Hi all, this is my first time here and my first post. I have read some other stories which are very good. I would really appreciate any feedback, good and bad. I have uploaded the first 4 chapters of an 11 Chapter book, although chapters 5-11 are planned they are not yet written.

Vindicare Emerging

CHAPTER 1

All was quiet in a backwater region of the Segmentum Obscurus but the peace was about to be shattered. Distant stars were gently winking against the black void of space like tiny lights reflecting on the surface of deep deep pool of water. A tiny ripple appeared on the speckled canvas but it grew like a virus. There was a sudden flash of intense light as an unmarked scout class space craft tore a hole in real space, shredding the calm illusion projected by the tranquil stars beyond. As soon as the Scout had settled into reality it fired a bolt of lightening from its belly and a drop pod ejected from its hull. Before even the Scout ship's hold had closed, the harsh interaction of real space and the Warp wound their dance once more, and it was gone.

The drop pod and its deadly contents of five Space Marine scouts glided silently to the jungle world of Tanglain with its hardy inhabitants and dangerous unwanted visitors.

Aegus Din reached out to his wife, Aleila, as the monstrous green creature pulled out its weapon. Din knew what was going to happen but he could do nothing about it. He tried to think how he had landed himself in this position but couldn't understand what he had done wrong. The monster's weapon fired and Aleila's lifeless body slumped to the ground. Din's legs were paralysed, he screamed but no sound came, he reached out but nothing moved. He looked around frantically, tears streaming from his eyes, where was Saif, his son. His eyes lock with Saif's and terror filled the boy's eyes as he was carried off by a metal giant. Din's world fades into black, he knows he is dying.

He lies still, staring into the blackness, blinking to encourage the light to reach his retina. He feels a tear drop down his cheek, he notices that the nose of the battle has subsided, the stench of burning, decay and the sound of screaming has gone. He looks around, still black, but his head no longer in pain. He squints again and can make out a light bulb above him. Above him and above his bed. He realises that he has just woken up from a terrible nightmare, but one so vivid. His memory returns and he looks over his surroundings, he can see the familiar bars, and slit window ten feet up. His prison cell is hot and humid, just like the jungle outside.

It is not the first nightmare of this nature, but this one was different. This one felt real, so real that he had to get out. He decided to pull his escape plan forwards. He didn't know how but if he didn't escape, Din knew that everyone on the planet was in jeopardy. They we not ready for an escape attempt but he didn't care, they were leaving tomorrow.

Twenty four hours later, it was Dawn and steaming rain thumped down the tangled creepers and splashed across oversize leaves. Panting hard, Din splashed through another muddy puddle and under another tree branch. He had not slowed for over an hour, his pace as relentless as the pounding rain. He wanted to rest, he needed to rest, but he dared not for fear of being caught and killed like the other escapee convicts that weren't quite as fast or cunning as he was. Twelve had made the escape attempt, and only three remained alive. The prison guards had no mercy.

He dared to stop for a second and glanced back. He could hear barking, it was distant, but they were certainly still on his trail so he had to find a way to shake them off. Still facing the direction he had come from, he saw the leaves in the middle distance stir. He raised a blade, a home made knife that took 3 months to source the parts for, but it was sharp, and well weighted. He sniffed through the raindrops, his eyes darting from tree to tree, he saw a flash of black through the tree line, and a huge hound pranced from the trees. Din launched the knife immediately, its trajectory already determined, there was nothing he could do but wait. If the knife missed its target, he knew he would be dead in seconds, the Dog was already close.

The dog coiled back on its hind legs, its muscles straining to keep its balance, then, a split second later it howled, it had been struck just above its hind leg and knocked clean over. Din ran over to the wounded animal, scanned the trees but there was no sign of anyone else yet so he clamped its head between his arm and body and recovered the blade, then swiftly slit the dogs throat. Warm blood poured out over his hand, the dogs movement slowed to nothing. It was a quick kill, not how it would have been had the dog landed a successful attack. Din knew that these dogs were not trained to make a clean kill, their trainers believing that those who were hunted did not deserve a merciful death.

Without looking up he shouted to his two remaining companions who had stopped just in front of him,

"keep going, I will catch you" he was only just audible over the pouring rain. He looked at the short squat figure of his little friend he knew as Boxy, and added "you have to run as fast as you can or you will both be caught". Boxy signalled he understood and disappeared into the jungle a few seconds later. Water dripped over Din's hair and down his forehead, he wiped his brow clean with his forearm, smearing blood across his face. He could taste the blood on his lips as he hauled the heavy weight onto his back, turned to his left and took off through the trees. He ran as hard as he could for several minutes, jumping foliage and fallen trees, he was looking for something very specific. After a few minutes of running he could hear more dogs, the chasing pack, and their trainers would not be far behind, they would be on him in 3 minutes.

The foliage was dense so picking up the pace was difficult, but he dared not look behind. The tree line opened up, a small clearing, inside which he found what he was looking for. He looked up, arching his back the whole tree filled his vision, the high canopy hidden by the low rain cloud cover. It was perfect. Din focused on a low foothold, about a metre off the ground and ran for it. After a couple of well placed steps and a well timed leap, he was standing on one of the low branches, well above head height. He had chosen the tree for its height, and he began the long climb to the top with the dog straddled across his shoulders. He knew that the strength of his and the dead dogs scent would overpower that of his companions, so the guards would track him to the base of the tree and then have nowhere to turn, it would take them some time to realise he must have gone up, by which time he would be long gone and the scent washed away.

He reached the top his arms and legs burning, his clothes and body now covered in blood. The canopy was thick, the foliage dense, even if his pursuers made it up this high it could still take them hours to find the body. He stashed the dog in a neat crevice, and turned to survey the scene. As he took some time to soak up the geography of the forest below, he could see a few of the old giants similar to the one he stood upon, all were poking well above the main tree canopy. He felt like he was on top of the world as he tiptoed towards the edge of the thick branch on which he stood, peering down at the main tree canopy 50 metres below. He knew where he was, and he knew where he needed to be. From where he stood he could make out his village, it was the first time he had seen it in nearly a year. He could even make out the roof top of the village hall, which was near his house. Apart from his dreams there was no reason to believe that they weren't, but he dearly hoped that his family were safe. Something inside him drove him on.

He closed the gap to the end of the branch, it was bare, one of the few part of the tree where there was no additional flora clinging for life. His body instinctively resisted the move to the edge unbalancing him and he wavered, his arm quickly extending itself to steady his body. He knew the time had come, he looked over the edge to pick the point to aim at and took a breath. He stepped to the tip of the branch and in one fluid motion launched himself into the air. He knew the free fall to the canopy below was a dangerous move, but necessary to evade the prison guards. His biggest worry however did not lie with the guards, but the strange creatures that might lurk in the trees below. Gravity took hold of Din's body as he plummeted to the ground.

Boxy Nero had been done exactly what Din had told him to do and had run as fast as he could for as long as he could. He was so tired he could hardly see, his vision a blur and he didn't see Alphie stop in front of him. He tripped over Alphie's crouched body and stumbled into a nasty ditch of deep mud. Nero was momentarily stunned and began to sink into the mud. His mind was racing, why wasn't Alphie helping him out as the second passed and he slowly sank. He urged his limbs to move and he managed to regain control. His hand shot out into the mud and he scrabbled to place it somewhere firm, but he failed, as he pushed down to prise his body out his arm just sank deeper into the sticky black mess. He opened his mouth in panic and his mouth started to fill with the mud, his body now almost completely submerged. Alphie was only an arms length away, but he remained stationary, his eyes transfixed dead ahead, unable to avert his gauze.

Something came at Boxy from behind and grabbed hold of his foot. At first it felt like he was being pushed further in but realised that it was tugging on his foot, pulling him out. Nero was slowly dragged out, his heart still pounding he scraped the mud from his face and eyes as best as he could. Din's face came into view, gave a quick wink and disappeared. Boxy lay there still and silent regaining his composure.

During the whole incident Alphie's stare never left the tree line, and Din followed his gaze into the trees but saw nothing. Nero coughed and spluttered, thick drops of mud came up from his throat, he turned onto his knees and wretched, still gasping for breath. As soon as he made a sound Alphie quickly turned and hissed,

"keep quiet, there was something up ahead". His eyes moved once again to the tree line ahead to once again observe the unknown creature that only he could see.

"what is it" Din asked quietly

"I have no idea" replied Alphie "I haven't seen it for a few minutes, but there was definitely something there. Definitely"

Din took the decision to keep moving, he had managed to catch up and he still had a long way to go. He had pulled the tree jumping trick before, it was a game they used to play as kids. They used to jump from trees aiming to land on the huge flat leaves which provided excellent cushions to brake the fall. If you hit the leaf at the right angle it always provided a relatively safe landing, but he had never done it from such a height and he knew he was lucky to be intact. As far as he knew he had successfully shaken off the pursuing guards.

He hadn't seen what Alphie had seen, but something still scared him, something was un-natural about the air. He had been a hunter since he was a child, his father owned a farm and with very few human visitors so Din spent much of his time on hunting trips with his father. He was used to the sounds, the smells and the feel of the forest at all times of the day, night and year but today it all felt different. Today, it stank.

He wondered if his time in prison had affected his senses, but as he considered it a movement to his right caught his eye. He froze, behind him Nero also came to rest. The rain had eased slightly and Nero was still black with mud because the large jungle leaves were shielding them from the worst of the rain. A crack of thunder roared in the distance and for a split second the sky lit up in an explosion of green and white.

Din saw movement again, this time a shape. He could have sworn it was closer, the outline of a shape was moving in their direction. He dropped to his knees and pulled Nero down with him and Alphie followed them down. He didn't recognise what he had seen, for the first time in a long time, a twinge of fear squeezed into the pit of his stomach. The stink came back to him. He tried to tune his ears into their surroundings, but the white noise of the rain took away any sense of direction. He could hear nothing useful.

Nero cowered on the ground next to Din, he didn't now why they had stopped, all he knew was that something was wrong. Din's eyes slowly edged over a fallen tree looking ahead again and finally made it out properly. It was just past the giant Oak, between two saplings about 50 metres ahead. There was a human shape, at first Din thought it was a prison guard, but how did it get ahead of them. After a few seconds he realised that none of the guards were this big, this thing was enormous, each arm must have been as thick as one of his legs. He could see it was clothed scantly, almost primitively, but it did appear to be carrying a weapon, although not a weapon he recognised.

They had to keep moving and was about to move off but risked another glance first. His eyes crept over the bark covering the fallen tree that was hiding them from view, his heart began to pump faster and harder. He re-acquired the creature and as he did so there was another flash of lightning which made Din jump. The creature turned its head, it appeared to look right into Din's eyes, like a rodent caught in the headlights. He immediately ducked down, he didn't know if he had really been seen, it was a long way and he was well camouflaged but he couldn't risk it.

"Its time to go" he said quickly to them both, and motioned for them both to stay low.

"what is it" Alphie asked

"I have no idea" Din didn't mention that it might have spotted them. He moved off and they followed staying as low as possible by crawling along the ground. After they have moved twenty metres Din carefully risked a glance over above the foliage line. The creature had moved on, he didn't dare think where to, and he knew they couldn't stop to find out what it was.

This forest was a dangerous place but he knew the geography of it well, he knew exactly where he wanted to by night fall and the cloudy sky was beginning to darken but they still had a long way to go. After fifteen minutes of slow and low trekking Din had seen or heard no sign of the strange creature, so he picked up the pace. They continued East, Nero and Alphie always trudging behind trying to keep up.

Another fifteen minutes went past and Din's confidence was gaining further, and was letting his guard down. Rather than following tree lines, and keeping low in the foliage he had begun to take risks in order to move faster. This was a mistake. Everything was still and calm ahead when it suddenly came pounding out of the undergrowth, moving faster than any of the escapees could imagine. Alphie was in the lead and he never had a chance. Din heard a disturbance and glanced up to look ahead, all he saw was the glint of metal, then the head of Alphie flying off to the side into the trees, his stiffened body remaining upright, mid stride. It didn't stop its charge and Din was next in line, he had less than a second to react. His hunting instincts took over and instinctively he took an aggressive stance. He could see Alphie's body still standing which distracted him as the creature closed for its second kill. A second later it was on him and Din's little home made knife clashed with its huge knife and although dwarfed by this hideous creature, Din was faster and was able to deflect the full force of the blow with a side step. He rolled to the side in time to see the creature still on its charge towards Nero, who had frozen. Nero was a criminal born and bred, and had fighting instincts running through his blood, but he had been brought up on the streets where guns were the norm. He was lost without his pistol, and stood no chance in close combat against this towering fighting machine. For the first time Din noticed that the creature had green skin, and it was clad in a light leather armour over its chest and stomach but little else. Its bare arms looked as tough as leather and were coated with bright tattoos and battle scars. He had a spit second of de ja vu before reality hit him again, but an element of his brain went off to think about where he had seen this thing before.

To Din it felt like time had slowed, he watched the green skin take another step towards Nero. He felt no real emotion, he considered turning and running right then, leaving Nero to his certain death. He had time to consider all the options, to weigh up the pros and cons of each, and he would have run if he had thought he could survive alone with this creature chasing him down. It was a fighting machine, one big ball of muscle, highly trained in combat and tracking. Having tracked them unseen and unheard for over thirty minutes it had caught Din completely unaware. This creature was a reckonable force, and although Din had never seen anything like it, he thought he could beat it. Especially if he attacked from behind.

Even before his brain had processed the thought his hands knew what to do, and they the finger tips of his right hand had found the hilt of the knife and had balanced it nicely in his grip. Din knew his best chance was, quite literally, to stab this thing in the back, where he had noticed there was very little protective armour. Clearly the fighting force this creature belongs to is used to full frontal attack.

The knife heft his hand a split second later, he had tossed it with all his might. Din didn't even take aim as he usually would, he had no time to, his arm did all that was necessary, and he knew the knife would find its target. It did a split second later. It struck the green skin hard in the back, just where the kidney would be in a human and it sank deeply in.

Din was satisfied with the throw but with the exception of a small flinch, the knife didn't seem to have any affect on the next few steps the creature took and it continued on its trajectory towards Nero. However, it must have been pushed off balance slightly because it didn't strike the inevitable killing blow it had expected to, instead only managing a glancing blow across Nero's chest, and inflicting a deep wound almost severing his right arm. As he made the attack the knife slid out and dropped to the floor.

The green skin's momentum took him past Nero, and now in obvious pain from the deep wound in his back, crashed to the floor into a puddle of blood and water. It rolled, picked itself up, and chose to take a more defensive stance this time. The creature surveyed the scene ahead of it. Water dripped into its eyes that were scanning the immediate vicinity. Nero lay on the floor, his blood running into the forest, no doubt attracting all sorts of un-desirable animals to feed later. His arm was in tatters, with a couple of broken ribs, but he was still alive. The creature reached to the wound in its back, as it scanned for Din, but Din was not to be seen anywhere. Suddenly he came crashing in from the side and leaping onto the creatures back, plunging the knife he had just recovered next to Nero's body deeply into the side of the green skin's un-armoured neck. With his feet no longer touching the ground he had to use all his strength to get the knife through the thick skin, he kept on pushing it in until thick green blood began to spurt out of the wound. As blood covered his hands he jumped down, leaving the knife embedded in its neck.

The creature spun round and its fist swinging round lightning fast striking Din on his arm, the blow was not aimed, more of a reaction to the wound inflicted. The blow was so hard it knocked Din off his feet and nearly broke his arm. The next move from the creature was not a good one. It grabbed the knife and pulled it out of his neck, and doing so ripped more flesh from its neck and the wound tore open along its neck, green blood now pouring from the wound. Removing the blade was a mistake and it didn't live long to regret it.

Din, searing in pain, rolled over to see the green skin grasping its neck in an attempt to stem the flow, it staggered a few steps towards him, and then fell to the ground. He staggered to his feet, his arm aching and lungs wheezing. The creature lay motionless, he kicked the body to check it didn't react. Nothing. He bent down and plucked its huge knife from its cold grip, it was a much better knife than his. He also noticed an ammunition pouch, full of large calibre rounds. He moved on to Nero, who had managed to pull himself to a sitting position, and was leaning against a tree, water dripping on him from the leaves of the tall tree. Din could see he was in pain but there was nothing he could do. Nero was very pale and just sat and stared ahead, he didn't dare to look down at what was left of his arm. Din didn't really care, Nero wasn't part of his plan anymore. He had lost a lot of blood and Din thought he'd be luckily to last the night and didn't want him slowing the pace. He threw down his old knife to Nero,

"look after it" he said "and it will treat you well". He trudged off through the mud, Nero staring after him.

"you can't leave me here" he shouted through the rain,

"If you can keep up, come with me" Din shouted back

"at least help me up" Din ignored this last comment, and approached the area the creature had first appeared. Din followed the green skin's track for a couple of minutes, and found a small clearing, and a stash of equipment, including a rifle. He bent down, picking up the rifle, it was weighty, not design he had come across previously, but looked fairly standard none the less. He slung it over his shoulder, and also picked up a stubby sword in its sheath.

He was intrigued that it had left most of its weapons behind. Had it been tracking the three of them and treated the whole thing as a game, a sport. It clearly did not expect to be killed, attacking only with a hunting knife. Din worried about how many more there were, and what they were doing here. He stood up, covered the equipment stash with foliage, and began to make his way into the jungle. Still heading East, the sky was darker, and soon the light level would be too low to make progress. It was time to find somewhere to sleep for the night before it was dark, but he wanted to get a decent distance away from the battle before settling down for the night, and took off into the jungle at a pace.

Just after Din took off, Nero staggered into the clearing. He was holding his roughly bandaged bloody arm. As he came into the open he saw Din disappearing through the undergrowth, then gone. Nero too had noticed it getting dark, and with his good arm began to scrape a clearing amongst the ground cover, under a couple of large leaves. A wild animal shrieked in the distance, just waking up to begin a night of hunting.

Din travelled for as long as he could, until he could no longer see more than a few feet in front of him. He had stumbled several times, tripping over unseen hazards, and now was the time to seek cover for the night. In his experience, to spend the night on the ground was a brave thing to do, and the echoes of the jungle's inhabitant's carnivores gave credence to this point. He found a suitable tree, and climbed as high as he could, and settled into a V in the tree. As he rested he pulled out a couple of tree roots to nibble on into the night. He felt safe for the moment but couldn't help but wonder what it was he fought just a few minutes earlier. He had heard of strange races in out in the galaxy, but never had he thought his world would be affected. What was this alien, what had sent it, what was it doing here, what did it want and how many more were there?

As he slept he dreamt again, of lots of things, at one point, he dreamt of a space craft coming down from the sky in a clamour of activity and eruption of fire, but when he opened his eyes there was nothing. He drifted back off, disturbed only by the manic night life of the forest below and thoughts of the following day. Then he woke. In his whole life he had never been so scared. Din remembered where he had previously seen the creature he had just fought. It had been in his dream. This was the creature that had killed his wife.

Half a galaxy away in a protected cell was the Beta class psyker Jasper Van Dank. He was deep underground in the Vindicare Assassin's Temple secretly housed on Terra. Even he didn't know his location, but in any event, his mind was elsewhere. It was, as always, racing through time and space, scurrying down information avenues and mining for data through the perils of the Warp. Amazingly he had been born on Terra, on the doorstep of the Imperium of Man, and even now was only thirty five years old. When he was just ten years old he was discovered by the inquisition and taught to control his powers. Since then he has perpetually worked for the Officio Assassinorum tracking down potential recruits from across the galaxy. He had become almost albino during his length of his service, his skin pigment faded to near white as he had not seen the light of the sun for nearly twenty years.

He rarely moved and today was no exception, he lay still, his sullen eyes staring up into the grey ceiling, unfocused, occasionally twitching. He rarely ate, and a wash was even more unusual, thus his skin was flaking and rancid in places. In may ways he was a rotting corpse only kept alive through drugs, and tubes taking food to him and waste away. As the Temple's most powerful psyker, this lifestyle suited them well, this way they could keep him under close their.

His mind was exploring the space around Segmentum Obscurus sector of the Galaxy and something drew him to an unknown planetary system called Tanglain. Except for a brief distraction by the Nigrum Centrum, as his mind drew closer to the planet his power became intensely focused on a single point, he no longer saw the grey ceiling three metres above his head, but he saw another world, and he saw it through the eyes of a human on the mysterious planet. The mind was a powerful one, but also one that could be influenced, could be manipulated. He probed further, it was worried about something and it could see a terrible fate closing in, darkness lay ahead and the mind's owner was desperate. Jasper had never been so interested in an individual, he hated being drawn so intimately close to another human being, but he could do nothing about it. Was it the warp forces affecting his judgement. He didn't think so, he knew his limits and he wasn't close to them yet.

He closed his eyes and was consumed by this mind, his body suddenly shuddered, almost leaping off the table, his eyes opened, with a renewed brightness, an intensity of colour that they hadn't had since the beginning of his indoctrination by the Temple. The future was now less certain than it had been at the start of the day, everything had just changed, his outlook, his fate and potentially the fate of the galaxy. He blinked twice, he sat up, his body ached, everything was sore, although this was mostly because he hadn't washed and his body was physically breaking down around him. He pulled off the medical equipment, blood seeping out of the new wounds, but he staggered to the door in his bare feet, he was desperate to see the sunlight one last time. He was not a prisoner, nor a slave, and as a Beta class psyker had free reign on most of the temple so he found a lift to take him to ground level, 105 floors above.

The lift door opened and with arms stretched in front he found his way outside and a soft patch of grass. There he lay, soaking up the sun, it may be the last time he saw it again. A security officer saw him, he looked so pale, almost a living skeleton, the guard had never seen anything like it and called for medial assistance. As the medic approached, he muttered barely audible sentence. He repeated it, then again, and again. The medic listened intently, and could barely make out the words "must see the Director Primus. Our I have seen our future. I have seen our prophecy play out. Director must get to the planet Tanglain". The message reached the Director, Lord Jedwist, within minutes, who rushed down to be by the side of Jasper Van Dank.

When the Director arrived Jasper's body to shuddering and succumbing to the Psychic forces it was being subjected to. In his final torturous moment, there was a whispered conversation between the two men, both eternally different, but each a powerhouse in his own way. As Jasper died, the Director reached out and touched his finger tips. He felt what Jasper had been feeling, only at one thousandth of the intensity. He smiled for the first time in a decade, and picking up Jasper's cold, pale and rancid body, he carried it out to the green fields beyond the gates of the temple. He knew that is what Jasper had wanted. As he returned, he called his office,

"Cancel everything" he spoke into his comm unit "Prepare my ship to visit Tanglain. There is somebody I need to pick up and bring back for training. Tell the inquisition I am on my way, I fear they may have an agent on the ground already. I don't want to have to hold them responsible for irreparable damage".