For weeks the Vox channels on the colony world of Thides III had been silent.
It was the signature calling card of the Night Lords chapter.
They always began by cutting off the planet from all outgoing communication and replacing it with unending broadcasts of screaming and other hideous sounds to confuse and frighten the enemy. The Night Lords had eradicated the planet's local Planetary Defense Force shortly after their arrival, but the small detachment of Death Korps soldiers who were resupplying at the time of the Chaos incursion had proven to be harder to take out. They had taken up positions along the ridgeline that overlooked the ferrocrete hovels of the colony, most of which had been reduced to rubble by the Kriegers to deny the traitor marines any cover. After several assaults the Night Lords managed to eliminate most of the Imperials, only a thousand or so had withdrawn into the wilderness to regroup. This is where Captain Torvul came in.
He was the leader of a Terror Squad and his specialty was getting information out of prisoners. During the attack he'd managed to procure a few guardsmen who hadn't been completely killed to find the whereabouts of the rest of the survivors, and of course, to satisfy his own sadistic a rudimentary torture chamber, which had he hastily put together in the ruins of a manufactory, Torvul examined one of his captives whom he had stuck on a freight hook. The individual in question, a Death Korps Commissar, dangled from the hook like a macabre puppet, his legs bent at unnatural angles and dried blood leaked from the cracked lenses of his rebreather mask. Torvul turned off the Vox broadcaster and approached him.
"Where is the rest of your pathetic kind?" Torvul asked; his bladed hand wrapped around the Commissar's throat.
No response.
Torvul pulled him from the hook, mindful to be as forceful as possible, and threw him on a blood-covered table before asking him again.
No response.
He took his serrated index finger and made a slit in the mask, ripping it off his face revealing the man within. He was paler than Kriegers usually were, most likely due to blood loss and he had two slightly tan circles around his eyes where his mask lenses had been; the only part of him that had ever been exposed to sunlight, even then not directly.
"I have gone three days without hearing as much as a whimper from you," Torvul said angrily, "and you have begun to make me very impatient."
No response.
He picked the Commissar up again, along with a few pieces of rusty rebar, and drove them through the man's arms, pinning him to the metal wall.
The Commissar's breathing rattled through his clenched teeth as he raised his head to meet the eyes of his captor. Torvul, believing that his work was about to pay off, put his hideous face next to the man's, eager to hear what he had to say.
The Commissar gave a harsh cough as he spat up whatever blood and saliva he could onto the traitor's face.
Enraged, Torvul smashed his fist into the Commissar's abdomen, making a dull, moist crunch as the tremendous pressure forced the man's eyes out of his sockets and some bits of organs to come out of his mouth.
Torvul wiped the spit and blood from his face as he heard a faint sound from another prisoner on the other side of the room. A Krieg grenadier who been impaled through his left side and out his right shoulder with a large stake driven into the ground began to speak.
"G…g…g…g…"
"What is it? Spit it out!" yelled Torvul, it was the first time a prisoner had said anything.
"…Go…go…go..." the Korpsman stuttered, his hands trembling around his chest plate.
"Yes? Go? Go where?" Torvul roared, grabbing the soldier by his shoulders.
The chest plate fell off its buckle to the ground along with three frag grenades, their pins strung to a thin wire tied across the grenadier's chest.
"…to hell." The grenadier replied.