This is the first WH40K story I've written in a long, long while. I'll try and keep to all the fluff where possible, I'm sure you guys'll let me know if I go off the rails too far. I used to write quite a lot at the Black Library under the pseudonym SGT RAWK before it closed down, but its good to see an avenue for these stories again. This is about a rim world fallen into the Eye of Terror, and about my SM Chapter the Silver Fists. That said all rights belong to Games Workshop. This story had its roots in an idea that occurred to me several years ago. I lost that story when my computer files got eaten up by a deadly virus. This is my first attempt to revise it from memory. Interestingly enough there is a fair amount of allegory between my gobbled up computer files and my protagonist's plight!
{ .. I .. }
She was eighteen today. A legitimate adult!
Not that anyone would notice, or bestow her with birthday wishes, balloons, or surprise ambushes from behind doors or inside cupboards, cuddles and claps, or one of those embarrassing birthday songs! How did it go? 'Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday dear Katrys, Happy birthday to yooooouuuu..."
She blinked. Surprised at the hot salty moisture that swelled up like twinkling little diamond balloons that danced along the rim of her sight, causing the rubble strewn street and collapsed shopping district where she stood to swim and glisten like the passing of a Warp storm. Silly girl, she thought. You haven't cried in years! Big Silver would be ashamed of you!
Katrys swiped the tears from her cheeks with a grimy forearm and rolled her eyes toward the turquoise skies of her home, taking a big gulp of the bitter morning air.
It had been a long time since she had seen a blue sky like the one she remembered from her childhood. But then it had been a long time since her world had been swallowed up by the great Hellstrom, the Eye of Terror the Imperials called it, and everything she had ever known had ceased to exist. At least the alien firmament, however merciless it was, could still offer a close approximation of a blue sky once in a while. Once or twice a year it came out like this, when it wasn't burning with the colours of the Warp. Though there was still the tell-tale sickly yellow red haze on the horizon that revealed this was no ordinary sky, but an atmosphere slowly relinquishing its natural laws to the realm of Chaos.
Night time was the worst, however. When all the stars were out. The 'mad stars' they had called them back then, when there were still people around to name such things. She tried not to look at the stars any more: all those warped worlds sliding around befouled suns giving her a preview of where her own world Ophregus was headed.
Slowly or quickly, Katrys thought, all things inevitably died.
She had seen nothing but death since the night of her thirteenth birthday. And she had watched everything burn, twist, scream and be consumed every year since. Like this small shopping village where she stood, where her family had brought her on the weekends.
Sunkiss Fair.
The sign was still up, at the top of the building, the part which hadn't collapsed along with all the others in the street, high up where it could be seen from all three streets pushing up the hill toward it. Sunkiss Fair, where your family can be kissed by the sun whilst having a shopping day of fun. That's how the jingle went. Terribly corny, but it had such powerful sentiment to her past.
She missed jingles, along with vids and data plates, and pop songs. Kids vids she missed the most, because she had still loved them even at thirteen. Happy Hopper & The Angry Grox. The Wonderful Life of Mrs Catspaw. The Arms of Imperium. Hilton Higgets Does A Mess. But all of it was gone. Dead like all the rest. Her family, her friends, everyone at school, even all those people you never thought much about, but still made such a difference to your day just by being there.
But everything had died, been killed - or turned. Except herself. And she was not about to let that happen. Not while she still breathed. Not after the sworn promise she had made to Big Silver. Not while she could still fight!
She had grown up quick in five years. The perfect birthday present she could hope for was a day without the threat of imminent death, where she could just wander the desolated streets, rummaging for bits and pieces, maybe a new evening dress, or a new pair of boots. The thought amused her somewhat, and of course was sheer fantasy, but it brought a strange slow smile across her face that warmed her pretty grey eyes. If there were people to see her right now they would have thought her an attractive young woman, if not for the grime on her face and arms, and the mismatched clothing she had stolen off corpses or pilfered from shattered shops. She had a good figure, she thought. Everyone had been so obsessed with keeping fit in her culture before the Great Change, she wondered if they would have traded their simple routines at the gym back then for a single day of her life of survival now. She doubted it. Not in a million years! It was a pity there was no boy around to tell her how Stompin' she looked in her new jeans.
She wore tight dark denim, her long legs tucked into mud-caked calf-high fir trimmed boots. It could get cold at night, and it was early morning and the warped sun was late to warm, so she still wore her thick black hooded parka. It was great because it had all sorts of pockets in it. A pair of snow goggles hung around her long neck. Her long blonde hair - which she cut once every couple of months - was tied back into a long tail down her back. Her nose may have been a little hooked perhaps, but it leant her face a cheekiness and more matured beauty. Her lips were full, and were once quick to smile. She had big eyes still, with dark lashes to die for. Ordinarily, in another life in another world she might have been a pretty office clerk, or a lawyer, or the assistant manager of an upmarket restaurant. But now, all she had ever learnt and became good at was run, hide - and kill. She was strong too. But then she had to be to survive.
She always came to Sunkiss Fair. At least once a week, to pay her respects to Big Silver. This was where they had first met. This was where all her family had died right before her eyes, and Big Silver with them. This was where she had once been Katrys The Thirteen Year Old Little Girl, with pig-tails and big smiles and endless laughter. Especially at the expense of her two older brothers. But Willis and Tamlyn were gone now too. She guessed it might seem odd to others that she did not come to the fair to pay her respects to her family but rather to her saviour and hero. Of course, their bodies were long gone to dust. Big Silver's body, however, would never rot away. Not for a million years. But she came to see only him, because it was him and not her family that had saved her life. Her family had been screaming and running in terror like everybody else when the creatures erupted from the skies and clawed up out of the ground in all their hideous forms.
Events had settled down since then. Once the minions of Chaos had nothing left to murder and torture they tended to hybernate, or journey to other places that had not yet experienced their perverted forms of world order.
She hefted the las-rifle and rested it in the crook of her arm. It felt very natural to hold it this way. The las-rifle had become more of a companion to her in these dark times than any human she had ever known. She had taken it from a dead Guardsman, ripped in half by some monstrous leviathan. Luthox she had named the rifle. After the family dog. Because like Luthox the canine, Luthox the las-rifle was a girl's best friend. It kept her safe, and would do so until the day she made her first big mistake and ended up dead like all the rest. Which, from her experience, could be today or the day she turned thirty. But the thought of having a day off from all the terror amused her. And so she pondered it a little while longer, just as she might have pondered becoming the president of her country before the Eye of Terror swallowed it all to hell. She giggled.
That was her first mistake of the day. She guessed she deserved it too.
So much for Happy Birthday To You!
The Faceless emerged from the rubble behind her and pointed a tiny bony finger in her direction. Its jaw dropped open sickeningly low and an ear splitting shriek erupted from that wide maw as if all the thunder of an angry storm had been bunched up inside it waiting to erupt for this one moment.
They had been children once, the Faceless. Now, though it still held the form of an adolescent, its visage had been wiped blank by the deformities of the Warp, melting skin and muscle and bone until there was only one orifice at its centre - a great gaping black hole of a mouth. The Faceless used this hole to shriek out warnings to the main host. They acted as forward observers, alerting the main host to wherever the living might be found. And their scream was capable of rupturing a human's brain, making eyes bleed, and causing waves of nausea. They were one of the flimsiest proponents of the dark host of daemons, yet they were capable of sending entire companies of soldiers fleeing for their sanity.
Who knew how long this one had been sleeping there, under the rubble, waiting for this exact moment when something living, something pure, untouched, walked by and made the mistake of... giggling?
Did it have to be a mistake? Katrys remembered how freely she used to let her laughter ring out loud throughout the household; when Tamlyn had bumped his head on the edge of the laundry cupboard, or when Willis had opened up that great big bottle of gingerbrew, after she had given it one hell of a shake, and it had exploded all over the kitchen, all over him. She remembered laughter being so free and fresh. When you could laugh till you were giddy.
The Faceless howled at her. Yellow drool poured from the edges of its dislocated maw, and it stalked rapidly toward her. A child form, turned all into horror. Its supersonic cry sending blades of pain through her skull.
She pulled Luthox to her shoulder, took aim and fired in one clean motion.
The creatures head erupted into a great geyser of smoking meat and yellow pus. The body continued to stride forward, arms outstretched, it's little legs taking several more steps before realizing the head had been purified by Imperial fire. That's what the Commissars had said when the Imperial Guard were here trying to evacuate all the families before the attack. 'Purify them all', they had screamed, 'purify them with the Emperor's Light!'
Katrys looked down on the twitching corpse of the Faceless. It was too late already, she knew that, but at least it's reconnaissance days of sounding alarms were over. The horde would be on their way soon, or worse.
So she waited. And slowly breathed in, and slowly breathed out; using her ears to pick out every detail of sound around her. She would make Big Silver proud, just as she had promised, or die trying...