Captum Ante: Chapter 2

In the hanger the various dignitaries were sitting across from the strange captive, watching him as he talked. It was an odd sight, the prisoner being hunched over by his chains but somehow still impressively powerful. He was surrounded by Soldats but still a potent threat despite that.

The prisoner had called himself Jediah and he was speaking in his thick accent. Kommandant Renhardt listened intently, drinking in every word, "My ship was making a journey through the Warp but something went wrong. We were caught in a squall and thrown off course, forced to make an emergency real-space translation. It was rough, the ship was breaking up around us, fires on every deck and vacuum breaches venting the crew."

Mechaniker Von-Grod leaned forward and said, "You speak about space like it was a sea, but the void isn't like that at all."

Jediah shrugged, making his chains rattle and said, "The Warp is the warp."

Kommandant Renhardt didn't understand what that was meant to mean but decided to move on and said, "So how did you survive?"

Jediah explained, "I was in the drop-pod bay, orientating some Scout-novices. An explosion came out of nowhere and I was thrown into a drop-pod. The violence must have awakened its machine spirit because it ejected me out into space. The next thing I knew your men were dragging me out of its shell."

Vice-Chancellor Donner leaned forward, the briefcase cuffed to his wrist dragging slightly as he said, "You haven't explained: where are you from?"

Jediah answered, "I am from a world called Lujan II, it's further up the Saint Karyl Trail, as one heads towards Terra."

"Terra!" spat Donner, "That's just a southern fallacy, life exists here on Camollum and nowhere else! We don't listen to superstitions here in the Northern League. We stand for reason, science and democracy!"

Jediah played with his chains and said, "I don't know anything about your world or your beliefs. This world was lost to a Warp-storm three hundred years ago, the Imperium has made no contact since."

"Three hundred years?" mused Von-Grod thoughtfully, "That is as far back as our records stretch, everything before was lost in the fall of the First Kingdom."

Donner didn't sound so convinced as he said, "Don't muddy the issue with old myths and ancient history. Admit it, you're working for the Caliph, you're a spy!"

Jediah spread his hands as much as his chains allowed and pleaded, "I don't know who that is, I am a servant of the Emperor. A warrior of the Adeptus Astartes."

Kaptain Gobels spoke up mockingly to declare, "Now I know your joking. If you're an Astartes then where are your wings? Where are your harp and halo?"

Jediah shook his head and said, "I'm telling you the truth, this is all an accident."

Suddenly Director Neadler leaned forwards and hissed accusingly, "You're lying!"

Jediah frowned and said, "I assure you I'm telling the truth."

Neadler peered over his tinted glasses and declared, "Oh, you're good… you've clearly had mental training. Someone has meticulously resculpted your mind, I've never felt blocks so strong, but for all that you're still a blunt. I can feel the deceptions radiating off you, the half-truths and misdirection's you weave. You're trying to hide it but I can see that you came here with a purpose."

Jediah's mood instantly shifted and his face transformed into a feral mask of anger, gone was the reasonable persona and in its place was a murderer, filled with violent rage. Everybody started in shock and the Soldats put hands on their pistols as the giant warrior hollered, "Witch!"

Renhardt had heard the term before; it was a word from the old tongue, used by people who feared and hated that which they didn't understand. The term itself was a relic, from a less enlightened age, but the warrior made it a curse and pronouncement of doom all in one. The vehemence and hate laced into that one word made Renhardt's heart flutter and he had to leap up to stop the Soldats drawing weapons, shouting, "Hold your fire!"

Neadler brushed off his long coat and said, "Gentlemen, a word."

Everybody hurried away and Donner was the first to speak saying, "We can't let this get out, even if it is all a pack of lies it will spread discord and alarm. Nordlund can't afford that right now, not with the Caliph preparing the Concordance for war."

Neadler agreed and said, "This is not the time for complicated truths, Kongress doesn't like inconvenient facts, they want something good that they can tell the people."

Renhardt asked, "So what do we tell the Chancellor?"

Neadler thought about it then said, "It's well known that the Caliph has long wanted his own version of our Sturmtruppes. We tell them that we found evidence he's succeeded and sent one man to try to infiltrate our top-secret base and spy on our research."

Von-Grod queried, "What about the artefacts?"

Neadler answered, "Pack them up, well take them with us, maybe we can find discern their secrets."

Von-Gord looked disappointed but wasn't about to argue with the commander of the P.I.A. and the feared Sturmtruppe. Renhardt however wasn't satisfied and said, "What about the prisoner?"

Donner stated, "Get rid of him."

Renhardt was angered by the casual way he dismissed a warrior's life and said, "What, just give him an iho-stick before standing him before a firing squad?"

Donner shrugged and said, "This is a complication we don't need, not in an election year. The Dixiecrat-party is leading in the opinion polls and you know they're a lot of damned appeasers, so pink they're practically red."

Renhardt was about to protest but Neadler stepped in and said, "I know it's hard for you, a Soldat's honour and all that, but for Nordlund it as to be done. Your due to retire next year but I could have a quiet word with the Chancellor and see if we can move that up. I'm sure you would like to see more of your family…"

Renhardt clamped his mouth shut; the Director had clearly done his research. A lifetime of service had left his children practically strangers to him and he had barely seen his grandchildren, honour and duty were a hollow second compared to family. Besides, a small voice whispered to him, if he refused the prisoner would probably have an 'accident' on the way back to Konnigsberg anyway. He reluctantly nodded and said, "Soldat's! Take the prisoner back to his cell."

The guards obeyed, unshackling Jediah and leading him out. They all watched him shuffle off then Donner rubbed his wrist, where the handcuff was chaffing and said, "Do you have anywhere I could lock this up, being Vice-Chancellor has its perks but the tradition of having to lug these documents around everywhere is not one of them."

"Of course," replied Renhardt, "There's a safe in my office, Kaptin Gobels will show you the way."

As his adjutant lead the politician out the Kommandant saw the Mechanikers begin to pack the various artefacts into crates. Renhardt set off, walking slowly as he exited the hanger, leaving Neadler behind to supervise. Renhardt walked out of the hanger, seeing various Soldats at work and he couldn't help but be struck by how young they all looked.

Kommandant Renhardt had worn the blue proudly for decades, serving Nordlund heart and soul. And yet now at the end of his career he found himself wondering what had he accomplished? For centuries the Northern League had been feuding with the Southern Concordance and yet in the last few decades they had seen serious reversals. Despite being a repressive theocracy the Concordance kept achieving amazing advances in technology, leapfrogging Nordlund's greatest minds. In brush-fire wars and minor local conflicts the Redskins kept gaining the upper hand, turning Camollum's numerous smaller nations to their cause and pushing back the borders of the Northern League.

Renhardt was keenly aware that he wouldn't live to see an end to this cycle of wars and neither would these Soldats. What was really worrying him though was that his two grandsons were growing up; soon they would be old enough for the draft. Old enough to be sent to fight and die in some hellish jungle or for a worthless mile of mud.

Renhardt's heart was growing heavy; he had seen too much death in one life. All he really wanted now was to retire and go home to try to patch things up with his family and to watch his grandchildren grow. Which was why it was so sad that he now had to sign an execution order, but he wouldn't do that without knowing he had tried everything else first.

Renhardt's path took him up to the detention block, a small and squat building which saw little use save for the occasional Soldat who got out of hand. He passed through the wooden doors and was confronted by a guard, who saluted him. He was forced to stop here and be searched but he refrained from using his rank to bypass security: it was good to see the Soldat's following proper protocol. After a minute Renhardt was waved through, passing another guard to enter a long cell-block. There were a score of cells set to the left; each behind a grid of wrought-iron bars. While to the right there was a path, with a clearly marked yellow line defining the reach of any prisoner. However before one cell there was an extra red line, set even further back, the captive clearly making the guards nervous.

Renhardt walked up to the red line and stopped, looking within the cell. Before him Jediah was sat with his back against a wall, he was in profile with his knees drawn up and his hands clasping his chains before him. The prisoner's head was down, staring at his feet and he was mindlessly working his jaw in frustration.

Renhardt sighed at the forlorn sight and said, "I'm here to tell you that you are to be executed at first light."

Jediah didn't respond, merely staring at his feet and working his jaw. Renhardt recognised the look of a man who knew he was doomed and threw him a lifeline saying, "It doesn't have to be this way, just give me something useful I can take to the others. Something that they can understand."

Jediah was silent, gripping his chains in his huge hands and Renhardt barked, "Don't you hear me, you are going to be stood before a firing squad and killed! Do you want to die? If you don't work with me there's nothing I can do for you."

No response was forthcoming and Renhardt reluctantly stepped back from the red line. It was sad to see any man resigned to his death but the Kommandant was committed to this grim duty. Renhardt walked back along the line of cells to the waiting Soldats but there he paused. He faced the guards and said, "Nobody comes in here, nobody is to speak or communicate with the prisoner. Make sure he gets a last meal though, I won't deny any man that right."

With that the Kommandant stepped out of the cell block leaving the guards to wait for the door to slam, then they lent back and pulled out some iho-sticks. They lit up and settled down to wait out the long night in the manner common to guards across the galaxy, by griping about absolutely everything.

Back in his cell Jediah waited, patiently chewing his jaw over and over, his transhuman hearing letting him discern every mutter of the guard's bellyaching. Slowly Jediah's head rose and his hands parted, revealing the chain between them. It was corroded and worn, the metal links half-dissolved by what should have been many year's worth of corrosion. Jediah lifted the chain up to his mouth and began to chew once more and as he did so a hissing acidic drool leaked from his lips to bubble on the concrete. It was a shame that the Soldats of Nordlund had never heard of a Betcher's Gland, nor the acidic salvia it produced, otherwise they would have known that mere iron was no obstacle to an Astartes.

Jediah relentlessly chewed at his bonds, working the softened metal with his teeth. At this rate his arms would be free in less than an hour, another to free his legs and then all he needed to do would be to kill the guards and get out of this cell.

Then freedom beckoned.