Chapter Four
A/N: well, this chapter does contain some things not meant for children, but not enough overall for the story itself to be changed to a M rating. Other than that, the chapter before the rating is changed, I will leave an author's note signifying such.
As he shook the sleep from his eyes, Solomon was practically thrown from his bed, the room lurching violently. Off in the distance, there was a distinct boom, and several loud screams. Scrambling around on the floor, he found the old set of armor he had been given by the captain. It was similar in function and appearance to a space marine's, but much smaller, and as such he began dressing himself as quickly as he could. Another rumble, another explosion in the distance, but much closer this time: he had to hurry. Whatever was happening elsewhere in the ship, Solomon did not want to be caught with his proverbial pants down.
Grabbing his M35 M-Galaxy Pattern Lasgun from the floor where it had fallen, he was just about to shoulder it when he remembered something important.
He switched the power pack around to what he hoped was the correct orientation. "Wouldn't surprise me if someone had gotten the lettering mixed up a long time go," he muttered. "Maybe now it'll actually make a dent." Solomon didn't want to use his weapon, but judging from the next series of explosions, which weren't so distant anymore, he'd have to if he wanted to stay alive.
He rushed to the door, just as several guardsmen rushed past, their own lasguns trained on the far end. Several were covered in blood, but whose, he did not know. It was fresh, though; he could smell it.
"What's going on?" It sounded stupid the moment it left his lips, but if the others thought so, they didn't make any mention of it.
"Chaos raiders, from some small warband," one of the marines, a woman, replied. "Sent in a bunch of boarding parties during breakfast. A lot of our guys are dead down in the mess hall, took them totally by surprise. Those that managed to at least grab something to shoot did a bit better. We lost a lot of marines in the fight for the barracks, but we're holding our own for now."
"Raiders? How many are there?" It twisted his stomach, thinking of the men and women that were dead elsewhere in the ship, some of whom he could have been in the process of befriending...
"Not sure, seems like we've killed most of the raiding parties, but there's one big one headed towards the bridge," another said. "Being led by some big fella and his entourage of huge soldiers, a Traitor Space Marine captain or something."
Solomon did not like the sound of that. He'd read and heard many tales of the Horus Heresy and the events following it, thanks to information supplied by Captain Ordacius, so to be in the middle of a battle with potential chaos marines... it made him rather scared. Well, as scared as anyone like him could be in such a situation, which was a lot. "Do they have a specific insignia?"
"No idea what it is, could be from almost any damned traitor legion, or at least some splinter chapter. We've only got reports of one small group of space marines, though: for some reason, the rest of the raiders are just plain humans. None of them seem to worship any specific chaos god, so thank the Emperor for that. If they did, then, well... we'd all be in deep shit."
"Must be some sort of trial by fire for them," Solomon muttered. "Maybe to show they're worthy of being "blessed" with their progenitor's gene seed?" That's the only reason he could think of at the moment as to why it wasn't a boarding party entirely made up of chaos marines. From what he had been told, they often operated in warbands, usually doing whatever the hell they wanted.
"Whatever the case is, they're headed this way, and-," the guardsman's voice was cut off by a monstrous blast, sending shrapnel flying their way. One of the marines fell dead, a large chunk of doorway lodged firmly in his cranium. His helmet, neatly split down the middle, rolled off to the side.
Through the debris and smoke came a monstrous figure, face bathed in blood and shoulders covered in spikes. His red armor dinged and dented from age and use, covered in runes that seemed to pulse with an unholy light, the giant's face bore a snarl of pure hatred, and his eyes burned like the fires of Hell itself. The chaos space marine marched forward, weapon at his side in an almost unworried manner, as if they could do nothing against him. "Look at all the little guardsmen," the giant man said, his condescending tone filled with enough enough to send many a chill down Solomon's spine. Such malice, such evil loaded into every syllable... it was not right. "Are you ready to die for your corpse emperor?"
He didn't even wait for a response before suddenly producing the massive bolter-like weapon and taking aim. With a might dakka, one of the marines simply seemed to explode, blood spraying all over the hallway as he fell back, clearly dead. Some of it splashed into Samuel's open mouth, nearly causing him to hurl on the spot. With a vicious smile, the traitor marine turned and pointed his weapon at the others. The others took aim and returned fire, but either missed completely or watched as their rounds simply pinged off of the thick ceramite armor.
Solomon reacted on instinct and took aim at the most visible portion of the super soldier's body: his head.
FOOM
The usual pew sound of the lasgun firing was completely replaced by what sounded like a condensed explosion, tearing across the room in a blinding brilliance. Solomon's boots, already slick with blood of the freshly-dead marine, were send skidding backwards, along with the rest of him, leaving a pair of red streaks across the floor. Thrown off-kilter by this, he fell backwards against a wall. Everyone still standing were covering their ears, shouting over the echoing din to one another.
"Holy God-Emperor!" a marine shouted as Solomon rose to his feet. "What in the Warp was that? A lascannon?!"
Across the hall from the small group, the former chaos marine slumped forward and fell to the ground with a great clang. The beam must have struck him somewhere right below the jaw, because... there wasn't much left of his head. Or the space between his head and torso, either. A bit of scalp and cranial bone lay in a pile of mush alongside the body. The cauterized area around the impact site sizzled, sending wisps of smoke into the air. It slightly smelled like bacon to Solomon: traitorous, evil bacon.
"I shot him with my lasgun," he replied, spitting out blood, the coppery taste of a former comrade making him shudder uncomfortably. He silently thanked his father for taking him hunting all those years ago, though he'd never have thought it'd come in handy like this. Solomon was just glad his aim had been true, and that he hadn't missed like a total idiot.
"No way," another marine said, sounding as if he were in awe. "There's no way a lasgun gives out that much power, or that much recoil. Most models don't even HAVE recoil!"
"Well, this one did, after I switched my power pack around," Solomon retorted. "Maybe if any of you idiots had any understanding of electricity other than "praying" to it in some way, you'd know that positive is attracted to negative, and to force polar opposites to be with their same charges means either nothing works, or it works poorly!"
Several of the guardsmen looked rather confused, even as they eye his lasgun as if it were suddenly a completely revolutionary piece of technology.
"You know what, forget it," Solomon said. "Just... just switch your own power packs around, minus to plus, and vice versa."
"But-,"
"Just do it!" Solomon had no time for this shit. The captain and the rest of the ship were both in danger, which by proxy meant he was in danger, there were likely more of these chaos assholes onboard, and he felt really sick right now. Sick to his stomach, both for witnessing absolute death and for taking a life; a life that would have undoubtedly ended his and those of countless others, yes, but it had been a life nonetheless. He really didn't want to think about it now, maybe later if he survived this carnage.
As the guardsmen grumbled and switched around their power packs, Solomon led the way out of the blood-stained corridor and out into another room... just in time for a bolter round to blast through a doorway ahead of them. There was a metallic scream and a figure threw themselves through the now-open door, just as another bolter round punched through the metal.
Adept Syngra was running for her life, and right behind her, a maniacally-grinning chaos marine was chasing her, a bolter in one hand and a massive chainsword in the other. Blood and gore dripped from both weapons, and as he took aim again at the fleeing techpriest, Solomon took aim again at the traitor's face.
"Shoot!" he roared, and as one, the whole group of marines and guardsmen shot straight at the super soldier.
All stumbled backwards across the dry floor as the blinding light and thunderous roar shook the room, coinciding with another boom shortly afterwards. When their sight and hearing returned to functional levels, the carnage their newly supercharged lasguns had wrought was clear to see. The chaos marine hadn't so much as died as been completely evaporated with extreme prejudice. The bolter lay on the ground, but the chainsword, as well as the arm wielding it, were lodged firmly in the ceiling above. The traitor's body was all but gone, bits and pieces of blackened remains poking out from fragments of armor. His head had been severed cleanly from his neck, and was just now coming to a stop on the bloodied floor below. Everything else was just... everywhere, it seemed: on the walls, floor, ceiling, even back out the door he had chased Syngra through.
"Well I'll be damned," one of the guardsmen said. "I ain't never seen a lasgun do damage like that, even in a group." In all fairness, though, it was possible their blasts had hit a grenade of sorts and set it off. Lasguns don't make your target explode, they simply melt or burn them to death.
"Yeah, well, you learn something every day," Solomon said, walking over and helping a trembling Syngra to her feet. That is, if she did have feet: for all he knew, she had mechanical legs or something similar under those robes, and now was not the time to ask. "Syngra, where's the captain?"
"They... they swarmed the bridge already," she said, her mechanized voice sounding like it was trying to choke back a sob, but also filled with some kind of anger. "The captain... he had us run, right as he detonated some improvised explosives under their feet: must have wiped most of them out, as only one must have been able to follow me. I don't... I don't know what happened after that, I was too busy running from him."
"The others?"
"I hope they got away, though some might have been caught in the backlash of the blast. I don't know about the captain, he was partially shielded but... he was so close to the detonation point..."
"So Ordacius is dead?" one of the guardsmen asked. "Great, just great. Just what we need."
"We don't know that for sure," Solomon said, his insides twisting at the implications of the tech priest's words. "Syngra, how many more chaos marines are on board the ship?"
"We were getting reports that most of their support troops died within the first few minutes, and then when the main force stormed the bridge, the captain likely killed most of them, so... I have no idea," she replied. The tendrils along her back seemed to wave wildly here and there, much more agitated then her own demeanor would have seemed.
"Then we head towards the bridge, and go on from there," Solomon said with a solemn finality. He had no idea what they would find, but he felt it would not be good.
"Man, I hate being right," Solomon moaned to himself as he and every other surviving guardsmen and marine entered the bridge. From all around the ship, the surviving crew and detachments of marines and guardsmen had filtered through, having swept the entirety of the ship clean from the forces of chaos. Many that had not died were often grievously wounded, though none of the traitors they came across could say the same: they were dead to the last, chaos marine or not.
The scene aboard the bridge was one of pure carnage. Many of the mechanical portions were damaged to extremes, and in some cases, gone entirely. Chunks of the bridge's building material lay scattered all over the place, though thankfully the dome that shielded the ships' crew from the void of space was intact. Pieces of armor lay scattered everywhere, and body parts, be they organs, limbs or simply piles of mush lay among piles of rubble. Blood and ichor dripped from everywhere, pooling n small blackened craters on the floor. Strands of someone's intestines hung from the ceiling, and every once in a while, a guardsmen pulled out a head from strands of blackened chaos armor, the features too distorted, burned or just plain gone to discern.
At the front of this carnage, nearest a door to another portion of the ship, lay Captain Ordacius. One of his arms was gone below the shoulder, a massive blood pool beneath him. His other hand still wielded a chainsword, which was lodged firmly into the split head of a dead chaos marine. The rest of his outfit was so covered in blood and gore that Solomon had a difficult time telling what color it originally was. The captain's other arm was a short ways off, the sharp piece of bridge floor between them the only evidence needed as to their untimely separation.
He knelt beside the captain. "I'm... I'm sorry," he muttered, unable to think of much else to say. What else was there to say? 'Gee, it sucks that you're dead or dying and all, but thanks for waking me up and preparing me for this dark and depressing future as best you could? I wish I could have gotten to know you better?' There really wasn't much he could say now, other than likely goodbye.
There was a soft grunt and the captain's eyes fluttered open. "Solomon?" he croaked, barely an octave above a whisper.
"Yes, Ordacius, I'm here," he replied. "It's me, Solomon, I'm here."
"I... I'm dying," Ordacius muttered, sounding almost... surprised. "Can't say I'm... not unhappy about that. Held out for longer than... I'd thought an old man... like me could."
"But, you can't die, captain," Solomon said as Syngra and a few more guardsmen rushed over to his side. "We need you to be captain. I... I need you. You're my protector, the one who found me, my captain."
"Captain?" Ordacius repeated, sounding confused. He lifted his remaining hand away from the chaos marine-embedded chainsword and placed it on Solomon's shoulder. "Solomon... captain," he said again.
"What-," Solomon began, but stopped when the captain's hand fell from his shoulder, and the light in his eyes faded away to nothing. The only man aboard the ship who had shown him respect at his awakening, who had told him of the ways of the galaxy he now inhabited... was gone.
"He is dead," Syngra said, her mechanized voice tinged with sorrow. Yet, underneath that, there was an undercurrent of... hope?
"Now what do we do?" one of the marines asked as everyone else filed in around the captain's body.
"We make repairs and try to find our way back to a populated sector," Syngra said. "Solomon will lead us there."
"What?" Solomon asked, his head nearly spinning in place to face the tech priest.
"What?" everyone else repeated, sounding equally confused.
"Ordacius named him captain right before he died," the tech priest said. "He had no chosen successor beforehand, so in his final moments, he named Solomon as captain of Terra's Scion and the heir to his Warrant of Trade. Most of you saw that, I know you did."
"Well, yeah, but..." Guardsmen Prollarius said, fiddling with the makeshift bandages on his arm. "Most of us were thinking about retiring if or when the captain croaked. We have no idea as to how good of a leader Solomon is, no offense, and really, a lot of us just lot quite a few friends in this raid. We're tired of this life, and-,"
"Then I won't stop you from leaving," Solomon said quietly, draping the cloak from his armor over the body of Ordacius. "After we fix the damage, we will set course for the nearest inhabited system with a spaceport, and you can do what you wish. You don't owe me any loyalty, any favors, anything at all."
"But, you're captain now," Syngra said.
"But I haven't earned it," was his retort. He was not only saddened by the captain's demise, but now upset as well, what with everyone suddenly expecting him to take over all of a sudden. He wasn't even sure the captain had chosen him, but had been merely repeated his name and "captain" in his potentially delirious state. "Do as you normally would, all of you. Get rid of these chaos worshiper bodies, prepare the bodies of your own dead for eventual burial, bandage yourselves up, and start repairing what you can, preferably in whatever order you deem fit. If you need me, I'll be in my room, trying to come up with a plan on how to proceed from there."
"But-,"
"Please," Solomon croaked, feeling as if he were going to break down and just cry. "Just... just do it."
Solomon sat alone in his room, the door locked but the vox channel open if anyone wished to speak with him. The bodies of the chaos raiders had been properly disposed of, unceremoniously shoved out of the airlock en masse in the direction of the nearest star. Those crew who had died in the fighting were currently lying on the floor in one of the smaller cargo holds, the atmosphere drained from the bay to slow any decay that would undoubtedly set in soon. When they reached the nearest system, they too would be discharged into space, but towards a star controlled by the Imperium, with ceremony and honor.
The rest of the crew had bandaged themselves up as best they could, the most seriously wounded confined to the medical bay. Those who were unhurt or bandaged up enough to work were currently busy repairing the bridge controls. Adept Syngra had suggested they use the machine spirit from the ship he had been aboard to aid in the repairs, either by using parts of the drifting derelict or using it's knowledge on such technology.
In the end, all that mattered to Solomon was that the ship was fixed. He felt he owed it to the others aboard the ship to bring them back to civilized space, back to the Imperium of Man. He owed them all that much. Prollarius had told him the captain's family had long since abandoned him, and as he had never told his crew of any next of kin, he was in a quandary as how to proceed.
Silent tears rolled down his cheeks. All this death, some of it by his own hand... it was so at odds with what he had been brought up to believe, or at least, what he could remember. Taking a life, any life, was not the best thing to be done, especially if it was an innocent life. Taking a life in self defense was perfectly acceptable, preferable even, but still.. it had been a human that he had blown apart with his lasgun. A chaos-allied, downright malicious human, intent on slaughtering others, yes, but a human nonetheless.
It tore at his soul, the guilt fed by the knowledge that this would likely not be the last life he took. But how could he take more lives, unless it was in defense of himself or those under his care? Would he be forced to take lives preemptively, to prevent future bloodshed? Anyone who sought to end a war before it started usually did so with the killing of countless people, regardless of whatever would have happened otherwise. A paradox if there ever was one, but would he have to kill others to save lives?
"Probably," he muttered. Having the lives of others in your hands was not something he would wish on anyone, especially if they were like him. Others... others could handle this shit, taking charge and commanding others to follow their will. Other had the will to kill and give orders to kill, even if in the end they were no better than those they fought. Yet... it was not his will he wished for others to follow, nor did he wish for others to kill in his name or for a corrupted cause spawned by him. He wanted them to aspire to be greater than they were, just as he did. To be better than he was, to improve, to grow, to... evolve.
The galaxy was in a major mess as it was, both within and outside of the Imperium of Man. He had read up on as much as he could of xenos, chaos and the like, to the point where he was astounded that the galaxy had not already plunged into some massive, all-consuming war that ravaged every single world. War was a necessary evil, yes, but on a scale like this...it was awful. The Tau were expanding and likely going to destroy everyone with their incessant curiosity, the Dark Eldar just didn't give any shits about who they attacked, the Orks were on bloody rampages seemingly everywhere, Necrons were waking up and eating everyone's souls, Tyranids were eating every planet they could, and the Eldar were slowly dying out despite all attempts otherwise.
Something had to be done.
The voices of Adam and Eve had told him he would bring a sort of peace, a peace unseen in the history of the galaxy for a very, very long time. A peace wrought not just by sword, but by words, by people like him, willing to try and lead the galaxy down a path that did not spiral into endless destruction. An end to petty conflicts that spared none and ravaged entire worlds, an end to the corrupt dogma that plagued the minds of so many. A willingness to live together, if not in total harmony, but at least a cooperative existence.
He would bring peace, a hopefully lasting peace, or die trying. For some reason, that thought comforted him slightly, for in death, he would finally be at peace himself, for the first time in what was tens of thousands of years.
How ironic.
But no, not yet, he could not embrace death when there was so much to do. He still had this "grand destiny" ahead of him, and now he realized that, by becoming captain, he was now a Rogue Trader, a man befit to work outside the normal rules of the Imperium of Man. As such, with as much leeway as he dared to push, he could use some rather... unorthodox methods to achieve his vision. Or just heretical, depending on who you asked.
Yet he did not care if what he would do would go against what others believed. He would need allies in all manner of places, a new crew, perhaps even some outlandish ideas and plans to make this all happen. Yet, for him to draw followers to his cause, both human and xeno alike, he would need, as Adam said, to become more than he was. Solomon would need to become more than merely himself, he would need to become... a legend.
All legends start with the most innocuous of beings obtaining power of some sort. The power he had now, if only a tiny fraction of what Ordacius had, could grow, given time and patience. He had been asleep for more than ten thousand years, and in his absence, the galaxy had gone to shit, an absolute, unchecked state of complete shit. If nobody else was going to do anything about it, or if they did but were too few in number to do much at all, then it was high time for someone else to help try and get things in order.
"Might as well be me," he said. Rising from his bed, a heavy burden seemed to slip from his shoulders, and a spark of courage and inspiration flooded his heart and soul. Yes, he knew what he must do, and even if he were the only one who could or would be willing to do it, then so be it.
"Time to get to work."
A/N 2: well, things are starting to come into play, but we'll have to see how they turn out. Now, seeing as this is my first story in this universe, I would greatly appreciate questions to answer and comments to reply to. They all help in my writing process to make the story better overall and more in-line with the universe, and I also truly enjoy gauging the mood of my readers, and how I can make them enjoy my story more.