35. Darkened skies
Advex-Mors had joined the Imperium peacefully, no space marines or expedition fleets had ever darkened its skies. The planet had been terrified during old night as entire systems went silent and those that didn't only spoke of horrors beyond imagination, the world severed all communication and the populous prayed that the horrors of old night would over look them and they did. No xenos invaded, no psykers summoned horrors from the warp and no anarchy spread, Advex-Mors kept its head down and was completely overlooked by old night.
Despite foregoing speaking Advex-Mors still listened, hoping that one day a light would shine in the dark and one day that light appeared in the form of the Imperium. A scout fleet entered the system and sent before them news of the Imperium and the ending of old night, upon hearing this the rulers of Advex-Mors sent out the first message in generations welcoming the Imperium with open arms and were brought in to compliance without an Imperial ship even approaching the planet.
An Imperial diplomat was sent to the planet to discuss the details of compliance and soon after an Imperial administrator came along with a handful of army regiments to ensure compliance was held, the handful of regiments was quickly cut down to a single regiment and in a couple of years Advex-Mors was training its own regiments to join the Great crusade.
It happened in the weeks before the first Advex-Mors regiments were to be sent off world to fight for the Emperor, for the first time in the planets history its skies were darkened and all the horrors of old night came for it with a vengeance.
Great jellyfish like constructs filled the skies, a strange mix of technology and organic matter that made it impossible to tell if it was a machine with organic parts grafted to it or a living thing with mechanical enhancements. The people of Advex-Mors didn't have long to wonder about that as the ships dropped great 2 mile high towers directly on to the cities of the world and from these towers came a tide of monstrosities, in a week all the cities went silent; no communications, no refugees, not even the sound of fighting, all there was was silence and those looming towers.
Jon Karo sat up against the wall of some disused cabin, his head was down and his eyes closed as he tried to finally get some sleep. He had been lucky, when the ships had darkened the sky he had been outside the cities and had quickly armed himself and joined up with others, they had considered going in to the cities to help with the defence but before they came to a consensus all the cities had fallen and the xenos were spilling out in to the country.
The group he had originally been with had been picked off by the things made of nightmares, he could barely bring himself to describe them but the image of them was forever printed in is mind. He had travelled alone for some time before he found another small group of survivors and joined them, they were all armed but it was only to give them a sense of security, if they came in contact with the enemy then they would just run.
Jon cracked his eye open and looked to the window, one of his group was sitting by it and looking at the distant city, it looked much the same as it did before the invasion except for the giant organic looking tower sticking out of it like some kind of tumour.
"Stop looking at it" Jon told the man sitting by the window
"Do you thi…"
"No" Jon cut the man off before he could finish his thought
Alek's family had been in the city when the towers came down and he had been traveling to meet them, he would always look at it whenever they stopped to rest, apparently he had looked quite handsome and youthful before everything but over the last few months of scavenging and hiding had become the grey and wrinkled mess that Jon had always known him as.
"There are millions in the cities they couldn't have got…."
"They got them all" Jon appreciated Alek's optimism but sometimes it was too much, "We're the only ones left, us and anyone else that wasn't in those slaughterhouses"
"Could you two keep quiet" another member of the group was sat by the door, looking out the window with weapon in hand, "They'll hear you"
Jon didn't know much about Kat but he guessed her story was much like everyone else's but she chose not to share, in truth their ragtag group had shared little outside of names. There was two other members of their group, Lia sat with a radio listening for any signals it could pick up and Henri sat with Kat on watch for any xenos.
Jon closed his eyes again as he tried to get at least a little sleep, he was just drifting off when Lia popped up in excitement and drew everyone's attention.
"I got something!" she said in an excited but hushed tone
They had not heard any communications since the cities fell, no one wanted to broadcast anything and possibly draw the xenos' attention. The group stood around the radio as Lia handed the headphones to everyone and allowed them to listen.
"Hello, my name is Kia, I escaped from Kalvek and I joined up with a group that is forming an army to fight back, we are located east of the city for now" a woman's voice came through the headphones as Jon listen, as soon as her message was done it repeated
"This has to be a trap" Jon concluded as he handed the headphones off to Alek
"Yeah" everyone else agreed
"Kia?" Alek looked stunned as he listened, "She's alive!"
"What?"
"My wife she's alive, this is her voice!" tears were running down Alek's face, "We're east of Kalvek, she must be near by"
Alek immediately grabbed his gun and marched for the door, the rest of the group quickly moving to stop him.
"We're leaving and heading south" Henri told him, "This is an obvious trap"
"That was my wife's voice, I'd know it anywhere" Alek looked ready to fight, "No one could copy it"
"Alek" Jon stood in front of the man and looked him in the eyes, "No one could have escaped the cities"
"How do you know!?"
"Because I escaped them!" Kat spoke up, she pushed past Jon and grabbed Alek, "I saw those thing tear through the Imperial army forces like they were nothing, I only escaped because I was the first one to start running and those things were on my heels the entire time; no time to stop, no time to rest, no time to look behind me, I ran for weeks until I didn't even know where I was anymore"
Alek seemed to have calmed down and Henri came to his side and pat him on the back, "I'm sorry, I want it to be true almost as much as you but…" Henri sighed and looked to the floor, "Come on, we need to move, they might be close"
"Yea…"
"Alek?" A voice came from outside and everyone froze, it was the voice from the radio
"Kia!" Alek rushed to the door
"NO!" the group tried to stop him but he was fast
"Alek?"
Alek threw open the door and ran outside, "Kia!" he called out with a hopeful grin on his face
The group grabbed their weapons and rushed to the door, staying in the frame for cover, "Shut up and get back in here!" Henri almost shouted at Alek
"Kia! I'm here" he kept calling out
"Alek!" the undergrowth rustled as something started coming through the trees
"Kia!" Alek rushed forward to meet his wife, a grin splitting his face and tears streaming down his cheeks, but he froze as soon as she came out of the trees
"Alek!" the thing that was once Kia seemed to grin as it saw Alek
It had her face but it wasn't her, not anymore, the skin was stretched over overgrown muscles and boney spikes tore through the taught skin in multiple places, its mouth was impossibly wide and filled with razor sharp tusks that made it impossible for it to close its mouth. Its bones had been forced to grow unnaturally long making its limbs long and lanky, its finger bones had grown out of its finger tips and given it deadly bone claws. It was a twisted mockery of Alek's wife and that mockery was completed by the fact it still had her voice.
Alek fell to his knees as the thing that was once his wife approached him, he had only carried on in the hope she was alive. He had believed she was dead but always hoped she wasn't and it had been the best moment of his life when he heard her voice again but now he wished she was dead, he wished he had come across her broken and mutilated corpse because seeing that was heaven compared to the thing in front of him.
"I finally found you" the thing seemed to smile as it approached the frozen Alek
Henri jumped out of the door way and took aim, firing a lasbolt directly at the creature's face. The rest of the group rushed out of the cabin, grabbing Alek and dragging his catatonic form to his feet. The Kia creature let out a scream, the las bolt had only burned off the skin on one side of its face, it quickly recovered and set off after them.
They ran through the trees but the creature was close behind them and closing in fast, they had to practically drag Alek along.
"Alek! Why are you running away?" the creature taunted them with Kia's voice, "Come give your wife a kiss"
Alek looked back at the thing chasing him as Jon dragged him through the forest, "Let me go" Alek tried to push Jon off him
"No we need to get away, now run on your own"
"Let me go!" Alek pushed Jon off him and stood to face the monster
Jon almost stopped to grab him again but he didn't have the time, he ran on and didn't look back. He ran through the forest without care for where he was going and before he knew it he was alone, the others having been left behind somewhere.
"Jon" he heard the hushed voice of Kat through the trees
Smiling he moved towards it, "I'm here Kat, is anyone else with you?"
"No, come to my voice" he moved to her voice and found her kneeling in the middle of a clearing, she seemed injured
"Come on we need to find the others and get out of here" Jon popped his head out of the undergrowth, not trusting the clearing completely
"Yeah lets go" Jon immediately knew something was wrong when Kat looked at him, he should have noticed it as soon as he saw her in the clearing, she would never leave herself exposed like that
A large shadow rose up behind Kat, a creature with a bulbous head, its brain was visibly pulsing under its taught skin, covered in many tentacles that flailed like wild snakes on the ends of many of them were people, attached at the base of their necks they looked like some sick fruits hanging from a tree and one of the tentacles was attached to Kat's neck.
"Come on Jon, let's go find the others" Kat looked at him with glazed over eyes as one of the tentacles launched itself at him
Jon jumped out of the way and grabbed his knife, swinging it at the tentacle that jabbed at him, he shuffled backwards as he sought to escape and keep an eye out for other tentacles.
"Jon don't go, help me please" the life seemed to come back to Kat's eyes for a moment and it was enough to break Jon's concentration
He only looked over at her for a moment but that was all the creature needed, the tentacle struck and embedded itself in to his neck. Jon's body immediately froze as he lost all control of it, he could feel the creature's consciousness overcoming his own even as he tried to fight back, he tried to keep control of his body but resistance was useless.
He could feel what the creature felt and he knew what it thought, it was puzzled, it didn't understand why Jon and everyone else always fought instead of accepting its masters and the gift they came with. Jon almost felt sick at the revelation, the xenos weren't twisting the bodies of their prisoners for some sick alien pleasure, they thought they were doing the right thing, they couldn't understand why humans wouldn't want made in to useful tools for them.
"Lia!" Jon called out, it was his voice at least and that was all the creature needed
Advex-Mors was the first system where the Rangdan were identified, the system fell completely in a matter of weeks and its inhabitants were forced in to great gene-forge towers where their bodies were broken and twisted in to forms to suit the Rangdan needs.
Not much is known about the foul xenos and after their utter defeat at the hands of the Imperium all traces of them would be scrubbed from existence but the one thing the Imperium would learn about this foe is that they saw themselves as gods. True Rangdan were rare with only one or a handful being present on any battlefield, their armies were made up of the twisted forms of their fallen enemies, utterly enslaved to the will of the true Rangdan.
The Rangdan were a highly psychic race with great natural talents for dominating the minds of others and biomancy, these two powers combined made the Rangdan see themselves as gods and see all other life as clay for them to mould in to shapes and forms that benefit the Rangdan. Pouring out of the ghoul stars, they had twisted entire species in to varying and specialised forms, the lucky ones got to keep something resembling their original form and were turned in to slave soldiers, either monstrous melee forms that fought with their newly hardened and over grown bones or if the individual was psychic then as a psychic conduit that extended the will of the commanding Rangdan.
The unlucky species that fell under the gaze of the Rangdan were those that weren't turned in to soldiers, they had their forms twisted in to a myriad of things that the Rangdan needed; ships, living weapons, the great gene-forge towers, buildings and any number of other mundane things that no other species in the galaxy would consider making out of living material.
The Rangdan would have used Advex-Mors as a spring board to invade Imperial space and turn humanity it to legions of mutated slaves if not for the actions of the 1st legion. As soon as word of the invasion of Advex-Mors reached Imperial space the Dark angels assembled a force and attacked, the system had been heavily fortified but the 1st legion were steadfast in their resolve to avenge all the souls that were tortured by the foul xenos.
It took months of fighting and the lives of thousands of battle brothers but eventually with the death of the true Rangdan in the system their armies withered and died with only a small force managing to flee the system back to Rangdan space. The worlds of Advex-Mors were now completely barren, the Rangdan having taken all the natural resources they could, the system was declared forbidden and the 1st legion set up an outpost to watch for any returning Rangdan and they would return.
In the first war both the Rangdan and the Imperium underestimated each other, the Imperium had assumed the Rangdan had sent forth their full might with the intent to conquer the Imperium, that was the only way their numbers would make sense, and the Rangdan had not known of the Imperium and assumed Advex-Mors was a lone system. The Rangdan would return decades later with a force they saw as fitting the conquest of the Imperium.
Worlds would burn, fleets smashed to dust, legions decimated and even primarchs lost, the Rangdan would inflict losses on the Imperium that it would never recover from.
Next time: When fate changes (Part 1)
