I suppose I owe our poet Batbayar the…inspiration for this record. I doubt I would have any compulsions to record anything had that not been his desire. Though, listener, I will inform you that I am not nearly as prosaic as Batbayar was. But his was right, and that a record for the future would be appreciated by those who come after. Who they will be after tonight, I do not know.
This is the record of events from Charybdis-2, Segmentum gothic, M37, Year 248, from Blackshield Antaeus Mordis of the Deathwatch under the purview of Lord Inquisitor Justina Elana.
Mechanicus survey records showed only four worlds in the system, only two of which are close enough to a red dwarf to even possibly sustain life. The closest is a molten ball that would as easily dissolve survey probes as our front did men. The furthest was a gas giant so clustered by asteroids and other celestial debris that a more detailed inquiry of its composition would be suicidal, and untenable for a resource positive harvest.
We were brought in as a precise surgical force alongside guard and PDF forces to purge the system of now-designated Hive fleet Scylla.
Our company was initially broken into two groups, one deployed immediately to the areas of the front that faced the strongest xenos presence, the other to sustain special action in the brief orbital war. By the time we had settled into surface attrition, the orbital war had been, for lack of a better term; successful. Hive ships were rendered as inert as Tyranid megafauna could be rendered, and the orbit of their largest remains was corrected to terminate directly into the system's star.
But the other half of our company still remained in orbit all the same. That was indication that something was awry, but ours was not to question that.
And for reasons I will make clear often in this record, saturation bombardment of their remaining location was made impossible.
But it is in Batbayar's spirit I log this, so I will begin without turning the story into Charybdis into any more of a debriefing.
We were staring at her for weeks by that point, the only thing keeping us on this planet, the target that we were never given, but always craved.
Hive Calabria. System and planetary Capital for the Charybdis system. All land within two hundred miles of the hive, once repurposed farmland, now nothing remained but the ash and scoured no-man's land between our front and that damnable city. It hosted limited manufacturing capability, but only in volume, certainly not in value, otherwise we would have glassed it along with two other hives during the initial bombardments.
It was the former home to 1.2 billion imperial citizens, only a tenth of which made it out of the initial insurrection, and only a fifteenth of those survivors were deemed untainted by xenos infection vectors. And it just so happened that of the approximately eight million souls, who survived civil war, infestation, starvation, and our expurgations, was the one man who kept us tethered to this boring planet.
"So what do you plan on doing?" The one man spoke to the woman across from him with the same concern I would have given a tech-priest to repair times.
I knew she would not give him so much an answer, because to ignore the title of Lord…Lady-Inquisitor would be a death sentence for any other being.
The guard commander answered before the insult, passive though it was, could be addressed, "My lord, we plan to attrite the enemy."
I would like to have seen the Lord-Governor's face when he heard that we planned to attrite an enemy that only concerned itself with supply lines when eating them. Sadly, myself and the others of my unit, were placed outside the tent to listen to the proceedings, and to have the light whine of our power cells remind the Lord-Governor who was holding the power here.
His own guard were a mix of largely augmented cult mechanicus fellows and unassuming mercenaries, the latter of which I put greater stock into when considering who to kill if and when it became necessary. A few had the smell on them, though I know my brothers could not feel it as I could.
"We have won the orbital war, yes?" Lord-Governor Augustus Alberich asked the room.
"Yes, my lord" the guard commander was either trying to make a friend or enemy of the Lady Inquisitor, answering for her so often.
"So then why do we wait for a final push? Why not move our forces into the city, and begin the purge proper? If our tithe to the Imperium is to be met than we must-"
"Lord-Governor." The inquisitor cut his tirade off, another moment I wish I could have seen more than heard, "I am aware of your planet's need. I am aware of your need. But just as I will hold no pretentions to knowing the idiosyncrasies of ruling a world, I do not expect you to know the minutia of purging such a complex of the xenos threat."
Lady-Inquisitor Elena, my third warden, second inquisitor, and a person of dangerously familiar character. Pragmatic, but never utilitarian. An ardent supporter of ceremony, until it slowed her.
The Lord-Governor took a sip from a glass and properly addressed her.
"Lady-Inquisitor, It would be calming to the mechanicus if such minutia could be explained, given the lack of transparency between my cabinet and yours…"
Talk trailed off between the two into the rhetoric of assured support and action, with no certain terms of any plans for an assault, or of additional planetary forces that the planetary governor's mechanicus allies kept in reserve specifically for the retaking of Charybdis, and nothing else. It was politics and nothing more. But as we listened to the droll through our gene-forged ears, I knew all of us; from guardsman to Governor were simply waiting.
We were waiting for the enemy to deplete themselves, to finally attempt a final push into the calculated kill-zones of artillery and die wailing upon miles of trenches. It was hell for me. I don't refer to the deafening bombardments, not the pervading smell of gangrene, not even to the wavering whisper of what was once our enemy's omnipresent psychic roar. The boredom was grinding against to every piece of what I wanted, what I was used to, what I was meant for, on either side of the Eye. Wilifrid kept a short leash on me, thankfully, otherwise…
"What chapter?" Asked a voice
I turned to find one of the mercenaries having relaxed, or appeared so, mulling about my squad. He didn't even carry so much as a laspistol, but he wouldn't have thought it useful to his other talents. The man reeked.
I told him the same thing I told everyone who asked "They are gone."
I told him the truth.
"Ah, so we've a scrap to protect our governor?" The man was attempting to aggravate a truth to the forefront of my mind, the stench of him grinding against my thoughts. All he found was the cultivated hatred presented for him.
"You have a survivor, witch."
The man's stench faded from my senses with that word. Such is the power of the imperial dogma, they never like being reminded of what they are, how close to execution they linger. The governor's other guards seemed to grin at the witch's chastisement, something I'm sure they suffered for later.
When the inquisitor and Governor finally abandoned their meaningless promises of eventual support, most of us were left to return to our postings among guard positions or facilities as our talents called for. Enfield could do little to suture and triage the more fragile human forms, but he would always stalk the medical tents looking for the "stench of mutation".
Not that he found any, all airborne microscopic vectors upon which the enemy spread itself into baseline humans had ceased weeks ago. We should have taken that as a sign.
No, his presence merely imposed a ruthless sense of order among the medicae, and I still suspect he had killed or crippled one of them in a calculated outburst.
"They keep staring at me brothers, how do I stop them?" Jauron asked out shared channel.
"Who, brother?" Batbayar asked.
"The humans. They think I can't see them, but they are always watching me."
Jauron often complained about our mingling with the humans, something I found strange given his chapter's storied affinity for those smaller than themselves. He was much like myself in his general avoidance for conversation in the presence of humans, if it were not for his…whining.
"Have you tried asking them politely not to?" Juaron often proved the only available foe for Batbayar's snide comments, though he still outclassed him to pieces.
"Not amusing, brother."
"So you haven't even talked to them!" Batbayar spat back.
Juaron grumbled back, "They should know better, they could be spies. Enfield?"
"I have sampled that area and it is free of any possible xeno-introduced mutation. You would do better to not seem so much like Antaeus, but not to reach Batbayar's level of fraternization," said the Apothecary
"Oh come now! We'll be dying together, the least they could have before then is to know their storied protectors aren't so mechanical," Batbayar said.
Jauron laughed at that, "You think we'll die on this world? We Astartes?"
His pride was not misplaced at the time, not one of us had fallen in the monotonous ground war. But, if Wilifrid would not answer his pride, then I had to. One of the few joys of being the assigned outcast was that my few words carried enough emphasis.
"One of us will."
Agreement came, as it often did, as silence.
Deafening, mind-raking, silence.
I was taunted by the vox-casters and their insipid droll that would toll throughout camps in between charges.
"Any conscious men incapable of walking unassisted are to report to mortar teams. Failure to do so will affect ration distribution."
I almost desired conversation with the humans scattered about me, if not for that I knew it would be beyond banal, or questions or I would never answer.
I partly received a reprieve, then, when a stifled static voice sounded through my vox, accompanied by a tap on the arm.
"Blacksheild Antaeus."
I turned to see a hunched techpriest, augmented far beyond proper resemblance to a human form. Where he should have had legs it was carried along by a mess of dendrites. Black robes, trimmed with a heavy silver metal, covered most of the bulging augments attached to whatever flesh he had left. A metal plate and lenses hung where I would've expected to see at least some show of a human face. He was a far leap above those performing maintenance on the war engines, likely not even from this sector.
"You know my title," I told the machine-man, half threat, half surprise.
"I am to apologize for the intrusion, our master sent me for you."
"I have many masters."
"I speak of the Inquisitor, Astartes."
"Very well. What does the Inquisitor need of me?"
"Your report. Of the situation."
"Same as it has been for the last four months. They pulse from the city-"
"We are well versed on the tactical situation of the immediate enemy," He interrupted, "We speak of more sensitive matters." Lenses focused on me, to a shoulder that did not bear heraldry, his mechanical fingers rapidly undergoing several warding sign in rapid movement, seemingly a glitch to those of lesser ability.
I nod
"Your report, Astartes."
"The enemy's roar is quieted, but still present."
The techpriest's legs clawed at the ground "We ask of the…other."
He of course, was asking after the thing that the Lady-Inquisitor was always too keen on exploring. I knew the safety of our current foe and the threat of the empyrean actively avoided each other. Neither seemed to have what the other wanted; daemons do not possess the flesh the tyranids desire, and the insects make terrible worshippers and even worse slaves.
I simply gave what I knew at the moment.
"There is nothing there."
"Satisfactory, Astartes."
The machine man scuttled off back to his, our, master, likely irritated at the lack of detail.
A calm echo broke out from a public vox system throughout the camp "The enemy is beginning to amass for another wave. Proceed to assigned defensive positions. The Emperor protects."
Why waves? Why not swarm us, why not overwhelm any one point of the line? Why not simply fly their way through the killing fields and tearing our line apart from the outside in? I did not bother myself with the tactics of the situation, only the orders, and a single question.
The same question the guard asked each other.
"How close do you think they'll get?" A guardsman, barely an adult, mewled at his comrade; both with lasguns pointing towards that taunting city.
They had survived long enough, though, otherwise they would still have their bayonets sheathed as protocol would ask of them. Perhaps a wave or two. The situation demanded the blade, the enemy demanded close combat, blood on steel, on such tiny, tiny knives. How did they bleed under a blade? I never knew, I just watched, tortured, as the enemy fell to volley of artillery. No matter how many shots missed, they never made it to my hands.
One peaked out from the trench, then put his head back down to fiddle with the radio "20 meters."
That would've been enough for me to break rank, to rush out to the enemy, whatever what was left of them. To loose the hungry knife. How many guard are there? If I killed them, the tyranids could've made it to me.
Such horrible thoughts were always at the forefront of my mind, then. So awash in the stench that I failed to notice how much I of it I breathed. I would've been executed or died an ignoble death for such actions.
The bombardments cleared most of the enemy as they charged forward, no counter acid-bombardments or swooping beasts to harry us. Just a footslog of monsters running through the exploding ground.
To my credit, I actually killed a few in the encroaching mass, if only for the feeble hope it would quench my bloodthirst.
I fired every round I could, but when I saw the last bolter round turn a head into a shower of gore, a perfect rose of blood and ichor, I knew that it was not going to be a day of restraint. I affixed my bolter to my back, its weight barely noticeable to what I awaited.
With still a sizable enemy fifteen meters from our position, I was out of ammunition, the guard had readied themselves for the crush. Half would die in the ensuing melee, but I did not know, or care of that at the time. I simply knew there would be blood, blood and joy, blood and joy.
My hearts were hastened to terrible purpose, my knife free from that damnable sheath, a hand still empty, but I would make do.
The highest-ranking among them shouted something, but I was too far gone, dreaming of cuts and slices.
The enemy was upon us. Men screamed. Some in defiance, others in terror, as the sheer momentum of the enemy crushed through us, over us, around us.
One rose up its claws to strike at me, its alien scream a horrible mix of spittle and hateful instinct.
My arm swung the knife clean through its skull with the delight of an artist unveiling their work. And as if the universe answered in kind, its ichor spread apart from the gash like curtains about a stage.
I grabbed the spike like appendage and swung the dead creature into another two flanking me, goring one and cut through the other while it was still disoriented. I saw the flash of metal and seized up a trampled las gun, breaking off the bayonet. I cut my way through tens of them, losing the stolen weapon inside a ribcage. My knife was little more than a blunted club, but I pushed it through their chitinous bodies all the same.
Then one rose its body from the horde and I trampled everything in the way to get to it.
It was twice the size of the others, two massive limbs with crushing spikes, two holding their strange bio-weapons, affixed to their own flesh. The sight of it, the memory of such weapons spurned me forward all the more.
Appendages scraped off my armor from the lesser ones as I sprinted towards the worthy prey. It pointed its bio-weapon at me in the vain hope it would slow me down, I jammed what was left of my knife into the opening of the thing and listened to it scream as its lower limbs affixed to the weapon exploded into impotent flesh. Its upper limbs swung at me, second slammed into me, sending me back.
I tore off the lesser ones attempting to swarm me and charged again into the brute, locking my arms around one of its upper limbs.
It was when the gore came, when the limb had been ripped from the alien's body, but when I had pushed its jagged edge back through its screaming mouth.
It was after another I tore another alien in two, before I fully lost myself, that I shouted those terrible words.
"BLOOD FOR THE GOD-EMPEROR!"