Legends of the Smoke Jaguars Chapter 9

Implacable Justice sailed through the warp, her holds brimming with equipment and supplies. Despite a decade and a half of gruelling war production the Tech-guilds of Kiavahr could still create marvels when required and a three months refit had changed her from a battered warship into a home fit for a Chapter. Apothecarions had been expanded, workshops improved, holds rebuilt to carry all the machinery needed to establish a base and the Strategium reconfigured to provide galactic awareness. She was but the first ship sent to begin the creation of a new Chapter but she had everything needed to make a start.

As part of that refit a compartment had been rebuilt as a training deck, where their initial recruits could be trained. Currently it was configured as an urban environment, with burned-out hab blocks in straight rows and the shells of ground-cabs smoking in the streets. The recreation was stunningly exact, with broken glassic littering the ground and cavernous holes in building frontages where shops would have stood. A large crater had been dug out of a hab-block, exposing tenements complete with overflowing bathtubs and dining tables covered with cutlery and plates.

Impressive as it was that was not what held the Astartes' attention. They were standing on a corner, watching a pair of servitors carrying away a body draped under a white sheet. Sedaxus, Nolaro, Damolos and Engar, silently observing as the young man was taken out of sight. Behind them thirty or so recruits waited nervously, Scout-novices as they were now to be known, eyes down and not looking at each other in shame. The older Marines had taken them in hand for training and the results had not been promising.

"Explain how he died," Nolaro ordered.

"Stupidity," Engar sniffed.

"You can't die from that," Nolaro snapped.

"You can if you're careless enough to not fit your harness properly. They were practising fast-repelling down that hab-block, while I sniped over their heads from down the street, only that fool didn't strap himself in right. Got his own rope wrapped around his neck and snapped it halfway down."

Sedaxus shook his head and grunted, "That moron had no business bearing the mark of the Astartes."

"I've seen worse," Damolos retorted, "One time, on Terra, we were training with Ornithopters, the established legions had grabbed all the gunships and we newer Legions had to make do. We landed on a steep slope and my squadmate ran up the bank, straight into the spinning blades. Took his head clean off, without troubling the machine."

Engar snorted, "That is a truly stupid way to die."

"Not so moronic as his best mate, ran to help and got his head removed too."

"You're making this up!" Engar spat.

"Hand on my hearts, it's true!" Damolos protested.

"I believe him," Sedaxus interjected, "I grew up on Nostramo, every day I saw people die in ways that defy belief. The only thing that surpassed the murder rate was suicides. Once saw a man try to off himself by drinking chemical solvents. Sadly all he could get was a weak diluent, took hours for him to go, insides burning as his intestines rotted."

"You're making the scout-novices sick," Nolaro growled, "This was supposed to be a simple training operation. Take a squad each and show them how it's done, I said. Sedaxus, I note your team is conspicuously absent, where are your Neophytes?"

Sedaxus sniffed, "Gave them a simple tracking objective, all they have to do is hunt me through these ruins. Of course I'm a trained Mortiat, so to give them a chance I told them I'd set a vox-beacon to broadcast my location."

Engar hissed, "Surprisingly generous of you… I find that suspicious."

Sedaxus grinned under his helm and replied, "First thing I did was catch a ship-rat and tie my beacon to it. Then sent it scurrying into a pipe. That will teach them to use their eyes and not trust an Auspex to do their thinking for them. Those idiots will be tracking a rat for days, before they realise they're hunting vermin."

"Aaaaaand there it is," Damolos groaned.

"This is getting us nowhere," Nolaro muttered then turned to the Scout-novices and barked, "Right you lot, back to your barracks and think about what you saw this day. There's a reason you double-check everything before you use it. A moment's inattentiveness in the field will get you killed as sure as a bolt round to the head. Until you get that through your thick skulls you'll be buddying up and checking each other's rigs. We'll do this again tomorrow and again and again until you get it right!"

The young boys turned about and trooped away dejectedly, leaving the foursome to fume. Engar muttered, "We were never that green."

"We grew up in prison," Nolaro sighed, "You got good, fast, or died. That lot grew up in relative safety, they haven't ever fought for their lives with nothing but a shank to hand."

Sedaxus sniffed, "You've got a decade to beat them into shape. All those new rules about them serving as reconnaissance support, before going into power armour. Hell of a change from our methods, might even turn out better troops for it. The days for sending fourteen-year-old Space Marines straight to the front are over."

"We're relics," Engar muttered, "The last flickers of the Great Crusade burning out. These newbies will never know what it was we lost when Horus betrayed us."

A strange look passed over Damolos' face but Nolaro sighed, "So much still to sort out. The new Codex says we need to select a Chaplaincy. Don't know where they got that idea, but it's mandatory."

"Screw that," Sedaxus snorted, "We don't have to obey Guilliman's scribblings, I say we dump his proscriptions out an airlock."

Nolaro glared as he retorted, "On top of that we need a new name."

Damolos started, "What's wrong with Raven Guard?!"

"We're not Raven Guard anymore," Nolaro snapped, "We're something new. The other successors have names like Black Guard, Revillers, Raptors… we need one too."

"Not Raven Guard," Damolos gasped, "It's unthinkable."

"It is what it is," Nolaro sniffed, "We have a hell of a lot to sort out before we reach the Copan system and then we may have to face an Ork infestation. I can't waste more time naval gazing; I need to be in a hundred places right now. I'll send in Sergeant Linkara with his bunch of neophytes and see you here tomorrow for the next go around."

Nolaro took off and Engar trooped after, lugging his sniper rifle with him. Sedaxus made to head out but to his surprise Damolos just stood there, staring into the distance. The look on his face gave Sedaxus pause and he drew in a breath to ask, "What's eating you?"

Damolos didn't answer right away, instead he turned to stare into a glassic window, fractured badly to create a miasma of clashing images. He set his axe down and flexed the crude digits that passed for a hand on his augmetic arm, examining the workings of his replacement forlornly. Finally he sighed, "What's going to be left of us?"

Sedaxus had never seen the boisterous Marine look so lost and grew concerned as he probed, "I don't follow."

"We're exiled," Damolos lamented, "I know it's not official, I know is supposed to be an honour, but it feels like exile. Sent away from home, never to return. A mismatched band of dregs sent away into the dark. I suppose it finally caught up with me, a patchwork Marine like me would never have any other fate."

Sedaxus was lost and pressed, "You're talking gibberish."

Damolos' face grew colder than he'd ever shown as he explained, "I'm old, I know I don't look it but I'm older than any of you. I was among the first of the XIXth, raised on the soil of Terra from the Asiatic Dustfields. I fought alongside heroes whose names are forgotten by history, brave souls whose contributions go unremarked. When Primarchs started showing up we became an afterthought. We were always sly and quiet, understand that, glory wasn't our way. Then the XIXth got seconded to the XVIth and became Horus' quiet blade, the hidden knife in the enemy's back."

"You fought alongside the Luna Wolves," Sedaxus murmured, "That explains your reckless attitude."

Damolos didn't smile as he continued, "I had a few bad translation slips and lost a lot of years. When I came back we had a Primarch of our own, a cause to celebrate, except Corax didn't much care for our ways. He saw too much of the tyrant in us Terrans, the legacy of our origins staining us. He'd despatched most of the senior officers to remote fleets, Arkhas Fel, who led us as Legion Master for thirty years, demoted to Shade-lord and sent into exile. We Terrans were reduced to a few thousand, among ever-growing numbers of Deliverance born, a flickering candle in the night. Then we faced Gate Forty-two…"

"I've heard of that," Sedaxus murmured, "The XIXth's darkest day."

Damolos nodded, "Horus and Corax never got along, Corvus was perhaps the only Primarch who didn't admire that arch-bastard, all the others respected if not outright loved him. Horus cajoled Corax into attacking headlong, spending the lives of his Marines like water so the Luna Wolves could swoop in and steal all the glory. Naturally the Ravenlord turned to his toughest elements, the Terrans, to break that gate. Lot of us resented that but we were the heaviest equipped in the Legion and most brutal, the only ones who could pull it off. I… got hit early and sank into a sus-an-membrane coma. Lost more years there and when I awoke Gate Forty-two was a fading memory but two things stood out. Corax had removed himself from Horus' aegis, and he'd taken the chance to exile the rest of the Terrans, those who'd supported Horus' plan. He exiled Nerat Kirine into the dark as a reward for the blood he'd shed, purging the last of us. I awoke to find I was alone, the last of my kind."

Sedaxus breathed, "And now you're sent away too, another exile."

Damolos sighed, "I fear no man, beast or disaster, but to be alone… to be exiled, that unmans me. I should have died in the good old days, instead of living to see this. Look at me, my body is as much a sewn rag as my armour, patched up time and time again. They should have let me pass, instead of lingering on all alone."

"You don't seem sad most of the time," Sedaxus commented.

"For me it's laugh or cry," Damolos whispered, "To throw myself into the fight, to live for the thrill of danger, I embrace such moments because I have to. No past, no future, only the now, it's all I have."

Sedaxus placed a hand on his arm and said, "You're wrong, you still have us. And a new home awaits, a new Chapter. We're going nowhere and soon there will be a thousand Brothers at your side. You will never be alone."

Damolos looked at the hand and smiled sadly, "Thank you."

"Don't mention it," Sedaxus dismissed, "Seriously don't, I have a reputation as a surly arsehole to maintain."

Damolos however broke out into a broad grin and quipped, "You care about us, you like us."

"I do not!" Sedaxus protested, "I just don't want you moping."

Damolos however chuckled, "You're getting comfortable here, going soft in your old age."

"You take that back, take that back right now!" Sedaxus barked.

Damolos however picked up his axe and settled it on his shoulder, the customary mask of humour back in place as he chortled, "Don't' worry, I won't tell anyone. It will be our little secret."

He strolled off, betraying no hint of his former sadness as he whistled a jaunty tune between his lips. Sedaxus was left in the rubble, clenching his fists in outrage as he muttered irately, "This is getting out of hand. Where are those Neophytes, I'm going to strip the skin off their backs before people start spreading rumours I'm going soft."