(f) Confessions of a Heretic: Part II
The first entry in this collection may be found here
The third entry in this collection may be found here
The fourth entry in this collection may be found here
The fifth entry in this collection may be found here
I'm sure you've seen what I came home to. An entire world's community stripped of the young, the brave, anyone without the power or influence or sheer, dumb luck to not be given a Lasgun, Flak Jacket and marched off to their mass-graves. Adjusting was impossible. How could I? I'd buried everyone I had known within the first year of the schisms. I'd gone on burying new faces for the next two years. My resentment festered. Loyal resentment. In the empty shells of once bustling hive cities the profiteers and cowards who, when the Imperium called, had avoided sacrificing a thing for their fellow man scurried around counting their credits.
The world would, of course, be repopulated before long. The Imperium is never short of lives and, once the cogs of the Adminstratum finally creaked over, would re-house refugees and the teaming masses overcrowded Hives couldn't accommodate with an unerring commitment to the task at hand. The parasite that was so pleased with itself would remain and expand, bloat itself through gorging. Buying up property and assets cheaply now, then on-selling at inflated prices when the influx of new arrivals materialised.
My only solace was my faith. It had not died in the trenches, drenched in poison gas or buried by shell-burst. Rather, it had been confirmed. Transformed. Gone was the carefree love dedicated to a benevolent protector in the form of the Immortal God Emperor. Instead was a cold hatred for those who denied Him. The firm belief that those who had turned their back on their fellow man when their time came to lay upon the altar would be hunted down and rooted out. Sacrifice would be willing or enforced at bayonet point.
I left my homeworld. Not out of disgust, but rather for opportunity. As thanks for my war service, and in recognition of my excellent marks in History at the Schola a lifetime ago, I received an offer to attend the Academy at Brundisjump. So called for the stable warp currents surrounding the Brundis systems, making it an important centre of sub-sector navigation and communication, the planet was home to an excellent Academy, so excellent that it claimed to be the best in the Segmentum. Founded by intellectual firebrands and renegades from their great rival, Corenvadum, it was an answer to an unformed prayer.
My first year at the Academy, college of Saint Thor, was the best of my life. I won't bore you with too many details. I continued to blossom in my history studies, with a particular emphasis on legal history, and my steel-hard faith in the Emperor meant that I likewise impressed the resident theologians. I had finally grown into my body and found myself to be a handy athlete, helped, no doubt, by three years of fighting for my life on a daily basis. This, too, helped me with women. I saw my service medals as empty trinkets, but to a patriotic academy student who had never been scarred by war herself, they were a glittering recommendation of my worth as a man.
It was in my second year at the Academy that my Universe ended.
I am a loyal man.
I was sitting in a lecture hall when the news broke, rustling along the student's pews like a grass fire. Several sub-sectors, all too aware of the complete scarcity of non-comprised PDF, Imperial Guard or Navy assets within their systems, declared their independence. The movement was led by a loose conglomerate of oligarchs, nobles, trade confederations and officers.
The terms they couched their declaration in were conciliatory. The worship of the Immortal God Emperor would still be mandatory. Imperial citizenship would not be abrogated. The leadership of the Ravennan Worlds, as this splinter state would come to be called, had simply changed hands. The truth of the matter was that no taxes or tithes would be paid to the Imperium at large, and the Sector, and surrounding Sectors at that, were in no position to respond with a show of force to force compliance. Property was seized. The Administratum was purged. The Ecclesiarchy proved themselves to be so thoroughly compromised by the governing cabal that they may as well have had eight pointed stars carved into their foreheads.
Still would the Ravennan worlds rely on the guiding light of Astronimocon to maintain communication and trade. Still would the Ravennan worlds enjoy peace and prosperity bought by the blood of the Guard less than a three years ago. Still would the Ravennan worlds be defended by the great Adamantium behemoths that ceaselessly trawled the void on the outer borders of the surrounding sectors.
Every second the Ravennan Worlds remained independent was a defilement of the sacrifice the Imperium was built upon.
It was a dark time. With the Adminstratum and Ecclesiarchy bought to heel by an Oligarchy that already held the reigns of business, land ownership and the armed forces, the naturally autocratic institutions of governship and control of the Imperium were turned completely to the new regime's purposes. Resistance, whether physical or intellectual, was limited. After all, Imperial Governance is directed exactly towards the end of completely curtailing all insurrection.
One of the few pockets of resistance that did exist was the Academy. Students are naturally quarrelsome, and the fires of patriotism were allied with the faculties' natural hatred of outside interference. For six months battles raged around me. Most were political or intellectual. Pamphlets in the night, board of study battles in the day. That sort of thing. Occasionally a student protest or rabble-rousing sermon would flare into something more, then the Cabal's newly established cohortes urbanae would lay into the students with electro-batons. Peace would be restored, embers of rebellion glowing softly for now. Just this time several hundred students would be in the Hospices, fresh graves or had vanished off the face of the planet.
I found myself a natural focal point for resistance. I was a known decorated Guardsman after all. I suppose my religious views helped as well. Many remembered my hard line stances in theology discussions. I was no firebrand, however. My hatred burned cold. Far better to appear the model citizen, play the part of an embittered Guardsmen done with the uncaring Imperium that had used him so poorly. I was careful, even then. Preferring to work amongst the shadows.
I committed my first murders during those six months. I do not regret them. Sure, I had killed before. That was life or death, desperate Lasgun shots or bayonet thrusts in the muck and filth of the trenches. Mud and blood and grime. Hurried and panicked at first. Grim routine at the end. This was calculated, intimate. Sumptuous and Sweet.
Six months of the soothing tonic of collaborators' death rattles.
I am a perceptive man.
Six months' into the Ravennan Worlds' nascent independence judgement arrived. Coasting serenely out of the warp like the relief Crusade that had saved me before. It was a small squadron: Dauntless Light Cruisers ranging in front of a battle line consisting of a mix of Lunar, Gothic and Dominator class cruisers. Twelve capital ships, all told.
I cried the night I heard. I am not ashamed to admit it. Tears of vindication, tinged with hatred. The Emperor, as he had before, as his servants always did, would lay his vengeance upon those who refused to sacrifice for him. For you or for me. He would exact a terrible revenge on those who had reaped the reward for my own sacrifice and spat on their duty when their time came.
No such retribution ever came.
The young Commodore in charge of Squadron Accipiter, Earl des Fresnes, was a career-driven man. Ambitious, vain, proud, whatever you want to call him. He wanted no part in a lengthy compliance and purge. Heroic Triumphs were what he lusted after. The Ravennan Worlds' governing Cabal included many Aristocrats who had family ties to the young Navy Officer. For two weeks, the Squadron orbited calmly around Brundisjump, while the Earl des Fresnes parlayed with his in-bred cousins. At the time I assumed he negotiated for their total surrender.
After those two weeks, the Earl des Fresnes made orders to broadcast a proclomation to every device capable of receiving it within the Ravennan Worlds. In it the Earl, with the consent of the governing cabal, declared himself the Military Governor of the Ravennan Worlds. The Ravennan worlds were no longer a splinter state. The unwritten subtext of the proclamation was simple. In return for assisting his political ambitions, and in particular for aiding the Earl in a bitter dynastic struggle lurking under the skin of our neighbouring Sector, the governing cabal would carry on business as usual with his blessing and official sanction. Des Fresnes had no need to levy men from the Ravennan Worlds- the Imperium already provided his noble house, Navy and Guard officers all, ample manpower- and instead imposed a tax that the governing cabal would gather from the common man all too enthusiastically.
I cried the night I read the proclamation, too. All my bitterness, all my righteous rage, everything was meaningless. It was only on that day that I saw the truth of the Imperium.
Posted Apr 12, 2017, 4:39 PM UTC · edited