(f) Confessions of a Heretic, Part V
Confessions of a Heretic: Part V
Part I of the Egistarum Confessions may be found here
Part II of the Egistarum Confessions may be found here
Part III of the Egistarum Confessions may be found here
Part IV of the Egistarum Confessions may be found here
Speak not to me of the Emperor’s Mercy. I know it all too well.
A formerly quiet night. There’s a biting wind, bitter cold, miserable sleet, murky black. There are also woodpeckers. One is hammering away at the stunted tree I’m sprawled behind. Thwack, Thwack, Thwack, Thwack. The woodpeckers have friends, too. Insectoids, whizzing and whistling. Crack. Whistle. Thwack. Murderously metallic. A bellowing, fiery roar joins the cacophony, accompanied by a victim’s shrill scream.
Everything’s all frakked up. Everything’s always frakked up, and I am powerless to do anything about it. Whatever happens, if I’m alive at the finale of this woodland symphony, things will continue to be frakked up like they have been for me ever since a Lasgun was first thrust into my hands and I was pointed at the enemy.
I’m not panicking. I still have that same Lasgun, after all. It’s in my hands now. If there’s one thing the Imperium does right, it’s reliable small arms. The woodpeckers are confident. They’ve done for half my fire team already. But some are exposed.
Find Target. Fire. Hit Target. Move. Get down. Repeat.
My Lasgun is an excellent weapon: accurate, long ranged, high rate of fire, enough stopping power to drop anything that isn’t heavily armoured or unnaturally resilient. But like all its trillions of kin, it has the unfortunate habit of giving away its position when fired. In confused clusterfraks like the one I’m in now, staying stationary is akin to signing your own death warrant.
Rushing hunched over to a new tree. It’s low and thick, forcing itself to grow from a rocky outcropping. Excellent cover. But now there’s someone gurgling next to me. One of those metal insects has found him and burrowed its way through his intestines. I put him out of his misery, saving him a few hours of torment. It’s an action that is as clichéd as his blood painting the white snow crimson red.
A woodpecker struts into my line of sight. Searing Lasbolt, and the woodpecker is no more. The woodpecker has a mate. It’s searching frantically for me, but must have been distracted. It’s looking in the wrong direction. And it’s exposed. Another searing Lasbolt, and two woodpeckers lie side by side. A third woodpecker rushes from one undulating gully to its neighbour. This woodpecker is craftier than its comrades. I should move. Dash to the left, covered by my rocky tree, and find a new firing solution. But I don’t think this one knows where I am yet, either. Besides, I’m confident. Our orchestra is beginning to drown out their band. Fewer woodpeckers are thwacking, and the heavy thumps of our stubber percussion have begun their fatal crescendo.
I peak greedily. I was right, I’m still unsighted. The woodpecker is merrily thwacking away at someone behind and above me. A third overcharged Lasbolt precision-drills a hole in the woodpecker’s helmeted head.
Two staccato cracks.
One Whizz.
And my left hand explodes into chunks of flesh and bone.
As far as Ops went, it had run like clockwork. We had departed on the rail line to the minute. For once, there wasn’t a single cock up with our fake paperwork. The Haulage Lorries we had were the best in the fleet, and the two fire-teams I had at my disposal were likewise the best available to House Muick’s various smuggling fronts. The freight train set us off at Tioram Mòr to the minute, and the service road to the drop site was well salted and free of snow and ice. We arrived an hour early, giving us plenty of time to reconnoitre the drop site and prepare defensive positions in case of complications.
It seemed I had a knack for Op-leader.
An Orbit to Surface Lighter flashed low and fast over the Dewncreggain mountains two minutes before rendezvous, transmitting the approved call-sign and accepting my response. The exchange was brilliantly fast. I’ve never seen a smuggler crew interested in helping unload their cargo before without some helpful gunfire to motivate them. It appeared they thought the cargo was just as hot as I did. My instructions were explicitly not to check the contents of the twelve stamped steel crates, but rather scan them with a modified auspex. I got the reading I was after, and handed over an encryption key that would allow the smugglers access to the bank account with their pay.
They bundled themselves back into their Lighter and within a minute they were streaking back over the mountain range, leaving us all alone in the Highlands of Mons Grespius. In that minute I had decrypted a message of my own, instructing me to take the cargo to a drop off at a lumber Warehouse in Dewncreggain Town. Onwards and upwards for our little convoy.
You can guess the rest. We were ambushed about five kloms north of the drop site. I wasn’t careless. In fact, I was the recipient of an intel feed ostensibly drawn from House Muick satellites, covering our route. It showed nothing. I know that our two outriders on motorbikes actually passed through the picket waiting for us. Without a word. The operation was completely compromised. I never asked Lillian, but she knew. Maybe not the extent of betrayal, but she knew. I don’t know if she predicted what was to come after that night’s treachery, or simply adapted to circumstances with consummate ease, but to this day I can only grudgingly admire her manipulative streak. She would have made a fine Inquisitor.
When the ambush happened, it was well-planned. They hit hard and fast. One Haulage Lorry went up immediately, torn apart by an autocannon. I don’t know which quick-witted individual sniped the crew of the anti-vehicle weapon, but they saved my life. Of that I am certain. Without the autocannon flinging explosive shells at us, we stood a chance. The non-combatants went down quickly, and with them died the unlucky and inattentive of our fire teams. Most curiously, however, despite the meticulous planning of the ambush, was that our persecutors weren’t particularly good fighters. Many were sloppy and what few showed any signs of proper training and experience in fire fights also evinced a near reckless abandon in their assault. None wore the uniform of the Gendarmes, but that was to be expected. Our attackers were, we thought, the private militia of a rival house, acting on information provided by their spies within the Gendarmes and a hitherto undiscovered network of informants within House Muick itself.
I can’t describe the feeling of being shot. Get your hand blown off, and you’ll understand. This “I was in a daze” nonsense is a lie too, as far as I’m concerned. Every fiber of my body was wide awake, and shrieking. I wasn’t prepared for this. How ironic that after three years in the trenches without so much as a graze from bullet or Las, it only took four months of smuggling before I really got clipped. I suppose it’s just more proof that whatever Gods do exist have an exceptionally cruel sense of humour.
I thought I was going to die. Even then, even at that point I still prayed to Him for absolution. As I sobbed at the sight and feel of my stump.
We’d won, but barely. There were five of us left. All our assailants were dead, or would be in a moment or two. Nobody had any doubt that reinforcements would be making their way to our position any minute now, and then it would be over. If we were lucky it would be quick.
I prostrated myself before Him. I begged Him to remember my service, both during the War and after. How I had remained loyal to Him when all around had betrayed His vision. I implored that He take into account many things. I asked of Him His Blessing and Grace. I thought of my two years’ worth of drifting aimlessly after the Ravennan Worlds declared independence. I had fled the Imperium, but not Him. Fled the ambitious, the selfish, those who wrapped themselves in the cloak of false loyalty and lived like parasites, feeding off the true believers. I had even joined loyalist societies on two worlds on the periphery of the Imperium’s territory. I left them in disgust. They were dedicated solely to the purpose of subverting existing governmental power structures and continue the same cycle of exploitation and lip service to His ideals. I had wandered without purpose further and further from Imperial space. Until Mons Grespius, where, simply put, I resigned myself to my fate. I would die an unloved and unremembered Martyr to Him on this unloved and unremembered lump of ice orbiting a weakling sun. I came here to die, and that time was now.
My reply was silence.
Nothingness as vast as the void.
I cried to Him, and He did not answer. I begged Him, and He turned away.
He forsook me. Then, now, forever.
It took me a long time to finally realise how we survived that night. Sure, I remembered Brondanson dragging me into a ditch while I wailed and bawled impotently at the final betrayal. I remembered instructing our band of five to break the cargo out of its heavy, metal housing and shove the small plastic-wrapped packages found within into rucksacks. I was told I even pulled myself together enough to be able to guide Preshath in bandaging the remnants of my left hand up. I remembered cleaning up the battleground as best we could, savouring every death granted, then setting off into the mountains, on foot, desperate to try and survive with our cargo. I understood that all that happened factually, but conceptually? No. Couldn’t wrap my head around it.
How come the reinforcements never came to grant us the coup de grace? How did the trackers that did come to eventually swarm all over the ambush site never manage to pick up a reliable trail? Where did the miraculously dense blizzard that shielded us from our pursuers blow in from? How did we survive for three days without being frozen alive by its ferocity before House Muick retainers found us?
I justified it to myself as me refusing to die. Being killed was no longer an option. It never sat well with me. I had that uncomfortable feeling where I knew I was lying to myself.
I was a Muick man after that night. So too were Preshath, Brondanson, Thermann and Geoffries. The mountain men. I got a new, cybernetic hand. Significantly better than the old one. I chose matte black. No reason.
I was taken into the family’s confidences. Not completely, of course, but the mountain men were to quickly become the family’s most trusted agents. The Fall of House Muick we would share with the family proper, but let me tell you this, dear reader:
Damnation was delightful.
To be continued: Part VI, the Fall of House Muick.
Posted Apr 26, 2017, 5:56 PM UTC · edited