THE EMPEROR’S WRATH
Steven B Fischer


 	As a flash fiction author, Steven B Fischer often presents the reader with an alternative perspective and asks us to reconsider what we think we know. This story of disillusionment and discovery does just that. 

 	Caius is full of hatred for the Imperium that he believes murdered his parents and brought ruin to his home world. Having spent his youth dodging the brutal regime of the local militia known as The Emperor’s Wrath, the sudden arrival of Imperial drop-ships signals nothing more than the return of a hated enemy. But when fighting erupts and Caius is caught in the middle, he’s forced to confront the realisation that the Imperium he knows might not represent the entire truth. 


 	The first lasgun round shattered the window. The second blew a hole through the door. 
 	‘Open in the name of the Emperor’s Wrath!’ a voice called through the charred fissure, accompanied by the scent of scorched metal and ash. 
 	Caius stared from beneath his parents’ bed and hugged the two children beside him even tighter. Rhea and Remus were too young to understand. To see that the world around them was crumbling.
 	In the centre of the room, Father levelled a laspistol at the door, shaking slightly on clumsy pneumatic legs, fire in his violet eyes. A crimson banner adorned the wall behind him, emblazoned in silver with a skull bearing outstretched wings – the same sigil that marked the old, faded uniform in his wardrobe. 
 	‘Damned militia,’ he growled. ‘They bear His name. They bear His emblem. Now they burn half His planet and usurp His governor.’
 	Beside him, Mother grasped an effigy of the Emperor, the words of a prayer streaming silently from her lips. ‘You knew there were risks when you advised a ceasefire.’
 	‘Yes,’ Father scoffed. ‘But I expected betrayal from the rebels, not the governor’s own forces.’
 	An explosion rocked the room, and the door burst into a cloud of smoke. Through the opening, soldiers stormed into the apartment, clad in grey body armour, toting lasguns in their hands. Caius felt Rhea squirm beside him and clasped his hand over the girl’s mouth before she could cry out. 
 	‘You don’t have to do this,’ Father warned, voice calm despite the shaking of his palsied hand. ‘We serve the same Emperor.’
 	Across the room, a black-armoured figure stepped forward, blood and soot across his face, ice and shadow in his smile. ‘My Emperor does not condone surrender,’ he muttered as the weapon in his hands roared to life. 
 	Caius held his siblings close as their parents fell to the ground and the soldiers retreated from the room, the silver skulls on their helmets gleaming crimson in the light of a burning city, mirroring the dark pools that spread across the floor.
 	Ten years later, Halcyon still smouldered. 
 	Caius padded through the night-soaked city, flitting between crumbling buildings and refuse-strewn alleyways. Behind him, Rhea and Remus darted through the rubble, black hair and grey eyes just two more shadows in a city full of darkness. 
 	Caius traced the fractured remains of buildings that had once soared towards the heavens. Towards a sky that used to be full of starlight, but tonight was swimming with metal. A cloud of steel and flame descended over Halcyon, twisting and swelling like an immeasurable wave. Thousands of ships marked with the Imperial skull, a flock of dark-winged carrion fowl come to feast on the planet’s carcass. 
 	Caius brushed the pistol at his waist, that same sigil embossed on its pommel. He hated that skull, but he’d kept the weapon. An old, heavy brute, inlaid with silver and gold and workmanship too fine for an agri world like Halcyon. The only thing the Imperium had ever given his father, after he had given it all of himself. 
 	Beside him, Rhea stared into the sky, Remus close behind with a tattered blanket stretched over his shoulders. Neither child spoke – neither had spoken since the night their parents died – but their eyes asked the question for them.
 	Caius sighed. There was no use masking the truth. ‘The Imperium has returned to Halcyon, and they’re going to burn it to the ground.’
 	Beneath his feet, the fractured statue of some tortured saint lay covered in dirt and lichen. His parents had followed the Imperium’s cult, but its god was no more loyal than its armies. The Emperor’s Wrath killed without regard for piety, and now their masters had returned to finish the job. Their only hope was to flee.
 	Above their heads, the sky swarmed with darting ships, jostling to drop points on the ground. Escape meant slipping through that mess, and Petyr Unger was the only captain who stood half a chance. Caius had run contraband for him for years, and if any ship could evade an Imperial blockade, it was his. Three years back, he’d had the chance to sell Unger out when the Emperor’s Wrath caught wind of a weapons drop to a rival gang. Caius had chosen a set of broken ribs and a knife across his belly instead. The captain wasn’t sentimental, but he hoped their history would earn him a chance to buy his way on board. 
 	Caius gripped his father’s pistol. Unger had mentioned more than once that it was a pretty weapon – he’d even tried to buy it on a few occasions. Hopefully, that offer was still on the table. His hand shook slightly at the thought of parting with the weapon, before Rhea darted up beside him and Remus paused atop the ruins on the side of the street. It would be a small price to pay for saving their lives.
 	The hangar floor was littered with bodies, blood slicks mingling with spilled voidcraft fluid, the scent of burnt fuel and flesh heavy in the air. Caius crawled to the lip of the catwalk, struggling to make out the shapes that stalked below in the dim twilight of the hangar’s flickering lumens. 
 	A groan filled the air, and a body on the floor writhed with pain. A man walked swiftly from the shadows, his green helmet and dirty, grey fatigues both adorned with a dark-winged skull. Caius recognised the sneer on his face – the soldier who’d tried to gut him a few years back. Unger’s hangar was well outside Emperor’s Wrath territory, but the impending assault must have emboldened the faction. The soldier stepped up to the man on the floor and delivered a boot to his face to silence his screaming. 
 	Caius leaned over the ledge and caught sight of the ship below. He recognised the Starshadow’s burnished, black metal and breathed a sigh of relief. If Unger’s ship was still in the hangar, maybe he was, too, stowed away inside, waiting for the Emperor’s Wrath to move on before making his escape.
 	Behind him, Rhea inched her way forward. ‘Don’t move,’ Caius whispered, motioning to the alcove where Remus still hid. ‘I’ll be back.’
 	Caius lowered himself over the ledge and dropped down between the Starshadow’s massive turbines, scrambling across the hull to a maintenance hatch nearby. Once inside, he raced through the narrow shaft, clambering over sparking wires and leaky fluid lines towards the ship’s bridge. 
 	Unger would be there. He had to be. It was their only chance. Caius kicked his way through a rusted hatch, heart racing before his stomach dropped into his feet. 
 	Unger was dead – tied to his captain’s throne, limbs bound with tubing stripped from the bridge’s machinery. Blood wept from a gaping hole in his chest, trailing down his arms and dripping from his fingers. A hole that looked like it had been made slowly. Across his forehead, someone had gouged a skull into his skin, this one wreathed in flame. 
 	On the floor, five more bodies lay similarly marked, the remnants of the Starshadow’s crew. Caius closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. When he opened them, a shadow moved behind him.
 	‘Beautiful, aren’t they?’ a sneering voice asked.
 	Caius’ hand darted towards his pistol, before the butt of a lasgun smashed into his head, and his world began to swim.
 	‘The Emperor is coming,’ the voice whispered. ‘It’s only fitting that his subjects help us welcome him.’
 	Caius woke to the hangar’s flickering lumens, head throbbing, with the taste of blood in his mouth. The cold stone floor grated against his shoulders, wrists burning from the wire that bound him to a cargo crate. That sneering face leaned over him, grinning, close enough that he could smell the soldier’s rancid breath. Behind him, a small crowd of Emperor’s Wrath gathered. 
 	Caius spat, spraying blood across the man’s face, then threw himself forward against his restraints, but the soldier only laughed, licking the splatters of blood from his lips. 
 	‘Don’t worry. We tied them tight.’ He pulled a jagged knife from the scabbard at his waist, its long, black blade already streaked with crimson, and pointed towards a body slouched against the wall, defiled just like the Starshadow’s crew. ‘We wouldn’t want you squirming too much.’
 	Behind the man’s twisted face, two sets of grey eyes watched from the shadows, and Rhea crawled towards the lip of the ledge. Caius swallowed and shook his head. He was going to die, but they didn’t need to.
 	‘Run,’ he mouthed, as the blade dropped towards his chest.
 	The sound of gunfire rang through the hangar, and the sneer on the soldier’s face melted into confusion as clusters of red bloomed across his chest and his blade clattered to the ground. 
 	The remaining soldiers spun towards the sound of the attack, a few managing to lift their weapons before a hail of lasgun fire consumed them. One sent a salvo back before taking a shot through his neck, and a second sprinted away from the firefight. A crimson-armoured body knocked him to the ground, blood spurting into the air as a long, silver blade sprouted from his chest. 
 	Caius pulled against his restraints. Across the hangar, a dozen men strode towards him, crimson helmets and armour gleaming, far too well kept for Halcyon militia. One bore a banner on a stave across his back, an Imperial skull mounted over crossed swords. 
 	Steel bit into Caius’ wrists as he stretched and snatched the knife off the ground. He sawed madly at the wire above his head, feeling the metal give way just as a bright lumen fell across his face.
 	‘Got a live one.’ 
 	Caius tensed. These men had gunned down a dozen Imperial militia; there was no reason to think they wouldn’t do worse to him. He launched himself onto the soldier, and the man collapsed under the surprise of his attack before regaining his composure and slamming an armoured gauntlet into Caius’ ribs. Caius rolled to the side and pulled out his ­pistol, only to find himself staring into the muzzle of a lasgun. A second soldier’s boot burst from the shadows, sending his pistol spinning before pinning him to the ground. 
 	The first soldier approached slowly, touching the cut on his cheek where Caius’ knife had grazed him. ‘Close,’ he murmured with a grin. ‘But you’ll have to do better than that to kill me.’
 	The boot on Caius’ chest pressed more firmly into the ground, forcing the breath from his lungs and leaving him gasping. 
 	‘Let the boy breathe,’ a deep voice bellowed. ‘He can’t tell us anything if he’s suffocated.’
 	Caius looked up at an aging, grizzled soldier. The man stared at him over a short-cropped beard and a face strewn with scars, twirling Caius’ pistol around the fingers of one hand. In his other, a long, silver sword dripped with blood, and a stack of gold chevrons rested on his sleeve. His violet eyes burned bright, just like Father’s.
 	‘Let him up, Jost,’ the man grumbled, glancing at the wire trailing from Caius’ wrists. ‘And get that rifle out of his face, Marset. He’s not going to hurt you unless you’re slow enough to let him catch you with that knife again.’
 	‘Course, sarge,’ the soldiers mumbled. Caius scrambled to his knees as they backed away.
 	‘Easy,’ the sergeant warned. ‘Just because I haven’t shot you yet, doesn’t mean I’m not going to.’ He stared at Caius’ ­pistol with recognition. ‘Where’d you get this?’
 	Caius turned and spat. He didn’t owe them an explanation. 
 	The man laughed. Not a cruel laugh, but a dangerous one. ‘A little defiance. Not necessarily a bad thing. But if you want to give me a reason not to kill you, you better do it fast.’ He looked down at Caius’ wrists again. ‘You’re not one of them, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t the enemy.’
 	Something boiled inside Caius, and he tried to shut his mouth, but the words spilled out. ‘Them? You talk about them like you aren’t the same thing. Like you don’t serve the same master.’
 	The good humour dropped from the sergeant’s face. ‘You don’t know what you speak of, so you best not carry on.’ He levelled the pistol at Caius’ chest. ‘I’ll ask you once more. Where’d you get this weapon?’
 	Caius took a deep breath, catching sight of Rhea and Remus on the ledge above him. He was no good to them dead. They’d lost enough family already. ‘It was my father’s.’
 	Surprise crossed the sergeant’s face. ‘His name?’
 	‘Gaius Maristratus.’ 
 	Slowly, the sergeant lowered the pistol, something softening in his expression. ‘A tall man, your father? About my height?’
 	‘Maybe once,’ Caius replied. ‘Not after they fit him with iron legs.’
 	The sergeant grimaced and stepped forward. Caius tightened his grip on the knife, but the man held the pistol out to him, then motioned to his men.
 	‘Meet the remnants of the Cadian Eleven Hundred and Ninth, Secundus Company. I’m Master Sergeant Hector Armines. I served with your father when he commanded this unit. He was an honourable man and one of my closest friends.’
 	Caius took the pistol slowly. It was a lie. It had to be. A ploy to make him drop his guard. But why would they need to lie, when they had him at gunpoint already?
 	The sergeant glanced around the hangar. ‘Trying to get off the surface?’
 	Caius nodded.
 	‘A not entirely foolish decision.’ The remainder of the squad shared a collective nod. ‘We’ve been tasked with clearing a corridor to the governor’s palace. There will be medical transports there once we arrive. I’ll do my best to talk you on board.’ 
 	Armines motioned at the two soldiers beside him. ‘Jost, Marset. You know the boy already. Keep him close and preferably absent of holes.’ He pointed to the catwalk above the Starshadow. ‘Those Gaius’ children, too?’
 	Rhea stepped into the light, and Remus followed behind her. Caius nodded. 
 	‘Don’t let them wander off. Not everyone in this city is as blind as my men.’
 	The two soldiers were surprisingly cordial without their weapons pointed in Caius’ face. Jost strode easily across the rubble-strewn boulevard, long, lanky legs clearing blocks of stone like pebbles. Marset, in contrast, moved like an animal, darting and weaving on a stocky body that seemed wider than tall. 
 	Marset grinned as he vaulted over a toppled statue, violet eyes gleaming against his dark skin. ‘We’ve been itching for a fight. Sarge does his best to keep the drills full speed, but training just can’t match the real thing.’
 	Jost’s sullen face stretched into a smile as he leaned around the edge of a building, clearing the alley beyond. ‘You seemed to think it was plenty real enough after I broke your jaw.’
 	Marset scowled.
 	Caius gripped his pistol firmly and turned to his siblings. He’d never seen the city this still, and it left an unsettled pit in his stomach. ‘Stay close,’ he murmured.
 	Rhea nodded and took Remus by the hand before a loud boom echoed behind one of the buildings. Caius spun towards it with his weapon raised.
 	Marset chuckled and placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘That’s one of ours. Basilisk laying somebody low, from the sound of it.’ 
 	Jost glanced at the pistol in Caius’ hand. ‘You ever used that thing for real?’ 
 	Caius shook his head. He’d learned to fire a dozen weapons before he could write, but he’d never actually killed with one. 
 	The soldier nodded. ‘Aim for the chest, not the head. A round through the lungs will drop them just like one in the brain, but centre of mass gives you a bigger target.’ 
 	In the centre of the street, Armines strode casually through the rubble, eyes darting between the squad spread out around him. Caius had seen these soldiers fight, but he wondered how much twelve men could really handle.
 	‘This is your entire unit?’ he asked Marset.
 	The soldier laughed. ‘No. Just a veteran squad.’ He glanced over his shoulder at the empty street behind them. ‘The rest of the company’s back there somewhere, but you can’t expect Savlars to keep up with real Cadian troops.’
 	‘You aren’t all from Cadia?’
 	Marset shook his head, smile faltering. ‘There is no Cadia. Not any more. And your father isn’t the only soldier we lost over the years. The few of us left are split across other regiments.’ Marset stepped closer and lowered his voice. ‘What happened to your father? I assume he’s dead?’
 	Caius glanced down, and Remus grasped his hand. ‘Those soldiers back there,’ he explained. ‘They call themselves the Emperor’s Wrath. They killed a lot of people after the governor died.’ 
 	His voice trailed off, and Marset’s face hardened with understanding. ‘Monsters,’ he mumbled.
 	‘Monsters that serve the same Emperor.’ 
 	The soldier’s expression turned to stone. ‘They might wear His emblem, but they don’t serve Him.’
 	Caius opened his mouth to reply, but the sound of gunfire silenced him. Marset dropped behind the remnants of a building, bracing his lasgun atop the crumbling stone as Armines’ voice bellowed through the street.
 	‘Contact. Dead ahead. Four hundred yards.’
 	Caius dived behind the low stone wall, dragging Rhea and Remus to the ground as a mix of lasgun discharges and bolts whizzed overhead. He crawled towards Marset, aiming his pistol at the sound of incoming fire.
 	The soldier shook his head. ‘Pistol’s no good at this range. Don’t waste the ammunition.’ He rolled behind the wall and swapped a new power pack into his weapon before resuming fire. ‘Besides, we’ll have them running soon.’
 	Down the street, however, their assailants weren’t fleeing. Instead, a few dozen men and women in ragged clothing advanced towards the soldiers, some toting rusting lasguns or bolt-throwers, but most armed with only crude knives and spears. The squad pummelled them with fire, but the mob just moved faster, despite the holes erupting through their bodies. Finally, broken by the vicious salvo, they began to fall, until only a single man continued stumbling forward.
 	‘Cultists,’ Jost remarked grimly as Armines motioned for the squad to advance.
 	‘Pumped full of stimms,’ Marset replied, turning to Caius and the children. ‘Keep them close. Hard to tell when these bastards are really down.’
 	As the squad moved down the street, several bodies crawled towards them, inching along on bloodied arms, trailing legs reduced to smouldering stumps. A woman dragged herself towards Jost with a single, mangled arm. Across her forehead, a crude skull was carved into her skin. Jost waited until she had nearly reached him before he put a las-round through her head.
 	‘Not as much fun when they can’t fight back,’ Marset said, absent of his usual levity. A worried frown spread across his face.
 	Beside them, a female Guardsman took up position beside a rusting transport, dark blood oozing from a wound in her shoulder.
 	‘You all right, Lorne?’ Jost asked, motioning to the streaks of red down her armour.
 	‘Course,’ she replied, glancing at the wound. ‘It all just looks crimson to me.’
 	Jost nodded and turned to Caius before kneeling behind a building on the plaza’s perimeter. ‘Blood and fire are our profession,’ he explained. ‘It’s only fitting we wear their colour.’
 	In the centre of the street, the stumbling man lunged at Armines with a sharpened length of pipe. The sergeant sidestepped the clumsy thrust and knocked the weapon to the ground, then levelled the man with a strike from his gauntlet. Armines kneeled beside him and clasped a hand over his throat.
 	‘How many of you are there?’ he growled, but the man simply laughed. The sergeant pressed the muzzle of his lasgun against the man’s head and asked again. ‘How many?’
 	The man mumbled something too quiet to hear, bloodshot eyes darting to and fro. Across his forehead, that same skull sigil dripped blood down his face, just like the ones that had marked Unger’s crew. Armines ground his knee into the man. ‘I can’t hear you.’
 	Slowly, the man’s babble resolved into words, and Caius felt his stomach drop. ‘The Emperor is coming. All of you will kneel before him.’ 
 	Armines frowned, confused. ‘The Emperor sits on Holy Terra.’
 	The man laughed again, madness in the sound. ‘Not your Emperor. Ours. The Emperor Incarnate.’
 	With that, he lunged forward, throwing Armines off balance and snatching his crude spear off of the ground. Caius lifted his pistol, but before he could fire, the man had driven the pipe into his own chest. 
 	Caius stared at the dead man’s forehead as Armines pushed himself from the ground. ‘That mark,’ he said. ‘The soldiers at the hangar had done the same thing to the men they killed.’
 	A shadow crossed Armines’ face, and he nodded slowly. ‘I know you don’t trust us, but there are worse things in this universe than the Imperium.’ He looked down at the body, then turned to his squad. ‘Eyes open. Move quickly. Don’t be skittish on those triggers.’
 	The governor’s palace towered across Halcyon’s skyline like a mangled, decaying corpse, iron bones and rotting stone flesh laid bare a decade ago. The knot in Caius’ gut should have loosened as they neared the palace, but it only grew, that bloody skull still fresh in his mind. His limbs felt heavy, and his chest starved of breath, as if the air itself had grown thicker here. He told himself it was only nervous excitement, but the tense expressions of the soldiers around him suggested they felt it too.
 	Rhea and Remus pressed close to him now, an urgency in their steps he hadn’t noticed before. Remus clutched the thin blanket over both their shoulders, as if its fraying threads could hide them from whatever evil waited ahead.
 	Caius felt the skin on his neck begin to flush, and he whispered to himself, an old mantra Father had taught him as a child. ‘There is no fear, only courage. There is no weakness, only strength. There is no danger…’ He trailed off as the sound of bootfalls caught his ear and turned to see Marset approaching. 
 	‘Only glory,’ the soldier said, completing the mantra. The smile had vanished from his face, replaced by a keen focus that filled Caius with both confidence and fear. 
 	‘The Canticum Bellum,’ Marset whispered, eyes darting between crumbling windows and dark alleyways. ‘Good words, but perhaps silence is best now.’
 	The soldier had hardly finished speaking before a burst of light erupted from his forehead and gunfire shattered the silence. Rhea pulled Remus to the ground, and Caius dropped beside Marset’s body. The track of a lasgun round smoked through his skull, charred blood and something grey bulging out from within. Caius grasped the soldier and began to shake him before a cold, armoured hand gripped his shoulder. 
 	Jost stared down at his friend, face devoid of emotion but shaking slightly. ‘Don’t waste your time.’
 	Around them, the squad engaged in a vicious gun battle. Muzzle flashes burst from the windows and rooftops, and dark forms flitted through the shadows, kept at bay by the withering fire of Armines’ squad. Even still, three crimson bodies already lay on the ground beside Marset. In the centre of the street, Armines poured fire into an alley and shouted over the vox. 
 	‘Follow the sergeant!’ Jost ordered, motioning to a building across the street – the only structure that wasn’t swimming with enemy.
 	Caius grasped Marset’s armour and began to drag, but Jost pulled him away. ‘He wouldn’t give two shits if you saved his body, but you can honour him by not dying, too!’
 	The soldier dropped to a knee and fired at the silhouettes along the rooftops as Caius pulled Rhea and Remus towards cover. He looked back only once, long enough to watch Jost fall to the ground beside Marset. Long enough to see bodies in grey fatigues and green helmets pour into the street, a telltale skull emblazoned across their chests. 
 	The Emperor’s Wrath charged towards the squad, along with a ragged swarm of men and women, most nearly naked and poorly armed, bodies streaked with bloody symbols. Caius sprinted to the cover of the building, pushing the children through the door and diving in behind them.
 	‘Emperor’s Wrath!’ he shouted over the roar of gunfire.
 	Armines was propped up in one of the windows, his lasgun spraying the street. Across the room, Lorne lobbed a frag grenade out a doorway, while her few remaining comrades pumped death through the building’s other orifices. 
 	The sergeant dropped to the ground, swapping the power pack from his weapon. ‘What?’ 
 	‘Those soldiers,’ Caius replied. ‘Same faction as the hangar. The Emperor’s Wrath.’
 	Armines nodded grimly, then returned to the window. ‘Then you’ll take no issue with us killing a few more.’
 	Caius stared into the street. Armines’ squad was carving the horde apart, but it kept advancing. Beside him, a crimson-armoured soldier fell back from her post, a long, rusted bar extending through her neck, blood pooling on the floor in rhythmic gushes. Rhea scrambled out from the cover of a toppled staircase and slid the fallen soldier’s weapon towards Armines. Flashes of lasgun fire lit his scarred face as he dropped his smoking rifle and snatched the new one off the ground. Beside him, Lorne’s armour was streaked with the blood of fresh wounds. 
 	These soldiers were going to die. There was nothing Caius could do about that. Despite their bravery, despite their resolve, the swarm would overwhelm them. But it didn’t have to end this way for Rhea and Remus. Or for him.
 	To the north, the bones of the governor’s palace stood tall through the smoke. There was a transport waiting there. A transport that could get them off this planet for good. 
 	Caius stared at the skull-emblem helmet on the corpse beside him. Armines had been his ticket onto that transport, but maybe the helmet would do just as well. He didn’t need them to believe he was a soldier for long. Just long enough to get in the door with his siblings. After that, he didn’t care what happened to him, so long as those two were safe. 
 	Beneath the staircase, Rhea wrapped her brother in her arms. They didn’t deserve to die here. They hadn’t deserved to be born here. Just like their father hadn’t deserved to be maimed and then murdered.
 	Caius lifted the helmet, but stopped when Armines caught his eye. The sergeant nodded with grim understanding, then pointed to the door at the back of the room. ‘Go,’ he shouted, his voice drowned out by the fire of his soldiers. 
 	Caius rose and reached out to take Remus by the hand, but stopped when the shouts outside the window fell silent. Slowly, the gunfire trickled away, and the swarm retreated from the street, filtering back into the alleyways and behind the surrounding buildings. 
 	‘What’s happening?’ Caius asked. 
 	Armines shook his head. ‘I have no damn idea. But if you’re going to make a go for it, now’s the time.’
 	Caius nodded, then froze. In the centre of the street, buried beneath mounds of dishevelled bodies, he caught sight of two crimson helmets. Marset and Jost had died trying to protect him. Armines and his soldiers were about to do the same.
 	‘Why?’ he asked, turning towards the sergeant. ‘Why did you let us come with you? Why have you kept us safe even when we slowed you down?’
 	The sergeant’s face adopted a worried frown. ‘It’s our duty.’
 	‘Your duty to who?’ Caius scoffed. ‘The Imperium? The Throne? An Emperor who will never know you exist? How does protecting three children matter to Him?’
 	Armines was silent for a moment. ‘It doesn’t. But it would matter to your father. And I owe him that, at least.’ The soldier took a deep breath and sighed. ‘He never told you how he lost his legs, did he?
 	‘I was just a platoon sergeant, then. He was my company commander. We were tied up on some Throne-forsaken hellhole, brimming with xenos and hive-scroungers, and other trash not worth our blood. But we had our orders, and we were nothing if not obedient.
 	‘My platoon was pinned down, split off from the regiment, and your father’s command squad had got caught up with us. He’d already ordered the company to move on without us – the mission wasn’t worth risking just for our sakes. Somehow, his command squad managed to break through the lines, and he had a chance to regroup with the unit. It would have been the right tactical decision. None of us would have blamed him. We’d already made peace with the fact we were going to die.
 	‘But instead of leaving, he brought the squad back.’ Armines smiled, the first time Caius had seen his stony face adopt the expression. ‘You should have seen him, boy, rushing back through the breach. I think he scared the enemy witless, lasguns blazing in both hands. He bought us a window, and the platoon turned the tide.’
 	A shadow crossed Armines’ face, and his mouth settled back into its resident scowl. ‘It cost him, in the end, but he came back for us. Throne, I wish I could have been here to do the same for him. But if I can do it for his blood, that’s good enough for me.’
 	Armines glanced out the window and shook his head. ‘Enough talking. Get out of here before those bastards change their minds.’
 	Caius opened his mouth to reply, but the sergeant nudged Remus and Rhea towards the door. ‘Words aren’t worth much at this point, boy. Just get those two on that ship.’
 	Caius nodded and pulled his siblings through the door. In the sky above, transports streamed towards the governor’s palace. They were close. So close. 
 	A scream rang out through the empty street. It took Caius a moment to register the sound, then another to realise who had produced it. Remus’ mouth hung open, a shaky cry pouring from his lips. Caius turned and followed his gaze down the street.
 	Through the dust and smoke, something terrible app­roached, a bloated, twisted form, scraping its way across the rockcrete. The creature was almost as tall as the surrounding buildings, a myriad of long, sinewy legs dragging its bulbous body along. Its head swung atop a writhing neck, ringed by dozens of mandibles like those of an insect, but its face was clearly, horribly human.
 	Caius tasted bile and copper in his mouth as he realised the thing had once been a man. A man he recognised. The man who had put his parents to death. A red skull dripped in the skin across its chest, just like those adorning the heads of its servants. 
 	Slowly, the horde re-emerged between the buildings, and a single man walked out into the creature’s path. ‘Behold!’ he shouted. ‘The Emperor Incarnate!’ The man spread his arms towards the sky and closed his eyes. ‘All must kneel before a true god!’
 	In the shadows, the crowd dropped to its knees. The beast, quickened by the man’s shouting, slithered towards him with horrifying speed, its inhuman arms tearing his body apart before delivering the pieces to its waiting maw. A horrible cry erupted from the creature, some twisted mix of human language and the primal scream of the abyss, then it threw itself down the street towards Caius.
 	Before he could move, the creature was on them. Instinctively, he reached out for his siblings, but Remus had already begun to run. He darted down the street away from the creature, his foot catching on a block of fallen stone and throwing him to the ground. 
 	Caius felt Rhea shift beside him and grabbed hold of her tunic before she could follow.
 	‘Stay,’ he ordered, pushing her back towards the cover of the doorway. 
 	The earth around Caius shook as the monster rushed past, its legs striking the ground with a sickly rhythm. Its swollen body lurched across the stone, leaving a trail of film that reeked of rotting flesh and burned Caius’ eyes. His vision swam and his ears still rang, as if its scream had lodged inside his head, but he raised his pistol and fired into the beast’s flank. 
 	Rather than slow, however, the monster seemed to speed up, until it towered over Remus and dropped its head towards the ground. A moment before its mandibles closed, a crimson streak flashed through the road, and a burst of lasgun fire erupted into the creature’s face. The monster reared and let out a guttural screech as Armines loosed a deluge of las-rounds up at it.
 	Caius sprinted towards the sergeant and his brother as Lorne and the squad opened fire behind him. Lasgun rounds splattered across the creature’s torso, starbursts of char erupting on its grey, hairless skin, maggots pouring out from each wound they produced. Screeching, the creature reared up once more and nearly turned away, then dropped back to the ground, swinging a long, black leg and catching Armines with a jagged claw.
 	The sergeant fell to the ground in a spray of blood as Caius pulled Remus from the creature’s path. A long, clawed leg slammed into the dirt beside him as he spun to face it. 
 	Around the monster, the light itself seemed to shift, as if the abomination were fashioned not just from flesh but shadow too. Its horrible mandibles crashed together only feet from Caius’ face, and he fired his pistol again and again. He watched with satisfaction as the rounds burst across its already-charred skin, and the Emperor Incarnate pulled itself away.
 	Caius scrambled up from the ground, dragging Remus to the doorway where Rhea waited. To the north, the path to the governor’s palace lay clear, only a few hundred yards across open terrain. 
 	They could make it. They could make it if they ran right now. 
 	Behind them, Armines’ squad peppered the Emperor Incarnate, while the sergeant struggled upright in the middle of the street. The creature staggered, then righted itself and turned back towards the wounded soldier. 
 	‘Wait here,’ Caius muttered, pushing his siblings towards the doorway where Lorne pulled them safely inside.
 	Caius sprinted towards Armines. The sergeant had risen onto his elbows and drawn his sword, but the Emperor Incarnate had knocked the rifle from his hands. Caius snatched the weapon from the dirt and dropped to a knee beside Armines, pouring fire into the monster. Armines slashed one of its legs with his sword, severing the limb and spraying foetid blood into the air. 
 	Despite the wound, the creature reached out once more, shielding its face with a set of arms. Caius laid into his weapon’s trigger, but each leg he severed was replaced by another. Finally, the weapon in his hands fell silent, and he glanced down at the smoking power pack as the creature lifted him into the air.
 	Caius watched in horror as the ring of mandibles spread out around him and the monster opened its twisted mouth. Inside, a black and pockmarked tongue flitted between rows of razor-sharp teeth. Caius’ mind rang with the memory of the creature’s scream, and he felt himself retch something sour and rotten. He reached desperately for the pistol at his waist, but was unable to move in the monster’s grip.
 	Blood dripped from his wrists, crimson drops raining down into the creature’s maw. Its mandibles squirmed madly before him, their jagged points dancing inches from him, when suddenly the creature shuddered, and its hold relaxed a fraction.
 	Caius wrenched his arm free and ripped his pistol from its holster, pressing the barrel into the monster’s face. When he fired this time, there were no arms to shield it, and the round let loose a spray of thick, black blood. The creature screeched and tried to drop him, but Caius clung to its arm and fired again.
 	With a horrible shudder, the monster toppled to the ground, its seething legs falling slowly still. Caius struggled beneath the tangle of lifeless limbs, finally staggering into the street. Armines lay on the ground beside him, a long, deep gash across his chest and face. The sergeant’s arm was crushed and bloodied, pinned beneath the monster’s body, still grasping the sword embedded in its belly.
 	‘Good shooting,’ he muttered, grimacing as a soft laugh escaped his lips. 
 	Caius staggered to the sergeant and pulled the helmet from his head. ‘Pressure,’ he ordered, tearing a piece of his tunic and pressing it into the soldier’s hand. 
 	Behind the massive carcass of the Emperor Incarnate, the sound of lasgun fire rang through the street, accompanied by the shouts of a mob that was no longer kneeling. Armines’ three remaining soldiers circled around the monster’s body, Lorne leading Rhea and Remus while the others fired at the approaching swarm.
 	‘Best be going, sarge,’ Lorne said. ‘Don’t think our friends are too happy about the welcome we gave their emperor.’
 	Armines nodded, then let out a groan as she and Caius pulled him from beneath the monster. 
 	Caius stumbled the final few steps to the transport, Armines leaning heavily on his arm. The wide doors of the carrier sat open, a mass of soldiers stretched across its hold in various states of injury. A few medics darted between the bodies, binding wounds and staunching blood with crude tourniquets and cruel-looking needles. Caius grimaced as the scent of blood and excrement assaulted him while Lorne escorted Rhea and Remus on board. 
 	A young man looked up from beside a mangled soldier, a surgeon’s emblem marking his shoulder. He nodded and pointed at Armines. ‘Lay him on the floor. I’ll get to him as soon as I can.’
 	The sergeant laughed. ‘Like hell you will. Throne itself couldn’t get me to stay on this transport.’
 	The surgeon’s face wrinkled in confusion as he looked over Caius and the other soldiers. ‘Then I’m not sure what you’re doing here. The rest of you seem serviceable to me.’
 	Armines motioned with his weapon, and Rhea and Remus stepped up beside Caius. ‘These three would like to hitch a ride.’
 	The surgeon’s face hardened. ‘This is a military transport, not a civilian rescue mission.’ He looked around the crowded ship. ‘You can see we’re practically full already. We’ll be taking off soon.’
 	‘Good,’ Armines muttered, tightening his grip around his lasgun. ‘Then they won’t have to wait too long.’ 
 	The surgeon opened his mouth to protest, then looked at the rifle in Armines’ hand and shook his head. ‘I don’t have time for this,’ he muttered. ‘When the commissar finds out, it’s your head, not mine.’
 	Armines laughed again and looked down at the wound stretching across his chest, still oozing blood and caked with filth. ‘I’m not sure he could do much worse to me.’ 
 	The surgeon departed to tend to another patient, and Caius ushered Remus and Rhea on board. ‘Thank you,’ he said, turning to the sergeant.
 	‘Didn’t do it for you,’ Armines replied. ‘But you could have done worse for yourself today. Now get settled in before that prig kicks you off his ship.’
 	Caius reached out to hand Armines back his helmet, but the sergeant shook his head, looking down at his gaping wound. ‘Not much point, is there? Don’t think I’m leaving this planet alive.’ 
 	Armines threw his arm around Lorne, and stumbled back down the gangplank to the plaza outside, where armoured bodies were already digging in. 
 	Caius stared out at the city as Rhea settled onto the floor beside him. Remus sat beside her and stretched the worn blanket once again over her shoulders. This planet had been beautiful, once. A planet worth fighting for. His father died believing that, years ago. Armines’ men died believing that, today. 
 	Caius turned the sergeant’s helmet in his hands, staring at its skull insignia. Beside him, a tired-looking medic leaned over a body with a vial. The soldier mumbled something then pushed the medic away, cradling a bleeding arm and limping towards the door of the transport. These men were willing to die for his planet. These men were willing to die for a planet they’d never seen before today. 
 	Armines’ words rang in Caius’ ears. There are worse things in this universe than the Imperium. There were worse things than dying for something you believed in. 
 	Caius took a deep breath and pushed himself to his feet. Rhea rose beside him and grasped his hand, Remus wrapping his arms around Caius’ waist. They stared at him with those haunting, grey eyes. Eyes that betrayed so much more than words could. Eyes that told him they understood.
 	‘Stay safe. Protect each other.’ He paused, afraid his voice might break, and pulled both children into a tight embrace. ‘Remember Father and Mother. Remember me.’
 	The engines of the transport roared to life as Caius ran towards the door, snatching a lasgun from a soldier too dead to use it. He slipped out the door as it began to close, leaping off the edge of the gangplank as the ship lifted from the ground. 
 	He ran towards the familiar, crimson silhouette limping towards the plaza’s perimeter, fastening Armines’ helmet in place. By the time he reached them, the sergeant and his remaining soldiers had settled in behind a row of sandbags, aiming down one of the plaza’s radiating approaches, where a crowd of dirty bodies approached at a run.
 	Caius knelt beside Armines, bracing his weapon on a pile of crumbled stone. ‘I won’t swear an oath to your Emperor,’ he said. ‘I won’t worship Him, or pray to Him, or whatever it is that you do.’
 	Armines smiled. A jagged expression, tempered but not extinguished by decades of hardship and war. ‘My Emperor doesn’t require your words. All He asks for is your blood. And theirs.’
 	Caius stared down the barrel of his lasgun at the waves of approaching cultists and tightened his finger around the trigger. ‘I think I can manage that.’