Musings of a strange mind

Not This Way

2011-03-24T14:57:00.002Z

Arun gazed down at the lasrifle on his lap, running his fingers across it slowly. He knew every inch of the weapon, every chip and scratch, with a clarity born of long familiarity. He could probably pick his weapon from a pile of similar lasrifles in complete darkness by using touch alone. His grip tightened around the stock, and for a long moment he fought back the urge to hurl it out of the Valkyrie's open hatch. He sighed.

"It wasn't supposed to be this way."

He waited, but only the howl of the wind rampaging through the Valkyrie's passenger compartment, snatching at his grey, shoulder-length hair and scouring the moisture from his eyeballs, answered him. Arun looked up and studied the other occupants of the compartment. Some stared down at the floor, others were busying themselves adjusting the equipment they were carrying, or fiddling with their weapons. Make-work, to stop themselves thinking. At the far end of the cramped space Dane was wincing as the medic wrapped a bandage around the livid wound on his bicep. Sweat was trickling down his face, his jaws clamped tight on a dirty rag to keep himself from crying out.

"It wasn't supposed to be this way," Arun repeated, and this time a few of the others glanced up. They looked at him with a mixture of irritation and shared empathy in their eyes.

"We heard you the first time," Baxter grunted. No sympathy in his gaze, only grim acceptance. But then he had never truly believed it was over. Only in death does duty end. He had said that more than once after a few too many pints of home-brew, but the words had rung hollow even then. Baxter hadn't believed that. He had simply been too cynical to accept that the Emperor was done with them, that their time to rest had finally come.

Of course, he had been right.

"We were done. We had served our time. It was....."

"Will you shut up?" That was Fenlon. He slammed the stock of his lasrifle against the floor, the clang of the impact snatched away almost immediately by the relentless wind. A couple of the others muttered something, perhaps trying to calm him down, but he ignored them.

"I mean, seriously, enough. You think we don't know? That we don't realise that we were supposed to have been finished? We know, Arun. We all frakking know. Just one problem though. Nobody told them." He pointed, his fingers quivering slightly, in the direction of the open hatch and the devastated ground beneath it.

"Maybe you should have mentioned it to them, Arun. Maybe they would have just gone away. I'm sure they would have been real sympathetic. Because the galaxy really gives a crap about you, and your dreams of a quiet retirement, and....."

"Enough." Fenlon opened his mouth to protest but Baxter glared at him, and after a few seconds he looked away. Nobody spoke for the next few minutes, each man lost in his own thoughts. The medic finished treating Dane's wound and sat back down in his seat, pulling the safety harness around his protruding stomach with some difficulty. Dane was still sweating, and Arun wondered idly if some of the enemy's poisons had got inside him. Hopefully the drug cocktail the medic had given him would stop them, otherwise Dane probably wouldn't survive another day. The others knew it too; Arun could tell from the way they carefully avoided looking at the wounded man.

The Valkyrie banked slightly to avoid a column of black smoke ascending rapidly into the sky. Something large was burning down below. From the stench in the air, Arun guessed it was a promethium refinery, which meant they were probably over Carterville. If the enemy had already made it this far, they would reach the capital in a day. They were inhumanly swift.

The sergeant stepped into the passenger compartment from the cockpit, large hands wrapped around the grab-handles set into the ceiling. "We'll be at the muster point in forty minutes, lads."

Arun's lips twitched despite himself. Lads. That word hadn't been appropriate in a long time, but force of habit die hard as far as the sarge was concerned.

"There's a large force assembling there, a big armour column too. Apparently there's even a frakking Baneblade. We'll be heading out pretty much as soon as we land, and we'll drive this scum off our world once and for all. They won't know what's hit them!"

He paused as if expecting a response, but none of them said a word. Most barely even looked at him. Arun saw a brief look of frustration on his face, which rapidly gave way to weary acceptance. The sarge knew what they were going through. How could he not? They had all shared the same dream.

"Close the damn hatch," he snapped, and went back into the cockpit. Arun leaned over and pulled the lever. In the distance he could see lights in the sky, hundreds of them, each descending rapidly towards the ground trailing smoke and fire. The fighting to come would be hard.

He was so tired.

The hatch slid shut.

The Patient Hunter

2011-02-07T14:59:00.001Z

A new month means a new RIAR, and this time around the theme is "Entrapment".

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The three Devilfish sped down the winding canyon, their drivers negotiating the sharp turns with an ease born from years of practice, effortlessly dodging the large boulders that littered the ground at random intervals. The sun was at its highest in the cloudless sky and even with the shelter provided by the canyon walls the temperature was uncomfortably warm. Fortunately, his chosen position halfway out of the rear Devilfish’s roof hatch allowed shas’vre To’nel to benefit from the cooling breeze that their high speed produced. If he was honest, his decision to keep watch on the enemy was just as much to do with that as it was out of any sense of duty.

Close behind the tau skimmers the canyon floor was covered by a seething mass of tightly-packed creatures, clawing and biting at each other as they chased after the fleeing vehicles. Their powerful hind legs carried them forwards with great bounding leaps so that the horde undulated like an ocean of chitin and purple-black flesh. Vicious scythe arms slashed at the air and hideous maws drooled thick saliva between razor-sharp teeth. To’nel knew full well that if the Devilfish stopped even for a moment, the tyranids would catch them easily and the tau would be slaughtered. He sneered. The witless beasts didn’t seem to realise that the Devilfish could outpace them with ease; he had simply ordered them not to.

The shas’vre tapped a command into the control array he clutched in one hand. At once the two gun drones mounted under the forward fins of his Devilfish turned round, each unleashing a sustained burst of plasma fire into the horde. A dozen hormagaunts were killed within moments, their steaming remains trampled into the dirt by the creatures behind them who were themselves cut down in turn. After ten dec’taa To’nel pressed another button and the drones ceased firing. If he killed too many of them now, it was possible that the surviving beasts might flee, and To’nel had no wish to spend rotaa tracking the last of them down. His plan was far more efficient than that.

His comm-link chirped once. “Shas’vre, we will reach the kill-zone within three rai’kor.”

“Thank you, shas’la.” To’nel opened a link to every one of the fire warriors in the three Devilfish. “Shas’la, we are almost there. As soon as the transports come to a halt I want a swift and clean deployment by each la’rua, be ready to provide supporting fire at my command. We have lured the prey into the trap; it is time to make the kill.” Closing the link, Ton’el glanced back at the hundreds of screeching hormagaunts behind him, feeling nothing but contempt for them. These beasts were a blight upon the galaxy; they deserved no mercy and would be shown none.

Only a short distance ahead, the canyon terminated in a large open area, encircled by steep slopes of jagged rock that the Devilfish would be unable to negotiate. That didn’t matter though, since To’nel had deployed a large force of fire warriors there; several broadside teams were supplemented by a half-dozen la’ruas as well as drone turrets. He had arranged their deployment carefully to create overlapping fields of fire around the entrance to the open area. When the hormagaunts entered, they would be slaughtered by the massed firepower of the tau. If even that proved insufficient to halt them, then four waiting Orca transports would evacuate the fire warriors before obliterating the remaining tyranids from the air. Ton’el was confident that such measures would not be necessary, however. He had laid a classic trap for the enemy, utilising the principles of kauyon to perfection. The beasts were dead already; they simply didn’t know it yet.

As soon as the three Devilfish entered the open space they split up, each streaking off in a different direction and passing through deliberately-placed gaps in the fire warriors’ defensive lines before coming to a rapid halt. The ramp of his Devilfish slid down and Ton’el followed his la’rua out into the open, his pulse rifle already raised and aimed towards the entry point of the kill-zone. A swift glance told him that the la’ruas in each of the other two Devilfish had deployed in a similarly swift fashion, and Ton’el allowed himself a brief smile. Ahead, the swarm of hormagaunts spilled into the kill-zone, their pace slowing as they spread out into the open space and caught sight of the ranks of tau awaiting them.

“Deal the killing blow,” Ton’el snapped over the comm-link, and the tau opened fire as one. Volleys of plasma scythed through the hormagaunts from all sides while the railgun fire of the Broadside battlesuits punched through their bodies with ease, each slug drawing out long trails of ichor and pulped flesh behind it as it passed through body after body without slowing. Despite the scale of their losses the hormagaunts continued to push forward, individual beasts hurdling the steaming corpses of their fallen kin, desperate to close with the tau. Ton’el fired twice, and smiled as his shots blew open the head of one of the beasts. In a few moments, it would all be over.

He felt the ground tremble beneath his hooves.

The trembling intensified and several of the fire warriors around him cried out, struggling to keep their balance. Behind him he heard an immense roar, and turned just in time to see something vast punch up through the earth, shattered rock and dirt catapulted in all directions by the violence of its arrival. The towering beast shrieked again as six immense scythe-limbs unfolded from its sides. Two of them stabbed down, carving through the hull of the nearest Orca transport with incredible ease. All around him the panicking fire warriors were attempting to redeploy, broadside battlesuits ponderously turning to confront the new threat. Plasma fire began slamming into the immense tyranid, having no discernable effect. Another limb lashed out, swatting a second Orca transport to the ground as it attempted to take off. The trygon roared and slithered forward, its gaze fixed on the line of faltering tau. Behind it, Ton’el could see dozens of hormagaunts emerging from the tunnel the giant tyranid had carved. In that moment the shas’vre realised that more than one trap had been set this day.

As the shadow of the trygon fell over him and blotted out the sun, shas’vre Ton’el remembered one particular phrase that had been drummed into him when he had been trained in the way of kauyon.

The patient hunter gets the prey.

Subject C67-B

2011-01-04T16:48:00.003Z

The monthly Read In A Rush competitions over on the Black Library Bolthole have restarted, and this month's theme is "Cold". I thought I would go with a different definition, rather than the more obvious temperature aspect, and with that in mind I wrote this piece, Subject C67-B. This is a companion piece to Help Me, so read that first if you haven't already. I also took the opportunity to write in a different tense to the one that I normally use, and I think it works nicely.

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Mechanicus Adept (class III) Malik Sigma-1 turns as a labourer servitor enters the processing area, carrying a new subject in its arms. The subject is placed on the table and the servitor injects a muscle relaxant into its circulatory system, to prevent its movements from interfering with the procedure. Malik steps forward, while the scanner embedded in his right eye socket reads the freshly-branded code on the subject’s forehead and information scrolls across his field of vision.

Subject designation: C67-B
Subject assignment: Bio-Reclamation Facility Beta Six/Waste Processing Line Alpha/Berth VI
Subject procedure: Kappa-Six-Beta(c)

Malik calls up the detail for the relevant operation and commits the sixteen pages of information to memory. This takes three point six two seconds. Another sixty-two point seven three seconds are spent selecting the tools required for the procedure and placing them in order of use next to the subject, which now lies still as the cocktail of muscle relaxant and anaesthetic spreads through its body. Its eyes follow Malik’s movements as he picks up the first tool to be used; a circular saw.

The adept removes the first limb at the shoulder joint, then uses a cauterising tool to stem the loss of circulatory fluid from the subject’s body. Malik raises the limb to eye level and studies it carefully, noting poor bone density and the presence of excessive amounts of subcutaneous adipose tissue. This does not exceed the minimum standards required for incorporation into a servitor, so the adept passes the limb to the still-waiting labourer construct, which will later transport it to the incinerator.

Malik removes the remaining limbs, pausing between the amputation of limbs three and four to wipe away circulatory fluid that has splashed across his scanner and vox-grille. The quality of each limb is deemed equal to or worse than the first, and all are rejected. A brief screech of vocalised code sends the labourer servitor to dispose of the rejected parts.

As the servitor leaves, the adept hears a spasmodic exhalation of gases from nearby. He scans nearby pipes for leakage but finds nothing. After another four point four two seconds he traces the sound to the subject. Its jaw is opening and closing irregularly and its eyes roll about inside their sockets, despite the effects of the muscle relaxant. Malik theorises that the over-abundance of adipose tissue is partially negating the effects of the relaxant, and makes a note to have the servitor apply another dose to the subject once it returns from the incinerator.

The adept continues the procedure; cutting a vertical slit into the subject’s torso followed by two horizontal slices below the neck and at groin level. Clamps are used to fold back the flesh while brief applications of the cauterising tool stem the relatively small quantities of fluid loss. The labourer servitor returns, and after it has injected a second dose of muscle relaxant into the subject, the adept has it remove the rib cage while he leaves to gather the biological tissue from the cryo-stores and mechanical parts that will be required for the remodelling of the subject’s digestive system.

Fifteen point seven six minutes into the remodelling procedure, Malik becomes aware that he is being observed from a gantry overlooking the processing area. He looks up for long enough to capture an image of the figure watching him then concentrates on his work, applying a mere five point two six percent of his intellect to enhancing the darkened image sufficiently for identification purposes. After thirteen point six seconds he finds a match: the observer is Arch-magos Kalen himself. Upon realising this Malik feels an unfamiliar tightening sensation in his stomach that he identifies as concern. He begins to go back through his memory to identify the last time that he experienced such a purposeless emotion, then classifies the fact as unimportant and returns his attention to the procedure.

After another twenty two point one one minutes Malik finishes the modelling procedure by sealing up the subject’s torso once again, doing so carefully to avoid damaging the restructured internal organs. The Arch-magos still observes from overhead, and as the labourer servitor picks up the subject and carries it out of the room, Malik hears a burst of machine code from above, which could be represented in spoken form as a single word: efficient. He feels a brief moment of pride, and this time does not dismiss the emotion.

The adept follows the servitor as it moves through the facility to waste processing line alpha. Reaching the designated location, the labourer places the subject on the floor before removing the non-functional reclamation servitor occupying berth VI. Malik scans the servitor briefly, agreeing with the report of the menial that had discovered the malfunction: the servitor’s biological components have degraded below acceptable levels. It will be broken down for usable parts then recycled.

The servitor places subject C67-B into berth VI and clamps the restraints into place to prevent the subject becoming dislodged over time by the pressure of the waste being pumped through, before inserting the nutrient removal pipe into the socket in the subject’s torso. Malik then inserts the waste extraction pipeline into the appropriate orifice. As he does so, the subject emits noise above anticipated levels, which does not subside after three point four one seconds.

The adept moves to the front of the subject and notices its eyes are fixed on him. It tries to speak to him, but he is unable to comprehend the words before the insertion of the feed pipe muffles them. Malik pulls a lever set into a nearby control panel and C67-B jerks as the waste to be reclaimed is pumped into its enhanced digestive system. As adept Malik watches the new servitor at work, he observes that its eyes are still turned towards him. He speculates that C67-B still retains some awareness of its surroundings.

Walking away, Malik runs the calculations, and determines that the probability of that awareness having any detrimental effect on C67-B’s functions is less than nought point six one percent, which is well within acceptable parameters.

Breathtaking Bias

2010-12-14T11:53:00.003Z

Having just watched the footage of Jody McIntyre being pulled from his wheelchair and the interview that followed; I am utterly gobsmacked. Not just by the behaviour of the police in question, but also the attitude of Ben Brown, the BBC interviewer. The questions he asked were beyond ridiculous, it's one of the most blatant examples of bias I've seen on television outside of Fox News.

So what if he describes himself as a revolutionary? As McIntyre himself said so well: that's a word, not a physical action. "Was he wheeling himself towards the police?" What kind of stupid question is that? Brown's questions were ridiculous; and gave every impression of searching for some reason, any reason, to blame McIntyre for what happened. That in itself is a disgrace and renders the whole notion of "impartiality" on the part of the BBC laughable in this case.

Also, just what threat did these policemen believe that a disabled man confined to a wheelchair could pose that would warrant such behaviour? It is a complete overreaction on their part and I hope that the officers involved are disciplined.

However, I somehow doubt they will be.

Paxman Interviews Hitchens

2010-11-30T13:13:00.002Z

I watched this Newsnight special yesterday, and I recommend that you all do, as well. It's very moving in places, and also gives a very interesting insight into Christopher Hitchens.

Andromeda in Ultraviolet

2010-11-09T08:45:00.000Z

A Battle

2010-11-08T13:43:00.000Z

A random battle I've written about for a Bolthole group story.

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Caleb made the mistake of taking a particularly deep breath, and winced as the frigid air hit the back of his throat. He coughed automatically, the sound suppressed by the collar of his greatcoat that he had turned up so it covered his mouth and chin. He glanced around quickly; sound carried a great distance in the still air of the forest, and sergeant Ryann had repeatedly emphasised the importance of noise discipline. Nobody was looking at him though; each of the other nine guardsmen seemed oblivious.

Like him, the others were clad in standard-issue Corinthian winter gear; dirty white smocks, greatcoats and gloves. Most had turned up their collars to protect their faces against the cold, and Caleb thought it likely that a few were wearing two or more pairs of socks, just as he was. Long periods of tramping through deep snow had a bad effect on the feet; Caleb had heard of several cases of frostbite being reported already. Apparently one guardsman had lost all the toes on one foot, and rumour had it that Aldritch’s cadets were none too happy about what they saw as avoidable carelessness. In Caleb’s experience, when commissars became displeased, they tended to get even more trigger-happy than usual.

It didn’t help that the last few months had been so utterly tedious. Since setting up camp outside of Eigersund, there had been no contact with the enemy bar a few skirmishes, usually over before they even had a chance to get started. Caleb’s squad hadn’t taken part in any action for quite a while now, nobody in their entire platoon had. In fact, Caleb was hard-pressed to remember having seen anything noteworthy on even one of the seemingly endless patrols that he had participated in through the area around Eigersund. He had reached the point where it would be easy to believe that the world outside of their camp was nothing but an endless expanse of trees and snow, notable only for how utterly mind-numbingly dull it was.

Lost in his thoughts, Caleb ignored the first flicker of movement off to one side. Only when the movement persisted did he look up, and even then it took a few seconds for what he was seeing to fully register. In the distance, several men were moving between the trees, and more stepped into view as he watched. There had to be at least fifteen of them, five more than Caleb's squad. They were clad in winter gear, just as the Corinthians were, but the markings were different. They had to be the enemy.

Caleb turned towards the sergeant and made a series of frantic hand signals. Ryann glanced at him, irritated, his expression slowly changing as he took in what Caleb was trying to tell him. Ryann looked into the distance and Caleb followed his gaze. The guardsman felt his heart lurch in his chest as he saw one of the enemy soldiers staring directly at him, his arm outstretched. They had been spotted.

"Forward, now! Get to cover!" Ryann's shout galvanised Caleb into action and he threw himself towards the nearest large tree, cursing as his boots sank deep into the snow with every step and slowed his progress. He could see the enemy running forward as well, and now the first las-volleys began hissing past, although fortunately the still-large distance between the combatants meant that none of the shots found their targets. He crouched behind the tree and tried to position his finger over his lasrifle’s trigger, but was hampered by the extra bulk of his glove getting jammed in the trigger guard. He cursed, gripping the end of his glove between his teeth and yanking it off his hand in one movement. Ignoring the sudden pain of the cold air biting into his exposed flesh, Caleb let the glove fall to the ground and carefully looked round the side of the tree. He caught a brief glimpse of running figures before several lasblasts slammed into the trunk, forcing him to duck back into cover. Snow dislodged from the branches above drifted past his face.

The rest of the squad was moving forward in groups, covering each other as they darted from tree to tree. Ryann half-fell, half-slid into cover behind a nearby tree, but within a few seconds was back on his feet, loosing another volley at the enemy.

“Caleb, keep moving, damn you!” He yelled. Without giving himself a chance to think about it, Caleb stood up and broke from cover.

He ran forward as quickly as he could, gaze fixed on a fallen tree about ten metres from his position. A vaguely-seen shape to his left was another man from his squad, weapon up and firing as he ran. Caleb looked ahead and saw an enemy trooper step from behind a tree, lasrifle pointed directly at him. Before he could react, a volley of lasfire from somewhere behind Caleb smacked into the man’s chest and sent him reeling backwards. Another soldier appeared but this time Caleb was ready; he fired wildly, forcing the man back into cover before he himself dropped and rolled behind the fallen trunk. He cast a quick glance towards where his squad-mate had been, and flinched as he saw him lying face-down on the ground. Blood was splattered around him, shockingly vivid against the achingly white snow.

Caleb twisted back round and propped his lasrifle across the top of the fallen tree, searching for a target. The enemy troops were no more than a dozen metres away now, and closing rapidly. He fired a quick burst then fumbled at his belt with his gloved hand, eventually grasping a frag grenade. He waited until an enemy soldier broke from cover before yanking the pin from the grenade and hurling it towards him. Caleb cursed as the grenade fell short, the first impact with the absorbent snow robbing it of momentum. A few seconds later it detonated, too far away to kill the trooper but enough to make him stagger as a wave of displaced air slammed into him. Before the man could recover, Caleb shot him three times through the head.

"Grenades!"

The shout came from somewhere to the left. Caleb started to turn, but as he did so he caught sight of two black objects hurtling through the air towards him. The first flew on, landing somewhere behind him, but the second thumped to the ground no more than three metres away. Instinctively he clawed at the trunk in front of him and dragged himself over it, hissing in pain as his outstretched leg scraped along a protruding lump of bark. Once on the other side he pressed himself against the ground as much as he could, then covered his ears and opened his mouth, just as the grenade detonated with a roar.

Shrapnel pounded into the other side of the trunk, the fallen tree shuddering under the impact. Caleb felt sharp stings of pain across his back and legs as stray chunks of metal hit him. The noise of the explosion in such close proximity was near-deafening; he knew that if he hadn't opened his mouth then the change in air pressure might have burst his ear-drums. He rolled over, breathing quickly, one hand groping across the ground for his lasrifle. Caleb's fingers had just closed around it when the shadow fell across him.

Instinctively he raised his lasrifle, and the first bayonet thrust glanced off the weapon's stock and away from his body. Above him his attacker came into view, his face twisted into a visage of fear and anger. He slashed down again and once more Caleb blocked, but this time he hammered his boot into the man's knee, knocking him off balance. The soldier staggered back, giving Caleb enough time to bring his lasrifle round and fire a burst into his chest at point-blank range, piercing his flak armour with ease. His torso a bloody ruin, the man toppled forward, landing on Caleb and driving the breath from his lungs.

As he struggled to move the dead soldier, Caleb could hear screams and yells coming from all around him, accompanied by the metallic screeches of bayonet blades scraping against one another. The enemy had made it into close combat. He was intensely aware of his vulnerability. It would only take one of the enemy glancing in his direction, and he would be finished. After over a minute of struggling, he finally managed to roll the trooper off him, and lay gasping for a few seconds before his instinct for self-preservation forced him into action.

He rose to a crouch, just in time to see one of the enemy drive his bayonet into a guardsman lying prone on the ground. The man's arms and legs shuddered as the blade went in, a plume of thick, dark blood erupting from his mouth. The enemy soldier started to turn, and an almost comical look of dismay appeared on his face as he caught sight of Caleb, only a second before the guardsman shot him.

As the soldier fell, Caleb glanced around, but could see no movement at all. The noise of combat had vanished as well; all he could hear was the sound of his own quick breathing. Was it all over? Could he be the only survivor from both squads? He paused, and looked around more carefully. Still nothing. Now that the adrenalin of combat was dying down, he was becoming increasingly aware of the cold attacking his exposed right hand. He would have to find his glove, before his skin ended up sticking to his lasrifle. But before that, he had to check if any of his squad were still alive.

He moved over to the guardsman he had seen being stabbed. It was Ryann. The lower half of his face was covered in blood, his expression a mask of rage and defiance. The sergeant’s eyes looked up at Caleb, seeing nothing. For a moment he felt as if he should say something, but the words wouldn’t come.

There was a soft crunch from behind him, the sound of snow being compressed by a boot.

Before he could turn, Caleb felt a sudden, searing pain in his back that raced straight through him. There was a brief feeling of pressure in his stomach, then something burst into view. Caleb looked down to see the tip of a bayonet protruding from his gut, blood welling up around it and spilling to the ground. The pain was incredible; he opened his mouth to scream, but his throat was already filling with blood and he could manage nothing more than an agonised gurgle. His unseen assailant wrenched the bayonet from Caleb’s body, and the guardsman fell to his knees.

Obviously he hadn’t been the only survivor, after all.

Hunger

2010-10-13T13:05:00.002+01:00

This is my entry for a Halloween competition being run on the Black Library Bolthole. The theme is horror, and had to include a "traditional monster" in some shape or form. As always I've tried to put my own, somewhat twisted spin on it!

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I can still taste them. The memory is always with me now, driving me on, compelling me to feed again, to once more feel that rush of sensation that was like nothing I had ever experienced before. The warmth of the flesh in my mouth as my teeth scraped against the taut, resistant skin. The tension suddenly released as they stabbed deep, followed swiftly by the hot rush of blood filling my mouth, my heart pounding as I gulped it down, matching the surges of liquid from the sundered flesh beat for delicious beat. The feeding itself; at once seeming to take an eternity yet over in scant minutes. The sharp, harsh crack of snapping bone and the sweetness of the marrow sucked from within its brittle shell.

I remember it, every moment of every day of what has now become my existence. Each time I feed now it seems to add to the richness of that memory, that precious moment when I first gave in to the desires raging within me and feasted. My need to replicate it is what drives me now; my disappointment at the end of each meal that fails to match the ecstasy of the first grows stronger every time. Yet I will not stop trying; I cannot stop. It is what I am now.

By day I slumber and dream of the hunt and the feasting that follows. They are glorious dreams, and when I awaken I find that they have always raised the hunger that is constantly within me to new heights of desire. I only move now when darkness has fallen and my senses are heightened. It is more comfortable that way, because I know it is my time. The time of the predator. I rove through the forest, killing whatever I can catch, but never straying too far from the village. It is my prime feeding ground, my territory. In the beginning I tried to stay away, only venturing there when the moons waxed full, but that was foolishness, some kind of lingering caution, an attachment to what I was. Now I go there far more often, driven by the need for the kind of flesh that I can find nowhere else within this vast, lonely forest.

They try to stop me. Once that angered me, but with time I have come to realise that they only do what their instincts drive them to. In that respect alone are they similar to me. The prey will always attempt to escape or defeat the predator. The predator always seeks to feed. It is the way of things.

They try, but they fail. I am too fast now, too strong. Their arrows miss, and even when they pierce my skin the wounds they cause heal swiftly. Only their sticks that bark fire can hurt me badly. I know they have a name, and that I knew what it is, but that knowledge has been lost to me. It does not matter. It is enough that I remember their effects, the danger they pose to me. I was once hurt by one of the sticks. It took me three full days to heal; three days with nothing to eat. The pain of my wounds was nothing compared to the hunger that gnawed inside my belly then.

I see a light in the distance. For a moment I think that the night is ending, that I must return to my lair to sleep until darkness falls again, but no. It is too soon, and the light is coming from the wrong direction. Instinctively I drop lower and stalk closer, moving between the trees in near-perfect silence. All my senses are fixed on that light, striving to discern what it is.

It flickers unevenly, sometimes dimming for long moments before brightening again. It moves, I realise that much, and sidestep quickly into deeper cover. It is heading this way. What is this strangeness? The hair on the back of my neck rises, and only the hunger burning within me keeps me from disappearing into the forest.

It draws closer, and now I can hear them. The tramping of dozens of feet, crushing sticks and sweeping dead leaves aside with every clumsy step. The grumbling, erratic sound of prey-speech. The light is not one but many, I see that now, flickering flame held atop raised sticks. Beneath the overpowering smell of burning I catch their scent; dirt, sweat and flesh. I feel the blood surge through me and saliva fills my mouth. It is all I can do to keep myself from attacking, dragging them down one by one and sinking my teeth into their flesh. Only the wrongness of the situation holds me back. Prey do not behave this way.

I see that some of them carry the sticks that bark fire, and only then do I realise what is going on. The prey are hunting me. This is not right; this is not how things should be. Prey exists to be hunted, not to hunt! They are meat! Without thinking I step out into the open, my teeth bared. They should know their place!

It takes a few moments for their pitiful senses to detect me, then cries of alarm sound throughout the herd. Those holding them lift their fire-sticks, and I raise my arms in response but do not move. My gaze is fixed on one of the prey, standing at the front. Recognition glimmers in my mind. Somewhere deep within me I know this one, the name for it. It comes to me after a moment. Husband. I cannot remember what the word means.

Husband stares at my face. No, not that. My raised arms. At first I think it is the fright of prey that sees the means of its own death, but then my gaze turns upwards, and I realise that it looks at what hangs from my arms. I lower my limbs slowly, and watch his eyes follow. It sees them. Does it understand?

Can it know what I remember? The wondrous fulfilment of that first meal, the sensation like nothing I had felt before or since? That is why I keep them; one scrap of cloth wound around each wrist. Their bright vivid colours are almost obscured now by dirt and blood. But that does not matter. I still remember. Two ribbons, for the two young prey I first devoured.

Does it understand? I look at husband, and see nothing but ignorant revulsion look back. I growl, low and deep, and the prey react. Those carrying fire-sticks push forward, another drags husband back into the centre of the herd, ignoring his howling. They are many. I should flee, but I do not. The hunger is too great now. I spread my arms wide and charge them.

They scream and shout in fear. The sticks bark fire, and I feel impacts blossom all over my body, blood oozing from the rents in my skin. I do not stop, I barely even slow. My wounds do not matter. My pain does not matter. Nothing does.

Nothing but my hunger.

Launch

2010-10-11T09:17:00.004+01:00

This is a picture of the recent Soyuz launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It's an absolutely stunning image! Even though I know what it is, it's a very grim and dystopian image, you can just imagine something like this on a dirty and polluted world in a grim future. Or maybe it's just me.

That's all.

Titan And Rhea

2010-09-22T14:22:00.000+01:00

Long Winter

2010-09-13T15:52:00.001+01:00

Another forum competition entry.

----------

Karlo hammered on the door, the wind howling so loudly in his ears that he could barely hear the sound of his fist striking the rotten wood. The door shivered under the impact, and a splinter of mould-encrusted wood fell away. It looked as if it would fall apart before very long.

The whole cottage looked as if it had seen better days. As they had approached the ramshackle building, Karlo had seen that much of the thatch on the roof had turned black and fallen away, revealing decaying timbers underneath. The walls were crusted with ice above the drifts of snow that the relentless wind had pushed against the northern side of the cottage; Karlo guessed that they had been soaked through with moisture and beginning to rot even before the brutal winter had hit.

None of that mattered. There had been smoke rising from the chimney and a light flickering in the window. If there was a chance of warmth and shelter, Karlo didn’t much care if the cottage was held together by orc spit and twine.

“Hurry up will ya?” Franz snapped. “I’m freezin’ to death here!”

Karlo ignored this, pulling his cloak more tightly about him and pounding on the door once again. This was all Franz’s fault anyway. If it wasn’t for him Karlo wouldn’t have been out in this foul weather in the first place. He could have been in the tavern, sipping bad ale and trying to catch Elsa’s eye as she served the customers. Most importantly, though, he would have been warm.

But Franz had supposedly heard a rumour. Apparently a supply caravan was going to use the forest road near their village, on its way south to warmer climes. Carrying gold and food, it would have very few guards, the merchant in question counting on the harsh weather to deter bandits.

Karlo wouldn’t have agreed to try and rob the caravan with Franz if he hadn’t been so desperate. But times were hard. The last crop harvest had been half of what it normally was and Milla had left him a few months back after he had been caught visiting the village whore once too often. He wouldn’t have minded that so much except that she had taken all the money they had with her.

Franz and Karlo had waited for almost a day in the bitter cold, but the caravan hadn’t come. When the weather closed in and the blizzard swept in from the north they had been forced to abandon their vigil and head for the village. But with the snow reducing the world around them to a white haze, they had quickly gotten lost. He had begun to think that they would not survive until he had spotted the light flickering through the trees, leading them to the isolated cottage at the centre of a small clearing. Perhaps the gods were watching over them after all.

“Who’s there?” The woman’s voice was so faint that Karlo could barely hear it. He leaned closer.

“Please, can you help us? We were caught in the storm and we need shelter. Please let us in!”

There was a long pause, and Franz stepped closer. “To hell with this”, he hissed. “Just break the thing down. There’s two of us and we’re armed, what’s she going to do about it?” Karlo glared at his companion, but closed his numb fingers around the hilt of his knife anyway. He had a point. They had nowhere else to go, if the woman wouldn’t help them, then…..

There was a grinding sound, and the door slowly opened.

Letting go of the blade, Karlo stepped inside quickly, Franz right behind him. He shook himself, snow cascading from his winter cloak onto the floor. They were in a small kitchen; a table with two chairs stood in the centre of the room while in the far corner a fire crackled in a small hearth. The door closed behind him and the grinding noise sounded again. Looking back, he saw the woman, hunched over with much of her body invisible beneath a hooded shawl, pushing a chest of drawers in front of the door. She looked up at him with watery grey eyes.

“Keeps the wolves out”, she said.

Karlo nodded for a moment, not sure how to respond as she lowered her head again and shambled past them, heading for the doorway into the next room. “Thank you for helping us”, he said. “I don’t know what we would have done without you”.

“That’s quite alright dear”, the woman replied without looking at him. “Now that you’re here we can have dinner. Just a moment”. Karlo said nothing, watching as the woman walked through the doorway into the dark room beyond. There has been something about her face that had seemed strange, almost like…..

“What a dump”, Franz muttered.

“Will you shut it? We were lucky we found this place”.

“You know, I think this is the old Mannheim cottage. My pa used to know old Kurt Mannheim, up until he vanished eight winters back. That must have been his wife”.

“No, his daughter probably. His wife died when I was about ten I think”. Karlo paused, memories surfacing. He had never been to the Mannheim cottage before, in fact when he was young he had been told to avoid the area by his parents. There were dark rumours about why Kurt had built his home in such an isolated area, where the living was marginal at best. The villagers had whispered about his daughter being hidden away, something about…..

Karlo turned. The old woman stood in the doorway, the hood of her shawl thrown back so that her face was clearly visible. He felt his breath catch in his throat. The skin of her face was stretched parchment-thin over the bone beneath, giving her a savage, almost feral look. Ragged tufts of grey hair protruded from her scalp. Her hands emerged slowly into the light, and he saw that the fingers were twisted inwards, the nails elongated so that they almost looked like claws.

“Sorry dears, but it’s been a long, hard winter. My boys and I haven’t eaten in a while”.

Only then did he realise that another two figures stood behind her. As they stepped into the light he screamed in horror, drawing his knife and holding it before him with a trembling hand. Behind him he could hear Franz struggling to move the chest of drawers away from the door.

The howling wind drowned out the sound of their screams.

Help Me

2010-09-10T12:57:00.004+01:00

My first entry to this month's competition on the Black Library Bolthole. The theme is "Hunger" and, as always, I've been gratuitously dark. Any of you who remember the Strogg from the Quake games will understand what gave me the idea for this.

----------

Can anyone hear me?

I don’t know how much time I have to speak. It’s the first time in…..throne; I don’t even know how long it’s been. I heard them, issuing instructions to the servitors. There’s a clog in one of the feed lines I think, and a valve’s blown somewhere. It won’t take them long to replace it. Listen.

Listen.

If anyone can hear me, I need your help.

I don’t know where I am. It could be anywhere on the planet. All I know is that I’m a prisoner here. I know there are others like me, trapped in the bowels of this vast production line. I’m glad of that.

I’m sorry. I know how that must sound. But…..the thought that I might be the only one…..it’s more than I can bear. Sometimes I imagine I can hear them. The others. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just hearing what I want to, what I need to, whatever keeps me sane.

I…..wait……

I thought I heard one of them. It’s okay, I think they’re gone now.

They’re the only people I see now. If you can call them that. Some of them barely look human, although I suppose they must have been at one point. One of them, the Arch-magos…..his face is just a thick mass of flailing metal tentacles. I don’t even know how he sees where he’s going! He can though. See, I mean. He certainly sees me. He comes by every so often, always with a scribe-servitor in tow, checking that I’m still performing my designated function within acceptable parameters. That’s what he says to the servitor. He never speaks to me.

He must know, though. He must know that I’m suffering. Surely he can see it in my eyes. He just doesn’t care. None of them do. Whatever they do to each other, it strips away their humanity, their compassion.

Mind you, compassion is something a lot of people seem to lack. Like the Judge. What was his name…..Graven, that was it. Judge Graven.

He must have understood the fate that awaited me when he handed me over to the Mechanicus. He just didn’t care. If anything, he seemed to find it amusing. A fitting punishment for your gluttony, he called it.

Damn him.

I mean, yes, I was a bit overweight. It’s not like I can deny it. I always have been, ever since I was little. I just…..I was just always hungry. I don’t know why. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. I didn’t eat so much because I was greedy. I gorged myself because I had to, because I always needed to. I don’t suppose you’ll understand what that feels like. Nobody does. Even my family didn’t get it. I know what they thought of me, I could see it in every contemptuous look they gave me.

And of course, that affected my work. I had a job on a production line, just like everyone else. Ten hours a day, seven days a week. I prepared ration-packs for the Imperial Guard. Well, me and ten thousand other workers. Immense lifters came every week to boost the tonnes of packs into orbit. From there, well, I don’t know where they went. All over the sector probably, to dozens of different worlds.

I know it was wrong. And for years I fought the impulse, I really did. I was just…..so…..hungry that day. Like I said, you can’t understand what it’s like. So I stole some of the ration packs. Only four or five, it’s not like it was the crime of the century! Do you know how many packs go through that factory in a single day? No, silly question.

I can hear them now. I think the valve is nearly fixed. I don’t have much time left.

They caught me, obviously. They gave me a pretty savage beating, and I thought that was the end of it. If only. The supervisor had me hauled up in front of a judge. I think they wanted to make an example of me. Maybe I wasn’t the only one caught stealing. Or maybe the supervisor was just a sadistic bastard. I don’t suppose it matters.

The judge handed me over to the Mechanicus running the bio-reclamation facility. Let your gluttony be turned to the Emperor’s service, he said. I remember it so clearly. And the Mechanicus are nothing if not literal-minded.

They remade me, turned me into a servitor. They sliced off my arms and legs, opened up my torso, and remodelled my digestive system. I was conscious through it all, though I couldn’t feel it. Maybe it didn’t occur to them to knock me out. In a way it was worse to be able to see all this happening, and yet not to feel it.

Then they put me into the production line, just another part of the machine. My neck is clamped in place and there’s a plate under my jaw so I can’t move it much. Helps stop the feed pipe inside my mouth from getting dislodged. Today is the first time I can remember that it hasn’t been functioning.

Maybe you’re wondering what I do. I’m a recycler. That’s what they made me into.

Every hour of every day they feed waste into me. I swallow it all, I can’t do anything but swallow it. My digestive system filters out everything that might be useful, every scrap of nutrition that can be reused, turned into new rations to feed the workers of this world, or supplies for the Imperial Guard. The rest of it passes out through a pipe they shoved up inside me. I think it goes through others, to try and catch anything my system missed. I used to feel sorry for them, until I realised that there may be more up the line thinking the same about me.

I can’t understand why they left me conscious. I certainly don’t know why I’m still sane. But it’s good that I am. It means I can ask you this.

Listen. I can hear it now. The feed lines are back on. I only have a few seconds. If anyone is out there, if anyone can hear this. Please. You have to…..

…..mmphfphh…..

Kill me.

GL490

2010-08-24T13:00:00.000+01:00

The gas cloud GL490, approximately 3,000 light-years away.

Sour

2010-08-23T14:48:00.000+01:00

His feet splashed through puddles of stagnant water, dank liquid splattering across his body and face, but Gellon didn’t stop, not even slowing long enough to prevent any of it from getting into his mouth. The risk of catching some kind of nasty disease from the ooze was hardly high on his list of priorities at that moment. Gellon would worry about that later, assuming that he survived long enough to do so.

Ahead of him a rat emerged from the shadows, its red eyes glinting balefully in the dim light of the underhive. The product of generations of vermin that had survived down here feeding on things that Gellon preferred not to think about, the creature was as long as his forearm. It hissed at him and crouched back, preparing to leap. His autopistol boomed once and the rat’s head disappeared in a splash of gore; its body skidding back into the darkness where sudden frantic movement and the sounds of tearing flesh told him that its kin were taking advantage of the free meal. The sound of the shot echoed through the corridor, and moments later Gellon heard the feral whoops and howls of glee that constantly dogged his footsteps change in intensity; becoming louder, triumphant.

The red-skins knew they were catching him.

The passage opened up into a much larger space. Although he couldn’t see much, Gellon could tell the chamber he had entered was immense by the feel of the air, the way his footsteps echoed, and a half-dozen other indicators that any inhabitant of the underhive would instinctively recognise. Immense machines loomed out of the darkness around him, pipes emerging from their innards to pierce the floor and disappear into the lower levels. Perhaps this chamber had once been a manufactorum, or some kind of processing plant. Now, however, the machines were little more than sculptures of rusted metal, draped in curtains of black mould and fungus. Gellon felt warm drops of liquid splattering on his head; falling from the ceiling far above, invisible in the darkness. He didn’t know what function this place had once served, nor did he care.

Gellon slowed, contemplating trying to conceal himself somewhere amidst the wrecked machinery, but decided against it. If the red-skins suspected he had gone to ground here they would tear the place apart looking for him. There were over a dozen of them, and he only had three bullets left in his autopistol. He knew he had to keep running, the certainty of that knowledge only surpassed by the awareness that he wouldn’t be able to carry on for much longer. Every muscle in his body ached, and his lungs felt as if they were on fire with every breath he took.

It was all that frakking idiot Henson’s fault. Everybody knew the red-skins couldn’t be trusted to trade with, that they spent so much time off their heads on powder-cut kesh that they would kill you without thinking, and would probably find it a great deal easier than trying to. Rumour had it that the last gang that had tried to cut a deal with them had been found reduced to little more than ragged chunks of flesh, identifiable only by the markings branded into the scraps of skin still clinging to the rotting meat. Henson, of course, had thought he knew better, and the rest of the spineless dredge in the gang had gone along with it, too enticed by the prospect of making some serious credits to actually engage their frakking brains for once in their lives.

He had objected, pushing it as far as he thought safe, but Henson refused to listen, and after a while Gellon had stopped trying. His words of caution had earned him scornful glares from some of the others, and one or two had called him a coward, too gutless to take the big risks. Juve idiots, too stupid to recognise which gambles weren’t worth taking, no matter what the stakes were.

They were all dead now, killed by the double-crossing red-skins. Gellon had only survived because he had made sure to stick close to the exit, and had started running as soon as it became obvious that the deal had gone sour. He wouldn’t miss any of the gang, except for Marla, maybe. She’d had quite a mouth on her, but made up for that by knowing exactly how to use it to keep Gellon happy.

He risked a quick glance over his shoulder. The red-skins had entered the chamber, spreading out to take advantage of the extra space. Bullets whined past him. One struck a nearby pipe and greenish-black sludge oozed from the puncture. They were firing blind, and that meant they were desperate. Gellon grinned. If he could keep up this pace for a little while longer, then maybe he could lose them.

He looked ahead, just in time to see the floor drop away.

Gellon slammed his heels into the floor, whirling his arms frantically as he fought to arrest his forward progress. He skidded to a halt less than a metre from the edge, the vibrations caused by his arrival sending a piece of metal spiralling into the chasm as if to point out just how close he had come to falling. The gap was large, maybe four or five metres across, and deep too. Looking down, he could see that it pierced the hive for at least several levels before the darkness made it impossible to see any further. Glancing to either side, he saw that the chasm stretched away unbroken across the chamber. If he tried to run around it, the red-skins would catch him easily.

He had to take the risk.

Gellon turned and ran back in the direction of the oncoming red-skins, firing his last three autopistol shots as he did so. One fell screaming and the others slowed their pace, surprise briefly registering in their kesh-choked brains. That brief respite was all he needed.

Flinging his now-useless autopistol at the gangers and roaring in wordless defiance, Gellon sprinted towards the chasm as fast as he could and leaped into the void, arms and legs flailing in a desperate attempt to propel him all of the way across.

He almost made it.

Brave Boy

2010-08-23T14:46:00.000+01:00

They were an unusual sight this deep in the underhive; a thought that occurred in one form or another to everyone and everything that saw them pass, running frantically as if daemons summoned from the furthest reaches of the warp were pursuing them. The woman was young, but the streaks of grey in her hair and her gaunt features told any onlookers with the wit to notice that her life had been a hard one. Her hand was constantly clasped around that of a boy, no more than eight years old, wearing clothes that, like the woman’s, were little more than rags. His eyes were red and puffy, his expression pained as he struggled to keep up with the pace the woman was setting, practically being dragged along. Yet despite this he did not cry out; it was as if the boy had long ago learned the importance of staying quiet.

Some of the inhabitants contemplated intercepting the running pair; either to try and steal whatever meagre possessions they might have, or to satisfy other, baser needs. Those that were brave or desperate enough to begin to move towards them were driven back into hiding by the sound of rapid, heavy footfalls following the woman and child. Any denizens not swift enough to retreat were punished for their lack of haste by merciless blasts from the pursuers’ combat shotguns. Increasing numbers of bodies were left floating in puddles of ooze or sprawled in dark corners as the chase continued, although the arbitrators who had killed them knew full well that it would not be long before the corpses were put to use by the other inhabitants of the desolate underhive.

Kass flinched at every roar of shotgun fire she heard, expecting at any moment to feel the fiery sting of shotgun pellets between her shoulder blades. The distance between them and the arbitrators was hard to estimate; sounds could be deceptive down here, carried through ventilation shafts and distorted by echoing chambers or winding corridors. Despite all that, Kass was grimly certain that the arbitrators were steadily closing the gap. She clenched her hands involuntarily as the thought ran through her mind, and there was a slight whimper from the boy beside her as her grip ground the fragile bones of his hand against one another. Kass glanced down at him. By herself, she would easily give the arbitrators the slip. The sickening idea slithered inside her head for only an instant before guilt and repulsion at the very notion crushed it out of existence. Ro was her brother; she would never abandon him. They would stay together until the very end.

When they turned the next corner and saw the corridor abruptly cease a dozen metres ahead of them, Kass realised that said end would not be long in coming.

She led Ro right up to the rusted iron wall that barred their way, looking for any doors or turns that she had missed. Not finding anything, she twisted back round, almost pulling her brother off his feet. The last fork they had passed was at least a minute’s run back; by now the arbitrators would have passed it. They were trapped. She stared around frantically; looking for any place she could conceal Ro. A pipe, a hole in the wall, anything large enough. There was nothing.

She looked down at Ro, who returned her gaze through a veil of tears brimming in his eyes. It was no good. The arbitrators would soon be upon them, and when they caught up they would undoubtedly kill Ro, and Kass as well for attempting to save him. How could they be so brutal? He was only a boy, he couldn’t help what he was! Then a thought struck her. She wished it hadn’t, but as the seconds ticked by and the sound of the approaching arbitrators grew steadily louder, she was unable to think of an alternative. It was a gamble, a desperate one, but there was no other choice. Kass swiftly knelt so that she was face to face with her brother, and took hold of both his hands within her own.

“Listen, Ro. You know the arbitrators are coming, don’t you?”

Ro nodded mutely.

“And you know what will happen when they catch up with us?”

Her brother hesitated, then slowly nodded again.

“Good boy. We’ve got nowhere to go. I need you to save us. I need you to use your…..” She swallowed. “Your gifts”.

Ro shook his head. “But you said I wasn’t to, Kass! Ever since…..” He paused and sniffed, tears now flowing freely down his face. “…..since what happened to mummy”.

“I know, sweetie, I know. But now I need you to use them, for me. Please, Ro, you have to. Just this once. Be my brave boy”.

Ro nodded slowly, and Kass smiled, fighting back the dread building inside her. She led her brother a few metres down the corridor and slowly let go of his hands. Kass smiled reassuringly and backed slowly away until she was at the very end of the corridor. As the arbitrators came round the corner she dropped down and curled up into a ball as tightly as she could.

Even with her hands pressed tightly in her ears, she could hear the shouted commands of the arbitrators, and her brother wailing in distress. Within a few seconds there came the roar of a half-dozen shotguns firing simultaneously, followed by silence. Then the screaming began.

When the last agonised howls had died away, Kass slowly opened her eyes and got to her feet. The arbitrators were all dead. Each and every one looked as if they had exploded; blood and viscera coated the walls, floor and ceiling of the corridor. Ro stood a few metres away from her, head bowed. Kass fought back her horror and stepped forward.

“Ro, are you okay? You did very…..well”.

Ro slowly turned, and as he did so an invisible force lifted Kass from the ground and slammed her back against the wall. “I know”, he said. “I’m a very brave boy”. He raised a hand, and Kass began to scream as, with excruciating slowness, the flesh of her face started to split and peel itself away from her skull.

Her little brother watched, and smiled.

The Drop

2010-08-17T09:52:00.000+01:00

The valkyrie tumbled past, fire blazing from the ruined turbines on its right wing. It passed close enough for captain Niko Tavrentis to be able to see the terrified expression on the face of the pilot as he battled to control the aircraft’s descent. It continued to spiral downwards, shedding burning guardsmen from its rear hatch like leaves. As it fell out of sight, Tavrentis murmured a brief prayer that the saints would guide their souls to the halls of the Emperor.

“The drop is failing”, Kosta yelled, fighting to be heard over the roar of air rushing in through the open rear hatch. Tavrentis turned to face him, keeping one hand wrapped tightly around a metal grip moulded into the ceiling. “It looks like the enemy had mobile hydra batteries under cover. The hermeans took out four fifths of the static defences, but the drop forces are still taking a real pounding. We’ve lost eleven…..” Kosta paused, pressing the vox headphones tighter against his ears. “Correction, thirteen losses. Three more are reporting damage. At this rate, by the time we reach the drop ceiling we won’t have any men left!”

Tavrentis thumped his fist against the wall, barely feeling the impact through the carapace armour covering the back of his hand. He eyed the altimeter mounted just above the ramp: seeing it cross the two hundred metre mark as they continued to descend. The valkyrie banked sharply, only Tavrentis’s hand on the grip saving him from being hurled out of the aircraft. A line of shells interspersed with red tracer rounds whipped upwards just past the rear of the valkyrie, he watched as the fire changed direction to strike another valkyrie behind them. It juddered as the shells slammed into it one after the other, tearing it into two pieces after only a few seconds. Yet more guardsmen were hurled out to fall to their deaths. The saints would be busy today, he thought grimly.

Tavrentis knew that the intensity and accuracy of the anti-air fire would only increase when the descending Varseen forces hit the hundred metre mark. As drop troops the Varseen naturally expected heavy casualties, but this time was different. By the time they reached the thirty metre drop ceiling their forces would have been cut to ribbons, and those that survived to make it to the ground would be easy prey for the defenders. Tavrentis had to find a way to change that. Then it came to him. It was a gamble, a deadly one, but there was no other choice that he could see.

“Kosta, contact the captains of the other lokhos. Inform them that we will be dropping from a revised ceiling of sixty, repeat six-zero metres. I suggest that they do the same. Have the lieutenants pass my orders down the line, I want all squads in my lokhos ready to drop within three minutes”.

Kosta stared at him. “Captain, that is twice the height of the drop ceiling, our carapace armour may not be sufficient to absorb the impact!”

“You think I don’t know the risks, guardsman? You have your orders, now do your job!”

As Kosta began babbling into the vox, Tavrentis turned towards the squad of Varseen inside the valkyrie with him. Twin rows of anxious faces looked back at him. “This drop will be hard, harder than any we have yet faced. Trust in your carapace armour and your fellow Varseen, and know that the saints watch over us. Prepare for the drop!”

The guardsmen roared in affirmation and released the restraints holding them in place. Each checked the armour seals of the guardsman seated opposite them, ensuring that each piece of the thick carapace was locked in place. When that was done they clipped their lasrifles to their chests and checked that their storm-shield struts were fastened securely to their waists.

“Orders relayed, sir. All captains confirm new ceiling of six-zero metres”, Kosta said, removing the vox-unit from his back and placing it in a padded and reinforced crate which he would retrieve after the drop. When they had checked each other’s armour, Tavrentis looked at the altimeter: seventy metres. There was a muffled bang as some shell or piece of falling shrapnel struck one of the valkyrie’s wings and the aircraft wallowed briefly before the pilot regained control. Tavrentis made a swift hand-gesture and turned to face the open rear hatch, both hands clutching the ceiling grips. He knew without having to look that the others would be lining up behind him. His gaze was fixed on the altimeter, watching as the digits slowly ticked down. He felt his heart pounding in his chest and his breathing quickened.

Sixty-two. Sixty-one. Sixty.

“Go, go, go!”

Without hesitation, captain Tavrentis flung himself out of the hatch. He fell rapidly, the ground seeming to rush up to meet him. He felt the chill of the wind penetrating the seams in his carapace armour and howling in his ears. His training took over and the Varseen officer swivelled in mid-air so that the thicker, padded armour on his back was now facing downwards. Above him he could see his squad strung out in a long line, each doing the same as him, one after another. Further up the valkyrie that had carried them this far banked away.

He hit the ground with an ominous cracking sound, the impact driving the breath from his body. His jaw snapped closed and Tavrentis felt a sudden rush of warmth in his mouth; he had bitten his tongue. He groaned and moved each limb in turn. Every part of him ached, but he didn’t seem to have any broken bones. A network of cracks covered his carapace armour, something that had never happened to him before. Even so, it had held.

Tavrentis got to his feet, unclipping his lasrifle from his chest armour as he did so. Varseen were falling all around him. Many hit the ground at awkward angles or with bone-shattering force and did not rise again, but still more were slowly getting up. His gamble seemed to have paid off.

Flares of yellow light blossomed in several directions as guardsmen clipped their storm-shield struts together and activated them, forming up in defensive wedges and beginning to advance on the enemy, who seemed in disarray, unprepared for the suddenness of the guardsmen’s arrival.

Tavrentis ran towards the nearest cluster of Varseen and moved into the centre of their wedge formation. “For the Emperor and the saints”, he yelled, his cry echoed by every Varseen within earshot.

Now the battle had truly begun.

Valerion (That's Right, Again)

2010-08-09T08:48:00.002+01:00

It seems that my blog has been dominated by Valerion of late, so one more post won't make much difference to that!

I am pleased to announce that Valerion, just as with my other short stories, is now available in PDF format, free to download from here. That should be a lot more convenient for those of you that haven't read it so far (shame on you).

It has also been added to my Links of Interest.

Random Musical Interlude 35

2010-07-25T13:00:00.002+01:00

It's been a while since my last interlude, so here's a classic: The Chain by Fleetwood Mac.

Valerion: Part Fifteen

2010-07-16T12:59:00.000+01:00

The Cathedral of the Emperor Incarnate was the largest building that Mikael had seen so far in Valerion. It had four immense spires, one rising from each corner of the building, tapering off to points far above. He imagined that, in the days when Valerion had been just an ordinary city, the spires would have seemed to pierce the very clouds. The building was constructed of great blocks of grey stone. Further up there were balconies, supported by semi-circular pillars that nestled against the sides of the cathedral. Gargoyles leered down from the edges of the balconies, while atop them great statues of the Emperor stood, each angled so that it appeared to be looking out across a different portion of Valerion. The message to the citizens was clear. The Emperor is always watching.

Now those same statues gazed upon a shattered city and, closer to the cathedral, a sea of corpses.

The road that encircled the cathedral was raised a few inches higher than the ground it surrounded; a quirk of geography or urban planning that Mikael was thankful for, since it allowed the six men to stand at the edge of the road and look at the bodies without stepping in the blood. There was so much blood. From where he was, Mikael could see thousands of corpses, disappearing from sight around the side of the cathedral. If it was the same on the other side, then there could be upwards of ten thousand cultists laying here. The smell was nauseating; everyone had clasped their hands over their noses in a vain attempt to prevent the odour from getting in. The air was ripe with the stench of putrescence and decay. Even stronger was the scent of spilled blood; it was so powerful that Mikael could taste an iron tang at the back of his throat.

Each cultist had died in the same way; their throats slashed open and the blood allowed to pour out. They lay in orderly rows; all dressed identically in their grey-black armour with white masks covering their faces. Males and females, young and old; united in death. Many clutched knives in their hands, the blade of each coated in a film of dark red. It didn’t look as if they had killed each other. Instead, it appeared that each cultist had lay down, then cut their own throats open, one by one. The pools of blood from each cultist had met and mingled, so that they were lying in a lake of congealed fluid.

Despite the horror of what he was seeing, Mikael felt that there was almost something peaceful about the scene. These men and women had calmly committed suicide, without any sign that they had been forced into it. Thousands of them. What strength of conviction that must have taken, what dedication to the dark gods they worshipped.

It was almost admirable.

“Witness, men, the fate of those who turn their back on the Emperor!” Krayn declared. “They believed that they could stand against the righteous fury of the Imperial Guard, and they paid the price for their treachery”.

“Begging your pardon, sir”, Frox said, “but the cultists all appear to have killed themselves. Voluntarily. It doesn’t seem like anyone else had a great deal to do with it”.

“That is where you are wrong, guardsman”, the commissar replied, after glaring at Frox for a few seconds. “What happened here is quite obvious. The heretics realised that they would soon be crushed by the might of the Imperium. In their despair, they turned upon each other, then the survivors ended their miserable lives. Exactly the sort of behaviour that I would expect from chaos-worshipping filth”.

The men exchanged sceptical glances, but said nothing further. Mikael was struck by how silent it was when the commissar had finally shut up. There was something missing. He thought for a moment, then it finally came to him. It was too quiet. There were thousands of dead bodies here, the air should have been filled with the buzzing of flies and other insects, come to feed on the decaying flesh. He looked again at the nearest body, and something caught his eye. He crouched down to get a better look.

Black specks were scattered across the cultist’s body. Looking more closely, Mikael realised that they were insects. All dead. It was the same with all the bodies. The insects had come to feed on the flesh of the cultists, and they had all died. Mikael quickly got to his feet, and took a few steps back from the edge of the road, almost colliding with another guardsman.

“I think I see a way to the cathedral”, Krayn said suddenly, pointing to the east. “We need to keep moving, we’ve been standing here too long”. As before, the commissar waited for the five guardsmen to take the lead before he followed.

As they drew closer, Mikael could see what Krayn had been referring to. From the entrance of the cathedral to the edge of the road there was a stretch of ground without bodies lying on it; a path of sorts, over two metres wide. Mikael glanced back in the direction they had approached from. It was hard to tell for sure with so many bodies on the ground, but he thought that he could make out another clear path. It appeared to travel in a straight line from the road to one corner of the cathedral, at a forty-five degree angle to the first. Just as he reached the path leading to the cathedral entrance he noticed a third stretch of clear ground to the east, again at a forty-five degree angle to the first. He wondered if there were more on the other sides of the cathedral. If the pattern persisted then there would be eight in total, spaced evenly around the central building.

Like the petals of a flower, he thought.

When they reached the path the guardsmen raised their weapons. The entrance to the cathedral was fifty metres away; a set of two tall doors, either wood or fashioned to resemble it. One was closed, but the other seemed to be slightly ajar. On either side of the entrance, sandbags were arranged around support weapons; heavy bolters and lascannons. There appeared to be nobody manning the weapons emplacements.

"Go!" At the commissar's order the guardsmen immediately went forward, still with their weapons aimed at the entrance, ready to fire at any sign of movement. As he ran, Mikael heard an unpleasant, rapid squelching sound, and glanced down. The path might have been free of dead cultists, but the blood that had spread from their corpses had covered the open space just as it had the ground beneath the cultist's bodies. He kept running, concentrating on keeping his footing. He had no wish to slip and land in the blood; throne only knew what infections it might carry.

He noticed something else as they approached the entrance. Halfway between the top of the doorway and the roof of the cathedral a large dish was attached to the wall, angled slightly upwards. It looked like a vox transmission dish, which was an odd thing for a cathedral to have.

They moved past the support weapons and pressed themselves up against the closed door, listening intently for any sound that their approach had been noticed. After a few moments Krayn nodded, and the first guardsman slipped through the open door with the butt of his lasrifle pressed into his shoulder, gazing through the sight and ready to fire. Mikael was next through.

It was dark inside the cathedral and Mikael blinked his eyes rapidly to try and make them adjust more quickly, moving to the right and pressing himself against the wall as he did so. He was in a corridor that ran straight ahead for about ten metres, terminating at another set of double doors, both closed. Glow globes hung from the ceiling, but they had been smashed. There were several alcoves at regular intervals on both sides of the corridor; each contained a statue of the Emperor or one of his saints.

The air was.....strange. It was utterly still, and surprisingly warm, given how cool it had been outside. With every breath he took Mikael could smell and taste something unusual; similar to blood but different somehow, drier and more metallic. The skin on the back of his neck tingled slightly.

Once everyone was inside they moved quickly down the corridor. Mikael saw that the images in each alcove had been defaced by the cultists; the statues had been smashed apart and markings daubed on their plinths. They looked like they had been drawn in blood. Whatever the markings were, he began to feel sick if he gazed at them for more than a moment.

Reaching the end of the corridor, the guardsmen crouched down while Frox checked the doors. Mikael tightened his grip on the plasma gun, and made sure his lasrifle was secure on its shoulder strap. The plasma gun took almost a minute to recharge between shots; he would need to be able to swap it with his other weapon quickly to avoid making himself into too much of a target for any cultists inside the cathedral.

Frox gave a quick hand signal, indicating that the doors were unlocked, and clear of any explosive booby-traps. The guardsmen exchanged glances. In that moment something passed between them; the kind of bond experienced by men who know that they might be about to die. Even Krayn was included within it. The commissar drew his chainsword and held his thumb over the activation toggle. He nodded once.

The guardsmen stood up as one. With his free hand Frox turned the handle of one of the doors and pushed it slightly. He stepped to one side and another guardsman moved forward, kicking the door hard and knocking it open wide. He ran straight through, followed by the rest of the men.

The space they entered was immense; Mikael estimated that it was over two thirds the length of the cathedral itself. Round stone pillars were spaced at regular intervals in twin lines that ran the length of the room, supporting the arched roof at least fifty metres above their heads. The unit spread out, Mikael and Frox moving to the right. The sound of their rapid footsteps echoed in the silence. On this side of the room there was row after row of benches for the congregation to sit; each row with enough clear space in front of it for the faithful to be able to kneel and give thanks to the Emperor. The rows stretched away towards the end of the room. Mikael ran forward, scanning constantly for any sign of cultists. He spotted several doors in the right-hand wall, but all seemed to be closed tight.

“By the throne, what is that?”

The disbelieving murmur had come from one of the other guardsmen, and Mikael turned quickly to see what had caught his attention. He saw immediately that there were rows of benches on the left, mirroring those on the right, but halfway down the benches had been removed. In their place sat what looked like a portable field generator. Thick cables ran from the generator to another machine; which he recognised as a vox broadcast transmitter. What was something like that doing here? He looked round, only to realise that the others weren’t paying any attention to the vox transmitter. They were staring at the far end of the room with expressions of bewilderment. Even Krayn seemed taken aback. Mikael turned slowly, and what he saw literally took his breath away.

At the far end of the cathedral was the altar, where the archbishop and his priests would lead the faithful in worship. Behind that, a stained glass window was set into the far wall, bearing an image of the Emperor seated upon the golden throne, a halo of light playing about his head and a noble expression on his face. In normal times it would have been a captivating sight, but now; with the only light entering the cathedral tainted by the madness of the sky; its majesty was somewhat lost.

A man was hanging above the altar.

The figure was suspended high in the air, held in place by thick steel cables that had been wound around his wrists and driven into the walls on each side of him. The cables were taut, so that his arms were held parallel to the floor, at right angles to the rest of his body. His head was bowed, but Mikael could see some kind of mask covering his mouth and chin. Another cable descended from that to the floor, where it snaked across the cathedral to connect with the vox transmitter.

The guardsmen walked slowly closer, stopping when they were only a dozen or so metres from the man. Mikael could now see markings on his naked body; just like those he had seen defacing the statues of the emperor outside. They seemed to have been carved into him with a knife. Directly beneath the hanging figure was a pool of blood mingled with what looked like urine and faeces. The smell rising from it was appalling, but not enough to overcome the dry, metallic scent that seemed to permeate the entire cathedral.

“He’s dead”, Krayn began. “We should…..”

At the sound of the commissar’s voice, the man slowly raised his head. Mikael stepped back, then wondered why he had done so. It was hard to put into words, but something about the man frightened him on a deep, instinctive level.

The man’s face was gaunt and haggard. His cheeks and forehead bore similar markings to those on his torso, the lower portion of his face obscured by the mask Mikael had noticed earlier. His eyes were shut, his head tracking slowly from side to side.

Before anyone could do or say anything, the man started to moan. It began as a low, mewling sound, like that of a hurt animal, then rose in volume, rapidly transforming into an agonised shriek that went on and on without any sign of stopping. Still screaming, the man opened his eyes, and the guardsmen recoiled.

His eyes were missing, and in their place were twin pools of congealed blood that began to seep down his cheeks and splatter on the cathedral floor even as they watched in silent horror. The moan deepened, until it no longer sounded like anything human. All at once the metallic odour in the air intensified and the temperature seemed to soar impossibly quickly. Beads of sweat broke out on Mikael’s face as he staggered backwards, suddenly understanding what was happening, and what the creature before him really was.

A psyker.

With that realisation it was as if a switch had been thrown in Mikael’s head. Suddenly what had happened in Valerion began to make some kind of sense, although he doubted that he would ever understand all of it.

The cultists had been losing the war; everyone on the Imperial side had known it, and doubtless the enemy had too. Realising that they could not hope to win against the army of guardsmen opposing them, the cultists had fallen back to the cathedral. There they had all killed themselves, offering their lives up willingly to the dark powers they worshipped. But their mass suicide wasn’t an admission of defeat, far from it. For them it was a victory. Perhaps they had conducted some foul, blasphemous ritual, sacrificing themselves to open up a gateway to the warp; a conduit that the psyker had manipulated to twist and alter the sky into the monstrosity that it had become. With that power he had used the vox transmitter to spread madness among the Imperial Guard forces; turning them against each other in a nightmare of bloodshed and terror. What better way to honour the dark gods than to create such chaos?

“Kill that abomination!” Krayn yelled, struggling to be heard over the psyker’s screaming.

Mikael was already raising the plasma gun, but had only lifted it halfway when the psyker’s moans ceased, replaced almost instantly by a sound that was terrifyingly familiar. The air was suddenly filled with a roar of white noise, so loud that it seemed to hammer at Mikael’s senses. He fought to hold on to his weapon, but the noise redoubled in intensity and he fell to his knees, screaming in agony and pressing his hands over his ears in a desperate attempt to blot it out. He could hear the voices in his head now, much more clearly than when Meeks had played the vox transmissions; before he had began killing. His vision blurred, and everything he could see seemed to flow and run together. He closed his eyes tight and doubled over, struggling desperately to resist, to hold on to who and what he was as the voices continued to scream at him; offering power, wealth, glory, blood, immortality, slaughter, ecstasy; if only he would…..

Silence.

Mikael slowly opened his eyes. His vision was still slightly blurred, but after a few seconds everything snapped back into focus. His hand groped across the floor until he found the plasma gun. Keeping a tight grip on it, Mikael got to his feet. The other four guardsmen were recovering slowly, blood was trickling from one of Frox's ears, but apart from that they seemed fine. As for Krayn.....

The commissar was standing a few metres away from them, his bolt pistol aimed at the psyker. Mikael turned, and saw that a hole the size of both his fists pressed together had appeared in the psyker's chest. Blood and the pulped remains of his vital organs were oozing slowly out and splashing on the cathedral floor. Mikael stared at the commissar, barely able to believe it. The psyker had tried to drive them mad, just like Meeks and however many other men and women in Valerion. Yet despite the agony that he must have been enduring, Krayn had somehow resisted long enough to do what none of the other guardsmen had been able to do. He felt a new sense of respect for the commissar.

A fly buzzed past his left ear, and he flicked at it idly. Before he could speak, the guardsmen heard raised voices, and the sound of doors slamming against the walls. Mikael span round to face the right-hand wall. The doors he had seen before! The cultists had to have been hiding in the rooms beyond. There were shouts from the other side of the cathedral too, then the guardsmen opened fire. Mikael raised the plasma gun and waited. Three cultists appeared from behind the nearest pillar and he fired. Ionised gas streaked forward and tore through each of them, and one after the other they fell. Dropping the plasma gun on the floor while it recharged, Mikael began firing his lasrifle at the oncoming cultists, killing them one by one as they charged towards him, screaming incoherently.

He frowned, starting to feel puzzled even as he kept firing. The cultists didn't seem to have any ranged weaponry at all; they were charging the guardsmen armed with nothing more than knives and clubs, and were being cut down long before they even got close. What was wrong with them? Had the death of the psyker robbed them of what little had remained of their sanity?

Howling furiously, four more cultists ran at him. He switched his lasrifle to full auto and fired a quick burst, dropping three straight away. The fourth kept coming until he put three holes through the cultist's face mask. The man fell without a sound. Mikael began to turn away, then looked back at the corpse for a moment. Something wasn't right. The cultists had literally fallen without making any noise. He hadn't even heard the thump of the body hitting the floor. What.....

A volley of lasblasts sizzled past his face and he threw himself backwards, heart hammering as the realisation of how close he had come to dying struck him. He twisted round and fired in the direction the lasblasts had come from. His shots struck an onrushing cultist in the shoulder, knocking him off balance and on to the ground. Before he could get to his feet to try again, Mikael stepped forward and put two more lasblasts into the cultist's chest.

Running footsteps to his right.

Mikael turned, just in time to see the butt of a lasrifle rushing towards his face. He sidestepped, but not quickly enough. The lasrifle glanced off the side of his head and Mikael staggered, barely able to raise his own weapon in time to block a second strike, then a third. The cultist charged forward into him, both of them toppling to the floor. Mikael went with the fall, rolling so that he ended up on top of the cultist with the lasrifle pinned against the floor. Mikael twisted and tried to bring his lasrifle down on his opponent's head but the cultist bucked and twisted underneath him, knocking him off balance long enough for the man to get an arm free and deliver a stinging left hook to Mikael's cheek.

Mikael rolled off the cultist then forced himself to roll again, coming to a halt just as the cultist was getting to his feet and aiming his lasrifle. Mikael fired first, lasblasts pulverising the cultist's chest and stomach until the weapon's power cell ran dry. Ignoring the pain of his aching face, Mikael slowly got to his feet, fumbling at his belt for another power cell for the lasrifle. Behind him he heard a shrieking, buzzing noise; the sound of the commissar's chainsword. He turned round, taking a step backwards as he did so.

It was that action that saved his life.

The chainsword swept round in a horizontal arc, the buzzing sound it made intensifying to a high-pitched screaming as its teeth tore through Mikael’s flak armour and the tip slashed across his stomach. For a moment Mikael stared at the cultist wielding the chainsword, who returned his gaze impassively from behind his blank white mask. Then the pain hit him. Mikael’s knees buckled and he toppled backwards, the chainsword passing through the air where his throat had been only a second later. The cultist took two steps forward and brought the chainsword down, and again Mikael only just dodged in time. In desperation he kicked out at his opponent’s ankles, screaming in pain as the movement wrenched at his stomach. The cultist dropped to the floor and Mikael threw himself forward, gaze locked on the chainsword. He couldn’t afford to give the cultist the opportunity to attack again.

Mikael landed on top of him, and he heard a gasp as the breath was driven from the cultist’s body. He grabbed hold of the cultist’s arm with both hands even as his opponent tried to bring the chainsword round to strike him. The cultist writhed beneath him, striking Mikael’s side repeatedly with his free hand. Mikael recoiled, each blow jarring the wound in his stomach still further. Not knowing what else to do, he lunged forward and head butted the cultist in the centre of his face mask. Starbursts of pain exploded in his head, but he felt the resistance in the cultist’s weapon arm loosen. In one swift movement he leant back, pulling the cultist’s arm round until the chainsword was between the two of them, its whirring teeth pointing downwards. Then he pushed.

The chainsword screamed, and hot blood sprayed across Mikael’s face and chest. Beneath him, the cultist fell limp, and after a few seconds the chainsword’s teeth stopped rotating. Leaving the weapon embedded in its former owner, Mikael lurched to his feet, but when he tried to straighten up hot pain flared across his midriff. Keeping slightly hunched, he glanced around, looking for a weapon. He spotted the plasma gun lying on the floor a few metres away, and moved slowly over to it, bending down and recovering it with a wince of pain. He checked the weapon’s readout and saw that it had finished recharging.

Mikael turned slowly, looking for the others, but there was no sign of them. The bodies of five cultists lay nearby; more corpses were by the pillars and near each wall. The cathedral was silent again, and as Mikael stepped forwards slowly his footsteps echoed around the vast space. What had happened to the others? Had the cultists taken them somewhere? But why would they take them alive and only try to kill him? It didn’t make any sense.

He heard a faint buzzing again and flicked at his ear. “Blasted insects”, he muttered, then hesitated. He hadn’t seen any living insects so far; only the dead bugs lying on the bodies of the cultists outside the cathedral. The buzzing changed pitch and shifted position, now seeming to come from the other side. He turned, but still couldn’t see any insects. The sound was strange; the longer he focussed on it, the louder it seemed to get. It was almost as if…..

“Guardsman!”

Mikael whirled, biting back a cry of pain as the sharp movement tore at his wound once again. He clamped a hand to his belly, feeling warm liquid seep slowly between his fingers. Ten metres away from him a man stood; a guardsman, with the tabs of a captain on his shoulders.

“Sir! Sorry, captain, I didn’t hear you approaching”.

The captain nodded. “We’ve only just arrived. The rest of my squad is outside, securing the perimeter. To be honest I was surprised to find another guardsman here, we haven’t encountered a single living soul in the past three days”.

Mikael nodded, trying to ignore the faint buzzing that he could still hear. “There were five others with me; four guardsmen and a commissar. I don’t know what’s happened to them”.

“Don’t worry, son, we’ll find them. You need to get outside, we have a medic who can patch you up; that stomach wound doesn’t look too good”.

Mikael slowly lifted his hand away from his torso and looked at it. His fingers and palm were stained dark red.

“I think you’re right, sir”. He moved forward, and as he did so the buzzing in his ears intensified sharply. He stopped and shook his head, but it made no difference. An odd compulsion came over him and he turned to look back at the corpse of the psyker hanging above the altar. For a fraction of a second the body seemed to ripple, as if surrounded by a heat haze of some kind, then it jumped back into focus; still unmoving, with blood dripping slowly from the chest wound that had ended the psyker’s life.

“Hurry up, guardsman”. The captain’s voice had changed now, more impatient, almost urgent. Mikael looked back at him, and flinched.

He could see a white flower.

It protruded from the top of the captain’s flak armour, just below his neck. It was identical to the flowers he had seen before; eight white petals above eight evenly-spaced thin green leaves. He was positive that it hadn’t been there a moment ago.

“Where did that come from?” he asked, pointing at the flower.

The captain looked down. “What?”

“The flower, sir”.

“What are you talking about? A flower? There’s nothing there, guardsman. Now come on”. The captain extended his arm. “You have to leave this place. Now”.

Mikael hesitated. How could he not see it? It was right there! Unless…..unless Mikael was the only one who could see it. He had seen the flower before, in his dreams as well as in his waking hours. Each time it had disappeared without a trace. But what did it all mean? The buzzing sound he could hear grew louder, and he suddenly remembered that he had heard the noise before. During the ambush, before he had killed the people he had thought to be cultists; who had turned out to be guardsmen, just like him. When he had been…..seeing things. Things that weren’t there.

He took a step backwards. The captain didn’t move, his arm still outstretched, an almost blank expression on his face. “Come with me, guardsman”, he said again. “You have to leave”.

Was he hallucinating now, like before? No, he thought. He couldn’t be. He had fought hand to hand with the cultists, he had shot throne knew how many as well. But he remembered how strange it was that most of them hadn’t been armed with ranged weaponry, except for a few.

Five bodies. There were five cultists laying on the floor nearby. One of them had wielded a chainsword. Mikael gasped, horror building inside him. Five bodies. Four guardsmen, and one commissar.

“No!” Mikael stumbled back, away from the captain. The guardsman remained unmoving, yet still Mikael could see the white flower, protruding from between the captain’s flak armour and his chest.

“This isn’t real!” Even as he spoke the words, Mikael began to hear them. The voices. They were angry now, furious. The figure of the captain began to ripple, becoming insubstantial. Everything around him started to blur again. He felt his eyes begin to throb and clenched them shut, struggling to blot the voices out. His head began to pound, changing rapidly from a dull ache to sheer agony. It was as if his head was about to explode. Mikael knew he was screaming, but couldn’t hear his cries over the sound of the voices. He somehow knew that this time was different; this time he would die if he didn’t do something.

Mikael turned slowly. His vision was swimming; shifting into focus one moment only to dissolve into a formless blur a moment later. The pounding in his head increased, each throb now coming so rapidly that they ran together in endless, searing pain. His eyes felt like they were on fire, yet despite that he somehow managed to look up.

The psyker seemed to stare back at him, blood still pouring from his ruined eyes. He thrashed back and forth, straining at his bonds as if desperate to break them and hurl himself at the guardsman. The cables wrapped around his wrists were surrounded by a crackling halo of energy, constantly shifting in colour from one moment to the next. It reminded him of the sky. He raised the plasma gun, and the screams of the voices in his head reached fever-pitch. He could feel blood coursing from his ears and nostrils.

Mikael squeezed the trigger.

The ball of ionised gas struck the writhing psyker in the stomach, incinerating the whole of his lower torso and most of his legs instantly in a flare of searing blue energy. The psyker threw back his head and shrieked in agony as blood and scorched fragments of viscera gushed from the tattered remnants of his lower body and splattered across the cathedral floor. The energy wreathing the cables intensified in strength, arcing out to strike the walls and floor. Mikael staggered back, dropping the plasma gun and clutching his head as the voices began to wail in fear and rage. The pressure in the air built rapidly, until he felt as if it would crush him at any moment.

Then something picked him up off the floor and hurled him across the cathedral to slam into the wall. Mikael hit the floor, and blacked out.

----------

When Mikael came to, the hiss and crackle of flames was the first thing he heard. He groaned and opened his eyes. On the other side of the cathedral he could see what was left of the vox transmitter, burning furiously. He guessed it must have exploded, and the blast wave had thrown him into the wall. Perhaps there had been some kind of feedback from the death of the psyker? Mikael didn’t know, nor did he care particularly. It didn’t seem that important.

The psyker, or rather what was left of him, was still suspended above the altar, a charred ruin of black, smoking flesh. He was very definitely dead.

Just like Krayn and the others.

Mikael looked across the floor to where they lay; Krayn still with his own chainsword buried in his flesh. Guilt rose up inside him, adding its nauseating presence to the litany of pain that was announcing itself all across his body. Mikael knew that he had killed two of the guardsmen as well, but not which ones. He didn’t want to know. He hadn’t been in his right mind, none of them had, but that didn’t make it any easier.

Mikael tried to get to his feet, but found that he couldn’t. His body ached all over. When he breathed he could feel several of the ribs on his right side grating against each other. The wound in his stomach throbbed in time with every heartbeat, and he could still feel blood seeping slowly from it. Despite the warmth of the air he was shivering; a very bad sign. He lay where he was, tempted to simply give up, to wait for death to claim him. After all that he had been through, hadn’t he earned a rest? But he couldn’t. He wasn’t sure whether it was a desire to live or simply sheer bloody-mindedness that eventually persuaded him to start moving, dragging himself hand over hand across the cathedral floor towards the entrance.

It was exhausting; he had to stop every few minutes to catch his breath and wait for the aching in his muscles to subside slightly before starting again. Where possible he used his right foot to push himself along; when he tried to do the same with his left, twinges of sheer agony shot up his leg. There was no way he could put any weight on it.

Reaching the corridor, Mikael paused for a while, listening carefully, but he could hear nothing except for the sound of his own ragged breathing. Glancing back, he saw the trail of blood he had left across the cathedral floor. The sight spurred him on, and he began to drag himself forward once again. Maybe he would get lucky, maybe there were other guardsmen on their way to the cathedral even now.

Yeah, and maybe the Emperor is waiting to give you cookies.

With the psyker dead, the metallic tang that had been in the air seemed to have disappeared, and it felt much fresher. More….natural, somehow.

After what seemed like an eternity, Mikael finally made it outside, stopping before he made contact with the lake of cultist blood. For long moments he lay still, struggling to catch his breath and control the shivering that hit him in waves. His whole body was beginning to feel numb and unresponsive, and his vision was slightly darker at the edges. He could hear his heartbeat throbbing in his head, and listened as it gradually slowed. It reminded him of what he had dreamt of for days; the pounding of the heart of Valerion. As his eyes began to close he wondered if he would dream of it again.

He started to hear a faint whining, growing louder with every passing second until it became the roar of thrusters. Just above that he could hear raised voices, although not what they said. Mikael groaned. Not more hallucinations. Couldn’t he just have some peace and quiet? Using what felt like every remaining ounce of strength he possessed, Mikael rolled over and opened his eyes. It took a moment for what he was seeing to sink in, then he slowly smiled.

Valerion’s sky was blue again.

Valerion: Part Fourteen

2010-07-12T14:00:00.001+01:00

Every step they took brought them closer to the centre of Valerion. The cathedral was partially visible now; they could see four great spires protruding above the smaller buildings that surrounded it. Mikael did not look at them too often; they were high enough that the only thing that could be seen beyond them was the sky.

The five guardsmen; all that remained of a unit that had once numbered in the dozens, walked down the centre of the road, each no more than a few metres from another. At any other time they would have been spaced much further apart, to minimise the number of men who could be caught by a missile detonation or a volley of small arms fire. But this was not any other time.

Commissar Krayn walked behind them. Mikael knew exactly why they were walking so close together, and he doubted that any of the other guardsmen were ignorant of the reason for it. It was so that Krayn had a line of sight on every one of them. If any guardsman attempted to look back, the commissar ordered them to keep their eyes forward. He didn’t want anyone to know exactly where he was; that would make it harder for any of them to turn and shoot him before he could kill them. It was safe to say that any trust that had once existed between the commissar and the guardsmen was long gone.

Jase had been a friend of Mikael’s for many years; they had fought together on countless battlefields and saved each other’s lives on more occasions than either of them had cared to recall. He had never been particularly talkative, but he was loyal and dependable. By contrast Mikael had never thought of Veran as a friend; the captain had always kept a certain distance between himself and the men he commanded. Despite that he had been an excellent officer; a good fighter who valued the lives of his men and thus would not squander them needlessly as so many officers in the Imperial Guard seemed to. He hadn’t deserved to die. Jase hadn’t deserved to die. Mikael knew that he should be angry at Krayn. He should want to kill him, to exact retribution. It was clear that the commissar was losing it. Any of them could be next.

Yet he felt nothing.

Instead of the fury he knew that he ought to be feeling, Mikael seemed unable to feel anything at all. The knowledge that Krayn was a killer; a madman who might at any second turn on the rest of them, sat heavy within him yet he just could not seem to care. Perhaps he was in shock, and the emotions would come later. Perhaps, though, he had simply been through so much in Valerion that he no longer had the capacity to feel anything. Not like Jase. The guardsman had thrown himself at the commissar, knowing that he would never make it to Krayn before being shot. He had wanted the commissar to kill him, to end it all. Valerion had beaten him.

The fighting had been fierce in this area, and as the unit drew closer to the cathedral they increasingly came across destroyed vehicles, most reduced to charred and blackened wreckage. Immense craters had been gouged into the plascrete by the detonation of basilisk artillery shells. In some of them they found corpses; both guardsmen and cultists. Every so often, though, they came across bodies that appeared to have died more recently. All guardsmen. Now that he knew what to look for, Mikael could see from their positioning that the guardsmen had been firing at each other. Yet more victims of the madness that had gripped Valerion. Had they all looked at the sky? Or had listening to the vox transmissions been all that was required to drive them to this? Mikael didn’t know the answer to that, but he couldn’t stop thinking that he had heard the vox transmission too, and looked at the sky. How long would it be before the madness claimed him as well?

If it wasn’t already too late.

At one point Mikael saw something that stopped him in his tracks. After a moment the rest of the unit slowed, and turned to see what had caught his attention. The bodies of two guardsmen lay nearby, locked in hand to hand combat. They both seemed to have died at the same time. Stepping closer, he could see that one man had driven his knife into the chest of the other, while the second guardsman had buried his in the first’s neck. Blood was everywhere; their clothing was saturated by it, and they lay curled in a congealed pool of dark crimson. But what affected him most was the expressions on their faces; masks of pain and fury, with eyes that seemed to radiate hatred for each other, even in death.

“Keep moving”, Krayn snapped. “The heart of the city is not far, we need to push on”.

As Mikael started walking again, the phrase the commissar had used seemed to resonate inside his head. The heart of the city. Where had he heard that before? He remembered abruptly. His dream! The same one that he had been having variations of ever since entering Valerion. There had been a voice in it, someone that Mikael had never heard speak before yet who had sounded so familiar.

The heart of Valerion has fallen, and now everything will be swept away in blood.

That had been the phrase the voice had spoken. Certainly the last part of it had come to pass. What if there was some truth to the first part of it as well? The cathedral was at the very centre of the city, it could be described as Valerion’s heart. Perhaps, though, he was reading too much into it.

But now that he had remembered the dream, when he looked around Mikael could not help but notice a certain similarity between the area through which he was passing and the road down which he had walked in his dream; the road he had been trapped on when the tidal wave of blood had swept him away. There were differences; the road was poured plascrete not flagstones, and it curved away gently to the right rather than continuing straight on.

The buildings, though. They were very much like what he had dreamed about. They were tall structures that cast long shadows across the road. Arched doorways and windows framed the darkness that lay within them. Further up, some of the buildings had parapets and he even spotted one or two gargoyles, leering down at the road with twisted, hideous faces. He couldn’t help but watch them as he walked, half-expecting them to suddenly move.

Mikael wondered if the sky would be the same too. In his dreams it had been filled with hideous, obscene figures; warring and cavorting endlessly in a kaleidoscope of sickening colour. They had been nauseating and loathsome to look upon. Despite that, some part of himself, something buried deep within the primitive, animalistic core of his mind, had found them alluring. He had looked upon the sky earlier as well, during the bitter hand to hand fighting with the guardsman that Mikael had thought to be a cultist. It had not looked quite the same then as it had in his dreams. Perhaps, though, if he looked again it would?

He was also puzzled by the fact that the sky could even exist in its current form. Mikael knew very little about the workings of the warp; execution awaited anyone who was foolish enough to show any curiosity about the fell powers of chaos, and rightly so. What he did know was that the warp was something outside of this reality, something that should not be able to intrude into this one for prolonged periods. That was why, it was whispered, that daemons could not endure for long in the material realm. But the sky, as unnatural a thing as Mikael had ever seen in his life, had been this way for days now, and showing no sign of changing any time soon.

What was keeping it that way?

Krayn ordered them to the side of the road, jolting Mikael from his reverie. As the unit moved towards the cover of the nearest buildings he saw that the cathedral was much closer now. Its spires dominated the skyline. Ahead the road was straightening out, although the presence of more buildings prevented them from gaining a direct view of the cathedral itself.

The unit moved forward, walking only a few metres from the front of the buildings on this side of the road, ready to take cover within them if they came under fire. They had been told before embarking on this mission that the cathedral had fallen into the hands of the cultists, it was probably heavily defended. Mikael cast quick looks inside each building as they passed them, and prayed it would not be necessary for the unit to take cover inside.

Shadowy figures stood inside each of them, watching him.

They halted just before the last building. Immediately ahead the road split into two. The only side that they could see headed away from their direction of travel at almost ninety degrees before slowly curving away from them. If the other road did the same thing, then after long enough they would meet, forming an immense circle around the cathedral.

Krayn, who was still at the back of the group, motioned for Frox to move ahead and check the area around the cathedral for signs of the enemy. As the guardsman edged forward, Mikael hooked his lasrifle over his shoulder so that his hands were free to use the plasma gun that Krayn had ordered him to take from Jase’s body. If they were attacked, he wanted heavier firepower to counter with.

Frox paused at the corner, staring out at the cathedral. He didn’t move. The guardsmen exchanged puzzled glances, and as they did so, Mikael became aware of a faint smell. There was almost no breeze, but what little there was carried a faint hint of decay upon it. Decay and blood.

Frox turned, and beckoned them forward. “It’s alright”, he said. “No need to be quiet”.

Krayn strode forward, a furious expression on his face. “Damn it, guardsman, keep your voice down! I will not have our position betrayed by…..” He reached the edge of the building, and his voice died away. Curious now, Mikael stepped forward to see for himself. What he saw was utterly unexpected.

From the edge of the road to the very base of the cathedral itself, the ground was covered by bodies. Thousands of them.

They had finally found the cultists.

Valerion: Part Thirteen

2010-07-09T13:00:00.001+01:00

What was left of the unit regrouped on the far side of the collapsed buildings. There had been nineteen men before the ambush; many had fallen to heavy bolter fire before Mikael had dealt with the support weapon, still more had been shot while fighting their way up the treacherous slopes of rubble. Now only eight men remained.

Mikael knew he was in a state of shock. He had been sitting in the centre of the road for the last few minutes, staring at the ground in front of him. The other guardsmen were doing much the same thing; the whole unit were sitting ducks. He didn’t care. Nothing seemed to matter at that point.

He knew that he was going mad.

How else could he explain it? What other reason could there be for his actions? He had killed four guardsmen; loyal servants of the Emperor; all the time believing them to be the enemy, seeing them as the enemy. During the fighting there had been no doubt in his mind about what he was going through. Only when it was all over had he realised the truth.

Perhaps though, on some level, he had always known. He remembered the buzzing in his ears, the way his vision had blurred on several occasions. He had assumed it to be the effects of fatigue, but what if it wasn’t? What if some part of himself had been trying to make him realise the truth of what was happening around him, but he hadn’t let it?

Mikael had once been told that if you could ask yourself whether or not you were going mad, you probably weren’t. Even then, such reasoning had struck him as too glib to be truly convincing. Perhaps madness wasn’t a sudden transition, but a descent; an inexorable slide that nothing could be done to prevent. Was that his fate? And what of the others? They had seen the same things as well, or claimed that they had. Perhaps they were all doomed to insanity.

“We should get moving”. It was commissar Krayn who had spoken. His cheek was scored by a burn from a lasblast that would have killed him had it been a fraction further to the right. With the exception of the fresh wound, he appeared much as he had before the ambush. He wore the same fixed expression, and his eyes still seemed to stare into the middle distance.

When nobody moved, the commissar slowly removed his bolt pistol from its holster and let it hang slowly by his side, an unmistakeable threat. “On your feet”, he snapped. “We are moving on. Now”.

“How can we?” Jase replied. “You expect us to simply carry on, as though nothing just happened? We can’t!”

“You can, and you will. The Cathedral of the Emperor Incarnate is only a few kilometres away”.

“You don’t seem to get it”, another guardsman said. Mikael looked at him for a long moment, but his name wouldn’t come to mind, and after a while he gave up. “We just fired on our own side. Guardsmen; just like us. There’s something wrong with us, seriously wrong. How can you ignore that?”

“I saw no guardsmen”, Krayn replied flatly. There were murmurs of protest. “I saw no guardsmen”, he repeated, louder this time. “The moment that they turned their weapons upon us they became traitors and heretics in the sight of the Emperor. It was our duty as loyal servants of mankind to execute them for such heinous behaviour. And we did so”.

Even filled with despair as he was at that moment, Mikael still couldn’t believe what he was hearing. How could the commissar pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred?

“They’re right, Krayn”. Veran slowly got to his feet. His face was a mask of exhaustion, and his eyes seemed empty somehow, as though the spark of life had gone out of them. “We can’t go on”.

“Captain Veran”. The commissar’s voice trembled with barely-restrained fury. “I would expect such doubts from the enlisted men. But you? By the throne, you are an officer. How dare you talk of giving up on our mission!”

“Because our mission is over!” Veran yelled. The guardsmen nearest to him flinched. “It’s over, commissar. You know that as well as I, you just won’t admit it”. The commissar started to speak, but Veran raised his voice and drowned him out.

“It isn’t just that we killed guardsmen, men from our own regiment. Throne knows, that is horrifying enough. It’s the fact that when I was fighting them, when I was killing them, I didn’t see members of the Imperial Guard. I saw cultists. Enemy soldiers, dressed in grey-black armour. We all did”. Frox and Jase nodded, the other three guardsmen looked away. Mikael saw tears glistening in the eyes of one of them.

“Tell me, commissar. Tell all of us. What did you see?”

“I saw the enemy”.

“Damn it, Krayn! What did you see?”

The commissar’s expression twisted, and he opened and closed his mouth several times. His face flushed, and when he finally did speak, his tone made it clear that he had reached the limits of his patience.

“I’ll tell you what I saw. Traitors and heretics, trying to kill us. What they were wearing is irrelevant”.

Frox laughed bitterly. Mikael couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The commissar seemed to be completely in denial. Looking at the expression on Krayn’s face, Mikael knew full well that he had seen the exact same thing as everyone else. But he just wouldn’t admit it. Perhaps he thought that to do so would be a sign of weakness. Or maybe he was trying to convince himself that he wasn’t going mad, like the rest of them.

“Irrelevant, is it?” Veran asked. “You couldn’t be more wrong. If we saw them as cultists, what do you think they saw when they looked at us?”

The guardsmen looked at each other, but nobody said anything. The implications were too chilling to vocalise. It would certainly explain why the guardsmen had fired on the unit; perhaps they had been seeing the same things as Mikael and the others had. But if that were the case…..

Before the rumbling of distant explosions had stopped recently, Mikael had found it comforting. No matter how isolated he had felt, that sound had meant that there were others like him scattered across Valerion, going through the same things that he had been. Now a horrible thought occurred to him. What if the things he had been hearing had not been the Imperial Guard battling against the cultists? What if it had been the sound of the guardsmen killing each other; men and women turning on their comrades in an orgy of madness and violence? Perhaps that was why the explosions had stopped; there were not enough guardsmen left for their battles to make that much noise. That, however, raised another question.

What had happened to all the cultists?

Veran let out a long, frustrated sigh. “Look. I don’t have the patience to argue with you about this, Krayn. You know as well as I do that we can’t carry on. We’re done, do you understand?”

The commissar’s eyes widened. Mikael saw that his right hand was now gripping his bolt pistol so tightly that the knuckles had whitened.

“Only in death does duty end”, Krayn snapped. “As long as we live, our mission must continue. I will not tolerate any cowardly statements to the contrary”.

“Frak you, Krayn!” Veran yelled, all the bottled-up frustration inside him seeming to pour out in that one sentence. Everyone flinched back, Krayn included. Nobody had ever seen the captain like this before.

“You think it’s about cowardice? You frakking idiot, cowardice has nothing to do with it. You stand there, quoting glib mottos at me, closing your eyes to what’s going on. Don’t you get it? Can’t you understand the truth? You saw what happened to Meeks, what he did. Listening to the vox drove him mad. We all heard it too, and now we’re firing on our own men, thinking that they’re cultists. Don’t you see? Whatever it is; whatever foul sickness is infecting this wretched city, it’s in us now. Valerion is tainted, and so are we”.

Captain Veran slowly turned his back on the fuming commissar to address the remaining guardsmen. “Listen up, men. Get your gear together. We’re going to get out of this foul place while we still…..”

The commissar’s bolt pistol boomed once, and the captain’s head blew apart in an explosion of gore. A collective cry of horror and disgust rang out; guardsmen scrambled backwards to get away from the fountain of blood spraying from the stump of Veran’s neck. His body swayed back and forth, back and forth, then gracelessly toppled over.

Mikael turned towards the commissar, feeling drops of something warm and wet on his cheek. He couldn’t bring himself to wipe it away. Krayn had taken a few steps back, enough that he now had a line of sight on all of the remaining guardsmen. The arm that held his bolt pistol was completely rigid. A faint wisp of smoke rose from the pistol’s barrel.

“Admission of taint is punishable by immediate execution”, Krayn intoned, his voice devoid of all inflection. One of the guardsmen made as if to get up, and immediately Krayn aimed the bolt pistol at him. “Cowardice in the face of adversity is inexcusable”, he said, sounding for all the world as if he were reading phrases from a book out loud.

“You son of a bitch”, Jase said, his expression empty. “How could you? He was our captain, damn it. He was only trying to save us all!”

Mikael saw Jase’s legs quiver, his fists clench. He shook his head, not daring to say anything out loud. No, Jase. Don’t do it. He’ll kill you. Jase looked at him, and in that brief moment Mikael saw the utter despair in his eyes.

Jase threw himself at the commissar.

The bolt pistol fired again.

Mikael stared at Jase’s body as it flopped back onto the plascrete, a massive crater blown into its chest. He knew he should be grief-stricken by what had just happened, but all he could seem to feel was envy. Jase had found a way to escape Valerion after all.

“Does anyone else wish to die a traitor’s death?”

Nobody moved, and after a few moments, the commissar nodded. “Good. On your feet; we’re moving on. The cathedral is not far now. Guardsman!” It took Mikael a moment to realise that Krayn was addressing him. The commissar gestured with the bolt pistol. “Take the traitor’s weapon. It is a valuable piece of Imperial equipment”.

Mikael nodded, and bent over to retrieve Jase’s plasma gun from where it lay next to his body. “I’m sorry”, he whispered.

The commissar moved to one side, allowing the five guardsmen to trudge past before he turned and walked after them, still holding on to his bolt pistol.

Veran and Jase were left where they had fallen.

Valerion: Part Twelve

2010-07-07T13:58:00.000+01:00

The frag grenade exploded while Mikael was still in mid-air. A wave of displaced air laced with shrapnel slammed into his back, propelling him further forward, his arms and legs flailing helplessly as he began to drop. He barely had time to wrap his arms around his head before he hit the collapsed building beneath him.

The impact drove the breath from his body. Rolling across the rubble helplessly, Mikael could not keep from yelling as his body collided with chunks of unyielding plascrete. Then he came to an abrupt halt, his head snapping back and slamming into a piece of rubble. His vision went dark for a moment before returning, riding a tidal wave of pain that broke over his entire body.

Mikael groaned, his eyes still closed, as he tried to move. His body felt like it was on fire; half the skin on his arms seemed to have been torn and abraded, and he could feel blood oozing slowly from the back of his head. He tried to sit up, biting back a yell as his ribs protested. He felt them gingerly with his left hand; none of them seemed to be broken, but it was impossible to tell for certain since his whole body was aching too badly. He opened his eyes slowly and saw, to his surprise, that he was still clutching his lasrifle in his right hand.

A shadow fell across him and Mikael looked up, just in time to see a gleaming bayonet attached to the underside of a lasrifle descending rapidly towards his head. Instinctively he fell back, striking out with his own weapon and knocking the blow aside. Before Mikael could move the cultist dropped into a crouch and slashed out with the bayonet again, aiming at his throat this time. Grasping his lasrifle in both hands Mikael swung the weapon out, jamming it against the side of the cultist’s lasrifle and halting the progress of the bayonet with only inches to spare. Mikael felt his arms begin to quiver as the cultist put all his strength behind the bayonet, fighting to drive it home.

He stared at the cultist. Like the others his face was covered by a white mask, obscuring his features entirely. Only his staring, bloodshot eyes were visible through slits in the blank visage. The cultist shouted something, but to Mikael’s ears it was nothing but incomprehensible babble, barely even sounding like words at all.

Behind him was the sky.

It swirled and seethed unceasingly, a boiling mass of fluctuating colour and shade that did not remain stable even for an instant. Against the riotous sky the outline of the cultist seemed to flicker and blur, as if he were in some sense less real than what Mikael could see beyond him. Unable to close his eyes for fear of the cultist killing him, Mikael could not look away, and with every passing second that he looked up he felt his strength fade a little. The colours raced through the sky, seeming to converge at a point far above him. He could hear something whispering in his ear. It seemed so familiar; as if it had always been there but never audible until that moment. There were words there; he could not understand them but somehow the meaning was clear. Submit. Surrender. Give in. Be at peace.

He felt his eyes begin to burn, and something warm and damp oozed down his cheek. For a moment he almost did it, almost let go of his lasrifle. The idea of leaving it all behind seemed so tempting.

No.

With all the strength he possessed, Mikael pushed with his lasrifle, driving the bayonet back a few more inches. At the same moment he lashed out with one foot at the side of the cultist’s knee then threw his body to the left as hard as he could. The ploy worked; the cultist lost his balance and toppled over to the right while Mikael rolled to the left and out from under him. The guardsman twisted, firing a volley of lasfire at the cultist’s head before he could try to get up again. He straightened up, wiping the liquid from his cheek. It was blood. He blinked rapidly, and his vision slowly cleared.

For the first time Mikael was able to get a good look at where he was. He had landed very close to the edge of the pile of rubble; to his right it dropped away rapidly until it reached the road. He could hear frantic shouts from that direction and the noise of sustained lasfire; with the heavy bolter gone, the unit was storming the collapsed buildings, attempting to fight their way up the heap of plascrete to the cultists. Ahead and to his left the heap sloped upwards, a tangled mess of plascrete and shattered masonry that would be treacherous to navigate.

A lasblast hissed past his ear and Mikael immediately dropped flat then crawled towards the nearest cover he could see, a jagged slab of plascrete protruding from the rubble. He slid across the uneven surface on his belly, ignoring the pain it caused, head up and scanning for the source of the fire. He couldn’t see where it had come from.

Approaching the slab, he was about to get to his feet and throw himself behind it when his left hand reached out and grasped nothing. In the lee of the slab he had been going to hide behind was a gaping hole. He eased himself closer and peered down into it. The hole led down into what had once been a room in the toppled building they were all now crawling over; he could just about see broken furniture heaped at the bottom, the room’s new floor which had once been its wall. It was dark in there; too dark to see any more than that, but he could tell it was quite a drop. Mikael realised that he had to look where he was going; throne only knew how many more holes there were like this scattered around the rubble pile.

There was a rattling, scraping sound somewhere off to his left. He got to his feet and peered round the edge of the slab. Movement caught his eye; a miniature landslide of plascrete chunks was rolling down the slope, displaced by something higher up. He was already moving when the first volley of lasfire arrived, and as a result it missed him by a few inches. Returning fire, Mikael was about to make a dash for the bottom of the slope when his foot got caught on something and he toppled forward. He looked up, and saw the cultist further up the slope, aiming a lasrifle in his direction.

A searing mass of blue plasma struck the cultist, incinerating him from the waist up in an instant. As the remains of the cultist toppled over, Mikael turned to see guardsman Jase a few metres away, holding his still-smoking plasma rifle with a grim expression on his face. Behind him other guardsmen were clawing their way up the slope; commissar Krayn at their head. He caught sight of Mikael.

“What are you waiting for, guardsman? Forward!”

With the other guardsmen following, Mikael and Jase made their way to the slope and began clambering up, snapping off quick shots at any glimpse they caught of grey-black armour. Return fire from the cultists was sporadic, and became increasingly so as more of the unit made it on to the rubble pile.

As Mikael climbed higher he started to find it increasingly hard to concentrate. He could hear a faint buzzing in his ears, and his vision began to blur around the edges, just as it had before they had been ambushed. He shook his head to try and clear it, but that only seemed to make it worse. He could hear his heartbeat pounding frantically in his head, growing louder and louder. When he reached the top of the slope everything around him seemed to diffuse and shift out of focus. Distracted, he barely saw the blow that struck him.

Mikael hit the rubble hard, and the sudden jolt seemed to clear his vision somewhat. He twisted, just in time to avoid another blow from the stock of a lasrifle. The cultist stepped back, bringing his weapon round towards Mikael. But before he could fire, the man stopped. He staggered slightly, and his hands went up to his ears. Mikael couldn’t understand it, and he didn’t waste time trying to work it out. He took aim, and fired a single shot into the cultist’s forehead.

As the cultist dropped, Mikael heard a ragged cheer go up. He guessed that meant the last of the cultists were dead. They had won the battle. He opened his mouth to call to the others, but before he could say anything, the pounding in his head abruptly intensified. The shock of it made him fall to his knees, he dropped his lasrifle and pressed both hands against his temples, screwing his eyes shut as his vision blurred again. After a few seconds, the noise slowly died away. When it was gone completely, he opened his eyes.

The body of the cultist lay directly in front of him, a single charred hole in the centre of its forehead. As Mikael’s vision slowly shifted back into focus, the body in front of him began to change. It seemed to ripple, as if it were completely insubstantial. After a few moments it solidified again.

The corpse was different.

His vision clear, Mikael stared, horrified at what he saw before him. The body of the cultist lay exactly where it had fallen. But the mask it had been wearing had vanished. Now the face was exposed, staring at him with sightless eyes. That was not the only change. The grey-black armour the cultist had been wearing was gone, replaced by a brown uniform that was achingly, gut-wrenchingly familiar. Mikael only had to look down at himself to recognise its likeness.

He staggered backwards, unable to believe what he was seeing. Nearby someone yelled something. He didn’t know what had been said, but the pain in the voice was clear enough. He felt the same anguish.

Trembling, Mikael stared at the corpse of the guardsman he had just murdered.

Valerion: Part Eleven

2010-07-04T21:50:00.003+01:00

Mikael sprinted for the nearest building; hearing lasfire impact on the plascrete behind him as he ran. The heavy bolter fired again and he instinctively ducked lower, as if that would provide him any protection. There were footsteps behind him, and off to one side somebody screamed. Veran was yelling orders but Mikael couldn't hear what they were over the relentless crack-crack-crack of the heavy bolter.

After what felt like an eternity of running, Mikael reached the cover of a doorway, pressing himself flat against the wall as he struggled to catch his breath. The door leading inside was a good two metres back from the front of the building, and as a result there was more than enough room for Mikael to conceal himself. The pounding footsteps drew closer, and Mikael looked round just in time to see Haem literally throw himself into the doorway. A volley of lasblasts hit the road where he had been standing less than a second later.

"You alright?" Mikael asked.

"I've been better", Haem replied. "I'm not injured. You?"

"No. Frakking hell, we walked right into an ambush, I can't believe we were so stupid!"

"I'm a bit more worried about staying alive right now, Mikael. What's going on out there?"

Mikael shuffled to the edge of the wall and stepped away from it slightly so that he could see most of the road without presenting a target. What he saw wasn't good. Three guardsman were lying still in the middle of the road, completely exposed. Whether they were dead, injured, or merely unable to move for fear of drawing enemy fire was impossible to tell. Several other guardsmen were pinned behind rubble and one behind an overturned vehicle. Sporadic lasfire was hitting the road all around them, keeping them from moving.

The rest of the unit was in cover on the far side of the street, huddled in doorways just as he was. Heavy bolter fire was hitting the walls of the buildings, gouging out craters in the plascrete with every detonation. As he watched, Veran stepped out into the open and fired several shots up at one of the cultists on top of the collapsed buildings, but within a few seconds he was driven back into cover by a barrage of retaliatory fire.

Mikael took a deep breath and stepped out into the open to get a look at the collapsed buildings, ducking back into the doorway before anyone had a chance to aim at him. He had counted at least half a dozen cultists on top of the pile of rubble, lasrifles aimed and sniping at anything that moved. There were probably more that he hadn't seen. With the heavy bolter keeping the guardsmen pinned down, it wouldn't be long before the cultists tried flanking them, and then the unit would have nowhere to go.

Unless.....

"Well, what's happening?" Haem demanded.

Mikael ignored him. When the first guardsman had been killed by heavy bolter fire, Veran had pointed to the building it had come from; if Mikael remembered correctly it was the next building up the road from his current position. It was probably high up to give it a better view of most of the road, but that meant it wouldn't be able to cover the side of the road that Mikael and Haem were on. He turned to the other guardsman.

"Listen, the rest of the unit are pinned down by the cultists and that frakking heavy bolter. But we're probably outside its firing arc. If we can get to the next building over and take it out, then everyone else will be able to move without getting their heads blown off".

"I don't like this, Mikael".

"What, and you think I do? It's simple. We either do something about that heavy bolter, or we can sit here and wait for death. Up to you".

Haem scowled, then nodded reluctantly. Mikael turned around to face the other side of the road and waved his arm back and forth until it attracted the attention of one of the guardsmen next to the captain. He used a series of hand signals to communicate his intent. The guardsman leant over to the captain and spoke to him for a few moments. Veran turned to face Mikael, then nodded once. He took a series of deep breaths, feeling his heart begin to race in anticipation of what was to come.

"Suppressing fire!"

In response to Veran's shouted command the guardsmen of his unit immediately began aiming volley after volley of lasblasts at the cultist positions. Mikael and Haem broke cover, sprinting as fast as they could towards the next building. The heavy bolter opened fire with a roar, and there was a scream from somewhere to Mikael's right, but he didn't dare look, his attention was fixed on what was going on ahead of him. He prayed to the Emperor that the door to the building was unlocked; if it wasn't then it was unlikely that they would be able to break it down before the cultists perforated them with lasfire.

Most of the figures atop the collapsed buildings were lying flat, returning fire at the rest of Mikael's unit, but he saw one turn towards them and raise a weapon. Before he had the chance to do anything, Haem fired a few shots and the cultist fell back; either dead or ducking for cover, it was impossible to tell.

Reaching the entrance to the building, Mikael found to his relief that there was no door and threw himself inside, Haem right behind him. For a few seconds he fought to catch his breath, ears straining to make out any sound over the deafening roar of the heavy bolter. He couldn't hear anyone approaching, but had to assume that the cultists in the building were aware that they had company.

Mikael led the way down a dark corridor that extended into the heart of the building. There were doors at regular intervals, most were shut. When they came across an open door the guardsmen moved across the doorways quickly, lasrifles up and fingers on the trigger ready to fire. Some rooms were filled with neatly ordered ranks of desks and chairs, others held rows of shelving that were stuffed to overflowing with heaps of brown-tinged paper. They only gave the rooms the most cursory inspection, enough to verify that they were free of any cultists; the priority was to find a staircase.

The corridor took a sharp right then ended at a blank wall. Mikael stared at it for a moment as if doing so would cause a staircase to spontaneously appear, then cursed graphically. One of the closed doors had to lead to a staircase, they would have to check them one by one, which would waste a lot of time. With every passing moment the cultists could be closing on the rest of the unit.

The first two doors they opened were for offices, the third a bathroom. Rounding the corner, Mikael looked down the corridor. They had passed at least two dozen closed doors, with no way to tell which one they wanted. He started to turn to Haem, then hesitated as a flash of white in the distance caught his eye. He jogged down the corridor and stopped by one door, which was identical to all of the others. He leant forward and turned the handle, then used the barrel of his lasrifle to push it open. Beyond the door was a staircase.

"Frakking hell, Mikael", Haem commented. "How did you know that was the right one?"

Mikael looked at him for a moment. How could he explain it to Haem: that the only reason he had picked the door was because he had seen a small white flower growing in front of it, a flower that had now vanished without a trace?

"Lucky guess", he replied.

The sound of the heavy bolter firing grew louder as they ascended, hugging the walls and always keeping their weapons aimed at the next turn of the winding stairs. Reaching the first floor, Mikael started forward, but Haem grabbed hold of his shoulder, pointing up to the next level. Mikael listened for a moment then nodded. Haem was right, the noise was coming from further up.

After another half a minute or so they made it to the second floor. The door was open, and beyond it lay a small square room, with doorways leading off to the left and right. The crack-crack-crack of the heavy bolter was much louder now, and when it died away Mikael could make out the sound of small arms fire. He started to move forward, then paused. Footsteps, drawing rapidly closer. He dropped to a crouch and raised his weapon. Behind him, Haem took aim as well. Mikael waited, and as he did so he became aware of a faint but insistent buzzing in his ears. His vision seemed to blur around the edges, and he blinked rapidly until the strange sensation went away.

A cultist entered the room through the left door. Clad in grey-black armour and wearing a mask that covered his face completely, the man was walking awkwardly, struggling under the weight of a long belt of heavy bolter shells that was wrapped around his torso and draped over his arms. Mikael shifted his aim slightly and depressed the trigger once, putting a single hole through the cultist's temple. The man toppled back against the wall, the ammunition belt clattering to the floor. Mikael got to his feet and stepped forward, tempted to put another shot into him but deciding against it. He wasn't sure what would happen if a lasblast struck heavy bolter ammunition, and he wasn't keen on finding out.

Haem took the lead as they moved through the door on the right, the same way that the cultist had been heading. The sound of lasfire was much louder now. Ahead, light from outside shone through a doorway on the left side of the corridor. Next to that was an empty crate that, judging by the writing stencilled on the side of it, had once held more ammunition. That room had to be where the heavy bolter was set up. Moving quietly as possible, Haem edged up to the doorway, Mikael only a few steps behind. The guardsman nodded and stepped into the open, and just as he did so it occurred to Mikael that they hadn't heard the heavy bolter firing for a while.

A lasrifle opened up on full-auto and Haem was slammed back against the corridor wall, convulsing as the hail of lasfire shredded his torso. After it stopped he slumped to the floor in a sitting position, head lolling to one side and seeming to look directly at the horrified Mikael.

He didn't move.

There were hesitant footsteps inside the room, but Mikael remained still, gripping his lasrifle tightly and staring into Haem's accusing eyes. That's it, it's all over, there was only one guardsman and you killed him. Just get back to the heavy bolter, don't worry, there's nobody else here.....

The heavy bolter started firing again. Mikael breathed a sigh of relief and slowly moved across to the doorway, trying to make as little noise as possible. He stepped through the doorway and into the room beyond. The wall at the far end of the room was completely gone, blown out by an explosion, and chunks of brick and plascrete littered the floor. The heavy bolter had been mounted on a bipod at the edge of the floor, with sandbags piled around it to hold it in place. A cultist crouched behind it, gazing through its sight at the street below. He turned, one hand reaching for a nearby lasrifle.

Mikael fired, and the cultist lurched backwards against the heavy bolter and fell to the floor. He stepped forward and fired twice more, the cultist’s body jerked limply but there was no other movement. Forcing himself not to look back at Haem, Mikael moved forward and, with some effort, heaved the heavy bolter over the sandbags and out over the edge of the floor. A ragged cheer went up from below, and he could hear Krayn's voice yelling something.

The first of the collapsed buildings was just below and off to the left from his vantage point. Three cultists were moving across the rubble in his direction, obviously confused about what had happened to their support weapon. One was punched off his feet by lasfire from the road below, but the other two kept coming, snapping off shots in Mikael's direction that forced him to lurch backwards to avoid being hit. Losing his balance and toppling over, he caught a glimpse of something small hurtling into the room and rolling across the floor behind him. Already getting to his feet, he glanced at it, and felt his stomach lurch when he realised that it was a frag grenade.

The grenade was between him and the door, there was no way he would be able to get past it and into the corridor before it detonated. Mikael did the only thing he could think of to do.

He charged towards the edge of the room and jumped.

Valerion: Part Ten

2010-07-02T15:29:00.001+01:00

There had been times, during the first few days after arriving in Valerion, when it had seemed like the distant sound of conflict was all that Mikael could hear. He had lain awake at night, unable to sleep, praying fervently to the Emperor to make the damn noise stop. He had felt like it was driving him mad.

Mikael had adapted in the end, as they all had. The sound had faded to mere background noise as his brain began to filter it out, to the point that he was barely conscious of it at all. It had even, bizarrely, become a source of comfort. As long as he could hear it he knew that, no matter how bad things seemed, there were men and women just like him out there, fighting for the Emperor. It had been reassuring.

Now there was only silence, and somehow it seemed louder to him than the explosions had ever been.

No matter how much noise he or the rest of the unit made, it didn’t seem to make any difference. There was no sound external to them either, not even a breath of wind to whistle through the rubble-strewn streets and shattered buildings. Whatever sound they made; a raised voice, the clatter of a dropped lasrifle, the crunch of boots on gravel; it didn’t matter. All seemed to be swallowed up by the silence, as if Valerion were a vast, utterly empty room and they were mere bugs crawling across the floor. Or ghosts, already dead but not yet realising it.

Now Mikael wanted to hear the distant rumbling again, so that he could know for certain that there were others out there, that his unit was not alone. He prayed for it with the same vehemence with which he had begged the Emperor to make the noise stop in the first place. In another time and place, such irony might have made him laugh. But not now. Not here.

They had left the bodies of their comrades where they had fallen; after they had stripped them of lasrifle power cells, rations, medicines. Anything that the rest of the unit could make use of. The captain’s orders. Mikael could see the logic behind it, as callous as it was. Their situation was desperate, and could very easily get worse. They needed every edge that they could get.

Hopefully the supplies would serve the remaining guardsmen better than they had their previous owners.

Eight guardsmen had been killed by Meeks, most of them when he had first opened fire and caught them off-guard. Five more had been injured. Another had taken lasfire hits to the lung and gut; even if there had been a medic assigned to the unit, the injuries would have been too severe for him to do more than make the man comfortable before death came. But they hadn’t had the time for that. Captain Veran had administered the Emperor’s Mercy himself. Counting Meeks, that made ten fatalities, bringing the unit down to nineteen in total.

Meeks. Despite what he had done, there was a part of Mikael that couldn’t help mourning his passing. Meeks had always been a good friend; his sense of humour had made him popular in the unit, as the vox-man he had played an integral role and had been trusted by everyone.

What had happened to him? How could he have changed so quickly into the monstrosity that had killed so many of his former comrades, and nearly Mikael himself? The transition had been so sudden; perhaps he had always had some kind of flaw, a weakness within that had allowed chaos to worm its way into his soul and corrupt him utterly. That was an uncomfortable thought. Who knew how many others in the unit had similar flaws? Perhaps Mikael did as well.

No. At the most that could only have played a part in what had happened. Mikael knew what had tipped Meeks over the edge. He had said it himself. The vox had told him. He had listened to the transmission, if it could be called that; the static and the whispering voices. Then he had looked at the sky, and after that.....

Mikael couldn’t help but remember where they had got the vox-unit from in the first place. The chimera where they had found four dead bodies and one survivor; the screaming guardsman with eyes turned to blood. Had something similar happened to them? Had the guardsman heard the vox transmissions and then killed his comrades? It certainly seemed likely. But if that were the case, it raised a far more troubling question.

How many more men and women, all across Valerion, had heard that transmission as well?

To Mikael it seemed that the loss of their original vox-unit, just before the sky had changed, had been a blessing, since it had spared the unit from hearing the transmission that had driven Meeks to insanity. The voices on the vox and the sky’s transition had happened at almost the same time; surely that was no coincidence. But what did it mean, if anything at all? Was searching for meaning in the workings of chaos a fool’s errand?

One thing Mikael knew for certain was that the unit’s exposure to the transmission must have had an effect on them. Judging by the haste with which captain Veran had ordered them to move on, the same thought must have occurred to him as well.

They were getting closer and closer to the centre of Valerion with each passing step. Their objective was to reach a single building; the Cathedral of the Emperor Incarnate, and recapture it from the grasp of the cultists. But this mission had been given to them almost five days ago, back before everything had fallen apart. They were to have been supported by tanks and three other units of guardsmen; the cathedral had been captured early on in the rebellion, and was expected to be heavily defended. Nineteen guardsmen didn’t stand much of a chance. But what other choice did they have? Mikael couldn’t see that it made a difference whatever they chose to do. Walking through the oppressively silent streets, he was increasingly convinced that they were all going to die.

He suspected the rest of the unit felt much the same as he did. Whatever discipline they had been retaining was rapidly slipping away. Everyone was visibly on edge, flinching at the smallest sound their comrades made. Those on the edge of the group were constantly staring into the shadows, lasrifles raised and flicking back and forth as if anticipating being attacked at any moment. Mikael didn’t bother to ask them what they were seeing; he already knew the answer.

Captain Veran seemed to have retreated into himself, walking with his lasrifle lowered and his eyes on the ground in front of him. He was still at least slightly alert though, as he seemed to always be between Haem and the commissar. Krayn, who had been going to execute Haem for incompetence before Meeks’s rampage, had spared the guardsman’s life. Either he had shown mercy or, more probably, he had reasoned that the unit could not afford to lose yet more soldiers.

The commissar’s behaviour was troubling as well. Krayn was constantly staring ahead, his expression fixed and unwavering. His lips were always moving. At one point Mikael had dropped back a little so that he could overhear. The commissar was praying, repeating the same prayers over and over again in a seemingly endless loop. Mikael had seen the look in the commissar’s eyes before. It was the look of a man rapidly approaching breaking point. He didn’t know for certain what the consequences of that might be, but knew that they would not be pleasant.

After almost an hour of walking they encountered an obstruction. Ahead of them it looked like several buildings had collapsed across the road. The impact had obviously been violent; whatever the structures had once been they were now little more than piles of rubble. The fronts of the buildings ahead of that had blown out as well; several floors were now exposed to the street.

“Spread out”, Veran said, after staring blankly at the rubble for a few moments. “We’ll have to see if we can find another way to…..” His voice trailed away and he stared around, as if trying to find something. Then Mikael heard it too. A voice; no, several voices. They were saying something. It sounded like…..

His vision blurred briefly as if someone had struck him. Everything seemed to swim about him for a moment before snapping into focus once again. Mikael shook his head, fighting to ignore the shadows flickering in the corners of his eyes; knowing that when he turned to look they would be still again. Several of the guardsmen were clutching their heads and moaning. Krayn was praying louder than before, slurring some of the words in his haste to say them, as if his faith could be measured by the rapidity of his speech.

Something was wrong.

There was a sudden noise, a rapid crack-crack-crack that was terrifyingly familiar to Mikael. The sound of a heavy bolter. Only a few metres away a guardsman was blown apart as the explosive shells struck him, disappearing in a splash of gore.

“There!” Veran yelled, pointing to one of the buildings with a collapsed front. “It came from there!”

Another man screamed and fell as lasfire shredded half his torso. Those shots had come from a different direction; from the rubble of the collapsed buildings directly ahead. As Mikael ran for cover he saw movement atop the pile of shattered plascrete; tall figures, dressed in distinctive grey-black armour.

Cultists.

Valerion: Part Nine

2010-06-30T13:58:00.003+01:00

Mikael practically ran towards Meeks, stopping only when one of the guardsman’s arms snapped out, palm facing towards him.

“Meeks, please. Stop it”. Around him he could hear the other guardsmen saying similar things. “It’s not safe, mate. You know what happens to people who look at the sky”.

“It’s fine, Mikael”. Meeks’s voice was perfectly calm. “I understand now. The vox explained everything to me. Just look at the sky, Mikael. It’s so beautiful”. Slowly he lowered his head, turning as he did so until he was gazing directly at Mikael. The guardsman gasped in horror and stepped back. Cries rang out as the others saw his face, and those that had been advancing toward Meeks stopped dead, unwilling to approach any closer.

A web of dark red streaks covered the whites of his eyes. Blood. As Mikael watched in horror, the blood spread outwards gradually; even the pupils were covered by it. Within a few seconds Meeks’s eyes were entirely red. A single drop of blood fell from one eye and ran down his nose slowly, almost as if he were weeping.

It must have been agonising, yet Meeks gave no outward sign of being in any pain. The guardsman simply smiled. “Just listen, and you will understand too”, he said, then pointed at the vox-unit, lying on the ground at his feet.

Impossibly, the vox unit activated and the air was suddenly filled with the sound of static, amplified to a near-deafening volume. Mikael instinctively snapped his hands up to shield his ears, and thus was caught off-guard when Meeks stepped forward and hit him. The guardsman struck Mikael in the chest with the heel of his palm; his feet left the ground as he was sent flying backwards.

Mikael hit the ground hard, driving the breath from his body. He tried to get up but fell back almost immediately, gasping for air. His chest was on fire; it felt as if he had been hit by a tank. There was no way Meeks should have been able to strike him so hard. Unable to move, Mikael could only watch as Meeks, still smiling, raised his lasrifle and opened fire on the unit using full-auto.

There were screams as the lasfire scythed through the guardsmen, and thumps as bodies hit the floor. Whether alive or dead, Mikael couldn’t tell. The rest of the unit began to return fire, but Meeks was moving too quickly. Frox stepped in to try and intercept him; Meeks responded by smashing the stock of his lasrifle across the soldier’s face. As Frox stumbled back, Meeks threw himself forward, rolling and coming up with the barrel of his lasrifle pressed into the stomach of yet another guardsman, who didn’t even have time to scream before Meeks fired.

Mikael rolled over and dragged himself across the ground towards where he had dropped his lasrifle. If he could just get to it before Meeks noticed, he could…..he could….. He was finding it increasingly hard to think. The roar of static from the vox-unit seemed to fill his head; he could barely hear anything else but the white noise.

No, that was wrong. It wasn’t static, he suddenly realised. Not entirely. There were voices somewhere in there, whispering…..what were they saying? He could almost make it out, almost understand the words. Something…..something about the sky, and…..

“No!”

It took Mikael a second to realise that the cry had come from his own lips. He fought to block the noise out. It was listening to the vox-unit that had driven Meeks into insanity, he would not end up that way. No matter the things he had been seeing, and the contents of his dreams, he refused to listen! With what felt like a huge effort Mikael reached out and closed his hand around the stock of his lasrifle. Hauling himself into a sitting position, Mikael aimed at the vox-unit and fired.

The vox-unit toppled over, smoke pouring from dozens of holes in its surface as Mikael continued to hold the trigger down, only letting go when the lasrifle’s power cell ran dry. The sound of the static cut out and Mikael gasped in relief as the voices that had been whispering to him fell silent. But before he could even look round, a hand seized him by the throat and dragged him upright.

Meeks stared at him, his impassive face no more than a few inches from Mikael’s own. Blood was now coursing down his cheeks; indeed his eyes seemed to be dissolving into the liquid and Mikael could see the glint of white bone within the sockets. Despite that, he somehow knew that Meeks could see him with perfect clarity. Too close to use his lasrifle, Mikael dropped the weapon and clasped both hands around Meeks’s, attempting to lever it away from his throat. When that didn’t work he tried kneeing him in the groin, but the guardsman just took the blow without flinching. Just as Mikael’s vision was beginning to darken around the edges, Meeks suddenly jerked and toppled over, dragging the guardsman down with him. Mikael broke free and scrambled back a few metres, seeing the scorch marks on Meeks’s chest. He had been shot from behind, and the lasfire had passed right through his body. Only luck had kept Mikael from being hit as well.

Meeks was still alive. Somehow he still seemed to be looking directly at Mikael. His mouth lolled open and blood oozed out from one side of it.

“The heart of Valerion has fallen, and now everything will be swept away in blood”.

Mikael stared, disbelieving. They were the very same words that he had heard in his dream. Even Meeks’s voice seemed different, more like the voice that had spoken that phrase to him while he slept; the voice that somehow seemed achingly familiar, although Mikael knew that he had never heard it before coming to Valerion.

A shadow fell over Mikael, and he looked up to see commissar Krayn standing over him, staring down at Meeks with contempt.

“The only thing that has fallen, heretic, is you”, he snapped. His bolt pistol fired once, and silence fell. Mikael let himself fall back, but after a few second shot upright as a thought occurred to him. It was too quiet.

“I can’t hear them any more”.

Krayn looked round, an irritated expression on his face. “Hear what, guardsman?”

“The explosions. Listen!”

The commissar stared at him for a moment, then his eyes slowly widened as what Mikael had said began to sink in. Ever since they had arrived in Valerion the distant rumble of explosions and the sounds of warfare had been constant in the background, so much so that most of the unit had simply filtered them out. But now, no matter how much he tried, Mikael couldn’t hear the noise at all.

Silence had fallen across Valerion.

Valerion: Part Eight

2010-06-29T19:39:00.002+01:00

He stepped outside to find another guardsman standing in the garden, weapon held ready. He looked surprised to see Mikael.

“I was told there were four were sweeping this house, where are the others?”

“Back inside”, Mikael replied. When the other man looked confused, he tried to appear embarrassed. “I managed to run straight into a table. Banged my shin pretty good and couldn’t walk on it for a few minutes. The others are checking the rest of the building”.

The guardsman grinned, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Fair enough. Orders are to regroup in the park”.

“Anyone had contact with the enemy?”

“Nothing so far”, the guardsman said. As Mikael walked past he grinned again. “Mind out for the wall, yeah?”

Mikael bit back a caustic response. Better that the guardsman think him incompetent than a madman.

Most of the guardsmen had assembled in the park, and more were arriving in groups of two or three. Captain Veran was standing at the edge of the park, talking to each group in turn. The commissar was nowhere to be seen, probably still in one of the buildings. From what Mikael could gather, nobody had found any sign of the enemy, but not every building had been confirmed as clear yet.

Mikael spotted Meeks off to one side and walked over to him. The guardsman was squatting in front of the vox-unit, hunched over as he made adjustments to the controls. He was wearing headphones and seemed intent on what he was doing, but barely moved when Mikael tapped him on the shoulder.

“I’m busy, go away”, he snapped, without even looking to see who it was.

“I just wanted to know if…..”
Meeks twisted round suddenly. “I said I’m busy, damn it! I almost have it, almost. I need to work!”

Mikael stepped back, surprised by how intense Meeks was. It was completely unlike him; normally he was one of the most easygoing members of the unit. The tension must have been getting to him, just like it was everyone else.

“Alright, I’m sorry mate”. Meeks didn’t react, simply turned back to the vox-unit as if Mikael wasn’t even there. His lips were moving, but Mikael couldn’t tell what he was saying.

“Have you found anything?”

It was Veran’s voice and Mikael turned to see the captain standing a short distance away talking to Frox and the other two guardsmen who had swept the house.

“Nothing sir”. Frox glanced at Mikael briefly. “No sign of the enemy at all”.

“Alright, get some rest. We’ll move on once the rest of the unit reports back, assuming they’ve found nothing too”.

Mikael looked at the ground as Frox and the others walked past, not wanting to meet their eyes. He was certain he had seen something. How could they have not? Perhaps they were lying; perhaps they had seen the same thing he had but just didn’t want to face the implications of it. He wished he could believe that.

Another ten minutes passed before the remaining five members of the unit returned, having completed their search of the house where the contact had first been reported. Krayn was among them. He had sheathed his chainsword but had his bolt pistol in his right hand. Veran walked over to meet him and Mikael edged closer, wanting to hear for himself what they had to say.

“There was nothing”, Krayn said before Veran could even open his mouth. “No cultists. No sign that they had been there in the past. Only a damn mess caused by our lasfire. What about the others?”

Veran shook his head, and Krayn scowled.

“This is completely unacceptable”. The commissar stepped forward, shrugging off Veran’s restraining hand on his shoulder, and moved to the centre of the group. “Listen up! Which of you was the first to fire? I want a name, now!”

The guardsmen looked at one another, but nobody said a word. Krayn waited for a few seconds, tapping his bolt pistol against his leg impatiently. “Come on, speak up! Which of you was it? We have just wasted our time sweeping deserted buildings. The noise of our weapons firing will have betrayed our position to any enemy forces in this area. All thanks to whichever one of you thought he saw something. Speak up, now, or I promise you that your punishment will be far worse for remaining silent”.

“It was me”. Leon Haem stepped forward. “I fired first”.

Mikael groaned inwardly as Krayn turned slowly to face the unfortunate guardsman. Mikael remembered that Haem had been with him when they had swept the hab-block, shortly after finding the screaming guardsman beside the chimera. Mikael had seen something moving in the shadows then, too. He remembered that Haem claimed to have seen it as well.

“Why did you fire, trooper Haem?”

“I saw someone, sir. One of the cultists”.

“I don’t see how that is possible, trooper”, Krayn said softly, taking a few steps closer. “You and I went through that entire building, didn’t we? We found nothing. The rest of the unit has swept every nearby building, and there was still nobody to be found. Are you still certain that you saw someone?”

Haem was trembling slightly. “Yes…..yes, commissar. I did”.

“Very well. What, pray tell, did this cultist look like?”

“Well, I…..I didn’t see what the cultist looked like. It was more of a shadow. But it moved, I swear by the Emperor it did!”

“A shadow”, Krayn repeated, his tone flat and emotionless. “You wasted both our time and ammunition, jeopardised our mission, all because you thought you saw a shadow? I’ve heard enough”. The commissar raised his bolt pistol in one swift motion, aiming it at Haem’s forehead. Several guardsmen cried out in disbelief. “Trooper Leon Haem. You have exercised poor fire discipline, and in doing so jeopardised the success of our mission. I hereby sentence you to death. Do you have anything to say?”

“That’s enough, Krayn”. Captain Veran stepped in front of Haem, and stared at the commissar, apparently unafraid. “You’ve made your point. Haem frakked up, no question. But I’m not going to let you execute one of my men for being fatigued, understand?”

“Might I remind you, captain, that as a commissar it is both my right and my duty to execute any guardsman who demonstrates incompetence in battle. Trooper Haem is certainly guilty of that. It doesn’t matter that he is tired; we all are. That is no excuse for gross dereliction of his duty. You will step aside, now!”

Veran opened his mouth to respond, but before he had the chance to say anything a nearby guardsman yelled a warning. A second later, Frox shouted as well.

“Meeks! What the frak are you doing?”

Everyone turned, Mikael included, and what he saw sent a feeling of pure horror racing through his body. Only a few metres away, guardsman Meeks was standing perfectly still, arms tight by his side. The vox-unit lay at his feet, apparently forgotten.

His head was tilted back, and he was staring up at the sky.

Valerion: Part Seven

2010-06-28T22:24:00.001+01:00

It took at least twenty seconds for the unit to cross the rest of the parkland. No fire came their way from the structures; the cultists were probably too busy avoiding the barrage of suppressing fire that the front-runners were laying down. Jase fired his weapon, and Mikael saw a ball of blue plasma strike a building, tearing out a ground-floor window and a large chunk of the surrounding masonry. Hopefully the plasma fire would have dealt with any cultists foolish enough to shelter in that room as well.

Mikael was still running at full speed when he reached the low wall and promptly hurdled it. The edge of his trailing foot clipped the top of the wall and he stumbled as he hit the ground on the other side, but adrenalin kept him moving forward. At any second he expected to be scythed down by fire from the windows overlooking the garden. Most of the unit were assaulting the next building over where the first contact had been detected, leaving Mikael and three or four others to sweep this home. Closing rapidly on the entrance, he fired a quick burst at the door’s lock and hit the door hard with his shoulder.

The door refused to give way and Mikael fell backwards, losing his balance and hitting the ground awkwardly. He cursed, rolling to one side and hauling himself up into a crouching position, struggling to ignore the pain burning all the way down his right arm. He could see the door had practically been torn out of its frame, but was hanging awkwardly at the top; there was probably a bolt there holding it shut.

A volley of lasfire hit the top of the door, chewing through the wood in an explosion of splinters, and the door toppled back into the house with a crash. Someone took hold of his shoulder and hauled him to his feet. It was guardsman Frox.

“Move, you frakker!” He yelled and dashed into the house without another word. Mikael snarled and flung himself forward, the other two guardsmen right on his heels.

It was much darker inside the house and that threw Mikael briefly, he almost ran into a table but managed to sidestep just in time. The room looked like a kitchen, with two doors set into the far wall. Frox was moving through one of them into a corridor and Mikael followed, motioning for one of the guardsmen behind him to check the other door. It was probably just a pantry, but they had to be sure nobody was hiding there.

Moving more slowly now, Mikael entered the corridor. Frox stepped into a room to the right, leaving Mikael to keep going. At the end of the corridor was what looked like the building’s front entrance. His eyes rapidly adjusting, Mikael could see two heavy bolts thrown across the door. To the right of that was an open doorway and to the left a staircase. Walking down the corridor with his lasrifle raised, Mikael almost fired when a figure emerged from the doorway suddenly, but relaxed when he realised it was Frox. The guardsman shook his head briefly, and pointed at the stairs. Mikael nodded, looking back to see the other two men waiting.

He walked forward quickly, struggling to bring his breathing under control. His shoulder was beginning to ache more as the adrenalin rush that had carried him this far subsided. He could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears. Mikael knew that his fatigue was beginning to tell, but he had to push through it as best he could. Reaching the base of the stairs, he turned sharply, and brought his weapon up.

Movement.

It was little more than a flicker in the shadows, but Mikael fired as soon as he registered the motion, then dashed up the stairs two at a time. No shots came back in reply and he reached the next floor within a few seconds, the other guardsmen right behind him. He turned left, eyes flicking over the gaping holes that his lasfire had torn into the wooden panelling fixed to the walls. Ahead was another doorway. Light, probably coming in from outside, was illuminating one of the walls in the room beyond. On the far wall a shadow moved. A man, holding a rifle of some kind.

Mikael fired, and as he stepped forward he saw the shadow flinch back. Switching his lasrifle to full auto he threw himself into the room, dropping into a crouch as he swept his weapon round the room, firing continuously.

There was nobody there.

Mikael stared around the room, unable to believe it. His lasfire had stitched a line of ragged holes across the walls at waist-height. The only items of furniture were a small bed, pressed tightly against one wall, and a chest of drawers next to it. There was nowhere for anyone to hide.

He looked back at the wall, and had to bite back the urge to yell. The shadow was still there; an impossible patch of darkness with nothing to cast it. The figure’s head seemed to turn, almost as if it were looking at him. Mikael’s head pounded. But was it his heartbeat he was hearing, or someone or something else’s?

Frox entered the room with his weapon up, and Mikael glanced round. When he looked back at the wall, the shadow had vanished. He stared around the room, half believing that it might have reappeared elsewhere, but there was no sign of it. It was as if it had never existed.

“Did you see that?”

Frox looked at him, a perplexed expression on his face. “See what? What the hell were you firing at?”

Mikael stood up slowly. “I’m telling you, there was something here. Didn’t you see the shadow?”

The guardsman stared around the room, then his expression hardened. “For frak’s sake, there’s nothing here, Mikael. Stay put. The three of us will sweep the rest of the house”.

He nodded, but Frox had already left the room, and a moment later he heard the guardsman muttering something to the other two. Their footsteps receded into the distance and eventually there was quiet. He listened intently, but there was no further shooting. Soon there was only silence, but for the sound of his own panicked breathing.

Was he going mad? First the dreams, and now this?

Suddenly Mikael didn’t want to be alone any longer. He walked out of the room and left the house as quickly as possible.

He kept a close eye on the shadows.

Valerion: Part Six

2010-06-27T11:40:00.001+01:00

The unit moved on a little over an hour later. It took a while to get everyone moving, despite the shouted orders of the commissar and the quieter words of captain Veran. The rest period didn't seem to have done anyone much good; those that had managed to catch some sleep complained about feeling worse than before.

Mikael understood exactly what they meant. What little sleep he got was always dominated by the same dream over and over again; reliving the nightmare seemed to leave him a little more drained of energy every time. He knew that he wasn't the only one who had been having nightmares, but hadn't asked any of the other guardsmen precisely what it was that they dreamed about. If he were honest, he didn't know which answer he feared the most: that everyone was experiencing the same nightmare, or that he was the only one.

They were all exhausted, and as a consequence weren't covering anything like as much ground as they would have been able to normally. It didn't help that the captain and the commissar had responded to this by reducing the number of rest periods, perhaps in the hope that this would somehow galvanise the guardsmen into making up for lost time. It wasn't working, although nobody dared say as much to their faces.

Mikael glanced around at the unit. They were walking down the centre of a broad avenue, that had so far been mostly clear of rubble, burned-out vehicles and other obstructions. He was bringing up the rear of the group, and every so often checked behind them for any sign that they were being followed. There was nothing, as always. They hadn't caught so much as a glimpse of the enemy since the sky had changed. He didn't know what that meant, if anything. If not for the ever-present rumble of explosions somewhere in the distance, he would have found it easy to believe that they were the only living souls in the whole of Valerion.

The rest of the guardsmen were on edge. Those walking on the outside of the group seemed very nervous, flicking anxious glances into every shadowed doorway they passed, as if expecting hordes of bloodthirsty cultists to come pouring out at any moment. Vigilance was essential, but they seemed entirely too twitchy. One of the worst examples was Jase, the guardsman who carried the unit's plasma gun. Imperial plasma weaponry was temperamental at the best of times; the last thing any of them needed was for such a gun to be carried by someone who was not only sleep-deprived to the point of exhaustion, but also jumpy and nervous. Mikael didn't know what could be done about it though; certainly nobody else was much better at the moment.

After half an hour of walking the avenue split into two roads, leading away to the west and east respectively. Ahead of them was an immense tract of parkland, or at least what had once been parkland, before war had come to Valerion. The captain waved them forward without a word, and the unit left the avenue.

Mikael thought it was a mistake. Although going around would probably have taken the unit hours, tactically it would have been the better option. The unit would be visible for quite some distance, with no cover should they be attacked. Even worse, they were out under the open sky, without the comforting presence of buildings to shelter them. He found himself hunching over, anxious to avoid catching so much as a glimpse of it. Other guardsmen were doing the same.

He imagined that the park must once have been a pleasant place to come to. No doubt parents had brought their children here; to have picnics, to play sports. Now, however, the park was little more than a blasted wasteland. Charred stumps of trees protruded from scorched earth, while other areas were pockmarked by craters or churned up by explosions and the passing of heavy vehicles. Apart from the guardsmen, there was not a single living thing to be seen; not so much as a single blade of grass. The air was heavy with the stench of rotting vegetation and the ever-present smell of burning that was pervasive throughout Valerion.

Mikael felt tremendously exposed, like a bug crawling across the wasteland. He felt, absurdly, as if the sky was watching him. Part of him found the idea ridiculous, but the rest of him, remembering the dreams he had been having, found it very easy to believe. He had to constantly fight the urge to look up and see for himself if it were true.

Ahead of him the ground sloped up, forming a ridge that obscured the rest of the park from his view. Some of the guardsmen were just reaching it, and as they did so they immediately dropped to the ground and trained their lasrifles forward. The rest of the unit began reacting; those on the flanks crouched lower and ran forward to support the vanguard, while the rest advanced cautiously, crawling the last few metres to avoid presenting an inviting target for anything beyond the ridge. When Mikael reached the top of the ridge he looked at the other side for a few seconds, then let out a long sigh.

The far side of the park was littered with wrecked and burned-out vehicles. Mikael saw Leman Russ battle tanks, chimera transports, Hydras, even a Griffon heavy mortar carrier. At least two dozen vehicles, which from their positioning had been firing on each other. The cultists had access to Imperial vehicles, commandeered when they had mounted their insurrection. Most of the vehicles below Mikael were so badly damaged that it was impossible to tell which side they had belonged to.

Captain Veran led the way down the slope. As he walked he made quick gestures with his free hand and the unit dispersed across the battlefield to check for survivors. They quickly found bodies scattered everywhere. Many were burned beyond recognition, but some were comparatively undamaged. There was an even mixture of guardsmen and cultists. Mikael had been around death all his life in the Imperial Guard, and he estimated that the battle had been at least four days ago, judging by the condition of the corpses.

The unit moved on after a while, when it became obvious that no survivors were going to be found. Nobody said a word, but Mikael noticed a few of the men make the sign of the aquila. He muttered a brief prayer for the souls of the fallen guardsmen.

Near the edge of the parkland they found yet more bodies. These appeared to have died far more recently, perhaps within the last day. Some of the men looked at Veran expectantly, but the captain didn’t react.

As the unit walked on, Mikael noticed something unusual. All the bodies, as far as he could tell, were those of guardsmen. All had died from wounds caused by lasfire or close combat. There were no cultists among the dead. He found it hard to believe that a unit of guardsmen could be ambushed and wiped out without killing at least some of the enemy. Or perhaps the cultists had recovered the bodies of their fallen? But why would they do that, when they had never bothered before?

Mikael shook his head, as if doing so would drive the questions from his mind. He needed to focus. They were approaching the edge of the parkland and ironically this period, so close to reaching cover, was when they were in the most danger. The unit might have been incredibly vulnerable while crossing the parkland, but at least they would have been able to see any enemy forces approaching. That was not the case here: cultists could easily be hiding in the buildings on the edge of the park even now, watching them draw closer.

The structures on this edge of the park had been private dwellings by the look of them, for those wealthy enough to afford a home overlooking what would once have been green and pleasant parkland. A low wall separated the homes from the park; it didn't look at all secure, but Mikael imagined that the buildings had probably had security systems. A few of the homes had collapsed, but the rest appeared to have been spared any substantial damage. There were a lot of windows, and Mikael tightened his grip on his lasrifle as he glanced at them one by one, looking for any signs of movement.

One of the guardsmen at the front suddenly yelled a warning and raised his lasrifle, firing several shots at one of the windows. Others joined in and soon volleys of suppressing lasfire were being aimed at the building's windows and those of the adjacent structures.

"Contact!"

Commissar Krayn sprinted past Mikael; bolt pistol in one hand and chainsword in the other, the teeth of the blade already whirring into life.

"Forward!" He bellowed. "Sweep the buildings and cleanse them of the heretic scum. For the Emperor!"

As one, the unit charged forward. Mikael did the same, and as he ran a single thought echoed in his head.

At last.

Valerion: Part Five

2010-06-24T12:26:00.003+01:00

Boom-boom. Boom-boom.

Mikael walked slowly down the centre of the road, his lasrifle hanging from a strap over his shoulder. The road was unlike any other that he had seen in Valerion; rather than being composed of thick blocks of poured plascrete, its surface was made up of square, grey flagstones, each a few metres across. It was the same all the way down the road for as far as he could see, until the haze of the distance defeated his eyes. He imagined it was the same behind him, but couldn't be certain. He was unable to look back.

Boom-boom. Boom-boom.

On either side of the road were immense buildings; tall, brooding gothic edifices so high that they covered the road with perpetual shadow. They had no doors or windows; their exteriors had arches framing blank patches of wall. Further up were parapets lined with gargoyles, sculpted to resemble hideous creatures from near-forgotten legend. Mikael did his best not to look at them, just as he ignored the faint rasping sound of stone on stone, as the gargoyles slowly turned to watch him walk down the road.

Boom. Boom-boom.

There was something on the road ahead of him. It was a plant of some kind, growing where the corners of four flagstones met. Mikael knelt down, and as he did so his lasrifle banged against his side. Without looking he slipped the strap off his shoulder and placed the weapon on the ground next to him.

Boom-boom. Boom.

The plant was about six inches tall, and had eight slender leaves growing two thirds of the way up its stem. At the top of the stem was a flower, but it was closed, white petals wrapped tightly around one another. Mikael counted eight of them. He reached out with one hand and gently touched one of the leaves, feeling the texture of it between his thumb and index finger. It was soft and delicate; he sensed it would take only the slightest pressure to break it, and he had no wish to do that. He released the leaf, and as he did so the flower atop the plant trembled.

Boom. Boom.

Mikael watched, fascinated, as the eight petals all began to quiver. With aching slowness they began to fold open, unfurling one after another. He could not help but smile. When all of the petals had opened fully, mirroring the alignment of the leaves beneath them, at the centre of the petals he could see a small circle of red. The flower. He reached out again, but hesitated. Something about the colour of the flower was not quite right. It was very dark, almost the colour of.....blood.

Boom.

It wasn't a flower at all, he realised. It was a drop of blood. Mikael stared as the drop expanded outwards, staining the lily-white petals dark red within seconds. The stem of the plant began to darken also, the colour travelling down from the flower to the leaves where one by one they turned red as well. Soon the entire plant was the colour of blood.

Boom.

Mikael lurched to his feet as the blood, impossibly, continued to spread outwards from the plant, through the tiny gaps where each of the flagstones met. He took a single step back, but found himself unable to retreat any further. Soon the entire road, for as far as he could see, was like a gridwork of dark red, each flagstone outlined by the liquid. Mikael reached down for his lasrifle, but it wasn't there. As he looked around frantically, suddenly desperate to locate his weapon, he became aware of the

Silence.

No, that was wrong. It wasn't completely silent. There was something, so faint that he could barely hear it. It was a rushing sound which at first he thought to be the wind, except that the air was utterly still, oppressively heavy. The rushing sound grew louder and louder, became more liquid, a gurgling roar. Then, in the distance, he saw it. An immense tidal wave of blood, growing higher and higher the closer it came, an impossible wave that refused to break. A single thought echoed inside his head, something foreign to him, yet spoken in a voice that seemed somehow familiar. The heart of Valerion has fallen, and now everything will be swept away in blood.

Mikael tried to move back, but found that he could not. Looking down at his feet, he saw that the blood from the plant had overflowed on to the flagstones, and now swirled around his boots. No matter how hard he tried he was unable to move his feet even the smallest amount; somehow the blood was holding them in place. He was trapped. And all the while the roaring of the oncoming wave grew louder and louder. All he could do was watch as it drew closer and closer. When it was almost on top of him he thought he could see struggling figures within the wave. Men and women, thrashing and writhing, their faces masks of desperation and hideous, incomprehensible suffering.

The tide of blood struck him, and he was plunged into darkness. The grip on his feet was released and he thrashed his arms and legs, clawing for purchase against the thick liquid as he struggled towards the surface. All he could hear was the gurgling rush of the blood swirling all about him.

Mikael broke the surface, gasping and retching as the semi-congealed blood oozed down his face. The tide was carrying him with it and he was travelling back down the road at terrifying speed. He shook his head and finally the haze of red across his vision receded, and he could see the sky.

The sky.

It was an impossible visage; a mass of violently clashing and swirling colours that was in constant flux, shifting in hue and shade from one second to the next, never remaining stable for even the briefest instant. There were colours there that he could not put a name to, that human eyes should not be able to perceive and, he instinctively knew, that they were not meant to. But that was not the worst of it.

Shapes moved in the sky, at once part of the endless melange of colour and yet distinct from it. Hideously beautiful forms, cavorting and battling endlessly. He could feel their terrible, pitilessly ancient scrutiny upon him. A thousand thousand chattering voices, overlapping and merging into a single roar of endless horror screamed in his ears; enticing him, threatening him, pleading with him.....

Mikael screamed and clasped his hands over his ears, tearing his gaze away from the sky. His eyes burned inside his head, and the voices continued to scream within his mind.

Just when he felt as if his head would explode from the agony, something grabbed hold of his ankles, and pulled him under.

Mikael awoke, gasping for air. For a moment he thought he could still hear the voices, but a second later they were gone, fading away into nothing but leaving him filled with disquiet and a sense of horror that he was fast becoming accustomed to.

He groaned and sat up, checking the time on his chronometer. He had been asleep for almost an hour and a half, yet despite that felt no more refreshed. If anything, he felt even worse than before. There was only another hour before the rest period was over and they would have to move on, so he decided that there was no point in trying to get back to sleep. Rubbing his eyes, he got to his feet and looked around.

The unit had holed up in what had once been a vast garage, a storage and maintenance area for civilian vehicles. It was filthy: littered with vehicle parts, tools and piles of rubbish, and the metal shutters at one end of the garage had been blown in by shell fire at some point in the past. Despite that, it was enclosed on three sides and, more importantly, the roof was intact, shielding them from the sky.

The other guardsmen lay on the floor all around him. Some were tossing and turning in uneasy slumber; others simply lay still, staring blankly up at the ceiling. Captain Veran was on watch with four other guardsmen at the entrance. The commissar was sitting in one corner, well away from the other men. Mikael couldn’t see whether he was awake or asleep, and he didn’t care enough to go and look.

Stretching and rotating his arms in an attempt to ease some of the knots out of his muscles, Mikael walked across the garage to where Meeks sat. The guardsman had placed the vox-unit on a bench against one wall and was now perched on a stool next to it, one hand pressing headphones against his ears while the other adjusted various dials and knobs on the vox-unit’s surface. Intent on his work, Meeks did not notice his approach, and practically fell off the stool when Mikael tapped him on the shoulder.

"For throne’s sake, don’t do that! I’m jumpy enough as it is!"

"Sorry about that", Mikael replied. "How’s it going?"

Meeks shook his head. "Not well. I’ve opened it up and checked the internal components; most seem okay but I’ve swapped out one or two with spares I had. Still nothing but static across all the bands though. I’m thinking it’s probably atmospherics, but there’s a few more things I can try yet".

Mikael nodded. Meeks was the unit’s vox-man, and the only one of any of them who understood how the things worked. He was by far their best chance of establishing contact with Command again.

"How about yourself? You look like you need some rest". It was true. Meeks looked completely exhausted. His eyes were bloodshot, with dark rings under them and his skin was pale and clammy. Not that Mikael exactly looked the picture of health, he thought.

Meeks shook his head again. "I’m not too bad". He twisted slightly and adjusted one of the dials on the vox, pressing the headphones closer to his ear. "Honestly, I would rather keep busy. Had some weird dreams lately".

Mikael felt a faint chill steal over him. "Like what?"

The guardsman’s expression froze for a few seconds. "Damn it!" He twisted the dial again, then scowled, and flung the headphones onto the desk.

"What is it?"

"I had something, just for a moment, then it was gone again". Meeks paused, and when he spoke again there was a strange look on his face. "It said.....well, I’m not sure, but it sounded like look at the sky".

Mikael shuddered. Only a few hours after the unit had lost their vox, the sky over Valerion had changed from a pleasant blue to.....what it was now. Nobody could stand to look at it for long; those that lasted longer than a few seconds became very ill, very quickly. He hated to think what the effects of looking at it for any prolonged period of time would be. He remembered how it had appeared in his dreams, and horror filled him. The dreams had started the same night the sky had changed; that couldn’t be a coincidence. But what did they mean, if anything?

"Mikael? You okay?"

He snapped back to the present, and looked at Meeks, who was regarding him with a concerned expression. "Yes, sorry. Look. What you heard the vox say. You must have been mistaken. The last thing that any of us should do is look at the sky".

"I know. I was probably hearing things. Look, you should go get some rest. I’ll keep trying".

Mikael nodded and walked away. After a few paces he paused, and looked back. Meeks had his back turned, and the guardsman was gazing up at the ceiling, almost as if trying to look through it.

Then he turned back to the vox-unit, and picked up the headphones again.

Valerion: Part Four

2010-06-23T18:43:00.000+01:00

Mikael was relieved to step outside again. Although that meant he had to once more be careful not to look up, at least the air was a little fresher out here, and there was no sign of any strange plants.

As he jogged back to rejoin the unit he felt vaguely foolish. He was tired, he knew that. Clearly the plant had never been there to begin with; his mind must have been playing tricks on him. It was the same thing with the shadows; he had seen movement and in his exhaustion he had thought it to be caused by something hostile when really it was nothing more threatening than kitchen implements swaying in the breeze. Slightly embarrassing, but better to overreact than not to be paying attention at all, he supposed.

He passed the perimeter that had been set up, nodding to a couple of the guardsmen, and made his way to where the captain was standing by the front of the chimera, talking to Haem and other guardsmen who had been assigned to sweep the buildings. Krayn was crouched by the bodies, and seemed to be examining them. Mikael came to a stop by the captain and waited for him to look in his direction.

"No sign of anyone in our building, sir".

"Thank you, guardsman", the captain replied. "Haem has just finished telling me the exact same thing. And none of you found any sign of enemy presence either?" The latter was addressed to the others, who shook their heads. The captain sighed and looked around. Mikael noticed that one hand was wrapped around the butt of his laspistol, gripped tightly enough that the knuckles were white.

"It just doesn't make any sense. It's almost as if....."

"Captain Veran!"

Another guardsman emerged from inside the chimera, cradling a vox-unit in his arms.

"How is it looking, Meeks?"

Meeks set the vox-unit down carefully then straightened up, scratching his nose idly as he always did when he was confused.

"Looks like someone's had a real go at this vox, sir. You can see all the dents in it, if I had to guess I'd say someone hit it a few times with the butt of a lasrifle, or something like that anyway".

"Is it operational? We need to get in touch with Command urgently".

Mikael found himself nodding in agreement. During their last engagement with the cultists, almost three days ago, the unit's vox had been damaged beyond repair. Since then they had been out of contact, and had no idea what the larger situation was in Valerion.

"Well I gave it a try", Meeks replied. "All I got was a frak-load of static across all the bands. Now it might be that something inside the vox got damaged when somebody tried to beat the hell out of it, or maybe it's interference from....." Meeks hesitated, and pointed upwards. "Well.....that. It's probably a bit of both. I won't know for sure until I get a proper look inside it. I'll do what I can, sir".

Veran nodded. "I know you will, Meeks. See if you can find a way to strap that to your back or something, we'll be moving on soon and you'll need your hands free. Frox, give him a hand".

"Yes sir".

As Meeks and the other guardsman moved away, Veran looked round. "Listen up! We're moving on in ten minutes. Get what supplies you can from our fallen comrades, we're running low on rations and Emperor knows we can get more use out of them than they can".

Veran walked round the chimera, to where Krayn was still examining the bodies. Mikael and some of the other guardsmen followed him. Krayn got to his feet as he saw them approach.

"What have you found, commissar?"

"It is as we suspected, captain Veran", the commissar replied, brushing his hands together as he spoke. "They were ambushed. Whoever hit them was good, I don't think they had a chance to defend themselves properly. We need to stay alert".

"Thank you, Krayn", the captain replied. "Gather the men, we're moving on soon".

Mikael listened to all of this with a growing sense of bemusement. It sounded as if the two men were reading from a script, and he had never heard them speak to each other so civilly, not since the start of the Valerion campaign. He glanced at the others, but none of them seemed to have picked up on anything unusual. Why would they be putting on such a show?

One of the bodies caught his eye, and he crouched down to get a closer look. Like all but the screaming guardsman they had found when they arrived, this man had been shot through the centre of the forehead. He had also been shot in the back; it was probably those wounds that had brought him down and the forehead shot had finished it. Mikael looked more closely at the damage to his back. The guardsman's uniform was heavily scorched around each point of entry. Mikael had been around long enough to know that that meant the lasfire had hit him at close range.

A horrible thought occurred to him. The positions of the guardsmen: they had fallen as if running for cover. What if they had been running from one of their own? The close-range nature of the wounds and the damage to the vox-set supported that, as did the fact that there had only been one survivor. When Mikael had arrived, that man had been in no fit state to do anything, but that didn't mean he couldn't have been responsible......

Was that why the captain and the commissar had gone through that little routine? Was it for the benefit of the other guardsmen, to conceal the fact that one of their own had turned his back on the Emperor?

No, that couldn't be it. Mikael stood up slowly. He was being paranoid, that was all. It had probably happened like the captain and commissar had said. The damage to the vox could easily have been caused by cultists. There was no real reason to believe otherwise.

But as he walked away to rejoin the rest of the unit, a little voice inside Mikael's head asked him just who he was trying to kid.

Valerion: Part Three

2010-06-21T13:54:00.003+01:00

As they drew closer, Mikael was able to get a better look at the building they had been ordered to search. It looked like a hab-block, a small one at that. He estimated that the building was probably only large enough for a dozen or so habs. The sort of accommodation that middle-management types could afford; senior Administratum clerks and the like. More up-market than where the majority of Valerion’s population would have lived.

At least, it had been. It looked like it had been severely damaged by fire; the top of the block seemed to have collapsed, and the glass in the windows had blown out and now littered the ground in front of the building. Mikael dodged the fragments wherever he could but avoiding them all wasn’t possible, and he was painfully aware that the loud crunching their footsteps made would advertise their presence to anyone inside.

He crouched beside the entrance to the block, the other guardsman just behind him. He listened for a few seconds, but could hear nothing apart from the ever-present sound of explosions and warfare somewhere in the distance. Pressing the stock of his lasrifle into his shoulder, Mikael stepped through the entrance and immediately moved to one side, to give the other man room to enter as well as to minimise the time he was exposed in the doorway.

Mikael blinked rapidly to help his eyes adjust. They were in a small lobby; to the right was a flight of stairs leading upwards. To the left of the staircase was a short passageway; he could see several doorways set into the walls. He motioned for the other guardsman to watch the stairs and stepped forward carefully, gaze flicking between the sight of his lasrifle and the floor in front of him, ensuring that his feet didn’t disturb anything and make a noise that might betray his presence.

The first two doors were locked, but the third door was open. Moving toward it, Mikael cast a quick glance at the area underneath the stairs, but there was nothing there. The room beyond the doorway was a supply closet; shelving on one wall held various cleaning products, and several mops lay on the floor near the door. There was no sign that anyone had been in there recently.

Mikael turned to move back towards the lobby entrance, and caught sight of the floor underneath the staircase. His eyes narrowed. He could see something there now, that he hadn't seen the last time that he had looked. He stepped closer.

It was a plant.

Only a few inches tall, its stem disappeared into a crack in the flooring. It had eight slender leaves, each a vivid green. He stared at it, unable to remember the last time he had seen such a shade of green, the colour of healthy life. Certainly not since he had entered Valerion. For a moment he was tempted to reach out and touch it, to feel the texture of the leaves between his fingers.

Mikael stood up, forcing himself to focus. He had a job to do, he couldn’t afford to let himself get distracted like this. He moved back to the foot of the stairs, where the other guardsman was waiting. Mikael shook his head, indicating that he had found nothing. The guardsman nodded, and motioned up to the next floor. Mikael started to nod, then hesitated. What was the man’s name?

It took him several seconds to think of it, and when he remembered it the name came with a sense of shame that he had forgotten, however briefly. The guardsman was Leon Haem, they had fought together for years on half a dozen different worlds. How could he have forgotten that?

Haem was staring at him, probably wondering what the delay was. Mikael nodded sharply, and the other man started up the stairs, Mikael close behind him.

This floor of the block had suffered significant fire damage. Every wall was blackened and scorched, and the air was thick with the stench of burning. The corridor doubled back on itself and ran parallel to the staircase before turning back round again and meeting another flight of stairs. A window in the far wall provided some illumination, but everything was so blackened by the flames that had swept through here that it seemed very dark.

There was a single door, charred and cracked, but still standing closed in its doorway. Haem tried the handle and pushed gently, then shook his head. No good. Either the door was locked or, more likely, the heat had warped the door and its frame so that it could not be opened without considerable effort. That meant they would have to make a noisy entrance. Mikael pointed his lasrifle at the doorway and waited while Haem stood against the opposite wall, then lunged forward.

It took two kicks to get the door open; it slammed back and hit the corridor wall before rebounding towards them. Mikael was already halfway into the hab though and stopped the door with his shoulder, his attention focussed on what was inside. At the end of a short passageway was what looked like a kitchen; two doors on either side of the corridor led into other rooms. Mikael moved to the first door on the left, Haem taking the right side of the corridor. They made no effort to move quietly; any element of surprise they might have had was long gone. Speed was of the essence now.

The first room had several chairs set up facing a vidscreen that was attached to one wall. There had been a fire here as well; the vidscreen was broken in half and the rest of the furniture had been wrecked. Clouds of ash kicked up by their entrance hung in the air and Mikael had to stifle the urge to cough.

"Clear!" He yelled, and moments later an identical cry came from Haem. He left the living room and moved up to the second room on the left side of the corridor. A bathroom. No space in there for anyone to hide. He stepped into the kitchen as Haem entered the remaining room. Nothing there either. There was a worktop in the centre of the kitchen and various appliances lined the walls. Ladles, spatulas and the like hung from long hooks embedded in the ceiling above the worktop.

Mikael entered the corridor and a few seconds later Haem joined him.

"All clear", Haem said. "No sign that anyone has been here".

"Same", Mikael replied. "We should....."

Movement to his left.

Mikael turned and dropped to a crouch, raising his lasrifle as he did so. The shadows in the kitchen were moving; he counted one, no, two figures; their outlines vague but nevertheless they were there, moving towards the doorway. With Haem following he threw himself into the kitchen, finger tightening on the trigger.....

The room was empty. Nothing had changed, except that the kitchen implements hanging from the ceiling were swaying back and forth, as if stirred by a slight breeze. Mikael just stood there, unable to make sense of it. There was no other way out of the room, and nowhere for anyone to hide. Yet he was certain that he had seen something.

"You saw it too, didn't you?"

"Definitely", Haem replied, looking just as confused as Mikael felt. "It must have been the ladles and stuff swinging, made the shadows move".

"Maybe". Mikael nodded, although he was far from convinced. They had certainly looked like figures.

"Let's keep going".

They left the hab and moved to the bottom of the next flight of stairs. When they looked up, however, they saw that the next floor was sealed off. At the top of the stairs it looked like the walls and ceiling had caved in; blackened joists protruded from a heap of shattered brickwork and sheets of plaster. There was no way through.

Mikael and Haem headed back to the ground floor, each looking into the hab as they passed the entrance, but this time there was no sign of movement. At the foot of the stairs, Mikael paused.

"Go on ahead, okay? I'll be with you in a second". Haem looked at him curiously, but shrugged and left. Mikael walked through the lobby towards the area underneath the first flight of stairs. He wanted to look at the plant again. It was slightly odd, he knew that, but even so. Who could tell how long it would be before he would get to see another? He reached the back of the staircase and crouched down.

The plant was gone.

Mikael stared, then rubbed his eyes, as if doing so might make the plant magically reappear. Still nothing. He leaned forward, and scrutinised every inch of the flooring. When he had first seen it, the plant had been growing out of a small crack in the flooring, but even that was missing. There was no sign that the plant had ever been there.

Mikael got to his feet and clutched his lasrifle more tightly, suddenly aware that he was alone in a dark building. It just didn't make any sense. He was positive that he had seen the plant there, just as he had seen the shadows move upstairs. There had to be an explanation. He was exhausted, he knew he was. That had to be it. Fatigue was making his mind play tricks on him.

Or he was going mad.

All he knew for certain was that he wanted to be away from here as soon as possible.

Valerion: Part Two

2010-06-18T13:14:00.003+01:00

This is the next part of the story Vignette, which I have now renamed Valerion. I will post updates every so often as and when I write them. Enjoy!

----------

The guardsmen moved quickly down the road to where it became a t-junction, turning left without hesitation. The air was still, and the sound of the screams was easy enough to follow.

The screaming.

It never truly stopped, only paused for periods of no more than five or ten seconds. Long enough, Mikael imagined, for a heaving chest to suck in a few more lungfuls of air, long enough for a ravaged voice to gain enough strength to scream again. And again.

And again.

Soon that sound was the only thing that Mikael could truly hear. The rapid pounding of the guardsmen's feet across the rubble-strewn ground, the rasping of his breath, the yells of the commissar to pick up the pace: all faded into nothing. Only the screaming remained.

Mikael rounded another corner, and saw that the guardsmen ahead of him had stopped. He slowed his pace, raising his lasrifle and scanning the surrounding buildings for any sign of enemy forces. Nothing. It looked like a firestorm had swept along this road at some time in the past, every building appeared burned out. Their windows were little more than ragged holes, the rooms beyond seemed utterly dark. They reminded him of gaping, empty eye sockets.

In the centre of the road was a chimera troop transport, parked at an awkward angle as if it had been abandoned there. Its rear ramp was down, but something was sprawled across it. A body.

The corpse was that of a man, dressed in their brown regimental uniform. It was heavily stained by dust, but not as badly as those of Mikael and the other guardsmen. As he drew closer, he saw a small hole in the centre of the guardsman's forehead, its edges neatly cauterised. Mikael had seen that kind of wound countless times before. It had been caused by a lasrifle.

The man's eyes were open, staring sightlessly upwards. Mikael looked at them, and for a brief moment saw a faint image of the sky reflected in their glazed surfaces. Nausea bit into his stomach and he looked away. Another guardsman crouched down and carefully pushed the eyelids shut.

For a few brief moments, Mikael had blotted the screaming out. Now it returned, far louder than before. When each scream ceased he could hear deep, rasping breaths for a few seconds before the next agonised howl began.

On the other side of the chimera, four more guardsmen lay on the ground. Three were facing in different directions, as if they had been trying to run for cover. Each had wounds caused by lasfire across their bodies, but also had a single shot to the centre of the forehead, just as the first body had.

The fourth guardsman was the one who had been screaming all this time. Eight of Mikael's comrades stood in a loose ring around him, but still the man's cries continued unabated. None of them moved to help him, even though so close to him the man's screams must have been almost unbearable. Irritated, Mikael pushed his way through them and looked down at the guardsman, then stepped back almost immediately.

The man's body was rigid; arms tight against his sides and legs together, as if he were ready to be buried. The heaving of his chest was the only visible indicator that he was still alive. From the neck down he looked perfectly ordinary, just another guardsman. The head, however, was another matter.

His expression was a mask of horror; mouth gaping so wide that the muscles in the lower part of his face were pulled taut and stood prominent beneath his pallid skin. His lips were cracked; split wide open, with dried blood smeared across his chin. His lower jaw quivered slightly as he continued to scream, but apart from that, his head remained motionless. The guardsman's eyes were the worst of all.

They were gone.

In their place were twin pools of congealed blood that filled the sockets entirely. The area around the eyes was completely free of blood, or any other sign of injury.

Mikael had been in the Imperial Guard for thirteen years, and in that time had seen things that most people could never even imagine. Despite that, this was easily one of the most horrifying. By all rights, with such injuries the man should have died long before. Yet he still lived.

What bothered him just as much was the reaction of his fellow guardsmen. They simply stood, and stared. Mikael could well understand not wanting to get too close to the injured man, but why wasn’t anyone calling for help, instead of just standing there?

Why wasn’t he?

“Get out of my way, you fools!” The commissar stepped into the circle, and stared down at the screaming man lying on the ground. Mikael saw his face twist, and for a moment the commissar looked as if he were about to speak. Instead, in one smooth motion, he pulled his bolt pistol from its holster and fired a single shot into the man’s chest.

The detonation of the bolt shell blew the man’s torso open, and his body jerked upwards like a rag doll before flopping back to the ground. For a long, impossible moment, he continued to scream, his mouth seeming to gape even wider than before. Fresh blood glistened on his lips as the cracks split open again. Then, finally, the sound ceased.

“Krayn! By the throne, why did you do that?” It was the captain who spoke. Mikael suddenly realised that he had been one of the eight guardsmen standing around the wounded man, just watching him scream.

Krayn stared at the captain, his expression utterly cold. “His cries were giving away our position to the enemy”, he replied.

The captain and the commissar locked gazes for a few seconds; the rest of the guardsmen said nothing and just watched warily. This was not the first time that the two had clashed during the campaign, and Mikael was sure it would not be the last. He was so used to it that he felt little more than a faint contempt for their posturing.

The captain was the first to back down, taking a pace backwards and looking around. His eyes narrowed as he took in the sight of dozens of guardsmen standing around, watching him.

“What are you idiots doing?” He snapped. “Throne, have you forgotten everything you were taught in training? I want a perimeter established now! Teams of two will sweep the buildings; whoever did this could still be in the area. Get to it!”

The captain began selecting teams with flicks of his fingers. Mikael and another guardsman were assigned a building about two dozen metres away, close to where the rubble from a toppled hab-complex had blocked off the road almost completely.

As he started to move, Mikael glanced back at the corpse of the screaming guardsman. The commissar’s kill-shot had jolted the body, and the man’s head now lay on its side. The congealed blood inside his eye sockets had oozed down the man’s face and on to the road surface. Mikael watched the blood slowly spread outwards, and for a brief moment he could hear the irregular rhythm of a diseased heart, pounding somewhere in the distance.

He shuddered, and looked away.

Vignette

2010-06-17T12:58:00.003+01:00

An idea that has been kicking around in my head for a week or more. Might do something with it in the future.

----------

One foot in front of the other. Over and over and over and over.

Mikael trudged through the ruins of Valerion, dozens of other guardsmen spread out around him. All walked as he did; listless and lethargic, their energy sapped by the months of relentless conflict. Even the captain and the commissar had given up trying to force a greater pace from the men; perhaps they viewed any progress made as a triumph of sorts. Perhaps their spirits were as enervated as those of the men they commanded. Mikael didn’t know. Didn’t care.

A piece of rubble shifted under his foot and Mikael’s ankle twisted. He flung out a hand to catch himself as he fell, hissing under his breath as a stone dug into his palm. He slowly got to his feet, wincing slightly as he put his weight on his ankle. It seemed fine. At the beginning of their campaign in Valerion, Mikael would have cursed quite graphically if such a thing had happened; the priest attached to their regiment had told him on more than one occasion that he had a remarkably foul mouth. Now, however, it had happened so many times that he no longer had the energy. He started forward, stopping after a few seconds as a thought occurred to him. He went back, and retrieved his lasrifle.

Nobody else seemed to have noticed.

Valerion stretched around him in all directions, or at least what remained of it. Every square inch of the city seemed to have been fought over at one time or another; every road had been churned up by explosions and coated in rubble from toppled structures. Not one building had avoided being damaged. Most had been ripped apart by explosions, or had their interiors gutted by fire. Now only the skeletal remnants of the once-proud structures still stood. They reminded Mikael of blackened, bony fingers protruding from the earth; clawing at the sky as if pleading for succour. There would be no aid from there, though. Mikael didn’t look at the sky any more; nobody did.

They didn’t like what it had become.

The distant rumble of explosions was constant, to the point that Mikael barely noticed it any more, except in his dreams. There it was Valerion’s heartbeat; the stuttering, irregular spasms of a failing organ. Sometimes he dreamt that the heart faltered and finally stopped, expelling a great torrent of semi-congealed blood to ooze through the streets and parks of the city, coating everything with the texture and foetid stench of death. In his darker waking moments, and they were many, he reflected that such a vision was not all that far from the truth.

He wondered just when his dreams would become reality. Would he even notice?

A scream split the air, and everyone stopped walking. It was an anguished howl, ripped from the throat of someone in tremendous pain. Just the sound of it told Mikael that whoever, or whatever, had given voice to the cry did not have long to live.

A whistle blew, and Mikael looked round. It was the captain.

“Forward, men”, he bellowed. “For the Emperor!”

Mikael clutched his lasrifle tightly to his chest, hesitating for a brief moment. A figure approached, clad in a once-black trench-coat now so stained by dust and blood that barely a hint of its former colour remained. The commissar. He looked deep into Mikael’s eyes.

“You heard the captain”, he hissed. “Forward!”

Mikael began to run. The scream echoed inside his head.

Moons Of Saturn

2010-05-24T13:32:00.001+01:00

An image taken by Cassini. The moon in the foreground is Rhea, the smaller moon behind it is Epimetheus. In this picture they're about 400,000 kilometres apart.

Snap

2010-05-12T13:43:00.008+01:00

Another short story competition entry. The theme this month is "Fury".

Snap

(1,043 words)

He had sat on the edge of the bed, in the darkened room, for what felt like an age. In truth, though, Jon had barely been conscious of the time passing. His attention had been utterly fixed on what he was holding in his hands. The culmination of a year of constant toil, extra shifts, and night after night of desperate prayers. Twelve months, encapsulated in a single scrap of paper, stamped with the symbol of the aquila.

In the name of the Emperor, the Joren office of the Administratum regrets to inform you that…..

Eventually, a sound from the living room roused him from his reverie. He looked up, blinked twice, and listened. It took him a few moments to realise what it was: one of the children, screaming again.

Jon got to his feet, and moved to the doorway. He watched Ilsa standing in the middle of the living room, trying to quiet the howls of one of the twins. The other was in a cot nearby, gazing up at his father. His eyes were dull and listless, face pinched and movements sluggish.

After a while Ilsa turned and saw him watching. One arm still cradled the twin; her free hand was pressed against her swollen belly. She started to smile, but the expression froze, stillborn, on her face.

“Jon? What is it?”

He looked at her without speaking, and her expression slowly changed to one of uncertainty, mingled with fear.

“Jon?”

He turned and walked out of the hab, the door slamming shut behind him. The screams of both twins echoed down the dingy, litter-strewn corridor after him.

He had a train to catch.

----------

The Administratum office was an uninspiring edifice at the best of times. It was a sprawling building constructed from grey plascrete, almost half a kilometre to a side. Even the towers and spires that reached up from it were drab. Funds had run out halfway through their construction, and to Jon they had always seemed reminiscent of fleshless fingers reaching up to claw desperately at the sky. The few gargoyles adorning their walls had been worn smooth by time and the elements into almost featureless lumps of stone.

Jon queued patiently to enter the building through one of the side-entrances, in a long line of hunched, haggard administratum clerks, all dressed identically in frayed grey clothing supplied by their employer. A few had umbrellas, but most did not, the constant rain plastering their hair flat against their scalps. They endured this with an air of long familiarity.

After only a fifty minute wait he made it inside the building, and pushed his way through the crowd of milling clerks and adepts. A servitor with arms replaced by mops clicked and whirred as it wiped away the trail of rainwater he left behind him.

Jon took a lift to the thirty-fourth floor. The lift was crowded to capacity with other workers, but he didn’t notice the fact that there was a slight area of clear space around him, nor the occasional worried glances from the others. His eyes were fixed unwaveringly on the lift doors. When they slid open he stepped out immediately and strode away down the corridor. Those that remained in the lift relaxed subtly, although they would have found it hard to articulate why.

Jon stepped into the office he had spent the last six years of his working life within. It was a square room, filled with desks arranged in orderly rows and columns. At each desk a clerk sat, tapping away at keyboards, entering data from slates brought by servitors into the central cogitator, from there to be transferred to somewhere else in the vast building for further processing.

The clattering of the keys filled the room, a noise that Jon had long since filtered out from his perception. So much so that he did not notice how the sound changed as he walked down the central aisle. The keystrokes of the nearest clerks faltered as they took in his appearance, a ripple of comparative quiet that spread down the aisle where he passed and out across the room as others began to look round. He entered the supervisor’s office without knocking.

The supervisor himself was sitting behind his desk, slates spread out in front of him. He was looking through the glass front of the office, a quizzical expression on his face, obviously having picked up on the change in the background noise. He barely spared Jon a glance.

“Your shift doesn’t start for two hours, clerk. Come back later”. Jon stepped forward, and only then did the supervisor give him his full attention, slowly rising to his feet.

“I said…..”

The first stroke of the knife opened the supervisor’s throat, a jet of dark red blood sprayed from the wound and splattered against the glass wall of the office. The supervisor toppled backwards, the fountain of blood spewing from the gash reaching almost to the ceiling. Heedless of the rising chorus of panicked screams from outside, Jon moved over to the supervisor, straddled his torso and began to stab him, over and over again in the face and chest.

Only when the blade of the knife snapped did he stop. Wiping trickling blood out of his eyes, Jon got to his feet and walked back into the main room. It was now completely deserted, chairs overturned and slates scattered across the floor. For the first time he could remember, all was silent.

Jon moved across to his desk and sat down, placing the broken knife on the table in front of him. After a few moments he reached into a drawer for a quill and a piece of paper. He wrote briefly, then sat back in the chair and picked up the knife.

Twenty minutes later, the Arbites found him, still sitting in the chair. His eyes were closed, and the jagged blade of the knife was embedded in his wrist. The first Arbiter into the room picked up the piece of paper, read it, then dropped it back onto the desk with a contemptuous snort.

During the clean-up that followed, no-one noticed the blood soak slowly into the paper until the words “I’m sorry, Ilsa” were obscured completely.

Random Musical Interlude 34

2010-05-04T16:22:00.000+01:00

Burden, by Opeth.

Fascist Follow-Up

2010-04-30T08:41:00.002+01:00

After my brief post on the BNP yesterday, I read a local newspaper that had profiles on the candidates for the Bedford and Kempston constituency. The BNP candidate, William Dewick, was featured.

A couple of interesting points. Firstly, he doesn't live in Hertfordshire, as I had thought. He lives in Kent. Kent! How can he stand for Bedford and Kempston? Perhaps I should stand for election in Aberdeen in 2015?

Skipping most of the drivel he spouted, there is one particular comment that, to me, really underlines precisely what kind of people join the BNP.

"Cameron has just said that he would let in homosexuals from Africa. Most of them will have AIDS and we will have to treat them at enormous cost".

The casual bigotry in that comment is truly stunning.

BNP Propaganda

2010-04-29T13:51:00.004+01:00

A leaflet came through my door yesterday from the British National Party. Amazingly, I didn't immediately deposit it in the recycling bin; I read it first, and binned it afterwards.

It was full of the usual drivel you come to expect from the BNP; the kind of empty soundbites a party has to use to try and obscure the fact that its policies are xenophobic, ill-thought-out and just plain bullshit in many cases. So there was the talk about how the BNP would pull "our brave men and women" out of Afghanistan. There was mention made of increasing the weekly pension by stopping payments made overseas relating to "non-existent climate change". There was the laughable picture of Nick Griffin next to Winston Churchill; as if Churchill would do anything other than punch a fascist lke Griffin in the face and spit on him.

Two points about the language it used caught my eye. The first was that it claimed that British people are becoming "second-class citizens" in their own country (or something along those lines, anyway. It's not like I took notes).

The claim is absurd, of course, but it tells you a lot about the mindset of the BNP. The world has changed a lot, and they haven't changed with it. In the past century we've had a lot of immigration, true. We've also had immeasurable progress in womens'and gay rights, a change in attitude about race, and the introduction of new religions and new ideas. The BNP don't like that, they feel left behind, longing for some mythical bygone era where things were so much better, at least in their eyes.

That attitude is encapsulated in the other point that struck me:

"Get even: vote BNP".

Doesn't that just sum it up perfectly. They don't understand the modern world, they're frightened of it. They feel hard done by, that they are owed something. And so they say "Get even, vote for us. That'll be one in the eye for all those politicians". That's the kind of sentiment they're trying to tap into, that's what parties like that thrive upon.

The BNP are out of touch. Not to mention racist, misogynist, ignorant, fascist, bigoted and just idiotic in general.

That's right, I don't like them, and I have no respect for anyone who would vote for them. Hopefully only a few idiots in my constituency will.

Parties like the BNP are an anachronism. The sooner they die out the better.

No Food Or Water For Seventy Years

2010-04-29T13:38:00.003+01:00

That is the claim being made by an 83 year old man in India. He is now under observation by a team of thirty doctors. Apparently military medics believe that he can:

".....help in working out strategies for survival during natural calamities, extreme stressful conditions and extra-terrestrial explorations like future missions to the Moon and Mars by the human race"

Apparently the man "meditates" and gains energy that way. But from where did he obtain these miraculous powers, I hear you cry?

The man claims that he was blessed by a goddess at age eight, and that is what has enabled him to survive without food or water for so long.

He doesn't mention which goddess this is, but I suspect she is the goddess of bullshit.

Let me put it another way:

HE'S LYING!

The most exasperating thing is that thirty doctors are going to waste their time on this until he is shown to be talking utter rubbish. Think how many other people they could be helping in the meantime.

Seriously; how gullible do you have to be to believe such crap? Don't they have homes for crazy old men in India?

Fundamentalism And The Conservatives

2010-04-26T13:00:00.000+01:00

Troubling reading in this article from the New Statesman. In the past I blogged about Nadine Dorries and her attempts to change the law on abortion, and the fact that she was backed by christian fundamentalists. Now, it seems, their influence is growing in the Conservative party as a whole.

In her own words:

"“Historically, there have been splits in the Conservative Party over religion. But the vast majority of the new MPs will be social Conservatives who have similar opinions to myself," Nadine Dorries tells the New Statesman. “I can think of half a dozen Conservatives that don't agree with me, but they're leaving at the next election - people like Andrew MacKay and David Curry. The new MPs that are coming in are all social Conservatives - people like Fiona Bruce, Philippa Stroud, Louise Bagshawe.""

Given that Nadine Dorries frequently exhibits at best an ignorance of reason and science, and at worst flat-out disregard for anything that contradicts her precious beliefs, the news that the number of MPs in the Conservatives that share her views is set to increase is, to put it mildly, worrying.

At the moment the General Election could go either way, and there's still (unfortunately) a good chance that the Tories will form the next government. David Cameron has already announced his intention to look again at the abortion limit.

This could lead to a growth in influence of people like Andrea Minichiello Williams, a fundamentalist who believes not only in a young Earth, but thinks its age to be about 4,000 years, so even younger than most other creationists! She was heavily involved in Dorries' abortion campaign, and her legal centre has consistently backed christians complaining about religious persecution. Indeed, she seems to be doing everything possible to add fuel to the absurd notion that christians are persecuted in this country.

Personally I find it unlikely that we will see religion influencing politics in the UK to the extent that it does in the US; we're too cynical for that I think. However, any rise in fundamentalist influence in the UK is a bad thing as far as I am concerned.

A potential increase in the power of extremist christians: yet another reason not to vote Conservative.

Lagoon Nebula

2010-04-22T16:29:00.003+01:00

Yes, I know this is the second space picture blog post in a row and I promised to try and write a blog post once a week. But I've been busy *looks shifty*

Anyway, have a glance at my new desktop background: an image of the Lagoon nebula.

See? Better than a boring blog post, right?

The Rosette Nebula

2010-04-14T13:24:00.001+01:00

This is the Rosette nebula, a large star-forming region that is about five thousand light-years away from us. The image was taken by the Herschel far infrared observatory.

Pandering To The Religious Vote

2010-04-12T13:45:00.003+01:00

Let's face it, all the political parties do it, and with a general election only weeks away I anticipate that Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems will each be going all-out to win votes however they can, even if it means pandering to faith-based views that have little grounding in reason.

Here's a classic example from David Cameron. In an interview on Friday with the Catholic Herald, he has called for the abortion limit to be lowered from its current position of 24 weeks to 22 weeks, or even 20.

"My own view is that we do need to review the abortion limit"

We did that, back in 2008, don't you remember? Efforts were made to cut the abortion limit, fronted by the chronically dishonest MP for Mid Bedfordshire, Nadine Dorries who was backed, it turns out, by our very own Christian fundamentalists, including Andrea Minchiello Williams. If that name sounds familiar, she works for the Christian Legal Centre, which has backed one religious moron after another in their complaints about not being able to wear crucifixes in certain places, or the fact that they feel their religious beliefs have been discriminated against by their being asked to do their jobs. And lost, consistently.

Anyway, back to good old Dave's views.

"I think that the way medical science and technology have developed in the past few decades mean that an upper limit of 20 or 22 weeks would be sensible"

Well, there's a reason that the limit is at 24 weeks. That's what the science supports. Babies born prior to that require considerable periods of time on life support, and are in almost every case unable to survive without such medical intervention. Cameron, Dorries and every other pro-reduction advocate in the Commons had their chance to make the case for reducing the abortion limit, and what happened?

They lost.

"A proposal to reducing the abortion limit to 22 weeks was defeated in 2008 by 304 votes to 233, a majority of 71.
A proposed 20-week deadline was thrown out by 332 to 190, a majority of 142"

And now, when it seems likely that the balance in the Commons will shift dramatically, up pops this issue again. How convenient. Where is the evidence, however, that this is what the public actually want? Has medical technology dramatically improved since 2008?

No. Cameron is simply trying to curry favour with the religious. Placing issues like abortion prominently in an election strategy is a shift to American-style politics, which is heavily religion-fuelled. Is that what we want in this country? I certainly don't. I want political issues decided on the evidence, not on the basis of people believing that God wants things to be a certain way.

This issue was voted on, and defeated. Bringing it up now is a cynical ploy. But is anyone surprised by that, really?

"Anti-abortion campaigners believe they stand a better chance after the election with fewer Labour MPs to defend the status quo.
Former nurse Nadine Dorries, the MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, told at the time of the vote how she held a foetus that gasped for breath and took seven minutes to die after a botched abortion.
Ms Dorries said: ‘What I thought we were committing that day was murder.’"

I do like Nadine. I blogged at the time of the abortion debate on her tendency to play fast and loose with the facts around abortion issues. For instance, she has promoted the discredited "Hand of Hope" story as being fact: see here for detail.

But it's not only the abortion issue. Cameron has given assurances that "faith schools" will still have the ability to set their own sex education curriculums. Phew. Thank God that these schools will be able to opt out of teaching children about immoral things like contraception, or how babies are made. Because, as we all know, keeping teenagers in ignorance about such things helps to reduce sexual activity and teen pregnancy. That's how it works, right?

Suffice it to say, I won't be voting Conservative at the next election.

----------

In other news, the Vatican's official newspaper has published a glowing piece on the Beatles, forgiving them for claiming that they were "bigger than Jesus", and for the "mysterious, possibly Satanic" messages in their songs. They were probably referring to "I am the Walrus" there, everyone knows it's a favourite hymn at Black Masses.

It's nice that they've taken the time to comment on this now, it shows they obviously have their priorities in order. After all, what else would they be writing about at the moment?

Little White Dot

2010-04-08T13:00:00.000+01:00

See that small dot of white on the right side of the picture? That's the International Space Station.

That's the sort of thing humans can do when we put our minds to it.

Impressive, isn't it.

Simplicity

2010-04-06T23:05:00.004+01:00

My first submission to this month's short story competition being run on a forum I post on. The theme is "The Edge".

Simplicity

(1,003 words)

Good morning, my sweet. How are you feeling? Well, I trust, as always.

I was beginning to think that you would never awaken. Perhaps I should have woken you myself; we were supposed to get started quite some time ago. But when I entered the chamber and saw you lying there, so peacefully, well.....I just didn't have the heart. I hope you'll forgive me.

If I'm honest, though, letting you rest was as much for my benefit as yours. I enjoy watching you sleep. It seems a strange thing to say, I am sure, but I've always thought of unconsciousness as being a most wonderful thing, even though it isn't really a thing at all, but rather an absence. You are the perfect example. When you are asleep there is such a tranquillity about you. The soft, rhythmic sighs of your breathing. The movements you make. Sometimes they are subtle, almost invisible to the eye. Sometimes they are abrupt and clumsy, almost ugly, yet despite that they possess a strange grace, or so I believe. It is hard to put into words, even for one such as myself, but watching you like that is a genuine pleasure for me. Sometimes, you know, in the quietest moments of the night, I fancy that I can hear your heart beating.

The others have forgotten about such things. Although perhaps that is unfair. I'm sure they know, on some level, but the knowledge is buried so deep that it may as well be lost, and I very much doubt that any of them are interested in retrieving it. They have allowed it to escape them, obsessed as they are with experience, the louder and more expressive the better. They no longer remember the simpler pleasures. To stand on a balcony, and watch the people in the city all around you. The joy of slowly cultivating a seed from dormancy to sapling to mighty tree. The simple contentment that comes from watching a loved one sleep.

No, it seems that very few remember such things any more. Perhaps you think that would sadden me? To know that I am one of the few who can truly understand and appreciate the simplest, most subtle pleasures? Well, you would be wrong, my sweet. A rare lapse for you, but entirely understandable I think given the circumstances. What other conclusion could you come to, appreciating as little of my life as you do?

The truth is that such knowledge gladdens me, more than you can comprehend. It means I am special, one of the few among my kin who possesses such a level of understanding. Perhaps you are thinking this attitude somewhat arrogant. You would be right, of course. But I would like to think I am humble enough to admit my own conceits. We all want to feel special, in one way or another. I would not want to be just like everyone else. I wish to stand out from the crowd, even if I am the only one who knows that I do.

Of course, you do not have to worry about such things. Thanks to my ministrations, you stand apart from the humdrum populace anyway, and you have had to do nothing but allow me to help you become so individual, more so than you could have ever accomplished on your own. Oh, listen to me, allowing my conceit to show once again.

Hush, my dear. You don't have to say anything. I have already heard everything you could possibly want to say, so many times before. You don't understand that, not yet. But in time.....in time you will come to truly appreciate what I am doing, and give yourself fully to it. There are no need for words, at least not uttered by your lips, lovely and red as they are. I am not too proud to admit that I do like the sound of my own voice. But then you already knew that, didn't you?

My sweet, I will not ask you again.

That's much better. Please forgive my harshness, but there is a reason I came to your chamber today. I wanted to show you this.

Look, my dear. Can you see it? Can you? Do you know what it means?

Oh my. You look, but I sense that you do not understand. Sometimes, my sweet, you frustrate me so. Let me help you understand more fully.

Perhaps you believed that I was rambling earlier on? If so, you were mistaken. Every word I utter has a purpose, though you may not understand what that is, and perhaps never will. But in this case the connection is so plain, so crude and obvious, that even one such as yourself might comprehend.

Is that.....ah, I can see it in your eyes now. The dawning of realisation, the illumination of knowledge. Is it not a glorious thing, my sweet. Embrace it my dear, absorb its meaning. Understand.

My brethren have forgotten so much. They think that bestowing the gift of sensation, whether it be upon themselves or others, requires crudity and ugliness, imprecision. And so they make use of the most unsubtle of implements in their work. The cudgel. The rack. The vial of acid. Biting teeth, burning venom. They no longer remember what can be accomplished, what symphonies of experience can be evoked, by the use of a simple blade.

Like this one. You will have already observed, my sweet, how slender its edge is. I spent many hours yesterday honing it to the width of less than a single molecule. It is, quite literally, my finest blade. Let me show you.

There.

Do you feel it?

It took a moment, did it not, for you to realise what had happened? The blade is so sharp that your body simply did not register its passage immediately. Such subtlety. From simple application, to glorious result.

And there.

Oh, my love. Your voice sounds so beautiful this morning. My lord will be pleased.

Let us continue, together.

Scientific Snippets

2010-03-30T16:24:00.003+01:00

A new record has been broken by the LHC, which has now created collisions at 7.5 TeV. Although there are expected to be months of work at a minimum before any major discoveries are confirmed, this is a significant milestone for the LHC. And still no world-eating black holes yet. Who would have thought it.

Also, a new dinosaur fossil has been found in China. Half a metre long, it probably ate termites and ants and was a highly efficient runner.

Random Musical Interlude 33

2010-03-25T15:28:00.001Z

Primavera, by Ludovico Einaudi.

Martian Avalanche

2010-03-16T13:00:00.000Z

An image of an avalanche on Mars, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The bottom-left of the image is the "top".

Pretty damn cool.

The Devil Is In The Vatican!

2010-03-11T15:22:00.002Z

So says the Vatican's chief exorcist. And if anyone knows, it should be him, right?

""The Devil resides in the Vatican and you can see the consequences," said Father Amorth, 85, who has been the Holy See's chief exorcist for 25 years.

"He can remain hidden, or speak in different languages, or even appear to be sympathetic.....""

Apparently he's not the Pope, though. Thought I should make that clear.

"".....At times he makes fun of me.""

I'm willing to bet that he's not the only one.

But wait, there's more.

"In a rare insight into the world of exorcism, the Italian priest told La Repubblica newspaper that the 1973 film The Exorcist gave a "substantially exact" impression of what it was like to be possessed by the Devil."

So people possessed by the Devil vomit pea soup. Fascinating. But what if they haven't had any soup?

""From their mouths, anything can come out – pieces of iron as long as a finger, but also rose petals," said Father Amorth, who claims to have performed 70,000 exorcisms. "

Rose petals. You wouldn't think of the Devil as a keen gardener, would you?

Utter lunacy. Even more crazy is the fact that people actually believe this rubbish.

The Written Ward

2010-03-03T22:02:00.003Z

In an attempt to promote my writing more I have started a Facebook page called The Written Ward. This page has links to all of my work (two books and five short stories so far), and will be updated whenever I publish something new. There is also a discussion section where people can leave feedback on any of my writing.

So, if any of my readers fancy it (and you have a Facebook account obviously) then follow the link and become a fan! If you really like my work, perhaps you could forward the link to other friends of yours on Facebook.

Yes, I am a shameless self-publicist.

To those of my readers that are already my friends on Facebook, you should already have an invite. Just go to your home page and it should be on there somewhere. You don't get e-mail notifications with this type of page.

Hope everyone likes the page, and my writing too of course.

Nostalgia

2010-02-28T20:39:00.002Z

Today I finally found the time to finish my latest short story, Nostalgia, which is now available for free download.

This story is longer than Yesterday's Man and is set in a post-apocalyptic world.

Let me know what you think!

NGC 346

2010-02-26T13:00:00.001Z

A star-forming region in the Small Magellanic Cloud, 210,000 light-years away.

Gay Porn Shown To Church Congregation

2010-02-18T13:46:00.003Z

Yes, you read that right.

Currently in Uganda there is wide-spread pressure for the law to be changed so that homosexuals could face the death penalty. As it stands it is already illegal, and punishable by imprisonment. But this is not enough for some people, apparently.

In what can diplomatically be described as an unusual move, a particularly vociferous bigot (sorry, I meant pastor) named Martin Ssempu decided to show the gay porn to his congregation of about three hundred in the hope that it would lead to increased support for the proposed change in the law. He defended himself by saying the following:

"We are in the process of legislation and we have to educate ourselves about what homosexuals do"

Firstly, it's hard to understand on what basis he has come to the conclusion that what happens in gay porn films is in any way representative of what the majority of homosexuals actually do. Secondly, as a Christian pastor, isn't he supposed to regard the viewing of any kind of pornography sinful? And yet here he is, showing it in his church to his congregation! And I wouldn't be surprised if he viewed it himself a few times as well in private, to find particularly "unpleasant" (from his viewpoint) moments.

Not to mention that the congregation undoubtedly contained children. What was the pastor thinking? Oh, that's right. He was thinking that he could use the pornography to push his hate-filled agenda, and in the meantime ignore the effect viewing things like this might have on young children, not to mention the fact that pornography is supposed to be sinful. And how did he know how to find such films? The mind boggles.

And what is his justification for the law he is promoting?

"In Africa, what you do in your bedroom affects our clan, it affects our tribe, it affects our nation"

No, it doesn't! Why the hell is what consenting adults get up to in the privacy of their own bedroom anyone else's business? It isn't,but it seems, as is the case everywhere else in the world, that Ssempu is one of those people who just can't seem to stop obsessing about it.

And he's religious. What a coincidence. Who would have thought it.

The proposed law has gained wide support among conservative religious groups, and although there is growing international pressure on the president of Uganda to block this law, there is no guarantee that will actually happen.

If this law passes, think what it will mean. Men and women put to death, for the crime of being homosexual. Their executioners bigoted and ignorant men and women fervent in the righteousness of their actions, as imparted to them by the preachings of their backward and cruel religion. And, sad as it is, there are too many people around the world who will agree with them.

Shameful and disgusting beyond words. But that's religion for you.

Orion

2010-02-15T13:59:00.006Z

The Orion nebula in all its glory.

Yesterday's Man

2010-02-09T15:19:00.003Z

My latest short story, Yesterday's Man, is now available for free download from Lulu, and has also been added to my Links of Interest.

The story is only a few thousand words long, and is written in a conversational style, basically one person talking for the whole story. This is a way of writing I haven't really tried before so it will be interesting to see what others think of it, and I've been a little less formal with the language I used as a result.

I hope you all like it, and any comments are as always most welcome.

Random Musical Interlude 32

2010-02-04T13:00:00.001Z

Epic, by Faith No More. Probably the best song they ever did. Just try and ignore the weird grinning face.

Euthanasia And The Right To Die

2010-02-02T20:36:00.004Z

Recently in England a woman named Kaye Gilderdale was acquitted of the attempted murder of her daughter. Lynn Gilderdale, after 17 years of battling Myalgic Encephalopathy, had begged her mother to assist her in ending her own life, and Kaye did so.

As is to be expected in euthanasia cases such as this, a great deal of media scrutiny surrounded this verdict, and many articles have been written that fall on either side of the euthanasia debate. One of them was written by a man named MR Hall, in the Guardian's Comment is Free section. In it Hall expressed what I regard as abhorrent views on euthanasia and suffering within society, so much so that I am writing this post as a response.

He sets out his views early on in the article:

"Harris and pressure groups such as Dignity in Dying would like a new law that would somehow accommodate "mercy killers", but it's a desire I find abhorrent; downright offensive in fact."

Why is he so appalled at the notion? You will be shocked, I'm sure, to learn that it is because of his religious beliefs.

"Those of a religious persuasion (and I count myself among them) talk about the sacredness of life, non-believers of its inviolability. The Christian view is that life simply isn't ours to take – it's God-given, and his alone to end."

Hall talks a lot about the sacredness of life in this article, but already he has created a problem for himself. The fact is that, while Christians may claim that life isn't for us to take and that it is God's decision, very many of them will have little issue with taking lives when necessary. How many Christians support the death penalty? How many believe that it is acceptable, if there is no alternative, to kill an attacker if he threatens you or your family? How many believe in the notion of a just war, or fight in the armed forces?

Not to mention the fact that the notion of life being "God-given" is itself an unsupported assertion.

"Once "mercy" is introduced as a virtue capable of overriding the absolute duty to preserve life, the sufferer is subject to relativism, fallible human judgment and societal trends and fashions."

The "absolute duty" is already, in the eyes of many Christians, a relative concept, subject to fallible human judgement. With his use of the phrase "societal trends and fashions", Hall begins to deploy his variant of the slippery slope argument, much beloved of those opposed to assisted suicide.

"One needn't go as far to witness a collective downgrading of regard for life. Since pregnant women have routinely been offered termination on discovery that a foetus has Down's Syndrome, there has been a feeling abroad that choosing to have the child is somehow selfish, self-indulgent even; not fair on the child and definitely not fair on those of us whose taxes will go to support it."

Not fair on those whose taxes will support it? Whose feelings are these, exactly? I would argue, however, that the offering of abortion to mothers carrying foetuses with Down's syndrome does not necessarily reflect a disregard for certain kinds of life. Many parents might feel unable to bear the burden of looking after a baby with the syndrome, or be unwilling to inflict such a hardship upon their child. This issue is complex and there are many views surrounding it. It is by no means as clear-cut as Hall glibly attempts to suggest.

"We've developed all manner of intellectual smokescreens to cover our creeping expediency (such as convincing ourselves that it's all about preventing unnecessary suffering), but it would be dishonest not to admit that we've come to pity the carer – the poor person whose life and chances have been sacrificed to the needs of another whose degraded existence will never amount to anything anyway – over the cared-for. In a world where achievement is measured in degrees of personal advancement, years of self-sacrificing care are viewed as wasted."

That's right, we have come to pity the carer. There is nothing wrong with that. Such people live with a tremendous burden. Few of us will ever be able to truly understand what it means to have to care for someone crippled by illness every moment of your life. Compassion for those who struggle with and yet still bear such a weight upon their shoulders is nothing to be ashamed of.

Hall is mistaken, whether deliberately or otherwise, however. Such time spent caring for a loved one is not wasted. If a carer willingly devotes themselves to looking after their ill child or relative, then that is far from a waste. The issue, in these cases, is whether the person being cared for wishes to continue living as they do, or if they want to end it all, on their terms and at a time of their choosing.

"And once the value of life is placed on a sliding scale, it's a very short hop to saying that there is no right to life beneath a certain threshold, especially when one's continued respiration becomes a heavy burden on others."

Slippery slope again. I suspect Hall knows full well that any change in the law to allow assisted suicide will be accompanied by intense scrutiny, just as it should be. Nobody is talking about taking away the right to life of others, much as Hall would have us believe that they are. The issue is the right of an ill person to take their own life, and to be able to ask for help when they are in such a condition that they are unable to do it for themselves.

If a person has the right to live their life, then surely they have the right to choose to end it?

Not according to Hall. This is where the sickening nature of his views becomes apparent.

"But what about the sufferers, don't they have a right to escape their pain? No, not if we believe that life is sacred."

Read that again, if you would. A person enduring terrible suffering has no right to choose to end their pain. And why?

"We've become so used to the idea that suffering is to be avoided at all costs, that the very notion that we might have to bear it is seen as a violation of some emerging right to a minimum level of comfort. But suffering has a positive purpose. Of course it's tough for the sufferer, but it's only through witnessing the pain and agony of others that we properly develop empathy and compassion. Many of us will suffer at our end, and for years beforehand; but, I would maintain, we have a duty to tolerate our suffering as a sacrifice for the respect our society has learned to accord to life generally: only through coping with and witnessing our suffering will rising generations gain true respect for the miracle of conception and all that follows it."

That's right. Those with crippling illnesses are expected by Hall to endure their agony, for the good of society, so that we can properly develop empathy and compassion. Because, apparently, without that small portion of the population living unbearable lives, we would somehow be less moral.

This is sickeningly reminiscent of the argument as to why God allows suffering and evil in the world, so that we can demonstrate compassion for those around us. The theologian Swinburne has argued that Auschwitz served a greater good in that, among other reasons, it allowed the victims to behave in noble and courageous fashions.

I find such notions utterly repugnant, just as I do the argument Hall is putting forward.

"The calls for reform following the Inglis and Gilderdale cases perfectly exemplify how emotional responses to individual circumstances can lead directly to moral collapse."

It is almost laughable that Hall, having just advocated that sufferers of debilitating illness should have to endure their torment for the good of society, has the nerve to talk about moral collapse. The argument he has put forward is completely absent of any form of compassion; there are probably sociopaths who could sound more empathetic.

".....he is the kind of man who cannot see that suffering and the involuntary self-sacrifice of carers is a necessary part of a truly humane society; he is the kind of man whose weakness in the face of challenging absolute principles is too easily disguised as compassion."

And yet we know that this principle is hardly an absolute. If challenged upon it, I am willing to bet that Hall could envisage circumstances where the taking of life would be warranted. Yet he is happy to proclaim the compassion of others for those who suffer as "weakness", because they do not believe as he does that those who suffer have a duty to society to do so. Who here is the one devoid of compassion? It is Hall himself. In his adherence to his religiously-justified "absolute principle", Hall is closing his eyes to the reality of the suffering of his fellow humans.

"To uphold the sacredness of life, one is also forced to accept that compared with the alternative, to dispatch one in pain is easy, brutal and selfish, even when he or she is pleading for life to end. For it is there, right in the cleft of mortal desperation that the quality of humanity is most tested and respect for life reinforced."

It is not "easy, brutal and selfish". Does Hall genuinely believe that Kaye Gilderdale did not agonise over the decision that she made to help her daughter end her own life? Does he think that it was a choice easy to make? What loving mother could decide such a thing without enduring unimaginable pain? It will be something that she will have to live with for the rest of her life, yet Hall would claim it to be "easy, brutal and selfish". The words of a man who desperately lacks the empathy that he so pompously proclaims society to require.

If someone is enduring such suffering that they truly wish to end their own lives, then to withhold the means for them to do so in the name of adherence to a faux-absolutist principle of the sacredness of life is the very antithesis of compassion. It is instead the definition of cruelty.

Equality Vs The Pope

2010-02-02T13:00:00.001Z

As many of you are probably aware, the illustrious leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Ratzinger himself, intends to befoul the United Kingdom by paying it a visit in September. A visit, incidentally, that it is expected to cost the UK taxpayers an estimated £20 million. No doubt this money will be well-spent on a souped-up Pope-mobile, lavish accommodations, high-class hookers and all the usual essentials that an entourage of high-ranking Catholics seems to require these days.

The National Secular Society is planning protests and has started a petition asking for the costs of this visit to be paid for by the Catholic Church, on the basis that they’re certainly not short of ill-gotten wealth. If you haven’t signed it already, go do so!

So what will the Pope be talking about whilst here in the UK spending our money? This transcript of a speech delivered to English and Welsh bishops by the Pope recently lends some insight into that. And unpleasant insight it is too.

It seems that the Pope is not happy with the UK’s recent attempt to pass a bill designed to work against discrimination and promote equality for all members of society.

“Your country is well known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society. Yet as you have rightly pointed out, the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs.”

In other words, he supports equality of opportunity for all members of society. Except, of course, when it infringes upon the Church’s precious right to discriminate according to their archaic, out-dated beliefs. If their beliefs are discriminatory, then by Jesus, they should be allowed to discriminate!

“In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed.”

What natural law would that be, Mr Pope? Would it be the natural law that has homosexuality common among many species in nature, not just our own? No? Apparently then “natural law” is whatever you say it is. Convenient. It is rich indeed for the Pope to preach about equality, when he presides over a Church that will not allow ordination of females into the priesthood as well. Women are treated equally, but are separate.

Now where have I heard that before.

“I urge you as pastors to ensure that the church's moral teaching be always presented in its entirety and convincingly defended. Fidelity to the Gospel in no way restricts the freedom of others – on the contrary, it serves their freedom by offering them the truth.”

Rubbish. It blatantly restricts the freedom of others by declaring homosexuality as sinful and an abomination. And what “truth” is being referred to here? Oh yes. That would be the “truth” that the Pope has decided upon, amidst all the other parts of the Bible that have been declared metaphorical, or that do not apply any more. A truth so utterly self-evident that practically every believer has a different idea of exactly what it is. Powerful indeed, your “holiness”.

The truth is that the evidence strongly suggests that homosexuality is perfectly natural. Attempting to discriminate against gay people on the basis of a text written thousands of years ago by a backward people is both unjust and immoral.

But Catholics don’t dislike gay people. They just dislike gay sex, which is immoral. Love the sinner, hate the sin. In other words, we don’t discriminate against you per se, instead we discriminate and campaign against your right to live your life with the same rights as straight people. We love you, but we would prefer that you forced yourself to remain celibate for your entire lives, or endured sham marriages with members of the opposite sex as many gay people have done in the past. Because, you know, it’s all a bit icky, isn’t it? And immoral, of course. Our holy book says so. Of course it also says that you should be put to death, but we don’t pay any attention to that these days. You should be thanking us.

But wait. There’s more.

“In a social milieu that encourages the expression of a variety of opinions on every question that arises, it is important to recognise dissent for what it is, and not to mistake it for a mature contribution to a balanced and wide-ranging debate.”

It really doesn’t matter whether the Pope is speaking strictly about the Church or the wider world here, the message is the same. Dissent is not to be tolerated, those that disagree with us are immature and narrow-minded. This in the same breath as talking about “wide-ranging debate”. It is staggering hypocrisy, and speaks volumes about the Pope’s opinion of those who dare to disagree with him.

“It is the truth revealed through scripture and tradition and articulated by the church's magisterium that sets us free.”

The Pope doesn’t know the meaning of the word freedom. We are free, yes. Free to adhere to the dogma of Catholicism, apparently, that does its damnedest to keep women and those pesky gays in their place. And heaven forbid that you should have a dissenting viewpoint, you immature heretic.

These are the views that the Pope is bringing to my country in September. He has every right to be here, true. But he should definitely pay for the privilege himself, and his opinions should be treated with the contempt they deserve by all rational people.

Punishing The Victims

2010-01-30T18:53:00.003Z

You may remember that, a few days before the commencement of the African Cup of Nations, the Togolese football team's bus was attacked. Three people aboard the bus were killed when Angolan separatists opened fire on the vehicle with machine guns. Following this attack, the Togolese government took the decision to withdraw their team from the tournament.

It seems, however, that the Confederation of African Football is not happy with this. They have taken the jaw-droppingly bizarre decision to not only fine the Togo FA $50,000, but also to ban the football team from competing in the Cup for the next two years. Their explanation for this decision is that the Togolese government interfered in the sport by keeping their team from competing, and this violated regulations.

What utter idiots.

The Togo team were fired on by machine guns! It's only by the greatest of good fortune that more people didn't die. I can't imagine what going through such an ordeal would have been like, but I'm pretty sure that afterwards playing football would not be high on my list of priorities.

But regardless of whether some of the footballers still wanted to play, the Togo government took the decision it did in order to protect its citizens. That is exactly what governments are supposed to do. The attack itself amply demonstrated that any Angolan claims of "security" were laughable. Not to mention the question of why on earth the competition was even held in Angola to begin with. The Togolese government had every right to withdraw its team if it felt that their security could not be guaranteed.

In effect the CAF has penalised the Togolese for choosing self-preservation over football. This demonstrates incredibly twisted priorities, and I would venture to suggest no small amount of greed in also levying a fine of $50,000. And what kind of message does this send out? What if such attacks happen in a future competition? Any competing team will face the prospect remaining in a situation where their lives might be in danger, or else withdrawing and being punished for that very act!

FIFA, it seems, has declined to comment on the ban. Bravo. Good work there from football's world governing body.

Hopefully Togo will appeal the suspension and fine, but the very fact that they have to do so is completely ridiculous. It would also be nice if the morons in the CAF who came up with this bright idea were given the boot, but I somewhat doubt that will happen. More's the pity.

My New Drinking Song

2010-01-25T08:46:00.000Z

Titan

2010-01-21T17:32:00.000Z

It has now been five years since Huygens detached from the side of Cassini and descended through the thick atmosphere of Titan. To mark that, here's an image of that particular moon. Taken in 2006 by Cassini, it's one of my favourite pictures of Titan.

Do Animals Have Souls?

2010-01-18T14:00:00.002Z

This week’s question on The Guardian’s Comment is Free Belief section is: Do Animals Have Souls? I always find these sorts of questions amusing, because the kind of answers that arise are usually nebulous and filled with vague hand-waving about what a soul actually is, and dubious reasoning about why humans actually have them. The first response, from Peter Bolton, an Anglican vicar, is no exception.

“"Soul" is about identity and self-awareness, and that something we call the "spiritual". Having a soul is about my ability to enter into relationships with my fellow human beings, the rest of the universe and with "God". Music, language, dance, art, making love, worship, laughter – all these things happen in the body but they are more than what the body is: they are "spiritual". Having a soul is about the fact that I live in my body but am more than my body.”

So he basically starts with the usual vague assertions, rather than actual evidence. Get used to this, folks. It seems a bizarre notion to me, but many religious people seem to think of their bodies as not fundamentally part of them but something that they simply ride around in for four score and however many years, like an EVA suit for the material universe. We’re not part of the universe really, reality is just something to explore for a while until we die and start our “real” lives. It’s bizarre, but also rather sad.

Adding the label “spiritual” to something seems to be his way of selecting things that he likes, and would like to believe that are part of his fundamental identity, something higher than the mundanity of our day to day lives. It’s interesting that he mentions things like “making love” and “laughter” but excreting and burping didn’t make it onto his list. Things like that never seem to: perhaps they’re simply less spiritual.

“Does a dolphin have a soul; does an ant or an amoeba? Is there such a thing as a doggie soul? Perhaps we could say more or less "yes" to some of these creatures and a definite "no" to others. Clearly, we can't altogether rule out the idea that some animals have quite sophisticated forms of communication.”

Well, that was nice and clear. And “we can’t altogether rule the idea out”? Actually that's wrong, because the fact that some animals have sophisticated communication is well known. As we continue to study, we are finding that many species have far greater communicative abilities than we had imagined.

“Do any have what we call "self-awareness"? There is a something about having a "soul" that rules out the use of the word in relation to all other animals. This dimension is what we call the "moral".”

Actually, yes, we’re pretty sure that some species, particularly among the primates, have concepts of “self”, albeit less developed than our own. But now Bolton jumps to something else: apparently having a soul is tied up with having a moral sense.

By that logic, quite a few animal species have souls. Experiments have shown that many species, particularly those that live in tight-knit social groupings, are capable of altruistic behaviour. Further, they have been shown to discriminate between those in their group who reciprocate in this regard, and those who do not, who behave in a selfish manner. Reciprocal altruism is one of the fundamental building blocks of what we sometimes laughably refer to as human morality: it seems, though, that we are not the only ones who make use of it.

“In the language of Genesis, we are "made in the image and likeness of God". This is usually taken to mean that we have a special role in creation – a special responsibility. Dolphins, ants, amoeba and dogs do not share this responsibility. Whether or not you can talk about dogs or dolphins having language, or making "choices", it seems obvious to me that one cannot intelligibly talk about them having "responsibility". This is what it is to have a soul, to be made in the image and likeness of God: it is to share with God in being responsible.”

Oh dear. The argument from my particular holy book. I know animals don’t have souls (which my holy book says that we do) because my holy book says something else. Sorry, Peter, but this is not evidence. Not even remotely close.

I would agree that we have a responsibility to other creatures and to the world, but only in the sense that, so far, we are the only species capable of understanding the long-term consequences of our actions. No other species understands concepts like “extinction”, or “climate change" or "science fiction". Does this, crucially, mean that we have a soul? No. It just means that we’re more intelligent and more self-aware than any species that currently exists on this world.

This is the problem with concepts like “the soul”. The definition is vague, and many of its so-called attributes are shared with other species. There is no actual, scientific evidence for the existence of any kind of soul. None.

When it boils down to it, people want to believe that they have souls. Why? Because it makes them special. It sets us apart from the other animals. It means that death is not the end for us, and that gives comfort. Unless, of course, you end up in hell.

Just because we would like to believe that we have souls, however, doesn’t mean that we do. That doesn’t make any of us any less special. Perhaps, though, it’s just not special enough for some.

Communists And Humanists

2010-01-17T19:41:00.003Z

Another letter to the editor of my local newspaper. As always, this is a first draft, so any comments or suggestions prior to submissions will be gratefully received.

Sir-

In his letter published January 17th, A. Rome describes the most repressive regimes of the 20th century as being "the atheistic humanist regimes of Eastern Europe". The reality is that these regimes were communist, not humanist, and the doctrines they espoused and the brutal methods with which they enforced them are far removed from the ideals of humanism.

Further, in referring to "repression by atheism", A. Rome makes an additional error. Atheism is merely the absence of belief in gods, and as such has no creed or tenets. In fact the repression of which he wrote arose as a consequence of attempts to implement communist ideals, not those of atheism, of which there are none.

Relaunch Rambling

2010-01-16T18:59:00.003Z

The frequency with which I've posted on this blog has dwindled a lot. From 276 posts in 2008, 2009 managed only a relatively meagre 102, and only 1 of those was in December.

I've been blogging for quite a while, and most of my posts can be grouped into broad categories. There are the music videos, the science articles and space pictures, and what I term my rants against religion. The latter has noticeably dwindled recently. I think a lot of that is to do with the fact that I feel I've already said a lot of what I wanted to say. There's only so often that I can decry the futility of religion and the horrors to which ignorance and superstition can drive people before it starts to become repetitious. Even to me. Even to me.

Blogging was my way of sharing ideas with the world, or at least that tiny fraction of it that reads the random stuff I post. Doing so has helped me understand more about my own thoughts on subjects and the things that interest me, in a way that I probably wouldn't have attained otherwise.

Is blogging an ego-trip? In a way it is, I admit that the things I posted were often done so at least partially because I wanted validation for my ideas, and for people to say that they approved, that I was right etc etc. I think there's a good chance that my decreasing level of posts is a reflection of the fact that I have less of a need for that validation these days.

Of course, I'm aware of the fact that writing this post could itself be seen as seeking validation. But who cares, really.

So why do I have less of a need for this? I think the answer lies in the fact that I'm far more socially active these days. As a consequence I have less time to sit and write. In the past, when I wrote my books, I had a lot of time to sit and write since I went out quite infrequently. That has changed now.

And it's for the better, I think. Some of my best friends have commented on changes in my personality, and said that I'm much improved compared to how I was a few years ago. Usually they say this while at least slightly drunk, but even so I think there's a lot of truth to it. I'm also much happier now, I think, than I was back then, and this has a lot to do with not only increased socialising, but the fact that I put myself out there more (so to speak) and am less concerned about what people might think of me for doing so.

Do I still worry about it? Yes. Do I let it stop me? Well.... not so much. :-)

If you're thinking that this is a bit of a rambling post, you should have paid more attention to the title. It's your own fault, really.

Anyway, to the point. Consider this post the official relaunch of Musings for 2010. Posts will not be as frequent as they were when I started out, but I'm aiming for a minimum of one a week. Hopefully what I do post will be at the very least interesting to some of you.

I hope you'll like it.

Ramble over.

Super Supernova

2009-12-07T14:00:00.001Z

What happens when a really big star goes boom? You see something like the image below:

Admittedly it's false-coloured, but even knowing that it's pretty spectacular as titanic clouds of rapidly-expanding gas go.

This is Kepler's supernova, or SN 1604, discovered by the great man himself in 1604. It holds the privileged position of being the most recent supernova to have been confirmed to have occurred in our galaxy. Only about twenty thousand light-years away, this stellar remnant represents one of our best sources of information about supernovas, and as a consequence is much studied to this day.

For those interested it can be found in the constellation Ophiuchus, which I have so far never managed to find in the night sky. Wrong time of year now, though.

Enceladus

2009-11-23T14:00:00.003Z

Above is a picture, taken recently by Cassini. Notice the spark of white at the top of the circle: that, ladies and gentlemen, is a geyser of water (mostly). This is the moon Enceladus, which orbits the planet Saturn, a world that is about 762,700,000 miles away from us on average. Think about that distance for a moment.

We can send probes across the vastness of space and take pictures of fountains of water on distant icy moons. How could anybody not find this awe-inspiring beyond words?

Water On The Moon

2009-11-16T13:09:00.005Z

On October 9th NASA slammed a probe into the surface of the Moon, intending to study the resulting plume of material for signs of water. Nothing much seemed to happen, and the consensus among the media was that the impact was a bit of a damp squib. But then what do the media know?

A photo of the impact itself.

Not much, it turns out. Scientists have continued studying the ejecta and vapour plume given off by the impact, and have reported the discovery of water. 25 gallons of it to be precise.

As yet it's uncertain how typical this crater is among the other craters in the shadowed region of the Moon, which due to its lack of exposure to sunlight is the most likely place to find water.

Even so, this is good news. The Moon, perhaps, is not quite dry as a bone. Future colonies might have a better chance of independent survival than had been thought.

Brothers In Arms

2009-11-11T13:00:00.000Z

NGC604 Nebula, The Triangulum Galaxy

2009-11-05T14:47:00.003Z

Babies In Hell

2009-11-02T14:00:00.000Z

Over on Premier, a christian named Todd was asked the following question by Lee:

"Do babies go to Hell BTW? Will they be tortured?"

Todd's reply (emphasis mine):

"I don't know. I'm sure it's case-by-case. You fail to consider that for God, yesterday, today and tomorrow are all 'right now'. If they do, then God must have a very good reason for allowing it."

That's right. Apparently, if God sentences babies to be tortured for all eternity, there has to be a very good reason for it. But what might that be, I asked. The answer:

"To eradicate evil once and for all, eternally. (this is the reason)"

There are few words to describe how disgusting this notion is. This guy reckons that babies, guilty of nothing except being born (according to Christian beliefs) will be tortured for all eternity so that evil can be eradicated. And this, from a supposedly all-loving, perfectly good God.

Where is the justice in that? The morality? There is none.

This is where blind religious faith leads you: to abhorrent notions like the one above. Babies are wicked, sinful creatures. We all are. We are all destined to be tortured for eternity unless we repent and believe in a god for which there is no evidence, save only for subjective assertions mirrored by the claims of all the other competing religions. Make the wrong choice, or have the misfortune to be born in the wrong part of the world, and you'll be damned for all eternity.

Along with all the dead babies.

But God is love, folks!

Sickening.

Zombie! Aarrgghh!

2009-11-02T09:00:00.000Z

Music

2009-10-26T13:05:00.001Z

Sometimes you come across particular songs that are really moving, and you can't put your finger on why. Something about them seems to speak to something inside you, that part of yourself that finds beauty and charm in the strangest places. So it is with me and the music below.

It's the soundtrack to the film Moon, which I went to see in London a few months back. It's one of those rare soundtracks that complements the film perfectly, with almost no dissonance at all. But even listening to it by itself is immensely enjoyable.

Tracks one and five are particularly good. In track one you pick up on a certain piano refrain that is repeated throughout many of the tracks. It's hard to put my finger on why I like it so much, but I really do.

Apologies for the introspective babble, but I'm in that kind of mood. I defy you to listen to the music and not be moved.

Random Musical Interlude 31

2009-10-25T11:29:00.001Z

Divenire, by Ludovico Einaudi. Just discovered this guy's work; it's very good indeed.

Tournamental

2009-10-16T16:17:00.003+01:00

Last Sunday I attended my second tournament since starting Taekwondo- the Imperial Taekwondo Association English championships, held in Reading.

In case you're wondering about my first; suffice it to say that doesn't really count. It was incredibly badly organised, and after eight hours of waiting I, along with several others who were waiting to compete, got fed up and went home. Plus I was sick that day, and I'm told I went from pale to an interesting shade of yellow over the course of the day. Not a lot of fun.

Anyway, this year's event was much better organised, mainly because it was spread over two days with the children under 13 and the "veterans" over 35 competing on the Saturday. I went along with my friend Bob and another guy from our TKD class. Bob and myself got up before six in the morning, so suffice it to say the journey down to Reading wasn't notable for witty banter and intellectually stimulating conversation.

Bob was entered for patterns, sparring and breaking; whereas I myself, through a combination of possible laziness and lack of confidence in the footwork for my patterns, opted for the sparring alone. I had to wait about four hours to compete, but didn't mind very much as there's always plenty to watch at a TKD tournament.

Eventually my sparring category was called up. We were all divided by weight into several groupings: light, medium, heavy and hyper-weight. There was a micro-weight category, but nobody fell into that- perhaps unsurprising since any male between the ages of 18-34 is unlikely to weigh below 54 kilos unless they've recently suffered a debilitating illness.

I was classed as light (I know, who would have thought it). There were three other guys in my group, one of whom goes to the same class as I do. It was my fervent hope that we wouldn't end up sparring, since I knew he could beat me (!). My first opponent was a grade lower than me (so a blue tag), about my age or slightly younger.

This is where it gets a bit vague, since a lot of what I did during the actual fighting is a bit of a blur. I definitely remember knocking the guy down at least five times, once with a reverse heel kick that caught him on the jaw, the other times with punches to the face and once with a side kick, I think. Several times I drove the guy back and got him out of the ring, which is what you're supposed to try and do if you can. But a lot of stuff I don't really remember. Martin (the guy from Bedford in my category) told me afterwards that I'd done a beautiful side kick, punch, back kick combination, and my response was: I did?

Anyway.

I beat the first guy pretty decisively and went on to the next round. For his first round Martin sparred the remaining guy, a red belt who was built like a boxer and apparently started out as one. Martin lost, unfortunately, the red belt kept dodging and he didn't really get going as a result.

So, onto the final. I was slightly more nervous of this opponent, as I had just seen him win against a guy I've trained with for years. He was a tougher fight, and caught me with a nice shot to the nose at one point. On the plus side, it reminded me to keep my guard up. He was shorter than me and I'm leg-oriented anyway, so I got into the habit of kicking him, going in for a punch or two then dodging the inevitable counter. That's my usual technique anyway, given how light I am I'm usually going to come off worse in a brawl.

The round lasted two minutes, and by the last thirty seconds I was ahead on points, so stood there for ten seconds waiting for him to make a move. After that I got slightly impatient and went on the attack, which worked out in my favour as he was pretty tired by that point.

The end result:

So, all in all, a pretty good tournament. I'll definitely be going back next year.

Six Months In Jail for Neumann Parents

2009-10-07T13:56:00.004+01:00

Sky News (I know, I know, but this was the first article I could find) reports that sentence has been passed on the parents of Madeline Neumann.

Madeline was an eleven year old girl who fell ill with an undiagnosed but treatable form of diabetes. Instead of taking her to seek medical attention, her parents opted for that other credible alternative: praying. Her condition worsened, to the point that she could not longer speak or move. The response of her mother and father? Continue to pray, and invite some people round for a prayer group.

Madeline died, of course. One of the prayer group called 911 after she stopped breathing, which was nice of them I suppose, although why this person didn't think to call the authorities when they saw the state this little girl was in is a mystery to me.

In any case, the parents have been sentenced.

Six months in jail each.

That's right. Six. Months.

They're not even serving it continuously. The judge has deemed that they should serve one month a year for the next six years. A powerful punishment indeed. And the reason behind this judge's sadistic and cruel sentencing?

"so they can "think about Kara and what God wants you to learn from this"."

What a brilliant idea from the judge. This will certainly ensure that the parents learn their lesson, and in future try getting their children treated with actual medicine instead of speaking words to empty air and wishing really, really hard. And since when are judges in the business of passing sentences based on what they think their God wants the defendants to learn? Shouldn't they be more concerned with something else.....what is it now.....oh, yes.

THE LAW.

"Leilani Neumann said: "I do not regret trusting truly in the Lord for my daughter's health. Did we know she had a fatal illness? No. Did we act to the best of our knowledge? Yes.""

No, you did not act to the best of your knowledge you cretinous fool! You stood there and watched her die!

Clearly these two have learned their lesson.

Let's hope that none of their three remaining children ever get sick.

And this little pearl of wisdom to finish on:

"Marathon County Circuit Court Judge Vincent Howard, sentencing, said the Neumanns were "very good people raising their family, who made a bad decision, a reckless decision"."

No shit, your honour.

From the sound of things, I wouldn't trust this guy to judge a dog show, let alone cases like this. They made a "reckless decision". No, Judge Howard. They made a series of reckless decisions, one right after the other as their child's health grew worse and worse. Their irresponsibility cost their daughter her life.

Good people? No sir. Not by a long shot.

New Tyrannosaur Discovered

2009-10-06T17:30:00.000+01:00

Science Daily reports on the discovery of a new member of the Tyrannosaur family; a smaller, nimbler dinosaur compared to the titanic Tyrannosaurus Rex that we're all familiar with. A very interesting article. Tyrannosaurs have always been one of my favourite dinosaur types, there seems to have been much more variety among them than was thought.

The Holy Spirit

2009-10-04T19:27:00.000+01:00

Patronising Platitudes

2009-10-04T13:38:00.002+01:00

The following comment was left for me over at the Premier site:

"God gave you a good brain. Maybe you could look at the New Testament and try to discover who Jesus is rather than massage your own ego? Don't waste your life in trying to dissuade others in their belief in God or His creation, discover the Creator for yourself and get real value out of your life and talents. Eternity is serious business!"

What a patronising little homily, made all the worse by the fact that the person who sent this probably believes that she's doing a good thing.

God gave me a good brain, she claims, but then criticises my attempt to use it (by questioning religious beliefs) as massaging my own ego. What she doesn't seem to consider is that I've read the New Testament. It's not remotely convincing, nor are any of the religious arguments I've heard so far.

"Real value out of my life and talents". As if I don't have that anyway, or can only get it through believing in a god. I take the view that trying to learn things is a pretty valuable thing in itself, and as far as I'm concerned my life has plenty of value; value that would only be reduced by ignoring the evidence in favour of wishful thinking.

Eternity isn't serious business; life is. It's fun, too.

Letter To The Editor: The Sequel

2009-10-02T08:51:00.004+01:00

I had the distinct displeasure of coming across another letter advocating intelligent design in my local newspaper this morning. Since said newspaper doesn't seem to believe in the importance of keeping an up to date website, I'm reproducing the letter below. Response to come later today.

----------

One can easily understand the alarm caused to local humanist Charles Baily by a survey showing 60 per cent of local people are aware of the evidence for intelligent design in the universe (Opinions, August 27).

It was, after all, such scientific evidence that caused Professor Antony Flew, once dubbed "the world's most notorious atheist" to convert from his atheistic beliefs to a belief in the existence of a God.

As examples of the failure of intelligent design arguments Mr Baily claims that with regard to the eye "Darwin disposed of that".

Darwin was too great and too careful a scientist to have made the claim that Mr Baily does. Darwin does ask others to share his belief that the eye could appear by natural selection but did not provide the statistical and probability evidence required to support that claim.

Mr Baily also then uses the judgement of a US court to dismiss other evidence of intelligent origin. Not, I notice, a scientific judgement but that of a court of law. Sorry Mr Baily- case not proven.

----------

My response:

A Rome (Opinions October 1st) claims that it is the “evidence for intelligent design in the universe” that lead Professor Antony Flew to convert to belief in the existence of a God. It is worth pointing out that the god Flew believes in is a deistic god, and in no way the god of Christianity (the Designer as far as many ID advocates areconcerned).

He also claims that Darwin failed to provide statistical and probability evidence to support the evolution of the eye. Hardly surprising, since Darwin was not a mathematician. What he did provide was an entire chapter of evidence in his book. The eye has been the subject of much study since then, and the evolution of its many variants are well understood. I assume that A Rome’s mentioning probabilities is a means of suggesting that the eye is too improbable to have evolved. This is incorrect, given the billions of years that evolution has been acting upon life, coupled with the evidence from the fossil record and molecular genetics.

In respect of his comments on the US court judgement: the plaintiff’s case drew upon testimony from evolutionary biologists, philosophers of science and a wealth of scientific evidence.

The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. In attempting to shoehorn their chosen deity in somehow, ID advocates choose to ignore most of this in favour of cherry-picking what they think is “evidence” for their position. Such claims do not stand up to scrutiny.

It is to be hoped that more people will come to realise that fact once they are exposed to the evidence for evolution.

Random Musical Interlude 30

2009-09-25T15:20:00.000+01:00

Highway to Hell, by AC/DC.

Fix

2009-09-17T09:54:00.002+01:00

The following is a short story I just submitted to a competition being run on a fanfic website, the word limit is 1,000. Since it is a fanfic site, there are a few references that might confuse people not familiar with the universe in question, but hopefully it doesn't detract from the story itself. The theme of the competition is "Desperation".

Fix

(989 Words)

She had barely put up a fight.

That was the strangest thing of all, the fact that he couldn't seem to get his head around, no matter how long he thought about it or what angle he approached the idea from.

Even as his hands had closed around her throat and his thumbs pressed themselves tightly into her windpipe, she had simply stared at him. It was as if she simply couldn't believe that such a thing could be happening to her, that she could be assaulted in such a way. It took almost half a minute for her survival instincts to kick in and for her to grasp desperately at his hands, fighting to loosen their grip. He had leaned closer, close enough that he could see himself reflected in her eyes: skin unhealthily pale, hair lank and greasy and as for the eyes.....

Maybe that was why he had started screaming at her.

It had taken a long time for her to die. After a while he had shut his eyes so he didn't see her, but there was nothing he could do to stop the choked, rasping gargles she made from reaching his ears. Now, every time he actually managed to sleep, he heard those sounds over and over again in his dreams. He sometimes thought he heard them in his waking hours too. There were times, increasingly frequent now, when he no longer knew what was real and what a product of his addled imagination.

But there was nothing that he could do about that. He would have to find a way to live with it, for as long as he could.

When finally the retching sounds of her agonisingly drawn-out strangulation had finally stopped, he had let her fall to the floor like a discarded toy. For a long time he had just stared at her, eyes taking in every detail with a morbid fascination that he had been repulsed by but unable to gainsay. Only the overwhelming compulsion finally drove him to act.

Moving quickly, hands shaking involuntarily with a mixture of fear, excitement and withdrawal, he had searched her, stripping her of anything valuable that the dealer would take as payment. The credits in her purse. Her ring. It wasn't like she'd needed that anyway, its other half was lost forever, probably still on its owner's hand, in the middle of a pile of corpses on some Emperor-forsaken world. He had been so angry when she had refused to let him have it.

It was her fault that it had happened, if she'd given him the damn ring then he wouldn't have had to do what he had done. Didn't she realise how much he needed it? So what if it was her last connection to her dead husband? Not wearing it wouldn't make him any less dead, would it?

Damn her for forcing him to do it!

After that he had headed into the depths of the hive, looking for the dealer. He was usually to be found outside a run-down bar owned by a former Arbites who had been kicked out for being a little too keen to use force. He knew that for an Arbiter to be actually expelled for that, the guy must have done some seriously bad things. Because of this fact, he made a point of never actually going in the place. That, and the hired muscle guarding the door never let him in anyway.

But the dealer hadn't been there.

He'd waited for hours, pacing back and forth, keeping a safe distance from the bar so its guard wouldn't take too much of an unhealthy interest in him. With every agonising second that had ticked past, he felt more and more like he was on the verge of exploding with frustration, his twitching and shaking getting steadily worse as time passed. The few passers-by had given him a wide berth, some spitting in his direction. A couple of gangers had eyed him briefly, but had obviously decided from his appearance that he wouldn't have anything worth stealing.

Then finally, finally, the dealer had arrived, swaggering along like he was the frakking Emperor himself. He hadn't been able to contain himself, as soon as he saw the dealer he'd practically sprinted towards the man, yelling something he couldn't remember and which probably hadn't made sense anyway. Only when the dealer's two guards had each drawn an autopistol and aimed it at him did his much-abused survival instincts finally kick in, and he'd stopped.

It hadn't taken long. The dealer had quickly taken the ring and credits, offering enough narc for several days in return. The whole time, he'd worn an expression of disgust, like he was dealing with a mutie or something equally repellent.

Thinking back, that angered him. What right did the dealer have to react that way, to make him feel bad like that? Didn't he realise it was his responsibility? If the dealer hadn't sold him the drugs to begin with, then things could have been so different.

Now he was sitting on the edge of his bed, his trembling hands and blurred vision making filling the needle with liquid narc a slow and frustrating process. After what seemed like hours it was finally full. Carefully he put the lid back on the vial of narc and placed it to one side. It wouldn't be long before he would need it again, it never was.

He tensed his arm until a vein finally appeared, and pushed the needle in. He injected the narc, and let out a tremendous sigh of relief as he saw the needle slowly empty itself.
Only then did he glance up, and really look at the body lying slumped in the corner, in the same position he had left her.

"Sorry mum", he said, smiling as the narc began to kick in, "I'll bury you tomorrow. I swear".

God Outside of Space and Time?

2009-09-15T14:00:00.000+01:00

I've started a discussion over at the Premier site, let's see if I get any responses to this little quandary:

Here's a query about an aspect of religious belief that I'm hoping some of the theistic contributors on here will help me make sense of.

It's claimed that God exists outside of space and time. This is why he is able to know everything that has happened and will ever happen, and is able to see everything that is going on in the universe all at once. In other words, it explains his omnipresence and omniscience, along with some other things too, probably. At the risk of sounding slightly cheeky, it also explains why science is never able to detect the smallest trace of God, no matter how hard it looks.... :-)

The problem with God existing outside of space and time however is this: it would make it logically impossible for God to ever interact with the universe.

Think about it: the universe is spatiotemporal. For God to act within it would make him temporal too. But how can a non-temporal being act in a temporal universe? It is a logical contradiction. A being cannot be both temporal and non-temporal at the same time, only one or the other.

But suppose a believer were to respond: well, God is both temporal and non-temporal. That makes no sense, unfortunately. How would the temporal part of God be able to interact with the non-temporal part? Non-temporality would make God unchanging, not subject to the cause and effect of time. So if the temporal part of God were to intervene in the universe and change something, how would the non-temporal part of himself find out about it? What kind of barrier would have to exist within God to allow temporal and non-temporal parts to co-exist?

Finally, to those who claim that God does not have to worry about what is and isn't logical, I simply ask this: can God create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it?

Centaurus A

2009-09-09T14:07:00.001+01:00

Another galaxy with an active supermassive black hole at its core.