Chapter 4: New Recruits (Part 2)

He is an eighteen-year-old assassin, and the sniper rifle feels heavy in his hands.

He has observed for a very, very long time. He was trained for this; he knows how to slow his heartbeat, how to control his breathing and the natural tremors of his body, until he is as motionless as a sculpture.

Predator.

Prey.

His mind gradually turns cold, his focus absolute, and the prayers recited in his heart become the only way to view this world.

Predator.

Prey.

There is no other thought beyond this. He pulls the trigger, and two thousand meters away, a life is extinguished.

Hunter.

The hunted.

"Target eliminated."

He says this to himself.

——————

He is a twenty-year-old man, sleeping on the same operating table as before.

The chemicals flowing through his veins keep him in a deep slumber, and once again, he dreams of that scene.

His consciousness hangs in the silence, entering the dreamscape of two worlds.

In one world, his brain is asleep, yet his thoughts roll and echo within the tightening grip of memory.

In the other world, his eyes observe the intersection of a corridor, while his thoughts jump slowly, in rhythm with his blood and pulse.

His eyes are open, his pupils dilating and twitching as if seeing something moving before him, yet there is nothing there—only three long, dark corridors.

He has been like this for fifty-six hours, awake for more than half that time, the rest spent in a state between wakefulness and the sleep he can now control.

In the real world, needles and medical probes drill into the flesh of his back, injecting various fluids directly into his spine.

He coughs—his sleeping body reacting to the intrusion of foreign objects. The acidic saliva sprayed from his mouth hisses where it lands, etching deep pits into the tiled floor.

When he wakes, it is days later.

He can feel the slots arranged along his spine, the scars, the metallic nodules...

He knows that in a universe of endless war, only by approaching death infinitely can one finally be sanctified.

The grey-eyed apothecary watches him, like an artist admiring his most perfect work, and for the first time, reveals a smile from the heart.

——————

He is a recruit, staring into his own eyes.

He stands naked in a dark room, in a line with a dozen others. The new recruits beside him are equally bare, their pale skin covered in the marks left by surgery.

Eros is a forgotten concept, non-existent in his mind, and that is merely one of the tens of thousands of human desires abandoned by his consciousness.

He can no longer remember the faces of his parents; he only remembers his name, for the instructors of the Legion have never changed it.

He stares at the pair of eyes that now belong to him, and those deep, slanted "eyes" stare back—a pair embedded in a helmet painted grey-white.

As he looks at that bone-white combat helmet, the helmet looks back at him with a grim reflection.

This is his face now.

Through these eyes, he will witness the entire galaxy.

Through this helmet, he will roar in fury at the traitors and xenos who dare to despise the Emperor.

"You are Sotha-Nal Alexei."

A Chapter instructor says this to him.

"Assigned to the Seventh Company."

——————

He is a champion, born for victory.

"Status confirmed—"

Sotha-Nal sends a message to the other two through the comms.

"Intersection 21 is stable, no movement, just like before."

"They are out there."

Axel, in the same squad, responds, his voice turning into a low growl over the comms.

"They are coming. Did that hive-world gutter you were born in not teach you patience?"

"Oh, it taught me, but somehow it didn't teach me to enjoy floating in a vacuum waiting for an unknown enemy to appear. Besides, the place I lived wasn't a hive city."

There is no extra emotion in Sotha-Nal's voice, but the other man laughs, the sound echoing in the silence like a burst of sharp barking.

"Things won't end like this—"

The cautious tone of the third member of the squad comes through. His name is Nard, and he is from the same planet as Sotha-Nal, part of the same batch of recruits.

"If we are here, then the enemy is too."

"What if that's not what we're supposed to learn?"

Sotha-Nal says this while shifting his stance to stare into one of the three corridors.

Several cables hang from a pried-open inspection hatch, and conduits leak from their casings like severed blood vessels. They are in a hazardous zone inside a transport ship drifting in the void. Other scout squads are scattered throughout the hull, each with a different mission, but no one knows where the other squads are or the details of their tasks.

The mission of Sotha-Nal, Axel, and Nard is to monitor a dead-end corridor. All of them are wearing only void suits, equipped with a bolter and a chainsword.

"What do you mean?"

Axel growls. Sotha-Nal takes a careful breath before answering. The young man can go from easygoing to enraged in a heartbeat; all the changes to his mind and body have not polished away this trait, but rather made his temper more pronounced.

"What if waiting is the wrong approach? What if there is no danger? The only thing keeping us trapped here is our belief that there is a threat."

"No, Sotha-Nal."

Nard retorts before Axel can speak.

"We have a mission, and we are going to see it through."

"But what is the mission?"

Sotha-Nal continues to question. He turns to look into the second corridor, a movement that tips him over, forcing him to rely on the safety line connecting him to the wall to steady himself.

The second corridor is empty, just like the first.

"What if we didn't understand it correctly?"

"This..."

Nard wants to speak, but Axel cuts him off.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean maybe there are no enemies here. Maybe they are somewhere else, and because we are stuck guarding this spot, others are fighting a bitter battle elsewhere."

"This is duty, not fear."

"Is it?"

Sotha-Nal challenges, unable to stop himself, but he regrets it the moment the words spill out.

He notices this happening more and more often. Emotional outbursts and impatience suddenly emerge from nowhere, as if another person lives in his mind—someone cold on the outside but anxious on the inside. He has no idea why.

"I'm sorry..."

"Enough."

Nard's voice is calm; he seems not to suffer from such troubles.

"We are brothers. You don't need to say anything more, just don't say that again."

Brother—the word remains as foreign to his world as the organs added to his body.

——————

He is a demigod, a complete superman, ageless, immortal.

He looks at the surface of the world through crimson lenses. A stream of data represented by sharp, clear white runes scrolls across his retinas. He watches the lives of his brothers displayed in numbers, feels the temperature outside his sealed armor, and watches the target-lock box flicker as his eyes move.

He feels his hand, the one gripping his bolter, the tension that comes with trying to follow every target lock.

The ammo counter lets him know how many enemies have died today.

Xenos lie dead around him.

Ten, a hundred, a thousand—his brothers have carved a bloody path through this junk-heap of a city.

"Brothers!"

He shouts the word while firing a bolt into every corridor, the recoil that would shatter a normal man's arm feeling as light as a feather under his grip.

"I'm almost at your position!"

Axel is roaring.

"I'm moving toward you!"

Nard's voice is filled with electromagnetic static.

He fires again, cycling from one shot to the next, and he sees the enemies.

They crawl on the walls like spiders, linked jointed metal limbs replacing arms and legs. Their heads are raised on necks made of steel rings, and weapon pods are extended from their spines on devices like scorpion tails. There are dozens of them.

"I see you!"

Axel's voice comes through.

"I have some targets!"

The flash of gunfire lights up the distant corridor, flickering as shrapnel tears through the air.

Sotha-Nal fires again. Three shots, four clusters of metal and flesh explode. He glances over his shoulder; Axel is ten meters away, pinned between a wall and a group of machines, firing at the xenos closest to Sotha-Nal.

"Hey!"

Even in the middle of the fight, he has the mood to shout through the comms.

"At least we found the enemy this time."

Sotha-Nal laughs along with him.

Bolters roar, chainswords growl. In the chorus of combat noise, the battle-brothers roar their fury at the enemy through their helmet speakers.

The sound is always the same.

The bolters always roar, the chainswords always growl, and the Astartes always shout to vent their rage.

He shouts the words carved into the deepest parts of his brain, words that will soon become the value of his entire existence.

And now, he and his brothers shout together, words they haven't thought about, words they haven't felt.

For the Emperor!

(End of chapter)