New Imperium

Rheumy eyes opened for the first time in untold ages, blinking at sudden and forgotten sensations. Crystals faintly pulsed in the center of the chamber and across its ceiling, gently dispelling the darkness. Music tinkled from hidden alcoves, wrapping the waking figures with a soothing melody to ease their waking. Twelve thrones sat around the crystals, and twelve pairs of eyes opened to take in reality once again.

So many experiments. So many campaigns in the Long War. So many worlds changed or invigorated or obliterated. So many victories. So many more bitter, bitter failures. All had been planned and observed in this place, by these beings. Something had awoken this council, the last remnant of a race that had once touched every last star in the galaxy.

Hourglass-shaped pupils expanded and contracted. Arcane devices hummed and whirred, managing the stresses of wakefulness after millennia of sleep. Damp, webbed fingers trembled on the thrones' arms.

"What has woken us?" One of the council members communicated. It did not deign to speak but broadcast its exhausted thoughts to the others.

"The Pearl."

"Something has happened to the Pearl."

"Is it breached?"

"A foolish question. The Pearl has always been broken."

"To think that it was perfect was imperfect of us."

"The Warp has always seeped into our sanctuary. The Pearl could not exist without it."

"Do not waste precious time with pedantic words. Have the breaches

widened

?"

The silently bickering voices paused for a moment, and the crystals thrummed more brightly as the psychic emanations of the council brushed against them. "Perhaps. It is...unknown."

"The Place Before has convulsed."

"Too weak a description. Anarchy and nightmare reign outside of the Pearl."

"As it did long ago. When we fashioned the Pearl."

"Incorrect. Before, silence and death threatened us. Now, the warp churns, and monsters gnaw at reality alongside the nightmares."

"Nothing has entered the Pearl, save for the endless trickle of Warp and Web, in all this time."

"But now something has."

"It is unprecedented."

"It is manageable."

"Matters of the warp are rarely manageable."

"Never before have we had so long to prepare. Every world altered, every race molded, every seed planted, must be ready."

"We tried before."

"Again and again. And failed."

"Strengthen the Warp, weaken the silence, but feed the nightmare. Weaken the Warp, and the silent death will scour the galaxy again, but the nightmare realm will grow dim."

"We all know the balance required. It took too long to learn, but we now understand."

"We lost trillions but saved billions. That must be enough."

"The Pearl must endure."

"The Pearl will always endure. It is already an impossibility. A new pinprick will do nothing to change that."

"Do we act? Or do we slumber?"

The room and the crystals thrummed and rattled. Thousands of decisions and arguments were made and dashed apart in the space of an instant before the crystals nearly grew silent and dark once more. Even the tinkling music was little more than a sussurating murmur.

"We act."

***

A snarling man in a coat of mail covered by a black surplice piled through the broken door to our room. Lamplight gleamed from his notched sword and the shadowed points of his beady eyes. Purplish magicks swirled around his free hand, coalescing into some witchcraft I didn't care to know the purpose of.

He didn't make it a second step into the room before I splattered his brains across the wall with my laspistol.

To her credit, my companion only screamed for a brief moment before she scrabbled out of the wash basin. I swept after her in a mess of bubbles and lukewarm water, keeping the pistol trained on the gaping door. Another heretic moved just beyond the jamb, rushing towards a different room, and I let decades of Onka's training and hard-won experience take over. Slinking towards the wooden frame, I peeked around and into the hall.

The second heretic had the tawny-skinned innkeeper held in front of him by the back of her cropped blouse, shouting something that vaguely sounded like 'where are they?' She wept and struggled to escape, but the heretic was far larger and easily controlled her. He spun her around and held a wickedly serrated dagger to her throat, and her eyes widened as she caught my gaze around her assailant's bulk.

I squeezed off two bolts into the center of his back, but some force or barrier rippled and absorbed the worst of the blasts. He still stumbled and lost his grip on the innkeeper before turning and glaring at me with faintly purple-glowing eyes. Blue-black energy coiled around his free hand, and I suddenly realized that I was facing not only heresy but a fresh coven of Witchery.

And all wearing nothing but a few clumps of pale bubbles.

The magick leaped from his outstretched hand and lanced towards me, but I was already diving into the filthy hallway, and it seared past and just above me. I awkwardly twisted and brought the pistol to bear again, unloading the powerpack into his chest. A satisfying look of surprise crossed the heretics face as his psyker-barrier collapsed and the last few shots punched through his rib cage, burning him from the inside out. He tottered on his feet for a moment before falling against the staircase's railing and tumbling down to the first floor.

"Just when a man has a frakking moment to relax," I growled and quickly searched the rest of the second floor. There'd been a few other occupants scattered about the rooms, and curious heads furtively peeped around doorframes at my naked form and the steaming mess left by my shots.

"Girl! You, girl!" I barked at the blood-spattered innkeeper. It was not the time for stilted translations, just intent and pointed gestures, "Get in there! Now!" I pointed back at the room I'd just vacated.

She scrabbled away, and my equally nude companion helped pull the panicked woman past the broken door jamb. After I checked the base of the stairs one more time, I followed. "

Beth sy'n digwydd?"

My partner said, blue eyes wide and panicked.

"You tell me, love," I guessed she was asking what in the Throne was happening, so I answered. I had no intentions of dying here, and certainly not dying naked and dripping wet. "Take this," I swapped power packs on the pistol and shoved it into the blonde's hand. "I really need to learn your name," I muttered. "Do you know how this works?" I asked, and she shook her head gently. "Point and shoot. Point and shoot. See?" I held her hand in mine and squeezed the trigger, blowing a new hole in the first dead cultist and eliciting a yelp from the innkeeper. "Point and shoot. Watch the door."

I dried off as best I could and started throwing on my fatigues and kit, and the two women huddled close by the door--one with the pistol and the other with the man's notched sword clenched in trembling hands. Shouts and screams carried through the walls, muffled by the heavy timber but carrying their owners' terror and rage all the same. Gunpowder of some sort cracked and filled the air with its harsh and rotten stink. Something else was burning too, and the village square was filling with smoke as clumps of burning thatch fluttered past the small window.

"Girl!" I barked and reached for my lasrifle. Startled, she loosed a bolt into the wood and started a smoldering fire. "I'll be taking that back now," I eased it out of her hand and followed by taking the meter-long blade from the innkeeper and sliding it into my belt.

"

Beth sy'n digwydd?"

She stammered again.

"Get dressed. Stay somewhere quiet." I said, awkward for a moment. Someone or something roared by the doorway to the inn, and I tensed. I wasn't supposed to be there. Throne, what I wouldn't have given to wake from that nightmare in some dingy underhive flophouse. "Frak it," I grumbled and leaned over to plant a deep kiss on her trembling lips.

And then I was pounding down the steps, bayonet-tipped rifle leveled before me.

The heretics had turned the common hall into a charnel house. Bodies covered the tables and floor, split open by blades or scorched and twisted by magic. Nothing stirred, so I edged towards the crooked hallway leading towards the door. Blades rang against each other somewhere close by. Another musket blasted, and someone screamed in sudden pain.

Perhaps I could just stand watch over the door, I thought, until the madness died down --no need to involve myself in this local heresy, what with the inquisitor absent. I wasn't supposed to be there, after all.

A figure burst into the common hall, stumbling backward as they desperately parried an assailant's blade. Part of me wanted to hose both down with a stream of lasbolts, but I was all alone in this nightmarish place, and it wouldn't do to start scything down possible allies. I only had a moment to decide, and both combatants wore nearly identical kits and markings. My finger hovered over the trigger, steel rang against steel, and I finally decided that it was more likely that an attacker would belong to whoever was burning Darkshire.

My first shot blew off the man's free arm in a spray of vaporized blood, and the next melted his mail coat and made a smoldering mess of his chest. He slumped against the entryway wall, a final breath rattling out of him and a look of utter surprise on his face. The defender twisted to me, their sword lowering only slightly.

"

Diolch,

" they coughed before pulling back the dark hood of their tabard. Her long dirty blonde hair had half-spilled out of two braids, and soot smeared her otherwise delicate features. If she was surprised by my appearance, she didn't show it, but her big hazel eyes held a wild mix of anger and fear.

"Um,

filwyr

," I pointed at myself, not knowing what else to say.

A look of disinterest crossed her features below the soot, but she nodded and pointed towards the door. "

Dod, Dod!"

I got the message well enough and raced after her, despite the flickers of self-preservation telling me to hunker down in the easily secured hall.

What greeted us wouldn't have been out of place in the middle of an underhive gang war.

Bodies covered the plaza's edges where the unfortunate citizens had been dragged from homes and businesses and unceremoniously executed. Two shops were burning furiously and spewing great lumps of burning thatch to float dangerously in the damp air. The strange crystals lay shattered in the mud. A handful of civilians and guards fought in desperate little knots, but even as I watched, one of the groups disappeared under a wave of oily purple-black warp-magic. They didn't even scream, just crumpling and dissolving into puddles of rotten flesh and rusted armor.

Darkshire never would've stood a chance; most of the attackers wore the regalia of the guards. There was a reason the Inquisition treated treason and heresy so harshly. Humanity was always only a single cult, a single witch, away from consuming itself. The traitorous guards were unorganized but overwhelming, clearing buildings at random while others still battled armed survivors. The only organization centered around the apparent town hall, where the heretics forced bruised and bleeding survivors onto their knees before a tall man in black robes.

They were exultant and arrogant in their victory, and, most importantly, they were all out in the open and looking away from me.

I stopped the female loyalist with a hand on her arm before I nodded at the rifle in my other hand. "Let me thin them out first, love," I dropped to one knee, leaned against the sturdy doorframe, and centered a baying knot of heretics in my sights. They circled around two wounded loyalists who'd managed to rescue a group of civilians and start herding them back towards the woods.

The compressor kicked the rifle back into my shoulder, and scintillating death spat out. The square wasn't much more than a hundred paces across, and my targets were bunched closely together. Two went down in the first burst, little specks of molten armor spraying like underhive rad-flies, and the other three had scarcely enough time to check their movement and look at me before I ruined their livery and armor with another tight burst.

The high-pitched whine of the lasbolts cut through the chaos, echoing off of mossy stone and moldering wood, and every head in the village whipped towards my kneeling form.

"Frak it," I mumbled to myself, fear sour in my belly and my mouth dry. I swung the lasrifle towards the next closest group, a trio of brutes standing over freshly massacred bodies.

My bolts scythed through them just as easily, but the heretics were beginning to catch on. They abandoned the lesser threats of wounded loyalists and panicked civilians, bunching up behind whatever cover they could find and shouting at each other in the lyrical tongue of the land. The black-robed cultist roared at them, conjuring up further dark magicks that swirled around him.

A primitive black powder musket coughed from a doorway, and the ball buried itself in the wood not a meter from my head. I blazed into the thick smoke, blind, before squeezing off a burst at the leader. Of course, his magick flared, and the same barrier I'd already experienced stopped the bolts.

The guard behind me was shouting to the other survivors, urging them to take refuge in the battered inn. Aided by the two surviving guards, the first group I rescued broke from cover and raced towards us, stepping over the smoldering heretic bodies. My armed companion shouted something at me and pointed into the melee, and despite the words meaning nothing to me, I understood their intent.

I gave the scrambling refugees what covering fire I could, forcing back a knot of men racing to cut off the civilians with a tight burst. Two of their number lay in the square, moaning piteously and clutching charred stumps left after my bolts had blown their limbs into ruin, and the others rushed back to cover. The survivors raced past, pale faces streaked with blood, soot, and eyes wild with terror.

That same terror surged back to the surface of my mind. The heretics weren't fools, and when my aim was masked by the civilians running past me, a dozen of the attackers sprinted forward to take up new positions closer to the inn. My mouth was dry, my guts clenched on themselves, and I reminded my curiously valorous self that I wasn't supposed to be there. I could run with the blonde joygirl, maybe the tawny innkeeper, and find somewhere less hazardous to my health.

The heretics unleashed a fusillade of musket shots and crossbow bolts that quivered against the abused wood all around the guard and me. They advanced with a great shout, half obscured by their own powder smoke, with at least a score of them sprinting forward. No way I could take them all with clean shots, but I could certainly try. I grimaced bitterly: Onca and the battle sisters would be so proud to see me now.

A hand rifled through my combat webbing and yanked the pistol loose. I froze for a moment, expecting a bolt from some fresh traitor between the shoulder blades, but the guard I'd rescued aimed over my shoulder and loosed a bolt. She was unfamiliar with the weapon and had over-corrected for the recoil, but the ruby blast still tore a booted foot away from its owner. I joined in on full auto, blazing from left to right at the mob.

Another of the surviving guards now standing behind me fired his musket over me, and I cursed his aid. The smoke was choking and blinding, and my ears rang painfully. I spent the last of my power pack shooting blindly into the musket smoke and the swirling embers from a dozen fires, and very nearly paid the price for it.

As I ejected one pack and hurried to slide another into place, the survivors of the heretic charge stormed out of the smoke. The guard hurled one back with her own last bolt before drawing her sword and screaming a challenge. Two more wounded men crowded behind us, swords in bloody hands.

For how rusty and poorly made it seemed to be, the heretics' armor was still thick steel mail. My clumsy bayonet thrust halted the first heretic but failed to penetrate his thick hauberk, and he snarled and knocked my rifle aside with a notched sword. I rolled to the side, the new power pack clattering away, and desperately drew the blade I'd taken from upstairs.

My first assailant had stepped forward and chopped down one of the wounded men, but the woman slid the tip of her blade beneath his raised arm and yanked it back out in a messy welter of blood. Another man, skin darker than the innkeepers, reared from the smoke and lunged at me. With the rifle still in my left hand, I deflected clumsily and roared as I swung my blade down from over my head.

Then I croaked as the blade stuck fast in the wooden frame above my head.

The heretic guffawed at me, so I smashed my helmeted head forward and felt his nose crunch beneath the plasteel. He scuttled back, one hand flying up instinctively to staunch the bleeding. Had he not been trying to spit me like a sumprat, I never would've taken him for a heretic. None of the madness touched his eyes, and there was no obvious taint or mutation. Perhaps the magicks these witches used were subtler, less damning?

He snarled through the ruins of his face and came forward again. I took my rifle in both hands and stabbed forward into his less protected thigh, tearing through his muscle and halting his charge. Yanking it free, I swung the butt of the rifle up in a brutal arc, smashing him under the chin and snapping his head back with a sickening crunch.

The last few heretics roared in terror and rage and mobbed the door. One of the civilians had reloaded the dropped musket and fired at point blank range, tearing a ragged hole in one heretic's throat. My companion and the other guard deflected wild strikes and riposted with the strength of desperation.

I reached above me, yanked the sword loose, and drove it into a shrieking woman's eye.

Finding myself alone on one flank of the desperate melee, I turned to my left and hamstrung the next attacker with a messy slash. "Frakking," I stepped over the wailing heretic and stabbed one-handed with the rifle into another's neck. "Emperor-damned," blood gushed over me, hot and metallic, obscuring one eye. "Heretics!" The others tried to turn to present a wall of blades against my charge, but I took the next man's leg out from under him with my sword before stabbing into his groin with my bayonet. "Ruining my evening!" He wailed and wept, clutching himself, and I stomped into his throat to shut him up. My two comrades forced their opponents back, and the fight finally left the heretics.

They fled back through the thinning powder smoke, and I angrily hurled the blade after them. My now-free hand went to my webbing, searching for a power pack, when a thin hand offered me the one I'd dropped earlier. I turned, surprised, and saw my joygirl smiling grimly at me. Her other hand held the musket.

I clipped the ammunition into place, and both of us took aim. She let me fire first, dropping two of the three heretics, before she pulled the trigger on the heavy matchlock and sent the third sprawling in a cloud of misted blood. For a moment, other than the ringing in my ears and the rush of hot blood, the plaza was silent.

The heretic leader shouted something, and, through the smoke, I could see him and his retinue fleeing from the far end of the plaza with their collected prisoners. Good, I thought. Let them escape into the monster-laden woods. I'd done enough of the Emperor's duty already.

"

Dod!

" The panting female guard shouted at me, and then again. "

Dod! Dod!"

The joygirl beside me shoved my shoulder, and I groaned. A squad of generally healthy guards was forming just outside the inn while those with more severe wounds tried their best to herd the rest of the civilians towards the scorched but still-standing building.