Potential - A short story set within the Warhammer 40,000 Science Fiction Universe

(This is the long overdue sequel to my story ‘Worthy’; it’s pretty dialogue heavy, so I hope it’s still an entertaining read when compared to the first one.  My goal with these stories has been to show the Space Marines of the 40K universe in a different light by putting them in different situations to the usual battlefields.  I hope the attempt has been interesting at the very least.

Warhammer 40,000, Space Marines, etc, etc are the property of Games Workshop, and are used here because I love the universe and am not turninga profit based off their work)

   

Potential

By Tim Sweeney

Corwyn Novak blinked groggily, and attempted to raise his head from the cold, hard surface it was pressed against.  The pain hit him before the room had even swum into focus, and it hit with all the power of a narcced-up heavy. 

He felt consciousness slowly ebb away, but not before noting that he was not alone; male voices, deep and echoing, seemed to fill the space around him in an unnatural way.  Novak did not have much time to ponder this before darkness descended upon him. 

Blinking awake once more, Novak lay perfectly still and resisted the urge to immediately curl up into a ball; he almost desperately wanted to welcome back the soothing darkness, the pain was that intense.

Trying to focus instead on the somewhat relaxing vibrations that seemed to be emanating from all around him, he began trying to puzzle out just where he was; this was a far more appealing exercise than thinking about the agony he was experiencing, particularly in his chest.  Worse still, he could not seem to remember why he was hurt so bad.

Suddenly he remembered the voices.  Sure enough, a deep male voice soon echoed throughout the chamber, speaking with a cadence that sounded unnatural to Novak’s ear.

“Any change in number two’s vital signs?” the voice spoke in a hushed tone, which nonetheless carried quite clearly due to the obvious power behind it, “I grow weary of playing the medicae; surely one of the med-servitors would be more suitable to the task?” Humour warred with tones of frustration in his voice, as though he were being less than serious in his griping.

“You wish to shirk your duties to our Chapter then, do you Brother Faer’dalis?  Honour’s truth, sometimes I wonder how you became one of us; you should have ended your days in a Penal Battalion on your homeworld,” this voice was deeper, and sounded…older somehow, more cultured.  Novak was struggling to understand what they were saying, and not just due to their peculiar offworlder accents; their voices were so deep, and reverberated in such a way that it almost did not sound like human speech.  

As the pair continued trading jibes, he got the sense that this conversation was one repeated by rote; a verbal joust between friends, rather than legitimate criticism or words of anger.  But something about these odd voices was making alarm klaxons blare inside Corwyn Novak’s skull.

“Sometimes, Brother-Sergeant Brachuss, I think you take the minor aspects of the Manifest too literally; why would two unconscious potentials need two full Astartes to dote over them like mother gernfangs after the rut?”

Novak had a sudden moment of horrid realisation.  Brachuss echoed through his mind, and he knew this was the being that had caused all his pain.

All coherent thought ended when his mind caught up with the rest of what the one named Faer’dalis was saying; Astartes.

Oh God-Emperor, he remembered.

Astartes.

The Angels of Death.

ASTARTES!

Memory came flooding back. He had been on his final induction run with the Greenskinnaz, his soon-to-be gang.  It was an easy run; follow some poor mark through the underhive, and scout the way so the rest of the gang could jump him and make off with the loot.

O, Lord Emperor, the beginning words of the Prayer to the Saviour of Reach’s World leapt into his thoughts, unbidden. 

It should have been easy.  But then this simple mark, seeming to be some idiot up-spire rich boy slumming it for the night, had somehow killed every member of the gang in no time flat.  He had pinned Novak to the wall with a knife through his chest, and had casually revealed that his name was Brachuss, and he was a Space Marine.

When all appeared lost, You guided us through darkest night,

He had then beaten Novak into a bloody pulp and finished the job.

When we were alone, Your hand, the Angels of Death, saved us from oblivion,

Except, thought Novak, I’m obviously still alive!

And, just as obviously, he wasn’t lying in an abandoned building somewhere, bleeding to death in the ruins of Hive Guellermo.

His internal recitation of the prayer trailed off as quickly as it had begun; I’m still alive!

Now I just have to keep it that way.

Determination flowing through him, Novak slowly turned his head, the room finally coming into focus.  The small space was dark, a dim maroon light source directly above him the only source of illumination.  Even with this he had no trouble locating the two gigantic figures seated at a row of consoles on the opposite side of the room.

One had what appeared to be long, blood-red hair, but which probably would have been a pale blonde or white under more normal lighting conditions.  He was obviously the younger, with a surprisingly boyish face despite the huge amount of muscle and copious amounts of scarring covering his huge, loin-cloth clad body.  Novak noticed with a start that the young Astartes’ left eye was missing, replaced instead by a state-of-the-art (and thus incredibly expensive) mechanical unit, which glowed a fiery blue in the dim light.

The other was Brachuss.  Novak remembered the scarred face, the short red hair, and the impeccably manicured goatee that was so unlike what he pictured an Astartes to look like;

It’s amazing what you take the time to notice, he thought, when there’s a knife through your lung.

During the encounter in the underhive, this monster had been wearing nothing more than a loincloth and holster rig; the rig was gone, but Brachuss still had his gigantic pistol clutched in his hands.  He seemed to be polishing it.

“The most honoured Bautista may have been in a rush to leave that Emperor-forsaken place,” Faer’dalis was saying; Novak suddenly realised that he had not been paying attention to their resumed conversation. “But I think we should have taken a closer look at the local gangs; where there are two potentials, there may be more, and the Inquisitor’s precious schedule be damned!”

“You should not say such things about the Inquisitor, Brother Faer’dalis; I tolerate some of the vitriol that you spout, but rest assured that such comments will not go unpunished if you utter them where he-,”

He cut off abruptly.

Novak froze; he had groaned softly when he had heard the word Inquisitor; who in their right mind wouldn’t have, especially when added on top of Space Marines!  But surely they couldn’t have heard him.

“Well Brother, it looks as though one of our guests is awake; Number One I believe…Novak, wasn’t it?”

Novak opened his eyes, and looked up into the face of a nightmare.

He couldn’t speak.

“I believe I asked you a question?”

When confronted in the hive, wounded and watching his friends being slaughtered, Novak had been full of defiance in the face of this monster.  Now, looking into it’s eyes from his back, laying on what was obviously a medicae table, Novak struggled to find the nerve to even open his mouth.

“N-N-Novak,” he hated himself for stuttering, “Corwyn Novak, Greenskinnaz,” the gang name came unbidden to his lips, an automatic reaction in the gang-controlled underhive.

“Greenskinnaz?” Faer’dalis laughed uproariously, “As though any of your lot have even seen a Greenskin!”  Brachuss’ lips twitched, as though he too was restraining himself from laughter.

Novak felt a bit of warmth rush to his face.  “We have too; the gang fought and wiped out a whole infestation of Gretchin after the Great Invasion.  We were heroes throughout the whole underhive!” he said angrily; they may have been Astartes, but they had no right to laugh at him…of course, he hadn’t actually been born when the battle had occurred against the Gretchin, but they didn’t need to know that.

“Gretchin? Gretchin! Primarchs alive boy, if you think Gretchin qualify as Greenskins, you are sadly mistaken.  When your petty little gang has fought and slain Orks by the thousands, then we shall talk-,”

“Enough, Faer’dalis.  They fought for their hive; they have their honour, and we should not take it away.”  Brachuss was looking at Novak once more, his scarred face scanning him from head to toe and back again, as though he were acutely aware of exactly how far the honour of lying ganger scum ran.

“I am impressed that you are awake so soon; most that I beat wake up after many days of medicae treatment, if indeed they wake at all.  This bodes well for you, young Novak, if not for your companion there.” Brachuss’ mouth twisted peculiarly; it took Novak a second to realise it was meant to be a friendly smile.  It looked completely alien upon his scarred, patrician features.

Novak’s confusion must have shown on his face, although it was thankfully misinterpreted.

“Still haven’t worked it out lad?” came Faer’dalis’ taunting brogue, “you’re not in the hive anymore; you aren’t even on Reach’s World,”

Novak felt his eyes widen with shock; surely they don’t mean…?

“So you can think for yourself when pointed in the right direction, at least.  Boy, you have the distinct honour of being aboard the Inquisitorial cutter Stiletto, bound for our Strike Crui-,”

Mercifully, the sound of his voice was cut off by the warbling of the vox-caster; as it was, Novak felt as though he was about to vomit.

Throne, he thought, I’m in space!

“Terra, I am becoming sick to death of being interru-,” Faer’dalis was cut-off by a sudden keening from the row of monitors behind him; even as he whirled around to face them, the noise cut off as suddenly as it had begun.

“It appears that your fellow potential was not as fortunate as yourself, young Novak,” Brachuss said solemnly, “he has succumbed to his wounds.”

“May he shelter in the palm of the Emperor’s hand,” the pair of giants intoned softly.

Novak stared at the corpse in shock; he didn’t even know the other juve, but they had at least been from the same city, the same world.

Now I’m truly facing this alone, he thought.

Staring at the two Space Marines, feeling almost numb from the shock of everything that had happened so far, he spoke without thinking, “Where are you taking me? Why kidnap me instead of just murdering me like you did the rest of my crew? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, POTENTIAL?”

He suddenly realised he was shouting; the pain, the shock, the anger, he just couldn’t take it anymore. 

Why are they doing this to me?

Faer’dalis was talking softly into the vox-caster; Brachuss slowly raised his head and looked Novak dead in the eyes.

“We are taking you, young Novak, to our Strike Cruiser, the An Amber Mourning.  I would draw your attention to the fact that your ‘crew’, as you put it, were planning on murdering me in cold blood…”

Novak gulped.

“I captured you as an enemy combatant worthy of honour, and I spared your life because I tasted your blood-,”

Novak interrupted as politely as he could, terrified by the reminder that his gang had tried (and failed) to murder this monster, “I’m sorry, my blood?” His voice sounded shrill in his own ears, and he noticed absently that Faer’dalis wore a mean-spirited grin upon his face, “why would you spare me because you tasted my blood?”

“I tasted your blood because my Neuroglottis organ allowed me to determine a wide variety of important things about you, particularly your age.”

Novak had the sudden feeling that he would regret asking the next question, but he couldn’t stop himself.

“Why is my age important?”

Brachuss’ lips curved in a smile; unlike the awkward, friendly effort of before, this one held no warmth at all.  It was the look of an animal about to pounce on an unsuspecting prey, and it looked far more natural upon the Space Marines grizzled face.

“Your age is important Novak, because potential members of our Chapter must be in their teen years to be eligible to walk among us,”

Novak’s jaw fell open; he couldn’t breathe.

“When I saw how hard you fought me, even knowing how badly you were overmatched, I suspected you might have what it takes; when you awoke from the injures I gave you and showed the ability to remain calm in what is obviously a highly stressful situation, you confirmed that my instincts were correct…and all of this in a boy of only fourteen!

He continued mercilessly,

“You will come aboard the Mourning, you will travel with us to our home, and you will face the seven trials that will make you one of us,”

“Although you will most likely die in the attempt!” Faer’dalis threw in cheerfully.

“I may simply have delayed your inevitable demise,” continued Brachuss, “but if you somehow manage to triumph in the challenges ahead, young Novak, you will become a Lord of Twilight and we shall be battle-brothers!  What say you, then, to a warrior’s life of violence, faithfully serving the Emperor and the Imperium until you finally embrace death?”

Corwyn Novak almost managed to speak before he fainted dead away.

   

- Tim Sweeney