Visions of Darkness

by SFaccountant

The Soldier

Author's Note:

It was a lot harder to inject some soothing humor into this than the last one. Pinkie is like a comedy crutch, I swear.

This interlude takes place sometime after Book 3, Chapter 6.

Visions of Darkness

Punctuation key: "Gothic Speech", +Binary Speech+, "Out-of-narrative speech"

The Soldier

****

Sweet Apple Acres - farmstead

Apple Bloom looked up at the door to her bedroom as someone knocked on the durasteel surface.

"C'mon in!" the filly shouted, turning back toward her project.

The doors slid open, and Daniels leaned in through the doorway. "Dinner's on, kiddo. Time to wash your hooves. Or face. Or whatever it is you eat with. I'm really not clear on the subject."

"Alright, Mister Daniels. Ah'll be ready in a minute." The redheaded pony was fumbling with something in the corner of her room, and Daniels stepped in to see what it was.

It was a glass terrarium, almost a meter long, filled with wood scraps and flowers. And wasps. Lots of wasps.

"Whatcha got there, Bloom?" the mercenary asked. "I didn't know ya kept bugs."

"It's new," Apple Bloom explained as she opened the lid a crack and dropped a cup inside.

A single one of the yellow and black insects zipped up out of the opening, and Daniels quickly took a step back.

Apple Bloom remained unperturbed. "Hey now, you get back inside," the filly said sternly, tapping a hoof against the lid of the glass tank. The wasp quickly dipped back into its container, apparently chastised, and Apple Bloom closed it again.

"... So is this a Nurgle thing, a pony thing, or a Nurgle pony thing?" Daniels asked as he watched the young earth pony secure the terrarium lid again. He supposed that he really should have been more of an authority on Chaos than Apple Bloom, but until the filly had been marked he had always gone to great lengths to avoid Nurglites.

"Ah think it's a Nurgle thing," Apple Bloom replied, although she didn't seem all that sure herself, "Ah mean, Ah didn't get a bug cutie mark, right?"

"I've never been real clear on how that cutie mark thing works, actually, but Nurgle certainly has his way with certain insects." Then he paused. "So what was in the cup?"

"Sugar nectar, mostly," the filly answered, "plus a big spider Ah found out behind the barn earlier!"

Daniels stared silently through the glass as he watched the aforementioned spider scramble over the edge of the cup, soaked with sugar water and apparently quite perturbed by the dangerous insects hovering above it.

"Hey, do you know how these wasps make babies? It's really interestin'!" Apple Bloom insisted, smiling brightly.

"Not before dinner, Bloom. Let's head downstairs."

****

"Solid eats as always, AJ," Daniels said as he started piling dishes into a stack to take into the kitchen.

"Eeyup," Big Mac agreed around the can in his mouth. The stallion was cleaning and oiling his augmetic foreleg while Apple Bloom watched in fascination.

"Well, thank ya kindly," Applejack said happily, "spent most o'the day cookin', in fact. Kinda nice to have most of each day free rather than bustin' mah rump from sunup to sundown."

"Now don't gimme that, AJ!" Granny Smith snapped from her rocking chair. "Ah ain't lettin' one o' mah grandchildren get lazy! This here apple farm ain't dead yet!"

Applejack rolled her eyes. "No Granny, it ain't. But Miss Duster has only begun to start takin' the scrap away to her museum or warehouse or whatnot, and Ah still have no clue what to do about the space ship sittin' in the orchard. Them historic society types're pretty iffy about takin' it, mostly 'cause of the price Delgan set."

"You could always detonate it," Daniels pointed out, "scatter the hulk and then just fill in the crater."

Applejack thought that over. "Probably best to wait. If us ponies can't get rid of it, then maybe the Company can. We've got our books in the black, fer once. No sense in causin' more explosions than necessary."

"Eeyup."

Apple Bloom was helping clean Big Mac's bionics with an oily rag now, and apparently liking the task a lot judging by the grin on her face. "Hey, Sis! What're we gonna do before bed time?"

Applejack smiled. When they had an early dinner and didn't have any more chores to do before bed, the Apple siblings often spent the evening playing a board game, reading a story, or hearing one of Twilight or Applejack's adventures as the Elements of Harmony.

"Well, how about story time?" Applejack said as she mussed up her little sister's mane.

"Ooh! Ah know! Ah wanna hear the story of how ya earned yer silver bolt!" Apple Bloom pointed excitedly at the heavy bolter round hanging around her sister's neck.

The orange pony considered that for several seconds, and then glanced over to the bipedal figure washing dishes. "Well, shucks Bloom, Ah guess Ah could, but Ah can tell ya that any old time." She grinned and pointed a hoof at Daniels. "But tonight we got a jen-yoo-ein space pirate as a dinner guest! Wouldn't ya rather hear a story about adventures on another planet?"

Daniels looked startled at suddenly being the center of attention, and he turned away from the sink. "Me? Well, sure, I guess." He pursed his lips as he glanced at Apple Bloom. "Not sure how appropriate my stories are for younglings, though. Lots of blood and guts and whatnot."

"Ah'm okay with that," Apple Bloom said quickly, "Ah mean, shucks, Ah've already seen three alien attacks. And Tellis."

"Fair enough!" Daniels agreed as he put up the last plate to dry.

The mercenary thought over his options as the Apple family retired to their den. Big Mac settled in the middle of the floor, and his sisters sat down in front of him before leaning back into his side.

"Big brother! Turn around! This side's all metal!" Apple Bloom complained.

Macintosh rolled his eyes as he stood up and reversed positions, giving his sisters a big red pillow to rest on.

"So, anything in particular you want to hear about? Fighting Tau? Orks? Other humans?" Daniels asked as he sat down on a cushion next to Granny Smith's rocking chair.

Apple Bloom looked confused. "Why would ya fight other humans?"

"Because a lot of humans are jerks like that," Daniels replied, "the galaxy would be a much nicer place if humanity could at least agree to kill everything EXCEPT it's own kind, but that's not how it works."

Applejack put a hoof to her chin. "How's about yer home world?"

Daniels' smile evaporated. "Gossan IV?"

"Yeah, that one. Ya told me what happened to it, but not how," Applejack reminded him, "Ah mean, Ah don't even know what 'Exterminatus' means, anyhow. Or who the 'Alpha Legion' is."

Daniels grimaced. "Well, all right. That's not a happy story, though."

"Do ya got any happy stories?" Apple Bloom asked.

Daniels considered that for several seconds. "Well... whether or not a given operation ends happily depends on which side of the barricades you're hiding, actually." He shook his head. "Never mind. Gossan IV it is. Plenty interesting, at least."

He leaned back, resting his arms on his knees. "I was young at the time. Thirteen. I had two brothers, and both my parents worked for the planetary administratum. Low-level positions, meager pay, pitiful benefits. We weren't happy, but we weren't miserable either. An average family full of average blokes on an average Imperial world."

Daniels sighed and scrubbed at his hair. "Me and Tim, my older bro, used to ditch classes some days and explore the underhive slums, just to remind ourselves that things could be a lot worse. All sorts of interesting and questionable things down there: drugs, weapons, heretical books, mutants, contraband... just about every Imperial hive city sits on top of a bloody rainbow of scum and villainy." He paused to wet his lips. "But even in those dark places, Chaos is taboo. I don't mean just, like, worshiping Chaos. Merely exhibiting knowledge of Chaos cults or drawing a Chaos symbol can lead to death penalties. Just knowing Khorne's name - one of them, that is - would earn you an appointment with a firing squad. It's said that Chaos worship extends to every dark corner of human civilization, but even for a couple young lads obliviously wandering around one of the nastier parts of the planet, you don't just stumble upon evidence of a Chaos incursion."

Apple Bloom gulped, already feeling the weight of the setting Daniels had established. "So, what happened?"

"We stumbled upon evidence of a Chaos incursion."

****

Gossan IV - Melkia City underhive

"Is that what I think it is?"

I almost tripped over all the bullet casings littering the ground as I caught up with Tim.

"Emperor above, this is a right mess here," I grunted as I climbed over a mound of shattered ferrocrete, "what's the matter?"

I reached Tim, who was standing on the other side of a pylon. It was pretty obvious what was the matter.

Nearly a dozen corpses were piled up against a wall, all of them stripped down to the shorts and riddled with bullets. That was pretty bad. Dead bodies could be found all over the place in the underhive, but usually one or two at a time. This didn't look like a firefight; this looked like an execution.

But that wasn't the worst part.

"Bloody hell... is... that...?"

I couldn't finish the sentence. On the wall behind the bodies was a star with eight points. Drawn in blood from the corpses, naturally. I'd seen a Chaos Star only once before, when a classmate showed me a sketch and told me to stay away from anywhere that the mark is drawn. Claimed they were cursed places.

“Twilight says curses ain't real.”

I'm sure the Princess has a different name for it. Sorcery or magic or Warpcraft. But to the layman, when enough people die and you can't right tell why or how, we call it cursed.

"You seeing this, Wy?" Tim asked, walking up to the bodies. "I think these are Arbites!"

"Tim, I... I think we should go."

"No, serious! Look at these guys!" he pointed to the bodies. "They sure as piss aren't gangers! Clean-shaven, plain hair, no-"

"TIM!" I shouted. "Whoever they were, they've been picked clean! Let's get out of here! I don't feel like playing detective!"

Tim scowled, but turned away. We jogged away from the murder scene.

"I'm not playing, Wy," Tim said.

"What's THAT supposed to mean?"

"I mean that I'm serious. I think those were Adeptus Arbites," he explained.

"I don't care who they were! I care that I'm far enough away from whatever freaks are taking up murder and forbidden lore as a hobby!" I growled.

"Well, maybe you SHOULD care!" Tim snapped.

I halted in my path. "You serious? You see a heap of dead and you want to get involved?"

"This could be big, Wy!" Tim insisted. "I don't WANT to get involved, but... don't we have to? As Imperial citizenry n'all that?"

"Oh, you canNOT be serious..."

"You know that Arbites have been going missing lately! What if this is what's been happening to them?"

“Mister Daniels, what's an 'Ahr-bit-ehs'?”

It's like... well, I guess it's like one of your guards. Only, you know, human.

“Huh. And someone took out a whole group of 'em? Woulda thought human guards would be better'n that.”

Nah. They're pretty useless everywhere you go. Anyway...

"See, the thing is, Tim, the more important this potentially is, the LESS I want to bother with it," I said, jabbing my thumb into my chest, "let's leave it to the Adeptus and keep our nose clean!"

"We should at least TELL someone!" Tim insisted. "What if they don't find the bodies and miss a lead? Whoever did this could keep killing!"

"Why are you so concerned about it?" I asked, turning around to face my brother. "People kill other people all the time down here! Don't see what difference it makes that it was Arbites. At least they can defend themselves."

"That's not the point!" Tim shouted, clearly frustrated. "Look, Wy, you KNOW what that wheel was, don't you?"

I shivered. "I don't know nothing about no wheel. I saw a bunch of dead bodies. That was all. That was ENOUGH."

"Wy-"

"NO!" I cut him off. "Tim, we're going home! We're going home and telling Ma that we were at class, and we're not coming back down here until all this is sorted! I won't be getting involved with serial murderers, and I sure as all Hell won't be messing around with C-"

I was about to shout "Chaos". Luckily for me, I was interrupted by a scream. The scream was followed by a lasblast.

We dropped to the ground. We were up high at the time, on some high path that ran along a big water pipe. Peeking out from under the pipe, we could see into the edge of the slums.

People were scattering like startled birds. You could make out gangers pretty much at a glance; tough, armed thugs with stupid hair and more piercings than brain cells. They were running as fast as anyone else.

When enough people had fled away from the newest underhive crime scene, we got a decent look at who had caused it. It was a figure all in black, with a stylized "I" on its wide-rimmed hat and a coterie of bloody Stormtroopers surrounding it.

When I saw that emblem I was even more scared than when I saw the Chaos Star. Chaos was reputed to be an awful thing, sure, but there was always that naïve, desperate hope that it wasn't real.

The Imperial Inquisition didn't allow for such ambiguity.

"We're leaving," I whispered as I pushed myself up, "NOW."

Tim got up too, but slowly. He didn't say anything. Just followed me back to our home.

I could guess what he was thinking, but I didn't want to acknowledge it. I wanted to pretend my brother wasn't that foolish. Murderous criminals were bad, murderous cultists were worse, but Inquisitors judged entire planets and decided their fates. Just because they do it for the sake of law and order doesn't make them any better.

But we made it home, and I was able to forget about the Inquisitor and the Chaos Star and the mass murder.

For a little while.

****

Gossan IV - Melkia City, commercial block 64

A hive world is basically a planet covered in cities. Not a city like Canterlot. Or even a city like Ferrous Dominus. A hive city can have billions of people, all living together in tiny little identical living spaces shunted into huge towers.

“Like a giant... hive?”

There you go, Bloom. Anyway, the daily grind of life takes its toll, but Gossan IV was actually pretty peaceful. We had an in-system agri-world, so we never suffered food shortages, and our planetary administratum wasn't THAT corrupt and oppressive. As long as you keep the general populace content enough, they'd rather endure the known miseries of everyday life than face the unknown risks and challenges of change. That's the equation that the planetary governors count on.

But you can't count on much after Chaos gets involved.

"Bleeding Hell!" I threw myself against a wall as I heard a burst of gunfire.

The commercial center was busy, as it usually was. I was surrounded by people, and the bodies were pressed so thick that the avenue was more a river of humanity than a path. That river turned bloody as the shrieking began; the momentum of bodies walking toward the gunfire bled away, and the pace of people moving away from it quickened.

"What the blazes is going on?!" I shouted. I couldn't see anything past the stampede of people.

More gunfire. Screaming. Shouting. LAUGHING. Everything around me was just booming noise.

Then the people rushing by started to thin out. Some of them were limping or crawling on hands and knees.

I finally got a look at what's driving them: masked men in dark red robes and hoods, covered in Chaos Stars and twisted runes. They're advancing behind the crowd, moving at a casual pace. And gunning down everyone ahead of them.

One such burst cuts across the people in front of me. A woman falls down, and some blood splashes over my legs.

I fall over. I'm not hit, just stunned. I decide to lie still where I fell, hoping that I might be mistaken for a corpse.

The gunmen walk by, exactly as I'd hoped. They're not checking on bodies, which surprises me. The thugs I've seen before would never just kill a person and walk off. It's wasteful. But that's what these bunch are doing. Killing for the sake of it. And apparently enjoying it.

"The new order has arrived, useless lambs!" one of them shouts as he reloads his autogun.

"Death to the Imperium! Death to the False Emperor!" screams another.

Then a laser blast cracks through the air, and one of them falls. Suddenly the cultists are in a rush, ducking down or bolting for cover.

"You dare attack the chosen?"

"Slay the unbelievers, brothers!"

"Chaos comes for you!"

I'm still too afraid to move, so I watch the firefight from the floor. The cultists seemed to have the advantage of numbers and heavier weapons, but whoever was tearing into them was a crack shot with a lasgun, and these thugs were rattled already, not used to shooting at people who shot back. By the time the killers were reloading their rifles, two more were down.

The cultists broke and ran. Three of them turned tail and sprinted in the same direction as all the people running from them. The last one happened to be the fellow closest to me, and he was still fumbling to reload his gun when he realized he was being abandoned.

I felt a sudden surge of anger and fool-headed courage at seeing them run, and as the last one turned on his heel I suddenly reached out and grabbed his leg. He shouted and fell forward onto the floor. I struggled to hold onto him, and that proved to be a mistake; one good flail of his other leg kicked me in the face, and I rolled away while clutching at my head and whimpering.

"The dark gods curse you, fool! Their will be done!"

The cultist didn't bother with me any further, scrambling to his feet.

He didn't make it. Another lasblast took him right in the back of the head, burning through his hood and dropping him.

I watched from the ground as three armed men rushed after them, all of them carrying las weapons. They didn't look like soldiers or Arbites.

"We have three runners!"

"Take one of them alive! We need someone to interrogate!"

Whoever they were, soon they were gone, and I was alone with the dead and wounded. Some people were sobbing or begging for help on the floor, but I ignored them as I stumbled to my feet. My head was bleeding and I could barely see through my right eye, but I could still move just fine.

I probably should have fled home immediately, but instead I rushed to the cultist that had kicked me. His autogun was lying on the floor next to him, and I could see the holster of a pistol tied to the rope around his robes.

I took both weapons. I didn't know how to shoot a gun back then; for all my experience around gangers and underhive thugs, I'd never fought any. Still, it seemed to me that being armed might be important now.

The stub pistol I could hide on me, but the autogun was too large. I found a maintenance hatch and stashed it away in there. Then I raced home.

****

Sweet Apple Acres - farmstead

Applejack whistled. "That's ugly stuff. Yer folks must've been mighty glad to see you home safe."

Daniels shook his head. "Not particularly. They didn't know what happened. I didn't tell them."

The ponies looked more disturbed at this than at the description of random and wanton violence.

"Now why would ya keep somethin' like that from yer folks?" Applejack demanded.

Daniels scratched the back of his head. "My family... wasn't like yours. We didn't hold each other up or work together. Tim was the only one of them I felt close to, and that was just because we spent a lot of time together wandering in places we shouldn't be. My little brother went to his classes diligently and never wanted to get into trouble. He looked down on me, really. My parents got home late almost every evening and hardly even saw us. It barely occurred to me to tell my folks; what were they going to do about it?"

Applejack frowned. "Well, if ya can't trust yer family, who can ya trust? It don't sound like those Arbites guys're much help, and ya straight-up said ya wouldn't have nothin' to do with those Inquisitors."

"Eeyup," Big Mac added helpfully.

"I didn't trust anyone, really," Daniels admitted, "probably why I'm still alive."

They were silent for a few seconds after that, save the sound of Granny Smith snoring. Apple Bloom leaned further into Applejack, and her elder sister hugged her close.

"So then what happened?" Applejack asked.

"Well, these things follow a surprisingly predictable pattern, apparently. First isolated murders, then outbreaks of open violence, then rebellion. The Inquisition sometimes manages to nip the last stage in the bud, but they had a pretty formidable opponent. It was barely two weeks after the shootout in the commercial sector that the uprising began."

"Uprisin'? How does a few killin's turn into a revolution?" Applejack asked.

"Well, around here they wouldn't," Daniels agreed, "but human populations tend to be more... tense. There are always people who want to overturn the status quo for one reason or another. Some of the reasons are even good ones." Then he wet his lips. "But this wasn't about justice or freedom. There was a darker force at work. Chaos had marked Gossan IV." He cast a meaningful glance at Apple Bloom, "and the Imperium of Man takes Chaos Marks very seriously."

****

Gossan IV - Melkia City, residential hive 21

"What in the hells is going on here?" I shouted.

Nobody answered me. Least of all the bodies littering the halls.

Melkia City was now caught up in rebellion; people were meeting up to arm themselves and take sides, and those that weren't willing to fight had holed up in the hives. My family was one of the latter groups. They'd sent me out to get water supplies. It took four hours.

When I got back, the residential hive was a charnel house.

“What's a "charnel house, Sis?”

“It's like a cemetery, but even creepier. Boy howdy, Ah do NOT envy mortician ponies! 'Sides the job, they have the most disturbin' cutie marks ya can imagine!”

“Eeyup.”

"Hello? Is... Is anyone alive?" My voice cracked as I spoke, and my hand reached into my coat pocket where I had the stub pistol concealed.

I slowly crept through the hall, water carried along my back and the pistol in my hand. There were bodies and bloodstains everywhere. Creepy symbols painted on the wall in blood. And not much in the way of ammunition casings. A lot of this killing had been done by hand.

Almost every living quarter had been forced open, the doors smashed free or the locks cut through. In the time it took me to run my errand, the rebels and cultists had torn through the residential blocks and murdered everyone here.

“Wait, ya mean...”

Yeah.

I got back to my living quarters. My parents and little brother were all there. Cut open.

The gun fell from my hands, and I collapsed onto the floor, sobbing. Like I said, I wasn't close to my family. I can't honestly say I loved them. But they were still my family, and they had been butchered. They were all I had.

I don't know how much time I wasted crying, but eventually I came to my senses and started figuring things out. Tim wasn't here. I didn't know where he was. The second thing I figured out was that all the intruders had done was break in, kill everyone, and then leave. It looked like they barely searched the place. That meant there should have been plenty of supplies for me.

“Why would anyone do somethin' like that? Ya'll are Chaos too, and ya don't kill fer no reason!”

Well, not to defend all the killing we ARE responsible for, but different Chaos forces have different goals and methods. Iron Warriors are efficient. Methodical. If you're not fighting them, they'd usually rather not waste time and ammo on you. The goal of these types were to spread carnage far and wide. Get people to panic and disrupt the orderly functioning of the planet. And they accomplished that in spades.

"C'mon, there's got to be something useful here!" I rummaged through the pantry, taking what little nutrient paste I could find. There was hardly any food, and that surprised me. What were we supposed to be eating while barricading ourselves indoors and waiting out a civil war?

"I've got to find Tim. If we can just get out of Melkia, we'll be okay," I mumbled as I stepped into my parents' room, "Emperor's bones, those sods didn't even take a quick look around, did they? What's this, then?"

There was a thick metal suitcase on the bed, looking for all the world like it might hold something very important and valuable. Untouched, apparently, because it didn't bleed.

I tried to open the case, but it was gene-locked. That might have deterred me normally, but the two most likely keys to opening that lock were lying in the next room.

"What were you hiding, Pa?" I whispered as I carried the case over and ran his dead hand over the reader.

“Boy, ya sure adjusted right quick ta bein' orphaned.”

In the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium, you get jaded pretty fast. And seeing my butchered family when I was still young set a pretty high bar for psychologically crippling trauma experienced later on in life fighting terrifying aliens and monsters. So, you know, silver linings.

"Bloody hell," I breathed as I looked into the case, "where the hell was Pa keeping all this money?"

I was staring into a case packed tight with thrones. That's the coin version of credits, by the way. Very high-value stuff, which is why void trash like me usually don't use them. My parents shouldn't have been able to scrounge up many either, but here they were, packed tight enough so that they didn't even jingle.

"What is this? This doesn't make sense," I mumbled to myself as I wandered around the blood-spattered room, holding my head, "where'd the old man get this kind of money? No way it's just savings." I froze. "Did he... steal it?"

I didn't want to cast accusations on the recently deceased, but it made sense. My pa had access to a big chunk of the Administratum budget, and could have siphoned it off for himself. Of course, he'd get caught easily if he were doing that. Provided there wasn't a bloody rebellion going on to distract everyone.

"But why would he? If he was going to steal something, why not food, or a... a ship..."

I had an idea. Tapping into cash that wasn't his made PERFECT sense if he was planning to use that cash to leave the planet. There would be millions dead, and assets destroyed beyond counting in the conflict. If he could buy passage on a ship out, there was no way the money or he would be missed.

“Still don't make it right, though.”

I wasn't at a point any longer where I could afford to worry about morals. Whether or not that was my Pa's idea, it was a good one. I reconfigured the lock and started putting the case into my pack.

"Hello? Anybody still alive in here?"

"Shit, they got everyone! Just... butchered them in their rooms, like livestock!"

"Bloody fanatics! Emperor strike you freaks down!"

I barely managed to get the coins stashed in my pack before I heard footsteps behind me. My heart leapt into my throat.

"No sudden movements, lad," said a deep voice from the door. My hand trembled as it crept toward the pistol.

"Over here! Found a scavenger!"

More footsteps. I let my hand fall away from the gun. One man I could plausibly stop if I was lucky and he was careless. But several? There was no way.

"You serve the Emperor, boy? Or are you one of those heretic mongrels?" a woman's voice demanded.

I slowly raised my hands up as I turned around. Sure enough, there were four people in my family's living quarters aiming guns at me. Clearly not Arbites; their weapons were different, and they didn't have uniforms. No Chaos symbols either.

I forced myself to talk, although it felt like I was choking.

"Th-This is my family's l-living unit," I said, my voice shaking.

"That doesn't answer the QUESTION, boy!" the woman snapped.

"Blimey Clara, would you calm down?" one of the men said, lowering his rifle. "You can see the lad's folks gutted right behind him! Cut him some slack!"

"We don't know if he's telling the truth!" she insisted. "He could be looting the place!"

Another of the men glanced at the wall and pulled down a pict-capture. "Seems legit to me." He showed the others a picture of my family together, probably the only such image we have.

The woman finally deflated, lowering her weapon. "I... I, uh... sorry."

"I'm real sorry for what happened here, kid. By the time anyone contacted us it was already too late," said one of the others.

"Who are you?" I asked. I felt slightly more confident now that these people had accepted I had a right to be here, but I was still cautious.

"We're militia, son," said the woman, apparently named Clara, "sworn to fight the rebel scum trying to turn our planet against the Emperor's will. Are you with us?"

"I'm just trying to get out of here before looters or more murderers come," I explained nervously.

"Get out of here? And go where?" laughed one of the men. "Melkia's a war zone now, lad. Most of the hive cities are, I hear. If the heretics have their way, all of Gossan will be the same."

"If you can hold a gun, you're with us," Clara said decisively, "the planet, and your Emperor, is counting on you! We'll get the bastards that offed your folks!"

I cringed. I wanted no part of this. Nice as it would have been to see the killers brought to justice, there was hardly much chance of that as opposed to me getting my fool self killed. I wasn't about to go swearing an oath of revenge.

"You got any supplies, kid?" one of the militiamen asked me, gesturing to my pack.

"I have water, some food, and-" I bit my own tongue before I told him about the money. They noticed.

"And WHAT?" Clara demanded, her eyes narrowing.

I looked at the floor. "I have... an autogun," I said it like I was guilty about it, "I stripped it off a dead body and stashed it away."

"Good thinking, lad! You just might be cut out for this sort of thing! We'll escort you to wherever you hid it. Jonah, you get the water. Let's go!"

****

Sweet Apple Acres - farmstead

"So that was my first experience with warfare: being dragged into the front lines of a civil war. They gave me a crash course in using the weapons I'd looted from the cultists, some ridiculously shabby body armor, and then had me guiding assault teams that went into the underhive."

"Wait, Ah don't get it," Apple Bloom said, shaking her head, "don't ya fight fer Chaos?"

"Well, sure, now I do," Daniels admitted.

"But they killed yer family!" Apple Bloom said, clearly distressed. She glanced back at her flank, staring at the green Chaos mark with rather overstated guilt.

It was all Daniels could do to keep from scooping the filly up and squeezing her like a plush toy. Instead he chuckled wryly. "Well, for what it's worth, Chaos isn't a unified force. The 38th Company had nothing to do with that war. They've had plenty to do with lots of others, but not that one." Then he shrugged. "But that doesn't really matter to me. I don't hold grudges. I'm not interested in revenge. And trying to find out which faction hiring human mercenaries is the least 'evil' is a useless exercise if I've ever seen one."

The ponies were frowning at this, and he snorted and looked away.

"There are no 'good guys' in the Imperium's wars. There's just your guys, and everyone else. And most of everyone else wants you dead by default."

Applejack glanced down at her little sister, wondering if she should send Apple Bloom to bed. This tale had certainly turned out more gruesome than she had expected.

The youngest Apple sibling looked intensely interested, though, and Applejack decided that the rest of the story wasn't likely to traumatize her; Apple Bloom had seen plenty of awful things of late.

"So what happened with the war? Ya were fightin' to save the planet, right?" the orange mare asked.

"Well, logistically speaking, we had it in the bag," Daniels said, his tone shifting back to "story teller" mode. "We had the advantage of numbers, organization, the support of the Adeptus Arbites, the Planetary Defense Force, most underhive gangs, and the support of the general populace, who helped keep us supplied and housed. Despite the odd monster that the cultists managed to to let loose, they simply didn't have enough weapons and bodies, their leadership was insane, and any support they got was out of fear and desperation."

Applejack nodded hesitantly.

"But we were losing," Daniels admitted, "despite winning almost every major battle, entire units would go missing without a trace, our supplies would vanish, explode, or end up poisoned, and our leaders kept turning up dead, along with their bodyguards. Nobody knew what was happening. Many suspected treachery within the ranks - it's not like there was much of a background check before they handed you a gun - but soon it was happening so often and leaving so many guards dead that it became pretty implausible that it was one of us. It was as if some force was just ducking into our territory whenever it pleased, taking out its target, and then slipping out before we realized what happened. And whatever it was wasn't deterred by a half-dozen armed guards."

Applejack tilted her head to the side. "Well, Ah'd guess Astartes, but there's no way you'd miss them. Those guys're about as subtle as a minotaur wailin' on a bagpipe."

"The Iron Warriors are," Daniels corrected, "but there are others. There's even a group that specializes in infiltration and sabotage tactics."

"Yer tellin' me that there's an army of giant, power-armored, daemon-infested, super-soldier SPAHS?" Applejack asked, looking appropriately horrified by the idea.

"Yeah. And it's exactly as terrifying and implausible as you imagine," Daniels grunted, "of course, none of us imagined at the time that there were Space Marines involved in the conflict, and most supposed that if there were, they'd be on our side."

"Yer side back then, or yer side now?" Apple Bloom asked in confusion.

"Back then," the human answered.

"So back then Space Marines fought against Chaos?" Applejack asked.

"Let's not have me recount the entire Horus Heresy, all right? All you need to know is that when the militia was trying to keep all of Gossan IV from turning into one big blood sacrifice, we weren't expecting to fight any Space Marines. Which made my biggest - and last - mission quite an unpleasant surprise."

****

Gossan IV - Melkia City, underhive slums

"This is a bad idea," I mumbled as I crawled on my hands and knees under a veritable labyrinth of water pipes.

A full nineteen fighters were crawling along behind me. None of them were professional soldiers or enforcers, but all had a firefight or two under their belts, at least. Clara was there. I even thought she was beginning to warm up to me. More than I'd warmed up to her, at least.

"This is a very bad idea," I reminded my squad again as I reached the end of the pipelines and stood up.

"Would you shut your yap?" snapped one of the men as he emerged behind me. "This is the only idea we've got!"

That wasn't strictly true, since I had an idea that involved ditching this entire world with a suitcase of stolen cash. But that wasn't the sort of thing you share with a bunch of militiamen bravely putting their lives on the line to save their home.

"You don't seriously think the Inquisition is going to help us, do you?" I growled. Surely I couldn't be the only one who heard the stories about them.

"You don't seriously think we can let an Inquisitor alone, do you?" Clara replied as she got to her feet. "I can't believe you knew there was an Inquisitor on-planet the whole time! While the planet is rebelling, yet! If they don't realize that there's people banding together against the cultist scum, our entire world could be roasted!"

"What makes you think that the Inquisitor doesn't know that already?" I demanded as I led the way out of the claustrophobic maintenance tunnels. "The militia isn't a secretive group. The Inquisitor has to know that someone's been fighting the rebels and heretics besides the useless Arbites."

"Not the point, Wyatt," another man said.

"Don't call me Wyatt!" I snapped. I didn't like strangers using my first name.

"The Inquisition is our only link to off-world forces, which we may need if these heretic freaks keep pecking away at us," Clara explained, "Daryn would have sought the Inquisitor out a lot sooner if he'd known there was one operating here."

"Yeah, yeah, me and my big mouth..."

I led the unit into a section of high scaffolding that ran over the slums. It offered an excellent view of the little city of tents and shacks below, most of which had been torn up by now.

I grimaced. Metal poles capped with Chaos Stars had been sunk into the ground around the slums, many of them decorated with bodies or parts of bodies.

"I thought this territory was friendly!" one of the men hissed.

"Yeah. 'Was'," I replied wearily, kneeling at the edge of the scaffolding and pointing down. "Check out those corpses. Gangers. The ones that used to run this slum."

"Well, at least they didn't go down without a fight," Clara mumbled. Then her gaze hardened. "I see a cluster of the rebel bastards down there! Spread out and mark targets!"

My blood almost froze in my veins. "What are you doing?! We can sneak right over their heads!"

"And leave another handful of cultists alive to slaughter more families? No. We have the advantage of surprise and high ground. We kill them all."

"The scaffolding isn't too sturdy! If they fire back it could drop us all to our deaths!"

"Then don't give them the chance to fire back," Clara advised as she aimed a lasrifle down at the cluster of reddish figures, "Emperor guide my aim! OPEN FIRE!!"

The other militiamen did exactly that, and my unit cut into the surprised cultists below.

Me, I ran for the alcove at the end of the scaffolding, sure that the firefight was going to rip it away from its flimsy ceiling mountings. I had my autogun out, but I never took a shot; I just kept my head down until the shouting and gunshots stopped.

"Blast! Only got about half of the bastards. The rest ran away," Clara grumbled as she put up her rifle. The scaffolding had held, and none of our team had been hit.

"And now they all know we're here!" I snapped. "Are you daft or something?"

"We killed a few of the heretic dogs and lost no one," Clara reasoned, "I regret nothing."

Well, that bloody jinxed us right there. A pounding noise came from down below, and before I knew it a pair of struts supporting the scaffolding were shredded to pieces.

The sections of walkway below the damaged struts folded immediately, and four men screamed while they dropped thirty meters or so to the ground.

The others were scrambling toward me now, FINALLY understanding that they were in a rather precarious spot to be inviting a gunfight. I was on more solid ground, and I finally aimed my own gun down into the slums.

I saw a hint of green for a moment, and then nothing. There were no targets down there.

"Where is he?!" Clara growled after she reached me, aiming her lasrifle into the shredded hovels below. "He couldn't have ducked away that quickly while carrying a heavy weapon!"

"Heavy weapon?"

"Sounded like a heavy stubber to me!"

It wasn't. But none of us had seen or heard an Astartes boltgun before, so we couldn't recognize the noise.

We made good progress through the underhive after that, and Clara didn't feel like hunting down more cultists.

Every stretch of rubble and run-down gathering place had been reduced to a battlefield. Up in the hives the rebels couldn't sustain attacks or hold territory for very long before the militia or PDF got its act together and pushed them back. Down in the underhive, though, there were only gangers and victims. Gangers could be plenty vicious, but they weren't equipped very well; a much better fight for the cultists, who were much the same.

"I'm grateful that the rodents and freaks down here are fighting against the rebel scum," Clara muttered, "but they seem to be making a hash of it."

"Gangers have more combat experience than our militia, though," one man pointed out, "shouldn't they be doing just as well as us, at least?"

I wasn't paying any attention to the dead bodies; I was alert for the living. The corpses seemed to fascinate the rest of the unit, though, and soon one of them pointed something out.

"Kiln is right. Look at the bodies here," someone mumbled, "both the cultists and the gangers left their dead lying about, but there are way more dead gangers in every area. How are the damned rebels doing so well down here? They never manage this kind of victory when they attack the hive."

"Maybe they just attack in overwhelming numbers?"

"If they outnumber the gangers that badly, then they could probably get away with doing the same thing to us."

"Look at these bodies. A lot of them look like they were hit with explosive shot. Most of them, even."

"So they have a nasty gun or two?"

"A nasty gun that we haven't seen in any of the battles top side. As far as I've seen, the rebels are lucky to have a proper lasgun among a dozen of them."

I sighed, turning toward the others. "All right detectives, what do all these clues add up to?"

Clara seemed unimpressed by my sarcasm. "If I had to guess, I'd say the rebels have help. Help from someone who knows what they're doing."

"You mean, like... traitor PDF?" one man asked nervously.

"Maybe. Or maybe something worse. Like traitor Stormtroopers, or witches."

I snorted. "Or maybe all that 'Dark God' claptrap they keep squealing about is real."

My quip was answered by the report of a bolt pistol behind me.

I spun around to see one of the guys falling to the ground, missing most of his upper body. Everyone else was already fumbling to aim their weapons.

He came from behind a wooden shack, practically swooping over the ground. Massive and stupidly fast, wrapped in sea green armor trimmed in silver. To this day I will never understand how the Alpha Legionnaires move so quietly in full power armor. Not even the other Astartes understand it.

Before anyone could fire a shot he opened up another man with his sword - not a chainsword, since I suppose those are too noisy for the Alphas - and then crushed another man's skull with an elbow strike.

We got in a few shots after that, but we may as well have been shooting at a ferrocrete wall; lasers and bullets and shot spattered off of the ceramite like nothing, and all the while he tore through my unit like he was cutting down wheat stalks.

Clara ditched her rifle and drew a knife, because apparently firing lasbursts at point-blank range into a Space Marine's face isn't suicidal enough for her taste. He didn't bother to let her use it, and removed her spine with a bolt round.

“Aww, are ya serious? Ah thought she was gonna make it! Wasn't she yer love interest?”

No. No, not even close. Why would you even think that?

“Well, she's the only lady whose name ya seemed to remember, sugarcube. It's kinda misleadin'.”

This is a story about my descent into a life of piracy and the destruction of my roots. There is no romantic sub-plot.

“Eesh. As if it ain't depressin' enough.”

Anyway. The Astartes was cutting through my unit. There were only two men left between me and him, and they were already turning to run. The only reason I wasn't moving to do the same thing was because I had started late and was still in the "desperately spraying bullets" phase of panic.

Then a ball of plasma took the Alpha Legionnaire in the side, and he dropped to the ground like a sack of rocks.

My autogun shook in my hands and I stared straight ahead at the smoldering body. I could barely register what had just happened, I was so scared.

The other two stumbled to a halt, gasping at whatever had intervened.

"These traitor Marines are like rats," snipped a female voice off to the side, "they won't crawl out of their hiding place without bait."

I finally regained my senses far enough to look at who had saved my life. It was a woman in black, with a wide-rimmed, flat-topped hat that had a stylized "I" in the front.

"The Inquisitor!" breathed one of the survivors behind me. "We did it!"

"I am Inquisitor Locus, of the Ordo Hereticus, yes. As for what you 'did', if you were referring to anything besides drawing out this rebellious filth, you'll have to enlighten me." She walked up to the dead Legionnaire and gave him a kick in the helmet.

I had to admit, it took a lot of gall to talk about an Astartes like that, even after he was dead.

“So is this Locus gal yer love-”

NO. Seriously. Quit that. There's no love story here!

Anyway, there were Stormtroopers piling in behind the Inquisitor now; heavily-armed and armored humans with special training and lots of combat experience. They still couldn't measure up to Space Marines man-to-man, but they were close enough that the Inquisitor could reasonably expect to survive a jaunt through Chaos-held territory.

"We've come to find you and request your aid!" said one of the other guys. "The militia has been holding back the rebels since they started mobilizing, keeping them from making headway into Melkia City," the other survivor explained, "but somehow they keep striking at us where we're vulnerable! We're losing soldiers, weapons, and supplies faster than we can recover them, and the rebels only seem to get stronger!"

Locus snorted. "Yes. That would be thanks to THESE pests," she grunted, planting a boot on the dead Marine's throat, "they've been keeping a low profile, as usual, but this rebellion would have gotten nowhere without their assistance."

"I don't understand," I practically choked out, "why are Space Marines aiding the heretics and rebels?"

Her eyes narrowed at me. "You are young, boy, so you may be forgiven this one misstep. But when speaking to an Inquisitor you do not ask questions, you answer them."

I gulped. This was pretty much as I expected. My unit must have been a bunch of idiots to expect help from the Inquisition.

Locus turned away toward the other two. "Tell me of your militia," she demanded.

While the other survivors practically tripped over each other to feed her information, I started to walk off, searching for any clue as to more enemies.

As such, I noticed more Stormtroopers arriving, and with them were non-Stormtroopers. Most of the 'civilians' following the retinue were gangers; heavily pierced, covered from top to bottom with tattoos, and carrying scavenged weapons. But some of them weren't. And one of them...

"Tim! TIM!! You're alive!" I saw my brother clustered with some gangers, carrying a dirty laspistol. He was at least as surprised to see me as I was him.

We embraced, laughing despite the horrors of warfare that surrounded us. The laughter soon died down, however.

"Tim... Ma and Pa. And Cellus too, they're..." I trailed off.

Tim shook his head sadly. "I figured that. I even thought they'd gotten you too, Wy." His eyes burned. "But we're going to get them! We'll push out the traitors, and get our home back!"

I looked around. The Stormtroopers had taken up firing positions around the Inquisitor and the militia boys. They were still busy answering questions. None of them were paying attention to us.

I lowered my voice and leaned in. "No, Tim. We won't. Listen. I think I might have a way out."

Tim blinked. "A way out? A way out of what?"

"Of this planet. This war," I whispered, "ever since I joined up with the militia I've divided my time between looking for you and looking for smugglers. I know how we can get passage out of here."

Tim was still confused. "Why would we do that? We can win, Wy! We can stop the rebellion!"

"And how long will that take?" I hissed. "What are the chances that we'll be alive to enjoy the end of it? What will happen after that?" I pounded a fist against my chest. "I'm not going to stay here to wait for the dice to fall if I don't have to. I'm leaving, Tim. And you can come with me. We can start over! It's not like there's anything tying us here anymore!"

Tim was thinking about it. I could see the gears in his head turning. But they were turning in the wrong direction.

"No," he said darkly, "I'm not doing that." He stood up straighter, looking down on me. "This is about more than just our survival, Wyatt. We can't just run from the enemy. We can't let rebellion and heretics run rampant, fleeing at the first sign of trouble. We have to fight back. We have to maintain and preserve the Imperium against the Chaos threat."

"I'm not fleeing at the first sign of trouble, I'm fleeing after trouble has painted our fragging HOME with bits of our family!" my voice rose a little too high, and I quickly toned it down. "I'm fleeing because there are cultists and monsters and Inquisitors and EVIL SPACE MARINES running about the place. This is beyond us, Tim! We're a pair of nobodies, and it's time you acted like one instead of strutting about with a bloody executioner like you're some kind of hero!"

He set his jaw, backing up. "Well, maybe I WANT to be a hero. Maybe I want to be somebody!"

"You're going to get yourself killed! And if I stick around, then I'm liable to join you!"

"It's worth the risk to take on these bastards!"

Tim was immovable. I wasn't sure what had gotten into him; he had apparently been following Inquisitor Locus while I was searching for him, and I wasn't all too familiar with how Inquisitors handle their informants and lackeys.

Before our argument could get loud again, Inquisitor Locus spoke up.

"I have heard enough!" she said. Her voice carried no anger or annoyance; it was merely a declaration. "I have compared your testimonies to that of other citizens, prisoners, and my own observations. I am ready to pass judgment upon Gossan IV."

Those individuals from this planet practically seized up in anticipation. The Stormtroopers didn't budge. A servitor among her retinue started writing down the edict with an auto-scribe.

"It is my opinion that the world of Gossan IV, despite the recent outbreak of rebellion, is NOT irredeemably corrupt," Locus pronounced. There was a palpable gasp of relief from many of the men, including Tim.

As for me, I was slowly breaking off from the group, my eye on an escape route out of the line of sight of the Stormtroopers. Call me pessimistic, but I wasn't ready to celebrate yet.

"Despite the evidence of heresy, the rebellious elements represent an insubstantial portion of the population, which by and large has risen to resist the seditious elements. Those heretics captured and interrogated do not show an advanced understanding of their blasphemous allegiance. It is obvious that the success of this revolution hinges entirely on the activities and success of its instigators, the traitorous Alpha Legion. This is less an uprising and more an infestation."

She paused. I slipped behind a durasteel wall, out of line of sight of the others but close enough to hear.

"An Imperial fleet is passing near this system to assist in the war for Nallaxis, a forge world that has been under attack by Chaos elements for some months now. The forge world is of critical importance, but I cannot leave the Gossan system's rebellion to fester and spread, especially with proof of traitor Astartes at work. I have already diverted the fleet here."

Some of the quiet gasps had turned to cheers. I felt ice settle in my stomach.

"The fleet has sufficient ground forces to drive out the Chaos elements and put down the rebellion, but I believe that is exactly what the Alpha Legion hopes to achieve by corrupting this world: to delay reinforcements to Nallaxis. There is no other apparent reason for their intervention here, and their timing is otherwise too convenient."

I knew what the next line was going to be. Frankly, I don't know how none of the others didn't. I broke and ran as fast as I could.

The last thing I heard was: "It is for this reason that I am having the fleet perform Exterminatus upon this world..."

****

Gossan IV - Melkia City primary hive

I barely paused to catch my breath all the way back to the militia headquarters. I didn't bother with any hidden paths or safe routes; a few bands of rebels actually spotted me as I was fleeing and opened fire. None of them got me, though, and I think most of them were pretty confused as to why there was a lone militia recruit sprinting through the underhive.

When I got back to base I told the guards that I had very important news that had to relay to Commander Daryn as soon as possible. They let me through right away.

I went straight to my bunk instead.

I opened up the locker with my money case inside, bundled it into my pack, and then told a different set of guards that I had a message to relay to my team as they met with the Inquisitor.

Then I made for the space ports. It took two days, since the rails were out. By the time I got there, I could see the shadows of Imperial battleships across the sun as they settled into orbit. The fleet was here.

****

Gossan IV - Melkia City, docking bridge 96

"Let me on, please!"

"We have to get out! I have a family!"

"Out of the way! Out of the way!"

In every conflict, there are those who fight, those who suffer, and those who profit.

When rebellion breaks out in a star system, smugglers descend on it like flies to a dung heap. Lost territory and exploding infrastructure disrupt the normal flow of trade and production, and that means that people can't get what they want. That's a need that the humble smuggler can happily address.

"Power cells! I'm looking for high-capacity thorium power cells!"

"Empty your pockets and we'll see what I can do, old man."

At the beginning it's usually weapons that people are looking for. Then medical supplies. Then more common things that we take for granted. And on every planet with a conflict, there's always money to be made in shipping people somewhere else... ANYWHERE else.

"If you can't pay, then bugger off!"

I watched as a man with a bionic arm kicked a woman away from the docking platform, spilling her belongings across the floor as she sobbed.

"We've got water, food, and the space that those supplies used to occupy!" shouted a woman in carapace armor. All these smugglers were armed to the teeth, and looking very happy. Business was good, it seemed.

"Don't you have any weapons?!" demanded a burly dock worker.

"You don't keep up with the news?" snapped a smuggler. "An Imperial fleet just dropped into the system this morning! Come tomorrow you'll have all the firepower you'd never wish for!"

He was laughing. I couldn't help but wonder if he knew what was coming.

News of our "salvation" spread quickly among the crowd, but it didn't much lessen demand for spots on the ship. By the time the crowd had thinned enough for me to get to the front, the smugglers were backing up to entry ramp of their freighter, rifles held forward.

"Wait! I want to buy passage off-planet!" I shouted.

One of them laughed. "Sure you do! But we're full up, lad! If you survive the month, we might be able to help you out on the next trip!"

I clenched my teeth. I would NOT survive the month on Gossan IV.

"I can pay!" I shouted.

The woman shrugged. "All our passengers already paid, hon. Tough luck."

I took a deep breath. "I can pay MORE."

They stopped backing away.

I stepped away from the few civilians still hanging around - probably getting ready to search the docks for dropped supplies or useful parts - and dropped my pack. I pulled out the case and swiped my hand over the gene-reader.

The case cracked open. I immediately glared behind me and clutched my autogun in case any of the other desperate fools tried to jump me for my money.

The smugglers took a moment appraising my payment. Then the woman spoke. "What's your name, kid?"

"You can call me Daniels," I said coldly. I cast a dangerous glance over to them, too. If they wanted to, there wasn't a whole lot stopping them from shooting me and taking the money without giving anything up.

But that's contrary to their business model, apparently.

"I like the way you think, Daniels," the armored woman said. Then she glanced down at the augmented smuggler. "Kirl! Go get a passenger and refund his payment. His spot has just been sold to a higher bidder."

The man looked surprised, then hesitant. "Anyone in... uh... in particular?"

"Choose someone whose face you don't like, for all I care. But do it fast."

She turned back toward me. "Welcome aboard, Daniels. I do hope you'll excuse our rapid departure, but not everybody is so thrilled to see Imperial battle fleets translating in when we're trying to keep a low profile."

I snapped the case closed and held it out for her. "The more rapid, the better."

****

Gossan System - high orbit around Gossan IV

"It's actually not that packed in here. I expected to be short on breathing room."

I nodded a silent agreement as I took in the interior of the ship. I'd never been in a void craft before. I'd never had cause to be.

There were two dozen people besides me and the smugglers, and as the rather nervous-looking fellow next to me had pointed out, the accommodations were actually quite spacious. More than I'd expected, anyway. They could have packed us in like power cells and we wouldn't have had much scope to complain.

The smuggler keeping an eye on us in the cargo bay chuckled. "We're professionals, pal. Believe me, we've tried packing this place to the gills before, and it just gets unpleasant for everyone. Setting a strict occupancy limit works best, we've found." He cast a meaningful glance at me.

I cringed away from the attention. Out of all the things I did on Gossan IV to get out alive, somehow that was the one act that I truly felt guilty about; getting some poor sod tossed out onto the docking bridge to get slagged after he or she had already thought they were safe.

"How long do you think we'll be en route to Unil?" asked a woman. She looked high-class; she was probably a noble, albeit a relatively poor or desperate one to turn to smugglers.

"Oh, it'll be two weeks or so," the smuggler replied with a shrug, "first we have to refuel at the orbital sub-"

The door to the main deck slid open, and another man staggered in.

"Change of plans! Everybody get comfy, because we're making a break for Warp space!"

None of us passengers seemed especially perturbed by this, but our guard stood up.

"Why? I know fuel is pricey right now, but we'll be cutting it awful close if we head out now, Gerril!" the other smuggler protested. "Is this about the Imperial fleet? Are they searching craft?"

"This is about the fleet," growled the second smuggler, "but they're not searching anyone." He moved to a monitor on the wall and then activated a feed leading to the primary auger array.

"The fleet isn't forming a blockade or dropping landers. They've taken up bombardment position."

We stared at the images of dark, baroque shapes looming over the planet's surface.

"But... the rebels... the rebels are under the hive city," mumbled one bright spark, "how are they going to get them with a bombardment?"

The looks he got from the smugglers made his face go white. His wasn't the only one.

"No. No, they wouldn't," the noblewoman insisted.

"I would hope not," the smuggler guard said, "I've seen the Imperium put down much worse rebellions than this with a proper counter-invasion. But..."

As if in response to his faltering, unspoken statement, the first battleships opened fire. Huge spears of energy were stabbing into the planet.

I blinked my eyes. There were tears streaming down my face, but I managed to hold back from sobbing openly. Not everyone in that ship did.

I rubbed my sleeve against my eyes to clear them. And then I sat back and watched the Imperium kill my homeworld.

****

Sweet Apple Acres - farmstead

Granny Smith's snoring was the only sound in the room as Daniels finished his tale. The Apple siblings stared at him silently and intently, having long ago stopped interrupting with their own thoughts.

"... So there you have it," Daniels said with a sigh, "the story of Wyatt Daniels and Gossan IV. A grand tale of cowardice, cruelty, and pointless loss." He chuckled wryly. "Billions dead. All just a little footnote in some Chaos Lord's grand plan. A diversion! But Inquisitor Locus was too clever for the Alpha Legion! Nallaxis was saved, I hear!"

The older Apple siblings shared a doubtful glance, unnerved by the mercenary's tone.

Apple Bloom tilted her head to the side. "So did anythin' happen 'tween you and the smuggler lady?"

"Oh, for the love of-" Daniels grunted in exasperation. "If you MUST know, yes. Kind of. But that happened way later, after I ended up joining the smugglers."

Apple Bloom brightened. "Ooh! Let's hear about that part!"

"No," the human said decisively, "for one thing, that's even less appropriate for little 'uns than this story, albeit for different reasons. For another, it would completely ruin the bleak and consistently tragic tone I've established already."

His eyes caught Applejack's gaze. The orange pony was looking at him with... concern? Judgment? Doubt? He couldn't tell offhand.

"This story doesn't have a moral, but it does have a point," Daniels continued, "throughout my whole experience over the course of the rebellion, none of the institutions that were supposed to protect me actually helped." His tone was bitter now, if not resentful. "The Emperor, the Arbites, the Planetary Defense Forces, the Inquisition, the Astartes, the militia... my friends. My family. My... my brother. Every one of them failed, or turned their guns on the rest of us. The only thing that made a difference - the only reason I'm still alive - is because of quick wits and a case full of money."

He leaned back. "So that's the lesson. You can't count on anything in this galaxy except cash. And the addendum is that every faction gunning for each other in these wars are just as bad and willing to kill you off as the others; so you might as well shop around when you're working out who to fight for."

"Bloom, why don't ya head on up to bed?" Applejack said. "Ah think story time is over."

"All right, Sis," Apple Bloom said as Big Mac shifted behind her. She stood up and trotted upstairs, and her older brother followed after her.

After a few more seconds, Daniels was alone with Applejack. If one didn't count Granny Smith, which they did not.

"Sorry about that," the mercenary mumbled, "I warned you that story was dark. I didn't mention how cynical it was."

"That's all right, Daniels. I'm glad ya told me," Applejack said quietly, "not so sure it was a good idea for Apple Bloom to hear it, but she seems all right."

The orange mare stared up at him pensively and approached, sitting down right next to the depressed human.

"Do ya... Do ya still think like that? That family and friends are useless compared to money?"

Daniels gave her a sidelong glance, as if wondering if he should give an honest answer. "My life experiences have tended to reinforce that theory. Although I suppose my family could have impressed me had they lived longer."

Applejack looked nervous. "It's just... Ah can't imagine workin' fer Chaos after they killed yer folks. Ah almost lost Big Mac to the Tau, and if he'd died, Ah would NEVER have forgiven them. Ah couldn't possibly let that go. Probably woulda marched right into the badlands and got mah fool head shot off."

"Cold, calculating apathy has its advantages," Daniels grunted, "but I wouldn't recommend it."

Once again, Granny's snores filled an uncomfortable silence.

"Ah wanna prove ya wrong," Applejack said finally, placing a hoof on the man's leg.

"Say what?"

"Ah wanna show ya that family's better'n that. That money can't replace the people ya love," Applejack continued.

"My point was actually more along the lines that people can't measure up to money, whether I love them or not," Daniels admitted, "but anyway, I don't know how you're supposed to disprove that when I'm all out of family members to have faith in."

"Yer not, Danny. Ya got us, now," Applejack said with grim seriousness, "ya may not be an Apple - hay, ya ain't even a pony - but all the same Ah'd put mah life in yer hands and return the favor."

"Can't say I know why," Daniels mumbled, "I'm not big on self-loathing or wallowing in regret, but I don't have a good record for taking care of me mates."

The orange pony smirked. "Yer stronger than ya think, Daniels. And while ya may be a lousy hero, you've been a real good friend. Ya mean a lot to me."

Daniels pursed his lips, shifting on his cushion. He wasn't as awkward with friendship as most of the space pirates on the planet, but he still wasn't used to such a genuine outpour of sentiment. And he was quite certain he didn't deserve it.

"Hey, uh..." Applejack chewed her lip briefly, something boiling in her mind. "Do ya think Ah could call ya by yer first name from now on? Ah mean, we're pretty far from strangers, right?"

Daniels couldn't keep a smile off his face, and he suddenly pulled the pony over against his side, hugging her to him. "You can call me whatever you want, AJ. Although since you've decided to make me family, I've always been partial to 'Wy' as a nickname."

"Well, then Wy it is!" Applejack chuckled as she nuzzled the man's chin.

"Eugh! At least lemme get outta the room before you two start smoochin' each other!"

Daniels and Applejack looked quite bemused as they watched Granny Smith suddenly hop out of her rocking chair and head for the stairs.

"Granny, Ah told ya. We ain't like that," Applejack scowled.

"Filly, Ah ain't judgin' you. But just 'cause Ah'll accept it don't mean Ah want to see it!" the geriatric pony hobbled upstairs with surprising swiftness, leaving the man and mare to glare at her backside.

"... Why do people keep thinking we're a couple?" Daniels grumbled.

"Ah reckon some folks're PERVERTS, is all," Applejack said, emphasizing the key word loudly enough so that her grandmother could pick it up.

Then she snorted. "Well, guess Ah might as well turn in mahself."

"Want a belly rub before you head up?"

"Would Ah ever!"

Comments

[Aatxe360]

The comedy was well done!

Some folks are perverts.

[GBscientist]

Sometimes a story doesn't call for much comedy; this is one of them. I get enough chuckles out of the casual violence and blatant neuroses in the main story, so I can fully accept some grim darkness seeping out of these character backstory flashbacks.

[Illusory Dignity]

I'm really liking these sides stories. Any chance of a Gaela one, even if her personality isn't quite conducive to story telling?

[SFaccountant]

5029951
Of course Gaela will get one! Although next will probably be Tellis or Delgan.

[Illusory Dignity]

5030391 Nice. Gaela is by far my favorite character. When I reread parts of the series, I tend to open a search function and only read the parts with Gaela in them.

[Hey its that Pony]

From the title I thought this was going to be Tellis. But getting the back-story of one of my favorite straight-men is good too. :)

It's actually quite a tragedy for the Imperium to have lost Daniel. He probably would have made a nice sensible officer.

Belly rubs are adorable.

[Word Bearer]

I'm here waiting for silver's backstory.

[Marenteius]

Here is hoping the next chapter is entitled "The Madman" or such... Also, great chapter as always!

[crumbydev]

"I can pay MORE."

That line sold me not just this story, but the story universe you're building as well.

[Aziraphael]

It's like reading stories straight from the Black Library, I swear. Well done, dood.

[xoid]

The image for this chapter is dead.

[SFaccountant]

6731764
Fixed. Thanks for the heads-up.

[Blewfire]

Belly rubs for the win!

[Nevermore777]

You know, if Locus does somehow end up on Equestria, I’m kinda expecting Tim to still be with her and Applejack and Daniels are going to either kill him or somehow manage to convert him