Home Fires – Chapter Ten: Works
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“You’re staring again, boy.” Ory-Hara needled.
Antonius shook his head. He had been staring. Seeing Ory-Hara’s hawk-like face outside of his rebreather mask was a shock, even now.
“Tough talk, old friend. Didn’t you swear a vow of silence to my Father’s memory?”
“And people say you aren’t funny.” Ory hara said as a smile made his sharp features more pronounced.
“…wait, who says that?” concern filled Antonius’ voice.
Ory-Hara’s eyes bulged for an instant and then his face became an unreadable stone wall. “No one in particular, my Lord.”
Anronius rolled his eyes. “You wanted to talk, O silent one. No one will disturb us here. What’s on your mind?”
“I have… concerns… about the events you have planned for our Company.” Ory-Hara said gingerly.
“Concerns?” Antonius asked, pretending not to know what he meant.
“Yes.” Ory-Hara brought up a list of the assignments the Grayshields had been assigned to. “This is… beneath us. We are the Emperor’s Angels of Death. Not civilians.”
Antonius could no longer hold out. A huge toothy grin lit up his face. “Old friend, trust me. You’re never going to be happier to be wrong.”
***
The finest produce was on display.
Then it wasn’t.
Colorful gourds and ripe fruit exploded as Bolt rilfe rounds tore into them. The shells cared not if the flesh was animal or vegetable; the mass reactive fuses detonated the explosive core of the round a fraction of a second after striking, blowing the vegetable matter to smithereens. Below, cringing journalists were covered from head to toe in puree.
The crowd went wild.
Around the produce, glass bottles hung swaying from ropes. Covered in plant gore but intact. The bolt rounds of Kheniam’s squad had flown true. Not one had struck the moving bottles.
The enthusiasm of the crowd baffled Kheniam. Why did they care? This was easy. Then he realized; they had never seen Astartes or what they were capable of.
No wonder people called them the Angels of Death. Kheniam felt like an Angel for the first time in that moment.
***
Withering fire pelted Azaveren’s Heavy Intercessors. He paid it no heed. The las rounds impacted his greaves, chest and shoulders. The Gravis plate took each hit without causing Azaveren to even break stride. As he crested the enemy position, he politely shoved them out of the way. Sergeant Daenan crashed through the five men holding position around the Flag and hoisted it aloft.
Light applause filled the air.
The cameras and politicians watching the battle looked on in approval. The Azure Flames had beaten the most decorated members of Altea’s PDF without firing a shot.
***
Zorathus stepped out of the Strike Cruiser Honor into the void.
This was nothing new to Zorathus. He fired a tiny attitude thruster to spin his massive Gravis pattern suit as he fell. The titanic bulk of the Honor began to shrink as he plummeted toward the surface of Altea. The altimeter readout in his visual display passed 10km in a few minutes and then counted down more and more rapidly.
The silence of the void began to give way to the roar of the atmosphere. Zorathus fired thrusters to adjust his feet to be “down” now that there was a “down” to orient to. Soon the exterior of his armor began to glow and give off flames as the friction of the atmosphere lit him like a falling star. To his right, he saw the identical stars of his Inceptor squadmates, each precisely spaced. Forty-seven meters apart. Main thrusters on his jump pack fired intermittently as telemetry sent to him from the Honor put him into the target drop zone.
Visuals were occluded momentarily as the fires overtook him, but then his main thrusters fired and he slowed. Clouds parted as he entered the troposphere, leaving moisture to streak the carbon stains from re-entry.
There. The target. He readied his weapons. There would be but one chance.
An entire grav-tank seemingly filled his stomach as he fired the thruster on manual to slow to a manageable speed. On cue, his squadmates, still precisely forty-seven meters apart, also slowed their descent.
The target was in front of him. He fired, juking to the left as he circled.
Disgusting grime around the smokestack began to fall away.
As Zorathus fell in a helical pattern around the smokestack, the specialized equipment that replaced his plasma weaponry sprayed degreaser at the filthy industrial fixture. Brownish goo flowed down in a cascade. Zorathus swept up, down, left, and right as he fell, leaving the bright orange brick of the stack above him.
The altimeter, previously screaming, now slowly ticked down. It hit zero as Zorathus landed with his feet on either side of a large gray “X” taped onto the roof of the factory.
Cheers detonated from the workers assembled. Zorathus looked to his left. Sergeant Sollam landed mere seconds later, forty-seven meters away, on an identical “X,” which was forty-seven meters from a third “X” for the last member of the squad. The smokestacks, once filthy, now gleamed.
“Ah, slag, I missed a spot.” Sergeant Sollam cursed as he bound into the air. A blast of cleaner took care of the last tiny smear of grime. He landed with a flourish that elicited more cheers. One of the workers came forward and did his best to shake Sollam’s hand in his giant gauntlet.
“Thank you, sergeant! We would have had to labor for weeks with hideously toxic chemicals to do what you did in less than a minute!” the worker fawned.
“Thank Captain Antonius. We did it for Altea!” Sollam shouted.
The workers swarmed them. Laughing, cheering, even a few crying. Zorathus lost count of them. It was so hard to understand; the mission was the easiest insertion Zorathus had made.
But it made a difference for them.
***
Blue stars lit up the night.
Dozens of bolts almost too bright to look at filled the air. Floating targets that were barely visible in the calm night air exploded violently with dramatic sparks.
Jarius grunted in frustration to himself. Putting sacred wargear to use like this was a disgrace.
The threat alert on his visor pinged as his entire visual display went red for a split second. A viscous thunderclap broke the air, then seemed to grow louder rather than rumble to quiet.
It was only after the visor recognized that the threat was a crowd of cheering people that Jarius understood: a few moments of precision fire had made the tens of thousands in this amphitheater all stand and cheer at once. It was so powerful.
“Thank you!” Sergeant Cadmeol said in to the vox, his words echoing throughout the stadium. “Tonight’s entertainment and refreshments are courtesy of Captain Antonius!”
The cheers for that dwarfed the previous applause. Women held up young children, begging to donate them to the Azure Flames. Pennants with the blue flame waved all around.
Perhaps a bit of showmanship wasn’t such a waste after all.
***
Dariel crushed the tiny painted stick between the thick fingers of his massive Flamestorm Gauntlet. Splinters of colorful wood sprayed into the air.
“Hah! I win again!” the child beneath his field of vision shouted in triumph. The bulky frame of his Gravis armour blocked view of the diminutive youth. Dariel looked down, seeing the child and the pile of multicolored sticks that consisted of the game he was ordered to play. He sighed and sent a message to his Sergeant. He had lost three games in a row. Titanic thuds preceded Sergeant Sachio, who arrived with a replacement stick daintily grasped in his own gauntlet.
“How am I supposed to win when I crush every stick I try to lift?” Dariel lamented.
Sachio did not respond. Dariel did, however, get a message from the sergeant a few seconds later. It was a link to the embedded manual for the MK X Gravis Aggressor variant, directly to the maintenance section for the gauntlets themselves.
“Tweak the precision of the joints to better match your movements.” the sergeant said in a friendly baritone.
Dariel spent several minutes adjusting values in his suit’s systems and flexing his joints to test. Satisfied with his calibrations he reached out and grasped a stick offered from Sachio’s container.
He lifted it without damaging the fragile wooden piece.
The child, still dancing in victory, looked up and frowned. Dariel’s losing streak was over.
***
Tristmay Narast pulled his tattered blanket over himself as he rolled over. He mumbled incoherently in his half-slumber. Then he remembered: the puddle. Oh no. It had rained as he was going to sleep. The overpass he’d sheltered under tended to pool water in a nearby depression in the plascrete. He’d be wet and uncomfortable for the rest of the night. Grumbling in anger, he forced his eyes open, barely noticing that his eyes opened more easily than usual.
The glow of the sun made the horizon beyond the nearby manufactorum sector glow a brilliant red.
Wait, it was morning? Narast had slept the night through without shivering himself awake? Odd, usually a rainstorm kept it cold… He looked down to find no puddle had formed. Even more strange. Had it dried? No, there was no ring of filth left over. It was dry all around him. And oddly dark…
Looking up, he gasped. A makeshift shelter had been built above him as he slept! Without waking him! On closer inspection, the structure was not a ramshackle assemblage of corrugated metal and discarded pallets the likes of which inhabited disused industrial sectors. This was sturdy ceramite fitted together perfectly by a professional.
“Here, now, what’s this?” shouted a hostile voice. Oh no. Enforcers. Narast struggled to scoop his meager belongings into his sleeping bag, but it was too late. An imposing figure in Carapace Armour towered over him, blocking him into the mysterious structure he now occupied. “A shelter? Here? You have a permit, citizen?” the Enforcer barked, waving a shock maul with equal parts malice and joy.
Narast held back a sob. If he was lucky, he’d be severely beaten. If he was unlucky, he’d be press-ganged into the forced labor pool. He squeezed his eyes shut in fear and got to his feet, bracing for the blow of the truncheon.
It never came.
Narast opened his eyes to find a figure in a lean suit of deep blue power armour towering over the Enforcer. It was one of the Azure Flames! Narast hadn’t ever heard him approach!
“What seems to be the trouble here, officer?” the Marine said in a breathy whisper with a hint of threat laced underneath.
“Ah… this… uh… citizen… built this… shelter… without a… uh… permit…” the Enforcer stuttered in abject terror.
“Worry not, officer. My squad was tasked by Captain Antonius to build these shelters to relieve the housing crisis, at the request of Governor Sterling. The appropriate paperwork has been filed. Contact your supervisor if you do not believe me.” the Marine replied. He rested his hand lazily on the handle of a knife bigger than Narast’s arm.
“Oh, no need for that! Thank Captain Antonius, citizen! Looks like you have a place to live now!”
Narast broke into tears. He profusely thanked the Marine. Through watery eyes, he could see hundreds of similar structures. Each with a unique address embossed on the side.
A real address. With this, Narast could apply for an actual job. One that actually paid instead of being in the general labor pool.
Captain Antonius’ efforts had made Narast’s life better in ways he never thought was possible.
***
The smell of burnt fur choked the air. Jolann’s helmet filters and third lung let him stomach the foul smoke without discomfort, but the baseline humans around him coughed and wheezed on the fruits of Jolann’s labor. Before him, the others of his Infernus squad drove clouds of pastel rodents from the underbrush.
Mice.
A Terran breed, brought to Altea before even the Age of Strife. Genetically engineered generations ago to be colorful pets for children. Escapees had long since bred out of control, gobbling up surplus grain and fouling what they didn’t eat.
Sergeant Oberdaes’ face was obscured only patially by the rebreather of his mask, but his eyes showed pure joy. The rodents had been driven directly toward him and he relished every second of exterminating the multicolored buggers. The human farmers moaned and covered their ears to muffle the rodent’s screams.
When the deed was done, Oberdaes approached the owners. “If you have more problems with rodents, just call Captain Antonius and we’ll be back to burn them out again!” he shouted with pride.
A great cry came up from the farmers. They were this happy because some mice were gone? It barely took any effort for his brothers. He said as much to Oberdaes on the way back to the city.
Oberdaes chuckled. “We didn’t just cleanse some vermin, brother. We saved that farm. Those pests were bringing them to the edge of ruin. Now, they owe their livelihoods to the Azure Flames. Imagine what they’ll tell everyone when they go to market. Word will spread faster than the fires we set today.”
Jolann grunted. He hadn’t thought of that.
***
The mountain fell.
At least, that’s what it looked like. A huge wave of debris sloughed off of the cliffside, kicking up dust and filling the pit below with spoil.
As the dust settled, the new edge of the cliff sparkled. Veins of ore glittered in the noonday light.
The foreman of the miners said that Xandi’s squad of five Desolators had done in seven minutes what a trained demolition corps would have taken three days to properly survey, drill, and blast. They would make their monthly quota after all.
Xandi thought they should just get the Superkrak missiles that he and his squad had used to collapse the cliff. Then he realized such munitions would be far too unwieldy for someone without the Power Armour and targeting sensors needed to fire it.
As much as Xandi hated showing off, he appreciated the results.
***
Falanches Nikala pounded the podium as his firey tirade washed over the unwashed revolutionaries before him. His rhetoric echoed from the walls of the disused manufactorum that his followers had “liberated” from the Imperialist dogs. He brought out all the old favorites. Altean grain for Alteans, withered corpse on the throne, absentee landlords, the works. But now he had new material; Captain Antonius. How the pigs in the government rolled over like lapdogs for their Astartes masters. The need to rise up and slay these so-called superhumans and take a stand for a free Altea. Finally, his closer: the glory of martyrs and loyalty to the party. After all, it works for the Imperials. Nikala punctuated with his closing phrase: “And I, alone, shall lead Altea to glory and freedom!”
There were no cheers this time.
He looked down and saw the expressions of the crowd turn to terror. Huge figures in black and deep blue strode into his followers, swinging knives bigger than a man’s forearm. Their faces were skulls of fire, and they made no sounds as they began to slaughter the revolutionaries. Nikala took in a deep breath to scream, but it was forced out as a meter-long spike of metal, slick with maroon venous blood, emerged from his chest. He felt his ribs collapse like a zipper being opened. He gurgled and blood dripped from his chin. A vague sensation of pressure on his scalp was accompanied by the knife in his chest being ripped out. Things went with it. However, despite having no strength in his legs, Nikala did not fall. Someone was holding him aloft by his hair. The last physical sensation he felt before everything went dark was a sudden pulling feeing across his throat and the sound of his body below the neck crumpling to the floor. Before his light guttered, he heard a voice that filled his last seconds with terror.
“This will make a fine gift for the Governor, courtesy of Captain Antonius…”
***
Belinus switched his visor to Eradcation mode. Instantly, a false color display lit up his face, splaying garish color onto the armour plate. The densitometer in his sensor suite showed metal fatigue in a radial pattern where the plate had been impacted in the past. Belinus hit the weakened plate with his Multi-Melta right in the middle of the weakest spot. The decimeter thick plasteel melted like butter. Sweeping upwards, the plate was bisected in an arcing line, falling away and swinging awkwardly on the chains it was suspended from. As a follow up, he fired once again at the largest piece, letting the swing carry the thickest part across his field of fire. A hideous clanging thud filled the air as the greater portion of the slab tumbled to the floor of the manufactorum.
Belinus turned to see shock splayed across the faces of the workers surrounding the display. Nearby, his competitor tried in vain to bisect the plate he worked on with a cutting laser. The straight path of the laser went a bit crooked as the amazed technician gaped like a simpleton at Belinus’ work.
“…and that’s on the lowest setting!” Sergeant Nephraym shouted. “Imagine what we could do to a ramshackle Ork vehicle with armour half this thick!”
Cheers erupted. Belinus shot the sergeant a look. Melta weaponry only had one setting: maximum.
Regardless, the workers celebrated as if their technician had won. Some of them even ran back to their spots on the line. How could such a display boost morale so effectively? Belinus wondered. Regardless, it was hard to argue with results.
***
“No, not like that! Better wrist action!” Shem Baltheris shouted over the din of Conathio’s Outrider bike. Conathio struggled to control the bike with the withered old man literally strapped to the armour plating over the rear wheel, made doubly difficult by him awkwardly flailing the lasso in his right hand instead of driving the way Lord Cawl had meant him to.
“What do you mean?” Conathio replied.
“It’s gotta be like… a circular motion! Else it won’t fly true! Whoo, we goin’ real fast!” Genuine joy permeated the old farmhand’s incoherent whooping.
“Indeed.” Conathio said. He spent a bit more of his attention trying to control the semi-random flailing of the loop of sturdy hempen rope. It took him a bit of effort, but eventually, it settled into a rhythm. Contahio realized with a bit of awe that it depended on the length of the rope. He choked up slightly and indeed the rhythm got faster.
“Watch that one! Stay on ‘er!” Shem cried. The terrified groxling fleeing from Conathio had diverted to the left; away from the main herd. Conathio corrected with his right hand, keeping the lasso in his left spinning. Amazingly, it was easier now that the lasso was spinning neatly.
“Could we not have a Servitor keep these beasts in line?” Conathio shouted as the engine revved to catch up to the juvenile beast.
“Naw, ain’t no servitor can outthink a grox!” Shem chided. “They ain’t super bright but they got some deep instincts. Now, you gotta release on the upswing. Aim for ‘bout two meters ahead cause the rope’s gonna slow down. Try to get both horns but get at least one!”
Conathio nodded. He let fly. The lasso flopped onto the scaly back of the fleeing animal and flopped onto the ground.
“Don’t give up! Try again! You got a good wrist there!” Shem said as Conathio heard gentle impacts on his shoulder pauldron.
Conathio rewound the rope around his arm until he was able to snag the knot. He took a bit of effort to resize the loop and once again found a good rhythm. For his next throw, he corrected a bit more to the right for a crosswind. This time the loop secured itself around the upwardly curled horns, and slipped around the reptile’s neck.
“You got ‘er!” Shem exclaimed. “Pull ‘er in slow! Don’t hurt ‘er!”
Conathio sighed. Gentleness was not in his nature, but he managed to slow the bike at a measured pace to bring the animal in line. He turned, heading back in the direction of the beast’s enclosure, kept spaced out from the others. The captured young grox had no choice but to follow.
“That’s the fastest I’ve ever seen someone picking up wranglin’! You a throne-damned genius, boy!” More appreciative slaps rapped on Conathio’s shoulder. “This ‘ere beauty is gonna breed a whole line, probably hundreds over the years. I’m getting’ too old to ride range on the breeders, so I’m much obliged to you, and to yer Captain!”
Conathio smiled. Perhaps the Captain knew what he was about.
***
Ory-Hara’s hand came away from Conathio’s forehead. That was the last of the memories of the Grayshields that had gone out among the Altean people. Each of them had grown, learned, and bonded. They were more than they had been.
He reached into his mind and found the memory he had wagered he would need. He pushed it into Antonius’ mind. Antonius re-lived the conversation they had had a month ago, ending with Antonius’ mile-wide grin.
Antonius had been right.
Then, Ory-Hara slowly dropped to one knee and bowed.
“There’s no need for that, old friend.” Antonius said, pulling Ory-Hara back to an upright position. “It was my pleasure.”
Ory hara motioned with his hand subtly. He could sense Antonius knew that meant “what now?”
“Now, Ory-Hara, we get to work.” This time, Antonius had steel behind his smile instead of joy.