Warhammer 40k: Vengeful Heart

A short and simple action story I wrote as practice. Features Space and the Marines thereof

We’ve always heard of the Space Marines, deep in the Northern reaches of the Ultima Segmentum. We’ve read stories of a superman the size of a battle tank who could crush a hundred normal men in combat, we’ve overheard local Astra militia who claimed to have once fought alongside these figures and even, once, seen power armour. It made the governor who wore it into a moving, godly statue. Someone said the Emperor had come to visit but no-one heard from him again. The militia said the governor was half a Space Marine in power armour, and my brain refused to consider proportions so inhuman. Oh yes, we’ve heard of the Astartes, stories, history and legend, but what we were never told by anyone is how much ruin followed in their wake.

Most are still unsure of why our hive world was targeted. For malice some say, or for strategic value, but who really cares? The Word Bearers of Chaos came down on us like scorching rain and tore into entire cities until only the lacerated earth beneath where buildings had once stood remained. Whispers in the lower hive could be heard that the Word Bearers were Space Marines, but no, those came later.

The Vengeful Hearts.

And when they came the blood of Word Bearer and hive citizen alike flowed across the white flower emblazoned on every shoulder pad and flag of the Vengeful Hearts chapter, pooling in the recesses of their carved ivory insignia and dying their gold and onyx armour red.

I first saw ‘the liberation of the Scylan hive world’ in action miles from where the action was actually taking place. While the districts I had once called home burned both with Chaos and with chaos, the regular kind which sprang from any war, I huddled for safety atop the spire of what once was a populated hab-tower. From there I could see far across the hive, further than I had ever seen, and there I saw a titan drop from the skies for the first time. I know it did not come from orbit but simply from a few dozen metres in the air from its support craft, but as far as I was concerned it was a shooting star of hate and metal which crashed into my homeworld and sent debris across the ground in waves like a rock dropped into a pond of water.

I would learn someday that it was a Reaver class titan. An apt name, for each one of its gigantic footsteps churned civilians beneath, the very people it was made to defend. I’m sure on balance it saved more than it killed, but I’m loathe to be beholden to such grim arithmetic.

Inside the titan it's Princeps called for shields, and the undulating discs of black and navy energy reflected gunfire which streamed at the Reaver from enemy titans across the city. Its enemies were smaller slouching warmachines, Warhounds, and were clad in armour the colour of dried blood. Spikes rose from every surface on the warhound titans and blood, real, not dried, poured from their eye shaped cockpits and armour’s joints somehow.

The princeps for the reaver called for missiles and the pods upon its back released a salvo which ground an advancing warhound into wreckage but lucky tracer fire from its other adversary pierced the reaver’s leftmost void shields and punctured some of its thick hide. Inside it consoles flared and sparked and killed the men who operated them. The princeps, suspended in his tank of fluids and electrodes, could not physically get to the now vacated consoles and instead screamed psychically for his titan to make a fist.

The war machine's left hand balled up and rushed to meet a charging warhound titan, the thunderclap of the impact of power fist on void shield echoed through the hive and the flash of energy momentarily blinded combatants for miles in every direction. I don’t know what happened after that, I had seen enough and needed to get down from my tower perch.

Days later I was trapped inside a bunker far from where I saw the titans clash. At twelve years old I was the oldest of a gaggle of young children trapped inside this metal tomb, only guarded by a few militia outside who, as far as we inside could tell, probably abandoned post long ago.

After a few nights of silence and starvation the sound of war reached even us. Noises of violence and bloodshed beyond recounting echoed through the tunnels which wound about our bunker, and eventually there was a sound of las-fire from just outside our door. I have to hand it to those militiamen, I probably would have ran had I been there in their place.

The door to our bunker crashed open suddenly and one of our guards rushed through. Briefly, before he pulled the emergency seal and snapped the thick plasteel door shut, I could see the viscera strewn place behind it. Not that I needed to try and catch a glimpse of viscera, the soldier himself was covered in it head to toe. His darting eyes reflected a ravaged brain behind them and after he had scanned the room, all the children now huddled behind me and around the guard in a semi circle, he turned his own pistol on himself and blew that tainted brain away. Then the bunker door shook hard on its steel hinges and I ran to grab the pistol from the guardsman’s corpse.

I never got to use that weapon, for as soon as the door to our hideaway was pierced by shrieking crimson horrors so too was the ceiling at the back of the bunker and through this hole streamed light and rubble and the gargantuan forms of the Vengeful Hearts.

The Space Marines in gold and black with blood stained white insignia poured into our hideaway and laid down a blanket of gunfire so thick and precise that the bullets whistled over the heads of the children, tearing the daemonic horrors across the room into ribbons before most of us even caught a glimpse of the things.

A skeletal thing made almost entirely of servo arms and wires floated elegantly between the fighting Space Marines; it was tall but only reached the Astartes’ waists and it trailed a cloak of scarlet fabric noiselessly along the ground.

“Do not fear children,” it said in a lilting static voice which cut through the sound of fighting and could somehow be heard from every direction, “I have come to take you away.”

And so the techpirest took us away. And some of us would not live past the night, and some of us are still alive, but all of us have been away ever since.

“Damn the Emperor, and damn you all!”

A slap, delivered casually but with great fury behind it, broke my arm and two of my ribs after I uttered those words. The un-armoured Marine who delivered it stood above me wearing a set of robes which could serve as tent and tarp for at least ten men, bearing the floral insignia of the Vengeful Hearts.

“Take this one to conditioning and start his training, the rest are free to leave or die.” His voice was a bolter itself, his words were shells. Fitting, for he was a talking, walking, weapon.

My bones were knitted and my mind was altered through hypnosis and indoctrination. I know this but I am not bitter, for now, years later, I see the glory of the Emperor. A younger me, at twelve and clutching a militia’s pistol, hated the Imperium with every breath and I still remember the toll the Vengeful Hearts took on my homeworld in their defense of the place. So what? What else was there to do? Even if below my now eroded hypno-therapy I harbor feelings of anger or disgust at times long past, it matters not. The Word Bearers have come again to raid more planets but this time things will be different. A son of the Emperor himself has risen and called for loyal chapters to stand by his side. This time the casualties will be lower, because the Vengeful Hearts are wiser, and more noble now, and because the Primarch walks again and his tread cleanses countless worlds. And most importantly of all this I am here, and I will not suffer the innocent to perish.

Author's Note

Sometimes, rarely, I dream stories. I'm not saying that to be pretentious, it's just the truth. A few hours of polish when I'm awake usually does the job to make something concrete out of half formed dream ideas and this is one such product. It's aight I think, could be better, could be worse. I don't usually write fan fiction of any kind so I was a bit surprised at how this one came to be but it was good practice. Basically what I'm saying is put me in Black Library, I'm ready!