Chapter Text
Title: Long is the Way and Hard
Description: After falling into a Drukhari ambush, the Rogue Trader awakes alone to the horrors of Commorragh.
***
Actus cleared his throat, failing to dispel the metallic aftertaste the stagnant air left in his mouth, and cast an appraising eye across his surroundings as the airlock's inner door ground open.
The corridor that stretched ahead of the Rogue Trader and his entourage was not, he was bound to admit, a particularly impressive sight.
A few dim and flickering illuminators cast just enough light to reveal thin fingers of mist coughed from rusted vents and leaking pipes. Yellowed and flaking purity seals adorned the cogitator stations and access panels that lined the walls, but the Rogue Trader suspected they hadn't seen the ministrations of an enginseer in far too long. Judging by the sharp chirp of binaric and disapproving grumble from behind him, Pasqal agreed.
On the whole, the ship was in a sorry state—one that would've shamed even the laxest of chartist captains—but the Vox Master had assured him this was the airlock their shuttle had been directed to. If it hadn't been for the trio of uniformed figures standing expectantly at the far end of the passageway, Actus might've suspected there'd been some sort of mix-up.
The voidship's master either intended it as a deliberate snub for the Rogue Trader's intrusion aboard his vessel, or this was genuinely the best he could do—both equally miserable possibilities. Not that Actus had anticipated his business on the voidship was likely to be particularly pleasant in any case, mind.
Actus glanced to his left to Yrliet, her long strides easily keeping pace with his own and her attention fixed straight ahead as they advanced to confront the paltry welcoming committee.
This excursion had been at her behest, chasing another lead on the fate of the scattered remnants of her people who'd survived the destruction of their craftworld. So far, the endeavor had gone poorly, and they had nothing to show for their efforts but a handful of xenos baubles recovered from the gutted hulks they'd found drifting in the void.
Unfortunately, their latest lead was shaping up to be another grim dead-end.
The von Valancius flagship had emerged from the Warp a few days ago to find a debris field littering the fringes of the system and a single, battered chartist vessel lingering in orbit nearby. Vigdis had confirmed the augur returns were consistent with a single, medium-sized eldar vessel that had suffered a catastrophic internal explosion, but despite the Vox Master's best efforts, they'd been unable to find any signs of survivors amidst the halo of twisted metal and frozen atmospheric gases.
The crew of the chartist vessel had proven unusually taciturn when questioned over the vox link, and so Actus had decided that if finding himself under the guns of a Rogue Trader's flagship wasn't enough to loosen the captain's lips, then perhaps a personal visit might.
Yrliet had insisted on accompanying him of course—and he hardly had any right to deny her given the circumstances—but if the voidship had played a part in her peoples' demise, he'd have to figure out how to prevent the ranger killing the vessel's master when they reached the bridge.
He was still working on that part.
Actus halted a dozen paces ahead of the trio of chartist crewmen and drew himself up to the full measure of his height, the light of a flickering illuminator rippling across the intricate gold filigree of his blue jacket.
His upbringing in the noble courts of a far-flung sector were long behind him, but the lessons he'd been taught had returned to him quickly after assuming the mantle of Rogue Trader. Even after his long and difficult years as a sanctionite seconded to the Militarum, it was still easy to slip on the mask of courtly dignity and blue-blooded superiority when it suited him.
However, as he got a better look at the group who'd been sent to meet him, whatever rebuke he had prepared for them to convey to their captain died on his lips.
As a psyker, Actus had long been accustomed to being regarded with suspicion and fear by the proles. Becoming a Rogue Trader hadn't changed that—merely inclining some towards a sort of religious awe—but what he found in the crewmen's faces was something else entirely.
The gaunt ghosts of three men trembled before him, their bloodshot, sunken eyes regarding him with animalistic terror. They stood ramrod straight, silent except for a few feeble whimpers they couldn't suppress.
"Wh-what..." Actus' tongue felt thick in his mouth, the words nearly becoming lodged in his prickling throat. "What happened here?"
"Them." One of the men, a deck officer by his uniform, whispered. He was missing his eyelids, the Rogue Trader realized abruptly, leaving the man staring at him with wide, shocked eyes.
No, Actus realized as the rattle of the ventilators grew louder. Not at him—past him. To the shadows.
"Ambush!" The psyker roared, his blast pistol already in his hand.
His companions were equally quick to react, drawing their own weapons and closing ranks as they eyed the shadows. The air around them thickened, taking on a bitter, metallic smell that burned his lungs like warpfire.
Gas, Actus realized belatedly, as a wave of agony began to flood his senses. The prickle in his throat, the rumbling ventilators—it all added up. Around him, his companions fell to the deck, writhing horribly.
With a surge of panic and willpower, the biomancer opened a channel into the Immaterium, straining to shape the surge of energy into a bulwark against the effects of the toxin. It worked, but only tenuously—like grasping an impossibly fine thread between the tips of his fingers. The fiery agony in his chest abated only slightly, but it was enough.
Actus spun aside as a drukhari dropped from the pipework, its downward swinging klaive biting deep into the deck plates instead of taking his arm off at his shoulder, and he blasted two steaming holes into the xeno's chest as it rounded on him.
The dark eldar collapsed to the deck with a muted groan but another instantly lunged forward from the darkness and Actus threw himself to the side, only narrowly dodging the reaver's gleaming blade and staggering like a drunk as his body struggled to obey his commands.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled and he side-stepped again—a fraction of a second too slow this time—and felt a tug at his sleeve. The pain didn't register, but blood ran down his forearm, staining the rusted deck plates.
It happened again and again—each time, Actus moving a bit slower and their blades biting a bit deeper as the poisoned air burned away at his insides all the while. It couldn't have been more than a handful of seconds, but to Actus each moment dragged on into an eternity.
The psyker again drew upon the warp to keep the poison and pain at bay, but no amount of supernatural power was enough to replace the strength of his rapidly failing body.
Blood misted each painful, ragged breath and flowed in rivulets from his nose and mouth, joining the patchwork of wet black blotches spreading across the rich blue fabric of his jacket.
The drukharis' sinister calls reached his ears over the sounds of his ragged breathing and pounding heart to jeer him in broken Gothic, mocking his faltering guard and darting gaze.
The pain and a rising sense of mortal terror begged him to lie down—to succumb—but Actus fought down the feeling, holding on tightly to a kernel of calculating certainty. Blind panic couldn't save him from this. He held onto the slimmest of hopes that an opportunity might present itself, if he could hold on just a little longer.
But the red haze swirling at the edge of his vision reminded the Rogue Trader that he was running out of time. He was a cornered animal, circled by baying hunting hounds that nipped in turns at their quarry—and Actus didn't have to wait long to meet their master.
A tall xenos in ornamented, black armor stepped forth from the shadows and he felt a strange pang of familiarity at the sight of him, but the Rogue Trader's muddled mind failed to place the creature's masked face.
"Rogue Trader." Even distorted as it was by the external vox of the xeno's helmet, he recognized the xeno's voice at once. "A long-awaited meeting, indeed."
Marazhai. Even unspoken, the name tasted sour and revolting on Actus' tongue.
By reflex, he raised his weapon and fired, but the ravening beam of energy found only empty shadows as the reaver swept low and rapidly closed the distance.
Something glinted in the darkness, and he spotted the pair of barbed needles zipping towards him an instant too late. One found its mark in the meat of his shoulder, the alien substance it was coated in burning hellishly as it sank into the psyker's flesh.
Still reeling from the blow, Actus saw the point of a wickedly sharp xeno blade driving towards his midsection and took the only option left to him, thrusting his blast pistol forward to meet the keening blade. Incredibly, it worked—the sword sparking against the muzzle as he turned the blow aside.
The thrust went wide—catching the cuff of his much-abused jacket and splitting the sleeve all the way up to his elbow as he dodged clear—but the pistol abruptly tumbled from his grasp, a stinging pain shooting through his hand and the sensation of something warm and wet streaming freely down his palm.
Actus tried desperately to open the distance by whirling to the xeno's left, but his balance finally failed as the ring of swirling haze closed tighter. His shoulder slammed painfully into the bulkhead, but he managed to stay on his feet.
Dull surprise registered through the haze of adrenaline as he took in the ghoulish absence where his fourth and fifth fingers had been a few moments before, and his vision waivered again—threatening to shrink down to a pinprick of light.
Actus tried once more to will the strength back into his limbs, pulling hard on the incorporeal thread linking him to the Warp, but this time, it slipped from between his fingers.
The flicker of power inside of him died like a guttering candle and he felt himself being dragged downward, like a drowning man falling into a sea of agony.
An instant later, he was falling, unable to prevent himself from sucking in another lungful of the poisoned air as he crashed to the deck, each breath like a chest full of broken glass.
A boot pinned him in place, driving into the underside of his jaw and threatening to crush his windpipe. His fading vision found the dark silhouette of the xenos leader, a pair of glowing eyes towering over him.
"Breathe deep, mon'keigh." The drukhari hissed, the words chasing Actus into the darkness as the world fell away.
...
The Rogue Trader hung weightlessly in the black of the void. All around him was empty and featureless nothing, and yet it felt... recognizable. Amidst the blackness, there was form, or perhaps, the idea of form? It evaded his description, seeming to grow more intangible and shapeless the harder he tried to understand what he was seeing.
Vague visions of color and sound registered as indistinct blurs, forming the suggestion of a scene; torment at the hands of the xenos, a tribunal before the Lord Inquisitor, green eyes beneath a shock of red hair that bore into him as a familiar voice damned him with every word.
Was this his past, twisted and misremembered? Or perhaps it was the waking world, pressing its way into his mind? Maybe it was both—the hauntingly real and familiar viewed through the warped lens of unreality. The more he strained to disentangle his thoughts, the more they faded out of focus and the harder his head throbbed.
How long had he been there? Hours? Days? An eternity? It was impossible to tell. Time itself seemed to blur into a meaningless abstraction. After all, of what use was time to the dead?
Except... he wasn't dead, was he?
The Rogue Trader stood like a man upon the gallows, teetering somewhere between life and death. All it would take was a little push...
What came after that? His thoughts lingered on the idea, turning it over in his mind with morbid curiosity. Would he find himself standing before the Golden Throne as its occupant rendered judgement? Or perhaps the Ecclesiarchy was right and, as a psyker, his soul would be dragged into the Warp to be fed upon by the monstrosities that dwelled there.
Actus didn't particularly relish either possibility.
From somewhere beyond the veil, the sound of approaching footsteps captured his attention, and he strained his senses to perceive more. Sensations pushed through the tenuous nothingness if he focused on them: the deathly chill that coiled around his body, the muted rumble of some distant, terrible engine. And the pain.
By the Throne, the pain.
Like the surface tension on a drop of water, it waited for the slightest pinprick to flood back into his mind. Every type of agony he was capable of imagining—more than he was capable of imagining, in fact.
Even adrift as he was, Actus knew with terrible exactness how utterly and unspeakably broken his body was. Like a porcelain figurine, shattered and clumsily mended, the pieces had been set at strange angles and ground unevenly against one other with every slight movement. The Drukhari considered themselves masters of the arts of torture and torment, and he'd been their canvas since the moment he'd fallen into their clutches. To step back into the world would be to immerse himself in the hell of Commorragh anew.
Abruptly, a voice—indistinct, but nearby—pricked his ears, followed a moment later by a stinging pain in the Rogue Trader's shoulder that pierced the shroud of numbness that surrounded him. Like a drowning man being plucked from beneath the waves, the world returned in a rush of crisp sounds and sharp sensations; the stink of putrid flesh, the taste of stale copper in his mouth.
An agonized groan—interspersed with quiet curses and murmured prayers to the Emperor—filled his ears, and it took Actus a moment to realize the voice he was hearing was his own.
A lithe figure in motely dress leaned over him, blurring in and out of focus as the psyker's mind continued to insist the world around him was pitching up and down like a voidship with malfunctioning grav-plates. Their face was concealed by a gold-framed mask made of smooth, white ceramic, but the slight tilt of their head suggested mild curiosity—as if the Rogue Trader was a shiny bauble they'd spotted in the gutter.
A peculiar dialogue followed; a xenos jester speaking of some grand stage play to a half-dead Rogue Trader lying atop a pile of corpses. It felt like the setup for some sort of perverse joke—though, somehow, Actus couldn't find it in himself to laugh just now.
Instead, he sat and listened, mumbling a few questions that the clown answered in verse. In his present state, it took him some effort to parse the xenos' replies, but he found the information he was seeking therein; his companions were elsewhere in the city and, hopefully, still alive.
The poetic stranger had been far more cryptic when the Rogue Trader had inquired why he'd been saved, merely alluding again to some grand opera being played out, but Actus was astute enough to hazard a guess. No doubt, he had some role to fill in the jester's design—though he'd be damned if he could see what it was from there.
At length, the strange xenos leaned down and pressed something into the psyker's good hand—a stub revolver of simple but robust construction. When he glanced back up a second later, the jester had already vanished.
He tested the weapon's weight in his grasp and spent a long moment lying there, imagining how the heavy piece of iron would feel pressed beneath his chin. The kiss of its muzzle was cold against his skin, but teased him with a strange sort of peacefulness. If he was being honest with himself... the idea had a lot to recommend it.
The only things Commorragh held in store for were more trials and more pain, and it was the closest he was likely to find to an easy death here.
He didn't have to keep fighting, a little voice told him.
All he had to do was let go—to close his eyes and allow himself to return to that uncertain void, until his consciousness peacefully faded into the ether.
He didn't want to go, but—Emperor help him—he was tired. Like a man struggling endlessly against a riptide, he yearned to just stop, to allow himself to become overtaken and to succumb.
The mantle of Rogue Trader had proved more a yoke than a crown, its deceptive luster concealing its crushing weight. Actus had tried to live up to the oath he'd sworn on Dargonus, but at every turn he'd run into the rot and stagnation that pervaded the Imperium; a Mechanicus that preferred superstitious to progress, an Ecclesiarchy that reviled the downtrodden masses that they claimed the Emperor loved, and a codex of law that knew justice without mercy and punishment without guilt.
They were the stokers of the vast engine that was the Imperium, shoveling the living fuel that allowed it to churn for another day. Even the Drukhari, for all their viciousness, could never hope to match the incredible scale of the cruelty humanity inflicted upon itself.
And who was he to believe he could change anything in the first place?
He was just a psyker, playing at being Rogue Trader.
From the moment of his birth, Actus had been foredoomed to an ugly end; likely at the talons of some warp-spawned monstrosity or at the tip of some anonymous bolter shell in a battlefield trench, with decent odds it'd be someone on his own side that pulled the trigger after deciding he'd outlived his usefulness.
Even now, nothing had changed, except that those who came for his life would be inquisitors and nobles instead of commissars and Guard officers. Once he was gone, the scriveners would scribble a few words about some short-lived, misguided fool in the annals of the von Valancius dynasty, and in a century or two that would be all that survived of him.
In a way, perhaps it was a kinder fate to die now in the depths of Commorragh than to survive long enough for his crew and companions to see through the mask of courage and self-assurance and grow to hate him for the frightened and doubt-filled coward that he was.
But... what would become of them, then?
What of the others who had willingly followed him into the dark, who now hung tangled somewhere in the Dark City's web, just as he did? What would happen to the uncounted billions scattered across the Expanse, after the one they called their lord and protector chose to lie down and die?
The biomancer's grip on the pistol loosen.
No.
He would not abandon them to the mercies of fate—he refused to. For as long as the Rogue Trader had work left undone, his life was not his own to take.
Every ounce of him belonged to them; his past, his future, every scrap of shredded flesh, and every bit of broken bone. Even down to his last, dying gasp; he had no right to meekly surrender what didn't belong to him—and Actus was far too great a coward to die with the weight of their expectations upon his shoulders.
With agonizing slowness, the psyker pulled himself to his feet, fighting back a gasp as every nerve in his body lit up with pain. Pulling tight the tattered remains of his gore-slick coat and testing the heft of the revolver in his good hand, Actus took in his surroundings, allowing himself a wry, blood-speckled smirk.
Sure, a lone, half-dead psyker lost in an inescapable labyrinth of a city of unimaginable torment was facing long odds—but he was a Rogue Trader.
Taking risks was in his second nature.