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The following fragment was recovered from the Cain Archive during my research into the unusual operational history of the 12th Valhallan "Ice Falcons." While my dear Ciaphas was prone to dramatic embellishment when recounting his near-death experiences, cross-referencing this entry with regimental casualty logs yields a picture that is both surprisingly accurate and deeply unnerving.
I have preserved the text in its entirety, though I must advise the sensitive reader that Commissar Cain’s assessment of military discipline in this instance is, if anything, understated. As for my own brief and rather surreal encounter with the individual in question years later—well, I have detailed that in my concluding remarks.
— Inquisitor Amberley Vail, Ordo Xenos
If I’ve learned anything in my illustrious (and entirely undeserved) career as a Hero of the Imperium, it’s that survival often depends less on one’s own courage and more on one’s ability to keep one’s mouth shut at the right time. This was never truer than the day I first met Steve.
Steve, as everyone called him, was apparently a veteran of innumerable campaigns, held in almost religious esteem by the 12th Valhallan "Ice Falcons" [1]. His name came up within minutes of my arrival at the forward command post, usually followed by some variation on “Emperor bless him” or “I’d follow Steve through the Eye of Terror itself.”
Naturally, I expected to meet some grizzled veteran sergeant with a face like a roadmap of scars and a tendency to smell of amasec. I’d already prepared my "inspiring yet approachable" face, the one that says I’m a hero, but I’m one of the lads, which I’d spent years perfecting in front of various mirrors.
What I actually met was a xenos nightmare wearing a very poorly fitted leather jacket. Except it wasn't leather.
We were bivouacked outside the ruins of an old Administratum complex, the walls still glowing faintly from the recent thermal exchange. The troopers were bustling about with the kind of morale one only sees in the wake of a battle that hasn’t gone entirely to hell. And then Steve walked through the camp.
The first clue that something was amiss was the height. He stood a full head taller than any human, even without a helmet. The second was the peculiar green glow emanating from his eyes. The third, and most conclusive, was the fact that he appeared to be a gleaming silver skeleton draped in several layers of enthusiastically harvested human skin.
The "uniform" was held together with what looked like rusted staples and sheer optimism. A flak helmet sat precariously atop his metallic skull, lopsided because it was resting on a flap of scalp that didn't quite belong to him.
“Ah, Commissar Cain!” Captain Sulla beamed, her face flushed with the kind of misplaced enthusiasm that usually precedes a suicide mission. She had been attached to the 12th for "liaison purposes," which I suspected was a polite way of saying her own regiment needed a breather from her tactical "genius."[2]
“Allow me to introduce you to Guardsman Steve. Finest soldier I’ve ever served with. He’s a bit of a quiet one, but his bayonet work is legendary.”
Steve inclined his head, the motion causing a wet, slapping sound as a loose piece of cheek-flesh hit his collarbone.
“GREETINGS, FELLOW BIOLOGICAL ENTITY,” he intoned. His voice sounded like a vox-caster being fed into a rock grinder. “I AM INDEED STEVE. I ENJOY TRADITIONAL HUMAN ACTIVITIES SUCH AS INHALING GASEOUS OXYGEN AND HAVING A PULSE.”
At this point, any sane man would have drawn his laspistol and put several well-aimed shots through the creature’s cranial cavity. However, my palms were already itching, a reliable internal alarm system that had saved my skin more often than faith in the Golden Throne ever had. I looked at the surrounding Guardsmen. They were nodding in agreement, looking at the gore-drenched skeletal monstrosity with genuine affection. I realized with a sudden, cold clarity that if I opened fire on their "best mate," I wouldn’t make it back to my Chimera alive [3].
“Er, yes. Splendid fellow,” I managed, my voice only cracking slightly. I offered a hand, which Steve shook. His "fingers" were long, wicked talons that had been carefully tucked into oversized mittens. His grip was cold as a crypt and felt like it could crush a krak grenade without noticing.
“YOUR DERMIS IS OF EXCELLENT QUALITY, COMMISSAR,” Steve observed. “IT LOOKS… COMFORTABLE.”
The problem, you see, was that everyone adored Steve. As we made our way through the staging area, a squad of Krieg troopers snapped to attention and saluted him as he passed. It was a bizarre sight, as their expressionless gas masks were tilted upward in a way that somehow radiated a sense of profound professional admiration.[4] Steve returned the gesture by stiffly raising a hand, which I noticed was currently sporting six fingers, none of which were original equipment.
Even a group of Catachans waved him over for a drink, as though inviting a skeletal automaton to share amasec was the most natural thing in the galaxy. "Nice tan, Steve!" one of them shouted, gesturing to a particularly sun-dried patch of skin on the Necron’s shoulder.
"THANK YOU, CLARENCE," Steve rasped. "I ACQUIRED IT FROM A CULTIST IN THE EASTERN QUADRANT. IT IS QUITE BREATHABLE."
Even Jurgen seemed unperturbed, which was the most disturbing sign of all. My aide walked up with a mug of tanna tea and a pack of nutrient bars. “Afternoon, Steve,” Jurgen said, his face as blank as a servitor’s. “The Melta’s acting up again. Reckon you could take a look?”
“I SHALL APPLY THE NECESSARY REPAIRS, JURGEN,” Steve rasped, taking the weapon. A tiny green spark jumped from his fingertip to the weapon’s ignition coil. The gun immediately hummed with a power level that definitely wasn't sanctioned by the Adeptus Mechanicus. He wiped a bit of drying gore off the barrel with a "handkerchief" that looked suspiciously like a sergeant's stripes still attached to an arm.
“Good bloke, that one,” Jurgen muttered to me. “Smells like the medicae tent, though. All ozone and, well, old meat. Better than most of the locals, I suppose.”
Instead of pointing out that our star soldier was a xenos war crime in a wig, I allowed Steve to lead the next patrol into the ruins. The tactical reasoning was sound: if the ruins were full of Chaos-worshipping lunatics, they could spend their ammunition on the indestructible metal nightmare while I stayed safely in the rear.
Naturally, the patrol was an unmitigated success.
We encountered a group of World Eaters cultists who usually greet an Imperial patrol with chainswords and screaming. This time, they took one look at Steve, who was currently "camouflaged" by holding a piece of rubble in front of his face while clanking loudly, and simply melted away. At one point, a lone cultist lunged at Steve with a jagged blade. Steve simply extended a singular, razor-sharp finger and "booped"[5] the man’s forehead. The resulting thwack of metal hitting bone was audible from fifty paces, and the cultist collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
"NON-LETHAL ENGAGEMENT COMPLETED," Steve announced to the empty hallway. "I AM A MODEL OF IMPERIAL RESTRAINT."
By the time we reached the heart of the complex, Steve marched up to the central altar and, with a casual flick of his wrist, ripped a massive, brass-bound Chaos icon from its moorings [6]. He returned to me, bearing the charred, warped husk with all the ceremony of a decorated veteran.
“ANOTHER GLORIOUS VICTORY FOR THE GUARD, COMMISAR,” he rasped.
“Yes,” I agreed, my face aching from the effort of maintaining a grin through clenched teeth. “For the Guard.”
And for once, I wasn’t entirely lying. If having a skin-wearing, immortal murder-machine on the payroll meant I didn't have to get shot at, then as far as I was concerned, he was the finest Guardsman in the segmentum.[7]
Footnotes
[1] The 12th Valhallan "Ice Falcons": A regiment known for their tenacity, though as this account suggests, their standards for "fellow humans" were remarkably flexible. While official Munitorum logs from this theater are uncharacteristically sparse, the Ice Falcons showed an anomalous 40% drop in fatalities during this time. These results were attributed to "unconventional defensive assets," though the logs fail to mention said asset wore the squad sergeant’s face as a cravat.
[2] Captain (later General) Jenit Sulla: As readers of these memoirs are aware, Sulla’s rise through the ranks was characterized by a prose style that was as purple as it was incomprehensible, and a tactical sense that was essentially "charge toward the loudest noise."
[3] At this point, one might reasonably ask why my dear Cain failed to alert the Inquisition. Having reviewed his private journals, I believe the answer lies in his chronic sense of self-preservation. He wasn’t afraid of the Necron; he was afraid of the paperwork and the awkwardness of explaining why he’d been shaking hands with a xenos in the first place.
[4] Krieg Troopers: The Death Korps’ appreciation for Steve is actually quite logical in a twisted way. A soldier who doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, is functionally immortal, and wears his kills is, by Krieg standards, the "Ideal Man."
[5] This is yet another example of Cain’s irritatingly flippant vocabulary. I can find no record in any Schola Progenium combat manual where a lethal cranial fracture delivered by a xenos talon is officially classified as a "boop."
[6] The Icon: I checked the logs for this specific engagement. The icon in question was a heavy brass casting dedicated to Khorne, weighing approximately four hundred kilos. Cain’s description of Steve "flicking" it is likely one of the few times he wasn't exaggerating for dramatic effect.
[7] the 12th Valhallans certainly benefited from a mysterious benefactor, but I never did manage to track down a "Guardsman Steve" in the official regimental records or the Departmento Munitorum’s payroll. It seems the Ice Falcons simply stopped reporting their dead and started recycling their names to keep "Steve" on the roster. The implications—that an entire regiment conspired to hide a Flayed One just because he was "a good bloke"—are… troubling.
Extract from the Private Papers of Inquisitor Amberley Vail
Attached Appendix: On the Persistent Rumours Regarding “Steve”
Despite Cain’s insistence that the matter was “best left alone,” I found myself unable to resist investigating the peculiar case of “Guardsman Steve.” Partly because any undocumented xenos infiltration of the Astra Militarum is potentially catastrophic, and partly because Cain’s visible discomfort whenever the subject arose suggested there was something genuinely extraordinary involved.
Over the following decades, fragments surfaced. Never enough for certainty. Always enough to be irritating.
A redacted after-action report from the Kallastin Suppression referred to “an unusually tall Valhallan” carrying three wounded troopers to safety through concentrated ork fire. Survivors described him as “quiet,” “smelling funny,” and “great with kids.”
Twenty-three years later, during the purging of a genestealer cult on Hive Belacane, a lone guardsman was recorded holding a corridor against impossible odds while civilians escaped. Pict captures were frustratingly blurred, though one Tech-Priest noted “skeletal anomalies inconsistent with standard human physiognomy.” The notation was removed from the final report.
On Mordant Prime, an entire platoon swore their survival depended on “Old Steve,” who allegedly wandered the battlefield handing out extra ammunition from a sack that should not have physically contained that much ammunition. One witness claimed Steve had calmly reattached his own arm during the engagement. The witness was later reprimanded for drunkenness.
There were other stories.
A silent sentry standing watch in the snow for eleven consecutive days without food, sleep, or relief.
A “very dedicated corpsman” carrying casualties out of a collapsing hospital while leaking green light from beneath his greatcoat.
A trooper described by comrades as “funny looking, but dependable.”
The descriptions varied from world to world, regiment to regiment, but certain details remained constant:
- Exceptionally tall.
- Spoke oddly and loudly
- Never removed gloves.
- Universally beloved.
Most troubling of all, casualty records surrounding these incidents often became… inconsistent. Dead men remained on active rolls for years. Supply tallies failed to add up. Administratum clerks filed complaints about impossible serial numbers appearing across multiple regiments simultaneously.
And always, somewhere in the margins, the same name appeared.
Steve.
I eventually abandoned the investigation officially after the Ordo Xenos concluded the evidence was “insufficient to warrant deployment of resources.” Unofficially, I suspect nobody wanted to explain to the Lord Generals of three separate crusades that one of their most decorated veterans might have been a Necron wearing somebody else’s skin.
Cain, naturally, refused to discuss the matter further.
“Look,” he told me over a glass of amasec some years later, “if a seven-foot-tall skeletal horror wants to fight for the Imperium instead of against it, I’m inclined to be grateful and ask as few questions as possible.”
Jurgen, incidentally, nodded in agreement. “Good bloke,” he added after a moment’s thought. “Bit skinny, though.”
Which, now that I think about it, may explain a great many things.
My own personal experience with Steve came eighty-seven years after the incident with the Ice Falcons.
A frontier settlement on the edge of the Ghoul Stars had been overrun by drukhari raiders. Local accounts spoke of a lone figure emerging from the blizzard during the evacuation: a ragged Guardsman in an ancient Valhallan greatcoat carrying an old-pattern lasgun. Witnesses claimed he walked directly into the xenos assault, green fire illuminating the snowstorm around him.
The drukhari force was annihilated.
No human survivors could adequately explain how.
By the time I arrived, only fragments remained: scorched metal, severed alien limbs, and footprints leading out into the ice wastes.
I followed them for nearly two kilometres before finding the figure standing atop a ridge overlooking the settlement.
Tall. Motionless. Silent.
He turned as I approached, and for the first time in nearly a century of rumours, I finally saw the legend clearly. Beneath the weathered greatcoat and frost-covered scarf gleamed the unmistakable necrodermis skull of a Necron Flayed One. Torn scraps of skin hung from his armour like medals.
His eyes flickered green.
For several long moments we simply regarded one another across the snow.
Then Steve raised one hand in a polite little wave.
“GREETINGS, FELLOW IMPERIUM HUMAN,” his voice rasped like a rusty chainsword. “HUMAN CIVILIANS SUCCESSFULLY RESCUED.”
Now I have faced daemons without flinching. I have stared down heretics, mutants, and ancient horrors from beyond the stars.
And yet somehow, absurdly, I found myself smiling softly and replying:
“Well done, Steve.”
The metallic jaw clicked up slightly at the corners. An approximation of a smile.
Then the snowstorm swallowed him whole.
Final Addendum — Sealed by Order of the Ordo Xenos
I officially closed the investigation three years later.
Not because I reached a satisfactory conclusion, but because every attempt to pursue the matter further produced the same results: confused witnesses, mysteriously altered records, and decorated officers becoming strangely defensive whenever the subject of Steve arose.
One particularly heated colonel threatened to strike an Inquisitorial representative for “slandering the finest trooper what ever served under me.” The representative in question wisely declined to press the matter.
I reviewed the accumulated evidence one final time before sealing the file:
- Multiple independent sightings across nearly a century.
- Physical descriptions matching known Necron morphology.
- Repeated acts of undeniable loyalty to Imperial citizens and personnel.
- Zero recorded incidents of betrayal, sabotage, or hostility toward the Imperium.
Which left me with an exceedingly uncomfortable conclusion.
Either an unknown Necron construct had somehow developed a persistent delusion that it was an Imperial Guardsman…
…or the Imperium itself had collectively decided not to care, so long as Steve kept saving lives.
In the end, I classified the matter under the most pragmatic designation available to me:
Potential Xenos Asset — Low Priority / Do Not Engage Unless Provoked.
I am aware of how absurd that sounds.
Still, after everything I uncovered, I found myself recalling Cain’s exact words on the matter:
“There are far worse things in this galaxy than a monster trying very hard to be human.”
The file was sealed shortly thereafter.
Unofficially, of course, I still occasionally check casualty reports from frontier regiments.
Every now and then, in the margins of some half-burned battlefield report from the edge of nowhere, I still find the same handwritten notation beside impossible survival statistics:
“Steve was here.”