Solaris Pt 1 (Teaser)

Without much further ado I give you the prologue to the story of Librarian Solaris’s training, and his fall from grace (or is it?).

 

Matt woke with a start, his eyes glistening in the pale stream of moonlight flowing through his window. A foul stench was in the air as he threw on a shirt, and pulled up a pair of trousers. Quickly he stepped around the remainder of wrapping from his 8th birthday, whilst he could hear his parent’s voices, speaking in a wavering tone in the kitchen before a deep resounding voice pierced the confines of his room. He crept to the door, and carefully peered out into the dark passage way. It was as still as a tomb. Again he heard his parents, their voices pleading with the unknown guest. He had made up his mind within seconds, walking into his father’s room from where he retrieved his father’s operational Lasgun. His father was a guardsman on leave from the local Planetary Defence Force, an officer, high up in the force. Silently he cocked and shouldered the rifle, confident due to his compulsory military training, and trod back down the corridor. Not a noise escaped his feet as if he were walking on a layer of air. The deep voice began again, this time with an urgent rasping quality to it. Their guest was becoming impatient. Matt nudged the door into the lounge room open and peered around into the kitchen. With a start he stumbled backwards into the wall, and knocked a vase which was standing on a pedestal, which fell with a sharp clattering noise to the ground. His parents were on their knees in the kitchen, knelt before an eight foot tall human being. But it was no human being. It was armoured in a great black armoured plates trimmed with a metallic golden, and great ribbed horns protruded from its helm. Its eyes glowed a deathly red. It was a Chaos Space Marine of the Black Legion. Death had come to his world.

In seconds the traitor Marine was upon him, lifting him off his feet and bodily threw him into the lounge room. He landed with a crack, feeling one of his ribs break, as the Lasgun clattered to the ground beside him. The first Marine strode towards him, drawing its corrupted bolter into its black painted hands.

Quickly Matt scrambled to grab the rifle beside him, and, securing his grip on its trigger, quickly brought it up to his shoulder to aim at the monstrosity. The rifle cracked twice as the laser bolts impacted with the Marines helm, but it continued on, shrugging off the impacts as if they were insignificant. As it reached him it backhanded the weapon out of his grip, dislocating his arm in the process before levelling its bolter to his face. Matt felt power rise up in him, and almost in instinct he raised his off hand, before the power surged to his finger tips, and leapt out at the heretic in great arcs of lightning. The Chaos Marine was lifted off its feet for an instant, before it was thrown across the room, collapsing straight through the opposing wall.

He felt the power die down within him, as he turned to the kitchen and roughly cracked his shoulder back into place. Quickly he drew the Lasgun from the floor again, and hurried towards his parents who were shaking on their knees.

‘Matt, we have been marked for summoning. You know what you must do.’

‘No, I can’t do it. I can save you,’ Matt replied, his voice shaking as his eyes welled up in tears.

The standard operational procedure for a marked civilian was to kill them, so that they would not be able to perform the summoning.

‘Matthew, there is no hope left for us, the best you can do now is save yourself,’ his father replied, also beginning to shake, as his mother burst into tears.

Matt threw the Lasgun to the ground and turned to his mother.

‘I can’t do it…. I cannot kill you.’

The tears freely streamed down his face now, impacting the floor with soft dripping sounds.

‘Then save yourself. Run. You know where the nearest bunker is. At least do that for us,’ his mother replied through the sobs.

‘But I can save…’

At that instant the front door collapsed as another two Chaos Space Marines entered, and quickly advanced upon him, kicking the Lasgun out of his reach. The second, picked him up in its hand, and threw him across the lounge into the wall, which he felt crack behind him upon the impact. He tried to lift himself to his feet as the traitor bore down on him, raising its bolter to his skull.

Then suddenly he heard everything, the scraping noise of metal on metal as the trigger on the Boltgun was pulled back, the buzz of the electric lamp in his room, his mothers whimpers in the kitchen, and a noise he could not place. It sounded similar to that of wind, but almost as if particles were being pushed out of the way, rather than around something.

Then it impacted.

A silver teardrop shaped object fell straight through his lounge roof, impacting with the ground to an ear-splitting boom as the wings fell down, and a single silver armoured Marine leapt out, bearing a mighty glowing halberd. In one motion it speared the Chaos Marine bearing down on him, whilst letting off two bolts with its Storm Bolter, decapitating the other Marine across the room. Quickly it turned to Matt, before seeing his parents in the kitchen, and ruthlessly, brutally let off two more bolts.

Matt screamed out, and launched himself at the Marine as both of his parents exploded in a gore of blood and bone as the shells detonated, tearing their flesh to pieces. It reacted in an instant, backhanding him with his armed Storm Bolter, which threw him once again to the ground, and he blacked out.