‘We give thanks to you, oh Father, who are in Terra, for this festival we are to partake in. Bless the hands that wrought it and toiled in its making. We offer our prayers and ask you to guide our young princes, our noble scions of thunder, tomorrow when their birthright shall lead them to join your heavenly host. Illuminate…
The vile creatures stood before her. Breathing through her mouth, she choked on the rancid smell. Putrid and pestilent, the oversized mutant oozed pus from various lacerations. A large flap of necrotic grey skin hung off its side where she had tried vainly to purge it with her chainsword. Yellow fat and infected fluids poured from the wound. The cursed…
Another assignment, another challenge. Lovely. I took my case from my desk and headed towards Research Pod 6, where recently O’Tsua’m had brought back some strange alien under isolation. A previously unknown xenos species, my favourite! Apparently the fio’gue’la who are usually assigned to the lower pods, had actually requested the move themselves. As much as mankind contributes to the…
I Death’s eye dipped below the horizon and Tobekh walked into the desert. The air was still warm, and no-one paid any mind to his departure. He simply put down his tools, turned his back to the generators he had worked on all day, and moved away. He limped across the conduits that snaked across the sands towards the monolithic,…
The old woman had always known that it was only a matter of time before the darkness came for her grandson. She had done all she could to push it away, and pushing was what it felt like. The coming darkness was like a physical, tangible thing. The light from her fireplace and guttering tallows did little to press it…
The mark of the beast. Eyes of crimson ruby. A perpetual snarl cast in bronze—a countenance as much of an angel’s as that of a devil’s. With trembling fingers, Isaria reached out for the terrifying door knocker. A hair’s breadth from the cold metal of the loop, she hesitated. No one knew what lay beyond the sealed portal of rockrete…
I The rain fell upside down in the orange sunset as I looked at the corpse of my partner. The anti-grav engines of the hover tank above me parted the veil of the sky’s heavy tears leaving my own tears exposed. My outstretched hand, singed after a glancing shot of plasma, was suspended like the vehicle, uncertain as if to…
It occurred to Nilla, while her eyes detailed the sky above and the seemingly unique and ever expanding cloud, that maybe, this planet did not have any other kind of weather, far from the radiant summers and cold winters of her long since departed homeworld. Some people, wiser or more educated, would likely have been able to tell the sergeant…
My name is Quintus Atticus Agrippa. A name long on words and short on meaning. I’m just a man trying to get by in His Imperium like everyone else. I make what little money I can by providing a service in constant need: finding out what people want to know and dealing with problems they don’t. There are sewers full…
A Soul of Theseus I put two bullets in the captain’s brain pan and ended six years of friendship. He squealed a syllable of unidentifiable noise, and died with a queer expression of confusion. I’d risen through the ranks and become his closest confidant. We spent many a night, drinking and pontificating as I provided a mirror for him to…
Credits: Colyn DeGraaff (Creative Director), Thomas Pham (Publishing Editor), Tim McGrady (Editor), Jack Shelton (Editor), Zev Benjamin (Editor), Ebony Gary (Editor), Joy Snow (Editor), and special thanks to Mia Pallas (Community Lead).
