Chapter 309: Awakening
In the empty dark, a single thought formed.
It started as a pinprick of light and grew, slowly, until it filled an entire mind.
Where am I?
That single thought surfaced in a brain that had been silent for years. Pain followed immediately — and with the pain came a flood of memory, fragmented and overwhelming.
He remembered the planet. The Ork tide. A warband, strong, far stronger than baseline — with a genuine Warboss leading it.
The Warboss had thrown the entire force at a Forge World in a single sustained offensive, billions of greenskins surging against the hive-city defences, the human line bending toward collapse.
His Chapter — the Crimson Bite — had answered the call. Came to hold the line.
He remembered the defence of the hive-city. Throwing everything he had into it. Hundreds of kills, large and small. And then his strength giving out, finally, after how long he didn't know — and a Nob catching him at the worst possible moment, putting him on the ground.
The last image: lying on his back. The Nob's weight on his chest. An axe coming down, again and again, into his sternum.
Then darkness.
Then I didn't make it back to the Throne.
The thought surfaced and faded. He started cataloguing his own condition automatically — old training, deeper than conscious thought.
The crimson lenses of his helmet flared to life. Internal systems rebooted. A vox-chime sounded in his ear.
"Twin hearts: fully operational. Triple lung capacity: fully operational. Bodily integrity: 100%.
Gene-seed hormone secretion active. Hepatic blood production resuming. Estimated full function recovery: three minutes."
He let out a slow breath of genuine relief. After a fight that brutal, he'd half expected to wake up missing limbs, if he woke up at all. Instead — fully intact. Every organ accounted for.
Did my brothers recover me? he wondered, feeling his superhuman physiology spin back up around him, system by system.
Tear ducts activated, flooding eyes that had been dry for who knew how long.
A long moment later, he managed to open his eyes — slowly, with effort — and found himself looking up at an unfamiliar metal ceiling.
And a face. An adult human male, grinning, leaning directly over him, close enough to count as personal-space violation by any standard.
"Morning, Sleeping Beauty. I've got some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first?"
The Astartes said nothing.
This didn't look like a Chapter strike cruiser. This man didn't look like Chapter serfs, either. Why was he smiling like that?
He held his silence on instinct, kept gathering strength quietly, waited for his body to finish coming back online.
Kian grinned. "Since the Angel of Death doesn't want to choose, I'll just start with the good news.
Good news is: a thousand years have passed. The Great Crusade succeeded. The Emperor rose from the Golden Throne and personally wiped out every xenos species in the galaxy.
Humanity stands as the undisputed master of the stars. The Golden Age has returned in full. Every human alive lives in peace and prosperity, free from any fear of alien threats, ever again.
Under the Emperor's direct rule, humanity's future is boundless and glorious."
Behind the helmet, the Astartes's red eyes contracted sharply. His throat, dry as sand, scraped out a fragment of voice using whatever moisture had just managed to gather.
"...Is... is that true?"
Kian, with the timing of a man who fully deserved to get hit, said:
"Aaand that's where the bad news comes in. The good news was a joke. Hahahahaha!"
Behind the visor, the Astartes's expression went from cautiously hopeful to something rather different in the space of a single breath. His breathing audibly sharpened.
This was — genuinely, in his very long life — the first time a mortal had pulled something like this on him. The sensation was novel. Not entirely unpleasant. Mostly just bewildering.
As his strength continued returning, the three-metre-plus giant slowly hauled himself upright in the cabin and took stock of his surroundings.
He recognised the layout instantly: the interior of an Aquila-pattern shuttle. The cabin was packed wall to wall with weapons, ammunition crates, and a collection of modified equipment he didn't immediately recognise.
As for personnel — the only other occupant was this man in PDF fatigues. No threat whatsoever, by any reasonable assessment.
"Mortal. Who are you. Where am I."
Kian, seeing the Astartes had woken up without going feral, climbed back into the pilot's seat without much concern.
"I'm a minor noble on Agri-World Secundus-496b. A few months back, an Ork fleet tried to hit our planet, got intercepted by an Aeldari warship instead, and the two of them tore each other apart in orbit. One of the Ork ships came out of it mostly intact, structurally, so I went out to see if it was worth salvaging.
Took a while, but I cleared out the several tens of thousands of Orks crewing it. Found you welded into the Warboss's throne."
He clicked his tongue.
"You've got incredible luck, you know that? Welded into a scrap throne by an Ork Warboss, and somehow that's how you ended up getting found by me."
He worked the controls for a moment. The shuttle came about, course set for Secundus-496b.
Mission accomplished. Every Ork on the hulk was dead. Time to head home.
By now the Astartes's body had finished its recovery cycle. He rose from the deck — fully armoured, standing a genuinely intimidating 3.3 metres — and moved to stand behind Kian, looking over his shoulder at the console.
The display showed the shuttle running full burn for Secundus-496b, ETA approximately two weeks.
He knew this system. Secundus-496b sat adjacent to Primo-496a, and most conventional warships took the better part of a year to make that crossing under standard drive.
If I'm a two-week shuttle hop from the Forge World, and the standard crossing takes a year...
I've been in stasis for at least a year. Possibly longer.
"Mortal! I need to return to my Chapter immediately. My battle-brothers need me."
Kian finished setting the autopilot and turned to face the demigod standing behind him.
"Angel of Death, sir, this is a shuttle. A small one. You're not seriously expecting it to fly you from B all the way to A, are you?
Come home with me first. At least get your feet on solid ground on the Agri-World. We've got a transport ship sitting in low orbit that makes regular cargo runs to the Forge World — should be heading out again before too long. You can catch a ride with it."
The Astartes listened to the plan in silence for a long moment.
Then, without warning, he reached up and removed his helmet, showing his bare face.
"Mortal. My thanks. You saved my life."
The face revealed beneath belonged unmistakably to a Son of the Drake — skin black as graphite, eyes burning a deep, fiery red. At a glance, in poor lighting, he could have passed for some kind of demon out of old human mythology.
For most citizens of the Imperium, an Astartes showing his bare face was considered an honour beyond price.
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