Tyrone Hive Primus
Deep within the festering depths of Tyrone Hive, in the suffocating gloom of the Underhive, war raged.
The Underhive, the lowest, most wretched strata of a hive-city that towers like a cathedral of rust and industry, had long been a lawless sprawl of filth and anarchy, a place where life was priced in bullets and brutality rather than coin. But now, amidst the decay and the echoing howls of violence, a brittle, battlefront had emerged.
At the only passageway that led from the Underhive upwards toward the lower hive, a ramshackle fortress had been thrown together from scavenged scrap, sandbags and corroded girders. The Planetary Defense Force (PDF), the local militia of Talon I, held the line here. Weary soldiers of the 44th Tyrone Infantry Regiment manned the trenches, commanded by Captain Burr Halvorsen, a broad-shouldered officer with a voice like a whip crack.
"Filth-licking dregs!" he bellowed. "While true soldiers bleed in the Emperor's name against that Evolutionist rot, you grovel like hive-scum! Move!
"Get moving! Build the supply points, reinforce the defenses, or I'll make sure you feel the lash!
"Faster, faster! We don't have time to waste!"
Burr's furious roars threaded through the trenches, clashing with the clang of hammers and the hiss of welding torches.
Infantry soldiers crouched in trenches carved from the very bones of the ancient hive, rusted metal laced with the grime of centuries. Some shoveled rations into their mouths, others lay slumped against crude barricades, grabbing what rest they could before the next inevitable call to battle.
But Burr wasn't shouting at his troopers. His voice targeted the chain-gang of convicts pressed into service.
They were not combat engineers but prisoners, condemned men and women shackled together, driven by overseers with shock-prods and the flat-backed contempt of officers who regarded their lives as currency to be spent. Their hands were blistered and raw, their bodies weighed down with the burden of backbreaking labor. They hauled crates, poured ferrocrete and set crude barricades into place, all grunt work no soldier wanted to waste their strength on.
Among them sat the man who called himself Qin Mo.
His shirt had been reduced to tatters. Dark, metallic-appearing etchings traced strange patterns across his forearms and neck, neither simple tattoos nor healed scars, but lines that looked almost like circuitry scribed into flesh.
Around his throat hung a psyker suppression collar, a battered iron band ringed with runes and sigils designed to dampen psychic phenomena. A small engraved plate read: Prisoner No. 444.
Unlike the others, his collar wasn't merely a restraint. It was a cage for the mind. A leash for an untrained psyker.
....
A hunched figure approached Burr, bowing his head in a ritual of rigid etiquette. The motion was deliberate, accompanied by the stiff raise of the Aquila salute, the two-headed eagle of the Imperium, an act of deference to the Imperium, though it carried the air of a ritual long stripped of sincerity.
"My lord captain…" The voice was a dry whisper, like old parchment dragged across stone.
Burr turned, eyes narrowing. "Kalon."
The sanctioned psyker's presence was a necessary blasphemy.
Even in the filth of the Underhive, Kalon's presence carried weight. His robes, once the deep violet of the Scholastica Psykana, the sanctioned order that trains and controls psykers, now hung in tattered ruin, the hexagrammic wards embroidered upon them frayed and faded.
His face was a ruined landscape of scars; his eyes were milky, pupil-less slits that never seemed to blink, a testament to decades of sanctioned service to the Imperium.
One who had survived long enough to be granted use within the regiment.
Despite his decrepit form, a palpable psychic pressure surrounded Kalon, a tension in the air that set the teeth of even seasoned soldiers on edge.
"You decrepit old bastard," Burr sneered. "Always interrupting me. This had better be important."
Qin Mo lifted his head slightly, watching the exchange with quiet interest.
He knew enough of psykers from half-remembered fragments of lore. Most were sacrificed to feed the Astronomican, the psychic beacon of the Imperium. Those who survived the Black Ships were sanctioned, their minds bound in service. To see a sanctioned psyker serving as a mere officer's aide? That was rare.
There was history here, something unsaid in the way Burr and Kalon moved around one another. Kalon had interrupted Burr countless times, and yet the captain never struck him in true anger.
"They are exhausted," Kalon said simply, his white gaze sweeping over the convicts. "We need them alive. Let them rest."
For a moment, Burr hesitated.
No one could lie in front of Kalon. If he said they were at their limit, he had already reached into their minds to confirm it.
After a brief pause, Burr exhaled sharply. "Fine."
A reluctant squad of PDF logistics soldiers soon arrived, tossing rations to the convicts with visible disdain.
"444. Your rations. The Emperor provides."
Qin Mo caught the nutrient block, inspecting it with indifference. A standard military issue, superior to the starch-based substitutes fed to lower-hive laborers. Not out of generosity, of course; simply because it was easier to distribute a single type of ration across the PDF forces and their expendable labor.
He peeled open the packaging, revealing a dull, white cube. It looked like wax.
He took a bite.
It tasted worse than wax.
A rancid, protein-heavy stench flooded his senses, the texture dissolving into a dry, chalky paste the moment it touched his tongue. It was less food, more nutritional punishment; engineered for efficiency, not palatability.
Instinct demanded that he gag, but he fought it down. Breathing too sharply would send the powder into his lungs, and that would be far worse than enduring the foul taste.
He forced the meal down, wiped his mouth, and retrieved a small, battered object from his pocket.
A journal.
It was worn and frayed, its pages yellowed with grime. As he flipped through it, faint traces of ink and graphite peeked through the filth, memories scrawled in uneven handwriting.
This was more than a diary.
It was a lifeline.
Within these pages were the fragments of another life. His life. Before this nightmare. Before this hellhole of steel and suffering. Before Warhammer 40K.
Names. Faces. Moments.
"I, Qin Mo, used to do this and that."
"My family and friends were so-and-so."
"When I was a kid, I experienced this."
"I liked playing this game, listening to that song."
Mundane, ordinary things.
And yet, as Qin Mo sat in that grimy trench, surrounded by the filth and decay of the Underhive, reading his own words...
He smiled.
....
He didn't notice Burr and Kalon approaching.
They stopped before him. Burr glanced at Kalon. The old psyker gave no signal, yet something unspoken passed between them.
With a shift of his weight, Burr let the chainsword at his hip swing forward.
Smacking Qin Mo on the head.
"Ha!" Burr barked out a laugh. "Still awake, 444?"
Qin Mo looked up, eyes black as the void.
For a single, fleeting moment, Burr saw something in them; something vast, something ancient, something that did not belong in a mere prisoner.
A cold sweat threatened to form at the back of his neck.
Then the moment passed.
"Psykers," Burr muttered. "Always so dramatic."
Kalon, meanwhile, raised a hand.
Qin Mo's journal floated into the air, hovering toward Kalon's waiting palm. The old psyker turned the pages, eyes scanning their contents.
Burr smirked. "What's he got in there? Weird psyker hallucinations?"
Kalon didn't answer immediately. He studied the text, brow furrowing. Then, finally, he closed the journal and handed it back.
"I can't read it."
Burr frowned. "What?"
"It's not in Gothic. The structure is strange... foreign. But it is not the scrawl of a corrupted psyker." Kalon turned to Qin Mo, his gaze unreadable. "You may be an untrained psyker, but you are still sane."
A long silence stretched between them.
Finally, Kalon spoke again.
"Prisoner No. 444," he said. "Why were you arrested?"
Qin Mo met his gaze.
"A noble mistook me for prey during a hunt in the lower hive," he said. "So I burned him to a crisp."
Kalon's psychic probe drifted toward Qin Mo's mind, only to meet nothing.
Burr frowned. "Well? Is he lying?"
Kalon exhaled. "I don't know. I can't get inside his head."
Burr scoffed. "Doesn't matter. We need manpower."
Qin Mo's eyes narrowed slightly.
He knew they wanted something from him.
Kalon confirmed it a moment later.
"We need your combat abilities," the old psyker said. "The key to your suppression collar is in my hands."
His next words sent a chill through the air.
"When the time comes... I will unlock it."