A short chapter set in the Hellmarine timeline!

The Rookie

The forensics crew had arrived before the Rookie but almost an hour. No one was particularly upset about it, considering that even after a year, it was difficult to know one’s way around. Loads of people working for the Obscura had been doing so for a lifetime, and still got turned around sometimes. His partner, on the other hand, didn’t have the same excuse. He’d been doing the job much longer than anyone on the scene. A scene in which he was absent. 

“What have we got?” The Rookie asked as he descended the steep grade of the ravine to join the team as they worked to reconstruct the scene. His voice echoed slightly from inside the helmet, the reflective surface of the faceplate making it impossible for anyone to discern his features. 

“You know you don’t need that right?” one of the techs noted, pointing at the helmet. 

The Rookie stared back at the tech in complete silence, letting it envelope him until he finally got around to answering his question. 

“Right,” the tech said, adjusting the collar of his jumpsuit. He pointed further down the ravine where the center of the blast seemed to have originated. Much of the ravine had been badly damaged by it, but as a whole was in surprisingly good shape. “So the blast was way over there. But everything here looks like it happened before the detonation.” 

The Rookie circled around the splattered bits of ectoplasm taped off from everything else. Two other techs meticulously reconstructed the appearance of the individual using an array of glyphs and sophisticated equipment that the Rookie himself wasn’t familiar with. The preliminary body type looked promising. 

“Cause of discorporation?” The Rookie asked the lead tech. 

The tech turned his head to the side and ran a hand through his short hair. “By the looks of it, someone phased a gauntlet right through his skull.” 

“He was in physical form at the time?” the Rookie asked, wincing slightly to himself behind his faceplate. “That had to be messy.” 

“If it weren’t for the explosion, I’m betting we’d have pieces of his physical body all over the place to clean up, too,” the tech agreed. “But it’s long gone by now.”

“Is this our guy?” A familiar gravelly voice asked as it approached from behind. The Rookie turned to see Senior Agent Dick Boulder approaching at a casual pace, as though he wasn’t later than the Rookie had been. He didn’t wear the standard uniform—never did. Instead, he wore anachronistic clothes from a distant era gone by and a trench coat. He didn’t bother flashing his badge; everyone there knew who he was. 

“Looks like it,” the Rookie answered, squatting across from the techs and motioning to the faint luminosity of the illusory overlay they’d created. Using the ectoplasm left over from the discorporation, it would be conclusive, but they didn’t need conclusive. He gestured with one gloved finger at the shape of the body. “Resonance definitely looks like a Simulen to me.” 

“Yeah,” Boulder agreed, snapping his fingers to ignite a cigarette dangling from his mouth. “Fucking clones. Didn’t have any of that shit in my time. How many more of these things do you think we’re gonna have to scrape off the pavement before we’re done?” 

The Rookie spread his hands uncertainly. “I don’t know. But if Straker’s here, then Colonel Gibson can’t be far.” 

“He’s at the blast site,” Boulder responded, scratching at the scruff of his chin. The way the Rookie understood it, nearly all Revenants appeared as they had in their prime, but it wasn’t clear as to who decided what a person’s prime was. Boulder still looked middle-aged and haggard as the day he died, seemingly unconcerned with appearances. “I was just up there.” 

The Rookie stood and looked down the ravine ambivalently. It was his next stop, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. 

“Don’t worry,” his partner assured him. “Nobody you know is there.” 

“Right,” the Rookie said, glancing at the older man. “How bad?” 

Boulder took a long drag off his cigarette before blowing a plume of smoke, shaking his head. “I’m not gonna sugar coat it. It’s about as bad as it fucking gets, kid.” 

“Hm,” the Rookie grunted. Most people wouldn’t have appreciated how direct Boulder was, but it so happened that it was precisely the way the Rookie preferred it. 

The lead tech frowned, waving his hand around to clear the air. “You know that doesn’t do anything right? You don’t have a body with a nicotine addiction. It’s just a construct of your—.” 

“Old habits die hard,” Boulder interrupted, giving the tech a withering scowl that the Rookie imagined his face would have looked like earlier were it not for the helmet. 

“We going?” the Rookie asked, nodding toward the blast site. “Or do you want to stay?” 

“I’ll go,” Boulder said after taking a final drag from the cigarette and flicking it off into the dirt and gravel of the moon’s surface. “They got it under control here.” 

“I’ll send you my report when we’re finished,” the lead tech assured them, before kneeling beside the others. The vague shape of a wheeled vehicle on the scene started to manifest from their magicks, blurred due to the speed it had been doing at the time. 

The Rookie recognized the style of the vehicle and had a pretty good idea of who had been in it. Turning his attention to the task at hand, the Rookie focused on the resonance of the distant blast site and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was standing at ground zero. 

Boulder was standing beside him and, if anything, he’d undersold the scene. 

They were standing in the blasted, skeletal remains of a reaction room. It was only by happenstance and the sturdiness of the construction that some of the supports remained intact. Much of the deck and walls had been melted to the rock, where any of it still remained within the crater. Multiple tech teams were working to reconstruct the scene and had nearly finished with the ectoplasm of Colonel Philip Gibson, a rogue Revenant, who had been discorporated by an Eldritch detonation of some kind. The same explosion had ruptured the nearby reactor. 

There were pieces of Gibson’s corpus all over the place, some of it still oozing where it had landed. He was a much more powerful Revenant than the Obscura was accustomed to dealing with, but the Rookie had nearly had him the last time they’d met. 

“Couldn’t have happened to a bigger piece of shit,” Boulder declared before motioning to the reactor. “Looks like some kind of modified tech. Demons were using it to power the whole facility.” 

The Rookie’s brows furrowed with concern. “That’s new.” 

“I’m thinking that’s what Gibson and Straker were bringing to the table for them,” Boulder surmised. “But it pales in comparison to what we found in the research labs, so who’s to say?” 

“The missing Elves?” The Rookie asked, the pit in his stomach only growing. 

“Yeah,” Boulder rasped, loosening his tie a bit. “You could say that. Mashed into a ball to extract the blood. At least, before everything went up in smoke. Reconstruction is nearly finished, so we know pretty much how everything went down.” 

“Christ,” the Rookie sighed, hanging his head for a moment. He’d seen his share of carnage and bloodshed in the past, but things on such a large scale still hit him hard. It was a senseless loss of life. 

“The rift was here,” Boulder said, his voice hesitant. He didn’t want to pile on, but he wasn’t one for bullshitting either. “Still a sliver of it left, but not big enough for anything to come through. The energy of the blast practically sewed the whole thing up in a matter of seconds. If that. So much Profane Energy, the surface here will be poisoned for years. Good thing it’s just a moon.” 

The Rookie looked up at all the drifting debris above the moon’s surface, hanging loosely next to the debris that had been kicked up in the battle leading up to the reactor going critical. “Well, you can ask the people of Middenheim how they feel about having a chunk of their moon blasted clean off.” 

Boulder scoffed humorlessly. “I’d say they got off light, all things considered.” 

“Mm, maybe,” the Rookie murmured, turning away from the remains of the reactor and the magical reconstruction going on around it to tour the rest of the facility. Thanks to the team’s hard work, they had a very good idea of the layout, how many Demons there were in the facility, and the atrocities that had been committed in the name of the Duke in charge of it all. 

“What’s this?” the Rookie asked, leaning over the reconstruction of what looked like a Knight Demon, but its armor was much more sophisticated and durable. There were still a few errant scraps of it hanging around despite the creature’s proximity to the reactor.

The tech reconstructing the scene looked up at the man standing over him. “Some sort of enhanced Knight. They were tinkering with a variety of Demons here, making them even more terrible than they already were. We found this…” 

Reaching into a long bag resting on the ground beside him, the tech produced a piece of a long, deep red sword. The Rookie frowned, becoming suddenly aware of the blade hanging at his own side. Had this belonged to one of the Elves?

“It was the Knight’s,” the tech noted as though reading the Rookie’s thoughts. “Durable blade. I expect we’ll find more the further from the reactor we get.” 

“Elven blades are built different,” the Rookie agreed, taking the weapon and giving it a brief examination before surrendering it back to the tech. There was no question the weapon was magical, likely forged from the same Profane blood sorcery that the ball of Elves had been used to fuel. 

Boulder approached from one of the other sections of the illusory facility, walking right through the walls in the process. “Have you seen enough yet? We got a sweep to do.” 

“Yeah,” the Rookie said, dusting off his gloves. “I’m good.” 

Boulder looked up toward the debris floating in the sky, flickered briefly, and vanished. The Rookie waited until he sensed his partner’s resonance on the largest and nearest of the chunks drifting by and followed, flickering out of existence briefly before appearing beside the older Revenant. 

Turning to look back down—or up, depending on one’s perspective—the pair stared at the crater from the reactor explosion that seemed to go on for miles and miles. Boulder let out a long, low whistle. “You believe that shit?” 

“Fucking Demons,” the Rookie replied disgustedly before walking his way up around the curvature of the floating chunk of debris. Several Demons had been camped out in the debris field and were either slain by the energy of the blast or the additional debris it threw off, crushed between colliding masses of rock. 

The Rookie used his foot to turn one of the smashed bodies over. It was arachnid from the waist down and vaguely humanoid from the waist up. Rather, it had been at some point. Now it was pulp. 

“Weavers,” Boulder announced. “You ever run into them before?” 

“No, but I’ve heard of them,” the Rookie admitted, gesturing toward the expansive debris field that continued on overhead. “They like to nest in this shit and get the drop on anything that ventures too close—usually salvagers.” 

“There were some Sentinels and Hunters in the mix, too,” Boulder remarked before vanishing, only to appear on the next chunk of debris. The Rookie followed. 

They continued to move through the field, picking the largest pieces to move between, looking for any sign of something that could be lurking in the aftermath. The Rookie knew that as troublesome and deadly as the Demons were, even to Revenants, it wasn’t what his partner was looking for—not really. 

He was hunting Wraiths. 

“Anything?” The Rookie asked after several minutes of popping around to different floating rocks to get better vantage points. 

Boulder didn’t say anything aloud, but the way his gaze remained fixed on a shadowed section of a nearby section of a ship’s hull drifting between rocks told the Rookie that things were about to get interesting. The senior Revenant’s head moved ever so slightly. “There.” 

“What do you want to do?” the Rookie asked, his hand moving discreetly to the hilt of the sword hanging at his side. 

“It’s about to pounce, so,” Boulder whispered with a shrug. “Not let it devour us, I guess?” 

“Fuck,” the Rookie growled, pushing Boulder with such force that the man went careening weightlessly toward the next largest chunk. No sooner had the Rookie got his partner clear that the monstrosity slammed into the rock, jaws open and gnashing, claws bared and thrashing. It’s entire form was like twisted, living malice wrapped in the darkest shadows that all of existence could possibly conjure. The darkness roiled around it like a mixture of ink and smoke, barely concealing the skeletal face within a section of its body resembling the hood of a cloak. 

It wasn’t a Wraith. It was an Allip. 

The Rookie flipped backward with the practiced agility he’d honed in life, deflecting one of the claws with the sword in one hand while reaching out with his will to a chunk of rock with the other, causing it to hurl itself at astonishing speed for the undead abomination. 

The rock broke across its shoulder harmlessly. 

Landing gracefully with both feet, the Rookie weaved from one side to the other, wielding the sword with two hands to knock the claws aside in the hope that he might be able to get inside its reach and do some real damage. The Allip was pissed, though, and in a berserk state that kept it one step ahead of the Rookie as the two exchanged blows. 

Allips were nasty fucking things, driven insane by forbidden knowledge or things that mortal minds couldn’t wrap their heads around. Then, unable to live with what they’d seen and what they knew, the person turned to suicide, spawning the Allip soon after. They’d expected the scale of death on the moon would have resulted in some stray ghosts and the Wraiths they would attract, but an Allip was seemingly out of left field for the Rookie. 

Shifting his footing, the Rookie leaped to the right and rolled, getting clear of the Allip so that Boulder could take his shot. The Revenant wielded what appeared to be an unassuming revolver from the same era that his clothes were from, but when he squeezed off the shot at his new angle, the round glimmered green just before piercing the Allip’s smoky hide. 

The apparition howled with pain, turning its attention toward Boulder drifting somewhere overhead. As soon as the heat was off the Rookie, it was his turn to act. Leaping from cover and tumbling behind the hulking form of the Allip to open a long line across the thing’s corpus from what could have been a hip all the way to the base of the neck. 

It’s back arched in agony, but it was quicker to respond than the Rookie anticipated. Catching the back of the abomination’s hand, the Rookie was sent flying from the surface of the floating debris, through open space to bounce off of another before coming to rest on a third. 

“Ugh…” the Rookie groaned, pushing himself up to his hands and knees as he heard a few more shots ring out. He knew that, physically, there was no sound in the void of space, but where they were standing in the Gloom—the barrier between the physical reality of Standard Space and Veilspace, the reality of all that was dead and gone—sound was still something they were capable of perceiving. 

Namely, he could hear Boulder swearing as the Allip cut a few thin ribbons out of his corpus, splattering ectoplasm across the surface of whatever rock they were drifting on. 

“Come on,” the Rookie told himself, finding the strength to stand. “Time to get back to work.” 

Locating the resonance of his partner, the Rookie vanished, appearing just overhead of the Allip. He brought the sword up with both hands and brought it down in a dramatic downward stroke. Not realizing it had been caught in the ambush, the Allip continued to advance on Boulder, only to take the blade of the Rookie’s sword to the top of the head. 

Before either the Allip or the Rookie knew it, the sword had traveled the distance down to the tapering tail protruding from its hips. Then, as the corpus of the abomination began to split in half, the Rookie brought his weapon up and across in a rapid barrage of follow-up strikes, reducing the Allip’s corpus further into drifting chunks oozing with ectoplasm. 

Only when the chunks drifted slowly to the surface of the floating rock the Revenants stood on did the older of the two visibly relax. “Shit, kid. But of overkill, eh?” 

“Best kind to get the job done,” the Rookie said, flicking the blade clean of ectoplasm before sliding it back into the scabbard. “Saved your ass, anyway.” 

“Nah, I had him right where I wanted him,” Boulder said, checking his weapon. “Fucking thing was durable as hell.” 

The Rookie shook his head, frowning. “Why would there be an Allip out here? They’re born of suicide.” 

“Well,” Boulder grunted, nodding vaguely back toward the moon. “I imagine there was plenty going on there for someone to make any normal person snap. Could have been another one of the Dusk Elves that got a look at what they were doing to his kin and just lost it.” 

“Mmm, maybe,” the Rookie muttered, not entirely convinced. “Doesn’t matter, I guess. It’s done.” 

Boulder kicked one of the oozing chunks to the side with the tip of his shoe. “Yeah. I’ll grab a sample anyway for the eggheads to take a look at… just in case.” 

“Anything else lurking out here?” the Rookie asked, scanning the horizon of the debris field. They both knew that if there’d been an Allip lurking, the chances of there being anything else were unlikely. Allip’s would often emit a persistent chattering that could drive even other undead and spectral entities insane. At least, it would befuddle them long enough for the Allip to devour them. 

“No,” Boulder said without looking up, producing a hard plastic box the size of a grapefruit from inside his trench coat. Using the tip of his revolver, he pushed a gooey chunk of corpus into the box, then closed it, the seals engaging automatically with a faint glow from the glyphs. “Let’s get out of here.” 

Within minutes, the two were back on the surface, passing into the Gloom of the moon and back into Veilspace. A tall, hooded figure with skeletal hands and no lower body to speak of greeted them at the entry point, along with those on the team returning to the field office to run their tests and file their reports. 

“Greetings,” the sentry said when it was their turn for the security check. “Rough time?” 

“You could say that,” Boulder said, producing the cube for the sentry to have a look. The dark void inside the hood of the robe stared long and hard at the cube before shaking its head. 

“An Allip?” the sentry breathed, its voice raspy like the inside of an abandoned crypt. “Rather unusual for your line of work, is it not?” 

“Exactly,” Boulder said, stowing the cube before producing his identification for the sentry to have a look at. It was mostly a formality, as even the sentries knew who the famous Dick Boulder was. The sentry motioned for him to pass, then turned its attention to the Rookie. 

“Identification, please,” the sentry requested politely in that same raspy tone. 

The Rookie nodded, reaching into his jacket and producing the requisite identification: a simple medallion with the symbol of the Obscura and his image magically engraved in it. The sentry examined it a little longer than he had Boulder’s, but not by much. The Rookie hadn’t been with the Obscura as long as his senior, but he still had something of a reputation. 

“Agent Benjamin Black,” the Rookie said, eliciting a nod of approval from the sentry before he stowed the medallion again. The sentry waved him through while Boulder waved for Black to get the lead out. 

“Come on, kid,” Boulder chuckled. “We still got a lot of fucking work to do.”