Secret War: Warhammer 40,000 by Ben Agar (reading eggs books TXT) 📖

the second, brief time you met, and yet there you were, exchanging saliva with someone you barely know; we just can't believe you're that shallow. Now tell me, Attelus, why is that?"

My jaw clenched even harder, and I glanced at Torris and Garrakson in turn. They stared back at me, their expressions set in determination.

What was I to do? They had me cornered, damn it. If only and Estella I had been more subtle. I just hadn't seen her in so long; I'd missed her without even knowing it.

I grinned nervously. "What would you say if I told you that we'd just met then, and I was, actually, that shallow?"

"Why don't you try and find out?" said Torris grimly.

My heart collapsed; I sighed again and shook my head, fighting back the anger at myself and Karmen. They wanted to know, and I understood that. Of course, they weren't asking for much either, but it was a secret and secrets were always hard for me to share.

I exhaled through my nose, rubbed my temples and decided to tell them the truth, and as we know, that is the best way to lie.

"Okay," I said. "Alright, I'll tell you the truth. I think you two truly deserve to know."

Garrakson and Torris both exchanged surprised glances.

"It better well is," growled Garrakson.

"It is," I said and gave him a withering glare."It is just hard finding somewhere to start, exactly."

"Just start from the beginning," said Garrakson impatiently.

"It's not that simple," I said, shaking my head.

"Have you ever considered that it's never 'simple' because you make it complicated?" said Garrakson. "Just start from the frigging beginning, kid! I swear you're like a damn woman!"

"It doesn't help that he looks like one," added Torris.

"Emperor damn it, guys!" I snarled, bashing my fists on the table. "This isn't easy for me, okay? You have no frigging idea-!"

"Then give us an idea, Attelus!" interrupted Torris. "Take some time if you need to, but you aren't leaving this room until you tell us."

"Alright, alright, I'll start at the...start if you insist," I sighed. "I come from a small agri world in the galactic west that borders the Halo stars. Named Elbyra. Particularly the small nation; Velrosia."

I paused and looked at Garrakson to see what he'd do, but he gave no reaction whatsoever; he just sat there, looking back at me as he picked his nose.

"I uh," I said with a raised eyebrow. "It was seven years ago when the forces of chaos invaded Elbyra. They apparently came from the Halo stars, took us by complete surprise. Destroyed our PDF fleet and proceeded to bombard us like all hell."

I sighed and shook my head. "My country and my city were amongst the hardest hit." I paused and wondered if what I was going to say next was because I was lucky or something else entirely. "I only survived the initial bombardment because I was near my father's house, which had its own underground bomb shelter."

"Wait! Wait!" said Torris. "Your father had a bomb shelter?"

I laughed and took a sip of my water. "Yeah! You may think I'm paranoid, but my father, my father he blows me out of the water. Excuse the pun."

Garrakson and Torris grimaced, glancing at each other again.

"Blows you out of the water?" said Torris. "You said that in the present tense, is your father still alive?"

I shrugged and took another bite of corned beef. "Dunno," I slurred. "Perhaps. He wasn't there at the time; he was off-world, somewhere else."

"What happened to your mother?" said Garrakson. "Where was she? You must have been only sixteen, seventeen at the time."

"She was at her house, maybe, at that time," I said, more deadpanned than I intended. "We'd just had a huge fight, and I wanted time alone, so I walked to my dad's place. Then the bombs began to fall. I'm pretty sure my mum's dead. After they'd stopped, I went to her place and found it in ruins, much like everything else."

"You were very lucky, it seems," said Torris.

I paused in my chewing, and my eyes narrowed. "Hmm, perhaps. Or unlucky, from a certain point of view."

"I'm sorry, Attelus," said Garrakson.

I shrugged again. "It's okay. Don't get me wrong, I loved my mum, and I miss her but, I don't know, I just always feel real numb about it for some reason."

"What were you and your mother arguing about, Attelus?" said Torris.

I glared at him. "That bit of information is rather irrelevant, isn't it?"

Torris shrugged. "Just wondering."

"What happened after, Attelus?" said Garrakson, fixing Torris with a disapproving look.

"I survived," I stated simply.

"Yeah, we can tell that," said Torris.

I looked down at the table and closed my eyes. "I-I don't want to go into the details. I don't want to talk about what I went through."

Garrakson shook his head, his eyes wide. "It must've been hell, Attelus. If you don't want to talk about that, we understand."

Torris shook his head. "No."

Garrakson shot him a glance. "What?"

Torris glared at me from under a hooded brow. "No, you should tell us, Attelus. You don't have to, but you should. We won't judge you, I swear. But it might be better for you if you talk about it. I worked in the Arbites for many years. I was, I think, too human for the job, so they got me to console the victims of many of the crimes we investigated. The best thing for them is if they talked about what they went through, always. Attelus, you're traumatised, I can see, suffering from what could be post-traumatic stress disorder. You hide it well, but I could see that right from the start."

I looked down at my plate and dropped my knife and fork with clangs, swallowing back the bile rising in my throat.

"I..."

"We're your friends, kid," said Torris. "Or at least I like to think we are; we're here to help."

I shook my head and closed my eyes.

"I've never told anyone about it before," I said. "Not even Glaitis; she never seemed even interested about it at all."

Because she probably knew all of it already, I thought, and I couldn't remember it in any detail until recently.

"I," I sighed. "Just promise me, swear to me that we'll still be friends after knowing what I did, please."

"Of course," stammered Torris. "Of course we will."

"For the first few days, I started off living off the food in my father's bunker," I said. "But much of it had caved in during the bombardment, so I ran out quickly. So I began scavenging amongst the rubble for food. But, but it was so hard to find, so so hard. But there were corpses, everywhere in the streets so I, I...had to...to."

"Oh, God Emperor," gasped Garrakson as it hit him. "You didn't?"

"Yeah, I did," I said, with a humourless laugh and tears in my eyes. "I was running then on pure instinct and anything and everything to win and, yeah. You could say it was lucky for me when the forces of chaos finally rolled in and, for some reason, secured the ruins of Varander. From then on, I had an abundant resource for food."

Garrakson and Torris said nothing, just gaped at me in abstract horror.

"I would, once in a while, stalk, ambush and kill their patrols. Then steal their supplies for myself."

"Wait!" said Garrakson. "Wait! Are you telling me you managed to kill entire arch-enemy patrols single-handedly?"

"I know it's hard to believe, and I didn't always succeed, but yes, I did," I said bluntly. "I would have to tail them for hours before finding the right moment to strike, and they were badly trained, ill-disciplined."

Garrakson glared at me. "You shouldn't have eaten that food, kid."

"What?" I growled. "I had no choice! All the food then was gone, rotted away! I had no choice!"

"Calm down, Attelus," said Torris.

I sighed and fought back the anger.

"It was like that for months," I said. "Many times, they'd try to hunt me down and kill me, but I'd always manage to slip away by the skin of my teeth. I was always on the move, changing my hideouts almost day by day."

I sighed. "I wasn't aware of it, but I was slowly losing my sanity and humanity, becoming a mindless animal, living to survive, not surviving to live. That was until I heard someone run over the roof of my hideout. Being chased by an enemy patrol."

Garrakson furrowed his brow, and Torris nodded.

"Who?" said Garrakson.

I smiled. "It was Karmen.

"What? Really?" said Garrakson.

"Yeah, well, kind of, back then she was sergeant Estella Erith, of the Velrosian PDF. She was the last survivor of a squad sent north to investigate the destruction. Do you know that black and white armour she wore before? It was from those days. She was the first person I'd seen in so long who wasn't trying to kill me."

I smiled. "She saved me, saved me from losing my sanity, and it would be safe to say that I... That I...uhh umm."

Torris grinned. "Fell in love with her?"

I grinned, looking away, embarrassed. "Yeah," I stammered. "At that time, though, I'm pretty sure it was completely one-sided; Estella had no idea."

"What was she like back then?" asked Torris.

"Different," I said. "Nicer and kinder, although she almost got herself killed because of her pride if I hadn't convinced her to step down."

"What about her psychic powers?" asked Torris.

"Much less. I think she must've been...latent?" I said. "It was weird, though; she knew my middle name without me even telling her."

"And you trusted her?" said Garrakson.

"Yeah, I did," I said, smiling. "It was hard for me at first, but, yeah."

Garrakson just smiled coyly and shook his head.

I was about to ask what that was about when Torris said, "what did you do then?"

"Together, we travelled south toward the front line. The Imperial Guard had come to fight for us. The Elbyran contingent. Commanded by General Tathe."

As I said this again, I kept an eye on Garrakson to see what he'd do, but yet he gave no reaction.

I sighed. "It took us over two weeks, but we finally managed to slip through the enemy forces and get to the refugee and Elbyran Imperial Guard encampments."

"What happened next?" said Torris.

"She left me," I sighed. "Karmen, uhh Estella left me at the refugee camp to report her findings to general Tathe, and she never came back."

"What? You don't know why yet?" asked Torris.

"No, she hasn't told me yet," I replied.

Here I was, swallowing many truths; I didn't want to tell them that she'd tried to erase my memories. That'd just make them hate her more, and with what was at stake, we didn't need that. Not at all.

"You have to understand, Torris, Garrakson," I said. "After all that I went through, after all, that I'd done. I-I couldn't go back to a normal life. I decided that I'd become an assassin."

"How old were you? Seventeen? You could've waited a year then joined the guard," said Garrakson.

"I'm not a soldier, Garrakson; you should know that."

"Many who believed themselves to 'not be soldiers' have become the greatest soldiers of all."

I glared at Garrakson.

"Garrakson, leave it," said Torris. "We told him we wouldn't judge him, and what's done is done, okay?"

I grinned. "Anyway, would they accept a withered, little ex-cannibal into their ranks?"

"Well, if that withered little ex-cannibal had your skill, I'm positive they would," said Garrakson.

"That begs another question, Attelus," said Torris. "How did you, at seventeen, acquire the necessary skills not only to survive but also be able to ambush and kill entire arch-enemy patrols single-handedly?"

I swallowed and frowned. "My father, he taught me everything I needed to know how to carve and cook partly rotten meat. How to fight, how to kill. Right from when I was old enough to walk."

"Just who is your father?" said Garrakson. "Sounds like he knows how the world turns. Ex-guard is he?"

"Nope," I said. "He is an assassin. Though I don't know where he got his training from."

"Was it him? Was it him that inspired you to take up this...Line