Foreign Body

***Foreign Body* (Short Story)**
‘Breathe deeply, and relax.’

He had smelled detergent and chloride, and his saliva tasted bitter, but that was gone in a second.

It took minutes for panicked gasping to subside, he was crying with relief but could not remember what triumph gave him joy. Without his suffocating noise the quieter ones returned; The crunch of distant boots, the thrum of engines and rumble of treads. The ground shook and water sloshed, each reverberation followed shortly by the thunderous echo of distant artillery fire. Sturgen tried to collect his thoughts, but he was overstimulated; Everytime the sound found a pattern it changed. Accelerating in pace or being overwhelmed by another. His pulse thundered as the heart tried to settle to it. louder with each second, he wanted to scream but fear held his mouth shut, so he clawed blindly into the soft mud.

It was not his scream that cut through the cacophony. His back spasmed in response to the tortured wail.

He was in a deep pool of watery mud, blood and vomit, the last of which was his own. The filth still tasted in the back of his throat and flashes of nearly drowning swam up from his memory. He shared the pool with a dozen bodies, the bloated rotting corpses swayed in the rippling water. ‘*Had they joined the grave the same as him?*’ Around him were steep walls of earth two men tall. It was a crater, perhaps the product of an Earthshaker, perhaps a buried mine. He must have fallen in, a slip or a trip.

Climbing out was impossible, though it was still attempted again and again. Each attempt followed the screams. Each scream was different but clearly given for the same reason. Each scream was closer than the last. Each attempted escape ended in the slipping mud. The walls would crumble under his weight, or his limbs would sink into the ground. Each attempt would send him falling back down into the icy embrace of the water. With each attempt he fought the pull of the water less. He had no ropes, no ladders, nothing that could overcome this otherwise trivial hurdle. The depths of his training, the endless instructions of the regimental standard, the boundless depth of his peer’s stories, they were all useless.

He wanted to believe that his side had won, those were the enemies' screams, those were his friends marching past. He wanted to scream out to them, he wanted an angel's hand. But he was too afraid. In the end he remained, floating on his back, counting the seconds that passed. They would pass him, there was only the dead here.

Eventually the morning came. It brought a dense, clinging, fog that buried the sun before it had a chance to shine. Sturgen had steeled himself to simply hide, he used what strength he had to keep his eyes above the water, but let it claim the rest. ‘*Had the others each tried this?*’

The illusion had to be perfect, just another floating corpse. Though each rippling shockwave brought another mouthful of dirty water, he fought to suppress each gagging jerk. He nearly screamed in the struggle. There could be no sound, no movement, he had to be dead. There were the footsteps at last, wet slaps of mud against rubber souls and hobnails. That crunch of marching boots he could hear before was distinct, the feet of warmachines he now assumed. Laughter came over the ridge, low gothic and common slang. It was his tongue, but foreign accents. Had the Imperium failed today? ‘Impossible’. Four figures casting shadows within the mist reached the craters edge, the vague shape of their heads crooking over the abyss. One swore predictably, while the others surveyed carefully. Their arms became vague blurs as they gesticulated and waved.

With his focus on the shadows Sturgen had not noticed the approaching sound. ‘*Was it wind, or some parody of breathing?*’ Each a draft of air dragged through mechanical valves, as wind over metal tins, followed with a hiss of moving pistons. Unlike an animal's regular breathing it came almost randomly, a minute or ten passing between each unnaturally long rasp. It overwhelmed any thought, singularly absorbing the mind as the body tried to step into its pattern, making itself sick with the effort.

Red light bathed the shadowy figures, casting their silhouette sharp at the mist’s edge. They were clearly Guardsmen, or at least were dressed as them. The light swept across the crater, passing over the dozen bodies, over Sturgen, lingering over every bloated swelling and gnawed bone. He had not needed to freeze, he did not jerk in response. He was so tired and defeated that it was no longer an act to play.

Five shadows now. Behind the original four was now another, it was gigantic, a hundred swimming veins of shadow articulating around it as gently as seagrass in ocean currents. The Guardsmen talked to it casually, as Sturgen would have to the companies Orgryns. As you did to the working animals that were strong enough to break your neck without breaking a sweat themselves but were hilariously gentle in spite of it. To their low gothic muttering it replied with a deep rumble of guttural illegible syllables, much like the sounds of a badly tuned vox receiver.

In just five minutes they were down into the shell hole, though they had the assistance of ropes. His eyes had been sharp, they were dressed as guardsmen; though their black fatigues were ragged and torn. Their grey armour was battered, showing the worn clean plasteel under the primer. That which was visible in the patches not covered by mud. There was no insignia, some had scratched out the paint, over had covered it with cloth. They did not bear the star that Sturgen's enemy had, nor paint their armour red with blood. **Who were they?** The strangers picked their way through the water gently, contending themselves with cleaning the pockets of the dead, extracting their weapons, tins, bars of corpse starch and power cells. One of them used a knife to cut the armour panels off of the bodies, as well as the rings off of their hands.

The larger shadow walked down the crater's edge, the threads of shadow digging into the walls of mud, as it came out of the fog they became knife edged apertures of metal. A dozen arms creeping out from under a dirty dark red robe, each clicking and whirring with their movements; An orchestra of purring motors. Incense followed it as fug, diffusing with each of it's breaths. From it's back flowed a forest of mechanical limbs, sweeping the ground with a dancer's grace. Each body was caressed with a number of instruments. Scalpels and needles cutting samples out of the flesh. Each returned to the host body which reciprocated with a humming machine song. The red light, emitting from under the cowl did not cease from its scouring search. Passing over the bodies again and again, emitting speech in disdain.

"Not fresh enough eh?" The closest Guardsmen replied. A pincer snapped in reply, and returned to picking through the bodies. Sturgen shut his eyes as a blinding light was forced on them. The pink afterimage faded into a skull built from gears, servos and cameras, itself receding into a wall of wires, tubing and apertures. The twinned lens whirred as they dilated. Searing hot oil dripped from the façade of a face and exuded a whimper from Sturgen as it scalded his flesh. A slow rasp was drawn in before the voice sounded. Childishly excited now, it’s every word was transcribed into a reel of parchment that gathered within an envelope. Complete, it was sealed with wax and joined a dozen more within a satchel. The unknown tongue switched to Gothic without a break.

"Guardsmen, the Mechanicus thanks the dutiful servants of the reverent Emperor for their humble service to the most holy Omnissiah."

Hoisted aloft, a dozen scalpels and needles emerged from it’s awaiting apertures, and a pair of gloves hands reached out from under the red robes. The blood curdling scream came again, louder than ever.

* + - * +

Sturgen awoke to softly ventilating machines, distant whispers and clipping footsteps on hard floors. He smelled detergent and chloride, his saliva tasted bitter. In an instance the heady mix of intoxicating drugs and numbed injury rushed to his head; his body jerked and convulsed in response. Sturgen heaved to vomit his empty stomach, until the dribble of orange acid became white bile. He barely noticed the nurse taking up the routine position behind him, one hand consoling on the shoulder and the other holding the bucket to his lips, the mind bored and absent. His body still wanted to kick out the foreign entity in his guts, he could feel the change in pressure and balance. Worse was the memory, the false memory, that swam through his mind, a death that was not his.

The chirurgeon walked in from a short distance away, flicking through files absentmindedly, their mind only half engaged while it’s imagination swam with ideas. They looked up to the scene with amused detachment.

"Ah Psyker you are awake, some elated brain activity aside, the operation was textbook, I’ll chalk that up to your particular mutation. I am confident that your body will not reject the new organ."

Sturgen spat the last of the bile out and drank deeply from offered water.

"You insult me chirurgeon, I was promised the finest product, not some stray."

"The stray, as you call it, was the most compatible." They returned to their files and dreams, while Sturgen fought their own away.