They stood amongst the slain, piling the corpse-mounds high and slaying any who still lived, cowering beneath their debased kin. They set incendiary charges there and soon the whole valley was full of the smell of burning flesh.
"Have you seen the watchers?" Kassim asked D'leh, the later looking up to the bluffs.
"I've seen them." D'lah confirmed, there were figures hiding in the forest. Human ones though, not mutants, so the Scouts were leaving them along.
The pair of them sawed at the great tendons of a large creature Kassim had hit with a rocket the night before. The thing had a hole in its chest large enough for an Astartes to walk through, and Sido had praised the artillerist for his accuracy. It was a fine feat given Kassim was only 14 and the youngest of the Scouts, recently having finished his training and joined them in the field.
Finally the adamantine combat knives managed to slice through the steely sinews of the creature and the enormous head came free. Sido had told them if they were able to get it they could bring it back as a trophy and both Scouts had enthusiastically set to the task.
A soft whirring came from behind them and the pair turned.
"Lash it to the Thunderhawk's lifter unit." Sido instructed, "I'll not have its stench in the compartment with us."
"Yes Brother-Sergeant." they both agreed.
The corpse gathering continued, taking several Scouts to pull some of the larger creatures in. Occasionally D'leh would find mutants still alive, often the smaller variants, trying to hide under their dead kin, but none of them lasted long once he found them.
As the hours when on chatter broke out on the vox-net about which Scout had made the most significant contribution during battle. Kassim argued well for his rocketry, D'leh offered his own kills of the mutant leaders and witches, Arif tried to claim that his quantity of kills was better given his use of the Heavy Bolter, while Sido reminded them all that individually their contributions were irrelevant, "The strength of the weapon, its capacity to kill, is nothing. The true power comes from the one wielding it."
Their sober acknowledgments filled the vox for a moment, then the chatter started right back up.
D'leh came to stand beside the Sergeant, "My lord," he address the officer more formally, despite their relative closeness from the adventures of the jungle, "Are you not concerned about the watchers up there?"
Sido did not answer immediately, rather, he went to the black altar in the centre of the valley, D'leh trailing behind. The Veteran knelt by the corpse of a beast-witch D'leh has killed during one of the volleys, taking his knife and with one clear strike severing the thing's head. He then held it high toward the mountains, and in D'leh's auspex-enhanced vision he could see the human observers dart behind rocks.
Sido drew breath, his bionics whirring, "What we do here today isn't only about destroying the enemy." He looked at D'leh, "What is the purpose of the Scout?"
"And let the Scout Marine go among the foe secretly, under the direction of his commanders, and let him strike in silence and learn much of the foe so that his lord might know them better. The foe shall not fear him, for they shall not know him, but they shall know the Wrath of Angels which the Scout brings." D'leh quoted dutifully.
"Yes I should hope you know the catechisms by now." Sido replied glibly, a light admonishment in his tone to a time when D'leh had been less diligent in his scholarship. "Yes, you gather information to inform the Chapter, yes, you use what tools you have to prepare the way, but this is more than just your rifle. We stand on an alien world, one that apparently has never seen the Emperor's Light. Our purpose is also to create that legend we rely on in our duties. We are forbidden to command mortals in battle except by the High Lords' writ, yet I have many a time ordered even Lord Generals to obey me. Once I needed to commandeer an entire army and they would kneel and reply 'Yes, my lord' because I was one of the Emperor's Angels of Death. Here the populace has never seen an Aquila, they don't know it's meaning, they fear our armour like they fear the beasts of the wilds."
"Should they not?"
Sido's helmet was on but he tilted his head slightly in what D'leh's long association with him could tell was a smile, "They should, but fear alone is rarely enough to create faith. If we had simply destroyed this place with a barrage and never shown ourselves the event would undoubtedly be passed down the generations, the wrath of a local deity perhaps, or some great hero, but now they've seen us, when they see us again years later they'll remember, they'll speak of golden men who struck down the wicked."
D'leh considered the matter, Sido was right of course, but he felt rather foolish for not realising it himself, and turned the conversation to another matter, "I heard a lecture once on Beastmen," he began, "it was said they once served the Imperium."
"Homo sapiens variatus." nodded the sergeant, "They're one of many abhuman stratum across the galaxy but yes, supposedly they served in organised troops during the Great Crusade, giving sacrifice to the Emperor for their sins of being born mutants."
"Is a Beastman a mutant?" D'leh asked, uncertain of the difference. There was enough genetic variation in human populations across the Imperium that certain strains of mutation were accepted as long as they 'bred true', like the hulking Ogryns or the diminutive Ratlings.
"It depends on the level of mutation." Sido said, "Look here, all of these creatures cavorted and lived in association with each other, there are levels of similarity between them, some have the appearance of particular animals, but there's no control to test with. If there were a hundred of them and they all looked the same, perhaps minor variations in hair colour or size, very well, but there, that one has a scales, and that one a tentacle for an arm."
Indeed, D'leh had moved the later onto the corpse pile himself, employing a pair of stout staves to flip and drag the creature so he didn't have to touch it.
"Additionally, many of those here bear the marks of Chaos." Sido continued, "That, at the least, renders this whole gathering damned, even without any of the other evidence. Remember, a pure body leads to pure thoughts, and pure thoughts to pure acts. Safeguard that purity which the Emperor and your gene-sire have bestowed upon you. It is only through our purity that we can know that we are the servants of the God-Emperor. Those who lack purity have no basis to identify the mutant, the alien, or the Traitor."
"I understand Sergeant," D'leh said, "But then how did some serve the Emperor?"
"Well," Sido said, "Their own impurity betrayed them. A warped barrel or a poorly-balanced round will always fly false, will always miss. Is it any surprise that their impure bodies led to impure assumptions, that they mistakenly served the Emperor when their true destiny was in darkness?"
There was a pause as the pair watched the rest of the squad bringing back more bodies from the woods, slinging them onto the burning pile.
"It is an issue complex in both military and spiritual aspects." Sido concluded, "Meditate upon these matters when you return, but first, bring up the flamer…"
D'leh sent a burst of vox to the others, one of them throwing him the weapon, "What is it?"
"The stone of this altar shifted when I came to stand here." Sido explained, "There's a hidden compartment."
The Sergeant reached down in a flash and sunk his hand into the crack between two stones, the crude material crushed to powder in his ceramite grip. The whole stone slab he'd been standing on flew away a good twenty metres at the violence of his attack, and a large chamber was revealed beneath.
Within cowered fifty or sixty more of the beasts. They were smaller, their horns and natural implements uniformly lesser, foolishly without armaments, clutching instead disgusting smaller examples of their kind in a perverse mirror of a human mother holding a child.
"Filthy creatures…" growled Arif, his finger edging to the trigger of his weapon.
D'leh saw one of them, babbling up at him, wide eyed and sobbing, a creature half her size hidden behind her as if to shield it from the Astartes' wrath. The thing saw his unwavering resolve, if not in his covered eyes but in his resolute stance and cast itself onto the floor, begging and holding up its hands in pleading gesture. The small monster beside it wailed and tugged at the larger one's ragged vestments. The Scouts were immune to their malfeasance though, muting their external audio receptors so as not to hear their enemies' unclean words.
"Have you a prayer for us D'leh?" asked Sido in a clip of vox.
But it was already on the Scout's lips as he depressed the trigger of his weapon, the holy promethium charging forth upon the cowering creatures in the hidden chamber.
"Emperor, let Your undeniable light burn on the misshapen and the twisted, so I can see them with pure sight, and purge them with righteous fire."
And D'leh snarled as the creatures wailed. The one who'd looked at him embraced it's spawn as it burned, flesh sloughing off both of them, eyes boiling under his onslaught, bones cracking in the sudden inferno.
After it was done the Scout looked down into the chamber and the blackened forms that once were bodies. It was a fitting punishment for those who would so unjustly assume the virtues that were humanity's alone.
