Imperial Literature

The Callidus way is not an easy one. Every year millions of gifted children are taken from their families by the Inquisition to be tested. I was one of those children, and despite the best efforts of the temple’s political staff I can still remember being taken. It was Inquisitor Harald Moorhagen of the Ordo Sicarius who came for me on that day.

It was he who told my weeping parents that I was to go with him to the temple six hundred miles away. It was he who shot my mother when she broke into hysterics and tried to stop the stormtroopers. It was his seal on the official documents authorising my father’s execution on trumped up charges of heresy. Assassins have no family save the gun, the sword and the Emperor. The Inquisitors of the Ordos Sicarius consider it their duty to ensure this.

I remember turning to see my parents one last time before I left. The mental image of my father kneeling beside my mother’s corpse while a stormtrooper raises his rifle to strike is the only memory I still possess of my childhood. From that day on I was an assassin. For me the hassles of youth would also be things that happened to other people.

Of course I should be grateful for what my recruitment gave me. The training I received has made me one of the most potent physical forces in the galaxy. My physical form is as much a thing of will as fate and I can turn any seemingly harmless object into a fatal weapon – both are handy little tricks when trying to get a drink at a bar or when high command stuffs up and a battlefield ends up enveloping me.

But that power and sheer survivability comes at a high price – the training program is a killer. Literally.

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