Steve Lyons’ short story Exodus is a bleak tale of an Imperial world falling under the shadow of a Hive Fleet, and the varied way its defenders react to the impending doom. With the evacuation underway, Arch Teilloch of the Katraxis Home Guard clings to the comfort of following orders as his world falls apart around him. Meanwhile sergeant Konrad Ven Mikkelson of the Valhallan Ice Warriors leads his squad in an inglorious retreat through a city gripped by panic, as the population begins to tear itself apart.
Even for a 40k story, this is dark. For both Teilloch and Ven Mikkelson there’s little left to hold onto besides duty, as every decision results in increasingly awful choices; for these characters all roads – whether faced with bravery or cowardice – lead to disaster. Lyons’ dry, matter-of-fact prose is a little uninspired at times, especially with some of the dialogue, but that somehow lends the narrative an appropriately hard, cold edge. There’s no real character development, but instead an increasingly grim unfolding of events that powerfully, sometimes unpleasantly, highlights the perils of blind obedience and the horrifying truth of life in the Imperium. It’s not heroic, but it is an effective story.
