Victorus aut Mortus

I submitted a new story to The Black Library's most recent short story contest. Here are the first four paragraphs.

Markus Raben perched on a metallic rack screwed into an exterior wall of a Gothic arch supporting the lowest passenger bay of the Imperium battle-barge, Pequod, cleaning his sniper rifle. He wrinkled his nose at the acrid mix of gun oil, mold, mildew, sweat, backed-up toilets, cigars, and after shave arising from the crowded floor. Bits of rust and dried paint flaked from the ceiling onto his black synthetic blanket, disturbing his sense of order.

Unconsciously, he scratched a fresh tattoo of a raven with its wings extended on his right shoulder, and then rubbed his left hand over three fresh wounds, neatly stitched on his stomach, the remains of the Apothecaries’ latest treatment.

Raben, a Raven Guard neophyte, had not yet been assigned to a scout squad. In the interim, he trained under the iron tutelage of Sergeant Instructor Mannix, who never tired of reminding him he was refuse from the lowest level of Kiavahr and his conversion into a lobotomized servitor was imminent.

Raben knew otherwise. He had measured his fate through the Tarot. After all, hadn’t he had survived fifteen years on a crowded industrial planet by using his wits, his knife, and the hidden psychic powers he had inherited from his mother to become a Raven Guard neophyte?