The universe, conventionally speaking, does not have corners. It has curves. Curves that spin and drop and coil into an infinite patchwork of blackness. And in the upper left-hand corner of this blackness there is a world. The one world. The final world of human habitation.

Sera.

Sera is fat, poised on the cusp of realities like an especially large cake. A cake with brown and grey icing. It looms, burning bright with drifting sparkles of flame, and sinks eternally through fields of stars. Scientists are unsure what will happen if the light of Sera ever burns out, but the general consensus has been described as "not good."

This is the world on which grow the hopes of humanity, like bright blooms, or possibly marzipan roses. And there are always marzipan roses.



* * *

Dominic Santiago liked to see himself as chizzled. It was an apt adjective. In fact, if a survey had been done of the denizens of Jacinto who had ever laid eyes on him, chizzled would have come up right behind mustachioed. Chizzled, suave, grizzled and brawny were the kind of adjectives that clung to Space Marines like magnets, that stuck to them like mustache hairs stick to a suit.

It was, in fact, the heavy suits like steel ponchos that people probably noticed first, that, Dominic considered, or the enormous pointy guns±. Everything they wore was a network of panels, a cavalcade of black buckles on black armour plates, with black designs at the centre of black pads. He had a blue light on his shoulder to draw attention to the black. His beard was black. His hair was black. Even the gloves that covered up the scar over his left knuckle were black.

The design on Dominic's chest was more or less identical to that on the others in his squad, and to all of COG, really. It consisted of a skull, locked inside a black gear. Dominic had never been sure who the skull was meant to intimidate, since the Locust hordes didn't seem to mind human skulls very much, but then, it was best not to think of such things. Maybe it was meant to remind Locusts of how bony humans could be, as a deterrent to eating them.

It didn't seem completely effective.

"Yo," Dominic heard. He made an effort to crease his muscled head toward the sound. Unit Commander Fenix (as in to rise from the ashes) had laid his enormous cerated saw-gun beside a vaguely intimidating spiral of rock and held up something speckled and rotund. "I think it's an egg," Fenix announced.



"Do they have eggs?" Dominic asked.

"Don't ask me." Fenix answered.

"Because I'm pretty sure they're not supposed to have eggs."

"I'm pretty sure they're not supposed to have that many teeth either," Fenix said, "That doesn't help matter too much, now does it?"

"No," Dominic answered. He scowled at his own reflection in a tall length of panelling. It was that kind of thinking that kept him from moving up. His mother was always saying that. "Still, it could be something else, er, Unit Commander."

"Well--"

"Gentlemen," interrupted a third voice. Both men turned. It was Cole. Cole was broader than Dominic and in his opinion had drifted too far from chisled toward "ripped" potentially even beefy. This made him nervous. Cole never had anything pleasant to say. "Might we cut back the argument for a moment?"



"Whyzzat?" Fenix answered.

"Well," Cole said, drawing a deep breath. He pointed with one muscled arm. Veins generally throbbed and otherwise made themselves known. "We might want to shoot the Locust standing directly behind you."

Now Dominic and Fenix turned, Dominic grimacing at the universe in general. And so far it had been such a nice birthday too.

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±This is of course based on a study carried out by Grismal Bokeray, High Investigative Unit Manager and Professor of Sociological Studies at West Sera University in a study entitled "Shiny First Impressions: The Look and Logistics of the Space Marine" which among other things, posited that the entire concept of the Space Marine may be flawed, considering the relative lack of marine or sea-based uses for the COG suit. Unit Commander Fenix's official response to this report is said to be: "What?"