This story came about when I found a thread on /tg/. The OP had posted a picture of a girl with all limbs amputated and 'recovering' in a hospital, along with the question what the Anonymous of /tg/ would do to restore her body to full function. Many an answer was given, amongst which of course was the mention of a Dreadnought. I have never really written anything, but that link just clicked, and I started. The result of that is what you find below.
I am not really much of a writer, obviously, and I dont really plan to be, but hopefully enough of one to get my story across.
Chapter 1
Zeruel was lost in thought, sitting down with his legs crossed and his back supported by his Servo-arms. He was staring at the Mechanicus-red primed dreadnought in front of him, unsure of the color he should be painting her armor. She was asleep and didn't want to wake her up. and there was nobody left on the Battle Barge he could ask. It was cold and dark, most of the ship's life-support systems had failed and only a few chambers are still habitable. This wasn't what bothered Zeruel. What bothered him was how his entire Chapter had been wiped out.
Though Unforgiven, the Angels of Doom were a proud chapter. No matter what, they would not yield an inch to the enemy, especially not because this battle was to defend their homeworld Zestra III. Zeruel was not like this. He was the only one recruited from a different world, a trial for their suitability. At least, he was the only one from that world who was genetically compatible with the Chapter's Gene-seed. He was always the most level-headed of the Chapter and they never really managed to get that out of him. He never really fitted in, which meant he never progressed in the ranks of the Chapter. He decided to become a Tech-marine instead as the Chapter didn't have a lot of them and because he found comfort in the more logical approach the Mechanicus advocated. It was only 3 years before the Chapter learned of the impending attack on their home planet when he returned from his training on Mars. The Angels Immediately ordered their entire fleet to return home, and they even made it before the Orks arrived. They set up defenses and waited for the attack. When it came, nobody expected the sheer amount of Orks that had joined the WAAAAAGH! The war lasted weeks, and Zeruel's role in it was to will the spirits of the Chapter's war machines to continue fighting after they had been damaged. As such, he never saw most of it. He never saw Interrogator Chaplain Leliel fall, nor was he there when Grand Master Iruel fell. Even the only Battle Brothers he ever really talked to, Gaghiel and Ramiel, died in battle while he was repairing a First Company Land Raider, completely ignorant of their ends. He worked in a repurposed manufactorum that previously built shuttles for the nearby star port, and he only found out how badly they were losing the war when the Orks broke into the structure. The Angels of Doom would not retreat even now and dedicated all Marines that were left to defend it. They succeeded, but at a high cost. Many of them died, and so did the manufactorum personnel. The last day of the war dawned, and the civilians of this Hive city were reportedly the only ones still alive on the planet. To support the Angels they were all put to work in the manufactorum, regardless of age. Both sided had been severely weakened in the weeks long combat and the Orks prepared for a final siege. The Marines fought harder than they had in the weeks before, for failing here meant losing the war, and the end of the Chapter, but despite this the number of Orks was too great, albeit by a small margin. When they entered Zeruel's workshop, they had killed all of the improvised manufactorum personnel. All, except the girl who was sent to deliver the final component of the Razorback Zeruel was repairing. She was maybe 14 years old and struggled to drag the heavy Astartes plasma gun behind her. Normally a Razorback is fitted with a twin-linked plasma gun next to it's Lascannon, but this was the last gun left. Zeruel didn't notice the girl's screaming until he finished mounting the gun. He looked up to see an Ork push her out of the way to climb on the Razorback. Zeruel grabbed it's head with his servo-arm and crushed it's skull with a loud crack. He got into the vehicle to gun down the Orks that tried to follow the first and proceeded to ram the rest. He didn't realize the fight was over until he noticed the girl was still screaming now that the noise of combat had died down. He found her in a large machine, pushed in there by the Ork. The machine's heavy cover was taken off as a makeshift armor plate for the Razorback. and it's heavy gears were exposed. As he saw her stuck in it, he reached in with his servo-arm and grabbed her by the waist. Her arms and one of her legs got crushed by the machine's gears, and while Zeruel was no Apothecary, he knew she would soon die. Normally he had more pressing matters to attend, but with characteristic speed he deducted that, if this was the last stronghold, and there are no more Marines, nor Orks, nor manufactorum workers, he and the girl would be the only two people still alive on the planet. The only way he could think of to save her was to amputate her crushed limbs, and quickly close the wounds, somehow. Cutting off a few appendages was no big deal for a Space Marine, but it took him a while to think of a way to close the wounds. While he got to work with his combat knife, his servo-arm held a small piece of sheet metal, which he heated with the flamer arm of his servo-harness. by the time he had cauterized her wounds, she had passed out from blood loss and sheer pain.
They had lived on that world for some months, all alone. During that time, Zeruel had been repairing a shuttle so he could return to the fleet. What he would do then, he didn't yet know. While the ships had all been destroyed in the assault, not all of them had catastrophically exploded. It didn't take him long before he could get the air scrubbers working on the Battle Barge he had docked with. At least in a few chambers. There was no way to repair the heating with the tools he had, however, so Zeruel carried the girl with him all the time. She sat on top of his power armor's backpack, where he held her in place with his servo-arm and where the waste heat from his suit's reactor core would keep her warm. In the months they managed to survive on Zestra III, the girl had not spoken a single word. Zeruel could understand this, he was fairly shocked himself and even now he could hardly believe what happened. He had wanted to put her at ease, and maybe keep the time on his dead Brothers' homeworld from becoming too boring for her, and thus he told her long stories every day. Sure, most of the stories he knew were of war, and occasionally from his time with the Tech-priests on Mars, but he had a lot of them and had yet to tell a story twice. During their second day on the ship she had finally talked. "Sachiel." She had whispered softly. Her name. Zeruel was surprised to hear a name that he only knew the Angels of the Unforgiven Chapters used, but it turned out it was common to do so on Zestra III, being the Angels of Doom homeworld. He had told her of his sergeant when he was still a Scout, whose name was also Sachiel. Days continued like this for a while. He would tell her more stories, and she would ask about them. A month ago she had asked Zeruel if he could do something about her unending pain, but he could not. During their talking, Zeruel had carried her around the areas of the ship that had oxygen, showed her around while he fixed anything he could. Two days after her question, they passed the storage chamber for sleeping Dreadnoughts. A single Dreadnought was still standing there, powered down. It's inhabitant had died in battle when the sarcophagus was struck by a Tau railgun. The Dreadnought was recovered, and the damage easily repaired, but it had yet to find a new owner. And then it struck Zeruel. You needed to be a Space Marine to wear their power armor, and to be a Space Marine, you had to be a man. But not for a Dreadnought, which were designed to function with merely an intact brain and central nervous system. He powered up the chassis to function as a heat source, and left Sachiel with it before he went to the Librarium, which did not yet have it's air scrubbers repaired. He spent a week and a half to learn everything an Apothecary would normally do, in theory, anyway. Normally the process doesn't take very long, but Zeruel had only one shot, and nobody to help him, which is why it took him until last night working non-stop to fuse the girl with the machine.
They slept, and the next morning Zeruel was sitting in front of her, supported by his servo-arms. He wondered if he would paint the Dreadnought in his Chapter's colors, a dark purple with bright green trims that would glow in the night so they could always keep track of each other. But his Chapter had been destroyed, and Sachiel was not exactly a part of it either. He would probably just wait until she woke up and simply ask her, and since they would not be going anywhere anytime soon, they had all the time in the Imperium to decide.
