"Such a strange smell…" thought the man to himself as his metal boots sunk into the soft soil. The smell the man was thinking of was somewhat repulsive; it invaded his nostrils and left him curious.
"What the hell is that damned smell?" A metallic scraping sound pierced his ears and he forgot about the smell, leveling the sights on his weapon towards what he expected to be the source of the noise. He waited for a moment and heard three metal clicks, the time between the sounds were consistent. He sighed and lowered his weapon as one of his comrades walked out from behind some bushes.
"Jenson?" asked the man, "Good to see you're in one piece, damned natives on this planet are good with their explosions."
Jenson walked further away from the building and staggered before falling to his knees. The man ran forward loudly and held Jenson against himself.
"Hey!" said the man desperately, "Jenson!"
The man dropped Jenson as a black worm with a shiny head pushed its way out of Jenson's eye and then re-entered the man through his mouth, which was agape with terror. The man pulled his weapon up again and scanned the area, "That was NOT a native creature." Thought the man frantically, "Where the hell have I seen that kind of worm before?"
Jenson's body was gone, only his clunky metal armor and a writhing pile of the black worms remained. The worms moved around, tiny pinchers all over their forms waved in the air, they piled on top of each other for awhile before they stopped moving and died. Apparently they were parasitic and died if they didn't inhabit another host soon enough. The man heard a twig snap behind him and he turned around, flicked a switch on the barrel of his weapon, and fired a steady stream of flames into the trees and bushes. The flamethrower roared like a wild beast as it burned the surrounding fauna. The man stopped firing and listened for another snap. Instead, the sound of the fire drowned out any possibility of him being able to hear an attack before it happened. The man yelled into the fire, a loud, guttural battle cry, beckoning whatever was hunting him to come out. The fire spread away from the man, consuming the jungle as it went, and silence fell. The man wiped sweat off his brow and walked over to the pile of worms. The worms were gone, and a smoldering hole in the ground was in their place.
"What the?" the man was cut off as he heard something being flung into the air behind him. He turned around and saw several black worms flying at him, he sprayed the air in front of them and they burnt up. They exploded as they burnt, sending their guts onto his chest armor, which started to fizz as the acidic insides of the worms ate their way through. The man pulled off his chest armor and threw it away, the same smell from earlier permeated around him and burned his eyes. He sensed something nearby him, a distortion in his vision made him quickly wipe sweat from his eyes. But the distortion wouldn't go away, then it moved towards him. "Not a distortion, a partially invisible enemy" thought the man as he fired at the being. Flame engulfed it, and the cloak disappeared revealing a massive organism with gray, slime coated skin and black, piercing eyes. It stood up on short back legs that looked ready to leap, its front appendages were long, scythe like blades that looked to be made of bone. Its face was a mop of gray tentacles and a small, toothy mouth under that. The man flicked the switch on his weapon and fired hot lead at the creature, but he never saw the shots. The creature had slashed his gun-arm off before the man had time to react. A second later, he was dead.
Three months earlier…
General Hullsmasher yawned as the Scout marine gave his report. Just another small, jungle planet with hostile natives. "I wonder when I'll get sent back out to fight the orks again, those were glorious times. I can see Sandusky's head being chopped off even now; he always was a slacker anyway. I don't know how their damned hierarchy works or how they've remained a major threat, they're so damned stupid you'd think high command's keeping them around just for kicks or to give the men something to fight against. If the greenskin bastards would just stay in one system for more than a week I'd-"
"General?" the scout asked, "Will all due respect sir, have you been listening or just daydreaming?"
"Apologies, Brother, continue."
The scout nodded and continued his report, "We lost three when we tried to communicate with the natives, hoping for a peaceful resolution. They seem to have bodily functions that generate crude explosive compounds from their skin as a natural defense. Put simply, if they were to produce their compounds and then attack one of our boys, both the target and the native would explode. But the natives must have immunity to explosives because neither their own bombs nor our grenades could damage them. Their main weakness is fire; their compound explosive defense is quite flammable. They burn very quickly. The geneticists have dubbed them Spriggans."
"Fine then." Said Hullsmasher, bored with the native species report, "Tell the landing parties to have flamethrowers as main weapons."
"That's not all, sir." Said the scout, "The trees and most of the other fauna were all producing defensive toxins before we even arrived. For all of them to be on the defensive, well it just doesn't make sense sir."
"Plants, Brother?" asked Hullsmasher, "Plants are meaningless, now let's fry those suckers."
Planet fall was made; thirty terminators and one hundred and fifty space marines accompanied the landing party. Mechanics got to work setting up the skeleton of a base, erecting high pasta steel walls and setting autocannon sentries in place on the north and south walls. The terminators left on the ship they arrived on, leaving one hundred space marines of all chapters and fifty scouts from said chapters. They had arrived on the planet just after a great battle on Delta 7.
"So brother, didja hear about the native's abilities?" asked the raspy voiced space marine with red armor
The scout marine clad in green and gray rolled his eyes and pushed another 25mm round into a sniper rifle magazine. A three foot flamer was pressed onto his back by a brown strap. The space marine in red nervously glanced out into the jungle just outside the base and then turned back to the scout.
"Well?" he asked intuitively, "Did you or didn't you hear about the native's abilities?"
The scout made a grimace and shifted himself to face away from the marine. The red marine shrugged and moved away to bother someone else. Another scout moved out from the shadow of the landing craft behind them, his armor changed from black to green, conforming to the most dominate colors around him. His respirator mask hissed and he spoke through a mike.
"Idiotic Blood Angels." Said the masked scout, "Ever since they started siphoning neophyte recruits from the other chapters they've been useless, except as meat shields anyway."
The green Scout looked at the masked one with annoyance, "You're just upset that they're pulling good troops from your chapter. Iron fists are always so arrogant."
The iron fist looked the other way and pretended to not hear the green scout. He glanced at the Blood angel marine, who was comparing his bolter to that of a space wolf's.
"I really don't like having to work with other the chapters." continued the iron fist, "Command should know better than to put so many different groups together, even if it's just for a planet conquering."
"Be happy that we made it off of the last planet." Said the green Scout, "Lucky that any of the chapters sent down survived."
"Yeah," agreed the iron fist, "But you'd think we'd get to be sent back for some downtime. But no, everyone gets pulled off that blood soaked rock and dumped onto a planet conquer mission. All of us too, not just the marines from one chapter or another, all of us. Something's not right about this, it seems too abruptly put together, too out of the norm."
"The empire has its hands full out in the eastern sectors dealing with Chaos confederacy. Damned traitors." Growled the green scout as he stood up, "In any case, brother, why've you bothered to talk to someone from a different chapter if you dislike them so much?"
"We're in the same squad, that's why." Said the iron fist with a tone of annoyance, "And don't call me 'brother', we're not family. Just comrades."
A marine was moving towards the two scouts, his blue and gold armor labeled him immediately as an Ultramarine. The green scout made a scornful face and turned to look at the iron fist, who was cloaking again.
"You're on your own with this one." Whispered the iron fist as he disappeared, leaving the green scout alone with the ultramarine, who was smiling broadly as he outstretched his hand in greeting
"Greetings, brother." Said the ultramarine happily, "I've been appointed as your makeshift commander for now."
The green scout scrunched his face and frowned deeply, "Why has command put an Ultramarine in charge of a squad of scout marines. You're the least build for stealth out of all the other chapters here."
"Well, I seem to be the most senior marine here." Explained the Ultramarine, "And command doesn't have much choice since all the scout sergeants were wiped out during the crusade."
"Oh?" said the green scout with a tone of amusement, "Exactly how much more senior are you to us?"
The ultramarine grinned proudly and tightened his stance, "Five years of front line combat against the Ork threat."
The green scout nodded while smiling, "Indeed you are probably the most senior marine here. But not the most senior soldier here."
The ultramarine frowned, his pride challenged, "Is that so?"
The green scout pushed the last 25mm round into his magazine and slapped it into his sniper rifle as he got up.
"I've got far more experience than you do or ever will have," said the green scout sternly, "Fifteen years of scouting and front line offense missions against Ork, Eldar, Tyranid, and Necron threats. I refuse to take orders from a worthless Ultramarine like you."
The Ultramarine's face was red and covered in sweat; his eyes showed a burning rage.
"You're lucky we're on the same side." He said with a growl, "And no matter what your experience is; I am still your commander as of now. You will obey my orders."
The green scout was about to say something when both his and the Ultramarine's communicator went off. The iron fist de-cloaked behind them. The three held their fingers to their ears and listened.
"Scout marine squad 13 is to move out on a reconnaissance mission to obtain information on a suspected Spriggan base. Stay safe brothers."
"I'm sick of you people calling me brother…" muttered the iron fist as he picked up a flamer and a sniper and followed the green scout and the Ultramarine out into the jungle.
Lush foliage covered the jungle floor while thick blue leaves blocked out the sun in the canopy above. Two more scout marines had been added to the squad, a space wolf and a dark angel, the space wolf was examining the fauna as they went alone and spoke to the others over the comm. system.
"He sounds young," thought the iron fist, "it's possible that this is one of his first missions."
"These plants are incredible, I tell you," said the space wolf, "All of them are producing highly toxic fluids and feeding them to the native jumping leeches."
The ultramarine made a face at the mentioning of jumping leeches, which the green scout noticed.
"Squeamish, commander?" he asked, "an ultramarine like you isn't afraid of a little parasite now then is he?"
"Of course not," responded the Ultramarine, "But those toxins have me worried."
"Relax Brother." Reassured the space wolf, "The toxins are too weak for our hardened immune systems. You should be more worried about the native xenos."
"I heard about them." Said the dark angel nervously, "Exploding tree things that don't die easy. But I guess it beats those things we fought on Delta 7."
They all agreed and the Ultramarine called for silence among the troops. The green scout noticed that the soil texture had changed, if felt more rocky and crunched when he grinded it with his fingers. A bitter smell coated the air and one of the trees moved in the background.
"What was that?" said the dark angel, startled at a rustling sound, "You heard that right, brother?"
"I didn't hear anything." Said the iron fist, "Now shut up before you compromise our position."
"Please." Jested the Ultramarine, "We're up against a bunch of trees, they can't hear us. We could be screaming bloody murder at the top of our lungs and still they wouldn't hea-"
The ground shook as blue trees uprooted and flew through the air, one landed with a crash just a few feet in front of the ultramarine. The trees were splintered and a thick green slime oozed out from them, the space wolf sniffed some of the slime and shook his head rapidly.
"Poisonous." He said solemnly, "And flammable."
The dark angel scout cried out in alert as he fired his flamer into the jungle, a column of fire engulfed everything almost instantly. He continued spraying flame in all directions and screaming. The Ultramarine put his hand on the scout's shoulder armor and he stopped shooting.
"What did you see brother?" asked the Ultramarine
"They looked like trees…" muttered the Dark Angel, "But moved like men…"
"Must have been those native xenos." Said the Iron fist, "We should be close to the camp that command told us to find, stay down, this isn't supposed to be a combat mission."
The green scout looked at the plumes of smoke and fire and grinned, "Looks like it's about to be, any living things in a ten mile radius will see that."
The Dark angel had his finger in his ear, calling for help.
"Four scouts and one useless Ultramarine verses who know how many exploding natives," thought the Iron fist, "I'm really not liking these odds."
"Hello? Hello base camp?" sputtered the Dark angel, "Yeah, yeah that smoke is from us. No we haven't made contact yet, but I saw one. Brother, we're right on top of their base, I can feel it. There's only five of us, send reinforcements! But-"
The Dark angel was cut off as a massive roar pierced the air and made him cover his ears in pain.
"To the left!" cried the space wolf as he fired streams of flame into the fauna; a blue tree collapsed just next to him and crushed the end of the flamer. In a quick motion the space wolf threw down his flamer and jumped to cover as it exploded. All around the marines explosions rattled the trees and shook the ground, yet none of them were hit. The Ultramarine spotted a forked tree. It was moving towards him!
"It's the trees!" he yelled, "They're alive!"
He fired from his bolter and shredded the trees into mulch. A small, waist high sapling sprinted towards them on root covered feet. It leapt into the air and was about to wrap itself onto the Ultramarine when it's top half exploded into a cloud of splinters. The iron fist pulled back the bolt on his sniper and sighed just as the remainder of the sapling collided with the ground, causing a blast the sent every member of the squad flying in different directions. The iron fist landed feet first but lost his balance, he heard the creaking and bending of wood as another sapling ran towards him, a pull of the trigger and the plant flew backwards and landed against a tree.
"Hey!" yelled the Iron fist, "Space wolf?"
A few hundred meters away, the space wolf shook his head and saw something moving from the corner of his eye. His vision blurred when he moved but gradually the space wolf made out the form of a giant tree with legs like smaller trees that ended in sharp roots that reminded him of metal spikes. The giant had strange eyes - what he thought were eyes - that looked like yellow almonds. The space wolf got up on all fours and threw himself away from the giant tree creature, pulling out his bolter pistol as he flew. He was only on his back of a second as he instantly got to his feet and started pulling off shots at the giant. Holes punched straight through the tree but it kept coming closer, it got within a few yards of the space wolf, who was reloading, and fell down at the marine. It suddenly occurred to the space wolf, "Why hasn't he dodged or retreated, it's like he's a rising silver piece on a Shogi board. This guy has no sense of self-preservation!". The giant landed in an explosion and sent the Space wolf flying through a blue tree and crashing into the wet soil below. The scout lost consciousness again.
Swarms of saplings charged at the Ultramarine, exploding like tiny concussion grenades as he mowed them down en masse. "They feel no worse than a punch when they blow." He thought to himself, "Pathetic lesser species thought they could best an Ultramarine! Not on this day!"
The remaining saplings stopped attacking and backed off, the Ultramarine smiled, thinking that they'd learned some respect. A loud creaking sound behind him made his smile disappear, he turned around to face a massive tree with yellow eyes that looked like almonds. It had several holes in its main body, which creaked as it reached down towards the Ultramarine. He pulled a chainsword from its holster on his back and slashed at the giant's hand, severing several branch like fingers. The giant responded by producing its defense chemical and punching at the Ultramarine. The marine jumped backwards but the giant's punch still set off a massive blast in the ground just in front of the Ultramarine. His power armor split in several locations and his helmet smashed into a thousand shards. The Ultramarine looked on helplessly and saw the giant's defense chemicals dripping onto the ground, causing tiny explosions. The giant reached up again and brought its hand down onto the Ultramarine, who closed his eyes in fear. But the hit never came. He opened his eyes again as a strange creaking scream pierced the air. The giant was alight with flame and the green scout was standing over the Ultramarine firing a flamer.
"What a guy!" thought the Ultramarine, "He came back to defend me, even though he doesn't like me at all."
"Get up, you worthless piece of Ultramar trash!" yelled the green marine, "Get up and prove that you've got what it takes to lead someone like me!"
The Ultramarine gritted his teeth and leapt through the air at the burning giant, bringing his chainsword down onto its head. The sword stalled for a moment but eventually cut the giant in half. The ultramarine landed in a heap of metal and cried out in pain.
"Not bad, but I think I over-estimated your abilities." Said the green scout as he threw the empty flamer aside and took up his sniper rifle. The ultramarine stared at the flamer for a moment before it hit him: the gun was empty because the green scout had been fighting the whole time. The Ultramarine thought back to when he fought the saplings a moment earlier and realized that every one of them had been on fire.
"You!" said the Ultramarine in a voice that was half afraid, half impressed, "You've been watching the whole time!"
"Burning lowers their explosive prowess." Explained the green scout, "You'd be in a million pieces if I hadn't set fire to those saplings. And you'd be dead anyway if I hadn't come right now to save you. But I'm not helping you anymore."
The green scout hurried away while the Ultramarine lost his balance and fell down in exhaustion. Nervous thoughts littered his mind, had he just been shown up by a scout?
Further away, the Iron fist had located the Dark Angel, all seven pieces of him. It looked like a sapling had latched onto his back and exploded. The force had sent the Dark Angel's armor back into the sapling and ripped it apart. The Iron fist shook his head and cloaked before moving on in his search for the missing members of the squad. Ahead of him, the very ground seemed to move. Dirt and leaves and twigs all jumped around on the jungle floor. The iron fist scanned the area for threats; he saw nothing but kept his cloak active.
"Something is amiss in this jungle, besides the exploding trees that is." He thought to himself as the ground broke away under him. The iron fist fell into the hole, no time to react, and landed face down in what felt like sand. He heard the grind of plastic on plastic and a strange clicking noise. Above him towered a massive insect, dozens of small, barbed legs covered its body. Two pairs of pincers where on its head, which had small, compound eyes. A bitter smell filled the air and the iron fist concluded that the barbs had some kind of poison in them. He shot at the insect with his sniper, but the shot bounced of the bug's chitin armor. A kind of bioplastic, chitin was very durable against small arms fire. The iron fist knew this. "But this thing just took a direct hit from a 25mm sniper round!"
The insect dug under the ground and disappeared for a few moments, just enough time for the iron fist to pull the flamer off his back and get ready. The insect appeared again, this time its head had four eyes and five pairs of pincers, a small, complicated mouth part was underneath the pincers.
"How many damned heads do you have?" yelled the iron fist as he coated the insect with fire. A high pitched squealing noise came from the insect as it writhed in pain, sending waves of uneven earth and torn roots at the iron fist. He leapt over one wave and landed in time to see the insect's first head disappear into the ground again. The iron fist looked around and found a tree's root system hanging down into the pit. He pulled himself back up to the cold, gritty soil and put the flamer back onto his shoulder.
"This fucking planet just makes my day." He muttered with a strange grin as he continued his search for the other scouts. He noticed that portions of the ground had been pressed into the air, "Must have been the bug. I bet it'll look for more easy targets…better find the Ultramarine fast." Though the iron fist as he broke into a jog, following the uneven earth to the bug's next victims.
The Ultramarine in question was just regaining consciousness when the iron fist started looking for him. He felt an itch on his arms and legs, like something was crawling on him with twig-like, delicate legs. He opened his eyes and saw the insectoid legs sticking from the cracks in his armor. He grabbed the legs and pulled, but as soon as he did, immense pain burned in his flesh. He felt as though someone had poured acid into his arms and legs.
"What the fuck…" he forced out from his gritted teeth as he pulled armor from his arm and saw the insect's head. Bulges in his skin surrounding the bug's head looked like massive veins; he felt the bug's scissor-like jaws close and his face twisted in pain. He looked down at his legs; more insectoid limbs protruding out. One of the slender legs suddenly grew and bulged. The ultramarine screamed as he felt his arm get crushed. He looked at his arm and saw that the insect tripled in size while his arm was just a flap of skin. The insect rolled off his body and dragged itself around for a few seconds. Then it burst in a cloud of blood and puss, and several hundred smaller bugs appeared. They crawled on his face, dug into his eyes and drank the blood greedily. The marine tried to pull the bugs off his himself with his remaining hand, but found that it refused to respond. The ultramarine felt himself being lifted into the air; he felt the tingle of freefall.
"No!" yelled the iron fist as he burned the giant insect, which had thrown the Ultramarine into the air, "Shit!"
The Ultramarine felt the smaller bugs get pulled off his face, and he sighed in relief. The other insects sucked in his other arm and one leg, but he didn't care. He knew he was going to survive, he'd heard the iron fist yell to him. Limbs could be replaced with synthetics, eyes too if need be. He'd be saved. He'd be taken back to the base and operated on, he'd live to fight another day, maybe even return the favor to the green scout.
"I'll burn this jungle to the ground." Thought the ultramarine
The ultramarine smiled with his torn up lips just as the giant insect below caught him and shredded his body into several pieces, which clattered and rolled when they hit the ground.
"Damnit!" screamed the iron fist as his flamer ran out of fuel. The giant insect turned around and stared at the iron fist with brown, compound eyes. Its jaws opened and closed and it emitted a high pitched screech before digging back underground. The iron fist fell to his knees and beat the dirt with his fists, grit flying into the air after each blow.
"Damnit, damnit, damnit!" he yelled, "Fucking shit!"
Words couldn't describe the feeling that was growing in the iron fist. Guilt, despair, anger, confusion, and pity. Behind him, a flamer was heard, followed by the insect's screech. A loud thud and the ground shook. The iron fist turned in the general direction of the sound and saw the green scout and the space wolf fighting the insect. The space wolf threw a grenade into the bug's coils, and blew it in half. The two halves started moving independently. The smaller one dug back underground, but the displaced soil told the space wolf exactly where to find it. The space wolf jumped up just as the smaller half launched itself out of the soil with the intent to grab the marine. Instead it was pummeled by lead as the space wolf fired again and against into the bug's open maw. It fell over in a steaming heap.
"We could use a little help you know!" yelled the space wolf, "If you're finished crying over the ultramarine that is!"
The iron fist got up and ran towards his fellow scouts, as he did, the larger half of the bug grew from the jungle floor and threw it's maw at the iron fist. He sidestepped the attack and shoved the muzzle of his sniper into the space between the chitin plates. He fired, the round went out the other side and the insect fell over, dead.
The iron fist heaved a sigh of relief and looked at the green scout. The space wolf walked around the giant corpse and spotted a piece of the Ultramarine's armor.
"He's dead then?" asked the Space wolf
"Yeah." Responded the iron fist, "So is the Dark angel."
"No response from the base." Said the green scout, "Looks like we might as well get to know each other, we might be out here for a while."
The space wolf nodded as he picked up the Ultramarine's bolter, "Alright, my name's Matsu Nakajima."
The iron fist held his hand out to Matsu. The space wolf shook it firmly.
"I'm Alexei Petrov." Said the iron fist, "It's good to know your name, space wolf."
The green scout picked up the Ultramarine's chainsword and considered it for a moment before tossing the unbalanced weapon aside.
"I didn't mean introduce yourselves." Explained the green scout, "I meant share your strong and weak points. But as long as we're telling names, you can call me Xadrian."
"No last name?" asked Matsu
"No." said Xadrian bluntly, "Now we should try and find our way back to the base and see what's going on there. Leave the dead."