This is the 21th century.
And there is only boredom.
But it is to reprieve
in an eternal war.
I grabbed the brake, then let the bicycle use the last remains of my momentum to park it below the outer roof of the tool shed.
"Welcome Hierarch Dave. We hope your journey was successful." - sounded the familiar voice in my head.
"oh. hi Aldaris. Yes I got your mineral water." - I answered with a chuckle.
At that point I opened the tool shed to see the entire protoss base. It was a beautiful sight. The natural coloring of wood and stone was replaced with gleaming glass and a strange molded material that covered their buildings. But even stranger was that every footsoldier of the Khala was not bigger than an inch, and their vehicles and weapons were also downscaled both in size and in power. So nothing short of the Carriers' glassing beams and the Mothership's Purification beam could do real harm in people, or so I thought.
"Your base is under attack" - Exclaimed the protoss Dark Templar who just teleported onto my shoulder. - "Should we prepare a strike force?".
"Just in case of emergency." - I heard the gunfire and it didn't sound like it was doing too much. "I'll see to these attackers." - Nevertheless I didn't want to go in without any form of backup, so I agreed to fill in a Freighter Class carrier with a Zealot-Stalker-Templar force and attached two void rays and two phoenixes for added protection. They handed me the safety pylon, which I was to plant if I was in deep trouble, so they could have a stable warp field to teleport into.
Now the Freighter Class was my modification to the standard carrier model, where they replaced the big gun with modules built to allow for many warriors and robots to embark or disembark. This also carried a warp prism for both as a smaller strike transport, and as a way to establish a warp field that can be moved on the fly. Literally.
With a protoss army in my back, my confidence grew, I slowly approached the door. With each step the sound of bullets peppering grew stronger, and soon I could recognize other weapons being discharged. Sharp cracks of displaced and heated air, wooshes of rockets, clashes of blades. I had a bad feeling about this.
And soon the bad feeling turned into something even worse.
"Watch out, the Mon-keigh comes." - Now that was definitely a female voice, and from the wording I could tell that it was an Eldar. Oh crap moment indeed. Now I was rushing the few steps needed to get the door, and a short glance back confirmed that the carrier was airborne.
"This is the Hierarch to all troops. Powerful psionic entities are to be expected in the base. Proceed with extreme caution." - Of course caution didn't apply to a human 65 times their size, so I opened the door and saw something that could best be described as crowning moment of OHCRAP.
Orks were fighting Space marines, Imperial Guard, and Tau joint forces, while chaos space marines wandered seemingly aimlessly, taking potshots at the imperials whenever they could. The eldar were nowhere to be seen, another oh crap problem knowing the eldar. I slowly stepped into the battlefield, my steps missing a running guardsman by scant centimeters. It was his shout that turned all attention to me. Tanks' main guns turning, tracks grinding the awfully battered floor, this gave a great option for chaos to take down a full squad of guardsmen and cripple one of the chimeras. Though their victory was short lasting, as the sisters of battle came on their jump-packs, their fast-attack troops taking out stragglers. But as I was concerned with the chaos troops, I forgot about the tanks.
They were all aiming at me.
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't scared, but eleven barrels of hell plus a dozen of lasers and a few lascannons were something to consider unless you were a khorne berserker or a degenerate cultist of nurgle.
"Don't attempt any of your tricks mortal" boomed a voice, definitely space marine, into my head. Oh crap more psionics.
"Correct. I'm Librarian Vasili and you won't get to place that pylon before we get a few shots on you. And trust me those shots are lethal even on this scale." Now that was mean. I hoped my protoss buddies could hear that thought, I was in deep trouble. Well, I should attempt to communicate.
"Umm... Hello. I'm Dave. And you?" - it came up almost as a squeak, definitely not the way to start a good relationship with a bunch of miniature supersoldiers. "hmm a critical mind..." - mused Vasili
"I'm Captain Eizak, from the Ultramarines. I guess Vasili introduced himself already." - Oh smurfs. Literal smurfs. I couldn't help but smile. I have to show them that cartoon one day.
"I'm General Ulrich Faust, leader of the joint effort to purge the forces of chaos and the angry orks out of this habitat."
"And do you happen to know something about a guy named Michael?" - Now that did it. They were shocked. I sent a quick psionic message of all clear to the carrier just hovering outside, and it relayed the message to Aldaris, they were preparing to a meeting. Now I was confident that I can talk myself out.
"Yes we do Mon-keigh. How did you know that?" - That sound. Was coming from somewhere above me. Probably from the bookshelves. Or the wooden storage modules they could use as catwalks. There were so many places to hide in there...
"Just a wild guess" - of course it is from a fanfiction portal on the internet. Full story about 29 chapters and a goddamn awesome read. Vincent must have leaked it.
"uh that was a lot more than what I wanted" - Said Zara with a slightly weaker voice.
"Now, since I know everybody, you know me, how about putting those guns away?"
AN:Okay that was it. There are protoss, there are the forces of Chaos, and there are a bunch of angry people from 40k-Toyhammer. As I'll move along the chapters, more and more will be explained and schemes will be revealed, and writing skills will be improved.