Commissar Kirk Archer lifted his hat off, wiping at the sweat on his forehead with his leather-clad arm, "I do hate this planet. All sand and cities. Not even a proper agro world," three days on planet, and he was still traveling. Apparently, the Tyranid invasion force had some decent anti-air systems in place on their side of the planet. That meant he had to ride in the back of an APC. Not a Chimera either. The Mercury II Militarum forces were one of the last to possess archaeotech from Terra, pre-Strife. This particular APC was one they called a Bradley, and it was hotter than Tartarus in there. Flanking it was a pair of what the driver had called Challengers. To him they looked like flattened Leman Russ Vanquishers, but the guardsman insisted that the gun was even better, and the armor too.
He felt the Bradley lurch, and hunched over beside the turret's feet. His hand touched the man's foot, "Hey, can I get up there and take a look around?"
Normally, it would have been an order, or he could have stuck his head out the cupola, but this machine lacked a viewpoint for him. And lasgun firing ports. The guardsman bent down and tapped the ear of his helmet, mouthing, "Headset. Loud."
A normally deadly offense, not answering the Commissar, he let it go, because he had to admit, the inside of the Bradley was a lot louder than the inside of a Chimera. He grabbed a spare headset off the rack by the driver's head and slipped it on, hearing clearly the chatter on the internal line, "...ar coming online. Sir?"
He cleared his throat, "I was wondering if I could possibly poke my head out and take a look around."
"No sir. Orders are to bring you to the line alive if possible. No heads out the windows. We operate sealed for a reason. In fact, Bullet, get your ass in here, we're crossing the DCZ."
The gunner dropped down so quickly Archer had to step back to protect his toes. The clang of the hatch closing resounded around the chamber as the Bradley humped over a hill and started picking up speed. "Sir, when we arrive, You will be disembarking immediately from the rear, where you will board your flagship. Beowulf is a handsome machine, do take care of her."
He nodded, still trying to figure out the whole situation. He had heard that one of the ancient Armors the Mercury II Stormrunners had was named Beowulf, and that it towered over most modern STCs. According to them, the design was archaeotech from the early late second millenium, designed in a country that was now beneath the Throne of the Emperor.
The APC came to a stop and he stepped out, wary to keep his head low as he stepped towards the fortification he assumed contained the Beowulf. A guardsman touched his shoulder, then pointed up, "Commissar, may I introduce you to the last surviving P-2000 Skaven, Beowulf?"
He tilted his head back, finally realizing that the towering wall of metal before him was not, in fact, a three story building, but an immense tracked vehicle, "By the Throne...It really is bigger..."
"Yeah. It's not entirely stock either," the guardsman took the Commissar's gloved hand in his own and shook it firnly, "Colonel Faraday. I'm the commander of Beowulf. Those main guns there are actually Volcano Cannons. We had to replace the whole mount for that. The rear turrets are almost entirely taken from Leman Russ', because the parts to fix them weren't in the STC patterns." He looked at the commissar for a long second, waiting to see if it would be declared heresy, or something.
Instead, Archer nodded, "I see there are some Icarus Lascannon arrays on top too. Any other surprises I should know about?" He wasn't harsh, like a lot of commissars, not more than was necessary. It helped him make better decisions in the field.
"Yeah, just one. Beowulf is more like a fortress than a tank. She drives like it too," slow, at only a hundred klicks tops, the titanic machine could also roll over a Leman Russ without noticing. And with the twin Volcano Cannons, she could easily handle the largest the Tyranids had to throw at them.
Sitting on the ground all around it were equally archaic designs that each had names painted or carved into them. One in particular caught his eye as he was just about to start the long climb up the ramp into the vehicle bay. It was an immense cannon sitting on two thick tracks. Not as thick as those on Beowulf, but it looked similar to a Macharius Demolisher, save for the actual cannon. Written on the side in dried purple blood, Praegrandis Venator stood out like a declaration of intent more than a name. And judging by the kill-circles on the barrel, it had succeeded several times already.
"How many kills do you have already?" The most important thing for a replacement Commissar to learn was everything. Kills, skills, names, ranks, who he should trust with his bolter, and who he should keep an eye on.
Faraday puffed out his armored chest, "Four hundred and thirty seven confirmed crunchies, five bio-titans."
"Crunchies being infantry, correct?"
At that, Faraday smirked, "Crunchies being anything we can run over. Up to and including the big pregnant fuckers," his face slid from a smirk to a solid commanding face as he stepped onto the ramp, "Ahfiser Ahn DECK! Mechanicus REPORT!"
The young female who skidded to a stop at the bottom of the ramp almost made Archer do a second look. She was reasonably attractive, shoulder length tar-black hair tied back in a thin braid, with the exception of two small clumps that just barely left her crystal-clear eyes visible. It took him a moment to figure out that the unnerving white of her eyes was because they were synthetic, and in that time, she had slid over to him, "Anna Rider, head of maintenance, also Beouwulf's Princeps...We were a bit short on staff for her, and the bureaucrats don't really have time to do anything like send a real princeps to take the reins." Now, he took the time to look at her. Smooth skin, but natural, not synthetic. Most of her augments seemed to be in her neck or back, although both legs were chopped off at the knee and replaced by the wiry appendages used by Skitarii assault troops. The red cloth that indicated she was a member of the Mechanicus was little more than a strip of fabric. A strip maybe two meters long, strategically wrapped around her pelvic region, leaving the rest of her skin bare, pulled taut across her bones. He stepped back a half-pace, just enough to confirm that she was ungarbed above the waist, before noticing that along her ribs were a series of zippers stitched into the flesh where there should have been a build-up of fat on her chest.
He raised one hand to point, but she brushed it away, "No touching. That's where I hold the datacables, so they don't get caught on anything. I don't want to risk damaging them."
"How old are you, miss Rider?" He was intrigued, most girls, even in the Mechanicus, would keep their chest natural, if only for the effect, but this one barely seemed to notice.
She smiled at him, a toothy smile that almost drew a tear from his eye, full of innocence and promise, "I turned nineteen last month. And if you really want to flirt with me, I'll warn you now. The last guy to do that greased the tracks."