Dark Imperium, Chapter 2 - Badlands Rumble
Explorator Ship "Ark Mechanicus", February 15th 999.M41
Enginseer Sylbiric, understudy to the great Belisarius Cawl, ruminated on the current situation as her mechanical legs carried her down the gunmetal corridors of the mighty ship Ark Mechanicus. Her rust-red robes covered her armoured hide, and her face was obscured mostly by a hissing gas-mask. The events that had transpired on that Ork-infested world had shaken the crew of the grand vessel to their cores, with the discovery of those arcane relics buried beneath the surface. The Tech Priest passed through a whirring door, the portal shaped in the image of a huge cog, and into her workshop. Here, she tended to her pet project, the Thallaxi warriors that would form the vanguard of their coming engagement on Cadia. The hulking cyborg shock troops were clad in thick armour of the toughest metals known to man, armed with arcane instruments of the Machine God's fury.
"Thallax Initiate Alpha Ignis, report" came Sylbiric's grating voice through her augmented vocal box.
"As you command, Techpriest" came the growled response from within the Thallax's featureless helm, "All units are operating at peak efficiency, we await your orders".
"Good" replied Sylbiric, "let us hope that it will be enough..."
Malefactors Warband Strike Cruiser "Spear of the Eye", February 21st 999.M41
I am the instrument of Chaos undivided, and mighty are my footfalls. I am the scion of Horus, descended from his great lineage, forged in his image, and I wage war in his legacy's name. I am Khatep, lord and commander of the Malefactors, the true Sons of Horus, the bearers of the Warmaster's own legacy into this dark time. At my back are the hordes of my warband, myriad and savage. The Tip of the Spear, in accordance with the doctrine of mighty Horus, my Terminators, the ranks of the Tactical Squads, with the deadly bolter in hand, and the unrelenting fury of the Assault Squads, who shall tear the foe asunder. Heavy Support squads bring to bear the thunder of Horus' wrath from their guns, while our Outriders encircle the enemy. In my hands I bear a mighty mace, the weapon of choice of our forefather, trained to fight in his style, the disable the enemy with crippling strikes before the finishing blow. Above the war, my fleet shall rain down Horus' fury on the foe, flames and death from the cold dark of the void.
"Warpsmith Graal" I announce, signalling a power-armoured giant with a nest of whirring mechadendrites at his back, "set a course for Cadia, it is time to make the name of Horus feared across the galaxy once more!"
The Inquisitorial Journals of Inq. Simeon Jaeger, Entry February 16th 999.M41
Our search for answers lead us to a lawless world on the frontiers of Imperial space, beyond the Formosa Sector, covered in vast deserts and inhabited by tough, wild folk. Here, the Emperor's light was nowhere to be found, and his servants had no authority. We landed in a discrete shuttle painted dull black, with no identifying marks. Accompanying me were Silver and Byron. To disguise our Imperial allegiance, we wore long overcoats that allowed easy concealment of weapons, and also hid our armour from view. Silver was now unhelmeted, allowing me to see his scarred face clearly, the violet eyes of a Cadian framed by his brown hair. A short distance from our landing site lay a hamlet, where it was believed Bern was located. Our initial surveillance showed no obvious hostiles, and no sign of the Dark Imperium.
"Alright, it looks clear from here, we should move in and search for Bern" I murmured. My two companions nodded in acknowledgement and we entered the hamlet, a collection of wooden houses and shops, low tech, but not too primitive. A few locals wandered around but they payed little attention to my party. We approached what appeared to be a saloon. I pushed open the wooden double doors and we entered.
Inside the saloon, filled with smoke and the stench of alcohol, a handful of natives sat about drinking various alcoholic beverages. I approached the bartender.
"Do you know a trader named Bern?" I asked him. The man's eyes widened.
"The rogue trader?" He said worriedly, "he's nothing but trouble, stay away from him". At that moment the doors of the saloon flew open with a loud crash. Half a dozen figures wearing loose-fitting robes had entered, their garments marked with simplistic sigils of Chaos.
"You, by the bar!" Growled the front intruder, "surrender at once!" The locals slowly inched their hands towards holstered pistols. I had to cause a distraction somehow. Noticing a bottle of some strong alcohol upon the bar, I seized it and hurled it at the intruder. He instinctively fired on the projectile, but the red hot las-burst ignited the alcohol and doused him in burning ethanol. All hell broke loose. A local drew a knife and sprang at me, but I elbowed him in the face and smashed a bottle over his head, rendering him unconscious. Byron tripped one of the hooded cultists into an armed native, then smashed a flimsy wooden chair across the downed heretic's back, leaving him down for the count. The locals and the cultists opened fire on each other and the air was filled with las-fire, prompting my allies and I to vault over the bar and take cover, with Byron pulling the bartender down into cover with us as we went.
"I thought you said this would be easy!" shouted Byron over the din of the bar's patrons and the Chaos troopers brawling, as the bartender took cover behind a barrel.
"Haven't you noticed by now?" remarked Silver, "it's never easy, there's always some bloody cult or xeno raiders waiting to jump us as soon as we let our damn guard down!" While his words were amusingly truthful, there were more pressing matters at hand, like how we were going to escape this tavern brawl. A quick glance over the bar showed that three cultists still fought on, and five bar patrons still stood.
"Alright, sweep them out!" I ordered, and Silver vaulted the bar, drawing his riot baton. A cultist lunged at him, but he sidestepped and clubbed his attacker in the gut, causing the heretic to double over. As he stumbled, one of the bar patrons, a muscle-bound woman in the outfit of a PDF trooper, tackled him, throwing him out through one of the bar's flimsy windows with an almighty crash. Silver gave the woman an thumbs up, and she grinned back.
Two cultists remained. One was caught in a fist-fight with a local, until Byron drew his laspistol and shot the heretic clean through the head, dropping him. The final one turned to flee, but the PDF woman shoulder-barged him, sending him flying through a wooden table, smashing it to pieces and rendering him unconscious.
"Check the cultists" I instructed. The PDF woman approached us.
"Hey there, you guys certainly caused a ruckus!" she laughed, "name's Luna, and yourself?"
"Jaeger" I replied, "tell me, would you fancy a new line of work?"
"Anything better than policing this backwater shithole" she smirked.
"Fall in then" I said, "we can always use a hand".
"These guys aren't Dark Imperium" Byron observed, "look, no draconic markings, just the eight pointed star".
"Yes, there's no obvious Dark Imperium iconography" I replied, "they could be proxies, or mercenaries though, I'll send images to Erwin for examination". If we could identify these cultists it would make our job of unravelling the mysteries of this planet much easier. We stepped out of the saloon we had just wrecked to see a crowd of locals gathered before us. One, obviously the ringleader, stepped forward to speak.
"Who do you people work for?" He asked, "and why did you fight the Brotherhood?" I decided it would be better to keep our Imperial allegiance secret for now.
"We're mercenaries" I responded, "those men started a fight so we took them down". The ringleader nodded in approval.
"The Brotherhood have been nothing but trouble ever since that Fawkes guy brought them here" he grumbled, "they're just a bunch of thugs!" This Fawkes character seemed to be at the centre of this affair. We would need to question him to identify how far the cult had reached.
"Where is the trader Bern?" I asked. The ringleader had the same reaction as the bartender.
"Bern is in the compound off to the east" he said hurriedly, "but the Brotherhood have him under heavy guard, you won't get to him!" I cursed under my breath. If the Brotherhood was involved with Bern they could well be allied with the Dark Imperium.
We took our leave from the town and I called for reinforcements. We would need more than four of us to deal with Bern's guards.
"You're not really mercenaries, are you, boss?" asked Luna.
"Not quite" I replied, "I'm Simeon Jaeger, Ordo Malleus".
"Inquisitor?" she said, "wow, I'm gettin' attention from the big shots now!"
"Quite" I smirked, "stick by us and do good work in the Emperor's name and you'll find the profession quite rewarding".
Mason's shuttle landed at our drop zone, a dusty plain to the east of the hamlet. Out poured a dozen Inquisitorial Storm Troopers led by Garent and Kaelen.
"Bern is holed up in a compound to the east of here" I addressed my troops, "it's very likely there will be a Chaos presence there, possibly allies of the Dark Imperium". Erwin's scans had shown a network of caves that ran directly under the enemy base. We would use them to gain access, hopefully without detection.
However, our approach was not so simple. As we approached the site we would enter the tunnels through, advancing slowly through sandy dunes and rocky outcrops, one of the storm troopers was felled by sniper fire. My men and I sprinted for cover, diving to the ground or behind rocks.
"Enemy sniper, on the ridge!" yelled Garent. Sure enough, I could faintly make out the glint of a scope reflecting the harsh sunlight atop a large boulder to the west. I gestured to a trooper with his own sniper weapon. The storm trooper took up his position and awaited a signal.
"Kaelen, bait him" I ordered. The crusader broke from cover, and his storm shield protected him from the sniper's attack, the high velocity round deflecting harmlessly off into a dune. My own sniper returned fire, slaying the Brotherhood marksman. As if on cue, Brotherhood men riding swift steeds galloped into view and fired wildly on us with pistols from horseback. The cultists wore the same loose robes as our early adversaries, and wielded simple laspistols and wicked scimitars. We returned fire, downing a few with disciplined Hellgun volleys, but the rest reached us and set upon us with their scimitars. Luna unseated one of the hostiles as he rode down on her, and catapulted him into a dune, where he was riddled with las-fire, while Garent took out a cluster of riders with a frag grenade. The remaining attackers were now caught up at close range, where their mobility was less of a deciding factor. Clearly these cultists were inexperienced warriors. A cultist swung at me, but I quickly dived to the side, causing him to lose balance and tumble from his horse. I drove my boot into his chest and shot him through the head. With the last couple of riders shot down as they tried to flee, our attackers had been destroyed and we reached the entry point. The boulder where the enemy marksman had once lain, splattered with his blood from our sniper's clean headshot, concealed an entrance.
Garent and Silver hauled the rough stone boulder aside, revealing the entrance to the subterranean network we would use as our point of entry. The tunnels stretched on further than we could see, hewn out of the bedrock by mechanical means long ago. The storm troopers were equipped with low light vision goggles to see in the dim caverns, and we advanced for several minutes through the dim catacombs with no issues. After that while, we came upon a gargantuan pair of steel doors. They were emblazoned with the symbol of the Dark Imperium!
"Sir, that room is shielded" came Erwin's voice over vox-link, "there could be anything in there and I wouldn't pick it up". Without warning, the doors began to hiss and slide open, their armoured bulk clanking aside slowly. My men and I concealed ourselves as best as we could in the shadows as a trio of heretics emerged.
"Lord, the men we sent to the town have been dispatched by unknown assailants" hissed one of the traitors, an emaciated cultist in tattered robes, "and our riders are not reporting in". The foremost one, dressed in black carapace armour with a sinister hood, replied,
"No matter, the plan still moves forward as anticipated". I decided now was the time to strike at these foes.
"Not today, heretic!" I roared as I sprang from the shadows and blasted the nearest enemy with my bolt pistols. The slim cultist caught the brunt of the blast, going down in a shower of gore. The leader turned and fled, pushing his second minion into my path. I bowled over the cultist with a swift elbow to the throat, and executed him with my pistol, and chased after the leader, followed by my storm troopers. The fleeing traitor hurled a frag grenade at my men, driving us into cover momentarily under a hail of metal shards, and allowing him to dive into a nearby skiff and escape, the small craft igniting its engines and speeding away as we fired at it.
"Shit" swore Garent, "he's gonna go get backup now!" I scowled, but we still had to find Bern and Fawkes. We examined the shielded room. All around were vehicles and mining equipment, and many racks of weapons from across the galaxy, both ramshackle, and military grade. They were building an arsenal! Before I could investigate further, a door across the chamber clanked open and a horde of cultists stormed in, opening fire with lasguns. They were poorly armoured and their lack of aim belied their inexperience, but they came in great numbers.
"Take cover!" yelled Kaelen, and my men and I did as such, returning fire from our hiding places and slaying a few of our attackers. A cultist with a flamer tried to rush us, but Garent's storm bolter cut him down before he could reach us. Heretics were mowed down by high-energy bursts as the storm troopers returned fire on their attackers, doing the bloody work they were trained for in the Schola Progenium.
"We need to push through them!" roared Luna, firing a shotgun wildly around the edge of her cover, a Goliath mining truck. I nodded in agreement, and signalled to a trooper with a Grenade Launcher, his name was Dozer, if I recalled correctly.
Dozer loaded his launcher, and let loose a volley of high explosive into the packed ranks of the betrayers, scattering the disorganised levy. The screaming heretics, driven into a terrified frenzy by the Krak charges, made easy targets and were scythed down by our firepower.
"We need to find the heart of this complex" said Byron, "the rogue trader is our main concern here". I nodded, then directed our forces to advance. We stormed down a steel corridor and kicked down a door, blasting a huddle of Dark Imperium soldiers who resided within, catching the heretics off guard and slaughtering them, then saw that this was far bigger than we had previously thought. The chamber we had entered was enormous - you could have easily fit a small Titan in it. In its centre was a vast pit, with a gargantuan mining elevator attached to steel rails, which lead down into the depths. The elevator was big enough to hold a platoon of Imperial Guard, so my men and I fitted on with ease. Kaelen pulled a control lever, beginning our descent into the heart of this dark place.
"There's no telling what they're hiding down here" I advised my men, "so stay sharp!" The storm troopers checked their grenades, and reloaded their Hellguns, preparing for the worst. At last, the elevator ground to a halt. We were standing in another massive chamber, but now the true horror of the enemy plan was revealed.
Across the wall opposite our entry point was placed a huge cross-like superstructure. Impaled onto it was a Lord of Change, one of the vile daemons of Tzeench! It was held in such a manner that it appeared to be crucified, and a great lance was protruding from its chest. An aura of...wrongness projected from the feathered beast, as if the very world was rejecting its presence. Even a trained Daemonhunter such as myself was filled with a great unease at this terrifying creature's appearance. My Storm Troopers and retinue, hardened as they were, still showed signs of great worry and even fear upon sighting it. However, the Daemon seemed to be dormant somehow.
At that point I noticed the cult leader who had fled earlier. He had shed his armour and wore dark robes.
"Greetings Inquisitor" he spoke with an arrogant drawl, "it seems you have reached the point of no return". I scowled. This heretic was in collaboration with a greater daemon, so he would evidently be powerful, but we might be able to slay him before he could retaliate if we caught him off guard.
"You cannot prevent the inevitable" he sneered, "the Dark Imperium shall rise, and all will burn". He snapped his fingers and cultists poured into the room, emerging from doors, behind crates, and up ladders from below, but they also dragged struggling locals with them.
"Today our lord shall receive a great blessing!" Chanted the cult leader, "begin the sacrifice!" The cultists set upon the screaming civilians with knives and axes, butchering them and watering the ground with their blood in honour of their dark gods. I roared in blind fury.
"Kill these warp-spawned bastards!" I growled, and the storm troopers sprang into action. Before we could fire on the cultists, the cult leader extended a hand as if to catch us, and I found myself paralysed and unable to continue my attack. My forces were similarly beset by the heretic's unholy power.
"The great daemon lord has granted me a portion of his power" taunted the cult leader, "I am stronger than a thousand pitiful Inquisitors!" I was forced to watch, helpless, as the citizens of this world were slaughtered before my eyes. The cultists hacked them apart with gusto until none remained alive, then the cult leader released my forces, but not by letting us down. He exercised a psychic blast and hurled us across the chamber, killing a few of my storm troopers from blunt trauma, and stunning the survivors.
"My power is unlimited!" He cackled maniacally, "you cannot stand against Chaos!" Before he could continue his rant, I fired my bolt pistol at him, detonating his head and instantly killing him. His arrogance had been his undoing, as was so with many of the followers of Chaos.
"So, I cannot stand against Chaos, eh?" I replied, "well, I think I just did!"
"Chaos has many faces" chuckled a voice behind me. I turned around, but received a fist to the face and fell unconscious.
I awoke in some sort of containment pod, and saw through the murky glass of its front side that dozens of other pods lined the room I was held in. Each pod was connected to many cables and tubes, and a combination of archeotech and daemonic sorcery seemed to power them. A man in the armour of the Dark Imperium approached my pod. He carried an archaic firearm with an ornate wooden casing, but it seemed to be far more than that. Daemonic energies coursed about its working parts, and its barrel gave off a malevolent glow.
"Inquisitor Jaeger, soon you will know the true nature of our scheme" he said softly, "too bad you won't live to tell anyone about it". I recognised his voice - he was my attacker from previously!
"Ah, where are my manners?" He said, "I am Sebastian Fawkes, the commander of this little base". So this was the arch-heretic of this place, the man who had bought the Brotherhood to this world, and presumably the Dark Imperium, as the evidence now overwhelmingly suggested the Brotherhood was merely a front for the Dark Imperium.
"Let this ceremony begin" be announced, "activate the blood pods!" The containment vessels hummed with dark energies and the archeotech that controlled them hissed and clanked to life. Across the hall, I saw a captive PDF trooper in his pod. He screamed as the dark power of the pod drained him of his lifeblood and pumped it through the pipes attached to it. Before long, the imperial soldier was reduced to a desiccated husk, with all his blood taken by the heathen machinery of the cult.
"More blood for the rebirth of our master" roared Fawkes, "let it flow to him, and speed his resurrection!" I was sickened by what I saw. The guardsman's blood was piped to The Lord of Change, and the daemon drew the red fluids in, glowing with unholy energies. Realising my men and I were next, I struggled against my bonds, managing to break loose from the shackles, but I was still trapped in the blood pod. Quickly checking my inner pockets of my coat, I noticed that the heretics had not removed my hidden weapon, evidently having not noticed it. I drew my compact stub-revolver in the cramped confines, and shot through the glass of the pod's front.
"What?" Yelled Fawkes, "you dare to interrupt this sacrifice?" He raised his unholy weapon, but I followed up my escape with a shot to his torso that blew him backwards and into an archeotech generator, where he was electrocuted and fell still. The cultist operating the blood pods screamed and ran, but I blasted him before he could make good his escape. I blew open the pods the other captives. Only a handful of storm troopers remained, but my retinue was still intact, and half a dozen troopers from the planet's PDF were rescued.
"We must escape at once" said Kaelen, "lest we be sacrificed for their blasphemous plot!" We stormed out of the sacrificial chamber, and headed for the mining elevator. As we passed through a holding cell block, full of destitute looking captives, I noticed an emaciated man in the garb of a rogue trader.
"Are you Bern?" I asked him. He nodded weakly.
"Bring him with us" I ordered, "get any of the prisoners who can walk too, they may be of use to us". Luna helped the weakened man to his feet, with Storm Troopers and rescued PDF troopers helping as many of the captives as they could, and we soon returned to the mining elevator.
"What of the daemon?" murmured a trembling PDF soldier.
"Kaelen, contact Lord Coteaz immediately, we shall have this place purged and consecrated by Banishers as soon as possible" I ordered. The Crusader nodded.
"Now, let us leave this unholy place..." I muttered, triggering the elevator, and beginning our ascent.
A/N - Again, I'd like as much feedback as possible, so please drop a review in if it's not too much trouble?