A/N: Sorry about the bit of hiatus, guys. Been working on Left 4 Dead: Lambs 2 Slaughter V.3. and other stuff, so Stormwind: Marine's sort-of on a bit of the backburner, but it's not forgotten and will be updated - just not too regularly. Here's Chapter Three :D It's a tad bit rushed, but I think you'll like it, as well as a few of the references I make as well as who's next to die on Corschach's killing list :D
Chapter Three
Niko Gearhammer's PoV
I'll be damned.
Seriously. What happened back at Stormwind before I realized that my Order was in fact a cover for three people who weren't even from Azeroth was nasty enough.
But what I saw Corschach do to the Stormwind guards… Sure, I'd seen what he could do to Horde that attacked a member of the Knights of the Holy Shield. But that's different. They actually deserved the punishment there for not giving a damn about me.
These guardsmen… I couldn't push them out of my mind. They'd died gruesome and quick deaths – quicker than maybe even King Varian could kill. Whoever these "Stormwind Marines" were, they sure were people I didn't want to cross.
Not to mention they had more of their "battle-brothers" to come here. What would happen if this turned into an invasion? Corschach was already bordering on too overzealous for my liking, and apparently he's one of more lenient ones.
The three of them give me smiles as I sit on the cart as we ride a goblin zeppelin from Grom'gol in Stranglethorn straight to Orgrimmar, but it's like their smiles hold daggers behind them. Hell, even the smile from Sonja, who's sitting next to me and apparently unlike Corschach and Duke Fenris, looks the same.
Hell, to digress a bit, it was amazing we boarded the zeppelin without much trouble. It's probably because the Horde are so used to seeing big fellas – read: Tauren – even though Corschach was bigger than even the biggest Tauren I'd seen.
Maybe I'm being too paranoid. Maybe the Stormwind Marines don't want to take over Azeroth. It's been a long while since I've felt like this, and I don't like it.
'Niko?'
I hear the very quiet voice from behind me. I turn around and only see a stack of secured crates. I raise an eyebrow, and turn back around, but then I hear the sound again, only louder this time.
Oh, finally. I get up and look behind the crates to find Sparky cowering behind them.
'Sparky! Where the fel have you been all this time?' I ask him sternly.
'H…hiding, Niko. I see these strangers. They'se scare me,' he squeaked. 'You saw what that big one did to those Horde and Stormwind City guardsmen, didn't you?'
I sighed, but then before I could continue, Sonja's head poke out from behind me. I notice it too late as she spots Sparky.
'Aaaaaaaw. Sparky! Come here!' she beckons. Luckily enough, Sparky knows Sonja and Duke Fenris. It's him seeing Corschach that's got me worried.
Sparky flies over to Sonja, and she holds him gently, smiling at his cute face and tickling the insides of his wings with her long, smooth fingers. Sparky seems to enjoy all this until she speaks up.
'Matt! Come over here, you've got to see this little fella!' she beckons to Corschach.
Oh, fel.
Sparky hears the crunch of Matt's boots as he approaches, and raises his head. Big mistake.
My little netherwhelp sidekick's eyes widen and curls into a defensive ball in Sonja's lap, trembling.
'EEEEEEEEEK!' he squeals, much to Sonja's surprise.
He keeps this up until one of Corschach's armoured fingers rubs him in the belly. It's irresistible to the little netherwhelp, and he begins to unfurl and start purring approvingly. I smile. I suppose there's compassion in these killing machines.
'We're getting ready to touch down in Orgrimmar, Fenris,' I hear a goblin, our zeppelin driver, say. 'Docking's in approximately one minute.'
Duke Fenris nods and replies accordingly, flicking a gold coin to our zeppelin driver. I take a look outside the zeppelin.
Durotar's orangey, mostly barren landscape is the kind of place I'd rather not be. I don't know about you, but I'd rather freeze to death than die from heat exhaustion.
There's a loud thump as the zeppelin docks. I get up along with my companions, and we disembark from the flying vehicle, letting the other Knights of the Holy Shield start with the heavy lifting, since Duke Fenris wants to meet with Thrall.
He insisted I come along as well, which was understandable – I'd met Thrall before, as I might've said, and he was really decent, even for an honourable orc. Hell, I even offered to buy him a mug of ale the next time we met.
The only problem I had with coming along, however, was Garrosh Hellscream.
It wasn't any mystery that mostly no one liked the fel-wit. Sure, he'd be great on the battlefield – he certainly lived up to his last name. Everywhere else, however… I put up a joke that went along the lines of, "your basic campfire would be a better leader than Garrosh" during a break with some of my fellow Knights, and to my surprise, they didn't laugh – they just nodded, which comes to show just how bad he was.
The orc's temper and arrogance was unlike anything I'd seen before. Sure, King Varian had his moments, but at least he had one helluva good reason to be. Garrosh… I sighed inside. It was as if he'd declared war on the Alliance for nothing!
And the worst part was, he was going to become Warchief! The arse-wipe had even insulted Tirion himself, for Light's sake!
I kept thinking about what we were going to do as we entered the city. Of course, we got the usual greeting – respectful nods from the guards, cheers from a few civilians and both staring at Corschach's massive armour – which helped me put my doubts at ease.
Duke Fenris led us through the winding city that was Orgrimmar and to the place where Thrall sat, the name of which I couldn't remember. The Kor'kron guards, the elites from what I learned, saluted in our direction as we approached.
I looked up to see Matt's reaction, and to my surprise, there was a slight look of contempt on his face that I would've missed were it not for my ability to read facial expressions. I wondered what kind of universe he came from to dislike the orcs before he came to know them.
The massive form of Thrall as we entered rose up and smiled as we entered, greeting us in something Orcish before speaking in Common.
'It is good to see you, Duke Fenris. Members of the Argent Crusade are always welcome here in Orgrimmar,' he greeted. He turned towards me. 'And you too, Niko. I wish it were under better circumstances that we'd have met again, my friend.'
I nodded and smiled back. It was a wonder how anyone didn't like the orc.
'Well, it doesn't seem like we're welcome here,' Corschach spoke up.
Oh. Fel. On a stick.
To my relief, Thrall kept his temper under control.
'Excuse me?' he asked. The Space Marine looked at him.
'It doesn't seem like we're welcome here,' he repeated. 'I can see you're an exception amongst orcs, Thrall, but why is it that I hear fighting outside?'
Thrall was, for the first time I'd seen him, dumbstruck.
'Fighting? Who are you?' he asked before turning towards an orc at his side – a scout, no doubt. 'Go and see. If there's fighting, I want to know. Now.'
The scout nodded, but before he could move, someone else entered the room. I turned.
I'll say it again. Oh. Fel. On a stick.
It was Garrosh.
Brother-Sergeant Matthew Corschach's PoV
'I had to clean up those Alliance filth outside that you let into the city, Thrall,' a voice sneered. I turned to find a brown-skinned orc wearing black plate armour stride into the room, a look of contempt on his face.
'Garrosh! Those were the Argent Crusade!' the orc called Thrall rises out of his seat, shaking in anger. 'What have you done?'
'Cleaned up, that's what,' Garrosh spat. 'You let these filthy scumbags into the city. A real Warchief wouldn't do such a thing.'
I immediately clasped my hand over Sonja's mouth just as she was about to retort. She could be a bit of a spitfire at times, and she hardly could take an insult without insulting back. I tensed. There was something about this Garrosh I didn't like, and it wasn't his personality. It took all of my will to stop me from attacking straight away.
Emperor forgive me, it was only because of Chapter Master Eric that I didn't attack any of these orcs when I first saw them! They were shorter and more civilized than the orks I had known back in our universe, but orks they were.
Still, attacking the city wouldn't have gotten the rest of Tactical Squad Corschach back, and I put that priority first. However, it proved to be of no use as Garrosh finally noticed us.
'More filth! Time for you to die.'
Thrall tried to restrain Garrosh, but it was then I saw something familiar. The reason why I didn't like him at all.
When Thrall tried to hold him back, Garrosh simply turned around, and a crackle of Warp magic sprung from his hand, knocking the orc Warchief off his feet and into a wall, unconscious, his two handed hammer landing on the throne. The powers of Chaos were present on Azeroth! I had a feeling that if it weren't for our presence, Garrosh would've killed Thrall right there and then. The Kor'kron guards backed out of the room, unsure of wether or not to intervene.
'You stand up for the weak,' Garrosh spat. 'That is why you are no Warchief, Thrall.' He turned towards us and took out a large axe. 'You. Will. Die.'
His voice had turned daemonic. Somehow, I had the feeling that even though we were blanks, the daemon's hold on Garrosh was strong enough to hold on and control him. I drew my chainsword and stood in front of them.
'No one tells a Space Marine what to do, especially a demon-infested ork like you!'
I drew my bolt pistol and fired, but Garrosh was deceptively quick, dodging the bullets and raising his axe. He took a swipe at me, which hit my sides.
Normally such a strike from a weapon like that wouldn't have done much to my power armour. But it was backed up by daemonic force and cut through the armour. Snarling in pain, I immediately threw a punch at him, which connected and threw the frakker off me, ripping his axe out of my sides at the same time.
'BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!' Garrosh roared, readying himself for another attack. I fired a few more shots at him, but they bounced off some sort of despicable shield of sorts. I immediately holstered my bolt pistol. That wasn't going to work in this fight.
I managed to draw my chainsword out as he charged again, parrying the blow.
'Fine. He can have yours,' I spat before thumbing the activator rune to full speed and taking a swipe at him. An old mock, but worth repeating.
I managed to score a swipe on his face, inflicting a massive diagonal gash on his face. His left eye, nose and the right side of his mouth were frakked now. Lashing out with a kick, I sent him backwards before thrusting forward with the weapon not designed to be thrust.
The chainsword spitted him through his stomach, the monomolecular blades churning his insides into mush. I was about to bring it up to rip his chest into two, but suddenly his hand stopped me from doing so with an surprising amount of force.
I looked up to find that he was grinning at me, and I saw that the demon that possessed him. It kicked me back and into the throne, my grip on the chainsword giving away. As I tumbled, I saw that he grabbed the chainsword, still whirring, and snapped it into two before discarding it.
I spared a glance at Eric, Sonja and Niko. They wouldn't be able to help – Eric was still weak from Duke Edward's attempt to control his mind since the "Gnomish World Enlarger" he'd used amplified the damage he'd take, and Sonja, for all her fighting prowess, was no match for this beast. Niko… I had the feeling that he was too shocked to do anything.
Garrosh took one last evil grin at me before beginning to float upwards.
Oh, frak.
With a sudden jerk in mid-air, he plummeted back down towards the ground at an impossible speed, and out of the blood explosion that ensued, a massive, winged, horned beast I knew all too well wielding a large axe erupted from the ground, shattering the roof and roaring.
Bloodthirster.
I'd killed one of these before, back on my very first mission, but that was with the help of my battle-brothers. Here I was alone, and without a proper weapon. Being a blank seemed to weaken it a bit, but not enough to make it an easy fight. This must've been one powerful daemon.
I drew out my bolt pistol once more, but I knew that, unless I got off an insanely lucky shot, it wouldn't be enough. Wrangling Bloodthirsters with nothing but bare hands was a feat only the fabled Angry Marines had managed on a regular basis.
I picked myself up before realizing that there was a weapon, after all. In front of me, Thrall's hammer lay. Heaving it up with my right hand, I started to charge at the daemon, firing shots at its legs as I did so.
It roared in pain, and swung down its axe towards me. Diving out of the way, I kept up with the fire, but didn't expect it to use the flat part to sweep at me. Swept aside by the force, I crashed into the wall.
Groaning and picking myself back up once more, I swiped Thrall's hammer back up once more. This time, however, I noticed that there was lightning coursing through it.
A primitive thunder hammer! Emperor be praised!
The Bloodthirster took another sweep at me, but I dived forwards and dodged the sweep, rising up and slamming the end of it into the daemon's shin.
There was a loud clap of thunder as the daemon roared in pain. The energy coursed through it and started to paralyse its muscles as it tried to sweep at me once more.
Jumping back, I let the axe pass by as its movements were currently clumsy, and leapt onto its shoulder. It rose back up, wondering where I'd gone. It didn't feel my weight on its back. I jumped from its shoulders onto the top of its head, and before it could react, I slammed down the top of the hammer into its skull.
Another thunderclap. Another roar of pain from the daemon.
It dropped its axe and tried to maintain its balance. I kept up the offensive by swinging the hammer in a horizontal arc in the air and jumping, managing enough momentum to launch myself from the daemon's head and into the air in front of its face, where I used the momentum from there to slam the hammer into the side of its head. Another thunderclap sounded, and it was thrown off its feet and fell.
I landed on the ground seconds before it did, holding Thrall's thunder hammer gingerly. Perhaps it was from here too that thunder hammers were inspired back in my universe? If it was, then this thing deserved respect.
After the daemon fell, it started clawing the ground as it was dragged backwards into a large Warp-hole, roaring in protest as it did so.
It finally managed to get a grip on land and stared at me with hate-filled eyes.
'Frak your False Emperor!' it roared. 'And frak you, Corschach! NOOOOOOOOO!'
How did the thing know my name?
It was of no matter. I raised my leg, and with a mighty kick, pushed the daemon into the Warp-hole, which closed seconds later.
After that I planted the hammer into the ground and uttered a pray of thanks to the Emperor.