A/N: I couldn't find info on the Spectre Psionic Lash, beyond the fact it can down a battle cruiser in one or two hits, so I made some up.
Kane: Sven wouldn't stand a chance in a head on combat with a guy like that, he's an assassin, not a warrior, he'll actively avoid direct confrontation when possible. And the planet is still Braxis, only forty thousands year in the future.
logan greenberg: I doubt this relationship will work for very long though ^^
Ifgry: Yes he did :3 and it won't be the last time :D
The two beastmen are bored right out of their mind, stuck patrolling an empty alley while all of their pals are out collecting skulls.
The alley they are patrolling is almost a hundred meters long and so thin at most placed only one man can go in at a time. That's good, it means they will not be facing Astartes.
All in all, they are careless and sloppy. They still eagerly search the place for something to kill however, poking bayonets trough piles of blanket and keeping an eye on both ends of the alley.
They could search this place for decades and never find me; I'm over their head, feet pressed to a wall and back to the opposite.
I draw my silenced pistol, but patience is a virtue and I stand by, waiting for them to get closer. One's tiny and looks more like a farm animal that a soldier while the other reminds me of these Tauren Marines storied I heard. Perfect candidate.
In the meantime, I do some digging inside their heads… Not a lot going on in there. Khorne, the blood god, is the supreme boss, then comes Tirus, a renegade Chaos Space Marine, whatever that is, then there's Viderrick, the commander of the corrupted guards and that's pretty much it, anyone else that tries to order them around gets his skull added to the skull throne.
Their mind taste like shit, like putrefaction, corruption… It's repulsive.
One gets into range and I line the crosshair with his goat-like head.
Where exactly is the brain? Wait, I'm using HE/SP 6mm rounds; I could hit his shoulder and the head would still come off, so who cares?
A plate sized hole appear in the beastman's head, forcing all of its content out into a water pond on the floor.
The other one falls to his knees as I creep inside his head, rewiring its chemical impulses and synaptic receptors to make him obey only one god: Me. There is some resistance at first, but instead of creating some form of loyalty to me from the ground up, I choose to overwrite the concept of Khorne and put myself in its place.
Then, I uncloak and drop to the floor, splashing blood-stained water all over my boots.
The Minotaur kneels. "I be servin' the Spectre god." Heh, that was easy.
"Here's what you'll do…" I send him the mental instructions and he bows deeper. "Yes, master."
His horned head snaps up with fierce determination painted across it. He grips his lasgun tighter and scream a war cry that sounds close to "BLOOD FOR THE SPECTRE GOD!"
That's kinda funny, if you ask me.
I cloak back and use some levitation and telekinesis to slowly rise to the top of the building where I set up my new gear.
The stuff is just where I left it, under a tired looking blanket.
It's just stuff I looted from the wreckage; a long-las rifle, some grenades, rappelling gear, a lascarbine and some very unstable looking demo charges. Most of it I took just for fun and field testing, as my AGR-28 has a sniper mode while being the size of a carbine and packing just as much punch as these babies. To be fair, they probably are way more powerful than my AGR, seeing as they are laser based, despite the archaic feel they carry, yet my Gauss rifle is obviously the most advanced piece of equipment.
All in all, I have no idea what I'm up against and how my gear will fare. A bit like fighting Protoss, really.
My sniper nest is a hundred meters further, squeezed between an air conditioning unit and radio antenna. It's quite low; standing at twenty meters, and offers a poor shot at the target, but that's the whole point, seeing as an easy sniping position would be pretty obvious.
There is a staircase leading to that particular rooftop and although the building is unoccupied, I still take a minute to hide a fragmentation grenade or two in every flight of stair from ground level to the top and set up the demo charge just above the staircase. No need for detonator, I can just psyonically set them off.
Then, I unfold the long-las' bipod and let it rest on the edge of the building while shouldering the AGR. I'm two hundred meters away from the command group; barely more that a bunch of ships and makeshift shelters and a boiling maelstrom of brutal fury and anger. They set up in some kind of huge plaza with a statue of some guy in armor in the middle.
Well, the guy in armor is not there anymore, but I've seen enough memories of this place in the past few minutes to know it used to be.
The whole situation reminds me of that movie the showed us at the Ghost Academy, 'And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.' It became my squad's motto after Shadowblade, an explanation as to why we fought the dominion.
The minotaur reaches the camp at that moment and I peek down the scope of my AGR. This will be interesting…
The beastman has a rock in a hand and his lasgun in the other; he is carrying out my orders flawlessly.
"Tirus!" He bellows, just at the edge of camp, "Come ya! BLOOD FOR THE SPECTRE GOD!"
Everyone in the camp stands still for a few seconds, all eyes turned to the crazy fool.
"Ya scared, ya big tin boy?"
A low rumbling voice, sounding like an avalanche of granite echoing in an empty valley, answers from the darkness, "You will die for you insolence."
"Yah, I will and so'll ya!" Something the size of a Marauder 5-4 armor steps out of the darkness, chain axe in hand; it is wearing an helmet, just as I felt, with an angry scowl as a face and shoulder pads so big I they could probably serve as toilet seats… What's with everyone and shoulder pads! Is their some vital organ in there they forgot to teach me?
The beastman roars and fires his lasgun into the Chaos Marine's face, barely scratching the paint. The Marine charges and chop off the minotaur's arm like it was made of butter, yet the beef guy still lands quite a few hits with his rock before being swapped away by a backhand strike that shatters his spine. Doesn't matter, he fulfilled his task, so I cut the pain receptors in his brain and let the thing die in peace.
The Marine, his lens scratched and damaged by the furious assaults of the crazed beastman, removes his head gear and toss it aside.
His face is ghostly pale with horns protruding all over his bald scalp.
His lips and lower jaw are a mess of scar tissue and one eye glows a sickly yellow. How can anyone be so ugly with only one head?
"You got something on your face," I compensate a bit to the right, my visual implants warning me about a mildly strong wind midway to the target, and squeeze out a single supersonic Neosteel spike, aimed right between the Marine's eyes, "Got it."
Old Ghost joke.
His face caves in under the impact, apparently struggling to repulse the 8mm spike that slowly makes its way trough. In the end, such resistance cause more damage than good, as the round is not stopped, but slowed enough not to exit trough the back of the head; it just bounces around the guy's skull like a rubber ball before shattering the jaw.
The guy is still standing tough, cerebral liquid and gray matter dripping from the mangled mess that was his mouth a second ago.
The troops in the camp begin a frantic search, chaotic and disorganized, as predicted; they search every single building without so much as trying to determine which direction the shot came from. They were animals earlier and now that I killed their leader, they're retarded animals.
I look up at the Galaxy troop ship still struggling to get back into orbit. This thing is the next target, now that I took out the commander…
How the fuck am I supposed to go about doing that? I guess first I need a very big gun or bomb, although if there was such a thing around here, the Imperial forces would have used it already…
So… Psi lash? Last time I did that, the whole Dominion was on me in seconds and the Frigate I took down was nowhere near the size of that transport.
Then again, this ship is already falling apart, all it needs is a little motivation.
The concept of Psionic lash is quite simple, one must focus raw psi energy in or around a limb, keeping it close to the body while building up power until the moment it packs enough energy to power a whole battleship for a full minute, then you find a target and 'lash' out at it with your mind.
Unlike Psi blast or other psychic attacks I could summon on a pinch, this technique doesn't follow the laws of physics; it is capable of cutting trough anything, the only restriction is how long you can keep it up.
I'd like to think of some one liner to say, something badass, but right now, I'm so damn nervous all I can think about is 'Yippy Kay Yay, Motherfucker' and I sure as hell don't want my last sentence to be some Bruce Willis line.
Instead, I quote that Wraith pilot; "Gravity: Not just a good idea, it's the law." Yeah, I did better… Anyway, let's turn that cloaking generator off.
I focus intensely and, soon, my right arm crackles with energy as I feel gradually weaker and hungry. I'm still malnourished, so this isn't going to be as powerful as it could. Doesn't matter, it'll suffice.
My forearm is now ablaze in pulsing red light, burning around my hand and wrist like a bonfire. It tickles, like running your hand on a TV screen you just shut off. Impressive, to think all that power emanates from my brain… But that's what Terrazine is for, otherwise I would fry my synapses right there.
Once I feel I've given it all I could without passing out, I unleash a needle-large string of pure psi energy. It swirls around in the air like ribbons in the wind, graceful and eerily silent in the rainy night…
I focus my attention on the ship itself and the string pulses angrily before whipping the ship in a furious thunderclap that leaves tiny criss cross patterns of molten metal near the still smoking engines.
The ship doesn't seem to notice, at first, then something just… breaks and fall off; a large triangular chunk at the rear of the ship just falls off, crushing a whole apartment block in the process. The ship itself twists and screams under the sudden and unexplained structural modification. To the machine's credit, it stays airborn for a good half minute before finally realizing all the laws of physics it is breaking and giving up.
The Galaxy class transport tilts to the right slightly as explosions run all across its structure, slowly pushing it away from the city. The whole engine soon break away, crushing at least four blocks upon impact. Fortunately, the ship itself crashes into the jungle and, less fortunately, goes off in a fireball that ignites a good chunk of the city and an even bigger bit of jungle.
God… I did this. Not some Protoss High Templar or Thor walker. Me, a lone, tired, beat up Spectre, just officially raped a Dreadnought-sized ship with nothing but my brain and... Shit.
My Psionic 'radar' warns me that I now have a horde of berserk Khorne cultists bearing down on my position and should if it fits my agenda, get the fuck out.
I use basic telekinesis to fire the long-las into the horde while using my rappelling gear to set up a zip line heading for the now abandoned camp, two hundred meters further. There's nothing holding the line except my psi powers, but it'll do.
The hordes are now in the staircase. No matter I'm already gone and, once they reach the top, none of them gets to take a shot or even see the abandoned long-las, as I detonate every explosives I left behind as soon as the first enemy makes it on top. The effort causes a mild headache and some numbness in the extremities.
I crash to a stop and drop to a knee, my legs too wobbly to hold me up. I feel weak, but I still retrieve the laser sniper rifle with a short telekinetic burst that sends it spinning in the air.
A bit more sporadic telekinesis guides it all the way to my outstretched hand. Once it's there, I sling it on my back and push myself off my feet. Got damn my legs feel like cotton…
I should have brought some Stimpacks… Bah, whatever, I'm done here anyway.
"Revenant," I call, "Operation successful, can I get an EVAC here?"
There's only statics on the line for about twenty seconds; a very long time, if you ask me.
"Negative, Sven, local defense forces are crawling in your area, sending anything in there would be crazy."
I look up and, indeed, the sky is crawling with eagle-like ships. Looking for whatever it is that took down a transporter in a single strike. Projector beams are sweeping the whole area and I hear patrols coming in. Some of them seem to engage the cultists in some pretty heavy combat, judging from the sounds of battle in the alleys around the plaza.
I feel someone emerge from an alley directly behind me, filled with fear and apprehension.
Fuck, I didn't turn my cloaking field back on after the psionic lash.
I quickly scan the Planetary Defense Force trooper's mind. Not very sharp; he's an artist, not a soldier and killing just ain't in his nature. He won't shoot me and hasn't reported my presence yet.
"Hello, mister Arkovitz." I greet, slowly lifting my arms up.
"Put you hands in the air!"
"It's what I'm doing, Harold." Mocking him isn't a good idea, but he's no threat, really.
"G… Get down, on your knees!"
"Can't do that, pal." With that, I send a boost of energy to my suit and sprint backward. Psi sprint makes you feel as if you were running in low gravity. I hate it.
A solid psi amplified punch to his lasgun suffices in disarming the trooper while a quick leg sweep prevents him from attacking me while I run my ass out of this mess.
I am cloaked long before he's up and far away by the time he begins firing at every shadow.
When the squad leaders will ask him what happened, he will most probably answer that he met a Spectre… Because I implanted this thought in his brain, as free advertising.
You know; be feared by your enemies and your allies alike, stuff like that.
So I run. No clue where, no clue how long, I just fucking run until there are no more Imperial ships looking for me, then, when the only thing in the sky is the reflection of the raging fires on the rain and clouds, I run some more, dodging chaos and PDF alike.
The city has an octagonal layout, spread on a single level, unlike bigger hives, who have many. It is separated in many sections: first one occupies the center of the hive, it contains the habitation districts and trade sector as well as quite a few entertainment establishments, second is to the south and west, it's occupied by the landing pads, docs and warehouses. Third come the northern area, the PDF base and training ground. Finally, the east side… Doesn't matter because it's kind of on fire right now…
As for me, I just dragged my ass all the way from the warehouse district to the city center. I send a psi echo trough the street and wait for the mental map to get in place. I need a place to rest, this last feat drained me and if I try to track down chaos troops now, I'll wind up dead by morning. Fortunately, there are things that never change and I quickly find a very shady brothel that would probably be purified by fire should the authorities ever find out it exists.
Just the kind of places I like.
It takes me about a minute to get there and one more minute to actually find the door; it's in a dark alley, hidden between what appears to be public restrooms and a...Honestly, I have no clue what that's supposed to be, seems like a church or something, only in a cut down, cheaper version.
I enter the alley and knock on a steel door, hidden ten meters away from the street, under the restrooms. I uncloak a second latter. So tired I forgot I was invisible in the first place…
No answer.
I knock again and a loud voice booms as soon as my fist touches the door: "Password?"
The man's mind is weak, an Ogryn, apparently, and I immediately find the password.
"Discretion is the better part of valor." I totally agree with that.
The door opens and the huge man waves me in. He's approximately the same size as Gregor, although I'd bet on the Marine in a fight between these two. The Ogryn is dumb as a brick.
The place is dirty, dark and empty. There's a bar straight ahead with stairs right next to it, going down, and only two tables. Just as well, seeing as the room is barely bigger than the restrooms above.
The boss, a Ratling called Siveras, greets me from a nearby stool.
"Oi! Welcome to Silver Paradise, my friend!" He looks at my armor and gets two thoughts almost simultaneously.
"He's rich." And "He can't be a normal customer." That and a feeling of unease, as if he felt I wasn't supposed to be there.
"How much for a night?" No time for bullshit; I want to sleep.
"Well, now, I suppose ya know what kinda service we do here…"
Mutants. This place hires mutant prostitutes… That's just great, I'll have to spend a night in the same room as a horny female Ogryn…
"Yes, I am aware of you specialty."
He's getting suspicious, peoples who hear from his place do so from being referred by other customers, so in theory, I should already have an idea what I'm looking for. I just need to take a pick from the midget's brain. Peoples in this place are just so fucking easy to mess with, it's as if they've never seen a telepath!
"I heard you employed a renegade Navigator, is she available?"
His grin makes me want to shoot him right there. "Khalia!" His shrill, high pitched tone hurts my ears and doesn't help with my murderous intents, "Time ta work!"
The girl looks human, kinda cute; short red hairs, black eyes, lips a little too big for the size of her nose… but at least five years younger than I am and I'm really not that old… I think I'm around twenty three or twenty five, so that puts the Navigator in her late teens-early twenties. I don't care, I don't intend to do anything with her.
Maybe I should have lifted my visor before she arrived, because the fear I sense from her is so intense, it overshadows any I've ever felt before. Either she's brave as a mouse or that weird aura bullshit is at it again. In any case, I'm really beyond caring right now. But no, she's no coward; I've seen Marines panic from fear half that strong…
Still, Khalia almost begs the Ratling not to let me hire herm, refusing to follow me to her room, and I'm about to tell Siveras that I changed my mind when, on a signal from the owner, the Ogryn doorman punches the tiny mutant girl in the guts hard enough to make her see stars trough even her normal eyes. I try to access the part of her brain linked to the third one, but my instinct tells me whatever made that girl so brave, it came from that eye and I don't have the balls to handle it, so I retreat from her skull and shoot the men a piercing glare… Trough my optics… Might as well be trying to kill them with a laser designator.
First: Sleep, then I'll mind rape the midget and the giant so hard they'll think they're farm animals.
A slight tweak in the little guy's brain make him think I paid double and gave him express orders not to disturb me until I decide I'm done, which he's glad to agree to.
"Why, of course, sir, you may take as long as you want!" And he begins counting money only he can see.
The Navigator's the only one to realize what I did and that just increases her fear. She'd like to run, but all the guns I'm carrying dissuade her from doing it. Instead, she heads down the stairs, clutching her stomach in pain and dragging her feet all the way.
The Navigator's room is barely more than a circular chamber with a queen sized bed occupying half of it.
The girl is dressed in robes I can only guess are supposed to make her look like a Navigator from one of those Imperial ships. I can't tell since her family was banished long ago and she never served the Imperium. She never even set foot on a space ship.
She asks me something about undressing, but I'm busy unlocking my helmet and infuser, so I didn't really hear.
Feeling the stale air of this place on my sweat drenched hairs and face is a delight, but one I must cut short, seeing as the mutant on the bed is growing more scared with every passing seconds. Might as well make things clear now…
"Don't worry, Khalia, I want nothing from you, I just needed a safe place to rest."
With that, I toss my weapons on the floor, quickly following them as I use my hardened backpack as a pillow.
I got a feeling I didn't get here by coincidence, that mutant knows thinks I could use, but right now, I just want to sleep.
I send a data package to the Rev using just technopathy -and a nearby metal tower- and quickly fall asleep.
0
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Revenant
Six hours latter
Braxis' Orbit
"C'mon, baby, ya need to follow the move, don't try to go against the flow!" The Hammer Securities merc explained to Alan as the other man tried to move his gargantuan CMC-660.
They were standing in a makeshift gymnasium Dylan had whipped up out of an empty cargo hold and Alan was trying to learn how to become a Firebat. It was very hard moving in that huge fucking suit…
Kade took a stumbling step forward, then another, then crashed on the floor like a ragdoll.
"Gettin' there…" The Marauder laughed over the downed Firebat, "Ya should just relax, baby, let the suit do the work. Your own muscles don't factor it, tha suit's robotic, a' least ten times as strong as ya!"
"So if I try to push it instead of gently nudging it, I eat dirt?"
"That right."
Alan pushed the massive armor back up with his twin flamethrowers and gave it another try, just nudging the armor forward. It was still nowhere as fluid as Dylan's pervious dancing display, but it would get him through the incoming combat drop.
Nearby, the War Pigs were using piled crates and containers as simulated urban environment to train in, they had spent the last two hours doing it, preparing for the upcoming battle.
Alan opened a comlink with Langley, they defacto team leader, and asked him what the operation's status was. Langley asked Fauster, who asked Worst and the Ghost answered on the general frequency.
"We're waiting for the Probes to finish assembling the Void canon, then we'll contact the defending fleet. If they authorize us to launch an op in their city, we're going to hook up with their forces and lead standard support operations, if they refuse, we're still going in, but on our own and with Nerazims acting as scouts."
"What the fuck's a Nerazime?" Vince's voice asked. The Reaper had disappeared soon after Karen had announced that they were heading down to find Kudrenkov.
"Dark Templars." Hannah groaned from inside the infirmary, "Christ, Vincent, I thought Reapers were brilliant killers or something!"
"I was, but then they ressoced me five times, so I guess I ain't as sharp as I used to be…"
On the bridge, Karen and Irena were trying to find where the comm. console was located, with little success. There were monitoring systems, cryo release commands, newly installed Protoss weapons consoles, but the communications system were a complete mystery.
So Karen decided to inspect the section of plasteel the Corporal had touched earlier, looking for anything with the words ON and OFF.
There was a list of numbers that seemed like radio frequency with, at the top, a frequency marked with the word UNKNOWN ERROR. She pressed that one and Shaanis' face filled the screen view, replacing all the diagrams and frequencies.
"You addressed me, Lieutenant?"
Well, that was not the intended result, but it would do. "Yes, Librarian, could you put me into contact with the Defender's flagship?"
"It shall be done." And he blinked away.
"Shady bastard." Irena commented. Worst secretly agreed, but then again, she was a shady bitch herself.
Soon enough, her screen filled with statics, quickly replaced by a severe looking man clad in some kind of blue military uniform.
"I am Rear-Admiral Reich," He announced, speaking as if she should somehow know the guy, "Identify yourself immediately!"
Karen hated that guy already. "Lieutenant Karen Worst, sir…" She was about to say 'from the Terran Dominion, but this would have been… Inaccurate: "Independent mercenary."
Maybe she should have chosen something else, seeing as the man's face immediately took a furious red shade.
"How dare you show yourself here! You scum, show yourself so I may smite you from the sky!"
What? If that was the best that pompous asshole could muster, she would give him a run for his money.
"Listen to me you fat fucker, I don't give a rat's shit about you, I only called to figure out whether I should just blow those two remaining junkyards you try to command and obviously fail, seeing as my man had to eliminate the enemy commander and their support ship all by himself…"
The man's face fell at her use of singular. A singe man? Impossible!
"That's right," Karen laughed with a ferocious grin, "Just one of my boy did what your whole fleet couldn't, of course, don't take my word for it, why should you? Ask the PDF and local about Spectre; that's my boy."
The man straightened himself and quickly analyzed the situation. There was an Ultramarine strike cruiser inbound; it would be with them any day now. Whoever these mercenaries were, the Astartes could deal with them easily, so in the meanwhile, he could enlist them to wipe out Chaos forces and assist the Planetary Defense Forces… If the Governor agreed, that is.
"Very well, miss Worst, let's hear you out…"
Karen regretted not being able to probe the man's mind to find out the reason behind that sudden change in heart. How non-telepaths got by was beyond her.
"We need Vespene gas and minerals… Here I sent you the chemical composition of both resources…"
The Admiral asked someone off screen to check it out and they answered these had absolutely no value and could not be used for anything outside cheap jewelry and fireworks. They were simple oddities, really.
Karen understood from this exchange that the Imperium did not have the knowledge of how to extract Neosteel from the crystal formations, nor of how to turn Vespene into fuel. How could any civilization make due without these two resources was beyond the Ghost's understanding.
"You will get what you requests, now, how many men can you spare?" Reich would be disappointed by the answer…
"Nine, it's a Special Forces group, however."
The Admiral asked for more information on these men and Worst obliged. She had nothing to hide, really, if these guys knew their history, they'd know about every kind of unit she had already.
"Marine Sergeant Fauster will lead the unit, Reaper Corporal Kerensky will serve as scout, War Pigs Corporal Langley is our Elite infantry team leader, with Private Darka as our medical officer, Firebat Corporal Kade and Marauder Sergeant Rainer will serve as heavy infantry, Privates Smiles and Cole as Riflemen and, finally, we have a Spectre Black Ops Specialist on the ground."
"Dave." Irena pointed out and the Ghost facepalmed. She needed some rest…
"That's right, we have a Viking versatility weapon platform as air and armor support."
Didn't take a telepath to know the Admiral was totally lost. The man was chewing on his bottom lip trying hard to understand what the woman had just said. When an admiral did something like that, it was never a good sign; privates chew their lips like that, sergeants, not so often. Admirals… Well, when your Admiral is tense, run for the nearest life pod…
"Fine, you may deploy immediately, I will clear it with the governor. I hope your men are as good as you say…"
So did she.