Chapter 37(orphan)
The huge Bloodthirster roared bestially as it snapped its mighty wings in pursuit of the fleet of thunderhawk transporters through the magenta night sky, Franklin still held screaming in its mighty left hand. The wind was terrible as the monster flew above the speed of sound, and Franklin was only still in one piece thanks to his full body armour!
The daemon was almost as big as the thunderhawks it pursued, blood red in colour and clad in unholy brass armour. It's face was like the face of a carnivorous animal, furry and snarling with hatred, it's feet were hooves, and it's body resembling an immensely well muscled man. In its right hand it held a huge brass axe that was bigger than a man, and the hand that held Franklin also gripped a horrific brass whip, covered in lethal spikes.
The thing palpably radiated violence and extreme manliness in a supernatural way, and Franklin could FEEL the hate and wrath it radiated!
The thunderhawks were not slowing or turning to reclaim Franklin, merely fleeing with maximum speed away from this horrific monster! They were leaving Franklin to his fate!
"STOP RUNNING AWAY YOU SEVENSON COWARDS!" The Bloodthirster roared in hateful wrath, voice loud as an explosion.
The thunderhawks responded by firing their engines all the harder to get away from the Bloodthirster, greatly exceeding the speed of sound now as the daemon flew with unholy supernatural speed. They had an entire army but were running away from just one foe, they really were cowards!
"Cowards!" Franklin found himself saying out loud in disgust without meaning to.
The daemon snapped its gaze around to look at Franklin, and almost seemed to smile approvingly with its razor fanged maw.
The daemon then returned its gaze to its fleeing foes, roaring with hatred as the thunderhawks continued to flee.
The Bloodthirster flew faster and threw its mighty axe at one of the thunderhawks.
The axe hit the rear of the aircraft with perfect accuracy, and instantly cleaved the entire thing in half, rhinos and all!
The two halves fell away to the ground, hitting at supersonic speed and blasting apart in explosions!
The Bloodthirster held out its empty right hand, and the axe shot back into its hand like a bullet. The Bloodthirster threw again, and another thunderhawk was cleft in twain!
The sky was starting to get lighter now, and Franklin desperately made sure that his goggles were secured and light tight. Dawn was approaching!
The thunderhawks were heading with maximum speed for the sunrise to destroy the Bloodthirster in the heat, Franklin would be roasted alive!
At supersonic speed it did not take long for the first blue rays of sunrise to appear, and Franklin prepared his soul to meet the Emperor as his refrigerated armour began to heat up. He was not going to die screaming, he was about to complete the Painful Path and go redeemed to paradise, no fear, no regrets, his duty was done.
The Bloodthirster gazed down at Franklin and nodded approvingly.
"You face death honourably like a man Franklin Sevenson, at last a Sevenson who is not an effeminate pussy," the daemon said with strange martial pride.
"I die redeemed, my duty is done daemon," Franklin said unflinchingly.
"Not today, my honour demands that I take you alive," the daemon rumbled, and turned around in the air with savage g force and flew away from the light so fast that the sunrise crept back below the horizon!
The Bloodthirster slowed down once the light faded, and flapped down to the ground, alighting in front of the armoured entrance to an underground city that was still fully intact. The armoured gate opened for the daemon, and it strode through into the safe cool below.
Franklin was saved!
***...
The Bloodthirster carried Franklin deep inside the city, as local mutants and heretics of the city grovelled down in worship at the sight of the passing Bloodthirster of Khorne.
The Bloodthirster came to a large underground military base of some sort, and stepped right over fortified walls and razor wire fences to reach a large parade ground in the middle of the base. Franklin was placed on the ground, and looked around to see thousands of armed heretics all around him.
The Bloodthirster picked up a nearby parked armoured vehicle and put it down near Franklin, the Bloodthirster then sat on the tank like a seat.
"Well met Franklin Sevenson, the blood son of contemptible degenerate Slaanesh scum, yet nothing like them. Khorne rewards those who are strong enough to overcome their bloodline to act like men, and I honour you." The daemon said with militaristic honour.
"My name is Galit the Beheadinator, maker of war and taker of heads, honourable knightly daemon warrior, Greater Daemon and Bloodthirster of Khorne." The daemon said with fierce chivalrous pride.
"A daemon with honour?, you are the first I have met," Franklin said honestly.
"Given your kin that does not surprise me, the daemons of Tzeentch and Slaanesh are dishonourable scum, unworthy of life, worthy only of having their beheaded heads on the skull throne!" Galit spat with angry contempt.
"I would GLADLY cut off their heads!" Franklin agreed with genuine feeling.
Galit nodded respectfully in approval.
"I must apologise for dishonouring you by not killing you in battle, being taken alive in battle is shameful, but your father and his war band owe me a great honour grievance, and honour demands that I get back that which was taken from me," Galit said with an odd combination of honour and angry bitterness.
"My father took your family from you?," Franklin asked delicately.
"My WIFE and BLOOD SON yes! But not by his own hand at all, female members and allies of the Sevenson war band committed the crime, but as the MAN who most rules the Sevensons, honour demands that Chaos Lord Luke Sevenson must take responsibility!" Galit growled bitterly.
"I saw no captive daemon woman or daemon child on the ship I am afraid, I don't know where those villains have placed your kin," Franklin apologised to this strangely likeable honourable being.
"My wife is a mortal human woman not a daemon, and my son is half mortal." Galit corrected with knightly manners.
"A human..." Franklin said distastefully, unable to hide his tone.
"I understand your distaste, normally I would share your scorn, but it was a matter of honour!" Galit growled warningly, his obvious deep rage now barely contained behind his warrior honour. Franklin decided that it would be wise to be more polite to Galit...
"How did it come about?, Who is she?," Franklin asked diplomatically.
"It is a tale of valorous bloodshed and chivalrous honourable wedlock, a most unlikely pairing bound together by honourable marriage," Galit began.
"My wife is the Slaanesh worshipping Dark Mechanicum Magus Technicus Labia Johnson, born into the lower serf ranks of the Sevenson war band and rising by raw talent to become their greatest engineer. She was named "Labia Nipple Johnson" by her depraved Slaanesh whore of a mother at birth, and raised in the filthy homosexual depravity of the Sevenson perverts!"
"She was a vile depraved slut, degrading the honourable HETEROSEXUAL institution of marriage by taking a woman even more loose than her as a "wife"! For her entire life before she met me she carried on like a shameless whore with her so called wife, committing constant sins of the flesh in homosexual depravity!"
"But then on the once mighty Khorne daemon world of Aumaom, she was captured alive by the mighty local warriors of Khorne. Labia is blonde of hair, thin of waist and big of breast, a beautiful woman with the insatiable libido of a depraved Slaanesh whore. She was also one of the best weapons developers in the latest generation of new Dark Mechanicum tech priests, able to make mighty weapons of war for whoever possessed her."
"Every man on Aumaom wanted this weapon building beautiful sexually insatiable woman's hand in marriage, both as a symbol of honour, for the weapons she would build, and so that they could take dishonourable sexual advantage of her! Men killed to possess her, until glorious war broke out between all the mightiest champions of Khorne on Aumaom!"
"She changed hands every few hours. Men would seize her, wed her and bed her, then mere hours later a new man would widow her by killing her existing husband in honourable combat, and wed and bed her in turn. In her harlotry she enjoyed this constant bedding by new men, and her vile sexual depravity with her continually changing husbands knew no bounds!"
"The war over her became a matter of honour that no mighty warrior could ignore, and no mighty warrior champion on Aumaom could ignore the contest to possess her hand in marriage without their honour being questioned! I was on Aumaom at the time and I could NOT let this question of my honour go unchallenged! I didn't want the whore but I had no choice but to join the battle to possess her to defend my honour!" Galit said passionately.
"So you killed all the others and won her for yourself?," Franklin said comprehending.
"Yes, I was the mightiest of all and none could take her from me. I had not wanted the harlot, but I was honour bound to marry her. I was forced by my duty as her husband to consummate the union with the unchaste slut until pregnancy, she bore me a mighty son about your age now, and to this day she remains my wife by RIGHT!"
"When I won her she was a completely shameless slut, lacking proper wifely submission and unworthy of being my wife, but I CLEANSED the depraved harlot by force! I MADE her worthy of being my bride with a harsh hand! After I first made sure to get her pregnant by me on our wedding night as husbandly honour demanded, I forced that slut to be completely chaste and celibate for an entire year, killed any man or woman who so much as looked at her, I locked her away from any drugs or debauched pleasures, and I prevented her from even touching herself indecently!"
"No matter how much that Slaanesh nymphomaniac sex addicted SLUT wept and begged for sex, I gave her none and forced her to act like a lady. Her sexual appetite was UNBELIEVABLE! For an entire year she tried to seduce me with shameless underwear and outfits! I kept burning her "lingerie" collection and she kept sewing more in her attempts to seduce me to feed her sex addiction, she wept and begged me to let her feel pleasure again, but I was merciless until she was completely broken down from abstinence. I then took the broken down woman and remade her into a wife worthy of me, chaste and proper!"
"Only once she was fully humbled did I grudgingly lay with my wife again, as was my honourable marital duty. She was now a tamed and obedient wife, cured of the Sevenson delusions of female domination, fully knowing her place as a wife who submits to her husband. I had DEFEATED her! Shown her a woman's TRUE place!"
"Just when she was clean and respectable, the craven Sevensons STOLE her back again, my son too, gave her back to the lesbian harlot "wife" she had originally chosen to "marry"! My wife was corrupted all over again with perverted depravity, undoing ALL of my hard work forcing her to be worthy of me, and for all these years I have never stopped hunting to regain what honour demands is MINE!" Galit roared angrily.
"But do you actually want HER back again?," Franklin asked carefully.
"I want my HONOUR back! To steal a warrior's WIFE from him is the WORST dishonour a warrior can receive!" Galit snarled indignantly.
"But did you ever actually love her?," Franklin asked with a sinking feeling.
"Honour DEMANDED that I love my wife, so I FORCED myself to love her as was my husbandly duty! Do you DARE to question my HONOUR!?" Galit roared with murderous challenge, bestial face filled with the full wrath of Khorne and ready to kill!
"No not at all, I was asking about your wife not your honour!" Franklin replied cautiously.
"It is enough that she is mine by right! What business of yours is my relationship with my wife?!" Galit raged.
Franklin nodded placatingly and dropped the subject. This "marriage" was sounding less romantic and more dysfunctional by the second. It didn't take a genius to figure out that this woman had never been a willing participant in the marriage, and had most likely WANTED to be rescued by the Sevensons!
"Now that I have YOU, I can force your cowardly Father to give me back my wife and blood son." Galit snarled triumphantly.
Franklin actually found himself feeling SORRY for this heretical Slaanesh worshipping tech priestess. This woman had been captured, constantly raped for who knows how long by "husbands" she clearly hadn't wanted, forcibly married to a MASSIVE daemon who had then... Consummated, the wedding with private parts presumably PROPORTIONAL to his massive size, been impregnated with some hellish offspring, and then after escaping with her offspring she gets hunted relentlessly by this daemon who doesn't even truly want her at all!
Even for a heretic woman this was a DARK fate!
Franklin would NOT let this happen! This tech priestess should be converted to worship the Emperor on the Painful Path, not married to a DAEMON! Franklin would protect this damsel in distress, he would find some way to stop this horrific daemon from bothering her ever again!
***...
The loss of Franklin didn't stop the Night Lords from continuing their battle to conquer Lavender Furnace. War was still war, and armies didn't stop fighting for the loss of just one soldier. Chaos Lord Luke Sevenson was less than pleased with the men who had cravenly handed over Franklin to the Bloodthirster, but with the fighting still ongoing his vengeance had to wait, but when this was all over they would have to explain their actions to him in person.
The Night Lord army currently had far more pressing problems to deal with. The badly overheated thunderhawks had been forced hundreds of kilometres off course to reach daylight as soon as possible to evade the Bloodthirster, and had had to land under the shade of solar collectors before the heat disabled them. The thunderhawks could go no further until the cool of sundown, and the army had continued north without them, the thunderhawks were uncrewed and daemon controlled anyway so were ultimately expendable.
The convoy of armoured vehicles no longer had Franklin to cool them down, and so headed north with all speed to the cooler latitudes, cooling systems working furiously. The current latitude was cooler than the hellish equator, cool enough that they might survive this.
Things were grim onboard the rhino that had been carrying Franklin, as Malcolm and Yuki tried to think of how they would explain this to Franklin's father. They both assumed that Franklin was now dead, and didn't relish what Luke would do to them.
"I saved the supplies, that Bloodthirster was going to get Franklin anyway. Luke Sevenson must see that." Yuki defended himself.
"I don't want to get my head cut off, Luke will KILL us for this!" Malcolm panicked.
"Maybe Luke Sevenson won't survive the battle?, maybe he might have an...Accident...," Yuki suggested in a conspiratorial whisper.
"And MAYBE Luke's daemon princess wife is reading your minds right now...," TigerLily's voice snarled warningly in both their minds!
"SHIT!" The pair of marines yelled in terror.
"If you kill my husband I will make you wish you had never been born!" The angry daemon princess growled with wrath!
Malcolm and Yuki screamed apologies, insisting it had just been harmless talk!
"I am watching you!" TigerLily warned hatefully and left their minds.
The pair were now white with fear, and drove in absolute silence, afraid to even think. With a furnace outside they had no where to run, and could only drive on in heart numbing dread.
The bad situation was now even worse, and TigerLily would doubtless tell her husband what they had suggested! How the FUCK would they survive this?
The sounds of heavy gunfire and colossal explosions erupting outside then distracted their panic, what fresh hell was this?
The vox crackled into sound, "enemy tanks hitting our rearguard! Thirty hostile rhinos, 2 predators and 1 dreadnought!"
The vox crackled again, "Vanguard under attack! 40 Leman Russ battle tanks!"
"Flanks under attack, it's an ambush!" The vox warned.
Malcolm and Yuki cursed.
The sounds of the battle were deafening as they brought the rhino around to face the nearest threat. Malcolm opened the top hatch and climbed up to operate the pintle mounted combi bolter.
The heat outside was brutal on Malcolm's power armour as he manned the combi bolter. Malcolm desperately used his black carapace gene seed organ to interface with his power armour's onboard cogitator, increasing power to his power armour cooling systems to compensate.
If Malcolm had been relying on a normal backpack power supply that normal power armour used, then he would not have had enough watts to run the cooling system sufficiently to fight THIS heat for more than a few minutes, but Malcolm's armour was plugged directly into the rhino, and had far more watts at his disposal to keep cool.
Malcolm was also profoundly thankful for the insulating heat resistance of ceramite as his red hot power armour glowed on the outside, his flesh inside the armour was merely uncomfortably warm rather than cooked alive! His gene seed organ altered oily sweat also helped, providing an additional insulating layer all over his body, as cooling ports in his black carapace directly refrigerated his blood to keep him cool.
Malcolm swivelled the combi bolter around in 360 degrees of motion on the rotating ring around the hatch, looking all around to see every possible threat in the hot glare. He saw friendly vehicles all around him, but could make out distant enemy tanks a few hundred metres away through the glare.
Malcolm checked the red hot combi bolter, it was currently so hot that ammunition would explode before it got to the chamber! It was a good thing that Malcolm wasn't stupid enough to keep it loaded when not in use!
Malcolm reached inside the rhino and pulled out a heavily insulated chemical spray can labelled "industrial grade emergency coolant". He shook the can and sprayed out a thick white chemical foam all over the combi bolter.
The chemical hissed furiously, as a potent endothermic chemical reaction sucked away kilowatts of heat, bringing the combi bolter down to subzero temperatures in the space of a few seconds. When the gun was as cool as it was going to be, Malcolm reached carefully inside the rhino and pulled a heavily insulated ammo drum from the cockpit ceiling webbing, spraying cooling foam all over the drum before loading it into the foam covered combi bolter.
Malcolm chambered a pair of rounds in the twin barrels and swivelled to face the nearest enemy.
The Night Lord tanks were firing furiously at the attackers, lascannons blasting out laser beams to melt holes in the already overheated enemy armour. Enemy tanks exploded in fireballs, but return fire was destroying Night Lord tanks too.
The rhinos that carried Night Lords were opening their hatches for emergency combat deployment. The Night Lords could not last more than a few minutes outside of a tank in this heat, and were spraying cooling foam on each other's backpack heat exchangers to buy as much time as possible, hopefully long enough to defeat the enemy ambush.
Malcolm fired his weapon at the enemy tanks. The red hot armour was slightly softened by the heat, and the bolts bit deeper than otherwise possible, blasting craters in the thick armour, weakening it to let others strike the killing blows.
The Night Lords on foot were joining in on opening fire on the enemy tanks, and a Leman Russ blasted apart from the combined fusillade of bolters into the soft red metal.
Friendly rhinos exploded around Malcolm, enemy battle cannons blasting them apart!
Malcolm fired with all his might, spraying enemy tanks with vulnerable craters for others to exploit.
The Night Lord infantry were now aided by chaos Raptors, flying at the tanks and landing on the roofs. Franklin's giant brother Augusta was using his super heated lightning claw to rip the hatch off a Leman Russ, exposing the common human crew to the furnace heat outside.
The Leman Russ went still and quiet, the crew cooked to death by the heat as the light poured inside, and Augusta flew away quickly. A few seconds later the Leman Russ exploded, the heat detonating its internal magazine of battle cannon shells.
The raptors and the marines quickly made the difference in the fighting, and the enemy tanks were destroyed in short order.
The Night Lords then scrambled back inside the remaining rhinos, but didn't have enough left for everyone anymore!
The 40 or so Night Lords in this section of the convoy column that were now left stranded on foot desperately approached Malcolm's supply rhino, all of the other supply rhinos were in other parts of the massive convoy, and being similarly approached by stranded marines in their own areas of the convoy!
Malcolm urgently voxed these doomed marines to stay out of this critically important supply rhino, as the entire army depended on these supplies, but the desperate Night Lords threatened to blow up the rhino if they were not allowed onboard!
Yuki cursed and unlocked the hatches.
The Night Lords hurled open the doors and chucked the precious supply crates outside to make room for themselves!
Malcolm watched in horror as the metal crates began to glow red hot, the army NEEDED those supplies but these marines selfishly valued their own lives higher than the good of the army!
BOOM!
An ammunition crate of frag missiles had just exploded in the heat!
The Night Lords unloading the rhino were caught in the blast, entire limbs were blown off in the colossal explosion!
The rhino flipped right over from the explosion! Malcolm ducked down desperately as the rhino rolled upside down, narrowly avoiding being crushed!
The surviving 30 or so Night Lords desperately worked together to flip the rhino the right way up, and then had a vicious fight to the death until only ten remained who could fit into the rhino! These ten vicious killers frantically unloaded the rest of the crates from the rhino, throwing the crates a SAFE distance away this time and, after cooling down for a minute with commandeered cooling chemical foam sprayed on their backpack heat sinks, they collected the pricelessly precious Night Lord gene seeds from the bodies of their dead comrades before the heat could destroy this utterly priceless resource.
The murderous ten Night Lords, strongest of the original 30 who had fought to the death, then embarked into Malcolm's now empty rhino with the harvested gene seeds from all the dead bodies.
Malcolm looked around the rest of the convoy and noticed with horror that EVERY single one of the supply rhinos had been emptied of supplies too! The army now had no supplies!
"The army NEEDED those supplies! You doomed us all!" Malcolm shouted over the internal rhino cabin speakers at these unwanted passengers!
"Shut up and just drive, I'm not dying in the heat for the good of others!" One of the passengers shouted back. The other passengers yelled similar things.
Malcolm and Yuki cursed and just kept driving, they now NEEDED to win as quickly as possible before the supplies ran out! This was already bad enough with a fucking Bloodthirster on the loose without running low on ammo!
The rhino drove with full speed, desperately heading north to hit as many objectives as possible before night. It was a long trip, and they had no idea if more ambushes were waiting for them.
For three hours they drove, until the first objective void shield generator was just over the horizon up ahead.
Malcolm peered through the haze and saw an army of enemy Leman Russ battle tanks waiting for them!
A vox order from the two chaos Lords crackled over the vox, all rhinos were ordered to hang back out of range and unload their passengers with heavy weapons. The heavy weapon marines were to engage the enemy tanks on foot at extreme range to protect the remaining vehicles.
Malcolm and Yuki sighed with relief and hung safely back from the fighting.
Chaos Havocs disembarked and ran forward to get in range. The enemy battle cannons were firing at the havocs in huge blasts, and the havocs were using the huge metal poles of the solar plates as cover from this lethal fire.
Missiles and lascannon beams and autocannon shells shot out from the havocs, and distant tanks exploded.
The havocs had no support from the Night Lord tanks, as the army couldn't afford to lose anymore, and were hammered by the enemy ordinance.
"Returning to supply rhino for more missiles!" Havocs started shouting over the vox and pulling back.
"We don't HAVE any more missiles!" All of the supply rhinos reported urgently!
The havocs had no missiles left!
"Out of autocannon ammo, returning for resupply!" Havocs started reporting.
"We lost ALL of our ammunition supply crates!" The supply rhinos reported grimly!
The havocs had only lascannons left now, with these massive guns constantly recharged by solar panels bolted to the havoc battery backpacks in this intense glare. All other antitank heavy weapons were now out of ammunition!
"Unarmed civilian on foot behind us in refrigerated clothing, be mindful," the vox suddenly warned.
Malcolm swivelled around and trained his weapon on a lone figure. The civilian was completely unarmed and seemingly carried no bomb, wearing a tight fitting red hot refrigerated suit that was already so overheated that it was about to fail. The figure had their open hands raised in peace, body language completely calm.
"SHOOT HER!" TigerLily suddenly screamed in their minds from orbit.
Malcolm and everyone else opened fire on the figure without hesitation, and she instantly exploded in a fountain of boiling gore into the massive diseased bulk of a Great Unclean One! A Greater Daemon of Nurgle! Twenty meters tall and equally wide, putrid diseased bulk hissing and open wet sores boiling in the heat!
"Ho ho ho, 'tis a bit warm this fine balmy morning." The daemon chuckled merrily as it caught fire, so tough that it was unfazed by the heat!
The entire convoy of vehicles opened fire on the vile thing, bolts and lasers blasting into its diseased bulk.
"I have firepower of my own, wayward children." The Great Unclean One chuckled affectionately.
The massive daemon turned around and bent over, pointing it's massive disgusting backside at a nearby rhino. The daemon let loose with a long deafening GIGANTIC fart, and the heat instantly ignited it into a roaring sheet of flame.
The burning fart engulfed the nearby rhino it was aimed at, and the rhino melted into a boiling puddle of liquid ceramite from the supernatural heat of the flame!
"Nurgle welcomes all with the gift of death," the Great Unclean One declared affectionately as gunfire erupted off its blazing backside, and it instantly farted on another rhino, liquefying it!
"Fuck this! RUN!" The vox ordered, and the convoy fled away from the ponderous daemon, pausing only to collect the havocs and gene seeds from a few dead bodies, before then fleeing away from both the enemy tanks and the nigh indestructible Great Unclean One.
The convoy moved at top speed as the daemon waddled slowly after them. Shooting it was a waste of ammunition, they merely had to stay clear of it until the heat eventually burned away it's putrid diseased bulk down to ashes and killed it.
The enemy had won this battle. But the war was far from over.
***...