-/Warning, data file corrupted. Please-
…=+Scan complete. Positive / reading]
/Code Primaris Accepted/
…=+Special materials registered…
/Code Secundus accepted/
Proceed with caution Inquisitor::::
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
[Mark. 79…r((((!*}}]]]]]]]]]]]
-( Vanguard Intruderssss{}SSssstrike teeeaamsssss Data not found*
/-(
/-(
Thought forrrr… Processing. Rendered safe.
{["Welcome to my kingdom Madness. You're just in time for the show…"]}
{["Welcome to my world of Darkness. A place where unreal becomes real…"]}
Four squads stacked up to the command center's blast doors.
Eight men of the seventh company and one of Bruis's black armored acolytes on my side. And ten of the sixty first on the opposite in this industrial grey corridor. I was sixth in the line of bronze Astartes readying their bolt guns. Dangerous place for a command officer but I felt the worst of the battle was over. We had adjusted the auspex scanners to search for the vibrations of heavy things walking in this subterranean labyrinth, like scout titans often did. Indicative of any Xeno walkers waiting on the other sides of the blast doors we had been steadily burning through for the last hour and a half.
Now all that was left was to take this room. Then we could extrapolate how to safely turn off the great geothermal generators or proceed lower and fry the whole system.
Part of me did wish for the reassuring solidity of the Terminator wing, whose armor and skills would have been perfect for such close quarters fighting. But resistance had been minimal once we punched through the first few levels. Slaughtering the synthetic soldiers and their attendees left to guard this place. There had not been as many of the fearsome Knights as Master Bruis had expected. And those we did encounter did not stand against our hard won lessons of battling them.
But still, I opened the squad vox, "Vibrations?"
"Negative," came the acolyte's reply.
I switched frequencies, "John, execute."
The Captain's crescent bladed battle ax waved out of the line motioning one of the men forward. Bolt pistol and chainsword hung at this brother's waist while his hands cradled a melta bomb. Once he had the device magnetized to the door the Marine ducked back.
Arminger voxed, "Ready."
"Go."
The assault marines went first, using their blades to avoid damaging the alien controls before we had a chance to study them. And remove the risk of accidentally shooting a brother in the back in such a close space.
Chainswords roared, combat knives and Arminger's axe flashed. Purple blood spilled as my squad entered, caution staying their trigger fingers. But the alien guards and support staff at the consoles had been put down in the short amount of time it took me to finally enter through the molten portal, the acolyte ready at my side ready with his boarding shield, raise my wrist bolter and see there was no threat. So I took to examining the room.
Bright display screens and glowing consoles covered in alien script ran along both sides of this long slanted box we had blasted into. One space of three stations in a half circle dominated the center on a small raised platform. Four giant holo screens hung above the far end of the room, scrolling through hundreds of lines of status codes and facility outlines. The persistent blue glow around us only slightly obscured by sprays of gore.
I took a place at the center of these consoles and opened my vox, "Egli? Are you receiving?"
The mechanicum adept's answer was laced with static, "Bare… ord. Your vox… By."
I sighed in frustration, "You are breaking up adept. Send last again."
The vox remained silent, "Egli?" I asked, tapping the side of my helmet with the bead link.
I looked to Arminger who was kicking through the bodies looking for anything of interest.
"John comm check," I requested,
He flashed a thumbs up, my helmet link crackled half a second later with his voice, "Commander?"
"Reading,"
It was all part of the process, squad links, company links and then orbital links. Closest to furthest. Arminger paused mid stride heading in my direction then struck the knuckles on his shield hand against his own helm. That motion telling me his ship link appeared to be down as well.
"Enginseer respond," I ordered into the ether of static.
"Commander?" the adept replied.
Finally, I growled to myself, before speaking in demand, "Report adept."
"Oh," Egli replied, "Your helmet vox was having trouble reaching us."
"Evidently not now," I noted. Intermittent vox was always a pain.
"No still now my lord, you're not talking to me. I am talking to you with a much louder voice and better hearing. I'm using the Brimming Rays main communication suite now. No lag guaranteed up to a half AU," The adept boasted, "Your comms should work squad to squad still, just local interference from the power plant. I wouldn't worry about it."
"I hope you saw fit to notify Mistress Read before hijacking her ship's primary systems."
"Nah, its fine. Besides, she needs me to fix the power relays to the officer's lounge later."
"Very well," I replied, "Shall we?"
The enginseer muttered to himself narrating his own actions, setting up our new link, "…Alright. Helmet recorders are in the clear. Show me what you've got Commander."
Slowly I began to pan over the holograms before me, transmitting the images back to the battle barge where Egli waited with the translation program. On the third panel he halted my scan.
"There," The Enginseer indicated, but then clarified before I could remind him of how little that word meant, "Below that center graph. Power levels are holding stable by the way. That line of one centimeter blue bars eight centimeters up, touch the first one please."
Delicately I brought the tip of my right index claw up and then down. Lines of alien script flowed out from another pop up data box. Egli continued talking quietly to himself.
"No that's nothing. Some message to defy the invaders to the last blah blah blah, die with honor moving on… Try the adjacent bar to the right."
"I do not believe this is what we seek Enginseer."
"Yeah," He agreed. "Go to the middle panel, those circular,"
This time the communications dropped out like they had been struck by an ax. The line clicked once and Egli's voice disappeared. I sighed cursing this place. But then beat back the exasperated feeling and choose to act like a Commander.
"Captain Arminger," I called out through my helmet vox,
"We've lost squad comms Commander," My second said, "Moments ago when you were speaking with the Enginseer."
That was problematic, "Blast it… Gather the squads and fall back to the surface. We shall bomb this station from orbit,"
I was looking forward to fighting on the other planets in this system. Where we did not have to restrain ourselves and could use more saturation bombing to weigh the odds in our favor. But the Mechanicus was due its tithe of the bones of alien technology.
The assault captain stepped to my side, "Commander if we disable the core with EM charges this jamming should relent. No need to bother the Praetor."
"You don't know that. We won't be able to call for support should we require it."
Arminger growled frustrated, "We don't need back up, we gather our men and move as one. I grow tired of these alien tricks."
He held up his ax and tilted his head as if there was some mutual understanding already.
I found myself nodding, swayed by his words. Tempted by pride, "Very well. Form up Captain, I shall collect the seventh."
But in spite added, "And investigate if this interference is not as severe on higher levels."
My chosen and the acolyte followed in my footsteps, bolters ready to gun down anything that leapt from the shadows at us. Yet all we saw were the still warm remains of the already dead as we made our way to one of the titanic exhaust vents we had passed through on our way down to the control room. Free space to the sky beneath the Xeno's city forge.
More steps slick with purple blood led us up to the catwalk of our destination. The structure just as impressive as I remembered. The circular spire through which gentle clouds of exhaust steam drifted up from the depths. The blocked off walkway wide enough for a trio of rhinos to drive along side by side. Its radius almost half a kilometer long, one of our brothers had determined with a laser designator.
I clicked my vox once again trying the company frequencies and direct lines to the Brimming Rays but still found only static filling the airwaves.
"Commander Skius!"
My wrist bolter almost came up, the warriors around me flinched. But I quickly banished that startled spike from my chest. It was an Astartes voice dim with distance, calling out my name. I scanned looking for the owner.
Across the vent one warrior emerged from another dirty black metal corridor. The legionnaire's gunmetal grey armor and jump pack coated in splashes and blotches of purple, and red blood. The fifteenth legion Sergeant Vallo, chainsword in his right hand.
Dragging an alien corpse by the neck in his left…
Curious I turned up my helmet and chest mounted vox amplifiers as loud as I could, "Sergeant Vallo! Report!"
His head shook, a violent twist to the side and then back. The legionnaire did not appear to hear me.
Vallo raised up the body by its throat, one of the armored pilots. Where he had come across the Xeno absent its steed and killed it I could only guess. Vallo regarded it for a moment, then threw the corpse down the exhaust vent.
"Do you see it Commander?" Vallo yelled out to me rasing his sword, his voice was gnarled into a deep growl.
I did not know what he meant, I flicked two of my right claws signaling my men to move closer. My curiosity was shifting into caution.
Vallo called again, "Can you feel that?"
"What Sergeant?" I asked him, "What is happening?"
He did not answer me. Vallo suddenly let out a cry of pain and fell to his hands and knees.
Suddenly the squad links came back loud and clear, letting me hear the tail end of Vallo's muttering.
"…Day be gone and damn the sun."
"Sergeant?" I called again.
Hi voice was shaking, struggling to come forth in between deep breaths, "I… I can't… Get back…"
I thought he was addressing me. Warning us to stay away. But then Vallo stood and screamed a single word.
"Daemon!"
In his right hand Vallo now held another body. Taken up into sight from behind the solid safety rail. A legionnaire, one in the bronze and black of the Dawn Stalkers. I assumed the man was dead at first. Then I saw his right arm begin to rise, grasping for Vallo's choking grip.
At once I knew what was about to transpire.
"Vallo! Stand down!" I yelled raising my wrist bolter, putting away thoughts about his peculiar choice of vernacular for whatever he was describing.
Even over this considerable distance I saw the Sergeant's helmet turn my way. I knew Vallo heard my order, and was dead set on ignoring it.
I fired three shots. The mass reactive rounds leapt forward, the blasts echoing across the chamber. The bolters of my chosen barked as well half a heartbeat later. But none of our shots reached their mark. The shells exploded harmlessly in midair. Vallo reached down and took the right leg of our brother in his left hand and raised him up over his head.
But he hesitated.
Two voices seemed to be coming from the man. A cackle gnarled with interference over the vox.
"The mass of dark has begun!"
But then… In the distance… Sergeant Vallo's desperate and cast in an unearthly tone of terror like he realized was about to do.
"NOOO!"
Yet the Sergeant cast the still living legionnaire into the abyss. Fury choked my throat, I raised my bolter again to end this mad traitor. Shells flew but still failed to reach Vallo, only this time instead of exploding they reversed their course.
Cold flooded my system, "Down!"
The acolyte crouched and raised his boarding shield. I threw myself flat hearing the snap of parting air behind the mass reactive shells flying past.
Then the heavy crash of Astartes bodies falling dead.
"Bastard!" I swore under my breath, peeking over the heavy railing. Four of my warriors had been decapitated by their own bolt shots. A dull ache of rage centered in the middle of my forehead.
Astartes didn't kill Astartes. The thought was unheard of. It broke every law of brotherhood we were built on. This heinous crime brokered no excuse or justification for its existence. I was going to tear Vallo limb from limb when I got my claws on him for this.
I snarled beneath my helmet, studying the traitor. The other warriors each down on a knee and ceased fire but kept their bolters trained.
Vallo's menacing voice called out again filling the air with a twisted hymn, and he raised his arms up to the ashen sky, "Let there be night!"
The deck beneath my boots began to rumble. My helmet sensors detected a sharp rise in temperature. More steam shot out of the depths like some great beast had begun to exhale.
From far below, a growing light began to cast long shadows up the vent.
Something at the back of my mind whispered an uncomfortable word. One I had left behind in the dark nights of my childhood.
Sorcery.
A dark term that had been erased from our vocabulary which left a bitter taste in the back of my throat. But nothing else seemed apt with this display. It was as if I had been teleported into the caldera of a volcano. Heat levels were rising. Fire erupted before my eyes, shooting up like a geyser. Tinted with hues even we Astartes had been taught to beware of.
Deep twists of every shade of red known. Things I had glimpsed before void shielded blast panels shut down on star ship windows entering the Warp.
"No," I told myself, cold logic soothing my thoughts, "Coincidences all. The Xenos are activating some self-destruct protocol… But Vallo…"
Metal began to melt around me. Brothers threw up their free hands and backed away from the blazing torrent. I kept flicking my eyes left and right. Knowing Vallo was still on the other side of this. Waiting for the traitor's charge.
A dark blemish began to emerge in the flames. I thought nothing of it at first. But that proved to be a mistake. The spot became larger and larger, a silhouette grown and suddenly shot from the wall before I even realized my error.
Vallo. His armor steaming and starting to blacken, the ruby eyes on his helmet staring down upon me like a gargoyle. His empty hands raised talons set to strike.
I swung up my right arm and the bolter upon it but he crashed into my chest and knocked me flat. Springing off my breast plate at the acolyte. Rolling to my stomach I prepared to gun Vallo down. The Sergeant threw a right hook, denting the black boarding shield swung into place. His left hand swept back towards my chosen and I.
The light faded behind me. An invisible force slammed into me like a ram and before I knew it I found myself flying without the aid of a jetpack. Crashing the back of my knees into the safety rail and sent spinning into the void.
Others fell, my remaining five brothers sent spiraling to their doom with no hope of survival.
My back struck against the wall. That dull thud bringing my mind to the one chance I had of surviving. I turned myself around and stretched my claws out to grasp the black metal wall. The mono edged points slid through like a hot knife through snow, carving deep as I fell close to ten meters. An earsplitting screech of rending metal sounding all the way down until my momentum was stopped.
My eyes must have been as wide as saucer plates, I felt the urge to shout in amazement as I scrambled for grip with my boots. Dull thuds of ceramite against ceramite cracked above me.
There was still a traitor I needed to kill.
I raised my left gauntlet and sank the energized points deep into the metal. Kicked my boots down hard denting in footholds. Using all my strength to begin ascending back to the fight.
The acolyte was bleeding, chunks torn out of him by what looked impossibly like Vallo's bare hands. Red gashes rent from the thickest parts of the black mark II plate. The traitor was ducking and dodging wild swings of the power sword aimed to kill, blocking the improvised jabs of the boarding shield with his red coated hands. The young Diaconus refused to go down easy.
Yet his valiant efforts only delayed the end so far.
Vallo stepped inside the next wide swing, catching the acolyte's right arm by the wrist with his left hand. Then raising up his right elbow and hammered down on the overstretched limb. I heard both armor and bone crack as I threw myself over the rails.
The Sergeant may have lost his sanity, but he still possessed sense for the martial arts. Maintaining his iron grip, he moved beneath the marine's broken arm. Flipping the acolyte head first onto his back. Vallo's boot came up.
I struck before it fell and crushed his black helmet. All ten points of my claws pierced his armored sides and I pushed him back almost chest to chest. Throwing my full weight at the traitor.
From deep in his lungs and helm I heard a bestial snarl, Vallo gripped my shoulder pauldrons and threw a head butt crashing his visor into mine then shoving me back.
Feet braced I swung up my right hand extended to the limit of my reach. Faster than I thought possible Vallo moved and backhanded his right gauntlet into my wrist bolter brushing the lethal talons away. He stepped again and crushed a boot down onto my bending knee.
More in shock than pain I grunted and fell forward. For only the briefest moment, but more than enough for Vallo to close back with the acolyte.
Sickening familiar twin crunches hit my ears and boiled the blood in my veins. It was the sound of cracking armor and flesh rending coming from behind as I turned to face them.
His back to me, Vallo had his both of his hands buried up to the forearm in the acolyte's body. One sank into the warrior's gorget and the other buried in his guts beneath his fused ribs. All this I saw as I moved to fire,
Two shots flew, the last from my bolter's magazine I suddenly realized. The first barely grazed Vallo's kidneys, the second blew a chunk of meat the size of a helmet away when it penetrated and exploded in red mist and armor pieces.
The Sergeant slowly rotated his head back, tearing his hand free of the acolyte's stomach.
Words nearly failed to enter my mind and describe what happened next, as I didn't even believe my own eyes. Unclotted blood poured from the wound, but it didn't spill onto the floor like I had seen a thousand times before. The crimson tide defied all the laws of physics and stayed linked to Vallo's hand.
Growing, turning sharp and almost crystalline as he pulled it away until the red tendrils finally snapped. And the Sergeant's hand was adorned in a twisted mirror of weapons on my own hands.
In his other bloody palm Vallo held another piece of flesh. Something that only apothecaries were supposed to handle once a legionnaire was slain. An unnatural organ each one of us bore within our breast, set in the moment we had begun to transcend humanity.
"Shall I tell you of your father, creature?"
I had not thought a voice could contain such malice, nor sound so vile coming from a Human as Vallo goaded me with into responding.
It worked, I admit it. Black rage crept into the corner of my visions, and an almost inhuman roar leapt from my throat. Stealing all sense of tactics and blade play from my mind.
I swung high then down with both hands looking to shred his helmet. Vallo threw the red glob behind him into the abyss. Another set of bloody claws sprouted on his right hand. He stepped and intercepted my hands with his own. Our fingers interlocked, muscles straining to push the killing blades down
His snarling voice taunted me again, "Drowning in a sea of tears, and screams of pain…"
No… He could not now, only the Emperor possibly had any knowledge of our lost father. He would know. We would know...
"Lies!" I screamed into his face, "Slithering bastard! Witch spawn!"
The Sergeant's helmet turned, cocked like a curious dog at my challenge. As if only now he chose to see me. Our struggle brought the gnashing claws down between our chests.
"Witch spawn?" The words sounded like a question, "Does that not include you, Brother? That burning black venom in your veins calls…"
I snarled and threw my right shoulder into him breaking this sparking dead lock and quickly swung high with my left while I stabbed low from the right. Vallo managed to catch my arms but I proved too strong for him, though I felt the stinging bite of his blood claws tearing into my skin.
"Meaningless words!" I spat back, "Show me steel traitor!"
My left claw wrapped around his skull, screeching and tearing through the ceramite like tissue paper. Leaving brutal scars across the scalp and two deep burning gouges along where his jawline would be, as Vallo pushed back my shaking arm before I could snip his head off like a gardener pruning flowers.
"Come brother." Vallo hissed, "I will sooth your deepest fears, and free your brain!"
I growled back a response. We grappled, trying to bring our talons to bear. Vallo edged out his boot behind one of mine and threw his full weight at me. Maintaining his death grip he turned and threw us to the railing.
The barrier almost buckled beneath our weight. Vallo pinned me down, locking my left arm back and latching his own left hand around my throat. Fending off my snapping claws with his elbow.
Air ceased to flow into my lungs, firey points dug through my bodysuit and skin.
My lightning claws pierced his armor and body again and again but the Sergeant remained unfazed.
Vallo forced my head back and I felt the top of my armor's power back hit my neck. I managed to catch a single breath of air.
But what I beheld in the distant sky immediately took it away.
I had heard stories, terrible tales of insanity and ruin. I had read reports and even once seen the results of this upon a ship.
The Warp was boiling over.
The sky we had spent days fighting under had disappeared. Shifted into a swirling mess of ethereal fire I was being forced to look upon in all of its,
"Behold!" Vallo growled, I managed to force my head down away from the boiling sky, "And despair! Glory for eternities! To claim the throne!'
I did. I witnessed something that sent chills into my hearts and would haunt my mind forever.
The glowing lines my claws left on his helmet grew radiant. The laws of physics and thermal dynamics cast out of control. The tortured metal warming again instead of cooling.
It looked like a smile,
A gruesome display fit for a leering predator from the blackest corner of a death world. The helmet crumpled and morphed. Those burning cuts becoming a screaming mouth blasting scorching air and a howl of fury that had no place in this world. Molten ingots like teeth dripped between cracked new lips. But between those growing incisors, I saw part of Vallo's face of flesh and blood.
And his own mouth. Skin covered in bleeding boils. Jaw unhinged and locked open.
Waiting for a scream of terror that would not come.
The eyes on Vallo's helmet shone as if they could see right through me. Every fiber of my being was straining to break free. To be anywhere else but here.
I slowly began to force my pinned left arm back up, every centimeter a hard fought victory for my oxygen deprived body. I did not expect to do any damage with this motion. Merely the first part of my final effort to escape, for next I wrenched my arm backwards. Feeling Vallo's claws slide through my skin but freeing my own talons.
Using this liberation to swing them with all my might back at the Sergeant's head.
Vallo tried to block with his right arm.
Which I cut in half.
Sailing forth, my armored palm bounced off his shoulder and crashed into his helmet. Not my desired result of shredding that warped screaming helm, yet I managed to stun the Sergeant and break his hold on my neck.
I threw myself up and forward, launching a gutting stroke at Vallo's stomach. Which ripped his unguarded insides to shreds and sending a spray of blood across the deck as I came to my feet.
Vallo snarled and stabbed with his last blood talon. Swift as a striking snake I clamped down on that wrist with my right. Pulled it back up and down in a jagged rotation, hearing the bone within contort and snap.
Leaving Vallo wide open for my left claw that I stabbed into his shoulder joint, and effortlessly tore his left arm free.
Defenseless, the renegade stumbled backwards. Keeping his eyes on me like a cornered rat. Glowing false teeth bared in a chilling smile that did not move as he tried to taunt me for the last time.
"Well struck brother." He complimented me with a sucking laugh, "We are impressed… Perhaps there still is a place for your get at this table."
There was a quiet hiss of pain in his twisted voice this time. Vallo held up his remaining arm, as if to accept his fate and taking another step back.
"Come offer me your sacrifice, there's no escape. Your path runs with us, not against us. Final truth will set you free. As a slave eternally!"
My reply was short and succinct.
I punched up from the right. My talons gouged out the numeration proudly centered on his chest and shot out from the top of his skull and helm. Ending Vallo's mad ramblings along with his life an instant before I tore his head off, which I flicked away and sent thudding away into darkness.
There I stood breathing in and out as deep as I could. Still feeling like there was a hand around my throat and ten thousand ants crawling over my skin.
Not for the first time I gave silent thanks to our creator for how resilient He had forged we who were to be His crusade's vanguard. I realized with a cold rush of adrenaline that I must quickly put Vallo's ranting false prophecies to the back of my mind. No matter how many more questions they had left me with.
Logic told me the rampant psyker with all his tricks was dead and those were troubles for another time.
For now there was a solution to the sudden Warp storm overhead to be found.
Far more importantly and pressingly though, I became aware of the sounds of distant bolters.
A great many bolters.
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
A/N
So finished getting my LEED Green associates certification. Decided to celebrate with a new chapter. There are Two definite and one kind of reference in the same vein here, happy hunting.
As always, share if you care. Review as you do. If you can bring yourself to. Think I'll get another two or three chapters done on this before going back to ITGD. Kinda want to finish it before the big thing,