Haven't got any reviews to date on my other story, so here is some of my Daemonhunters fiction. I don't own 40k (full disclaimer at end) but hopefully I can write good 40k fic. Read, hopefully enjoy, and review if you see fit... Chapter 1!

Confrontations in the Dark

Inquisitor Daria marched through the dark of the underhive, scanning the darkness from behind the silver mask she wore. Her long hafted power weapon was held at rest on the shoulder of her carapace armor. The Inquistor was surrounded by her body guard, a trio of Adeptus Arbites wielding flamers and matching blue carapace armor. Just visible in the dim light were the out lines of gray clad storm troopers, ghosting forward over the small piles of moldering ruble. A noise drew her attention and she activated the scanners in her mask. The disturbing flickering thermal outlines of underhive scavies were suddenly visible to her augmented sight. She issued a single succinct command in a flat emotionless tone, "Kill the observers."
Daria's command was transmitted to every stormtrooper under her command and a hail of hellgun fire rained down on the crouching mutants. Several dropped with piercing cries and the rest fled into the darkness of the tunnel ahead leaving their dead and wounded behind. One squad of stormtroopers rushed to the mutant's position and scanned the darkness for further targets as they executed the survivors. All was still for a moment and then Daria ordered the force to move forward. They entered the tunnel where water dripped onto the cratered floor amid the scurrying of nightmarish vermin and proceeded awhile in silence. Only the quiet hum of imperial issue rebreathers echoed off the walls as the inquisitorial force made their stealthy way forward. A light at the end of the tunnel marked the end of the monotonous silence. The babble of moaning voices, shouted commands, and earthing of wild energies indicated that the Inquisitor may have found her prey. With no noticeable change of expression behind her mask, Daria triggered her vox link and signaled the orbiting strike ship as she gestured for her troops to take firing position near the tunnel exit, "Inquisitor Daria, Contact# 142-830 to Strike ship Emperor's Justice. Inform the grandmaster that we have made contact with a sizable enemy force which may be our target. I will order the teleport homers lit if such is the case..."

The room was dark and quiet; no decorations breaking the austere walls save for a plain bronze aquila. A massive figure knelt in the center of the room, his ornately engraved terminator armor painted a subdued ash gray color. He was helmetless so that the slight motion of his lips could be seen in the incense laden gloom. Before him lay a low altar, candles guttering from its surface, on it lay a massive golden bladed halberd and a shield with a twin pronged end. The near silence of the Grey Knight's vigil was broken as a hidden vox caster spoke, "Grandmaster Judeas, forgive my interruption but the strike force has signaled from the planet that they have encountered the enemy. Its size and composition seem to indicate that it could belong to your quarry. Inquisitor Daria will activate teleport homers if such proves to be the case." "Understood Captain. Signal alpha and delta squads that they are to meet in the teleport chamber for possible assault duty as soon as possible." "As you will, so it shall be." The vox unit deactivated with an audible crack.
Judeas rose, murmured a final prayer and gathered his weapons, He picked up his helmet and twisted it into place, hiding his scarred features beneath the blank steel of the helm. His storm shield was slid over his arm until it locked into place. The halberd was reverently clutched in his shield hand as he strode to the door. Standing before the exit Judeas stated the phrase, "The Emperor protects." The door silently rose and Judeas passed into the hall which led to the teleportation chamber.

Daria picked up her pace, breaking into a near run as the stormtroopers fanned out amid the rumble surrounding the tunnel exit. Wordlessly her trio of guardians kept up with her, the bright pilot lights of their flamers sparking to life as she stepped into the light of the cavity. The decaying concrete dome channeled light into the space from above, illuminating the scene before her all too clearly. Daria calmly took in the sight of the sea of mutants shambling toward their position and the sparking, hovering daemonhosts that shuddered and twitched in their heavy rune engraved chains. The worst sight she saw, the one that caused her eyes to narrow in anger, was the bloated figure in power armor wielding an ebony sword and cloaked in robes marked with a stylized I. The sacred mark of the Inquisition. Here was their prey, one of their own taken by the dark powers and turned to their fell purposes. He had to die before he could do more harm.
As the first of the mutants shambled into weapons range, crude weapons clutched in their malformed limbs, hellgun shots lanced into their ranks. Daria gripped the haft of her weapon tightly as a sign of displeasure when merely a handful fell, the rest ignoring the impact of the lasweapons. One of the hovering daemonhosts vanished only to reappear far back in the tunnel behind them with a maniacal grin on its face. The chaos Inquisitor himself began to shout at his followers in a debased tongue while gesturing with his sword in the Daemonhounters' direction. The oratory was unintelligible to Inquisitor Daria's ears, but the speech fanned the mutants' eagerness into frenzy and they broke into a charge at her force. Daria tonelessly gave her orders, her voice heavy with controlled anger, "Activate teleport beacons. Our target is at hand and we must stand long enough for the Grey Knights to achieve their task. We fight in glory for we serve He who sits on Terra. Fight for the Emperor, may he stand forever." As the beacons were lit, the storm troopers, heartened by the prospect of the Grey Knights coming to their aid, eagerly responded, "For the Emperor!" The mutants were greeted with hails of fire as they closed.

"By the Omnisiah and the Eternal Machine, bear these warriors across the void. 11010011101..." The tech priests continued to chat in binary over the spidery array that dominated one end of the iron black room and sent wiry tendrils all over the teleportation chamber. These tendrils terminated in great cages, studded in circuitry and other Adeptus Mechticanous paraphernalia. Two of these cages held gray armored marines, a pair of Grey Knight squads. One was clad in power armor and knelt in prayer, their halberds held upright and still. The other held a quintet of terminators, their massive forms clustered tightly together. Grandmaster Judeas was one of them. He glanced over his armored shoulders at his bodyguard. Their weapons gleamed with the freshness of new polish and the odor of incense wafted from their armor. The Grandmaster permitted himself a brief smile at the thought of such pious warriors fighting at his side.
The tech priests' chantings took on a more frantic note as one priest, bearing a massive servo arm on his shoulder, called out, "Teleport beacons active. The machine spirit calls out to its father. Praise the Omnisiah as we bring its child to wakefulness. 00110001011011010..." The terminators stiffened slightly and Judeas led them in prayer as the weblike teleport array heated up around them. Halos of energy played off Judeas' armor and the techpriests' chant reached fever pitch. Then, a sudden flare of light flooded the chamber and the Grey Knight Terminators were gone. The remaining Grey Knights vanished shortly afterward and servo-skulls flocked down from the ceiling to inspect the cooling machine.

In the underhive, mutants halted their rush as twin deafening cracks echoed throughout the dome. Grandmaster Judeas and his guards appeared before the leftmost stormtrooper squad, their armored forms towering over their human allies. Litanies of repugnance boomed from hidden speakers on their armor as they raised their storm bolters and sent a barrage of shells thundering into the nearest of the mutant mobs. Judeas merely gripped his golden bladed weapon more tightly as he sensed his target. The enemy Inquisitor looked uneasy at this latest arrival as he plotted how to stop this threat before it broke his army. The mutants stumbled back in stupification, at how these wraith armored killers had appeared before their eyes. As the terminators stepped forward, storm bolters still spitting death, the mutants ran, their courage shattered by the new arrivals.
The other squad of newly arrived Grey Knights rose from their crouch and sent more bolt shells into the ranks of their opponents at the rightmost flank of the mutant mobs. The charge of a wailing daemonhost silenced their guns as they grimly began to hack at the figure with their Nemesis blades, sparks rising as the arcane energies clashed. The center of the line was anchored by Daria herself. Moving forward as bursts of hellgun fire shrieked past on either side of her small unit, Daria sent a bolt pistol shot into the skull of the nearest mutant as the roar of three flamers engulfed the mob. The leaders were devastated, a dozen lying scorched and burning, and the mass of deformed abhumans barely held its ground. The squad charged into assault, the Inquisitor swinging her humming power spear in great sweeping attacks that forced her opponents back. She smashed the butt end of her weapon into the face of her opponent and gutted him with the blade end as he reeled back in pain. She skillfully blocked and counter-attacked, adding two more wiry mutants to her toll before she stopped and gazed at the mutants with a challenging stance. As the mutants moved vengefully forward, her guardians formed a screen in front of her, using their heavy flamers as clubs to repel the feral attackers. One was gutted by a broken bar as Daria gathered her power, the psionic energy flickering around her. She pointed the spear like a focus and a holocaust of spectral flames erupted in the mutants' midst that caught one of her surviving guards and fried him from the inside. The mutants turned and ran leaving, the majority of their companions dead at the female Inquisitor's feet. Judeas ignored the battled around him as he hacked and slashed his way through the largest mob present on that battlefield. None of his guards had fallen, yet the mutants were so numerous that the terminators were isolated from one another, immoveable islands amid an angry sea. His blade steamed as the arcane weapon boiled away the blood that clung to its surface. The degenerates were more determined here, more reckless and heartened by the presence of their leader, the Grandmasters' target. They battered at his armor and he cut one of them one down with a backhanded swing of his weapon. He forced another handful back with a scything swing of his weapon as he brought the weapon to guard. The clatter of metal on metal rang as the mutants attacked the ash grey champion futilely once more. Growing incensed at their stubbornness, he impaled one mutant on the end of his shield, the razor prongs tearing twin wounds in its chest as he hauled it aloft. The wretch screamed pitifully until he ended its pain by crushing its skull where it lay. As the mutants finally broke and ran for shelter, leaving the way clear to their leader, Judeas glanced around and noted that one of his terminators lay dead. Overcome by the sheer number of his opponents, the Grey Knight had been a companion of centuries and his death grieved him, but he would not mourn while the traitor still lived. He called a catechism of challenge as his squad reformed and they ran at the chaos Inquisitor. Two of the traitor's foul daemonhosts still accompanied him and they leapt at the Grey Knights their blind hatred for their opponent's purity of soul blazing in their eyes. The traitor himself sought out Judeas, the power sword now blazing black flames. Judeas momentarily averted his gaze as his auto-filters engaged. He blocked with the shield and its latent power field flared to life as the traitor sought to cut his opponent down with the unnatural weapon. The storm of sparks lifted to find the Inquisitor impaled in the chest by Judeas' Nemesis force Halberd. The traitor twitched and shook as waves of golden flame rushed into his body as Judeas sought to crush his soul. The traitor poured every once of will he had against the force that sought to demolish the keystone of his psyche. The Grandmaster saw snippets of the traitor's lifetime as he gripped that which he sought with his mind and tore the Inquisitors soul out. There was a final flare of flame and a desiccated corpse fell off the golden blade of the massive weapon. Judeas knelt at the side of the slain daemonhosts and closed their eyes as he regained his strength. He looked down at the mutated victims with something akin to pity at their forced damnation. With his terminators looking at him silently, he rose and turned his mind to the battle once more. Coordinated fire from the power armored Grey Knights and surviving stormtroopers was cutting down the last of the mutants inclined to fight as the coldly regal blue armor of Inquisitor Daria gave pause to any foes who wished to stay. Grandmaster Judeas offered a brief prayer of gratitude to the Emperor before ordering his terminators to open fire on the fleeing mutants. His gray armor dimly reflected the light as they thunderously complied.

Legal Disclaimer: I do not own Warhammer 40k in any way, shape or form. That honor belongs to Games Workshop and I'm not contesting that. I don't intend to make any profit from this work and hope that it doesn't get sued. Please...