It had been a while since Kais killed his last human. Realizing that Dolumar IV had occurred well over a year ago made the Fire Warrior feel… sentimental, he supposed? It was a weird feeling, fondness for the bloodshed. Of course, what was even more disturbing was how he felt about pretty much everything in general right now. Under normal circumstances any sensible Tau warrior would be feeling scared, perhaps angry, maybe even a little bit pessimistic about his odds for survival. Kais… felt none of that. There was nothing there. Literally, just a vacuum where those normal pesky emotions should be hiding. All Kais felt was, intrigue? Yes, intrigue was the correct word. In place of all those emotions lingering within the Tau gene-pool which gave adaptable mental survival traits was instead a calm of the likes of which the Fire Warrior had never before experienced. He wasn't scared, just curious how he was going to kill all the guardsmen scattered throughout the hospital. It was like a puzzle… a puzzle he had to solve with guns. There was no elaborate preamble to his rampage. No heroic speech upon the facilities vocal address system where he makes a mockery out of killing them all. On the contrary, all Kais did was enter a random room and start shooting people.
…
"Wee-hoo these here blue skins ain't that tough," cheered a guardsman as he slit the throat of a wounded Tau male whose skin was blotched in some sort of bacterial infection, while the creature struggled, kicking the white sheets of his hospital bed with hooved feet. It was kinda pathetic all things considered. These here aliens weren't worth the Imperial Guard's time of day. This was the seventh hospital room the assorted gang of troopers had cleared of survivors left behind from some sort of hastily planned xenos evacuation, and thus far ain't a single blueberry fought back worth a flying shit. They was' just-a killin' the worst of the wounded who couldn't of been moved in time, and killn' them was like strangling mutant babies in their cribs.
Suddenly, the door opened behind the guardsman with a hydraulic woosh, "That you Sarge? You done a' play'n with that their blue skin nurse?" The trooper laughed out loud… and was shot in the back of the head blowing his brains out of his eye sockets in a gore ridden evaporation of pink steam.
…
Kais calmly shot the first Guardsman in the head at ten paces just after having entered one of the hospitals General Holding Rooms. There was no war cry, or gesture to alert the stupid bastard. Kais, out of combat reflex and with no preamble, just pointed and popped the man without a second thought. The trooper's compatriots lingering within the room at first didn't know what was going on, and were slow to react. So, the Fire Warrior tracked his stolen Guard Issue Lasrifle across the room, shooting two more men as they stood up from their murdering of the wounded left behind from the prior Tau military evacuation.
The second trooper caught two beams of lancing las-light center mass and fell backwards against a hospital bed with a gurgle of evaporated water steaming from his cooked lungs. A third trooper stumbling across the room to get his own lasrifle leaning against the wall took an energy lance in the shoulder. Kais watched the man spin in midair, tumbling to the ground with a wet smack. Without remorse, the Fire Warrior calmly walked through the disorderly chamber, over numerous discarded objects upon the floor, and with the rifle held nonchalantly in one hand blew the troopers face off at two paces.
There was a muffled yell of alerted voices somewhere nearby and the Fire Warrior heard running footsteps coming down the hallway. Quickly, Kais took out a Terran combat talon and waited next to the doorway. A single panicked guardsman ran into the room without checking his corners. Kais stabbed the man in the ribs with one hand, and as the trooper contorted from pain, the Tau aptly fired his lasrifle at point blank range up and into the human's face. Bone, blood, and hair splattered onto the ceiling in a thin pink paste as Kais used the combat talon to spin the human corpse around as makeshift shield while exiting the room.
Three more troopers instantly opened-up with their Lasrifles on full-auto, standing outside in a semi-circle, as the xeno warrior waltzed out into the hallway. The beams of red light trembled the decapitated corpse with steaming whelps as the Fire Warrior steered the fleshy remains by blade, using the human body as a makeshift shield. The resulting gun battle occurred at five paces as Kais, once more one handed, fired kill shots with his stolen rifle. All three troopers crumpled over into stuttering broken shells, one human still instinctively toggling his trigger finger wildly in death as he fell over, cascading las-beam fire down the hallway.
Kais tossed the dead and heavily gored troopers remains aside and took a brief opportunity to reload the stolen Guard rifle. His fingers fumbled with the unfamiliar breaching mechanism despite his best efforts. Mentally, he took a brief body count… Ou'tau (10). He had killed ten troopers thus far including the ones back at his containment cell. Not bad, but he was just getting started.
Still there was precious little time to reflect upon such matters as Kais heard more footsteps running towards his position. The Fire Warrior looked at the dead troopers at his heels and grinned humorously as he took a primitive frag grenade attached to the stolen Terran flak armor. The device was rather simplistic. All he had to do was pull the pin and keep the lever pressed down to avoid triggering the internal fuse.
…
"Sir, over-here! We got ourselves some wounded!" yelled a Guardsman leading a small band of his comrades towards the gored bodies resting ramshackle upon the hallway floor. Damn-it all! The hospital was supposed to be secure following their initial sweeps. All his platoon had to do now was just some mop-up of these pansy-ass blue xenos. The very idea that some Emperor forsaken turd muncher was runinn' around fragn' his buddies was unnerving.
One of the troopers, the first one to reach the tumbled over remains of his dead buddies, hunched over the most intact body lying upon the floor hoping that this man might have taken some glancing fire and was merely unconscious. Before anyone could stop him… the trooper tried to roll the body over.
What happened next happened to quickly for anyone in the group to react. As the dead trooper was rolled over onto his back… a compressed frag grenade sitting under his belly blew its ignition pin and popped comically into the air before rolling gently to a stop a meter away into the crowd of armed men. None of them had the common sense to quickly react. Five seconds later the grenade exploded.
The man kneeling on the floor tending to the other dead troopers lost his right arm and most of his face instantly. A split second later, most of his organs were pulped into bloody ruins by the fragmentation chaff. Another trooper was blown back by the concussive force and stumbled against the wall smearing bloody fingerprints from some shrapnel wounds to his legs. The last trooper took a flying piece of metal to his throat cutting a deep bloody gash through his wind-pipe. All three men had their eardrums blown out and couldn't hear anything but their own dulled screams. They had just enough time to realize how totally fragged there were as a tiny little shit blue xeno peered around an adjacent three-way corner junction to the hallway and opened fire with a stolen Lasrifle killing any survivors.
…
Kais laughed to himself as he ran away from the Imperial Guardsman he had just shot up. If the humans didn't realize that they were under attack earlier, they sure did now because it was highly unlikely that the grenade explosion went unnoticed. His actions, though effective and inspired, now also limited things. They were going to be alert following his attack, and less inclined to fall for such easy tricks. So, he pondered how best to approach things as they closed the noose around his location. The hospital was a big place with lots of room to hide, but by the same token his actions were limited given their numerical superiority. They still had the bodies to pin him in. Unless… well… he could always attack. The Fire Warrior grinned to himself, yes, he could attack them and stay on the offensive.
As the fire warrior ran down the hallway he could hear more troopers briskly moving to intercept him from an adjacent corridor. They were going to meet at a T-junction up ahead. What to do? What to do? Kais had a moment of inspiration as he took one of the stolen Gue'la frag grenades from the combat webbing, pulled the pin, and intentionally let the ignition prime. Mentally, he counted down while running with the live grenade: Ki'au, Mu'au, Pi'au. At two remaining intervals, he threw the grenade at an angle so that it bounced off the T-junctions wall and into the running troopers line of sight.
"Is that a fra-!" yelled a human male right before a loud explosion decorated the air with a thin haze of red mist and a swash of vita slashed across the T-junction wall like someone had thrown a bucket of paint.
…
Kais didn't even slow down. He rounded the corner and pressed down on the trigger filling the hallway before him on full-auto with las fire. There were five of them. One man, crawling away on broken legs with blown off kneecaps, took four las rounds to his back and stopped moving. Two men holding their gored eyes melting blood from their sockets screamed as they took lances to the chests, evaporating flesh and causing them to contort wildly before falling over dead. Another man, missing his left eye and bleeding from his sternum tried to fire on the fly with a single hand. Kais blew the right side of his face off while running forward into melee range. The last human tried to batter the xeno away with his rifle. The Fire Warrior tackled him to the ground, pushed the rifle away as the human pulled down the trigger cascading the red lances away wildly into the surroundings, and stabbed the human in the eye socket with a combat talon. This last human opened his mouth to cry out in pain, but the best he could manage was a surprised gasp as he died. Kais slit his throat just to make sure and stood up. More footsteps were converging in from behind. Apparently, he had been correct. They were going to try and encircle him. Unfortunately, the Fire Warrior had already escaped the trap and used a few precious seconds to strip some of the human corpses for ammo before escaping. Mentally, he calculated how many Gue'la he had snuffed out so far. Ou'oiu (18). Not bad. Not bad at all.
…..
"What-choo mean there's some dingle-berry' running around fragn' our buddies!?" demanded Lieutenant Shark as he took a large-red-metal-can of liquid promethium and started to douse it upon a gagged blue-skin tucked away into one of them their cog-boy barrels. The little frager was screaming himself flush with the gag in his mouth as the Gue'la finished his task, tossing the empty can aside without a second thought.
"It's like I said LT, one of dem critters done got feral on us. At first we thought we'd just corner the little bastard, but then he done gone and blew up about a dozen guys to pieces with grenades and what-not," reported a lone private.
"Well… dog-gone-it, and here I was a-hopn' we could just mop up these here blue berries and get back to the proper killn' in the city," said the Lieutenant as he struck a match to light his cigar. The human took a few deep puffs and promptly tossed the still light match into the barrel. The Tau screamed and pulled at his restraints as the liquid promethium alight and quickly covered him in hot red flames. The two guardsmen stood watching the alien burn like a mother-frager, grins upon their faces, "Ahhhh… frag this shit! Get Berny and his crew to sweep the rooms with flamers. Ain't nothin' as beautiful as some damned XE-NO turned into burned bacon in da' mornin'."
…
Kais was hiding in the sub-roof of a private hospital room when the gas masked man walked in and started spraying a fume of flaming gas across the interior. The Fire Warrior could hear the Gue'la laughing to himself as the bedding started immolating along with the remains of a dead Earth Caste woman. The scent of tainted flesh and charred plastic sept throughout the floor as more men and women of the Imperial guard wondered around with their clumsy equipment torching everything in sight.
Something about the fire, the smoke, the meat… triggered a primal part of Kais's mind. He could feel it in the back of his head, the whispering, and his mouth watered with salivation. The human man was below him, laughing and burning away with his chosen tool of destruction. The Fire Warrior could smell his stench, that sweat of human fat on his tongue. His mind wanted it, wanted it more than anything in his entire life. 'Rip and tear,' whispered the voices, 'rip and tear,' they demanded again and again. Kais shook his head, but they wouldn't leave him alone. The smell, the taste of it, he couldn't take it.
…
Berny loved his flamer. Some part of his mind thought of the tool as somewhere between a phallic extension and an actual woman. If Berny could have made love to his framer, and made little flamers together, and died together in a giant bonfire, he would have. The curves of the tanks, the way it felt when he set some poor bastard to the torch. He loved his job, the look on those alien faces when he light them up like a dried-out pine tree. And so, it was, he laughed and laughed as a small blue shadow crept down from the ceiling, teeth wet with hunger, gasping heavily like some sort of beast.
When it happened, it happened fast. The alien was upon him, stabbing him in the face, tarring through the gas-mask eye lens and going right into the brain with a combat talon. Berny had just enough consciousness left when the alien started to dig his teeth into his neck. That part scared him.
Berny had fought many a fragging alien, but none of them had actually tried to eat his body let alone some turd-thunking blue berry Tau. What was wrong with this critter? Well, it didn't matter. Berny faded away just as the Tau sat rod-straight on his chest and laughed manically with glee as streams of red blood trickled down his chin and throat.
…..
Kais felt something inside of him unhinge. He could feel it shift like someone turning off a light switch. One moment, he was a Tau warrior apathetic to the task of murdering the guardsmen throughout the hospital, and the next… he was liberated. Truly free, free of the bonds of civilized thought.
He sat upon the dead human and felt the warm blood trickle down his throat. It felt good. It felt right. Kais looked at the flamer lying motionless upon the floor and felt a sudden need to kill. It wasn't a rational feeling born out of the desire for survival. This was something else. It was a thrill, a lust for blood burning inside his mind and taking over his libido. The Fire Warrior took the tank of promethium from the human troopers back and strapped it on. The handles of the flamer felt comfortable in his hands as he laughed wickedly and ran out into the hallway in a crazed frenzy.
Two humans instantly looked at him with bewilderment. Kais sat them on fire, and then ran past their immolating bodies as they spun and twirled trying to pad down the flames. The Fire Warrior ran, he ran and hunted, coming face to face with another gas masked human. At first the trooper tried to raise his flamer to hit the charging Tau, but failed to react quickly enough.
Kais tackled the man, pulled his head aside, and bit into the neck. A gush of blood erupted like a spray and the Tau took the Gue'la's melon of a head and bashed it against the floor until it felt like jelly. With maniacal laughter, the insane Tau stood to his feet and ran away looking for more humans. He didn't have to run far. A group of them were guarding the perimeter, but they were relaxed. Kais rounded the corner, and doused them flames as well. The stench of burning pink flesh and padded clothing filled the hallway as they tumbled over wreathing in agony as hair and skin melted off their bodies.
There were six of them in all, contorting like blackened mummies upon the floor. Kais didn't give them a second thought as he ran past their smoking corpses coming face to face with another human male. This one looked startled as the Fire Warrior grabbed him by the shirt and threw his body to the floor. Here the Gue'la landed with a wet smack and started to crawl away, "Monster, it's a god-durn monster!" he yelled.
Kais laughed with approval and light the man on fire. The human rolled over and over on the floor much to the Tau's amusement as the liquid promethium burned away his clothing, skin, and features leaving a charred leather corpse behind. And then… something changed. Something was wrong. Kais looked at this hands gripping the flamer. He was covered in human blood. When had he… oh god… he had just.
The Fire Warrior took the tank off his back and threw it aside. Quickly, he ran into a nearby hospital room and looked at his reflection in a mirror. Blood, human blood was everywhere. He was completely covered in it. Yet, he didn't feel anything… except for perhaps bewilderment. What had just happened? How did he just lose control? Why did it feel soooo good? Kais did a quick mental calculation. Pau'oiu (28). Twenty-eight dead humans. That was more than half, and certainly pleasing to his regained sensibilities.
…
When Lieutenant Shark saw the bodies, he felt his blood chill. That damned Tau blue-berry had gotten ahold of some of their kit and done did a damned rampage. Berny was fraging dead. The xeno had fraging eaten him. Most of the men going through the area had been fraging cooked. It was a fraging mess, and it was… scary. Lieutenant Shark was man enough to admit when he was fraging scared. It ain't no liberal thing to admit encountering something which sent hairs on ends. This Tau turd, he fought like a fraging devil. Half the platoon was dead, and they hadn't so much as fraging seen the bastard yet and lived to tell the tale.
What was left of the Unit was here with him, gathering the charred and broken dead soldiers from the hospital complex out into the central plaza. It wutin' right, being made a group of yellow belly cowards from a single fraging Tau blue-berry! But, what choice did the Lieutenant have? The little bastard had picked his platoon apart piecemeal until they were at half strength.
As Shark thought things, he heard something clatter down with a metallic thud nearby, into the gardens. His eyes instinctively focused in on a promethium tank resting suspiciously near a parked Salamander where some of the dead bodies were being loaded for transport. Something was wrong. That tank shouldn't be there. He slowly started to back away as a sudden feeling of being watched crept into his mind.
….
Kais grinned wickedly as he stood on the roof of the hospital and looked down into the patient plaza where the wounded could enjoy the gardens during their rehabilitation. The Gue'la had appropriated this area as a makeshift command post and were spread out dealing with numerous dead bodies from his madness. From his position of cover the Tau Fire Warrior did a head count. Pau'au (22) The remainder of the Gue'la soldiers all gathered together in one spot. This was perfect, and Kais made his plan, assembling his rifle ammo in easy each, stolen frag grenades lined up in a nice neat row... those fools, they had made it sooo easy.
With a well-placed throw, the Fire Warrior chugged the promethium tank from his captured flamer into the plaza right next to an armored Salamander. Only a single human noticed the fuel tank land, and started to instinctively back away. Good man, good instincts, but far too late. Kais took his stolen Lasrifle, aimed, and fired a single shot.
…
The world turned into a flaming hell before anyone knew what was happening. Three troopers went down instantly from shrapnel wounds as the Salamander buckled, upended, and came crashing down like the wrath of the god-emperor itself from some sort of massive explosion. Before anyone could respond, sniper fire cut down another four from the roof with lancing beams of light. Six more died from grenades landing all around the plaza. Their bodies were flung into the air where they disintegrated into fragmenting pieces of flesh held together by their combat fatigues. Blood, fire, and twisting metal exploded through the exposed plaza taking down a pair of xeno trees split asunder and torn aground with flaming dirt. Only nine guardsmen survived the ambush, and Lieutenant Shark wasn't among them, but they could see him, or what remained of him. The Lieutenant was slumped over the lip of a crater missing his legs and half his face. A single dead eye was wretched out of its socket staining the side of his face with oozing blood and pink brain matter.
The last of the Guardsman craned their necks to try and find the sniper as they huddled together behind the remains of the burnt-out Salamander. They knew that Tau frager was on the roof, but where? One by one, they were shot down until at last everyone was dead. They never even saw him… even at the end.
…
Kais leaned back on his haunches right after blowing the head off that last guardsman. Off to his side… the sun was setting over the horizon glistening a slight shard of amber red across the horizon. He found it rather beautiful… and… "Right… the nurse," he said in brief reflection. The Fire Warrior stood to his feet and started to walk towards the roof exit, contemplating stopping for a brief bath before returning to the wounded nurse. Hopefully, she was still alive. Then again, perhaps he shouldn't stop for a bath? Perhaps, he should return to her first? After all, he looked good in red.
