Screams of Chechenwaldr
2
Wrong Door
Nothing past the frame had made sense, especially not to him. He didn't like big words, but the only one that kept coming to mind when he tried to figure out how it had felt, was discombobulated.
Of course, given his nature, that Low Gothic term was mispelled and butchered in its pronunciation, but the meaning still stood.
Besides: Steltha hated humie speech.
Their mouths were so pathetic and brittle. They lacked tusks, fangs and even the girth of a true Ork. Humans were good for nothing else but the loot off their corpses and the entertainment garnered from snapping them in half like twigs.
But once he and Maddnut had jumped through the frame, none of those things seemed to matter anymore. The world became liquid, and things were wobbly all over. Steltha likened the lack of sensation in his guts to that time he'd literally been blown in half by a Krak round, before Maddnut had stitched him back together nice and proppa'.
Sometimes, the metal bits itched him and oozed, but they did the job well enough. He owed a fair bit to the Mek regardless, and luckily Maddnut hadn't made any obvious passes about any loyalty of his deteriorating.
But this mess could've fooled him.
What the hell had he been thinking? There were other ways off that nasty world with the big dino-stompas. Teleyportas made Steltha queezie, and now he was being reeducated about why he felt that way.
The air went from being completely still one moment, to being breached by a deafening, electrified crack~! –that bounced all down the warrens.
Red and pink flames spun and spun, and the fire whooshed as a gaping tear was ripped wetly in spacetime, giving birth to a spreading, hideously oval-shaped cyclonic gate of Warp-stuff. The hurricane-shaped hole rotated eerily, bolts of yellow lightning striking the walls and surroundings in burning snaps that shot off plates from the deck and sent a nearby cluster of storage crates flipping away covered in flames.
From the center of the portal, a bulbous, green mass came erupting from the pupil. With an inhuman bellow, a massive, nearly eight-foot-tall figure came cartwheeling from the depths of the Immaterium, end over end.
A string of fervent curses was cut short when the figure slammed into a bulkhead wall with a sharp clang. He crashed down into a mound of debris, twitching, as the portal continued to sputter and scream behind him.
Then, a second figure flew from the rift. This one was smaller, just as hunched, and had almost as many metal parts as he did green and squishy.
Steltha snarled, shaking himself free of scrappy bits like a dog. He rose just in time to see his Mekboy eat a support pylon nearby. Maddnut squawked, like a fat bird being smacked in the face with a heavy wooden board. Compressed to the strut, the Ork slid down and crumbled into a stilled heap.
Using a knuckle to wipe blood dribbling from his pug nose, Steltha's fanged maw slithered up its corners into a feral grin. He was chortling when the portal gave off another loud whip, and it vanished in a flash of fiery light, leaving nothing behind but trailing snowflake-sparks that soon vanished along after it.
Steltha took his eyes off the groaning Mekboy, his attitude souring again as he snarled at the space where the portal had been. He slurped up another trail of blood and looked around angrily, his red eyes narrowing as they stuck to every wall, patch of dark and floor-rent comprising his new environment.
"Oi," The Ork bellowed. "dis don't look like no jungle werld ta me. What kinda gitshi ar ya pullin on me?"
"Gitshi'?!" Maddnut sputtered, pieces of deck-plating clanging as he scurried to free himself from the piled garbage they had landed in. "-Agh, nutz-" The Mek rolled his jaw, reached a full fist inside his mouth, and snapped off a loose toof with a morose squelch. "-Aye, much betta that. Gud luck too." He pocketed the fang with a pouch of others (all not his) –and scratched at his bionics. "I'm finkin yer right, boss, deres a distinct lack uv green here, which be mighty disappointin."
"Don't get smar." Steltha snarled, standing up. The larger Ork dwarfed Maddnut by several heads, his gruff exterior shielding something much more violent and dark inside, possibly even as an exception for one of his kind. He gave the Mek a displeased glare with his pug, blood-red eyes. "I'm in no mood fer smar-arsen. What is dis all now? Ya told me dat yu had da coordie-neets stashed in that compoota uv yours!"
"I did!" Maddnut whined, pointing at the air accusingly. "We've been dooped! Somefin is out ta get us!"
"Bleatin imbesal." Steltha dented a loose plate when he stomped his scrap-bladed boot down. "Dis is all yer fault. I shoulda known afta all dem times. I rely on ya too much, Madd'. There aint nothin that comes uv good frum lettin da rearline boyz do the dirty werk! Ya coulda jus up and killed both of us, aye?"
"Nevva, boss! I'm certun it isn't dat bad!" Maddnut groaned, palming the side of his bionic cranial seal. "-But I fink I got a bolt or somefin loose from dat tumble. Feels like an angry Squig iz bouncin round me 'ead"
"Much more den a bolt ta get us dis far outta the way." Steltha frowned, glancing around the dark chamber surrounding them. "Wha da 'ell iz dis place?"
"Hmm," Maddnut grunted. He stooped down to grab up one of the ripped-off deck plates in his green hands. "by da looks uv it: I'd say itz made uv medul."
Steltha growled and nailed the Mekboy in the face with a tossed scrap-piece. Maddnut howled and sprawled on the ground in a hideous crash.
"Purfect den, theres gotta be enuff bits lyin around fer you ta fix our problem." Steltha craned an arm around, unslinging a heavy, merged-barrel rifle with a thick bayonet affixed under the chin. He yanked the grubby bolt back and hefted the weight. "Wherevva we'z lyin around in da first plase."
"It's gotta be a hoomie ship." Maddnut waddled over, rubbing his forehead. The conduction pylons wired into his bionic-riddled back gave off staticy quips as he surveyed the chamber.
They were standing in a wide berthed hallway, with ripped-up decking, damaged wall sections and spidery drapes of wires hanging from rips torn through the above-hand structuring. A hollow boom constantly thrummed around them, and the very world mournfully groaned.
"Gork's teef," Maddnut went slack-jawed. "look at all the nice bitz!"
"Mmph." Steltha's quaking voice came out as a staccato grumble. He tapped his fat fingers on his gun, wandering forward, leaving Maddnut to gawk at everything alone. "I'm gonna get a feel fer around ere."
"And leave me all alone?!" The Mek squawked, suddenly sounding terrified.
"Dats up ta yu."
Maddnut didn't appreciate being left alone back on Dellos.
Or anywhere, really. Not when the environment was potentially hostile, which was everywhere.
But Dellos had been an exception, which neither of them had been expecting. After all, all Orks knew that the hoomies owned a bajillion planets, and didn't care about three-quarters of them when someone showed up and started shooting.
Dellos was a small, backwater industry world that barely had any connections outside maybe a system or two. Warboss Grolkilla had been quite accurate in summarizing it as an easy conquest. The slaves and resources would have been perfect to springboard the Waaagh! he had been planning for years.
But then, right after he and his boyz had landed, an entire Imperial Guard legion had showed up.
And then another.
And another.
Steltha was anathema to admit his witnessing it: the day where the hoomies actually outnumbered them. Grolkilla would've won too. If only the damned twigs didn't have all those planes and tanks. Then he and Maddnut wouldn't have had to run.
"Ya fink Grol' got da boot?" Maddnut ironically must have been mulling over the same thing. They'd only barely escaped using the Mek's tellyporta platform, even as the humans closed in from all sides, systematically butchering the infighting, ragtag remnants of Grolkilla's army.
Maddnut had been too busy frantically working, but while Steltha stayed on the front and did his best to hold off the Guard, he had witnessed Grolkilla himself in the midst of a battle.
Some human wearing a snazzy cap with a stylized cutlass had sliced his face open. With the cutlass, obviously, not the cap. Though the headwear had been almost as sharp.
Humans had a fair deal of spite in their guts, but when one of the Guard tanks went the extra mile to run the Warboss' corpse over and turn it into jelly, Steltha knew they had just been rubbing the victory in his and the others' faces. By the time of the escape though, he'd gotten over the little spring of fervor from Grolkilla's only adequate mob-mentality.
So, the war was lost.
Big fragging deal.
Steltha had walked away with double the teef he'd been promised when he joined up.
"It couldna ended well for im." He absently snorted. "We got wut we needed. Grol' was a fat-headed pig with all kindz uv dalushens of grander. He got what wuz comin tu him."
"Teef or not, still leaves us outta a ship." Maddnut grumbled, picking at a tusk. "I told ya not ta crash our fighta inta dat tank! It has rokkets! It aint a rokket itself!"
"Had rokkets it did." Steltha smirked. "And had da same flames and toof-marks on da nose as da rokkets did too. Ya might take it instructally dere, Madd: it really showed up yer sub-per engineerin when dat plane blew up the way it did."
"I werked ard buildin dat! An yu went on and smashed it into sum sorry git's face!"
"An what fun it waz. -"
Both Orks went very still when a hollow, echoing sound crawled up from one end of the tunnel.
It bounced for a few moments under their wheezing breaths before it faded to nothing. Steltha and Maddnut glanced over, the latter beginning to shiver like the coward he was.
Steltha was an oddball in how he pursued the Orkish dream of endless bloodshed. He'd spent time working with Kommando mobs and leading various krews of Freebooterz. He was comfortable in environments he could come to understand. Jungles, deserts, forests and hills were all perfect habitations for his style of craft, and he greatly enjoyed utilizing them.
But there was a reason he didn't fancy void warfare. He'd boarded a ship once in his life, once, and it had ended very badly. Not many of his mob came home that day.
Thusly, he didn't like ships to begin with. They made him twitchy. There weren't any bushes to hide in, no foliage to blend with, no natural ambiance of animals and birds to mask your footsteps with, nothing of the workplaces he so fancied.
But this felt a little different.
All those things were very real right now, and in addition to that: it was dark.
Strangely dark.
The Kommando Nob had to squint to pick out anything that had been swallowed up by the blankets of black populating so much of the holds surrounding them. The unnatural silence, coupled with the sound they'd heard before, also unsettled even him.
"Was dat a screem or sumfin?" Maddnut gawked.
"I don't like dis plase." Steltha snorted, and spat a wad of Ork-phlegm on the deck. "I don't like it at all."
[💀]
There was a fetish of deck-plates, clinging to their own bolts, dangling from the edge of the hole he had broken through.
Creaaakkkkkk Creeaakkkkkkk Currrrkkkkkk…. –it whined periodically as the top plate swung on its hold, back and forth, back and forth. Its song echoed throughout the otherwise completely still Spacehulk.
Wreckage tumbled. The Fallen appeared, rising on his palms, garbage flittering down his armored body like reams of water as he dug himself free.
"Contusions it tells me." He grit his teeth, fresh bruises afflicting him with their dull aches down the entire front of his body. The Fallen offered an eye to the HUD readouts in the lower corner of his vision. His shields had already recharged from the fall. He blink-checked a diagnostic history, exhaling when he saw that the impact had taken almost three-quarters of them away. "At least I didn't break something."
"*Administering regenerative soluti-*"
"-No!" The Fallen barked in panic. "Nono, it's… I'm fine. It's just some black-and-blues, keep the needles away. I hate those things."
He sighed, looking around in the darkness. This must have been one of the under-level subsidiary capillaries of the Battleship. Most of the structure was still original, albeit heavily warped. The thrum of what sounded like engines was consistent and deep, and obviously, judging by all the debris and the fact that he'd eaten the floor: the gravity here was working too.
Not that I can explain that still.
Absently, the Fallen brought around his console-uplink, tapping the holographic keys intuned with his helm's visor. The layout of the Tolerance came to life, rotating slowly as he worked his finger around the edge.
"*Scans unchanged.*"
"Focus concentrative lapses over the sections I'm indicating. Keep trying." He mumbled. "It can't be that this place can just turn something on without any power being directed, that's-"
"Impossible?"
The Fallen glanced over to see Conscience strolling through the debris beside him. His duplicate half looked at him from under his copied helm, shrugging.
"We've been around long enough to know it isn't too far out of the playing field. Especially in this reality. Phantom sounds? Systems and machinery working without any reasonable explanation? This isn't the first time we've been troubled by that kind of thing." Conscience explained, his voice bouncing around the underchamber's walls. "It might not mean that you're going crazier- 'cause you're already pretty crazy –but it does mean that you might have to improvise."
"And how the fuck am I supposed to do that?" The Fallen stared.
There was only empty air again, Conscience had vanished.
Another dim, howling scream came echoing from far away, tasting of the metal walls it rattled through.
Hissskkk~!
-The cat's hiss coming from right behind him. The Fallen didn't even bother turning around to look for a source. He knew there was none.
"*Scanners indicate activity.*"
The voice from his AI startled him. He clicked on his console again, speaking in a hushed murmur.
"Tell me you have something."
"*Prior requests still are absent. No life support or engine system signals are present inside the vessel.*"
"So then what the hell did you pick up?"
"*A large burst of non-classifiable energy expulsions has occurred in the highlighted deck. The energy output indicates a rounded signature, and also that the subsequent exfoliation was not only brief, but immense.*"
"Moreso than any Imperial mainframes on record?"
"*Exponentially. Energy signature has concluded brief lifespan, and has vanished shortly after appearing.*"
He quirked a brow at that.
A brief and gargantuan burst? Of energy that couldn't be determined as plasmite, electrical or carbon-based?
That had to mean either something was wrong with his suit's scanners (which he doubted) –or that the Spacehulk's anomalous nature was causing all manner of disturbances that were baffling his suit.
Or, it could've meant an even worse option.
One that he really hoped wasn't true.
It wasn't your average gang of thugs or runaway gutter-xenos that utilized things like that. People who used that had resources, and resources meant power. Powerful people packed nasty equipment and training, generally.
"Halt all scans." He quickly said. "Override on all maintenance briefs. Don't interfere with the static cloud and get baffler outputs on full."
"*Does the user suspect enemy scanning software?*"
"I'm not taking the chance, if that's what you mean. Redirect my map? Update waypoint, and put it in my eye."
A little purple tick-marker appeared levitating, flat, in his vision, and it would get larger the closer he came to it in the 3d map.
The Fallen tried ignore another distant scream from down the way as he started stepping over the debris.
Concentration.
It was what he needed the most when things got this hairy. The greatest threat to a combatant was their own mind, even in situations where his enemy was flesh and could be shot.
That was where fear came from, and uncertainty, and hesitation. All the things that killed many more soldiers than the opponent's fury ever could.
"You must always know the weaknesses to your defenses, and to do so, you must break them down the same way your enemy will. They will try, you will try, and both of you must never stop trying. When you can relentlessly inflict pain upon yourself, you have already proven to be a more effective warrior than those who would stand to oppose you."
Nasu R'ha had said that once to him, a long time ago now, when the Fallen still had someone he kindly called sensei.
Wise words indeed.
It was too bad Nasu hated his guts. He probably shouldn't have fucked the old aristocrat's niece, in hindsight. Nasu had trusted him, and the Fallen had turned around on spit on that trust.
Now, however, the past was irrelevant. He had a job to do. He could think about the burned bridges in his life later.
Even if the memories of Leha R'ha made him so desperate to seek her out.
Crnccchhh~
-The Fallen cringed when something dryly crunched under his heel.
He looked down, stepping off the mummified, smiling corpse sprawled on the hall floor.
"Did we ever get a diagnosis?" He blink-clicked some keys. "Show me the examination charts, raw."
"*Deceased tissue shows signs of exsanguination and rapid atrophy.*" –Explained the AI as the charts popped to life. "*In short: the victim's physical state and composition suggest that all blood was drained from the body. This cannot be determined as pre or post mortem.*"
"And the faces?" The Fallen crinkled his nose, sneering at the eternal, wicked grin exposing the man's full yellowed teeth. His lidless eyes just made it more disturbing. "Why the hell do they look like that for?"
"*Unknown. Not enough evidence exists to compile a diagnosis or theorem. Possible suggestions: should I list them for you?*" The AI queried.
"Hit me."
"*Vampiric-slash-carnivorous fauna or flora.*"
"It's probable. Anything else?"
"*Enigmatic forces or entities.*"
He wriggled his fingers.
All of that just sounded positively lovely. If only he'd brought a fucking picnic basket and some bologna.
The Fallen passed through a gallery filled only with shadows and the dull thrums that had been mainstay for the hulk's backdrop. Through a crushed-in bulkhead, a rectangular passage was revealed shrouded in utter blackness, save for the elongated strip of windows going down the leftwards wall.
The Fallen stepped closer, placing himself between a pair of bulky sills to put a gauntlet on the pane itself. He looked out and beyond.
There were probably a crews quarters or some other recreational facility that had once been on the other side. The chamber had literally been shorn off. Just below the window were only chunks and shards of a deck floor, ragged from soot and destruction.
With the contents gone, the window now overlooked a vast cavity beyond. The chamber was immense. What looked like stalactites chewed through stray swathes of artificial ceiling, as the chamber's upper flesh was melded to that of asteroid-rock. The remains of what looked like some kind of fat, caterpillar-styled shuttlecraft were lodged in the warped and twisted mounds of metal making the western walls. Its spine was curved, the cockpit melded into a floor of rock where its nose melted into a flat bill. The whole thing looked like a giant, metal duck that had had its neck wrung and its corpse flung in a corner.
The Fallen's distraction of this feature was torn away, however.
Something down on the ground floor of the grand chamber moved. It was a fluttering twitch. White, and then gone as soon as his eyes stuck to it.
He checked his motion scanners, and of course, they had picked up nothing.
More distant yowls, this time coming from somewhere below in the chamber. The screams of a woman echoed everywhere beyond the face of the panes. Tortured, lava-fleshed and ragged shrieks of someone being drawn and quartered they were. It made the Fallen exhale, the horror stinging him in the breast.
Hisssk~!
-The cat's hiss came next, clear as day through his receivers. He glanced around the gallery chamber.
Nothing.
He looked back outside.
There was a panel along the haft of the melded shuttle's spine, probably an access-hatch used for maintenance when the ship was still active and well.
He saw the tail-end of a pale-skinned, limp, waterlogged body being dragged within, its dead arms and legs wobbling as it was sucked through the portcullis like a stray noodle.
The hatch slammed shut, and the sound reached the windows as a dull, low gunshot.
"I ate her." –Mumbled a man's voice in the room.
The Fallen had his blaster and plunger out in an instant, eyes set, aim steadied down the crosshairs. He was ready to shoot and rip and kill. Whatever this was in the hulk that was screwing with him, its efforts were working, and it was about time he paid it back by cratering in its fucking face.
Clung clung clung clung-!
-Footsteps clanged, muted, from one point in the chamber's ceiling to the other in the form of a quick jog.
The Fallen caught sight of a pale, tiny hand just as it detached from the windowpane outside, and vanished below into the massive chamber. He ran to the window and peered out at the several story drop that no person could have possibly been standing on.
Especially for the kind of hand it was.
That of a child's.
This didn't make any sense. The Finite Tolerance was a Chaos Renegade Battleship in the employ of a marauder armada that had gotten its ass handed to it by the Imperial Navy. There had been nothing about civilians on the ship, or citizens from some world that had been captured alive and brought aboard.
But then again, a lot happened in two centuries. Maybe something horrific had indeed occurred here involving such things, but already after the Tolerance had become the heart of the Chechenwaldr. Maybe, in the time since this place had become a hulk, drifting in and out of the Warp, completely different horrors had come to possess it.
"Look at me." –Said the phantom man's voice, somewhere, crawling out from the dark.
"Maybe I would," The Fallen muttered aloud, swallowing. "-if you were here for me to see."
All the activity immediately stopped after that. The distant screams, the footsteps on the ceiling panels, it all ceased instantly.
The Fallen lowered his weapons and relaxed his posture. Checks across his scanners showed everything as all-clear. But they had looked like that the entire time anyhow, so that wasn't reassuring at all.
"I knew you would find me." –Came a grumbling, hideous voice, a new one, one separate from the unknown man's. The Fallen turned around to look at the window pane.
There was a face looking back at him from the other side.
"And it's about time, too. I was thinking I had gotten you off my trail. Obviously, I left a sufficient number of crumbs, and so here you are, like a good bloodhound."
"Isotope." The Fallen snarled.
[💀]
Forming a mental-map of the warrens wasn't entirely difficult, given his experience. Maddnut insisted regardless on marking the pathways they took by drawing a sharp chunk of scrap he'd appropriated across surfaces, leaving scratch marks in a crumb-trail so that they'd know if they had gone in a circle.
Steltha wasn't concerned about that though, the circles. There was part of him that could smell something off, and whatever it was hadn't been caused by either Ork's misdirection. The air in this ship, or station, whatever it was they were inside, stunk oddly. The smell was somewhere between metallic, earthen and plastic-ish. It was there and not all at once.
"Dere's gud enuff bitz down here ta slap together sumfin for us." Maddnut commented, the Mek trudging in a lazy waddle behind the larger Nob. "Dis iz gonna be arder it is. Normully we hitch a ride wit whoevva the clyant iz, on their shipz, and their teef. We aint even got a small ship. Least: not anymo."
"Would ya stop whinin like a git abou da stewpid Fighta?" Steltha grumbled, peering over his broad, green shoulder. "It wasn't eve ensured or nuffin. An da wing on da left side lazed abou all the time, kept veerin da dumb gurl to da same side when I waz tryin ta go straight. I fixed yer meecannical erra I did. Again."
"Wasn't me own erra." Maddnut testily growled, shooting him a scalding look. "Yu can blame yerself fer dat one. I can only werk me masterpeeses as best as da local bitz let me! Maybe, we shud stawp takin commeeshiyons from scabbin bad employas!"
Steltha clicked his tusks.
More then once throughout their careers together, had he somehow mustered the control to bite back retorts, and even more then that had he restrained himself from ripping Maddnut to shreds.
This was why the Meks were so respected and also so scoffed throughout all of Orkdom: a proppa' Ork took payment in the thrill of the fight. Getting stuck-in was the purpose of an Ork's life, as there was literally nothing else worth living for other than the chaos and violence of being able to participate in a total war. Mekboyz were an oddball in that societal norm. They did enjoy a good fight, as long as they were behind the action, and their allies were using their inventions and baubles to do the killin'.
Steltha couldn't recall an instance where Maddnut actually had killed something, aside from rebellious workshop assistants like Snotlings and Grots. But that had been years ago, because even Grolkilla hadn't had the logistical bandwidth to provide his hired Meks with fully-fledged laboratories, much less kegs of supplies and grog, and even less-so a fresh supply of Grots to help patch stuff together. Grots were a Mek's lifeblood in a sense. They were multipurpose in their presence: a good Mek knew when to have a crew of Gretchin put together a good weapon, and just how many of them to test the weapon's effectiveness on shortly after.
Now that he was thinking about resources, Steltha took another moment to pat himself down as he walked.
His vest and stitch-pants had survived the journey unscathed mostly, and the heavy double-sling backpack sprawling over his shoulders had come out fine. His scrap armor had gotten a little dinged, but that meant nothing, because the plates had been put together roughly with hammers and bolts in the first place. The flash-bangs dangling from the catch around his neck, and the extra ammo-belts tied around his thigh made the situation a bit more reassuring. His trusty choppa- a chiseled axe-blade –dangled idly from his hip.
Steltha scratched at the handle of his gun, wishing he had something to stab to death. He plunged a filthy pair of fingers into the slip-pocket on his bulging vest's pectoral, and he pressed the leathery wad of squig-chew he scraped out from inside onto his tongue, slapping it about his mouth quietly.
Suddenly, another distant scream echoed out from somewhere far away.
"Wha the ell is that?" Maddnut mumbled, scraping his scrap-chunk down a pylon Steltha had passed. It was probably the hundredth time he'd asked. The screams had been sounding out frequently in the distance.
"Maybe it wants ta fight." Steltha shrugged. "I could use a gud fight."
"Long as ya keep me in da bakk." Maddnut reminded, patting the slung Shoota hanging from his shoulder. "I'll give ya support."
"Mmph." The Nob shook his head in disgust.
A Mek and a Shootaboy. What a combo.
"If yer gonna leave me ta fend for meself, why dontchya put dat ead-powa of yours to good werk an figure out where we is?" Steltha grunted. "It's sum hoomie ship, dat much I do know."
"I cant say what type." Maddnut scrunched his piggish eyes to scrutinize a passing pipe-sect. "Oughtta be big tho, dis kinda supastructa aint meant fer one of those wimpy sloopies it aint. Its probableh sum kinda hauler, or a really big transporty-fing."
"Is dat so." Steltha spat, nodding off to his flank as he waddled down the deck. "Call meh blind if you gotta, but dose don't look like no 'armless boxes and drums it don't."
The Orks had passed through a sub-strata gallery and out into a massive chamber. The western wall was riddled with reinforced scaffolding, and tens of blocky skywalks created a forest that revealed a red-lit ceiling above only in slivers between their bulks. Some of the exposed stations that lacked a tube showed reinforced mesh-bulkheads, each capped with an expulsion vent that tumbled into a large dump-chute for casings. The cells were all connected via broken-down and unused belts, their links holding hundreds of shells, each bigger than a hauler truck.
"Damned hoomies always gotta be so orhganized wit their battry lines." Steltha snorted. "All dat space ta pack-in a lot uv fairy-guns. Woulda been bettah off stickin in a bigger singul shoota if ya ask me."
"It's a warship!" Maddnut yelped. "Gork's teef, we're in sum hoomie warship!"
"Calm yaself down real nice, or I'll smakk ya block off quick." Steltha warned. "It aint da hoomans I'm worried bout none. Havent ya noticed? All dis hoomie tech and all dese hoomie bitz: but no hoomies ta use any uv it. Sumfin didn't go well fer dese pinkies."
"Ya fink its abandoned?" Maddnut blinked, tearing his gaze off the gun battery lines. "Dat would reason a lot… I mean, afta all: nobodeh showed up ta give us a shoota's greetin when da tellyporta put us out. And we avent seen a fing dis entire time."
"If deres a closer plase for answas, den dis iz it." Steltha snarled, looking around the battery chamber. He pointed. "See if you can werk those compooty-weirdums uv yours, I see a close-sal ovva dere."
"Do ya mean the con-sohle?" Maddnut scratched his bionics.
"Get ta wigglin dose filfy fingas uv yours!"
"On it!"
The Mek hurried over to a sprawl of stations nestled in the heart of the chamber. He hopped down an island rise, and landed in something that crunched and popped under his heels. Maddnut looked down, and scrunched his nose.
"Uh… boss?"
"Dis bettah not be anuvver complaint." Steltha peered from around a truck-sized shell casing he'd wandered behind.
"I fink I found da hoomans." Maddnut pointed, skin crinkling as he stepped off. "Deyz all wrinkly and ded."
Indeed, the Mek was right. Steltha crossed over and peered past the console nest, grunting when he saw the trio of dried, mummified corpses laid out on the floor of the station. Their bugging eyes and grinning mouths looked back up at him silently.
"Somfin took all the juice out." Maddnut nudged one. "Da jungle we was headin for had sumfin like dis."
"Mmph." Steltha glanced at him, eyes distant.
"Big nasties, 'uge bugs da size of Grolkilla's Nob mobs!" Maddnut held out his claws wide in a demonstration. "Dey have blood-suckin straws on their fases, an dey stick em in their food an suck all the blud."
"But we isn't in da jungles." Steltha frowned.
"Maybe we ar, an we jus don't know it."
"Figurr dat."
"Maybee dis ship crashed all messy and such in da middle of da jungle!" Maddnut suggested. "We jus 'ave ta crawl out! Find an exit."
"I thought youz was supposed ta be smarter den me." Steltha chortled. "Da air aint humid, it aint nuffin but stale arteefishall like, dat meens deres filtas cleanin it all and rasikeclin it. And if dis ship had gone down in dose jungles, itd 'ave ta be years ago, fer it ta be dis old lookin, and fer da damage ta be dis bad and not flamin. Dere aren't even any plants growin nowhere. Da jungle woulda started creepin in pretteh fast."
"-W-Well –Well-" Maddnut sputtered. He guffawed angrily and swatted at the Nob. "Well dats why yous da Kommando and I'm da Mek! Ya didn't ave ta make it all embarrassin for me!"
"Jus rip open the bleatin con-soley fings and shut yer gob." Steltha turned around. "I'll be bakk in a jiff."
[💀]
Black, freakishly long limbs affixed with gnarly claws kept the Converter latched to the wall outside the pane. Isotope's serpentine, fanged and ugly face leered closer to the transparent metal of the window, his yellow, glowing eyes appearing as a pair of miniature suns in the darkness.
The Fallen stepped closer to the sill, gauntlets crinkling as he tightened his grip on his blaster and plunger.
"Why are you here?" He sneered.
"Why are you?" The Converter's burbly voice muffled through the pane. Isotope cocked his head, grinning, with silvery drool leaking past his iron-colored teeth. "It's never happenstance or coincidence that sees us together, Portaljumper. Some strange twist of our own fates closes the door, but it's always you or me who picks up the key."
"This doesn't involve you." The Fallen growled tiredly. The metal of the pane clinked as he touched the forehead of his helm to the metal, his hat compressing against it in an angle above. "But I'll still rip you to pieces either way. Come in here with me."
"Are you saying that because you fear my intervention? I didn't think I could ever so easily get a reaction out of you." Isotope allowed a silver tongue longer than his torso to whip and lash out of his maw. It twisted in on itself and drew across his fangs to moisten them. "I'll have to remember the right lines. Everything in these meetings is always so grimly scripted, and you're always so humble about your viciousness. I like the more aggressive side of you."
"So then come in here and let me show you, you piece of shi-"
The Fallen blinked.
His nemesis had vanished. The outside of the window was empty again.
"Isotope?" He muttered, fingers running down the pane.
Hollow footsteps rang out as Conscience appeared, strolling up to his side with a puzzled look. He tipped his top hat.
"A lot of things appear in your head, my boy, he isn't one of them." Conscience said. "I'm normal, your usual cynical sometimes pessimistic attitude-"
"-Fuck you."
"-is also normal." Conscience crossed his arms. "Well I don't know, Fallen, think about it for a second. Your Conscience is the only thing in your head that talks back to you."
"Many people would find that frightening." The Fallen peeled himself off the window, glaring as he stood in the hulk's darkness. "But go on."
"You've never had a moment where your loved ones, much your enemies receive their own avatar to stand with me." Conscience pointed at both their helms. "Contrary to popular opinion: this town is big enough for the two of us. But just the two of us, and not much else."
"So what are you saying?"
"Isotope isn't here."
"But that means-"
Hisssk~!
"…Oh." The Fallen shut his eyes. "Of course it would be that."
"See me." –Said a phantom man.
The Fallen punched the window, and the dent he left in the translucent metal looked otherworldly, almost like bundled bubble-wrap.
"God damn it."
[💀]
When a cluster of infantry all moved at once, it gave off the sound of a squadron of horses galloping. Human feet were deep when massed. Ork feet were even deeper, but that was because the Kommandos knew that they could get away with it, at least for a moment.
"Deyz movin round the creek!"
"Let's hoof it, boyz!"
With faces concealed in shrapnel-fanged rebreather masks, or with foreheads marked by bandanas, the Orks slipped like a river of green, junk-laden liquid through the thick foliage. Plants whispered, and gear from the big packs over their shoulders jingled as they went. Pins were yanked on shootas, and grenades chimed like bundles of ornaments as they were unclipped from hooks and bandoliers.
Gitshak was at the front of the mob. He always was because he was the biggest of the three Nobs present. He was two heads taller than Steltha, and Steltha was bigger than Boomumz, that was the order of things, and the other Kommandos respected it, because if they didn't, Gitshak would beat the spores out of them.
They feared Gitshak.
But the lesser boyz were terrified of Steltha, who was much less forgiving, even if Gitshak didn't want to admit it.
"Identiteh comes frum what ya leeve in da minds of da others. Ya 'have a 'ard identiteh, an Orks wont wanna test fer sumfin dey don't fink dey can brek. Ya have a silent identiteh, and ya don't let much on, an all da challengas in da werld'll zog to ya lookin for a fight. And I luv fightin."
Steltha had already killed six of his own men for challenging his orders, it disappointed him that the whole squad hadn't been as foolhardy. He worked best with mobs he personally installed, no matter the banner of the day.
"Deyv got the fancies wit em." Gitshak hissed at the head of the pack. Steltha got a glimpse of his snarling, iron-jawed rebreather glaring back at him specifically. "Dose flyin ones with all da purty stones on em. Steltha's got a charge fer one. He goes in afta we stick em."
"Bomberz dis time?" One of the other Kommandos grumbled.
"Ya finkin straight today, ladz. Wez got em on both ends, Boomumz is on da other side waitin fer the shootin ta start." Gitshak huffed as he climbed a fallen log. "I'm leadin the wedge in da rear. We'll box em off and slaughta them in the treez at da smoke."
Steltha made sure to shoulder his shoota for a moment, dirtied, bandaged hands gliding over his form as he snatched up a bundle of stickz and a fresh pair of magazines.
All of the ruckus and commotion that the mob was making silenced then, as if an invisible wave of impenetrable jelly had enveloped the entire squad. Leaves stopped crackling and gear stopped jingling. The Orks vanished into the grass and shrubs of the forest, and Steltha was in with them. He ducked under the umbrella-shades of a gigantic fern and slipped to the edge of the greenline.
A muddy ridge tumbled with willow-roots that resembled bushels of black fingers overlooked a sweeping creek ridge below. The river that had once been here had been reduced to a murmuring and pathetic trail in the middle of the moist rock-beds. The canopies above shielded this hidden, natural highway from the sun's glare, and so the whole thing was washed in dappled spots of deep green from the oversight of the trees.
Steltha carefully worked down a hump in the dirt, and he crouched beside two other boyz behind an entangled stump breaching the ridge.
The pass itself was not the subject of interest.
The tens of sleek, humanoid creatures silently sweeping through it were.
They were said to be graceful in everything they did. Even walking, the Eldar soldiers seemed to float over the terrain, their heeled boots not producing anything aside from the occasional click of metal to stone. Aside from a slight din of the wind, and some distant macaws: all Steltha could hear was the dim, ragged breathing of the other Kommandos hidden beside him.
He wriggled his fingers on the grenades in his fist, craning an eye over his pauldron's plate to look for Gitshak.
The larger Nob's fat lips were pursed over his piggish teeth. He met Steltha's gaze, holding up a finger to shoosh him as he pointed his shoota back towards the creek pass.
Behind the screen of Eldar infantry came a humming trio of levitating, brightly colored vehicles. The alien tanks were shaped like fat horseshoes with bladed ridges. They had fluorescently glowing cockpits and gem studs layering their chassis. Spout-looking guns bristled their turrets and frontal glacis'. Despite the rugged environment, their paintjobs were eerily untouched by any slight from the forest's various materials, even mud.
"Wanky tanky gitz." The Kommando by Steltha's side uttered. "We'll see 'ow purty dey look when we zog em."
"Keep yer teef on." Steltha rolled the grenades in his fingers again. "Boomumz betta be ready."
"Ready or not, ere it goes." Gitshak spat an expended wad of squig-chew from his mouth, and soil crumbled as he stood up. "We wipe dese pointy-eads off da map, we secur da Warboss' flank. Dis leafy-planet's ouas."
"I'll do sum redeckoratin wit Eldar 'eads on stakes." Someone else hungrily growled. "I'm keepin da skullz."
"I'm in Gork's Glory lads~!" Gitshak cackled, rising from cover, and hauling back with his muscular, green arm. "Waaaagggghhh~!"
{Cyberpunk 2077 -E3 2018 Trailer Music Hyper- SPOILER}
The Eldar response was instantaneous. Flickering, neon blue projectiles ripped through the Kommandos' position, shredding ferns, pulping rootballs and splintering the trunks of trees. The scream of the bolts was shrill and pitched, they sounded like glass when they met inanimate surfaces, but they gave off the noise of wet, tearing paper when they cut through an Ork.
Gitshak jolted back and forth as a cluster of shots sliced into his body completely through his vest and bits of armor.
The wounds did little to silence his warcry, and they did not fell him. Gitshak plowed head-first through the hail, and tossed the wad of grenades in his fist. Bundles of similar devices were chucked from all down the Kommandos' line, Steltha himself stood from cover. He ripped his pins from his bouquet, one a finger, and threw them into the mess of infantry below.
Sharp cracks and deep whumps came intuned with blooms of white light among the Eldar's positions, their singsong voices echoing out to voice alarm and warning to the rest of the line. A second wave of bellowing cries erupted from the Ork mob as a wall of Kommandos came flooding out from the greenline, advancing down the ridge to throw themselves at the enemy.
Steltha himself vaulted off the boulder, hurling himself forward with the deafening howl of his rage flying through his teeth.
The Kommando beside him liquefied as a concentrated cone of shuriken fire reduced him to bloody vapors and chunks of his own equipment. Steltha was spattered with gore, feeling a trio of taught yanks as some glancing shards ripped into his arm and came out the other side.
He landed with a thud as the sounds of melee roared before him. The Eldar lost an immediate edge of blood drawn. They had killed a quarter of the mob during their brief charge, but almost the same number of their own soldiers summarily died when the Orks closed ranks. The Eldar's lithe, thinly armored forms were no match for the brutish, overwhelming strength the Greenskins possessed. They died silently sometimes, and with shrill shrieks of agony in other times, their bodies breaking like glass under choppas, fists and boots.
An Ork had his head taken off before his body could realize the extent of the injury. Steltha shouldered the standing-corpse aside, firing from the hip as the big shoota in his hands roared deafeningly.
A duo of Eldar were caught in the wide, mostly inaccurate cloud of fire. They withered under the fist-sized bolts, their bodies imploding and misting thick gobbets of rich blood. Steltha stampeded through the viscera. He shoulder-checked a third Guardian, and brought his heel down on the alien's head as he passed. The Eldar's skull flattened, and the helmet creaked as it was pancaked.
Though he was anathema to side-step the fighting, Steltha's battlefield objective wasn't with slaughtering the hapless infantry.
A cluster of Kommandos vanished in a blue, plasmite cloud that erupted in the air with a terrible roar and buzz of static. Some of the twitching and halved-survivors on the edges of the blast were turned to chop meat by a flickering cone of shuriken fire that followed up from the heavier weapon's kiss.
An Eldar hover-tank broke off from the cluster, giving a metallic, sickeningly musical thrum as it glided down the creek-bed along the flank of the melee fighting, picking off Orks that were just joining the fray and weren't close enough to friendlies. The tank crew- unbeknownst to Steltha –were weeping silently as they did their duty, sometimes forcing themselves to open fire on combined elements of infantry, to save their own kin the dishonor of being hacked to pieces in the stead of cleanly vaporized.
Steltha held his shoota in one hand, the freakish muscles in his arm bulging as he loosed the last of the two mags off in the singular grip. He punched the feeds free and slipped in the two he'd been holding. A quick jerk of the pin, and the next thing he did was much more laborious.
The detonation sack jostled on its sling as he tore it from his backpack. He had to balance mowing down more Eldar Guardians with his gun, and so the Nob bellowed in frustration when he couldn't reach the activation yank.
Steltha growled as shuriken fire laced through his torso, blood running down his broad chest as he reoriented, and used the handle of his shoota like a club. The offending Eldar's brains popped out the eyes of his own helmet like spouts of chunky paint as Steltha brought the blow dead-center his articulate headwear.
The hover-tank was swiveling around, the crew having picked him breaking off from the mob. The spout-like plasmite turret on its top spun to bear itself down on him.
Steltha couldn't feel any dread like they could. The thrill of dying in such a blaze only drove him onwards.
He brought the detonation sack up, and bit off the yank entirely, spitting it free as the indicator rune glowed a dangerous red.
Steltha rolled forwards and overhanded the bundle. The sack's discus magnet clunked hollowly as it smacked onto and adhered across the hover-tank's flank. A moment later, and that half of the tank was incinerated from a mighty, shrapnel-flooded explosion.
The detonation was unbelievable, even for Ork standards. Evidently, the Grots had packed a bit too much zog into that particular charge, because the way the air blurred and the ground rumbled, Steltha could've been fooled that a whole building had been brought down.
The grav-tank gave a mournful machine-wail, and it flipped in a sluggish death-roll through the air, trailing thick soot and flames. The ragged remains of the chassis slammed into the side of the ravine, liquid fire rolling and settling around it.
Steltha's initial grin slid off his underbitten face as he pulled himself off the ground. The Ork's expression modeled something of mild displeasure as he gazed at a slip of shrapnel from the tank's chassis. It was the length of a human's leg, and it had penetrated the muscly flesh of his forearm, bursting out the other end, dripping crimson.
He tried to clench his hand, but a vibrating pulse of dull pain, and only a twitch from the aforementioned extremity showed it had gone through the bone. He couldn't close his fingers. How annoying.
Steltha gripped the metal, sneering as he grotesquely worked the burning sheet back and forth, blood bubbling up from the ragged wound. It slipped free with a squelch, a fresh gore geyser bursting from the hole and pattering onto the scorched earth.
Another Eldar ran at Steltha, shooting him point-blank across the chest and stomach with a burst of shuriken shards. Steltha growled, and he used his shattered arm as a blunt weapon, bringing it across the Eldar's helm in a crushing blow.
The alien flipped end over end and sprawled at his feet. Steltha took the bloody shard of metal and ran it through the Eldar's back, pinning him to the ground and leaving him to crumple in on himself like a dying insect.
"I didn't fink we'd run outta em dis fast!" Another Kommando cried out, slashing down a Guardian with his axe. "An' I aint talkin bout da Eldar!"
"Where in zog's name is Boomumz?!" Gitshak screamed. Half of his face had been torn away by shuriken fire, his eyeball shredded, the left side of his skull exposed to the open air, nestled in a crater of blackened and cooked flesh. The larger Nob killed and yelled as if the injury were insignificant, blood flecking from his fangs as he talked. "Dey wer supposed ta take out da uvver side!"
In the brief lull, Steltha was just rising out of the creek's low-heart, ragged dressings casting over his useless arm as he snatched up his gun.
"Thievin, good fer nuthin, useless Grot-luvvas-!" Gitshak's shrieks echoed up and down the ravine. Bundles of Orks were fleeing back into the woodlands, most of them being cut down by the organized, vicious fire from the Eldar.
Now that they had a reprieve, many of the remaining Guardians were able to pull back and consolidate on the very side of the ridge Boomumz' mob was supposed to attack. They numbered too few now, as so many had died. But even still, with ragtag survivors, the Eldar were able to lay down a withering field of fire from their supernaturally effective shuriken rifles. Orks looked like they had walked through cheese-graters as the vengeful Guardians swept their cones about.
A Kommando hollered as he charged past Steltha and at the Eldar, wielding his own severed arm like a bat. He was reduced to a splashing puddle of gore and meat-slabs when a quad of rifles focused on him. Steltha threw himself in a ditch as shards pattered through the dirt around him. Nearby, the two remaining grav-tanks were running rampant through the broken squads of Orks, staining their previously perfect skins as they sometimes lowered their orbit, and rammed through clusters of boyz like flying buzzsaw blades.
"It's too much!" A Kommando landed beside Steltha, weaponless, with his pig-eyes widened in sudden terror. "We gotta leg it lively!"
Steltha finished reloading his shoota. He snatched a stikkbomb off his belt, and slammed the head into the terrified Ork's face to light the crush-charge.
"Ya could be a bit mor useful," He tossed the grenade over the ridge, grunting when it detonated among a cluster of screaming Eldar. "-'specially if yer gonna lay in dis 'ole and cry like a Grot."
Gitshak landed heavily in the depression, heaving as blood trickled from his mauled face. Three more Kommandos tumbled in shortly afterwards, covered in both Ork and Eldar gore. The charge had turned into a charnelhouse.
"Da whole attak's gone ta rubbish." Gitshak spat bloody phlegm, scratching a nail onto his exposed skull and the empty socket inside. He peered at his finger in a moment of grim curiosity, and then took up his choppa and slugga. "Boomumz mob didn't do their part, and now we're all zogged nice and proppa."
"Boomumz is ded." Steltha growled, leaning up to peak over the muddy lip of the hole. He cringed, ducking back down when a squad of Guardians raked the top of the crater. "We still ave a ruff engagey line. We can puhl bakk and lose em in da treez."
Gitshak snapped his jaws and glared at Steltha. The two worked well together, but it was a rare day Git' just sat back and let a lieutenant suggest action.
His gaze seemed even more frightening than usual, but that could've just been because half of his face had literally been transformed into an eternally grinning, blood-flecked skull. If he wasn't an Ork, the wounds he'd suffered would've outright killed him.
Eventually, though, he let go of the irrelevancies. Gitshak harrumphed, spitting more blood into the dirt. He pointed through the smoke and dust towards the greenline.
"Gatha as much of da boyz as yu lot can, and start yankin their sorry arses' bakk." He said, before snarling at Steltha. "Yu betteh be rite bout Boomumz, Steltha, cuzz I'll kill dat git meself if I find 'im afta this."
"Be surr ta give me a shot or two on his legs!" Steltha barked, steadying his shoota on his shattered arm, he drained through the dual magazines. "Waaaaggghh~!"
"Take it ahl ya filfy bawstards! I'll kill every single one uv ya wit me bare-'ands if I gotta! Eldah scum!" Gitshak roared, his slugga pistol belching as he aimed over the clamboring backs of his Kommandos. He swept his arm back for the trees. "Puhl bakk! Puhl bakk to da treez! Puhl bakk! Go!"
"Dose floaty tanks ar turnin round." Steltha pointed, backing up as he struggled to reload with one hand.
"Boomumz," Gitshak quivered with utter rage. "I'm gonna find 'im fer dis hoomuliashun."
Just then, as Steltha worked back over the ridge, flickers of light caught his eye from the other side of the creek.
The opposite greenline, the one Boomumz' mob was supposed to emerge from, was blinking under the presence of tens of blue stars.
In a flash of energy, an Eldar garbed in angular, arachnid-styled armor appeared out of thin air among the foliage, shuriken spitters mounted on tarantula stilts spreading like the petals of a flower from over his shoulders.
The Eldar looked right at him over the carnage of the battle, and he threw something in his hand that bounced to stillness in the center of the creek.
Steltha didn't have to be close to recognize the dumb, slack-jawed face that belonged on the severed head.
"Looks like da pointy-'eaded freaks beet ya too it, Git'." He grunted as the larger Nob paused to get a good look of his own.
The Eldar Warpspider vanished again with a flicker of blue light, and suddenly, not only did that Eldar reappear among the foliage with the retreating Orks, but tens of them did.
Warpspiders materialized from all directions, clinging to limbs in the canopies of trees, emerging from behind clusters of foliage, nestled among boulders and earth-rises. They poured shuriken fire from every conceivable direction. Retreating Orks that survived the abattoir of the creek below were literally funneling into a meat-grinder in their efforts to escape.
A Warpspider blinked into existence right in front of Steltha as he turned to run. The Nob hollered as a cluster of shuriken shards ripped through his flank. He batted the Eldar onto the ground with a swing of his rifle.
Steltha raised a boot and stomped it down for the Eldar's head. The Warpspider teleported away in a second, and his heel ate dirt instead.
Gitshak was hollering, shaking himself like a dog as a Warpspider straddled his broad back, plunging his wrist-blades in gory dips across his neck. Gitshak snatched the Warpspider off his perch via his ankle, and swung the whole Eldar warrior like he was a club. The Warpspider brutally ate a tree-trunk with a wet crunch, leaving a far-armed spread of gore up the wood.
"Steltha-!" Gitshak cried. "Run! Run dam yu, r-!"
[💀]
"-un~!"
Steltha wheezed as all at once, the forest melted away like ice to water, and darkness flooded his vision.
The Ork stumbled, metal thunking as he checked into the aisle's wall and steadied himself, unbelieving eyes locked on the empty space ahead.
The forest, the Eldar, the retreat.
It wasn't here.
It had happened already, years ago. The Eldar Maiden World, Te'yieiin. Warboss Fleshmulcha's Waaagh! against the Eldar planetary city-state of Ulurin, the protectors of the planet.
Steltha had fought in Fleshmulcha's mobs for almost eleven months on that damned world. With his Kommandos against the Eldar pathfinders, the forest wars that engulfed the planet became the most vicious and merciless woodland fights he'd ever seen in his life. Steltha missed the thrill, at least when it was around at the same time as he was winning.
But the memory of that place? Steltha had new goals and things to concentrate on. The Eldar had been a Grot's step. He was younger, more foolhardy, still under the command of other tougher, experienced Nobs. That war had been before he met Maddnut and entered into their partnership as Freebooterz for hire.
Things had looked a little better back then, but that could've just been the sourness of losing on Dellos egging him on. Steltha had been betting everything on Grolkilla and his mob. It was supposed to be the fight of the age, and it had turned into a pathetic route.
One that would've seen Gitshak screaming himself hoarse. He never did deal with cowardice very well throughout the time Steltha had known him.
But what was bringing back Gitshak and that ill-fated battle with the Eldar? It wasn't just a memory, Steltha had felt it. He'd lived it, again, in some sick parody of time's echo.
The large Ork looked shellshocked as he lumbered down the passageway, stopping at a dark intersection going in three separate directions.
"…We were supposed ta get bakk to da treez." Steltha muttered, his eyes trying to pierce the black.
The tinnying ring of a foreign disturbance in his pointy ears made him blink. Stupified or not by what was happening, he couldn't reason his world spinning, and things becoming twisted and cloudy.
Suddenly, laughter erupted from down one of the tunnels.
Steltha couldn't shake his head enough in his efforts to clear it. He resembled a towering, enraged dog as he rocked himself around and shaggily walloped his hide.
He shouldered to a wall with a heavy report, aiming his shoota in the general direction of the laughter. The hallway lit a hellish yellow and white as the first bullets in a wide cone began to cough out, peppering the metal with sparks and dust.
"Who's dere?!" Steltha groggily barked, his eyes feeling heavy. "I'll find yu, yu zoggin git. I'll find ya and kill ya."
The Nob lumbered down the passageway, no longer caring about or remembering his original intents to simply scout the holds out.
A feminine scream rung in his ear, it was seemingly born from the wall he was beside.
Steltha reeled away and pumped the wall full of lead, draining the last of his magazines in a raucous, metallic spluttering of his gun.
"Where ar yu?! Come out an fight meh!"
This was too much.
Something wasn't right. His head… it wasn't supposed to be like this. He was wrong, he knew it.
As Steltha fiddled with a fresh magazine, he dropped the second one in a heavy clatter, cursing as he stooped to retrieve it.
"…Whyar yu showin me old tiems fer…" He wavered, yanking the bolt. "-Makin me see dem like dat. If Gitshak wer 'ere, we'd 'ave clocked ya, wherever yu is… yu… yu fing…"
"Oi, clean the shi' outta yer eyes, lad, I'm rite 'ere."
Steltha whirled around, his pug face draining of its taught rigidity as a shadowy figure came to light from the darkness in the hallway.
A towering Ork, taller than him by almost two heads took shape from the melding blackness, their heels clunking dully on the ship's deck as they approached.
"Yer actin like yu don't recognize meh."
"Fancyin dat dere," Steltha murmured in some mockery of awe. "cuzz I don't."
"I'z seez I do." Gitshak grinned, the exposed half of his skull glistening, still wet from the blood that had once clung to it in wholeness. His empty eye-socket dribbled gore and puss down his mangled face, and both sides of his underbitten maw- not just the fleshed side of bone –were grinning maniacally at Steltha. "Ya really 'avn't changed oen bit, Steltha."
"Yu wouldn't know." Steltha curled back his green lips, his fangs clenching down until they emitted crinkling sounds from the grinding.
"Howz dat? I wouldn't know. Youz standin rite in fron' uv me. It may be dark an all, but I could pick yu out in a mob withou' even tryin."
"Dats why yu wouldn't know." Steltha's fingers flexed over his gun's grips.
"Wasn't dat what youz been searchin fer all dese years?" Gitshak cocked his massive head, taking another step closer.
Ca-dunk- -went the larger Nob's boot.
Steltha's eye caught movement by "Gitshak"-'s flank.
The other Ork's left arm was entombed within a blocky, triple-fingered and wicked glove.
A Powerklaww.
The incisor-like blades that made its fingers twitched, the servos inside minutely whining as metal creaked and wires buzzed.
"Yu nevva 'ad what I 'ad." Gitshak grinned even wider, a small torrent of blood dribbling from his shredded eye's socket. "Dose Orks were mine. Yu wer' just a gun on the run, a merc ifn' I evva did lay eye on one. You nevva commanded da respect I did, and yu wer nevva as fighty as me or da others. Wot can one tiny reject wit a mad-Mek on 'is eels really do afta all?"
"More den yu, ya eyeless git." Steltha grumbled. "One uv us walked away from does pointy-'eaded freaks, and it won' yu, not even close, ya sharrlatunn gang-hopper. Yu wer ded becuzz I was comin for ya, and youz was terrified uv me."
Gitshak suddenly erupted into motion.
A deafening bellow pierced his throat, the classical warcry of their kind, as he surged forwards with the bladed fingers of the klaww opened and aimed for Steltha's throat.
"-Waaaggghh~!" –The Kommando bellowed, meeting the charge head-on.
Bnk~!
-The decking thundered as Steltha bodyslammed into the wall, denting the layered plates and rattling the buttress frames.
"Yu can crawl on bakk tu wherevva it is yu came frum aftah yous wuz ded!" Steltha cried. "Ca-rawl on bakk! I'm no gud for your tricks I'm not! I'm not! I'm Steltha! An' when I find whoevva's doin dis ta me: I'll kill ya!"
[💀]
"-It was different." She muttered, her snout poking him as she closed in to put her face on his neck. "Better, more importantly. I… I feel this, really, with you."
"Despite everything?" He murmured back, running a thumb down the full length of her mandibles.
She nipped at his finger, golden eyes fixed and narrowed with truth.
"Regardless." She said, pressing her hefty, gray bosom into him. The rings piercing her jingled quietly in the room's dark din as she started gyrating. "Now: I want my bull back again. Rouse yourself, please…"
Clun-rung
-The Fallen gasped and opened his eyes.
He'd collapsed. He didn't remember it, but apparently, he had. The bedsheets had felt real, and he smelled her, and felt her, and tasted her, and-
"Leha?" He uttered aloud, picking his helmed head off the deck.
Silence. Save for the hulk's constant, dim ambient boom.
The Fallen gingerly picked up his tophat and reaffixed it atop his headwear. The galleryway was still taught, narrowed, and very very dark.
"Those memories aren't to be touched." He mumbled. "They're mine."
"Whatever is yours, is also mine." –Came Leha's honeyed voice from the blackness. "You forfeited your privacy just as you did mine. We're together now. We share the dirt, and we share lost love. We shall decay together."
"Get out of my mind." The Fallen growled, eyeing the indicators on his HUD. He blinked a few runes active. "Get out I said."
"Make me." –Wheezing voice of an elder man croaked. "Or would you rather have me kneel and concede to your purpose? What other reason would you have to come here if not for me?"
"Most definitely not for the reasons you assume." The Fallen frowned. "You daemons are all alike."
"Daemon!" The being cackled. "Naïve fool."
"No more a daemon than anyone else you've met today."
The Fallen spun around.
A man was standing in the darkness, a cloak whipping over his shoulders in the steam-haze crawling out from a ruined skirt vent nearby.
The man smiled underneath a thin mustache and a blanket of jaw-stubble, broad arms crossing over a flak-carapace covering his chest. There was combat gear hidden all over himself, only shielded by a farse of regal nobility's robes.
"No more a daemon than I was, or you were, when you stole my property." The newcomer said, his voice deep and rattling. "But I think you know you stole much more from me than just that ship."
"If you consider your life to have been more valuable." The Fallen grunted. "Which I do not."
"Obviously, you wouldn't be here if you'd thought different. We still have a score to settle, being that you killed me."
"The score was already settled. I won."
"Did you?" The man stepped closer, gore trickling from the bloody hole penetrating his chest and emerging out his back. "Or did you only sentence yourself to your ultimate defeat?"
[💀]
The spires were glazed a diseased green from the haze staining the sky. Neon emerged as a bulb that bloomed like some kind of artificial sunrise on the horizon, drowning the city's confusing carpet of infrastructure in a drab tinge.
The Gothic immensity was gridded with interlocking skywalks and haulerways, the roads sometimes suspended thousands of stories above networks of gridded manufactorums and assembly plants. Distant headlights made crawling millipedes of ghostly wisps below, and even above when the roads were concealed in distant factory-smog, giving the appearance that they were airborne.
This all meshed with the consistent moan of turning hydraulic-winches, grumbling factory exhausts, and the omnipresent boom of a metropolitan center containing billions of people. The endless murmur of fetid civilization. Most realities lacked the grunge, but then again, the Fallen's sense of acceptance wasn't widely popular.
On a passing run, a fat industrial barge grumbled as its immense, rectangular bulk passed neatly between two nearby spire-habs. The air exuded a foul smell, and a steel paranoia stole any sense of idleness. The Fallen- clad in his armor and tophat –perched atop a support rafter overlooking a fervent drop, his snarling visor tilted to gaze below and past his kneepads.
Linked via docking millipedes, at the base of a decorated, arched building sloping underneath the rafter, was a bulky vessel with a protruding nose and ridged spine.
The sloop was a reverse-scorpion. Very familiar, seeing as the Fallen had already beheld her presence here before.
Watching the past wasn't something he was new to, but every magic, power, and essence across the Multiverse had their own ways of framing the replaying of time.
Only a slight edge of intrigue was added here, but other than that, the memory played itself flawlessly and devoid of the present.
The Fallen's back-thrusters kicked to life, and with a short leap, he plummeted off the rafter bars, nose-diving for the docked ship. The foul-smelling air whistled as he fell, parting with effortless fluidity.
Another blast of the jet-ports. The Fallen flipped end for end, and landed on the spine of the sloop with a hollow clung of metal.
Steam was rising from a bouquet of smokestacks birthing from the base of the massive docking structure. They masked the ship's southern surroundings in pale obscurity, and he jogged through this crawling cloud as he moved for the opposite flank of the hull's roof.
One of the docking millipedes ran short in its linkage to the sloop's ribs. The coverings retracted, revealing a brief, guarded walkway that was swallowed by a cramped bulkhead leading inside the ship.
A guard was stationed in front of the arch, arms lazed in his lap, rebreather mask ducked. There were nutro-stim pipes that created an interlocking bushel across his suit's back, feeding his insides repeated dosages of adreno-chems.
Such practices were common among the Hiver-Gangs. The particularly effective brutes in the crimelords' ranks often received extreme benefits over their fellows.
But steroids weren't going to keep someone like the Fallen out.
The aforementioned smirked under his helm. He jumped off the hull's roof, landing right behind the thug.
"Hello there." He grunted.
The sentry reached for a stubber pistol and swung with his other hand in one motion. The Fallen caught his gloved fist in his gauntlet, and then squeezed. The guard's cry of pain muffled through his rebreather as bones crackled.
A punch to the gut shattered every rib in his body and ruptured most of his major organs. The Fallen twisted the corpse around in a dancer's spin, hooked his arm between the guard's thighs, and threw him over the rail and into the misting oblivion of the gigantic city-sprawl below. He didn't bother watching the cadaver cartwheel as he calmly strode through the sloop vessel's docking bulkhead.
He had to duck to squeeze through what was essentially a boarding cavity. Sick-red light bathed the Gothic arches and swaddled the ship's innards entirely as he passed, shrouding his footfalls with the dull thrum of the ship's engines on standby.
The Fallen blink-checked his HUD, watching as his motion-sensors bloomed to life, illuminating for him a series of registered organic lifesigns that were with him inside the vessel.
Well, I hope they don't mind me strolling inside…
"Evening." The Fallen tipped his tophat as he swung up a gantry flight, and a distracted man dressed in robes and a plate-vest jogged down the steps heading right for him. The crewmember jumped and stopped dead, staring at him with wide eyes.
"Who the hell are y-?"
The Fallen gripped his temple and smashed his head into the wall. A morbid crunch saw the crewman's face cave inwards. His body spasmed, and the Fallen let it roll loudly down the stairs.
"Oh, thankyou." He muttered, grabbing the man's sidearm and letting gravity slide it free.
"Fressi? What's going on down there?"
A similarly dressed woman with auburn hair and an eye-patch appeared at the top of the flight, reaching for a powered cutlass on her hip. The stubber coughed as he shot her through the face. The Fallen rounded the top of the flight as if he hadn't even seen her, examining the Imperial handgun with an appraising eye.
"These aren't half bad." He said to himself quietly. "Better than the shit in the mid-2500s."
"Intruder!" A fat, bald deckhand with half a bionic face screamed.
The Fallen had entered the sloop's bridge through the under-gantry. Comfy control-stations flanked both ends, and a risen pedestal contained the captain's command throne. A pair of hollow-eyed servitors with treaded wheel-legs sat immobile in the yoke of each station, unflinching as they became inadvertent spectators to their master's demise.
In contrast to their eerie silence: the deckhand turned out to be the loudest one of all of them. He bellowed raggedly, at the top of his augmented lungs, throwing himself down from the isle rise, a heavy bolt-wrench clenched and beared in his gritty hand.
The Fallen shot him twice through the chest, but was surprised when the screaming man fought through it and swung with his heavy wrench regardless.
Cllnnkk~! –sparks flew, and the Fallen's energy shields flickered as his head was knocked to the side from the blow.
Figures, the Fallen growled.
How embarrassing.
Normally, this wouldn't be an issue: average Hive-scum like this. But the Fallen was practicing restraint. He couldn't use his Doomblaster, as the plasma would punch right through the crew's soft bodies, and it would probably punch clean through the sloop's hull too. He needed the ship in working condition, after all, to use it for his intended purpose here.
The deckhand shrieked and came back for a second strike. The Fallen gripped his wrist, snapped it like a toothpick, letting the wrench fly away from his victim's useless fingers.
"Aagggggghhh~!" –The deckhand was now positively howling.
It annoyed the Fallen so much that he got creative. He snatched a compact-explosive off the deckhand's belt, thumbed the rune, and then twisted it in a full punch, his fist penetrating flesh and clothes alike, right up the deckhand's ass.
Pllchh~!
Blood spattered the floor and dribbled off the Fallen's elbow. The man's shrieking cut off with a horrified squeal.
"He's got Runns!" Barked another crewman that was stampeding from the spinal passage of the ship. He was some bruiser, clad in graffiti-laced flak armor with a sawed-off in his hand. Behind him was a woman, a sleeker one garbed in a jumpsuit with red-glowing goggles that sprinted on his tail. She drew a pair of dual pistols with safeties clicking askew.
Ironic.
The Fallen ripped his arm out of the deckhand's body, lowered his victim's heels to the floor, and drop-kicked him across the bridge. The fat crewman screeched like a flightless bird made airborne as he cartwheeled through the air and over the command throne.
With an organic flop, Tubbaload crashed into the two newer arrivals and sent them all sprawling. A moment later, the grenade went off, and all three vanished in a crackling, splattered drumroll of thunder that flecked soot and gore in a wide series of paintings in all directions. A piece of shrapnel flew out from the exchange, and the Fallen was actually able to keep his eyes locked on it, his head darting as he watched the white-hot shard ricochet off the spine of the throne, bounce against a pylon, before firmly lodging itself in the skull of one of the pilot servitors.
The sound of a firmware hub dying groaning out from the servitor's grill-mouth. It flopped forwards, its face cracking open as it ate the console pad in front of itself and collapsed to the floor.
"Oh," The Fallen's shoulders sagged. "-perfect."
"-Ishketen mak thelo grimlas! Is Emperor bahkaz! –Boomed a deep, gravelly voice from the ship's spine gantry. The speaker wasn't just accented like the rest of the crew: he spoke full-on native Gelic, and probably had never grasped an iota of Low Gothic in his whole life.
The Fallen craned his top-hatted helm past the chair's arm and gazed over the still dripping smatterings of viscera that had been the last three crewmembers.
There was a man standing- shell-shocked –in the gantry. His arms were wide, his jaw dropped, his fancy robes and overcoat flicking as his body quivered.
"…B-Bischd das Throne…" –The poor captain blinked.
The Fallen almost felt sorry. It was a rare day his enemies were caught with their pants down so low.
But then again, these fuckers had the combat-value of a pack of misdirected farm-pigs compared to his normal quarry.
He just wanted their ship. Honestly, finding the evidence of their illicit records had been more challenging than storming the sloop…
Regardless, the Fallen sighed tiredly, draining the last of the stolen stubber's mag' into the captain's chest.
The captain convulsed with each hit like a corpse embraced by lightning, and hit the deck back-first, spread, as if withholding the intentions to create a snow-angel.
"Done and done then." The Fallen tossed the pistol away with a modicum of dismissal. He glanced around the bridge, sneering in disgust as more strings of chunky gore pattered down from their new homes on the ceiling. "Ew. I shouldn't have done that."
The throne's command-pads bleeped in protest as he tried to key in the right codes over the course of the next few minutes. This was when he started running the translation software to figure up from down. This was when he figured out that the navigation controls had been halved by the death of the servitor killed in the explosion.
This was when he first got underway to find the Chechenwaldr.
It wasn't that long ago, and yet it-…
[💀]
-felt like an eternity has passed since then.
The Fallen heaved as the memories flowed clear of his eyes and revealed the grim hallways of the mangled hulk again, as they were always.
He didn't know where he was. This chamber was new. Its ceiling was a cragged hole, the floor punctured by shards of rock. Some kind of service-trawler had punched clean through the western wall, and lye dead and inactive in the rim's teeth.
The hum of active energy translation whispered out from the dark. The Fallen glanced up and saw several ringed conductor towers lining one section of the space above. The destruction wrought had knocked several of them off their moorings, and so some pointed their bulbous antenna-heads downward as brackets of blue lightning swam up and down their lengths.
"What, tell me, are you trying to get at me? With morals?" The Fallen's chuckle echoed throughout the chamber, meshing with the energy pulses. He bathed in the dull blue-light, glaring hatefully at the empty air. "You'll need something heavier than that."
Hissskk~!
"She's dead." –Coughed an unseen speaker.
"Good for her." The Fallen spat, his teeth gritting as a terrible headache stabbed him all over the interior of his skull. "You're an angry thing, aren't you?"
A tired, ragged wheeze sighed out from the breast of a stumbling, enshadowed figure that limped into the chamber from a hallway arch. The living corpse existed with cauterized skin, a hanging mouth whose level was unnaturally low, with bleached eyes and exposed ribs. The corpse gave a harried moan and reached out with bone-fingers.
The Fallen blinked, and the vision vanished.
"I've seen worse inside my toilet." He grunted. "This is it? Impersonations and cheap illusions? You're right, you're no daemon, you're weak. You have nothing. You're a Sprite, a wisp, some pathetic trickster who can't survive its own victims without the cover of magic."
A metallic, rattling groan settled throughout the hulk's body. The floor trembled and something heavy shifted nearby, impacting a surface with a thunderous bang.
"…Is that really what you think of me?"
The Fallen turned, facing a large, hunched figure just barely birthed from the black.
The creature cocked a vaguely-serpentine head, his mandibles flexing idly.
"Was I just a pathetic illusion? Something to pass you by and never leave a mark?" Nasu R'ha asked.
"You are empty air, a phantasm." The Fallen shook his head. "There's only one man who reminds me with weight of my own sins. And that man is me. I myself, and no one else, will ever possess that power over me."
"I was the only one who saw your weaknesses that you so skillfully kept hidden from all others." Nasu said. "You couldn't cope with your own fragile grip. This immeasurable face of bravery you wield is a lie. I may be an illusion, a mimicry of someone you once knew, but now that you have let me into your mind: I can see everything. All you have done. All those you have wronged. You think you're some kind of misunderstood loner, someone different from every world in existence. You are not. You are a drifter, and a worthless gust of wind. Your greatest fear is of being incapable, when all your life that is all you have ever been."
"Is that why you think we're here for you?"
The Fallen and the illusion glanced over to see Conscience stepping forth. Together, the two doppelganger Fallens stared down the intruder, arms crossed, eyes narrowed.
"I was wondering where you were." The Fallen mumbled.
"Hey, it's my skull too. I don't like vandalism and I sure as hell don't like burglary." Conscience pointed at the figure. "And, what's more, I don't really think you quite know who this is you've stumbled upon, Good Sir. You're comparing us- not just him, but me –to your own reality's limits. You can't fathom digging any deeper into the situation than you already have. What do you think that alien you're mimicking right now is? Do you really believe it's native to your strain of spacetime? Not only are your lies baseless, but we are also above your petty laws of engagement. We exist on a higher level. Nothing you ever do will change that, because you are existentially incapable of countering us."
"Mind games don't work on me." The Fallen concluded.
The creature allowed a twitch in its mimic's mandibles, but said nothing for the longest of whiles.
"We will see." –It eventually mumbled, its form becoming reabsorbed into the darkness again. "If I cannot turn you away with deception…"
"Perhaps, we will try for trauma." –It switched voices, Nasu's deep tone ending itself for the shrill sing-song of another.
The Spacehulk melted away yet again. The Fallen was free-floating in nothingness.
And then, he heard the wind whipping, and the motoring drums of afterburners.
[💀]