Screams of Chechenwaldr

3

Dark Heart

Most Mekz learned their first real iotas of tinkering lore through human technology. It was why all the klanz and warbands who warred the least usually had the dumbest Orkz. No loot being taken meant no toys.

Meks needed their toys to figure out the mechanical gubbinz, so they could make their impromptu creations blow up in the enemy's faces more often than of their own warriors. Of course, some shortcuts were always necessary. Besides, it kept the morale high when the occasional friendly wagon went up like a firecracker due to a malfunction. If there was one thing Orks loved just as much as dakka', stompin' and speed: it was explosions, and the purty lites' that followed.

Maddnut had done his fair share of purposefully slipping in a hiccup with the orders of particularly violent or otherwise nasty clients. He'd always been an oddball in the mobs due to his lack of desire to bathe in the vital fluids from a vicious melee. Cleaving victims apart wasn't as fulfilling as vaporizing them from a mile away, or pounding them into paste with an effective artillery barrage.

But that was just Maddnut's thinking at work.

The only reason Steltha tolerated his cowardice was because the Mek was good at making guns and bombs. Most of Steltha's gear had been retrofitted or outright bolted together by Maddnut in the variety of workshops and hideouts they used throughout their mercenary campaigns. The only thing missing was a ship and some underlings, add in those and Steltha could've become a Warboss, just like he'd been anticipating for Mork-knew-how-long.

But the Imperials had stomped that dream into the ground.

Again.

Dellos was just one of a few instances. Steltha had fought against the Eldar on a number of occasions, but all of his truly painful defeats had been inflicted upon him by the Imperium. Steltha hate-talked a lot. All that hate went in one direction, and it wasn't made subtle.

It did mean at least that Maddnut had been able to become familiar with Imperial equipment from the few samples he'd garnered.

Computer mainframes and servo-monitors were navigable to him, at least in a basic sense. Luckily, whatever ship this was had been built by a fairly standard provider. Everything was in Low Gothic, which translated quite well to a number of the piggish dialects his kind spoke.

Somehow, the electrical systems inside the ship were still working. Judging by all the damage wrought across the structuring, Madd' would've guessed they were on a derelict of some sort. The mournful groans given off from the hull, and the ghostly creaks and clanks meshed finely and terrifyingly with the mocking screams.

They appeared every so often. High-pitched, but sometimes deep, ragged, and some also bloodcurdling, some extremely far away, some that sounded like they had come from around a corner or two.

The Mek mumbled to himself inanely as his fat, green fingers dabbled on the heavy keys of the console. Work went slower with just one hand, but he absolutely refused to take the other off the shoota lying on the aux-slab of the station. Maddnut had ripped open the console's western paneling and had directly tethered a bushel of cables to a more central output. It greatly increased the risk of a fire, but he was used to such risks in his occupation. Besides, the key-ports in the console's guts had been fried and there weren't any replacements.

"…fix da bleatin console he says, werk ya fingas on it he says, get me results, do dis fer me, quit bein such a cowar', Madd', quit dis, quit dat, why I oughtta…"

The keys stabbed down under his fingers more aggressively as Maddnut grumbled and cursed. The Ork paused before a raucous sneeze blasted out of his face like a gunshot, and a wad of sticky, yellow snot slapped repugnantly onto the center of the keyboard. Maddnut glared at it before wiping it up with his palm, and he dragged it away against his pants. He kept typing.

Or at least he kept trying to.

*MALFUNCTION** OVERRIDE *-

-The readout said.

"Gork's arse, ya yuseluss fing-!" Maddnut slammed a punch on the board. "Leav it to da humies ta slap togetha a peese uv junk. A gaggle uv dammed Grots coulda stitched dis up mor proppa. ...Wudent even be ere if Steltha didnt say fer meh to. Wot's he fink we're gonna get off dis anyhow? Dis hole ship's in da gutta, probableh 'as been fer years!"

*MALFUNCTION***BENEDICTIONS REQUIRED BY DESIGNATED ASPIRANTS OF THE MACHINE-GOD. *-

Maddnut snarled, metal denting as he kicked the frame.

"I didn need nuffin fancy…" The Mek cursed. He started jamming the central key tens and tens of times in his growing impatience. "I jus needed a bleatin over-veeyu~!"

*PRIMARY SYSTEMS REBOOTED. SIGNIFICANT DETACHMENT NOTED.** OVERRIDE COMPLETE. SYSTEM STATUS: OFFLINE.*

-For a moment, Maddnut froze, uncomprehending of his success.

The glowing yellow typeface scrawling down the olive-drab screen showed brightly in the darkness, waiting for his direction. The Ork grinned and drummed his dirty nails on the keys.

"-I knewz I could getz it."

Maddnut flinched when a particularly mournful scream hooked his attention. The noises hadn't stopped since Steltha had wandered off, and if the Mek put aside his haste for assumptions: he'd say that the screaming was getting closer.

"Bettah werk quikk." He mumbled, fighting with the human-sized keys to scroll through the feed list. "Dis ere musta been wher dey kept da shootas and kannons."

Obviously, every battery station in the entire network connected to this uplink was listed as nonfunctioning. Maddnut's eyes briefly bugged. He may not have been able to read the majority of what was in front of his ugly face, but even he could pick out the various crimson spheres dotting the network map. All of those must have been various forms of damage and wear.

He found an aux-link to a central navigation terminal. The battery stations had limited viewing power, and so Maddnut tried to open up the only window he really had at this point.

"…Dat don't seem rite it don't." The Ork muttered, itching his armpit as he scrolled. His finger caught on a ragged disturbance on his flesh. Maddnut craned over, digging two nails into a scabby pick nestled in the green folds of his thick skin.

The Mek had to tug a few times, but the wriggling, crimson-colored larva living inside was yanked free, twisting, as the barbed-hook on its tail tore free of the growth's interior with a tiny drip of blood. The chubby creature was easily six-inches long.

Maddnut crushed its head in his fingers and threw the still-writhing body away.

"Much bettah."

Back to the console.

That didn't make sense, unless the link was broken, which it couldn't have been.

Maddnut glanced down by his foot to check that he had indeed tethered the right cables together. He'd forgotten all about the gun beside him as he sank deeper and deeper into the screen.

There was a registry block.

It read Finite Tolerance.

Well, at least he knew where they were now… But aside from that, the readouts clearly showed that the ship's internal spine of life-support chambers had all been obliterated. Red spheres drowned out any hope of a beating heart. So then how was the interior of the vessel still maintaining an atmosphere and gravity?

"Da boss iznt gonna like dat." Maddnut stepped off, blinking dumbly. "Maybe he'll know whatnawt bout dis ship, cuzz it meens squig-turd ta me."

clnkclnkclnkCLNKCLNKCLNK-!

Maddnut's ears perked as the heavy clanks grew in volume. It took him a moment to understand that something heavy was running across the deck, headed straight for him.

"Zog-it-!" The Mek growled, fumbling his rifle as he snatched it back up and pointed it over the guard-sprawl of the station. "Stay bakk!"

A percing shriek overtook the chamber. It certainly didn't add up to an angry Ork's bellow, but it was enough to make Maddnut's guts drop. He staggered away, hitting the console and leaning against it as the shadows began to move.

The western portion of the battery-dump chamber changed. An amorphous, broiling ink of utter black roared and sloshed, consuming whatever its mass met. It enveloped the walls, the floor, the other console stations, swallowing them with ceaseless hunger.

When Maddnut's shoota began to cough, the muzzleflare did nothing to light up the immediate space that the shadow conquered. It was unnatural darkness, impenetrable, like it was oil.

"Zog-it-!" He hollered again, clawing his way over the console guards.

Maddnut scrambled, landing on his chest and immediately breaking into a waddling run. He left his shoota behind in the station, forgetful of it completely as it was lost to the spreading darkness.

[💀]

Sometimes, a mixture was made that comprised of squig-tendons ground with dead-spore, washed in grog, and threaded black-mold. The Kommandos called it Knokovva, and sometimes, they smoked the recreational drug to induce pre-battle visions and portents. Many of them believed that it was a way they could commune with Gork and Mork, and others believed it was a gateway to utilizing the Immaterium for their own gains.

Steltha hadn't been so sure of any of that. The 'visions' –he had experienced during his consumption of Knokovva had revolved more around the namesake of the drug than any kind of entailing or supernatural prowess. All the stuff did was tighten the muscles and heighten one's aggression, all the while lowering cognitive ability. It left marks sometimes, but use of it before a battle was widely popular with his tier of society. Steltha just remembered lumbering about and killing a few boyz without really recalling the exact details.

Not that he had cared.

It was however, a tad annoying not being able to witness his own handiwork.

The point was, he remembered very well the sensations of confusion and weightlessness that followed the use of Knokovva.

Last he checked, he hadn't brought any along with him through that tellyporta.

So then why did he feel like he had snorted a keg of it?

He used the walls of the passages for support, trudging through the dark, seeing enemies in every wisp of steam from the broken vent-ports, and every twitch of a shadow as a potential threat.

Gitshak hadn't come back at least. Steltha still had that fresh in his mind. It didn't make a lick of sense: Gitshak had been dead for years, and even before he'd kicked the bucket, he'd had the Mad-Doks replace that portion of his head with cybernetics following the battle with the Eldar.

The illusion had been an easy to detect lie, but regardless, the lie's knowledge about his past was surprising. Steltha cared not for appearance. The entity could've unraveled every failure in his existence, and it would not have mattered.

However, Steltha did care about his power.

And that illusion had scoffed him over his lack of it, just as the real Gitshak had.

The Kommando Nob snarled, and planted his head into the wall, denting the plate.

Lies.

That was exactly it. All lies and nonsense. Shit-talk. Gitshak had known the end was coming, all the lads in the mob had. Nobody questioned whose hand had been dealt when the enemy had 'overwhelmed' –the ferocious bigger Nob. Steltha's kunnin' had been the victor. He hadn't needed an up-front fight to prove his betterment.

He never needed upfront fights. That was why he'd had Maddnut build the portal, that was why he was alive where none of the other Orks on Dellos were.

He was a survivor.

"Dat'd be a fancy way uv sayin how much uv a coward yu ar." Gitshak grinned evilly as Steltha lumbered past. Blood trickled from both eyes in the Nob's head. He was missing them, leaving only gory sockets. "Dere'd be Warbosses snug in wit da Goffs who wouldn't look at yas. Yous worthless, scramblin fer scraps lik a Snotling."

Steltha had enough sense in him to hack a wad of spit at the hallucination. He didn't humor any response otherwise, even when eyeless-Gitshak's voice tremored the hull with a deep chortle. The Nob melted into the blackness and was left behind him.

"Durty trikks." Steltha sneered. "I know what yu is: yous a Weirdum. I know bout your kind, I herd da storeez. Ya got nuffin on me, no powah, unless I givs you permisshunz. Yu cant trikk me like dat."

Echoing, dull laughter burbled up from all directions, echoing down the passage, like formless currents bashing off of coastal rocks.

"Get away frum meh!" Steltha barked, the trigger of his rifle clicking as he tried to fire from empty magazines. "I'm 'arder den what you is! And stronga!"

He broke into a run as best he could manage, teetering, like a missile struggling to form a lock on whatever was in front of it. A stack of ancient drums went clattering and rolling everywhere as the Ork smashed through them. Steltha was howling and screaming, his own cries rebounding down the halls of the Spacehulk in mimicry of the earlier, phantom shrieks that had so unsettled him.

"Get outta me 'ead~!"

"Your time has come, beast." –An elegant, masculine voice whispered out from the dark. "After all of this time, we have finally found you."

Steltha roared, grate-mesh ripping, bolts flying free of their mounts as he shouldered his whole weight into a wall, cracking the central plate like glass.

His piggish eyes swept madly through the dark, searching for anything, something to let him know his enemy was real and that he wasn't simply alone, warring against the shadows.

His wish was granted when a figure slipped fluidly from the dark.

No.

Not just a figure, several figures.

Steltha staggered back as black, shadowy beings zipped among the contents of the chamber. They dodged effortlessly around corners, weaved through arrays of crates and drums, and slid down the walls like waves of rapids-water.

One of the figures surmounted a storage chest, boots wrapping on the metal as it poised itself for Steltha's consideration.

Two rubies glowed in the dark, staring back at him with an unfettering hatred.

These rubies marked the flanks of an insectoid, cocoon-shaped helmet marked with the curling, archaic, and daggered script of the Aelderi's mysterious languages.

The Eldar's wristblades glinted in the dark as he brandished them. Warpspider to Ork, both sized one another down in cramped environment.

Steltha's face tightened, and he bore his fangs with a feral snarl.

"I shoulda known bettah." He spat. "Sneeky, cowahd Eldah scum! Ya just pulled yer last trikk."

Steltha leveled his shoota at the hip and yanked the trigger.

The latch clicked, and the barrels remained dark.

Steltha howled, wielding the gun as a blunt. He threw himself forward, swinging his shoota like a bat at the Eldar perched atop the workcrate.

The alien's lithe figure seemed to melt around the metallic mass of the weapon. Its limbs and body dematerialized into weak dust foraying into the breeze. When the shoota passed completely through, nothing but a dim afterthought of black wisps remained to show where his enemy had been.

"Where'd yu go?! Yu-"

"I see you, animal." –An Eldar hissed from his flank.

"-Yu little bastard-!"

The shoota's girth swung through that illusion too, the Warpspider bursting into a disappearing cloud of smog.

"I am everywhere."

Steltha's head shot up, his eyes locking on the Warpspider clinging to the overhead pipe-docks. The Eldar gazed down at him with some semblance of pity, its helm cocked with perhaps a taste of morbid curiosity.

"I'll kill yu!" Steltha dropped his gun, his hand sweeping his belt. He came up with a fat slugga sidearm, and jammed the barrel in the Eldar's face.

BANG BANG BANG-!

-Fist-sized bolts ripped through empty ceiling paneling and severed one of the pipes.

An onrush of hissing, whooshing steam burst from the ancient pathway and washed over the Ork's head and shoulders in a singing totality. Steltha screamed and staggered away, his sight stolen, burning blisters causing his face to swell and turn a scabbish red.

"What danger am I to you, when you can fulfill my murder for me?" The Eldar's mocking laughter bounced down the passage. "Taste oblivion."

Steltha roared and yowled, slapping at his face and clawing at his own eyes. Seering, sharp pain rung through his skull. Orks were nigh-invulnerable to the grips of anguish across their tough hides, but even they had weak spots too.

"Such brute strength, and yet look at how pitiful you are."

Steltha swung his fists with abandon, he spun and kicked and leaped, denting walls, bashing aside drums and fracturing panels.

"-I'll fihnd yu-!" He bellowed.

"No, you will not." The Eldar mused. "Because I have already found you first."

[💀]

{Ace Combat 6 OST: Bartolomeo Fortress}

Something wasn't right with Marathon's docking millipedes. The way she was listing to the southeast, and the gradually growing episode of silence bleeding out from the control spire were all tellers above anything else.

But when the ship didn't detach, even as the enemy was preparing to pounce on her, he knew the situation was worse than a mere mechanical error.

"What channel is Marathon connected to?" The Fallen grit his teeth, knuckles whitening even underneath his gauntlets as he battled with the directionals. The world jolted, and a deafening bang just outside the ballistic-barrier caused his ears to ring. Luckily, his helmet's nullifiers had taken the brunt of the blow. But speech still echoed as he yelled into the communicae network. "What channel is Marathon linked to?"

"*Did that flier just say something?*" –Came stray babble through the vox.

"*HQ, my left wing's gone but I'm still airborne, I'm leading what's left back to the strip.*"

"-*Negative 33rd, they're right on top of you. Group with 7th and hold on. Emperor Guide You.*"

"Can someone answer me in the next century?" The Fallen barked. His attention was stolen a moment later, breath hissing through his teeth as he strangled the controls and yanked them towards his chest.

The fightercraft's fuselage gave a rebellious creak, and the afterburners buzzed. What was an evened and distant horizon of crisp, snow-capped mountains for thousands of miles turned into nothing but deep blue.

The Fallen ripped his Lightning through the thin cloud-cover, nose pointed for the heavens. Not a second after he had done so did a flickering band of munitions fire slip under his tail and pass the left flank of his wing.

Fighting the pressure changes, the Fallen steadied his breathing, craning a bloodshot eye around the rim of the fighterplane's cockpit shield.

His suit handled most of the G-tug, the stabilizer joints and HAZ sealants coinciding with the arcane emitters. Nonetheless, it still felt like someone was squeezing his head like a grape between two colossal fingers.

He huffed, his suit's readouts emitting warning claxons in response to his spiking heartrate.

Down below, a pair of fat, ungainly shapes punched through the thin cloud-cover, beelining upwards in a distant chase with sooty trails of black exhaust marking their pathways behind.

He'd been able to sidestep the Ork Fightas so far, but now they had him in a trap. His Imperial Lightning steed could outclimb and outmaneuver most of the trash-planes the Orks had fielded in the sky. The problem was, some of the more beefed-up Fightas could match his speed at full-throttle. He couldn't get away from them this time.

The pattering of hailstones invaded his hearing. The Lightning shuddered, and below, the two Ork planes' noses and wings were alight with coughing cannon barrels.

With a snarl, the Fallen wrenched the sticks over, throwing his plane into a sharp sideways descent that flattened him into the operations-throne, and shoved the weight of his heels into his throat.

One of the Ork scrap-planes broke off from the attack, ducking back down beneath the clouds for cover. The second Fighta wasn't so cautious, the pilot wrenching his steed's nose lower in an attempt to catch the Fallen in his forward cones. Fighting the wind meant the Lightning slipped horizontally without challenge under a second spray of flickering rounds. The Fallen gunned the afterburners and switched off the rear-thrusters, jolting the Lightning's chin up a second time in a short jitter.

"Big, ugly, green asshole." –The Fallen sneered, squeezing the stick-trigs.

His fighter quivered, and the mechanical drone of what sounded like a buzzsaw croaked out from either side of the cockpit shield.

Daggering bolts of bullet-spread whipped through the sky, flashes and lights blinking about the Fighta's belly. As the Fallen bypassed right under the enemy pilot, the underside of the Ork's plane belched out a thick volume of whipping flames. The Fighta produced an atmospheric shriek as it plummeted, leaving a fading vein of inky black to mark its deathly descent.

"*Damned flyers-!*"

"*-I'm hit-!*"

"*Ork flyers are going for the transport! Moving to intercept!*"

"Where is the fucking connection to the spire?!" The Fallen cried, squeezing his triggers and unleashing a burst of fire. He flinched, the cockpit briefly flaring a bright yellow as he jolted the Lightning aside. A flaming Fighta that had been playing chicken came screaming just over the left wing, flipping like a drill-head and tearing its own fuselage apart. "Marathon isn't away and the docking clamps are still closed! What is going on down there?"

"*This is Spire Noctis, establishing link. Is this who I think it is?*" –Croaked out in the Fallen's helm-uplink.

"Save it for later, Control Primaris, someone needs to talk to me."

"*The servo-locks aren't responding to manual or automatic. We can't get her separated from the docks.*" –The ATC officer swallowed. The Fallen could hear a ruckus of activity in the background of the conversation, he even detected the sound of glass breaking. "*We're dispatching maintenance teams to the operations clusters. I'm reading rupturing in the cooling restraints of the dock-clasps.*"

"How long until you can fix the problem?" The Fallen skimmed his belly over the thin clouds below, tipping the Lightning's wing to glance down the length.

There was another pair of Ork Fightas barreling through the sky, flying side-by-side with him and keeping fair pace. The Fallen had a brief glimpse in one of the scrap-plane's cockpits. A green-skinned, pointy-eared and hideous creature grinned maniacally back at him under a pair of flight goggles too small for its fat skull.

Piggish exhaust-racks running down the crimson and black Fighta's ribs coughed, giving off a gunshot that reached him as a bouncing echo. The plane actually hopped, jolting on its own flightpath, but the danger only seemed to make the Orkish operator cackle with hideous, silent laughter.

"*First team prepping for intervention. It's-*"

"Not fast enough." The Fallen's wings clipped the clouds as he barreled in a flanking twist. The Orks scattered, and he caught one of them trying to slip behind him. The Fallen killed the thrust, letting the Fighta outrun his craft's ribs and then the nose, before he gunned the thrust. A quick burst of cannonfire turned the Ork's tailsection into flame-coughing scrap. The Fighta moaned as it lost altitude in a gratuitous death-dive. "Pull your teams back, Primaris, I'm coming to you."

"*You're under no authority to make such decisions, mercenary.*" –Another of the operator attendants snarled into the line. "*Time is out, and we need to get that transport in the air before the Xeno-filth wreck it. Stay out of the way.*"

"*No, listen to him.*" The prior operator snapped. "*I don't know about you, but today's been fragged since the captain died, and I'm pretty sure there's only a naval ensign available to take his place. The mercenary's proven his skills. We should take his advice.*"

"*Advice isn't a plan here! Mercenary, I have nearly a thousand refugees that are defenseless inside this hauler, what in the Throne's Light are you going to do?*"

"I'm undocking the Marathon for you." The Fallen clarified. "Sit tight, I have a clear path. This is your last warning: pull your detachment teams back inside the facility. I will not hold my fire if they don't obey."

The Fallen severed the link before anyone could acknowledge him. He eased the Lightning downwards, slipping like a knife's blade through a blanket of cloud cover. When the white haze receded, it opened up an unobstructed view of the sprawling mountains below. The crystal blue skies were riddled with contrails that arced and banded in loops and daggers across the heavens. Ant-sized specks representing Imperial aircraft locked in a deadly dance with Ork scrap-fliers zipped in clusters and in disorganized bundles, casualties looking like miniature comets as they plummeted from the sky.

"*Primaris, 7th here, we can't take much more of this. I'm outnumbered four to one!*"

"*-Negative! Last orders have not been received! I'm taking command! Squadron leader just went down, no grav-chute! I'm taking over! Repeat last.*"

This had turned into a hot mess.

Below the huge dogfight, the fire-licked ruins of the stilted city of Perator Magnus were still erect up and down one of the larger mountains in the range. The bronze-colored city personified craters, scorched concrete. Blast-holes marred the once beautiful spires, and crawling arms of soot rose from the bombarded garden-plazas nestled among the city's urbanized hearts. Luck had had much to do with the Imperials' ability to evacuate most of the civilians before the Orks had struck.

At least, that was what records would've shown.

Probably no one would have appreciated the Fallen's forewarnings, and his singular efforts to hold back the innumerable Orks before the Navy could reinforce him.

It didn't matter, he knew, what mattered was keeping people alive.

"Just so they can turn around and be raised as religious nutjobs who don't know how to use their own dicks, right?"

The Fallen glared at his flank, seeing Conscience polishing his knuckles on his breastplate as he wedged himself between the pilot throne and the bubble-shield. His doppelganger met his gaze and shrugged.

"It wouldn't be right of me not to remind you." He said, before pointing for out the cockpit. "By the way, you might want to duck."

"-Shit."

The Fallen almost sucked his own face into his mouth. He clenched every muscle in his body and slammed the sticks south.

Just a second after his plane jolted and the sky outside rose into the heavens, a fat, two-propellered craft zipped over the Lightning's spine, chugging black soot and wavering in its flightpath as it trundled on.

The Chinork chopper grumbled deafeningly outside the cockpit shield. The Fallen could see the open-topped operator-thrones fully occupied. There was a whooping pilot in the tiny nose-throne, and another operating a pair of linked machineguns in the chopper's bulky, plated spine. The gunner swiveled his nest and started opening fire, rounds pattering out and flying past the Fallen's wing.

He vaulted in a sharp curve, using the air like a wave of water to ride parallel to the helicopter's flank. He raked the Chinork from nose to tail with a concentrated, full stream of cannonfire, and just for good measure, the Fallen thumbed the release-rune on the top of his left stick.

His fighter quivered, and what sounded like a snake's hiss erupted from outside the bubble-shield. A missile slipped out from under the wing, barreling into the Chinork's midsection before bursting in a spectacular cloud of colored fire and tarry soot. The two inflamed halves of the big chopper spun as they tore themselves apart in their descent for the mountains.

The first real sign of friendlies in a long while gave the Fallen some degree of hope. An Ork plane exploded nearby, making way for a trio of Imperial Lightnings to swoop through the wreckage and pass over his right flank.

"*Fair shot on that one, mercenary.*" –One of the pilots crackled through the comms. The Fallen knew of him. He was a newly awarded ace of the Imperial Navy's Battlefleet Solace, a rough-voiced man named Daggus Cilfried. "*You're going for the Marathon? Me and my lads will cover you.*"

"I'd appreciate that." The Fallen breathed, yanking the triggers, firing a cone of cannon-wrath coughing from his wings. The shells gutted an Ork Fighta passing by his direction in a spray of flame and flipping debris. "Take either side of me so I can spearhead a quicker route."

"*You'll have it.*"

The Fallen had flown with Daggus on two sortes throughout the campaign. He was a good pilot, all of his new, shiny kills having been gathered fighting the Orks.

Daggus' Lightning was a scuffed drab color, contrasting the blue sky on its top, but mimicking it on its creamier painted belly. He dipped the wing, and the Fallen could see Daggus' helmed head peering down at him through the bubble-shield. The Imperial waved before gunning the throttle again, pathfinding as an upper-right sentry. The two wingmen took the left, and together, the four of them advanced on choppy air.

"*Response teams have cleared the embarkment decks.*" –Primaris Spire wired. "*This had better work. Marathon's the last transport for away flights. It'd be against everything we've gotten to wreck the good news so far.*"

The Fallen almost snapped back a vulgar retort, but swallowed the rage instead.

Condescending Imperial cunts.

"*Bloody xenos…*" Daggus grumbled. The Fallen could see him tipping a wing as they passed over the ruined city below. They skirted the side of a massive hab-spire, its copper flesh riddled with blast-craters and flaming skeletal expanses. "*It'll take these people years to fix all this damage.*"

"*Fixing it counts on us holding the place. Isn't the Battlefleet pulling out? I thought the Peak Guard PDF got their arses' kicked back at Romlof, broke their backs HQ's saying.*" –Another pilot rebuked. "*Until the front consolidates, I'm fancying this place gone and done.*"

"*You're lucky there isn't a Commissar on the line.*"

"*Closed channels! Those overzealous windbags can kiss me nards.*"

The spaceport loomed over the far northwestern expanse of the city, tall and commanding, with Primaris Spire forming the bronze heart that arose from its central clusters. Two other massive wharf-skeletons lay empty, their great maws birthed from the mass of the mountain. The third bay was still full, Marathon lurching, and its engines flaring as the crew tried to steady her against the tugging force of the locked millipedes.

"*This is Transport Marathon! We're fixed over the docking bays by half of a kilometer, and the Orks are almost right on top of us!*" –Came from the panicked comms teams of the hauler's bridge. "*We should be able to temporarily hold, it looks like only the small ones got through, but we need these docking clamps gone, and fast!*"

"*What do the beasts think they're doing? Attacking the Marathon with fighters?*" Daggus scoffed, his Lightning shrieking as it turned on an angle and rocketed to keep the Fallen's flank. "*They'll never chip through the hull, these lifters are repurposed belt-runners, they can take a hit from an entire asteroid, forget any of the warheads they got or their guns.*"

"Intercept vector," The Fallen interjected. "to my left."

"*Break off, break off.*"

The two Lightnings opposite Daggus tore off with brass growling out over the howling of the wind and their engines. A trio of Ork Fightas trying to cut the squadron off scattered, meshing into an ungraceful dance with the Imperial defenders.

"You should help your men." The Fallen grit his teeth as another missile slipped out from his wing. The Fighta zipping over to block his path imploded into a briefly-lived corona of light. "My flightpath's clear enough, we're free of obstruction. Go, I'll be fine."

"*We've still got stragglers.*" Daggus rebuked. "*I have three more contacts, two left one right. Let's get you to that pad-array in once piece, aye?*"

"I'm not the one in trouble." The Fallen snapped. "Break off. Do it now!"

{Space Marine OST: Valkyrie Run}

"-*Agh~!*" –Even if Daggus didn't want to take the hint, he was soon forced to when an Ork plane jumped him, appearing from where it had been drifting behind one of the colossal copper spires of the city's upper tier. The Fighta twirled and based itself with Daggus' tail in its crosshairs, forcing him in a shrieking climb as cannonfire passed his wings.

"Come on." The Fallen growled, squeezing the triggers. His Lightning coughed and jittered, an Ork ripped by beneath his chin wreathed in oily flames. "Come on."

It wasn't good. Two more Fightas, one angling from east and another west had already buoyed themselves on the certainty that they had boxed him in. Rounds pattering against the hull of his fighterplane thunked and clocked everywhere. The wind suddenly wheezed and screamed when a torso-side hole was shorn into the cockpit's leftwards panel.

The G-force was so bad, that the Fallen's suit began to lock up his joints to prevent injury. He roared, tightening his muscles painfully as he fought against things beyond his control, even with the superhuman benefits of his attire. The restraints in the throne, pure luck, and the lowering altitude prevented him from getting sucked clean-out the cockpit. It was a good thing the Lightning hadn't needed to be pressurized for the engagement. If he was above the spires of the city, it might've been different.

The drone of ripping metal buzzed out non-stop. His plane shuddered, and a black-leaking fire belched out from the fuselage's linkage to the left wing. Warning klaxons howled, and the indicator screens on his dashboard began to flare deep-red, yellow skull-icons blinking in panic against all the readouts.

" -Holy smacked lips, Batman, we're goin' down~!" –Conscience flailed his arms, gripping the spine of the throne and causing the Fallen's growl of stress to undulate as he shook him back and forth. "Abandon ship!"

"Not yet." The Fallen snarled over the wind, wincing when he tore the Lightning's nose on an incline, incising himself as a flaming comet right between the two Fightas as they angled to cut him off completely.

One of the Orks practically ripped out his steering-stick as he seethed in frustration. He yanked his steed downwards, trying to ram the Fallen's ship from the top.

Instead, the overeager Greenskin shoved himself right in the flightpath of the other Fighta. The two planes smashed into one-another at breakneck speed, two cones of flipping, inflamed debris skyrocketing in two directions on either side of the brilliant, violent explosion.

The Lightning jolted, the readout screens flashing bright red as the Fallen brought his chin upwards and readjusted his path.

The Marathon's fat, bulbous form grew and grew as he closed on the insurmountably larger freighter. The drum of the giant engine-suns studding the ship's rear caused the dying fighter to quiver, and earned a staccato buzz in the Fallen's ears, even over the roar of the flames birthing from his wounded ship's shoulder.

"Jeez', whoever designed her must have been freakishly obese with dreams of revenge." Conscience mumbled. "They're evacuating people off this rock with ore-haulers, something about that just isn't right."

He passed under the Marathon's blocky tail, and aimed for the ship's belly. There was nearly half a mile between the bulbous stomach of the ship and the rows of interlocking gantry ways making the docking station's topside, and yet still, from inside the Lightning's cockpit, the gap looked terrifyingly slim.

"-This is actually going better than I thought it would." Conscience gulped, trembling as he rose from behind the throne. "There are two millipedes linking her to the deck!"

"I know." The Fallen gasped, wrenching sideways, narrowly avoiding the screaming mass of a pylon-gantry that slipped dangerously close past the Lightning's wingtip. "Cannonfire's useless here."

It was true, just up ahead, spaced apart by the length of a small town, there were two matching, blocky canopy-locks protruding from the interlocking railroad stilts and walkways of the platform. Smoke trickled up from their slits as the two immense, steely cables running up from them pulled taught from their placements inside bulkhead alcoves carved into the freighter's ribs. A pair of rectangular millipede sky-walks stuck out like giant's arms coinciding with the cables.

Conscience hummed and glanced around the throne at the Fallen presumptuously.

"That's awfully noble of you." He blinked. "But I can think of a million and two things more worth your sacrificing yourself over. Besides, this reaks of Kamakaze, and I hate the IJAAF."

"I'm not ramming them, you dumbass." The Fallen flicked the missile-house on his stick. He pressed the rune. "Let's hope this works."

Two contrails grew and grew as the warheads slipped cleanly out from the Lightning's wings. One curled west, ending its bright journey into the central housing of the locking cable right underneath the canopy plates. The locking structure imploded, pillars of crawling fire vomiting from scorched rents and gashes ripping through the metal. The immense structure revved itself up into a tortured, echoing groan, of which only ended with the gigantic clap~! –of the cable itself snapping.

This scene replayed itself on the other locking station, the cables quivering, and the millipedes undulating as they began to shake themselves to pieces.

All at once, the two cables were ripped from their moorings, and they trailed from the hauler's flank like a pair of loose entrails, leaking debris and smoke. The millipedes shattered into descending sections hurtling for the docking masses below.

"-AAAHHHHHHHH~!" -The Fallen and Conscience hollered simultaneously, the latter's arms flying and locking over the Fallen's shoulders in a death-grip as the Lightning sailed true, right under both of the collapsing house-gantries.

Several curtains of an avalanche of flaming wreckage barely missed them as they outran the descent by maybe a second. A plate of plasteel bigger than a man impaled the Lightning's nose-cluster and stuck there with a sharp creak, trailing sparks and soot as it erected from the fighter's skin.

The Marathon's engines flared, and sluggishly it began to lift away from Primaris Spire's wharf, even as clusters of zipping Ork Fightas broke off and orbited its flanks. Sporadic cannonfire and some missiles impacted the hull in bouts, but despite scorched scratches and small flames, none of the munitions were enough to penetrate the industrial-strength hull of the transport. Some overzealous Ork flyers tried ramming their whole planes into the ship when their guns and missiles ran dry, but the efforts were wasted, every small burst of flame from a dead Fighta did nothing to stop the Marathon's ascent.

"*This is Marathon, the clamps are freed from the hull and we are lifting off! The Mercenary must have done it!*"

A whooping cry crackled through the link from Daggus' Lightning.

"-*Blood of the Astartes, she's up!*"

"*Sublight engines are green, hull integrity holding, we're feeding the afterburners now.*"

The Fallen fought with the sticks as the Lightning finished its descent, screaming out and around the hauler's chin, still trailing black smog and flames. He raised his head against the whipping wind perforating the cabin, watching as the huge ship ascended over his tiny plane and into the crystal blue, Fighta-studded sky.

"There's a good deed for the day." Conscience clucked, leaning against the breached cockpit pane as he deflated. "Was that the improvising part? Or are we saving that for getting out of this fighter alive?"

"I don't know yet." The Fallen muttered, gaze transfixed on the ship.

"*-Wait, that isn't part of the squadron-*"

"*Primaris, there is a large vessel approaching through the Ork fighter screens! Frigate-class!*"

"*It's pulling for a broadside! Brace! Brace!*"

"Oh shit." The Fallen felt his guts fall into his heels.

The Ork capital ship seemed unphased as it torpedoed through the sky on roaring engines, its immense bow gridded with massive bolt-plates stylized to look like a crude, screaming Ork skull painted black and white.

"*-That thing isn't bearing batteries.*"

"*Oh by the God Emperor…*" –Someone in the command spire wept. "*They're ramming the Marathon!"

Fightas unwise enough to distance themselves vanished in comparatively small blooms of flame against the scrap-frigate's hulk as it shot straight for the Marathon. With a sound of crunching titanium and thundering cannons, the nose of the frigate connected with the Imperial transport's ribs, sinking in almost a quarter of the way as the hull folded inwards like collapsing foil.

Fire and explosions blossomed in checkerboards around the impact, before the frigate jolted still with a clap of thunder. The Marathon and the leech goring its side shifted in the air, the awesome display of sheer size and weight dominating the dogfight-ridden heavens.

The Fallen didn't need to be close to know what the Orks were doing. There was commotion running up and down the Ork frigate's hull. What looked like harpoons launched from socket-stations jettisoned out in tens, eating into the Marathon's hull and sticking.

The Orks were boarding.

"Uh-oh." Conscience winced. "I'm guessing we should do something."

"-Yep." The Fallen barked, gunning his flaming steed's afterburners. "God damn it!"

Burning debris fell from the fiery linkage between the ships. It looked as if a titan had gathered a fistful of mountains, had crushed it in its fingers, and was letting the detritus slide back down to the earth past its knuckles.

Ork Fightas and Imperial Lightnings vanished in bursts of flames as the immense curtain of debris scythed right through the aerial engagement, heedless of faction with its wrath.

The Fallen twisted and gunned his ship, more klaxons shrieking as he pushed the fuselage's frame to its limits. Something creaked, and a large slab of the wounded Lighting's left wing was shorn free, exposing skeletonized webworks of mechanics underneath it as it flipped away in the wind's cyclone.

"-I don't think the fighter's gonna' make it!" Conscience grit his teeth, holding onto his tophat.

The Fallen clenched the sticks until the plasteel started to crack underneath his gauntleted fingers. He snatched an arm out and caught his own tophat before the wind could take it, affixing it back over his helm's cranium as he climbed and climbed.

He sprayed a Fighta-Bomma via his cannons when it got in the way, bisecting the Ork plane in two flaming halves that cartwheeled past and down on either of his sides. The Lightning barked, and the left cannon-feed exploded as flames reached the ammo-belt, tearing most of the wing off in a spray of shrapnel-licked fire.

Another explosion blackened the glass of the Lightning's cockpit. The Fallen quirked an eye off his concentrative desperation when he saw that his energy shields had flared. If he had been a regular Imperial pilot, the shrapnel that had shorn through the cabin would've disemboweled him.

"-What in the actual fuck-nuggets are you doing?! We don't have the firepower to blow that thing up!" Conscience wailed as they climbed closer and closer to the linked ships.

"Remember the improvising part?" The Fallen grit his teeth, his heart hammering mercilessly as he aimed the nose of the Lighting.

Right for the Marathon's blocky hull, just above where the frigate was impaled in its flesh.

"Oh no, oh nononono-" Conscience babbled. "-Waitwaitwai-OHMYGOD-~!"

The Fallen bellowed as cannonfire from a passing Fighta shot out the Lightning's belly from under him. Another Fighta rammed his craft head-on, the Ork plane exploding as it took off the entire right wing in a blast of fire.

Minute screaming matched Conscience's shrieks and the Fallen's terrible roar. There was a terrified Grot- one of the late Fighta's passengers, no doubt -clinging to one of the blackened shreds of where the Lightning's wing had been. Its beady red eyes were narrowed, its troll-nose bent against the current, and its tiny green body was flapping wetly in the cyclone like a dishrag left in a hurricane.

The world seemed to become hazy and unreal as the Fallen skyrocketed right for the hull of the ship. Time stood still, and only the scream of the air and the crackle of flame could be heard.

Then, the Fallen wrenched the sticks back, and slammed his fist into the burner-readout of the dashes. All at once, the afterburners ceased, the limbless Lightning decelerated, and the nose jolted down to face the highway of flaming ruin marking the Ork frigate's flank below the portion of the Marathon.

The Fallen tucked into a ball and activated his back-thrusters in his suit's HUD. Ballistic-glass shattered, metal lurched, and the Fallen rocketed out of the pilot's throne and through the fighterplane's ruined cockpit's roof-pane, flipping end over end through the sky.

Breathe.

Check.

Clung~! –the Fallen felt the wind get knocked out of his chest as he body slammed into the massive hull of the freighter. He fell in a cloud of sparks, landing heavily onto the topside of a storage protrusion in the Marathon's body, his energy shields flickering.

Below, his wrecked fighterplane slammed into the hull, exploding into a roaring mushroom-cloud of debris and flames.

Center.

Breathe.

"…I'malive-" –The Fallen sucked in a breath like he was a revived corpse, eyes fluttering open as he sprawled on the deck. Every inch of his body was pulsating like he was still flying.

Nausea clung to his guts and throat. He grunted as his suit's systems injected him down his spinal-column with special solutions and alchemical potions.

"*Vitals normalizing. Permanent damage avoided. Please allow several moments for injections to take effect.*" –The always-pleasant voice of the AI chimed.

"…Ouch." –Was all he uttered, whether from being smacked into the hull of a freighter or from having a bunch of syringes being stabbed into his skin, he didn't know. It was probably for both.

The air screamed as a flipping Ork Fighta death-spun directly overhead, a victorious Imperial Lightning shooting above its flames.

The Fallen wavered as he stood himself up, wheezing whilst the potions kept him from upchucking inside his helmet. He found his tophat lying on the hull and picked it up, dusting it before replacing it on his head.

"…While I have you on the line, girlie… System readout?"

"*All functions are operating to full capacity. Would you like a complete datasheet?*"

"…Oh, just… fucking no." He clenched his own wrist and flexed his hand, eyes daggering through his neon-visor as he peered just ahead.

The comms were erupting into madness now, Imperial pilots were struggling to understand how a quarter of their own and roughly half the enemy planes en-field had all suddenly vanished off their screens. Primaris was having a fit, and the bridge-crew in the Marathon were even worse. The Fallen dialed his comms' volume down to concentrate.

The hull of the Marathon was at a slight angle, so he saw the mountain formations sprawling below the great bulk of the scrap-frigate past the lip of the hull-plate he was standing on. The hauler was big enough that a town could've sat atop its bulky spine. He didn't remember the exact figures, but there was something around a thousand people packed inside, desperate to escape the fighting.

To get away from the Orks, who would no doubt slaughter them all, men, women and children. The Greenskins were ruthless and uncaring.

"It's amazing that none of this has killed us so far." Conscience walked with the Fallen to the edge of the hauler's top. A slight whine on the air earned his glance, and he pointed at the sky suddenly. "-Uh, I think he sees us."

"Fuck him." The Fallen spat, nanites clicking as he swept a palm over the Nano-box. The Heavy Tube Blaster formed in his gauntlets, gleaming in the midday sun.

An ungainly, quad-engined Ork Bommer dipped down from a flanking arc, soot belching from its exhausts as it lined its nose up with the patch of the ship the Fallen was standing on.

The Tube Blaster sharply coughed, and a purple bolt of Wyvern Plasma shot through the air. It connected with the link between the Bommer's left wing and fuselage. Fire licked and metal shrieked, the fat plane shrieking as its wounded side tipped low, and it began to careen in a death roll, passing the side of the Marathon before impacting the top of the Ork frigate. It detonated in a brilliant plumage of flaming wreckage and blinding light.

"You know what you have to do right?" Conscience blinked down at the drop.

"Yes." The Fallen boxed the Tube Blaster, the Plunger of Doom and his regular plasma gun materializing in his hands. He stepped to the edge of the several-story descent to the flaming merger of the ships below, off the edge of the Marathon's hull. "…*sigh* -I hate it when I have to jump."

"So shield the vertigo with a riveting warcry!" Conscience suggested. "For the Dragon Vagina~! Or, maybe… In the Name of Derg-Puss-! Yeah?"

"I could use some derg-puss." The Fallen smacked his lips, sounding hazy for a moment. He looked at his Conscience. "Would you call me crazy if I said the 'Improvising' part was just happening now?"

"You talk to yourself!" Conscience cackled. "Of course you're fucking crazy! Now get down there and save those techno-religious douchebags."

The Fallen smirked.

Then, he stepped off the ledge and plummeted through the-...

[💀]

-sky.

The Fallen opened his eyes just in time to see the dark, grated floor rushing towards his face.

With a curse, he flipped himself upwards, the back-thrusters on his suit flaring to life.

Wssshhh-CNNHKKK~! –He soared down until his heels and a fist dented into the solid decking with a terrible crash. For a long while, he was transfixed, eyes searching the grate-plates for an answer to a mystery they couldn't solve for him.

The memory. The Marathon.

All gone, just like his recounting of the smugglers.

But that fall had been close. The entity's illusions must have had him wandering in circles.

"Nice try." He breathed aloud. "So that's how you're going to get rid of me. You'll have me walk off a cliff, into a furnace, under a trap?"

-Nothing responded to him this time, only the unerring and complete blackness of the Chechenwaldr's interior remained to silently encompass and scrutinize him.

It didn't make complete sense, the waking memory of this last bout. It seemed that the entity housed inside the Hulk sought to undo him through mental damage. It enjoyed recounting past failures and uncertainties to weaken its prey. The Fallen had encountered beasts of similar caliber throughout the Multiverse before.

But why the memory of the Marathon? That had been a victorious day. The Orks had been driven from the planetary surface of that previously doomed world. He had helped save tens of millions of people.

That isn't what it's after.

The Fallen felt his chest drop into his heels.

It's after what happened when you jumped.

"…Yeah? And so the fuck what?" He licked his lips, speaking to the darkness. "You don't think everyone who's in the profession I'm in has their demons? You don't think everyone who has to kill to survive has done things they don't regret?"

"It isn't what you have done."

The Fallen turned to look over his shoulder.

There was a man standing in the passage behind him. He was wearing the drab flak-vest of an Imperial Naval Pilot, his cap was worn crooked, and his eerily smiling face was riddled with what appeared to be claw-wounds drawing bloody gashes up and down his face.

"It is what you failed to do." The man cocked his bleeding head, exposing a portion of his throat that had been ripped out, glistening tendrils of crimson running down his chest and soiling his fatigues. "And now I know exactly what that is, what it means to you."

"You want to bet?" The Fallen darkly growled, turning to face the deathly figure. "Do your worst. I think you'll find that it isn't so straightforward."

The bloody man smiled unnaturally, his face for a moment reflecting those of the bloodless, mummified corpses spread throughout the Hulk's warrens. His eyes even bulged in the dark.

"If that is what you think." –It salivated. "Let's see for ourselves, together."

[💀]

The steam had blinded him in one eye, but at least with the other, Steltha could still make out the world, even through the blur and dark.

The massive Ork periodically stumbled, growling and snorting like a dog as he lumbered, forcing himself to ignore the various lacerations done to him by the illusions. Or, rather by the illusions tricking him into throwing himself at walls and dangerous machinery.

He spat a loose toof onto the deck. It rattled away like a thrown coin.

The Eldar.

-He wanted to believe so badly that it was them. But Steltha knew it wasn't. The Eldar wouldn't have let him walk away, and they certainly wouldn't have played games in their quest for vengeance.

Even if somehow the city-state he'd ravaged had known where he was, he doubted that the Aelderi would've cared about a single of his kind among the millions that had participated in that planetary sacking. It didn't make any sense for a platoon of them to suddenly appear on the derelict ship.

He needed to focus on getting back to Maddnut, so they could build another tellyporta platform, one better coordinated and with proper lock-on specs this time. Steltha would shoot Maddnut in the foot just to motivate him to greater technological quality by this point. Just so he wouldn't run into another errant Wierdum trying to fry his thinkin' parts.

When the Nob reached the battery chamber he'd left, Steltha couldn't help but humor a gradually loudening growl as he trotted over to the console-station.

It was empty, save for the mummified pair of dead humans that Maddnut had tossed out to make room.

"Mmfff." Steltha impatiently grumbled. He gripped the safety bar and vaulted into the station's cluster, his boots rapping the deck as he looked around for clues.

Maddnut's shoota.

It was lying on the floor, the barrel still smelling of a faint whisk of recent use. There were shell casings everywhere, and bullet-damage extending in the opposite direction he'd come.

A tiny electronic beeping caught his attention. Steltha glared at the flaring warnings on the console's screen Madd' must have managed to access it. And while the sprawl of layout maps was appetizing, Steltha couldn't read much, period, less even full sentences of Low Gothic.

He tried clicking a key with his fat finger. The console bleeped protest and shoved an error-bubble over the whole screen.

Steltha brought his finger down again with more force.

Error.

Again, rattling the keyplate.

Error.

"-MMmrrrgghh~!"

Steltha dropped his rifle, bringing both fists down on the board of the console. Metal wrenched and glass shattered, sparks spat and licked from the crunched-in top of the station, and a small wisp of black smoke trickled out the gash in the ruined screen.

He dragged his hands back, scattering tens of little keys that jingled and danced all over the floor in ragged ruin. He picked up his gun and looked around the chamber.

Where to go off from here?

"Damm it." The Ork sneered, scratching at his scabbing eye. "It had ta be da one tiem I isn't even lookin fer a fight."

[💀]