Screams of Chechenwaldr
5
Lies for Truth
When they reached the end of the gangway, the Orks discovered that the bulkhead was destroyed, a double-sealant of panels left only a sliver ajar to reveal a hint of whatever contents they secreted.
"It ain't deecumpressed." Maddnut reported, tongue jutting as he tried to shove an eye through the little gap. "I fink I seez it in dere! Howar we supposed ta break it dow tho?-"
Maddnut yipped girlishly when Steltha's big, palm hooked on his shoulder and swatted the Mek back down the tunnel. In the zero-G, poor Maddnut went cartwheeling, his curses and protests echoing up and down the passage.
Steltha patted around himself, grunting when his shattered fingers flared dully, and found what he sought. The disc-shaped charge clunked as he smacked the magnetic-foot onto the divider between the panels. He twisted the timer and ripped the latch off off the center dais.
"Keep ya ead down, ya sorry fing." Steltha grumbled, planting both heels on the archframe, and kicking away to rocket down the tunnel. He growled when his ruined knee crackled and screamed with pain. "Reckonin I'll needz ya ta get any uv dese sorreh ooman ships off da deck."
"I don't leik dis!" Maddnut squealed as he grabbed a floating crate and hid himself behind it.
"Mmff! Bleatin cowahd! Yu keep flinchin like dat and I'll bakkand ya inta space, now stay cawshyious uv da blast!" Steltha chortled, swinging around a frame buttress. He bit the coat off the latch and spit it away, thumbing the rune underneath with a little click. "Boom~!"
The end of the hall lit amber, and the great explosion sent sparkling blades of shrapnel bouncing all over the place, their travel aided by the lack of gravity.
Maddnut shrieked as shards smacked off the storage crate in kicks of sparks. Steltha winced back behind the buttress, eyes darting to try to follow the bands of fiery light hissing past his shoulder and face like laser-bolts.
"Don't luuk so ungraitfuul." Steltha sneered at the Mek, jumping back towards the blown-open bulkhead. "It wuznt one uv yur invenshuns dis time at leest. Yu kno dese oomie compootas bettah den me. Yu mouth it ou proppa if one uv dem doors is keepin da air in. I didn't get dis far so I culd get sukked ouw inta nuffinness."
"Da screeneez 'iilbe red." Maddnut muttered with displeasure as he vaulted over his cover. "An ifn it's in ya consurns: me own invenshuns aint werth it ta smash! Dey're da only fings keepin us goin dese days."
"Mmm. Well now we'z need da humies ta provide taday."
"We'z doomed if da bloody hangah-bay's been spased!" Maddnut trembled.
"Jus gimme a direkshun an' shut yer whinin!"
"Dat way, says da floaty map!" The Mek had to scrunch his eyes a few times to highlight the corona. He gasped. "Boss! I fink da burny-map is faden! We gotta move fasta!"
"Dat solves da permanensee problem den." Steltha would've rolled his eyes if the steam hadn't messed up his face. As he sailed down the tunnels, he huffed, glancing down at the plasma-wound in his side.
It trailed black wisps of tar and blood behind him as he went. Orkish biology or not: he'd need to patch that one up good and soon.
Steltha had been shot before. He'd been hit by Eldar Shuriken fire more than just twice, and even Las-bolts had hit him during his battles on Dellos.
But none of those things had caused anywhere near as much damage as whatever that human had shot him with. The purple plasma ammunition in that weapon had come close to outright killing him. He was lucky that it was a glancing hit by comparison.
Another bulkhead was just down the tunnel. This one was opened fine, and when the Orks zipped through the arch, a sprawling chamber several stories in height was revealed to them.
The Finite Tolerance wasn't a carrier craft by design, by her hull had been constructed in the traitor wharves with a pair of small shuttle-bays that had once housed a minute contingent of scout craft, liaison craft, and a batch of transports to move ground elements to and from a surface deployment.
During the battle that had claimed her, the battleship had exhausted almost all of its smaller craft, having lost them to Imperial fire. Thusly, there were now arrays of storage crates, barrels and even a few forklifts levitating aimlessly around the great hold. Fueling wires snaked through the air like strands of hair in water. The decrepit remains of some kind of triple-treaded troop tractor had floated up to the hangar's ceiling and was eerily presiding there, emanating constant stress that at any moment, it might plummet back to the deck and crush anything beneath it.
For a while, Steltha's guts plummeted as his searches proved nothing in the ways of any flyable vehicles.
"Boss! Dere!" Maddnut pointed frantically.
When Steltha followed his finger, he saw what appeared to be a very recognizable design, lifted by a few feet off the deck, with one of its sloped wings touching the ground in a heavy list, the other suspended and pointed right at them.
From his fights against the Imperials, he knew that the craft was called a Valkyrie: a multipurpose aerial workhorse of the Astra Militarum and various other divisions of the Imperium's armed forces.
The ship was painted a dull gray and was smattered with wear and chipping. A Chaos Star had been painted across the top of one of the wings, and what looked like riveted chains formed decorative links around the nose and on the sides of the cockpit bubble's rim.
"It's one uv dem humie shuttles! An' it looks halfzway deesent fer a fly." Maddnut said. "I can get 'er werkin I fink."
"Do it fahst." Steltha grumbled, stopping himself behind a cluster of slowly rotating barrels as the Mek rocketed towards the ship. "I'm sikk uv dis ugly ship and everythin in it."
"Boss." Maddnut gripped the side of the Valkyrie, shoving his head through an unloading hatch in the side to peak within the internals of the hold. He came back, and threw something across the distance, Steltha catching it when it finally swung over to him. "Dere's dakka inside."
"Puny dakka." The Steltha sneered, fiddling with the Lasrifle as he struggled to wield what felt like a child's play gun in his big hands. Only the tip of his finger fit in the trigger-house, and he practically had to pinch the underside with two fingers to steady it.
Maddnut had vanished inside the hold of the dropship, curses, and mutterings echoing out as metal objects clattered and debris spilled. Something bounced off the Mek's head, and his vulgarity pitched for a moment.
"Gah-! Feelz like I'm stuffin meself in sum kinda tube! Dammed oomans! Tiny little fings wit tiny wriggling little fingas-!"
"I'll shoot ya if ya don't stow yer gob." Steltha growled back, scanning the surrounding decks for anything unusual or hostile, or as unusual as something in this terrifying horror-ship could get. He glanced at the massive hangar door sealing in the hold from the void outside. "Can it fly?"
"I fink so. Everythin in dis ship is so well preservvee, I fink dere's still feulez in da tankz too." –Maddnut echoed out from inside. "Jus gotta wedge mesel thru-"
More clattering and a feminine shriek. Steltha- who has started to drift across the deck -glanced back and saw Maddnut's shadowy form collapse back outside the hold.
"I can't fit thru the hole inside." The Mek sheepishly growled. "Oi, boss, wher ya goin?"
"Ta make surr we can get outz dis door." Steltha dismissively muttered, his eyes scanning the various forms of debris.
He still had another pair of magnetic-explosives hanging off his pack, and there was a cluster of unused stikkbombz on his shoulder. Luckily, Kommandos always came prepared with enough explosives to wipe out a hab-block. At least ones worth their salt.
Steltha found a patch of the massive door's plate. He growled as he worked with his broken fingers, slapping both mag-discs onto the metal, and letting the stikkbomb bouquets magnetize to one of the charge's flanks. A quick examination of his surroundings later, and the Nob departed and came floating back with a pair of fuel drums under his arms.
He wedged the drums against the charges and repeated the process several more times until a large bushel of fuel drums and a bunch of jerry cans lye as a blob against the wall.
"That'll make a nise 'ole it will." He mumbled, floating back over to the ship. He toyed with the bomb-latch he'd kept from one of the charges. "Letz get dis over with."
"On it, boss." The Mek growled as he crawled up the ship's flank and out from under the wing, his fist beating on the cockpit's release hatch before the shield popped open with a tortured hiss. "Want da co-pilot's seet, boss?" Maddnut started to climb into the operator's throne.
"Step off." Steltha floated over and punched Maddnut in the face, sending the squealing Mek into the side of the Valkyrie with a slam of metal. The Nob climbed into the cramped throne, growling as he tried to stuff his legs inside the compartment. "-Mmmf-! C'mon, ya bleetin- Agh! Dammit!"
"Yer too big, boss." Maddnut glowered, rubbing his jaw. "If I can jus bairly fit in dere, yu can't at ahl. Don't worreh, I'll fly us outta ere good."
Steltha's snarl was the only response he'd humor. He ripped free of the confined cockpit, sneering as he drifted back and threw himself through the much larger rear loading bay of the ship.
"Gotta close everythin up." He called, looking at the three openings revealing the Valkyrie's bay to the hangar outside.
"I'm werkin on it fer Gork's sake!" Maddnut barked, finally wedging himself inside the cockpit. The shield slapped shut with an audible squeak, and the Mek began the agonizing process of scanning over the controls in front of him. "…Erhm… lotsa buttonz…"
"Madd'?" Steltha drifted over to the connector-sub between the back of the cockpit and bay. There was a little portcullis, too small for either Ork to cross through, so the Nob had to settle for leaning down and hollering through it to the cockpit above. "Ya gotta close da bay doorz furst!"
"…It's ah… not dis one, or… not dis one… squig-turds, wot's dat one even fer?!"
"Madd'!"
"Ah-ha! I'm a geneeus I am! 'Ere we go boss." The Mek cackled.
"Madd'! Shut da fraggin doors befer ya-"
The Valkyrie roared, and a heavy jolt sent Steltha painfully into the ceiling of the aux-hall with a loud clang of his skull bouncing off the archframe. His bark of agony was drowned out by the whoosh of the ship's engines coming alive, sputtering soot and light as they powered up.
"I gotz it! I reely gotz it!" Maddnut cheered, switches flicking as the Valkyrie slowly started to rise off the deck, the thrum of its engines growing into a fevered bellow.
"-Maaaadddd'~!" –Steltha howled, clawing at the floor of the bay as he slid down and towards the still-ajar loading ramp in the rear of the ship.
"Oi, fergot ta close da hatchez up." –Maddnut mumbled obliviously, thumbing the rune on his panel.
Right as Steltha was about to be hurled out the belly of the craft, the ramp retracted back in with a screech of servos. The Nob clambered onto the rising plate and was rolled back onto the deck when it finished sealing shut. The two hatches on either side of the bay similarly clapped closed, reducing most of the noise to a dulled yet still deafening round of thunder.
"Bleedin imbesaal!" Steltha hollered, gathering himself off the floor. He picked up his Lasrifle, and for a second considered aiming through the portcullis and shooting Maddnut dead in his seat. It would almost be worth remaining stranded here to avenge such a blunder.
"Yu alrite bakk dere, boss? I can't 'ear ya ovva da engines!" Maddnut barked back. "I need yaz ta blow up da wall so we can fly on ouw'!"
"I'll blow up the wall I will-" Steltha foamed, shouldering into a row of puny restraint thrones as he handled the latch. He pressed the rune so hard that the controller snapped in two under his thumb. "-I'll blow up da fraggin wall~!"
BSSSHHHHKKKKKK~!
-The charges and the fuel drums vanished in an explosion so big and powerful, that it rattled the hangar bay, and sent flaming debris flipping in all directions. Shrapnel licked off the ballistic-glass protecting Maddnut inside the cramped cockpit. But he still flinched as shard wheezed off the panels or sang in sharp ricochets.
A wind cyclone roared out, and just as quickly as all the surrounding detritus floating about the bay had been cast away, it all started to rapidly be sucked back into where the mushroom-cloud of pure fire had been born.
Instantly, the great bubble of flame vanished, being slurped up by a ragged welt rent through the hangar-door that exposed fingers and ribs of bent scaffold-supports.
Crates were shot out into the void, barrels spun like tops to join them, a forklift slammed into the lower rim of the hole and widened the gap in a burst of quick-fire and soot. Maddnut hummed nervously when the Valkyrie screamed, and the whole craft pitched forwards, getting sucked out just like the rest of the hold.
"We ain't gonna fit out dat hole!" The Mek cried.
"So blast it~!" Steltha screamed. "Make it bigga, yu senselezz Grot!"
"Blast it? Blast it! Youz right boss!" Maddnut scratched his chin as he bent down to scan the panel controls, even as the dropship groaned and closed in with frightening speed towards the breach in the hull.
"Madd'~!" Steltha was shrieking.
"…Wher'd dey put da shootas on dis fing…? Mm, maybe dis one-"
The Valkyrie bucked, and a pair of explosions underneath its wings knocked Steltha off his heels, further throwing the poor Nob around like a bug inside a jar handled by a colossal child.
The missiles slipped out from the ship's flanks and impacted the sides of the blast crater. When the explosions bloomed, Maddnut screamed like a girl as the suction vortex finally brought their ship in, and the Valkyrie shot through a roaring tunnel of flames and mirth.
When the lights cleared, Maddnut had to take a few minutes to dare to lower his fingers from his face, but when he did, he saw nothing outside the panels of the cockpit, just utter blackness.
Utter blackness populated by millions and millions of tiny stars.
Aside from some nearby debris flipping erratically and glinting as they passed their flanks and were lost in space, there was nothing to remind them of the ship's grasp. They were out.
"…Bloody finalleh." Maddnut deflated in the throne. "I knew dat wuld werk. See dat, boss? I reelly am a geneeus!"
"I'm gonna rip off yer fase when we land." The Nob grumbled in pain from the back of the hold. Steltha had to rise off with his palms in order to adjust. Seething from the burns across his face, and with his wrecked knee flaring, the exhausted Ork leaned against a restraint-throne, deflating with a tired huff. "Dat wuz too close. Wher even arr we anywayz? Can ya seez anyfin?"
"Rite, I'm bringin 'er round."
Maddnut gingerly curled back the flight sticks, blinking when the ship's thrusters rattled her hold, and slowly, the Valkyrie pitched and turned to show them where they had come from.
When the view of space became entirely inhabited by an endless, black mass, the Mek almost dropped the sticks in shock.
"…Gork's Foot." He muttered.
"Wha is it? Dere's a whole fleet uv oomans waitin out dere for us, isn't dere?" Steltha called.
"Not so mutch, boss, but, erhm… dat ship's a ole lot bigga den we foughtz." Maddnut took in the expanses of ragged metal, the mighty Spacehulk's ribs, still clearly outlined where the Tolerance made its heart, but added on to with forests of asteroid debris, and snarling sections of smaller Imperial and alien craft. "It ain't jus one ship eivver."
"It wuz a derelikk, wot yu mean?" Steltha shoved his face through the portcullis, having crawled over. He struggled to even get a glimpse out the cockpit bubble. "I can't see nuffin."
"Dat's becuzz it's everywher!" Maddnut exasperated. "Biggest dammed Spasehulk I evva did seen! Dis fing is rife fer lootin!"
"Not taday it iznt." Steltha huffed. "Dat humie wit da dakka can keep it. Jus fly us outta ere alreadeh."
"…Uh, wai a minutz dere, boss. Look at tha." Maddnut pointed.
"I can't see nuffin, grog-fase!"
"Dere's purteh lites! Up dere! On da spineez uv da hulk!" Maddnut cocked his head, his eyes locked on the sparkle of purple light that flickered in and out of existence. "It's all purpall an likeness."
"Purpall?" Steltha twitched. Suddenly, his temper began to bubble back up in the form of a gravelly growl. "Purpall, lik dat git who shot me full-a holes."
"Feeuel looks gud fer a botha." Maddnut tapped the petrol indicator. "An I fink da humies bolted sum nice shootas next ta dose miss-aisle podz."
"Make it quikk." Steltha frothed. "Get in dere an see if it's him, ifn it iz, shred 'im."
[💀]
{Deadly Creatures OST: What of Struggle?}
"Now you see. Totality. Bleed. Bleed. Food."
The Fallen cringed as the tentacles toothed and ate away at the vulnerable weave-sections protecting his joints and body underneath the plates.
The abomination was still there in the center of the chamber, the infantile, tusked mouth curved upwards in sick sort of half-smile. The bushel of legs sprouting from its underneath flexed and kicked numbly in the void. Already, its green skin was turning a pale gray as it mutated further to protect itself from the cold void it was no exposed to.
So that was the terrible truth.
The Chaos army using the Tolerance must have created the creature, whether from a captured infant off a world they had attacked, or one born from their own ranks. They had turned it into a horror, a biological weapon that had been left to fester inside the Spacehulk for two centuries.
"You are the most interesting person I have ever killed." –His own voice echoed in his mind, and it wasn't from Conscience, it was wetly tinged, evil, obviously a mimicry formed from the monster. "What really are you? You are not a warrior, an explorer, or a traveler or wandering buffoon. You are something else. Tell me. Tell me as I feed."
"It's- agh-" The Fallen growled, wrenching his arms free of ensaring bushels of the thing's tendrils. He grappled with another's toothed mouth, squeezing it in his hand until it squealed and popped like a steaming boil in his grip. "-it's complicated."
"I see. I see. I feed. Portal-jumper. You are a Portal-jumper. You are different." The monster flexed its jaw again. "Different. I will find different to be delicious."
"I've been told I taste bad to anything that isn't female." The Fallen chanced a smirk with difficulty, an eye darting down to the bubble on his HUD.
The recharge protocols.
"Besides, you're the most hideous thing I've encountered in like the last year. What is it with people and letting their experiments go haywire? I guess evil scientists never learn."
"Learn. Learn. Feed."
"Feed on this, you fetid cunt."
"*Reboot complete*."
The thrusters on the Fallen's back erupted into blue light, disintegrating the swathes of tendrils lassoing his back and shoulders. His energy shields flicked back to life, squashing the chewing heads trying to eat through his armor and throwing back their quivering husks in splashes of hot blood.
The monster's shrieks pierced his mind as he ripped and rent and tore with renewed vigor. All he could see were the Orks inside the flaming hold of the Marathon, and the inside of that cave on the steppe planet. The vile memories that the mutant had dug out of his mind now acted as an opposite of what it had hoped to achieve. The goal had been to cripple the Fallen. Instead, it had only made him angry.
The tentacles were helpless as he cut his way through them. The monster screeched into the void at him, the infant mouth exposing the rows of fangs and the tusks sprouting from its heart.
Tentacles flipped away in reams as the Fallen emerged from the bloody forest, roaring, his plunger in two hands as he descended to bring it down on the small monster.
Lightning crackled in its eyes again.
But it was too late.
The Fallen completed his delve, the thrusters rocketing as he brought the plunger's flaming head down, and compressed the mutant to the deck flat as loose-leaf with a morose crunch.
The shrieks suddenly went silent, and green gore burst in thick rivulets to spread around the chamber like tree-limbs floating in space. The forest of tentacles infesting the arena stations wilted, going limp in the grip of the void. The Fallen heaved breathlessly, twisting the flaming cup of his plunger. He watched the scorched chunks and oatmeal underneath the head crumple and squelch, gradually becoming incinerated by the heat of his weaponized toilet-implement.
Soon, stillness came back to claim him.
And after that, nothing, not even the howl of the wind, for there was no air.
The Fallen closed his eyes, slumping exhaustively, his knees splashing into the gore that hadn't been kicked free to float around the chamber. He watched idly as the rotating globules of green and crimson mush traveled slowly in every direction, making tiny pilgrimages to the far corners of the storage vault without haste.
The illusions were quiet, and the sounds of battle had faded. Now there was nothing.
"…I did it." The Fallen croaked aloud. "I did it. See? I did it."
His grim expression cemented when nobody came to respond to him. Conscience was silent, and he made no appearance, congratulatory, or otherwise.
"…Yeah." The Fallen snickered, snorting as his nose started to run. "You always choose the weirdest times not to say anything."
Brushing a stray tentacle from his visor, the Fallen's joints ached as he lightly set off the deck, floating upwards to preside over the terrible mess the fight had created. It was all floods of gore, and it was everywhere.
Yuck.
"That went well." The Fallen tapped his wrist-console, and a needle silently prostrated from the vent-port. He slid it into a wad of pulped flesh stuck to the deck, waiting a second for the sample to complete by burn-sanitizing the metal. "Anything interesting?"
"*Subject's composition contains innumerable DNA strands from multiple species.*" The AI chimed. "*Approximate age places subject into the two-hundred and five years, general marker.*"
So it was true. The thing was probably the result of some sick experimentation undertaken by the Tolerance's Chaos-loyal crew. It was a sound, if grotesque plan: to grow a psyker inside the command vault of the battleship to use on enemies during void combat. The monster's purpose had probably been to confuse enemy crews on attacking ships, and aid in the repelling of boarders.
All this time later, and the Tolerance's horrific, organic security solution had still been festering, feeding on those foolish enough to journey inside the Hulk.
And it had been the source of the screams. Now that it was dead, the Chechenwaldr had descended into an eerie stillness, where not even a shred of interest survived under the merciless grip of the empty void. Regardless, what it had shown him, or rather forced him to relive, was still fresh. They were old wounds he'd forgotten about, reopened. As the Fallen rose and started to drift back the way he came, he couldn't help but glare hatefully at all the little chunks and streams of floating viscera left from his foe.
It could've been worse, he supposed, jetting back into the ship's opened bridge.
The Fallen blinked when he started to feel a light tremoring in his bones. Suddenly, a bright light silently appeared in full strength, blaring in his face as he reeled back through the void.
His helm's filters processed the glare, and when they revealed the rip in the ship's hull above, it allowed the dark, avian-shape looming overhead to bear itself in clarity.
The Fallen cocked his head.
It was an Imperial Valkyrie.
But how-
"…Arbites." He grumbled. It had to be the policing zealots high on his tail. He did just happen to wipe out a smuggler crew probably employed by some haughty government official.
Surprisingly, instead of demanding his surrender through an unencrypted comm-link, the Valkyrie dipped its gray nose, the spot-lamps in its shoulders lowering their beams to share the bridge entirely in quivering blind-light.
He didn't wait for what he knew was next. The Fallen heeled off the deck and gunned his thrusters. He could hear nothing, but his bones quivered just as well to inform him of the destruction. A quad cone of Heavy Bolter fire chewed into the lowest tier of the bridge and crawled upwards in his direction, vaporizing stations, turning bodies and dead servitors into little chunks, rendering the floor a ragged plane of welts and rips.
He used the admiral's throne to jettison towards the exit arch, the bolter fire atomizing the once regal seat with a burst of short-lived flame and scattering debris. The Valkyrie's pilot leveled his gunship with the hole in the roof, struggling to find purchasable aim as his gap to fire through it narrowed.
The Fallen flipped as he traveled to cover, a cluster of purple bolts whipping out from his Doomblaster.
One of the shots clipped into the Valkyrie's intake-shoulder, and it exploded with a muted crunch of metal, yanking the ship upwards in a draft of black smog.
Faintly, he could make out a bulbous shadow flailing inside the cockpit, but then, the Valkyrie grumbled, swinging on its axis, before shooting upwards and into the void with haste.
The Fallen jetted back to the remains of the throne, peppering the Valkyrie ship with fire as it spun around, and zipped deep into space, soon blending with the blanket of blinking stars.
"Crap." He cursed under his breath, his gun-arm drooping. "How many fucking people could've possibly been looking for the same blood-sucking mutant baby?"
"Nah, they weren't different folks. I feel like you knew those fellows. The whole cowardly shoot-and-bitch-out strategy seems familiar." Conscience startled him, floating by as he scratched at the chin of his helm. He shrugged. "What? Don't glare at me like that! I'm your comedic relief! Do I look like a therapist to you?"
"I was just... wondering where you went, was all." The Fallen slowly looked away from him, updating his HUD, and placing a marker on where his stolen sloop was still docked and waiting on the exterior of the Chechenwaldr. He took one last glance around the now doubly wrecked bridge. "I think we've seen about enough. Let's get out of here."
"Kind of sucks that it wasn't some kind of ancient weapon we could've carted home like champions, but, uh... Anyway, you're driving, right? I had to do way too much work today to be the taxi-guy this time!"
"I need a vacation." The Fallen said, drifting towards the exit for the chamber. He thought for a moment. "...You want to go somewhere island-based?"
"Like in the ocean?" Conscience blinked. "An island vacation?"
"Just a quick break." The Fallen smirked, distance in his eyes as he replayed the last few hours in his mind.
The monster was dead, but somehow, he could still hear the screams. He knew it was just in his head, but he could swear he could smell it again. The blood, and the pungent stench of Orks.
He shivered inside his armor.
"Hell yes! An Island Vacae'! Especially if it means we can get our hands on some bodacious native-babes shielding their tits with coconut shells!" Conscience pointed forwards heroically as he cartwheeled in the zero-G. "Onwards!"
[💀]