Chapta Twentytwo: Far From Home

Say of Da Day: "…Because I can only put corny titles on the Imperial chapters…" – Author.

The night was long and cold; a chilling wind had picked up, forcing the Imperials to find refuge even though instinct told them to keep walking and never look back, from fear that the Orks would find them. Barthees was still unconscious; Sam and Marco had found him sprawled on the mountain road bleeding from his ears, with a broken arm and many small cuts and bruises. Between them they had hauled him twenty kilometres through the mountains – weary, hungry, and hurting from their own injuries. They took shelter in a shallow cave, their need for respite out weighing their fears – Sam and Marco were not far from collapsing and needed to tend to their wounds as well as the Sergeant's.

Marco offered to go find some wood to burn – he was the healthiest of the three, and hadn't lost as much blood as Sam. He brought back a few shrubs, and some sticks he found. "It's all I could find…" he said as he sat down, feeling embarrassed with his small haul.

"That's okay Marco, once we've dressed our wounds and had a few hours sleep, we have to move again anyway. We really shouldn't even be lighting a fire… but Barthees needs warmth."

Or he'll die… Marco thought to himself in his head, finishing Sam's unspoken words. If only we were back at the base. I knew going to that Ork camp would spell disaster for us.

There wasn't a lack of water, thanks to the snow which began to fall. Sam boiled some of it in a kidney cup and bathed Barthees' wounds; blood had stopped dripping from his ears at least – she just hoped the Sergeant had a fractured skull, and not a brain haemorrhage. After a while, she handed Marco her pocket knife which had tweezers and a small blade flicked out. "I need you to do something for me. Dig out the bullet using the tweezers, then sterilise the wound by heating the blade and pressing it on the hole."

Marco's stomach flipped. It sounded like quite a horrible task, but there was no one else to do it for her, and she wasn't able to do it herself. "Okay… turn around."

He calmed himself as much as possible while Sam took off her top layers of clothing to expose the wound. When Marco's hands stopped shaking, he put the tweezers into the bleeding hole.

Sam gritted her teeth and Marco dug around and pulled the bullet out. "Now, heat the knife… and press it onto the open wound. Just ignore the blood, Marco… I know you don't like blood." She encouraged, knowing her friend wasn't a big fan of blood and guts.

Marco handed Sam the bullet; it was quite large, and would have completely destroyed her shoulder blade if she hadn't been wearing lightly armoured fatigues.

After a couple of minutes of heating the knife in the small fire, Marco quickly applied it to the bleeding hole; blood and flesh sizzled. Sam breathed in sharply as the blade burnt her; it was a necessary evil to help prevent infection.

"Thank you, Marco." She said taking a sip of water. "I hope I haven't already caught something nasty from that Ork bullet."

"You get some sleep Sam, I'll do piquet duty, and keep an eye out for any unwelcome visitors." Marco got up and sat at the lip of the cave, his back against the rock wall as he looked out into the dark, snowy night.

Black Lake, below the Deffskullz' mountain camp.

A large heap stirred in the shallows. Stikk'ead's mud covered face rose from the water, his red eyes unfocused and twitching. With an enraged growl, he heaved himself up out of the cold waters and ambled onto dry land. Drool slopped from his half-open mouth, and his arms hung limply by his side; he looked like a zombie. Blood and fluids seeped from around the fence post stuck in his head – it had been pushed further into his brain during his tumble down to the lake. That, combined with a massive over dose of Dok Shavgra's 'special' solution, seriously affected the Boss's already compromised brain function.

He began to walk towards the slope, muttering a word with every footstep he took. "Find… kill… slaughter… WAAAAAGH! Find… kill… slaughter… WAAAAAGH!"

The Imperial's cave, fifteen kilometres south-ish of the Deffskullz' mountain camp.

Dawn came several hours later; when Sam awoke, she saw Marco still sitting at the cave's entrance. They swapped piquet and Marco slept for the next few hours, until the sun was well and truly up and it had stopped snowing. He was startled awake when someone's hand fell onto his face.

"Oh my god!" Marco squeaked in panic waking up thinking it was on Ork, only to realise the hand belonged to a human.

"What… the hell… happened? Ow… oh that canes…" Barthees had woken up, slightly confused and aching all over. "And why is Marco curled up beside me like a cat?"

Sam crawled over from the cave's entrance and handed Barthees a kidney cup of water. "Drink up. We have to get moving; do you feel fit enough to travel? Oh, and you were attacked by the Ork Boss – you're lucky to be alive."

"I have a migraine, but I will walk anyway – I'd rather not risk running into the Orks again just yet." Taking the cup, Barthees commented, "You don't look so good yourself. Man… I thought that ef'n Ork was supposed to be tranquilized."

"So did we…" Marco sat upright, touching his numerous bruises gingerly. "I feel like I got stomped on by a Space Marine."

Sitting on the rocky floor, Sam shrugged shaking her head contemptuously. "This is what we get for trusting Greenskins…"

In less than fifteen minutes, the three Imperials were outside walking again; Barthees' left arm was splinted and held in a make-shift sling made from his sleeve. They trundled onwards at a steady pace, further into unchartered territory. They spent the next four hours walking before stopping for a break and eating snow to quench their thirst.

"Hey, look, I think there's an animal over there…" Barthees whispered, pointing to a snow-laden bush. "I saw some of the branches move."

Marco swung his laser rifler up and looked through the sight. "You're right, I saw movement too…"

"Pass that here," Sam took the rifle from Marco. He objected, but was silenced by her glare. "It doesn't have as much kick as the shotgun, my shoulder will be fine."

Everyone waited in silence as Sam aimed the rifle at the bush, waiting for an opportunity to shoot the creature within. It was several minutes before the thing moved again – and when it did, Sam pulled the trigger. A satisfactory squeal echoed through the mountains, and the animal squirmed out from under the bush before dieing.

"What the hell is that?" Marco asked, walking over to take a closer look.

Barthees began gathering tinder for another fire. "Who gives a crap, let's just cook it, eat it, then get going."

Marco stood beside the animal; it was fat and round, with two legs, a pair of short chicken-like wings, and covered in feathers. It looked like a very ugly pheasant, but at the same time, Marco was sure it wasn't a bird because it had a large mouth full of sharp pointy teeth. He poked it to ensure it was dead before picking it up and taking it over to Sam who stripped it and prepared it for cooking.

An hour and a half passed before they left camp; after eating, Barthees had rested his throbbing head in the snow for a short while. They buried the fire remnants in dirt and snow, and hid the food scraps in a shallow hole under a bush.

While they were walking, Sam explained that they were heading in roughly the right direction to their camp. "I plotted our trek in my head from the Panic Room to the cave. Now that we have shifted into a North-Westerly direction, we should at least be heading towards the base rather than away from it anyway."

For the remainder of the day they trudged on until just before dusk; although they would have liked to use every scrap of daylight for trekking, Barthees had started vomiting. Sam hunted out a crevice which sheltered them from the wind and they set up camp. It kept them from view of anyone who might be walking around through the mountain passage, which helped to ease the humans already strained minds.

Barthees fell asleep almost the instant he lay down on the cold rock; his migraine was worse than ever and he was looking extremely pale. Marco napped as well, while Sam kept watch and started a small fire with some tinder they had carried with them – flammable materials were hard to come by in the desolate mountains. Halfway through the night, Marco swapped shifts with Sam; Barthees was left to sleep until dawn, when Marco woke everyone up as Sam had requested.

"Are you feeling any better?" Marco asked Barthees, handing the Sergeant a small scrap of meat and water. "Here's some of yesterday's roast…er… thing."

"Fit enough to travel." He replied croakily, taking the food and water. "I'll be better when we're back at the base. Even those baked beans seem highly appetising right about now…"

Busting for a pee, Marco walked out of the camp and onto the mountain slope. As he relieved himself, his gaze wandered out over the mountain side and over the valleys. In the distance, he saw a small shack perched in a rift on the mountain, sheltered from the weather. He did his pants up and searched his pockets for some binoculars or eyeglass, but he had none. Returning to camp, he reported what he saw and asked if either of his companions had a pair of binoculars.

"We only have the flexiscope, and it won't be helpful to view things far away." Barthees stood up immediately, and ushered Marco back towards the slope. "Point out this shack; it could be the very thing that could save us."

Marco did as he was bid, and pointed to a fissure in the rocks on the other side of a shallow valley. Sam and Barthees slapped the Private on the back, in apparent good spirits.

"We'll head there, and scout the place out." Barthees ordered, sounding less sickly. "If we're lucky, there might be old medical supplies or radio equipment."

"What if something lives there?" Marco asked, considering that it might be inhabited by more Greenskins.

"It's not like that shack is big enough to house a tribe of Orks," Barthees explained, "We'll just kill anything that is there. We have three guns between us after all."

With everyone moving as fast as humanly possible, the Imperials made it to the shack by lunch time. They were lucky to find that a path lead up from the valley to the building, aiding their climb. Where the path had led to from the building was uncertain; there were a few scattered remnants of a human settlement in the valley – bits of corroded, twisted metal, weather worn cement chunks and rotted wooden foundations, but nothing more. Sam suggested that it was perhaps a transmission station for communicating with space stations, satellites or terrestrial use.

As they drew closer to the shack they slowed their pace, ever alert for signs or life. However, the area was devoid of Ork stench and the building was silent. The shack was in better condition than the three had anticipated for a one-hundred year old building; despite the front door missing entirely, the fissure had protected the shack from the weather. The building was much larger on the inside than it appeared; although it has a small frontal area, the building was quite long and had several rooms connecting off the main hallway which ran down the centre.

Barthees lead the group in, everyone with their weapons raised. They checked each room for Orks, making their way to the end of the building slowly. As they approached the last room, something big and hairy sprang out past Barthees.
"Baaaaa!"
BLAM!

Everyone's hearts raced, and their ears rang from the noise of the shotgun; but their fear washed away when they looked down at the carcass of the mountain goat that Sam had shot dead.

Barthees checked the last room, commenting, "Well, at least our food shortage has been solved for the time being."

Luck seemed to be finally swinging in the humans favour. By the time the stars were rising, the goat was almost done cooking over a pit fire which had been dug out behind a slab of rock, halfway down the path. Most of the rooms in the building had been pillaged and looted, but Barthees had explored an old cellar – the door to which was concealed beneath an old rug - and discovered boxes of trinkets, including some old computer equipment, and even a faded but still legible map.

Further sifting through the boxes was to be delayed until the next morning, due to the lack of light. While they sat in one of the rooms eating their dinner of goat meat and some tuber roots that had been dug up, the three discussed what they would do when the sun rose.

"I say we see if we can figure out those maps, we can find our way back to base easier." Barthees said, pointing to a dusty box. "We could try to pin point our location by using the old computers to ping base. Then at least we could know where we are."

"That's assuming they work," Sam replied. "Those things have been sitting unused for decades."

Finishing his meal, Marco leant back against the wall with a sigh. "I'm just happy to have a roof over my head, and food in my stomach. A map and computer equipment is just an added bonus. I think I'll be able to sleep more peacefully tonight knowing we have a chance to get back in one piece."

"Don't get too comfy," Barthees snorted. "We still need to do piquet. A roof over our heads and food in our stomachs doesn't make us invulnerable to Ork attacks, you know."

This dampened Marco's mood slightly; just the mention of Orks was enough to raise hairs on his neck. "I'll take first piquet, so I can get undisturbed sleep afterwards. Can uh… I take the shotgun with me?"

Sam ensured her weapon was set to safety before handing it over, warning him, "Don't go being stupid with it."

A few miles away, a large dark shaped trudged through the mountain passage. Stikk'ead stopped for nothing; his head was a sore sight, covered in a congealed mess of fluids. He clutched his chainsword in one hand – he had found it when climbing up the slope back a the lake side. Threads of drool laced his chin and cheeks; his jaw hung half open between his trance-like mutterings.

"Find… kill… slaughter…. Waaagh… find… kill…. Ungh?"

For the first time since standing up and walking away from the lake, Stikk'ead stopped. He was bewildered by the strange sight which met him: in the middle of the road, were two mountain goats, one on the back of the other, both bleating noisily. Stikk'ead watched and waited for them to kill each other; but neither seemed to be giving in. The Ork bellowed a war cry to try and encourage them to fight harder, but this merely scared the goats causing them to part and run down the path away from the Ork. Enraged that the goats apparently gave up the fight, Stikk'ead pursued them, waving his chainsword in an attempt to bash them. The goats were far more agile than any lumbering Ork with a fence post stuck in his head though, and were soon out of sight.

Stikk'ead wasn't an Ork to give up; brain injuries or not. He continued to follow the path through the mountains in the dark, hoping to find the mountain goats and teach them a thing or two with his chainsword choppa.

The next day, the three Imperial Guardsmen were in high spirits; although their wounds were far from healed, they were on their way to recovery no less. Marco, who was the healthiest of the three, was assigned the task of carting all computer equipment from the cellar into a spare room at the back of the building. Sam was on the roof, fixing the antennae; their plan was to try and contact the base to triangulate their position so they could plot a route on their dusty old map. There were many ifs and buts in the plan, but Barthees agreed that it was worth the time to attempt using the ancient computers. Sam suggested that if worse came to worse, the abandoned station could be used as a temporary base from which they could conduct explorations as long as there were no signs of the Orks.

A hatch opened in the roof of the room across the hall from Marco. Sam climbed down the ladder slowly, her shoulder wound feeling stiff and sore. "Well, we won't go hungry, that's for sure." She spoke walking over to where Marco was setting up the computers. "The valley is full of goats."

"We might be able to milk them," Marco said as the thought struck him.

"Uh… I don't know if any of even knows how to milk an animal." Sam emptied her pockets of the tools she had used. "And the antenna is fixed now. It was just rusted through a bit. It's a bit shorter, but it'll do. It's a fair sized antenna, I can tell you that for free."

"Do you know how the generator is coming along?" Marco asked, wiping the dust off the computer screens with an old rag. "Barthees has been out there a long time. Does he even know what he's doing?"

The station was built between two walls of a large crack in the mountain stone. Behind the building was a disused power generator; it was in better shape than most things they had discovered, thanks to towering rock walls which provided it with some shelter from the weather. Barthees had volunteered to try and get it running again.

"He can't possibly do any harm, he said he's played with generators before anyway." Sam shrugged. Although she didn't say it, she was also rather doubtful Barthees could fix the generator. He couldn't even fix his electric shaver. "But now that I've finished my job, I will go and help him – it might speed things up."

"Give me a shout when the power is on. I am almost ready to connect power to the computers," Marco replied. "Just don't go electrocuting yourself."

Half an hour later, smoke wafted through the building. "Shit! Shit! Cut the power!" Barthees yelled from somewhere out the back. Marco jumped up and ran outside; the smoke was coming from the generator.

Sam turned off the power and grabbed Barthees' wrist as he reached for the metal door to the generator shrouding. They heard a loud bang, and the sound of something being sprayed. White foam began to appear around the edges of the shroud door.

"Why did you do that?" Barthees asked firmly. "I was going to put the fire out. What if the generator is fried?"

"What good would opening that door have done? We had nothing to use on the fire!" Sam let go of Barthees wrist and explained, "by leaving the door closed my intentions were to starve the fire of oxygen. Not that we need to worry anymore – it looks as though the fire detection system was still operational."

When the door was cool enough to touch Marco lifted it up. White foam was everywhere. "Thank goodness the fire bottles were still operational," he sighed with relief. "The computers are useless without power."

Reaching inside, Sam felt around carefully with a stick. She felt something springy, and pulled it out. Once the foam was shaken off, it was recognisable as some kind of burnt nest.

Barthees didn't dare look Sam in the eye. It had been his job to check the generator for debris; the fire was by all rights his fault. "Guess I missed that one…"

"I'll uh… be with the computers." Marco wisely dismissed himself and headed back into the building.

"If it wasn't for your injuries…." Sam narrowed her eyes; she was visibly annoyed. "Anyway. Let's try starting the generator again – after we recheck it for flammable materials. I doubt the fire bottles are any good to us now."

Another hour passed before the generator was started; Sam decided to cut the power lines to everything except the computers, to avoid another possible fire. There was no telling what condition the wiring was in inside the building; decades of sitting there unused could have had numerous bad effects that they did not have time to fix.

Most of the computer screens flickered to life; the equipment hummed with age. Marco disconnected the items which did not work and set them aside; he then linked everything together which was operational. Not everything was good to go though; ages of sitting around unplugged had caused another problem – the files on the computers had been corrupted and the advanced operating systems were useless. Marco was forced to wipe all the hard drives until he was left with a black screen and a blinking type icon.

This did not appear to be much of a problem to Marco; he sighed, and settled in for a long haul behind the keyboard. "Oh well, it looks like I'll just have to do this the good old fashioned way."

When Sam and Barthees walked back into the building, they could hear Marco punching away at the keyboard. They walked into the room to see how he was doing; Marco had his back to them, with the screens surrounding him in a semi-circle. Sam raised an eyebrow.

"Why are you typing in binary?" She asked, watching as zeros and ones scrolled across the screens.

"He can type in binary?" Barthees said in disbelief. "Or is this just another one of his retarded moments?"

Marco replied to the Sergeant without looking away from the computers, "well if you read everything in my résumé besides the psychology and medical reports, you would know that binary coding is one of my hobbies."

Sam was surprised but not as much as Barthees. He had read everything in Marco's résumé. "But I thought the binary thing was a joke or something… I mean… you did write that it was the only thing your mother found that could put you to sleep as a baby. You have to admit that is a little weird, Marco. It might explain the brain chip that was mentioned in your medical report…"

"Uh…" Sam felt like she wasn't on the same wavelength; she had no idea what either of them was talking about.

"My mother put a computer screen beside my crib when I was a young," Marco explained to her, "and it used to recite fairy tales like Snow White and the Seven Ultra Marines, Little Red Chaos Space Marine, The Imperial Guardsmen Who Cried Ork, Three Little Inquisitors, and many more. It also scrolled the binary text across the screen to match the audio. Apparently it entertained me and was the only thing that would help me sleep as a baby. I don't know anything about a brain chip though."

"The chip thing may have been some kind of clerical error," Barthees shrugged. "It was on a sheet labelled 'classified' and listed several other medical notes, but did not identify the patient. I think you would have known if you had been annaly probed and your skull drilled though. I get strange things like that in the fax sometimes; they forget to take it off the pile."

There was an awkward silence for several seconds before Marco spoke, and began typing again. "Uh yeah… I don't remember anything like that."

"We'll leave you to it now," Sam said as she turned around to exit the room. "We can't really do much to help with the computers, so we'll be out hunting or something for the time being."

It was late afternoon; Marco had been sitting in front of the computers only taking a toilet break once in the time that had passed. He was setting up a program which would send, receive, and convert incoming digital signals into binary. Marco was immersed in his task so much that he scarcely noticed the bleating of the goats in the valley. He barely even registered the noise, and just assumed it was because Sam and Barthees were coming back to the station.

Heavy footsteps walked up the corridor; a horrible stench reached Marco, but still he did not stop typing. "What the hell did you two kill? An Ork? God that smells. Must be big though, sounds like you're trying to drag in an ox or something. What's that? Did yous say something?"

Stikk'ead stood in the doorway to the computer room, drooling profusely. His head and shoulders were encrusted in the blood and brain fluids which were still seeping out from around the fence post stuck in his skull; his eyes were half closed and he shuddered with every rasping breath. He raised his motorised chainsword even though it no longer spun the chain. "Find… kill… slaughter… Waaagh?"

Marco was too terrified to move; there was no way out of the room, Stikk'ead blocked the only exit. He had been snapped out of his work rhythm. Expecting to die any second, Marco covered his head with his hands and curled up into a ball. But nothing happened. Slowly he looked around; the Ork had his weapon half raised, and was staring at the computer screens. Zeros and ones were scrolling across them as the computer performed a function.

A few seconds later the computer finished its task and the numbers stopped scrolling. Stikk'ead began to raise his weapon again. "Find…. Kill…"

Marco began typing at lightening speed; his fingers were pressing the zero and one button so furiously the keyboard was jumping under his fingers. Immediately the Ork Boss paused again, stoped his chant, and stared at the scrolling figures. It appeared as though the numbers pacified the Ork, having some strange hypnotic effect on him. Marco had no idea why the Ork was so affected, but all he knew was that his life now depended on typing; he swallowed. Had Sam and Barthees been killed or injured by Stikk'ead already? He prayed that they would return soon to help him.

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Author's Note: I will put most updates at the end of the most recent chapter, taking them off the previous chapters as I go along so as to keep the chapters relatively "AN" free (but not all updates – just the ones such as this).

Thanks: Thank yee to the nice chap who agreed to Beta read for me! Take your time, no rush ;) And thanks to TheLoneHunter for giving me some advice and granting my request – your opinion is also much valued. And thank you to the people who actually read this story and thanks for the two reviews – I always value readers' opinions.

NEW EDIT - "Da Bad Sunz -Wait, what!?" - Yeah I thought I deleted all those typos. In some of my earlier chapters I accidently wrote "Bad Suns" instead of "Evil Sunz". I kept getting Evil Sunz and Bad Moons clan names confused. I fixed these errors I found though but if anyone spots anymore please let me know.

Other: I finally finished the next chapter - I have been playing WAR online so I didn't do much typing for about a month. Also, check out my profile for story related art and my WAR online details. I will now start working on that thing for you TLH. Should have more freetime by the end of this week - I will have finished my studies.