Author's note: Alright, here is the third chapter. If you're wondering why it took so long its because I'm working on my very first novel: The Diyu Express. Would I be violating any rules if I just posted the first chapter here for some feedback? Maybe just make it a storytelling interlude perhaps? I'm sure the reviewers will let me know what I can and can't do.
In other news the name of the Brutals has been updated to Nephilim which is what they're called in my book. Also their height has also been adjusted so if the Nephilim characters seem taller than before don't worry about it. Basically the final version of my OC race is giants from the bible with elements of space marines and Deadpool mixed in. These guys are going to be a scary opponent for the Imperial Guard to face.
Chapter 2: Interesting Developments
Vice Chairman Kevin leaned back in his office chair while munching on a submarine sandwich and watching some of the foreigners broadcasts on a holographic screen. It was currently his lunch break, so he had some time to kick back, relax and watch some foreign news that sounded more and more like communist propaganda the longer he listened to it. The broadcast was currently on commercial break so instead of being bombarded with incredibly biased opinions that tried to present themselves as news, he was being bombarded with advertisements for worthless and overpriced products. So he had some time to think and he let his thoughts drift off onto the most random subjects imaginable, like the recent conversation with Thalleous on which base building game represented which horseman of the apocalypse. Ultimately, after a lengthy conversation, they determined that Rimworld was the horseman of Pestilence, Kenshi was the horseman of War, Oxygen Not Included was the horseman of Famine, Dwarf Fortress was the horseman of Death and Factorio was the forgotten horseman of Conquest.
Eventually, Kevin's thoughts began to wander over to the Chairman's recent decision to travel to Canada and he found himself growing concerned.
It had been a little over three months since Thalleous's infamous 'Blackface Broadcast' and the nations of the world were still crying their fucking balls off like what he had done was the worst crime ever committed by a sentient being. Every time he turned on the news all he would hear was them going on and on how he was the most evil man ever and that he was racist and he was literally worse than Adolf Hitler and 'waaahhh, we're a bunch of crying pussies, waaahhh'. Thankfully, the unending slander and barely coherent blubbering seemed to be dying down as the various governments of the world found something else to complain about.
But there was one notable exception; The Prime Minister of Canada.
This dope smoking hipster douche spent virtually all of his time on television calling Chairman Thalleous Sendaris every name in the book like some kind of immature ten year old boy. It wasn't much different from what other world leaders were doing, but what separated this guy from the rest was that he was a massive hypocrite. Because not only had he also done blackface more times than he himself admitted he could count, but he had also done other things such as going to a pride before fall parade while wearing Muslim socks made from endangered owls or some other critically endangered species. So when Thalleous got wind of this, he immediately challenged the annoying little shit to a boxing match and the stupid retard actually accepted.
Kevin was under no illusion as to who was going to win this particular fight, but his real concern was that Thalleous's political enemies were going to use this as an opportunity to have him assassinated because there were a lot of people in the media and elsewhere calling for his death. So he had made sure that the Chairman was assigned several squads of fully equipped bodyguards to make sure the enemy didn't try anything funny.
It had been several days since that event and yet he hadn't heard any news of what was going on. Normally he would be slightly concerned by the complete silence but he was on lunch break at the moment so his worries could wait.
Kevin was a little over halfway though his sandwich when the intercom came to life with a bored sounding woman's voice "Vice Chairman Kevin? Are you there?"
Slumping down in his chair Kevin let out a loud groan of annoyance before leaning forward and hitting the button to reply "Yes I'm here, what happened?"
"The chairman has returned. He's currently in the main hallway giving a report of what recently transpired and you might want to hear what he has to say."
Kevin briefly felt a wave of relief wash over him and then let out an even louder groan at the prospect of ending his lunch break early "Fine, I'll go see what he did this time."
With that Kevin got up and exited his office. He made sure to walk as slowly as he could and took plenty of detours so he could finish his sandwich. By the time he reached the main hall he saw that the Thalleous had long since finished giving his report and was now talking to the press. As he got closer he noticed that the Chairman was still in his boxing shorts and had some peculiar items on his person. In his right hand he was clutching a portable bubble shield generator that was currently switched off and in his left hand he was gripping an industrial strength garbage bag that was filled with unidentified round objects.
"So..." Kevin began as he walked up to Thalleous "How did your boxing match go?"
Thalleous turned around, grinned broadly and puffed out his chest with pride "Absolutely awesome! I splattered that punk all over the floor!"
Kevin blinked in confusion "What?"
Thalleous dropped the boastful act and spelled things out plainly "I killed him."
Kevin balked at this "You killed the leader of an entire country!?"
Thalleous just shrugged in response "Well yeah. What was I supposed to do? Accept his bribe and purposely lose the match?"
"He tried to bribe you!?" Kevin began, but then held up his hands and calmed himself down "Alright, alright, tell me what the fuck happened from beginning to end."
"Well it started out normally enough. I went to Canada for the boxing match, met with the local government and we quickly got everything set up for the big event. Publicly the smug hipster douchebag remained confident he could beat me despite the fact that I was literally three times his size and built like an orangutan. More secretly however, he had contacted me and offered to pay me whatever I wanted if I purposely took the fall and lost the match. So I asked for an entire garbage bag of deep fried Cajun gator bites and the deal was sealed... Or so he thought, because the second we got into the ring I immediately bull rushed the faggot and hit him so hard he exploded all over the arena like an infected kidney." Thalleous paused and looked thoughtful "I still don't understand why he was so surprised."
Kevin was secretly horrified by this news but kept it to himself and simply nodded his head as he heard the Chairman's story "I take it the local security forces didn't take kindly to your double cross."
Thalleous chuckled "No they did not. Not five seconds after that happened, one of my bodyguards tossed me this here bubble shield just as dozens of snipers opened fire on me. What followed was a massive ass shootout as we fought our way out of the stadium and down several city blocks to a park where the Stealth Pelicans had landed. We then got the hell out of there before the local air force showed up."
Kevin gave an exasperated sigh as his shoulders slumped "I'm probably not going to like this, but how much damage did you guys do?"
Thalleous rubbed his chin in thought for a moment "Considering the fact my bodyguards were all elite special forces soldiers in giant suits of bulbous power armour that made them look like the Terran Space Marines from the Starcraft series, complete with personal energy shields, active camouflage and armed off the ramp with heavy weaponry, I would say we killed at least several hundred United Nations troops with a bunch more likely crippled for life, destroyed dozens upon dozens of armoured vehicles and levelled several buildings with a dozen more heavily damaged. And before you ask, no, we didn't take any casualties and everyone made it out in one piece."
Kevin groaned in dismay at the news, but then he noticed something peculiar about what Thalleous had just said "What do you mean you were fighting United Nations troops? What the hell were they even doing there?"
"I dunno." Thalleous said, obviously just as confused by this turn of events as Kevin was "They were there and they were attacking us, so we blasted them."
Kevin stepped back and plopped himself into a nearby chair with his head in his hands. Had this been the leader of a country like America or Russia, they would probably already be in the middle of a nuclear exchange. Thankfully, the individual being killed wasn't the leader of a nuclear power and by all accounts was quite unpopular in both his own country and on the world stage. Still, this was an incredibly dangerous and reckless move on the Chairman's part... Or at least it seemed to be that way on the surface.
"Did you really have to kill him?" Kevin asked and then probed further "Couldn't you have just put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life and called it a day?"
"I needed a new distraction." Was Thalleous's flat and oddly serious reply.
Kevin looked up "What do you mean by distraction?"
Thalleous elaborated "The media frenzy caused by my blackface broadcast was winding down. People were starting to ask questions about the now completely different constellations and take notice that I was arming my nation to the teeth with all the advanced weaponry I could get my hands on, not to mention the space fighting force and all of the anti orbital weapons. So I came up with a plan to murder a well known but highly unpopular political figure on live television. This way people will go into a new frenzy over what happened to that snowflake but won't care enough to actually do anything about it due to how little respect the rest of the world leaders had for him."
Kevin's eyebrows raised as he started connecting the dots "So that broadcast you made earlier wasn't just you fucking with people. There was an actual plan behind that as well as this latest stunt?"
Thalleous nodded enthusiastically "Oh yeah, totally. I know I said I was going to let them destroy themselves so we could take the planet for ourselves afterwords, but then I decided to leave nothing to chance and make my own contributions. Now, thanks to me, the population of the world has something new to complain about and will remain completely ignorant of the danger they're in until its too late to actually do anything."
Kevin pondered what he had just heard. Overall the Chairman's plan was sound and seemed to be having the desired effect on both the peoples and governments of the world. Or at least publicly it was having the desired effect. More secretly however, there were probably all kinds of things going on that no one knew about. Secret meetings were almost certainly being held because while the public had successfully been distracted, the ruling elite of the world most assuredly weren't and were likely drawing up plans for their own survival. He decided to try and find out what those planes were once he got the time. If nothing else, he could at least find out why United Nations troops had tried to assassinate the Chairman and maybe strike back at whoever put them up to it.
"So what are you going to do now?" Kevin finally asked after his long silence.
Thalleous held up the garbage bag that was filled with the aforementioned gator bites "You got a microwave? I'm gonna heat these up."
"Sirs!" Someone loudly shouted while running up to the two of them.
Both Kevin and Thalleous turned to the newcomer and were greeted with an unremarkable looking male Nephilim in a business suit. It was Josh Steffen, a member of Parliament who over the months had more or less become a glorified messenger.
"Alright, what is it?" Thalleous asked in annoyance.
"I've been trying to reach you for hours! There have been three major incidents that require your immediate attention." Josh said while pulling out a folder containing said reports.
Kevin watched Thalleous take a deep breath in preparation and after a sew seconds of silence said "Ok, lets hear them."
Josh began listing them off "First off, our survey teams have discovered several large underground complexes that have 10,000 Nephilim in cryosleep in each of them, bringing the total number up to 70,000. Secondly, a strange Roman like structure has appeared in downtown Boatmuredered and is massively disrupting traffic in the area. Finally, a massive unidentified object has appeared at the edges of the solar system."
Kevin could tell the Chairman wasn't really interested in the reports by his bored expression and the way he absentmindedly nodded his head. But that quickly changed when Josh got to the unidentified space object and Thalleous instantly snapped to full attention.
"What does this object look like? Do you have any pictures?" Thalleous demanded while impatiently stepping closer to Josh.
Josh handed over the report in question and Thalleous began furiously flipping through the pages. Then, a few seconds later, he started laughing.
"Well well well." He said happily. "It looks like fortune has smiled upon us because we have ourselves here a space hulk."
"What's a space hulk?" Josh asked curiously.
Thalleous's smile beamed brightly "In simple terms a space hulk is a bunch of star ships that have clumped together while in the warp. They are filled with all kinds of hostile alien life forms, eldritch horrors and mutant abominations. But they are also highly sought after because they are filled to the brim with all kinds of forgotten technology and who knows what other treasures, which is why we're going out there as soon as possible."
With his speech given Thalleous turned to Kevin. "I want all our cargo ships, fighters and support craft prepared for an expedition to the space hulk. I will be going as well because they're going to be needing my expertise on what they'll be encountering in that thing and how best to deal with them."
Kevin nodded his head. "Very well, but what about the people in cryosleep and the mysterious structure?"
Thalleous visibly mulled it over for a few seconds "Give the people in cryosleep a crash course on how we do things in the Spartan Federation and then set them up with whatever jobs are in most demand. As for the Roman thingy, I'm giving you free reign on that one since you'll have the command while I'm away. But personally, I recommend you have it looked over for any possible loot and then demolished if you don't find anything useful."
Kevin nodded again "Understood sir."
Thalleous eyed the bag of gator bites and vigorously licked his lips "Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to go and have lunch."
Both Kevin and Josh watched as Thalleous lumbered down the hallway towards the kitchen. Once he was gone around the corner Kevin 'politely' signalled for the still assembled press to screw off and then turned his attention back to Josh.
"Get me a vehicle. I want to see this mysterious structure for myself. Also, do what the Chairman said and start prepping our space forces for deployment."
"This is Citizens Militia Commander Helga Bennerson to Militia Headquarters, I'm requesting a unit of labourers to demolish this structure. I repeat, request for labourers to demolish the structure." A blonde haired female Nephilim with blue eyes and glasses spoke into a military grade walkie talkie.
"Labour request... DENIED!" Came the robotic sounding response.
Helga snarled in rage and raised the walkie talkie into the air. She was about to smash it into the ground but forced herself to calm down and just put it away instead.
Helga then looked over to where the unidentified Roman-like structure was and frowned. Roughly fifteen minutes ago the structure had appeared out of thin air right smack dab in the middle of Boaturdered Financial Square. This of course massively disrupted traffic to the point that a joint force of Citizens Militia and Law Enforcement were called onto the scene to cordon the area off until further notice. This pissed everybody off but there wasn't much anyone could do about it until they received orders from higher up. She briefly glanced behind her where a crowd of roughly a hundred people who had gathered on her end alone to see what was going on. None of them had crossed the cordon yet, no doubt kept in check by the militia soldiers and police officers.
Speaking of police officers, two of them had just stepped over the cordon and were walking towards her. Unlike the militia soldiers who were all in suits of Tankor series power armour, the two officers were in regular full body armour with face concealing helmets.
"What do you two want?" Helga asked cautiously. Yes she was the commander of the assembled militia force, but the police technically outranked the Citizens Militia and by extension her as well.
"Hi there. I'm Mike and this is my partner Dave." The first officer said when the two of them reached her "I'm going to level with you and say that it's probably going to be a while before we receive any orders on what to do with that structure and we've got some beer in the police Warthog. So I was wondering if you'd like to join us."
Helga thought about it for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders "Yeah, okay."
'ROAR!'
Helga, Mike and Dave turned to the gate just in time to see several helicopter sized dragons with mounted warriors come flying out of the structure. Then, before they could wrap their minds around what they just saw, out marched an army of thousands upon thousands of those puny human things dressed in primitive Roman styled armour and wielding equally primitive looking weapons. But it wasn't just humans that were in the invading army. There were also tons of gibbering little green goblins, brutish looking orcs, hulking trolls, snarling wolf people and even a giant pig man accompanying them.
As they watched the primitive army continued to pour out of the gate and soon formed up into organized looking blocks of infantry. For the next few moments they just stood there looking around at the city in abject awe.
Then someone blew a horn that snapped them out of their trance and with a mighty war cry they all attacked at once.
Had this been any other city in the world, the resulting attack would have been met with terrified screaming, shouting, chaos and panic as the invading army slaughtered the local civilian population and advanced inwards without meeting any real resistance. Unfortunately for them, this was the capital city of the Spartan Federation and its inhabitants didn't really do the whole "disarmed and defenceless" thing the rest of the people of this world did for some unfathomable and probably retarded reason. So instead of fleeing like frightened prey animals, the assembled Citizens Militia, Law Enforcement and regular civilians pulled out various high powered weapons they had in digistruct storage, took aim and unloaded full auto into the attacking army.
Helga, Mike and Dave had just enough time to dive to the glass steel pavement as all other sounds were drowned out by the deafeningly loud roar of gunfire and the air above them was replaced with bullets, cannon shells, grenades and even a few rockets.
The invading army wasn't so fortunate and took the barrage of projectiles head on.
Men and monsters alike were torn to pieces by the deadly projectiles. Some lost limbs and fell to the ground screaming in agony as they bled to death. Others were hit in the head and decapitated in a spectacularly gory fashion. Some unfortunates were hit in the torso with high explosive auto cannon rounds and blown in half with their internal organs splattered all over the glass steel pavement while the really unlucky ones were hit by rockets and turned to clouds of bloody mist in an instant. Then, just to make things that much worse, the grenades landed in their mist and blew whole scores of the invaders into bloody chunks.
Close to a thousand of the invaders died in the first few seconds alone and things only got worse for them from there on out.
Meanwhile Helga began crawling over towards the gun line with Mike and Dave following close behind. She soon reached the assembled crowd and they parted slightly to give her and the two accompanying police officers some room to squeeze in. Once she was in position she stood up and turned to face the invading army.
The sight that greeted Helga was one of total carnage. The ground around the gate was already completely covered in corpses with a massive pool of blood starting to form around the perimeter like a moat. The invading army was in total disarray. Some of the invading humans and monsters were trying to charge the Nephilim gun line, others were trying to retreat and fresh reinforcements from inside the structure were bulldozing their way though all the confusion.
Helga decided to add to the mayhem.
With the press of a button a heavily modified ZU-23 anti aircraft cannon with a 100 round belt materialized in Helga's hands. She made a quick glance to both her sides and saw that Mike had materialized a customized KPV 14.5mm heavy machine gun with a large ammunition backpack while Dave was sporting a massive A bore pump action shotgun that was as long as his entire body and loaded with what was most likely naval grape shot.
The three of them spent the next one and a half seconds selecting which targets needed to be put down the most.
It was also right around that moment that someone got onto one of the police warthogs, turned on the speakers and started blasting rock and roll music.
[Stay Home - Fastbacks]
Helga opened fire on one of the few war trolls that was somehow still alive. A meter long tongue of flame came from the muzzle of her cannon as a stream of 23×152mm armour piercing incendiary bullets flew out and straight into the brain pan of the unsuspecting troll, obliterating the creatures head and showering nearby troops with its brain matter. The great beast was still in the middle of falling to the ground and crushing an unfortunate soldier underneath its mass as Helga readjusted her aim and blasted another one with similar results.
While that was going on Mike had decided to add his fire to the already dense stream that was hitting the reinforcements coming out of the gate and sent dozens of 14.5×114mm rounds into their midst, blowing off limbs and kicking men off their feet. The rounds must have been armour piercing as well because many of them over penetrated their targets and killed the individuals behind them as well, further adding to the chaos and clogging up the entrance of the gate with their corpses.
Dave meanwhile pointed his shotgun at an approaching group of goblins and blew several of them to bloody shreds with a single mighty blast. He pumped his giant shotgun, ejecting a massive spent smoking shell, took aim and blasted another pack of goblins from the face of the earth.
"I know this might be a bad time!" Mike shouted over the roar of the gunfire as he continued to blast the soldiers coming out of the gate. "But are you doing anything tonight!?"
"Considering the fact that we just got invaded by a fantasy army..." Helga shouted back and then shot down two more mounted dragons that came out of the gate while a third was taken out by another shooter. "Yes!"
"Told you she wouldn't go out with you!" Dave shouted as he turned his punt gun skywards and shredded the wings of another dragon. The beast tumbled from the sky and plowed right into a formation of soldiers that hadn't been completely annihilated yet.
"Shut up Dave!" Mike shouted back and unloaded into a group of orcs who were somehow pushing up through all the carnage. They didn't make it far and were torn apart.
For the next few moments the three were silent as they focused their attention entirely on killing as many hostiles as they could until Helga saw a giant pig man with a comically oversized mallet charge right at her. She aimed her ZU-23 at it and pulled the trigger only for it to click empty. Knowing she didn't have enough time to reload before it closed the distance, she put the anti aircraft cannon back into digistruct storage and materialized a pair of custom made Pfeifer Zeliska .700 Nitro Express revolvers. She fired shot after shot into the things grotesquely bloated body until it finally keeled over dead and her revolvers clicked empty.
Helga took a deep breath to calm herself. Then she put the revolvers back into digistruct storage and materialized yet another weapon which took the form of an oversized Type 96 automatic grenade launcher. She targeted a small group of traumatized looking warriors who had somehow survived the entire time up until now and launched a volley of 80x106mm grenades that blew them to pieces. Then she targeted another group and blew them up as well and she kept repeating the process until everything was dead.
It wasn't long before the rest of the invading vanguard was obliterated and the defenders could now completely focus on the forces coming out of the gate itself. With the sheer amount of firepower being dumped into the reinforcements, it also wasn't long before they were all killed with any future incursions being impossible due to the front entrance of the gate being literally clogged with corpses from top to bottom. When it was finally all over, the entire area looked like something out of Dante's Inferno or a scene from the Bible with thousands upon thousands of corpses everywhere and the ground completely covered in a mixture of blood, bodies and shell casings.
Now that all hostiles had been completely and utterly annihilated, the defenders reloaded their weapons and got to work searching for potential prisoners and double tapping everyone else. They were in luck and found a dozen enemy combatants that were unharmed and simply pretending to be dead. They were dragged off to the side and given several guards, Including Mike and Dave who bid Helga farewell, to watch over them.
With the situation now under control Helga had gotten back onto the radio and was giving a report on what had just happened.
The sound of clanking treads and corpses being pulped drew Helga's attention away from the radio and to the other end of the street. She saw a Warthog of the military variety heading towards her position all while crushing the bodies in its path and leaving a bloody mess in its wake. Just as it seemed she was about to be run over the Warthog came to a sudden stop just in front of her. Then the drivers door was booted open and out jumped Vice Chairman Kevin of all people who landed on the corpse of one of the invaders, crushing its skull and spraying blood and brain matter all over the place, including onto her uniform.
The Vice Chairman silently looked at all of the corpses in the streets, then at the gate with its entrance clogged with corpses, then at the workers shooting the corpses, then to the visibly terrified prisoners and finally to Helga herself.
"What a piggy fuckin mess! What in the actual fuck happened here!?" Kevin loudly exclaimed while pulling out a cigar and lighting it.
Helga adjusted her glasses for a moment before speaking. She didn't actually need glasses, no one did, they were just fashionable to wear.
"Roughly twenty minutes ago this Roman like structure appeared in the middle of the Boatmurdered Corporate Square. Then fifteen minutes after it appeared this primitive army came out of it and attacked the local civilians, Citizen's Militia and police officers who had gathered to inspect it. What transpired after that was short but violent fight between the two groups as the citizenry exercised their right to bear arms and gunned down the invading army with extreme prejudice. No apparent casualties were taken. After that we searched through the bodies, took a few prisoners and then you arrived."
Helga saw Kevin raise an eyebrow at this "They didn't send any scouts to do recon?"
Helga just shrugged "Nope. As far as I can tell they just walked in like they owned the place and attacked."
Kevin snorted derisively and blew out a smoke cloud "Fucking retards. Deserved to die for being so stupid. Get any useful intelligence out of the prisoners?"
Helga briefly glanced at the prisoners before going back to Kevin "We only just took them prisoner a minute or two ago so that's a negative. But from their actions alone it doesn't take a genius to figure out that they were essentially here to rape, pillage and burn. What are your orders concerning the gate?"
"Well, the Chairman has given me the command while he's away on his magical space adventure and his recommendation was that I do whatever is most profitable." Kevin said while eyeing the magical gate "Seeing as these people came here to pillage the land, I think its only fair that we do the same to them. So here are your orders; You are to assemble two forces, one to guard the gate on the other side and another to pillage the land for anything even remotely valuable. Leave no stone unturned and use whatever force you deem necessary, but I personally recommend you whip out the big guns and blow the shit out of them."
Helga nodded her head and saluted. She was about to get back on the radio when someone off in the distance started shouting.
"WWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTT!1!1"
Both Helga and Kevin turned to the source of the shout only to see a tall woman running towards them. She had pale skin, purple irises, navy blue hair with a pink stripe running through it and wore thick rimmed glasses. For clothing she was dressed in a militia uniform with a lab coat over it and had a belt that was festooned with surgical tools.
"Who are you?" Helga asked as the strange woman ran up to her.
The woman broke into a smile that seemed to wide for her face and Helga felt a chill go down her spine "My name is Nina Mengele. I work for Parasol Pharmaceuticals and I'm looking to acquire some specimens, both alive and dead, from the other world to study. Preferably the non-human species like the goblins and dragons. My superiors are willing to compensate you for your efforts."
Helga thought about it for a moment and an idea formed in her head "Say Kevin? How much do you think the black market would pay for a bunch of fantasy creatures from another world?"
Kevin blew out another smoke cloud "Probably enough to buy a mansion and a fleet of convertible cars with enough left over for a harem of high class hookers to snort cocaine off of."
"Do you want some of the fantasy world's human inhabitants as well?" Helga asked.
Nina blew out a raspberry in disgust "Hell no! We've experimented on so many of them by this point that it's gotten boring and Management won't lets us buy any more off the black market anyways."
Kevin looked over at some of the fantasy creature corpses in silence for a few moments and then turned to Helga.
"Capture every creature in that world that looks even remotely interesting. I'll even let you form a third force just for that if need be. While you're doing that I'll get some internment camps set up for them. I don't know how many we're going to be getting but I have the feeling it'll be quite a lot. Hey Nina? How many do your superiors want?"
"I'd say around a few dozen of each species to start off. We'll ask for more if the need arises." Nina replied.
Helga glanced at the terrified prisoners. "What about them?"
Kevin turned to regard them for a brief moment "Start translating their language until you have a decent grasp of it. Then send them back through the gate with a message for their leadership."
"What will that message be?" Helga asked.
Kevin took another drag from his cigar and Helga watched as the smoke drifted out his mouth and nostrils "Tell them that they're going to lose everything."
Helga raised an eyebrow "Everything?"
Kevin stared back at her "Everything."
Sargent Talos Michelson checked his GAU-23 linkless feed cannon for what must have been the hundredth time. Once he was done he leaned against the wall of the D135 troop transport ship and waited for the boarding actions to finally begin. It didn't take long for him to become impatient once more and he looked at a nearby display screen that was showing the Ork Kill Kroozer. The thing was well within visual range now which meant he got to look at it in its full unfiltered glory. The ship looked like a giant red predatory fish if it had been constructed entirely out of scrap metal with no planning what so ever and then had as many guns as possible bolted onto its surface seemingly at random. It looked like a complete disaster and not like something that would be considered space worthy. His eyes hurt just looking at it so he looked elsewhere and thought about other things.
The trip to the space hulk at the edge of the solar system had taken several days and it didn't have to take that long to get there. The assembled fleet could have just activated their slipspace drives once they were out of the Earth's atmosphere and been there instantly, but there were currently several good reasons not to. The big main one was that Chairman Thalleous needed to brief the assembled task force on just what they were likely to encounter in that thing and what weapons would be most effective. The end result of his briefing could be summed up as: Whip out the big guns and shoot anything that moves. There was also the fact that the Chairman had no prior military training, so the first few days of the trip were spent giving him a crash course on how to operate power armour and how to correctly use the various weapons he had brought with him. After all that the next few days were spent doing drills as the task force practised boarding manoeuvres so there wouldn't be any accidents when they did it for real.
On the final day of the fleets approach they began selecting which ships they were going to be boarding first and four ships of note were singled out from the rest.
The first of these was what appeared to be a mostly intact Dark Eldar raiding vessel which had Thalleous scratching his head. After giving a brief explanation as to why it was so weird for an Eldar vessel to be in the warp he theorized that it had likely been hit with a vortex weapon. His advice to the assigned boarding team was not to touch anything that looked spiky.
The next target of interest was a Space Marine strike cruiser of an unknown chapter. The team assigned to that ship were given M70 AR1 Gauss cannons loaded with Anvil rounds. Because whatever was on that ship was likely going to require all the extra firepower they could get their hands on.
The third ship of interest was what looked like an Inquisitorial black ship which likely meant it was filled with screaming mad psykers. The assigned team was given some flash bang grenades along with their regular weapons and wished the best of luck on that one.
Lastly was the Ork Kill Kroozer. There wasn't likely going to be any interesting loot but Thalleous was going to be with the force boarding it because apparently blasting Orks was lots of fun to him. This of course meant the Chairman was under the protection of Talos's squad. There was likely going to be a huge number of Orks on the ship so the largest boarding force was assigned to it.
Talos looked over to where Thalleous was standing. He had his power armours helmet off and was currently checking his weapon much like everyone else in the company sized force was. The weapon he was checking over was a massive double barrelled shotgun that had been nicknamed Irish Tom. This thing was fourteen feet long, weighed somewhere in the realm of six hundred pounds and fired shells the size of cannon rounds. The thing could end a zombie apocalypse overnight.
Talos was about to say something when the sound of bullets pinging off the transport ships hull caught his attention. It sounded like there was a literal hailstorm going on outside.
"What's going on out there?" Talos asked out loud.
"We're being shot at by the Ork ship" Came Captain Anders reply "Most of it is low calibre anti aircraft fire though so we aren't is serious danger just yet. Our fighter squads are being sent in to both distract them and take out their weapons."
"They haven't fired any of the big guns?" Thalleous suddenly piped up.
"They tried to but the guns apparently malfunctioned and exploded." Anders replied.
Thalleous chuckled "That's hilarious."
The troop bays speakers suddenly crackled to life "Beginning final approach and commencing soft seal. Breachers report to the bay doors to commence boarding operations."
A team of breachers with huge over designed blowtorches and large gas tanks strapped to their backs rushed past the assembled troops and stood ready at the doors. A few minutes later the ship lurched slightly followed by a hissing noise and soon the troop bay doors opened revealing the rusted red scrap hull of the Ork ship.
Talos had only been half joking when he thought that the Ork ship looked like it had been made from scrap metal. But now that he could see its hull up close, he could see that it was indeed made from patched together scrap metal and not good high quality scrap metal either. No wonder Thalleous had recommended the use of heavy duty equipment. It was going to be an absolute chore cutting through that mess.
The breachers got to work cutting their way through while Captain Anders ordered the troops to form up and prepare to board. The plan Thalleous had come up with was simple and straight forward, the bulk of the boarding forces were going to enter into what were guessed to be the most trafficked portions of the Ork ship. This would both draw their attention away from the smaller boarding force and break their numbers up into more manageable pieces. And while the Orks were being blasted the much smaller force would then sneak in and seek out areas of interest. Talos's company in particular was tasked with investigating what looked like a large brig. The Chairman had personally volunteered to accompany them because was very curious as to what kinds of prisoners the Orks took.
Soon the breachers finished cutting through the ship hull and it fell forwards with a loud crash of metal on metal. Talos's squad were the first ones in, barging through the dust cloud that had been kicked up and into the complete unknown which soon revealed itself to be a large partly lit room. The inside of the Ork ship was just as ugly as the outside with uneven surfaces of patched together scrap metal in all directions with no attempts to make it look nice and piles of junk everywhere. From where he was standing there appeared to be three entrances leading to unknown destinations with each one sporting a series of primitive glyphs above it.
Talos then heard a high pitched screech from his side and saw a group of scrawny and diminutive green skins running away from him. Gretchen by the look of things. He and the rest of his squad fired a burst from their respective weapons that the Gretchen were turned to bloody mist in an instant.
This turned out to be a mistake because not five seconds after they had fired a loud roar came from seemingly everywhere and reverberated off the walls of the room.
Then, out of the three entryways, came the Orks.
Lots and lots of Orks.
Thalleous had given descriptions of the Orks of course, even drawn a few crude pictures with the markers he had on him. But now Talos got to see them in the flesh and take in all their horrid details. Most of them stood at the same height as a human, though they would no doubt stand much taller if they weren't hunched over like gorillas. They were dressed in crudely made armour but he could still see that massive slab like muscles covered their bodies, giving them almost cartoonish proportions and their gaping tusk filled mouths seemed almost too big for their heads. They were armed as well, mostly with crudely made guns and knives, but he did see some explosives on a few of them.
"Fuck em up!" Captain Anders shouted.
The loud roaring of the Orks was suddenly and abruptly replaced with gunfire as both sides started shooting at each other. Splatters of blood flew through the air, stray bullets ricocheted off the walls and shields flared bright yellow as the two sides unloaded everything they had into each other. Talos was doing likewise, firing his GAU-23 at full tilt and spraying the Orks with 20mm rounds at two thousand rounds per minute with no concern for ammunition conservation. But he did keep an eye out for any Orks armed with weapons that might actually pose a threat to his unit. He soon spotted a massive hulking one that was festooned with crudely made grenades and turned his fire upon it. The Ork shook violently as the bullets tore into its body and it wasn't long before one of them hit a grenade causing the Ork in question to explode like a fireworks display and take a dozen others of its kind with it.
'BOOM!'
Talos turned his head to the source of the noise and saw that Thalleous had stepped forward and fired his massive shotgun at the thickest concentration of Orks, kicking over a dozen of them off their feet as the navel grapeshot shredded their bodies.
Then Thalleous fired the second barrel of his shotgun.
'BOOM!'
Roughly a dozen more Orks were pasted all over the deck plates. Thalleous then quickly stepped back behind the line of soldiers to reload his weapon.
Talos nodded at this. Good, the chairman wasn't actively charging forwards into melee to get himself killed and was actually fighting intelligently.
A loud booming and clanking sound drew Talos's attention back to one of the entrances and he looked over just in time for the biggest Ork he'd seen yet to come lumbering into the room with a whole horde of reinforcements. The Ork in question was dressed in a massive suit of what looked like power armour that looked like a disassembled tank with one arm ending with a giant gun and the other ending in a massive claw. The hulking brutes beady red eyes locked with his and it let out a bellowing roar which invigorated the other Orks who seemed to be on the verge of retreating.
Then it charged.
Talos wasted no time turning his GAU-23 on the massive armoured Ork and opening up on it. To his absolute surprise a glowing red force field appeared around it and his bullets simply bounced off it with some of the stray shots even killing other Orks that were nearby. Then, to make matters just that much more worse, his GAU-23 clicked empty.
Judging by the speed at which the Ork was charging at him and the time it would take for him to load another drum of ammunition, Talos knew he wouldn't have enough time to reload before the Ork was upon him. Not to mention that everyone else seemed too occupied with the rest of the horde to consider helping him. Not that their help would have done any good due to the shield anyways. So with grim resignation, he uncoupled the ammunition drum, tossed the GAU-23 aside and pulled out his combat knife.
But just as all hope seemed lost, Thalleous jumped in front Talos and shoved the business end of his shotgun into the Orks mouth.
"Shotgun Mouthwash!" The Chairman screamed and fired both barrels.
Talos momentarily saw the Orks eyes widen in horrified realization before its head exploded into a shower of blood, skull fragments, brain matter, tusks and eyeballs. Thalleous quickly steeped out of the way as the now headless body managed to take a few more steps forward before crashing to the deck like a sack of anvils.
The death of the armoured Ork seemed to be the last straw of something because whatever passed for cohesion in the Orks suddenly collapsed. Some of them broke and ran while others started fighting with each other and the rest simply charged forward with reckless abandon. The fight was now just a mop up and any Ork that didn't flee was swiftly killed.
Talos, seeing that everyone was distracted, quickly materialized another ammunition drum and reloaded his GAU-23.
"Alight, platoons one and two are to secure the area." Captain Anders announced when the last Ork fell. "The rest are to head through the middle entrance and down the halls until they reach the end where the brig supposedly is. Now move out!"
"Yes sir!" Talos along everyone else in the room shouted before forming up and heading down the middle hallway and into the unknown.
Farseer Kelmon Firesight was jolted awake by the sounds of gunfire followed by heavy footsteps. That wasn't anything new by this point. But what was new was the door to his cramped and filthy cell being ripped off its hinges and tossed aside. The inside of his cell was bathed in light and he had to squint his eyes. But he knew that whatever was in front of him wasn't an Ork because he would have been either kicked in the ribs or whipped by now. So he stood up and waited a few moments for his eyes to adjust so he could see what was in front of him. Then he saw just what was in front of him.
Standing in front of Kelmon was a giant.
The creature was easily twice his height if not even taller than that and as broad as Kelmon was tall. It was dressed in a bulbous suit of what appeared to be power armour that immediately reminded him of the Imperiums space marines but upon closer inspection the design was different. It didn't have those oversized pauldrons and the dome like helmet was part of the armour. So whatever this thing was, it likely wasn't a space marine. Normally that would be a relief but now he was faced with a complete unknown. He tried looking into the future to see what this thing had planned for him but he was too drained.
The giant stepped off to the side and gestured for Kelmon to exit. He complied and stepped out of his cell and into the first wide open space he had experienced in over a year. He looked around and saw more of the giants along with dozens of his kin who had also been freed. Was this a rescue operation? Were they being collected for study? There were just too many unknowns to form an answer.
Once all of Kelmon's kin had been freed one of the giants said something in a deep rumbling voice and gestured to the entrance to the brig. Obviously they wanted the Eldar to follow them back to their boarding craft.
Kelmon hesitated for a moment and weighed his options. He could stay here at the tender loving mercy of the Orks or follow a group of mysterious giants to an unknown fate.
Truthfully, there wasn't really a choice in the matter. So Kelmon started walking and the rest of his kin quickly followed behind him. The giants formed up around them as they walked out of the room and into an unknown future.
Author's note: This took far too long for me to finish, but its done now. Not sure what I'm going to write for the next chapter, but the chapter after that is going to have the greater galaxy finally take notice.