Ships Mistress Constantina Zalgost stood and surveyed her kingdom. The Ship's mistress was a tall woman, regally dressed in the traditional Navy-blue overcoat and high breached black Zslyth leather boots as befits someone of her august station as mistress of the Suneater. Pulling herself up from her centrally placed bridge command throne with as much grace as she could manage, which was far less than she was used to, she turned towards her Commodore, a thickset man named Barzan Vertis, she made to inquire about the state of her vessel.
'Commodore' she asked, her usually breathy voice made horse by the hour upon hour of shouted orders and screamed countermands that keeping a ship together in a Warp Gale required. 'In your estimation, what is the state of our vessel' she asked, her voice not altogether immune from the tiredness that her face conveyed.
'Mamzel Ships mistress' the thickset man rumbled, his strong baritone voice unaffected by the hours of shouts he too had had to issue to keep the bridge crew in line. 'I think we have passed throught the worst of it.' On their private vox channel he added, 'You look terrible Constantina.'
'You don't look much better yourself Barzan' she quipped by way of response. 'True, but I'm not the one whose been stuck on an Emperor-damned command throne for the last six hours, I've got things here, rest Constantina.'
Thankful to the throne for such a competent second as Barzan, she stalked off the command bridge, shaky legs carrying her as gracefully as she could muster, glad to finally be off to a peaceful rest, now that order had been restored to her ship.
The Tertiary loading bay was engulfed in chaos. Crates were overturned, spilling their mechanical contents out all over the loading bay floor whilst perforated promethium drums spilled out their fuming slippery contents, creating pools of stinking black liquid that could easily tip the unwary rating. However, those were not the main hazards engulfing the loading bay. Indeed, if that had been all, engineseer Xyvith Quoth would not have been cowering behind his podium, clutching his Talon mark III Autopistol to his chest, and muttering prayers to the Omnissiah to preserve him and his machines.
It had all happened so fast, reflected the enginseer, even to one whose senses had been augmented beyond those of a baseline human, Xyvith couldn't countenance how it had happened so fast. One moment he had been directing the menials, directing their labor like one of the Opera virtuosos of Old Earth, his mechadendrites swinging to a rhythm invisible to those without access to the ship's neusphere. His bay had been run as if it were a great machine itself, with flesh and sinew taking the place of conveyors and hydraulics, creating stockpiles of material in the loading bay ready for use, whilst simultaneously directing resupply parties to provide beleaguered repair crews with every gadget and gyzmo they could require.
From the mighty girders of plasteel to the humblest brass screw, every component was categorized and labeled, a mighty order reigning over the bay, an extension of the Omnissiah's ever dominant will across the galaxy.
Then that will had been shattered.
Mutants. The scum who haunt the bilges of every warp-capable ship in the Imperium had stormed into the loading bay, killing indiscriminately with the inelegant tools of the mechanically inept. Crude clubs dashed the heads of burly stevedores, many of the big men would have put up a fight if they hadn't been burdened down by the weight of the vast crates they carried. Crude knives also flashed in the hands of the mutants, cutting down the runner team who had just been on their way to deliver more requested cargo. Organizers to were cut down, from atop their own podiums, either pulled down and trampled by dozens of mishappen feet or blown off their perches by crude stubguns, stollen from the crew or crafted by the mutants own twisted artifice.
From the far corner of the loading bay from where Xyvith was cowering came a great bellow, and for a moment hope flared in Xyvth's chest, where his mechanical heart beat engine oil through silicon veins. The old Ogryn porter, the only one to be assigned to loading bay Tertium, Grug, was bellowing loudly, like a bull grox in heat. The old Ogryn, all toughened hide and bulging muscles had taken up one of the plasteel support pillars and was laying into the enemy with abandon. The crude ballistic weapons of the mutants had no effect on the massive brute, pattering off the Ogryn's though hide as if it were rain off a hivespire. The melee weapons of the mutants had little more effect, the clubs bouncing off Grug's rippling muscle.
Lossing another mighty roar the Ogryn paid the mutants back for his own, minor injuries tenfold. His plasteel girder, held a Herculean great club, swept in front of the Ogryn in great arks, crushing and bludgeoning a half-dozen mutants with every swing.
Seeing this forming locus of resistance, the ratings and stevedores began to gather around the Ogryn, pulling shivs, clubs and crude stubguns not so dissimilar from the ones that the mutants wield. Gathering around the bastion of strength that the Ogryn represented, the beliguered naval crew began their counter push. Grinding forward, the Ogryn at the head the naval crew began to push back, retaking the he loading crane that stood silent sentinel above the loading bay.
It was then when the mutants sent in their reserves.
With a shrill grating cry, like a melding of a song bird's cry and a steam whistle a great mutant beast lumbered forward to match the Orgryn.
The mutant was a hunched and crippled figure, the swell of its hunch back rising high above its head, the things mishappen face covered in the shadow that its hump produced. The things abomination didn't stop there however. It's skin was thick and warty, colored bruse purple, whilst the little hair that the thing possessed, mostly in the caverns of its to many armpits crawled visibly with vermin. Lowering its head like the great Taurines of Aluxis Prime, the thing charged.
Grog, an old hand at smushing those smaller than him was just as taken aback by the size of his opponent as his peers were, but nevertheless he strode on. Lifting his pillar, now mishappen on its end from prolonged bashing like a spear, the ogryn squared his shoulders and prepared to receive the mutant's charge. On and on the beast came thundering towards the Ogryn and his impromptu spear. It seemed for a moment that all would be well, as enginseer Xyvith Quoth quickly calculated that at the speed the mutant was moving, and the speed at which it charged forward, it would be spitted upon the girder-spear like a pup grox on Emperor's Day.
But then the unexpected happened. Having grown its whole life in the twisted confines of the ship's guts, the massive mutant thing was more agile than it appeared. Diving down just before reaching the end of the Grug's spear, the mutant launched itself at Grug's legs, managing to grab onto one and flip the dim witted Ogryn from his feet, sending him onto his back with a thunderous crash.
Warbling a strange lilting ululation of victory, the creature began to slice into the downed Ogryn with its malformed claws, its many hands cutting away great chunks of Abhuman flesh. Screaming in fear and pent-up rage, Grug tried to fight back, his massive paw like hands reaching up to strangle the mutant even as it slashed him to death. Giving one last cry of rage, Grug squeezed even harder on the mutant's neck, and snapped it, with a great cracking sound that echoed around the loading bay.
Grug got little time to enjoy his victory, however, as whilst he was distracted by the great mutant beast another creature, lithe and dexterous where the beast had been large, came around Grug's prone side and, lifting up its crude spear, just a mop handle with a spike lashed to the end, drove the makeshift weapon down into the Ogryn's eye, rupturing the organ and driving that spike deep into what passed in Ogryn's for a brain, instantly felling the loyal brute.
Dully, still in shick at what had happened to Loading Bay Tertium's erstwhile champion Xyvith came to the conclusion that the spike must have been made of Adamantium for it to so cleanly pierce through an Ogryn's thick skull. Xyvith imagined that its intended purpose was as a vast nail, like those used in the Enginarium, Adamantine being one of the few materials known to the Imperium that could withstand the vast heat and pressure of that place for a prolonged period.
Roaring again at the seeming eminence of their victory the mutants continued their advance with a renewed vigor, screaming their victory over the hatted navy personnel, the hateful norms who had for generations hunted the mutants through duct pipes and ships holds, much like how the lords of Old Earth stalked prey beasts thorough lush woods and fecund jungles. Now, those mutants believed, they would get to hunt.
The few remaining navy crew, those who haven't already fled now broke, and made for the great vaulted doors that led up to the main decks, desperate to escape the ever-escalating slaughter. But before they could reach the great door, their need to flee soon became irrelevant, for another force had joined in the skirmish.
Charging out from another of the many, many hallways that led into the Tertiary loading bay, came a force as different from the mutants as could be conceived.
Where the mutants shambled forward, their form and march anathema to order, these new comers marched. Advancing at a steady pace, this new force which Xyvith couldn't yet make out fully from behind his podium moved into the bay and opened fire.
Instantly, a volley of bright red lasbeams streamed out into Xyvith field of vision, chunks of mutant blown back with it. The mutants cries of victory soon became shrieks of fear. Rising from his place of concealment, Xyvith observed something that he considered to be beautiful. In the same way his own loading bay was the perfect expression of the Ommnisiah's order imposed on the universe, so too did these, men who he could now make out more clearly, were the epitomy of order.
Shifting his stance, tentatively leaning out of his cover, Xyvith glanced a full view of his saviors and breathed a sigh of relief, perhaps his first since he had been uplifted by the Mechanicus when he was just a boy. The men were lined up in a firing line anchored on a central figure, four men rows stretching out from around this figure. The first line lay down on the floor, the second knelt just behind their comrades, whilst the third stood, all of the men pointing their rifles, lasguns if the bright beams of light were any indication, lanced scarlet death into the crowd of mutants, milling and confused now that they had been attached from a different angle. All of the men were perfectly uniform, all garbed in a dark grey greatcoat, their heads topped with a sturdy helmet, and, most notably, their faces covered by a mask made of a material that Xyvith could identify as synth leather.
The only figure that was not completely uniform with the rest of his men was the one who stood at the head of the formation. While he still bore the helmet and coat of his men, his were far more elaborate, with a plume of red equine hair rising above his helmet, and a breastplate of polished ceramite covering his torso over his coat. His mask to was more elaborate, with a fully integrated internal filter, as opposed to the boxy filters that the rest of his men wore on their chests which was connected to the mask by a rubberized hose. This man, clearly a commander was also armed in more elaborate fashion than his men, on his hip was a sheathed saber, the weapon's sheathed across the officer's side. In his right hand, the officer held a bolt pistol, a contraption that Xyvith concidered to be beautiful in its simplicity.
Whilst Xyvith had seen the bolt pistols sported by the ship's aristocracy, those contraptions were gilded and delicate mechanisms, which clearly had not been fired in decades if ever.
The officer's weapon on the other hand was clearly well used, as the officer pumped bolt after bolt into the charging mutants, exploding heads and mangling limbs with almost mechanical precision. Under this massed barrage of small arms fire the mutants melted away, the few survivors streaming back the passage they came.
Or they would have, if more of the troopers, dressed identically to the masked men that Xyvith had spied, had not appeared in that passage, cutting down the last of the mutant scum in a well-coordinated flanking maneuver.
Finally, with the enemy now slain, Xyvith finally stepped out from behind his podium to view the devastation before him, the men who had been lying down and kneeling coming to their feet and standing on formation behind the officer, all without a command being uttered.
Behind him, Xyvith could hear the chatter of his surviving menials as they discussed the events of the last few minutes in quite traumatized voices.
'Who the frak are those guys, naval security?' one of the menials asked another. 'No you dolt' another replied, 'do those look like any damned high-boots you've ever seen?'
'No I suppose I haven't,' the first menial replied thoughtfully, 'so who are they then, mercenaries?'
'Well I don't know, they 're probably'
'Guardsmen,' Xyvith stated, cutting of the second menial before he could respond. 'The guardsmen that we were transporting'
'Guardsmen' the first menial repeated in confusion, 'Those don't look like no Guardsmen I've ever seen on the recruiting posters' the menial stated, his question hidden inside his statement.
'It is likely that those you saw on the posters were Cadians, Valhallans or any other number of regiments that make up the Astra Militarum,' Xyvith stated. 'These ones are not like those others, these ones are the Death Korps, and they come from a world called war' Xyvith concluded, his mechanical retina burning the image of the now identified Korpsmen into his memory, the soldiers standing cold sentinel, as silent and efficient as the machines that Xyvith so loved to toil over.
Hey guys, I just want to say thanks to anyone reading this, it means a lot that anyone is interested in my writing. I'm going to apologize in advance for any spelling mistakes, I'm pretty damn bad at it, and I'll also apologize if I accidentally repost a chapter or somehow mess up the tech I'm... well not great with it. I'd like to thank everyone again for reading and please if you have any criticism, any at all, let me have it! If you like it let me know, if its shit shout it from the roof Tops! That's pretty much all from me, have a blessed New Year!