'Full retreat', the words continued to Resonate in Tymons head as he drifted in and out of consciousness. If a full retreat had been sounded, it meant all imperial assets were to withdraw immediately, no matter their previous objective. For as long as his injured body would let him, he pondered this thought, pondered the situation that would result in for him, was he alone? Had he been left behind by his brothers in arms? Through his seemingly failing vision, he caught a glimpse of one of his battle brothers, reduced to a lifeless corpse, his flak vest stained a dark shade of red. Though his injured body would let him see no more as he once again fell back into the black that was his unconscious mind.
One day… That was how long the half witted imperial scout teams lasted upon this wretched world before they unintentionally kicked the hornet's nest that was the canoptek and any plans of using the mon'keigh to leave the planet were snuffed out when their 'Full Retreat' was sounded. Her vox piece, previously intercepting the various imperial transmissions from the surrounding area, had once again become as silent as it was days prior and so, she again started to contemplate a lifetime alone on this mudball. Nevertheless, the patient striking scorpion stayed hidden, perched atop a branch on one of the taller trees, waiting for Canoptek activity to ebb once again. Sure the mechanical abominations had ignored her before, but that was before these imperials had gracelessly waltzed through the planet. Now the soulless machines were agitated, paranoid, searching for anything that wasn't necron. One of the unliving creatures, something the eldar had come to know as a wraith, slinked its way nimbly and almost silently between the trees and over their roots, slowing to a halt almost directly beneath the branch that she was perched upon. Silence overcame her, apart from the occasional screech and cry of the indiginous wildlife. Its head twitched all over the place, left, right, then left again, searching its surroundings as one of those bushes retreated straight back into its hard shell, but eventually, it continued its way through the forest, quietly as before. It was starting to seem as though she was going to be here for a while.
Tymons injuries finally allowed him to wake up again, although with a head pain that was reminiscent of having his skull cracked open against a bulkhead and stapled back together by some servitor from the ass end of the maintenance division. His eyes, as soon as they squinted open, were saturated with a blinding orange light that was the sunset of Gamma-Eridanus 3, yet his surroundings were largely unchanged. He was still lying against the Alien obelisk, yet the grass seemed to have grown accustomed with his presence, no longer swerving out of its own way to cater for him, but it flinched as soon as he moved his head away from the blinding light. Slowly, but steadily, he brought his right arm between his eyes and the planet's sun and then he tried to prop himself up against the structure only to be forced back down by the head splitting pain that was plaguing him. For minutes, he lay there, almost falling out of consciousness again and again, but eventually he hoisted himself up despite the pain. Thankfully his injuries were restricted only to his head as the rest of his body complied without screaming in similar pain. Panting, he leveled his head with the ground around him as the pain started to ebb, there was no sign of the mechanical creature that had ransacked his squad and, as he finally got up to get a better look, he turned to inspect the obelisk which once again, was dormant, in fact everything around him seemed dormant. It did not take long for Tymon to find his Lasgun, although the weapon had seen better days, a piece of the barrel was bent down and its outer lens had shattered, the weapon was useless unless he could scavenge another lasgun barrel.
That was his first objective, he walked over to the body that was once his brother in arms... It was Rico... He had a hole in his chest from when the creature impaled him, the poor guy must have died almost instantly with his eyes frozen in a terrified and confused expression like that. Slowly, he brought his hand over Rico's eyes and closed them,
"May you rest in peace my brother"
were the only words Tymon whispered as he looked around him, trying to find Rico's weapon. Eventually he did, but his lasgun was in an even worse state than his own with its receiver assembly having been torn open revealing the emitter inside, but Tymon wasn't looking for a receiver assembly. Quickly he took the weapon in his hand, detaching the barrel so that he could inspect it, but its outer lens had been shattered too. Just his luck, he was alone and unarmed on an alien world, sheer aggravation made him toss the broken barrel into the ground with a grunt causing the grass to flick away once again. Then it struck him, he was alone, unarmed, equipped with nothing but his survival bag and the armor on his back… how much food was he carrying? Hastily he unclipped the survival bag from his belt, letting it drop to the floor, then he opened it by the zip and peered inside. A locator beacon, his dataslate, a rolled up hydration bag, he started to rummage through the contents, spilling some out on the floor around it and then he found them, his two nutrient blocks, one of them had a chunk already bitten out of it, that was all the food he had left.
"Maybe… five days if I ration?" Tymon muttered to no one in particular as he started to contemplate the arguably hopeless situation he was finding himself in, only to stop himself moments later, sure he was alone, but that was only his immediate surroundings, maybe there were others that had been left behind. New objective, he had to find a functional, long ranged vox-box to establish contact with other survivors, if there were any. Still kneeling on the floor, Tymon pulled out his clunky dataslate which was pretty much just a low resolution screen with a single vertical row of buttons beside it. He held the topmost button down and the device flickered into life with an astra militarum logo appearing in the middle and the words 'hammer of the emperor' flickering on beneath it, then a small rotating spiral beneath as the device booted up while a battery icon revealed 89% in the top left.
'UPLINK TO FLEETCOM FAILED' were the words that abruptly replaced the logo and slogan once the device had booted up, the option to 'recover from previous state' or 'retry uplink' appeared beside the two lowest buttons on the bottom of the screen. Tymon chose to try and uplink again in some vain yet hopeful attempt to reconnect with the 9th Recon fleet that were almost certainly gone by this time, but the same unfeeling message appeared on the screen, with the same two options. He sighed, selecting the second option and a map flickered into view showing Tymons current location, the clearing, thankfully the device still registered his location accurately. He zoomed out as far as the device would let him, wondering how much information it had actually saved when it was still uplinked to the fleet. 20 square kilometers with him in the centre, beyond that the map was blank but within this box, he saw various objective markers including his own, showing the route they had taken to get to the clearing. Among the objective markers, he saw one listed as 'prospector 3', that was where he and the rest of his team had initially been deployed to. At this point that was the only location that came to mind where he would be able to find a vox-box, food and maybe even a spare lasgun, but it was four kilometers away and on the other side of the forest that he came from before the attack. Circumventing it simply wasn't viable, the forest stretched as far as the map could show him in either direction, so he had no choice but to walk back the same way he came and, with that realisation, he packed every spilled item back into his survival bag, clipped it to his hip and started on his way, picking up his defunct lasgun as he did.
She was still perched up on the branch, in the same position as she was mere hours prior and she had not seen any more Canoptek activity besides her close call with the wraith and one or two sightings of some of the taller, yet less surveillant 'reanimators' beyond the forest. With this in mind, the striking scorpion decided to drop down from her well hidden and defendable position in the tree, creating only silent and viscous ripples in the swamp like soil below. She remained crouched as she peered all around her with the aid of her helmet's threat detector… Nothing… Not a single damned thing, she really was alone again, not that the canoptek were any better company. Silently the Eldar waded through the ankle deep mud that was the soil, making her way back to her little encampment. Already the loneliness was getting to her. With only her own emotions to keep her company, she felt empty yet at the same time deafened by them, once again she contemplated the idea of being truly alone upon this world.
Enough, she had the mental fortitude to cope with these feelings and she had the discipline to logically deconstruct them. In fact, she already knew what she was feeling and why, so for the moment, she put them aside and focused. Right now getting back to her campsite was the priority, she was exposed and her encampment was defendable, there was plenty of time to contemplate her situation when she got back. But she still decided to leave her vox-piece on and once again, set it to broad spectrum scanning, just in case there was that one chance that she would hear a vox transmission from well… anyone...
The route back to prospector 3 seemed worse, the mud was thicker, colder and its temperature had started to seep through Tymon's boots. It wasn't long before he was starting to shiver all over with his flak vest and overalls slowly but steadily failing to maintain his body heat, yet he soldiered on, broken lasgun in one hand, dataslate in the other. That's when it came to him, an explanation as to why everything felt more difficult, apart from the theory that maybe his mind was already playing tricks on him; the day was ending and the sunset had been replaced with a slowly dimming blue sky. The planet must have less of a greenhouse effect than other terra-like worlds meaning colder nights. This realisation did him no good however, for he was still in the middle of this emperor-forsaken xeno rainforest, trudging through the swamp like mud that was starting to feel like slowly setting cement around his boots. He had to keep moving, what if the mud fully froze up, what would he do then? He checked his dataslate to see how far he was from the prospector 3 site, his hands starting to gently shiver from what he was slowly coming to know as the nightly temperature of this world. The device shone into life, again revealing his current position. He was still one damned kilometer out and closing a maybe foot or two with each step… Then his hand failed him as the device came loose from his weakened grip, slapping into the viscous mud beside him. With a grunt of effort, he reached down and grabbed it back, pulling it from what turned out to be the suddenly very prying grip of the mud as tendrils of the stuff greedily tried to hold the device. This however did not stop him from swiftly retrieving it and bagging it. He just had to keep walking forwards and he'd eventually get there, and exactly that was what he did.
At least an hour of travel had passed and the mud was thinning again, he was reaching the end of the forest and, to his happiness, relief and amazement, the prospector site was there, three tents (two of which were partially assembled), one stockpile and a wide circle of still glowing red markers for the landing zone, just like he remembered it.
"oh THANK YOU GOD EMPEROR!" Tymon cried out to no one in particular as he approached the small and neatly arranged cluster of makeshift buildings with new courage and vigour. Between him and the tents and stockpile, was the wide landing area which was largely charred by the drive plume of dropships regularly landing and taking off, but it offered no such resistance like the mud from the forest. Contrary to the clearing he had travelled from, there was no grass here and it looked more like a set of trees had simply been knocked down and cleared to accommodate this little encampment. He sprinted over the 10 meter wide landing area as fast as his old body permitted to the command tent with hope of finding a vox box in there, but this hope began to diminish. The closer he got, the more it looked as though this tent had been ransacked too, presumably by the same or similar mechanical horrors to the one he and his squad had encountered. Hope continued to drain from his face as he neared the tent and peered through a hole that had been torn through the fabric. Inside, there were tables upon which equipment was resting and once he was at the tent, he inspected the interior. Everything was broken, mangled beyond repair; a holotable with a hole the size of his fist through the top, some other piece of equipment with its electronic innards exposed and a vox-box, oh emperor the god fething damned vox-box, it's antenna was gone, some cables were hanging out of another fist sized hole and the microphone looked like it had been stepped on.
"FRACK!" Tymon yelled, tossing his broken lasgun to the floor like a belligerent child and with a look of pure despair and so, the hopelessly screwed guardsman, continued to inspect the ruined command tent.
Vox-box, holotable, plasma microgenerator, datalink module, all components of the temporary command post rendered were rendered completely useless, but there was one undamaged item, and it was a portable heater... Like a moth to a flame, he went straight to the unpowered device. The cold was starting to get to him, his uniform and armour no longer able to protect him from the coming night. Once he was in front of the device he immediately began to inspect it. Did it require an active power supply? Or was it battery powered, could he turn it on now? His eyes and his shivering hands inspected every part of the device, accidentally dropping it as he did.
"Gak!" He whispered harshly, his breath forming small temporarily lingering clouds in the air in front of him as he quickly picked the device back up. He found a switch on it, without a single thought he flicked it, only for something to fall off and onto the ground. He had to get himself together, at this rate, he was going to lose possibly his only heat source for the night, so he put it down and tried to find what had fallen off. He couldn't create a fire now, the temperature was too low and his hands were starting to freeze so even if he wanted to he couldn't. Then he found the piece that fell off the heater and to his utter relief, it was a battery pack, the heater was battery powered. Why they just had one lying around, he did not know and he did not care, he only turned the heater around so that he could slot the battery back into its place and, when he did, a set of lights flicked on with a gentle humming sound. Four of them, three green, one red and, above each light he could barely make out a number, four to one. What did they mean, days? Hours? Millenia? Why was imperial equipment never specific enough to detail actual timespans? He didn't care, he continued to inspect the device and… there it was, another switch, larger than the other, again with no forethought he flicked it and then the device suddenly started emanating a warm, orange hue accompanied by a gentle hum.
"Hah… HAHAAAH! YES!" was all his mind let him scream as he turned the heavenly device to face him and when he did, he was blessed with the privilege of not freezing to sleep throughout the coming night.
Fueled by the discovery of the portable heater, Tymon's confidence was renewed as he carried the device out of the ransacked tent and to the stockpile, setting it up so that it faced the entire array of boxes and, with his previous objectives once again at the forefront of his mind, he began to search. He went over each box, inspecting the writing on the sides: 'Receiver/Transmitter', most likely not a vox-box but nevertheless he, with a grunt of effort, slid the heavy crate off of another that read 'Munition', not that that would be of any use until he fixed his weapon. He undid the latches on the 'Receiver/Transmitter' crate, lifting its lid open and peering inside, revealing an antenna and a receiver dish of some kind padded nicely into the crate. It was a data link assembly and without any ships in orbit to uplink with, it was practically useless. He ignored it, going straight to the other crates that had been stacked up on top of and against each other: 'Munitions', 'Plasma Microgen', 'Heating Elements', as he saw that one, he asked himself why no one was briefed on the planets temperature cycle, 'Tent assembly', 'nutrition bricks', 'Vox equipment'...
Jackpot the guardsman thought to himself. It was stacked atop another crate but, with some effort, he managed to get it on the ground in front of him, then it took him less than a second to get the box open and peer inside, revealing exactly what the labelling claimed it was containing; a well padded, long ranged vox-box. Almost giddy with excitement, he took the device out of the crate that contained it, completely ignoring the padding that almost flew everywhere when he pulled it out. He inspected it, more careful than he was with the heater, looking for its on switch and when he found it he tried to turn it on, but it would not react. Once again, he felt what little hope and confidence he had in his survival fade, but he pressed on, checking to see if there was a battery installed and when he established that there was not, he checked the crate to see if there was one in there. He went through every corner of the storage box, through the padding that had not been accidentally tossed out, had he accidentally thrown the battery out with his carelessness? No, he found a part of the padding that had a slot with the same shape as the battery on the heater and... It was empty. Somehow, the vox-box did not come with a battery pack, or at least it was supposed to and some idiot loading tech forgot to put the emperor damned battery pack in the crate. The only other option was to try and get the plasma microgenerator up and running, but he had never started one up before, if he screwed it up the generator would either overload and blow up in his face, or just crap out and fail. Neither of those outcomes were desirable, but that's when he realised he technically had another functional battery pack, and it was powering the heater. Reluctantly, he turned the heavenly device off and almost immediately the cold enveloped him again, it had gotten worse. He turned the device around and flicked that same switch as previously, letting the battery pack fall out of the heater and into his once again freezing hand. Then he slotted it into the vox-box and flicked the power on. It worked, the small display on the front was reading a couple of numbers, namely '300.5'. Wasting absolutely no time he pulled the microphone off and pushed the button on its left for a moment with his thumb and the words 'BROADCASTING UN-ENC' appeared on the display.
She couldn't see any Canoptek on the way back to her encampment which was little more than a caved in and overgrown tunnel in the side of a hill with a small solar collector rigged up on the top of the entrance. She could feel the cold seeping through the gaps in her armour as she made her way back, but the suit's thermal panelling kept her warm for as long as it was charged and presently, power reserves were at 9%. In light of the lack of canoptek activity, the striking scorpion figured she would no longer need to keep her active stealth systems online so, with the neural interface her helmet had, she commanded them offline. The whole set of armour she was in slowly started to feel slightly heavier with a quiet humming sound that decreased in pitch and with that, her boots were no longer gently rippling through the now more viscous soil of the forest. There was one unintended but convenient side-effect the active stealth systems had and that was that they made it easier to wade through the viscous mud due to a magnetic field curve around the boots which initially just dulled her footsteps, they must have been forcing the mud around the boots each time she took a step. Now with a lower power consumption rate, she could focus what was left of her battery life on the thermal systems. She had practically memorised the surrounding area and, when the imperial forces had landed, she had seen the locations of two temporary command posts belonging to the mon'keigh. That would be next on her path to surviving this world, visit those command posts and see if there was anything she could use. Perhaps they knew something her survey team did not, sure the mon'keigh and their technology were primitive, but contrary to the small survey group her and her team had gated in with mere days ago, before she was left behind, the mon'keigh had ships in orbit and an entire regiment soldiers and scientists on the ground. It was not long before she arrived at her little camp and she went straight to the solar collector to check how much power it had accumulated today and was pleasantly surprised with a 10% increase from the day before. She went to pull the charge pack out of the collector, only to hear a sudden burst of static on her vox piece. It stopped her in her tracks. What was that? She checked her helmets logs, played it back a couple of times... That's all it was, just a burst of static, but it cannot have been a random burst on that frequency because it was modulated. Her mind raced with possibilities, maybe there were some remaining imperial elements left on the world? When she tried to track it back to its source, she was unsuccessful, it was not on the air for long enough. But that did nothing to stop a certain irrational thought from repeating in her mind:
I'm not alone.
The vox-box was working, but now he was freezing. He could not use the radio like this, hell, he probably wouldn't even survive the night without getting hypothermia. Hastily he pulled the battery pack out of the radio and, slotting it back into the heater, had once again blessed with the right to not freeze to death overnight as he turned it on. Sitting himself in front of the heater, he pondered what to do, what else could be done besides going to sleep for the night. The dark blue hue that had overcast the sky, was replaced with an almost pure black, sprinkled with a galaxy's worth of tiny white little dots in the night sky. Tymon looked up, almost straining his neck as he did, and he couldn't help but admire the clear sky above him for the next couple of minutes. There was a distinct lack of clouds and, in place of them, was… nothing... The skies, like the planet, seemed completely untouched. Well, apart from the mechanical creatures. He thought back to what Andrukas said before the attack:
'Could be some necron shit'
He played it back to himself over and over again. Necrons, according to rumours, were a race of long dormant robotic xeno's that were slowly awakening. Could Gamma-Eridanus have been one of their once dormant worlds? He chose not to strain his mind anymore than he needed to as he got up, picking up the heater and strolling his way over to one of the half assembled tents, looking for a place to lay his head for the night. He must have found what was meant to be the medical tent because beyond the framework that would have made up the walls, was a stretcher laid out on the floor. Looks like he had found his place to sleep for the night, he propped the heater up at what would soon become the foot of his makeshift bed and laid down, still fully clothed and armoured with his boots towards the heater. As he waited for sleep to pull his mind down to his subconscious, he again stared up at the night sky, those same words still playing over and over. Eventually he dignified his, hopefully still living battle brother with a response:
"It's definitely some necron shit man…"
