Bright_Ops

From Ashes We Rise: The Galaxy At Large

???. Closest inhabited celestial body: Pentious.

With the Warp Drive of code name 'Blood Labyrinth' having been successfully detonated, Rik had lead the expedition back to their landing shuttle for resupply and extraction. Blessed ammunition had been spent, cleansing and maintenance rituals were badly needed, but in truth the most vital of supplies that needed to be replenished were also the most basic for life: Air, Water, Food.

Since none of those keystones of human life that were somehow on the Space Hulk could be trusted in any capacity outside of the most tragic and dire of situations, the various expeditions had needed to bring their own supplies of all three. A logistical challenge to be sure, but one that the children of Pentious and heirs of distant Mars were more then equipped to face. However, no matter how gifted the logistical minds planning the campaign, there was only so much room within each individual shuttle to carry the supplies needed to keep its cargo alive.

Every expedition had a time limit in which if it didn't return to Pentious, it was going to perish. The exact number could be drawn out and flex with changing circumstance, but there was always a point where the supplies ran out. The overwhelming success of Rik's expedition, ironically enough, ensured that they needed to go back planet side sooner then later. The limited casualties meant that the drain on resources hadn't decreased by any meaningful amount.

So they had loaded up and began the four day journey back to Pentious.

It was on Day Two that the situation on Pentious started to change.

..........................................................

"[Professional and restrained, but emotionally charged.] Myrmidax Uixien, this is Magos GC-118. Respond."

Rik couldn't help but allow some degree of concern to linger in his mind as he moved towards the shuttle's long range vox caster. While he suspected that his partner had been worried for his well being since he had departed for operations in one of the most uncertain and dangerous sections of the Space Hulk, he knew her well enough to know that she wouldn't have been using a long ranged vox like this just to silence her doubts and ensure that he was okay; Both of them liked to keep their relationship out of the public eye. If she was reaching out like this...

"This is Myrmidax Uixien. The mission was a success. What situation requires our attention?"

Despite the power and range of the Vox Units in use, the distance meant that there was a delay of a couple of seconds. Encryption and Decryption added a few extra seconds. But the response did come.

"[Professional, but nervous.] There has been a development at Forge Delta. Magos Dak Virellan and Head Enginseer Dorox Xixos, alongside a number of their subordinates, have perished in what, on the surface, appears to be a tragic accident."

Rik was quiet as he processed that statement. He had personally appointed Magos Virellan and Head Engineer Xixos to oversee the purification and restoration of Forge Delta in his absence. Both of them had been the best candidate for the job and their sudden loss was going to set things back considerably. Lacyraemarta Volkov was almost certainly going to be frustrated due to the sudden death of one of their more successful students in Virellan; At least they had themselves to fall back on for support.

However, that wasn't the priority of GC's statement. "An apparent tragic accident?" He asked, seeking clarification.

"[Disbelieving tone]'Apparently', Generator-Y536K1 suffered a series of catastrophic failures and detonated, taking Magos Virellan, Head Engineer Xixos and a number of subordinates with it."

Rik had been tempted to interrupt her partner with a rather base 'That isn't possible' the moment she had spoke of the Generator-Y536K1 suffering a catastrophic failure, let alone several, but he had squashed the impulse. After all, she had clearly come to the same conclusion that he had. Generator-Y536K1 was a Anyanwu-class generator; It was designed to be as stable and 'idiot-proof' as a power generator could physically be. It didn't produce the most power for a generator of its size, but its stability and calm temperament made it next to impossible for it to suffer catastrophic level failures. It had suffered abuse and neglect from orkish hands for decades and all it had required to be restored to perfect working order was a few replacement parts and a basic data cleansing ritual.

They had still given it a full inspection and proper deep dive examination because it was better to be safe then sorry, but that had been done shortly after they had retaken the Forge. Even if something had been missed, between its fail safes and fundamental design, if something was seriously wrong with Generator-Y536K1 it wouldn't have been hiding its pain until the point of critical failure.

The only way Generator-Y536K1 would have detonated like this was if it had been made to detonate.

"Any recorded evidence of what happened?"

"Frustrated sigh]No. Surviving recording devices of the area around the time are proving difficult to locate. It would seem the blast has consumed them. Attempts to find the stored recordings themselves has also proven difficult. Cybernetica Syncwarden has taken over that aspect of the investigation and believes that the explosion caused an EMP effect that has wiped a number of data bases."

Rik suppressed a sigh. Cybernetica Syncwarden's unpredictability and wandering mind if regards to projects made them difficult to work with at the best of times, outright frustrating to get to focus on the matter at hand at worst... but he didn't doubt their ability with communicating with machine spirits and searching the noosphere; If they couldn't find any traces of any stored recording data, there was likely none to be found.

"[Additional Sigh]It gets worse. Macrotek Omnicron has flooded Forge Delta with their subordinates in wake of the disaster. Their personal student Magos Mu Vladimus has been put in overall command of restoration. Malagra Flux has also mobilized their forces in the Prefecture Magisterium, focusing their attention on those who survived the destruction for signs of heresy and negligence."

This required the suppression of a wince from Rik. Omnicron and Flux were natural allies on the Council of Pentious due to their shared Fundamentalism. This strict adherence to the Rules and Strictures placed down by Mars had caused... some degree of strife to existence between himself and them. The fact that an impossible 'accident' had just given them both the perfect excuse to expand their influence on Forge Delta and Pentious as a whole while diminishing that of himself and Lacyraemarta Volkov...

"I'll be back planet side within two days. Do what you can to try and find out what happened, but don't directly get in the way of the Prefecture Magisterium and their duties." Rik paused... before adding softly in a somewhat comforting tone "We'll work this all out."

From Ashes We Rise : The Imperium Is Born

Ursh: The Anvil

For all the cacophony of war, there was an eerie quiet to the work of the Astartes. It was not in their movements or their wargear, for both were as thunderous as any could be expected. It was in the lack of audible communication between them as they swept through the motions of clearing ruin by ruin. Even the most highly trained mortal soldiers could not match the instinctive flow that they had upon the battlefield, they had not been trained for war, they had been bred for it, and each step in the action of a breach and clear was as fluid to them as breathing.

Earlier in the war this alone had often been enough to shatter the enemy, the sight of a being too large and too heavily armoured to move with a fluid and fast grace, terrifying to mortal minds. But what true mortals remained among the fighting forces of Ursh were not in this fight, the Astartes finding their physical, if not mental, match in the foes assailed against them. Each hollowed out shell of a building on the long march through the shattered streets of the outercity was a barracks of horrors, from twisted mutants born of recent Wyrdcraft, to amalgamations of machine and flesh which screamed in binharic death cries even as they lunged at the armoured forms of the Emperor's finest.

The marines had been bred for war, but the foes they fought were made of it, crafted in anathema of peace or reason, with only the purpose of bleeding and delaying the Emperor’s forces.

Along the forces tasked with running this cruel, grueling gauntlet of fighting, building-to-building, street-to-street, were the forces of the 8th Astartes legion. They had come in force, with the entire strength of the 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 7th companies having made the journey to the dark lands of Ursh to see the monsters purged once and for all.

There had been some issues between the Praetors. While Praetor Ulstecht of the 2nd Company was recognized as being in charge, the history between Praetors Al-Allal of the 4th and Praetor Josch of the 6th made having both of them in the same command tense… even if the bulk of the bad blood had been settled.

The real issue was Praetor Loffenbjorn of the 7th. Egoism and a fundamental selfishness were bad traits to have in someone who was meant to be a subordinate and it caused many a butting of heads. Still, despite the difficulties, a battle plan was organized and agreed to.

Fundamentally, this was just the same as any other urban fighting they had done; Melee combat with side arms and close to mid range weaponry being the standard kit, with heavy weapons being kept close by as support to be bought up as needed. As buildings were secured, buildings in key locations to lock down and secure the street they were overlooking would be entrenched and manned by heavy weapon teams and snipers. Grenades of various varieties were to be employed liberally.

Two companies were to be actively pushing at a time, one on active reserve to respond if a crisis or counterattack happened, the last one to start as a secondary reserve before cycling in to allow one of the active companies to step back and rest, recover and resupply while maintaining the pressure.

The issue, of course, was that this was the most logical course of action. The most logical plan of attack was also the most predictable. A predictable plan of attack got people killed.

Spending what little time they could to try and find an alternative, other options were ruled out either due to the timetable the Emperor was demanding for this siege to be brought to a victorious end, or the fact that their advances were objectively worse in terms of predicted losses and difficulty. However, the search for an alternative did provide a plan that might give an edge going forward.

While it was the outer edges of a city, it had been advanced enough in its heyday to have pipe infrastructure. Sewers, water, or other, the exact reason for the pipes to be laid wasn’t important to their needs; merely their size. The major pipelines that would branch off to supply individual hab blocks or buildings could easily allow people to traverse them.

Finding suitable pipes and tunnels was going to be left to the abhuman and mutant retinue forces of the 8th. Once buildings and streets began to be secured, the job of the ‘mortal’ forces of the 8th was to scour the buildings and roads, tearing apart or digging as required, in search of suitable pre-existing pipes or tunnels. Once found, they were to be breached to give access, with the Irregalers going into them with the intention of securing, repairing, or digging as needed to connect existing infrastructure to speed up the invasion.

Ideally, the defenders would not have considered ancient and neglected pipes or sewerage tunnels as a part of their defensive plans, allowing for rapid progress. In the event that they had accounted for them and the situation devolved into tunnel fighting… well, those underground passageways were now being contested instead of simply providing the defenders with a tactical advantage.

A crew of abhumans labored, clearing rubble and refuse from a long-since-abandoned tunnel connecting an arterial road deeper into the city. They sweat, cursed, and joked quietly as they worked, each taking turns manning the torch and stubber on security as the others worked.

They had made considerable progress, carting hundreds of pounds from the tunnel as they worked, so much so that they had to begin moving the growing piles of debris outside, further away from the entrance as not to tip off the enemy as to the work they were undertaking below their feet.

An abhuman, a third appendage hanging limply from his chest, hefted a boulder the size of a man’s head with ease and released a stream of viscous fluid from the rubble. The fluid ran down his uniform in runnels, pooling at his feet as he and his companions ignored it and continued working.

Throughout the tunnel, the work crews were met with the same fluid soon enough. Dark and thick as molasses, it ran from cracks in the tunnels and under rubble through seams too small for anything but the rats to traverse. None thought to radio in the strange finding, for what else would a sewer hold but long since stagnant waste and effluent? The miscalculation was the last for many.

In every tunnel that had encountered the strange substance, all at once, Ursh gave its answer to the enterprising Imperial sappers.

The fluid, pooled and forgotten, began to coalesce. Jet black fluid rose silently out of sight toward the ceiling, shaping into roughly humanoid forms in the shadows of the work lamps and around dark corners. The first sign that anything was wrong, and often the last, was the wailing of the creatures as they descended upon the work crews and ripped them limb from limb with claws and spiked appendages that writhed like liquid.

............

Between the screaming, braying, and the sounds of those few brave souls that managed to try and fight back against their blatantly supernatural foes, it did not take long for word to reach the surface that combat had started down in the tunnels. The odd survivor who had managed to escape in the chaos was even able to give those above some idea of what was waiting down in the dark.

Praetor Al-Allal, the master of the 4th company and tasked with overseeing the infiltration effort due to his personal experience dealing with ‘supernatural’ hive environments, had been quick to round up what few eyewitnesses of the chaos in the tunnels as he could get and listened to their seemingly mad ramblings and stories with an intensity of attention that few would give the mutant or the abhuman.

His response to the situation was sharp and made very clear so that those who heard it would understand exactly what the assignment was. “Part of the reason we did this was to prevent the enemy from using the underground against us. Considering that we are fighting insane, depraved, and desperate witches, supernatural bullshit was to be expected. Work crews are to focus on widening and stabilizing the tunnels enough so that we can get Astartes down there.”

“Deploy the mortal elements of the Coven and their guardian squads. They are to drive the foe from those tunnels and secure them from Imperial use.”

Ever since the 8th had started to take the field during the early Mercia campaigns, the legion had noticed that some of its members, as well as some of the abhumans that made up their auxiliary forces were able to use what the Imperial government referred to as psychic abilities. They also found that when dealing with other ‘psykers’ or just weird, supernatural things that didn’t have a logical or technological explanation behind them, those with supernatural abilities of their own tended to be the best equipped to counter them.

Thus, the Coven was born. An organization made up of psykers, be they Astartes, abhumans, or more traditional humans or mutants who trained together, honed their abilities to be their anti-supernatural forces. Their guardian squads were not psykers themselves, but still actively trained alongside the Coven to be as resistant to psychic abilities as possible and not freak out when things started to get weird.

Ursh had been harsh and unforgiving on the Coven and its guardian squads. Every step deeper into this wretched land that the 8th had taken, the Coven had needed to fight to protect themselves from the insidious and murderous spells of the Ursh witches, as well as Imperial forces in general. Many had died or broken in ways so horrific that any mention of how they died was censored and redacted from all records.

Those that remained were veteran combat psykers. Luck, training, and the experience that survival provided had created a fighting force that actively used supernatural abilities to counter and destroy the supernatural. And it was these veteran spellcasters, human, abhuman or outright mutant alike, that Praetor Al-Allal ordered to sweep and claim the tunnels under the outskirts of this final hive city with confidence that they would get the job done.

The tunnels closest to the 4th Company's positions were still secure as the Coven made their way down beneath the streets. Work crews scrambled to complete their work and vacate the subterranean death traps as quickly as they could, as the rumors of the fate of those ahead of them began to trickle down to them. The smell of fear permeated the air, the weight of so many minds on the verge of panic licked at the minds of the warp-blessed as they passed and pressed onward toward the Ursh aberrations.

The guardian squads moved ahead at first, their torches sweeping the tunnels as they moved with practiced precision toward danger. As they advanced, group by group, the wytchminds began to take the lead, their extracorporeal senses far keener than any torch and eyeball could ever wish to be. But the mad sorcerers of Ursh had foreseen the deployment of Imperial psykers; in fact, they had hoped for it.

A coven squad reported contact with the aberrants back to the 4th company command post just seven minutes after entering the tunnel systems. A guardian, frantic, claimed that the tunnels were filling with the black fluid, and they were withdrawing. The last transmission from the squad was a garbled scream from liquid-filled lungs.

A sigh escaped Prateor Al-Allal as he reached out and turned off the vox. As entertaining as it had been to listen to those final screams, he needed a moment to reflect on the situation. Besides, any survivors were already withdrawing if they could and didn’t need him ordering them to use common sense. As much as he hated the bitter taste, he was forced to acknowledge that his ploy had completely failed.

The plan had been good and his fault for sending in the abhuman elements of the Coven had been due to the sheer scale on which the defenders of Ursh had produced their literal living tide of corrupt filth then a tactical blunder. Further attempts to take the underground would likely end in failure and wasted lives without even the promise of keeping the enemy’s monster (Monsters? Or was the tide just one massive thing that could split into many?) contained in the underground for the sacrifice.

Flicking the vox back on, he changed the channel to start giving commands. “All Mining, we are activating failure protocols. Rig the tunnels with mining charges at the pre-determined zones to seal the damn things. If you see a tide of filth coming towards you before everyone further up the tunnel has reported in, everyone you can’t see is dead and you should seal it immediately.”

With the miners getting their orders, the Praetor swapped to an Imperial command channel. “This is Praetor Al-Allal, fourth company of the eighth legion. Be advised. Attempts to breach the tunnels and underground of the hive city have been repulsed by what can only be described as a literal living tide of polluted ‘water’. Alongside the normal hazards of large bodies of heavily polluted water, it seems to be able to spit pieces of itself out to create combat forms.”

“While currently it has only been reported in the tunnels under the hive city, there doesn’t appear to be anything stopping it from coming to the surface. Be advised that any body of polluted water within the bounds of the city may be an ambush in waiting.”

………………

The flames roared, competing with the screams until both died down so that only the crackle of ash and embers remained.

Ike stepped away from the door, the heavy flamer in his hands still flickering, even if he wasn’t bathing the room in fire. Sergeant Amutiel was the first over the threshold, giving the room a tactical scan within a matter of seconds: Formally a living area of some sort, most of the objects that had been within it now either ash or actively burning, which included those who had been within the room when the door was breached and Ike cleared it with a preemptive wave of flaming death.

Without hesitation, Konrad aimed his pistol and fired into the head of one of the residents who was still twitching. Against any other foe, this would have been done as an act of mercy to end their suffering; If Ursh had taught him anything, it was that there were some enemies that you couldn’t afford to indulge with petty sadism. A dying Ursh witch could unleash some horrific shit with their final, agony filled breaths if given the chance.

With the primary threats dealt with, Konrad gave the room a second, more measured sweep with the intention of locating hiding places or locations for caches that could prove problematic if left alone.
Having earned a great deal of experience in Urban Warfare due to the campaigns in Mercia, as well as surviving long enough to learn some of the terrifying variations on the practice that Ursh brought to the table, Konrad’s proper inspection took less than ten seconds. The room was clear, and the extra time made damn sure he hadn’t missed anything.

He had been about to leave the room to repeat the breach and clear process with the next when a feeling came over him. Subtle and easily missed or ignored in most situations, but even since coming to Ursh he had learned to trust a rather difficult to explain sense for dangers of the more… supernatural variety.

It was almost like he was detecting a strange scent; The closest Konrad had been able to describe it was akin to the stories some of the nomads told about being able to tell a storm was coming due to a scent in the air. The promise that something dangerous was nearby and about to happen soon.

Closing his eyes and focusing on the ‘scent’, it seemed to be coming from the wall that separated this room from the one next door. Enough so that the idea of kicking in the next door and letting Ike do his thing suddenly seemed like a very poor idea.

The room still needed to be cleared and secured; They couldn’t just leave it alone without compromising the security of the building or their continued advance forward.

Making a few hand signs so as to not need to speak, a ripple of activity spread through his squad… and a melta charge was brought forward.

Planting an explosive charge while wearing power armor was [b]not[/] a silent affair, but the task was carried out without a word or any noise beyond the movement of larger than life bodies wearing metal; The nature of what that movement was attempting to achieve was not betrayed by it.

The charge secured, Ike moved into position. Far enough away to be clear of the detonation, but close enough that he would be able to immediately start flooding the breach and the room beyond with fire hot enough to distort and melt just about anything that wasn’t instantly reduced to ash and cinder.

The signal was given. The charge hissed as it was activated….

And the world went mad in less than three seconds.

As the charge detonated, an unearthly roar that sounded like it was made up of countless different voices crying out at once shook Konrad to his bones.

He didn’t see it clearly; Ike was fast on the trigger of his heavy flamer and whatever was on the other side of the hole was blocked from view by the comforting sight of purifying flame.

But he heard it.

He heard the horrifying noises it made. The sound of the door to the next room exploding as something [b]big[/] burst through it. The cries of alarm from his squad that had been watching the next door with the intention of ambushing anything that tried to escape the flames and the rapid discharge of their weapons.

He witnessed a chunk of the wall explode outwards as [i]something[/] punched through, sending it flying into Ike’s helmeted head and staggering him for a second;Thankfully, the flamer remained pointed at the wall, even if its spray was briefly in the room instead of going through a hole.

Konrad himself was not idle, pointing his weapon at one of the openings and firing through the flames where he had to. For a few moments all that could be heard was violent thrashing, inhuman roaring and weapon discharges.

Soon it was just the thrashing and chorus of gunfire. Then the gunfire alone, as even lacking movement and noise, everyone wanted to make damn sure whatever was in the room was good and dead.

“Status.” Was commanded over the squad vox as Konrad tried to get a headcount. All but two of his squad sent the all clear signal.

Ike himself answered “I’m fine. Took a hit to the head, but it was a glancing blow. Good thing too.” Ike made a gesture over to where the chunk of wall had ended up, letting Konrad see how deeply it had embedded itself into the ground where it had ended up. “This is why you always wear a helmet.”

Once Ike was done, a second voice spoke up belonging to Organa. “Got clipped by some of the door when it exploded, but the armor took the brunt. Still combat ready.”

Letting out a breath as Konrad took some comfort in his squad still being alive, he instead turned his attention to what exactly they had just killed.

It… was honestly difficult to tell what he was looking at. Part of that was because of the combined fire, volkite and solid bullet damage that had worked together to end its wretched existence, but he honestly could say that even without all that, it wasn’t anything that belonged in a sane universe.

It’s… mass seemed to fill up the room they had found it in. Considering how it was literally destroying the building around it, it was possible that it physically couldn’t leave the room, but Konrad was more inclined to think that it had just entered an animal panic due to the fire.

It didn’t… seem to have skin. Granted, the battle damage made it hard to be absolutely certain and its remaining bulk meant that seeing a piece of it that was unharmed would require hacking it to pieces to gain access to the room proper, but Konrad’s impression was that it didn’t seem to have flesh to begin with.

In fact, looking closer at one of its less burned ‘limbs’… it looked like a misshapen human fist connected to a mutated forearm… if both of them were a random amalgamation of body parts from multiple humans.

Once he saw it, understanding revealed the true horror to Konrad in that terrible moment. The whole creature, a singular solid mass big enough to fill up an entire living space (or as good as filled it up from what they could see), was an amalgamation of who knows how many people, twisted into this… thing via methods that Konrad couldn’t help but automatically label as profane in his mind.

On an intellectual level, Konrad knew that this thing would have terrified him back before he became an Astartes; both the thing itself and the ramifications of how it came to be. But now…now it just filled him with hate at how revolting it all was. In both of his hearts, he hoped that his squad would find the monsters who had created this thing so that they could be properly disposed of.

Speaking of.

“Secure the position while we set up another melta charge to try and break up this crime against humanity into pieces so Ike can properly burn it to ash. I don’t want it to return to life behind us.”

His squad only had so many melta charges but making sure this… thing didn’t become an active threat again was worth a second one. You couldn’t trust the monsters of Ursh to stay dead after all.

Still, Konrad doubted that this was the only ambush or trap on this floor but by the Emperor, he was going to see this level secured or die trying.

From Ashes We Rise: The Galaxy At Large

The alarms had created a painful choir; Only one of them was operating at max efficiency, with damage and neglect causing the rest of them to wheeze and sputter at varying, off key degrees that would grind against the human desire for harmony, even for something that was intentionally meant to be loud and annoying so that it couldn’t be ignored.

Yet Rik was tuning it out all the same. The warp drive in front of him required his full attention after all and such minor distractions as the alarm system weren’t worth his time at the moment.

The plan was that the warp drive needed to be turned off so that it couldn’t trigger a warp jump in the larger space hulk. Ideally, all of the warp drives (or their equivalent) would be disabled before a random jump was triggered, but as long as a critical mass were offline then theoretically, the hulk wouldn’t be able to open the hole in reality of the scale required to move the hulk and thus it wouldn’t be going anywhere.

Not to say that having those warp drives try to do so anyway wouldn’t cause complications and technical issues, but that was a problem for the future.

The warp drive he was trying to beseech was his primary concern and it was proving to be the hardest challenge he had ever faced in his life. Much like how the warp had horrifically twisted the rest of the vessel to the point that its origins were impossible to tell, the warp drive was stripped bare of any signs of what its original template might have been. The degradation of reality that seemed to linger at the corner of the visual spectrum had taken its toil on the advanced piece of sacred technology, with the unnatural blood that rained from the walls and ceiling further getting into its inner workings and causing untold harm.

The machine spirit itself was… was…

Rik was honestly at a loss for words about what the state the machine spirit was in. The closest he could get would be that it was like trying to interact with a machine spirit that had somehow endured the brutal tortures of the orks for centuries and yet somehow was still able to mindlessly perform its original function, despite the countless defilements, broken pieces and unsanctioned modifications made to it but…

Truthfully, that didn’t truly capture the extent of the horror. Parts of its broken internals had been replaced by fleshy growths that were actively drinking the blood dripping into it and by all accounts it was somehow still able to perform its function, despite all logic and reason saying that it was impossible.

The machine spirit itself was… difficult to understand. It spoke with many different voices, all of them trying to speak over the others, each talking in a tongue that Rik didn’t know… but there was an emotional undertone to each one that was always either manically overjoyed or so deep in the pit of despair that Rik was pretty sure if anyone else was trying what he was doing, they would have killed themselves by now.

There was a part of Rik that wanted to save this drive. To gleam the knowledge of how to heal such deep damage and twisted corruption that it’s time in the warp had caused. The quest for knowledge demanded as such but Rik isolated those feelings in their vaults. The mission required him to be objective and treat this as the triage situation that it was.

With great difficulty, he managed to isolate and shut down some of its subsystems. Reactivate some of its long eroded safety features. With blood dripping from his eyes, he disconnected from the machine and looked towards those who had been prepping explosives to consign this poor, twisted echo of a sacred machine to wherever machine spirits went once they were truly destroyed. Rik honestly suspected that whatever the outcome, it had to be better than its current state. “The warp drive is as prepared for destruction as it can be. Once the charges are ready, get clear and perform the rite of detonation.”

Taking a moment to wipe away the blood on his face, Rik considered saying something: A sentimental urge to honour an ancient machine that, while it might not be sanctified anymore, deserved some respect all the same. When the pings of readiness appeared from the demolition team, he settled for “May this ancient wonder find the peace in destruction that existence denied it.”

From Ashes We Rise : The Imperium Is Born

The Jade Citadel of Hongol

A siege battery had torn a hole into the citadel's sanctum walls, and Imperial forces had spent the last hour and a half attempting to force their way through the breach. An entire regiment of Noregr Dane heavy infantry had made the first attempt to storm the opening, but they had been slaughtered nearly to the man by several scuttling multi-armed techno-monstrosities that spat fire and esoteric beams of energy at any that were too slow to dive for cover. Even the cover hadn’t protected the Danes, Dume’s novel mixtures of industrial solvents and acids eating their way through stone and flesh alike in torrents of sizzling liquid from mechanical arms.

The scuttling walkers had been felled at great cost with the addition of tank fire from a squadron of Abyssinian Armored Pioneers, and the last of the remaining Dane’s had fallen back to trade places with a fresh unit of Merican troops. The 11th Neork Zouaves had surged into the gap, their ostentatious red hats and golden tassels heralding their advance as stubber and las fire licked out at them with deadly effect.

The Zouaves had been through the breach for nearly twenty minutes now, desperately holding onto the small beachhead they had gained on the far side of the sanctum wall with every ounce of courage and grit they possessed.

“Damnit Breon! Get me those frakking reinforcements! Where the frak are the 12th and 13th?!” screamed Lieutenant Smeth as he instinctively flinched away from a lascannon bolt snapping across the top of the rockrete boulder he and his vox officer were clinging to for cover.

“They’re not coming, sir! They’re pinned down six blocks southwest! Something about flesh horrors, sir!”

“Frak!” Smeth exclaimed as he leaned around the edge of the boulder and sent a flurry of hand signals to the next nearest officer to his position to relay the bad news.

An explosion rocked the ground to his right, and he filtered out the screams of his wounded and dying men as he racked his mind for a way out of this kill zone.

“What about the Abyssinian tanks out there? Can they push through?”

Breon shook his head in defeat, “Two are burning now, the other two are engaged with some sort of hoverbourne tanks that are skimming in and out of the alleys, sir. They’re keeping our exit open as best they can, but they can’t press in or we’ll be surrounded!”

“FRA!K” Smeth screamed at the top of his lungs, “Put it out, we’re going to be attrited and pushed back, we can not hold!”

His vox officer pressed his headphones to his ears and began speaking hurriedly into the mic. Smeth risked a couple of las shots around the corner, earning a spattering of rockrete dust as reward from Pacifican return fire.

“Emperor save us,” he sputtered, wiping grit from his eyes.

It would not be the Emperor who saved them, but as a deafening, monstrous roar of engines came through the breach, one could be forgiven for believing that the thunder of the Lord of Lightning had come.

Two groups moving so quickly as to be a blur would zoom past Smeth’s cover at high speed like water passing a rock in the tide, for a brief moment consuming the sounds of combat and the screams of the dying with the challenge of powerful engines pushed to the extreme and near maniacal laughter. Only once the blurring shapes had passed did the near ear bursting tide of bullets start to fly.

Somewhat more braced, the pinned Zouaves would be able to see the second wave more clearly than the first. One of the Emperor’s enhanced human legions had come, though exactly which one was difficult to tell at the moment due to the sheer speed they were moving at.

Two squads of three truly monstrous sized combat bikes followed those that raced past before, the massive armored figure sitting in the seat driving at speeds that a normal human would struggle to properly control or have the reflexes to do safely. Those fast or lucky enough to see would spot what appeared to be large guns on the front of the bike, silent only due to a lack of enemy targets.

The sidecar of the bikes would have looked almost comical, were it not for the equally imposing armorer figure that seemed to be armed with some kind of heavy flamer?

Those able to follow the fast pace of the Legionaries would note that their battle tactic was rather simple, but highly effective all the same; While they would absolutely gun down an enemy that was caught in the open or didn’t get down into cover in time, the heavy guns were firing a surprisingly accurate cloud of heavy suppressive fire onto key enemy defensive points to force them into cover.

At which point the bikes would swing into close range and unleash a combination of grenades and a… it wasn’t fire coming out of the heavy flamers, but some kind of unnaturally blue chemical gas cloud that launched like water from a firehose before spreading out. Whatever it was, screams would quickly start to come from wherever the gas was introduced… followed by explosions that thankfully silenced the screams more often than not.

The bikes did not rampage unchallenged. Between the inhuman grace in which some of the riders could pilot their bike to dodge incoming fire and the armor present in the event a shot landed, the bikers seemed invincible.

The lascannons would change the nature of the story, however. Where small arms and lesser heavy weapons failed, the lascannon packed a much heavier punch with crews who were experienced with waiting until they knew the shot would hit before firing under pressure.

Four lascannons fired. Three of them found their targets as the massive bikes exploded or flew out of control into a wreck, while the biker of the fourth shot managed to control their bike after taking the hit enough to bring it to a stop and ditch it for more traditional foot combat with his companion.

The bikers would strive to make sure that they wouldn’t fire again.

Even as the bikers rained down death and chaos onto the enemy, legionary transports started to roll up to the breach, their ramps opening as they allowed the troops within to pour out and into the contested beachhead to help secure and grow it.

The 8th legion had come.

Smeth watched in awe as the Emperor’s Astartes laid waste to the Pacificans that had been whittling his regiment down to dust. In the span of only a handful of minutes the Astartes had accomplished what his Zouaves had failed to for over twenty. He breathed a sigh of relief as the interlocking fields of fire from heavy stubbers slackened and died completely. He allowed himself to breathe for the first time since they’d entered the damn breach as he watched one of his Medicae sprint from cover to another wounded Zouave without so much as a stubber round attempting to end the man's work.

“Vox command, the Astartes have relieved us, and see if we can get a Medicae Battalion to meet our wounded beyond the breach, there’s going to be far too many for us to handle.” he sighed, his voice still shaky from the adrenaline of their desperate stand.

“Sir,” the vox operator responded smartly before keying up his mic and beginning to relay the commands.

Lieutenant Smith keyed his vox, “Alright sound off, who’s not dead?” he asked with a confidence he did not feel in that moment.

A single other junior officer responded, followed by only a couple of non-comm’s and a half-dozen privates who had simply picked up their platoon commanders' vox beads and spoke timidly when they heard it begin to squeak.

He did not envy the privates, newly battlefield-promoted Sergeants all, as he relayed his next commands. While the Astartes finished their work along the edge of the kill box, his Zouaves picked up as one and began to work their way across the field of death toward the closest building to them. Higher command had presumed it to be an administrative center, but the half dozen fortified machine gun positions and trench works around it tipped Smeth off to a greater purpose.

He slipped into cover behind a burning conveyor and cupped his hands around his mouth as he yelled in the direction of the Astartes, “Chosen! We’re making entry here! Administratum center, but I don’t buy it!” he continued as his troopers placed melta charges on the bunker-like doors of the entrance.

Many of the Astartes ignored the random mortal who was shouting his intentions to breach what appeared to be an Administratum center. In fairness, this may not have been out of rudeness; While the original beachhead killbox seemed to have been dismantled, fighting was still ongoing and they had their own objectives to be pushing towards.

One, however, did stop to focus on the Lieutenant. His gaze turned to the Center for a moment, inspecting it… before seeming to come to a similar conclusion to that which the human soldier had made. As he steadily closed the distance towards the man and those he was gathering to perform their breach, a squad of Astartes that seemed to be following the first fell in behind him.

Clad in power armor, with what bits that weren’t covered by a mesh armoured coating and signs of a hazmat suit being worn beneath, a voice speaking through a rebreather greeted the Lieutenant as “Praetor Muckstead, eighth chapter. Third Squad will be first into the breach; your men can follow as we sweep the building. Understood?”

Smeth recoiled at the sight of the Astartes warrior. He hadn’t been quite so intimidated when they were saving him from afar at speed, but now that the armored warrior was standing before him, he felt exceedingly small and fragile in comparison.

“Yes Praetor,” he began as he waved his engineers away from the armored door, their melta charges blinking happily as they waited for the command to detonate, “I’ll leave the charges to you then… for better timing?” he finished, offering the detonator in his palm to Praetor Muckstead.

Around them, the Zouaves began to take their positions to cover the door in a half-circle.

There were a few seconds as the Praetor waited; While this had the benefit of the Zouaves both getting clear of their own melta bombs and the chance to get into position, in truth he was largely waiting until his squad formed up to breach and clear once the bombs went off.

Once they were ready… an oversized thumb came down on a comically small button.

It took a few seconds for the chain reaction of the melta charges to properly get going… but once it did, the intensity of the light and heat that was melting its way through the doorway was immense.

As the reaction finally died down and before the molten slag left behind could even begin the process of cooling, Praetor Muskstead threw a flashbang grenade through the opening, waiting until the bang went off and his Astartes began the breach and clear operation with inhuman speed.

Warning klaxons were blaring within the building, dim red lights illuminating the space with long shadows and eerie glows.

The Pacifican soldiers, bathed in the red of their emergency lights and deafened by the alarms sounding, found their doom at the end of bolters and chemweapons as the transhuman warriors flooded the corridor with a speed uncanny for their size.

The few Pacificans that managed to squeeze off terrified las-volleys and arc rounds found their aim sorely wanting. A short bloodbath ensued; those not felled mercifully at range found themselves instead mercilessly slaughtered by chugging chainswords and gauntleted fists.

Lieutenant Smeth and his mortal troops followed in the wake of the Astartes of the Eighth, wide eyes surveying the transhumans’ handiwork as they stepped over gutted Pacificans and unidentifiable puddles of smoking organic matter.

“Frak…” his vox operator whispered to himself as their lumens swept the red-lit interior corridor and the carnage within.

Smeth steeled himself as he trudged through a puddle of what he could only assume had once been several humans, and directed a squad to follow a trio of Astartes working their way down the corridor to the right with a point of his fingers.

The rest of the Zouaves fell in behind him or held the exterior of the building.

They were only about halfway to joining up with the Legionaries of the Eighth when the klaxons stopped blaring their incessant alarm and the lights switched back to their normal white tone.

The Zouaves all doused their lumens and squinted as the harsh white light attacked their eyes.

“Thanks for that,” a Trooper to Smeth’s left breathed in relief.

Smeth wasn’t feeling so happy at the sudden change. “Praetor, any idea why the lights just came back on? I don’t like it,” he voxed to the Astartes somewhere further ahead of him.

“I can think of a few reasons. They’re not stupid so I doubt they have their pipes hooked up to the same power grid as the lights so they likely haven’t turned on the power to trigger gas or liquid based traps. More likely they’ve turned on some auto-defenses, alongside some las or electric-based traps.” Was the immediate vox answer… followed by a thoughtful pause.

“...Possibly some crush panels or some spiked walls. Give me a second.” The vox channel went silent for a moment.

Those able to see Praetor Muckstead would witness the man remove his helmet and the various protective materials he and his legion were trying out. His skin was a very dark brown, with small hazel eyes. Without ceremony or warning, he reached down to scoop up some brain material that had been splattered on his weapon after ending the life of one of their foes and popped it in his mouth before swallowing it without hesitation due to not needing to chew it.

What information may have been gleaned by the Praetor’s macabre tastes weren’t necessary as the Pacifican’s made their purpose known at the same moment the Astartes commander took his first bite.

A previously hidden hatch in the floor yawned open just steps in front of the furthest of the Eighth’s Astartes. A haz-suit clad and genehanced son of the the VIII leaned forward to inspect the new avenue of movement - or attack - with his chemthrower at the ready. A chug of green fumes was loosed a heartbeat later.

Smeth watched the event with curiosity from his position behind the lead element of genewarriors. The green chem fumes belched forward from the Astarte’s makeshift weapon into the hatch, and a moment later the Astartes was pulled bodily into the abyss. A number of his Zouaves yelled in alarm as more hatchways opened up and down the hall, effectively cutting the long passageway into many small pockets of resistance. There would be no supporting one another for whatever was to come, Smeth knew.

A wretched arm, its structure too thin and bones too long, reached from the hatchway closest to Smeth. It moved quickly for its size, and Smeth could have sworn something so long and ill-supported by musculature shouldn’t have been able to grab the closest of his Zouaves with such ease, but it did.

Up and down the passage gunfire began to add its rippling staccato to the yells of surprise and dying men. A creature emerged, met by withering bolter fire and las bolts from a ragtag group of Astartes and Zouaves. Its body was slim as its arm, too long and too ill-proportioned to be anything natural. It’s skin was a sickly pale hue, and it lurched forward to crush a mortal trooper under a too-wide open palm before biting another clean in half.

“Form line, double rank! Back to back!” Smeth yelled, panic edging into his words. He hadn’t needed to give the command, his disparate and unsupported men already taking the most obvious route to their own survival even before he had commanded it. A creature rose in front of him, and his stomach twisted into a knot as he noticed the human eyes, too small on its wide face, crying as the thing swept aside another of his troopers with bonecracking force.

“Cassiel!” was all Mauger managed to call out from Qvoro’s side before Cassiel was pulled into the previously hidden hatch. Even at the enhanced speeds in which Astartes could move to provide aid to their literally fallen brother, the vital signs of Cassiel flatlined with a cut off cry of surprise.

Then hell broke loose as more of the damned wretches that had been twisted into monsters of war began to emerge into the hallway.

The nature of fighting meant that Praetor Qvoro Muskstead was unable to see all of his Astartes as some of them were in other hallways, but he noticed as two more sets of squad vitals went completely dark, one after the other.

Vox chatter from a group of four whose vitals had clearly spiked into dangerous levels painted a picture of two of the squad being unlucky enough to be surrounded by several of the creatures in the opening seconds, with the monsters now trying to use that opening success to try and snowball into overwhelming the remaining imperials on that flank. While the squad was taking an absolute battering of injuries, they were still standing and fighting.

Elsewhere, the rest of the squad seemed to be holding their own rather steadily. By all accounts he was willing to attribute this to luck of placement when the ambush began; Those he could physically see had been close enough to each other not to be cut off when the hatches opened and monsters started coming out.

So focused on the creatures trying to come at him from all sides, Qvoro didn’t see the hatch on the roof slide open silently. Didn’t see the monstrous hand that lingered for a moment as it judged where he was going to be for a surprise opening strike…

But Mauger did.

With a sudden body block and a sharp swing of Mauger’s combat knife, a blow that might have maimed or killed Qvoro was avoided as several of the creature’s fingers were taken from it as punishment for trying with an inhuman screech.

Unfortunately, the creature did not flee back into the darkness.

Dropping down with its unnatural body, it landed on Mauger with an enraged fury, battering him with its bleeding fist while using its ‘healthy’ hand to try and pry off either helmet or head with a wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Before Qvoro could help his old friend, two more of the monsters dropped down, trying to take advantage of the situation. One of them quickly discovered that whatever its horrific body was modified to do, surviving a chainsword was not one of them as Qvoro ended its existence… but the other focused on the distracted Mauger and…

Qvoro… didn’t properly remember what happened next.

Or at least, it didn’t feel like a memory. The pain… the hate… they were there but… he wasn’t experiencing them. Instead it was as if they were pouring directly into his limbs. Into his heart… giving him fuel to operate at a level beyond what he believed possible, even with his enhancements.

It brought with it a clarity of mind and purpose: There was a target in front of him and it was going to die. The creature seemed to be moving stupidly slowly when it tried to reach out for him, allowing him to grasp and break its forearm before ripping the limb off completely, even as his chainsword bit into what passed as a collar bone to tear its head and upper torso away from the rest of it and throwing it aside like the nothing it was.

Then he moved onto the second, dismembering it at the knees and stamping its skull into paste. Third… Fourth… Fifth… Each was dispatched in swift, brutal fashion with the same silent energy and dedication as someone clicking a button to make a number on a screen go up.

It was only after his chainsword had finished bisecting number eight from the groin to the skull that the Praetor briefly recognized Smeth… but he didn’t say anything. He merely pressed on to look for number nine to bring an end to.

Smeth hadn’t witnessed the display of martial prowess and savage strength that took place behind him, but he had felt it. Foul blood covered him from head to toe, his troopers behind and beside him fairing no better. Even as his troopers focused down one of the spindly-limbed monstrosities with overwhelming fire in front of him, he felt fear growing in the small part of his mind at the rank behind him slackening their fires.

He turned then, chastisement on his lips, even if it was the last thing he’d do, only to find himself slack-jawed at the sight he beheld.

Praetor Muckstead, previously resplendent in BLANK armor, was now a mess of gore. He strode through the ruined remains of more than a half dozen of the creatures, more than enough to have overwhelmed his Zouaves easily, and still, he seemed out for more.

The young Lieutenant from the Merican Easterlies had heard stories from times long since past. By his schola professors and his eccentric great-great-grandmother before she passed, of a place long since lost to the sands of time. A mountain of such immensity that it towered over the entirety of the people of the world. Atop it sat gods. They bickered and fought, loved and killed one another, not bothering with the lives of the humans going on far below. But sometimes, they graced a maiden in her chamber with their presence, and their progeny strode among humanity and wrought bloody paths of righteous fury on the monsters of fore. Demigods, they’d been called. At once human and more. Now, he found himself truly in the presence of such a figure of old myth. This Astartes, unconcerned with the plight of the little folk before him, and with ease befitting the child of a god, vanquished monsters.

Whatever revelations he was inspiring, the Praetor was blind to them. Maintaining his martial trance while in this pocket of calm on the other end of murderous hate and fury, he simply kept moving forward towards the next target with the certainty of killing it.

Before long, the hallway he had started the ambush in was clear of hostile life. Which was when he turned to spirit at full, inhuman speed back down the corridor towards where the squad had split up with the unstoppable intention of finding new things to kill.

He arrived at a key moment.

Of the four Astartes that were left on that front, two of them were standing back to back, holding their ground against their foes. The other pair of two were doing much more poorly, as one of them had been brought down with his lifesign readings confirming a death; The dead man’s partner was holding on, but it was clear that the fighting had been harsh on him. His injuries were starting to reach dangerous levels, and failure to reinforce him now would almost assure his death.

Fortunately for him, his Praetor arrived in murderous silence just in time.

Smeth found the sight of the Praetor awe-inspiring and terrifying all in the same breath. He did his best to compose himself, tapping on the shoulder of the nearest of his command squad as he tried to bring himself back into the act of leading his men out of this newest house of horrors.
“Get me a map, where the frak do these holes go?” he motioned with a hand to one of the openings in the floor.

His trooper nodded, rummaging through a pouch at his side before he pulled out two orbs. With a tap each, they buzzed to life and floated from the trooper's hands before darting off down the hole.

“Give it sixty.” his trooper assured him as he fiddled with a display strapped to his forearm, “Less…” the trooper’s voice trailed off as he held the display on his arm out for his commander to see.

“Frak…” Smeth agreed as he eyed the three dimensional map the drones had created.

The tunnel led down, nearly vertically for 200 meters, before it came to rest in a small room that appeared to be a containment cell. Outside of the cell, through a door left open either on purpose or in haste, the drones had found something far more important.

Rows of datastacks stretched through a vast chamber beneath the building. Cogitator banks, obvious from their bulky proportions in the imaging, sat in thick clumps at the center of dataspires and assorted workstations.

“I want boots on the ground down there in five,” Smeth spoke to the non-comm to his right, who nodded and turned to gather the survivors, “secure everything, don’t let them remove or destroy anything down there.”

A series of affirmatives rippled through his command squad before Smeth keyed into the vox channel for the Eighth he had been given.

“Lord Praetor, there is a datavault beneath this structure. I am uploading the imaging data we have to you now, the 11th is prepping to secure it.”

The number of hostile enemy targets reached zero as the Praetor… just stood still for a few, tense seconds. There was nothing else to kill, and thus the battle zen-like state that Qvoro had entered was finally allowed to slip away as he now had to be a leader and push on, despite the personal loss.

He finally took the time to slide his helmet back on, hiding his gore-covered features from the world once more as he finally listened to the message that the Lieutenant was sending. As well as checking the map data that had been uploaded to him.

“Give me a few moments, Lieutenant.” was the answer over the vox he got before Qvoro swapped to legion channels while the squad that had followed him into this place regrouped, tended their wounds and… secured their fallen.

While Qvoro was a Praetor and thus had his own company to call upon, he was apart of a wider ongoing battle and thus he needed to get an update of the situation, figure out which forces were free to be moved around to reinforce their position and update other leaders of the datavault discovery.

The whole process took a grand total of thirty three seconds, but once it was done Qvoro swapped to a channel that both his squad of Astartes and the Lieutenant would be able to hear. “The legion has been updated of the situation, with two squads of legionaries currently on route to help us take and secure the datavault.”

There was a moment when Qvoro considered the idea of having himself and his squad taking advantage of the tunnels to drop down directly to the datavaults. He decided against it; The lack of knowledge in regards to the physical ability of an Astartes to survive a 200 meter fall and still be combat effective on the other side was a major pillar of the decision, but another was concerns about the size of the tunnels and them not being able to fit an armored astartes.

A man getting stuck a third of the way down was a tactical issue after all.

“We’ll help your men locate a means down. If we need to get climbing equipment, so be it, but I suspect there has to be an elevator or staircase around here somewhere.”

It didn’t take long for the astartes of the Eighth to locate the elevator, enhanced senses and baroque auspex systems prying the secret from the walls surrounding them given adequate time and skilled operators.

The lift quickly filled, the ranks of the Zouaves falling in at the back of the elevator as the remaining Astartes took positions in the front. The ride to the bottom was quick, and the elevator doors yawned open on silent, well tended to mechanisms to reveal the room beyond.

Bright light bathed the interior of the elevator casting the Astartes at the front in stark shadow to the mortal soldiers behind them. White tiled walls and glimmering surgical tables met the Imperials as they made their way into their new surroundings. The smell of counterseptic stung their noses and gnawed at the corners of their eyes.

“There,” a trooper called out as he pointed a torchbeam at a circular passageway toward what looked to be rows and rows of cogitators and databanks.

“A vault sir?” Smeth’s closest Sergeant asked in confusion.

“Aye, seems so,” he responded with a nod, “stay alert, those bastards won’t let this go easily if I had to guess.”

Above them, in the black of the vaulted ceilings, the darkness stirred.

The legionaries were slow to leave the elevator; instead, they moved at a more measured pace as they secured the room right outside of its doors and continued to move forwards from there slowly to ensure that every inch of ground they crossed was clear of traps, enemies and other such problems.

Torchlights connected to their weapons helped to light the dark, the Astartes turning slowly in order to ensure that no area was left in enough shadow to provide a place that might allow a hiding place.

In the name of this precaution, as well as the history of panels hidden in the ceiling, of the five Astartes that had survived till this point and followed their Praetor down the elevator, two of them made a habit of turning their gaze and lights upwards.

The light reflected off of bare metal, spinning gears, and purulent flesh. Spider-like amalgamations of steel legs and tortured flesh gazed down toward the Astartes with gaping maws locked in silent screams. The first of the twisted experiments died in tightly grouped shots from the two Astartes that had had the forethought to look up.

Blood and oil rained from the ceiling onto the armored transhumans and mortal Zouaves alike, the eviscerated spider-creatures, each twice the size of an unmodified human, crashing to the ground just a moment after the rain began. The pair of Astartes let off more shots, their fellows joining in without so much as a word shared between them. Each shot was a killing strike to another of the many-limbed creatures above them,and the Zouaves added their weight of fire to the transhumans a few seconds later.

The spider-creatures fell from the ceiling, many of them torn apart or shot full of wounds gushing fluids of some form or another, but many more fell with a purpose.

Zouaves were crushed under the weight of the creatures, skewered on limbs as they landed too deftly for their tortured forms, or cut in half by raking limbs as the things fell in the midst of fireteams and squads.

The Astartes handled the rain of corpses much better than their normal human counterparts; Between the power armor they wore and their transhuman strength, the corpses that fell on them were something to be shrugged off rather than an actual threat to them personally.

At least as far as weight and gravity were concerned. The claws of those that were still alive when they reached the ground could punch through metal and shed transhuman blood in the moment before it clotted and the flow ceased completely. By chance or newly gained experience, the remaining Astartes remained standing by the time that the ‘rain’ finally came to an end, with only two new wounds to show for their pitiful foes' hopefully final attempt to slay them.

Praetor Muckstead had actually ceased shooting his weapon, instead focusing purely on melee in order to swat living monsters and corpses out of the air with his power armoured, transhuman fists to keep the dying wretches off of the more heavily injured of his Astartes brothers. He did make a point to at least avoid deflecting or throwing any of the bodies he was intercepting with his fists away from the Zouaves accompanying them.

Smeth ducked away from a swiping blade-limb, crashing to the ground hard as the troopers around him laid fire into the Pacifican creature. It roared in some form of machine pain, collapsing to the ground under the weight of the Zouaves combined fire. He scrambled to his feet, surveying the carnage around them as he tried to assess their position.

There was a brief moment where he thought they might have been on the verge of defeat, but that doubt was quenched as he watched the Praetor finish off the last of the living beasts with his gauntleted fists.

“Clear!” a squad leader yelled out from down the passageway, a number of others reporting the same. He heard his vox operator relay the information, and only a second later the familiar tone of a vox override filled every vox caster and bead in the datavault, mortal and astartes alike.

++“Ensure containment of the vaults, await arrival of follow-on personnel.”++

He exchanged a glance with his radio operator, the man already fidgeting with his bulky vox set as he looked back up toward Smeth.

“Vox override isn’t ours, it’s high, vermillion plus…” the man trailed off a moment, “the Astartes?”

Smeth shook his head, “Sigillites.” he corrected.

A Song of Ice and Fire: A Gilded Throne

I think I might stay out of this one then. I don't know a lot about the lore.

A Song of Ice and Fire: A Gilded Throne

So just to clarify, if you want to play you have to actually dig up a canon house, rather then create one?

From Ashes We Rise: The Galaxy At Large

A more technologically equiped expedition might have fallen for the rouse; After all, in the poor lighting and some distance, they looked like people.

…If the expedition was completely idiotic and failed to account for where they were, anyway. The air wasn’t breathable, blood dripped from the walls and roof of a ship structure so warped by its time as part of this tortured hulk of metal that it seemed to have grown flesh… and what data they were able to glean suggested that this section of the ship had once, logically been the sump.

No living people would be found here.

Which made the fact things in a human shape were actively moving around all the more alarming.

Rik… needed a moment to process what his senses and sensors were telling him, because logically it made absolutely no logical sense at all: In the chamber in front of him, shambling through waist deep waste were creatures that had clearly once been human beings… but all sensors indicated that there was not a single life sign among them.

No detectable pulse. Their temperature was the exact same as the room around them. Some of them were breathing, but it seemed more out of some long forgotten impulse that raised it’s head in a haphazardly random way rather then out of necessity. Motion was the only sensor that reliably picked them up… and that depended on them actually moving.

By all sensor accounts, they were all dead. Visually, they looked it. Bloated, covered in tumours and boils where skin hadn’t just rotten off in a horrific green puss. Some still seemed to be wearing clothing, but it was little more than rotten rags clinging to their frames by chance rather than anything else.

They hadn’t been detected by the things yet. The idea of these things being able to detect anything was madness in Rik’s mind, but their very existence had already that they had left the sane laws of reality behind when they boarded this broken, twisted vessel.

Records from Pentious had indicated that warp travel had its dangers. The reanimation of the dead appeared to be one of them.

Figuring out the intent of these creatures was simply not something that Rik was confident in guessing at. Intention required intelligence and impulse… and these unnatural things didn’t seem to possess either that a living creature would have. He wasn’t about to risk the lives of his expedition for the sake of these misbegotten creatures and they needed to traverse the chamber they were currently gathering/standing around in.

With a signal, his forces formed a firing line. These creatures seemed to be physically slow to move normally, let alone wading through the refuse of the sump. But they didn’t have life signs and any that fell below the muck might not be confirmed kills.

This was going to be a time consuming pain in the ass.

Rik gave the command. The battle began.

Wildwood Masters Library - Haunted Library RP

I'm still here. Just waiting for someone to respond.

From Ashes We Rise: The Galaxy At Large

???. Closest inhabited celestial body: Pentious.

The orbital dockyards of Pentious were decades away from being anywhere close to operational. Never mind the actual production of its first capital ship.

Production of the dockyards had actually started prior to the Orkish invasion of Warboss Kracker'Laker, with much of the foundational works put into place during these young and peaceful days. However, the arrival of the Orks had caused priorities to shift, resources and personnel being moved towards wartime production and fighting the ground war. The in-construction dockyards were never forgotten, but had simply been pushed down so far on the list of survival against the Orkish Waaargh that many simply wrote it off as a dream that would never be realized.

With the orks destroyed and the ability to turn resources towards rebuilding their world in the aftermath, the decision to commit resources and personnel towards the unfinished dockyard rather then towards furthering reconstruction efforts on the ground was met with a degree of scrutiny by many. Myrmidax Uixien's arguments about it being vital to the future defense of Pentious against future greenskin invasions committed by whichever warboss on any of the worlds Kracker'Laker had left in their wake managed to form a Waargh of their own held merit, but it was still going to be a lot of resources spent on something that wasn't going to be able to produce anything towards that defense for decades.

The abomination of voidships thrown together into a singular, tortured mass of monumental size had caused a great deal of damage and death merely arriving in system. However, it also provided several opportunities. Capturing and securing the abomination and shutting down its ability to warp jump would not only protect Pentious from the second wave of madness as it tore a hole in reality of massive scale, but would allow for the reclamation and purification of some of the ships within the bulk to serve as the core of a new fleet. And since cutting those ships out would be a time intense endeavor, the hulk could serve as a make shift defensive space station.

Of course, such a feat was easier said then done.

Scans of the Space Hulk provided... disturbing readings. Some sections of the hulk provided stable, clear data but others...

With some sections of the combined wreckage, the very act of trying to scan it caused the scanners to be infected by some kind of hyper aggressive, corruptive malware. Machine spirits that had long ago been twisted into malevolent monsters by pain and exposure to the alien energies of the warp attempted to spread the agony of their existence to other machine spirits solely by the act of being gazed upon and multiply in fresh hosts.

Countless cogitators had to be isolated and granted a merciful end in order to prevent the infection from spreading beyond them, but their sacrifice was not in vain. Between them, something resembling a vague map of the hulk was produced; At least Fifty eight ships of various origins and ages, alongside asteroids and other space debris. While the exact layout inside of the hulk was currently beyond them, in theory there were (logically) around fifty eight warp drives (or their equivalent) that needed to be shut down in order to prevent the Hulk from trying to randomly jump again.

Of course, in order to perform this operation, there needed to be boots on the ground.

That part was actually easier to accomplish then one would think. Transport shuttles and void craft that were designed with the intention of transporting goods and manpower into orbit in order to work on an orbital dry-dock transferred over to the transportation of troops and supplies for said troops with a minimum of modifications. The most major of those modifications being updating the fuel reserves so that the transports could range far enough to reach the Space Hulk and come back to Pentious.

A literal fleet of transport ships took off from Pentious and left its atmosphere behind to travel for four days in tight, cramped conditions. Skitaraii, Servitors, Tech Priests and what would normally have been considered logistical support/camp followers in a more conventional campaign alike made the trip. The plan was to have the shuttles land in different areas of the outer layer of the hulk, taking advantage of entrance points were possible and cutting their way in through the hull if need be, with the intention of covering as much ground and locating key locations to be shut down as swiftly as possible: No one knew just how long the Abomination was going to remain in system before whatever cascade of events that triggered its journeys into the warp manifested and time was of the essence.

On one of those countless shuttles sat Myrmidax Uixien, his axe resting across his lap as he seemed to be in a state of mediation while trying to take up as little room as possible for the benefit of those who were traveling with him. There was a tenseness in the air of the shuttle that only seemed to grow the closer they approached their destination, even for those who had upgraded their minds to be able to compartmentalize their emotions.

The destination and operations were going to be taking them into the areas of the highest risk; Their landing zone was assumed to have once been a void ship of some kind, but the unnatural shape it had been forced into made it all but impossible to determine its origins. All attempts at scanning it past the outer hull had failed drastically, with the resulting malware infections of the cogitator being among the most potent and deadly on record, even compared to other sections of the Space Hulk. All that was known for sure was that the energy readings it was given off caused error messages in the machinery and defied all classification.

Whatever the journey through the Warp had done to that section of the Space Hulk was unknown, but as far as scavenging it was concerned it had already been condemned to the mercy of destruction. The exact nature of its dangers was not apparent, but exist they certainly did. Yet... someone still had to go in there in order to find what was suspected to either a warp drive or something akin to one and shut it down. Or at least confirm that it didn't exist in the first place.

Rik had never been one to order someone else to do something he wasn't willing to do himself. So he had volunteered to lead what was calculated to be the most dangerous sections of the Space Hulk. As the transport latched itself to the hull and the cutting process began, Rik briefly wondered if that bravery was truly a virtue at times.

---

Fear was something that Rik had experienced before, but never had he felt just a cold, sharp knife of it punch into his heart like in the second that entrance into the hull was breached. The first and truthfully most horrifying thing to hit him was the unrelenting stench coming from within; Rik was wearing a void sealed suit with an internal oxygen supply. He shouldn't have been able to smell anything!

There was a moment of panic in which Rik not only ran a diagnostic on his breathing equipment, but visually looked himself over, trying to find a breach or fault somewhere that was causing a leak. Failing to find anything wrong with his own equipment, Rik noticed that the majority of those sharing the transport with him were in the middle of doing what he had just done; Checking their equipment for a leak with various levels of panic. Those that weren't were servitors and tech thralls.

Accepting that as illogical as it was that this was going to be an unpleasantness that they were just going to have to deal with for the foreseeable future, Rik sighed as he instructed over the vox "The Tech Thralls will stay and hold the transport while the rest of us move in. Try to breath through your mouths like I'm going to do." before he stepped through the breach and entered the condemned ship.

The first footstep was a ghastly wet squelch noise, followed by a sudden splash that somehow made the smell worse as the top layer of 'skin' broke under his weight. Rik needed a moment in order to try and properly recognize just what he suddenly found himself ankle deep in, and sight along simply didn't provide an answer. The aupex scan did offer an answer. It didn't make it better.

Blood. He was standing ankle deep in a mixture of old, filthy, crusted over blood and... fresh blood. Blood he was actively watching bleed out of the walls and drip from the ceiling, slowly mixing fresh in with the old. The sight was disconcerting when the reddish substance was coming out of the rusted metal walls, but it was the patches of... pulsing organic matter that parts of the wall were seemingly completely made out of the drew the eye.

It... appeared to be some kind of meat. The rotten drapes of flesh upon them and the texture of the muscle structure running throughout gave the impression of someone taking the building blocks of the human body and using them to craft some kind of living support structure out of it. The fact that the structure was twitching and pulsing and actively bleeding did not, unsurprisingly, make things better. Already acknowledging that things were unlikely to get better anytime soon, Rik allowed a sigh to escape him... before he started to lead the way in deeper.

---

As the expedition continued within what Rik had privately named 'The Blood Labyrinth' in absence of the original name of the ship, Rik noticed the rising sense of unease that was sinking into those traveling with him. He didn't blame them. The warped and twisted nature of the structure made navigating a nightmare because it followed no logic or reason that could exist in a rational reality and the paranoia of the awful smell being able to seep into void sealed breathing systems never went away. But there were other things as well that he personally didn't quite understand.

There was something fundamentally wrong with this place that had nothing to do with its twisted physical form, the meat walls or the creek of blood in various states of being that they were wading through. It... It was as if the very walls of reality here were slowly being eaten away by something. Shadows that shouldn't exist or didn't move correctly, things in the corner of the eyes that disappeared when you turned to look. Pathways that gave off an ancient, animal instinct that walking down them would be the last thing you would ever do.

And yet... Rik didn't seem to feel the same shroud of dread that the rest of his group was enduring and he didn't know why. The only thing that made sense to him was that it was due to something that was apart of his genetic engineering, but exactly how or why currently eluded him.

But the thought was swiftly pushed back to be reviewed later, for a mystery had manifested before him that needed his attention now.

In the hallway that they were striding through the blood took a very drastic turn. The blood they had been walking through up to this point was largely black due to rust, grim and decay mixing into it to create semi firm skins and solid mass, but at a cut off point, the nature of the blood changed. It was swallow and dry... almost powder like in appearance. An unhealthy pale color and lacking all the signs of decay and outside contamination. The fresh blood trying to bleed out of the walls was even now attempting to pool, but the small sizes of those puddles suggested whatever happened had occurred here recently.

Raising a fist in order to bring those following him to a stop, Rik started another aupex scan in order to try and get a better idea of what was going on. The results were... interesting.

The targeted zone had been rendered completely sterile of all bacteria and life in a matter of seconds. The water in the blood had been evaporated, leaving behind a lifeless gray ash. Fresh contaminates were trying to move back in but the data indicated that this was not the first time such a purge had happened, nor had it only happened once recently. The area was awash with different energies that had been left behind in the wake of the purge, but by themselves wouldn't be dangerous for them to pass through while in such a passive state; On closer inspection, the energy readings were akin to those created by variations of atomantic generators that served as the basis of rad furnace technology... but the strength of the energy being pumped out was of a much higher magnitude.

And from the data of various blood ash indicating the time between unleashing that energy, it was doing so in wild, uncontrolled bursts. A sign of its neglected, possibly damaged state. Rik couldn't predict when the energy source would activate again since its bursts didn't follow a given pattern. They could have simply focused on going past it and leaving it where it was. But... capturing it could provide insight into atomantic generators in general. However, if it triggered while someone was attempting to shut it down, the readings he had gotten from its past bursts indicated that the current level of protection himself and everyone else in their expedition was using would not protect them... because the level of rad protection required needed to be specialty made for these kinds of levels.

The information and decision was made within less then two seconds. The binary response took one. "Hold position. I am going to attempt to shut down and secure a malfunctioning piece of archotech." Before the confirmation messages had even reached him, Rik had stepped forward onto the dust as he strode towards an open doorway to look further in.

Whatever the room had originally been, he couldn't tell. It had been warped, much let the rest of the ship... but to a much lesser extent. The constant sterilizations had prevented the blood and rot from seeping into here as it had everywhere else, covering everything with a thick layer of radioactive dust. Seeing the source of things confirmed what Rik had already deducted; It was some kind of atomantic engine, through this one had clearly been designed to be portable. Some kind of backup generator to be moved around and plugged in to keep a downed section running if primary power failed.

...One that had been hooked up to a machine that had long ceased to function, causing the engine to slowly build up and overload with power. It had been trying to vent the excess power that it was gathering without release or end, but while it had clearly been designed with emergencies in mind, being left in that state long term was not part of the plan. Time and the constant build up and venting of energy into the world had damaged parts of it, causing it to go into a critical state; As Rik looked it over, the calculations and information he gathered quickly came to one conclusion.

The engine wasn't going to vent again; It was going to explode and soon. If it was allowed to do so, its violent death would easily surpass its attempts to vent the excess power before. While the damage to the hulk itself would be acceptable (what with the section it was in already being condemned to destruction), a calculation of the blast radius would mean that everyone in Rik's expedition would be caught in the blast, even if they attempted to abandon the mission.

This was not an acceptable outcome. The engine needed to be saved and safely shut down. A task that required more hands for him to work with then he currently had.

"Psi-Upsilon 39, Chi-Tau 27. I need your assistance to defuse a class Terminus level threat." Was it somewhat unprofessional to refer to two of the leading tech-priests with him without addressing them by title over the vox? Under normal circumstances, yes. But with a terminus level danger to contend with, some formality could be brushed aside in the name of not dying. The fact that both of them responded quickly in silence gave credence to that.

Out of social politeness, Rik gave them several seconds to observe the failing engine for themselves and catch up on the seriousness of the situation themselves before he suggested "I suggest we form a neural link conclave. This is going to require us working in tandem and with the state it is in, we cannot afford a mistake."

A neural link conclave was a procedure in which tech priests would link into each other, briefly becoming an entity made up of the minds of the participants sharing the sensors, instruments and resources of all their bodies at once. A temporary hive mind. It was not a procedure to be used for combat operations, due to the physical links required to establish the conclave being a clear weak point and limiting the member's individual ability to move around without triggering an unprepared disconnect. There were also some psychological risks involved, since not all personalities meshed well together... or meshed a bit too well.

But with the nature of the operation they were about to perform, the unmatched coordination and instant understanding of what the others were seeing and doing might be the difference between life and death. It was a calculation that Psi-Upsilon 39 and Chi-Tau 27 couldn't refute, if the fact that after a moment both presented their cables and ports for the connections to be made.

With the connections made, thus began what would have been the most tense maintenance rituals of Rik's life if those feelings weren't isolated in their respective vaults. Every maintenance ritual was a time consuming affair, with the only silver lining of a possible mistake being that at the range and power of the blast, they wouldn't be alive long enough to realize they had slipped up.

It took forty minutes. Forty long, tense minutes with the threat of death and failure one slip up away. But where the flesh was weak, steel proved certain. The unity of the conclave proved itself as with a final whine, the engine was safely powered down into a dormant state. With the danger averted, the ritual of disconnection was performed as the Conclave was ended. Rik watched the other two with care, but as both Upsilon 39 and Chi-Tau 27 adjusted post-conclave it was rather clear that they were free of any of the lingering effects that a conclave could cause.

But the engine itself, now dormant... it was still too important as an example of archeotech to simply leave behind. Having already lost enough time, Rik strapped the engine to his back before they began to move deeper once more.

Divinus Mk. 8: The Eleventh Cycle (A God Roleplay)

@Frettzo
We should fix that at some point.