A NEW TERROR( STAR WARS CROSSOVER)

[sonofccn]

“…creation of this specialized task force, composed of the new super-heavy B-36 bombers, will ensure the total and complete protection of our glorious Republic. Enabling enemy nations to be laid into submission via mass bombing without need for forward airbases beyond our borders or the needless sacrifice of blood and effort on part of our enlisted ranks.” Excerpt from President Kennedy’s speech on creation of the Superiority fleet in 1945.

Last Chance, Catacombs-

With a screech that was more guttural growl than an outburst from a civilized creature the figure kicked off from the shadow strewn rock face. The whine of the industrialized drill he clutched adding to his ragged dirge he made sailing across the room, legs kicking like made through the stale air, through only at a fraction of the speed of the red bolt sped towards him. Energized flesh and the oily fabric of his stained jumpsuit exploding into voluminous vapor as his body was knocked backwards and sent toppling end over end.

“Bloody hell.” One of the two Stormtroopers the man had made a jump for grumbled looking over the body as it collided back against the wall.

His voice was like a mountainside after it had been pelted by a Star Destroyer with a temperament only slightly better. Both of which becoming frayed at the thought of pay the jumper’s death had cost him.

“He just about impaled himself upon it.” The other cackled swishing around to face his colleague.” Feth, if you had been a split second faster you might have even got him.”

The two of them having been loitering just out of reach of the whackjob pretending to be guarding the juncture as part of the game they were playing, seeing which one of them was the fastest “quick draw”. Regrettably it had become apparent that between them their existed an unequal distribution of skill. Or at least rotten luck.

“Your only up three, I can still beat you.” The indebted Stormtrooper grimaced putting the best face on it he could.” Come on, somewhere out there I know there is a psycho with my name on it.”

Pushing off and gliding while his still immensely pleased with himself friend following after searching for the thermal signatures of their quarry, the sensors in their helm effortlessly piercing through the gloom of the cramped passages. Yet the previously crazily determined defenders refused to be obliging, five terse minutes passing without sign when their squadleader’s voice chimed into their ears.

“We’re the feth are you sods!?” He gruffly demanded, voice interspersed with the stucco of slugthrowers.” We got some slags cornered in the bottom south tunnel but their reasonably well armed, I have one man down and two injured and Emperor forgive me I need you two.”

“What was that Sergeant?” The three up Stormtrooper asked innocently suppressing a laugh.”…repeat…breaking up…magnetic ore…”

Not that their NCO was going to fall for that trick again, bursting out in a profuse triad against both men promising both they’d be fed to a Sarlacc pit if they didn’t get a move on. Which didn’t send either of them into a tizzy like it might have in years past, career men both they’d learned one important lesson about his divine majesty’s realm. No matter how large its arsenal grew it was never large enough. There was never enough Star Destroyers, never enough AT-ATs or Stormtroopers. The Empire a perpetually hungry maw which devoured ravenously everything it was offered and except for gross insubordination, as a sacrificial scapegoat or disloyalist acts something as valuable as a breathing Stormtrooper wasn’t going to be wasted in an execution. Marched into the killing field of a gunnery nest perhaps but steadfastly each death was geared towards the betterment of the Empire however marginally. The worst that normally happened was that your were transferred to a more bottom rung assignment and the Talon was the final rung in that ladder.

“Ah there you are Sergeant, you’re coming in clearer now.” The losing Stormtrooper spoke up over his superior’s grouching voice.” But I’m afraid we can’t as yet link up to your position, currently we are sequestered in mobile operations clearing the western tunnel of potential threats.”

“My eye you lily livered failed excuse of Bantha dung! You two are playing that fething game again.” Their superior grumbled back, from the sounds venting his frustrations upon the enemy.

“No Sergeant.” The Stormtrooper with the winning kills took over directing his gaze towards a narrow crevice which glowed with warmth.” We’ve just discovered a potential holdout bypassed by our primary thrust. After we go in and clear the section we will make best possible time towards your position.”

Transmitting the thermal signature as well as an edited and highly selective content of their previous antics to their brooding commander which he digested for several long moments before his harsh voice broke back over their helmets’ channels.

“Five minutes then I’m coming for you.” He barked.

“All we’ll need.” The Stormtrooper down three points answered wading through the opening.

The sides rough hewn and poorly carved just barely wide enough for a person to fit through, a frayed gray cable stapled to the rock face of one wall running up to a string of lights all of which had been broken or removed basking the whole area in darkness. On three faces there was merely the irregular curtain of impure iron and carbon rock which made up the asteroid but on the fourth dreary gray iron doors had been fitted into a chiseled opening and it was from there the heat emanated.

“You know this is likely just a busted heating system right?” The other Stormtrooper asked grinning beneath his helmet as both of them took hold of the rust pitted handles to pull it open.

“ Yeah yeah. You just don’t want to lose.” The first one said before a snorting gag robbed him of further speech.

Once forced to scour the swamp world of Dagobah searching for the Emperor knew what he understood about rot and decay, about trekking through chest high sluice made from equal measures decomp and excrement. Yet the bridled air from the chamber took all that, the rancid musk burning like acid in his lungs as he titled down towards the floor gagging trying to expel it. His raspy retching only seeming to stir and circulate the noxious fumes within him further sickening him, his croaking turning to a wet gurgle as a thought pierced through the fog of his befuddled mind and he triggered the seals on his armor. His suit hissing as the protective insulation expanded out forming an air tight lock which was then filled with the recycled oxygen, stale but breathable nectar the Stormtrooper greedily inhaled as did his comrade flailing beside him.

“Feth.” The Stormtrooper whom had been winning the game derided, fighting to right himself in the air” What is that?”

Spying walls of what once had been a storeroom plastered with indescribable excess, ratty drapes which billowed in the subtle shifts of muggy currents from the air vents, a detritus floating pile of festering scrapes of flesh and a tar black pustule ridden tube which reared almost expectantly from behind such filth. Its horned and beaked end splitting open revealing an oozing gullet in a rumble of both surprise and naked hunger, any previous hints of lethargicness vanishing as it uncoiled its vast bulk to strike. Slithering in a rapid, wavy motion from its dirty environments for the door. And through the Stormtrooper had won so many points with his quick shots the iron muscles in his arms refused to operate, iced over with Hoth like efficiently at the Leviathan that dove upon him. The sight of its horned beak stretching open, the serrated edges reaching for him, robbing him of all thought but the single phrase fragment which welled up from some dark depths of his psyche with the force of a turbolaser.

“ Father Dragon…” He screamed, feeling something tighten in his mind, before the beast’s mandibles closed over him crushing through his armor with contemptuous ease.

A ruby cloud billowing, swelling up over the onyx horror, from his body as it was severed. Half of him vanishing down the gullet of the stygian thing and the other drifting sideways towards the remaining Stormtrooper whom cursing raised his carbine and fired. Seeing hit and singe the thick, mucus laden hide of the alien, the low powered yield piercing no more than a few millimeters and serving mainly to attract its attention from the blood seeping meal. Where upon, seeing the opening maw which had so effortlessly bisected his friend, the Stormtrooper ceased his dialing up his blaster and instead turned swimming out through the iron door’s threshold.

“Sergeant! Sergeant help!” He screamed into his com-link sensing first a great shadow over him and a colossal pressure which drove spikes into his sides.

Not enough to crush him through, horned edges cutting messily into flanks, but to grasp and pull him back which he resisted, his weapon gone and spinning from his reach, by grappling for the edge of one of the iron doors. Fingers curling over it, anchoring, pitting the heavy set muscles he’d developed in training gyms across the Galaxy. And for a moment he saw himself edging forward before with a playful jerk vanished back inside. The splitting of his fingers as they bent backwards off of the iron entrance punctuated his curdling scream which slowly faded, becoming ever more muffled, leaving only tendrils of scarlet blood and his empty helm which lazily spun top over bottom towards the door.

“Fething Sods!” The NCO’s voice crackled from it as it bobbed to a rest against the door’s edge.” Bad enough you two are off playing around but now you want to pester us? Let me tell you we don’t have time for you, these freaks we got here are fething nuts. Do you hear me? Huh?”

Interlude:

Krona, Denerio-

I.What a wonderful world Louise Armstrong

Commerce De’Plaza, a centuries old institution and facility, gave a loud protesting wail to the already cluttered and dirge filled ether and came screaming down. Most of the tens of stories of the gray building already missing, jagged gaps knocked out with explosive force or burned away, but still it was a surreal vista watching the skeletal structure buckle and implode through the swirling silt and smoke. Adding thickly to the former as rupturing cement aerosolized and poured plastics turned to powders, thick plumes which swelled and rolled across the choked landscape mingling with other dust shells spawned in the city’s twilight. Dark, brooding nebulas of jetsam and filament which coarsely coiled through the city’s ashes making the vestige of half melted steel and broken masonry which jutted from the earth’s grip like fetid teeth to appear and vanish.

The legacy of the ending bombing run along with the dim glow through the suffocating smog of untempered blazes and the charred and blacken bodies over whom the tiny squad treaded over with the rubble. Too frequently reminded by an fleshless arm, smoldering leg or bared skull leering up from beneath crumbs of concrete that lay strewn like eggshells. That they’d been Hybrid or Trader unsettlingly irresolvable, too much beaten off by the bodies’ errant flight or burned, through much consolation was found in the hope it was the former rather than latter. If not then, as Thyde had put sourly but reaching for some grim silver’s edge, it was all too likely that death had come as a relief to the proclivities Hybrids towards prisoners they indulged in. Regardless on any of the practical matters they were beyond the need of Defenders, others through might not yet be.

“Can you get a reading on anything?” Thyde voiced over the constant serenade of crumbling edifices which dissolved into the barren earth which it had been raised from.

His voice muffled by the obstructing clear-plexi adorning mask and hiss of its oxygen secretion which sheltered and fed him unobstructed and filtered gases.

“ Plenty but…nothing distinct. Just garbage…” Killgore answered cycling through his Targeter trying to make sense of the miasma they were engulfed by.

Fires and cooling blast craters casting innumerable ghosts to his thermal sensors while the constant shifting and collapsing of the ruins triggered every motion alarm. The more specialized and advanced sensory devices equally baffled and stumped, the dense particle soup in the air sending the spectrum piece into conundrums it was never meant for. The ultrasonic, magnetic and ethereal bands its generated shifting and oscillating without discernable pattern from moment to moment eluding any illumination.

“Makes one wonder how anything could survive out here.” First Atune Mnorel, the third and final member of the group, whispered craning his head to watch the signature of a firestorm creep over what had once been an industrial center.

He like Killgore and Thyde affixed with a breathing mask which spared him the worst of the finely honed detritus which pelted him, acting not unlike sandpaper where it was caught by a forceful gust.

“You’d be surprised, life can be tenacious.” Killgore muttered, dark memories of a supposed derelict and the Satyr horror that would have been unleashed had he acted slower.

“Yeah, my grandfather always used to tell me stories of the survivors they pulled from the Skram disaster.” Thyde more optimistically suggested.” He said they found people curled up inside drainage systems, vaults and sub-terrestrial passage tubes and just about anywhere a pocket of air could linger following the explosion.”

The city Skram, leader of chemical distillation and production, having been the target of a terrorist group focused on the better treatment and disposition of non-Trader integrated races in particular the higher percentage of whom who worked at risk in the chemical distillate plants. A misplaced fire bomb had ruptured one of the storage cells resulting in first a rapacious inferno that had swept through the heart of the city and then a noxious lethal gaseous residue which had clung stubbornly for days stemming attempts by relief workers.

But the city had lived through it, after a decade the physical scars had healed and in a generation even the emotional ones had began to fade. To visit Skram would to be ignorant of the tragedy save for the few modest tokens preserving its memory, a controversial but decisive ruling by the city’s government denying the request to add the names to the city’s rock of remembrance citing it was an internal disturbance akin to a traffic accident rather than an act of war by an external power, but no such hope lay for Denerio.

The city that might stand in its place might share its name even lay claim to its history but it would be upon the first rustic settlers which had first come centuries previously, the odd jagged spur of construction still standing serving amiably in stead of the Vraen ruins which had once populated both the land and imaginations.

“It is their job to cling to life against all heed or sense. It is our job to find them.” Killgore answered Thyde, finding where his thoughts turned to now equally as bleak as those concerned with the gangrenous things clawing from the hold on that abandoned ship.

“Yes it is sir.” Mnorel agreed quickly.” But how, we’re virtually on the coordinates and yet nothing.”

To demonstrate the First Atune swept the barrel of his gun through the swirling vortexes of sand and grit through which not but the barest few millimeters could reliably be seen, the partial windows which allowed the rancid hulks of the destroyed buildings to be seen always transitory and faltering.

“Well Targeters are useless, orbitals are likely destroyed and we lack connection regardless and the dust shell is too thick to be seen through even if we had air support.” Thyde reasoned with a mischievous tint.” So we’ll likely be forced to do what the textbooks said Defenders of old did when looking for someone. Walk a lot.”

“Its good that you’re keeping to the bright side.” Killgore would have said hadn’t his foot stepped onto something brittle like glass which broke sending his leg down through the hole followed by his body and then the omnipresent cam-droids which swooned after their subject.

The shouts of his friend and associate ringing in his head as he fell a short ways through inky blackness then hit a hard surface cushioned by a thin crust of silt. Old protests welling up in his body from it and when he tried to move after despite the medications he had circulating through his system, enough to drown out the noises around him until a snaking cable from above nearly smacked him in the face. Thyde appearing wiggling down it next, heaving off beside Killgore and kneeling over the First Atune which he brushed aside. Shrugging off the help and worry as he rolled to the side, groped for his pulse rifle and finding it rose with the help of a curved wall he’d would without his Targeter been unable to perceive in the stygian blackness.

With it through he could where in the porous and sand leaking stonework where the broken spurs of ironwork had originally been run forming an arch in the tube shaped conduit and holding it all up. The gilded strips, colored in bronzes and golds and emblazoned with now hazy glyphs, little more than an emaciated skeleton hanging off of a cracked and crumbling shell millimeters thick at its narrowest and so riddled with irregularlity and impurity that any Trader craftsman resigned to have been the father of it. Similarly a glance towards the chamber’s center revealed iron colored ruts made for trestle wheels but without the inner third rail which would have fed the needed electric power to the motor-car. This manner of empowerment standard by means of efficiency on all sub-terrestrial across the Khordon leaving a single possibility.

“A Vraen sinkhole of a transport tube.” Killgore lamented curling his hand into a fist and striking it against the surface of the wall through receiving little comfort from what was more sandstone than cement broke to dust under the impact and spilled to the floor.” An entire city and I had to step over the part that hadn’t completely collapsed in on itself.”

“It likely curls all beneath the city sir.” Mnorel, kneeling over the pit’s edge, clarified as he broke and shook a florescent glow-bar dropping down into the crevice.” The bits of the network would have partially filled when the Vraen city was destroyed, entire segments collapsed, they’d have found it more prudent to simply demolish the entry points. Then the city buildings just paved over and began building.”

All of which was true, in some of the more bohemian cities such ruins had even been incorporated into the civic structure, but it did nothing to help Killgore get out of the pit. Not wanting a further history lesson the Atune, waving off Thyde once more, slung his rifle reached a hand out to snag the dangling cable intending to scale up the pitted wall’s surface to its broken roof. Instead, providing more fodder that would be deleted from the recordings, his arm failed to bare his weight and he went toppling back down onto the hard, sand covered floor. Landing face first into something cold and nauseating, a permeated salty aroma which set his facial tendrils amok even beneath his breathing mask.

The embarrassment, the weakness forgotten as he pushed himself up wiping away the flecks which stained the clear-plexi then staring down at the damp spot and half formed tracks scrawled in the loose silt covering. The glow of the dropped glow-tube revealing they vanished down the passage tunnel where, straining, he believed he could now hear soft muttering of voices and the scything of feet across masonry.

“Hey, sir! I got movement up here! It’s from one of the buildings…” Mnorel shouted down, childhood excitement flowing with it.”…looks like some piece of cloth or a flag or something…its being waved back and forth…somebody’s alive out there.”

“Good work First Atune Mnorel. Go to them, take Thyde.” Killgore ordered rising with the aforementioned subordinates assistance and bringing his pulse rifle to bear.

Across the way, where the illumination of the dropped light diffused into a twilight, he watched through his Targeter the hunched lopping forms of Hybrids as they cloistered with blood lusting curiosity at what had disturbed their squalid shelter.

“It seems the tunnel has vermin.” He remarked for the swirling cameras as he lined up his first shot.

Last Chance, Catacombs-

II.I got you under my skin Frank Sinatra

Shlack, clutching his rusty revolver in one hand and gripping the leaking white armored corpse with the other, knew something was wrong as he kicked into the secluded crevice through the salty red streamers that rose from both his own body and his victims. Seeing in an instant even through his watering eyes that the door was ajar, the pinisk stained helm which hovered near it serenely and immediately the Keeper of the Faith felt the cold chill of fear run through him. Releasing his offering to more violently swim through the open doorway fearing for the brood of the Father Dragon, drinking in its pain upon the threshold, yet found it lethargically floating not far away amid a maelstrom of shattered armor and bloody residue. Shlack experience relief then worry at its continued feelings of pain then confusion when it sunk in of the omission. Of the omnipresent hunger which drove it utterly vanished, its bloated undulating flesh at last appeased, and yet he still felt a longing from his patron deity. Some part or task he could still perform through it was faint and unfamiliar to the Keeper of the Faith despite having been at the creature’s side since its earliest moments. The alienness of the emotion and its continued pain perplexing Shlack, worrying him that he would fail his appointed task for the Father Dragon whom would be borne from the bodies of its young to usher in a new galaxy. One where now forbidden chants were spoken freely, where strong and vitalized men were unshackled to dance and play to the delight of the elder creatures whom slumbered in the stygian corners of the galaxy.

“What is it? What do you desire?” He begged of the worm-god, coaxing closer to press his palm against its pulsating tar-black skin.

Feeling it rip in an oozing, oily secretion in what was the first of many tears that split along the breadth and width of the deity. Torn open by the frenzied mass of spawn which vomited out from the sagging mother creature and hungrily bore into the warm, succulent tissue of the Keeper of the Faith. And, as his momentary scream was silenced by dozens of the starving beasts, he realized what his god had needed from him. He’d fed it dutifully for all this time, now he’d do the same for the resultant brood. Their first meal but not their last…not nearly. The dark tide already rushing past the bedraggled body of Shlack, engorged with countless parasites, out of the room and into the caverns in search of fresh, living hosts.

[Praeothmin]

C'était très bien, mais pourquoi faut-il que les personnes qui se retrouvent seules dans un endroit dangereux agissent de façon aussi stupide?





















;)

Here's the translation:
it was nice, but why must people finding themsleves in dangerous situations always act so stupidly?


:)

[sonofccn]

I'm sorry to say I've had a massive case of writer's block and that nothing really gelled or clicked with me. I do apologize. In lieu of the actual plot please help yourself to this tasty filling. Enjoy :)

“The cost of the operation was higher than expected.” The “General” explaining the destruction of the alien world in question.

I. The Great Old Ones-Nox Arcana

“…causes a shiver up my spine like the mention of the planet Nephthys. A blighted world I hope never to step foot on through at the time, as is a regrettably frequent occurrence, I thought I was being smarter by half. At the time the planet was classified as the standard “Dead World” hypothesized due to a Class Omega biosphere disintegration with the depressing all to frequent aged ruins which those of the high foreheads seem to salivate in unearthing. More importantly to the Confederacy was its location in our burgeoning hyperspace lanes leading to Earth which saw us invest the resources to build it into a staging area. Tiring, arduous work which you can expect doesn’t attract the very best of humanity, indeed from what I recall the bulk of the workforce consisted primarily of Penal work-gangs, requiring excessive…prompting in order to stay on task.

This in turn requires a rather substantive Imperial garrison that has to endure nearly as much privations as the laborers which causes moral issues in the planetary segment which we can least afford it. And Tyler, in his wisdom, conceived of my visiting Nephthys in order to combat both of these issues which were straddling our advancement of Earth’s liberation from the clutches of Merika, Englanders and Sino-Hegemony. Typical meet and greet I’ve performed literally hundreds of for planetary dignitaries back in the Home Galaxy of which I have no reservations on principal against, indeed thinking it would be a welcome break from the ignoble Scandoc-work I’d been forced with, if preferring a world with higher ratio of females to scab encrusted Bay-loaders.

A regret which sunk deeper in my breast on seeing the envoy which greeted the shuttle’s landing, thick limbed and rugged warriors palatably ill at ease in their dress uniforms. Brawny sons of banthas I’m sure who took to brawling like mother’s milk, and of course later I would be eternally grateful for their presence over more nubile companions, but it is a most depressing sight after a dull voyage to be greeted by faces that seemed little more than scar tissue. Their commander, as well as acting Governor, was every bit worse. Born on Soth Karalinah he clearly adhered strongly to the Colonial ethos both in his overdeveloped muscular, nearly bordering on the alienesque, and a tanned face which looked like pressed leather. Shorter than Imperial average he none less the towered and dominated both his men and myself, having only thrice been involved in more violent exchanges and those had been in grapple with Xeno scum, from the moment he clasped my forearm in an iron lock to the back crushing “embrace” he chose to share. The Colonial’s proclivities on the physical having already been well covered in these hallowed pages and of which entire books have indeed been made attempting to analyze. Suffice it to say I didn’t so much enjoy as endure the greeting with as much dignity as I could manage while casting envious glances at Tyler who failed to receive nearly a warm as greeting. But then he is merely the Arch-Servitor.

After that bone shattering debacle we, that myself as well as Tyler and my personal body guards, were given the privilege of touring the outpost and outlying territory. Starting with the turbolaser batteries cut into the jagged spear like mountain thrusting up out of the cloying sod to the half finished behemoths of the colossal starports and ending with the communal huts and shacks the laborers were bivouacked. Gnarled structures cobbled partly from prefab kits and whatever odd bits that could be looted from the building project itself, cloistered on the grungy shores of the Black sea which I’m sure would still be quite lovely if the body of water didn’t quite so live up to its name. Being thick, tar like sludge devoid of any organic matter but with excessive screening to filter out the harsh minerals and salts it’s dehydrogenate monoxide was sufficient to keep a man alive. If not particularly happy about it.

But that is the nature of Nephthys, utterly dead. No grass in its grayish soil, no fish in its oceans and no trees but the few struggling saplings Imperial edict had transplanted and nurtured. The deficit of this last point allowing the sun to bake down most mercilessly through the stale atmosphere both on the work-gangs toiling to erect the hab structures well as to myself being jetted around in an open air speeder. Which was why I pressed so strenuously when I did to retire to the army barracks, a semi-modern abode with climate regulation among other rudimentary amenities. Purest chance as I entered with all the regal fan fare and snapping of hard heeled boots onto the deck floor that I ran into the head of the Science division, at least on my part, assigned the study of nonhuman civilization which had once flourished. Further chance that she was such an inverse to the vigorous and testosterone laden atmosphere of which I had been surrounded with since leaving the Confederacy capitol. Even to this day I still feel the slight whisper of a smile as I think of the way the way she, a leggy blonde, sort of squeezed between two slabs of muscled beef whom looked as if they broke rocks with their faces and with a hesitancy born from a sense of awe stepped in front of me and before the base commander stop her extended her hand out and introduced herself.

I was instantly taken and not solely because I liked the look of her gams beneath the shapeless army issued trousers. She was assertive beneath her coy demeanor, an obvious requirement to attain rank in the cut throat atmosphere she traveled in, knowledgeable of a diverse range of topics and brazenly outspoken in manner the female courtesans would never be. Most particular she wanted my ear on the matter of inequality concerning her expedition compared to the Imperial garrison proper, questioning the logic of maintaining an heavily augmented regimented for a world where noting had lived for millennia. She possessing, shall we say, more noble outlook on convicted rapist, murderers and dissidents than I or Imperial justice. None the less I warmed to the subject, easily letting her coax from me an agreement to tour the research outpost, being a simple matter to arrange passage on the durable Lifter she’d come in to bring back the monthly provisions. After all as Lord Protector it was my right to ensure proper dispensation of Confederate expenditures as well the primary purpose of our visit had already been met. Truly since the Judgment arrived, the power to lay waste to continents and tens of thousands of veteran soldiers capable of doing that, but discounting that we had shown the flag and reminded warrior and laborer alike we’d hadn’t forgotten about them.

And so I went off with Dr. Inga Heckler leaving Tyler to the brunt mannerisms of the Imperial commander whom the Arch-Servitor took an interest in, like being perhaps too improper a word, conversing on possibly solutions to certain recurrent behavioral problems in the work-gangs. The standard flogging or example making execution I gathered was proving inefficient. Messy, dull work I was most glad to leave to them, instead sharing a bottle of Amsec I happened to have come across with the lovely Dr. Heckler as we were ferried up to the “mountain stronghold”. Really just a prefab garrison house cradled between and over the cloister of crumbling edifices whose protrusion from the surrounding stony matter were an uncanny reminder of the raw forces which had ended the alien civilization.

While the Judgment could easily have incinerated the recessed city, and indeed the peak it was built into, it would be at the cost of leaving little more than broiled glass as residue rather than the large intact chunks which predominate such “Dead worlds” through I digress. At the time I must confess having little interest in the ivory relics jutting like rotten teeth from the rocky soil, my attention distracted via a much closer concern. The thought not crossing my mind until much later when as I finished up the golden hued buttons of my uniform shirt, being effectively if not unduly cleaned in the interim, and leaned over to fasten my boots when Inga suggested I might benefit from seeing her work. Dreamingly weaving me spellbound as she talked about new vistas for mankind that they were unlocking, which at that time I hadn’t learned to feel the drip of ice water when hearing such phrases, from the depth of knowledge possessed by the “old ones” as she colorfully phrased it. Through I was later to discover the term was borrowed from a Merikan writer of “Weird Fiction” not that, by that time, such trivial matters were of any import to me. At the time I found myself most agreeing with the good doctor, getting up and following her realizing only later that in my haste I’d neglected my personal blaster.

Of the intervening period as we walked not much needs to be said, the barracks themselves were inconspicuous while the sepulcher like ruins we entered through a cut stairway through the floor was of the dull repetitive manner of all gothic mausoleums. I recall it being predominantly damp, the very air chilled and thick with the aura of dust and mold, and disorientatingly dark. On the alabaster walls which reared haphazardly around me, some collapsed or ruptured as if struck by a powerful blow, there were distinct murals of ghastly contemplation. Immense, bloated beings whose flabby claws up rooted trees, skinner white stalks crowned with five pointed heads whom waged futile war against the former and hunched, reptilian things which abashed themselves before glowing figures. Years later in certain tomes of eldritch lore, the Necronomican or Chronicle of Pious for instance, I would connect these lurid images with nightmarish calamity but then I was still young and innocent of the darker aspects which shadow us and merely attributed my unease to Xeno structure of the alien artwork.

Our destination was of similar atmosphere, vault doors of jade cut with graphic scenes immolation and destruction that opened to a darken crypt sparsely lit by electric torches left sitting in the room’s corners. The chamber’s center, posed on a bronze dais that in turn rested cobalt blue iron steps, rested an gold and silver encrusted sarcophagus to which Igna beckoned me towards. Following close on my heels, extolling to me the historical significance the discovery and the intact Queen who had once ruled this planet had in their understanding the eldritch race. Relating how it allowed the translation of the coppery text found on certain walls into the stanzas of the Emerald goddess. This, having obviously more than a passing knowledge of that deity, serving to at last freeze my soul as I stood atop of the platform. My hand painfully gripping the thick edge of the opened casket, listening to Igna approach from behind as I stared down not at any preserved remains but the shredded tatters of a wizened husk. My question on this matter, voice sounding strangely small and dry of lip, overshadowed by doctor Heckler’s most unpleasant laughter as well the scuttling scythe from the shadow laden ceiling above.

When at last Heckler did speak it was not to me, her tones losing all previous qualities to become the lickspittle of a sycophant, but I gathered to that which the veil of darkness mercifully smothered. Appraising me like one might chattel, of the power I could wield for the “cause”, to which the hidden thing made disgusting squealing noises. Its body sounding to scuttle more energetically as Heckler came from behind him clasping me in an embrace much more sterile and professionally than she had before, more phenomenal was the surge of strength with held me as if in bars of iron. All but crushing me as she leaned into my ear, whispering about the euphoric awakening I was to experience, and nudged my head skyward towards the grayish-white thing that descended.

Its exact details time and my own fear addled senses mercifully have blotted but I still have distinct impressions of a translucent, slimy creature with great mandibles and hooks outstretched towards me. Appendages I naturally recoiled from squirming madly screaming a litany of oaths and curses and while Heckler’s sudden vitality ensured she absorbed my frantic energies with little trouble she was far less able to with the shifting of my mass backwards. From there the planet’s one point one gravimetric field conspired with the narrow width of each of the iron steps to unseat her, Doctor Heckler falling backwards with me acting as a cushion against the ledge’s hard, lacerating edges. Each digging in with a splintering of bone as we bumpily skated down to the chamber’s floor, copious streaks of blood running down in rivulets in our wake joining the growing scarlet lake I straddled the center of. Dazed, aching through my back I gasped for breath through a raw throat now bruised with the purple shading of a delicate hand across it regaining some measure of my senses. Thoughts of flight emblazoned chiefly on my mind I tore at the limbs restraining me to the half crushed corpse and ripped them from my being, it was in that instant as I clenched her dainty wrists between my palms in which I felt life surge back vigorously if drunkenly through them. As well hearing from beneath my lifting head something tearing, my sole warning before a wet almost gelatinous mass coiled constrictingly about my throat silencing my panicked scream to a muffled grunt.

This then, renewed arms fighting to claw my face and a choking noose on my neck, I struggled against briefly before with fear induced strength I nearly wrenched Heckler’s arm off at its joint letting it fall limply beside us and reaching and finding missing my holster I instead reached my hard hewn palm against the slimy rope strangling me. Fingers biting down into its jellified flesh, ripping chunks out messily until with a pop and release of a most repellent musk I was freed and rolled off of the corpse through the blood gasping. Leaving Heckler’s remaining arm, which was a ruinous mess where my grip had crushed through her delicate skin and began turning her bones to powder, stretching feebly after me as she tried to make her back broken body rise. More of the transparent tendrils I was at that moment hurriedly unspooling from about me bursting forth from her torso in vain pursuit of me as well, the first signs of the parasitical agent which I’d become all too familiar.

But that was later, that moment I had far graver concerns as I was reminded by the fluttering of leathery wings. My eyes catching the glimmer of a grayish shape descending down from the dais which would have raked over me had not a burst of self-preservation fueled me and sent me scurrying like a singed sump rat against the chamber’s wall. Streaking bloody palm prints as I fumbled across it, traversing more by instinct towards the door than rational thought, until with that damming scything of wings through the air sensed a great weight behind me and the painful sting of pinchers against my ankle sending me tumbling into the musty corner. Across my cheek I rammed and dented the stand of one of the shabby electric torches, the light’s globe smashing open against the alabaster siding of the room in a burst of phosphorescent shards which spared me a more thorough look of the gray-creature as sharp nailed claws dug into my back and sides flipping me over. My face basked in the most horrendous, oily scent imaginable and I sensed rather than saw the rank dripping secreted proboscis with the pliant finger like feelers which began wedging open my mouth.

Bristling hairy things I don’t mind telling you that I was gracious for their retraction as I, in a flight of incoherent mortal dread, rammed the light pole I’d grabbed up like a spear through the creature’s abdomen. Its body, catching the still active filament from the shattered bulb, lighting up like certain luminous species of fish from deep water through with such lurid motion only the most grotesque caricature of its features was impressed upon my mind. Leaping away from me I heard it crash and turn about before the stand was pulled free and it grew silent. Regrettably later I was to learn the creature had only been stunned by the electrocution, such entities being unfathomably hard to destroy, through I did not bother to ascertain either way at the time of the facts. Instead making for the door and my forgotten blaster starting a terrifying odyssey which at its end would see the science outpost destroyed, the Queen of the Emerald goddess Heralds slaughtered by most unfortunately my own hand, and nearly a quarter of the prison population culled to combat this infectious conspiracy…" Extended excerpt from Lord Protector Krevin's autobiography " How to live through a life of service" circa 9 N.E. ( 1977 AD old calender)

Excerpt:

“…is not to say the Star Destroyer concept is bad and the “pure cruiser” concept is good but to articulate which is most felicitous for the most diverse of situations and environments in which our Naval forces can be expected to endure. On such balance the Star Destroyer concept, as exemplified by the Rommel class, are formidable warships which have most bravely defended Imperial space from incursion by alien forces as well for those of us privileged to had led a charge into the enemy’s teeth in one nothing can truly compare to a Star Destroyer. Further the larger size allows these star behemoths to traverse longer distances than medium cruisers, as exemplified by the Hunter class, could ever possibly manage. As well I do not challenge the conventional wisdom that a Star Destroyer is the most apt at meeting divergent threats be they planetary operations, hard assault into the enemy’s bosom or safeguarding the boarder.

Consulting Appendix C, covering the Confederacy’s per annum Naval expenditures, however does starkly erudites how a highly flexible Line of eight vessels composed of torpedo corvettes, medium cruisers and fully equipped escort carriers can be constructed for the price of a single Rommel class Star Destroyer. A fact demonstrated in Appendix D where during the disastrous battle at Wolf 359 the Hunter class cruisers accounted for the majority of hulls destroyed yet the three Rommel class losses equaled the medium cruiser in monetary terms. Additionally consider the loss of servicemen, each Star Destroyer carrying a compliment of fifteen thousand to convene every eventuality while as the Hunter class typically only handled a hundred and seventy sailors and marines. A warrior surplus which could be used towards specialized purposes allowing us to refine the quality of our forces or to be earmarked in increasing the size thereof.

Appendix E, detailing the destruction of a Vraen raiding party near Soth Karalinah, similarly shows the flexibility smaller, more numerous warships have in engagements. Medium cruisers Pride, Indomitable and Fearless engaged directly against the Xeno taskforce while fighter wings converged on either flanks of the formation and Torpedo corvettes Valor, Courage, Defiance, and Impertinent maneuvered in from below the enemy vessels in an equal distribution of firepower it would be difficult if not impossible to replicate with the larger Star Destroyer…” Excerpt of Robert Jackson’s treaties on Naval Doctrine, 12 NE (1980 AD Old Calendar)

Excerpt

II. The Mass-Knights Templars

“…blasphemous rites, calling upon the Pagan deity Draco, rang out as we descended into the crypt. The stench of rot and profound incenses burning our nostrils as we approached the flickering light whose essence was fueled by the sizzling of human salts and fats, bodies ripped from the stained clothes draped and tethered around their plague bound forms and flung in the pyre or hacked apart with a rusty ax head for a more grisly repast. The heathens, many of whom I recognized from my previous day excursions in the town’s surface as devote faithful of our merciful Lord, dancing around the flames gnawing on bloody ends of arms while a blood and pus soaked “savage” crouched atop a mountain of fleshy pink stained skulls bellowing dark, stygian words from a crude book tanned from a heavy leather I dare not speak my thoughts on its source and written in a mottled, red ink.

By the grace of God they were too engrossed in their own depravity to notice us until it was too late, the guardsmen stepping into the warm glow of their hellish flame swords and axes drawn most willing to carry out this most holy of tasks of ridden His most beloved world of such filth. Many of their number having lost loved ones, friends to the plague sowed by the cultists and faced with their desecration were fueled by righteous anger making quick work of it. Of which I watched at the fire’s edge speaking naught as each in turn was cut down, pleas falling on deaf ears, but for the gross and naked chieftain who alone had neither tried to run from his fate or resist. Accepting the ax blow which severed his arm with the most sanguine of humors, and would have laughingly bled himself to death had not I instructed his wound tended.

Being equal sure to retrieve his fallen book of browned flesh and spare it from the fiery torch which the guardsmen put all traces of the corpse-eaters under. Taking both it and the ghoul-king with me when I left that accursed village to the benevolence of our Lord and Savior, the former a puzzle box of mystery and the latter the key to deciphering it. The writing in it coarse and heavily blotted, not Latin or Greek or the whispering words of Kendu or even the Emerald devils butcherious tongue. The etchings made on certain pages, depicting a great scaled beast devouring the very heavens or of lecherous cretins grown fat and bloated upon the decaying wretches of the dead, speak of only ill tidings from this venture but perhaps through this knowledge man can be spared further this blight. Even now, with every plunge of the poker’s hot tip, the former chieftain’s screams grow more frantic, his melancholic more disturbed, and I know I am closer to his teaching me his the meaning of his scandalous language…” Excerpt from the Chronicles of Pious

Krona, Denerio-

III. Defender ManoWar

From down the barrel his pulse rifle hissed, the piercing dart shooting out across in an eye blink. Killgore shifting his aim as one of the revolting, mottled flesh hybrid’s head shattered open in vivid gore. Putrid sludge splattering against the artificial cavern’s walls, joined by another and another as they streamed forth from the depths of the tunnel. The darkness shriveling against the glare of the flame-cannons which swept out from behind the thrusting, rabid ranks of the defiled spawn. Disjointed scabby anthropoid limbs scurrying beside scaly finned ones, iron axes and war hammers rose towering clutching in pinchers or fleshy clawed hands, angular jaws filled with barbed teeth stretched open in hellish shrieks alongside horned beaks that could clip through bone like the ethers. From all of this they came, howling mad banshees craving if they were to perish one last taste of sweet blood.

And Killgore raised his head from them to Thyde standing behind him and then to Mnorel who knelt at the pit’s lip beside the hanging cable and nodded. Turning back in time to catch the final life spurt from a mutant pegged by one of the others and to catch the sword edge of the one which came behind it. Deflecting it, bending beneath the barbed tendrils which snapped out from beneath the thing’s ratty cloak and drove the butt of his rifle into the thing’s chest with a satisfying crunch. Stepping over it, heel digging down into its mushy, boneless face, as he swept his weapon to knock astray a hyrbid’s flame-cannon, dosing itself and others, and unclipped a handgun from its sheath. Firing it twice into the tendril whipping thing on the floor once he passed from it then raising it to claim the shrieking, burning aliens who danced about him.

“Get out of here. Complete the mission.” He commanded falling himself with the blazing corpses the whittling of a moment ahead of the silver crested war hammer.

Its fat, bloated owner catching himself as he spun, righted and swung the heavy point above his pulsating face which twisted towards where Killgore was rising. The vertical slash of its mouth becoming a parody of a smile right before its head vanished in a hail of spittle, the rest of its paunchy body slumping forward the hammer’s point cracking the foundation the First Atune had been. Now he was half a meter away wielding his pulse rifle in one hand and a flame-cannon in the other which he crisscrossed over the horde. Thyde sweeping over the ruined train tracks to join him, his own gun steadily chewing away at the accumulated filth.

“Sometimes I wonder why I bother to waste my breath.” The First Atune, already feeling his surge of adrenalin ebbing, complained sparing a glance towards his subordinate.” I thought I told you to reach the survivors?”

“Mnorel’s a big boy, he can handle it.” Thyde laughed letting his rifle’s clip drop and slamming in a fresh one.” Besides there is no way I’m going to let you die in some stupid heroic last stand and cheat me out of my “Keep you alive” bonus. I mean the Exalted Treasurer I just bought a new boat. I mean did you ever stop and think about my needs?”

“Briefly but it passes.” Came the reply, Killgore tossing his weapons away and reaching for a pair of Rippers he unloaded viciously into the screeching mass.

[Praeothmin]

Nice, I feel like I'm watching a documentary on the war, with the footage from one operation to the other cycling through my screen... :)

[sonofccn]

More random drippage from my brain while I work on my Narrative.

“My opinion on cruisers and destroyers? Judgment. Beyond her what more needs to be said?” Lord Protector Krevin when courted for favor on the “Navy Debacle”

“…it is, has been said, not whether if the “Aviation-Cruiser” concept or “Taskforce doctrine” is merely a choice between ill and fortune. It is what our fragile but precious Confederacy can best bear the burden of. Matter of economics, however dry and untitillating, for the most part define sensible policy and sound practices. But only after careful weighing of the matter, sides originally hidden from cursory glance culpable of altering the entire arrangement.

Such prologue, which I unabashedly admit, serves my illuminating the real costs of either Naval doctrines which can be observed in our proud fighting arm. Nor is such costs borne wholly in the in the initial monetary offset of purchase either an “Aviation-Cruiser” as personified by the Rommel class Star Destroyer or an entire task force made up of corvettes and medium cruisers. There are costs, or “theoretical savings”, which are paid through a vessel’s life from the moment it leaves drydock till it is scrapped. The price of its consequences, in every instance where it is unavailable or unusable for the task at hand, which must be carefully vetted.

To consider it must be included in any calculations of cost that the Taskforce doctrine, while tactically more flexible, is strategically limited. The deficit of available reactant storehouses for the fusion furnaces, or indeed on older models from the Founding the FISSION reaction-chamber, midwifed with the phenomenal cost of superluminal speed inhibits their range to a catastrophic degree. Requiring, if we are to embrace these assets, that we accept a static defense, with the increased burden of greater system forces, or a dearth and vulnerability to those on the edges of our realm’s great breadth. Further such a shift would force, by economic fiat, a regress of our domain’s expansion if not a total elimination of it by requiring battlegroups of tens of vessels as opposed to a lone Star Destroyer to ply the darken celestial waters of the galaxy. Each vessel more dependent upon the hearth of our Confederacy, requiring to return to our border sooner, then is currently.

Further…”Excerpt of Arch-Servitor Mallus Tyler pamphlet “Trends of Naval development and their scientific analysis” published 12 N.E.( 1980 old Calendar)

“…can gleam that, accounting for the populace’s unruly nature, I insist upon a “light touch” where it concerns the subjects beneath our rule. An obvious refrain, to those who are worthy of aspiring to my office, would be the query if I intend to yield free reign to whatever uncouth planet so desires it with its gross desires and shibboleths. Which I must resoundingly answer in the negative less I renounce the entire whole of my teachings you have so digested, it’s founding that of bringing order to the chaos of the galaxy.

But there is and must be an entire strata of “encouragement” to provoke a world’s representation upon the proper path. The easiest, and more directly effective, I have found lay in the adjustment of gradient in a planet’s Tithe level. The merest suggestion by a Collector of increasing a planet status from Standard to Exemplary and thus its Tithe percentage I have found will have a planet scurrying to court your favor and in so doing take upon themselves any ill tidings the proposed policies may produce.

However, as with all things, such practices must be used with constraint. Lacking subtly a too pronounced policy can only attract misfortune as a rod of iron attracts lightening. Over the years I have found it most advantageous, if more tasking and requiring a firm hand, to bypass the ruling judgment and alter the people’s directly. While the exact manner must always vary in accordance to specific world and indeed region in which you wish to sway as an general example I have found the publication of short and concise booklets pertaining to the subject, giving the illusion of open debate even while avoiding the opponent’s and magnifying ones own points, to make great inroads. Further on that score, and keeping with the established goals, I have had much success adopting the language and mannerisms of the “Scientific”, save in those specific locals were more traditional dogma would still be in place, finding that the populace, bereft of any formal education on such heady matters, almost cling to the expert who most clearly and strenuously speaks in an assured manner. So…”Extended excerpt from Archservitor Mallus Tyler manuscript “Treaties on Subservience and Devotion” circa 55 N.E. ( 2023 A.D. old calendar)

[Praeothmin]

You should post the manuscrips in their full versions some day... :)

[sonofccn]

And so I return, the stygian eldritch horrors which dwell beyond the veil of man's mind at last returning the discordious siren song which hauntingly paints for me these nightmarish vistas encrusted before you all.

“The outbreak occurred in the industrial slums before moving into the sewer system, quite close in fact to property held beneath the Archbald estate. A family with a…colored…history in the study and exploitation of materials and organisms classified as hostile.” Agent John concerning the, contained, outbreak of the Corpus Ereptor strain on the colony-world Minerva

Last chance-catacombs-


I. Frontline-Pillar

During his academy days young Stiles had faced three obstacles. One had been his drill instructor, a mammoth South Colonial incensed to ensure only those “hard enough” graduated to become officers to the Imperium, another had been the tactical-strategic portion of the courses and the last had been the zero-gee training. The lack of standard gee setting his stomach on edge which wasn’t helped by the rank aroma of the mining tunnels themselves, reeking of the toil of sweat and general human waste spiced with grease and oils.

Grungy cables of stygian black coiled and snaked in and out of the harsh stonework of each, feeding filthy bulbs which flickered and sputtered with hazy waxing yellow light, adding to the nauseating scene their frayed coatings peeling apart and releasing hosts of inorganic particles into the dank atmosphere. The motes wriggling listlessly in the stagnate ethers barely moved by the circulating fans whose creaking whirling rattled in the background, a repetitive whine like the crossing of squeaky springs with fingers across a chalk board, souring the officer’s already malicious mood.

“Bottom level.” He called out, mimicking Colonel Kratz words, to the rest of his command who filtered down the rusty ladder and drifted out through the artifice and rock face door past him like great leathery wings unfurling.” Let’s not Feth this Bantha sitting.”

A full blown plastic boy the Colonel of course was officially regarded by a numerical designation but that had never sunk into Kratz. Rugged chin, sparkling eyes and a knowing smirk he’d commanded an image and presence more fitting the square jawed heroes in the action holos, like them taking to battle without his helmet and full pomp regula. Not even catching a blaster bolt from a Rebel soldier in the face, requiring an artificial replacement for his right eye and parts of his skull, had knocked any sense into him. Or lessened the self-importance in his own mind’s eye, forcing Stiles and his men to wait shortly past the docking area listening to the sounds of the dying battle while the pompous excrement-eater had his armor polished one more time and then announce his arrival with the Imperial Anthem playing from a portable speaker.

“ No Lieutenant, the situation is in control.” He’d answered Stiles’s obvious request to get to the fighting, the twist of his muscles scar tissue giving his smile a very hard edge.” Herding the survivors into improvised detention centers…no what I need is you down in the Bottom level. Took the fight out of them already but…places is a labyrinth. Will take hours to scour away every last corner, time my boys could better spend topside against the few holdouts. It’ll be a bantha sitting, I’m sure your men can handle it.”

And looking into that sneering grin Stiles could only nod and agree to sending his men on an errand run, poking around a dingy grotto while the plastic men get all the valor and prestige. Just like you saw in the news-holos, lovingly playing across stormtroopers taking bunkers or marching prisoners but never the Imperial Army stuck off camera.

“Immediate area is secure Lieutenant.” Harrow whispered, coasting through the air beside the hovering Stiles, splitting and directing the curved “wings” down separate branches of the tunnel network.” Place is a ghost town.”

“Fething typical. “Icemen” can’t even be bothered to show.” Stiles complained venting, swishing through the air between the mouths of the passages.

His men clutching to the edges of each opening, peering down into the solemn depths, searching for signs in the shadows. Pale circular swaths from illuminators switching on and cutting over the scraggily wall revealing among other twisted strips of artifice rusted signs the color of blood warning occupants to wear headgear. But not a trace of life, not a soul.

“Fethers likely got lost.” A soldier nicked “Reaper” cackled, laugh short and brutal as it broke into a sputtering wheeze from his powder dissolved sinuses, kicking forward past the Lieutenant to take the forward most tunnel.” Plastic boys couldn’t find their arse without a holodisplay.”

“Yeah well I ain’t crawling through tens of cubic kilometers of rock just to find their sorry faces.” Harrow declared for the unit, the Sergeant twisting around and stretching an arm out towards a rear clinging warrior.” Lucius if you please.”

Equipped with a field high powered transmitter, personal transmitters unlikely to pierce far into such a warren, the grisly solider eased himself forward. The play of the catacomb’s light on his features as unnerving to Stiles as the first time he’d witnessed it, his face a web of scar tissue running up from his chin to his shaved bald scalp. All on full display because he chose not to wear his helmet, not that the Lieutenant would have been particularly heartbroken to lose such a visage his own self.

“Here.” He spoke handing the receiver over to the Sergeant, the words more oozing from his shriveled lips than being articulated by them.

Taking it Harrow cradled it beneath his own helm and spoke into it, his hard features for the first Stiles had seen faltering for a moment after he did so. Saw something light up in the Sergeant’s eyes which hadn’t existed before, not since that day off the shore of a blood soaked island. The look of surprise.

“What the hell is this? Games?” He thundered and, on a look from the Lieutenant, handed the receiver over to his commanding officer.

Lifting it up to his own ear he heard first only the grating hiss of static, reminding him too much of the fans’ scraping, but then beneath it, a hoary murmur ebbing along the edges of the static, he heard it. Voices, several possibly so hard was it to tell one from another with their guttural and low tones.

“Hunger…itchy…hunger…”They wailed through the radio’s emitter, a scratchy pleading quality to them all.

“See?” Harrow asked seeing Stiles’s expression.” What do you make of that Lieutenant?”

“Mind games?” Stiles suggested tossing the receiver back to the leering Lucius.” Back on Umbara the natives did calls like that during the War and occupation…weird shrieks in the night, taking people out in the mists…anything to shake’em up.”

From his place at the tunnel mouth’s up ahead Reaper’s chronic snorting became particularly sharp unlike Harrow who openly laughed at the comparison. Others sharing at best charitable looks at the officer or downright contemptuous, the Lieutenant even hearing a few sniggers at his expense.

“Sure they did, bet you fought there between having your nanny changing your diapers” Lucius cackled wearing a grin a Karkarodon would have been envious of.

“Psychosis of War and its effects under Doctor Pjem Tiller actually. I may have only managed a seventy-one in his class but he covered the Umbara campaign extensively. The planet made Geonosis look like a field day.”

“ Lieutenant Geonosis was before any of us but that’s minor but regardless there is a problem with your theory.” Harrow piped up.” The transmitter is preset to the plastic boys’ channels.”

“Meaning…?”Stiles drawled not seeing the merit.

“It means that their frequency is scrambled to prevent enemy interception.” Reaper grunted, the soldier producing a small vial from his person and unscrewing the capsule’s lid carefully.” So either someone cracked the code or is broadcasting from their gear. Either way means we are in deep silt.”

Letting a smell clump of the glittering powder escape from the vial, briefly swirling in the air, while he closed the capsule and then coaxed it into a nostril with a particularly loud snort. Slipping the container into a pocket sheath he then shook his head at the burning sensation crawling up his sinus cavity and to help induce the desired effects of the dried and grounded up substance, first and foremost the luminous ferocity glowing in his eyes. Nor was he alone, several others taking additional “samples” at his proclamation of which they all seemed to carry copious amounts of.

“They’re not paying us to suck our thumbs here folks. Finish up and let’s do this.” Harrow boomed kicking out to the center of the chamber selecting men with a wave of his hand.” Quick and clean search for retrieval, either enemy or friendly. A twenty-five meter run and then flip back, plastic boys can go get lost looking for their own if they want further. And these tunnels twist into each other. Cover your sixes and for Emperor’s sake don’t shoot each other.”

Finishing he drifted over towards Reaper, gently turning through the air with his own smirk beckoning Stiles over along with the others selected for Harrow’s group. A lot which included not only the scarred Lucius but the addled Berserker whose entire skin hung taunt and ripple as if about to rip from his bones. His smile without the self-awareness of Harrow’s or the unrepented malice of Lucius’s rather it was merely the contraction and contortion of nerves and muscle fiber making it all the more chilling.

The chemical sloshed man was without the doubt the last being in the galaxy, except perhaps a Megarachnid, which Stiles would want fighting beside him as were the rest of the men in his command. Sump rats through the marrow but his sump rats the Lieutenant consoled himself, his general disgust with them incapable of competing against the jittery exuberance he felt towards the promise of combat.

Of the execution of duty, the upholding of the ideals on which the Empire had been founded. The New Order’s New Man, what his father had first cherished and triumphed only to turn his back against in the Lieutenant’s later years. And it was that betrayal perhaps why young Stiles had rejected the world of politics, whose foundation was slippery and elusive as a puff of smoke, for the hard reality of the armed forces. The stark and clear vision, shown so brightly on the News-Holos, of the men and women who expanded and protected the domain of the Imperium, what he’d craved after witnessing his father turn from the forces of progress. Becoming, in spirit if not deed, a relic of the banished ages he’d so long waged against. One in which greed had whetted ambition, where the purses of both unscrupulous senators and corrupt industrial tycoons had fattened at the expense of the noble human citizen slaving beneath their, directly and indirect, alien masters.

Such was a world his fathered had championed, witnessed by the Lieutenant as he grew, raging against the avarice and splendor of the likes of the Trade Federation or the Banking Clan. Only to lose some sense of his vigor, and proportion, after the onset of such a world. A world Stiles had sworn to protect.

“Got something.” Someone breathed between the intermittent stripes of light and shadows of the tunnel-work.

Revealed to be a living shadow which detached itself from the rough hewn wall it had been gliding across and swimming out past the rusted pipes and defunct ventilation shaft grate, the Lieutenant recognizing only after the deed was done that it was Reaper. Watching as he vanished on a bend in the passage then returned draping over his shoulder that which by some sound, glint of movement or perhaps scent had alerted him. A white bundle resolved into a stormtrooper when Reaper edged to a halt before the fire team, hovering in front of the Sergeant as he unspooled the listless warrior and laid him out to the NCO like a gift to some hungry forgotten god.

“Nearly a squad worth of them back there…all the same.” Reaper whispered again, voice like a scythe cutting against a grindstone, raising his hand to the cracked fissure running down the side of the trooper’s helm.

Dried, crusty residuals of human plasma seeped up from it, more coating the outer layers of plastiod a light pinkish hue, that was revealed to be a garish head wound. Much of the man’s left temple had been ruptured, jagged splinters of bone protruding inward in a circular formation, unlike blaster or bolt fire but no less total in its destruction. And yet the trooper lived, eyes lazily flicked across the roof of the warren while his mouth twisted in cants of faltering gibberish and his chest rose and fell in a haggard sequence.

“Report trooper.” Harrow demanded sliding beside the warrior and roughly grabbing his jowls and face and twisting him to look at the Sergeant.” What happened here?”

“Hungry…food…”The man whined for what surely must have been his last meal.

“Answer me!” Harrow demanded wrenching the man up, the two spinning about like puppet and master intertwined in some ghoulish dance, trying to force some sense into his dying frame.

And from his side Stiles felt Lucius cough, the first noises he made since entering the tunnel, and feeling conscious of the ice water dripping fright running down his back the Lieutenant craned his neck to face the death-face of the man. That grin of his plastered solidly there as he held up the receiver to the transmitter from which came not the scratchy moaning voices which had plagued it but other human ones. But very low, less than even the cryptic wandering voices which scythed freely across the crumbling gothic ruins in horrifically bad Holo-Vids. So muted it took Stiles a moment to realize they were from his own command.

“…survivors…bad way…” The voice faintly crooned through the background static, entire words sinking through the distortion’s haze.”Unresponsive.”

“This is Lt. Stiles. Message confirmed, we’ve found our share as well.” He reciprocated into the speaker after the barest hesitancy on where the button stud he needed to press was.

Treated to another burst of static as the soldier attempted to respond, submerging any meaning to the stray utterances which managed to escape from the speaker, and made all the harder to hear as Harrow’s interrogation intensified. Reaper helping, Berserker edging his mouth foaming body closer in anticipation, propping the stormtrooper upright leaving free the Sergeant to more vigoriously conduct his questioning. The look on Harrow’s face while he did it not all together unhappy.

“Speak trooper, what where the enemy’s numbers! Where’d they go, had did they ambush you!” He coarsely inquired between treatments, receiving only further hoary whispers whose oily tones reeked of unrepented starvation.

The sort one expected to hear in the bellow of a Rancor rather than an intelligent, sapient being. Or at least Stiles thought so, feeling the shivering crawl of that ice water again along his back as he shifted uncomfortably close to Lucius and attempted to adjust the modulation. Only attempted because of the leathery vise which snatched his hand from the air, a hand as scarred as its owner’s face holding the Lieutenant’s in an unbreakable grip.

“I will do that.” He murmured, more oozing darkness than vocal tones, letting the officer struggle in futility for a moment before releasing him and reaching around him to the backpack unit.” Better?”

Stiles nodded as the static receded ever so slightly allowing the soldier’s voice, different from the one before, come through. A separate fire team, and one which was in the process of cornering an elusive target rather than finding another batch of plastic boys.

“Crazy…skull broke open…eating when we saw him…” The voice narrated with increasing choppiness as more rock was placed between the two transmitters.” Bolted…storeroom…flushing…”

“Say again? Broke someone’s skull open and…repeat your transmission.” The Lieutenant demanded feeling the running fear crystallize over his spine.” I say again repeat your transmission.”

Cupping the receiver hard against the side of his head straining to hear against the whistling howl of interference, rewarded for his efforts but with the voice of the first fire-team whose profanity tipped outburst pierced through the deafening cocoon of static.

“Feth! Mother Fe…alive…under…feth!” The voice screamed, laced with fear and jacketed with the captured noises of Imperial weapon’s fire.

Definitely Imperial issue, Stiles having listened to them plus typical and common Rebel and Alien variants to learn the difference, and yet for some reason it didn’t reassure him. Not nearly as he doubled down shouting orders through the electronic ether in vain hope that by will alone he’d direct pieces he could feel slipping from his grasp. Uselessly babbling into it as the voices within it spun away into incoherent shrieks and warning cries, plaintive cries he couldn’t answer as he twisted towards the Sergeant still locked away in his own private efforts.

Harrow currently then punching the stormtrooper, as he’d done dozens of times previously, into his gut in hopes of provoking some response from the nigh catatonic wreck. This time through, in what erased the joyish grin from his face, he felt something shift beneath the white plastiod armor. Beneath the stormtrooper’s very flesh, a cancerous clump which twisted away from the Sergeant’s weathered fist and then slithered up. Becoming apparent as an inching bulge up through the man’s throat then crossing over his chin and cheek towards his right eye. The bloated apparition sinking just short of the socket with a splintering crack, submerging as Harrow leaned in his grin replaced with a deepened furrow.

A visage then treated to concealing pus as the stormtrooper’s eyeball first bulged outward then exploded releasing a viscous shower and a darting black shadow which instinctively dove towards the tender tissue of the human face and the sweet brain meat beneath. Its tiny, rapier like mandibles unfurling in a petal like configuration to bite down when another shadow closed around it. Its jaws snapping shut with a pained squeak a fraction of a millimeter from its prey, dark ribbons of jellified matter oozing out between the Sergeant’s crushing hand.

“The fethers a brood carrier! Reaper re-“ Harrow shouted, releasing the larva form, snapping his attention back the stormtrooper just as he arched his body backwards despite the popping noises that resulted.

Mouth stretching open in an inhuman scream that only ended when the jaws slammed closed over Reaper’s shoulder. Tearing a mouthful for itself, more armor than tissue, which it chewed as it unbent its body and focused on pulling itself free from its restraining soldier’s grasp. Pulling an arm out, joint crunching with bits protruding along the edge, and twisting it to claw at the still fighting Reaper’s face when a ionizing red bolts of energy ruptured the limb below the elbow in a burst of incinerated flesh. The all too human scream of the mortal warrior whose face was caked in the cremated matter drowned out by heavy silence of Berserker’s drug fueled assault.

Swooping in driving both feet first into the body knocking it away, driving the vibroblade attached below his gun barrel again and again into the body hacking bits away. Triggering his gun as he did so, each high powered shot gouging a steaming crater, basking in the effects with single-minded ferocity. And all utterly soundless, jaws clenched tightly shut with muscular spasms, without a cry of joy or acknowledgment of pain.

Unlike Reaper whose body kicked through the air and against the cavern wall screaming, ripping at the burning greasy matter he’d been splattered with. Nerves he’d once thought dulled to the point destruction by the powder’s affects he now found heightened to phenomenal levels.

“You bantha kisser! You nearly took my fething face off!” He howled, still cupping half his face, turning his head after the diligently working Berserker.

Only seeing then the head, severed, lunge through the air and clamp down on the drug addled warrior’s wrist or the bloated maggot like black leeches vomit up in a nebulous cloud from the stormtrooper’s torso. Digging into Berserker’s, their wriggling bodies vanishing into the bloody cavities they clawed only to find their host had no qualms following after with his bayonet and fingers.

“By the Emperor…” Stiles, sounding like he was calling for his mother, whimpered seeing the besieged soldier, the head still gnawing on his limb, plunge his blade into his shoulder with a spray of ruby mist.

The flaying droplets tinted black from the secretions of the wiggling mass he’d sawed in two, both segments floating out as Berserker, at last, turned his attention to the biting head. Turning towards the cavern wall and striking against it until the head turned to pulp and its jaws snapped to splinters. The resultant jetsam floating about him like tendrils of seaweed as his bulging, chemically excited eyes panned from the mutilated corpse, which at last had ceased fighting him or spawning the sharp beaked leeches, to the squad worth of once human creatures which scampered from around the tunnel’s bend. Helmets thrown off to the way side revealing hungered, soulless features incensed and driven by the rich boutique of warm blood filling the corridor.

“Berserker fall back, everyone back to the access shaft.” Harrow commanded cradling his rifle but letting his target drift to catch which ever one first made the break for them.

“That may not be so easy.” Lucius, smile in his words, quipped drawing one of his sabers from his hilt and turning towards the rear.

Festering shadows crawling along the wall or swimming through the center to meet them, bedraggled and bloody specimens with haunted eyes in their sockets. Their jaws twitching in a low, chanting moan promising themselves a succulent feast, a repast to end the all consuming hunger.

“Meat…crave…hungry…blood wet…juicy…”They crooned, joined in by the first group as they closed the circle around the human warriors.

The tunnel filling with their mortal screams…

To be continued:

[sonofccn]

“ The satellite was found orbiting a radiogenic world, tentatively labeled Mixcoatal, engulfed in atomic dust clouds. Inside the orbiting metal sphere a metallic onyx colored tablet was recovered engraved with a message recurring in scripts, glyphs and pictographs. Translated reads as follows: 1000 moons/revolutions/time-units ago the Living Scourge/Despoiler arrived to find a paradise. We, the people of Sacred Moon/Night Star, leave it as a poisoned waste. A monument if not in victory of our people then a defeat for the most dreadful pestilence of the Outer-Spheres.” Excerpt of the Bureau report concerning the recovered “Solemn Star” orbital .

“…despite my previous warning entombed in this great work I have found the use of multimedia effective in swaying a populace. This is not a recanting of my previous warning, for those beleaguered minds who even recognize the seeming contradiction, but acknowledgment of the power, if wielded properly and intelligently which is always the most pertinent problem, such methods wield even with the risks.

And there risks of that you can be most assured. To reiterate for the elucidation of those with whom it is still struggling there is no greater sword against one’s self than poor propaganda. Nothing will turn the subjects upon the Lord Protector’s goals than a piece of cinema or text which obviously and grossly insults their intelligence or credulous nature. Which far too many of the childish attempts are, bungling trash with all the subtly of a starving Reek which assumes the audience is composed of numbed imbeciles requiring points laboriously implanted.

Such is the butcher’s mindset, raw force and unbridled vigor, when a more subdued nature is called for. In a piece of pro-Confederate fluff for instances it is unneeded and indeed counter-productive for the name of the Confederacy of Man or the glories of the Lord Protector to make an appearance. Such spectacle too crash, too likely to draw attention to itself and away from the message we want. No to do something so blatant is already to fail and I trust those of you dear readers who imbibe of my wisdom understand how I treat failures.

No instead rather we are talking of a motion picture, a news reel, a radio program, a piece of literature or even a stump speech delivered by a manipulated locally held official should focus on the great virtues of the humanities. Through word and deed the audience should be encouraged for their independent thought, through constrained by the need of the collective whole, their courage in the face of adversity, their great compassion and desire for social justice, their industriousness their purity above the reckless and violent Xeno races which pollute our galaxy and numerous other shinning examples of the greatness of Homo Sapiens. They should be drilled and encouraged on these topics leaving it to their own minds to form the logical conclusion that the Confederacy of Man is the embodiment of these qualities. Tenfold will flock willingly to our banners without us having need say a solitary word in our “favor” then would with the most proactive and intense alternatives.

Of a converse nature these works should consider to hinder or nullify cultural residue which may be disharmonic to the Confederacy of a whole. Obviously those that suggest the alien and MAN can survive side by side but as well, and I stress caution here, those of a too individualistic nature. By matter of necessity we must cultivate the illusion of free will in our subjects which we garnished with a healthy devotion to the collective body. A General Will to which every “free-person” must bow to and which certain anti-social elements will champion the personal over the collective. Now your initial reaction to those who would put their personal pursuits above the Lord Protector’s likely ranges from ostracizing to summary execution through such acts are heavy handed and counter-productive on many levels. Firstly by too directly showing our presence in a negative manner as well second by enforcing an incorrect notion. It is unseemly to be viewed as punishing those attempting to better themselves, as many of such will attempt to justify their actions, and dangerous to reward sloth, another tightrope tackled further down, and in my experience it is most beneficial to come to an understanding with such forces rather then whole sale destruction or banishment. Much effort should be expended reinforcing that it is not so much the public good versus the private but that both together complete and enhance one another, another of the great tasks those of you who wish to follow after me must complete in order to justify your desire.

Another, and one you may feel more freely to dispense or ridicule, inhibiting cultural residue would be a sycophantic fetish for classical Sovereign arch-liberties. Distinct from law and stability encouraged and mandated by the Confederacy, in conjugation with local statutes, such archaic notions regard the individual subject as indivisible and separate from the power of the State. Such qualms, if allowed to propagate through the local governance, chaffs at the absolute control of the Imperium beyond their marshy atmosphere and questioning the right of the Confederacy to enact such rulings and in some extreme cases even the Lord Protector’s, often theoretical, Supremacy over them. Many a world was temporally lost to wild rebellion when its larders were full and its people otherwise content merely from a friction of such banality as representation of Tithe allotment. Such can not be readily tolerated…"Extended excerpt from Archservitor Mallus Tyler manuscript “Treaties on Subservience and Devotion” circa 55 N.E. ( 2023 A.D. old calendar)

*

You should post the manuscrips in their full versions some day... :)

Well my first instinct was to say not to encourage me but after skipping an entire week I can't say I don't need a the odd encouragment to stay focused. Still I'm surprised you put up with my pesudo-political junk, I mean I get a kick out of it but doesn't it come off a little dry?

[sonofccn]

Another update.

“ …operation against Commando’s sky-fortress ended with only partial success. The retrofitted Kriegmarine carrier Karl Donitz, sister ship to the Graf Zeppelin, was successfully captured and the prototype “SUN-RAY” was destroyed but the insurgent Commando himself escaped and due to assets expended in the effort smaller detailed raids across American/European assets were successfully conducted ensuring the material continuation of the insurgency for some unprecedented time to come.” Agent John’s report on operation Headshot.

Last Chance, Catacombs-

I. Hammerfall last man standing.

“Lets rock!”

The words coming sharp and clear in Stiles ear despite the muffling of high energized particle weapons flooding the tunnel space, some part of the officer’s reeling mind linking the outburst to Reaper who energetically swam through the air towards a stormtrooper which moved wrong. All squished and hunched together, its limbs moving in a disjointed and lethargic patterns, like a half crushed spider it bobbed off of the passage’s ceiling and contorted down towards the skull emblazoned warrior only to be bisected by the scarlet rads of plasma. The radiant matter shattering plastiod armor plate and boiling flesh, gusts of atomized tissue shooting out from the craters as the body continued to sweep towards him. Bloody fingers stretching to claw the warrior’s face as Reaper flipped backwards beneath the perforated wretch, their two images appearing to collude into one as Stiles revved about to find an infected, his face pulsating with sub dermal larva, drawing upon him its jaws widening to strike.

Managing a feeble outcry the officer recoiled from the soulless abomination striking others around him and tumbling about in the weightless void like a helpless babe, catching only snippets of the corpse like hellion scuttle through the ether. Jagged, hook like hands thrusting out to snag him and pull him towards a yawning maw that with each revolution seemed to grow even larger. A stygian orifice which drew him in freezing his confounded and jumbled thoughts, the terror numbing his mind and leaving himself with only a hazy outline of his hand jumping up and catching his attacker’s jaw beneath the chin pushing it aside or how he wrangled the angle of the attack pushing the stormtrooper up and over him just as his drill instructor had painfully schooled him. Following after onto the back of infected he let his grip on the man’s jowls slide until he had his arm tightly coiled down beneath stormtrooper’s throat and bared head and then complimented it by reaching with his other hand down beneath the infected cheekbone.

Giving a twist he kicked off, sending the body towards the floor, away from the still malevolent eyes which glowered and gnashed its teeth as he sailed away. Righting himself and turning away from the backwards sitting head in time to catch white gauntleted hand raked across his face, another driving into his chest like dagger tips, knocking him into a tumble through the air. The thick plastoid sheath of a plastic boy’s helmet bashing into him next from what appeared to be a whitish torpedo, the impact christened with a splintering crack Stiles was far from certain the ownership of. Rearing back unafflicted by the blow, as opposed to the officer’s swirling and double exposed world, the infected swung its faceguard away with a sudden and painful looking jerk to the side and tried again.

And promptly vanished in a scarlet hail of its own blood, a choking Stiles belatedly seeing the imprint of the dark shadow which had passed between. Trailing after its faded image to Lucius, shed of his communication gear, holding aloft a pair of his sabers. Both equally stained with the blood of his former comrades, the latest’s head swirling down through the billowing ruby cloud towards the floor. A crimson marking between its eyes showing where the blade had pierced through its skull ending its malignant life through not the oily black tendril which poked its way out from the side like a chick breaking through its shell. Similar creatures emerging from the bleeding corpse, shooting out from the ruptured wounds in small schools which invariably were drawn towards the swordsman. Perhaps attracted to his swift and energetic motions as he confronted the spawn or perhaps sensing some kindred hunger to his attacks.

“Unshackled yourself Lieutenant. Live for this moment…” Lucius whispered in tones best found in the moldering remains of forgotten sepulchers.”…and live for all time.”

The swordsman himself unshackled to severe a clump of the brain leeches, backwards kick another corpse-fiend away and run through a third. This last he swept his second sword up towards to eclipse the head as the other sawed its way up through the figure’s torso. A particularly strain of delight on Lucius frayed face as he was engulfed by the resultant detritus and seeking vermin which vomited from the sheared corpse. Body a dancing blur beneath the haze while Stiles scrambled his from the enveloping cloud.

Only tearing his eyes away from the twinkling neither fiend darting from one of the encroaching infected to the other when he struck a howling specter he recognized only after as sergeant Harrow. Shrieking commands to the oscillating and fluidic battle the noncom struck five round square through the chest of a stormtrooper and when those failed to stop the former human he’d settled on rushing it and swinging his rifle against its thick skull. And then again as the thing snapped back at him caving its jaw into itself before twisting his blaster around and finishing the destruction started.

Looking back over towards the still and mindlocked Stiles the sergeant only fixed him with a scowl before rolling with his gun to tag a scuttling horror which had been leaping towards the blood drenched Berserker. The body, head and neck a pockmarked mess, bouncing unsensed against the chem choked warrior. He instead lunging to pin another opponent to the rockface, its body twisting and convulsing against the vibroblade parsing through it.

“Time to earn your pay Lieutenant. Up and at them.” Harrow crooned shifting to a fresh target.

“By the Emperor!” Stiles cursed in reply, eyes widening as he watched Berserker began to hack at his own backside, alive with the Xeno spawn bursting from the headless corpse.

“You wish.” Reaper, shoving a thermal detonator inside a dripping wound alive with flesh hungry leeches, sneered.” He ain’t here.

Pulling his hand free he peeled away from the clawing corpse-fiend, kicking with both legs to send him flying from the blast radius and knocking the hungry monster back among its peers. Whom it was still prying itself ungainly from when explosive timed off flash vaporizing it and filling the tunnel with the cremated ash of its comrades.

“Hold explosives! Hold your fething explosives Reaper!” Harrow screamed, turning away from the oven like wash, at his laughing subordinate.” Stick to blasters and swords or your going to roast us all!”

Spinning about above near the cavern’s ceiling peppering an Infected with blaster fire, chewing away its head and shoulder, while a second seared away beneath the torso swam up from beneath and swooped over him. Laughter never ceasing at the iron embrace of its arms folding over him or the jagged cut of its jaws as its head slithered up over his back. If anything it became even richer in texture.

“Burning alive better than letting these Nerf herders rip us apart.” Reaper shouted back, still laughing, as he unclipped a vibroblade and clipped an arm of the Infected just above the elbow before jabbing the gyrating blade through the fiend’s body for leverage and flung it off of himself.” I don’t know if you noticed but these fethers don’t just fall down and die.”

Freed from its clasp he at last inspected the raw spot across his shoulder blade, stuffed his knife back onto his belt and squeezed the firing stud on his weapon. The chest and back on the Halfling corpse bursting open in a fiery blaze and satisfied Reaper swung around to smack another shambling Infected, crushing in its skull, and shooting it apart as he pulled another detonator from himself. Tossing it over his shoulder towards the bend in the tunnel into a cluster of corpse-fiends and their lesser spawn were the closest of which were briefly illuminated by the intensity of a miniature sun. Their skin and progressive tissues flash boiling away leaving dark cinders of bone until even they dissolved inside the expanding radiance’s corona.

“Emperor forbid it! Reaper, I’m going to shove my boot so far up your asteroid!” Harrow screeched raising his arm to shield himself from the glare as well as visually demonstrate his opinion to the explosive happy warrior.

The sergeant turning away from covering Berserker, who ignored it as he did the rust of ionized air wading amid the Infected, to flash the universal symbol to the still cackling soldier who only shrugged. Shouting for him to be put on report for it as he spun firing in support of Lucius fending the other end of the passage, digging out his vial of dried powder as he did so. Not even bothering to dig any out but, after undoing the top, throwing the contents into his face which his burning nostrils happily and noisily drank up.

“Oh yeah…” Reaper gushed, eyes widening, hosing down the tunnel space with burning plasma.”…bring’em on! Head full of this stuff I think I could take on Darth Vader himself.”

Which was when the scarlet bolt caught him aside the head in a fragmentation of his helmet’s side which sent the rest spinning from his head, the tissue beneath transformed into an indistinct sizzling mess which he could feel through even his dilapidated nerve system. Each fiber cluster now exposed to the open air throbbing heartily with pain as he gripped where his ear had been and pulled back with only a smudge and sticky film.

“Quit your belly aching, I set it to low power. If we live you can get a nice plastiod replacement.” Harrow scolded.” Now get a hold of Lucius and pull him back here, tighten up before these fethers overwhelm us. And for Emperor’s sake hold your fething detonators!”

Ignoring the barbed threats from Reaper as he obeyed Harrow flipped his rifle back up through its power settings and swiveled back towards the relentless Berserker. Expecting to see the Chem-dog engulfed in another burgundy cloud of viscera as he eviscerated a corpse-fiend without care for the black spawn which would spill forth with it but instead caught a blackish-white blur traced with red explode over him. Face instantly tingling with absorbed thermal radiation and overwhelmed with the boutique of broiled gray matter, choking on the rotten stench he jabbed his elbow into the quite determined Halfling sending it away. Shooting it’s drifting form thrice in rapid succession to finish the breakup Reaper had started and then turned in the direction of his ringing ear to find Stiles clutching his pistol between his hands. His pallid face quivering in its corners as he looked over the grungy and cluttered battlefield and then to the sergeant, trying a smile which felt forced and meaningless.

“Sorry about leaving you for a-for a minute there. So…we’re stuck fighting Night-Haunter stormtroopers or did-did one of your men slip me something in the transport?” The Lieutenant asked with stilted levity, voice cracking away with each word.

“As long as you’re here now.” Harrow clipped, attention and body drawn towards Berserker who at last slowed.

Looking more, to Stiles’s eyes as he despite himself kicked after his noncom, like he was going into a seizer than dropping from fatigue the drug fueled psycho lurched into one final opponent relying on the convulsions of his muscular to flay. The bundles of leeches which swarmed within the Infected body taking onto him, joining the others which had vanished inside of him only to choke on the phlegm ridden innards marinated in Stems and Chems. Dying twitching deaths deep within the madman’s bosom failing to adapt to the permeating toxicity years of use had encrusted to every particle of Berserker’s being.

Said components through far from lifeless increasingly erratic and even by his own standards unintentional, some fragment of self that had been the man before Berserker noting the laboring of his heart in his chest. The pain of each beat and how, like the jerking of his arms and legs, its rhythm was ebbing bit by bit. Like the gears of a great machine being worn bald, stuttering pneumonics faltering to inaction one final time. And the man he had been reflected on it, gazed through the fogging mists hoping for some facet for him to endear for or some name, some face for which he could look forward to in the next realm and found nothing. If any had existed they were robbed from him, a conscious transitory within its own skull, leaving only the blood drenched voice of Berserker to argue for a prolongment. His cry of “More” making up for ineloquence with throaty volume even if it was futile. The man he was observing the inexorable weakening impartially along with the upside down visage of the sergeant, one which righted itself as the warrior turned Berserker around and began to pry loose the oily bodies which protruded limp and dead from his flesh.

“Get a medkit open, we have to flush his system…get his blood pressure down before…” Harrow spoke hurriedly leaning over Berserker.” Grace of the Emperor he’s still breathing as it is.”

“Or…we need to give him some…stuff. Enough to get up and move…” Stiles said darkly looking not at Berserker but the cluttered tunnel mouth leading back to the ladder system.

The man Berserker was sighing with resignation at the ordeal to come and the man he’d become cheered, his jumbled mind alight with the crimson dreams to come.

Last Chance, Upper berths-

“Keep your armor polished.” That was what soldier turned Governor Trysh had whispered to a young Kratz all those years ago.

The latter then the personal guard to the former aboard a repulsar equipped platform which had floated above the sparkling convoy of Imperial soldiers, battle tanks, and Stormtroopers parading through the capitol streets. Above V-wing fighters swooped in carefully choreographed maneuvers which paid tribute to the veteran pilots’ skills as well as the Governor they honored. Combined the preceding, done annually to mark the planet’s acquisition to the Empire, was a remarkable pageantry which was the nub of the elder Trysh’s advice.

“Be seen, be remembered, be distinctive.” He’d lectured on another occasion in transit to one of his innumerable “gatherings” followed by a visit to the Opera house.” Those who succeed or those who stand above the squabble of the rest.”

Words Kratz had lived by over the next fifteen years across a gulf of dozen successful gambits, campaigns and ventures. Each placating the right person or adding the proper facet to his demeanor, every step calculated to spurn aside those who would have held him back and draw those who would benefit him. Even the transfer to the Talon-II, of which his glories more than surpassed their meager accomplishments, had been done with keen foresight. That the unclaimed human and alien worlds along the edge of Imperium space his greatest opportunity to assume real power, political power.

Nor had that dream been dampened with the Taskforce fallen astray, from beyond the Home galaxy if all of the ship’s scuttlebutt could be taken as truth, but intensified. There were new worlds out there, an untamed galaxy calling for tightened grip of mankind’s fist, and new possibilities. Why settle for mere Planetary Governor when Lord Kratz has such a more commanding ring to it.

“Status.” He demanded suddenly breaking the heavy silence which lingered onboard the station and startling his armorer who flittered above over him running the reeking rag the immaculate surface of his body armor.

The damp plastiod material well gleaming from the ministrations as did the circular chest piece of radiant silver he had sheathed over the armor, a sparkling disc engraved with his house’s Rune-Glyph. Drawing it again beside a scaly serpent twisted about a sword’s edge on his morning dew soft cape which rippled and flowed behind him. The obscurity of both symbols lessened and interlinked to his own fortune, part of a great saga he diligently worked to forge.

“The incoherent messages are still continuing.” Bradfurd, one of his chosen Praetorian guard, answered reverently.

Continuing as he described the live vid-feed of one of the trio of stormtroopers descending down the ladder into the caverns beneath. Noting the sounds of weapon fire and the tinges of energy bursts to his liege whom nodded dutifully, nearly sent head over heels from that simple act, and beckoned for his armorer’s return. The lithe and quick craftsman, well schooled in any environment his master may have need of his services, quickly taking back his place swarming around the Colonel. The putrid incense of his cleaning oils polluting the surrounding air as he wiped away even the faintest traces of motes from Kratz’s armor.

“Sir! We got people…Stormtroopers and…” Bradfurd started trailing off at the inexplicable images he was being fed.

That of his kin, his brothers in arms, throwing themselves at a ragged Imperial soldier, his face locked in a constricted grimace, flinging himself without abandon through their ranks. No way of knowing it was a man named Berserker recorded by three set of helmet lenses slaughtering his way through, caked thickly head to toe in blood both his own and his victims. Bradfurd further unable to find adequate explanation for either the wild gleam in the man’s eye or the dozens of thermal detonators which hung off of his body. Their counters blinking vivid red…

“Emperor save them!” The Praetorian screamed shunting his eyes beneath his helm as the entire vista was consumed by withering flame, the thermal sensors on all three stormtroopers hitting critical for the split nanosecond they remained transmitting, so bright it pierced through despite his efforts.

“The Emperor save whom?” Kratz thundered, scaring away his armorer again, twisting his naked head after Bradfurd.

His cranial implant squeaking slightly as the crystalline lens of his right eye was narrowed and focused by its iris, watching through it among other things the subordinate’s increased heart rate and respiratory.

“Answer me, what happened.” He demanded with the august personage of kings past.

[sonofccn]

Another update. Stiles and Harrow "bond" some more and we learn a little bit more about the esteemed Colonel Kratz a man who just might have a fruit cake for a brain.

“…oceans shall boil, the very earth rot with pestilence…the sky weeping with crimson as it is torn asunder revealing my goddess upon her blood washed tower. And you shall bear horrible witness in those final, dark moments her ushering the end of all times with the cry of her tar-pitch voice.” High-Priest Manos, kneeling beside the remains of his butchered and eaten victims, “prophecy” before being summarily executed by Security Agent “General”.

Last Chance, Catacombs-

I.Nightwish dead to the world

“Move!” The Sergeant shouted, his voice filling the cavern.

Rivaling the intensity of the thermal bombs with the force and rage Harrow placed in that solitary word, more a wounded shriek from some stygian abyss than a command. He gave the order, almost spat it, gesturing his men on even as he spun gamely in the air to fire at the encroaching shadows therein. He gave it, alone and solely, leaving Stiles to grit his teeth against his welling fears and mimic the NCO’s actions and turn his blaster against a squatted thing leaping from wall to wall as it chased them down. Refusing to believe anything which wore such a grimace could ever have been human, could ever have had friends or laughed or held a soul within its corpse like exterior. Certainly didn’t move like a human as the ionized plasma bolts stitched down across its shoulder and chest, its side shifting and breaking away and it only shrieked with rage and spiraled to catch the rockface with its other hand. Scrabbling across it, leaving its seared arm lazily floating through the air, towards the Lieutenant forcing him to flip his blaster away from a second he’d eviscerated to finish the job on the first.

Pulling up with each squeeze of his trigger depositing the first of the thrice volley into the already cratered torso of the beast then into its neck with the last boiling to vapor copious amounts of its facial tissue and skull. Wet pap spewed out the side and back through the growing fissures, body loosing traction and slipping through the ether, forming streamers through the air as it flew. Its body and armor bloating against the fetid wake of the leeches within burrowing to the surface, breaking forth as Stiles shifted back to the second corpse-fiend.

Only to be assaulted by the burned to his retina image of a pale, taunt face pulling its jaws apart until sinew began to split and cut ruby seams down across them. His sense of smell sodomized by the rank oven hot breath which blasted over him like a rotten gale wind, choking away his abbreviated scream as a rifle stock stabbed forth from the peripheral of his vision and drove the haunting vista from him.

“Debt paid.” Harrow snarled shooting the thing through its back and then kicking off towards the ladder.” Want to live Lieutenant? I suggest you move.”

The words spoken with the fiery hate of a star’s burning core, not that of the Emperor insisted in his more rousing speeches which might endow and instigate the lesser mortals who inhabited the greater galaxy to greater feats. No, this was the personal rage spied, in those few unguarded moments, in the Dark Lord Vader. Only directed not towards the enemies of mankind but at himself. Deservedly.

It was by his word that Berserker had perished as he did, his hand had primed each of the explosives counters, his will. He’d made the decision and so Harrow led those of his men which remained and Stiles could only tag along beside.

As he did spiriting away from the maelstrom of madness, from the orgy of blood hungry corpses crawling up from the depths, and towards the salvation of the ladder. Looking back only once, after his palm had wrapped around the first rung and he’d begun to catapult up after the rapidly ascending sergeant, and seeing only bloody hands outstretched and gaping jaws stretching across as a living wall. More coming up beyond, crawling up through the tunnel’s warren like it was some silicon throat regurgitating undigested morsels. Streams of hungry sinew and flesh stretching all the way back to the very bowels. And he shuddered.

Then he was going up through the tunnel’s shaft, the ancient asteroid rock replaced with grubby steel and dingy man made materials, towards the rusty hatchway. A particularly deteriorated slab of metal which once may have had a cover plate but now only boasted a pair of vestige hinges, one crumbling more to powder as the Lieutenant pulled himself over and slung himself clear. Only for him to nearly colliding with Harrow and his men who cloistered at pit’s foyer’s entranceway, more specifically the white armored goons who held them at gunpoint. A fortune the Sergeant’s men returned in kind except for Lucius who elected to crisscross his sabers to either side of one of the stormtrooper’s necks. Treating the member of the Emperor’s finest to his fleshless grin even as he stared down the black expanse of the man’s carbine, the Swordman’s arms tensed and posed to complete the scissoring action before the shot could even leave the barrel.

“The seven fething hells!” Stiles cursed taking it all in a pan of his head.”Everyone drop your weapons! That’s an order.”

Which went as far as himself before sputtering a feeble death. Reaper lightly glancing towards Harrow who rocked his visage side to side a fraction of a millimeter while Lucius did nothing to break his focus on his particularly stormtrooper. Of the plastic men, through their features were hidden beneath identical looking armor, there was an atmosphere of derisive refusal. He’d as well have ordered them to join the Rebellion and as likely to be obeyed.

“It would be best Lieutenant if you could talk your curs down.” The stormtrooper with his neck caught between two durasteel blades, corporal markings on his pauldron, said with the indulgent venomous of youth.” I promise we will put you in detainment until a tribunal can be declared. Which is more than murderous scum like you deserve.”

The Corporal’s quartet of white armored goons nodding their heads either in agreement with his bargain or his sentiment through its only response was a snorted laugh from the Sergeant. His face shifting ever so slightly from where he hovered, while keeping his rifle focused like a laser beam on his target, to glare at the one who’d issued the demand.

“Way to sweet talk us.” He spat.” And maybe if you’d spent half as much time using that Bantha shooter as you’ve spent polishing your armor we might even be obliged to follow suit.”

“Oh for Emperor’s sake we don’t have time for this.” Stiles cried out, causing a ripple of disquiet among the stormtroopers, revolving in place and pointing back towards the pit.” In about ten the fething bowels of hell will come up and bite off our asteroids. Understand?”

The outburst clearly and truly moving the white clad soldiers but not in the manner the Lieutenant had wished, the Corporal swiveling his gun from Lucius to Stiles. The tone of his voice speaking clearly that if not for the present and constant reminder of the two swords perched to either side of his vulnerable throat he’d have tapped the weapon’s trigger instead of wasting breath.

“Don’t you dare speak of his Majesty after so coldly cutting down his servants.” He hissed.” By all rights I should-“

The rest lost by his own girlish shriek when the blood splattered thing leapt from the hole’s mouth towards the ceiling, the first but not last thing which spewed forth. A shimmering curtain of tainted flesh vomiting from the pit, widening across the foyer’s domain as they charged single minded towards the fresh meat.

A span they traversed in the blink of an eye but which dragged and hung with inexorable heaviness to the mortals, the Sergeant’s forces fluidly shifting targets and propelling themselves backwards through the foyer’s entrance and the shell shocked stormtroopers. Bowling through their ranks agape at the pockmarked and ragged beings spilling forth like a mottled tide, their cries of recognizing going unanswered by the ravaged horde.

“Feth! Shoot’em! Shoot’em that’s an order!” Stiles screamed franticly convulsing to egress his gun snapping in a blur from one dark shape to the next without delay of thought.

“ It would work better if you depressed the little toggle on the side.” Harrow advised the Corporal, wildly jabbing his firing stud without success, as he laid down a barrage in support of Lucius who alone hadn’t retreated.

The Swordsman sailing towards the swarm of undead locust, evading the circling arms of a neither-fiend by first getting close enough to bask in its fetid breath and then releasing a crimson curtain parting the beast down from its skull to between its legs. Immediately shifting the blade and its mate as he completed the act and drove them behind him into the lunging thing there and finding purchase pushed off against it flipping himself over the gnashing thing’s face. Swords cutting up after him as he drifted down and bisected past each other cleaving through the bone and gristle of the Corpse-fiend’s neck. Striking the then dislodged organ from its perch with the hilt of one of his blades setting in on a short lived journey which terminated with the hissing pop of flesh atomized by a colliding packet of plasma. One of dozens which swept around the Swordsman turning the oily leeches bursting forth like maggots into sizzling bits of phlegm like fats which colluded and collided against Lucius’s body. Already a flicker as he dove beneath another of the Infected, drawing a ruby shower in his wake, then buoyed up lopping away the reaching arms of another. Sending the bleeding stumped one away with a kick to its torso as he spun and drove the tip of his sword through the base of the former neither-fiend’s neck, twisting it through the fraying bone and nerve clusters before ripping it free.

“Quit playing and get out here!” The Sergeant screamed sweeping to his side to cover the still fumbling Corporal from another one, the burning offal of its immolated body splattering against the man’s once pristine outer shell.

“As you wish.” The Swordman’s oozed dejectedly, a frown laying like a lead weight in his words, twisting away from his latest foe and squirmed ahead of the descending thuggish mob.” Not much sport anyway.”

Swishing past the Corporal, whose carbine at last spurned to blazing life, he made sure to turn and allow the edge of a blood drenched saber to trail across the Stormtrooper’s visage. Not enough to pierce through the plastiod and split open his concealed face in a orgy of velvet but enough carve a lazy line across the side of his helm. Enough to remind the being inside and then dart out of the way before he could respond, just as well with other more pressing matters competing for his focus.

“Fall back…just fall back…” He croaked out watching low powered shot after low powered shot crater the chest and stomach of a former colleague, at the burning soulless eyes hanging in its stretched skull as it flung itself towards him.

Scabby, flaking hands grabbing his own he’d raised in his defense and pulling them towards jaws possessed of inhuman strength. The plastiod outer shell shattering against the force as it sunk down to his forearm, shooting tendrils of liquid fire going up as his arm as he pulled it back in a haze of scarlet droplets. Smashing his carbine up against the side of the hellion knocking its head aside and swimming away from it, angling his gun to continue to pepper it with laser fire. Kicking from the foyer down the corridor panning his helm from the voluminous cloud rising from his arm to the equally nebulous haze of bodies spreading forth to fill the passage. Confident each crisp moment of the footage was being transmitted to his superiors, a faith rewarded by the authoritative voice which filled the speaker of his helmet.

“Explain the tactical situation.” The stern taskmaster demanded.” What are we seeing?”

“Unknown sir. Unknown.” The Corporal wheezed turning away from the living wall to squeeze between the blazing light of blaster fire and through the archway of a door.” Need reinforcements…reinforcements…”

“Unacceptable.” The voice reprimanded as the Stormtrooper sailed path Harrow and Reaper who followed after picking away at the darting onyx eels as Stiles slammed into the iron face of the hatch sealing it.

The Lieutenant latching the wheel lock in place as it groaned and shrieked against the vented frustration of the dammed hellions careening against it, the metal creakingly bulging in places from a particularly determined attack, which fueled the officer as he wheeled away from the door and grabbed hold of the bleeding Corporal. Drawing him close, ignoring the swiveling of guns towards him from the other stormtroopers, looking straight into the lenses of the helm and hissing an acidic utterance towards whom he knew was on the other end.

“ You want to be the Savior? Get the feth down here because the fething Grotesque is about to come ripping through!” Stiles screeched, drawing an approving nod from Reaper, before shoving the Stormtrooper into his peers.

*

Last Chance, Upper Berths-

The room had been a logistical-administrative suite of the most awful and low brow sort, crude bolted down lockboxes filled with yellowed and musty flimsies in the corners with broken graphite writing styluses bobbing through the air along side globules of desiccated ink completely at odds with the gleaming god-figure who floated at is center. Reaching a gauntlet glistening with shining oil to the armorer floating hunched over before him, taking the chromium lined sheath and harness proffered. Removed of his burden the servant of war nodded briskly in awe and retreated from the presence of the stark leader, another ebbing into his orbit similarly prostrated to the hovering figure offering him, raising it above his head like a gilded wreath of power, his gun belt. Its either end supporting the latched forms of Kratz’s stylized gold plated DC-15S carbines.

The guns by which the warlord Magos who dared believed his world was immune to the reach of the Empire had fallen, the sword that which he’d dueled the Megarachinid Queen’s chosen consort during the siege of Holia. A deed he’d replayed for a thousand Holo-vid reenactments afterwards along with a dozen-dozen other opportune moments of glory during the operation. Deeds only slightly marred by the world ultimately being declared lost and a base delta zero being issued.

“How does it fair?” He demanded of one of the three stormtroopers who floated facing the office’s doorway weapons drawn and ready.

“As you wish my liege.” Bradfurd answered after a slight tick of hesitation.” The detachment you sent to detain the vagabond soldiers have united with them and are attempting a fighting retreat towards the area you designated.”

“That rings good truly in my ears.” Kratz thundered adjusting one final time the satchels and harnesses which contained his mighty weapons.

“Yes my liege but…this plaque is spreading out among the lower ranks of this station, we’ve lost contact with innumerable squads of both Stormtrooper and Army. We fear they are either dead or worse. As well with those of your Praetorian dispatched to hold the hanger bay…I fear we may not have enough strength to overwhelm these abominations.

Bradfurd paused there expecting his lord’s wrath but instead was only treated to his hearty laughter, the musk of his armor cleansing filling the trooper’s senses next followed by the heavy presence of his liege’s hand upon his shoulder.

“Don’t tell me you doubt me after so many campaigns we’ve won together from the Queen’s lair to burning wrecks in space. And so shall it be this time.” The Colonel boasted brushing away any fear or doubt which might exist.” But if you are worried there must be a fighting force not preoccupied with the last of the holdouts on the up most tier.”

Many of the lecherous crew taskers whom had called the station home still defiantly refusing to submit, crawling through the webbing of wires and piping inside the walls as they eluded the will the Emperor. A task Kratz had not seen fit to pull his stormtroopers from, victory would not be yielded because of worthless malady or the wretches driven mad by it. His Praetorian guard with his own Herculean efforts more than capable of dealing with the plight, adding another laurel to his name in the process.

“No stormtroopers but there is an Army unit, a detachment from the Aboreian 532th light infantry regiment.” Bradfurd answered with the barest of pauses, this culled from not fear but to consult his helm’s display.” Their listed as untested in combat my liege, you originally assigned them the “honor” of guarding the hanger. One they share now with your Guard.”

“Even better, the barbs of the trap will need bait and what better choice could we ask for then a troop of scholars and artists.” The Colonel chuckled, his organic eye alight with coming battle.” Order them into position at once, between the vises which shall crush this morbid pestilence.”

“As you will my liege.” Bradfurd said with a bow of his head, busying himself with the directive along with ordering the small troop of Guards out ahead of the great commander Kratz.

The father of a hundred victories, only boyhood eagerness competing against his stern resolve. Satisfied with the knowledge that he would prevail and through that certainty those of his Praetorian were similarly blessed. For where he marched they went as well, basked in the relief in the demi-god and blessed to share his fate. No man but the Emperor could expect more from Bradfurd and the Guard, each carefully chosen from the elite ranks by the Colonel himself.

Choosing only those of supreme martial valor, those of whom would embody the spirit of the Empire, those of the dedication necessary to see their oaths to the end. The stars might die, planets might crack and explode forth in magma fury but Kratz Praetorian guards would never fail to be at their master’s side.

Marching against the vile tempest which rose from the dark pits like the primordial aeon old devil-gods spoken of in a thousand-thousand nigh forgotten occults…

To be Continued…

[Praeothmin]

Kewl ichory battle!

What the hell are those things?
The "Dark" Dragon's spawns or something?

[Admiral Breetai]

I swear I'm reading a historical documentary...other times I'm watching a really awesome horror movie and other times I'm watching one of those gritty old school PBS documentaries..other times sonofccn has me convinced he is the reincarnation of Robert E Howard

this has been inspirational and fantastic I have had a lot of RL issues of late but things seem to be calming down. Rest assured though whenever I could I lurked your fic and preaos..and they have really helped out in stressful times

keep up the good work, keep up the great characters.

[sonofccn]

“…and my heart within my breast did stir at the sight of the loathsome cretin culled from the stygian wastes of HIS most perfect creation. Watching as I did it pull itself from its burrow of rotting bones and desiccated strips of flesh by its two powerful limbs, its bloated and serpentine like body stretching out in coiled loops behind it, uttering ghastly sounds in expectation of the regular “tribute” brought forth by the pagan Vandals who worshipped it.” Excerpt from the Chronicle of Pious.

Last Chance, Upper berths-

I. Harley got devoured by the undead

II. An additional treat, short animated video of the Statement of Randolph Carter.

The stormtrooper’s scream was what brought Stiles attention, stomach freezing as he watched the armor clad warrior lunge forth from a blossom scarlet haze. His back alive with the oily black things burrowing greedily into the succulent tissue, unlikely to long enjoy their meal as Corpse-fiends pounced down from the ceiling and off of the walls after the trooper who had began ripping off his armor plate. The black webbing of his body glove splitting down his chest revealing bulging furrows which excitedly trekked across it in excruciating patterns. Then he vanished beneath the grasping bodies descending around him, his screams faltering moments later.

The clustering ball of kicking arms and legs in turn consumed by the tidal flood of the flowing leviathan, a mutable collective mass of Imperial soldiers, engineers, stormtroopers as well as the grungy “civilians” of the station itself. Anyone who hadn’t gotten out of the wall of the gestalt organism, bodies in some cases barely more then vestige with tens of dozens meaty chunks frayed from their person but they still ambulated. Without concern, without compassion, without thought but a single overriding urge as old as the first microbe. To feed.

Which, along with the few strips of wet, moist flesh whirling forth ahead of the mobbish pack, was all the incentive Stiles needed to keep moving. Flinging with mechanical rote a spread of plasma bolts into the freaks, the shrieking gouts as bone and sinew explosively atomized depressingly like a human’s scream, before revolving back and pushing off down the dilapidated station’s warren. Towards an arched, crumbling and regrettably door less divider between halls, fusing together to distinct and separate architect types, which Reaper and a nameless stormtrooper flanked with their own weighty volume of fire.

“Hungry basterds aren’t they?” The scarred and burned army soldier cackled sweeping his barrage back and forth over the horde.” We keep squashing them and they keep coming.”

The distinct tinge of the laugh which followed coloring the noise of the blasters as the two closed in and retreated after the Lieutenant down the next rusty segment, adding an unhinged note to an already otherworldly atmosphere, to the next point where Harrow and the Corporal stormtrooper assumed the suppression fire. Lucius intermittently adding his support as well but only with supreme distaste for the blaster pistol he’d been thrown, holding one blade aloft in the air and toyingly spinning it as he lethargically made his shots. A restraint not observed in Harrow much less the stormtrooper NCO whom, with his mindlock fading, threw himself into the fiasco like the gun toting fools seen in war-drama holo-vids.

“Keep going, move!” He shouted, releasing a hand from his carbine to wave the fire-team on, as if any intended to slow down or halt.” We’re nearly there…just a few tens of meters more…”

“Help better be there.” The Sergeant growled against the heated popping of incinerated skulls.

“Colonel Kratz and his Praetorians are in position.” The Corporal reassured with utter conviction of his youth.” Waiting for us.”

To which Harrow, electing to move first, shook his head as he slipped backwards down the hall adding at last for scalding bolts before scurrying madly after the next check point. Corporal following through but not before, as previously, he rotated through thermal and resonance harmonics gauging the ranks vanishing from sight down the corridor’s gullet, the teeming masses of the infected and their parasitical spawn which swarmed about, which he’d relayed to the waiting kill teams. Finishing he’d pivoted away from the out stretched arms of the Corpse-fiends and swam away from hissing pop of flesh dissolving from searing plasma navigating his way through the dazzling maze of weapons fire pouring down the hall. Passing Lucius who, causally lopping off at the wrists the hands which stretched towards him, turned his grim perpetually grinned skull-face after the darting Corporal.

“Faith can be a dangerous commodity if misplaced youngling…” He breathed, like the emaciated whisper of a Night-Haunter itself, letting the trooper pass before coasting behind him.” Which is why I prefer cold steel instead of golden idols…”

So saying his dark stygian voice broke out into mirthless laughter the twin of Reaper’s. Restraining himself to the one sword he placated himself dueling with the Corpses-fiend a trifle longer and then, severing in two a leech which dared approach, swooned and made his retreat in earnest. Continuing to laugh all the while.

Craning his head towards the scarred madman, effortlessly overtaking and passing the exerting trooper, the Corporal then turned what was clearly a quizzical stare even beneath his helm towards the Sergeant.

“Is he always like that?” He asked tilting his helmet towards the now spiraling Swordsman.

“Ever since he woke up suspended, in the dark with about a thousand Megarachnid larva crawling in his guts.” Harrow answered with the grim specter of a dark star.

Through not nearly so as the perverse miracle which had seen Lucius returned to his battle-brothers. An early casualty, snatched from the wreck of a downed gunship part of the first wave, he’d nearly been crushed by a folding bulkhead then dosed in the burning fog-vapor of the chem-warheads the transport had meant to saturate the offending isle with and was then flung through crystalline before even touching the razor edged coral the island was forged from. His bones broken, bleeding and sick from the copious amounts of chems he’d ingested he’d been easy pickings for the warriors which spurned forth from their dug warrens, dragging away the disintegrating remains of the doomed first wave before the LAATs of the second had even touched off. There he’d been offered to a female, sequestered in secreted resin and impregnated by a hungry brood as countless others who died screaming would be.

Only to remerge on the blood soaked shores of the isle to greet the fifth wave vomiting profusely the wiggling newborns thanks to his unhealthy saturation of “Agent-Green”. A chemical-vapor the bio-types had engineered as a “pesticide” for the Megarachnids. While ultimately useless as a dispersal fog, and far more lethal to humans than had been suggested, due to the attenuated mists being unable to pierce through the dense filters in the Megarachnid’s lungs Lucius proved its viability as an ingestion agent. At least against Megarachnids, its use against Lucius being notably less effective.

As had everything since then…more than any other beneath Harrow’s command the scarred swordsman had been beyond death. Beyond, perhaps, even the undulating living curtain which stretched after the group, of the stygian “others” which swirled beneath their torn flesh like Night-Gaunts taking to flight on the bleak night’s air. Perhaps Lucius was beyond all concerns, all fears, which would encumber and weigh a warrior. Perhaps…

“Lucky son of a bantha.” Harrow remarked, face bathed in the sauna like breath of atomized flesh, driving his rifle up catching it stock against a Corpse-fiend sending it flipping backwards before pushing off and shooing down the end of the corridor.

Which terminated in an open locke to either side of which Stiles and Reaper floated sweeping blaster bolts across briefly before sinking through the entrance after the Harrow who pivoted about to catch the door and slam it shut upon the grasping mound attempting to vomit its way into the circular chamber. Spinning the wheel lock taunt against its groove through nothing on the other end still possessed the grace or intellect to utilize such a complex mechanism. Instead pawing and bashing the metal like an animal would, the pangs of warping metal mingling and cut with the wet snapping of those of the first most ranks breaking against the pushing tide of the rest, sending rusted rivets exploding out with sparring. The lackluster alloys bulging inward from repeated blows from bloody limbs deadened to pain and incensed only by the lure of hunger.

“We got a problem.” Stiles voice from behind Harrow as the latter pushed off from the door, narrowly avoiding the profusely seeping appendage which pushed its way through a growing crevice.

“Yeah…appear we are Lieutenant.” Harrow spat turning a scowl towards the officer.” Anymore ideas maybe…another brilliant gem from your tactical training.”

“Oh…we got something a little more pressing than that.” Lucius said with a rasp of a chuckle, wearing his skull-grin with pride as he pointed his sword tip at the knot of soldiers cloistered at the room’s center.

Turning away from the disintegrating door the Sergeant followed the saber’s edge and found himself staring down once again the barrels of his own side. This time through there was no sheathing armor to conceal the distraught and the unsettled faces on five-sixth of the half dozen Army soldiers, the flicker of their eyes as they jumped from the bedraggled force to the clawing monstrosities which had followed them, much less the quivering each carbine did in their clutched hands. Of the remainder he struck Harrow as a residual remainder of the “old guard”, a ruffian in uniform with a scruffy beard whose forbearers had rode steeds across the frontier but whom was a poor substitute for. From the family glyphs embroidered on his collar besides his regiment colors and numbers to the vibroblade sword sequestered at his side in a silver outlined sheath there spoke a certain cheapness of soul, a certain feeling inadequacy he was permanently locked in wrestle with. One likely as afraid as his charges but unwilling to show it the Sergeant deduced, well imagining the lengths he might go to that affect, while the Corporal swam out ahead along with his remaining stormtrooper shouting at the soldiers.

“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” He cried holding his weapon up over his head, a move his subordinate echoed.” We’re here under orders from colonel Kratz, we were ordered to rendezvous in this section. Where is the Colonel?”

“The Colonel? He’d moved us up into the “line”. Said it was going to be an easy route.” The sixth and bearded member of the team spoke.” But by devil there something wrong with those people…with this place…”

His voice brash full of the cacophonous thunder of war but his words skipped and sputtered with an errant life, eyes ablaze but perhaps not truly seeing the world he’d found himself in. And while the Corporal focused on getting the whereabouts of Kratz Harrow had a far greater question on his mind which he made after raising his blaster skyward and punching a smoking crater into the thin, aluminum roof. Fragments of which scattering out, their glow making them appear like fireflies, and towards the floor as he lowered it to calmly address the fellow soldiers.

“Your regimental officer, where are your men?” He demanded very slowly.” Where did you send them?”

“My men?” The man with the beard asked with earnest confusion, the thought having not previously flowered in his skull, fixing the Sergeant with a stare.” They were sent out to secure the outlying areas…they encountered resistance…heavy…ordered them to fall back…should be here by now…”

The bearded officer’s rambling giving way to the creaking of the curving promenade’s doorways, each swinging open to scant deliriums of ravaged, blood soaked soldiers with frightened grimaces whom in turn were engulfed and swallowed by the slithering shadows which filled the yawning beyond. A few giving fight caught upon the threshold or scant meters beyond firing into sickly mass with minimal results against the corpulent volume stemmed solely by their sheer pressing numbers through the constrained entry. A smaller handful of soldiers evaded the blood rended claws of their pursuers and darted like schools of frightened fish towards the enclave at the room center, a half dozen souls who revolved from target to target spilling across the walls or scrambling up over the ceiling.

“The Emperor feth it!” Harrow cursed with the blackest bile, hand already raised silently ordering Reaper and Lucius into action.

Stiles he ignored, his fate to his own, reserving his voice, beyond foul utterances in his youth would have saw him caned, for the Corporal flittering off in orbit from and circled in turn by his white armored subordinate.

“ Get those bantha fethers into action, box their ears if you have to but I need laid three sixty fields of fire. Now!” The Sergeant demanded, sparing a glance from the ominous tidings unfurling into the room to the crumbling door behind, diving towards the group’s center.

A shadowy filament breaking itself apart from where the ceiling dipped to meet the wall and for the barest millisecond the two were joined in union, Harrow rolling with the sudden weight and curling his body beneath its grip to drive first his heel into its ruptured body and then a stray energized bolt as he sunk into the midst’s of the defenders. A guttural cry coming from his saws, as dark a pitch as a Grotesque’s calloused bellows to its enslaved souls, sending up from the ranks he joined crisscrossing fire which bisected the flaying Corpse-fiend. The meat puppet bursting apart under the fire, disintegration accelerating as the Stile’s order to switch to the heaviest setting was carried out, revealing its belly full of squelching leeches. The maggot like things weaving in and out between the expanding clumps of viscera, creating sizzling floral petals when they were in turn struck, while the Sergeant, hitting the deck plate, recovered and directed concentrated volleys against a random segment of the coming torrent. A monstrous sphere of mangled bodies which contracted with the force of hundreds of persons, a hundred-hundred souls possessed by an Eldritch presence.

Before him, in his narrowing field of vision, a demonic lattice of intertwined bodies heaved themselves with single minded hunger, an urge which never abated against the thunderous volleys which cut across dissolving torsos, bursting skulls into cremated embers and ruptured limbs in stinging gusts of broiling vapor. And to his left he could hear Reaper’s bellicose laughter egging on his segment to spit into the face of the devil, on his right the childishly naïve Corporal who proselytized his own “wing” duty to the Emperor and realm even as the jaws of death closed about your waist, and at his back heard the Lieutenant’s shouts. Neither a religious zealot or firebrand vagabond he didn’t cajole, beg or demand their tribute to the effort but rallied them all the same.

“Your life is in your hands, measure it and choose the price to part for it.” He’d pragmatically offer to stoke their fires, focusing instead on directing the fire against the shifting tendrils of bodies which looped overhead.

Itself but a singe rotten fragment of the festering canvas which stretched like a cauldron’s dome over the tiny knot, clamoring Corpse-fiend struggling as much with each other to be the first to reach the succulent flesh as well as swishing brood-spawn which bored through the latter in search of a host. An expanse which convulsed and shuddered, shrinking over the cloistered mortals only to break apart and deteriorate only to reform from the bloated ranks drawn by the promise of prey. Again and again the dome of flesh trembled and sunk, again and again the air took to the squeal of flesh melting against the star like radiance of weaponized plasma, the throaty and mind numbing whispers of the damned as well as the coarse bellow commands from each section. Each time only lessening only to build again, the Infected accruing faster than the volleys could pick away streaming in from every passage and doorway.

The cycle rearing towards its zenith once more when Harrow, switching his gun sights rapidly with every twitch of his finger, when he heard the brass tenor of the regiment commander all but forgotten in the descending chaos. Shouting something excitedly that even to his ear the Sergeant couldn’t make out over the din, the distinct words lost the maelstrom and off hand could have been deemed unimportant against the backdrop of endless horrors thirsting for his blood but the officer’s raw enthusiasm and chronic insistence in repeating it to his soldiers and the others like a child who just got his first “A” on his scandoc crept doubt into Harrow’s mind. Shaking his head to clear away some of the ringing noise from it, the oily squelching of burning flesh and unholy slobbering, and twisting his neck so as to keep his vigil over his section and focus on the bearded man.

“Top quadrant fething blast them gone!” He shrieked to his men, and for the moment they were his men, with audible hate for the lecherous cretins and then with only a slightly softer tone shifted toward the bearded officer.” What feth are you saying?”

“He’s coming…he’s coming!” The man shrieked cupping his body and pointing towards the field receiver which floated unadorned at the nucleolus of the formation.” He’s coming for us…”

“Then we’ll shoot him when he gets here.” Harrow snapped both to the army officer as well off to a corner where a dark specter had slipped past the fusillade of withering fire.

Never completing the alignment of his weapon with it before a second shape, thrusting through the weightless air, collided making the former vanish in a hail of phantasmal ichors. The meaty chunks of its body, liberated and propelled apart, peeling away under Lucius’s ministrations who spun about it on gossamer wings of scarlet striking hither and yon separating the oily cretins which ruptured from the thing’s stomach.

The whole process taking the toll it took for the Sergeant to follow through with his knee jerk reaction to the peripheral glimpsed shape, the only sound through it and seeing off the Swordsman shooting off was his raspy mirth which transcended even the noise of the blood soaked arena and followed murkily after him as he sailed to meet the writhing canopy. There preoccupying himself, weaving between the cascades of lethal fire rising up, carving burgundy and red stripes through the twitchy canopy which darkened over the besieged battlegroup, his twists and turns creating a scarlet vortex of grizzled meat to swoon about him, as a relentless closing fist.

Drawing Harrow’s fire as well as the others, relenting on the walls who unmitigated swarmed like enraged insects, to stem the descending hammer of bone and sinew just as the bearded officer tried again. Repeating his statement and , heedless of the death hailing from all sides, reached to grab and turn the Sergeant around to face him. Fingers never touching but the barest brush before the knotted elbow of Harrow eclipsed between them with a muffled cry made wet by the spilling of blood then shortened as the Sergeant pulled back the joint to drive a calloused fist into the man’s throat. Adding the bottom of his heel to the man’s sternum for the effort and sending him adrift like an old style water craft whose keel had been torn asunder.

“I don’t have time for these games.” The Sergeant hissed.”Fething tell me what is so important or get back to fighting but be quick either way.”

Expecting the soldier, dimly observing him sprawling over himself burying his hands over his thickly bleeding face, not to answer and indeed barely had time after his utterance to direct the others before the enemy was among them. A tightened ball of grasping, biting, rending hell all about with stabbing and shooting. But the bearded officer was possessed some fanatical devotion, some religious zeal which granted him voice even as the fiends descended upon him. Harrow, billowing in the retched bile of a Corpse-fiend his vibroblade had cut apart from the neck to its belly, spying him push up from the feeding ball frenziedly tearing at him. Extending one red palm out from the growing ruby tendrils at the Sergeant as he spoke his brass voice ringing clear.

“He’s coming…Colonel Kratz is coming…” He shrieked heralding by a breath the explosion above them all in the chamber’s roof.

It’s sudden bark of that of a directed thermal charge, its wafting heat baking through the carpet of gnashing monsters, the first of several which thundered along the circumference of the rotunda. Clearing, the hard metal disintegrating to hot ashy waste, the way for the stormtroopers who descended down from the edges while from the center first came staggered and posed fire creating a shimmering pillar of destruction which the gleaming figure only then lowered himself through. Brandishing a gun in each hand which glowed as if forged from the heart of a star itself and appeared to unleash such celestial fury upon its helpless victims, where a bolt struck a torso would explode in cremation bones splintering and scattering with the burning embers from the fiery core. A stray to a fiend’s head would utterly disintegrate it in one fell swoop and immolate its crumbling body sending it rocketing off through the air. Lord Kratz had come.

Gently wafting down upon the wriggling vista beneath a shimmering curtain of rifle fire which shielded him between his modified guns’ ponderous shots, his armor polished to an unparalleled shine and his cape fluttering in the shifting currents of air. And all this was observed, beneath the curtain of twitching bodies which he danced about, by grinning Lucius

“Guess he didn’t forget about us...” He laughed out loud bringing his swords down through down through the arms of a Corpse-fiend lopping them away then continuing down and curving them behind his back to pierce on either end the skull of another.”…can’t forget the bait now can you?”

To Be continued...

[sonofccn]

What the hell are those things?
The "Dark" Dragon's spawns or something?

"…classification still pending, specimen tentatively identified by the place holder Unidentified Biological Organism #104.

Preliminary remarks: Specimen is a parasitical invertebrate possessing a tough, leathery exterior which close examination reveals a fine “downing” of microscopic fibers not unlike cilia. Possibly, in conjunction with the translucent secretions found emanating from the specimen’s pores, its means of locomotion both inside and out of the host. Of which eyewitness accounts, through unverified by the Bureau, testify to its acuity and agility under “combat conditions”. Specimen measures…six point three inches in length more than one-fourteenth the size of the largest specimen claimed by the aforementioned witnesses, through no firm remains have been found to collaborate this, suggesting potentially a juvenile form through alternate gender or subspecies can not be eliminated at this time.

At the specimen’s “front” can be observed the only non soft tissue readily apparent, a chitin “spur” an approximate one tenth of the creature’s overall body length. Hinged to retract open revealing a feeding orifice and through the serrated inner edges suggests mechanism towards that end eye witness accounts suggests the bone like protrusion primary purpose is to help burrow its way inside the cavity of a host. Up to between .26-.29 inch of the protective layers of cranium for creatures the size of the specimen and, alleged, up to two inches of RHA for the largest through analysis of the stricken battletanks can not be performed at this time to confirm.

Once inside the host observed members either burrow through the soft tissues of the body, presumably feeding, or, once more according solely to the military personal who witnessed the infestation, take up residence within the brain mass where, by powers or abilities not yet deduced, they assumed dominance over the host organism. A process not without precedent within the animal kingdom through never to the extant or degree alleged by witnesses, each of them speaking of the afflicted being inurned to thoughts of pain or discomfort as well as puppeteering the hosts well after the process of deterioration had started to set in. A vista reminiscent to certain…quaint…passages to be found in De Vermis Mysteriis and other texts in the archives through likely these, as with the witnesses, are case of exaggeration brought about by unscientific minds appearing to probe the weighty matters of the universe.

Final thing, before we began dissection, the witnesses in addition to their other incredulous claims insist that they shared a, brief, dialogue with the creature(s) and that it possesses intellect. Either singular or gestalt, they imply the latter, through like much of the rest of their report this has not been substantiated by either the Chinese government or by the Bureau itself. To this end however in my initial survey of the specimen I will focus on identifying its brain mass, making comparisons to its complexity in relation to humanity and other higher tier organisms as well as its Psionic potential. Identifying a third species with the capability, following Martians and a human minority, would go long towards proving the theories of myself and others…" Excerpt of dissection's audio log of specimen recovered from the "China foothold incident".

this has been inspirational and fantastic I have had a lot of RL issues of late but things seem to be calming down.

Well its good to hear things are calming down and its good to have you back. Not least of which I siphon awesome from you like some small parasitical leech.

I swear I'm reading a historical documentary...other times I'm watching a really awesome horror movie and other times I'm watching one of those gritty old school PBS documentaries..other times sonofccn has me convinced he is the reincarnation of Robert E Howard

Thank you as always through I think you better capture the epic, Frazetta style action of Mr. Howard.

[Praeothmin]

Damn, James is jealous, for Kratz sure knows how to make an entrance... :)

Why do I feel like I would be one of the army soldiers, knee ddep in trouble with no idea if I was going to survive or not... ;)