WH40K: Suffer Not The Alien
Posted: 2005-01-21 03:57pm
Warning: Abandoned Fic!
Note: Found this lying around on the HD and decided to post it after reading through for nostalgia's sake. I've posted the prologue, the first chapter and the plot outline I wrote beforehand.
Disclaimer: All italicised sections at the beginning of each chapter are property of Games Workshop, appearing in the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook, Codex Tyranids, and other sources. © copyright Games Workshop Ltd 2000-2004
Suffer not the Alien, Prologue
...to be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. This is a tale of those times. Forget the power of technology, science and common humanity. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for there is no peace amongst the stars! There is only an eternity of carnage and slaughter and the laughter of thirsting gods. But the universe is a big place, and whatever happens...... you will not be missed!
6.150.997. M41, Saragamine system, Ultima Segmentum, the Imperium of Man.
Week One.
Adept-Cadet Abidan cursed as his robes dragged through yet another puddle in the condensation-drenched corridor within the bowels of Prosperity, the largest human habitation on the Emperor-forsaken world of Abundentia.
Life on the run-down little colony planet was rarely anything less than miserable, and the only excitement of life here was the sort that came from discovering that one of the planet’s multitudinous species of fly had laid its eggs beneath your skin. Or the excitement that came from knowing you were over half an hour late for an appointment with the planetary governor.
It wasn’t really his fault though, the Adept-Cadet groused. On his journey towards the Administratum building at the heart of Prosperity’s main enviro-dome, he’d come across one of the city’s inhabitants blaspheming against a malfunctioning air recirc unit, and had needed time to both chastise the insolent peasant and to repair the device in question. Surely as a priest-in-training of the Adeptus Mechanicus, he could not afford to ignore such things!
As he exited the corridor, he emerged into the main causeway running across the two-kilometre dome, turning his head upwards to marvel at the construction of the monumental edifice that so dwarfed the largely squalid buildings built within it.
The dome, identical in design if not in size to all on the surface of Abundentia, was a necessity of life on a deathworld. From the higher floors of the Administratum building, you could see over the thirty metre-thick permacrete skirt that surrounded the dome and into the Jungle beyond; a verdant green hell interrupted by occasional splashes of gaudy colour. Each leaf of which seemed to conceal some variation on the “covered in venomous spines” theme.
Abundentia had been established some centuries earlier by a Magos Biologis explorator team, who had been delighted by the rich variety of plant and animal life, choosing to ignore the fact that the planet’s ecology was constantly engaged in more bloodshed than the first twelve Black Crusades put together.
And so, the deathworld’s thirteen million colonists huddled together under their environment domes, hermetically sealed against the murderous plant and animal life outside.
As Adept-Cadet Abidan hurried to his appointment, Administrator Felix Engel was not having a good day either. Not only was that Imperator-damned Mechanicus drone late for their appointment, but he’d recently received a message via the astropath relay, informing that Abundentia’s planetary tithe grade may be subject to change soon, moving from Solutio Tertius to Solutio Prima- An increased strain on an already impoverished world.
The next item on his litany of More Than Minor Irritations was the imminent arrival of an Imperial Guard regiment from Silvanos III, apparently the result of a two-century old request from the last surviving Biologis personnel for some military assistance in purging some of the more insidious life-forms making their homes immediately outside the domes.
Grimacing in irritation, he leaned back and stared through the milky glass of his office skylight, where, hundreds of metres above, through a hanging maze of pipes, scaffolding and gantries, the indistinct form of a cargo blimp could be seen, bringing its cargo from the hydroponic combines to the south. With the setting of the sun, the steam produced by the colony’s ancient air conditioning units was collecting amongst hidden nooks and crannies far above was condensing, to fall in a greasy rain on the hab-blocks arranged in featureless, haphazard rows around the central square, its perimeter manned by the headquarters of the Administratum, Ministorum, and the city’s Arbites precinct house.
Administrator Engel sighed, and bent once more towards his desk. No, tonight was not going to be a good night. And the future did not look appreciably brighter.
Week Two
Above the strategically unimportant colony-world of Abundentia, the planet was seeing more space traffic than it had during any period since its founding. The epicentre of this flurry of activity was His Imperial Majesty’s Ship Saint Veran, its cargo the five thousand men of the 3rd Silvanos Light Infantry. A constant flow of transport shuttles streamed down to the planet’s humid surface and returned to repeat the journey, ferrying the men and machines coming to belatedly answer the plea of the world’s unfortunate settlers.
Within the bucking cargo compartment of the lander, Trooper Vehm struggled heroically to keep down the rations he’d unwisely wolfed earlier in the landfall operation, while his neighbours busied themselves with either checking their kit or leaning away from the nauseous-looking soldier. Across from him, Trooper Hasiz winced in sympathy and went back to cradling his lasgun.
Ahead of them in the dropship’s cockpit, the pilot shifted uncomfortably in his pressure suit and whispered the litany of Turbulence as he prepared to approach Abundentia’s only spaceport, a few permacrete landing pads and a control tower, all within a walled enclosure clinging to the side of Prosperity like a leprous growth.
On the ground at the landing pad, Commissar Hasse, newly arrived with the Silvanos, eyed the cloud-filled skies above dubiously. The briefing he’d received en route had mentioned any number of dangerous flying xenos populating the planet, and he had no desire to take casualties before the regiment was even assembled properly. Even as he peered upwards, a constant stream of men marched along the thoroughfare leading through the fortified base of the dome into the interior.
Week Three
In the soundless void far beyond the Saragamine system, the Hivefleet floated inexorably. To the Imperium, it was a splinter fleet of Hive Fleet Leviathan, which had recently begun plaguing Ork holdings elsewhere in the Ultima Segmentum. To the trillions of organisms to which it was home, it was the All.
Note: Found this lying around on the HD and decided to post it after reading through for nostalgia's sake. I've posted the prologue, the first chapter and the plot outline I wrote beforehand.
Disclaimer: All italicised sections at the beginning of each chapter are property of Games Workshop, appearing in the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook, Codex Tyranids, and other sources. © copyright Games Workshop Ltd 2000-2004
Suffer not the Alien, Prologue
...to be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. This is a tale of those times. Forget the power of technology, science and common humanity. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for there is no peace amongst the stars! There is only an eternity of carnage and slaughter and the laughter of thirsting gods. But the universe is a big place, and whatever happens...... you will not be missed!
6.150.997. M41, Saragamine system, Ultima Segmentum, the Imperium of Man.
Week One.
Adept-Cadet Abidan cursed as his robes dragged through yet another puddle in the condensation-drenched corridor within the bowels of Prosperity, the largest human habitation on the Emperor-forsaken world of Abundentia.
Life on the run-down little colony planet was rarely anything less than miserable, and the only excitement of life here was the sort that came from discovering that one of the planet’s multitudinous species of fly had laid its eggs beneath your skin. Or the excitement that came from knowing you were over half an hour late for an appointment with the planetary governor.
It wasn’t really his fault though, the Adept-Cadet groused. On his journey towards the Administratum building at the heart of Prosperity’s main enviro-dome, he’d come across one of the city’s inhabitants blaspheming against a malfunctioning air recirc unit, and had needed time to both chastise the insolent peasant and to repair the device in question. Surely as a priest-in-training of the Adeptus Mechanicus, he could not afford to ignore such things!
As he exited the corridor, he emerged into the main causeway running across the two-kilometre dome, turning his head upwards to marvel at the construction of the monumental edifice that so dwarfed the largely squalid buildings built within it.
The dome, identical in design if not in size to all on the surface of Abundentia, was a necessity of life on a deathworld. From the higher floors of the Administratum building, you could see over the thirty metre-thick permacrete skirt that surrounded the dome and into the Jungle beyond; a verdant green hell interrupted by occasional splashes of gaudy colour. Each leaf of which seemed to conceal some variation on the “covered in venomous spines” theme.
Abundentia had been established some centuries earlier by a Magos Biologis explorator team, who had been delighted by the rich variety of plant and animal life, choosing to ignore the fact that the planet’s ecology was constantly engaged in more bloodshed than the first twelve Black Crusades put together.
And so, the deathworld’s thirteen million colonists huddled together under their environment domes, hermetically sealed against the murderous plant and animal life outside.
As Adept-Cadet Abidan hurried to his appointment, Administrator Felix Engel was not having a good day either. Not only was that Imperator-damned Mechanicus drone late for their appointment, but he’d recently received a message via the astropath relay, informing that Abundentia’s planetary tithe grade may be subject to change soon, moving from Solutio Tertius to Solutio Prima- An increased strain on an already impoverished world.
The next item on his litany of More Than Minor Irritations was the imminent arrival of an Imperial Guard regiment from Silvanos III, apparently the result of a two-century old request from the last surviving Biologis personnel for some military assistance in purging some of the more insidious life-forms making their homes immediately outside the domes.
Grimacing in irritation, he leaned back and stared through the milky glass of his office skylight, where, hundreds of metres above, through a hanging maze of pipes, scaffolding and gantries, the indistinct form of a cargo blimp could be seen, bringing its cargo from the hydroponic combines to the south. With the setting of the sun, the steam produced by the colony’s ancient air conditioning units was collecting amongst hidden nooks and crannies far above was condensing, to fall in a greasy rain on the hab-blocks arranged in featureless, haphazard rows around the central square, its perimeter manned by the headquarters of the Administratum, Ministorum, and the city’s Arbites precinct house.
Administrator Engel sighed, and bent once more towards his desk. No, tonight was not going to be a good night. And the future did not look appreciably brighter.
Week Two
Above the strategically unimportant colony-world of Abundentia, the planet was seeing more space traffic than it had during any period since its founding. The epicentre of this flurry of activity was His Imperial Majesty’s Ship Saint Veran, its cargo the five thousand men of the 3rd Silvanos Light Infantry. A constant flow of transport shuttles streamed down to the planet’s humid surface and returned to repeat the journey, ferrying the men and machines coming to belatedly answer the plea of the world’s unfortunate settlers.
Within the bucking cargo compartment of the lander, Trooper Vehm struggled heroically to keep down the rations he’d unwisely wolfed earlier in the landfall operation, while his neighbours busied themselves with either checking their kit or leaning away from the nauseous-looking soldier. Across from him, Trooper Hasiz winced in sympathy and went back to cradling his lasgun.
Ahead of them in the dropship’s cockpit, the pilot shifted uncomfortably in his pressure suit and whispered the litany of Turbulence as he prepared to approach Abundentia’s only spaceport, a few permacrete landing pads and a control tower, all within a walled enclosure clinging to the side of Prosperity like a leprous growth.
On the ground at the landing pad, Commissar Hasse, newly arrived with the Silvanos, eyed the cloud-filled skies above dubiously. The briefing he’d received en route had mentioned any number of dangerous flying xenos populating the planet, and he had no desire to take casualties before the regiment was even assembled properly. Even as he peered upwards, a constant stream of men marched along the thoroughfare leading through the fortified base of the dome into the interior.
Week Three
In the soundless void far beyond the Saragamine system, the Hivefleet floated inexorably. To the Imperium, it was a splinter fleet of Hive Fleet Leviathan, which had recently begun plaguing Ork holdings elsewhere in the Ultima Segmentum. To the trillions of organisms to which it was home, it was the All.