Sparks From the Edge (40K/BT)

[Academia Nut]

A special thanks to Jon Berry for the assistance he has rendered and no doubt will continue to render, if only to make sure that I don't lose focus.

Chapter One

"Brace for transition back to realspace," Fourth Company Captain Petronius Maximus of the Survivors Chapter said quietly to the significantly shorter man standing to his left.

"I gathered that was what the alarms were for," Inquisitor Lucien Kennard muttered in mild annoyance at being told something he felt was obvious, even as he discreetly placed his hands upon the rail in front of him, a move that proved well planned a moment later when the ship lurched abruptly in a direction that was normally at right angles to reality. Lucien remarked rather dryly, "I had heard that Adeptus Astartes craft were known for the roughness of their transitions, but that was rather much."

"The Navigator is reporting in now that the barrier between the Warp and realspace is distinctly 'choppy', Inquisitor Kennard," Shipmaster Gaius Tiberius, commander of the battle barge Dirge of Heresy, reported with equal dryness to the Inquisitor's remark.

"Choppy? I had thought that at last report the Empyrean was distinctly smooth," Lucien pointed out with a tinge of irritation.

"Guy?" Captain Maximus asked, using the diminutive from their chapter's unique flavour of Low Gothic to express his worry without being obvious to the outsider in their midst.

"I'm translating a bit from psyker-speak Petr, but in essence the Warp has been calm," Shipmaster Tiberius said with something of a shrug of his enormous shoulders.

Inquisitor Kennard's face darkened and he said, "That is indeed troublesome. Keep me appraised of any further changes in psychic activity or Warp phenomenon."

Taking that moment to walk onto the bridge, Codicier Pyrrhus stated, "Our astropathic choir has already begun to intercept transmissions from Oologon IV. Translation should be ready shortly, but I do have the proper ciphers to tell you the salient points, if you so desire."

The Inquisitor Kennard looked askance at the powerful psyker for a moment before he accused, "You did that on purpose."

"Perhaps," the codicier admitted with an inscrutable look on his face.

"Tell me what you know now so I can better sort out the primary messages later. We should be a good eight hours out in any case," Inquisitor Kennard said, somewhat irritated.

"Approximately forty transports under the control of traitors and heretics have arrived in orbit about the planet, with the majority of them parked in high orbit above Hive Iolon. An estimated dozen regiments of Traitor Guard have made landings within the city and have smashed local PDF forces, but have made no attempt to engage forces outside the city. Communication from within the hive is sporadic at best, but enemy forces seem to be engaged in slaughter of the local population," Pyrrhus reported dutifully, his eyes and psychic hood glowing cerulean as he processed the psychic messages.

The command staff on the bridge all looked at each other in wary confusion, each aware in their own ways of the dangers of the various tricks that Chaos could be up to when the lunatics under its sway started acting irrationally. Inquisitor Kennard broke the silence when he asked, "What of the cruiser that took out the local system defence forces that first drew our attention."

Looking contemplative for a second as he sorted through the data, Pyrrhus replied, "The enemy ship, identified via broadcast as the Harvester of Endings, secured orbital supremacy and annihilated groundside aerospace bases capable of running any sort of interdiction over Iolon before it left."

"Sensors confirm a cooling ion trail leading away from the planet indicative of a craft on full military burn no more than three days ago," Shipmaster Tiberius confirmed.

"Would it be remiss of me to suggest that the segments of the enemy force that could be considered 'important' do not want to be anywhere near this system?" Captain Maximus suggested darkly.

"That or a rather convoluted trap. Either way..." The Inquisitor said, falling away into a musing tone. Finally he said, "Forward the messages to my staff, I shall consult with them during our transit."

"We will keep you appraised of any changing conditions or our own insights as we examine the situation," Captain Maximus replied as one of the chapter serfs went through the process of having a data copy of the astropathic messages routed to the Inquisitor's retinue in their quarters elsewhere on the battle barge. Left unsaid but rather obvious was the request for equivalent cooperation.

"Thank you," Inquisitor Kennard said with a curt nod before he stalked off the bridge to return to his own analysts.

Captain Maximus watched the Inquisitor leave before he turned to Pyrrhus and asked, "Was there anything in there meant only for the ears of the Chapter, Rhus?"

"No, but there are certain records within the Library that may be of use in this situation, Petr," Pyrrhus noted.

Glancing at the four hour old images of Oologon, Tiberius groused, "I thought we were done with that cursed place two centuries ago."

"I forgot that you were old enough to have lived through the Exodus, Guy," Maximus noted apologetically.

"I was not yet even an Initiate at the time so I barely remember it, but I know that the day my family left the rubble of Iolon behind was the happiest day of my short life. Compared to that wretched ruin of a hive, the wilds of Yundr were paradise," Tiberius mused in reminiscence of times that were quite literally from a previous life.

"The attention of Chaos in the Hive where our Chapter was born and fought for seven centuries is indeed a troublesome development. I have already tasked my Lexicanum to begin collecting what information we have on the area, both for tactical assessment and to see if we can determine what the enemy could possibly hope to obtain through their actions," Pyrrhus noted gravely.

"I will gather the sergeants and we can discuss the issue. Shall we meet in the council chambers in half an hour?" Maximus inquired.

"That should be sufficient time to access what information we have stored with us," Pyrrhus stated before he bowed slightly to Tiberius and Maximus in turn before he too left the bridge.

Placing his right arm on Tiberius' left pauldron, Maximus said to him, "Keep us safe in transit, Guy."

Nodding, the Shipmaster said, "Aye. I'm wary of that bastard cruiser sneaking up on us. You handle getting ready for the ground campaign, and I will make sure you get there."

Half an hour later and Captain Maximus was seated at his customary position at the round table that served as the centrepiece for the council room. To his left sat Pyrrhus, to his right was Chaplain Fedor Meridius, and forming a quarter ring around the rest of the circle were the ten sergeants attached to Maximus' company. The Dirge of Heresy could carry up to three companies at once and the table reflected that, hence the only partial filling, along with both the places for the Shipmaster and Master of the Enginarium remaining empty due to their activity elsewhere. At the moment, all eyes were directed upward at the holographic schematic of Hive Iolon.

"Looks like a shithole," Veteran Sergeant Rudolfus Terminus commented in his own particular idiom.

"That's because our ancestors spent seven centuries killing orks within it, Rud. Why the Administratum thought it worthwhile to repopulate the place is lost to me. In any case we should receive updated map data and all current tactical and strategic data. In the mean time we shall see if we can figure out why the enemy has chosen to attack this one hive to the exclusion of all others," Maximus explained.

"The wholesale slaughter of the civilian population stinks of foul sorcery," Chaplain Meridius commented in disgust.

"I agree, particularly given the nature of our Chapter's centuries of isolation, but we and the Inquisition scoured Oologon during the Exodus for any clues as to what happened. We are unlikely to see anything that has been missed within two centuries, but perhaps now that we can know that the forces of Chaos have a focus upon it something new may become clear. We have four centuries of coherent battle reports to go through, so keep your eyes open and your wits sharp," Pyrrhus noted as serfs began to hand out data slates to the various sergeants.

After about half an hour of quiet discussion among the sergeants the youngest of the ten, the recently promoted Sergeant Guriy Nihilus said loud enough for everyone to hear, "You know, this city looks like some of the things I normally take a flamer to."

"If you are referring to certain patterns that appear in the networks of roads and service ducting, that is a known phenomenon in cities, particularly in radial hives. The human eye sees patterns. The Administratum and Inquisition check for the presence of blasphemous ones just to be sure though," Pyrrhus explained.

"Oh. Kind of disconcerting all the same," Nihilus noted.

"It is brother, it is, but... huh... that's peculiar," Pyrrhus said, suddenly coming up short.

Snowy white eyebrows twitching, Chaplain Meridius turned to Pyrrhus and said, "Rhus, when a Librarian says that something is 'peculiar' I reach for my crozius."

"Well... there is sort of a pattern with the various cathedrals and main transit lines, but those happen naturally because of the need for associated transit hubs and connecting thoroughfares and the like, but it is not... well..." Pyrrhus noted while looking at the various maps with a sceptical eye.

"What do you see brother?" Maximus asked.

"Well, if you squint, you can almost see what might be a hexagrammic ward in the design," Pyrrhus admitted.

"If after seven centuries of fighting that devastated the hive you think you can see some form of occult symbol in the structure of the city then we need those updated maps right away," Maximus declared, looking at the nearest serf, who just shook his head in a negative gesture. Frowning, he said, "Very well. Now that we have a hint I want everyone but Rhus to focus on examining any reports of cult activity. Our primary enemies during our occupation of Iolon were orks, but reports indicate intermittent cult activity as well. It was assumed that it was just the weak succumbing to stress from the Warp storms, but perhaps not. Look for patterns."

"We should probably inform the Inquisitor," Pyrrhus pointed out.

"We probably should," Maximus agreed with a sigh before he turned to one of the serfs, who nodded and quickly began typing on a data slate to compose the proper message. Satisfied that the task would be dealt with, Maximus returned to his own examination of the old battle reports. These were all familiar to him, having been part of the information hypnotically implanted in his mind during his indoctrination into the ways of the Survivors over a century and a half ago. He had gone over them countless times since, but usually seeking lessons from the past in terms of tactical or strategic insight. Now he looked at them with new eyes, seeking more esoteric patterns.

All Space Marines had extraordinary minds as part of the gifts granted to them by the Emperor and the Primarchs through their gene seed, but sadly far too many battle-brothers chose not to exercise that strength and let the muscles of their minds atrophy. By his own estimation, Maximus ranked the Survivors as being better than most at using their brains, although certainly not the best. As a Captain he was by definition a cut above the rest of his brothers in terms of intelligence and battlefield acumen. Still, as he quickly scanned back and forth through the centuries of reports, he found his intelligence lacking. Roughly five hundred years of back and forth with orks in the ruins of a city that had once housed two billion people while a hungry black void hovered overhead was quite a daunting task to try to understand all at once, let alone to pluck the madness of heretics from the general disorder of such a war.

Then he saw it. In retrospect it was obvious. Looking up at all of his from the data slates, he said, "Brothers, I am amazed no one has noticed this before. Plot all cult activity by location and time and account for the presence of the greenskins and our own enclaves. Does anyone else notice what I am seeing?" As he spoke, Maximus manipulated the holo-lith and imposed the sites where cult activity had been found while also overlaying ork lines and their own.

There was an awkward silence before Chaplain Meridius commented dryly, "That's a rather conspicuously large dead zone of cult activity."

Up on the holographic display there was a large oval that showed no signs of any cult activity at all during the five hundred years of activity within the hive, despite being well away from the strongholds the Survivors had built into the city. While looking at the hole, Senior Sergeant Artminus Marius hummed for a moment and said, "The dead zone gets even bigger when you compare the greenskin lines to the cult activity on the borders. We only ever cleared out cults within a kilometre of that area after pushing the xenos out of the area."

"So there was clearly something in that area that they wanted so badly they couldn't even risk their presence there tipping us off to its existence. The question is, what?" Maximus mused aloud.

"The obvious answer is the crashed hive spire that more or less makes up the boundaries of the dead zone, but from an occult perspective it is completely out of place," Pyrrhus noted.

"Yes, but considering the precision cuts to the primary supports on one side we have long suspected that our ancestors dropped the spire to one side for some reason very early on in the occupation of Iolon, possibly to crush a very large concentration of orks in the collapse. What if the cult objective was what the spire landed on?" Sergeant Rudolfus speculated.

"That's possible... but..." Pyrrhus began to say speculatively while carefully examining the maps and reports before him. He then muttered, "How did we miss this?"

"Because it is not your job to look for these sorts of things," Inquisitor Kennard announced as he marched into the room. There was a slightly smug look on his face and the faintest flicker of warp fire in the eyes of the psyker acolyte at his side. The not amused look on Pyrrhus' face said everything that could not be said aloud between them, and the rest of the Marines in attendance wisely chose not to comment. After allowing for dramatic timing of his arrival to sink in and letting his eyes quickly dart over the holo-lith, Kennard added on, "The sort of high level analysis of cult activity that should have caught this is the domain of the Inquisition, which implies corruption at work. In fact, I would not be surprised if your ancestors noted this strange dead zone and reported it after your exile was over."

There was a slight pause as those assembled considered the implication that Inquisitor Kennard had just made, and then the eyes of Maximus' brothers fell on him as the senior Marine to comment. Maximus licked his lips for a moment as he carefully considered his words before he replied, "While the Survivors are uncertain of our lineage, there is some evidence to suggest that our progenitors were on Oologon IV in the first place due to Inquisitorial request."

"I am aware of this fact. I have already sent an astropathic message towards the Inquisitorial Conclave indicating that a thorough investigation into the matter is required. There is something rotten within that requires cleansing fire to purge. I can only hope it arrives," Kennard noted with the sort of dispassion that indicated that he would be strangling people if only he had their throats available.

Maximus looked at Pyrrhus, who said, "The Warp grows increasingly disquiet. It is difficult to describe to a non-psyker, but the best analogy I can describe is of the interface layer between a liquid and a gas. It is currently vibrating in such a way that there is no mixing between the two fluids, but the energy is there and slowly increasing such that if trends continue..." Pyrrhus let the morbid analogy fade away with a troubled shrug that said enough to his brothers.

"Could the slaughter of the civilians be causing it?" Meridius asked.

"Yes and no. Mass death disturbs the Warp with the echoes of their souls violently cut away from the bodies, but the scale of the disturbance is out of proportion to the scale of reported deaths. This leads increasing credence to the possibility of an arcane structure to the city, but even then such slaughter could only serve to prime the array, not activate it," Pyrrhus explained.

The pale skinned, hunched over and heavily augmented creature that Kennard had brought with him along with his psyker suddenly spoke up with a raspy, excited voice and said, "It is the power conduits! That must be it!"

"Archimentes?" Kennard asked of his servant.

"The main transit lines are the obvious part, but there is only bits and pieces so unless there is a major cult ritual going on you would never think to look, but most major roads have the biggest power conduits in the hive running parallel to the side or underneath them. You do not however have to run such conduits along the same path as roads and you can hide them in the infrastructure of the hive. If you look here and here there are major industrial sectors in sub-optimal locations that could easily have major power conduits transecting them and completing missing pieces of occult circuitry. The area the cults were protecting by avoiding falls into a third such position," the savant explained, gesturing to a pair of production blocks that seemed no different than any of the other blocks.

The battle-brothers remained silent and still at the proclamation, while Pyrrhus, Kennard and the other psyker all looked thoughtful for a moment before Pyrrhus declared, "Okay, it is definitely an occult array of some sort, but there is too much missing information to be able to determine its exact function."

"Immaterial, we..." Kennard began, before Maximus cut him off and said, "...bombard Iolon from orbit until not even the outskirts remain intact and then survey the remaining hives while waiting for back up."

Kennard paused in annoyance before he said, "Acceptable. I had heard your chapter has a reputation for softness, but it seems I was mistaken."

The Space Marines all glared at the Inquisitor in a way that suggested that his Inquisitorial Rosette might find itself little more than a shiny bauble amidst a pile of meat if he said something like that again before Maximus replied coldly, "Our enemies often mistaken long term pragmatism for softness, to their brief but intense discomfort later."

Not appearing in any way intimidated in a manner that suggested he had received the message loud and clear, Kennard said in turn, "Well, I suppose the infrequency of such attitudes amongst the lesser servants of the Emperor could generate such rumours."

Since a roundabout apology without actually apologizing for anything was probably the best that could be extracted from an Inquisitor, Maximus let the initial comment slide and instead said, "In any case, we have no authority to carry Cyclonic Torpedoes or any other Exterminatus grade weaponry, so a surgical excising of the confirmed infection shall have to suffice until further Inquisitorial oversight arrives."

"This is true," Kennard admitted. He looked like he was about to say something else when all froze in horror as wan witch light began to flicker across the eyes of the two psykers present, with the crystals upon Pyrrhus' skull that made up his psychic hood soon glowing ominously. All else in attendance began to slowly edge out of their seats, hands resting upon the hilts and handles of various weapons as they waited to see if intervention would be necessary. Finally though the episode seemed to pass for both psykers, to which the Inquisitor could only exclaim, "By the Holy Light of the Emperor, I demand to know what that was about!"

"Something terrible has just happened master," the psyker whispered hoarsely to the Inquisitor at a level he probably mistakenly thought the Space Marines would not be able to make out.

Pyrrhus' eyes flashed once more before he announced, "We have lost our Astropathic choir; five burnouts and two emergency executions. Our Navigators are currently stable, but one had to be heavily sedated. The Lexicanums are fine."

"What happened, Rhus?" Maximus asked worriedly.

"I... I cannot say precisely. If the boundary between the Warp and realspace was agitated before, it is now like a large rock has been dropped from a great height. I need to consult some things before I can make an accurate assessment of the true extent of what has happened," Pyrrhus stated. He paused for a moment before he said, "At this point I do not think anyone will ever know the story of what happened here unless we tell it to them face to face."

Both Meridius and Kennard looked like they wanted to say something about defeatism before the pained looks on the faces of the psykers informed them that Pyrrhus was being optimistic. Maximus instead said, "Go, see to what you need to see. I think we are done here. Everyone, return to your squads and order a full combat lockdown. We will not be dropping into battle any time soon and I want us prepared for rough weather if need be. I would suggest you have your own people secure themselves as well, Inquisitor."

"Archimentes, Procyon, pass the advice along to the rest of the team. I will accompany the Captain back to the bridge as I wish to be among the first to see what the auspex has to say," Kennard ordered of his acolytes, who nodded in silent confirmation.

Activating his personal vox as he got up, Maximus said, "Guy, I'm not sure what you know so far, but I recommend you prepare the ship for potential moral threats."

"Acknowledged Petr. I suspect Rhus has more information, but the death of the Astropaths has already moved me up to full alert on that front. I've already distributed orders to the section heads, but I held off on a general announcement in case you were in the middle of something," Tiberius remarked.

"The psychic disruption more or less ended the conversation we were having. On that note however, we need to prepare for an orbital bombardment," Maximus stated.

"Precise or prejudiced?" Tiberius inquired.

"Prejudiced. Extremely prejudiced. We will need a complete scouring of Iolon at the minimum," Maximus noted.

"I will inform the masters of the guns of the coming need so that they can prepare," Tiberius responded crisply.

Arriving at the bridge, Maximus found that there was little to do but wait for the requisite hour for light from whatever the event was to reach them, even as the psychic augers showed Warp energy readings that were reaching terrifying levels. What they saw in the EM spectrum would have made lesser men than Space Marines and Inquisitors blanche, and a few of the serfs on the bridge had to be taken away for morale reasons. What they saw was the squadron of forty enemy ships, most of them appearing like defiled pilgrim ships, all attempt to activate their Warp drives in close formation within low orbit of Oologon IV. The results were spectacularly predictable, but the aftermath was not.

Making the sign of the Aquila in warding, Inquisitor Kennard whispered, "Sacred Light of the Emperor protect us! I had thought I had seen the depths of such madness, but this is beyond anything in our records!"

"May the Emperor protect indeed. This certainly explains the reactions of our psykers and the readings from the auspex," Maximus noted grimly as he stared at the bleeding hole of unlight that was connected by strands of viridescent indigo to the world below.

"Such insanity! But... but yes, I can see what the design could do now. It must be some sort of... warp amplifier. It is siphoning off the energy from that Warp tear, but instead of dissipating it, it must be feeding it back into the rift. God Emperor help me, the depths of depraved corruption to have pulled this off..." Kennard stated, nearly muttering to himself towards the end.

"And the Survivors sat on it for seven centuries and noticed nothing," Maximus replied grimly.

"It's not your job to root out this sort of base treachery, it is supposed to be the job of the Inquisition. God Emperor guide my last message safely through the Warp to faithful ears so that the guilty might be punished for this atrocity," Kennard stated numbly.

Seeing something of a horrified yet enthralled look growing over him, Maximus cut the feed and said, "All signals are to be considered a moral threat at this point."

Shaking off whatever fugue was settling over him, Kennard stated, "Thank you Captain, I should have been of stronger will than to stare like that."

"We will all require proper debrief and interrogation for corruption after this, I suspect," Maximus pointed out before he turned to Tiberius and asked, "What are our options Guy?"

Sweeping over a few safe, clinical numbers Tiberius mused on it for a second before he stated, "I suspect the whole city is going to be enveloped in energy from that rift, which I am betting my soul will be like a gigantic Void shield in terms of protection, only I doubt even torpedoes would be able to get through. Cultists are crazy, but they at least know our obvious moves to try to counter them."

"Agreed, wholeheartedly," Kennard said with a quick nod, the weakness gone from his eyes and voice to be replaced with proper Imperial steel.

"We therefore need an unobvious move to have a hope against them. Could we ram the city?" Maximus asked.

"No, we would be torn apart by the rift before we could get there, even if we don't just bounce off the shielding effect," Tiberius replied with a shake of his head.

"The shield did not seem to extend very far outside the city. Could you launch torpedoes at an oblique angle and sneak them in underneath?" Kennard suggested.

"They're not that agile, especially not in a gravity well with atmosphere," Tiberius stated with another shake.

Maximus and Kennard both stared quietly at the clinically dispassionate holo of the doomed world of Oologon IV for a long time, watching the range counter slowly tick down as the Dirge of Heresy approached at a speed that was only slow on the scale of stars. After what seemed an interminable time of quiet but could have been no more than a handful of minutes, Maximus asked, "Your savant, what areas of scholastic lore has he studied?"

"I can think of no Warp lore that could serve us here," Kennard replied honestly.

"Not lore of the occult, but rather lore of the physical world," Maximus clarified without looking at Kennard.

"Oh, he has studied just about everything in that regard, or at least only the up to the semi-banned treatises on the physical sciences," Kennard answered with a shrug.

"I suspected as much. Do you think I could consult with him over a geological problem?" Maximus asked.

Kennard turned to look at Maximus, and as their eyes met the Inquisitor's went wide with comprehension. Turning back to the holographic representation of the world, Kennard noted, "Your chapter is far more unconventional than the rumours suggest."

For the next two hours the Dirge of Heresy made its final approach, watching as the Warp rift grew in size, casting its hideous, sickly light across the damned star system. All across the battle barge shutters remained tightly shut as if in Warp transit, and the mortal passengers found anti-psychotic drugs being distributed to all. The vox casters were filled with the hymns of Meridius and particularly faithful serfs, bolstering the spirits of those aboard the ship.

Slowing down to a final, geostationary orbit on the far side of Oolong IV from Iolon, the great warship rotated on its longitudinal axis so that its starboard side faced the world below. With the Warp rift eclipsed by the bulk of the planet, the shutters opened for the macrocannons along the side facing the walking dead world below. On the dorsal surface the great lance battery turret rotated into position as final firing solutions were plotted out. Tech adepts and integrated servitors fed in the last of the necessary data to the mighty weapons, chanting out in Binary the praises to the world endingly powerful machine spirits that they might vent their apocalyptic wrath true and clean.

Staring at still closed adamantium and ceramite shutters, Shipmaster Gaius Tiberius uttered the only word he need to.

"Fire."

The entire six kilometre long warship hummed as the hab block sized capacitors for the lance battery all emptied in a few seconds, projecting long columns of star hot light down into the coastal mountain range the savants aboard the warship had selected as their targets. The beams struck true and stabbed straight into the magma chamber of the dormant volcano chosen as the first target. Pressure that had been building for centuries suddenly discovered that there was a convenient exit cut and the mountain exploded with the combined force of the lance strike and its own eruption. A second later and the first of the macrocannon shells began to rain down into the other geologically active features.

The guns kept firing, as fast as they could reload and recharge, bombarding the mountain range that had begun to grow tens of millions of years prior when two tectonic plates began to grind against each other. Tensions and pressures on a planetary scale suddenly found the unyielding rock that had held them in check had been abruptly and catastrophically removed. The skies soon darkened as explosions to end the world rapidly ripped back and forth across this seam of the world.

Ten minutes into the bombardment, the Dirge of Heresy began to rotate, bringing its bow about to point down into the burning scar the warship had gouged into the planet below, its guns firing in sequence just as they lost line of sight with a singular target. Just as the last of the macrocannons fired the six now open torpedo tubes launched their building sized payloads. It took but a second for them to leave their tubes and rush down to the planet below, during which time the lance battery fired just above them.

The mighty warship had dug a hole through the crust of the world to the mantle beneath, and the half dozen plasma torpedoes made it through the rapidly collapsing wound to strike and bury into the dense, not quite solid and not quite liquid rock of the interior before they detonated into newborn suns. On the scale of worlds, the bombardment was not enough to do more than scratch the ball of rock and metal, but on the scale of continents the bombardment was more than enough. Multiple tectonic plates cracked and shifted. Mountains fell and oceans rose. If Oologon IV had a future then the devastation would have been a scar that would have been visible in the geological record for billions of years.

But Oologon IV did not have a future. In the charnel house of Iolon where daemons capered and danced over the corpses of Imperial citizens and the cultists that had summoned them, their first warning that this world and the stars for a hundred light years around would not be theirs was the way the ground began to shake and tremble. Nameless, formless blasphemies unused to the structures of realspace exulted in this novel new form, but their more complex brethren had enough understand to know that the ground should not shake.

Iolon was built on geologically stable ground as proof against the shifts of nature in the short millennia since its initial planning, but that was not enough in the face of the quakes that raced across the planet. The ground shifted and trembled and pulled on the great array that had been constructed. The design was robust against damage, but not on the scale inflicted as conduits snapped under the tension and hive spires toppled upon critical lines. The daemonic architects who had played with dozens of generations of mortals to achieve this monument to their brilliance screamed in horror as their design was perverted and altered by pure random chance.

One of the patron gods of the grand project cackled with perverse glee as its minions were devoured by pure, unadulterated chaos that had been set in motion by their own hands, while the other gods turned away from the failures before them. The grand array was no longer functioning properly. It was now drawing the rift into itself rather than the energies spilled forth by the rift. The daemons wailing amongst the wreckage of their design knew that when contact was met between the two, their immortal existences would end permanently.

By the time a serf had cried out, "It's working!" two hours had passed since the launch of the torpedoes, the Dirge of Heresy and her masters needing to wait to see if they would need to repeat their bombardment to finish the job. Tiberius had not even finished giving the order before the main engines started firing to take the mighty warship as far from the dying world as they could as quickly as possible. The ship fired its engines at rates that would quickly burn them out if kept up, but the red robed masters of the reactors saw no need to conserve them if a lack of a single erg would lead to their annihilation.

It wasn't enough.

The rift touched the array four hundred and seventy-six seconds after the battle barge first fired its engines. For a briefly infinite time, everything within about a light year of the planet stopped. Then, a moment later, everything within that sphere of space collapsed inward, driven to superluminal velocities by an enormous buckling of the Warp. The matter of the star and all the planets and moons and comets and asteroids and dust abruptly found themselves all compressed into a single point too small for the universe to acknowledge as having volume, and promptly collapsed into a singularity at the centre of the Warp rift, which then promptly fell into the Warp rift, sealing the fissure in reality by pulling it closed.

Diverting all possible power to the Gellar Field and the engines, the Dirge of Heresy burned like a candle just above the ultimate blackness while surrounded by the hungry darkness of the Warp. Only able to survive the buckling of space-time by the fact that their drives did something similar, they avoided being pulled into the singularity, but not from being snared by its gravity. Downward they travelled, pulled along by physical forces that had no place in the Immaterial Realm and by the vortex currents generated by the impossible motion of the black hole through the Empyrean as it sank towards the Stygian depths.

Psykers skimmed power from the waves and ripples at the surface of the great sea of power that was the Warp. Mighty warships swam through the currents just beneath. Daemons and more horrid things prowled in the lightless depths below that, hunting for the flickering light of mortal souls upon the surface or in the bubbles about their ships to guide them to their next meal. The Dirge went deeper than that, into and beyond realms of pure thought and emotion. It was a stratum of the Warp that no mortal could go, where the weight of non-existence threatened to crush the tiny, insignificant craft. The Gellar Field was pressed in to the hull and even through in some places, causing normally near indestructible armour to flow and melt like ice exposed to a cutting torch, the bonds that held the material together rendered void by the unreal nature of these depths.

The black hole, shielded for a long time by its own impossibility, finally began to lose its grip upon the battle barge, and the two began to wander away from each other. As much as the singularity had been the doom of the warship by dragging it into these depths, it had also been the salvation by keeping the worst of the Warp pressure away by dint of its wake. Tumbling out of control, the Gellar field began its final collapse inward.

Isolated for too long from the normal laws of physics, the black hole surrendered to the Warp. The first physical law, by way of being one of the weakest, was the force of gravity. In the nanosecond between the failure of gravity and the rest of the physical forces giving up, they protested against the compressed state.

In the months and years to come, the Imperium would take note of the loss of the Oolong Star System, a battle barge and company of Space Marines, and the disappearance of an Inquisitor. They would also take note of a rather sharp upward spike in the birth rate of psykers in the sector and an general roughening of Warp currents in the subsector where the star had once been, but the event was not noticeable to rouse the attention of the galactic bureaucracy, nor allow them to properly connect the dots. Entities more ancient than apes would also notice the peculiar event, but not have a proper explanation for what had happened, and in their own ways simply shrug and move on with their own agendas.

The Dirge of Heresy on the other hand was considerably closer to the event that the rest of the galaxy would eventually perceive of as a minor burp in the Warp. Anywhere and anywhen else, either the blast or the Warp pressure would have obliterated them, but instead the shock formed a wave of reality that the ship was carried along on, the forces of the Warp and the explosion just barely cancelling each other out enough for the battle barge to be swept out of the abyss and towards the depths where it was meant to operate.

Twisted and buckled by awesome forces that boggled the mind and its mighty armour pitted and eroded by the corrosive essence of the Warp, the once mighty battle barge was vomited forth back into realspace with such violence that the ship was nearly snapped in half. As it was, on the bridge when motion returned to sensibility and colour stopped having a flavour it was a hellish scramble of broken machinery and shattered bodies, all lit in the bloody crimson of the emergency lighting. Deck plates had crumpled and the artificial gravity was clear malfunctioning as down was not oriented perfectly normal to the deck but had a small but noticeable tilt to it.

Having just barely remained secured to his seat, Maximus managed to recover quickly enough to be able to see Tiberius extracting himself from the partial collapse of the ceiling over his command throne. Undoing his restraints, Maximus moved over to the shipmaster and aided him in pushing a piece of debris off of him. Judging by the way Tiberius' armour had crumpled, if he had not been adorned for battle he would have surely have perished.

"Thank you brother," Tiberius replied while he gingerly removed his right pauldron to free up the range of motion in that arm.

"Any time brother. How can I further assist?" Maximus asked.

Looking around the wreckage, Tiberius replied, "Assist the bridge crew, I need their technical expertise to get the Dirge up and running once more."

In other Chapters, a Company Captain being asked to aid non-Space Marines might have been interpreted as an insult, but the culture of the Survivors placed the pragmatism of the situation above concerns of pride and honour. Service to the Emperor was the greatest pride and honour one could have, and if the Emperor was best served by medically aiding His servants so that they might do their job, then it was Maximus' great joy to do so until he could find a better use of his time. As such Maximus nodded to Tiberius and went to go examine the nearest pile of serfs.

Ceramite gauntlets moved with surprising gentleness to extract the living from the dead and to give the dead some dignity in their repose. Only when he found the living so battered that even in his inexpert opinion that they had no hope for survival did he bring his full strength to bear, quietly delivering the Emperor's Mercy while whispering prayers for the quick and painless departure of their souls. The Adeptus Astartes were the Emperor's Angels of Death, and they could deliver that death both brutally and mercifully, as the case may be.

Then, while working on sorting out a pile of wreckage, both machine and man, Maximus found Inquisitor Kennard, still strapped into his seat. While it was obvious that the Inquisitor was badly injured, it was also obvious from the rise and fall of his chest that he had survived. Using his strength to shift the entire seat, Maximus brought the Inquisitor out into the open and called out to the few mobile serfs, "I need a stretcher team for a VIP."

To their credit the serfs only hesitated for a moment in deciding what to do, for as much as it had to rankle for an outsider to be given preferential treatment while their comrades lay dying in need of the limited amount of transport to the nearest Apothecary, it was still an order from a Captain of the Chapter and the patient was an Inquisitor. Maximus examined the faces of the trudged forward to take the Inquisitor, identifying them as Ensigns Mykyta and Klavdiya. He would talk to them later about how he understood their hesitation and appreciated their obedience in spite of that. It would not do to let morale be depleted by doubts.

"Brother, I require your assistance," Tiberius announced as the serfs took Kennard off to the Apothecary for treatment.

"What is it, Guy?" Maximus asked.

"I need something confirmed, Petr. I can tell from my instruments - Emperor, from my handheld auspex - that we have exited the Warp, but nothing else is working properly and I can't even open the shutters. I need someone to go down to the bridge airlock and more or less look outside. I would normally ask a serf to do it, but I am short of serfs, let alone void capable serfs," Tiberius explained.

Maximus nodded curtly and then asked, "What do you need me to look for?"

"Look for the extent of the exterior damage and any nearby masses that we should be worried about, more or less. You should also set your armour's auto-senses to record so that we can analyze star patterns later if we can't get our sensors back online properly due to damage," Tiberius explained.

Nodding, Maximus went to work without another word, quickly descending into the service corridors surrounding the bridge until he arrived at an airlock normally used by serfs for maintenance of the exterior of the bridge but that was more than large enough to permit egress by powered armour. After double checking that his armour retained a full atmospheric seal, Maximus activated his vox and said, "I am sealing the airlock now. The interior lock is showing a positive seal, but please make sure to be prepared to fire emergency bulkhead seals in the event of unexpected decompression."

"Confirmed. Emperor be with you," Tiberius stated on the other end of the vox.

Making the proper observations to the machine spirit in charge of the air lock, Maximus went through the decompression procedure only for the system to inform him that there it was suffering a General Error 27 and could not complete the procedure. Tapping the vox once more, Maximus relayed the problem on to Tiberius. After a moment, Tiberius said, "Can you open the outer door without completing the depressurization step?"

Glancing at the controls, Maximus stated, "The airlock is currently on an isolated air supply and the manual controls are intact."

"Please make the attempt, Petr," Tiberius requested.

"Very well. Stand by and take note of any anomalies while I open the lock," Maximus stated as he began flipping breakers to cancel out the magnetic clamps and enable the manual override. Once the machine spirit had been properly instructed to stand aside despite its protests, Maximus set himself in front of the outer door to the airlock and engaged the magnetic clamps in his boots, sealing himself to the deck so that he could get extra leverage and avoid any possibility of being knocked out into the void of space by explosive decompression. Grabbing the handles for the door, Maximus then began to turn.

Even with a Space Marine's great strength augmented by power armour and the mechanism in manual mode, the differential in air pressure should have required some effort, and Maximus expected the possibility of requiring even more due to damage. Instead there was a small popping noise almost immediately and then the door slid inward and to the side with practically no effort, much to Maximus' bafflement. What he found on the other side of the door was equally baffling, as rather than hard vacuum and stars there was a solid looking matte black barrier.

"Brother, I have encountered a potential Warp phenomenon. Standby," Maximus announced over the vox.

Disengaging his magnetic clamps, Maximus took several steps back and drew the plasma pistol at his side, thumbing the activating rune as he took it out. Levelling the energy weapon upon the black barrier, Maximus fired a single shot and was rewarded with an actinic flare of light as the bolt of star hot plasma struck the material and flashed away some of it, leaving a glassy piece of matter behind in its wake and a puff of acrid looking smoke hanging in the air. Raising his pistol away, Maximus then reached down his belt and casually drew and threw the combat knife there with a single smooth motion.

The metallic clatter of the knife striking the wall and then bouncing off confirmed that Maximus was dealing with some form of matter. Carefully moving forward, he kicked the knife to the side while he kept his pistol raised and closed the airlock door. Once it was sealed he activated his vox and said, "We appear to be encased in something. I need someone with a psy-spex to investigate for possible Warp contamination. Full environmental sealing required."

"We've made contact with elements from elsewhere on the ship. I am sending down a pair of brothers with the equipment," Tiberius announced, a slightly worried tinge in his voice. Or at least worried for a Space Marine.

Two hours later and Maximus and the surviving complement of marines minus the overworked Apothecaries were assembled within the primary chapel, along with the conscious elements of the Inquisitor's retinue and what serfs could be spared from keeping the ship from collapsing in on itself. The central element at the moment were the prone bodies of the three Marines who had perished and as many of the serfs as had been found and could be conveniently brought in for the initial service.

"Ave Imperator," Meridius spoke in a solemn, booming voice that carried across the chapel.

"Ave Imperator," the assembled congregation spoke back as one.

"We live, because the Emperor has chosen us to live. We die because the Emperor has chosen us to die. Between those two times, we serve the Emperor. That is all there is, and all that needs be said for the dead. They lived and served honourably, and died in service. No greater thing could be asked for. For the living though, to have brothers and sisters cruelly torn away from us, if words are not said, faith might waver. So I say, of the dead, they shall be remembered. They are already known to the Emperor, but they shall be remembered by the living too. Each soul taken from us today, in our duty to the Emperor, shall be remembered. Their sacrifices shall not be forgotten. Their deaths, no matter how random and capricious they may seem, had meaning to the Emperor, and thus they have meaning to us. It is my great honour to have known many of them, to have ministered to their spirits, and it is my great disappointment to have not known far too many. Any true servant of the Emperor is a worthy in my eyes, even if some have more pressing need of my attention to distribute it as evenly as I might like. That they are gone is a loss that we all feel. I shall now read the names of those who have passed on into the Light of the Emperor, so that we might all know them. This list shall grow as more of our brothers and sisters are found in the wreckage, and as the grievously injured pass on from their wounds, but since we must thank the Emperor for His miraculous intervention in our survival, that we gather makes this also the time to speak the names of the dead," Meridius boomed out to the assembled crowds, who listened on with rapt attention.

A clerical serf then handed Meridius a massive scroll, which he unrolled and began to read off for all in attendance, "Alenko, Ann. Azon, Glynkzo. Baalsyn, Gregoire. Baalsyn, Henkel. Baltine, Boris..."

A silent buzz to the three most important officers in the room informed them of important new information, and with curt, apologetic nods to Meridius they left to return to the task of overseeing the ship. Meridius gave a small nod of his own acknowledging that their presence was required elsewhere without even breaking pace as he continued to read out in alphabetical order the names of the dead.

Slipping out of the chapel, Maximus, Tiberius, and Senior Techmarine Timaeus Galen all found a quiet room attached to the main corridor leading to the chapel. Speaking in the mechanical tones so common to the followers of the Machine God, Galen said, "Senior Apothecary Aristides reports that Sergeant Kyrillos will survive his wounds and should regain consciousness soon. Since his squad did not remove the spar that impaled him but instead cut it free with his power sword, the loss of two lungs and a heart did not prove fatal."

"Ave Imperator. I will make sure to quietly pass the blessed news along to Meridius when I return," Maximus stated.

Looking over his data slate, Tiberius said, "I see that your adepts have made sufficient progress with our situation that it comes time to make a command decision."

"Yes. Sustained melta cutting has breached the dense matter that appears to have been shoved aside by our Gellar field - Ave Imperator and Ave Omnissiah for such miracles - and has found sedimentary rock on the other side, consistent with the geology of a world possessing liquid water and an oxygen atmosphere. Sounding with seismic charges indicates that we are in a mountain range of some sort. A fresh shaft is being dug as we speak towards the closest open surface," Galen reported clinically.

"The question thus becomes who is best suited to the task of scouting," Maximus noted.

"Indeed. The Emperor has clearly ensured our survival where it should have been impossible many times over, which means He has a task for us on this world. The question thus becomes what task?" Tiberius added on.

"I have a full complement of servo-skulls ready to scout as soon as we finish mining out the new shaft," Galen stated.

"Good for the immediate area, but of limited use over a wider range. Tell me, how well did our Land Speeders weather the ordeal?" Maximus asked.

"Land Speeder Typhon suffered damage to its missile launcher system, but Land Speeder Xykos is fully intact and operational. I take it you intend to scout long rang with Xykos?" Galen said.

Nodding, Maximus said, "Tenth Squad lost Bracchus and their sergeant is injured. Even if it is only two members, they will have their sense of worth reinforced through action, and they are the best scouts outside of Tenth Company. Can we deploy the Land Speeder?"

"I will instruct my adepts to widen the shaft. It will also take some work to move Xykos through the ship to the necessary egress point," Galen replied.

"Excellent. Who can we assign to the move?" Maximus asked.

"I will send out the serf assignments immediately. I already know from the reports which divisions suffered the least casualties and thus will be able to spare numbers from the funeral. I will of course apologize to both them and Meridius for it," Tiberius stated.

"Duty overrides other considerations, especially in a situation like this. Not knowing what is going on around us could kill us just as easily as a reactor overload. Whatever penance Meridius assigns I shall be sure to bear with you, my brother," Maximus replied while placing a hand on Tiberius' shoulder and looking him in the eye.

Returning the gesture and holding the gaze, Tiberius said, "I know my brother, but it is still hard, especially with the fact that the Dirge is unlikely to sail ever again weighing upon my honour."

"It weighs upon us all, brother, it weighs upon us all," Maximus agreed solemnly. "All we can do is discover the task the Emperor has for us and complete it to the best of our ability."

"Aye. Ave Imperator," Tiberius stated.

"Ave Imperator," Maximus and Galen echoed.

[Academia Nut]

Chapter Two

There was a patch of scree on the side of a mountain that had been vibrating on and off in varying strengths for several hours, shaking loose much of the broken rock, although there was plenty more above to replace that which went skittering down the slope. Eventually though the vibration stopped and was replaced by a gentle agitation of a few of the stones as they were shoved out of the way by a metal pole. The pole remained held in the air like a dog's nose for a few moments before it retracted back beneath the scree. Shortly after that the vibration returned, but now there was a new direction for the rock to move as it started to fall into a hole in the underlying stratum of the cliff.

When the dark void opened up to a size roughly large enough to fit a human head through, the digging stopped once more, this time to allow a pair of skulls to float out of the hole. Bleached and polished ivory with black lines of devotional script scrimshawed into the right sides and strange cybernetic attachments occupying the eye sockets and rears, the macabre machines rose into the air and then began to sweep the area. As the skulls bobbed like corks in a tub, laser scans sweeping out across the desolate rubble field, the hole they had emerged from began to rapidly widen out, becoming a gaping maw that was soon hurling rocks out rather than letting them fall in as previously. As the excavation continued, more skulls floated out of the hole.

When the hole was large enough for a human to comfortably walk out of, a significantly larger figure emerged from the earth. Heavily armoured in massive plates painted in dark grey tones with strategically placed green trim, the giant looked out at the barren wasteland through faintly glowing green lenses while keeping his weapon up. What he saw was a massive, grey plain of drumlins and moraines, the broken rock coated with a fine layer of lichen that gave splashes of colour. Out on the horizon there was a slight glimmer of white that suggested that the ice sheets that had created the plain were still out there. Panning about, he soon saw the mountain range he had emerged from. A long line of white capped steel peaks that stretched from one horizon to the next, their sides had been scoured by the last time the ice had advanced this far.

Stalking out away from the still expanding hole, the giant was soon joined by a near identically clad twin and then a third. The third had not only his weapon but a scanner in hand and he was carefully going over the readings before he announced, "All clear for at least five klicks. Lex, Lyp, you are clear to deploy when ready."

From the dark depths of the now vehicle sized tunnel human sized figures wrapped in environmental suits scrambled out of the way as a deep thrumming noise started up. Floating on strange principles similar to those of the servo-skulls and propelled by enormous fans, the vehicle offered little protection to the pair of armoured giants within other than pure, raw speed and the ability of its crew to strike first with the rapid fire weapons mounted underneath the hull and next to the right seat. Drifting clear of the tunnel, the workers, and their fellow brothers, the driver gave a thumbs up signal to the others before spinning the ducted fans up to the point where they were generating significant thrust.

Accelerating away, the driver quickly pushed the throttle all the way full, taking the craft up to a blistering three-hundred kilometres per hour, running parallel to the mountain range in a direction the compass was telling them was magnetic east. Trusting in the anti-grav system to compensate for all but the largest changes in elevation and in fast reflexes to avoid other obstacles, the driver whipped across the landscape while the gunner surveyed the terrain through an array of sensors that scanned for artificial constructs or other signs of industrial life.

"There's a pass in the mountains up ahead, ten klicks," the gunner stated over the internal vox channel.

"Think we should take it, Lyp?" The driver, Lex, asked.

"I'm getting lots of returns from the ice to the north of the sort that probably means continental ice sheet. If we're close to a pole, this plain could stretch all the way around to where we started. Unless there's a mining operation out here, not even orks would set up shop this far north. We might as well turn south at the first opportunity. Also, the pass just came in on my thermals and it looks like there might be a warmer valley in there," the gunner, Lyp, stated.

"The pass it is then," Lex noted as the gap in the mountains came into view, although in retrospect it was obvious from further out due to the cloud formations generated by the wind coming out of the pass, which was strong enough to sweep the area around the gap in the mountains smooth.

"That's quite the thermal inversion effect," Lex commented, and in short order the Land Speeder was being buffeted by the winds rushing out of the mountain pass. Keeping the powerful vehicle under control, he watched as their speed dropped precipitously as the engines fought the air trying to balance its temperature out via ferocious displacement winds.

Reaching the top of the pass, a partially frozen over valley was revealed on the other side, the stone sculpted smooth by millennia of glacial activity and then by dry winds blowing through with hot air piped up from the far south by the mountain valleys. Clinging to the warmer floor of the valley was a carpet of lichens and mosses interspersed with cold dwarfed and wind twisted pines. As the Land Speeder rushed out of the worst of the wind and began to pick up speed once again sophisticated sensors probed the plant-life.

"Life scans indicate the plants are Terran derived, so that means that at least some point humans were on this world if they aren't here still," Lyp announced while looking over the data passed by the Land Raider to his helmet's auto-senses.

"Praise be to the Emperor for continued miracles," Lex added on as he slipped through the various strands of air in the valley on something between instinct and careful planning, moving like a sidewinder to take the path of least resistance. Following the meandering, ice cut course of the mountains, Lex slipped into a hollow to take advantage of a lack of wind to accelerate further only to slam the fans into reverse and hit the retrorockets to bring the Land Speeder to an abrupt halt so as to not overshooting the sudden discovery within.

The little hollow had likely been cut by melt water thousands of years ago and offered a respite from the winds for the Land Speeder... and whatever vehicle had left the tire tracks were clearly cut into the fine, gritty glacial till that had accumulated. Undoing his restraints, Lex announced, "Cover me," as he dropped out of the Speeder to take a closer look at the track. As he was crouched over the impressions in the powder, Lyp panned across the horizon with his heavy bolter, seeking out threats.

"It's not orks, the vehicle was travelling relatively slow in the general direction of the pass," Lex announced, that piece of evidence being more than enough to rule out the reckless xenos. "Looks like a single all-terrain buggy-type vehicle came through here... no more than a day ago, no less than three hours."

Looking over the maps compiled by the machine spirits of the Land Speeder and the sensors, Lyp announced, "There's some glacial cuts that are creating sensor blind spots within a few kilometres of here. They could have already spotted us."

Hopping back in, Lex asked, "Do we pursue?"

Glancing about the valley, Lyp pointed to a nearby pile of snow that was clearly from a recent avalanche and said, "Our arrival was Emperor-blessedly smooth for what it should have been, but there must have been some seismic activity. That had to have attracted attention. Whoever is out here likely has the advantage of knowledge of the terrain and surprise."

"We need to regain the initiative," Lex concluded.

Pulling up the map that they had compiled so far, Lyp quickly gestured to the general course of the valley before returning his attention to scanning for threats and said, "The valley looks like it turns back around here. We have the speed and lift to get around and on top of them, and if we stick to the shadows we should be able to lose them."

"We can do better. If we run for that cleft over here first and then track around in this other dry streambed formation past the turn in the valley, we can break their line of sight to us while making it look like we're running rather than hunting," Lex said while he gestured to the map to show his plan.

"Excellent idea brother," Lyp noted as Lex kicked them up and out of the hollow and sent them north towards the geological features necessary for their plan.

Spending a good half hour in silence as they started to make their circuitous way around the valley, searching for just the right places to slip away from any prying eyes potentially hiding in the blind spots on their sensors, the two worked their way south and west by a good five kilometres, although the actual path was significantly longer. Just as Lex was starting to work out how he would ascend the opposite side of the mountain they presumed the buggy was sheltering in, Lyp proclaimed, "Alert Brother! We have an active fusion engine just on the other side of that ridge."

Abruptly aborting his plan, Lex wheeled the Land Speeder about and settled it in behind a building sized boulder amidst a scree field. Looking over at his battle brother he asked, "What have we got?"

"A relatively dense column of hot air that just became visible. The machine spirit is tagging it as a probable fusion engine connected to a primitive cooling system venting in the air, due to a lack of combustion products in the column," Lyp reported.

"Looks like we may have stumbled upon the camp of where the buggy came from, and they have access to better technology than internal combustion. Do we pull back or proceed?" Lex asked, once again asking for his brother's thoughts on the matter.

"We need information. I should proceed on foot to the edge of the ridge while you keep the Speeder in cover and remain ready for rapid extraction in case of overwhelming hostile response," Lyp stated.

"Agreed. Emperor be with you, brother," Lex replied as Lyp hopped out of the Land Speeder and began to advance across the broken, grey terrain at a cautious ten kilometres an hour before he went prone upon arrival at the ridge in question. Created by some primordial fault pulling the mountain range apart and then scoured and cut by the glaciers endemic to this mountain range, it was an oasis of relative warmth and shelter from the winds that allowed what could be called a forest to grow.

However, attention was drawn away from the comparative novelty of trees by the much stronger attractor of the first definitive proof of technologically advanced beings on this world. Taking the form of a small settlement composed of a half dozen one and two storey stone structures made from local materials, it also featured the even further attention focusing additions of a rotary VTOL aircraft and what appeared to be a very small Titan. The humanoid war machine was rather alarming to Lyp in its construction due to the odd angularity of its surfaces that gave it certain aspects that were almost insect-like, but zooming in his auto-senses on the figures milling about the buildings and VTOL craft showed that they were more-or-less human. Lyp chalked the war machine's appearance up to a very different design philosophy, something that happened to human civilizations separated by large spans of time from the rest of the species.

His zoomed in senses also let Lyp see armed men dragging struggling figures out of the stone structures. Women by the look of things. Lyp felt something bubble up within him, a deep rage that he viciously suppressed. Part of it seemed to have come from some repressed corner of his mind, possibly from the unremembered dream before he was a Marine and he made a note to speak to the Chaplain about it, but another part of it was his Chapter's philosophy on proper behaviour. The Imperium was for all of humanity, and while its function required hierarchy, rank was not privilege to abuse others. That path led to hedonism and sloth and resentment from the lower classes. Still, Lyp did not know enough about the situation to warrant intervention, as it was entirely possible that these people were deserving of their fate, so he held his tongue and hand.

Then again, from the sloppy weapons handling and dress of the aggressors, Lyp would not have wagered on these men being the local planetary defence force, and if they were then they badly needed a commissar to shoot the majority of them. He watched in stoic silence as one of the struggling figures managed to break free, only to be gunned down in a burst of fully automatic ballistic fire. The shooting was sloppy and relied more upon the rate of fire to hit something than any real marksmanship, and the wounds were all gut shots rather than centre of mass. The act seemed to stir up the inhabitants of the structures, and one of the soldiers seemed to be angry with the one who fired at the fleeing person. He began to wave at the soldiers, who started to fall back to the VTOL, some carrying prisoners while others let loose with undirected automatic fire.

The extraction process seemed to vitalize the miniature Titan, which had appeared content to scan the ground up until that point. Now apparently given more active orders, it stalked forward to one of the two storey structures and pointed its weapon studded arms at the building. It then opened up with what appeared to be heavy flamers of some sort, although the behaviour of the white hot flames was more like a gas fire than a jellied liquid fire as there was a distinct lack of the stick and burn process most Imperial flamers used. The whole process of destroying the settlement took minutes, during which time the aerial craft took off, but Lyp got the distinct impression that the pilot of the Titan was taking sadistic pleasure in the process, especially when on more than one occasion individuals came running out of the buildings on fire and the machine took the time to kick them. Considering the use of las weapons and stubber fire when the pilot evidently got bored of just using the flamers, these acts were of pure malice rather than of any sort of desire to end suffering.

Eventually there was nothing left but smoke, molten rocks, and snow turned to cloying mud. Satisfied that there would be no possibility for survival, the Titan fired up enormous jump jets on its back and began to bound along after the aircraft. Lyp continued to observe from his prone position for a minute more after both craft left visual range before he ran back to the Land Speeder and reported what he had just seen.

"We require additional intelligence. Since there appears to be no effort spent in looking for us, the tracks we found are likely associated with the settlement just sacked," Lex pointed out.

"Agreed. A live capture would be ideal," Lyp pointed out.

"You doubt my piloting abilities brother?" Lex replied with a tone of mild but mock hurt.

"A warrior doubts everything but the Emperor, but still trusts," Lyp countered with his own deadpan even as Lex took the Land Speeder up the mountain they had originally been intending to climb before circumstance had delayed them and made them much more willing to take risks to ensure a live capture. The unspoken plan forming before had been to threaten the occupants of the vehicle with their guns, but now they knew they would need a more personal touch.

Increasing power to the anti-grav units, Lex began to pseudo-fly up the contours of the mountain, bypassing features that would be insurmountable with a more closely terrain following maneuver. It left them more exposed, but they also took the opportunity to expand the scope of their searching, mapping out more distant peaks and looking for any more tell-tale signs of human activity. Finally, as they reached the peak of the mountain they lowered back down so as to not expose themselves to their prey before they peeked out over the edge.

"There," Lyp said, pointing to a primitive, wheeled buggy that was mostly a set of metal tubes around an engine with some polymer panels slapped on to cut the wind for the two occupants. From their position, they had definitely been in the in the blind spot of their sensors, but now they had broken for open ground and appeared to be running as fast as their vehicle could take them. Unfortunately for them, the Land Speeder had massively more powerful engines and was unimpeded by rough terrain the way their buggy was.

"Easy," Lex answered as he threw the fans into reverse and backed up far enough to get a running start up a convenient slope on the rear face of the mountain. Judging the distance carefully from long experience, Lex then threw the throttle into full forward and then past that into the afterburner position. While the Land Speeder was driven by a hardy plasma reactor and the fans were spun by powerful electric motors, there was a supply of fuel grade promethium that could be injected into the air stream and ignited to give the war machine that extra kick necessary to take it past its normal top speed.

In less than one and a half seconds the Land Speeder reached its maximum speed of three hundred and fifty kilometres an hour, and over the last ten metres of travel Lex kicked the anti-grav system back to maximum. Hitting the edge of the cliff like a ramp, the Land Speeder hurled itself into the air, rapidly going beyond the normal hundred metre ceiling it could fly at and then going into a mostly ballistic arc. Despite himself Lex grinned at this feeling, experienced hundreds of times before in training exercises or in Thunderhawk insertions from the edges of the atmosphere into hot combat zones. Hands flew over the controls as he took the split second to make the leap a guided one.

He wondered if the occupants of the buggy looked up to see them coming or if the attack vector was a total surprise. He knew for a fact that what happened next was not something that they could have expected. Through deft manipulation of the controls his landing had perfect positioning and velocity matching, so that the Land Speeder was flying sedately backwards at the same sixty kilometres an hour as the buggy a metre off the ground right in front of the vehicle.

In the last third of a second of the drop when he could feel that the height and speed was easily survivable in the unlikely event of either of them failing, Lyp undid his restraint. At the very nadir of their drop, just as the anti-grav began to shove them up slightly, Lyp sprang forward. The driver, shocked by the sudden arrival of the Marines, had only barely begun to break when Lyp supplied a much quicker but more terminal for the vehicle method by landing on the buggy. The force of an Adeptus Astartes clad in full plate landing on the front axle was more than enough to snap it and bury the nose of the vehicle into the gravel and send it into an end-over-front flip.

Lyp caught the vehicle with ease on his pauldrons even as his arms punched through the chipped plastic and caught the driver and passenger in his gauntleted hands, simultaneously cradling and restraining them so that they would not be injured in the abrupt stop, and neither could they escape. Metal twisted and plastic shattered, but after a full two seconds of skidding the vehicle came to a stop, half folded around Lyp. The combined suddenness and violence of the stop combined with the abruptness of an Angel of Death grabbing them was more than enough for both men to lose control of their bodily functions, which was all things considered not the least undignified response either Marine had encountered in their relatively short careers.

"Do you speak High Gothic?" Lyp demanded in the formal tones of the oldest Terran language still spoken by the Imperium. When neither wide eyed man gave a coherent answer, he switched to the significantly more common derivative and asked, "Do you speak Low Gothic?" Sadly, incoherent babbling was all that was said in response, although curiously about one in five words was somewhat familiar.

"Sounds vaguely Terran at least," Lex commented as he hopped out of the Land Speeder and began to casually pry open the wreckage. Finding a collection of sheets that turned out to be maps, he commented, "I don't recognize the language, but the characters are certainly Gothic, and I think some of the words are similar."

One of the captives heard the discussion and picked up on one of the words, because he asked in a panicked tone, "Tier-ra?"

"Terra? You understand the word Terra?" Lyp inquired. The man seemed confused, and Lyp realized that even if the word sounded similar it might not mean the same thing and they didn't have enough knowledge to confirm.

"Emperor curse trying to do this here and now, there are Librarians back on the Dirge and even an Inquisitor and his staff. They are the ones who can overcome this language barrier," Lex said as he carefully packed away the treasure trove of intelligence found in the maps.

"I concur, although getting them back on the Land Speeder will be interesting, especially considering the environment," Lyp noted.

Emptying out the tool locker, Lex enrolled a thermal insulation blanket meant for keeping machinery at the right temperature and said, "This and the locker itself should keep them warm and secure, if not exact comfortable."

Extracting the two men with but a gesture, Lyp noted the dubious look in their eyes as he brought them to the rather small locker. He gave tiny internal shrug though, as at least one of them would survive and the discovery of the maps would more than make up for the loss of living intelligence that would be extracted from their interrogations... and live or die, the Librarians would be able to figure out their language.

[Diverball]

Nice set-up. Trying to engineer a new Eye of Terror is pretty damn ambitious, even for Chaos. I assume that Tzeentch was behind this?

The 'dense matter' surrounding the Dirge of Heresy. Is that supposed to be the stone that used to occupy the space that the ship is now occupying? If so, wouldn't that have become at least partially degenerate matter?

[White Haven]

Aaand we're off, with the Academia Nut Writing Challenge!

...Is it bad that I'm pondering setting up a betting pool as to when this one will peter out mid-scene?

Seriously though, always a pleasure to see you writing again, and as always it would be more of a pleasure to see one of your myriad other threads rise to the top.

[Academia Nut]

Aaand we're off, with the Academia Nut Writing Challenge!

...Is it bad that I'm pondering setting up a betting pool as to when this one will peter out mid-scene?

Seriously though, always a pleasure to see you writing again, and as always it would be more of a pleasure to see one of your myriad other threads rise to the top.

I'll put $50 on sometime in the 3040s, which I would say should have about 1:1 odds.

More seriously though, I know I have a problem. This time however, I have a consultant and beta, which should hopefully keep me on a more even keel.

[Academia Nut]

Accelerated the release of this one a bit due to illness. Also, this chapter was partially co-authored with Jon Berry.

Chapter Three

“Look, Jack, there's nothing out here.” Mark complained through the wind-torn fabric that wrapped around his head. “And it's cold out here! Not even the damned raiders would have a reason to come this far north!”

“Something caused those landslides, and that earthquake!” Jack shot back as he pulled a small box out of the back of their buggy. The hundred-times rebuilt machine barely noticed the change in weight. “Alright, let's see here...” he pulled a large telescope out of the box and quickly set it into a gimbal hanging from one side of their ride.

Panning back and forth, he scanned the edge of the mountain range that bracketed the northern edge of the continent. Veasna was situated in the Periphery, a world lost to the ravages of the Succession Wars, and now used as a resource point and fall-back location for a band of pirates who had stumbled on the world in decades past and kept the locals under their BattleMech sized thumbs. What little industry they were allowed all went to maintaining or enriching the pirates, with the rest of their pathetic economy being agriculture or "services"

Mark and Jack were a pair of prospectors working out of an illicit mining camp hours away from the nearest actual settlement. The overlords were so bad at running an economy that the official mines were so burdened with bribes and skimming that the pair of factories that made spares for the pirates frequently ran out of raw materials, which caused shortfalls, which caused reprisals to get people to work faster or communities scooped up to be sold as slaves elsewhere in the Periphery. It was a long, slow death by incompetence and malice and it compelled many to seek to make up the shortfalls outside of official channels... and official skimming of revenue.

It was the sort of dangerous, desperate atmosphere that had driven them to foray out here, to the edge of oblivion seeking the source of the earthquake that had hit the camp hours earlier. With no known volcanism in the region and them being too far from any faults for a normal earthquake the only solution was that it was a meteor of some size impacting, which held the allure of rare earths and metals possibly contained within.

“Nothing that I can see. Let's get into that pass there” - Jack pointed to a low gap between two peaks - “and look some more from there. A solid impact should have sent something into the air, and we can get a better look from a higher altitude.”

Mark groaned. “Oh, come on! Give it up already!”

“No! We've got all day to look around, and damn it, I'm going to take all day!”

“Fine! But if we don't see anything before sundown, we go back!”

"Yeah, yeah. Let's see here, range to that gap is... holy shit!" Jack cried out as he was taking one last look through the survey telescope.

"What is it?" Mark asked at the sudden surprise and panic in his friend's voice.

"Some kind of hover craft just tore out of that pass like the devil itself was chasing it," Jack explained excitedly as he tracked the fast moving vehicle as it wove strangely across the valley floor to the north of their position. Looking more carefully, Jack swore again and said, "And the thing looks armed to the teeth for its size. It doesn't have a skirt though... maybe that's how it moves so fast?"

"Then we need to get the hell out of here," Mark noted as he went for the ignition switch on their buggy.

"No! It's just... swerving about. I don't think it has noticed us, and we came to this little rock cut to get out of the wind so I don't know if it can see us. Let's just let it go on its business without drawing attention," Jack stated.

Holding his hand just above the keys, ready to turn them at a moment's notice, Mark said, "I don't like this."

"Neither do I. Okay, they just went into one of those valley things... shit, I think it was one we used to get out of the wind a few hours back," Jack noted.

"Screw this," Mark stated as he turned the key for the ignition, causing the engine to rumble to life.

"That thing is moving faster than the fastest 'Mech the pirates have! We don't stand a chance!" Jack protested.

"Yeah, well, to hell with sticking around here. Pull the damn telescope and gimbal in and let's get the hell out of here," Mark demanded.

Seeing that he wasn't going to win this fight, Jack took one last look through the telescope and said, "I can't see them... I don't know where they went. Screw it, let's get out of here."

Pulling in the telescope and gimbal and folding up the cheap plastic siding, Jack had to grab onto something as Mark threw the buggy into gear and went down the bumpy natural path they had taken up to this sheltered vantage point to observe the desolate valley from. As they exited into the open area the temperature abruptly dropped as the wind tore at the many gaps in the crude insulation they had placed on the vehicle to try and make it somewhat cold tolerant. Huddled up in their furs, speaking was impossible over the wind, engine, and cold.

About an hour after departing while they scanned the horizon for any signs of the strange military hovercraft, their ride came to an abrupt and permanent end when the vehicle abruptly dropped out of the sky, and instead of crashing like any sane sort of vehicle would do, someone in battle armour jumped on their buggy. The crash was over far too quickly for either Mark or Jack to know what happened, since there was a bit of a gap in their perception between 'Where did...?' and 'There is a large angry man holding us and our buggy up and shouting at us'.

"Sie Ngao Goetik savvai?" The grey and green giant screamed at them through a voice distorting mouth grille that seemed to give an expression of a perpetual scowl. Neither man was particularly able to sort this out as they went into panic and shock from the sudden, frenetic change of events. The armoured man seemed to decide that their incoherent babbling was a sign of incomprehension and instead barked, "Ni sabva Ja Gethec?"

Both men resorted to various pleas for mercy and how they were going to pay the fees for mining anything they found, but the giant and the companion that hopped out of the strange, floating hovercraft seemed to not understand their words. The other one began to rifle through the buggy and pulled out some maps. The motion was oddly, almost freakishly smooth, as if the armour were an extension rather than something wrapped around a human. The looter noted in a tone that sounded weirdly idle, "Otho vbangoo Tierran minnimus." He then said something much faster and longer as he looked through the maps that neither man caught.

Mark's mind seized on the one vaguely familiar word in there and asked in a half-addled tone, "Terra?"

"Tierra? Nu vengrivvan chi Tierra?" The one holding the two of them barked, before glancing over at the other. They seemed to quickly come to a consensus and the other went back to their hovercraft to get something. Despite confused and frightened protests, both men soon found themselves bound in some sort of reflective thermal blanket and shoved into a locker just barely big enough to cram both of them in and leave a little breathing room.

Crammed into a terrifyingly small space, in the dark, captured by strange armoured men, and with both men having lost control of their bodily functions at some point during the crash, Jack could only say one thing to Mark, "Uh... Sorry?"

"Not... the... time..." Mark wheezed in the confined space. Both of them could feel a definite acceleration and sustained force, along with a rapid chilling effect due to the wind roaring past outside. Very quickly both men were chattering and on the verge of hypothermia, but very quickly the feeling of motion also ceased.

The door to the locker they were stuffed in opened to painfully warm air and both men were hauled out into a scene out of some sort of drugged addled preacher's visions of some form of punishment in the afterlife. The hovercraft was faintly humming as it floated impossibly in the air at the end of a tunnel that opened up into an enormous, cavernous chamber that appeared to be some sort of transport deck, although incongruously the tunnel was too small for most of the things in there. Figures with additional metal limbs sticking out of their form concealing red robes directed ashen skinned and dead eyed abominations of metal and flesh while men in black and green military uniforms moved about boxes and tended to various inscrutable tasks. To complete the strange, hellish atmosphere there was a cloying scent that was sort of like what a mechanic might make as perfume and the entire ceiling was set with images of giant half-angel, half-devil figures in baroque, mechanical armour peering down at the activity below.

One of the giants removed his helmet, revealing a too-large head underneath that caused Jack and Mark to boggle at the implied relative sizes of man and armour. The man barked to some of the military uniformed figures in his strange language, which both men were starting to realize sounded vaguely English or German about one word in five, while some of the other words sounded like they could have come from the mouths of a Drac or Capellan. The men immediately saluted before they rushed over and seized the pair of prospectors from the other giant that was restraining them. The men, and one woman, had a hard look to them like they had all been in plenty of fights before and a battered appearance that suggested that they had all recently lost one rather badly. One man had a massive set of scars running up his face that suggested he had been clawed by a wild animal, and the eye that was covered by the old wound was actually a glowing red mechanical monstrosity that appeared to have been welded to his skin. He seemed to also have the most metal on his shoulder and commanded the others even as he sneered at the mess that had been made in Jack and Mark's pants.

Continuing their descent into infernal madness, Jack and Mark were quickly frog marched into a darkly lit side corridor from the massive storage bay where they were stripped and hosed down with quick, brutal methodology before someone in a white and red smock pressed large syringes into their backsides and smaller ones into their arms with a bored, disinterested expression that suggested that they badly wanted to be elsewhere. The soldiers then threw rough, long tunics over each man that was some sort of hybrid between a hospital gown and a prison uniform, although by that time whatever had been in the injections started to take hold and it became difficult to protest the brusque, unpleasant treatment.

Soon the two men found themselves sitting in uncomfortable metal chairs in front of a bare metal table in a darkly lit room that they suspected was some form of torture chamber. The feeling of light headedness had clouded their thoughts and made the possibility of crying out against the presumed indignities and agonies to come too difficult to muster the effort for. Their isolation did not last particularly long, as three figures entered into the room.

The first was another of the giants, although this one was clad in blue armour rather than the greys of the others and had a strange set of what looked like metal and crystal dreadlocks coming out of an otherwise bald head. In a somewhat more attentive state, the prospectors also noted that he appeared to have sheets and strips of parchment attached by wax seals all over his armour and, of all things, a sword at his side.

Right on the heels of the giant was a strange thing that appeared to be an amalgam of wizened old man, insane mechanical spider, and antique typewriter. Nearly bald except for a few strands of white hair attached to a metal plate and wire studded skull, his frail body was suspended in a hunched over position within a mechanical apparatus that also held some sort of bulky keyboard and strange machines. He had a mad, overeager look in his eyes that suggested that he might poke them just to catalogue what their cries were like.

Finally, there was a woman who had the face of someone in early middle age but the hair of an eighty-year old as it was shock white. She wore a massive, voluminous blue and red dress covered in lace and with fleur-de-lis like she was out of some sort of knight and damsels holo about medieval Terra, but she was carrying some sort of electronic recording device and had a strange wire-frame device of the sort these people seemed fond of wrapped around her right hand. Compared the stern look of the blue giant and the madly eager look of the old man, the woman had a matronly air that suggested that she had just caught some boys getting into trouble and was about to scold them.

The giant elected to stand and the mechanical spider man seemed content to let his rig support him, but the woman sat down at the table and peered over at Mark and Jack. She said something in one of the languages they could not understand, but the tone suggested that she wanted them to speak. Jack felt a most peculiar feeling worming its way up from the back of his skull and he said, almost compulsively, "Hello?"

The woman held up her right hand before she wiggled the strange machines on it over the electronic device and it made some weird noises that sounded like a language of some sort. She and the elder man seemed to have a quick, heated discussion in whispers. At further prompting, Jack said, "I can't really understand you and I doubt you understand me, but..."

"Angl-ice? Kee savvy Angl-ice?" The woman asked abruptly.

"English? You can speak?" Mark asked in drug-dulled surprise.

This seemed to spark another round of whispering and debate. Jack felt particularly weird, like there was something inside his skull gnawing on his brain and looking for the parts that had lit up around the word 'English'. The woman then said in a strange accent, "Ah... ah... Angle-ash. We am speaked Angle-ash?"

Something latched onto Jack as he sorted out the sentence and he corrected in a pained monotone, "You speak English."

"I be speak English?"

"I am speaking English."

The woman hummed to herself for a moment before she said in a most peculiar accent, "This grammar structure be correct-like?"

"This grammar structure is correct," Jack answered. The woman turned to the giant, nodded and then the worm that had been writing about in his brain disappeared, along with a faint cerulean light that had gone unnoticed until it was absent.

"Ah, excellent, excellent. I do not think my full pronunciation is up to full speed yet, but I do believe I have isolated the proto-Gothic dialect you are using. Can you understand me?" The woman asked with a remarkably weird accent. It was almost like a Capellan trying to speak like a Lyran or FedSun noble from the few old holos of such the prospectors had seen.

"How did you do that?" Mark asked, mildly boggled by the experience.

"The dialects spun off from Eagleland on Terra were one of the most widespread and form a key progenitor to High Gothic and thus many pre-Imperial documents have been made using one form or another. It is not uncommon to this day to find civilizations cut off from the rest of the galaxy that speak some derivative of one of the proto-Gothic languages. I simply had to find a few keywords in my linguistic database to begin tracking down the necessary files and extrapolate the evolutionary path your language has taken since last contact with Terra, which must have been a very long time ago," the woman explained in a refined fashion neither man had ever experienced before.

"What?" Jack asked incredulously.

The woman gave him a dim glare before she said, "I already knew most of it, I just had to track it down."

"Oh," Jack said with a quiet nod.

"So, with that out of the way, I suppose proper introductions are in order. I am Sister Dialogous Zekatrina Meissner, along with my companion Savant Archimentes and allied Librarian, Lexicanum Aleksy," the woman said, gesturing to the old man and the giant in turn. "And we have some questions for both of you."

"We were going to pay the fees, honest, we just wanted to be the ones to actually haul the ore out of the impact crater," Mark pleaded in a daze.

"Fees?" Zekatrina asked curiously.

"Yeah, you know, why we were out here. We were looking for the meteor and..." Mark began.

"I don't think they care," Jack commented dully.

"But... but that was why we were..." Mark protested.

"From examination of your maps and records, you two appear to be prospectors of some sort?" Zekatrina inquired.

"Yeah, out of Camp Long Shot," Mark agreed.

"Hmmm... This Camp Long Shot, would it be this location on your maps?" Zekatrina asked, waving her hand and causing Archimentes to type a few things and cause one of the machines attached to his support frame to light up and produce a holographic projection of one of their maps, one location in particular brightly lit up.

"Yeah," Mark and Jack said in eerie synchrony.

"And you mentioned fees. What are those about?" Zekatrina asked.

"The guys in charge want everyone on the planet to grease their palms to do anything, even mine the stuff they need to build spare parts for their 'Mechs. It's so bad we have to go out to the edges of the world where no one pays attention to mine under their noses," Jack explained.

"I see... I see... and what would the people in charge do if they found you?" Zekatrina asked.

"Probably shoot and/or enslave us all," Mark stated grimly.

"You mentioned something called a 'Mech. Is this some sort of war machine?" Zekatrina asked.

"Of course it is. You know what a 'Mech is, everyone does, it's how everyone fights," Jack chided.

"Humour me," Zekatrina demanded in a humourless tone.

"Big robot things, usually shaped like people but like... ten times bigger or something like that. Made of metal. Usually studded with guns?" Jack explained.

"I see... I see... and what of tanks? Artillery? Infantry? Planes?" Zekatrina asked.

"They're crap compared to 'Mechs, so no one fights with them anymore... or at least I think they don't. The pirates in charge certainly seem to think so," Jack stated.

"I think they still use planes... is that the word they use? Isn't it like Assff or something?" Mark inserted in.

"So those in charge are pirates you say? Well, we have a lot to talk about then," Zekatrina said with a cold smile.

[Academia Nut]

Chapter Four

Nine years ago Epiktetos had shown up to do what he felt was his duty to his world and the Emperor by showing up to the muster for aspirants to the Chapter that ruled Yundr. The trajectory his life had taken since that day had been a very strange one indeed, so much so that being summoned to speak with Captain Maximus and the rather battered looking Inquisitor rumoured to have been aboard the Dirge and doing so in a room that looked like it had been picked up by a Titan and crumpled a little was only the second most stressful thing to happen to him in his short life. The incident with the canoness, Blood Angel and the molasses tank still ranked as the most stressful - to say nothing of surreal! - thing to have occurred.

The fact that Captain Maximus was wearing the look on his face that clearly expressed that he had not forgotten that little diplomatic incident was what really helped elevate the stress levels. Before Epiktetos could really begin to make a fumbling salute with his right arm in a cast from the crash and aftermath the Captain raised his own hand and said, "Given your condition, I will accept that as a salute. At ease."

Shifting his stance, Epiktetos gave a respectful nod and said, "Thank you my lord, your clemency is worthy of the Emperor."

"Thank you lieutenant. Now, do you know why you are here?" Maximus asked.

Glancing down at the cast about his right arm, Epiktetos tried not to express too much distress and said, "My lord, in the current atmosphere I have been unable to seek out a Priest of Mars to determine my proper penance for my actions, but I can assure you my lord that it as soon as it is possible I will dedicate all my resources to the task."

"Techmarine Galen has made me aware of your actions immediately following the crash, but unlike what you are clearly thinking it has been decided that your decision was theologically sound, albeit almost certainly accidentally. The machine was damaged, but the priests feel that in comparison to the potential damage caused by an overload your decision to ground the capacitors via... unconventional... means was the correct one to take in your position," Maximus stated.

"Ah. Thank you my lord, although I still feel I should seek out a techpriest to find the proper prayers to the machine spirit I so wounded. I work with the device regularly so it would not do to have it angry with me or my subordinates," Epiktetos replied.

"A sound idea, although it shall have to also be a farewell prayer since you are being transferred," Maximus stated.

"My lord?" Epiktetos asked with terrified hope.

Maximus gave a Epiktetos a long, level stare before he said, "Lieutenant Zuza, as much as your track record is... complicated, it has been noted that the more sensitive points have remained within the Chapter despite the possibility of profit on your part, particularly the incident with your great-uncle-"

Epiktetos felt like he had been slapped to bring up such a sensitive topic and he opened his mouth to protest but the Inquisitor gave him a glare that had immediately slam his jaw shut with an audible click. The stern looking man said nothing but simply nodded. Maximus continued and said, "Such ability to stay quiet on such matters has been noted and is one of the major reasons we have chosen to change your status within the Chapter."

"My lord?" Epiktetos asked once again.

"I can trust that what is about to be said will not be go beyond the three of us?" Maximus asked.

"Of course my lord, and may Horus himself take me should I break that oath," Epiktetos immediately snapped off while shifting to full attention.

"We're out beyond the light of the Astronomicon," the Inquisitor stated simply.

There was a slight gap in his memory, but Epiktetos was fairly certain that he may have blacked out in existential terror for a heartbeat before he recovered with a stumble and said, "That... that..."

"The Emperor can still see us, even if we cannot see him. That has long been the stance of the Ecclesiarchy, even if Macharius' troops may have felt otherwise," the Inquisitor said in a tone that was not entirely reassuring.

Nodding but knowing that he had a look on his face that suggested that he needed to add another priest to visit to his schedule, Epiktetos took a moment to school his features before he said, "I can see why you demand this to not go beyond this room, but I fail to see why you would choose to share it with me at all, my lords."

"It is because as far as we can tell we are far enough out that there is no psychic communication, so we are far from the Imperium. Scouts have however discovered that this world houses a human population of some technical sophistication. We will be cut off from the Imperium for the foreseeable future and thus certain steps will need to be taken. We are still in the process of gathering intelligence, but the next order of business will be to ensure the pacification of the local population. Militarily that is unlikely to be problematic, but politically we are going to require certain steps to be taken that need to begin now in order to ensure optimal transfer of power," the Inquisitor detailed out.

"I don't need to say it, but Space Marines are ill suited to administrative tasks, and the Survivors are already on probation for such actions in the past so we would prefer not to be seen as attempting to settle every planet we land on. We will thus set up branches of the important Imperial departments with the personnel we have available. You are thus no longer a serf, but the current Imperial representative of the Departmento Munitorum on this world, specifically as a newly inducted member of the Commissariat," Maximus stated.

"I... I... this seems wrong," Epiktetos stated.

"There have been enough instances of expeditions being cut off from the rest of the Imperium and forming best-guess efforts at continuing Imperial institutions until contact can be made that the Administratum and Inquisition have extensive protocols on reintegration. If we can re-establish contact within the next decade or two any personnel moved into politically awkward positions will simply be swept back into service for the Survivors or into my retinue," the Inquisitor explained. "After more than about a generation things get a little more complicated, but my oversight being in the records will go a long way towards smoothing things over for those in the most compromising positions, such as you."

"There is that my lord, but I was more referring to the fact that I have no idea how to be a commissar," Epiktetos pointed out.

The Inquisitor raised an eyebrow while glancing at something on Captain Maximus' desk before he said, "Your conduct during the Ymdros Food Riots seems to indicate that you have the proper instincts."

Blushing deeply at one of the most embarrassing moments in his short life, Epiktetos said, "That was pure improvisation sir, and of a rather self-serving sort I might add."

"So you noted in your report," the Inquisitor said with a curious little smile on his face. "In any case, that has already been taken into consideration, and to an extent that sort of decision making process is useful in political officers."

Maximus took this moment to step in and explained, "Also, it is not like we are going to be throwing you immediately into a penal legion full of indigs. You will be receiving several more years of training, which is the primary reason we are starting now: so that by the time we are ready to start forming the locals into PDF and Guard regiments you will be ready. We will also be sorting out further transfers of authority as we begin building a branch of the Administratum proper, with the full bureaucratic offices of the Munitorum established to oversee you, it is just that the skill set is harder to find on the Dirge but easier to train so we will require less lead time than establishing a proper Commissariat. Until further notice your immediate superior is Chaplain Meridius, who will begin your instruction. He has been informed of your status and has several assignments for you to begin your training. Is this clear?"

"Yes my lord!" Epiktetos snapped at attention, falling back on old instincts to power through his shock and confusion.

"Excellent. When you leave this room you will officially be a Cadet-Commissar of the Munitorum rather than a Lieutenant in the Yundr Naval Serf Auxiliary. As the reorganization and your training proceeds we will assign you an assistant and proper administrative superiors. Do not forget that the reasons for your transfer of duties is still classified. Dismissed," Maximus stated, giving a nod to Epiktetos attempting to salute before the young man exited the briefing room.

There was a pregnant silence between Inquisitor Kennard and Captain Maximus for a moment after the door closed, until Kennard said, "You have quite the madman within your ranks."

"Indeed. But his is a madness useful and pleasing to the Emperor. We cannot be certain which of the many factors are the origins of the ailment, but he almost certainly has a massive inferiority complex that he is in denial of, stemming from being transferred from being an initiate to a serf," Maximus stated.

"Deep seated inferiority can drive men to do great things... and terrible things. He is dangerous," Kennard pointed out.

"Extremely. Had the Survivors more gene seed to spare or deeper ties with the Priesthood of Mars to have access to some of the better bio-tech the older chapters possess he would be a Scout by now, but as it is the things that most likely make him so great and dangerous presented too great a risk of rejection and loss of gene seed. After Ymdros we transferred him from infantry training to naval officer training because his psychological profile was starting to destabilize. His condition has since improved considerably as the stresses are different, but yesterday's incident demonstrates that he still has issues," Maximus noted.

Kennard had a far away, wistful look for a moment before he said, "If the Inquisition had found him, he would have been taken into one of our hidden Schola and quickly found a mentor. He would have burned like a star, bright and terrible. He would have greatly aided the Imperium and done great things, but it never would have been enough for him, and he would have assuredly, inevitably perverted his own genius for horrid ends."

"You speak of experience," Maximus noted.

Kennard let his face settle into a slightly sad, neutral tone before he said, "In the typical life span of a member of the Adeptus Astartes or the Inquisition I am but in middle age, if that, but there are times when my eight decades feel as old as they would on a feral world."

Maximus thought over the statement for a time before he said, "This administrative minutiae grows tiresome, does it not?"

Kennard snorted in irritated amusement and replied, "It is often commented that no body of the Imperium is quite so despised as the Administratum... right up until the moment where it is no longer around, at which point it is the first thing its detractors beg for."

"Indeed," Maximus noted before he glanced down at a data slate that was blinking at him. Picking it up, he noted, "And now our meeting must draw to a close. Your acolytes have finished translating the maps recovered and the situation is sufficiently stable that the additional manpower the Astartes represent is unneeded, so I must begin initial strategy meetings with my troops."

"Excellent. I suppose I should see how the prisoner interrogation is going. Hopefully Zekatrina and Archimentes should finish soon so I can delegate the majority of the personnel file trawling to him. I will have someone contact your assistants the next time we need to meet for such important but non-urgent matters," Kennard noted as the two went their separate ways.

---

[The Vortex Empire]

Hm. Very interested in seeing how this turns out.

Also, interesting that the Warp evidently still exists in the BT universe, seeing as the Librarian could still use his powers during the interrogation. And yet no Chaos corruption...

[Diverball]

Hm. Very interested in seeing how this turns out.

Also, interesting that the Warp evidently still exists in the BT universe, seeing as the Librarian could still use his powers during the interrogation. And yet no Chaos corruption...

We don't know whether BT is an AU to 40K, or merely in the past. In 40K, 3000AD would be during the Dark Age of Technology, long before the Fall of the Eldar, so it's not surprising that the Warp would be quiescent.

[Grimnosh]

Hm. Very interested in seeing how this turns out.

Also, interesting that the Warp evidently still exists in the BT universe, seeing as the Librarian could still use his powers during the interrogation. And yet no Chaos corruption...

We don't know whether BT is an AU to 40K, or merely in the past. In 40K, 3000AD would be during the Dark Age of Technology, long before the Fall of the Eldar, so it's not surprising that the Warp would be quiescent.

And where "small" titans and other vehicles would be technologically inferior to 40K vehicles (the noted superiority of the Land Speeder's velocity and manoverability compared to the buggy that had been carefully demolished). 3000AD tech would be crap compared to 40K tech, though there might be a few gems here and there, one noteable is how a 100 ton mech needs only its mechwarrior, while even the warhound titan of 40K has a decent sized crew. Of course should the mechwarrior die, there is no one else onboard that can take over in the middle of battle, while on a 40K titan.....

BTW AN you have a typo in the first chapter:
"Life scans indicate the plants are Terran derived, so that means that at least some point humans were on this world if they aren't here still," Lyp announced while looking over the data passed by the Land Raider to his helmet's auto-senses.
It should be Land Speeder instead of Land Raider, as both are compleately diffrent vehicles.

[Diverball]

And where "small" titans and other vehicles would be technologically inferior to 40K vehicles (the noted superiority of the Land Speeder's velocity and manoverability compared to the buggy that had been carefully demolished). 3000AD tech would be crap compared to 40K tech, though there might be a few gems here and there, one noteable is how a 100 ton mech needs only its mechwarrior, while even the warhound titan of 40K has a decent sized crew. Of course should the mechwarrior die, there is no one else onboard that can take over in the middle of battle, while on a 40K titan.....

Would it be crap? The Imperium builds on a vastly larger scale than the IS, but I've never got the impression that the underlying weapons technology of 40K is actually superior to BT. Of course, void shields and other warp-tech would make a rather large difference....

[Grimnosh]

And where "small" titans and other vehicles would be technologically inferior to 40K vehicles (the noted superiority of the Land Speeder's velocity and manoverability compared to the buggy that had been carefully demolished). 3000AD tech would be crap compared to 40K tech, though there might be a few gems here and there, one noteable is how a 100 ton mech needs only its mechwarrior, while even the warhound titan of 40K has a decent sized crew. Of course should the mechwarrior die, there is no one else onboard that can take over in the middle of battle, while on a 40K titan.....

Would it be crap? The Imperium builds on a vastly larger scale than the IS, but I've never got the impression that the underlying weapons technology of 40K is actually superior to BT. Of course, void shields and other warp-tech would make a rather large difference....

Bigger is better, just ask any Ork. Of course with a bigger gun, its also going to be louder, which is also very important to any Ork.....

{edit}
also add in that in 27000 years a lot can be lost or forgotten. As an example IS/Clan lasers might have a better cooling system for thier lasers, but the design could have been lost long ago, and a poorer cooling system could have replaced it. Its unlikely but it is possible, however if it is there (or virtually any other tech) then the biggest hurdle would be getting the AdMech to accept it.......

Also tech like the Streak SRM systems and Narc Beacons could intreast some people, and again the biggest hurdle would be getting the AdMech to accept and incorperate it to thier existing systems.

[Academia Nut]

Chapter Five

Alex Camino was not a bad person, although some days he wasn't quite sure he was a good person. The militia wasn't exactly a particular respected occupation on Vaesna since they were the local enforcers of the often absent pirate rulers of the world, but the few positions available were always in high demand because of the benefits provided, the most important being that the families of militia members were rarely hassled. That one benefit made it all worthwhile to stand watch in the cold winds that blew out from southern edge of the Nusquam Mountains onto Tergofinis, the northernmost settlement worthy of the name.

It was actually his mother that had prompted him to join the militia, just to obtain that protection for his sister, who was 'too-pretty-by-half' for her own good. If a MechWarrior took notice of her then there wasn't a damn thing that Alex could do, but there weren't many of them on world at any given time and the threat of pretty girls getting rounded up to pay taxes was more or less eliminated because it was mostly the militia that did that sort of thing and they weren't stupid enough to antagonize their own ranks. Alex had been fortunate enough to not have to do anything like that yet, but the incessant sucking up had left him a little ill on more than one occasion. At least when it was only cold he could fall back on thinking about family to keep him going, unlike the worst occasions when that only made him feel worse.

"Thinking up another poem there Romeo?" Samson Tong, the other man on guard duty, asked from over his shoulder.

Alex tried to avoid looking into the fire barrel set up for warmth and light behind him as he turned to address his comrade in annoyance, "They're not love poems. And lots of soldiers have written poems over the years. I'm part of a long tradition. Also, I'm trying to, you know, keep watch."

That had been about the fifth such exchange tonight, and somewhere in the upper dozens since Samson had found Alex in his bunk trying to rhyme words while scribbling on a scratch pad. He and the other guys in the barracks had teased him about it, although Vickers and a few others thought he was pining for some girl somewhere and had taken him out to party at one of the brothels near the base in Tergofinis, which had been fun... until the next day, because Alex was just a really bad poet and he was writing the exact opposite of love sonnets. He was trying to exorcise guilt.

This CO had got drunk about two weeks back and had Alex drive him out to a farm. All he had to do was watch the vehicle. All he had to do was try not to listen to the shouting and then the terrible silence. All he had to do was not take his eyes off the angry faces waiting outside in the cold after. All he had to do was drive away when his CO returned, dishevelled but looking arrogantly self-satisfied. All he had to do was put on a false grin the next few days whenever the bastard saw him and smiled knowingly.

The silence had been the worst part, because his mind had filled in all of the expected noises, from gunshots to screams to whimpers and crying, but none had come. Just silence. Silence and accusation. He could still hear it, haunting him, the quiet that demanded voice. He had tried to give it that voice on paper, but he was scared of what the others might do to him, do to his family, if they thought he was doubting the way things were done, and his skill with words just weren't up to the task. He wanted ambiguity, but his barrack-mates had seen it as porn and his shame had prompted them to take exactly the wrong message.

Alex's cheeks reddened and he shivered in a manner that was unrelated to the chill polar air as he went over the things gnawing away at his soul, but he was unable to keep up a proper brood when Samson said, "Oh fuck keeping watch, no one would dare do anything, especially not after the boss men burned down those squatters last week."

"Yeah, well, if that's true then why are all the people out in the mountains all spooked?" Alex retorted, taking the moment to look back at Samson, which just served to wreck his night vision and turn the night once more into a blank slate for him to draw his fears onto.

"They're a bunch of stupid, superstitious goat-fuckers up in the mountains," Samson replied dismissively.

"Yeah, but they don't tell people about that stuff most of the time. Something out there has got them scared this time, and there's all sorts of other weird shit going on," Alex pointed out.

"Going to go on about alien conspiracies like Dane?" Samson asked with a dismissive snort.

"Because entire families walking up in the middle of the day out in their fields, dressed in their night clothes with no idea how they got there isn't something worth paying attention to?" Alex asked rhetorically.

"Sleep walking," Samson replied.

"All at once?" Alex exclaimed, turning away from the darkness to properly address the other man.

"Fine, drunk then," Samson countered.

"Including the kids?!" Alex pointed out, feeling his doubts and self-hatred slip away as he got into the heat of the argument.

"They're backwoods country folk, their mother's tits are probably alcohol taps," Samson replied dismissively.

Shaking his head, Alex said, "Fine, screw all the reports of weird things going on from the locals. What about that patrol that went missing yesterday."

"It was a landslide. Shit happens in the mountains," Samson pointed out.

"Yeah, but the truck under the rocks was empty and the bodies were far away and missing their heads and limbs," Alex pointed out.

"Animals," Samson replied weakly.

"I don't know... I heard the marks were all wrong for that sort of thing," Alex pointed out.

"Yeah, well maybe you just heard wrong," Samson countered, although from his look he seemed a little unconfident, having clearly heard the rumours too.

"Maybe... maybe... but well, whatever is going on, it's something weird. I mean, don't you think it's strange that ever since those squatters got burned out these things started happening?" Alex asked.

"The civvies are just freaked out because that maniac in the Firestarter ran through the area and they'll try to tie anything to a ghost story," Samson said.

"I'm not saying ghosts, I'm saying some sort of group of people with a death wish out there hunting. Yeah, sure, they can't take a 'Mech, but they can definitely ambush the poor bloody infantry, which you will note that we are," Alex pointed out before turning back to the black night, the barrel fire and the heat of the argument having completely failed to warm him any, although now his angst was different in nature.

He imagined movement out in the tall pines that grew a few meters past the chain link fence that marked the outer perimeter, but he honestly couldn't see the trees themselves and was just filling their presence in from memory. All there was out there was blackness and his own imagination. And, frowning now that he noticed it starting to seep past the fence line, fog.

"Well shit Alex, now I'm going to be freaking out over some damn mist because of you," Samson groused.

"Is this normal?" Alex asked while he shivered at the humid chill and something else he could not quite put his finger on.

"It's fog," Samson replied sarcastically.

"Yeah, but at this time of year? At this time of night? And coming in this thick and fast?" Alex asked, a slightly worried tone in his voice as the fog started to turn the other fire barrels around the base into distant, flickering red stars and the electric lights of the barracks and based became blue-white pinpricks surrounded by utter darkness.

"You're scaring yourself... and me. So knock it the fuck off," Samson stated in irritation, his teeth chattering ever so slightly, although he would no doubt insist from the cold.

"Maybe..." Alex said hesitantly as he inched closer towards the pool of light around the fire barrel. Before he could say anything else the muffled silence was shattered by a brief burst of automatic fire, followed by distant, muffled shouting.

"What the fuck was that?" Samson screamed out, picking his own rifle up off the ground and frantically scanning the claustrophobic darkness.

"Stop pointing your gun at me!" Alex yelled with a mixture of anger and fear as he tried to get his eyes to adjust to the darkness despite repeatedly looking at the fire barrel and the fog reflecting enough light to basically make it impossible to see.

Pointing into the void, Samson shouted out, "I think it came from over there!" He then took off at a dead run.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Alex curse as he thought about what to do before he ran off after Samson, shouting, "You stupid bastard! You're going to get shot by one of ours!"

As if prophetic, there was a brief storm of gunfire and shouting from somewhere in the general direction of the barracks, followed by confused, sporadic secondary fire from across the base. Fearing for his life in the chaos and confusion, Alex hit the cold ground hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Gasping for air, he very nearly opened fire on Samson when his shoulder was grabbed. It was only the fact that Alex had made it into the militia on merit and thus he actually observed proper trigger discipline that prevented such an accident.

"FUCK!" Alex screamed in panicked frustration. "Don't startle someone with a gun, god damn it!"

Shocked by the vehemence in Alex's voice, Samson backed off, his face disappearing into the darkness and mist before he said, "I... sorry. You're right."

Blinking at the fact that Samson actually seemed chastised for once in his life, Alex shook his head and said, "Yeah. Look, let's just move slow and keep our heads down. Who was on watch over in this direction... whichever direction this is?"

"Turkish... yeah, I'm pretty sure it was Turkish," Samson said, his voice descending to a whisper so as to not draw attention.

It then dawned on Alex that the shooting had stopped, and he suddenly felt very, very alone. Not even Samson's presence could cut the feeling of isolation in the darkness. The cloying fog was a harbinger of doom, and Alex desperately wanted to escape it. It was only that sensible little part of his mind that had been repeatedly kicked into him by his mother so that he could be good enough for the militia that kept him from running towards the nearest pool of light in the darkness, although he and Samson both moved at a brisk pace.

"Turkish? Turkish?" Alex called out as loud as he dared as he and Samson approached the nearest fire barrel other than the one they had theoretically been guarding. Practically crawling on the ground, he and Samson had almost made their way to the all-too-small pool of light when Alex's hand fell on something hard and warm to the touch. Picking up the small cylinder and holding it up, he confirmed by the dull copper reflection that he was holding a brass casing.

Feeling around, Alex found more casings, but nothing else. Turkish or whoever it was on watch with him had been shooting here, but there was no sign of where they were now. Feeling somehow more alone and afraid than he had before, Alex said, "They... they must have fallen back."

"Yeah... yeah, fuck staying out here. We go in and figure out what is going on," Samson said, nodding enthusiastically at the idea of not being out in the open and the fog like they were.

Turning towards the points of blue-white that were cast by the electric lighting of the base, the two militia men continued to run-crawl forward, ears straining to hear anything that could be considered encouraging. So focused were they on the diffuse lights and trying to hear something in the muffled silence of the fog that they nearly ran into the concrete inner wall of the base in their haste. Alex managed to spot the looming additional darkness in time to stop short, while Samson kept going.

He would have run into the wall had there been a wall there.

Alex's heart stopped as his eyes managed to pick out the faint, jagged outline of an enormous breach in the six centimetre thick concrete. It looked like a 'Mech had kicked in a hole, but even on a night like tonight there was no way for a 'Mech to hide, let alone cause such damage silently. Having landed on the jagged remains of the concrete within the inner part of the base, Samson was cursing in pain as loudly as he dared, which meant that Alex couldn't make out anything other than the sentiment.

Picking his way across the rubble, Alex quietly picked up Samson, the weight of his comrade and his gun the only even remotely reassuring things in the universe. Once on his feet Samson went silent once again, and the two started to pick their way forward in the night. The only sound they made was the crunch of their boots, the hammering of their hearts, and the chattering of their teeth. Those were the only sounds they dared make, and that was because they were involuntary. Even their breathing was suppressed to point of silence.

Creeping forward, the two of them found another looming shadow in the darkness, this one which they belatedly realized should have had light coming out of it. The barracks was a caved in wreck. Neither Alex nor Samson said a word, but they definitely now knew what all of the firing had been about a few minutes ago. Working their way around the broken building to the front doors, they could just make out from the lines of shadows that it looked almost like something incredibly heavy had stepped on the old wood of the building, punched the boards, and then simply waded through the structure like a man in waist deep mud.

"Fuck this... fuck this... fuck this..." Samson began to mutter like a man possessed. Before Alex could stop him he took off screaming, back out of the base. Disappearing into the swirling mists, his panicked cry seemed far too loud for the soundless, closed universe the base had become, and then it abruptly cut off as if it had never been.

Alex's knees cut out. He simply could not process what was going on. Too much was happening. Was this punishment for his sins? Was this punishment for trying to obey his mother? Was this punishment for trying to protect his sister? Alex could hear the silence screaming back at him and could see the ghostly faces of accusation all around him. Every part of him was vibrating like a wire pulled too taut and only moments before failure.

And then... and then he saw it. Looming in the darkness and fog, it was standing next to him. Shaped like a man but far too tall and broad, his brain belatedly realized that not only was it standing next to him, but it had been there since he arrived. His mind simply rebelled at the concept. Nothing that large could be that stealthy. His mind rebelled at the concept. It was a square circle.

It was also, clearly, the enemy. It was the source of the panic and distress and death. Alex raised his rifle.

Abruptly the world took a strange spin and Alex found himself at a very strange angle on the ground and feeling exceedingly light headed. As the darkness began to become absolute and some instinct told him that his head was no longer attached to his body, he wondered what the giants would do to his family.

Then he didn't wonder anything anymore.

[The Vortex Empire]

Yikes. I gotta feel sorry for all these poor little infantrymen.

[Darkevilme]

Very nice, I hope this doesn't get dislodged from Academia's head by another stray bolt of inspiration cause I want to see much of this...also looking forward to seeing when the mech warriors end up in battle with spacemarines.

[Diverball]

Very nice, I hope this doesn't get dislodged from Academia's head by another stray bolt of inspiration cause I want to see much of this...also looking forward to seeing when the mech warriors end up in battle with spacemarines.

I'd be more interested in seeing how the Marines fare against Clan Elementals.

[Grimnosh]

Very nice, I hope this doesn't get dislodged from Academia's head by another stray bolt of inspiration cause I want to see much of this...also looking forward to seeing when the mech warriors end up in battle with spacemarines.

I'd be more interested in seeing how the Marines fare against Clan Elementals.

Probably comment on how the Elemental armor looks similar to pictures of the armor used by protomarines during the unification wars on Terra. Clan Elementals had essencially a single shot SRM-2, a machine gun (if memory serves) and powered claws, maybe a precurser to the powerfist or chainfist. I believe that they may have had jump jets as well, but I could easily be wrong there. I think most marines would consider them to be essencialy assault marines or at least the equivlent of such.

One should also consider the best armor that marines have availible:
Terminators are equipped with (originally) combibolters or a heavy weapon like reaper autocannons, havok launchers, and powerfists or powerweapons. Imperial upgrades were stormbolters, assault cannons and options to replace the powerfist with a chainfist both with stormshields.

It should be noted that Clan Elementals were quite decent at taking on 'mechs, and it should also be noted that terminators can take out titans. Overall I'd say the Elementals would lose however against either normal space marines and terminators, but thats my opinion.

[Highlord Laan]

Depending on the year, Elementals would be toting antipersonnel gauss rifles, which I think would do a pretty good job of wrecking a Space Marine's day.

SM's and Ele's are so close in application and firepower that I'd just call them equals and leave it at that, with an edge to the Elementals, especially against standard Marines. Terminotors would be a good one-on-one though.

[Academia Nut]

Elementals won't be showing up for quite some time, so you don't need to worry about them for a while. The only thing that can be stated definitively is that they fall far short in terms of training, experience, and morale, which is more of a function of the training methods available to the Marines and their extremely extended lifespans than any deficiencies on the part of the Elementals. The Marines also have much greater access to "weird shit".

[Academia Nut]

Chapter Six

"Attention people of Tergofinis," Maximus' voice boomed out across the small settlement through vox amplification. "Your community has been conquered by the Imperium of Man. Reinforcements from your local militia forces have been summoned and will arrive within the next few hours. We will fight them. We will kill them. To aid in their destruction, we have deemed the cover provided by your homes and businesses to be of military value. We will not deliberately target civilians, but we will not tolerate interference in our operation. Even accidental or otherwise unintentional interference. If you are deemed a threat to our activities, you will be dispatched quickly and efficiently. We will not force you to leave the area, but we strongly recommend it as it is about to become an active war zone. That is all."

Deactivating the broadcast vox, Maximus looked down sadly on the tiny settlement from the cliffs in the mountains above the village where he had positioned his two junior Devastator squads. With six lascannons and two plasma cannons, they packed a potent, long range anti-armour punch. Emperor willing, they would be able to dispatch the enemy with minimal casualties among his men and the civilian population. It was hard to be so callous to the suffering of the people below, but they were not yet Imperial citizens, and the situation did not leave him many options.

The Survivors were sometimes considered soft, but that was just because they had learned the hard way that sometimes the grim calculus of war rewarded what some might call sentiment. Yes, there were times when you had to kill one to save ten, but there were also times when if you saved one at the cost of ten today, you would save a hundred tomorrow. It was deep, complex thinking that in the uncertainty of battle the wrong call was often made, but as an officer Maximus had studied the concept extensively. One of the key issues was that in order to weigh the values of things, you actually had to acknowledge that they had value. Far too many Imperial commanders had grown hard and callous and had been bitten by something as stupid as an aide having lost family to an artillery bombardment and deciding to take personal revenge.

The people who he had ordered his men to displace and execute if necessary, they had value and worth, it was just less than the value in this mission, and considering that they would be making lasguns and joining Guard regiments within the next generation it behooved Maximus to generate the least amount of bad blood during the conquest. He had wanted to shoot more than one idiot who forgot those considerations and kicked off a rebellion or mutiny by being too harsh on subordinates. The Imperium had enough problems from the outside that it didn't need additional ones from the inside!

Taking his eyes away from the first trickle of civilians running out into the night to escape the coming conflagration, Maximus turned to his own troops. Because of the enemy's preferred usage of a small number of war machines over infantry, he had elected to bring mostly specialists, taking three out of four of his Devastator squads and both of his Assault squads and only one of his Tactical squads, leaving the rest behind to guard the Dirge. While he would have liked to have the First Squad with them, he would need their skill and expertise ready to secure the rear if he found he needed to fall back, and if he should fall in battle they would be even more necessary.

Fortunately after Sergeant Rodion and Sixth Squad with Lexicanum Yanuz had taken the local militia base they had confirmed that the rulers of this planet had less military acumen than Orks, which was rather sad, all things considered. With a little bit of mental compulsion it had been determined that a single transport carrying four 'Mechs, to use the local terminology, and a pair of aerospace fighters was the entirety of mobile assets available, and they were deploying them all at once. From interrogations and examination of files, the deployment would likely leave much to be desired. It would be the job of the Assault squads to capture the transport after it delivered its cargo and the rest of the squads to deal with said cargo.

Hopefully between the three Devastator squads and Rodion's squad with its heavy weapons the Assault squad would not be needed to make risky attacks with melta bombs. Considering that Techmarine Vallach had accompanied them to aid in the capture of the enemy machines after the battle and that he had joined with Sergeant Theus' Devastators to lend his signum uplink to the accuracy of their lascannons, they had a good chance of inflicting massive damage early. For the moment though all of that was theoretical as the enemy had yet to show up to the ambush.

Two hours passed and the night began to burn away into pre-dawn twilight, the Marines waiting nearly motionless in their armour with their reactors and energy weapons kept on standby so as to minimize their signatures. Maximus watched with half his brain active as the trickle of people fleeing the community turned into a stream, although they were distressingly short on vehicles despite the war machines of their overlords. That could make things after the conquest tricky. Finally though a bright light that was not the sun crossed the horizon, coming from the south-west.

Maximus watched as the Marines under his command subtly switched over from standby to running off internal power supplies, their reactors ever so slightly warming as they were put into the final stage of readiness, able to be activated within an eye blink. Those Marines infiltrated down in the town would no doubt be doing the same, although he couldn't actually see them. He could now see the enemy transport more clearly now, a stubby winged brick riding atop a pillar of nuclear flame, flanked on either side by a pair of significantly more aerodynamic fighters.

Suddenly the transport erupted with streaks of exhaust and cracks of light, followed a moment later by the sound of distant explosions. Maximus narrowed his eyes in anger. The only target in that direction was the refugee column. He mentally downgraded his assessment of these pirates: at least Orks were stupid enough to not know the difference between combatants and civilians. This was the sort of baseless butchery associated with Chaos. He would have to make sure to pass along to his men that captives would be needed so that public executions could be carried out.

Energy weapons blasts continued to rain down even as the transport moved closer and closer to the settlement and the burning militia base that had been left as bait for them. They seemed to die down a bit before a smaller vehicle dropped out of the behemoth, slowly falling to the ground on its own fusion torches. Maximus watched the war machine descend with something approaching stunned incredulity. The maniacs had actually split their forces just so that they could butcher civilians.

Maximus considered this turn of events carefully. On the one hand, that split represented a large fraction of the forces available to the pirates for the coming fight and would allow them to be more easily defeated, but then again if the machine had jump jets like those found on agile xenos Titans then it would be able to rapidly return to the fight and could potentially attack from an unexpected angle if it were not kept track of. Plus there was the issue of purely just wanting to stop the massacre. Maximus had both Land Speeders functional and held in reserve for situations like this, but he had to wait. It would be weeks until they could safely build a tunnel capable of allowing the Thunderhawks egress from the Dirge, so capture of the enemy shuttle was of paramount importance. It had to land first.

So Maximus said and did nothing, and instead he just watched as the transport moved in closer to the settlement, even as he watched the occasional flash of light from the woods in the distance and a growing column of smoke that gave a hint as to what was being done. The depravity and insanity of the foes of the Imperium were a pernicious problem for planning against. Retribution would come later.

Hovering above the settlement, the shuttle seemed ambivalent about what to do next before another of the bipedal war machines dropped out of an open bay door and fired its own jump jets as it descended, landing in the midst of the sturdy buildings and, most probably by pure chance, right next to Sergeant Terminus' squad of hidden Devastators. The machine seemed to scan about, almost bored, for a few moments before it raised its right arm with a forearm mounted long barrelled weapon and opened fire. A blue-white energy beam surrounded by a helical discharge spat out and slammed into one of the buildings, apparently at random, and blew out a significant chunk of it.

Inaction ran counter to everything that made up a Space Marine, but Maximus held his hand. This would probably come in useful in a moment, as part of the plan had been to get the enemy deployed at the militia base to move towards the settlement and away from their shuttle. Rud cutting loose with the multi-meltas at his command at point blank range would certainly be one way to draw attention. All that the Survivors had to do was be patient.

Maximus watched as the aerospace fighters circled lazily about the settlement and strafed it with some sort of laser weapons and the shuttle began to descend from the sky towards the smouldering husk of the militia base and the various mutilated bodies laid out on display, mostly heads and decapitated bodies on stakes. The wounds had all been inflicted in combat; the displays were all post-mortem. The Survivors weren't barbarians after all. Things like crucifixion or impalement required a trial and they hadn't had time for any of those yet.

A third war machine dropped out of the bay door of the shuttle and Maximus briefly wondered if he was going to have to order his troops to open fire on the shuttle and try to bring it down because if all of the enemy units were capable of deploying like Assault Marines out of a Thunderhawk then capture of the enemy ship would prove impossible with the current plan. Fortunately and simultaneously somewhat unfortunately it seemed that this third enemy unit was piloted by someone who was not an idiot as the machine appeared to be attempting to sweep the perimeter for a landing.

Maximus watched with painful slowness as the lumbering ship dipped lower and lower onto the landing pad set aside to contain the heat of its thrusters and the weight of its bulk. Finally it touched down at the fourth and final enemy machine exited out of the cargo bay. It was considerably larger than the other three, although not the size of even the smallest Titan. It was a rather peculiar design too, as there was a large section that formed a sort of shoulder hump that appeared to be composed of banks of energy weapons, if he had the read of these people's technology correctly.

The enormous, lumbering monstrosity had just stepped off the ramp when Maximus opened up a vox channel to Terminus and said, "Engage."

---

The pilot of the Panther 'Mech plinking away at the partially deserted buildings with his PPC was rather surprised by the appearance of a pair of figures in excess of two metres wearing heavy armour and wielding double barrelled weapons nearly as large as they were kick open a door to the residential block he had been standing next to. Flicking a switch to change from the PPC to his SRMs and twisting about to bring the centre of his torso to bear on them, his brain had just enough time to note the strange glow coming out of the barrels of their weapons before he thought nothing anymore.

Lances of thermonuclear fire speared out and struck the Panther squarely in the torso, which was where the 'Mech had its SRM launcher placed, and the armour meant to deflect rounds did not protect particularly well against upward shots. A single multi-melta hit was probably overkill, but two in a tight cluster to what was probably the weakest point on the torso was like hitting an egg with a wrecking ball. Two rather unpleasant things happened one after the other in short succession. The first was that one of the fusion beams punched through at an angle to the storage bins and began to cook off the SRM ammunition. The second was that the other beam began to chew into the reactor housing.

For a few fractions of a millisecond the reactor held, even as its outer components started to boil away. Computer gates that would perform an emergency shutdown began to flip, the many redundant ones taking up the slack of the ones reduced to hot plasma. The melta beams had expended most of their energy already chewing through armour and internal chassis, and the cladding about the reactor was particularly dense and thermally resistant.

Then the shockwave from the SRM ammunition detonating more or less all at once caught up with the diminished melta beam and slammed into the now exposed inner-most reactor housing. Metal crumpled and bent inward and the hot core of the fusion reactor was exposed before it had a chance to shut down its reaction and dump heat. The results of the combined ammunition explosion and reactor containment failure quite spectacularly served as an attention grabbing method.

----

"What the fuck was that?" Captain Travis Harmon of the Port Hamar Star bellowed as Tatsuya Walker's Panther disappeared in a ball of white light and window rattling concussion.

"Uh... the Sabres are rerouting to check it out," the communication officer, Nathaniel Tong, reported.

"The King is going to have our heads for this! There shouldn't be anything on this mud hole capable of chipping the armour, let alone-" Harmon was cut off by multiple beams of coherent light stabbing out from the distant hills and slamming into the Swayback and Wasp that blew off massive chunks of armour from both 'Mechs. The Swayback responded by opening up with its many medium lasers, while the Wasp fired its Jump Jets and bounded towards the settlement, unleashing a speculative blast from its SRMs on the buildings.

"What the FUCK?" Harmon screamed in disbelief. Those had to be large laser shots at the very least, and the ones that had hit the Swayback were very tightly clustered. If it had been a metre to the left and up it would have been a head hit instead of a torso hit.

"Sabres report... infantry?" Tong reported in confusion.

"I don't care about the motherfucking PBI, where's the 'Mechs that are shooting at us?" Harmon demanded.

"That's... there aren't..." Tong tried to explain before he winced from his headphones, pulling them slightly away. Out over Tergofinis a quartet of energy beams spat skyward and forced one of the Sabre ASFs to bank hard to avoid being tagged. One of the beams looked like another heavy laser, one was maybe a PPC but missing the confinement helix, while the remaining two made absolutely no sense as they were just pillars of white that sort of looked like flamer shots that refused to dissipate for a few hundred metres.

Looking apologetic, Tong said, "The dumbass pressed transmit while he was yelling about being shot at... by infantry."

"That's it, close up the bay doors, we're getting the hell out of here right now!" Harmon declared, right as one of the smouldering buildings at the base they had arrived at promptly exploded outward, disgorging what looked like jump infantry out of old historical holos. In a single leap they had crossed half the distance to the DropShip. They touched down in a run and then leapt again before either of the 'Mechs or any of the gunners could really respond, and then they were at the bay doors left open from the exit of the Swayback.

Running over to one of the display screens for the 'Mech bays, Harmon watched as the twenty armoured giants armed with chainsaws began to butcher the technicians. They fired pistols and men came apart like they had been hit by autocannons, and when they got into close combat the results were even more gruesome. The fighting in the Swayback bay was over in seconds. Then one of the armoured figures, who had a gigantic, glowing hammer thrust it into one of the pressure doors separating the 'Mech bay from the rest of the ship. The door came off like it wasn't there and the whole ship rang like a bell struck.

The invaders were fast, efficient, and utterly brutal. The weapons used aboard ships to prevent again hull penetration and thus depressurization just bounced off their armour, and all firing really did was make them angry. Looking outside as the Swayback steamed in the early morning air with repeated laser hits and from firing its own complement of medium lasers as fast as they could cycle, Harmon did the only thing he could think of.

Pulling out his service pistol, he put it up against his temple and pulled the trigger. If the strange invaders didn't kill him then The King certainly would.

---

Miranda Baku shut off the radio in response to the screaming coming from that bastard Tong over the fact that there were boarders on the ship and that asswipe Captain Harmon had just shot himself. While it was somewhat satisfying to know that the grope-happy bastard had taken the coward's way out, it also meant that this was the end. She had been jumping her Wasp frantically to avoid get tagged by those lasers, which hit hard and had caused a massive spike in her heat load when she had been hit. Mica's Swayback wasn't fast enough to just keep dodging like her 'Mech could and so was getting progressively and rapidly pounded down to nothing, molten chunks of armour shedding like hot slag being poured from a blast furnace.

Miranda couldn't keep jumping forever, not in combat conditions like this, and the enemy was small, hard to hit, and dug into the buildings of the settlement so she couldn't get a proper lock on them, and they were wearing some sort of armour that made the splash from her missiles or blowing up the buildings around them with her laser basically useless. She had been toying with closing to brawling range with them, but the energy weapons fire that tried to tag the low flying Sabres had convinced her that closing to her most effective weapons range was an exceedingly bad idea.

Miranda cursed her ancestors for signing up with the ancestors of the idiots that ruled this backwater shithole. Her 'Mech had been progressively stripped of everything useful over the generations and she was fairly certain that if she didn't have Mika as a wingman to back her up against the techs they would have started to hold her machine together with chewing gum like they did for that maniac in the Firestarter. Even then, she suspected that unless the actual raiding forces had been around instead of the incredibly poor garrison force she wouldn't have won with a mint Star League era Wasp.

Her suspicions were confirmed when one of those heavy laser beams from the hills punched into a hole previously drilled in the armour of Mika's Swayback and from the little flash and crackle of ionized air his reactor had been cored. With Walker's Panther gone before it had even started to fight, the Leopard captured, and the idiot in the Firestarter massacring civilians, that left her and two Sabres to fight against entrenched enemies with heavy weapons.

A missile leapt up from the other side of the settlement from where most of the heavy weapons fire was originating from and caught one the Sabres right in an air intake, more or less by fluke as far as Miranda could tell. The ASF didn't really need atmosphere to fly and it should have enough internal armour to survive an SRM hit - except for the fact that judging by the size of the fireball that caused the fighter to be transformed into burning chaff there was no way that missile could have been an SRM. Seeing the result, the other Sabre immediately began to climb skyward, leaving Miranda completely surrounded by hostile forces.

'Mech starting to overheat from getting clipped by their weapons and firing her own weapons at long range and with way too much armour blown off, Miranda fired her jets and hurled herself towards the hill where the majority of the laser fire was coming from. The weapons were relatively slow firing so she figured she might have a chance at taking out a few of the weird soldiers before they brought her down too. She was a pirate, so it wasn't like she was particularly used to asking for or taking quarter anyway.

She had just enough time to mentally call bullshit as the pair of blue-white bolts leapt out from the ridge at her cockpit window. The amount of firepower they had brought was just plain unfair.

---

[drakensis]

Hmm. Calling a lascannon equal to a large laser seems a bit much, but that's a combat estimate so it may be a bit unreliable and certainly it's the sort of weapon that would be more usually found on a tank not man-portable, so its not implausible.

Most of the damage seems to be the result of Devestators being devestatingly precise with their shots, which seems entirely reasonable. Once they get an idea of where the vitals are inside 'Mechs, they'll probably be even nastier.

[Grimnosh]

Hmm. Calling a lascannon equal to a large laser seems a bit much, but that's a combat estimate so it may be a bit unreliable and certainly it's the sort of weapon that would be more usually found on a tank not man-portable, so its not implausible.

Most of the damage seems to be the result of Devestators being devestatingly precise with their shots, which seems entirely reasonable. Once they get an idea of where the vitals are inside 'Mechs, they'll probably be even nastier.

Its been, well, at a minimum 27000 years of tech development, so its not that much of a streach that a lascannon has the minimum power of a large laser. It is one of the standard weapons on many Imperial and Chaos vehicles as well so it has both the pedigree of being good enough for mounting on vehicles ound AND aircraft as well as being used by infantry, and also is the best long range antivehicle weapon of 40K.

As for the Devistator's accuracy, you have to understand that aside from veteran sargents, commanders, and commander retinues/bodyguards, Devistators have the highest amount of experience among all of a chapter's troops. Accuracy should be close to second nature to them, and yes I agree, once they know a 'mech's vital areas they are going to be even nastier, with the only problems that might be there would be getting to the right position to shoot at those weak points as illistrated by how the Panther was destroyed by upward shots rather then shots from a flat forward plane.

[Darkevilme]

Sooner or later the imperial interdimensional expeditionary force is going to run into someone who understands the concept of surrendering. As is, fun read, poor pirates, keep it coming.

[PainRack]

Hmm. Calling a lascannon equal to a large laser seems a bit much, but that's a combat estimate so it may be a bit unreliable and certainly it's the sort of weapon that would be more usually found on a tank not man-portable, so its not implausible.

Most of the damage seems to be the result of Devestators being devestatingly precise with their shots, which seems entirely reasonable. Once they get an idea of where the vitals are inside 'Mechs, they'll probably be even nastier.

Its been, well, at a minimum 27000 years of tech development, so its not that much of a streach that a lascannon has the minimum power of a large laser. It is one of the standard weapons on many Imperial and Chaos vehicles as well so it has both the pedigree of being good enough for mounting on vehicles ound AND aircraft as well as being used by infantry, and also is the best long range antivehicle weapon of 40K.

As for the Devistator's accuracy, you have to understand that aside from veteran sargents, commanders, and commander retinues/bodyguards, Devistators have the highest amount of experience among all of a chapter's troops. Accuracy should be close to second nature to them, and yes I agree, once they know a 'mech's vital areas they are going to be even nastier, with the only problems that might be there would be getting to the right position to shoot at those weak points as illistrated by how the Panther was destroyed by upward shots rather then shots from a flat forward plane.

Which chapter? Space Wolves and Blood Angels aside, codex marines place newly inducted Marines into Devastator squads, there to learn their stuff. Now granted, this probably doesn't apply to the battle companies strictly, but most Chapters appear to pass new grunts into those squads, with the more veteran of those marines manning the heavy weapons.

[Academia Nut]

Chapter Seven

Samsara was not a person, as her mother and master had both repeatedly beat into her. She was a thing, a commodity, to be sold or exchanged for a profit at any time, or used up and discarded as when she was no longer useful. Her mother, at the ancient age of thirty, was already almost like an old nag, ready to be taken out to pasture and shot to make room for the new filly to be presented to the studs. Her mother knew that and hated her for it, but couldn't do too much damage because Sam didn't belong to her. All she had given her was life and a name, and apparently the name was some sort of sick joke to go with the sick joke that was her life.

Probably the worst of it had come a few years ago when her mother had decided that the beatings weren't sinking in, so she had declared that they were going to go see her "brothers". She had taken her to an old quarry just outside town that was filled with tiny bones picked clean and bleached white by the elements, hundreds of smashed in little skulls littering the macabre landscape.

"Boys born to whores are near useless, so we toss them here unless told otherwise. I've thrown two of your brothers in here already, and if the master tells me to throw your rebellious ass in here, I'll do that too," her mother had told her coldly, a sick sneer on her face.

Sam sometimes wondered what it was like to have a mother that didn't hate her, or a father, or even a father figure that wasn't setting up an auction for her virginity among the locals who were into that sort of thing. Then again, maybe if she had been treated with some sort of warmth by her mother perhaps she would have fallen into the slavish devotion some of the other girls directed towards their master. Just because she had a collar around her neck didn't mean that Sam had to be a slave on the inside.

There was an old holo projector within the brothel that had been kept running somehow over the past two hundred years, and sometimes they played old propaganda films talking about the Star League and the Camerons and the Successor Lords. The wealthy men who lounged about drinking booze would go along with the narrative and mock the distant people of Terra and surrounding space, and the women lounging about and being groped would agree with their patrons, but not Sam. Sam figured that if the people in charge hated them, that was good enough to support them in the back of her mind.

Sometimes, sometimes she would even dream that she was somehow descended from the lost leaders of Inner Sphere, the Last Cameron, and Kerensky and his warriors would descend from the sky to take her back to Terra where she would no longer be a slave and she could live as a queen in a palace. She thought that the most on the nights when her mother or her master beat her particularly harshly and she looked up at the stars, blurred by tears. The stars would be her salvation, she just knew it.

But her thirteenth birthday was nearing, and that meant that she could no longer do chores about the brothel, she had to start doing "real work". If she was lucky a baron would take a shine to her quickly and buy her to go work on his estate somewhere. If she wasn't lucky, she would remain in the brothel until her own daughter replaced her. Either way, judging by the blood on the sheets from the girls slightly older than her, she was strongly contemplating extreme measures to escape her fate.

And then the giants had shown up.

Appearing from the mists like armoured ghosts, they had killed the militia that was the main source of regular business for the brothel and then told everyone to leave. They had taken particular interest in the building that the brothel was in, since it was centrally located and an original part of the settlement and thus made out of sturdier materials than later construction. Her master had taken exception to being told to leave.

One of the giants had backhanded him, his enormous hand encased in an unyielding gauntlet. Her master's head had jerked backward with a sick snap before it collided with a wall and burst open like a red melon. As more giants stepped inside, glaring down at them all through grim faced helmets and judgemental green lenses, the prostitutes had all got the hint and quickly joined the stream of people. Sam's mother had been scared, but Sam could tell that it mostly wasn't because of the giants. It was because she was without a master and that terrified her.

Sam could see it in most of the other women. The hand holding their leashes had fallen slack, but none of them were free. She was fairly certain most of them were running with the other people in the city because it meant they were surrounded by people who would be able to tell them what to do.

Exhaustion setting in from being woken up only shortly after most of them had actually gone to sleep, the members of the brothel started to fall away from the middle of the pack as better rested or richer people with their own horses or even vehicles with engines pulled away from them. As the first fingers of dawn light started to creep up over the horizon, another light began to appear, accompanied by a distant rumble. People started to talk among each other, about how the lords would take care of the invaders quickly and then they could all go back to their homes, which hopefully wouldn't be too badly burnt.

The cold, tired slaves of the brothel could only watch on in horror as the killing started along the refugee column. Explosions landed among those further up, ripping apart people and animals and scattering worldly goods in tatters to the wind. Energy weapons scythed through trees and set them ablaze, or caused people to burst like water balloons cast upon a hot stove. It was chaos and mayhem, and Sam watched as a man fell to his knees and cried out pleadingly to the sky, "We're loyal! Why are you doing this?"

His prayer to their overlords was answered in the most horrible way possible when one of their colossal war machines dropped down and stepped on him like a bug, splashing his internal organs out among the surrounding terrain. Someone screamed something, and Sam could only look up in horror at the Firestarter. For generations it had been spoken of as a demon of legend, a monster that could be unleashed against the rebellious and unfaithful. Legends spoke of the hundreds of thousands of people it had burned for daring to act out against those who ruled, of entire cities put to the torch by its flamers and the ground salted so no one would dare take up habitation there again.

The boogeyman of myth, told in stories to unruly children to get them to behave, had come to kill them all.

It was even worse for Sam, because the Firestarter had stopped by less than a week ago after it had burned down a settlement far to the north for some crime. The pilot had stopped in at the brothel and had been rather demanding, taking all that he wanted and only paying by not killing them all. Sam had not really seen him since her master had kept most of the younger girls away from him lest he damage their value, but Anne was a few months older than Sam and was already on the working roster. From the sound of the screams, the pilot had been rather rough with her.

Sam didn't see Anne anymore. She had seen some rather bloody, soiled sheets left in the trash outside the next day. Sam had wondered if she went to the quarry outside town she would see Anne's rotting body still being picked over by scavengers.

The fire demon of legend, piloted by an all too human monster, loomed over them all, and then started firing. People became black silhouettes in the white flame and then were no more. Lasers swept through the trees, cutting them down to form firewood for the growing inferno that would hem in the single path to the cities and plantations in the south. And Sam could only watch in wide eyed horror as it all happened around her, helpless to do anything.

Suddenly her world went tumbling to the side, and Sam realized that her mother had tackled her. Looking up at the beaten down face of the tyrant that had ruled over her since before birth, Sam watched her mother open her mouth to say something. Whatever it was disappeared in a suddenly metallic chatter and something hot and sticky forcing Sam to close her eyes in reflex. When she opened them a moment later, she found red ruin in front of her. Dark, bloody organs flopped out of the hole in her mother's abdomen, and whatever the older woman had wanted to say died on her lips as she fell boneless to the ground.

Scrambling up to the woman who had given birth to her, Sam propped up her head to try to make her comfortable, but by the time she had done that there was no light in her eyes. Sam's mother was dead. Sam just stared down at her as the world went blurry with tears.

Had she pushed Sam out of the way because she was her daughter, or because she was valuable property? The latter seemed more likely, but perhaps there had still been a scrap of familial loyalty in her. Sam would never know. Unlike with her master where she had to hide her glee for fear of censure by those that knew her, this death left her feeling torn up inside. She was her mother, and as horrible as she had been to her, she was her mother.

Kneeling down over the corpse of a loved one and screaming in agony was a common pose in the burning ruination around the 'Mech as it reaped its due on those who had been caught up in something they had never asked for.

Sam wasn't sure how long she sat in the dirt, cradling body of her mother in her lap, screaming and wailing. The winds were pushing the worst of the fire away from her, and the Firestarter chose for whatever capricious reasons to ignore her in favour of those still running. Everything sort of dropped away for a time, until new noises entered into the cacophony. There was a strange whooshing noise followed by ear splitting explosions, and then a deep, heavy, barking chatter.

Looking up, Sam found two strange, extraordinarily low flying vehicles weaving through the trees in the forest and firing weapons at the Firestarter. They were fast, faster than Sam could imagine anything actually being, especially so close to the ground. The demon 'Mech, meant to be killing infantry, decided that it did not like these fast moving pests and so jumped through the air to close in with them.

In response one of the vehicles fired an incredibly loud weapon mounted on its underside and the torso of the Firestarter suddenly exploded with hundreds of sparks all at once. Its forward motion stalled in mid-air, the 'Mech dropped from the sky and landed with an earth shaking crunch less than a dozen paces from where Sam held her mother's body and just lay there, prone on its back. Ugly black smoke that smelled of burning oil and plastic quickly began to pour out of the hole that had been chewed in its torso.

The speeders slowed to a halt, floating eerily in the air and revealed a pair of the giants in each of them. One of the giants from the machine that fired the killing shot jumped out of the side of its machine and strode over to the smouldering 'Mech. By the being's general posture and demeanour, Sam judged that it was furious. Reaching the downed Firestarter it walked up to the head and fired a few rounds from a ridiculously huge pistol into the window of the cockpit, causing the material to go white with repeated shattering of it. Undeterred, the giant punched the weakened material, allowing another plume of dense smoke to begin pouring out. Reaching into the blackness, it first peeled open the remains of the window and then hauled the choking pilot out.

Lifting the proportionately child-like figure of the pilot up, the giant growled something in a language Sam couldn't understand before roughly hurling him aside. The giant turned to survivors of the refugee column and screamed something at them before gesturing with a single hand to the gasping pilot trying and failing to gain his feet nearby. There was a long pause as it scanned out over the people, somehow expectant, and everyone stared back in terrified confusion.

Through tear flooded eyes, Sam looked at the giant and then at what it was pointing to. The pilot of the Firestarter. The demon told by mothers to their children. The butcher of thousands. The one who had raped Anne to death.

The murderer of her mother.

Sam had no idea what the giant really wanted, but suddenly she realized that if she ever wanted revenge it had to be here and now. Even if the giant killed her for her insolence, she had to try. She had already been contemplating suicide just a few days ago to escape the fate in store for her. Even getting in one good hit would be worth her life.

Bellowing the mightiest war cry a twelve year old waif could muster, Sam rushed at the pilot and kicked him as hard as she could in the face. Pain exploded in her foot and she was fairly certain that she broke a toe, but she was so furious that she ignored it and instead wound up for another strike. Much to her surprise, the pilot managed to grab her foot before she could connect again, leering up at her with a perverted grin.

Much to both of their surprise that grin transformed into a howl of agony as the giant stepped on one of his feet, crushing the appendage to paste with a series of sickening pops. He let go of Sam and was then almost delicately lifted up by a boot under his torso and flipped away. Sam stared up at the giant with reverent awe, and it gestured to the screaming and coughing pilot once more.

Her foot still stinging from the initial attempt at combat, Sam changed tactics and grabbed a branch blasted off a tree that was as long as her arm. Lifting it up over her head, she screamed once again as she brought it down on the pilot's face. She was rewarded with numbing vibrations shooting up her arm and the man screaming as he brought his hands away from his ruined foot to shield his now broken nose. She brought the stick up again and hit him with everything she had again, watching as the skin of his arm tore away and let blood leak out.

Sam was screaming for everything she was worth, and barely even noticed when others were suddenly alongside her with rocks and sticks and knives and boots. Centuries of oppression suddenly burst like a dam filled too high. The pilot disappeared into the mob. Sam's mind disappeared into the mob. Everything descended into red and noise.

When she came too, aching in every possible way she could conceive of as aching, Sam looked up at the giant looming over the proceedings. Its helmet still scowled at them, but she could tell that the face underneath was smiling beatifically. Sam smiled back in awe.

This was no giant. It had slain the demon that was the Firestarter. It had gifted her and all the others with revenge for the death and destruction wrought.

It was no giant.

It was an angel.