Bridge of the Strike Cruiser Bakasurra
Remnants of the Krodha System, 682.M41

They had been right. Fellow Astartes of the Storm Wings Chapter, with their dark, dark eyes and pale skin had told him everything when they met on the edges of the Segmentum Pacificus. In the aftermath of their brief, brutal campaign against the Eldar slavers, they had convened on the bridge of the strike cruiser Penumbra. At first, it had seemed a formality, for brothers honor one another after a glorious victory. Not to be, it would seem.

There it was that the somber 3rd Company Captain Lugus had told Vetala the tales of the Tiger Claws - or at least, what fragments remained. Clad in burnished nickel with a helm bearing wings and a skull visage set in crimson, he had taken Vetala aside as a courtesy, to let him be the first to know what fate had befallen his Chapter. The were gone - their world, their fleet, all their brothers. Spent and broken, lost to time and all but a legend.

When confronted with that truth, it became no more easier to accept, but to deny his own eyes would be futile. The accounts at the waystations, the hushed words with Rogue Traders and the scrutiny of a rather impish Inquisitor all told the same story in one form or another, corroborating what the Storm Wings Captain had said years before. Yet now it was not words that spoke to him, but what was before him.

Krodha was dead, their Chapter just a myth now. When was the last time anyone spoke the name of the Tiger Claws? Over a millennia had passed since they ventured off into the Warp, Vetala leading his Company out to confront an incursion of Eldar pirates. The very same that had built their slave empire that the Storm Wings and his brothers had shattered. They had waxed and waned, waves of Imperial forces crashing against them and breaking, yet it was at the hands of the Tiger Claws that saw them finally broken.

From the time they had left to confront this new threat, a mere two years had passed. Yet, to the Imperium-at-large, it had been fourteen centuries. The confluences of the Warp were fickle, though now it appears they had been downright capricious - consigning his Chapter to oblivion, but for the remnants that had accompanied him on what was to be a brief campaign. The brass-rimmed occulus ahead of him was opened now, showing the wrathful star in the distance, the black rock of his homeworld Krodha alight only when lashing arms of solar flares scorched its surface. Long gone were the verdant forests and endless fields of tall, sweet-smelling grass, gone were the crisp, clear oceans. Worse yet, gone were the people. His people.

Next to him on the deck of the Bakasurra strode his trusted Sergeant and friend, Naraka - both of them hailing from the same small village on the Dhaaraa river that wound its way through the central continent of Krodha a millennia ago. Naraka didn’t say anything - words were nothing now. Instead, he just placed a gauntleted hand on his pauldron. A show of camaraderie, a show of understanding.

“Close oculus, bring us about and get us clear. It is time we left,” said Vetala to the bridge. Naraka was not far behind, going to the upper dias as the ship prepared to make for the Nadir point in the system before translation. The servitors clattered and chimed with affirmations, the ship’s engines thrumming with power.

“Master Vetala, what is our destination?” That was Jaland, the ship’s captain, a blunt-faced warrior from the mesa lands of Atraiu who was a veteran when Vetala was but a neophyte. While Vetala may have been the senior most officer left in the Tiger Claws, few commanded such respect as Jaland.
“Where best we can secure our Chapter’s future, Jal. Set course for Holy Terra.”

Administratum Parade and Receiving Grounds
Holy Terra, 685.M41

They approached in a loose wedge made up of small clusters of various allegiance. Overhead, swarms of cherubim hovered lazily with banners and horns announcing the approach, while servo-skulls dashed here and there chronicling the whole event. It was a clumsy display of power, one unfamiliar to Vetala and his brothers, who wore their honor with a warrior’s pride. This was ostentation meant as a message.

“They are the Imperium, we are their servants,” the Captain said to himself as much as his companions. To his left was Champion Ashok in his armor layered in gilded traceries, his hands resting on the hilt of the ancient blade Asi. Beneath his decorative mask, a man's face held in the jaws of an Aghra, the tiger’s native only to Krodha. Draped across his shoulders was a pelt of the same animal, a rite of passage that marked him a veteran of the Chapter. Vetala knew the champion’s face would be set in hard lines, his disdain for this entire charade being the singular topic of his rage as they marched out to the parade grounds.

At his right was trusted Sergeant Naraka, holding high the last banner of the Chapter. The names of scores of battles sewn across it - only legends in the mind's of those who remembered their Chapter at all. At its center was a prowling tiger with claws and maw bloody, a last vestige of their Chapter’s history, now ancient history. If anything, it only made the display approaching seem all the more desperate.

Leading the wedge was a figure clad in a gleaming suit of silver, its surface etched with golden lightning bolts and a single, enameled "I" centered on his chest, the holy symbol of the Inquisition. Held in one mailed fist was a stave topped with a splayed double-headed eagle, while the other was hand held a scroll tube of ivory and bronze. Across his armor were seals of wax, pressed with all the icons of the Inquisition fixing to him parchments, as long as a man is tall, that streamed behind him in the wind.

For all of that, the most imposing part of this figure was his eyes that radiated a cold intensity that would make any mortal cower. It was for naught, for Vetala knew no fear. He knew power though, and that to cause any slight or disrespect would bring down swift judgement on his already suffering Chapter.

It took the entire procession the better part of an hour to finally reach across the massive parade ground. The Inquisitor passed off his staff to a nearby servant and opened the tube, revealing a parchment inside. Silence fell across all present - only the howling wind and low hum of power armor and servos could be heard.

Vetala steeled himself for the words to come. He pled his case to the envoys of the High Lords, to the emissaries of the Administratum and Mechanicum, asking only for the chance to rebuild, to claim a new home and start anew with old traditions and fresh blood.

Now came judgement.

“As the chosen voice of those who speak for the Emperor, I, Grand Inquisitor of the Ordo Malleus Eros Rathore due decree that the request for continuance of the Tiger Claws Chapter, honored though their past, has been denied forthwith. Word is final, unalterable, and unquestionable in nature - you are to serve loyally as ever you have until the end of your days, honoring the God-Emperor and his glorious Imperium with your final breaths.” The voice had been amplified by a dozen of the cherubim, the echoing words came from all directions and spread across the entire grounds.

The Inquisitor rolled and stored the tube, then strode forward to present it to Vetala. The Captain looked through him as he stood, arm extended and waiting. He didn’t reach out to take it, not at first. The gravity of the words took time to settle in his mind. When he did return his attention to the man before him, he wondered if he could kill him before his retinue could slay the three Tiger Claws. He reached out slowly, eyes set in a grim stare that was more than a match for the Inquisitor.

Vetala took the tube in hand, turned about face, and strode with his brothers from the parade ground back to their waiting Thunderhawk. They fell in step behind their leader, judgement made and their duty here done.Words had failed him. Words had betrayed him.

Now all he had left was his duty, to his Chapter and his brothers.

Kashak-ha System, Fourth Planet (Unnamed), 687.M41
Segmentum Pacificus

The roar turned to a blood-spewing gurgle as bolt rounds smashed through the greenskin’s throat and chest. Vetala swept his power fist around, coring another of the brutish creatures with a spray of viscera that coated the burning interior of the downed space hulk.

A whirring glove of blades and saws came at him, looking to take his head off. The sputtering monster he had shot finally fell away, dead or near enough. More bolt shells exploded in the Ork’s arm, sending the maniacal weapon careening to the decking, still closing and opening. Smashing into his back can yet another, with more behind it. Icons were turning red in his display as choppas started hacking into his backpack and pauldrons.

Without seeming to notice, the greenskin’s head fell from its shoulders. Then another. And another. Ashok had parted them without so much as a pause, wading through the warband with Asi burning off Ork blood, a kris in his offhand darting in and out of eyes and throats.

Naraka was not far behind, banner held aloft, his ancient Tigrus-pattern bolter pulping Ork skulls and brains with every shot. Somewhere, he had lost his helmet and a gash had been rent from cheek to chin, his mouth full of posthuman blood that flecked out as he roared a wordless battle cry.

Courage was never in short supply among his Chapter. Vetala had never once doubted that. As they scoured the downed hulk that the Bakasurra had ruined in orbit. The Orks had lost control, their junk ship burned and broke apart on re-entry. The task was not done; the Tiger Claws had to finish it. That meant bolter and flamer, sword and first. Nothing short of extermination would suffice, lest the beasts rise back up and continue their senseless slaughter.

Brother Rava muscled his way up through the crush of bodies, the air rippling around the nozzle of his meltagun after sustained firing. Ahead, a vast beast in heavy armor with giant pincers for hands was wading into the fray. “Rava, with me!” Vetala said over the vox. He turned Gandiva, his wrist-mounted twin bolters on Orks that were between them and their new prey. Naraka and Ashok fell in behind, hacking and firing into the waves of greenskins all around them.

A deafening roar erupted from the beast as he sighted the Astartes closing in on him and started running with a heavy tread, pincers slashing the air, opening and closing in anticipation of the killing.

Rava aimed his meltagun up and letting loose, but the shot was knocked off target and only served to carve a hole in the Ork line. Greenskins were instantly vaporized, turned to molten flesh and blackened bone. The giant armored Ork closed and fast, reaching down to snip Rava’s arms at the wrist, the meltagun falling to the deck.

Vetala shoved his brother back, smashing his power fist into the Ork’s elbow, blasting it with a contained energy field and blowing the arm apart. Naraka was dragging Rava back to the skirmish line that had formed up as Vetala’s wedge had pushed ever deeper in. From there, bolters were banging away. The were broken against the wall of mass reactive shells.

Another roar, then came the other pincer arm swinging down, looking to take Vetala's head clean off. He drew up his fist and deflected it, only just. Down it came, the brute force behind it immense, forcing a deep gouge into the pauldron on his right arm, ripping into the layers of ceramite. Ashok came in on the Ork’s blind spot, dragging Asi in a swirling arc that parted the bests legs at the knee and slashed up through what had to be a primitive, chugging power source on its back.

With such grievous wounds, it still battled on. It smashed its tusked face into Vetala’s helmet as it fall forward, slipping and twisting on bloody stumps. Again is bellowed, but it was the last it would utter, as Vetala swung down with a hammerblow from his fist, caving in the beasts head down into the center of its chest. Little arcs of lighting rippled across the ruined Ork.

Some enemies were cowed by the death of their leader. Not Orks, that was not their way. They only fought on and harder still, slashing about wildly and spraying death with their fat, ugly guns.

They died to the last.

Khrysaor wrote:wow! just wow! these are fantastic! much better than i could have hoped. thank you very much!