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Made in gb
Mekboy Hammerin' Somethin'





Papua New Guinea

To save the humans from any discomfort at the sight of our rituals, my Brother's and I move to the far side of the ruined convoy where we cannot be observed. Four of our Brothers are laid out, stripped of their armour and wrapped in canvas sheets cut from one of the ruined marine transports. Yorghad takes the honour of preparing them, slicing through the scalp at the back of the head, running his fingers beneath the skin and peeling it back. Using the blades of his narthecium he cuts away the skull, exposing the brain beneath. Carefully cutting away the membranes covering the organs he then scooped out the brains and places them with care upon a sheet of metal, washed down and cleansed as best as possible. Replacing the skull caps, he pulls the scalps back and staples them shut. When possible, the skulls, and indeed, other parts of the skeleton, are salvaged for use; On my hip I carry a sheathed bone blade, carved from the femur of Yessel, a fellow neophyte, who died on his first mission as a full initiate. In life he never claimed one enemy life, but in death I have despatched hundreds of the Emperor's enemies using the bone blade, the hardened Astartes femur providing a material that is superior to mere steel in many ways.

The flesh of our fallen Brother's is diced into mouthfuls and each of us take a turn to take a piece of each of our Brother's remains. Knowing what is to come I start with Tariem, flashes of his short life flitting before my mind's eye quickly, but as I move on I can feel the process of ingesting the memories of the fallen begin to take their toll on even my genhenced metabolism. My body temperature spikes, forcing me into a feverish fugue state. When I reach for the brain piece from Wilfram, my arm is shaking so violently I have to concentrate all of my willpower on the simple action. Swallowing down the still warm lump, I am overwhelmed by sensation, falling to my knees.

I try to calm my hearts, try to slow my breathing but it is impossible, I collapse to my side but do not even feel the impact as I sprawl across the soot flecked ground. Blades of grass are magnified in my vision so clearly it is painful to look at them, I think about shutting my eyes but by now my senses are so overcharged that even so simple a thing seems to take hours, enough time to watch a tiny insect biting lumps from a fallen leaf, and that metaphor crashes into my subconscious with all the force of a tidal wave. I can feel my jaw clamp shut and my muscles cramp. Even in snatches and glances, nearly eight centuries of life is a lot to take in.

Of course, it is not merely Wilfram's life that I see, it is also the lives of every Brother who fell, and who he consumed. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of years of life! It is too much! Make. It. Stop!! My consciousness hovers like a page held in the fire, my sanity fluttering away into darkness. I hear a scream and I do not know if it is me.


* * * * *



I am surrounded by darkness and whilst I am awake my mind is dominated by dream logic, my subconscious mind dominant in a waking body. I feel a presence, some malignant that I cannot see even as the details of the room I am in become clear. On the wall is a security alarm, it is active, I know this from the two small, red LED lights built into its casing. My sub-conscious sees the eyes of a daemon and the terror is so pure, so complete that I feel it wash through my body like ice water in my veins. I want to shout, to cry out for help but only a strained moan escapes my lip. I know this is not real. I begin to struggle, to thrash, but my body is locked in paralysis, I seem to fight against myself for an age before finally breaking free. My waking mind surges to the fore and the dregs of the night terror hiss in my ears until they fade into silence. On the wall, the alarm is just an alarm again.

"Still with me Sabaddon?"

I am sat against a stone wall, on one knee beside me, a hand on my shoulder is the neophyte, Wilfram? Yes, Wilfram. I push the boy away with a grunt and push my self onto my knees and then, using the wall for balance, I stagger to my feet. The grogginess passes in moments, an unwelcome and alien sensation. For a moment I was almost not myself, not anyone even, strange, but I remember now.

"You are not my Battle-Brother yet, neophyte, so address me by my rank."

"Yes, Captain."

"Hmpf." I look around, we're in some kind of storage bunker, heaps of decaying technologies are wreathed in webs and layers of dust, lit by a pale blue light, filtering through a narrow firing slit in the wall. "Where are we and where is the Chaplain?"

"Chaplain Eskott was almost on us when another Chaplain found us. He didn't even hesitate, simply started shooting at Eskott. I dragged you away whilst he was distracted. We're nineteen levels down, I didn't want to take any chances after what happened to the others."

"You did well. Who was the other Chaplain?"

"I did not recognise him Captain. I think he had a black crown on his helmet?"

"Ah. How interesting."

"Captain?"

I look in Wilfram's eyes for a moment, see the puzzlement, of course, he wouldn't know. Why would he? "Don't worry about that neophyte."

"Why did the Chaplain attack us Captain?"

"I don't know, but-" But what? If I am right the entire Chapter is imperilled and I have only a neophyte to confide in? I should tell him, I can feel my wounds are not healing and I only just avoided falling into a sus-an coma. If that happens and Eskott finds us... And our erstwhile rescuer? None of the Chaplains can by trusted.

"I need to tell you something of the utmost importance Wilfram but not here. And, if I should fall, you must perform the rites, take my memories and-" And tell who, who can be trusted? "First we ne-"

The door blasts inwards and I see the red lights of the alarm flick green. There is no siren but someone will know where we are. Clever of the neophyte to lock us in here. Eskott's armour is shredded and blood is pouring like water from a tap over a jagged spike of ceramite in his left side. He half shuffles, half collapses into the room, he is dead on his feet. The laughter from his helmet mic is wet. Then, in an instant he is upon me, like his mortal wounds mean nothing. His speed is incredible. I fly through the air and crash through broken machine parts that explode around me. Then Eskott is on me, crouched on my abdomen, his blood washing over me. He speaks but the words are just gurgles. His crozius ignites in green flame and then plunges into my chest. I hear Wilfram shout and then bolter fire from the doorway. But I see only darkness.


* * * * *


"For the Emperor's sake Carleeson, pull yourself together." Gordreg is leaning over me, his face inches from mine, a finger prodding at my head. Behind him Croagan stands with his arms crossed, frowning. My Brother's are all watching me where I lie in a foetal ball on the ground. Behind them all, half obscured by the haze from a flaming pile of debris, I see Modak. He is peering at me from behind the bulk of a Tau Devilfish and as is his want, he is clutching onto the alien vehicle like some kind of wall climbing lizard, with only his head and right shoulder just visible, and only to me, and only from this angle. His serpentine helmet watches me with such stillness it is unnerving, the expressionless, unblinking lenses of the helmet never-the-less conveying secret meaning. I flick me eyes to Gordreg and he hauls me to my feet. Looking back for Modak I cannot see him anywhere.
   
Made in gb
Renegade Kan Killin Orks






Northern Ireland

It makes me wonder what Wilfram knew. Makes me want to check back through the story and look for evidence of Wilfram being funny about Modak. Like he didn't trust him... I wonder...

   
Made in gb
Mekboy Hammerin' Somethin'





Papua New Guinea

Well I can tell you now that he didn't EDIT: that Wilfram didn't have any interactions with Modak that is, not that he had issues with him, that was terribly ambiguous of me, ha!

I think I did mention earlier in the thread about a Chapter schism so, this is a little hint of the origins for that. To me, Modak is a sinister character, so having him 'know stuff' adds to that impression. Then there's Ferrax, the mind-wiped marine, who saw things he ought not to and got scrubbed...

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/06/22 00:17:33


Be Pure!
Be Vigilant!
BEHAVE!

Show me your god and I'll send you a warhead because my god's bigger than your god.
 
   
Made in gb
Mekboy Hammerin' Somethin'





Papua New Guinea

It seems like months have passed since my last conscious thought. I am aboard the Shiva assault craft, but I have no recollection of its arrival; odd then that I recall its designation. My head swivels on my spine from right to left taking in my brothers and our human allies. As if weighted down, my head droops and it takes a moment for me to process just exactly what it is I am looking at: a human girl-child.
She looks half starved and filthy but her smile is genuine. Whatever she's looking for in my eyes, evidently, it is not there. Her smile falters and she looks confused. I turn away, she is not my concern.
Against all sanity and logic, Modak hangs from the roof. What is he doing up there? Can't the others see him? He moves closer without seeming to move and no-one bats an eye at the spectacle. He is above me now and slowly, his head descends into view, inches from my own. His helmet lenses are black, I cannot see his eyes through them.

My vox-bead clicks on but there is no sound, just empty air. It clicks off. After a moment it clicks on again, still nothing.

"Modak. What are you-" My voice feels thick in my mouth, my thoughts are slow. I feel unwell. I have never felt unwell. Modak reaches out with both hands and they seem to sink through the meat and bone of my skull. There is no pain. There is nothing at all in fact.

"What did you see?" Modak's voice is faint, as if his vox is picking up his voice from the other side of a room.

"What?"

"What did you see?" Now his voice is like a whisper in my ear.

In that instant, I remember everything. Everything from the moment I came to on the Cage, after my brothers abandoned me for dead.

Everything swims back into focus and I see Modak, strapped into position on the far side of the troop bay, he tilts his head to the side and then down. I get the impression he was smiling at me and then saw something at my side. He looks away as I register this.

A Space Marine's Powered Armour is not merely dead ceramite. Woven into the surface are thousands of sensors, relayed back through the Black Carapace, it allows the wearer to "feel" the armour as if it were skin. That is how I can sense the tiny fingers curl around the last digit of my gauntlet.

I break the contact and Ashney looks up at me with a hurt look that vanishes as I brush my hand over her hair. I can feel the texture, feel the oil and sweat and grime. My armour's systems also convey a sense of the fragility of her skull, its relative mass and compressive strength interpreted by my armour's cogitator as a sense that if I were to apply even a hundredth of the pressure my gauntlet can bring to bear, her head would pop. I have done such a thing many times. I can see in my mind's eye, with perfect detail, exactly how her tiny face would slowly rupture as her brain was squeezed from her skull like paste from a tube. It is a strange and terrible burden to witness the ruination of the human body, to see how meagre we are, the vast range of our human intellect and character, decades of memories, and what are we? Just meat and bone and blood. And then gone.

I think of all the lives of my brothers that live now only in me. I think of all their secrets. All their weaknesses, all of their lies, which now live in me. That now are me. How much of who I am is really me at all? And my life in the minds of others. I know myself through the memories of dozens of others, the memories of brothers who knew me well or hardly at all and I have seen myself as they saw me. If I now lived only in their memories, if I had expired, unrecovered on some distant battlefield, and their memories of me were all the remained then everything I am, everything that I had ever done would be rendered so small and hollow, that it might just as well be that I had never existed.
What legacy is that?

Ashney turns her face into the palm of my gauntlet and I feel her eyelashes brush the reinforced weave as her eyes close. Somewhere on the world below, her parents lie dead. They do not live on only in her memories but in the very fabric of her flesh. When I was not much older than this tiny girl, too young to even conceive of the notion of legacy, and my only concerns were for my own life and the adventures I would have, I gave away my opportunity for a normal human life. I am incapable of regretting that choice but even so, I would make the same choice again. But... I will never have children. My gene-seed have already been harvested and used in the creation of more Space Marines, some still alive, others long dead. But they were not my children, my genetic material, accumulated through the progenoid glands, was transplanted not inherited.

These are not my thoughts, or at least, they were not, even if they now are. I look up and Modak is watching me again. He knows.
   
Made in gb
Renegade Kan Killin Orks






Northern Ireland

A welcome return for THD! Do you have a plan for how to wrap it up or are you just seeing where this goes?

   
Made in gb
Mekboy Hammerin' Somethin'





Papua New Guinea

It has been a while yes, but I had this 'scene' and one other floating around in my mind so, needed to get it typed up.

I'm dreadful at planning out stories, which is to say, I don't plan them at all. I do have a number of vague ideas for things and I try and work them in but mainly it would be accurate to say most of this stuff just appears in my head, occasionally I may dream something!

There are a few things I want to do before I finish the story though: 1. see what the new human faction have to say, get some reinforcements. 2. Finally get around to taking out the Tau HQ and 3. Some manner of confrontation with Modak about all the secret nonsense.

Many, many years ago, Carleeson was a rogue space marine character I came up with for a series of ColFic stories on the old Conclave forum. I'm not sure if this version is headed that way but I've written in enough so far that, it's possible.

As always, thank you for reading along and for the comments

Be Pure!
Be Vigilant!
BEHAVE!

Show me your god and I'll send you a warhead because my god's bigger than your god.
 
   
Made in gb
Mekboy Hammerin' Somethin'





Papua New Guinea

The interior of the Shiva is black matt, a grilled deck and four rows of benches, two back to back in the centre of the bay, the other two alongside either side of the fuselage. A raised step at the front of the craft has seperate seats for officers and a communications station. The only overt indication that we are about to land is the activation of red lighting. It is a quiet machine and the landing is barely perceptable. Despite the Shiva's seeming sophistication the straps securing me to the bench are simple, locked tight under tension, a saftey feature in case of a crash no doubt. I like it.

The troop ramp descends quickly and silently and our rescued Kredesh troops lead the way out, followed by the human marines and finally my brothers. We are in the centre of a small clearing, slick with recent rain. There are no buildings more than two feet above ground level, firing slits and little else, each covered by turf, or built into the natural rock or under trees. Tracked gun units patrol the perimeter, fully robotic versions of kataphron battle servitors. We are met by a coterie of officers and civilians backed up by a platoon strength detachment; the men and women stand rigidly to attention, showing not a flicker or twitch at the sight of forty transhumans in their midst.

Zylvia Mordran, steps forwards and salutes. In her own language she gives a short rundown of who we are, or so I summise. She seems honourable but her reassurances to me when the convoy was taken cannot be said to extend to her commanders. The Zotack-a'Shal half turns and indicates me, her leaders look at me and their faces crease in half frowns. At the head of the civilians is a female in a strapless dress and a fur collared belero jacket. Her dark hair is scraped back into a bun and whilst her bearing is poised she does not seem like ex-military. She nods at Mordran, and the two of them, alongside a small, older male in kredesh fatigues approach.

"My name is Alonette Torparn, Tarshock of Kredesh and this is Agre, Lockumdai of the Lizzet Pah'shadath. You are," She struggles for a word, "Commander?"

Behind me Gordreg laughs.

"I am Carleeson, brother of the Prophets of Hatred Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. The war here does not warrant what you might consider an officer in our Chapter. Be thankful." The Tarshock seems taken aback by this pronouncement but I interrupt her before she can speak again. "This is Kesslin?"

"Yes. We came h-"

"How far is the Spirlin from this place? It is our understanding that the Tau leader caste are in this place. Can you confirm?" The female frowns and shakes her head. Evidently she is not used to being addressed in this manner. She will need to learn fast once the Administratum arrive. Her military advisor speaks for her.

"Yes. The aliens are ensconed in the fortress along with their allies. It is heaviley fortified. You will not be a-"

I turn away, confirmation is all we need. And transport. I eye the Shiva, it seems as good a vehicle as any I have seen but without any obvious weapons systems.

Gordreg jerks a thumb at the craft and glares at the kredesh leaders. "We're taking that. And the pilot."

"How dare you. This is not how things are done. There are protocols. Much needs to be discussed." She looks towards Brant and his marines and she double takes as she sees Ashney stood to one side with her Kesslin prisoner. "There is a great deal to discuss. You cannot-"

Gordreg is not an agile creature, he is crude, if he were a normal human he would be obese, a result of incompatabilities with his gene-seed. Even so, the female is off the floor in an instant, her throat fully encircled by Gordreg's gauntlet. Now the Kred troops move, but my brother's are among them far too quickly, as if Gordreg's outburst had been coordinated ahead of time. Knowing him as we do, it was practically certain.

"Let me explain something to you, little human. We do not answer to you. This world will be Imperium or it will burn. Comply or die."

For all the aggresion, when Gordreg puts the woman down, there is barely a mark on her, but the point is made.

"My brother makes his argument robustly but he speaks plainly and true. Our mission is to destroy the Tau threat, nothing more. Negotiations will come after, with the approriate Imperial bodies, not with us and certainly not now."

Brant steps into the midst of us and he backs up to the Tarshock. Interesting. We are the true outsiders here, for all the long centuries of fighting and untrust between these two human peoples. This is their world, their fate hanging in the balance. Even now, even a man like Brant, still does not quite grasp the new reality.

"We can't just go rushing off, even if you Astartes can. We need to resupply, get some rest. We need some rest." He puts an emphasis on his words as if trying to convery far more meaning that his speach allows.

Why do all these humans think that I am the reasonable one?

"Whatever." I walk away.
   
Made in gb
Mighty Vampire Count






UK

Always a joy to see an update

I AM A MARINE PLAYER

"Unimaginably ancient xenos artefact somewhere on the planet, hive fleet poised above our heads, hidden 'stealer broods making an early start....and now a bloody Chaos cult crawling out of the woodwork just in case we were bored. Welcome to my world, Ciaphas."
Inquisitor Amberley Vail, Ordo Xenos

"I will admit that some Primachs like Russ or Horus could have a chance against an unarmed 12 year old novice but, a full Battle Sister??!! One to one? In close combat? Perhaps three Primarchs fighting together... but just one Primarch?" da001

www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/528517.page

A Bloody Road - my Warhammer Fantasy Fiction 
   
Made in gb
Mekboy Hammerin' Somethin'





Papua New Guinea

Thanks for reading along, I'll try not to have any more eighteen month gaps

EDIT: waagh emoji just did not want to go away.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/10/11 21:46:25


Be Pure!
Be Vigilant!
BEHAVE!

Show me your god and I'll send you a warhead because my god's bigger than your god.
 
   
 
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