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Gaston, ducked in his cover, at first freezes in surprise. In a joyful voice, he said, in Kallenese dialect as always: "Mon Colonel, you're back!" and hands over his laspisto' and all his clips. His morale was, all of a sudden, sky high. "I'll protect you, mon Colonel, stay low!" Knew resolve flooded in his heart, and, keeping his silhouette as best as he could behind cover, he scanned frantically in all directions, making sure nothing could harm the colonel - or that he could interpose in time.

He saw John take aim down the hall, and shouted, hoping that despite his accent, he'd be understood: "Badge, tis Trigger, head back 20 meters, I support!".

(In game terms, I will protect the VIP, using my look out sir ability if necessary)

While you cover the rear, a quite heavy fire fight enfolds in the front, with lots of bullets and a couple of lasbolts flying around, but seemingly without too much effect on the caravan. Your ernstwhile travecompanions have taken good cover and give at least as good as they get and from your position you even see one or two of the assailants going down, while you own only suffer some minor flesh wounds. Lucky for you, the caravan leader notices in time that the attackers try to go around and flank them and redistributes his fighters to cancel that out, but after he does so, John gets a rather queasy feeling. It's strange that the ambushers would not have put some men where they seemingly wanted to move to begin with and also when they made their move, they did not really try their best to conceal it. Looking at it from this direction you notice that the redistribution of your fighters stretches the line a bit, keeping them further from your little lot and disrupting the sightlines to you. Now it's more or less only Buck and Pearson, who refused to move up as commanded, that still have a look on you.

Cold Eye gets a look at some of the gunmen and -women attacking you - typical downhive mutant rubble. But after what that shaky, triggerhappy soldierboy in her company was babbling about the last days, she does indeed notice that the odd additional hand or even arm and a skin complexion drifting towards the purpelish-scaly kind does seem to be a bit more prevelant than she would like. Maybe the soldier was less nuts than she thought.

A couple of shots also go in your direction, but as long as you stick your head down, you are mostly fine. Gaston keeps Loisy covered who tries his best to give at least some suppression fire with his pistol, his aim being far from the old mark. How the others feel about the partly lobotomized governor having a firearm again is anybodies guess. One of the shots of your attackes even glances Gastons flak armor and while it doesn't penetrate, he himself is sure that he quite literally "took a bullet for the Colonel", boosting his confidence in no small amount.

As suddenly to of the mutants rush Pearsons and Bucks position - being greeted by the big mans combat shotgun, you hear Rhos rasping mechanical voice "Location of second servitor unclear. Life signs abnormal." You take a look around, but can't find the Hiver you took with you. Only Cold Eye intuitively looks in the right direction and can make out a long, blood covered, purple claw, resting on a stone in the rubble above your cover, pulling "somethin" over it... Something that will drop on your hideout any second...

Cold Eye gave a shout of warning as she tried to get her shotgun on target. Despite knowing she was going full-speed, the shotgun ever so slowly moved towards the strange hivebeast coming over the rock. With horror, Cold Eye knew there was no way she was going to get on target in time.

"By the Chasm Eagle, this was it.", flashed through her mind.

Gaston heard the warning from Cold eye. He had just shrugged off debris flying towards the colonel that struck at his plate carrier instead, and he was still a little dazed from the impact, although proud to redeem and ready to die trying. It was only when he instinctly turned his head towards the source of the warning that he saw some purplish form dashing towards the colonel. Well, rather, towards, him, but somehow, he knew it came for the colonel's head. And as he saw it, his brain awoke.

"Genestealer!" He roared, and shot a full auto volley while interposing between the colonel and the creature. Gaston felt, a fraction of a second before the impact, that he was about to give up his life, and he hadn't even a second thought about it, facing his destiny headlong - and the heart light from anticipated, well deserve redemption in sacrifice.

Warned by Cold Eyes shout, you turn your gaze upwards just in time to see an eldritch horror crawl across the sumit of some scrap-hill directly above you. Its form is only vaguely humanoid at best, 6 long clawed limbs with strangely shaped and turned joints supporting a heavy set, broad torso, the whole ensemble covered by thick, bony chitin. Where the dark purplish, almost black carapace plates join you can see thick strings of dark red muscles working, absolutely sure that this beast is strong as a grox.
It is unarmed in a sense, but its talons and claws look maliciously sharp, the edges shimering like razors even in the spare light, but the worst and most scary of all is its alien head, the face distorted to a cruel grin exposing several rows of pointy teeth and a long, slimy tongue snaking around, tasting the air. Despite its size and bulk, the Genestealer moves very silently and - you have to admit - almost gracefully as leaps towards Gaston, claws first.

Rho seems to overloaded with sensory input at the moment and doesn't even raise her left arm with the integrated laspistol you saw once or twice before and Cold Eye is just a little to slow right now, but the other three at least get of a shot, before the monster hits your ranks. The slugs from Johns Autogun slam into the armored shoulderblade of the thing, but while that would have been enough to seriously harm a mere mortal, it only seems to slightly throw it of target


In the same moment, Loisy raises his laspistol, a primal scream on his lips, full of an ancient mix of anger, rage, panik and burning pain. He spews forth a couple of lasbolts but his aim is pretty abysmal - no wonder given that he basically has just raised from the braindead if you will.


So it comes down to Gaston and the stealer, the Guardsmen shoving himself in the way of the beast to protect his Colonel and quite likely die a heroic death in the process. But he won't sell his live cheaply, at least losing a volley into the thing before the talons connect. The hail of lasbolts slam into the thing, mainly towards its head and shoulders as the claws close around Gaston. And while they, like Johns shots, barely pierce the carapace they do tear out lumbs of flesh and nerves at the side where you would expect the ears.


The thing screams in pain and then lashes out in a blinding flurry of claws, fangs, teeth and talons. The result is... more gruel than in your worst nightmares. These talons that can even threaten Astartes powerarmor cut through the Kalinese flakvest as if it was butter and in a spray of blood and viscera the human soldier almost explodes into bluddy lumbs flying around everywhere. Still in shock you find yourself in bloody melee with the beast... But in a last act of defiance, Gaston had thrown himself into it, tripping it for a moment, which might give you some pause, as it struggles to get back up and sort out its multiple appendices.

Gaston didn't even truly see himself die. Sure, he felt the first strike of a razorsharp claw. A split second after, before his brain even actually registered what was happening, he blacked out from the nervous overlaod of all this talons breaking his body piece by piece at lightning fast speed. But he didn't even see himself pass away. He left with the pride of redemption and a worthy sacrifice in his beaten, but valiant heart. It had been the very last emotions to animate him. He did what his duty demanded of him - and despite his young age, he didn't hesitate to step up... May he be remebered as a hero, and his wrongdoings be forgiven and forgotten...

"GASTON NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

He reloads and empties a second full clip into the genestealer, desperately trying to get the kill.

[Only 4 successes this time. With the extra damage dice total damage is only 8]

As the Genestealer tries to get his grip again, John empties another clip into it, but the carapace of the monster is unbelievably thick and hard as ceramite, the slugs of the autogun that connect ricochetting off harmlessly. The VIP is right in front of it, now devoid of its bodyguard but the stealer... turns around to face John instead. It doesn't take a genius to figure out its plan: kill off all the protectors and then infect the Governor... a price that would be worth sacrificing its minions that right now get killed by the rest of the caravan further at the front.

Out of the corner of their eyes, Cold Eye and John can see Rho getting a grip on the situation and panicking, trying to back away from the flailing talons and claws as fast as possible, her flight instict getting the better of her. Suddenly freezes and you can see a wall of text appear on her artificial eyelense, the same way you sometimes saw, when she was communicating with the Noosphere further uphive. Under her breath she mutters "override in progress... deprioritize self preservation..." before she unexpectedly flings herself right at the monstrous tyranid creature. The pistons in her artificial legs scream from the strain of being used far out of their security range and somewhere a pipe bursts, spraying hot hydraulic fluid around. Her mechanic arms and the medical mechandrite you witnessed before shoot forward, as she barrels into the thing. Her whole body seems to be in overload mode and literally strains its muscles to the point of snapping, but to your utmost surprise she pushes the stealer two feet back and restrains it at least for a crucial moment. With a scream of rage the thing tears into her, with more or less the same result you saw with Gaston, but the Omnissiah grants her the miracle of dying slow enough to buy you some crucial time, before she joins him at his throne.



Trying not to let this go to waste, Loisy and Cold eye fire at the thing too and from their hiding spot nearby, Pearson lines up a speculative shot with his hot-shot pistol, while Buck storms closer to bring his combat shotgun to bear. While both handguns fail to make an impact besides some light cinder marks, the shotgun slugs find their mark, somehow wriggling through where the carapace parts connect and in between Buck and Cold-Eye, the monster seems really hur for the first time. It is far from done though and at the speed it is killing your companions, this will be a very close call indeed...

"AHHHH, COME ON!"

John slams in the very last clip of his autogun and empties the whole thing into the genestealer, hoping against hope to do enough damage to put it down for good.

[4 successes, ED does two extra damage for 9 total]

[I think you are doing this right. After a successful hit, the total damage is Damage minus target's resilience. Then the target can use shock to soak the remaining damage before it starts taking wounds. So since the genestealer has resilience of 7, it will likely take 2 shock damage]

Rising from the brain dead, vision blurred and unsecure, Loisy tries to hold as best he can and shoots at the tenebrous, purple form that he nows for sure is a genestealer... Although to no avail yet... Composing himself and making clear thouths is hard, a million voices scream in his brain and he can't seem to sort them out by any conscious effort. However, from the chaos, one, the traumatising image of his own men shooting their comrades as new genstealer cult minions tears trhough the others, flashing and superseeding par of what he sees, and the traumatised brain of the officer nows for sure. No looking in the eyes. When he is the last one alive, he shoots himslef rather than be turned into the monsters his fragmented, tortured brain clearly remembers now it hates more than anything. At least, more than the value he puts on his own life... He rushes to a grenade that was left by the shredded remains of Gaston, and gets ready to blow himself away when the monster turns his horrid gaze towards him...

Cold Eye finally pulled herself together. The shadow of the Sump Eagle had fallen across her soul for a moment, and it probably cost Gaston his life. She hunkered down and watched the beast. She had seen some terrors in the night before, but this was something else. It was a sight to behold.

For some reason, it was clearly going for the VIP.... the reason they had come here. It was after them for some reason. By the xeno glint in its eye, it was obviously something bad.

She made her decision. Cold Eye let he shotgun sling to the wayside, it would be next to useless against the creature if the Badge's auto-pistol barely scratched it.

She had always grown up relying on cold steel, and now was no different. She pulled her best blade from its sheathe and carefully, casually, quietly circled around the Beast. She kept her eyes on it, even as the Tech-Priest flung herself at it, and was torn asunder.

Cold Eye approaches not the beast, but the VIP. Then, she spies him pick up a grenade and pauses. It appeared he all ready knew what the best course of action was.... to finish himself off.

The tracker stopped stalking the old man. Cold Eye flashed him the sign of the Sump Eagle in honor. She left him to his fate. Now, she had to looked to her own survival and the continuation of her tribe. She glanced around to see if there was a way to trigger a cave-in, avalanche, or similar environmental hazard on the Beast.

Merely a second after Cold Eye saw Loisy and assumed it would kill himself with the grenade, it appeared that the broken man's brancells couldn't hold onto a single plan for very long, and in a panicked, yet practiced move, years of training compensating instinctly for his crippled faculties, Loisy takes the pin off, cooks 2 or so seconds, and throws the grenade towards the blurred purple form before trying to get his laspistol back in hand and pray he had some ammo still left...

Once the grenade detonated, John unsheathed his shock maul and charged into the monster letting loose with the maul in a last ditch attempt to save a man that he neither knew nor liked. It was now or never...

With that, the battle - pitched as it already was - reaches it's climax, as all of you go all in, throw your cards on the table and wait to see who will come out on top.

Cold Eye looks around, searching for some way to use the environment to her advantage, finding it in a heavy sheet of metal a good two and a half meters above ground that seems to balance on a knifes edge, ready to slip and fall. It must weight a good 200 or 300 pounds and the edges are serated. If she manages to run there, jump and give it a hard enough punch, it might loosen itself and come flying into the fray, which... might at least do more damage then her knife, if she is incredibly lucky. As she starts to sprint towards it, her mind races to the thought of the stealer being right on her heels and eviscerating her before she even gets the chance to do her thing. So she can only hope ithe monster will occupy itself with her comrads first.

As John changes to his shockmaul and givven that Bucks combat shotgun has so far be the weapon that has hurt it the most, the stealer turns towards the imposing underhiver with grim determination, fixed on killing his next target. Rho remains, especially the mechanical bits, keep clinging to it though and it needs a crucial moment to shake free.

Buck visibly swallows, his jaw clenched tight, fully aware that this will spell his bloody and spectacular end, should you not bring the Tyranid creature down. He levels his combat shotgun at the things belly and lets loose with the reat of his ammo, until you only hear the "clickclickcklick" of his empty magazin. The slugs hit the beast in the cheast and while you see with a sinking gut feeling that none of the slugs penetrated, they do seem to drive the breath from its torso enough to give the thing serious pause.


What happens next is... kind of a surprise, but a welcome one. John can see Cold-Eye sprinting away, but realizes a moment later that she is not abandoning you, but instead jumping towards a large metal sheet leaning tilted on a scrap heap beside you, grabbing hold at one side and throwing all her weight into it to loosen it. The massive piece of sharp cornered metal comes loose and slides sideways, hitting Cold-Eye in the head, leaving a nasty gash, but then axxelerating. As it flies down, it gets a bit too high though, missing the genestealers head that it pulls down just in time. But while it does not get decapitated by the debris, the sheet half lands on it, further pinning it down - just in time for Loisys grenade to slip in between the stealer and the metal plate. This way John is kind of shielded from the shrapnell, as the oversized Frag grenade goes off, bulging the metal cover like a hedgehog and lifting it up from the stealer.
The monster cries in pain, as the shrappnell lacerates it in a thousand places. Yet still the thing lives and tries to claw its way back into the fight.


It's this moment, that John comes onto it, levelling his shock mal repeatedly at the terrifying maw of the thing, sending shockwaves throughout its neurons until it succumbs into unconciousness.


Out cold on the ground, but still breathing, it is Loisy how finally stand above the stealer, breathing heavily, tears of strain and trauma streaming down his face, as he levels his laspistol towards the back of the head of the monster haunting him since yeards and emptying his magazine, until the it is no more.




From further up the caravan, fighting suddenly seems to turn very onesided as you hear screams and wails of agony from the assailants over there, all of them quickly falling to the caravans other protectors or running away in panick, only to fall victim to the dangerous environment of the underhive. It looks like this fight has turned in your favor - but at what cost...
As John, Cold-Eye and Loisy take a desperate look at what little remains of Rho and Gaston, Loisy finds and takes the soldiers dog tag. A moment later Pearson appears at your side, buck in tow. Both of them are quite shaken too, but have a determined look on their faces. "Sorry about your friends. But stop acting dumb. I think we all know what the old gheezer is worth. I'm not insensible, you did most of the work. But now you have two shares less if it gets to the reward. Buck and I get one of those and we call it quits and nobody else needs to be cut in. Agreed? By the way, old man: better you start playing the dumb servitor again, before anyone else notices..."

It takes John a moment to come to his senses as the adrenalin starts to come down from the combat. He once again sheathes the shock maul and looks to the underhivers.

He looks genuine shocked and saddened to see Gaston and Rho dead and turns his head away quickly from them.

"It's hard to say what the reward will be. Anything can happen once we get up-hive. But I do know one thing. The price of failing to deliver this old man to the uphive is that of our lives. So I'll agree to your terms, but just be mindful, once we all get up there, it's all out of my hands and you'll be taking your chances with the Commissars and Emperor knows who else."

Loisy's sight was still blurred, and all he listened was like filtered and dampened. He had lost most of his recent memories, indeed, he himself was kind of wondering how he get there in the first place... Vague fragments of a big fight and of directing a planet wide defense flashed through his mind incoherently, as he struggled to have this make sense...

He looked at the dog tag, and painfully asked, in a choked voice "What happened? How did we get there? Who are you all?"

Cold Eye splashed her gashed wound with a bit of water, and bandaged herself up as best she could. Her limbs felt like they weighted hundreds of pounds. She listened to the Badge talking with the Smugglers.

She didn't too much like what he had to say, and turned to the beast. She got closer to its corpse, and gave it a sniff. She hadn't smelled a creature like this before. She kicked it to make sure it was dead, and then leaned over and began cutting one of its ferocious talons off with her knife.

As she worked at it her thoughts wondered just a bit. She was starting to wonder if the Uphivers would ever actually pay her the fuel rod she needed. They were not trustworthy folks, no one was. Maybe, it was safer to just to scuttle back into the Sump? Afterall, she knew what to expect down there, things like this beast. Uphive, the dangers would be more.... human.

She finally worked the talon free, and slipped it into her kit. That would be a fine prize, maybe make a good cutter or scraper. Perhaps, she could carve it a bit?

She muttered to herself, "Best to play the hand out." She was ready to see where this went. Her tribe needed that Fuel Rod to keep going.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Loisy's sight was still blurred, and all he listened was like filtered and dampened. He had lost most of his recent memories, indeed, he himself was kind of wondering how he get there in the first place... Vague fragments of a big fight and of directing a planet wide defense flashed through his mind incoherently, as he struggled to have this make sense...

He looked at the dog tag, and painfully asked, in a choked voice "What happened? How did we get there? Who are you all?"

John looked at Loisy and took his helmet off to stare directly at him with his cold grey eyes.

"Sir, we're here to rescue you

. But the extraction is not yet completed, so I'd advise you to remain silent until you're back to where you belong." [/size]

Hey! The Cardinal was not a bad guy! Just..... misunderstood!

With Pearson and Buck in on the fold, you successfully cover up the reason for the attack on the caravan towards the other members of it, who ultimately put it down as just another, more mutated than usual, scavenger group.
The Governor does indeed seem to be almost up to his own self, but heeds Pearsons recommendation to stick to the "dumb servitor" routine, your lot made it far enough uphive for his VIP status to provide some form of protection. Finally you reach one of the giant, sealable hangar doors marking the border between the more or less civilized mid- and upper hive on the one side and the lawless underhive on the other. It is well guarded with several check points and a good platoon of Kalinese soldiers. As the Governor reveals himself, his men are baffled to say the least, before the crowd errupts in cheers realizing that their idol - one of the saviours of the chaos incursion that almost brought the hive to its heels - has indeed succeeded in the imposible and returned from the dead. John, Cold Eye and their two newfound companions get celebrated for their effort, enduring countless handshakes, shoulderclaps and spontanous toasts on their health, while Gastons sacrifice earns a lot more somber notes, mixed with a modicum of pride that one of theirs did the ultimate sacrifice to bring their commander back.

As Cold Eye and Pearson are both kind of weary really going into the upper hive, they part ways with Loisy here, but the VIP more then holds his end of the bargain. Pearson and Buck get their "cut" in the form of some exclusive passport which in a lot of fine upperhive writing blabber basically gives them a free pass to get a crate or two through the checkpoint without it being taxed, or even looked at, every week - quite a boon for an aspiring smuggler who plans to make a living out of it. Satisfied by that he bides his fairwell to Loisy and John, but offers Cold-Eye that he does have a job for her and her tribe, if she wants it...
Cold Eye gets not only one fuel rod, but 2 of them, and a whole crate of lasguns with their powerpacks and a small generator to charge them. Alltogether an incredible game changer for her tribe, as they wouldn't have to worry about ammunition anymore. Of corse far too much to be carried by herself, but instead she is to return downhive with a significant troop of elite soldiers, send by Loisy to pick up the track of the stealer you killed. As you could say you involuntarily picked up the best track in years to root out this sickness.

John returns to his work, being showered in gratifications of various forms too, including him basically being able to choose whichever promotion he wants to, early retirement on a luxurius salary or the like. The Governor is not an ungrateful man...

Loisy return to the highest echelons of the hive on the other hand shake things up pretty heavily. As he soon learns, Gaussenberg did not survive the attack, and his successor von Bülow seemed to have failed to regain the position the old Administrator once had. While he still has the reigns of the Administratum fast in his hands, he lacks the view on the "bigger picture" his predecessor always had, thus leaving the balance of power in disarray between Loisy and the Cardinal.
But first and foremost the returning General sees his fears of Genestealer cults brewing in the rotten intestines of the hive confirmed and starts planning how to root out this evil once and for good and if the Cardinal is a rotten egg to be adressed now or further down the road. Either way what he first needs is trustworthy allies, which he soon finds in the Adeptus Mechanicus he already had a good standing in. Repentent from the sins of their former Fabricator General, they welcome Loisys friendly attention with open arms, providing advisors and consultants and overall assistance whereever they can - and securing very lucrative contracts on the way.

Now and then, over a cold beer, John keeps wondering that it was indeed quite a lucky coincidence that Rho had exactly the parts, implants and tools with her to fix Loisys brain damage. Just as if her supervisors had already expected the General would return with a neural implant made and maintained by the cult mechanicus... An implant that provides him with the wisdom and insight to drive for closer ties to the priesthood of Mars...

This implant was a marvel. Every day, Loisy regained clearer memories of what had happened, clearer view and easier movements. In fact, after a few weeks, it seemed as if he even got better, making calculuses on the fly he could never have resolved before... But his world, on the other hand, was in disarray. Lucky he did in fact implement extremely strict measures to combat the Cults... Now, the war effort against it was in full motion, and he made sure that the wider imperium knew he was back in business and rooting out the plague. Meantime governor Richmond had done no good nowhere, and he'd need to fix all of this, put he had a new mmod for himself: one that leaned towards diplomacy rather than bursts of anger, and he was making sure he'd rally the mecanicum and the administratum as powerful allies behind his banner to make the vison comme further: Imperial Guard world, with the priesthood pushing for it, more and more likely arsenal world...

Loisy was truly saddened to hear that von Gaussenberg had made the ultimate sacrifice in his commintment to the Imperium. A tear formed on the side of his eye, as he offered a prayer and a praise to that brave man... The one that ever was closest to a friend he had had...

What the future reserves to the saved governor, now one knows. He owed gratitude to the underhiver who saved him, but he felt like this was a generosity that could come back to bite him later on. Although, he thought, that old fool of Friedrich and his civilian compassion did get the best of me after all. Loisy would often go and honor the memorial to that old comrade.

And with this, the future was wide open for him and Saint Bonifacius Reach...