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Ok this is my first attempt at writing a fan fiction for 40k and my first fan fiction in many a year. Any input you can give would be greatly appreciated so I can improve my writing. I'll be posting the story in parts as I finish it.

Karl sipped his bitter caff and scanned the bar around him. He was always careful to look out for a familiar face that could undo his anonymity. In the 41st millennium when the human population of the galaxy numbered in countless trillions spread out across millions of worlds it was easy to become an unknown; but when you’re a deserter from the emperor’s armies, it never hurt to be careful.

The air of the dingy bar hung heavy with blue smoke from the nicotine sticks that clung to the lips of over half its patrons. In the lower hives everyone took what comforts they could to soften the dismal nature of a life of recycled air and artificial light.

As Karl mused on adding to the atmosphere with one of his few remaining smoke sticks the vid screen over the bar clicked on adding a red glow to the bar; it was a generic public warning and announcement screen.

The warning signal was a regular part of life in the hives of Mourns world. The planet was a harsh desert world where life could only be comfortably maintained in the great hives that jutted out from its sandy continents. Even close to the sea the salt content of the sand prevented anything from growing and so not a scrap of green could be found outside of controlled botanical domes which provided the planets food.

The warning signs flashed on whenever sandstorms occurred too close to the hives and happened once every couple of months so few people paid any attention to it. The barkeep reached up a big hand and clicked a cut off switch he’d installed into the side of the monitor to stop it lighting up his bar.

“Been a while since we’ve had sandstorms.” He casually remarked to Karl wiping down the counter out of habit.

Karl grunted an affirmative as he clicked his lighter and ignited the end of his smoke. He drew deeply on it before it caught in his throat and he coughed out a cloud of blue smoke into his caff. He looked at it in disgust before grimacing and downing it; he had too few creds to his name to waste good caffeine.

“Why is that monitor out?” came a gruff challenge from the entrance to the bar.

An arbiter stood there in his highly polished armour a shock baton held in his hand as if he was ready for trouble. He held the threatening object out pointed at vid screen and that was instruction enough.

Not wanting any trouble with the law the barkeep reached up and flicked the cut off a second time. The screen lit up again and the generic announcement had been replaced by a news caster from the hive network. He spoke in hurried tones and wore a look of worry as he read out his urgent announcements.

“... happened just moments ago. We have no idea what caused it but some kind of localised energy or warp phenomenon appears to have occurred, destroying the whole hive in seconds. Reports are also coming in that we’ve lost contact with no less than thirteen other hives across this continent alone.” He held a hand to his ear and listened briefly. “ Hold on I’ve just been informed we have a satellite above hive Primarus and we should be receiving the feed any second now.”

The screen clicked over to the satellite feed and suddenly the bar was full of commotion. In the middle of the blasted wreckage of Primarus a huge tear in the fabric of space rippled and pulsated. Huge arcs of energy peeled off it and grounded themselves in the rubble. It was almost beautiful in a maddening way. The satellite scanned in further and from the rift columns of vehicles and troops were emerging. They were sporting armour painted a deep red and flying flags with symbols that seemed to shift and change across the fabrics.

The feed went dead then and the screen darkened for a second before the news caster came back on. He was visibly paled by what he’d seen and seemed dumbstruck for a few moments before someone rushed on screen and handed him a piece of paper. He looked at it as if not seeing it for a few seconds longer then returned his gaze to the audience.

“The hive is now on official alert status. Leave has been cancelled for all members of the PDF and hive guard and you are to report to your barracks. All support personnel are to report to their station houses and all civilian populations should head to shelters or their quarters. I repeat the hive is now on alert status and expecting imminent...”

Anything else the reporter said was lost when the bar and everything else in the hive went black as the main power generators went offline. The commotion in the bar tripled as bodies fought in the darkness to get out of the bar and back to their families or whatever place of safety they could think of. Claxons began to sound and orange emergency lighting came to life along corridors and walkways, Mourns world was under attack.

All was chaos as people ran around trying to find a place to weather the coming assault. Looting had already begun in the residential areas and for the most part the Arbites were too busy directing the populace to take care of it. Several civilian stores had been seized by squads from hive security and already PDF medical teams were rendering assistance to people injured in the panic.

The main hive corridors were lit by the amber glow of emergency lighting as Karl moved through them. He had to cut through one of the more infamously lawless parts of the hive to make the quickest time to his own quarters and he was glad to feel the comfortable weight of his blade at the small of his back.

However the panic that infested the rest of the hive seemed to stop at the entrance to this part of town. The criminal underworld seemed to do a lot better job of keeping order than hive security. The local gangland enforcers were all out on the streets and all of them openly carried weaponry. They took protection money from all the local businesses and true to their word they weren’t going to let any looting happen on their watch.

No one challenged him as he moved through the district but he slowed his pace to a walk when he observed a looter running from a store get gunned down; he didn’t want people to think he was running for the wrong reasons.

Eventually Karl found his way to the side passages that lead to his appartment, the corridor was deserted and for the most part the doors were still sealed shut. He offered thanks to the Emperor that the looting hadn’t begun here yet. He ran his access chit across the scanner but the door wasn’t working, as with many of the power assisted doors across the hive its motors were silent.

Pulling out his old Guard issue combat knife he used the blade to unscrew the covering to the doors access panel. Inside was an emergency pump system designed to generate just enough power to open the door. Karl offered a prayer to the emperor that the device would work and was reminded of the myriad incantations performed by the tech priests to get the various machines of war running.

The mechanism was stiff, having probably never been used before, but after a few minutes Karl had built up a rhythm and the whine of power building up within the device could be heard. Eventually with a satisfying whoosh the door slid across into the wall where it would probably stay till the power returned.

The inside his apartment was dark; the emergency lighting offered a dismal amount of light to see by in the corridors but didn’t run into individual rooms. He groped around in the room knocking over a small table and hearing a glass he’d carelessly left out smash against the plasticrete floor. Mostly by memory he found his way to his bed and from a compartment built into the base he removed a large torch and a long rectangular case which had once born an imperial insignia on it.

By the light of his torch he cracked open the case for the first time in over a decade. Inside in its holster was his guard issue las-pistol and a couple of spare power cells. Aside from that most of the case was dominated by another welcome piece of equipment from his days as a veteran sergeant with the Imperial guard.

Karl unwrapped the length of ceramite and steel from its covering and hefted its weight in his hand, the familiar strain on his muscles was reassuring. He thumbed its activation rune and the machinery started up perfectly and purred like it hadn’t been idle for ten long years. A second rune saw the blades begin to spin and Karl grinned as he gave his chainsword a practice swing.

After filling a sack with anything in his apartment that constituted medical or food supplies he left and began his journey to the heart of the hive. If someone didn’t find out what happened to the power the PDF would have little to no support in repelling any kind of assault and he was certainly not going to sit in a shelter and leave the fighting to someone else. He was no coward, he might be a deserter but he still considered himself a faithful servant of the emperor.

Liking it so far.

Wonderful.

Thanks guys, if anyone has any advice on improving the writing it will be welcome.

Karl shivered with the cold and took a swig from his hip flask to warm his belly. It was a cheap grain alcohol he’d bartered some food for, but it took the edge off the cold and helped him to forget. This far from the sun, deep below ground there was little to provide heat. The under hivers he passed gathered around burning barrels of sump oil warming themselves seemingly unaware of the threat the hive was in. He wondered to himself weather they would notice if the hive was captured; would the dark forces of even bother to torture such wretched specimens of humanity.

The silence of the place struck him more than anything else. He’d passed through the under hive before and normally the air was filled with the sounds of the vast archaic machines that kept the hive running. Machines so ancient they could no longer be manufactured and if it wasn’t for their brilliant design with hundreds of redundant subsystems and the ministrations of a small army of engineers and tech priests they would have given up the ghost long ago.

He couldn’t help but shudder when trying to comprehend of the kind of mind that would actually risk switching something like that off. There was no way of knowing if they’d be able to get it running again and if they didn’t, invasion or not, everyone in this hive had a death sentence already. He took another swig from the flask and began to feel the buzz that told him he’d gone a little too far and dulled his senses. He placed his hand on his chainsword’s hilt in an absent minded gesture.

“That’s a mighty nice weapon you have there.”

The voice stopped him in his tracks, trouble is always a possibility in the under hive. More lawless even than the gang controlled areas of the lower hives; down here there was only one law to live by. Karl cursed himself for allowing himself to be snuck up on as well as the self destructive tendencies that had dulled his wits.

Karl began a flamboyant and practiced movement that would unsheathe his chainsword and spin him around to face his assailant, but instead pain shot through his head as something heavy collided with it. He tumbled along the floor, flashes appearing in his vision, half blinded by the jarring shock of a blow to the skull.

Groping around for his chainsword Karl looked up at the huge brute that had struck him. The giant was a mountain of meat and metal. Heavily augmented half his body was rigged out with crude cybernetics clearly grafted to him by off the books under hive surgeons. His one glowing eye was a cool blue and the passiveness of the metal half of his face was an unnerving contrast to the rictus of anger and hate that was the organic half.

The brute bellowed and charged, scraping his giant claw of a bionic arm along the floor as he went sending showers of sparks skittering around his feet. Karl rolled out the way coming up with his las-pistol in his hand but he was sent flying a second time. This time a blow to his ribs that bruised him and knocked all the wind from his chest.

Karl lay on the floor wheezing and spluttering, trying to draw breath but finding it won’t get any further than his throat. Still reeling from the earlier blow to his head and unable to draw breath he felt the onset of panic begin to take him. The huge brute loomed above his head filling his vision and raising his claw in a menacing manner.

The brute screamed an unholy cry spittle and blood raining on Karl’s face as the light went out in his eye and he crumpled, folding up on himself, a smoking hole in his chest where the las round had excited. Allowing himself a moment to recover Karl lay there next to the crumpled giant. He didn’t even remember pulling the trigger, but he thanked the emperor for muscle memory and the extensive training he’d had in his armies.

He staggered to his feet and grimaced at the pain that came from his bruised ribs. His mouth was filling with blood slowly from a score of small cuts caused by his own teeth during that jarring blow. He spat it out onto the hulk before taking another swig of the alcohol relishing the focus the sudden sting it wrought within his mouth while it dulled the pain in his side.

He gathered his unharmed chainsword up from where it lay beside some barrels and set off further into the depths of the hive. Looking back over his shoulders he saw the under hivers, previously halted by his presence, fall on the body and begin dividing the spoils. Cybernetics where ripped away by the more savvy, to be sold on the black market, while the more base and shameless squabbled over his flesh itself to stave off the constant ache of hunger.