well iv'e been mulling this over for a long time now of possibly trying to make a
40k short story for the Grey Knights (my 3rd edition troops are still going on strong and shiny!) I haven't really got into it yet, its just sitting in its file around 2 and a bit pages long looking for an excuse to be written so I thought why not post it on the forums and see what I get for replies so far, as it is its just the fluff before any of the actual characters appear so the calm before the warpstorm if you will
so ye here goes.
(oh and i will update the post when i write a reasonable amount more so ye here we go
)
Purge the Heretic
Accessing Inquisitorial data banks…
Rosette detected… Clearance level Omega
Logging in… Welcome Burlen
Accessing star maps… Please enter co-ordinates
199.27.09
Vervidon XIII Designation: Outpost
Strategic value: Nil
Population: Unknown
Planetary records: Data corrupted
Accessing records… Password required
*********
Mikeal was alone in the cantina, working his way slowly through a rough bottle of Asmaec, Laughing to himself over the thought that maybe if it was as cold in the cantina as it was outside it would be enough to freeze your ass to the cantina chairs even with the furnace on full.
“Mikael!” shouted Jacob.
“Did you seal the exhaust vents?”
“No why the frak would I, you think I want to die to promethium fumes and be blown out into the Eye?” Thinking to himself it would be a sight to see, might even give off enough heat to thaw out the jumper engines in the cargo lifter and a good excuse to get off world.
“Then something is blocking them then, I had to shut down the reactor to stop it from choking us all to death” with a note of irritation in his voice
“Right I’ll get the suit and the saw and you can hit the lights on the exterior dome, I aint no servitor despite my bionics, I can’t see in the dark like you and your tekkie friends think!”
Jacob was obviously thrown off guard by this as he and his co-workers often jested about Mikael “Old Rusty” they named him, for the red hair and decaying bionics. Seeing the realisation on Jacobs face forced a quickly suppressed smile on his own.
“Got it ya damn rust bucket”
“You say that again and I’ll show you how far up your ass I can stick Bertha”
“Oh you’re still seeing that piece of junk then, well I guess they do say birds of a feather rust together”
Mikael and Bertha had both been here a long time, Bertha was an old industrial ice saw that he had found in the decaying sub-levels in what had looked once like a Tech priests shrine preserved in a now dead stasis shield. All manner of tools and trinkets could be found in the sub levels even a few personnel fire arms, most likely from the days the outpost was usefull, you just needed to know where to look. The recruits had labelled it the Kingdom of Rust as the first few levels were filled with out of use servitors, heavy lifters and servo-suits, and of course Mikael was their King with a legion of rusting honour guards.
During the trek from the lockers to the airlocks Mikael began to wonder, what manner of idiot would place the lockers and the air lock on the exact opposite side of the base, a good mile apart from each other. As he turned the corner to the airlock he noticed a clunking sound, different then the usual ones of pipes rattling and whatever was being blown around in the air vents, it was more of a wet thud like someone pounding a lump of meat with a hammer. he guessed another servitor had gone and crashed into a wall again, whoever the last batch of servitors were made from must not of been that bright to begin with, amused with his observation he had reached the door and was double checking his seals on the old void suit.
He pressed the intercom stud on the airlock wall and took a pause to listen for the sound again. It had stopped, lucky that’s one more problem I don’t have to take care of he muttered.
“Oi Mat open airlock 7 I’m going out”
-Crackle-
“Mattie?”
“Yeah, yeah opening the locks got it”
“Bah the least you could do is pretend that you actually work here”
“Screw you!”
“No thanks I’m taken”
“Oh you got a hot date with Bertha then?”
“Hot hah more like ass numbingly cold”
“sounds like a Valhalen would be more to your taste then”
“Oh yes just what I need a woman who’s cold to the touch and sounds like buzz saw”
“Right doors open”
“Got it”
As Mikael took his first steps to the tool shed he laughed, Matt was probably the only man on this rock of a planet who could put up a decent conversation, and the only one worth talking to too. Mattie and Mikael were Guard veterans and both had retired early due to wounds. Mikael had lost an arm a leg and half his face on three different planets, whilst Mattie had both his legs severed by a Gene Stealer exploring a space hulk named ‘the lucky seven’. Luckily he was important enough to receive immediate medical aid, but not important enough to receive the bionics to go with it, so he rode around on a decrepit pair of treads which he had an engineer salvage off an old servitor, no matter what he did to preserve them they just degraded faster and faster as if telling him he’s supposed to remain crippled
As he fumbled for the keypad searching roughly where he had last remembered it being he noticed a audible rumbling sound almost like the sound of rusty gears grinding together. As like every thing kept outside the keypad was covered in a layer of ice and was nigh impossible to find among the white background and the endless white plains all around. At last he found the pad sweeping away the ice and snow that was covering it and typed in the combination, striding into the shed and slamming the door behind him. Even through the heated void-suit he could feel the cold biting at his finger tips, well the real ones in any case. As he walked down the Rust caked lifters and servitors which had all been neatly lined up, he noticed one of the heavy lifters had toppled over crushing beneath it two servitors and a large puddle of what was most likely engine oil. He reached the cabinet where all sorts of tools and other unknown objects hung, he clumsily keyed into the cabinet’s own password pad and reached in to take Bertha off her make shift mounting. The lights began to dimly flicker on one at a time until the room was a wash with a sooty orange glow
“Motion sensors my ass” he muttered
-crackle- as the sheds poorly maintained Vox system burst into life
“Mikael!” shouted Mattie
“What is it now I’m busy”
“Can ya fix the damn vents soon? I’m freezing what’s left of my ass off”
“Hmm I don’t think that they can replace that, can they ?”
“Damn right and I don’t intend to lose it either”
They both laughed.
“Right. Now get your ass out there and fix the vent we only have so much reserve power, I’ve already had to start shutting down sections of the outpost”
“Which parts?”
“So far I’ve shut down the heating, lighting and the power supply to the teks rooms, said it was to reserve power until you clear the ice off the vents”
“Haha frakers deserve it”
“Right now get moving I’m taking the sheds coms offline now, external lights are on and so is the com station on the roof top”
“Got it”
As he made his return approach to the sheds door he took another glance at the fallen heavy lifter, he then realized with some disdain it had crushed a tekkie, and that the pool of what he had assumed to be oil was actually his blood, bah another mountain of paper work to deal with he thought, he laid Bertha down to one side and moved toward the shattered limbs of the Lifter and the corpse.
Rolling the lifter to one side with a lot of effort and sliding the tekkie to the other side with his foot, he turned the body over so he lay face up in his own smear of blood which was beginning to coagulate quickly in the cold, which meant he had only died recently, his body was badly frost bitten meaning he had been out for a long time without even a basic void suit, looking at the mans face he realised that he wasn’t from the outpost he knew all 17 of the workers by face and name and new nothing about any new blood or that any ship had even been in orbit in the past 3 months.
-Crackle-
“Mat is that you?”
“Oh it would appear I’ve lost a lamb, but he has brought you to the slaughterer” a rather dark, distorted and tinny voice spat over the Vox network, even with the vox caster as it was this voice was too heavily distorted almost like playing a recording of static through the already poor system they had.
“Who the Hell is this?”
Mikael turned round just in time to see his demise, as Bertha whipped through the air finding its new home in his Chest, before being twisted and yanked out again leaving a hole the size of mans forearm
“Fear not little one for your death is not in vain I have much use for your parts”
As Mikael stared at the roof above he saw six bright lights each a different colour, rotating and zooming in and out as if trying its best to decide what to do with him.
(any comments and ideas are welcome aside from really stupid ones about angry marines and other spam like that)
This is version 2.0
I am the hammer
Currently collecting and painting Eldar from W40k. 
