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Made in gb
Been Around the Block





I'm trying to write a short bit of fluff for each of my armies as a bit of creative writing practice. I've done some for my Imperial Guard and Beastmen already, and here's some for my Fire Hawks Space Marines. I'll be adding to it in parts.
   
Made in gb
Been Around the Block





Shrieking and whooping, the two Gigglers came tumbling down the gangway. The fingers of their many arms dragged across the steel walls, leaving burnt and smouldering trails. Their pink bodies pulsed and shifted with internal energy. Brother Pyrrhus stepped from behind the bulkhead and fired a burst of shells from the bolter at his hip.
The first shell embedded itself in one of the Giggler’s body and detonated a microsecond later. The daemon’s body came apart in a whirl of sparkling iridescent colours that lit up the gangway like fireworks as it lost its grip on reality. Laughing maniacally, the second threw its arms forward and launched a torrent of multi-coloured fire at Pyrrhus. The Astartes dropped his bolter and turned to let the brunt of the attack wash over his shoulder guard as he drew his combat blade. The thing leapt at him as he turned back, but a powerful upward stroke clove it in two. A scream of outrage came in stereo from both halves as they fell to the ground.
His armour still smouldering, Pyrrhus retrieved his bolter and racked the slide. At his feet, the two halves of the daemon were darkening, their forms shifting and reshaping. Muttering in their own idiot language, the two blue Grumblers began to draw themselves to their feet. Pyrrhus sighted down his bolter and blew them into burning chunks with single kill-shots.
Hearing more daemonic giggling and screaming from further ahead, Pyrrhus picked up the detonator from where he had been lying in wait, and activated his vox.
“Courbray from Pyrrhus. Corridor Sigma One Seven, charges set.”
“Received Pyrrhus. Detonate and withdraw. “
“Acknowledged.”
The first Giggler entered the gangway and cackled as it saw Pyrrhus. It was ten metres away when the Space Marine thumbed the detonation rune and collapsed the gangway’s ceiling on its head. When the reverberations of the explosion had died down, Pyrrhus could hear insane squeals of rage on the other side of the tangle of wreckage from the surviving Gigglers.
“This is Pyrrhus. Sigma One Seven denied to the enemy. Withdrawing.”
Leaving the lunatic sounds of gibbering behind him, Pyrrhus turned and ran back the way he came: deeper into the Raptorous Rex and back to the Fire Hawks’ besieged command post.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/02/17 11:53:35


 
   
Made in gb
Been Around the Block





It was on their eighth day in the warp that the daemons came. The Raptorous Rex had been buffeted by storms from the moment it entered the Immaterium, and the ship’s Navigators had been unable to find a break in the swirling tempests to escape. For all that time everyone on board had bad dreams and waking nightmares; the sensation of circling sharks, of half-glimpsed lupine forms in the forest. The Geller fields had taken the hammering of the waves of unreality breaking on them as long as they could, until at last, on the eighth day, the inevitable happened and they failed. The ship’s Astropathic choir wailed in terror as they sensed the malevolent intelligences that had been patiently watching them for days dive towards the ship with hungry intent. As one the chapter’s Librarians began chanting the Invocation of Deliverance, and drew their Force weapons. To everyone else on board, human and Astartes, the sudden and horrific feeling of exposure to the warp was warning enough. Weapons were drawn, and the barricades manned.

First to come were vicious, red skinned fiends, wielding lengthy swords that wept blood constantly and sliced through power armour with ease. They leapt from holes torn in reality and swiftly overran the outer docking bays. Massed bolter fire held them at bay for a while, but they came with whipcord speed and unimaginable fury. Living constructs of brass and hate stampeded through their midst, crushing barricades and trampling Space Marines underfoot. Snarling daemon-hounds leapt with terrifying swiftness and clamped their needle sharp jaws around necks. The Fire Hawks were slowly driven from the outer compartments. Strategically placed explosives sealed off overrun areas. The primary docking chamber itself was abandoned with the arrival of a colossal winged daemon that stepped out of the encroaching warp and slew Captain Ravousier, beheading him with a single sweep of its infernal axe. The last sight the withdrawing Astartes had was of the warp-creature squeezing the captain’s corpse above its head, and drinking deep of his spilling blood. With disgust, Captain Courbray ordered the detonation of the warheads that had been placed beforehand in the docking bay. The Fire Hawks retreated to their secondary positions.

The next day brought foul, diseased creatures, whose coming was heralded by plagues of flies that quickly clogged up the respirators of the Space Marines. Those that removed their helms to see or breathe more easily quickly came up in a mass of boils and sores that even their advanced Astartes physiology struggled to fight off. Following the flies came plodding bloated things of necrotic green flesh, dragging rusting swords in the filth they left behind them. Bolter fire blew off massive chunks of rancid flesh, but the plague-daemons seemed not to notice, maintaining their dolorous pace as they muttered a repetitive chant that’s very sound induced nausea. Those that made it to the Astartes positions swung their decaying swords with surprising speed and hacked into power armour that rusted and flaked at their touch. Those Space Marines that received so much as a scratch from one of the daemon-weapons collapsed as their flesh erupted in cankers and blood wept from their eyes. The Fire Hawks fought with grim determination, reluctantly giving ground to remain beyond the reach of the advancing creatures. After the last of the plague-daemons had been felled, specialist flame-teams spent hours scouring the crawl-ways and ventilation shafts, immolating the tiny giggling pus-daemons that had followed behind their larger cousins. The Apocatherium deemed the forward armouries too virulent to remain there; they were quarantined and sealed with blessings of salvation, and what remained of 6th company were forced back to deeper defences.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/03/24 19:17:41


 
   
Made in gb
Been Around the Block





The majority of the ship's human contingent were compromised on the third day after the fields fell. A keening, mellifluous song came drifting from the darkness of the enemy-held regions of the ship. Lasguns and autorifles clattered to the deck as most of the shipsmen and deck-crew clambered over the barricades and walked towards the source of the atonal melody. They ignored the barked commands of the accompanying Astartes, and the pleading of the few crew-members who resisted as they wandered into the darkness of the gangways. A minute after the last one had disappeared from sight, the singing ended, and for a few seconds there was silence. But then suddenly screams of terror and agony pierced out of the darkness, accompanied by inhuman laughter and shrieks of delight. The remaining crew-men recoiled in shock, but the Astartes stood firm, and readied their weapons.
The things came inhumanly fast. Most of the humans froze at the sight of them - lithe, seductive shapes that provoked conflicting sensations of desire and disgust. They leaped and dodged with preternatural speed, avoiding most of the single volley of bolter fire that the Space Marines managed before they were on them. The she-daemons laughed as they tore apart the defenders with grotesque claws and talons. The human defenders offered no resistance; many died smiling, enraptured by the beguiling aura of their killers. The Astartes fought viciously with blade and pistol, but even the super-human speed and reflexes of the Space Marines seemed slow and leaden compared to the impossibly fast warp-things. Less than a minute after the start of the attack, the Grand Corridor was overrun. Chaplain Altaim of the 8th Company was the last to fall. His final vox transmission was an order to have the great doors that led to the Sanctorum at the heart of the ship sealed. As the massive door swung shut, the last thing the defenders inside saw of Altaim was him fire his jump pack and soar deeper down the Grand Corridor towards a great bull-headed beast, swinging his Crozius Arcanum back to strike. The great doors closed with a heavy thump, but the shrieks and squeals of delight from the she-daemons as they made sport of the wounded and dying could be heard for hours later. Trapped in the Sanctorum at the heart of the fortress-monastery, the few remaining Astartes and helots of the Fire Hawks, treated their wounds, reloaded their weapons, and prepared for their final stand.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/10/24 12:36:01


 
   
Made in gb
Been Around the Block





Brother Pyrrhus arrived in the Sanctorum, and Techmarine Morrier began sealing the door behind him. The command post was situated in the centre, at the base of the massive statue of the Holy Emperor that dominated the enormous chamber. The vaulted ceiling high above the chamber echoed with the intermittent gunfire from the defenders. Of the three entrances to the Sanctorum, two had now been sealed, including the huge doors that led to the abandoned Grand Corridor, and the maintenance entrance that Pyrrhus had taken. The third was a wide passageway to the habitation modules for the ship's Ecclesiarchy contingent, and its sealing mechanism had failed when the defenders had tried to close it. Two brother-marines stood guard as a human work-crew tried frantically to block it the entrance, but their work was being hampered. Every few seconds, one of the priests who had previously thought themselves safely secured in their quarters would come screaming down the passageway, their robes alight with blue and pink fire. They would quickly be put down by a bolter round, but the effect was quickly becoming clear; ammunition was being depleted, and the nerves of the handful of human survivors were being stretched to breaking point by the manic screaming.
Against this nerve-shredding background of noise, Pyrrhus also became aware of a dull and repetitive thumping sound as he entered the command module. Captain Courbray, surrounded by the remaining Fire Hawk commanders, looked up as he approached.
"Brother Pyrrhus", he said.
"Captain", Pyrrhus replied. Captain Elam Courbray had abandoned his helm on the first day after a daemon's sword swipe had split the face plate. His eyes were still alert despite the three days of near-constant combat. He nodded towards the great doors at the far end of the Sanctorum. Pyrrhus realised this was the source of the regular thumping sound.
"There is something large, trying to get in. Something we haven't seen yet", said Courbray.
"How long until the Astropathic choir is prepared?" asked Sergeant Raq.
Of all the remaining commanders, Epistolary Hellier looked the most worn. The Librarium had been using their powers to try and hold back the encroachment of the warp as best they could, and as the sole remaining Librarian, the strain on Hellier was almost too much to bear.
"The final benedictions of transmission are being given now", he said wearily. "Once they are given, we can attempt to make contact and-"
His words were cut off by a deafening crack from the end of the Sanctorum. A massive fracture jagged its way across the doors there. The pace of the hammering increased, stone chips crumbling from the doors. Pyrrhus looked across the Sanctorum floor, to where Chapter Master Laezaerek manned the forward fortifications with the remaining Terminators of the 1st Company. The massive armoured forms moved into defensive posture, and aimed their weaponry at the door.
Courbray drew his sword and activated its power field.
"We're out of time", he said.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2012/07/09 15:18:04


 
   
 
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