Xenohunter Acolyte with Alacrity
England
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IMPORTANT! Author's notes
Alright, so I haven't uploaded anything in a long, long while, not that anyone's been complaining, but still, an explanation never hurts.
Basically, a combination of University work, a desire to work on other things, and sheer resentment of what I've been working on have meant that motivating myself to work on Benjamin Mordecai's story has just been impossible.
I basically just became dissatisfied with how things were panning out, and wasn't doing anything about it. When I came back to it a few days ago to try and finish the story arc, I found that it just wasn't working for me. So instead, I've decided to rework it. New characters, new plot, new Mordecai.
The reason for this overhaul is that I just can't work with those characters anymore, and trying to gives me a headache.
There were a few things that the last incarnation was just severely lacking in, such as interesting characters, more diverse scenarios, etc. These are issues I'm going to tackle head-on this time around. I will also be working on The Litany of Arvanto Argatus in the near future, and I have a draft of the next chapter already.
I've also started working on my own fantasy novel while at Uni, and that now takes up a lot of my spare time in writing, so my posting here might be a bit sporadic.
But hey, if people still like what I'm writing, I might get back into the swing of things and begin uploading regularly again.
Prologue - The Metal Man
The sun blazed high over the frigid northern forests of Brackl, yet even in it's unobscured, glaring light, Sergeant Rickard Kiasan of the 3rd Jurdani Strappers felt like he was freezing.
He rubbed the frost from his eyelids before opening them, blinking out the last vestiges of sleep before rolling over onto his side.
A brief yelp escaped his mouth before he caught the trunk of the tree he'd been sleeping in, barely managing to stop himself from falling. Everything was iced over, his standard issue boots, standard issue fatigues and helmet, his standard issue Lasgun, even his standard bloody issue beard he'd acquired since forgetting his razor at Bastion Camp.
Rickard was a fairly young man, tall and well-built with a lean face and short cut hazel hair, he seemed like the kind of Guardsman who had someone waiting for him back home.
The truth was another matter.
Quickly unreeling a length of rope from his belt, Rickard looped it over the thick branch he'd just spent one hell of a night on, and began his steep descent to the forest floor.
"Morning lads." He called cheerily on his way down.
A Chorus of groans answered him, and he grinned to himself.
"Feth you, Sarge!" Anders said.
Rickard chuckled, slowing his descent as he came to the lower boughs of the colossal tree.
Munikh Zanil, the squad's designated watchman, was already packed and ready for the day's work.
The balding man looked up at Rickard, nodding shortly, "For some reason, only my standard issue stuff is frozen."
"You too, huh?" The sergeant grinned, "Take point and secure the ground, I'll cover."
It didn't need saying. It never did with Munikh.
The dark-skinned man had always been sharper than any other soldier Rickard had met, and seemed to know what a commanding officer was going to say before they said it.
The only thing that kept Munikh from a command position was that he was good at following orders, not giving them.
Rickard looked out through the forest as the sunlight came filtering through the frozen canopy, and saw at least two dozen more figures in combat fatigues and camo cloaks descending from above.
These were the Strappers, one of Jurdani's finest regiments, known as "tree sleepers" among the other Regiments.
"Let's be about it, lads!" Rickard called as Munikh slid down past him, "Third and Sixth squad are already on the ground and blazing trails!"
He looked up in time to see his own sleeping bag hurtling towards him. Rickard caught it before it had a chance to drape over his face.
"Alright, Anders, you're digging in the latrine before we head off, Boswell left a mighty big present in there for you."
A hefty chuckle sounded from above, and a minute later Boswell's large frame descended through the canopy.
"Macin's stew did it for me." He murmured on his way down.
"Area secure." Munikh called from below, his green uniform already plastered with snow.
Once they were all down, Munikh set off through the waist-high frozen scrub, leading them to a small clearing where four other squads were gathered, most of them bleary-eyed, raw-faced and groggy.
"G'day Kiasan," sergeant Fores hailed Rickard with a wave, "I'd offer you a smoke, but they're frozen in the packet. Damn standard issue stuff."
"Only the Munitorium's finest." Rickard laughed, slapping Fores on the shoulder as the two stepped forward to convene with the other Sergeants, leaving their squads at ease.
"Captain Bennet's not happy," Fores said gravely, "Command drafted in the 12th Tygers today, some bastard named Osbourne."
"The 12th are city rats," Sergeant Kelv broke in, "We can't teach them to stealth in a day, we'll never spook the Orks out of the woods at this rate!"
An uneasy glance ran between them; none of them had seen their quarry since they'd deployed from Bastion Camp, back in the planet's capital of Crossroads.
"Brackl is sparsely-populated," Sergeant Brenner mused, "This game of hide and seek could last months, or longer, and I'm not taking some feth-arsed city goons on my patrol."
"Let's murder our darlings as they come," Rickard said, "One of my lads noticed a massive heat spike a couple of miles from here, I want to detour to check it out."
"No, Rickard," Fores growled, "We can't deviate from our routes. Half the things in this forest want to kill us, the other half are Orks who want to kill us."
Kiasan bit his lip, Fores had a habit of using his first name to belittle him. The few times he'd actually lashed out at the older man, it had ended badly.
"Have you actually seen an Ork since we got here?" Rickard replied smoothly, "This could be it, a definite location, starting point."
"No, Rickard." Fores repeated.
"Alrighty," Brenner cut in before Rickard could reply, "Now that that's over with, courses have been plotted for today, courtesy of Captain Bennet and his cushy, warm command throne."
"What's the betting he has a lass on each knee?" Kelv snickered.
"Unlikely," Brenner chuckled, "He prefers playing with Administrator Vel's Null Rod, if you know what I mean..."
"To each their own," Fores replied smartly, "sync up your dataslates, we'll meet at the new coordinates come sundown," He cast a knowing look at Rickard.
Rickard gave a nonchalant shrug, his boots crunching the frozen grass as he stepped back over to his squad.
"Anders, sync this to your dataslate, will you?" He murmured quietly, "Me and mister Munikh are going on a little detour."
***
"Deflect!" The Curator's voice rang out loudly over the training hall.
In unison, twenty tall, muscular women lifted the leather bucklers strapped to their right arms as if to block an incoming blow, while the Curator watched, sat on high in his hovering throne, a woman draped in a see-through robe sat chained at his feet, hand-feeding grapes into his fat, complacent mouth.
Presumably, she was some poor soul who had failed the Curator in some way, her former athleticism and muscularity faded over time into a more curvaceous shape.
Autumn Khys found it disgusting that the girl's glory had been stolen from her, but then, the Curator was in charge, his word was law.
"And slice!" the Curator shouted, and as one, the women lifted their daggers in a swift cutting motion.
"Very good," the Curator slapped his meaty hands together, "Dismissed."
One by one, the women filed out into the large, sprawling corridors of the Collection.
It was a place without windows, and none of the women there had ever been allowed outside. Autumn had once heard a couple of the Guards talking about men, men other than the Curator, though if they existed, Autumn had never seen them.
Except for one...
The Guards were peculiar. Where the trainees all had fair skin and black hair, the Guards could be shorter, taller, broader, slimmer, have different hair or faces, and different voices.
Autumn broke off from the other women as they made their way towards the canteen, taking a side passage down deeper into the Collection.
Each and every hall and passage in the Collection was lined with glass cabinets, display cases, and cells containing various items and creatures. The Curator was a man who took pride in his valuables, and did his utmost to keep them from going anywhere. He also saw to the Trainees. The same twenty women, who had lived there as long as Autumn could remember.
She stopped in one particular hallway. She knew this one well, halfway down it was a large glass-fronted cell, and opposite the cell was a glass cabinet containing a beautiful, curved sword.
Autumn smiled as she looked upon the sword, it was almost serene, like a sliver of sunlight had been caught and forged into a slender masterpiece.
"Back again, Autumn?" a muted voice said from behind her.
She turned with a smile, facing the figure who stood in the glass cell opposite.
He was clad in a hooded, black trenchcoat, with only a thin beam of red light escaping from beneath the hood.
He was tall and lean, and when he lifted his left hand to place it against the glass, it was metal.
Autumn put her hand on the glass, mirroring his.
"Hello, metal man." She said softly.
"That is not my name, Autumn, you know this."
"Of course," She answered with a chuckle, "I'm sorry, Benjamin."
***
The sun beat down strong on the desert world of Orestes.
Vehicles the size of Hab blocks shifted the earth as crewmen and Servitors excavated further into the crust of the world.
Foreman Segon mopped the sweat from his brow, pressing his hands to the small of his back as he stretched.
Damn Magos Vanos! It was his talk of a 'theoretical discovery' out in the desert that had Segon working his backside off.
He straightened as a commotion rose up at the other end of the digsite. He hurried over, bringing an arm up in front of his eyes to keep the wind from whipping sand into his face.
When he got near enough, he saw that one of the Servitors was blindly hacking away at something with it's shovel attachment.
The something it was attacking definitely wasn't sand.
"Turn that Emperor-be-damned thing off!" Segon shouted, darting past the Servitor as two of the workers rushed forward to pull it away.
He crouched by the excavated item, and his eyes lit up with wonder.
"Uhm, sir?" one of the workers tapped him on the shoulder, murmuring, "What is it?"
Drenched in sand, 'It' was a metal construct, long past working by the looks of it. It seemed to be shaped vaguely like a human skeleton, though the markings on it's limbs were completely alien to Segon. In it's hands it clutched a shield, and a vaguely axe-like weapon.
"Contact Magos Vanos," Segon murmured shakily, "Tell him, we've found his metal man."
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