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Post by Lex on Feb 28, 2007 14:00:30 GMT -5
I've reposted it as I entered it in my other forum competition. heres t'rest;
The list shortened to two entries, I routed both to my ship board computer and then made the decision I would later come to regret. I deleted both files. My body ached from staying so low, and I stood up. I froze as the arbite stepped around the wall, an iho stick lit between his teeth. He spotted me and spat out the stick, pulling his visor down over his eyes. He shouted out in the native language, a language I had thought unnecessary to learn. I am going to blame fate for putting that arbite there, though I know believe that other forces were at work. The arbite drew an auto pistol; I wasn't surprised; crouching beside a centre for the galaxies police force with a customized vox hacker seemed to tick all the boxes for trouble. He voxed something and another arbite appeared behind me, both drew pistols and targeted my heart. I shuffled uncomfortably, one of my fingers straying towards the power wire on my customized vox. They wouldn’t recognize my face, though the device was revealing. “By order of the arbites, we are placing you under arrest for suspicious activity.” If they got the vox they'd see the login and transmit it, then I was doomed. I nodded, and smashed the vox on the floor. A dart hit the back of my skull and I dropped as anesthetics pumped into my blood. *
“Master returned not, hunt hunt you. Shilds first.” The Hrud turned to leave, and found himself staring down an auto pistol. Staring down the barrel of a gun was all too common for the Hrud. He preferred to be on the good side of that barrel, the side that’s tracking a target before bringing it down with a well aimed shot. But he couldn’t help this current situation, the idea that he could escape floated through his head, but a strong breeze of Hrud common sense told him it was pointless to try. He licked his lips in a way that suggested he was preparing his own funeral speech; he cocked his head to one side so that he could see his assailant. He ignored the foul appearance of his attacked. But it was difficult to ignore the urine stained rags, the smears of faeces, the flies that nested just beneath the skin, or it would have been if he hadn’t been wearing the same. “Time to die Hrud” Harsh words, containing more truth than was comfortable for the xeno. A drop of bile fell from his face, hissing as it reacted violently with the floor. The Hrud gave a small shriek of agitation, realising that it was probably nothing compared to the hell the man’s diseases could wreak upon his body, if he were human. He opened his mouth, which was dry from the heat that radiated from the altar to his right, and stinking of the fresh sacrifice still lay upon it, and sucked in a rasp of stale air. He scanned the room quickly, noting all the different pipes that could be used as a weapon; should circumstances change. The room was a riot of corroded colour; each stretch of metal seeming to sport a new shade of orange, yellow or brown. Fungus that had strayed to far from its usual moist environment lay in a dead cloak across the floor. The Hrud felt a gun butt impact with his head and collapsed, a bone cracking. “Hrud, perhaps you do not understand how bad your situation is” The Hrud had been in situation like this before, many times. But on those occasions his fate had not mattered; now his master was trapped, and he had to get to him. The life o the only man he had ever liked, wrested on his shaking shoulders, it was a heavy weight. It was a bitter feeling of irritation that now spread through the Hrud. Frustration ran through his body; a sense of failure to his master, even though this situation had been vital. The heretic would die. He brought up a scraggy hand to prevent the pistol impacting with his head again. He saw the look of horror in the plague marine’s eyes, though it fluttered for but a second and was quickly hidden. “You still think you can escape don’t you? Idiotic fool, if you are a fair representative of your kind, then why do you find it such a war to kill a single lowly astropath?” Morl had learned the human dialect from his master, and could understand it well enough. But he struggled to speak it; his body was only capable of so much. He had come to this temple to kill a heretic; it would have been his master’s task if he were still free from the troubles of hiding. Morl had made it so far, even found the patriarch of the cult. He was surprised when, with a thin gurgle, the priest fell. The man began to twist, his skin boiling. Fat began to bubble and flow out through gaping orifices that spread as the skin dissolved and orifices formed. Muscle liquidised and exploded from the priest’s rag armour. Morl took a startled step back; he had expected to fight, not to just watch the heretic die, without cause! He backed away, sensing that something was wrong, searching for a reassuring wall to scurry up. But the holy walls of this chapel hurt his hands, burning with a zeal that humans seemed not to notice. He could feel the faith, and beneath it the corruption of chaos. He looked around for an escape, seeing nothing but rusted torch brackets and the bloodied altar. The body on the floor stopped contorting, stopped its inhuman death throes, and stood up creakily. Eyeless sockets dribbling puss, a gaping mouth covered by a thin layer of loose skin. It turned to face Morl, its gore soaked cloak shifting as movement beneath it began to pres against the fabric. With a series of cracks the bones in the arms and chest had crumbled, and flew out as dust from the wide filthy mouth. Faces, limbs, hands, all pushing through the skin from within, eventually bursting out. The Hrud tore a bracket from the wall and smashed it into the torso of the mutating corpse. It smashed straight through the soft bones, and as soon as Morl withdrew it began to form yet more foul limbs. It staggered forwards, its many limbs reaching forwards, its many faces emitting cries of pain and anguish. More holes formed on the things surface as the power pumped taint through the horror. Each hole became filled with many more deadly attacking digits and snarling faces. The Hrud threw his useless weapon wildly, skimming it off a boiler and showering the thing in a hail of sparks. It roared in pain, the sparks burning deep into the flesh, the holes created cauterised instantly. Morl saw this and tore a large stone block from the wall, with more strength than his size accounted for, and smashed it into the malignity, buying himself much needed time. Gas flooded out of the mutant’s foul mouth and began to smother the room in toxic, but –the Hrud realised- flammable fumes. The Hrud rushed past the monster; rushing up the stairs he grabbed a filth covered auto pistol from a dead follower of Nurgle. He fired the shot into the room, watching as it glanced of the piping, setting the room a blaze. The Hrud scampered up the stairs, ignoring the flames that bit at his heels. He threw himself from the door at the end. He landed hard on the earthy ground. An audible click came from above him. “Greetings Hrud. Sin-swine has come to help.” The demon host smiled, but it was forced. “We must go.” *
I was unconscious for a while, and later on I managed to piece together exactly what my retinue did while I was out. My heretical friend Nullius Bracken had gone with the demon host to Centurion 4, which was the home of the inquisitor who had declared me hereticus and xenus, a nice finish to the trend started by Verdact. Some aspects of my honor code would not hold back, the man was dead within minutes of my servants landing. His passing would not be mourned, thought would look suspicious. I had staged a death a few years back… and this was the first thing that might suggest I was still alive. Morl had left the ship against my orders, and taken a small custom crafted ship that he could pilot to the icy northern pole. I gathered from gently peering into his mind that he discovered a convent of astropaths who worshipped chaos, and killed them all. The next time I saw him his cloak was significantly ruddier, so I only imagine what he did. The thing that really interested me was how he had found them. I am not familiar with the biological composition of Hrud, and I knew that Morl was an outcast from his kind and hence no xeno to base theories upon. But there was something about blood that had motivated him to learn the gothic word for it, so I could understand easily what he wanted. Every time he drank, I assume that is how he consumed it, he was slightly different. His agility had sprung up after a fight with some primate on catachans, and other attributes often cropped up after fights which seemed a little too coincidental. In my sleep a thought passed through my head, sent from the Hrud. ‘Master returned not, hunt hunt you. Shilds first.” Shilds… that was his word for police. I placed the method of transmission down to the astropath blood, and thanked the Emperor that I wasn’t alone. I was woken an hour later.
Part four
I listened for a moment to the voices around me, blurred and tuneless, droning on and on...and on. One tuned in. “He’s awake, and he’s trying to hide it.” I was impressed; there are times when I congratulate the efforts of my fellow ordo workers, despite their hostility. I tried to remember this one, if he was old enough to be around since my time as a puritan. I eased my eyes open. No, he was young, how embarrassing, an interrogator too. The room was a cloy of decaying plascreete, damp patches mottling its surface at irregular intervals. More than once I spotted dried blood on those walls. The man before me clamped a hand around my throat and twisted my skull to face him. He smiled, a bald headed young man of around thirty, and with a gentle chuckle picked up a scalpel from the bedside, and held it above my eye for a moment. His eyes went frantic for a second, and he put impossible amounts of weight behind the blade. He speared the scalpel through my hand, and I shrugged, mildly amused at the attempt. I was less amused by the pistol he rammed between my teeth. “Ordo Doxial send their regards, I was the nearest man.” I gently eased my hand across, and pulled the scalpel from my hand. He would kill me in a minute; he had no reason to keep me alive. The room around me was concrete, an old interrogation cell with one entrance, guarded by a brace of inquisitorial storm troopers. The inquisitor’s muscles went tense and his entire body strained behind the trigger. I shut my eyes as the bullet was finally fired. There was a crack as it flew back into the mechanism, and blew off the two fingers that held the gun in place. The inquisitor screamed and fell back, so I took the opportunity to jump from the chair I was sat upon. The two men screamed beneath their Centurion pattern helmets, and blood splattered against the semi clear visors. They writhed and crumpled, screaming. The inquisitor got a second longer, his honed mind fighting hard against the unseen oppressor, then his eyes bulged and he went still. His head hit the floor with a crack. “So good to see you again.” The naked man drifted in front of me. He held a chain in his right hand, which was aflame. His voice was projected now from his mouth, no longer by thoughts. He wasn’t the same. Someone was controlling him. “Stains inquisitor, they die a white record for ever.” A figure was watching from the shadows beyond the door, i indistinctly made out a female shape. The young man drifted closer, thin spines in the place of hair, blades in the place of bones, jabbing beneath his skin. Tormenting him. He fired a mental dart into my brain, which I barely blocked with a hasty shield. He smiled, and fired another, this time physical, which sent me through the wall behind me as though it wasn’t there. I hit the pavement outside hard. The psyker drifted out, more in resemblance to a demon host than a gifted human. Another dart, melded into adamantium through some unspeakable process. It speared me through the leg, I tried to tug it out but for the barbs that ran its surface. I yelled my frustration as another formed, and barely dodged it as I rolled aside. The vox link implanted in my skull crackled, it only ever did that when a demon host was here. My demon host. The man in the shadows beyond the psyker had disappeared, though he was probably close. I watched the psyker summon yet another deadly metal stake, then collapse screeching. Hands were hooked beneath my arms, lifting me. I thanked the Emperor for Bracken that day, but only for a second. A resounding sniper round took his skull cap off and he fell back, dead. I scanned for the sniper, and spotted a figure in the backdrop of the arbite windows. My attention turned to the closer battle. The demon host was grappling with the psyker, the demon channeling its power directly from the warp. She was slowly winning, but I didn't want to know what happened when the warp fully entered the psyker's head. The thought went rampantly from possibility to possibility. Stronger Psykers attract stronger demons. An apex had never been possessed before, but the very concept was awe inspiring in the worst way possible. Part Five
What now? I crawled behind a metal stall to protect myself from the deadly fire. I was unarmed, my acolytes were my weapons. I tore a length of metal wire from the stall above me, and some lengths of wood. I hastily made a brace for my leg, and listened as the sniper pumped a round into my demon host’s head. I don’t know what he had written on those rounds, because a normal bullet she could shrug off, but the psychic echo as she died cut my mind into confused shards. How did they find me? What did they know? One question rang out above them all. How was I going to die?
My skull cracked back by the force of the bullet? Every facial orifice bleeding as my brain was crushed? I dared to look around the stall, and caught the glint of the scope. I watched for a second longer, half willing the bullet to come. It never came, and with a yell the sniper was flung from the window, Morl tearing at his eyes with a bladed claw. I hobbled out, my leg frustrating me. The psyker spotted me, and turned, his attacks no longer came in bursts, but in one long wave, hammering me until I fell to my knees. My senses slowly crumpled, and I felt my thoughts begin to implode. The psyker put everything into the attack, everything, he really wanted me dead. With an amused grin I fired a dart into his thoughts, nothing special, my abilities didn’t go that far. It was enough to force a gout of blood from his nose. Morl was upon it in a second. The psyker stopped his attack and slid aside, allowing his master to come through. I recognized a man even older than myself, a man I knew by name. High lord Verdact. “Stains... how amusing that my psyker mentioned it. Remove your overcoat Sluice; I want to see the blood I spread before.” He saw that my gaze had gone back to Morl; he chuckled and drew a pistol, aiming it at the Hrud, amusement in his eyes. The gun kicked back and I turned away. For the second time today, the bullet imploded the mechanism. The inquisitor was fast enough to discard it as it happened, and turned to the psyker. “You did this? You are trying to stop me?” The psyker shook his head. “No, I only did it last time because you asked. I didn’t mean to do it this time...” Morl was writhing on the ground, his violent spasms whipping out limbs I had never wished to see again. The cloak fell away as he thrashed and I stared for a long second. The inquisitor grew red, his mind angered by the insubordination. “You killed my interrogator as well!” The psyker looked confused for a second, then nodded. Morl stopped moving, and drifted away from the ground. “Die now you.... what in the Emperor’s name?” The psyker smiled, and gently drifted, pressing a hand on Verdact’s head. The air went cold and the inquisitor collapsed, every wound he had ever sustained bursting into life and bleeding him dry. His skin retracted and his bone crumbled. The mass upon the floor made my mind hurt and I switched my attention to Morl, who was exchanging thoughts with the Psyker. I translated the chatter. I caught the end of the psyker’s last line. “Brother in gifts, may your spirit be strong.” The psyker vanished, and Morl dropped back to the floor. With a flick of his wrist the cloak was back around him, another and my leg was healed. I gave him an appreciative grin, which faded as the arbites vomited out from their building, weapons drawn. “That’s the fether, kill him.” Morl flew back at them and I walked away from the sounds of pain, my body feeling revitalized. I stopped beside her body, and closed the lids of her eyes. I would not bring her back, her debt was paid. She had saved my life.
Epilogue
“Radical Inquisitor Hellborn, we are going to land near your location soon. Any attempt to escape will be defeated by extreme prejudice, confirm you will not attack?” Hellborn was a nice touch, I liked being famous enough to have a nickname. I pulled a cigar from the folds of my cloak and rammed it between my yellowing teeth. I chewed on it for a second, and lit it; glad of the warmth that they isolated building provided. Thank throne for insulation. I pulled a vox from my pocket and spat into it; “Since when did you need to doubt my words? There’s a storm coming, and the Emporer can send me to Ill if we don’t escape it, and that won’t please your superior’s will it? Get that ship down and get to my location double theme! If I’m gunna die, I’ll do so efficiently.” I puffed the cigar a little, revelling in the only commodity I still had. I strode over to a screen on one of the walls, tracing the ships progress over the cityscape with a thin gloved finger. I had about a dozen minutes before they arrived. My grey nail followed a thin red line which was just one edge of a slowly expanding circle in the centre of the city. Within the misshapen blob were thousands of flickering lights; each one was another xeno intent on taking the inquisitor’s hide. Morl was amidst them somewhere, I had sent him out when I found out that the inquisition had found me. I wanted to die now, and would do so fighting the very men who had decided to torture me to death, robbing them of that would be my final victory. I smiled. Let them come. I’m ready.
End
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