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Hyaenidae

By Hyaenidae
in + AGE OF DARKNESS +

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  • 4 weeks later...
Brother-Chaplain Kage Venerable Brother

Brother-Chaplain Kage

Posted
Posted

http://i.imgur.com/NQ45h0V.png

 

 

-- Chapter 3.2: The Tumor of Nord Merica, part II --

 

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

    The room that Mahdra directed them to was a hastily constructed tactical center with a hololith table in the center. Thick power cables twisted and bundled like black snakes on the floor. Five astartes in grey IV Legion scout gear stood at the far end of the room. All of them had removed their helmets and were so close in skin coloring and facial features they could have been actual brothers.

    "These are the only men I could find that didn't hate me or you enough to volunteer for this," Mahdra said as Vall and the other scouts filed in behind him. "Legionnaires Ladras, Corillon, Tasko, Petrekis, and Mykos."

    Bev Duros chuckled. "A ringing endorsement, if ever I've heard one."

    Tasko stepped forward to the hololith table. "If you can help us take down that shield and prevent more of my brothers from dying senselessly, I don't give a damn who you are or where you came from." The other four volunteers made grunts of agreement.

    "Speaking of the shield," Vall began, but Mahdra help up a hand to silence him.

    "I'm getting to that. First," he said as he turned down the lights, "please remove your helmets. I, and my brothers, would see the faces of the men who will risk their lives with us."

    Vall removed his helmet immediately, followed by Xon, Murg, and almost stubbornly, Rel.

    To the surprise of everyone but Vall, Mahdra shook the hand of each of the scouts. "Even if the rest of my Legion despises your presence here, I thank you all for coming. Now, to the matter of D'troi." Picking up a data slate wired to the hololith table, Mahdra loaded up a file and a three-dimensional wire-frame rendering of the super hive coalesced into being. Details filled in quickly, and once fully formed, it began to rotate slowly in the air. “The original hive had been built as a perfect circle with a high curtain wall and gates regularly spaced along its circumference. Time had seen shanty towns form around the outer ring, like barnacles clinging to a ship.

    "This is how it looked before we arrived," Mahdra said. He loaded another file and the rendering changed dramatically; the shanty towns vanished and were replaced with wreckage -- or in some cases -- only cratered earth remained. "This is now. The exterior growth of the hive outside the wall was removed with three days of constant shelling to deny the enemy a potential tactical advantage for ambushes or fallback positions in the event of a protracted ground war."

    "You IV Legion boys sure do like your big guns," Rel quipped in his raspy, ruined voice. The room was suddenly very quiet and still. Vall would normally have said something about the remark, but this time he didn't have to. Phelan Mahdra's head turned slowly on his massive neck, like continental plates grinding against one another. Vall knew the power of Mahdra's glare and even the coldest, most black-hearted killer of Scout Squad Alpha withered under it.

    Rel looked away and cleared his throat. "Uh, please continue, Warrant Mahdra."

    "As I was saying," Mahdra continued, "the shield has resisted everything we've thrown at it with no indication of the damage even straining the generators, save one incident." He zoomed in on the curtain wall of the hive model and pointed at something near the top. "Aside from the main shield generator inside the hive proper, there are also eight of these sub-generators on a track that run the circumference of the curtain wall. They are constantly in motion, moving and stopping at random to search for new targets." The view zoomed closer, showing a better view of the rectangular sub-generator that bristled with various sensors lenses and unfamiliar energy weapons.

    "Are they protected by the shield as well?" Vall asked.

    "To an extent," Mahdra answered. His fingers moved over the data slate and the model zoomed back, now showing the protective shield in place. "The shield is thin over the sub generators, but still strong enough to repel any shelling that we've managed to land on them before they move again or kill anything close enough to fire directly at it. Even more troublesome than their firepower is their ability to strengthen the shield in their immediate vicinity, and if multiple subs are in close proximity, that added protection is multiplied. After the first two days, we decided to concentrate all artillery fire on a single point and the shield seemed to react for the first time, but then three of the eight subs converged beneath the target point and rendered our attack useless."

    Vall looked down at the backpack device Mahdra had brought in with him, then up to the model of the hive and grinned. "Ah, I understand now."

    Murg scowled in annoyance. "Mind filling the rest of us in?"

    "This is not my presentation and it's only a hunch."

    "Please," Mahdra said, "I knew you'd catch on quickly and I'm curious to see how much you've figured out."

    "Very well." Vall picked up the backpack and set it on the edge of the hololith table. "This," he said, indicating what looked like a video picter unit on a telescoping arm, "is a targeter of some sort. This antenna will relay the targeting information back to the artillery fire command who will then drop concentrated fire directly on the sub-generator in the hopes of destroying it before it can move again. How am I doing?"

    "Exactly as I expected of you," Mahdra said. "You and your scouts will assist mine to get within targeting range of the sub-generators where we will mark them for precision artillery strikes; I predict we will need to bring down at least four of the eight subs to have any hope of knocking down that shield. Four is the minimum of what I expect of this unit. What I want is all eight of them."

    Someone, most likely Rel, scoffed softly.

    Vall's cold, unblinking eyes turned back to the model of the sub-generators and their bristling weapons. "You told me you lost ninety scouts before we arrived. Was it the subs that killed them?"

    "That, and enemy scout forces. We don't know if the subs are controlled by men, an automated system, or they could even be AI, but what we do know is that the energy weapons they bear are capable of slicing through anything we have. Nothing survives long enough to need a second shot."

    "Effective range?" Bev asked.

    "Confirmed lethal at fifteen hundred meters. Beyond that, reports get dodgy."

    Vall shifted the targeting backpack he was holding. "What's the effective range of this?" He saw the twinkle in Mahdra's eye before he spoke.

    "Approximately a thousand meters. The units were hastily constructed, and given more time that we don't have..."

    "For moment there, you had me thinking this might be difficult," Vall said. He looked to his men. "Pair up and get ready to work."

***

    The ominous clouds they had seen on the flight in had continued to move west, hanging low over D’Troi and spreading outward like a giant hand composed of smoke. The ionization from the shield dome fueled a spectacular lightning show, the strikes against the dome and ground appearing green from all of the pollution boiling out of the hive. The air stank of ozone, fyceline, the smoldering remains of the habs outside the curtain wall, and a faint whiff of rot that seemed to permeate everything.

    The twelve scouts stood in a copse of trees, the leaves a faded brown and their branches drooping as if on the verge of death, fourteen kilometers from the hive.

    “You smell that?” Bev voxed. “That’s not just my imagination, right?”

    “That rot?” Mykos asked.

    “It’s the hive,” came Mahdra’s hard voice.
    
    Vall remained silent. He had smelled it from inside the ‘copter and it was one of the reasons why he had opened the door. It wasn’t a natural smell, but a corruption of some kind. An illness, bone-deep, destroying the host from within. He began to wonder if the cancerous moniker for the hive wasn’t just figurative.

    “From this point,” Mahdra continued, “I want radio silence with the exception of an emergency or reporting the destruction of a sub. Understood?” Eleven vox clicks answered him. “Any other questions?” Silence. “You know your jobs and what I expect of you. Move out.”

                                                                                                   ***       

    They never even knew the enemy scouts were there. One second, Mahdra was standing on the lip of a shell crater lighting up one of the sub-generator stations with his laser targeter, preparing to send the information back via short-burst vox to artillery command, and the next, the ground around him erupted in puffs of dust and flying dirt from bullet impacts. Bright red arterial blood spurted from Mahdra’s lower right leg and his right arm. He fell backward into the crater beside Vall.

    “You didn’t know they where there,” Mahdra hissed through gritted teeth. It was neither a question nor an accusation, but a simple statement of an extraordinary fact. “Have they seen you?”

    “No,” he replied, looking over the rim of the crater. “Five hostiles incoming. Two just broke off to flank us.” He turned back to his friend and barely kept his surprise in check at how much blood was already staining the dry earth from the wound to his leg; a considerable amount of blood was spurting out with every heart beat. Vall started digging in his first aid pouch for bandages. “That’s bad.”

    “I know,” Mahdra said as calmly as if they were discussing ammo requisitions. “I can’t move my right arm. Give me that,” he said, holding out his left hand for the bandages.

    Vall hesitated a moment before tearing open the sealed bandage pack and shoving the contents into Mahdra’s giant hand.

    Mahdra pressed the wad of bandages to his leg and grunted sharply in pain. “You know what to do.”

    He did. It was like the game they used to play in the Citadel of the First; Mahdra’s eyes looked away for a moment and when they looked back, Vall had vanished.

    After a few seconds to make sure his short friend was gone, Mahdra reached behind him for a pouch on the back of his belt, wincing from the sharp jolt of pain the movement sent up his damaged arm, and produced a disposable syringe injector and stabbed it into his right thigh. Immediately, he could feel the blood beginning to clot and the stream jetting out with each heartbeat diminished to a slow trickle. He was reaching to get another one for his arm when three enemy scouts appeared above him on the rim of the shell crater, small, compact weapons trained on him. They wore full face masks with respirators and combat webbing with plenty of spare magazines and grenades.

    “Don’t move,” the middle scout ordered. The voice was voxed, coming out in a harsh metallic tone.

    When he’d fallen after getting shot, Mahdra landed on his rifle, so there was no worry that he’d be able to get to it and his sidearm was on his right thigh. “I hadn’t planned on it,” Mahdra said.

    “No matter how many of you we kill, you never learn,” the same scout chided. “You’re not getting through the shield and we’ll destroy anything that approaches.”

    At first, Mahdra thought the man had a strange accent that was making him difficult to understand, but quickly realized it was a speech impediment of some kind. “We’ll see.”

    The scout to the leader’s left gestured with his weapon at the laser targeter backpack and Mahdra could faintly hear them communicating inside their helmets. “Something new?” the leader asked. He motioned to the man on his left, who dropped into the crater and moved to Mahdra’s wounded right side. “What is that on your back?”

    Slowly, Mahdra glanced around the circumference of the crater while the scout was inspecting the targeter. “Don’t you think your two companions that split off should have been here by now?”

    The three enemy scouts stiffened in surprise and he could hear the leader’s voice, muffled through his mask, trying to raise them on the vox.

    Mahdra’s grinned. “They’re already dead.”

    The scout kneeling next to Mahdra backhanded him across the face. Behind him, there was the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the ground. He turned and immediately jumped to his feet, readying his weapon at what he saw; the other two scouts were both on the ground, dead, with their throats cut wide open. Their blood was running together and forming a pool at the deepest point of the crater.

    “What’s doing that?” he demanded, turning his gun on Mahdra. Something knocked his gun up and away from Mahdra just as a bright flash of pain erupted at the base of his skull. He never even had time to wonder how the man who killed him had materialized out of thin air.

    Vall pulled the knife out of the scout’s neck and let the body drop to the ground. “Get up,” he said to Mahdra. “I’m getting you out of here.”

    “I can’t walk.”

    “I know. I’m getting you out of here.”

    Mahdra laughed. “What? You think you’re going to carry me? I weigh twice what you do at least. Probably closer to three times.”

    “I’m certainly not going to carry your heavy arse all the way back to camp, but when I killed those other two scouts I saw a deep crevasse that your shelling opened up. It’s only a few hundred meters from here and it's big enough to hold both of us. We have to disappear for the time being.”

    “You’re not carrying me,” Mahdra said with finality.

    “I might be short, but I'm still astartes. Earlier, you told me that you are whatever your Legion needs you to be. Right now, your Legion needs you to be alive to complete this mission you dragged me out here for. I’m getting you out of this crater and I’m not asking for your permission.”
 

                                                                                             +++

 

And it's still not finished! I will try to have the next part out soon.
 

Brother-Chaplain Kage Venerable Brother

Brother-Chaplain Kage

Posted
Posted

Oh my... I might have to look into that. The biggest issue would be if you actually have to live there.

Anything that awakens the Hyena.

If only. I miss my old friend dearly.

Brother-Chaplain Kage Venerable Brother

Brother-Chaplain Kage

Posted
Posted

The last time he even logged in to the website was October '16. The last I heard from him was some back and forth in a PM with us planning on starting a new project, but he had recently gotten a new job that he was really into but was also eating a lot of his time, and the remainder of his free time was almost completely taken up with his family, taking care of their plants and animals, and trying to get active in their community to better some things. I think, as any good father and husband should do, he chose to focus on his family first.

Kizzdougs Venerable Brother

Kizzdougs

Posted
Posted

The last time he even logged in to the website was October '16. The last I heard from him was some back and forth in a PM with us planning on starting a new project, but he had recently gotten a new job that he was really into but was also eating a lot of his time, and the remainder of his free time was almost completely taken up with his family, taking care of their plants and animals, and trying to get active in their community to better some things. I think, as any good father and husband should do, he chose to focus on his family first.

Thanks for the info :) and you're doing a fantastic job of carrying the torch :tu:

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