The 189th Tebessan Expeditionary Force

[P3AKHOUR]

Finished my second attempt at a command tank (Emissary version 1.0 is at the top of this thread) a few months ago and have finally gotten around to putting some pics up.  
C&C welcome as always.

 

 

Also wrote a bit of a story about this tank and her crew for the Inspirational Fridays thing they have going over at the Chaos board.

 

 

++The Oasis++

 

 

Dawn

Arris started as the dawn call to prayer echoed harshly off the whitewashed ferrocrete buildings huddled around the well. After three days in Zelfana he still hadn’t gotten used to the cacophony which emanated from the ancient Aquila-topped vox tower 3 times a day. He cursed the locals and their parochial customs under his breath then filled his canteen before placing it into a battered ammo box alongside those of his fellow crew members.

When he passed out of the eastern gate, the dunes were glowing pale pink in the soft morning light, a herd of maeiz milled about, the geneered goat-analogue’s bells tinkled quietly as they bedded down to sleep out the day. The serenity of the scene was disrupted by the brooding, angular silhouette of his track, sitting hull-down amid the prefabricated huts and barricades of the roadblock which overlooked the highway.

As he climbed up onto the turret he was greeted with a scowl from the Colonel, who was heating a pot of caffeine on a heat brick balanced precariously on the turret bustle.
“The maiez seem to have forgiven us” remarked the older man. The barrels of Emissary’s main gun were still plinking and ticking as they cooled after the incident a few hours earlier. Nusram, their gunner, had opened fire on a herd of the nocturnal beasts a few hundred meters out from the checkpoint, their strange heat signatures and lurching gait obviously capturing his fertile, combat-stimmed imagination.
“I want you to find the owner today and pay him for that mess” the Colonel gestured to the gruesome remains of the animals spread across the highway. “We’ll have another uprising on our hands if we don’t handle this properly.”
“Are we here to win a war or is this another ‘hearts and minds’ mission sir?” Enquired Arris. Colonel Danek took a sip from his battered pewter cup.
“They are one and the same, boy. These people have been here for generations. They guarded the caravan routes and the promethium pipelines which followed them. If and when the Cult arrives here, they’ll know about it before we do. Our survival depends on them trusting us enough to tell us.”
“With respect sir, all I’ve heard are the ramblings of superstitious nomads, tales of monsters under the sand-”
“They’re probably true!” all humour had left the older man’s eyes.
“The foul creations of crazed gods defy belief, even when your ears are bleeding from their howls and you can smell the stench of their breath, the sane part of your mind will refuse to believe they exist!” He threw his caffeine grinds over the side of the tank in disgust, landing with a wet splatter on the rocks.
“But they do exist. I’ve seen them on the steppes of Qom Salah and in the dunes of Tallarn, Tilak still sees them in his sleep.” Arris recalled the muffled cries of their driver as he slept each night in the grips of some vivid terror.
“Get below and make sure that idiot gunner gets his water ration. He’s useless enough without being dehydrated.” Ordered the Colonel. Arris disappeared through the top hatch, happy to have several inches of armour between himself and the old man’s foul mood.

Noon

The midday call to prayer woke Arris from his fitful sleep. He tried to stretch and jarred his elbow painfully on the large serpentine ammo feed that coiled around his cramped loader’s station. Deep within the belly of their track the air was humid and thick with the pungent bouquet of men and machines in prolonged co-habitation.
“The tribesmen will be gathering around the bazaar after prayer, find the owner of those beasts and compensate him for his loss” the gruff command was accompanied by a thud as a wad of notes wrapped in a sheaf of leather dropped from the Colonel’s command station above. As Arris reached for the money, Nusram reached over the back of his gunners’ seat and grasped his wrist.
“Arris!” he growled, low enough to not be heard by their commander, “you think I haven’t been looking down this sight long enough to tell the heat signature of a man from a goat? The things I fired on this morning were shaped like men, as soon as I opened fire they burrowed beneath the sand. I know what I saw!”
“Then why is there a pile of dead maiez where your monsters stood? Why do I have to go out in this heat to apologise for your itchy trigger finger?” Arris shot back in a hoarse whisper.
“If you’d seen what I did you’d watch your back in the bazaar, this place is touched by the Rot.” Warned the gunner, before turning back to continue staring intently through his targeting optic.
Arris squinted as he emerged from the side hatch into the sun-bleached landscape of mid-day. Palms shimmered in the heat haze and dozens of flies alighted on his back and around his eyes. He slung his carbine over his shoulder and trudged toward the centre of town.

After two frustrating hours of asking around the teeming bazaar, Arris finally had a lead. His enquiries as to the ownership of the animals by the eastern gate were met with dismissive grunts and suspicious stares. He followed the directions of a nervous power-pack vendor. Up a narrow flight of stairs between two tall buildings off the main square, he arrived at an arched doorway with a tattered curtain. A young woman with a stub gun cradled in the crook of her arm looked him up and down and made him leave his weapon by the door, then waved him inside.

Four old men sat cross-legged on a carpet around a large black hookah, lho-smoke drifted through beams of light filtering in from a small balcony overlooking the market. Several autoguns with the characteristic wooden fittings and sickle-shaped magazines of local patterns leaned against the back wall.
“What new indignity does this arrogant young soldier of the Emperor mean to foist upon us today?” Enquired the man with a tattered blue skull-cap, the creases around his eyes betraying a kindness that belied his words. His friends moved to the balcony and continued their conversation in the native tongue.
“Are you Jalfa? I was told you owned the herd that grazes around the eastern gate, I’ve come to buy them off you” said Arris
“How many are left?” Enquired the man, suddenly looking grave.
“Uh, I want all of them, our rations are running low and my friends are hungry for real meat” Replied Arris, wondering how the man had heard about last night’s debacle.
“Your friends will have to look elsewhere, those beasts are marked for the Djinn, as long as we provide for them, they stay beneath the dunes and do not bother us within the town walls.”
Arris felt the blood drain from his face and pool in a cold ball in his gut.
“What do you speak of! Offerings to the Dark Gods? What heresy?”
Jalfa made a dismissive gesture. “The taint has always been in this land, we live with it and it lives with us, what you call an offering, we call keeping the peace.”
“Why were we not told of this? We came out here to protect you from the Cult, yet you are providing them with food? What else have your people given these enemies of man?” Stammered Arris, fighting the urge to turn and run back to the safety of his tank.
“Go back to your green zone, there has been no cultist activity here for months and it is not them we are providing for-“ the old man’s indignant reply was cut short by a shout from one of his friends. He took his rifle and hobbled to the balcony, Arris followed.

The elders were talking excitedly and pointing down to the bazaar at a man pushing through the villagers crowded around the well. He wore a threadbare grey robe and his face was hidden by a headscarf.
“He should not be within these walls!” Jalfa grabbed Arris by the shoulder, “Get back to your friends and tell them the Cult is here!”
Before Arris could turn to leave, the man by the well emptied a small pouch of what looked like ash down the shaft. A couple of onlookers shouted and ran towards him as he made a strange gesture with one gnarled hand and melted back into the crowd.
The men on the balcony stood transfixed as a dense, churning black cloud rose up out of the well. The crowd flowed back in revulsion and people began to shriek as the cloud unfurled to whip angry tendrils toward them. A sinister buzz filled the air, Arris saw a youth fall, flailing under the carpet of flies. To his horror she stood up a few seconds later and began lurching toward the crowd in and unnatural, ratcheting gait. He turned and dashed back through the room, the girl on the door tossed him his carbine as she ran past him to the balcony. Gunfire erupted in the street below, adding to the screams and other, less natural sounds filtering in from outside.

Arris tore through the crooked, cobbled alleyways of Zelfana. The screams and gunfire of the marketplace seemed to follow him as the pox spread rapidly in the densely populated centre of town. He burst through the eastern gate into the blast-furnace heat of late-afternoon desert and began screaming and waving his arms wildly as he ran towards the checkpoint. A few men from the mechanized detachment looked up from their card game. “Don’t you hear the shooting? Stand-to you fools!” Upon seeing the look on Arris’s face, the soldiers quickly decided that what they had dismissed as another celebration was definitely trouble.

The foetid crowd shuffled through the streets and laneways toward the eastern gate, sensing their quarry just outside the walls. In the buildings above, cultist kill-teams clad in the mucus-green robes of the Cult of Rot darted from house to house, shooting and slashing their way through the cowering population in a murderously efficient operation.

The Imperial checkpoint was a hive of activity as the garrison hastily re-oriented its fields of fire on the gate behind their position. Men leapt over the ferrocrete barricades and hunkered down behind them, nervously adjusting their sights for a close engagement. With a roar and a belch of black smoke, Emissary hove her slab-sided bulk around 180 degrees, tracks whinnying as they ground up the stony earth. Inside, Arris pulled on his padded leather tank helmet and checked the turret feed mechanisms, the cabin was filled with the sounds ancient machinery being prepared for combat as each crew member muttered litanies to the subsystems under their care.
At the gunner’s station, Nusram looked through his sight and went visibly tense.
“Gunner, troops, direct forward, 1 second burst” called Colonel Danek calmly.
“Emperor save us. Identified, two hundred twenty metres!”
“Let the wretches bunch up through the gate… Fire!”
“On the way!” Nusram’s announcement was drowned out by a rising whirr followed by a deep, grating growl like high-voltage electrical arcing. The tank rocked back on its suspension as ranks of shells clattered through the feed tray in a blur before Arris’s eyes.
On cue, the muffled crack of lasguns erupted from the infantry to the left and right.
“Loader, I need you on the hull mount, fire at will!”
Arris swung expertly though to the front of the tank and settled in with his cheek against the boxy bulk of the heavy bolter. He squinted through the sight. Hundreds of bodies surged through the gate, tumbling over the piles of disintegrated flesh and clothing that was all that remained of the first wave. Some of the pox walkers had already sprouted horrifying, thorny growths from their heads and necks, all were covered in weeping sores. The air above them was thick with files. Arris said a litany of accuracy and squeezed the trigger, feeling the weapon buck in his grasp. Rounds streaked into the advancing throng, bodies exploded. The main gun barked again and the entire front collapsed in a haze of blood, dust and spores. Still more walkers lurched forwards, spreading out with unnatural speed as they passed through the gate, their screams and moans were broadcast through the tank as a steadily rising hum.
“One hundred forty metres!”
“Fire”
“On the wayyy!”
A rocket streaked out from a parapeted tower overlooking the gate, tracing a gentle spiral towards them. It impacted the right side of the turret with a bone-jarring clang.
“Feth! Gunner, tower, traverse right, two hundred fifty metres!”
“Identified”
“Fire!”
The turret motors worked to realign the Punisher cannon, which whined and spat.
“Keep firing, bring it down!”
Arris’s sweat turned cold as the gun fell silent and an alarm started to shrill behind him.
“Weapon feed malfunction! They must have hit the external belt.” He shouted, already swinging away from his station toward the side hatch.
“I’ve got it, stay on that bolter boy.” Called the Colonel from his command chair as he reached up to pop the top hatch.
Arris froze for a moment, feeling the weight of his responsibility come crashing down on him, then he looked up. “Sir, I’m on it, with respect, no one will be able to fix it faster than me.”
The Colonel looked down at him for a moment, then nodded. “The Emperor protects.” He said, making a benediction toward his loader before reaching for his vox set.

Arris tumbled out of the side hatch into hell, the stench of rot and death and ozone was overpowering. A couple of infantrymen looked up in surprise then turned back to firing. He sprinted round the back of the tank, reeling in the blast of heat as he passed too close to the exhaust shrouds, then ran expertly up the slanting rear track. Steadying himself on the intake filter, he unclipped a tool kit and proceeded up to the turret. The armoured belt feed that ran along the side of the turret bustle was blackened and dented by the explosion, creating a blockage. Arris began a litany of unjamming and shoved a pry-bar into the gap between two belt links and began to lever the mangled steel back into shape, singularly focussed as the battle raged around him.

He looked up as the Colonel emerged from the top hatch.
“Get inside boy, the rest of the garrison are fighting their way to our position from the north gate, we need to fall back to the dunes and regroup.”
Arris looked over his shoulder to see the braying hoard ambling toward them, now less than 20 metres away. His eyes took in details too horrific for his brain to process, but the smell reached in through his nose and emptied his stomach over the side of the tank. As he stood to climb inside, the engine howled and the tank lurched backwards. Arris fell sideways and grasped the ammo feed as the track moved beneath him, dragging his leg painfully against the battered tread. He looked up to a gurgling yowl.

Something that was until recently a man was crawling toward him along the top of the exposed track, having been lifted off the ground by the same conveyor belt motion that had caused him to fall. The pox walker’s face was a distended mass of pustules and his clothing had been shredded by a mass of needle-like spines which had erupted from his back. Emissary continued to reverse, pulling the thing within reach of him. There was a series of sharp cracks and Arris opened his eyes to see the creature tumbling off the side of the tank. He threw his arm up to cover his face as a huge wave of heat washed over him and the din of battle was replaced by a high-pitched ringing. He saw men rising to cheer and his eyes followed their excited gestures.

Old Diplomat topped the berm to the right at full speed and crashed back down in a cloud of dust, smoke whipping back from the barrel of her thick, large-bore cannon as she tore through the flank of the enemy. Lieutenant Hamza sat waist deep in the command cupola, expertly stabilising his torso to compensate for the rocking vehicle whilst firing short bursts from his las carbine. Diplomat fired again and the mass of walkers to the front evaporated in a fireball. Dirt clods and chunks of ichor rained down all around.

Arris slid through the turret hatch and collapsed onto his loader’s seat, ears and nose caked with dry blood and grime. Tilak looked back from the hull weapon station, “Forgive me brother, your seat looked more comfortable than mine.” He said before turning back and firing a burst at the cultists disappearing back within the walls, their meat shield having dissipated.

Dusk

As darkness fell, the prayer tower in the centre of town crackled to life. Within his track, Arris waited for the lilting cadence of the adhan. Instead, a sickening babble of half-formed phrases and glottal clicks echoed out across the desert, causing a stab of pain through his damaged ear drums. In the cooling dunes behind the checkpoint, hundreds of tiny runnels of sand tumbled down the barren slopes as something shifted beneath them…

[Aothaine]

Outstanding work! ^_^

[duz_]

Looks great! :D :tu:

[WarriorFish]

Great stuff P3AK, the tank looks really good with the colours and weathering and the first picture is something special :tu:

[our_baz]

Great job on the weathering. A fine addition to lead any army.

[gunnyogrady]

Really love your fluff, man! Also the modern feeling of your army is great. I've got a similar vibe going with my own. Also, great piece for Inspirational Friday!

 

PS: love to see your SOFLAM conversion. I'm building some myself to work as Sabre Defence Searchlights, and it's good to see the concept looks good at 40k scale.

[P3AKHOUR]

Really love your fluff, man! Also the modern feeling of your army is great. I've got a similar vibe going with my own. Also, great piece for Inspirational Friday!

 

PS: love to see your SOFLAM conversion. I'm building some myself to work as Sabre Defence Searchlights, and it's good to see the concept looks good at 40k scale.

Thanks mate, it means a lot.  Have you got a project log? I'd love to see your stuff.

[wulfgar hammerfist]

Nice work and great fluff!

[gunnyogrady]

I'm getting one up soon! In the meantime, I'll look forward to your progress!

[The Pounder]

Loving your desert camo!

Those Mars Alpha Pattern Russes are incredible.

[P3AKHOUR]

I moved city early this year and started full-time university.  As such not much hobby got done (not that I was ever a power-house anyway), but Trooping the Colour gave me the motivation I need to get back into it. 

My friend entrusted me with his old half-painted Malcador as a going-away present, I was stoked.  It's such an authentic looking sculpt, but never something I would have bought for myself.  Whoever designed it must have been a total armour-nerd because every detail seems kinda well thought-out and realistic (even though it's probably a terrible design by modern standards).

Anyway here is the Hammer of Kassad, named in honour of Colonel Fedmahn Kassad, super-soldier and all-round badass of the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons.

 

Before shots (after some light conversion)

 

 

and finished

[WarriorFish]

Fine work as always P3AK, the weathering detail really sells it your friend must be very pleased with the attention you've given it :)