The Serpent Within

[Tarvek Val]

                                                                                                                               The Serpent Within 

 

Chapter 1

 

            The control room was silent, broken only by the soft murmur of cogitators, the hushed voices of data analysts, and the quiet conversations between soldiers from the Geno Three-Three Silenoid. Brutus Salgoya looked about him, admiring the efficiency of his detachment at work. As a hetman of the illustrious Imperial Army regiment, it was Salgoya’s honor to oversee the troops stationed at Outpost 11-13. Kolenus and Decian sat at the vox-station, listening attentively for any transmission that might reach the remote Imperial Army outpost. Verran conversed with one of the Mechanicum’s red-robed tech-priests, gesturing ever so often towards the dormant holo-projecter in the center of the room. Salgoya smiled inwardly – Verran was not known for his patience, and dealing with the authorities of the Mechanicum could be a trying experience at the best of times.

            As if willed into motion, Verran threw his hands up in defeat and walked away from his Mechanicum counterpart. He was shaking his head in disbelief by the time he reached Salgova’s command chair, positioned neatly in front of a bank of data monitors. 

            ‘These Mechanicum rajjatans make everything so difficult,’ Verran groaned, ‘all I want is to fix that accursed holo-projector so maybe we can receive an order to transfer out of this miserable pit.’

            Salgova laughed inwardly, but managed to keep a straight face through sheer willpower. Keeping an eye focused on the blurry datascreens before him, he nodded sympathetically.

            ‘I know, Ver. But our duty is clear, and Lord Commander Vesevian assigned us to the defense of this world for a reason. As irritating as they can be, it is vital to the Imperium that the Mechanicum stay loyal … especially in light of the –’

            Here Salgova hesitated. In light of the what? Betrayal of the Emperor? Act of open rebellion by the Warmaster? The so-called Horus Heresy?

            He was saved from finishing his sentence as one of the screens before him flashed amber, accompanied by the dull drone of a proximity alert siren. Salgova frowned and turned to his second-in-command, Navar.

            ‘Ayy Nav, are any of the lads in Siphon Corridor 17? Or any of the Mechanicum?’

            Navar looked around the room carefully, making certain to note the faces of each of the troopers and Mechanicum functionaries present. After several seconds, he shook his head.

            ‘All present and accounted for, sir.’

            Salgova sighed and rubbed his greying mustache wearily. Already, his duties at Outpost 11-13 weighed on him; he had put on twenty pounds in half as many weeks and his pristine uniform hardly fit his frame anymore. The control systems of the command center had been malfunctioning for weeks – hence Verran’s fruitless efforts to obtain assistance repairing the holo-projector – and yet failure to investigate the alleged breach would surely be a dereliction of the hetman’s duty.

            ‘Verran, Troika, Decian. Go check out that corridor and report back to me,’ Salgova softened the order with a weak smile, ‘it’s probably nothing, but go in weapons hot anyway. Good hunting.’

            The three men replied in unison, ‘for the geno and the Imperium.’

            The blast door isolating the command room from the rest of the facility ground slowly open, and the footsteps of the three men quickly faded into the distance. As his men moved down the corridor, Salgova became aware of an entirely new and unwelcome set of footsteps, growing closer to him by the second.

            The Mechanicum priest that Verran had debated with earlier gradually loomed over Salgova’s command chair, mechanical legs dragging over the ground with heavy treads. Salgova cursed inwardly. Of all the things he wanted to deal with now, a Mechanicum lackey was not very high on the list. 

            ‘Data query,’ the priest’s voice burbled wetly through the respirator covering the lower half of its face, ‘should a request for assistance be made / created?’

            Salgova considered the request, irritation and indecision warring over his face. In the end, indecision won out. The facility wasin the middle of nowhere, but Access Hatch 74-02 did exist, which meant that if someone were able to find it…

            ‘Fine,’ the hetman snaps, ‘Kolenus, prepare a message to Colonel Arren. Tell him that we may have an unknown security breach, and request further orders.’

            Kolenus nodded, and began typing the missive into the encoder built into his transmission station. As his finger hovered over the ‘send’ key of the system, he glanced to his hetman for approval. Salgova gestured for the man to send his message – and every single lumen in the facility immediately went out.

            For a few seconds, no one in the command room reacted to the sudden cessation of light. Then, as the backup generators kicked in and the space was bathed in crimson emergency lighting, the reality of the situation kicked in. Salgova’s swarthy skin lost its dark tone, paling as he frantically tried to reboot the dead screens before him.

            ‘Sir,’ Navar’s voice intruded upon the hetman’s blind panic, ‘we have received no contact from the men sent out earlier.’

            The information was too much for Salgova to handle.

            ‘Go find them,’ he growls, ‘take four men. Have the Mechanicum priests guide you to where the others went – they’re fine, I’m sure. Nothing but a blackout!’

            As the soldier hesitantly gathered his squad and moved into the blood-red corridor, Salgova noted dispassionately that he was now alone in the command room, save for Kolenus and the Mechanicum priest he had spoken with earlier. The priest stalked back to the hetman’s throne, its metallic voice insistent.

            ‘Information: we must make contact with our allies. Information: they must know of this situation.’

            The priest paused as a distant bang interrupted its words. A brief silence fell over the room, then another deep thud, and another.

            ‘Inference,’ the priest droned, ‘gunfire, heavy caliber, likely utilized by members of the –’

            The harsh crack of an auxilia lasrifle cut off what would be the priest’s final words. Slowly, the bulky figure crashed to the ground, the back of its head still smoking from the shot that has ended it. 

            Kolenus turned his weapon to bear on the hetman, his face devoid of expression.

            Salgova met his friend’s eyes and half-rose to his feet, unable to comprehend the reality of what had just happened.

            ‘Kolenus, what are you doing?’

            Kolenus squeezed the trigger of his lasrifle again, sending a half-dozen shots scything into the hetman’s chest and torso. Salgova toppled backwards, tipping his chair over as he crashed awkwardly into the display bank behind him. Kolenus dropped his lasrifle onto the ground. He would no longer need it. He reached into a sheltered alcove behind his desk, fishing around until he found the small, battered vox-caster hidden in the tiny alcove. As he turned around, he was confronted by five giant figures. They had come into the command room so quietly that he had been entirely unaware of their presence.

            Each of the figures loomed heads above the Imperial Army soldier, and their size was emphasized by the weight of the armor encasing their bulky frames. Splashes of red liquid ran across their boots and armor plating. Kolenus fell to his knees before these giants, mutely offering up the vox-caster to the foremost figure. The Astartes reached out a gauntleted hand, taking up the piece of equipment with surprising gentility. The warrior’s other hand came up to rest a bolt pistol against Kolenus’s forehead.

            ‘Any last words?’

            The Astartes’s voice was gruff and metallic.

            As he knelt, Kolenus offered up three simple words.

            ‘For the Emperor.’

            The Astartes nodded, understanding evident in his gesture. Then, he pulled the trigger. The bolt-round roared directly through the mortal’s head, exploding through the back of his skull in a burst of blood and bone fragments. The round exploded upon contact with the metal floor, and Kolenus’s body flopped lifelessly to the ground.

            Vaen Fyr, Harrowmaster of the Alpha Legion, carefully keyed a frequency code into the vox-caster, the device seeming ridiculously small in his large hands. To any observer, the encoded transmission would come across as a harmless burst of static. However, to the message’s intended recipients, the words would have an entirely different meaning.

            We’re in.

[calgar101]

Very good indeed, now more! :P

[Tarvek Val]

Chapter 2

 

            Nero scraped his gladius over the edge of the whetstone, setting off a piercing squeal from the metal of his blade. His hands moved with mechanical precision, amber eyes intensely focused on his work. The beaked helm of the legionare’s Mark VI warplate sat at his side, crimson eye lenses glaring blankly into the distance. 

            Kalistus watched his brother work in silence, observing how Nero’s pale features screwed up in concentration as the blade glided smoothly over the whetstone. He knew from experience that if Nero felt that his blade was dull in the slightest, it would entail another hour-long sharpening session. So, he waited in silence for his brother to finish his task. Pulling his own helm into place, Kalistus closed his eyes and waited.

            It wasn’t long before Kalistus’s helm crackled with a private vox-message. Aylin. Kalistus clicked his tongue thoughtfully as he opened the secure channel with his brother. Aylin’s voice echoed around the confines of Kalistus’s coal-black helm.

            ‘Moritat-Vengus.’

            The title was delivered with respect, and Kalistus saw his brother incline his head a fraction in his direction with the words.

            ‘Yes?’ 

            ‘With all due respect, sir, how long will our… honored brother.. continue producing that noise?’

            ‘As long as he deems fit,’ Kalistus replied.

            Kalistus glanced to his right side, to where Aylin sat under the flickering light of a lumen bolted haphazardly into the ceiling. The Astartes were grouped into a tiny chamber. It had once been the auxiliary room of a power generator, but it had fallen into disrepair over the years as the mighty Mechanicum forge city Cigma-Prime had grown around and above it.  Thraevos stood at the corner of the room, his silenced bolter trained on the only entrance to the space –a rusted and ill-maintained blast door with the skull icon of the Mechanicus emblazoned into the portal. Kalistus smiled as he realized that the skull was slightly off center, being a few inches too far to the right.

            Distracted for a moment, he almost missed the insistent blink of another commline request from his brother. Almost.

            ‘I must protest,’ Aylin’s deep tone crackled into being, ‘the noise is unnecessary and could easily bring our enemies upon us. Stealth is paramount if we are to carry out this mission to completion.’

            ‘You’re right.’

            Kalistus didn’t need to finish his statement. You’re right, but… The words were left unspoken, but Aylin pressed on nonetheless.

            ‘We are deep in unknown territory with no ability to resupply ourselves should the need arise. We must avoid detection at all costs.’

            ‘I understand your concerns, brother, truly I do,’ Kalistus replied, ‘but I picked this location for a reason. We are so deep in the underbelly of Cigma-Prime that enemy patrols are limited, and the power generators running along the eastern wall mask any sounds coming from this chamber. We could set off a cache of grenades and the Mechanicum would be none the wiser.’

            Aylin didn’t reply, but neither did he choose to deactivate the private communications line. The vox crackled and popped in Kalistus’s ears, to be replaced by a new voice. This time, it was Thraevos.

            ‘Moritat-Vengus.’

            Kalistus sighed. Months had passed and still his unexpected promotion felt like a chain around his neck, dragging him down a little bit further every day. He remembered it like it had been yesterday. The primarch had towered above him, the sable-black armor draped over his mighty frame accentuating the metal wings rising up over his broad shoulders. Corvus Corax’s hands ended in long claws of killing steel, and the quiet hum of his active armor pervaded the private room hidden in the depths of the Ravenspire. Kalistus had knelt before the Ravenlord, head bowed in supplication, until his liege-lord spoke a single word.

            ‘Rise.’

            And Kalistus had, bringing himself up in sync with the winding protest of his armor. Astartes were not meant to kneel, yet before the Ravenlord no other gesture of respect seemed appropriate. When one stood before that mighty warrior – eyes hardened by thoughts of unthinkable betrayal, fingers flexing as if to catch the throat of a traitor – one knelt. When he rose, he came merely to the Ravenlord’s chest. 

Yet he brought with him a new sense of resolve, and of authority.

            This resolve had faded over the past months, buried beneath acts of necessity and the chore of dealing with his brothers –

            ‘Moritat-Vengus.’

            Thraevos intruded upon his leader’s thoughts, voice as toneless and acidic as ever. The warrior stood like a statue, bolter aimed unflinchingly at the blast door. Thraevos’s finger squeezed the trigger gently. Kalistus took a moment to admire his brother’s armor- the mismatched pieces had been scavenged from a dozen different suits on the killing field of the Urgall Depression, the only unifying factor being the deep black shade of paint tying each armor fragment to the next. 

            As the blast door began to slowly grind open, Kalistus realized the reason for Thraevos’s warning. Raising his lightning claws, he cautiously made for the opening doorway, his brothers close behind.

[calgar101]

And so the great story continues. I liked the off center Mechanicum skull, it made me chuckle.

[Mazer Rackham]

This is very good, thank you for posting it, enjoying it!

 

MR.

[Tarvek Val]

 

 

And so the great story continues. I liked the off center Mechanicum skull, it made me chuckle.

 

Thank you for reading, I'm glad you're enjoying the story!

 

 

 

This is very good, thank you for posting it, enjoying it!

 

Thank you for reading! I'm having a great time writing this piece, and will ideally have the next installment up tomorrow morning.

[Tarvek Val]

Chapter 3

 

            The blast door shuddered, jerking as it slowly opened upwards. As it reached the halfway point of its ascent, the door juddered to a stop with a metallic shriek of protest. Kalistus noted the blinking red light on the control panel directly to the door’s right – as he had originally suspected when his warriors had first accessed the hideaway, the door was not fully functional. Anyone hoping to gain entry to the chamber would have to duck under the half-open portal – making quite an inviting target out of themselves in the process.

           Kalistus’s warriors had spread themselves across the chamber so as to not prevent an inviting massed target to any potential enemy. Thraevos covered the yawning portal with his bolter as Nero and Kalistus moved forwards, gladius and lightning claws respectively raised. Aylin hung back; as the mission specialist, his volkite charger was to be held in reserve for when it would be most useful.

           Kalistus opened his squad’s vox-channel, issuing three rapid clicks across the encrypted link to each of his brothers. After a tense two seconds of waiting, four sharp clicks sounded in reply. As he breathed out a sigh that he had been entirely unaware of, Kalistus lowered his clawed hands fractionally. Likewise, his brothers loosened their grips on their weapons – while they still stood ready to fight at a moment’s notice, they no longer focused upon the inky darkness beyond the blast door with their previous intensity.

           After a pause of no more than a few seconds, a single figure detached itself from the shadows cast by dying lumens in the deserted corridor. Brother Sylax seemed to flow from the darkness with fluid ease, deep black armor blending in near-flawlessly with the perpetual night of the buried forge complex. A holstered bolt pistol swung from his left hip, and a power sword rested loosely in his right hand.

           ‘Well met, brothers.’

           Sylax’s voice was the whisper of a ghost, brushing across the vox-channel so lightly that Kalistus was uncertain whether his brother had spoken aloud or if he had imagined the words in his head. 

           Aylin spoke in reply, disapproval coloring his gruff tone.

           ‘What took you so long, little brother?’

           Sylax raised his left hand, showing a gauntlet speckled by what seemed to be drops of blood and oil. As he opened his fingers, he revealed a small key, fashioned in the shape of a symmetrical cog. 

           ‘I ran into company in the lower levels. A squad of skitarii, accompanied by a pair of seeker-thralls. Rather than lead them back to you, I found us a key.’

           Kalistus cut into the conversation. 

           ‘Is the Mechanicum aware of your, of our, presence?’

           Somehow, Sylax’s battered helm conveyed the impression of offense, and a note of wounded pride colored his reply.

           ‘Of course not. All eight were dead in three-point-four seconds, and I disabled their alert systems and vox-caster before the last Mechanicum thrall hit the ground. They’ll never even find the bodies.’

            ‘Good.’

            As he entered the auxiliary room, Sylax tapped a sequence of buttons on the blast door’s control panel. The door shut with a pitiful squeal, sending flakes of red rust raining downwards from the ceiling. The squad thus assembled, the gathered Astartes relaxed, removing helms and settling into a loose semicircle at the center of the room. 

            Kalistus took a moment to take stock of the situation. His brothers, devoid of their featureless helms, looked nothing like one another under the weak glow of the room’s lumens. Thraevos, the oldest of the group, was a veteran of the earliest stages of the Emperor’s Great Crusade, and his age showed in the web of scars woven across the craggy surface of his face. One nasty-looking cut had opened his face from jaw to crown – the souveneir of a demented warrior of the Emperor’s Children. In sharp contrast, Sylax looked almost too young to be an Astartes; much less the experienced veteran that he was. His dark eyes moved from face to face without pause, constantly scanning for something only he could recognize. His gaze rested upon Aylin for a few moments, before flickering over to meet Kalistus’s. Aylin. Aylin, unlike the others, was a Terran-born. His skin was a shade darker than that of his brothers, and frown lines marred what could have otherwise been an attractive face.

            Disdaining the company of his brothers, Nero went back to sharpening his blade in his corner, helm lying where he had left it in his rush to cover the doorway. He was the youngest of the squad, though the dark voids of his eyes showed that he had suffered just as much as his brothers in the period following the massacre on Isstvan V.

            As the shriek of the whetstone resumed, Kalistus grimaced. Surprisingly, it was Thraevos who came to his rescue. He met Nero’s eyes and gave a slight nod and, to Kalistus’s surprise, Nero sheathed his blade and rose to join his brothers without a word.

            Without taking his gaze off Nero, Thraevos offered a characteristically dry explanation.

            ‘We served in Veteran Sergeant Rekval’s squad through Isstvan. After Rekval was beheaded by an artillery shell, we were assigned to new detachments.’

            With his helm removed, Nero must have heard his brother’s words, but he offered no discernable reaction. Instead, he stared mutely at the backs of his guantlets as he joined his brothers, fingers flexing open and closed with precise slowness. 

            Aylin broke the awkward silence.

            ‘This mission disturbs me. We are meant to act from the shadows, aye. The Ravenlord taught us that. But we have no proof that the Mechanicum on this world are anything other than loyal to the Emperor.’

            Casting a pointed glance at Sylax’s stained armor, Aylin continued.

            ‘We have killed soldiers of the Mechanicum and the Imperial Army – soldiers like those who bled and died with us due to Horus’s accursed treachery. This sits ill upon my heart, brothers.’

            Thraevos gave a grunt of approval, and the briefest flicker of doubt crossed over Sylax’s face. Only Nero remained unmoved, content to listen to his brothers speak.

            Kalistus nodded sympathetically. He had felt the same about this mission, before his meeting with Lord Corax. 

            ‘Our task pains me. But our primarch is aware of troubling reports surrounding the Mechanicum in these dark times. You already know that our father seeks to rebuild our Legion, that we might crush the traitors beneath our boots. We must act in his stead, and meet the enemy in battle –wherever, and whoever, they may be. If the people of this world remain loyal, we will know soon enough.’

            ‘Aye,’ Aylin replied, ‘and how will we know that?’

            Kalistus extended an open hand towards Sylax. Sylax dropped the key into the Moritat-Vengus’s waiting palm. 

            ‘There are dark whispers that the Mechanicum are creating a monstrous weapon of unspeakable proportions in this forge. We need to gain access to the secure vaults in the heart of the forge city.’

            The gathered Astartes nodded, looking at the key with newfound respect.

            ‘So the key gets us into a sentry post, and from there we make our way into the vaults and check them off, one by one,’ ventured Thraevos.

            ‘Not quite,’ Sylax interjected smoothly, ‘I believe I know precisely which vault we are looking for. The Mechanicum did not expect anyone to infiltrate their world, and their comms are thus largely unshielded. While I was out scouting, constant references were made, on multiple channels, to Vault Alpha-7. They used technological terms beyond my description, but it is evidently an important and secure facility.’

            ‘We infiltrate the vault,’ Kalistus finished for his brother, ‘and discover the truth once and for all.’

Kalistus turned around, picking up his helm and sliding it on in one smooth motion. The vox-caster on his chestplate growled to life. 

            ‘And brothers? We survived Isstvan for a reason. Let us make the traitors regret that, in blood.’

            ‘In blood,’ echoed the rest of his squad. Even Nero joined the chant.

            In blood.

[Tarvek Val]

Chapter 4

 

            The skitarii alpha hadn’t seen his death coming, but nonetheless managed to get in a good look at his murderer’s face in the seconds before the discontinuation of his motive force. The emotionless emerald eye-lenses of a Mark IV pattern Astartes helm gazed down at him – then the warrior twisted the power sword deeper and the skitarri’s eye-lenses went dark. Vaen Fyr gazed down at his twitching victim, the skitarii’s cybernetic implants fighting to keep the metal man alive long enough to exact vengeance for his terrible wounds. In the end, the implants failed and the skitarii ceased moving. The flesh is weak, Vaen Fyr thought, but steel is strong.

            Behind the harrowmaster, the other members of the alpha’s squad lay crumpled where they had fallen. Two of the skitarii had been cut down by silenced bolt rounds, dead before they were even aware of the attack. Another Mechanicum soldier dragged itself across the floor, legs trailing uselessly behind it. A precise bolt-round had clipped the soldier’s spine, rendering it crippled from the waist down. An armored boot abruptly ended the skitarii’s struggles, crushing the half-man’s skull into bone fragments and metal shards. Phaerus T’var stalked forwards, gazing about him with slow sweeps of his head. Finding no signs of life, he stood beside the harrowmaster.

            ‘A pitiful excuse for guards.’

            Vaen Fyr couldn’t see Phaerus T’var’s face, but he could imagine the dismissive sneer curling across the warrior’s narrow lips nonetheless. Phaerus T’var loathed weakness in all of its forms. During the Dropsite Massacre, he had had the misfortune to have arrived on the surface amongst the last group of the XX^th Legion veterans. His Thunderhawk had been shot out of the sky by a lucky missile - he had been the only survivor to drag himself from the aircraft’s burning wreckage. Though surrounded, outnumbered, and significantly outgunned, he had managed to draw the wreckage of several companies’ worth of XX^th Legion Astartes to him, cutting a bloody swath through the lines of the Raven Guard massed in the Urgall Depression. 

            For his bloody contributions to the Warmaster’s cause, Phaerus T’var received praise from none other than the mighty Horus Lupercal himself. His own Legion awarded him a gift of a different sort. Though Phaerus T’var was nothing more than a Legionary at the time, he was allowed to take unofficial command of his band of Isstvan survivors. Other veterans of the Alpha Legion took to calling his unofficial company the ‘Reborn 20^th,’ in honor of its birth in the fires of treachery. The name stuck, and the Reborn followed Phaerus T’var with fanatical devotion, while remaining loyal to their primarch’s schemes of dominion. 

            Ten members of the Reborn accompanied Vaen Fyr and Phaerus T’var in the heart of Cigma-Prime. Four of them covered the extreme ends of the corridor, silenced bolters panning for threats and finding none. The others alternately inspected the fallen skitarii or grouped around the two commanders in silence, awaiting further orders. None of them had true names - at least, they held no title other than that of Alpharius’s mantle. For this mission, simple codenames served as identifiers for the ten Reborn; Alpha, Delta, Sigma, and the like. Each warrior was an extension of the primarch’s will; desires, quirks, and even identities were second to their shared goal. 

            Phaerus T’var was the exception to the rule. While his suit of Mark IV armor was built to the same specifications as the other members of his squad, his vambraces and gauntlets were covered with a series of haphazard scratches. Each signified the death of a Loyalist Astartes, dead by his own hand.

            As he gazed at the carnage surrounding him, Vaen Fyr noticed something wrapped in the hand of the skitarii alpha lying at his feet. It was metallic. Smooth. Gleaming under the harsh illumination of the lumens.

            It was a grenade.

            Recognizing the threat, Vaen Fyr hurled himself aside as the alpha’s revenge bloomed in a fiery blast. He slammed heavily into the roughly ridged wall behind him, grunting as the wind was knocked out of him by the force of the explosion. He uttered a curse as he dragged himself to his feet. One of the Reborn, who had been standing closer to what was now a smoking crater, lay unmoving some several feet away. His armor had been torn apart by the force of the blast, and rich Astartes blood flowed sluggishly onto the silver-sheened flooring.

            Phaerus T’var checked the fallen warrior’s’ vitals, quickly confirming that the warrior was deceased. Faintly, an alarm siren began to wail as the forge’s automated systems detected the blast and responded accordingly. 

            ‘Quickly,’ Vaen Fyr snapped, ‘we need to find somewhere to lay low for the moment. Theta, use that skitarii’s data-reader and find the schematics for this floor. Get us to a secluded place. Delta, Gamma, carry our brother’s body. We cannot afford to let the Mechanicum know our nature.’

            Vaen Fyr glanced down the corridor. It remained deserted, but he knew that in minutes it would be flooded by Mechanicum soldiers and thralls. 

            We cannot afford to let them know our nature, he mused, not yet.