#Chaos Undevided | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

scoundrelstars · 6 years ago

Text

League of Traitors

We fight the Long War, not through vain notions of duty and honour, but through a far purer purpose: hatred. --Ferrous Ironclaw, Warsmith of the Iron Warriors

[118.M42]

The tortured thrum of the void engines echoed throughout the Hangman’s Shadow like a heartbeat. Pict-screens shone sullen red, casting the cluttered Workshop in a bloody hue. The vaulted compartment echoed with the sounds of forging metal and agonizing screams blending together in a discordant symphony.

The Workshop was a nightmare combination of fabricator’s shop, surgical suite, and sorcerous library. Mortal men and women were strung up on steel trusses, skin and muscle flayed from their bodies to reveal bones upon which articulated mechanical arms carved blasphemous runes with lascutters. Maulerfiends, unholy amalgams of flesh, fire, and steel were chained to the decking in rows, their balefire hearts banked low. Occasionally, the screams that echoed through the Workshop would flare the daemon-engines to lash out at the mortal slaves who tended them, but they were in no short supply.

The ship lurched suddenly and Halaphus Stein, Warsmith of the Iron Warriors, grimaced as he mangled the exposed brain of the man he had on his table. He was a lord of the IV Legion, but centuries of mechanical adaptation and transplantation had elevated him to something that was so much more. He was clad in armor of gunmetal that shifted and moved with a mind of its own. Cabling and articulated tentacles coiled about him like living things, draping him in an unsettling mechanical cloak.

He’d been in the middle of hard-wiring the unfortunate’s synapses to a delicate, eight-pointed cogitator star that would have fed the brain with an unending stream of crushing dreams so vivid as to be real. Hours of work ruined.. Instead of a powerful testament to the Ruinous Powers’ revelations, he was left with a drooling vegetable. He remained calm; he had left emotion behind in another age. His prostheses, however, had their own reactions. His cloak of mechadentrites lashed out with a rage all their own and hurled the failed experiment across the Workshop, leaving trails of blood and spinal fluid where it streaked across the deck.

Mechanician slaves scattered out of his path as the metahuman warrior retrieved his cruel-looking war axe and stalked out of his lab.

The bridge of the Hangman’s Shadow was a thing of precision horror. Legion serfs, mutated beyond recognition, had become one with the machineries and consoles of the great ship. Distorted faces pressed against the fabric of the bridge’s walls to whisper dark secrets or maddening truths in languages long dead. Dataslate screens, holo-tanks, and auspex displays flickered with leering daemons who were drawn to the ship’s fell presence. Only the chosen of the Dark Gods--or those who had left their humanity behind--could command a glorious amalgam of machinery and warpcraft like the Shadow.

The ship rocked again as Stein came through the bridge doors. Something was hitting the void shields, the Warsmith could feel it.

“Report,” ordered Stein. His voice was a deep, digitized rumble.

Baltarius, Stein’s second, was hunched over the railing of the command pulpit, issuing orders to scurrying slaves, ship’s officers, and stoic Iron Warriors. He was clad in his battleplate, his helm mag-locked to his belt. Stein’s mechatendrils writhed with displeasure at the breach of protocol.

Baltarius saluted with one fist. “Warsmith. The sensorium has picked up a group of unknown ships in-system from the translation point. Initial scans reported they were scrap, but as soon as we began our acceleration burn, they opened fire with long-range ballistics.”

The Warsmith strode to the ship’s command throne and sat, his thrashing cable cloak snaking to interface with the Shadow’s systems. Sensory data flooded his mind and he began to take in the tactical situation. The ship was burning steadily towards Vraesis, the misbegotten star at the center of the system. Stein had expected more Imperial activity, even here in the far reaches of the heliosphere, but sensors picked up nothing. Only the strange foe-signs milling just off the ecliptic of Vraesis V. Auguries and scrying put a heavy Imperial presence in this sector, but so far, there was no sign.

The Iron Warrior continued. “The Tyrant of Enmity and the Bilious Prize, along with their tenders, have powered to full yield and are proceeding at full burn sunward in pursuit.”

“Enemy strength?”

“Unknown, lord. Auspex findings for all active threats read as system debris until they engaged. All active foes have changed course away from pursuing ships.”

Another missile on a ballistic course reached them and exploded in a blaze of nuclear fire. Hangman’s Shadow’s void shields flickered, but held. The plates of Stein’s armor trembled in annoyance as the squirming fleshmetal shifted. The enemy was so far away that the incoming missiles were unpowered by the time they got in close. This made them easy targets for point defense and maneuver, but even so. They were proving to be an exasperating navigational hazard.

He was a master of mechanology and yet he recognized nothing of the readings coming in from the sensorium. The enemy ships were of unknown design, built in ways that defied all logic. A more in-depth study was needed. Preferably when his fleet wasn’t taking fire.

But for now, he needed to reign in the fools racing in-system.

Stein stood, cabling unspooling from his harness, letting him walk about the bridge while still being plugged into the bridge systems, and took his place on the hololith communion pad at the center of the bridge’s great gallery. He banged the butt of his warcog axe on the deck.

“I want Antaryon and Mortekai. Now.”

The fused vox-slave let out a gurgling acknowledgement and the hololith pad ignited with ghostlight. After a short moment he felt the data handshake through his neural uplink verify the connection to the Tyrant of Enmity and the Bilious Prize. At least those two were still coherent enough to answer their vox.

Ghostly figures appeared as if through mist. Motes of light coalesced in the hololith to form the hulking figures of two massive Astartes.

Antaryon, lord of the Sons of the Butcher, was a towering pillar of fury. The hololith light seemed to dance and burn around him. His battleplate smouldered like black iron out of the forge and he wore a cloak of ragged skin taken from his defeated enemies. He paced, dragging the tip of a savage daemon blade across the deck of his bridge, leaving furrows of tortured metal. Stein’s tendrils recoiled in disgust, but the Warsmith himself showed no reaction to the wanton destruction of his ancient voidship.

In contrast to the Khornate lord’s impatience, Mortekai of the Mouldering Claw, was a languid presence, wholly unperturbed by the sudden summons of the nominal master of the the entire raiding force. The hololith motes danced around his projection like flies. His green Terminator plate was distended and cracked, Bilious fluid leaked from the joints and rotten flesh spilled from rents in the once-proud armor. His enormous bulk was carried by a horde of gibbering daemons that shouted and gamboled around him. The lord of contagion picked at the rusted surface of a cruel axe that rested across his swollen gut.

“Stein,” Antaryon spat, “what could you possibly want now?”

The insubordination would have rankled ordinary men, but Stein let it pass him by.

“Return to formation,” he said, “Sensorium readings do not support this course of action. Caution is required. Enemy strength is unknown.”

“Caution is cowardice and I do not follow cowards,” growled Antaryon, “This foe is mine. I’ll offer their skulls to the throne and yours too if you get in my way.”

“So impatient!” chortled Mortekai. He spoke like he had fluid in the lungs and the nurglings that held him jeered and echoed his words, “I must say that I am eager as well. We don’t want to let the enemy die without the seven blessings.”

“There is an asteroid belt between the fourth and fifth planet. Enemy ships appear as dormant debris. Calculations point to an ambush there.”

“I do not need a lecture on how to wage war from a glorified servitor. Nor will I be taken by surprise by Imperium dogs. There’s nothing in this system that could pose a threat to the Tyrant.”

Stein contemplated letting both of his “subordinate” warbands rush to their death. Would the Despoiler praise his foresight or punish his wastefulness? Losing two complements of Astartes warriors could be a black mark against him.

His contemplations were cut short by his vox-slave’s pained announcement of an incoming message.

“It is from the fourth planet, my lord. Enemy transmission!”

“Main viewer,” said Stein, “We shall see the face of our enemy, my lords.”

On the bridge’s massive pict-plate, the image of an Ork of truly massive size fuzzed into view. It sat upon a throne of scrap, weapons, and crude effigies atop a plateau of alien green stone. Crackling emerald energy danced in crystaplas bottles that were tended by smaller orks in white coats and set into carved alcoves within the stone. The sky was clouded by the exhaust of a legion of orkish vehicles idling below the throne dais.

“Well, well, well,” grumbles the Ork, “wot ‘ave we ‘ere? Puny ‘umies makin’ their way inta Warrakka’s system? S’been a long while since we fought any ‘umies!”

The image resolved even further and Stein was able to make out the truly incomprehensible armor in which the Ork was clad. Stacks belched black smoke and crude hydraulics powered a savage pincer claw that looked like it could cut an Astartes in half with ease. Muscles bulged beneath leathery green skin and red eyes flashed with brutal cunning.

“You’m be in my sights now!” it bellowed, stomping on one of the grots that was scampering around the scrap throne, “You’m be eager for a fight! But don’t go tryin’ ta be sneaky! Only Orkses can be sneaky! SHOW ‘EM BOYS!”

Threat warnings lit up the sensorium as the Ork Warboss’s order burned like fire through the system. The entire asteroid belt seemed to light with red foe-sign as dorman ships came online at the huge Ork’s word. Antaryon’s ship was barreling straight into what looked like an asteroid fortress bristling with ship-killer weapons.

A savage smile split Antaryon’s face. “This is more like it! Weapons to power! Bring reactor up to maximum yield!”

Stein dismissed the holo-ghost of the Khornate lord and went back to studying the Ork’s ferocious countenance. All along his body, strange electrodes were burrowed into his flesh. Arcs of emerald power crackled from the strange electro-bottles that surrounded the dais. The white-coated orks that scuttled around the ramshackle machinery started gibbering excitedly. Their boss’s ire was up.

“We’ll kill ya just like da other ‘umies! We gots da Horderock! FIGHT DA WAAAGH AND DIE LIKE DA REST! I’M DA BIGGEST, BADDEST WARBOSS AND YOU BOYS ARE GONNA FIND OUT!”

All around Warakka, his minions were dramatically throwing switches on their machines with great showers of sparks. More green lightning streaked and cracked, rending deep furrows into the dais. Most was drawn to the electrodes in Warrakka’s flesh and he bellowed as the power coursed through him. Muscles bulged and grew as the energy danced into him. The chords in his neck strained as the Warboss hunched over in pain.

The machines sputtered and started to explode, causing the Orks to start jabbering excitedly. Warrakka howled as he grabbed his vox-caster and started laughing. It seemed to Stein that the Orks eyes were looking through the vox and right at him. His tendrils thrashed with excitement.

“You think you gots what it takes, ‘umies?” he growled and crushed the caster in one massive hand. The vox went dead.

Stein turned to Mortekai, who was watching bemused through the hololith. “Make sure Antaryon doesn’t get himself killed. It seems the Orks have our warpstone.”

2 notes · View notes