Prose looks at Curtis and speaks softly.

These souls have given their lives unto the great enemy, I feel as though I will be joining them by the end of this day, but at the rite side of the emperor… for I do not know how much of this abuse I can take at my body’s current status. I am sorry to tell you this Curtis, but every of the faithful has at their core an ability to become a martyr, remember that child.”

He pulls the ancient plasma pistol from the death grip of the frog-daemons body and tucks it into his cassock.

Lucious hails the craft once again but the response is always the same, a screech of jammed signal feedback.

His synthetic voice echoes from the vox speakers, “Unidentified craft vectoring on approach sweep. 27km and closing.”

Lazerus, Stig and Tauron dash into the storeroom. Curtis urges Prose to follow and then falls in behind them.

Lazerus stops at the elevator and hoists himself up the cable. Stig continues on into the generatorium with Tauron.

Curtis follows Lazerus up the cable. Prose is to weak to climb.

Stig and Tauron burst through the doors to the generatorium. Sila and Kron are surprised partially drawing weapons before recognition sets in. Lucius head down and mechadendrites plugged into the cogitator array doesn’t even notice.

Stig removes the shackle from Taurons left wrist and reattaches it to a conduit along the battery stacks.

“Where are the others?” Asks Kron weakly.

Stig sprints back out to the storage room and climbs up to the shuttle hangar. As he crawls over the lip he sees Lazerus and Curtis take up a position behind a stack of stolen cargo crates near the ruined shuttle. Stig quickly moves tot he far side of the shuttle and sets up his stubber for a nice crossfire.

Lucious’ voice barks from the vox grills.

“Unidentified craft is slowing for landing. Trajectory aligned with this bases hangar bay. I will report visual data promptly. Estimated landing time after visual report 3 minutes.”

Stig drags Tauron over to the service area and scans the tables. There is nothing of obvious use to the guardsman.

Lazerus works the steel latch and pulls open the door nearest the elevator. There is a hiss as the seal is broken and cold frosty air billows out from the breach. The great metal door swings open on well oiled hinges and a lume strip flickers to life inside.

The chamber which appears to be a cold storage is tall and deep. Three vaguely humanoid forms lie on rubber sheathed metal tables in the center of the room. They appear to be made of or wrapped in raw meat. Tubes and wires run from the red and purplish flesh to arcane looking boxes above the heads. The boxes glow with green lights in the for of unrecognizable runes and symbols. The meat shivers and twitches and the boxes let out little beeps. Tauron gasps recognizing the meat sarcophagus for what he so recently escaped.

Lucious’ voice burst from the overhead vox grills.

“Attention! Attention! Inbound craft at 40km. Navigational trajectory lock this facility. ETA 5 minutes. I am opening the hangar bay doors. Mark. Now.”

Lucious tries to hail the ship but receives the squeal of a jammed frequency instead of a response.

Sila helps Kron to stand and they ready themselves for the inevitable.

Prose looks sorrowfully over his shoulder at Kron.

“Only through our doom can salvation truly be reached.” The wounded priest whispers. He then walks slowly and with great pain out the doors headed for the hangar bay on the level above. When he reaches the large storeroom Curtis calls to him.

“Where are you going, Father?” She asks.

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This hallway doesn’t look familiar at all, but it was dark and he was being pursued by daemonic frog headed surgeons. Perhaps he missed a few details.

Heavy steel doors with sealant cuffs around the edges appear along the left wall. They are three meters tall and two wide, set at a distance of two meters apart. There are four of them. They seem to hum with the vibration of hidden machinery. On the right the is a large alcove four meters wide and deep carved as is the tunnel into the solid rock of the mountain. The alcove is a jumble of cast off machinery parts, work tables, and portable cogitator modules on small dolly wheels. Tools and stained log books litter the work space.

The tunnel continues for a bit then ends in a set of red elevator doors.

Curtis walks about in the main store room area, she prods each of the bodies of the dead with her boot tip then moves on. Always keeping watch on the southern passage.

Prose heaves a slow sigh of relief as Sila’s magic mends his ruined flesh. When she is finished she helps him to take a seat on the floor near Kron and then re-bandages the Priest’s wounds.

Lucius scans the bases data flow. The old mechanicus station was built to last and it seems every the heavy fighting of the last few hours has done little to damage it. A few lights have been destroyed and several of the surveillance camera ruined. The base is over all intact. Lucius can see Lazerus and the other moving down a tunnel labeled Level 2 Mainway East – Cold Storage + Workshop A. He can see Curtis examining the remains of one of the servitors in the main storage hall. He can two laboratories/surgeries strewn with equipment and bizarre apparatus. An alert appears, blinking in his peripheral. Lucius accesses it. The alert is from the external trans-atomospheric sensor array. There is a craft inbound 50km away moving at appropriate landing speed with balanced trajectory to the shuttle bay. The shuttle bay bulk head doors remain closed. The bases anti-aircraft weapons are off line.

Kron wakes up. “We are all damned.” He whispers.

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“Well, something went that way.” Tauron nods to the southern passage. “I believe the chest I mentioned lies in the other direction.” Tuaron starts confidently towards the eastern passage muttering, “This has turned out to be a most exciting holiday. I must make a note of it when I get my belongings ba-urrghkk!”

Stig hauls on the shackles and pulls the noble up short.

“Curtis, you stay here and keep an eye on that southern passage. If anything comes back let us know. Stig, let’s go check out the eastern passage” Lazerus says. Curtis nods. He and Stig then head for the eastern passage, dragging Tauron along.

The eastern passage entrance is a spectacular display of gore. Lumps of raw meat punctuated with jagged white bone are heaped in the archway. Chunks of dark meat organ are stuck stuck to the walls and everything is painted in thick black blood. The stench is over powering. The over head panel lights didn’t survive the shoot out and so the passage continues away into darkness. Stig’s lamp pack reveals a long straight passage.

Lucius shuffles about in the shadows tending to the arcane control panels. He removes a rune etched dust cover from a access terminal, pulls a silver tipped feed line from his hood and plugs into the bases cogitation mainframe. Streams of data flood his augmented mind.

Prose rolls over and climbs unsteadily to his feet. He is a ruin of a man. His charred and melted flesh swathed with weeping bandages. His clothing is crumbling rags, fused in some places with his blistered flesh.

He pulls his blackened pistol from a brittle holster and takes up a position by the generatorium doorway.

Sila watches him as he moves with agonizing slowness. She lowers her head and whispers another prayer to the Emperor, then lowering Kron’s unconscious head onto her pack she rises and approaches the Priest.

“Father, wait. I will tend to you wounds.”

She raises her hands towards him. Her eyes and finger tips begin to glow a gentle blue.”

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I believe Ghus is ready to take his place in the war for the fate of humanity. I can’t say I like his gun. Everyone else seems to think it’s great, but if I was keeping Ghus I would probably rip of that arm and go with something more brutal and straight forward.

I should have his back story piece up here later this week.

So let me know what you think.

Mr. Ghus is coming along nicely. He has a nice yellow coat and a proper crusting of grime. He maintains a personal level of filth only a foot soldier of the arch enemy stationed on a daemon world can manage. He wields a weapon of alien design, from a different time and space, cast out of the warp at the whim of a dark prince. Ghus recovered the strange gun from the detris of blue scabs which form the no man’s land of his current home. He and all around him view the weapon as a boon of chaos and many now give Ghus a respectful distance while others plot to take it for themselves.

The Arbiter then snaps the manacle back in place and tugs the young noble to the doors.

“A fine plan. As I said, I’d like to see what was in that chest I saw before. It seemed…important.” Tauron rambles as he let’s himself be dragged along.

Curtis falls in next to Stig. Lucius moves close and talks to Sila in hushed tones.

He then turns to Lazerus. “We will stay here for now. I must monitor the restart of the generatorium. They shall wait with me until Kron and Father Prose are mobile. ”

The tech priest walks off into the shadows of the generator banks. Sila is whispering to Kron.

Stig pulls the large doors open and the medical tape rips away. Wisps of gas gust along the ceiling and are suck away up the shaft.

The group moves out into the storage room once more.

The room is huge. Carved with Mechanicus lasers from the mountain bedrock, the vaulted chamber appears far more massive than it did cloaked in darkness. The place is a charnel house. Great swathes of blood are splattered and splashed across the floor, walls, and the piles of shipping containers, press foam cargo casks, iron stowage lockers and wooden crates stacked at random around the room.  The containers are riddled with bullet holes and las burns and the twisted and burnt bodies of your enemies lie crumpled and ruined where they fell.

Curtis lets out a sigh of breathe as she surveys the total carnage.

The cargo lift is still stopped near the ceiling, its corner melted into a stalactite of hardened slag. A blood soaked, meat choked corridor leads off to the east and an identical passage heads south. A wet trail of bloody slime moves off down the southern way.

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I put some primer on Ghus. Now I have to decide on a paint scheme. I’m seeing ochre in his future.

Lucius fumbles in the shadows of a right hand naive. The shaft of light from his lamp pack chops back and forth wildly revealing the slab sides of STC style heavy generators set in uniform rows.

“Stay calm everyone, what you’re seeing isn’t real. Just hold it together until the visions stop.” Lazerus states calmly and firmly, holding his open palms out to the other members of the group.

Stig secures the door and seals it against the gas as best he can with remaining bits of first aid tape from the med kits.

Sila lays Kron down on the floor and removes his mask. She continues to hover over him occasionally pressing her palms to his face and chanting monastic imperial prayers.

Curtis checks her weapon and lamp pack then disappears into the left nave.

Lazerus leans in close to his prisoner. Tauron can smell the rank two week old sweat and rancid jungle mud on the big Arbiters clothes.

“Who are you and what are you doing here? You give me the impression that you aren’t with the rest.” He growls into the young mans face.

The youth, his eyes wide, with gas induced hysteria, stutters. “Firstly, I must mention, that your face appears to be melting. I don’t know if that’s something you commonly do, but it’s a but unnerving. Secondly, I am Tauron… Tauron Delphinius Forterex Mondus Ar’ Leigh. I was on a holiday cruise on one of my families lesser pleasure barges, when next I know, I’m covered in, what can only be described as a meat suit. Some foul servitor then came in and injected me with Emperor knows what, and stuck me in another room with all manner of unsavory looking instruments. I tried to reason with the thing as best as I could but it injected me again. I finally got fed up with the whole ordeal and walked away. Frankly, I was a bit surprised it worked. That brings us to our meeting and your rough handling of my person.” Tauron looks around and says, “Now that I’ve answered your questions I have a few of my own. By what right do you have to fetter me? By what right do you have to strike me, and lastly, WHO THE HELL ARE YOU AND WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!?!”

“I am Lazerus Zuriel, Member of the Adeptus Arbites and Agent of the Imperial Inquisition.” Lazerus flashes his rosette. “The big guy next to me is Sgt. Stig, Imperial Guard and fellow member of the Inquisition.”

Stig pull spare clothes from his satchel and tosses them at Tauron. Te big man then removes his ruined chest armor and sets to work bandaging the well cooked flesh of his torso.

Tauron holds up a shirt much to large for him and then raises an eye brow at Lazerus as he jingles the arbite shackles at him.

Lazerus sneers at him. “What sort of proof do you have of any of this? For all I know you could be one of the pirates, rather likely given what we saw just before meeting you actually.” He says.

Tauron scowls. “If you are, who you say you are, then take me as your prisoner until we can get to a place where we can have both our identities proven. If proof is what you require.” He turns to Stig and says, “Thank you for this garb, it shall do well enough until I can get to mine own clothes.” Tauron raises his voice to be heard by the rest of the scattered group “Are we entirely sure that those monsters outside are dead; or at least close enough to let us be as we make good our escape? I saw something in the room I was in, that might be of some interest. A finely carved chest, it could contain some answers for why they were holding me, and what, in the Emperors name, is going on here.”

“We’ll see. Just let the cogboy do his thing for now.” Lazerus replies.

Tauron replies, “Yes, yes, agreed. In the meantime, let’s discuss the knee deep pool of blood we appear to be standing in. I suppose this sort of thing happens often to you, given your general lack of concern, but I am new to having insects crawl out of my finger nails.” He rolls over onto his belly making swimming motions, mumbling about prime apes being able to paddle effectively in a non-corrosive substance.

Curtis walks slowly out of the left naves shadows. She pauses by the pit and looks over its rim.

“Long way down there,” she spits a glob of phlegm into the shaft.

“There is a suddenly flash of blue lightning along the ceiling, the floor begins to vibrate and a loud electric hum fills the air. The lights, huge banks of silver cone shrouded floods, flicker on and everything is lost in white blindness for a moment. As everyone’s eyes adjust, Lucius saunters out from behind the row of generators.

“Behold,  meatbags! The Omnissiah gifts you with illumination once again.” He bows mockingly.

Oh Ghus, you horrible savage you. You’re all geared up and ready to spill some blood for the blood god.

Looks like it’s time for some primer.I’m going to try white primer this time. I have only used black in the past, at least for minis. Terrain being a different story.

Wish me luck.

The dog thing stops twitching. Stig looks around slowly as if in shock, then recognizing the swirling gas for what it is begins to yell, “Gas! Gas! Gas!”

He and Lazerus fumble their respirators from side pouches and fit then to their heads. Curtis and Sila follow suit.

Lucius having no need of a respirator, walks crookedly over to the now inert gas canister and retrieves it with metal fingers.  He hold sit up to his optics and turns it slowly around.

Stig is surprised to find his hand is only slightly bruised after his gun exploded, which seems a small concession considering his melted chest.

Stig notices a huge pile of bloody skulls in the corner of the room, which didn’t seem to be there earlier.

The big guardsman makes his way to Lazerus and they drag the unfortunate Tauron towards the Generatorium doors.

Lazerus can hear shouting off in the darkness followed by the cries of children. He sees that the floor is covered in blood and it seems to be growing deeper.

Lucius speaks as they pass him. “Be warned meatbags. This canister contained a micronised neuro-toxin. A highly volatile hallucinogenic aerosol compound. You may begin to experience brain dysfunctions.”

The tech priest slips the canister into a belt pouch and marches towards the Generatorium doors.

Hearing his words Sila hurries to Kron and fits the man’s own respirator over his head.

Curtis seems to be slapping at unseen insects.

Tauron hangs slack in the grip of his large captors. He stares up at them, their faces hidden behind black masks, as they drag him towards the large double doors.

“I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot…” He gasps still trying to catch his breath. Tauron, his heels scraping along the rockcrete, notices that the lens of his captors masks have begun weeping thick rotten blood.

Stig kicks the door open and it swings silently into another dark chamber. Lucius limps past him. The Priests lamp pack shows another identical set of doors which Lucius pushes throws wide.

“I will perform a diagnostic ritual to determine the status of the power grid.” The Tech Priest barks at Lazerus and limps off to the right.

The others file inside, Curtis carrying Prose, Sila helping Kron, who seems vaguely conscious as if in a trance.

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The strange purple tinted gas from the grenade has thinned to a swirling mist. The wisps of vapor seem to form into faces and people and things, dark things.

The servitors continue to look confused even as Curtis steps around Lazerus and the flailing Tauron, and opens fire on them. The las bolts miss, flashing away into the darkness and the servitor barely seem to notice.

Tauron squirms and thrashes, shouting, “Get me away from this, my father will not let this stand! Whomever harms me will be dealt an awful death!” He struggles fiercely against Lazerus spoiling the man’s aim as he tries to fire his autogun at the servitors. But the Arbiter has the leverage and he drives his knee down hard into Tauron solar plexus stunning him.

Sila stalks across the room firing as she advances. Her shots flare over the heads of the idle servitors.

Stig rolls up onto his knees and fires his remaining pistol at the crouching dog beast. The first round hits it square in the chest and the beast squeals, the second round teas off its lower jaw showering the floor with black blood and gristle. The third and fourth shots punch through its thick skull and the beast collapses with a gurgling growl. It lies twitching in an ever widening pool of it foul blood.

Lucius still shouting derisive curses at the servitors marches directly up to them and begins ripping at their power feeds and coolant tubes.

“This Omnissiah forsaken tech heresy must be abolished immediately. He appears to know what he is doing and in a moment both of the machines are hunched over powerless and non-functioning. The sputtering flares fall to the rockcrete floor from lifeless fingers. He turns to Lazerus with a fist full of wiring, which he brandishes in the air. “This will not stand! This… this… the Omnissiah’s justice will be done here.”

The wounded frog slinks off into the dark and shifting gases. Dark figures and twisted shadows move through the chemical fog as it closes over it. You hear a chorus of barking laughter followed by a hissing sighs which seem to come from everywhere at once.

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Da Grot’s Life.

Thanks for reading.

Tauron, eyes wide, runs past Stig screaming, “Kill it! Kill it! Kill! Now now now!” The frantic noble races straight into a powerful fore arm close line move by Lazerus. Tauron’s feet go out from under him and he hits the floor hard with a choking cough, the wind knocked from his lungs. As he struggles to suck in a breath, the arbiter’s knee comes down hard on his chest pinning him to the ground. Zip click! A second later Lazerus has the young man rolled over hands fastened behind his back with a pair of blackened steel arbiter manacles.

Sila lays the unconscious Kron gentle on to the floor, she then slowly rises, stepping over him and drawing her las pistol. She places herself between Kron and the enemies and takes aim with the hand gun.

The dog beast yanks a cylinder from its harness, then rears up on its hind legs and throws the object into the center of the warehouse chamber. The cylinder hits the ground with a clank and begins to spin across the floor expelling pressurized gas in a thick growing cloud.

Stig drops low to the ground his auto stubbers roaring. The Surgeon, his frog brain screaming alien incantations, fires his grotesque plasma gun simultaneously.

In a simultaneous hurricane of violence, Stig snarls as he drops, the pistol in his right hand firing a semi auto burst. The Surgeon fires his evil gun and a screeching sphere of white hot plamsa streaks towards Stig. Stig’s bullets find their mark, two rounds punch into the surgeons chest and two more blast through the glass dome of his head. The frog bowls shatters explosively and it’s squealing slippery contents onto the floor as the mechanical body falls backwards to land in a twitching heap. The gun in Stigs left hand jams, the round in the chamber detonates and the gun comes apart violently in his hand just as the plasma burst hits him full in the chest. Stig rolls across the floor with the impact, his chest plate molten and sputtering with white hot fire, the melted flesh beneath sizzling and popping.

Curtis fires a rapid burst of las over Lazerus’ head. The foremost servitor is blown apart under the impacts. It’s left arm flies from its shoulder in a shower of sparks, its chest panel shatters and bursts into flames and finally as it spidery mechanical legs give out its head explodes and the terrible thing slumps to the ground.

The two remaining servitors swivel their heads back and forth in jerky motions. Their gruesome close combat weapons hang limp at their sides. They seem confused and unable to act.

Lucius shouts from across the chamber, ”Purge the hereteks! For the Omnissiah tolerates not the heathen forms of tech heresy! DESTROY THIS ABOMINATION!” He limps forward waving his las pistol in the air.

The frog creature crawls slowly away, trailing foul fluids from two ragged bullet wounds and hundreds of tiny cuts from the shattering bowl.

The big room slowly fills with smoke from the spinning grenade.

Lucius limps, towards the fallen priest, his damaged leg clanking loudly with each step.

Sila cradles Kron in her arms, rocking him and whispering prayers into his ear. She looks up with a start as Stig yells.

“Freeze! Get down! Down on the floor now!” The big guardsman shouts, raising his guns at the naked man pinned in his lamp beam.

Tauron peers in the the light.

“Are you friend or foe? I’ll have your answer now. I haven’t any more patience for this place.” He says with aloof annoyance. Stig’s fingers tighten on the triggers. Lazerus stops his sweep and hurries towards the commotion.

Suddenly, the sound of movement in the darkness behind Tauron distracts Stig, and Tauron turns sharply, peering over his shoulder into the black.

A burning bright red flare bursts into life, quickly followed by two more. The too bright sputtering crimson glow reveals the tall rags swaddled form of the daemonic frog bowl surgeon, flanked by three misshapen servitors, their baleful eyes glowing green, each holding a sputtering flare rod with one of its many mechanical limbs. Crouching near the surgeons legs is what appears in the lurid flare light to be a large hairless dog. Its head and snout are shaped like a mallet, the features are blunted. It is wearing a complicated leather harness around its trunk . The horror sits back on its hunches and raises its forelegs revealing human shaped hands complete with thumbs. The dog beast grins showing thick black gums set with double rows of arrow head teeth. The daemonic frog flops and twitches in its bowl. Garbled gibberish blasts from its chest speaker and the noise feels like a slap in the face as it washes over Stig and Tauron. The batrachian headed surgeon raises its clockwork arms and points a brazen object, like a screaming gargoyle caged in brass pipes, directly at Stig.