//------------------------------// // Chapter 2 // Story: The Dark Heresy Chronicles: Operation:Equus // by General_Rex //------------------------------// Dark Heresy Chronicles: Operation: Equus Chapter 2 “A is for AHH!” Planet Side, Gliteram Prime Market District, Solomon 1200 hours (Terran Standard Time) “RUN FOR IT!” As he ran for his life, Solomon didn’t even notice he had barreled through a crowd of people, hearing confused responses and then a unified “AHH!” coming from over his shoulder. The odd looking group of people following his lead and sprinting as quick as they could, Solomon didn’t stop to ask or check to make sure they were keeping up, the more that slowed down, the greater his chances they would catch a bullet for him. Peering over his shoulder he saw the same two angry looking men he was trying to outrun, level large guns at them, a very loud barking sound emanating from them a clear sign they wouldn’t be talked down. “What’d you two do this time!?” a female voice demanded from just behind him. “Who? Us? Uh…” Solomon asked. “We didn’t do anything! We bought a drink, a guy said we should leave and of course we said no” a man stated. “How did you say no though is my question!” demanded the female. “We… may have… insulted his mother” “What!?” she screamed. “He asked for it! He touched my new coat, these aren’t cheap you know!” Solomon whined. “Guys their catching up!” warned a muffled male voice from near group’s rear. “Why does everyone you piss off Solomon, have a frakkin’ bolter!” It was a good point, many times in his career he had managed to insult, offend and generally screw with the wrong people, all of them somehow armed to the teeth with large firearms, mostly all bolter weaponry, but not stopping to count the exact times, he only concluded that this was something he should fix, later. As he turned the corner, a piece of the rockcrete building corner exploded next to him, the bolters explosive ammunition both terrifying him, and annoying him, the terror overriding his need for such a weapon, “AHH!” “God you’re all such little girls, we can take them!” claimed the groups other female member, “Comon lets kill them and nobody will mess with us anymore!” “Fine Azura, you stop and fight them! We’ll keep running!” said the man to his right, “Not if you guys aren’t! I won’t be left behind, that’s my job Carver.” said Azura. The group turned the corner and made with all haste to their shuttle, hopefully escaping these lunatics. “Give us our satchel back!” demanded someone from behind them. “What satchel?” asked the lady behind him. “Uh…” “What did you steal Solomon!” she demanded, “Ok! Fine we stole something, but it was for a good cause Ocenyou!” “What cause!?” demanded the now very angry woman, “The fancy kind!” he replied, suddenly gaining a much needed burst of speed that outpaced the sister of battle’s reach. Glancing into the satchel for a moment, Solomon saw his prize, a large gold encrusted crown, it was totally worth breaking a man’s arm and nearly killing a noble’s body guard for it. A contact, which was fancy for saying a drunk guard, had let slip that they were transporting a rare crown for a slumming noble, Solomon felt that he must liberate it in the name of himself, pulling his confused friend Carver with him and telling him the bogus story of how they had impugned his honor and he had simply responded accordingly, the penal trooper had believed every word of it like the idiot he was. “Almost there guys!” warned the muffled voice at the group’s rear. Solomon noticed that they easily outnumbered the nobleman’s guards and were just as well equipped except for the difference in weaponry, but they had just repaired their gear and were far too cheap to waste their precious bullets, especially when running was what they were better at. As the group plowed through the shuttle port, shoving random locals and assorted privateers aside, Solomon maneuvered himself towards their docking area; glancing to the side he noticed one of their missing group members. Solomon noticed Barek was sitting at a table with a bottle of wine and looked like he was trying to woo a pretty girl, hearing the commotion though he noticed Barek only gape in confusion as they sprinted past him, “What the hell, we’ve been in port no more than an hour?!” “No time Barek, we got Sol’ trouble!” Ocenyou screamed. “What!?” he yelled, quickly stealing a kiss from the woman and grabbed his bottle as he sprinted to catch up. “Alright what the hell happened this time…” Barek demanded, his question cut short by the sudden barking noise and bits of the wall exploding near him, “Never mind! Leg it!” As Solomon and the others finally entered the wide open shuttle area, he noticed the final member of their party, an average sized man with arms the size of small cannons, standing at the bottom of the shuttles ramp typing away on a data slate device, “Oh hey guys!” came the figures muffled helmet voice, waving at them, stopping only when he heard the gunfire behind them causing him to shake his head, “More local problems?” “You could say that ‘Scrat’” Ocenyou replied, Solomon didn’t stay to hear the rest of the conversation as he leapt for his seat on the shuttle and buckled in. More loud barking sounds hitting the shuttle gave Carmine the incentive to man the controls. “At least were safe in here” Solomon sighed, relieved that he had managed to make it without anything bad happening. The sound of the engines slowly spinning to life told Solomon the danger was now behind them, a small cry of shock from his left told him over wise. Slowly turning he saw his brown haired, slightly chubby faced friend Carver staring out the window of the shuttle pointing at something and whimpering. Squinting to get a better view, Solomon began flailing his arms and screaming too, Solomon noticed everyone except Carmine follow suit and voice their concerns, loudly. “AHH!” they screamed as Solomon watched the team of guards lower a very familiar tube weapon, reaching in a satchel and producing a needle pointed rocket, “Wait… where the hell did they get a RPG launcher?” Solomon asked, no one else paid his logical question any attention. “’Scrat’! RPG 9 o clock!” Ocenyou cried. “Um… it’s only ten past noon though” Carmine replied, answered suddenly seeing the RPG launcher, “OOHH!” he said and suddenly began tugging at the shuttles controls trying to get it air borne. “Damn it Carmine get us out of here!” cried Barek. “Woohoo you guys are finally gonna die!” Azura’s cheered. “Yo! Ding bat, if we die… you die too!” Carver pointed out. “Oh… damn… GET US OUT HERE!” she screamed loudly just as the the shuttle suddenly lurched and bucked as it gained altitude. “Common common common!” chorused the group, as Carmine strained his massive arms trying to lift the shuttle into the air. Slowly they cleared the hangar bay roof just as the RPG warhead flew towards them, Carmine hit the throttle controls and the whole shuttle jumped as it surged forward to safety. “Phew…” sighed Solomon, turning to see everyone else share his relief. “Yay! We're not gonna die!” Azura cheered, the energetic lady assassin only causing Solomon to roll his eyes, “Shut up!” they chorused, A sudden flash of light beside them caused Solomon to watch as a large shuttle slowly drifted towards their previous landing pad, its rear engine on fire, “Sucks to be you” Solomon admitted as he placed his arms behind his head, a loud boom! telling him that those guards would never bother them again. Solomon watched as the small craft made its way into the planet’s atmosphere, slowly heading high and high towards the looming figure of their mother ship just ahead awaiting their arrival. Ship side, Gliteram Prime Raider vessel, The Fortunatus 1247 hours (Terran Standard Time) Watching as the shuttle docked with the small Raider class vessel, a tall figure donning a black cloak and a large suit of black and gold armor stood on high looking down into the landing bay watching his specialist squad returning from another successful mission, which astounded him to no end. He had only formed one kill team previous to this squad, and they had become great heroes of the Imperium, but these people were far from them. The figure began walking along the cat walk towards an exit hatch having seen that his ‘team’ was still alive and having business elsewhere to handle and quickly departed. *** *** *** Carmine put the shuttle down in their allotted landing bay aboard the large raider vessel, noticing a small black human shaped figure watching them from the rafters, he ignored it as he shifted his attention back to landing the small shuttle. Swinging the small craft around, he noticed a group of soldiers moving towards them, a very unhappy woman leading them. Muttering a cruse under his helmet, Carmine set the shuttle down and unbuckled himself and unfortunately turned the helmets exterior sound systems on immediately being bombarded by the arguing voices of his peers. “No, No. That is not what happened! I told the gentleman how repulsive he was and then he became upset…” The snooty and pompous voice of the blue tinted psyker unmistakable from anyone else. “It didn’t even occur to you that it was a woman did it?” came another male voice, this one sounding far more serious, obviously the groups Arbiter, the man wearing a large set of fully enclosed carapace armor, his tall, black armored form creating a rather intimidating figure. Carmine sighed and began walking towards the rear, everyone completely ignoring him, they usually did when they were in the midst of arguing. Ocenyou, the groups nun and scholar, was reading a tome, next to her sat Azura, the lady ‘assassin’, who everyone really believed was just a crazed, emotionally disturbed woman rather than a sneaky cut throat, was asleep snoring rather un-lady like. Carmine who was unanimously voted shuttles pilot, since most the group were too lazy to save themselves let alone save the whole group, hit the activation rune on the wall to lower the ramp, waiting patiently while it lowered. Carmine turned to gather his bags, but as he turned he saw everyone already standing and filing in behind him still arguing over past exploits, Carmine pushed past them and let them face the angry guards alone. “How was I to know that such an action would cause such a hostile response? Most females would be more than gracious for a touch from me.” Solomon claimed arrogantly. “Son, you have a lot to learn about women if that’s how your greetin’ them” came the suave voice of the hive world nobleman, Barek, the groups pistoleer expert and average rich privateer. “Psshh” was the only response from Solomon, the groups blue tinted, bald, Astropath, the man believed he was second only to the god Emperor himself, only just. Carmine grabbed his duffle bag and headed back towards, the exit, the team already filing out the back and forming a group at the bottom of the ramp. Carmine walked out to see Solomon opening his arms welcoming the guards, “We return victorious!” The woman leading the guards stomped towards Solomon coming within inches of his face, “An entire mining facility and a space port successful destroyed, and you call that successful?!” she screamed. “Well, technically we didn’t blow up the space port…”Carver mumbled, Carmine to this day still wondered about that man, no one knew what he really did for a living except that he liked knives, a lot. Carmine could have sworn he saw smoke coming from the woman’s ears as she pushed the psyker aside and came face to face with Carver, “How is it not your fault!? The reports claim that the rocket clearly destined for you, impacted a shuttle carrying fuel and munitions, which then barreled into the stations stock of fuel!” “That’s just unfortunate luck ma’am, I mean who in their right mind puts fuel and munitions in the same transport?” replied Barek, Carmine nodded his approval at the intelligent statement, however telling a angry woman in a suit of powered armor, was not. Carmine prepared for the flood of curses and possible broken bones from the lady, the abuse though never came, only the sound of someone clapping. Carmine glanced past the woman, a tall, average looking man in a black armored bodysuit with scruffy looking head of brown hair was slowly approaching them flanked by an angry looking woman and a bald man trying to contain his laughter, both dressed the same as their leader. “I think they did a great job Canoness Raveria, and of course you should expect such interesting tactics from this group, they’re here because of their… unique approach to such situations” The clapping man said grinning at the woman, the praise though sounded more like an insult Carmine thought, but he wouldn’t deny the fact that they were bad infiltration operatives. The angry Canoness simply sighed and shook her head in disappointment, she motioned for the Sister Ocenyou to accompany her, Ocenyou quickly shoved her way to her mistress and ran to catch up with Raveria. Carmine turned to see the clapping man standing in front of them grinning still, “The High marshal wishes to speak to you all after you have cleaned up and refitted, see you all there at sixteen-hundred hours” the man said as he began walking away, Azura quickly moved to the small group and put her arms around the leader and the bald man, both removing her arms in disgust. “Sooo…” Carmine stared, turning to the group, “what now?” “I say we celebrate another job well done Carmine, and then get cleaned up and meet the High Marshal” Solomon suggested. “Solomon. Brilliant” Titus replied, removing his helmet and slowly moving to follow Solomon towards the bar “Well let’s go before something or someone… important finds us” Carver added as he jogged to catch up to the pair. Carmine watched the three leave, he glanced over to the side to see Barek examining his bottle of port and then race after the group too. Carmine sighed and wondered what he should do, finally deciding that a nap wouldn’t be a bad start. Underway, destination unknown Raider vessel, The Fortunatus 1600 hours (Terran Standard Time) Having finished her lengthy discussion over the operation, and about how her studies on Xenos and Warp phenomenon, Sister Ocenyou went about finding her team mates, which didn’t take any book smarts to know that they wouldn’t be on the bridge like they should be, so she started heading towards the bar in the lower crew decks, the usual place she could count on them being. Ocenyou would have rather continued studies with her mistress, but “duty calls” her mentor had said, practically shoving her out of the library to meet the High Marshal. Strolling through the halls in her church robes instead of her power armor left her with a vulnerable feeling, she had lived without the armor for most her Inquisitional career, but ever since having it she wore it whenever it wasn’t being cleaned and maintained, like it was now. Hanging her head and sighing in shame, Ocenyou slowly began the arduous trip towards into the bowls of the ship. *** *** *** After what seemed like ages of wandering the ships labyrinth of halls ways, Ocenyou eventually found the elevator taking her to the barracks level, once there she only had to follow the smell of hops till she heard the roar of laughter and the clanging of metal mugs. Entering the ‘establishment’, if it could be even called anything but a hole in the wall was hard, the smell was atrocious and the place looked like one would require a full medical examine if you touched anything. Sucking it up though and trying to ignore the disgusting place, Ocenyou pushed forward holding her nose and approached the table where her loud mouthed and immature comrades resided. “Heeyy… Bar keepsh” Carver said, slurring his words horribly as he waved his empty bottle around, “I… I want another! *hiccup*” Ocenyou shook her head in disgust, the thought of having to associate with these, heathens, made her want to cry. Looking at the penal trooper, who of course had no real name as far as they were concerned, simply used the name a banker had used to address him years ago, the name stuck and she went with it, the alternative meant trying to actually care about him, and making it easier if he died, to forget him. She noticed him drooling slightly; she cringed and turned to the only collected man in the bunch of them. A hand waving at the corner of her vision snapper her back to reality to see someone had handed her a pint and were having a conversation with her, Ocenyou shook her head and turned to Barek. “So…” Barek asked, “you alright Ocenyou?” “Oh... oh ya I’m fine Barek” she replied sheepishly. “Well alrighty then. Let’s go meet the High Marshal and see what all the fuss is about.” Barek said pounding his fists on the table and moving towards the exit. “Fine…” Solomon whined, Carver and Titus having already started leaving just as Barek had gotten up. “Comon guys, we had our fun, now we get back to earning our keep.” Carver stated, his speech and balance completely restored somehow, “Coming Sister?” “Oh… yah, lets go” she said, composing herself after letting her mind wander again back to her studies, she saw they were waiting for her at the exit, she raced to catch up, nearly falling in a pool of vomit on the floor which caused the others to laugh at her and then leaving, she sighed and ran after them. *** *** *** Ocenyou and the other four team members finally found the bridge after a lengthy and sobering journey, having gotten lost a few times as always. She saw Azura already standing near the High marshal, harassing one of the terminal operators with a quill, the High marshal turned to face the group and nodded, “Welcome, I read you’re after action report, it was very… exciting.” He said in his usual monotone, never letting showing a sign of emotion unless it was truly dire. “Wait who wrote an a report?” everyone asked, Ocenyou wanted to know too, feeling a sudden drop in temperature, Ocenyou slowly turned to see the others glaring at her, she smiled but she shook her head, “I didn’t do it.” “Yea, sure… tryhard…” Azura muttered. The sister corrected herself and stood at attention, her hands clasped behind her back, Titus being the only other who showed any respect, the others simply stood around, bored looks on their faces and general disrespectful behavior. “Where is ‘Scrat’?” she asked. “The Guardsman will be joining us soon, but you all may brief him later” the High Marshal said as he turned to a large circular table, a green holographic image appeared showing an image of a solar system. “This is your next assignment.” he said, an image of a large planet close to the systems sun, “A few weeks ago, a large Chaos force attack an Imperial fortress on a world known as Tillium V, they absconded with a very important artifact that had been under direct observation by members of the Inquisition. The fleet escaped after a clash with our ground and naval forces, the enemy fleets primary ship was crippled, but using their own ships to disable the Imperial forces, managed to escape.” “I’m assuming that’s the system they moved to?” Titus asked, the High Marshal only produced a data slate and began typing on the device, “No. Any images you see now are products of interference from The Fortunatus’s proximity to a viable warp entrance.” Ocenyou turned to the other members; they all looked just as confused as she, “Excuse me my Lord? It doesn’t look like any interference I’ve seen…” The High Marshal turned to her, staring at her for a moment and then back at the map, “You all will be deployed at an unknown and unspecified area in the void, no planets or habital systems will be in reach of your shuttle.” Ocenyou arched an eyebrow at the High Marshal as she watched him move around the table so he was facing the team directly, “Uhhh… sir? This sounds like a load of Inquisitional grox shit. Dropped in the middle of nowhere, in an unknown system with planets that you will show but won’t acknowledge and an unknown sized chaos fleet in the system with us… any clues as to how the frak we are supposed to accomplish this?” “That I leave to your discretion Arbiter, Dismissed” the Marshal ordered, turning back and leaving them. Ocenyou turned to see everyone wide eyed and gaping at their, encounter, with the High Marshal. “Sooo… what?” Barek asked, Ocenyou moved closer to the holographic image of the system, she noticed none of the bridge operators tried stopping her while she examined the image. “Barek, it looks like this is the area they tracked the ship too, but why wouldn’t the Marshal just tell us that?” she asked, “Cause he’s having a case of warp insanity? Who the frak knows Ocenyou…” Azura groaned as she continued harassing random bridge crewman. “See any Imperial presence in system?” “Doesn’t look like it Titus, all the information is locked to the highest degree… doesn’t even look like the High Marshal had the whole picture…” “Imperials sure do love their secrets don’t they…” Barek grumbled. Ocenyou looked around for more information she could make out from the image, the layout though had a simple name and only rotation cycles giving them a proper time table for events, the times matching almost perfectly with standard Imperial time. “Uhhh… guess we break for now?” Carver suggested. Ocenyou turned to see most the group already leaving, shrugging and expressing their annoyance at the situation. Ocenyou copied down what notes should for later study on the planet, the image disappearing suddenly as she went for her quill, she let out a heavy sigh and pushed herself away from the table and started strolling back to her quarters as she thought about what could be so important about the world that the High Marshal himself was only told half the story? *** *** *** The High Marshal walked with due haste to his quarters, the sudden lack of information on his current mission bothered him to no end, he didn’t enjoy sending any team he formed into a situation without proper knowledge. He walked through the doorway seeing the ships primary Tech priest still examining the intelligence packet he had been sent on this system, “Anything progress Master Quintus?” The tech priest sighed and turned to face him, “Nothing yet High Marshal, my master has taught me many ways of deciphering Imperial encryptions... but these are… ancient, I personally have never seen such technology. Whomever in this organization that sent this did not want…” The Priest stopped mid sentence, the Marshal turned to see a glowing image of a planet above the small circular device, “What is this?” “I-I don’t know Marshal… I touched nothing. It’s as if the machine spirit was only to share its secrets at a certain time.” The Marshal ignored the priest and moved closer to the image, information began blinking to life on every possible question to be had about the world, the High Marshal stood awed by the information he began reading, “Tell the Lieutenant and his team that I require their presence here immediately, they will brief Alpha squad on this new information.” “Yes High Marshal… may I be so bold as to ask… why not only have the Lieutenant and his team perform such a important mission? Alpha team lacks the… subtlety that the Lieutenant’s team possess.” The High Marshal turned to the Tech priest, “Exactly why they are necessary. This new… information, has changed how we are to approach this… bring me all text our librarium has on this image” the Marshal demanded. The tech priest said nothing but his footsteps evident of his departure. The Marshal took a seat and admired the image, “Very interesting” he muttered as he squinted his eyes and glared at the eldric symbol, six distinct colored dots surrounding the rune, “Very, very… interesting”