My Little Warhammer: Friendship is Heresy

by evilsoup

Invisible Pink Unicorn

Colonel-custodian Mangum took a glance up at the arched ceiling of the corridor, shook his head and kept walking. The height of the butressed, ornate ceiling (as intricately designed as anything Mangum could remember from Akarak) made him feel very small, so he tried to ignore it. To his right was major Garald; to his left custodian Faral Mangum, the colonel's cousin and aide-de-camp.

The three of them had met the admiral the day after the regiment embarked on the ship, and had met him five times over the month-and-a-quarter they had been aboard. Colonel Mangum had an austere upbringing; he held self-discipline to be (second to obedience to the Imperium, of course) the most important virtue, and so found the fat, smelly admiral both disgusting and morally abhorrant.

They were nearly at the command centre now, walking past the engraved mural of - so far as colonel Mangum could tell - angels fighting some kind of goblins. He didn't doubt that it had some symbolic meaning, but he didn't care for such things; and even if he did, it would rankle him to have to ask admiral Kil-ban-Ocean for an explaination.

At first the naval guards had been somewhat wary of Mangum, but by now they fixed him with a stare that was not quite contemptuous, but certainly not respectful. Those at the door (four today; it's usually two ... the fat man's probably nervous that the xeno scum will attack again...) at least had the manners to salute him, even if they did so far slower than he'd allow any man under his command to get away with. One of the midshipmen (a child of thirteen; while the uniform he was wearing was scrupulously tidy, it was also just slightly too big for him) stepped forwards and gave a quick salute.

"Colonel, admiral Kil-ban-Ocean awaits you and your staff in his void-cabin. Please follow me."

The boy turned sharply, and the great doors to the command chamber began to swing open. As the three officers followed him, major Garald whispered into his ear:

"They really like their theatrics, don't they?"

Mangum nodded, glanced over his shoulder at his cousin, whose moth was open slightly.

The admiral's void-cabin was towards the front of the command chamber; to get to it, they had to walk the length of the room. It taller than a cathedral hall - it rivalled even the reception hall in the Lord Governer's palace, which Mangum had visited to recieve his commission as colonel of his regiment. He felt even smaller than before, but pushed that emotion away. He could hear his cousin's footsteps faltering, no doubt the idiot's impressed by all this...

The command chamber was tall, but fairly narrow: it only took them two minutes to reach the admiral's void-cabin. They waited for the midshipman to enter and announce them to the admiral; the boy came out a few seconds later and held the door open for them.

The admiral's void-cabin was almost spartan compared to his regular suite: it was a single room, with a relatively plain (but still quite ornate) table and three chairs; a sink and mirror (framed with an elaborate gold frame, inset with many skulls and topped with the double-headed Imperial Aquila) by the wall; on the far side was a deep red curtain, trimmed with gold, obscuring his bed.

Admiral Kil-ban-Ocean was sitting behind the table, the top button of his uniform undone, collar pressed down to cover a recent food stain. Disgusting, thought colonel Mangum; he glanced down at the tabletop - the baroque, carved dark wood around the edge of the table belied the archaeotech holo-display, projecting a miniature topography of the world below. Kil-ban-Ocean gestured to the two empty chairs in front of him.

"Colonel, major, please sit. Regalis, be a dear and fetch a chair for the colonel's aide."

The door slid shut; the midshipman scurried off. Mangum sat down, Garald gingerly followed suit; Faral crossed his arms. The colonel looked at Kil-ban-Ocean expectantly; the Admiral began to speak.

"Now, colonel, we need to decide when and where to attack - and, indeed, if we should attack-"

"If!? With all due respect, admiral, we must attack, and right away!"

"Oh? You yourself encountered the creature that attacked my ship. By my evaluation, and that of my mental-savants and all the measuring instruments under my control, it seems to be as powerful as it claimed."

"That-" - Mangum sputtered, his fists clenched in rage; "are you afraid of this alien vermin!?" - he stood up, the high-backed chair falling backwards in a crash. Major Garald was vibrating with anger; Faral was looking, puzzled, at something behind the admiral.

"I took an oath when I took command of my regiment: by the Emperor, to fight all threats to Mankind and the Imperium, no matter how mighty they might seem!"

Kil-ban-Ocean was not intimidated or impressed by the colonel's outburst; if anything he found it amusing. Cute, even. He replied calmly:

"As an admiral of the Imperial Navy it is my duty to evaluate the facts before committing a warship of this value to battle. And the fact is that the alien vermin could crush this ship like an insect-"

Mangum howled, slammed both his fists down on the table.

"The Inquisitor ordered us to attack!"

"The Inquisitor is not here."

"We have a duty-"

"Do not-" - the admiral sat forward; "-think to lecture me on duty, you jumped-up prison warden. Listen! To. Me. As I was going to say before your outburst, I have evaluated all of the facts, and I have determined that we must attack - but not now. Not piecemeal, as the Inquisitor insisted on. We must wait a week for the rest of the forces to arrive-"

"We cannot wait that long. The algae vats that feed my regiment have been completely polluted by some kind of poison. The emergency rations we have will last at most two days."

"Ah- uh, Admiral?" - it was Faral; "Is there anybody else in this room, apart from us? I swear I saw something-"

"Faral!" the colonel shouted; "Shut up. Well, admiral, do you agree that we have to attack? Unless you can feed my three thousand men-"

"Yes, yes," the admiral waved an arm dismissively, sat back in his chair; "Or rather, no. I simply haven't got the resources."

"Very well," he sighed; "Since the when has been decided for us, we shall have to concentrate on where to attack. You can see here a holographical map of the alien world. One of my mental-savants has marked the areas that he intuits are important cities..."

----

Moondancer stayed as still as she could. This was not easy: the smooth metal of the floor was unnerving underhoof, made it hard to keep balanced. She slowed her breathing, trying to stay quiet, concentrating on the human soldiers in front of her and on maintaining the invisibility spell.

Unit 14c were lined up with the rest of block 14 in the armoury. The regimental quartermaster and his two assistants were standing behind a long metal desk, giving out the necessary kit as the prisoner-soldiers shuffled past. A buzz had been growing all day: excitement that they were finally to be allowed off-ship, tinged with fear. With her highly-public appearances throughout the ship, there had been no use in trying to hide the alien's incursion. There was a strictly-enforced eyes-forward rule, intended to reduce conversation between prisoners, but the armoury was not silent.

Keeping his head as still as possible, moving only his eyes, Madrin glanced around the room. Larek Dag, standing in the line just behind him, had been whispering to him for nearly half an hour; and Madrin was worried that custodian Khofi (or one of his assistants) would notice and punish the whole unit.

"I tell you what, Madrin, this whole situation - I mean, at first I thought 'oh shit, Larek, this is another fine mess you've gotten yourself into', but the way I see it, this whole thing's an oppertunity, right?"

Dag paused for a moment, as if waiting for a reply. Madrin cursed silently - he knew where this was going, everyone in unit 14c had heard Dag's heretical ramblings. He studied the far wall as best as he could, trying to ignore Dag. The wall was covered in propoganda but, along with two-thirds of the regiment, Madrin could not read the messages. He liked the pictures though: a giant-sized strong-jawed clean-cut guardsman in a uniform he barely recognised saluting the room; a boot stamping on the face of some ugly green alien; a row of guardsmen, much healthier-looking than anyone in the 9th Akarak, standing strong against a wave of hulking, misformed aliens holding sticks. But...

What's that..? - some of the posters were slightly blurred, as if there was slightly-imperfect glass in the middle of the room. Despite himself, Madrin turned his head a little: there was definitely something there, only ten feet from where he was standing.

"...I mean, shit, if they turn out to be good, there's no reason we couldn't keep some around, ya know? Just for f-"

"Do you see that?" - Madrin nodded at the blur. Dag turned his head slightly.

"See what?"

"That ... blur, in the middle of the room."

"I-" - Dag fell silent. Footsteps echoing on the metal floor, approaching Madrin: he looked straight ahead, his mouth dry. Custodian Khofi took a step in front of him, smiled his humourless, sadistic smile.

"Were you saying something, 14c09?"

"Cuh- custodian, I thought I saw something-"

"Oh really," sneered Khofi; "and what did you think you saw, Madrin?"

Madrin looked at the custodian, then turned his head slightly. It's still there-

Moondancer had never felt so scared in her life as the moment when that guardsman looked her right in the eye (she looked down quickly to check that she was still invisible) and pointed at her. The man standing next to him - the custodian, she reminded herself - first looked like he was going to laugh. But then his face dropped, he drew his pistol and pushed through the line, striding towards her.

She took a step backwards, and her the sound her hoof made startled her out of her invisibility. The custodian shouted wordlessly, the entire room turned to look at her: the custodian raised his pistol and fired at Moondancer.

It was not a well-aimed shot, but it grazed the top of her leg and produced an explosion of pain. Moonadancer felt her leg go weak, fell down; she could feel blood seeping from the wound. Her first instinct was to work some healing magic, but she could see the custodian levelling his pistol to deliver the coup-de-grace. Only one thing for it...

The wounded little unicorn was enveloped in a ball of pink light, and then disappeared.

----

Since the alien creature's intervention, things had been more pleasant for Dutal. He still had his floor-scrubbing duties, but Travis was ... not nice, exactly, but less actively beligerent. When the chief petty officer came around on his regular inspections, he normally found some imaginary fault with Dutal's work, and used it as an excuse to berate and belittle and beat Dutal. But not today. Today he had been left in peace to get on with his work, with Travis only making a token appearance when he had to. Dutal was sure that Travis was being careful with the other men under his command, wary of intervention.

There was a quiet fizzing pop noise from behind Dutal. He turned his head, then his whole body, to see the pink little unicorn slumped on the floor, bleeding onto the deck. She looked up at him, scared. He raised his hands to show he had no weapon.

"I- It's- It's oh- okay, I'm a ... friend."

She nodded, winced, looked to her leg. Her horn emitting a pink light, a similar shade to her skin and hair. Dutal watched, fascinated, as the skin either side of the nasty gash on the side of the unicorn's leg pulled together and fused into one. He touched his cheek absently; that is what it must have looked like...

She turned her head to face him; there was a sleepy look in her eye. There was a lot of blood pooled around her.

"H-help ... I need somewhere to rest."

Dutal's mouth opened and shut a few times, and he nodded slightly, as he tried to think of somewhere. If Travis sees all this blood... - it needed to be somewhere close by, to let him get back in time for the chief petty officer's inspection.

"Can you walk?"

Moondancer struggled to stand, the deck slippery with blood, took a hesitating step towards Dutal - and nearly fell over. He rushed in and grabbed her round the neck, steadying her. Glancing down, he could see a red smear across the front of his ragged, tea-coloured clothing.

"W- where are we going?"

"To the gun deck. There are plenty of places for you to hide for a while, and it's close by ... this way..."

----

The plans were set. The admiral had given the order for the landing craft to be prepared: they were currently being towed into place in the launch bay by galley-slave-gangs pulling long chains, the automated system having been destroyed in the ship's famous attack on Gaudius V.

The admiral was standing by the door to his void-cabin, and the three Akarak officers were about to be on their way to co-ordinate the regiment's disembarkation, when a naval rating

"So, what - we're overrun with these things?" - Mangum

"I- I don't know, sir, we've only spotted one - and that was shot by custodian Khofi-"

Mangum turned to the admiral.

"Well, what are we going to do about this!?"

"We? Well, you are going to lead your men down to the planet, as we have decided."

"But, surely you'll want to use my men to search for-"

"Colonel, I have no desire to see your ... men disrupting the operation of my ship. I have my own security people, who are a great deal better trained and disciplined than your little gang of rapists."

Faral: "Sirs!"

Mangum: "Oh what is it, Faral!?"

"I- I think I saw something back there, in the admiral's office. Sort of a ... shimmer."

The colour drained from Mangum's face. Kil-ban-Ocean brought his hand to his face, a disbelieving look on his face. It was major Garald who first managed to speak.

"By the Emperor ... if one of those things was in there, it would know all of our plans!"

Colonel Mangum drew his pistol, pushed the admiral aside, strode back into the void-cabin. He screamed wordlessly, and fired two dozen wild shots in rapid succession: large chunks flew out of the sturdy table; the chairs closest to him were destroyed utterly; the sink shattered and the mirror's glass boiled away; the curtains separating the bed from the front section burst into flame from the heat. But there was no yell of pain, no quadrapedal alien corpse.

"Stop him!" - one of the admiral's guards hit Mangum on the arm, touching a nerve and forcing him to drop his laspistol; two others takled him to the ground.

"What are you-" - Mangum struggled to get up, but one of the guards got his arm pinned up behind his back and pushed his knee onto Mangum's head.

"Hey!" shouted Garald, pulling out his laspistol (Faral Mangum following suit a second later) and pointed it at the guards: "Let him go!"

One of the guards looked to admiral Kil-ban-Ocean, who nodded a confirmation. "Let him up," he said cooly; then, to Garald: "Put your gun away, or I shall have you shot."

One of the guards offered his hand to help Mangum up; the colonel ignored him and angrily struggled to his feet. Another guard picked up Mangum's gun, looked to Kil-ban-Ocean; the admiral glared at Mangum's subordinates until they holstered their pistols, then turned his gaze on Mangum.

"Colonel, what the hell do you think you are doing!?"

"I'm... if one of those xeno scum was there, listening to our meeting, then they must know our plans!"

"And for that, you destroy my void-cabin? I have my guards armed with autoguns rather than las weaponry for a reason! The holo-matrix in that table was worth a dozen of your shit-stained prison regiments!"

"But- if they have our plans, it changes everything-"

"It changes nothing, except that we need to act now, before they have time to react. Guard, give colonel Mangum back his pistol. Colonel, get your 'soldiers' into the landing craft within the hour. And somebody put out that fire!"

Comments

[OoooyVeeeeey]

Nigga, did I just catch you wantin' to write a story where ponies kill Warhammer universe humans? *SLAP SO HARD IT RIPS YOUR SKULL APART*

[More_Dakka]

Yeah, that's just a little bit impossible.

[Clicker]

Tell me, all ships have pryskers... were is he?

[Solo Wing of The Abyss]

And that's why you never trust Penal Legionnaires!