Chapter 2.
”In the Emperor's service, the Death Korps will pay any price.”
-- Lord Marshall Arnin Kagori
The bar's atmosphere was all hazy from several lho-sticks the patrons were smoking. Cheap looking paintings lined the wall behind the counter. The place was half full, quite crowded for such a late time of the night. Through the large windows, people could be seen walking to and fro on the skyways hanging onto the towers of the hive city covered by the darkness of the night. Lamp-posts from outside illuminated Crask's face with their artificial light, as he sat beside a table with several other patrons. He didn't know these men until tonight and would most likely never see or hear of them again after the night was over.
”So then the ork shouted at me, 'I'll shove dis' choppa up yer arse n' send ya to yer 'mperor!'. And guess what I did? I yelled at it, 'No need for that, for I've got the Emperor right here for you!' and I cut it's head off with a single swing of my power sword!”
The men around the table roared up in laughter as Crask finished his story and chugged down the last of his beer before joining the drunken laughter. His slightly hoary hair was carefully combed back and he was wearing a fancy jacket.
Some amateur band was playing jazz on the stage and the dance floor was full of tipsy citizens, most of who thought they were good dancers, thanks to their liquefied state.
Crask had a lho-stick between his lips and a refilled jug of beer on his hand while he was listening to his companions' tales. From a corner of his eye, he saw a beautiful, young woman approaching the table he sat at. Her hair was long and straight and the color of chestnut. She had high cheekbones and they were sleek as the finest silk. Her body was a perfect shape of an hourglass.
”Could I have this dance?” She asked Crask with her gentle voice as she extended her arm towards him, waiting for him to grasp it.
Snapping out of his staring, he stood up smiling and took the girl's hand. He accompanied the woman into the crowds of the dance floor and took her other hand in his own. The band started playing a new song and the pair started to waltz in rhythm with it. Crask wasn't much of a dancer but the girl made more than up for him. After the waltz the band started playing a slow one. Crask had never danced slow ones, but before he got to say or do anything, the girl wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her head onto his shoulder. Surprised by the move, he moved his arms to rest on the girl's lower back and they started swaying to the song. Crask closed his eyes and smiled contently as he could smell the girl's wonderful perfume. He opened his eyes momentarily, glancing at others dancing around them. His heart skipped a beat as he saw one of the dancer's face hidden behind by a khaki rebreather. He closed his eyes, hoping the sight would go away, but when he opened his eyes again, all the other dancers also wore rebreather.
Crask released his grip on the girl and stumbled backwards, falling onto the mahogany floor. The people had stopped dancing and the quiet music had turned into a horrible screeching of violin's and cello's. The patrons circled him as he layed on the floor, unable to move, albeit how much he wanted to run away. All the people were staring at him, wearing identical rebreathers, the hoses going through their stomachs. He raised his gaze up to face the girl he had shared a dance with moments ago. She also was wearing a rebreather, blood pouring from the point where the hose entered her stomach, staining the pearl white dress red. She crouched in front of him and leaned to whisper into his ear.
”Wake up commissar.”
”Wake up commissar!”
Crask was jolted awake from his slumber by the Korpsman shouting at him while yanking him up. He scanned the area around him in his hazy state and saw the others taking cover behind boulders of various sizes. He leap onto his feet and unseathed his power sword and laspistol.
”Report, soldier!”
”The man on watch saw movement on the hills upward from us when several shots were shot at us. The enemy's numbers are unknown, though it seems like we are heavily outnumbered, concluded by the amount of shots.”
Just as the Kriegsman finished his sentence, bullets started to impact the rocks and ground around them. Both men dove for cover behind the nearest boulder while the others started firing into the darkness that still surrounded them.
”Can you pinpoint their location?” Crask shouted over the sound of gunfire.
”Only roughly, sir.” The man sharing the petty shelter answered.
Crask ran crouching to the other men, taking care to stay behind cover all the time. Bullets ricocheted from the rocks that separated him and the unknown enemy. From time to time he fired a shot or two at the general direction where the gunfire came from. Whilst advancing towards his men, he decided his plan of action.
”You four,” He pointed at the four men he had picked with his sword. ”Will lay covering fire while the rest of us will flank them.” He grabbed the shoulder of the grenadier firing his hellgun at the enemy. ”You and I will go from the right, while you two ”Again he pointed at two of the Korpsmen. ”will go from the left. Identify the enemy and neutralize him as soon as you're in position. When we've drawn their focus on us, the rest of you will advance and we'll finish them off. Try to leave at least one alive. Maybe we'll get some light to what's going on. Understood?”
A coherent 'Yes sir!' was heard.
Crask knew the Death Korps rarely took prisoners. He could only hope that maybe the situation would allow him to capture one. He'd definately want to know what was going on, as he was sure did the Kriegsmen accompanying him. Or maybe not. They were content enough if they could serve the Emperor, no matter the place or time, and killing their current foes counted up at that ambition. But maybe, just maybe because of the peculiar situation they'd leave one alive.
”Aim for the muzzle flashes!” Crask yelled as he bolted from behind the boulder, away from the gunfire coming from above them. The Kriegsmen followed him one by one and when they were sure they were out of sight, they divided into two groups and started to proceed to flank the enemy.
The korpsmen's covering fire had some minor results as the hostile fire lessened, if only slightly. Some of their shots even seemed to hit their targets as some shrieks were heard and the muzzle flashes seemed to decrease in numbers.
Crask and the grenadier had gotten to a vantage point where they could see their foe. In the dull light coming from the muzzle flashes blazing, they saw that the figures firing the guns were similar to the one they had encountered before. Their weapons were long and seemed to be had reloaded after every shot, the process being awfully time-consuming. They saw the other two Korpsmen taking positions when Crask signalled them to hold fire. He nodded at the grenadier who replicated the gesture.
Fully aware of the commissar's plan, he proceeded towards the gryphons below, making sure to not to be seen. Stopping twenty-or-so metres from the gryphons, he detached two grenades from his belt and unpinned them. Gripping them in both of his hands, he jumped from his cover. Filling his role as a grenadier he lobbed the grenades, one at a time, in the midst of the gryphons.
The closest gryphons to the detonations lost their lives instantly as they were ripped apart by the shrapnels from the frag grenades. Those further away got away with only minor injuries as their brethren unwittingly saved their lives with their ripped bodies.
Taking benefit from the gryphon's disorganized state, the Kriegsmen opened fire. Though the darkness disrupting their aim, the las-beams they unleashed upon their unfamiliar foe cut through many of the gryphons.
The four korpsmen that were left to cover the others started to advance up the hill towards the remaining few gryphons. The others had also ceased their fire and now charged at the still disoriented gryphons, attaching their bayonets while running.
The gryphons had reorganized during that time and now got ready to fight the strange enemy that had so easily cut down two thirds of their numbers. Dumping their flintlock rifles and drawing their swords they took battle stances.
The two flanking korpsmen were the first ones to reach the gryphons. A gryphon swung at one of the Korpsmen with a fierce battlecry. His opponent of choice blocked the swipe with his lasgun and retaliated with a kick to the gryphon's chest. The quadruped dropped onto the snowy ground, clutching his chest while the korpsman lifted his rifle up and brought it down bayonet first at the gryphons neck, instantly killing him. His partner fared with similar success.
Crask and the grenadier entered the fray from the other side, effectively leaving the gryphons between the attackers. The commissar stabbed a gryphon through his chest with ease and shot another one with his laspistol while pulling his power sword out of the corpse. The grenadier was fighting with only his bayonet as there was no place on his hellgun to attach it to. The hellgun's powerpack is worn as a backpack and the power is transmitted to the gun itself via cables, making it clumsy at close combat, so he had also left his gun and the powerpack behind. This left him no worse at hand-to-hand combat with his mono knife as he stabbed a gryphon straight at his heart and cut another one's windpipe and carotid artery with continued motion. At this point the rest of the Kriegsmen had reached the ongoing battle and had reduced the gryphon's numbers to two.
The last two half-lion half-eagles were standing back to back and ready to defend their lives, surrounded by the menacing bipeds. Just as Crask was going to try to injure or knock out at least one them, they turned into a mist of blood and gore, accompanied by a loud throb. Instinctively the Kriegsmen and the commissar hit the deck.
The bolt spitting machinery of war stopped it's ear deafening rumbling. Glancing at the direction the sound came from, Crask saw a distinguishable shape of a heavy bolter and the two men manning it. He waved at the men, in half to thank them and in half because he didn't want to get shot by the trigger-happy korpsmen. Standing up, he saw a familiar man approaching him. Though the only familiar thing at him was the company number imprinted on his shoulder. Crask felt the two empty holes boring into him, the eye-pieces alike to almost everyone else's he had seen during the last three years.
”Major Bellrath, it's a pl-” Crask was cut off by the commander.
”I'm fairly sure you should know by now that I am known as major 3556-8294-35-Theta. Or major 35 for short. Not Gerlach Bellrath.” He spat his name with clear disgust and anger at the fact that the commissar had even brought this up. Again.
Crask was a bit taken aback by the outburst but composed himself swiftly and rephrased his sentence. ”Major 35, I'm glad you came to our aid, but we were taking those two gryphons as prisoner of wars. We could've gotten information of our current location and whatnot. I assume you do not have any more light into the situation as I do?”
”We were fighting a winning battle at Kheltan III when a xenos sorcerer cast a what seemed to be an ion storm, the men lost their consciousness, us included. The next thing I know is when I woke up few kilometres north of here. Few korpsmen were laying beside me, all killed by the storm. I came around other Kriegsmen, these ones alive. We started to trek south, picking up more and more of men on our way.”
The Death Korps with the major had come around while he was talking with the commissar, some taking positions around the perimeter. Even without an order they worked like a greased clock.
”We have two full squadrons of Korpsmen, five grenadiers and a heavy bolter team. We even have an ammunation carrier full of lasgun packs, frag grenades, special- and heavy weapons being towed by a Trojan. We also came around a Quad-Launcher, but without anything to tow it with we had to leave it behind. I left a few men guarding it in case we find another something to tow it with or establish a temporary base of operations until we get in contact with the fleet or other regiments or companies.” The major ended his story.
”And what if we don't find anything to tow the Quad-Launcher with, or won't go back for it for any reason? What about the men guarding it?” Crask knew the answer for sure and wasn't thrilled about it. Yet he had to get a confirmation.
The major turned around and started to walk back to the Trojan, answering over his shoulder. ”I gave them an order to destroy the gun if we don't come back in three days. After that they are supposed to give their lives for the Emperor, by any means possible.”
Princess Luna was laying on her bed, still suffering from a magic exhaustion from the incident the night before. Although her body seemed unconscious, her mind was far from it. In the realm of her domain, she walked around, peeking into ponies' dreams. She was fully aware of her own magical-, and her body's physical exhaustion.
She recalled entirely last night's events. The meteor shower, her using it as a magic vessel, her unusual trip into the far corners of the dream realm... The peculiar creature and scenery. She remembered how the creature seemed to answer her rhetorical questions.
The princess was venturing from a dream to another, when all the windows exploded into thousands and thousands of tiny fragments. Even in her dream-like state she felt her blood run cold from the ear-splitting crack. It sounded more like a shriek than a collapse of a magical window.
She was left alone to walk in the darkness of the realm. Each time her hoof touched the surface, it rippled like a pebble thrown into a pond. Out of the blue a foul stench filled her nostrils. She summoned a scarf over her muzzle to muffle the stench but soon noticed that it didn't help at all, more like the opposite. The smell seemed to absorb on the scarf. Luna dropped the scarf onto the ground, letting it swallow it.
She felt the smell intensify until she felt like she couldn't breath anymore. The odor felt like it burned her eyes and entrails, crawling from her throat, through the stomach into her intestines. The princess collapsed onto the ground of the very realm she ruled over, feeling the surface slowly swallowing her.
Her ears were filled with an ominous cackle, its volume intensifying each second until she felt her head exploding from the sound. It was unlike anything she had heard before, more sinister than of all the demons and brooding creatures she had fought combined.
Her legs were already under the surface and she felt her body sinking deeper when through her bleary eyes she saw a huge, sickly green and red creature staring at her with it's small black eyes. Feeling the world collapse around her she closed her eyes, ready to face her doom.
Gasping for air, princess Luna woke up.
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2244096 I MUST SEE NON-BROKEN PICTURE!
FOR TEH EMPARAH!
please.
I order you to keep going!
YES A WHOLE LEGION OF CORPSMEN FOR THE EMPEROR TO LIBERATE THE EQUESTRIAN HOME WORLD
Is the woman a reference to Granny Bacon?
Unnessecary apostrophe, missing "n" in "intensifying", and "her" replaced with "head".
Otherwise, the rest of the story seems okay.
2257712 Nope. Its from Sjin's videos.
2259806 Oops.
That's what you get for writing late at night after work. Thanks for pointing that out!
2260141 Blimey. I could never get AS INTERESTED in Sips and Sjin
Still think their awesome, especially during the Tekkit videos with Duncan
Do I see the lord of plagues making an appearance in this?
Either way this great so far looking forward to more, cheers!
2256565 cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/250x250/32727623.jpg
Not bad, I like it. I'm writing my own DKOK in Equestria fic. Thankfully enough I think they're going to be different enough so people won't be too confused by their tandem existence. Hope this turns out well for you.
And Nurgle decides to have a bit of fun...
It's good to see the Lord of Plagues getting in on the action, rather than Khorne or Tzeentch. Or even Slaanesh, but I've never really liked him/her.
2269621 Thanks! I'll be looking forward to your fic.
"The korpsmen's covering..." how come the K in this example of korpsmen was not capitalized? Probably should be capitalized.
2337517 Thank you! Fixed.
2356561 No problem.
2293546 heresy!
6785953
7168183
The Death Korps Liked that.
And the Death Korps also want to get into the action.