986.M41: The Emperor's Boot
Observation deck
It had been roughly eight months since they had entered the warp, and everyone was eager to reach their destination. The Eldar and Humans had only strengthened their sense of comradery, many of the Eldar walking freely about the ship and conversing with the crew. The majority of this was due to captain Michael's efforts to repair many millennia worth of damage caused between the humans and Eldar.
Jarod had taken his time to investigate the Rogue Trader, and found that the several-hundred-year-old man was slowly dying to some disease that did not exist in the third millennium. It could have been cured of course, but Robert felt that he had lived long enough, and he was ready to join the Emperor's side.
His health had been deteriorating over the past several years, but he was now entering the last months of his life. It was one of the reasons he had been so eager to find an heir, and with Jarod's position as the 'savior of the galaxy,' the title of Rogue Trader would help him immensely.
In any case, Robert figured he still had a few years left and had decided to use that time to help Michael and Jarod in any way he could. At the moment, the best way he could help them was by taking them to the Eldar craftworld, which he was more than capable of doing.
"Attention all hands!" Jarod called out over the intercom, his voice filling the entire ship, "We will be exiting the warp momentarily, and if the Farseer's information is correct, there will be a craftworld waiting for us! So be ready for second contact!"
Most of the Eldar, along with Michael and many crewmen had opted to stand in the observation deck, ready to get a good view of the craftworld when they first exited the warp.
Everyone, psyker or otherwise, felt when they exited the warp. It sent shivers down one's spine, and in the case of Jarod, it felt like someone was trying to change his fate… not that he would allow some Indecisive Mollusk decide what choices he would make.
When the blast windows finally retracted, and the many people sitting in the observation deck got to see what they thought would be a planet-sized ship, they were greeted by a very different image.
There the craftworld stood, in all its majesty, but standing next to it, was a ship of human design. The ship was huge, and if Jarod were to guess, a battleship by design. What stuck out the most about the ship, however, was the purple-pink coloration and the ridiculous amount of spikes on it.
The Eldar were the first to start panicking. Everyone started gearing up, putting on armor, checking weapons, and warming the engines of the dropships.
"Michael! You must get us down to the Craftworld now!" An Eldar ordered, ignoring the fact that Michael was currently in the process of getting his personal squad organized.
"I know, I know! I'm trying to get everything done without everyone tripping over each other. Right now I suggest you head down to the docking bay where the dropships are, all of you Eldar will be the first ones down there." Michael explained hurriedly.
The Eldar nodded, running off to join his kin in the dropships. Michael pressed his vox bead to try and reach Jarod, "Jarod are you there? Thing's are going haywire down here and the Eldar are about ready to blow a hole in the hull and just jump straight down to the craftworld!"
"Hold on!- yes, yes I know it's chaos! Pretty sure the spikes gave it away!- Ok, Michael? I'm giving you control of the bay doors, get everyone off the ship and down to that- oh crap…"
The ship shook as it was hit with something, likely one of the Chaos ships weapons. Michael gave up any attempt of reaching Jarod again and headed down to the docking bay. The Eldar were way ahead of him and were trying to cram themselves into the ships. Michael started barking orders to his men, getting the ships loaded and getting his own gear in order.
The ship was hit with several more projectiles in the time it took to get everyone loaded on the ship. When the bay doors opened, every single dropship filed its way out of the bay.
[-----]
Salah cursed as her shuriken pistol ran out of ammunition again. The cursed Mon'keigh worshipers of she-who-thirsts were tearing through the Eldar ranks, destroying the spiritstones of any they could get their hands on. What was worse, was the fact that they still had yet to kill a single one of them.
There was no doubt that they were capable of killing them, but without heavy or specialized infantry they struggled to do so. They had formed a basic defensive line to keep them from being overrun, but they could only hold out for so long.
Salah was very surprised when several Mon'keigh ships flew low to the ground above the accursed Chaos worshippers and dozens of varied Eldar Aspect warriors started dropping out of them and landing in the midst of their enemies.
So taken by surprise by the attack, the Emperor's Children space marines were unable to defend themselves in the first few moments of the attack. Over a dozen marines were killed before the Aeldari reinforcements were driven back, and even then the space marines lost a large portion of the ground they had taken.
Salah sighed in relief, the hope that they could turn the battle around beginning to fuel her mind. The relief left as soon as it had come when there was an explosion, and a very loud voice shouting.
"LEEEEERROOOOOOY JEENKIIIIIIIINS!"
Looking up, she saw a short Mon'Keigh in a black trench-coat falling from the ceiling swinging a chainsword wildly and chucking psychically conjured fireballs down onto the traitor marines. When he landed, there was not a splat like she had wanted, but a soft landing caused by a talented psyker.
This did not change the fact that the traitor marine did not appreciate the chainsword that was being introduced to his unarmored head.
Soon enough there were two more explosions followed by two more space marines of different origin falling through the roof onto the chaos marines. The battle was enough of a distraction for the Eldar to get the upper hand on their enemy.
Things only got more confusing when even more Mon'keigh ships landed behind their defensive line, unloading many a Mon'keigh guardsman onto the battlefield, their weapons flashing as they poured lasfire into the chaos marines. Salah barely had time to register what was going on before Farseer Elirom stood before her.
"Exarch! I am glad you still live, but we must hurry! These humans are our allies, and they will assist us in driving these monsters off the craftworld!" He called out to her.
Salah blinked. Nodded. And reloaded her shuriken pistol.
It was going to be a long day.
[-----]
"Jarod! Get back here, you're not a super-human warrior you'll get yourself killed if you-" Michael never finished his sentence, as he witnessed Jarod being backhanded by a traitor marine, his body flying back to friendly lines.
Michael cursed under his breath and ran over and to check on his friend, and yes, he was still breathing, even if when Michael pressed on his chest his ribs moved in way's they really shouldn't have.
"Well… that's one way to do it…" He said with a sigh, signaling a guardsman to get Jarod back to the ship. Jarod really didn't need to keep doing this kind of thing, and Michael really didn't want his friend dead.
Fortunately, they were able to get Jarod onto one of the last ships heading back to the Emperor's Boot. Michael turned his attention towards the battle. The guardsmen were doing their best to drive the rogue Astartes back while staying out of the direct line of fire. Our upgraded lasguns really did work wonders it seems.
The Eldar had seemed to form two groups; The ones we brought with us, which were mixed in with the guardsmen and actually gave a crap about pulling one or two of them out of the way of a stray bolt round, and the craftworld Eldar, which tried to put as much distance between themselves and us as possible, using the former group as a buffer.
Michael rolled his eyes before turning to try and spot the two space marines they had brought with them. Alaric and Calivar were doing wonders among the ranks of the Emperor's Children, tearing them apart with their melee weapons of choice.
Michael smiled, before signaling his men to move forward, slowly. He knew better than to order around the Eldar, even those that he had spent the better part of a year with. They probably would have followed his orders, but not because he ordered them, merely because it was the logical thing to do. They probably would have resented him after the fact as well.
In any case, they succeeded in pushing back, even managing to reach the point where they were now walking over the corpses of several dead chaos marines. That was when things started going wrong.
The first indication that the situation was FUBAR was when a seemingly dead traitor marine reached up and grabbed a guardsman's leg, crushing the bones and tossing him to the side as he got up. Shurikens and lasbolts impacted the marine, but he simply laughed in agony, the effects of He… She… IT, coming through in full force.
Several more of the traitor marines started doing the same, laughing as the lasbolts melted the flesh off their bones and shurikens shredded their insides. The humans and Eldar began to retreat, running from the Emperor's Children that were getting up around them.
Michael found himself at the back of the retreat, urging his men forward and firing a few lasbolts behind him. He stopped for a moment, helping a fallen Eldar -- howling banshee is remembered correctly -- to her feet and pushing her forward. He choked when a massive, purple, armored hand gripped his neck. Michael grappled at the fingers but knew that it wasn't much use.
The Emperor's Children marine laughed, "I must admit, I am surprised that guardsmen would so willingly aid a Xeno. What great desperation has caused you to do such a thing?" He asked. Michael gurgled in response, incapable of forming words through the adamantium grip.
"Well, I suppose it doesn't matter. Their souls will be quite the treat for The Prince of Pleasure, and your screams will be music to his ears." The marine said with a chuckle. Reaching up, he carefully grabbed Michael's arm and pulled it outwards, stretching the muscles to their limits.
Michael grunted in pain, knowing what was to come and trying his best to deny the chaos servant his screams. His tendons stretched to their limits, and he felt his shoulder finally dislocate with a sickening pop. Michael let out a scream as the marine continued to laugh and pull. His screams turned to a silent gasp as he felt his flesh rip apart, his arm taking a chunk of his left shoulder with it.
The corrupted marine laughed, tossing the arm to the side as he admired the bleeding hole where Michael's shoulder should have been. He laughed and laughed, holding Michael up for all to see.
His laughter was cut short, when the arm holding Michael was severed at the elbow, a power sword glowing with energy. The marine screamed in pain, and the severed arm released its grip on Michael as he fell to the ground. Michael didn't make a sound as he hit the ground, his eyes glazing over as he barely understood what was going on.
"Calivar! Get him to safety!" Alaric yelled, pointing his power sword towards the traitor marine.
Calivar grunted as he yanked his ax out of a marines head, dashing over and looking over Michael's somehow still living body, "And what do you want me to do? He'll be dead in a few minutes!" He complained.
Alaric didn't answer, as he was locked in combat with the crazed marine. Calivar groaned, turning back to survey the retreating Guardsmen and Eldar. He soon spotted the farseer running against the flow of the crowd towards them, reaching them soon after he had been spotted. The Eldar kneeled over Michael's body, not deigning to touch him.
"We need to get him to one of your healers, a medic I believe you called them!?" Elirom said in a slightly panicked voice.
Calivar cursed, "I am aware! But if we move him we risk causing even more damage." He said, swapping out his ax for a bolter and firing a few times into the crowd of now retreating chaos space marines.
With so many deaths, and with Alaric winning his duel with their leader, the traitor marines had evidently decided to run and live to fight another day. Surprising, given their solid if crazed nature.
Elirom seemed to be doing his best not to panic as he tried to use his psychic abilities to see what kind of damage had been done to Michael. After coming to a rushed conclusion that if he was moved then he would die and if he was left there long enough for one of the human medics to arrive he would die, Elirom decided to take a desperate gamble.
Reaching into the warp, he used his power to heal a few of Michael's wounds, successfully halting the bleeding. Unfortunately, his gamble failed when Michael gasped, coming back to full consciousness and screaming in agony. Elirom cursed, using a more basic piece of psychic skill to put Michael into a silent, if uncomfortable, sleep.
"There, we should be able to move him now. Where do we go?" Elirom asked.
Alaric had finished his fight by this point, and walked over to where they were standing, "I have already called down a ship, it will be here in a few minutes, in the meantime, we should move him to a safer location." He ordered. Alaric grunted in affirmation, before hoisting Michael's unconscious form over his shoulder and running toward friendly lines.
[-----]
"Join us! Claim the power offered to you!"
"You think they'll give me power!? You think they give YOU power!? You're nothing more than a puppet!"
"GRAH! They are nothing! I have risen above them! I have become what mortals could never dream of!"
[-----]
"You are more than you give yourself credit for."
"Heh. I learned from the best."
"Hmm. If that is the case then who have you been learning from?"
"Why, isn't it obvious? It's you. You taught me how to turn you into dust."
[-----]
"Your soul is quite spacious."
"Well, you of all people would know, I killed you after all."
"Heh. Indeed you did. To think I was bested by a mere mortal."
[-----]
"No… What have you done… WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?"
"I fixed the mess you made! I just saved the galaxy!"
"You fool! Now I shall never be made whole!"
"If you being with your so-called 'grandfather' is so important, why don't you say hi for me?"
[-----]
Matthias sighed as he looked at Michael's sleeping form. It was a miracle that he was alive, let alone the fact that he was somehow healing at an alarming rate. Perhaps it was due to whatever the Eldar had done. That was quite likely all thing's considered, though the tech-priest was still baffled that the Eldar had no form of medical force.
In any case, it was doubtful that Michael would be comfortable with losing an arm, the better part of his shoulder, and a good chunk of the blood in his body. The latter problem was solved through a simple blood transfusion, but the former problems… well, that was a bit more complex.
When Matthias had approached Jarod with the issue, he had simply told him to give Michael an arm that could rival that of a space marine. Matthias had scoffed initially, and when he'd asked for a legitimate answer Jarod had simply shrugged and told him to do whatever he thought best. The only condition was that Michael should be able to get a new one should he need it.
It was then that Matthias set out to give Michael a temporary prosthetic left arm.
Matthias sighed as he connected another nerve to the cybernetics. Michael's biology was confusing at best, and counteractive to his work at worst. It was like someone had taken the normal human genome, and simplified it to the extreme.
To put it simply, his genome was the purest form of DNA Matthias had ever seen. In his opinion, it was as if the DNA of most humans had been… diluted, for lack of a better word. He was not a part of the Magos Biologis, but even he could see that Michael's body was well beyond that of the average man.
Setting aside his theories on Michael's biology, Matthias spent a few more minutes working until he finally finished connecting the nerves to the arm mount. It was a basic thing that barely covered where his shoulder once was, but a new arm could be easily connected or swapped out with a different model, and if he wanted to go with a more permanent option, then the mount was perfectly capable of being disassembled to nothing more than the nerve connectors.
Moving over to his bench, he rifled through a few basic arm components, before he heard a loud gasp and a clang from behind him. Nearly flying out of his seat, he turned around to find Michael lying face first on the ground, groaning.
"Why am I on the floor…" Michael asked with a groan, pushing himself up with one arm and stumbling to the side as if he had been trying to use both arms. Confused, he looked down to his bare chest and saw the mass of metal where his arm should be.
"Um… cybernetics are cool and all, but where's my arm?" He asked, mildly alarmed.
Matthias tilted his head to the side slightly "Do you not remember?" He asked.
Michael used his remaining arm to push himself up against the table where he had been laying, shaking his head, "The last thing I remember that wasn't a dream was getting grabbed by… something, no idea what it was. We were fighting Emperor's Children, I know that much. How long was I out?" he asked in a confused tone.
Matthias nodded, "You were grabbed by the leader of the warband, who then proceeded to rip your arm off. As for how long you were unconscious, well it's been about eighteen hours since you were brought back onto the ship." Matthias explained, his lack of subtlety being noted by Michael's shocked expression.
Michael shook his head, "Wait… so you're saying that I was grabbed by a chaos space marine… and I'm not a steaming pile of mulch?" He asked, his breath picking up in pace.
Matthias shrugged, "I wasn't there, I was just told what happened by Jarod and Alaric." He explained, before finally picking up on what Michael had first said, "Wait, dreams?" He asked.
Michael nodded, rubbing his temple, "Yeah, I'm… oh," He chuckled suddenly, muttering something about mass effect, "I guess it was just a bunch of images, fighting, talking, and a lot of destruction." he explained.
Matthias hummed, before going back to shuffling through parts, "Well, whatever It was It doesn't matter to me. Ah!" he lifted an arm out of the pile, "Here, this should be good until we can build you a new one."
Matthias proceeded to help Michael get the arm attached. After giving it a few experimental movements, Michael let out a low whistle, "I know biological arms are cool and all, but this thing has a lot of potential."
Matthias and he chatted for a few minutes before the door to the medbay opened, Jarod walking into the room, "Ah! You're awake!" He said in a pleased voice.
Michael shrugged, "Woke up a few minutes ago. Still trying to figure out how I managed to survive being grabbed by a chaos space marine but that is neither here nor there."
Jarod nodded, "Well, in any case, we should probably get going. Elirom wanted us to head down to the craftworld as soon as you woke up." he explained.
Michael nodded, getting dressed and heading down to the craftworld.
[-----]
Salah was very confused. She tried to ward off that confusion by helping destroy the corpses of the worshippers of she-who-thirsts. She felt her muscles tense every time one of the Mon'keigh guardsmen would get more than a few meters from her, and she almost killed several of them, her extreme discipline staying her had. She had not become an Exarch by being unable to control her own actions after all.
She trusted the Farseer's judgment, but even then, she still struggled to understand why Elirom trusted these Mon'keigh so implicitly. Yes, they had fought alongside each other against their mutual foe, yes they had a shared interest in bringing down the threat of chaos, but they were still Mon'keigh.
Those of the Imperium had killed hundreds of her people -- they had killed her own sister… and now the Farseer wanted her to trust them. It was a complex and counter-intuitive situation, made even worse by the actions of a certain Mon'keigh, one who seemed to be leading them.
The man had stopped running, he had stopped his own retreat in order to pick her up when she had lost her footing. He hadn't even blinked before he did so, and when she saw him being grabbed by the servant of She-who-thirsts… she didn't even consider helping him, not even to simply fire off her weapon to distract the marine.
The man was probably dead now, not that Salah cared all that much. She was confused by the situation, but she would not mourn a Mon'keigh, she was Aeldari, she was higher than them. And yet her resolve seemed to falter.
She found herself wondering who the man was, if he was somehow still alive, and if resented her for leaving him to die.
It was during these thoughts that she was startled by the Farseer.
"Salah," He asked, causing her to jump slightly, "What confuses you so much?" He asked.
Salah shook her head, "It is nothing Farseer, I am simply… confused as to why we ally ourselves with the Mon'keigh." She said, brushing the question aside.
The farseer raised an eyebrow, "Really now? I see your expression Exarch. I am aware of your past, but you must understand that this is the only path to our survival."
"And if they turn on us? If they lure us into a sense of false security, only to stab us in the back."
Elirom sighed, "Despite your beliefs, it may surprise you to know that it is the Aeldari that betray the alliances with the humans more often than not. I was given access to many records of the alliances between our peoples, and I must say that my respect for many of our cousins has… wained, so to speak." he explained.
Salah scoffed, "And they do not hunt us like pests? They show no respect for their betters, they should be bowing to us!"
"Should they? Should they bow to the race they believe to be the cause for She-who-thirsts?" He asked, shocking the Exarch, "Make no mistake, the two that I went out in search of are more than aware that we ourselves are in no way responsible, but the majority of humanity believes that we are the cause of that catastrophe."
Salah shook her head, "That was the Drukhari! Our ancestors remained within the webway, away from the perversion of our race the Drukhari had become!" She almost yelled, her fists clenched and shaking.
"Did it not occur to you that most humans do not know the difference between us and the Drukhari?" He asked, causing Salah's thoughts to halt in their tracks, "Just as we do not know the intricacies of the humans, most humans do not know ours. Tell me, to which traitor chapter do the Astartes corpses you are destroying belong to?"
Salah simply shook her head. All space marines looked the same to her, she only knew that the ones they fought were the servants of she-who-thirsts and that those that the Mon'keigh had brought with them did not.
Elirom smiled, "I thought not. To answer the question, they belong to the Emperor's Children Legion, and they were some of the first to betray humanity and turn to the dark gods." He explained.
Salah hung her head in thought and in even more confusion. The more she thought about it, the more and less sense her world made.