Happy Days Down In The Mines - 40k short fluff [Necron & Chaos]

[KaisKlip]

This is a little extract from a whole mass of text I punched out a few years ago but to no avail. Looking back over it, I decided to crop and tidy it up over the coming weeks, but I always favored this little chapter so I decided to put some use out of it and post it here.

Looking for some constructive criticism; if you require some context the story is set about a necron emergence on a turmoiled Daemon World. Enjoy ^_^;

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Jerimiah Orgus gave out a frustrated moan as the metal monstrosity kept on coming, staggering as bits of earth cascaded off its hunched, gleaming shoulders. One foot was dragged past the other, scraping against the cold rock underweight in ear-rending screeches. It was barely metres away from him now, enduring even more punishment than those crazed Berzerker Astartes. One arm was severed at the elbow, ending in torn off wires where Orgus had shot it before, and the other was clenching and unclenching its hand repeatedly as it made its steady progress towards it’s terrified prey. His hands fumbled with the rifle in an attempt to hurry the ancient charging process, while every step backwards sent an agonizing flair of pain shooting up his his broken ankle. The machine’s hand had burst from the ground in a geyser of rock without any warning at all, crushing Orgus' ankle and sending him toppling onto his back. It was only to his well drilled training from the days when he had been a sergeant of some distant planetary defense force that had kept him calm and got him where he was now - scrambling like a rodent but still very much alive. He spared another furtive glance at the machine, groaning yet again as he saw the marks of his previous shots disappear in a rippling pool of metal on the thing's chest.

Finally after an eternity, he cried out, thanking the pantheon of the Dark Gods as the charge indicator above the corroded trigger shone a brilliant green, warming his wretched black heart. The Traitor Guardsman braced his rifle against his fatigued shoulder, forcing himself to calmly wait until the necron's head bobbed in-between his iron sights. He squeezed the trigger, rejoicing in the meaty kick against his shoulder as the thing's head exploded in a shower of sparks, illuminating the tunnel in a cacophony of flaming colours. The machine collapsed to the ground as though a puppet’s strings have been cut, a vibrating clang resounding across the tunnel walls. He breathed a sigh of relief, vainly trying to calm his thundering heart down. He lowered his rifle and back-pedaled, keeping a steady eye on the collapsed, lifeless form. He mused that he the thing appeared lifeless before he discharged a lasround into its damned face. Retrospectively, it had shambled towards him like an automaton, not unlike the few servitor things Orgus had come across in his master's layer. The eerie red light bathing it by one of the many laps hung from low ceiling did little to ease Orgus' nerves, but it was they who saved his life once more.

A shadow flitted before him. Reacting more out of instinct than direct thought, he spun around, bringing the butt of his rifle with him. A dull clang sent waves of vibration racing up his arms as another expressionless metal face was smacked sideways. He snarled like an animal, now very pissed off at the prospect of facing another one of the machines. He swung again, not giving it time to draw its cruelly bladed weapon back and snapping it's head the opposite way with another echoing clang that stunned his arms and sent waves of shock reverberating through his scarred forearms. Reeling, the thing recovered and twisted towards him, a metal fist that felt more like a maul driving into Orgus' chest and throwing him backwards. His heart sank as he watched his rifle clatter out of his hands and into the dark embrace of a mining pothole. Panicking, Orgus clumsily shuffled away, his panicking mind not surrendering the motions needed to scramble onto his feet. The thing started marching with its outstretched hands held out towards him, baleful eye of green fire cutting right into his soul. Finally, one of his scrambling hands smacked into a boxy object, causing Orgus to grimace as one of his fingers was jarred into his palm. Dismissing the pain, Orgus turned onto his belly and brought the matt black object towards him, almost squealing in delight as he realised it was an abandoned melta-cutter.

The thing was almost on him, no more than body’s length away. Grunting as he twisted himself onto his back, he brought the cutter up. He bellowed a curse at the thing as his thumb slammed the activation rune down.

The tool coughed out a low whine, nothing else. Another rune, its transparent cover cracked, flashed on and off, but he couldn’t make out what the symbol represented. He pressed it again, swearing colourfully as nothing happed once again. Orgus’ mind raced for solutions as he scrambled away again, the necron warrior getting closer and closer while his audibly thudding chest struggled to heave in regular breaths. He picked his **** up of the cool stone and desperately scrambled backwards like a crab, not daring to turn and run and cause the necron to waste a shot on an apparently effortless target. His lips moved of their own accord, muttering dark strings of words in an attempt to beseech his cruel gods while his eyes came across and followed the thick power cable extending out of the cutter’s attached power pack. It ended in a twisted mess of exposed wiring, ravaged by rodents long gone. The glint reflection of dreaded green on the stone below him made his head snap up, and his mouth whimpered out another ancient curse.

The necron was above him now, and it raised its axe-like, thick tubular weapon over its head. It brought it down.
Orgus screamed, grasping his plundered las-gun out of its holster and squeezing the trigger. He had pillaged it earlier, not bothering to check its charge in what had been a moment of rejoicement – it was a gold-embroided officer’s pistol, a worthy gift to present onto one of the Traitor giants. In that split second between the squeeze of his index finger and light tap as the trigger smacked into the jewelled grip, his lips blurted out the very last thing he thought he would say at such a moment.

“God-Emperor!”

A deafening crackle and a bright flash of light seared into his eyes as the axe blade smacked down, wedging itself into the rock and skinning his cheek while half a laspistol clattered away. The machine staggered back, its gaze snapping between its weapon and its served wrist, the compromised wiring coughing out angry sparks and snaps. Faintly realising a torrent of tingling blood was now flowing down the side of his neck, Orgus scrambled up onto his feet, ignoring the flair of pain as he desperately denied the necron’s ancient logic engine a chance to finish processing the situation. He grasped the wedged weapon with trembling hands and pulled with all his might, twisting his torso and swinging it round with a cry. A metallic hand shot out and smacked into his throat, raising his flailing, spluttering form and smacking his back against the crumbling wall even as the blade of its own weapon was plunged halfway into its head. Orgus gagged, froth bubbling down his chin beneath his bulging eyes, beating the machine's arm uselessly with his as the monstrosity before him began to fade away with everything else. It brought him close, studying his glistening face with those damned fires as his struggle weakened, before Orgus began to accept the encroaching darkness.

He thought his eardrums blew out when a trio of explosions enveloped his world and suddenly he found sprawled once more on the stone, his ears ringing and his vision swimming while bits of metal clattered off the rock around him. A severed hand was still locked around his throat, and his hands desperately fought the vice-like grip with all the strength he could muster with this new-found chance of survival. It finally gave and he threw it away, gasping a huge lungful of sweet, prickly air into his burning throat. He rubbed away dust from his eyes as he faintly made out a giant figure through the haze, framed by the bright light at the tunnel mouth.

"On your feet, whelp! The Dark Gods are in need of you!" The grating bellow thundered into Orgus' dazed world.

Feebly murmuring in what Orgus could imagine was only a pathetic display; he stretched out his arm and pointed towards the blur of orange on the stone beside him. Turning to return back out into the fight outside the tunnel, the plated warrior paused and regarded Orgus once more, before following Orgus’ outstretched arm. Vox-grille scratching a broken grunt that could’ve both signified an accepting delight or damning disapproval, the giant bent to scoop up his prize for prolonging another worthless life.

Orgus’ aforementioned world came crashing down as the Astartes roar caused his entire body to shoot up against the wall and squeal in terror. Orgus screwed his eyes shut as a flash of green speared into them, scarring a bottomless black sun onto his retina. When he opened them again, all that remained of Orgus’ dark angel was a sorry mess of glistening bone and fleshy sinew sprawled beside the broken form of the necron terror. Something clattered in the depths of the shaft, and his head twisted painfully towards the source, the side of his head a mass of throbbing pain both from injury and mental trauma.

Orgus' blood froze.

In a throaty hum of ancient servos dormant for millennia, the first necron warrior inexorably rose and stood, the gleaming, rippling metal for a face plunging an icy blade into the traitor’s nerves.

Jeremiah Orgus got up and ran like he never ran before.