Time of Ending: the 40k Finale

[puppetmaster24]

lol. splody ork.

[hawo0313]

lolololol WAA-BOOM!!!!

Another victory for the space wolves

[nicholasakira]

The battle was far off. Quite frankly, Runepriest Jarl couldn’t care less about it right now. As he gazed down through the candlelight in his personal chamber, a round room located in the city-sized underground bunkers of the Steel Legion. Normally a closet, it had been converted to personal-sized shrine to the Emperor. A rug lay open across the rockcrete floor, its brown-furred skin painted with the runes of Russ. Incense from Fenris spiced the gentle, soundless air. The closed door sealed him from the world beyond.

“Yes, Leman Russ, I understand,” Jarl whispered to the emptiness, “Jormungand is here. The Great Wolf shall be informed.” He bent down and kissed the rug’s wolf head. “Thank you. And when Ragnarok descends, we shall be steeled against it.” Jarl took a moment to understand what he had learned. If the serpent of chaos was here, then the Space Wolves would have the chaos they were searching for. They could turn from fighting orks and leave it to Armstrong. At last, Leman Russ’ true enemies could be battled.

Then, Jarl felt a pair of twisting coils take his wrists. He tried to rise, but he felt his ankles and waist immobile. Looking to his hands, he glumly acknowledged the pair of metallic snakes wrapping around them, holding even his Astartes strength at bay. He turned over his shoulder as he located the source.

Behind him were a trio of Alpha Legion warriors. Two were helmeted and faceless, but the third wore only a respirator on his face, showing his cruel eyes. He was source of the cybernetic serpents: nine of them reached out from his left arm. Each snake was many meters long, with moving jaws, and long teeth.

“You’re alone,” the one of the helmeted traitors laughed. “Lost old you, and Logan is somewhere, taking souls.” Jarl built up his powers. If these marines intended to interrogate him, they would die first.

“Never leave the pack,” added the helmetless one. Before Jarl could kill the marine, one of the spare serpents was lunging at him, jaws open. It was the last thing he saw.

Inquisitor Rarend stepped onto the landing platform. In the clear night sky above his head, hanging in the rolling black sky and the endless veil of bright stars. It had been in this world’s sky where he had seen the retreating ultramarines. Momentarily, he thought about what Afennor had said.

‘So they made it out,’ he thought, ‘my henchmen made it out of that eldar attack alive.’ He felt almost bad for abandoning them so shamelessly. They had been his trusted companions, caring about him enough to seek aid from the Ultramarines when he was in danger. Now they would be tarnished with his name: like a tumor on healthy flesh, marring and destroying by association. Every man who had ever worked with or for Rarend was now under investigation no doubt. And why? Because he had trusted the eldar. Rarend looked down at Project Gaia in his hand. Above him, the only people who could have known what it was, disappeared.

‘At least I made it to this world,’ Rarend thought, ‘at least this world is still here.’ As landing crew clustered around him, moths attracted to light, Rarend looked about and concealed the stolen artifact in his clothes. The damage the eldar had made him inflict would be healed, somehow. When the time cme to use Project Gaia, he would use it. He’d know when the had come the moment it was upon him. Until then, he could only hide from his former loyalties, fold himself into the shadows between the stars. His home would be the quiet void. But he would always watch and wait.

“In the name of the Inquisition!” Rarend said for the last time, “I am occupying one of your ships!” the landing crew, to whom the news of Mars’ destruction had not yet reached, scrambled to comply with his sharply spoken demand.

Within an hour, the night was racing up to meet him. The lights of the world the Ultramarines dropped him on became a glowing yellow sea beneath the little freighter he had occupied. Mindless servitors manned the controls, a servile navigator oversaw their warp travel. These and no others kept the inquisitor company.

Rarend forsook his title as inquisitor at that point and vowed never again to speak of them. As Maiagnar grew to a blue dot in their wake, Rarend patted Project Gaia under his robe.
…

“WHAT!” Armstrong yelled over the static of the vox-set he crouched by, “what could you possibly want now?” In the cramped quarters of the control room, with the holodisplay of Armegeddeon out in front of him, Governor Militant Armstrong had little area to gesture violently in. Despite his apparent frail appearance, thin voice, and crippling scars, the man earned his white uniform with a chest covered in medals. He spoke with the fire of a preacher and the weight of an inquisitor. His temper was volatile if anything. Pushing his way past the lord commissar and three scribes in the control room, he approached the messenger. “What coud you possibly want?”

“The Space Wolves report a rok, sir…” the messenger began, his thin young face staring stupidly at the ancient figure, hardened by sixty years of fighting orks.

“By Yarricks hat, not another one!” Armstrong cried. “Leave that loudmouth Logan to drive over it. I’m trying to hold onto the Fire Wastes AGAIN.” He returned to the holodisplay. “Now listen!” he said to the holographic image of General Jukas’ face, “I don’t care about Beckinhyne Ridge, its not much good to us and it can be outflanked. What’s more, you didn’t secure it like you report. You’ve just contested the place. All my reports say the damn place is half to hell with orks. Congragulations Jukas, you just sacrificed 500 000 men to create a little white question mark on my map display here.” He flicked a button on the controls and made the face vanish.

Looking up, Armstrong scratched his long white beard in consideration. The orks had been particularly large this year. The numbers of warbosses had tripled, with each one bringing millions more greenskins with them. He’d known since he was ten that he wouldn’t live to see the war won, by he’d sooner let an ork into Terra than be the man who let the orks take Armegeddeon.

Over the commotion of the control room, he heard another man speak up.

“Sir? Governor Militant?” This was no messenger. Though Armstrong’s tone didn’t grow blunt, he didn’t dare talk back to this man. He wore a simple ceremonial outfit consisting of a red robe and a tall hat. On his breast: the symbol of the Inquisition. “The Inquisitorial fortress is overdue on its report.” Armstrong had the man’s answer.

“Your fortress is part of the underground bunker complex around Helsreach, right?” asked Armstrong. He didn’t likw to call It a fortress. The name conjured images of a tall castle. This place was an underground vault from which the Inquisition searched HIS world for Chaos. “I have your answer: a rok just dropped near it. The bunker complex was emptied totally to fight the orks off. The Space Wolves should reconstruct contact…”

“I demand a survey sent to determine the cause,” stammered the man. Armstrong let his temper go.

“Do you know why the ash dunes on Armegeddon are so big?” asked Armstrong, “it is because, after three thousand years of war, the burnt, rotten bodies of hundreds of billions of Imperial guardsmen and orks have turned to dust. Where battles go on, dunes grow from their ashen remains. Those dunes have buried small towns. The Impeiral Guard have fought for this planet for three thousand years, long enough for their bodies to become a geographical feature!” Armstrong paused to catch his breath. “What makes you think they’ll stop fighting now to do a little survey? I’m sorry, but my men are too busy building ash dunes to care.” Armstrong turned to the holodisplay without a word.

And he beheld, superimposed over the hologram, an unfamiliar face in a winged helm of alien design.

“Greetings Governor Militant,” the head said, looking directly at Armstrong. The whole room convulsed in surprise and some fear. “I would recommend you do as the man tell you, fate would favor it.” The room, once abuzz with words but now silent save for the crackling of vox-sets, focused on the unfamiliar head.

“How did you hack my…” began Armstrong, knowing better than to get mad at a hologram.

“We have entered your primitive machinery through a unique art of our own. Let it only be known that you are in grave danger from Chaos. The Alpha Legion itself strikes at your heart. They seek to hasten the rise of the Despoiler. You must trust us,” the head said in urgency. Its wise voice sounded unnatural, speaking quickly.

“You’re an eldar,” Armstrong said in realization.

“I am an autarch of Biel-Tan, yes, and an officer to the Phoenix Lords,” the head said. “One of my esteemed masters goes in your direction now: Baharoth. He will explain to you your problem and how chaos may be defeated here.”

“What exactly do you want from me?” demanded Armstrong. “Why should I believe a word you liars tell me?”

“The Alpha Legion is attacking the Inquisitorial fortress near Helsreach. Soon, they will move on the Astartes. By next week, another traitor legion, we don’t know which one, will come to Armageddeon,” the autarch warned. Armstrong crossed his thin arms and his wrinkled brow creased. “This world soon be the center of a huge warp rift,” the autarch continued.

“I suppose this has to do with those mad rumors of a raid by the chaos gods on Terra,” Armstrong laughed. The autarch shook his head.

“Not rumors, fate.”

“I don’t believe in fate. If chaos sticks its ugly face onto our world we’ll shoot it off. If you come here, we’ll shoot you off too,” Armstrong shouted, now finding his temper difficult to control.

“So be it. But to those of you willing to listen, men of the Imperium, warn the Space Wolves that we come to join them. Know also that there is something about the orks you don’t fully understand, for it shall be they who cause the rift, and from it, the end of the Imperium.” With that, the face vanished. Armstrong looked at the man from the inquisiton, who seemed smaller as he cowered against the wall.

“Send the message,” he said, “in the name of the Inquisition, warn the Space Wolves!”

“You know everything that eldar said was a lie? Armstrong insisted as the room broke into commotion again. When the stubborn inquisitorial minion said nothing, Armstrong shrugged. “Deal with the eldar however you like. Just keep me out of it.”

…

Odeen of the Space Wolves howled with savage glee as he killed the Emperor’s enemies. His bolt pistol shouted in the faces of orks far bigger than he, turning their faces to bony red ruin and popping their red eyes. With a whelling blow, his ancient axe split the face of a howling greenskin lengthwise, spilling the things vile brains out of its face.

“Odeen?” beeped his earpiece, “the commandpost has detected a faint energy signature coming from inside the rok. Investigate when you can.” Odeen smiled, showing pointed teeth through his long beard. To reach the rok, he had easily ten thousand orks to chop through. Tanks and guardsmen were drawing the horde outwards, but the Space Wolves would have a long way to go to break their way past this horde.

“Your demands are impossible as of now!” shouted Odeen into the earpiece as he and a fellow marine fought against one of the orks in bulky powered armor, “but we shall do what we can.” The other Space Wolf reached in with his head and bit the ork on the thoat. The ork fell backwards, crushing two bit boys under it. The feral Astartes continued to ravage the alien monster with his teeth, while blasting blindly away into the mob with his bolter. Odeen felt his back shudder while shots glanced off it. He turned around, swinging his axe to decapitate another ork, and returned fire, senting an explosive bolt through the offender’s cybernetic eye and into its brain.

An explosion, one of many now blossoming through the horde, threw Odeen off his feet. He landed painfully against the ground after being thrown some distance. His head hurt and he grasped in vain for his bolt pistol, which he’d lost in the blast. What he first took to be rain turned out to be the pulped remains of ork flesh. Odeen stood back up and wiped the blood from his face. Another explosion rocked the combat, but far larger than any that had come before. A wall of explosive fire leapt up in the middle of the orkish mob, oily and spectacular, dancing in celebration at the spectacle of death around it. In the air, the jet-shriek of an engine broke the air. The combat stopped momentarily as all eyes turned skyward.

‘Praise the Emperor,’ thought Odeen as the blue shapes of Ultramarine drop pods broke through the canopy of unnatural clouds, ducking and weaving among them were a pair of thunderhawks. A second salvo of missiles descended on the battle, turning massive swathes of the green sea into a garden of fire. The ground shook when the drop pods hit the ground, landing near the Space Wolves. The deadly twin eagles of the thunderhawks circled gracefully around to deliver another crushing bombardment to the horde.

Dashing over to the nearest drop pod, Odeen beheld four Ultramarines with bolters firing into the orkish heart. They were good killers, felling greeskins each second, but Odeen disliked the way they stood in the open around the drop pod rather than using it as cover. When they struggled to reload, a wave of orks fell on them, axes in hand. One of them was felled while the other three fell back.

“You shall not be alone!” Odeen roared, barreling through the fray, killing four orks on the way, and striking into the greenskins that attacked his brothers from another chapter. His axe chopped into an orkish back, severing its spine. He snatched its massive axe from it before it could be swung at an Ultramarine and whipped it into the face of a second. The greenskins turned to confront him instead, but were chopped down by Ultramarine bolters. The three survivors hurried to liberate their fallen comrade’s body.

“I am Odeen. You can think of me as a captain.” These students fo the Codex Astartes could not hope to understand the Space Wolves and their unusual makeup. “One thousand ork skulls for your fallen brother.” He did not stop chopping orks down as he spoke, parrying even as he said “ork skulls.”

“And so shall it be. We are here with the Black Tomb and bring news of much importance,” one of the Ultramaines said, fumbling with his bolter. “Chaos comes through this world.”

“Pardon?” Odeen chopped an ork head from its shoulders. The world shook again as another wall of flame blossomed up from the middle of the horde. Odeen was noticing the green tide was finally abating. Targets were fewer and further between. He was even seeing a few guardsmen, pushing against the mob, pressing the horde back. Odeen took a moment to rest. He’d need to find his pistol.

“I said there is news from Terra,” the Ultramarine repeated, “a warp storm will blossom here and from it, Abaddon the Depoiler will come forth.” Odeen then thought of the energy reading insdie the rok. Could it be?

“Show me to the Black Tomb,” Odeen asked as a leman russ and a company of guardsmen rushed past him, lasguns spitting at the greenskins, dragging them down one at a time. The thunderhawks dropped yet more bombs into the mob. “I have been given an assigment.”