Xisor wrote:Nutstoyoutoo, I've only read the first few paragraphs (I'm not a huge fan of reading prose from my laptop, too heavy to adjust/lounge comfortably for longer periods), I'm almost certain I shall be printing this in the next few days to read fully. Nicodemus' opening speech is a conceptual joy.
Oh yes, I shall to read more.

Thanks! I've swung back and forth on that opening speech - too long, too short, too wordy, too uninspiring, etc. As for the next chapter:
Crash site
Agria, Terran Dominion
June 19, M98.41"…and they shall have no fear."
Such were the words of the God-Emperor Himself: Space Marines, the Emperor's Finest, had no fear. This was not exactly true.
Fear was an incredibly useful emotion, when properly contained and channeled towards constructive ends. The genetic designers of Space Marines, when making super
human creatures, kept the intuition and "sixth sense" that fear provided in a Marine's gene-enhancements. Through diligent training and discipline, many a Marine had saved himself from an ambush by listening to his near-supernatural sense of apprehension.
Four was feeling awfully apprehensive as he approached the downed creatures.
Three armored figures, obviously not Marines and likely not Imperial – Four prayed fervently that his squad hadn't just shredded an Inquisitor and his retinue. Bolter rock-steady and eyes locked on his targets, Four approached the creatures. Perhaps the targets were the heretical Iron Men, returned to make war against humanity once again?
No shells flew, no shouts went up as Four reached the creatures after half an eternity of walking. Seeing the gore around the two other figures, Four slowly reached down to flip the creature downed by Two's plasmabolt.
The creature stirred.
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Walker's first thought on waking was
I still owe Fred 150 credits after last night. Good thing he's dead.Nearly blinded by the wake-up drugs his suit was pouring into his system, it took a moment for Walker to realize how crazy his last thought was. It took another moment for him to notice that, much to his surprise, he was still alive.
Lessee…no spikes, horns, or tentacles. Hey, I haven't even been Zerg-ified yet! Opening his eyes, Walker's vision was dominated by a massive blank screen. "Oh, right. Suit, safe mode reboot."
The CMC-300 armor, having shut down earlier to avoid cooking its wearer, slowly rebooted, letting Walker stir as he reflexively clenched his muscles. "Alright, chest armor's crap but internals are good. Lessee-" A recluse by nature, Walker had always annoyed squadmates in the recently-created Agria Militia by muttering with his mike set to open broadcast.
If anyone's still alive…Walker thought gloomily, slowly pushing himself over onto his back. His HUD cleared up, revealing a…oh.
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Four quickly stepped back several paces, kicking away a nearby weapon, as the armor began moving. "Surrender, enemy of the Emperor!" he boomed, thinking of Three as he did. His squadmate was always good at melodrama –
focus.
The armor's visor hissed open, revealing a human face. The figure uttered something, arms moving up defensively in front of its head. "HOLD!" Four yelled. The figure stopped moving, the human obviously confused and fearful. The enemy armor's loud-hailers spit out a stream of noise, and Four steeled himself against a Harlequin-style audio assault, before realizing that the 'attack' was some form of language.
Four was unsure. A mere fifty-five years old, Four had only recently graduated into a powered-armor Tactical Squad. He was decades away from receiving his Chapter's peculiar Rite of Acceptance and taking a name once again. "Corporal?" he asked quietly over the vox.
Corporal Thorosis, viewing the situation, was also unsure. New mission? Find our location…I hope. "Take the xenos…to the Thunderhawk."
"Sir, it's human."
Thorosis felt a new stab of doubt. "Understood. Orders remain the same."
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When the red giant had started yelling, Walker panicked. He was a mechanic, not a soldier, damnit! The giant made a rumbling noise that sounded a helluva lot like a rockslide; had Walker been a cosmopolitan of the Ultima Segmentum, he would have recognized Macragge-style Low Gothic.
"Say, ummm, sar, what's that weapon there? It kinda looks like one of them SR-8s, but – shutting up now!"
The figure gestured with its free hand, making more rocks-rumbling noises; Walker figured that it probably wanted him to move. "Sure beats sitting here with – oh,
damn." Fred and the Sarge were down, permanently from the looks of it.
"Look, sar, I dunno who you're workin' with, but we kinda got ourselves a Zerg pr-" A sudden impact to his helmet staggered him slightly. "HEY! My people're gonna be bug bait if they don't get help, you bastards!"
Not seeing any way to communicate without a language in common, Walker slumped his armored shoulders and slumped away from his friends' corpses.
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Four was curious. The Marine kept his weapon fixed firmly on the human's back, but inwardly his mind was whirling. The human sounded agitated, although Four suspected that a funeral dirge might sound 'agitated' in that fast-paced chittering that passed for a language.
He was fearful about something, more than his own survival. Another enemy?Any further musings were cut short by a flying target –
XENOS!; Four tracked and fired automatically. One bolt struck a wing on the organism, and the xenos let out a piercing screech, turned, and dove towards the human and the Marine.
The prisoner jumped to the side as Four's weapon snapped up and fired at the creature's head. Bolts from Three and the Corporal slammed into the side of the creature, destroying much of its internal structure. The dying creature spit out a green object as it died –
Tyranid bio-plasma! Move!Dodging to the side, Four watched as the green blob hit dirt and…
melted? Accustomed to Tyranid bio-plasma and fleshborers, Four was surprised as the green stuff melted the dirt and grass into an unrecognizable goop.
"Sir, target has an acid attack," Four dutifully reported. "Orders?"
Thorosis was still unsure; if he acted to save the local humans, he might spare heretics from their rightful judgment! "Bring the human to me."
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Surprised by the sudden Mutalisk attack, Walker was too confused to protest when the strange Marine kept pointing him towards the woods.
"Alright, alright, I'm going," he muttered sullenly; the shock of the last several minutes was just starting to set in.
Approaching the border of the woods, Walker wasn't surprised to see more red-armored types. They looked human, almost, but that armor definitely wasn't CMC-standard. "Suit, scan 'em."
As his suit's scanners went to work, Walker looked over the one who'd just approached him. The armored giant looked at him through green-colored eyepieces, before turning away.
Weird…That funny-looking gun still pointed at his back, Walker continued walking as his suit chimed. "Analysis complete. Armor type: unknown. Armor composition: unknown. Weapon type: unknown. Weapon projectiles appear to be rocket-propelled, armor-piercing. Armor occupant: nonhuman."
"Great," Walker muttered, as the woods cleared and he saw where Johnson's farm should've been. Now, it was a blackened wasteland, with bits and pieces of warped metal scattered across it.
Bastards.His suit picked that moment to chime in: "Attention. Unarmored humans detected in combat situation. Repeat: unarmored humans de-" Walker killed the alert with a sharp jerk.
"Holy…the hell's going on?" he then asked as he caught sight of the "unarmored humans." Funky-looking uniforms, gold braid and shiny this-and-that – was this an
honor guard? "What happened here?"
The two red-armored figures ignored him again, instead speaking to the honor guard types in their strange language. Several yells later, and the decorated-looking humans had assembled in blocks of ten, strange-looking weapons held at attention.
"What is
with you crazies?" Walker muttered. Shit was getting weirder and weirder here…
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"Move out!" Two ordered, watching as Four led the remaining Mordian Guardsmen away. As the thump of boots faded into the distance, Two allowed himself to relax fractionally. His plasmagun's spirit had ceased to cooperate and his knee was a pulpy mess, so the Corporal had ordered him to guard the prisoner.
The prisoner in question was preoccupied with looking over the remains of the Thunderhawk, talking to himself in his strange language. Two's bolt pistol remained constantly locked on a weak area on the back of the strange armor, but the likely-PDF trooper now ignored it.
Grass rustled behind Two's back. Any normal human, even with CMC armor help, would have missed the signs.
Two was no normal human. He'd already turned on his good leg, firing bolt pistol rounds into the leaping Tyranid at point-blank range. The creature fell over as the bolts bounced through its internals, too close for the bolts to detonate. Several similar creatures – a Gaunt supspecies, perhaps? – approached from the same direction, as Two corrected his aim and fired again.
Three more shots, two more dead xenos. Caught between needing to guard the prisoner and the attacking xenos, Two frantically whispered a wordless prayer and focused on the approaching creatures: more Gaunt-species and several larger bio-forms.
"In His Name!"
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whish-
BLAM! whish-
BLAM! whish-
BLAM! whish-
BLAM! whish-
BLAM!Two's sidearm sang in anger, its spirit spitting rage at the vile xenos assaulting its owner. The Marine dodged slightly as a xenos leapt at his face, the Gaunt species receiving a ceramite-clad fist for its troubles. Bolt pistol rounds detonated inside one of the larger serpent-creatures, sending the hissing monster to the ground, while the other one arched a clawed limb.
WHOOSH! Gene-enhanced senses allowed Two to – barely – dodge the flying spikes, although one of the organic projectiles lodged in Two's right pauldron like the neosteel spikes in his breastplate.
His near-perfect aim thrown off by his injuries and the incoming fire, the last two rounds from Two's bolt pistol went slightly wide. One round missed entirely, while another detonated on the serpent-creature's right limb. ka-
click and Two's sickle-clip hit empty.
Although he cocked back his empty pistol to throw it at the xenos, Two saw that he was too late to dodge the creature's next atta-
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!The serpent-creature jerked as fist-sized craters appeared across its body. A lucky round hit its unarmored eye, penetrating and detonating inside its brainpan; the luckless creature slumped, dead, to the ground.
Although busy with two more Gaunt-species, Two's mind was whirling.
The prisoner? Armed? Helping me?BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!Three more rounds from the unfamiliar weapon struck one of the Gaunt creatures in front of Two, causing the creature to slump to the ground. Two immediately seized the opportunity, striking the other with a mailed fist to send it flopping over.
The Space Marine turned to find the former prisoner facing him, an panel open on the side of unfamiliar armor
(so that's where the weapon came from) and a snub-nosed pistol in his hand. Too far away to strike and his sidearm expended, Two couldn't see any further options.
At least the human let me face him before I die. Bowing his head slightly, Two began his last Litany of Devotion.
"Where there is uncertainty, I shall bring light.
Where there is doubt, I shall sow faith.
Where there is-"
The human put the gun down.
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"Easy there, big fella. Ain't gonna hurt-"
Private Walker had just started to step away from his sidearm when the red-armored giant moved. The monster, in a blur of movement, had Walker's gun turned on his owner in less than a second.
Walker gulped suddenly. His pistol was linked to his armor, so Walker knew the other guy couldn't kill him with it.
Wouldn't stop him from wringing my neck, though. Punching Zerglings – crazy bastard!Marine and Marine faced each other, the only noise coming from Walker's exhaust vents as his suit struggled to rid itself of excess heat. Walker gazed almost calmly at the black barrel pointed directly at his face: he'd gone through so much crazy in the past few days, what with the Zerg invasion and all, that a strange-armored human pointing Walker's own gun at him seemed almost normal.
"Alright, man, we've got a real bug problem and we could use your help, and I know you can't understand a word of this, but please we've still got people on the ground here and at Lark's Crossing and we could use you and your fancy-dress people and ah hell just shoot me or let me go al-"
BLAM! BLAM!A Zergling crumpling behind him, Walker fainted.
Battlecruiser Hyperion
Low orbit, Agria, Terran Dominion
June 19, M98.41Jim Raynor was, by and large, a quiet man. He was not given to sudden outbursts or hysteria, and the crew of the
Hyperion counted on him to keep his cool in any situation, no matter how crazy.
Therefore, the only reason that no one later commented on his near-pants-shitting yell of "holyJesuswhatthellsthat!" was that the entire bridge crew was busy doing it as well.
"-multiple hostiles spotted, size uncertain but off the char-"
"-don't care, get all Swords in the tubes two days ago, you h-"
"-to full combat status, get all batteries manned-"
"-n't do that sir, we're still charging after the last j-"
Quieting again, Raynor glanced around the suddenly-crazed bridge with a guilty look.
Oops. Around him, the crew of the
Hyperion's Combat Information Center (CIC) continued to ready the massive Battlecruiser for fight or flight, everyone too distracted to notice.
Right, then – CIC and Matt will have options ready, so it's time to decide."Matt, status."
Matt Horner, captain of the
Hyperion and second-in-command of Raynor's Raiders, stayed as calm as ever. "Unidentified fleet, sir. Scans are picking up ten different kinds of crazy from them at every ping, and visual isn't much better. The fleet's apparently drifting and scattered, but they're definitely not normal ships of any group we know. Whoever built them, though, had plenty of resources to throw around."
"Resources?"
"Sir, the smallest ship over there is over a klick from stem to stern. There's also one monster over there that looks to be over five kilometers long."
Raynor whistled appreciatively. His own
Hyperion was just over one klick long, and was among the largest capital ships ever produced by Terrans.
I wonder what's in the water over there to make them build so much?"Alright, let's see it."
Following some quick fiddling with the CIC's main holographic projector, the table-sized machine showed something that looked like a flying cathedral. "These people have a pretty impressive gargoyle fetish," Raynor observed dryly. Inwardly, he was worried. Whoever these people were, they weren't screwing around.
"Alright, sir, they're not ours or anyone we know, but they look to be humans."
Raynor simply grunted, letting Horner continue. "The eagle on the monster ship, the gargoyles and spikes – those people do love their spikes, by the way – all likely come from a human culture."
A repeating broadcast from the planet interrupted them: "…any ship receiving this transmission…the Zerg are invading Agria. The Dominion-"
"Damnit! They're still down there!" Raynor's fists clenched as he considered his options. "Alright, here's the plan. Launch the Swords, have 'em cloak and scout towards the new fleet. Matt, take us close enough to launch droppers, but keep the ship at alert and ready to run once the other fleet wakes up."
Horner nodded. "What should we do if we're attacked, sir?"
"Get the
Hyperion out of here. We can run if they're busy chasing you, so don't worry about anyone dirtside. Oh, and Matt?"
"Yes, sir?"
Raynor glanced at the 5-kilometer-long ship again. "Try to stay on their good side."
"Understood."
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Flight deck, Hyperion
Low orbit, Agria, Terran Dominion
June 19, M98.41"Well, this should be different."
"Launching!"
Physics had its wicked way with 1st Lieutenant Imai, G-forces shoving her deep into her grav-seat as her Wraith fighter was flung from the Hyperion's flank. Behind her, Sword 2 was already loaded in the same flight tube, with 3 and 4 behind him.
Imai turned and burned, her nimble craft 'going hot' to re-orient along the planned departure path. At several million kilometers and heat-hidden by the local star, the Lieutenant wasn't too worried about being detected by the new fleet – whoever they were, anyway. The reports from the CIC were sketchy, and some of the knuckle-draggers were saying the fleet was Protoss, another calling them Dominion, and their resident conspiracy theorist calling them the Naga-whatsits who made those strange things that Raynor kept getting paid for.
Mmmm…the mushroom diet again. Kept in the dark, fed on shit. A former Dominion Wraith jockey, Lt Imai had grown used to the camaraderie and intel-sharing in Raynor's Raiders.
C'mon, mission-focus. This is gonna be hairy enough already."Swords, check in."
As the eight members of Sword Flight answered over the radio and sent telemetry data to Imai and the CIC, the Lieutenant got her first look at the fleet they were supposed to be shadowing.
"Holy…"