The squad of guardsmen slowly advanced into the wrecked manufactorum they'd been tasked with clearing. After weeks of shelling from both sides, there wasn't much of the industrial complex left standing above the surface, but underneath was another matter. The two pointmen moved forward slowly, sweeping their Lasguns' luminators across every nook and crevice in the rubble. The Guardsmen of the Generian 99th had developed a healthy respect for the skulking little greenskins that infested the no-man's land, not to mention the packs of feral Squigoids and the occasional not-quite-dead Ork. So far things had been clear though, suspiciously so in the opinion of Specialist Schultz, the squad's demolition trooper. Schultz kept his opinion to himself (per standing orders from the Sergeant, LT, and regimental chaplain), and focused on keeping the large pack full of explosives on his back out of view of any potential Gretchin snipers. The demolition trooper was not overly happy to be carrying enough explosives to vaporize his entire squad, a sentiment shared by the rest of the squad, not to mention the two squads flanking them. Orders were orders though; the LT wanted some tunnels plugged up and said "Twitch" was just the Guardsman for the job. At least that's what the LT had SAID, everyone knew officers couldn't be trusted. Twitch's pensive pondering on the perfidy of officers was interrupted by a small metallic twang. His warning, which was more of a panicked yelp as he threw himself the ground, was too late for the pointmen. The blast of the Ork booby-trap shredded the two guardsmen and knocked half the squad on their asses, the Sergeant was still standing though, and as Twitch wriggled his lasgun out from under him and scanned for threats, the NCO was already barking the rest of the squad back into order. Behind the sergeant, the perfectly normal oil-drum all of them had been ignoring stood up and shoved a massive combat knife straight through the man's flak armor.
The greenskin was big and fast, but not faster than six lasguns, or big enough to survive thirteen lasbolts. It also wasn't alone, or at least that was Twitch's bet, and as the leaky bag of smoking gore that used to be the Ork dropped back into its barrel, he swung his own lasgun towards a metal scraping sound coming from his left. The scraping sound was coming from a metal hatch half-buried under the rubble. As Twitch turned, the Ork underneath abruptly decided it was done with this sneaky shit, and both the hatch and the hundred or so kilos of rubble on top shot into the air. Only one of his hastily aimed lasbolts landed, the rest passing underneath the Ork as it erupted out of the ground with an ear-shattering bellow of "SNEAK ATTACK!" While the single lasbolt didn't do much to the inexplicably purple Ork, Twitch's follow-up clocked the next one to climb out of the hatch right in the face. The third, equally purple Ork didn't even flinch as the grenade bounced off its thick skull, and immediately redirected its attention to the prone demolitions trooper with a bellow of its own. Twitch hadn't been sure whether the grenade had been a krak or a frag, but it didn't really matter since the Emperor was with him, and the blast cooked off the greenskins' own crude explosives. The top half of the second Ork rocketed into the air on a plume of fire, accompanied by pained bellows loud enough to be heard over the explosion. Several pained bellows in fact, and not all coming from the same hole.
By the time the second Ork was brought down, two more Guardsmen were dead, and from the sound of things it seemed like the other two squads weren't doing any better. In fact, a quick peek behind revealed a staggering number of xenos boiling out of dozens of the rubble piles they'd just been advancing through. None of the greenskins were looking their way though, their attention firmly fixated on the barrage of las and stubber fire coming from where the LT had the rest of the platoon "in reserve". The good news was that the five surviving guardsmen included the squad's medic, which is why there were still five of them. The bad news was it also included the corporal. Twitch's very reasonable suggestion that they mine the area and fort-up in the recently cleared access shaft was rejected out of hand, despite the silent looks of agreement from the other guardsmen. Corp said the mission needed doin, and didn't seem to think losing half the squad (and having a concussion and bleeding head-wound where his helmet used to be) was a valid excuse. The man was still pontificating about one's duty to the emperor when he stepped out of cover to lead the way and caught a burst of heavy stub rounds to the everything. All four guardsmen brought their lasguns up in anticipation of the traditional Orkish charge, and were completely unprepared for the grenade that sailed through instead. Twitch and the medic both dove for the crude explosive, only for it to go off in their faces in a geyser of purple smoke. As the cloud filled the area, accompanied by the anticipatory guttural chuckling of the greenskin, Twitch decided not to wait for another veto, and scrambled down into gore-splattered access shaft.
Following Twitch's lead, the rest of the guardsmen piled down after him into the tunnels. The landing at the bottom was a soft one, thanks to the remains of two and half of the purple-faced Ork ambushers littering the 3-way junction of tunnels. No other xenos were present, thank the Emperor, and Twitch seized the opportunity to open up his pack and start pulling out the tightly packed mines and demolition charges. By the time the other three had finished dithering over which direction to go, Twitch had the landing below the access shaft mined up and double-timed it out after them. Vanders, the guardsman on point, had only made it a short distance down the chosen tunnel, spending far too much time waving his lasgun's luminator around looking for the blatantly obvious tripwires and asking Twitch what to do about them. Twitch curtly directed the idiot to just not step on the damn things, and led a frantic hopping sprint down the tunnel as the rest of the guardsmen belatedly hurried to catch up. Through some divine act of Emperial grace, all four guardsmen made it through the gauntlet of Ork booby traps without setting them off. Sadly, only three of them managed to do it fast enough. As Guardsman Sprat brought up the rear, he looked backwards at a snarling-scraping sound, and got a brief glimpse of a small squig with something strapped to it dropping down the hole before the blastwave hit him.
Twitch swore as a far larger blast than he'd expected ripped down the tunnel, splattering poor Spratty across the chamber's far wall and throwing the three surviving guardsmen to the ground. Lurching back upright, and ignoring the scared looks from guardsmen who didn't understand how explosive safeties work, Twitch collected the scattering of mines he'd been holding and started planting them properly. The small group kept moving, the distant echoes of Ork boots and voices serving as their only real guide in the maze of interconnected, partially collapsed tunnels. Now up on point, Twitch led the other two around or through more of the crude booby traps, while leaving plenty of his own behind. At first Vanders and especially Dufresne, the medic, had questioned the wisdom and safety of all the mines, but after the second distant blast echoed through the tunnels behind them, they'd come around his perspective. The problem was that by the time the trio of guardsmen reached what looked to be some sort of wrecked control chapel, Twitch was completely out of mines and left with just his detpacks. Well, actually the problem was that they were lost, underground, behind enemy lines in xenos-infested, structurally dubious tunnels while what sounded like Guard artillery hammered the surface. Twitch was more concerned with being out of mines though, because even he wasn't crazy enough to try using detpacks like some sort of combat explosive. Grumbling to himself, the demo trooper walked over to the suspiciously intact door that Dufresne had found at the rear of the room. While Twitch worked to trace the metal wire he found tied to the door's handle, the two other guardsmen continued their sweep of the control-chapel's exits. Ignoring Twitch's complaint that poking around should probably wait until he wasn't literally defusing a bomb, Medic Dufresne scanned the doorway leading into the next room with his lasgun's luminator. Finding no traps along the floor, he signaled Guardsman Vanders to cover him, and stepped forward to check the corners. The medic swept his lasgun left, started to turn right, and then abruptly spun in a full circle as a large green arm darted down from the ceiling, seized his entire helmeted head in one palm, and snapped Dufresne's neck like a twig.
It happened faster than Guardsman Vanders could even see, one second the medic was standing, the next he was crumpled on the floor. His burst of useless lasfire sailed through the air over the dead medic, stitching belatedly upwards until the top edge of the doorway blocked them. Behind him, Twitch giggled hysterically and announced that he'd TOLD them, not even looking up from the tension-rigged stikkbomb he was carefully extracting. Vanders stood still, or at least as still as his hyperventilating would allow, covering the doorway and waiting for the greenskin to drop from the ceiling and rush through. As the seconds dragged passed, the Ork's terrifyingly un-Orky patience wore at him. The question of whether the greenskin was really just hanging there, right over the doorway, waiting for someone else to step through like some sort of idiot, burned at his mind, and the temptation to just try to rush it grew with every second. Then, after nearly a full minute, there was a guttural curse of disappointment, and the familiar shape of an Ork stikkbomb sailed down through the doorway. Vanders swung a desperate hand at the grenade, managing to swat it away behind some wrecked data-lecterns before it exploded, but that took his attention off the doorway. The large, purple-painted head and torso of the greenskin hanging upside down above it dropped into view and opened up on full auto with its shoota. Ignoring the spray of barely aimed rounds and Vanders screaming as one his leg, Twitch triumphantly pulled out the short-fused Orkish grenade and tossed it back through the doorway.
The gunfire cut off abruptly with the second grenade blast, and Twitch sprinted out to grab Vanders. As he dragged the wounded guardsman back towards the newly opened room, the sound of Orkish cursing assured him that the Kommando was both alive and pissed, but not quite enough of either to rush the hail of suppressive lasfire Vanders was laying down behind them. Worryingly, it wasn't just the one Ork he heard, there were more of the guttural voices echoing down the tunnels, punctuated by the occasional distant explosion. Deciding that the time overkill had well and truly come, Twitch tossed a pair of his detpacks back into the control room, carefully keeping their detonator ready for the first sound of imminent greenskins. A quick survey of the new room turned up only one other, partially collapsed, exit, but a tantalizingly large gap in the rubble revealed yet more branching tunnels beyond it. Twitch propped Vanders up against the large bank of cogitators taking up one wall, quickly hitting the bleeding guardsman with his only stimm, and applying a rough field dressing to the man's leg-wound. Once stabilized, Vanders hauled himself into position to cover the door, back still propped against the cogitator bank, while Twitch dug at the rubble blocking their exit. Moving fast, the demolitions trooper clawed out a hole big enough to squeeze through, and pushed through his pack and lasgun before turning to help Vanders through. As he turned, there was a large metallic bang, and the middle section of the cogitator array flew away from the wall, propelled with incredible force by the pissed-off Kommando behind it. Vanders tumbled back out into the control chapel, cursing and desperately trying to turn and bring his lasgun to bear as the enraged Ork plowed through the last of the wreckage after him. Twitch just watched as both the guardsman and the greenskin shot past him. Without so much as blinking, he turned back around and threw himself through the hole he'd made, and hit the detonator.
The second expedition to secure the manufactorum's extensive tunnel system was considerably better prepared, spearheaded by well-equipped stormtroopers, and didn't have to deal with a horde of Orks pouring up through them while they worked. Surprisingly, while several of the tunnels had been booby trapped by the greenskins, a large number of Imperial mines had been found, as well as remote demolition charges. Servo-skull scans of the area detected human lifesigns, and a single unconscious and badly dehydrated survivor of the previous Generian expedition was extracted from a sort of fortified nest in one of the pumping substations. Specialist Schultz was returned to his unit's medicae without further debrief.
Occurrence Border Orientation
"Statistically, three quarters of you will encounter something worthy of reporting to either the Inquisition or Ordos Juris within your first week aboard. This is not some sort of hint or sly suggestion, merely a projection based on past data." There was a general murmur of concern, but the gaggle of newly-conscripted tech-priests, tech-acolytes, and tech-thralls remained silent for now. "Fortunately, reporting such an encounter is both encouraged and easy, because this ship is an Inquisitorial vessel." Hannah clicked the projector to the next slide, displaying several pictures and bio-tags sorted into groups "And these are the Inquisitorial agents on-board-" One of the tech-acolytes immediately spurted a binaric query. Hannah rolled her eyes (which she'd specifically modified to do so), and gestured are the plain-gothic axis labels. "Response: They are ordered by a combination of rank and unhelpfulness. And the 'Belligerent', 'Belligerently Paranoid', 'Not a Heretek', and 'Probably Lying' labels are self-explanatory." Hannah gestured a mechadendrite at a point very near the axis of the chart. "Now this little shaded area denotes agents of both the Inquisition AND the Ordos Juris." A disbelieving binaric mutter began to pass through the group at the mention of the Mechanicus' heretek-hunters. It stopped abruptly as Hannah broadcasted her and Jim's undeniably real (if slightly exaggerated) credentials as Ordo members. "Which, as you can see, would be myself and Enginseer Jimmothy." She gestured at the axis for emphasis, "I suggest you take any inquires or reports to us first, but if you decide to go to one of the other options..."
Hannah advanced through several slides featuring tech-acolytes of various ranks cowering from heavily-armed guardsmen, or fending off a barrage of wrenches from a group of elderly men in grease-stained coveralls, or sitting locked in the ship's brig, or being dagged into the medbay with missing limbs. "Well, good luck, and don't be surprised if your concept of 'emergency' does not coincide with theirs." Hannah clicked to the next slide, "On that note, let us discuss hierarchy." Another chart appeared, with a single line labeled 'Years Survived on this Death-Trap'. The white-ish bearded man at the chart's far end stepped forward, and Hannah gestured at him with all the respect due a senior Magos. "Bill," asked Hannah "why is there a hole in the floor?"
The crowd turned as one to look at the large, square hole in the bay's floor, with two and a half cones marking it off. They looked back to the old man, sucking his teeth, as he thought. After several seconds, the elderly man snapped his fingers "That's the crawl-way to Engine 2s cooling regulator, it used to have a fancy hatch on it, but then we had the decompression on the gunnery deck, and I thought to myself, NEXT TIME if we had a void-sealed access on this-" Hannah held up a mechadendrite, "And if we really had to deal with this hole right now, Sir?" The old man spat. "I knew you'd ask that, cuz you always ask that. I'd say we should just weld a damn grate on it, because Engine 2 does 7% better with it open than it ever did b'fer." Hannah nodded and gestured at herself, "There are several very good reasons why that makes no sense, but I'm absolutely certain that he's right," She pointed at the old man, and the half-eaten sandwich dangling in one hand, "And THAT'S why he's the Engine-Master on this ship." There was some more muttering, mostly from the ordained members of the crowd, but Hannah could tell the point had sunk home. With a flick of a mechandendrite she deactivated the projector, and started the REAL orientation. "Next, we're going to go on a little tour of the ship's critical systems." She signaled at the two squads of lasgun-armed tribal armsmen chatting to eachother in their unique version of gothic at the far end of the bay. "Those of you with weapons or combat augmetics will want to keep them armed, but do remember that friendly-fire can go both ways. Now if you'll follow me, we'll start with the Gellar Field Generators, plural. Bill, while we walk, why you don't you tell them why we don't use the main access corridor to reach them anymore..."
Occurrence Border Fun Facts
>Occurrence Border fun fact #7329 We don't turn off the Gellar Field in normal space just turn it down to a low idle, which is why it's so important to have more than one generator. So always be sure to check if the other generator(s) are up before taking one down for maintenance! >Occurrence Border fun fact #7330 Iffin memory serves, that rule started when the entire port lance battery spontaneously dropped back into the warp, along with half the original electrical systems... Grandad said it took 15 years to re-wire it all, had to make his own wires, ya see. >Occurrence Border fun fact #7331 Last time the field went down in real-space, all the hydraulic fluid in the fore sections turned into Tyranid ichor before we got it back up. Most of them still work fine though. Also, a bunch of Astropaths blew up, but we're pretty sure that wasn't the ship's fault.
The Stationkeeper
Along with Magos Smith and his minions, an entire refueling-station's worth of new crewmembers reluctantly called the Occurrence Border their home. Hannah had worked hard to keep as many of them alive as possible through the critical orientation period, and she was relatively satisfied with her results. Even the former station's head (and only) Tech-Priest had been successfully integrated, which was surprising given his insistence on everyone properly addressing him as THE Stationkeeper. The Stationkeeper's initial attempts to assert his authority had been met with general mockery and some half-hearted attempts by his former subordinates to bring him down gently. After nearly a week of sulking he'd stomped off his shift, declaring his intention to "take command". Hannah had thought was off to try his bullshit with whichever Inquisitorial agent was technically in charge, or maybe just go to the Captain directly, and gave him a 19% chance of survival. If she'd known he'd intended to argue WITH THE SHIP, it would've been a lot lower.
The Occurrence Border had a Machine Spirit, if only for lack of any better term for such a kludged together amalgamation. A large part of the last re-fit had been reorganizing the disparate systems under control of the ship's original bridge manifold. It'd almost lasted a week. Several of Hannah's unlamented former superiors had spent most their time propping up the overloaded bridge systems with their internal processors, managing to maintain some semblance of unified order. Without them, the spirits had devolved into something more like a Machine Mob. This breakdown hadn't really impeded the ship's function, given the amount of manual work-arounds already in place. The Navigator had even confided that he preferred it this way, just interfacing with the systems directly, rather than working through the neurotic bridge manifold. What the Navigator, and everyone else who valued their sanity, DIDN'T do was jack directly into the primary data nexus.
Hannah imagined the dataflow of 722 system's accumulated errors, maintenance reqs, and status updates had been something like attaching a firehose to one's brain. Amazingly, by some grace of the Omnissiah's Try-Catch's, the Stationkeeper survived the experience. A patrol of tribal armsmen found the Tech-Priest wandering up near the edge of the front tainted areas, and taking him for a lost servitor, had brought him back to the village in hydroponics. By the time someone realized the former Stationkeeper wasn't a servitor he'd gotten pretty settled in. Hannah had found him quietly and (surprisingly) happily, maintaining the wide variety of hydroponic systems and enzyme vats alongside the tribal elders. She'd left him to it.
Magos Smith's Contingencies
"Magos FLESHSMITH sir? What was your plan if we hadn't arrived in system?" >MY PLAN HAD ALREADY SUCCEDED TAU-MINION! "Uhh-" >DO YOU THINK IT'S HARD TO NOTICE A CRUISER WARPING IN AND DECLARING IT'S INQUISITORIAL AUTHORITY? >I HAD MY ENTIRE LABORATORY STASIS-PACKED AND WAITING FOR THEM, ALONG WITH THAT BLITHERING IDIOT OF AN INQUISITOR AND HIS MINIONS. I EVEN LABELED EVERYTHING FOR EFFICIENT STORAGE. "So, you were, uh, complying?" >YES. OBVIOUSLY. IDIOT. "... why?" >HOW ELSE WAS I SUPPOSED TO GET EVERYTHING ABOARD MY NEW VOID-LAB? CARRY IT MYSELF? WITH MY ARMS? THINK TAU-MINION! "What Void-lab? I thought-" >THE DAUNTLESS-CLASS LIGHT CRUISER IS A HIGHLY RATED BY THE EXPLORATORS FOR ITS ADAPTABILITY, RANGE, AND EASE OF SUBBORNMENT. "So you were going to-" >KILL THEM ALL? NO YOU FOOL, I NEEDED THE NAVIGATOR ALIVE AT LEAST, AND MORE THAN 30% OF THE CREW BY PREFERENCE. "No, I meant-"
>THAT'S WHY I INVENTED THE XENO-PSCIONIC CONTROL IMPLANT, BEHOLD! "...wormy meatballs?" >THEY MIGHT AS WELL BE WITHOUT MY PATRIARCH. IT TOOK NEARLY A DECADE TO TUNE THEM TO INSTILL THE PROPER OBEDIENCE WITHOUT ALL THE CULT-SPREADING AND HIVE-FLEET SUMMONING BEHAVIORS. -- >BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE TAU-MINION! NOT ONLY ARE THEY REMOVABLE WITH ONLY A 26% FATALITY RATE, THE THREAT OF THEIR RE-INSERTION HAS PROVEN TO ENCOURAGE TOTAL LOYALTY IN 97% OF SUBJECTS! "That's horrible." >I KNOW, NOW THEY JUST INSTILL PSYCHOTIC HUNGER. COMPLETELY USELESS.
"I meant-" >AND NOW, INSTEAD OF HAVING A FULLY SUPPLIED CRUISER FULL OF COMPLIANT LAB ASSISSTANTS, I'M STUCK ON THIS WARP-TAINTED PETRI DISH OF A VESSEL, REDUCED TO SCAVENGING FOR EVEN THE MOST RUDEMENTARY RESOURCES. "Like lab assistants?" >PRECISELY. TAU-MINION. PRECISELY.
"It were CAIN'S REGIMENT!"
Aimy boggled over her drink at the former Scribe, and then turned to give the chair-bound Commissar the sort of morbidly curious look typically reserved for the survivors of really gruesome vehicular crashes. "His ENTIRE REGIMENT deserted?" The Scribe nodded, but to our amazement it was the Commissar himself who answered, with a slurring bellow of "ALL OF EM. Logishtics, dependens, an all." The old drunk forced himself upright, and turned a bleary glare around the room at large, before settling on Aimy. "An wasn jus any regimen either mishy, it were CAIN'S REGIMEN! BLOODY CAIN'S REGIMEN, AN I LOSS EM. Loss em all." Aimy continued to stare at the Commissar, this time with a look of dawning incredulity. "Wait, you mean CAIN Cain?" She blinked as the Commissar nodded grimly, and then blurted "YOU were in Lady General Jenet Sulla's Regiment?" The Commissar just stared at her for a few seconds, and then bellowed "WHO?"
To Aimy's amazement this sentiment was shared by everyone else present, and for a second she clammed up, but it didn't take much prodding to get her going again. "First Lady General since, like, 3rd Edition." She raised her bottle in salute, "Fracking hardcore battle-bitch, Mom always had this huge portrait of her in the tac room, even though she just drove a chimera." The Markswoman's expression grew distant, and she rather absently continued. "She used to read me these stories about Sulla and her little Chimmy, mowing down Orks and Nids, and driving Cain closer so he could hit em with his sword..." The potentially awkward silence was broken by a second drunken bellow of "WHO?" Aimy shook herself "The Valhallan 597th Infantry?"
"FRAK NO, bloody ice worlders, always hated em..." his expression tightened for a second, "it were one of the other ones, started with a 'P' I think. Had thish crest that looked like a, uh, thing." The Commissar pondered this conundrum for a few more seconds, and then leaned forward and beckoned at Aimy conspiratorially, "An they say he got re-shined before he even arrived, so he jusht did a speech an frakked off again." The Commissar's gaze dropped to the bottle in his hand, and he took a (relatively) small pull from it, before sitting upright with a bellow of "BUT IT WERE STILL CAIN'S BLOODY REGIMEN, AN THEY WERE THE BESH DAMN SONS OF BITCHES TO EVER HOLD A LASGUN, AN I LOSS EM!" The pull that followed this outburst was not small by any measure, and only ended when Aimy yanked the bottle away. To our amazement, the Commissar allowed this without protest, merely slumping in his chair and staring off into Emperor-knows-where.
Commissar Kelly
Commissar Kelly blinked at the two identical men standing at the head of the table, sporting a pair of equally identical Inquisitorial Rosettes. He wasn't entirely awake, or entirely sober either, after the Deployment Eve festivities that'd occupied most of his evening, but he was increasingly certain that this was all actually happening. Whatever it was. The rest of the command tent, having the advantage of either more sleep or considerably less sobriety, seemed to have already accepted the mysterious duplication of their Inquisitorial Observer, and were more concerned with the pair's "request"(as if the term could be applied to anything backed by a Rosette, much less two of them). The various muttered conversations between the officers came to a halt as the General cleared his throat, "The ENTIRE Regiment?" The Inquisitor on the left nodded, "Logistics, dependents, and all." "This will be a rather... extended deployment." added the Inquisitor on the other-left. Once again, the table erupted into muttered conversations. Kelly reached for the Recaff.
"And you're certain," pressed the General, "both of, uh, you, that the stakes-" Both of the Inquisitor nodded. "The existence of the Imperium itself may hang in the balance." "Not to mention the rest of causality." added the other one. The General lowered his head in thought for a few seconds, and then looked up at the pair with a grim smile, "Then I guess you've picked the right regiment." He turned to the man next to him, "Major, sound a general alert and bring us up to full readiness. Intelligence, start reviewing-" "Belay that order… Guardsman" interrupted a sneering voice, and every single face in the tent turned towards Kelly. He paused, recaff mug halfway to his mouth, replaying the last few seconds, and then whirled to stare at the Junior Commissar standing behind him.
The narrow faced young Commissar looked down on Kelly (literally for a change, supplied a small semi-functional corner of his brain) and continued in a rather prodding tone. "Our orders are-" With a splutter, Kelly finally managed to get his mouth at least partially working "You can't! He's a! They're a! You can't honestly-" "Whether they are or are not Inquisitors does not change that this is a "request", and one which runs directly counter to our current orders. Until such a time as Vox contact can be re-established with High Command, and proper authorization can be granted, both their duty as Guardsmen, and our duty as Commissars is perfectly clear." Kelly's eyes bulged as he looked from the young man behind him, and the laspistol in his hand, to the two Inquisitors, to the rest of the officers, and then back to the little idiot who'd just decided to argue protocol with the bloody Inquisition. His mouth gaped as he tried to form a coherent response, but words failed him. All he managed was a sputtered "Wha-wha-wha-wha-" before one of the Inquisitor held up his hand and the room went silent. The Inquisitor on the left surveyed the room, evidently appreciating the incredulous looks on the officers' faces, while the other turned to face the two Commissars with a smug little smile. "Well, far be it from us to ask a man to ignore their duty."
When Commissar Kelly woke up, he wasn't in the command tent. In fact he wasn't in a tent at all, or anything else, aside from a very big, very muddy, and VERY empty field. Well, empty except for the Junior Commissar snoring in the mud next to him, and a pile of what looked to be their personal effects. With a weary sigh, Commissar Kelly levered himself out of the mud, staggered over the pile, and extracted the bottle of amasec he'd set aside for next Deployment Eve. Overhead, the first wave of orbital shuttles circled the clearing in obvious confusion, and a small flier with Commissariat markings descended towards the pair.
Meanwhile, in the All Dreadnought Party
>BROTHER FESTUS, I BELIEVE I HAVE STEPPED ON A XENOS PSYKER "MY AUSPEX CANNOT IDENTIFY ANY PSYCHIC ACTIVITY, HOW CAN YOU TELL?" >I AM CURRENTLY RE-ENTERING THE ATMOSPHERE AT TERMINAL VELOCITY "AIM FOR THE GARGANT!"
>BROTHER, BEAR WITNESS! "I SEE YOU, BROTHER INGVAR" *hefts 3/4 of a Tau Battlesuit* >I WAGER I CAN TAKE OUT THAT GUN EMPLACEMENT FROM HERE "..." *yeets battlesuit through an upper-story wall of the hab-block above, missing the nest by several meters* "THIS IS WHY THEY DON'T LET YOU HAVE A PLASMA CANNON ANYMORE." >BE QUIET AND TOSS ME THE ONE YOU KILLED. "GET YOUR OWN. NOW WATCH TAKE OUT THIS FLIER..."
"BROTHER DAMASC, THERE IS A SHIPPING-CONTAINER STUCK YOUR CHASSIS, DO YOU REQUIRE ASSISTANCE?" >DESIST BROTHER, IT IS A CUNNING DISGUISE, I AM SNEAKING UP ON THEM. "I TOLD YOU TO BRING A RANGED WEAPON." >THEN HOW WOULD I HOLD THE SHIPPING CONTAINER?