Invenire Praeterita

This is a Warhammer 40k side project of mine. This is only the prologue, but I intend to make it into a full story if I have the time.

Screams and shouts rang throughout the hallways. Boots thudded on deck plates and equipment clanked as soldiers ran to their stations.

The soldiers arranged themselves behind barricades rising from the floor. Lasguns were trained on the long hallway before them as sweating, cursing men emplaced an autocannon to cover the door. Then they waited...

And waited...

CRACK

The entire platoon covering the hallway turned towards the unexpected detonation. Less than half even managed to get a glimpse of the bulkhead, rent asunder by an explosive charge, before the hail of bolter shells emerging from it cut them down. Body parts were flung everywhere, and screams ended in horrible, sharp detonations as the explosive rounds found their mark. Most of the soldiers were too stunned to even fire back, and only a handful -the most veteran among them- managed to let a few shots off, wildly off their mark, before they, too, were killed.

It was over in an instant. The distant sounds of the engines, pushing the ship ever farther into the void, and the environmental systems endlessly laboring to keep it's crew alive sounding almost...shocked after the symphony of death that had just occurred.

A second passed.

"Sector clear." Boomed the powerful, unmistakable voice of a space marine through a highly secured and encrypted vox channel.

"Roger that. Move up. Barachiel, you take point. Somers, cover our left. Serio you take the right. Sarok, you have the rear. Elistor, you stay here until I give the go ahead." Another booming voice answered, vibrant and full of authority.

"Yes sir."

The space marines darted into the hallway, surprisingly fast and agile to the uninitiated, even with the bulk of their power armor. They separated quickly, a marine with a bolter taking point, while a pair scanned the side corridors for threats, one using a bolt pistol and a chain sword, the other wielding a chainaxe and a plasma pistol. Finally, a devastator, wielding a massive heavy bolter, followed on their heels, in position to support either of the three others should they need it.

"No contact." All reported, nearly simultaneously.

"All clear. Milady, Elistor, you may move in."

"Thank you, sergeant Orion." Said a low, feminine voice.

A figure stepped through the rend in the bulkhead. It's figure was obscured by flowing crimson robes, and a hood covered her face. However, the tell-tale glow of cybernetic eyes shone from under it. Behind it came the shadow of another space marine, this time wielding a massive two handed power sword.

"Where to now, milady ?"

The figure hesitated for a second, and held out her hand, revealing a slender, robotic limb. It's exterior was deceptively simple and utilitarian, compared to most of the cybernetic implants of the Imperium. However, it was more due to the owner's complete disregard for gilding rather than lack of quality. A miniaturized holographic projector, whose working would have baffled most magos, sprang to life from her palm, and an hologram of the ship's interior plan appeared, simultaneously being relayed to the space marine's heads up display by the woman's implants.

A section of the ship became highlighted in red, then another in purple.

"Engineering has already been taken care of. Life support is of little use to us, as is the hangars, nor the savior pods. Let them flee if they will, they matter not. Our next objective shall be the bridge...Then the reliquarium."

"Yes milady. Alright, let's move out !"

The space marines once again leapt into motion, and started making their way forward, regularly gunning down security teams and crew members as they tried to stop them, and outflanking or blowing through the more heavily entrenched positions. The woman smiled, bemused each time they stopped her from going forward, in regards to her safety. In truth, her extensive augmentations and implants, some of which whose technology was unfortunately long lost, would have made her almost as resilient as they were to conventional weapons. Of course, it wouldn't do to rub their noses in it...and in all fairness, they were just doing their jobs.

The woman chuckled, and her bodyguard, Elistor, the marine with the power blade, gave her a quick glance, before going back to scanning the surroundings for potential threats to his charge, every sense he had, including his suit's more arcane sensors, stretching out to look for enemies.

Predictably, there were none. His comrades might not be from his chapter, but they were space marines. They knew their business as well as he did, and the only enemies he saw were dead, often so mangled that even if they still somehow drew breath they wouldn't be able to threaten anyone. That was when there were enough pieces left to form a cohesive whole of course.

After a few minutes of intermittent fighting, they arrived in the command section of the ship, just a hallway short of the bridge.

Of course, the slight problem was that their advance had been anything but discrete, and even had they been from the Raven Guard and not let their enemies realize where they were heading, their opponents weren't bumbling idiots either. The bridge was always one of the primary targets hit during a boarding action, usually alongside the engineering sections and the life support system. Since engineering had been their first target, it made sense to fortify the last two as much as possible.

In this case, half a dozen autocannons and heavy stubbers had been arranged behind sandbags and barricades raised from the floors, alongside a rocket launcher, all overlooked by a solitary las cannon. There were 3 full platoons of infantry, nearly 120 soldiers all told, guarding the entrance to bridge alongside them of course, but unless they came into range to throw krak grenades or a melta bomb, they were unlikely to be of any threat to the group.

The sergeant looked at the tactical map for a minute, before turning towards the woman accompanying them, taking out a grenade out of his belt, and showing it to her.

She looked at the cylinder for a moment, before smiling and nodding.

"Of course you have my permission to use it sergeant ! There would have been little point to give them to you otherwise."

The sergeant nodded back, and quickly gestured for the rest of the team to prepare their own grenades. He could have just ordered them thrown in, but they were gifts from their companion. Politeness was never wasted, particularly on someone so masterful in the use of technology, as the tremendous upgrades to his suit's auspex systems showed.

"Alright. On my mark. 3. 2. 1. Mark !"

Simultaneously, 5 grenades sailed through the hallway -Sarok, the devastator, not having grenades of his own-, and bounced straight in the middle of the awaiting gunline, whose officers had just realized something had moved and were opening their mouths to give the order to fire.

They never even got the chance.

The grenades detonated, and the entire defensive position was engulfed in a dense, glittering smoke. Confusion reigned for a second...Then the electric arcs and the explosions began.

The grenades' content itself was fairly harmless. Smoke, yes, and a bit of explosives to open the canister more expediously. But the powder contained within was, on it's own, mildly irritant to the lungs at best. However it did have an interesting property. One that only a member of the Adeptus Mechanicus, or anyone deeply acquainted with technology, would have recognized.

It was a variant of the complex meta-material used in capacitors or power packs to draw the energy out of the arcane mechanism. However, unlike it's close cousin, it did not do so on command...or only bit by bit. In a single, violent second, every power pack of every energy weapon released all of their contained energy. Some, like the large backpack sized power packs used by the few elite soldiers wielding hot-shot lasguns, or the large power pack used by the las cannon, simply exploded. The smaller ones, like those used for laspistols or lasguns let loose bolts of electricity, jumping around on anything that could get it to gound, helped by the cloud of the very conductive material spread around them.

Men and women screamed in terror and pain as their own guns exploded and ripped them apart, or arcs of electricity coursed through them, completely frying their nerves and burning their bodies. Soldiers dropped left and right, spasming or just torn apart, and only a handful, lucky enough to have been manning the stubbers and autocannons, remained standing.

Then the final component of the grenade activated. Another reagent, mixed in with the conductive meta-material, began to oxidize in the air...And as it did, it created a reaction with the other material, and began outputting tremendous amounts of heat.

Screams of pain as the dust started to glow red and melt resounded throughout the room...before being brutally silenced as the incandescent dust hit the ammunition boxes of the projectile weapons and the spare rockets for the launcher.

The space marine sergeant's appreciation of his companion clicked up another notch as he surveyed the carnage. Out of the 136 hostiles the defensive point had boasted, 16 were still combat capable...and only 45 were going to survive for more than the next handful of seconds. That is, if they got tended to by a medicae quickly enough. Which wasn't going to happen.

He yelled a warcry, a long, hullulating scream, and his men followed. They charged forwards, straight into the stunned survivors of the devastating attack.

The only thing that prevented them from taking full control of the fortified position in less than 6 seconds was that sandbags had buried one of the survivors, and they had to use a krak grenade to finish her off.

The sergeant looked at the door leading to the bridge, then back at his companion, the question evident, even through the limited body language of his suit.

"Yes, no point in waiting around. It isn't like they would negotiate even if they had something to negotiate with. Still, do try to keep a few alive, I have some questions to ask."

"Yes, milady." Said the sergeant, before reorganizing his men with a few, terse orders.

Somers, Barachiel and Sarok stayed behind, positioning themselves behind the sandbags to intercept any attempt to retake the bridge. Somers' bolt pistol and Barachiel's bolter should be more than enough to repel any counterattack the crew of the ship would be capable of throwing at them, and Sarok could take care of any surprises with his heavy bolter.

He nodded towards the massive, ornamented door, and he and his remaining men positioned themselves around it. Then, as one, they moved forward.

Orion kicked the door open as Elistor charged forward, cutting in half a soldier wielding a hot-shot lasgun before he even had the chance to fire, before moving with superhuman speed, almost whirling in the middle of the enemies as his blade swept around him, taking limbs and lives in a carefully coreographed dance of death.

Serio leapt into action, his plasma pistol spitting out the hatred of the stars themselves, the plasma bolt blasting cleanly through a trio of enemies before exploding as it collided a cogitator, grievously wounding those around it as the wave of plasma and hyper-heated shrapnel hit them. He then started swinging his chainaxe left and right, cleaving through his foes and tearing them apart as they fruitlessly attempted to swarm him.

Orion for his part, simply lifted his bolter, and began methodically taking out every single enemy that didn't wear the bearing of a superior officer and wasn't in his men's blood soaked path.

After a good ten seconds of screams and carnage, the sounds stopped. Out of the 3 dozen persons that had stood on the bridge a moment ago, only 3 still lived. The rest had either been shot or torn asunder by the might of the space marines.

Orion looked at one of the survivors, the only one who had the wit to pull out his sidearm and fire at him. He had hit his mark as well, but even a human sized bolt pistol was a poor weapon against power armor, let alone one enhanced by a master artificer.

The sergeant started forward, and tore the pistol -who the young man was still trying to reload- from his grasp, and threw it across the bridge, before grabbing him by his throat.

"Milady ? The area is secure." Called out the sergeant over the vox.

"Ah, excellent ! You kept some alive." Answered the woman as she stepped through the door leading into the bridge.

She nimbly stepped over or around the cadavers strewn around the room, with the ease only an excellent sense of balance -from natural gifts or cybernetics- could give you. Then, she stopped in front of the group of terrified men, with the one entrapted by the space marine looking at her defiantly.

She looked at him, and tilted her head at his outfit, especially his strange, fancy cap...

"Ah, a commissar ! Well hello my dear. I am here for some information, particularly on the cargo you are carrying. Could you help me out ?"

The commissar spat defiantly on the ground.

"NEVER ! I will not say a word to you, heretic ! Torture me all you want, I will take what I know to the grave ! Warp take you, traitorous wench !"

The woman sighed, and shook her head sadly.

"Ah, such language...Oh well, so be it. Sergeant, if you would ?"

Orion nodded slightly, and closed his gauntlet. There was an audible crunch, and then the commissar's body went limp as his spine was broken, alongside everything else in his neck. The space marine simply let the body fall to the ground as he turned to face the last two Imperials standing.

"So, now. Any of you two gentlemen willing to answer some questions ?"

She looked at the two remaining officers, and they recoiled. The first one babbled unintelligably, probably muttering a prayer, as he repeated the sign of the aquilla, over and over again, as if to ward himself against her, while the other one simply stood there, like a gretchin caught in the headlights of a leman russ, frozen in terror.

The woman sighed, and walked straight towards the mumbling one. It didn't take an enhanced cortex to realize he was probably beyond any use at this point. So she leaned towards him as he recoiled, while keeping the last survivor in the corner of her vision.

"Mmmmhhh ? Nothing ? Well, let me help...refresh your memory."

Suddenly, her mechadendrites swarmed from her robe, and pinned the unfortunate Imperial against the console he had backed up against. Then, other cybernetic limbs extracted themselves from underneath her garnments...Wielding scalpels, probes, and a host of other instruments.

For a second, nothing happened. Then, all of the appendices went towards the poor man at once.

After a few seconds, and once the man's head had been so thoroughly sliced to pieces that even an experiences medicae would have trouble putting it back together, she turned back towards the last survivor. She hid a frown as she saw that he had soiled himself. Oh well, it wasn't like she couldn't turn off the smell anyway. Not that it would change much, given the amount of bowels that were being emptied from the corpses around the room

"So, do you need another memory refresher, or can we get down to business ?"

"N-No ! P-Please don't kill me ! I-I'll tell you everything I know ! J-Just don't hurt me, p-please !" Rushed out the terrified officer.

"Of course, I won't hurt you." Said the woman in a soothing tone. "Now, what do you know about the artifacts in the reliquarium...And who sent them aboard this ship ?"

"I-I, u-uh, I don't know much, I-I swear ! T-The artifacts are a bunch of a-archeotech stuff ! A-Ancient technotheology things, I-I don't know exactly what they are ! A-As for who sent them onboard, I don't know ! T-There were rumors that it was an inquisitor, o-or an archmagos, e-even a space marine chapter master t-that tasked us with delivering them !"

"Ah, I see...Anything more ?"

"N-No ! I-I don't know anything else, I-I swear ! P-Please don't kill me !"

The woman smiled.

"Relax, I'm not going to kill you." She smiled as he sighed in relief, his shoulders sagging and his eyes closing, and gestured at the sergeant. "He will."

The officer barely had the time to open his eyes before the sergeant's bolter came up and fired a single shot.

*****

The woman stared pensively at the headless corpse, before turning around, towards the space marine sergeant.

"Well, that doesn't help us much. Still, some information is better than no information...and the fact that even the superior officers of the ship didn't know anything about it tells us something on it's own, doesn't it ?"

The sergeant politely nodded. His companion had a tendency to talk to her escort, even if they had no idea what she was rambling about or what kind of logic chain she was following. Then, the sergeant tilted his head slightly, before looking at the bridge's door.

"Milady, I-"

"Dear gods, stop calling me that."

Orion froze, and looked at the woman, who simply tapped her foot on the ground.

"It makes me feel like one of these corpse worshipers. Call me Archmagos, or heck, even Arcadia will do. Just no more of that 'milady' bullshit. I wasn't born a noble and I'll die before I become one like some of these bastards."

The sergeant slowly nodded.

"Very well mil-Archmagos. Shall we proceed to the reliquary ? My men are reporting that the corpse worshipers have stopped attempting to retake the bridge, and are pulling back. I fear that they may be preparing to scuttle the ship."

"Yes, that would be the most logical course of action...Although given the fact that we blocked every access to the engineering section I'm a bit curious as to how they plan to accomplish that. Oh well, no matter ! Onwards, sergeant ! We have artifacts to acquire !"

Sergeant Orion, formerly of the Silver Phoenix space marine chapter, nodded, and followed his somewhat exhuberant companion -and employer- back into the bowels of the ship. Out of all the things he had imagined he would do when he and his brothers had rebelled against the Imperium, this wasn't one of them. Then again, if he hadn't met the...peculiar Heretek Archmagos, he probably wouldn't be alive to do anything anyway.

He shook his head slightly, and started organizing his men. They had a mission to complete after all.