Story takes places just after part one, Commissar Dulin and Colonel Schaeffer were surrounded and fighting back to back in the village square. With the help of Sgt. Trask’s returning men, they were able to fall back while holding off the Dark Eldar to an old warehouse. (A lot stolen from ww2 movies as a nod.”)
The Commissar stood with his arms crossed behind his back looking into the round cylinder’s glass view port. He was standing in an old warehouse turned command bunker. The floor was thick with hay and the night air smelled of rain, decayed crops and burning. Outside bombs exploded, lighting up the sky and shaking the building and causing dirt to fall from its upper floors. Behind him Sgt. Rock Custodian of one of the Demon Dog Legions was yelling into a Vox.
“No, that's Map Section 3.. not 4. I don't give a damn what Command says about anything! Mulligan, I don't think I'm getting through to you! You're dropping your damn barrage on our position!” Another bomb rocked the building. “You can't hear me? The reason you can't hear me...is because you're firing your artillery at your end...and they're dropping here at our end! No, the Eldar are not here! We're here!” A series of explosions rang outside and one old window exploded inside. “Mulligan, your bombs are coming down on our heads! I don't know where the Eldar are! Just lift your goddamned barrage! Over!” Outside a bomb hit a sugar silo and busted it open. “Mulligan, you son of a bitch!” Rock threw his Vox mic down and walked way.
Suddenly Sgt. Trask came running down the stairs, binoculars in his good hand. “They're trying to push up the street by the Main Green House Bio-Domes.”
“What do you want me to do about it, Trask?” Rock snapped frustrated throwing his cigarette down to the damp floor.
“The Scout Sentinels been wiped out! And the Old Man wants you to reinforce that section.” Trask said thrusting his thumb towards the upstairs towards Colonel Schaeffer.
Rock, pushed up his helmet and rubbed his forehead. “Go see what's happening. Archie! Jughead!” Rock yelled towards two of the penal legionnaires playing cards in the corner. “Grab a Auspex and Signum and go with Corporal Barbara. On the double!
“Sarge can you do me a favor?” The very young trooper asked as he started to head out with Archie and Jughead.
“What?” Rock asked lighting up another cigarette.
“Stop calling me Barbara.”
“Its your name isn’t it.”
“Its Babra.”
“Shut up! “Rock yelled pushing the Corporeal out the door.
This time a bomb hit so hard a large crack formed in a side wall as everyone but the Commissar half ducked in reflex.
Brains the legions communications expert, suddenly stood holding the Vox. “It's Mulligan.”
“What the hell does he want?” Rock asked standing again.
“He says he's sorry.”
“Sorry Son of a bitch!” Rock walked off continuing to curse.
Brains setback down by the Vox. “Rock’s a little upset right now. I think maybe you should leave town. Get out of the neighborhood.”
Sgt. Trask walked back upstairs to Shaeffer’s unit barricaded up by the windows Lasguns primed and looking for signs of the enemy. “Any Troubles?” Schaeffer asked as Trask retook his position.
“Yeah! To the right of us, General Super Dragon Marine Pyrus. To the left, the Nun Army. To the rear, our own goddamned artillery. Besides all that, it's raining. Which happen to be the best thing at the moment as it keeps our Air Corps from blowing us to hell...because it's too lousy to fly. “
“You know, if the Commissar didn’t like you so much Trask, I think I would shoot you.”
Trask couldn’t tell if the colonel was kidding, he was unreadable, like a robot. He just stared through you with those cold blue eyes of his.
Brains stood from the Vox yelling in a panic. “Barbara reports Ravagers coming in through Webways. The Dark Eldar are here!”
Rock walked over to the side of the Warehouse where 2 Lemun Russ were setting parked. Harmonica music coming from it. “Hey, Cowboy! There are three Eldar vehicles coming up the road. I suggest you get activated.”
“Hold it down there a bit, Willard.” The driver of the second tank said. “The Sgt trying to tell us something. Yes, sir. You're telling me what?”
“There are three vehicles coming up the road.” I suggest you get activated!”
“Now, come on, pal! Ain't you got any Valkyries? We've been polishing these things for two days! If we take them out there in that rain, they'll rust up on us.”
“Don't give me a hard time. Get off your ass, and get out there!”
“Yes, sir. I didn't mean nothing! I was just trying to tell you how we're feeling, ain't that right, Willard?” the two got back inside he tank and started it up.
Rock turned to the blonde bearded Penal Tank Commander setting one a lawn chair up on the first Lemun Russ. “Well, what do you think, Oddball?
“It's a wasted war, man. Nobody said anything about locking horns with Ravagers.”
"Look. You just keep those Eldar busy, and we'll take care of the rest.”
“The only way I got to keep the Eldar busy is to let them shoot holes in me.”
Rock was starting to lose his patience, but Oddball was a real freak, but a Tank Ace and you had to talk to him real special. “We just want you to keep them interested for a while.”
Oddball’s tank driver/mechanic Moriarty popped up from his hatch. “Oh, man! You guys are crazy! When we was in the bocage country, we was assaulted by them Ravagers! You know what I mean by "assaulted"? Well, I mean assaulted!
Oddball suddenly got mad. “Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here in farmer land? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?
“Shit”! Moriarty went back into his hatch with a slam.
Rock continued, trying to stay calm. “We do have the element of surprise. They Don’t know we’re here.”
“We don't have the element of surprise. They will hear our Mars motors long before we even get inside that map sector.”
“What if I can show you a way to get into that sector so they don't hear you? Nobody's asking you to be a hero.”
“No? Then you sit up in that turret, baby.”
“No. 'Cause you'll be up there, baby. And I'll be right outside showing you which way to go.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Crazy. I mean, so many positive waves, maybe we can't lose. You're on.” Oddball threw his foldup lawn chair into his tank and pointed towards the wall while yelling
“Yooooooooooooooyaaaaaaahhh”. The two Lemun Russ, Oddball’s Crazy 8 and Cowboy’s Haunted Tank drove through the wall and out into the night rain, sky lighting up in flashes as Mulligans flak shells popped in the sky. Sgt Rock and his men piled onto the back of the tanks and climbed up onto them to ride out to the location.
Commissar Dulin finally turned from his thoughts and the metal cylinder. “Im sorry old friend, but I have to awake you. If my intel is correct we are greatly outnumbered here but we must hold this village from these xeno.” Commissar pushed a series of numbers on the cylinder’s door. Then drew his bolt pistol and shouted out to Sgt. Trask, Brains and the other penal legion of B-Company. Bayonet up! And follow me!” He led his men out towards where the majority of the Villagers were hiding.
The cylinder hissed and steam poured from it and as the door slide open and an albino Female stepped fourth in a skin tight synskin suit. She lifted up a gigantic sniper rifle from the cylinder like it weighed nothing. Checked its cartridge chamber, slammed the gyro compositor shut and popped a lollypop in her mouth. The Afriel Strain Sniper was engaged. She took the stairs to the warehouse roof at unhuman speeds. She busted out the roof top doors just in time to see a ravager coming out of a webway, she fired a quick hip shot and the shell pierced the mighty raiders engine and the vehicle exploded with great force sending its passengers up and out of it like popcorn kernels. “Oh hellz yeah!” it was good to be awake again.
<Hours into the battle>
Sister Stern fell to her knees aboard the mighty cathedral battle ship, Erue. Blood poured from her nose. She had been using her Daemonifuge powers for hours to warp and shift the Webway portals of The Dark Eldar to keep their vehicles from accurately arriving, but the strain was too much to warp them to prevent escape.
<Back to the village below>
“Oddball, this is Trask.”
“Trask, what the hell's going on out there, man?”
“We still have the Villagers protected, what about your Tanks?”
Oddball sets in his lawn chair next to his tank, bottle of wine in one hand and some cheese in the other. He lazily eats his cheese then picks up his Vox. “Like No good, man. They've both had it. One's tracks are shot and, the other's burning.”
“Yeah, I can see the fire from here. Over.”
“We cleared the sky, man, of those razor wing...things.. but we’re stuck here now man”
“Where's Sgt Rock?”
“Man, him and Easy Company took on some real hard core bitches, man. Most heric thing I ever seen, man. Sarge jumped up and took out all of them but 2. He even head-butted the main one with his helm, but it looked like he went down. That sector still has enemy and no way to send in medics yet to check.” Without getting up out of his chair or putting down his wine, Oddball held a finger up towards the sky and spin it around and around in a circle and yelled “Fire!” Cowboys immobile tank fired its heavy bolters into a group of Dark Eldar on foot to devastating results. “Over and out.”
Commissar Dulin looked at the heavy losses of B Company. “Sgt. Trask, take the villagers and move them back to home base.”
Trask peeked around the Green House Bio dome towards the warehouse but a Venom was between them. “Sir…”
“Don’t worry about them Sgt. They will have their hands full.” The Commissar pulled a Krak grenade from his belt. “For the Emperor!!!” The Commissar ran the distance firing his bolt pistol, the rounds blinking off the hull. His Golden Face mask lighting up eerily as the flak explosions lit it up randomly. The venom fired into him but no harm can come to he who is protected by the emperor. He shoved the krak grenade into its grav port and the vehicle exploded. The blasted knocked him to the ground and knocked his bolt pistol away. As he stood he saw a group of Dark eldar on foot. B Company was almost to the warehouse. He had to keep the Eldar’s attention; he drew his old shiv, the one he used when he was a penal legionnaire under Schaeffer. He had turned his life around and served the emperor well, now it seemed it was time to repay his second chance. He charged them. He went down in a hail of fire. His body riddled by the strange weapons of the Dark Eldar.
There was a scream of rage from on top the ware house. An insane amount of sniper fire slammed into the vehicles of the xeno sending them to a fiery death. Lollypop moving from window to window in a blur of motion, rifle to shoulder popping of one single round during that moment of crossing. One shot, one kill, one shot, one kill.
The Commissars loss didn’t just affect lollypop. Mulligan’s Artillery finally homed in and rained down on the Dark Eldar soldiers, and Schaeffers’s Chosen fired their lasguns as fast as their power cells could handle, mowing down the remainder of the xeno with a cry of “For the emperor!!! For the Commissar!!!!!
Trask stood in the door way of the ware house as the last of the villagers made it in. He was always looking for a way out, a chance to run, drink, or gamble…even steal. Selfish reasons. But that…that was the most heroic thing he had ever seen. Any imperial command would have ordered them into the enemy bullets as penal legion sacrifices without a second thought while they themselves and the villagers made it to safety, even Schaeffer would have…..but The Commissar treated them like battle brothers. Stupid as hell, but heroic, the kind that inspires. Trask turned around to Bad Company, Warrior Princess, Shiv, Animal, Demolition Man (Major Moustache), Rocket Girl, Fingers, Brains, Gunny, Hero, he just met their gaze in silence, he nodded and they nodded, he drew his bolt pistol, they were going back out to get his body. A bunch of selfish jackasses, doing something good.
Maybe they could call this day a win.
No comments:
Post a Comment