VYANIAH
VYANIAH
Shadows in the Hulk
'By the marks upon thee, shall he know thee,' said Tiber. 'And so judge the iron of a brother's soul,' responded the chaplain, Voldo. Tiber contemplated this a moment. It was simply the way. All brothers of the Novamarines were brought up in the practice. Particularly memorable or meaningful deeds were inked into permanence upon their flesh. The tattoos covered nearly every inch of flesh on particularly decorated veterans. Some preferred simple, symbolic representations of their deeds, while others had their flesh covered with mural-like depictions of their actions, graphic and masterful in their rendering. The Chapter believed that upon the death of a warrior, the Emperor himself would judge the tally of their deeds, and the ritual tattoos would be as a scroll for the reading.
All around him, Tiber could hear the creak and groan of earth and metal, grating against one another like tectonic plates shifting. His inbuilt auspex unit had stopped functioning reliably twenty-three minutes ago, and his inter-unit vox channels were spitting nothing but static and, more worryingly, a malign whispering. He had been separated from the rest of the unit by a cave-in twenty-seven minutes ago, and was attempting to follow the pre-planned route back to their staging point. He had committed the route to memory, and had a rough idea of which direction he should be traveling, despite the lack of his auspex or data-hound. This portion of the Hulk was primarily space-rock and other organic detritus, but Tiber approximated that less than a kilometre above him lay a titanic and unknown power source; this had been noted during their pre-breaching augury, and all of the Marines had mentally noted the anomaly. This heat and energy source would likely be playing home to a brood nest of genestealers.
Traversing the unsteady ground heading back toward the outer crust of the Hulk, he found the path opening up ahead. The air pressure decreased, fractionally, and experience told him that a ship's carcass lay ahead. This wasn't expected, and Tiber took a moment to assess the risk. He could turn himself around and attempt to forge a new path, circumventing the dead space craft, or continue through in the knowledge that he was maintaining his course. After a brief moment, his armored boot strode forward toward the craft. The outer hull plating became visible as he came upon it, and his flickering omni-light illuminated a portion of the livery plastered upon the ancient ship's belly. Vyaniah. A name, he presumed - in a language he was not familiar with. He snorted out a breath, and double checked the ammo-counter linked to his rotary assault cannon. Four hundred-and-seventy two rounds left in his current drum. Two more full drums were mag-locked to his waist, but his left fist was encased in the immense gauntlet of a powerfist, leaving him unable to re-load the weapon unaided. Tiber nodded reverentially toward the name, 'Vyaniah'. He understood that he was about to enter a likely killing ground, and had no wish to enter the ancient craft without offering his respects.
After entering the Vyaniah, Tiber had followed a lengthy straightaway before coming to a dead end. The passage had been lined with flickering blue lumens and the corpses of long-dead Tech Adepts. Pausing a moment, he leaned over one of the broken bodies. It was practically skeletal; somewhat preserved by the low atmosphere, and partially bionic. The heraldry, faded as it was, represented no tech cult or forge-world that he was familiar with. This beast must truly be ancient, he thought. With a whine, he powered up his gauntleted fist, and crumpled in the wall section to his right. This would lead him nearest to his desired heading, and although he regretted the noise and vibration created by his fist, the progress was worthwhile. The yawning room that he'd punched through to looked like a maintenance bay or engineering deck; Cables lay strewn across the floor like thickly bunched serpents, and servo-arms hung from the ceiling above work stations. Tiber paused a moment to wonder at the mechanical mess. It meant nothing to him, but it appeared as though the place had been functioning right up until impact with the Hulk. Or perhaps they'd translated poorly and directly into the space-rock. A poor fate, he thought to himself.
A rending, squealing noise lanced through his fore-thoughts, tearing him from his momentary distraction. Ponderously, he twisted at the waist and scanned the ceiling. There were a multitude of rents and tears in the ancient roofing, and he was unable to ascertain the source of the noise. Calmly, he tested his cannon's action, spooling up the six barrels briefly with a low metallic purr. He had no desire to make a grave of the Vyaniah. Scanning the room for possible exits, he decided upon a hanging-open mag-door at the far end of the room. It was a straight path, and should take no more than a few moments to achieve the doorway and quit the open space of the engineering deck. Three metres from the portal, another noise froze Tiber in place. A wet, alien, clicking came from directly behind. Taking a measured breath, he spun himself around steadily, mentally activating the vigilance targeting systems linked to his cannon. A figure stood, just within sight. Hunched and sinister, melting into the surrounding structure and shadow, it watched him. There's never just one, he thought, taking steady, backward steps. His ancient terminator plate worked with him, softening his footfalls and enhancing his audio pickups. A haze of unnatural fog ominously began to spill from the hole he'd created in the wall.
Without hesitation, he spooled up the assault cannon and let loose with a salvo of high-velocity shells. Things unseen screamed out, and suddenly a wave of the foul xenos spilled from the broken wall, scrabbling over the broken bodies of their fellows. A particularly large alien heaved two corpses ahead of itself, soaking up bullets in a welter of gore. The bodies fell to pieces, and the brute was no more than two metres from Tiber when it finally succumbed to the hail of shells. Working the trigger, Tiber efficiently destroyed all of the genestealers who attempted to gain entry through the broken bulkhead. Their black blood ran freely in the under-pressurized atmosphere, and covered the walls and ceiling like a charnel house. He estimated fourteen kills, and made a note of the number. It pleased him to keep tally. He hadn't powered up his gauntlet again, and hoped that he wouldn't have use of it. A thought brought up his ammo-counter. Three hundred-and-nineteen rounds remaining; not nearly sufficient.
Without further hesitation, he turned and resumed his course.
The corridor he now traversed twisted and turned, constricting Tiber in his enormous armor. His already battle-worn pauldrons scraped through tight turns, and he was more than once tempted to seek a more accommodating route. But he knew, he was heading in the right direction. Perhaps he could even forge a path back towards his unit's original route and reunite with them. The way widened ahead, and appeared to open up to a stair. This was a good sign - he needed to ascend, relatively speaking, if he was ever to find a way back to his egress point. His lamp flickered as he looked round, casting freakish shadows from the hallway above. His enhanced audio feed alerted him to a steady scrabbling noise following him, and gaining quickly. Sucking his teeth, Tiber mentally activated his powerfist. It hummed and occasionally crackled with barely contained energy - the servos and pistons which acted as muscle and sinew strained to keep the immense fist steady. He had worn the gauntlet on sixty-three occasions, through twenty-seven warzones and two other Space-Hulks; this would simply be another. He murmured praise to the machine-spirits inhabiting the powered fist, and the weapon's trembling subsided.
Continuing onward and up the grated staircase, the Novamarine found himself torn. Ahead, he could see a crushed-in potion of what looked like the ship's outer skin. This would likely see him back out and into the rock of the outer Hulk. But his foe was nearly upon him, and turning his back would be suicide. Continuing another twenty feet, he spun on the spot to face the corridor he'd just left. This gave him a small buffer zone to work his cannon before combat was joined. All noise had ceased, and it struck Tiber for the first time just how quiet the interior was. Quiet, and dark - Without the faint blue glow of his ovehead lamp, he would descend into total blackness. His headsup display failed momentarily, and a long, tense moment passed as he waited for it to reboot. Immediately, warning flashes blazed in his peripherals, along with the faint chime of danger signals. Cursing his foolishness, but refusing to be unnerved, the Novamarine pumped the assault cannon's trigger once more, hovering his target zone around the corridor exit. His Vox suddenly came back to life, along with his Auspex, and the realization dawned on him that the aliens had likely caused his armor's malfunctions. They wanted to sense his fear now, but he wouldn't give them the satisfaction.
The auspex was alive with red hostile indicators, flowing toward him in a wave. He squeezed the trigger of the gun now, and pre-emtped the first genestealer to break the top of the stairs in a shredding salvo. It was thrown back, and tumbled over the mass of chitinous bodies trailing in it's wake. The heavy bullets shredded through the face and spine of the next two creatures, dropping them instantly. The barrels of his gun were orange-hot now, and his accuracy waned; shells panged off of the bulkhead and tore the chest out of another alien. Tiber advanced in the wake of his firestorm, trying to maintain momentum. He was firing nearly point blank down the stairwell now, exploding alien bodies and throwing them around the tight confines of the corridor. He only then realized that his jaw was set tight, his teeth grinding uncomfortably. Relaxing, he eased off of the gun, allowing the barrels a chance to cool - it wouldn't pay to crack a barrel now. Surveying the wreckage strewn about the stairs, he counted approximately twenty-two dead aliens, and he read another four life signs disappearing away from him. The blood coating the walls obscured some signage that he'd missed on his first trek through the hallway. An arrow, in the direction he was traveling, and an angular symbol that was unfamiliar to him. Snarling, he spun round to continue onward.
Two minutes later, a faint buzzing whir filtered through Tiber's audio receptors, alerting him to activity ahead. There was nothing but rock ahead, and the Novamarine paused, considering the source of the noise. It was too muffled to be distinctly identified, and his armor's sensor suite had begun failing again. A long moment passed, and the sound died away suddenly, like a switch being flipped. Advancing, TIber strained to pick up any more noise coming from the rock-wall... Nothing. His instinct told him to investigate, and he rarely ignored his gut.
Clambering through the remains of the rock-wall, Tiber's breath caught in his throat. The temperature had dropped by twenty degrees on the far side of the wall, and the armor clad giant found himself standing in what appeared to be a viewing room, filled with tiered seating to accommodate a dozen or so men, facing a thoroughly grime and frost coated viewport. The window was large, spanning perhaps six meters across and half that in height. His auspex, despite it's flickering, was now picking up life - from beyond the viewport. With deliberate tread, the Novamarine found his way to the window and peered inside. It was a portal into what appeared to be a hugely deep holding tank, with eroding paint and verdigris coating the walls. His gaze tracked downward, and met the eyes of a monster. A tentacle-lined maw hung beneath clearly intelligent alien eyes, set into a skull which sprouted from an enormous serpentine body. This was covered in a chitinous carapace, bristling with quill-like vanes. The vanes began to vibrate, and the familiar buzz-whir began again.
'Suffer not the unclean to live,' Tiber muttered under his breath, as he spooled up his cannon
