The day Aurelius Marcotexs Vedrii volunteered in the dark depths of the Aquila ensconced building that served as a center for the growing might of Calavar was a proud one. The lines were packed with many many scores of men and women, and Vedrii considered himself lucky to be in the midst of them all. The line moved slowly, almost achingly so, the noise at once cloying and almost too distant to be real. Braziers roared by the stands the recruiters were perched upon, adding a dizzying array of smoke that was sucked upwards and out of the building through a series of sometimes redundantly added, dead ended pathways to emerge somewhere outside the building.
The recruiters themselves were divided into two groups, one headed by a ferocious looking man whose one remaining non mechanical limb was an organic arm that bulged with muscle and restrained force. His bulk was mainly bionic, even to the top of his bald head where a significant portion was enclosed by a shining chrome plate. He appeared to be handling the ones who deemed themselves destined for the Guard. Behind him in his entourage stood a Priest, a beaming woman who towered over all present save the man in front of her. Her robes were a brilliant blue, trimmed with crimson, a talisman of mother of pearl shaped into an emerald aquila radiantly shone from its position on her chest. The other three were two men and one woman, armed with rubber enclosed mauls and stood passively at attention behind the recruiter. One of them even had a bionic left eye, and her gaze seemed to freeze all she directed it at.
He even had a chance to see the recruiter in clarity during a rare lull.
"You man! Step, step, lively now! Why is meat like you worth the Guard?"
Vedrii saw a mountain of a man step forward, both sides of his scalp shaved and bare save for the raised strip that ran down the middle of it. He was dressed in the ragged clothing of a menial, and his dark skinned arms seemed to dare anyone to make a statement on it. His arms were covered in the twisting tattoos of flotsam filled twinned river bisected township of Vercinrax.
"Lord, I am-"
"Lord?" the recruiter said, eyes alight. "A lord am I? Excellent! Theodus! Justinia! Do you hear this? I've been enobled".
The man grew quiet and ridged, eyes stuck staring directly forward. The priest at the recruiters side stepped forwards affixing the man in her gaze. "Tell me" she sweetly began "of your faith. Tell me of the trials you would endure for the Emperor. He protects us all but he requires us to follow Him in all things"
The man grunted, raising his head to look at the Emperor's Priest.
"All my life, have I followed Him, have I worshipped Him. He has guided my family since the day we arrived here. I heard the call, and like my father and mother before me decided twas time to serve"
The Priest's grin grew and her face exploded in a ray of light that lit the room. She gestured towards the people behind her and looked once more at the man.
"He is ready" she intoned and the man was dragged off by two men who appeared on either side and disappeared out through the hollow middle of the stands.
It was Vedrii's turn now, the line having mercifully sped up until it was his time to stand before the woman who headed the second group. She was a squat woman, stout and muscled. Her red colored hair was tied behind her head, her uniform the color of pale sky blue intermixed with black in a twisting pattern. She wore a cape on her shoulders that was a deep red while her cap was black. A sword was at her left side held in a gemstone studded scabbard. Unlike the other man's group there was no Priest but a hulking thing of burly muscle and enormous size. It wore crimson robes emblazoned with cogs and skulls stuck in a pattern whereby each half was made of the other. There was a great mass of whip like metal appendages hanging from its back that slowly waved through the air with an almost imperceptible whurr. The being looked at him almost as soon as he had stepped forward, and he felt its gaze upon him.
"You've the look of one of my compatriots menials" the being began with a deep boom that reverberated through its chest. "Recite to me the Prayer of Reconstitution and prove your worth".
"The machine is inscened" Vedrii intoned into the shouting miasma of noise that was the recruitment drive.
"its spirit no longer flows" he said as if it seemed the whole world dropped away and he was buoyed to the center of the universe.
"It requires our ministries. By our hands do we intone its Activation, Restoration," Vedrii spoke and felt as if his words were twisting through time itself to call back to an era of majesty.
"Our attention it implores. Fulfilment and duty, unbound functioning" the words flowed and he felt the attention of the Tech Priest spike.
"By this rite is it sanctioned,
By this rite it allows us our works.
Sleep now, good Spirit,
Great and Noble Artifice"
"You are more right than incorrect" the Tech Priest said into the void of silence that seemed to reside in Vedrii's soul. "So you are one of Helveticus menials . Interesting. Know that I am Genetor Eudosia Rukov, and it is by my will you are granted to the maintenance of the great machines of the Crusade". The Tech Priest nodded once at the woman beside them before once more looking out at the mass of gathered people.
"You're mine boy" the woman grinned maliciously, and he was promptly hauled off by two apparent naval armsmen who had somehow seemingly materizled out of the shadows themselves.
"Next! You girl! Forward!" was the last thing Aeurilus Marcotexs Vedrii heard from the room as he was roughly shoved into a cramped holding full of others just like himself.
______________________________________________________________________________
Many months later:
Excitement blossomed on the Aegis of Lyt, so named for a moon located nearby the cavernous shipyards of Calavar, as she exited the maelstrom of the Warp, purples and blues and iridescent tendrils of color lovingly trailing her as the rift shut with speed. The colors vanished as fast as they had appeared as the iron grip of reality reasserted itself. Her engines glowed brighter and brighter, a deep azure that propelled her as she readied herself for the fray to be had above the world of Bailafax, horrendously renamed as the 'Pox's Marsh'. Scuttlebutt even said they also called it Grandfather's Cauldron, the Garden of a Thousand Plagues, and even simply as Pox Marsh. Vedrii wasn't sure what was so great about a marsh, his uncle Thaddeus had taken him on a trip to the southern reaches once to a great marsh there and it seemed a hellish thing to be involved in. Insect swarms so large they could eat a man whole, water so deep you fall in and never be seen again, the constant noise of an ecosystem that didn't care for you in the slightest. Not to mention the great reptiles that enjoyed nothing more than to lie in wait and ambush anything near the shores or the Emperor forgive the water.
It did not take long for word to spread of the paltry fleet that had gathered to defy the Emperor's Might, to stop what was even now being called the Mailed Fist of the Emperor's Crusade by some of the first rates of the lower decked crews. Aurelius Marcotexs Vedrii, though his uniform merely said 'Vedrii' now. Though he felt lucky he even got that as the vast vast proportion of the crew's uniforms and work suits were simple blue and black jumbled eye sores with no insignia.
It had been months since he had been attached to the Tech Priest Belisar Damasz to serve him as one of his thirteen assistants, who themselves were to be taught and empowered to enable them to do many of the minor maintenance tasks this deck required to free up his time. This allowed him to do what he considered truly required the Mysterious of the Machine he jealously guarded.
Now, though, as the Aegis of Lyt thrummed her way towards Bailafax to remind her of her place in the Emperor's Flock, he had been placed among what Yenena Crosus had termed as 'rapid repair teams', something that seemed to surprise his master Tech Priest. He was placed in between two mighty guns, macrocannon batteries 5 and 6. Already the ship shook from the mighty barriage they flung at the Great Enemy. He had no idea the state of the battle, not truly, but it seemed as if it were going well if the constant rolling thunder of the guns was any indication. The klaxons of shield flickers were rare and spread far apart, and there had only been one breach along the entirety of his assigned portion of the deck.
And so as he thought that things were going well was truly the moment when it began to unravel.
At first it was just a string of impacts that felt like pinpricks to those nestled this deep in the hull, and Vedrii was tempted to ignore them as yet more of the clamours of battle when a ringing occured in his ears, a terrible thronging that seemed to encompass the air itself. The noise grew louder and it transformed into a buzz that never ceased, while laughter licked at the edges of his mind. The air suddenly stank of putrefaction. The stench coalesced and flowed down the corridors that made up the walkways to the 6th battery. It even hurt to look that way.
"Armsmen!" roared the announcement sirens placed about the deck "prepare to repel boarders! Emplacements 5,8,12, reinforce emplacements 7 and 9!". The sirens ceased and were replaced with the alarms resounding through the depths of the ship to alert all those in the vicinity. Vedrii lifted the cudgel all of the maintenance crew were given from his belt. He tested its edges, finding it a wicked thing of black iron. Its ends were sharp and elongated, and a spike was placed on the bottom of the pommel. He was broken from his sudden inspections as the sounds of many rushing feet grew closer and closer. He tensed, grip on the cudgel tightening until his fingers were white. The five others with him began to do the same as it seemed as if the footsteps were moments away from rounding the corner into the alcove they were nestled in.
The first armsman to round the corner nearly had a cudgel implanted into their face as they rushed past uncaringly. They carried a large shotgun and pointed it menacingly at the person nearest the corner who had almost struck them. Four armsmen rushed past, then four more, and more, until finally two people, one carrying a tripod with a great backpack on, while the other carried the telltale profile of a light stubber in their hands. They moved by without a glance as the final armsmen to pass by stopped and clapped a hand on the shoulder of the shotgun wielding one. They took off as he remained.
"You're to remain here" he said seriously, his one remaining organic eye looking at each of them in an almost predatory fashion. "If any stragglers reach you, you are to ambush them. Understand?" Vedrii gulped as the leader of his 'rapid repair team', a pale man named Mikael Thuirn spoke up, nodding.
"Of course Armsman Sergeant! Not even a cultist could withstand us" he sported a cocky full of false bravado and lifted his thumb over his shoulder pointing. The armsmen looked unconvinced, but left without another word.
Soon after that the first telltale call of a Cult began. The air, which Vedrii' thought had stank before, grew so bad he felt the urge to vomit. The noise which even now buzzed at the edges of his mind increased in strength and began a dirge so strong it threatened to lift one off their feet and throw them to mud below. Flies appeared almost as if from thin air and swarmed the air itself. It became hard to breath and the stench was all around. That is when the noise in his mind was rivaled by his ears as the stubber began its tumultuous melody. Its bark was overshadowed still by the haunting song that echoed through the halls of the deck. It was a song without words and yet seemed as if you strained enough you could make them out. A sonorous beat that pulsed and repelled from the walls and was strengthened for it. His ears bled from it.
"Do what you do best men! Here they come!" the armsmen sergeant shouted above the din of the dirge, above the stubber. The flash of autogun fire travelled its way down the hall where Vedrii could make it out. The report of shotguns began a bark that almost drowned out the endless ethereal chanting that wretched its way in the halls.
Vedrii dared a look, pressing his way towards the edge of the alcove he was in.
"What are you doing man?!" one of the attendants with him said as he crept closer.
"Checking to see if we're needed" was his too quiet reply. The sight before him tried to drive him to madness and he collapsed to his knees from the sight of it.
The armsmen line was holding and yet perforated, bleeding members at a rate to boggle the mind. The armsmen sergeant had a green slime drenched javelin embedded in his leg that seemed to pulsate and move. He ripped it out and dropped it on the ground beside him but his wound looked gangrenous already, swollen and almost rotten. Vedrii saw the stubber cease firing to feed another ammunition belt in as a cultist saw it as her chance to fling herself forwards only to be stopped by the red bark of a shotgun to the torso. To his and probably the armsmen shock she took the projective blast and kept coming. Her hair was a matted mess of tangles, most of it having fallen out to leave behind a sickly remnant that was withered and grey. The armsman's shock lasted less than Vedrii's as he fired a second blast that knocked the cultist off her feet.
The stubber began its lead-filled discharge once more as the cultists' ranks seemed to thin even as they still hurled themselves at the armsmen. One armsmen took a hellish axe to the face that slammed through her helmet and embedded itself in her skull. And at the back of it all was a lanky, tall man that dripped green slime and mucus over the floor of the deck. The swirling dirge seemed to swim around him in an edy tide that never ceased. He looked at him, the browns of his eyes wholly given over to the rot that was the rest of his form. He raised an arm at Vedrii and nodded before stepping forward into the din. He blinked and he was simply gone, there one moment and gone the next.
The cultist horde had ground itself down against the rockwall that was the armsmen and the engagement was over as quickly as it began. Vedrii didn't even object when Mikael all but wrenched him back into the alcove and slammed him against the ground. The noise began to recede blessedly at last, but Vedrii didn't move. Not yet. A collection of smaller booms descended down the hallway as another armsmen called out.
"Clear! It's clear at last. Thank the Emperor" Vedrii gulped and began to get up, a prayer on his lips. It was a statement that put him at ease almost as much as the victorious shouts of battery 5 did. They'd won! By the Emperor they'd won!
