birdmaster01
Big Tech's Strongest Soldier
Changed a step
SIEGE PERILOUS: A WARHAMMER 40K REBEL QUEST
- Thread starter Laplace
- Start date
Chimeraguard
We do deserve to exist.
[X] Plan: Baiting Them In
Yeah, this works. Same prep-work as my plan, and daring them to come and get us probably works better with making sure they follow the correctly prepared routes to inflict friction and attrition.
Our guy has worked alongside Space Marines, right? Presumably enough of a veteran to know when there's sufficient AA that even a Thunderhawk can't throw itself into the thick of it all.
Yeah, this works. Same prep-work as my plan, and daring them to come and get us probably works better with making sure they follow the correctly prepared routes to inflict friction and attrition.
Our guy has worked alongside Space Marines, right? Presumably enough of a veteran to know when there's sufficient AA that even a Thunderhawk can't throw itself into the thick of it all.
[X] Plan: Baiting Them In
Mael's a farseer, i put solid odds that they intended us to overhear them so as to more effectively sew distrust for one reason or another
not really much you can do in outwit precog games though, since they could also not have, or have intended to make us think he was trying to sew distrust etc etc
just something to bear in mind
not really much you can do in outwit precog games though, since they could also not have, or have intended to make us think he was trying to sew distrust etc etc
just something to bear in mind
- Location
- boundless optimism
Or this is a long term double psyop to force the Commander to hard commit to the Rebellion out of spite.
wheels within wheels... plans within plans....
This is why farseers are such a pain in the ass, it's like a pocket Tzeentch, but with more casual specism.
[X] Plan: Baiting Them In
Theaxofwar
Definitely not a Bunny Cat in disguise.
- Location
- Standing right behind you
[X] Plan: Baiting Them In
[X] Plan Fires and Friction
[X] Plan: Baiting Them In.
- Location
- boundless optimism
Votes closed. Imma try to get the next update next weekend but no promises.
TURN 1d: FIRE, BUT SWEET
- Location
- boundless optimism
Zero five hundred Zebra time, the drop pods entered the atmosphere. You gods of battle, smashing your way out of the pods, birthed anew in red war. How long did you live? A hundred years? A thousand? No, you've lived for no more than ten, ten years total in the battlefield. Only when your bolter chatters, when you can listen to the ping of your armor telling you that there is incidental lasgun fire on your glacis, can you say you are alive. Prayer and contemplation, politics and logistics, these are words to say that you live in a half life, which is to say, dead.
The heretics are in front of you, your brothers are around you. They are mere men, you are as gods. All you need is kill. This is the only life remitted to you, Astartes. Packed away in peace, unleashed in war, you have more in common with a Baneblade tank than a man.
The Thunderhawks dip into the atmosphere, glide-bombs released in arcing parabolas, gliding into the sheer walls of the hive. Concrete and plasteel are shattered, but the effort of the heretics have paid off. Each detonation only reveals another layer of fortification, or a bunker dug deep into the walls. You are not assaulting a Hive, you are assaulting the largest orbital fortress you have seen.
The Hydras on Zebra Hive are too thick to trespass into, and in the void Indomitable Radiance and its complement are too busy batting away at the traitors launching attacks just dangerous enough to warrant a response but not committed enough to get stuck in the defense zone of two and a half active frigates. So they operate without the benefit of orbital brightlances or volcano bombs.
Ten kilometers of marshy landfill to charge over. Up the ramps and into the highways. Easy.
Minutes later, great machines in the tangled concrete jungle spit fire and metal into the sky. You can see the arcs clearly-- Guard standard high explosive mix. A direct hit can knock out a baneblade, proximity detonations can turn men into mincemeat and can even break the bones of an Astartes. You see your brothers get flung into the air, smashed back down. Some get up, like Brother Gallus there, even though the way he walks belays a smashed leg. Some don't, like Brother Titus, just graduated from Scoutdom, now a mixed up bloody bag of organs natural and flesh-wrought in all the wrong places.
It was a good death.
No more than ten have been rendered combat incapable, whether that means that they are now by the Emperor's side or they are wounded to a point that it is no longer reasonable to expect them to engage in combat operations. Five combat capable brothers are dispatched to watch over the wounded. Standard protocol. In the case of the operation's failure, these Marines can form the nucleus of a guerilla cell behind enemy lines. In the case of the operation's success, then Star Ultima has preserved fifteen Space Marines.
Target acquisition. Take your shot. The enemy has dug killholes in the hive city, firing seventy mm anti-tank artillery
The foul renegades have espoused some kind of atheism, no doubt influenced by the poison the Tau left in the sector. The chantry of the Sororitas is under attack, many members of the Ecclesiarchy and those yet faithful running battles with the scum of the hives the renegades recruited to their false cause. Captain Andronicus wants to go to them so much but---
"Out of the question, Captain," Sergeant Antonius snarls. "Our goal is the Commander. We know they are in the Governer's Spire, we don't have time for heroism."
"Then what do we have time for? We're going for the chantry."
Sergeant Antonius stands statue still. On the horizon fire rises. He takes in a sharp breath. "As a member of Star Ultima, I must remind you that our goals are to apprehend the rebel commander. All other objectives are to be discarded."
"A brother in motion outranks a captain at rest. We're going for the chantry."
Brother Flavius, once Salamander, now Deathwatch, snarls. "If this is the case, then Deathwatch is going for the Commander. We'll do your job."
"Good luck. Feel free to mention it in the reports. Star Ultima! To me!"
In the spire, evil plots.
"Fragging hell," you note, listening to the reports. Your former comrade Antonius is tearing five shades of warpy hell through your backlines. A hive is a very large place, and you can't defend every single lift, every single corridor, so you only prioritized the highways leading to the governor's spire. Now, since you aren't some hard charging inbred dimwit who took the Imperial Guardsmen Uplifting Primer seriously like some people (cough-cough Drakholt) you've taken the precaution of flanking attacks.
What your dear Captain Andronicus is doing, however, is not a flanking attack. It's more akin to a total overrun. Baneblades and Leman Russes running all over the supply depots. Promethium burning in your command posts. They've cut a line away from your cunning hedgerows that would turn centuries of experience embodied in holy gene-wrought flesh into hamburger meat.
It's like clockwork. Contact made, squad lost. Contact made, squad lost. You're losing a lot of good men out there. The regimental core. At the rate these numbers are losing, you'll have to start relying even more heavily on the underhivers.
"Your boy doesn't like you anymore," your annoying frak bitch counterpart notes, leaning over your shoulder. "What happened? You were so beautiful. Now they're chasing Sororitas tail."
"I really liked you better on the frontlines."
She shrugs. "Tough. We're doing this together. Anyway, I suggest an active defense. It hurts that we are giving up an entrenched position," she lies, unconvincingly, "but--"
"It is the least-bad option. Why don't you take point on this?"
She fixes you with this lasgun stare. "Why?"
You wave the vox receiver. "Frontal combat. Man to man. In the trenches. You're my best woman for this kind of thing."
It's a very rational argument, you feel. She commanded scion stormtroopers and never lost the taste. But: "Nope."
Because she and Kaeman Mael thinks you'll break. That's why Lyssith Vextrae is with you as well, standing off to one wall whistling to herself. You could push her, you imagine. Order her. But for what? If she lives, it'll be taken as an action of a traitor. If she dies, it will definitely be taken as the action of a traitor.
You make the orders-- detachments furthest from the Space Marine incursion are ordered to leave their comfortable kill holes and engage with the target. Dreadfully unhelpful orders, you know, but you are just a general now. You see the map, not the territory. All you can do is hope your field officers are on the ball.
In the trenches, your soldiers are cursing your name. Fragging scum suck up in the governor's tower, ordering us to get killed by the Emperor's finest. In your post, Drakholt and wherever Kaeman Mael vanished off of to all think you're a traitor the the Cause, and coincidentally, that's also what your old buddy Captain Andronicus is thinking as he ventilates some old salt with mass reactive bolter rounds.
Damn. Maybe you shouldn't have lobbied so hard for the commander's seat on this op.
In light of other things to do, you vox a progress report request from the Vorst-Carayns.
"It's hard. Very hard,' Lucayn reports. "The destroyer is chasing us, we have the Wager hiding in orbit after the mauling it took. The next volley of fireships is the last. We're pulling out after this. Burning towards Elipson. We can hide in the orbits there, draw off some of the enemy fleet."
Count on a Rogue Trader to look out for himself first. You want to yell at Lucan to pull his head out of his ass and engage in the Guard Patented Suicide Charge, but that's a. Not likely to effect a positive change in the general situation and b. Probably some lingering bad influence from Drakholt. "If you don't draw off the cruiser, then there's no point. Zelung Ground, out." You close the receiver, thinking at full steam. "They're headed towards the nunnery, right?"
"At full speed." A road map of the hive covers the central table. Drakholt is marking down the Space Marine's progress. In about thirty minutes, red x's, each where a contact report was made, Captain Andronicus and his doughty team are ten clicks away from the nunnery. It was going to be hell digging up hard as nails mother superiors and frenzied sisters out of there, it will be double hell if Star Ultima gets to reinforce them.
Okay. Problem. List your weapons, then.
You have anti-armor teams. Not as much as you would like, but if it came down to it you could force your troops to manpack field pieces near the nunnery and start firing.
Not good. You'd just turn it into a warren of rubble.
You have industrial amounts of high explosives. These were meant for asteroid mining, but you imagine if you set off enough of them under the nunnery-- it being constructed on a floor of the hive-- you could remove the problem.
Not better. Reference immediately preceding section. You'd also blow a hole, giant sodding, in the Hive. Not something that would endear you to the inhabitants.
You dearly wish for some measure of atemporality. You want to go back in time and kick your own ass for believing that pre-prepared kill zones were enough for Space Marines. You wish you had plasma troopers, you wish you gave two Krak missiles for every guardsman, and you also wish that you were a Gamma Plus Pskyer and that you could have a pony. Nothing for it, Commander, you just have to…
You turn towards the vox techs. "Can you get a line to the Star Ultima chapter?"
Click.
"This is not because I am a traitor, Drakholt," you add. Several of your staff officers have also unholstered their bolt pistols, and you imagine that the small symphony of clicks are her staff officers following suit. "Think. Captain Andronicus thinks he can 'save' me. We can fake a message, or I can taunt him into charging to the governor's citadel, back into our defensive lines. Think! You asked me for a plan, well, here's a plan!"
"Uncommonly bold traitor," there's a sneer in her voice. She's three seconds away from shooting you like a Guardsman with a cowardice charge. "You know, I have to respect you. You're the only person that could even try to walk a plot in bold daylight."
"It's not a plot. Face the facts. If the Space Marines gets to the nunnery, then nothing short of orbital bombardment can dislodge them."
"Have the Vorst Carayns win, then."
You plough on. "Our plans predicated a straight line assault on the governor's citadel. That is still in play. I know Captain Andronicus, Drakholt. Vox them a message of me… I don't know, kicking puppies, killing some scribes. He'll charge right back in." You turn around. She's thinking, but she's still got the gun raised up to your head. "Drakholt," you beg. "It's the only plan."
"It's not, is it?"
"Huh?"
She lowers her gun. "It's not the only plan. You've got another."
"Find industrial grade explosives, plant it under the nunnery, blow it into orbit, and then pound the rest with artillery. But I don't think it's a good plan."
"It's the plan we're going to use." Now the gun is holstered. She moves with purpose, barking orders at her staff. You slump down into the chair. At the moment, you are free and empty. Whatever happens next is out of your hands. If the chem barons go up to complain that there's a giant smoking hole in their hive, you can shrug and go, take it up with Drakholt. You're pretty sure this constitutes an unlawful usurpation of authority. You can shoot Drakholt right now. The brass would believe it, except of course, you're not in the Guard. And even if you were still in the Guard, the highest rank a relative of yours managed was Shift Boss. Her's managed Lord General of the Sector once.
It's the thing with the club again. Now that you don't need to command groxshit, Drakholt so ably having usurped yours. There's a club. You have a very nice little rank, that's true, it's got a nice shiny little brass badge, and all the people at the club (which again you are not a part of) like it. But they're in and you're out, so when Drakholt says, I took command in the stead of our dear Commander, who sadly does not feel that up for it, they'll believe it. You wonder if you can manage to retain command, and if you even want to. You'd say that you could probably put a wedge between her and Kaeman Mael, but this entire thing started because they were buddies. Who? Vess? Maybe. The Vorst-Carayns? No, they're of a kind with the Drakholts. In fact, you'd bet your augmentic arm (worth so much more than your fleshy one) that they're cousins or something.
Your stress relieving habit of thinking of politicking comes to a close with a trooper, which rank is quite obscured by gore. They look like if the Thrax heraldic colors were red. "Sir!" he just about gasps out, "Deathwatch marines at the perimeter! Charging in!"
"What?" Drakholt barks out. "Nothing on the vox? Explain yourself!"
"They jammed our comms!"
Makes sense. A localized jam could cut off attempts by perimeter security to reach you. The comms equipment, situated higher in the spire, could remain untouched. You'd never know until someone ran up to tell you. Whoever's in charge of the Deathwatch team knows their business. "Alright, Drakholt and the rest of the officers. You know the evac routes. Get the hell out while you still can."
"And you, Commander?" The trooper slumps down. An acrid scent of human waste permeates the air. A slew of guts spills out on the floor, like a military casserole tipped over.
You shrug. This lho might be your last. You intend to enjoy it. Now that you've taken the governor's spire, you can say that nothing makes a better smoke then the cheap coffin nails the Guard churns out like bullets. "I'm staying here. No objections. They're going for me, not for you. You're an idiot, but not entirely incapable. Hard charging ambull that you are, but there's no denying that there's no better for dragging down the Guard into a senseless meat grinder. You need to live, sadly."
"Sadly?" She squints at you, in the middle of all the hurry.
"I mean, obviously I'd like for the positions to be reversed."
"You really think you're going to die, then. It's the uncharacteristic honesty."
The briefcase nuke is up against a chair. You pick it up and put it on the map table. "Yep."
"And they call me suicidal. Alright, let's leave'em to it."
The command post quickly clears out of everyone but you and Lyssith Vextrae. You wave at her. She waves at you. "Staying? You know I'm going to blow up the squad with this here nuclear device, right?"
There was a great diva from your hometown. Did poky little folk songs over the vox before she got picked up by the Ecclisiarchy. You got curious one day and discovered that she joined the Sororitas, but ended up getting accused of several breaches of conduct. Died as a Repentia against the Tyranids. But that's not the point. The point was her voice. It was the most beautiful thing in the world. If there was some sorcery capable of distilling the warm, balmy nights of your childhood, the resonant, heart deep thrum of waves against the shore. That was her voice.
It is also Lyssith's voice, which sets you on edge more than a little. "Well, don't. Because I'm going to win."
"Good chances?"
"Sixty forty." She lets her cloak fall down to her feet, already bouncing to some song only heard in her head. Ropes of muscle flex and roil like waves underneath her skin. There's two knives, each as long as her forearm and glimmering with some eldritch energy in her hands, moving in circles. "You should be proud, mon-keigh. In Commoragh, it'd cost an arm and a leg to watch me preform. And the cheap seats too!"
"What would front row seats cost?"
"Firstborn child." A bandolier of grenades adorns her waist. Nothing fancy, just a simple leather belt with attachments for easy access to explosives. Now, what they are, you have no idea. You've never done a tour against Drukhari. Lyssith notices you staring of course, but welcomes the attention with a smile that's similar to the insect eating flowers up on the highland country. "Can you move that dead body?"
"Why?"
"It stinks. It's ugly. It'll detract from the performance. Throw it out the window."
You shake your head. "I'm not throwing my soldier out. That's disrespectful."
When she stares at you, you are reminded that despite several morphological similarities, Eldar and humans are not at all alike. "You're planning to reduce the entire upper spire to nuclear cinders. That body included. If you ask me, that's even more disrespectful."
"It's just cremation."
"I don't understand you mon-keigh. I really feel for my cousin, always messing around with your plans. Why do you people even care for this dump, I'll never understand. Shoving yourselves into the galactic wood chipper, and for what? I don't think any of you enjoy this at all."
The spire rumbles. Deathwatch is coming closer. "Why are you around Kaeman Mael."
That stops her dance. "He's kin," she says as if that explains everything. "Kin counts for something."
You point out of the window, into the teeming mass of Thraxians. "They're kin. Kin counts for something."
This appeal flies over her head. She sniffs. "Blood related to all of them, are you? Progentiors must have been busy, monkey. Or do you all come out of a fab-womb? Anyway, don't press that remote too early. Have some--" she breaks out into a child-burning-ants smile-- "faith in me."
She is getting some sort of sadistic kicks in making a mon-keigh rely utterly on her. You know the type. They're all over the Guards muniton depots, paper skin clerks who will go up against the High Lords of Terra just to personally deny a noble Guardsman their allotted gun lube. Jump through the hoops, monkey, or mon-keigh, we drink your tears, they chortle.
You're back in the trenches again, holding a grenade up to your head because you got to be the stay behind element. Sure, the grenade is a multi-kiloton nuclear warhead, and you're up against the Emperor's Angels instead of some xeno horror, but nothing has changed. You'll die the same way untold billions of conscript non-officer boots will die. And you, a general.
Solidarity, you suppose.
Brother Flavius and his four veterans burst through the left wall with fire and fury. Here's what they see. You, terrified out of your mind but doing your best not to show it. There's a suitcase on the table, the augurs on his helmet detecting some radiation signatures. The room is otherwise entirely empty. For a moment, he looks up, at the tall rafters, suspicious of snipers. This was the first mistake.
"Hey, tin can!" Lyissith says brightly. Brother Flavius looks down. A drukhari grenade is clattering on the floor. The emissions are consistent with-
"Vortex grenade!" he shouts, already moving. "Scatter!"
The flash is white, but only because white contains every color. It's scorched into your retinas. You're still blinking it away when you hear wild and free laughter, frenzied for the slaughter. Astartes battle chants battle it, backed by the wild chatter of bolters. You're blind, almost mute. All you have the hope for is that Lyssith never stops laughing. If she stops laughing, then she's dead. If she's dead, you're dead. Your animal instincts are howling at you to move, crawl behind something. However, your human instincts, the stupid ones called pride and shame, are pointing out to you that you'd die there anyway if a bolter shell goes your way, so you're going to say put on this chair, smoking a lho. If you weren't a traitorous heretic who goes against all the Guard stands for, all the untold generations before you would salute you for your nerve.
Your eyes slowly resume their prior function. Blink once. Blink twice.
Imagine that. You're not dead.
The air smells like blood. Lyssith Vextrae is staring at you. She's covered in blood, and you can tell she wants to say that it's not her own but it's definitely her own. Lacerations, burn marks, the whole nine miles. She's the ruin of the rest of the spire, turned into rubble, incarnate into the eldar. The space marine lie in pieces behind her, at least the unlucky three that weren't banished to the warp.
"Told you I'd win," she tells you, and then she falls over.
With the Star Ultima detachment off chasing unimportant objectives, the orbits still being contested, you could say you've won. At the very least, you've survived. There's still hope.
Flash Side
[]- Vanguard General: Across the Tau borders, Kor'O Tash'var Kais'yr Mont'rel considers the chaos in the Thrax Sector.
[]- My Own Kingdom: Indomitable Radiance returns limping to the Chapter Master, the Inquisitor onboard spitting accusations of heresy and weakness.
[]- Black Sabbath: The Farseer Conclave of Tain-Helseth receives the first of many reports from Zelung Delta.
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- Location
- New York
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X]- Vanguard General: Across the Tau borders, Kor'O Tash'var Kais'yr Mont'rel considers the chaos in the Thrax Sector.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Because it would be too easy.
Fucking club. It would be hilarious if all the club-ass covering gets them all killed and we can finally run things our way. But that would be too easy.
[X]- My Own Kingdom: Indomitable Radiance returns limping to the Chapter Master, the Inquisitor onboard spitting accusations of heresy and weakness.
It would be so good to see Imperial brainworms tearing them apart.
[X]- My Own Kingdom: Indomitable Radiance returns limping to the Chapter Master, the Inquisitor onboard spitting accusations of heresy and weakness.
[X]- My Own Kingdom: Indomitable Radiance returns limping to the Chapter Master, the Inquisitor onboard spitting accusations of heresy and weakness.
jwolfe_beta
Semi Genre-Savvy Overlord
- Location
- Canada
[X]- My Own Kingdom: Indomitable Radiance returns limping to the Chapter Master, the Inquisitor onboard spitting accusations of heresy and weakness.
[X]- My Own Kingdom: Indomitable Radiance returns limping to the Chapter Master, the Inquisitor onboard spitting accusations of heresy and weakness.
So from what I am reading so far, our MC has successfully defended against an imperial task force of space marines of a Space Marine Chapter?
So from what I am reading so far, our MC has successfully defended against an imperial task force of space marines of a Space Marine Chapter?
- Location
- USA
[x]- Vanguard General