The imperium discovers the back rooms
Those yellowed halls(a Warhammer 40 K backrooms crossover)
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Those yellowed halls(a Warhammer 40 K backrooms crossover)
Rylan of the 444th Vespilan Irregulars leaned against the monotonous yellow wall, chewing on a ration bar that tasted like cardboard mixed with sawdust. Around him, his fellow soldiers found solace in the mundane: some played regicide with the desperate intensity of men whose fates hung in the balance, while others engaged in idle chatter about past campaigns,. , One guardsmen was polishing his lasgun and he was mumbling about how he could never get it to stay clean.
The Mechanicus had deemed this bizarre expanse the Back Rooms, a labyrinth of unnervingly uniform yellow walls and humming fluorescent lights. The regiment one of eight had been deployed here at the behest of the Adeptus Mechanicus, who had unearthed a ancient pre imperial computer that did not have a machine spirit,in a facility , in a decaying city on a near forgotten, continent, called " merica " deep under the sprawling hives of holy terra. From this trove of forgotten technology, they had unearthed blueprints for a device they called the Threshold—an archaic mechanism that had opened a permanent gateway to a dimension unlike any the Imperium had encountered.
The rumor was that the Imperium sought to guard this threshold fiercely; the mechanized priests were convinced of its value. His regiment was one of eight stationed here, tasked with a job that seemed redundant in the face of the strange emptiness surrounding them. As far as they could ascertain, there were no other living beings in this disorienting limbo. He recalled when his regiment ,that was previously on Garrison duty in the norak system, were recalled and ,was sent to a system , within the Gath Sector in segmentum solar, where they disembarked along with eight other regiments and hundreds of construction servitors ,tech priests ,weapons platforms and vehicles,, and they entered this threshold that was inside the Mechanicus Fortress.
Some areas of the Back Rooms were dank and decrepit, filled with the remnants of old furniture from a pre-Imperial age, while others sparkled with sterile light, devoid of even the slightest hint of wear. Some rooms had objects fused into the walls ,as if the decided to eat them, but gave up halfway through .Every so often, as patrols scouted ahead to clear paths for the Tech-Priests and builder-servitors, stumbled upon the remnants of long-dead bodies—victims of a fate unknown, their decay so advanced that genetic sampling was often the only way to determine their origins. Rylan had seen it all: Imperial Guardsmen in rotting uniforms, ecclesiarchs reduced to mere husks, and even one Ork in rusted plate armor, although there were no fungal growths around the body ,something that astounded the tech priests.
As he leaned against the wall, Rylan felt a mixture of boredom and relief. The absence of fighting was a comfort, yet the haunting emptiness of the Back Rooms tugged at the edge of his mind. He thought of the death that had occurred here—of the bodies they had discovered and the lingering questions that followed them. How had they arrived in this forsaken place? Why had they perished? He could only recall one death that had happened so far.
His mind drifted back to the only casualty he had witnessed since their deployment. Flashback: Four Days Ago
Rylan marched in formation alongside his platoon, the harsh crunch of boots echoing in the sterile, yellow expanse. They had just been deployed to this strange liminal space, ordered by the Mechanicus to scout and secure the area. As they moved with the tech priests, following behind and securing the area along with them,, they stumbled upon a large, square hole that went down and from what they could tell ,there is no bottom.
The imposing figure of Commissar Gluridon halted them, his eyes narrowing as he surveyed the chasm. A veteran of the Third War for Armageddon, Gluridon commanded respect and fear in equal measure. The Tech-Priests' auger devices couldn't ascertain the depth of the hole. as if it was bottomless.
Someone snickered."What is so funny,, Guardsman?" Gluridon demanded, directing his gaze toward Jenksund, a known tormentor of Rylan. Jenksund had a penchant for dark humor, often at Rylan's expense.
"Well, sir," Jenksund began, his bravado swelling as he peered into the abyss. "I just think it's as deep as your mother's—"
"Silence!" Gluridon's voice cut through the air like a knife, and the bravado slipped away as the commissar drew his bolt pistol, aiming it squarely at Jenksund's face.
The men exchanged uneasy glances; Jenksund's bravado evaporated like a drop of water caught in a supernova.
"Do you enjoy making jokes about holes?" Gluridon's voice was icy, his expression unreadable.
"Yes, sir," Jenksund stammered, his bravado shattered.
Gluridon regarded him for a moment, a hint of a smile creeping onto his lips. "Then go find some fresh material," he said, the words dripping with dark humor. With a sudden and forceful shove, Jenksund plummeted. The scream grew fainter as he plummeted into the chasm.
Silence enveloped the platoon, not wanting to provoke the ire of the Commissar.
"Guess he's fallen for his own joke," Rylan quipped, before he even really realized what he said. He tensed, expecting to meet his end on the end of a bolt gun or at the bottom of that hole.
To his shock, Gluridon chuckled as well, not a sinister, menacing, chuckle,, but one born of genuine humor,. "Indeed," he replied, his voice low and rumbling, "but one less idiot to deal with is always a blessing."
End of Flashback
Rylan sighed and polled up an iho stick and lit it. This was gonna be a long "campaign", if it could even be called that.
The Mechanicus had deemed this bizarre expanse the Back Rooms, a labyrinth of unnervingly uniform yellow walls and humming fluorescent lights. The regiment one of eight had been deployed here at the behest of the Adeptus Mechanicus, who had unearthed a ancient pre imperial computer that did not have a machine spirit,in a facility , in a decaying city on a near forgotten, continent, called " merica " deep under the sprawling hives of holy terra. From this trove of forgotten technology, they had unearthed blueprints for a device they called the Threshold—an archaic mechanism that had opened a permanent gateway to a dimension unlike any the Imperium had encountered.
The rumor was that the Imperium sought to guard this threshold fiercely; the mechanized priests were convinced of its value. His regiment was one of eight stationed here, tasked with a job that seemed redundant in the face of the strange emptiness surrounding them. As far as they could ascertain, there were no other living beings in this disorienting limbo. He recalled when his regiment ,that was previously on Garrison duty in the norak system, were recalled and ,was sent to a system , within the Gath Sector in segmentum solar, where they disembarked along with eight other regiments and hundreds of construction servitors ,tech priests ,weapons platforms and vehicles,, and they entered this threshold that was inside the Mechanicus Fortress.
Some areas of the Back Rooms were dank and decrepit, filled with the remnants of old furniture from a pre-Imperial age, while others sparkled with sterile light, devoid of even the slightest hint of wear. Some rooms had objects fused into the walls ,as if the decided to eat them, but gave up halfway through .Every so often, as patrols scouted ahead to clear paths for the Tech-Priests and builder-servitors, stumbled upon the remnants of long-dead bodies—victims of a fate unknown, their decay so advanced that genetic sampling was often the only way to determine their origins. Rylan had seen it all: Imperial Guardsmen in rotting uniforms, ecclesiarchs reduced to mere husks, and even one Ork in rusted plate armor, although there were no fungal growths around the body ,something that astounded the tech priests.
As he leaned against the wall, Rylan felt a mixture of boredom and relief. The absence of fighting was a comfort, yet the haunting emptiness of the Back Rooms tugged at the edge of his mind. He thought of the death that had occurred here—of the bodies they had discovered and the lingering questions that followed them. How had they arrived in this forsaken place? Why had they perished? He could only recall one death that had happened so far.
His mind drifted back to the only casualty he had witnessed since their deployment. Flashback: Four Days Ago
Rylan marched in formation alongside his platoon, the harsh crunch of boots echoing in the sterile, yellow expanse. They had just been deployed to this strange liminal space, ordered by the Mechanicus to scout and secure the area. As they moved with the tech priests, following behind and securing the area along with them,, they stumbled upon a large, square hole that went down and from what they could tell ,there is no bottom.
The imposing figure of Commissar Gluridon halted them, his eyes narrowing as he surveyed the chasm. A veteran of the Third War for Armageddon, Gluridon commanded respect and fear in equal measure. The Tech-Priests' auger devices couldn't ascertain the depth of the hole. as if it was bottomless.
Someone snickered."What is so funny,, Guardsman?" Gluridon demanded, directing his gaze toward Jenksund, a known tormentor of Rylan. Jenksund had a penchant for dark humor, often at Rylan's expense.
"Well, sir," Jenksund began, his bravado swelling as he peered into the abyss. "I just think it's as deep as your mother's—"
"Silence!" Gluridon's voice cut through the air like a knife, and the bravado slipped away as the commissar drew his bolt pistol, aiming it squarely at Jenksund's face.
The men exchanged uneasy glances; Jenksund's bravado evaporated like a drop of water caught in a supernova.
"Do you enjoy making jokes about holes?" Gluridon's voice was icy, his expression unreadable.
"Yes, sir," Jenksund stammered, his bravado shattered.
Gluridon regarded him for a moment, a hint of a smile creeping onto his lips. "Then go find some fresh material," he said, the words dripping with dark humor. With a sudden and forceful shove, Jenksund plummeted. The scream grew fainter as he plummeted into the chasm.
Silence enveloped the platoon, not wanting to provoke the ire of the Commissar.
"Guess he's fallen for his own joke," Rylan quipped, before he even really realized what he said. He tensed, expecting to meet his end on the end of a bolt gun or at the bottom of that hole.
To his shock, Gluridon chuckled as well, not a sinister, menacing, chuckle,, but one born of genuine humor,. "Indeed," he replied, his voice low and rumbling, "but one less idiot to deal with is always a blessing."
End of Flashback
Rylan sighed and polled up an iho stick and lit it. This was gonna be a long "campaign", if it could even be called that.
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Those yellowed halls part two
Rylan shifted uncomfortably against the grimy, cracked white tiles lining the walls of this bizarre section of the "Backrooms." The previous stretch they'd scouted had been endless, monotonous yellow rooms with flickering lights that hummed constantly. Now, in this damp and broken-down area, the air reeked of mold and something far fouler. Pipes above dripped murky water into large, dirty pools spread unevenly across the ground, and strange railings jutted out of walls and floors with no clear purpose. The dim light from unseen sources cast everything in an eerie, off-putting glow.
Around him, his fellow soldiers of the 444th Vespilan Irregulars were either playing regicide, chatting quietly, or busying themselves with weapon maintenance. In the distance, a contingent of Mechanicus priests was setting up yet another forward position, hauling their strange machinery deeper into this endless maze. They were fortifying this area, expanding the base connected to the Threshold—the gateway that had been opened by the Mechanicus, leading into this bizarre, infinite space. A place not of the Warp, but some other dimension.
Rylan scratched at the stubble on his chin and listened half-heartedly to the tall tale one of the guardsmen was telling about Sly Marbo supposedly killing an Ork Warboss with his bare hands. The man's exaggerated tone and the way the others hung on his every word grated on Rylan's nerves. Frakking myth, he thought, rolling his eyes. He turned his attention to a small rubber object he'd found, one of the random pieces of pre-Imperial detritus that littered this place. It was a rubber bird, bright yellow, and it squeaked whenever he squeezed it. He idly made it chirp as he tried to distract himself from the oppressive environment around him.
One of the guardsmen nearby stood up, canteen in hand, heading toward one of the temporary water dispensers the Mechanicus had set up. As he walked past another soldier, they bumped into each other. The guardsman with the canteen stumbled and fell straight into one of the filthy pools with a loud splash, sending murky water everywhere. The others burst into laughter as the drenched man flailed around in the deep pool.
"Stop fooling around and get out of there," barked Commissar Gluridon, who had been overseeing the deployment. His stern voice cut through the laughter like a lasgun blast.
Rylan smirked as he leaned back against the wall, squeezing the little rubber bird in his hand. The guardsman in the pool was still thrashing, but then something changed. His movements became frantic, desperate. Then, without warning, the guardsman was yanked under the surface. A heartbeat later, the water clouded red.
"Frak! Get out of the pool!" someone shouted.
The laughter died instantly as panic spread through the platoon. Commissar Gluridon looked down at the pool, his brow furrowed. "What in the Emperor's name is going on?" he demanded, stepping toward the edge of the pool. When he saw the blood blooming in the water, his eyes narrowed and he unholstered his bolt pistol. He began to shout an order, but was interrupted.
Something bloated and monstrous surged out of the filthy depths. It was human in shape, but its flesh was bloated and waterlogged, its features grotesquely twisted and rotten. The foul thing was like a mangled,swollen bloated corpse, as if it was the body of someone who had been, pulled from a swamp after they were killed by a crotalid, but the corpse was moving . Arms outstretched, the ghoul shambled at them, its movements awkward but alarmingly quick.
"OPEN FIRE!" Gluridon bellowed, his bolt pistol already aimed.
Lasguns flared to life, and over forty shots seared through the air. For a second, the bloated monstrosity stumbled backwards towards the pool, as it was shredded by las fire, and after that second,the thing exploded into rancid chunks, the bursts of light and heat turning its flesh to steaming, blackened sludge. Only its rotten feet remained standing, swaying comically at the edge of the pool before toppling into the water.
For a moment, the platoon breathed. Then, another one of those bloated ghouls surged out from the pool. It moved faster this time, its bloated fingers stretching out and grabbing another guardsman, pulling him into the water before anyone could react. The pool churned violently, and a scream erupted as the man thrashed around, trying to break free ,before the man's cries were stopped as the ghoul dragged him beneath the surface, even as the other men aimed the lasguns.
More of the ghouls shambled from the pools, grotesque things dragging their decayed bodies forward. The guardsmen scrambled to form a firing line. Rylan raised his lasgun, heart hammering in his chest, and fired at a ghoul charging toward him. His shot hit the creature square in the stomach, blowing open its swollen gut. A flood of rotting entrails and waterlogged gore splashed onto the floor, but the thing didn't stop. It swiped at Rylan with unnatural strength, knocking his lasgun from his hands and sending him stumbling backward.
It grabbed him by the shoulder,, its bloated hand tightening like a vice and the thing used, it's other hand to grab his head and started to shake him around relentlessly. Rylan grunted, drawing his combat knife and slashing at the ghoul's hand. He sliced it off clean, but the creature lazily backhanded him with its stump, knocking the knife from his grip and sending him crashing into the wall.
Rylan's back hit the tiles hard, and he scrambled, searching for anything to use as a weapon. In desperation, he threw the little rubber bird at the creature's face. The ridiculous squeak momentarily confused it, giving him enough time to grab a nearby piece of wood. He swung with all his might, smashing the plank into the ghoul's head. Its skull caved in with a wet, sickening crunch, and the creature collapsed, flopping onto the floor like a sack of rotten meat.
Around him, the battle raged. One guardsman skewered a ghoul through the head with his bayonet, but two more creatures lunged from the pool and pulled him under, ripping him apart in the blood-clouded water. A hulking, bloated ghoul—easily the largest any of them had seen—crawled out of one of the deeper pools. Its flabby hide rippled as lasgun shots tore through it, but it barely slowed down.
It charged toward a nearby guardsman, who fired his lasgun in a panic. The creature swatted him aside, smashing his ribcage with a brutal swipe and sending him crashing into a pipe above. He fell limply onto a railing below. Another guardsman blew off the beast's right arm with a well-placed shot from a rocket launcher, but the ghoul didn't stop. It grabbed the man and bit off his head, discarding the body like a broken toy.
Desperate, several guardsmen charged the hulking beast, stabbing at it with their bayonets. One man plunged his combat knife into the ghoul's gut, spilling out more bloated, rancid organs, but then something worse happened—some kind of parasitic worm slithered out of the wound, wrapping around the soldier and dragging him into a pool. The others, too focused on the battle, couldn't save him. The ghoul grabbed one of the men attacking it by the legs, with its remaining arm and it smashed him into the floor repeatedly,until he was a broken-boned mess, and it threw him across the room, where smashed against a wall and left a bloody stain.
One of the guardsmen finally shoved a frag grenade into the creature's opened stomach and dove for cover. The explosion tore through the bloated monstrosity, splattering its remains across the tile floor. As the blast subsided, the ghouls began to retreat, shambling back toward the pools.
Reinforcements arrived, filling the room with even more lasfire. The ghouls were driven back into the murky depths, their bloated bodies disappearing beneath the filthy water.
Rylan stood amidst the carnage, blood-splattered and exhausted. He looked down at the remains of the ghoul he'd killed and wiped the grime from his face. Around him, the air was thick with the smell of burnt flesh and rot, and the pools still bubbled ominously.
But for now, the creatures were gone.
Around him, his fellow soldiers of the 444th Vespilan Irregulars were either playing regicide, chatting quietly, or busying themselves with weapon maintenance. In the distance, a contingent of Mechanicus priests was setting up yet another forward position, hauling their strange machinery deeper into this endless maze. They were fortifying this area, expanding the base connected to the Threshold—the gateway that had been opened by the Mechanicus, leading into this bizarre, infinite space. A place not of the Warp, but some other dimension.
Rylan scratched at the stubble on his chin and listened half-heartedly to the tall tale one of the guardsmen was telling about Sly Marbo supposedly killing an Ork Warboss with his bare hands. The man's exaggerated tone and the way the others hung on his every word grated on Rylan's nerves. Frakking myth, he thought, rolling his eyes. He turned his attention to a small rubber object he'd found, one of the random pieces of pre-Imperial detritus that littered this place. It was a rubber bird, bright yellow, and it squeaked whenever he squeezed it. He idly made it chirp as he tried to distract himself from the oppressive environment around him.
One of the guardsmen nearby stood up, canteen in hand, heading toward one of the temporary water dispensers the Mechanicus had set up. As he walked past another soldier, they bumped into each other. The guardsman with the canteen stumbled and fell straight into one of the filthy pools with a loud splash, sending murky water everywhere. The others burst into laughter as the drenched man flailed around in the deep pool.
"Stop fooling around and get out of there," barked Commissar Gluridon, who had been overseeing the deployment. His stern voice cut through the laughter like a lasgun blast.
Rylan smirked as he leaned back against the wall, squeezing the little rubber bird in his hand. The guardsman in the pool was still thrashing, but then something changed. His movements became frantic, desperate. Then, without warning, the guardsman was yanked under the surface. A heartbeat later, the water clouded red.
"Frak! Get out of the pool!" someone shouted.
The laughter died instantly as panic spread through the platoon. Commissar Gluridon looked down at the pool, his brow furrowed. "What in the Emperor's name is going on?" he demanded, stepping toward the edge of the pool. When he saw the blood blooming in the water, his eyes narrowed and he unholstered his bolt pistol. He began to shout an order, but was interrupted.
Something bloated and monstrous surged out of the filthy depths. It was human in shape, but its flesh was bloated and waterlogged, its features grotesquely twisted and rotten. The foul thing was like a mangled,swollen bloated corpse, as if it was the body of someone who had been, pulled from a swamp after they were killed by a crotalid, but the corpse was moving . Arms outstretched, the ghoul shambled at them, its movements awkward but alarmingly quick.
"OPEN FIRE!" Gluridon bellowed, his bolt pistol already aimed.
Lasguns flared to life, and over forty shots seared through the air. For a second, the bloated monstrosity stumbled backwards towards the pool, as it was shredded by las fire, and after that second,the thing exploded into rancid chunks, the bursts of light and heat turning its flesh to steaming, blackened sludge. Only its rotten feet remained standing, swaying comically at the edge of the pool before toppling into the water.
For a moment, the platoon breathed. Then, another one of those bloated ghouls surged out from the pool. It moved faster this time, its bloated fingers stretching out and grabbing another guardsman, pulling him into the water before anyone could react. The pool churned violently, and a scream erupted as the man thrashed around, trying to break free ,before the man's cries were stopped as the ghoul dragged him beneath the surface, even as the other men aimed the lasguns.
More of the ghouls shambled from the pools, grotesque things dragging their decayed bodies forward. The guardsmen scrambled to form a firing line. Rylan raised his lasgun, heart hammering in his chest, and fired at a ghoul charging toward him. His shot hit the creature square in the stomach, blowing open its swollen gut. A flood of rotting entrails and waterlogged gore splashed onto the floor, but the thing didn't stop. It swiped at Rylan with unnatural strength, knocking his lasgun from his hands and sending him stumbling backward.
It grabbed him by the shoulder,, its bloated hand tightening like a vice and the thing used, it's other hand to grab his head and started to shake him around relentlessly. Rylan grunted, drawing his combat knife and slashing at the ghoul's hand. He sliced it off clean, but the creature lazily backhanded him with its stump, knocking the knife from his grip and sending him crashing into the wall.
Rylan's back hit the tiles hard, and he scrambled, searching for anything to use as a weapon. In desperation, he threw the little rubber bird at the creature's face. The ridiculous squeak momentarily confused it, giving him enough time to grab a nearby piece of wood. He swung with all his might, smashing the plank into the ghoul's head. Its skull caved in with a wet, sickening crunch, and the creature collapsed, flopping onto the floor like a sack of rotten meat.
Around him, the battle raged. One guardsman skewered a ghoul through the head with his bayonet, but two more creatures lunged from the pool and pulled him under, ripping him apart in the blood-clouded water. A hulking, bloated ghoul—easily the largest any of them had seen—crawled out of one of the deeper pools. Its flabby hide rippled as lasgun shots tore through it, but it barely slowed down.
It charged toward a nearby guardsman, who fired his lasgun in a panic. The creature swatted him aside, smashing his ribcage with a brutal swipe and sending him crashing into a pipe above. He fell limply onto a railing below. Another guardsman blew off the beast's right arm with a well-placed shot from a rocket launcher, but the ghoul didn't stop. It grabbed the man and bit off his head, discarding the body like a broken toy.
Desperate, several guardsmen charged the hulking beast, stabbing at it with their bayonets. One man plunged his combat knife into the ghoul's gut, spilling out more bloated, rancid organs, but then something worse happened—some kind of parasitic worm slithered out of the wound, wrapping around the soldier and dragging him into a pool. The others, too focused on the battle, couldn't save him. The ghoul grabbed one of the men attacking it by the legs, with its remaining arm and it smashed him into the floor repeatedly,until he was a broken-boned mess, and it threw him across the room, where smashed against a wall and left a bloody stain.
One of the guardsmen finally shoved a frag grenade into the creature's opened stomach and dove for cover. The explosion tore through the bloated monstrosity, splattering its remains across the tile floor. As the blast subsided, the ghouls began to retreat, shambling back toward the pools.
Reinforcements arrived, filling the room with even more lasfire. The ghouls were driven back into the murky depths, their bloated bodies disappearing beneath the filthy water.
Rylan stood amidst the carnage, blood-splattered and exhausted. He looked down at the remains of the ghoul he'd killed and wiped the grime from his face. Around him, the air was thick with the smell of burnt flesh and rot, and the pools still bubbled ominously.
But for now, the creatures were gone.
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Those yellowed halls(part three)
This chapter takes some inspiration from an article I found on the backrooms wiki a while back
—————————————
The hour that passed after the pool fight felt longer than it was, but the Mechanicus didn't waste time. Tech-Priests had sealed off the pools with ceramite plates, ensuring nothing else crawled out—at least from that section. Unfortunately, the pools were connected to others in nearby chambers, so the Skitarii and the Imperial Guard still had to keep watch. Casualty reports came in. Eight dead: six Guardsmen, two Skitarii. One of the Skitarii had been killed by his own plasma weapon malfunctioning and reducing him to ash, while the other was dragged into the water by one of those ghouls and peeled apart like a tin can.
Rylan was back on patrol. He'd barely had time to scrub the gore off his boots before his platoon was pushed into another section on the outskirts of the south side of the expanding base. The base itself was rapidly being fortified—more barricades, more Imperial Guard reinforcements pouring through the threshold device, heavy weapons getting stationed. It wasn't just a base anymore; it was becoming a fortress.
As Rylan's platoon filed out of the heavily guarded gate, they passed squads manning heavy bolters and a few Sentinel Walkers standing on alert. No one was slacking off. Not after the pools.
"Another frakking patrol, for Emperor-knows-what reason," Rylan muttered under his breath. Around him, his fellow Guardsmen shared his sentiment, the fatigue evident but unsaid. They marched through a series of decrepit hallways and rooms, the kind that looked like they hadn't seen care in centuries. Wallpaper was peeling, brown rugs were full of holes and odd stains that looked more recent than they should. It stank of damp rot. He spotted a strange, looking insect like a mix of a cockroach and a centipede with over a dozen legs and a brownish carapace, that scuttled away into a rotten hole in the wall. Commissar Gluridon shouted an order to stay vigilant for the emperor demanded it. Rylan doubted the emperor himself demanded it. He probably had better things to do.
Behind them, another platoon followed—this one from the 228th Mordian regiment. Known for their unshakable discipline and willingness to face down anything, even Chaos Space Marines, the Mordians weren't the type to crack under pressure. The commissar leading them, Brinehurk, was a tall, steely-eyed man with high cheekbones. Rumor had it he had personally killed a Chaos Space Marine on Bextus prime by shoving a power sword through the marines corrupted skull. If true, he didn't boast about it, and that only made the story more believable.
Already, the Mechanicus was moving in. A couple of Tech-Priests scuttled into the area like cockroaches, taking stock of the room they'd just stumbled into. This area had only been discovered about an hour ago, after a servitor malfunctioned, its cranial implants, causing unsanctioned motor functions and caused the servitor to wander here. The tech-priests had followed it, and now here they were,(the servitor had been terminated and disassembled for parts).
Both platoons fanned out, covering the large room as the Tech-Priests started their tasks. Skitarii warriors stood like statues at attention. Everyone knew the drill: eyes forward, lasguns ready. Rylan took point as half of both platoons stayed behind to guard the tech-priests while the others—including him—moved ahead to investigate.
They advanced down a hallway, hearing a strange, muffled burst of static from around the corner. With weapons raised, they cautiously moved into a door about 20 feet ahead.
What they found was unexpected. The room was enormous, larger than anything they'd encountered so far. The ceiling was a dull white plaster, illuminated by comfortably bright lights. The floor was a faded brownish-white linoleum. Rylan wasn't an expert in the finer details of Imperial architecture, but linoleum wasn't something you usually saw outside the grand rooms of planetary governors. The sheer scale of the place was staggering. The shelves, packed like dominoes, stretched into the distance, each column Of shelves separated by aisle's as wide as roads., Occasionally There were areas where the shelves were interrupted by decent sized areas where furniture such as chairs and couches, arranged in half hazard positions.. The shelves. were lined with items that looked eerily familiar but wrong—devices that resembled Imperial tech such as pict-screens and micro-cookers, but without any of the design aesthetics Rylan knew.
The Tech-Priests, barely hesitating, immediately began preparing the area for incorporation into the base and they dismantled the shelves and grabbed the devices to be hauled off to the core of the base for analysis. Rylan's eyes scanned the shelves, spotting more of these familiar yet unfamiliar devices to him as they vaguely looked like. Imperial Civilian appliances , but of a different design era and oddly unsettling.
Then they heard it again—static, louder this time.
The Guardsmen didn't hesitate. Guns raised, they moved toward the sound, the clattering of their boots filling the air. They rounded the corner, of one of the wide, aisles between the shelf sections, and there it was.
A thing.
Something the imperium has not seen before.
It had a long, spindly, humanoid frame, but its skin was stretched too thin over it's bony body , and metallic antenna protruding out of its back, like the spines of some deathworld creature,. Its head was a boxy device with a screen on it ,, a relic from pre-Imperial times—a screen from Old Earth, though none of them knew that. The screen was filled with static, flickering. The neck was covered in wires and tubes ,as if the boxy screen was surgically attached. It was just standing there, or wandering aimlessly between the shelves.
The Commissar grimaced. "Xenos filth," he spat. His voice echoed. "Purge it. For the Emperor."
Rylan hesitated, what has this thing ever done to them?, but hesitantly joined in.. They opened fire—lasbolts, bolter rounds—everything. The shots hit the creature, square in the body and head. But it didn't react. It didn't even flinch.
The static on its screen turned blood red.
Then it screeched—a horrid, noise of crackling static—and charged. It moved like some fiendish parody of an ape, loping forward on its spindly knuckles as it hurled itself forward with surprising speed.
"Hold the line!" Brinehurk and Gluridon barked, almost at the same time, and the Guardsmen did. No one retreated. Bayonets were affixed in seconds, ready to meet the charge.
Even as they fired, the thing came on, and eventually after about 10 seconds, it was upon them, the beast hit the line like a battering ram, impaling a Guardsman through the chest with its hand, before ripping off his head and flinging the body aside. Another Guardsman swung his rifle like a club, catching the creature off balance, but it recovered instantly, grabbing him by the head and slamming his face into a shelf with bone-shattering force before it threw him to the ground, and smashed his chest in with both its fists, even though he was already dead.
Rylan, gritting his teeth, smashed the butt of his lasgun into the thing's torso, but it was like hitting rock. Men stabbed at it with bayonets and firing lances of las at it, the Commissar barking orders all the while, firing his bolt gun,. The creature lashed out, swiping a Guardsman across the face, mutilating him before shoving a shelf onto his body. Reinforcements were arriving guardsman and Skitarii .One Skitarii, armed with an arc rifle fired, the creatures screen flickered and stuttered, and the creatures body convulsed and juttered, but the thing retaliated by punching through the Skitarii's chest in a spray of oil and blood.
Rylan could barely think. They had attacked it first, and he felt somewhat guilty., but that didn't matter now. He smashed his rifle into the thing again, and this time it stumbled back, its screen flashing erratically. It lashed out one last time, clawing and punching at a nearby soldier , smashing in his face like some grotesque bowl, and leaving his shattered skull, on a broken spinal cord, to flop backwards as he hit the floor like a dead sack of meat,, but then it scrambled off, disappearing into the depths of the room.
The Guardsmen stood there, panting. The creature had gone, but they weren't taking any chances. They immediately set to work fortifying the area. The Tech-Priests, undeterred, continued their tasks, as over the course of an hour ,, shelves and devices were hauled out for analysis, and to make room for the expansion of the base,, armored walls were set up and reinforced, heavy bolter positions were put in place , and blast doors were installed. Rylan knew they were far from safe in this hellish place
But at least, for now, the monster was gone.
—————————————
The hour that passed after the pool fight felt longer than it was, but the Mechanicus didn't waste time. Tech-Priests had sealed off the pools with ceramite plates, ensuring nothing else crawled out—at least from that section. Unfortunately, the pools were connected to others in nearby chambers, so the Skitarii and the Imperial Guard still had to keep watch. Casualty reports came in. Eight dead: six Guardsmen, two Skitarii. One of the Skitarii had been killed by his own plasma weapon malfunctioning and reducing him to ash, while the other was dragged into the water by one of those ghouls and peeled apart like a tin can.
Rylan was back on patrol. He'd barely had time to scrub the gore off his boots before his platoon was pushed into another section on the outskirts of the south side of the expanding base. The base itself was rapidly being fortified—more barricades, more Imperial Guard reinforcements pouring through the threshold device, heavy weapons getting stationed. It wasn't just a base anymore; it was becoming a fortress.
As Rylan's platoon filed out of the heavily guarded gate, they passed squads manning heavy bolters and a few Sentinel Walkers standing on alert. No one was slacking off. Not after the pools.
"Another frakking patrol, for Emperor-knows-what reason," Rylan muttered under his breath. Around him, his fellow Guardsmen shared his sentiment, the fatigue evident but unsaid. They marched through a series of decrepit hallways and rooms, the kind that looked like they hadn't seen care in centuries. Wallpaper was peeling, brown rugs were full of holes and odd stains that looked more recent than they should. It stank of damp rot. He spotted a strange, looking insect like a mix of a cockroach and a centipede with over a dozen legs and a brownish carapace, that scuttled away into a rotten hole in the wall. Commissar Gluridon shouted an order to stay vigilant for the emperor demanded it. Rylan doubted the emperor himself demanded it. He probably had better things to do.
Behind them, another platoon followed—this one from the 228th Mordian regiment. Known for their unshakable discipline and willingness to face down anything, even Chaos Space Marines, the Mordians weren't the type to crack under pressure. The commissar leading them, Brinehurk, was a tall, steely-eyed man with high cheekbones. Rumor had it he had personally killed a Chaos Space Marine on Bextus prime by shoving a power sword through the marines corrupted skull. If true, he didn't boast about it, and that only made the story more believable.
Already, the Mechanicus was moving in. A couple of Tech-Priests scuttled into the area like cockroaches, taking stock of the room they'd just stumbled into. This area had only been discovered about an hour ago, after a servitor malfunctioned, its cranial implants, causing unsanctioned motor functions and caused the servitor to wander here. The tech-priests had followed it, and now here they were,(the servitor had been terminated and disassembled for parts).
Both platoons fanned out, covering the large room as the Tech-Priests started their tasks. Skitarii warriors stood like statues at attention. Everyone knew the drill: eyes forward, lasguns ready. Rylan took point as half of both platoons stayed behind to guard the tech-priests while the others—including him—moved ahead to investigate.
They advanced down a hallway, hearing a strange, muffled burst of static from around the corner. With weapons raised, they cautiously moved into a door about 20 feet ahead.
What they found was unexpected. The room was enormous, larger than anything they'd encountered so far. The ceiling was a dull white plaster, illuminated by comfortably bright lights. The floor was a faded brownish-white linoleum. Rylan wasn't an expert in the finer details of Imperial architecture, but linoleum wasn't something you usually saw outside the grand rooms of planetary governors. The sheer scale of the place was staggering. The shelves, packed like dominoes, stretched into the distance, each column Of shelves separated by aisle's as wide as roads., Occasionally There were areas where the shelves were interrupted by decent sized areas where furniture such as chairs and couches, arranged in half hazard positions.. The shelves. were lined with items that looked eerily familiar but wrong—devices that resembled Imperial tech such as pict-screens and micro-cookers, but without any of the design aesthetics Rylan knew.
The Tech-Priests, barely hesitating, immediately began preparing the area for incorporation into the base and they dismantled the shelves and grabbed the devices to be hauled off to the core of the base for analysis. Rylan's eyes scanned the shelves, spotting more of these familiar yet unfamiliar devices to him as they vaguely looked like. Imperial Civilian appliances , but of a different design era and oddly unsettling.
Then they heard it again—static, louder this time.
The Guardsmen didn't hesitate. Guns raised, they moved toward the sound, the clattering of their boots filling the air. They rounded the corner, of one of the wide, aisles between the shelf sections, and there it was.
A thing.
Something the imperium has not seen before.
It had a long, spindly, humanoid frame, but its skin was stretched too thin over it's bony body , and metallic antenna protruding out of its back, like the spines of some deathworld creature,. Its head was a boxy device with a screen on it ,, a relic from pre-Imperial times—a screen from Old Earth, though none of them knew that. The screen was filled with static, flickering. The neck was covered in wires and tubes ,as if the boxy screen was surgically attached. It was just standing there, or wandering aimlessly between the shelves.
The Commissar grimaced. "Xenos filth," he spat. His voice echoed. "Purge it. For the Emperor."
Rylan hesitated, what has this thing ever done to them?, but hesitantly joined in.. They opened fire—lasbolts, bolter rounds—everything. The shots hit the creature, square in the body and head. But it didn't react. It didn't even flinch.
The static on its screen turned blood red.
Then it screeched—a horrid, noise of crackling static—and charged. It moved like some fiendish parody of an ape, loping forward on its spindly knuckles as it hurled itself forward with surprising speed.
"Hold the line!" Brinehurk and Gluridon barked, almost at the same time, and the Guardsmen did. No one retreated. Bayonets were affixed in seconds, ready to meet the charge.
Even as they fired, the thing came on, and eventually after about 10 seconds, it was upon them, the beast hit the line like a battering ram, impaling a Guardsman through the chest with its hand, before ripping off his head and flinging the body aside. Another Guardsman swung his rifle like a club, catching the creature off balance, but it recovered instantly, grabbing him by the head and slamming his face into a shelf with bone-shattering force before it threw him to the ground, and smashed his chest in with both its fists, even though he was already dead.
Rylan, gritting his teeth, smashed the butt of his lasgun into the thing's torso, but it was like hitting rock. Men stabbed at it with bayonets and firing lances of las at it, the Commissar barking orders all the while, firing his bolt gun,. The creature lashed out, swiping a Guardsman across the face, mutilating him before shoving a shelf onto his body. Reinforcements were arriving guardsman and Skitarii .One Skitarii, armed with an arc rifle fired, the creatures screen flickered and stuttered, and the creatures body convulsed and juttered, but the thing retaliated by punching through the Skitarii's chest in a spray of oil and blood.
Rylan could barely think. They had attacked it first, and he felt somewhat guilty., but that didn't matter now. He smashed his rifle into the thing again, and this time it stumbled back, its screen flashing erratically. It lashed out one last time, clawing and punching at a nearby soldier , smashing in his face like some grotesque bowl, and leaving his shattered skull, on a broken spinal cord, to flop backwards as he hit the floor like a dead sack of meat,, but then it scrambled off, disappearing into the depths of the room.
The Guardsmen stood there, panting. The creature had gone, but they weren't taking any chances. They immediately set to work fortifying the area. The Tech-Priests, undeterred, continued their tasks, as over the course of an hour ,, shelves and devices were hauled out for analysis, and to make room for the expansion of the base,, armored walls were set up and reinforced, heavy bolter positions were put in place , and blast doors were installed. Rylan knew they were far from safe in this hellish place
But at least, for now, the monster was gone.
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Those yellowed halls (part four)
An hour had passed since Rylan and his platoon had been deployed to stand guard in one of the newer areas of the base. The tech-priests and servitors were hard at work expanding their foothold into the strange complex they found themselves in. The area, an unsettling mishmash of rooms filled with randomly placed furniture and hallways leading nowhere, gave off an eerie impression as if something was trying to mimic human habitation, but was failing horribly. Objects were fused into walls, some pieces were from pre-Imperial times, and small buildings stood inside rooms where they had no business being. This place didn't make sense—nothing about it did.
Rylan stood near a hastily erected barricade, his lasgun hanging by his side. His platoon was part of a larger force stationed here, spread out with other regiments to fortify the area. The room they were in was large—large enough to have two watchtowers and a Leman Russ Punisher variant guarding the entrance. Its Gatling-like Punisher cannon idly spun, manned by a crew of guardsmen ready to let loose at the first sign of danger. Behind the barricade, tech-priests were setting up more emplacements and technological equipment. In front of them, down the other end of the room, was a long, ominous hallway branching into more twists and turns. Strewn about the hallway were more objects—like everything else, they were placed haphazardly, giving the area an unsettling, dreamlike quality.
What made it worse was the strange tinny music that seemed to echo from deep down the hallways. It grew louder and softer, as if it were fluctuating, putting every guardsman on edge.
Rylan and nineteen other guardsmen had been ordered by Commissar Gluridon to advance down the hallway to investigate. They were being led by Sergeant Vale, a fresh-faced officer barely out of training. Their previous sergeant had been killed with a pair of bolt cutters, in a drunken brawl just the day before in the hastily constructed mess hall, near the center of the base,, and the guardsmen responsible had been shot for his crime. The situation was a mess, but such was the way of things in the Imperial Guard.
As they moved down the hallway, lasguns raised and tension thick in the air, they entered another strange room. This one had a cluster of doors, each of varying models and designs. The architecture here made even less sense than what they had seen before. Rylan's mind raced as they advanced, and he wondered just what this place was. It seemed designed for humans, but nothing about it was right. Some of the design elements looked familiar— most of it was pre-Imperial, for sure (other than some random pieces of the Gothic Masonary typical of "standard "imperial worlds)—but they were placed in the wrong and peculiar ways, and the rest was just wrong.
They finally entered a larger room, this one add a metal slide that just went upwards into the wall. A furrow ran along the floor, rectangular and strange, and there was a window that didn't lead anywhere but into the wall. The room, like the others, was littered with random furniture and objects, all thrown about as if discarded by a careless hand. The tinny music was getting louder now, almost deafening.
"Fan out," Sergeant Vale ordered, though his voice betrayed his fear.
Rylan and the others fanned out as ordered, sweeping the room with their lasguns. Rylan's eyes locked onto a strange device in one corner—a boxy contraption that looked like a radio, that sat upon a table that had no legs, but it was attached to the wall,. He approached it cautiously and, after a moment's hesitation, switched it on.
What came out wasn't music or static—it was a deep, croaking noise that filled the room, mechanical and alien. Rylan stumbled backwards, frightened by the noise. The sergeant screamed."Rylan what the hell did you do?"
The noise attracted something.
There was a sudden crash as a door to the left, began to come off of tinges, and started to splinter,. Something was trying to break through.
"Form up!" Sergeant Vale barked, his voice shaky. The guardsmen quickly formed a firing line, lasguns aimed at the door. The sergeant was clearly scared, but to his credit, he held his ground.
The door finally burst open, and what barreled through was a nightmare made flesh.
It was humanoid in shape—but it was grotesque beyond reason. Tumor-like growths covered its body, sagging red flesh slapped as it scrambled towards them,, and its tattered clothes barely hung onto its misshapen form. Its eyes were bloodshot, and it let out guttural growls and grunts as it charged forward, moving with animalistic speed, flailing its arms around, like a madman. It was unsettling how human in appearance it was, disregarding the tumors and drooping red flesh. Was it possible that thing and the ghouls from the pool area, were, once humans, loyal servants of the emperor, cast down into this wretched place to become mutants? .
"Open fire!" the sergeant screamed, and the guardsmen obeyed.
Lasfire seared the creature's flesh, scorching it, but it didn't stop. It crashed into one of the men, even as he tried to scramble to get out of the way but the thing was quicker and , smashed his head with a brutal swipe, smashing open, the upper part of the guardsmen head. The force sent the poor guardsman flying across the room, his neck broken and hit the slide with enough force to break his back.. Another man, desperate, rushed forward and skewered the beast with his bayonet. But the creature simply roared, punched through the guardsman's chest, and flung him into the rectangular furrow on the ground. The guardsmen realized their bayonets would have more effect and they charged, chopping at the monstrosity. The thing was tough and strong. and it literally twisted another guardsman's head off.
More guardsmen swarmed the beast, hacking at it with bayonets, trying to bring it down. The creature thrashed wildly, knocking men to the floor. It grabbed another unfortunate soldier and, with sickening force, ripped his head open, tearing it in half. Blood sprayed across the room, painting the broken furniture and playground equipment.
One of the men managed to jam his bayonet into the side of the thing's head while firing his lasgun point-blank into its skull. The creature let out a final, horrific roar as it collapsed, but inexplicably, the thing was not done. Even in death, it grabbed the man who bayoneted it, and started him repeatedly into the wall repeatedly, like an industrial press, until he was nothing but a bloody stain, .
Even after the creature was down, the guardsmen continued firing into its twitching corpse, lasbolts searing through flesh and bone until nothing remained but a smoking heap.
Rylan stood there, panting heavily, his lasgun still raised. His heart was pounding in his chest, and his mind was racing. .
But there was no time to dwell on it.
Sergeant Vale, his face pale, ordered the men to regroup. The rest of the squad was on high alert, expecting more horrors to come charging out of the smashed door. But for now, the room was almost completely, quiet. The strange croaking from the radio had stopped.The lights didn't hum .The men didn't talk. Silence—save for the distant, tinny music still echoing from somewhere deep within the complex and the heavy breathing from the guardsmen.
The guardsmen set to work securing the area, their nerves frayed but their duty clear. The dead were gathered, and the tech-priests would be informed of this latest anomaly. The Imperium's foothold in this strange place continued to grow, inch by inch, but it came at a bloody price. Afterwards they fell back to the barricade, to the safety of the base
And Rylan knew this would not be the last time they faced something like this
Rylan stood near a hastily erected barricade, his lasgun hanging by his side. His platoon was part of a larger force stationed here, spread out with other regiments to fortify the area. The room they were in was large—large enough to have two watchtowers and a Leman Russ Punisher variant guarding the entrance. Its Gatling-like Punisher cannon idly spun, manned by a crew of guardsmen ready to let loose at the first sign of danger. Behind the barricade, tech-priests were setting up more emplacements and technological equipment. In front of them, down the other end of the room, was a long, ominous hallway branching into more twists and turns. Strewn about the hallway were more objects—like everything else, they were placed haphazardly, giving the area an unsettling, dreamlike quality.
What made it worse was the strange tinny music that seemed to echo from deep down the hallways. It grew louder and softer, as if it were fluctuating, putting every guardsman on edge.
Rylan and nineteen other guardsmen had been ordered by Commissar Gluridon to advance down the hallway to investigate. They were being led by Sergeant Vale, a fresh-faced officer barely out of training. Their previous sergeant had been killed with a pair of bolt cutters, in a drunken brawl just the day before in the hastily constructed mess hall, near the center of the base,, and the guardsmen responsible had been shot for his crime. The situation was a mess, but such was the way of things in the Imperial Guard.
As they moved down the hallway, lasguns raised and tension thick in the air, they entered another strange room. This one had a cluster of doors, each of varying models and designs. The architecture here made even less sense than what they had seen before. Rylan's mind raced as they advanced, and he wondered just what this place was. It seemed designed for humans, but nothing about it was right. Some of the design elements looked familiar— most of it was pre-Imperial, for sure (other than some random pieces of the Gothic Masonary typical of "standard "imperial worlds)—but they were placed in the wrong and peculiar ways, and the rest was just wrong.
They finally entered a larger room, this one add a metal slide that just went upwards into the wall. A furrow ran along the floor, rectangular and strange, and there was a window that didn't lead anywhere but into the wall. The room, like the others, was littered with random furniture and objects, all thrown about as if discarded by a careless hand. The tinny music was getting louder now, almost deafening.
"Fan out," Sergeant Vale ordered, though his voice betrayed his fear.
Rylan and the others fanned out as ordered, sweeping the room with their lasguns. Rylan's eyes locked onto a strange device in one corner—a boxy contraption that looked like a radio, that sat upon a table that had no legs, but it was attached to the wall,. He approached it cautiously and, after a moment's hesitation, switched it on.
What came out wasn't music or static—it was a deep, croaking noise that filled the room, mechanical and alien. Rylan stumbled backwards, frightened by the noise. The sergeant screamed."Rylan what the hell did you do?"
The noise attracted something.
There was a sudden crash as a door to the left, began to come off of tinges, and started to splinter,. Something was trying to break through.
"Form up!" Sergeant Vale barked, his voice shaky. The guardsmen quickly formed a firing line, lasguns aimed at the door. The sergeant was clearly scared, but to his credit, he held his ground.
The door finally burst open, and what barreled through was a nightmare made flesh.
It was humanoid in shape—but it was grotesque beyond reason. Tumor-like growths covered its body, sagging red flesh slapped as it scrambled towards them,, and its tattered clothes barely hung onto its misshapen form. Its eyes were bloodshot, and it let out guttural growls and grunts as it charged forward, moving with animalistic speed, flailing its arms around, like a madman. It was unsettling how human in appearance it was, disregarding the tumors and drooping red flesh. Was it possible that thing and the ghouls from the pool area, were, once humans, loyal servants of the emperor, cast down into this wretched place to become mutants? .
"Open fire!" the sergeant screamed, and the guardsmen obeyed.
Lasfire seared the creature's flesh, scorching it, but it didn't stop. It crashed into one of the men, even as he tried to scramble to get out of the way but the thing was quicker and , smashed his head with a brutal swipe, smashing open, the upper part of the guardsmen head. The force sent the poor guardsman flying across the room, his neck broken and hit the slide with enough force to break his back.. Another man, desperate, rushed forward and skewered the beast with his bayonet. But the creature simply roared, punched through the guardsman's chest, and flung him into the rectangular furrow on the ground. The guardsmen realized their bayonets would have more effect and they charged, chopping at the monstrosity. The thing was tough and strong. and it literally twisted another guardsman's head off.
More guardsmen swarmed the beast, hacking at it with bayonets, trying to bring it down. The creature thrashed wildly, knocking men to the floor. It grabbed another unfortunate soldier and, with sickening force, ripped his head open, tearing it in half. Blood sprayed across the room, painting the broken furniture and playground equipment.
One of the men managed to jam his bayonet into the side of the thing's head while firing his lasgun point-blank into its skull. The creature let out a final, horrific roar as it collapsed, but inexplicably, the thing was not done. Even in death, it grabbed the man who bayoneted it, and started him repeatedly into the wall repeatedly, like an industrial press, until he was nothing but a bloody stain, .
Even after the creature was down, the guardsmen continued firing into its twitching corpse, lasbolts searing through flesh and bone until nothing remained but a smoking heap.
Rylan stood there, panting heavily, his lasgun still raised. His heart was pounding in his chest, and his mind was racing. .
But there was no time to dwell on it.
Sergeant Vale, his face pale, ordered the men to regroup. The rest of the squad was on high alert, expecting more horrors to come charging out of the smashed door. But for now, the room was almost completely, quiet. The strange croaking from the radio had stopped.The lights didn't hum .The men didn't talk. Silence—save for the distant, tinny music still echoing from somewhere deep within the complex and the heavy breathing from the guardsmen.
The guardsmen set to work securing the area, their nerves frayed but their duty clear. The dead were gathered, and the tech-priests would be informed of this latest anomaly. The Imperium's foothold in this strange place continued to grow, inch by inch, but it came at a bloody price. Afterwards they fell back to the barricade, to the safety of the base
And Rylan knew this would not be the last time they faced something like this
Vote closed
Those yellowed halls, part five.
New
The Imperium's exploratory push into the backrooms continued with measured efficiency and no small amount of wariness. Two platoons of guardsmen had been tasked with venturing deeper into this unholy labyrinth, accompanied by a contingent of Mechanicus adepts, two heavy bolter teams, and a small squad of eager Ogryns. The latter were surprisingly motivated today, their sergeant promising extra potato-peeling duties if they behaved. The Ogryns took this reward seriously; peeling potatoes was a privilege, after all.
The area they had entered was a sprawling warren of interconnected warehouse-like rooms. Some were cavernously empty, the flickering overhead lights illuminating nothing but rust-streaked blue metal walls. Others were packed with towering shelves that groaned under the weight of strange machinery and forgotten components. The shelves themselves were tall and gunmetal gray.
There was a chaotic variety in the machinery and also the components. Many devices bore the clear stamp of humanity: There were gyroscopes, engines, thermal lances, and remnants of submarine systems.There were cardboard boxes of lugnuts, screws, paperclips and staples. Among the alien-yet-familiar relics, there were also relics of Imperial design—lasgun power packs, Gristedes-pattern auto-cab mufflers, and even a worn-out power field generator for a power sword, though it looked several millennia out of date. The Mechanicus adepts scurried to and fro, clanking as they cataloged and claimed anything that caught their augmetic eyes. One of them hoisted a toaster into the air, warbling excitedly in binary.
The guardsmen established a forward sub-base in the largest room. Standard procedure. Barricades went up at the entrances, vox systems were linked back to the primary base, and small fire teams secured the perimeter. The heavy bolter teams took positions on either side of the room, their gunners casually bantering about the odds of encountering something nasty.
"Bet ya five thrones it's something with too many teeth," Private Harlan muttered, patting the side of his bolter affectionately.
"Nah," replied his loader, grinning. "It'll be teeth and claws. Maybe wings too."
The Ogryns, meanwhile, were setting up crates and stacking supplies under the watchful gaze of their bone 'ead, Grag. The big lunk corrected any misplaced boxes with a cheerful grin, completely oblivious to the wary distance the guardsmen maintained around him.
Unfortunately, even good intentions could go horribly wrong.
One of the Ogryns, specifically Grag, eager to prove his worth ,started to move around various objects for no apparent reason, and he bumped into a towering shelf. A metallic groan echoed through the room as the ancient structure shifted. Guardsmen dove for cover as , air conditioners, a generator- and the largest- even a an ancient bathysphere—a device of Old Earth's oceans— rolled or slid free and fell.
The unlucky soldier below it had no time to react. The enormous metallic sphere crushed him instantly. Gasps and shouted curses rippled through the room.
"Emperor's mercy!" Rylan hissed, his stomach turning as he took in the grisly sight.
Commissar Gluridon began reprimanding the ogryn responsible. Grag was just picking his nose absentmindedly even as he was chastised.
Grag, then noticed the crushed guardsman, and lumbered over, effortlessly hoisted the bathysphere with one massive hand, and began performing what he assumed was CPR on the flattened remains. Blood coated his massive fingers, but Grag only frowned in confusion as the guardsman failed to spring back to life.
"Grag help! Grag fix!" the Ogryn said, his face scrunched in concentration as he pushed down on what was left of the soldier's chest. He then started to sort of shake was left of the man, as if trying to get someone out of a haze.
"Grag, stop!" Sergeant Varn barked, stepping in to pull the hulking soldier away. "He's—by the Emperor, just stop!"
The Ogryn's confused expression deepened. "But... Grag helping!"
"You crushed him!" Varn snapped, waving a hand at the mess. "He's dead! You can't fix this!"
Grag's face fell, his lower lip trembling. He mumbled something about "not meaning to," but before the sergeant could reply, the Mechanicus contingent interrupted with a burst of binary chatter.
Apparently, the adepts had already moved on from the accident and were eager to start disassembling some of the larger machines for analysis.
"Move him out of here," Varn said grimly, gesturing for the other Ogryns to carry the remains away. "And try not to break anything else."
As the Ogryns shuffled off, muttering apologies, Rylan shook his head. There were no creatures this time—no ghouls, no TV headed monsters, no tumor-men—but he still felt uneasy. The oppressive silence of the place was worse than any enemy.
The guardsmen worked quickly to secure the area, and the Mechanicus wasted no time in setting up their operations. They didn't encounter anything else that day, but the bloodstain on the floor lingered, a grim reminder that even without enemies, the backrooms could still claim lives. Or technically ogryn's could still claim lives, he supposed.
Tomorrow, they would push further.
The area they had entered was a sprawling warren of interconnected warehouse-like rooms. Some were cavernously empty, the flickering overhead lights illuminating nothing but rust-streaked blue metal walls. Others were packed with towering shelves that groaned under the weight of strange machinery and forgotten components. The shelves themselves were tall and gunmetal gray.
There was a chaotic variety in the machinery and also the components. Many devices bore the clear stamp of humanity: There were gyroscopes, engines, thermal lances, and remnants of submarine systems.There were cardboard boxes of lugnuts, screws, paperclips and staples. Among the alien-yet-familiar relics, there were also relics of Imperial design—lasgun power packs, Gristedes-pattern auto-cab mufflers, and even a worn-out power field generator for a power sword, though it looked several millennia out of date. The Mechanicus adepts scurried to and fro, clanking as they cataloged and claimed anything that caught their augmetic eyes. One of them hoisted a toaster into the air, warbling excitedly in binary.
The guardsmen established a forward sub-base in the largest room. Standard procedure. Barricades went up at the entrances, vox systems were linked back to the primary base, and small fire teams secured the perimeter. The heavy bolter teams took positions on either side of the room, their gunners casually bantering about the odds of encountering something nasty.
"Bet ya five thrones it's something with too many teeth," Private Harlan muttered, patting the side of his bolter affectionately.
"Nah," replied his loader, grinning. "It'll be teeth and claws. Maybe wings too."
The Ogryns, meanwhile, were setting up crates and stacking supplies under the watchful gaze of their bone 'ead, Grag. The big lunk corrected any misplaced boxes with a cheerful grin, completely oblivious to the wary distance the guardsmen maintained around him.
Unfortunately, even good intentions could go horribly wrong.
One of the Ogryns, specifically Grag, eager to prove his worth ,started to move around various objects for no apparent reason, and he bumped into a towering shelf. A metallic groan echoed through the room as the ancient structure shifted. Guardsmen dove for cover as , air conditioners, a generator- and the largest- even a an ancient bathysphere—a device of Old Earth's oceans— rolled or slid free and fell.
The unlucky soldier below it had no time to react. The enormous metallic sphere crushed him instantly. Gasps and shouted curses rippled through the room.
"Emperor's mercy!" Rylan hissed, his stomach turning as he took in the grisly sight.
Commissar Gluridon began reprimanding the ogryn responsible. Grag was just picking his nose absentmindedly even as he was chastised.
Grag, then noticed the crushed guardsman, and lumbered over, effortlessly hoisted the bathysphere with one massive hand, and began performing what he assumed was CPR on the flattened remains. Blood coated his massive fingers, but Grag only frowned in confusion as the guardsman failed to spring back to life.
"Grag help! Grag fix!" the Ogryn said, his face scrunched in concentration as he pushed down on what was left of the soldier's chest. He then started to sort of shake was left of the man, as if trying to get someone out of a haze.
"Grag, stop!" Sergeant Varn barked, stepping in to pull the hulking soldier away. "He's—by the Emperor, just stop!"
The Ogryn's confused expression deepened. "But... Grag helping!"
"You crushed him!" Varn snapped, waving a hand at the mess. "He's dead! You can't fix this!"
Grag's face fell, his lower lip trembling. He mumbled something about "not meaning to," but before the sergeant could reply, the Mechanicus contingent interrupted with a burst of binary chatter.
Apparently, the adepts had already moved on from the accident and were eager to start disassembling some of the larger machines for analysis.
"Move him out of here," Varn said grimly, gesturing for the other Ogryns to carry the remains away. "And try not to break anything else."
As the Ogryns shuffled off, muttering apologies, Rylan shook his head. There were no creatures this time—no ghouls, no TV headed monsters, no tumor-men—but he still felt uneasy. The oppressive silence of the place was worse than any enemy.
The guardsmen worked quickly to secure the area, and the Mechanicus wasted no time in setting up their operations. They didn't encounter anything else that day, but the bloodstain on the floor lingered, a grim reminder that even without enemies, the backrooms could still claim lives. Or technically ogryn's could still claim lives, he supposed.
Tomorrow, they would push further.
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Those yellowed halls (part six)
New
The next day, the guardsmen had expanded their operations further, establishing another forward sub-base in one of the massive empty warehouses close to the main route leading back to the growing Imperial stronghold. The room was a cavernous, dusty void—tall ceilings disappearing into shadow, shelves devoid of purpose, walls streaked with rust and grime. The Mechanicus were preoccupied cataloging and disassembling strange machines elsewhere, leaving the guardsmen to occupy themselves.
The sub-base was calm, for now.
A makeshift mess area had been set up where guardsmen from other patrols drifted in and out. Some were grabbing quick meals before returning to their posts; others lingered, nursing their exhaustion and trying to enjoy what passed for food. Ration packs were ripped open with mechanical apathy, flavorless grox-meal shoveled into mouths without enthusiasm.
Rylan sat on an overturned crate, gnawing at his third ration bar. He chased it down with a swig of water from his canteen, grimacing as the foul metallic taste clung to his throat. Emperor preserve him—this stuff was borderline undrinkable.
Nearby, another group of guardsmen were decidedly less miserable. Somehow, a shipment of gaup liquor had ended up in their supplies, likely the result of some scribe's mistake—or the Emperor's mercy, depending on who you asked. It wasn't long before a few of the more enterprising guardsmen had cracked it open, and now the air was filled with their slurred laughter and off-key singing.
One particularly drunk soldier, Private Kellis, staggered to his feet, unsteady as a newborn grox calf. "Gotta piss," he announced to no one in particular, swaying on his feet. His friends hooted as he stumbled off, their attention already lost to another half-empty bottle.
Kellis wobbled through the door into an adjacent room, mumbling some off-tune hymn to the Emperor as he went. The room was dark—unexplored, untouched. A maze of towering shelves rose up around him, cluttered with strange machinery. Engine blocks, turbines, and heaps of unrecognizable scrap loomed like silent sentinels in the gloom.
Kellis stopped beside what looked like an engine block, propped haphazardly against a wall. He unbuttoned his trousers, leaned one hand against the cold metal, and sighed in relief.
As he pissed, a faint noise reached him—low and rhythmic. Clank. Hiss. Clank. Hiss. Mechanical, almost like the sound of gears grinding together.
Kellis frowned, blinking blearily into the shadows. "H-hello?" His voice slurred. "Anyone there? You cogboys messin' about?"
The noise stopped. For a moment, there was only silence. Then—
CLANK.
Something sharp and heavy whistled through the air. Kellis didn't even have time to turn. The jagged edge of a rusted blade sheared clean through his skull with mechanical precision, splitting it in half. His body dropped bonelessly to the ground, the spreading pool of blood soaking into the dust.
The unseen figure loomed over him. It was not alone.
Rylan was mid-chew when he heard something—an odd clattering sound from the direction Kellis had gone. He paused, frowning at the door.
"You hear that?" he muttered to Corporal Varn, who was seated nearby.
Varn grunted, wiping grox-meal from his mouth. "Probably Kellis knockin' somethin' over. Idiot can barely walk straight."
The sound came again, louder this time—heavy, irregular footsteps. Like metal grinding against metal. Rylan's stomach twisted. That wasn't Kellis.
He stood up slowly, grabbing his lasgun from where it leaned against a crate. Others began noticing too, conversation fading into wary silence. A pair of glowing red orbs appeared in the dark doorway. Then another. And another. They bobbed up and down as they approached.
"Oi!" one of the drunken guardsmen called, staggering to his feet. He squinted at the shifting shadows, a sloppy grin on his face. "Mechanicus? You lot finally—"
He stopped, the words dying in his throat as the figures stepped into the light.
They were not Mechanicus. They were not anything remotely human.
The things that emerged from the darkness were abominable—humanoid shapes cobbled together from scrap metal, gears, and forgotten machinery. Their limbs were mismatched and jagged, each appendage was either lunch or jagged with pieces of scrap metal or machinery, or were a horrifying tool: saws still dripping with oil, hydraulic jackhammers twitching ominously, clamps studded with rusted nails. Their bodies were crude amalgamations of piping, engine parts, and plates of metal bolted together in ways that defied logic.
The first one hunched forward, its torso covered in spikes. Its head was an ancient cogitator core—pre-Imperial, maybe—glowing red through a cracked viewport. It moved with an unnatural jerking motion, dragging a serrated length of rebar where its right arm should have been.
The drunk soldier let out a nervous laugh. "Heh… cogboys gone funny-lookin', eh?"
The scrap-thing lunged forward with terrifying speed. The jagged rebar pierced clean through the guardsman's skull, the wet crunch silencing him instantly. His body spasmed once before the creature wrenched its weapon free, leaving him to collapse in a heap.
"CONTACT!" Rylan bellowed, raising his lasgun. The room exploded into chaos.
"Get the bolters ready!" Corporal Varn roared, grabbing his vox. "Command! This is Sub-Base Theta! We are under attack! Unknown mechanical hostiles! Reinforcements required immediately!"
The heavy bolter teams scrambled into position, their gunners racking the slides and prepping their belts. Other guardsmen took cover behind crates and overturned shelves, lasguns snapping up as shouts echoed through the room.
Rylan's eyes stayed locked on the doorway. More of the creatures were emerging—dozens of them, their glowing red orbs cutting through the dim light like predatory eyes. They filled the corridor beyond, clanking and hissing as they advanced. Each one was different but equally grotesque. Some carried spinning saws that whirred with a hungry screech. Others dragged rusted hammers or spikes studded with scrap.
"Emperor's teeth…" Rylan whispered.
The lead scrap-thing raised its rebar arm, pointing toward the guardsmen with a horrible grinding noise. The swarm behind it began to charge, their footsteps an unholy chorus of metal on metal.
"OPEN FIRE!"
Rylan's finger hovered over the trigger. The room shook with the thundering roar of heavy bolters spinning to life.
The heavy bolters roared like angry gods, their shells slamming into the advancing horde of scrap-creatures and detonating in brilliant bursts of sparks, oil, and twisted metal.
The first creature—a lumbering heap with a head resembling a rusted pre-Imperial camera—was the first to fall. The heavy bolter tore it apart, its "head" blown clean off and flying across the room, split open like a cheap tin can hit by buckshot. It staggered forward, taking a few aimless steps before another salvo of bolt shells tore vertically through its body, splitting it in half with a shriek of tortured metal. It crumpled to the ground, limbs flailing like a broken puppet.
Lasgun fire lanced out in furious volleys. Guardsmen hollered as they squeezed off shots, the bright beams melting holes through the creatures' improvised bodies. Rylan gritted his teeth, sighting one of the monstrosities— the humanoid one with a cracked cogitator core for a head. He pulled the trigger.
The las-bolt drilled a glowing hole clean through its chest. The creature froze, then collapsed in a heap like an articulated statue whose strings had been cut.
But they just kept coming. And they showed no sign of stopping.
One of the things bounded into view, a horrific quadrupedal figure with grotesquely backward-jointed hydraulic legs. Its body was a writhing mess of pipes, wires, and bolted scrap, and its head was no better—a tangled, seething ball of wiring, with cracked glass lenses poking out like hideous eyes. Worst of all was its "mouth"—a bear trap, rusted and streaked with black oil.
It scuttled up the wall like some hideous parody of a spider before launching itself straight into the mess hall. It slammed into a guardsman hard enough to crush his ribcage like a tin of recaf, the impact flinging him across the room. He smashed into a table, slumped to the floor, and didn't get back up.
The creature spun, pouncing on another guardsman, its jaws snapping open with a sickening clunk. Blood sprayed as it ripped the man's head off.
BOOM!
The quadruped's head disappeared in a shower of metal fragments as a shotgun blast took it clean off. The headless body wobbled for a moment before crashing down, oil pooling beneath its twitching limbs.
"COME GET SOME!" a booming voice roared.
The door exploded inward, and an ogryn lumbered into the mess hall. Massive, crude club in hand, the giant barrelled straight for the horde. A spider-like creature—spindly, covered in lenses and wiry limbs—skittered toward him. The ogryn swung his club in a bone-jarring arc. The mechanical arachnid crumpled into a mess of crushed parts, oily fluid splattering four feet up the nearest wall.
"Grag SMASH GOOD!"
Grag—another ogryn nearly as big as the first—stormed in after him, wielding his ripper gun like it was a club. A scrawny creature with a cage for a head lunged toward him, swinging razor-sharp claws. Grag growled, brought his ripper gun around, and smashed it flat with a single thunderous swing. Metal splinters and gory oil sprayed everywhere.
"Grag ANGRY!"
Another ogryn wasn't so lucky. A swarm of mechanical monstrosities leapt onto him, clawing, hacking, and stabbing. He bellowed, flailing like an enraged grox, but the weight overwhelmed him. Saws screeched as they cut into flesh, and his roars became pained screams that abruptly stopped. Another ogryn was pinned down by a dozen of the creatures even as he fought back. He grabbed one and crushed it, even as the metal deeply scratched his hand,, then his struggles stopped as his head split open with a jackhammer, the tool belonging to a spiked ramshackle construct.
"GRAG NO LIKE THAT!" Grag bellowed, enraged. He grabbed one of the mechanical creatures— the spiked abomination with a jackhammer arm (which was grabbed by the jackhammer arm)— and hurled it against the wall. The impact ruptured its body, metal plating bursting apart in a shower of sparks.
And still they came.
Rylan blew a molten hole through another creature, this one a misshapen thing with a pair of treads as a lower body and a propeller for a hand, when he noticed the beast approaching.
One of the largest creatures yet lumbered forward. It had two mechanical heads consisting of amalgamated masses of sensors and lenses, the heads spun in lazy, asynchronous circles on neck-limbs attached to a spinning large metallic gear on the top of its lumpy body,. Its body was an ungodly fusion of machine parts, with eight clawed legs and a massive, spinning buzzsaw mounted on a piston arm.
Lasbolts merely ricocheted off pieces of metal or made inconsequential wounds in relatively soft areas on the scrap creatures bulk.
The buzzsaw screamed to life.
The first guardsman it hit didn't even have time to scream. The saw struck his leg, the saw quickly started slicing up the length of his leg through flesh and bone, then continued through his torso and out his opposite shoulder. The two halves of his body fell in opposite directions, blood arcing in graceful sprays across the floor.
"BLOODY—"
The creature stomped another guardsman into paste before he could finish swearing, and swatted another one aside. A guardsman lunged at it, bayonet in hand. He stabbed forward, severing a mess of wires near the creature's abdomen.
It froze for half a second. Then the wires sparked.
The guardsman convulsed violently as electricity surged through him, smoke rising from his scorched body before he collapsed, steaming. The giant creature did not stop. The giant creature continued to rampage. The giant creature tore a guardsmen to pieces and snatched another one, and threw him into the horde where he was reduced to something barely recognizable in seconds.
Another guardsman had his head smashed to a bloody mess by a thing that was essentially two spindly pipe-legs, a small static covered screen, and a hinge with a sledgehammer, that was smacking up and down on the remains of the guardsman's head.
"THEY'RE AT THE HEAVY BOLTERS!" someone screamed.
The heavy bolter team was attacked, as a jagged clamp crushed the gunner's legs like twigs. The gunner's scream cut off abruptly as a jackhammer pounded into his skull, turning his head into a ruin of bone and brain matter. The loader turned to flee—
FWOOOSH!
A literal barrel waddled toward him on spider-like legs, a crude pipe-nozzle sticking from its top. A pilot flame, consisting of a blow torch, hissed to life. The guardsman had time for one strangled yell before the flamer turned him into a screaming fireball. He thrashed around a bit before he collapsed to the ground
"GRAG TIRED OF THIS!"
Grag roared, grabbing the barrel-creature mid-flamethrower. It flailed in protest, hissing and spitting fire, but the ogryn hurled it into the horde like a bowling ball. Scrap-things went flying, crashing to the ground in tangled heaps.
"RYLAN, SHOOT IT!"
Rylan didn't need to be told twice. He squeezed the trigger, las-bolts slamming into the barrel creature. The improvised fuel tank ruptured—
KA-BOOM!
The explosion was magnificent. Fire and shrapnel erupted outward, immolating a dozen of the scrap-horrors. Several staggered, their components ablaze as they let out bizarre buzzing and screeching noises before collapsing like broken toys.
The room fell momentarily silent.
The surviving creatures—what little remained—paused as if considering their odds. Then, with a shriek of metal on metal, they retreated back into the dark room they'd emerged from, their red "eyes" disappearing one by one as they retreated away
Rylan's shoulders sagged as he exhaled, trembling slightly. He glanced around the mess hall. Bodies lay everywhere—guardsmen and abominations alike. Oily black fluid mixed with blood on the floor. Sparks rained down like fireworks from exposed wiring. One guardsman was screaming even as he tried to find his severed right arm.
Grag, still panting, stood in the middle of the room. He wiped a smear of oil from his massive club and bellowed triumphantly.
"Grag WIN!"
The guardsmen didn't celebrate ,as a dozen other troopers ran into the room and surveyed the carnage. Rylan wondered why they were even in this place.
The sub-base was calm, for now.
A makeshift mess area had been set up where guardsmen from other patrols drifted in and out. Some were grabbing quick meals before returning to their posts; others lingered, nursing their exhaustion and trying to enjoy what passed for food. Ration packs were ripped open with mechanical apathy, flavorless grox-meal shoveled into mouths without enthusiasm.
Rylan sat on an overturned crate, gnawing at his third ration bar. He chased it down with a swig of water from his canteen, grimacing as the foul metallic taste clung to his throat. Emperor preserve him—this stuff was borderline undrinkable.
Nearby, another group of guardsmen were decidedly less miserable. Somehow, a shipment of gaup liquor had ended up in their supplies, likely the result of some scribe's mistake—or the Emperor's mercy, depending on who you asked. It wasn't long before a few of the more enterprising guardsmen had cracked it open, and now the air was filled with their slurred laughter and off-key singing.
One particularly drunk soldier, Private Kellis, staggered to his feet, unsteady as a newborn grox calf. "Gotta piss," he announced to no one in particular, swaying on his feet. His friends hooted as he stumbled off, their attention already lost to another half-empty bottle.
Kellis wobbled through the door into an adjacent room, mumbling some off-tune hymn to the Emperor as he went. The room was dark—unexplored, untouched. A maze of towering shelves rose up around him, cluttered with strange machinery. Engine blocks, turbines, and heaps of unrecognizable scrap loomed like silent sentinels in the gloom.
Kellis stopped beside what looked like an engine block, propped haphazardly against a wall. He unbuttoned his trousers, leaned one hand against the cold metal, and sighed in relief.
As he pissed, a faint noise reached him—low and rhythmic. Clank. Hiss. Clank. Hiss. Mechanical, almost like the sound of gears grinding together.
Kellis frowned, blinking blearily into the shadows. "H-hello?" His voice slurred. "Anyone there? You cogboys messin' about?"
The noise stopped. For a moment, there was only silence. Then—
CLANK.
Something sharp and heavy whistled through the air. Kellis didn't even have time to turn. The jagged edge of a rusted blade sheared clean through his skull with mechanical precision, splitting it in half. His body dropped bonelessly to the ground, the spreading pool of blood soaking into the dust.
The unseen figure loomed over him. It was not alone.
Rylan was mid-chew when he heard something—an odd clattering sound from the direction Kellis had gone. He paused, frowning at the door.
"You hear that?" he muttered to Corporal Varn, who was seated nearby.
Varn grunted, wiping grox-meal from his mouth. "Probably Kellis knockin' somethin' over. Idiot can barely walk straight."
The sound came again, louder this time—heavy, irregular footsteps. Like metal grinding against metal. Rylan's stomach twisted. That wasn't Kellis.
He stood up slowly, grabbing his lasgun from where it leaned against a crate. Others began noticing too, conversation fading into wary silence. A pair of glowing red orbs appeared in the dark doorway. Then another. And another. They bobbed up and down as they approached.
"Oi!" one of the drunken guardsmen called, staggering to his feet. He squinted at the shifting shadows, a sloppy grin on his face. "Mechanicus? You lot finally—"
He stopped, the words dying in his throat as the figures stepped into the light.
They were not Mechanicus. They were not anything remotely human.
The things that emerged from the darkness were abominable—humanoid shapes cobbled together from scrap metal, gears, and forgotten machinery. Their limbs were mismatched and jagged, each appendage was either lunch or jagged with pieces of scrap metal or machinery, or were a horrifying tool: saws still dripping with oil, hydraulic jackhammers twitching ominously, clamps studded with rusted nails. Their bodies were crude amalgamations of piping, engine parts, and plates of metal bolted together in ways that defied logic.
The first one hunched forward, its torso covered in spikes. Its head was an ancient cogitator core—pre-Imperial, maybe—glowing red through a cracked viewport. It moved with an unnatural jerking motion, dragging a serrated length of rebar where its right arm should have been.
The drunk soldier let out a nervous laugh. "Heh… cogboys gone funny-lookin', eh?"
The scrap-thing lunged forward with terrifying speed. The jagged rebar pierced clean through the guardsman's skull, the wet crunch silencing him instantly. His body spasmed once before the creature wrenched its weapon free, leaving him to collapse in a heap.
"CONTACT!" Rylan bellowed, raising his lasgun. The room exploded into chaos.
"Get the bolters ready!" Corporal Varn roared, grabbing his vox. "Command! This is Sub-Base Theta! We are under attack! Unknown mechanical hostiles! Reinforcements required immediately!"
The heavy bolter teams scrambled into position, their gunners racking the slides and prepping their belts. Other guardsmen took cover behind crates and overturned shelves, lasguns snapping up as shouts echoed through the room.
Rylan's eyes stayed locked on the doorway. More of the creatures were emerging—dozens of them, their glowing red orbs cutting through the dim light like predatory eyes. They filled the corridor beyond, clanking and hissing as they advanced. Each one was different but equally grotesque. Some carried spinning saws that whirred with a hungry screech. Others dragged rusted hammers or spikes studded with scrap.
"Emperor's teeth…" Rylan whispered.
The lead scrap-thing raised its rebar arm, pointing toward the guardsmen with a horrible grinding noise. The swarm behind it began to charge, their footsteps an unholy chorus of metal on metal.
"OPEN FIRE!"
Rylan's finger hovered over the trigger. The room shook with the thundering roar of heavy bolters spinning to life.
The heavy bolters roared like angry gods, their shells slamming into the advancing horde of scrap-creatures and detonating in brilliant bursts of sparks, oil, and twisted metal.
The first creature—a lumbering heap with a head resembling a rusted pre-Imperial camera—was the first to fall. The heavy bolter tore it apart, its "head" blown clean off and flying across the room, split open like a cheap tin can hit by buckshot. It staggered forward, taking a few aimless steps before another salvo of bolt shells tore vertically through its body, splitting it in half with a shriek of tortured metal. It crumpled to the ground, limbs flailing like a broken puppet.
Lasgun fire lanced out in furious volleys. Guardsmen hollered as they squeezed off shots, the bright beams melting holes through the creatures' improvised bodies. Rylan gritted his teeth, sighting one of the monstrosities— the humanoid one with a cracked cogitator core for a head. He pulled the trigger.
The las-bolt drilled a glowing hole clean through its chest. The creature froze, then collapsed in a heap like an articulated statue whose strings had been cut.
But they just kept coming. And they showed no sign of stopping.
One of the things bounded into view, a horrific quadrupedal figure with grotesquely backward-jointed hydraulic legs. Its body was a writhing mess of pipes, wires, and bolted scrap, and its head was no better—a tangled, seething ball of wiring, with cracked glass lenses poking out like hideous eyes. Worst of all was its "mouth"—a bear trap, rusted and streaked with black oil.
It scuttled up the wall like some hideous parody of a spider before launching itself straight into the mess hall. It slammed into a guardsman hard enough to crush his ribcage like a tin of recaf, the impact flinging him across the room. He smashed into a table, slumped to the floor, and didn't get back up.
The creature spun, pouncing on another guardsman, its jaws snapping open with a sickening clunk. Blood sprayed as it ripped the man's head off.
BOOM!
The quadruped's head disappeared in a shower of metal fragments as a shotgun blast took it clean off. The headless body wobbled for a moment before crashing down, oil pooling beneath its twitching limbs.
"COME GET SOME!" a booming voice roared.
The door exploded inward, and an ogryn lumbered into the mess hall. Massive, crude club in hand, the giant barrelled straight for the horde. A spider-like creature—spindly, covered in lenses and wiry limbs—skittered toward him. The ogryn swung his club in a bone-jarring arc. The mechanical arachnid crumpled into a mess of crushed parts, oily fluid splattering four feet up the nearest wall.
"Grag SMASH GOOD!"
Grag—another ogryn nearly as big as the first—stormed in after him, wielding his ripper gun like it was a club. A scrawny creature with a cage for a head lunged toward him, swinging razor-sharp claws. Grag growled, brought his ripper gun around, and smashed it flat with a single thunderous swing. Metal splinters and gory oil sprayed everywhere.
"Grag ANGRY!"
Another ogryn wasn't so lucky. A swarm of mechanical monstrosities leapt onto him, clawing, hacking, and stabbing. He bellowed, flailing like an enraged grox, but the weight overwhelmed him. Saws screeched as they cut into flesh, and his roars became pained screams that abruptly stopped. Another ogryn was pinned down by a dozen of the creatures even as he fought back. He grabbed one and crushed it, even as the metal deeply scratched his hand,, then his struggles stopped as his head split open with a jackhammer, the tool belonging to a spiked ramshackle construct.
"GRAG NO LIKE THAT!" Grag bellowed, enraged. He grabbed one of the mechanical creatures— the spiked abomination with a jackhammer arm (which was grabbed by the jackhammer arm)— and hurled it against the wall. The impact ruptured its body, metal plating bursting apart in a shower of sparks.
And still they came.
Rylan blew a molten hole through another creature, this one a misshapen thing with a pair of treads as a lower body and a propeller for a hand, when he noticed the beast approaching.
One of the largest creatures yet lumbered forward. It had two mechanical heads consisting of amalgamated masses of sensors and lenses, the heads spun in lazy, asynchronous circles on neck-limbs attached to a spinning large metallic gear on the top of its lumpy body,. Its body was an ungodly fusion of machine parts, with eight clawed legs and a massive, spinning buzzsaw mounted on a piston arm.
Lasbolts merely ricocheted off pieces of metal or made inconsequential wounds in relatively soft areas on the scrap creatures bulk.
The buzzsaw screamed to life.
The first guardsman it hit didn't even have time to scream. The saw struck his leg, the saw quickly started slicing up the length of his leg through flesh and bone, then continued through his torso and out his opposite shoulder. The two halves of his body fell in opposite directions, blood arcing in graceful sprays across the floor.
"BLOODY—"
The creature stomped another guardsman into paste before he could finish swearing, and swatted another one aside. A guardsman lunged at it, bayonet in hand. He stabbed forward, severing a mess of wires near the creature's abdomen.
It froze for half a second. Then the wires sparked.
The guardsman convulsed violently as electricity surged through him, smoke rising from his scorched body before he collapsed, steaming. The giant creature did not stop. The giant creature continued to rampage. The giant creature tore a guardsmen to pieces and snatched another one, and threw him into the horde where he was reduced to something barely recognizable in seconds.
Another guardsman had his head smashed to a bloody mess by a thing that was essentially two spindly pipe-legs, a small static covered screen, and a hinge with a sledgehammer, that was smacking up and down on the remains of the guardsman's head.
"THEY'RE AT THE HEAVY BOLTERS!" someone screamed.
The heavy bolter team was attacked, as a jagged clamp crushed the gunner's legs like twigs. The gunner's scream cut off abruptly as a jackhammer pounded into his skull, turning his head into a ruin of bone and brain matter. The loader turned to flee—
FWOOOSH!
A literal barrel waddled toward him on spider-like legs, a crude pipe-nozzle sticking from its top. A pilot flame, consisting of a blow torch, hissed to life. The guardsman had time for one strangled yell before the flamer turned him into a screaming fireball. He thrashed around a bit before he collapsed to the ground
"GRAG TIRED OF THIS!"
Grag roared, grabbing the barrel-creature mid-flamethrower. It flailed in protest, hissing and spitting fire, but the ogryn hurled it into the horde like a bowling ball. Scrap-things went flying, crashing to the ground in tangled heaps.
"RYLAN, SHOOT IT!"
Rylan didn't need to be told twice. He squeezed the trigger, las-bolts slamming into the barrel creature. The improvised fuel tank ruptured—
KA-BOOM!
The explosion was magnificent. Fire and shrapnel erupted outward, immolating a dozen of the scrap-horrors. Several staggered, their components ablaze as they let out bizarre buzzing and screeching noises before collapsing like broken toys.
The room fell momentarily silent.
The surviving creatures—what little remained—paused as if considering their odds. Then, with a shriek of metal on metal, they retreated back into the dark room they'd emerged from, their red "eyes" disappearing one by one as they retreated away
Rylan's shoulders sagged as he exhaled, trembling slightly. He glanced around the mess hall. Bodies lay everywhere—guardsmen and abominations alike. Oily black fluid mixed with blood on the floor. Sparks rained down like fireworks from exposed wiring. One guardsman was screaming even as he tried to find his severed right arm.
Grag, still panting, stood in the middle of the room. He wiped a smear of oil from his massive club and bellowed triumphantly.
"Grag WIN!"
The guardsmen didn't celebrate ,as a dozen other troopers ran into the room and surveyed the carnage. Rylan wondered why they were even in this place.
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