Post by Grand Admiral Talos on Sept 1, 2010 17:15:12 GMT -5
Weapons fire gutted the forest; chipping away at the ancient trees that rose up so high into the sky; explosive rounds sang as they cut through the constant low-level rain that always fell on Hivnon and screamed as they met their target and exploded. Great gouges were carved into the muddy earth as the four brutes continued their barrage, intent upon the destruction of the one foe that had stood before them. On killing the demon.
Forgort, who headed up the squad bellowed, his deep voice cutting through the scream of weapon fire, he roared taunts and curses as the armoured foe who had so casually killed three of his best men. The ground seemed to shake under the attack and the trees in the way began to bend and break; their trunks chipped away to almost nothing. Fargort continued the attack, roaring for more power, sustained fire. He was no fool; he would take no chances with this one. The firestorm continued, flames licking up as the very ground seemed to melt and twist and still they continued. Forgort thought about calling an end to the barrage but a part of him refused; he had seen this beast, this demon that had dropped down upon them from above. It had stank of humanity and yet it was not human. It stood as tall as Forgort himself, broader at the shoulder, its armour was muddy and scored by battle but there was no chink, no hole, no weakness. The Prophets had announced the existence of a demon once, back home, but compared to this, that was nothing. This demon was pitiless, it had gunned down two of them the moment it arrived, even as they were still in shock; the smaller grunts that had been herded out in front of them to act as cover lasted little longer; the demon had cut them down, it hadn't even bothered to hide as their infective needlers and plasma pistols pinged ineffectively off its armour. It had stood its ground and now the earth was soaked with the blood of its enemies. Seeing their chance, two of his finest soldiers charged, wielding gravity hammers they had intended to crush this demon in hand to hand, where his kind had always excelled. That was the last mistake that they would ever make, the demon had moved like lightening, drawing a sword of some kind, hard metal and big enough for it to hold, tiny metal teeth started to move as the sword screamed. The teeth were connected to a belt connected to the blade, they roared throaty as they spun with enough speed to dig into armour, flesh and bone. This ''chainsword'' had neatly bisected one of the brutes before the other even knew what was happening and by the time he tried to swing his hammer, he too was bleeding to death on the ground.
Forgort had thought that the human ''Spartans'' were demons, but this thing was so far advanced that he could hardly credit humanity with its creation; and yet they must have for it smelled of them. At length, he held up a hand and the roars of the guns stopped. Smoke slowly rose from the crater in the earth that had once been the demon, he squinted but could not see; all he could smell was the explosions and weapons fire. Still, he congratulated himself, not a bad kill. Now he only had to hope that there were no more of these things on this planet, and that the Prophet could orchestrate a way for them to get back home.
“ Form up.” He growled, “ Without the runts to take the damage we're vulnerable, fall back to base camp.”
One of the soldiers grunted in acknowledgement, but before he could move there was a splash of blood and a whirring chainblade sprouted from his chest, he cried out in agony, blood leaking from his mouth as the motion of the teeth slowly dragged the blade into his gut. He collapsed whimpering but his companions had already forgotten him.
Forgort scanned the smoke, his weapon in hand, it couldn't be possible, not even one of the human demons back home could survive that kind of barrage unscathed. Suddenly, the smoke was pierced by a red glow and Forgort felt his heart freeze, the eye-slits of the powered armour glowed red! He screamed.
“Attack! Attack! Don't stop until there's nothing left!”
But by then, the massive form was barrelling out of the smoke like lightening, a pistol, looking deceptively small in its giant hand barked and Forgort's world filled with pain.
_____
Battle-Brother Kadain reclaimed his whirring chainblade from the chest of the dead brute, pulling it from the body with a jerk and a spray of gore. Looking around at the dead xenos, he could not help but grin behind his helmet.
“ And so is the fate of all those who oppose the AllFather.”
He said a quick prayer to the AllFather -- the God-Emperor of mankind, by who's hand a million wars were waged and trillions of lives lost each day. Then he cleaned his now silent blade on the clothing of the dead xenos. Just looking at them made him sick; twisted, imperfect parodies of the true, divine form of humanity. Aliens. The only thing worse was heretics and Kadain had fought both in his one-hundred years as a Space Marine of the Space Wolf Chapter. His blade clean, he returned it to his side. He would doubtless require it again later. He checked his bolt-pistol, whispered a quick prayer of supplication to the Machine-Spirit therein and was off again, tracking through the thick forest.
The forest was where he was most at home; despite his big size he seemed to flit, a mere shadow moving from tree to tree, he saw everything. His auto-senses scanned the forest around him in excruciating detail; his smelled the wet rain, the blood of his enemies, he smelled the strange plant-life and he smelled more xenos close by.
This was going to be a busy day.
________
The Spartan known to the small number of people with high enough clearance as Master Chief was not having a good day. He had been shot-at, nearly killed and sucked into a new and unknown world by a strange machine being built by one of the Prophets. Only the last one was unusual for him. Now, he was looking for the reason that the Covenant had come here; and he was getting nowhere.
He'd been dropped off deep in some kind of forest; randomly by the looks of it, no enemy forces had been nearby which was good. The travelling had shaken him up more than he would ever admit. As a Spartan, a super-elite warrior of mankind, Master Chief had seen some things, even done things that would unsettle most humans, but that machine had been something else entirely. He'd felt as though he was being torn apart, atom by atom, and then reassembled in the same way. But true to his training, as soon as he arrived he'd begun to look for a way back, and for the reason that the gate had been opened in the first place. Fortunately, while his armour had been hit with a massive EMP dose on the way in, it had recovered now. His heightened senses scanned the clearing that he found himself in; his radar was empty, discounting the small forms of animals there was nothing nearby.
“ So,” he muttered, “ Any idea where we are?”
Cortana, the advanced AI installed into his suit of armour answered instantly, for him anyway, for her it took some time to run the various tests and simulations that allowed her to say, with total certainty, “ I don't have a clue.”
“Right.” He said, “ Guess we'll have to make our own way out, any idea what that machine was?”
“ A transporter of some kind, I'd heard about the theory but I never imagined that the Covenant had the technology to put together a working model; even taking a low-end estimate that's thousands of years ahead of what they've used so far, technologically. I think it was Forerunner.”
The Chief had already picked a path and began to move swiftly under the sun-dappled trees. His mode of locomotion was a strange fusion of running and walking, a sort of trot that he could easily keep up all day while keeping the energy drain to a minimum.
“ Something that they just dig up and turned on them?” It sounded almost exactly like something that the Prophets would do as well. He could easily imagine them digging some ancient weapon out of the sands of some ancient and distant planet and turning it on for no other reason than that it was once Forerunner.
“ Seems so.” Cortana replied simply.
Quiet descended, but that was OK, the Spartan was used to silence, he moved fluidly through the forest, ignoring the occasional call of birds, the click of insects. If the Covenant had came through here on purpose they would have a base set up somewhere nearby, that base would contain information on just what this place was and what they hoped to accomplish here. It would also, most likely, contain a way back. That made it top of the Master Chief's hit-list. For a normal human soldier, attacking a fully fortified Covnent position with at least platoon-strength infantry reserves and who knew what level of armoured back-up would be suicide, for a Spartan it was all in a day's work.
Suddenly, the sound of gunfire erupted nearby, echoing alongside it, the pained cry of the species informally known to humanity as Elites.
“ Sounds like we're not the only ones here.” Cortana commented.
The Master Chief was silent as he changed his course, trot forgotten he dashed towards the sound of combat, just what the Hell had the Covnant unleashed on them this time? Images of the flood danced through his mind, and he wandered, and what would he have to do about it?
_________
The last of the strange xenos fell; their strange energy-swords no match for a blade given over to the holy God-Emperor of Mankind in His guise of the Machine God as worshipped by the Adeptus Mechanicus. Once more, exotic xenotech was proved helpless against ancient and well-trusted technology of mankind.
Kadain looked over the long gash in his power-armour, it was superficial at best; hardly even denting the cremite but the last batch, the bigger, bulkier brute-force xenos had been unable to do even that. These slimmer, faster creatures had almost proved themselves worthy of facing an honoured Space Marine. Almost. But, as he looked from one, gutted, bleeding corpse to the next, Kadain knew that none of them would ever come close to besting one. The mixture of blood and less identifiable substances that wafted from the corpses blocked his nose, but his auto-senses were still functional and he spun around as a new form flitted out of the tree cover, his consecrated bolt-pistol barked one and the figure lurched back, but the shot had missed, the man had seen it coming.
As the figure scrambled to his feet, Kadain took a brief second to look over this new enemies of mankind. The xenos had a human-like body, the legs and arms were too large to actually be a human though, not large enough to be a Space Marine but too big to be pure human. He was thinner too, not as broad at the shoulders. His armour was clearly kin to the blessed armour of the Adeptus Astartes, but it was wrong. There were no signs, no decoration, it was a simple as the suit of a businessman, there for a purpose and little else. In contrast, Kadain's own suit was decorated with his years of service, badges carved or painted onto the holy armour, decorations earned in the fires of battle, passages from particularly stirring sermons or old scars he had chosen to keep as reminders of the eternal duty of all Space Marines. His armour had a soul of its own, it had a past, before him it had served another Marine, and before him, another. All the way back, in one form or another, to the founding of the Chapter, or so the legends told. The armour of this new warrior was soulless, grey, a pale imitation of the true armour of the champions of mankind.
All this he took in in an instant. He said no words, just raised his bolt-pistol and fired. The armoured figure lurched aside and the tree to the right of him died as the bolt exploded inside its trunk, bringing the three-hundred year old plant crashing to the ground.
Kadain nodded, very well, if that was how it would be.
He drew his chainblade and thumped the activation rune, mouthing a prayer to the Emperor of Mankind as the full-throated scream of the weapon filled the forest.
______
“ I've never seen anything like it.” Cortana commented softly as the figure in the clearing was revealed.
Looking from slaughtered elite to bisected brute, the Master Chief was forced to agree. The figure standing before them was unlike any Spartan he had ever known, though clearly a descendent of the Spartan technology. His armour was broad at the shoulder, his chest bulky, he dwarfed Master Chief and sheer pound for pound, was surely his superior. His armour was carved with trophies, kill-counts, like a common soldier, the Spartan thought with distaste. So this was what the Covenant was working on all the way out here. Their own incarnation of the Spartan program, their own super-soldiers. Anger hardened into resolve. Now there was only one thing to do; he'd find the base, destroy the lab and make it back to warn UNSC. There was no telling how many other labs there were.
But first; he would deal with this imitation of a true soldier. There was very little that could make Master Chief angry -- fight and kill, yes, but not angry. Anger clouded the mind; it brought death and pain. So he and every other Spartan had been taught. But now, as he gazed eye to eye with an alien perversion of the Spartan program, with a living insult to all Spartans, alive or dead, he found a tight, hot ball of hated welling up in his gut.
Then, the alien fired, Master Chief had already begun to dodge as his fingers closed around the trigger, throwing himself back he watched as a path of ground exploded before him, a second round tore through the air and the Chief leaped awkwardly to the side, the single round ploughed into the trunk of a tree and exploded, killing the ancient giant.
“ What is he firing?” Chief hissed to Cortana.
“ Some kind of armour-piercing, high explosive bolt,” she answered, reviewing her memory files, watching the death of the tree again and again. “ Don't let him hit you, shields or no shields I doubt you could stand up to a direct hit from that thing.”
But the false-Spartan had holstered the pistol and drawn what looked like a chainsaw-sword, he called a savage battle cry and charged, his massive strides eating up the distance between them. Training kicked in, the Chief went for his shotgun and took careful aim at the rapidly approaching figure.
When the man was well within range, Chief pulled the trigger. The gun roared and bucked in his hands, Chief had expected the man to stop or to fall back or for his shields to at least flicker. None of it happened, the man continued his blood-crazed charge.
“ This is going to be messy.” The Chief said dropped the shotgun as the massive man swung his blade at his neck.
The Chief barely managed to dodge the first swipe, but the man reversed his grip and struck again, this time the Chief was forced onto the ground as the blade screamed past his chest; so far in the fight he had made two important discoveries. The first was that the man had no shields, up close he could see the shotgun pellets embedded in his armour, there had been no flicker of a shield because the man had no shield. Second, no matter what other improvements the Covenant had been able to emulate or even improve on, the man was not as fast as a Spartan. Almost, but not quite. Chief quickly realised he would have to capitalise on this if he were to win this fight.
The man struck again, this time striking with the tip of the blade, the Chief side-stepped ducking down as the marine turned the impale into a viscous side-swipe, now inside the man's guard Chief drew his second pair of weapons, twin plasma-pistols he'd taken from two grunts on the way, they spewed green fire at the man but it simply struck his armour and petered out, Chief cursed and tried to back-step but the blade caught him, the whirr became a full-throated scream as the Master Chief was tossed aside; inside his helmet alarms flashed.
Shield Breached.
Armour Breached.
He rolled as he hit the ground, coming up shooting, the plasma-pistols did little better this time. Suddenly he became aware of the trail of blood leaking from his chest, risking a look down he saw jagged scar ripped down the side of his chest-plate, blood leaked out of it and he felt pain, but he coldly decided, the amount of blood and the level of pain indicated merely superficial gash, long and possibly somewhat deep but not life-threatening. His Spartan body would heal, on its own if need be. The state of his body established, he looked up.
The false-Spartan looked down at him and though his face was covered up by a helmet, the Chief couldn't help but feel he was smirking at the ease of the wound. The Chief discarded the pistols as useless and looked around for something else to use; his eye caught the hilt of an elite energy blade. Yes, that could work, he quickly decided. His superior speed plus the raw power of the blade would allow him to emerge from this fight victorious.
He lunged for it.
____
Kadain smirked as red blood leaked from the jagged wound in the foe's power-armour. He had been surprised by the inclusion of a shield but it was clearly a weak model, this fight was drawing to its conclusion. He had been suirprised by the raw speed of his enemy, he shouldn't have been, the Space Wolves were among the most perceptive of the Emperor's many children, their sight, hearing and taste were legend even amongst other Astartes Chapters, and their speed was second to none. That this...imitation could match and even exceed that speed was an insult to Space Marines everywhere.
Suddenly, the fake lunged for a nearby energy-sword, igniting it and standing to his full height, the fake drew himself into a guard position, clearly intending for Kadain to make the first move. He'd be glad to; his blade was made from the same cremite that was embedded in his power-armour, as he'd learned in his last fight, his blade could stand against the pure energy of these strange weapons.. if only for a short while.
He struck forwards, faking to the left, the imitation fell for it and Kadain swung for his leg, but the enemy leapt back, his speed coming to his aid, with a growl Kadain pushed the attack, striking for the heart, the lungs and the head, the two blades danced, moving like lightening, his stab at the chest was deflected, his strike at the head avoided. The Spartan drove forwards now, counter-thrusting. Kadain fell back, weaving a web of screaming metal around himself; he had fought with this blade for over one-hundred years, greater speed this xenos may have, but it did not beat his guard. Still, with each hit, his blade began to hiss and splutter, the raw energy of the blade slowly overcoming his own chainsword.
He dived forwards suddenly, intent on ending this duel once and for all, the energy sword swung for his neck, but was deflected by his shoulder-guards, bouncing back and giving him the time he required. Kadain smashed a massive, armour-plated fist into the fake's face, the shield broke under his blow, his next strike he felt the armour shift and break, he hammered a final fist, intent upon breaking the skull of his enemy and ending the fight but the fake caught his fist in a double-handed hold and held it.
Kadain grunted, calling upon all his strength as he slowly forced his hand down, he considered drawing his pistol with his free hand but discarded it; this fight was personal. A Space Marine is a heavily enhanced being; so much so that one can not truly call them ''human'' anymore. Their bones are laced with metal, their muscles strong enough to rip apart tank-grade armour without the assistance of their Power-Armour's stat-boosting turbos. Kadain found Master Chief surprisingly powerful, but nowhere within the range of a Space Marine.
His second fist smashed into the fake's rib-cage, armour bent and broke, blood sprayed from the pre-existing wound, the fake cried out in pain -- the first sound it had made -- and broke the hold. Kadain lifted it and smashed a knee into its back, throwing it to the ground with the proper hatred owed to all xenos.
It rolled and came to a stop, Kadain frowned as it continued to move, twitching, trying to get to its feet.
“ You are a persistent xeno, I'll give you that,” he growled and started towards the prone form to finish what he had begun.
_________
The Chief was in pain, terrible pain. His skull was fractured in two places, his ribs cracked and broke, at least one of them now pointing inwards and invoking fresh agony with every movement, his back had nearly been broken but he found that he still had control over his own body.
He was alive despite all this. The Spartan will in him kept him going despite the pain, the being started towards him, Chief felt blood welling up in his throat.
“ You are a persistent xeno, I'll give you that.” The fake announced.
Chief frowned, despite the pain, that was English... or rather; it was human. He wasn't sure how he understood it as, despite his first conclusion, it wasn't English, it actually tied in with Latin. During training, the Spartans had learned much of Earth's history, ancient languages was one of those. This was not Latin but it was close grammatically.
“ You're human?” He growled despite the pain, rising to a sitting position.
“ You speak!” The false-Spartan announced with glee, his voice menacing and oddly machine-like coming from the helmet.
“ I am human.” Chief said. Now did not seem like a good time to touch on the particulars of what had been done to change the Spartans from base-line humans.
Now the figure stalled, the first hesitation Chief had seen from him since the fight began.
“ Explain,” the figure demanded, “now.”
Chief did as best he could; his suit's inbuilt medical systems quickly took away the worst of the pain and he found he could stand again. He was no fool; when he got back he'd need to spend weeks recovering.
After he had finished his explanation, the figure reached up and removed its helmet, Chief saw to his shock that the face was indeed human; he had expected as much given the language but to see it before his eyes... But it was different, the teeth were sharpened to needles, his eyes were wide and yellow-tainted, the pupil wider than he was used to. Still, despite this it was recognisably human.
_______________
Kadian listened to the explanation and tried to consider what should be done. Of course, what he should do was to just kill this ''Spartan'' destroy the Xenos and wipe the base clean leaving anything interesting for the Adeptus Mechanicus to pick through at their ease. It was certainly what the Ultramarines would do. That clenched it, the Space Wolves had long taken pride in being different from the Codex Chapter descended from their kin, the Ultramarines.
“ Come on,” he growled, helping the Spartan to his feet, “ We're going to go hit this base and find out just what happened, and if you lied to me I will kill you, but if you are telling the truth.. this could be a glorious day for the Imperium and this UNSC
______________________
Space Marine - 5 Votes
Master Chief - 1 Vote
Forgort, who headed up the squad bellowed, his deep voice cutting through the scream of weapon fire, he roared taunts and curses as the armoured foe who had so casually killed three of his best men. The ground seemed to shake under the attack and the trees in the way began to bend and break; their trunks chipped away to almost nothing. Fargort continued the attack, roaring for more power, sustained fire. He was no fool; he would take no chances with this one. The firestorm continued, flames licking up as the very ground seemed to melt and twist and still they continued. Forgort thought about calling an end to the barrage but a part of him refused; he had seen this beast, this demon that had dropped down upon them from above. It had stank of humanity and yet it was not human. It stood as tall as Forgort himself, broader at the shoulder, its armour was muddy and scored by battle but there was no chink, no hole, no weakness. The Prophets had announced the existence of a demon once, back home, but compared to this, that was nothing. This demon was pitiless, it had gunned down two of them the moment it arrived, even as they were still in shock; the smaller grunts that had been herded out in front of them to act as cover lasted little longer; the demon had cut them down, it hadn't even bothered to hide as their infective needlers and plasma pistols pinged ineffectively off its armour. It had stood its ground and now the earth was soaked with the blood of its enemies. Seeing their chance, two of his finest soldiers charged, wielding gravity hammers they had intended to crush this demon in hand to hand, where his kind had always excelled. That was the last mistake that they would ever make, the demon had moved like lightening, drawing a sword of some kind, hard metal and big enough for it to hold, tiny metal teeth started to move as the sword screamed. The teeth were connected to a belt connected to the blade, they roared throaty as they spun with enough speed to dig into armour, flesh and bone. This ''chainsword'' had neatly bisected one of the brutes before the other even knew what was happening and by the time he tried to swing his hammer, he too was bleeding to death on the ground.
Forgort had thought that the human ''Spartans'' were demons, but this thing was so far advanced that he could hardly credit humanity with its creation; and yet they must have for it smelled of them. At length, he held up a hand and the roars of the guns stopped. Smoke slowly rose from the crater in the earth that had once been the demon, he squinted but could not see; all he could smell was the explosions and weapons fire. Still, he congratulated himself, not a bad kill. Now he only had to hope that there were no more of these things on this planet, and that the Prophet could orchestrate a way for them to get back home.
“ Form up.” He growled, “ Without the runts to take the damage we're vulnerable, fall back to base camp.”
One of the soldiers grunted in acknowledgement, but before he could move there was a splash of blood and a whirring chainblade sprouted from his chest, he cried out in agony, blood leaking from his mouth as the motion of the teeth slowly dragged the blade into his gut. He collapsed whimpering but his companions had already forgotten him.
Forgort scanned the smoke, his weapon in hand, it couldn't be possible, not even one of the human demons back home could survive that kind of barrage unscathed. Suddenly, the smoke was pierced by a red glow and Forgort felt his heart freeze, the eye-slits of the powered armour glowed red! He screamed.
“Attack! Attack! Don't stop until there's nothing left!”
But by then, the massive form was barrelling out of the smoke like lightening, a pistol, looking deceptively small in its giant hand barked and Forgort's world filled with pain.
_____
Battle-Brother Kadain reclaimed his whirring chainblade from the chest of the dead brute, pulling it from the body with a jerk and a spray of gore. Looking around at the dead xenos, he could not help but grin behind his helmet.
“ And so is the fate of all those who oppose the AllFather.”
He said a quick prayer to the AllFather -- the God-Emperor of mankind, by who's hand a million wars were waged and trillions of lives lost each day. Then he cleaned his now silent blade on the clothing of the dead xenos. Just looking at them made him sick; twisted, imperfect parodies of the true, divine form of humanity. Aliens. The only thing worse was heretics and Kadain had fought both in his one-hundred years as a Space Marine of the Space Wolf Chapter. His blade clean, he returned it to his side. He would doubtless require it again later. He checked his bolt-pistol, whispered a quick prayer of supplication to the Machine-Spirit therein and was off again, tracking through the thick forest.
The forest was where he was most at home; despite his big size he seemed to flit, a mere shadow moving from tree to tree, he saw everything. His auto-senses scanned the forest around him in excruciating detail; his smelled the wet rain, the blood of his enemies, he smelled the strange plant-life and he smelled more xenos close by.
This was going to be a busy day.
________
The Spartan known to the small number of people with high enough clearance as Master Chief was not having a good day. He had been shot-at, nearly killed and sucked into a new and unknown world by a strange machine being built by one of the Prophets. Only the last one was unusual for him. Now, he was looking for the reason that the Covenant had come here; and he was getting nowhere.
He'd been dropped off deep in some kind of forest; randomly by the looks of it, no enemy forces had been nearby which was good. The travelling had shaken him up more than he would ever admit. As a Spartan, a super-elite warrior of mankind, Master Chief had seen some things, even done things that would unsettle most humans, but that machine had been something else entirely. He'd felt as though he was being torn apart, atom by atom, and then reassembled in the same way. But true to his training, as soon as he arrived he'd begun to look for a way back, and for the reason that the gate had been opened in the first place. Fortunately, while his armour had been hit with a massive EMP dose on the way in, it had recovered now. His heightened senses scanned the clearing that he found himself in; his radar was empty, discounting the small forms of animals there was nothing nearby.
“ So,” he muttered, “ Any idea where we are?”
Cortana, the advanced AI installed into his suit of armour answered instantly, for him anyway, for her it took some time to run the various tests and simulations that allowed her to say, with total certainty, “ I don't have a clue.”
“Right.” He said, “ Guess we'll have to make our own way out, any idea what that machine was?”
“ A transporter of some kind, I'd heard about the theory but I never imagined that the Covenant had the technology to put together a working model; even taking a low-end estimate that's thousands of years ahead of what they've used so far, technologically. I think it was Forerunner.”
The Chief had already picked a path and began to move swiftly under the sun-dappled trees. His mode of locomotion was a strange fusion of running and walking, a sort of trot that he could easily keep up all day while keeping the energy drain to a minimum.
“ Something that they just dig up and turned on them?” It sounded almost exactly like something that the Prophets would do as well. He could easily imagine them digging some ancient weapon out of the sands of some ancient and distant planet and turning it on for no other reason than that it was once Forerunner.
“ Seems so.” Cortana replied simply.
Quiet descended, but that was OK, the Spartan was used to silence, he moved fluidly through the forest, ignoring the occasional call of birds, the click of insects. If the Covenant had came through here on purpose they would have a base set up somewhere nearby, that base would contain information on just what this place was and what they hoped to accomplish here. It would also, most likely, contain a way back. That made it top of the Master Chief's hit-list. For a normal human soldier, attacking a fully fortified Covnent position with at least platoon-strength infantry reserves and who knew what level of armoured back-up would be suicide, for a Spartan it was all in a day's work.
Suddenly, the sound of gunfire erupted nearby, echoing alongside it, the pained cry of the species informally known to humanity as Elites.
“ Sounds like we're not the only ones here.” Cortana commented.
The Master Chief was silent as he changed his course, trot forgotten he dashed towards the sound of combat, just what the Hell had the Covnant unleashed on them this time? Images of the flood danced through his mind, and he wandered, and what would he have to do about it?
_________
The last of the strange xenos fell; their strange energy-swords no match for a blade given over to the holy God-Emperor of Mankind in His guise of the Machine God as worshipped by the Adeptus Mechanicus. Once more, exotic xenotech was proved helpless against ancient and well-trusted technology of mankind.
Kadain looked over the long gash in his power-armour, it was superficial at best; hardly even denting the cremite but the last batch, the bigger, bulkier brute-force xenos had been unable to do even that. These slimmer, faster creatures had almost proved themselves worthy of facing an honoured Space Marine. Almost. But, as he looked from one, gutted, bleeding corpse to the next, Kadain knew that none of them would ever come close to besting one. The mixture of blood and less identifiable substances that wafted from the corpses blocked his nose, but his auto-senses were still functional and he spun around as a new form flitted out of the tree cover, his consecrated bolt-pistol barked one and the figure lurched back, but the shot had missed, the man had seen it coming.
As the figure scrambled to his feet, Kadain took a brief second to look over this new enemies of mankind. The xenos had a human-like body, the legs and arms were too large to actually be a human though, not large enough to be a Space Marine but too big to be pure human. He was thinner too, not as broad at the shoulders. His armour was clearly kin to the blessed armour of the Adeptus Astartes, but it was wrong. There were no signs, no decoration, it was a simple as the suit of a businessman, there for a purpose and little else. In contrast, Kadain's own suit was decorated with his years of service, badges carved or painted onto the holy armour, decorations earned in the fires of battle, passages from particularly stirring sermons or old scars he had chosen to keep as reminders of the eternal duty of all Space Marines. His armour had a soul of its own, it had a past, before him it had served another Marine, and before him, another. All the way back, in one form or another, to the founding of the Chapter, or so the legends told. The armour of this new warrior was soulless, grey, a pale imitation of the true armour of the champions of mankind.
All this he took in in an instant. He said no words, just raised his bolt-pistol and fired. The armoured figure lurched aside and the tree to the right of him died as the bolt exploded inside its trunk, bringing the three-hundred year old plant crashing to the ground.
Kadain nodded, very well, if that was how it would be.
He drew his chainblade and thumped the activation rune, mouthing a prayer to the Emperor of Mankind as the full-throated scream of the weapon filled the forest.
______
“ I've never seen anything like it.” Cortana commented softly as the figure in the clearing was revealed.
Looking from slaughtered elite to bisected brute, the Master Chief was forced to agree. The figure standing before them was unlike any Spartan he had ever known, though clearly a descendent of the Spartan technology. His armour was broad at the shoulder, his chest bulky, he dwarfed Master Chief and sheer pound for pound, was surely his superior. His armour was carved with trophies, kill-counts, like a common soldier, the Spartan thought with distaste. So this was what the Covenant was working on all the way out here. Their own incarnation of the Spartan program, their own super-soldiers. Anger hardened into resolve. Now there was only one thing to do; he'd find the base, destroy the lab and make it back to warn UNSC. There was no telling how many other labs there were.
But first; he would deal with this imitation of a true soldier. There was very little that could make Master Chief angry -- fight and kill, yes, but not angry. Anger clouded the mind; it brought death and pain. So he and every other Spartan had been taught. But now, as he gazed eye to eye with an alien perversion of the Spartan program, with a living insult to all Spartans, alive or dead, he found a tight, hot ball of hated welling up in his gut.
Then, the alien fired, Master Chief had already begun to dodge as his fingers closed around the trigger, throwing himself back he watched as a path of ground exploded before him, a second round tore through the air and the Chief leaped awkwardly to the side, the single round ploughed into the trunk of a tree and exploded, killing the ancient giant.
“ What is he firing?” Chief hissed to Cortana.
“ Some kind of armour-piercing, high explosive bolt,” she answered, reviewing her memory files, watching the death of the tree again and again. “ Don't let him hit you, shields or no shields I doubt you could stand up to a direct hit from that thing.”
But the false-Spartan had holstered the pistol and drawn what looked like a chainsaw-sword, he called a savage battle cry and charged, his massive strides eating up the distance between them. Training kicked in, the Chief went for his shotgun and took careful aim at the rapidly approaching figure.
When the man was well within range, Chief pulled the trigger. The gun roared and bucked in his hands, Chief had expected the man to stop or to fall back or for his shields to at least flicker. None of it happened, the man continued his blood-crazed charge.
“ This is going to be messy.” The Chief said dropped the shotgun as the massive man swung his blade at his neck.
The Chief barely managed to dodge the first swipe, but the man reversed his grip and struck again, this time the Chief was forced onto the ground as the blade screamed past his chest; so far in the fight he had made two important discoveries. The first was that the man had no shields, up close he could see the shotgun pellets embedded in his armour, there had been no flicker of a shield because the man had no shield. Second, no matter what other improvements the Covenant had been able to emulate or even improve on, the man was not as fast as a Spartan. Almost, but not quite. Chief quickly realised he would have to capitalise on this if he were to win this fight.
The man struck again, this time striking with the tip of the blade, the Chief side-stepped ducking down as the marine turned the impale into a viscous side-swipe, now inside the man's guard Chief drew his second pair of weapons, twin plasma-pistols he'd taken from two grunts on the way, they spewed green fire at the man but it simply struck his armour and petered out, Chief cursed and tried to back-step but the blade caught him, the whirr became a full-throated scream as the Master Chief was tossed aside; inside his helmet alarms flashed.
Shield Breached.
Armour Breached.
He rolled as he hit the ground, coming up shooting, the plasma-pistols did little better this time. Suddenly he became aware of the trail of blood leaking from his chest, risking a look down he saw jagged scar ripped down the side of his chest-plate, blood leaked out of it and he felt pain, but he coldly decided, the amount of blood and the level of pain indicated merely superficial gash, long and possibly somewhat deep but not life-threatening. His Spartan body would heal, on its own if need be. The state of his body established, he looked up.
The false-Spartan looked down at him and though his face was covered up by a helmet, the Chief couldn't help but feel he was smirking at the ease of the wound. The Chief discarded the pistols as useless and looked around for something else to use; his eye caught the hilt of an elite energy blade. Yes, that could work, he quickly decided. His superior speed plus the raw power of the blade would allow him to emerge from this fight victorious.
He lunged for it.
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Kadain smirked as red blood leaked from the jagged wound in the foe's power-armour. He had been surprised by the inclusion of a shield but it was clearly a weak model, this fight was drawing to its conclusion. He had been suirprised by the raw speed of his enemy, he shouldn't have been, the Space Wolves were among the most perceptive of the Emperor's many children, their sight, hearing and taste were legend even amongst other Astartes Chapters, and their speed was second to none. That this...imitation could match and even exceed that speed was an insult to Space Marines everywhere.
Suddenly, the fake lunged for a nearby energy-sword, igniting it and standing to his full height, the fake drew himself into a guard position, clearly intending for Kadain to make the first move. He'd be glad to; his blade was made from the same cremite that was embedded in his power-armour, as he'd learned in his last fight, his blade could stand against the pure energy of these strange weapons.. if only for a short while.
He struck forwards, faking to the left, the imitation fell for it and Kadain swung for his leg, but the enemy leapt back, his speed coming to his aid, with a growl Kadain pushed the attack, striking for the heart, the lungs and the head, the two blades danced, moving like lightening, his stab at the chest was deflected, his strike at the head avoided. The Spartan drove forwards now, counter-thrusting. Kadain fell back, weaving a web of screaming metal around himself; he had fought with this blade for over one-hundred years, greater speed this xenos may have, but it did not beat his guard. Still, with each hit, his blade began to hiss and splutter, the raw energy of the blade slowly overcoming his own chainsword.
He dived forwards suddenly, intent on ending this duel once and for all, the energy sword swung for his neck, but was deflected by his shoulder-guards, bouncing back and giving him the time he required. Kadain smashed a massive, armour-plated fist into the fake's face, the shield broke under his blow, his next strike he felt the armour shift and break, he hammered a final fist, intent upon breaking the skull of his enemy and ending the fight but the fake caught his fist in a double-handed hold and held it.
Kadain grunted, calling upon all his strength as he slowly forced his hand down, he considered drawing his pistol with his free hand but discarded it; this fight was personal. A Space Marine is a heavily enhanced being; so much so that one can not truly call them ''human'' anymore. Their bones are laced with metal, their muscles strong enough to rip apart tank-grade armour without the assistance of their Power-Armour's stat-boosting turbos. Kadain found Master Chief surprisingly powerful, but nowhere within the range of a Space Marine.
His second fist smashed into the fake's rib-cage, armour bent and broke, blood sprayed from the pre-existing wound, the fake cried out in pain -- the first sound it had made -- and broke the hold. Kadain lifted it and smashed a knee into its back, throwing it to the ground with the proper hatred owed to all xenos.
It rolled and came to a stop, Kadain frowned as it continued to move, twitching, trying to get to its feet.
“ You are a persistent xeno, I'll give you that,” he growled and started towards the prone form to finish what he had begun.
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The Chief was in pain, terrible pain. His skull was fractured in two places, his ribs cracked and broke, at least one of them now pointing inwards and invoking fresh agony with every movement, his back had nearly been broken but he found that he still had control over his own body.
He was alive despite all this. The Spartan will in him kept him going despite the pain, the being started towards him, Chief felt blood welling up in his throat.
“ You are a persistent xeno, I'll give you that.” The fake announced.
Chief frowned, despite the pain, that was English... or rather; it was human. He wasn't sure how he understood it as, despite his first conclusion, it wasn't English, it actually tied in with Latin. During training, the Spartans had learned much of Earth's history, ancient languages was one of those. This was not Latin but it was close grammatically.
“ You're human?” He growled despite the pain, rising to a sitting position.
“ You speak!” The false-Spartan announced with glee, his voice menacing and oddly machine-like coming from the helmet.
“ I am human.” Chief said. Now did not seem like a good time to touch on the particulars of what had been done to change the Spartans from base-line humans.
Now the figure stalled, the first hesitation Chief had seen from him since the fight began.
“ Explain,” the figure demanded, “now.”
Chief did as best he could; his suit's inbuilt medical systems quickly took away the worst of the pain and he found he could stand again. He was no fool; when he got back he'd need to spend weeks recovering.
After he had finished his explanation, the figure reached up and removed its helmet, Chief saw to his shock that the face was indeed human; he had expected as much given the language but to see it before his eyes... But it was different, the teeth were sharpened to needles, his eyes were wide and yellow-tainted, the pupil wider than he was used to. Still, despite this it was recognisably human.
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Kadian listened to the explanation and tried to consider what should be done. Of course, what he should do was to just kill this ''Spartan'' destroy the Xenos and wipe the base clean leaving anything interesting for the Adeptus Mechanicus to pick through at their ease. It was certainly what the Ultramarines would do. That clenched it, the Space Wolves had long taken pride in being different from the Codex Chapter descended from their kin, the Ultramarines.
“ Come on,” he growled, helping the Spartan to his feet, “ We're going to go hit this base and find out just what happened, and if you lied to me I will kill you, but if you are telling the truth.. this could be a glorious day for the Imperium and this UNSC
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Space Marine - 5 Votes
Master Chief - 1 Vote