Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]
219 – Gone Awry

Tarn didn’t know what he should have expected. He had lived for a long time, been in more battles than he knew numbers to count them with, and he was quite proud of the fact that very few things could stun him. He had had a Lictor jump him while he was taking a dump, had seen horrors few could even imagine and met both without blinking, merely roaring as he grabbed his axe and jumped into battle. 

He didn’t know where he should have expected to end up. The Watch-Sergeant did tell them what to expect, that the strange amulets would somehow allow them to hitch a ride on the Psyker’s next teleport, but … he expected to find himself on the bridge of a ship, facing down the Rogue Psyker, maybe in a hideout, or perhaps on one of the Imperial ships where she led her pet Orks into battle. 

He did not expect to end up floating in space when he came out of transit. The amulets gave them a smooth ride, at least, he could say that much; they certainly felt smoother than any Imperial teleporter he’d used. Now, the fact that the very same amulet was burning his chest where it was tucked under his armour was the only thing he actually felt, along with a deeper burn somewhere deep within. While the first burn was slowly subsiding, the latter was only growing with every passing second. Mildly, but growing nonetheless. 

The damned amulet was supposed to hide them for a bit after dumping them at their destination after all, and it was some Eldar psyker toy, so it made sense it fucking burned his soul when he wasn’t a blasted Psyker himself. 

He tried to turn around, but zero gravity made that much more challenging than it should have been, leaving the veteran Space Marine, one of the Emperor’s Angels of Death, writhing in place like a beached fish as he tried to take in his surroundings. 

He caught sight of Drakk’s ugly metallic mug first, stoic as ever, even if ice crystals formed on his chemically cured skin. Next was Keir, the large explosive-specialist clutching his heavy melta like a lifeline as he too twisted in place for any sign of their target. Finally, he found Cassius, Watch-Sergeant Varran and finally, the floating coffin housing their pocket-Blank right behind himself. 

If there was one thing he liked about his new location, it was the fact that, without an atmosphere to transmit sound, he couldn’t hear the anguished screaming of the Pariah anymore. Apparently, the other relic they had stuck on the poor sod’s head was even less enjoyable to wear than the amulets … on the flip side, it made the subpar Pariah into a horror rivalling Culexus Assassins for the short duration until his soul burned up. Because, of course, the horrifying artefact used the souls of Pariahs to power itself. 

How exactly the amulet hanging around his neck managed to work its Sorcery was beyond him, and flipped what he knew of Blanks and Psykers on its head. Not that it mattered to him at this moment. It worked … or maybe it didn’t. The Watch-Sergeant said the two relics had been tested together previously, though, so it should have worked.

With a bit more shifting around, he made a full circle and confirmed his original hunch: they were in deep space, alone.

Well, not quite. Tarn frowned as he glanced down at the mangled remains of what had once been a Space Marine floating between the six of them, where the Psyker should have been standing according to Varran’s explanation of the amulets. It was beaten, ceramite torn asunder in places just like the flesh and bone underneath, cracks webbed across the surface of the Power Armour like it was made of glass, not one of the toughest materials known to Mankind. From all the blood and gore covering it, and the lacking head/helmet, it took him a few seconds to identify the corpse, and when he did, his blood ran hot with liquid fury. 

That was the Watch-Captain’s corpse, but lacking the man’s head. 

His blood boiled, but there was no foe to vent his rage on, just the infinite darkness of the void and his own compatriots. Gritting his teeth, he barely heard the sound of his comms coming back alive over the sound of his grinding molars. 

“Status report,” Varran barked over the comm. “Is everyone in one piece?”

A round of ‘Yes’-s sounded out, four voices speaking up all at once. 

“What the fuck happened?” Tarn growled, pointing at the mangled corpse of their commander with a thumb over his shoulder. “That’s not our Psyker, unless she likes to dress up as the brutalised corpse of the Watch-Captain.”

“The amulets should have let us latch onto the Psycker’s teleport,” Varran said thoughtfully, like it was an interesting puzzle he needed to work out. Tarn found it ever so slightly irritating. “It seems she was teleporting not herself, but the corpse … and that either she intended to deposit it here or she somehow felt our intrusion, which caused her to change the destination on the fly. The latter assumes she can teleport not only herself, but objects and other people too, and that she can react faster than it took for the teleport to go through … which was one twentieth of a second. It would also imply that she can extract objects from beyond Void-Shields and teleport them to herself, or to wherever she feels like. We might have underestimated her capabilities.”

“You think?” Tarn asked, the words coming out before he could bite his tongue and stifle the urge. He grimaced under his helmet as the physical weight of Watch-Sergeant Varran’s murderous glare bore into him. “Apologies, Sergeant. But it seems like we are thoroughly fucked, if she didn’t know about our attempt on her life before, she sure does now.”

“The lack of gravity will be highly detrimental to our combat capabilities,” Drakk added after a moment in his monotone, artificial voice. 

“There is that too,” Tarn said, snorting wryly. “At least she didn’t throw us into a star. Do you think we managed to surprise her enough so that she threw us in a random direction?”

“It’s possible,” Cassius said gruffly. “But I wouldn’t be so optimistic, it breeds overconfidence and mistakes. We should assume the worst. That she chose this place, which means this is her preferred battleground, the place where she’d have the most advantages over us … which makes sense, considering she has a fleet and we are floating in space without any real way of moving around.”

“The Pariah might just be the only thing that kept us alive,” Varran said after a moment. “It’s supposed to have the same effects as a Culexus Assassin on Psykers, it would make sense if it spooked her. Still, I agree with Cassius, we should assume she knows where we are and that she wants us here. Any ideas?”

“The nearest celestial object is a group of asteroids more than six hundred thousand kilometres away,” Drakk answered. “Our supplies of oxygen will run out before reaching that, even if we manage to achieve a velocity comparable to smaller void-ships.”

The minute of silence that followed that pronouncement, deathly, eerie silence that was only possible in a void where only the slight scraping noises of his clothes and the slight whirling of his Armour’s servos reached Tarn’s ears. They had been dumped here like garbage, and despite all their powers, preparation, training and specifically chosen priceless artefacts, they could do nothing. The enemy had already won; all the Rogue Psyker had to do now was wait for them to suffocate and die. 

A sense of defeat and resignation crept into Tarn’s soul. He was a son of Russ, the Great Wolf, and he would be dying of suffocation, without the enemy responsible for his downfall even bothering to show her face. He’d been thrown away like a piece of garbage and forgotten about … it was absolutely shameful and utterly humiliating. It should have infuriated him, and it did for a bit, but there was nothing screaming into the void — quite literally in his case — that would achieve. 

“Contact, multiple unidentified signatures detected.” Drakk’s voice brought him back to the present, and while a younger Marine might have been startled or confused for a moment, Tarn instantly went into combat readiness as his narrowed eyes scanned the void around him. “Sending sensor readings.”

His helmet pinged, and a set of twelve blurry red marks appeared on the spherical holographic depiction of his surroundings. His eyes narrowed further as he followed the indicators, and only when he was sure he was staring in the right direction did he catch sight of a hint of something being there. It was just a shimmer of light, a dark glint in the infinite darkness of space, barely noticeable to even his superhuman eyesight. 

“What are they?” Watch-Sergeant Varran asked, his voice lacking his usual stoic professionalism. 

“Unidentified,” Drakk repeated, his static voice sounding even drier than usual. “They are only visible on the ‘visible’ light spectrum. No thermal or other electromagnetic signatures can be detected.”

That was worrying. Drakk had his ‘chassis’ outfitted with a suite of sensors that damn near rivalled some void-ships in their capabilities, especially out here in the void of space where there was little to no interference. 

“Are they allowing us to see them, then?” Cassius asked in a grim voice, sounding quite perturbed, and Tarn couldn’t help but share those emotions.

“Likely,” Drakk said. “If these are creations of the Rogue Biomancer, certainly. Her creatures have been shown capable of using near-perfect optical camouflage.”

“So she threw us into the way of some migrating flock of interstellar beasts?” Tarn asked, trying to track as many of the creatures with his naked eyes as he could. They could move through the void with the ease of fish swimming through water, while he floated there like a buoy. They had the advantage, but he was an Astartes. He wouldn’t fall to mere beasts even when out of his element. 

“Or it’s a test,” Varran said. “A probing attack to get our measure. I’d say we hold back and hold our strengths close to our chest, but I don’t think it’ll be viable with how disadvantaged we are. Our only hope would be a surprise attack when our mark shows her face though.”

The crimson dots representing the approaching enemies pulsed and wavered, their outlines impossible to decipher. Sometimes, they even lengthened into ellipsoids, or jumped back and forth along a linear vector as if the sensors couldn’t tell how far away they were, only that they were in a specific direction. Something was messing with the sensors’ depth perception, no doubt. 

Tarn found it suspicious how the Psyker’s previous monstrosities could hide from all sensors aside from his own combat instincts, while these new creatures could only obscure themselves. Then again … the wailing Pariah likely made all Psychic powers invalid within its vicinity, so whatever powers the Psyker could bestow upon its monstrous creations had to be permanent, natural changes. Sorcerous enhancement and enchantments were out of play, at least. That had to be worth something in the battles to come.

At least whatever came their way would have to be grounded in reality, and while the Pariah’s soul still persisted and powered the wretched relic, they didn’t have to fear direct combat with the Psyker herself. Which also meant they likely had no hope of completing their mission any longer unless their foe made a mistake of cosmic proportions.

Tarn wouldn’t write it off. Psykers, especially the ones who’d been left to fester and grow arrogant, were absolutely full of themselves most of the time. This one, too, might just wander into Power-Axe distance once she thought she’d won, just to gloat. 

The veteran Space Marine’s instincts screamed at him, a glint of something dark catching his eye far too close for comfort, and his body reacted on instinct. A snarl warped his features, and his Power-Axe lashed out, but whatever this mysterious void-beast was, its strike struck first. A scythe-like mandible dug into his side, tearing through ceramite to rend the softer flesh beneath, but Tarn twisted in place, using his foe to gain enough momentum and grab its limb to halt its momentum.

He grunted, feeling about five centimetres of wickedly sharp metallic chitin pierced into his side, but it didn’t even slow his own attack. The Axe came down, molecular disruption field doing good work, and the sizzling blade cut deep into the beast, rending chitin, flesh and bone apart. It wasn’t enough to bisect it wholesale, but it was dead enough to not matter. 

Tarn kicked it away and tore the offending scythe-arm out of his side with a grimace. The wound clotted over in seconds, and he turned to assist his comrades, but he needn’t have bothered, as in seconds all of them defeated their own foes. Five beasts, one for each combatant. 

Narrowed eyes surveyed the dark void for any other assailants, but found none … for now. Tarn was old and had spent the vast majority of his life at war with the enemies of Mankind. He knew a probing attack when he saw one. This would not be the last of their foes, far from it, and if his instinct were telling him the truth, this was merely the beginning of what might be the most tiresome battle of his long life.