Encounter

by John Harrington

A Squat mining vessel encounters Hive Fleet Behemoth....

+++File Begins

Captain Halthorn stood alone on the bridge, gazing out the oval view port into the vast depths of the universe. It was too rare a sight, the clear stars on a black field. Spending most his time either dirt-side or in the warp was taking it’s toll on the old miner. The stars outside slowly revolved with the movement of the ship, all of the crew quarters and command decks aboard the Imbach’s Scorn set into a perpetual spin paced just precisely to match that of the blessed Home Worlds. The Guild master Arengron had explained early in the journey to the new men that despite the age in the vessel, the revolution wouldn’t be noticeable. Halthorn wasn’t sure about the ship, but something was certainly spinning. For a moment he tried to remember how many hours he had been sitting there on watch. His flask was only a quarter filled, and judging by the dizzy sensations running through his head, surely it would be... The deck seal hissed behind Halthorn. First mate Gidden hefted the iron door open and climbed out on the bridge, leaning back to close the seal behind him.

“You’re still up?”, Gidden jumped, noticing the Captain sprawled out on the command couch.

“Jest up collecting me thoughts...”, Halthorn drawled, trying to right himself before the enterprising First mate took the opportunity to give him grief over his intoxication.

“Ancestors be shamed, you’re not drinking on duty again, are you Captain?"

Halthorn closed the flask, and tossed it absently off toward the tactical station, hearing it rattle down below the seats somewhere.

“Of course not Gidden, what reason would I have to do such a thing?”

Gidden laughed, making his way down the ladder into the cramped command area with the captain.

“Maybe because you’re a blimey drunk, among other things.”

“Is that supposed to be a joke?”, Halthorn growled, stroking the braided portions of his beard.

“Oh, I wish it were.” Gidden grinned, cuffing the Captain’s shoulder, “You know this is just what the Imperials back on Home World think of us you know? Bugger little blokes, all drunk off ale and taking turns gut-punching each other and wasting our fine technology. You’re a bloody poster child for their Emperor I tell you...”

Halthorn grunted.

“Silly humans can only remember one ancestor, that’s the problem. Too simple minded and afraid to handle the universe around them.”, he grumbled.

“So true,” Gidden nodded, sitting down at the navigation stool, “but they’re not green, they’re not bloody panzies, and they’re not trying to take our homes.”

“Yet.”, Halthorn added.

“Aye, yet.”, Gidden agreed.

The Imbach’s Scorn came round about again, bringing into the view ports frame the image of a great and terrible object.

“That’s what’s got you in the bottle, isn’t it?”, Gidden smiled, looking across the unspeakable things long, shiny body.

“It’s certainly not helping my sobriety, no.”, Halthorn sighed.

For three days they had been circling the mysterious object, waiting for information from the home world as to what they wanted to do with it. Halthorn was no xenobiologist, not even an explorer. But for some reason Halthorn and his crew of sixty eight miners had been told to park their ship next to this thing, and sit on two thousand tons of ore meant for the markets of Home World by the end of the week.

“What do you think it is?”, Gidden mused, studying the things overlapping plates and radiating tendrils, “Looks almost like a bug, like a Tarkin beetle maybe.”

“It’s not alive. Guild master says it’s not made of metal or anything either. If it lived, it’s dead now.”, Halthorn shrugged.

“It is a ship of some sort though,” Gidden made motions with his stubby fingers, pointing out the features of the object, “See the exhaust ports, and the vectored holes along it’s underbelly?.”

“Aye,” Halthorn nodded, “Guild master agrees with you, says that over seventy percent of that thing is hollow. Who ever made it, they likely used it to travel the warp, just like us.”

“Ancestors be shamed, who makes a ship like that? Even the Eldar’s ships aren’t that ugly.”, Gidden shook his head.

“Don’t know, but tomorrow we’re going to find out.”

Gidden spun around and looked incredulously at the Captain.

“What do mean? Are you joking?”

“As you said Gidden, I wish I were. Word finally came back from Home world. The Guild lords could care less if we leave it alone or blow it into scrap, but the Imperials seem to have taken an interest. They say we board it.”

“No.”, Gidden gasped, “They have no right, this is for their Marines to deal with. This is not our business!”

“Guild lords say it is our business, at least as long as Home world wants to keep our treaties and stay in bed with our beloved human friends...”

“Ancestors save me.”, Gidden sighed forlornly, “Captain, where did you throw that bottle?”

***

Pratton stood up tall in his suit of exo armor. Outside, his brothers were busy checking the suit’s various systems, insuring nothing would go wrong during the insertion. He knew that they were aggravated in their duties, being forced back into work after just completing a eight month haul on some nameless asteroid, but that didn’t take the edge off of his excitement. Pratton loved every minute in his armor, and had gained nitrite as the only exo-jock in Halthorn's mining-outfit who didn’t fear a cave-in. His guild brothers often made fun of him for it, but he’d always tell them, “I know this is the only way I can go the way I want to, buried in my armor.”

Guild master Arengron stepped up onto the ready platform, checking his rune-book for any final steps that need be taken before the teleportation sequence began.

“Pratton, you hear me in there?”, he growled, staring into the glass eyes on the suits egg shaped body.

Pratton brought the suits manipulator arm up in a salute.

“All right, listen up, we’ve sent a few teleport homers into the object to get a feel for where we’re putting you, but we can’t get any local data on the inside of that thing. So, for the duration of the stay, you stay buttoned up and on internal supply, got that?”

Pratton chomped down on the com switch stuck in his mouth and nodded with the whole body of the suit.

“Arengron, I’ve been doing this since you first picked up a spanner. Just don’t ‘port me into a wall, and I’ll do fine.”

The Guild master spat on the deck and mumbled something about disrespect, walking back over to the control panel where the other techs waited to begin the sequence.

“Have it your way Pratton, just remember, if you don’t come back we’re dividing up your share!”

“Don’t worry about me,” Pratton laughed, shooing away his brothers as he clomped up onto the teleport pad, “just be sure the Imperial record keepers track the overtime I’m getting on this little venture.”

***

There was the usual buzzing sensation, followed by the undescribable feeling of imploding into non-being. Finally, Pratton was spat back out into realty nine hundred feet to the left, just within the outer shell of the bizarre vessel. Pratton was not especially worried about the alien ship. Maybe the other men on the Imbach’s Scorn were ignorant of the galaxy, but Pratton had seen it all. Kroots, Skrull, even the dreaded orks. They all had a way of making warp vessels a bit stranger than a good skilled Squat designer would, but in the end a ship was a ship was a ship. Something about the job they served meant they all resembled each other, whether the pilots breathed the ancestor’s air or swam about in soups of methane, it made no difference.

“This is Pratton to the Imbach, I’m inside the object, too dark to see anything.”

Pratton pulled his arm back a bit in the suit and flipped a few switches, bringing to life a battery of halon lamps on the suit.

“Okay, I’ve got illumination. The hall appears to be about ten feet wide by about fifteen tall. Everything looks sort of purplish, like...”

Pratton thought about it. It really didn’t look like anything.

“Ancestors... Well, it’s a bit like being inside an animals intestine maybe. Everything is wet and a bit gelatinous.”

“I hear you Pratton, this is Arengron. We believe the vessel may at least be partly biological. We’ll need some samples once you’ve had a look around.”

The radio transmissions sounded strange inside the object, wavering and uneven.

“All right, I’m moving out.”, Pratton grunted, taking an uneven step forward.

The Exoarmor bounced along down the hallway, unfettered from the high gravity of the Imbach’s Scorn. Vinier jets on the suit hissed as they compensated, bringing Pratton back down to the soft, fleshy floor.

Slowly he guided himself to the end of the hall, which sprouted off in three directions, two roughly downward and another directly up. The layout made no sense at all.

“Arengron, I’m looking at an irregular juncture. Three paths, none along even ground. Not normal fabrications, everything is one piece, very biological looking.”, Pratton paused, leaning closer to the wall, “And the surface of the hall appears to have veins of some sort running in it.”

“Keep moving.” Arengron came back, “Take one that goes deeper. Don’t expect much to look familiar in there.”

Pratton headed down the right tube, pushing the mucusy ceiling up to make room. Eventually the passage became little more than a shaft, allowing him to drop down into a larger, kidney shaped room. As he dropped toward the new floor, something made a clunk as it struck the exo-armor’s hull. Quickly Pratton spun around and seized the object with his hydraulic claw. Hanging slack from the objects neck was a human face, frozen in eternal scream.

“Arengron, I think I know why the Imperium wants the ship. I have a dead human here. Looks to have been done in by several slash marks along his belly, and he’s clad in flak armor.”

“Any designation on?”, Arengron radioed back.

“Imperial Guard insignia on him from head to toe, most of his helmet is still on his head.”

“Okay, leave it where it is. Press a little deeper. If anything looks like it’s alive in there, let us know. We can pull you back out, but you have to let us know so we can calibrate the beam in time.”

“Okay, I’m just about to hit the floor.”

The feet of the stout suits came down softly under the weak gravity, squishing down on a loose pile of unstable forms. Swinging the lamps downward, Pratton had to swallow hard to keep from crying out.

“Ancestors preserve me...”, he finally croaked.

“What is it? Come back Pratton, what do you see?”

“Bodies, it’s filled with bodies.”

“All human?”

“No, something else too, tall and chitinous. Hundreds of them, the room must be filled halfway up with their bodies!”

Nervously Pratton scanned from side to side in the room, taking in the unimaginable scenes of death that lay under him.

“Not just Imperial Guard. There are power armor suits broken open here, light gray or white in color. Appears to be human remains in them... Like, like a crab with a bite taken out it...”

“Ease up Pratton, your vital signs are jumping all over. Remember, these men are dead, but nothing is going to happen to you. Just stay calm boy, keep talking to me. Tell me, are there any other halls here?”

Pratton looked a little higher.

“Yes, one very large opening, I think it goes still deeper into the ship. I think I’ll go there, I’ve got to get out of this room. Ancestor’s be with me Arengron, I’m walking on them! I’m stepping on their backs, and their faces!”

“Be calm Pratton! You’ve never let a thing phase you in the mines, not for the nine years I’ve known you. Remember what you told me, you’ve been doing this since I first picked up a spanner, right? So prove it to me!”

Pratton tried to ease his breathing, floating down the immense passage toward the darkness below. It was like a thought, he thought, like flying down the immense esophagus of some gigantic creature. He was being swallowed. While the suit maintained the descent, Pratton busied himself with the atmosphere readings.

“Okay, they’ve got a stable air supply in here, plenty of oxygen. The walls seem to be giving it off, exhaling it almost. What ever those bugs were with the corpses, they must breath a similar atmosphere.”

“I’ve got you Pratton, our readings from the suit confirm that. How’s the hallway?”

In the darkness little could be seen, save for a small patch the lamps illuminated, casting a ghastly sheen on the sticky, membrane like surface. Here and there a twisted body could be seen, some of them of the strange, six limbed insect race. Most though, were clearly human.

“This hall is like everything else here. There are more bodies, but they seem more scattered the further in I go. Mostly marines now. I don’t think the Guard stood much of a chance.”

The passage emptied out into a large auditorium like space, round and high ceilinged. The walls cast a shimmery sort of pink light on Pratton, and illuminated the center of the room. There, amid countless thousands of radiating tendrils and tubes and veins, sat an immense glop of some viscous orange material, roughly shaped like an apple. In one side a great gash had been cut in it, and the orange fluid had gushed out of it’s skin.

“Arengron, I don’t know how to describe this anymore.”, Pratton moaned.

“Tell me, what is it?”

“I’m looking at a large mass, maybe thirty feet across, sitting in the middle of a nearly circular room. I think, judging by the condition of the thing, that it was once suspended in the middle of the room by a system of tendons or tentacles, but it’s been torn down. There are more bodies, piles of them on top of each other, all insects. Some of them are grasping sword like objects. Others appear to have crude firearms, at least, I think that’s their purpose. The bodies are maybe fifteen feet in height, four feet across at the shoulders. More than I can count. I’m moving closer to the orange mass. I’m going to take a sample, and then I want you to get me out of here.”

“I understand, very good work.”, Arengron returned, his voice growing even more distant and static ridden.

Cautiously Pratton clamored over the bodies, pale with fear that any moment one of the beasts would rise back to life and grab him, pulling him down into the deep pile. He supposed what ever these aliens were, in life they had been anything but friendly.

Then something stuck out of the ordinary, framed in the stark halogen light. One single humanoid body was laying prone on it’s back in the flow of orange fluid. Unlike the others, this one was clad entirely in black.

“Wait, Arengron, I have another human body here.”

“So?”, Arengron responded incredulously.

“This one is different, I’m not sure how just yet. Hold on.”

Pratton stood over the human, and studied it. The first thing to catch Pratten’s interest was the bodies sex, a female. The Imperium rarely dragged women on their crusades, and let them fight even less. Yet, this one wore power armor, contoured to flatter her feminine body. Pratton had never seen much in human women, their bodies were too long and dangley for him, for this one was impressive for other reasons. Her armor was torn in places, crimson stains of the woman’s blood caked in each opening, but from her chin to her feet she was coated in the gross ichor of the aliens, putrid layers of their remains covering her gauntlets. The woman had gone down fighting. Just a few feet away lay her bolter in a pile of spent shells, along with the sharp horn she’d apparently torn from the beasts and used against them. This woman had likely killed all of these aliens, and then inflicted the damage done of the orange mass. Pratton bent over at the hips to study her face. She was an aged human, several small scars marred her image, but she still held an air of human beauty. Her lips were full and crimson, as perfect as any Pratton could have placed on a human.

“She’s amazing.”, Pratton smiled, biting down on his com unit unintentionally.

“What about her?”, Arengron replied, “You’ve been on the rocks for eight months, anything female looks good to you.”

“No, she’s really incredible, her armor is more ornate than anything I’ve seen, this human was important to the Imperium. Wait, something is wrong.”

“What’s happening Pratton?”, Arengron growled, “Don’t leave me hanging like that! Those kinds of phrases make terrible last words!”

“No, it’s just...”

The woman’s gauntlets were twitching. Not just her wrists, but her whole arm, as if the horrendous fighting they had endured were still reverberating through them in death. Then, without a moments warning the woman sprang up like a snake and sank her armored fingers into Pratton’s precious suit, tearing it slightly and lifting him high into the air, up and over her head. She cried out, not a human cry, but the voice of en enraged angel. Her ice blue eyes cut into him, then one of her fists twisted and cocked back. Had Arengron not pulled the plug and teleported him out at that exact moment, Pratton knew that fist would have come down though his exo-armored suit, maybe even through his head within. Nothing could stop that woman, no more than the legendary heroes could fight a thunderstorm or the ocean.

That woman was a bloody force of nature.

+++File Ends