A/N: Needed to get this out of my head, I like the WH40K setting and wanted to send some foreign elements into it, but 40k is extremely overpowered, given Games Workshop apparent desire to outgun every other universes out there, so it might not be completely accurate, it migh cause some rage, it might even make you want to stop reading and that's cool, ain't like I'm being paid or anything, but I can assure you, if you just keep an open mind, because I also use a pretty unorthodox style, you'll have fun. Might not be the greatest read of a lifetime, but it will be worth the eyebleed you'll get from all the traditions I break.
That or you'll utterly hate it, there's rarely an inbetween with this kind of stories.
As Han Solo once said, NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS. Whatever that means, although I'd be glad to hear your arguments as to why I should reconsider force reports. Be polite and you'll be more than welcome to tell me how much I suck at life :D
Welcome to Braxis Penitential Facility Network Intelligence.
Login:ArkansasM
Password:********
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Welcome, Director Arkansas.
/Accs_RootBPFNI-ADMIN
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Administrator Priviledges Granted.
/MnGrd_0
/PwrGenMain_0
/PwrGenAux_0
/EmrgLD_1
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Main Defense Grid: Offline.
Primary Generator: Offline.
Secondary Generator: Offline.
Emergency Lockdown: Enacted.
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/D149-Opn
/D222-Opn
/D501-Opn
/D732-Opn
/HngBDr-Opn
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Door149: Open
Door222: Open
Door501: Open
Door732: Open
Hangar B Door: Open
/Accs_Cnvtfl-28470
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Accessing Personal Files
Convict: Kerensky, Vincent
DoB: 09/23/2471(33)
Height: 190cm
Weight: 112kg
Hairs: Black
Eyes: Green
Known Crimes:
Manslaughter
Grand Theft Auto
Qualified Theft
Desertion
Probation Violation
Rape
Sentence: Death (Postponed)
Forced labor
Former Affiliations:
Confederate Marine Corps.
Reaper Corps.
Current Status: Imprisoned, BPF facility, B Bloc.
/Accs_Cvtfl28488
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Convict: Worst, Karen
DoB: -
Height: 170cm
Weight: 67kg
Hairs: Brown
Eyes: Brown
Known Crimes:
Insubordination
Attempted Manslaughter
Perjury
Murder, First degree
Sentence: Death (Postponed.)
Forced Labor.
Former Affiliations:
Ghost Program
Current Status: Imprisoned, BPF facility, B Bloc.
/Accs_Cvtfl28466
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Convict: Fauster, Gregor
DoB: 11/16/2460 (44)
Height: 204cm
Weight: 166kg
Hairs: Gray
Eyes: Blue
Known Crimes:
Murder, Second and first degree
Drunk driving
Sentence: Death (Postponed.)
Forced Labor.
Former Affiliations:
Mar Sara Militia
Sons Of Korhal
Dominion Marine Corps.
Current Status: Imprisoned, BPF facility, B Bloc.
/Accs_Cnvtfl28469
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Convict: Kudrenkov, Sven
DoB: -
Height: 188cm
Weight: 86kg
Hairs: Brown
Eyes: Gray (Formerly Brown-Green)
Known Crimes:
Manslaughter
Insubordination
High Treason
Destruction of Government assets
Grand Theft Auto
Identity Theft
Sentence: Death (Postponed.)
Forced Labor.
Former Affiliations:
Ghost Program
Project SHADOWBLADE
Current Status: Imprisoned, BPF facility, B Bloc.
/Accs_Cnvtfl28500
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Convict: Darka, Hannah
DoB: 01/27/2475(29)
Height: 158cm
Weight: 59kg
Hairs: Purple
Eyes: Black
Known Crimes:
Larceny
Murder, First degree
Impersonating an Officer
Treason
Drug Manufacturing
Drug Trafficking
Sentence: Death (Postponed.)
Forced Labor.
Former Affiliations:
Tarsonis Paramedical Response Service
Dominion Medical Corps.
Current Status: Imprisoned, BPF facility, B Bloc.
/SetAllCrntSts_Deceased
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Set all Convicts Current Statuses to: Deceased? [Y]/N
Y
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Warning, All BPF Residents Deceased.
/Format_RootBPFNI:
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Goodbye
I wave the computer as it flickers off "Bye."
Hacking is a very easy task for a Spectre; I just had to use elementary Technopathy to convice the computer I was the Prison's director and it gave me full access.
I step away from the monitor and scan the dimly lit room.
The Director's office is pretty cramped with my convict pals, those who's files I just brought up, strewn around. Greg and Vincent are guarding the door with their shivs ready while Karen and Hannah search the place for weapons.
I like to know who I'm dealing with, even though I could easily read their minds to find what I want, Neural resocialislization makes such process unreliable. In any event, my new friends are exactly what I expected, although Karen, knowing I stuck my nose in her file, slaps the back of my head.
Hannah looks at the former Ghost, worried that she'll enact a psychotic break from me.
Heh, she's afraid I'll slit her throat in her sleep… I'm not the one she should fear, Karen is, but the former medic seems to think the tall, white eyed guy is more of a threat than the small and harmless Dominion assassin.
Shit, I killed less peoples than she did and I'm the crazy one…
"Sven," Karen growls, "Shut the fuck up."
Whatever, cranky Ghost bitch… She's pissed off because she rated nine on the Psi Index and never expected anyone to surpass that, yet I had a rating of eight before SHADOWBLADE. Now it must be somewhere between nine and eleven…
"Yeah, yeah, you're a tough psychic," She whines, "Can we get going now?"
"I wasn't aware that this was my call…" I give her a wide smile.
Seriously, though, may act like a dumbass, but while the dumbass was trading jabs with the Ghost, the Spectre was also remote viewing the whole way to the exit and I now know it's crawling with convicts and guards.
Quite frankly, Karen may be a weaker psychic, she's a far better leader, so after sharing this information with the girl, I step back and let her do her shit.
"Okay, we'll have to fight to get out of here. Sven will take point, Vincent, you cover the right flank and Gregor will take left, I'll bring up the rear with Hannah."
I squeeze past the two mountains of muscle, sensing their heavily contrasting minds on the way.
Gregor used to have a family on Mar Sara and joined the militia to protect them from the Zergs. It failed, however, as the Colonial Magistrate sent him on a patrol to Blackwater station and, by the time the militiaman came back home, his whole family was kaput, torn to shred by the Zergs.
He latter joined the Dominion Marines in the hope that he would die in the process, but that never came and he only ended up causing others the same kind of pain he had felt. This made him really pissed, to the point that he got himself drunk, killed everyone in his section and took a Vulture hoverbike for a spin trough town, hoping he'd finally get killed.
He crashed the bike in a house and killed four innocents. Then, before he realized what had happened, he was on Braxis, mining ice.
Vincent, on the other end, only remembers the smell of oranges, blood on his hands, satisfaction and then, being trained to be a Reaper. He doesn't give a fuck what he did before, he loves killing 'toss and bugs so much, humans are boring now. How he ended in prison is a very complicated story, which means the dumbass himself doesn't know for sure.
The corridor itself is large enough for four men to stand side by side with room to spare, yet we keep a tight formation. Bad idea when peoples can shoot at you, as it can get everyone in the team hit by a single burst, but with us Specters, the rules change…
There is a curve ten meters ahead and four wooden doors on both sides of the hall.
I point the last on the right, "Guys with shivs about to bust trough them," then to the bend, on the left. "Two Marines set up there."
Karen already knew, but I'm the pointman, it's my job to call out shit like that.
She distributes orders trough suggestion directly in our brains. I hate it and send her a mild psionic spike in retribution, causing a slight jump on her part. Yet another trick I can do that she cannot.
Now, my job is to dispatch the Marines without damaging their suits, so our two grunts can get some firepower. Easy as pie. Okay, I can't cook for shit, so let's say easy as Pi.
3,14159265…
I remove my prisoner shirt, since orange is the worst camouflage ever, and tie the sleeves around my waist. The white t-shirt underneath isn't that much better.
Now, which way would be the best? Fry their brains would cause nose and ear bleed and that would not be optimal for whoever wears the suit next, psionically choking them would be dangerous, given the amount of time that leaves for some retaliation attempt…
Answer? I'll lockdown their armors and choke them… Gonna be fun.
As soon as we get 'ambushed' by the convicts behind the doors, I sprint trough the two meters between the bend and me, coming face to face with the Marines.
They aim their C-14s at me, but only earn a dry click and some electrical buzzing from pressing the trigger.
I flick the switches on the side of their armors, just like I'd do with a lightswitch except from ten feet away, and they both freeze as I cut their air supply. Getting to hear their thoughts as they die is one downside of my job.
Carl, the one on the right thinks he should have called in sick this morning and went to Bacchus moon as planned, while Lenny, the one on the left regrets skipping breakfast this morning, as he'll now die hungry.
Peoples think very strange stuff when their time has come. One time, I killed a guy who regretted never owning a dog.
Both guys finally die while, behind us, the two convicts are disarmed and knocked on the floor.
Worst quickly read their minds and I just read hers.
One's a child molester and quite simply can't be trusted, the other is a pyromaniac and former fireman who turned himself in after his first crime.
The former gets his throat cut open with his own knife while the latter is helped back on his feet and gets integrated to our happy little family.
Vincent gives the dead man's knife to Karen and when I ask why, she answers that I don't need one, since I'm such a powerful psychic.
Think I detected a hint of sarcasm, but hey, I'm just a moronic psychopathic psychic, not a psychologist!
"Alright, smartass, can you unseal these suits?"
I walk up to the downed Marines without a word and touch their helmets. A little Technopathic talk with the onboard computers gets them open in thirty seconds flat. That's actually long, but Worst's presence in my brain slowed down the process. She tries to be subtle when trying to observe my powers, but to a Terrazine enhanced high level psychic such as me, she's as subtle as a train wreck.
"Milady requires anything else?" I ask, bowing.
Vincent wants to take one of the suits, but is shoved away by Greg's massive shoulder. The former Marine decided that was his armor. Vince doesn't object.
Gregor may not like Vincent, the other man still views him as a role model, given his badass scars and attitude.
The suits are the open top CMC-400 variants, allowing the wearers to remove the shoulder and helmet parts, allowing them to gear up in two minutes, more or less.
The guys will take a while putting on their suit, so I carefully scan every room on our path.
Kinda hoped I'd find an armory, but no such luck, only supply rooms.
So I scan the hangar itself. There is a battle there between guards and convicts.
"Worst!" I call, "Check this shit out!" And I send her the RV image of the hangar. The effort and Terrazine withdrawal makes me shake uncontrollably for a few seconds, but it soon subsides, replaced by the usual withdrawal effects…
The ship I saw is round, segmented with four engines and a protruding control booth. No weapons, but enough room to house ten thousand peoples, at least.
All in all, the thing looks roughly like an oversized potato that crash-landed into a scrap yard…
"We need a pilot." She mumbles, knowing full well we'll have to do some mind digging to find one in the crowd battling inside the hangar.
Fact is, we'll need an engineer, navigator, cook… A whole crew, and I think we won't need to assemble it.
That supply ship didn't come here by itself, did it? We just need to convince its crew to help us, once we find them…
Karen is still plugged to my brain and she likes that idea, so she decides it will be my job to find out where they are, seeing as I can handle myself just fine. A year spend mining ice and minerals in this freeze box with minimal rations and free time has gotten pretty much everyone in this slam hard as neosteel, but I received close combat training from the day I was eight and have my psi powers to help me out.
For the time being, however, I'll stick with the group, since we're going in the same direction… We don't have much choice in the matter; I locked down every other sections of the prison.
Vincent calls my name, from the left, so I turn and catch the makeshift knife he was carrying, nodding in thanks.
The ex-reaper just lifts his Gauss rifle, itching to kill something with it.
The new guy, Alan Kade, has his own knife already, so Hannah finally gets a weapon, even though I don't see the frail woman stabbing anyone…
Ahead, the hallway stretches on fifty meters and ends with a flight of stairs. I scan it, but feel nothing, so I call the all clear and we get moving.
There are force fields every ten meters, but Worst and I psionically shut them all down along the way. The trip itself is eventless, and even if it hadn't been, we got the firepower to knock an Ultralisk out of commission.
One we reach the stairs, Greg and Vince both take up position to the right while Karen and I set up to the left. Hannah and Alan just stand aside and let us do our shit.
Beyond the bulkhead we're covering behind are two flights of ten stairs, barely large enough to accommodate two armored men, and on top of these is a pair of Marines with ballistic alloy shields and five light infantrymen waiting to tear us to shred.
I go first, Vincent shadowing me, and use a little trick my Ghost instructor called 'Fuck with their brains', telling the two Marines that there are Zergs crawling behind them while fueling their fear with nightmarish images of twisted corpses and deformed monsters.
They spin and unload their rifles at point blank into their five unarmored pals, turning the men into fine paste.
Before they can even say 'woops' Vince basically ass rape them with 8mm subsonic spikes.
"Gruesome!" I laugh, holding myself on the man's shoulder pad for a second. I need my fix.
Shaking myself a bit to project a psi shield, I run up next to Vince and, once we're on top, telekinetically lift one of the AGR-14s the light boys were packing and snatch it off the air in time to shoot down a pair of guards.
To the right, Vince is spraying a cluster of convicts with his own rifle. Sparks fly from all around them and one is even knocked to the ground by the air disruptions, but no one dies. Not sure if this was done on purpose.
The guards came in from the hangar while the convicts crawled trough the air duct. I mind probe every of them and find out they are mostly mercs, which is why they stuck together; three are War Pigs, one is Hammer security, another's a Dusk Wing and the last one is an Hel's Angel.
Professionals, incarcerated in another part of the slam, but smart enough to know that if they want out, they got to find the hangar, so they crawled trough the air ways from the beginning of this shit, finally ending up here, hidden in the air circulation system and waiting for someone to take out that checkpoint.
Two women, four men, all veterans of the Great War, like us. Although one must admit we all don't look like much with our faded orange prison uniforms, turned into very efficient camouflage suits by all the dust and grime.
I like these guys already and Karen agrees that we should extend an invite to our little party. I don't say anything; instead, I mentally kick two AGR-14 their way and physically lower Vince's rifle. The leader, a black guy called Dylan, picks a rifle off the floor and nods.
I salvage and distribute whatever gear I find still usable on the corpses and we get a move on.
We're standing at the edge of the hangar when I suddenly freeze, sensing something from the Hel's Angel and Dusk Wing. Knowledge.
Vince, Greg and the Mercs are quick to join the fray, but I stop the two pilots, one's a Viking driver, the other is a Banshee pilot.
"You guys can fly that scrap yard?" I point to the supply ship and they both nod.
"Nothin' to it, darlin'" The Banshee girl laughs, "Dave an' I can fly or drive anythin' ya want."
I like her, but then, I like just about everyone that gets the job done. I inform Karen of the new development and she informs me that there is something in a nearby supply room I should check.
Ghosts are weaker than Specter, but much more focused and careful, knowing this, I'm not amazed she felt something while I didn't, but am just a little irked I didn't smell it first…
Terrazine Infuser. My Terrazine Infuser. They took it from me when I first arrived, along with my suit, gear and rifle. Maybe the whole stuff's in there… I hope so, anyway.
I'm addicted to the stuff, Terrazine I mean, it makes me strong and stops the shakes dead. Of course, I don't really need it anymore, since my body has built up a supply sufficient to keep me at my level of power for few decades, but fact is, I've seen Specters attempt to quit the stuff and end up totally fucking their brains, so I still use the infuser at a very low setting, as a mean to slowly quit the stuff…
My decision made, I sprint trough the hangar and away from the team. A Guard notices me and I must dive behind a pair of metal crates to avoid the onslaught of Gauss rounds.
They stick into the metal, glowing white hot and forming three white hedgehogs.
There are more crates ahead, a full blown war to the left and a wall to the right…
I creep into the man's brain, but am too weak to make him shoot himself. Istead, I convince that kid I'm actually behind those crates, just ahead.
He aims his gun there and I fire a single spike trough his skull.
"Good night." A cheesy one liner is all the apologies he'll ever get.
I leap from cover and fire a burst into another group of Light Infantry who were coming to investigate. I miss one, but the convicts are quick to overwhelm him and loot his gear.
Sixty-six rounds remaining. To a grunt, it's not a lot, to a trained sniper like me? Well, it would be plenty if I had a scope and nobody shooting at me, right now, it's still not a lot.
I slide under a stream of C-14 fire and drift behind cover just in time to avoid being fried by a firebat. A quick suggestion in the guy's resocced brain convinces him he should check on the two Marines advancing on my position…
Nah, you don't need to stop flaming, what's wrong with fire?
The Perdition twin linked plasma-based flame throwers do not penetrate the CMC-400 suits, but it does cook the wearers alive.
By the time they're dead and the Firebat is shot down by other Marines, I'm already inside the supply room, surveying it for the faint psionic 'smell' of Terrazine.
There are ammunition crates all over and a few weapon ones as well. I spot a crate containing C-10 rifles as well as a few explosive canister boxes, which I toss next to the door. I don't like C-10s, they shoot slowly and limit their users to a sniper role, AGR-28 DMRs are much better, in my opinion, but Karen is a Ghost and Ghosts use C-10s, so I'm taking the guns with me, as soon as I've found my Infuser…
I know it's somewhere in those square boxes, out back, but can't pinpoint where.
Enough bullshit; I psi blast the whole room, tearing every boxes apart and lifting everything touched by Terrazine at eye level.
There, found it! The silver helmet and glowing red optics are glaring at me, as if shocked and angry that I found them… The things were custom made for me and they fit perfectly around my head and face.
The HUD takes a second to initialize and soon warns me that no Hazardous Environment Suits have been detected, which means no increased strength, speed or durability.
"Shut up and pump the juice!" I growl and the machine.
Soon, my nose and mouth are filled with blood tasted gas and the HUD points out I have a week before I need a refill.
Perfect.
My hands stop shaking and my mouth quickly dry up while I get that feeling of liberation that comes with the first rays of sun after a particularly violent storm, not violent, but sweet as a whisper, rolling trough me like blood flavored honey.
The helmet is linked to a small box that I tie up to my belt awkwardly. It's meant to be secured on specially made clamps, in the back of my Spectre suit, but that'll do for now.
I walk out of the room, into the utter chaos beyond and send deafening a psionic whisper to every guard and convicts in the area, accompanied by a great deal of irrational terror and an image of my helmet. A nifty trick I used on Drelor VI to disperse a crowd quickly.
"Hell is here."
The whisper spreads across the room like wave, making every single person present attempt to get the fuck away from me.
Such a feat would have drained me mentally just a minute ago, but now that my body has had it's Terrazine fix, I am a fucking god. Of course, had Karen not helped bounce my Psi wave, I most likely wouldn't have affected half as many people, but now, everyone is just starring at me, terrified.
I creep in the heads of two Firebats and have them detonate their own fuel tanks while making a pair of especially weak minded Marines shoot themselves.
Needless to say, resoc or no, everyone runs the fuck out of my way and I simply walk up to the supply ship, keeping my mind open for any sort of aggressive thoughts. There are none, Karen is keeping the fear at very high levels and it paralyzes even the bravest of these bastards. I make it to the loading ramp in a minute or so, but that's long enough for Worst to turn ghostly pale and sick looking from the constant effort.
Shit, she ain't a Spectre, she can actually die from this!
I turn my attention back to the crowd and replace Karen as she collapses in Alan's arm. Behind me, the boxes clatter on the floor, breaking my focus long enough for pretty much everyone in the room to shake me out of their minds…
That technique can backfire quite badly, should the targets shake free, seeing as I suddenly become everyone's priority target.
Fortunately, this time around I'm in the ship and the ramp closes by the time everyone has truly awakened.
That was close…