Getting Warhammered [WH 40k Fanfic]
213 – Astartes – Tarn

Haegar Tarn, Watch-Brother and Scout of Kill Team Varran — formerly of the Space Wolves Chapter until he put a fist through the wrong person’s head — kneeled over the corpse of the strange beast laid out before him. Even with the always overeager Brother Merek having done his damndest to dice the Xeno beast into tiny cubes, and the two other explosion-loving Brothers he had in the Kill Team going wild at the creature, the carcass was still worryingly intact. Only Watch-Sergeant Varran, putting his Power Claw through the creature’s skull, finally felled it.

“Thoughts?” Watch-Sergeant Varran asked, treating each word like it cost him money as always. Those Ravenguard always did love looking all broody and grim, like it hurt them to enjoy themselves. 

Tarn grunted, glancing over at Brother Cassius, a veteran of the Ultramarines who was also busy examining the carcass. The two made eye contact, and while Tarn never liked the rulebook-fiddler, he felt a moment of kinship with the man, seeing the befuddlement in his weary eyes. 

“Never seen anything quite like this beastie,” Tarn said, rising to his feet with an exaggerated grunt as he grabbed his power-axe, more for comfort than anything. “It looks like something a Tyranid would shit out on a bad day … if ya squint real hard, but its insides are nothing alike. It’s like how Eldar and Human look faintly alike if you’re drunk enough. Two arms, two legs, a head and all that. This shit’s as much a Tyranid as I am a shit-eating Tau.”

“And yet it holds similarities to bio-forms I am familiar with,” Brother Cassius said, his voice stoic as ever, like he was making a game of trying to make people fall asleep with his words alone. “A Lictor’s, most of all, especially with the extreme stealth capabilities it has shown. It is worryingly better than any Lictor I’ve come across at remaining undetected.”

Tarn eyed the put-upon frown on the ex-Ultramarine’s weathered face suspiciously, grunting in affirmation when the Watch-Sergeant’s gaze swam over to him. That was their problem. Cassius wasn’t the only one of their squad mates who didn’t fear Lictors anymore, trusting their gut instincts and experience to detect one of those beasties when they were skulking about.

This new monstrosity? … It eluded them all, remaining undetected until the very last moment where it stumbled, its cloaking faltering for a brief instant. 

“Obviously the shit’s got Psychic cloaking or some stealth sorcery put onto it,” Tarn gave voice to the obvious, turning his gaze upon the heavy metal coffin Drakk, their Techmarine and local machine-fanatic was dragging behind him. “And the regular active-camo the Lictor’s got underneath just for good measure. Anyone without a pocket Blank like us is likely fucked all the way to the Great Rift and back if they come across one.”

Cassius frowned, the height of emotion from the dreadful bore, likely imagining the other Kill Teams spread out across the Fleet getting slaughtered as they speak. Merek, that zealous idiot, clutched his oversized Power Sword with a look of righteous rage warping his features. He kept his trap shut though, the last time he started spouting worthless crap he earned a fist to his face from Tarn. The lesson will fade in another few days, it always did, but he’d behave for now. 

“Perhaps we should gather into larger groups then?” Brother Keir suggested, his deep rumbling voiced tinged with concern. A true Salamander, that one. Despite getting his gigantic ass booted for torching the wrong house one too many times in the throes of battle. “Both to protect our Blank and to provide its aegis to other Teams, perhaps even to a Regiment of guardsman.”

“No use worrying bout the worthless chaff,” the Techmarine said, his mechanical voice coming through his vox-speaker and yet he managed to convey the naked disdain he felt for anything that had even just a percent of organic flesh left in it. The fact that the ex-Iron-Hand Marine was included in that list rather easily explained his abrasive personalty. “But wasting other Kill Teams to these Xeno monsters would be suboptimal before the final fight.”

“Agreed,” Watch-Sergeant Varran said, finality ringing in his tone and silencing the squad members. “Any weak-points on the creature?”

“The spine and the skull,” Tarn said, biting off the ‘obviously’ he wanted to attach at the end. Varran cared little about discipline until it turned into anything even vaguely smelling like mouthing off or backtalk aimed at him, or until the lack of discipline affected combat efficiency. “Even that’s iffy, the thing’s spine was as thick as my wrist and probably as tough as ceramite. Nothing’s getting through that if it doesn’t have ‘Power’ attached to its name, same with the skull, I’d think.”

“Not even that’s assured,” Brother Corian, the squad’s Apothecary, spoke up for the first time, his soft, melodious voice filled with something grim. “The Watch-Sergeant’s strike came at a precise angle, hitting the softest part at the base of the skull where it connects to the spine. A haphazard strike at the creature’s spine anywhere else wouldn’t be enough for an instant kill, or even incapacitation. Especially since I am seeing redundant organs for the redundant organs in here, two layers of redundancies for everything. Half of which I don’t even know the function of … the carapace is also much less resilient in death, I suspect an active Biomantic sorcery at work or something similar. The Blank might negate it in close proximity.”

Tarn curled his lip in distaste, grunting as he failed to notice that. Oh well, he was the Scout of the Kill Squad, not their pocket Magos Genetor. He was good at hunting, staying hidden and killing things, not analysing corpses.

“Like the Swarm Lord, then?” Watch-Sergeant Varran asked, and Tarn stiffened at the question, then snarled when Corian nodded. “Worrying. Give me a moment. Eyes peeled Brothers, there could be more of them. If they are anything like the Tyranids, they will know one of their more powerful organisms just died here.”

“Watch-Sergeant,” Drakk, the Techmarine, said as the very nanosecond Varran fell silent. “The ship’s been boarded. The local Guardsmen Regiments are already in disarray as Orks are flooding out of a dozen boarding pods that cut through the Void-Shields and impacted the hull.”

Of course he would go against protocol and tap into all the local comm-networks and eavesdrop on the Guardsmen. The paranoid machine-lover didn’t trust anything that wasn’t made of metal … though this time his nosiness seemed to have paid off. 

“The Psyker,” Tarn growled, clutching his axe. “She teleported through the Inquisitor’s Void-Shields too with a force of Orks at her back. It’s the same shit again.”

“With the addition of these monstrosities,” Cassius added, and likely only his need for decorum held him back from spitting on- or kicking the corpse. 

“A moment,” Watch-Sergeant Varran said, tapping his helmet in a universal gesture of ‘I am on the call’. After a second he nodded, and his hand fell back to his side. “The suggestion to group up has been shot down. The Guardsmen are being routed already, pulling back into the corridors and setting up kill-zones. We need to hold a vital corridor to keep the greenskins away from the command deck, make sure the guardsmen aren’t overwhelmed. The Lord Militant cannot fall yet. Other Kill Teams will mirror us in other vital spots. Move out and stay vigilant.”

‘Stay vigilant’, he said. That was his way of saying ‘expect an enemy to pop out of your own asshole and be ready to shoot them if they and when they do’. 

“How deep of a shit are we in, cog-head?” Tarn asked gruffly, glancing at the techmarine as they set out, helmets turning this way and that with baleful red light scanning every nook and cranny.

“The boarding pods are either spatially expanded inside,” Drakk responded in his mechanical monotone voice. “Or have portals of some sort set up inside. The number of Orks on board doesn’t match the reported volume of the boarding pods. My conclusion would be that we are unlikely to hold out unless those boarding pods are taken out of commission soon.”

“The Watch-Captain and his elite Kill Teams are handling that,” Watch-Sergeant Varran cut in. “Focus on our own task and trust our Brothers to handle theirs. Now silence.”

Fair enough. The sneaky Xeno fuckers were hard enough to notice as it was, but with Orks shouting like they were wont to do and the other squadmembers yammering? Yeah, they might as well lie down and bare their necks, hoping for a swift death at that point. 

Not that Tarn would ever be willing to go down, swiftly, silently or at all if he could help it. As a son of Russ, he’d laugh in the face of death and fight until his body gave out and maybe a bit more out of principle. He did not buy into this ‘God-Emperor’ nonsense the wider Imperium was yammering about, he’d been blessed enough in his youth to be there when the Honourable Dreadnaught Bjorn the Felhanded — the legendary Chapter Master of the Space Wolves who fought alongside the Emperor himself and later on the Primarch Leman Russ during the Great Crusade — decried the Ecclesiarchy a blight upon the Imperium tainting the Emperor’s dream with their folly. 

There was no afterlife waiting for him, only rest. Eternal, dreamless slumber. It sounded boring, so he’d fight tooth and nail to stave it off for as long as he could manage. 

And he wanted to die with a proud smile frozen eternally onto his lips, knowing he’d made whoever brought him low pay dearly for it. 

They advanced silently through the tight corridors, the rhythm thump of metallic armour on ferrocrete flooring echoing in the halls. Soon Tarn’s ears picked up echoes of fighting ahead, lasrifles firing, screams, shouts and of course … 

“WAAAAAAAAAGGGHHH!” It was distant still, and yet unmistakable to any who’d heard it before. 

Tarn glanced at his HUD display, then smiled grimly and hefted his axe. It looked like they were going to have to carve their way through a horde of advancing greenskins to get to their destination. 

“Come on, brat,” he said in a whisper through the comm-link in his helmet, glancing at the ex-Black Templar next to him who was practically vibrating with suppressed bloodlust and murderous intent. “We take point, as always.”

“The green filth defiles His holy ships — let none survive! In His name, we shall purge them!” The ‘boy’ called back zealously, having the brains to turn on his helmet’s sound suppression.  

Tarn snorted at the idiot. If he wasn’t so good at killing, he might have decided to beat some sense into him, but the zealot’s fury in battle was a thing to behold. It’d put some Khornite berserkers and Wolf Lords to shame.

“We cut through,” Sergeant Varran said decisively. “Charge. I’ve outlined our path on the HUD. Remember, we must get to our post swiftly before the Orks overrun it, we have no time for sentimentality.”

Tarn didn’t have to look back to know their kind-hearted demolition expert knew that was aimed at him, and took it badly. The man always did, never growing comfortable with the … callousness of the other Chapters.

It didn’t help that the Templar brat, and the Techmarine had all sense of empathy torn out of them by a spiked mace shoved up their arse then pulled back out. Tarn could at least relate to the Salamander, and he guessed the Watch-Sergeant and Cassius did too. 

Only the Warp knew what went on in Corian’s head though. The pretty boy — ex Blood Angel — not being one to confide his thoughts in any of his Brothers. 

Not that Tarn cared, or wanted to know what was inside that sparkly head of his, for he suspected the pretty facade hid a giant stinking turd inside. It always did. Like with those fancy nobles, prettying themselves up and strutting around like a bunch of self-important peacocks just because one of their ancestors ten thousand years ago was a good enough paper pusher to be given some responsibility. Pretty facade, rotten interior. He’d rather not find out just how rotten Corian was, because he didn’t want to start having doubts about the man who patched him up after every battle.

There was just something wrong with the look Corian wore on his face every time after battle, an almost longing, wistful glimmer in his eyes as he looked upon a sight of savagery. Don’t get him wrong, Tarn loved making those gory sights, tearing apart the Imperium’s enemies with his axe, but he did not look at the gory results like it was some beautiful piece of art.  

Tarn shook his head, instead focusing on the battle ahead, on the war cries of the enemy he will have to slaughter, on the screams of the men and women he was too slow to save. His hearts thunder in his chest, his engine roaring up as a familiar thirst for battle rears its head once more and twists his face into a vicious snarl.

Power Axe in one hand, wrist-mounted bolter in the other, he stalked forth like a great wolf of Fenris. Tarn never was one to think too deeply on problems, but perhaps old age has worn down his mind. Nonetheless, it was time he got back to his roots and slaughtered some Xenos in the name of the Emperor.