Vraet’anan mothership bridge. Currently traveling through the Crystal Web
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“Honored Oracle,” the Black Reaper Centurion called her, “why go through all that trouble for a weak human?”
Was he still angry she hadn’t allowed him to kill the time traveler? Velk’lora craned her head, staring at him behind her mirrored faceplate. She decided to just answer his question straight.
“I’ve foreseen a piece of that man’s future. He had to be guided into a path that was beneficial to us. Should the Imperials find him first, he’d be drafted and become a weapon against us. Now, he will trace his own path.”
“Why not keep him then?”
“He would chafe under captivity and eventually turn on us. We’d have to kill him, erasing any potential benefit from having him under our wing. No. Let others enslave him. Then it will be their heads he’ll blow up, not ours. Even though we would stop him easily, he’d still kill one or two of us. Our numbers are dwindling. The Chaos Goddess hungers for our souls. We can’t let a single Vraet’anan perish if we can avoid it.”
The Black Reaper nodded. “I shall trust your wisdom, Shaman. But if I ever find him again, I’ll kill him.”
She nodded. A vision of the future flooded her mind. In that vision, he was dead by the same weakling he looked down upon. She was glad her faceplate didn’t show her face. That way, he couldn’t see her tears.
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Thraxis Prime, orbit
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“The drop pod crash-landed on the planet’s surface. Warp energies interfering with sensor scan. We have camera feed only, sir,” the sensors officer reported.
“Any survivors?”
“There’s a dust cloud blocking visual, sir. Impossible to determine.”
The captain slammed the panel. “Send a Scout detachment. I want to know what was in that pod!”
“Sir, we detected alien activity on the surface, near the crash site.”
“What aliens?”
“Orcs, sir. A roving band.”
“Send in a five-man Marine squad along with two Guard companies then!”
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Thraxis Prime, surface
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The young man awoke in the Drop Pod. Lights blinked in the crystal that surprisingly not only survived the crash-landing but also didn’t turn him to paste. Some serious alien shenanigans going on there. For the second time, he was thankful for the stupid alien high-tech. He picked up his pack and faced his first dilemma. How would he open the damn pod? It had no instruction manual or visible controls. He tried to reach into it with his psychic ability. The door hissed and his ears popped as the pressure equalized. Then it opened.
He felt several presences around him. That sense was reciprocated as these presences homed in on his location. Fearing what was coming, he clamped down on his ability and set it to minus two. His ESP vanished and he was once again grounded on his five senses.
Heeding the advice of the Space Elf woman, he left the pod and carried his heavy backpack as he tried to put as much distance from the crash site and the entities that were coming as possible. He climbed out of the crater his crystalline drop pod created and ran over the naked earth.
He had no friends, no allies. Even the mysterious aliens stated clearly that they were helping him in hopes he would become a weapon against their enemies. Whoever they were.
The crystal spires caught the light of the suns and cast a kaleidoscopic array of rainbows and flashes of light. One such light was moving too fast and looked like fire. Turning around to look at the sky, he saw several flaming meteors coming down, targeted at the very crash site he left minutes ago.
A sense of dread enveloped him. The young man ran as fast as his legs would carry him away from that. Even if those meteors weren’t bombs shot by those ships that arrived as he descended, he didn’t want to be anywhere near the massive craters they would create. And the shockwave, cloud of debris, radioactive fallout…
His mind evoked his worst fears. He was in an alien world where everything wanted him dead. Even the scorching suns and crystal spires offered him no respite. He was sweating profusely but his legs refused to stop moving. He had to run.
As the roar of the descent reached his ears, he looked behind him. The two projectiles looked metallic and pear-shaped. He snickered at the analogy. Everything was going pear-shaped, why not the missiles/meteors?
He also saw them. Massive aliens, tall and stocky. They looked like the trolls from his tabletop RPG games, green, nasty, and violent. He had no frame of reference to measure them but they seemed massive. At least ten feet tall and a short ton of pure muscle, sinew, and aggression. They wore kitbashed armor made of metal plates savagely welded to one another and wielded weapons that would kill a person of tetanus if they survived being crushed by those crude implements.
The aliens pointed at the two descending meteors and, defying all logic, ran toward the probable location of their impact. Then the two meteors touched down the planet’s surface. More like crashed. A massive roar and shockwave forced the young man to fall flat on his stomach or risk being thrown like a ragdoll… again.
Then a brief moment, not even a second, of utter silence before chaos took over. The aliens shouted. Gunfire roared as machine guns came alive. He heard mechanical voices speaking in something that resembled Latin and the clash of metal against metal.
Standing up, he looked past the dust cloud and saw the same people in metallic power armor fighting the aliens. They used massive swords and fired guns too large for a single person to wield.
“Ad Gloriam Imperii!” He heard a mechanical synthesized voice shout. Probably from the power armor warriors.
They too seemed like giants. The mass of green aliens threw themselves against those metallic warriors without a care for their personal safety. They bashed in the futuristic armor with their crude and massive axes and clubs, and both sides suffered massive casualties.
As more dust cleared, he could see that the two pear-shaped meteors were actually metallic drop pods. They were open and the armor-clad warriors formed a perimeter around them. He also saw more green aliens running and shouting as they fired crude weapons and brandished their implements of carnage.
“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!”
Half of the newcomers fell to a barrage of explosive bullets fired by the armored warriors. The aliens reached melee range and dished out punishment against the defenders. More deaths on both sides.
The third wave of aliens crested a hill and ran down, screaming their guttural challenge and running to get a piece of the slaughter.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Then there was light. A pillar of light descended from the heavens and covered the whole hill and the young man was blinded by it. The crystal pillars caught the light and painted the world in colors that would make Lisa Frank’s work seem faded.
When his sight returned, the hill was no more. The charging aliens were no more. The few defenders, two of them, stood victorious. The young man decided to exercise the best part of valor and hide behind a rocky formation.
He slid down and sat against the rocks. Breathing heavily, he tried in vain to calm his heart. Sweat ran down his brow, his cheeks, neck, back, and stomach. His body tingled. He was afraid. The scent of burnt propeller, ozone, and death reached him.
He heard the mechanical voices again. They were talking to each other in what really sounded like Latin. Then other voices joined them. It seems some of the warriors that fell in battle survived. Probably some life-support system in their futuristic armor.
Some shots were fired. The young man assumed they were finished with the surviving aliens. Heavy footsteps echoed against the massive crystals and disturbed the eerie silence that followed the violent but short battle.
The young man felt dizzy. Some oppressive force triggered his flight instincts. Something told him he had to get away from there, NOW.
Searching around, he looked ahead. A group of aliens appeared from a crevice. They were covered in sandy chitinous armor and had the body of velociraptors. The digitigrade hind legs told him running away was impossible. They had six limbs with the two frontal pairs ending in large mantis-like scythes. A ridged carapace covered their heads and backs. They had several rows of bug-eyes along the ends of their heads, which resembled the Aliens from the eponymous movie. Their mouths ran along the whole of their heads and were covered in needle-sharp teeth.
They weren't tall. Each of them seemed to be about a meter in height but more than capable to skewer a grown man like a kebab. And the chef’s special menu today was time traveling human, it seemed.
The aliens stared at him with their heads tilted. For all of two seconds, man and alien stood immobile. Then the magic was over. The young man screamed in terror and the aliens shrieked and salivated as they dashed across the rocky landscape toward their prey.
Once again he emptied his bladder involuntarily. Scrambling to get back on his feet, he knew he would not live to see the next sunset. As the aliens approached, the oppressive fear-inducing pressure increased. Trembling, gasping for breath, he couldn’t blink as he watched his death approach.
The young man raised his hand and screamed. Raising his Psychic ability to the paltry maximum, he evoked the power the alien woman taught him.
Lightning coursed around his head and down his arm. A bolt shot from his hand and struck the lead alien. Then it jumped to the next four aliens, killing all of them.
He felt tired. Weary. The surviving aliens, five of them, dashed at him, covering half the distance in a few seconds. Fighting the urge to curl into a fetal position and cry, he ran away from the aliens. Looking behind him, he fired another bolt of lightning. Two more died. His head pounded as the dangerous energies he used took their toll on his body.
Disregarding their fallen brethren, the aliens gave chase. They were a few meters away from reaching him. Another band climbed out of the crevice.
The young man tripped and fell to the ground. The aliens closed in but the roar of gunfire drowned their maddening gibbering. Rolling to get back on his feet, he saw as the bullets from the armored warriors blasted the aliens’ carapace.
“Alieni perveniant. Tueri positionem!” The synthesized voices shouted.
Disregarding him, the two armored warriors turned to face the band of marauding aliens, twice as much as the first wave. The young man used the opportunity to run away. Some may call him a coward but he was no warrior.
Almost there but not yet.
The two stalwart combatants fired into the approaching swarm but they were too many. They were surrounded and piled up, as the tiny aliens bashed their scythes against the metallic armor. The warriors cracked carapace as they punched with mighty gauntlets and cut the aliens apart with a mix of sword and chainsaw.
But they were outnumbered ten to one. As the third wave of aliens climbed from the crevice, the battle was as good as lost. Yet they stood. The young man could only admire their defiant bravery. These metal men knew no fear. They shot and punched and swung their blade, blasting and crushing aliens heedless of the danger to their lives.
Another pillar of light descended from the sky. This time, over the crevice. A roaring upheaval shook the ground for miles. Something underground exploded. The shockwave this time picked the young man up and tossed him dozens of yards away as he tumbled and flayed against the ground. Only the armored clothing the Space Elves gave him kept his skin from becoming completely lacerated.
His bones, however, were another story. He broke his arms, twisted his ankle, bashed his skull. A veritable wave of debris washed over him and settled over his unconscious form.
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The young man recovered his senses and his whole body was in pain. It was night and the starry sky shone above him. Without light pollution, it was marvelous. He would surely admire it if he wasn’t in such a sorry state. He focused on his Regrowth power and tried to heal him but he failed to activate the power. He tried over and over again. On the twelfth try, his body mended entirely.
He vowed to spend the next batch of experience in getting his toughness up. More Hit Points were surely a good choice. How would he live if he was one shot away from dying?
Once more he sensed presences nearby and they seemed to sense him too. One, in particular, shone brightly. He shut down his ability, fearing discovery.
To stave off the feeling of utter loneliness and despair, he brought up his “datasheet” to see if he had any Experience Points left.
> Experience Point Summary:
>
> Four-Faction Patrol Engagement.
>
> Orks – 867 points
>
> Empire – 480 points
>
> Zeraagnyds – 1476 points
>
> Unaffiliated – 8 points
>
> Point ratio: 353:1
>
> Bonus Experience: 20%
>
> You gained 42 Experience Points.
He bought a point of Endurance and one Hit-Point, for thirty Experience Points. He felt his body toughen up as some mysterious energy coursed through him. With the remaining twelve points, he increased his negative Psychic Skill to minus four. He had a hunch that it would protect him from enemy psionics and hide him from others.
His “Deployment Cost”, which rose to 8 after he increased his “Psychic Skill”, climbed to 11. While this would mean less Experience in future engagements, no amount of Experience was worth his life. And now he was twice as hard to kill. Which he was sure didn’t mean much.
> Name: ________________
>
> Species: Primitive Human
>
> * Agility: 3 / (0/10)
> * Strength: 2 / (0/10)
> * Endurance: 3 / (0/15)
> * Hit Points: 2 / (0/40)
> * Attacks: 1 / (0/10)
>
> Weapon Skill: -5 (0/5)
>
> Shooting Skill: -5 (0/5)
>
> Psychic Skill: -4 / +3 (0/5) (0/20)
>
> Current Psychic Skill: -4
>
> Leadership Skill: -5 (0/5)
>
> Deployment Cost: 1
>
> Experience Points: 20
>
> Special:
>
> * Dual Nature: Your Psychic Skill can be developed in both positive and negative values independently. You can set the value anywhere between the maximum and minimum at the start of each phase.
>
> Psychic Disciplines (1/2):
>
> Basic:
>
> * Lightning Smite. Difficulty 5. Range, 36 meters. Deal 1-3 HP of damage to one unit, or 1-6 on a critical success. Proficiency: (2 / 50)
>
> Biomancy:
>
> * Regrowth. Difficulty 9. Range, 6 meters. Restore 1 HP of damage to an organic unit. Proficiency (1 / 90)
The young man risked raising his head to look around. He was half-buried under a pile of dust and debris but he had to see if he was alone or if any enemies lurked nearby. Anything that moved was an enemy. The high-tech armored warriors only left him alone because the aliens were the most dangerous threat.
By the position of the crystal spires, he estimated the location of the drop pod crash site. Several people swarmed the location and he could see a flying transport… spaceship? Coming down to bring more people.
Then he felt the ground rumble. More aliens stormed out of cracks but this time they were the size of an elephant, but nimble as a mix of scorpion and snake. Then curved then dashed toward the humans.
Laser beams and gunfire rang against these monsters. More monstrosities erupted around them, surrounding the humans. Dozens of the armored defenders rallied to protect the others but more of those skittering scythed raptors followed the scorpion-snakes. They swarmed the humans on all sides.
Concentrated gunfire from the defenders managed to kill one of the giant monsters. Hundreds of small aliens jumped over their brethren, clawing and gnawing as the humans died under the relentless swarm.
And yet they did not falter. The armored soldiers fought to the last but they were direly outnumbered even though they received reinforcements. The transport tried to take off even as dozens of small raptors attempted to claw their way up the fuselage.
Then one of the giant scorpion-snakes revealed a mutated tail. Instead of a giant stinger, it looked like a proboscis. It glowed with a sickly green light and shot a blob of goop at the transport. It splashed against the fuselage, killing the swarming raptors and melting the vehicle’s armor. Another shot hit one of the VTOL turbines and it exploded. The imbalanced propulsion caused the vehicle to spin out of control, turning upside down and plummeting down on the ground. It exploded, killing dozens of scythe raptors and wounding one of the scorpion-snakes.
Then the skies shone. This time, the young man could see the silhouette of the starships against the starry skies. He knew what was coming and looked the other way as he desperately ran away from the crash site. The swarm was as good as dead.
The starship beam weapons unleashed orbital bombardment once again. Even with his back to the light, he was blinded as the crystal spires shone with the fury of a dozen suns. Everything was white for an instant, and then the shockwave tossed him like a ragdoll, over and over.
He was glad he improved his vitality. This time he would surely die if he was still an ordinary human. That was his second-to-last thought as he, for the umpteenth time, fell unconscious.
He wished he had one of those power armors.