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I’d been notified that a new company was going to be moving into this outpost, because I have to know these things for my job. But it’s funny how the things that surprise you the most come from such unexpected directions, you know?
Anyway, this company was from a recon outfit, and a couple days after the Munitorium shipment arrived, the company actually showed up and moved into Malheureux Post West 39, or as we Guardsmen and logistics people call it, West Bumfuckistan. Let me tell you, Malheureux is a good name for the planet.
Anyway, shortly after everyone moved in, people started coming to my counter. And within a day something fairly unusual happened. A soldier walked around the corner of one of the barracks, and… I knew something was up from thirty paces. This soldier’s walk was wrong, somehow, the shape of her body subtly odd, and her face…
Then it hit me. She looked like an Eldar. A short Eldar. And yeah, I know what Eldar look like. One of those elegant bastards took my left arm off at the elbow, so I wear this damn claw instead.
But she wasn’t charging anyone, waving a sword around. Nope, she was wearing a standard Guard-issue uniform, a standard Guard-issue shotgun over her shoulder, a standard Guard-issue sidearm and bayonet at her hip, a standard Guard-issue kitbag on her shoulder, standard Guard-issue sunshades over her eyes and a standard Guard-issue helmet sitting on her head.
Well, see, I find myself as the guy with one foot in two camps – the Munitorium and the Cult Mechanicus. Out here in the cold of West Bumfuckistan, I’m the nearest thing we have to a quartermaster. And then this soldier walks up, looking kind of like a short Eldar, alongside our intel officer, a high-ranking NCO, and a handful more troopers. I see from the new girl’s uniform that she’s an NCO too. Interesting.
The NCO hands me a requisition order, so I scan it, and then because I can’t be fucking bothered to go get everything myself, I holler. “Gearbox, get this order, will you?” And in a moment the servitor steps out of the office behind me, takes the pink copy of the order from me and walks down the hall. Meanwhile I file the blue copy for the Cult Mechanicus and start entering the yellow copy into the Munitorium computer. (After which, of course, I have to file that too. The machine cult asks for one copy; the Munitorium wants three. Seriously, we have bureaucracy out the ass in the military, even more so than in civilian life. The Mechanicus may be pretty crazy, but they don’t make me do paperwork in triplicate.)
And while the other folks go wandering off after whatever errands they’re on, the woman sergeant takes her helmet off and plunks it down on the counter. I look up at her for a moment and gasp, because her ears… are weird. They’re pointed and stick out more, and they’re covered in the same short, black hair that grows on the rest of her head. I stare. She sees me staring.
“You’re with the Imperial Guard, right?” is what comes out of my mouth. Before I can stop myself. I never really liked abhumans, I abhor the mutant like anyone else, but… there’s some cognitive dissonance here, because she’s pretty easy on the eyes, and yet those ears, you know? So my inner smartass beat me to the punch.
And she just says, “Recon specialist. The ears come in handy.” And I open my mouth, and close my mouth, and shut up and get to working.
So I’m sitting there, typing one-handed because my fucking claw gets in the way, and fuming about the goddamn Munitorium and this fucking planet like I always am, right, when Sergeant Whatsername leans over the counter and says my name. “Davidsson.”
So I have to stop typing. I look up.
“Yes, Sergeant?”
“What kind of xenos gear do you have back there?”
“What? I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She smiled, unamused, I think; and I noticed with a jolt of slight horror that her teeth were just a little bit too long, too sharp for my tastes. A feral-worlder? No, much too comfortable with Guard kit and soldiering. Hmm.
“Don’t try to pull that on me. No quartermaster worth his salt doesn’t have a stash of contraband. And we’re in a war zone, and the Tau are camped on the other side of the valley, and the Eldar were messing around with the ruins in the middle of the valley, and this Guard post was here the whole time. Judging by what you were swearing about while you were typing, I’d say you were here the whole time, maybe even lost your arm fighting the Eldar. Am I right?”
My jaw dropped. Had I actually been saying it aloud, instead of just whispering to myself?
“Yes, you are, Sergeant. Now… now look, yes, I have sealed boxes of xenos stuff, it gets shipped off to the Inquisition. I don’t deal in that kind of contraband. Hah, you want porn or liquor I can hook you up, but… soldiers’ trophies are their own business. I don’t sell xenos goods of any kind.”
“Cut the bullshit. I’m not buying anything from you. I just want to know what you have.”
About this moment, Gearbox came back, towing a pallet full of the stuff that had been ordered for her and her team. “Ah, here we go,” I said, glad to be off the topic of contraband. “Shotgun ammo for you,” and I pushed it across the counter, “and your power cells, body armor, and your cold-weather, climbing and camo gear would probably fit better on a truck. Do you have a truck? Gearbox, follow her loading orders, please. Sergeant, could you sign here? Thanks. Okay. Where were we?”
“Xenos merchan— ahaha, I mean captured materiel. What kind of weapons and artifacts are soldiers bringing back?”
“Not much, to be honest. Mostly pulse weapons, not many of those, except for the time we caught up with one of their scout teams. They had a couple of rifles that looked like they could’ve been miniature railguns. Oh, and some spotting gear.”
“Oh? Tell me about the spotting gear.”
I sighed and reached under the counter, pulling out first a standard Guard-issue marksman’s scope, and then a rather larger piece. It was black and grey, with a couple of knobs and some markings in Tau script. “Try this. See, this is bigger than our scopes, right? And as far as I can tell, the knob on the left there changes the scope’s settings – don’t touch that during daytime, really – while the top one adjusts focus. Try it, you can feel the lenses move inside.”
“So it’s some sort of night-vision device?”
“I think so. It also has a laser pointer in it – invisible dot, but you can see it through the scope itself. Handy for marking targets, I suppose. The Tau do skulk around mostly at night, in any case.”
“Well, that’s certainly interesting,” she said. “Here, hide it away again. Now, nobody’s seen any heavy weapons?”
I shook my head. “Not that I know, other than a couple of transports. Intel people don’t talk to me, but it looks to me like the Tau are doing the same thing here that we are – just watching us.”
She looked like she was going to say something, then thought better of it. And about that time, in walked another sergeant, and he just strode right up to her – and you can tell when people are a couple by the way they stand, you know what I mean. And he takes her sunglasses off, as gently as you please, and hot damn, but her eyes have vivid yellow irises. That’s not the weird part – the Imperium is pretty big, people can have yellow eyes if they want – but her pupil is a vertical slit. Just like a cat. My eyes shivered at the sight of that.
And the other sergeant was speaking to her, I think he was wishing her luck and safety, and she responded with something, I wasn’t really listening. My mind was still reeling a little from seeing an abhuman with rank pins, being treated like a pure-blooded human. And as she was leaving, with Gearbox at her back, she turned back to me and grinned a lazy grin, and the combined effect – ears, eyes, teeth, that narrow face and odd inhuman grace – made me want to run and hide.
I want to say I never saw her again, but I did. She came back with some spent power cells and got some more climbing gear and a new suit of armor. I’m not sure what to think, you know – I’m an Emperor-fearing man, same as you, we’re all told that mutants come from the enemy… but at the same time, if they fight in the Emperor’s name, can they be all that bad? I’ll have to think about this.
Thanks for the drinks. Next time, I’m buying.
---
As seen on 4chan's /tg/ board. As per request (the sergeant's name is Irene).
If you are the anon who requested this, please let me know.
Anyway, this company was from a recon outfit, and a couple days after the Munitorium shipment arrived, the company actually showed up and moved into Malheureux Post West 39, or as we Guardsmen and logistics people call it, West Bumfuckistan. Let me tell you, Malheureux is a good name for the planet.
Anyway, shortly after everyone moved in, people started coming to my counter. And within a day something fairly unusual happened. A soldier walked around the corner of one of the barracks, and… I knew something was up from thirty paces. This soldier’s walk was wrong, somehow, the shape of her body subtly odd, and her face…
Then it hit me. She looked like an Eldar. A short Eldar. And yeah, I know what Eldar look like. One of those elegant bastards took my left arm off at the elbow, so I wear this damn claw instead.
But she wasn’t charging anyone, waving a sword around. Nope, she was wearing a standard Guard-issue uniform, a standard Guard-issue shotgun over her shoulder, a standard Guard-issue sidearm and bayonet at her hip, a standard Guard-issue kitbag on her shoulder, standard Guard-issue sunshades over her eyes and a standard Guard-issue helmet sitting on her head.
Well, see, I find myself as the guy with one foot in two camps – the Munitorium and the Cult Mechanicus. Out here in the cold of West Bumfuckistan, I’m the nearest thing we have to a quartermaster. And then this soldier walks up, looking kind of like a short Eldar, alongside our intel officer, a high-ranking NCO, and a handful more troopers. I see from the new girl’s uniform that she’s an NCO too. Interesting.
The NCO hands me a requisition order, so I scan it, and then because I can’t be fucking bothered to go get everything myself, I holler. “Gearbox, get this order, will you?” And in a moment the servitor steps out of the office behind me, takes the pink copy of the order from me and walks down the hall. Meanwhile I file the blue copy for the Cult Mechanicus and start entering the yellow copy into the Munitorium computer. (After which, of course, I have to file that too. The machine cult asks for one copy; the Munitorium wants three. Seriously, we have bureaucracy out the ass in the military, even more so than in civilian life. The Mechanicus may be pretty crazy, but they don’t make me do paperwork in triplicate.)
And while the other folks go wandering off after whatever errands they’re on, the woman sergeant takes her helmet off and plunks it down on the counter. I look up at her for a moment and gasp, because her ears… are weird. They’re pointed and stick out more, and they’re covered in the same short, black hair that grows on the rest of her head. I stare. She sees me staring.
“You’re with the Imperial Guard, right?” is what comes out of my mouth. Before I can stop myself. I never really liked abhumans, I abhor the mutant like anyone else, but… there’s some cognitive dissonance here, because she’s pretty easy on the eyes, and yet those ears, you know? So my inner smartass beat me to the punch.
And she just says, “Recon specialist. The ears come in handy.” And I open my mouth, and close my mouth, and shut up and get to working.
So I’m sitting there, typing one-handed because my fucking claw gets in the way, and fuming about the goddamn Munitorium and this fucking planet like I always am, right, when Sergeant Whatsername leans over the counter and says my name. “Davidsson.”
So I have to stop typing. I look up.
“Yes, Sergeant?”
“What kind of xenos gear do you have back there?”
“What? I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She smiled, unamused, I think; and I noticed with a jolt of slight horror that her teeth were just a little bit too long, too sharp for my tastes. A feral-worlder? No, much too comfortable with Guard kit and soldiering. Hmm.
“Don’t try to pull that on me. No quartermaster worth his salt doesn’t have a stash of contraband. And we’re in a war zone, and the Tau are camped on the other side of the valley, and the Eldar were messing around with the ruins in the middle of the valley, and this Guard post was here the whole time. Judging by what you were swearing about while you were typing, I’d say you were here the whole time, maybe even lost your arm fighting the Eldar. Am I right?”
My jaw dropped. Had I actually been saying it aloud, instead of just whispering to myself?
“Yes, you are, Sergeant. Now… now look, yes, I have sealed boxes of xenos stuff, it gets shipped off to the Inquisition. I don’t deal in that kind of contraband. Hah, you want porn or liquor I can hook you up, but… soldiers’ trophies are their own business. I don’t sell xenos goods of any kind.”
“Cut the bullshit. I’m not buying anything from you. I just want to know what you have.”
About this moment, Gearbox came back, towing a pallet full of the stuff that had been ordered for her and her team. “Ah, here we go,” I said, glad to be off the topic of contraband. “Shotgun ammo for you,” and I pushed it across the counter, “and your power cells, body armor, and your cold-weather, climbing and camo gear would probably fit better on a truck. Do you have a truck? Gearbox, follow her loading orders, please. Sergeant, could you sign here? Thanks. Okay. Where were we?”
“Xenos merchan— ahaha, I mean captured materiel. What kind of weapons and artifacts are soldiers bringing back?”
“Not much, to be honest. Mostly pulse weapons, not many of those, except for the time we caught up with one of their scout teams. They had a couple of rifles that looked like they could’ve been miniature railguns. Oh, and some spotting gear.”
“Oh? Tell me about the spotting gear.”
I sighed and reached under the counter, pulling out first a standard Guard-issue marksman’s scope, and then a rather larger piece. It was black and grey, with a couple of knobs and some markings in Tau script. “Try this. See, this is bigger than our scopes, right? And as far as I can tell, the knob on the left there changes the scope’s settings – don’t touch that during daytime, really – while the top one adjusts focus. Try it, you can feel the lenses move inside.”
“So it’s some sort of night-vision device?”
“I think so. It also has a laser pointer in it – invisible dot, but you can see it through the scope itself. Handy for marking targets, I suppose. The Tau do skulk around mostly at night, in any case.”
“Well, that’s certainly interesting,” she said. “Here, hide it away again. Now, nobody’s seen any heavy weapons?”
I shook my head. “Not that I know, other than a couple of transports. Intel people don’t talk to me, but it looks to me like the Tau are doing the same thing here that we are – just watching us.”
She looked like she was going to say something, then thought better of it. And about that time, in walked another sergeant, and he just strode right up to her – and you can tell when people are a couple by the way they stand, you know what I mean. And he takes her sunglasses off, as gently as you please, and hot damn, but her eyes have vivid yellow irises. That’s not the weird part – the Imperium is pretty big, people can have yellow eyes if they want – but her pupil is a vertical slit. Just like a cat. My eyes shivered at the sight of that.
And the other sergeant was speaking to her, I think he was wishing her luck and safety, and she responded with something, I wasn’t really listening. My mind was still reeling a little from seeing an abhuman with rank pins, being treated like a pure-blooded human. And as she was leaving, with Gearbox at her back, she turned back to me and grinned a lazy grin, and the combined effect – ears, eyes, teeth, that narrow face and odd inhuman grace – made me want to run and hide.
I want to say I never saw her again, but I did. She came back with some spent power cells and got some more climbing gear and a new suit of armor. I’m not sure what to think, you know – I’m an Emperor-fearing man, same as you, we’re all told that mutants come from the enemy… but at the same time, if they fight in the Emperor’s name, can they be all that bad? I’ll have to think about this.
Thanks for the drinks. Next time, I’m buying.
---
As seen on 4chan's /tg/ board. As per request (the sergeant's name is Irene).
If you are the anon who requested this, please let me know.
Category Story / All
Species Feline (Other)
Size 120 x 119px
File Size 42.3 kB
Yeah, I really do dislike the plot to Warhammer. Yes, I feel it is largely nothing but nihilistic dogma.
But that doesn't men I think less of those who do like it.
This is good writing, whether I like the plot or not. And I think I'll keep reading your work regardless of my concerns for the subject matter.
To be honest, I'm a little humbled that you can make something like this out of warhammer's plot.
I don't consider this a warhammer story. I consider it your story, and a pretty good one.
If I look at it that way, I think I can wizen up enough to keep off my soapbox in the future. ;P
I only ask that you don't devote yourself solely to warhammer stories, as I have seen many other artists do.
You have a lot of creativity. I'd like to wee what you can do with a wide variety of topics.
But that doesn't men I think less of those who do like it.
This is good writing, whether I like the plot or not. And I think I'll keep reading your work regardless of my concerns for the subject matter.
To be honest, I'm a little humbled that you can make something like this out of warhammer's plot.
I don't consider this a warhammer story. I consider it your story, and a pretty good one.
If I look at it that way, I think I can wizen up enough to keep off my soapbox in the future. ;P
I only ask that you don't devote yourself solely to warhammer stories, as I have seen many other artists do.
You have a lot of creativity. I'd like to wee what you can do with a wide variety of topics.
Well, monotreeme (the named anon who started the roll&tell threads the last time around) said there'd be another one this Tuesday evening; I look forward to that, to see what comes of it.
I do like the character in these, though - not Irene, but the narrator - and I will bring him back in future Warhammer stuff.
(I wondered if, for nerd cred, I should make Irene's surname "Pepperburg". Slightly different from Pepperberg, but close enough to be recognizable... Stg. Irene Pepperburg. Thoughts?)
I do like the character in these, though - not Irene, but the narrator - and I will bring him back in future Warhammer stuff.
(I wondered if, for nerd cred, I should make Irene's surname "Pepperburg". Slightly different from Pepperberg, but close enough to be recognizable... Stg. Irene Pepperburg. Thoughts?)
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