Editing Nobledark Imperium Writing (section)

== Me Time ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''

Arronax. A tiny dustball out in the middle of nowhere. A breathable atmosphere, but no native lifeforms more complex than an oxygen-producing prokaryote. Which was why it was so odd that a pair of Warhound titans were on its surface. The two colossal mechs stood guard, watching over a facility so well hidden it seemed to blend into the surrounding rock. The titans themselves were also just out of sight beneath a nearby rock face, out of the range of any orbital sensors.
 
Even odder was the presence of anyone else on this space rock. Yet the sensors were clear, there was at least one other lifeform on this planet approaching the facility. After a brief moment of communication between the two princeps, the two Warhound rose up as one, striding forward as the intruder came into view. The figure seemed to be alone and was obscured, covered by a simple woven robe. The Warhounds towered over the intruder, weapons bristling, as the vox crackled to life.
 
“This planet is off limits. Identify yourself or vacate the premises, otherwise we will open fire.”
 
The figure only smiled.

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

---

Klaxons sounded across the Inquisition base. Stormtroopers were roused from their beds and weapons were immediately placed in their hands. Personnel ran to and fro like ants in a disturbed nest, each trying to figure out where they were supposed to go to perform their duty.
 
“What the bloody hell is going on?” one stormtrooper asked.
 
“Warhounds on the surface encountered an anomaly and haven’t reported in,” the sergeant, Jezhua, replied, “Protocol is to assume the worst. The facility is under attack.”
 
The combead hissed with static in Sergeant Jezhua’s ear, patching him through to the adept watching the security cameras.
 
“Uh, sir?” the adept said, “we’ve re-established visual contact with the Warhound titans.”
 
The adept turned to his screen, looking at the sole leg sticking up into the horizon like an upended drumstick.
 
“Well, what’s left of them, anyway.”
 
“Details, adept,” Jezhua barked, “What do you see?”
 
“Six figures on the landing pad. Can’t make out any details, the remaining camera is too far away. They’re standing right in front of the entrance, but the hangar doors are closed.”
 
The sergeant clapped his hands on the stormtrooper’s shoulder.
 
“There are six intruders just outside of the main door. Go, set up a defense in front of the door so if they try to come in they’ll find the appropriate welcome waiting for them.”
 
The stormtrooper nodded. He rushed through the base, travelling down two corridors and up a flight of stairs, to find himself in the hangar that represented the entryway to the rest of the facility. With calculated precision, he set up his laser carbine and aimed it at the closed metal doors of the entryway. Around him were at least thirty additional Guardsmen who had done the same. They were ready for anything to come through that door, at least, as ready as they were going to be. There was a pause. An eerie silence permeated the air, tension high despite the quiet.
 
BANG!
 
The sound echoed throughout the room, several Guardsmen flinching involuntarily.
 
BANG!
 
The second blow hit the door with a visceral effect, the vibrations so powerful that the Guardsmen could literally feel them through the floor. It sounded as though the forces of hell themselves were trying to force their way in.
 
BA-CRUNCH!
 
The door yielded with the third blow, the upper corner of one of the hangar doors bending inward from the force leaving a triangle-shaped gap in the door. Sunlight flooded into the room, momentarily blinding some of the Guardsmen. As their eyes readjusted to the change in light, a solitary figure stepped through the gap in the doorway and into the room. The figure was clearly an Eldar, given that it was at least a head taller than the any of the Guardsmen in the room and had short-cropped red hair that was a shade too dark and too red to belong to any human. The figure wore a garishly pattered suit of armor with a fur-lined collar, suggesting it was a Crone Worlder, and wielded a hideous-looking sword that looked large enough to decapitate a grox. Normally, the Guardsmen would have opened fire, but the room stood in stunned awe, fear overriding any sort of combat reflex. They knew who this figure was. Everyone knew who this figure was. They had thought they were ready for anything, but none of them had expected the person that had just walked through their door.
 
“Oh come off it,” she said, seemingly to no one as particular, “I am not turning you into an overgrown lockpick. Look, we’ll find someone to kill, and you’ll feel like your old self in no…”
 
The Eldar looked up, having just become aware of the thirty or so Guardsmen in the room. She seemed just as surprised as the Guardsmen, the two sides having formed an impromptu standoff. One of the Guardsmen fainted with a sound, the realization of exactly who they faced having just sunk in. It was one unfortunately stupid Guardsman who broke the pregnant silence.
 
“L…Lady Malys. What in Terra’s name are you doing here?”
 
“Oh, you know. Just needed some “me” time.”
 
With that, the hangar turned into a whirlwind of blades. Malys went into a frenzy, her eyes wild and her tooth-like jaw plates locked in a hideous grin. She moved with astonishing agility, cutting through the Guardsmen before they could even react. A Guardsman tried to yell to the others to open fire, only to have his head sliced from his body before he could finish speaking. Lasbolts fired through the air, but every one of them seemed to hit just wide of the Croneworlder. Guardsmen fired at where they thought the female Eldar was one moment, only for her to have already stepped out of the way the next, their lasbolt penetrating the helmet of their comrade on the other side. The Crone seemed to take particular pleasure in that.
 
The stormtrooper gritted his teeth as he watched the Daemon Queen tear through his comrades. Seeing them dead left a bitter taste in his stomach, but he had to be vigilant if his shots were to do more than just fly wild like the rest. Just then, he noticed Lady Malys had made a mistake in her movements. Malys had briefly paused in her deadly criss-crossing of the room, giving him the perfect opportunity to put a lasbolt through her unarmored head. The stormtrooper tried to take the shot, only to hear a whirring noise and feel a sharp pain in his wrist. Looking down, he saw that his hand had been entirely severed from his forearm. Another Crone Eldar, this one armed with a saw pistol, had come through the hole in the doorway following his queen. At first the fight was merely lopsided. When the five other Crone Eldar entered the fray, it simply became unfair.
 
---
 
As the battle wrapped up and the high of combat began to fade, the question became what to do with the survivors. One was the Guardsman who had fainted when Malys had entered the room. Malys laughed. That one got to live, if for no other reason than the delightful squeaking sound it made when it fainted into a heap. The other was another mon-keigh soldier that had been wounded in the leg and was merely injured, as opposed to dead.
 
“The injured mon-keigh, as you requested milady,” replied one Crone warrior, having bound the human soldier’s arms behind her back.
 
A female, if Malys recalled right. She always did have such trouble telling male and female humans apart. Malys nodded to the warrior. The Daemon Queen thought to herself for a moment, and then got to work.
 
“Well, well, welll,” Malys strutted across the hangar of the dead and the dying to look at the female guardsman. “What are we going to do with you. We could always take you into the Warp and leave you to the tender mercies of daemons. Watching them tear mortals limb from limb is always good for a show. Or we could seal you inside a marionette. Seeing mon-keigh claw at their skin as they struggle to come to terms with the sensory deprivation always gives me a shiver up my spine.”

Malys grabbed the guardswoman by the hair.

“I tell you what. I’m feeling merciful today. You tell me everything you know about this facility, then maybe we’ll pretend we pretend we overlooked you among the dead in this room. Otherwise…”

Malys swung her greatsword around, pointing its tip at one Slaaneshi Croneworlder standing in the corner.

“I’m going to have Asmordach here rip out your nerves one by one and we play a little game of ‘how much of an intact nervous system can you pull out of a live mon-keigh before they die’”.
 
The threat of violence apparently helped the mon-keigh find its tongue, though not in the way Lady Malys had hoped for.
 
“You vile fiend. I will not give you what you want, nor will anyone in this facility. Your day of reckoning will come abomination. Even if is not by my hand, then by the next person, or the next. The Imperium will never fall to the likes of…”
 
“Fehlkor?” Malys spoke over the dithering mon-keigh, her voice an annoyed growl.
 
“Yes milady?”
 
“Kill it like the rest.”
 
“Killing it like the rest ma’am.”
 
After that little pleasure was out of the way, it was time to decide how to proceed further into the facility. Maps of the facility showed the upper level was nothing but guard quarters and military ordinance, whereas down below was where the really fun stuff was kept. Malys crooked her finger at one of the Cronedar, beckoning the Slaaneshi to her side. The augmented vox taking up much of the Crone Eldar’s throat and lower face crackled to life, speaking to Lady Malys in a distinctly artificial voice.
 
“Your command, Lady Malys?”
 
“The five of you go on ahead down to the lower levels. You know what we are looking for and what to do with it.”
 
“All due respect but, are you sure that’s wise? Splitting up seems strategically unsound. We could be isolated and picked off one by one.”
 
“Today is not a ‘strategy’ day. Today is a ‘fun’ day. I want you to remember that. I picked this facility for a reason. There should be nothing here that poses a significant threat to you or the others. If not then, well, I expect you to be smart enough to do something about it.”
 
“Understood. Your will be done.”
 
The Crone’s voice was like screeching on a mon-keigh record player. He had claimed he had made his voice sound like that to honor the cacophonies made by the ancient musicians of the Eldar, but Malys suspected he just wanted to have a voice that was as annoying as physically possible while still having enough of a reason to not be justified in killing him.
 
Malys shuddered. Ten thousand years of service to the Dark Gods and there were still things in the galaxy capable of provoking a reaction from her. One learns something new every day. The five Cronedar having already moved out before her, she followed their path down to the lower levels.
 
---
 
Seargent Jezhua silently cursed to himself as he pressed himself against the wall. Everything was going to shit. His men were scattered, people were disappearing, and no one seemed to be answering from the hangar. The last transmission Jezhua had received had reported five Cronedar descending into the labs from the hangar elevator, so at the very least Jezhua could presume what happened to them. And worst of all, he was so busy coordinating everyone else he was only able to grab a stubber from the armory before things went to shit.
 
Make that six. Jezhua had just heard another Crone descend down the elevator and walk into the hallway just ahead of him. From the sound of the footsteps, the Croneworlder was walking forward at a leisurely pace, seemingly uncaring of the fact that it was standing in the middle of a hostile enemy base. From its shadow, he could tell the Chaos Eldar was a female, and was seemingly unarmed beyond a large sword strapped to her back.
 
Jezhua gritted his teeth. Everything had gone ploin-shaped. And so he was going to have to rescue his men and take back this facility. Even if he had to hunt the Crones down one at a time. And this nearly unarmed, sword-wielding Cronedar seemed like a good place to start. Jezhua broke from cover and levelled his weapon at the Cronedar’s head.
 
“Stop”.
 
The Crone hesitated for a moment, as if amused by the audacity of the situation, then slowly turned to face him. Jezhua remained firm. If he had recognized who the Croneworlder was, it did not seem to faze him. Malys chuckled.
 
“You know who I am, yet you are still foolish enough to point a gun at me?”
 
“Lady, I know a thing or two about weapons. I know that’s a six-foot long broadsword strapped to your back. That’s nearly as tall as you are. You don’t have any other weapons. I know that no one, not even an Eldar, can whip a blade like that out before I can fire. The blade is just too unwieldy, and I’m too far away. Try anything, and I’ll put a bullet in your head before you can even move. It’s simple physics. You just can’t move that fast.”
 
Jezhua pulled the trigger, but before he could react Malys was on him, impaling him to the wall through the gut with that sword of hers. The taste of blood in his mouth, Sergeant Jezhua looked weakly around He knew he had fired, he had seen the muzzle flare in front of him. There was no way he could have missed at that range. Then, he had a chilling moment of realization. Sergeant Jezhua looked down, only to see the shell of his bullet had been deflected into the ground, neatly bisected by the Crone Eldar’s blade. He looked back up only to find the face that had haunted the nightmares of every soldier in the Imperium merely only inches from his own.
 
“You’re very perceptive. But you made once critical miscalculation. I CAN move that fast. And now, well, my friend is hungry. So eat well.”
 
Jezhua noticed that the last remark had not been directed at him. He looked down to see the blade impaling his body glowing with a whitish-green, unholy light. He felt a pulling sensation, as if something he couldn’t accurately describe was being ripped from his body. And going into the black abyss which he realized the sword really was. Sergeant Jezhua screamed. But no one was able to hear him.
 
---
 
Standing outside the ruined entrance of the research facility, Lady Malys examined a small data chip, holding it up to the light.
 
“Here it is, data on all Inquisitorial activities and research programs within the subsector. Our prize for this day. So informative, so juicy, so…”
 
She threw the chip on the ground and smashed it under her foot.
 
“Useless.”
 
Okay, maybe it wasn’t entirely useless. Maybe some small squadron of Crone Eldar or local Chaos cult could have made use of the data. But it wasn’t useful to her, which was really mattered. And the facility had been so sparsely guarded. Just normal human mon-keigh, not any of her unenlightened kind or the augmented kinds of mon-keigh the Imperium usually had around one of its facilities. Malys sighed in frustration. How was she supposed to have any “me” time when all of the targets she attacked had turned out to be so damn boring. The Warhounds were fun for a warmup but then it was all downhill after that. Looking overhead, she watched as an Imperial ship warped into existence overhead. That was her signal to go, despite her enthusiasm a battleship was rather outside her current means right now and she wasn’t looking forward to dying again.
 
Well. Maybe the third time was the charm.

</div>
</div>