Editing Toyhammer (section)

=Chapter 11=

Thought for the day: "Guardsman, the Emperor gave you a trigger finger for a reason. USE IT!" - Commissar Tomas Sturm, Cadian 918th.

"Aaah shite." Vincent muttered as he saw the gang that had come in.

The asian nerd was kneeling on the ground less than eight feet away, a look of borderline panic on his face. Eyes were flicking left and right, trying to find some way of escape. His hands were spread out and trying to subtly search the empty ground for a weapon. Vincent was obviously on the verge of losing it completely.

Curled up right in front of me, the purple haired cultist was lying there, unconscious, her right hand still smoldering from the intense Warpfire that it once held. Her clothes had been torn and stained by the struggle between us and the blood spilled during that fight, respectively. Hers or mine, I didn't know.

My entire body ached as I came down from my adrenaline high. My left shoulder – victim to a daemonically powered knife stab – was throbbing in protest from its overwork in wrestling said knife from the cultist it had possessed. The fact that I had been wearing a light blue shirt at the time wasn't helping with my secondary thoughts of having to wash my blood off. My leg muscles were strained from their relatively rapid use, and what passed for my shoulder muscles had been strained from the impact when Vincent and I crashed a trolley through the glass panels of the supermarket window. All of my clothes had a tear or stain on them.

Around us, the remains – maybe just more than a half – of the scouting party that had stowed away in my satchel were preparing for their final stand against the gang-boys that had assembled twenty feet in front of us.

On my side of the fight, we had miniaturized state-of-the-art Tau weaponry mixed in with the ancient but no less effective weapons of the Imperium; lasguns (the sniper rifle variant) and bolters. The Eldar were using their needle-launching sniper rifles as well, but the specialized anti-personnel weapons weren't going to be anywhere as effective against the gang before us.

In their hands weapons ranging from a freshly fired pistol to knives – both new and some seemingly rusted with blood – and crude clubs made of lead pipes and similar materials.

"Izzat tha boy K-horn wants us to fuck up?" The guy to the left of the leader asked.

"Fucked if I know." A third drawled.

"Fuckit, jus' cap 'em and go. Blood's all he needs. K-horn doesn't care where the blood comes from."

I sighed, inwardly. I knew this kind of group.

This was the kind of group that usually trawled the edges of the 'hoods: They weren't 'real' gang members, more like potential recruits for the actual ones. Posers, for lack of a better word. Wannabes. Their 'traditions' were derived from the bravado-fueled rap videos, and their behavior taken from the same. Mostly aggression-driven into a pack mentality like that of wolves, they strove to impress their peers and the real gangers... perfect prey for the Blood God with promises of power and respect.

Even so, there were five of them, facing Vincent, the scouts and myself. Normally, on a even scale, a single Scout – whether Eldar, Tau, Space Marine or Imperial - would have been more than a fair match for them.

But dammit, 1/56 scale sucked.

Okay... think.

Think... fuck!

I had some of the most brilliant tactical and strategic minds in the universe – the Space Marines, warriors that had survived centuries if not millennia of warfare, the Eldar chess-masters of stratagems, who had the oldest and wisest counsel to draw their plans from, and the naïve but no less effective Tau way of killing blow and patient hunter – and yet I had not learned a thing from these guys.

But I knew some basics, from games (of all things. Vincent would be proud). Assess the terrain... okay, okay... don't panic.

I can survive this.

Firstly, think of where you are fighting.

Our corner of the near-empty car park was devoid of anything that could stop a bullet. I had eighty – maybe ninety – pounds of unconscious female cultist at my knees, and all they had to do was start shooting; the only other cars around besides Vincent's pickup were your typical soccer-mom mini-van, and a hatchback that looked like it belonged to another suburban mom. Both were at too great a distance to actually give us any real cover. The hedges bordering the parking lot also hemmed us in, keeping us from escaping out into open road – it also concealed us from anyone trying to figure out where the shots came from.

Alright... how about consolidating resources? That was a good start. Leave nobody behind.

"Guys, get into my satchel." I muttered through clenched teeth. The stealthy scouts were crouched low to the ground, now, their cameleoline cloaks and battlesuit stealth systems allowing them to blend with the ground as they moved to sneak into my bag. Not good, not good. The miniature soldiers began to inch their way across the asphalt, backing their way into the battered satchel.

The Blood God's servants kept their weapons raised as we held up our hands in the universal 'Hey, I'm not a threat!' gesture. There were... lets count 'em... five of the crimson clothed gangers, one of which was armed with... what was that gun? I turned to Vincent, ignoring the conversation spouting from the gangers like water from the mouth of a gargoyle.

"Vincent, what kind of guns is that guy using?" I hissed to my friend. Said nerd squinted for a second, examining the weapon in the ganger's hand.

"Silver plated Colt .45. He's got six shots left if h-"

He blinked and then jerked to the left, an action followed by second gunshot from the lead ganger. The round skipped off the concrete behind us, then into the hedges. Vincent swore in surprise, the bullet had passed through his clothes, ripping a hole in the left back of his jacket. He half-rolled, half-tumbled to the side and came up stumbling, managing to throw himself into a run before the gun was brought back to bear. A third gunshot sent a bullet through the air where he had been.

All thoughts of thinking left my brain.

The leader managed to get off one more shot, which again went wide, before there was a surprised cry of frustration from him. I saw the outstretched pistol, still held one-handed and sideways, looking not quite right; there was now a copper-brown cylinder sticking out of the silver plate on the side, and the barrel was sticking out of the front.

A moment of confusion passed.

Big, bandana faced and nasty snorted in disgust and threw away the gun.

"OH-PAHN FAI-HAR!" Barked the heavily accented voice of MacTavish, each syllable emphasized by his bellowing voice. For a scout, he could sure make a lot of noise.

Suddenly, there was a bright mashup of firepower connecting the open satchel hanging off my neck to the throat of the nearest ganger – the one who had stepped forward as his leader threw away the gun. His fellows flinched and some yelped as bright lances of energy scorched their skin, but the leader was hit the worst. He clutched at the traumatized skin, letting the metal pipe in his hands clatter to the ground. Blood seeping out from between his pale fingers, I could see eyes widen as he gasped for breath. There was a choked gurgle, and the ganger pitched forward.

And then I truly felt the Hand of a God.

It came like a sudden pressure, pressing down on me from all around... You know, when you put on dishwashing gloves and then stick the hand into water? Apply that to your entire body. The feeling was crushing the breath from my lungs. The pure malice that was floating around me was tangible, and I felt the whispers of daemons as they passed by to dive into the gangers. A dry throat and trembling fingers were all that was needed to tell me that things were not going well on any of the planes of existance.

The four other gangers roared as they trampled their former comrade.

"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"

I almost crapped myself right there. Instead, I decided to be more productive and run away. Bending down, I picked up the cultist, and found my estimates of her weight about right. Why I picked her up, I didn't know.

Pity? Maybe.

But what I knew was that she had a lot of explaining to do, and I wasn't going to let her get out of it by dying. I hefted her body up with my arms, and broke off into a run... well, slow jog, at best. My protesting feet carried me as quickly as I could, satchel bouncing behind me, as the battle cry of Khorne went up.

"SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!"

A ganger sprinted ahead of his leader, leaped and tried to beat at me with his improvised club. I felt the heavy blow crash into the space between my shoulder blades, went down like a log, the cultist and the scouts coming along for the ride, and was set upon by the others.

The cultist rolled away, more-or-less safe in this situation, and I felt the satchel bouncing off my left shoulder, sending another shock of pain through my nervous system. Blows rained down on me as the others surrounded my prone form, searching for the weapon that had felled their comrade,.

A quarter-inch thick line of blue lightning sliced out from the satchel, burning a nasty scar onto the forearm of one ganger. I managed to break free for a second, and threw it open, scattering the scout teams onto the ganger climbing on top of me, punctuating each blow with a word that sent my head into another bout of throbbing pain.

"BLOOD. FOR. THE. BLOOD. GOD!

SKULLS. FOR. TH~"

"KRAK GRENADE!"

In my state of concussed disorientation, my eyes seemed to decide that it was a good idea to be aware of what was happening in front of me; a Space Marine leaped from my shoulder, scampered his way up the ganger's bandana, and shoved a krak grenade into his ear. Earlier – maybe on the fourth day – the Space Marines had shown me the oversized, tin-can shaped grenades they used to crack open doors and armor that was too strong for regular frag-grenades, but too weak to waste a melta bomb on.

There was the almost familiar thunderclap sound of its detonation, and suddenly the ganger was dead weight in my struggling arms. I decided that he was thoroughly distracted, so my arm came around to give him a punch on the right temple. Kicking the limp body off of me, I managed to scramble onto my feet as a second round of gunshots split the air.

Two pops reported the shots of the pistol behind me. I prepared myself for the pain. The crunchy sound of a bullet hitting a human body was soon followed by a scream of pain. Around me, the remaining gangers got their act together, their morale – or what passed as morale among these guys – broken, and they turned tail and ran. The suffocating anger in the air seemed to lighten, and I could feel myself breathe freely again.

Beside me, the cultist shuddered.

"Khorne does not care where the blood flows from..." She whispered.

Still crouched behind the smoking pistol, Vincent collapsed with a long release of breath, his back to the lamp-post that usually illuminated the car park at night. The Colt .45 slipped out of his hand as three shell-casings rolled about. They stopped when they hit the body of the still writhing ganger, who was clutching at his thigh, shot through by the pistol.

"Thank God for YouTube. And Halvorsen." He muttered distantly, picking up the pistol again. I was busy with searching for the Scouts, who were amazingly unharmed as I rolled the unconscious – and still bleeding with an odd whistling sound to his breath – ganger onto his side, allowing the Tau Stealthsuits to pick themselves up and crawl out. The Shas'vre's front paint had been completely scraped off, revealing the off-blue metal underneath his stealth field thingy.

Barrel pointed at the ground and slightly away from himself, Vincent began to half-walk, half-stagger towards me. "Hey, Michael! You all right over there?"

"Just fine. Ugh... I think I might need a medic, though." I jabbed him with an old joke from our highschool days, trying to distract myself from the fact that we had almost been killed by crazy cultists for a blood god.

All I got was his blank face.

I sighed. "How about you?"

"First time I ever shot a real gun... didn't hit a thing I was aiming for, though." He stammered, giving his newly captured weapon a glance. Nerding out was overriding his freaking out, it seemed. However, the guy still looked like he was in an anesthetic daze, his eyes unfocused and distant, his movements jerky and... uncoordinated. It was like looking at a puppet with only half the strings attached. Stumbling across the carpark, Vincent fell to his knees beside the ganger who had once wielded the gun.

"Dasar keparat!" Vincent swore. I think it was Indonesian for 'damned fool'. "Didn't know how to clear a stovepipe... bodoh, they put the iron sights on top for a reason..."

He shook his head in bewilderment as he poked the guy once with the gun, and pressed the weapon to the guy's neck, finger on the trigger now, and began to rummage through his pockets. Pushing the guy over onto his back, Vincent began to pat him down, his hands digging into the hoodie pouch.

"What the hell?" I asked, confused. Vincent had moved on to the other side of his pants. A cellphone was discarded offhandedly.

"Just looking for..." There was the sound of a buckle being undone, and metal sliding on leather. "Ah, here we go."

Vincent produced a pair of extra clips, and after a little searching around he thumbed a button just behind the trigger, to eject the half-spent magazine already in the gun onto his waiting palm. His hands then pushed a new clip into the slot – the trembling fingers missed their mark the first few times - and clicked on one of the catches on the slide of the pistol.

"Eight shots." He murmured to himself, searching his own pockets for somewhere safe to store his newly captured weapon. A cough from a Guardsman alerted me to him. I turned around, lowered my hand to pick him up, and sat him on my shoulder. The man raised his voxcaster to my ear so that whoever was on the other end of the line could speak to me.

"Michael, the auspex is still reading life-signs from these cultists." MacTavish reported. I nodded, and moved onto the real concern.

"How many did we lose this time?" I muttered, walking over to the second ganger that we had put down.

Put down. Funny word to use. Not killed. Or murdered. Put down.

Like a rabid dog.

Too true, mon-keigh. However, these followers of Khorne must be... how do you say it? Nipped at the bud, lest they cause more lives – innocent lives – to be lost.

A few souls damned for many more to be saved.

The age old argument, mon-keigh.

Zara's voice... well, the shadow of her voice still echoed in my head.

I sighed as I picked up a knife, wondering the feeling of its weight in my hands. Was it anything like this? Feeling the weight of a man's soul, knowing that it was yours to use, abuse or discard? I shook those thoughts out of my head as I imagined the hundreds of miniature troops in my house. My head spun a little as I thumbed the safety catch and folded the blade closed. It would do for now. No blood on it, it should be fine. The newly looted weapon went into my pocket.

"Hello? Are you there, Michael?"

"Sorry... spaced out a little there... what's up? How many wounded?" I knelt down beside the cultist, who was still unconscious. How she had slept through all that, I don't know... I wondered if she had hit her head harder than she should have. Picking her up, I was again reminded of strained muscles and aching limbs.

"Surprisingly, we have nothing more than a few more broken limbs, but they are easily repaired." MacTavish grunted over the vox. "The Eldar Ranger who lost his arm is getting quite pale now, though. We have to get him to an apocetharian, or whatever passes for a healer for those Eldar. The Space Marine Scouts are doing pretty well, but that's Blood Ravens for you, never give up, do they? The Tau are doing well enough, too; I don't think they took much more than paint scratches during that little skirmish."

The wail of police sirens drew closer. Of course, being in a rather isolated suburban area, it would have taken the cops a while to get here.

"What was that?" MacTavish's voice was edged with worry.

"Police... I think your term for them would be 'Arbites'."

"Will they assist us?" MacTavish queried.

"No. I doubt they'd believe me even if I had you guys around. I guess the best thing to do is to get out of here..." I pulled myself up, and turned to my friend. "Vincent!"

Vincent snapped out of his shocked reverie, and looked up. "Yeah?"

"Time to leave."

He grimly nodded, and pulled out his keys as he padded over to the car. His fingers missed the keyhole the first few times. He stopped, clenched his trembling fingers together, and carefully slipped the key into the lock.

"No kidding, Mike."

The door popped open as he pulled on it, and Vincent climbed inside.

I walked over to the cultist, and pulled her limp form up. Vincent started up the car.

Behind me, someone fired off his bolter into the air.

"HEY! AREN'T YOU FORGETTING SOMETHING!"

Eventually, we managed to pack up everyone and leave just as the police came wailing down the highway. I don't quite believe that the time from the Cultist trying to knife us to the last shots of the rumble we had just survived had taken only ten minutes, fifteen at most.

And yet, almost ten minutes after that, I felt my hands trembling.

Vincent slowed the car down a little as we went down along the quietest roads he could find. Speeding would attract attention, that much we knew. 'No need to rush, we had all the time in the world' was all I could say to reassure myself. The five minute drive home from this supermarket would be the longest one I've ever taken.

I was sitting in the passenger seat of Vincent's pickup, with the girl between the two of us, sitting on the middle seat. The miniatures were on the dashboard or in the open glovebox, treating injuries and taking turns at watching the girl. Vincent was obviously uncomfortable: He had his wrench out again, wedged between his thigh and the seat.

"Where to now, Mike?"

"My place, I guess."

''Bring me back that girl. She is the lock to the door.

Of course.''