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KINDA looking for compliments to make me feel better, but please provide constructive criticism if you feel the urge
As he slid the last round into the magazine, and loaded it into the auto pistol, one thought ran through his head over and over again. "I was fuggin' made for this"
He wasn't entirely wrong. Raised by the underhive of Necromunda, this was far from the most complex job he had ever done. A damn social gathering compared to the masterpiece he had pulled off just a month prior. From the beginning his survival had depended on his ability to separate others from what they thought was theirs. This didn't make him special, this was a requirement for survival. What made him special was that nobody ever knew he was even coming until after he had long departed.
The very morning the Imperial Armory got word a raid was planned, they opened their vaults to find they had been pilfered the night before. Nothing to be found save for the old, disused las pistol that sat in the place Davus' had retrieved his own auto pistol from.
"MADE for this. Fuggin' made for it."
The autopistol returned to it's home at his hip, his nose dipped briefly into the pile of soft pink powder on the ammo can that served as his night stand, and he was on his feet. He made his way from his personal quarters past a lone emergency response servitor extinguishing the last embers of a refuse fire some juve must have lit in the street. His lips slightly numb he spat a glistening green glob on a beautiful arc through the air that smacked the servitor in the cheek before following the contour made by the voxcaster protruding from its face. Davius smirked to himself, and wiped the string of spittle that trailed his chin as he turned to continue to his mark. The smirk faltered slightly at the sight of the Arbites Enforcer, but he held it fast. They where inspecting a pict screen in their hand, shock maul leaning against the wall next to them. "Alright" he thought to himself "That was damn stupid. Just move along. You're nothing to him, just some other ganger scu-" "Citizen." The Enforcers voice was a touch softer than he had expected. A woman? The carapace and helm hid most indicators he would usually rely on. He had stopped when she spoke, 10 Meters away. "I do apologize, Enforcer, me mum you see, she's been real sick and I-"
"Lord Helmawr has decreed that for the crime of desecration the recommended punishment is to be servitude."
Davius gestured over his shoulder. "For spitting on a fugging servitor?" Fear raced through his mind, but he kept it out of his voice.
"No" This voice was much deeper, and just behind him. He whirled to see another enforcer towering over him, his autopistol impossibly out of his holster and in the man's hands. He turned it over to display the Imperial Aquilla, freshly defaced from the last night's revelries.
"Oh f-" Cut off by a sudden electric crackle, he knew no more.
"...-peror hear my prayer!"
Pain tore Davius back into consciousness. He felt as though a giant was trying to pull his head from his body as he would pull the cork from a bottle. His hands flew to his neck and his legs kicked in nothingness. A buzzer sounded and his legs swung back as he was wrenched forward by his head. Surely this would kill him. His eyes where open, but rolled into the back of his head.
"Emperor please anything but thNOOOO" The man swinging in the nothingness in front of Davius screamed out as they all came to a stop.
His hands grasped onto an iron collar, and he pulled with all his might, temporarily relieving the pain and clearing his vision. He quickly wished he hadnt. Davius found himself nude, suspended by the head from a conveyer belt. Most of the others in the same predicament where graced with unconsciousness. Most of those awake could be heard behind him either screaming in pain and horror, or bargaining in their own way. The only person left in front of him that could be considered conscious in any real way was the man directly to his front.
"Fugg your Emperor!" Davius failed to keep the fear out of his voice this time. What did it matter anymore. Several limp bodies in front of the both of them was a station manned by a servitor connected directly to the belt system that locomoted them through the facility. One of the Servitor's limbs ended in a pneumatic gun it was affixing to the collar around the unconscious body before it. With a hiss of pressurized gas and a sickening crunch it drove a small gold spike into the back of the woman's head. She awoke screaming, but was quickly silenced as the Servitors other limb, ending in a thin moist red drill bit, entered her skull through her eye. The arm made a stirring motion, and withdrew again. The pneumatic arm withdrew and several thin gold strands trailed from the gold plate now flush with the woman's head. The buzzer sounded and as Davius lurched forward with the others an arc of lightning leapt from the Servitors station to the gold strands, which immediately stiffened, and seemed to sink into the gold plate. Her arms and legs had flailed briefly, but then shuddered and started to extend, retract, and rotate through their full range of motion before she fell out of sight around a bend. The air felt cold, a stream of urine running down his leg.
Davius was sure he would cease to be in about 60 seconds, give or take. A control node inserted into his skull to rob him of autonomy, and a thin steel spear in his frontal lobe to dull his mind and steal his memories. Truthfully it was a quicker death than he had thought he would find one day. Perhaps not a true death, but surely Servitors are not what he had ever considered 'Alive'. If he was honest with himself he was lucky to have made it to the ripe old age of 24. The procession stopped again. Only two men in front of him now, Davius was beginning to accept his fate. He knew the 2 real paths his life could have taken where either as a leader of his house, or with death. He had always hoped for the former, but was not at all surprised to find himself thrown into the latter. The buzzer sounded and Davius slid into position behind the Servitor station. "Emperor hear my prayer! Save me from this fate!" The man in front of him was shrieking between sobs.
"Fugg your fugging Emperor! There's no salvation from this!" The anger had erupted from nowhere, eclipsing his fear. Davius didn't accept this. Why should he? Everything that made him who he was snatched away because some man he never met half the galaxy away doesnt like what he did to a damned aquilla? By what right did the Emperor snuff him and all these others out?
"Noooo! NOOOOOOOOO!" The pneumatic gun affixed to his collar, the man in front of him thrashed his limbs as the drill bit aligned itself with his eye, tears and sweat pouring down his face.
Davius closed his eyes, but there was nothing to block out the crunch that followed.
Davius heard a gentle whir, he assumed the drill bit spinning up to make it's way through the skull, and he squeezed his eyes shut all the harder. "Good" Davius thought. "Fugg 'im, won't listen to 'is blubbering while they murder me." Incredibly, despite the chunk of metal that was just slammed through his skull, the man in front of him could still speak, albeit, barely above a whisper.
"n'thing b't thiz." The noise from the drill, so quiet that Davius had barely heard it from 2 meters away, increased dramatically in volume, its low pitch shrieking upwards like a jetbike with the accelerator locked to full. Davius pried one eye open a crack just in time to see the mans head explode, and his body tumble out of sight below him.
The anger dissipated as quickly as it had arrived, letting the fear come surging back. Davius started to get light headed, and realized he had been screaming. Chunks of brain matter where sliding from his face. He was quite sure a piece may have even landed in his mouth. Davius spit out something that felt like a mouth full of fish eggs, or at least as they had been described to him, and tasted of offal.
The buzzer sounded again, and Davius vomited as he was yanked forward once more. The Lightning leapt from the servitors station and struck the now empty collar, flash boiling the blood at the point of impact. It was only once he came to a stop, and the servitor swooped into view, that he saw the problem.
While the servitor busied itself affixing its other limb to the back of the collar, Davius stared in silent, wide eyed horror at the bloody stump where the drill bit had been. It sounded as though he had been shoved into the void. He heard nothing but his blood hammering in his ears, even as he saw from his new vantage point all manner of dismemberment, welding, assembling, and testing that surely produced a cacophony.
Then came the hiss from behind him peculiarly isolated and loud. The pace of his panicked breaths quickened. His jaw ached and his teeth creaked from clenching. Davius never heard the crunch. His world was nothing but immense, immeasurable pain. His vision was a blurr, but he could tell the servitor was waving the stump in front of his face by the mix of blood, lubricating oils, and coolant that washed over him. The buzzer must have sounded, though Davius didn't hear that either, and he lurched into motion.
Realizing what was coming, he sucked in a deep breath and screamed out "WAIT!" A sensation like pins and needles spread in a wave from the back of his head, and suddenly sound washed back over him. Davius' eyes, previously darting too and fro in his madness, locked themselves forward.
He tried to blink the fluids from his eyes, but they wouldn't obey. His arms, unbidden, began to rotate, and he felt himself fall a few inches before his jaw caught at the collar. A fresh wave of agony washed over him and he felt teeth tumble from his lips. His thoughts where a nonsensical, animal panic. Run. Hide. His body, however, had fallen still again. His vision began to clear somewhat, but all he could make out where shapes. More servitors, certainly. The shapes slid past him on either side, and his eyes disobeyed again as he tried to follow one of them past.
A curious heat appeared at his left arm. It felt almost pleasant at first in the freezing environment, but quickly became unbearable. Just as he began to think he had been rejected, and was to be immolated, the heat entered his arm and somehow seemed to grow even hotter. Then he knew nothing.
Davius woke with a start. He looked around his room, but couldn't pick out most of the details in the dark. He sat up in his cot and turned on the lumen lamp. Everything where it should be, the autopistol hanging in a holster on the back of a chair. His breathing slowed but his heart continued to pound. It had felt so real. The back of his head still felt like a crater had been blown in it, and he ran his fingers through his short cut hair to confirm he was still whole. A pillar of light shot across the room as his door cracked open. Janess walked in and the dream drifted to the back of his mind.
"Is everything ok? You where screaming."
"Just a bad dream, nerves about the job probably. Nevermind all that now."
He smiled and stretched his hand out. She returned the smile and crossed the room to take it. The smell of cooking meat reached his nose.
"Baby are you cooking somth-"
Janess' mouth opened and a sound like a foghorn came out. No, like a buzzer.
Jerked back into conciousness Davius saw again through his already open eyes. The fluids had cleared, and the empty collar in front of him had disappeared. He had only a moment to wonder what had happened to it before something clamped down on what was now the stump of his arm. The pain was immense, but at this point he was almost becoming accustomed to it. The man now in front of him had a bolter for his left arm, and an iron shell around his torso. His ears where being assaulted from all directions with crackling, the sound of metal on metal, and a sea of other sounds He could not place.
The macabre procession advanced again, and as it came to a stop two unseen robotic arms clamped him into a shell of his own. His arms raised themselves and Davius could hear welders on either side of him sealing him in.
"This is my tomb" He thought to himself.
Some sort of probe, or hypodermic needle jammed itself into his spine. The stimulants pumped into his system left him blessedly delirious for a time. How long he couldnt say, but when the fog had lifted he was no longer suspended from his neck.
The buzzer sounded again, but now it was behind him, distant. Loud metallic thumps punctuated his footfalls, and sent fresh shocks of agony up his legs.
Happy to continue it if enough people enjoy
EDIT: formatting
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