Fergus McFien and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Heretical Day

A brief look at life on Omagudnis, from the bleary eyes of its most irascible citizen....

Chapter 1
From the moment he woke up, Fergus McFien knew it was going to be a bastard of a day. This was partially due to the fact that he awoke inside a Baneblade tank, slumped into the bucket seat in a way that made every muscle of his body groan upon waking. As he pitched forward out of the seat, he bounced his head off a bulkhead. He spent the next few moments back in the seat, grasping his forehead and swearing such vigorous oaths as to make a Khornate berserker blush. When he finished the bit about the greased Lictor at the Ecclesiarchy training schola, he carefully and slowly stumbled his way out out of the tank, holding his hands out in front of him, like so many other recovering drinkers throughout the ages.

The workshop proved to be mercifully quiet. Peering cautiously around the inside of the cathedral sized room, replete with dozens of workstations, and mechanized war-vehicles in a hundred different states of repair, he made his shuffling way to his office. It wouldn't do, he thought miserably, to be seen by his workers and servants in this state. He checked the personal chronograph tucked into one of his pockets, and muttered a few new and terribly inventive curses. It was past dawn, and he was only just coming to grips with being awake, much less horribly sober. His head throbbed with every small sound. Even closing the door of his office, atop 10 meters of scaffolding from the workshop floor, made him flinch. Working his way, still following his searching hands like a blind man, he eventually found his chair. And immediately regretted trying to sit in it. There was a yowl, a blizzard of movement, and a sudden breeze in the seat of his pants. McFien probed the gashes in the coveralls, while glaring fiercely at the causative animal. Mittens, a solid 12 kilos of muscle, claws, and well-groomed fur, glared right back, while licking a few errant fibers off its claws. It looked like a large cat. I mewed like a large cat. It lounged lazily like a large cat. It was not. A Gyrinx from a distant world, the Inquisitor - who McFien remembered only as being entirely self-righteous in a way that made McFien's working-class skin itch - had thought the creature valuable. Something about psychic connections, McFien thought dimly. It didn't work out, seeing as the animal had escaped, and hidden itself in McFien's garage. And then been adopted by McFien in a rare fit of sentimentality. He still claimed it was a gift from his nephew, a perfectly normal Terran feline. It was a decision he hadn't yet come to fully regret, even with an unexpected airflow near his unmentionables. The Gyrinx, so said the unlucky Inquisitor, modeled itself after the owner, so McFien couldn't blame it for being in a foul mood in the morning.

McFien stuffed the torn coveralls in the trashcan, kicking it flat with his boot. Eventually, he'd need to empty it, but he was of the mind that anything additional that could fit, would fit. With a little extra effort. He brushed and tugged at the collar and sleeves of the new set, exactly identical the previous, only with the absence of grease stains. McFien didn't believe overly in ornamentation, though he had a nice charcoal pinstripe set of coveralls set aside for state occasions. He even went so far as to clean his boots the last time he'd worn it. Captain-Commander Draconis had insisted he wear various badges and medals on it, which McFien felt rather suspicious about, but relented. He'd always been of the opinion that grease stains, sweat streaks, and even the odd burn mark on one's clothing meant that they did honest work, and should therefore be proud. Draconis had been less than pleased with the idea, and made several remarks that McFien found unnecessary, mostly with the business end of his Flamer. Under protest, McFien still had the charcoal suit, medals, badges, and all, in a separate locker. Something about keeping it clean, he remembered through the fog of morning. He didn't much see the point.

By the time the mechanics and technicians had filtered into the shop, McFien had already consumed a pot of recaff, and spent a good part of the morning tilting the windmill of his hangover. As the technicians were firing up the various motors under repair, cutting new slabs of ceramite, and generally making a racket, he was feeling somewhat more human. Nevertheless, when it became clear that everyone knew their tasks, and there was nothing he really needed to personally supervise, McFien found an excuse to be out of the shop. He left under a cloud of guilt and migraine pressure. It wasn't so long ago, he thought miserably, when he had been the one doing all the repairs himself, fending off Techmarines with one hand, and taking the transmission out a centuries-old siege vehicle with the other. Now he had ' people for that'. Now he had rank, and responsibility, and a never-ending sea of paperwork to ignore. He wallowed all the way to the elevator.

The Chapter command center set deep in the core of the fortress, behind hundreds of meters of hardened ceramite and rockcrete in any direction. Despite the fact that sunlight had never touched it since the fortress' construction, the very walls of the massive room were stained glass, each shimmering slightly, monuments to the great heroes of humankind's history. McFien glared faintly at the monolithic representation of Corvus Corax, a study in monochrome, the black of the Primarch's armor seeming to muffle the light around it. And across from him, the Chapter Saint Gordon Freeman, a stark shift in tone and color. McFien studied each in turn, slouching forwards. Chapter officers and pages flitted in and out, their sound of their footsteps swallowed the vastness of the command room. There were barely any about. McFien took this as a good sign. Dotting the vastness of the center, cogitators and holo projections gleamed coolly. Typing diligently at one, McFien spotted a familiar face. Lieutenant Vanya glanced briefly in his direction and nodded curtly. Her uniform gave off the crisp impression of having just been steamed and pressed.

"Shooldnae ye be at a certain Commander's beck an' call? Ur did he finally tak' mah advice, an' sleep in fur ance?" McFien grinned in what he hoped was a sufficiently annoying way.

Vanya didn't give a sign, as usual, simply generated her casual sense of annoyed efficiency. McFien had a sneaking suspicious that if he tossed her a shuffled deck of cards, they'd be organized by suite by the time she caught them.

"Commander Draconis is out on maneuvers. He thought the new crop of Whiteshields needed to experience artillery fire first hand." She eyes caught McFien like a pair of laser-sights. "And I've never seen the Commander sleep. He wouldn't accept the lost time." Whether it was a joke, McFien couldn't tell.

Sweeping a hand though his rust and steel hair, McFien muttered, "Thooght eh'd swin' throo - see if anyain needs a haind. Somethin' dain." He shuffled side to side.

Vanya ignored him, comparing an ever-increasing set of generated datasets. Her fingers paused over the keys, frozen for half a moment.

"Actually, if you wouldn't mind...." Vanya turned to McFien, leaning ever so slightly against the terminal. "I was supposed to have the day for liberty," she began, hesitating.

"Aye?"

"There's a bit of personal shopping I was going to- " She halted suddenly, as if finding foreign words in her mouth. "No. No, forget it." She waved her hands, as if she could erase the idea from the world. She turned back to the terminal, muttering.

"If ye hink there's somethin' 'at coods embarrass me, lassy, ye obvioosly huvnae met me afte' hours." McFien found his grin again, slightly more leering this time.

Vanya seemed caught between the impulses to punch him in the jaw, and relent. She gave in, seemingly only by an inch. "Fine." She pulled a short list from a pocket of her uniform. "If- " she yanked the list away from McFien's reaching hand, "you keep this between us. If anyone so much as implies they know...." Her eyes flared with a fury rarely seen in sane men and women, yet her features remained as calm and focused as ever. McFien mentally flashed back to his regretting being awake. He took the list with a cautious movement. As he scanned the contents, he felt his eyebrows creep up towards his hairline.

"Yoo're jokin'."

Vanya turned crisply back to the terminal, typing steadily. "I don't get a lot of leave. A woman needs things." If Lieutenant Vanya was ever capable of blushing, it seemed likely that she had not only mastered the impulse, but beaten it down, cut out its heart, and buried the body. Yet she still didn't make eye contact with McFien.

Fergus tucked the list into a pocket, and patted it flat. "Weel, looks loch Aam headed intae th' Capital teday. Mite tak' some lookin', but I'll fin' it, sure enou'."

"Oh?" Vanya asked, pretending not to notice him.

Fergus chuckled merrily, flashing a broad grin. "It's naethin' Ah havnae dain afair, lass. After all... Ah was married, once upon a tim'."

He cackled quietly as he turned, waving goodbye over his shoulder. Somewhere behind him, Lieutenant Vanya's jaw gravitated towards the floor.

Chapter 2
McFien took a deep whiff as soon as he stepped onto the landing pad. The PDF Thuderhawk purred to a still behind him, it's engines whining as they spun down. The PDF troopers walked to and fro on the platform, in the shadow of the PDF tower. McFien smelled grease, heat, and a vague stink of copper. He smelled home.

He nodded vaguely at the troopers on his way out, ignoring the occasional surprised salute. He did take the time to buttonhole a sergeant, concerning a rattling intake vent, but otherwise trundled his way out like any other shift-worker. It wasn't until his boots clicked on the pavement outside the base that he began to smile. Across the boulevard, towers of factories, habitation-blocks, and filter systems stood like half-kilometer-high, squat pillars. Above, a matrix of sunlight and webbed shadow filtered down. He strolled leisurely to the nearest edge of the level he was on, leaning on a railing. Below, the skirt of the city's levels expanded as a bronze and slate horizon. Above, it extended to thin cluster of towers and communications arrays. The Capital City Hive. A acute pyramid tens of kilometers across at the base. Home. McFien allowed himself a lazy smile, then leaned back and rocked forward, releasing a wad of spit far over the edge. He watched it arc out of sight, and imagined it landing on some other poor bastard a level below. He was home.

McFien didn't imagine that he had a clue where he was going, so he found one of the broad thoroughfares, triangulated between a few distant, long familiar landmarks. He closed his eyes, stuck his hands firmly into the pockets of his coveralls, and swung one heavy boot back and forward again. He followed his feet.

He wandered old streets and avenues, haunts out of distant memory, and the odd turn on whim. That is, until he heard hammering. It was down a lane of small shops, trinket vendors, and second-hand holo-film stores. McFien leaned around a door inside one of the more ill-lit shops. Three men were tinkering with a steel box of vents and wires.

"Ye know...." McFien announced quietly, leaning on the frame, "If ye release th' pressure oan th' secondary cap first thing, then it'll spare th' filter." He strode in, and found a seat on a convenient crate. "Ye git a bodkin? Smoll knife? Stab it thro' th' seal near th' bottom, aye? Let th' pressure hiss oot, then ease th' cap up. Then ye kin pop th' manifold oot wi'oot pure burnin` yer fingers off. Or breathing ozone fur th' next hour, which micht cause ye some trouble."

He fished a small cigar out of his pocket, and offered a few more out. They answered with blank stares and silence.

"Who... the fuck are you?" asked one of the young men.

McFien shrugged. "Just an old laddie, kens how tae fix a goosed amp converter wi' a bit o' wire an' a rubber mallet." He waved vaguely at one of them. "Ehh... Pass me a drink, wuld ye? Nah, some o' that in th' capped lighting tubes. Ah kno' whit that is."

He was rather hesitantly passed a glass tube, that had perhaps been a piece of a lighting fixture in a previous life. The clear liquid inside hissed slightly as he uncapped it. The smell was of paint thinner, hot metal, and bad eggs. It tasted like cool ice water, with a hint of shoe leather.

"Who am I?" McFien coughed raggedly at them. "I know your using Old man McNamara's recipe, and this was brewed oh..." he took an experimental sip, "three weeks in a copper tank." The young men shared a look and visibly relaxed. The word local was written on their faces, under a wash of relief. They toasted the Hive, Old Man McNamara the virtuoso of the illegal still, and walloped the manifold of the amp converter until it worked. It was agreed among them, in quiet, defensive terms, that an Enginseer couldn't always be found, much less convinced to properly help. And if something needed fixing, well... that was just being a good citizen. A loyal citizen. This made them all feel a bit better about things. McFien added some colorful remarks about the Adeptus Mechanicus in general, which was also toasted.

"Say, lads...." McFien offered when they were more suitably acquainted. "A'm trying tae fin' something... special fur a certain lassie frien'. Ye wouldn't happen tae kno' whaur Ah coul' fin' something fur her, wid ye?" After the chuckling died off, McFien found himself with some directions, a refill for his flask, and a loose swagger in his step.

This is, roughly, when the sirens started.

Chapter 3
McFien found himself listening to the sirens with two sets of ears. No one else seemed more than half interested. A mother on the other end of the lane waved her children back inside the hab. The rest just added an ounce of haste to their day. The drill siren signaled one hour till. Plenty of time. And yet, McFien felt the oddest distortion. To hear the alert as a member of the Cardinal Archivist command, who knew exactly what it meant... and as a wild urchin of a boy, staring up at the eternal city that was his sky. Hearing it with wonder, and a head full of myth. He'd met his childhood heroes. Gotten falling-down drunk with more than a few of them. Yet the boy still stared up at the city-sky.

The shop was where the lads had said it was. The items Vanya wanted were certainly quite interesting, and McFien had caught more than a few odd looks purchasing them. He just smiled.

He hit street level just after the siren sounded the ten-minute alert. He spat in a drain, and glared at the vox hidden somewhere in the towers above. He decided to head to the nearest Arbite station and wait it out. His ID would get him inside, and maybe a sip of recaff while he watched the show.

Somewhere on Omagudnis, somewhere near the hive, or even in it, a military drill was about to happen. A Cardinal Archivists military drill. "Hole" drill, if you were local. All of which meant Astartes, war-planes, vehicles, and explosions. Somewhere near the hive. The siren and alert didn't say where, just when. McFien felt the boy listening in, remembered days waiting on the highest parapet he could climb, dirty hands and scabby knees. Watching for the Archivists to make an appearance.

McFien trudged towards the nearest administrative compound, when he saw some young men hauling heavy plastic crates into a truck in the street. One or two of them seemed to be the ones he'd spoken to earlier, over moonshine. He waved over to them.

"Oi! Lads! Gie 'at wreck aff th' street! Shooldnae ye be in covee? Th' drill's about' teh start...."

Everything felt wrong. Small details, coalescing into a knot of fear. The boy told him to run, as far and as fast as he could. It was the old Hive instinct. Everyone who grew up there had it. Everyone who lived long enough to grow up, at least. Something was terribly, fatally wrong, and McFien found himself tensing even as the last words left his mouth.

The men all looked angry, staring at him. McFien saw a bulge in the waistband of the man nearest to him. He didn't need years of working with the military to know what that meant. Every street rat of the hive knew what it was. McFien turned to run, scrambling away. Which meant that when he slammed into the other man's chest, he ricocheted off hard. This one was large, tall and wide as any man he'd ever seen. McFien picked himself half off the pavement, eyes locked with an awful magnetism to the mark on the man's head, chiseled into the living flesh. Dried blood covered his face in a streak from eyes to chin.

"Rip and tear." The voice was slow as treacle, and harsh as broken glass. His boot came up, and McFien's lights went out.

Chapter 4
First the headache, then the noise. Light came last, stubborn eyes creaking open. McFien had awoken to worse headaches, as many a bottle of amasec could attest. Even so, he whispered a half-forgotten boyhood prayer to the Emperor, substituting a strategic phrase or two for muttered profanities. If the Emperor was a man, so McFien's reasoning went, He would understand. And if He did not, McFien would beg the indulgence after his skull stopped imploding.

McFien was surprised to find his hands bound, but was still too temporary-minded to be concerned. He rolled over loosely, to find himself staring at a rather bare warehouse. The arched ceiling showed some sign of inattention, the walls stained sometime in the ancient past, and all manner of scrap littering bow-backed tables around the room. He peered around at the room, scowling at the whole of it. His gaze lingered on a rather nasty stain on the floor near him. The faded scarlet put him in a poor state of mind. There was rather a lot of it. McFien felt urgency creep back into the world. The chains around his wrists proved tight enough. Kicking his legs hard, he whipped himself into a kneeling position. The world looked rather worse from this position. The tables were covered in scrap and tools sure enough, but some of them belonged in a butcher's shop, or the nightmares of demented men. And on the wall near the door, McFien noted coldly, was a pointed sigil made from roughly bent and welded steel beams. He'd seen the emblem in intelligence briefings, cold and miserable days locked in a room with the Chapter elite. McFien knew what the eight-armed symbol meant, and it chilled him to the core. He spat angrily, and glared about for his next move.

A rusted screwdriver and hammer freed him from the chains in short order. He didn't dare touch most of the tools and devices about, which would either give him tetanus, or were covered in something he didn't care to think about. McFien didn't like blood. Blood, destruction, and mayhem were someone else's problem, not his. At worst, gore was something he had to hose off the bottom of a Land Raider. His head still swimming, McFien patted himself down, finding his flask still tucked away. The local moonshine made his eyes cross, tongue shrivel, and throat convulse in fire. He let out a contented sigh, suddenly at peace with the world.

Then he heard the door behind him open.

The man was exactly as large as McFien remembered him, in the moment before unconsciousness. An ugly face marred by fresh scars and deep cuts. He wasn't simply large, but looming, stretching in every dimension as if physically conquering space itself, assaulting it by simply existing. McFien felt, in a distant and defiantly sober part of his mind, that this specimen looked rather like a smallish Astartes, or a particularly unkempt Ogryn.

A call came from deep inside the giant's chest, guttering and growling out. "Rip and TEAR!" The giant did not so much charge, as take a couple of enormous strides toward McFien, his hands splayed out like meat-hooks.

"BLOOD FOR THE BLOO -" The warcry did not so much end, as fizzle out in a high-pitched whine. McFien retracted his right boot from between the attacker's legs, and grinned evilly. The giant seemed to fold inward, and slowly collapsed sideways with a further bubbling noise.

"Ye like tha'? Ceramite tipped boots, ye ken? Hav' to be awful careful in the shop." McFien took the remains of the chain that had previously bound him, and began looping it around his attackers wrists and ankles. "Made 'em meself, out ay scraps. Ye jist got whacked wi' Baneblade armor, ye fecker."

McFien finished tying up the giant, and again to the nearest bolted-down shelf. The massive auto-pistol stuck in the giant's waistband was a welcome surprise, and one that earned an earnest prayer of thanks from McFien. He immediately stripped the weapon on a table swept clean, familiarizing himself with the pieces and working. It seemed in poor shape even for a tool of a Hive ganger, and he muttered foully at the tension left in the spring. Worse, the barrel was filthy, and he had no tools to properly clean it with. He doubted he'd get more than a shot off, if he was lucky. McFien spared every other glance at the door to the room, and froze at the slightest sound. Cursing hard, he considered hiding under a crate, like he'd seen done in the Lady Snipe's ancient combat simulations. Metal Cog, he thought, trying to remember the name, before shaking his head in frustration. He needed out of there, he needed a drink. The answer came to him with a flash. Capping one end of the barrel with the pad of his thumb, McFien poured a measure from his flask into it. Holding it firmly by both ends, he vigorously shook the barrel, sloshing the moonshine about. When he dumped it out, the barrel shone brightly under the light, free of debris. McFien raised the flask to his lips for a celebratory sip, before thinking better of it. The barrel he thought, was awfully clean. It had even taken the rust off. Defeatedly, he decided to do whatever came next relatively sober. He prayed hard, one for the Emperor, a few for the saints, and one for everyone who had ever owed him a favor. The list ran on.

McFien did not like blood, and armed violence (beyond a good honest brawl) was beyond his measure. So, breathing deeply, he desperately considered what the Astartes we lived and served with would do in his place.

The Chapter Lady Snipe: Punch down walls while screaming, jump on the bodies of the dead.

The Chapter Lord Wib: Make puns, while shredding the minds of his foes with psionic fire.

Captain Maximus Omar: Charge unseen and unheard, then cover every living thing in plasma fire.

The Dreadnought Smirkeh: Level half the hab-block, while roaring oddly specific threats of bodily harm.

Captain Hans Draconis: Call in an artillery strike, then burn the remains. Being inside the target zone, unimportant.

Magister Iratus Stupri : Kill everything by screaming at it.

McFien scratched his head, not finding a helpful rung to cling to. He considered Kinwrath, and the recent recruit, AWeirdDude, and even Brother Corpe-Jerky. The problem being, McFien reasoned, was that he was not wearing a small tank, nor armed with a cavalcade of enormous guns. This was a practical problem, and one he would address, perhaps by crawling inside a Baneblade at his next opportunity, and never leaving. Yes, he thought, racking a round into the over-large pistol, this was an excellent idea. If he could live through the next few moments, he would spend the rest of his existence behind an immense wall of ceramite and guns. He leaned against the door-frame, and uttering one last profanity-ladden prayer to the Emperor of Mankind, stepped through.

Scenes To Be Added
 * 1) Bugger this for a lark - DONE
 * 2) Out on the town - DONE
 * 3) 'Hole' drill - DONE
 * Oh, bugger - DONE, YOU BASTARDS
 * 1) Come to the Emprah, ya spineless dingbat
 * 2) Aftermath