Stories of the Braxxis Campaign

[Caladai Doomblade]

Prologue, part 7c

Chaos Cruiser 'Eternal Domination'
Personal Chambers of Iron Ruler

The Rule kept gazing at the doors long after Melgior had left. He would need to keep a sharp eye on that whelp. The Rule had been a commander of the Iron Warriors for long enough to know exactly who of his men were to ambitious for their own good, and both his senior commanders fit the bill. Now lieutenant Claw might be a moderately intelligent brute, but Melgior was a smart man, and smart men were unpredictable. Smart men see all the options available to them, which makes it harder to gauge which option they might pick.

Braxxis might be a good opportunity to get rid of Melgior. On the other hand, if his plan to trade the Eldar Soulstone for daemonhood succeeded, he'd never have to fear Melgiors plans again. He'd be immortal. Even Melgior wouldn't attempt anything against him once he had the power of a Daemon Prince, but Melgior would also have realised that. So time was running out for the sorcerer. The Rule decided he needed to watch his back twice as hard as normal, because if Melgior was ever going to attempt to usurp him, it would be on Braxxis.

[Caladai Doomblade]

Prologue, part 8

Daikiri Hive, Braxxin Defence Force Command building
High Command Briefing Room

Major Haka Tovul was bored. Extremely bored. He hated board meetings. Unfortunately so did Colonel Revanna, and as his commanding officer he could just order Tovul to attend them in his place. Not that the meetings were not usefull, since there was ussually something of interest to the 306th going on, wether they were new training schedules or news of the off-planet deployment they had been waiting for for over 8 months now. But he had to sit through the 5 or 6 hours of discussion between the other division commanders and the BDF and Stormguard High Command, he couldn't fathom. He would be glad when this day was over and he could return to Jadin First Base and join up with his regiment again. In a few days, they'd be going into the jungle for training for three weeks. At least during that time there would be no chance of boring meetings.

Haka Tovul was pulled from his self-pitying reverie by the mention of Jadin by the chairman, someone lowlife suck-up from overall High Command called Bernt. A lieutenant-major, by his stripes. He was just explaining that training material was apparently being stolen from the jungles. In the past three years on several locations target tanks had been stripped to their bare chassis, and two weapon and ammo caches had their doors forced open and all weapons and ammo stolen. Apparently Bernt was announcing a full-scale investigation into any regiments and divisions that had been present during that period. He was promissing court-martials and executions for whoever was responsible.

Haka started to flip through the pages-thick meeting agenda to find the details of what was going on. Of course he should have read the document on the trip to Daikiri, but of course he hadn't. Card-night with sergeant Ruza's squad had gotten out of hand again, and without the shut-eye he'd gotten on the trip this morning he would have been fast asleep in this chair two hours ago. At last, he found the section on missing equipment from Jadin. Quickly reading through the numbers he was amazed this hadn't been brought to an investigation earlier. Two years ago a tank target-training field filled with over 60 tanks was found almost empty, all except the most rusted tanks stripped of weapons, armour, engines and systems, only leaving behind the heavy solid-steel frames. The amount of material stolen was incredible. It was also quite hard to believe that a few individuals had done this. For the first time since the meeting started, he raised his hand.

Lieutenant-major Bernt stopped in his orratory when he saw a had raised further down the table. The tables were set up in a large rectangle, with over 60 officers filling the seats, and the one raising his hand was almost on the other side of the room. He didn’t recognize the officer, but the tag on the table said 306th division. 'You have a question, colonel?' Bernt asked with a slight note of annoyance. Haka stood up and saluted for good measure; 'Major, sir, Colonel Revanna was busy. I was wondering, is it a possibility that non-military persons got onto Jadin to steal all these items? It seems that the amount of material might be a bit to much to take back to shore by soldiers without someone noticing. I mean, it's kinda hard to stuff a leman russ engine block in your kitbag, right?'
Some officers in the room sniggered at this comment, but Bernt's round and serious face remained entirely serious. 'Major, we have off course considered this possibility first, and for the past year the seas around Jadin have been patrolled by the aircraft of the BAF, and we are quite sure that during that period no unauthorized ships came within the vicinity of Jadin. We don't know how they are doing it, but we have concluded that military personel has found some inventive way of getting large amounts of material from the training island to the mainland and probably onto the black market.'

Haka sat down again with a nod of understanding. He didn't actually understand, but that didn't really matter. Civilians, maybe ex-BDF, raiding the training grounds, possibly with help from military personel, seemed the most likely option to him. Jadin was a big place, and it was filled almost entirely with dense jungles, so a camp where the criminals took the materials before shipping them out to the mainland could go unnoticed for years. Especially since Jadin was a no-fly zone, even for military craft. Haka decided to let it go for now, it probably didn't have anything to do with the 306th. They hadn't been on Jadin before, so no chance of any of his troopers getting there hands dirty stealing military materials. Besides, Haka believed he knew pretty much all the black-market scams going on in the ranks of the 306th, and they ussually involved getting alcoholic drinks, cigarettes or hookers, and sometimes troopers using black-market contacts to get things like hot-shot laspistol clips or solid-slug sidearms. He was quite okay with most of this, as long as Commisar Bourgon didn't find out about it. Besides, as long as his troopers told him about it, he could at least keep an eye on it.

[Caladai Doomblade]

Prologue, part 9

Dark Angels 5th company strike cruiser ‘Sword of Truth’
Briefing room I

Company Master Gabriel surveyed the various training data he had received quietly. His men were in prime condition, as expected. They had no current objectives in this area, since the only war within 6 weeks travel had been won a few months ago, and the Salamanders had sent a fleet to patrol the area. Most of 5th company was on-planet somewhere in the southern regions of Braxxin, on some island-continent called Eder Vaan, training on the ice wasted near the south pole. The Ravenwing squads assigned to Gabriels strike force were training in the deserts in West-Hatari, and Deathwing squad Amatiel was doing a city-fighting routine in a closed-off section of Durban Hive. Only veteran squad Orpheas was still on board the Sword of Truth.

The training routines would go on for the next two weeks, after which they would move on to wherever they were needed most at the time. Gabriel hoped there would be something to go to, because he hadn't seen battle in almost a year. Far to long for a space marine bred for war. He was just itching to use his body and weapons in more than mock-battles and training exercises, but he also knew war would come again. It always did.

[Caladai Doomblade]

Prologue, part 10

Braxxis, Jungles of Jadin
Clan Krusha settlement

Warboss Bullit was looking over his boyz. They actually looked like haf-decent orks by now. It had taken him more time and patience than he had ever imagened he would need in life, but it had finally payed off. Not that he'd had any choice. Gork or Mork had stuck him on this planet with these witless orks with a mission, and there was no way he was gonna tell either of the ork gods no.

The jungle around him was filled with his boyz. Klan Krusha. The jungle reverberated with the sounds of the truck engines, only recently finished. It had taken years for the nearly braindead 'toolboyz' to become proper meks, and even more for them to figure out how to make engines go fast, how to make fuel en most of all, how to make gunz. Now they were ready, da Whaaagh could finally start good and proper. Bullit had put on his new kickin boots, with brand new steel caps, and he had personally watched some grots sharpen his weapons and load his blasta. All that was left to do was inspire da boyz! Da Lightning Bullit of Gork (or Mork) cleared his throat.

'O'RIGHT!! LISTEN UP YA GITZ!!'

'Right!! Now I is lookin at yooz, and I likes wot I seez!!'

A great cheer went up amongst the assembled warhost.

'HOLD ON, I AINT FINNISHED!!'

'As I woz sayin, I likes wot I seez. But looks don't mean nothin' in a WHAAAGH! Its not about lookin good, its about FIGHTIN good!! I teached you boyz da meanin of WHAAAGH, now its time to see if yooz got it in you!! ARE YOOZ ALL READY FOR A FIGHT?!!'

A deafening below from the thousands of orks gathered around him shook the jungle!

'THAT’S DA SPIRIT BOYZ!! WHAAAAAAAGH!!! WHAAAAAAGH!!!! WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!'

And the horde stormed into the jungle, northbound.

[Caladai Doomblade]

Chapter 1; part 1

Former Imperial Base; Jadin Island

Dok Grufnek wiped sweat of his forehead again. The heat was killing in the improvised dok-shop, and he was quite nervous too. The sweat kept dripping down into the wounds he was trying to fix, and every time the salty water hit the bloody mess that used to be an arm the enormous ork attached to the stump glared or snarled at him. That was a good sign though, because as long as Warlord Bullit was still snarling, he wasn't dying. And the last thing Grufnek needed was a dead warboss. The boys would kill him if he let the Lightning Bullit of Gork, prophet of da Whaaagh, die.

Most of the wounds on Bullits body were already fixed. The las-burns were already cauterized, but a bunch of staples would make the wounds into some nice scars. Grufnek was busy cutting away musles to lay the nerve-bundles in the stump of the arm bare so when one of the mekboyz finally finished that mechanical arm he had promised they could start attaching it to the Boss' arm proper.

When two mekboyz finally came into the room with the arm, Grufnek was awestruck. That was the biggest, meanest, most orky arm any ork could have. They had surely made their warboss proud. Bullit didn’t notice, as he was passed out from the pain of having his arm repaired with a hacksaw and a hammer. Well, that was probably best anyway, attaching that mechanical arm was gonna take a lot more nails and screws than Grufnek had used so far. After a quick look at the wires from the arm and the nerves coming out of the bloody stump, the doc and the meks set to work fixin up da boss proper!