Foulnest was beyond
salvation. The tunnels and domes echoed with screams, not all born of
corporeal mouths. Shadows reached out and grabbed the unwary,
splitting them open as they were dragged beyond the veil. Madness and
possession skipped from hiver to hiver as easily as the common spore
flu. Cannibalism of flesh and tech ran rife as bitter battles raged
over ever more scant resources. There was only one option left for
gangs with any shred of sanity left: get out.
Of course, the
Middenmans had long left sanity behind, enraptured as they were by
the apocalypse gripping these sumpwards zones of E-Sec. When news
reached the Middenkirk that gangs were converging on a trio of
transports, surely the last that would leave Foulnest before the
ultimate lurch into darkness as the power lines gave out for good,
the Cawdors promptly seized arms and sallied forth – how dare
these sinners presume they might escape the sublime end of the world?
The exit point was an
old hangar dome, a great cavernous space in the upper reaches of
Foulnest. The centre of the dome was dominated by a maglev terminus;
at either end, there was a landing pad awaiting the last flyers. The
seven surviving Middenmans knew they could not sabotage all attempts
to leave, so focussed their attentions on the nearest landing pad.
The dome was teeming with fighters; no doubt each vehicle would be
the focus of bloody struggle.
Sharp-eyed
Scourge-Thyself-For-Thine-Sins made out two gangs emerging from
tunnels mid-dome: the Inglorious Bastards, who'd clashed with the
Cawdors several times over the preceding cycles; and the three-armed
mutants of Kreel's Ascent. Clearly, they were intent on reaching the
landing pad, something the Middenmans could not allow. They would
rush to meet the cowardly unbelievers and prevent them from boarding
the transport when it arrived.
Torment-Unending-For-The-Unworthy
bade his followers throw up a screen of smoke to mask their approach
to the landing pad. Grenades were duly thrown, but as the smoke
billowed out, Pity-Not-The-Recidivist spotted another gang in the
zone: the twisted sinners of Joab's War Party, a band of
wrong-godhead cannibal mutants. Unstinting-Is-His-Vengeance, a mad
glint in his eye, suggested that the mutants would make fine allies
after a fashion, for they were probably as intent on preventing
escape as the Middenmans were. Torment grudgingly agreed.
As if by way of
confirmation, one of the War Party clambered out of a ventway behind
the Bastards and lobbed a firebomb into the Van Saars' midst. They
were washed with flame, and those who were not set alight were driven
forward toward the landing pad.
There was no time to
waste: the Cawdors advanced into the smoke, hoping to lay an ambush.
Scourge took aim at one of the Bastards and fired his longrifle. The
Van Saar was pinned, and the Bastards moved forward more urgently –
right into the Middenmans' path.
But then there was a
roaring from overhead: a flyer had arrived through a cavernous
transit-shaft in the dome roof. The pilot was unsure where to land,
and, as the vehicle hovered, its downdraft swept away the Middemans'
covering smoke. They were left exposed to the Inglorious Bastards'
guns.
The Van Saars wasted no
time. Pulsing rad blasts tore through the Cawdor advance. Hyper-dosed
with radiation, the Middemans suffered mass cell-death and instant,
gut-churning trauma. It was enough to push them beyond the final
brink of utter insanity. Sheer raging animalism took over.
Torment-Unending-For-The-Unworthy
had taken the brunt of the blast and, as his organs ruptured under
rad-induced strain, he crawled to the shadow of a rusted container
and watched his followers as they reeled, howling and hooting,
clawing at their masks and setting their ragged robes alight. All was
lost. Torment, usurper of the Middenkirk, smiled as he lost
consciousness and died.
Blessed-Are-The-Abject,
upstart juve, was the only Middenman to escape the rad-insanity.
Clearly, the Emprah had plucked his fellows' souls from their bodies
and replaced them with those of wild beasts. Blessed's mind raced –
why had he been so forsaken? Still time to prove his worth in the
eyes of Him-on-Terra. He readied his stubber and started towards the
landing pad, stepping out from the cover of a container.
A salvo of Van Saar
lasfire caught him and and he dropped to the domefloor, dead.
The flyer had finally
settled in a great cloud of scouring dust, and Kreel led her acolytes
toward it, with the Bastards not far behind. But Joab's mad cannibals
got there first, swarming on board and chewing the pilot's throat
out. One of the mutants clumsily fumbled with the vehicle's controls.
Buttons were hammered, levels jerked, and, after a while, the flyer
lurched off the domefloor.
Cackling with glee, the
mutants managed to steer the vehicle across the dome and into the
support struts of the maglev train. The ensuing fireball consumed
several C-Section enforcers, and caused much delight amongst the
Miscreants, ever at the centre of the vortex of Chaos that had
engulfed Foulnest.
A few hardy gangers
escaped the transit hall that shift, regrouping uphive to face stern
interrogation by Imperial agents. Others, like the Inglorious
Bastards, were stranded in the all-consuming darkness to fight for
bitter survival against the cultists and mutants who now controlled
the zone. Many shifts later, their grim fate would be revealed as a
plan was enacted to reclaim Foulnest and restore the brutal order of
House Helmawr. But that's another downhive tale...
As for the Middenmans,
they were last seen at the fringes of this final battle,
Redemptionists beyond all hope of redemption.
Unstinting-Is-HisVengeance, erstwhile leader of the crew, had set
about his fellows with his chainglaive, commending them to the Emprah
even as he carved them limb from limb. With his bloody work done, he
fell upon his own churning blade.
They had locked and
sealed the Middenkirk before setting out to their doom. Even now,
many long cycles after the Cannibal Wars, it sits forgotten in a
neglected corner below Foulnest core, seeming nothing more than
another rusted container unit. Perhaps one shift, a scavenging true
believer will discover the junk-relics within, and E-Sec will know
the furious faith and fire of a new generation of Middenmans.