Chapter 20

Tau Volantis from orbit looked like a giant ice ball but on the surface it was a so much worse with lare snow dunes, mountains with jagged peaks preventing any landing of large void craft and the valleys also vulnerable to the constant blizzards. In one particular valley, flames covered the wreckage of a ship of alien design, revealing many tunnels made in the snow and ice. With a roar of engines, hundreds of landing crafts began to land around the tunnels with their only separation was their colors with one being grey with yellow hazard stripes and the other being midnight blue with green lightning. With each landing large, heavily armed men began to march into the tunnels with weapons at the ready. It was after the number of men reached the thousands when the two forces split with the blue marines moving further into the tunnels and the grey marines, creating kill zones and rigging explosives in the tunnels to seal them should the need arise and building a base camp at the center of the wreckage. Inside the camp in the largest building was the command center, two giant men standing next to each other looking upon a constantly updating map on a holo projector.

MC POV:

"Any word from the scouting party?" I ask

"Not so far, brother, but I believe they may already be dead. They may have been afflicted with whatever caused the mass death of our destroyers' crew when it got too close, " responded Perturabo

"There seems to be an odd psykic presence on this planet, but it seems to have little effect on our sons besides causing severe headaches, but to a mortal, it causes possible increased aggression." I state with a scowl just remembering the two foul voices that are trying to drive anyone without proper mental fortitude.

"Whatever it is that killed the crew appears to also be killing the xenos as with every hour that goes by, there are fewer and fewer heat signatures meaning only two things. One, the xenos have dug so deep that we can no longer track their substantial heat signatures or Two what ever is wrong with this planet is likely killing them." States Perturabo with his own scowl at the odd circumstance.

"My lords, a report from the leader second claw of third company has brought forth odd recordings and a few data records from a revealed cavern. The old records were correct sir a research building has been found or what's left of it." Reported a saluting Night Lord of the Shadow detachment.

"Bring up the recordings on the table." I order

With the order carried out, a large hologram was activated, showing a collapsed wall in an ice tunnel.

Squad Leader of First Claw POV:

Looking out of the hole in the tunnel I can't help but draw my gaze to the many Claw like marks on the wall going into the tunn after all what could Claw through about a foot of ice and then trail after the foul xenos.

"Sergeant take second claw and scout the left side of this cavern but stay in vox distance." I order

"Yes, Sir Captain Rico Sir," Salutes the Sergeant as he moves with his brothers to the left while I take first claw and move to the right.

If it wasn't for the ice roof, it could be mistaken as the surface at night with the large amount of snow and rocks, and perhaps it once was the surface only to be buried in the ice. Within only a few miles of walking we spotted a decrepit metal building only about a single story with possible basement and on the side of this building looked to be a logo of some species of eagle on a planet but with its colors long faded to no longer able to be recognized and looking closer around the perimeter of the build signs of collapsed walls are barely visible sticking out of the ice and from a collapsed gate stuck in ice had visible words on display.

"A science division facility. It seems the Intel was correct about the purpose of us not just breaking this death world. Brothers, if you find anything valuable, bring it to my attention, so I may record it with my helmet camera." I state, and I received nods and affirmatives from my brothers.

Looking into a destroyed door that seems to have been busted out from the inside, and once again, the strange claw marks were visible. The entirety of the interior was destroyed as if some great struggle happened, and judging from the many holes in the walls, it was a firefight and a lost one as some human remains were visible in the ice as nothing more that bone. The further we traversed the building many more sites of battle became common with more and more limbs stuck in the ice with some human and others mere twisted bone in the form of slicing claws the size of arms.

(What could have led to this and for there to be so many parts to remain but no full corpses what could have done this?) I thought to myself as like all sons of the Judge I began to feel a slight premonition of a horrible death sweep over my brothers with some becoming horrible abominations. I simply shake my head and move on, only to be interrupted by a shout from a fellow space marine.

"Sir, we have power still operating down below. Perhaps some ancient generator is still active below. " Callled out Engineer marine Salvator, pointing toward an ancient freight elevator as sparks of power flicker from its control panel.

Checking over the elevator, it was inoperable with a large hole in the bottom leading to the shaft going down to a basement level and looking down in was barely visible flickeromg hazard lights and too a regular human it would still look almost pitch black but to us sons of nostramo it might as well had been daylight down there enough so we could even remove our helmets and not be blinded by the light. Widening the hole, we made our way down, with most of us having to move in single files down the narrow hallways with substantial lack of snow, a result obviously from the heat of whatever power source is powering this basement of labs. Looking into each lab, a pattern was revealed with each room having multiple test tubes of different sizes all broken and empty, and for most of them covered Iong since dried blood, so the point of the only evidence was the coloring below the dust. With each room found was a few handfuls of data pads are no longer operable but could still hold info, so we collected them and anything else that may hold valuable information. It was the final room that should've given us pause, but to the nightlords, seeing dead flesh and skeletons was a common occurrence, so we paid it no mind even when we should've since it was Hrud flesh.

The moment I had Salvator open the final door at the end of the hall a horrible screech was released as the marine cut the door down with a power sword only to be pounced upon by the corrosive corpse of a Hrudd as its alien maw releases a high pitched howl and it mutates infornt of our eyes as scythe like limbs burst out and cut into salvator's armor with the corrosive effect of the hrudd's blood allows the bone blade to pierce the ceramite not enough to bisect the marine but enough to dig in deep enough to fatally wound the marine but before our brother could die he managed to grab the beasts head and simply ripped it from its shoulders and then bisect the corpse with his own power blade.

"Get him back and someone contact second claw we have need of their apothecary." I ordered as my brothers shifted to pull the dying marine away as I and another two marines march into the final room, finding an ancient nuclear generator running on its last legs with its shielding long since rusted away.

Finding nothing of value, we left the room as we made our way out of the building to find Second claw was also down a man with their apothecary currently working on Salvator but a hazard box carried by the apothecary shows they were forced to remove the gene seed from a fallen brother.

"What happened on your search, Sergeant?" I asked

"Odd mutants burst from some week ice walking fossils really, but they had dense enough bones to remove our brothers head and utterly destroy his war gear. It took the most of our enough rounds to its corpse to kill a space marine to finally bring the creatures down, but it seems that dismemberment works best on them." Reported the Sergeant

before I could respond, I noticed something in the distance shambling closer to us and upon closer inspection it was a headless astartes but where it's head should be was an odd bat like creature was mounted to its spine as the marine jerkly makes its way over.

As we were all distracted we failed to notice another bat like creature managed to land on salvator's vegative corpse and with us leveling our weapons on the walking corpse we were unprepared for him to begin spasaming and actively mutate. With the sound of ceramite being broken, we opened fire on both corpses as we recognized the threat. Removing my helmet with it recording chip secure, I handed my helmet to the Sergeant.

"Get this to command NOW and all this recovered tech to base as well. The rest of us will quarantine this area," I ordered as I handed over a mag locked pouch carrying the data

~~~~~~~~~Recording end~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MC POV:

Looking upon the still image of the mutated corpse, I began to realize where the sense of familiarity was coming from as a great pit of dread began to set in as I knew how much a threat this planet now entails. It just had to be Dead space. Why couldn't it have been some Star Trek alien instead of this horrific shit.

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Hello, Author here

Sorry for the long wait. I've had some serious stress from work, and it took a while to find time to write this, but thank you for still reading. I don't plan to drop this story anytime soon.