In the Grimdark Future... (Private)
 

Margret Carpenter raised her lasgun, firing around the corner at the two goons taking cover down the hall. Sweeping her short blond hair back with one hand, she reached for a grenade from her belt and considered their situation.

It was the end of an eight hour slog through a hostile base. A few rogue Omnisiah worshipers who had abandoned common sense had found an old workshop buried in the ruins of an old city, long since abandoned after a few dozen wars over the millennia had driven off the stragglers. (Margret had considered asking what wars, but she knew better than to question their employer.) When word got out of the workshop being put back into order, a few interested parties had started peeking around to see if there was any technology worth salvaging. And so, the Black Talons had been called in to clear out the Omnisiah Cultists before salvage missions could get together.

Fortunately, as tech-savvy as they were, most of the cultists were not too good at actually using their weapons. Most were poor excuses for soldiers, and not too much of a threat. Still, it had been a chore to clear them all out: The facility was a maze of steel corridors, making it a pain in the ass to find them all. Finally, though, they had the last handful of men trapped in what seemed to be their last ditch effort of defense, and she and her partner were getting ready to move in.

Blinking a little to keep the exhaustion of eight hours of combat from getting her, she rolled the grenade towards the last room, turning away and ripping the smallish chainsword from the holster on her back. Grinning at Gabriel, her partner, she asked, "Ready to make our money?"

Gabriel smirked, sweeping a hand through his hair. He reloaded his bolter, a gift from a dead scavenger he and Margaret had discovered while tracking down a deserter from the Blood Angels. He slipped it into his holster. He slid a shining Power Blade, something he had "borrowed" from the deserter, "Me and Vigilance are ready." He grinned. Sliding a blind grenade from his bandolier, he turned to Margaert, "Blind em?"

Margeret grinned back, nodding. "You and your toys," she muttered, grabbing her laspistol to go with the chainsword. Checking to make sure it was loaded with a hotshot pack, she gestured for him to roll in the grenade after hers. With any luck, the cultists would just be coming out of cover from her own grenade and would look up just in time to get blinded. Whirring the chainsword to life, she roared a battlecry and turned after the blind grenade, charging after it while yelling at the top of her lungs.

This was going to be fun.

"Die scum!" Gabriel yelled, charging forth. The cultists, who had run out of their short supply of ammo, had resorted to using crude, makeshift weapons, or malfunctioning weapons that had been left on workbenches and tables when the workshop was abandoned long ago. Parrying the pipe club of one of the Ork worshippers, he thrust his metallic arm into the chest if the foe. Yanking his blood smeared arm out, he fired two shots into the chests if two more cultists.

(*Omnisiah, not Ork.)

Margret played it a little more safe than her masculine counterpart, blasting a few cultists through the head with her laspistol before closing on one who was fumbling with what looked like a lasgun but was oddly devoid of powerpack. She realized after a second that it *was* a lasgun, and that the cultist was trying to reload. Chainsword sweeping down, his head was disintegrated into a spray of bone and blood.

"Ick," Margret commented, wiping a bit of cultist off her flak armor. Then, finally, she turned to take in their surroundings.

The room was mostly devoid of the workbenches and equipment that had littered the rest of the facility. In fact, the whole thing seemed... Clean. Oddly clean, considering the decay everywhere else. Unfamiliar runes were emblazoned on the walls in symmetrical patterns, but otherwise there were no decorations unless you counted the cultist corpses on the ground.

In the center of the room, though, there stood a machine the size of a small tank. It was mostly encased in steel and ceramite, but two doorways opened up and a notebook was sitting in front of it on a small table, open and with a jar of fresh ink next to it.

"Huh," Margret commented. "Want to see what all the fuss is about?"

"Sure." Gabriel said, smirking. His eyes were aglow with the aftermath if battle. He didn't particularly care that a portion of his face, and much of his reinforced flak armor was coated in omnisiah blood. W ping off his chainsaw, he began to peruse the notebook, and whistled, "Plenty of weapon schematics in here." He said. He then turned to a case that was peeking out from the table, and bent down. The lock had corroded away. Grunting, he forced it open. His eyes widened.It was a meltagun, except slightly smaller, looking like it was meant to be wrist mounted, with two smaller barrels on the side, and scope on top. "Emperor's ballsack, look at this beauty." He ran his fingers along the chassis. He grinned, and attached it to his robotic arm. "Now, let's have a look at you." He turned to the machine, "You wanna do the honors Marg?" He asked

"You and your guns," Margret commented, rolling her eyes. "You know, a Lasgun does the job just fine against these guys, and the ammo doesn't cost more than a Valkyrie." Then, striding over to the machine, she fingered the input pad. It flickered to life more easily than she had expected, apparently the cultists had gotten things working before they had shown up.

As the display booted up, Margret whistled. "Damn," she said, looking over the manifold. "Come take a look at this, it's an augmentation Medicae setup. Implants to boost... Well, strength, speed, recovery... Just about everything."

She didn't notice that, as she started to read it, the runes on the walls started to glow ever so slightly, she just felt a minor compulsion to give the machine a try.

Gabriel glared at her, before going over to check out the display. THE hairs on his nest old on end as the runes started to activate. He looked at his partner, "Now Marg, while I love anything that will allow me to kill better, shouldn't we have a professional do this. Remember the last time you tried to activate a mutations?" He mind monetarily recalled nap that incident, wherein he had been stuck with a third arm and green hair for nearly a month. Well, that, and everything he had eaten had tasted like Ork dung.

"Come look at this, though," Margret said. "It doesn't need an operator, it's foolproof. Besides, last time was a fluke, it only went wrong when that freakin' Psyker tried to blast us while we got the machines booted up." Glancing back at the manifold, she added, "And it looks like those cultists fixed it up pretty good. We're already convicts, what's the worst that could happen? I'll go first if you're too much of a pussy."

Gabriel flashed her the bird, before he went to the console. The mercenary sheathed his blade, chuckling as the newfound vitality, strength, and whatnot augmented his abilities. He grinned as he flexed his hand, "Oh yeah, that's the stuff." He the. Stepped back, "Your turn, your highness." He teased.