Abell’s story

Brushing aside the grit and dust of years from the shattered balustrade, Abell rested the forward grip of his stubber gently against the plascrete ruins of the old Adminitratum hall and squinted down the barrel. The sights hovered over the long reptilian form of the skezzard as it sunned itself on the exposed floor of the ruined PDF barrack house 140 yards away. It’s mottled grey hide gave it a fair degree of concealment, but as one of the top predators on Tale, it had little to fear as it gathered the midday sun and digested it’s latest meal. Abell tried to relax, despite the heat, despite his hunger, despite the knowledge he was running very low on ammunition. Slowing his breathing, he squeezed gently on the trigger. The explosion from the shot echoed round the ruins of Tale’s capital city Vidi as the first round tore into the skezzard’s shoulder. With a twisting motion the lizards body sprang up on it’s three remaining good legs and it started to bolt away up the broken wall behind it. Abell’s second shot took it in the neck and the skezzard slid down onto it’s back onto it’s former roosting place.

Abell watched the skezzard’s moribund form closely, stubber still trained on it. The growing pool of blue-grey ichor suggested a clean kill but he knew from bitter experience how deceptive the skezzard could be and he needed the meat from this kill badly. After an eternity of only a few seconds Abell felt confident the skezzard was not about to leap up and move off, and more importantly no other critters were being drawn to the kill. Shouldering his stubber and grabbing his pack he ran back into the Administratum building, the administrative and governmental centre for Vidi, and headed for the one remaining intact stairwell down to the ground floor.

As he slipped from cover to cover, weaving his way across the plasma fused and blasted plaza toward the barrack house Abell reflected on how hard life was becoming in the ruins of Vidi.

Tale had been reincorporated into the Imperium of Man during the Great Crusade and its vast mineral reserves had made it an important jewel in the crown of the Imperium here on the eastern fringe of the galaxy. The coming of the Tau Empire, who had the same need for it’s rare and complex metal reserves as did the Imperium, had brought conflict to the world of Tale. All of the population centres had suffered the same fate as Vidi, being reduced to a blasted ruin as the Tau moved to crush the Imperial defence forces on Tale. Abell was unsure how many Talian, or Terran standard, years had passed in the interim, but in that time no help had come from the Imperium and humans on Tale had become increasingly scarce. The Tau had set up their own population and mining enterprises on Tale and now small bands of men like Abell eked out a scavenger existence in the ruins of its once glorious cities.

As he approached the barrack house Abell assessed the route to the ledge where his kill lay at rest. From many long hours hunting for ammunition and other discarded military gear in these ruins he knew there was no route inside the building to take him to his quarry. Power had long since stopped running to any of the transport lifts but the amount of damage this building had suffered did mean the outer surface was riven with blast holes and cracks that made a climb up to the ledge a possibility. At the base of the barrack house wall Abell fitted improvised crampons to his boots, pulled his hood forward to shield himself from the glare of the relentless sun and, taking one last look around, hauled himself up onto the remnants of a broken buttress.

The climb was brutal in the heat and the jabs and scrapes from the broken wall were not softened by his, now worn and almost ragged, clothing. As Abell groped with his left hand to find purchase in the fractured edge of open window, misshapen by the blast that had blown it out, a faint sound caught his attention in the dust blown silence of Vidi. Kicking frantically with his legs, sparks flying from the twisted metal crampons, Abell rolled onto the shaded floor near the fragmented window as the whistling sound intensified. Spreadeagle on the floor, Abell lay motionless as a single Tau flyer cut a lazy arc over the Administratum hall towards him. The flyer was a single man scout craft the Talians called a piranha. Abell let out a breath of relief as the flyer continued over his location and out of sight. Pulling himself up he skittered behind a broken column and looked through the skeletal remains of the barracks. The piranha came back into view. Abell watched as it jinked round the towering spire of Vidi’s sky port further down the plaza. The piranha swept round the tower scanning the now empty docking sleds that once bustled with civilian sky traffic over Vidi before breaking off and heading west away from a much relieved Abell.

Wiping the sweat from his brow with the front edge of his hood, Abell swung back out onto the wall to resume his climb. As he pulled himself onto the exposed floor at the top of what remained of this section of the barracks the stink of the dead skezzard became apparent. Grabbing the tail of the reptilian corpse, Abell pulled the body into a niche between two broken columns, finding some shade from the midday heat. Unslinging his pack and drawing his knife he began to strip the carcass in swift practised strokes, wrapping hunks of flesh in sections of the animals own hide before stuffing them into his pack.

His work complete, Abell carefully cleaned his knife and reshouldered his now bulging pack. As he walked towards the floor’s edge, wiping his hands clean on his fatigues, a loud bang over his head made him flinch.

The supersonic blast from the piranha was quickly followed a more sustained and raucous series of explosions as a cloud of munitions broke the piranha into pieces, which rained down onto the plaza below. The previously still air was thrown into a chaotic storm as a shadow passed over Abell. Tilting his head back he saw the massive undercarriage of the crimson Stormtalon dropship as it slowed to a hover over it’s prey, assault cannon barrels still spinning.

The marines had arrived.