Private A Wolf and His Prey

[Madame Avilaine Mabeius]

Revmar Bloodoath

An opportunity had presented itself to the rogue trader, and when opportunities present themselves you take them. Especially when they were opportunities of this nature.

Her vessel had picked up a distress signal from a planet they were meant to stop at for a simple resupply. And when the distress signal was identified, the message told Avilaine something that made her face split in a grin. Immediately she had her personal soldiers prepare to enter the atmosphere, and to bring their best with them. A Platoon of Dalavarian Conquerors boarded three seperate Arvus Lighters to deploy to the planet's surface where the distress signal originated. Four squads of six soldiers armed with Hotshot Lasguns plus a command squad headed by Avilaine herself to answer this call, leaving plenty of space in the third for more troops. None of the twenty nine troopers aboard had any idea exactly what they were going down to do, all they knew is that this was sudden andurgent, suggesting that this was incredibly important. Their patrons presence making this even more obvious.

Whatever this was it was definitely liable to be dangerous.

What Avilaine hadn't told them, was that the distress signal was identified to be of Astartes origin. So what they would be doing was search and rescue for one of the Emperor's Angels. And whatever it was they were fighting was bound to be horrifically dangerous. Assuming that they were still alive and kicking when they arrived.

The Arvus Lighters broke the atmosphere upon entry, the crew inside shaking as the reentry jostled the craft. Then they continued to plummet for some time, before finally pulling up into level flight and eventually slowing to a cruising speed as they approached the area where the distress signal originated. Avilaine instructed the pilots to look for a sign of struggle or battle, and they compliantly began visually scanning the area, along with the assistance of their limited auspex capability.

 

[Revmar Bloodoath]

Revmar had been waiting, for how long he wasn't entirely certain. His wounds were grevious, but he had prevailed, in a sense. The remnants of the warband had fled, and the sorcerous bastard leading them was amongst them. Revmar had felt the corrupted ceramite scraping under his gauntleted fingers as the heretic had turned, breaking their dueling embrace and escaping through some portal, likely a rip into the immaterium itself and beyond to wherever their origins were.

As the portal had closed Revmar had managed to stay upright long enough to limp to the cockpit of the thunderhawk, using his rune-spear as a crutch of sorts . Using the last of his will, he had keyed in his command code chain and sent an alert. Their escort was gone, he had known that already. So instead he had managed to loop a standard encrypted distress message. Hopefully his brothers, or someon loyal to the Emperor would find it, and respond.

The runepriest stumble away from the console, making it to the cockpit doors before collapsing to his knees, slumping face first into wreckage of a co-pilot onsole and control terminal. His body, and the gene-wrought brilliance of the Emperor and Russ' own legacy, knew better than him in this moment, and the sus-an membrane kicked in, overriding his weakening stubborness, forcing his body into a state of almost suspended animation, so that the many and grevious wounds would hopefully not end the life of the white-armored figure...

As the meditative darkness of the trance took his, his bolt pistol and force-spear clattered from numbing hands, and by the time Avilaine and her band had picked up on the signal and responded, an untold amount of time had passed, and the battle would look almost old and worth examining, if not for faint life signs from the cockpit of the thunderhawk, there one moment and gone the next, and the persistent distress beacon still chiming insistently on all bands and channels. Within his own mind, Revmar slumbered. His body was healing, but his mind roamed in the guarded trance taught to him by the elder runepriests of the Icefangs, and only they alone knew what that meant for his very soul to be so adrift that long. Even now, traces of psy-frost coated his armor, occasional puffs and drifts of the substance drifting on the rare winds.

Somehow, he lived... In some form...

Madame Avilaine Mabeius

 

[Madame Avilaine Mabeius]

The Lighters came down on the old looking battlefield, and one of the pilots spoke over vox.

"I have a visual. Astartes thunderhawk." The pilot called out. "No signs of hostiles, just a lot of bodies."

"Bring us down." Avilaine instructed to the pilots, then to the soldiers she was bringing with her. "Prepare to deploy. Once we're on the ground Squads Secundus through Quintus secure a perimiter around the thunderhawk and keep watch for anything that moves. Squad Primus will move with me to investigate the Thunderhawk. And pilots, keep these ships ready to go while we're down there in case we have to leave quickly."

Her commands were acknowledged and the three vehicles moved to land, the two ships on the wings dropping down on opposite sides of the downed thunderhawk, allowing the four squads of her troopers to fan out from those dropships and form a basic perimiter in decent time, while the third one carrying Avilaine herself as well as her four personal guards and Commander, deposited them at the open mouth of the thunderhawk, leaving Avilaine to lead her four troopers into the downed craft with her Commander remaining behind to oversee the troops outside and make sure they actually had chain of command available in case something happened.

Avilaine would search the Thunderhawk, looking for any sign of life. And they found it. A collapsed Astartes just outside the cockpit where the distress signal was originating. If it weren't for the obvious psychic presence still lingering Avilaine would have thought he was dead and that they were too late. Thankfully however, this Angel remained breathing and alive, but severely wounded. And that simply wouldn't do. Though moving him would prove inordinately difficult on her own.

She went past the Space Marine and entered the cockpit to find their vox. Her own personal vox was not capable of reaching the ship in low orbit on its own. But an Astartes Thunderhawk likely had the necessary power to do so. So she got into the cockpit, fired up its vox and began transmitting to her ship in orbit. And she called down three more Arvus Lighters, this time with laborers to help load the astartes onto one of the transports so they could get him to her ship in orbit. As well as find any of his fallen brethren if there were any to find.

And maybe even collect a few items of interest if there were any of those lying around besides. Couldn't leave any relics behind for some random inebriate to collect after all.

And thus began a long, and arduous process. But Avilaine didn't need to be present for any of it. She accompanied the still living space marine up to The Arrogance where she brought him in to see her own personal physician, in the hopes that they could assist in healing him, and where the tech adepts could remove his armor if need be. Meanwhile the scavenging and recovery efforts on the surface continued for most of the day. Avilaine knew full well that the Astartes wanted to recover their dead as much as was possible, or at the very least recover something from them. She wasn't fully clear on all of the processes and customs of the Space Marines but she knew that they were important, and she wanted to make a good first impression.

Nearly twenty hours had past, and finally all of the dead Battle Brothers that could be found had been recovered, and were lain out with reverence in one of the cargo bays along with their weapons, and any other important items that might be found. In Avilaine's private medbay the comatose Astartes was being watched very closely, and given what help the mortal physician could provide. He was good of course, but an Astartes was not quite human, so there wasn't much that they could do except make sure they didn't die.

Revmar Bloodoath