Warhammer 40k: Void Crossed Lovers Ch. 02

Author's Note: I did not invent the Warhammer 40,000 universe, nor many of the concepts contained within. All elements of Warhammer 40,000 beyond the characters and explicit setting of this story (the Hive Bosporus and a few mentioned planets) are the creation of Games Workshop.

This is the second and final part of this story of love, revenge, swords and monsters. Enjoy!

Jornan and Ruby were about two hours into their progress through Sub-Factory-39 Ajaxsis when Ruby suggested: "Maybe we should ask a native for directions?"

Jornan looked at her -- his brow furrowing as he snapped his gaze from her beautiful face to the grungy surroundings. Acid-rain had condensed along the roof, causing the leering gargoyles that dominated the upper reaches of each corridor to slump and slouch as if they had become tired by their long duty watching over the souls of the Imperium. The floor tended to metal grating -- making it all too clear that they were walking over thrumming pipes filled with aetheric fire drawn from the electrodynamic minarets and that a single misstep might consume them in a blast of tech-sprites. He looked back at her.

"I'm sure if we just keep heading this way we'll be fine," he said, nodding. "Besides. I'm a Rogue Trader. Well, Trader-Elect. We're born to navigate the unknown." He advanced forward to the next intersection and looked left and right. He rubbed his chin -- deducing that the best way to go would be to the left -- he noticed less odious scents from that direction. He started that way before realizing that Ruby wasn't beside him.

He turned back and saw that Ruby had asked a green and gold clad hiver. The hiver pointed straight down the junction, then made a throwing gesture -- his rising and falling hiver cant lost to the faint whistle of the wind that streamed through the corridor. Ruby nodded, handed him a few thrones, then walked over to Jornan.

She smiled and booped his nose with her finger.

"That way," she said, nodding to the right.

Jornan scowled.

"Take this as a lesson, oh honorable Trader-Elect," she said, quietly, stepping closer and whispering in his ear. "Sometimes, it is okay to find the treasure map before throwing yourself into the Warp."

Jornan scowled even harder.

"Come now, Jornan, you look like you've eaten a prune," Ruby said, slapping his chest as she started towards the right. Jornan followed after her. They walked past a series of chambers that contained hivers who did a job -- it seemed that mostly they were occupied in adjusting hololithic displays, or moving about glimmering glyphics with immense hapatic-response gauntlets. Their function -- or if they even had a function -- was unclear to Jornan. But he didn't like the fact that the route that they were taking lead them immediately to a set of stairs -- wide ones, with built around a statue of some long forgotten Imperial Saint, her hands lifted to the heavens, her eyes covered with a sculpted bandage.

She seemed to be crying -- but that might have been pollutions caked on her cheeks.

"I'm not sure if that hiver knows quite where they were directing us," Jornan said.

"Well-" Ruby stopped, then turned back. She narrowed her eyes. "I thought I saw something." She said, when Jornan looked at her questioningly. "Something mov-"

She grabbed his arm. "Come on! Move! Move! Move!"

Jornan didn't question. He ran with her down the stairs -- the two of them taking the steps two or three at a time. They came to the first landing and Ruby had drawn her pistol. This time, Jornan saw the darkness -- it moved like a paintbrush had marked its progress as it swirled out of a vent-shaft that ran along the side of the stairwell, then slammed to the ground to their left. Ruby didn't pause -- she simply lifted her pistol and fired five rounds into the inky blackness as it surged to its full, three meter height. The rounds hit -- then sparked off the wall behind it. The creature didn't even shudder.

In the light of the passageway, Jornan saw what stood before him in hideous, hideous detail. It wore a patchwork outfit that seemed more like condom-sheath than actual clothing. It had no arms, and yet, it had many -- its body was less a body and more a mass of undifferentiated tissue, connecting and joining and rejoining and morphing and colliding again and again. But seated at the top were a pair of eyes and a single hideous skull-face. A human face. A crecent moon smile -- white as the rest of the creature was dark -- spread across its mouth.

"Naughty, naughty, Melichor-daughter," it said, in a voice that was purely human -- and all the more malevolent because of it.

"Melichor?" Jornan whispered.

Ruby drew her pistol back and fired again -- this time through the creature's head. Or she would have, if its skull hadn't simply dropped to the center of its 'chest' region. The bullet thumped into flesh and went through as smoothly as if it had struck butter. The creature started to move forward -- flowing like a cancer, leaving behind a thin trail of blackish ooze. Jornan saw that those eyes were...in the end...oh so very human. The delight was utterly familiar -- the delight of a fresh snack, in the eyes of a beggered child that he had once tossed a throne too while visiting one of his father's factory-farms. He was filled with a sudden, indescribable terror.

But despite that terror -- the instinctive fear of being eaten -- his hands did not shake as they yanked the pistol from Ruby's hands. He crushed the impeller circuits with his fingers, pressing wire to wire. A low whine started to sound and he lobbed the pistol, barrel first, into the creature's body. The slow moving projectile stuck and he grabbed Ruby and tackled her down the stairs. The two teenagers tumbled -- head over heels -- as the whining sound of the maglev impeller's feedback loop filled the air. The creature clutched at its belly.

And then the build-up of magnetic stress-forces became too great and the metal frame of the pistol shattered like a krak-grenade.

The two teens came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. There, Ruby groaned -- and sat up, looking terrified. But no darkness swooped down on them. No teeth came to chomp and chew. Instead, she only saw Jornan, rubbing his ribs. "You okay?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, blinking. "What did- how did?"

"I, uh, grew up on a agri-world," he said, grinning at her weakly. "Before my parents picked me up to be trained in the Trader's arts. We improvised a-ah bit more than I think the Cogboys would like. From time to time."

Ruby flushed, looking to the side. "I-, uh, I won't tell them. If you don't." She flashed a smile. Then, terror filled her eyes again. A terror she quashed a moment later. Jornan knew that she was Melichor. Now, she just had to see what his reaction was.

Jornan rubbed the back of his head again. "So, uh, what in the warp is a Melichor?" he asked. "And why did that thing know you?"

Ruby spluttered like a rekaff pot on boil.

Before she could say anything more, though, several forms came out of the darkness. They were dressed in rags and metal armor. They bore pipes and they bore knives and they bore guns. They gathered around the two teens and one of them -- a tattooed man with a wild profusion of green dreadlocks -- knelt down to look into Jornan's eyes.

"Well, well, well," the narco-ganger said. "Looks like we have two pretty helpless noble-brats. Don't you need some help, bratties?"

Jornan slowly lifted his palms up. "We don't want any trouble, good sirs, madames." He nodded to the women of the group. As they looked just as psychotic as the men, the 'madames' simply made them look more furious.

The narco-ganger punched Jornan in the face. He hit the ground -- groaning -- and the narco-ganger stood up. "You got no guns, you got no swords, you-"

"Actually," Ruby said, remaining on the balls of her feet, her knees bent, one hand pressed to the floor for balance, the other lifted up -- palm spread. The narco-ganger looked at her. Then the top half of his head vanished. Ruby's left hand -- the one that had been near the ground now held a smaller, sleeker looking stub-automatic. She rolled forward and Jornan kicked out -- catching another ganger in the knee. That man went down -- his kinfe hitting the floor. Jornan grabbed for it and wished dearly for his shield belt as he surged to his feet and buried the knife in the throat of one of the ganger-women before she could bring her shotgun to bear.

He yanked his knife free, pirouetting out of the blood spray as Ruby's automatic barked -- once, twice. She sent one ganger to the ground, but the others with firearms were diving for cover. One with a pipe swung it at Jornan's head. Jornan parried. His knife hit the ground -- but it was joined by several of the man's fingers and the pipe, slicked with blood. Jornan wrung his hand and the man, his combat-drugs surging into his body as he activated his implanted stim-injector with a spine-cracking twist of his neck, tackled him against the wall.

Gunfire rang out as Ruby -- who had hit cover as well -- exchanged shots with the two surviving gangers with guns. Jornan shook his head to try and clear it and brought his knee up and into the narco-ganger's balls. The ganger didn't seem to notice. Jornan kneed his thigh, his belly, punched him in the throat, clapped his hands against his ears. He headbutted him and the ganger just laughed, grinning and showing a pile of crude augmetic teeth. Then, the meaty hands befitting that of a giant closed around Jornan's throat and squeezed. Jornan staggered, trying to force the narco-ganger's hands off his throat, but he felt his vision going black.

Ruby stepped up, like an angel from the void. She put the barrel of her gun to the narco-ganger's head and pulled the trigger twice. Blood and bone misted the air and the narco-ganger hit the ground. Jornan coughed and rubbed his throat.

"Emperor," he gasped.

The narco-ganger roared, his eyes flashing open as he sat up. Jornan and Ruby jerked back as she lifted her pistol and put five more rounds in the man's head, two in his neck, and three in his torso. She smoothly dropped her magazine and reloaded it -- keeping it leveled on the ganger's chest as smoke rose from the bullet holes in his ragged clothing.

"Emperor," Jornan whispered.

"You can say that again," Ruby said -- her hand shaking.

Jornan leaned against the wall, panting. "Lets find somewhere to hide and think of where we're going next."

Ruby nodded, holstering her backup pistol.

###

The abandoned store-room had a whisper-lock on the door. Fortunately, the door was also rusted and poorly latched and fared poorly when set against Jornan's boot and Ruby's shoulder. At swung inwards, Ruby found the luminator actuator and -- with a whispered prayer to the machine spirits -- brought illumination to the chamber. It looked like they were far from the first people to use it as a resting place. There were two cots that had been set in the corner, several ancient corpse-tallow candles that had burned to their brass trays, and other hints of detritus. Someone had etched a Low Gothic quotation in the wall: Signifies not, this endless toil, they will place me in a box, the Emp'ror shall take me away, the Emp'ror shall take me away

"Well," Jornan said. "This is cheery."

Ruby chuckled and stepped over to the cot, testing it with her foot before sitting on it. She looked at him -- and her mirth faded.

"So," she said. "History lesson first? Or planning?"

"As that thing we killed was-"

"We didn't kill the Necrophage," she said, her voice flat.

Jornan blinked at her.

"We just bought ourselves, at best, five to six hours," she said, quietly. "Less, if it feeds."

"That's why you wanted to burn those bodies?" Jornan asked.

It hadn't been hard -- considering the amount of energies that flowed through the hab-complex, and the lack of proper tech-priest oversight. He had jerry-rigged a current that had surged into their clothes, and lit them a flame. By the time they were hurrying away, the narco-gangers had been nothing but ash.

"Yes," Ruby said. Then, reaching up, she brushed her fingers through her dark hair. Her eyes closed. "It was during the 10^th Black Crusade -- above a world known as Vedas." At Jornan's look, she smiled. "You recognize it. Shrine World, ruled by the Emperor-Deva cult, who worship him in his ten million guises." She shook her head slowly. "The forces of the Arch-Heretic fell on the world with a light force, but that was all that was needed to slaughter the Vedics by the millions. They drew back to their sacred mountains and fought a spirited resistance from their temples. But at the end, it was monomolecular chakram and trained martial arts pitted against power armor and bolt-guns."

She frowned. "The leader of the defenders fell to three families: The Guptri, the Sadvharta, and the Melichor. But despite all their valor, despite all that they strove to do, were they rewarded for their sacrifice, for their months of dogged resistance?" She made a quick chopping with her hand, tossing her head. "No! They were overlooked by some...middling Admiral who saved the Vedas system!"

"Jeremiah Hall!" Jornan exclaimed. "My great-great-great grandmother!"

Ruby nodded. "For this insult, the Melichor family never forgave the Halls." She blushed. "But what was once glorious was ruined. Destroyed by my ancestor -- who blackmailed and extorted the Adeptus Terra until they bequeathed him a Warrant. Annihilated by a family that turned its back on four thousand years of philosophy and faith -- defiled and twisted into something that consorts with the likes of the Necrophage."

Jornan gulped. "T-Tell me. What is it?"

Ruby sighed. "In the lowest pits of Necromunda, in the most vile swaths of its planetary sewers, the Necrophage was born from human parents. Touched by Emperor-knows-what foulness, it has an entirely distributed muscular system and a set of organells that let it survive in space let alone in a wasteland. It regenerates flesh faster than even a flamer can destroy, and all it needs is immense amounts of...meat...to sustain itself." She shuddered. "My father purchased it after ten gangs worked together to barely contain it within a makeshift electro-net. Since then, it has been his favorite assassin."

"Emperor help us," Jornan said.

"And he had it cybernetically augmented," Ruby added. "Muscle grafts, targeting matrixis, implanted vox-units."

Jornan rubbed his face slowly. "Why?" he asked, slowly dropping his hands. "Why would you do that? Who does that? Who finds the most horrifying creature short of a daemon and says: you know what this needs? To be even scarier!?"

Ruby laughed. Like all of her laughter, it was like sunshine coming out from behind a cloud. Jornan smiled at her -- unable to help himself as she shook her head a bit.

"Our only hope is to, well, get to a place with an army before it finds us again," she said.

"Actually..." Jornan said, slowly walking forward. He sat down on the cot, taking her hand in his -- squeezing it gently. "If we have five hours before it will start tracking us again -- at the max?" he paused. "I...uh..."

Ruby's thumb slid along his knuckles. Jornan's heart skipped a beat and he knew that his cheeks were turning bright red from the way Ruby smiled at him. She was very close -- and the adrenaline that the fights and flight of the day had woken in his body surged to new life. He felt his manhood snap to attention, straining against his confining layers of clothing. He felt drawn towards Ruby with the strength of a magnetic lock and when her lips met his, it was as if fire had bloomed in his belly. Her hands grabbed his chest, then spread out. If she had planned to shove him back, if she had planned to remind him they didn't have time...her fingers were distracted. They traced the lines of his muscle through his jacket and shirt and under-shirt. Then they became desperate -- undoing his neck-cloth. Jornan broke the kiss to pant quietly and then kiss her nose, her cheeks. Then his neck-cloth slipped off and for the first time since crashing, he felt as if he could breathe.

Ironic, as a moment later, their lips locked together again. Ruby's tongue darted into his mouth, found his tongue. They slipped together, coiled, pressed. Jornan moaned low in his throat as her fingers -- darting and quick and clever -- undid button after golden button. She shoved his jacket off and Jornan realized that he should be doing something as well. But to tug her poncho off would require them to break contact.

She drew back to whisper. "W-What are we doing?"

Jornan slid her poncho off. Underneath, as he had seen earlier, she wore a form fitting black bodysuit. The kind of clothes most menials in most hives wore. Simple. Didn't get caught in machinery. Delicious. And, most importantly, held together by a single electrostatic tab that he tugged on and then pulled down as Ruby twisted about to make her back easier for his finger. She wriggled, then stepped out of the bodysuit. Once revealed, her body was just as divine as he had hoped -- honed by a lifetime of training into slenderness and muscle, and cushioned by a lifetime of nobility into having curves.

Jornan tugged off his undershirt as Ruby turned back around, the hard tips of her nipples glinting -- they were painted a pale white. Ruby tackled him to the bed, her fingers tracing his chest. "God-Emperor," she whispered, her voice husky. "How did you get so built."

Jornan blushed as he spread his arms -- quivering as he felt her dusky tongue slid along the curve of his pecks, then find his nipple.

"Grew up on a farm," he said, huskily.

"Mm, love it," she murmured, voice muffled by his chest. Then she kissed his belly, slithering down towards his leggings. Jornan breathed in -- and all thoughts of everything beyond the room had scattered. Save for one. One that he held too -- and hoped that he wasn't wrong. If he was wrong...no. He shook his head slightly, then arched his back.

Because Ruby had undone the clasp on his belt and was pulling his pants down. His cock sprang free and slapped against his belly. Ruby cooed quietly, then paused, opening her mouth and shutting it. "I-I, uh, I've never done this before..." she admitted quietly.

"Neither have I," Jornan said, sitting up and blushing.

Ruby arched an eyebrow with a frown.

"I swear!" Jornan said.

"You're the teenage son of one of the wealthiest noble families in the galaxy -- heir to a fortune spanning multiple solar systems, destined to captain a voidship that can destroy planets with a broadside. And you're claiming you've never rolled a servant girl?"

Jornan pursed his lips, his back prickling. "Hey!" he said. "My family name means something. And captaining the Aquila Aureus without my honor isn't worth a damn!"

Ruby regarded him, narrowing her eyes slightly.

"A-And," Jornan admitted. "I don't like it when...the girl..." he shook his head, blushing. "They shouldn't be doing it because of my last name. T-They should be doing it because of my first."

Ruby's eyes grew shadowed. She leaned forward -- then planted a very gently kiss along the point where his cock met his balls. Jornan bit his lip to not gasp, but his cock twitched with the sensation. Then her tongue darted out again -- sliding along the curve of his scrotum. She made a quiet murr noise, then started to lick up his shaft, her tongue darting out in long, slow licks. From that point on, Jornan didn't even try to keep himself from groaning. It was all he could do to not erupt over his belly and chest. Then Ruby closed her warm hand around the base of his cock and leaned forward to take the tip of his cock into her mouth. She sucked him into her mouth with a quiet moan, then slid forward, her voice pausing as his cock bumped against the roof of her mouth. Then she started to bob her head up and down, her tongue swirling around and around his cock.