Having been badgered by some of you to try my hand at writing, here goes. hope you're all happy now
enjoy
UPRISING.
A full moon shone down on the world of Manehtia, its light turning countless miles of crop fields into rippling oceans of silver, making isolated farming towns appear as islands amid the surf. It shone down on mine workings in the mountains, on storage sheds housing unprocessed ore bound for the refineries to be turned into that most precious of alloys, Adamantine. It illuminated the tiered city of Barakein, the seat of Imperial power on Manethia, as it slumbered on the coast, dreaming the fitful dreams of a billion minds. Dreams that would soon turn to nightmares.
Explosions tore at the great city, plumes of red fire rising into the sky to answer the moons silver glow from scores of locations around the sleeping giant. The attacks were masterfully executed. Within two hours every Arbites precinct, every single ecclesiarchal building from small chapel to grand cathedral, and many of the PDF garrison houses were reduced to rubble. It was as if all traces of Imperial faith and authority were being surgically removed. The uprising had begun.
A dark figure stumbled through the moon shadows of the debris choked streets, trying to remain unseen. PDF units and what few Arbites combat teams that had escaped the initial destruction were everywhere, involved in running battles with gangs of mutants and rebel troops as explosions still tore the city apart from the inside out. The figure dragged himself into an alley way and took stock of himself. He was a mess. His right arm was missing from the elbow down, blown off in a fire fight that took his right eye from him too. Only his formidable will power kept him from passing out from the pain. Luckily the shot that dismembered him had cauterised the wound, or he’d have bled to death within minutes. Reaching into a belt pouch he retrieved a dose of pain suppressants and took it, then took another and as the pain faded to a dull throb he started to move again, stumbling through the passages, seeking to escape his pursuers.
How could he have been so clumsy? Hadn’t he been trained better than this? That he had been caught in the middle of his work was a mistake that carried a high price. An arm, an eye, perhaps even his life. Now here he was, separated from his companions, and he had run out of ammo for his pistol, having spent its last rounds evading capture. The only other weapon at his disposal he greatly feared to use in his weakened state. He paused for a moment and crouched back into the deeper gloom of a doorway, closing his remaining good eye and letting his senses expand, searching for his pursuers. He found them closer than he would have liked, brushing their minds gently and fixing their location in his own. They were closing in on him, surrounding him. He had to move quickly before the noose was drawn tight.
He stumbled on, the sounds of the hunters growing louder behind him. Turning at bay, he gathered what remained of his will and hurled it at his enemy, unleashing all his fear and rage in a psychic assault that ruptured arteries and burst internal organs, but the strain nearly overcame him. He could feel the warp battering at his shattered mind, threatening to consume him utterly. With a supreme effort he beat it back, but he was now utterly defenceless, his only chance was to out run his enemy.
Shots rang out in the darkness behind him and he ran, following the twists and turns of the alley ways at random. The passage in front of him opened up into nothing and he found himself standing on a ledge over looking the lower levels of the city. His second mistake of the evening, he’d forgotten the he was on a higher tier. 300 meters below him lay the tops of buildings, with gantries and support struts running between them looking like some monstrous spider web when viewed from above. A fall from this height would almost certainly kill him, but his pursuers undoubtedly would. Long odds but the only choice left to him, he jumped.
The air whistled past his ears, girders and support struts whipping past him in a blur. His flailing left arm caught hold of a gantry but the momentum of his rushing descent dislocated his shoulder and he was falling again, only to have the remains of his right arm get trapped and torn from its socket. But it was enough to slow his descent so that the ground didn’t pulverise him as he landed, and only a small spray of blood shot from his mouth as his tortured body impacted with the floor. What pain remained felt like a distant thing, oddly muted. His head felt light and his vision swam, and the noises of the fighting still raging in the city were muffled as if hearing them through water. Someone was shouting nearby, their voice vaguely familiar to his dying mind and a face he thought he recognised but couldn’t place loomed large in his blurred sight. The last thing he knew before darkness took him was the feel of strong arms lifting and bearing him away. Then, he knew only darkness.