Grimdark Future

This story is fan-fiction made in the Grimdark Future universe, by One Page Rules, , and inspired by the Doomed Empire line of miniatures created by Oshounaminis.

“There’s no trees.”

Airn looked up. “What?”

Rishard gestured around the horizon. “No trees. At least, not many. Look, I’m not going to complain about going on a treasure hunt, but I’ve seen Starhost ruins before, and they’re always in jungles or forests. At least there should be some grass. This is just sand and dirt. Barely any life at all. I haven’t even heard any insects buzzing.”

“There are birds,” Airn sighed, turning back to her work. “Shen mentioned seeing one several minutes ago.”

“Yeah, flying overhead,” Rishard leaned on their las-digger. “Probably migrating. I’d feel better if it had stopped by for a bit, but there’s nothing here any birds could want. It’s dead.”

“I promise you, we are in the right spot.” Airn’s glowing mechanical eye blinked, the only sign that she had flipped to the next screen of the file she was looking at. “Satellite positioning puts us within three meters of the target.”

This story is fan-fiction made in the Grimdark Future universe, by One Page Rules.

Gene Mods were dangerous things. Hart knew this better than most, and he was not one to quickly forget a lesson. A mistake in the synthesis, an error in the gene coding, or even bumping the manipulator arms could result in horrible mutations, diseases, even acidic fog that would fill the lab in seconds. They had been tinkering with the building blocks of both life and death in Research Station Kappa.

The cells were separate from the main building. They were connected by a series of airlocks with extensive decontamination stations at regular intervals. The Monitoring station allowed Hart — and presumably the former lab-techs — to see what was happening in the cells without needing to risk life or limb of any of his soldiers.

Had the Sonic Sensors not picked up a distant noise, they wouldn’t have bothered looking. What could still be alive in the containment cells after so long without food or water?

This story is fan-fiction made in the Grimdark Future universe, by One Page Rules.

Commandant Schuler was a prisoner.

No matter how he looked at the situation, he couldn’t see it any other way. Oh, the Lance-Captain had been very polite; had a slew of excuses, apologies, and promises of vacating the colony soon enough, but Schuler was no fool. Despite all the ‘sir’s and ‘please’s, there was no mistaking the tone of command in the Lance-Captain’s voice. There was no missing the heavy rifles gripped in the hands of every armored-soldier that now crawled over the tiny colony “for their protection.”

Even now, in the back of an APC with no one but him and two “escorts,” a fully-charged plasma pistol was gripped in one of their fists, as if the gene-modded super-soldiers couldn’t snap his neck with all the effort of cracking an egg.

They didn’t even move right. Schuler watched as the APC tore over the uneven landscape, pitching left and right, rocking him back and forth against the metal walls of the transport enclosure. The soldiers barely moved at all, looking for all the world like they had been carved out of the APC, as much a part of it as the walls.

This story is fan-fiction made in the Grimdark Future universe, by One Page Rules.

“They’re holding their hands up,” Horva reported. “It looks like they’re talking.”

“Damn it!” Ranthar snatched the com unit from the nearby operator. “Whoever reads me, tell Squad-Sergeant Wythe that Lord-Champion Ranthar wants to speak with him at once!”

Horva could only faintly hear the talking over the coms before Wythe’s steady voice became suddenly clear. “I’ve heard that roar before, Lord-Champion. I was stationed at Enek Powerstation. I was part of the bastion force sent to repel the Hive’s advances.”

“Sergeant Wythe,” Ranthar was furious, “What the devil are you —”

“I was there, sir!” Wythe shouted. Through the binoculars, Horva could see his hand was beginning to shake. “We managed to hole up, about twenty of us, in the lower levels. We were cut off from the command center. I was one of three sent out to scout and bring back intel on enemy activity. We reached the main power stacks, but a Hive Lord was already there along with a whole squad of crawlers. It looked around, like it was sniffing at things, and then gave… that howl and left. The whole squad just left. We got into the center and reconnected our coms to the computer, but…then…”

This story is fan-fiction made in the Grimdark Future universe, by One Page Rules.

The grunts almost looked harmless as they nosed through the underbrush, searching for who knew what. Tamryn swallowed his nervousness; they would look harmless until the moment they shrieked and charged at you with claws and teeth bursting out of their bodies like a snap-trap. Some of them could even fire their claws out of their hands — at least, that was the scuttlebutt. Tamryn didn’t believe it; he knew it was the experienced veteran’s privilege to lie to the new recruits. His older sister had told him it was both a rite of passage and a way for veterans to remind recruits that for all the training the Guild gave them, they didn’t actually know anything. There were some things only experience could teach you.

Tamryn’s grip tightened on his iron blaster. He wouldn’t have minded more experience before this operation. How strong were the null-pheromones? Could he sweat through them? Would the grunts attack if he got any closer? The squad was under orders; engage and then withdraw. Only fire his weapon in obvious self-defense. They were orders that made no sense to him, but that was the point of being a solider; you were a cog in a vast machine. The cogs didn’t know what the machine was doing, they knew only when and how to turn. That was what it meant to be a Dwarven soldier; serve well, bring honor to the Guild, and trust that someone knew what the machine was doing.

More and more, recently, it was getting harder to hold to that faith.

This story is fan-fiction made in the Grimdark Future universe, by One Page Rules.

Horva ith Irnwuld stared over the darkened forest at the distant horizon of the Maldadori Gap. The fog was dark with a hint of green, and the air was sour in the nostrils, the familiar signs of Hive industry. The scientists called it terraforming, but Horva had fought Hive infestation for years, and had seen the devastation left after the Hive moved on. It wasn’t terraforming, it was digestion.

She had grown used to the smell, though she was not proud of the fact. Her expertise had come at the cost of thousands of good men and women. If their charge were correct, if there really some way to end the fighting…

At first she had been skeptical. No, that was selling it short; at first she had been dismissive. Their own war-scientists had been studying the Hive for decades, and every report had been the same; they were highly advanced animals, acting on instinct and emergent hive-behavior. They communicated mostly through pheromones and growls, and there were no signs of sentience, let alone sapience, in individual beings.