# The Grind



## maelstrom48 (Sep 5, 2012)

The wheeled chair creaked in protest as Skarthax leaned in, squinting at the monitor. Despite the shift in angle, the contents of the spreadsheet remained as indecipherable as ever—a jumble of competing functions that had populated every last cell with depressingly low numbers. Productivity was down. It’d _been_ down. And no matter how hard Skarthax tried, the boxes in the ‘Totals’ column stayed highlighted that angry shade of red.

“Bloody excel,” the World Eater muttered sadly. He wished he could go far back in time and disembowel the wretch who’d invented the cursed program.

Well, wishing didn’t accomplish much, and his totals weren’t going to change themselves.

Sighing, Skarthax focused his attention on row 463. He narrowed his eyes at the contact info—and groaned aloud at the name he saw there. “Not again…” Dejectedly, he crammed on his headset and punched out an alphanumeric on the keypad of his vox set. A repeating monotone sounded in his ear as the number rang out. _Beep…. Beep… Beep… Beep…_

Just as he’d resigned himself to leaving a voicemail, the speaker crackled into life. He shifted in his seat, licking his lips hopefully. “Hello?”

There was a series of muffled scraping noises as the driver presumably rummaged in the seat cushion for his handset. A few curses. Then, ”Yeah? What?”

“Hello!” Skarthax said with entirely false brightness. He forced a smile onto his craggy features, his sharpened teeth turning the expression into a leer that his listener fortunately couldn’t see. _Smile when you’re speaking on the net_, the trainers had constantly repeated during orientation. _It’ll find its way into your voice! Customers appreciate a positive attitude! _“Hello,” he fake-grinned, “this is Skarthax, I’m with Transportation. Is this… uh…” He glanced fleetingly at the contact info, “…Bardus?”

“No,” the speaker said with annoyance. “I don’t know who that is. This is Alpharius.”

_Oh for the love of Khorne. _“Alpharius. Right, that’s fine, my mistake.”

“Damn right it’s your mistake!”

“Look, Alpharius, I need a status on this shipment you’re carrying. The Company of Misery is counting on that ammo and they keep calling in saying they expected it yesterday. Can you give me an ETA?”

“No.”

“What?”

“I can’t say.”

Skarthax fought to keep his agitation under control. “You’re not one of the bloody Mournival and we’re on the same team here. All I want to know is, when can the customer expect his shipment?”

“Sorry but I’m just not in a position to guess at that. Have you seen traffic on the belt recently? Plus, the nuclear fallout is really messing with my GPS. If I gave you an ETA, it’d be a lie, and you know how bad my legion hates lying.”

The World Eater minimized his window and pulled up the tracking system. “But my tracker says you’ve been stopped at your current coordinate for 36 hours!” He knew for a fact that there was a Slaaneshi bordello at that precise location, but it wouldn’t have been seemly to point that out.

There was a feminine giggle in the background, quickly suppressed. Then, “Uh… Bro, there’s a tunnel coming up. Actually I’m going in now. _Tzzzzzztttkkkzzzzzztzz_…”

At this point Skarthax lost his cool completely. “Oy! What the hell? There’s no tunnel! You’re making that sound with your mouth! Oy! Alpharius? Alpharius?” But the line was already disconnected.

Aggravated, he tore off the headset and tossed it against the monitor, which flickered in protest. “Fuck!”

“Alpha Legion, huh?” **** emerged from the cubicle beside him, arms folded. The Iron Warrior’s pristine battle plate was half-covered in yellow and black chevrons. It gave the distinct impression that some construction vehicle had chugged into the office and gotten a mite too comfortable.

“Who else?” sighed Skarthax. He wished his coworker would just bugger off, but he was too nice a guy to say so.

**** nodded sympathetically. “Never a straight answer from that lot. You need to talk code with those guys. Just spit out enough cryptic-sounding bull and they’ll sing like songbirds. In code, of course.”

“Yeah, well, it all comes naturally to _you_,” snapped Skarthax. Bloody Iron Warriors were all the same. Prissy oversized cocks and their inferiority complexes, always trying to prove how smart they were. With forced civility, he continued, “Straight forward is the way I prefer things.”

The Iron Warrior’s face took on a smug expression. “How’s that working out for your numbers?”

Skarthax’s choler rose and he was _this_ _close _to telling **** to fuck off. But the anger just as quickly faded. What was the point? Beating **** into a pulped mass of quivering muscle fiber and ceramite splinters wasn’t going to help anyone, least of all him. At this point he just wanted to go home. At least there was cognac there. If Cadians knew one thing, it was cognac. Not that it would get him anywhere near drunk, but still, alcohol was a mute companion and that was awfully welcome.

He glanced at the clock. 2:45. Great. He’d gotten off lunch an hour ago and it felt like he’d been wedged in this office chair since the Great Crusade. Sighing once more, Skarthax swiveled back and forth with all the enthusiasm of a hamster who’d just emerged from hibernation in his balsa wood mini house—disoriented, sleepy, covered in wood shavings and tufts of wild fur growth. It was a bad synonym, sure, but he was too jaded to come up with a better one.

He sniffed as a foul odor permeated the air conditioned space. “Did someone fart?”

****’s armored shoulders lifted in what must have been a shrug.

“No, that was me.” Their boss shuffled into view. Monty was Death Guard, and a picture of decay. His rotten green armor was covered in buboes, which wept rancid pus that dribbled onto the floor with every shuffling step—a ready-made meal for the miniature swarm of flies drifting around his head. His bloated face was spread into a swollen facsimile of a grin. “How’re things over here, lads? I heard some strong oaths just now. And you know how I feel about swearing in my office.” He clapped Skarthax on the shoulder, leaving a mucus handprint on the World Eaters sigil.

**** pointed immediately. “That was him, boss.”

Halfway disgusted at the sycophancy but too tired to care, Skarthax raised a gauntlet. “Yeah, it was me. I cussed.”

“Alpha Legion?” Monty prodded kindly.

Skarthax nodded.

The boss chuckled. Some stale coffee splashed from his mug. He swilled the remaining liquid absently. “Ah, those boys. Just when we thought our jobs weren’t difficult enough, pulling order out of _chaos_ and all that.” He alternated a nauseating grin between the two workers, hoping for a laugh. Receiving only faint smirks for his trouble, his shoulders drooped. “Well. Suffice to say we’re a bit unappreciated sometimes. If only people understood that a Black Crusade isn’t going to supply itself! If only they could realize the value of logistical work! But don’t you worry, lads, they’ll figure it out sooner or later. For now… Skarthax, you go ahead and take the rest of the day off, eh?”

“What?” The World Eater jerked in alarm. “You aren’t firing me, are you?”

“No, no, no! You’re one of my best, lad!” 

It was a lie, but Skarthax supposed Monty was just being nice. A World Eater stuck in a cubicle. That was utter failure waiting to happen but it hadn’t stopped Lord Sirdag from transferring him. The bastard was probably still laughing.

Monty went on, “I wouldn’t just let you go like that! No, you’ve had a rough day, that’s all. We all have those. Even **** over there has one every so often. Right, ****?”

“Absolutely, boss!” the Iron Warrior piped, so giddy at the attention that he was visibly trembling.

“See? So there, you just head on home. I’ll clock you at the usual time. You won’t see any drop in your paycheck. How’s that?”

Understanding that he had no choice in the matter, Skarthax stood. “Well alright. I’ll… uh… I’ll see you both tomorrow.”

“Wednesdays are good days! Extremely productive! We’ll make up for this tomorrow, don’t you worry. One thing before you go, though…”

Skarthax paused mid step, absolutely positive now that he was about to be fired.

Monty pointed at the waste bin. “You mind if I get in there for a minute?”

“Uh… Sure, boss. Go right ahead.”

“Great, thanks.” Monty leaned over and, with infinite care, drew out a crumpled tissue paper. Tongue stuck between his teeth in anticipation, he dropped the tissue into his coffee mug. He took a careful sip, completely unaware of his workers’ appalled expressions, and smiled indulgently. “Ah, yes, now that’s the good stuff. Do I detect a hint of… strep throat?”

“Just got over it last week,” confirmed Skarthax.

“Well you just made my day, lad. Thanks. Now go on, scat.”

Horrified at the poop reference, Skarthax fled in all haste.

He navigated through a veritable labyrinth of cubicles, each populated by a hunched figure in power armor. The dregs of every legion was represented here, and the occasional renegade battle brother as well--though most traitor chapters weren’t so beholden to the Despoiler that they were expected to contribute to the bureaucratic workings of the Black Crusade. The rings of incoming calls reverberated through the amply-sized office, and the gentle tapping of keyboards. The sounds of productivity.

By the Blood God, Skarthax hated this place.

He trudged on through. He passed the secretary, a luscious daemonette named Sin-die, who giggled behind one spotted hand. “Bye, Skar! Be sure to call me if you aren’t doing anything!”

“Sure thing, Sin,” he grumbled. She said the same thing to every Astartes who worked here. All talk and no action, that girl.

A set of shattered glass doors slid open in his path. The walk outside was made of Cadian flak plates, smashed up and artfully arranged so that the bloodstained pieces formed an overlay of eight-pointed stars. Lovely, really. The Word Bearers who’d rechristened the administratum building had really known what they were about. They’d even laminated the whole arrangement in liquefied stained glass plundered from a cathedral. The attention to detail was enviable.

“BOO!” An Astartes in midnight blue armor sprang from a hedgerow, talon-tipped arms flapping theatrically.

Skarthax shuffled by with a nonplussed wave. “Nice try.”

The Night Lord dropped his arms sadly. “Was it, though?”

“It’s the bat wings, brother. I saw them sticking out of the bushes before I even stepped out of the door.”

“Don’t make fun of my bat wings!” the marine bawled.

“They’re bloody stupid. Lose them and you might be getting somewhere. See you around.”

Out in the parking lot, Skarthax felt a welcome stirring of joy. Sarah was there, faithfully parked where he’d left her that morning. Her warp-spawned plates glistened with a fresh sheen of sacrificial blood, and the bronze trim was so brightly polished that he could see his reflection from twenty paces away. The juggernaut snorted at his approach. She pawed the asphalt, eager to be off.

The World Eater smiled. He gave her spiked head an affectionate pat. He retrieved his helmet from the saddle. Once the helmet had borne a proud set of Khornate bunny ears, but a lascannon burst had shorn one off in the first week of the Crusade. With a forlorn sigh, he crammed it over his head. He stooped and peered at his reflection, hoping against hope that he wasn’t as sad a sight as he imagined himself. He was sorely disappointed.

His crimson armor was battle worn, the plates scratched and dented by thousands of blows. A flurry of lasbolts had melted half the Khornate emblem on the breastplate, so that it now had the look of a lumpy capital ‘E’. The dangling chains were devoid of their usual decoration; teenage cultists had broken into his flat and filched the trophy skulls months ago. Uncaring rainfall had washed off every last lovingly-acquired bloodstain. The lone bunny ear only accentuated the unhappy fact: he was a shadow of the berserker he’d once been.

“Skarthax! Oy!”

He turned in faint recognition. “Oh. Corey. How’re things?”

His fellow World Eater stopped short. “_Corpser_,” he corrected in a plaintive tone.

Within his helmet, Skarthax smiled whimsically, remembering the long-gone days when he’d shared that same enthusiasm. When he’d had pride. He missed that. “Sorry, Corpser. It’s been a long day.”

His fellow brightened a bit. “Yeah well, that’s alright. You’ve been at it a while. Say,” he gestured at Sarah, “I’m liking the hooves. What’s that, warp onyx?”

“It is! Glad someone noticed! I installed them last weekend.”

Corpser squatted beside the juggernaut, eying the new hooves appreciatively. His gaze panned across the mount’s ample bulk. “She’s a beaut, bro. Love what you’ve done with her.”

“Get your own,” laughed Skarthax.

“Aw, someday. Tickets to the Bloody Realm are tough to come by these days. Looks like it’ll be a while until I get to the dealership. Despoiler doesn’t want his Crusade wandering off on him. So I’m stuck here, with that.” He jerked his head at the scarlet rhino on the opposite side of the lot.

“That’s not a bad ride. I like the spikes. How’s the gas mileage?”

“Oh, fantastic.” Corpser rolled his eyes. There was an awkward pause. Then, “Well, the reason I came over here. You look like I feel. Like you’re needing an escape. There’s a thing tonight. At the arena. Gladiator fight. I’ve got a spare ticket if you want to go.”

Skarthax frowned. “You’re not asking me out on a date are you?”

Corpser looked genuinely horrified. “Oh by the Bloody Lord, hell no. But you’re the only other World Eater around here, so I thought I’d make you the offer first. Better you than some sorry ass Night Lord. That one back there try to get you too?”

“He did. Poor bastard. He’s been trying for months now.”

“Those bat wings are totally fucking stupid.”

“Totally,” nodded Skarthax. He winced at the youth-emism. Shit, but he was old.

“But really, you want the ticket or not?”

Skarthax thought about it. “No, that’s alright. Try giving it to Royd. You know, that amped-up Word Bearer in accounting?”

“You sure?” goaded Corpser, waving the scrap of parchment at him. “They say the Betrayer himself is attending! I mean, that’s not necessarily a good thing but they’re gonna draw random ticket numbers, and the winners get to run out in the arena and kill a few Cadian prisoners. Strictly B-Y-O-B, is the only catch.”

“B-Y-O-B?”

“Bring Your Own Battleaxe, dolt.”

“I’m too old for that stuff now, brother. Acronyms and such. I just can’t keep up anymore. Give the ticket to some young berserker who can appreciate it. I’m just going to head home.” Sarah stooped obligingly, and he heaved himself into the saddle with a grunt. “Enjoy the arena, Corpser.” With a happy snort, the juggernaut trotted off, her hooves tearing deep gouges in the pavement.

The young World Eater watched him go, still holding the ticket out. “You’re only old when you let yourself be, bro!”

“Thanks!” Skarthax called over his shoulder. He gunned the completely unnecessary motor, and he and Sarah took off at a gallop, their passage marked by a great swirling cloud of black exhaust.

*[More to come. Stay tuned!]*


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## Alexander_Millar (Jan 2, 2012)

Put a smile on my face  good writing, I definitely enjoyed it! Looking forward to reading more


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## maelstrom48 (Sep 5, 2012)

_[OOP: I hadn't even noticed that this was the Featured Fiction for this month! Thank you for the recognition! Here's the second segment at last. I'll have to get working on the third and final.]_

Alpharius hadn’t lied about one thing. Traffic on the beltway was horrendous this afternoon. The traffic jam was miles long, moving at a lurching crawl along the battered stretch of Cadian highway. Land raiders, rhinos, and all varieties of appropriated civilian vehicles clogged the road and vied for space. Badly-maintained engines belched pollution into the already-tortured atmosphere and obscured what little sunlight the nuclear winter let through.

Angst permeated the crammed roadway. Many of the commuters had been trapped in the gridlock for hours. Their honking filled the air. Some had popped the hatches on their tanks and stuck their heads out to throw useless insults at their co-sufferers. A few had even drawn weapons, only to realize everyone around them was armed as well. Soberly, the hotheads holstered their guns once more. There was no violence—not yet, anyway.

Riding had its advantages, though. Skarthax steered his juggernaut through the clear space between the lanes, whistling tunelessly to himself. Angry drivers threw choice words at him as he rode past, mostly along the lines of “illegal” and “fuck yourself”. 

He went by a tractor occupied by a long-suffering cultist, his tattooed face lined with barely-held patience as a gaggle of tiny purple changelings in the bounced around in the wagon bed, screeching and wailing for attention.

His wife, a pink daemon who resembled a toothed manta ray, was leaning over the shift nob to yell in his ear. “Why aren’t you doing what that red one is doing? Go between them you moron! The kids are driving me insane!”

“Woman, don’t you give me that bollocks!” he roared, his endurance finally spent. “I wanted to leave mass early but noooooo, _you _felt the need to have a bloody vision and go into spasms! If you want to go home so badly, then get out and walk!”

The daemon had a retort ready of course, proper wife that she was, but Skarthax was spared from hearing it. He kept trotting on his merry way.

Then, up ahead, a boxy blue shape loomed. There were all sorts of crazy sigils cut into the armor plates, but their blinding insanity couldn’t approach what this driver had accomplished. The rhino was perpendicular on the road. Its bulk had taken up all of the three lanes from divider to divider, and without an inch to spare. There would be no steering around this one.

Skarthax gaped, wonder-struck at the sheer ineptitude. So this was the reason for the traffic jam. But that left the question, _how the hell had he done that_?

A glance at the driver’s compartment provided the answer. A pair of blue and yellow striped prongs were protruding from the top hatch.

“Thousand bloody sons! Well doesn’t that just figure!” Skarthax brought Sarah right up to the side of the tank. “Oy! Oy! You in there!”

There was no discernible answer apart from the nonsensical whispering of dozens of ghostly voices. But the prongs slowly shifted as the driver—invisible in the confines of his tank—turned his head.

“You’re taking up the whole road. People have places to go. You care to move?”

No reply. The prongs didn’t so much as twitch, either. Skarthax could just imagine the automaton staring absently at the wall, wondering why it couldn’t see who was talking.

He gritted his teeth. “Move it, old man! You’re wasting my fucking time!”

This time there was an answer. A blue digit rose from the open hatch with infuriating slowness, slower than a glacier made of frozen fucking molasses, in fact. Approximately three minutes later, the whole gauntleted hand had finally become visible.

It was giving him the finger.

“Fuck me?” Skarthax’s voice rose in pitch. “Fuck ME?! Oh, now that does it! Sarah!” The juggernaut’s boxy head swiveled. She regarded him curiously—and yes, angrily—through one beady black eye. “We’re doing this, Sarah! Come on!” He kicked his heels against her sides. The daemon machine responded instantly. With a whine of servos and a pulse of warp-spawned muscle, she launched herself into the Rhino’s side. Plasteel dented, and the tank lurched back a solid foot.

Sarah backed off, shaking her head. With a metallic roar, she rammed it again. By that point, the stranded spectators behind them were all cheering. A few more bludgeoning, brain-churning blows later, the rhino had finally slid far enough that a lane was partially open.

“Fuck you, dusty!” Skarthax cackled as he rode on past. The Thousand Son’s middle finger remained stubbornly upright.

With the road clear ahead, the World Eater goaded his juggernaut into a full gallop. Sure, her short limbs made her gait a tad clumsy, and he would most certainly need to see an apothechiropractor in the next month or so, but boy was she a fun ride. Ruined Imperial buildings juddered past, some of them still smoldering. The rushing air found its way through his helmet grille, and he savored the delicious tang of radiation. This was freedom—riding down an open road at a full gallop with the wind in his face and a glass of liquor waiting at the end.

Then, just as his scarred face cracked into a grin, he heard the bass.

“Oh no. Not again.” The rhythmic thumping grew louder, accompanied now by the aggravatingly high-pitched buzz of a juiced rhino engine, and—if he didn’t mistake it—a whiff of narcotic perfume.

They pulled up alongside him in the slow lane—the slow lane! assholes—whooping and hollering, their armor painted a truly immasculine shade of pink, like some kind of cough medicine gone horribly awry. The Noise Marines had daubed all sorts of crude pornographic imagery on their tank, though they’d thankfully decided to obscure the worst of it by clinging to the sides rather than sit inside it like reasonable human beings. They grinned at him with their hideously-malformed faces, brandishing weapons that defied classification. One of their guns looked suspiciously like an overlarge harmonica. Not that they needed them; the music blaring from the vehicle’s loudspeakers was just way too loud. Hell, the subwoofer alone was strong enough to pulverize concrete.

The squeaky engine revved in challenge. The Emperor’s Children stretched their smiles wider.

“Really?” Even bellowing at the top of his lungs, Skarthax doubted the pink marines could hear him. “Move it! I’m not gonna race you, you idiot bunch of kids!”

As if they couldn’t have gotten any more ridiculous, the rhino started _bouncing_. Its front end heaved to the beat of the music. And somehow, the kids were having a blast. They giggled as the clung on for dear life, their bodies tossing comically.

“Oh come on!” roared Skarthax, growing angry now. “A low rider? Do I seriously have to put up with this shit?”

Without warning, the bouncing rhino slewed toward him. Skarthax had no time to react, save to tense his body. With a terrific bang, tank and juggernaut collided. Shards of metal—and Emperor’s Children—were sent flying. Skarthax was hurled from Sarah’s back and smacked into the pavement hard enough that stars swirled across his vision. He slid fifty meters, trailing sparks, before groaning to a halt.

Breathing hard, he staggered upright. Around him, the teen marines were lying inert, though most of them were still giggling in delighted pain. But Skarthax’s gaze was torn to his juggernaut. “Sarah!” 

He pounded over to her, but he already saw that the damage had been done. His poor juggernaut was lying in a broken heap, her legs twisted at even more unnatural angles than normal, her head slumped on the pavement. She mewled pathetically. “Aw, fuck,” he said. Remembering himself, he took hold of her snout. “Hey, it’s alright girl. This is nothing. A little blindside is all. We’ll get you towed to a Warpsmith and he’ll fix you up right good. You just rest that spiky little head a bit. Me…” He clenched his fist. “I’ve got business to take care of.”

He stood. For the first time in years, part of his crusty old heart was stirring. The really pissed off part. Actually he doubted this had anything to do with either of his hearts, but still—

“Now you’ve done it, assholes.” He said, unlimbering his chainaxe. The thing was damn near rusted to his back by now, but a good tug got it loose. “You hurt my ride!” He raised his voice to a roar. “YOU BROKE THE ONLY THING I EVER LOVED! I’LL KILL YOU ALL!”


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## Anne Marie (Aug 13, 2012)

This is hilariously wonderful, especially the bouncing Rhino. Looking forward to more!


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## Waaagh_Skabfang (Feb 12, 2013)

Haha! loved the image of the high Noise Marines lieing unconcious on the road. You have made a boring day of work go much faster, keep it coming!


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## Deneris (Jul 23, 2008)

Love it, even as a "Dusty bastard" player :grin:

Will there be any more?


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## maelstrom48 (Sep 5, 2012)

Sure will! Can't promise when, but I'll get to it soon as I can.


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