Editing Toyhammer (section)

=Omake: c0gb01=

It was late evening as Techpriest Ulrich 293384-491832 wandered the house, his roving band of servitors and lesser adepts of the Cult Mechanicus following him closely as the three combat servitors swung their heavy bolters warily from side to side. No telling when the xeno might attack them, despite the treaty of peace with Michael. The sound of a humming fan perked his aural sensors, and he quickly swung around to see Titanicus Michael step from a room and wander off. He was mumbling something about his injured legs and too much... warcraft? Was he secretly a commander of some sort? All indications of his pacifistic qualities did have an underlying hint of a strong willed leader, but so far he showed little to no military intelligence; after all, trying to simply smash orks with a simple pressure-based fire suppressant device was utterly stupid, even by biological standards... well, maybe with comparison to the Greater Barking Toad of Catachan [1] it was slightly more intelligent.

[1: The Greater Barking Toad of Catachan is a roughly van-sized frog, normally docile but when surprised it triggers a self defense mechanism that would cause an explosion capable of leveling entire Death-world grade forests for miles around – the only clearings in the Death World of Catachan are known to be the blast sites of such surprises (no doubt for whoever surprised the Toad in the first place)]

Attracted to the sound of humming electronics, the band of mechanical priests stepped into his study. It had been a study, until it had been converted to the purposes of a gaming room. A large (24 inch) 2D projector dominated one corner of the room, with various wires and blessed electron pipes running feeding the Machine spirit. Surprisingly, it had no devotional decorations at all. Ulrich's heart – had it not been replaced with a more efficient mechanical replacement – would have stopped at the sight of such disobedience to the Rites of Activation... as well as perhaps a thousand other rituals.

"What have they done to this place!" Asked an adept, who had far less blessed augmentations and of course was more susceptible to emotional outbursts.

"Shhh!" The Skitarii bodyguard hissed, tapping away at an interface on her wrist. "I'm voxing the Magos. He will most certainly wish to hear about this mother lode of the Machine God!"

The team advanced, fanning out from the entrance and exploring around inside of the cavernous room.

The study was perhaps the nexus of Michael's wealth; it had a few decent gaming systems (although most of the games were loaned or traded) and a well to do computer on either end of the room, with a veritable library of tomes and polymer cases much like the ones that they had destroyed in his recreational space. Grappling devices (read: a thrown servitor) soon reached the top of the table, and lowered down a rope to allow the others to make their way up to the top.

"More permanent lifting systems will be most desireable." Ulrich noted.

The massive screen before them showed a pair of primitive Arbites, with short autoguns, snub pistols and flack jackets. Featureless faces hid behind masks and goggles. They looked cold and fearsome, despite their plain appearances; perhaps the lack of individuality was what made them so intimidating. Faceless legions. Anonymous and uncaring.

"Is this the army of this era?" The adept asked.

"Possibly. Can you decode this text?"

"Yes, the text is simple English, a language which derived Low Gothic many years ago... before the Emperor's Crusade."

"I see... shall we get started, then? I wish to explore the Machine Spirit's capabilities."

The lexicalogist muttered the Litany of Communication as he opened his eight eyes at the giant screen.

Ulrich grinned. "Let us consecrate this holy machine, so we may operate it without incurring the wrath of the Machine Spirit."

- - - - - Server 'P1', 2 hours later - - - - -

The terrorist labeled 'Vector' rapidly tapped on the keyboard, and threw away his not-very-needed gun away. He surveyed his teammates. The terrorists were all in their favored skins, with balaclavas and snow-camouflage pants. They all wandered around on the 'testing ground', a custom map thought up by the local programmers for testing out new guns, tactics, equipment or just to get used to playing again. On this Saturday afternoon, the self-proclaimed gamers were sitting together and playing on some CounterStrike for the weekly 'tournament' held at this particular server; anyone in the city who wanted to be considered 'l337' was in (although some were using the internet to connect to this game). This time, they were here to protect/hold the hostages stored inside of a warehouse's control room, and for that purpose the fifteen strong team had quickly organized into five man fire teams.

Among the veteran terrorists, twelve in all (there were three regulars), a newcomer stepped up, in his green sweater and brown pants to contrast with their Phoenix Connection skin schemes, running into walls, reloading and switching weapons, jumping... and... well... everything. Several weapons dropped to the floor, including a rather expensive sniper rifle. Eventually, that process stopped with a USP .45 in his hands, then he began to jump around like an epileptic on a pogo stick. To everyone around, it looked like the guy was simply banging away at the keyboard like a monkey at the proverbial typewriter.

"WTF! R U 7r1pp1n b01!" [What the fuck! Are you doing drugs, boy!]
"R33d d4 m4nu4l, n00b!" [Read the Manual, newbie!]
"Th3r3 15 n0 m4nu4l, _DRAGON_." [There is no manual, _Dragon_]
"0h. 3h... l33rn 2 pl41, n00b!" [Oh. Eh... learn to play, newbie!]

"lol, ph41l." [Haha, fail.]

In the real world, the gamers of 'Team 3' looked with at each other with very worried expressions. Thankfully, this was only the friendly 'practice' round to let everyone stretch their proverbial legs. The real round was starting in ten seconds' time. C0gb01 was still jumping as he tried to break through a hole in the concrete.

Vincent (alias Vector) sighed, carefully removed his glasses, put the keyboard safely away and applied his head to the desk in a perfect 60 bpm tempo; bang – pause – bang – pause – bang – pause, rinse and repeat.

"This might not end well." Jarred (alias Tailcracker) croaked. Damian (Macadamian) nodded in agreement. The rogue terrorist among rogue terrorists was now out in the catwalks, jumping up and down. In the headphones, they could hear Microsoft Sam chuckling away.

Henry (ÆON) moved through, and quickly crouched down to exploit the shortcut. Seeing what had happened, the player marked as 'c0gb01' and Colwyn (Saravock)

Cyrus (alias Vladmir) nodded his agreement. "Who the hell is this... c0gb01 anyway?"

"Round starting!" Luke (Mr. Spot) warned. Everyone hefted their newly purchased weapons.

They waited for the Shakespeare.

- - - - - 1 minute, 28.294 seconds later- - - - -

"Vent tunnel, to the control room!" Vector warned over his mic from his post in the 'control room', spraying bullets in short, two-shot bursts from his weapon of choice, a Kreig 552, at the metal tube which linked the roof to their hostages. Two kills showed up on his screen. He chuckled with the success, only to yelp in panic as something drained his body armor and clipped his health bar down to 34.

"Everyone down!" Mr. Spot leveled his P90 and fired over the shoulders of the now-crouched terrorists, spraying bullets everywhere. He managed to pick off the surviving CT squaddie in a burst of 5.7mm death as he dropped down the busted grating. He returned to his task of making sure that the three sharpshooters weren't ambushed.

More counter-terrorists burst into the loading bay, to be met with crippling return fire from the terrorists camping on the catwalks. ÆON quickly racked up a headshot with his AWP. They lost Saravock and Tailcracker to a burst of Maverick return fire. Action was fast paced and brutal, with everyone losing teammates quickly. Vector ran behind into the room, his main weapon depleted. He picked up an AK-47 from a fallen teammate, and hurried over to join the rest of the combatants. A hurled frag grenade quickly ended that notion.

Then suddenly, c0gb01 was in among the Counter Terrorists, having jumped from the catwalks.

"n00b!" _DRAGON_ cried out as he ran across the catwalk, jumping and crouching randomly as he avoided the return fire from his liberal use of the machinegun. His legs were scythed out from under him as a shotgun was unloaded into his kneecaps, and a second blast brought his health down to 0.

There were ten gunshots as c0gb01 spun around on the spot, firing his USP .45 wildly.

Five bodies dropped to the floor around him, all gibbed beyond recognition.

The kill screen tallied up five head shots.

"Holy..."
"WTF!"

"N0 w41!" [No way!]

A surviving CT player capped c0gb01 in the head with his UMP at point blank range, but his triumphant 'hah!' was cut off by his head exploding from the magnum sniper rifle.

The round ended, but instead of returning, c0gb01 had left. The players of Team 3 looked at each other, as Vincent again performed the Bows of Frustration.

"Who the hell was that!"

Ulrich flexed mechanical limbs in a gesture of irritation, looking at the Skitarii who had commandeered the rodent, the struggling servitor which had been operating the optical movement sensor beside it trying to get up onto its tracked 'legs'.

"D4 fr4k j00 d0, n00b!" [The hell did you do, fool!]

"I... I... I'm not sure... something just... t00k 0v4 m3..."