Friendly Skies
Aug. 30th, 2017 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
exiled_heir_of_the_eighthIt's a Tuesday when he takes the freight elevator down into the Bar's garage and starts exploring. He's never been in here before, never had any need to, but he might as well. As the song says, "Got nothing better to do."
Sahaal wanders the rows of vehicles for a while, looking at the myriad civilian and military groundcars. There's ones that look like the ones from Mad Men, but with more weapon systems. Crude tanks sit next to dune buggies. Motorcycles like the ones ridden in Easy Rider touch tyres with silvery speeders of seemingly xenos origin.
After about an hour down in the maze, he turns a corner away from a corridor of VTOL aircraft and begins heading towards a row of attack helicopters when he spots a small hatch set into the wall between a V-22 Osprey and a UNSC Falcon. It looks like most others in the Bar, but this one is different somehow. To his shame, it takes him a moment to notice the two lines of jagged runes painted in white at his eye level. That's mostly because he never expected to see them here, of all places.
They're Nostraman. Bloody Nostraman.
Specifically, a dialect of Nostraman he's never come across before. It looks to him to be a form of Hill Folk parlance, but evolved into something much more feral and martial. He can't be completely sure, he is a fluent speaker, but he knows the Nostramo Quintus dialect best, like most Terrans in the Legion. From what he can read, and with some guesswork, he settles on this meaning:
"Only those who have walked the sunless world and stood in midnight clad may enter my Tabernacle."
The second line is much clearer to him: "Death to the False Emperor."
Given that he was the First Captain, he feels entitled to enter. Besides, Sahaal wants to know why, by the Throne of Lies, there's Nostraman so far away from any other native speakers. You don't go round writing cryptic messages on doors in dead languages for no reason. He pushes the handle down, and opens it slowly, in case the mystery speaker booby-trapped the door. It's what he would have done, after all.
With a screech of long-unused hinges, the door opens. The first thing he realises is that no one has been in here for a very long time. Decades, perhaps. This conclusion is reached thanks to the plume of dust that gets dislodged by the opening of the door, as well as the liberal amount of the same stuff floating aimlessly in the air. He coughs once, to clear his throat, before looking around.
It's actually a rather large room, vaulted with steel girders and mocked up to look like the hanger bay of a Legion ship. Banners with the winged skull of the Night Lords hang from the rafters, piles of metal crates huddle in the corners and a railed maintenance gantry runs along the length of all four walls. A large fuel tank sits in one corner, rubber hoses snaking out over the grilled floor. Steps in the middle of the room lead down to an underfloor maintenance pit. Workbenches with scored wooden tabletops line the walls and cabinets made from a thin sheet metal are bolted above them.
All of it brings a smile to Sahaal's face. It's like being back home again, in the embarkation bays of the Umbrea Insidior before a combat drop. But, that nostalgia is not what grabs his attention the most. That honour belongs to the fairly large shape in the middle of the room, shrouded entirely by a oil-stained tarpaulin like a child in a ghost costume.
Cautiously, he walks over, dust puffing from his bootheels. He grabs a corner of the tarpaulin and pulls with all his strength. It takes some effort, and the oversized sheet gets caught several times, but eventually Sahaal gets it off. What he reveals makes his eyes go wide behind the tinted lenses of his goggles and his jaw drop.
He stares for a few seconds, disbelieving that anything like this could be here, in Milliways, even though he's been here long enough to not even doubt it's possible. Then, struggling to maintain his composure, Sahaal closes his mouth, forces himself to calm down and runs steadily back to the cargo elevator.
He's going to need a proper pilot.
Sahaal wanders the rows of vehicles for a while, looking at the myriad civilian and military groundcars. There's ones that look like the ones from Mad Men, but with more weapon systems. Crude tanks sit next to dune buggies. Motorcycles like the ones ridden in Easy Rider touch tyres with silvery speeders of seemingly xenos origin.
After about an hour down in the maze, he turns a corner away from a corridor of VTOL aircraft and begins heading towards a row of attack helicopters when he spots a small hatch set into the wall between a V-22 Osprey and a UNSC Falcon. It looks like most others in the Bar, but this one is different somehow. To his shame, it takes him a moment to notice the two lines of jagged runes painted in white at his eye level. That's mostly because he never expected to see them here, of all places.
They're Nostraman. Bloody Nostraman.
Specifically, a dialect of Nostraman he's never come across before. It looks to him to be a form of Hill Folk parlance, but evolved into something much more feral and martial. He can't be completely sure, he is a fluent speaker, but he knows the Nostramo Quintus dialect best, like most Terrans in the Legion. From what he can read, and with some guesswork, he settles on this meaning:
"Only those who have walked the sunless world and stood in midnight clad may enter my Tabernacle."
The second line is much clearer to him: "Death to the False Emperor."
Given that he was the First Captain, he feels entitled to enter. Besides, Sahaal wants to know why, by the Throne of Lies, there's Nostraman so far away from any other native speakers. You don't go round writing cryptic messages on doors in dead languages for no reason. He pushes the handle down, and opens it slowly, in case the mystery speaker booby-trapped the door. It's what he would have done, after all.
With a screech of long-unused hinges, the door opens. The first thing he realises is that no one has been in here for a very long time. Decades, perhaps. This conclusion is reached thanks to the plume of dust that gets dislodged by the opening of the door, as well as the liberal amount of the same stuff floating aimlessly in the air. He coughs once, to clear his throat, before looking around.
It's actually a rather large room, vaulted with steel girders and mocked up to look like the hanger bay of a Legion ship. Banners with the winged skull of the Night Lords hang from the rafters, piles of metal crates huddle in the corners and a railed maintenance gantry runs along the length of all four walls. A large fuel tank sits in one corner, rubber hoses snaking out over the grilled floor. Steps in the middle of the room lead down to an underfloor maintenance pit. Workbenches with scored wooden tabletops line the walls and cabinets made from a thin sheet metal are bolted above them.
All of it brings a smile to Sahaal's face. It's like being back home again, in the embarkation bays of the Umbrea Insidior before a combat drop. But, that nostalgia is not what grabs his attention the most. That honour belongs to the fairly large shape in the middle of the room, shrouded entirely by a oil-stained tarpaulin like a child in a ghost costume.
Cautiously, he walks over, dust puffing from his bootheels. He grabs a corner of the tarpaulin and pulls with all his strength. It takes some effort, and the oversized sheet gets caught several times, but eventually Sahaal gets it off. What he reveals makes his eyes go wide behind the tinted lenses of his goggles and his jaw drop.
He stares for a few seconds, disbelieving that anything like this could be here, in Milliways, even though he's been here long enough to not even doubt it's possible. Then, struggling to maintain his composure, Sahaal closes his mouth, forces himself to calm down and runs steadily back to the cargo elevator.
He's going to need a proper pilot.
