Grioteks world part 2

To carry on from last session. Now that the planet seemed to be fairly secure the crew of the Orpheus turned their efforts to the forces that had board their ship. Tristan lead the marine company over the hull of the ship and entered the craft via the hole made by the Tyranid boarding craft. They found the interior of their ship covered in alien slime. After moving through the ship they came to the life-support station where they found that the Algae tanks had been consumed by the Tyranids and replaced by tentacular creatures which attacked them. These creatures were killed when Trystan reactivated the stirring system.

Meanwhile outside the sealed off area of the craft the crew which were poisoned by the Despised were getting worse. The earliest of the affected troops were beginning to turn purple, close examination showed that they were infected by the genestealer genes and being converted into hybrids. The medicae thought they could cure at least some of them as long as they took samples from the creature that infected them.

There was an explosion in one of the Macrocannon batteries outside the sealed area on the Orpheus. When Jax, Oscar the deputy seneschal and the Psyker Weki went to investigate they found that the explosion had come from a conveyer system used to transport shells from the armoury which was in the sealed area. They realised that allowed to the forces inside the area to send explosives to various points on the ship but would also allow they to send troops into the sealed area. They coordinated with the troops inside the sealed area so that as Jax lead 2 squads and a murder servitor into the armoury they attacked at the same time.

The troops lead by Tristan and Cain were held off by the gun emplacements near the armoury doors. The troops from the main part of the ship were more successful although their path was originally blocked by a shell coming the other way they managed to push the shell back into the armoury and storm the room although they were rather horrified by the enemies willingness to fire at the shells given their power and size. Tristan eventually managed to rally his forces and they overwhelmed the door defences although they took high casualties doing it. The attackers already in the armoury were making good progress against the cultist forces but were surprised when several pure strain genestealers and a larger creature dropped from the cealing onto them. The servitor was eventually overwhelmed by the genestealers but by that time the main force had made in into the room and after a major fire-fight manged to overwhelm the genestealer lord. A sample of its blood was rushed to the medicae who were able to manufacture an antidote to the poisoning although many were already to mutated to be allowed to survive and had to be euthanised.

Meanwhile, Kaltos had been left in charge of the planet below. He had been ordered to find anything useful to loot by Tristan and after reinforcing and securing his position he redoubled his attempt to break into the main fortress part of the city. After much effort the main doors eventually were breached showing the fort to have several more layers of defences. Bodies of several Squats were found who had died of starvation within the last 50 years showing that some of the cities original inhabitants had survived the Tyranid Invasion.

Upon hearing this Tristan and Weki decided to relocate to the planet while Oscar, Jax and Cain were left in charge of securing the rest of the ship. They arrived with a shift of Tristan's bodyguard at the docking bay and the shuttle started to refill with injured to be evacuated from the planet. Suddenly a titanic scythe-clawed monstrosity broke into the hanger leading a horde of smaller creatures. Tristan and his guard opened fire and slew a number of the smaller creatures but their fire had little effect on the larger creature. The behemoth breathed a ball of plasma which incinerated several of the guard, almost killed Tristan and damaged the shuttle. The human forces quickly retreated and the shuttle withdraw but nor before the creature almost clawed its way inside. Kaltos quickly found that a horde of Tyranids several thousand strong were rushing down the tunnels between the shuttle and the city and ordered his forces to take refuge in the Engineers guild section of the city to await the wave of attackers.

The attack to capture back the remainder of the Orpheus from the Tyranids involved two companies of troops those trained and equipped for assult roles and those equipped for short-range ship defence roles. These troops were lead by Oscar, Cain and Jax. The Tyranids originally retreated before the attackers but slowly started to fight back as the troops get closer to one of the major food stores on the ship. While the rest of the forces engaged a swarm of smaller Tyranid creatures Oscar moved silently ahead and located the Tyranid next in the food store where a massive 8 armed monstrosity lead they tyranids in defending several thousand eggs. Oscar noticed that their was a lift in the store used to move food to other levels and arranged for a bomb to be placed in it and detonated in the store itself as the main assault began. This blew out the back wall of the store and set the area on fire while the troops charged into the tyranid horde. Although Cain was almost slain by the Tyranid Leader the troops eventually managed to kill off all of the tyranids in the nest with the Hive Tyrant finally being destroyed by massed heavy weapon fire after it was crippled by a missile blast to its leg. However, a number of eggs were rescued from the fire and spirited away by the nests defenders.