21M.128.1.12
Imperia Salamandra Quadrant, Hephaestus Segucorum Sector, Easgorum System
Tyrannosaurus Rex, Citadel War Barge
Lwm Tshua Cho
He gazed out of the visor of his helmet at the dropship sitting in the hangar. His platoon jogged into the back of it and the lieutenant bellowed at them through the platoon’s comms to move their asses on board. “We’re about to head planetfall, the big boys are already down fighting! It’s time to back them up and take this rock!” He jogged into the back compartment of the dropship with his brothers in arms, with a rifle in hand. Then all he could do was sit down and wait.
It was impossible to tell who was who in their full combat armor. Thankfully his helmet’s heads up display identified him as Cpl P. Patterson.
“How are you feeling buddy?” He asked over a private channel between them.
“F-fine,” Cho answered, cursing his stuttering. He didn’t want to sound like some weakling.
“Well, it ain’t anything to worry about. We ain’t fightin’ Urks. No goddamn greenskin bastards here.”
“I s-sa-said its f-f-f-fine.” He didn’t mind fighting Urks a few years ago, and he certainly wasn’t afraid of them anymore. “I-I’m not af-afraid of them. Just don’t w-w-want to-to fight them.”
Patterson shrugged, “Either way these ain’t green big skulled Urks. Its humans in need of imperial freedom.” He patted his rifle. “And we got a load of that comin’ planetside. Even though we’re probably just cleaning up after the Ultra Marines.”
“That’s just f-fi-fine, by me.”
If the power-armored demigods and swept away the planetary defense forces he wouldn’t mind just doing the cleanup. Usually, that entailed eliminating holdouts, dealing with the wounded and taking care of the captives. He didn’t expect something as easy though. The battle was still going thick below as far as they’d been briefed by the lieutenant. As the dropship took off, so did hundreds more like it, transporting tens of thousands of men planetside along with tanks, anti-air cannons, and artillery of different make and scope. One of them was the impressive Falchion Artillery Tank, a killer that launched thirty rockets through the air to strike enemy positions several kilometers away with perfect precision. If they could get a hundred of them planetside, that was three thousand rockets. Enough force to bathe the self-proclaimed imperial army in the god-empress’s holy fire.
“One minute to dirtside boys,” the lieutenant announced. “You ready to show that you’re the true Imperial Army!”
“Sir yes, sir!” They cried out in unison.
“Forty seconds. Guns ready.” He moved through their ranks to stand at the ramp. He was always the first to place his boots on the field, leading them all into the battle. “With me now, for the Galactic Imperium, for the Empress!”
“For the empress!” The bellowed together, adrenaline pumping and nerves twitching. An eagerness swept over them and Cho stood with his brothers and sisters in arms, ready to spill blood.
He felt the dropship settle and a moment or two the metal ramp were lowered to the ground and the lieutenant led the charge down it. Cho looked around after he got off the ramp to get his bearings and see what they felt with. The land was nothing but stone and dirt and covered in a network of trenches that spread as far as his eyes could see, with what must have been hundreds of bunkers, many of the closest ones smoldering ruins. Wrecks of tanks were scattered across the battlefield, both friendly and unknown designs. In what seemed to be the middle of the field he caught sight of drop pods that had dug into the earth at impact. Bodies littered the field in the thousands, and that was those he could see from his landing point. He quickly ducked into the closest trench with the platoon, but not before he saw machinegun fire tearing through four men and spraying him, others and the ground in blood. He was horrified to see human bodies torn apart in the trench. He recognized the carnage to be caused by the Ultra Marines' favored weapon, the large Bolter Rifles who fired large and powerful bolts that caused lethal wounds to any normal moral human. Each bolt had a plasma charge inside the bolt shell that ravaged the target from the inside due to the bolt’s abilities to pierce both flesh and most kinds of armor. He spun around in shock by the sound of an explosion.
“Oh by the god-empress,” he breathed in horror.476Please respect copyright.PENANA4PKKMRzuMM
Something had hit the dropship that landed next to theirs and utterly ravaged its rear. It threw metal, shattered armor pieces and body parts in every direction. For every dropship that went down in flames, ten others touched down to unload its contingent of troops.
“Second Platoon, on me!” The lieutenant yelled through their comms. With help of the HUD Cho quickly located his CO. “We gotta take out that bunker. I’ll take first and second squads with me to flank it. Three and four will keep them busy with suppressive fire.” The orders were given as he led the platoon forward through the trench. With rifle and cannon fire ringing across the field, Cho focused on following Sergeant Scaepula and keep an eye on the objective display on his HUD. The young Martian sergeant led them to a part of the trench line that stretched horizontally before the bunker, with only twenty meters between them. The bunker’s three machineguns roared and he heard screams of dying men. He paused and was surprised for a moment when he saw three dead Ultra Marines, the Salamandrakes Legion. Despite their shattered heavy power armor, they were recognizable by their black pauldrons with a letter and a numeral below on the left one. Both had an H with the skull and below it the numeral III. Hospitaller Battalion, III Company. He had memorized every inch of Ultra Marine markings when he was a mere child on Earth. Below the numeral one of them had the insignia of a communications specialist and the other had a…he paused and stared for a moment.
“Holy God,” he exclaimed. Below the numeral, he had a black skull on an iron cross. Cho could do little but stare. He’d never seen it in real life and nether thought he would. It filled with sorrow, but also a feeling that this man had been a man of unbound duty and honor. It was the greatest honor awarded by the Imperium. Period. The shattered demigod wasn’t just a man, but a hero of the greatest order. The rest of their shattered armor was parakeet green and one of them had black Scaemae, a combat skirt. Supposedly it was made from some damn hard material that could take a hit, though he knew little more about it then that Ultra Marines some times wore them. Scaepula had ones claimed it was some traditional thing. As all Ultra Marines, those two Salamandrakes were two and a half meters tall.
“Everyone lob a grenade toward the bunker,” she ordered them.
Cho picked out one of his frag grenades and lobbed it to the bunker best he could without sticking his head up. He then waited for the first explosions and listened to hear if the guns were silenced. With two squads worth of grenades they had to get some of them detonating inside the bunker.
“Are we going over, sarge?” Patterson asked.
“Negative. Leave it to the el-tee,” was her swift answer.
In the skies above dropships continued to ferry down men and thousands upon thousands took to the field and charged through the trenches and cleaned up whatever the Salamandrakes had left behind their advance. His attention was brought away from the skies by the roaring of machineguns. He didn’t think it sounded as heavily as before and estimated that it was only one gunner now. Then it grew quiet as quickly as it had roared.
“Okay, move up. The el-tee have shut it down,” Scaepula called out.
They raced forward up the middle trench with three squads of soldiers joining them. in the bunker, he saw the lieutenant push the machinegun aside and crawl out the opening and waving them forward.
“Forward boys! For the empress!” The next moment a high-velocity round bounced against his combat helmet and made his stumble and throw himself to the ground and then quickly roll into the trench.
“Are you alright, el-tee?” Scaevola was quick to ask.
“Just fine, sergeant. Just a sniper round. No reason to overreact.” Then he gestured northward deeper into the trench network with his rifle. “Deeper in now, forward. It's only a few kilometers to the capital.” And so he led on and Cho found himself swept along with the others. He tried his best to block out the semi-distant screams of dying soldiers. Some of them were the people they were cutting their way through. Some of the yelling came with an incomprehensible language. It was impossible to recognize that the bodies they ran passed had ever been human. They were a mishmash of flesh, blood, and bones mixed with fabric and shattered combat plates-sort of like the standard imperial trooper combat armor. He only barely kept his breakfast down and it was a hell of a miracle in his own opinion.
21M.128.1.12
Imperia Salamandra Quadrant, Hephaestus Segucorum Sector, Planet Easgorum
Vulstianus
He cursed the shattered side of his power armor. His heads up display operated as well as ever despite the cracks in the large visor that covered the front of his face. It helped him confirm that while the bleeding was bad, it wasn’t lethal. He could carry on. With that, the Salamandrakes Ultra Marine got up on his feet and began to run forward. He couldn’t allow himself to fall behind, to fall behind the rest of the brethren on their advance to the capital. With his trusted bolter rifle in hand, he continued onward down the trench as it came to disappear into open ground, a base.
“Damnit!” He cursed. “By the god-empress.”
There was a line of eight small bunkers situated around a larger two-level compound of cement. Two of the bunkers had been utterly destroyed and turned into crates by the initial orbital bombardment, but the rest was intact. Sadly, his brothers were already cleaning the main compound out. Salamandrakes milled about in the same parakeet green armor, with the same black pauldrons and the same skull insignia on their chest with differing insignia on their left and right. Each of his brothers-just like himself-had an array of symbols with a different meaning. Like the honorary insignia on their right pauldron to display how long they had served. The war had only gone on for twenty-eight years, so the only obtainable honorific yet was that of Hastati, given those who had served for one full century. It was only obtainable for those that had been grown within the first twenty-eight years before the
It was still early in the war, the crusade to unify the territories of old had only just begun. He remembered what the god-empress had said some decades before the crusade ever began. “Four hundred generations of mortal men and women will grow old and die before this crusade is over.” Four hundred generations. It had given him and all brothers and sisters assembled to hear it an interesting view on life. He fully intended to still fight for her cause by the time of the crusade’s end. Ultra Marines were effectively immortal. It was all part of the god-empress’s ingenious design when she began the process of cloning those original twenty humans.
“Are you missing the fight, hey Vulstianus?” One of his brother’s japed.
“Shut it Merebus,” he growled back in his deep voice.
“Maybe you should have waited on the ship.” He swore he could fear the smirk on Merebus’ face.
“Sergeant Merebus!” The voice of Hospitaller Battalion’s CO.
Merebus straightened and stood at attention. Vulstianus stopped in front of Merebus and the approaching Tribune Markus Aurelius. His visor receded up into the helmet to reveal the face with a dusky complexion and hard lines, a face they all shared since all within the Salamandrakes Legion shared the same template. The Tribune stared down their younger brother.
“I will hear no disrespect out of you, Merebus,” he told him with a harsh, commanding tone. “You may be sergeants both, but you will show respect to a Hastati.”
“Yes, Tribune,” Merebus complied.
“I will not hear this again until you yourself are a Hastati.”
“Yes, Tribune.” He shifted his head to look at Vulstianus. They looked at each other through closed visors. “Apologize brother.”
Vulstianus gave a small inkling of his head in response and looked around the area, to his sixty brothers that had cleared up the positions and was preparing to move on. The road ahead of them led into the city proper. A mere five hundred meters down the road and they would be moments away from tearing down this false claim to imperium. There was only one might that represented mankind and that was not this world.
“See a medic for that.”
Vulstianus looked back to the Tribune. “It is not necessary.”
“I disagree. You will see a medic.” He then called one over via comms and a moment later a brother jogged over. “Don’t take a no for an answer,” the Tribune ordered as he and Merebus walked away.
“I never do, sir.”
“No. You don’t,” Vulstianus grunted in irritation. He had no time for this.
He turned around at the sound of engines and heavy footsteps. It was an armor unit that was making its way to their position. Three Lucius McCoy-class Tanks and five bipedal Walkers. Three of the large Walkers were ten meters in height and the other two had a height of eight meters respectively. Each of them piloted by a single man or woman trained to excellence.
“Sit down and let me treat that wound,” the medic ordered, albeit in a cheerful tone. “It’ll be a nice scar for future generations of Salamandrakes. Armor and body both, that is.”
“Just get it over with.”
His brother chuckled and kneeled to study the grievous wound. “This won’t take long.” He hoped not, for the advanced continued. His brothers were forming up to move up the road and the Archon himself came out of the compound. He wore a variant of their armor, though his was made for a man that reached four meters. His ebony pauldrons were adorned by golden epaulets that held up the large violet cape. In his right hand, he wielded a bolter and in the left, he wielded a large shining sword.
“Biofoam should be enough for now,” the medic estimated. “It’ll be enough until we get back to the ship.”
“Fine.”
He waited impatiently for him to administrate biofoam to prevent his injuries from bleeding further. As he waited squads and platoons of fellow Salamandrakes joined up with the advance. It wasn’t long until the medic patted his gauntlet against his arm. Without a word to move on to other wounded brothers. Vulstianus ignored the pain he felt when he began to job. It was only minor pain and he could push it aside. He expected that they would encounter defending positions among the hills and slopes that followed the road. He made his way to the front with his bolter ready in his hands.
The captain of the III Company placed a hand on his shoulder as he joined them.
“Good to see you with us, Vulstianus.” He spoke with the same deep voice as all of his brothers.
“Thank you, Captain Nomenario,” he answered with appreciation.
He looked down to his right side and the small cracks in the armor.
“I feared you were badly wounded when I saw. I’m glad that’s not the case.”
“As am I.” He looked at the captain’s closed visor. He lowered his gaze to the heavy plasma thrower he carried. It was a standard model besides the symbol on the side. A small white dragon devouring an eagle. Only one brother had a plasma thrower with that symbol. “Spartacus?”
Nomenario answered first with a deliberate and heavy, horizontal bob of his head. “Aye. I’m afraid he and perished early into our campaign.”
“Damnit,” he cursed, grieved by the news. Spartacus had been awarded the black skull for unequaled sacrifice and heroism. It was awarded by the god-empress herself to the greatest champions of the Ultra Marine Legions. According to expectations the war had barely begun and a great brother had already passed, and he wasn’t the only brother or sister with great potential that had perished. He had seen other brothers too and heard of brothers and sisters from other legions with untested potential. “The whoresons will pay. And their false empire.”
“Easy sergeant,” Archon Hephaestus spoke, his voice deep and naturally loud. The tall Archon always spoke loudly. It was second nature to him. Vulstianus looked away, to his Archon with great reverence. “These people have not yet seen the truth of things, and they will not until their petty emperor is removed from his throne. He and his government are our true enemies, not the people.” He looked over his shoulder, his dark visor directed down toward Vulstianus as he raised his shining longsword and aimed forward. “Vengeance for the fallen lies there.”
“Yes, my Lord Archon!” He asserted obediently. He knew that the Archon was right. He always was. It was a part of being that close to godhood.
The Archon stopped and raised his right hand for all to stop. He then spoke on the comms to the Salamandrakes that advanced down the road, plus the Walkers and tanks. A good hundred of Vulstianus’s brothers were there. “The scouts have reported a bunker beyond that hill. Captain Nomenario, take a squad up and deal with it.”
Vulstianus received an order from the captain on his hood to join him, and he jogged after him immediately. Mergus and two others joined the captain. Both brothers carried a sniper rifle. They quickly closed the one hundred meter distance to stand with the scout squad. They made their way part way up the hill before the captain sent the two other brothers left to circle around for another vantage point. Vulstianus, Mergus and the captain laid down and crawled the last bit before the bunker came into view. Behind them the rest of the men closed to fifty meters and remained out of view, waiting for the all-clear.
“I’m seeing three heavy machineguns down there, and two rocket launchers,” Merebus announced.
“Aye,” Nomenario said over their comms.
The gunners were visible from their elevated position. He thought they had to be stressed beyond belief, considering the chatter they must hear from the collapsed front. “A bunker that size, I guess it’s held by at least fifteen men. That’s assuming it doesn’t go underground,” Vulstianus added his piece. “But considering its size I doubt it goes too deep.”
“Agreed,” Merebus stated.
His HUD displayed the distance between them and the bunker below and ahead. Thirty meters.
“Marksmen in position,” Nomenario told them. “They’ll deal with the rocket gunners. Here’s your target.” He highlighted targets to Vulstianus and Merebus. On my mark. I will light them up with a few shots from this pretty plasma thrower. A blast of that through the gun opening is gonna eat through armor and flesh.”
Vulstianus aimed down the sights of his bolter. The gunner leaned over the machinegun turret and he noticed a slight twitch from his fingers. He wore the ridiculous local helmet that only protected half his head. Vulstianus’s finger rested on the trigger and his aim rested on the gunner’s skull. Whether he would hit the helmet or not was irrelevant. His bolt through pierce it and the plasma charge inside the bolt shell would detonate and tear the gunner’s skull in pieces of charred flesh and bone.
“Mark.”
In one single second four skulls burst open in small detonations of superheated plasm from inside their skulls and splattered seared flesh, bone, and broken helmet pieces. Nomenario fired three rounds of superheated plasma energy that entered the bunker through those gun-ports and the plasma burned through flesh and ceramic plates and left men howling in pain.
“Marksmen covering us, move in.”
Vulstianus got up first and rushed toward the thick metal door that led into the thirty-meter wide bunker. His side ached him further when he ran. Halfway to the closed metal door, he caught movement in the bunker and a high-velocity sniper round tore through the target. He took up position two meters right of the sealed entrance and Merebus did the same on the left. Nomenario assumed a stance in front of the door with the plasma thrower ready to chew through the metal. The five-man scout squad was right behind them, boltguns ready to go in after them. The captain made easy work of the door with the plasma thrower and Vulstianus was the first through with Merebus right behind him. The gunners' area was empty, only filled with the carnage of a few moments ago. The only sign of life was the man that peeked around the corner five meters ahead and fired a burst from a puny submachinegun. A single squeeze from Vulstianus splattered the man’s skull against the opposite wall and moved to the corner and stared down the short corridor. With three more rooms it took less than a minute to secure the bunker and Nomenario reported to Archon Hephaestus.
“Let’s move on,” Nomenario told the men. “We’re heading back to the main force. The Archon is sending scouts and tanks ahead to handle any other bunkers between us and the city.”
Then it’s a clear way to the petty emperor, Vulstianus thought. His mind wandered back to Earth, the god-empress’s throneworld. He remembered when he first walked through the Hall of Archons. She had raised enormous golden statues of her children, of her Archons. All the twenty Archons had a thirty-meter statue of the purest gold shaped to his or her likeness. He remembered that he had felt overwhelmed to stand in the hall, unworthy to stand before the mere statues of so many that were his betters.476Please respect copyright.PENANA6QbdGczz1J