Genesis Short Stories: Daughters of Mara
21M.938
Planet of Gaevalon
Adriana Faeya
The large city had been ravaged by the time the Thunderwing Landing Transports and Warhawk Gunships unloaded thousands of soldiers in heavy sets of power armor. Numerous skyscrapers, stores, and neat luxury homes had been destroyed to clear the way for the insertion of the Ultra Marines that took their name for their beloved god-empress. Faeya made her way through the rubble covered hilltop surrounded by her gene-sisters, their guns blasting away at the foes before them. When a bolt impacted the Imperial flak armor it pierced without loss of force and passed flesh and bones and tore a large hole through armor and body both with a small plasma charge. The brown and green armored giants carved out the hill as a landing zone with brutal efficiency. Faeya threw her amber eyes to the Thunderwings for a moment. They rolled out vehicles ranging from the light scout hoverbikes to the heavy Normandy-class tanks. A succession of shots from a trio of Normandy’s tore apart the side of a spared five-store building from where the unfortunate soldiers fired upon them. Faeya’s HUD counted thirty-one soldiers inside before, and three after the trio’s barrage.
Faeya opened a channel to two tank squadrons. “This is Warforger Faeya. I am transmitting coordinates for a targeted barrage.” The target was a skyscraper two hundred meters west of their position with anti-air pieces atop it. She gave various orders to five company captains to establish a perimeter before she saw the tanks unleash their deadly wrath upon the target and chowed through its mid-levels with their shells until it all came crumbling down. With a last defiant salvo one of the cannons atop managed to drop a Warhawk out of the sky.
Faeya lowered her gaze. A soldier cowered under the cover of debris. She snarled. The traitor hoped beyond all hope that somehow he could survive his treason. She leveled her Supremus Domina Mk VI and fired a bolt that tore through the trembling, sobbing man’s head and tore it apart. It was all a traitor deserved. As far as she was concerned they had accepted this fate the moment they followed their commanders in this puny attempt of rebellion. To follow some charismatic governor's notion to strife for empire. One kilometer from her position rose the capital building. With the city center’s devastation, there was no longer a mass of skyscrapers to block her vision. The lights of the city had been replaced with roaring fires and hundreds of pillars of smoke reached for the sky. The capitol building rose. The bastion stood tall and untouched from aero bombardment. Its shield generator had saved it from such a fate. Though would that not have been an easier end? Now death has set foot on your world, she thought. The Daughters of Mara has come for you. An entire Cohort was setting down around the city. Close to 8,000 strong. The V Cohort expected their next reinforcements of new clones in three months.
Aero bombers continued to unleash their deadly cargo over the city center ahead of them, tearing it apart and tanks fired shells that tore down the ruins. The defending traitor division could only pray to survive the hell they found themselves in. There was no united defense, only desperate men and women in imperial flak armor and fatigues.
“How long until that artillery is operational?” She asked. Her voice was full of authority after centuries of command in the field.
“Only a few minutes, Warforger Faeya,” came the answer from a human officer, a loyal Imperial.
Throughout the rubble and debris and ruins of the wide hill, hundreds of Daughters of Mara formed a defensive line with rocket launchers, heavy machineguns, flamethrowers, and other infantry weaponry.
“Sir,” one of her sisters, Sergeant Amaka Abioye said over her armor’s speakers. Despite her HUD identifying who she spoke to, Faeya recognized her gene-sister’s voice, despite the fact that they all shared the same voice just as they shared the same body frame and the same shape. “Incoming ahead.” Her report of hostiles was casual and from her own position five meters from her she saw the onrush of traitor troops. All imperial army, charged ahead down what had been a neat road not long ago. They were quickly closing the fifty-meter distance. A few bullets bounced off Faeya’s armor harmlessly.
“Two army company at least,” she remarked.
The bolt rounds spewing out of the thick barrels of the Daughters’ rifles as a full company of Daughters unleashed hell upon their brave and foolish attackers. Compared to an army company, the Ultra Marines’ numbered one hundred. An army company was composed of nearly two hundred troopers, and so nearly four hundred troopers charged them. The Daughters’ bolts were only slightly larger than a regular round and their capability to maim and kill came from the explosive plasma charge inside the bolts that left at minimum a body part blown off and most likely death. Regular flak armor offered zero protection and every bolt fired from Faeya and her sisters effectively maimed or killed someone. Faeya’s first kill was the commanding officer that so bravely led the charge.
Faeya snorted. They don’t possess anything that can actually pierce our armor. Its suicide then. It made this a charge born out of desperation, for all they fired in their direction as regular rounds. With that first salvo close to a hundred troopers fell and had parts of their body blown to bloody, grotesque pieces. After that opening salvo they continued to fall and the Daughters remained unharmed. At thirty meters a dozen grenades were lobbed at their positions.
“Plasma grenade, get down!” It was the voice of the Communication Specialist. It was her task to carry the long-range communication device.
The plasma ate through the armor of those few unlucky enough to not get away. There were only a few dozen troopers that managed to get close to the Company’s defensive line, charging right into the formed bulge. Sergeant Abioye held her rifle with one hand and punched a man’s visor hard enough that Faeya heard the shattering of metal and bones and blood sprayed on Abioye’ gauntlet. Once the body fell there was nothing resembling a face or even a skull. The thundering of artillery ended the moment of silence after the one-sided bloodbath of a charge. It lobbed a few shells at the shield protecting the bastion before they shifted to bombard its surrounding, as if wiping away the memory there anything had ever stood there.
Faeya opened a channel to the Cohort’s centurion. “I Grand Company ready and in position.”
“Copy that, Warforger,” Centurion Dacinia responded in her hard voice.
Most of the twenty-one legions did not utilize the grand company formation, making the Daughters’ one of the few that did. Her rank of Warforger was strictly their and formed out of their preferred way to wage war. A grand company consisted of five companies and was specially formed outside of the regular chain of command. That being squad, company, battalion, cohort and of course legion. Her Grand Company was a mere cog in Dacinia’ forces that assaulted the planet’s capital city. There was only a handful of cities and a few dozen smaller towns on Gaevalon’s single landmass. A new twenty squadrons of bombers descended with their cargo and as before the shield took the punch. She gave the officer in command of the artillery regiment at her position to focus all his firepower on the shield. Mayhaps they could exhaust its power with a continuous bombardment. Eight various positions throughout the ruined landscape of stone and metal lobbed shells at the shield. She listened to the command channel chatter. Delta and Imperia Battalions were ordered to advance within one hundred meters of the bastion. The shield protected it from bombardment, but it didn’t stop anyone from marching through it. It was not an anti-personnel shield after all. It was a beautiful sight to see the artillery bombardment. There was a strange beauty to it, something that was hard to understand and even less appreciate without a masterful comprehension of siegecraft.
“Warforger, advance some of their forces forward. Keep some to defend your foothold,” the Centurion’s voice ordered over the commlink.
“Yes, sir. My pleasure.” The Centurion closed the channel and Faeya shifted it to the captains. “I, II and III Companies prepare to advance on the bastion. IV and V will remain here. Hold this position.”
Green dots on her HUD appeared as confirmations from her captains. “III Company takes the lead,” she added. The III was a Siege Company after all, specially equipped and trained. They had a bolt rifle, a chainsword, and a siege shield. It had the shape of a Scutum shield and was forged out of the purest titanium. As the three Companies advanced down the rubble-filled slope Faeya was surrounded by Abioye’s squad formed around in. They were her security squad, responsible for her security. The youngest among them was a legionnaire that had taken the name Ninx. Despite no more then eighteen years of service her skills as a marksman were extraordinary. True, the same could be said to describe most Ultra Marine sharpshooter but there was a passionate iron will that she had sensed in her. With the advancing companies followed the tank company.
The bastion that acted as capitol building was not very impressive for the awe-inspiring standard that she was used to. It was barely forty meters tall and only had a width of fifty meters and a length of forty-eight. She was used to the grandeur of the Imperial Palace of Terra Imperia, the sprawling planet-wide cityscape or the vast caverns of underground factories of Mars. The enormous shipyards of Ponffi Xel was a sight out of this galaxy the first time she had seen it. As they came with one hundred meters of the shield Faeya could zoom in with her HUD to get a good view of their opposition. Inside the shield, earthworks had been thrown up with barbwire and small bunkers of cement. These were spread out and built half-buried, none of them large enough to hold more than one man. The soldiers that held them wore mixed uniforms. Many of them had imperial army uniforms and the rest wore the colors of local militia. By the short arrival of part of her Grand Company elements of Imperia Battalion had engaged. Specifically their hoverbike scout squads. They had to drive through the shield and fired their bolters for a moment before they left with equal speed, never stopping. Their CO had reported up the chain that the gunners in the bunkers were equipped with bolter turrets.
“III Company, you’re going in first.”
“My favorite words, Warforger,” said Captain Alaeria Blackmouth. She had taken her surname from the fitting nickname she was given by her fellow batch legionnaires.
With their large shields held in one hand and a rifle in the other, they advanced at a jog against the shield with I and II Company and tanks following suit. They received a hail of bullets and proper bolts in response. Even the bolts bounced off the titanium Siege shields harmlessly. After crossing the shield the Daughters’ of the Siege Company responded to the traitors greeting with lethal fire. They closed the range and switched from rifle to chainsword and began to carve through the traitors in close combat, covering the ground in blood and cut off limbs. It was no surprise to Faeya that the militia broke the moment Blackmouth’s Company reached their earthworks. As proper imperial soldiers the army troopers stood their ground and with plasma grenades, officers with chainswords and bolter turrets to kill some unfortunate sisters of hers as they attempted to withdraw to a secondary defensive line of earthworks-though it was in mid-construction. A last-minute effort no doubt. She admired their attempt to stand against the might of the II Legion of the god-empress’s Ultra Marines. They must know they have no chance, she thought. The Galactic Imperium’s religious body taught mortals the holy and immortal nature of the god-empress and her holy angel warriors. Her twenty-one legions. Well, twenty-one. One had to be brave to stand once ground against the soldiers of your god. She led the charge through the shield to join the carnage with Abioye and her squad formed up with her. Abioye was right next to her, her Supremus Domina Mk VI unloaded round after round. Chatter on the command level comms told her that the Delta and Imperia Battalions had begun to cut their way through the traitor lines. The traitors were firmly back in their second line of defense but they only had ten seconds before the first Daughters’ was amongst them, swinging chainswords and carving apart metal and flesh, all following by the terrible screams of dying humans. After her numerous centuries as a cog in the god-empress’s machine of war, Faeya had heard young men and women scream for their mom and dad too many times to count. What was worst of it was how it had been centuries since she felt any sorrow and grief to see these scared youths die, to see how they cried for a parent to save them, how they begged the god-empress to take them back home. It was her greatest shame. That she had ceased to be touched by it. She didn’t need to see Ninx’s face to know that it was still getting to her. It was in her tiniest movements. Her young meant that she was still touched by it. A gift as far as she was concerned. She heard Ninx say a pray to Ares, their beloved Archon, a father figure as far as they were concerned. The clones of all legions had a special bond with their Archon, their master.
“You’ve never met the Archon,” she said as she squeezed the trigger and launched a bolt at high velocity that pierced the unprotected skull of a young woman, and incinerated the insides of her skull with plasma.
“No, sir.”
“You’ll meet him. Keep your wits about you for two more years and you’ll see him in person.” Ares’ mysterious and nightmarish injuries were healing, after centuries of hospitalization on the Throneworld. After the dark blade of a fierce and beastly warlord of demonic origins had struck him not even the blessed regenerative abilities of the Archon could heal him. It had seemed nothing could. Until now, for only a year ago word had come that the technology to heal him was found. Something recovered from a recently discovered ruins of the extinct Praenoctur civilization. It was the greatest news the II Legion had received for over three hundred years.
“Warforger. Do I have permission to take my Company in first?” Blackmouth asked with hope.
“Negative, Captain. I will be leading the I Company in. I’ll take the lead.”
“Son of a…” Blackmouth caught herself before she finished. “…yes sir. Sorry.”
The last holdout of traitor infantry on her portion of the defensive line was broken by the barrage of tanks. There was an attempt to reorganize at the bastion’s dual-door entrance but it failed but after the major rallying them, had his chest blown open they were put to flight. Their attempt to seal the doors was prevented by a tank shell that ripped the doors down. She knew it was only a short matter of time before the bastion either fell or surrendered.
21M.940
God of War, Citadel War Barge
Adriana Faeya
The mortal armorcrafter helped to put her the pieces that made up her power armor. Three of the four were humans, middle-aged to fifty. The fourth was an Oannon from Greenauga, one of the many xeno worlds brought in to the Imperial fold. Finally the blue skin Oannon female handed her the helmet and she bent down to take it and place it over her head. It was umber with the customary blue visor hat most legions utilizes. When she left the armorcrafters bowed their upper bodies in a sign of respect. It was the honor of a mortal lifetime to serve the Ultra Marines of Her Excellency’s Legions. To serve as armorcrafter was a true blessing for those chosen.
“The Imperial Spirit has arrived,” she heard over her commlink. The Alexander-class Carrier came to the system with the purpose of transporting the Archon to his flagship the God of War. There was a flutter in her stomach as she thought of her Archon’s return. That Ares was in the system proper now. Soon he would come aboard the God of War. She made her way to the main hangar to join the Legion one thousand highest officers assembled to have the honor of meeting Ares first. For the first time in sixty years, the Legion was fully united from the various campaigns, outposts and other duties due to the return of Ares. After just over three centuries he would lead the full strength of the II Legion once again. The hangar bay was full of her sisters and at the front where the shuttle was expected to land stood the Lord Commander and Centurions of the twenty cohorts. The fleetmaster was present, clad in his dress uniform. Most notable to Faeya was Captain Anand of the Olympian Guard. Her helmet was attached to her belt with its maglock and her face was visually nervous, perhaps even fearful. No doubt the Olympian Guards was more nervous and uncertain than anyone in the whole legion right now. They were all handpicked by Ares to serve as his bodyguards. The Olympian Guard. She remembered that half of their Company had died next to Ares’ wounded body and poor Aakanksha had received most-if, not all-of her facial scars on that battlefield. All after Ares fell to the demon’s powerful and mysterious blade. Both of the captain’s eyes were cybernetic optics with a sharp blue glow.
Faeya was lucky enough to find herself in line with the special ranks, such as the Master Armorcrafter, Fleetmaster, the First Standard Bearer and the handful of Warforgers that the Legion had. They stood behind the Centurions and in front of the Battalion Tribunes. After the shuttle had landed the rear ramp lowered to the cold metal floor and out walked a tall man with a height of four meters. He was of fair complexion and his short cut onyx hair was touched with a broad streak of white. He wore an expensive red tunic with the golden insignia of the legion on his right chest and a short red cape was attached to his right shoulder. He paused halfway down the ramp and looked at the mess of Ultra Marines assembled before he took a single stride down from the ramp. He was followed by two of the god-empress’ Templars. The one of the left carried the standard of the legion, its golden sword and the right held the standard of the Galactic Imperium: the golden fist and golden beams shooting outward on a field of white. The latter spoke in a harsh, unpleasant voice, an echo through the hangar as he spoke through his exterior speakers.
“His Imperial Highness, son of the Empress, Archon of the II Legion, Ares!”
On that command, every last of Faeya and her sisters slammed a clenched right fist against their left chest, then raised their fist to chin level. “Hail Ares!” They all declared in a unified voice.
He raised a gloved palm. “Hail Legion.” His neutral expression turned to a warm smile. “Hail, my children.” He stepped forward and came to stand before the Centurions and the Lord Commander. “Lord Commander Dominica. You stand relieved as commander of the II Legion.”
“I-I sta-a…” her sister paused to gather herself and shifted her head down for a moment. When she looked back up at the Archon she said, “I stand relieved, sir. As is my greatest honor, if I may say so. I am overjoyed to call myself no more than Centurion once again. We have desperately prayed for your return for so long.” Faeya was thankful that she had not had to stand there and speak to the Archon. There was no way her voice would have held together like Dominica.
The gall Archon leaned down and placed a hand on Dominica’s pauldron and spoke in a lower voice. She saw the movement of his lips but had nothing that was said. Behind the Archon, the Templars turned on their heels and marched on board the shuttle, and the ramp closed behind them. The Archon would exchange a few personal words with each of his Centurion. Eventually, he came before Captain Anand-who kneeled before him.
“My Lord. I humbly beg for your forgiveness for my company’s failure.” Her voice was full of emotions and shame.
The Archon knelt before her and placed a hand on both her pauldrons. “If anything needed forgiving, it was done centuries ago, captain. You and your sisters fought bravely and to the best of your abilities. Have I ever asked for more?” He asked. “Have I?”
“N-no, my lord.” Her optics stared down at the grey metal floor.
“Indeed I have not. Your scars tell clear as day of your personal bravery and dutiful handling on that day.” He rose and she followed.
She didn’t hear what Anand whispered, but she caught the word execution and assumed that she claimed that she deserved execution for such failure. Faeya remembered that she had demanded it from the Lord Commander, but it had been denied.
“Captain,” Archon Ares spoke. “There is no other I would have command the Olympian Guard.”
For the next seven days, the Archon visited the various ships to see his Ultra Marines and mortal commanders in person. Before he had joined them in the system he had already been up to speed on the expansion. Around a fourth of the galaxy laid in Imperial hands for they had carved out a bright swath of space and almost cut the galaxy in half. Few outside powers could oppose them, and even fewer would ever dare to face the strength of the Ultra Marine Legions. She could think of little else for the coming week but on what battlefields their Archon would lead them to.505Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXyWoSkUWNZ
