//------------------------------//
// Devastation 
// Story: Strange Bedfellows 
// by BRBrony9 
//------------------------------//

There was pain, and there was a terrifying silence. That was all.

Major Halix opened his eyes blindly. He did not know where he was, or what had happened. He could feel something, something cold and firm. Metal, brushing against his skin, his hands, his face. There was light, and there was dark. He could not tell which one he was in. Both, and neither. Everything, and nothing. He closed his eyes, opened them again. He was alive, at least, that much was sure.

He managed to turn his head slightly. His mouth was dry, his eyes reddened by dust or dirt. Something was digging into his left leg, but when he tried to reach down with his arm, he found it unresponsive. He could hear, now, but only a faint sound, a crackling. Fire? The vox? He didn't know, but he at least remembered where he was; he had been in his Salamander command vehicle. Baltimare, the city was called. Baltimare, the pony city on the pony planet, the strange place the Crusade had been fighting through these past weeks. They had been trying to take it, wrest control of it away from the forces of the Archenemy. But something had happened, that much was clear. He remembered a flash, and a sudden violence of motion and sound, and now he was lying here.

They must have been ambushed. They were retreating. That was right, high command had ordered it, a general fallback to somewhere on the outskirts of the city. That was where they had been heading. Not into the fray, but away from it, and yet something had caught up with them. Something had caused this. Was he still inside the Salamander? It seemed so. The cold touch of the metal, the familiar smell, a mixture of grease, oil and exhaust. While Halix had never had a command car of his own before this operation, as Major Harding's deputy he had frequently ridden in one as part of the command squad. How typical of the fates and whims of the universe that he should be provided with one here, only for it to be immediately destroyed.

Something was swinging just above him. He managed to look up enough to identify it. It was the vox handset, swaying gently from side to side like a metronome, thrown from its bracket by the force of the impact of whatever had struck the Salamander. That explained the crackling sound; the vox net was alive and hissing with static, like a swarm of angry serpents. He had to contact someone; the companies under his command, another Brigade, high command. Someone. Grabbing onto something firm, Halix pulled himself up into a sitting position and looked around the cabin. 

The Salamander's crew compartment was open-topped, giving, ordinarily, a view of the sky. All Halix could see out of it now was concrete. The Salamander had evidently been overturned by whatever had struck it, and now lay upside down. Maps and papers were scattered around. There was no sign of the driver, and two of the aides who had been travelling with him were missing. The other lay dead from some trauma of the crash, a broken neck, perhaps, his helmet providing little protection if his head had been smashed at the wrong angle on the hard ground as the vehicle overturned. Nothing could be done for him, certainly not by Halix, who checked for a pulse and found none, the only form of medical aid he could attempt to provide in the circumstances.

He looked down to determine what had been digging into his leg. It was the barrel of one of the crew's lasguns, which had been stored in the rack but clearly thrown free. He tried to reach up to the vox handset with his left arm, but once more it would not respond to his commands. Broken, probably, or fractured, although there was little pain. Perhaps the adrenalin from the shock of the crash had not yet worn off, or perhaps there was nerve damage. He reached over with his right hand instead, and pressed the transmit button on the handset.

'This is Viper Beta Actual to any unit receiving. Come in please. I say again, Viper Beta Actual calling any Imperial unit on this net. Please respond, over.' He released the button, and a blast of static assailed his ears once more. There was no reply, hardly surprising given the apparent interference. He tried retuning the set and repeated his calls several more times, but the airwaves were clean of all other traffic, or at least, the Salamander's set was not receiving anything. Another vox might have more luck- the escort vehicles. They must be nearby. Perhaps even now they were fighting off whatever ambush had struck the Salamander a fatal blow. Or perhaps they had shared the same fate. Either way, there might be another working vox set.

Halix crawled over toward the back of the Salamander, where some light was shining through. At least there an exit from the upturned metal tomb. He considered picking up the lasgun, but his left arm would not permit him to use it. He checked for his sidearm and found the holster and laspistol still in place. He inched his way to the back of the Salamander and eased out, dropping down onto the ground below. The concrete was firm beneath his feet. There was a small space between the Salamander's rear and the wall of some building. There was enough room to move through, and Halix did so, drawing his laspistol in case there was any sign of the enemy. Moving around the corner, the Captain scanned quickly for any movement. He saw none, but what he did see made him take a deep breath from shock.

Towering above the rooftops, above the city, was a dirty grey mushroom cloud, already being bent out of shape by the high altitude winds far above. That explained what had overturned the Salamander, then. Only an orbital strike or an atomic weapon could have caused a cloud of such scale. He ducked back inside the command car to check the Radiac equipment mounted to the vehicle. Detectors, simple radiation meters fitted to every Imperial tank and carrier, would give an indication of any excess counts. Halix checked the detector, and didn't like what he saw. Sure enough, the reading was high. Not extreme, but well above background levels. There had obviously been a large release of radiation, which could mean only one thing. The blast must had been caused by an atomic weapon.

Atomics had a long and bloody part to play in mankind's history. A nuclear war millennia ago had nearly destroyed civilization on Holy Terra, and more recently the planet of Krieg had been bombarded incessantly with atomic warheads, turning the entire surface into a radiation-scarred intolerable wasteland where barely anything could hope to survive for more than a few hours unprotected. The inhabitants had no choice but to turn to subterranean caverns and bunkers for protection against the incessant nuclear winter above ground, a phenomenon that science said would take a truly astronomical amount of atomic blasts to actually achieve; a testament to mankind's insatiable appetite for destruction. More recently, atomic weapons had fallen completely out of favour for ground battles, for two reasons. Firstly, they had the unfortunate side effect of irradiating the target area, which, depending on the intention, could be a help or a hindrance; it was hard to occupy somewhere you had just bathed in gamma rays. The other reason atomics had been withdrawn from service was that it was simple to cause a similar level of devastation through the use of orbital weaponry. A lance blast might not cause as much damage as a nuclear weapon, but a lance could be fired again and again, or fired in entire broadsides, with enough firepower to rip through a mountain and shatter a city, performing in minutes a task that an atomic could perform in seconds, but without the associated radioactivity. 

The one place the Imperium still had for such dirty weapons was in space warfare. Nuclear-tipped torpedoes were part of the arsenal of every destroyer and escort, as well as many of the Starhawk bombers carried aboard capital ships. While in the vacuum of space, a nuclear explosion would have no blast effects to speak of, since there would be no medium through which the blast could propagate, that meant almost the entirety of the weapon's energy could be converted into radiation. This radiation, depending on the type of warhead, could be focused almost like a laser by shaped-charge sequential detonations of the explosive lenses around the core in order to try and 'punch through' the target's radiation shielding and irradiate the crew inside, or it could be spread like butter across the ship's exterior by a more distant detonation, which had the potential to fry sensors and targeting equipment, disrupt point-defence batteries, and knock out fighter craft. Of course, a direct hit by a nuclear torpedo would still have the same devastating impact as a plasma warhead, since the blast, heat and radiation could then be transmitted directly into the hull of the target, and generally speaking in space combat, you only fired at something you wanted dead.

Back on the surface, Major Halix cared little for the details of the Imperial policy regarding atomics. This one had been detonated by Chaos. Evidently this was the ambush into which they had all been moving, the reason for high command's call to retreat, which had come presciently early, but nevertheless too late. Halix left the Salamander again, his left arm hanging uselessly at his side. He needed to find another vox set, and he needed to get to safety. Judging by the mushroom cloud, the weapon had been detonated as a groundburst, sucking up dust, dirt and debris from the ground, which would be made radioactive by the residue from the weapon and would begin to drop back to earth as fallout within a few minutes, thirty at the absolute most. He couldn't tell where exactly ground zero was, but he knew it could not be more than a few miles away. Most likely it had been in the centre of the city, the business and leisure district into which they had been heading, the final goal which would signal the capture of Baltimare. The enemy had evidently seen the Imperial forces begin to retreat, and detonated the weapon prematurely to try and catch as many as possible in the blast radius.

The street down which they had been driving was a mess, littered with debris. The buildings around him had collapsed, either partially or totally. Walls had tumbled into the roadway. Street lamps and signs were bent and twisted like the boughs of trees after a hurricane. There were men in the street, dead, some with injuries from being thrown by the blast, others with severe burns. Up ahead, the road was blocked. Two Chimeras and one of the escorting Salamanders of his headquarters company had been thrown together in a tangled mess of steel, mixed with bricks and twisted metal beams from the collapsed side wall of a factory. Behind, a building which had once been a proud old structure with a fine clock tower was now just a slumped pile of debris, bricks and mortar strewn across the street, the large iron hands of the clock face lying incongruously in the middle of the road, pinning one unfortunate guardsman beneath their bulk and crushing him. The more distant buildings he could see that had formed part of the business district were nothing but empty, gutted shells, those that had survived at all. Many were missing from the skyline entirely, collapsed as a result of the blast. What had been developing into a pleasant day weather-wise was now overshadowed by the great column of smoke and dust that hung high above, blocking out the sun's rays and casting the area into the gloom of the overcast state it had been in before the sun rose.

Back down the road lay the other Salamanders of the command section and their escort. Several were overturned, and one was blazing merrily, fire and smoke belching from the crew compartment. Halix headed for the nearest intact vehicle. It lay on its side, and was rather dented, having clearly been hurled a fair distance. The crew compartment was a natural shambles as a result, with two dead men inside. But someone was alive, too; Lieutenant Albaran, a trusted member of Major Harding's staff, who had stayed on in her post to serve under Halix. She was hurt, clearly, with a grimace of pain on her face and her right leg clearly broken, to say nothing of possible internal injuries. But she was alive, at least.

'Easy, Lieutenant,' Halix urged. 'Don't try to move. You're hurt.'

'No shit...' Albaran managed to utter, with a small chuckle. Such a lack of respect would have caused some stricter officers or commissars to potentially execute her on the spot, but Halix cared little for such things at a time like this. He gave her a quick check for any sign of other injuries, and found nothing obvious other than her leg, twisted out of shape. He found it hard to attend to her properly with his equally useless arm.

'I've got to get a message out. Is the vox working?' he asked her.

'I don't know, sir,' Albaran shrugged, then grimaced as a result. 'It was working before...what happened? Ambush?'

'Worse. Atomics,' he replied. 'Looks like they were trying to lure us in, but when we turned back they decided to detonate anyway...I guess high command were right to pull us out, but it was too late.'

'That's always the way...' Albaran chuckled again. 'Atomics, though...those Chaos bastards...' She coughed. The crew compartment was filled with either dust or smoke, though there was no sign of fire inside the vehicle.

'I'll get in contact with command,' Halix assured her. He moved to check the vox set. It was intact. He picked up the handset and tried to contact somebody.

'This is Viper Beta Actual to any unit on this net. Come in, over.'

Again, he got no reply from anybody else. The static crackled loudly. The interference, undoubtedly caused by the ionizing radiation released by the atomic explosion, was preventing any message he tried to send from getting through. He had tried two vox sets with the same result. It seemed fruitless to try and send the same message with another. Instead, he turned his attentions back to Lieutenant Albaran, who sat with pain etched upon her face. The Salamander held only a simple first aid kit which offered nothing for setting broken bones, and there was no medicae around to help her.

'Sit tight,' Halix ordered. 'I'll go get some help. There must be somebody.' He stood and staggered out of the Salamander. Was his own shock and pain from his injury starting to kick in? He couldn't quite tell. As far as he knew, the trouble with his arm was the only thing wrong with him, but it was always possible that he was suffering from some kind of internal injury as well. A concussion would not be a big surprise, given the violent nature of the Salamander's crash and overturn, but his head, apart from a slight throbbing, felt fine.

Halix made his way down the street. He checked out the other Salamanders for the command company's medicae. He found her tending to another crewman with a large gash on the back of his head, having evidently struck something hard during the vehicle's overturn. The medicae looked up.

'Got another one for you when you're done here,' Halix informed her. 'Next vehicle down. Broken leg.'

She nodded. 'What happened, sir? Were we attacked?'

'Looks like they were trying to lure us into an ambush with an atomic warhead,' he replied. 

'I'd say they did a pretty good job of that,' the medicae commented, quickly bandaging the crewman's head wound.

'I guess someone up at high command saw through the ruse and ordered the retreat...just a little too late,' Halix replied. 'Is your vox working?'

'I think so,' she replied, packing up her kit to go and help Albaran. 'What about your arm, sir?'

'Later, later,' he urged. 'I need to make contact with Regimental command.'

'Let me at least take a look, sir,' she insisted, sidling over to him and earning a begrudging nod from the Major. She ran her practised hands over his arm and shoulder, feeling for any breaks or fractures and finding none. 'It's just dislocated, sir,' she informed him. 'Let me just pop it back into place...this'll hurt, but it'll be quick.'

'Then get on with it,' he grunted with a nod of approval. 'Time's wasting.' She took firm hold of his arm and popped the joint back into its socket, soliciting a grimace from her commander but nothing more. 'All done, sir. I'll go check on that other casualty.' She scampered out of the Salamander with her kit, leaving Halix to try the vox. He picked up the handset and tried broadcasting several times, with the same results. Nothing. Nobody was receiving him, or if they were then he wasn't receiving them.

Halix helped the wounded crewman out of the Salamander and onto the street, where he gazed around in dismay at the sudden devastation which had been unleashed in a mere few seconds upon the formerly intact city. What little of it could be seen from their vantage point told a horrifying tale, one which was certain to have been repeated all across Baltimare. Atomics were indiscriminate weapons, used in ground combat only when something big needed destroying, orbital support was not available, and collateral damage was not important.

A glance up at the mushroom cloud told Halix much. It was being distorted out of shape, the prevailing winds carrying the upper levels of the plume to the northeast, right over the top of them. Fallout would be starting to descend very soon, coating the ground in radioactive dust, along with anyone who happened to remain in the area. They had to get out of the city, as far away as they could. In the absence of any orders from, or contact with, either regimental command or high command, Halix felt that proceeding with their last order and retreating to Phase Line Alpha was the best option. Other survivors might be gathering there, and more importantly, it would starting putting some distance between themselves and ground zero, taking them away from the city.

Most likely, very few of the men attacking Baltimare had ever come under atomic attack before. Neither had Halix, though, like all officers, he had been trained in their effects, including the insidious threat of radiation. Even if one had no knowledge of the true nature of the event, common sense would tell them to run the hell away from the site of the monumentally huge explosion which had just torn through the city. The Radiac equipment readings, which he had been double-checking in each Salamander he had visited, were higher than they should be, but not at dangerous levels. This was due to the fact that the vast majority of radioactive material given off by the explosion was being carried up into the sky by the smoke plume. It would take time for the particles to fall back to earth, but fallout in the vicinity of ground zero could be expected within half an hour after detonation. The farther one went, the longer it would be before fallout occurred, leaving a great stain of radiation across the landscape wherever the prevailing winds carried it.

Halix massaged his left arm. Feeling was returning to it, and there was pain from the dislocation and the treatment, but it was nothing severe. He kept a wary eye on the street behind them. Enemies could burst from the smoke at any time, assuming some had survived the blast. Given that most of the enemy forces in the city had yet to be encountered at the time of the explosion, he could only surmise that the majority of them had been located in the central areas, right in the middle of the blast zone. Why the Archenemy would throw away so many of their number in such a fashion was a mystery to him, as indeed were most things the traitors chose to do. Clearly they had been hoping to catch the entire Imperial force in the blast, but the withdrawal order would have saved much of them from destruction, especially the second and third wave forces that had not entered the city yet.

He returned to the other Salamander with the injured crewman. The medicae was treating Lieutenant Albaran's leg, forming a makeshift splint from one of the lasguns and some adhesive tape. 'We've got to move,' Halix informed them. 'We're heading for Phase Line Alpha. Get her ready to go. I'm going to see if any of the Salamanders are operational.' The Major looked around the street. Only one of the Salamanders were the right way up, and there was no way they could right any of the others, as each vehicle weighed some thirty five tons. 

He made his way quickly to the intact scout car and climbed into the crew compartment. Of the crew themselves there was no sign, or rather, there was, just not inside the vehicle. Several broken bodies littered the road behind, suggesting that, although it was right side up at the moment, the Salamander had been rolled or flipped by the blast, throwing the crew out to their deaths, one of the hazards of an open-topped vehicle, although being thrown hard against the steel roof of a tank was not much of a preferable option. This was proven by the fact that the vehicle's driver lay slumped at his controls, not breathing, his neck broken by striking some of the protruding control levers and wheels. 

Halix pulled his lifeless body out of the way and replaced him in the driver's seat. While he was not a trained Salamander driver, the basics were clear to him. He knew how to get it started, which was what mattered. Would the engine fire up, or had it been damaged in the blast? If it did not work, they would be on foot all the way out of the city, and there was no way they would reach safety before the fallout began. They might have to seek shelter in some secure location if that were the case; a basement, subway tunnel, sewer, anything that would protect from the radiation, although then they would be trapped in the city with no way to leave, as going back to the surface would lead to them becoming irradiated anyway. The fallout would not lose its potency for some time, perhaps as long as several weeks after the explosion.

Halix turned the starter. The engine whined, grunted, and died. He tried again, with the same result. Once more...and this time, it fired, roaring into life, a most wonderful sound. He climbed back out of the vehicle and signaled to the other survivors. The medicae and the other crewman supported Lieutenant Albaran and brought her out of the wreck, crossing the street to the working Salamander. They got her into the crew compartment and climbed aboard themselves, ready to move off. Halix swapped placed with the crewman who had been the driver of the other vehicle, and performed one final quick search around for survivors, calling out but getting no reply. He climbed back onto the Salamander and ordered it to get moving.

The driver gunned the engine, taking the vehicle down the street. Ahead, wrecked vehicles blocked their passage, but the Salamander's powerful engine gave it good torque. The driver was able to nose up against one of the overturned wrecks and nudge it out of the way. The street headed through the industrial area of the city, but to head back the same way they had entered Baltimare was not a wise direction to take, given that it was also the broad direction that the fallout plume was heading. Halix ordered the driver to turn left, and head west instead, hoping to reach a safer area. There was no guarantee that it was safe; the enemy might have taken control, or there could be pockets of radiation there. But it was better than the certainty of getting irradiated if they were to follow the course of the smoke. Fallout would start dropping any time now, with more being carried away to the north and northeast. Halix did not want to be underneath it when it did.