//------------------------------//
// Treads and Stones 
// Story: Lament and an emerald tide 
// by Lord_Draigo 
//------------------------------//

Lord General Thomas Helberk lets out air from between his teeth. Initial scans have shown this world has incredibly limited major roadways able to accommodate the six thousand Leman Russ tanks, three hundred and thirty Macharius tanks, eleven baneblade based tanks and three proper baneblades of his expeditionary force, and of course the various specialty vehicles.

The astropaths of the Lamenters and the local royalty, evidently some sort of psykers themselves, had been coordinating the defense of their world as of late. It appears the death korps will initially stage out of the Valley nearest the mountainous capital, named "Canterlot" of the premier country on the planet, Named ‘Equestria’.

With a flick of his hand he readjusts the holographic models on the digital map of the world displayed on his table, their ghostly green shapes showing the landing points of the various divisions, their type, number and expected march pace. If this valley can be held until the arrival of imperial forces, his job will be a whole lot easier. If it doesn’t hold, well, the death korps has reserves.

What happens to the other realms of this world is largely irrelevant, given that this “Equestria” was the only one to bother responding and appears to be mobilizing in response to the warning given. The Lord general jumps a little as an alarm clock goes off on the other side of the room. He sighs. This is do or die time, this was the time that the Cogitaters had estimated the Greenskin Fleet arriving in a low enough orbit above this planet to initiate planetfall.

A pair of Krieg Guardsmen march down the hall, lasrifles clutched in their hands as they go forth in perfect unison. The general had always been somewhat put off by the vat-born Kriegers, their fanaticism, coldness and mechanical actions made them seem like servitors. Except he’d never seen a servitor smiling madly as it blows itself and a brood of tyranids to hell with a frag grenade as a last stand. He’d never seen a servitor execute its own comrade for attempting to retreat without prior orders from their commanding staff officers. He’d seen servitors do many things, and He was confidant that the Vat-born kriegers were even less human than those lobotomized half-machines assembled for menial labor and security.

Of course, he was lucky, being a womb-born on Krieg is an advantage, since most of the natural births of the world are sent into the officer’s corps. While the officers are usually pretty fanatical, they usually have free will, and a will to live.
The lord General grabs his pipe, lighting the pipeweed within and giving a few puffs to get it going. After a few deep drags, the lord general steps away from the table, in order to inspect the preparations of his superheavy vehicles. A small cart is waiting outside of the room. The lord general sits down in the passenger seat. The driver's seat is occupied by a masked and helmeted Krieger, who’d waited patiently for a few hours in the seat. He points ahead.

“Superheavy staging bay, Grenadier.” The man or maybe woman, it’s hard to tell under the kit the kriegers wear, complies, pulling out of the small spot by the corridor. The drive is quiet over the ten minutes it takes to cover the five kilometer drive from the command deck to the equipment staging bays. Eventually, the cart pulls into the proper bay, where the fourteen super-heavy tanks sat, each one being swarmed by servitors and mechanics and observed by their crews. The krieger and Lord General stand up, walking out into the center of the enormous room. A loud, Female voice roars from the respirator of the Krieger accompanying him.

“Officer on deck, prepare for inspection!” The Kriegers who’d been watching the mechanics working on their tanks with disinterest turn on their heels, instantly alert. The general waits for them to line up in inspection formation in front of the tanks, helmets under their arms and masks secured. The Lord general walks around the hangar, looking over the crews and occasionally asking questions of the troops regarding their habits. He stops at the shadowsword squadron, and their assortment of about forty crewmen. Each tank had a few kill markers painted down their barrels, each one bearing the Astra Militarium hostile designator number for the type of foe they’d killed. The Lead tank had a record down half its barrel, a dozen or two tervigons, tyrannofexes and other assorted beasts, three hive tyrants, but most impressively, a quartet of Bio-titans. The Lord General had been present for only one of those, and it had been an impressive shot, low light at five kilometers. The beast probably didn’t know what was coming, especially when the volcano cannon atomized its head and back. A smile plays across his lips at the memory, compared to battling the Tyrannic threat, greenskins will be a cakewalk. The lord General looks about, yes, this will do, the greenskins can attempt to do battle, but it’s hard when your tanks turn to slag and your infantry to a crunchy paste by the might of the Imperial Guard.

Overall, the tanks are on track to be ready well in advance of when they’re actually going to see combat. This pleases the general The Grenadier hands the General a vox projector, the speaker clutched under her arm. He takes the mouthpiece carefully, and raises it to his mouth.

“All appears to be in order Guardsmen, I expect this equipment to be ready for combat in six days, otherwise quite a few Leman Russ crews are getting promotions to your tanks. And I assure you all, it will be a permanent removal from duty for those not ready.” The assembled crewmen nod, mechanically. The commissars present nod as well, more human, almost worried, since this is one of the few officers who could order them around. In all honesty, the Commissars are probably the most reasonable men around, which is unheard of in other imperial guard regiments. Of course, as most know, the death korps aren’t other imperial guard regiments.

Satisfied with the degree of readiness, the general exits, a light bounce in his step. He may not be ecstatic to die for the empire, but excitement to see the greenskin driven back is always a good thing. He can practically imagine the looks on the locals faces when the imperial guard arrive. Normal people, wielding weapons they think to be the tools of the gods. It will be astounding.

Down on that world, one of the locals is bored. Following the appearance of odd lights in the sky, the princesses had all convened in their high towers and the five non-princess elements of harmony had been sent to the far corners of Equestria, supposedly to view the phenomenon from different angles. Which would be a believable story if any of the five actually knew how to do astronomical observations. On second thought, Pinkie may, but who really knows what she knows. 

Rainbow Dash slumps over her coffee, a notebook of observations to the best of her ability sat in front of her. That ability is not all that great. She harrumphed, blowing air out one corner of her mouth. At this juncture she’s effectively given up on actually getting any useful data for Twilight, yes she writes in the notebook, but for the most part she’s enjoying Manehattan. the sights, sounds, and coastal air of the bustling metropolis are a welcome change for the speed freak compared to the countryside of Ponyville.

The blue pegasus finishes her drink and steps out of the small cafe onto the broad sidewalk, where it appears many onlookers were gathered in the street. Thinking it’s some sort of show, Dash looks the same way, only to turn pale and back up a pace. One normally doesn’t see a meteor so low. They’re usually distant, burning across the sky. Of course, one normally doesn’t see one from a frontal angle either. The massive rock, still burning from its deorbit and approximately three hundred meters in diameter approaches rapidly, screaming towards the coast at around mach one. Dash, figuring that she probably cannot do battle with the rock, instead starts yelling, mainly orders to get into cover. This is of course only a temporary measure since whatever’s gonna happen, it’s gonna be bad.

The rock flies overhead, barely clearing some of the taller buildings around Rainbow Dash, followed almost an instant later by the thunderous boom of its passage. Mere moments before it would overshoot the city, a ramshackle array of thrusters ignite, slowing it down so quickly as to bring it down in the financial district, about a kilometer from Rainbow Dash. She loses sight, but the Massive dust cloud rearing up from the impact site followed two seconds later by a thunderous crash like a mountain falling over showed exactly what had happened. At the same time as the sound, came a shockwave through the ground, knocking over dash and collapsing a nearby half-built skyscraper. Dash picks herself up from where she’d collapsed. She didn’t know why, but she felt something wasn’t right with this. This isn’t a normal disaster, if one could call a disaster normal. She backs into the cafe after seeing a wall of dust, tall enough to obscure the tall buildings of the city in the grey and brown storm of what had once been building and ground. She shuts the door, mouth agape as the dust cloud surges down the street, turning the previously sunny noontime to midnight black, the winds howled flinging dust through any hole it could find. A few chunks of brick and shattered cement strike the windows, like more aggressive hailstones.

Of course, the sounds of wind weren’t the only worrying sounds outside, in the distance, a chorus of distant bangs whispered just over the wind, like a fireworks finale at a funeral. That was the confusing thing. As Dash Recalls from a pamphlet she’d read on the train, the armory was on the other side of town, so the sound couldn’t be the powder going off prematurely from the fires that such an impact would cause. In the several minutes it took for the visibility to reach serviceable levels, Dash and the patrons of the cafe convened to figure out to do. The result was unanimously to head for the impact and look for survivors. Dash lead the group, mainly consisting of businessponies, guardponies, and militia troopers on lunch break out of the cafe and down a street that leads most directly to the impact zone. Dust seems to be raining from the sky, almost choking the ponies in their tracks. The motley crew proceeds well considering the circumstances, but another loud sound and blindingly bright flash stops them dead in their tracks. It was an apocalyptically loud crack, like a hundred lighting bolts right at the impact zone along with a second-long flash of light like a thousand suns before it subsided. The ponies proceed more slowly, now hearing far more of those mysterious bangs, accompanied by loud chattering sounds and deeper booms.

Dash is still uncertain on what these sounds are originating from, until a massive steel foot comes into view from behind a large apartment building about five hundred meters down the road. Another footstep brings the massive machine, just about as tall as the building into view. It’s quite a sight, painted in garish yellow and black, the behemoth bears an arm with what looks like a giant sword, except the edge is blurred and sounds like something is roaring. The other arm looks to be a cluster of what seem to be musket barrels, of all sorts of sizes, from Barely visible at this range to big enough that the vent holes at the end are easy to see, even at half a kilometer. It seems to be wearing a stereotypical pirate hat, which crackles with energy. From its back poke all sorts of smokestacks, blowing out black smoke in almost as great a quantity as the smoking crater it had come from. The gargant turns to proceed down the street. A terrified crowd of ponies starts to spill from the already-battered building, whose windows look to all have been blown out by the impact. The machine seems intrigued, turning its head to look at the building, before one of its eyes, looking like an odd sort of cone in a dish, lights up. The Eye takes two or three seconds to charge before firing some sort of beam into the building, cutting it in half with a quick shake of its head. Thus severed, the top half of the building fell off, crushing another building underneath its weight as the lower half crumpled like cardboard. Then it focused on the crowd of a hundred or so ponies below it, still running. A large number of flashes erupt across the machine’s body, accompanied by a chorus of guttural banging and roaring as the crowd of ponies began to drop dead. Then it occurs to dash, those weapons are probably just very advanced muskets, and that she should run before it gets to her. As if it could read her mind, the gun arm raises, and aims right at her and the former cafe patrons. Dash makes a run for cover, jumping into an alley just in time as the street behind her explodes into rubble, instantly atomizing the former cafe patrons into either a fine mist or chunks depending on where they had been.

Dash screams in pain as a severed limb strikes her in the wing, striking her with enough force to break several of the bones with a sickening crunch. The pegasus grits her teeth tears in her eyes as she evaluates her options. Forward is blocked by annihilation, up is no longer an option, so back it will be. She turns around, and runs, hearing something scuffing around the corner, maybe it’s some other survivors of this gargantuan apparatus.

The thing she sees is not at all what had been anticipated. Instead of a group of ponies making their way out of town, she’s confronted by a group of green skinned bipedal creatures, hulking around twice her height, with the one in front being even larger. They look to be wearing some sort of armor, namely ramshackle pieces of metal strapped together and then thrown on at the last moment. The lot of the smaller ones look to be carrying what Rainbow Dash could call the shittiest rifles she’d ever seen, looking to be nothing more than tubes with boxes underneath. Their Leader, instead of his hand ending in a normal green paw-thing like the rest has a large, metal claw instead. The claw is worryingly blood-splattered. In his other hand he seems to have a similar gun to the rest, except a rocket has been stuck to the top.

The nob looks down at the small blue creature in front of him. It had been a hard time krumping his way through the rest of the mobs to get himself and his boyz into the first wave on the planet. So far it has been a right good romp. Although he laments the lack of a good scrap, getting in shoota and klaw practice is always good. He’d not seen any of these little four-legged creatures that would make a good trophy, while they were generally brightly colored, He knows every nob would have a bright trophy, so he wanted something unique, and this rainbow horse is looking right flash. Thus he turns to his boyz.

“OI, FIRST WUNNA YA LADZ TO GET THAT RAINBOW HORSE GETS A BIT O ME SQUIG-RUM STASH!” with that encouragement, the boyz open fire on the retreating equine, who had started to run when the Nob turned around. Now that he sees his prey escaping, a scowl creases his face, before he gives chase, alongside his boyz. The pony turned out of the alley onto another street. The Nob follows, he won’t allow another Ork to have his prize, not while Mork and Gork still stand in the sky!

His pursuit is interrupted by a four hoofed ambush by the blue pegasus, who’d gottent o some high ground as soon as she’d turned. Of course, RD landing on a two hundred kilogram ork did little to him other than disorient the beast enough for her to jump to the next fire escape and start running up as she’s followed by a chorus of blazing guns. Right before she makes it to the roof, a stray round stikes her back, right leg. She lets out a startled gasp before dragging herself the rest of the way and breaking the fire escape off the building with a good kick from the other leg. At least the cheap, borderline illegal construction practices in this town have some use.. She figures that the Beasts will follow her through the building, but hey, at least she has a few minutes to figure out what to do before they break out onto the roof. The pony decides that getting out of the city is the highest priority, and thus, she starts on a rooftop journey, moving as fast as a hobbled pegasus can go.

The Nob and his boyz emerge onto the roof moments after Rainbow Dash leaves line of sight. He gives one of the boyz a firm whack on the back of the head, chastizing his taking too long with looting the shiny bits off of some wrinkly horse they’d come across on their way up and promptly gunned down. Of course, The nob had taken all of the shiny bitz, but he needed someone to blame. He continues to vent his frustration, until he sees a blood trail, leading down the roof and onto the next. An idea forms in his head. The smartest one he’d ever had.

“Oi, Ladz, I thinks that if we follow dis ‘ere blood, we’ll find our horsie. So, let’s follow dis ‘ere blood!”with that, he leads by example. Example being running down the roof with a war cry. The boyz follow, being exuberant participants in the sacking of Manehattan, the first battle of Equestria’s first contact with the stars.