//------------------------------//
// Storm Of Steel 
// Story: Strange Bedfellows 
// by BRBrony9 
//------------------------------//

Parachute landings were never the most pleasant thing to experience, especially after the explosive violence of ejecting from a stricken aircraft. Captain Muran had ridden out plenty of practice landings during his training, and one or two during his career, but never directly into a pitched armoured battle. He scanned the ground below for somewhere to land as wind buffeted his canvas. There was open ground everywhere, but with a battle raging, anywhere that was safe for a landing was likely to be riddled with crossfire from both sides. Nevertheless, the fundamentals of physics meant that a landing was inevitable sooner rather than later. 

Muran picked a likely spot, a stretch of churned-up grassland with a few wrecked tanks he could, hopefully, use for cover. Cannon shells and las-fire could be heard and seen below, and it seemed there could be no safe passage for a lone, unprotected pilot, falling from the sky into the middle of complete madness. But at least he could try. He used the steering lines to direct his descent. A burst of automatic fire whipped past him perilously close. He pulled back on the lines, slowing his approach, flaring as close to the ground as he dared. Tanks were still moving ahead of him; at a glance he could not tell if they were friendly or not, but it wouldn't matter. If they saw him, they would probably cut him down without bothering to establish which side he was on. Better safe than sorry. 

The ground rose to meet him, riddled with craters, grass torn up from hundreds of tracks, a quagmire of mud and death. He knew trying to land on his feet and stay on them would likely see him catch in the mud and end up breaking an ankle at the minimum, so at the last moment he brought his legs up, slowing still further, until all lift was gone and he dropped the last foot or two into the dirt.

The wind tried to drag his chute, and he had to get out of it quickly. He felt himself sliding across the slick mud, and hastily unbuckled his harness. Gunfire raged all around, the whine of tank engines and clank of treads clearly audible over the din. Thunder crackled overhead to add to the cacophony. The chute kept pulling him steadily until he was able to slip out of it. His flight suit was already soaked through from the rain, and now it was covered in mud, but he was down, and he was alive, for the moment at least. He looked around quickly and scrambled through the muck to the lee of a Leman Russ tank, a broken hulk with one sponson missing and a large, ragged hole in the turret. It at least hid him from view in the direction that, nominally at least, the enemy was supposed to be coming from.

But a quick glance around told him that things were clearly not that simple. Wrecked tanks, both Leman Russ and a design unknown to him, were sitting at any number of different angles, indicating the confused nature of the fight, especially in the limited visibility. The storm was almost directly overhead now, and rain sheeted down, obscuring vision. Death could come from anywhere. Muran stayed crouched low, huddled beneath the overhang of the tank's surviving sponson. All he could do was hope nobody spotted him, or if they did, that they were friendly or didn't care to waste time on a single dismounted target. Among the field of metal giants, he felt very, very small indeed.




'How goes the battle, Lord-General?' Lord-Admiral Marcos inquired, striding across the bridge to the main holo-display, where Galen and his senior staff were gathered. The table displayed a holomap of the landscape below, with unit markings being shown in blue for friendly forces, and red for the suspected or confirmed locations of enemies. 

'The situation is...confused, Arlen,' the Lord-General replied, his eyes not wavering from the battlespace projection. 'We were not expecting the enemy to ride out in such numbers to meet our advance. Such a move would seem foolhardy under normal circumstances, but this confounded storm sprung up seemingly out of nowhere and it's causing havoc.'

The storm had not been predicted by the fleet's climate augurs, and it was having a large effect on the battle. Communications between ground units and fleet command were disrupted, enemy locations were obscured, orbital strikes could not be carried out safely. As the storm had moved closer to the battlefield, Imperial aircraft had been forced to pull back farther and farther so as not to get caught in its grip.

'Yes, the storm...' Marcos nodded slowly. 'You do not think the Xenos Princess is behind it, do you?'

'I do not see why she would be,' Galen replied. 'We are fighting to retake her city, are we not? Why would she wish to cast obstacles in our way?'

'I do not know,' Marcos replied. 'But this storm sprung up quickly. Rather too quickly to be natural, if you ask me, and she knew of our plans, knew the date and time and location of our attack...'

'Perhaps you should question our Mechanicus colleague?' Galen suggested. 'He may have some insight we do not. In the meantime, if you will excuse me.' He gestured to the holo-table, and Marcos nodded again. 

'Of course, Hektor. The battle must be won. I shall see if I can find out anything that might help you.' He headed over to his command lectern and addressed the vox officer to open a channel to the Mechanicus science vessel, the Ferrus Terra. His will was done, and Arch-Magos Darius responded in his metallic monotone.

'Greetings, Lord-Admiral. How may I be of assistance?'

'Arch-Magos,' Marcos responded. 'This storm occurring over the battlefield. It is causing great disruption to our operations. Given what you know if it, and of her, could the Xenos princess be responsible for it?' he asked clearly. The full details of Celestia's involvement in both the warp storm's end and the display of power from the sun had been relayed to the Mechanicus ship, whose autoscribe servitors and Techpriests had redoubled their efforts to analyse the masses of data the fleet's sensors had recorded to search for any explanation of her power.

'It is theoretically possible, Lord-Admiral,' Darius suggested, 'that if the princess does indeed have total control over the system's star, that she could affect the circulation of the climate cells through differential heating of localised areas of the atmosphere which may increase the likelihood of storm formation. Such a function would be similar to certain sub-classes of Imperial weather-control devices, albeit the effects would be caused by forces arriving from outside of the atmosphere in the form of solar radiation. However, I do not have any confirmatory evidence that such a thing has taken place. Our sensors detected no spikes in the unknown particles as we did during her demonstration and during the solar flare.'

'Then this storm is natural?' Marcos questioned. 'It is all just a grand coincidence that it happened to form in the direct path of our assault forces?'

'I have no indication that there was any outside influence on the storm's formation,' Darius replied, 'but that does not rule such things out, either from the princess, the Archenemy, or some other source. The climatic conditions of the planet suggest that such storms are a regular occurance. Indeed since our arrival in orbit there have already been three similar storms in the coastal region, of varying intensity.'

'Alright, thank you Magos. That will be all for now.' Marcos signed off, not very much reassured by Darius' lack of certainty. As he had said, no evidence did not necessarily mean no link. He returned to the holo-table.

'Our metal friends aboard the Ferrus Terra seem none the wiser, Hektor,' he informed the Lord-General. 'It may be natural, it may not. In other words, the same judgement we already made for ourselves.'

'Whatever the source, Arlen, I dearly wish it would go away,' Galen replied. 'This is a critical phase of the engagement, but we're barely getting any signals through the interference. It may be time to deploy the operational reserves. I have every confidence in my troops, but...if the confusion down there is anything like it is up here, they might be in trouble.'




Big Beautiful Doll was in trouble. Smoke filled the crew compartment. Something had struck them a hefty blow from behind, and Captain Mayner was bleeding, a large cut on his forehead, a ringing in his ears. But he was alive, and he needed to find out who else was.

'Crew, comm check, sound off!' he coughed into his throat mic, pulling himself to his feet and glancing around the smoky turret. Cheyne and Janssen were both present, and gave him gestures of acknowledgement. A few moments later, both sponson gunners called in. 

'Driver, report in!' Mayner urged. Janssen started forward to assist Barnes, but quickly returned with a shake of his head. With their driver dead, they weren't going anywhere.

'Janssen, take over,' Mayner ordered. 'Find out if we're mobile.' The loader ducked back down, calmly extricating Barnes from the driver's seat, laying him out on the turret floor with the help of Cheyne. The round that had struck them had hit the rear of the turret and punched through, being deflected downward, narrowly missing the turret crew and hitting Barnes with its kinetic penetrator. A large exit wound had replaces his chest with a bloody mess, internal organs ruined and exposed to the air. His face still held a determined expression, as his death had evidently been instantaneous. Another life lost in the service of the Emperor, one of millions to fall that day, scattered across the stars. A tragedy, but a statistic. Some months from now, if they were lucky, his family back on Stourmont would get a death notification. If they were unlucky and the wheels of bureaucracy turned slower than usual, it might take years. In the worst case, the remains of the Crusade fleet would be wiped out entirely by the enemy or lost in the warp, and there would be no closure at all.

'Drive and tracks seem functional, sir!' Janssen called up from the drivers' position, drawing Mayner's attention away from his fallen comrade. 

'Very good. Cheyne, ammo count?' Mayner requested. 

'Three armour piercing, four HE, two smoke,' she replied, no need to check. Mayner trusted her mental calculations absolutely. The smoke rounds might prove useful for concealment, but the high-explosive rounds were of no use against enemy tanks, leaving them just three rounds capable of actually doing anything to the enemy.

'Alright...load armour piercing and standby.' Cheyne moved to the ready ammunition locker, retrieving an armour-piercing shell. She handled the hefty weight as well as Janssen, and shoved it home into the breech. Mayner tried the vox channels, but the storm overhead was producing masses of static. He could not contact the rest of the company, or regimental command. They were on their own. 

'Driver, about turn,' he ordered. Janssen complied, gunning the engine and swinging the tank around. While he was no expert at the controls, every member of the crew received rudimentary training in operating each position, so that the driver could become the gunner, the sponson gunner could become the loader, or, as in this case, the loader could become the driver. The tank swiveled around to face the enemy. Mayner looked through his thermoscope.

The rain-lashed mud was all he could see. The torrential downpour was limiting vision to a few hundred feet at most, and he could see no moving tanks, only wrecks. That did not mean, of course, that there were none out there. Caution was the word of the day, and Mayner scanned intently, with both visual and thermal settings. He could see nothing...but there, there was something. Something small. A thermal reading. A man?

He switched to visual, but could see nothing except a wrecked tank and what appeared to be a dark grey Imperial parachute, billowing in the breeze, caught on its rear deck. He switched back to thermals. There was definitely a signature in the lee of the tank; cool, but clearly alive. He switched back to visuals and magnified as much as he could. It was certainly a human, just one man, and he was wearing an Imperial Navy flight suit. A friendly pilot, somehow in the midst of the maelstrom? 

As much as there was rivalry between the Guard and the Navy, they couldn't just leave a man out there to die. Mayner had been saved too many times by long-range missiles or daring low-level strafing runs by Navy pilots to abandon him to his fate. He pondered their options. There were no sign of enemies on his scope.

'Farber! There's a friendly pilot out there, range approximately three hundred, up against a knocked out Leman Russ. I want you to dismount and go fetch him,' Mayner ordered. 'There's no sign of the enemy on scope. If you hurry you should be able to get him.'

With no hesitation, Farber replied. 'Yes, sir!' The crew's bond meant that he knew his commander would not send him out alone into the field unless he was confident he would make the trip unmolested. Farber unlocked and opened the starboard sponson's escape hatch, crawling out into the mud and rain. He stood and took a quick check around before sprinting across the open field, waving and calling to the pilot. Mayner observed through his scope, keeping an eye on them but also watching for contacts.




Captain Muran, from the shelter of his improvised cover, had watched with some discomfort as a tank not too far away had suddenly sprung into life and swung around a full 180 degrees. He had no idea if it was friendly or enemy, as both sides operated the Leman Russ. He stayed low and was relieved when none of its guns swung toward him, but now, to his surprise, a man had jumped out and was running towards him, arms flailing. His hand went for his sidearm, a laspistol, utterly useless against the tank but fatal to a human if necessary. But over the rolling thunder and lashing rain, he could hear a faint cry.

'Friendly! Imperial!' The uniform looked to be Imperial in design, and there was surely no chance that a Chaos tanker jumping out of his vehicle to approach Muran would not be brandishing some kind of weapon.

'Friendly! Stourmont 2nd Armoured!' the man called. That was the unit engaged in the assault, for sure. Muran relaxed a little. He pulled his pistol but kept it raised in his right hand, aiming skyward as he lifted both hands. 

'Imperial Navy!' he shouted. 'Hammer Squadron! Grox!'

'Bell!' the tanker replied, answering the daily challenge correctly. 'Come on, buddy! There's room for you on board. Follow me!' He beckoned. Muran was satisfied enough. He stood and lowered his gun, taking a cautious look around before running through the thick mud, following the tanker back to his ride. He climbed through the hatch and offered a hand to Muran, who accepted, being hauled inside, into the dry and into the heat. He looked around. There was a dead man on the floor.

'Captain Mayner, Stourmont Second Armoured.' A man standing in the turret spoke, thrusting his hand out. Muran shook it.

'Captain Muran, Imperial Navy...'

'I don't know how you ended up out there, Captain,' Mayner replied, 'but I bet you're damn glad to see us.'




After an eternity, the storm finally moved through, passing the battlefield, and starting to dissipate. Behind the grey came the sun, shining brightly on the green fields and plains where thousands had died. With better visibility came renewed enemy contacts, but the Imperial tanks were being reinforced by the operational reserves, fresh companies of tanks being thrown into the fight, Lord-General Galen having decided to commit them even as the storm raged, giving them time to make the advance. While the Chaos armour had not been shattered by the loss of the Baneblade and so many of its comrades, they had been shaken, disoriented and opened up by the Imperial flanking manoeuvre. With reinforcements arriving, the surviving tanks of the Stourmont 2nd were able to push forward, forcing the enemy back. 

With the ground reserves now fully committed, the frontline units, survivors of the clash on the plains, were able to fall back to resupply and refuel. Big Beautiful Doll arrived at the Regiment's supply station with just a single round of armour-piercing ammunition remaining, having fought through the storm and shell, taking the worst the enemy could give and surviving. The loss of Barnes had shaken the crew, but they had lost members before, and they would pull through this time as well. After a timely rescue, Captain Muran was able to hitch a ride back to his squadron, the survivors of the dogfight now being relocated to a forward airbase being set up east of the mountains by engineering teams.  

A large number of Chaos vehicles began to withdraw, fleeing for the city, but they never made it. With the storm passed, Fleet Command was able to reestablish contact with their forces on the ground, and direct accurate orbital fire. Lance beams smashed into the wet ground, raising huge plumes of sodden dirt and shattering enemy tanks caught in their blast, a string of strikes cutting off the retreat of the enemy. Caught between a wall of death and a storm of steel, the Chaos survivors died in their dozens, shattered by shells from behind, or vaporised under the intense heat of the lances. 

But they had taken a heavy toll. The Stourmont 2nd Armoured had lost almost three hundred tanks, over half their strength, though they had accounted for more than six hundred enemy vehicles in response. Nevertheless, the enemy force was spent. With the reserve units committed, and the 9th Mechanised pushing up behind, the way was clear for the advance on Manehattan, the pony city on the coast, the target of the assault, and a stronghold of the Archenemy. 

The Imperial armour moved out to surround the city, in conjunction with the diversionary attack to the north, which captured the town of Mareston but failed to draw off any of the defenders of Manehattan. Even with the loss of so many tanks, it was estimated that the defenders still had around a hundred armoured vehicles inside the city limits, along with at least fifty thousand men. Reinforcements were landed on the plains, close to where the battle had been fought and won by the Imperium. More tanks and infantry were deployed to keep the enemy bottled up, along with specialised siege regiments- long-range artillery, super-heavy mortars, entrenching and bridging equipment, and engineer units to operate them. It did not take long for Manehattan, the largest city on the planet, to be invested completely.

Surrounded on three sides by a ring of steel, and on the fourth by the sea and constant air patrols, the defenders of the city could only sit and wait, sharpening their knives and stoking their hunger for the inevitable battle to come. Imperial artillery wasted no time, targeting known enemy strongpoints, hurling heavy shells throughout the remains of the day and throughout the night. The siege mortars belched out smoke and flame, and every time they fired, a building crumbled into rubble and ruin. The siege landings took twenty four hours to complete, and as night fell again across the city rooftops, dozens of muzzle flashes could be seen on the plains as the Imperial batteries continued to fire late into the evening. There would be no sleep for the wicked.




It was long after midnight, and the darkness of the plains was tinged with a phosphorescent light coming from the ocean. Just several miles away, the sea lapped gently at the shore, a far cry from its state a day earlier when it was whipped into maddening troughs and peaks by the storm. It would have been a peaceful scene, with stars twinkling overhead, if not for the intermittent roar of the guns. The siege cannons had barely relented during daylight hours, only stopping to clean out the barrels or to cool them down. The rate of fire dwindled significantly at night, as a constant barrage would have rendered the besieging troops unable to sleep and thus unfit for action the next day, and the muzzle flashes of the guns could easily be pinpointed in the dark, making for accurate return fire even for those enemy forces that lacked counterbattery Auspexes and gunfire echolocators. The logistics train for such weapons was long and constant, with a steady string of ammunition lighters and shuttles bringing down fresh shells during the day to be expended during the night, in an effort to keep the enemy alert and awake all night. Single guns from different sectors of the siege lines would fire a round every couple of minutes, permitting sleep for the Imperials but giving a constant threat of death to the Chaos infantry.

Trenches had been dug and breastworks thrown up over the last twenty four hours. Firing positions had been build up for the heavy artillery, with thousands of sandbags to dampen the recoil and protect the guns from return fire. Each super-heavy siege mortar required a crew of almost fifty to actually operate, which included Sentinel powerlifters, rangefinders and spotters, a guard detail, and ammunition trucks or trailers. The Medusa heavy guns, Basilisk self-propelled cannons and their stationary Earthshaker equivalents were much less resource-intensive, needing a crew of just a few men.

A mile or two ahead of them lay the shallow trenches and foxholes that marked the Imperial frontline. Beyond that was no man's land, empty grassland reaching out ten or fifteen miles to the outskirts of the city, its towering buildings visible even in the dark, silhouetted against the eastern sky. Thousands of men waited, some watching, some eating, most sleeping, or trying to. The guns did not make it easy, but there was something soothing about this place regardless. For many men it was the similarity to their home worlds, but some felt more than just that.

To the rear of the guns and supply parks, soldiers guarded the perimeter, some individually, some in pairs, some in squads ready to react to trouble as a unit. Guardsman Mattias, 15th Hordonite Infantry Regiment, was on patrol, lasgun in his hands in case of any incident. It was, apart from the guns, a quiet night, and he had spent much of his time admiring the stars overhead, blazing clearly in the firmament. Somewhere up there was the transport ship that had carried his regiment through those same stars, countless trillions of miles from Hordon, a distant world of lush foliage and towering trees that rose hundreds of feet toward the heavens. The plain grasslands were dull in comparison, but at least Mattias could get a clear view of the stars.

Footsteps made him look around. A shadowy figure was coming closer, through the darkness from behind a parked truck. He made to raise his weapon and issue a challenge, but it was just another trooper, Rennick. 

'How goes it?' Mattias asked. 'Seen anything tonight?' Rennick shook his head.

'Me neither,' Mattias replied. 'Nice night, though.' A cannon roared nearby, drowning out any reply Rennick might have made. Mattias continued on, treading on the still-damp grass. The storm had dumped a lot of water and it had not yet had time to fully drain away, which must, he thought, be making conditions for the frontline troops in their trenches rather unpleasant. He was glad just to be patrolling the rear and sleeping in a tent. Something made him look back. He glanced  over his shoulder, but he did not see Rennick. Instead, he saw a monster.

A dark creature, quadrupedal, crouching low, ready to pounce. It leaped on him before he could shout a warning or raise his gun. Fangs glistened in the starlight and sunk deep into his neck as the chitinous fiend pinned him down, eyes glowing with an otherworldly fire. A sickening gurgle was the only sound Guardsman Mattias could make as his throat was ripped out by the slavering beast, dying alone in the darkness.