//------------------------------//
// 2nd Hour 
// Story: Liberty Unto Death; Warhammer 40k My Little Pony crossover short 
// by Fulgrim 
//------------------------------//

"Now! Move MOVE!" Yelled Valor as the back hatch of the Chimera dropped open. He and his squad  ran out into the dust choked ruins as artillery boomed in the background, and buildings behind and around them were leveled by the mammoth shells dropped on them.  They ran forward under the barrage, the squad next to them disembarked only for a shell to fall on their transport. Valor and his squad were knocked from their hooves as the impressive explosion sprayed them with shrapnel, dust, and wet body parts. 

They took shelter behind a ruined manufactiorum and the squad collectively cringed at every nearby artillery. Valor trotted to look out at the battlefield facing them. He could see some recently destroyed transports, as well as some blood-stained craters where squads took a more brutal look on the assault and subsequently died.  Through the thick dust and debris, he could see flashed of las-fire coming from in the distance, and shadowed shapes could be seen behind these flashes. 

Valor and his squad stat behind the bunker for a bit of time while waiting for new orders from Sargent Fire, peeking around cover at points to see if the enemy were advancing. 

"Alright, Squads 104, 34, 97, 308, I need you to advance up the center, and pressure the traitors." growled the voice of Fire through his squad's vox-tech. Valor felt his heart turn to iron as he heard his squad's number called. The enemy's bombardment had ceased, and the fire of tank weapons and small arms had increased. 

"Alright," Valor yelled to his squad. " You heard him, advance until I order you to stop. Do not fire at anypony until I order!" Valor's squad began their advance through the ash-choked ruins, crouching and scanning for any signs of the enemy. Valor signaled his squad to stop at the crest of a leveled building. His squad moved up to the edge and looked over, and saw the enemy, trying to spot anypony marching through the dusty air.
Valor had seen the enemy many times throughout the campaign, but their appearance never ceased to unnerve him. Most of them were bare headed, with a few, sack-like masks in their midst. They were disheveled and dirty, wearing the remnants of guard flak armor along with patches to cover damage and sigils in the form of a chaos star. Some had the star of chaos inscribed on their bare flesh in tattoos, or simply cut into their body with knives.

Valor signaled to his squad get lower to avoid detection. The enemy did not have the benefit of Kreig re-breathers, so their vision was harried by the intense dust that had not settled from the artillery barrage. Valor glanced around to see the squads near him taking up similar positions. When the other squads signaled that they were ready, Valor hunkered down and aimed his lasgun at the foe.

"Alright! Light them up! Light them up! The Empress protects!" Yelled Valor, and he bit down on the piece in his mouth that allowed him to fire the lasgun. Beams of crimson light lit up towards the chaos battle line, as warriors were cut down by the scything fire that they didn't see coming.

Valor and his own squad did well. He shot at a bulky pony that was acting as a sargent for the traitors, liquidating his face and leaving him to choke on his own liquid flesh for his last agonizing moments as he searched for another target. His squad had mixed shooting, some hitting the foe, and other shots hitting the steel tank traps and rubble the traitors were using for cover. The enemy wilted under the barrage, a few frantic shots were fired, but the enemy made a quick retreat down a cracked street. Valor's squad shouted with defiance as the last of the traitors disappeared through the dust.

Valor himself smiled through his mask. He and his squad stood up and slowly made their way to the entrenchments where the traitors had been a moment before. Then a sound riveted through the silence, an unearthly cry that pierced Valor's heart and brought him to think of terrible things. His squad was also unnerved, some now shuddering as the cry left it's silent echo. A flash of light appeared in the dust some meters away from him and his squad. With a boom like thunder, the flash then lit up into reddish glows, which quickly faded. Before Valor could fathom what this was, the air was again pierced by the same howls, this time, many in number.

Valor felt his heart stop and his blood go cold. He had not seen anything capable of making such a noise, but the noise itself bore a resemblance of a bloodthirsty beast and a maniacal killer combined. Something that served only to kill for the sake of killing.  Out of the dust, like a demented jack-in-the-box, sprung about a dozen monstrosities. Equine in shape, the beasts had a scaly red skin without any fur. Their faces had beady yellow eyes and fanged mouths opened in vicious leers. Their heads pulled back at the end in a cone shape. Two antler-like horns mirrored this addition.  Fiery swords were held aloft in blood-red magical auras near each of the creatures, albeit a lack of any horn.

The daemons gave the guardsponies no time to recover from their shock, spotting the squad next to Valor's, who had been overbold with their advance. They ran at them with horrifying speed, and began to massacre the ponies. Valor stared in horror, watching the daemons as they swipes their swords at the ponies, cutting some in half like organ-filled pinatas. Those who had the timidity to fight back were hopelessly outmatched. The daemons exposed their fangs in jeers as they cut down the last survivors and instantly began decapitating the corpses and flaying the skin off of the head, leaving wet skulls with blood veins still clinging to them.

Valor recovered from the precious seconds that he wasted watching the abominations glut themselves on flesh by evaluating the situation. With bloodthirsty daemons to their flank and traitors to their front, the only hope was to fall back to friendly lines, lest they join the pile of skulls being amassed mere feet away from them.  Valor needed to give any orders to have his squad begin their silent retreat. The only thing keeping the daemons from searching for more targets was their grisly task, and Valor hoped it would be long enough for them to get to relative safety.

Already, they could hear voices punctuate the dust over the crunching and snapping of the daemon's work. They didn't want to get too close to their 'allies', but they did want to press the advantage. Valor knew what he needed to do. He had to close the distance with friendly lines to avoid death, and get their quick enough before the traitors realize they have been granted a reprieve.

It seemed like an impossible task, but the lives of him and his squad-mates depended upon it. After they had gotten safely away from the daemons and the traitors, Valor had his vox-tech relay his position to Sargent Fire.

"I copy Squad 98," replied a voice that didn't sound like Fire's.

"We need more orders from Sargent Fire, can you put him on the line?" imperatively asked Valor, hoping for the best.

"Negative, Sargent Fire is leading his squad against the heretics, and put me in position to relay orders. He says that all squads are to hold their positions, no matter the cost for the time being."

"It is has I have told you," inquired Valor. "Our positions are compromised, Squad 104 has been eliminated by... foes, proficient in close combat. Our guardsponies cannot match their skill. And getting far enough away will leave our position indefinitely in the hands of the traitors."

"Well, coordinate with the nearby squads, find a way to regain your position, no matter the cost. Orders will be incoming by Sargent Fire when he returns. And please don't contact this vox unless it's important, I have a battle to prosecute, and their are more pressing matters than some hive-worlders armed with shock batons menacing squads." replied the voice with a viper's bite of annoyance at the end of his statement.

Hive-worlders armed with shock batons? Valor felt like trotting over to the command hub and throwing that insufferable lieutenant in-front of the daemons and see what he would have to do. Commanding the guard was a grisly job. Their primary weapon was the amount of soldiers they could throw into the meat-grinder of battle for the smallest gains in return. No matter how horrible the foe was, all would be crushed under the iron boot-heel of Celestia's Hammer.

Now, they we're trying to preform that same aspect of warfare with woefully limited troops and supplies. Valor felt sick to his stomach, doing all he could to save his squad from a gruesome death at the hands of monsters just to trot back there and risk it again, this time the odds stacked even more against them.

Valor had his squad connect to the frequency that 308 was operating on to conduct a plan of action. As the vox-tech used his magic to fiddle with the knobs on his strange apparatus, the amount of small-arms fire increased to their west, with more flashes resembling lightning strikes hitting down in the center of the battle as more daemons were summoned into the fray. Valor allowed his eyes to follow the strikes upwards into the sky until he was staring directly at it. 
The sky-wound.

The sky on this planet had no atmospheric sheen to hide the planet from the gaze of the stars. Letting anyone on it's surface to stare up into a night-like sky, even in daylight. But amid the constellations, an ugly thing was held in the sky. Like a gash in space itself, the sky wound was a knife-wound in the cosmos, bleeding out hues of purple and fiery orange, as it sought to devour the space around it.
It was strange to think that something so strange was the very reason that otherworldly things not even of the galaxy itself manifested themselves right before their eyes. It was also strange to think that something that appeared so far away was the very reason the planet itself was dying, right under their hooves.

"Squad 308, do you copy?" asked Valor when his vox-tech adjusted his device. 

"We hear you loud and clear," replied a gruff voice.

"You saw those...things, right?" asked Valor.

"Aye, we need to end those abominations. And the only way we can do that is if we work together."

"Do you even think those things can be hurt by lasguns, or even be killed?" asked the voice.

"I-I don't know. Its best to hope so." stammered Valor, as he tried to push thoughts of the daemons pushing through a barrage of gunfire to massacre his squad.

"What's your current position?" asked Valor. A small clicking voice could be heard over a vox as they correlated the positions of the squads.

"Twenty meters west from your current position. Behind a broken wall. If you want, there's a shattered section of another wall nearby, If we can lure them towards us, we can hope to eliminate them." Valor moved away and moved his squad through the rubble until they found a large section of wall. Other ponies garbed in the same attire of the 97th Siege Army leaned up against a wall that was separated from theirs by a very large blast.

Growls and gunfire was audible in the near distance. As Valor's squad took shelter behind the wall, the other sergeant spoke to then through his vox to maintain silence.

"We heard them, in a small barricade about ten meters straight ahead. They're busy...decapitating, Squad 34." The other pony shuddered when he described the monster's gross actions. The loss of another squad was another loss that they had to cope with. That means that only his squad and the one next to him were the only ones maintaining the offensive into enemy lines. Fire in the distance spoke of a dreadful push on the enemy's part.

"Alright, we need noise to draw them out, ponies, prepare for the storm," spoke Valor to the other squad and his own. He hoped the monsters would take the bait. If not, this plot that hung on a needle-thin thread would snap. One of the unicorns in Valor's squad used his magic to pluck a large rock of ferrocrete, and chuck it out of the opening. 
The squads were dead silent. The squads pressed their guns through the cracks and waited with wide eyes.  Bestial growls of curiosity sprung out from the dust, and shuffling hooves could be heard. Valor began to sweat. The sounds of the daemons trotting around where in no definite place, making it difficult to gauge their position. What if they didn't take the bait? What if they went around the wall to attack them from the rear?

His questions were soon answered as the daemons themselves came out of the dust in front of the squads. Like stalking serial killers, they shambled forward with their nostrils flaring, searching for the guardsponies. The order to fire didn't need to come, as all the ponies opened fire on the daemons powered by soul-staining horror and righteous vengeance. The daemons were caught in a deadly crossfire, their faces not pulled back in fear or shock, but fury as the puny creatures thought to immolate them.

The squads shots struck true, and to the squad's delight, the daemons struck with fatal shots started to web with cracks, light spewing forth as they imploded, leaving nothing behind. The daemons tried to clear the distance, but the closest ones drew fire, and their numbers dwindled. 

As the last of the daemons were destroyed, the squads shouted out in victory. Cheering that their horrible adversary had been defeated. As the cried out, they were deaf to the gurgles and growls coming from behind them. It seems the first daemons the guardsponies killed would be their last.