Angels of Death
++Hive Tersius, Denton III++
++3.631.879.M39++
Twilight flapped her wings in short, powerful bursts, gaining altitude quickly. As she rose, her head swung back and forth, checking the sky around her. She couldn’t see any Necron aircraft in the immediate vicinity, but after her previous encounters with them, she knew that the crescent-shaped terrors were extremely fast when they wanted to be.
“They must be concentrated on the other side,” she concluded when no such flyers appeared to menace her. “They never attack without air cover.” Twilight rose over one hundred stories above where she had left Titus, moving into the more inhabited parts of the vast hive city. There, no one would notice a single military aircraft doing long circles, not with the war going like it was. “Next time, I bring a long range vox,” she vowed to herself as she closed to within estimated range of her micro-bread. “This is Acolyte TS to Warbird. Come in, Warbird.”
Static crackled in her ear. “… again… repeat…”
The alicorn continued her rise. “I should be in range by now. Are they jamming us?” she worried. Aloud, she repeated herself over and over again into her bead. “This is Acolyte TS to Warbird. Come in, Warbird. This is Acolyte TS to Warbird. Come in, Warbird.”
Finally, a response came through. “About damn… not getting any signal… debating whether to bugger off or…”
“I can’t see you. Can you get a fix on my location?”
“What?”
“A fix. On my. Location.”
“What?”
“FIX! MY! LOCATION!” Twilight screamed into the micro-bead.
“Oh, fix? Just a damn minute, you little xeno piece of…”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Fly to me!”
“Huh?”
“FLY HERE!”
“Alright, I hear ya. I’m coming…”
Twilight ceased her movement and simply hovered in place, waiting for the aircraft to show. She could have tried flying herself, but that would mean leaving her last man to die, or at least find his own way back to base. And the Valkyrie was faster. It had a proper communications rig. The reduced likelihood of getting “accidentally” shot down by Imperial forces certainly didn’t hurt, either.
It took a little bit more time than was probably necessary, but at last Twilight spotted the uncreatively named Warbird in the distance. Unlike the squad, it was Imperial Navy and thus simply borrowed for the mission, which meant that…
The Valkyrie opened its side drop door to admit her. “Hurry up and get your purple ass in here, before I come to my senses.”
Yeah. That.
With a slight sigh, Twilight flew into proffered compartment. The door sealed itself shut behind her, and she stumbled as the pilot jerked hard on the controls, pulling the Valkyrie into a hard turn.
“So, you and the rest of the xenos filth got everyone killed, eh?” came a scornful voice, simultaneously from the cockpit and from her micro-bead.
Twilight frowned and bit her tongue for a moment before replying. “There’s an additional survivor in need of extraction.”
“Abandoned them, did you? No surprises there.”
Twilight closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Pilot, most of my squad was just killed in front of me. I am not in the mood for this. Just fly to these coordinates.” She recited the exact location she’d last seen Titus, her memory as sharp as it ever was.
“Yeah, and I’m not in the mood for ferrying xeno filth in my baby, but we all gotta make sacrifices, eh?”
“Do I need to remind you who exactly I work for? And what they’ll do to you if they find out you let one of their men die through tardiness?”
“If I was you, I’d be thinking about what’s gonna happen to me when I bring back one man out of six, and no prisoner.” replied the man with a distinctly triumphalist tone. Still, the Valkyrie angled down and began a rapid descent towards the underhive.
Twilight simply sat back and rested her wings, a sour expression on her face. Telekinesis grabbed the Warbird’s standard emergency kit and brought it to her face. She tore through it without a care, until her eyes found what she sought. A large, boxy piece of equipment – an Imperial Navy standard emergency vox, meant to let any downed survivors call for evacuation and medical aid. Supposedly, it was good for up to low orbital range. She began to fiddle with it, switching frequencies as they descended.
“Imperial Command, this is Inquisition Acolyte TS, do you copy? Imperial Command, this is Inquisition Acolyte TS, do you copy? Imperial Command…”
Denton III PDF Sergeant Alex Aisen was not having a particularly pleasant night. He’d had a bit of well-earned (in his opinion) time off, to spend his meager salary how he saw fit. He’d been enjoying a few rounds of what passed for booze in the lower parts of the hive and had just been getting around to picking out a joygirl for the evening when the alert sirens had started going off. Which, in addition to the half the bar he’d been relaxing in getting vaped by a passing Necron flyer, had effectively put a damper on his plans for the night.
Now, he and a rather impromptu squad of whoever the hell had been relatively near him when the shitstorm started had the unenviable task of keeping the scary xenos away from an inconvenient building full of panicked civilians. At least, they did according to the slightly scarier man with a black trenchcoat and a bolt pistol standing behind them. Aisen took a long swig of his private stock of liquid courage (aka. whiskey) from a small metal flask as Mr. Scary Commissar started yelling.
“Move those worthless hides, you lazy dogs! On the double! You gonna let these xenos scum run roughshod over your homes?!”
In truth, Sergeant Aisen would have been perfectly happy to let them do exactly that if it meant he could run away, but repeating that sentiment out loud would merely be an excellent way to join Jeston’s “I got a bolt through my brain” club. So he sucked up his fear and let the adrenalin and alcohol do the talking.
“Forward you maggots! For the Emperor! Charge!” Figuring he might as well practice what he preached for once, Aisen leapt up from the rubble he’d been taking cover behind and made a dash for some rubble slightly closer to the enemy. He fired his lasgun wildly, on full auto, towards the important-looking black and glowy green pyramid floating on the other side of the square. The lasbolts merely pinged across the surface without doing much of anything visible. “But, hey, it’s something,” he thought.
Aisen ducked down below the new rubble pile in time to avoid some retaliatory fire from the xenos advancing into the large square from the direction of the freaky pyramid. A woman running behind him wasn’t so lucky, taking so many green shots that she went from alive to dust in maybe a microsecond.
“Shame. She was cute, too,” he commented to no one in particular. He took another drink from his flask, then shrugged. “Oh well.”
“What was that, sarg?” one of the men who’d managed to reach the new piece of cover asked from his firing position, snapping off a few las shots at the machines before ducking back down. “What’d you say?”
“I said that you all are a disgrace to the Emperor and our proud Planetary Defense Force! Look at you sorry lot, cowering behind some scrap piles like a bunch of frightened juvies!” Aisen said with a slight slur, before taking another slight swing out of his rapidly-diminishing flask. “Your mommies and daddies would be ashamed of you! You should be brave, like me!” He rose, and climbed to the top of the rubble pile, balancing unsteadily on a piece of what had been a building wall. Probably. “Hey, xenos! Suck it!” he yelled, firing his lasgun on full auto into the advancing Necrons. One shot pierced the eye of a particularly luckless machine, dropping it.
The pyramid thing fired some kind of giant green lightning bolt out of its top, directly at the place where Aisen and his boys were standing. The shot vaporized half the pile and three of the PDF men ducking behind it. His precarious position atop the rubble disrupted, Aisen promptly fell backwards off the pile and onto his ass.
“Sarge!” one of the men from further back yelled, rushing forward to his superior’s aid. “You alright, sir?” He paused. Aisen was shaking. No, scratch that. Sergeant Aisen was laughing.
“Ha! This is great fun! We should do this more often!”
++Strike Cruiser Venom, Orbiting Denton III++
++3.631.879.M39++
“Targets acquired,” Techmarine Istus of the Thunder Serpents Fifth Company declared, looking up from his console. “Coordinates locked. Awaiting confirmation.”
Captain Thalis gave a curt nod. “Acknowledged. Launch drop pods.”
++Hive Tersius, Denton III++
++3.631.879.M39++
The drop pod’s impact could be felt a dozen hive levels away. Knocked slightly off course by a glancing collision with a singularly unfortunate Doom Scythe, the machine and its precious cargo impacted directly on top of several Necrons advancing towards the Denton III PDF. Thankfully, the rugged nature of Adeptus Mechanicus construction meant that the square’s floor was only seriously dented, rather than being punched through atogether.
The unexpected location of their landing did not stop the five Astartes within the pod from doing their duty for a nanosecond. After all, they were Thunder Serpents, proud descendants of the Ultramarines Legion and loyal sons of the Emperor and Primarch. As soon as the hatches fell, the Space Marines rushed out of the drop pod and towards the enemy, firing as they went. Even with the casualties from the pod’s landing, it was at least several dozen Necron Warriors and Monolith backup against five Astartes.
One could almost feel sorry for the xenos.
The Space Marines were, to the unaided human eye, blurs, seeming to be in multiple places at once. Bolters unleashed spitting death for the handful of moments it took to close, before being clamped back to mag-lock belts. Chainswords came out in a roaring fury, dancing in tune with their masters to sunder metal heads, limbs, and torsos from their Necrontyr owners. The Necron Warriors, hindered now by their own numbers and reliance on ranged weaponry, barely had time to calculate the appropriate response and raise their gauss blasters before getting cut down. The drop pod’s own machine spirit took aim with its inbuilt bolters and offered covering fire to its battle brethren, gunning down those aliens that sought to flank humanity’s champions. The PDF men that were left offered their rescuers a resounding cheer.
Save one.
“Oy! No kill stealing!” screamed Sergeant Aisen as he drained the last of his flask, tossing it aside in his anger. “That’s MY freaky alien pyramid thing! Go find your own!”
When the Astartes rudely declined to answer the man’s polite and completely understandable request to bugger off, Aisen made up his mind to do something about it. Jamming a fresh battery pack into his lasgun and firing wildly into the massed Necron forces, Sergeant Aisen charged across the hive square, to the utter shock of the men and Commissar who knew him.
The Necron Monolith chose that particular instant to unleash its Particle Whip yet again, a giant flash of green lighting appearing to vaporize the Thunder Serpents’ drop pod with an earsplitting crack. The Astartes and Necrons were immune to such considerations, of course, but the men and women of the PDF were not. They shrieked and writhed, cluching painful and even bleeding ears close. Even noble Sergeant Aisen lost footing and hit the deck.
Aisen rose unsteadily with an embarrassed look. “Right, let’s try that again.” He cleared his throat. “For the Emperor!”
A particular Necron Warrior, more fortunate or more insightful than the others, had hung back during the Astartes’ wild charge through the crowd of its fellows. Now it had taken the opportunity to follow the path the Space Marines had cut in the xenos ranks as they charged to avenge their fallen drop pod. A marine cut down the one fellow that had been blocking that particular Necron’s aim, and it raised its gauss blaster to shoot the Astartes in his armored backside.
Only to be surprised by a bayonet punching out of its chest.
The Necron endured a further unpleasant surprise in the form of a boot to its rear that knocked it forward. Followed immediately by several wild shots across its back, neck, and skull. Its self-repair systems failing, the programming it followed directed it to phase out, retreating in a flash of green to the nearest Necron facility to undergo needed repairs.
Aisen roared his triumph to the heavens before resuming his wild charge.
The Astartes had cut down dozens of Necrons in considerably fewer seconds. Some even badly enough to prevent their repair programs from getting them back on their feet. They had lost an honored comrade – their drop pod’s machine-spirit had served the Chapter for over three thousand years across countless worlds and just as many foes. Honor demanded it be avenged, preferably in the most rapid and bloody manner possible.
“Brother Stratos, your left, twenty degrees,” voxed Brother Naiyard over the squad channel as he brought his boot down on a mechanical xenos skull, raking his chain-blade across the chest of another.
The battle brother in question brought his sword around in a blind spin, trusting in his brother and his instincts to guide it rightly. The whirling teeth cut halfway through the skull of another of the metal xenos before the force of the Astartes’ arm tore it off altogether.
Brother Naiyard ducked just in time to avoid another xenos before he kicked out with his right leg, smashing the metal warrior backwards against its pyramid. That pyramid was the primary threat here. The basic xenos warriors seemed intellectually deficient and were relatively slow, if insanely tough, but that vehicle – Naiyard presumed it was a vehicle – packed enough punch to vaporize a drop pod in a single shot. The only reason it hadn’t done so to the Space Marines as of yet was that they were knee-deep in its fellow xenos. Both honor and reason dictated that it be destroyed as soon as possible.
“For the Primarch! For the Emperor!” roared Sergeant Xian as he hacked in twain the last xeno standing between him and this thing the Chapter command had dubbed a “Monolith”. He plunged his power sword directly into the black metal side of the vehicle. It penetrated, and the Sergeant twisted and pulled, trying to cut a larger hole in the armor. Unfortunately, in doing so, he had ceased to benefit from the cover the lesser xenos soldiers provided.
The twin rods on the pyramid’s two corners nearest Xian rotated with speed and flexibility no Imperial turret could match. Before Naiyard had a chance to shout a warning, they fired twin beams of green lightning at Brother Sergeant Xian, and in an instant his chest and legs disintegrated.
“No!” Brother Naiyard shouted, but too late. His Sergeant, whom he’d served under for over eighty years, was dead. His remains, and power sword, clattered to the ground.
Naiyard screamed in fury and rage, caving in the nearest xeno’s chest with one blow of his armored fist. With one eye on the tactical situation, he noticed that the squad was rapidly running out of lesser warriors to use for cover. Of perhaps five or six dozen that had been there when the Astartes had started, only twenty or so remained on their feet and fighting. Besides the late Sergeant’s power sword, no other weapon the small Tactical Squad possessed could hope to breach thick vehicle armor. So they would have to make a tactical retreat, leaving the PDF to die and their comrades unavenged, and-
Fate, or the Emperor, had something else in store for Brother Naiyard. His keen, genetically-enhanced vision caught sight of a small, oval-shaped object hurling through the air towards the Monolith. By some strange quirk of fortune, it managed to go directly into the rapidly-closing hole made by Sergeant Xian.
There was a second’s pause, then a muffled crack from inside the xenos vehicle. Then several cracks, sounding like primitive firecrackers going off inside. Then the machine blew its top – literally. The deadly green crystal exploded in a blinding burst, sending tiny fragments flying all over the square. Brother Naiyard’s power armor dimmed his vision momentarily to preserve his sight. When his auto-senses returned to full a split second later, he saw that the explosion had all but torn the xeno contraption in two.
Surprised, but heartened, by this stroke of luck, Brother Naiyard turned his attention back to the few xenos still standing before him. With four Astartes fighting in close quarters, it did not take long to cut them down like the wretched slime they were.
“Injuries?” Brother Naiyard demanded over the squad’s vox as the last of the enemy warriors fell. With their commanding officer dead, the role fell to him as senior-most of the remaining Astartes, until a new officer could be assigned in the post-battle.
“Negligible, brother,” came the reply from brother Axyis, “I have a slight hole in my side armor. Clipped by a xeno shot. Other than that, nothing.”
“Good. We go to link up with our battle brothers and drive these xenos filth from Imperial soil. Brother Stratos, you’re on point. Brother Axyis, with me. Brother Hendral, cover our rear. Let’s move!” The others fell rapidly into position, but Brother Stratos appeared to be looking back at the square they’d just defended. Almost as if he was staring. Naiyard voxed again. “Brother Stratos. Is something wrong with your equipment?”
“Huh? Oh! Yes! Sir! I mean – No! Sir!” came a hasty and obviously embarrassed reply from Brother Stratos.
Naiyard took a few steps towards his battle brother, and looked in the direction that Stratos was looking. “What is it, brother? What do you see?”
Stratos pointed. There, not more than a dozen meters away, was an obviously intoxicated man in the uniform of the Denton III PDF. He was… dancing?
“HA! HA BLOODY HA! I told you it was MY kill! HA HA!” Suddenly, bizarrely, he seemed to take notice of the Astartes looking at him. Rather than wilting, like most mortals, he faced them dead on and said, in a very bold and direct tone of voice, “You know what? I need a drink.”
Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fainted.
“That,” Brother Naiyard remarked as the reduced squad began moving out to link with their fellow Thunder Serpents, “was a very strange little man.”
++Unknown Location, Denton III++
++3.631.879.M39++
Nemesra Ehtekhra stared down at the incoming tactical data on her console. Hundreds of thousands of reports were being filed each minute by the automated programs running most her army. A commander of lesser skill would have been overwhelmed by the sheer variety of data on display, but Ehtekhra had long since learned how to filter out the worthless and redundant data down to its bare essentials.
The essentials in this case were that the assault was stalling. The Imperium had mobilized faster than she’d hoped for, particularly on the eastern portion of the hive, where she’d hope to gain more from the element of surprise. Human forces outnumbered her own eight to one in the field, and that difference was growing by the minute. The enemy’s fiercest warriors, the Space Marines, were deployed ahead of her more optimistic calculations. The fearless, durable nature of her troops had prevented the situation from devolving into a retreat, but the advance had stalled. Nemesra Ehtekhra’s mind processed all this data in the span of seconds, and came to the only logical conclusion.
“We have accomplished enough for this night. It is time to withdraw,” she directed.
“Sir, there are thousands of Llandu’gor’s cursed running about the battlefield. What shall we do with them?” an Immortal seated at one of the center’s data consoles asked.
“Leave them. The cursed spawn of the C’tan can be dealt with by the Imperials,” she said, flicking her wrist scornfully.
“As you wish, my lord,” came the dull reply, as her Immortals set about sending her instructions to the army.
As the tactical icons representing her forces began to fade, teleporting home to rest and repair, Ehtekhra noticed out of the corner of her eye that “Thantekh” was bending over another console, examining feed from the retreating Necontyr forces and commenting to himself.
“No. No. No. Dreadful pose. No. I like that effect. But perhaps too gauche. No. No. Definitely not. No. No. No.” he paused, then magnified a particular image. “Well well well, what have we here?”
Slightly curious in spite of herself, Ehtekhra brought up the footage he had on his screen. It was a picture from a little surprise she’d left for an incoming Inquisition kill-team. There were several humans, and a small purple equine. What did that mean?
Nemesra Ehtekhra dismissed the image from her console and returned her focus to the incoming data. She had a war to fight, after all.
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Oh, I so want Trazyn to 'lead' a small contingent that just so happens to run into Twilight.
Aisen is best warrior of the emperor. definetly needs to get recruited into an inquisitorial team. he killed a monolith for gods sake, people have gotten better rewards for less.
4679951 But then, becoming part of an inquisitorial kill team could easily be considered anything but a reward
4680867
1d4chan.org/images/7/77/Commissar_NO.jpg
That Aisen sure is good at it. This part was funny. Good idea to contrast with the darker prequel.
I wonder if Twilight is going to meet the Thunder Serpents.
So, she's an Acolyte now? Not bad for a xeno witch.
4682412 I mean her mental state still in the prologue.
Good thing Aisen turned off his targeting computer.
4682603
Sorry, I didn't see you were commenting on the prologue. Kylara might have told Twilight what she really thought of her and that she was only faking friendship.
Please tell me we'll get more of Aisen, and not him dying or something. I just love how with some luck and sheer drunkenness he manages to pull such incredible acts off.
Aisen is Awesome!
And I really like your battles.
Aisen would actually make a good special character (more specficially an upgrade an the Astra Militarum infantry platoon sergeant or veteran sergeant):
Special Rules:
Blind Luck - Sergeant Aisen has a 5+ Invulnerable Save
Drunk Brilliance - Make a Leadership test at the beginning of each turn. (This Leadership test is not affected by Drunk Brilliance.)
If Aisen passes, he can re-roll each miss at range and in melee (second result counts) and has a +1 Leadership bonus until the end of turn.
If Aisen fails, he has to re-roll each hit at range and in melee (second result counts) and has a -1 Leadership malus until the end of turn.
4680700
Featured on EqD ! Good job.
Remember, everyone, this guy is PDF. The people who are cowardly and pathetic compared to the Imperial Guard. So, ask yourself when you look at this guy, just how badass are the Guardsmen?
4683367
On one hand, you're drunk on duty. On the other hand, the drunk you is vastly more competent and professional (cough) than when you're sober...
This story's turning out brilliantly. The battle scenes are very well written.
Only one thing stood out as wrong for me though.
Power sword getting through a monolith's armor?
Strength 4 in game vs armor 14.
You'd have to roll a 10 on one dice to achieve that.
Otherwise, keep up the good work.
....ive only played a ripoff of that game.....and that was a BOARDGAME...it was called: Space Crusade
s.toussaint2.free.fr/maniacdelafig/images/boite_space_crusade.JPG
4867015
He was filed with the emperor's glory
6556708 and alcohol...lots and lots of alcohol