Warhammer 40k: The Mission

by 40kponyguy1

Part 4 'New Allies/Rescue'

Part 4

Here, we switch to a camp fire in a ruin...

It was early evening, and the sky was beginning to darken, although there would be daylight for a few hours yet.

Sergeant Vorenze sat at what remained of the doorway to this ruined building. He could only guess at what it had once been.
Possibly a small workshop for vehicles.

The thirty year old sergeant counted himself lucky to be alive right now.

There was little left standing after the Chaos forces had rampaged through this part of the city.

Small fires continued to burn everywhere he looked. Off to his right, he could probably see for miles, if it wasn't for the dust that still hung in the air.
Visibility wasn't that bad any more, but he couldn't see more than a few hundred feet. Any buildings in sight that way had been smashed flat by the attacking enemies.
In front of him, and to his left, almost every building within a mile had been reduced to single storey walls, the roofs caved in and huge chunks of masonry laying within their shattered shells. This workshop he and his allies had commandeered was in a similar state.

He looked back at his force. Or what was left of them.

A Sentinel walker stood over them. Maverick, the pilot, slouched back in his seat with his feet up on the console, smoking a lho stick.
What little smoke reached Vorenze suggested there was something other than tobacco in the pilot's smokes.
Maverick was a stocky man, with short crew cut hair and a face full of stubble. He always insisted on wearing his sun glasses, probably to hide his eyes that were normally reddened by whatever he'd managed to smuggle through for his smokes. If any commissar had caught him he'd have been reprimanded severely. Which usually meant a summary execution when commissars were involved. Luckily for Maverick, they were all dead.

Natalia and Maria huddled next to the camp fire beside the sentinel's feet. These two women had proven to be two of his best soldiers.

Maria. An attractive blue eyed blonde girl, probably around twenty years of age. She had an average build, but had proven to be an expert shot. Not unexpected from a Cadian recruit. Her las rifle had long since been abandoned in favor of the plasma gun she now carried, despite the weapon's tendency to overheat if fired too much.
She had joined the guard at the same time as Natalia and the two were inseparable friends.

Natalia. Now there was a stunner. Large pale green eyes looked in to the camp fire. Luscious red hair spilled down her back, and even the dust and grime of this Emperor forsaken hell hole failed to cover her pale and flawless complexion.
In a different time, she could easily have been a model.
However, she had been drafted in to the guard at a young age, along with thousands of others from her home world.

Any doubt in her abilities had soon been quashed.
Her melta gun had accounted for a Chaos dreadnought, three marines, a rhino and had toppled a defiler.
In hindsight, Vorenze realized that the reason she was still alive was probably down to her weapon, and the fact she tended to sneak around opponents so they didn't spot her until it was too late.

The group's last survivor from the heavy weapons platoons sat opposite the two girls.

Leroy. Six foot nine, clean shaven including his head, solidly built, dark skinned and with a steady aim, his Las cannon stood behind him.
Nobody else in this group could even lift that thing, let alone walk around firing it like a rifle like Leroy did.

He and Natalia had a bit of a competition going for who could get the most kills.

So far, they were even. A lucky hit on a Chaos Hell Blade fighter had seen to that when it's blazing wreck had smashed in to the back of an enemy Predator tank, destroying both in a huge fireball.

Leroy claimed he should be in the lead for the most spectacular kill.

A Chimera troop transport sat to one side of the fire. The group's last survivor sat against it.
Guardsman Bateman, cleaning the twin plasma pistols he'd acquired by scavenging, affectionately nicknamed 'the dubs'.
Bateman was a thirty five year old driver for the armored platoon Natalia and Maria had come from, and was pretty average in every way, save for a knack of surviving.
Also, he did have a limited ability with mechanical repairs, (which amounted to hitting things with a hammer and swearing a lot until it started working usually), which was how the group still had the Sentinel walker and Chimera.
Both vehicles had taken light damage, but Bateman had managed to get them going again.

Vorenze sighed.
This was all that remained of his forces. If he returned to his superiors with such extreme losses they'd probably have him before a firing squad.

Six hundred guardsmen, thirty tanks of varying types, fifteen thunderbolt fighters, twenty valcyries, ten vulture gunships, six units of elite storm troopers, thirty sentinels and the baneblade 'Justice'.

Reduced to a group of seven survivors.

At least they'd given the enemy a run for their money.
They'd actually wiped out the Chaos forces almost completely, but at what cost?

The city was in ruins, and his forces were all but completely destroyed.
There was nothing left here for them to go back to.
There were other enemy forces out there too. Scattered remnants of the horde they'd crushed here.
Emperor help them if any of the big stuff had survived the battle. There had been three Warhound titans backing up the enemy, and Vorenze wasn't certain they'd been destroyed.
He'd only actually seen one of the corrupted god-machines fall, caught in a crossfire between the Baneblade 'Justice' and a squadron of Leman Russ tanks.

The crumpled wreck of that huge walker lay on the horizon just within visible range, dead. The Baneblade crushed under the titan.
He put that to the back of his mind for now, and turned his attention to the conversation unfolding between his troops.

"Wonder where Fenrick's got to?", muttered Maria, poking the fire.
"I'm sure that little weazle's off scavenging again", replied Natalia.
"Hope he finds something to eat", rumbled Leroy ,"I'm getting hungry".
"You're always hungry!" snapped Natalia.
Leroy laughed. "You're probably right".

There came a dull thump, followed by another.

A few stones toppled over on to the camp fire, putting it out.

"Something's coming", stated Vorenze.
Bateman scurried up to the wall at the back of the ruin.
"It's a Warhound", said Leroy, craning his neck.
Bateman turned back to the group and pointed over his left shoulder.
"Two the same", he said.

"I was just thinking, we may not have got those earlier", stated Vorenze.

"Looks like they're armed with Vulkans and Plasma Blastguns", said Leroy, picking out the shapes of the huge walker's weapons as they came in to view.
"Keep down then, they might miss us", hissed Vorenze, as if whispering would make any difference.
Titan tread was deafeningly loud up close.
"Don't think that'll work, one of them's coming right this way", said Maria.
"Then we go down fighting", stated Leroy, hefting his Las Cannon.
"KEEP DOWN!", snapped Natalia, readying her own weapon, "they still don't know we're here. Wait till it's up close and it's shields are useless".
"As if they won't see those", pointed out Vorenze, indicating the idle sentinel and chimera.
"They look like wrecks as long as they're not running", stated Maria.

Maverick grimaced and hopped down from the cab so as not to draw attention to the group.
He huddled beside the sentinel's leg, ready to get back in at the first opportunity.

The steady thump of titan tread got louder, then one of them came in to view.
This one was several blocks away, and for a moment the group thought they may have got away with it.
It was quite clear to Vorenze, if not the others, that this titan was host to something that did not belong in this reality.
Several gouges in the machine's carapace were running slick with blood.
Blue sparks sizzled along the cables controlling the weapons, pointing less to technology, and more to sorcerous means of providing power to them.

Then the other Warhound appeared, right over them.
There was no time to cast an appraising eye over this adversary, although it did appear oblivious to the small group.

It's right foot smashed down on the smoldering camp fire.

"Now!", snapped Natalia, and opened up with her melta gun at point blank range. She didn't realize at first that she was the only one to actually attack, although the close ranged melta blast was still sufficient to do heavy damage, especially as she had hit the exposed rear workings of the titan's ankle.
The heat weapon severed two of the pistons in the ankle joint of the war machine, a chunk of the support pillar behind running down the foot in a silver river of molten metal, locking up the foot.

The titan stepped forwards again, but when it put it's weight on the ruined ankle, the leg buckled.

With a howl of tortured servos and over-stressed metal, the titan collapsed. The impact tore the ancient machine in half at it's waist joint, it's plasma weapon exploding behind the machine in a gout of blue fire.

"IT STILL ONLY COUNTS AS ONE!!" shouted Leroy.

The destruction of it's ally had got the attention of the other Warhound.

There was very little cover between the group and the titan.

Maverick and Bateman opened up with the vehicle's multi lasers.
The titan's shields flickered, then failed.
"Good shooting you two!", called Vorenze. It was precision shooting like this that had saved this small group when everyone else had perished, but even then, to take out a warhound titan's shields with such weapons was a stroke of luck.
Such firepower, however, would be useless against the god machine's thick armor plating, and Natalia's melta gun was only any use at short range.

The titan's plasma blast gun began charging, sparks coursing along the containment coils.

"Oh hell no!" shouted Leroy, planting a pinpoint accurate las cannon shot in to the huge weapon's mount.
Without it's void shields to protect it, the impact tore a chunk from the cabling feeding the huge weapon.
Shrapnel flew from the elbow joint, power cabling flapping around spraying sparks.
The build up of energy subsided and the weapon sagged uselessly.

The titan turned a little at it's waist, then raised it's vulkan mega bolter.
Seemed like the group's luck had run out.

"Well", Vorenze addressed his remaining troops ,"it's been an honor serving with you".

He close his eyes as the weapon fired a stream of mass-reactive shells, resigned to the fact he and his allies would be blown apart.

***************************************
The shots didn't hit.

When Vorenze opened his eyes again, the shells from the titan hung suspended in the air several feet away in a strange purple glow.

The glow subsided, and they clattered to the ground.

Looking around for a reason for this, he saw that all his allies were staring dumbfounded in the same direction, and not directly at the titan.

Following their gaze, he saw a small purple horse creature stood between them and the titan, it's horn surrounded by the same purple glow he'd seen around the shots moments before.

As he looked around, strangely detached from the scene unfolding around him, he spotted something his other troops had missed.

There seemed to be a group of these creatures hiding behind a ruin a few feet away from the magical creature.
The ratling sniper Fenrick stood with them.

"Well well", admitted Vorenze quietly to himself ,"looks like you found something useful after all".

**********************************************************************
Twilight stood before the immense machine, her mind racing.

How could one little pony stop such a huge machine?

Her magic had been able to stop it's shooting, and it appeared to be stunned for the moment, but this certainly wouldn't last.
She needed to take it down somehow.

The alicorn looked around for something, anything she could use.

The surrounding area was littered with demolished buildings, broken pipes, girders and still smoldering debris. Most of this was too small to really do any damage.

Her wandering gaze settled on what was once probably the corner of a tower block. The fifteen foot long 'L' shaped concrete block probably weighed several tons.

This was going to be a strain.

The last time she'd lifted something that big was when the Ursa had come to Ponyville.

A purple glow surrounded the rubble and it slowly lifted in to the air.
Twilight's horn flared brightly, her face a mask of desperation.
The titan's weapon barrels began to spin up again ready to fire.

This made Twilight panic. She could get blown apart at any moment.

With a final burst of magic, she hurled the rubble at the titan like a spear.

A few rounds began to stitch a path across the ground in a zig-zag pattern trying to find the range to hit the tiny magical creature that dared to challenge the might of the god-machine.

The chunk of masonry smashed through the cockpit window of the Warhound, crumpling half the head inwards with the impact. The momentum of the broken building was enough to drive it clean through the roof of the titan's torso.

The titan rocked back and forth, impaled, before it's corrupted machine spirit finally decided it was dead.

It toppled backwards with a groan and an earth-shaking crash.

After what seemed like an eternity, two sets of cheers rang out across the desolate landscape.

One from the ponies once the shock of such an epic display of magical power had worn off, and the other from the rag tag group of soldiers who would almost certainly be dead right now, if it wasn't for their unlikely savior.

Comments

[xoid]

A mere handful of infantry managing to take down a titan’s voidshields? Twilight managing to throw the rubble fast enough to pierce both the cockpit but also the armour behind it? I call bullshit.

[Cakebomb]

What the fuck is this bullshit? A pony taking down a Warhound? A single melta-gun taking down a Warhound? One imperial gaurdsman killing a dreadnought, defiler , and multiple SPESS MEHREENS without being a Kaskrin?

[CuriousCurse]

This whole story is bullshit, but it's funny to read if only for the sheer ridiculousness of chaos war hounds being reduced to cannon fodder. Slanesh must be having a field day watching this insanity.

[Potatoe man]

Maverick and Bateman opened up with the vehicle's multi lasers. The titan's shields flickered, then failed.

HOW, void shields don't just fail against a multi laser, it can take tank round and missiles even plasma annihilator rounds and if lucky still survive, but a multilaser ? outta the question