Everything looked much closer in his scope than it really was, but that was the point of having such a powerful tool on a weapon like an exitus rifle. It was also much more than just the scope, the gun, and the ammunition at his disposal, but also the hands of its user.
There was one person who was his target, the leader of the city, it's name being unimportant now. His name was Emtit Mynor, and his official title meant nothing. All that was important was Mynor's death, and this fight would be the perfect opportunity to deliver it.
The city itself lacked a serious defensive line. The planet itself, it's name also unimportant now, was deeper within the Imperium, far from the fighting of the orks and eldar. It boasted a sizeable population well into the billions, but was nothing compared to the hundreds of billions of a hive world.
From his secluded rooftop he scanned the horizon away from the city. Mynor was not he looked for as Mynor was within the city itself rallying defenders from among the militia. What he looked for was the forces of the Imperium.
What he was waiting for were the Space Marines.
If the rumor was true it was a company from the Iron Hands chapter, and that meant there would be at least one battle barge in orbit. He knew little more than that, save their ceremite armor was as black as the void, with white markings and silver hands. The chapter's marking was that of a mailed, left handed glove, which would decorate the left pauldron of their armor. All Iron Hands sacrificed their left hand upon the completion of their training, replacing it with a cybernetic hand, and their chapter symbol represented this.
The assault did not come from the land, from beyond the horizon as he expected. The roar of jets came from above as half a dozen drop pods screamed from the heavens like ebony teardrops. Their expert cognators and navigations systems guided the drop pods into the city itself, with one roaring right past the hidden assassin and his building. The assassin ducked down below the cornice to shield himself from the drop pod's landing jets.
The closest drop pod opened its five petals, and a tactical squad of Iron Hands deployed. Seven of them carried boltguns, weapons the size of a small assault rifle that fired miniature rockets instead of actual bullets. The squad leader, identifiable by the small banner attached to his armor's backpack, carried a pistol that used the same ammunition and a large hammer. The other two carried plasma weapons, one a rapid fire gun about the size of a boltgun and the other a massive cannon that would take at least two regular men to even move.
Ignoring the Iron Hands, the assassin turned his gaze back towards the heart of the city. There he caught sight of another of the drop pods, more massive and with only three massive petals that had opened. Out of this had stepped a massive dreadnought. Smoke bellowed from the two massive exhaust pipes on its back, but that was not what impressed the assassin in the least.
The dreadnought lumbered towards a fortified building that some of the city defenders had already occupied. Much of their small arms fire was beyond useless against the armored shell of the dreadnought, slugs from their small caliber autoguns ricocheted in sour twangs. It was equipped for city the fighting the Iron Hands had planned for, with a huge flamethrower for its right arm and a giant three disk grinder for the left hand of a more articulated arm.
It was not until the dreadnought was almost on the building itself that it unloaded a gout of intense flame. With a grinding of metal the left hand began to spin, the grinding disks of its three fat fingers tearing through the building like a child with gift wrapping paper. More flames belched from its hand, burning those within. In a matter of seconds the fortified building was collapsing into a heap of rubble as the siege drill shredded the load bearing ferocrete into a fine gray powder.
There were survivors, of course. Four of Emperor knew how many had managed to escape the collapsing building, one of them now rushing the dreadnought with what looked like an anti-vehicle bomb of some sort. A hellfire round was chambered into the exitus rifle and loosed, with the would-be bomber's back exploding behind him in a spray of blood and other fluids.
The three remaining men turned and ran, only to get cut down by a torrent of flame from the dreadnought as it marched after them.
It was not part of his mission to aid the Iron Hands, not in the least. The temple would not care as much as long as the mission was a success, or he died in the attempt. It just so happened that the more effective the Iron Hands assault was, the better the chance that Mynor would die.
The Iron Hands were making short work of the defenders. With the practice of centuries behind many of them they went from building to building, clearing it of anyone they found regardless of whether or not they actually fought back.
The city's militia, however, had managed to get a hold of more than just autoguns. Three Valkyrie gunships screamed overhead, door gunners unleashing a torrent of shells from their heavy bolters at the Iron Hands. The Iron Hands themselves were no fools, diving for cover instead of blindly relying on their armor to protect them.
The Valkyrie's circled around back, coming down low to unload whatever passengers they may have carried. A turbo penetrator was chambered and the assassin took aim at the two turbine engines atop the gunship. When one of gunships was moving perpendicular to him, the assassin shot, and the ultrasonic shell tore through both engines more easily than the dreadnought had torn down the building.
Engines sputtering and belching, shreds of metal and unburned fuel vomiting from the exhaust and its sides. Four white pulses of energy lanced out from somewhere else in the city, two beams each to the remaining two Valkyries. Likely more Iron Hands unseen. One of them exploded in mid air, and the other two Valkyries crashed into a building into the distance. The assassin could not see who might have managed to climb from the wreckage.
"Traitors sighted!" he heard one of the Iron Hands yell. Coming from them, there was only one thing in the galaxy to be classified as 'traitors'.
The temple had their suspicions as to Mynor's rapid rise to power, which was part of why the assassin was here. Now it was to wonder if the Ordos Malleus had any inkling of the powers of chaos being present on this world. If that were true, then in the least there would be a strike force from the Grey Knights showing up. Likely that would never happen if the Iron hands proved successful on their own.
Emperor knew what was going to happen.
And it seemed so as the Iron Hands continued to push the battle towards the city. Slinging his exitus rifle, the assassin drew his pistol and checked to make sure that hellfire rounds were loaded. Like a shadow he worked his way down to the ground floor of the building, making no more noise than the sound of falling leaves as he ran over broken ruble to follow the battle.
He was almost too fast, having managed to not only catch up to the Iron hands but actually slip ahead of their advance. Taking advantage of the shadows he slipped into a ruined building, pressing his back into a corner foundation wall. Peeking around he saw the traitors.
Chaos Space Marines. Their armor the color of dried blood and decorated with various scrolls and parchment. Some had armor that looked more baroque with extra spikes and even horns decorating them. Though he felt it was not quite so important, his training in identifying those of the traitor legions told him these Chaos Space Marines were of the Word Bearers, a legion well known for the power of their words to sway the masses.
Like in all armies, the higher your rank the more decorated you were, and the Word Bearers were no exception. Only those of the Assassinorium were well known to abstain from any form of formal rank or identification. If you saw one, if you were so fortunate, you would never know if you were the first official target or just one in a long line of thousands.
With pistol still in hand, the assassin aimed for the leader of the Word Bearers squad and shot. Without checking to confirm the kill beyond seeing the Chaos Marine drop, the assassin ran. Turned out to be the smart choice as a hail of boltgun fire riddled his last position.
The Word Bearers did not pursue him. He could hear the Iron Hands yell as they charged. The two squads would be busy with each other for a while.
While everyone seemed occupied, the assassin slipped into another building and made his way to the roof. From there he could see another of the Iron Hands dreadnoughts. This one was armed with a massive multi-barreled assault cannon for one arm, a weapon with such a high rate of fire it was impossible to hear the individual bullets. Barrels already spinning at speed, brrzzzzpt the assault cannon went as it tore through the militia as they charged. Several of them had anti-vehicle bombs with them, and the assassin could only pick off two of them before one of them managed to plant it on the dreadnought's back. The explosion was so bright that his vision was briefly blacked out by his visor's flash compensation.
When his vision cleared he saw the dreadnought on its side, one leg and much of its back were obliterated. The cannon arm and sarcophagus that housed the near dead remains of an Iron Hands warrior were still intact.
The Gray Knights had proven to be in the area. A gunship of their own, a veritable flying tank called a Stormraven roared as it came upon the scene. Half a dozen boltguns mounted in a Hurricane pattern were on its sides, and the turret at its top held two assault cannons. The noise was deafening as these weapons poured hundreds of blue glowing rounds into the hoards of defenders, narrowly missing the bright beam from an Icarus lascannon.
With no sight of Mynor still, the assassin turned to tracking down the Icarus lascannon. It was not hard to find, being a large weapon capable of shooting down aircraft at incredible range. Readying his exitus rifle, chambering a turbo penetrator round, he took aim and fired.
Going through the fortification's armor proved just as easy as it had going through the Valkyrie. He was not quite sure what was hit, but the building itself first bulged from a massive explosion from within, then literally fell down upon itself.
Checking down to the field of battle once again, the assassin saw something he truly did not expect to see. Though there was little communication between the temples, it was extremely rare for more than one to be assigned to the same area. General guidelines were that they would assist each other insofar as it did not conflict with their mission objective. Considering that each of the four temples had death as their mission objective, it pretty much never happened.
This other assassin was of the Callidus temple. These assassins were the close in scalpel compared to the Vindicare's long distance death, like his own. The Callidus used a unique drug called polymorphine to alter their appearance, and their training was such that only they could actually use the drug without becoming a shapeless mound of blubbering flesh. This allowed a Callidus to slip close to her target, sometimes dispatching it without anyone being the wiser.
It did not seem to be going so well as it looked like this assassin was fighting a mass of shadows come to life. Her C'tan phase sword was proving almost ineffectual in cutting away even the tiniest shred of darkness.
The Stormraven circled back around, coming in low and slower as it showered the militia with boltgun fire and a pair of missiles. The front mounted twin multi-melta, a fusion powered heat beam, lashed out at a building, shooting at what the assassin could only guess. Its passing did cause a break in the fighting for the other assassin, forcing her to leap clear with preternatural speed and grace to avoid the missiles' detonations. The mass of shadows also had reacted to the missiles, looking like it was avoiding them at all costs.
With practiced speed the assassin chambered a new round, a shield breaker. As the mass of shadows seemed to settle some, before the Callidus or the Grey Knights strike squad could rush in to engage, he shot at the shadows.
The shot was true, the round piercing the shadows with ease and destroying them.
Mynor was finally revealed, though he was not quite the man he once was. His skin was blue, and not just the blue of someone who had been frozen, but a piercing blue. His eyes were orbs of solid gold, and though the shadows were no longer protecting him it looked like he was surrounded by an aura of almost invisible crystalline fire.
Without hesitation the Callidus leaped at Mynor, her C'tan phase sword shining as she attacked with renewed vigor. The C'tan phase blades the Callidus used were so deadly that even a single scratch meant death, from the tiny ratling snipers of the Imperial Guard to the mighty trygons of the alien tyranids.
Death came three ways to Mynor. First from the Callidus as her sword ran through Mynor's gut, the blade jutting out through his back and stained with black ichor. Next came from a Grey Knight with armor as ornate as the chapter was old, his Nemesis sword glistening with psychic might as it sliced into Mynor's chest. Either blow would have been death for a mere mortal.
As the two drew clear from Mynor's convulsing but still living body, the assassin chambered a turbo penetrator round and fired. The anti-vehicle round normally capable of punching through even the nigh impenetrable armor of a Land Raider tank or even the hardened armor of a Thunderhawk was not frequently used against mortals, though its use were undeniably effective and gruesome nonetheless. Mynor's body vaporized from the waste up, with his arms and lower body collapsing to the ground with a fine mist of his own black blood.
With the objective finally met, the assassin discretely made his way from the battlefield. His destination was a pickup point to leave this world. The ship would likely have his next assignment waiting for him.
As he walked, the world around him vanished. Buildings faded into wireframes before disappearing, bodies simply fading away, and soon the world itself was gone.
Also gone was the rifle and pistol the assassin used, the virtual reality game's sculpting disappearing for that of his own persona. His own skin suit of the Vindicare temple, visor, and guns all disappeared in place of his own appearance of a bone white monk's robe over a suit of ebony black military body armor.
He received an invite to a private chat room just as he entered the game's public chat room, and knowing the sender he accepted it. In the blink of an eye was a lounge type room, with comfortable looking sofas and a table in the middle with a variety of drinks. There was already one person in there, and he expected they would be the only two. Her icon looked like it was from the realm of super science, crystalline orange armor with large pauldrons, a red domed helm with a V shaped green wedge for a visor. Instead of a right forearm was a cannon.
"Pretty kick ass there." Hunter said, the dome helmet of her icon disappearing to reveal a human head. Even her cannon arm was replaced with a matching arm in orange crystal armor. This was the first time he had seen her icon like this, and was surprised that her head looked like her own face in the real world, her blonde hair tied high in a simple ponytail. In the privacy of this chat room, he figured it would not be anything to worry about.
With both hands at the sides of his head, John removed his own black helmet. The face of his own icon would look like how he hoped he would when he was in his twenties, short cut blonde hair and maybe just a hint of stubble on his squared jaw. Of course his eyes were normal looking, not the nearly pure blue-within-blue his real eyes had.
"So, you have fun in there?" Hunter asked, taking a bottle and pouring herself a drink.
John secured his helmet at his waste and sat down on one of the sofas. He sunk deeply into it, and figured the node's sculpting would have included the sensation of luxurious softness had his icon not had hard body armor.
"That gun's super wiz." John said. "And your choice too, that assassin."
"Sorry it took so long to get going." Hunter apologized. "These massive games can sometimes take a while to set up. It sucks playing the assassins as you've really gotta wait."
"Yeah, I figured." John said. "Can't just start blasting away at everything."
"So, have you ever fire a real gun like that?" Hunter asked, taking a sip of her virtual drink.
"No." John said. It was a half truth as he had no idea if he had ever fired a rifle of any kind before he lost his memories.
"Well, you can have my back anytime." Hunter said. "Sorry, but I gotta go. Duty calls."
Despite matrix etiquette that said you were supposed to leave by the node's portal, Hunter simply stood, fixed her icon so the helmet now obscured her features, and vanished.
With no one else in the room, John also logged off.
The real world of the Denver FRFZ would not feel quite as exciting.