It felt as though the whole of Armageddon was on hold.
No winds snapped at sergeant Naom Zadow's trench coat. No ash particles or dust motes marked his goggles. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, allowing the heat of the system's sun to beat down on the company of Steel Legionnaires that waited outside the twin ruins of what used to be Fortitude RHO12.
No cloud in the sky, though there was an anomaly.
A space hulk - a twisted amalgamation of debris, rock and derelict star ships – lurked in the sky, a dark, faraway beacon of uncertainty. The rumours had travelled fast, broadcast planetwide over holo-reports by tired, dead-eyed news fabricators as wary and worried hivers shared and spun wild tales of profit, death and mayhem. Lord Herman von Strab had promised more throne gelt for every man and woman, suggesting the hulk may be an asteroid veined with minerals and rare metals, perhaps even housing priceless archeotech, whilst a faction of the Imperial Guard had suggested caution, that the space hulk might harbour foul xenos and reavers of imperial worlds. Zadow couldn't recall the name of the ringleader, knowing that he was a commissar from off-world, allegedly well regarded…
Zadow had already made up his mind what the space hulk would be. Neither mineral nor assault boat, it was simply a piece of crap floating in space. He and every mother's son of the Fire Wastes were wasting their time, marching up and down outside hive Death Mire, so very far from their homes and their mines. This commissar may have friends somewhere else in the galaxy, but the Steel Legion's 12th Wastelanders had little reason to love him.
Zadow was broad shouldered and thick-set, his square jaw obscured by the respirator he wore as he stared up at the hulk. Fifteen meters ahead of him, he could see Captain Bruhl talking to the leader of their sentinel contingent, busying themselves with the training exercise ahead, rather than what loomed above them.
"You want to talk about it?" He heard corporal Idra Paij's monotone voice break the silence. He glanced over at his adjutant, his eyes quizzical.
"About Jenni?" Paij clarified.
That subject took him by surprise, his eyes leaving her to regard his platoon – thankfully, they all seemed far too occupied in setting their weapons and tagging equipment down as they rested their feet on the hard stone of the highway.
"No, actually. The Hulk above," Zadow pointed up at the distant speck, "Think we stand to get paid?"
"I hope so. I could use the extra creds for a new ground car." Paij decided.
"Glad you're so optimistic," Zadow said, his eyes on the sky once more, his fingers rapping on the hard leather of his sidearm's holster, "though if I were a superstitious man-"
"Which you are, praise the Emperor." Paij chimed in.
"Which I am, praise His name," Zadow said dutifully, "I'd be worried. All kinds of strangeness occurring in the hives, apparently. Statues weeping tears of blood, mothers dying in childbirth and their babes clutching clots of blood in their hands, symbols of the aquila splintering from seemingly nothing-"
"Hivers talk. All they've got to keep 'em going through the day." Paij said dismissively.
"…Yeah, it likely is. City folk'll do that." Zadow decided.
"Did you talk to her? Before we left?" Paij asked.
"Yeah. Yeah, I did." Zadow said, once more throwing a furtive glance towards the rest of the platoon. Paij took the hint and walked up to meet him. Clad in the same bulky coat, plates and respirator helm, no-one would've been able to tell Paij was a woman, not until she spoke to them.
"Go on then, what'd you say?" Paij asked, cautious now. She knew her superior to be a passionate sort, quick to anger and quick to action.
"I told her I'd miss her." Zadow admitted.
"What'd she say?"
Zadow lowered his gaze to regard the battered and broken remnants of Fortitude RHO12. "She said she's glad we could put all this behind us and be friends."
Paij was silent for a moment. "And then…?"
Zadow sighed, "I echoed the sentiment, and that was that."
"'Echoed the sentiment', Noam…" Her voice was laced with sympathy as her gloved hand gripped his shoulder. He knew she would've grabbed a hold of him if they weren't on exercise and in sight of the rest of the unit.
"I'm alright, sweetheart," Zadow replied, his hand going up to squeeze hers, "Just need-" He paused, glancing around past Paij as he heard the rumble of tracks. A lone chimera APC was rolling up the road from Hive Death Mire. His platoon had long since managed to move their gear and themselves out of the way. Zadow looked back to where Bruhl and Hercule were, noting that the former had broken out his magnoculars.
"Corporal, make sure the men are ready? I'm going to go see what the plan is." Zadow said, briskly walking on over to Bruhl.
"Why don't we get to play garrison?"
Captain Bruhl ignored Zadow's words, instead tweaking the zoom level with a gloved finger. He squinted into the magnoculars as his skull faced gas-mask clinked against his tagging chestplate. The highway stretched away in front of him towards the first objective – a crumbling archway that preceded a long-deserted settlement known simply as 'Alpha Stack'. Today, it was not deserted – Jaxxon's borrowed company lurked in the ruins, and Bruhl managed to catch a glance of the occasional respirator, helmet or wide-eyed stare before all of it ducked behind cover.
"I don't see the appeal, personally," spoke 'Twitch' Hercule, who captained the Striders sentinel contingent, "Much nicer to seize the initiative, act the aggressor! Fight on one's own terms, wouldn't you say captain?"
Bruhl said nothing, eyes still scanning the horizon. Trench networks snaked away from Alpha Stack to either side and the rocky spires beyond the miserable grey buildings meant that they would have to follow the road to reach Beta point, or commit to a circuitous route through the ash wastes.
Zadow snorted, "Your equipment is mounted on your walkers, you're not lugging the guns about, or the splashers they're attached with." Zadow muttered, referencing the bulky laser emitters that their launchers would be using for the duration of the exercise. Bruhl could sympathise. Jaxxon's mob were well entrenched in their defensive positions, with no need to move the tagging projectors that substituted support weapons. Zadow and his dogs were expected to move, fire and redeploy, all whilst lugging around their missile launchers, munitions and their tagging equipment.
"A moment's silence, for our brave support sections and their unflagging spirits and dedication to duty." The refined manner of speaking got Bruhl, Zadow and Twitch, with all of them of lowborn stock, turning to meet the new arrival.
He wore the mustard-yellow greatcoat and brown leather straps and gloves of their legion, and like all of them wore a vest of glass plates packed with sensors over that, though his gold and red epaulettes, high collar and rank pins denoted him a colonel. Their colonel, Bruhl reckoned. The colonel possessed a recessive chin and bright blue eyes that made him look innocent and boyish, the five o'clock shadow on his face the only hint of maturity on him. At his shoulder was a young woman in similar attire, her hair shaved to a partial mohawk that rested to the right side of her face. She wore a master vox caster on her back, and the both of them had gold-trimmed, carapace segments overlaying their flakweave uniforms.
"Colonel Adrian Gallius, commanding the 3rd reserve battalion." The woman spoke, her voice underlaid by a tinny echo that made Bruhl look twice. Partial throat reconstruction? For a moment he wonderedwhether she had suffered some injury there or was one of those Mechanicus enthusiasts with more money than sense, but his gaze flicked back to Gallius, who had a gloved hand extended towards him.
Bruhl took it. "Captain Jakob Bruhl, 12th Steel Legion Mechanized. 'Wastelanders'." Bruhl said, immediately wishing he hadn't said the last part with such relish.
"I'm sorry?" Gallius asked. Bruhl paused, wrong-footed.
"A nickname for our own that we like to throw around, sir," Zadow helpfully added, "First regiment drafted from the Fire Wastes."
"Oh! Wasters, right," Bruhl winced at the colonel's use of that word, "Well, good to know you, Bruhl, who is this fellow, and him?" Gallius asked, clasping his hands behind his back, flitting his eyes between the stocky Zadow and the compact Twitch. Both still wore their gasmasks.
"This is sergeant Noam Zadow, leading our heavy weapons platoon, and this is lieutenant Mateo Hercule, he leads a detachment of the 20th Striders from the Jungle."
"'The Jungle'? The Equatorial Jungle, I assume? Must have been invigorating work, hunting forest devils." Gallius joked.
"It was certainly no picnic." Hercule said in that light, airy tone that told Bruhl he had no interest in reminiscing, with a stranger least of all.
"Sir, the exercise will be starting presently. I'd hear your orders." Bruhl said, attracting Gallius' focus.
"Ah! Yes. What are we dealing with?"
Bruhl handed him the magnoculars. "Jaxxon has put a token militia in the ruins of Alpha Stack. We don't see his mechanized assets yet, though I wouldn't be surprised if he was keeping them in reserve for a thrust or counter push."
Gallius stared down the highway with the magnoculars raised to his eyes for a long while – long enough for Bruhl to feel obliged to coax him. "Sir?"
"I'm here," Gallius murmured, "Tell me, what forces do we command?"
"Two platoons of legionnaires, Zadow's heavy weapons platoon and 'Hercule's Heroes' occupying the wings in two sticks of eight machines."
"And Jaxxon has our second company… he was always one to jerk at the slightest provocation. Have Zadow start sending his munitions down range. He'll rush to counter our initial success, and we can leave his wheels spinning in the wastes as we push on to Beta."
Bruhl's eyes glanced over to Zadow's as their command talked of his opposite number's character. "You sure he'll work like that?" Bruhl asked.
"I am. We were classmates in the Schola together." Gallius said.
"Ah, an old comrade." Bruhl noted. Gallius let the magnoculars leave his eyes as he looked back at Bruhl.
"I wouldn't go that far." Gallius said with a note of reproach, his eyes lingering on Bruhl's before he remembered himself, offering the captain back his magnoculars.
"Sorry, yes – once we've checked Jaxxon's counter punch, our sentinels will reconnoitre the area whilst taking pot-shots at whatever they find. Strike and move, Hercule, and we'll follow you in."
Bruhl was glad to see Hercule good-naturedly nod in agreement.
"Alright, I'll need a weapon." Gallius said.
"Pardon?" Bruhl asked. His two comrades had turned to face the colonel, and he noted that the handsome young woman who accompanied Gallius was also staring up at him, a mild furrow on her brow.
"Well, I am wearing one of these fantastic tagging plates. Only fair I get stuck in myself and don't see it issued for no reason!" Gallius went on, gesturing at the toughened glass sheet on his front. Bruhl, Zadow and Hercule had had their swords, knives and pistols replaced with paint sticks and drained las-pistols locked to low setting. Hercule drew his las-pistol, offering it butt first to the colonel, who took it with a grateful smile.
There was time for little else, as they heard the klaxon in the distance before the coarse voice of the surly drill instructor Goryle bellowed through the speaker on the woman's back.
"The exercise begins now, whelps!" Goryle snarled, "Commander Jaxxon, hold Alpha and Beta at all costs – Commander Gallius, seize the objectives from him!"
"To your units." Gallius ordered, and his officers, ever loyal to the throne, obeyed.
It felt like a pantomime to the men of the 12th.
Most of the regiment had taken part in live-fire exercises, and everyone had at the very least heard the distinct whip-crack of a lasgun, the brilliant red stab of light that linked the kill to the killer in a moment.
But with the lasguns tampered and drained to the point of non-lethal levels, and all heavy weaponry muzzled and superseded with a marking light, it felt more like a muted game of pretend played by schola children.
Zadow made the opening moves in the engagement – safely beyond the range of Jaxxon's Alpha defenders, his men leisurely readied their marking lights on their missile launchers, thumbing the triggers on them. The gunners mounted them on their shoulders, their loaders going through the motions of introducing a warhead to the tube. With a whine-click, they activated the tagging lasers and saturated an area several meters wide in a laser invisible to the human eye. The defenders did not die, though their chestplates would register the hit, and they would march out from the ruins they had been defending, or be dragged out roughly by Goryle's bombastic enforcers and exacting scoremasters. machines, theirs and their enemy's. By the time Zadow's platoon had finished 'firing', they had disqualified half of the defenders.
The 20th Striders made their move, making long, loping strides with their chicken-legged sentinels, circling wide around Alpha Stack. As Gallius had predicted, the southern wing detected one of Jaxxon's Tauros detachments, roaring forward to catch Bruhl's advancing infantry. Each of the bouncing all-terrain vehicles sported a broad tagger to simulate the strengths and weaknesses of a heavy flamer; wide spread, all encompassing… but ultimately short ranged.
They were picked apart at range by Hercule's sentinel squads, every hit of their stab-lights triggering the arresting devices attached to the vehicles' engine blocks, causing the Tauros' to roll to a halt, causing the drivers and gunners to throw up their hands in frustration, slump against their wheels and pintle mounts or curse at the machines, theirs and their enemy's.
Unmolested by Jaxxon's vehicles, the infantry preceded their assault with 'grenades' – rocks tossed into apartments and crumbling buildings before they cleared the town room by room, trigger happy as they rooted out the last defenders.
Like Alpha stack, the attack on Beta point was rapid, with the Striders leap-frogging the 12th, scattering what little resistance they found on the road before they began throwing wild shots into the ruins. Zadow's rocket humpers caught up in time to fire their own fusillade before the 12th's assault began.
"No losses yet. Keep it tight, cover your corners and your comrades." Bruhl whispered into the unit vox-bead. His men, stacked up on the door into the workhouse. He received no response and he didn't need to – seeing the leading trooper reach over and rest a hand on the door handle whilst his second prepared the smoke grenade was assurance enough that they were listening. "Alright, on my –"
"No quarter!" Gallius crowed as he gave the door a running kick, swinging it open as he strode towards a rusting conveyor belt unit, his low powered laspistol whining in his hand as he fired downrange at the enemy positions. A lattice of faint red bolts answered him, forcing the commander to duck down behind the conveyer.
"Light them up!" Bruhl bellowed, real anger in his voice as he watched their commander rush in like a fool. The smoke grenade skittered forward, and with a bang-hiss began to fill the room as the squad of steel legionnaires piled in, and any thought of orders and reprimands gave way to the lights and sounds of battle.
"Canteens! Canteens…" Zadow called out as he fumbled with his own water supply. Every man in the platoon had dark circles beneath the arms of their heavy trenchcoats. After running the launchers up past Alpha Stacks, the men had opted to take off their masks to reveal red faces, their respirators now muggy with the damp of perspiration.
"Give us back our chimeras." Muttered Baile, encouraging a chorus of affirmatives and breathless chuckles from the rest of the platoon between drinks. Baile was a young miner with an old soul, and Zadow found the boy's dry wit amusing.
"Beta point is taken!" Paij cried out as she lowered the vox-horn. The platoon gave out a ragged cheer as they ripped off their helmets and sank to their knees or fell onto their backs, their armaments slipping off of shoulders into ash silt, forgotten for the moment, blissfully unaware that this first day of training would be just a taste of the punishing regime that Goryle had planned for them.
When the news did come three days later, the only unit pleased about their new training field were the detachment of sentinel pilots from the 20th.
"Looks like we're jungling, lads." Hercule was a quiet man, reserved, but there was a relish in his voice and a grin on his face when he delivered the news to his Striders. The huddle of pilots hadn't been issued with the heavy steel helmets or the stifling trenchcoats of their infantry and mechanised cousins – they wore oil-smeared, fire retardant overalls, leather crew caps and reinforced tank helmets. Another difference between them and the footsloggers was the relative disregard for regulation – harnesses were adjusted or abandoned all together, some sported non-issue sidearms like compact stub-revolvers and short-barrelled autopistols, others had respirators and non-standard rebreathers rolled beneath their chins. They looked like desperadoes and underhive proles and were regarded as loners and mavericks.
Hercule conceded that they liked to roam independently, but the rest was unfair. He knew in his bones that they were the best damn unit here, slayers of reality bending monsters and abominations from the warp and the fastest, toughest scout unit on Armageddon. They were Hercule's heroes.
"The God-Emperor doesn't forget his own, clearly." Said Tol 'Dozer' Keeghan, Hercule's hard bitten second in command.
"So, what's the plan? Hold the hand of the main force?" asked Trayvor 'Beard' Bace, the detachment's ace. Carefree and clean shaven, he had the natural good looks and easy smile of a militarum propaganda model.
"Not only are we not going to do that, but what we're doing is being sanctioned by the higher-ups. We've got the south flank all to ourselves, with Bruhl suggesting to the commander for us to 'enjoy a degree of autonomy," Hercule said. His men murmured in approval, chuckling as Hercule leant in towards Bace and speaking emphatically, "We get to do what we want!"
"Oh! Oh." Bace's mock puzzlement disappeared, replaced by a blithe grin.
"So we're following Keeghan's lead. We'll take a walk, clear the way, leave the infantry to sweep what's left." Hercule said, his hand chopping towards Lohm, who looked like she wanted to say something.
"What kind of resistance will we have to contend with?" She asked.
"Tarantula guns and partisans. Some tracked vehicles, artillery mostly – but you all know what we do to those, don't you?" Hercule opened the question to the rest of the group.
"Get in quick n' fast." Journivei said, his voice low and slow.
"What he said. We've got an hour yet, so make sure your walkers are all limbered up." Hercule said, leaving his detachment to see to their support crews.