Segmentum Ultima
Planet Skyfall III
City of Horizon
Defence Perimeter Support Trench
"Lictor! Fo-" The cry was cut off with an anguished scream as the Tyranid infiltrator murdered it's way through the trench.
The city was falling. Too far away from the spaceport nearly a continent away, its commanders have long since abandoned all hope of survival, much less victory.
In a way, it had been lucky. It was too heavily fortified but also too insignificant for the Tyranids. The initial invasion force had skipped them over completely, allowing the defenders to rally and purge the traitors among them. All too soon though, the city had become a single speck of Imperial resistance surrounded by a sea of chitin.
The Lictor's elongated arm-blades scythed its way through the trench before pouncing at a dugout bunker, shrugging off fire from the disorganised defenders as it left a trail of bloody desolation in its wake.
Suddenly, multiple bullet trails stitched the the dugout and lictor inside it as a trio of light tanks approached from the city outscirts, each firing their turret mounted heavy stubbers. In moments, the Lictor was reduced to a twitching mass of bleeding ooze and chitin plates; soon finished off when a half dozen krak grenades were tossed its way.
A turret side-hatch on one of the tanks opened and a head poked out.
"Anyone know where Colonel Alfadz is?" The tanker asked.
One of the soldiers pointed absent-mindedly at the lictor's remains, or more precisely, at the collapsed dugout.
The tanker swore, before re-addressing the crowd. "Who's ranking officer here?"
Murmurs broke out in the group before a figure pushed up to the fore. A string of commands later, and the crowd started to disperse. Some manning their posts while others attempted to shift through the dugout to find any survivors.
"Lieutenant Salma of the 115th Munitorium detachment sir." She saluted, her bagged eyes measuring up the person above her. "After how long it took, we weren't really expecting any reinforcements at all."
"Well, no need to thank command, we're here by the grace of the Emperor himself!" He barked a laugh "Commander Farkhan of the Central Militia Contingent. The city is a bloody mess, pods smacking down and fracking everything crawling out of the sewers, including scores of buggers like that one. Figured I better die fighting a bastard I could at least see coming. Some came along." As he spoke, militia members passed by, moving into the trenches and joining the beleaguered defenders.
The lieutenant frowned at the converted land-crawlers. "You won't make it anywhere close the front trenches. The bugs got stuff that could carve out a Russ in a single shot. There's more than enough vehicle dugouts here." She motioned at the support trench-line dotted with mortars and artillery. "Park your lads in and keep your eyes peeled. Save us from bloodbaths like this next time a frakker like that show-"
"Lieutenant, look!" both turned their sights towards the forward trenches.
"Merciful Emperor..." Farkhan muttered.
A more than a dozen Carnifexes were charging the line, vanguard of the horde of bioforms behind them.
Lascannons, missiles, and other munitioned struck at them even as artillery and field guns in the support trench opened fire, peppering the advancing horde with heavy explosives. Yet, neither the Carnifexes nor the bioforms behind them hesitated at such a show of force.
Arcs of bioplasma flew overhead, crashing into the forward trenches, vaporising the barbed wire before sweeping into the trenches... and behind it
"Crawling barrage! Move it Commander!" Lieutenant Salma ordered while the militia commander rushed to manoeuvre his tanks into the relative safety of the dugouts.
Even as the defenders in the support trench bunkered down and prayed the meagre protection the earthworks provided them would suffice, their counterparts in the forward trench-lines were already fighting for their lives. The Carnifex pack had been thinned, but not nearly enough. Lasfire erupted across the line in a desperate attempt to repel the xenos.
Something was wrong... Salma observed. She gasped as the realisation hit her. "The artillery! It isn't concentrating it's fire!" The command personnel were dead, each artillery group were picking their own fire solutions, preventing a barrage density sufficient to disrupt the attack.
She glanced at the command bunker, and ran to it. Pushing past gang-pressed munitorium personnel inside, her heart sank. Corpses of the command staff littered the bunker, bodies mutilated by the lictor and further perforated by heavy stubber rounds and ricochets. The myriad vox-casters in the room were inflicted with tears, holes, and dents.
"Check the vox-receivers, they might still be working!" She picked one up, was met with silence, and moved to the next. Behind her, the munitorium adepts followed her lead.
"Emperor be praised, Ma'am, I've got a connection!" One soon called out.
She snatched it out of his hand "-saken fire support you fething idiots! We're dying over here! I repeat, requesting some frakking fire-"
"Command is dead. This is Lieutenant Salma, the entire bunker is a charnel ho-"
"I don't frakking care if there's the second coming of Horus himself back there, I need a barrage on these coordinates!" The voice rattled off the requested fire solution.
She wrote down the coordinates and called out, "Any other working vox-casters?"
Two affirmatives called out. "Tell them to fire on these coordinates. You, make a copy of these coordinates and run to the artillery sections!" She dispatched the runners just as the connection with the forward observer fizzled out amid screams of panic and fear.
"The front trench is overrun! The carnifexes are coming right at us!"
Salma left the command bunker, directing a group to grab everything they could get in the supply stores while leading the rest back to the trenchline.
The tyranid line-breakers had barrelled through the first line of defence, impaling vehicles and collapsing hard-points. By now, only half a dozen Carnifexes remained, as one more of them were bought down by point-blank launcher fire and flamers.
The survivors though, pressed forward with singular will, their loping gait swiftly carrying them past the trenches and into the area between the two lines. Behind them the horde split, some plunged into the trenches, massacring the hopelessly outclassed defenders, while others followed behind their larger brethren.
"Man your stations! Fix bayonets!" Exhorted numerous NCOs all along the line. By the initiative of their own crews, capable field guns started direct firing. A lucky shell detonated right in the maw of a Carnifex, exploding its head and laying low the monstrous beast.
Whoops of defiance echoed around her just as a group of Munitorium clerks and PDF troopers bustled in carrying crates of arms and munitions between them. It wasn't enough, not nearly enough.
One of the aged clerks threw up his hand in disgust, "All we could get LT, frakking thugs from the 8th had already looted the rest!"
"Selfish civvy-killers were holding us at gunpoint, lucky the other troopers backed us up." Another reported with grim satisfaction. No doubt the affair had concluded bloody and one-sided.
Damn it, security problems had been brewing even before half the detachment had been conscripted into the artillery cordon. There wasn't enough time to deal with that though, with everything going to the warp as it was.
She had them distribute what little they procured even as the heavy stubbers of Farkhan's command started spitting their payload at the advancing horde. The cracking of lasguns and banging of autoguns joined the booming of artillery and heavy stubber staccato. There were less foes now, but the support trench lacked the heavy weapons and front line soldiers of the previous one.
Here were artillerists, press-ganged support personnel, and volunteers. Although many have been inured to the devastation of war, they lacked the training to wage it against the fearless, endless numbers of the Great Devourer.
Then again... who was?
"Have Faith!" She shouted, echoing words she heard said all too many times.
"Have Faith and hold fast!" Her voice carried across the din around her, eyes stared at her, conveying a gamut of emotions from desperation to acceptance.
"We've repelled these bugs before and this shall be no different!" She declared.
"The Emperor Protects, For Horizon!" She could feel the relief in their eyes as they grasped her reassurance like a lifeline.
"For Horizon! For the God-Emperor!" They shouted in raucous dissonance, each one calling upon what they took comfort in.
After that things dissolved into in a blur of adrenaline fuelled awareness. Exhortation to the defenders around her, calling upon their duties to Humanity, the the Imperium, to their loved ones.
Defensive fire intensified as the wave neared, and return fire was suffered. A grunt next to her collapsed backward, screaming incoherently as a fleshborer ate through his eyes.
A Carnifex neared, she gestured. "That one! Launcher teams focus fire!"
"Aim!" Launchers were levelled and bought to bear
"Fire!"
The Carnifex, blinded by pain or bloodlust, made no move to evade. Krak and frag missiles punched holes in its ribs, blinded its eyes, and shredded its legs. It collapsed mid-stride, crashing into the mud, momentum carrying it to the lip of the trench.
For a moment, the body blocked her view of the swarm. Then a hormagaunt crested the top. A moment later it was swept back by a storm of bullets and lasfire.
Then another, and another, and another...
They were among the trenches now. The person next to her was pounced on, eviscerated.
She fired her lasgun, centre of mass, semi auto, three squeezes. Chunks of charred chitin and sizzled meat fell off the hormagaunt as it slumped over the corpse.
Then she was flying, her body smacked into the trench wall. Pain everywhere.
Warrior, a mandible had backhanded her. It flicked the other one, freeing a spasming body away from its impalement.
It was going to be upon her in an instant. Lasgun? Not in her hand.
Get something. Her hand grasped at her belt... What? No, holster. Holster.
Autopistol.
She pulled it out. The warrior dominated her world. Close. Too close.
She squeezed. It was impossible to miss.
Dozens of points in its chest imploded, deepening and overlapping as bullets smacked into it like a furious hail of retribution.
But it advanced, a mandible stabbed into the ground, pulling it forward like a swimmer struggling against a current.
She tried to scoot back, to cower away. The wall was right behind her. No escape.
The Autopistol clanked. It did so again, and again.
Then with a clunk, it ran dry.
She had been too panicked to heed its warnings.
Radiating grim triumph the warrior stabbed another mandible forward, now using it as a crutch as it towered directly over her slumped body.
The other mandible was higher still, ready to stab down and finally end her.
Too late did she remember that she had another filled holster all along.
AN: Hello and welcome to my first fic. Been a huge 40k fan for a long time, I hope you enjoy my writing!
This will be a 4 chapter story of 1500 to 2500 words each. Next chapter will be this time next week. I'll probably add glossaries once the story is finished, since even I can already tell that a lot of the lore can't be shoehorned into the story without making the flow suck.
I know, its short. I'd like to make it a possible routine for myself and that means chapters I could write in a week or less. Stay tuned next week! :)
Looking for Beta.
Cheers,
MM