Transmitted: HQ, 149th McKenzien medium armour regiment, Trumann base

Destination: Commander, 4th squadron, said regiment

Author: Corporal Rendalls, regimental clerk

Decode authority: Marble

Time remaining: Est. 5 Terran months

Major Linigan,

You have immediate and overriding orders to rendezvous with a recce section and weak AA section from A battalion assets and proceed to Dempsey camp. Upon arriving, exchange one troop for a mechanised platoon from 3rd company and join with an assault pioneer section from D battalion assets. All these units are to come under your command and this formation will be designated "task-force Linigan". From Dempsey camp proceed to river-crossing 47 and destroy it with your pioneers, then continue behind orkish lines, avoiding excessive engagement or casualties, to 23/34, map 10, SE quadrant, blue district. There you will encounter a temporary operations centre for several company and possibly battalion sized "cabals" of the Dark Eldar xenos. Your objectives are, in this order:

1)Release the imperial soldiers and citizens being held there

2)Gather all possible intelligence

3)Destroy the enemy where possible

Upon completion or abortion of these missions, head north by whatever route you see as prudent to river-crossing 48 and return to the divisional staging area for new orders.

Due to warp interference, enemy jamming, and the destruction of installations, you will be out of contact for much of the duration of this mission.

May the Emperor smile on you and your mission and bring you success,

Colonel Auchinleck

Rain pattered maddeningly on the sides of vehicles and tents, a constant noise that became part of your temporary world. A while ago, rain in this season would attract comments, and, most likely, scathing remarks about meteorologists, but with the approaching warp storm, weather patterns hadn't just gone wild. They had gone.

Despite the damp and the cold, Arnold Linigan sat upright in the hatch of his command tank, his distinctive McKenzien officer corps uniform concealed by an oilskin cover adorned with nothing but the major's double-eagle on a plain shoulder strap. He was beyond being merely pre-occupied: more than one soldier, hurrying by quickly and unable to make out fine details, mistook him for an ambush-detecting dummy.

The mission ahead would be… was there a word for it? No, not in Arnold's language, one among the thousands spoken on the worlds of the Imperium of man. He might not return. Some of the men under his command certainly wouldn't be coming home. But despite their urgent relevance, these facts had been consigned to the bit of his brain which stored knowledge he wasn't using, like the melting point of lead. In a way, he was looking forward to the operation. Nothing, no other activity, no training simulator (or at least none issued to the mere guardsmen) could replicate the thrill of being in command.

Arnold glanced at his watch. Five to five. A couple of hours to midnight, in Medusa V time. Having re-fuelled and re-loaded, he had given his men a little treat: switching to nocturnal operations through a much needed double sleep, rather than a double shift. His orders, of course, had said "immediate", but in Colonel Auchinleck's dialect, that meant "ASAP". And Arnold didn't think it was possible to conduct a daring deep-strike entirely under the influence of Vigil, or, when the issue drugs ran out, caffeine.

But now, time was up. He dropped down into the belly of his Vanquisher and glanced around. Sergeant Vic Coombs was dozing at the gun, Lance-Corporal Jerry Shillerman was in earphones running a combat driving simulation, Private Graham McIntyre, loader and right sponson gunner, was reading a novel, and his counterpart, vox-man and left gunner Private Adrian Rushton, was catching his own forty winks.

Arnold tapped Jerry on the shoulder with his foot, an unspoken order to fill the ancient duty of the most junior NCO in a unit: wake everyone up. Officers never did this: it was below their station and generated a bad image.

"Tank, tank, attention!"

The crew came as close as was possible to attention whilst sitting, or in Jerry's case lying, down.

"Rushton, transmit the order to move to all task-force vehicles."

"Yes, sir."

The commo trooper turned to his machinery.

"All elements report and move out."

"This is A troop, good to go."

"B troop, good to go."

"C platoon, g2g."

Arnold listened as the familiar and unfamiliar voices sounded off. He had re-designated his new units: 3rd company's A platoon was now C to avoid confusion, and the other elements had done away with all numbers and letters and used purely descriptive terms, like "recce".

"Okay, Rushton, request clearance."

Adrian twirled a few dials and clicked some sliders, then asked permission for the task-force to leave Dempsey camp.

"Task-force Linigan, this is Dempsey command, you're cleared to move out."

Before the commander had even finished, Jerry had the tank, which he himself had christened "Blind Faith", rolling towards the gate, with the other vehicles forming a column behind it. They reached the exit, opened promptly by the forewarned sentries, and thundered out.

The scene, Arnold reflected, would've been real poster material, the kind if not for the driving rain and the fact that it was the middle of the night. Ah well, you couldn't have everything.

Immediately upon leaving the camp, the company formed up. Its main body comprised the two tank troops forming a "V", with a tank in front, the troop leader in his Vanquisher, the troop sergeant, and another generic tank, spreading out to right and left. Nestled in the middle were the three Chimera IFVs of C platoon in a triangle, flanked by Hydra AA tanks and with the pioneer and platoon HQ vehicles in the centre, while the three tanks of HQ formed a second "V" to the rear. Some way ahead of this formation, the three Salamander recce tanks formed a screening line.

Technically, this was unnecessary since they were in "blue" imperial territory, but in reality communications and sensor breakdowns meant that Eldar and Dark Eldar, Tau, and even Ork raiding parties operated with such impunity that all territory outside fortified camps and cities deserved deep purple at the very least.

They rolled on like this for some time, stealing through deserted villages, their inhabitants long since evacuated to the cities to be shipped off the doomed planet, until they came to the artillery firebase.

At least, it had been, judging from the burnt out husks of the big basilisk howitzers, hung with the entrails of their former crews like the worst party decoration of all time. The corpses, gutted and mutilated, provoked disgust before sympathy, because it took a moment to realise they had once been human. The others, the mangled, overly slender ones mixed with fragments of their own wickedly jagged armour… they, despite being one of the more humanoid races of the galaxy, generated no pity at all. Arnold didn't doubt that his company would've been kicking the corpses vigorously of they weren't afraid of what would stick to their boots.

A buzz from the radio, like an awkward cough from someone who has stopped the conversation by saying something stupid, broke the deadly hush.

"Semtaxians, sir. I recognise the helmets."

The sentence, simple, functional, and military, broke not only the silence but the spell, and movement started again.

Arnold tried to recount the scene in his nightly report, but in the end all he sent off was "Encountered Semtaxian firebase, raided, Dark Eldar believed responsible. No survivors."

And on they rolled.