This is an account, true if it were happening right this second, of how the world came to be unified under the Emperor of mankind, beloved by all.
The Age of Strife is at last coming to an end, and a single ruler has pronounced himself. The Emperor. The creator of the Adeptus Astartes currently manned solely by Proto-Astartes in the glorious new creation of Mark I thunder armour they tower over normal men like demi-gods. Not the emperor though; a demi-god in his own right who seeks nothing but to reunify his brethren under a single banner, that of the imperium.
And so man waged war upon itself, and the Unification wars began. Brother fought brother, father fought son, all to save their false ideologies of Gods and Daemons and spirits. The Emperor, beloved by all, has shown us his guiding light and now all that is left is for the rest of mankind to allow him to embrace them.
I am Tiberius Domitian, one of the very first Proto-Astartes; I am the Emperors torch bearer, a member of the Thunder Warriors- the original Adeptus Astartes. I fought with Him until the very end of the wars, and this is my story.
I joined the war during the battle against the Techno-barbarian state of Franc, the Battle for, what was known in the old-world as, Paris. Oh it was a glorious day.
"Get moving Maggot!" bellowed my superior officer. I didn't regard him too kindly, he irritated me and that was the last thing I wanted to be as I leapt out the back of the transport. The second my feet hit the ground I was met by the sound of rifle rounds that whizzed past my head and suddenly my gene enhance adrenaline was pumping. Pathetic I thought to myself as on the rounds pinged off my shoulder plate. My visor picked out multiple targets, and highlighted them in red. In the blink of an eye my bolter was raised and two of the targets burst into clouds of red mist. Four more thunder warriors followed me out the transport before it chugged into life and raced off to get the next wave of reinforcements. Like we'd need them.
The battle field was immense. Ramparts of sand bags and broken walls made up the first line of defence, small heavy weapons teams with heavy machine gun weaponry sat atop these ramparts, spraying bullets down into the legions of Astartes charging there poorly made encampments. Behind that were walls, giant black walls made from what looked like onyx that towered so high they looked as if they were brushing away the clouds from the sky. At regular intervals along these walls were gaps to allow troops and armour through them although most were filled with barbed wire and iron blockades. Nothing an Astartes couldn't handle.
A cry issued from somewhere amongst the dug in Thunder Warriors around me. "For the Emperor!" the voice bellowed, followed swiftly by reply shouts of the like, I followed suit. We charged the dug in rebels of Franc with such force it was no wonder that by the time we reached them over half had routed or were dead.
"Draw Swords!" A captain shouted somewhere amongst the ranks. As I bounded over one of the ramparts, my power sword slid smoothly out of it's sheathe and hummed into life. My gaze turned to the closest rebel, who raised his rifle and emptied a clip onto my armour, and it did little more than scratch the surface. I laughed at him, my voice booming like a cannon and I'm fairly sure the rebel crapped himself right before I cleaved him in two. The battle was starting to get going now, and my blood was boiling in veins, lusting after another kill. So I satiated it by spinning around slicing a rebel's head clear of his shoulders with a quick strike.
The bulk of my force was moving forward now, having made our way into the walls, towards an area where supposedly a great tower had once stood, but now was a major rebel encampment. The city on the inside was a shambles. It was clear it had once been an incredibly large Hab-site, with tall building stretching to almost as high as the walls themselves and many smaller ones surrounding them, but most of the building were in heaps of rubble; some old from when the techno-barbarians were fighting for control some new from our own bombardments prior to the invasion. Weeds were starting to grow out of the old rubble heaps adding a small dash of colour to the barren grey coloured ground and the uniform cream coloured buildings. The rebel encampment itself was fairly well made, I had to admit. A stone grey bunker that was only just visible above the soil and surrounded by sand bags to prevent any frag shrapnel from finding its way inside, surrounded by trenches and small blocks of walls to act as cover for any rebels just leaving the base. It was, in essence, a small fortress. Atop the fortress, though, was a flag; striped blue, then white, then red vertically along it. It flapped in the wind shuddering slightly when the ground trembled from an artillery round landing somewhere in the war zone. It instantly became my target as I knew that this is what gave the rebels a small lick of hope; that the symbol of their rebellion still stood firm.
I roared with delight as I hacked blasted my way through the rebel forces that stood in my way, bolt and steel decimating the rebel's forces faster than leaves falling from a tree. Terra that was a glorious blood bath. Rifle rounds were soaring past my head and clanging on my armour at such a rate that they were starting to irritate me, as gnats do in your sleep. I looked around and eventually saw a small gun emplacement, two humans with a regular sized machine gun surrounded by sand bags, and bounded off towards it. I heard one of them shout and they suddenly stood up and began to run, which annoyed me as it would have been far more fun to kill them up close, so I raised my bolter and shot them. One of them lost his head, the bolt punching clean through his skull showering brain fragments in all directions, while the other one had a large chunk of his left side taken out, spraying blood and sinew everywhere.
As I continued to charge the rebels base camp and slice down opponents that got in my way, I suddenly heard a familiar voice over the Vox link.
"Tiberius! Ten Aquilas for the man who gets the highest count on this field?" My friend Julianos chuckled, clearly enjoying himself as much as I was.
"I'll take that bet, Julianos, I'm on 20 as is," I replied over vox. More booming laughter ensued, crackled and inhumane sounding by the bad vox link.
"Oh Tiberius, how much you have to learn about me, I'm on thirty my dear boy." He replied. I wouldn't let this happen; there was always a sense of sibling rivalry between me and Julianos, being from the same gene-seed. I would not let him win this bet, he had won two in a row so far, but not this time, I could tell I was going to do well.
Just ahead of me was trench, and lines of soldiers with some surprisingly advanced weaponry, plasma rifles, lascannons, and other old world tech, blasting away whilst being safely tucked with the majority of them tucked away below the lip of the trench. This would be a nice addition to my count.
A rebel ran up to me, with what looked from my perspective to be a butter knife, as I stormed towards the trench. I did not break stride, merely trampled him under foot. As I grew closer to the trench I raised my bolter and switched it to full auto and sprayed the heads at the brim of the trench, not wanting to get cut down by a lascannon blast. Two heads shattered as my suppressive fire caught them quite by accident and the rest of the group got the message and ducked down. I pulled a frag off my belt and marvelled at how something no bigger than an apple in my hand could take out multiple opponents, but the time for marvelling was later. I primed the frag and tossed it into the trench and watched as a few stray limbs jumped up into the air after a fairly large explosion, obviously amplified by the size of the trench.
I bounded down into the trench, and counted the casualties from the blast; four, a nice addition to my total. A rifle round pinged of the back of my helmet the force of it caused my head to get knocked forwards slightly. It irritated me to no end when a mortal thought they could take out a Thunder Warrior with such ease. I turned sharply and grasped the small man's head in my hands, and squeezed relishing the screams until his head exploded like a coconut under a mallet, at which point the rest of his carcass slipped from my grip. A small squad came round the corner of the trench and dropped down into firing positions, two standing in the rear rank and two crouching at the front rank, and unleashed a hail of bullets down the trench. I stumbled a bit under the combined force of all the bullets hitting me, but then regained my footing and brace myself into the storm, as if it were nothing more than a strong gust of wind. Then I raised my bolter and returned fire, shredding the four rebels at the end of the trench to ribbons. One of them was cleaved clean in half by the bolter rounds.
Sprinting round the corner of the trench the Franc rebel's flag came into clear view. I decided I would take personal pride in taking it down myself.
"Julianos, feel like upping the wager a bit? An extra 10 Aquilas for the man who captures the flag," I voxed him. No reply.
"Julianos, respond!" I sent out again. His vox couldn't be down, there was no way that they had dampening technology in a base this size. Then a crackle and string of curse words.
"Tiberius! The… everywhere… too many of the bastards…. Need immediate assistance!" his reply eventually came through. His locator beacon blipped up on my visor's HUD and I sprinted away as fast as my feet would carry me, bolting down the occasional rebel en route. I rounded a corner, annoyed by the densely built up city I was in, and saw Julianos standing surrounded by rebels. It seemed a small mass of them had surrounded him and were trying to take him down by hacking at his legs with small combat knives. It was like watching villagers try and take down an ogre with butter knives.
I charged the mass, holstering my bolter so that I could have both hands free, not wanting to let off a round accidentally and damage my friend in the process. The throngs of bodies was so densely packed around Julianos' position that I had to physically hack my way to him, picking up and throwing the occasional rebel to one side. I eventually reached him and we went back-to-back, drawing bolters and peppering the soldiers milling around us. By the time we were finished the ground around us had turned red, and there was no whole body left in sight.
"Now that….." Julianos panted, "Was a glorious fight."
"Songs will be written about this day brother," I replied, equally as exhausted "but first we must break these damned rebels, to the flag then? That so openly insults the might of the Emperor?" Julianos nodded and we both set off sprinting to the flag.
We eventually reached the trench that I had cleared earlier and bounded over it, sprinting hard and fast towards the flag. We must have tripped a proximity alarm though because, no sooner had we landed on the other side, auto-turrets exposed themselves from hidden positions in the ground and started thumping out bolter rounds.
"COVER!" Julianos yelled, except this much was obvious. I dove behind a small ruined wall to my left, hoping it would be just thick enough to fend off the huge explosive bullets. My vox link crackled and Julianos' voice came through my helmet speakers.
From the glimpse I got of them I could tell that they were fairly new tech, gleaming polished silver with twin heavy bolter cannons strapped to them on either side of the main turret emplacement with a covered belt feed running off down underground where they were presumably being fed with ammo constantly by either machines or men.
"Well this is a right shit storm we got ourselves into!" he shouted. He was obviously panicking, intel had never said anything about them having this level of tech. Thunder armour could defend against small arms fire, and if you were lucky a high explosive missile, but not bolter rounds and certainty not at this rate. It would be challenging to say the least.
"Brother, flare them. If they're anything like the ones we have the work by heat not by motion," I told him over the vox link. I heard a grunt in reply; what I said made sense. The bullets were still thumping out of the turrets, obviously still picking up the high body temperature of our Astartes metabolism through the thick wall. I heard a whoosh as Julianos lighted his flare and threw it over his cover.
"Now move! We have a few seconds before they realize that's too hot to be anything living so try and get round the back to their servos; damage those and the whole turret gets shut down." I ordered over vox. We both leapt up, nearly simultaneously and sprinted towards the turrets. Watching them pump rounds into the ground around the flare, and the flare leaping up into the air occasionally from exploding bolts, almost verged on amusing. Thankfully we made it behind the turrets without their sensors adjusting, yanked out the wires and servos and let them power down slowly. It was inevitable now, the flag was ours.
Setting off again, a slightly more gentle pace this time, I realised just how easy this had been and started to ponder on whether or not this was fair. But that was the human in me thinking, I was an Astartes now, the Emperors gauntlet; such thoughts were unacceptable to us.
Julianos and I reached the flag, and decided that the most appropriate thing to do would be to burn it where it was. Julianos pulled out his lighter that he had taken from an officer of one of the techno-barbarian tribe, a golden colour with a small skull protruding from it slightly, a trophy of his and one of his few personal belongings, and set the flag alight. I activated my vox-speaker and amplified my voice so that I could be heard across the battle-field.
"People of the Franc rebellion! Your flag and last symbol of hope burns, lay down your weapons and the Emperor shall have mercy on you." I boomed triumphantly. Slowly, as people realised just how pointless it was to continue the fight, the sounds of war died down. A tremendous boom of Astartes voices resounded across the battle field and filled me with pride to know that I had personally crushed the will of this rebellion. Julianos looked at me, and I could tell he was grinning.
"I'm going to need a good drink after this one brother," He said sounding suddenly sullen.