Hello again everyone! :)
Here's something I've been wanting to do for years; A fanfic based on the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
I would like to make some disclaimers; I DO NOT own the name of any Space Marine Chapter's (although HOW AWESOME WOULD THAT BE?! :D), the Imperial Guard, any of the races in the story itself, or anything pertaining to the workings of the Imperium. I DO own the character's, the planet and of course, the story itself :)
Enjoy.
Chapter One
Planetfall
The planet Draxal. A common agri-world, one of millions under the Imperium's iron control. The Planetary Defense Forces were fairly confident in the relative safety their unimpressive world granted them. In most cases, this would lead to a lax in discipline and battle ability. However, the Departmento Munitorum, the hands that control the distribution of Imperial Guard regiments and supplies, saw fit to send a commissar, along with several regiments of the Imperial Guard themselves, to keep the PDF in line. The PDF higher ups did not believe such an action necessary, but, for fear of punishment, possibly even execution, they did not argue.
The Munitorum could not have guessed how perfectly timed their decision would be. For less than six months after the arrival of the Imperial Guard, a space hulk of immense size drifted into the Draxal system, and unlike most space hulks, this one was filled with more than just a few petty creatures of Chaos, or even genestealers of the tyranid swarm. As the space hulk slowly crossed the void, thousands upon thousands of voices echoed inside it. These voices growled and roared, as the inhabitants of the hulk grew restless after their long confinement. Corpses littered the rusting floors of the ship, evidence of huge melees when tempers boiled over.
On the bridge of the mechanical abomination that was the space hulk, the massive ork warboss, Balthuzog Smasha, stood at the forward view port, observing the healthy green world his Waaagh! was approaching. Balthuzog was a giant among his kind, green skin bulging with barely contained muscles. A large power claw replaced his left hand, and it clenched in anticipation. Gretchins, the smallest of the ork species scurried about around him, keeping the space hulk just barely in working order.
One of his ork bodyguards came up to his side, "Sir, wez approachin' da planet."
"I can see dat, ya grot." Smasha smacked the ork in the back of the head. "Redy da boyz. Dem humies ain't gonna know what hit em."
--
Truly, the humans on Draxal did not know what hit them. The first of the ork rockets smashed into the surface on the far side of the planet's capital, Eyoden. At first they were presumed to be mere meteor crashes, a relatively common occurrence. But when greenskins began to pour forth from the ships, killing anyone in their path with axes and gun, the scope of the danger became apparent.
At first the humans had the problem contained; the Imperial Guard held their lines against the still relatively small ork force. But, once more ork rockets began dropped from the high atmosphere, the situation quickly deteriorated. The Guard and PDF forces were overwhelmed and were on an almost constant retreat around to the other side of the planet, the ork horde charging after them.
Immediately, the planetary governor sent out a distress signal to the Munitorum, begging for reinforcements. The astropaths sent their psychic pleas echoing across the warp, hoping beyond hope that they would be heard. The message was never received by the Munitorum; the distress beacons' signal strength failed and the astropaths' psychic abilities had not yet reached their apex. However, that did not mean that no one received their distress calls. Their cries were heard and help was sent immediately.
It was not until four months later that the reinforcements finally arrived. The Draxalian PDF and the Guard regiments planetside had begun to lose hope that they would be saved at all, and even in their wildest dreams, they never could have guessed who would be coming to their rescue…
--
Rain pounded the earth in a torrent. It hissed and steamed as lasbolts whizzed through the air. Guardsman Sergeant Christopher Grix ran across the rain-slicked street to cover of the building before him. Muscle's fatigued and heart pounding, Grix had been in combat for twelve hours, and battle weariness was beginning to take its toll.
As he stood in cover, he peered around the edge of the building, down the long avenue. Damned greenskins, they're relentless, he thought to himself. Seeing an ork run from around the corner, Grix aimed down the sight of his lasrifle. "If your skulls are too thick to be shot through…" He pulled the trigger and a brilliant red lasbolt zipped through the air, punching a hole through the ork's eye and out the back of its head. The massive body continued to run, its body unaware that the brain was dead. It collapsed to the ground in a heap and Grix smirked, "Maybe your eyes aren't."
Grix heard the hiss of lasbolts coming around another corner and nine Guardsmen come barreling onto the street. Several seconds passed and four massive greenskins, their bodies covered into cybernetics, charged after them. Grix stepped out from cover. He recognized the heraldry on these men, they were from his regiment. "Hold!" he called.
The Guardsmen stopped and ran to him. "Grix, sir, by the Throne, I'm glad to see you. Listen, we have to keep moving, we can't fight them," one said.
"They'll kill us all. If we retreat, we may live," added another.
Grix shot the second a hard glare, "Should I ever hear such fear from a man in my own regiment again, I'll blow his coward brains out. Do I make myself clear?"
The second Guardsman bowed his head, "Crystal, sir."
"Good," the sergeant said, satisfied. "Now, you five, kneel facing the greenskins, lasguns forward. The rest of you stand behind them." As his orders were followed, Grix took a spot in the center of the standing line. He raised his own rifle, set it to full-auto and cried, "Fire!"
Lasbolts burst from the makeshift firing line. They smashed into the advancing orks, but they still plowed forward. "Keep firing! No mercy!" Grix yelled. More orks came charging around the corner as the original ones finally succumbed to the hundreds of lasbolt holes that riddled their flesh.
Seeing the new advancing wave, Grix's pulse quickened further, Okay, NOW we should retreat. "Retreat!" The Guardsmen with him needed no further encouragement and ran full speed in the opposite direction of the orks. But the orks were stronger, faster than the humans.
Even as he ran, Grix activated his comm-link, "Commander, this is Sergeant Grix."
Static was his only response for several moments, then finally, a deep, gruff voice answered, "Sergeant Grix, it is good to know you still yet live."
"Thank you, sir, but that may not be the case for much longer." He risked a glance over his shoulder. The greenskins were gaining fast; he could see their yellowed teeth in their open mouths as they yelled battle cries. "We are in need of assistance."
"The whole planet has been in need of assistance for four months now, sergeant."
"I'm well aware of that, sir." He could hear their heavy footfalls getting closer.
More static filled his ears, before, "I have a lock on your location, sergeant. Take a right down the next street and hit the ground once the greenskins follow." The connection was cut.
"Follow me, boys!" Grix charged to the front of the Guardsmen and led them right. As soon as he heard the orks take the turn, "Hit the dirt!" He dove to the ground. He heard nine bodies smack the wet pavement before all noise was drowned out by the roar of an autocannon. The wet smack of the rounds striking xenos flesh was barely heard.
Finally the autocannon stopped firing and Grix lifted his head to look behind.
The ork bodies could barely be called bodies anymore; they appeared more like random pieces of blood-soaked flesh and armor. Getting to his feet, he looked where the autocannon had been firing from. A Leman Russ Exterminator tank stared back at him, the twin-linked autocannon's barrels still smoking and hot. A hatch opened on the top of the tank and a man poked his head out. "No friendly casualties, right?" he called.
Grix smiled, he knew that voice. "It's a good thing the commander warned us before we crossed your path, Omni, or you'd have ten loyal Guardsmen bodies among these xenos corpses!"
Even though he couldn't see him through the rain, Grix knew Omni was smiling. "It's a good thing he warned us that you would be coming around the corner, Grix, or I would have shot holes through myself!" he called back jokingly. "Keep going this way, the city is lost. The Chimeras are waiting for any surviving Guardsmen. Move quick, they won't wait forever." With that, he closed the hatch and retreated back into the confines of the tank. It rumbled to life and ground past the Guardsmen. They turned and followed Omni's directions.
Moments later, the troops saw the Chimeras waiting at the city gates. They climbed aboard and the transport gunned the engines and roared away, leaving another city to fall before the seemingly unstoppable ork horde.
--
Three more days passed and the orks continued to advance. The Guardsmen and PDF forces were running out of options. Soon the entire eastern hemisphere was consumed by the endless green tide. Only one final bastion of human presence and control remained, Eyoden, and the orks were closing in.
Thousands of Guardsmen manned the walls of Eyoden. The PDF and reserve forces were kept inside the city, to be sent out where they were needed. Inside the governor's palace, General Demetrious Karr observed a holomap of the city and surrounding area. The regimental commissar, known simply as Commissar Thorpe, stood on the other side of the map.
"How fares the morale of our men?" the general queried.
"Relatively well inside the city, poor on the walls," Thorpe answered.
"Any casualties?"
"None as of yet, sir. The orks have yet to make their move out of the foothills to the east."
Karr folded his arms behind his back and paced around the holomap. "What are your orders, sir?" asked the commissar after several minutes of silence.
"Call the reserves and PDF forces to the main square, and tell all Guardsmen on the walls to watch the feed on their helmet displays."
"Right away, sir." Thorpe disappeared through the door.
General Karr leaned on the table the holomap was projected on. "I only pray that our distress signals were received."
A shadow moved in the corner, "The Emperor protects, general."
Karr turned on the shadow, "I know He, vindicare. I just find my faith shaken by this turn of events."
"The galaxy rarely behaves in the way we wish it to," said the assassin, walking out of the shadows.
"The galaxy is cruel place."
"You have no idea how true that is, general." The assassin turned his masked head toward him, the Exitus rifle shifting slightly on his shoulder, "But He will deliver us should that be our fate." Arms moving in a blur, he took the Exitus pistol from his hip and slammed in a fresh clip, "Should our fate be to die, then all we can do is destroy as many of His enemies as possible."
--
General Karr stood upon a raised podium in front of the palace. Behind him stood the Vindicare assassin and Commissar Thorpe. Hundreds of thousands of men and women had crowded into the square before him.
"Men and women of the Imperium, you stand as the first line of defense against the Emperor's enemies. Untold trillions have fought and, if it was His will, died for Him since He had walked the earth over ten thousand years ago. After He sat upon the Golden Throne and ascended to godhood, we of the Imperial Guard have been the enactors of His will, bringing the Emperor's justice down upon innumerable xenos and heretics.
"It now falls to us, the latest in the Imperial Guard line, to pick up the torch left behind by those before us." Karr gestured across the square, to the foothills in the east. "The green tide of the orks has descended of Draxal, and we are the only ones who can save this planet. The orks has assaulted us relentlessly and pushed us our forces to here, to Eyoden." He unsheathed his power sword from his hip, thumbed the activation stud, and the field of glowing energy simmered up the blade. "Here is where we make our last stand on Draxal! The greenskin horde will break against Eyoden's walls like water on rock. We shall never give up the Emperor's world, and should it be His will for us to fall, we shall make them pay for every inch with their lives!"
The air echoed with the war cries of the PDF and Guard forces. After the cries had died down, one voice called from the far end of the square.
"This is a hopeless, pointless venture, general." The last word was filled with contempt. A lone Guardsman stood out from a balcony, "We cannot beat the greenskins. We should all retreat while we ca-."
The man's head exploded in a welter of blood. The headless body tumbled over the edge of the balcony and into the square below.
The Vindicare assassin stood, arm outstretched, his Exitus pistol smoking. Commissar Thorpe stepped forward, every eye turned to him.
"Let me make one thing perfectly clear to all of you. The Imperial Guard does not tolerate cowardice." He gestured to the ruined corpse of the Guardsman at the far end of the square, "If you will not serve on the battlefield, then you will serve on the firing line."
Karr glared at the commissar for a moment. "You have your orders, Guardsmen. Dismissed."
Hundreds of thousands of trembling hands shot up to salute, before they all began to file out of the square. The true battle was only just beginning.
--
Unbeknownst to those on the ground, due to the orks destruction of their sensors, a warp rift appeared near the planet. Slowly, an immense ship passed through the rift into real space. It was black and jet-black. On its side it bore a winged skull with a red hood. The battle-barge, Fist of Vengeance, slid silently from the warp, and even as the Guardsmen's hope began to wane, their reinforcements had finally arrived.
Veteran Sergeant Dios stood in his sparse living cell, cleaning and giving prayers to the machine-spirits of his power armor and weapons. Dios was a large man, if he could even be called a man any longer, having been given the nineteen implants that turned him in more than a man, the nineteen implants that turned him into a weapon. He stood over two and half meters tall, his body rippling with muscles. His dark hair was cropped close to his head and his emerald eyes focused solely on the task at hand.
A knock on the door broke Dios' trance-like state. "Enter."
Brother Magus pushed open the door. Magus towered over Dios in his black power armor. "Captain Bram requests all battle-brothers to report to the launch bays."
Dios ceased his cleaning, "We have arrived in the Draxal system then?"
"Indeed, brother-sergeant."
"Very well, I will be along shortly."
Magus bowed and swiftly disappeared down the hall, leaving to Dios to put on his power armor, It appears it is time to bring justice to the Emperor's enemies once again. He slammed a fresh clip into his bolter. His lips twitched as a shell slid into the chamber, "Time to spill the blood of the xenos."
--
"For the Emperor!" cried Grix as he blasted, full-auto, into the greenskins below. The orks howled in retort and riddled his section of the wall with bullets and bolts. Taking one hand off his lasguns, the other still firing into the horde, he reached down and pulled a fragmentation grenade from his belt. Ripping the pin out with his teeth, he hurled it in the green ocean. Moments later, screeches of pain and anguish reached Grix's ears over the din of battle.
He took a moment to take stock of the battle. All along the eastern walls, the situation was played out a million times over, as the Guardsmen shot down at the orks massing as the base of the wall. We may actually be able to pull this off, the sergeant's thoughts were hopeful. Turning back to the endless orks horde, his hopes changed to despair.
Flying low in the sky, an ork fighta-bommer was flying straight at the wall. Strapped to the bottom of the aircraft, crude though it was, was a large cluster of explosives. "Oh no…" he breathed. Turning to his fellow Guardsmen on the wall near him, he cried, "Move! Move! Get off the wall!"
But it was too late. The ork pilot gunned the engines and the fighta-bommer smashed into the plasteel wall. The aircraft was engulfed in the resulting explosion, made all the more violent by the explosives strapped to it. The wall collapsed and pieces of it flew in all directions, littering the ground with metal and Guardsmen.
Grix was catapulted from the wall and landed in a heap on the ground below. His vision blacked for a moment before he came to. Trying to push himself to his feet, he winced and fell back, Feels like some broken ribs, maybe even a punctured lung. As if to prove him right, he coughed up a thick glob of blood and spat it on the ground.
He turned his head to see the gaping hole in the wall as the orks piled through. No…
Just as the greenskins crossed the threshold into the city, the front most orks' bodies were riddled with bullet holes, only to have those bullet's explode moments later. Grix didn't understand, Bolt rounds? There's nothing that fires bolt rounds on this planet… He turned his head again.
A large gunship streaked low towards the breach. It was jet-black and bore the heraldry of the red-hooded winged skull. It fired streams of bolts into the advancing orks, stopping them momentarily. As the gunship neared the orks, large armored shapes leapt out of the back of it. The shapes landed and quickly begin adding their own bolts to the gunships already impressive display. A pile of greenskin dead quickly began to fill the gap, but still the orks charged.
Grix stared, open-mouthed at the new arrivals. He had thought they only existed in the legends of the Great Crusade. The towering figures, the unbeatable prowess and marksmanship. "It cannot be…"
One of the figures walked over to his, his bolter held one handed as he kneeled down next to Grix. "Are you hurt, Guardsman?"
Grix ignored the question, his voice only able to ask one, "Who are you…?"
The figure straightened slightly, "I am Veteran Sergeant Dios of the Angels of Vengeance's Fourth Company. We are here to deliver you."
It is true then, the Emperor's angels of death had come to Draxal. Grix lost consciousness as he realized what was happening.
And so it begins! :)
Please review everyone and let me know how to make this story better! :D