Chapter One:
Upon areas of the planet Valmalla the Forces of Chaos have long held a firm grip, serving as a base of operations for Chaotic Marines and Cultists. The Imperial Guards presence upon the system has long been fast dwindling beneath the endless attacks. Finally they have been driven all the way back to their last two ports on planet.
One is assailed by the Orcs and it is here our story begins...
Orks. Orks. And yet still more Orks surged around the Spaceport defenders. The massive green skinned brutes towered over the Guardsman with gigantic axes that could cleave a man in two and pistols the size of ones leg. In great swarms and lines of green they descended endlessly slathering and without restraint.
The Imperial Guard, as happens when they are driven to their last refuge and have no hope save rescue, fought with such fury and unwavering defiance that the Orks were held at bay. They were truly warriors of the Emperor, for whenever one fell, the others fought twice as hard. They ducked and waved and jabbed with Bayonets, outnumbered, overpowered and on the verge of total destruction.
Inquisitor Kayowni was having a nervous breakdown mid battle. This was rather an off day for the Imperial Guard this didn't usually happen.
'Everything was going so smoothly...' She was going to die in the next few minutes. 'I graduated second from my class at the School for Inquisitors and now look at me... then I got replaced with some greenhaired broad, and assigned to a remote post! All of it was the forces of Chaos fault! Its all because of THEM!' As she spoke she fired repeatedly into the enemy ranks with a plasma pistol that had proved quite effective. Two Orks had fallen to the shots already while she was sobbing piteously.
Amidst all this chaos an auburn haired Guardswoman threw off her Helmet and rushed up to the escarpment and firing her gun repeatedly. 'Alright Orks you'd better watch out because I'm winning this match! I'll give you another! And another! Ah! Look out he's got a drop pod!'
It was at this point that a series of Drop pods crashed into the battlefield, decimating the Orcs front rank as out of them streamed the Space Marines en masse. Their guns echoed like thunder, their weapons tore through the flesh of the Orks with such fury and power that few indeed could comprehend the deadlines of their throats. Blood was like fine mist in the air, as the Black and Violet Clad Space Marines tore through the Orcs and finally found themselves with no more enemies to fight.
By this time Inquisitor Kayowni Magcord had successfully composed herself enough to realize that the Space Marines she was looking at were not quite so orderly as she would have liked to believe.
'I am Primarch Arthurius of the Emperor's Mirror Chapter.'
Kayowni turned round in sudden fear as she bore witness to a Space Marine who towered above her. The splitting image of the splendor of another Marine she had seen upon tapestries on her homeworld.
'Fulgrim...' Her voice trembled in horror. 'but not quite Fulgrim...'
Fulgrim had been effeminate in all pictures of him, beneath his terrifying appearance. Looking at his pictures gave you an idea of just why he fell to Chaos in the first place. Vanity. Pride. Arrogance placed with someone who looked perfect by all accounts, but wasn't. He was effeminate in a very Space Marine sort of manner. Arthurius in contrast was broader of shoulder and cold of bearing, rather than smug. His eyes were blue green, and he looked almost wolfish in nature. It was like there was a terrifying emptiness where there should have been an aura.
'This port must be held if the Imperial Guard is to survive, correct?' He asked.
Kayowni realized that she had several dozen weapons systems in her trenchcoat none of which would be of any use against a Space Marine in melee, let alone a Primarch, if indeed that was what he was. Which she sincerely doubted. How to go about demonstrating sufficient groveling.
'Eheheheheh,' she laughed nervously. 'we're in no position to refuse you.'
Even if she did go out screaming 'for the Emperor' her Soldiers certainly weren't. She could tell by the look in their eyes, which meant she'd best try a subversive tactic here. She was so dead. However Arthurius was already marching away past her. 'Brothers! Like us destroy this Orkish filth!'
A roar of enthusiasm and victory came from the Chaos Space Marines as they rushed to battle.
Presently another part of her Soldiers approached. 'So are you really sure about working with Chaos Space Marines-'
'Of course not, Karen.' said Kayowni 'The Chaos Worshippers are merely a mean to an end.'
'You sound just like one of them.' Noted the Guardswoman.
'Watch it, kid.'
They followed slowly behind the Chaos Marines, observing their progress from behind. Kayowni set one long leg upon a rock and gazed out with her binoculars as Arthurius tore through every Ork in sight, but left the rather confused Imperial Guard alive.
'Milady, Chaos is setting up a base behind us!' said Karen.
It was true. A dark temple was being created by... Servitors. Or at least what looked a great deal like servitors, though traces of the Heratic were there. It was like a mix of both, only without any of the recorded nightmarish pain which the Heratics reportedly suffered.
This was rather an off day for the Inquisition, this didn't usually happen.
Okay, asking the Chaos Space Marines why they were helping the Imperial Guard kill Orks was so foolish it was worth a bolter to the face for your trouble. But if you still wanted to know how long they had believed in some Eldritch Abombinations offers of unlimited cosmic power?
They were wondering when they would show up.
Arthurius shot an Orc in the face with a bolter, and parried an axe.
And even when they were being inducted into the Chapter before its recent corruption, they knew better than to think that the various Xenos, Monsters, Eldritch Abombinations offers of greater understanding or power... were anything but false assurances to replace their Commander with some hammy Idiot Demon who didn't do anything.
Arthurius ran an Orc through, before dragging out the blade and chopping its head off.
Its just that they held an equal distain for a Deity who couldn't be bothered to heal his easily healable wounds, get off his butt and kill the other Gods himself. If ever there was an ideal time for Judgement day, or month or whatever this seemed like it.
Arthurius hamstrung an Orc, before bringing his blade round in an Arc that sent three of its friends flying.
So yeah, they were Chaos Space Marines. They didn't need a reason for doing what they wanted to do, or shooting who they wanted to shoot. And shooting the Imperial Guard was hard. You lost half your forces breaking their defenses and then just kind of washed over their defenders.
'Our prayers have been answered! Here come the... Chaos Space Marines?' By the Time the Imperial Guardsman finished speaking they had passed him by, leaving a path of dead Orcs behind them and were now engaging a collection of Orcs who had cornered the Imperial Guard at a dead end street.
'We are the Imperial Guard, it is time we started acting like... wait what?'
A barrage of impeccably aimed Boltershots cleamed away the Orks via shots from behind as the few survivors were finished off from behind.
Just business as usual.
You didn't get any credit for beating the Imperial Guardsman, and when they won everyone thought the world of them. So yeah, the flummoxed expression as the Chaos Space Marines wiped out their enemies for them?
That was the only possible victory concievable in the circumstances.
The Chaos Marines charged the Orkish Waagh Banner Posts and laid them to waist in a great tide of Black Armor. The blades sang with the weight of their powerful strokes as Arthurius cleaved an Ork Chiefs skull with such force that it made the Leman Russ behind the Ork explode.
Orks were odd that way.
Then turning around they carved a swath upward, through the Northern gate to the Spaceport and burned everything in sight as they crushed all the Orks who dared to stand in their way. Their guns blazed with an allconsuming fury, their eyes glinted with blue fire in the waning light.
Their swords flashed violet as they tore through all whom dared try to halt them. Yes they knew that Primarch was technically an innapropriate rank to bestow on ones leader, but frankly outer gods looking in they didn't give a damn.
It was odd, though, Orks were usually better fighters than this.
And if anyone so much as whispered the word 'bishonen' with distain, they would put their villages guts on a spike!
Kayowni, meantime, had covertly commendeered a Leman Russ that was not quite destroyed. It was badly damaged, but workable and she turned it toward the the enemy before opening fire. The weapon worked like a dream, and she saw the immensely satisyfying sight of several dozen Orcs mowed down by machinegun fire as she loaded the shells into its firing mechanism.
Then drawing back, she took aim and pulled the trigger.
The craft reeled beneath the power of the shot which arced through the air and blasted the Orks, who fell away and began, of all things, running away.
These Orks really didn't act like Orks did they?
...
The Chaos Space Marines departed almost as swiftly as they had come, and Kayowni returned from her brief meeting with the Captain of the Chaos Space Marines unchanged and unharmed. Amazingly.
'Well,' She said 'we'll just hold here then. The Imperiums has got to send down some real Space Marines some time.'
Cue the waiting!