Author's Notes:
This story has been sitting on my laptop for quite awhile now, but it's 1 am and I decided 'why not?'
As per usual, I do not own the rights to Warhammer 40,000 or any of its affiliates. All belong to their original creators and our overlords, Games Workshop. Quisto'Rol is indeed a planet in the 40k universe, however since no information was available on the planet or its topography I had made my own up, as well as several other factors in the story. Enjoy, and any feedback would be appreciated. Any questions will most likely answered in a Youtube video that I shall link on my profile page as soon as I complete it.
The jungles of Quisto'Rol were a deathtrap to all but the most veteran predator, whether it is man or beast. Packs of wild animals hunted during the day and the night, picking off the weakest and most vulnerable of targets. Many an Imperial patrol was sent into the jungles, attempting to control the No-Man's-Land between the Imperial front and the Eldar Webway Gate that stood deep within the canopied jungle; the dirty-white wraithbone structure that would rapidly transport Eldar warriors to the planet's surface. It was a good day for a patrol if it came back to the Imperial Guard's forward camp with at least two of its twenty members, but it was an even better day for the Imperial Guard if the patrol came back at all. The Eldar had made no demands and gave no terms of surrender to the human forces stationed on Quisto'Rol; instead they had conducted numerous hit-and-run attacks each week¸ causing frighteningly high casualties on each occasion while the Guard were lucky to even cause a tiny margin of that number back to the Eldar.
The war on Quisto'Rol had been raging for almost a year now, even since poachers from the city of Taluun had stumbled across the seemingly-inactive gate. Scratched and heavily bleeding after their encounter with several of the native animals, the hunters had watched the structure from the cover of nearby bushes before trekking back across through the jungle. Signaling the nearest Imperial Guard outpost with their military-grade vox-caster, the group of hunters transmitted the coordinates of the Webway Gate as well as their own position before their transmission was cut. The local Imperial Governor gave orders that a recon party be sent out to appraise the situation, and a group of twenty Imperial Sentinel walkers were sent into the jungle.
The Sentinels easily traversed the jungle, crossing several hundred miles; their long mechanical legs easily keeping any predator at bay as the machines rumbled through the undergrowth. They sent frequent updates of their position back to the outpost, as well as requesting updates of the hunter's positions, which always came back with the same answer: no new information. The Guard had already figured the hunters to be dead; mauled by the savage beasts of Quisto'Rol and providing their dinner, but what the Sentinels found was far from what they had expected. Crossing underneath the shadowy canopies that towered far overhead, the Sentinels stomped their way through the small bushes and plants; crushing both plant- and animal-life underfoot before reaching the still bodies of the hunters.
Major Jackary Anderson of the Quisto'Rollian 2nd Regiment's Light Company still could remember very clearly even one year later the gut-wrenching expressions on the hunter's faces as he jumped down from his Sentinel to examine the bodies in the evening light. He was a raw lieutenant then, having just completed his officer training and looking forward to his first slice of action. Their faces contorted from fear, the hunters all had received the same blow that killed them; a clean slice to the throat. They were all arrayed in a single line; their clothes untouched and the rifles on their backs slung, and the creepiness of this new discovery rattled all the Sentinels to the core. The scouts had reported their find then continued on, zeroing in on the location of the Webway Gate. Anderson remembered even more vividly the first contact with the opposition. Nestled in a valley exactly where the hunter's transmission said it would be was the Eldar Webway Gate; the rising wraithbone curves sculpted with perfect precision, its ridges and crests making the gate look similar to the stinger of a Quisto'Rollian Water Scorpion. The small squad of Sentinels spread out, their Multi-Laser weapon systems hot and their adrenaline pumping, each trooper both hoping and dreading contact with the Eldar. They weren't disappointed.
Lieutenant Anderson watched in horror as a shadow disengaged itself from the trees and sprinted out quickly towards a Sentinel, moving far faster then any human could run. Anderson shouted out over the vox channel, but he was too late, the runner had attached and detonated some sort of explosive, sending an electro-magnetic pulse into the core systems of the walker, shortening it out. The men became jumpy, their discipline fading as they ached to just blast laser fire everywhere. Immediately several other shadows came from the trees, swinging down and sprinting at the remaining nineteen walkers. Without waiting for orders, the men engaged the enemy; a myriad of laser fire closed in on the approaching enemy saboteurs, but the enemy was one step ahead. Laser fire illuminated their white and blue armored forms as the saboteurs leapt into the air, their artificial wings unfurling then blurring into action, vibrating fast enough to meld the colors.
This was the first time the Quisto'Rollian forces had encountered Eldar in almost fifty years, and naturally none of the Guardsmen sent on the reconnaissance mission knew what they would face; if they had then they would have never stood their ground in such a small clearing. The Swooping Hawks flew down over the Sentinels, dropping their payloads then flying away. Almost ten Sentinels were knocked out, their pilots jumping down from their disabled walkers toting their lasguns. A pair of Eldar was punctured by laser fire, spiraling to the ground in fiery heaps, and the Imperial forces felt exhilarated; none of their own number had even been injured. The remaining Hawks swooped down and out, sprinting in the cover of jungle that lay behind the remaining Sentinels.
"7th Sentinel Platoon, status report!" Barked Anderson over the vox channel. Only nine Sentinels hailed his request, leaving only ten Sentinels in operation, including his own. The rest of the men had shouldered their emergency packs which they had salvaged formed a squad on foot, looking only slightly-nervous, but overall pleased by their small victory. On the trek back to base Anderson has lost another four Sentinels, as well as eight of the foot-soldiers to the blades of the Swooping Hawks, leaving only six functioning Sentinel walkers and twelve men to report in.
The situation had quickly escalated after the first skirmish; a battalion sent to secure the Webway Gate was ambushed and annihilated by an Eldar strike force, while a team of Eldar Dire Avengers were captured by the newly-reinforced 7th Sentinel Platoon only a few weeks after first contact. The two sides exchanged fire often in the jungle, conducting raids and sneak attacks. Men were forced to become veterans after a single night in the jungle; their experience quickly setting them apart from troopers who may have only enlisted a single day before them. Trees burned, animals fled while predators stalked the battlefield afterwards, taking its pick of the dead human carcasses. Not a single Eldar dead was ever recovered by the Imperial Guard; their bodies taken way by their comrades quickly.
The Imperial Governor, he himself a veteran officer in the Imperial Navy, looked to his own experience when dealing with the Eldar in the past to work out a strategy. Eldar were renowned for their lightning-fast maneuvers and strikes into enemy territory before withdrawing, and the governor theorized that the Eldar would melt quickly in the face of a foe with vastly superior numbers, after all, the Eldar always avoided a straight-up firefight if they could, they simply did not have the numbers to keep up.
A month into the conflict, the Imperial Guard could no longer get anywhere near the Gateway. Entire regiments were caught in a hailstorm of shuriken and laser fire, infantry running for cover while the light vehicles used in the jungle were disabled or destroyed. Swooping Hawks and Striking Scorpion warriors infiltrated the Guard's retreat corridors, cutting down survivors in their hundreds.
Brigadier-General Basque Veres led an all-out assault on the Webway Gate, massing thousands of troops as well as dozens of Chimeras, Sentinels and a handful of Leman Russ tanks and Basilisk Howitzers. Valkyrie transports and Vulture gunships flew overhead as the strike force rallied together at Outpost Zal-Omega, forming lines of guardsmen armed with lasguns, grenade launchers and plasma rifles. Entire companies of snipers and scouts were formed and sent ahead to perform a reconnaissance of the undergrowth; the scanners of the air-support unable to penetrate the dense jungle canopy. The Brigadier-General had smiled that day, his remaining eye communicating his relief at finally being able to destroy this threat to Quisto'Rol, and by the end of the day his now life-less eye was staring up at the tree branches above while men screamed and tanks grinded to a halt, their treads turned to slag and hulls demolished.
Two months into the conflict all the shipyards planet-side were sabotaged, grounding the planet's fleet. No longer could the Imperial Guard perform any sort of aerial-support missions; they could only rely on their ground forces from then on.
Five months into the conflict a call for aid was sent to the neighboring systems of Esteban and Valhalla, of which only the Valhallans promised a relief force within a few months. The relief force never came. Quisto'Rol was alone, its garrisoned force of almost twenty-thousand armed conscripts already whittled down to half the original number.
Jackary Anderson mussed his now-long hair, and sighed. He was the only survivor from the original party that had found the alien nemesis in the jungle the year before and had been promoted to the rank of Major quickly, filling up the power vacuum left by so many deceased officers. He wore the tattered remains of a Captain's uniform, for no new uniforms or equipment had been issued to his company in over four months, and the only indication of his true rank was a badge on his green cap and the scimitar he kept. His men were a mass of scarred and wounded men, the majority of them forsaking most of their carapace armor and donning flak jackets instead. Anderson's men were storm troopers, or at least the closest one could get to the elite commandos of the Imperial Guard. While not true storm troopers, Anderson's company had been filled with the best of the best, the cream of the crop. The most veteran and experienced soldiers were transferred into the Wraith Company, given carapace armor and Hellguns as well as being issued with the occasional heavy or special weapon. From the original Wraith Company, barely over a hundred survived, most of their armor having been cast off and weapons gathered from the dead and dying.
Anderson himself had cast aside his Hellpistol and taken up a Stalker-Pattern Hellgun; he felt far safer with the big weapon in his hands, and had adopted some pieces of the carapace armor, armoring his shins, forearms and chest as well as keeping an additional combat knife strapped to his leg. He had 'borrowed' a camo cloak from a dead sniper, and kept his Auspex always close at hand. Being sent to battle Eldar was bad enough in Anderson's opinion, but being stationed at the outpost closest to the front-lines was even worse. The Wraith Company had to adapt, as they learnt on their first nights stationed at the dilapidated outpost.
"You live constantly live on the edge here at Outpost Zal-Omega," Anderson spoke loudly to the new additions to the Wraith Company. Due to the nature of this war, this was a speech he was making every few weeks now. "Our enemy is situated only twenty miles away from us, within a single day's walk. You poke your heads outside without a helmet and you are likely to lose them. Your heads, not your helmets. Private Giller over there decided to take a piss late one night while on sentry detail, greet the new recruits Giller!"
Private Giller turned from cleaning his gun, revealing the mechanical block of circuitry that replaced his neck and mouth.
"Giller here lost quite a bit of his head, but now he's a good boy, aren't you Giller? Giller here can still fight, and I'll expect no less from any of you. You all know why you're here; to purge the Eldar from our planet, and now you've all been given better armor and Hellguns. Do yourselves a favor; drop the bulkier parts of the armor. We're the Wraith Company, and our duty is to raid, infiltrate and skirmish with the enemy, something that is impossible when you're being weighed down by the shit that gets assigned to us. Keep your Hellgun charged, your dick in your pants and plenty of fragmentation grenades in your arse, dismissed!"
Anderson knew that from the thirty new additions to the company, barely five would survive their first action. The Wraith Company was designed to fulfill a role somewhere between scouts and commandos; to be the first in the field and the last out, taking part in situations that would leave a regular guardsman crying for his mother. The Wraiths would be the rearguard and the vanguard; they could hide in the trees for days before dropping onto a mobilized Eldar strike team. They were expected to give their dying breath for the Emperor and to never retreat, and Anderson's boys always delivered.
Sliding into his personal Sentinel, Anderson barked a quick set of orders to his lieutenants. Immediately Wraith Company became a flurry of action; dozens of marines jumped into their Sentinel walkers while the rest of the boys formed firing squads, forming up on their sergeants.
Their mission this day was a simple one: to find the remnants of Echo Company, a platoon of conscripts accompanying a Basilisk self-propelled artillery vehicle, which had been sent to reinforce Zal-Omega. Somewhere between Zal-Omega and the Conscript Barracks, the company had gotten lost. No one had any illusion of the men being found alive; that was impossible, not improbable. Instead, they hoped to recover the Basilisk or even scavenge the massive Earthshaker Cannon attached to it.
All around him, Jackary Anderson watched as steely-faced storm troopers prepared for their inevitable fate. Each had made their peace with Death, promising themselves to greet it as old friends rather then screaming children calling for their mothers. The new recruits gulped as the veterans showed them exactly what pieces of their carapace armor they should throw away while some of the older men smoked in a group, reminiscing about times before the war. Anderson had no time for such things; war was his life now, he had no other purpose then to advance the Emperor's Cause, one dead xenos at a time.
Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Anderson motioned to his lieutenants it was time; Wraith Company was heading out.
Author's Note:
Chapter Two will be out as soon as I have time.