A/N This is my first fanfiction, so please be nice. Please review. What should I do? Should I continue? What does it need? Please note I planned this out on a boring afternoon activity session at school, so it might be lacking a bit.

P.S Look out for quotes!

The soft hum of the warship's engines resonated through the ship. The dim lights of the night cycle provided Trooper Oliver Steele with a view of his friends.

To his left, his best friend George Helghast snored loudly.

"For a small guy," thought Oliver, "He sure can snore!" To his right, lay the shapely figure of his other best friend, Isabelle Irone.

Oliver returned his gaze to the bunk above, and smiled as sleep claimed him.

16 Years Previously

A five-year-old Oliver Steele sat nervously in the corner. It was his first day at the pre-scholem, and everybody else seemed to have a friend. Suddenly, a tearful boy, clutching his mother came in. The teacher pointed Oliver out to the boy, and he came over.

"Do you like Space Wars?" Oliver asked the boy.

"Yeah!" he replied. "I'm George," he said, "George Helghast."

The Present

Oliver turned over in his bunk, happy at his dreams of home.

12 Years Previously

"Ha ha!" sneered Boris Gudten, the school bully. George and Oliver, both nine, cowered before him and his cronies, George sporting a bloody nose.

"Leave them alone!" cried a girl's voice. "Go away!" She said.

"C'mon," grumbled Boris "Let's go see if we can nick some of the teachers lho-sticks."

"Thankyou," said Oliver.

"Don't mention it," said the girl "I'm Isabelle Irone."

The Present

The thoughts of the meeting of him and his two friends were some of the happiest of Oliver's life, and his sleeping form grinned at them.

8 Years Previously

"Well," said a thirteen-year-old Oliver, "I guess this is goodbye."

"Yeah." gulped George-he had a lump in his throat.

"It's been great guys," said Isabelle, "But I guess we have to say it-goodbye."

"We're off to senior school," said George "Hey," he asked, "Do you have a piece of paper?"

"What for?" asked Oliver.

"For your holo-phone numbers!" he replied. "So we can keep in contact," he explained.

"Yeah," said Isabelle "See you guys, it's been great."

The Present

Even in his sleep, Oliver remembered it. The years of waiting, the days he had spent with only the memories. Sure, he'd had other friends, but they just hadn't been the same.

3 Years Previously

An eighteen-year-old Oliver looked nervously around at the universitariat building. He could see his fellow students talking around. He remembered how he'd felt on his first day of pre-scholem – he felt the same now. Then, he saw something else. It was a woman, pointing him out to a man. Their faces lit up. They ran towards him.

"Issie!" gasped Oliver, incredulously, as she hugged him "George! It's really you."

"We met up yesterday in the dorms," explained George, "Me and Issie are neighbours – we're in Aquila house."

"Me too!" exclaimed Oliver "We've got a lot of catching up to do," he said, as they approached the dormitory.

The Present

Even though these memories were happy, they foreshadowed something much worse, as dream, turned to nightmare.

Two Years Previously

"All students, assemble in the main square in fifteen minutes. This is not a drill." The incessant voice from the speakers woke Oliver from his sleep. The words this is not a drill concerned him. What was happening?

It was dark outside, as Oliver switched on the small holo-vision in his room. The news came on. The presenter came on with a news flash.

"This is Mark Durak with Hive Live, you're source of news in Hades Hive. Our top story: Planetary Invasion! We go live to Governor Herman von Strab's speech after these shocking images are revealed." Oliver watched, in shock, as the camera showed an asteroid out in the ash wastes, with greenskins pouring from it. There was a knock on the door. When Oliver opened it, George and Isabelle were outside.

"What's with the 3am wake-up call?" asked George.

"The holo-vision can answer that," replied Oliver, leading them in. As they watched, the Governor spoke. He reassured them of their safety, and assured them that he had the situation under control. Finally, he assured the populace that Commissar Sebastian Yarrick, who had tried to spread dissent by calling for help, had been sent out of the way – to Hades Hive. Finally, he called for the people to support the Planetary Defence Force, and for the Universities to offer up some of their best as a tithe of soldiers.

In the grounds, a PDF mobile armoury Chimera drove up, and its crew began to unload their cargo: crates of las-guns and power packs.

The Present

Oliver remembered the crash course in combat that he and his friends had received; the University's fittest, smartest students had been conscripted, and taught how to shoot in the weeks after the first landing. Three months after first contact, sentries on the walls of Hades Hive had spotted a mass of green coming from the ash wastes – they had come.

One Year Previously

Oliver, George and Isabelle were crouched behind the burnt-out wreck of a mobile-armoury Chimera. Oliver recognised it the registration as the vehicle that had supplied his universitariat with weapons. It was empty. The turret weapon had run out of ammunition long ago, and all that was inside were two krak grenades and a knife. Everything else was broken or looted by needy troops.

"The Orks are getting closer," said George, who was on sentry duty, "So you might want to start praying for a miracle. The only live guardsmen they could see were an autocannon team further down the street.

"I don't want to die," whispered Isabelle.

"Neither do I," replied Oliver, "But there's always hope. When I was a child, my mum told me a tale. It was about a group of Guardsmen, who always remained true to the Emperor, and when they were trapped, and surrounded by the enemies of man, he sent his angels to save them."

"Do you think it's true?" she replied.

"There's always hope," he said, "And there's already one angel here," he smirked.

"Stop talking," she replied, and pulled him into a kiss. A round ricocheted off of the tank and George ducked down.

"Alright love-birds," he said, priming his last power cell, as Oliver and Isabelle picked up their weapons,

"FOR THE EMPEROR!" They cheered as they leaped up, firing on full auto. A dozen Orks were cut down, but just as the leading monster was about to cut them down, its head exploded. Looking back, they saw ten Space Marine Terminators marching down the street, storm bolters and assault cannons firing into the packed mass of greenskins. Hundreds were cut down. One of the Terminators stopped, looked at them, and then spoke:

"Come with me if you want to live."

Later that day, Oliver found Isabelle in the makeshift mess tent.

"So," he said, "Where were we?"

"No," she replied."

"No?"

"Look, that was the no way out adrenaline talking. It was nothing." And with that, she left him.

"Soldiers of the Imperium," boomed Commissar Yarrick. "Men of Armageddon, you are the finest the Imperial Guard has to offer. The Armageddon Twelfth Steel Legion you are the finest the Imperial Guard has to offer, even more so than you're fellow Steel Legion regiments." The men and women of the newly-christened Armageddon Twelfth Steel Legion knew that Yarrick would give the same speech to a hundred other regiments, but they still believed it: they were the best, of the best.

The Present

Oliver was awakened by the klaxons that sounded to indicate the start of the day cycle. He looked at his friends once more, and allowed himself a rare luxury for a man of Armageddon: he smiled. Life was good.

A/N So, what do you think? R/R, and I'll listen.