As pretty as the night sky was, I needed to get moving. I unhitched a knife from its sheath across my chest and began the careful work of cutting my way through the dense forest canopy. It seemed most of the work had been done for me by the fall, placing me a good ways into the branches and leaves already. I could see the ground through some of the less dense patches of limbs.

Considering what I saw, I still had a fatal fall ahead of me. I needed to find away down that wouldn't shatter my legs, preferably. It seemed that none of the tree trunks were remotely close to me. I was surprised that I hadn't punched right through the branches. Considering I didn't know were my squad mates were, and I didn't want to compromise radio silence or attract others in shouting distance, it looked like I'd have to risk it.

I shimmied my way through the last of the branches and swung down, still holding on to the limbs above me. I looked down at the large drop and sighed. Though it was dark and I had a difficult time seeing the forest floor, it was certainly the height of a small hab-building. This would hurt.

It at least seemed that the gravity here was at least a little lighter than most other places that we had been deployed. The agri-world I had been raised on had a higher level of gravity compared to this planet's, though not by much. Hopefully that would help out some.

I let go and for the third time that night found myself in free fall. On the way down it struck me that the grav-chute may have been my way out of the problem. It was already decided, unfortunately. My feet hit and the rest of my weight settled into them. Thankfully, I had landed on an even surface. That didn't stop the searing pain that shot up my right leg, however.

The pain was so intense that I saw stars. I shifted my weight to my hands and my other leg. I gasped and held my breath, trying to will away the pain. I slowly exhaled to try to calm myself down.

Something was definitely wrong with my leg now. At the best, it was probably a sprain or something similar. At worst, I shattered a couple of bones in my leg. I tried to put some pressure on the leg and groaned. That could be a problem. I tried the range of movement on my leg and found that it was mostly alright. I was no medic, but it seemed as thought nothing was broken, or if it was, it could wait.

After passing through the near blinding pain and fun of dropping over two stories onto packed dirt, I looked at my surroundings. The forest looked to be composed large , full trees with orange or red leaves. It was difficult to tell in the little moonlight that broke through the layer of limbs and leaves above me.

I finally stood to full height and hobbled about for a second. It seemed things were already clearing up a tad, so that was good news. Bad news was, I didn't know where I was or where my squad mates were.

Thankfully, I was spared the trouble of having to find friendly forces at night and in the middle of the forest. There was a rustle in the foliage to my left and out came a renegade guardsman. I couldn't discern any details about his uniform besides the fact that he held a beaten and ragged melta gun in his hands.

We both froze. Neither of us wore masks and could see the other's expression of surprise. Out of habit I gave the challenge that was commonly used by most of the soldiers in service to the Blood Hand.

"Star." I directed at the man. He kept his melta gun up and quirked his head slightly. "Star!" I repeated, this time louder.

"Eight." The other man replied. He frowned slightly and his voice was just as broken as his weapon. He looked young too. We both immediately relaxed visibly. Though it was terribly unlikely that he would not have been another sympathizer to chaos, paranoia drove us fanatics to act sometimes. Now that we weren't about to shoot each other, we exchanged brief formalities. I introduced myself, afterwards he introduced himself as Lanton Dahl, hailing from the Blood Hand's 12th, a combat engineering division.

Soldiers out of the 12th would either be assigned or requested for deployment by other companies for the purposes of the mission. They often worked closely with the mystery shrouded Dark Mechanicus. He would, of course, be working more with demolitions than actually building anything.

I introduced my self as a rifleman out of the 4th company, comprised of the Blood Hand's elite stormtroopers. He seemed slightly taken aback that I was in the 4th but it didn't seem to phase him too much.

Orders from before the drop told us to head east to reach our destination. Hopefully others would be found on the way there. There would likely be groups of stragglers coming in till the break of day. After everything was accounted for, squads would mobilize and continue into the city.

After confirming that we were headed in the right direction, the both of us set off. Neither of us spoke. It wasn't unusual for guys from other units to never interact with each other, unless in competition or outright hostility. Contrary to popular belief, us "heretics" were actually a pretty tight-knit group. Of course, the in-fighting caused by these groups was not especially productive or helpful.

As we continued walking and getting closer to our objective, Lanton and I stopped. "Do you hear that?" He asked. I listened closely and strained my hearing. Behind the ambient noise of the leaves swaying in the night air and the nocturnal insects chirping, I could vaguely hear what sounded like... las-fire. We looked at each other and nodded before double timing it in the direction which we heard the las shots coming from.

As we neared, the sounds of a fight became stronger. In probably the least safe and tactical way, we burst through a tree line into a wide open field to see las fire stitching across the darkness. Unfamiliar and beast-like shapes moved through the darkness in between the flashes of light. The rush of adrenaline and the overwhelming outside stimuli of the fight was not particularly pleasing. I was no slaaneshi cultist.

Large beasts, bigger than any man present, hunted in the shadows. Only flashes of white and red and vague movement in the dark gave away their presence. Both myself and Lanton immediately set to help our allies. I began to pick targets in the field and carefully started the work of killing indistinct shapes in the dark, surrounded by friendly soldiers. A less disciplined unit may have fallen into disarray, but our trigger discipline was perfect. Not a single man had fallen to friendly fire within the confusing fight.

That was not to say that no one had fallen to the beasts. They quite reminded me of the ravenous tyranids, though perhaps the tyranids were more organized and numerous. They did share a similarity in their unthinking brutality and viciousness, however.

I saw one of the creatures bat a soldiers las-gun from his hands before pouncing on him. The creature pressed a huge paw into the man's chest, keeping him pinned. It seemed to ignore his vitals and went straight for the man's belly, easily ripping flesh and organs with its teeth. Almost immediately after the creature disemboweled the man it was enveloped in a painfully bright flash. The image of the man's innards strewn about the forest floor was briefly etched into retinas.

After my eyes cleared a second later, the spot where the creature and suffering soldier had been was now a blacked patch of earth with little to suggest that anything had been there previously. Next to it stood Lanton, his face a mask of grim determination and suppressed anger.

The fight continued for a minute or two before things finally started to settle down. It seemed that quite a few of the creatures had been killed. At least 10 men had been slaughtered by the beasts, with some injured.

For dropping onto a planet with little to no intelligence on the local wildlife and civilizations, I'd say things were going rather well.

-Remnant Besieged-

Hey guys. For those of you following this train wreck,I know, 3-4 months for 1.5k words? Pretty awful right? Thank overlord62 for following me and getting me off of my fat ass. Thanks to the guys that are following me and my story. I'm writing this thing for you guys, so if you have any corrections, suggestions, or comments, please send them my way.

And for future reference, I will be trying to upload much more frequently, but chapters of about 2-3k words. Thanks again, and may the Imperium stagnate and rot.

-Whytryharder56