The ruined city was quiet. Not the general type of quiet, but the spooky kind of quiet. The only sound was the occasional crunch of rubble, the wind blowing through the ruins, and, rarely, the scattered sounds of gunfire off in the distance. The squad slowly moved through the streets, guns at the ready. Each of the five kept one eye on the other, and the other eye on their surroundings. Everyone was tense, with maybe the exception of Michael.

Michael was still running a few things through his head, about how this wasn't all some sort of wacky dream and that he really was thrown into a futuristic war zone. He was slowly coming down from the shock however. He had always been a pretty good adapter to life changing events. After the initial shock had worn off, he decided to just accept things as they were and deal with it. After all, there wasn't anything he could do about it, right?

So the squad walked in relative silence through what was considered by command to be relatively "secure" territory. According to Jacob, that meant that there was about a 50% chance they'd run into some Tau.

After a while, Dan motioned for the squad to stop. Almost immediately, the four took up defensive positions while their leader dropped down to one knee and listened. For a moment, all that could be heard was their own breathing. And then suddenly...

Crunch crunch crunch

It was the sound of feet on rubble. Boots maybe, though it could very well be the sound of Tau hooves. The squad readied their rifles and scanned the street that they had found themselves on. Around them were bombed out hab-blocks, the remains of stores, and various other mundane reminders of the human's previous occupation.

Crunch crunch crunch

Everyone continued to scan the ruins. Eva gave her neck a quick pop, and Jacob gripped his grenade launcher tighter. Michael watched the upper ruins and the rooftops, trying to get a direction on the sound of the footsteps. The sound was getting closer, but it was still a ways off, so thankfully they were not going to be pounced upon by a Stealth Suit squad or anything.

"Left," muttered Renald, and everyone glanced over to his left. In that direction was a series of ruined apartments with the walls still standing, but with the floors missing, like a bomb took out the insides, leaving it just a ruined shell.

Just as the squad was readying to adjust their position, lines of blue energy lanced out from the ruins at their position. "Shit!" barked Dan as he ducked behind cover just in the nick of time. In a matter of moments, the hidden Tau had the squad pinned down.

Hunkering down behind a fallen wall, Michael listened to the sounds of the shots. "Pulse," he muttered as he recognized the sound from of of the many Warhammer 40k video games. "Um...Rifles and...Carbines," he said slowly, listening to the rate of fire. "Fire Warrior squad," he called over to the rest, who had taken cover behind the various rubble.

"No shit!" barked Eva as she popped out and sent a few lasbolts at the Tau's position.

"Well at least it's not Stealth Suits," offered Michael as he found a nice firing position and began peppering the general area that the shots were coming from. It slowly occurred to Michael that the Tau that were shooting at them were not as keen on scoring clean kills as they were whittling down the available cover, then popping them when there was nowhere else to hide. Bits of the wall collapsed under the Tau's fire, and it was pretty clear to Michael that he was indeed correct.

"We gotta get out of here!" called Michael to the rest of his squad. They nodded, having come to the same conclusion that Michael had.

"Jake! Got any smoke grenades on you?" asked Dan, and the big man nodded. Jacob quickly loaded a smoke grenade into his launcher and lobbed it up and over into the relatively clear area that stood between them and the Tau. As the smoke was released from the shell, the squad jumped up and made a break for it. Renald and Dan ran to some cover across the street to get a better flanking position. Eva and Jacob ran to a mound of fallen rubble a little further down the street, with Eva providing a hail of covering fire.

Michael however was left on his own. Realizing that he had been left by the rest of his squad, he pulled himself up from cover and booked it to the closest unoccupied cover-a ruined hab-block right behind their position. He ran through the ruins, looking for stairs leading upward as the sound of pulse and las fire echoed up from the street. After some clever jumping on his part, he managed to get onto the second floor and hunkered down behind a blown out window. Aiming down the sights of his Autogun, he could just make out the Tau position through the smoke, but he couldn't get a bead on them. With a growled swear, he got up from his position by the window and looked around for a better firing position.

Next to the hab-block was a relatively untouched multi-level garage, in front of which Eva and Jacob were taking cover. Seeing no better option, Michael found a bridge of rubble connecting the hab-block to the garage and quickly crossed. Someone must have been looking out for him, as the moment he hopped off the bridge, it collapsed behind him. He booked it through the garage, maneuvering around the bullet-ridden and rusted remains of cars and other vehicles. Up two levels, and he ran to the edge again, trying to get a bead on Tau. Again, he was blocked by the ruins in which they hid. Swearing once more, he looked down at how his squad was doing. The whole thing had turned into a stalemate of sorts. Nobody was taking any casualties, and nobody was moving.

"Great, it's like that..." muttered Michael as he looked for a way to get further down the street without being shot to ribbons. Next to the garage was a ruined store who's front was still pretty intact, but the back end was in utter ruins. The roof was just high enough for him to leap onto, but it was still a ways down. "Fuck..." muttered Michael. With nothing better to do, he took a running jump and leapt off the garage, falling a floor down onto the top of the store. He managed to tuck and roll, resulting in only a couple of scrapes as opposed to a shattered shin or something.

Throwing himself flat, he tried to ignore the pain in his knees and elbows as he peeked over the edge of the roof. Again, he couldn't get a bead on the Tau, but he was getting close. The building he was on was the second to the last before an intersection. If he could get back down to the street, he could, in theory, get around to the back of the Tau and fill them full of lead. That was a big "if" however, as from where he was, he couldn't see any way to the street besides a good two or three floor fall. And truthfully, as a new recruit, he didn't really feel like sacrificing the use of his legs to save his squad.

But something seemed to tug at the area of his brain that controlled morality, and he knew he had to do something. Michael crawled over to the edge and peered over and was delighted, almost, to see that that just happened to be some rebar and ruined metal supports that formed out a jumbled, mangled sort of ladder that dropped down a good floor and a half. Rolling his eyes in annoyance, the young man slung his autogun over his shoulder, crawled over the lip, eased himself down, and began a slow descent to a better jumping position.

The climb took longer than he had expected, and by the end of it, his hands were pretty scraped up from using the rebar and rubble as handholds. But the important thing was that, finally, he was on the ground again, and in a position to get behind the Tau position and butcher the xeno with a spray of hot lead death. The intersection was a T-intersection, with the road his squadmates were at forming the upright of the T. Rifle in hand, the young man booked it across the street and made his way carefully down the road until he could see down the road where his squadmates were pinned down. He could just make out the Tau's position in the blown out building across the road. Pulling a grenade from his belt, he inched closer, ready to blow the Xeno apart before mopping them up by himself.

Almost there, almost there, almost-

WHAM

Where the Tau position was, there was now a sleet grey drop pod, glowing slightly red from just coming from orbit. The ramps dropped, and out stepped five grey armored giants, their shoulders emblazoned with black wolf head insignias. Their armor was further decorated with wolf pelts and various tribal paraphernalia. All but one wore a helmet, and by the look of the markings on his armor, he was the one in charge.

The Space Wolves had made their entrance.

While Michael was busy coughing from the impact dust, his squad hurried over to where the Space Marines had just disembarked from. There was a bit of chatter between the squad and the Marines, mostly along the lines of orders and whatnot. Once Michael had finished coughing up a lung, he made his way over, wiping down his glasses on his uniform.

"Mike!" called Renald, who looked happier than a kid at Christmas, "Space Marines!"

"I can see that," said Michael, his tone unimpressed. "Cockblockers is what they are."

This comment got the attention of the Space Wolf squad leader, who turned to face the young man. The Space Wolf leader's head was shaved bald, and his facial hair, which looked very much like a viking's, was a bright orange that reminded Michael of a Dwarf Slayer's in color. "What did'ja say whelp?" asked the Space Wolf.

"Nothing sir," replied Michael with a friendly smile. "Just coughing loudly." He coughed twice for emphasis, noting the Space Marine still eyed him suspiciously. "Thanks for the assist though." The young man moved back to where his squad was, hooking his grenade back onto his belt. Eva was glaring at him in a "Are you serious?" way.

Without another word, the Marines made their way off down the road, their Boltguns at the ready.

"All right," said Dan after the Marines had made their way down the road a ways, "Patrol route leads the other way. Shame we can't have them watch our back." There was a general murmur of agreement.

Before they headed off though, they decided to take a slight break to check ammo and supplies. While Jacob reloaded his grenade launcher and Renald did some field treatments on a graze he got from one of the Tau's pulse rifles, Michael made his way over to where the drop pod had landed. The area was pretty decimated from the drop pod, but not everything was destroyed. On the ground were a few serviceable pulse rifles and a carbine. Slinging his autogun over his arm, Michael picked up the Tau Pulse Carbine and examined it.

"What di'ya think yer doin'?" came Eva's voice from behind him.

"Lootin'." he said simply as he relieved one of the more complete corpses of what he guessed were ammo clips.

"Those're Xeno weapons," she said.

"And?"

"They're XENO weapons." she repeated, this time with more emphasis.

"Yes, and?" Michael fiddled with the buttons, smiling when he found one that ejected the clips in the butt of the carbine. He wouldn't try to find the marker light button or the one that would let him fire those weird Tau grenades, at least not yet.

"They're not...right." said Eva, a hint of worry in her voice.

"Look, gun's a gun," replied Michael as he began looting the rest of the corpses for ammo, "'Sides, Tau have the best guns 'side the Marines. Better than this autogun anyway."

"That's almost heresy," stated Eva, slightly angry.

"That's facts." said Michael, standing up and facing his squadmate. "Ammo weighs less, shots hit harder, and it's got more gizmos on it than a Catachan army knife. 'Sides, it's not gonna turn me nutty or anything."

"Any more nutty you mean."

"Yup."

Eva rolled her eyes and shook her head sending her ponytail of dreadlocks bouncing. "Whatever. The sarge'll have to deal with you." With that, she turned around and walked back over to where the rest of the squad was sitting and resting. Michael followed shortly after, ready to get an earful from Dan about looting xeno corpses.


Author's Notes: So very very VERY sorry for the extreme lack of updates. Life happened. Anyway, I feel this chapter dragged on a little, and would greatly appreciate critiques on how I can make it better.