Disclaimer: I don't own warhammer, that belongs to GW. All technologies and characters native to 40k and the Horus Heresy, not made up by me, belong to Gdubs too. I do not own any aspect of Attack on Titan, those belong to Hajime Isayama.
Claimer: I do own the original character Warsmith Phidias Longinus of the 86th Great Company of the Fourth Legion Astartes, as well as all original characters and organizations of unspecified origin, i.e. not created by the wider warhammer community or GamesWorkshop, associated with the 86th Great Company and the attendant Expeditionary Fleet, including, but not limited to, the Legio Cauchinium and all characters directly under the umbrella of the 86th Great Company of the Iron Warriors.
AN: Another relatively quick chapter. No plan survives contact with the enemy, or in this case planetfall.
Review Replies:
Lecturing-Rando: Yaaaaay! You're familiar with 40k and fantasy lore, or at least capable of copy-pasting segments that reach the character limit. I don't need a lecture on 40k, but I would appreciate 30k, as I'm a little behind on the great crusade lore and I can't afford the Forgeworld Horus Heresy books. If you want to be helpful find me some 30k copypasta and PM IT TO ME. Don't need extremely tangentially related reviews cluttering the feedback, but thanks for inflating the count by five.
WTF-Rando: IK, R? I was lowkey insulted, that's why there's a postscript after the AN. I don't need 40k recommendations, I know the elements I want to include, because WARPY BULLSHIT, already. We might see some well known siege-y boys participating in this story because of temporal warp dickery.
PsychoShame16: Hey! Thanks for catching that for me! If you check back on the first chapter, I've implemented the corrections where relevant. I edited the first chapter in four phases making some key changes, like I'd originally referred to Sergeant Rufio Alexander as Phidias' second in command, when I'd meant to refer to him as his equerry, as is reflected by the current state of the document. Keep an eye out for me. I appreciate the help, as I don't have a beta for the story and I write off the top of my head in general, which only really works out because I'm something of a Lore-Journeyman, not quite a Loremaster.
Readers: I'm open to Attack on Titan ideas, as I've only really seen the anime, but, well, the core thing is pitting the survey corps and the garrison corps against proper Titans, God-Machines, to see what happens, and pitting the god-machines against the bio-titans... remember that offhand reference to a research station on a moon? Keep that in mind.
Sergeant Rufio Alexander stood dutifully behind the Warsmith, studying the writhing nest of mechadendrites and the plethora of servo-arms protruding from Phidias' servo-harness as he followed a precise set of instructions he'd memorized to mount a las-cutter on the Warsmith's leftmost servo-arm. They'd made planetfall under the cover of darkness on the island, and now Phidias and his honor guard were preparing to begin negotiations with whoever fancied themselves the rulers of this island.
Sergeant Alexander passed the Warsmith an assortment of oils and incenses he required to ensure the optimal function of his various augmetics. For a Techmarine, the Warsmith was relatively unaugmented externally, but he sported many data ports all over his body that allowed him to interface directly with machines through his Black Carapace. Inside his body he had many data stacks, and his armor interfaced with a secondary brain crafted specifically for him by Perturabo. The device was a small tetrahedron set in the augmetic eye of the Opus Mechanicum that adorned his left pauldron. His right pauldron bore the heraldry of the 86th Great Company, the iron skull of the IVth set inside of a clockwork wreath, representing the especially close relationship between the 86th and the Mechanicum, even for the Iron Warriors.
The 86th Great Company has had a Techmarine at its command since the genesis of the Great Crusade and had participated in countless actions at the behest of the Mechanicum. After the hundredth action on behalf of the Mechanicum, they were bequeathed a permanent formation of the Legio Cauchinium consisting of ten Warbringer Nemesis Battle Titans, twenty Warhound Scout Titans, five Warlord Titans, and one Imperator Battle Titan. These machines were a crucial last resort available to the expeditionary fleet, and wouldn't be deployed unless an absolute show of force was necessary.
Pre-landing scans had revealed no mainstream human life signs within the outer ring of the three concentric walls, but Phidias made the command decision of establishing their command post firmly outside the walls, ten kilometers south of the southernmost extruding bastion of the fortification. A small provisional spaceport was established for the purpose of supplying the command post, while four of the seven council captains surrounded the bastions inside the first ring, erecting massive provisional spaceports through the work of the legion brothers and their mortal auxilia overnight. Before the sun had risen earthen work trenches encircled each bastion a kilometer away from the wall, and as the early hours of the day progressed the Iron Warriors poured quick drying permacrete into the trenches to reinforce them. The mortal auxilia had begun the laborious task of digging in for the siege guns and dug outs, while the Mechanicum Ordinatus engineers established reinforced firing positions for the Earthshakers and other such big guns.
Due in no small part to the pervasive paranoia instilled by the fourth legion's geneseed, the legionnaires fortified their trench lines to weather an assault from behind, four hundred legion brothers facing towards each bastion, four hundred brothers facing away from each bastions, and two hundred brothers held in reserve to defend the spaceports or reinforce the lines if need be. The titans were held in a rapid deployment footing in low orbit, while one council captain's force was held in general reserve, and the other two were holding low orbits over what had been identified as key centers of rule for other planetary power blocks.
After Phidias had chanted the binaric canticles of activation, smeared the oils, burned the incense and besought the machine spirit collective of his artificer armor and his servo-harness to serve him well in the coming hours and days, he donned his helmet, masking his strong patrician features and his organic looking augmetic eyes behind the glowing red lenses and vox grille of his helmet. Phidias nodded to Rufio, and they left the command prefab to collect Lexicon-617-Xi, a pair of siege terminators, and five dozen legion-brothers that represented the diplomatic party that would head to the local citadel.
They reached their stormbird transport to find Barbarossa, the Chief Librarian of the 86th great company and the council captain in charge of the reserve force, waiting for them. With Barbarossa in tow, the sixty-five man diplomatic group was complete. The massive, superheavy air transport shifted its considerable tonnage into the air, pointed itself toward the bastion, and keyed in the coordinates of the fortress' citadel. Soon the Warsmith and his men would know if they had come to this planet as builders or conquerors.
Mikasa Ackermann was on patrol in Trost when she heard the sound of a hundred cannons firing at once coming from the direction of the remnants of Trost's outer gate. She scaled the wall to see if she could determine what had made the noise with no smoke in the air when she saw what appeared to be a grey bird in the distance. Over the course of three seconds, the grey bird grew to the size of a canal barge and then three strung together. It was moving insanely fast under its own power.
Not knowing what to think, Mikasa made the snap decision to attempt to attach herself to the metal bird, managing to stick herself into a recessed cupola at the joint between its right wing and the body of the massive metal bird. In this position, she was relatively shielded from the winds whipping against the vessel while still able to feel the absurdly fast winds moving around the bird, attempting to rip the hair from her head.
She looked ahead to see wall Sheena hurtling towards them, and the massive castle in the center along with it.
The stormbird pilot notified Phidias of the external stowaway as soon as they'd attached their self to the hull of the voidcraft. Phidias opted to let them remain on the craft until touchdown, figuring that if an individual could survive the heat and wind on the outside of the stormbird during atmospheric flight, they deserved to live. He notified one of the attendant apothecaries from his first company that was aboard the stormbird to prepare to treat a mortal for burns and g-sickness on landing.
Having jacked himself into the forward pictfeeds, he knew when they had reached the designated landing zone, a massive plaza, roughly one and a half kilometers squared, before the main gate of the keep. Countless normal looking feudal-styled mortals scattered from the plaza as the stormbird careened to a stop before entering a slow, vertical descent in the center of the plaza. The entire trip had only taken a matter of minutes, every legion brother having been briefed before hand by their squad sergeants, the chatter over company comms had been minimal during transit.
Now that they'd touched down, the legionnaires filed out while an Apothecary, Brother Janus Tiberius, came out of the right hand hatch in front of the wing to peel the stowaway off the hull. The apothecary administered painkillers and synthskin over the unconscious mortal female's burns, then tossed her over his shoulder like a sack of tubers and rejoined the command formation in the center of the diplomatic group.
Phidias noticed the cross rune in the corner of his HUD light up as brother Janus came within 10 meters of him. The Warsmith opened a private vox channel to his chief Apothecary, "I take it the stowaway lives."
The deep, rumbling voice of the apothecary came back over the vox. "The mortal child will live, given the proper care. I'm amazed she survived. Based off her attire, I assume she's some kind of local PDF trooper." A thoughtful growl came over the vox, "Considering the biometric data I gathered from this child soldier, these humans, or at least the ones she's descended from, fit the genetic template of pre-Old Night ancient Terrans."
A thoughtful grunt resounded through the vox as Phidias blink-clicked a rune keying Barbarossa into the private vox conversation between him and the Apothecary. "Captain Barbarossa, does the Immaterium speak to you in this place?"
Out of the corner of his eye, Warsmith Longinus noted a shake of Barbarossa's unhelmeted head in the negative. "I sense a larger than normal proportion of latent psykers, but very few nearby and none that could be considered witches. I would consider it a matter of some small concern, but secondary to the current diplomatic mission."
Phidias clicked his vox twice to signal his receipt of Barbarossa's opinion, then blink clicked a command to his assembled honor guard, and pointed with his great, cog-shaped Omnissian Power Axe: "Forward, to the gates of the keep!"
An MP trooper who guarded the gates of the keep fled towards the throne room as a phalanx of grey armored giants marched towards the gate after disembarking the massive, equally grey vessel that had made landfall in the plaza. "Giants!" He screamed, "Giants coming towards the gates!"
"Giants?" An MP in the hall stopped the frantic man. She shook him slightly, and with a frantic look in her own eye she asked "Titans?"
"No! Machine men! Machine men from the sky!" He wrestled free of the woman MP's grasp and rushed towards the throne room where the new queen was holding a meeting with the military leaders of the New Eldian Empire. He burst into the massive hall, "Lady Historia! Machine men, no, giants from the sky are storming the keep!"
AN: I guess I'll stop here tonight. A little shorter than the last one, but kinda lazy and trying to work these in around my work schedule. Still, two days in a row is pretty awesome for me, considering the six-year content drought. Not proud of that friends. How do the Attack on Titan parts feel? I know they're a bit short, but I'm not quite as familiar with that universe as I am with 30k and 40k. Still, it's something. I'm going to try to write the beginning of the next chapter from Historia's point of view. There should be some action next time! Hopefully I can string together something a little longer than these first two, but I'm trying to produce because motivation comes from action!
Postscript: A digital cookie to anyone who knows the origin of Legio Cauchinium!