Chapter 1: The Emperor's Finest

Brother-Sergeant Thram snarled as he brought his chainsword screaming down upon the head of a goat headed daemon, the roaring weapon chanting a song of victory as it tore through the abomination in a thick spray of hissing, viscous blood. He looked up from the rapidly-disappearing corpse in time to see the rest of his squad finishing off the other foul warpspawn with their bolters and blades and took the opportunity to breathe deeply.

Idly he wondered just how long it had been since the Geller fields had been raised and the hunt to purge the battle-barge of the daemons had begun. Time had no meaning in the Warp. One moment it felt like he had just begun to fight, his muscles fresh and ready for war. The next it felt like he had been fighting for ten thousand years, and that the slightest of movements would be the undoing of muscles that screamed in fatigue. The chronometer installed in his helmet was of no use either, fluctuating wildly every time he glanced at it.

Dismissing the pointless conjecture, he opened a channel to his squad with a thought. "Status report brothers," he rasped into the vox.

"Fine, brother," Brother Hrim said in response.

"Minor wound, but I am fine as well," the deep tones of Brother Joh reported.

"I too am fine, Brother-Sergeant, but Brother Barathon fights at the Emperor's side now," Brother Malthus said, his normally emotionless voice tinged with a hint of sorrow. Thram knew that Malthus and Barathon had fought alongside each other over the past century, and the bonds of brotherhood had been deep between them.

Thram lowered his head in respect for their lost Brother. "May his spirit forever watch over the chapter, and guard us with his courage until the Emperor returns to us once more," he intoned, speaking loudly and clearly the Litany of the Fallen, as tradition demanded he must.

"And when we fall, so too shall we," the others said, finishing the chant.

"Come Brothers. Though it pains me to do so, we must continue on to the bridge without Barathon. We shall return for him later," Thram said once the fallen was given his due.

"Then let us carve a swath through these foul creatures as we advance," Malthus declared as he slammed a new sickle cartridge into his bolter.

Any agreement to that statement was interrupted by the sounds of screams that pitched impossibly high one moment before shifting to impossible lows the next.

"It seems the Emperor is listening to your prayers Malthus," Hrim chuckled as he stroked the activation stud on his chainsword.

"Then let us praise His name in the only way we can brothers," Thram said as a knot of daemons came charging down the corridor towards them. The distinctive crack-boom of bolters firing joined by the shrieking of chainswords echoed throughout the ship as battle was joined between the two groups.

Epistolary Vargus was weeping tears of blood as he unleashed his powers upon another long-tongued daemon before it could scythe one of his brothers in twain, ignoring the constant pounding on his skull as he did.

The Geller fields had not been raised fast enough, and now the Duty's Shadow was teeming with the spawn of the Empyrean, who now rampaged throughout the ship killing whatever crossed their path. Most of the mortal crew had been already lost to their blades and claws; Vargus could see with his sixth sense the bright lights that marked their souls passing into the Warp, only to be torn apart by ravenous warpspawn eagerly waiting on the other side of the Geller fields to join their kin.

So it was that he found himself outside the chambers of the Shadow's Navigator with a squad of his fellow Marines. Should their only means of traversing the tides of the Warp be lost, he and all of his brothers would soon join those mortals in the claws of the Neverborn.

Give in…

Vargus gritted his teeth as he impaled a daemon that had leapt over one of his brothers in its haste to reach him on his force staff, before bringing the end of the staff down to the floor and stomping with all of his might upon the creature's head. The whispers had been a constant companion ever since the Shadow was plunged into the Warp by the heretic's ritual, as they had been every time he had sailed through the Warp with his brothers.

You are marked for greater things, Vargus…

The daemonic assault doubled in ferocity, and the Marines stood firm in the face of the blasphemous tide. Vargus strained himself to his utmost limit, knowing that of all of the Iron Sentinels gathered outside the Navigator quarters, he and his powers were best suited for fighting the predators of the Empyrean. Blood flowed out of his ears like a river, while the tears of blood from his eyes were now a constant flood. Unless this ended quickly, he would soon end up overloading himself, frying his mind from constant use of psychic powers.

All you need to do…

He snarled in pain and desperation, unleashing one final blast that sent the daemons skittering back into the darkness of the bowels of the ship with its ferocity.

…is accept…

Never! he roared mentally, even as his sight dimmed rapidly and the deck rushed up to greet him. I will never be your plaything! In the Emperor's name, I shall fight you until and beyond my dying breath!

He did not hear the worried shouts of his brothers or see them rushing to catch his collapsing frame. As the blackness claimed him, all he could hear was a deep chuckle.

That is what they all think…

Their exit from the Warp was just as sudden as their entry had been.

One moment Nemros had been poised to drive his power sword Defiance into the broad chest of a daemon, and the next moment the ship had jerked wildly while the spawn of Chaos attempting to gain access to the bridge dematerialized as they lost their only foothold into the Materium. Turning from the carnage that marked his stand, he stomped his way back over to the viewport to see a lush and verdant world hanging in the void before him.

Turning back towards the Shadow's shipmaster, he made his way over to the command throne that dominated the room. "Speak to me Davriel, where in the Emperor's name are we?" he demanded, the adrenalin still coursing through his veins. He needed to know where the Warp had seen fit to deposit them.

Shipmaster Davriel Kemril, a mousy, aging man with a wiry frame and flecks of gray running through a head of hair that was once jet black turned away from the report he had been receiving from one of his officers to face Nemros. "We are still in the process of determining that Captain," the man said in a mechanical monotone. Davriel had suffered damage to his throat over a decade ago during an engagement with traitor forces and had to have his voice box replaced as a result. "It would appear, however," he continued, "that wherever we are, it is within no recognized Imperial system."

"Any sign of the traitor ship?"

"Negative, Captain. Just the planet."

Nemros turned to glare at the mentioned green orb that continued to float in the void in direct defiance of his best attempts to batter it into submission with the force of his gaze. Davriel's voice drew him back towards the command throne a moment later. "There are, however, signs of habitation. A number of what appears to be destroyed dry docks are in orbit of the planet, though they are woefully undersized."

"How undersized?" Nemros asked tersely. Habitation? Possibly a xeno homeworld?

"They could service the Imperial Navy's Sword-class frigates with some difficulty, but anything larger than that would be impossible."

Nemros stared at the Shipmaster, sensing that the man was not quite done with his report.

Davriel seemed hesitant to continue, as if the next bit of information would displease the Space Marine captain. "Captain…" the man began. Nemros could hear the trepidation within the man's usually flat voice.

"Speak, Shipmaster," he said encouragingly. Or at least, as encouragingly as he could with his voice distorted into a grotesque parody of itself by his sneering helmet.

"The crew are still unsure, but the auspex scans seem to be indicating that the life on the planet below us is human."

Nemros stared, the glaring red slits that formed the eyepieces of his helmet slowly shifting from Davriel back to the lonely world. A non-Imperial human world? How? Was this a lost colony, settled during the first great human diaspora before the Dark Age of Technology, somehow surviving against all the odds to the present day? Or was this something else entirely? An enclave of renegades hiding from the wrath of the Imperium?

"There is one final detail Captain," came the Shipmaster's voice from behind him.

"What is it?" he said absently, his mind still focused on the myriad of possibilities that surrounded this new world.

"While we are still working on a translation matrix for the transmissions we are intercepting, there appears to be two separate factions on the surface which are in conflict with each other."

Curious. It appeared there was only one way to solve this riddle.

"Sergeant Thram," he spoke into his vox.

"Captain?" Thram's voice came crackling back a moment later.

"I have new orders for you and your squad. Report to Brother Manswell in the armory, urban loadout."

"Captain?" Thram repeated, confusion lacing his tone this time.

"Ready yourself for a drop brother," he said. "I will explain more when you and your squad are headed for the surface."

Richard Helermann was so tired. How long had been since the last time he had slept? Four days? Five? Cerberus was in no mood to give him and his fellow resistance fighters the courtesy of anything beyond the lightest of dozes these days.

Benning was a world under siege in a galaxy gone mad. After the destruction of the local Alliance fleet by those mechanical squid things, Reapers he had heard others call them, Cerberus terrorists had descended upon their helpless world and had begun abducting people for God only knew what purposes. The Alliance was not coming, bogged down as they were with the Reapers that were rampaging throughout the galaxy, and the Council did not care for their plight. The people of Benning were truly on their own.

To his shame, Richard had been too frightened to resist, too scared to defy his oppressors in the beginning phases of the occupation. He had watched as his neighbors and friends had been hauled away, and yet he had done nothing. It had not been until Commander Shepard and the crew of the Normandy had launched a daring raid upon the Cerberus garrison that he had been inspired to take up arms with the burgeoning resistance and dare to spit in the face of the enemy.

Now, he and a dozen others found themselves trapped within an abandoned subway tunnel with Cerberus troopers closing in on their location.

"Well," a dirty resistance soldier named Kevin said from next to him. In a previous life, the man had been an interior decorator. Now he was a hardened killer. Strange indeed, Richard mused, were the twists and turns life was prone to taking. "Let's hope Mikael was able to get those civilians out of the city."

"He did. I'm sure of it," rasped Sarai, a woman that had been a teacher before Cerberus came. "Now we just gotta teach these assholes what it means to think they can do with us as they please."

"Amen," Richard muttered hoarsely, his throat dry and aching beyond all belief.

There were no more words. Each resistance fighter had accepted this fate as an inevitability ever since the moment that they had taken up arms against the invaders. Now all that was left was to face their deaths with dignity.

As Richard moved over towards a broken section of the tunnel and stuck the barrel of his scavenged Mattock rifle out through the cracks at the encroaching Cerberus soldiers, he thought he caught the sight of a plume of fire descending from the heavens towards the planet. Shaking his head to clear what he figured to be a hallucination, he took aim and opened fire on the Cerberus troopers, catching one in the shoulder and sending the man spinning to the ground in a spurt of blood.

Ducking back behind cover he noticed the orb of fire still dangling in the sky, though much closer now. Squinting, he noticed it was drawing even closer by the second at an alarming rate, and the trajectory seemed to place its landing spot right on top of him. Could Cerberus have decided to simply launch an orbital bombardment on the world and grab whoever was left in the aftermath? If so, why would they still have troops planetside?

He was shaken out of his reverie by a near miss that showered him in broken stone. Cursing himself for his inattention, he turned and emptied the rest of his thermal clip into the Cerberus position. Whatever the bastards had decided to do, Richard was not going to go out quietly.

A shriek filled the air, drawing the attention of all the combatants upwards in time to see a cylindrical object skip off the side of a prefab, sending the sterile white building groaning into the streets below, before slamming into the surface with a massive impact, kicking up a cloud of dust and debris as it did. Dozens of pairs of eyes stared at the grey and black metal pod warily, unsure as to what they had just witnessed.

A hiss of hydraulics cut through the tense, still air as the sides of the cylinder unfolded, revealing a quartet of giants clad in armor that was painted the same color as the pod and marked by the occasional piece of paper held in place by what appeared to be wax. Squinting red slits winked evilly as they took in the sight that lay before them, while everyone held their breath, waiting to see what these newcomers that were currently pounding down the ramp that the side of their pod had created for them would do.

A harsh, barking command ripped through the air, laced with static and mechanically deepened beyond the point of sounding anything like a human, which Richard presumed these newcomers to be given the general shape of their bodies, could make. No one could understand them, and after a few moments the command was repeated, louder this time. Still no one dared to move.

Suddenly one of the Cerberus officers, Richard remembered that the Alliance coordinators had dubbed them 'centurions,' leapt to his feet and pointed at the newcomers. As one, the Cerberus troopers turned and opened fire on the giants, who stood exposed in the center of the street.

Richard thought that that was it for the newcomers. That they would be cut down in a hail of mass accelerator fire before they could even react to the sudden aggression on the part of Cerberus. So it came as no small surprise when the bulky armor of the giants shrugged off the small arms fire with almost contemptuous ease. He was further surprised when the giants reacted even before the initial volley had reached them, bringing fat-barreled guns to bear on the white-armored forms of the Cerberus troopers.

Thunderous blasts accompanied by flares of light erupting from the muzzles of the stocky guns that the newcomers bore, deafening him with the volume of the noise put out by the weapons. Turning back to look at the Cerberus soldiers, he saw them being blasted off their feet in great gouts of blood, the bullets of the newcomers blowing giant holes out of their armor and flesh and tearing entire limbs off of those unlucky enough to be hit in either the arm or the leg. One trooper was hit in the head, and faster than Richard could blink, the entirety of the man's head, neck, and most of his upper torso was gone.

Centurions signaled for a withdraw, launching smoke from their modified rifles in an attempt to spare themselves and their men from the brutal weaponry of the towering soldiers that were slaughtering them. However, the helmets that the giants wore must have included some sort of thermal imaging as the accuracy of the massive guns was unchanged by the billowing canisters of gray and white smoke.

Over the course of ten seconds, between the time that the first Cerberus shots had been fired and the last discharged bolt shell had tumbled to the ground after being ejected out the side of the weapons of the giants, the four newcomers had butchered almost thirty Cerberus soldiers with nothing more than a few scratches upon their hulking frames. Richard and the rest of the resistance fighters gaped openmouthed in awe and more than a little bit of fear at the spectacle that had played out before them.

That awe shifted solely to fear when the giants shifted their gaze to them, as if contemplating finishing them off as well, despite the fact that none of the resistance fighters had shot at them. Then, after a brief yet incredibly charged standoff between the two groups that had Richard believing that he had survived everything the war could throw at him so far only to meet his end at the hands of these mysterious soldiers, the giants turned and tromped off north, deeper into the heart of the city.

After they had disappeared from sight, Kevin turned to his comrades and asked, "That just happened for everyone else, right?"

Richard said nothing, still unsure whether he should thank God for these mighty new soldiers that heralded their salvation, or to crawl into the deepest hole he could find and never see the light of day again.

"Captain Nemros, group one has proven hostile and has been eliminated. Your orders regarding group two?" Thram said into his vox as he and his brothers glared at the group of civilians wielding those oddly shaped rifles of theirs. The previous group had used the same weapons and had been utterly powerless against the protection granted by his mighty suit of power armor. This group promised to fare even more poorly should Nemros give the word.

"Negative, stand down Sergeant," came the order after nearly a minute of him and his brothers marking targets. "Proceed to rally point Alpha and plant the beacon. Auspex scans are showing more of group one headed in your direction."

"Understood, proceeding to objective now," he confirmed before closing the vox channel and opening one to his squad. "Brothers, leave them for now. The chapter has need of our services elsewhere."

"They would make for poor foes anyways," Hrim said as they made their way out of the street and towards the blinking rune on their HUD that signified their destination. "Even the Whiteshields of the Guard are capable of putting up a more disciplined fight than they."

"You and your obsession with honorable combat," Joh intoned, his gravelly voice rumbling over the vox. "We are Space Marines. We do the Emperor's bidding no matter how honorable it may be."

"Enough Brothers, save your verbal spars for when we are not on the battlefield," Thram admonished the pair before an argument could break out between them. "Eyes open, the enemy could be anywhere in this maze of a city."

The sharp crack-boom of a bolt being launched from Malthus' Stalker-pattern bolter, followed swiftly by the headless corpse of an enemy sniper tumbling out of a window and into the street in front of them, emphasized his point. Silence reigned as they made their way towards the landing pad that had been designated as rally point Alpha, only occasionally hindered by pockets of resistance, though the primitive nature of these humans weapons and armor ensured that any delay was minor at worst.

"Captain, I have Alpha within my sights," Thram reported, his chronometer informing him that it had only taken them thirty minutes Terra standard since leaving the drop pod to reach the street that overlooked the site that the Captain had ordered them to secure.

"Excellent news Marine, squads Delta and Scipio are on their way via Thunderhawk now, and Brothers Klivak and Yonthul stand ready to teleport in should you require heavy assistance," his Captain informed him.

"Sergeant," Malthus said, gesturing towards a nearby hab-block in which a larger group of enemies was gathering. His helmet immediately began adjusting his vision to better suit his needs, allowing him to see that even more foes were on the way.

"Captain, requesting heavy assistance. Renegades will attempt to overrun the landing zone before squads Delta and Scipio arrive," he voxed up to the Shadow while gesturing towards his brothers to assume defensive positions. Kneeling down, he pulled the homer off of his back and muttered the Litany of Activation, watching as the device unfolded and began to pulse almost imperceptibly.

"Understood Thram. Tactical support is inbound."

He reached cover just as the first shots began to rain down around him.

Closing the vox channel to his brothers on the planet, Nemros opened a new one to the veteran Marines that stood ready to shed the blood of the foes of the Emperor, no matter what they were. "Brother Klivak, are you and Yonthul ready?"

"Just give us the word Captain, and the heretics shall fall before us," the monstrously deep voice on the other end reported.

"Most heartening Brother." A soft beep from the console near him signaled the activation of Thram's teleport homer. "You may proceed. Show them that none may stand before Space Marines."

"Understood. Deploying now Brother," the voice of Klivak, clad in Tactical Dreadnought Armour, said as he and Yonthul were whisked from the bowels of the ship to the surface of the planet instantaneously by the holy mechanisms within their blessed warplate.