COMMANDO 226
Clash of Iron
When proof of treachery amongst the Adeptus Mechanicus on Meridian became known, the response was anything but subtle. After Magos Dolthem had been publically denounced by governess Elena Derosa for acts of sabotage and murder, the noble houses of Angel Hive demanded the heretics be brought to justice and face execution for their crimes. Angel Forge, granted autonomy from the government through a forced bargain, sealed its gates to the Imperium in protest of the charges. Imperial forces established a siege of the forge as a result. Two months passed.
In the southeast, the Imperial Guard continued to fight against the widening Ork presence plaguing Golgotha Spire, Angel Hive's religious and commercial hub. The ongoing battle, colloquially dubbed the Green Winter, had raged since late 002.M42, when Warboss Smashface's greenskins had made planetfall, intent on looting and pillaging. With no end in sight, Imperial regiments were constantly rotated in and out of the warzone in order to keep the spread of greenskin forces in check.
With the bulk of the Guard forces committed to the Green Winter Campaign, the first strikes made by Magos Dolthem's cult went unanswered. What began as skirmishes against the meagre Imperial picket lines surrounding Angel Forge soon became major offensives, until the threat of Mechanicus aggression could no longer be ignored. The crisis reached a head when several nuclear warheads were launched against Capitol Spire. Only a last minute warning from techpriests still loyal to the Imperium enabled Governess Derosa to raise the Spire's void shields in time and prevent the total destruction of the Spire.
The time had come for retaliation. As hundreds of Imperial regiments continued to pour into Subsector Aurelia, a second front was opened on Meridian, with the singular goal of annihilating Magos Dolthem and his followers. To this end, Derosa made contact with the Priesthood of Mars, presenting her findings to the Ruling Priesthood. Magos Dolthem was declared Excommunicate Traitoris, and the Auxilia Myrmidon, the Mechanicus's siege masters, were deployed to the planet to put an end to the hereteks and reclaim Angel Forge for the Imperium.
Angel Forge, Southern Front, Day 79
The fuel station was the only notable landmark for twenty kilometers in either direction along the encirclement. Captured during the first days of the siege, as Imperial and Mechanicus forces drove the traitor tech-guard back to the walls of Angel Forge, the station now stood amongst a sea of tents and ammo dumps. The large flat roofed structure had been built to accommodate the great cargo haulers that once traveled along Meridian's super-highways. Now, it served as division headquarters for several Maveron regiments of the Imperial Guard. Silver and green Maveron flags flew from the station's roof and hung over the entrances.
The morning fog that lay over the ground quickly dissipated as the skies opened and the daily deluge of rain swamped the region. After a short but bitterly cold winter, spring on the northern continent was heralded by the annual wet season. It was in no small part caused by the immense heat exhaust created by the hive spires that dotted Meridian's surface; weather on the planet was fierce and prone to extreme changes.
Corporal Javar Linkstrom of the 373rd Maveron Division, pulled his rain cape higher over his neck. The heavy downpour rattled against his helmet. His package of lho-sticks were soggy. His boots were waterlogged. He was miserable.
True, siege duty was better than going blade to blade with the greenskins in Golgotha Spire, but that was a poor consolation for the young trooper stuck on watch duty. Linkstrom had hated Meridian from the moment he'd stepped off the troopship. First it was the menial guard duty, while the other regiments went off to fight in the true battlefields across the subsector. That naive outlook had quickly vanished when the Green Winter began, and the horrors he'd witnessed there. Then came this nightmare war against the machine men. Now, he would have given anything for that menial guard duty. Anything other than this hell.
Oh true, the Auxilia Myrmidons had built a spectacular siege line around Angel Forge to encircle the traitors. Nearly thirty feet high at some points and bristling with weaponry so strange and ancient that figuring out how they worked baffled Linkstrom, it stood between the Imperial camps and their foe. The loyalist Mechanicus forces were master siege workers, and the Maveron regiments on the southern front could not ask for better aid. But a wall was just a wall, and that hadn't stopped the traitor tech-guard. Unmoved by emotions or poor weather, they assaulted Imperial positions constantly. The field that lay between Imperial lines and the forge was littered with thousands of bodies, all sinking into the mud that plagued friend and foe alike.
Screw this. Javar needed a hot cup of caffeine. When nobody was looking, he slipped away from his post. Sloshing through puddles up to his ankles, he wound his way through the camp towards the gas station. Maybe the officers had opened a new box and he could snag a few packets for himself and the platoon. The commander would never notice a couple missing.
A convoy of troop trucks was working its way up towards the station on their way to the frontline, half a kilometer north. Linkstrom perked up when he saw them; perhaps his rotation was up. The Maveron lances operated on a three week rotation schedule: one week at the front, two weeks at the rear echelon. His heart sank when he saw the transports did not bear Maveron colours, but rather an olive green pattern from a different regiment.
The soldiers in the back of the truck were a vicious looking bunch. Their heavy upper body armor and narrow brimmed helmets made each man look like a crushball player. Compared to the light flak coat and simple plasteel shoulder plates distributed to the Maverons, these guardsmen looked more like the traitor Magos's Skitarii, if tech-guards wore a permanent scowl. The sides of each truck bore the markings 36/46/85 VG. A commissar rode in each of the five trucks, and Linkstrom realized what he was looking at.
This was a penal company, or a RIP detail. He'd heard stories about how other regiments dealt with criminals in their ranks. The dirtiest, deadliest scum of the regiment would all be rounded up into special detachments and then be given suicide missions to prove their loyalty. Surviving members were given the chance to appeal their punishment and be returned to their units, while the dead served their purpose by dying on the battlefield.
The Maverons had a much simpler approach: commit a crime and be executed. It was no secret that the number of Maveron soldiers on Meridian nearly outnumbered the other Imperial regiments combined. There was no shortage of manpower, and no tolerance for delinquents. Linkstrom sometimes skirted the law, but he was always careful not to get caught. And his crimes never went beyond some creative "scavenging", like he was about to do at the station.
Just being under the flat roof of the fuel pumps was a relief. Inside, the station was bustling with officers conversing with adjutants, liaisons from other regiments and administratum bureaucrats, and the myrmidon himself. Each regiment on the siege front had at least one centurius from the Auxilia overseeing their sector of the encirclement. Centurius Wophesh was a terrifying figure, towering over the Maveron soldiers, clad in layers of iron and steel. With his red hood pulled back, the extent of his mechanical augmentations was abundantly clear. The only thing Linkstrom could truly say was still human were the dead eyes staring lifelessly out from under Wophesh's metal brow.
Linkstrom wheeled into the storeroom to avoid the centurius. The tech-priests made him uneasy, especially the hulking destructors that followed Wophesh everywhere. They were even less humanlike than he was; their arms had been replaced with massive weapons that looked like they should be mounted on tanks, not carried. Common enemies made for strange alliances, and not one that Linkstrom particularly liked.
"Afternoon, Javar." Supply sergeant Raverro looked over his shoulder as Linkstrom slipped inside. The sergeant was a short man with a face that looked like somebody had punched it inwards and stayed that way. Despite his looks, it was an open secret amongst the enlisted men that Raverro ran a black market ring underneath the officers' noses. Extra Lho-sticks, cigars, alchohol, and even highly illegal stimulants and combat chems, he had it all, if a soldier had the money to pay or something to trade.
"Caffeine packs, Rav," Linkstrom threw a handful of the local coinage down on the table. "I know you have them, hurry up."
Raverro waved his arms mockingly, taking his time to grab the packets. "What's got you in such a rush, corporal? You miss the rain already?"
"Don't remind me. You'd think we were in the ocean out there."
Raverro grinned nastily and flicked his eyebrows at Linkstrom. "It's nice in here, ain't it?" he said, rubbing it in. "You should've joined the supply corps then, if you hate it out there so much. Need to keep a nice roof over the ammo so it doesn't get wet, I get to ride around in a truck when I'm not here, and, I know everyone's vice, so all I need is a little persuasion and I can get whatever I want."
Linkstrom was having none of it, "Look, you rat, are you going to give me the packets or not? I'm skipping out on sentry duty, can you hurry it up?" He kept glancing nervously at the entrance, afraid that they might draw the attention of an officer, or worse, Wophesh.
"Will you stop looking at the door? Emperor, if you're that jumpy, go out the back. Here, straight from the general's own stash, premium stuff. Now get out of here, you're making me nervous too."
"Jackass," Linkstrom muttered as he closed the door.
Raverro clearly heard him, "Screw you too, Javar!" he called after the corporal, laughing. Linkstrom gripped his caffeine packets and walked away.
No sooner was Linkstrom outside that the sirens began wailing. Incoming fire, he realized. To the north, light flashed against a backdrop of dark clouds, followed by the distant thunder of artillery. Instinctively, he threw himself back underneath the gas station overhang. All around him, other troopers dived for cover wherever they could find it. Some attempted to bury themselves in the mud, for all the help it would do.
The first few shells made it through just before the camp's portable shield curtains activated. The volley of shots landed frighteningly close to the station, blasting large craters where tents once stood. A canvas covered ammo dump went up like firecrackers when the shell struck, throwing liquid promethium over a dozen tents, and then the whole camp started to burn. Linkstrom watched in horror as men were doused in unquenchable flames, while others clutched at missing or mangled limbs. Only a handful of shells, but the damage was severe.
The shield curtain held, however, the kinetic force of the artillery shells dissipating like ripples on oily water. Rising from the Myrmidon's towers, the shield pylons formed an energy barrier aimed towards the forge to protect against indirect fire. But artillery only meant that an assault would soon follow. The skitarii would be on them soon, using the guns to cover their advance.
Men were scrambling back to their feet now that they were safe from the bombardment. Centurius Wophesh strode from the building, followed by his destructors and the 373rd's officers. Wophesh's red cloak was torn back, revealing three additional arms, each ending in a vicious blade, crackling with energy. "All guardsmen to the front!" he barked through an augmented voice box. The dead eyes targeted Linkstrom. "You, corporal, with me!" The sharp tendrils pointing at Linkstrom made it clear it was not up for debate.
As they ran towards the front, Wophesh conscripted every trooper his gaze set upon. Soon, he had several dozen men following him and his bulky destructors. The bombardment above them rocked the shields, casting lightning arcs of energy across their surface. Linkstrom wasn't sure if he should be afraid or awestruck by the incredible firepower. Remembering his training, he checked his lasgun's charge setting and ensured his vox link was operating properly. Captain Deribar's vox channel was nowhere to be found, so he patched into the centurius's. The static and beeps used by the techpriests took a few moments to translate to proper gothic, but it was better than nothing.
The rear line of the encirclement stood at the top of a shallow incline. Some of the troopers lost their footing on the loose mud and had to claw their way up the slope. At the top, Linkstrom was met with an terrifying sight. Across the killing field, the traitor tech-guard were advancing in force across the killing fields. Thousands of skitarii machine men charged the imperial positions, the gyrostabilizers in their legs giving them unerring accuracy as they fired upon the Maverons. Five men were cut down next to Linkstrom before he ducked behind a machine gun nest. The gunners paid him no heed, and the heavy chug of bolter fire nearly deafened him.
The penal troopers Linkstrom had seen before were manning the weapons. Commissars were stalking between the emplacements, shouting and striking at troopers who didn't do as they commanded. Javar saw one man try to make a run for the slope. He made it to the lip before three las bolts from one commissar pierced his chest. The corpse rolled down the muck and slid to a stop at the base of the hill. A single glance from a particularly gruesome looking officer was all it took to get Linkstrom to fire his weapon.
Atop the highest battlements, Myrmidon techpriests activated their weaponry. Mortar batteries thumped and fired high explosive shot against the skitarii. Linkstrom witnessed a massive plasma culverin rake the landscape with a continuous beam that eviscerated all it touched. A myriad of other strange weapons came online, bombarding the tech-guard with explosives, energy blasts and storms of airburst flechettes. But it didn't slow them down. Perhaps they were so augmented that pain no longer affected them?
More and more Maveron guardsmen reached the top of the hill, falling into the trench lines and pouring ever more intense fire onto the traitors. The imperial troopers had numbers on their side, and the sheer firepower provided by the Myrmidons, but the skitarii's deadly accuracy meant that dozens of men died every second. The traitors were closing the gap quickly, drawing into close range. Linkstrom heard the penal commissars call for bayonets. The glint of polished blades stood in stark contrast to the rain and mud, and the guardsmen braced for impact.
Grenades came first, either lobbed overhead or fired from wrist launchers grafted onto the tech-guards' arms. A bomb landed at Linkstrom's foot, but he picked it up and tossed it right back at the enemy. The grenade exploded in midair, hot shrapnel raining down and cutting into skin and metal. One of the penal troopers jumped from his gun nest and fell next to Linkstrom. The nest exploded soon after, taking the lives of two troopers and cooking off the ammunition belt. The trooper gave one glowering look at Linkstrom and then turned back to the fight.
He was a massive man, well over six feet tall and broad as a greenskin. His face, from what Javar could make out, was a mess of scar tissue and deep gouges, like he had taken a face full of burning shrapnel. The lasgun looked tiny in his meaty hands, but the penal trooper used it as well as any Maveron rifleman. He rammed the bayonet into the first skitarius that reached their pit. "Are you just going to sit their staring or fucking help me?" the man roared over the sound of the heavy bolter.
Linkstrom realized he had been sitting idle, and got his feet under him. About three hundred skitarii had managed to break through the killzone and assault the Imperial line. A vicious melee ensued, with guardsmen meeting blade with bayonet and chainsword. Linkstrom found out the hard way to make sure the enemy stayed down for good. Turning his back on a skitarius he had shot down, Linkstrom didn't notice the trooper get back to his feet. The whir of its saw blade barely gave Javar time to react. The saw bit into his cheek, spurting hot blood down his uniform. Falling backwards, the Maveron fired his lasgun on full auto into the machine man, blowing his head off in a shower of oil, metal and flesh.
While the guardsmen struggled in the trenches and foxholes, centurius Wophesh strode across the open ground, targeting the heretics with extreme prejudice. He was protected by a personal use refractor shield, visibly by the slight shimmer of the rain that drizzled over it. In his two human arms, he wielded an axe in the shape of a sharpened gear, while his mechadendrite limbs flailed with blades and digital weaponry. The centurius carved a bloody path through the skitarii, crying prayers to the Omnissiah as he delivered fatal blows. None could stand before his righteous onslaught.
The commissars from the penal detail formed together. Their leader, the gruesome one that had stared daggers at Linkstrom, took his five junior officers into the fray with chainsword and powerfist alike. The commissar roared litanies, "By purging the unclean, you cleanse your souls, men! Through victory you shall gain your freedom from the shackles of sin! Be at them!"
Linkstrom and the penal trooper both pinned a skitarii officer against the sandbags with their bayonets. While linkstrom fired into the traitor's body, the scarred man ripped the belt of grenades from the corpse's waist. With a look of murderous glee in his eyes, the trooper began throwing the explosives back at the skitarii with a trained efficiency. Grenades landed between the feet of clumped soldiers, others that he held longer went off as airbursts, killing several skitarii in moments. Linkstrom realized where the trooper's scars had come from.
The fighting dragged on for several minutes, but by then it was clear that the attack would be repulsed. The full might of the Myrmidon weaponry had cut off the skitarii reinforcements, while more Maveron soldiers were pouring onto the line to repel the enemy. The heavy bolter crew in Linkstrom's pit had been slaughtered by the skitarii, left dangling over the smoking machine gun. He and the penal trooper fell backwards and rested their backs against the side of the dugout. The trooper pulled out a cigar and tossed it onto Javar's lap. Javar nodded and they shared a moment, just sitting there, staring out over the bloody field, without a word between them. What needed to be said?
Eventually, officers from the Maveron regiments made the rounds to collect their men. Wophesh had been so quick to react that he had left most of the senior staff back at the station, seeing the need for troopers at the frontline as his priority. Rather than trouble himself with berating lieutenants and jumped up captains, he and his destructors departed to inspect their automated weaponry. Few were sorry to see him go, even if the centurius had saved the 373rd from being overrun.
It was the commissar that found them first. Up close he was even more repulsive looking. A short man with a wiry frame, he had a long drawn face with a permanent scowl and a crooked, beaked nose. Beady eyes squinted at Linkstrom from under the brow of his cap, but it was the penal trooper he was interested in. "Trooper Vornas," his voice was a snarl to match his face, "I don't recall anything in the procurement regulations that allows convicted men to carry contraband." The trooper looked blankly up at the commissar, a trail of smoke rising from his cigar. "Now, how are we going to handle this?"
"Shoot me and be done with it?" Vornas said, his expression unchanged. The commissar just smiled, and wagged a finger at Vornas, like he was some disobedient schoolchild. While Vornas looked up defiantly, Linkstrom was quietly shrinking away as the officer bore down on the trooper.
"Now why would I shoot you? No, not when I can keep you here longer. I'm sure that would be far worse, wouldn't it, trooper Vornas? Perhaps you want to die. So be it. But it will be on my time, not yours. And I say that you are still useful."
"Are you done, Ornoff?" said Vornas, still unfazed.
"Of course not. That is still contraband, trooper, and you must be punished for it." Commissar Ornoff clapped his gloved hands together. "I think that you may skip entrenching duty today. Go and get yourself a hot meal from the Maverons, and tell them I sent you."
"Whatever, sir."
"Good, see that it is done," Ornoff's gaze turned to Linkstrom, confused at what just happened. "Isn't there somewhere you should be, soldier? Off you go as well." The commissar walked away, leaving the two.
"He punishes you by giving you leave?" Linkstrom asked as Vornas gathered his gear. A whole packet of cigars fell out of the penal trooper's coat. He hesitated, and looked back at the Maveron. "I don't understand what he means to do."
"He's wants to turn the others against me, make them hate me, try to kill me," Vornas said bitterly. He stepped on the cigars and ground them under his heel. "They can try."
After Vornas left, Linkstrom's commanding officer, lieutenant Rakeshk, found him. "You alright, corporal? You want that cheek looked at?" Javar touched his hand to his slashed up cheek. He thought about the scars that covered Vornas's face, and wondered how many more he himself would have before the fighting was over.
"Those men, the penal troops, sir," he asked as they walked back to where the company was gathering, "Who are they?"
Rakeshk glanced at the green armored troopers digging in along the battle line, watched over by their vulture-like commissars. They hurled abuse at guardsmen not pulling their weight, and Ornoff was going as far as to beat some of the men. "They're Vendolanders, Jav. Veterans in the subsector. Been here for years, know the place as well as the locals. Command says that they're being spread out along our sector, one battalion in our center, two on our flanks. Looks like we've got their dregs with us. If one of those convicts comes after a Maveron man, you shoot him dead, you hear? Nobody is going to miss this criminal scum. The only thing they're good for is soaking up bullets."
"Yes, sir." Linkstrom wasn't sure if he meant it. Vornas had saved his life during the fight. And he'd shared a smoke with him afterwards. He didn't know what to think.
Rakeshk must have taken his silence for something else. He shook Linkstrom, "Come on, mate, you don't look well. Let's get you something to eat and sit you down, alright?"
"Yeah, alright."
Author's note: And I'm back. Hope you like it. Maybe I'll get on a roll and update more frequently. Or not.