Marine Corporal Ryan Taylor looked upwards from his position on the rim of the construction site of Rapture City. It was a massive hole in the earth twenty miles in diameter, that was surrounded by hundreds of deep trenches of varying lengths and depths. The trenches were made for the sole purpose of interring the massive starships of the CFDF government and military in exile. From his position he could clearly see a nine kilometer long battlecruiser slowly lowering itself into a trench with the aid of gravity tether projectors positioned on the ground beneath it, their green colored beams caressing it's hull as it descended.

Ryan was coming back from perimeter patrol, his grey hued power armor was covered in a patina of brown dust from the hours spent trekking the western rim of the construction site. Down below was a tangle of scaffolding and walkways leading to thousands of hab-units that were built into the walls of the hole like seeds in a papaya, using his helmet's vision enhancement mode he could pick out the forms of hundreds of thousands of human workers toiling endlessly alongside automated machines to construct this mother of all time capsules.

In another time, all of this work would be performed solely by machines, the Men of Iron had made human work crews obsolete in the centuries before the Iron War. They did not eat, they did not sleep, they required almost zero human maintenance, and best of all they did not need to be paid. Mankind had grown fat and weak with the absence of manual labor, the days of sweat and toil were long gone. Such hubris and laxity had ill prepared humanity for the day their synthetic servants violently rebelled.

Ryan had grown up in the post-war period, he had never fought against the Iron Men like some of the older veterans had, and from listening to the stories about their meticulous brutality and genocidal tendencies he was thankful that he had not. Ryan was much more used to dealing with the insurrectionists cells that had cropped up following the downfall of the Iron Men and the victory of Mankind. Selfish, dissatisfied colonists that felt they were not getting enough attention from the reconstruction efforts after the war, which had been focused on rebuilding the core worlds that had born the brunt of the war's devastation.

But now it was all in the past, after the military's withdrawal from the core worlds, mankind was tearing itself apart guided by the selfish ambitions of would-be conquerors and self-proclaimed emperors. It was a fight that could not be won, only lost. The Colonial Federation had saved mankind from the machines, only to be ousted by self-serving opportunists that wanted to have a go at ruling what was left of human space. After everything mankind has accomplished since traveling forth from Old Earth, why had it all come down to this?

He approached a bunker complex built just off the rim, it's gray wind beaten polycrete walls were angled, and reinforced with Plasteel-A struts, giving it a ribbed appearance. When he reached the airlock, it cycled open, allowing him to step into the small room.

"Decontamination sequence in progress," a synthetic male baritone announced.

A low hum announced the activation of a high-frequency electromagnetic sterilizing field, a thin translucent sheet of light appeared next to him, it advanced slowly, killing off any and all foreign microbes in the air and on his person. It made a few more passes from left to right before deactivating.

"Decontamination complete, repressurization in progress."

A loud hiss, and pale white plumes of atmosphere came from the ceiling and floor.

"Repressurization complete."

With a mental command, his helmet's HUD winked off, and the helmet split apart down the middle and folded down in segments into his armor's collar. The air smelled fresh here, not like the filtered, metallic tasting air his armor's life-support system constantly recycled. Ryan took a moment to get used to the feeling before he left the airlock.

He stepped into the guard post which was defended by two sentry turrets and four Army grunts dressed in slate grey semi-powered armored suits which were significantly less bulky than the fully powered suit Ryan was wearing. Their stances indicated boredom, they held their HK MP-7000's in loose grips. (Yes Heckler & Koch is still viable in the 25th Millennium)

"Hey shraphead, find anythin' out there?"

"Only the frakking sand," Ryan replied for the hundredth time since coming to this miserable ball of dust. He ignored the trooper and progressed further out of the guard post. He made his way to the middle of the complex where the armor block was located. It was a zone dedicated to servicing the vehicles that went out on patrol around this section of the construction zone. It was also where the marines stowed their power armor for cleaning and refurbishing.

Entering the armor block the first thing he noted was a bunch of techies trying to fit an arm into the shoulder socket of a Sentinel-class battle-walker. Sentinels were twenty-five foot tall engines of destruction dedicated to heavy fire-support duties. They were like baby titans in this regard. It vaguely resembled a humanoid shape, but it possessed a hunch-backed profile, and it's 'head' was a spherical shape bearing an optics cluster recessed into the torso. Underneath it's hunched back were the distinctive exhaust ports for a repulsor-lift jump system which enabled it to 'hop' up to ninety feet into the air in a 1G environment.

He looked at the impressive war machine for a moment before heading down to the armor locker so he could shed his suit and grab some dinner before hitting the rack.


"Ice naps are going to be scheduled soon," a man to the left of Ryan said as he dug into a plate of grox steak and mashed potatoes. His name was Warren Cain, a specialist in his squad. He had brown hair, a little darker than Ryan's and dull green eyes. He like Taylor was dressed in his digital pattern short-sleeved SCU (Standard Combat Uniform) which came in a variable shades of gray and tan.

"Did they say which groups are going in first?" Ryan asked as he popped a piece of red meat into his mouth.

"Well if this amazing meal is an indicator, it might be ours. But I think they will be freezing the non-essential personnel before working their way up. But people are still spooked, nobody has ever been in stasis for the amount of time we are going to be."

Ryan nodded, looking down at his tray. Was this some kind of last good meal before the plunge? Ryan was not ashamed to admit he was scared. He could handle gunfire and the uncertainty that accompanies the moments before the fighting starts; but stepping into a cryo-tube, to spend an undisclosed number of centuries, possibly millenia in stasis. He was practically leaving the world he knew behind for an unknowable future. And what if something went wrong? What if his life support failed and he died? Nobody would know, nobody would care.

Ryan gazed out of the window they were next to, it was in one of the middle levels of Rapture City, the window looked out into the twenty-mile wide chasm the walls of which were populated by the thousands of structures meant to house a population of sixty-million, in and out of cryo. It looked like one of those caves near his childhood home on Charybdis Prime, it's ceilings were coated with bio-luminescent worms that glowed an unearthly white, just like the lit window ports of so many hab-modules.

"What other choice is there?" Ryan asked.

"None I guess," Cain said, "It's like the Old Man said, humanity is fucked and we are the only chance our race has to make a comeback after this 'big event' everyone is talking about. The one that's driving them space elves mad."

Ryan cringed mentally at the mention of the Eldar. Those guys were set to lose even more than mankind if the rate their empire was crumbling was anything to go by. Though the aliens had never been friends to humanity, and their arrogance knew no boundaries, Ryan could not help but sympathize with them.

"What do you think we are going to find? After we wake up." Ryan asked.

Warren set his spoon down and concentrated for a moment, "I don't know man, but whatever it is, it can't be worse than what is happening already."

A growing sense of unease filled Ryan, he did not know why, but something in him knew that the future would be nothing like anything they had ever seen before, and he could tell that things were going to get really ugly before they ever got prettier.

"I'm not taking that bet," Ryan said, still looking at his plate. He had suddenly lost his appetite.


Codex: The Ancients

Sentinel Battle-Walker: An STC design created during the Iron War, the true Sentinel towers over it's poorly conceived Imperial counterpart by ten feet, and accommodates firepower that makes it a match for the Riptide battlesuits used by the Tau Empire. It is capable of operation in environments of up to five standard Gees and can even operate in zero-G. The Sentinel was created to contend with the overwhelming numbers of the Iron Men and their own heavy walkers. Sentinels often work in pairs, to maximize the coverage of their firepower while still remaining a highly mobile force. It wasn't until after the Iron War ended that the design was optimized to include repulsor-lift jump jets and atomantic shielding. (P.S. If you have ever played Titanfall, the Sentinel's appearance and role should sound familiar.)