Space Marines were shock troops, first and foremost.
Trooper Allon truly appreciated this fact in his final moments of life.
Before this point he didn't really get it, especially upon witnessing the lacklustre performance his comrades were putting on. It appeared to him that any enemy could be stopped with enough firepower, and the idea of shock troops charging straight at the enemy was just stupid.
Allon was not impressed.
They had been taking shelter in the hangar nearest to the Spaceport, a huge, high ceiling dome more used to housing cumbersome Atmospheric landers or the Odd rogue trader craft, it now stood empty but for the troop's unwelcome presence. The troops, initially nervous and fired up, their first feelings about the coming battle had quickly turned to boredom when they realised that their immediate deployment was not immediate at all.
It was in fact, a support role.
Most men watched the battle unfolding before them when they first got off the trucks, those with magnoculars giving a running commentary of their mechanised partners' progress.
Standby, full battledress and weapons primed to reinforce once the star port was taken.
That had been the extent of their orders, and even now the officers were away in some back office deliberating what to do once the port fell, grand plans above and beyond what was necessary for common troopers to know, no doubt.
It was inevitable. They had told them.
Just a matter of time.
Well time was passing slowly and Allon was bored.
He looked out of the vast hangar door Across to the West, to where the battle was raging about a kilometre away in the terminal building, squinting to make out anything through the ferocious downpour.
Allon wished the rain would stop, a bit of sunlight would lighten his mood, already dark at the prospect of dying today under a hail of lasgun fire. He shivered, despite the fact that it was not cold and pulled the collar of his combat jacket up higher around his neck.
Some summer this was turning out to be.
Through the rain he could make out glittering slashes of light as lasfire was exchanged, momentarily lighting up the firers as the attacking forces, The 121st "Ryan's own", made their slow advance.
Every few minutes or so, a stray las bolt would fizzle past, lacking the energy to do any damage at this extreme range but cause enough to make Allon flinch involuntarily.
Hardly any sounds carried across from the battle, the wind whipping away the sharp cracks of lasguns and yells of excited young officers, the only sound carried was the occasional burst of heavy bolter fire as the defenders raked the choke point entrance, stalling the advance with their heavier fire.
The tanks of the 121st stood outside in orderly ranks, some 100 metres away, battened down against the rain and idle, their crews inside sharing the hangar with Allon's own unit, the 223rd light infantry. A unit so poor it didn't even get the honour of joining the attack. It didn't even have a nickname.
The tanks had been ordered to stand down, the Few Leman Russes in particular wielding weapons that could cause great damage to the thousand year old terminal building, which had been deemed too important to the highest echelons of command.
Obviously nobody had thought to tell them that the tanks probably could have crushed all opposition in minutes.
Allon scoffed at the thought.
Instead, the attack was reduced to a sporadic tit-for-tat as the lightly armed assault force, led by inexperienced commanders and reluctant troops, hesitantly pushed against a numerically inferior but better armed enemy, who probably had enough ammo to hold out for days.
Throne, this was dull.
Allon turned away from the enormous hangar doors and ventured further into the building, walking past squads playing cards on overturned ammo crates, a junior officer biting his thumb nail while intently listening to ongoing vox reports and a preacher giving a quiet sermon to some of the more faithful troops.
All told there were just under five hundred men in the hangar building, having waited three hours now for the order to move.
And none were as bored as Trooper Allon.
Allon was about to settle down to a game of regicide with Daiv, 3rd platoon's vox operator when the stout older man gestured for him to stop.
Annoyed at being delayed when all he wanted to do was sit down, Allon was about to gesticulate a suitably rude response when Daiv said.
"You hear that?"
Allon slumped down onto his ammo crate and pawed a playing piece from the table, inspecting it's poorly carved construction.
"What? All I hear is wind and rain."
The older man frowned, before replying, straining his words for emphasis.
"You're sure you can't hear that?"
Allon looked at him quizzically.
Daiv cocked his head to one side and looked away at nothing in particular.
"In the wind, it sounds like its roaring or howling or something."
Allon was about to retort when he heard it too.
"I can hear it. It's getting louder too-"
Allon looked up just in time to see the sheet metal roof of the hanger cave in with explosive force, sending shards of metal and plastek spinning away to the ground below.
Through the hole fell 5 black shapes, giant things on wings of flame, the first one's head shaped like a grinning skull.
And they were screaming.
A sheer wall of noise, amplified by external speakers to ear splitting volume filled the hangar.
Allon was fixed in place, unable to do anything but stare in disbelief at the armoured monsters that fell now amongst them.
Five Bolters firing on automatic added their sound to the screams, the deafening booms echoing around the hangar interior as a cataclysmic thunder, drowning out even the inhuman rage being vocalised by their attackers.
Men were dying before the Death Company hit the ground, bolts exploding inside skulls and blasting apart torsos with overwhelming force. Each massive form thudded to the floor with crack of permacrete, not stopping for a second as they tore among their tightly grouped foe.
The quicker troopers among the 223rd had started to react now, some screaming as they ran in absolute terror away from the nightmarish shapes that were tearing into them, others diving for cover behind stack of ammo crates or anything else that was to hand, before realising the folly of their decisions.
Explosions bloomed as Astartes deliberately fired upon ammo crates at close range, the detonations throwing a storm of fragmentation in all directions, scything down scores of men. Chainblades roared, the rapid swipes of the Death Company's weapons cleaving entire bodies in two or decapitating their prey, throwing limbs and entrails all over the hangar with their unbound enthusiasm.
A few Stoic individuals took up arms with impressive speed and stood firm in the face of impending death, sending accurate volleys of lasfire into the black armoured giants, their faces set with stony expressions of grim determination.
These unfortunate fools went unnoticed by the charging maniacs, being chopped down like so much chaff, their bravery unnoticed by history forever as their features were devoured by revving chain blades and explosive bolts.
Most of the Battalion simply stood still, like Trooper Allon, in complete shock. Their brains, unused to combat as they were, were totally incapable of comprehending the carnage that was being inflicted upon them.
It mattered not to the Death Company how the enemy reacted, all they could see were traitor Astartes at every turn, vile followers of Horus who had to die a violent death at their hands.
Allon was the 157th member of his Battalion to die, roughly ten seconds after the Death Company hit the ground.
Allon, who never really wanted to join the PDF, who struggled through training, died with an ironic smile on his face, which would have seemed peculiar had his killer been any normal enemy.
His last thought before Former Captain Slaught Pulverised his skull with the muzzle of a bolt pistol, was of how he truly understood the definition of a shock troop.
Sgt Saur watched the black forms of the Death Company disappear into the hangar complex some hundred metres below and snarled, willing gravity to pull him faster.
To the South, he could already hear the unique sound of assault cannons, their wailing blast signalling the enemy's blood being spilled. Battle had already commenced and the desire to destroy had consumed all rational thought in his mind, every sense purely focused on destruction.
The two 8 man assault squads fired their jump packs, bright flames signalling their presence in the cloudy sky, and begun a controlled burn to reduce their velocity to a survivable level.
Saur ignored this, watching his altimeter count down with savage glee, waiting 'til the last safe moment.
Looking down at the unyielding ground rushing up to meet him, Saur triggered a full burn for exactly a second, just enough to bring him practically to a halt, before cutting his thrusters and freefalling the last twenty metres.
Melta-bomb primed, Chainaxe revving wildly, Sgt Saur slammed into the top of the Leman Russ with the force of a small bomb, causing the battle tank to rock on its suspension.
Even as his knees bent under the impact, Saur was already fixing the charge into place, pressing the arming rune and leaping clear in one practiced movement.
In mid jump Saur noticed a number of things, his squad all landing on their designated targets all within a split second of each other, carrying out the exact same task as their leader. He also noticed a lone tank, another Leman Russ previously thought to be empty, gun it's engines and tear off in the direction of the battle to the South.
Saur landed with a thump, followed by the dull crump of a melta bomb detonation. Saur moved at a sprint as the Tank's ammo cooked off in one mighty explosion, sending a fireball some twenty metres into the air and buffering his armour with a fearsome shockwave, shrapnel fragments of all shapes and sizes peppering the rear of his battle plate.
He ignored this as a number of other explosions followed the first, lighting up the grey sky in in a cascade of stuttering flashes, giving everything a momentary hue of brilliant yellow, Astartes filters instantly adjusting the light to acceptable levels.
16 Enemy tanks and transports died in half as many seconds.
Over the din, Saur Heard a voice he recognised as his own send a message over the vox.
"Cain, this is Saur. One enemy MBT en route to your location."
He heard a single Vox click on Cain's channel by means of acknowledgement as his body moved towards the hangar complex at a sprint, the rest of Squad Saur falling behind in a loose V formation, weapon motors howling with anticipation.
Cortez had been detailed to deal with the remaining tanks while Saur's squad formed a cut-off group to terminate any would be escapees from the traitor reserve Battalion.
Scores of traitor troops were pouring out of the hangar doors in complete disarray, half of them unarmed, some carrying their wounded comrades and all with wide eyed stares of terror etched onto their faces. Blood curdling screams could still be heard from inside the hangar, twinned with the constant, overlapping noise of multiple chain weapons.
The first Guardsman to notice Saur's squad charging at them just dropped to his knees, closing his eyes in the hope that he was in some terrible nightmare, about to wake suddenly in the comfort of his own bed next his love.
The reality of Sergeant Saur simply ran through him, his armoured bulk first lifting the human off his feet as a ceramite plated knee crashed into him mid stride before the next gigantic step stamped him out of the air and shattered the man's ribcage, crushing all internal organs under one immense boot.
Saur's chosen target was a closely packed group of individuals, ten or so in number, that were cradling a pair of wounded men among them. They had fallen back on primal instincts and formed a protective group, the concept of strength in numbers forming this logical process.
The process didn't really help, however, when confronted by a superhuman warrior that is attracted to blood.
Saur Smelled the fear, mixed with adrenaline, testosterone and most importantly lifeblood as he crashed into his foe, relishing the chance to get to grips with the enemy.
The first man disappeared into a red mist under a downwards swing of the chain axe, the Adamantine teeth chewing him apart in a flash of metal. Saur's momentum took him into the middle of the group, bowling over the men supporting the wounded individuals, snapping bones and knocking wind out of lungs without actually ending any lives.
Saur's bolt pistol appeared in his left hand and banged of a single shot, point blank range into one of the wounded men's torso. The detonation tore the body apart, sending the severed head sailing through the air in a pleasing arc to thud into the hanger wall, leaving a red smear on the Permacrete surface.
Sensing the heartbeats all around, Saur lashed out to his right, the faint tremor of resistance shooting up his arm telling him that he had struck true, cleaving a man in two at the chest.
One brave fellow bellowed in rage and ran, bayonet fixed, straight at the hulking Assault sergeant. The blade stabbed at Saur's chest plate and glanced off, causing the man to stumble, his momentum carrying him under Saur's left arm.
The Sgt smashed his forearm down in a hammer blow, the grip of his bolt pistol caving in the back of the man's head as he fell past.
He didn't get back up.
A second bayonet wielding hero steamed in, stabbing low at Saur's groin, trying to probe for a weak spot. As luck would have it, he caught Saur's knee guard as he strode forward, the blade glancing off the armoured surface to jam into a small gap between joints.
Saur's knee seized immediately, the mechanism cutting off to avoid damage. Unfortunately this meant that the huge Sgt fell to one knee, his right leg unable to finish it's step.
Amber warning runes appeared on Saur's visor, detailing the obstruction, which he blink clicked away, snarling incoherently.
The fleeting look of elation on the guardsman's face disappeared as he regarded the glowing emerald Eye lenses of saur's black Mk5 helmet, just a moment before Saur rammed it into the man's face, turning his features into a bloody crater and launching the corpse off it's feet to land in a tangled heap some feet away.
Saur swatted the bayonet from the stricken knee joint with a flick of his bolt pistol and stood up, feeling a slight jolt to his rear armour as he did so.
A proximity alert rune displayed itself, detailing that one of the traitors had thrown themselves onto his back when Saur's movement was impaired, desperation obviously lending the remaining traitors some semblance of courage.
The marine triggered his jump pack for a half second, the searing blast of the thrusters not enough to lift him off the ground, but more than enough to achieve what he wanted.
The proximity Alert rune disappeared and Saur was rewarded with a strangled scream, the noise cutting off almost as soon as it started as the traitor's voice box was incinerated in the intense heat.
Gritting his teeth in a mixture of joy and barely contained fury, Saur gunned down the remaining three able bodied traitors that were plinking at him with Lasguns, perforating their yielding forms with explosive bolts in one sweeping burst of fire.
A mouth watering smell of charred flesh and burning fat filtered through the systems of Saur's helmet while he reloaded the smoking bolt pistol, causing him to salivate uncontrollably.
Fighting the urge to eat everything he just killed, Saur looked around him for more targets, only to be greeted by a relative calm, too soon, he felt, as surely there were many more heretics to purge. Killing the motor of his chain axe as the cocktail of combat stimms washed from his system, a cold clarity drifted back over Saur's perceptions, setting his mind into gear to prepare for what was to come.
His squad, and the squad of Sgt Cortez stood around, surrounded by the corpses of traitor guardsmen, each battle brother having slain a mere handful of the enemy, nowhere near enough, he knew that none of his Brother's blood lust would be sated by this pitiful display of resistance.
The screams coming from inside the hangar had stopped, evidence enough that everything inside was dead and Brother Chaplain Gornt was calming the cursed brothers to a controllable level. This pleased Saur, as the difficulty in directing the cursed brothers would limit their participation for the next phase, leaving more foes for his assault marines.
The only sounds now where the constant drizzling rain, joined by the gentle crackling of burning tank hulks and the half sobbing, half moaning noise emanating from the final wounded guardsman at Saur's feet. Saur Silenced the pathetic creature with a stamp of his boot before voxing his squad, ordering them to consolidate on his position, in anticipation of the next phase of the assault.