Chapter 2: Arrival
"Brace yourselves!" Dragus' voice echoed across the bridge. Sparks flew from burst consoles, the holo-screen flickered as outside flames licked the sides of the battered Battle-Barge.
"Plasma Reactors are offline! Engines down, auguries not responding, weapons system are down!" Kalman shouted over the din. His bionic eye blazed as he processed dozens of data-streams from the ship's machine spirit. "Captain, the ship is an uncontrolled descent; we are 47 seconds from impact!" A part of the bridge ceiling collapsed. Serfs screamed twisting cables fell down, power arcing across broken connections. Alarms blared over the chaos, mercifully drowning out the sounds of the wounded or dying.
Dragus gritted his teeth. He reached over to the communications console, next to it the bloody corpse of a Chapter serf who had taken a piece of shrapnel through the head. Dragus ignored the body and grabbed the intercom. He prayed it still functioned. "All hands! This is Captain Dragus! Prepare for emergency planetary approach!" Ahead of him he saw a slab of metal peel off the ship's superstructure and tumble away. Pieces of the ship were shredded off as it hurtled through the planet's atmosphere, a great blaze of fire falling from the heavens.
The planet loomed before them. Dragus could see patches of green surrounded by vast expanses of brown, probably deserts, and the coast of a great ocean extended into the horizon. As the ship hurtled towards the planet, he saw mountains rising beyond the desert's edge. Around him, serfs were chanting prayers to the Emperor. He muttered a silent prayer himself.
The ground rushed towards them, the Battle-Barge leaving a blazing trail behind it. The ship jolted as it hit a low hill, its prow plunging down towards the fast approaching planet.
"Ready yourselves! The Emperor protects, Brothers!" Dragus shouted over the grinding sounds of the ship. Then, in an explosion of earth and shattered rock, the Battle-Barge impacted the planet's surface.
Dragus braced himself, shockwaves tearing through the ship's hull. From the view-port, he saw a wall of earth explode up from the tortured ground as the ship's plummeting mass gouged a deep rend into the planet's crust. Sparks flew from severed connections, broken tiles flying through the air.
The terrible course continued for what seemed an eternity. Trees snapped or were uprooted by the inexorable mass of the Battle-Barge.
Then, with a deafening sound of creaking and grinding metal, the ship's passage ground to a halt. The silence was punctuated by the blaring alarms. Dragus righted himself, "Get men to tend to the wounded. Status report on all systems."
Kalman, emerging from beneath a mass of severed wires and power conduits, nodded, shaking the debris from his armored form, "Yes, Brother. I will go check on the Plasma Reactor. Omnissiah willing it may still be in working order." Dragus turned to the view port, now covered in a tangle of branches and leaves.
"By the Emperor, where did we end up now?" He muttered under his breath. He shook his head and headed down the broken corridor.
[Half an hour later]
Dragus hefted a heavy plate from a downed serf. The faithful servant had once been an honorable engineer of the Chapter, tending to the weapons and armor of himself and his fellow brothers. Now, his broken body lay sprawled where he had fallen, crushed beneath a mass of twisted metal. Dragus paused for a second, then knelt and whispered a prayer for the fallen serf.
"M-My Lord Captain?" Dragus turned to the voice. A young Chapter serf, wrapped in a tattered work-cloak stood before him. Dragus' armored form towered over the man.
Dragus saw the man hesitating, obviously intimidated."Come boy! Give me your report!" Dragus said forcefully, jolting the serf from his stupor.
"Y-Yes, my Lord! Forgive me, I was sent by Lord Argus, he requests your presence in the hangar bay, Sir!" the serf burst out. Dragus gave a curt nod and turned away, the serf giving a bow as he hurried back to his duties. Dragus made his way through ship, emergency already assessing the damage, as the ships tortured hull still blistered with heat from the uncontrolled reentry.
Dragus wondered how this situation had come to pass. He had, as all in the chapter also had, heard stories of ships and even entire fleets being swallowed by the Warp and deposited light-years from their locations, sometimes even thrown through time and space to end up centuries from their time of entry, be it in the future, or even rarer still, into the past. Dragus needed to get his bearings as quickly as possible, there were few things he hated more than finding himself in a blind situation. He cursed silently as he marched through the broken doors of the hangar bay.
"Captain, over here!" Argus' voice boomed from the far side of the chamber.
"Sergeant, report", the Captain called as he walked over to Argus. All around, serfs were picking up upturned crates of ammunition; shells were strewn across the deck by the impact, wrenches and other tools tossed from their containers. The stench of spilled fuel filled the room.
"Looks like this campaign is off to an excellent start Brother!" Argus said gesturing around the room. "From my count we have lost about a third the mechanics and assistants from the hangar and armory. Of our three Thunderhawks none seem to have been heavily damaged, though a falling crane did hit the starboard wing of Thunderhawk 2." Dragus turned to where Argus was pointing. The Thunderhawk lay beneath the twisted remains of a ceiling crane, men swarming over it trying to assess the damage.
"Beyond that, I cannot tell you anything you don't already know", Argus said shrugging, "Thank the Emperor we even survived that descent."
Dragus gave a laugh at his remark, "It will take more than some light turbulence to take the Hammer of Terra out of commission. And certainly not some short drop from orbit." Argus grinned, clapping his gauntlet onto the Captain's armored pauldron.
"Aye Dragus!" he said, "Next to the fight we had against the Greenskins on Bravia IV this is a cakewalk!" Dragus clapped his own gauntlet on Argus' shoulder giving his old friend a brotherly smirk.
Argus turned and walked to the men trying to extricate the pinned Thunderhawk. Dragus also made his way to the main reactor chamber. He had to speak with Kalman over possible repairs.
[Meanwhile, 135km away at Alliance Monitoring Station Gamma]
"Sir! We have confirmed the meteorite has crashed in the forest in this sector, here", the officer gestured to the point on the holo-field. Lieutenant Tracy Wilson leaned back in her chair, hands crossed across her chest.
"And you say it was detected in atmo? No approach warning from the satellites?" she asked turning to the young officer. The man gave a shrug and gestured to the screen. It showed the object's descent path, a thin line depicting its crash into the planet. Tracy narrowed her eyes and shook her head. 'Why do these things keep happening to me...', she thought sighing and rubbing her temples. Her thoughts were interrupted by a voice coming from the command room's entrance. The unmistakable form of a turian was illuminated in the center's harsh light.
"Well now", the turian said, Tracy thought she saw the equivalent of a smile show on his face. "I guess this day just got a lot more interesting."
