Chapter-5

Houston, we have a problem.

250 miles above Earth.

Karl fumbled his way through the ISS mid-deck, the bulky EVA suit making movement tricky in zero-g. Reaching the airlock, he met up with another astronaut, Morgan and they headed to the briefing room together.

Crammed inside were the rest of the ISS crew - 7 astronauts, 3 Vostokvakians and 4 Ulraznavians. Everyone looked anxious as Alan spoke into the radio.

"Houston, we copy," Alan said. "What's the situation planetside?"

The reply was grim. Enemy forces had blitzed major cities worldwide, inflicting heavy casualties. DEFCON 1 across Earth's militaries.

"Jesus, this is insane," muttered Marc. "Are we talking about an alien invasion here?"

Before Houston could respond, a new message cut in. "ISS, we've got an unidentified craft approaching your location fast. Not one of ours. Intercept in under 2 minutes."

"Intercept?" Karl echoed in alarm. "You mean this thing is coming right at us?"

The astronauts looked at each other in dismay. They were sitting ducks in orbit. If the invaders could reach them up here...

Karl hurried to the nearest porthole, searching the star-speckled blackness for any sign of the encroaching contact. How the hell were they supposed to fight back in space?

He scrubbed a circle of frost from the thick glass, peering out desperately. They needed a miracle to survive up here now.

Orbit above Nova Arcadia

Something was amiss. Inquisitor Gerhart Enoch couldn't quite pinpoint it, but there was something about this mission that confused him. Rather, it was the planet itself. On the surface, it looked just like Ancient Terra's or Cadia's with a large ocean that covered 70 percent of the planet's surface. The land mass of the world was divided into a variety of ecosystems each different. Also was the fact that the 7 continents did not resemble any familiar drawings or sketches from even the 21st millennium. The planet was also twice as large as Terra or Cadia, more like a gas giant, which was impossible since that meant it should technically not have life.

However, the unfamiliar geography wasn't the only cause of his unease, his pilot had reported a Warp anomaly and the resulting damage they had sustained.

"How severe is the damage?" asked Inquisitor Enoch, pressing the button on his headset.

"My Lord," responded his pilot, Lt. Krix, from the Valkyrie's cockpit, "system diagnostics are complete. The ion rockets are completely fried, most likely due to the Warp anomaly we encountered. We're currently relying on maneuvering jets, but once we enter the atmosphere, our mobility will be limited."

This was deeply concerning. They would eventually need to land as the Valkyrie wasn't designed for prolonged exo-atmospheric operations. They would have to depend on the fleet for assistance. If regular Vox channels were unusable, he would have to rendezvous with a psyker and attempt to send an astropathic message.

"Rebel spacecraft detected, My Lord," his headpiece buzzed, "appears to be disabled. Should I destroy it?"

"Do we have any lifeforms on board?" the Inquisitor asked.

"Yes," Lt. Krix's voice replied, "auspex shows seven humanoids."

"And how do we know they're disabled?"

"They would have detected us and taken evasive actions," the pilot explained, "I believe they might be a prototype of some sort, damaged and adrift."

Enoch found it strange. He was tempted to order the multi-laser to destroy these miserable beings out of spite for this wretched world. But something felt off today, and perhaps these people had valuable information. "Bring us alongside the rebel spaceship," he commanded, "find an entrance and prepare for boarding."

"Yes, My Lord," Lt. Krix replied, confused but unwilling to question the Inquisitor's orders.

The Inquisitor then turned to the five Inquisitorial Stormtroopers in the cramped passenger cabin. They were dressed in black carapace armor with red fatigues and faceplates. "Get ready to board the enemy ship," he instructed, "we have seven humanoids on board. Set your weapons to stun. Tear their ship apart if necessary, but I want them alive." He looked at the tallest Stormtrooper. "And no disintegrations."

"As you wish, My Lord," the Stormtrooper Sergeant replied, his faceplate showing no emotion except unwavering loyalty to the Emperor.

The Valkyrie shuddered as its docking clamps latched onto the side of the strange alien vessel. In the passenger compartment, all was silence but for the hissing of life support systems.

Inquisitor Enoch gazed pensively out the small viewport as the skies outside slowly darkened from blue to black. Sunset on this alien world, and what mysteries it yet held.

An eerie stillness fell over the Valkyrie's passenger cabin as the craft drifted closer to the strange alien vessel. Through his helmet filters, the sergeant couldn't help but feel a prickle of unease at this whole situation. None of it felt right.

Dim warning lights flickered in the gloom as the pilot ran pre-docking checks. The Inquisitor sat stoically, no doubt pondering mysteries known only to his kind. His troopers waited, like automated killing dolls. But they were still men underneath, and men had doubts.

The red warning lights bathed the compartment in an eerie crimson glow. Within their suits, each trooper sensed his comrades' rising tension as keenly as his own.

Sergeant Bale shifted his weight, fighting the urge to check his weapons again. Useless venting of energy that could cost lives in an ambush. His visor displays flickered intermittently, glitches in the faulty cabin systems. Or something more insidious at work?

No, stay focused. His gaze flicked to each trooper in turn - Helm tightening his grip on Hotshot Lasgun until the tube whined in protest. Kirin rocked gently on her heels like a caged animal. Gant fiddled with his power knife, the low rasp grating on Bale's nerves.

Young Deak sat stock-still and statuesque, no tell to betray his state of mind. Bale envied his composure as the seconds crawled by with hellish lethargy. How long had it been? An hour? A day? Time distorted under pressure until each breath dragged like an eternity.

A faint clank reverberated through the hull as magnetic grapples took hold. The cabin lights flickered once, twice - and went out altogether. Emergency strips glowed balefully crimson along the walls, bathing everyone in a hellish pall.

The sergeant tensed, ready to purge whatever xeno or traitor filth awaited them in those lightless tunnels. But his battle-honed instincts screamed that the true enemy lay closer. In the impenetrable shadow within their master's gaze, in mysteries, they'd never live to unravel.

A metallic groan signaled the airlock's obedience. Through his optic augmetics the sergeant saw it widen like a maw, exposing a raw nightmare. He shouldered his weapon, following hard on the Inquisitor's boots into that abyss. The others fell in like trained hounds on a hunt, gripped by nameless dread. What had they been sent to find, in that lightless abomination of a ship?

Behind sealed visors, five pairs of eyes turned in soul-deep apprehension to the darkness waiting to receive them. Their master had spoken. They had no choice now but to see this through, wherever the warp-spawned path may lead.

Enoch tilted his head, noticing a faint change in the atmospherics. The cabin was ever so slightly depressurizing as the reinforced pressure doors to the docking tube sealed shut. Now fully isolated from both craft, any sudden danger could mean a grisly death by vacuum.

His hands folded patiently behind his back, aware his troopers might be feeling the tension far more viscerally. They'd been chosen for their proof under fire, of course, but the waiting was another kind of trial entirely. One only the Emperor's will could see them through.

A burst of static spilled from the command commlink. "Docking complete, my lord. Troop squad may advance at your word."

The Inquisitor drew a slow breath, then spoke clearly into the pickup at his throat.

"Proceed."

The hiss of parting airtight seals was their darkest doom's-day knell. A knell to damn them all. Through his faceplate, the sergeant saw only pitiless shadow and hated himself for the jolt of pure terror it struck within his breast.

Steady, he muttered behind clenched teeth. Steady. For the Emperor...

Bad Orb

Ulraznavian Federation.

HAUPTMANN ANNA MEYER

9.PANZERDIVISION

Ulraznavian Western Group Army

Dawn of June 3rd, 1995.

Officially day-2 of the War.

They'd survived the night, but not without casualties. Anna was surprised her tank had survived at all to be honest. Looking out at the foggy summer dawn, she could see the wrecks and smoking hulls of the strange enemy tanks, as well as warm infantry corpses, enemy infantry corpses. The remaining Panzergrenadiers had retrieved one of the bodies and had found they were human- it had been hypothesized, but never proven.

"Status report!" she shouted at her crew. All of them, Marai, Julia, and Sabine had survived the night. But that was the only thing she could say was good. The rest was a disaster. Their tank, their beloved Leopard 2A4, had a huge gash in the turret, the barrel was bent, the commander's cupola was destroyed, and the driver's vision slits were broken. Not to mention the other various smaller holes in the hull, from the machine gun fire. And it seemed to have developed a chronic oil leak.

"Fucking hell, that's one nasty-looking wound!" said Sabine, the gunner. She had the same injuries as Anna and was probably the worst for wear of the crew. Julia, the loader, was the best off. And Marai, the driver, had a few bruises and scratches. They were in a sorry state.

"It's a miracle the turret hasn't fallen off," mused Marai.

"Well, I'd like to see you do better," grumbled Anna.

"You've got the map?" asked Marai, pointing to the rolled-up paper on the dash.

"Yeah, yeah. Don't worry. It's marked," said Anna.

"The only good news is the engine's still running. We've got fuel, and we can drive. That's all that matters. Get back into your stations, we're not going to drive just yet." Anna ordered.

The three girls got back into their stations, Meyer herself stared out of the viewport, not that the view outside was pretty. Smoke from still-burning wrecks of the enemy's strange tanks and IFVs mixed in with the usual morning fog, obscuring visibility till they could barely see anything in front of them. A fire meanwhile had erupted on the slope of the hull, a small one it didn't seem to be of much danger yet so they had not bothered to put it out.

Meyer herself wondered just how the hell they had survived the night. All throughout the evening of June 2nd, the enemy had assaulted them in mass waves. Casualties had been heavy, with 3 Leopard 2s remaining in action. Most of the IFVs were destroyed and so were most of the infantry.

The 1 ACR had suffered too, with its own IFVs surviving as well as most of the infantry, but losing one of the Abrams tanks, bringing their remaining tanks up to two.

"Captain, I've got movement outside the fog," Marai spoke up from the driver's seat. "Multiple shapes approaching, looks like a half-dozen...no, closer to a dozen."

Anna peered through her battered viewer but saw only shifting gray. "Can't identify through this murk. Sabine, status on main gun?"

The gunner climbed back into her seat and gripped the torn and dented controls. "Barrel's still bent but it'll have to do. Loading mechanism's jammed again though."

Julia swore as she wrestled with a recalcitrant ammunition case. "Might be the last round we get off, ma'am."

Tension coiled through the cramped fighting compartment. After endless hours of bombardment the night before, none had expected to see the sunrise. Now their survival hung by a thread as unseen enemies closed in.

Anna tightened her grip on the intercom. "Alright girls, look alive. Soon as you get a target, Sabine, you are cleared hot. I'll try and ID them from up here."

Fog curled and eddied outside, playing tricks with shape and distance. Anna strained to penetrate the murk, hoping against hope for friendly colors to emerge rather than the ominous grey-black of the invaders.

Something glinted - a glimpse of metal. She opened her mouth to order Sabine to hold fire, only to snap it shut again as more shapes coalesced around the first. Too large, too blocky, all wrong.

Her tone dropped to an all-business rasp. "Sabine - take the shot. Engaging hostile infantry, hundred meters."

A deep boom shook the tank as a high-explosive shell tore from the ruined gun. The target vanished in a ball of angry red flame. But more followed in an endless tide.

Outside, in the fog.

Corporal Erasmus Kranz, 5th Cadian Armoured Regiment, trudged in the foggy quagmire. Captain Erstine was in front of him, chainsword and laspistol in hand, magnoculars around his neck while behind him, the rest of 12 AT Platoon walked.

The landscape was mysterious, with burning vehicles and the smoke they created mixed with the morning fog, creating a smog that was as hard to see in, as it was hard to breathe in.

"Alright! Garix says that the enemy is probably at the end of its rope. 12th artillery bombarded them! And all throughout the day, the evening and the night we attacked! Now we'll only have to deal with remnants!"

Kranz coughed, he was the one lugging an RPG in his arms, he didn't know if there were remnants and all that. He scratched at the scarred flak armor over his chest and continued trudging forward cautiously through the foul-smelling mist. His lasgun was gripped tight, its hefty bulk pulling at tired muscles. Though the Captain spoke with optimism, Kranz had seen enough battle to doubt any foe was truly spent after a single confrontation.

Shapes loomed indistinctly ahead - wrecked vehicles half-glimpsed through swirling smoke. Kranz saw Cadian hulks amongst the rebel make, a grim reminder of the price already paid. Ahead Erstine motioned a halt, crouching to trace patterns in the ashy dirt with his chain gauntlet. "Tracks lead that way," he rumbled. "Remnants or reinforcements, we'll soon know."

Kranz nodded, shouldering the unwieldy RPG and squinting into the gloom. His laser sight probed the mist, picking out cracked branches and torn foliage ahead. Too much for simple wildlife. A chill kissed his skin despite flak padding. This place felt wrong down to its bones, shadows within shadows waiting to pounce.

A noise snapped his head around - was that a faint engine thrum, or just nerves fraying? Through filthy eyes he scanned till his aching neck protested, seeing nothing but spectral tree-shapes dancing at the edge of vision.

A hand clamped his shoulder spurring a violent flinch. Erstine gave a grim shake of his head and pointed onward with pursed lips. Kranz followed, footfalls leaden as his lascannon swept ceaselessly, trigger finger stiff and itchy. This place crawled under the skin worse than any enemy. He muttered a prayer to the Emperor under rasping breaths and pushed grimly into the mist-haunted murk.

They had to end this, and soon, before the mist crawling in his mind became as thick as that obscuring the real enemy waiting hungrily out there somewhere in the shrouded killzone ahead. His flamer stood primed should the unnameable emerge from the spectral trees.

Hanna Meyer.

"wait for it!"

Anna looked as the enemy infantry appeared through the grey smog. She looked down to see Sabine fiddling with the trigger.

"Stop that!"

Sabine stopped, before beginning again.

"I said stop it! Wait for them to get close."

"How close?" Julia asked as she loaded a shell into the gun and slammed the breech.

"Wait... HE Loaded?"

"Yes," Julia replied.

The soldiers were close enough that she could see them semi-clearly. Their fatigues must have been a khaki color before last night's assaults had dulled it, the same could be said about their body armor. A lot of them had winged skulls stamped on their helmets and weapons while their shoulderpads had unit numbers. And their faces resembled any other soldier, Anna realized. Caked with dirt, blood, and grit, and with tense eyes, human eyes.

Their officer, he had a chainsaw sword and a pistol called back to the men, saying something in a guttural rasping language that while sounding like words of encouragement seemed unnatural to hear coming from human lips.

"Marai, after Sabine fires, I want you to lay down some suppressing fire with the coaxial MG, got it?"

Sabine's breath frosted the optics of her targeting computer as she peered intently at the approaching enemy soldiers. Their shapes loomed ever clearer through the thinning mist, like specters given dull flesh-tones by blood and grime.

At Meyer's terse hand signal, Sabine exhaled slowly and squeezed the trigger. With a deafening roar the main gun belched flame, hurling a high-explosive shell into their packed ranks. The blast threw broken bodies in macabre silhouette against the sulfurous smoke.

Before the shrapnel had finished its deadly pirouette, Marai was traversing and raking the MG across the disoriented survivors. Their screams were lost to the hammering chatter of steel-jacketed lead, but their convulsions as limp forms collapsed spoke all too clearly. Within seconds a dozen men had been reduced to shredded meat.

Meyer radioed curtly. "Reload AP, target any vehicles. Keep firing along that lane, sweep left to right." Sabine complied mechanically as her viewslits fogged red. Some part of her that still thought itself human recoiled, but the soldier knew no mercy in this inferno.

Through the sights more fog-shrouded figures emerged to replace the fallen, their angular features twisted with rage or fear. Perhaps they even shouted empty vengeance - the hull's armored isolation rendered all outside mute. Unhesitating, Sabine triggered another gruesome volley, scouring a bloody furrow through the onrushing dots.

A crunching boom signaled a return shot glancing off sloped frontal armor. Undeterred, the tank traversed its lethal mass and continued the pitiless work of extermination. By degrees the attackers' numbers seemed to dwindle, then finally cease - but for how long in this mutable killing ground?

Sabine rocked back with a gasp, sweat running rivulets through caked gore on her forehead. Her hands shook upon the grips as adrenaline ebbed, leaving a hollow queasiness. Across the cramped crew quarters similar tremors betrayed the brutal cost of survival in this place. Meyer nodded stiffly and spoke into the intercom, cutting through the shell-shocked hush.

"Load AP. Hold and scan for further movement, conserve ammunition. We're not done yet."

Kranz

Erasmus's knees buckled when the shell struck. Captain Erstwine had been closest to Ground Zero, and he had been flung like a ragdoll. Then, green tracer fire had erupted, nailing quite a few of his comrades as the squad fell prone.

He'd seen Gregory, heft up his missile launcher, go prone and take aim. Then a shell intersected its path a hair's breadth from Greg's chest, punching through his body in a spray of gore even as his finger clenched the trigger involuntarily. The tube clattered from limp fingers without firing.

"Holy Shit" he didn't know who said that. Was it him?

Erasmus's world exploded in a hellish roar. His senses spiraled as an unseen fist slammed into his chest, hurling him bodily through the roiling air.

For an agonizing moment, all was white noise and vertigo, his body spinning wildly out of control. Then the miasmic swirl resolved back into a grim half-light hellscape.

Shapes flickered and writhed in the mist-veiled killing field like phantoms, pieces of men fluttering on crimson tendrils. A rent stump where a head had been, a gut-spilled corpse clawing blindly at the blood-churned soil.

His ears were filled with an endless banshee keen that drilled straight to the bone. Through watering eyes, Kranz looked down to see his lasgun no longer in his hands, that something dark and viscous coated his flak armor in glistening ribbons.

Where was the squad? He tried to call out but gagged on ash and copper. Voices filtered in and out of the tolling clamor, their lips forming alien words under rippling helmets.

"Feth, sarge is dust!"

"...ranz, you daft fething grot, answer me!"

Hands seized his shoulders, shaking him roughly. A helmeted face swam into view, mouthing urgently though no words penetrated the veil.

Kranz scrabbled at his ears and gasped, "Sarge? Gregory's down, the Emp...the Emperor..."

But was any of this real? He could still smell the burning flesh, see pieces of his brothers drifting before his eyes. The world pulsed with madness and horror in an unending crescendo...

Short chapter, but a bit more realistic. Comment