Colonel 64371- Kurtzen of the 3,671st Siege regiment stood impassive around the bustle of activity that surrounded him. Surveying out from the lenses of his tinted mask he observed the space port he was now standing in, looking towards the series of shuttles filtering down from orbit and back up again in a seemingly endless stream, as if the Suneater were some glutton, vomiting out food so that it might intake more. Around him his men began to marshal. Ranks of Korpsmen stood in blocks, row upon row of them standing as still as grim statues, whilst around them the loaders off of the Suneater scurried about under their impassive stares. Next to him stood the commissar assigned to his regiment, the ever-chatty Serana Vilsk, her mat black greatcoat and red sash standing out as a gash of color amongst the Death Korps' corpse grey greatcoats.
"Your boys appear lovely today Kurtzen" Serena said, pointedly refusing to use his given title. "If you say so commissar" came Kurtzen's response, his curt tones slightly muffled by the mask he wore. "Still thought, it's nice to be off ships isn't it Kurtzen, how those Navy monkeys handle it I'll never know" the commissar quipped. "I suppose. It will be good to do some proper exercises. I fear the men have started to lose their edge" came Kurtzen's response.
Raising an eyebrow, Serana looked over to the colonel, mild surprise written on her face. "And what would make you say that colonel? I think the muttie insurrection was handled quite nicely by our boys, only minor wounds inflicted on our side and near enough three thousand of the scum sent to the bowels Warp. A good showing, no?" the commissar said. "No" said Kurtzen in response.
Grinning slightly at her partner's unusual chattiness, the commissar was about to respond when a voice, velvet and smooth, cut off the commissar before she could continue.
"General, if I might have you attention?" came the silky, feminine voice. Turning away from the growing blocks of his men and supplies being assembled on the landing field, Kurtzen found what he assumed to be the governor's envoy. She was a slight creature, Kurtzen concluded, standing only up to his shoulder, she was dressed in what Kurtzen assumed was some fine formal gown. The dress, a shimmering gossamer azure fell all the way to the floor in such a way that the envoy appeared more to float than to stand.
"I am not a general" Kurtzen growled in response, his flat, heavy voice and his masked appearance leaving the ambassador non-plussed.
"My apologies, if you are not a general, than are you not in charge here?" the woman asked as she pulled a dataslate from somewhere on her person. "It said here that I was to meet with the commander of this force, is that not you?" the mysterious woman enquired.
"These are the 3,671st Siege regiment, my men, and my rank is colonel, not general" Kurtzen stated. There was something almost entrancing about this woman, something about how the breeze toyed with her dress, sending ripples across the fine fabric, seemed to entrance the colonel.
"And I am the assigned commissar to Colonel 64371- Kurtzen, commissar Vilsk, and as commissar it is my duty to act as liaison officer between the 3,671st and any civilian officers." The commissar stated, her normally affable demeanor replaced by a venomous hardness that Kurtzen had only seen from her in combat.
"I see then, perhaps I can hand off the blessed Governor's greetings to you then madam, I have instructions about where you will be billeted, if you would like I..."
"That will not be necessary" Kurtzen interjected, cutting off the aid. "I am sorry sir, what do you mean by, mmhm, will not be necessary?" the woman stated, flat-footed for the first time in the conversation. "That will not be necessary, we already have our quarters assigned to us by high command before we took ship, we are heading for hive block Alexeev to establish our muster point. My men and I are here to act as a vanguard. As soon as they and our preliminary equipment has been landed we will be on our way."
I...I am sorry sir but you can't do that! The streets at this time of day are already clogged as it is without a great horde of tanks running through them, if you give me a day I could perhaps..."
"This was not a request; I am merely stating what my orders dictate. I assure you; my men will cause no disruption to the hive, they are well disciplined as I discipline them myself. You are a civilian, you will do as you are instructed, or I will have you shot as a traitor for interfering in the workings of HIS august Imperial Guard. Have I made myself plain?"
The woman endured the colonel's eerily calmly delivered tirade with commendable poise. Nodding her slowly in confirmation of her understanding she slowly turned and then departed. To her credit, she managed to hide it well. She did not run away as another might have, and her posture was still straight as she moved, but Kurtzen could feel it. She walked just that bit too quickly, her head motion just that bit too rapid for her to be at ease. She was afraid. Good. A garrison duty was always that much easier when the civilian population was warned what would happen if the Death Korps is impeded.
"And I'm reminded once again why I am the one who does the talking" said commissar Serena as she sighed to herself. Shrugging, Kurtzen turned back towards his men and judging that enough had arrived ordered them forward. Let the populace see who had come to defend them. And let them know the price of disloyalty.
Kal'roh looked down as the screen told him the same tale that it had told him for the past three days, more of the Gue'la's brutish warriors had come into the hive, looking to set up an operating base somewhere in its depths. They were not the Gue'ron'sha, the Space Marines, thank the Greater Good, but they were still dangerous. The depravity of man that Kal'roh saw on display still disgusted him greatly. Whilst the Gue'ron'sha may be brutes, their caste purpose of war was clear, and it was a calling at which they excelled. But here, baseline humans, a caste clearly not designed for fighting were used as warriors, fodder to be thrown onto the Tau guns. The humans acted as if they were the Y'he or the Be'gel, the sheer barbarity of it shocking in its simplicity.
"And speaking of simplicity..." the Tau ambassador thought to himself as he examined yet more of the footage his Earthcaste data-hunters had managed to scrounge. The screen displayed silent images tinted green, the picture obtained from tapping the scattered array of cameras the Governor had set though out the hive. The noiseless, green images reminded him of the barbarity of the humans, it was a wonder that they could be integrated into the Greater Good at all.
"Through the wisdom of the Ethereals all things are possible" Kal'roh mumbled to himself, reassured by the familiar mantra. He had advocated for sending pict-caste drones deeper into the hive to obtain more salubrious intelligence, but Firecaste high command had forbidden it, fearing that if they were spotted, the drones would expose their presence on the planet.
"Have you finished on that estimate of the Gue'la numbers yet?" Kal'roh enquired of the Earthcaste engineer sorting through the images.
"I have a rough estimate of their number, honored Por'o" came the engineer's response. "I count roughly fourty five thousand infantry men, with at least a hundred of those primitive machines the humans call tanks alongside them" concluded the engineer's verbal report.
"Why are these only rough estimates?" asked Kal'roh, his tone gentle whilst still insisting, his hands a horizontal T-shape across his chest in the sign of the patient enquirer.
"I apologize honored Por'o, but the data we receive is of poor-quality. Our own analysis drones cannot properly interface with this human film, and the human warrior caste march in a staggered line, obfuscating their number."
"The Greater Good does not run off of excuses, Fio'Ui'Kaltran, I understand that there are difficulties working with savage technologies, but I would ask that you look again. Our comrades in the Fire Caste need an accurate counting of the numbers they may face. Tell me honored Fio'Ui, what can I do to aid this endeavor?"
The earthcaste engineer, Kaltran, rubbed tiredly at her forehead, the bags under her eyes denoting her weariness at the task ahead of her. Bowing her head while making the her'an'set, the sign of the grateful subordinate, she replied "Another three Fio'La or Fio'Saal would help to round out my department, they need not be very far advanced, just another pair of eyes to sort through data."
"It shall be done as you have asked, Fio'Ui'Kaltran." Kal'roh replied. "One more thing Por'o Kal'roh"
"Yes?"
"Could we be permitted a cask of the Gue'la recaf? I understand that it is an unorthodoxy but we have found that after imbibing, our efficiency has increased by 16.73 percent." asked the weary engineer.
Smiling slightly at the plight of the bedraggled engineer, Kal'roh nodded his head in the affirmative.
In the three days since landing on the planet hive block Alexeev had undergone massive change. An old block, hidden away deep in the center of the hive, Alexeev had seen better times. In the old days, when the hive was first settled, this was thought to be one of the first blocks constructed, built with the old technologies now lost on Cena Primaris. Some hive residents, the desperate or foolish sometimes ventured down to Alexeev, hoping to discover some long-lost technology or holy relic to scrounge.
All they found was death. Bordering the Underhive, cut off from most of the hive except for three large tunnel ways connecting it to the neighboring blocks Calway and Borsk. The isolated nature of Alexeev made it a haven for outcasts and deviants of all stripes.
Narco Princes and slum lords battled amongst the rundown habitations for supremacy, whilst the mutants too hideous to integrate into polite society crowded around the messiahs of strange cults and gave mishappen ear to the word of back street preachers. All the while gang war ripped its way across Alexeev, under the dispassionate gaze of the storage siloes which reached up into the smoke covered ceiling of the hive block.
It would be these siloes that would doom the misbegotten residents of hive block Alexeev. Knowing that to feed and water a force his size, Lord General Minor 999983- Helbourg turned his eye to these now derelict siloes.
To this end, a plan was drawn up and the Emperor's Hammer was unleashed on the misanthropes who scrounged amongst the ruin of Hive Primus' past glory. Along all three lines of advance, Leman Russ and Malcador ground forward, the flimsy conurbations and lean-tos set up by vagrant scavengers proved poor defense against war-machines designed to weather shellfire and wade through a battlefield. Behind this was drawn up phalanxes of Death Korpsman, rifles forward, bayonets fixed, the silent warriors advanced at pace, putting down the wretches too crippled or witless to flee.
The little resistance that did materialize was predictably ineffectual. Autogun rounds whizzed and pinged off the plasteel hulls of Leman Russ, while the answering barrages of Lascannons blasted apart any ganger foolish enough to stand and fight. Firebombs too proved a poor response to the grinding advance of tank treads, the sealed hulls and oxygen filters easily overcoming the burning promethium that splashed across the tank hulls like waves of fire lapping against a redoubtable cliff.
And as the tanks advanced, so too did the men sheltering behind them. Every room not blasted to pieces was cleared with grenade and bayonet, whilst any who tried to give themselves up as prisoners were shot, the high-powered Lucius pattern lasguns blowing apart the unarmored targets, with what little remaining being snatched up by the attached techpriests for processing.
It was, in short, a massacre, thought Lord General Minor 999983- Helbourg. Gazing out at the now cleared hive block from his command tent. A massacre that the Emperor had decreed.
But much like the phoenix of dimly remembered ancient myth, hive block Alexeev too would rise from the ashes. Already the quartermasters were hard at work establishing new supply depots, whilst the great silos that Helbourg had put so much effort into preserving were set upon by the techpriests, to be clensed and refurbished to supply the needs of Helbourg's small army.
The rest of the men too were kept active, busying themselves to make their impromptu camp defensible. Engineers set about establishing defenses, blowing the buildings too flimsy to use for defense whilst reinforcing those deemed sturdy enough to turn into hardpoint. Across the major roadways in the hive block, roadblocks and barricades were established creating kill boxes and interlocking lines of fire able to cut down any that would try and launch a lightning assault. All the while slit trenches and foxholes were cut into the hard steel of the hive floor by meltagun wielding special weapons troopers, overseen by emplaced Bombards and Basilisks guns, ready to fire at Helbourg's command.
On the fringes of the hive block, patrols of Deathriders and Grenadiers prowled the access halls turning back curious hivers with barked commands and Las blasts.
Overall, the general was pleased with the progress they had made. More supplies would still need to be requisitioned from the Governor, and he was still awaiting the arrival of the some of his regiment who were still in orbit, but overall the position was about as secure as could be found in the Imperial guard. Still, he felt something, a brewing sense of unease that he had come to associate with a brewing storm. If that storm were to break, he could only hope he had dug in firm enough to not be swept away.
Hey everyone, I hope you enjoyed the chapter! I feel like it might have come out a bit clunky so please feel free to comment your thoughts and advice.