Storm-Lieutenant Mace Coldinger stood at brisk attention as he took in the sight of the Lord Governor's gilded throne room. The walls were onyx black, decorated with elegantly etched figures engaged in various activities, some of which strayed close to heresy in Coldinger's eyes. The pillars, in contrast to the walls, were a sparkling ivory, carved with intricate geometric designs and set out evenly throughout the room, serving as a walkway to guide supplicants up to the Governor's very throne. At the end of this walkway, placed on a dais of shimmering cerulean stone, carved in such a way as to resemble one of the churned seas that stretched across vast swathes of Cena Primaris' western hemisphere, its oceanic blue contrasting with the bright red curtains that hung at the back of the chamber. Finally, resting upon the dais sat the throne.
In contrast with the rest of the room, the throne was a squat and ugly thing. Forged from crude looking pig-iron and covered with a light patena of rust, the seat was utterly incongruous with the surrounding chamber's opulence. Indeed, the paucity of the seat may be the cause of the chamber's ostentation, mused Coldinger. But that chair Coldinger knew well, was the most valuable object in the room.
Not only was it Cena Primaris' most ancient relic, said to have once been the command throne of the fabled Breaker of the Storm, the colony ship that carried his own far distant ancestors to this world nearly four thousand years ago. When the ship alighted on the surface, so legend dictates, it was stripped for salvage and used to build the hive. The farmers took the chemicals and lubricant byproducts to grow crops so tall that even the fierce Urlock Tigers would be lost under their stalks. The merchants stripped the valuable metals from the ship's circuitry to mint into coins and trade bars. The warriors melted down the ship's plating to craft spears and crude las-jezails to fend off the mega-predators that stalked the dark places. But the governors, being the wisest of the people who landed on Cena Primaris, took naught but the seat, claiming that with it they shall craft a new throne for the Emperor on Cena Primaris, as only He could be the true ruler of any of man's domains. The thing's symbolic and historic value is enormous.
The effect was only slightly spoiled from the veritable mountain of pillows, upholstery and flabby flesh that were pilled upon the thing, the mark of the Lord-Governor's desire to not get a cold arse when pontificating to his subjects. Despite this the Governor, flanked by his elite lifeguard, appeared almost regal, despite the glossiness of his many chins.
By contrast Storm-Lieutenant Mace Coldiger in his mat black carapace armor and bulky Ilryican pattern Helpistol stood out amongst the opulent splendor that the governor enjoyed. "Storm-Lieutenant, I am here to personally assign you a crucial, and more importantly, ideologically sensitive mission" the fat governor said as he addressed Lieutenant Coldinger from his highbacked throne. "Me and my men live but to serve Lord-Governor" Coldinger responded quickly, uneasy standing in such opulence while wearing his battledress.
"You are no doubt aware" said the governor, "of the Imperial guard force which has landed in our fair capital."
"Already they have disrespected me and scorned my hospitality. What is worse, I fear, is that their arrival presages the beginning of a campaign against the neighboring xenos, those Tau creatures. I have seen the technology they possess and the vast force of their arms. It is clear to me no crusade against such creatures can succeed." said the governor, his heretical words echoing throughout the chamber.
"Therefore, we must nip this problem in the bud. If we can eliminate these occupiers quietly, without it getting out to the rest of the Imperium, we can continue our peaceable life here, without interruption, just as we like it, yes?" As the governor said this, a smirk began to play across his corpulent face, an indication as to how pleased he was with his plan.
"That is a bold strategy you have devised, Lord-Governor, but my unit numbers barely a hundred men. I've not seen the full numbers of the occupying force, but there must be thousands of the bleeders out there sir." Coldinger replied briskly. "Quite so Lieutenant, but fear not, you shall not attack alone. I have already mustered a force to drive out these occupiers. As we speak over one hundred thousand brave PDF men stand ready to rid us of this irritant. What I need from you is a specialized operation."
"I'm all ears, sir."
"Good. I want you and your men, however many you think sufficient, to launch a targeted raid into Hive block Alexev, where the invaders have made a base camp. I want you to sneak in there and kill the general and any other important officers you can find. If we cut off the head, the following fight will be all the easier"
At the governor's words the lifeguard to the left of the governor's throne came forward and presented Coldinger with a data wafer, the details of his upcoming mission.
"You shall find the requisite information for your strike in there, Storm-Lieutenant, may the Emperor guide your blade." the governor decreed as he waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. Snaping of a crisp salute, Coldinger turned on his heel and marched to the door, the desire for a warm recaf foremost in his mind.
"Is he gone, noble Lord-Governor?" asked Kal'roh, as the Tau watercaste emissary stepped out from behind the blood-red curtains that cloaked the wall behind the governor's throne dais.
"Come now emissary, you would not have stepped out if you did not already know he had left" the governor chided, his intolerably puggy face breaking into a faint smirk.
"Your eminence's intellect is once again evident, excuse my ill thought question" the watercaste spoke in a soft, clear voice. "That was some fine rhetoric you gave to your Shas, honored governor. I take it from your speech that you wish to remain neutral in the coming conflict with the Imperium?" the watercaste asked innocently.
"Why, nothing of the sort emmissary!" the governor exclaimed, his booming voice thankfully muffled by the thick Adamantine plated doors that covered the chamber of his throne room. "A bit of tactical obfuscation, that is all! A goad to ensure that the good lieutenant will put his all into this mission."
"I am relieved to hear this, governor, you restore my faith in our shared future. Have your servants produced the documents for me to mark?" the emissary enquired. "But of course." With the snap of his pudgy fingers the governor summoned forth a quivering functionary from a side door, bearing a large scroll case. "A pleasure doing business with you, emissary, let this treaty bring prosperity to both of our peoples."
At a signal, Storm-company Coldinger came to a halt in the darkness of Hive –Block Borst, Alexev's closest neighbor. Lieutenant Coldinger's men were spread out around him in the tenebrous dark of this run down, near abandoned block of the hive. This in and of itself was odd. The darkness and rundown nature of the hive-block was normal, Borst being almost entirely unlit because of a ganger war some 200 years ago knocking out most of the ceiling lights. The smell too, a mixture of raw sewage and lingering cooking smoke was also normal, the results of thousands of desperates forced to live in close quarter squalor. What was so incongruous was the noise, or in the case of Borst, the lack thereof.
There is always noise in a hive. The clunk of trade carts rattling across the roughhewn metal of the roads, peddlers and petty merchants hawking wares, the ring of bells and shrill shrieks of priests and street preachers exulting the virtues of the Emperor, if not always His Imperium. Here there was nothing, as if the occupiers had laid a pall of silence across the whole hive block.
"That's enough lingering, we press on." Coldinger spook into his vox bead.
A series of affirmations clicked across his vox. Squad leaders Chilper, Asty, and Frilow all clicked their affirmation, their squads of ten splaying out behind them like a bridal train. Coldinger's own command squad of four stood next to him as he gave out orders.
"We all know the drill here, but since this is where we will depart company, we got over the plan once more. Squads Frilow and Chilper are to take two different ingress tunnels already marked on the tactical display, while squad Asty goes up to provide overwatch and act as our reserve. We are still a few kilometers out of where their firebase properly begins, but we move carefully. The fact that they have already cleared this area of hive scum shows that they are dangerous. Remember, while we want this done quiet, we have more than 100 thousand reinforcements at our backs, so call in if you think a localized attack will help us. Is that understood?"
A chorus of affirmatives answered him as he finished with his instructions and quickly the squads departed, slipping away in the darkness to their assigned routes. With a gesture, he notified his vox operator, Marsha Clems that she could set down her pack.
"We settin up 'er then gov?" Marsha asked, her underhive accent shining through clearly now that she was so near to her old home. "Aye, this looks like the place. We set up here and send support as needed." came Coldinger's response, "but I pray to the Emperor that they won't need any."
"Why do we get all the fun jobs?" complained private Torick, his boots already damp from wading through the sewage tunnel that he and squad Chilper advanced up the grimy passage, "I had just washed my boots to!" The bedraggled trooper opined.
Squad Chilper had spread itself out into a skirmish pattern, helguns held at the ready, as they advanced down the dank sewage tunnel, their fully enclosed face shields thankfully filtering out the stink of the waste they wadded through.
"Well, that's your problem is it not, we already knew we were to do field work and you busied yourself looking pretty" came corporal Estrana's condescending tone. Her accent and poise spoke of spire nobility, but no one knew why a spire-noble had deigned to join the PDF, even the elite storm-company.
The corporal was the second back in the formation, behind and to his right, her helgun held at the ready just as his was.
"Your one to talk" Torick retorted, "I don't see shit all over your boots" he growled irritably. "That's because I look where I step, and don't bound through every pile of refuse like an Ork with a bad hangover" Estrana replied.
"Oi, shut it you lot! We don't know what kind of listening devices the occupiers have placed down here. Until you get eyes on the target, I want silence." chastised sergeant Filimon Chilper.
"Well I" Torick started, but then stopped as he felt a wire of some sort snag against his shin. Oh Frag he thought as the wire pulled taught and snapped.
Torick had just enough time to turn his gaze to Estrana and begin an apology when the tunnel lit up with fire, the explosion tearing squad Chilperic apart in a storm of fire and shrapnel, shredding carapace, and piercing organs.
All that remained of squad Chilperic were charred remains, and cooling corpses.
The explosion's back blast emerged lightning fast out of the tunnel, pelting Coldinger with red tinged dust. Marsha began to panic and reached for the vox horn, but Coldinger grabbed her hand to stop her. Squad Chilperic was gone, their life signs blinking from a lively green to a sanguine red in a moment.
Coldinger grabbed the vox and started barking commands. "Head count, now!" he roared to his other squad commanders, trying to get a read on the remaining state of his squads.
"Asty here, we report no contact" came the measured voice of Darlina Asty, the heavy-set matriarch of her squad.
"Frilow, reporting in the same, what happened?" Riker Frilow reported, his voice a breathy exhale where Asty's was a smooth drawl.
"Chilper is gone, the whole damn squad, redouble your watch for explosives, that's what did in Chilper, we must assume that we've been made. Get moving people, if we can make it there quickly, we can still complete the mission in the confusion. Understood"
"Understood command, we'll gut these bastards just like Chilper would have wanted!"
"Good to hear, and Asty?" silence greeted Coldinger's request. "Asty, do you copy," he asked again. Looking down at his data pad's display told him that the squad was still alive, and that their vitals were still functional, but he got no response. "Frack me!" he growled, irritated that his mission had started off so poorly.
"Marsha, keep hailing Asty, see if you can get a response out of her."
"Understood sir!" Marsha said as she squatted back down over the vox caster, flipping through channels to try and break whatever encryption might be blocking their signal.
"Frilow, you're my last online squad, I want you to pull out of there, this mission's completely fracked! I'm gonna call in support and we'll just have to run these bastards through the good old-fashioned way!"
"Understood sir, we'll start..." Frilow's voice was cut off, just before he could finish, but just after is voice died Coldinger could make out a distinct noise. Lasfire.
"Damn it all to the fracking Warp, Marsha get on the vox, call in the main attack!"
"I can't, sure the vox is down, some kind of techwitchery has it!" came Marsha's panicked reply
"Fine then. Ditch the vox, if they've corrupted it, it's dead weight. We run back, call reinforcements and wipe these bastards out! Move!" Coldinger bellowed, already moving back down the passage before he had finished speaking.
The rest of his squad began to follow him, grabbing up what supplies they thought to be useful, but still leaving a great deal of equipment for their enemies to plunder.
We'll just have to take the stuff back, Coldinger thought bitterly, and pay them back tenfold for Chilper, Asty and the rest. Running at full tilt, they made it halfway back down the passage from which they came when they heard it. I sounded like a heavy pattering, rhythmic and heavy as the sound bounced around the close confines of the near-underhive, making it impossible to tell how far away the sound was coming from.
"What in the warp is that!" yelled captain Borick, Coldinger's heavy set second in command. "Don't know, sounds like... rain maybe?" Marsha replied between breathes as she ran. "You think its some kind of vehichle, like a chimera of a Russ?"
"I don't think so. Call me crazy but it almost sounds like..." Coldinger cut Marsha off before she could respond. "Hoof beats".
"Say that again sir?" asked Borick.
"Everyone hold, and turn, stand your ground, the enemy is on us!"
In response to his command, command squad Coldinger, the four-man strong unit all that was left of Coldinger's command turned on their heels and formed line. A sight greeted them that would be burnt into their minds for the rest of their, now significantly shortened lives.
About a hundred meters away they could see a large animal. It almost looked like a horse, the old Terran equine that had carried man around the plains and forests of Old Terra, long before even the Dark Age of Technology. The creature's hide was hairless and grey, riddled with a patchwork of scars and lasburns, carried forward on four heavily muscled legs and powerful, clawed hooves that rung of the metal floor of the hive. But its face was what arrested Coldinger's gaze, masked and emotionless, the beast's face was that of death, swift and cold as it starred down Coldinger's last remaining men.
Atop the beast was seated a man, or something that looked like a man. Face masked, much like that of his mount and encased in a gleaming metal breastplate, the rider gestured forward with his revving chainsword as the rest of his men, four riders emerging behind him, made to follow, their massive beasts kicked forward into a charge.
"Open fire!" Coldinger cried, and at his word, four helguns spat rays of strobing red light.
The first volley crashed into the riders, all five powerful beams of the helgun fire smacked into flesh or armor. Incredibly, not a one fell. Flesh had been burnt of the strange equine beasts that the occupiers rode, leaving craters and scorch marks as large as Coldinger's fist, but still on they came.
Again, Coldinger's squad unleashed another volley too much the same effect as the first. A third volley kicked out towards the charging equines and a beast fell, a lucky shot punching through an eye lens. Traditional cavalry might have been held up by one of their own falling so near to them, becoming fouled in the twisted limbs of the unlucky mount to slain. Not these. Jumping over or trampling their comrade and his mount, the riders, now reduced to four, continued their death charge.
"Again, Fire again!" Coldinger screamed, adding the voice of his own drawn helpistol to the barrage. One more volley went out, and one of the riders fell, thrown back off his mount as he took a blast straight to his armored chest, and then they were on them.
Borick was the first to die, his skull messily split as the reeving chainsword of the leader swiped down at him, splattering the rest of his detachment in brains. Tanric, and Allasman followed him, both skewered on the long lances of the other two riders who rode just a little behind their leader. Ducking down to avoid another stroke of the leader's roaring chainsword, he raised up his pistol and fired, blowing the leg off one of the lance wielders.
Seeing that his charge had missed one of his quarry, their leader jumped off his own mount and came at Coldinger with his roaring blade. The leader's first swipe was dodged by Coldinger, who readied his pistol to reply, but was unable to. The swipe had been a ruse, not intended so much to kill as it was to distract Coldinger from the full body tackle that followed, bowling him over and sending his pistol skittering from his grasp.
Desperately, Coldinger reached for the knife at his belt to try and run through his assailant, only to be beaten to the punch by his opponent, as the enemy leader brought a heavy, possibly augmeticized fist down hard onto Coldinger's chest, bruising his ribs while he tried to draw his own blade.
Seeing this, the enemy leader drew his own knife, a gleaming bayonet and drove it down, stabbing through Coldinger's neck straight, pinning Coldinger like a sadistic child might an insect.
Choking around the dagger embedded in his trough, Coldinger saw the enemy leader picked up his own fallen pistol and fired it. Then he knew no more.
Marsha rolled under the flailing clawed hooves of the strange beasts ridden by the occupiers, managing to come up on the opposite side from where most of them were facing. Grinning, she glanced down at her hands only to remember that she had lost her rifle during her roll. Panicked, Marsha looking around for something, anything to use in her defense. Glancing around, she saw something, but it wasn't a weapon, it was a ladder.
Making a dash for the ladder, Marsha pulled herself up it, arm over arm as quickly as she could, not knowing where she was going but knowing that the occupiers cavalry could not follow. Pulling herself into the side tunnel that the ladder connected to she glanced back at the three remaining masked horsemen, and fled down the tunnel, resolved to return at the head of the army, and crush the occupiers who had done so much hurt to her unit.
"Ride-master, one of the infiltrators is escaping" said 94786-Erich, pointing towards the female soldier fleeing in the direction of the ladder. "Should we pursue?"
"Negative" replied ride-master 93147-Ritter, not raising his masked gaze as he picked out any flesh scraps of other detritus that might clog the mooter and suffocate the valiant sword's machine spirit.
"Let her run, she will spread fear to the rest of the weaklings. What is the status on our wounded?"
This last question was addressed towards the last uninjured man in his detachment and Ritter's second in command 06781-Heller, the red aquila on his shoulder pad marking him out as a Quartermaster.
"One horse is dead, shot right through the eye, the others will heal quickly, but I recommend administering each a phial of Frenzon to stabilize their chemical balance before finishing the patrol."
"And the men?" inquired the Ride-master. "Ah, yes, them. 54397-Hertz is optimal, only minor bruising, as for 44446-Gantz his leg is gone, but the close-range shot seems to have cauterized the wound. I suspect the shock, or the impact of his fall sent him into unconsciousness. If synthskin is applied now to his leg he can likely be saved to receive an augmetic, but supplies of both are limited."
"Understood, do what you can to save Gantz, at present men are our most limited resource. Hertz, take Gantz horse, we have completed this patrol and must return. Heller, you take Gantz with you, move out."
Author's notes: Hey everyone, I hope this one was alright. It's my longest chapter yet so if there are any inconsistencies, please let me know. Exams are coming up so this'll probably be my last upload this month, enjoy!