Dillsburg saw the arrival of night. Wherein the expectations of an attack from both sides during daytime had been dashed for both sides, the night gave way to the jitters of patrolling troops watching the many paths into the small town, with the Severan Dominate and East Imp troops present within the town taking turns patrolling the place. The Severan had openly started avoiding the East Imps, however, for reasons unknown by the Imperial Guard scouts.
That had seemingly broken cohesion somewhat, and even from the trenches dug by the Death Korps of Krieg, the Guard could hear the audible screams and anger of hundreds of enemies. Emperor only knew what was driving them up the proverbial wall so much, but one would suppose it was the reason the Severan was avoiding them. It also meant an open target with loose defenses for the Imperial Guard to deal with as they saw fit.
It was part of the reason what came to happen was happening. A Severan Dominate soldier regarded the fields ahead this moonless night, waiting to see if the Guard would make a move at any point. He had dozed off several times, his rations of energy-aides running low. He'd need to ask one of his mates to brew him a new cup or something. Still, keeping an eye down the thermal binoculars provided by their manufactoria in the East Empire and another on his Lasrifle, the man found little time to sleep.
It was, however, the tiredness he felt that distracted him enough for him to only notice the first Kasrkin and Grenadier pop up over the edge of the half-destroyed wall he used for cover. Twin hellgun bolts punched through the man's upper flak plate and pretty much turned his chest into nothing but ash. Following that up, a lance of blue light slammed into the side of another building, bubbling up into a ground-shaking explosion as the Grenadier with the plasma gun and her escort marched out.
The Death Korps of Krieg Grenadiers poured into the streets alongside their Kasrkin counterpart, with dear Major Amy Mkvenner and the Death Korps's own detachment Watchmaster of the Grenadiers at the front. Amy drew her Power Sword, the grin she wore obscured by her respirator as she kicked a door in, shouldered and hip-fired her Hellgun, putting down several East Imp soldiers that'd just woken up.
A Grenadier Sergeant kicked the door to another building, drew his sword bayonet and went to town, pinning two men against a wall and stabbing both in the neck and chest. He then drew his pistol and put a las-bolt clean through an arriving third garrison member. His fourth comrade, however, seemed to have learned. A stick grenade rolled down the stairs, forcing the Grenadier and his other two comrades into cover.
Above the battlefield wailed the engines of Valkyrie gunships. Missiles flew from the pods of the flying transports, striking the rearguard lines of the False Imperial Defense. Following this up, a hundred blue specks seemed to appear in the night sky while the fires burned and the enemy awoke. Harakoni and Elysian Drop Troops landed before the enemy had a chance to retaliate, their las-weaponry and heavy assault guns already roaring across the bridge from the assaulting ranks of two Imperial Guard regiments.
Amy grinned as she thoroughly and meticulously pushed through into buildings and cleared them of hostiles, wiping out enemy defense groups with all the fury of a whirlwind, unstoppable. Laser and blade sang in unison against the darkness, heads flying, limbs pulverized. The Emperor Himself must've blessed their night to be so productive in terms of killing their enemies.
Following up on the overall assault, the troops expected a False Imp Counterattack. A counterattack that did, soon, come. Imperial Army assets, followed by Severan Dominate Shock Troops, fast-marched toward the town, lasguns and rifles drawn as they moved. First to come from above, however, was a long, sharp whistle, followed by the thundercrack of detonations.
The ground shook as artillery shells from 132mm cannons landed. The Imperial Guard's Basilisks filled the air with thunder and hellfire as the Earthshakers struck. Medusa siege batteries also fired from closer, nailing several enemy bunkers in the opening salvo of artillery and leaving naught but blackened craters. The Medusas then closed in toward the town as Imperial Guard troops called out buildings that were targets of opportunity, too heavily entrenched for Infantry to take them out alone.
A Watchmaster of the Death Korps followed Amy in, her plasma pistol screeching as superheated, ionized hydrogen gas punched out, boiling the air ahead and striking a pair of Imp melee troopers, penetrating both and washing the wall of a house. An East Imp tank came around the corner next, only to be met by the same plasma pistol. The female Watchmaster thumbed the coolant system, letting the gas escape out of the top, before charging forward toward the tank and cocking back her Power Fist. The melee implement crackled with energy, slammed into the side armor of the enemy tank and drilled a hole big enough for unspent cannon shells to fall out.
She followed that up with a second punch that pretty much splattered viscera across the place when an enemy crewman tried escaping the vehicle. His comrade came next, pouncing on her and slamming the butt of his rifle into her face, thus knocking off her mask and helmet. He paused as he was about to deliver the second strike, noticing the youthful face of the girl. She could easily have been his daughter...
To her, it didn't seem to matter. With a burning glare from Azure eyes and short blonde hair painted red by a small cut on her forehead, the girl drew her other side-arm, a las-pistol, from her belt, put the barrel to the man's chin and fired. The beam of energy punched clean through human tissue and the padded tanker helmet the man wore. She pushed the corpse off of her just before it collapsed, grabbed the next enemy Crewman by the throat and pinned him against the tank, choking him out without making a sound of her own and with only a furrowed brow to denote her fury.
Pop. The man's vertebrae popped in her hand. She growled and picked up her mask and helmet, sliding them back onto her face and head, respectively, before rallying her platoon of Grenadiers and kicking in a door. Outside, on the main street toward the bridge, Imperial and Gallian armor finally rolled, with one Incinerator Leman Russ at the lead. Its flamethrowers belched white-hot Promethium into the windows of still-uncleared houses, while the main flamer in the turret shot out a tongue of flame twice the length of the tank.
It burned through enemy cover as Infantry, both Guard and Militia, advanced next to it, Rosie toting an improved SMG this time around, which she shouldered and fired as they moved to clear houses on their own with grenades. A Thunderer siege tank also rumbled forward, pushing aside debris from collapsed houses that were hit by the massive guns of the Medusa batteries and firing its own heavy gun to make even more rubble.
Alicia advanced with the squad, Juno, Susie and Marina close behind. She fired from her rifle the moment she spotted movement that was not one of their own. How she knew in the clusterfuck of this assault was quite simple:Their unit was at the forefront of the second wave of the assault and the Drop Troopers had easily-identifiable markings that shined under the light of the flares being fired into the sky.
Within thirty minutes, the armor had reached the bridge. There was surprisingly much less resistance than anticipated originally among the enemy's ranks, but that was nominally normal, considering their main encampment was much farther in the rear than the troops stationed to hold the Bridgehead. No reinforcements would come quick enough, either, what with it being midnight.
Another bolt of Plasma lanced through the night, the blue light of the detonation stunning the crews around them. Alicia blinked away the flash, then kicked a door in and put two bullets through the skull of an East Imp. Susie followed her in and Alicia noticed the more stern, determined gaze her old friend from the Town Watch wore. She smiled, then gasped and pushed Susie out of the way as a Battleaxe fell down on the exact position where she had been.
Edy pushed in and hefted her SMG, firing. Bullets punched through thin steel plate armor and kevlar jacket and the man wound up with multiple holes through his corpse, his axe filled with nauseating symbols and blood clattering to the floor. Edy didn't stop firing 'till her gun clicked empty, either, the man left with so many holes, he may as well have been Cheese.
She growled, reloaded and looked to Susie and Alicia, "Sarge, Susie, you two good?!"
"Just fine, Edy. Thanks..." Alicia nodded, patting the girl on the shoulder. The two then shifted their attention toward the stairwell leading to the second floor as a pair of Imp Shock Troops came charging down. Guns rang and spent casings clinked against the wooden floor, followed by the thumps of three corpses. Edy pushed upstairs first, negotiating the corner of the stairwell with a fragmentation grenade tossed right to the top floor. Once the explosion thumped, shaking the whole house, Edy pushed to the second floor, peering down the hallway and hosing down two surviving Imps that had been disoriented by the blast.
Alicia followed in close behind, her rifle thundering in the enclosed space. She turned to the right, shoulder-checked a door open and felt the weight of it hitting the face of a Severan soldier. She gasped, hefted her rifle and shot the last of her magazine into the man's exposed midsection, before feeling a rifle butt slam against her cheek. She tumbled to the side, surprisingly still on her feet, before gasping and dodging a bayonet thrust at her by the man that had hit her.
She watched the Severan soldier that was about to try and stab at her get his head split wide open by a las-bolt from a Lucius Lasgun. She blinked, spat out some blood and gray matter and watched as a Death Korps rifleman stepped inside as the corpse fell. She wiped her face with her sleeve, murmured a sarcastic, "Thanks..." and stepped out to meet with Lucy, Edy and the others. The Death Korps rifleman, meanwhile, pushed out and moved down the stairs as the others cleared the place out.
Susie stepped out, paused and chuckled, "Guess I'm not the only one who got a little red in the face..." before blanking and covering her mouth, "Oh, good lord, what happened to me...?"
Alicia chuckled, "Existence, I guess. The Kids really made us see things differently..."
"Yeah..." Susie sighed, shoulders sagging, before a soft, sad smile appeared, "I guess so..." just as Juno walked out. The bayonet on the end of her rifle was dripping with blood, but the girl seemed to be terrified by something. When Alicia peeked into the room the girl had just come out of, she understood why. The man she had killed had taken off his armor and shirt and was wielding only a strange axe with teeth, like the chainswords of the Imperial Guard. His body was marred by the markings of the Imperium's 'Arch Enemy'. The simple sight of them made Alicia nauseous for some reason. She looked away and shut the door.
Soon, a ceasefire order was given as the sun slowly began to rise. The Imperial Guard troops set up a perimeter around the city, with Colonel Telos marching inside alongside Colonel Stern, all while looking at a map of the immediate area surrounding Dillsburg itself. He hummed and said, "The False Imperial FOB is due North-East of us. A few kilometers at most, but we'll have to go through a forest thicket."
"Should not be impossible, considering the Thunderers have dozer blades..." Stern murmured, "How are casualties in your ranks, Colonel?"
"Two injured and one dead. Yours?" Telos asked, looking to her.
"Six injured, ten dead. Expected..." She replied as impassively as he'd have expected out of a Death Korps officer. Turning toward him, she stated bluntly, "We will prepare for the assault... Did you see the corpse?"
"Of the Khornate cultist?" He asked dispassionately, then offered a nod, "The Arch-Enemy's presence makes itself ever-more known... I dread what the future holds for us, my friend..." and he gazed upon her. She removed her gas mask and cap, revealing a young woman with azure eyes and nutmeg hair that was as short as her mask permitted her to comfortably have while wearing. Scars permeated the face of the beauty that was the Death Korps officer, scars that mixed with an impassive expression.
"Let them come," She stated, "We will end them."
"Indeed," Telos replied, unmoved by the image of what would supposedly be a beauty. He had a girl he cared for. "The Emperor Protects."
"The Emperor Protects." She gave the Aquila salute, put her mask and helmet back on and left to rally her troops.
Fouzen.
The mining town of Fouzen, located within the occupied Northern Regions of the country, was an industrial and mining powerhouse that also contained one of Gallia's largest populations of Darcsen. Funnily enough, the fact that this was a mining city from which most of the supply of unrefined Ragnite came from was one of the main reasons the Darcsen were even her in the first place. A city built into a canyon, with houses suspended on metallic supports and streets of dirt and steel through which carts passed.
It was no longer just a city, however. Sections of it had been occupied by the Imperial Army in their desire to utilize it to supply their war effort. That had displaced many a Darcsen family, some of which wound up within the confines of a newly-built Camp within the city. A Darcsen Concentration Camp, one of the more detestable ways countries had found to control their local populace of 'undesirables'.
Johann Oswald Eisen, captain of the Imperial Army and somewhat of a coward, stared down from the main office building of Fouzen's governance at the camp as it was being expanded by the slave labor companies of Darcsen that the Imperial Army's more vicious anti-Darcsen Units, the Hunters. They were ad-hoc companies made up of some of the worse racists of the Army...
Though it wasn't them that worried Johann.
It was the Brigade that was being commanded by General Gregor's fanatical membership that worried him. Honestly, the unit was pretty much a Penal Force and half the atrocities they had apparently committed while in Fouzen were indescribably cruel. Gregor's little army of madmen, the 'Dieter Brigade', as they were called, led by a Hermann Dieter. An animal of his own.
He sighed and put those thoughts to the back of his mind, simply turning to General Gregor and saluting as he entered the room. Gregor barely lifted his eyes off of the documents he was writing. Without a word, the man lifted a letter and said, "Take this south of town, to the commander of the Blood Pact Garrison we have there..." and that sent a shiver up the poor boy's spine.
There were things worse than Dieter and his boys, too. The bastards in the Blood Pact. Creepy lot. He sighed, however, walked and took the letter. Gregor nodded to dismiss him and turned back to writing. The young man stepped out of the building, marching onto the streets where platoons of soldiers patrolled. Most of his comrades were normal, thank the Valkyrur. Most of them.
He marched past a patrolling unit that'd round up(and roughed up) a few Darcsen. A family, it looked like. The father had a broken arm and marks from the stocks of rifles and SMGs on his face, while the mother and daughter seemed even worse off. Johann shuddered, not even wanting to think what may've been done to them. Marching deeper into the canyon, the young man sought out the Motorpool, from where he could grab a staff car and drive his way to the blood Pact's position.
A Severan Leman Russ convoy rolled past him, with a Chimera and a pair of SPAAGs, or Self-Propelled Anti-Air Guns. Johann had never thought he'd finally see the concept of air assets being military-worthy coming to fruition. There were those espousing the idea of combined arms warfare utilizing air and ground units in cohesion even in the Imperial Army's Bureau of Research, but little to no attention was paid to them.
He watched a Severan patrol marching behind the convoy, dragging along body bags with the 'help' of Darcsen prisoners, one of whom glared at the boy. Averting his gaze, Johann pushed forward, across the bridge and to the Motorpool, stopping by the door as he heard a pair of Severan soldiers talking. "Gods damn the Blood Pact and Dieter's men. Some of the shite they did in the South of the city makes me skin crawl..." One said, semi-disgusted.
"I'd expect nothing less from a penal squadron and an armed Cult following a supposed 'blood god'," Replied his comrade as Johann entered. The man nodded to the captain, then continued unabated, "Frakking bastards have no idea of the kinds of issues they're causing. And the Prince and Gregor don't wanna bloody listen to the complaints of quote-unquote 'foreigners'. Pillock doesn't get we're the ones evenin' out the odds against the Cadians."
"Yeah," Sighed the first man, "And now we have to deal with those Death Korps fanatics and the Tallarn, too."
"Not to mention some traitor General... Whatever..." The second man turned toward the captain and asked, "Need anything, sir?"
"Just a bike or a car. I have to go deliver a letter from General Gregor to the Blood Pact..." Johann answered uneasily. The two men of the Severan Dominate's military had their faces turned from fury to empathy. He hummed, then shyly said, "Please?" before one of the men led him to a motorcycle of Imperial make. The man handed him the key and patted him on the shoulder, before murmuring a prayer and sitting himself down next to his workstation.
Johann started the motorbike, hearing the engine's light purr. Lifting the kickstand and leaning forward, the boy spun the acceleration and drove out of the tent at half the bike's capable speed, before turning and starting his rollout toward the target. The cliffs around him were filled with patrols that were raiding houses and defenses being built up around the city itself.
He saw them as he drove. Dieter and his brigade were returning from a 'mission', wearing smiles, laughing and joking. The women of the team, rough-and-tumble, just as vile as the men. Their faces soaked in the blood of presumed innocents, bayonets glistening red with congealed viscera. One of them lifted a skull and started mocking the deceased by mimicking their voice, all while his comrades laughed.
Major Dieter had noticed Johann driving by. The two men locked eyes for a moment and the thin-faced man's mere stare sent a chill up the spine of one of General Bles's trusted adjutants. Dieter then gave him a creepily knowing smile as he watched him drive off, which caused the young man to shudder, his spine now ramrod straight as he drove forward.
"Fucking lunatics..." Johann murmured, allowing himself his first swear in a while. Certainly, he was a 'Momma's Boy' to some degree, raised to be polite, respectful and thoughtful of those around him. It was why this posting was making his bloody stomach churn. He was among the 'best' Imperial units for riot and partisan suppression. Among the worst in terms of humanity, sans the goddamned Severan troops, it seemed.
He soon arrived to the South and almost died off-road doing a double-take...
Effigies, spikes with skulls poked onto them and pools of blood at their bases, eight-pointed stars with symbols so gut-churning, Johann couldn't bear to look at them for more than a minute before his gag reflex kicked in and the scent of the dead, decaying corpses, strung up on other effigies around them. Some wore Gallian uniforms, others wore civilian clothing. Some even wore East Imperial uniforms, probably cowards given to these bastards for punishment.
None of them were alive. All were in various stages of decomposition and marred by the markings of Chaos. Johann bowed his head, face paler than bone as he arrived at the command post of the Blood Pact. One of their soldiers, a man clad in blood-red flak armor, a steel helmet with spikes and a strange mask like the face of a Demon, lifted a hand, holding close an Autogun with a bayonet. Beside him was a trio of other soldiers, sat around a barrel that was aflame. He ordered, "Halt." then demanded once Johann stopped, "What's your business here, Imp?"
"L-Letter... For your commanding officer..." Johann's voice trembled as he lifted the letter. The man looked it over, hummed and nodded, then stepped aside, letting Johann park his bike next to the command tent. He now fully understood why these bastards were separated from the rest of the Army. Professional as they may have been, they were still terrifyingly barbaric...
He marched toward the tent and found the Commander of the Blood Pact unit convening with his soldiers. He was an elderly man, marked by just as many 'tattoos' of Chaotic signs as the corpses hanging outside. The Commander eyed the boy, then raised a brow and paused as he was handed the letter itself. Waving off Johann, he turned and tore into the packaging, pulling out the item just as the Imp left.
Johann got back onto his bike, then paused as he heard screaming. A young woman was being dragged forward by the bastards, a Darcsen. She had been savagely beaten, clearly. Worst part was? It was Imperial troopers dragging her in. They dropped her at the feet of the soldier that had stopped Johann, who looked up at the Imperials. One of them said, "Command says to make an example outta her for the other Darkies in the camps! Do what you do best, you fucking freaks!" with a hollering laugh.
The young woman looked up, grabbing onto the hem of the soldier's uniform shirt and begging. Johann was about to intervene, but could only watch in horror as two bayonets were plunged into the woman's chest, one from each side. The leader showed the men to lift her to her feet, which they did utilizing the bayonets, garnering gargled screams from the woman, before he hummed, cupped her chin and smiled behind the mask. Following that, he put his hands around her head and-
Johann revved the engine of his bike and rode away before he could hear the sickening noise. He felt his heart racing, eyes welling with tears. Their 'allies' were bloody lunatics, driven by the belief in some pseudo-God of war and blood. They'd just murdered someone in cold fucking blood and seemed to revel in doing it! This wasn't normal. This wasn't normal...
This was not fucking normal... And Gregor had to do something about it, damn him...!
... He missed General Bles...