Born in Darkness, Chosen for Fire (40K)

[Imperial Overlord]

It feels right that there should be some record of our lives. We are dying in droves and when we are gone no one will remember us. A dusty scroll or forgotten data crystal will record our fate and be filed away and forgotten. Perhaps this will survive, and with it, something of us.

I guess I should start in the beginning. I am Sylas and I was born in Hive Segula Tercia on the world of Cicatrice. My mother was the junior of wife of my father, who was a subchieften of the Iron Men. He died when I was seven, at which time I was already a scavenger.

Maybe I should explain. In the underhive one gets by however one can. The upper hive has little use for us, but there are things that need to be done. Machinery must be maintained, materials scavenged and recycled, and obediance. The clan chiefs control the maitenance and recycling jobs. Along with the Ecclesiarcy, which makes at a token effort of conveying the Emperor's will to us, they are the law. On the infrequent times they show up, the Arbites are pure terror.

There are ways up. Everyone knows that things are better the higher you go. The biggest men in the clan go upside as do the best whores and the best fighters who hook up with the right people. That's where I learned how to read. I started toadying up to the priests when I realized they go all the way up. They need fighters as much as anybody else. So I hung around the priests and did favors. Irregular lessons from a half dozen people taught me the basics of reading and writing.

I scavenged through junk for the recyclers until I was twelve. I killed my first man when I was eleven. He was a Blood. I shot him with the steel framed hand crossbow I carried and ran. The shot didn't kill him and he didn't catch me, but he slipped in some filfth and cut his leg open on some debris in tunnels. One of his wounds became infected and he waited too long to got to a medico or the medico botched it. Either way, it eventually killed him.

It wasn't long after his death that the Iron Men made me a fighter. I was the son of a respected member with blood on my hands. After an initiation that mostly consisted of the juniors of the Iron Men beating the crap out of me, I was in. I had my next kill the following year, in a viscious brawl. I opened a boy's stomach up with my knife.

That made me important enough to go on terror raids on other clans, as we tried to drive them into paying tribute. I'm not proud of what I did, but it was the way things were where we lived. Usol lead us in these and sort of took me under his wing. We slashed people and broke bones, set fire to houses and homes. To hammer the point home we took young women, branded their faces, and raped them. We worked them as whores until their families were able to ransom them back. For all intents in purposes, we were the law for kilometers.

That changed when I was fifteen. Some of the clan leaders from up level threw us a feast. I got hammered out of my skull in fungus beer and I wasn't the only one. In retrospect, our clan leaders were in on it. Like everything else, tithe paying is something that gets passed down from above. They had to give up a portion of their people to maintain their position and it wasn't going to be their sons and daughters.

We were still passed out or hung over when the Arbites sealed the ways into and out of Undervault G7. Men in grey uniforms and flak armour jackets were surrounding us before we knew what was happening. We weren't in much shape to fight and they had far better gear. They hustled us into columns and forced us to march down the central corridor. To uphive.

They shot anyone who was too slow for their liking. They were armed with short frame autoguns and lasguns and fired long bursts. They didn't care much abouty collateral damage either. Fucking PDF.

There were thousands of us in the lines. Dozens of gangs mixed together, along with anyone else they had grabbed up. Normally there would have been bloodshed, but not while we were under those bastards guns. They had done this before and would do it again. I didn't see any gang leaders among us and now I knew why. They knew the score. Give up some of their people or the hammer comes down on them.

We marched for kilometers, up ramps and down long lengths of corridor. We finally reached a huge vault. Holoclocks glowed on the upper levels and bridges spanned the upper levels. Dozens of lanes of metal strips ran through the center. Dozens of boxy metal cars were strung together on the lines.

Nothing in my experience had prepared me for rail center. We were herded at gun point into the box cars. They stopped when about the likely packed mark and then sent people to the next car. I was jammed into a car with fifty strangers. There were no windows and only a pair of vents for air.

I could hear the whin of the air cyclers as they changed the air. It quickly became hot inside. There wasn't much room to move and no toilet facilities at all. We had already been on the march for hours without break and it stank pretty bad as it was. After an intermiable wait, the car began to move. We were on our way to what ever fate had in store for us.

[Imperial Overlord]

The journey took hours. I recognized at least three gangs and there were four I didn't. Two of them were clan enemies. We passed the journey uneasily.

Although I didn't know it at the time, we were headed to Trident Spire, one of the oldest hives on the planet. We were being sent there because the levies were always sent there. The car cruised to stop and the doors opened. A soft breeze entered and I gasped in fresh air.

"Out!" the guards ordered. We obeyed. We were in a transit station even larger than the one in Segula Tercia. Not that I believed we had left Segula Tercia. I had been told there were many worlds of men, but I could not imagine anything but the underhive. I merely thought I was in a different part of it.

The others cars were opening and more people were pouring out. All but one. The doors opened. I could see bodies inside. I latter learned that air cyclers had failed and they suffocated inside.

Several bodies were pulled out of others, along with women and scrawny boys with dishevelled clothing. They were held in place while the rest of us were marched to huge lifters. We were packed in tightly and then the grates closed and the lifts descended.

We dropped for almost a kilometer before emerging at the side of a huge vault at least two kilometers across and half a kilometer high. We were directed to one side and told to put on armbands with the number seventeen on it. Groups with the numbers sixteen and eighteen flanked us.

The four groups with rape and murder victims were marched out in front of us. A tough looking quartet with sergeant's stripes escorted a man wearing black leather coat and a peaked hat. His skin was dark brown, an exotic colour we did not see in the underhive. He was big too, a hair under two meters.

His face was fleshy, but not soft or weak. He paced back in forth in front of the groups for two or three minutes. Then he spoke.

"I am Commissar Isidore Khan. Your lives are the Emperors and to me is intrusted the task of keeping you faithful to him. You have been chosen to serve as his sword and fist as soldiers of the Imperial Guard. Some of you have chosen to rape and murder your future comrades within your first hours of selection. You crimes will not go unpunished."

He walked along the line with a drawn laspistol. Slowly. And then he shot. Bodies fell to the floor. He spared most of them. Those he killed were nasty pieces of work and probably guilty. If I had been in one of those groups he might have shot me.

He finished shooting. "It is my task to turn you underhive scum into soldiers of the Emperor. In this task I will be aided by your future officers and sergeants. You will be worthy of the One Hundred Fifty-Seventh Circasian Stalkers or you will die trying. Strive hard and give your devotion to the Emperor and you will succeed."

"You have all been assigned platoon numbers and will be housed as such. You are under military discipline. You will learn to fight and function as a team." He signalled a group of men in grey fatigues to walk forward. They were mid twenties or older and all of them wore a patch with the the number one fifty-seven in red over a pair of crossed knives. Each one wore sergeant's chevrons.

"These are your platoon sergeants. They will make soldiers out of you." Each sergeant had an armband with a number on it. Ours was a grey haired man, clean shaven, with a flinty expression. Zryn Hask was not a man to be triffled with. "Fall out by platoons," Khan ordered. And we did.

We were lead to a series of buildings where we were ordered to strip. We were then lead into shower rooms where we were sprayed with disinfectant before being blasted with warm water and past on through. We were issued grey fatigues that came in one of four sizes. Our sergeants then lead us to a mess hall where we got some rather tasty protean gruel and bread and cold, crisp water. It was one of the best meals I've ever had.

We then retired to our barracks, where we were instructed in the minutia of Guard grooming and housekeeping standards by Sergeant Hask before retiring to bed. After the display earlier this evening, no one tried any funny stuff after lights out. The bunk was simple, but clean and comfortable. Sleep came quickly. I knew that I had a big morning ahead.

[Imperial Overlord]

The next few days were monotonous. At least the food was regular and good. We learned to line up for drill. We spend a lot of time running around with heavy packs. We had speaches exorting us to be loyal to the Emperor shouted at us.

Our sergeant went by the name of Kerns. He was probably about thirty and the left side of his face was marred by knife scars. He looked nastier than he was. He was stern, but not abusive. Not that he was a slacker when it came to enforcing discipline.

Disobediance got you shot. On the spot. I latter learned that they had rounded up around three thousand people per regiment and expecting to graduate around two thousand or so from training. They expected loses from accidents, sneaking away, and enforcing discipline. The car with the broken air cycle had killed about fifty. The commissar had shot a dozen on the first day. The sergeants weren't interested in taking any disrespect either. They didn't try to prove that they were better knife fighters than the trouble makers were as a way of awing us into submission. That would have probably gotten them killed. Instead they shot them with their lases. We were up to a hundred odd dead at the end of the first week.

A couple men got shot over women. Not really suprising I guess. The sergeants fired full auto when they gunned men down, which meant occassionally they hit some poor bastard who wasn't doing anything. They also shot anyone they though might be in on it. This was their method of letting us know that we had a stake in preventative measures. So we learned to do their work for them and internalize the discipline of the Guard. We learned to solve problems before they came to the attention of the sergeants. Rape and murder would get you the axe. Beating the snot out of some shit head before he caused any trouble was work well done.

There was some gradiation in punishment. A few more shot for attempted dessertion and there were a couple of floggings for those who were trying to sneak in and visit lovers in other platoons. One guy took a swing at his sergeant and they massacred half his platoon. Almost everyone kept their head down, learned to operate a vox button or apply a field dressing or whatever the day's lesson was.

Life being cheap wasn't new to us. We had lived under those conditions all our lives. We also knew who held the power and ducked our heads down. Only the painfully stupid got themselves killed that way.

Every one had a shiv by the third day. I'm sure our sergeants anticipated this. The process of raising regements was ancient. These vaults served as the training ground for Imperial Guardsmen since time immemorial. I don't think we had any new tricks.

By the end of the second week we could march decently, use all the field tools that were expected of us, and marched all over the vault in heavy packs. We had learned to stop the trouble makers before they got the rest of us killed with them and the terminally stupid had gotten themselves killed. That's when they decided to let us play with weapons.

First it was knife fighting lessons with plastic batons. Most of us didn't think we needed them. The sergeants had a few tricks and I was smart enough to pay attention. We spent the next two days brusing each other before moving onto bayonets. Another pair of days spent using plastic frames and then we moved to the real thing. Lasguns.

We were eager at that point. We were issued Cicatrice Pattern Las rifles, which I latter learned were a knock off of Mars Pattern lasguns. Long barrelled las with good range and energy efficiency. One pull of the trigger, one laser pulse. Max cycle time of one pulse every half second.

The sergeants had shorter barrelled, less energy efficient Cicatrice Pattern assault lasers. They had a much faster cycle rate and would continue to fire if you held down the trigger. They were great weapons for close quarters combat.

So we were instructed on how to care for our lases and their power cells. Then we marched around with them for a while. Finally, we got issued power cells and we got to shoot them at the range.

We enjoyed the hell out of that. A las is a very forgiving weapon. Almost no moving parts, no need to compensate for windage or leading the target. Just point and shoot. We became competent shots pretty fast, albeit against targets that stood still.

After demonstrating an acceptable level of accuracy with the lasrifle, we started to play with the other toys. Grenades, heavy stubbers, grenade launchers, flamer, and rocket launchers. Mostly dummy ones at first. The sergeants weeded us out pretty fast, focusing the training on those they though had the knack for it. Not that we had many of them.

We got introduced to our officers next. They were mostly uplevelers who found their circumstances not so favorable. They weren't that happy to see us, but they had committed themselves the to Guard.

Our lieutenant was a twenty-something who was prettier than any woman I had ever seen. Perfect, smooth skin, blue eyes, not a hair out of place or a speck of dirt on his uniform. He wore thick gold rings on each thumb and let Kerns do most of the work. His name was Andril Lawrans and we immediately recognized him as deadweight.

We had a wargame with dummy weapons next. Winners got to eat for the day. We wore flash visors and used dummy weapons that fired beams powerful enough to sting. Our officers lead us for the first time and corporals were appointed. I got the job because I could read. We did well, Lawrans apparently knew something about small unit tactics, and although I got shot, we ate the next day. We got a beer to go with the evening meal. We rejoiced.

My promotion stayed through training, which was with our officers from now on in. We got our armour, thick flak jacket that covered us from waist to neck and our helmets. We could now pass as soldiers of the Imperial Guard.

We spent the next week on drills and squad tactics. Repetition and rote pounded the basics of leap frogging, assault rushes, and supression fire into heads. At the end we could perform them with a modicrum of competence.

That was all the time we had. We got called to muster the next morning before Commissar Khan and a short, stern man. Colonel Richar Arvak was career Guard and he had been assigned to our regiment as its commander. We were relatively lucky in that, but I didn't learn that until latter. At the time I just wondered who this grey haired man with all the medals on his chest was.

He gave a speech. It was short, which I learned to recognize as a way of distinguishing field commanders from staff officers. "You came here as the worst trash in the hive. You are now the hammer of the Emperor. You lived in squaller and knifed each other over trash. Now you will travel to distant worlds and live with honour. Your deaths would have been meaningless, now they will be glorious. You have taken up the sacred duty of defending mankind from heretics and aliens. For that I salute you!"

And he did. We roared back. To be told by someone with power that we weren't scum, that our lives weren't worthless, was something we had all craved secretly in our hearts. Our ordeal meant something.

The cruel joke is that he meant every word, but our status changed little. The Guard's tendency to win battles by burying its enemies in overwhelming numbers of shells and bleeding bodies was unknown to us then, but we would soon learn.

We were ordered to hump our gear to the lifts in platoons. We were sent kilometers into the upper levels. We grew excited. Then the lifts slowed and finally stopped. The grates stopped and we marched forward. A huge door was open and light poured in. Fools that we were, we thought it was to another vault. Workers in overalls stopped to gawk at us.

We approached the door. The huge expanse of the rolling sky was revealed to us as we overlooked the landing platforms for shuttles. I, who was smarter than most, had never even concieved of open sky. I fell to my knees in terror and vomited. I wasn't the only one.

Our sergeants showed some mercy. The proded us down the walk way to the belly of the shuttle. It was a boxy construct with a cockpit at one end and a cluster of thrusters at the other. We were marched into the cargo bay and ordered to strap ourselves into the benches. Shacking with terror, we did. Then the engines roared to life and we left Cicatrice behind forever.

[NecronLord]

You're inhumanly prolific, you know that IO?

[Prozac the Robert]

You're inhumanly prolific, you know that IO?

I'd like to semi-seriously propose giving him a custom title along the lines of 'writer of 40,000 fics'. I can see why someone would rather not have a bad play on words as their title though.

[Imperial Overlord]

We had time to recover from our encounter with the sky on the shuttle. Considering that the sky was covered in ash clouds like a vault roof, it could have been much worse. We were miserable through the flight up, but eventually the shuttles docked in a vast bay. We were enclosed in metal and loved it.

We were marched down to a cargo bay and set up bed rolls by platoons. It was big, maybe twenty meters high, fifty meters wide, and a hundred meters long. There were dozens of identical bays throughout the ship. We bunked down, secured our gear, and then got the word from our lieutenant.

About two thirds of the cargo bays on the ship held troops and equipment. The others were going to be used for training. We had about two months before we hit the war zone (we had no idea what that was) and the transit time was going to be used. We accepted that. Hell, it was better than staring at the walls.

So we did drills at first. More field assembly and more gear use checks. Easy stuff. Then some more target practice. It wasn't particularily interesting, but it got us up and about and occupied. We also started bumping into the crew.

Things started getting interested. Some of the crew had sidelines in recreational substances ranging from hidden stills to upper, downers, hallucinogens. The orange murder balls were my favorite. Jacked up you up nice and high and made you feel real good. Pop one of those and you were ready to fight an army.

There was the little matter of payment. We were about two to one men to women and some of both had sold their bodies before and were willing to do so again. Personal jewelry, stolen equipment, fruit from the ration packs for the stills, favors, and the Emperor knows what else became currency. I paid for the murder balls with some knife work. Some kind of inter crew rivalry with the engineers. Didn't kill anyone, but hurt three of them pretty bad.

The illicit substance trade didn't go unnoticed. Anyone caught using them got three days in the hole, an unheated, dark storage locker with only a flask of tepid water. The expressions on the guys who come out make it clear that it isn't any fun. The pre sentencing shit kicking was pretty nasty too.

They didn't look too hard when were on off hours, but if you're wired or zoned on duty they find out pretty damn quick. Sex is a little easier. They don't try to stamp it out, which isn't going happen and they know it. One of the things they shot into our arms on planet was a contraceptive. They don't much care about what company we have come lights out as long as its consentual, discreet, and it doesn't fuck with how the unit functioned. A few brutal beatings help educate those who were slow to get with the program.

It was tempting to use my shiny new corporal stripes to get some company, but the sergeants and lieutenant were watching too closely. My natural charm was insuficient. The average age was seventeen and I was fifteen. The bigger and tougher guys got the women mostly, as they attached themselves to the liklier prospects. Most people in my platoon thought I wasn't long for the word. It wasn't that I was a bad squad leader, it just was that I was only fifteen. The murder balls did get me a nice romp with Kyla and Terees though.

They didn't expect too much from us. We were gangers and downlevelers and didn't take naturally to order. They clamped down hard on the heavy stuff and turned a blind eye to the inevitable as long as it didn't do too much damage. We would fight, of that there was no doubt, and do so with a modicrum of skill and organization. That was all that they expected from us.

They got it. We took to the war games pretty well. With two months more of drill, we thought we were ready for anything. We were tougher than anything short of Astartes, meaner than hive rats, and smarter than than uplevelers. We were born survivors. Only the last was true.

[Imperial Overlord]

Our training ended one day. We had spent sixty-two days in the belly of the ship, training and drilling. We fell out for chow one morning and lined up to recieve our drill assignments. We got something else instead.

Colonel Arvak addressed our assembled ranks. "Today we go into battle for the glory of the Emperor! Beneath us is the world of Darver III. It is an agricultural world, which serves the Imperium by providing food for other worlds in the subsector. Four years ago ork invaders attacked this world. The filfthy xenos have resisted every attempt to dislodge them. This time we shall succeed."

Our confident roar greated his speech. Our platoons were sent to different drop ships. We secured our equipment in cargo nets and strapped ourselves into the accel benches. Amber lights flashed, warning of immenent drop. Then the red light shown and we fell into hell.

We hit atmosphere hard and felt the whole ship shake. My stomach did flip flops, but I managed to hold down breakfast. I clenched my fists and waited for it to be over.

We made landfall soon enough. We grabbed our gear and headed for the door. I lead my squad outside and it felt like getting hit with a hammer. There was no ceiling. Not even a thick layer of ash clouds. Just endless blue. I folded up in the long grass.

There were no walls either. Just rolling fields of waist high grass. I managed to hold on to the contents of my stomach. A lot of troopers couldn't manage that. A lot of yelling and screaming came our way. I managed to stand up on shaking legs. I looked down at my puking comrades, avoiding the void of the sky. "Get up!" I shrieked.

Rass and Trev managed to find their feet. "Get up!" I shouted again. "Isidore is coming!" That managed to produce some results. My squad to shakily get to their feet, shaking and moaning.

"Stand!" roared Isidore. "What kind of men are you?" He brandished his las. "Are you unmanned by an open sky? What kind of fighters are you?"

There was the crack of his las. I couldn't bear to look. "If you will not stand you will die! So fall all those who will not serve their Emperor." There was another crack. I heard another body hit the ground.

Everyone was standing now. The commissars and officer were screaming and shouting around us. I looked up from the ground and controlled my nausea. Other drop ships were landing on the plane. From the look of it a dozen regiments the size of ours were being dropped off.

"Sylas!" Sergeant Hask shouted.

"Yes Sergeant!" I shouted back. I looked directly at him, trying to fill my vision. I was almost able to ignore the sky.

"Get your squad assembled. We'll be moving out. You'll be on point."

"Yes sergeant!" I yelled back. Oh shit.

[NecronLord]

Nice. More! *goes to root for that book...*

[Imperial Overlord]

I lead my men forward, into the fields waist high grass and the rolling hills beyond. The sun beat down upon us. It was warm out here, warm enough that I was starting to sweat under my armour. At least the wind felt right, like the air flow from the near duct areas. My men followed not too closely behind.

The whole regiment was moving out. We were all humping packs full of supplies. The other regiments weren't coming with us. Most were staying behind, a few had moved out to the right and the left of us. I couldn't see them now. They were mechanized and got to rest their legs in fancy machines instead of marching their asses off. They had to be a few klicks away from us.

Not much happened. We marched, found nothing but the occassional tree or corpse, and eventually a halt was called. We made camp, use the heater on the ration tins, and slurped down the food. Say what you want about the Imperial Guard food, it was better than most of what I had eaten previously. I was latter to find out what a sad commentary that was.

We were nervous and excited. Sergeants and commissars made their patrols, to make sure nothing serious was breaking out. A few squads had rivalries from losing exercises and where we were from, those bad feelings meant knife work. I slept damn good that night. Of course, I was bone tired.

Next day, Zar's squad of the twenty third platoon got point. They went ahead. There were more trees today, clumps of them called copses. I wouldn't learn that word until latter. I soon had more immediate concerns.

We passed some Grox carcasses that had been crudely butchered. They were buzzing with flies, but not more than a couple days old. Our sergeants told us to keep alert. Shit for brains Lieutenant Lawrins didn't say nothing. Sergeant Hask said trouble was coming.

Zar founded first. He spotted something moving in the distance. Lots of them. He signalled back and a rocket screamed out of a copse of trees about a kilometer ahead. It missed by ten meters and sent a gout of dirt into the air.

Everybody with more than two chevrons on his sleeve started shouting. Our platoon went to ground and started digging. Zar and his boys hotfooted it back towards the rest of us and more rockets were lit off. Tracer rounds ripped through the air. Two of Zar's boys got hit. They didn't get up.

The something moving in the distance resolved itself as a few more innaccurate shots came from the trees. Vehicles. Our sergeants had us hold fire. We used the waiting time to dig. There was a lot of them and a shit load of infantry behind them.

The vehicles were all different. Most of them had four big tires and crudely painted and welded armour. All of them had at least one gun. The lighter, faster ones were outdistancing the rest. They were painted red and were basically buggies with a few pieces of armour plate and a gun slapped on.

Our sergeants let us open up on them when they were well under a kilometer. Hundreds of las beams split the air. Most missed. We weren't good shots, especially at range against a moving target. Even if said target was coming towardus us.

A few beams hit. Most of those hit armour. A few managed to connect with drivers or gunners. We were firing pretty rapidly, at least once a second. A few vehicles swerved and coasted to a stop or flipped over.

Heavy bullets sprayed across the plain from their guns. They were worse shots than we were. Our heavy stubbers opened up and they were mean guns. They fired igh velocity thirteen milimeter rounds with armour piercing tips at a hellacious rate. They put out some hurt and then the rocket teams joined the party.

Even having held back until the orks were at close range, their accuracy sucked. They hit maybe one time in four. There were, however, about fifteen or so teams that decided to open up. Streaks of fire and smoke shot through the air and dirt was blasted into the air, accompanied by loud booms.

Ork vehicles hit by them went up spectacularily. Whatever the orks were using for fuel, it would blow up real good with a little encouragement, and those rockets had no trouble blowing their buggies to pieces. Flaming bits of metal and ork were launched into the sky.

They were getting close now and a few people were taking hits. One of those damn things had some kind of flamethrower on it and we could here the screams as it roasted a few of our boys. Everyone near it shot it to pieces damn quick.

The buggy that my squad was pumping fire into suddenly blew with no sign of a rocket contrail anywhere. One of us must have hit a fuel tank.

Some of the grass was burning now. I looked over at the slower vehicles. They were getting closer now and some of them had disgorged orks. They were close enough for me to get a half decent look at them. They were big, thick, and green with really big arms. They carried huge guns. Fuck.

Most of the buggies were scrap by now, but the big boys were firing. They were bigger and slower and had more guns, bigger guns, and more armour. I didn't bother shooting at them. "Kill the foot troops!" I yelled.

Me and mine opened fire. We were a little over half a kilometer away and our aim sucked, but a las is a very forgiving weapon and we hit fairly often. The orks were even worse shots and those huge guns they carried must have had brutal recoil. The ones shooting at us mostly shot too high or too low. The big vehicle guns chewed up earth pretty good.

The Emperor damned greenskins didn't die. I couldn't really see much in the way of armour at this distance, but at the time I thought they must have some good stuff because you really had to hit them to put them down. The first one me and my boys must have shot a dozen times before he dropped.

The rocket teams were hitting the big boys more often, but they didn't always go up. They also didn't need a direct hit to kill you with the reallyl big guns. Our casualties were starting to mount, although our platoon was golden.

The heavy stubber chewed up greenskins real good. It put a lot of big holes in them that went all the way through. To bad my squad didn't have one, but we were putting the hurt on them. We must of put a dozen down before things went sour.

Some of the ork vehicles had survived the rockets and they were close now. Some of them had holes in them or pieces blown off, but they could still fight and they were. The orks were already firing their big guns, but now they were close enough to hit some of the time. And use their flame throwers.

Ninth platoon was close to us. An ork half-track's flamer swept over the area and the orks opened up with a big double barrelled gun turret to boot. Emperor have mercy, we could all here the screams. Those that weren't hit were surrounded by flames. A few got up and ran, flames clinging to their bodies. Orks gunned down two. I shot the third in the face, because I sure as hell wouldn't want to live as badly burned as he was. We were really in the shit now.

[NecronLord]

Orks! Almost hitting at a klom? By thunder!

[Imperial Overlord]

Orks! Almost hitting at a klom? By thunder!

You put enough lead in the air and some of it is bound to go some place you don't want it.

[LadyTevar]

Great story, as always Impy

[That NOS Guy]

So now that the anvil of the Guard is in action, is there any chance we'll get to see the hammer?

[Imperial Overlord]

So now that the anvil of the Guard is in action, is there any chance we'll get to see the hammer?

Yes, at some point.

[Imperial Overlord]

Seventeenth was lucky. None of the surviving ork vehicles, which were rocket magnets, got too close to us. The heavy weapons boys and girls really dropped the hammer on them. The vehicles were half junk, but the armour worked and the orks weren't at all bothered by people shooting at them. The died damn hard.

I wasn't really paying too much attention to them. The huge wave of the Emperor-denying bastards closing in on us was holding my attention pretty good. They were shooting all kinds of guns at us as the loped forward. If there is one thing I like about orks it is their aim. I'll be damned to the warp if they didn't make us hive conscripts look like marskmen.

I hit one in the shoulder and he didn't stop. I put another four las beams into his upper torso before he dropped. I was beginning to get used to the idea that you had to practically shoot them to pieces to stop them. And there thousands of them. Tens of thousands maybe. I didn't count. I kept shooting.

I dropped another one by stitching bolts across his waste and he fell over. If he'd been human, he would have been dead before he fell, but he may have lived. Then I dropped one with a single headshot. I guess even orks need to a brain to direct them.

The greenskins were getting close now. My squad and the rest of my platoon was firing furiously. Red las beams filled the air relentlessly. The xenos scum refused to die fast enough. Somebody nearby screamed.

The stubbers were a constant buzz saw. They tore up the orks pretty good but still they came. Me and mine were sitting in shallow pits with a feeble bit of earth in front of us. That's all that was there between us and a horde of orks that just would not fall.

The grenade launchers and flame throwers joined the fun. Orks were torn open and mangled in all sorts of ways. Streams of fire swept over them and they burned. Between the flamers, the rockets, and the burning vehicles, half the grasslands seemed to be burning. They still came as we furiously fired into them.

They died in droves and the survivors still came forward. Getting the hell out of this hell was looking very good. Too bad that bastard Sergeant Hask was right next to the heavy stubber, fifty meters back, and overlooking the our path of retreat. At least the orks might miss me.

Then the earth shook and fountains of dirt rose into the air. The orks in front of were startled. I drilled the closest one through both knees and he fell forward. I screamed my rage and my defiance and my refusal to die through smoke choked air. I fired my lasgun dry and then reached for another energy clip. Fuck them all. I was going to fucking live.

[Shinova]

Awesome. Really nice portrayal of the mood of the 40k-verse.

[NecronLord]

And that's how the Earthshaker got its name.

[Imperial Overlord]

The fire shielded us, although I couldn't see a fucking thing through the smoke and I was boiling in my armour. A big, nasty bond of burning promethium was in front of our trench and it was setting the grass around it alight. Apparently, even orks aren't eager to wade through flames. They bypassed up, moving around our sides to engage other platoons.

We were firing like maniacs, hitting them in the flanks as they ran into massed las and stubber fire. Throne, they were stubborn. The earth shook through another series of explosions and more dirt went into the sky. I could feel the blasts rattle my bones. Fuck, they were getting close.

I was shooting the bastards to the north of us. They were shooting in every direction and weren't too sure what to do. We solved their problem by shooting the green bastards until they dropped. That's when I saw them.

Tanks. I didn't recognize them then, but I know what they were now. Leman Russes and Chimeras. At least a score of them, closing from the north. And turned and looked south. I could see the silhouette of more tanks. That's when I figured it out.

Those tanker regiments they had sent north and south were the hinges of a trap. They had sent us out to find the orks and we had. Then the hinges close. Cauldron. Tankers surrounding the orks while the artillery pounded them. They all die. I'd bet a years pay that there were more tanks east and one of those hard looking regiments behind us, to make sure the orks were surrounded.

Of course they had used the expendable hive scum as bait. Made perfect sense. You wouldn't want to loose a good regiment doing that. Fucking uplevelers. I screamed in rage, the only thing I could do. I rose up out of my pathetic cover and blasted away at an ork.

I hit him in the shoulder, shot of a tusk, and grazed him in the thigh. He turned and looked at me, red blood oozing from his wounds. In his good hand he raised a big boxy looking gun with a huge magazine. It had to weigh at least six kilos and probably closer to ten.

He fired, missing over my head. I put a beam into his collar bone and another bolt into his chest. He didn't fucking drop. He fired again and I felt pain blaze through my head before I collapsed down into swirling chaos and then darkness.

[Imperial Overlord]

My head was throbbing, but I managed to open my eyes. The ceiling above me was canvas and I could hear moaning from either side. I turned my head and saw maybe two score other men lying in cots in a big tent. Two Sororitas nurses were passing through, checking on the other wounded.

My throat was bone dry and it felt like I had been gargling razor blades. "Water," I managed to croak as one came close to me. She wasn't pretty, but I thought she was an angel when she went over to a water tank and brought me a glass. I gulped it down.

My head still hurt. "How bad am I?" I asked.

She checked the chart hanging on edge of my bed and considered for a moment, undoubtedly translating from medicae technical jargon to trooper. "You'll be fine. Headaches for a while and a scar."

"Okay," I responded, relieved. She changed the bandage wrapped around my head before leaving to check on another patient. At some point in the conversation, a good NCO would have asked about his men but I certainly wasn't a good NCO. I was grateful to have survived that hell unmaimed. That isn't to say I didn't care, but that the galaxy of a fifteen year old conscript soldier revolves around one being: himself.

I was stuck in bed for another day or two. The pain and nausia subsided enough for them to kick me back to my unit. The rest of Seventeen greeted me with fist bumps an slaps on the back. We had lost Teena, Lars, and Ekast and Varnya and Heeth were both fucked up worse than I was. We hadn't gotten hurt too bad, all things considered. It wasn't much comfort.

Sergeant Hask came along and, looked me over and barked "get back to your men and take care of business."

I saluted and said "yes sergeant!" Fuck if I knew how to lead. Half my boys were just waiting for me to buy it, but they were at least inclined to keeping their gear in shape and not getting shot in the head by a commissar, so I got a basic level of cooperation and obediance. I wasn't confident enough to push it, although in retrospect I could have demonstrated real leadership. That was just fine with the brass, of course. They didn't expect too much from hastily trained conscript gutter trash.

I had gotten a new helmet, courtesy of gear taken off the dead. Time was valuable the dead were not and there was no shortage of promethium so corpse disposal was handled by torching the bodies. It spread, of course, which I latter figured out was probably intentional so that most of the ork spores would be taken out.

We got our marching orders and rumour flew down the line fast and furious. It seemed we were to marching on Hidleburg, the only real city in this part of the world. A punny thing that house a couple hundred thousand and the indigs called it a city. It boggled the mind.

Only the glitter boys got the nice rides, we gutter slime had to walk the way while hauling all are gear. So we walked, eating the glitter boys' dust. We were getting pretty sour and we weren't really in shape for sustained marches and the blisters weren't making us any nicer.

After five days we could see the defensive works the Orks had set up around the city. Crude steel and concrete guard towers, dug in gun batteries, sunken barrack houses, coils of wire and assorted other nastiness that I couldn't see or recognize through field glasses. Scuttlebut said they had slaves working turning out weapons in war factories inside.

We had gone from twenty seven hundred when we hit dirtside to twenty two after the battle. I had a pretty good idea who was going to get tapped to lead the first charge through that mess. I hoped I lived long enough to shoot one of those Lord General fucks.

[Imperial Overlord]

I had been issued a new gun along with the rest of my gear. It wasn't a las, but a slug thrower. A short frame autorifle with a forty round clip. I was able to get a little practice shooting it. The kick took a little getting used to, but it put out a lot of bullets real fast. It wasn't as accurate as a las, but it would be a real hurting on whatever it hit. Well, if I was going to go crawling around in Ork trenches better it than a lot of other weapons.

We had a day to rest before we were due to hit the line. Most of us were pretty sore and nervous. There was a lot of sharpening of knives and grumbling. The corporals, including me, were given the task of making sure no one got knifed or seriously injured in any other way before the Orks got the chance to kill us tomorrow. We managed to succeed at that task.

The attack began with a massive, pre-dawn barrage that was suppossed to pin the Orks in bunkers and wreck the wire. What it mostly did was let the Orks know we were coming.

"Advance!" shouted Lieutenant Lawrins. We marched out towards the wire. We had several kilometers of open ground to cover and the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. Shells were sending fountains of dirt up into the air. We had a good look at layer after layer of trenches, wire, bunkers, and gun pits. Emperor have mercy. We were marching into hell.

The glory boys got to travel in wrapped in steel. They were coming on our left flank, a penetrating spearhead, while our asses marched practically naked into the killing field. Fuck you twice Lord General.

We were about a klick from the outer works before fire began to come our way. A few rounds at first and then a field motar joined in. Neither of them did much. Then some poor bastard twenty meters to my left caught a round and fell screaming. And then another. And another.

We shot back, of course. A fusilade of generally ineffectual lasfire. I held my fire as my comrades raked the front trench. I don't know if they did much good, but they probably felt better.

We drew closer and the Ork fire picked up. We couldn't go a couple of steps without someone going down. We were getting close to the artillery shell explosions as well. The sound was hitting us like hammers and then ceased.

"Charge!" shouted Hask. We jogged foreward, weapons firing. Orks began to stick their heads up and open up with their weapons. Our casualties mounted as we closed. I was praying to the Emperor to live through this.

We neared their lines, firing like mad men. The flamethrower boys opened up, filling the trenchers with burning promethium. Half the wire was still standing. We forced our way around it and threw it, fuck it was mess, people dropping right and left. We chucked grenades into trenches, filled them with fire, and sprayed fire to keep their heads down. Somehow, some of us made it to the first ones.

I leapt down into the mud. Not five meters away was an Ork with his left arm severed at the elbow. He snarled at me and lunged. I raised my rifle, but her caught it by the barrel and yanked it out of my hand. He raised it above his head to beat me to death with it when a lasbeam caught him in the head and he dropped. Three troopers slid down around me. I retrieved my gun.

I looked around. Two men and the woman who had saved my life. I was the only one with rank. Fuck, I was in charge. "Alright, everyone good to go?" I asked, playing for time. What the fuck was I going to do?

Nods answered me. "Okay, lets move out. That way," I said stabbing with my rifle. Our orders were to advance, so thats what we were going to do.

[Ford Prefect]

And it returns! Hooray!

[Hawkwings]

It lives! I like this one