*Authors Note
I am terribly sorry about this. This "story" didn't come out the way I wanted it to,
I rushed it, and I consider it to be one of my worst works ever, with all this said,
please don't go into it expecting much.
Also! I have been kicking around the idea of doing a short story around the Assassinorum, since there isn't much lore around it I figure I could play around with that and actually make something decent, unlike this, let me know what you think of that in the comments, or private message me!
Foreword
I haven't read any books pertaining to the Imperial Guard before, so please keep in mind that I have a limited amount of knowledge on them.
Chapter 1
Clods of pristine white snow flopped to the ground from the contorted limbs of the trees all around him, each such occurrence was inaudible but not unperceived, usually catching in the reaches of his peripheral vision. Snow-capped trees were bountiful in every direction, altogether forming a sea of untainted purity. His legs submerged in and out of the thick white blanket with each great step he took; the land was welcoming and familiar to him, it was slightly warmer here now than what he remembered it being back on his home-world, however, the presence of an unclouded nighttime sky punctuated with sparkling stars shook any doubt in his mind, he was home.
His nose began to drool lightly, he was partly convinced that it was from the cold that squeezed his face but he reconsidered that thought once two heated beads of wetness liberated themselves from his eyes, and slipped down his face, tears, something he forgot he was capable of producing after such terrible absence from his home.
A short walk later, he came upon a small cabin, constructed of sturdy logs that were much too thick to have been made of any of the specimens which he had seen all around him; he recaptured memories of the customs of his homeland for such a scenario, knocking on the warmer toned, honey-colored door which so distinguished itself from the surrounding darker wooded body of the structure he awaited reply from within. After several attempts, he finally tried the door and found it to be unlocked, opening it and allowing the door to swing inward afforded him a glimpse of the warm and comfortably lit interior.
Announcing his intent to enter to whatever occupants may have resided, he became increasingly aware of a stubborn inability on his part to move inward, to move at all, with this realization came another, which was all the more unappreciated, there was a presence behind him, that he was unable to confront. Whatever was behind him seized a hold of his shoulder and shook him violently, and began dragging him back, the world shook and flashed between two separate plains, and then all was black.
Chapter 2
After being shook awake by several of his fellow trainees, Astorak fell from the lofty heights of his top bunk down onto his face; he had slept through the first calls of the morning inspection ritual, and there were going to be severe consequences if his squad wasn't able to assemble for inspection.
The interior of their barracks was a hive of scantily clad activity, each and every recruit was either making their beds hurriedly or tending to the personal hygiene rituals in as quick and efficient a manner as was humanly possible. The several hundreds of other barracks that surrounded were capable of being placed into one of two groups, barracks which were populated by the ready and conscientious recruit or the complete opposite; Astorak's barrack was the second one.
No sooner had the recruits finished their rituals than the door to the barracks burst violently open, and in stepped the sergeant. Sergeant Monar was a man capable of behaviorally shapeshifting faster than a Guard draftee was to consider desertion; with soft blue eyes, and sandy blonde hair, the man was able to be as gently spoken and unassuming as a newborn babe, and this often worked to his advantage, as his underlings demonstrated a consistent lack of comprehension of the reality that he was one to be underestimated as much as a Catachan Devil.
The sergeant stepped all throughout the hovel, his glimmering boots thumping with a singular, carefully measured two step beat, his brows hardened and pitched into inhuman degrees of parallelism and his once kind blue eyes frosted over and darkened into a harsher almost contemptuous shade.
He passed the first four bunk rows with haunting smoothness, as his eyes vacillated to and fro, it was certain that he wasn't going to be merciful today, he was a wolf prowling for the throats of lambs.
He passed Skek Baldersmunne drowning him in a wake of intensity and stalked onward, then he came to a mechanical stop, everyone's heartbeat stopped, dread wafted through the air, and he homed in on Belkun Rowsmen.
In the next terrifying moments, he stared through the chest of the man that dwarfed them all, seemingly peering through the fatigues which clothed his breast and locking in on his beating heart, Belkun measured near seven feet tall, and was equally filled out as he was tall; he was a literal pillar of flesh, and yet here they stood as witnesses to him being gripped by his collar and slung over the sergeants right arm, he hardly had time to make a whimper before he impacted the cold rockcrete floor and his lungs were forcibly emptied of air.
“You stupid bastard Belkun!” the sergeant spewed forth “Explain to me why you think you can slacken your belt on a day of inspection without my express permission to?” the man couldn't respond before the sergeant hoisted him up by his belt and threw him onto his bed, where he lay limp and battered for several minutes before he stood on his feet once more.
Sergeant Monar returned to the door threshold and announced: “Today, you have earned a satisfactory score as a squad, and it is my pleasure to announce to you that you will have the opportunity to improve your imperfect score should you display an adequate performance in today's lessons and inspections. Report to the combat range by 0100, dismissed.”, with that Monar shut the door and faded out of the minds of the men.
Chapter 3
At the combat range, the squad was baffled and slightly worried to find an Ogryn waiting for them, as well as
their beloved sergeant; today they were going to be challenged in besting an opponent that was larger and stronger
than they in close quarter battle. The objective they were to achieve was to make the mammoth abhuman's back
touch the ground. Skek was the first to approach the hulking fiend; he charged forward with a scream and slammed
into it with his shoulder. In result of his physical insignificance to such a being, his effect was negligible in all
regards aside from enraging the beast, which summarily pummeled him for a small time. The leviathan's retaliation
was horrible, with fists the size of anvils it hammered the aggressors chest before the beating was called off.
Another brave soul stepped up to the beast and positioned into a hunched fighting stance, distributing balance
equally over the entirety of his person just as they had each been taught in basic close quarter combat training
he lashed out with a right handed forward jab and nabbed the creature in the face. The incensed Ogryn then took a gigantic fist and rocketed it forward into the mans solar plexis,which bore him into the air and sent him
crashing down into the mud.
The second man was rotated out for a third and inevitably a fourth, before long Astorak was designated as the next
to attempt, unlike the others, he wasn't going to combat his opponent alone.
Astorak enlisted the help of several of his squadmates, and together as a group, they assaulted the beast, climbing
atop it and wailing on each exposed point of its anatomy, before long the creature lost its composure and swung
wildly, hoping to batter any of its many assailants, this was done to no avail, and contributed in the dissolution of
its balance, ultimately seeing the giant collapse onto his back; the recruit's victory was secured.
Chapter 4
The events of the day carried through invariably, training exercises were the largest portion of the squads effort
and inspections followed afterward, everything was routine and by the book, errors whenever and wherever they
were encountered were stamped out.
Perfection was demanded by and from everyone; whatever doubts that had formed in the minds of the recruits or
their leaders, of the recruit's capabilities withered and died over a very short duration of time.
The day of graduation was a picture indistinguishable and unerring from several millennias of tradition. Rivers
of men thousands of miles long flowed and danced, each river flowed into seas of transport craft, which took off
with constant frequency.
Astorak's squad formed a human tributary for the 82nd Foxal Company, all around him marched men who wore
faces prideful and unworried of where they were to be sent, or what they would be commanded to do, these
men were exemplary beings of unquestioning loyalty and faith. Astorak wondered what he looked like as he
marched along with his squad, but quickly returned his mind to keeping in step with all the rest of the human
herd.
The seas of men stripped and parted with a regular consistence as platoons snaked their ways to their appointed
transport craft; it hypnotized and disoriented the individual that watched the men beyond his own squad, so
Astorak and Skek kept steady recognition of where the rest of the squad was at all possible times.
So intent had both Astorak and Skek become on keeping their eyes from wandering that they hardly noticed they
had been herded aboard their very own transport craft. The sounds of the migration of both man
and machine aboard the craft were such a cacophony that the very noise of the aircraft's immense engines were
almost entirely inaudible.
The interior of the craft was a compendium of mixed scents and noises, the sound of boots stomping
and engine noise merged into a singular horrendous sound; the air was a barrier of stale warmth, which suited the
manufactured appearance of the interior wires, pipes, grates, and tubes all lay along the walls and ceiling.
The upper deck was quieter and moderately lit from overhead panels which graciously concealed the offensive
and confused mechanical flesh of the aircraft's interior, unlike that of the abrasive imagery of the lower deck.
Housed in several infantry bays which were paired accordingly with their squads and
companies, some groups were chatting idly whilst others milled about the environment in
which they found themselves. With the last of the vehicles loaded aboard, no time was wasted in securing every
piece of equipment and port, within the space of an hour after that the engines of the immense aerial machine
loudened gradually until they roared with physically perceiveable intensity; everyone aboard felt the power of the
vehicle coursing through the floor into them. The immense ship hopped into the air with a great leap and began to
ferry the brave men ever higher into the skies, clouds parted and fell away until the
great vehicle crawled into the great blackness of space.
Chapter 5
The Cetaceus class ship Muria hung expectantly in the blackness of space, like a bloated spider awaiting some
new morsel to bumble into its trap. The kinds of craft which populated the belly of the monstrous ship were mostly
flocks of Devourer dropships; intermittently, there would be the coming or going of different ships, though none
were of any comparable size to that of the bloated craft. Astorak's vessel was just another craft to be engorged
by the gargantuan host-ship; tucked comfortably within the open belly of the Muria.
As the docking clamps seized onto the craft there came a breath of excitement over all the men aboard Astorak's
ship, men milled about and chattered amongst their respective platoons and companies whilst briefings passed
down the line. The 82nd Company was to recapture the mega-city of Argos and the surrounding territory from
an increasing force of Chaos that was believed to have initially begun as a chaos cult that gained momentum.
Talking became all the more feverish once briefing had been finished, there wasn't much notice among the
troops that the very last of the other dropships had docked within the hull of the Cetaceus ship, it was only a
matter of time now before they were all blasted into the warp and onward to their destination.
In the Muria's communication and navigation room the final confirmations and approvals from the necessary
divisions were being run and reconfirmed, whirlpools of text and numbers scrolled across screens and terminals
whilst the attending crew performed their tasks with flawless efficiency and finesse.
The Muria's Warp drives powered on and hummed mechanically, gradually the proper conditions were coaxed
and the perceived reality of the physical dimension tore itself apart, birthing a massive anomaly in space and time
which hungrily consumed the stars and light around it whilst disgorging its own haunting light if only for a brief
moment before it steadily collapsed in on itself moments after it enveloped the carrier class ship.
The duality of reality was all around the Muria now; things which were uncertain and impossible in the corporeal
dimensions of existence were now entirely apparent to the feeble creatures that now drifted through it. Few
understood the gravity of what they were witnessing or what they were feeling, they were traveling through a
medium which transcended mental and physical planes. The ship held course for its destination in conventional
reality and fought the tides of the alien realm around it, it was believed that the approximate time of their arrival
was to be several hours after they had departed from the material world.
The Muria drifted back into conventional space and time in accordance with earlier projections, which came as a
welcome notion, no matter how many times an individual passed through the realm of the warp, it was still a
powerfully haunting experience.
With a couple hours of piloting through the void, there came into view the planet Tarvos, the subject of their
deployment and the world which they would be landing on within several hours. Tarvos once a planet with
highly toxic air, which was laden with acidic compounds that proved extremely fatal to biological lifeforms, this
uninhabitability was remedied by a moderate amount of terraforming over the course of six Terran years.
Terraforming immediately rendered Tarvos habitable to such an extent that it was immediately populated for food
production due to its highly volcanic soil content, this gave it the economical push from trade with other nearby
planets in the Ultima Segmentum to become a considerable point for colonization and resource production.
The modestly proportioned green and white ball sat haphazardly in a concernedly small distance of 100,000
light years from expansive herds of asteroids and the vast plumes of cosmic dust that coiled and enveloped them.
Navigating through the diverse fields of space-rock, the Muria and the ships which protected her drew ever nearer
to their destination, scrutinizing every possible angle of ambush they could experience from the notorious pirates
and other myriads of horrors which populated this distant fringe of space.
Astorak and his platoon made ready in their section of the ship as the host-craft closed the distance between them
and Tarvos; men pulled armor pieces from their respective racks that lined the armory walls and leisurely strapped
the meagre slabs of protective carbon fibre and ceramic plating onto themselves, they wore the numbers of their
platoons somewhere on the face of their pauldrons,whilst their squad numbers were displayed on their right
breastplate. In other platoons and companies aboard the other ships the locations of where the identification
markings rested varied as much as the stars all around the ships did. Numerical or alphabetical patterns and icons
weren't uncommon and the men and women of the Imperial Guard took these modest forms of customization as far as
they could go, the singular constant was that this heraldry among all the innumerable regiments of the guard
consistently hard earned and was typically taken very seriously.
Lasguns were pulled from racks and wargear was looped, strapped, hooked, and buckled in the last few minutes
of leisure before the mighty clock of war began to tick, and the men would be deployed into the maelstrom of
combat.
As fresh recruits, Astorak and Skek lacked the winged skull insignia which decorated the right breastplate of
their fellows. This absence above their squad number was a gross perversion of their sense of uniformity,
something a mere several months ago they would have prided themselves upon, they were different from those
around them, they felt alien, tolerated rather than welcomed as comrades of the mighty imperial military.
“A pair of wings matters little when the fighting is done on the ground” Seargeant Monar spoke matter-of-factly
as he delicately inserted a stick magazine into his hi-power Autopistol and tucked it into the lightly tanned leather
holster on his thigh, then gave a reassuring nod to them.
Dropships began to launch in gradual succession and made their way to the planet in great swarms of craft
which spilled from the hull of the carrier ship, onboard the troop transports men gathered up the last of their gear
and pulled on their backpacks, some took a moment to utter a silent prayer to the emperor for whom they were
about to die and kill in the name of, whilst others sharpened and affixed their bayonets in solemn preparedness for whatever situation they would find themselves storming into.
Chapter 6
Multitudes of dropships swarmed the planetary surface of Tarvos, ships burst from the blackened clouds that
polluted the skies above, 7,000 feet below sprawled the battlefield,miniature countrysides which encapsulated
the mega-city of Nesk in a semi-circular pattern. A grand, lush, forest stood before the city and to
the northwest of that great forest flowed the river Anklos which supplemented the diverse crops of the south and
east alike. The ships which hung from the clouds above swooped down in waves for hours and beached themselves
in the rich soils of the planet; the enemy established Anti-Aircraft guns responded to the invasion force with indiscriminate violence, and fired on many of the gargantuan aircraft, casting pale orange beams into the dark and
sickly green sky which blossomed into explosions on the surfaces of the many dropships, the damage which
was inflicted was cumulative and took a great deal of consistent fire.
Slaughter started in the air and was soon to be adopted on the ground, the anti-aircraft gunfire was unsuccessful in
eliminating more than two aircraft at a time and consequently thousands upon thousands of unmolested craft
collapsed to the soft ground and spewed forth seas of men and machines alike.
Astoerak and his squad were among the incalculable hordes of the 182nd guardsmen regiment that crashed and
marched through fields and forests in the outskirts of Nesk, commands were spewed as the tides of men and
vehicles were arranged into battle formations in preparation for immediate advance on city.
In the relative calm of preparation for battle
it was easy to think about victory and the foolish concept that it would be easily wrestled from an opposition
which was fewer in number than the aggressor and was inequally equipped. Orders for advance came quickly
and were obeyed far more swiftly until these orders which were obeyed so easily were complicated with sudden
and intense artillery fire from no apparent direction. The slaughter was consistent and unforgiving, men and tanks
were thrown from the ground or vaporized with absolute unpredictability.
For several hours they endured and marched onward into plumes of dirt and gore, but with each step they took
the guns which destroyed them became ever more audible, and it was a drive to silence those guns which propelled
the mighty advance ever further. Sight of enemy forces within the forest ignited the maddening flames of war;
tanks began firing their main guns into the treeline and revealed a standing force of tattered beings which opened
fire on the proceeding armies, crimson beams sliced through the air and caught men in their faces or chests
and made them collapse into piles of scorched meat and equipment.
Screams and commands became indistinguishable as all the madness in the world fell on the heads of men,
grenades began exploding and limbs were cast asunder as fire was exchanged, death became indiscriminate
in the sea of violent motion and blood.
Chapter 7
After the small engagement, there lay nearly 2000 dead heretics, and the advance proceeded relatively
unhampered, Astorak couldn't have been sure, but he thought his laser fire might have been near one of those
chaos fiends when they still stood alive during the fighting.
The lines of artillery guns soon came into view of every guardsmen in the 182nd regiment, and each man charged
without thought of himself, thousands were cut down from entrenched traitor forces but it mattered little to halt
the crazed advance, and complete slaughter ensued. Streaks of brilliant blue glided through the air and into the
trenches of the heretics, plasma scorched the flesh of the enemies of the imperium and liquified all that it touched
whilst lasgun fire was exchanged interminably, it was a brave, glorious fight, that lasted for several months before
the imperial forces finally broke through the defenses of their enemies and laid siege to the city within.
Tarvos was returned to stability after a standard year of intense fighting, by the brave men of the Imperial Guard.
