“THE GOD EMPEROR PROTECTS!

FEAR NOT YOUR DEATH, FOR IT IS

HE WHO REWARDS YOUR SACRIFICE!”

The man sized vox units screamed passages from the Imperial Hymnal overhead, its
mechanical chorus barely audible over the shriek of landing engines spinning to life with
the sound of flaying metal. The crew cabin was hot and stank of sweat and vomit, the
only light filtering through red hazard bulbs in the distance. The deafening cacophony of
sound competed with the crushing force the restraint bars pressing down into Trooper
Volaire’s shoulders.

Around him sat the rest of his platoon, part of Aquila Company of the Coran 609th Light
Infantry Regiment. Each body was pressed snugly into the gravgel seats, the spongy
material doing much to keep the wild bucking of the ship from cracking teeth and
snapping necks through their turbulent descent. Aquila Company was among the first
wave, a hundred thousand troops raining down from the heavens in a hundred city-sized
landers.

The Herald was a Helios lass lander easily the length of a city hab-block and nearly as
wide, its sides bulging with troop bays meant to dispel a company of the Emperor’s
hammer from each of the gigantic landing ramps. Built for capacity rather than elegance,
the ship was shielded in double hulled adamantium plating and studded with retro jets
that shone like miniature blue suns as they labored to slow the speeding ship, yet it still
descended with all the grace of a falling brick.

“YOUR LIFE IS BUT AN ALLOWANCE OF THE GOLDEN THRONE, SPEND

IT WELL!”

The vox continued to wail in digital monotone from their seats high up on the vaulted
bulkhead. Beside him a younger trooper had jettisoned his ration paste, splattering a grey
mess over his flak vest and the grated deck between his boots. Volaire silently repeated
the Prayer of Deliverance as the ship was buffeted again, the servos of the pressure
harness above him struggling to equalize his balance in the seat. The result was his
helmet clanging against the steel bar and resonating in his skull with a painful ring.

For a moment he was deaf, vision blurring as the ship was lurched again, this time even
harder than before. Nearby he could hear the sound of his commander, Lieutenant Krill,
shouting something from his command seat at the head of the platoon’s designated
bulkhead. At first Trooper Volaire couldn’t make sense of the noise, the ringing still
muddling his senses. Whatever the noncom was listening to was muted from the trooper's
own headset.

“—Fire! Taking fire! Report!”

1
That didn’t make any sense, Volaire thought as another forceful blast rocked the ship;
buffeting him against the frame of the gravgel padding beneath him. There wasn’t
supposed to be any defense fire!

In their short briefing, they had been told that the landing site had been cleared of any
resistance, the might of the Imperial Navy having bombarded the outskirts of the hive
into wasteland, so why were they taking ground fire?

“HE WHO SITS IMMORTAL KNOWS ALL. FEAR NOT, FOR COWARDS
DIE IN SHAME!”

The troopers around him began to chant a shuddering chorus of the Emperor’s Prayer,
beseeching Him on The Throne to protect them. Volaire found himself joining without
effort, the words reaching his quivering lips before thinking. Soon the whole of the troop
bay was joined in prayer, the choir broken only by the continued buckling of the ship as it
weathered an increasing storm of fire.

Outside the bay windows of the cockpit were black, the massive shutters of the blast
shields sealing the command deck in a darkness that was only spared by the dim green
glow of the logic engine banks and control instruments lining the bulkheads. As captain
he was the only human on the deck, his company held by a dozen servitors in varying
states of frantic work. The pair manipulating the flight trajectory of the lander seemed the
most stressed, blood running in inky rivulets along the rude joints of their metal muscles
as they flexed beyond the breaking point. Captain Gyrum didn’t need to heed the
technical readout to know his ship was dying.

“ALTITUDE: 14,687 FEET, RATE OF DECCELLERATION: 692 KILOS.

ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL TO DROPSITE: 4:31 MINUTES.
RESISTANCE: EXTREME. HULL CONTANCTS: 412—436—479--.THE
EMPEROR PROTECTS." The servitor rattled off grim statistics in a hollow voice, its
sallow fleshed face riddled with protruding wires that fed the cogitator engine rigged to
its cranium. Two of the largest cords strung from its eyes and locked into matching ports
on the panel in front of it.

Gyrum knew that The Herald wouldn’t last long, his connection with the drop ship via
his neural umbilical cord already growing tenuous. A sad irony, he reflected for a
moment, to be so close to a planet he was surely about to die for and never to have seen
it. He released the controls mounted in the arms of his command chair, easing back into
the worn leather.

2
For the first time in several months he disconnected the neural uplink that fed into the
back of his neck, dripping thick fluid over his shoulders in the process. It was a naked
feeling, no longer feeling the agony of the ailing machine spirit. Briefly he lamented the
cold feeling, but he would die more man than machine at the very least.

“ALTITUDE: 12,719 FEET, RATE OF DEC— WARNING: INTERNAL

IMPACTS DETECTED.” All of the servitors screeched in alarm, their sightless faces
jerking back and forth in unison like a morbid chorus. “HULL BREECH DETECTED
ON CARGO DECKS: 12A, 12B, 14A. PRESSURIZATION LOST. CARGO
TERMINATED. ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL TO DROPSITE: 3:2—-
2:31— 1:21-- ERROR: UNCONTROLLED DECENT. ERROR:
UNCRONTROLLED DECENT.”

“YOU SERVE BETTER IN DEATH THAN—ERROR: UNCONTROLLED

DECENT. PEPARE FOR EMERGENCY DEPLOYMENT RITUALS.”

Suddenly Trooper Volaire found his stomach rising through his throat with an urgent
force, his heart slowing with a sluggish rhythm. It was like riding the travel shuttles on
Coran with his sister when it sped down the steep track along Landighive’s spine. Except
this wasn’t Landighive, and he didn’t piss himself on Coran. Lieutenant Krill was
screaming now, blithering status reports through his headset with the angry features of a
man made helpless.

The ship had turned over like a kicked ration can, tumbling the men and still white
knuckled in its belly like marbles. As it rolled, The Herald exposed the weaker armor of
its upper hull to the torrent of orbital fire and a particularly lucky bolt of superheated
plasma shattered the craft in half with along the keel with concussive blast that knocked a
nearby lander sideways into a spiral. Captain Gyrum and his bridge were vaporized
instantly.

As the ship broke up it spilled its human cargo like a bleeding wound, bodies and
equipment given up to the ionized air several thousand feet above the ruined ground
below. As the debris fell it struck other drop ships like a brilliant series of costly
fireworks that illuminated the skies over Jraax like a brief, second star.

3
 Lord Commander Militant Delmar frowned in the dim light of his command
sphere, his eyes pinching shut behind the wrinkles of a man who should have perished
decades ago. In front of him played several hovering pictboards displaying tactical data
from across the blooming warzone several miles below his orbiting cruiser. The central
slate held the grim footage of orbital defense fire ripping the massive bulk of his Imperial
Guard landers apart, the estimated troop losses scrolling along one side at a dizzying rate.

There would be no beachhead, he reckoned with rueful certainty. Of course he had put
his trust in the Navy to do their part, the incompetent, portentous lot that they were. But
it was no matter, Delmar consoled himself in the absolute silence of the sphere, if the
Guard had any strength it was with numbers. A hundred thousand troops was only a
proverbial drop compared to the torrent of retribution he yet commanded.

And so, with a casual flick of his wrist, another volley of landers was cleared for
departure; the neural connections of the sphere passing his orders before he’d even
moved. If the Navy couldn’t silence the traitors, Delmar was certain he would simply
drown them.

The loading bay aboard The Humlocke was in the same state of frantic action as
the half-dozen other Imperial transports hovering over Jraax’s dingy atmosphere. The
ship had a capacity in the thousands, each of the smaller bulk landers lined together in its
massive loading bays able to ferry an average regiment of five thousand into the warzone.
The landers were hunched, bulky constructs that resembled massive adamantium beetles
as a frenetic traffic of ants poured around them. Companies marched in quickstep to file
into loading cadences; Navy personnel manned trucks and operated cranes that lifted the
bipedal sentinel walkers and equipment crates into position. The cacophony of machinery
and boots was interrupted occasionally by the booming sequence of the control operator
warning of a coming departure.

“Alright, boys, hear this! Orders filtered down, we’re green!”

4
 The command bunker was hidden deep beneath the ground, accessible only by a
narrow channel that housed an electric lift. The air inside the elevator was stale, void of
the stink from the surface. Nearby sodium light burned with a frosty white glow, a
metallic clunk signaling that the lift had reached its subterranean destination. As the
grated door slide open the recycled air of the command complex swirled around Major
Corbain. The floors were still duckboard, but the wooden slates were clean except where
the Major’s muddy boots left a trail as he passed frenzied adjutants and vox operators as
they toiled at their stations.

Entering the main offices of the Lord General was much like sticking his head into a nest
of hivebees on Coran, the Major reflected briefly.

Corbain saluted the disheveled looking secretary outside the General’s staff office. The
trooper looked as though he hadn’t slept since they’d made planetfall a week earlier; his
features pale and gaunt as he regarded the dirty Coran soldier through crooked glasses.

“Name, rank and detachment?” The adjutant asked warily, fingers unpaused as they
danced over the cogitator input device resting on the crowded desk.

“Major Corbain, Seventh Company, 609th Coran Infantry.” Corbain recited with equal
monotony.

There was a moment of silence, the adjutant’s bloodshot eyes flicking back to his
pictscreen with another flurry of inputs. “General Duvall is expecting you, Major.” He
nodded the soiled Coran through before forgetting the man altogether.

The General’s office smelled of fresh recaff and seasoned eggs, the aroma of cooked
sausage finally causing Corbain’s mouth to water. The gilded, silver breakfast platter had
gone untouched, and it was a monumental effort on the Major’s part not to sink his hands
into the abandoned pile and gorge his empty stomach. Since the landing rations had been
in short supply, the initial support ships having been redirected after the first wave
massacre.

“Major Corbain of the Coran 609th, I presume?”

At first Corbain hadn’t registered the address, pausing for a moment as his attention was
finally wrestled away from his hunger with a repentant salute.

General Duvall was a large, pale man; his broad shoulders having once been catered to a
strong frame but given over to the luxuries of his rank. As he spoke, the hanging folds of
stuffed jowls seemed to waddled after every syllable. His dress uniform was crisp and
unused, buttons straining around the middle as the material was tested against a
gargantuan belly. Over each heaving breast were several ranks of polished meals, their
honors won long before Corbain’s time.

5
The general was sitting behind his chart desk, a large holographic image of Jraax rotating
slowly in blue. Although the image jumped and faded several times, Corbain could
discern the positions of orbiting ships and the jagged lines of their earned dropzone, the
rest of the globe splotched in a foreboding red.

“Correct, sir. I received your summons this morning.” Corbain replied, doing his best to
ignore the quaking rolls of fat hanging from Duvall’s cheeks.

“Mrm. Well, then let’s be quick about it.” Duvall slid a dataslate across his desk, holding
it out for the Major to take.

“Your company is to amalgate with the Krieg Death Korps making planetfall this
afternoon. According to our numbers you are still at eighty six percent fighting capacity
despite the loss of the 609th. Is this a correct figure, Major?”

Corbain soured his features, glancing over the padded figures. “To be frank, sir, this
report is impossible! We lost nearly all of our support and equipment when the rest of the
regiment dropped. I have barely five platoons and enough lasguns to share between the
three of them.”

The first wave assault had been a disaster. It was a planned blitzkrieg against the main
traitor hivespire, the orbiting guns of the Navy supposedly having disabled most of the
heretical resistance. Unfortunately naval intelligence had neglected a shielded battery of
orbital defense guns, and the drops ships had been torn apart. The Coran 609th had been
numbered in the casualties, except for a single company that had escaped boarding for
resupply.

Duvall looked incredulous, the pale hue of his cheeks flushing pink. “I would watch your
tone, Major. You have bodies, and I have a grinder to feed. Unless you would care to
stand charges of insubordination, I suggest you accept the orders and get the frak out.”

Major Corbain tightened his lip, well aware of the general’s implied threat. “As you
order, my liege,” he lowered his head in mute resignation; signing the aquilla over his
chest. Duvall made a quick dismissal with a wave of his bloated hand and returned to
planning the invasion of the sector.

Corbain leapt down into the hastily constructed defense trench, thankful for the
duckboard underfoot keeping the torrential rain out of his boots. It had been raining since
they had arrived on Jraax, the skies a perpetual stormy grey as fields turned into
featureless brown mires that trapped all but the most brunt of vehicles.

“So what’s the good news, Major?” Sergeant Friar asked, looking up from his
entrenching tool with a crooked grin.

6
Friar was a young man, fresh from the founding on Coran. He had a tangle of blonde hair
and a smiling face that the other men took to easily. It was reported that he had earned
some combat experience against raiders on Cora Extremis and was given Sergeant while
in warp transit. Jraax was to be his inaugural command. Beside him was the rest of his
squad, Troopers Gordon, Dregol, Quix and others that Corbain didn’t immediately
recognize. The lot of them were battling against the falling rain in digging out a section
of trenchwork for the landing site defenses.

“As usual, brass is more worried about their own asses than ours’.” Corbain reached out
for a shovel as Dregol relieved himself of the burden. “We’re to report to the
commanding officer of the next Krieg unit to hit planetside.”

“Kriegers?” Trooper Gordon perked up, wiping a slop of dirt from his brow, only
succeeding in spreading it to his cheeks.

Quix threw down his shovel nearby, shouting something as he kicked against the
mudslide that had erased his work.

“Death Korps. Silent ghosts. Body counts,” Dregol numbered off the less than appealing
surnames of the Krieglanders as he heaved muddy slop over the trenchwall. “Sound
downright pleasant, don’t they?”

Major Corbain let a well intended smack across the head from Friar be enough
punishment for Dregol’s bemoaning, but silently he couldn’t disagree. Regardless, he
joined the men in their menial work, hoping to distract his mind from the coming
meeting.

7
 Artillery fire thundered overhead as the line of stocky, armored assault carries
trundled across the desolation of no-man’s land. Each Gorgon was built with the express
purpose of delivering its human cargo to the opposing lines, its thick plated assault ramp
plowing through abandoned razor wire and the shattered trunks of splintered trees as
autocannons spat with the rolling staccato of heavy rounds from emplacements built
along the angled command deck in the rear of the vehicle.

Inside each open-topped transport stood a platoon of silent ghosts, faceless behind the
dark stares of their fixed gasmasks. The length of their grey greatcoats had been turned
black by the same torrential rain that had churned the battlefield into a featureless muck
as the Gorgon around them powered through the troughs of mud and spray.

From his position at the rear of the transport Hauptmann 005573 could see the dirty
orange blossoms of flame and muck rise over the pockets and broken billets of no-man’s
land, the Krieglander’s finest artillery emplacements doing well to incinerate the forward
lines of their heretical foe before they arrived to claim victory. 00573 had no naïve hope
of survival, but as the concussive force of a dozen shells ruptured the air around him and
reverberated through the lenses of his mask, he knew that his death would be but a
stepping stone for his brothers to reach glory. And that, he knew was enough.

“Thirty seconds to glory, Krieglanders!” The voxcasters blared around the troops of
Platoon 05573 as they stood within their iron womb, though none returned the praise as
their hauptmann spoke through the voxhorn above them with rare inflection, “Ready
yourselves and die well, for you pay your debt this day!”

The engines of the Gorgon transport roared as its exhausts flumed black, pressing the
mudded treads up and over earthen embankments just ahead of the enemy trenches. The
artillery barrage was still falling, shrapnel bouncing off the risen assault ramps in hot
sparks of molten slag. All along the front line similar transports trundled up the mound,
ready to unleash the Emperor’s wrath. Somewhere along the procession a shell struck the
center of an open Gorgon, shattering the assault vehicle into flying debris. The platoon of
men inside was little but red mist settling into the mud as 005573 signaled for the assault
ramp to drop in front of his own charge.

The Krieglander’s barrage stopped only moments before the ranks of Gorgons reached
the open maze of enemy trenches, the massive shells had little effect on the earthworks
themselves, only in sparse sectors had the trenches fallen into massive craters that filled
with rolling mud and limbs. But the purpose of the bombardment took effect as the
assault ramps of the Death Korps dropped into the grubby soil, the enemy had taken
shelter in the armored bombardment bunkers seeded along the trench line and left their
lines unmanned. In their fear of death, they’d done nothing but welcome it.

8
As the moments passed the defenders began to pour out to repel the invading assault,
heavy stubbers clicking to life and tearing open the greatcoats of Krieglanders as they
disembarked. The Korps pressed forward despite the losses, trampling over their fallen
brothers in silent blood lust. Mortars began to fall around the transports, several of them
already beginning to retreat back up the muddy bank, leaving the first wave of
Krieglanders to their fate.

The rain continued to fall along the forward emplacements, the sounds of heavy
lifters blasting back into orbit and guardsmen marching between hastily constructed
plascrete bunkers carrying over from the expanding landing zone a kilometer behind
them.

Dregol had taken his place on the surveying platform, his eyes pressed against the
mirrored contraption that rose over trench lip. It gave him a wide audience of the desolate
soup that stretched out into the rainy mists. Around him was the rest of third platoon.
Quix stooped in a dugout alcove trying in vain to avoid the pelting rain while Gordon and
Sergeant Friar were making time fortifying the earthen walls with flakboard along with
Troopers Harley and Vlarne. Harley had been one of the few Coran women to have opted
out of compulsory resusitrex training, having instead put her small frame to better use
behind a long-las.

The rest of third platoon huddled about without much purpose, their objective in the
muddy trench having been one of a forgotten cause. It was general knowledge that they
were to be reassigned, and the Corans felt it to be a second blow after the destruction of
their regiment so early in its career. Moral was low, and between the incessant rain and
the lack of any word from command it had proved to be a bleak three days posting.

To make matters worse, the Major hadn’t been able to locate their new parent regiment.
Rumors had run rampant about the supposed disregard for cautionary warning, the Death
Korps regiments instead forging on beyond the Imperial line soon after disembarking. It
was a bold move, but many began to wonder whether or not it was in vain. No reports
had been heard from the advance since their departure two days before, and it was in part
the remnants of the 609th that were tasked with keeping watch for their return.