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***
Melchoir rode on the back of a Leman Russ tank. The armored wall advanced forwards in front of the guardsmen in a long wave. The tank was almost as filthy and exhausted as Melchoir was.
Days had turned into weeks. Reinforcement and resupply had slowed, and then had abruptly stopped. He had only had one chance to speak with people from orbital command, and they said that the situation was even worse in the other drop zones, so nothing was able to be spared for them. Melchoir could hardly believe that somewhere else could be worse than here.
The Foleran forces at Drop Zone Delta had been all but wiped out. Through constant skirmishes, lightning thrusts, and probing actions, the enemy made it impossible to form up a proper defense. Shattered units everywhere had been displaced, lost, and killed to a man. It was one short breath away from complete chaos. From complete collapse.
About a week and a half ago, Melchoir had had enough. It was now a matter of survival. He threw away the proverbial book on how to defend fortified positions and started to improvise. It wasn't, strictly speaking, important that he held ground, he reasoned, he only needed to prevent the enemy from holding it, at least, with any degree of security. If the enemy was going to prevent him from defending in force, well, then all he needed to do was to prevent his enemy from attacking in force.
He had started by launching a series of daring and dangerous raids, a few of which he personally oversaw. The loss of a group here and there saved entire lines of guardsmen, at least for a few days. A week ago, he had made a showy display of fortifying one of his strongholds. When the enemy massed and made an all-out assault, they found the fortification empty. Moments later, dozens of artillery rounds exploded in a colossal booby trap, bringing the whole fort down. The attackers were then rudely surprised by an armored company attacking them in the rear.
Stragglers had shown up, group by group, and line by line, finding their way towards the only place where there were friendly bodies for miles around. As quickly as Melchoir absorbed them, he sent them out. Often to their deaths. By now, he had commanded the remnants of what had likely been two whole infantry divisions when the assault began a month ago. He couldn't help but feel a little vindication after having been passed over so many times for promotion. Here he was, a commander marshal, second class, an officer who was only supposed to be in charge of, at most, a few hundred men, now in command of what had once been perhaps sixty thousand.
Of course, vindication was a poor substitute for what he should have been feeling. After all, he had only a day left to live, maybe two, tops. His forces were spread so thin and ethereally, that, just that morning, the enemy had broken through, practically everywhere. Melchoir had only just barely escaped. Almost everyone with whom he had fought the past few weeks was now cut off and isolated in little pockets here and there scattered amongst the hills. They were just mopping up now. The days and hours of his life were now determined by nothing more than how long it would take to kill everyone else.
Doggedly, Melchoir was resigned to see it out to the end. There was only one place that he could retreat to that would offer him any amount of a defensive position. Ironically, it was where he had first attacked when he made planetfall. He could see the familiar ruins ahead of him now.
The enemy had been surprised by their approach, and the defenders at the top of the hill had fired down on him with a few big guns. Melchoir had ordered the tanks to fire smoke rounds onto the hilltop, and keep firing until they got all the way up there. The enemy had been quiet. Likely they had retreated. To where, he did not know.
With all but the last of their effort, the starving, incredibly fatigued, and nearly completely spent shell of an Imperial Guard army made it to the top.
As the guardsmen began to set up in the remains of the fort, Melchoir hopped down and started to walk around. The place had scarcely changed since he had retreated two weeks previous.
Around him lay the dead hulks of Leman Russes. The battered shells loomed above him as dark empty shapes in the retreating wisps of the smoke rounds. They bore mute testament to his defeat. Lifeless. Uncaring. Once they had been armor, and now they were just twisted lumps of steel.
Melchoir spared a moment to think of the tank crews whose charred bodies were still entombed in their vehicles. Each one a tombstone, a shrine, a reliquary even, for those who fought and died there.
Thinking of them, though, brought something to his attention. When he was last here, he had left dozens of dead guardsmen. He'd left behind hundreds of wounded. Where were they?
As he continued to walk around, his guardsmen securing the area and setting up their places of defense, he could see nothing. Nothing but the rubble and the craters and the wreckage of the Russes. He picked up the pace and went over to a spot where he had bulldozed in the bodies he had found when he first took the fortification. He rounded a piece of ruins, and then he saw it. Where there was once a mass grave, there was now an empty ditch, picked perfectly clean of even the thought of corpses.
"Melchoir," came the chipper voice of lord Vask's hull gunner over the micro-bead.
"Yes?" the officer replied.
"We are in position, standing by."
Around him everything was clear now. The last of the smoke blowing off of the fort, and down the side of the hill.
Suddenly, he began to hear shouting behind him.
"Melchoir, be advised," the command tank chimed in again, "Enemy units have been spotted."
The officer turned around and began to run forward. It seemed that the enemy had been chased off, but had regrouped just out of sight and was already counterattacking.
As he ran, he could see Vask pointing out targets with his turret weapon. What heavy weapons he had left to him were following his lead, and the officer arrived just as the main, booming cannons of the vanquishers began to bark their destruction downrange.
Melchoir could make out the cautious advance of a few enemy vehicles picking through some ruins ahead of him. His forces were consolidating their firepower on one of them behind a wooden fence. The officer looked on in satisfaction as one of the vanquisher cannons fired a high-velocity anti-tank round into the front armor. The tank split with a thunderous crack, and a thin stream of smoke began to pour out from somewhere deep within.
The officer peered forward. More enemy vehicles were approaching. This was going to be there armored thrust. This was going to be their point of counterattack.
"Focus fire on the enemy vehicles!" Melchoir ordered, as if that command were necessary. "Armored units form up. Blunt their attack."
The lumbering behemoths slowly began to grind into gear and start moving, their heavy treads ripping and gnawing at the soil below them. The gunners in the turrets and sponsons just kept on firing as if the tanks were stationary, heedless of the slow crawl of their rides. A living line of firepower began to form up as the tanks took their positions.
Those few enemy vehicles left after the opening salvos drove straight into the teeth of their guns.
Down the line they went, one after another. Muzzles exploding with fireball after fireball. Shell after shell pounded into the enemy, churning up dirt and slamming into their fragile armor.
Hull weapons continued their fusillade, their own anti-tank weapons showering the rushing tanks and transports with blistering firepower.
First one, and then another went up in flames. An enemy Leman Russ, groaned and heaved as shell after shell impacted into it. One hit and then another, and then a dozen. Slowly, painfully, it began to succumb to its wounds, eventually blistering out in several place with small tongues of fire.
Some enemy soldiers managed to escape from the wreckage of their transport and made a mad dash for cover. Foleran lasguns trained on them as they stumbled into the ruins and out of sight.
Melchoir looked on with grim satisfaction. And that, it appeared, was that.
The officer began to wander down the line as the roar of battle and guns began to die down. There were still a few enemy infantry models to root out of the ruins, but that wouldn't be too difficult.
He walked up to one of the few remaining in-tact walls and looked up at the guardsmen on top. Positions like these would be necessary for their last stand. Their last actions, and last chances for what glory could still be found.
A low rumble began to pierce the calming battlefield. The guardsmen around him looked confused.
So, for that matter, was Melchoir.
The rumbling picked up in intensity until it was a booming echo. The officer looked downfield at the ruins, which were now beginning to light up with a billowing haze. Then, suddenly, some sort of giant projectile shot up into the air. It was a massive rocket, half the size of a chimera. The blinding light of its motors shone through the air as the mass of fuel and payload lifted almost straight up.
The officer watched as the thick trail of exhaust stabbed up into the air, chasing after the flaming missile as it streaked up against the clear blue sky.
Everyone else also just sort of stood around, mouths agape as the weapon arced up, hundreds of feet above their heads.
The con-trail began to waft away at ground level.
"What... was that?" a junior officer asked Melchoir.
"Uhh... well..." his fatigue-addled mind was trying to make sense of it. "Clearly it's some kind of rocket, but I don't know what exactly its purpose is."
And then he noticed it. Most rockets were designed to deliver a payload into orbit, or to send something a very, very long ways away. This one only seemed to go up, well, a rather short distance, given that it was a rocket. In fact, it seemed like it must have malfunctioned or something, because the rocket motors appeared to have quit on it.
And then it dawned on him. It probably had a set distance it needed to fly before it could acquire its target. If the motor had turned off, that meant that the target... would... be...
right...
The officer's eyes went wide.
"INCOMING!" he shouted at the top of his lungs.
The guardsmen around him were confused, but started to take cover. As quickly as it had gone up, the missile began to plummet towards the ground. Faster and faster, its sleek frame glinting as it fell.
Melchoir dove for cover behind the wall.
Instantly, Melchoir's body was picked up, right off the ground. The face of the wall in front of him disintegrated and blew to chunks. The fireball blinded everyone.
With an apocalyptic blast, the missile detonated, sending the officer flying through the air along with several tons of wall and anything else that was not instantly vaporized. The shockwave knocked the breath out of him as he bounced across the ground like a rag doll. The heat and light completely overwhelmed him. In an instant, Melchoir was unconscious.
What was once part of the remains of a fortification on the top of the hill was now a crater a hundred feet wide.
An absolutely massive fireball peeled up into the air and became a titanic pillar of smoke as it rolled into the sky. The sound of the blast reverberated and echoed through the ruins before blowing off the hilltop.
From behind it came a few comparatively dull thuds of other artillery smashing into the ground and the fortifications around them.
The tanks and guardsmen that weren't near the missile blast scrambled for cover as earthshaker rounds slammed down onto them, further breaking apart the ruins, and churning up the freshly-formed crater.
One after another, shell after shell exploded into them. The Imperial Guard force defending the hill was quickly being thrown into chaos.
Commander Taiaphas flipped on his micro-bead.
"Vask to Melchoir, do you read?" his throat painfully grated into his microphone.
"Vask to Melchoir-"
The tank commander's voice went quiet. Above him, a threat even greater than artillery swooped down out of the sky.
Taiaphas flipped on his speaker system and toggled his all-wave channel.
"This is commander Vask," he scratched, his voice desperate to escape his broken body, "All units engage enemy aircraft."
The commander's crackling, speaker-amplified voice managed to pierce over the exploding artillery. As the stunned guardsmen began to find their shelter and collect themselves, they began to take up defensive positions.
The pair of enemy aircraft flew in low towards the hilltop. As they came in for their strafing run, they let loose their weapons. Powerful anti-tank weapons slammed down, and the sky split open with the sound of a pair of gatling cannons ripping into the hillside below them.
But these were not hapless guardsmen, powerless against the might of aircraft. These were guardsmen protected by tanks of Eta regiment of the Foleran Seventh Armored. These were lord Taiaphas' tanks, and lord Taiaphas' tank crews. They had been trained to ruthless precision.
The tank crews in the various Russes prepared as they were drilled to be able to handle incoming enemy aircraft. Hulls were moved to face the fliers as the artillery continued to drop around them.
Turrets traversed and guns elevated. Ranges and speeds were estimated. Guns were loaded.
Then, one by one, in conjunction with their hull weapons, the heavy vanquisher cannons began to fire up at the speeding aircraft. One bellowing cannon shot followed another. The enemy fighters didn't seem to notice the near-misses.
Then, spectacularly, one of the main guns hit their target. The high explosive round easily smashed through the aircraft's thin armor and the resulting explosion blew it apart with contemptuous ease. Thin ribbons of falling debris chased after flaming wreckage as the large plume of smoke hung up in the air.
Shortly after, a second russ found its found its target. A half a second before, a few of the occupants bailed out with grav-chutes. They slowly began to drift down to the ground, shrouded in their own flaming debris.
The hapless enemy landed directly in front of the tanks. Small arms and heavy weapons fire began to pile down onto them, and they were swiftly taken out of action.
"Vask to Melchoir, do you read?" Taiaphas said, returning to his vox set.
"Vask to Melchoir-"
Suddenly an earthshaker shell landed directly on top of the commander's tank. The crippled man flinched at the last moment as the blasting impact exploded on the front armor.
Vask was thrown down into his seat as a spray of flaming shrapnel blasted over the top hatch and an unearthly boom of metal exploding on metal sent shockwaves through his body.
Taiaphas lay stunned, wedged into his turret. His body was completely numb. His eyes dazzled. His mind temporarily scattered.
He lifted his hand up to his head. His hat and vox set had blown clear away. He looked down to see the body of his gunner slumped over, partially shredded. He could see a gaping hole in the front of the turret.
The moment stretched on as artillery continued to churn the earth around him.
Slowly, his wits began to recover. He uncrouched towards his seat, only to find that most of it had been shorn away with the explosion. There was nothing he could do now but to see to the safety of his crew. He had to trust in the competence of his squad commanders now.
Little did he know that they were already crawling down the hill, smashing into the ruins.
One by one, the vulnerable artillery pieces were beset upon by the grinding monstrosities of the Vanquishers.
An enemy officer rushed forward in a one-man attempt to stop the russes, but he was quickly disposed of with extreme violence.
With what little infantry was left cleared out of the way, the Leman Russes made their way into the enemy.
A firefight began at point blank range. The russes were obscured by the ruins, but they also had heavy frontal armor. The artillery only had the ruins.
As the Russes began to crush through, they no longer had even that...
***
The wind whipped with soft, but constant pressure over the top of the hill. The fortification, such as it still was, was now shrouded in the dark of night. Stars glinted slightly above them.
Melchoir stood on top of a ruined windowsill, and stared down into the grim faces of a few dozen officers in front of him. Lord Vask was propped up to his left. Other than the two of them, there were only three soldiers present that had been an officer before planetfall. One of them was an officer marshal first class, who, four weeks ago had only been first private.
Melchoir stepped down. The men in front of him shifted slightly as the lamp packs swung in the wind. They were all facing him in what could possibly be called rows. He suddenly felt like a preacher standing before his congregation. Most of them tried to sit at attention, but others were content to sleep in their proverbial pews.
Melchoir took in the moist breeze through his nose and took a moment to gather his thoughts.
"Well, so, this is it," he began, staring his men in their faces the best he could. "Within probably twenty four hours, the enemy will attack this position in force."
The other officers remained silent. They seemed only half present there anyways.
"We've done our best, and it's been an honor serving with you, but very soon we are all going to die."
The words fell harshly on the soft breeze.
One of the officers broke down and began to cry. Melchoir could only nod in sympathy.
"I'm sorry that there's nothing really I can do or say..." he continued, letting his voice trail off.
Weakly, one of the officers lifted his head and asked in a quiet voice, "Can we pray?"
Melchoir's mind drifted to memories of Sanario. His steadfast conviction. His implacable sense of self and others. His angry mustache. Melchoir hadn't allowed himself to think that the priest might be dead. Not until he knew for sure. He was more than just a friend and a spiritual councilor, he had practically been a brother to him.
He wanted nothing more than the priest to be with him now, here at the end. Just to hear a few words of comfort as they met their fate.
"Unfortunately," Melchoir began, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat and started again, "Unfortunately, we don't seem to have a priest with us."
The gathered assembly remained silent in the dancing lamplight.
Then Melchoir got a strange feeling in his chest. Suddenly his brain began to activate. Something was welling up inside of him. Something wasn't right.
He squinted at the officers in front of him. "Does any of your units have a priest in it?" He knew the answer, but he had to know for sure.
Nobody responded. Some of them just shook their heads.
"Have any of you EVER had a priest in your lines or groups at any point in this operation?"
The officers looked at each other, but seemed to be at a loss. A few officers responded that they hadn't.
"Not one priest, in, what, two whole divisions of infantry?"
Melchoir's mind was racing. It was all starting to congeal.
"You," he said, pointing to one of the "proper" officers, "Why didn't you have one?"
"Well," the other officer replied, "My C.M. didn't think it was proper for priests to get put in danger."
"What about you?"
"Well, I used to have one a few months ago in my group, but it didn't make sense to have the ecclesiarchy in my unit. I only wanted actual fighters, and thought that babysitting a preacher would just be a drag on resources."
"My own confessor went missing seven weeks ago," Melchoir admitted, "They kept on trying to give me a new priest, but I kept on refusing. I didn't want to take on a new one while my old one might still be alive. Just before this operation, they stopped asking me about it."
It was all starting to make sense. A new sense of energy and urgency crept into his voice.
"How many here have received reinforcements, not from ground forces, but directly from orbital command in the last three weeks?"
Shockingly few of them raised their hands.
"And how many in the last two weeks?"
Those with their hands up put them down.
"We are invading a planet. The assault wave goes in. Then the second wave goes in. Then... what? Nothing? No support whatsoever?"
"But," one of the officers replied, "I was in contact with the ships, they said that the supplies and men were needed elsewhere."
"Yes, but else-WHERE?" Melchoir retorted, "Dumping us off and cutting us off makes no sense whatsoever. If they couldn't sustain this drop zone, which I know for a fact they could have, then they would have swarmed in here with a thousand valkyries and dropped us off to where we could do some meaningful fighting.
The officers began to murmur amongst themselves.
"What are you trying to say, sir?" one of them asked.
"We were told to attack one of the most heavily fortified positions on the planet directly from orbit with no support of any kind? I'm saying that we weren't put here to fight. I'm saying that we were put here to die. Drop Zone Delta was just a prison that was designed to throw people they wanted to get rid of, and when they all died, it could be swept under the rug as casualties of war."
"What?" a few of the officers asked, shocked. As tired as they all were, the few dozen officers began to stir with energy.
"Why would they do that?" someone asked.
Melchoir's mind turned to the many documents of Sanario's that he had been trying to decode. Somewhere, there was a link. The Ecclisiarchy, the Kingsguard, the whole crusade. He just wished he knew for sure.
"I don't know what this conspiracy is," he finally replied, "Maybe it has something to do with all of the priests we've suddenly had everywhere this crusade, and maybe it doesn't, but what I DO know is that the fleet has utterly and completely abandoned us, and that we can't just stay here, following orders to hold to the last. That last is less than twenty four hours away, and absolutely nothing will be gained by it."
The officer's words sent a jolt of electricity into the gathering. The officers, trying to parse things out for themselves, were increasingly open to the idea of finding an out.
"We're to disobey orders?"
"No," Melchoir replied, "Our orders were to take the drop zone and hold it until reinforced. There are no reinforcements. The contingent clause of the orders has failed. As far as I'm concerned, we have no orders now."
"He's right," one of the officers replied, raising his voice. Assent began to bubble up in the ranks.
"Well if we're not going to defend here, what are we going to do?" one of them asked.
"I'm sure as hell not going to die HERE," one of the others responded. The affirmation was now threatening to become shouting.
"I don't intend to either," Melchoir replied, "And as far as I can tell, there is only one option available to us."
The officers waited on Melchoir's words.
"We've got to make a breakout."
The officers exploded with energy. Quickly they rose to their feet and began shouting.
They would make for Drop Zone Beta.
It was their only hope.
***
The Empire 
1500 pts
: 
Order of the Sable Heart
Grave Knights
House Rouen