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***
With the priest's help, Melchoir strapped down the breastplate of his flak armor. The guardsmen around him were doing the same. They were making the final preparations before embarking on the massive landing craft.
The storms on the planet below had abated, covering everything in a thick crust of ice. Just in time, Melchoir had been given a pass by the medicae staff. He'd been given a new group of soldiers and assigned to a new line. The next grand assault was just moments away. Loyalist forces had already begun to bombard the enemy from orbit, and would hopefully break them before a million Folerans disgorged onto the field. Hopefully...
The officer winced slightly as the weight of his armor bore down on his not-quite-healed wounds. Despite the dull throbbing, it felt good to be back in the proverbial saddle again. He gave Sanario a thumbs up as he finished with his armor. He'd be able to manage his powerfist on his own.
He looked at the archaic beast. The massive gauntlet fueled by a four-stroke promethium engine that generated the disruption field. He had a bit before he needed to embark, so he thought he should do a quick strip and cleaning of his weapon. Odds were good that the fist would be smushed full of gore soon.
As he sat down at the table, removing a small toolkit from his utility belt, he spied a guardsman clumsily attempting to field strip a lasgun. This one hadn't been given armor, and didn't seem to know his way around his small arm. Conscript, most like. He should feel lucky that he even HAD a lasgun.
"Come here, soldier," Melchoir said, reaching his right arm out for the weapon. The conscript unsurely looked at the officer, before handing the lasgun across the table. With six lightning fast moves, he disassembled the lasgun, even without two good arms. Melchoir looked down, stunned, at the pieces in front of him. He couldn't remember the last time he broke down a small arm.
"Thanks, sir," the conscript replied, taking the pieces back from the officer.
"Don't worry, you'll get it," Melchoir replied. It was important to be cordial to keep up morale. Odds were, he would never get it. Odds were roughly 1 in 6 the conscript would be turned into a casualty in the first three hours on the ground. Roughly 1 in 800 he'd be made a casualty in the first five minutes.
"Is this your first action?" Melchoir asked as he opened his tool kit.
"No, sir," the conscript replied, "I fought in the big fight."
"Did you?" the officer asked, unscrewing the top panel of his power fist. "What did you do in the big fight?"
"Well, we were supposed to take an old manufactorum at the bottom of the hill. It had a creek that ran by it down into one of the three rivers that it used to dispose of waste.
The first three waves of us were gunned down taking the last objective, and that put me in my fourth wave at the front this time. We all huddled together as we came up on the building.:
"We started advancing, when we came across a couple of enemy vehicles. The guns in our platoon opened up on them. One of them blew a hole in it, and after a few more shots, the thing went down, and we were all relieved at that.
And then, overhead, some reinforcements come in. We could see the valk swooping down to give us a hand, when from the side came in an enemy aircraft. From out of nowhere, the thing lights up the valk and it starts on fire. The thing swooped over out of control and landed behind us.
We could see a couple of the Kingsguard inside manage to clear the flaming rubble of their vehicle, but at least half of them died in the fire, along with the pilot.
Then the enemy fighter circled around, and began to strafe at us infantry on the ground."
"The thing strafed us pretty bad, and killed my commanding marshal. Without anyone to lead us, the Kingsguard came forward and took control of the situation"
"They told us to charge forward, and so we did. We made it up and over the hill as the enemy shot down on the regular infantry. I ran forward as fast as I could, just hoping to survive. We managed to make it up into the creek, and just got up near the manufactorum when the enemy aircraft came back and they all shifted fire at us.
It was just too terrible to tell. Their lightning arced everywhere. I got hit in the arm, but the blast bounced off of my pauldron, knocking the rest of my flak vest off. Those around me, they didn't get off so lucky. They were killed where they stood and fell down into the thick muck of the polluted water.
They just kept shooting and shooting, and everybody around me was dead. The ones behind started to run away, but the only way I could get back was by climbing back up the other side of the ditch, and I'd be an easy target. Instead, I decided to stay in the creek. I let the ooze fill up around me, and I started to float slowly downstream.
I could see there in front of me that the Kingsguard were braver than I ever could be. The survivors of their crash started their own charge for the manufactorum."
"It certainly did fail though. Seeing them ripped apart like that will scar me for the rest of my days.
The last thing I saw as I started to float around the bend was more of my wave of guardsmen charging up through where the rest of us had just retreated from."
"And, well, they charged across down into the gully and came splashing up the other side, and then they too were gunned down right there where the rest of my unit had been.
Without our commander, nobody knew what to do, so they just charged in another wave. By that time I couldn't see anymore the action that was happening, but I could hear the screams and shouts of the men who were sent to their ends in that creek."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Melchoir replied, picking through the digital struts of his weapon with a tiny steel brush. He blew on the power fist, sending tiny flakes of charnel dust and a few broken metal bristles gently wafting across the table. "I can only hope," he continued, "that now that you're assigned to me, you'll have an easier time of it."
"That you will," another conscript interjected. For some reason, his pre-battle works was absorbed in polishing his helmet. He had never seen a piece of flak armor buffed to such a shine before, but apparently the guardsman thought it was good for one more go.
"Yeah," the conscript continued, "I fought with the good marshal here at the beginning of the big fight. I helped him light one of the valley beacons, I did."
"Excellent," the officer replied, feigning familiarity, "I'm glad you were there to lend a hand."
"Well, it's a duty now, you see, ever since I was made to be a soldier." The guardsman picked over his rag, looking for a less-dirty spot and went back to work on his helmet.
"I was even there the day you got stabbed full of bullets and whatnot," he continued, "though thankfully not in the first wave of that particular adventure. Made it all the way through, in fact."
"Then how did you manage to make it onto a medicae ship?" Melchoir asked. He was now actually made curious about what the other conscript was doing here. He was pretty certain that wounded conscripts were left for dead on the battlefield, or at least, left for wounded. They would have gotten medical attention on the ground and then shoved back into the fight.
"Well, you see, sir, those of us who survived were deemed fit for extra training. We got ourselves a two-week furlough off-planet so as we could learn some drill."
Melchoir looked down at the conscripts hands. In the last five minutes, he had nearly reassembled his lasgun. The officer shuttered to think about how long that would have taken had the soldier NOT been fresh off of two weeks of basic training.
"Not to say that it didn't get close," the second conscript continued. "The last day of fighting before the storm. I was defending the new outer perimeter. We were told to hold our positions until the storm came in and we could be relieved.
And the weather started getting cloudy that afternoon, and a freezing gale was blowing over us all. We just hoped that we could get off that barren hillside before it was too late.
Then, right at the end, we were there, huddling for warmth, and the enemy came up at us through the ruins."
"They were really sneaky-like. We had no idea that they were even there until they started shooting down on us with their heavy weapons.
Well, the commanding officer knows that we can't just stay there, waiting to get gunned down, so he pulls out his whistle and blows it twice to prepare us for a full frontal attack. If you can believe that. Hours away from rescue and there we are, being told to charge right into the machine guns. Not very nice of them, I say.
So then the officer blows his whistle in one long blast, and we start forward. I climb over the barricade in front of us, and get ready to charge up the field.
In fact, it seemed like this plan had a little merit to it because from out of nowhere, who do I see but some Kingsguardsmen, holding the enemy down so that we can hit them!"
"And I'm just starting to get some confidence in this plan, when from out of a cloud bank, an enemy vendetta screeched in after us out of the developing storm.
It came in, guns blazing,"
"and the thing just strafed the hell out of us, killing our platoon officer outright. The thing then stopped on a dime and just started murdering everybody. While it sat there shooting, I could see dark shapes moving behind it, flickering in the engine wash. It was the enemy! They were here!"
The guys charge out from under the vehicle with a heavy flame thrower that douses everything in fire, and they start shooting with their shotguns. Everybody is running around screaming everywhere.
I look back up the field, and I see the enemy pouring liquid fire down on to the stromtroopers, and it seems like that's exactly the same damn fate that's awaiting us if we're insane enough to try and keep up the attack. Well, someone else figures that out too, because the guy next to me shouts 'to hell with getting killed over there, let's get killed over here' or something to that effect.
So we all decide to turn around, back and to our left, like a school of fish. We all pull up right in front of them and stop. Like we were trained, we pointed our lasguns at the bad guys, those who had lasguns anyways, and just like that we open fire.
And boy did we ever! I don't know what kind of armor they were wearing, or what kind of accuracy drugs they put into our amasec that morning, but we just cut the enemy down like they're not even trying to stay alive.
The ones who were left scrambled for the ruin, but what was left of our infantry was waiting for them. The whole thing devolved quickly into a fight hand-to-hand with the few desperate survivors of both sides."
"Well, things were going tough, and then that flying hellbeast scoots backwards and breaths its murderous machine gun breath down on us. And, well, there was nothing doing for us after that point. There was nothing we could do but run. It's not like we could have hurt the thing.
Well, a few of us were braver than others, and we form up with some more infantry that were quickly rushing in from up the barricade. We join in with them and decide that it's time to end this threat, flying machine or no.
We all charged in then."
"And the enemy, well, they were pretty badly outnumbered by all us boys coming in. They didn't stand much of a chance there. Once the ground forces were cleared, the long-awaited storm finally began, and the enemy flier moved off. We looked out into the ruin after the rain started to fall, but we couldn't see the enemy hiding in the ruins. For all I know, they've been stuck there in that ruin, freezing their balls off for the past two weeks. At least, that's what I'd hope."
Melchoir finished putting the last screw in, and lightly brushed the top of the powerfist with his hand. Satisfied in his quick repair, he hefted the gauntlet onto his left arm.
"So do I," the officer replied as he began to connect the servo motors and strap the weapon down onto his upper arm.
A crackling voice came over the ship's intercommunication system, informing all guardsmen on board that it was now time to head for the landing ships. The assault would begin very soon now.
"Well, good luck," Melchoir stated to the conscripts as he stood up, taking another moment to adjust his power fist.
"You too, sir," the conscripts replied.
The officer walked towards the end of the large room and met up with Sanario, who was just finishing the blessing of It Is Right To Rend Twain the Enemies of Terra on his eviscerator. He carefully wiped a drop of sacramental oil off the chainsaw sword with a clean cloth.
The priest gathered his things and gave the officer a quick nod.
"Let's do this."
***
KHADOR 
X-Wing (Empire Strong) 