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***
They were calling it the "heathen square" now. It was a massive, roughly trapezoidal-shaped piece of territory, hundreds of miles on a side. Slowly but surely, the enemy was getting ground down, and beaten into a single defensive position. Melchoir had seen it before on countless campaigns. Soon, there would be artillery.
Being able to box the enemy in was never easy, though. There were still huge areas that weren't secure, and, of course, there was nearly half of the total enemy forces that weren't being entrapped either, but that would be a matter for later, he supposed. For now, it was just important that they held on to what they had already gained.
If there was one weapon that Melchoir had slowly become a master at, it was the spade. His guardsmen had just recently arrived, but already they were reworking the terrain to make it more defensible. They would probably need it. Once again, the whole area was blanketed in an impenetrable fog.
Sanario quietly finished chanting a prayer before closing his book.
"That still looks in great shape," Melchoir noted, nodding at the codex. "I mean, given how often it's been rained on, involved with explosions and attached to someone getting shot at."
"It does," the priest replied, taking a second glance at the book. There was some staining on the cover, and the binding showed extensive repair work, but all the pages were still there, in more or less their original condition. He had taken such good care of it that it had almost worn out from use more than from battle.
The same, of course, could not be said about the priest. He had been stuck in freezing rain and mist for what felt like an eternity with only one small break. Various parts of his body hurt enough when it WASN'T dank. What he needed more of was proper battle. More chance to really prove his mettle, rather than all of this waiting and entrenching and cautious advancing.
He glanced over at his eviscerator. Unlike his prayer book, his massive chainsaw weapon had been replaced several times. It seemed like he couldn't get in more than one scrap before it would get horribly mangled, or all of the teeth would chip on it.
Some muttering came at them from down the line that started to pick up in intensity. Sanario reached over and picked up his blade.
"What's going on?" Melchoir asked a nearby sergeant.
"Nothing, sir, just jitters."
Melchoir frowned. Discipline was hard enough to keep amongst the endless waves of conscripts and
raw recruits, and poor visibility just made things worse.
"You want me to have a talk with them?" Sanario asked.
"Yeah, the men could probably use a little fortitude right about now. I don't want nervous guardsmen with itchy trigger fingers and the inability to see anything."
The priest nodded. He rose to his feet, tugging at his armor to get it to settle. He smoothed out some of the wrinkles in his tabard and cleared his throat. Standing tall, he prepared to make his presence felt amongst the guardsmen.
More murmuring started to break out in front of him. Then, a pattern that the priest and officer had seen too many times began to play out. The murmering led to raised voices, which began to devolve into fear. Someone shot a lasgun into the mist, followed by another.
"Hold your fire!" Melchoir shouted as Sanario began to rush over to calm the nervous soldiers.
"They're here!" someone shouted in reply. Instantly, the whole group, already on edge, began to scramble.
Trough the mist, they could just begin to see them.
"Enemy sighted, Melchoir!" the priest shouted as he began to jog back towards the officer.
"Everybody, prepare for battle!" Melchoir ordered, and his troops immediately sprung into action. Those who could see the enemy began to engage them sporadically in the mist. Many of those who could not started opening fire anyways.
The officer strained for a view of anything, any sign of the enemy in front of him.
Suddenly, to his right, the mist lit up into a bright orange haze. The officer looked and saw a massive fireball spraying out beside him. As the glare receded, the new threat emerged into view.
His troops rushed forward, bringing their melta guns up and desperately attacking the towering enemy monstrosity. Their fire seemed to have little effect on it. Lasguns began to pour up into it, only to scatter off harmlessly.
The mechanical monster bounded forward and let out another searing gout of flame. Half a dozen guardsmen were instantly incinerated, while those who were spared suddenly began to come under storm bolter fire. The enemy was shooting in from everywhere. The cover of the mist was meaningless.
Again, the giant machine strode forward and let loose with a stream of liquid flame, setting the earth ablaze. The flames leapt into the air, backlighting the guardsmen as they desperately tried to drag down their foes with gunfire. More storm bolter shots pounded through the wall of flame, blasting into the guardsmen and ripping them to shreds. Bits of armor, cloth and bone flew into the air, only to be consumed by the rushing wall of flame.
Melchoir could see the enemy towering above the inferno. With a great leap, it jumped into the midst of the guardsmen, pulverizing them with a giant fist.
"Bring it down!" Melchoir shouted to his basilista team. The heavy weapon gunner took careful aim and fired a shot straight at the vehicle's driver, but the shot bounced off of a shimmering force field.
The officer frantically looked down his left. The enemy that had first emerged barreled into his conscripts. They were desperately attempting to fire back against the enemy.
Melchoir could only hope that his most poorly-trained troops would be able to hold his left flank more or less by themselves.
He looked at his priest. Sanario was grimly awaiting his order.
He looked back at the conscripts. They were gone. The conscripts were there, but whoever they were fighting were nowhere to be seen. Melchoir frowned. The fog may be obscuring things, but to have an enemy unit disappear altogether was quite another.
Melchoir heard a noise behind him. He turned and looked.
There they were.
Directly behind him.
The officer instinctively lifted his massive power fist up to protect his face.
A blast of fire slammed into him. The disruptor field on his fist and the refactor field around his body screamed as he was engulfed in flames. Melchoir hunched down against the blast, mind frozen in shock.
The hosing on his powerfist popped and snapped off as the front of the gauntlet began to glow.
Ozone began to choke his lungs. He cried out.
***
Three scout sentinels made their way through the mist. They were men and machine of the 2/2 Recon Line. This time, they had been joined by some Kingsguardsmen to help in their patrolling.
"All I'm saying is that it's not like I have a fog-vision array, here," one of the sentinel pilots retorted.
"Well what's the point of all of that fancy equipment if you can't see anything?" the stormtrooper shot back.
"Hey, I can see plenty of stuff. I can see in the dark. I can see heat signatures. I can see encoded vox signals. I can see one smart-ass stormtrooper who needs to know when to shut the hell up."
"You sure? You can't seem to find very much else out here. You know, being a scout and all."
"Hey, if you don't watch it, I'm going to step on you."
"I'm surprised you haven't done that accidentally already."
Off and to the right, the flicker of an explosion of some sort lit up the haze.
"Did you see that?" the stormtrooper asked.
"Of course I saw THAT," the sentinel pilot replied, "Come on, everybody, let's go check it out."
The sentinels turned and picked up speed, peeling away from the Kingsguard and rushing up to where the sounds of battle now broke out through the mist.
They could see, towering above the guardsmen below, a giant mechanical construct firing a massive flame thrower down into the panicking soldiers below.
"Well, that's the first target," the sentinel leader stated.
The three walkers charged in, lascannons blazing. The shots slammed into it one after another. With help from the infantry below, the enemy machine began to falter and fail. It slowly began to crumple under the weight of laser fire before finally falling to the ground in a great crash.
"Well done," the sentinel pilot said to his squadmates, "That's how we do it in the double deuce."
"What else we got around here?" another pilot asked, craning his neck to try and see something in the mist.
As it turned, out, something found them instead.
First they weren't there. Then they were. It was the damnedest thing. A whole squad of enemy just appearing like they had been there all week.
The sentinels didn't have time to react before the enemy unloaded with a pair of flame throwers on to some guardsmen in a ruin. A bright plume of sparks sprayed up from within the flames.
"Hey, there must be an officer in there," the sentinel leader noted, "let's help him out!"
The three machines gracefully bounded over towards the enemy and began to lay into them with their anti-tank guns. One hit one of the enemy with a flame thrower, blasting a hole the size of a dinner plate though his torso.
"Got one!" the pilot announced proudly.
From behind them, the stormtroopers arrived and began to pour hot-shot lasfire into the enemy. Their supercharged lasers punching through the armor like it wasn't even there. Even some of the regular guardsmen turned around and began to join in.
Desperate to get away, the surviving enemy broke for the ruins.
In the confusion, guardsmen were running around everywhere, looking for targets or just plain running away.
The sentinels and stormtroopers quickly rushed in to finish the enemy squad off.
Meanwhile, some other stormtroopers who were on patrol, happened to accidentally infiltrate their way into the middle of the battle. As flames and gunfire erupted all around them, they scrambled, either for safety, or for someone to shoot.
As they ran through the fog, they practically ran into one of the enemy.
The enemy charged at them in its massive tactical dreadnought armor, the ground shaking under its advance. Storm bolter fire started to rip into them, and the stormtroopers desperately attempted to fire back. One of the meltaguns managed to punch into the armor, but the shot was too little, too late.
With ravenous fury, the enemy terminator began to smash them apart with his mighty hammer, the air around them exploding with blood and concussive power every time he landed a hit. The stormtroopers desperately tried to fend him off, but to no avail.
Those at the back of the squad began to break and run away, desperate to clear the one man killing machine. The large, heavy armor was cumbersome, though, and the enemy was unable to turn fast enough to give chase, allowing the Kingsguard survivors a chance to flee.
Unable to find more guardsmen to kill, the enemy terminator went searching for more. He came across a ruin in the mist in front of him. He lifted up his mighty hammer and bashed into the wall as hard as he could. A shock wave thundered out of his hammer, and the building wall cracked and buckled. Again, he lifted his weapon and pounded it into the wall. The ruin gave way, allowing the terminator to emerge from the mist.
The guardsmen were ready for him.
As soon as the ruble debris cleared, everybody opened fire. Lascannons from the sentinels blast into the tough armor while the stormtroopers applied well-aimed fire. Some nearby guardsmen opened up in a blaze of lasguns, hoping to bring it down through sheer weight of small arms.
The terminator burst forward, bathed in laser fire. Some of the shots started finding their mark, but he didn't care. He summoned his willpower to cast forward a purifying flame. The stormtroopers in front of him kept firing despite the attack.
He charged in, hammer swinging. This time, though, the guardsmen weren't caught unawares. This time, they were set and ready to receive his assault.
***
The conscripts huddled together as they advanced, terrified, into the mist.
Further away, the sounds of battle had begun, and they were at once sent out from their own group to reinforce. The commanding marshal there had seen it fit to keep the regular guardsmen in position, in case of a flanking attack.
So they were sent out alone, likely to die.
The worst part was that they didn't even know where they were going. Everywhere around them, a thick, freezing fog blanketed the ground, drastically cutting down visibility.
The conscripts whispered between each other as they cautiously advanced along a long fence line. The air around them began to flash and glow as they came nearer to the fighting. The tension was killing them. They just wanted to be done with it already, but were terrified of what that "done" would entail for them, personally.
A sharp whistle pierced the mist in front of them. The guardsmen jumped in surprise. A few in the back broke away from the group and ran.
"You!" came a voice unseen, "Come here."
The conscripts looked at each other confused as somewhere around them a flame thrower lit the sky a sickly orange.
"Yes, you," the voice repeated.
Reluctantly, the conscripts crossed the street, moving towards the voice.
Before them, a ruin dissolved into view. Hidden in the shadows were a few soldiers, clad in massive tactical dreadnought armor. The conscripts stood in shock before the towering suits of armor.
"Come here," the leader told to them as weapons fire began to slam into the ruins they were hiding in.
"But... but aren't you the emeny?" one of them asked, meekly.
"No, we are servants of the true Emperor," the terminator replied.
"Oh."
"Come here, I have a very important mission for you..."
***
