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***
Sergent Finneas held his breath. It was kind of foolish, of course, because the enemy would hear the engines of his chimera long before they heard the sound of him breathing.
The engines quietly idled underneath him, sending vibrations up the vehicle. They had been sound insulated as best as the guardsmen could make them with what few tools and scraps of material they had at hand. It wasn't much, but it had seen them roll undiscovered for days so far.
The sergeant with a tense, silent grace slowly swept the area in front of him with his optics. The enemy was there.
They stood on the other side of the road, doing something that he couldn't quite make out. Their garish pink armor shone brightly in the sunlight. They didn't seem to be on alert.
Finneas let a long, slow exhale creep silently out of his mouth.
It was nothing short of a blessed miracle of the God-Emperor himself that they had managed to make it this far. A few days ago, Foleran positions had begun to catastrophically collapse around Drop Zone Delta. As resistance crumbled, his line marshal declared that it was every man for himself before shooting himself in the head with a bolt pistol for all to see.
Frantic and demoralized, everyone had scattered. He had commandeered a couple of chimeras and had gathered his friends into them to make a mad dash for freedom. Somewhere. Anywhere.
After somehow escaping, they had spent the last few days rumbling in the general direction of Drop Zone Beta. He didn't really know where it was, but he had a good guess. Slowly but surely, he began to come across the tell-tale signs of a war-torn landscape. They had finally made it somewhere.
The days and hours stretched on seemingly endlessly. The silence and the emptiness of the landscape drove his mind beyond the normal human bounds of paranoia. Everywhere around him could be enemy waiting, lurking. Ready to pounce unexpectedly.
But fate, or whatever kind deity otherwise, had seen him through it all somehow. He was here now, presumably. He had spent all of this time sneaking around but he had finally gotten to the point where he knew he had to arrive at some way. Finneas and his desperate crew had to punch through the rear guard of the enemy to try and make it to friendly positions.
The sergeant silently ducked into his transport. His men awaited him in the darkness. The cabin was stuffed with as much food, fuel, and materiel as it was possible to scavenge before they made their escape. Finneas picked his way between knees, and meltaguns, and fuel containers. He made it over to the vox set on the back of the shadowy cabin.
A faint click broke the quiet as the vox set was turned on.
"This is Finneas," he almost whispered, "The enemy is across the road. Transports, get ready to charge. Artillery, prepare to fire."
Other than excellent luck, the sergeant had another ace up his sleeve. They had managed to hijack a fuel bomber before they set out. It only had one charge, but this seemed exactly the time to use it.
"Stand by, Finn," came the reply from the artillery.
Minute stretched after minute. Behind him the preparatory work was being done. The fuel level was checked. The detonators were being installed. The right prayers to the machine spirit were being hastily intoned. It was a cumbersome process, but one didn't want a piece of air-burst ordnance accidentally going off in one's motor pool.
The sergeant nervously tapped on the vox casing as he waited for the bomb to be ready. He had to do this right. Once the blast went off, everybody within many, MANY miles - friend or foe - would know that he was there. Once this all started, speed was going to be key.
He stood, hunched over the vox.
It finally crackled into life.
"All right, the fuel bomb is ready."
The sergeants over-strung nerves twisted tighter. It felt like his blood was boiling to vapor in his veins.
"That's confirmed. Chimeras, stand by. Rev up your engines once the blast goes off. The second that the shockwave and fireball clears, gun it forward. Artillery, catch up as best you can. Do we all understand?"
A trio of affirmations clicked in over the vox.
"Artillery," he snapped, "fire away."
The sergeant gave the order and then quickly raced to the front of the chimera cab as quickly as he could, tripping over everything in the way to get up to the front hatch. As he stumbled, he could hear the peculiar shunting noise of the fuel bomb's catapult shooting the large keg of explosives up into the air.
Finneas just barely managed to find a seat and cover his ears in the cramped darkness.
The explosion was truly awe-inspiring. The inside of the chimera flashed briefly almost as bright as day, and was then followed by a universe-shattering shockwave. The blast instantly shoved the multi-ton armored transport several feet backwards, causing all of the men and materiel to crush forward to the front of the cab. The deafening blast tore at the armor, peeling off bits of paint.
The sergeant was completely crushed under the weight of several veterans and their gear. Stunned, the soldiers desperately began to flail and thrash around in a squirming mass of humanity. One by one, they began to peel themselves out of the blob. Finneas gasped frantically for air as he reached to shove the others off of him. With a loud heave, he managed to clear some oxygen into his lungs.
As the fireball began to roll up into the sky, the equally stunned vehicle drivers began to try and shake themselves to their senses.
One by one, they began to start up and roll as quickly as they could down the hillside towards the road. The sudden jerk threw the last of the veterans off of the sergeant, who was left clutching his chest and desperately gulping down air. He tried as hard as he could to regain his senses. The world began to fade back into some semblance of sanity.
Slowly, he staggered to his feet and turned towards the front hatch viewport. The chimera bucked ungracefully beneath him as the chimera made its way up to the road in front of it.
Then, over the ringing in his ears, another sound began to fade into focus. It was another kind of ringing. Some sort of hollow, electronic whine...
Suddenly, a noise washed through his being that made the explosion of the fuel bomb feel like a hiccup. It was a noise that couldn't even be described as loud. The word "loud" doesn't have enough letters in it to explain what happened.
From the inside out, every molecule and chemical in the sergeant's body began to writhe and rupture in incomprehensible agony. The blast of noise completely obliterated his sense of being.
The sonic blast crushed the chimera. As the tone broke over them, the vehicle instantly began to shake. The hatches blasted off incoherently. The wheel wells faltered and the engines failed. Inside the cabin, the veterans clutched themselves in agony. A guardsman's abdomen exploded violently, bursting his blood and guts into the transport. Another's teeth began to fly out of his mouth as gore began to vomit from within. The fuel containers shattered, spraying vaporized promethium into the air of the cabin.
With unintelligible violence, the horrid beam of pure aural ruin blasted the bolts and rivets out of the vehicle, and the engines violently began to erupt into flame. Within a few moments, the vehicle began to disintegrate into a fiery wreck. The screeching, smashing, crushing noise echoed and ricocheted off of everything.
Then the weight lifted off of Finneas.
He suddenly felt... incorporeal. Almost like he was floating in water. He looked down and could see his hands in front of him. His head swam in complete silence.
He lolled his head up to see his transport a blasted wreck around him, and everyone except for a lone guardsman dead or completely incapacitated.
Then he saw something else.
They were here.
From the other side of the remaining chimera, stood a half dozen monstrous, utterly garish, towering hulks of vulgarity.
The sergeant's entire being was completely numb. Completely still. He watched with only passing comprehension as the enemy terminators blew the other transport apart with their meltaguns.
The desperate survivors crawled out to attempt a counterattack.
Finneas couldn't feel his body anymore. He slid his disembodied hands around along himself. Neither his hands nor his torso registered any feeling. His mind was completely blank.
It was... bliss.
He looked down at his hands and watched them slide up his flak armor. He could still move his various parts on instinct, but he could only visually guide them. He brought his hands up to his face.
Still nothing. He looked down at his left hand. It was completely soaked with blood.
Huh.
It was only then that he realised that he had collapsed, painlessly, onto the ground.
He watched as the other veterans scrambled into a firing line in front of him.
With what must have been a cacophony of violence, the meltaguns opened up on the terminators. The air shimmered and flashed brightly with a million spraying sparks.
They dropped, noiselessly in the air. The impressive display didn't have an effect on him. He felt hollow. Clean. Empty.
One by one, the terminators dropped until they were able to make it into close combat with the guardsmen.
The guardsmen were horribly eviscerated in front of him with practically no effort. Blood sprayed from the pounded bodies up onto the brick of the tower behind them.
Finneas rolled his head over to look away from the carnage, when he came face to face with something he did not expect. A pair of lumbering Leman Russ tanks ground towards him, opening up silently with their main guns.
He could see the muzzle flashes of all of the hull weapons punctuated by shell after shell from the turret, unloading what should have been an awesome display of firepower.
He was being rescued, he supposed, but even his rescue seemed so... boring?
***
"Well nah that's it, boys! Enemy sighted! Man to ya guns, iffa pleese!"
The ogryn nearly squealed in delight.
The inside of the chimera was hot, dark, noisy, and unbelievingly rank in odor. The vehicle bucked up and down as it drove at incredible speed over terrain. The wire mesh covering the circular hatches flicked a broken light into the cabin.
"That's right, nah! Un-batton those hatches. Bring up the guns. Come on, ya wretched whelps!"
Caspar looked down at the ogryn arrayed before him as they worked to prepare for action. Gun loops were crudely slung, and the hatches were opened. Sand was cast (well, unceremoniously dumped) on the floor to help with grip. Ammunition was scattered nearby for ease of access.
"Keep it up, boys, we're gonna have ourselves a fight!"
The lord commissar looked on with a tinge of pride coloring his insane spirit. Things were going well for him.
Not a month ago, he was captured by enemy space marines who served the dark and ruinous gods of chaos. They had made him fight in the slave pits against demons, and against chaos champions in ludicrously unfair fights, but had won regardless. He had managed to climb out of the ring on the corpses of a dozen dead enemies and beat back the angry throng of spectators armed with bolt pistol and chainsaw sword. Once he found his powerfist, things had gotten almost easy for him, beating off squad after squad of enemy space marines by himself.
He eventually managed to fight his way to an airbase and steal a chaos hellblade fighter. Somehow he had managed to get it working and flew it back to loyalist lines only to be shot down by anti-aircraft fire. Escaping certain death by fiery crash, he had collected a new posse and rolled through the enemy in a blaze of glory.
His armored fist of tanks and transport careened as quickly as they could forward. After a few days without sign of the enemy, he was glad that he had finally caught up with some.
"Nah put yer backs inta it you lazy sonnabitches!" Caspar shouted at the ogryn arrayed before him.
"Lord Caspar," the vox in the chimera crackled, "We have confirmed sighting of enemy units forward and to the left. They're on the other side of a road, sir,"
Unfortunately, the lord commissar was on the wrong side of the cabin from the vox set, and squeezing in between five fithly, sweaty ogryn to do so didn't feel that particularly appealing to him.
Instead, he looked through the front viewport. There they were. The enemy arrayed all in their pink frippery.
Without a second thought, he opened up the top hatch of his transport and pulled out his megaphone. He may not be able to reach the vox, but he had other ways of making his wishes known. He flipped the switch on, and cranked the knob up to 10.
Just then, the ruined city in front of him lit up in an apocalyptic explosion. The shockwave sent the lord commissar into the side of the hatch and nearly knocked the helmet off of his head. He looked on as a massive fireball rolled up into the air.
Caspar smiled.
"Well YEE-HAW!" he shouted through his megaphone, "Looks like it's all a started, nah! Let's git 'em boys!"
The chimera and Russ engines blasted into speed as the invincible blob of armor rolled forward. The ogryn began to fire their hand cannons into the air in a jovial, celebratory fashion. The tank guns quickly followed, though more decidedly aimed at actual targets in front of them.
"That's right!" Caspar shouted down the top hatch to his ogryn by means of encouragement, as one by one, the massive hand cannons stuck their muzzles out the side hatches and blasted into the air. Eventually, one of them would hit SOMETHING.
"Man your guns, keep up the fire!"
The armored column passed around the corner of some ruins, and came face to face with the enemy.
The air in front of them exploded with gunfire. Enemy rockets slammed into the front of the heavy tank armor causing them to buck violently as they moved forward. Exploding bits of shrapnel and armor sprayed everywhere as the tanks continued their implacable advance.
Caspar had just a fraction of a moment to react as an anti-tank missile, fired high, sped just past the turret of the Russ in front of him and headed straight for his head. The hundred-pound high explosive clipped his helmet spike, ripping the ornament off of his head before spinning off and exploding into the building behind him.
"Well sonnabitches!" Caspar shouted, putting his hand on top of his head and feeling the broken lug on the helmet, "That was my damn near favorite pick-
el-habber! I'll get y'all for that!" he shouted defiantly at the enemy.
But the enemy heavy weapons teams would have to wait. A far more insidious threat soon broke upon him from the ruins above. A horrid electric whine filled the air for a moment, before everything suddenly exploded in sound.
Caspar winced as an electric guitar with a slightly flat B-string blasted an E-minor chord at inhuman volume. It was quickly joined by a heavy-distort voice screeching obscenities at a hundred decibels.
"Ah!" Caspar shouted, "Emperor... DAMN
IT! Turn off the damn noise!" he shouted at the enemy as the wall of noise increased in intensity.
Caspar would have none of this. In his schola days, he had been strictly, even brutally trained as a classical musician as part of educating the whole person. He wasn't just a brave man shouting orders at people, he was also the pinnacle of human class and dignity in his own mind. His ears had been forced to register perfect pitch. His mind had been formed to perfect acoustic aesthetic.
And now these damn... teenagers... were blasting this crap that you couldn't even call music on a GOOD day. No, this would not do. It would not do at all.
The lord commissar reached down and cranked his megaphone up to eleven.
"NAH I SAID TURN DOWN THAT GOD-EMPEROR-DAMNED RACKET!" he bellowed over the blasting cacophony of questionable-taste grunge-pop.
The enemy refused to comply.
They were going to be obstinate, were they? He'd shut them up if he had to do it himself.
He turned towards his tanks.
"SHIFT FIRE UP ONTO THAT NOISE!"
The Russ commanders could barely make out the orders, but one, then the other began to obey. Caspar withdrew back into his chimera and shut the hatch as the transports broke out between the tanks to charge in.
Back in the darkness of the chimera, he could see his sweaty ogryn frantically working to reload and fire their guns. So far, they had expended a great deal of ammunition without yet being able to acquire a target.
"Holda fire, if'n'y'all please!" Caspar shouted to the gunners. Eventually, they began to respond to the order.
"All right now, y'all'r'a reload yer guns!"
The ogryn dutifully reloaded their weapons. A few of them had to remove the currently loaded ammo (largely by discharging them) to make space, but within a few moments, they all had fresh rounds in their hand cannons.
"Open the hatches, and prepare to give them a volley!"
The hatches opened, and the guns poked out. The cabin briefly blasted with "music" before the holes were filled again with steel barrels.
Caspar looked out the front viewport. They were coming up to the side of the ruins.
"Prepare to fire!"
"Preparrina fire!" bellowed the voices of a few of the ogryn as they readied to unleash the massive power of their ridiculously oversized pistols.
"Nah take careful aim, nah, y'hear? I want you to point di-rectly at those pink'uns who are a-blastin' their non-sensicalities at us."
This order didn't make much sense, but they did understand what the word "pink" meant, and certainly there were pink targets in front of them.
The chimera passed by into perfect broadside position.
"FIRE!" Caspar shouted.
At once the ogryn fired their cannons in a massive volley. The chimera rocked to the right on its suspension as several hundred pounds of nails, washers, and other tiny bits of metal burst from the left side of the vehicle in a great plume of shrapnel. The hapless enemy were blown off the ruins in the shredding storm.
The rest around them were finished off by the heavy weapons fire from the tank that mercifully shut down the chaos space marine who was holding onto the amplifier. Within moments, things became relatively quiet.
With bombastic proficiency, the tanks mopped up everything nearby before they finally went silent. Soon, the battlefield was still.
"Nah that's more like it," Caspar noted, "Some folk have the most as-in-ine tastes."
"All right, nah," he said to his ogryn, "Reload ya guns and get ready to move out."
***
Caspar leaned back out the top hatch. The sun was beginning to set, and the heat of the day was finally passing. Being stuck in a cramped transport full of ogryn was a little much, even for him.
And so now he was enjoying a light breeze and sipping from his canteen. He was also lazily busying himself plucking at a guitar. The lord commissar had liberated it earlier in the day from the bodies of his slain foes. This particular instrument also had a underslung bolt gun attached to it. He hadn't felt the need to bring one of the massive
amps along, so he was content to play it acoustically.
It had been awhile since he'd played. He still remembered the basic chords well enough, and it hadn't taken long for a soft string of easy, folksy strumming to accompany a bit of proper old-tymie folk tunes. Unfortunately, Caspar sung worse than he played. The ogryn, all but passed out in the baking warmth of the transport, and tuckered out by a day's fighting didn't seem to mind. Much less notice.
"Hey!" came a voice from somewhere.
Caspar gently put down his combi-axe and turned to find the source of the voice. From just up the street, there was a Foleran guardsman waving his arm at him from the top floor of a ruined building.
"Well, ahoy there, yourself!" Caspar shouted as his transport began to slow down.
"Is this all hear Drop Zone Beta?" the lord commissar asked the guardsman up in the window.
"No, sir," the guardsman replied.
Caspar frowned slightly.
"Nah just where do I find myself then?" he asked.
"Have I got a story for you, sir. Just take your convoy over to the right and around that building there. Go down the end of the street and you'll find a place to park."
"Well than thank you kindly, boy," Caspar replied as the chimera approached the ruined building.
After a few moments, the transport came to the end and took a right turn. The lord commissar and the guardsman in the ruins snapped a quick salute at each other as they passed.
***
The Empire 
1500 pts
: 
KHADOR 
X-Wing (Empire Strong) 
Armageddon Steel Legion - Blade Storm Battalion - 1st Company
Undivided 
