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Another start on a short story, this one will be an unashamed bolter-porn marine-based story. Thoughts welcome, haven't fleshed out the type of planet Fera will be, so any ideas will be appreciated!

- Dan
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Rain. Freezing, incessant, driving rain. That’s what the mortals who were present on that blasted world remembered.

They called it the liberation of the Fera system.
We called it betrayal.

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“Brother-Sergeant!”
Valerian halted mid-step and turned.
“Fulvius,” Valerian growled. “I could hear you 2 decks away with that new leg of yours.”
The giant in gleaming cobalt armour clapped his hand onto Valerians pauldron, and grinned. It looked uncannily as if a weather-beaten boulder had suddenly opened and split in imitation of a smile.
“Jealousy! One day you shall aspire to the levels of heroism that I have displayed, I may have lost a leg, but I have won glory!” He threw his arms above his head, as if to appease an invisible, roaring crowd.
Valerian gave a low chuckle at Fulvius’ words, sounding like gravel crunching under metal-shod boots.
“Believe me, it is good to see you well again brother, I was not informed that you had left the apothecarion? Come, walk with me."
Fulvius caught his sergeants wrist as he turned to lead the way.
“Valerian,” his voice low “I must thank you. If it hadn’t of been for you it would have been my life, not my leg, that was left on Grypha. I shall not forget it.”
Meeting his eyes, Valerian smiled
“Think nothing of it, we are brother, I would expect you to do the same.”

Fulvius’ eyes gleamed in the darkness, a deep blue-green.
“Oh you can count on that, brother.” thought Fulvius, his lips curling as the sergeant turned and made his way down the corridor.

+++

Human Crew and Chapter serfs scurried out of the path of the two warriors, not one lifted their eyes to meet their gaze. They strode the corridors that wound through the heart of the Strike-cruiser, walls of dark steel stretching for kilometres throughout the bowels of the ship. Every few paces bronze arches and plinths jutted from the walls, the parchment prayer-bonds and faith strips covering them fluttered as air moved throughout the ship, each sheaf covered in words taken from company histories, ecclesarchial sermons and oaths of moment.

The blast door leading to the bridge opened with a hiss of air and hydraulics, disappearing into the roof as the astartes strode through. The bridge was a hive of activity, every aspect of life aboard the Indomitable Will was controlled and administered from within the cavernous arena that was the bridge. Like a great amphitheatre, the roof was two dozen metres above the deck, the adamantium darkness swirled with vast frescoes of imperial victory and triumph.

Tech-adepts stood hunched, manipulating controls with metallic snake-like appendages grafted to their spines, speaking to their kind in blurts of binaric code. Blank faced servitors sat hunched in control-pits sunk in tiered rows deep into the floor. Permanently attached to their machines, there was little left of them that could be considered human, coiled wires and pulsing cables burrowed into their pallid flesh. The closest to him, designated Chi-Mu 75 by the brass plague riveted to its neck, was a particularly brutal example of what became of the human form when forced into indentured servitude. The servitor’s legs had been severed at the hips, tight bundles of cables wound their way into the fleshy stumps, and pipes filled with gurgling, red haemolubricant entered through the abdomen and chest. The rear of the skull had been removed, data-spikes, 6 inch daggers of gleaming circuit-inlaid glass, slick with blood and oil sank into the grey matter of its brain, information from the cruisers data-coils surging into it’s skull to be sorted and analysed.

Tearing his gaze from the creature, he strode towards a group of figures silhouetted against the glow from a holo-map. Valerian stopped a few paces short and saluted, hands spread over his breast plate, thumbs interlocked, forming the sign of the aquila. The astartes gathered around the raised platform nodded their greetings, then clasped wrists in a warriors grip.

“Now that brother-Sergeant Valerian has joined us, we may begin.” Captain Furiam was a veteran of scores of campaigns, recently elevated to the captaincy of the second company. He wore the scars of battle proudly upon his rough-hewn face, tanned skin striped with the stark white of scar tissue.

“4 weeks ago a distress call was received by our astropaths; warning of a greenskin incursion in the calaxis sector, specifically, the star system known locally as Fera.”

The captain took a data-wafer from a pouch on his belt, and fed it into a slot on the machine. Gears whirred and clicked, a ghost-pale image bloomed into life above the holo-table. A cluster of pulsing, green-tinted stars. The holo-servitor hanging above the table like a grotesque marionette, waved it's spider like arms as if it was groping for the stars in the hologram, and the view focused on a single star, Fera Prime.

“They entered the system in the shadow of the gas giant, Fera Septus, dropping from the warp far further in-system than thought possible.”
Red arrows coalesced in the air, indicating the direction of the attack and fleet disposition. Three arms converging on a hive world, the fifth planet, Fera Quintus.
“The invasion fleet, though it could hardly be called that, numbered only a few dozen vessels, not one larger than an imperial battle cruiser."
"Then why are we here?" Sergeant Tolin cut in, "Surely a force that small is no match for the local PDF forces assuming that the System defence boats don't stop them first?"
"That, Sergeant, is precisely why we are here. We cannot account for the location of the local SDF. The path to Fera is open and clear, and the orbital stations are offline for retro-fit. I refuse to believe this is a coincidence. When you've fought the enemies of the Imperium as long as I have, you learn there are no such thing as coincidences."

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