Deepstrike: A Warhammer 40k Story

Deepstrike                                                                                                       

 

      The drop pod’s interior was stained blood red by the single bulb burning in the center of the otherwise darkened space. Designed to hold twelve fully armed and armored Adeptus Astartes brothers, the pod was mostly vacant except for the single solitary occupant seated in an acceleration harness in the very center. Captain Maccias’ features were hard and battle-worn. His uncovered head was completely shaved, and the metal studs of augmentation protruded sporadically from his skull. The set of his wide jaw was grim, a long fresh cut along the side of his face shining wetly in the light. The drop pod was empty of his brothers. He would have it no other way. This was his duty, his penance for his failure to defend the planet below.

      For three Terran months now the Magna system had been under siege by the great enemy. A huge flotilla of Chaos battle barges and frigates had leapt from the immaterium, moments before a massive warp storm had isolated the system, likely their foul plan all along. The abominable hordes and legions had swamped Magna Secundus and overran the Planetary Defense Force within the first week. The naval battle above had been swift and brutal, Imperial Navy Cruiser carcasses littering the cluster like wayward moons. Then, when the heretical scum had launched another offensive towards the shrine world of the system Magna Primus, the Astartes had arrived. It was only by the Emperors grace that a Fighting Company from the Crusade Force Lucido had been within range to receive the feeble attempts by the surviving planet at astropathic communication through the haze of the warp storm. The small group of ships, a flanking assault force had arrived in-system to witness the hordes making landfall on the shrine world from afar, before swiftly engaging in retaliation. Thus had begun their journey to defeat - and Maccias’ own.

     The fight to retake the shrine world had been among the bloodiest he'd ever seen in his long career. For weeks he and his brothers had held the oncoming tides of cultist heathens, traitorous Chaos Marines, and bestial Demons of every kind at bay through fire and toil and their own blood. Too many of those fallen, littering the hives and temples with their bodies had been adorned with the obsidian black of his chapter. In this, his last duty, he paid their sacrifice homage. They were sons of Dorn all.

      The great black on white cross of the templars adorned his massive plated shoulder, the rest of his armor dinted and scarred, sporting craters from deflected bolter rounds and long scratches as evidence of brutal melees. Monuments all to the fight and struggle to hold the world he was hurtling towards that very moment. A fight they'd lost.

     In his contemplative silence he didn't notice the vibration at first. It began as a sub-audible tremor, then as a quiet rattle that shook the pod. He began to feel it then, in the short moments before it became a deafening roar as the drop pod accelerated beyond terminal velocity by exterior rockets entered the planet's atmosphere in excess of twelve thousand miles per hour.

     The shaking became bone-deep, even to his superhuman geneseed-enhanced skeleton inside it's near impervious ceramite power armor. It grew to such a terrible crescendo that any normal human being inside the pod would have been liquefied instantly. But he was by all means no normal man. He was Astartes. Space marine. And the lost Planet Magnus prime which he hurtled towards now, would be avenged.

      Calmly, slowly and with great reverence brother captain Maccias lifted the black visored helmet at his side and lowered it over his head. Digital diagnostic text fluttered over his vision as the helmet powered on. Immediately he switched off the vox system. In this, he was alone. As it should be. In the maelstrom of violence that was the descending drop pod he waited in silence. One gauntleted hand drew across his chest gripping a thickly muzzled bolter. The huge weapon would have dwarfed a normal human’s tiny arms yet fit into his palm naturally. Almost ritualistically he drew his other, left arm across the right, this one carrying a long-handled chain sword, motionless teeth painted red as though dripping blood already. In a way it was a ritual, one he'd performed countless times before on numerous crusades and purges across the embattled Imperial world's and systems, against all manner of the enemies of man. In the relative quiet of his environmentally sealed helmet, Maccias intoned a solemn rite and prayer to the God-Emperor of mankind. Thanking him for giving him purpose. Asking for absolution for the failure he was about to remedy.

     There was an explosive jolt as the brake rockets on the underside of the pod fired. Heartbeats later the drop pod touched down, and the world went mad.

      With a monumental impact which would have felled a basilisk tank in one blow the drop pod slammed into the earth of the planet. Maccias shook it off, the genetically enhanced structure of his superhuman body supplemented by the thick powered limbs of his armor absorbing the impact with trained ease. With a roar of explosive bolts firing, the six outer doors lining the sides of the pod blew open.

If there had been anything left alive immediately outside the drop pod to witness its evacuation, they would have seen the huge void-black armored figure explode out from the doors and tear through the billowing smoke that vented from the pod itself. A half-dozen bodies littered the impact site, smoldering and torn into unrecognizable ruin by the pods landfall. The sprinting figure moved with incredible speed, feet crushing scattered rubble underfoot to dust from sheer power and weight. Yet for the immense size of the thing its movements were precise, each footfall delicately placed with honed, trained finesse.

     Inside the hurtling ceramite armor Maccias barely perspired. Nor did he pant in exertion. To his augmented and enhanced body such a display of raw speed and power was nothing exceptional. He was Astartes, after all, the Emperors finest.

He ploughed through the wrecked and ruined streets of the outer hive habitation blocks where he'd landed. The huge megacity burned. The towering habitation blocks to either side of him were pockmarked from weapons fire and scarred from the battle that had raged through these same streets when the defense had still held. Inside the sealed helmet of his power armor, bright glowing lines of overlays flickered into being as the integral sensors mapped his environment and the streets directly adjacent to him.
     Above, aboard the battle barge that had birthed his pod, the long-range sensors had been scrambled and confused by the warp storm and layers of foul psyker chaos magic that hung in the sky above the hive city. Had they been able to pinpoint his target, the same mission could have been accomplished from above. Alas he was sent instead, down here to this wretched place to finish what the foul powers had started.

     The hololithic map across the interior of his lenses pinged a location far off through the city to the west of him, bordering the hives outskirts. With grim finality Maccias keyed the map off and picked up even greater speed. He knew now where he was going.

     Up ahead he rounded the blind corner of a wide intersection through the avenue of the wide rockcrete street. Right into a milling mass of cultists gathered haphazardly across his path.

     In a hairsbreadth of time the charging space marine reacted. He keyed the activation stud of the chainsword in his left hand and it growled to life. Flying forward faster than the cultists could react themselves, he swung savagely, cutting through two of them at once, bodies separating and tumbling apart.

      The cultists were dressed in a great variety of tattered, blackened rags. At his sudden and unexpected appearance, they howled, screeched, and cried in equal parts rage and fear. They were poor excuses of sub-human filth, some sporting sickening mutations in the form of extra appendages, eyes, or scaly, boil-ridden skin bestowed by the ruinous powers. Some had carved inhuman sigils and glyphs into the skin of their faces, arms, and bare chests. These glyphs themselves seemed to twist and warp in vile patterns, flowing curves and vicious spikes, designs so insane they'd make any normal human scream and vomit as his mind bent in upon himself. But Maccias was a son of Dorn. He did not waver.

      He laid into the ranks of creatures mercilessly, carving a path through and barely breaking stride. The cultists nearest scrambled to get clear of the scything chainsword, though some charged him and were quickly and brutally cut down.

     Without warning he was through them and away, having cleaved a path through the lightly armored congregation in a matter of seconds. Very few could stand against the unleashed fury of an Astartes and live. As Maccias raced on further down the rockcrete Avenue, weaving between abandoned and burnt out civilian vehicles and similarly destroyed light assault trucks the cultists behind began shooting. Apparently, they'd regained their senses enough to realize that they themselves too, were armed.

     Red bolts from laspistols and solid rounds from auto guns began to fall around him like sporadic rain. He grunted in annoyance. It was not the light arms fire that irked him, not in the least. More that it was likely one of the cultists behind carried a stolen vox caster or other communicative device and were alerting the damnable forces in the area. And he still had a great number of the towering blocks to cover to his destination.

      Eventually the hard rounds pinging and ricocheting off the steely hides of the ruined vehicles around him, and the bright red beams of lasfire zapping past died away as he went out of range. Maccias’ blood boiled at the necessity of leaving so many heathens behind in want of cleansing by the teeth of his chainsword. Fire and blood was the way of the templars, not retreat and never surrender. But within himself he acknowledged the deeper battle to be fought here and the vitality of his mission. There were larger battles and greater glory to be won this day, and their deaths would be inevitably immanent should he succeed.

      Maccas’ hulking, bounding form rounded another of the blind corners on his right.

The stubby, thick barrel of a Leman Russ battle tank levelled directly at his head. It's armor sickeningly adorned with more blasphemous, occultic symbols of the warp and coated sickly black with dried blood. Maccias threw himself aside, and the rockcrete ground erupted violently where he'd been just an augmented heartbeat before. The cannon of the tank vented thick grey smoke and there was a clanking whine as the internal auto-loaders inserted a new shell. The machine's secondary weapon, an auto stubber machine gun mounted on a swivelling turret beside the main cannon opened up. Where he'd rolled to a knee in his dive the ground began to kick up rock chips as it sprayed him with fire. Several glanced off his ceramite shoulders, the force of the impacts twitching his bulk.

Maccias sprang aside again, leaping behind the remnants of a burnt-out half-track vehicle with the sigil of the local PDF emblazoned on the side. Hard rounds rattled against the far hide of the vehicle as the stubber continued to unload at him. He cursed quietly.

     After the weakness in challenge of the cultist followers the last thing he'd expected was armor. While the auto stubber didn't present a serious threat the tank’s main cannon could easily dispatch him. All it would take is one, semi accurate shot. He had until the forsaken machine's loader had finished cycling to move.

     As if in response the tank fired, close range, directly into the side of the half-track.

Maccias was thrown backwards as the vehicle was shunted into him violently, sending him and it crashing into the plascrete side of a towering habitation block. The impact was hard. He shook his helmeted head, dazed. Miraculously he still gripped his weapons, the chainsword in his left hand and the bolter in the right. The pelting rain of the stubber ceased as the twisted tank, it's machine spirit likely corrupted by the powers of Chaos, attempted to confirm it's kill. It couldn't see him. Hidden behind the newly burning, torn wreck of the half-track, he slumped against the side of the habitation block out of view.

     He was in trouble, which irked him to no end. Not even halfway to the target site and he was in danger of failing. The anger grew and blossomed as he recovered, swelling into the black hate that had infected so many of his brothers. Not a fully-fledged madness like some were doomed with, but a furious hatred at his circumstance, borne from the sheer futility of his weapon's ineffectiveness against the corrupted tank.

     He staggered upright and crouched low. With a thundering bellow Maccias launched himself over the burning wreck and directly in front of the Leman Russ. Still screaming his anger, he flew at it and was inside it's defenses before the stubber could react and open fire. The thundering space marine raised his bulky bolter and slammed the barrel into the viewslot running along the front of the tank, a dark wide gap through the armor plates an inch wide the operating team could see through. He jammed the trigger down.

      The bolter bucked and leapt with automatic fire, breaking a hole right through the slot and venting huge slugs into the confined space. The rounds resounded loudly around the inside of the tank as they ricocheted and shredded those within into pulp.
      He released the trigger and silence reigned through the street once more. When Maccias backed away the thing was quiet and still, the engine driving the large armored tracks idling dully. He turned to continue to the objective.

      Lasbolts, angry and red whined past his head. They smacked harmlessly into the tank behind and glanced off, pitting the rockcrete below. He snarled in annoyance. Time was critical. If he arrived too late his mission would be null and void, ineffective. Already he'd taken too long. He had to keep moving. As a larger group of the cultists rounded the corner back where he'd encountered the tank he lifted his bolter one handed and fired, sending a volley of oversized rounds tearing through the cluster of mutated and scarred bodies. The pitiful wretches screamed and shied away into cover - those that were not blasted apart by his wrath. In the respite Maccias turned, and though it vexed him to do so, ran onwards.

      The rockcrete streets flew beneath his armored feet, thundering and shaking with the impacts of his strides as he pressed on faster and faster, urging himself to greater speeds. In his hololithic virtual overlay the map whipped past as he flowed further through the outskirts of the great hive, past more and more again of the towering habitation blocks, shorter now that he neared the edge of the city itself. So focused was he on the glowing map and its depiction of a large structure on the edge of the hive that when he passed into a wide-open Plaza that he nearly didn't see them.

     There was a tall white marble fountain in the center, which once would have sported a towering statue of a living saint, winged and blindfolded, resplendent in the brilliance and purity of the stone itself. Now the statue was ruined, wide spread stone wings broken off and cast aside - no doubt the work of some foul heretics. It had been viciously beheaded and the Holy sword the saint had held aloft was snapped off at the hilt, the blade resting in the bowl of the basin below. But it was not filled with water.
      Dark black-red blood jetted from the center of the fountain to cascade into a frothing pool within the basin. All around the sides slumped hundreds of human bodies, all of which were dismembered or decapitated in a gruesome manner to produce the blood now polluting the pool. And there they were, one standing amidst the visceral sloshing waters of the fountain pool and holding a headless corpse by the ankle, one handed, to drain its contents. Several Chaos space marines, encased in deep crimson armor somehow more offensive than the red waters below stood about the fountain. Maccias’ blood boiled in his black veins at the sacrilege.

      They hadn't seen him yet, too enraptured in their foul monument to the dark god they worshipped. Beyond them he could see down a broad multi-laned avenue towards wide rockcrete steps leading upwards to his destination. There was no way around. No other course. Without a flinch nor falter in his stride that was a testament to the very name of his chapter Maccias raced directly at the group defiling the fountain.

      The hulking traitorous marine closest to him was the first to turn, too late. Maccias slammed the muzzle of his bolter directly into the things face, and simultaneously pulled the trigger. In a spray of gore and the roar of fire, it didn't have a head anymore.

Screeching electronically through their helmets external speakers the others began to react as he vaulted towards them, never pausing.

      The next two brought their bolters to bear but caught by surprise even their inhuman reflexes were off and the lethal cascade of rounds went wide, tearing up the rockcrete around Maccias. They too, were slow. Ducking low as he neared the pair, he slid beneath their aim and the roaring chainsword in his left hand scythed forward, severing the Chaos marine’s legs off together at the knee. Simultaneously he jerked the bolter up and targeted the rightmost one. Point blank, the heavy solid rounds punched into its thick red ceramite power armor. Even this close they weren't enough to penetrate, but the force of the hail shunted the monster backwards, cast off its feet. Maccias sprinted on.

      The final three were more prepared than their counterparts before them, though he was still pressing towards them relentlessly. The one in the center still stood calf-deep in the fetid waters of the fountain, raising a chainsword to guard and thumbing the mechanism awake, the toothed chain roaring. The others to either side had set up in firing stances with their bolters and opened up on the charging templar. A round slammed into his left shoulder but he shrugged it off aggressively, bringing his own chainsword to bear. With a wordless roar, Maccias launched himself off the stained brim of the fountains bowl and crashed down at the waiting chaos marine.

     Their blades met in a flurry of sparks and the roar of the twin engines. Maccias’ opening blow was turned aside, and he had to parry a flurry of cuts from the red-armored abomination. The two either side had quit firing, not having a shot clear of their comrade, which he was thankful for. The two superhuman warriors cut wildly at each other for heartbeats more. With a flourish the templar Astartes wove his purring blade up and around the others, bringing it down on the Chaos marines elbow joint. The hardened teeth sheared through the weaker layer of armor and in a blink the red encased forearm dropped to the polluted waters below. The severed joint gouted its own thick crimson blood, and the midnight black of Maccias’ ceramite armor was sprayed with droplets of red as his opponent flailed, screeching.

     He pressed the advantage and lunged forward, smashing the hilt of the chainsword up into the face of the traitors helmet. The blow was savage and hard, smashing in the right eye lens of the monster as it careened backwards. Exposed, gnashing teeth, needle-like and sharp snarled in rage where teeth had no right to be. As it fell Maccias drove over it and brought the bolter up in his right hand, loosing a volley of shells at the chaos marine on that side, bringing his own weapon up to take aim. The rounds punched into the armored figure, sending it stumbling, and Maccias leapt from the gruesome waters of the desecrated fountain just as the other twisted fiend opened fire.

     He hit the rockcrete of the wide Plaza running, but not before a few bolter rounds glanced off his armored sides, jolting him. He felt a snap and a flare of pain on his left side but kept running, raising his own weapon to fire wildly back at the remaining shooter.

     The wide double-laned thoroughfare opened up before him, and at the far end a huge monolithic cathedral towered towards the diseased ochre sky.

     The gunmetal grey stones and brilliant stained-glass windows stood high and proud, yet there seemed a haze to the structure as if surrounded by a perpetual smudge of black smoke. The taint of the warp was strong here. Maccias sprinted down the avenue towards the high stone steps leading up to the sacred Chapel. His great vaulting strides ate the ground beneath. Close now. So close.

     From every crevice, door, window and balcony along the tall habs to either side they poured like locusts. Screaming cultists, many twisted by the foul powers. More of the red armored chaos marines, the warped betrayers and turned brothers adorned with sickening sigils and runes. Creatures great and small, many limbed and tentacled, swarming over the sheer faces of the buildings like so many plague rats. Lesser demons. The putrid sulfuric stink of them filled the air, and he could even taste their presence inside the sealed environment of his helmet. Warp scum, chaos followers, and traitorous heretics all bellowed their outrage at him from on high. Strangely, not one of them levelled a weapon at him to fire, despite many being heavily armed. It was as if they were almost afraid to dare. No matter.

     After seemingly an age of being watched by the gathered horde, his heavily booted feet met the wide stone stairs and he began to climb.

     Heartbeat by heartbeat the stairs fell away underneath Maccias’ bounding leaps and strides. Close now, so close.

     Up ahead of him the huge wrought-iron doors of the Cathedral exploded open. From within the sacred church emerged something massive, a writhing mass of pallid white tentacles lined with purple barb-like teeth. The center of the fleshy mass was dominated by several gaping, gnashing maws showing rows of more teeth, dripping with sickly froth and drool. A towering head appeared above the twisted body, a thick muscular neck ending in a bulbous head covered on all sides by staring lidless eyes blazing red and divided by slit pupils. The greater demon roared in unequalled rage, it's many mouths bellowing over each other in a ferocious cacophony reminiscent of the warp which had birthed it.

      Maccias did not flinch. He did not falter. He was a son of Dorn, a Black Templar, those of the longest, holiest crusade the Asartes had even known. He did not balk from the insane sight of madness made manifest. Fear did not sully his veins this day. As he flew on up the steps he remembered. Remembered defending this same holy site not a week hence, where the foul hordes of Chaos had stampeded, overrunning the final defense he and his brothers had lain down. Many of them had fallen that day, to his sorrow. Many more would have if he hadn't given the unforgivable order to retreat in his failure. And so here he was, for his penance. For his atonement.

      Crying in wordlessly fury, Maccias charged at the foul thing atop the steps. He fired his bolter one handed into it as he ran, the shells smacking into the glistening hide and tearing through but seeming to have little effect on the immense size of the demon.

       He reached the top of the stair, leaping to deliver a blow with his roaring chainsword that never landed. Faster than blinking, faster than thought itself, faster than anything had a right to physically move, a thick muscular white tentacle flashed out and batted the falling sword aside so hard that it was torn form even his superhuman grasp. Another slammed down on the bolter in his opposite and, and while he did not lose the weapon the fleshy appendage wrapped around its bulky casing and invaded the breach on the side, jamming the firing mechanism into stillness. Still more lashed forth and he was wrenched from the earth and upwards by tendrils encircling his arms, suspended and defenseless before the abomination. It held him there, as if inspecting the dangling marine.

     Then it's unnatural warp-birthed features twisted and furrowed in consternation. At a sound. A very peculiar sound. Low and hard, a barking noise sharp and jagged, emitted from speakers that made it tinny and electronicised. The Black Templar was laughing. Inside the sealed confines of his helmet Maccias read the glowing hololithic script projected before his eyes.
       Signal established - target acquired.

     He was still laughing when the demon tore him apart in an eruption of rage. But it was far too late. The warp-spawn, the Cathedral, the raucous horde in the street behind. All were obliterated, atomized by a spear of blinding white energy that descended from the heavens above, violently parting the clouds in a glowing halo. The explosion spread for a thousand kilometers in every direction, purging the entire sector of the hive with its lethal radiance.

     From high above in orbit, dozens of other pillars of light touched down around the planet Magna Primus. The Templar Fighting Company had few ships remaining. The naval engagement above the planet had been brutal, but now the hulks of tainted frigates and battle barges of the great enemy littered the void, their victory was absolute. Though nothing could be done to save the world below.

     Their ships were few, and so they selected their targets carefully and with utmost precision. They rooted out the locations most important to the enemy on the surface, in the center of warp distortions and psychic fields, yet could not pinpoint them accurately from on high through the various reality-bending effects shrouding the targets below.   And so not an hour earlier, living beacons were dispatched. Great warriors all, sacrificing themselves in the purge of the planet. Maccias himself had been one of them.
      This had been his retribution in the eyes of the Empire and his Brothers. Like the others he hunted through the streets and tracked the infection spreading through the world to its source. His handy work would scar Magna Primus for all time. It would be a long, slow process, but the exterminatus had begun.