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+--- Thread: Forgotten Betrayal (/showthread.php?tid=4599)
Forgotten Betrayal - Tartaros - 06-12-2016
The 31st millenium, Istvaan III. The world burns, its surface razed, its vast hives abandoned and its people slaughtered. The Warmaster had decimated his own legions, attempting to purge those he deemed too loyal to the Emperor to join him in his betrayal from the ranks of the legions. He sent dozens of companies of Astartes to the surface in a wave of drop pods, under the pretenses of crushing a rebellion, before bathing the world in fire and turning upon the crews of his own ships.
Only due to the sacrifice of Captain Saul Tarvitz of the Emperor’s Children did anything survive, hidden deep within the spires and tunnels of the world as the bombs fell, annihilating any other traces of life, rotting the world’s inhabitants into nothing but decaying sludge and bone, before covering the world in great storms of flame with a single lance blast. Cities were left charred husks, and the dying screams of billions echoed through the Empyrean. Even a number of unfortunate Astartes and civilians who had made it to shelter died in agony, having brought the life-eating necrophage with them into the bunkers.
Upon receiving news of Tarvitz’s plan and the survivors, the Red Angel himself, Angron, ordered his legion to mobilize for a ground assault in a fit of blind rage. Or, perhaps, out of the desire to give his sons an honourable death. Whatever reason the primarch had, it didn’t matter anymore.
Under the blazing and cruel sun of the dead world, the survivors lay inside makeshift trenches and the rubble-strewn buildings of the capital, Khry Vanak. Legionnaires, soldiers and a scattered handful of lost, terrified civilians, left broken and battered. With Astartes emerging from their shelters after the firestorms had subsided, the legion vox channels crackled to life, demanding answers, screaming towards the skies and raging in futility against the very gods themselves. But as soon as the remnants had begun to organize themselves, a rain came, a rain of steel and ceramite, tumbling down towards the earth. The loyalists knew their end was upon them.
Exiting their drop pods, gripped by frenzy and madness, the Eaters of Worlds charged towards their former comrades across the ashen wastes they had laid to ruin, with the Red Angel himself at the front of the assault, his chainaxes emitting guttural roars from their engines in anticipation for the coming battle.
As the charging berserkers finally reached the storm-wracked ruins of the capital, the response was similarly savage. No quarter was asked, and none was given. What little weapon emplacements the desperate loyalists had were used to their full effect, cutting down the first wave of World Eaters in a hail of lascannon beams, splinter shells and boltgun fire. But in the end, though their defense was valiant, the numbers of the traitors were simply too great, and they broke through the front lines in a hail of whirring steel, their once shining white armour now stained with the blood of their former brothers.
Eventually however, the tide was turned. Under the exemplary leadership of Saul Tarvitz and the legendary commander Garviel Loken, and with the brave sacrifice of Captain Ehrlen of the World Eaters, the loyalist forces had managed to scatter the traitors in the corpse-strewn streets of the capital. While squads of World Eaters still scoured the streets, searching for more foes to sate their endless bloodlust, they were disorganized, and allowed the loyalists a brief moment of respite.
Waiting in his battle barge far above the world, Horus seethed in his command bridge, the shadows of the ship obscuring his furled, wrinkled brow. His plan was in ruins. For a brief moment, the arch-traitor simply considered cutting his losses and bombing Angron and his sons into dust alongside the loyalists, but having the World Eater fleet turn on him was a loss he simply could not afford. So, attempting to turn the failings of his brother into a success, Horus ordered a full-scale ground assault on the capital.
-----
After weeks of fighting and desperate scavenging for whatever supplies were left, their armour and clothing, formerly showing the colours of their legions with pride, were covered with dirt, ash and dried blood. Now there was only one legion, a legion of the damned.
Howling wind and clouds of ash blew through the empty fields and still-burning streets, a centurion of the Sons of Horus sat atop a crumbling watchtower, his head buried in his hands as he watched over an at-ease patrol of marines below. He couldn’t believe it.
There were suspicions in the back of his mind, ever since Ullanor. Something just wasn’t right. He was there as the legion was renamed, but against his better judgement, he pressed on. He was there as Sejanus fell, and the legion mourned. He was there as Horus himself was struck, and the Imperium fell to its knees. He was there at the lodge meetings, he heard the whispers in dark corners, of changes in the Warmaster, of wrack and ruin to come.
As Torgaddon and Loken had discovered the treacheries of the Word Bearers and the honeyed lies of Erebus, he still held some desperate, denial-fueled hope that these warnings were mere paranoia. It wasn’t until they were sent towards the capital, and he desperately tried to brace the entrance of the Siren Hold against the foul necrophage that tainted the earth itself, that he had finally realized the truth. They were betrayed. Offered as kindling to the pyre of a fraternal war, cast aside as callously as sand thrown to the wind…
But even then, through the screaming, death and chaos, he said nothing. As civilians ran, the corpses of the fallen disintegrated where they fell and the last of the payload was emptied onto the surface of Istvaan III, he stood alone with a single tear running down his cheek, one of the last pillars of peace in the violent end of the capital city. It was much too late by then to try and halt the inevitable.
Slowly, as he sat upon the tower, alone with nothing but his own thoughts, the marine’s sorrow turned to rage. Not the impassioned, fervent sort felt in the din of battle. Something far from it. A cold, bitter hatred. The kind forged over a slowly fading flame, moulded around the inner inferno of anger and hardened by years of weathering. Victory? All but the most optimistic among them has given up on any hope of such things a long time ago. All that they could hope for now was vengeance. Protracted, bloody vengeance. As his former comrades so said, kill for the living, kill for the dead…
Suddenly, his grieving was interrupted by the buzzing of the vox system of his helm.
“This is Praetor Mydaiel”, a dour voice crackled through the channel, “We’re pinned by the southeast hab-spire in your sector! Muster whoever you can! We need support!”
“Of course… And what of the civilians?”
“Dead.”, the praetor muttered blankly, his reply almost muted by the sound of gunfire.
“Show me an army”, the centurion replied, his anger barely constrained behind his rasping, tired tone, “and I shall show you a slaughter...”
He rose to his feet, assured himself that all his trusted equipment was in place with a glance around the room, and bolted down the watchtower elevator shaft with a single leap. The marine paused for a moment, his scarred lips curling into a small frown as he unhooked a large and rusted metal cylinder from the mag-lock on his thigh. A phosphex bomb, perhaps the most tainted weapon in the armories of the Imperium. An alchemical abomination, sure to lay waste to anything within its grasp. His former brothers had laid waste to this land, and it was time for them to taste the same suffering that they themselves had caused.
The centurion ducked through the stone archway of the tower and into the streets of the capital, he was met by two dozen marines and a half-platoon of auxilia in total, inspecting their equipment as they sat perched atop a half-functioning Land Raider. The bottom dregs of the underhive slum-gangs and fanciful scions of feudal world nobility, and all things between. Sons of Terra, of Cthonia, of Barbarus, of Bodt and Chemos both, and of the thousands of other worlds under the banner of the Imperium. But above all, they were the defenders of humanity, and their duty is to die standing.
“Ahem!”, the centurion cleared his throat, “We’re needed in the eastern spires! These traitorous scum, these half-men we once called brothers… They wish to see our end? Show them theirs. Show it in steel and in blood! STRIKE FIRST! CUT THEM DOWN! SHOW THEM THE WRATH OF TRUE SONS OF THE IMPERIUM! RISE HIGH THE BANNERS OF VENGEANCE, FOR NOW IS OUR TIME!”
“AVE!”, the squadron replied, almost in unison. In mere moments, they managed to prepare themselves. Each attuned to the same vox channel, each with their weapons loaded, and all prepared prepared to fight, to bring vengeance for each battle-brother and citizen of the Imperium lost. The fallen whose blood stained the very ground they stood on.
Each were broken in body, but behind their shells of ash-covered armour and tired eyes, the limitless wrath of humanity blazed as brightly as ever. With a single gesture from the centurion, they swept eastward through the empty, firestorm-wracked streets and fields of scorched earth. They had all done this many times before, and this time certainly wouldn’t be the last. They may never return home again, they may be forgotten, but their actions will echo through eternity. They had nothing to lose and everything to gain, for all had already been taken from them and for every one of them that fell, there would be retribution tenfold, tithed in the blood of traitors.
RE: Forgotten Betrayal - Tartaros - 07-11-2016
“Praetor? We’ve arrived.”, the centurion spoke into his helmet’s vox-link a tired, sombre tone.
As they crept out of the ruins of a charred brass-coated hive spire in the edge of Chloral City, little stood before the group but a crater-filled wasteland of ash, mud and charred corpses. A realm of dead men. The squadron of legionnaires guardedly advanced across no-man’s-land, the targeters of their boltguns pointed in every direction. They had to be ever-vigilant, for death awaited around every corner.
“Over here! The west side!”, one of the marines hissed, his hoarse voice echoing throughout the loyalist vox network.
“Anything to report?”, the centurion replied.
There was a moment of silence before the marine spoke.
“The Death Guard garrison… they’re all g-”
“I understand. Over and out.”
The centurion grit his teeth before turning to the westward horizon, Nothing but seared, dry mud and rotting mounds of bone marrow for miles ahead. It was as if the formidable stronghold of an encampment set up by Mydaiel had simply vanished into the toxic smog-filled winds of the world. Nothing remained but ruined weapon batteries and spent bolt casings. Before the centurion could process the sight, the silence of the dead plains was broken by a ear-splitting crack. The unmistakable sound of nearby bolter fire.
Through the corner of his eye, a battle-brother could see that alleyways of the city a band of traitors crept, their violet-painted armour stained with the dark crimson of dried blood and the elaborate brass decoration of the Emperor’s Children marred by a layer of filth and verdigris. Their blades were already bloodied, and the barrels of the boltguns were smoking. They did not speak, but their intentions were more than clear.
“It’s a bloody ambush!”, the legionnaire yelled, a crackled and distorted echo of his voice sounding through the vox network.
“This won’t be easy…”, another replied.
The centurion interrupted the two. “Of course not. Now, watch and learn how wolves bring down the lion...”, the marine turned to his brothers in arms. “Squadron! Spread out and hunker down! Crescent formation! We aren’t to be defeated by these whoresons twice in the same bloody week!”
The two squads sprung into action immediately, the loyalists spreading themselves across what little cover there was in the wasteland as the traitor formation charged through the city alleyways towards their former brothers, their knives gleaming in the shadows. The loyalists were the first to fire, blasting away at the traitors. But even then they could only slow their charge. The scions of Chemos kept running, firing towards their brothers with bolt pistols and slashing towards them with combat blades, behaving more like the maddened berserkers of yore than the disciplined warriors the legion was famed as.
The centurion looked around as all hell broke loose. The sworn brothers, Lukas and Hakael, blown away by lascannon fire, their broken bodies lying face-down in the dirt. Kharak, a veteran officer of the War Hounds, brought to his death by a volkite shot. A century of service, ended by a single blast of heat. The centurion tallied each casualty in his mind, and muttered under his breath, promising he would repay threefold.
As their former battle-brothers sprinted forwards straight into bolter fire, the squadron had two options. Fall back, and get caught in the charge, or stand. To them, the decision was obvious. The centurion placed his still-smoking gun on the mag-lock on his belt, and motioned for the loyalists to charge.
The speartip of the traitor assault was met with a counter of equal fury by the loyalists. Both sides slogged through the mud, smog and charred corpses, through frag shells and gunfire, straight into their deaths. They had killed this world, they had killed their brothers, and for what? The centurion didn’t care for their justifications at this point. He strode alongside his brothers, chainglaive in one hand and pistol on the other, meeting the traitors in the middle of no-man’s-land in a storm of steel, blood and chaos.
He struck one legionnaire with his first strike, his chainblade tearing through their armour with an ear-piercing cry and cutting into the marine’s lungs. The marine fell on the spot, blood oozing from between his ribs. A second and third were set ablaze by his wrist-mounted flame projector, and a final mud-stained boot to the leg and two-handed overhead swing ended a fourth.
A sudden pain coursed through the centurion’s upper arm, followed by the shivering cold of iron. He turned to find a knife stuck deep into his right pauldron, the blade shattered the gouged ruby eye of the Warmaster that the marine once wore proudly. Behind the blade, a giant of mauve-tinted ceramite stood, his mud-stained face scowling at the centurion.
The traitor pulled the knife out of his target’s shoulder, and followed up the blow with a knee to the gut, cracking the centurion’s ash-coated chestplate. The centurion stumbled backward for a moment, before regaining his footing in the brawl. He responded with a snarl and a strike from his chainglaive, cutting a gash into the traitor’s forearm. Before he could continue the flurry of blows, the traitor jammed his blade into the teeth of the glaive. The weapon let out a horrific growl at it tried to tear through the rust-coated steel, but it was jammed.
It was then that a whistling cry came from far above the spires. Artillery.
“MORTARS!”, a marine cried.
Acting almost on instinct, the centurion tore his blade downward through the traitor’s knife, breaking its chain, and leaped for cover. He ignored the chaos behind him and powered through the injuries he had suffered, giving only a final parting shot to the brawl as the legionnaires ran for their lives. Some stood and continued to fight, the chivalrous fools that they were. They would soon be dead.
The shells began to fall upon the outskirts of the city, and not a single tear was shed was those lost.
Quote:"Glory in death is life eternal." - Thought for the Day