Warhammer 40k Shorts Volume 1: Vengeance

The End Draws Near

>>>Incoming Transmission<<<

3. 286 . 002. M42

Urgent assistance required. We are being overrun. They have slain Orloc. The Colonel is missing. The men are slowly falling to chaos. Send help.

>>>Transmission End<<<

That was all the soldiers of the Longhallow 119th Armoured Infantry knew about their mission as they sat in the troop holds of their Chimeras. They had been transferred from the garrison of Mortendar to relieve the Vengeance 9th Infantry (the Hammer of Vengeance) who were defending their homeworld. As they exited the warp, Commissar Claudio thought of what doom had befallen Vengeance. Was it a daemonic incursion or a cult of heresy? Was it Xenos, and if it was what form did it take? He had heard that the Blood Drinkers had been deployed as reinforcements and their Chapter Master had fallen to this unknown enemy.

A few minutes later the ship arrived at its destination... Vengeance. Claudio heard the dull clunk of the Imperial Navy transport disengaging from the main docking bay of the Gothic Class cruiser that had brought them here. The Commissar mentally prepared himself for what would await them upon the transport landing. Whispering a prayer to the Emperor, he checked his bolt pistol and adjusted his cap – whatever happened, he would make sure that no soldier fled and no commander failed. The sergeant next to him shuffled uneasily, Claudio reassured her with a grim smile.

A voice came on over the vox, the transport had landed and the Chimera drivers were cleared to go. One by one the vehicles drove out of the lander and onto the surface of Vengeance. Claudio reached up and grabbed onto the overhead hand rail, hauling himself up off the bench in preparation for disembarkation.

At that moment the men in the gun positions started furiously firing at an unknown enemy. The Chimera drove on regardless, punching through whatever tried to stand in its way. From within, the distant boom of Earthshaker batteries could be heard quite clearly through the racket outside. Something sounding like a creature wearing ,the long outdated archeotech, plate armour landed on the roof before being thrown off by the momentum of the Chimera's advance.

The Chimera began to slow, the driver came on the vox to say that the squad was cleared to exit. Claudio braced himself before opening the rear door and stepping out onto the battlefield. Almost immediately he saw what they would be fighting. A short distance away, a line of what looked to be large storm shields or slab shields cut through the landscape. Behind them, humanoid creatures armed with a weapon no soldier in his regiment had seen before, braced against the onslaught of lasfire. As soon as Claudio had begun to wrap his head around the enemy's tactics, a hurricane of explosive rounds flew through the air. Many soldiers trying to assault the shield wall were cut down in this withering hail of fire. All along the line, shots from whatever ordnance these alien creatures were using, rang out, followed swiftly by the sound of soldiers being cut down as the shells disgorged their cargo of unholy chemicals.

Claudio, who until that moment had been taking cover behind a makeshift barricade, rallied the men around him for a headlong assault.

But it would never happen. As soon as the Commissar and his men stepped out of cover they were cut down by a volley of explosive rounds.

Would the alien menace be beaten? Would Vengeance survive? Read the next story to find out.