Hey All - Medge here. Welcome to Oathed by Blood - a short narrative series written for my custom Tempestus Scions Regiment - the Bloodoathed.
This project started off as a little thing - a small piece of narrative to set-up the creation of my Astra Militarum project. Unfortunately I forgot how much I enjoy writing, and within and hour or two I'd expanded a short idea into into 2500 words of narrative. Rather than cut it down I thought I'd create a whole new blog series for the short story, fleshing it out as I go over the coming weeks.
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it, and if you want to see more narrative like this let me know in the comments below!
Medge
Oathed by Blood; Part 1
Vi stared at the ceiling wishing, not for the first time in her career, she could cry. Not tears of sorrow or weakness; the Schola Progenium had trained her better than that.
No, she wanted to cry tears of rage. She wanted to ball her fists and scream and cry, to exhaust her anger and frustration by beating her hands bloody against someone or something breakable.
She swung her legs off the bed, reached for the closest thing on her table, and hurdled it across the room. The object, a glass goblet filled with wine, shattered against the far wall. Shards of glass bounced from the wall and buried themselves silently on the carpeted floor, whilst dark red wine ran thickly down the wall - the deep red staining the masterfully painted walls.
Vi released a long breath and chuckled, the juvenility of her outburst breaking through her dark mood.
"What would Henley say if he could see you now," Vi said to herself bitterly, moving across the room to the wash station. She ran a shallow pool of cold water in the basin, and splashed it across her face. The water was ice cold, as it always was on Void-craft, but less brackish than she had expected. The suite she occupied was clearly meant for someone important; more important than she felt.
Vi turned from the mirror to take in the room. Rich cream carpet covered the floor. The walls and ceiling were painted a dark red and covered in intricate artworks of Angels fighting Shadows and Daemons, scenes redolent of the Imperial Creed. A four-poster bed stood in the center of large sleeping chamber, and exquisitely wrought wooden furniture lined the walls. Lumens lined the walls, carved in the shape of candles protruding from the eyes of skulls, and a faint scent of perfume and spices wafted from the skulls mounts.
Vi's discarded trench-coat, cap and boots lay sprawled across the floor where she'd thrown them, and she walked over to collect them and place them neatly on the bed. Her sword and sidearm rested against the door frame from the sleeping chamber, placed with more care than she'd given the rest of her uniform, and she picked them up as she moved into the adjoining room.
The adjoining room was equal parts study and reception room, and was as well decorated as the bedchamber. A solid wooden desk sat along one wall, a servo-skull with a deactivated candle-lumen bobbing just above the desk. The opposite wall had a ornate fireplace, better suited to a governors study than a cabin on a warship, carved into the wall. Vi walked over to inspect and found, to her surprise, real wood within the hearth and a chimney that receded into the wall. She couldn't imagine where the smoke would go on a starship...
In front of the fireplace sat two high-backed leather chairs and a low table with a decanter of win and two goblets. Again Vi chuckled to herself, her frustration bleeding away as she took in the ridiculousness of her situation.
"What would Henley say if he could see me now," she chuckled, "Commissar Daegon treated like royalty. The End of Days must truly be upon us"
Vi buckled her sword-belt round her waist, took up the decanter of wine and removed the lid. The wine was a deep crimson, thick and heavily spiced. She took a long draught straight from the decanter and smacked her lips.
Throne! That was good, she thought, taking another drink.
She walked over to the desk and started leafing through the contents. The servo-skull bobbing nearby automatically rose at her approach, it's candle-lumens igniting to cast light across the desk. As Vi rummaged though various star-charts and planetary maps, none of which she recognised, the servo-skull bobbed along with her, keeping the desk well lit.
Vi paced back into the bedchamber, swigging liberally from the decanter, and started rummaging though the cabinets and drawers. They were inexplicably empty, so Vi returned to the main chamber and sat in front on the empty fireplace.
She drained the last of the wine from the decanter, smacked her lips, and laid her head back on the high-backed chair.
"Why am I being rewarded for failure," she sighed, her head swimming slightly as the wine started to take affect.
She closed her eyes, and memories of the war drifted through her mind...
* * *
Smoke curled from the barrel of Commissar Vivian Daegon's bolt pistol, the echo of her shot somehow heard over the clamor of battle around her. The headless guardsman crumpled before her, his squad-mates looking at the corpse with horror.
"Any more cowards among you?" Vi asked calmly.
The Guardsmen shook their head and turned back to the battle before them. Las-lights flashed through the air as thousands of Guardsmen up and down the trenches fired into the onrushing horde. Heavy Bolters chugged, missiles and mortars whistled and autocannons barked as the human barricade unleashed the Emperors fury against the Tyranids.
Vi holstered her pistol and marched back to her command position where four Tempestus Scions, her command squad and bodyguard, stood at ease. At her approach they snapped to attention.
"Sir," they saluted as one, their voices leaving their masks as a distorted growl.
"Save it boys," she said as she approached. "Leave the pomp for the General. You'll need those trigger fingers before the days out"
The command squad chuckled beneath their masks, and readjusted their grip on their weapons.
"Think it's that bad, sir?" asked one of her men.
Vi turned to the man, shook her head and tapped her ear.
The vox crackled in her earpiece as he switched to squad-comms.
"Keep your voice down among the chaff Sergeant Kromm", said Vi, whispering into her lapel-mic. "I don't enjoy wasting ammunition on the Emperor's own when their are more deserving Xenos out there"
"Apologies Sir," replied Kromm. "But do you really think it'll come to that? Not that I'm not itchin' to spill some Xenos blood, Sir."
"These are the Tyranids Kromm," said Vi, matter-of-factly. "We'll be lucky if we don't all end up in somethings gullet by the end of the day."
She turned to face Kroom.
"Just make sure you give them a touch of heartburn on your way down, eh?" she said, smirking and tapping her holstered pistol.
The Kromm and the others chuckled again.
Out in the distance, across the killing field, the encroaching horde pressed ever closer. Battle tanks and artillery loosed hundreds of shots into the wall of xenos, bloody geysers blossoming as the explosive shells hit home. Servitors on mud-slicked treads rumbled back and fourth resupplying heavy weapons platforms, the orchestra of heavy weapons changing very subtly as the weapons accepted new magazines or power packs.
Vi's trained eyes scanned not the encroaching horde, but the trench-line before it; her battle was against the enemy within, the fear and cowardice of men, not the xenos over the trench lip. Her section would hold - she guaranteed it.
A tremor ran up Vi's leg... a new beat in the rhythm of the battle. At first she dismissed it; an armored regiment repositioning to achieve a better firing positions, nothing more.
As the tremor grew in magnitude she began to question... Armor moving doesn't take this long... A Baneblade perhaps? A super-heavy company?
"Anders, contact HQ. I need to know if there's any super-heavy activity in our sector" she said.
"Sir," replied Anders, her Vox operator. "One moment."
Vi waited, feeling the tremor grow. Her eyes kept scanning the trench-line, watching the soldiers intently. One or two heads started to turn towards the ground, hands reached down to feel the tremor. Squadmates asked others to check, the las-fire started to slacken.
Quick as a Catachan lashvine, Vi drew her bolt-pistol and fired a shot into the side of the trench, blasting dirt across the faces of the nearest squad.
"The next person to lose focus get's one to the head," Vi shouted.
The Guardsmen before her renewed their focus, their fear of her temporarily overshadowing their fear of the tremor.
Vi clicked her teeth. The tremor beneath grew.
"Anders," she hissed, impatiently. "Anything"
"Not yet, Sir. Just waiting on... wait... response coming in now Sir. HQ confirms - no Super-heavy activity in this sector," replied Anders.
"Fugg," swore Vi, turning to face the Vox officer.
"Tell HQ we may have a subterranean incursion in progress," whispered Vi into her Vox-bead. "Keep it quiet, internal vox only. Don't let this get out"
"Aye Sir," replied Anders over the secure Vox. A click in Vi's ear told her he'd switched to a different vox channel.
"Emperor preserve us," whispered Vi to herself.
The exchange between Vi, Anders and Regimental Command had lasted no more than five minutes, but with the tremors growing stronger every second it felt like a lifetime for Vi. Soldiers had begun questioning again, their gunfire slacking as more and more soldiers felt the earth shake beneath them and wondered what was happening. Vi spread her command squad between the men, making a show of giving them the authority to enforce the Emperors "discipline". With the Scions and a Commissar marching through their lines the soldiers held their nerve... barely.
Vi paused as the tremors abruptly stopped, their sudden absence sending a shiver though her. Before she could say anything the ground beneath her lurched, before exploding upwards. Vi was thrown like a leaf in a storm, hurled through the air in a flurry of splintered trench steps, dirt and broken bodies.
Fortune carried Vi into the arms of a pair of bewildered guardsmen, and the trio clattered to the ground in an ungainly heap. An ear splitting roar shook the world, and Vi blinked away stars to stare into the maw of death. A huge wyrm, bigger than anything she'd ever seen before, reared up out of a cavern that had just been the trench floor. It's six limbs ended in huge blades of bone, each one longer than she was tall. It's mouth dripped with thick, sticky green ichor, and a pair of snapping mandibles as thick as her arm chiterred hungrily.
Vi stared into the beasts eyes and knew, despite all Imperial intelligence on the Tyranids, the beast started back. It saw her, it knew her, and it would devour her.
Training kicked in. Vi righted herself from the pile and drew her bolt pistol.
"FOR THE EMPEROR! BRING IT DOWN!!" she bellowed, righteous fury fueling her as she fired on the creature.
Las-fire criss-crossed the monster, the smell of burning flesh filling the air as it's outer carapace cooked. If it felt pain, it didn't show it. Instead it turned to the largest group of soldiers, a squad of ten that had miraculously survived the explosion of the trenches unscathed, and dived into them. Four soldiers were skewered by the creatures forelimbs, a fifth swallowed whole by the monstrous mouth. The remaining men broke and ran, only to be swept into the trench wall by the wrym's barbed tail and crushed to death. The thing had butchered a whole squad in an instant.
A terrible chittering echoed up from the hole the wyrm had emerged from as dozens of lesser xeno-forms clambered up the sides of the tunnel.
"SWARM!!!" bellow Vi, drawing her blade and firing up the energy field. She stepped forward as the first beast reached the lip of the hole and slashed, lopping the head from the beast. Stepping back she raised her bolt pistol and shot the second between the eyes as it took the first ones place.
"SUFFER NOT THE ALIEN TO LIVE!!" she screamed, rallying soldiers to her.
She emptied her bolt pistol into the creatures as they rose from the hole; one, two, ten, then more las-shots joining her own. On the far side of the bore-hole the wrym thrashed madly, reaping a bloody toll on her soldiers.
"Heavy weapons, target that wrym," she yelled into the Vox
"Command. Reinforcements requested on my position, deploy the Scions. NOW!!" she yelled into the vox.
If command acknowledged her request she didn't hear it, the creatures bubbling from the bore-hole taking all her focus. She fired and reloaded with methodical precision, the bodies of the tyranids so think it was impossible to miss. Bolt-rounds did significantly more damage than the las-rifles the common soldiery had, and her shots blew off limbs and shattered carapace. She fired and moved, constantly putting bodies between herself and the beasts. Soldiers died as she weaved between them, her training keeping her as safe as she could be. Sometime, during the confusion, her Scion command squad had joined her. Kromm's plasmagun glowed red-hot as he pushed it beyond it's recommended limits. Anders fired controlled bursts from his hot-shot lasgun, working in concert with the other members of the command team to bring down the lesser xenoforms.
"Danger close!" yelled Anders into the squad vox. "Air-support incoming!"
"TAKE COVER!" screamed Kromm and Vi in tandem, disengaging from combat and hurling themselves deeper into the trench.
High-caliber rounds and micro-missiles tore through xenos and imperial alike as a pair of Vulture gunships roared overhead. They circled around, loosing another fusillade into the tide of creatures swarming from the bore-hole and monstrous wrym. Xenos bodies burst like insects, raining body parts and gore across the trench-line. The wrym reared up as explosions ripped across it's hide, screeching in pain. Twin streaks of incandescent light tore though the sky as the Vultures disengaged, bursting the wyrms skull. Half a dozen Valkyrie gunships, lascannon and micro-missiles spitting death over the trenchline, hovered over the fallen wyrm. Rappel lines unspooled and more Tempestus Scions descended into the trenches. Demolitions teams moved to the bore-hole, hurling shaped charges into the breach, whilst the rest took up positions along the trench wall.
The last man to touch down wore a gold chased helm, and carried a rod of office in his right hand. He walked over to Vi and dragged her to her feet.
"You look like Devil dung," he said, removing his helms faceplate to reveal the scarred, but handsome, face beneath.
"We're finally on the same level then, Commander Henley," chuckled Vi snatching a quick salute, two hands making the sign of the Aquila across her chest, before reloading her bolt pistol.
Henley laughed and patted Vi with his command rod.
"Flirt on your own time, Commissar. We have Xenos to kill"
Commander Henley spun on his heal without another word and started barking orders, gesturing with his command rod and sending his troopers up and down the trench-line.
"Fugg you, Commander," Vi smirked under her breath as she picked her sword off the floor.
She sheathed the blade, turned back to the trench-line and took in the situation. The Wrym's arrival and the following xenos incursion had badly mauled this section of the line. The Xenos horde were pushing hard across the killing floor, having gained significant ground when her sections fire slackened. The timely arrival of the Scions and their air support had stopped the line breaking completely, but their situation was bleak.
Up and down the line similar scenes were playing out. Tyranid Vanguard beasts broke through lines and tore dozens of soldiers to shreds before being put down, the grueling war of attrition playing out over and over along the miles of defenses.
Kromm, Anders and the rest of her Scion bodyguard formed up beside Vi. Kromm had discarded his plasmagun, it's fusion coils a melted ruin after overtaxing the weapon for so long, and held his hot-shot las-pistol on a loose grip.
"Sir," said Anders, "New orders coming in. Command is ordering a strategic withdrawal to the second defence-line. Standard protocols"
Vi looked up and down the trench-line; discarded ammo cases, weapons and bodies littered the floor, blood pooled in boot-prints in the mud and grime, and the air was hazy with las-heat. She looked back at the horde of monsters creeping closer across the killing ground.
Her mentors at Schola Progenium told her that the forces of the Astra Militarum were limitless. Staring into that endless horde of xenos Vi now truly understood what limitless meant. It was said that with enough sacrifice the Astra Militarum could win any conflict.
Vi wondered if there were enough sacrifices left to hold this world.
* * *
End of part one
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