Week One

“Sir?”

There was no response. Commissar Prash looked sternly through his long range viewer, not acknowledging his subordinate.

The prompt came again, “Sir?”

Prash turned slowly to see Lt Colonel Braithwaite. He held a dataslate in his gloved hand. As Prash lowered his viewfinder, he noticed that Braithwaite was bleeding from under his helmet. “Lieutenant, are you injured?” Braithwaite looked somewhat faint, he was sweating and had clearly lost a significant amount of blood. “Just a fleshwound Sir. My men and I are just back from Area 317, the area the Death Korps refer to as ‘Deff Valley’.” Prash took the slate from his hand, “what am I looking at, exactly?”

“Battle reports from the last few days Sir. Fighting has intensified in a couple of key strategic locales and it seems there are new factions involved.” Prash studied the screen intently. “Lieutenant, why are Astartes battling Astartes at LZ426?” Braithwaite had begun to fade, he was leaning against the hull of a Leman Russ with his head bowed. At the word of the Commissar he snapped back to attention. “Sir! Yes, uhh we believe that the Dark Angels and Red Scorpions may have more information but at the moment they’re not responding to our communiques. They took quite a pounding. We show no corresponding marks on file for the Astartes they did battle with at LZ426. The Inquisition is getting involved Sir; specifically the Ordo Chronos. In the meantime, these unknown Marines have taken possession of the teleport beacon and the landing zone.”

The Commissar flipped through several pages on the slate and turned to face Braithwaite. “I see. What can you tell me about these traitorous bastards from the 113^th? According to this; they may actually be supporting our efforts.” A thin line of blood streamed from the Lieutenants nose and ran down onto his uniform “plip, plip” in little drops it spattered on the silver Aquila on his chest. 

Braithwaite returned; “Well sir, intelligence indicates that the traitorous guardsmen from the 113^th were able to route a combined Xenos threat within the city. They made a hell of a mess of Capitol Boulevard, Commissar. Our former brethren are fortifying their position as we speak. Decrypted Vox transmissions indicate they may have been a vanguard force sir.” “A vanguard?” Prash replied. “Yes sir, we believe Chaos forces from the warband known as the Crimson Slaughter are arriving in orbit over the city now. Our Naval forces are engaging them in ship to ship combat…” Braithwaite began to slump as he trailed off. Prash set the dataslate down and returned to his viewer “That explains why these Tau are advancing on Deff Valley I suppose. Seems they think by entrenching themselves on the edge of the city, perhaps they can shell the Chaos forces from the safety of those Aegis lines.”

A cloud of dust blew in from the western edge of the zone and Prash adjusted the filters on his viewer to compensate. Within the cloud he could discern shapes. Those shapes were Tyranid bioforms. His mouth got dry and he felt a hot flush at the back of his neck. He snapped the lens of his viewer closed and turned to Braithwaite. “Lieutenant, broadcast emergency Vox on all channels. The Tyranids have made landfall at Area 317. Begin our withdrawal, prepare area for Exterminatus.” 

Braithwaite lay still and unbreathing, splayed over an ammunition crate. Prash could see clearly now the crack in his helmet and the knife lodged in the back of his skull.