Outskirts of capital center of Nova Prime
Fort Macharius
On route to the Command Section
3th Company, 557th Segmentian
11:45
Victoria Vanhayn
"It's PDF", said Vanhayn as the vehicle lurched forward, the engine topping its acceleration by the impulse of the forced drive. "The bloody frucklers had fragged every imperial base on the planet", she added as a way of explaining herself to the Colonel. The thermidorian Major was holding the rail of the passenger's seat so hard her black leather gloves creaked by the pressure applied. On her face there were pulsing veins that spoke of contained anger. "Inbound aerial hostile assets could try to..." The assertion from Vanhayn was interrupted as a message arrived by a secure emergency frequency from her own command vehicle. The calmed voice of the Lieutenant Lester chimed through the vox as soon as the Major pressed a switch, opening the comm to speakers so the Colonel could listen the information. "It's divers, not strafers, they are evading and getting altitude to drop around the entire base. Impacts inbound in 10..9..8..7..".
"Zig zag it", added Vanhayn touching the shoulder of the driver as the countdown ended, during which the crescendo of descending aircraft at terminal velocity filled everyone's ears even over the rumble of the salamander engine. The vehicle lurched forward again reaching top velocity as the driver started to change directions as they advanced alongside the tarmac, and then the onslaught started. As most veteran soldiers knew, you could sense the shockwave created by close exploding ordnance even before you could hear it. At the Fort Macharius' bombardment, it was not different. Large plumes of dust rose into the air from the bomb impacts in several areas of the base as the Anti Air Denial Systems kept firing to the incoming planes. Some of them were caught in their almost vertical trajectory and crashed into the ground, themselves a projectile as effective as the bombs themselves. The sky from the open topped vehicle was mayhem of light and explosions, and the cockpit was filled with the smell of cordite and shattered earth.
Luckily, during the whole minute of the bombardment, no bomb did nothing to the small and fast salamander vehicle but to shake it from the close explosions, and now it was a matter of time before they reached the central buildings where the command section of the regiment, in charge of the Segmentians themselves, was mostly undamaged. The vehicle used its breaks near the door of the main facility, ready for the Colonel to dismount. Vanhayn had stayed silent during the entire bombardment. After all, there was nothing she could say anyway over the thunder and shock of the aerial attack. he grabbed the Colonel's forearm with her palm as she went to leave the vehicle, staring her at the eyes. "We have a ground spearhead advancing on us too, engaged by one of our companies in the close woods. You might want to deploy some heavy infantry into the ramparts and into the woods. Just an advise, I know you know your job. Contact my command section for coordinates and details if you need them", the blonde thermidorian added before letting go the Colonel's forearm. "I trust you on this. We trust you on this. Trust us too", she said before strapping again to her Salamander and leaving in a rush of dust towards the thermidorian barracks nearby.
Imperial Planet Pan Arcadia
Outskirts of capital center of Nova Prime
Fort Macharius
1st Spitfire Battery Platoon "Trebuchets"
3th Company, 557th Segmentian
11:45
Valentine Irvine
The bombs fell after the roar from the planes invaded the compound. Out of Sky Eagle missiles, the pair of Manticore platforms deployed around the thermidorian billets fell silent, although the auto guns mounted of the Hydra tanks and the Sabre positions kept firing in several directions, tracking the descending planes. Inside the open topped compartment of a Salamander vehicle, the Thermidorian Captain felt how sweaty her feet had become inside the tall boots of black leather that encased her legs almost up to the knee. Her stare was fixed on the auspex and signum screens displayed in front of the command seat of the scouting vehicle. Red triangles meant enemy planes, appearing on the system as they entered the tracking bubble deployed around the base by the Thermidorian Macharius Consul. Most of them had gained altitude enough for their runs and were falling on top of the entire base, like ill-omened birds of prey. Yellow lines marked the current firing vectors of the guns under her command, cutting the air above in smaller sector as to herd the planes where the damage incoming from their discharges could be minimized.
"Do not follow boogeys!", yelled the Captain in charge of the Thermidorian batteries to her vox, over the thudd-thudd of the rounds leaving the autocannon barrels. "Disrupt their bombing vectors! Force them to abort runs!", she added, although she was pretty sure that the crews of all her vehicles knew the drill. It was not the first bombardment they had suffered, and given the circumstances, far from the last. The gun platforms and the tank turrets swiveled, and weaved a web of denial lines over the most sensitive parts of the base, although they were not at all able to give proper cover to the entire massive compound.
Bombs started to fall around the West Entrance and the motorpool area, shaking the ground and with it the tracks of the thermidorian vehicles. Luckily none of them blasted apart the thermidorian hanger where the regimental munitions and fuel was stored. The entire base was ravaged, the amount of aircraft used for the raid higher than even the thermidorians could had expected. So far, the damage seemed superficial to most structures, but the curtain of blasts and fire approached their own position.
"Do not attempt to bring them down now! Number 4, steady your gun and follow the marked protocol!", yelled Irvine, fixing her sliding glasses upon her sweaty brow, after noticing one of the Sabre Platforms was distracted from her common vector and had started to follow the trajectory of one of the departing bombers that had already emptied its bombs sponsons. "Deny them comfortable angles of drop!", she yelled, her usually subservient and calm attitude lost as usual, during the grim and dim of battle conditions.
The planes fell, and with them the bombs around the thermidorian perimeter. Luckily, none of the explosive charges fell directly on top of the few buildings manned by the Thermidorian Maidens, denying a great carnage of support personnel, thanks due to the great work of the gunners, that forced the planes to abort direct and easy targeting runs and to drop their bombs outside true aim or risk destruction under the hail of bullets. At least three bombs impacted really close to the thermidorian buildings, failing a direct hit by just a handful of meters. The bombs shocked the entire facility, rocking the crew of the manned tanks, the buttoned up chimeras and the enclosed ambulances. One atlas recovery vehicle suffered a partial hit and turned over, one of its threads blasted apart. Shrapnel from a second explosion dented a barrel of the second Spitfire platoon's Hydras and warped it, as if a giant had bent the huge metal cylinder. The tank did spit another try at firing their linked system, but the bullets got caught in the dent metal and were destroyed before leaving the gun, ricocheting everywhere and blasting away four fingers from the loader of the machine before the stream of bullets stopped. Another fragment of the bombs penetrated the rear armor of a Basilisk piece of the First Spitfire Platoon, and caused spalling that cost the eye of the comm officer of the vehicle.
Nurses and support personnel fell to the ground as the bombs hit the medical facility, destroying an entire operating room and a triage station, causing five wounded, three of them severe as an oxygen tank blew up and submerged two nurses and a cook in a temporary inferno as the air turned into flames. Glass from the blown windows maimed and cut several members of the company, and the shockwave dazed most of the vehicles' crew, also blowing up several tires from the mechanized trucks the thermidorians had at their disposal. Two of the Sabre platform gunners were blown away from their positions by the closest bomb that fell in thermidorian grounds, with light burns and severe bone fractures from the close blasts, one also brain concussed, her supine form lying as a discarded doll more than five meters away from her gun position. The controller of one of the Manticore turrets had a piece of bomb casing lodged on her lungs that had pulverized that side ribs, a life threatening injury. And that was apart from the minor concussions, dazing, burns, and loss of hearing created by the close blasts. All in all, the thermidorians did not suffer any absolute immediate loss of life during the bombardment of their facility, but were not unscathed.
Overall, the bombardment did not last over a minute, and the enemy Avengers went wide, not risking another pass. According to Lieutenant Lester, regimental forces had already engaged the incoming ground forces, and right now that had priority for the entire regiment. Orders from the Colonel would arrive soon. Irvine shook her head, also dazed and half deaf by the concussion of the shockwaves, and opened a intercomm to a different company, as she analyzed the lectures given by the Inflecto Maestus readings. "Purity platoon 14th company, this is thermidorian artillery command, please state level of engagement for regimental value. Standing by for further coordinates if you need further artillery support. The enemy disperses, so without careful pinpointing we will not resume fire. I repeat, we will stop firing. Danger of Friendly Inferno involved". The sirens of the ambulances filled the sound spectrum as if kilometers away, the thermidorian medical wing already extending its assets for the care of the wounded. Irvine sighed, deeply. So far, the danger had passed, but at the same time, the war had started again.
The woman fixed her glasses and recalled her Guilliman. Started again?, she mused to herself. Even as she was truly a thermidorian engineer with a grade in Common physics and a master degree in electronics, war was her trade and her life, in a fashion, her work was to murder and to prevent the enemy from murdering her and her comrades. Irvine was a soldier, and a damn good at it by addition. War is without end. It never starts, it never ends. It just keeps going. She finally rose from her seat and gasped for air, getting a wide inhale of smoke and dirt instead. She coughed and damned war and destruction once more, hoping the Major would arrive soon and take charge of the company again, so she could slip again into the shadow of the charismatic daughter of the cruiser Captain, as always.
Imperial Planet Pan Arcadia
Outskirts of capital center of Nova Prime
Fort Macharius
Regimental Motor Pool
3th Company, 557th Segmentian
11:15
Elizabeth Sinnett
The aircraft squadrons went down well before she could reach the safety of the munitions hanger. The ground shook with the violence of the explosions, and dust was propelled into the air, effectively blinding her as the blast threw her to the ground. The Lieutenant was barely able to recover from her fall when a falling airplane enveloped in flames fell on top of a nearby empty hanger and blew inside it. That could had been us, she realized to herself, lost in a minute in the odds of surviving this attack, and on the luck that she was still standing there in one piece, and not vaporized to particles in the fine morning wind. Those are Avengers, she said to herself, recognizing the armored, sturdy cockpits. Not big payloads, diving bombers at best, strafing horses of the Guard. They will be over soon, she said as she crossed the space between the burning hanger and the munitions depot, at a light pace. It was the closest she could be to an apocalyptic explosion. If it happened, she did prefer to stand next to it, to know it would be as painless as possible. Die with her cap on.
That was her dream now, to die proud. To die serious as she has been since leaving the green thermidorian lands and its stone university palaces. To die in her uniform, daring the enemy to keep trying to kill her. Once upon a time, Elizabeth Encarmine Sinnett Sinabonne Labois Loutrec had other dreams. Other aspirations and hopes. That was on the years before the guard, before the muster. She dreamed of a family and children, of a palace and of working everyday at her chemistry lab, hard as nails to show even the most stubborn mechanicum adept that silicae-arsenic compounds could be boiled on the proper conditions, and finally die happy and fulfilled.
That changed the day the Culling came and she was designated to serve as a Guard Officer. By luck, and ominous odds no less! Not by choice, not by volunteering, but by an unforgiving empire that took her dreams from her and turned them into a constant nightmare of death and massacre through the entire galaxy. She always wanted to visit other worlds, and now she could say to herself that she had been to dozens. But only to wage war. She had never been to a miracle or marvel of the imperial space. If any of the places she had visited once were marvels, the enemies of mankind had already reduced them to rubble when Sinnett had arrived. There was no beauty left in the places she had visited. War always destroyed it to the very roots.
Of all the thermidorians, Sinnett was the first that realized that the Imperium had damned her to a violent death. Only in death does duty end, was their maxim, and now, hers. She knew she had died the moment they chose her for guard by drawing the ball with her student's number on it. She had lived extra time from then on. She had lived her purgatorium, her punishment during these pilgrimage years, these suffering years. That was why she was grim. Unforgiving. Resolute, calmed, quiet, strict. There was no place for friendship or happiness when you live a borrowed time until you can die. Being a soldier, for Sinnett, was like being a terminal patient. It was just a matter of time until the syndrome of war got you. There was no cure, only the peace when the end finally came. All she asked was to die with dignity, not as defiance to the endless stream of unknown enemies that laid siege to humanity across the stars, but as defiance to the Imperium itself, to the Imperial system that had castrated her dreams and hopes before they even hatched. She would die quiet, serene as strict, as she behaved during her punishment as a soldier. In a way, it would be the only revenge available for the ones as her, crushed between the cogs of an endless, invisible and blind machine that ate humans and vomited their pieces across the entire galaxy. She would die unfeeling, without emotion, not giving her leeway to feel, to cry, or to suffer.
The sound of the engines woke her up after a pair of steps. It had been only three steps into the alley that separated the hangers. The plane was banking up, trying to recover from the steep dive that allowed it to drop its bombs. As in slow motion, as if time stopped, Sinnett kept detail of the incoming plane. Its ragged, well designed structure built to resist as most damage as possible. Its punctured wings, ragged holes blasted by auto cannon high velocity rounds. The posture of the aircraft was banking down, and Sinnett, although no pilot, could easily realize that the plane was not going to recover in time, and would get trapped by incoming fire or crash against the base some hundred of meters further from her position. It was a mighty air beast, not adroit, not lithe, but powerful and raw. Its empty wing weapon mounts, its powering avenger nose cannon...
Avengers are the strafing horses of the Imperium..., she told herself as she realized the barrels of the nose mounted cannon were rotating. She did stop her steps, standing firm looking at the aircraft. She recognized the hunger of the pilot that was inside the cockpit, even although she did not know him or would even see him ever. His plane was going down. He was too low to eject, and the mortally wounded plane was going to crash and to drag him to a painful and horrible death, that perhaps was merciful, or terrible and slow. But no matter what, he would fly into the cold maw of death blazing away with his gun. He would fire every weapon at his disposal before turning into a ball of fire and molten metal. That was an attitude Sinnett could show some empathy towards. She did not take a step further, standing in the middle of the alley, her face sullen and austere as always, placing herself in the trajectory of the massive bullets that were already opening small craters in the ground in front of her. The road of bullets, the stream of eruptions of dirt advanced towards her, and as a final act of defiance, she rose her forehead and gave the enemy plane a look of the eagles, an aloof expression that marked her last act upon this desolate existence.
The avenger cannon discharge launched her into the air with the strength of the impact, tearing apart her frame and biting chunks of her flesh off, even cutting limbs and launching them in several directions as if she was made of straw. When she landed, she was just a mangled memory of what Lieutenant Sinnett, Chemistry Magister Sinnett, Elizabeth Encarmine Sinnett Sinabonne Labois Loutrec had been, or had dreamed to be. Her cap was off.
