On the Shoulder of Martyrs (Black Templars 40K Quest)

+THOUGHT FOR THE DAY+
May the Emperor's mercy touch the worthy, and a bolt round touch the rest.
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"I am Varro Kohl, leader of Lady-Captain Anastasia's armed bondsmen. An honor to meet you."

Kohl was an imposing man, at least by mortal standards. He wore carapace armor like his men, though his was notably more refined and decorated. You wondered about the competence of this man, but time and war would tell soon enough. He extended his arm for a handshake.

You didn't see the need to shake his appendage. "I am Sigismund, brother-neophyte of the Black Templars. Our marshal has ordered us to fight alongside your captain."

The mortal lieutenant nodded, but you could sense his unease. You could sense all of their unease. Anastasia Anatoly's father - the foolish noble who had rushed to his death - had kept his men far from the war on the surface. With his eldest daughter now in control, their jobs had suddenly become far more dangerous.
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"Brother Sigismund, we're clear down here. Auspex reads twenty hostiles on your floor. We're coming to hel-"

"Floor cleared," you said nonchalantly. After the devastation you had suffered under traitor Astartes, mortal renegades were almost laughable now.

"You've already cleared the second floor?"

"Fifth," Emmerich answered, his smile infecting his voice. "Hurry up, human."

"How much further until we've reached the docks?" you asked.

"There's twenty floors in total, then we'll be on the launch bays themselves. Auspex readings say that that's where resistance is thickest."

Footsteps. You aimed your bolt pistol at the staircase. A rebel was reduced to red ruin the second he turned the corner.

"Do you notice something different about these traitors, brother?" Emmerich asked. "They're not the ragged bunch we're used to fighting."

"Reinforcements from space?" suggested Nimrod.

"It makes sense, but Emmerich's right. There's something about these renegades. They look like guardsmen."

"Traitor guardsmen," Gottfried spat.

You shook your head, seeing what Emmerich meant now. You knelt beside a dead renegade. "Traitor guardsmen wouldn't bother filing off their regimental identity."

When your force had arrived at the foot of the dock tower, where resistance was lightest, the garrisoned enemy had opened fire immediately - like traitors. But these traitors didn't bear any marks of the Archenemy, nor did their bodies show signs of corruption.

More footsteps, this time Kohl and his men. "Forgive me, sir, but wouldn't it be best if our forces fought together? You went upstairs and left us."

"And we cleared four floors in the time it took you to clear one," Emmerich said. "Do not lecture us on what would be best."

The human sighed. "Of course, sir."
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"Take cover!"

Two words you had rarely heard a Templar use. Autogun fire was a mild annoyance, las only dangerous in large volleys - but bolt rounds were a definite threat. A mass reactive round detonated the doors of the staircase as you pressed your back against the wall.

"They have a heavy bolter. Brothers, go on my signal."

Click, click, click.

"What about us, sir?" Kohl asked.

Templar convention was to use them as meatshields, but you decided against it. "Provide fire support. They'll have the heavy bolter trained on the door, waiting for us to go through."

"We're not going through?"

"Not through the door. Brothers, go!"

As one, through different points of the wall, you and your brothers fired your own bolters into the walls and smashed through. Thick, choking plumes of dust wafted across the final chamber. The foe fired from behind overturned desks, the choir of their lasguns marked by the roar of a heavy bolter.

"Kohl, fire support!"

"Yes, sir!"

The heavy bolter's attention now turned to the clouds of obscuring dust, Kohl and his bondsmen stormed into the room. He and his men used a voidship-friendly pattern of shotgun that excelled in close quarters. Splinters burst from desks, the foe behind them reduced to ruined corpses. The raucous roar of their firepower drew enemy attention perfectly.

"Brothers, advance."

You and your squad encroached closer and closer to where the heavy bolter was emplaced. Where lasfire didn't sink harmlessly into the cold adamantine of your bionics, it hit the thick ceramite of your neophyte armor instead.

Your advance was only slowed by the heavy bolter bearing its destruction on you, though with you and your brothers so distantly spaced, the gunner was hard-pressed to pick a target.

His indecision cost him his life. Nimrod reached him first, eviscerating the gunner's neck with his chainsword. With the true threat eliminated, the rest of the room's garrison fell to your bolt and chain in short order.

Kohl breathed raggedly, his carapace armor battered and his face blackened with dirt and grime. He looked at you with a bloody smile. "We're not that useless, are we, sir?"

"You're alive. That's useful enough for me. This is the last floor, correct?"

"Yes, sir. Beyond those doors," he pointed at a huge pair of doors wide enough for four Astartes to walk through it abreast, "is one of the main launch bays."

"And this room used to be?"

"I believe it was a passenger terminal, sir."

Emmerich scoffed. "These passengers will be leaving in caskets."

"Let them rot here," Nimrod spat.

"Come, brothers. We secure the launch bays, and we'll have accomplished our tasks."

One of Kohl's men accessed the doors from a cogitator. They opened with tectonic slowness, the light from the bleak sky flooding the dark and dusty battleground. It opened to a wide bay that extended over the spire, a precarious balcony hundreds of meters wide, nearly a thousand meters from the planet's surface.

And on that bay was nearly a hundred armed soldiers, armed with hellguns and protected by carapace armor. Your bionic eye could read no identifiable designation on any of them, nor could you see any marks of the Archenemy.

One of their number stepped forward, a scarred human with a plasma pistol in hand. "When they said Astartes were storming our defenses, we expected traitor legionnaires. Have the Templars gone renegade?"

"How dare you, human?" Gottfried spat.

You calmed your huge brother over the vox. You turned to the human. "Who are you? What regiment are you from?"

To your surprise, the human simply laughed. "I don't answer to you, Templar. Now, leave or we will open fire."

"Opening fire on Astartes is an act of heresy," you threatened.

"And?" the human replied, unfazed. "No one uses these void docks to leave Hierosolyma, not until this mess is over."

"Brother," Gottfried called through the vox. "Let's show these curs what it means to be Astartes."

"Aye," Emmerich said. "They've attacked us already. Let us finish what they started."

"Hold, brothers." You returned to the human. "I am under orders from my marshal. The void docks were overrun by Archenemy forces, and we were sent to reclaim them."

"We reclaimed them first, it seems. And I'm under my own orders. No citizen leaves this rock. You? You're free to go, before we open fire."
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[ ] Leave.

The humans garrisoning the void dock are in no mood to negotiate. You will tell Marshal Reginherus and other Imperial commanders of the force garrisoning the void dock and await their instructions, but that would surely not be seemly in the eyes of your chapter, nor in the eyes of your brothers.

[ ] Stay.

It was true that those stationed at the void dock proper were far better equipped than those in the building, but they were still mortals and you were still the genetic descendents of the Emperor Himself. You would leave well enough, but you would return - and then, only one group would be alive on the void docks.



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