I was a member of a few such as The Ammobunker, The Waaagh! and Boot Camp.
This last one, Boot Camp, is what brings my post today, for I discovered some old background fluff I had typed up and posted on an old hard drive, in a different folder to the Chaos stuff I posted a bit back!
I also wrote a small piece about the build up of an assault which I have added at the bottom of this page.
Grab a drink, sit back and enjoy reading.
Sargeant Gerritz
looked round, the clanking and squealing of approaching armour echoed
around the small buildings. Second platoon was deeper into the
township of St. Lyllease then any other unit, and now they faced a
serious problem. He cursed under his breath, his squad had run out of
missiles not ten minutes earlier, and now they had this to deal
with.
"Everyone take cover, enemy armour inbound!"
he shouted to his nearby squads. The men spread out along the cobbled
road, but Gerritz knew that it wouldn't be enough, the street were
just wide enough for their own armour, so one tank round would take
all of them out.
Gerritz felt a chill run down his spine as
the enemy tank, a Reaver AT-70, crept to view through the smoke. Its
blackend, pock marked hull ground into view. It was covered in
symbols which caused all the guardsmen around the curse, and pray. It
clanked forwards threateningly, spiked treads digging up cobblestones
and dirt.
Lasshots burst at them and he realised for the first
time that enemy infantry were advancing with the tank. Two troopers
near him died before his platoon could return sporadic fire. Their
fusilade seemed puny and insignificant compared to the roar of the
enemy tank's battle cannon as it fired. The shell sailed high over
them,
and demolished a building somewhere else in the town.
The
enemy lasfire grew more intense as they advanced, things were
beginning to get desperate. Gerritz was thinking about calling for a
retreat when he was forced to duck. Walls and rubble crashed down
further down the street as another armour piece tore its way through
a building! A long barreled, low slung monster of steel, it turned
and fired, destroying the traversing tanks turret in a blossoming
explosion, the AT-70 slung to a halt.
He looked closer and saw
the Imperial Aquilla on the side armour of the new arrival. he
watched dumbfounded a the tank reveresed back into the ruins and
turned on the enemy infantry. The top hatch flung open, a crewman
appeared and started to punish the traitor infantry with the stubber
on the hatch. Men were gunned down as they tried to run. Without him
realising it, Second platoon had opened fire as well, in a matter of
seconds every traitor was dead.
"CLEAR UP!" came a
shout from the tank.
"CLEAR DOWN" he replied, "Second
platoon move out".
The men moved out down the ruined street
and he thought about how battles change in an instance. Not more then
a minute ago they had
been under heavy fire from the enemy, now
they were advancing against
said enemy with armour of their own.
***
Lieutenant Koffzca
grinned as he called out to his crew.
"Enemy tank, Reaver
pattern dead ahead! FIRE!"
The destroyer lurched as the
cannon fired. Smoke backwashed into the crewspace and was sucked out
quickly by the louvres on either side of the hull.
"Target
elimination confirmed!" called his targeter, who immediately
started to search for another target.
Koffzca smiled to
himself as his crew took a quick note of the kill; that was his
eighth kill in this battle. Surely a new record in the company! He
was jerked out of his thoughts by the urgent calling of his
targeter.
"Enemy to front, enemy to front!"
"Address
and fire at will, Markus! Keep us in cover, but preferably with good
shooting angles!" he ordered calmly.
The vehicle shook as
a round exploded harmlessly off its angled hull armour.
"And
for throne's sake, DO IT NOW, MAN!" he bawled.
The
destroyer reversed away from the approaching traitor tank, but it was
not fast enough. A shell hit the ground near it and ripped away a
section of track. They ground to a halt in the middle of the open
street, a clear target. Koffzca gulped.
"Abandon! Get
out! GET OUT!" he shouted, as he watched the stubby barrel of
the AT-70 traverse downwards to point directly at them.
***
Major
Rummel stared unblinkingly through his destroyer's scope. He waited
patiently for the right time to fire, although some other armour
commanders would have opened fire already, ruining the chance of a
clean kill. Rummel truly understood the power of the destroyer that
he was commanding, however. A quiet position and quick fire with
maximum chance to kill was how he operated his tank, and this fact
alone had led to him being called an 'ace', and had racked up
eighteen kills in his career. He was glad that the infantry which had
just begun supporting him from the last street had followed his
instructions and kept their heads down. He waited...
"What
the hell are you waiting for?" came the clipped vox signal, no
doubt from the sergeant.
"Be quiet, you fool!"
Rummel spat into the vox.
"You have a shot! What are you
waiting for? Personal orders from the Emperor himself?" the
infantryman voxed again.
Rummel sighed and ignored him.
Wait
for it, wait for it!
The time for action was now.
"FIRE!"
***
The flat crack-boom
of the Destroyer's cannon firing echoed across the street. The Reaver
AT-70 which had been so focused upon Koffzca's stricken Destroyer
shunted several feet sideways, its tracks sparking on the hardpan. It
ground to a halt, turret swung completely around, its main weapon
hanging on a single hinge. Fire ran across the side of the tank from
where the explosion had ignited the electrics and motor servos,
before reaching the main magazine.
The Chaos tank blew itself
to pieces in an explosion so powerful that it shook both Koffzca's
and Rummel's Destroyers and left Garrond and his infantry cowering in
the rubble. Looking up to where once before there had been a tank and
the road, they saw only a crater- nay, a hole, several feet deep,
covering almost the entire width of the road. The walls of the
building directly opposite had also been mostly destroyed.
"Target
elimination confirmed!" called Rummel's spotter.
"Thank
you, Wolfe, but I think we already knew that." His crew laughed
as the tension eased.
"Get us out there," he
ordered. "Rummel to Support. We need an Enginseer at 60/81b
ASAP. Destroyer damaged."
The vox crackled to
life.
"Support section to Rummel. Request heard and
approved. Will be on site in approximately twenty minutes. Out."
***
Lieutenant
Koffzca had climbed out of his Destroyer and was inspecting the
damage to the track section as Rummel's Destroyer tore its way free
of the ruins, sections of prefabricated Ferrocrete bouncing freely
off the slanted armour of the tank as it drove clear and turned to
them.
"That damn b****** will have another mark to paint
on that barrel now," he thought. "That should have been
mine!"
Rummel climbed down and walked over to
him.
"Support is on the way. Twenty minutes."
"Thank
you, sir." That was all that Koffzca could say before Rummel had
climbed back into his Destroyer and started to back up into the new
ruins to await and cover the Enginseer's team when they got there.
***
Rain poured down,
droplets bouncing into the air when the hit the water-logged ground.
Street lamps flickered in the wet night air, casting inane shadows
over the alleyway, sparks flying from broken cables. Ahead through
the gloom, the flashes of weapons fire marked a fierce firefight in
progress, though the sound was muted by the pouring rain. Private
Dieck watched the flashes impassively, cradling his lasrifle, knowing
that he would be in amongst that hell soon, scowling at a noise
created behind him. Private Viby had stumbled on a loose piece of
rubble and had fallen headlong into a large pubble. He splashed
around for a few moments, trying to find his feet, and scrabbling for
his rifle in the puddle.
"Emperor's sake, Viby! We're
trying to be stealthy here!" Private Dieck whispered harshly to
him.
"Ease up, Dieck. Any one of us could have slipped on
that." said Corporal Jakobson.
"Come on, lad."
Sergeant Kambietz said, offering Viby his hand and pulling the young
private to his feet. After making sure
Viby was steady again,
Kambietz moved to the front of the squad. The ten men were crouched
in the cover offered by the sides of the buildings around them. The
Imperial buttresses of the ruined Basillica, that had been fashioned
into Imperial Aquila heads long ago, were merely pitted and rusted
now. At one time they would have been a brilliant gold, but now they
sheltered the guardsmen from the prying eyes of the enemy. By the
time Dieck looked back to the fight, the area ahead was still and
silent. The firefight seemed to have ended.
"How's things
looking out there, Beynon?" Kambietz asked, coming up alongside
his grenade launcher specialist.
"Mighty quiet out there,
Sarge. Helluva noise not more than five minutes ago, but now mighty
quiet. Almost like..." Beynon trailed off.
"Almost
like they're waiting for us." Kambietz spoke the unspoken end of
the sentence, staring at the windows across the street. He was sure
that he had seen movement up there, but with the bad visibility from
the rain and the failing street
lights, who knew what he could
have seen?
"Orders coming through, sir. We're to advance
and take Building 619 in Grid 60/18b. That's the one across this main
street, sir." Jakobson said, pointing at the building in
question. "The rest of the platoon will be assaulting from their
positions, sir, as well as Third Platoon and elements of Sixth as
well."
"A major offensive, eh? Well, let's look
alive!" Kambietz said, starting up his chainsword. He raised it
in the air and grabbed a grenade. "Come on, lads! We have our
orders! Assault formation! Enzmann, I want you to hit that wall with
everything your missile tube has. Make a breach large enough for us.
Beynon, target any windows and put a grenade through them. I want you
to keep them pinned down. Everyone else into the breach with me. Any
questions?"
"Sir! Behind us!" cried Private
Viby, pointing down the street from where they had just come. A large
shape loomed out of the mist, its autocannon protuding from the front
as a greenish glow lit up the pilot. A faint buzzing and clanking
accompanied its movements.
"A Sentinel..." Jakobson
said. "If they're also being sent in for support, it looks like
this is bigger than we thought."
"Looks like the
assault is starting, lets move!" Kambietz said. They broke cover
as one, Enzmann's missiles flying past them, blowing chunks of
ferrocrete into the building. Grenades hurled from Beynon's launcher
peppered the windows facing them, exploding violently inside the
upper stories of the building. Brilliant red stripes of energy spat
from the squad's lasguns, the las rounds cutting steaming paths
through the rain. All along the street, as he looked left and right,
Kambietz could see ripples of lasfire from the advancing squads.
Explosions lit up the darkness and fires began to crackle amongst the
debris.
Return fire began to pepper the street around them,
hard rounds glowing and leaving tracer trails in the air, enemy
lasrounds a lighter shade of red pierced the darkness. A Private in
front of Kambietz doubled over and dropped dead as two separate
lasrounds found him, blowing out of his throat and making a large
hole in the top of his chest. Still holding the grenade in his right
hand, the clip held in, Kambietz raced towards the objective. A cry
of terror and fury erupted from his throat...
"For the
EMPEROR!"
***
Well, I hope you enjoyed that, it was a trip down memory lane for me at least.
As I continue on with my Ventrillians, who knows, perhaps the destroyer crews will be renamed something more suitable for that army and included eventually. I have much stronger converting and modelling skills then I did back then and am not as worried about converting things such as tanks and expensive kits nowadays.
Until next time...
- Lewis
