Ok here is a short story I wrote while i was bored earlier this week. Please feel free to share feedback, I always could use some.
Captain TannHauser picked up his scorching can of recaf from the fire quickly. It’s heat providing temporary comfort from the freezing cold around him. He downed the steaming liquid quickly before it could lose any of its precious heat. The scalding hot liquid soothed his throat as it flowed through.
The 42nd “believers” had been deployed to the forest world of Skintik to hold the line against a xenos invasion. It was the middle of Skintik’s icy winter and the sub-zero temperatures were taking their toll against the Guardsmen who tried to defend her.
Fires and burnt trees marked the line of the Imperial Guard, a 100 meter long line of decimated trees. The frozen soil had prevented the digging of trenches, so the Imperial Navy burnt a path for guardsmen to build a makeshift flakboard wall for cover. The 42nd would have 50 meters of free shooting before the opposition reached the wall.
The young captain tossed the now empty can back into the fire, and wrapped himself tightly in his Greatcoat to shield himself from the wind. It was time for him to walk down the length of the wall, moral was plummeting by the second. Even the heavy weapons seemed to protest the extreme conditions and required constant maintenance from their crews.
“Hey captain what in the emperor’s name is that?” Nicholas, a trooper who had been busy cleaning a mortar asked pointing over the ramshackle barricade. A bright red chimera could be seen tearing through the tree line, black smoke pouring from the back. It plowed quickly through the ice and snow, with a large plough on the front smashing all from its path.
“For the love of the emperor I haven’t the slightest! Quick vox the troops to get into position, then get command on their and request intel on that chimera!” Drawing his massive bolt pistol and chainsword he ran toward the wall his command squad following suit with the missile launcher and lasguns. The only exception to this being Glubbin, who franticly yelled into the vox at sergeants trying to get them into position.
The orks in the chimera laughed franticly at their bosses’s clever plan. He told them to use the chimera to sneak through the line of the humans, and attack them from behind. Once the humans were distracted the rest of the orks would charge in and take them by surprise. Any good ork could see how hilarious this plan was, using a looted human vehicle to trick the humans and get close to them.
A moment passed and the chimera was destroyed in a series of large krak explosions, followed be a single massive one from the ork engine catching fire. The humans had to look away for a brief moment as their eyes readjusted. But when they looked back up they saw that the tree line had moved closer, a second later they all realized the tree line was running at them.
The blood axes had prepared “spechul k kamoflage” for their surprise attack. Everything from hollowing out trees and wearing them to having a grot hold a branch in front of them. As bizarre as the plan was, it had worked and the guardsmen were taken completely off guard. Not thinking to shoot until the orks were almost half way.
The men of the 42nd were in disarray, they were all firing in confused undisciplined patterns. Only the veteran troops in close proximity to their captain remained cool, each picking individual targets and dropping them. His command squad’s missile launcher firing frag grenades into the midst of tree clad xenos, tearing small holes in the coming line.
The ork’s excitement grew with each step, in only a few moments they would be in close combat. Some of them were dropping from the mixture of las fire and the explosions from the few heavy weapons the humans possessed, but the majority of the force was undamaged. As the excitement and momentum grew instinct slowly took over, first only a few took up the ancient cry. Then a few more joined, until it was a gigantic chorus of coming death shouting “WAAAAGGHH!”
When the orks were almost upon them every guardsmen pulled a fragmentation grenade from his belt and threw them in unison, landing just in front of the coming wave. The explosions ripped grots apart and peppered the orks with shrapnel. Hundreds of fire selectors now flipped back to full-auto and las rounds were poured into the ork force, but that was not enough to stop the green tide.
The orks crashed into the makeshift wall, smashing it by brute force and engaging the disheartened men on the other side. The unlucky guardsmen in close combat who were not instantly ripped to shreds, were killed quickly by stray las rounds from their panicked comrades.
Captain Tannhauser looked in dismay at his crumbling forces, as he sawed a grot in two with his chain sword. “May the emperor have mercy on our souls…” The captain pulled the trigger repeatedly at an especially large ork coming at him, but only a sharp click could be heard from it. One green large hand lifted him from the ground and he found himself looking into two huge eyes. He tried to swing his chainsword in revenge at the warboss, but was simply crushed as if he was a seer cookie…
