Editing Toyhammer (section)

=Chapter 15=

Thought of the Day:

"The only army that has never suffered any losses is one that has never taken to the field of battle,

the only commander who has never made a mistake is one who has never been in command."

- Force Commander Eizak, Angelius Crusaders.

- - - - - Little witch, you certainly seem in need of help. I can do so.

This is bad. Vincent gulped. Really, really bad.

His back to a corner, which was currently occupied by Batel. Vincent looked around; the couch had a small force of mixed units hiding behind and slightly underneath, and his eyes flickered over Michael's fire extinguisher, which sat just behind the couch – only slightly out of reach.

Standing atop the daemonhost's shoulder, the Sorcerer's voice boomed across the room.

"The Key, mortal! Surrender her now, or I shall feed your soul to the Warp!"

Ryan sneered at the cowering young woman.

"C'mon, honey, don't you want to go home? Your dear mother is waiting for you, don't you know?"

The hollow words of the man's voice dripped with such mockery and malice that Batel simply curled into a tighter ball, as if trying to hide from the lecherous grin that the man was giving her.

Facing them, the bespectacled steward of Michael's home frowned. The voice wasn't quite... human. It sounded like a human, it even belonged to a human shaped figure. But... there was a lack of something, the uncanny feeling that it was synthetic.

Vincent thought quickly. He nodded, then knelt before the flesh-puppet and its master. The Sorcerer laughed. There were shocked cries from the Imperials. The kneeling nerd reached behind the couch, unnoticed by the triumphant Sorcerer, and then stood.

"Psych." He muttered. Vincent pulled the pin, wrapped his hand around the open beak, and squeezed.

BIG RED #XI was suddenly spewing its payload of powdered fire suppressant, covering the forces of Chaos in white chemical snow. Batel's former step-father coughed and sputtered as he breathed in the white powder, and Vincent stepped close, his arms drawing back the crimson tube.

The Chaos Sorcerer managed to gulp down one last breath before he saw the Big Red Cylinder of Doom swinging around. It passed over both the shoulder and the swing was short enough to miss the daemonhost's face, but it struck the Warp-wielding Chaos Marine squarely, and with a sharp ting as steel struck ceramite-encased sorcerer, BIG RED #XI easily propelled him back and smashed him against the wall with enough force to make him ludicrously gibby when he finished splattering.

That stain wasn't going to be easy to clean.

Going around and keeping up his momentum, Vincent pirouetted on the spot and sent another swing into the stunned face of the former step-father, who managed to claw the powder off his face in time to see the bright stars that popped into his eyeballs as Vincent completed his one-two K-Os.

A roar of defiance rose up from the Imperial lines, and for a moment, the Chaos forces cowered.

Then a man stood up from their midst, chuckling. As soon as the nerd caught sight of him, he knew that he had just made one hell of a mistake: He had assumed that the grand-standing Sorcerer had been the leader.

The one now crackling with warp-fire was the real Sorcerer. The one who was coordinating this attack. The one had he had just sent on a home run was only a fake, an apprentice at best.

With a gesture, the Sorcerer unleashed his forces.

A quick blast of the powder sent the front row reeling, and covered the rest in the white chemical.

But still, the legion of Chaos kept on firing.

Vincent screamed as their return fire tore at his legs, the tiny lasguns pricking his skin and cauterizing the wounds. Thankfully the vehicle crews and the heavy weapons teams were still working furiously to clear their powder-packed weapons and sensor arrays to not contribute to felling a flesh-titan. Vincent glanced fleetingly at the kitchen and his pistol, laying on the counter-top, and would have made for them if he knew that there was no time. The boom of a Vindicator's siege cannon caused him to duck instinctively, and the window behind him shattered.

Already hurting, he tucked the fire extinguisher under his arm, like an oversized football, and threw himself over the couch and into cover. As he hit the ground – thankfully missing the others sheltered there – he got a mini's eye view of the action.

Batel looked on, her eyes wide with fear.

- - - - - Why don't you just accept the inevitable? We can finish this now...

The Daemonhost was taking anti-tank fire of his own, the lances of lascannon and the steady thump-thump-thump of the autocannon stitching scars all over his legs and stomach. The Imperial vehicles played a deadly game of tag as they popped out of cover, took a shot, and then ducked back into the safety of the furniture's shadow.

Just by the nerd's grounded face, Justicar Amadeus calmly picked off the cultists charging at them from underneath the couch, the unconscious form of Raquel at his feet.

"Canoness! The small witch!"

Samisha nodded, breaking into a sprint. Another cry alerted her to the ravening hordes of the Damned charging up behind her. She went into what would have been a base-stealing slide as Justicar Amadeus dropped a pair of bolts into the Chaos Marine at her heels. She stopped beside Raquel, and scooped the limp witch up.

She barked at her retinue, indicating the rushing cultists that were almost upon them. "Meliya! Cultists!"

"Right!" Trotting up with the flamer, Meliya braced herself, her thumb selecting the highest pressure setting, and then depressed the valve release. A thin jet of flame squeezed out of the projector, and she swept it left and right, covering the advancing Chaos cultists in the burning promethium. With their tattered clothes and the volatile cocktail of combat drugs coursing through their veins, the Cultists seemed to spontaneously ignite as the temperatures around them soared. A few even exploded as their drugged-up blood itself combusted.

A Chaos Terminator stood among those ruins, growling as he and his two squad-brothers advanced, their combi-bolters chattering high-explosive death. Meliya cried out in alarm as the Sister of Battle beside her – a noble veteran named Cordila – was gutted by the single bolt round that penetrated her breastplate. She fell to her knees, clutching at the shredded remains of her internal organs and pitched forward, dead. Canoness Samisha cried out, a bolter shell glancing off her pauldron. Some were as lucky, the bolter shells defeated by their armor. However, others were not so lucky, falling from the precise combi-bolter fire from the veteran Chaos warriors.

Vincent brought down the fire extinguisher, crushing the Terminators before they could claim any more lives. When he removed the cylinder, they began firing again – but were quickly taken apart by the recovered Imperials, especially the concentrated fire from the Land Raider.

"FOREWARD! ENEMIES OF THE IMPERIUM, COWER BEFORE OUR WRATH!"

Justicar Amadeus was in a battle-fury now as he and his brothers hurled themselves into battle, his Force Halberd spinning and cutting, dancing among the Cultists as if a scythe through grain.

The sudden loss of the Terminators and the charge of the Grey Knights broke their morale, and the Cultists quickly retreated to the sheet of firepower being sent their way. Still lying down, the Indonesian nerd coughed and sucked in a long overdue breath.

Around him, the miniature commanders quickly began to locate their forces, to try and co-ordinate a purging counter-offensive. Vincent crawled over to the others.

"Alright, we need to counter-attack. Abandon the living room, but deny these guys access to the rest of the house. Get in touch with the rest of the guys upstairs and in the bedrooms, and get the Orks out of the basement... try to get them out into the lawn and charging in through the front door. I'm going for the gun. Anyone got anything to add?"

"The Orks only listen to their Boss, and that's Michael." Quipped Inquisitor Danilov, his hell-pistol neatly decapitating a Cultist as he placed carefully aimed shots at exposed skin. The bolt pistol on his other hand coughed a series of high explosive shells, which neatly decapitated a Chaos Marine.

Vox-jockey Amira Sulein chipped in, lowering her voxcaster for a moment. "There are heavy weapons teams deployed up on the kitchen table, they're taking fire. We'll need to reinforce them to keep the Chaos forces from getting through Fridge Pass."

Vincent blinked for a second. "Fridge Pass?"

"The space between the kitchen cupboards and the fridge, Vincent."

"Ah. Send the Tau. Get their Broadsides and Hammerheads up there, shoot anything with an eight-pointed cross."

Confused looks passed over their faces, and even the battle-suited Shas'El Firestrike seemed confused for a moment. It seemed as if Michael had never really used the Tau's designations for their vehicles before. Vincent shrugged. "Hey, I play the games."

He popped his head above the couch, scaring the piss out of some Chaos cultists that were planning on dropping explosives down on the Imperials below. A quick sweep of his hand sent them tumbling to their dooms.

"'kay, then, that's the plan. Get a move on!"

Nods came in abundance, and Vincent rose, his voice straining to make itself heard over the roar of battle.

"FIGHTING MEN AND WOMEN OF MICHAEL'S HOUSE! HOLD. THEM. BACK!"

Behind him, Batel shivered.

- - - - - Submit, girl, and you can save these lives!

Sergeant Deunan's clipped tone crackled over the comm-beads.

"Contact, thirty degrees left. Down low, the cultist platoon with the Traitor Marine. Five rounds apiece, spread your rounds out."

The Heavy Bolter teams responded immediately, Trooper Vekt adjusting the elevation as Trooper Vorrens swung the massive weapon around. Trooper Kase sat close by, his lasgun in one hand and another resting on top of their last box of bolt shells. Stroking the trigger, the machine spirit of the Heavy Bolter barked out five high explosive shells, sending them into the massed platoon taking cover by one of Michael's discarded shoes.

Concentrated fire from the three Heavy Bolters in the support section ripped the panicking Cultists apart, and the cogboy that had been left to see to the heavy weapon's maintenance after they had been stripped of ammunition clapped in an unusual gesture of appreciation.

"Seventy three percent casualties in the first burst. Well done, Troopers."

Sohm grinned as Sergeant Deunan continued to pick out targets with his amplivisor, calmly passing out instructions like an announcement servitor.

"Chaos Marine warband, focus on the flamer. Three rounds, rapid fire."

The Guardsmen shredded a Marine wielding a flamer as heavy bolter shells struck his armor, leaving the path clear for the last one to slam into the thing's flesh, gutting the Marine as the high explosive shell detonated inside his power armor. Another struck the promethium tank that had been rigged up to his arm, and that too exploded, spraying his allies with the burning fuel. Of course, with the armor of the Space Marines, it wasn't a lethal burn as their tassels and ornaments melted, but certainly distracting as the flames covered their eyepieces and cooked off their munitions.

In an even battlefield this would have been a Pyrrhic victory for the Guardsmen, at best. But with superior elevation and their heavy bolters, the plunging fire they were directing at the Marines geared for close combat was proving to make this what Valhallans - and one particular Commissar attached to their regiments - called a 'traki shoot'.

With the majority of their platoon re-deployed on the other side of the kitchen in their rush for cover, they had left the heavy weapons platoons to pack up and occupy the bread-bin. Right now, everyone was double-timing it back to firing positions. It wouldn't be for another minute or so, but the veterans didn't like it; that was all the time in the world an enemy would needed to kill you.

The Sergeant bellowed a warning as he spotted the imminent counter-attack. "Incoming! Sit this burst out, then get back up and give them the Emperor's wrath!"

Return fire was sporadic at best, the heavy bolter team half-hidden by the lip of the kitchen counter-top, and everyone was sandbagged anyway, so as the ten man platoon ducked under their makeshift cover to shelter from the bright red lances of lasguns and the projectiles of the solid weapons.

However, this also blinded them to the streaking columns of smoke of the nine Chaos Raptors that angled up into the sky, and dived to land amongst the Guardsmen. Most were using primitive and daemonically corrupted assault packs, while others took to the sky on massive, bat-like wings.

Their bolt-pistols were already snarling as they sent a barrage of return fire, cutting down team two's gunner and loader in a hail of explosive shells. Their overwatch guardsman tried to flee, but was crushed under the talons of the lead Raptor.

Sohm dived under cover, and drew his las-pistol as Kase took a bolt to the leg, instantly severing the limb as the round detonated. A second bolt cut off his scream of pain as it detonated in his throat.

"Raptors, up high! Return fire! RETURN FIRE!" Sergeant Deunan screamed, drawing his own weapon at the enemy, firing his bolt pistol to meet theirs, crouched behind a sand bag barrier. He managed to bounce a few shells off the lead Raptor as it arced through the sky, intent to land in their half of the bunkers, before a bolt shell slipped through the intake grille and crippled his booster pack, sending the Chaos Marine crashing into the ground.

The Sergeant roared in triumph, but it was short lived: Another Marine dispatched the brave Guardsman as he passed, contemptuously decapitating the Sergeant with his chainsword as he ran to rejoin the fray.

By now, Sohm had managed to bring the Heavy Bolter around, and as the Raptors fell upon Team One, he quickly breathed a prayer to the Machines as Vorrens poured full-auto lasgun fire onto them.

The effect of four shells, mixed in with the other sixteen that Sohm had launched, were unexpectedly effective.

First, the Raptor leader's daemonic sword screeched as it was struck by the lead shell, and burst in an explosion of warp-fire. This sent Raptors to the ground, the psychic energy of the weapon's destruction eating away at their minds, completely ignoring the armor that encased them.

Shell number two struck the ammunition that had remained in the sandbag bunker, and the resulting explosion was an appropriate funeral pyre for Team One, taking with them another three or four Raptors.

The third shell reinforced the reason why helmets were issued, as it neatly dropped down the throat of the Raptor screaming with berserk rage and madly chopping at the dead body of Trooper Nankaro. He coughed, and his head turned into a fountain of blood as the bolt shell's explosion was channeled by his power armor.

This covered another Raptor's eyepieces, making him a gratifyingly easy target for the fourth shell, which struck him in the chest and threw him back a step.

Off balance from the explosion, he staggered back. Sohm found himself screaming as he pressed down on the firing stud again and again, peppering the Raptor's armor with explosions, and finally the last shell penetrated the thick breastplate, shattering the ancient ceramite. The explosion that resulted knocked him off the kitchen tabletop.

There was a cold chuckle as the remaining Raptor watched the demise of his brothers. Sohm whirled around, and saw that Vorren's body was still twitching, run through by the Raptor's chainsword like a grox on a spit.

"Impressive, little whelp." The snarling chainsword blurred as it cut itself out of Vorren's cadaver, arced up in a gory rainbow of human remains, down towards Sohm – who was trying to draw his las-pistol - and then across, the flat of the blade striking the last Guardsman to the ground. The back swing came a heartbeat later and Sohm howled in pain as the spinning teeth cut across his chest, just barely penetrating his flak vest and scoring a deep cut from right shoulder to his left side.

The cogboy lay a few feet away, clutching his leg as it bled black oil. His mechadendrites were jerking spasmodically as the Engine-seer fought for balance.

Chuckling, the Raptor turned off his bloodstained chainsword. "I shall enjoy avenging my brothers, boy. Your screams shall ease their pas~"

He never finished, as a ball of sunlight smacked into his helmeted head, melting the armor as if it were butter under a blowtorch, and passing on through to splash molten metal across the pauldrons. The cauterized stump that was left behind was wholly insufficient to sustain both coherent thought nor life, and as the rest of his body decided this, the armored Marine fell backwards and expired.

Sohm spat on the Chaos Marine's body, and collapsed.

The Traitor was ten thousand years overdue, anyway.

Sputtering and wheezing, the Techpriest used his extensive mechadendrites to crawl over to Sohm.

The trooper had already propped himself against the sand bag walls, laspistol in one hand as he dug through his medical kit with the other. Morphia, bandages. That would have to do. Sohm struggled to inject the vial of painkillers, but a snake-like mechadendrites pushed the plunger down. He sagged in relief.

"Thanks, cogboy."

"Hah... you... ain't a... rusty." Was the cryptic response. The Cogboy dragged himself over to sit beside Sohm, and pulled out a vox.

"Want to call some help?"

Looking over the sandbags, Sohm shook his head as the Tau Fire Warriors dispatched the remaining Raptors with carefully controlled bursts of pulse-rifle fire. Shas'El Firestrike called over Imperial medicae to attend to the two survivors, waving his still-smoking plasma rifle.

"Nah... they're here already."

He turned his gaze out to the titanic humans, and the witch. She was shaking visibly, even to the half-blurred and rapidly tunneling vision of Trooper Sohm Vekt.

- - - - - See how they fall? How they die! You could have prevented that! You could end this!

Vincent skidded into the kitchen, grabbing the pistol from its place in front of the bread-box. He looked out into the battlefield below, and saw a Chaos Defiler. A single bullet was enough to tear its rear armor to pieces, killing the tortured operator inside.

His hand flicked up, one hand firmly wrapped around the pistol, the other cupping it from below.

On cue, the Colt barked again as another bullet was unleashed.

The bullet hit the corrupted flesh of Ryan's chest with a wet smack as Vincent steadied himself into a parody of a firing rhythm, desperately trying to aim for center of mass, his best bet at hitting it. He stroked the trigger a third time, and another red hole ripped itself into the man's chest as the Daemonhost took another step forward. Five shots left. A small voice in his mind whispered. Make them count!

Another one would have smacked into face, were it not for the sudden jerk of the head that put a hole in Michael's painting of the tree in the back yard.

The dry and cracked skin of its lips stretched as Ryan grinned. It was now only a meter or two away.

"Take the little bitch from me, will ya? Well, I'll show you smartasses what happens to people when they take something from Rhyan Owen-ens!" Its voice was distorted now, like an audio file copied over too many times.

Panicking now, Vincent was dodging as fast as he could from the sudden grabs that followed, having worked himself into a berserk rage as it smelt spat and swore at him.

"Come here, y-y-you! Lem-m-me rip y-y-a a new one, f-f-fuckin' fancy p-pa-pants with that lit-t-t-tle pea shooter-er-er, huh!"

His voice slid up and down the range of possible human vocalizations, going as high as a soprano one moment, a low baritone the next. Add to that the erratic rhythm of his voice – which disturbingly reminded Vincent of a broken vinyl record – and he was seriously getting disturbed.

Vincent tried to shoot him in the face again, only to see that it had only passed through his cheek, leaving a wet puckered hole. The man now made a whistling sound as he breathed.

Door, head for the door! The nerd's mind screamed, knowing full well that getting into an open space was his best chance for survival. Leaping over a line of advancing Chimera and Rhino APCs, Vincent was already half out of breath by the time he was hit by the charging Daemonhost. It was pinning him against the wall before he knew it, ignoring any feeble attempts at the miniatures shooting it with the thick clothes that it wore, no doubt also reinforced by whatever warp-sorcery that it could call up. The heavier guns had already exhausted their munitions on Chaos vehicles, which would have wreaked havoc on the miniature armies, but at what cost?

Gagging, he gasped for breath as a set of absurdly strong fingers closed around his neck. He spotted Batel, and tried to call for help.

She only sobbed, her mind racked with confusion.

- - - - - The boy will die. He will die painfully, and knowing that you could have stopped this.

"KILL! MAIM! B~"

"BURN!" Eizak eagerly finished the screaming Chaos Marine's chant with a blast from his combi-melta. The eye-scorchingly hot beam of energy simply passed through the heathen super-soldier, the movement of Eizak's thermal weapon melting his torso and throat into a molten goo, and Eizak closed in to finish the stunned traitor's life with a precisely placed blow from his Thunder Hammer. The Traitor's helmet still glowed as it lodged itself in the Chaos Marine's bowels.

His backswing struck down a Cultist, and the bolt shell that followed burst a second's head, sending brain and skull matter arcing over the battlefield.

"Forward, brothers!"

"FOR TERRA! FOR THE EMPEROR!"

A hundred voices; Marines, Guardsmen, Sisters, Eldar and Tau all shouted their many and colorful battlecries in the faces of the five-hundred strong Traitors. They poured out of the hallways, having rallied under the banner of Order to face the forces of Chaos.

Near the back rows, another voice cried out.

"Take to the skies, Brothers! DEATH FROM ABOVE!"

Seven dozen knees bent, and almost a hundred thrusters yawned as they vented propellant, sending the elite fast attack units into the air. Assault Marines flared their jump packs as they hurtled through the sky alongside glittering flights of Swooping Hawks, with a trio of Tau Battlesuits boosting into battle with ammunition packs hanging off their backs.

They all had – in a curious but overall beneficial twist of relationships – somehow grown into one massive pack of flying hunters, their elite status amongst their respective armies giving them reason to seek each other out and compete; for many of these jumping warriors, they saw the kindred spirits as bastard siblings. In a way, but got along with each other nonetheless, an unspoken bond forming between the soldiers of the sky.

The expanded squadron of jet packs, boosters and rockets now flared as they took to the sky.

Brother-Sergeant Vinters locked his eyes onto a cultist, and he carefully angled his trajectory to suit.

A thousand years ago, it was standard practice for Assault Marines to land in front of their enemy and charge the final stretch to engage them with their close combat weapons. But it was Brother Ventorez, the Raven Guard veteran whose geneseed which now sat in his torso, who discovered – to the unexpected satisfaction of both Ventorez and every Space Marine with a Jump Pack – that a ton of nearly supersonic Marine falling out of the sky was a weapon in itself.

Today, however, they had refined the practice of dropping out of the air onto one's enemies into something of an art form. The first Cultist to find this out suddenly found his mouth and face filled with the boots of an Assault Marine, and then suddenly that wasn't important as his head was crushed against the ground. The floor itself shook as the Marines pounded into carefully chosen targets, kneeling in some places where the gore had gotten a bit too slick, and before anyone could start screaming the Marines became whirling tornadoes of chain-bladed destruction in the densely packed formation of Cultists.

Seraphim danced in the space above this hurricane of blood and chainswords, weaving through the hail of fire the Tau were raining down from above taking the opportunity to blaze away with their pair of bolt pistols issued to each one, dropping high explosive death to those below, occasionally grabbing onto a hovering Tau Battlesuit to propel themselves into the air, rejoining the flock of humming blue figures that were the Swooping Hawks, which were liberally sowing their high explosive seeds throughout the fertile fields of heretics below. Battlesuits lumbered through the sky like a barge through water, and their armor, shielding systems and the sacrificial drones themselves were soaking up much of the damage which would have otherwise felled a Seraphim or Swooping Hawk.

Their plasma rifles and burst cannon, however, were quick to cut down heavy weapons carefully marked out by the markerlights painted onto them by the Tau stealthsuits, which were mixed in amongst the enemy, destroying a vehicle here and a heavy weapon there in a sudden burst of plasma fire.

However, all did not go well for the assault troopers. Every now and again, a psyker or heavy weapon would rear their yawning mouths, and strike a warrior from the sky. Many died quickly, but a few were unfortunate enough to land in the mass of cultists below, and be torn apart by the crazed traitor legion.

Sergeant Vinters saw a Seraphim clipped of her wings as a Chaos Raptor passed by her, a quick slash across her jump-pack sending the Sister of Battle tumbling to the ground.

He sent a few bolts the Raptor's way, but his chances of hitting an ally were far greater than his chances of landing a hit on the Raptor. Instead, he began to tear his way through the tides of cultists, his chainsword cutting bright red arcs with their buzzing teeth. He reached the downed Sister soon enough; all he had to do was listen to the sound of two bolt pistols firing in perfect harmony, a duet of destruction. Already, the Cultists were tearing at her armor, sacrificing three or four of their number to simply remove a panel of the black plates. A knife was already stuck into her bared right side, and she was wrestling with a Cultist trying to rip off her helmet.

Vinters and his two flanking Assault Marines set about clearing the cultists from around her, an expertly placed bolt shell and an equally precise flick of a chainsword severing the man's entangling arms from the Seraphim.

"Brother Sergeant Vinters, at your service, Sister... would you like an escort from the battlefield?"

"Gladly, Brother..." She staggered, and quickly emptied the remaining shells of her pistol into a gaggle of cultists approaching them. The high explosive shredder bolts quickly reduced them to fist sized chunks of gore.

More were streaming in, like vultures they surrounded the downed Seraphim and Vinter's squad.

"This is Brother Vinters. We are being overrun! Break through at this location!"

He armed a Melta Bomb, and hurtled into the sky as his assault pack lifted him above the battleground. Seeing a group of Chaos Marines and a Terminator trudging through the Cultists, he angled himself down at them and emptied the remainder of his Bolt Pistol's ammunition into one's face. Jumping off, he landed on a Chaos Terminator, slapped the Melta Bomb on, and launched himself into the sky as the final few moments ticked off on the timer. He could feel his feet heat up as the bomb's detonation licked at his boots. Bolt- and las-fire swirled around him as avenging Chaos Marines fired up at him with the help of their cultist cannon fodder.

An autocannon round cut his victorious ascent short, the lance of steel piercing his pauldron and exiting through his back. Brother Vinters tumbled down to the ground, barely in control of his armor's wounded machine spirit, grimly arming all his melta bombs and tossing them at every clump of cultists that he could reach.

- - - - - You're WEAK! WEAK and USELESS! ACCEPT! SUBMIT! SAVE THEM!

Ryan – Daemonhost of Chaos – howled in pain. Vincent's nostrils filled with the stench of cordite as he tried to work the slide. The casing had not ejected properly, again stovepiping. That was expected of a weapon squeezed between his stomach and the man's thigh. No room to eject the shell.

"'lu ngak akan ada anak, brengsek!" [Ya ain't gonna have kids, bastard!]

He howled as a second bullet entered its thigh via some very sensitive and already traumatized anatomy, and Vincent raised his legs to try and kick away, but a fast swipe sent him sprawling to the ground.

"Y-y-you!" There was a sudden rush of putrid miasma as something shifted; the light in Ryan's eyes died, and there was a sudden wave of sickening nausea that overtook everyone's mind. Vincent fought the urge to hurl, although Batel was more than happy to void her stomach.

The Daemon now surged forward. "FEEL MY WRATH, MORTAL!"

Vincent blinked once, then was picked up by one arm.

Well, shit. Vincent stared into blood red eyes, narrow and slanted like a snake's, filled with hate and unkempt fury.

By now, it seemed, whatever had been Ryan Owens was now dead and gone. Vincent struggled against the grip of iron.

Batel flailed at the man, grabbing his arm. A sudden whirl of his arms sent her crashing into the ground.

Another kick sent him rolling, fortunately through a crowd of Cultists rather than Imperials. Gasping for breath, Vincent managed to get his feet underneath himself. This guy was most certainly one hell of a bastard. Shuffling through his knowledge of such things... he looked up at the man's face, twisted into an unpalatable mask of fury.

"C'mon, lets take this outside." Vincent rasped, his mask taking on a fake and desperate bravado, grinning as he chuckled, rising back to his feet. He could barely stand, but that dramatic flair was all he needed to get the man into even more of a rage – and less of a thinking fighter. Br'er Bear and Br'er Rabbit an' all that.

Strong arms picked him up, and suddenly bright sunlight was dazzling him as he crashed out into the front lawn.

- - - - - Ah, things may be going well this battle, but they will fight again, lose more of their number...

"Full throttle, Marines!"

The White Scars chapter were experts of mounted warfare, and their skill at the handlebars of their heavy assault bikes were testament of that. Blazing into battle, the white lightning bolts simply drove over the cultists as if they were a particularly bumpy road, their wicked combat blades slicing and severing some very important anatomical features off the cultists as they passed by. Heads and arms, legs and large tracts of internal organs were cast aside in their wake.

With them were the heavier weapons platforms belonging to the other Chapters and factions; the Land Speeders with their buzzing assault cannon and the corkscrewing missiles streaking from their side-mounted launchers.

An Eldar Falcon provided the centerpiece of their assault, its Bright Lance stabbing out to lash at the Traitor Marines that were counter-attacking in their wake.

Around them, a storm of monomolecular disks cut through a Marine as he finished swinging his sword through a Swooping Hawk's shattered wings, his arm and torso turning into a fine red mist as the shuriken slipped between the atoms that composed the Marine. The jet-bikes of Ulthwe zipped overhead, discarding behind them a gift of hand grenades given by the Imperials. The following series of thudding concussions hurled cultists into the air, and the nimble bikes quickly turned to make another pass.

"High speed, low drag." Muttered one as he pumped a Chaos Marine full of monomolecular disks

A wild swing from a spear severed the Eldar jetbike's control canard, and as the bullet-shaped vehicle spun out of control, the Marine wielding the spear gave a throaty laugh of triumph.

Suddenly, a bright lance of focused laser-light speared through the Traitor Marine in the middle of his exultation, and then five more fell as they suddenly found their faces spiked by the lances of the Shining Spears aspect warriors. A moment later, and they were gone, leaving curiously clean wounds on the dead bodies in their wake.

Sergeant Vinters awoke, and instinctively realized something was wrong. He was being dragged. A hand immediately went for the arms that somehow managed to easily pull along a one ton Marine in his power armor.

"Do not worry, Brother Sergeant." It was Brother Belarius, one of the younger Assault Marines. "You are out of danger now."

He coughed, and looked past his feet. Around him, two Crisis Battlesuits pumped a steady stream of burst cannon fire into the surrounding cultists. Swooping Hawks hovered overhead, their grenades falling in amongst advancing cultists. Belarius stopped, and began firing his bolt pistol. Vinters looked to his side. The Seraphim, knife still jammed into her shoulder, was on the ground beside him.

However, she was alert and still fighting, firing her single bolt pistol – one with an extended barrel and scope – into the enemy that surrounded them. The body of a cultist bounced off the ground beside his head, before it was used as an impromptu brace as Vinters got up onto his knees. The Marine froze as he turned to see the sight that was gathering behind him.

Brother Belarus shouted out in joy. "Sister Meryl! Brother Sergeant Vinters! Look!"

Guardsmen, Sisters of Battle, Space Marines. Tau, Eldar and even Orks, all arranged in one battle-line (although there were a few Orks impatiently gunning their engines).

They were arrayed before the legions of Chaos, their troops spread throughout the many transports that they used; Orks atop their ramshackle Trukks welcomed the Tau Fire Warriors (without butchering them), and Guardsmen helped the graceful Eldar as they boarded the boxy Chimera. Tau Battlesuits and Space Marine Terminators jockeyed for the prime seats in their heavy Land Raider, the centerpiece of the assault along with the Falcons. Pathfinders quickly showed Sisters of Battle the switches on the Devilfish's hatch doors as the Orks piled into Wave Serpents.

And they all cried out, for their Emperor, for their homeworld, for their Greater Good, for their victory.

But above all, one battlecry eclipsed all others by typical Ork brute force, lung capacity and volume.

"WAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

Fully a third of the Chaos legions voided their bowels as others took up the cry.

Vinters grinned, and punched the quick release for his damaged backpack. The assault pack fell to the ground, and he moved more freely now as he stood, the battlecry of the Orks ringing in his ears.

- - - - - Quick Omake: For the Greater WAAAAGH!

"waaagh."

Madork Gunna gave a sigh of frustration. He whacked the Tau Fire Warrior over his head.

"No no no, ya grey-skin git! You'ze gots ta cap-it-tah-lies da WAAAGH! Uvverwize dere ain't no WAAAGH!"

"Waaagh!" Cried out the witless Shas'la.

The greenskin palmed his face and then swatted the Fire Warrior with his non-Klaw hand.

"You'ze messin' wif me, greyskin? Well, you'ze betta tuffin' up! Alrigh', lemme showz ya again!"

He drew in a breath, and bellowed at the top of his voice. Which was sufficient to knock the Fire Warrior onto his arse simply from the amount of saliva projected.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

The Ork began to stomp on the spot, howling into the sky as he punctuated the battle-cry with his shoota. His single flesh and blood eye focused on the Sash'la.

"DATZ HOW YAZ DO DA WAAAGH! SEEZ? YOU CAP-IT-AH-LOIZ! AN' IF YA'S 'ARD ENUFF an' a roight proppa Orky boy, but dat don' matta fer ya, YOU'ZE GETS TA BAWLD'AN EY-TAL-ICKS DA WAAAAGH! too!"

He waggled a finger at the bewildered Fire Warrior.

"But! Only da best o' da Orkiest boyz can do this:"

Quickly, the Shas'la clapped his hands over his ears, and shut down his audio recorders.

Even through an inch of Earth-caste polyceramic armor-weave, the battle-cry shook his eardrums.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"

The Ork crossed his arms and gave himself a self satisfied nod as he finished his lecture.

"See? Underloinin' an' 'xtra eksklamatin' bitz."

A fair distance away, Sergeant Talon facepalmed.

"Dear Ethereals, he's screwing with the formatting!"