Insertion Zone part 2

The ramp hit the sand with a thud and at once I was in the combat zone. The chatter of auto-weapon fire, the screaming pulse from the heretical weapons of the Tau and the bellowed orders from both sides. All of us were thankful the column only consisted of infantry. Had it contained the more specialised AT weapons, our aircraft would have been annihilated during the descent. The blood was even louder in my ears, the sound almost drowned out the noise of battle. I spotted a flash of gunfire that hit a PDF square in the chest. The trooper buckled and crumpled to the floor. I traced the origin point of the shot. My hand was a lightning blur. I reached into my holster, drew banisher and smashed a hole in his helm. I was then searching for a new target.

My vox bead pinged in my ear, Karazak was in trouble. I spotted him, surrounded by Tau fire warriors, but he was going to be overwhelmed. I shot one, holstered my revolver and charged in, drawing my power sword as I ran. My impact knocked one to the floor and I brought the sword round in a great arc to remove another’s head. The next thing I knew was a great explosion of pain in my side as one of the Tau, obviously a soldier of distinguished achievement stabbed his ritual knife into one of the few cracks in my carapace armour breastplate. Instinctively, I brought the pommel of my sword into contact with his face. He fell, dazed. I then delivered the killing blow with the ring mounted laser emitter. Karazak was now free and hunting for new targets. I was doing likewise and considered how combat “felt”. I loved the “zone”, the adrenalin rush, the extreme levels of hormones stimulating your reaction times and thought processing.

I was snapped out of my daydream when I saw Lorenzo, a distinguished Devil who had served me for well over 10 years. That was longer than anyone except Karazak and I had to do something in an act of vengeance for him. I butchered my way through several of the tau soldiers and caught a glimpse of the primary target. The commander of the column was a so called “Ethereal”, one of the rulers of their Empire. About ten Veltraxian troopers were down already. One of the column’s elite soldiers, mounted in a battlesuit charged towards me. He didn’t even get five of their gargantuan paces before his vital circuits were destroyed by a casual flick of my right hand and a intense ray of heat from the inferno pistol mounted on a ring on my right hand. I charged into the fray once more, with the litanies of hate on my lips, but I cut through one  before the inevitable happened.

My power sword had run out of charge. I dodged a swipe from the butt of a tau rifle, stooped low and sheathed my sword. I leaned backwards to dodge another strike. I spotted a chainsword in the corner of my eye. With the red mist descending and a glint in my eye, I backed out of the fight and sprinted, ducking low and grabbed the hefty chainblade with both hands and charged. From the moment the sword made contact with the tau’s flesh, the rapidly rotating chain teeth were splattering the blue blood and gore from the tau soldiers all over me. It was then I looked down at the puddle of blue blood and what I saw shocked me. I was no longer Octavian Lars, saviour of worlds, hero of the masses. I saw myself as an avatar of war, a purger of life. That was the path that led to destroying worlds because you could and summoning daemons. Eventually, that path led to heresy. That was not the Octavian Lars I wanted to become. After that glimpse of that path that led to heresy in that puddle, viewing the scarred, gore splattered persona of myself; I thought on Karazak, the major, the Devils as well as the common soldier. In the case of nearly all of them, they were only tasked with battle and training, they had little mental capacity to even think about the complex tasks of an Imperial Inquisitor.