Sizzle shoulders his launcher and deftly switches rounds. He takes a moment to tinker with the warhead as he does so.
Ready, sarge. Just say when.
Anatoly looks around to see if there are any pieces or war-debris he can quickly fashion into a gunner's shield for Sizzle's shot.
The Commissar groans as he finally gets to right himself - feeling not as bad as he thought he would.
"No Sergeant. I would not. I still don't think staying here for long will be good. And the Frag won't keep them down for long. So we should be ready to run the moment the rocket flies."
Anatoly does not find enough stuff to prepare an actual shield, instead his internal database highlights a very old anti-sniper tactic.
He quickly grab his standard issue guard helmet and grabs it with his manipulator, ready to raise it above the lip of the hallow at Andersons command.
Sergey readies a smoke grenade to pop the moment Sizzle takes his shot to give them some cover for the first part of the charge.
After a final once-over, Anderson nods.
A decoy helmet is raised - and shot.
A smoke grenade is tossed.
A missile launcher coughs, sending out its dangerous payload on a well-aligned course, leaving a clearly visible white trail.
Moments later the top of the watchtower is enveloped by a fireball.
At that time you are already running uphill, first through a dense smoke screen, then without it.
Always uphill.
Over loose ground.
Awaiting to get shot any moment.
Its nerve wrecking
And really dangerous considering the ground!
You really feel the previous hours in your bones and just cannot keep up the dead sprint.
You start falling behind the others!
You missed a spot where the ground is particularily loose, nothing but several meters of loose volcanic pebble.
You stumble and :
1: Fall prone and take 1 wound
2: Strain your ankle. You fall behind the others as you just cannot run anymore.
You are hit by a stray round of solid projectile fire.
Sizzle takes a few steps and switches weapons in the haze of the screen. Then he sprints as hard as he can up the hill. But his wounds make themselves known and pain shoots through him. He feels fatigue seep from his bones into his muscles. He's starting to fall behind!
and
He keeps his eyes on the ground ahead and plows on in spite of his body's protests. Now was not the time to take a break!
The old priest is just unable to keep up the pace and starts to falter.
:
The day had been stressful, and Asbjörn just couldn't dig deep enough to keep up with the pace, though he wasn't alone in that.
Luckily, his eyes were still keen and he paid enough attention to avoid the treachery of the rough terrain.
The Commissar runs like fresh from the lander - maybe a bit too well actually as he fails to notice something in his path and stumbles. Luckily his all-metal legs aren't as fragile as flesh and bones otherwise this would have hurt like grox dung
Anatoly runs into the smoke with the others, eyes fixed on the next place they will stop. A little too focused, he fails to properly asses the variances in the quality of the surface upon which they run. A patch of loose rubble is all it takes and Anatoly tumbles to the ground. A grunt of pain escapes his lips as his shoulder crashes into the unforgiving rocks.
3 hits
Anderson, Hella, Sergey, Bolus, Anatoly, Sizzles, Asbjörn, Yeta
I, Pen:1 Bleed(1) => Bolus
E, Pen:0 => Yeta
The Sergeant and Sergey make a good time, along with - somewhat surprisingly considering his age - Bolus.
Everyone else is encountering minor, and not so minor problems on the way.
Yeta had the lead for a solid while until his machine leg betrayed him on lose ground.
While he did not fall, the augmentic frizzled and whined in protest, causing the Commissar to slow down noticeably, falling more and more behind the others with every pondering step.
Anatoly who was right beside the Commissar got hit by a stray round and seeking (and failing) for balance on the loose ground is sent momentarily to the hard ground.
But is back on his feet only moments later, now level with Sizzle, Hella and Asbjörn - all of them struggling with the newest strain due to past injuries.
The lead group has nearly reached the flank of the first bunker when a half squad of heretics comes rushing out from the bunker to meet the rushing imperials.
All of them are armed with firearms (blocky autoguns and lasguns from the looks of it) and form up a semi-circle gun line, sighting down at the imperial squad!
The enemy is reacting a split second faster than you, probably due to the fact that they knew you were coming and accordingly prepared, and fire first!
The withering gunfire is hasty and not particularly well aimed but the rabble soldiers manage to score two hits in total, plus a third near miss where Hella twisted out of harms way at the very last second.
The first round smacks hard into Bolus, forcing the air from his lungs and leaving a bleeding exit wound just below the barely healed scar inflicted by the warp creature a few days prior.
The second, a orange-hued lasbolt hits all the way back, the Commissar.
Sizzle charges up the hill until he comes to a steep bit that could be used for cover-ish. He throws himself prone against the gradient and returns fire on full auto targeting the center in an attempt to scatter the firing line.
The Commissar is thrown back a step from another impact to his battered chest. But this one isn't enough to stop him.
He breaks into a run with a growl.
Asbjörn is less interested in immediately firing back and more about finding the best possible cover.
So he quickly beat feet to throw himself in the best cover he can spot.
Besides, he wasn't about to waste a shot of plasma on these mooks,
If he got close enough though, they would get a taste of fire...
Bolus slumps over as the bullet saps the little strength he had left.
He rolls over and gasps Emperor... preserve... require.. aid
Oh for the love of...
"Someone grab the father and get him into cover! Can't bandage him under fire!"
Sergey is by the fathers side within seconds and pulls him towards the shallow cover the steep hill provides.
The trooper immediately starts to fuzz over the priest, spraying a generous amounts of synthskin onto the wound.
"Got him!
A clean shot through, father.
The Emperor protects!"
Sizzles short but brilliant bright salvo sends the attackers scuddling.
Two drop prone while another two hurry for cover along the edge of the bunker wall.
The fifth falls to the ground, a burning hole in the chest.
Hella reaches a prone position right beside Sizzle and slams her heavy stubber down and pulls the manual loading lever once, chambering the first of many rounds.
The Sergeant huffs into cover as well, pulling a frag grenade from his belt and readying it.
E, Pen:0
Anatoly walks up the steep hill in measured steps that eat up distance fast without being tiring, his integrated weapon firing at the barely visible enemy but missing by a close margin.
Most of the enemy troopers stay in cover or keep their heads down.
One is risking a snap-shot from behind the cover of the bunker. From his aim he very clearly intents to retaliates against Sizzle and his aim, despite the haste, seems to rest right on target!
Another seemingly very headstrong enemy leaves the cover of the bunker wall entirely and throws a grenade at the clustered imperials!
The throw is dangerously good and the grenade falls not too far from the Sergeant and rolls several meters downhill until it rests nearly directly between Sizzle and the Squadleader!
Sizzle's reflexes kick in and he evades the shot by fractions of an inch. It's so close that he Feels the round go by.
Then he hears a threatening Thump between himself and sarge. He knows that kind of grenade. He has that kind on him right now. and he knows that he has less than two seconds to get rid of it.
Sizzle grabs the grenade and returns it to sender with the confidence only a Breacher can muster!
Feeling like he wasn't actively dying anymore Bolus grasps the trooper's arms in thanks before flopping over again and crawling belly first up the ridge just enough that he can see the damned heretics and flames as many of them as he can.
Asbjörn, not quite aware of the drama unfolding with his brother scrambles forward, leaping into cover close enough that he will be able to unleash flaming death on the enemy in a moment.
Sizzle cocks his arm back... and feels it catch. His wound, it won't let him throw the rapidly cooking grenade...
The time for the pineapple of death to kill.... everyone... comes... and ... goes? Dud! Sizzle is so surprised he nearly forgets to let the thing go! Nearly. He chucks it back in the bunker's general direction and keeps his head down for a moment while he says a quick and very sincere prayer of thanks to the Emperor. He truly does Protect.
The Commissar does what he does best - keep going towards the enemy. Running as fast as his clicking metal leg allows him to.
Anatoly, joining the Commissars advance albeit at a more measured speed, cuts down the all to eager and wide open enemy down with a single bright blue lance of high-power lasfire through the sternum.
Sgt. Anderson looks wide-eyed at Sizzles.
From the sweat beads on his brow it is very clear that he noticed what just happened and how close he, and everyone within several meters came to a quick death.
He shakes his head like a canine trying to get rid of water in its ears to regain focus, muttering something under his breath - whether a curse or a prayer is everyones guess. He then carefully robs up the steep incline, chainsword at the ready.
Hella opens up with her stubber, clearly intent on keeping the enemy pinned down for good.
The angle is problematic and the enemy already in cover or prone so the salvo goes overhead and pings off the bunker wall.
Sergey is still fuzzing over Bolus, even though the priest is already flinging streams of burning promethium against the enemies of mankind.
But after a bit of tutting he gives up.
"You'a mess father and a proper doc needs ta look at you - again."
At that moment, the bunker door swings open and a imposing figure in pristine carapace armor and a pitch-black cape etched with the eight-pointed star emerges.
Atop the scarred head, on a bone spike emerging from the skull itself, sits a pierces through a red hat.
A commissars hat.
The man bellows at the remaining three soldiers.
"What is the meaning of this?!
The Carrion Throne suckers are still alive and you cower in the dirt like some filthy Nurglings?
Get up, fix bayonets and CHARGE!!!!"
From somewhere the man has pulled a huge chainsaw and points in your direction while pointedly brandishing a rune-etched bolt pistol towards the traitor guardsmen in a very clear threat.
Two of the men rise and mount serrated blades to their weapons at once but the third remains on the ground despite the threat.
Eeep! NOT fun!
It's obvious what will happen next, the commissar will be charging the big man, and thus be in Asbjörns way, so the only thing to do is to make sure to get a good hit in as fast as possible.
Said and done, Asbjörn moves to the best position available and lets loose with a nice cone of flaming fuel.
Ohohoh! feel the BURN of my reply!
The Commissar roars as he sees his corrupted counter part "YOU! Not only did you fail in keeping your soldiers loyal to the throne you FELL WITH THEM? I WILL RIP OFF YOUR HEAD!"
He ignores the sparks and the squeeling protests comming from his mistreated augmetic leg and FLIES at the man. The rage does nothing for his accuracy thought and his massive swing is barelly off target of the opponents right leg.
Sizzle sees an opening. Literally. With the practiced grace he reloads his launcher in seconds, as the Saernus is known for. He has the weapon up and ready while his Commissar is still speaking. As Yeta charges, he's beat by the streak of a missile!
The missile, however, doesn't hit the fallen commissar, it flies just past him and into the bunker.
The spiky Fallen makes an instinctive evasive step to get out of the missile flight path but grimaces as he sees the warhead streaking by and into the bunker where it detonates another two heartbeats later with a very dull *thump* followed by a sudden drop in weapon reports and a lot of screaming.
Follow up explosions shake the ground.
But the traitor has not much time to think about this precision strike against the heart of the hills defensive line, as he is charged by his loyal counterpart.
With a grunt of effort, he brings his chainsword around and blocks the power fist of Yeta. Pieces of the chainswords casing go flying but it remains mostly functional - this time.
The powerful impact forces the traitor to take two steps back and he seems on the verge of passing out but somehow powers through, albeit his eyes are somewhat glassy and his speech is somewhat slurred as he answers Yetas challenge.
"Aerrll, yer skulll' rest on Khornnns pil-e."
His return strike is similarly affected and even Yeta, slowed down by a malfunctioning augmentic and all but determined to see the hated enemy dead, is able to side step it with ease.
NO MERCY TO TRAITORS. Burn them all from the FACE of Existence. No more shall they SULLY this planet with the affront of their very BEING.
Bolus shouts from just below the rise.
Burning Boy #1: -4
Burning Boy #2: -4
By now, everyone in the Breacher squad knows the fiery speeches of the priest.
But hating fellow guardsmen, even if they seemingly have fallen under bad influence, is not nearly as easy as hating the neverborn, the alien or the mutants from earlier.
Somewhere deep down you cannot bring yourself to hate those guys as utterly as the priest demands.
The way that one guy is cowering before his former (?) Commissar is just too familiar...
Nevertheless they are trying to get all of you killed, so it is not too hard to fight back at least.
Asbjörn steps up and sprays two of the enemies with liquid fire.
Neither is able to escape the attack in time.
The howling of the two hit men is terrible.
The one lying and cowering from his own Commissar rushes out of the scorched and burning area and throws himself to the ground, rolling around wildly seeking to extinguish the flames melting his armor, uniform and flesh alike.
It does not seem to work though - but his mad activity makes it quite hard to hit him.
The one who was already standing (and is now lit from head to toe) is rushing directly towards Asbjörn in a mad rush - whether from blind panic or some form of suicidal bravery is impossible to tell.
The sole remaining enemy (beside the Commissar) is starting to run further up hill and in a mad zig-zag!
From the general direction he is going, he seems keen to try and reach a low build prefab half-build into the hill, some 150 meter off.
A lasbolt hits the ground a handswidth from Hella and the blonde trooper rolls over with her gun pointing it north and yells over the stakkato of her own heavy gun.
"Crap! Still some snipers left at the tower.
Got us pants down here!"
Sgt. Anderson reacts quickly.
"Everyone, force an entry into that bunker.
We need to make sure its cleared and it will provide us with cover from those snipers!"
With that he takes the first steps to get to the Commissar duel, chainsword whirring.
Anatoly has conquered the final steep hill part as well and stomps towards the dueling Commissars as well... but finds himself in the path of the amok burning trooper as well and attempts a snap shot but misses.
The Commissar roars in anger about the continued existence of the opponent and swings with all his might, this time aiming better, going towards the right arm. And then swings again because there is still rage left to vent but this one goes wide.
Incensed at the worst of all enemies.. the traitor, continuing to not die, Bolus crawls towards the enemy Commissar with flamer out. Visit upon them The glory of the Emperor they have turnd away from!
and sprays as many of them as he can with a sweep of his flamer. Including the enemy Commissar.
Sizzle lets his laucher go slack on its strap and snatches up his lasgun again. Snapping it to his shoulder, he lays down his own automatic fire between his bro and his Sarge into the cones of promethium blasting over the traitors.
Asbjörn leaps out of the path of the flaming idiot, hopefully allowing the massive enginseer to club him to death or something.
A crazy plan enters Asbjörn's head, and before he has time to try and talk some sense into himself he is off running.
Ducking and weaving like some sort of professional athlete, he manages to dive under and past the viciously weaving chainswords and powerfist and make it through the rapidly closing door to the bunker.
Being familiar with the makeup of bunkers, he reaches out and slams his palm against the rune to stop the door closing further, and then taps the open rune instead.
Huffing and wheezing, he manages a maniacal grin as he turns back towards the opening.
"Doors open Sergeant, are you guys waiting for an invitation?"
I'll take the first one.
Between another wave of promethium and several high-powered lasbeams from Anatoly, Sergey and Sizzle the two burning traitors are scorched from existence - much to the satisfaction of the preaching priest.
The fallen Commissar half turns after the weaving Asbjörn, obviously trying to stop the trooper from doing exactly what he is about to accomplish, which turns out to be a grave mistake.
Yeta's power fist strikes true against his right arm and the thundering discharge of the disruption field removes the entire arm from existence.
The traitor staggers and struggles to remain conscious through the pain and aftershock - and somehow succeeds with gritted, bloody teeth.
Having lost his sword (and the entire arm) the Commissar sluggishly aims his bolt pistol against his counterpart and fires.
But the exploding bolts miss Yeta - close enough to leave a small scorch mark on his hat!
"Gogogo, I'll give them reason to keep their heads low!"
Hella yells at those around her and continues shooting at the watchtower.
Sergey, Anatoly and the Sergeant all make good progress towards the now re-opening door - result of Asbjörn's bravery.
Anatoly and Anderson both reach the now pretty much decided melee but both stay their hands, clearly unwilling to rob Yeta of the satisfaction of killing this person, who clearly is a pretty personal affront.
The sole remaining survivor of the enemy fireteam is continuing his mad rush to the distant structure and now has crossed half the distance .
You hear moaning, cursing and the fall of heavy boots deeper down the bunker, which is a pretty big one.
There are probably quite a few enemies left scattered inside.
From the heavy gun reporting and vibrations, at least two of its main batteries continue working and giving the main advance a hard time.
Yeta has no time for irrelevant stuff like closing doors or cover while the abomination of everything he believes in and stands for still draws breath at all. And so he keeps punching in rage.
I...no, no idea what that is...damn.
"Sarge, I hear more enemies further in. Orders?"
Sizzle squeezes off a couple shots at the fleeing man, then makes for the door.
Bolus scrambles up and moves into the bunker, flamer at the ready.
The pounding pattern of the batteries is familiar...
Yeta's next punch lands center mass and vaporizes the other man's entire chest killing him instantly.
But in addition to a lot of bone, flesh and internal organs, the disruption field does also triggers several clips worth of bolt shells the Fallen was wearing.
A whirlwind of shrapnel envelop the tightly packed group of imperials!
Anatoly is saved by his sturdy construction from the worst of it and Anderson is not hit too bad either but Yeta and Asbjörn are hit with merciless force.
What remains of the enemy after all of this is hardly more than a smear on the surrounding and a pair of scorched feet ending abruptly ten centimeter above the top of the heavy boots.
Inside the bunker Bolus has taken the front row and he remembers the specifics of this construct from a visit to the Shrine World Jorix' Treasure half a lifetime ago.
It is a Thranix-3 pattern, L-type, Quad-Compartment prefab bunker. Its inside, as the name suggests, is a subdivided into four major chambers. Each about 10²m big compartment is sealed from the rest by a air-tight plasteel blastdoor and has a hard mounted heavy weapon (usually autocannons or heavy bolters) as well as a grenade dump, rudimentary sanitary systems, air filtration and a secured ammo depot. Its overall shape is that of a L. This one seems to mirrored around the horizontal axis and you are at the "top" of the long side.
The first compartment is a mess. Several dead (and their parts) litter the ground, two seriously wounded are in the process of bleeding out and don't appear to be in any shape to resist your intrusion. At one side, the one facing downhill, a firing slid is left in the otherwise solid rockrete and an embedded heavy bolter rests, its barrel still emitting visible heat. At the far end of room a dull metal gray blastdoor seals the next compartment off.
Back outside, the first lasbolts fly from the watchtower despite the suppressive fire - but they seem to be fired hastily and are quite off target - for now.
Sizzle meanwhile manages a perfect shot at the fleeing man and drops him with a by-the-primer center mass double tap.
Hella, having seen nothing of it, yells at the breacher she can see out of the corner of her eyes.
"Still here? This ammo doesn't grow on trees you know?!
Get over there and then give me some nice cover fire for a change. NOW!"
The Commissar stands in the hailstorm of shells, getting blasted back a step by the force, shrapnel plinking off his armor left and right, gauging small but painful lacerations into his skin where it is bare, mostly in his face.
When the storm is over the Commissar still stands - with a grin. A slightly crooked grin with his human eye slightly unfocused but still he stands - relishing in having eradicated the abomination from the face of the universe. Also recuperating from the long drawn out beeep in his ear and the loss of focus in his eyes and limbs. Not that he notices that thought...
I'm going! I'm going! Sizzle gripes at Hella with all the incredulity of a younger sibling. He pops up to his feet and starts running to the bunker.
Bolus pops his head around the corner when everyone else doesn't pile in behind him to see the Commissar just sort of standing there next to a bloody patch on the ground where his counterpart heretic had been. He grasps him by the shoulder and pulls him into the relative safety of their objective We are in a Thranix-3 pattern, L-type, bunker. 4 compartments, equal size, separated by airtight blasteel doors. I believe we will breach and enter 3 compartments heading straight and then the last will be at a turn. By the emperor's blessing we will cleanse the remaining three as we have the first. He announces to anyone able to listen.