Hotdrop. That was what it was called. The Sky above Tyro’s western-most providence suddenly burst. First, bright lances of light punched through the frothy, discolored clouds, smashing into the huge coastal wall and obliterating massive chunks of masonry. They were just stabbing blinks of light, there and gone before the sound report even materialized. Lancing spars of light raped the clouds and earth alike, the static discharge from friction of the projectiles slicing through the atmosphere causing thunderstorms to form. Slowly, as if it were a large animal being prodded and goaded by someone with a baton, the citadel city of Mer Voius etcr Verven began to return fire. Massive energy weapons raised skywards, their muzzles crackling with increasing vigor as the power levels grew. They sent blinding strobes of lightening blue projectiles into the sky. Lances rained down for another ten minutes; obliterating the massive guns, cutting the number of them by nearly three fourths. Thousands of long, black dots punched through the lacerated and roiling clouds above. They grew larger and larger and their forms took the shapes of Drop ships.
The Siege of Mer Voius etcr Verven had begun in earnest.
I Company was using three of the fifty-man drop ships, coming in at a screaming pace that jostled its cargo of Verdiana men and women, strapped tightly into the seats in full battledress. Sergeant Kolsim Collins muttered the Litany of Protection under his breath. A veteran of two campaigns, he had never been through a hotdrop, and it showed. About half of the fifty others in the dropship were in similar states of being, some rocking slowly, others making prayers and promises; others simply stared with hollow eyes, sure that they would be killed before they were on the ground. It didn’t help that the inside of the dropship was humid and dark, its low red lighting whimpering out for a moment with every decent jolt. It smelt of fear and anxiety, sweat and bile-breath.
Collins took a quick glance up and at his eyes sat upon the stoic form of his commanding officer. Captain Sahasha Silves sat directly across from him, her lasrifle firmly clamped into the alcove to the right of her seat. A short-statured ferret, she had an air of soldiering about her, through she was dangerous and since Collins had first seen her, he saw her as deadly as a newly sharpened blade. She had joined the Seventh eight years before him when the regiment had been decimated by a Tyranid attack on Estivan V. Even though she had now been thrown into campaign after campaign, she was almost untouched by the enemy, the running joke was the enemy knew if they wounded her; she’d kill everything in her way to pound them down with her bare paws.
She raised one of those paws now, all but two fingers curling into the palm as the last two pressed against the microbead in her ear, currently in contact with the pilot and co-pilot. She nodded to herself and gave a quick, single worded reply before snapping back up and looking down the troop bay.
‘Alright,’ She bellowed, pausing as heads perked and muttering went away, leaving only the creaks and squeals of the dropship’s hull as it barreled down into the buffeting air. ‘Two minutes ‘till were on the beach! Expect immediate heavy retaliation, we’re dropping in, full regiment strength; a company of Urkai armor is dropping with us and will support our advance up and through the walls. If you’ve any last minute checks to do, get them done now, there won’t be time once we’re down for a while.’ She went to grab her lasrifle from the alcove when the dropship took a direct hit.

The back of the ship lurched upward, as if some great being had simply kicked it straight up. The drop ramp, damaged by whatever had hit them, buckled and peeled away with a tortured squeal of metal. It was a horrific blessing to finally see true light. The air screamed around them, pulling at wailing soldiers and bits and pieces of kit were hurled out into the sky; helmets, rifles, medical pouches, canteens, anything that wasn’t to heavy and wasn’t secured properly was ripped out, trailing in a hellish confetti behind the wounded dropship. Over the sucking scream of air, another sheer of metal sent a tremor down the craft and a fat, black propulsion pod whipped into view, spinning wildly before falling out of sight after barely missing another dropship.
It was then that the tumble began; it started off slow, barely noticeable save for the leaning sensation. Then the roll became for violent, sending more shuddering quivers down the length of the ship. Not built for the stresses, the remaining engine pods ripped from the hull, opening up another whole in the ship out into the light. The supporting struts that lined the interior and the seats strapped to them were all that kept those unfortunate enough to be sitting there alive and not tumbling into the burning wake of its decent.
In the final seconds before the stricken ship hit the ground, time slowed. Looking through the bays or other holes in the vessels wounded belly, Sgt Collins glimpsed the city they were assaulting.

Collins slowly came to, his vision coming back in a blur, as if someone had laid a thin red velvet cloth over his face. He blinked and it cleared slightly, he became aware with a start that it was blood leaking into his eyes. He looks around, seeing that he was no longer in his jump seat, but propped up against a chunk of ruined wall, legs sprawled out infront of him. He noticed a canteen sitting beside him, with a grunt off effort he leaned over and gripped it, unstoppering it and splashing the cool water onto his face, allowing it to wash the blood from his eyes before blinking repeatedly. A shout rose up and he looked up to see Miranda Colger –the field medic assigned to drop with A-platoon. The Border collie stopped in front of him and leaned down, the grit under her boots crackling as she did so.
‘Fek, we thought we had lost you, too, Sarge.’ She said, lifting his eye lids further and peering into them before taking out a roll of gauze and wrapping his head up firmly, making him grunt. He looked around himself once more when she was done, finally finding the husk of their landing craft; The wounded and dying craft had smashed through a providential wall, skidded down the street and came to a halt finally when the front half had smashed into a building with highly arching buttresses and ramparts.
‘Who’d we loose?’ He asked, grabbing his rifle that had somehow stayed at his side. Standing up slowly with the woman’s help, it felt strangely reassuring to hold it, running through a tightly drilled check over on the weapon before reaching into the black webbing of his battledress and pulling a fresh cell loose, slapping it home and priming the weapon.
Miranda sighed and pushed the thin framed glasses back up her muzzle, she shook her head. ‘Twelve dead, fourteen wounded, three of those most likely wont last to much longer, I cant save them with what little I have.’
Sergeant Collins did the numbers in his head as quickly as his swimming mind would allow, not liking the end result; twenty-six members of A-platoon dead or wounded, leaving only twenty-four effective troopers. He rubbed his chin and took a limping step forward, looking at the remains of the fifty trooper strong group. ‘I need to talk to Captain Silves, we should be moving…’ He trailed off, looking at the medicae officer. ‘What?’
Miranda hesitated and then sighed again. ‘The Captain didn’t make it,’ she nodded towards the dropships remains. The ground began to shake, dull thuds reaching a second later; a succession of such noises followed the first up; heavy shelling somewhere far off in the distance. The barrage of the other sections further out had began, turning his head he could just make out the destructive lances of light stabbing down from the sky much like they had here.
“Fek, really?” Collins replied, as if it was some bad joke. He shook his head and looked around.
I’m in command now, I can do this, it’s not that different than being First Sergeant, he thought to himself. Except you can get them all killed now: came the reply from the nagging part of his brain. The wolf rubbed his eyes and felt his wrapped head throb. He didn’t know how long he’d been out, but it was far to long, they should have moved out already, they should have left him too and scattered before any enemy troops decided to sniff out the wreckage.
He looked at his wrist-chron; its glass front plate was cracked. It read 0732 hours which he suspected was the time they had augured into the ground. He took a quick look at Miranda’s own chron; it’d been ten minutes ago now. He cleared his throat, “Get everyone rallied here in five minutes to receive orders.” He didn’t wait for a reply from the young woman, simply striding off towards the wreckage, where he was rather sure the corpse of his commanding officer still was.
He made his way into the wreck, still spewing and sputtering a nauseous mixture of propellant and flame retardant foam. He had to crouch under a downed support beam. It was black as pitch in the shadowed husk, he reached into his webbing and produced a lamp pack, lighting it startled him. He realized that the unfortunates here had been left; he tried not to look at the broken and ruined bodies of comrades he had known and trusted. He took their ID tags, stuffing all the stamped oval pieces into the breast pocket of his webbing. He struggled up a little further, the floorboards were ruined and bent, the dropships’ body had buckled again here, and it had grown a slight hump that he had to work up and over.
There she was; she looked peaceful and asleep, something he’d never seen her do, nor had he seen anyone else do.
No one living was ever that relaxed.
He grabbed a support strut jutting from the ceiling of the craft and leaned in. Still all too numb to have emotions, he looked her over for a moment in disappointment. Eight years. Eight years she had fought and killed and bled, and above all else; survived. This death, one so- un-heroic- and purposeless didn’t befit her.
Such is war, his brain nagged again.
He slid in a little closer and pulled her ID tags over her head and slipped them around his neck.
He looked at the knife sheath on her side and gingerly pulled out the blade by the hilt. It was broken about two inches from the leather strip bound handle. He slipped the broken hilt into his thigh pocket and slid his own silver from its sheath, looking at it in the dull light; Thirteen centimeters of gleaming silver from Verdiana VI, with his name and serial number milled into one side he read over it slowly, as if it held some sort of ancient, live altering text.
It didn’t; it simply read KOLSIM COLLINS. ID NO. 2938-349D-38RT4
He spun it back and sat it on her leg.
‘No soldier of Verdiana goes to the Emperors side without a blade.’ He slung his rifle, made the sign of the Aquila across his chest, and left her tomb.
Additional section of main assault on the Verdiana troop section

Collins was glad to see a number of faces her trusted as he walked back out, finding the detail of Verdiana troopers rallied and awaiting orders. The scouts, a slinky ferret named Vaham Rilk, the equally cunning German shepherd femme named Jax Vadain, and the extremely reliable wolven form of Baxtyr Poke. Baxtyr was a mess though, what was left of his right arm was ruined tatters, it appeared Miranda had bound it with enough bandages to stopper up a leaking dam. He was leaning heavily again Rilk with his left hand wrapped as well, with dubious signs that his little finger was no longer there. To the right of the grouped scouts were the four snipers that had made it out of the wreck. They had already donned their tarp cloaks, buttoned around their neck, running down the length of their bodies. One of them, Collins couldn’t tell who because of the cloak, was fiddling with the barrel latch on his long-las. He did his best to clear his throat and work up a good commanding tone.
“Trooper, what’s wrong with your weapon?” He inquired, motioning towards the thumbhole stocked sniper rifle.
The sniper looked up, the shadows retreating from his face enough that the sergeant could see. “Sir,” The voice was feminine. “Trooper Rescka. The latch; its smashed, I wont be able to change barrels. I’ll only have a handful of hot-shot cells before it will be useless, maybe more if I take it slow.”
Collins nodded, “Well then, we better hope we don’t get into the thick of it.” He wasn’t to the point where he was scared, but he knew that just because they had survived the wreck didn’t mean they would survive to see the Regiment again.
“Alright,” He clapped his gloved hands together, as if he needed to get their attention. “We need to move out. However, I need two acting sergeants; any volunteers?”
He looked around at the troopers. Slowly, as if unsure, two stepped forward.
Miranda was one of them.
The other was a ferret named Giles Corry. Kolsim nodded proudly as the remaining members of the platoon began to fall into two staggered squads, the scouts and snipers mostly keeping to themselves, preferring to stay with those of their profession.
Collins gave the order to move out, and they started their way back towards the beach assault. Kolsim watched them all; they were all ready, each of them coiled like a spring, ready to retaliate at anything that came at them. He didn’t allow himself to think that they had survived the dropship just to be killed while they were cut off from the rest. The Vox-caster set had not survived the crash, nor had its operator for that matter, leaving them with micro-beads, effectively cutting them off from any other Imperial forces without its higher yield bands and stronger casting range.
They did their best to keep to the shadows, there wasn’t a massive amount of sunlight now, this was due in part by the fact that the orbital bombardment had kicked up clouds of dust and filth that was already beginning to span the globe. They entered a massive courtyard, perhaps at one point it had been a town square or an open-market, but now it was mostly barren. The cobblestone surface was a dry pink, Kolsim could imagine that it had been red many years ago, slowly baked and paled by the sun from years of no maintenance.
Eight other paths branched off from it, one at each corner and one about midway down each side, meandering out into other parts of the town. Directly in the middle, on a raised, round portion of the stone stood a massive statue of the Emperor, or it had at one time. The face had been smashed away, the mighty sword he had slain Horus with was broken near the hilt, the halo that surrounded his head was bent and warped, bits of wire coiled around it to turn the holy symbol into the retched eight pointed sign of Chaos.
Kolsim felt and smelled how this enraged the group of survivors, he was glad to note that he did not see any of them appear to break or loose hope at the site. Ahead of him, half of the squad under Corry were working along side one of the snipers. Suddenly the sniper froze, cloak tails flicking and twitching in the wind.

RESKA SAW THE patrol round the corner just about the time they spotted her. Without thinking she rolled the long-las to her shoulder in one fluid motion, snapping off a shot. It caught the green robbed enemy in the forehead, he snapped back like he’d been clubbed in the face and fell over, a string of las-fire zipped into the sky as his finger mashed the trigger.
Contact; first contact.
And the first kill had been hers.
Before the rest could respond the sniper dove behind a pile of debris. The ferret slammed her back against the makeshift cover as a mixture of las and hard rounds started rattling away at the other side, sailing overtop, and spanking off the any metal it came in contact with. She sang out over the comm. The rest of Corry’s mob was already diving into cover likewise. Giles himself jumped through a broken window and leaned back out, firing out a spurt of las fire at the enemy troopers still scattering for cover.