Warhammer 40k Fanfiction - Hero Imperator (English)

Chap. 2 - Day 17 (Part 1) - Limbo

It's been 7 days since I had time to write anything. The events of this last week have barely given me time to eat anything decent, and I've been so busy that I haven't even been able to get more than three hours of sleep a day.

Now I find myself inside a Sable-class frigate, where I finally managed to find a moment of peace after so many calamities. So many things have happened, that I have many doubts where to start.

As soon as they gave us the order to meet with the rest of the troops in front of the southern wall of the city, we understood that the time had come. Both Purshok and I stopped receiving reports a couple of hours ago, because I guess those in charge saw us as cannon fodder and nothing more.

However, the view outside the walls was not pleasant at all. Almost immediately I was able to recognize the reinforcement regiments. They were perfectly formed to our right, not moving a muscle unless General Habrok said otherwise. Very different from the formations on our left.

The civilians that Purshok had sent to the front by orders of his superiors now carried anything that could serve as a weapon. Purshok himself could not take his eyes off those formations. As worried as I am.

They were not warriors. Almost none of them had carried a weapon before, and a shooting practice section was all the training they received before being trained along with the rest. The fear on their faces was visible. The prayers to the Emperor from those closest to us could be audible. As clear as those of those 100 men who formed behind me.

As soon as General Purshok received the order, we marched with the reserve forces towards the south. Apparently, the orks were planning to land on a plain south of the city. A place that was once a prosperous grain field would now be devastated by the voracity of war.

As we walked, all those memories of the academy came back to my mind. The manuals on how to confront the orks were the most common, showing within them the thousands and thousands of possible ways to defeat the greenskins. Which, in my most humble opinion and without wishing to offend those authors of such books, was complete stupidity.

Every book that contains the merest comment about the Orks will always have an opinion: "Orks are unpredictable." What's the point of memorizing the 548 combat tactics to confront the greenskins in quicksand, if they can get a rocket from your backpack and blow everything to pieces? The only answer I can find is the lack of creativity in our education... In everything... in fact.

Well... I still had to memorize the 5932 pages of the saga of Mosterius, the chronicler who was assigned to the detachment under the command of Commissar Yarrick in the Armageddon wars. Although I have to admit that I read them more to know the exploits of its protagonist, and not exactly because of the strategies that the officers under his command executed. Many of them, without result.

Now that I had time to think as we marched, it seemed rather strange that the orks had not directly attacked the capital. Much more strange that they have set foot on land in an area so far from the city. The manuals described the greenskins as war-hungry creatures, whose erratic behavior was similar on all battlefields. The only book where I read something different was in Yarrick's own chronicles, highlighting the presence of Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka. Just thinking that a catastrophe of such magnitude would appear here, in Cantus, made every drop of my blood run cold.

However, my fears soon had to be allayed. The shots of the Valkyries could already be heard in the distance, and when I looked up, it was shown how the sky was dyed red before the thousands and thousands of Orkoid ships that descended from the atmosphere. This would be a massacre the likes of which had never been seen before, and Cantus himself knew it, for the storm clouds gathering over the battlefield were an omen of the days to come.