The Warfield (A warhammer 40k story)

Chapter 35

The rest of the morning night time and then the actual morning was spent rearranging defenses and the few, rare few untainted artillery as Haydrax was quick to begin making some hasty defenses along the ridge line that was where the small mini-fort was put on. Sandbags were stacked, walls that could be repaired with loose rubble were rebuilt, wrecked vehicles were moved, and every last man alive and skitarii was put on the ridgeline to fire down as Haydrax and his group took the Mini-fort with Captain Ventris and his command squad while the rest of the Fourth Company spread their squads out. And lastly, the remaining walkers and light vehicles set up on the ridge as they would act as the heavy weaponry of sorts.

Haydrax watched as Imperial guardsmen man a few mortar pits they had managed to hastily construct as he was with Monster and Jaxx and when he looked over the parapet that looked beyond the ridgeline into chaos lines, it was a vision of a nightmare in some cases. The earth was streaked in blood, red veins as the buildings around had been seemingly overgrown with the stuff. He could smell death and decay as a red fog was settled on the ground, almost obscuring the many dead corpses he could see scattered around as they barely poked out above the fog.

"Well the enemy sure has been keeping busy with one another.." said Monster as he kept his shotgun close.

"Must have been some sort of civil war conflict between the Warlords..." said Haydrax.

Meanwhile, below them as they tended to ammo that remained and their wounds, the rest of Haydraxs group collected itself together to prepare to defend the fort. Shino shoveled a ration down as both Logan and Jonathan were keeping magazines in good condition as their rations were already long gone.

"Man, this is gonna be harsh till the armor divisions appear... the enemy is not going to like us having taken this spot." said Logan.

"What do you think they'll throw at us?" asked Jonathan as he soon finished his maintenance.

"Knowing from what I've seen so far, more Dreadnoughts I bet." said Shino. "If we're lucky we may only see cultists and Guardsmen, the occasional armor of light variant..."

"You're learning to be one of us, I see." said Logan with a smile.

"Guess you are rubbing off on me." said Shino with a small smile as she finished her ration.

Meanwhile, Angelo and Phrix were watching Drake, Galek, Rex, Toombs, and Stark as they kept an eye out from within the Mini-fort as they were next to some Ultramarine Tacticals and Devastators as the two of them could hear Chrima, Leonidius, and Alec praying a level above them as just above them was Theo, Widit, Evan, and Engelbart were doing maintenance and crating of useful things like makeshift bombs and grenades.

"Wow... hard to believe we've come so far and managed to live through so much." said Angelo as he kept his lasrifle close.

"Yeah... and yet we're so close to finishing this war... be able to finally do something better for once instead of slogging through death." said Phrix.

"Well, at least sloggin through death is preferred over, say, investigating a demon world itself perhaps or maybe going onto a Space Hulk." said Angelo. "We'd get chewed to pieces on either but at least one you can get out in theory and the other is pure madness."

As Galek slowly panned a heat sensor across the fortified opening before him, he then heard Drake ask him, "So how long have you been... a scion?"

"About three years I think... it hasn't been that long to be fair." said Galek as he retracted the sensor and sat back down on a nearby sandbag.

"huh... I was only PDF for maybe 9 months... never thought I would be hear, you know? The Emperor is mysterious sometimes."

"Hand me that micro-laser." said Widit.