From where he perched on the wall of the ancient temple, Commissar Steiner could see almost the entire city spread out below and around him. Not that this pleased him, for the sight of such carnage was enough to demoralize even the staunchest of his men. For over six weeks the inhabitants of this long-established Imperial port city had been subjected to the inconceivably destructive energies of planet-bombing for the orbiting space hulk Visage of Khorne.
Had they known what was coming, most of the residents would have fled into the low foothills outside of the city and avoided the skin-melting furnace which thermal plasma bombs wrought from the ruins of their once prosperous home. Although now ended, the scars of such single- minded and ruthless devastation would lie on this place for centuries, if indeed the damage was ever repaired.
This last question is the one which the one-eyed Commissar turned over grimly in his mind before turning his true eye and its artificial companion to the sky for what might have been the tenth time in as many minutes. He cursed and told himself not to look up again, lest his men notice and become even more demoralized by concluding that he too thought their position hopeless without the desperately awaited ship.
The burnt amber sky revealed no sign of a descending ship within its swirling smoke-clouded expanse, however. Behind Steiner stood, amazingly untouched by bombardment, the ancient marble statue of the God-Emperor to which this temple was once consecrated. The inner sanctum which shielded the holy statue from the acidic weather of this planet was long since breached and laid open by the bombardment. It now provided only the cover of broken walls to the Imperial Guard troopers huddled within it, their weapons trained outward to defend the command post which had been hastily constructed within.
The temple itself lay upon a fair-sized hill near the middle of town, the sight obviously chosen for the fact that it could be seen from almost anywhere in the city. The dead Guard captain who had chosen to place his command post here may have been motivated by this, but surely also by the fact that, were they defeated, this holy site would at least be the last place to fall.
Steiner turned his eye to the ruined path of vehicles and small buildings which led from the dense city below to the gate of the temple they now held. With a blink he willed himself to see the twilit path in infrared, closing his real eye to facilitate his concentration. He saw the skulking shapes of crouching figures crawling up the hill, using the hulls of shattered suicide hover cars and Imperial personnell carriers as cover.
"Sergeant, B Squad to the south wall. Another infiltration," he spoke quietly into the communicator sewn into the collar of his black greatcoat in the shape of a silver skull. He turned and saw the ragged shapes of the four remaining B Squad troopers coming up behind him, dragging their weapons by sheer force of will despite the wear of combat drugs and lack of sleep which had been sapping their strenght for days.
They quickly took cover under his direction, setting up heavy flamer and plasma gun to best effect over the clear space outside the wall which Steiner had had them clear by flame and demolition charge when they first set up here, in case of just such an attack. How could he have known how many would come though, and how often. It seemed that the enemy had no concern for their own lives, mounting senseless attack after attack, hundreds of lives lost merely to demoralize the Guardsmen by driving home the fact that they could afford to suffer these losses without concern because they were legion, a multitude of fanatics ready to throw away their lives at the mere thought that their great and bloody-handed master may be momentarily pleased.
Steiner checked the action on his bolt pistol, blocky and metallic, unardorned but for a single bronze skull on the side of the metal gun casing. With his other hand he fished a coin-sized grenade from one of the pockets of the armoured vest beneath his red-lined coat. The troopers rubbed sweaty palms on their grimy uniforms, transferring from skin to clothing yet another layer of the soot which had been choking the air and coating everything in the city since the sprawling pipe-tangled chemical processing plant near the airfield had taken a direct hit. For two weeks it burned like the apocalypse, pouring great gouts of evil-smelling smoke into the atmosphere and making visibility in the city almost negligible.
Under this cover of black smog the enemy had truly struck a fatal blow against this world, as those who waited below, arming secretly for years, took the cue from their masters in space and surged into open rebellion seemingly without warning. Truly if the death of this world could be traced, it would have to be said that the cancer of heresy and rebellion had been eating away at it from the inside for centuries, and that the Visage of Khorne was if anything only the harbinger of a doom written long ago in the souls of so many of the inhabitants.
Steiner waited until the cultists, three quarters of the way up the hill, were almost in position behind the blasted plascrete remains of the temple guardhouse. His cybernetic eye told him with robotic precision just when the enemy were all lined up in a ragged skirmish line. He knew from experience that they would momentarily hurl a volley of concealing smoke grenades through which they would charge the wall he and his men held. He indicated to the troopers with the heavy weapons just where his eye told him the most heavy concentrations of these suicidal cultists were gathered, and then he waited until his inner voice, the guiding voice of the God-Emperor himself Steiner believed, said it was time.
"Fire at will," he spat, almost casually. The lack of intensity in his voice was contrasted by the roar of fiery destruction which it precipitated. In truth nobody heard him say 'at will', all speech lost in the roar of burning adhesive gel spraying down the hill under the high pressured assault of the heavy flamer. A spray of superheated plasma joined the conflagration, melting both wall and ground in huge pyrotechnic bursts of releasing energy. The effect on the skirmishing line of cultists was immediate and complete. As superheated flesh combusted and consumed the bones within the heretical rebels tried to flee down the hill, their atavistic fear of the consuming flame engulging all thoughts of bravery or faith.
As they fled they were plastered with patches of burning fuel gel which sent them screaming and rolling down the hill. There was no dousing the fire, which burned even in the shallow pools of muddy water which they tried to save themselves by diving into. Centuries of chemical processing pollution, as well as the conflagration of the last two weeks, had seeded the rainclouds of this continent with acidic poison. The pools of rainwater on the hill burst into flaming baths upon contact with the cultists seeking the salvation of dousing water.