Chapter 61: Death From Above

Chapter 61: Death From Above

Petros stood at the massive observation window of the captured starport, watching his plan unfold on the planet below.

On his command, the station's mortal crews had gathered all available refuse—empty cargo containers, industrial scrap, mountains of compacted waste—and had begun loading it into the station's mass-ejection chutes.

The first wave of refuse was fired at the planet. A cloud of debris, caught by the planet's gravity, began its long, fiery descent.

The PDF defenders on the surface, seeing the "attack," reacted instantly. Their defense-lasers, missile batteries, and flak-cannons roared to life, filling the sky with fire as they blasted the incoming trash. The barrage was perfectly effective, and utterly pointless.

The second wave was launched: hundreds of massive, empty metal cargo containers. Again, the ground batteries opened fire, wasting precious energy and ammunition to vaporize the empty boxes. But the fragments from the destroyed containers continued to fall, a cloud of shrapnel that forced the gunners to keep firing, further draining their reserves.

In the starport's main hangar, Petros and 14 of his Battle-Brothers—15 in total, including Phelon, Vornab, and Thor—were gathered inside their Thunderhawk gunships. Every one of them was clad in full power armor, a fully-fueled jump pack secured to their back-plate.

They performed their final systems-checks: jump pack integrity, weapons, vox, auspex. All green.

As the third and largest wave of debris was ejected from the station, the Thunderhawks launched. In the blackness of the void, their assault-bays opened, and the 15 Astartes leaped, one by one, into the abyss. They fell head-first, a spear-tip of iron, plunging into the atmosphere alongside their cloud of metal chaff.

Friction set the air ablaze. Their armor's ablative coating absorbed the worst of the re-entry, but the internal temperature climbed, from 30°C to over 100°C and still rising. They endured. Their gene-forged bodies and specialized sweat-glands fought the extreme heat.

A crackle on the vox broke the roar of re-entry. It was Phelon, the Warpsmith.

"Boss, you were right, this is a stupid-Throne-damned-idea!" he shouted over the wind. "My jewels are roasting!"

"Nobody forced you, Phelon," Petros's voice was flat. "You could have waited for a Drop Pod."

"No way!" Phelon laughed. "I've never done a solo atmospheric insertion. Had to try it!"

Petros ignored him, his eyes on the shimmering energy-field rapidly approaching. The planetary shield.

He knew its weakness. Like most void shields, it was designed to stop high-velocity impacts—lance-fire, macro-shells, Drop Pods. It was not, however, designed to stop low-velocity objects, like a docking shuttle... or free-falling debris.

"Approaching shield-layer," Petros voxed. "All units, execute braking maneuver. Now!"

In perfect unison, the 15 Astartes flipped in mid-air, their bodies now feet-first. Their jump packs ignited, not to accelerate, but as massive retro-thrusters, killing their velocity.

They hit the shield at the same instant as the third wave of debris. The shield's automated systems, detecting a massive cloud of low-velocity, non-threatening scrap, allowed the entire wave to pass through.

"Breach successful," Petros grunted. "Re-orient. Terminal velocity."

They flipped head-first once more, their jump packs cutting out, and accelerated into a deadly dive.

The ground-based flak batteries, their ammunition reserves depleted by the first two waves, were now firing sporadically, concentrating only on the largest, most threatening pieces of cargo container. The 15 Astartes, hidden in the massive cloud of smaller debris, went completely unnoticed.

As they fell, they separated into three 5-man squads, adjusting their trajectories.

Their target, identified from the Port-Master's data-slate, was an unassuming, remote waste-processing sector in the hive's outskirts. It was a "stupid" place to put a critical facility... unless you were trying to hide it.

"Final approach," Petros voxed. "Fire retros."

The jump packs roared to life, slowing their descent. In the landing zone, a few local scrappers, drawn by the falling metal, looked up in confusion. Petros, still a hundred meters in the air, unslung his bolter and executed them with three precise shots.

With a series of ground-shaking THUDS, the Astartes landed, their armor absorbing the impact.

Petros checked his squad, ignoring the minor burns on his own plate. He keyed his command-vox. "Squad One, on the ground. Two kilometers from Entrance-One. No casualties."

Vornab's voice crackled in reply. "Squad Two, on the ground. Eight kilometers from Entrance-Two. No casualties."

A new sergeant, Benjamin, reported. "Squad Three, on the ground. Four kilometers from Entrance-Three. No casualties."

Petros looked at the unassuming, camouflaged plasteel hatch of the underground generator-complex.

"Good," he said, drawing Blood of Crassus. "Operation: Death From Above. Begin."