Chapter 9: The First Battle of the First Legion
"Luna shall be our final battle," Ushotan declared, his gauntleted fingers tightening around the grip of his power sword. "The Thunder Warriors shall never break their sacred oath."
He gazed across the scarred battlefield, watching the distant flashes of weapons fire paint the lunar horizon in stark relief. The words were spoken to himself as much as to the Emperor he served—a final affirmation before the end.
He had long known this day would come. Whispers had reached him from the mountain laboratories of the Himalayas, where the Emperor wrought new warriors in secret.
These would be the successors—stable where the Thunder Warriors were flawed, enduring where they were ephemeral. The instruments of the Great Crusade that would carry humanity to the stars.
Once, he had harbored hope that his Legion might find another path. That delusion lay shattered now, ground beneath the inexorable weight of necessity.
"For unity," came the battle-cry through the vox-net, echoing from a thousand throats across the warzone.
"For unity," Ushotan responded, casting aside his doubts. He signaled to his remaining guard and surged forward through the smoke and thunder of the artillery barrage.
The next defensive line awaited.
Shells screamed overhead to detonate in blossoms of superheated plasma, casting geysers of pulverized regolith skyward.
The entire battlefield had become a hell of intersecting fire—las-beams carved brilliant paths through the murk while bolt rounds fell like burning hail. Fighter craft screamed past overhead, their passage stirring the slowly drifting clouds of debris and vaporized stone.
At the spearhead of this mechanized apocalypse marched the Thunder Warriors, ten thousand strong in their bronze ceramite.
They were the crest of the Imperial wave, tearing through the gene-twisted abominations that defended Luna's surface and smashing the automated defenses that barred their path.
Here, in their final hour, the Thunder Warriors had cast off all restraint. The madness that consumed them in peace became their greatest weapon in war. They embraced the fury that was their birthright, channeling it into pure, directed violence.
Combat raged in brutal melees across the lunar surface. The Thunder Warriors fell upon the Gene Cults' defenders with primal savagery, overwhelming one fortified position after another through sheer, relentless aggression.
But when they reached the final defensive perimeter, the enemy revealed their most terrible creations.
These were horrors that could only have sprung from minds touched by madness—towering amalgamations of corrupt flesh and twisted machinery that defied both nature and the Omnissiah's sacred patterns.
They were living weapons, crafted by those who had surrendered their humanity in pursuit of transcendence.
It was here that Vaizula fell.
The massive creature's talons carved through his ceramite plate as if it were parchment, opening his torso from sternum to pelvis.
When Ushotan finally cut his way through the press of enemies, he found his lieutenant propped against a ruined wall, one hand pressed futilely against the grievous wound.
"Brother," Ushotan said, dropping to one knee beside the dying warrior.
Vaizula's eyes fluttered open, a ghost of his old defiance flickering there. "Apologies, my lord. It seems I must depart first."
He coughed, blood speckling his helm's vox-grille. "Tell me truly—did He ever care for us as more than tools? Or were we always simply instruments to be discarded when dulled?"
Ushotan found no words. The Emperor had fought beside them in the early campaigns, had spoken of the golden age that would follow Terra's unification. That same being now orchestrated their destruction with calculated precision.
"Perhaps... perhaps it matters not," Vaizula whispered, something approaching peace settling over his features. "We are what we were made to be."
His final breath rattled in his throat, and then First Captain Vaizula of the Thunder Warriors was still.
He had questioned the Emperor's loyalty and named His actions a betrayal. Yet in the end, he had died as he had lived—in service to the throne.
A bestial roar shattered the moment's quiet.
More of the Gene Cults' monstrosities emerged from concealment, their hybrid forms rippling with unnatural muscle and crackling energy fields. The surviving members of Ushotan's command squad formed a defensive circle, their weapons tracking the approaching threats.
Ushotan rose slowly, his power sword's energy field casting dancing shadows across his scarred plate. The burden of command weighed heavily upon him, yet he understood the mathematics of necessity that had doomed his Legion.
From a strategic perspective, the Emperor's decision was not merely wise—it was inevitable.
Understanding, however, did not ease the sting of abandonment.
"For unity!" he bellowed and threw himself into the fray with berserker fury.
His remaining warriors followed without hesitation, their war cries echoing across the battlefield as they met the enemy charge. The gene-horrors struck back with cybernetic claws and barbed appendages, their alien strength enhanced by dark technology.
One by one, Ushotan's guard fell. Each death carved another wound in his soul, yet still he fought on. When the last of his warriors collapsed, ichor streaming from a dozen wounds, only the First Captain remained standing.
His scaled cloak hung in tatters, his armor cracked and weeping coolant. The power field around his blade flickered intermittently, its machine-spirit dying along with its wielder.
The remaining monsters circled him like carrion birds—eight-legged horrors with arachnid grace, their carapaces gleaming with reinforced plating.
Clusters of crimson sensors tracked his every movement while razor-edged limbs that could cleave through tank armor flexed in anticipation.
"Come then, abominations!" Ushotan snarled. "Face This Son of Terra!"
As they leaped toward him, the last restraints on his sanity finally snapped.
The madness took him as it had taken so many of his brothers—a cascade of corrupted memories that transformed reality into a nightmare.
He was back on the Antarctic Plateau, atomic fire raining from a poisoned sky. He was climbing Mount Ararat's slopes, his fallen comrades raising the lightning banner as they cried out in unison for unity.
Past and present blurred together until only the warrior's instincts remained. His sword sang its death-song as it carved through chitinous armor and synthetic flesh, guided by reflexes honed across a hundred battlefields.
This was the Thunder Warriors' greatest flaw made manifest—the inability to distinguish between memory and reality that had claimed so many innocent lives. But here, surrounded only by enemies, Ushotan could unleash his fury without restraint.
When the last abomination's head struck the lunar dust, the First Captain swayed and collapsed to his knees. His armor was a ruin of cracked ceramite and exposed cabling, his life's blood pooling beneath him in crimson rivulets.
Even the finest chirurgeons of the Imperium could not have saved him now.
The thunder of engines announced new arrivals. Transport craft descended through Luna's thin atmosphere like metallic rain, their landing thrusters carving craters in the regolith. Boarding ramps hissed open in clouds of venting atmosphere.
Warriors in grey ceramite emerged with parade-ground precision, their movements synchronized to an inhuman degree. They stood silent in the swirling dust, like statues given dreadful life. Upon their breastplates was emblazoned the numeral "I," while their right pauldrons bore the winged sword of their nascent heraldry.
These were destruction given human form and armed with the finest weapons the Imperium could forge.
Ushotan raised his head to study these new warriors—the Emperor's perfected angels of death. They possessed the Thunder Warriors' stature but radiated a cold discipline that his own Legion had never achieved. Here were warriors built to last, crafted for the long campaigns that would carry the Imperial banner to the galaxy's edge.
A golden transport settled nearby with impossible grace. The Emperor Himself emerged from its passenger compartment, His presence seeming to still the very air. He approached the dying First Captain and placed one perfect hand upon a shattered pauldron.
"Do you truly care for us?" Ushotan managed, his voice barely above a whisper. "Or were we always simply tools in Your grand design?"
The Emperor's expression was unreadable. His gaze encompassed eternities of possible futures. When he spoke, His words carried the weight of absolute truth.
"You are heroes of humanity, not mere instruments. Yet you were forged for war, and there exists no path that leads you home again. To end as warriors—this is perhaps the most honorable fate available to you."
The Master of Mankind's voice softened slightly, taking on an almost paternal tone. "The Imperium shall remember your sacrifices always. Every citizen will know the Thunder Warriors' glory, and children yet unborn shall speak your names with reverence."
Hearing these words, something approaching peace settled over Ushotan's features. With his last breath, he spoke the oath that had defined his existence:
"For unity."
The Emperor stood in silent vigil for a long moment before addressing His entourage. "Gather their remains. When Luna falls, we shall raise a monument to their memory. The Imperium must never forget that the Thunder Warriors were humanity's first champions."
"At last a worthy end," the Raven observed from his perch upon the Emperor's shoulder, studying the still form of the fallen captain with the emotion of tears in his eyes.
"Better this than summary execution by firing squad."
The creature's otherworldly senses detected the flow of power that sustained his existence—the origin force that rewarded him for each change wrought upon destiny's web.
The Super God Universe had granted him strength, and now the altered fate of the Warhammer realm offered its own bounty.
The Emperor turned His attention to the Gene Cults' final stronghold. Automated turrets bristled along reinforced walls while energy shields shimmered with barely contained power.
Behind those defenses waited more of the twisted creatures that had claimed so many Thunder Warrior lives—an unbreakable fortress that had turned the Emperor's finest into broken corpses.
"Depart from Luna, you tyrant," came a woman's voice as a holographic projection materialized before the Imperial host. "Your reign of terror ends here."
The Gene Witch's image flickered with electromagnetic interference, her augmented features twisted by decades of surgical modification.
"Your resistance is futile," the Emperor replied with divine certainty. "Humanity's ascension cannot be stopped. Submit to Imperial rule, or face extinction."
"Arrogance blinds you, usurper," the witch snarled. "If you persist in this folly, your New Empire shall bleed its last upon Luna's stone. Activate the atmospheric processors—let winter fall."
Luna had been humanity's first extraterrestrial colony, its harsh environment tamed by vast terraforming engines. Those same machines that had once brought life to the barren moon now served as weapons in the Gene Cults' final gambit.
Energy beams lanced upward into Luna's thin atmosphere as the processors reversed their ancient function. The temperature plummeted within moments, and crystalline snow began to fall like ash from a funeral pyre.
"You have earned a singular honor," the Emperor said, catching a snowflake upon His palm and watching it sublimate in His radiance. "You shall witness their first true battle."
His golden eyes fixed upon the grey-armored warriors, and His voice carried across the battlefield with absolute authority.