As we descended the Thunderhawk shook with the turbulence of irregular currents generated by the furnace stacks beneath us.
The rebellion on Eimiaj IV was in full swing when we received the distress call. Inquisitor Egrog had identified where the center of the cult activity he was investigating was but his Deathwatch team and he were pinned down and barely holding their own against an onslaught of monsters.
It was lucky we were nearby.
The Star Sovereign had dropped out of the warp for refueling and was more than half way from the Mandelian Point when we received the call.
My squad was dropping into the thick of things to cut the heart out of the rebellion and Reuben's squad was going to pull Egrog's fat out of the fire.
Small arms fire greeted the Thunderhawk as it got low enough, something glanced off the hull that must have come from a grenade launcher.
As we jumped out of the rear hatch the jet wash scoured our armour in the seconds before the Thunderhawk was in the air again. We advanced firing.
We could just see the cultists doing whatever weird ritual that we needed to stop for whatever reason.
Some of them were already moving towards where the Thunderhawk had dropped us off.
Ortiz and Sanchez opened fire on one of the squads quickly scattering a large section of the thermo-stack they were using for cover with a dark, thick substance.
I moved up on the right of our line with Colon and Ortega.
Through the heat haze in the air I could just make out the enemy coming to stop us. They appeared human from a great distance but it did not take long to see that their gait, bulk and appendages did not match up with type.
It was not important, we were not here to categorize them just slay them.
As we opened fire the enemy in the open were ripped into chunks of flesh and the remainder took cover in a shattered building.
Just then the first quake hit and we were surprised by the seismic activity. I voxed to the Captain about it and he said he had just received word from Egrog about the area we were in being unstable from over mining.
It worked to our advantage as parts of the shattered building came down on top of our opponents.
After the brief shaking stopped we opened fire on the rubble again and then started to advance. Something huge had been lurking behind the building but I wasn't able to see it now.
I signaled for Ortega and Colon to slow down and it was the only thing that saved us as five monstrosities fell upon them, bursting up through the quake damaged ground.
My men behaved manfully in their defense and I rushed up and cut the biggest monster apart with my chainsword.
Ortega had taken a few hits from the beasts that staggered him but Colon was finishing his opponent off and rushed over to help.
He yanked one of the monsters off of Ortega but then another quake hit and we were thrown off of our feet. I recovered first and from my back I fired my bolt pistol into the monstrosities that beset us. They were blasted to pieces in moments.
Just as Ortega was getting up a huge piece of the building behind us came crashing down on him, smashing him to the ground and mangling his power pack. Colon wasted two seconds making sure that he was alive and stable before we left him trapped. There was no time now to liberate him. We had to stop the ritual and hoped that we would draw the attention of any of the defenders to ourselves.
More enemy lay in our path. They opened fire at Colon, their rounds ricocheting harmlessly off his ceramite armour.
The reverse could not be said to be true and very shortly chunks of the enemy littered the ground or fell through the cracks in it to the dark depths below.
As the enemy paused at the carnage we had wrought among them we charged, Colon was in first and quickly smashed two of them to the ground.
I left him behind and continued to advance towards the ritual. I could see that Ortiz and Sanchez were almost there and Nunez was already firing on the cultists changing their writhing in pleasure to writhing in pain and quickly not writhing at all.
Ortiz and Sanchez added their bolter fire to the staccato of death and soon the enemy ritual was silenced.
I didn't know if we had stopped them in time, all around us the enemy lay dead but it had cost us. One of my men lay dead before me, two others were badly wounded and one fell into a crevice and was in need of rescue.
promised pictures!
