Your chatter carries on for the fleeting moments of peace you can eke out despite the never-ending assault on the senses that are the engines. The cramped interior allows no favour in allowing you to see the world outside its confines, yet those with a window view will see this almost unmistakable sight. The aircraft had diverted course. No longer did you set course to the designated drop zone and the relative safety that an established foothold held for you all. Instead, you were to be diverted to the thickest of fighting, where Imperial Soldiers were barely hanging on despite near suicidal levels of aggression from those who sought to slay them. The ship lurched, almost seemingly as though it knew only too well what would happen when diving into this, last, perhaps greatest of hells.
An ear-splitting crackle echoed about the dimly lit aircraft as the pilot gave you his solemn words. His voice was heavy with distortion, your emotional well-being is of little concern after all. He spoke relatively softly, as though he almost wept for you and your imminent demise. “Sorry boys, new orders. We're being diverted off to Aether Station... Command says to, expect a warm welcome...” You could almost feel the despair the man emanated from his very soul, as though he could stand to not lose a single more of his brothers in arms, he soon shut off the vox systems though unbeknownst to you he truly did weep for you.
As the pilot speaks, the reek of blood permeates the air with its sickeningly sweet stench of iron, as you are reminded ever more of the fate of the last team to be sent out in this vessel. Their grisly end that has been a rallying point for the guardsmen, or so the uncaring officers would want you to think. The stench is so overwhelming, that it would seem almost as though a force beyond humanity is making it's sweetness wish ever more to breach into your nostrils and force you into the same fate as those before you.
The banking and rolling of the aircraft was extremely noticeable, as all you who were not strapped into your seats would most certainly be tossed about lightly by the sheer speed of the transport. From the soot-marked windows, you soon see that no other aircraft has been diverted. Whether through command failure or outright abysmal luck, you were more or less alone with only those bedraggled guardsmen on the ground to support you...even though you were to support them.
The situation had been dire in that district, even since the times before the war. Constant ganger attacks, murderous mutant infestations and a plague of xenos that abducted those poorest of humans, for them to never return. Some say that to dwell within such a miserable place changes a person, warps them in ways no man should ever bear witness to, turning once good people into twisted, craven souls who only lust for blood and vengeance gains those who seek to wrong them, or those who lord above them in the upper hives, those who care for nothing while the common man gets nothing but a pittance and dogged loyalty to all those who seek to berate and lower him even further, debasing them as humans, turning them into nothing more than trained animals.
A streak of light. A plume of soot-laced smoke. Manic laughter. Those are all the things that you would hear, were you not encased in the walls of the Valkyrie. An immense force rocked the transport, buckling the metal and causing rivets to squeal in abject protest at this abuse. The entire hull on the starboard side had been torn asunder by the lucky shot of a single Heretic missile launcher. In his desperation, you hear the vox on-board crackle into life and the pilot's voice echo coldly. No longer does he whimper. His soul has been steeled. He has come to embrace his death, but not yours. “We are hit. Worry not. This ship will land...you have my word.” His word seems lacking, however, or maybe the Emperor has turned his gaze from you and your craft as the thing begins to lose all directional control and being its hellish decent into the ground...
Those guardsmen in your craft, those poor miserable wretches. Some hug each other with a terror born only if the purest of fears. Some of them weep uncontrollably, babbling away the names of their most cherished in this world while clutching a small locket with the image of a smiling child upon it. You see one man, his eyes cold and hardened against the worst of this world, you see him calmly drawn his own sidearm and shoot himself. Not flinching in the least as he did so. He gives no words nor reasoning, yet his solution shall be the least painful of them all...He slumps to the ground, making even those hardiest of souls give in.
His lifeless corpse hit the grating of the floor with a dull thud, as the sack of flesh were now devoid of its mental master and sought almost to rebel against the life it once knew. Those guardsmen around the corpse simply stared at the thing like it was utterly alien. That a man could lose all hope so quickly and so easily end himself... The dead man's eyes were fully open to the world around him, one last visage as he slipped into the embrace of his demise.
The nauseating, delirious spinning mounts and worsens with each rotation, each movement of this damned aircraft bringing your soul that much closer to sitting beside the Emperor, or perhaps damning you all to an eternity of misery....Some of you undoubtedly have your fears. Some of you will react with decided difference in all actions of the world. But all humanity reacts the same to a crash of this sorts and sheer magnitude. With the shrieking of several banshees, the craft crashes in a wrecked pile of twisted metal and broken bodies. Yet, the most peculiar have occurred. You live. Each of your, even the weakest physically survived, but, why? Perhaps fate has something planned for you? Or maybe a dark lord creates the hands of fate that guide you all.
Whichever the circumstances, here you stand. Bruised, cut, perhaps scarred and scared beyond all sense. You see the mangled remains of fellow guardsmen. Them, not you, you see the same man who weakly held onto his locket during the time of crisis. He was staring wide-eyed at the sky, his legs missing and his body trapped. He bears marks of blood across his face, with a smooth layer of the scarlet vitae coating his armour. He is truly dead, yet even he held onto his hope, will you, however?
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Winstanly was most pleased by the company about himself. They seemed like the most pleasant of sorts, though some seemed decided backwards, and there was indeed some that commanded him to be even the slightest bit worried about them, not as soldiers but as actual people. He looked on with almost passive yet sorrowful intent at the commissar. A broken man perhaps, Winstanley had heard much about the commissars on this world, but never so much as this. He eyed the scholar, or that is what the Stormtrooper so deemed of him, with a mixture of passiveness and utter laughter. “This is a war my boy, not a place for those who fear the very sight of blood as much as to make themselves wretch.” He gave a short, scathing laugh afterwards, looking back at the Valhallan medic that sat beside him. “A proper fighting gentlemen if nothing else I do see!” He spoke aloud, a smile decorating his face, splitting it from side to side. Composing himself, he brought himself to stare into the very soul of the former penal legionnaire, checking him for even the slightest bit of disloyalty that may compromise the entire squad. He found none, yet he gave only a rough nod to the man and his blade.
“I dare say that we are in quite the state, it would seem as such anyway. No doubt you all, know, how to perform your duties to the Emperor and to the Imperial Guard as a whole.” You could very well make out at least a slight undertone of sarcasm to his voice, the smallest bit of biting dryness that burned, masked ever by a smile and cheerful expression.
Brushing aside a layer of dust that formed over his pauldron, Winstanley leaned inwards to hear fully what the pilot had to say. He was not dismayed by the tone of the man, for him to show weakness was an exceedingly bad example for the rest of the squad, though anyone with a brain cell will know too well that their mission zone was in complete disarray and falling on all sides. “It is with valour that we carry out the Emperor's will” he mumbled, eyeing up the state of the other guardsmen of little note. They seemed normal at best, incompetent at worst. Only time would tell.
He was, however, not one of those to be sat by a window, and was completely blind to the disaster which struck them seemingly without any sorts of warning. He flinched and moved in complete shock to the impact, though he did manage to place the man next to him in front of the blast, perhaps ungentlemanly, but he was a savage anyway. Winstanley was at a loss for word or reason, however, he knew too well that this had occurred before, but never like this. He managed to bellow out some seemingly random encouragement. “Stand fast! The enemy assails us yet the armies of humanity stand firm!” While in his mind the words were heroic and awe-inspiring, they actually came out as seemingly weak and lacklustre.
“Damnit, just brace yourselves you-...” Despite all his training, all his courage, he was not prepared to see the sight before himself as a guardsman simply shot himself without a care. He watched in silent horror, completely dumbfounded despite the horror of the situation at large. He stared, unblinking for several moments before moving back into action and actually preparing for any sorts of impact... “Emperor guide us!”
Winstanley awoke amongst the severed limbs of a gunnery sergeant, a brute of a man who was now missing all his limbs and spraying blood while screaming into the heavens such was his pain. Standing above the man, he calmly shot him several times in the head with his las pistol before moving to assist his fellows. Though the only real words were a grim, damning verse. "What in the bloody hell just happened?!"
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