Tenth Company's Righteous Victory

• Daniel Morgan, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2008

“Brother, fire that plasma cannon” Loken ordered. The battle-brother carrying the squad’s plasma cannon obeyed without hesitation. For a dazzling half-second, a twenty-metre ribbon of light linked the muzzle of his weapon to the auto-mortar, and then the device engulfed the facade of the palace in a roasting wash of yellow flame.
Dozens of enemy soldiers were cast down by the blast. Several were thrown up into the air, landing crumpled and boneless on the flight of steps. “Into them!” Jubal barked. Wildfire chipped and pattered off their armour. Loken felt the distant sting of it. Brother Calends stumbled and fell, but righted himself again, almost at once. Loken saw the enemy scatter away from their charge. He swung his bolter up. His weapon had a gash in the metal of the foregrip. He began to fire, not on burst, but on single shot, feeling the weapon buck and kick against his palms. Bolter rounds were explosive penetrators. The men he hit popped like blisters. Pink mist fumed from the corpses. It came off every ruptured figure as it fell.
“Tenth Company!” Loken shouted. “For the Warmaster!” “By the Emperor. The true Emperor.”
Reloading, Loken entered the palace through the induction gate, stepping over the tangled corpses of the enemy dead. The plaster facings of the inner walls had been cracked and blown down, and loose crumbs, like dry sand, crunched under his feet. The air was full of smoke, and his visor display kept jumping from one register to another as it attempted to compensate and get a clean reading.
He moved down the inner hall, hearing the echo of gunfire from deeper in the palace compound. The body of a brother lay slumped in a doorway to his left, the large, white-armoured corpse odd and out of place amongst the smaller enemy bodies. Marjex, one of the Legion’s apothecaries, was bending over him. He glanced up as Loken approached, and shook his head. “Who is it?” Loken asked. “Tibor, of Second Squad,” Marjex replied. Loken frowned as he saw the devastating head wound that had stopped Tibor. “The Emperor knows his name,” Loken said. Marjex nodded, and reached into his narthecium to get the reductor tool. He was about to remove Tibor’s precious gene-seed, so that it might be returned to the legions banks.
Loken then proceeded to the library where most of the enemy were hiding. He then entered the room and charged. Loken began to fire, and Vipus’s men did likewise. Raking the area ahead of him, splintering furniture, Loken hit something. He saw pink mist kiss the air, and something fell down with enough force to overturn a chair. Vipus scored a hit too, but not before Brother Tarregus had been struck with such power that his head was punched clean off his shoulders. “My brothers we must make a final charge” barked Loken. The Space Marines charged forward and set upon the enemy with righteous fury.
And that resulted in a one sided massacre and the traitors began a full retreat.