A message sent from just outside Carthage
The moral of the cadian 13th is low, casualties were incredibly bad this weekend. Sergeant 'guts' laforge has given us all permission to send a message out while we're in transit to a our next battle, he said something about us needing to cleanse some forests of demos elves or something. We are ready for anything now. The fighting here has been tough.
Your cousin Horton who had just transferred to our squad fell yesterday to a disease, I thought you deserved to know what happened. Although we are the elite soldiers equipped and armed with the best technologies cadia can offer, even that did not stop the plague of typhus.
It was night, We were in our fox holes, dug in with barely any cover, ordered to hold a road against an advancing horde of green skins. Commander Antilles had decided that we would be the bait, he'd deployed snipers and heavy weapons teams on our flanks hidden in the buildings either side of the road, I could hear the sound of Davy Crockets engine rumbling not far away. When he'd heard that we were to be the frontline he had demanded he be stationed with us arguing that he could buy us time when we needed to fall back, the bull had agreed reluctantly, he wanted the tank In a higher position with a better firing ark, but seeing the fire in Crockets eye The Lord commisar knew he'd have to shoot the tank commander to change his mind and that was simply not an option anymore, although I'm sure that if we had a few more leman russ commanders at our disposal then the bull would find a way to make an example of Davy. So the bull let us have the tank for the good of our moral, the righteous prick.
This was our second night in our pits, ten kasrkin and a tank, bloody hell I still didn't find our chances of survival that appealing, though guts kept reminding us that we were the best of the best. Horton was on comms and it was him who picked up the transmission,
"d'artagnon to command I've spotted Orc trucks advancing 10 clicks out from our line. Numbers to vast to count, will keep you updated"
"Recieved" came the reply from Antilles, "Laforge be ready, you are the emporers shield, so hold the fucking line".
Guts grabbed the vox handset off Horton "We'll do our jobs, kasrkin out"
Guts didn't give us any orders, he never did before a battle, each of us had our orders and he accepted that we each knew what we were doing and were always ready to perform. I could hear the bull further down the road though, shouting and pumping up the regular infantry posted around the commander, the blob and the command squads were being held back to defend the civilian leaders of the city and there aristocrat friends. They were the last line of defence the city had before it was officially taken by this mob of green freaks.
30 minutes passed before we saw the first orcs down the road. They looked insane, blitzing down the road in these old broken vehicles at insane speeds firing there weapons in our direction even though they were no where near in range. They must have got all excited at the site of davy's russ sitting there waiting to be 'kaboomed'. It was just before the orcs were in range that all hell broke loose. And I mean that in as literal a way as possible.
Antilles' voice came over the vox he sounded frantic the sounds of gunfire in the background and that a could now hear not even over the vox. "Laforge pull back now! Reinforcements needed here immediately, get to my position now! Bring the tank!"
Guts looked up at us "pull back now"
Crocket had already started reversing back when suddenly a missile flew from no where and detonated on his side armour! Gun shots were peppering around us and explosive volleys of missiles and grenades were going off all around us.
"Covering fire, the orcs are in range controlled bursts" I shouted
Guts turned to me "this isn't Orc fire! This is betrayal!"
An explosion went off directly in front of me and I was blown from my feet. I opened my eyes and as my blurred vision cleared I could see grenades, missiles and heavy artillery fire coming from the buildings around us, my ears were ringing, I couldn't think straight, Arms pulled me to my feet, Horton pushed me forward shouting something I could barely hear, guts was crouched behind him screaming into the vox hand set attached to Hortons back.
"Get behind the tank" Horton was shouting
The russ was still moving, it's turret pivoting round to the buildings and opening fire on where our heavy weapons units were hidden in dark windows. There was sniper fire whizzing over head and I noticed that we weren't the only focus of fire, the units in the buildings were shooting at each other as well obviously not all of them had betrayed us.
Betrayal...
Why? Why was this happening? I pushed the questions from my mind and focused on surviving. There were four of us left. Sheltering under the back of Crockets slow moving tank, every now and again we'd pop shots up at the buildings but there wasn't much we could hope to achieve and so guts ordered us to conserve out laser packs.
In all the madness I saw a glimpse of someone moving through the buildings on our left, a greeney grey shape in a doorway for a split second, it was madness. No one was still living in these buildings.
This all left my mind as I turned and to my horror I saw the the orcs were on us...
