"Old man, we've walked through a sea of bugs. You tell me, who are we supposed to be afraid of?"
They joked with their mouths, but their hands didn't slow. One by one they checked their weapons,
hooked into their visor feeds to pull down battlefield data, and finished their readiness checks.
Thunk.
The drop-pod slammed hard, clearly hitting ground.
With a hiss, the pressure valves vented steam and the hatch began to slowly open.
In a heartbeat, the roar of artillery, daemon shrieks, and the swelling hymn of the Savior flooded in.
"For the Savior!"
Old York roared and led his squad charging out.
His field of view exploded open. Above loomed rotten, upside-down mountains. In the distance, a black-and-red battlefield burned with constant detonations.
He could see clouds of black drones studded with crimson lenses and brutish, hate-filled machine-forms.
Long-range automated gun-servitors and servo-drones, tasked with handling the first waves and tearing apart the densest daemon swarms.
The ground trembled under his boots, a steady percussion.
That was the marching stride of Titan engines.
Every kilometer of the battlefield held at least one colossal Titan, dividing the front into segments and providing overwhelming fire support.
More importantly, every Titan's back carried a beacon-like device emitting a faint, holy glow.
That sanctified light washed over the front, somewhat dampening the influence of the warp energies.
And the hymn of the Savior poured from amplifiers mounted on those Titans.
Together, they bolstered the fighting spirit of every soldier.
In just this one square kilometer, countless Astartes and hundreds of armored squads were already engaged.
Guns thundered everywhere. Shrapnel rained. The Titans hammered distant daemon engines with ceaseless barrages.
"Heavy weapons!"
Old York roared over the squad channel.
Once they reached their assigned zone, he immediately ordered the squad into a fire-line.
He had already sighted a pack of Bloodhounds racing toward them, jaws slavering.
At his command, five troopers lugging heavy twin-linked bolters stepped forward.
They hefted their massive barrels and unleashed streams of fire like serpents. The onrushing Bloodhounds were caught head-on and shredded into meat paste by the bullet storm.
The rest of the squad also brought their weapons to bear on the enemy.
"Shields up! Load concussion grenades!"
They had barely cleared out the hounds and some scattered daemons when Old York spotted a traitor warrior and tagged him.
An Emperor's Children marine.
Thud, thud, thud.
The shield-bearing troopers had only just raised their barriers when the Emperor's Children's fire swept into them, pounding deep dents into the plates.
The immense kinetic force nearly drove the troopers back.
But a moment later, the squad replied in kind.
Concussion grenades and torrents of fire forced the traitor marine into a panicked retreat.
He was fast, but no man could cope with twenty streams of fire at once.
The concussion shells sapped his speed further.
A 25-man armored squad that coordinated properly could annihilate any ordinary Astartes.
Combat data showed that, at maximum performance, such a squad could hold off three Astartes at once.
Any higher than that and the squad would crumble quickly and be wiped out.
The Storm Army Group's solution was simply to send in more squads, using sheer numbers to offset the disparity in individual strength.
It wasn't long before the Emperor's Children marine was riddled with wounds, his movements sluggish.
At last, an armor-piercing sniper round ended him, followed by a fusion grenade to finish the job.
His corpse went up in searing flame, a grisly sight.
"Hahaha! Another bronze medal for our squad!"
Old York laughed over the comms, and the others joined him with hearty chuckles.
Suddenly, he paused as fresh orders came through, then barked a new command.
"Lads, shift five hundred meters to the flank, right now. We're clearing a lane for the Titan cluster to pass!"
He led the squad in a mad dash to the side.