"Hold your positions! Send these treacherous bastards to hell!"
Company Captain Zask's roar echoed beneath the shadows of Saar City's twisted spires and through the thunder of artillery, like the defiant bellow of a dying beast.
When Saolis and his dozen or so surviving grey-armoured warriors followed the distinctive Ancient Dreadnought through the final blockade and staggered into the shattered fortress, they were greeted not only by a scattering of weary, bloodshot gazes, but also by Zask's brisk orders to reorganize.
A dozen Space Marines were no more than a drop in the ocean for a city teetering on the brink amid a storm of steel and flesh.
But now, one more Bolter, one more Space Marine, meant one more chance to hold on.
The grey-white figures were swiftly assigned to critical gaps throughout the defensive lines, like a handful of sturdy rivets hammered into a steel plate about to snap.
"Enemy armour! They're coming through the eastern breach!"
Major General Doram's voice had grown hoarse. He clutched a Plasma Gun taken from a fallen Astra Militarum officer, its barrel already overheating, as he crouched behind a low wall with half of it blasted away.
Bolts and heavy bolter rounds hammered the ruined walls behind him like hail, throwing up countless chips of stone and clouds of dust. They pinned him and the half-squad remaining beside him so firmly behind cover that even raising his head to look had become a luxury.
His regiment, that proud infantry regiment once at full strength, had been reduced to the fifty faces around him, smeared with soot and blood, etched with despair and a final, desperate madness.
Fifty men defended a district that should have required an entire regiment.
Not far from him stood another group of silent warriors.
Their uniforms differed from