What the fuck happened on Enlas Du?
"We shipped out as a demi-battalion of the 2/841st on a flight of Vain Glory assault carriers out of Ruby (1005 Jewell) en route to Zho-Space. Colonel Kugdaarshii was in command having taken over the battalion recently; he wanted to show us his metal. How Lt. Colonel Vikane felt was no one’s business but I bet it was not happy thoughts. They loaded us in and them some with my company, Epsilon, on the Vishna, in quadruple occupancy. We had Ansar IFVs for our planetary assault and a 50 ton troop transport for the support elements.
As luck would have it we appeared at Indo (0703 Cronos) early, before even our destroyer escorts and had a nervous wait till finally everyone assembled. I always hated the vagaries of jumps. On we went to our target of Enlas-du (0601 Cronos) where the Zho has some sort of religious cult that was not part of their Consulate, not that it stopped the Zho putting assets in the system. The followers of the Second way, we were told, were to be left well alone as they disliked their Zho cousins almost as much as we did. We arrived bang on mid arrival sequence with a nice screen of destroyers in system. They set off after the Zho ships and we had a leisurely clear run at the planet and the three Vain Glorys rode in together. The reassuring jolt as the Ansar dropped clear in to the upper atmosphere as we began dropping groundside. Fusion ortilley was hitting the Zho’s base nicely as we landed around the one major settlement. Zeta Company had hit the Zho base and was having all the fun till a unit of Z-80 Grav tanks turned up. Their Vain Glory closed in and took them out.
At the settlement the Zhos were all lined up chanting and waving as one. The voice in my head kept on calling me to join them and the Second Way; it sounded enticing. I liked the idea till Captain Lilli opened up with his FGMP-15 and the whole mood changed, and then we all opened up. Our fire was poor and wide of the mark, hitting ourselves as much as the chanting Zhos. Over the Zho base, a good 50 clicks away the Vain Glory dropped like a stone and hit the ground, Zhos and her marines with horrendous effect. The power plant must have gone off or melted down or something as the whole place went up.
We had been on a panty raid to gain intel; prisoners and computer hardware but with the base, and Zeta, gone!, Lt. Colonel Vikane called recall and we all fell back to our Ansars. Colonel Kugdaarshii was dead with everyone at the Zho base and the mission was a flop, an expensive flop with too many corpses for anyone’s comfort but it got worse. Our ship, the Vishna, was gone from one moment orbiting to the next nowhere. Delta Company rendezvoused with her ride, the Varyag, while we were stranded. ‘Them Bless’ Captain Gravely of the Varyag as she sent down her troop transport shuttle for us Epsilon grunts as soon as her own company was jammed in. We were dangerously overloaded with the best part of two companies on one Vain Glory but we all, somehow, fitted in. We all boosted at max acceleration to the jump point with the wounded auto-doced and others rushed in to cold sleep.
The jump was rough and even though we were only in J space for an alarmingly short two days we all got jump fever straight away. The way your skin can crawl your eyes weep and your head has that tight constricted feel around it. Then we crashed back in to normal space and found we were very lost. Off the charts was an understatement and we were not in any star system. We poor bastards in the shuttle were on fast to keep us sane and the systems less strained so I missed most of this but people were not happy. Captain Gravely detected a system just within range of our remaining fuel and went all ‘shit or bust’. Again 'Them' was with us and we entered a system with gas giants and an inhabited planet but it got weird. We were hailed by an Imperial destroyer, a Chryanthemum, and told that this was an Imperial world. The thing is that we were nowhere what so ever near the Imperium or even the Consulate but the Varyag smelt like a field latrine in high summer and our systems were failing. Captain Gravely talked with the other Imperials and we went in. The shuttle, which I was on Fast in was sent down to the planet.
They had a good reception committee waiting for us with a Marine Major and Navy medics on hand while a lone piper played “Red Sunbursts over the Border”. There were a good number of local indig personnel as well but the air tasted really clean and fresh. I remember lying on my back smelling like Vargr shit while the locals gave out clear cold water and fruit based snacks. I just laughed and cried for a bit.
We stayed on ‘shitbox island’ for a week while the local Imperials and our leaders met, talked and talked some more. Seems we were all marooned out a shit load of sectors spinward away from the Imperium, well off the map. Worse for us we had been in jump space for 2 days at first but it turned out it was really 20 years. We had left in 1110 IY and were now in 1130 IY and a long long way from home.
There was a small mixed squadron of Imperial ships but Varyag was the largest but they had got the local Vilani on board and we were very outnumbered. That said we had Marines and IFVs but that said they these marines all fatigued and in desperate need of rest. Unsurprisingly Lt. Colonel Vikane and Captain Gravely threw their hands in with them and let them pamper us to hell.
That is how I became Poldavian."
© Copyright Winwick Pig Publications 2024
