The hum of engines and the crack of flak was a sound all too familiar to any of the 12th. The combination of both dulled, but did not drown out, the roar of the conflict far below.

"All right troopers, the foot-sloggers have got themselves in a hole, charged and the orks have done a fine job of making them look 'right silly. We're going in to dig them out. Most of the regiment is going to deploy and cut 'in' to the trap, we are among the lucky few that are diving straight into the mess, reinforce the Endorans, questions?" Sergeant J Emanuel Tyrick was not a man of doubt or one who suffered it in others. He wouldn't allow any form of complaint as to the recklessness of their deployment, when he asked for questions, he meant exactly what he said and nothing more.

"Anything to get out of a box with a witch." Not all of their current squad had fought together long, the drop troops had a relatively high casualty rate in comparison to the length of time it took to train one, and so squads were reshuffled to move back to full strength rather than relying on a stream of recruits. Four of the 12 man squad currently housed with the Valkyrie were new, and formed their own little 'corner' of the transport. The comment was quite squarely directed at the currently silent figure at the far end of the hold, an empty seat between her and the rest of the squad, as the sergeant was standing to address them all. The figure was quite clearly, even under flak and the PT-38 jumpsuit, female, even if her facial features had been covered. With bleached white hair and the I of the ministorum marked across her cheek, she could almost have been an out-of-place sister of the Ordos, instead, the thin metal collar snaked around her neck marked her for that she was. Ariel's eyes turned to the speaker, and the trio that surrounded him, matching their hostile stares with her own cold eyes.

"You're new here Guardsmen Samuel, and maybe they don't teach damned respect in every squad in this regiment, but I had a 'slight' inclination they do, either way, you get one slide. Now if you speak out of turn, unwarranted, one more fucking time, I'll have you dropped right in a warbosses' damn stinking hut. Is that understood you piece of shit?" Tyrick's tirade was as much a response to the guardsmen contributing nothing in the way of a question as in defence of a member of his squad, but it was about as much as Ariel could hope for even from a man who, on a good day, she might consider a friend. Such was the fate of a psyker that even those who supported them had to do so in careful measures.

"Yes sir, sorry sir." The response was snapped back, disciplined, so not a complete waste of air.

"Very good, now, on your feet guardsmen, lets go save the day." With that the entire squad stood, the 'wings' of their grav-shutes unfurling as they did so, each firing off a test 'blast' from each wing thruster out of well trained habit.

"Fight!" The sergeant roared, before the squad, as a whole, chanted back.

"In his name."

"Kill!"

"In his name."

"Triumph!"

"In his name."

"Die!"

"In his name."

"Wonderful fucking day to save lives." With that, Sergeant Tyrick slammed his fist into the door release control, the hold of the Valkyrie opening up and the man himself disappearing in the next moment. The remainder of the squad dived in twos. It felt like an age before Ariel herself plummeted out, but in reality they were all gone within a pair of moments. The grav-shutes enabled them to descend at breakneck speeds, the fast moving, relatively tiny figures of descending guardsmen almost impossible to track for the orc anti-air response. In the reverse of the battlefields of old, the drop troopers were odds wise safer out of the transport than in.

From behind the helmet shield that prevented her eyes from being blasted back into her skull, Ariel watched the battle below, the sprawl of Vernum awash with the tide of battle. The scale of the conflict might have been enough to drive one not used to it insane. Hundreds of lives, alien and human, were being spent every moment, termites within the mound of the hive city. When her thoughts snapped back to her own private war, she had to adjust her flight path to avoid a barrage of flak that ripped apart two of her squad further ahead. The odds were one thing, but a guardsmen being caught in the line of fire would certainly have rather been in a Valkyrie.

A further eight seconds passed before she had to reverse the direction of her thrusters, slowing her fall from high enough that the velocity did not rip her body apart. Ten seconds later, she touched down, the survivors of her squad, the two losses being the only to account for, all landing within 20 meters. A perfect landing in the wrong place. Rather than land among the imperial troops they had been placed a little into Orkish lines, and so they came down guns blazing. Ariel snapped off a trio of perfectly placed las shots, downing a roaring ork as it neared them. Wordlessly, the squad began to form a circle, fending off the orcs that noticed they suddenly had a much closer target to hack. A temporary defence until they could find a path to reach the Endorans. The Elysian troops were a far more well-drilled regiment than most, shots being fired in careful bursts rather than sprays of las rounds, but even still, slowly being encircled by an increasing number of orks charging them through the rubble of the city, their firing was beginning to come at a more frantic pace.

The first orks began to reach uncomfortably close soon after, clambering over their fallen brethren with roaring glee. As a pair charged Ariel, she dropped her lasgun, instead pulling the long combat knife from her belt. One of the orks was a few steps ahead of the other, and she took its first blow, a wild swing of the axe, on the blade, the force shuddering through her causing her to hiss in pain. She pushed back, unbalancing it for the moment, before turning to the other, and opened her mind to the madness of the immaterium.

Bringing her hand down in an arc, a curved line of purple light scythed through the air, splitting the second ork in two before it could process the new threat. The guardsman beside her, one of the new additions, jumped out of his skin at the sight, mumbling off a furious curse and prayer, before his distraction was cut short when the first ork's axe became buried in his skull.

[i]Idiot[/i] Ariel thought, cursing both the now-dead squadmate, and, more inwardly, her self once again for what she was.

The remaining ork, eyes on the guardsman it had just slain, proved an easy finish, her blade buried in its neck before she lifed her lasgun from the ground. Her squad had bought themselves an opening, and so they were all running, to what remained of the embattled Endorans, just as the remainder of the Elysian squads jumping to this section of the fighting touched down among them, guns trained on the orcs. Soon, the remainder of the 12th and 13th Elysian drop regiments would deploy on the other side of the Orks ambushing the foot-sloggers, and be caught between the new arrivals and those they had previously entrapped.