The Valkyrie dropship shook like a leaf in the wind as it screeched through the torrent of acidic rain. The pilots were flying blind, relying entirely on spotty auspex readings to maintain formation and navigate. It was rough, but to the men and women of First Squad, Third Platoon, E Company, it was just the calm before the storm, something they had experienced many times before. The squad was crowded into the passenger compartment of the dropship, shoulder-to-shoulder. The only light came from a pair of dim red lamps on the rear wall of the cabin.

Sergeant Felder was positioned closest to the sealed ramp, his cybernetic arm gripping an overhead rail to keep himself steady, his lasgun strapped across his chest. He had fought through the entire Stiri campaign with first platoon until losing his arm to a heavy bolter round a few short weeks before redeployment. Rumor was that he wasn’t due to be medically cleared for duty for another few weeks and had excused himself from the medicae ward to participate in the drop. Whether or not he was truly fit for duty, it had stopped 1/3/E from getting assigned a non-com from the 103rd, and that wasn’t bad news.

The briefing hours earlier had been brief and straightforward: traitors had seized control of the hive and the 37th had been tasked with bringing down the Emperor’s fury upon them. E Company’s commanding officer, Captain Leo Tarilis, was not one for verbose speeches, he left that to the regimental confessors. 

E Company’s intended drop zone and objective was a two kilometre stretch of the Hive Primus’ Grand Processional. The Processional, as Captain Tarilis had explained, was a massive thoroughfare, 500 metres wide in most places, even wider in others, that stretched across the upper-hive and linked the major hive stacks together. The Grand Cathedral and the governor’s Imperial Palace sat along the rain-soaked cobblestones and crumbling statues of the Processional, overshadowed only by the noble houses and crumbling towers of the spire. The Processional was to be secured and held against counterattack until the bulk of the Regiment could be deployed along it by more conventional means. Intelligence reports suggested the upper levels were still in the hands of loyalist forces. Weather reports had suggested a smooth drop. That had proven dead wrong.

The pilot announced five minutes to the drop zone, his voice stripped of emotion by the crackling vox and just barely carrying over the roar of the craft’s engines. Only three had passed since the pilot had announced ten minutes.