'There is only War' is a fairly common statement from the lips of an imperial space marine, but for the Aleran Legion - that saying came home to roost. It’s been almost forty years since I've found enough time to sit in the quiet, and reflect on my thoughts in this journal. And yet, while forty years have passed for me, four hundred have passed for the universe at large.
I suppose I should start at the beginning, as it were.
Alera Prime was a fine world. One of six in the subsector our chapter called home, and the site of the Legion's fortress monastery. We were a fine order, serving our place beside our Codex Astarte's brethren, pitting our might against that of a galaxy that was set to see humanity destroyed. Subsector Alera had not seen a true battle for more than nine hundred years. Every fifty or so, one of its worlds would give up it’s due to the Imperial Guard, and we pulled out initiates off of the hardest two planets population.
It was on such a year that the Warp opened its great maw, and decided to try to swallow the subsector whole.
I can tell you that I have lived for more than five standard lifetimes - and I have never seen such a calamity as what befell the sub-sector. I've seen worlds stolen by the warp. Ships lost, then found hundred or more years later, adrift with arcane terrors in their hold, just waiting for a salvage vessel to pounce on.
And none of it compares to the horrors that descended upon us.
Daemon, Traitor Marines, and worse trod the great worlds of this subsector, and reduced them to lifeless husks of themselves. Not even Tyranids are so complete as this. For forty years the near full might of the Aleran Legion held onto its home world, the world that gave it its name, as the other five worlds crumbled and fell. Beside us a newly formed Regiment of Imperial guard fought like lions, for men so young.
It was a losing war, and every one of the brothers and sisters in that battle knew it - but we would not bow to the Gods of the Warp. In the very end, we had been reduced to but a handful. The remnants of the Chapter re-organized behind the banner of the First Company, holding the walls of our last bastion, the Fortress Monastery herself, as terrors that would shred the mind of a neophyte brother Marine on any world threw themselves against our defenses. With us stood the last remaining men and women of that ill-fated Imperial guard regiment, and every civilian and serf we had managed to save.
Together they hardly number a Battalion, and the fighting men and women of the Guard, were organized down to two company strength.
It was our last hour. The end of the Legion. As was proper, our Chapter Master Gaius Septimus held the outer wall. When the time came to fall back to the inner perimeter, he stood alone, allowing his Marine's to get their foot hold behind him before he would give ground.
It was his finest hour. Hundreds fell at his feet.
But all great men eventually fall.
And as he fell back, the storm bolters mounted on the backs of his terminator armour power fists spat death, and finally clicked dry, a moment before he would have activated his personal teleporter – still functional, at least within the walls of the monastery a terrible psyblast sliced through his armour and fell him.
Before Octavian, the longtime Captain of the First Company could react, his vanguard veterans leapt from their post, and with their jump packs running on the last remaining refined promethium we had available, slammed headlong into the oncoming wave, and for a moment, it faltered. It was enough, and Octavian gave the order to concentrate on the center. Five Thunderfire cannons, overseen by the last of our Tech Marines, and every heavy bolter we still possessed and could find ammo for rained holy death on those monstrosity’s at the gate, and cut a hole for those valiant Brothers.
Of the ten, five lost their lives on that field, but they reached their objective, and together on their Sergeants order, managed to jump as one, bringing the certainly lifeless body of our Chapter Master back to his line, where at least he might lay with his brothers.
At least, that was what we all believed.
But Septimus would not go quietly into the night, and to our Apothecary’s surprise, his body still held life, and the stubbornness that had seen this chapter through its darkest time had not abated in his near death state. Despite the Chief Apothecary’s suggestion that he allow himself to be brought within for treatment, Septimus stayed on the walls, allowing only the most necessary of treatment as he and
Octavian conducted our final stand.
Within twenty minutes of their heroic jump, the Thunderfire cannons fell silent, and soon behind them, the heavy bolters. The last of our bolter ammunition was passed out, and the remaining Guard, refreshed their lasguns with the last of their own dwindling supply of functional power packs.
We would fight to the last.
And as the horde howled, knowing their hour was near, the sky – which for what was now time immemorial had been the eye wrenching, mind destroying kaleidoscope of the warp, was ripped asunder, as if the heavens themselves had opened above us, in a blinding flash.
It was somewhat more mundane then that, however - just the earsplitting crash and mind numbing thump of an orbital bombardment, brought in danger close. But I still believe it was the Emperors own hand that finally slammed the door on the warp storm that had engulfed our subsector, and guided the Wrath of the Legionnaire through the maelstrom in our final hour.
The bombardment lasted for an hour, as fresh troops - or at least, fresh to us - four squads that had been out on antipiracy duty when the warpstorm had first swallowed the sector, fell to terra firma in
drop pods. They brought much needed ammunition, and most importantly hope.
Despite his protests, Septimus, now in grave condition was pulled off the inner wall, as Octavian saw to what was now a holding action. Even with the storm gone, Alera was lost. The land had been completely corrupted, and the survivors would not number enough to take it back, even without the warp's influence and re-enforcement. Our only option was to take to space aboard the Wrath, and her few surviving escorts, bringing our most precious relics and the contents of the Gene seed vault with us.
It took just over five days to finish the lift, and as the last of us filed aboard the last Thunderhawk, Octavian stood before the gangway, looking out one last time on Alera. Twenty minutes after our departure, the massive fusion plants buried beneath for fortress would overload, and take it, and the surrounding area for fifty miles with it.
There would be nothing to come back to.
But on that gangway the Heir Apparent to the Chapter swore that before he drew his last breath, the Legion would return, and scour clean every last one of their worlds of the filth that infested them – and deny the enemy his prize.
They were bold words.
We may yet come to rue their utterance. But they have given us a purpose. We must leave, so that we may become whole. Heal the chapter so that we might wage a holy war for that which was stolen.
They are barren horrible wastelands now - and there is little left to reclaim. But sometimes, honor demands of us the insane. And we must defend that honor to the last.
As we departed, the astropaths and navigators came to a revelation. Based on stellar drift, over four hundred years have passed for the Galaxy at large as we battled the horrors of the warp.
There were two companies off world when the Warp Storm hit, one serving near the Eye of Terror, another was in the Calaxian subsector, assisting with an Orc Uprising. There is every chance they finished their assignments and upon hearing of the warpstorm in their home sector returned with all haste, and flew their company fleets into the maelstrom, in an effort to bring some relief.
Or, they may have wisely stayed clear. We have no way to know... but the Callaxian subsector will be our first stop. It is just over a month, estimated by Warp... while I - and more than likely every member of this Chapter, and our dependents are not particularly in a hurry to step back into that particular maelstrom - the Emperor delivered us once, I do not think he will abandon us now.
But I have dallied enough for one evening. There is work to be done.
-Excerpt from the journal of Veteran Scout Sergeant Liam Jeckt, Tenth Company, Aleran Legion
