Drogant Kjarrick had been born amongst the Caucus Wastes on Terra as the Unification Wars had drawn to a close. For some reason, the Emperor had always had a certain fondness for the peoples who had inhabited the Caucasus Wastes. As one of the Old Hundred, the Geno Five Two Chiliad, who principally recruited Hetmen from the Caucasus Waste's many lesser military formations, had done the Emperor great service in the Unification Wars and won many honors.
In one of those honour ceremonies, the Emperor of Mankind spoke of the resiliency of the people of the Caucus Wastes for surviving in the radiation-blasted wastelands where humanity's first civilizations had arisen nearly thirty-six millennia before. In his speech, the Emperor eloquently described how he viewed this place as the distillation of the indomitable human spirit. Even amongst the shattered remnants of mankind's zenith, men and women still strived to build for themselves a better life.
It was this speech that had driven Drogant to train incessantly from the age of seven until he ran away at the age of sixteen to join the Imperial Auxilia.
The Old Hundred were not units that would take fresh recruits anymore by the time Drogant was set to join the Great Crusade. They had become the ultimate baseline human soldiers. Only the Legiones Astartes surpassed the Old Hundred in prestige and lethality. Thus, Drogant was assigned to the 44th Terrawatt Cohort, known by the moniker of Selenic Ash Dragons.
This unit consisted of volunteers and conscripts from the Terrawatt clans and from the disparate clans of Luna. This unit was created to use the technical expertise and void adaptation of their recruits to create a force of expendable shock troops that specialized in capturing intact shipyards and void facilities. It was made clear to the men and women of the Ash Dragons that their lives were worth far less than the facilities they were tasked with capturing. These facilities, in the control of the other human polities inside the Sol System, were the cradles that would give birth to the mighty war fleets the Emperor needed to begin his Great Crusade.
Much as he disliked being treated as expendable, Drogant had the endless confidence of youth and the fire of true belief in the Emperor's cause. It was with gusto that he deployed to Tharsis Station in orbit between two of Saturn's rings with his squad, Omega squad. The star forts of Saturn had been created during the Dark Age of Technology, as a defensive barrier to protect the inner system and control traffic in the system of humanity's birth. The clans of Saturn had stubbornly held onto their star forts and space stations throughout the Age of Strife, which most humans called Old Night. The long years had seen much of the defensive bulwark reduced in scope as the clans of Saturn struggled to both maintain their redoubts and provide sustenance for themselves. This bred a hearty breed of Saturnine warriors that maintained their weapons and stations in the way their ancestors had for generations. The nervous tension was palpable in the cabin of the assault shuttle carrying Kjarrick and his squad to Tharsis station.
"Alright, boys and girls, it's time to cut your teeth. Sound off after performing last-minute gear checks," said Sergeant Tundr, the squad leader and former miner from Olympus Mons on Mars. He performed last-minute checks on all of the connections between his arc-shotgun and it's backpack power source.
"Check," said Halvek, a former slag pit operator from the Terrawatt clans, who had joined the Ash Dragons for the chance to change his miserable existence. He was a big man who checked the seals of the ill-fitting void armor he had been issued. They didn't make many sets for a man his size, so he got stuck with the only one that would fit. He checked that his boarding shotgun was cycling properly.
"Check," rasped Jast, a former arms runner of the rad-wastes that had joined the Ash Dragons to pay off the debt he owed the Terrawatt clans for his artificial lung. He lost the original to cancer from the dust of the rad-wastes in which he had plied his former trade. He checked the modular long–las he had been issued was transitioning between long-las form, for overwatch, to carbine form, for close quarters, without issue. It wasn't always necessary to have long-range fire support in the frenetic, close quarters of space station assaults, but when it was necessary, it was often the difference between a squad's survival and death. Jast had the best aim of Omega squad, hence why he filled the designated marksman role, and he hadn't been stingy in helping his other squad members. He had often taken Drogant to the shooting range to refine his shooting form.
"Check," croaked Silma Yorr, a member of one of the last techno-barbarian tribes to surrender to the Emperor, as she checked the exact type and placement of her grenades on her void suit's webbing. Her childhood had left her ritually scarred along her jawline and with an augmetic spine. This made her the ideal grenadier from Omega squad, as her augmetic spine allowed her to deal with an unwieldy pack of explosives like it was nothing. She didn't say much. Her pale blond buzzcut and marble white skin gave off the sense that she was a ghost that hadn't gotten the message that she was already dead.
"Check," murmured Kaedra Venn, a quiet woman of small stature who appeared inconspicuous, but was as rock solid as they came. She had been in the same intake batch as Kjarrick. Once he'd gotten over a stupid little crush on her, he had been astounded by her tenacity. She'd carried men far larger than her to safety in casualty drills. She'd never broken down in the face of instructors, no matter how hard they pushed, and she'd never shown one iota of frustration or doubt. She was as relentless as a machine and as precise. She had formed a good door-kicking duo with Kjarrick in close-quarter battle training. Her precision matched with his dynamism.
"Check" said Kjarrick. He reopened the firing chamber of his standard las gun. Though his had clearly been modified with carving into the wooden furniture and a shortening of the barrel. It vaguely gave the impression of the short barreled rifles and submachine guns popular in Terra's ancient past. It felt like a weapon born for the brutal-minded — built to collapse the breath between seeing a threat and ending it, as if hesitation itself were a weakness to be killed.
The klaxon started to wail at the front of the assault shuttle's cradle.
"To crash positions!" shouted Sergeant Tundr as he strapped himself into his crash restraints. Each squad member strapped themselves into a five point restraint harness. They felt the assault shuttle's retro thrusters kick on at full burn to rapidly decelerate as they came into Tharsis Station. The mechanical whine vibrated through the frame of the ship as the squad members felt themselves being crushed by the G-forces. Struggling to maintain consciousness as their blood sluggishly pumped throughout their bodies. There was a moment that seemed to stretch as the dark walls were closing in on Drogant's vision as he fought to stay awake. Then there was an almighty crash as thunder seemed to rebound throughout the cabin.
BANG