Anton looked upon the carnage on the street.
He felt nothing. As a space marine, he had fought many monsters before. And many monsters, draped in human skin. Both literally, and figuratively. Men who used human skin as vellum and parchment. Monsters who looked banal amongst mortals, only to do things like sacrifice children before their mothers. Even so, as he looked upon the street of this particular city, in this particular continent, on this lonely planet spinning around the sun, he felt a certain sense of... disquiet.
It wasn't just the chaos. It was the silence. No one was here. No one was fighting. All had fallen, to the twin ravages of Chaos and Evil.
The Lamenters had fought against the dread star locust with everything they had. Bolster, bolt pistol, blade. Plasma cannnon, autoguns, and lances. It was not enough. The Mater Lachrymarum and her support fleet, including 2 adeptus mechanicus forge ships and and a strike cruiser, had leapt into the immaterium to flee the abomination. Flying through the warp, it had stopped here for repairs, the astropaths and Librarians discovering that there was sentient life within this system. Currently, the Battle Barge and the rest of the ships were out amongst the system's asteroid fields and gas giants, straining and forging resources from the system's resources. But it was hard work. Immense damage had been done to the ships and personnel during the battle, both by bioplasma and organisms which had boarded the ships. The gellar field was shot. The armour, shattered into a thousand pieces in numerous places. The warp drive itself, ready to detonate into a warp chasm. Power and shield generators nearly fried. The chapter master's decree was simple. Get us to top shape, then continue the penitence crusade. Meanwhile, taking several escorts, the chapter's retinue of space marines and several imperial guard regiments they had saved had gone along with them, their commanders anxious to stretch their legs and hoping that doing something would distract them from the horrors of Leviathan.
In a way, it worked. The Librarians had claimed that there was sentient life on the world... yet, there were no wide-scale radio signals. No messages. In fact, steadily, the lights that appeared on the night side had slowly disappeared, while the tech priests discovered that the native noosphere was slowly dying down. Radio transmission, blinking off one by one. Then they landed near one of the cities, and discovered why.
A tide of rabid humans, chased after them, wearing skulls and other severed body parts, wielding weapons ranging from scrap metal to unloaded guns to bones. They screamed and whooped and cheered, as they charged at the formations of guardsmen marching out of the landers, their bodies barely covered in rags.
After several rounds of lasgun fire, they were all dead. Bodies, smoking with the impact of the las shots. The apocetharies and several genetors had taken samples, and vivisected a few more captured near the city. A virus, they said. Highly virulent. One which annihilated majority of higher brain functions, turning ordinary impulses inside out. Turning all who were infected, into sadomasochistic, maniacal, impulsive, insane, monsters. Not so different from the ordinary cultists serving the whims of Chaos. But far more virulent, they warned. Able to be transmitted by blood or saliva, with the virus itself being able to survive outside a body for several planetary rotations.
The planet itself had not survived it. Satellite and reconnaissance had come in, stating that no living civilisation was found near the city. Only maddened beasts, corpses, feral animals, and these... madmen. Nothing. There were, however, several indications of non-maddened life within the continent. Starting from the next city over. Nothing in this city, however.
Anton scowled within his helmet, and looked upon the attacker, lying face-up in the grass, face smiled in a giant grin, even as his lower torso had been torn apart by a bolter shell. Some thing about it repelled him. A man who had his core hollowed out and transformed into something as puerile as a cultist of chaos, torn apart by space marine weapons. And yet it still dared to smile.
Anton's hand twitched, and he fired his pistol. The rocket propelled grenade smashed into the man's face, marked by a pattern of lesions and scabs that resembled a cross, and detonated within the braincase, exploding the head, scattering bone fragments and viscera about the grassy knoll.
He turned away, back to the thunder hawk. Even now, members of the Death Korps of Krieg were marching, burning the bodies with flamers. Within an hour, the corpses would be naught it ash.
He marched forward. He had people to save.
Crossed X 40k.