By Official Remit of the Departmento Munitorum

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

"Ask not what the Emperor can do for you, but how best you may serve His undying Will."-Lord Commander Solar Macharius

+++ONE+++

The pounding of thousands of guns lined wheel to wheel made a sound that shattered the earth. Or so it seemed to Lieutenant Alex Folke, of the 312th Skanian Infantry Regiment. The artillery regiments behind his platoon were putting shell to gun as fast as possible, entirely dedicated on saving as many lives of their own infantry as they could. They would do this by the simple expedient of pounding the enemy front line for the next ten minutes, and then cease their barrage once the infantry went forward with bayonets fixed.

Folke had decided not to wear the gray great-coat issued to him upon his joining the regiment, and that was a decision he was regretting in the pre-dawn fog and cold, even for a Skanian, where winter in some areas lasted nine months of the year. The fog clung so thickly that he couldn't even see his breath misting.

His platoon sergeants were ensuring that the men were ready for the cessation of the artillery. He stood and shivered for a few minutes as they finished last minute equipment checks, tightening straps, loosening the daggers from home in their sheaths, ensuring their lasrifles were loaded with fresh magazines.

When they finished, Folke drew his officer's infantry saber and knelt in the snow before his men. They followed suit, gray tunics and pants looking like smudges of ash against the snow. Their faces were pale, and Folke knew his would be, as well.

"I had requested a chaplain attend us before we begin," he started in the Skanian war-cant, and then smiled. "Unfortunately for us, they're all busy elsewhere. I shall lead us in prayer, gentlemen." There was a quiet murmur of assent to this announcement, and Folke checked his watch. O435 hours. Almost time, then.

"Our Undying God-Emperor upon the Golden Throne upon most Holy Terra," Folke incanted. "Grant us that this day we might achieve victory over the heretic in Your name, Immortal Emperor, and that the men of Skania perform valiant and mighty deeds for You. We honor You, Emperor, who sacrificed Himself for the meanest of us men, and so we shall sacrifice ourselves for You if needs must. Praise the Emperor, and strike down His foes," he finished. His men chanted it with him, and they all stood. Emperor, grant that I lead most of them home, Folke added silently. He stood, then, and kept his sword loose. The platoon made the sign of the Aquila as one, and from their canteens, freshly filled, they all poured libations to the Emperor.

Folke did so as well, and then he checked his watch again. O438 hours. Two minutes. Soon, then. This was it. Emperor, preserve my men! In the distance, the guns began to fall silent, and the tank drivers gunned their idling engines to warm them up in the pre-dawn cold. The snow fell with a quiet vengeance, intent on blanketing this part of the planet, and Folke reached up to touch the small aquila and red metal leaf gifted to him by his sister,

The leaf was the symbol of the Blessed Saint Langley, the red-haired refugee girl-child from offworld, who had led the men of Skania to victory over a traitor warband ravaging their world. Then she'd led them to glory on a dozen worlds for a century afterwards, before giving her life to destroy a traitor Titan. Every home on Skania had a shrine to the Emperor and Saint Langley, and Folke's had been no different.

The silence fell heavily and eerily on the forest. He went to where the tree line thinned enough for the open farmland they were to march across could be seen. Snow had started to fall again, and it coated the shoulders of his tunic, hiding the rank insignia. He shook his head to displace the snow from his hair, and behind him, his men formed into line.

Their battalion was between two other Skanian battalions, even if they were from different regiments, and Folke's men, tribe-and-woodsmen from outside Skania's only hive, felt as if they had been returned to the sheltering arms of a brother.

"Fix bayonets," he ordered, and every man of his fifty-strong platoon obeyed. A ganger from the Stockarta hive, it pleased him to have the instant obedience and respect that it implied from his men.

Down the line, the order to advance came in the form of three sharp whistle blasts, and Folke lifted his sword up. "Advance!" He called, and began the slow, deliberate, measured march forward. He spared a final, silent prayer asking Saint Langley to keep most of his men alive and his sister, who should have been safely behind the lines five miles away, in good health.

Along the line, the infantry began moving forward. The first line, Folke knew, at two men deep, with a thousand men in a battalion, and thirty-seven battalions involved in the first line in the attack, would stretch over fourteen miles. Spaced behind the first infantry battalions would be the Hellhound light tanks, with their flamethrowers. Intended to leap ahead of the infantry and burn anything to death with their flamers, they would in turn be supported by Chimaera troop transports carrying the mechanized infantry, Tauros Venator variant light vehicles, and Leman Russ main battle tanks.

The world Folke was on was Corcusani. It lay Rimward in Segmentum Tempestus, not far from San Leor. The planet had risen in rebellion, declaring for the Tau Empire, taking two neighbors with it, and the Guard had responded with overwhelming force. Their corps had been diverted from the on-going Black Crusade to Corcusani, and now the infantrymen went forward with glinting steel on the tips of their lasrifles. The might of the Imperium knew no limitations in its wrath, save that Corcusani was a civilized world and the home of a combined commandery of several Adeptas Sororitas orders.

All that passed in Folke's mind in the brief instant he stood alone against the backdrop of the shadowed forest, and it felt like he was highlighted and the perfect target. He was. All along the opposing tree line twenty meters away, Folke could almost hear the small 'clicks' and 'snicks' of heavy stubbers being mated to pintle mounts and rounds being chambered, it was that quiet. Then the rest of the infantrymen stepped out of the trees behind their officers, and began making noise.

Some, like the 98th Lennach, with their swirling skirts instead of trousers or breeches, had their infernal warpipes to skirl and screech. Others, like the Sachsen Grenadiers, began chanting something in their war-cant. And the Skanians behind Folke, and to either side of his regiment, began singing the Emperor's Prayer in the Skanian war-cant.

Folke began singing with his men. It helped take his mind off the fear threatening to turn his guts to water and was currently shrinking his testicles into his stomach. Then there seemed to be a silent signal, and the enemy defensive line began firing. First he heard the chatter of the stubbers, the semi and automatic rifles issued to Planetary Defense Forces that were too poor to afford lasrifles, and then the roar of the heavy stubbers. He wanted to drop face first into the dirt churned up by the creeping artillery barrage, but instead he stayed standing.

He stayed at the front, advancing at the ordered slow march, sword held aloft. Why hadn't he been killed yet? He watched as a traitor on the trigger of a heavy stubber swiveled the mount in his direction. Time seemed to slow down, and Folke thought he felt the leaf or Aquila tingle against the skin of his chest beneath his shirt and tunic. The traitor had brown hair and a blonde beard, Folke saw. He thought that was odd, perhaps a sign of mutation, or merely parents with different colored hair. He heard the coughs that indicated lasrifle fire, and red lances began to hammer into the enemy line.

And then something punched him in the side with a huge roar, just his entire side, and Folke was toppled over. The sword stayed with him thanks only to the loop wrapped around his wrist and attached to the sword's hilt. A ringing went through his skull, and Folke wanted to curl up. Instead, he forced his head up through a supreme effort of will, gritting his teeth and swallowing back on the urge to cry. His head lifted, he swiveled it to look for what had knocked him over. He had no clue and saw nothing, but he would guess it had been an uncomfortably close artillery shell. Thirty meters away to his right, and down a line of bowled over infantrymen, the main gun on a Leman Russ was still smoking. Then the coax bolter and the commander's stubber added their din to the ringing in his ears, and Folke grimaced at the sheer stupidity of being knocked over by an artillery shell he'd never heard.

He got his arms beneath him, sword still dangling uselessly. He couldn't hear anything. He shook his head, heart pounding. If he couldn't hear, he couldn't command. If he couldn't command, he couldn't keep Elise safe. Get up, you hiver scum. It sounded like the voice of his recruiting and then training Sergeant, a huge, wicked man that had taken a perverse pleasure in the suffering of his recruits. But he'd never bent them more than they could snap back, never broken them permanently.

So now Folke blessed the name of Training Sergeant Cathurin, and drove himself up to his feet. Behind him, his men were doing the same, and so he turned back to the front, to the traitor PDF infantry that had declared for the greater good of the Tau. He took one step forward, then another. He heard only a ringing in his ears, but now the battlefield smelled like the ozone of thousands of lasrifles hammering at an enemy, of the cordite of the Leman Russ guns.

He drew his laspistol, a heavy model preferred by some cavalry units-he had traded for it with a week's worth of amasec rations to a trooper from the 87th Duchess Elizabeth Cuirassiers. Folke was hammered by another wave of sound, one he heard even through the ringing in his ears, and he realized the Leman Russ tanks were ripple firing now. Ripple firing meant they were taking turns by platoon, four tanks shooting their main guns to suppress the enemy heavy stubber and bolter nests, and their coaxial and pintle-mounted supplementary bolters and stubbers chattering the while.

Folke and his platoon were nine meters from the enemy line now, and by some unspoken signal, gaps opened in the Imperium's line through which the Hellhounds and Chimaeras came, engines roaring. Not willing to be out-done by mechanized infantry, Folke swore soundlessly and abandoned the disciplined march that might still have been blunted by carefully sighted enemy artillery or mortars. He bellowed a war cry in the Skanian war-cant and leapt forward. The last three meters seemed to fly under him, and if his men didn't come with him, then he would die a hero, at least.

There was a wall of sandbags on the top of the berm thrown up when they'd dug their trench just outside the tree line, behind which a stubber sat silent, the crew waiting for something, an order, perhaps. Folke's running start allowed him to jump onto the bags, where a bayonet jabbed at his vulnerable stomach. He batted it aside with his sword, blew the man's head off with his pistol, and then hacked halfway into another man's throat on the back-swing.

He jumped down into the trench, landing on a third man, knocking his cap off, and then Folke was into the stubber nest, roaring a wordless challenge. This was what the Administratum issued pay for. The trench was too tightly pressed for the enemy to use their bayonets or for Folke to use his sword, so he jammed it through the throat of the man he'd knocked down. Folke got his forearm up in time to block the downward thrust from a faceless enemy's bayonet. He jammed his pistol into the man's gut, pulled the trigger, and was rewarded with a gun butt across the back of his head. His world went white for a brief second, and he tried to slump to his knees, but was stopped by the press of the bodies. A hand on the webbing on his back grabbed him and lifted him up to standing. A wickedly long Skanian dagger came from beside Folke's head, stabbing into the eye of the man to Folke's right, and then the rest of the platoon were there, dropping into the trench with war cries and entreaties to the Emperor on their lips.

The Leman Russ' had fallen silent, and so Folke could hear, some. "Clear the bodies out," he ordered. First Squad set to tossing them over and behind the bags they'd come over, while Second and Third began digging with their E-tools, fortifying the now-front of the position. Fourth Squad began shifting the sandbags and heavy stubber, an ancient model reminiscent of the kind still used by the Skanian PDF forces that the 312th had trained with for the time before embarking on their troop ship.

In every direction, Folke could hear the chatter of bolter and heavy stubber fire, and the cough of lasrifles. Every thirty seconds or so, the report of a Leman Russ speaking its fury sounded, silencing all else for the brief milliseconds it echoed across the battlefield. "Vox!" Folke roared, and the vox operator came up. "Call Company HQ," he ordered, "report that we've taken our first objective and are fortifying it as a fall-back position in the event we're repulsed at our secondary objective." The vox operator went off, leaving Folke with the command section of his platoon.

He heard the skirl of the Lennacher war-pipes, and he wanted to laugh. He stood, because cowering behind a sandbag or behind a body never won a war, and watched as the 98th hit their target, half a klick away, with bayonets fixed and a paean to the Emperor on their lips. They washed over the enemy resistance like a snow-lion of Skania devouring one of the giant horned-horses after a bitter winter.

Beside him the platoon sergeant, his second came up. "What a sight," the tall man said. Going by the name of Theodorus, he wasn't a Skanian. Instead, Theodorus was a Troscan, one of the only survivors of the 87th Troscan Legionnaires and their bitter and hard-fought defense of the agri-world Fulkros.

"Aye," Folke said. "Have we received our next objective?" Miles away, a Baneblade, one of the precious few afforded to this Guard expedition, roared its fury and the earth shook beneath them. Theodorus nodded.

"Yes sir. We're to link up with the rest of the company and advance to assault the village of Beecher's Grove. Navy auspex scans indicate that there's a concentration of enemy force there, but not enough to pose a problem to a company of Guardsmen." The unspoken words were they're just PDF infantrymen, and no match for the men of the Emperor's hammer. Folke wanted to warn Theodorus for underestimating the locals, even if they were traitorous scum, but as the man was nearly a half-standard century older than him, felt it wasn't his place.

"Go ahead and rest!" Folke called to his platoon. "Is there any kind of timeline to it?" Theodorus shook his head, then shrugged.

"They just want us there in an hour." He handed a dataslate to Folke, with their route of march indicated. The village, which on the map seemed to be no larger than one grand house, and fifteen or so less grand family dwellings, was labelled 'Beecher's Grove.'

"I wonder who Beecher was," Folke murmured. The map, as laid out, said that they were only twenty minutes' march from the rally point to meet with the rest of the company, and that boded well, he decided. If the company or battalion had suffered undue casualties, they'd have already been ordered rotated back to the initial defensive line. "Ten minutes," he told Theodorus. "Then on their bloody feet and ready to go. We'll make it in fifteen minutes. We're not the God-Emperor's Light Infantry for no reason," he said with pride.

The Platoon Sergeant indicated his affirmative response and left Folke to stand and stare and think about the next fight. Whoever Beecher was, Folke hoped he wouldn't mind them rooting out the xeno-loving scum that had turned his namesake into a target worthy of the Guard's notice. Emperor and Saint, give me the strength to see my men through this, he prayed silently.