"Full Ecclesiarch! Read 'em and weep!"
The other four groaned, cursed, and muttered as Jones spread his hand onto the camp table.
"A pleasure doing business with you, ladies." Jones turned to O'Reilly buried, as usual, in the pages of a book. "How do you read all that anyway? It ain't even got pictures! You should get a real hobby like cards," he grinned deviously.
"Thanks, but my pay's bad enough without turning it over to you and your conveniently lucky cards."
"Convin...what's that supposed to...Hey! You accusing me of something, Books?" Jones rose menacingly from the table.
"Calm down, Jonesie, Calm down!" said Marsters, putting a hand on Jones' shoulder, "he didn't mean nothin' by it."
Jones shook off the hand, but sat back down. "Books ought a keep his damn mouth shut then."
"Maybe, but at least he's smart enough not to keep playing when you take everyone's money," Girafino growled tossing his own cards on the table, "I'm sick of this, when're we getting our orders?"
"Why are you in such a rush to get back to the front, anyway?"
"Because, if I don't get out of this camp soon, I'm going to end up like Wiznisky"
O'Reilly looked up. "What happened to Squeaker?"
Jones opened his mouth, but shut it when Griafino's hand cracked across the back of his head. "Swallowed a laspistol this morning." Griafino finished for him.
"Oh, damn."
"Listen up, girls." Jones jumped at the voice suddenly behind him. "Looks like Jones got his wish." Davidson, the last living member of the squad, waved a sheaf of paper. "We're marching out within the hour."
Marsters reached out for the papers. "Where're we going this time?"
"Hell everlasting, my lucky laddie. Straight from the Commissar's mouth, we're to join up with Baker Company. We're going to retake Sector 43, the Meat Grinder, and may the Emperor take mercy on our souls."
O'Reilly dropped his precious book in the mud. Marsters and Griafino stepped back as though to ward off an evil omen. Even Jones, ever eager to be in the thick of it, was taken aback. The Meat Grinder, they called it, because every squad, company, and battalion that entered that valley got chewed to bloody pieces. The Imperium lost control of the valley, officially designated as Sector 43 early in the war, and commissar after commissar spilled IG blood like water trying to take it back. And now, they were about to march right into the middle of it.
"I think Wiznisky got off easy," mumbled Jones, but there was no humor left in his voice. There was no humor in any of their voices. Not now, and likely not ever again. There's not much place for laughter on the road to hell.
Like men with a death sentence, which in fact they felt they were, they made ready their gear and waited for the order to move out. An hour passed, and then another. As the day passed from morning to afternoon, they were amazed to discover that even though their deaths were all but assured, they were impatient to get on with it.
Shortly before lunch mess call, platoon sergeant McKennin entered the squad area and looked at them quizzically. "Going somewhere? I don't remember signing any liberty chits." Sgt. McKennin had a sense of humor that was completely unappreciated by the rest of the platoon. He ignored, as he always did, the rude comments and the physically impossible suggestions that always followed his jokes. "Anyway, stand down. The attack has been cancelled for today. There's been some sort of shake up in the high command and we go in tomorrow instead."
"Typical." Muttered Jones, as he started to strip off his combat gear. "At least we can get back to the game after chow."
Griafino snorted, "What good are a few more credits going to do you? There's no way to spend it between now and tomorrow."
"Yeah, but I'll die richer than you and I'll enjoy winning it. That's something at least."
Griafino started to say something but changed his mind. After a short pause he said, "You may be right, that is something at least." He grinned, "And I'm going to make it as hard for you as I can. That's something at least too."
O'Reilly finished stowing his gear and picked his book up from the ground. "Maybe there's time to finish this. That's something."
Marsters grinned, getting into the spirit of the thing. "I think I'll have extra helpings at all the next meals. Let's see how fat I can get by the time we attack. Now that would be something."
"You're all idiots." Davidson said from his bunk. "I'm going to do something that is actually worth doing. I'm going to find the Commissar and see if I can get him to tell me what is going on."
It was after evening mess when Davidson came back to the squad area. He appeared troubled, even more so than when he brought the news that they were being sent into the meat grinder. He quietly walked over to his bunk and sat down. Without preamble, he said; "They're gone." And didn't say anything more.
No one wanted to be the first to ask, but O'Reilly broke the silence, "Would you care to provide a few more details? Like, who is gone and why should we care?"
"The Commissars, they're all gone. There is not a Commissar in the entire battalion.
The news cheered everyone except O'Reilly. "You're not thinking this through people. Things like this don't just happen. Somebody had a good reason to order it and I can't convince myself it was done for our benefit."
Marsters spoke up; "That's right. They think Commissars are more valuable than us!"
"Don't be an idiot," Jones growled, they've never held back on sending Commissars into the meat grinder before and they've died just like the rest of us." They argued for quite a while longer but no one could come up with a reasonable explanation for the Commissars being withdrawn. By the time Lights out was sounded the only thing they all agreed on was that they might as well get a good nights sleep before they got themselves killed in the 'grinder'.
Word had been passed to the cooks about where they were heading and a better than usual breakfast was laid out for the battalion. Few even noticed it. Transport was waiting and they arrived at the trenches at the mouth of the valley just before dawn.
When they unloaded from the trucks, they discovered engineers hard at work, setting explosives. No one wanted to get into the trenches. When the engineers were questioned about what they were doing the only answer they gave was that they were under orders not to talk about it. Several fights nearly broke out before Lt. Simmons arrived to see what the disturbance was all about.
Lt. Simmons sought out the officer in charge of the demolition team and had a brief, but heated conversation. Jones and the rest of his squad were close enough to overhear what he said to Sgt. McKennin. "Unless what he said is a total load of groxshit, high command is so sure this attack is going to be 'the big one' and succeed; they are going to blow up the trenches because they won't be needed any more."
"Wouldn't it make more sense to just use bulldozers to fill them in? Why blow them up?"
"Sergeant, you just used the word 'sense' in connection to high command."
"Sorry sir, it won't happen again."
"It's OK, personally I agree with you. However, it's not something we can argue about. Whatever their reasons, this is the way they want it, so this is the way it will be. The demo officer and I were very clear on one thing though. If those charges go off early and I survive, I will personally hunt him down and kill him. Anyway, get the men in and wait for the jump off signal. The prelim bombardment will start soon."
No sooner than the words were out of his mouth, than there came the screaming freight train sound of large shells passing overhead. All up and down the line, without having to be prompted, men quickly overcame their reluctance to get into the trenches. All along the mouth of the valley, explosions erupted as the heavy shells impacted with the ground. Soon, there was nothing to be seen except a wall of smoke, dirt, and flashing explosions.
Sooner than anyone expected, the signal came to prepare for the assault. O'Reilly looked at the Lieutenant in amazement. "He can't be serious. That isn't half the prep bombardment needed for an attack like this." But the Lieutenant was serious and five minutes later the whistles were blown and the assault was started.
They hadn't covered even a fifth of the distance to the enemy positions when the barrage lifted. Jones cursed viciously and growled to Marsters, "They stopped the damn barrage too soon! The damn rebels will be back in their positions before we get half way there!"
"Tell me something I don't already know!"
True to his prediction, heavy stubbers, autocannons, and heavy bolters opened up on them as they crossed the mid way point from the enemy positions. The fire tore into the advancing guardsmen killing many on the opening volley. After that, it was just slaughter. The range was still too long for lasguns and the attacking troops desperately tried to close the range so that they could shoot back. Heavy weapons from the attackers would set up and try to cover the advancing infantry but it was a doomed effort. Any heavy weapon that started firing found itself the target of concentrated fire from the rebels and quickly silenced.
The attack was getting bogged down. Griafino took cover behind the low stump of a tree and looked around for Davidson and found him laying on the edge of a shell hole a few meters away. He didn't appear to have any wounds, but his total stillness and unblinking eyes left little doubt that he was dead. Marsters ran up towards him, intent on sharing his scant cover. He never made it. Just short of Griafino, a heavy stubber stitched a pair of holes in his chest and catapulted him backward. Griafino looked around some more and realized that the attack had been stopped dead. He immediately wished he thought of another way to describe it.
Through the din of the battlefield, Griafino heard the lieutenant give three sharp blasts on his whistle and shout, "Fall back!"
Griafino couldn't believe his ears. Going back was as bad as going forward with the Commissars ready to,,, his train of thought stopped cold. There were NO Commissars! They could fall back without having to worry about being shot in the back of the head. Elated at the prospect of actually surviving the battle, he got to his feet and began vigorously obeying the lieutenant's order. He ran for about 10 yards before a heavy bolter round caught him squarely in the back of the head and left his decapitated corpse sprawled in the dirt.
Elsewhere, others were having more luck. Jones and O'Reilly made it back to the trenches and tumbled gratefully over the edge. They were just picking themselves up when an officer they didn't recognize shouted at them to keep moving if they didn't want to die where they were. He didn't stop to see if he was obeyed or not, but kept yelling the same thing to anyone that entered his section of the trench.
Jones and O'Reilly gave each other a puzzled look and by silent agreement, agreed that any order that took them further away from the rebels was a good one. Jones had already cleared the trench wall when O'Reilly looked back over his shoulder to the rebel positions across the battlefield. Jones tuned back to see why O'Reilly was swearing so much. It wasn't hard to figure out. The rebels were not content to just stop the Imperial attack, but were launching a counter attack. And there were a lot of rebels. Hundreds of infantry and quite a few vehicles were pouring from the valley mouth and heading straight for the Imperial trenches. It was obvious that the tattered remnants of the assault battalion were not enough to stop them.
Jones extended his hand down to O'Reilly, "Come on. We've been ordered back and I don't feel like arguing with officers today." He helped O'Reilly up the ladder and the two of them quickly set off away from the trench toward the low hills about a mile and a half away. All along the trench line it was the same. Singly and in small groups the survivors of the assault were making for the hills. They headed to the gap between two hills and were almost to it when a Commissar stepped out from behind a boulder. "Halt!"
Jones stopped so suddenly that O'Reilly nearly ran into him. "Damn" he muttered, "It looks like we're going to get shot anyway."
However, instead of drawing a weapon, the Commissar pointed to the back side of the hill they were going around and told them, "Get over there. Keep inside the markers and if you have earplugs, put them in."
Shocked, they stumbled to obey but received an even greater shock when they rounded the hill. Out of view from the other side was an entire column of vehicles. They seemed to be set up in platoons of five. Three chimeras, a Leman Russ, and a hellhound made up each platoon. Because of the hills, it was impossible to say how many platoons were there, but O'Reilly suspected it was at least a regiment. They scrambled up the back of the hill and sat down wearily in a space that had been marked off with stakes. O'Reilly could see that the backs of several hills had been set up with similar marked off areas and all of them were filling up with the scattered remnants of the battalion.
O'Reilly was still studying one of the emblems on a chimera, trying to figure out what regiment it was, when Jones tapped him on the shoulder. "Hey Books, what was all that groxshit about earplugs?" As if to answer his question, there was a deafening blast from the other side of the hill. They scrambled up to the top of the hill and looked back toward the trenches. Or rather, where the trenches were. The trenches were obscured behind a slowly rising wall of dirt and dust. Heavier bits of debris were already falling back to the ground and even at this distance it was easy to tell much it was bodies.
Jones turned to speak to O'Reilly but anything he might have wanted to say was cut short by the shriek of a low flying flight of Lightning fighters heavily loaded down with Hellstrike missiles. With one pass, the Hellstrike missiles turn most of the rebel vehicles to burning wrecks. With a second pass, everything larger than a jeep was reduced to twisted, burning metal.
The rebels were streaming back towards the valley in full retreat when the next wave of aircraft hit them. Marauder bombers ambled low over the battlefield, dropping canisters at regular intervals. Where ever the canisters hit, great sheets of flame spread out from the point of impact. By the time they were done with their run, the entire battlefield from the trenches to the mouth of the valley was a sea of flames.
O'Reilly doubted that there were enough live rebels left fill out a platoon. He was about to say as much to Jones when he was cut off by the roar of the mechanized regiment revving the engines of their vehicles and starting off. He nodded to himself as the platoons formed up and charged across the ground to assault the valley. It was defiantly an entire regiment. In the sudden quiet, he was surprised to discover how much his ears were ringing. He shouted to Jones, "Do you still want me to explain about the earplugs!" Jones didn't say anything, but instead made a rude gesture.
O'Reilly sat down exhaustedly on the hilltop and waited for his ears to stop ringing. The ringing was fading when he sat up straight. "That's it! It all makes sense now!"
Jones looked at him puzzled, "What makes sense now?"
O'Reilly started to chuckle, "All of it. No Commissars. Our attack was meant to fail. We were bait to lure the rebels out of the valley and into our trenches so we could blow them up."
O'Reilly began to laugh louder now and it was beginning to annoy Jones. "What the hell is so damn funny about us being used for bait and getting slaughtered?"
Between gasps for breath, O'Reilly spat out; "No Commissars. We were supposed to break and run. We had to run when we were supposed to. If we had Commissars with us, we wouldn't have fallen back. Can you imagine Commissars calling a retreat!"