It Wasn't Fair
It wasn't fair.
He had wanted to be a techpriest. He used to spend hours tinkering away in the barn, taking apart the tractor's engine and putting it back together (mostly). He was always fascinated by how you could put together pieces of metal and wire and make something that moved and worked. He wondered if that was what it felt like to be a god, and always listened intently when the local techpriest would talk about the blessings of the Omnissiah, even when everyone else dismissed him as a nutjob. Then the PDF draft came through.
He stood over two meters tall and his shoulders were nearly that broad. When the wolves came prowling for livestock, he could shoot more dead than anyone else in town, even Old Marcus, who used to be a soldier. His name was practically at the top of the drafting list. It wasn't fair. He had never asked to be big and strong, to be good with a las-rifle. For a while he had wondered if the God-Emperor was punishing him for thinking about making machines being like a god, but the techpriests did that all the time. They weren't considered heretics, so it had to be okay, right?
He learned to live with it, though. The training was hard, but he got through it easier than many in his platoon. After that his job was pretty easy, just standing ready at one base or the other, ready to spring into action if rebellion or heresy started up. He got plenty of leave, and all the folks back home were willing to buy a drink for a proper soldier. Then the Orks came.
His home world, Venrick 8, wasn't the biggest planet in the system. It wasn't the most populated. It wasn't the richest. It didn't have the most natural resources. And yet the Orks chose to invade them. It wasn't fair. His training had been for fighting heretics and insurgents, not monsters that could take a las-bolt to the face and keep coming, or could swing an axe that weighed more than he did like it was baton. Most of his platoon died in the first few days and at least three were eaten.
But he survived. They learned how to fight back against the Orks. Don't engage them head on. Attack from hiding, lead them into traps. Don't waste time with single shots, pour on the fire. If you think you brought one down, shoot it several more times to be sure. Flamers work well for finishing them off, but if you try to drop a healthy one with it you'll probably just be beaten to death by flaming fists. Keep in constant communication with your comrades, coordinate your attacks to hit them from all sides at once. By the time the Guard had arrived, he had gotten pretty good at killing Orks.
The Guard had taken heavy losses retaking the planetary capital, losses they needed to recoup before they shipped out to the next warzone. And lucky for them there was a supply of skilled soldiers who had proved they could handle themselves. It wasn't fair. He had just been trying to stay alive, to hurt the xenos that had invaded his home. And for that, he was being shipped out on a warship, never to see that home again, being bounced from war to war until he died.
He got used to the life after a while. A guardsman's job was pretty simple; you stand your ground, shoot until everything else is dead, and don't piss off the commissar. And whatever else, it wasn't boring. His regiment fought heretics and traitors, and even some Traitor Marines. They hunted Eldar rangers through shadowy woods, repelled boarding parties of their twisted kin, and fought even more Orks. They stopped the Tau from seducing a world to their treacherous ideals and slaughtered the fools who thought they should submit to the xeno scum.
He lived through things that would kill most people. They did kill most people. He didn't know why it was that he survived when the others around him dropped like flies. He wasn't the fastest or the smartest or even the strongest, but he kept on living even when everyone else died. It wasn't fair. Donny always won at dice, but he wasn't lucky enough to avoid having a heretic shell hit his foxhole. Jake was the best shot in the regiment, but the Tau sniper that took his head off was better. Wes had a better grasp of tactics than most of the officers, but it didn't save him from the Eldar witch that could see the future.
He kept rising higher in the ranks, often by virtue of all his superiors being dead. From basic grunt to sergeant, from sergeant to lieutenant via a battlefield promotion that he got because someone had to be in command with all the COs dead. And so on it went, higher and higher up the chain of command. He never did like all the promotions. He always felt there was someone better suited, more deserving, but they gave the ranks to him anyway. By the time he made major he stopped complaining, and by the time he made general he had stopped caring.
He sat in his office, staring at the star map as if that would change what was written there. As if, if he looked hard enough, those contact markers would go away. He reached for the bottle he kept in his bottom drawer. An Ork fleet was inching closer and closer to this sector, but they wouldn't be here for at least a few years, and there was too much demand for his troops elsewhere for them to just sit around waiting. He looked down at the sheet in front of him, sighed, and signed. As he sent off the request for a PDF draft, he mused, once again, that it just wasn't fair.