He stared at that bullet for a long time. He pictured in his mind its deadly cycle of existence: the round cycling into the chamber, the firing pin striking the primer, the shell case ejecting as the bullet sped down the barrel, the bullet exiting the muzzle, tearing a hole in his skull and exploding out the other side. Yes, he pondered that bullet for a long time.
Corporal Dorin Beck, late of His Most Holy Majesty's Glorious Imperial Guard, picked up the small stub round and placed it back in his desk drawer next to its deadly parent, his old eight millimeter service pistol. The light of the morning spilled in through the slats of his room's window blinds, bathing Dorin in its warmth. But in spite of the sunlight and the smoldering cup of recaf Dorin held in his hand, he felt anything but warmth. Placing the mug on his desk, the soldier fumbled amongst its clutter for another bac stick, rasing it to his lips as he lit it and continued to stare the at wall.
Beck was not an especially tall man, built light but lean with muscle, just barely into his twenty second year. His ginger red hair had just began to grow out in defiance of his closely cropped regulation haircut. Stripped to the waist and slouched forward in his desk chair, he let the smoke from his bac stick play through the sunlight as he continued to mumble to himself. They had left him behind.
He had seen barely nineteen summers when his Regiment was called up. The 29th Silcean Infantry, the 39th regiment founded on his homeworld, was levied in answer to the call of the Lord Solar himself. The great General Macharius, his Crusade to expand the borders of the Imperium growing ever vaster, needed troops, and the Autocrats of Silcea were happy to oblige. Dorin still remembered that wonderful day, the Day of Founding. How proud he felt standing on the parade field in his grey fatigues and green steel helmet, his lasrifle on his shoulder. The rush of a thousand different emotions as he marched up the boarding ramp of the transport ship with thousands of others; their polished boots ringing as one on the steel, the banners of his regiment and homeworld fluttering in the lukewarm summer breeze, the melody the massed bands played with an air so powerful one's heart would leap at the sound of it! Such days, such heady days; what he would give for just a taste of that feeling again.
It had been a thousand battlefields and a thousand dead since that day so long ago. Bauhaus, Derna, Adrantis Five, a few of many names etched into his memory. Not all of those names were planets. The names of men, and later women, he had come to trust and treasure. Many of those names were stamped onto the steel tags he kept on a beaded chain that now dangled from his desk lamp. Names he had loved; names he had buried.
Rising slowly from his seat, Dorin Beck crushed out his bac stick in its ashtray and dressed. The soldier of the Emperor now worked in the steel plant three blocks away, and he was late. His foreman would really be pissed this time.
***
Beck's boots fell heavy and fast on the cobblestone street as he walked with rapid pace. The fresh morning air was a relief from the stuffy confines of his multi story hab unit, but it still carried the taint of the manufactories that drove this city's existence. Still, this world wasn't as pretty when he arrived on it eight months ago, along with two hundred and fifty million other Guardsmen.
He had to give the locals credit; they put up a hard fight, not that he could blame them. If somebody just showed up in orbit around Silcea demanding total surrender, Dorin was sure they would have fought just as hard. But armoured cars and autorifles were no match for battlecruisers and lasguns. A few weeks of trench warfare and street fighting and it was over; another easy victory for the Lord Solar. But for 2nd squad, 6th platoon, 5th company of the 29th Silcean Infantry, there was no easy victory. Dorin was the temporary sergeant of a squad that no longer existed. All but two had been killed in the month long fight for this worthless world. He remembered sitting on steps of a hab in the capitol, watching the triumphal parade of honour guards from the participating regiments. He took pause from his bac and a flask of saramec as the 29th's regimental colours passed by, rendering a salute with his trembling right hand, a single tear streaming down his dirt covered face. It would be one of the last times he would ever see that banner again.
Dorin Beck snapped back into the present, nearly running into the cart of a street vendor in the process. Beck gave his pardon and moved on, but the vendor replied only with a look of disdain that continued to burn into Beck's back as he walked down the street. They hated him, and others like him. In the months after the invasion, many regiments mustered out their crippled, old, and infirmed to take up settlement on this newly conquered Imperial world. Dorin Beck was one of those men. They sighted "battle fatigue" as their excuse; apparently Corporal Beck was starting to lose it. He admitted he was never quite the same after the Siege of Charnel IV, when the 29th went bayonet to bayonet with the forces of Chaos itself. But Beck was still convinced the discharge was a load of shit. Just another excuse to roll together a few companies and trim the fat to make the Munitorum bean counters happy. A blessing from the Emperor they called it. Hah! Mustered out by an ungrateful bureaucracy onto a world full of people that hated his guts, and his regiment, the only family he had, moved on without him. Emerging again from the memories of the recent past, Beck refocused on the immediate present; namely if he would still have a job when he reached the steel mill. He quickened his pace again.
***
The flask of saramec slammed onto the faux wooden desk with a thud. He had been fired. Beck had been ten minutes late for his shift for the third time this week, and that bastard of a foreman exploded. He had Beck thrown out of that plant on the spot, without severance pay. Now the old soldier was back at his hab desk, drowning himself in the alcohol he had purchased on the walk back from the plant with the last of his wages.
The sun had long since set, the only illumination in the small hab room coming from the desk lamp, its light glinting off the collection of dog tags dangling from its angled neck. The air was thick with bac smoke. Dorin Beck was again seated in his desk chair, staring at the wall. The desk was clear of its usual clutter. In its place were old papers, lithographs, medals; tokens of another life. Faces captured in brief moments of happiness and relief in a galaxy that knew only war. Dorin had ceased to look at them. Where the liths had shown smiles, he could only remember screaming. Broken, shattered human beings, plastered in their own blood; screaming for their mothers or the Emperor's mercy. He remembered holding Corelli as he died, remembered Vistula's face as the top half of his skull was splattered across a wall. He remembered poor young Anothello when a mortar round blew him to pieces, covering Beck in his gore. He could still see it, smell it, hear it all: the lasfire, the cordite, the smell of ozone and the sick odor of burning human flesh. The screeching rumble of tank tracks, the distant thunder of artillery. Then he remembered the bullet in his desk drawer.
He carefully set that last eight millimeter round into the well of the magazine, slapping the mag home into the grip of the pistol. Dorin Beck stood up, wracking the slide of his sidearm. He had nothing. He'd left his family behind on Silcea four years ago to chase dreams of glory across the stars. In those four years, he seen more death and misery than he could recount and lost most of his friends in the process. The regiment he had loved so dearly had abandoned him on a world that didn't care if he lived or died. Now, he couldn't even hold down a factory job. He had nothing. He would not be missed. Dorin lifted the pistol to his head, flicked off the safety, and closed his eyes. For one long moment, he breathed. He squeezed the trigger.
Nothing. Nothing but the click of the hammer falling, striking the firing pin against the primer of a cartridge that refused to fire. Dorin's eyes shot open, and for a moment, he simply stood there, paralyzed. With a cry equal parts rage and misery, he threw the pistol against the hab wall, and collapsed to his knees. For the first time in a long time, Corporal Dorin Beck, Warrior of the Emperor, cried.