"Lord-colonel!"
The honorific echoed around the vast cathedral, banging off the ribbed arches and chiseled figures of saints emerging from the surrounding pillars, yanking Lementa's attention away from the golden idol of the Emperor on the pedestal before him. He turned to see Kissov standing next to the pew, the young man's face twisted in a visible effort to contain some vital information.
"What?" he asked.
"The Orks, sir." The junior lieutenant seemed to deflate as he got the words out. "They've hit the Argnos defense line."
Lementa swore on reflex, at the same time realizing that it was bound to happen. "How bad is it?"
Sixty-Seven Miles Away
An Ork roared in delight as it cracked a screaming Guardsman's head open with its makeshift axe. The alien then bashed the corpse again and again, ejecting more blood into the air. Dimitri sighted on the distracted Ork and shot it in the eye, sizzling its brain with a superheated beam of red.
All along the primary trench, Orks were brawling with Guardsmen chopper-to-bayonet and stubber-to-lasrifle in a brutal and disorganized melee. It had been just ten minutes since Lieutenant Rakatev gave the order to open fire on the unsuspecting Ork formation, and already the battle had turned to chaos.
Dimitri was with Rakatev and his vox-man now, holding their ground in the HQ hard point. The soldiers around him were firing into the Orks, each shot being swallowed up by the bubbling green mass that flowed across the floor of the trench on either side of them.
Rakatev revved his chainsword and buried it in the face of an Ork that rushed their position, at the same time shouting over the roar of battle, ordering the rest of the company to repel the attack. "We've got to get more firepower on these greenskins!" Rakatev threw a glance back to his vox-man. "Lang, are those Basilisks ready yet?"
"Yes Lieutenant!" the corporal replied.
Rakatev pulled his chainsword from the mushed remains below him and gestured up to the eastern part of the trench. "Tell them to fire for effect there, on hard point sierra."
"But sir, that's Sergeant Sakarov's position!" Lang protested, "What if he hasn't made it out yet?"
"Sakarov's dead! Hard point sierra belongs to the Orks!" Rakatev shouted, "Now, call in the bombardment!"
Lang only dallied a second before complying. As the vox-man called in the coordinates, Rakatev turned to Dimitri. "Private, where in the Warp is that Confederate friend of yours?"
As if on cue, Jax pulled himself free of the melee right in front of them. His armor was spattered with gore, and as he got to his feet he paused to turn and spray the aliens behind him with spikes. The barrage of steel scythed down two square yards of Orks, punching them into the dirt and pinning their broken bodies in unnatural positions.
Jax turned from the carnage, the barrel of his Impaler smoking, and favored the Guardsmen with a casual salute. "What's goin' on?"
A little over a mile away, the Basilisk shells hit their mark in a thunderclap of force, throwing half a ton of churned mud, broken alien bodies and screaming Guardsmen into the air.
Cathedral of the Emperor's Divinity
"Not well, sir," Kissov admitted, "Initial estimates from the St. Timov's orbital pict-recorders place enemy disposition at 6-to-1 in favor of the enemy."
Lementa nodded, already crunching numbers in his head. "Is Lieutenant Rakatev still alive?"
"Yes sir. He's transmitting now, asking for reinforcements." The tactical analyst hesitated. "Sir, should we move the armored company from its position around Utnos Hive to assist them?"
"No," Lementa said, "If we move the tanks, it leaves our flank wide open, and that's just what Narkull wants from us. That's why the attack came at Argnos: it's just a diversion." The colonel stood, feeling his knee joints pop after an hour of inactivity. "Have Commissar Yanavich reinforce them with the new blood."
Kissov, to his credit, managed to keep the stutter from his voice. "The Scum Squads, sir?" he asked, using the regimental slang term for the newly-recruited Guardsmen of Dancer VI's hive cities, "With all due respect, sir, I don't believe they're well-disciplined enough to-"
"They can shoot straight," Lementa said, cutting the younger man off, "and so long as Yanavich is there to inspire them, they'll be more than a match for those Orks. Send the order."
The Confederate
Chapter 4: Stuck in With the Boyz
Two Weeks Ago
Dimitri stopped just outside fifth company's HQ, little more than a sand-bagged nest in the trench complex, and snapped off a textbook salute. "Private Dimitri Vlasna, Lieutenant, reporting as ordered."
"Right, at ease," the Lieutenant replied absently. Like the rest of his command staff, he was clearly finding it hard to take his eyes off of the white armored giant that stood behind Dimitri. "Who are you?"
"Sergeant Fred Jax, Confederate Alpha Squadron," the friendly hulk held out his hand, "Good to meetcha, Lieutenant…um…"
"Rakatev," explained the officer as he hesitantly shook Jax's vice clamp of a hand, "Alpha Squadron, huh? Is that a local enforcer group?"
"Nah," Jax said, going with the trouble-avoiding cover story Dimitri had told him to use. "It's more like a freelance kind of thing."
In Dimitri's experience, the Guard was much more ready to accept mercenaries into their ranks in times of trouble than any other kind of outsider. If they were to explain in detail to this Lieutenant how Jax had appeared in Emperor Square, both of them would have probably been shot on general principle just to avoid the whole mess of figuring it all out.
"Oh," Rakatev said. He didn't look very keen on pressing the issue. "Anyway, we would appreciate it if you saw fit to stay with us. I'm sure we can work out some form of payment if that's what you require."
Jax's eyebrows shot up. "What, like money? That what you mean by payment?" Rakatev nodded, fueling Jax's enthusiasm. "Well, hell yeah! How much we talkin' here?"
"I would have to check with the higher-ups first, so-"
"Okay, then check me in," Jax said, grabbing his Impaler in a ready position, "Where do you need me and Dimitri?"
Rakatev blinked away his surprise and gestured to the Ratling next to him. "Private Menshaw will show you around and give you a post between here and hard point delta."
"Understood, sir," Dimitri said, saluting again.
Jax didn't say anything to Rakatev, as he was already mesmerized by Menshaw. "Hey there, little feller! You gonna show us around like a good boy?"
Menshaw, for his part, hissed at the Confederate and shuffled out of the HQ, the butt of his long-las sniper rifle dragging through the dirt behind him. Jax frowned and looked to Dimitri.
"Nasty little midget, ain't he?"
Dimitri shook his head, suppressing a laugh, and started after the Ratling. Jax followed him, his armored boots leaving indentions in the dirt as he walked.
The Present Day, Three Minutes after Basilisk Bombardment
The dirt storm kicked up by the artillery blew downwind across the trench, covering the skirmishing aliens and humans in a shroud of reduced visibility. In the gloom, Dimitri could see sporadic bursts of las-fire and vague, brutish shapes moving about, but little in the way of hostile contacts.
"Hurry, before they recover!" Rakatev ordered, kicking an emptied ammo crate into the trench, "Get a barricade up!"
Dimitri slung his lasrifle, grabbed a dead Ork around its shoulders and with great effort pushed it up onto the ammo crate. The other Guardsmen started doing similar things, grabbing anything they could and working together to get a barricade between them and the dazed Orks.
Dimitri tried to pick up another Ork, this one a decapitated Nob. He struggled to pull the corpse from the mud, but found it too heavy for his human arms.
"I got it," Jax declared, brushing Dimitri aside with his arm. The Confederate reached down with one hand and grabbed the Nob by the scruff of its neck. He hurled it onto the barricade, letting it land in a thud and squish of blood, before grabbing another corpse from the pile at his feet.
Dimitri watched Jax work, piling corpse after corpse onto the ammo crate to form a makeshift sandbag construction of green flesh and strips of broken leather armor. There was no effort taken in the work, just a casual back-and-forth motion from Jax's armored limbs.
A stubber popped in the raging dust, the bullet streaming out of the gloom and pinging off Jax's shoulder pauldron, causing him to drop his latest meat shield.
"Hey!" Jax shouted. His Impaler replied in a ripping burst, spikes swirling the dust as they chased down the offending Ork shooter. A death scream echoed from the clouded northern trench, followed by a thunk. "Gotcha!"
Dimitri looked to the duo of Rakatev and his vox-man. Corporal Lang, lasrifle held in shaking hands, busied himself with other channels in his headset as his superior shouted into the vox receiver to any remaining squad sergeants.
"Yes, you heard me right: pull back to the company HQ, on the double!" Rakatev paused as the person on the other end replied, unheard to Dimitri over the snap-crack of las fire. "By the Throne, do I sound like I'm running a medicae tent? Leave your gakking wounded to the xenos! We've not the time for this! Get your arses over here! Call sequence is Holy Terra, forget to respond and we open fire." The Lieutenant thunked Lang on the back of his helmet, getting the vox-man's attention. "Get through to Regimental Command yet?"
"Yes sir!" Lang replied, "They're sending reinforcements now! Estimated time to arrival is thirty minutes, sir!"
Rakatev swore and spat in the dirt. "No good. We'll be dead in half that. Tell them to quit dragging their asses." He paused and fired off six shots with his laspistol into the dust before addressing the surrounding soldiers. "Men, begin issuing call code 'Holy' to approaching contacts. If they don't respond with 'Terra' fast enough, assume they are hostile and act accordingly."
Dimitri frowned, but replied with a 'yes sir' and got to work manning the new north side barricade along with several of his fellows, laying his lasrifle across the Ork-corpse sandbags for additional stability. He sighted along the barrel and into the murky dust storm, searching for a figure amidst the chaos.
A sound of whirring gears sounded above him and Dimitri looked up to see Jax standing behind him, his height giving him enough clearance to sight over the heads of the Guardsmen.
The Confederate looked down at him. "How you holdin' up?"
"Fair," Dimitri replied honestly, "Compared to getting out of Thantos, this is child's play."
"Yeah," Jax agreed, "This reminds me of this one time when I was fighting in the Sara system back in '98-" An alert beeped inside the marine's visor, jerking his attention downrange. "Uh-oh. Something's coming down the pipe."
Dimitri back into the dust, faintly making out the figure of a body running toward them, hunched between the high walls of the trench. "Holy!" Dimitri called out. He waited three seconds, then tried again. "Holy!"
Still no reply. Las shots split the air, quickly followed by a burst of spikes.
One Week Ago
"Okay, here we go!" Jax said, shuffling the deck of cards in his armored hands with a delicacy that seemed at odds with his hulking demeanor, "Poker: the game that takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master! Y'all ready for this?"
The crowd of 30-something Guardsmen who had congregated in the supply pit declared their readiness with raised fists and shouted hoorays. Dimitri stood at the entrance to the pit, leaning against one of the earthen walls with his rifle slung and helmet in the crux of his arm.
He watched as Jax explained the game to the soldiers in attendance, throwing out terms like 'raise', 'hand' and 'flush' in a rush of words. It was as if Jax had been waiting to explain the game for a very long time, and while his instructions were at times hazy and difficult to understand, his enthusiasm was contagious. Soon he had dealt out cards on the rations crate being used as a table and, along with several of the Guard, became engaged in a tense bit of gambling.
Each revealed hand was met with cheers from the spectators and Dimitri could see money exchanging hands not only on the card table but also amongst the spectators, the result of side bets on who would win the game. Private Menshaw, as expected of an entrepreneurial Ratling, was overseeing the side bets and earning himself a take from both the winners and losers.
Fifth company had taken to Jax easily largely, Dimitri expected, due to their desperate need for anything upbeat. Just like the rest of the 42nd Marathon Regiment, fifth company was a worn out, depressed lot of soldiers. Having just been assembled and trained two years ago, the 42nd had spent fully all of its operational time in combat.
After a year and a half long war defending the agri-world Sengladesh against elements of the Red Corsairs Traitor Marines—a small part of the still-unfinished Novaguard War—they had been shipped here to Dancer VI, with no new supplies and no R&R time save what they managed on the voyage aboard the St. Timov.
All of these factors combined to make for a very tired, very disgruntled bunch of Guardsmen. Dimitri could see why they took to Jax so readily: he was an unbeatable beacon of optimism in what was otherwise a dreary existence.
Dimitri felt it too, though to a lesser extent, and as he watched the poker game unfold before him to the amusement of his comrades-at-arms, the young private was reminded of the one issue with Jax that bothered him.
He still didn't know where in the Warp the Confederate came from.
The Present Day, A Distance From the Argnos Defensive Trench
Boris Yanavich was a Commissar. He had been his for all of his adult life, and he wouldn't change his profession for all of the wealth of the Adeptus Terra. To do such a thing would run counter to the ideals of the Commissariat. That would be heresy, and Yanavich would then have to execute himself, which would be suicide. And suicide was a sin unforgivable to the God-Emperor.
So he stayed a Commissar, and as such he was committed wholly to inspiring the Guardsmen under his command to achieve victory, either by smashing the enemy under a mallet of courageous valor or by drowning them in a sea of warm flesh and blood. Either way, the Imperium would be victorious.
Presently, Yanavich was perched atop a Leman Russ tank as it rumbled across the badlands between Utnos Hive and Argnos Hive. Behind his tank was a procession of some four thousand newly recruited hive dwellers herded by eight additional Commissars, all of whom Yanavich had personally trained in the delicate arts of inspiration.
The hive dwellers were a rag-tag bunch, armed mostly with low-quality stubbers that were either assembled in the under hive or had been scavenged from the destroyed remains of the Orks' first attack out in the minefields.
That had been a good day's worth of training: having them try and navigate a live minefield as they gathered weapons. It was one of the few things Yanavich could do to shape the tunnel-crawling gakkers into something that resembled Guardsmen on such short notice, and as he looked out across the formation behind him, he thought he had done a damn good job.
"How far out are we?" he shouted down into the turret.
Armor Sergeant Zaita looked up from his instrument panel where he sat in the sweltering commander's seat. "Six miles, Commissar!" he shouted over the tank's roaring engine, "We'll be within firing range soon!"
Without thanking Zaita, Yanavich turned his attention back to the marching mob. He took a deep breath, inhaling the scents of the world around him in all their dusty, exhaust-filled glory, letting the atmosphere fill his lungs.
"Ah," he sighed in delight, "Battle."
Argnos Defensive Trench
Dimitri shouted. "Holy!"
"Terra!" came the reply, quickly followed by two, four, six Guardsmen leaping the barricade. They landed in the HQ, their bloodied boots causing them to skid across the packed earth. A seventh got hung up on the top of the barricade and fell with a yelp into Jax's outstretched hand.
"Here you go," the marine said, helping the trooper safely into the HQ.
"Thank you," the Guardsman replied. His right arm had been torn off at the elbow and was crudely bandaged by a stained white dressing, but somehow he still managed to bring himself to attention. "Where do you need me?"
Jax opened his mouth to reply, but Dimitri beat him to it. "Right over here, if you can still shoot."
"I'm not dead yet," he answered, taking up the vacant spot next to Dimitri, lasrifle held one-handed over the barricade's top. He looked over at Dimitri. "The name's Tokerov, by the way."
"I don't care."
Jax flicked one disapproving armored finger against the back of Dimitri's helmet. "Shut the hell up." He looked to Tokerov. "Sorry about that. Dimitri here can be a real whiny bitch sometimes. My name's Fred Jax, and it's good to meet you."
Somewhere at the right end of the barricade, a Guardsman shouted out, "Holy!" The response came in the form of a tearing fusillade of stubber rounds that chewed into the makeshift barricade, penetrating the piled Ork flesh in wet smacks.
One caught Tokerov in the temple, the heavy bullet imbedding itself in the private's brain before breaking apart into fragments that sheared through his skull and into the open air, leaving behind them the shredded remains of a face. The Private keeled over, dead before he even hit the ground.
The rest of the Guardsmen along the barricade retaliated in a wave of las-fire that cut down whatever Ork had fired on them.
In the silence that followed, Dimitri ejected the spent energy pack from his rifle and looked back at where Jax was staring at Tokerov's dead body. "That's why I didn't want to know his name," he said, slamming a replacement into the weapon's empty slot.
Jax's expression was hidden behind his visor. "He seemed like an alright guy."
"Maybe he was," Dimitri admitted, "but knowing that would have only made his death harder." He sighed, thinking of how to sum up his thoughts. "Friends are overrated."
Jax turned his unreadable face to bear down on Dimitri. "That's pretty cold."
Dimitri shrugged. "It keeps me alive."
"If you think life without friends is living," Jax said, his voice coming out in a snarl made all the more angry by the distortion of his suit's external speakers, "then you're a fuckin' idiot."
Dimitri had initially judged Jax as being very simple, as the kind of person who didn't think through complex concepts like loyalty and friendship and just took them at face value, finding companionship in anyone who acted nice toward him. Now he threw that logic out the door in an instant.
I underestimated him. The realization hit Dimitri with enough shock to render him speechless for a moment. When he finally found his voice, it came out in a shudder. "Jax, listen, I-"
"Shut up," Jax barked, "You don't even care about the guy serving right next to you. Where I come from, that'd make you a real yellow-bellied sonuvabitch. Hell, maybe I oughtta tell the Lieutenant over there where I found you hiding under a pile of your dead buddies back in Thantos."
Dimitri stared at the white armored soldier. "You wouldn't do that."
"No, I wouldn't. If you were my friend," Jax leaned forward till his helmet was mere inches from Dimitri's face, "But apparently, you ain't my friend. Are you Dimitri?"
Dimitri looked up into the reflective visor, seeing the mirrored image of his own face. He hadn't seen himself in what seemed like a year, and it repulsed him. His face was unhealthily thin and his nose was crooked, the result of a bad resetting after it was broken by a cultist on Sengladesh.
But what really haunted Dimitri were his eyes.
When he'd joined the Guard on his seventeenth birthday, Dimitri's eyes were a deep blue. After two years of constant war, they had become grayed, milky orbs set in sockets of drawn, pallid flesh, their ghostliness brought out even more by dark crescents of sleep deprivation that shadowed his lids. They were the eyes of someone much older than Dimitri's nineteen years, someone much more jaded, cynical and set against an unforgiving galaxy, but more so than any of those things, his eyes were of a man who was terribly, cripplingly alone.
The visor peeled back, taking with it Dimitri's honest lens into his own soul and replacing it with the strong jaw line, furrowed brow and joyful eyes of another. Jax's eyes revealed a soul much better coped to dealing with hardship. It was as if the Confederate's natural tendency toward feeling for others was a...positive? Was that possible?
"Dimitri, you hearin' me?" Jax asked, shaking Dimitri by the shoulder.
The Guardsman's eyes shifted back into focus and locked with Jax's own. "Jax, would you be my friend?"
Jax grinned. "Shit, Dimitri, we always was buddies. I was just testing you."
Dimitri gave a numb nod, still trying to cope with the epiphany Jax, however unwittingly, had subjected him to. "Well, did I pass?"
"Absotively, posolutely." Jax held out a hand.
Dimitri gripped it without hesitation and was pulled to his feet, the yank bringing with it a mental snap back into the reality of the war going on around them.
The dust was finally settling and with it the sounds of battle were once again increasing. The HQ was packed full of guardsmen, their dented, bloodied and scratched flak armor banging together as they shifted around to medicae stations, ammo crates and the two barricades. None, though, seemed to have noticed Jax and Dimitri's conversation and if they did, no one let on that they cared.
Sergeants grouped their squads, readying them for yet-to-be-assigned scouting missions into the artillery-shattered eastern part of the trench. Every so often a burst of las-fire would erupt from the barricades, but anything too serious had yet to show itself.
Lieutenant Rakatev was again shouting into his vox-receiver, sounding as though he was explaining where exactly he needed the reinforcements.
Corporal Lang, however, was looking at the badlands outside the trench. Abruptly, he turned and shouted, "Enemy reinforcements! They've got armor support!"
Jax looked to Dimitri. "Does 'armor support' mean 'ass load of tanks' to you guys?"
"Yes."
"Whew," Jax breathed, "Thank God."
Dimitri frowned. "What else could it be?"
"Well, I thought maybe something like giant robots, or cyborg horses, or some kind of undead walker with laser guns, or-"
"No," Dimitri said, stopping what he was sure would be a long-winded rant, "It's probably tanks."
Over at the trench wall, Rakatev looked out over the approaching Orks with his field glasses, spotting amongst the hordes of aliens and several wartraks the lumbering bulk of a Squiggoth. The creature marched across the badlands, its great shoulders rolling with each earthshaking step, jostling the myriad armored plates and Orks that rode upon its back.
"Throne, why can't it just be tanks with these Orks?" Rakatev asked himself, "Lang, where's my gakking Basilisks?"
The vox-man shook his head. "Not operational, sir. A fighter bomber just hit that spire and dropped off a team of Ork kommandos. By the sound of it, the Basilisks are compromised and crews dead. The PDF are fighting to take the spire back, but-"
Rakatev cut him off. "And Commissar Yanavich?"
"Nearly here, sir."
As if to underline Lang's words, the Squiggoth threw back its head, bellowed a long roar, and charged.
Author's Note: So, a couple of basic formatting changes occurred in this chapter, namely the setting designation breaking up sections of the text. Normally I don't do things like that, but this story needed it to aid in keeping locations mapped out for the reader, as well as helping out with humor in a couple of spots.
Thanks again for all the feedback, both in reviews and the couple of long PM sessions I had with a few of you. With all of that input, I reached a decision about the addition of more StarCraft characters. If I do bring in more, it won't be until much, much, much later. I feel Jax, Dimitri and the other 40k characters that are effected by the Confederate will suffice for now, though that may change. Though if more do arrive, they most likely won't be cannon characters.
We've fallen into a Saturday update schedule with this story, so you can count on that. Having a regular deadline keeps me on task, something that a lot of fanfiction authors really need to get on top of. Even if it is a hobby, this is preparation for writing commercially, and being on task is a big step toward becoming a professional. I guess what I'm saying is that you can count on this story getting one chapter a week.
And now for a question. The next two-three chapters are going to focus on wrapping up the war against the Orks on Dancer VI. After that, our protagonists will move on with another group to go and fight...something. I've got a few ideas as to what, but nothing concrete. So the question is: what do you want to see Jax fight? 40k obviously has a wealth of things to choose from, not just in terms of playable races but also things from just the background lore. Think about it, then drop your answer in a review or a PM, and while you're at it, tell me what you thought of the above chapter.
Oh, yeah, and sorry again for a half-ass cliffhanger. I'm really trying to break that habit...
