Three useless vox sets lay at the bottom of the shell hole.
"What I mean by that, sir," Husky looked from the vox set and back to Kins and Frens, "is that I cannot explain it."
"If the problem is mundane, I'll have you killed for this," groaned Frens in disbelief, only half serious. "Do you know what that means, trooper?" Trooper Husky looked back at Barlian and Malv, who were backing away. They'd stood by him all throughout the Chazz campaign and were now abandoning him to this Ersonian commissar's red face.
"Inspect it if you want, the three of them are blown," Husky admitted. He looked up out of the shell hole at Bolfe, who walked by with a steaming cup full of ration-beans. In the morning light, it was easy to see the vox set was untouched on the outside. "Should I tell…"
"The captain?" asked Frens, "no, I'll tell him. I want it worked on. If those sets are dead, we can't call in our lift." Three sets. They brought three sets to alert their pickup when it was time to leave this mission behind. They took three so they could afford to lose one. Those sets were their lifeline back to Urbanis 5. Now all three were gone. "Don't spread it to the younger guys. I don't want panic, with a lot of people making noise and waking up the orks." He slid out of the hole and through the craggy swamp of wreckage to Lystartro to tell him the bad news.
"Men," Lystartro said with the grim toughness his fighting buddies knew him so well for as he leaned on a fallen wall and rolled a shotgun shell over in his augmetic hand. Before him, the whole of 5th company and the members of the 89th they had with them, were all sheltered in an especially deep crater in the middle of the destruction. "We came here on special orders from the top. Our objective is simple. Stay here, at this spot, until this special person we're picking up gets here. We will do that. We just need to remain here and survive." He tossed the shell to his other hand. "Now, I have just been informed that our three vox sets…don't work," he smiled sarcastically. "Which is great because now we're pretty much stuck in Urbanis 1 until help can get to us or until we get the damn things working again. In the meantime, hang tight and look for our friend. He will mark his position with a little flare of green light. He's out there somewhere and he needs our help. Who is he?" Lystartro shrugged. "Command wouldn't tell me who. Just keep your eyes open for a pop of green light somewhere out there." He gestured to an eternity of grey. "At ease boys."
….
"I can't believe we're stuck," Tigerson whispered. He and Cav poked their faces out through a rockrete wall that stood, unconnected to a greater structure, in the middle of the destruction.
"It's probably dust in the crystals…or something," Cav replied, "just keep watch." There wasn't much to look at. The wreckage of streets, piles of rubble and skeletons of half-standing buildings was pretty much all there was to see, except for one thing.
Far in the distance was one lonely shadow, tall and pointed, on the horizon. Angel's Peak. Cav had seen it a thousand times. It felt so strange to be fighting aliens while so close to something he'd always associated with pride and happiness. Essendrav was a city he'd almost never visited in peacetime. But Angel's Peak…he'd been there once every year, at least.
"Well," said Tigerson, "there's nothing out there. Just like the last freaking few hours."
"Least there's no damned orks," Cav answered with a bit of gratitude. "Better than fighting them, I guess." He peered across the field of destruction. Across it, he saw an office tower, standing miraculously amongst a landscape of destroyed buildings. Huge glyph of alien design had been hoisted across its ruined surface. A crude skull, make of metal scrap with triangular teeth, angry eyes and painted red, wearing a horned helm or perhaps daemonically horned. He had nothing but that to look at all day. At less than one kilometer away the building was too close. He could practically hear the orks that he knew were inside, infesting it like maggots in meat. At least if he died here, he could take that one ork with him, that one ork he'd killed. Cav didn't take his gaze from the tower for the whole morning. If something came, it would be from there. How many orks could fill a place that size? He'd heard from Malreth that fifty-three orks could infest one hab unit. An entire tribe could be in that tower, thousands of warriors, hungry for blood.
…
The tower had once been the property of a banking company who'd owned much of this part of Essendrav. It had employed over two thousand clerks in that one building alone. It stood undamaged through sheer luck and the orks hadn't knocked it down so to hoist the glyph of the red horned head, to strike fear into the humans who still lived in these ruins. The glyph was the pride and joy of an or knob named Killamongra, who was known by his rivals for his huge toothy grin that could strike fear into the gretchen and the human enemy.
Killamongra lay across an accounting desk, his teeth bared through his open mouth. Black holes filled his mouth: hollow vacancies left after he'd been bashed in the face. His gut was unzipped from chin to groin, his organs splayed around him. His axe was broken over his body. Around him, the twisted remains of seven of Killamongra's largest subordinates lay, headless. In the office around him, dead orks lay, still clutching their weapons. Spent shell casings littered the ground like sand. Looks of fear were frozen on a number of dead greenskin faces. A few had taunting messages and symbols, drawn on their faces in their own blood. Three more hung from the ceiling by their necks, swaying like executed criminals.
"Arghk…" one of the orks upon the floor shifted, its eyes opening. Though the ork was missing its legs, it still tried to get up, pushing weakly at the floor, trying to lift itself upright, though in vain. The maimed alien was too close to dead to have the strength.
Footsteps approached it. The ork blinked at its enemy and snarled weakly, then fought harder to get up. A cruel cackle filled the room as the ork roared in stress. The legless ork clawed against the floor, reaching for a gun, a knife, a piece of bone, anything to fend off this nightmare with. It was pulled across the floor. The ork's cries filled the room.
Then, in a crack of bone, it went quiet.
The legless ork lay dead, eyes wide. A bloody hole lay in its chest, boring into a now hollow chest cavity where its heart had been. Of the killer, there was no sign.
…
"…I would call them adequate," Lystartro finished. Kins nodded, his eyes narrowing. "What's wrong, commissar?"
"I'm thinking," he replied, setting down his empty ration can. "I know at least three problem cases amongst the 89th. You might think they're enough for your needs captain, but I can see deeper into a man's soul." Lystartro frowned, glad it was only him and Kins in this lonely shell hole, deep inside the perimeter. Everyone else was watching the landscape for their objective or repairing the damned vox sets.
"What are you saying? You think you're better with men than me?"
"I know how to evaluate morale," Kins replied. "For one, the 89th is still barely experienced. They haven't had time to become brave, you know? But also, there's this one PDFer that I know won't live through this mission." Lystartro knew exactly who. "Mieel. I heard him crying in his sleep last night. Damned near kept me up. We can't have weaklings in the PDF, much less the guard."
"Boy lost his brother. Real close to him," Lystartro explained.
"Yeah, I know," Lystartro said with a commissar's arrogance. "He's got to be dealt with, he can't be sitting around, weighting the rest of us down. Either I do away with him or you get him sent somewhere else. Let him bug Arcantillius."
"Sending him to another company won't help. Besides, I respect Captain Arcantillius too much to piss on his men like that. I'll deal with Mieel…"
"Summary execution should do it," Kins said, "let me…"
"No Kins, there's a lot of former gangers in this volunteers unit, like Tigerson. He's got an old soul, that kid," Lystartro replied. "They'd knock you off for sure if you shot one of them for something as minor to them as a little crying."
"Hm?" Kins showed his own inexperience. Lystartro wished he had a better commissar than this old cadet.
"Contrary to popular belief, gangers make poor guardsmen." 'And even worse Astartes,' he thought without saying.'
"They're insubordinate, they're loyal to their old gang first and the guard second, a lot of them are addicted to weird stuff, they scribble their stupid gang signs on everything and they don't know anything that any farmer can't learn in basic," Lystarto replied. "On Morchaghan, commissar's got short lifespans. They always turn up dead with gang signs sprayed on them the day after a summary execution of a former ganger guardsman. I don't want to risk the patience of a unit with a guy like Tigerson in it until I know how many gangers there are in the unit. Got to make sure its safe before you move. There's another lesson from Rynn's World, commissar."
"Don't talk down to me you…" Kins shed his commissar arrogance and calmed down, throwing on the calculated calm of someone from high up. "I mean…sir, what will you do?"
"Make sure Mieel shuts up more. But enough about him. Cav says you hate him and he's tired of it," Lystartro gave a little smile at Kins' young, aristocratic indignity.
"Wha…he told you?" Kins shook his head. "He's a traditionalist who's losing time and needed sleep by writing in his diary. I want a leader of him, not a scribe. If he'd put down that diary, I'd stop calling him out on it."
"I think you might have a grudge against his people. Just as gangers keep their old lifestyle after they join the guard, so too do some people keep their old anger after the war's done," Lystartro sneezed out some urban dust. "I'm talking about the Halivorian war."
"Yeah," Kins said after a pause. "Alright, fine captain, you caught me. Fine, I admit it, I freaking hate strawheads. A bunch of anti-imperial scum."
"Not all of them followed Halivor."
"Enough of them followed him for it to be a problem. I see a rebel in each one of them and it doesn't help when Cav writes notes about our activities in his diary every single night."
"You think he's a spy?" Lystartro didn't expect such a serious accusation.
"I think he might not hold the Imperial creed as close to his heart as he should," Kins paused as two men from the 112th walked by. "You warned of insubordination sir. I think we should remember that insubordination we get from the 89th won't always come from former gangers."
"And is there a cause to think Cav is being insubordinate?" Lystarto asked.
"The diary, he spends too much time on it," Kins replied.
"Then I'll get him to shorten his entries," Lystartro replied. "If its that big a deal to you. Anything else?" Again, Kins looked indignant. Lystarto realized it had been his tone. The little commissar couldn't find enough strength to come up and verbally confront the large captain, so he shrunk into his uniform like a turtle. His cheeks almost touched his collar, which looked big on the man.
"You like him?" Kins asked.
"Who? Cav? He's good with his lasgun, he held his own in the wall attack. I see a warrior of the Emperor in him."
"I mean personally. Why'd you take me up so powerfully on Cav when there's still Mieel to deal with?" Kins asked. Lystartro grinned from ear to ear. Kins looked so spiteful and small, like a child who wasn't getting his way. He must have been trying to accuse him of choosing favourites, anything to discredit his protection of Cav. Cav had been right: Kins did hate him.
Lystartro began to speak but was interrupted by trooper Tarlos.
"Captain," Tarlos said, "there's something with the vox you should see." He was gone a second later. Like Tigerson, Tarlos had been a ganger in his former life. Now in his forties, he was one of the men here who'd been with the regiment since the very start. If it hadn't been for his old habits, Tarlos would be a lieutenant by now.
"Kins, when you're in the guard, every man you fight with is your brother and your friend. Yes, I like Cav. Why should I not?" Lystartro said, standing up.
"Another lesson from Rynn's World, captain?" Kins asked.
"No commissar, I learned that in basic." He was starting to despise Kins.
…
Diary.
The end of our first full day here. I have been told by the captain I am to write short entries to appease the commissar.
Nothing happened all day. The vox sets are broken beyond repair. The captain told us all that the internal systems were all knotted together, like a rope, and on all three no less. There is an uneasy rumor going around, that someone among us did it. The captain is looking into it.
No orks.
"That's enough," Lystartro said. Cav nodded and put his diary away. Once again, he and the captain shared the same shell hole alone. Unlike last night, Kins was in the hole next to them, listening. Cav shut off his lantern and lay back in the darkness.
"Do you really think one of us did it?" asked Cav innocently.
"Cav, if it was one of us, it wasn't any of my 112th boys. Did you see those insides? Everything was scrunched up like a tissue. That was no accident. I want you turning your outfit inside out, looking for someone who might have done it." He lowered his voice to a near mute whisper, "leave Kins to me." Kins? As much as Cav loved to think Kins was an enemy of the Imperium, having the commissar backstab their mission was disturbing.
A low cry broke the night. Cav and Lystartro were on their feet in seconds, guns raised. But the cry broke down into childish sobs. They heard a tearful voice cry for its mother.
"It's Mieel," groaned Cav.
"That's it," Kins loaded his bolt pistol and rose out of his hole. "No more of this." Cav felt his blood boil. If Kins dared hurt one of Cav's friends, he's have hell to pay. The sobs died down as Lystarto stopped Kins.
"A gunshot might attract orks," he said. "Besides, its gone now. I'll deal with him in the morning. Remember what I told you." Kins cursed, his enraged voice burning the dark.
"If he wakes me up one more time, I knife him. Slowly. Then you can listen to him cry and sob all you want," he disappeared into his hole.
"One more thing Cav," added the captain as they settled down, "I order you to fix Mieel before he brings the orks on us."
Once or twice, during the hour of time that Cav had to himself as he tried to fall asleep, he heard Mieel crying again. He tensed, anxiously waiting to hear Kins stand up and go off to murder the crying boy. It didn't happen: Kins was asleep. He must have been crying for hours, judging by the amount of time it took for Cav to go to sleep. He had hazy half-dreams of waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of Mieel's sobbing, then going back to sleep. His dreams were filled with the sound of crying.
The next morning, Cav woke up with a stretch. Lystartro was still asleep and the sun was dim in the sky. Cav shook sleep from his eyes. He promised himself that today would be the day the guy they were rescuing would show up so they could go back to Urbanis 5. Of course, there was the vox problem…
Vox sets and mysterious saboteurs were forgotten as the cool morning air was broken by Mieel's distant cries. This time, a red-faced Kins stood up, a vicious bayonet in his fists.
"That's it," Kins said, storming across the urban moonscape to the distant shell hole where Mieel was, following the sound.
"Wait!" Cav was up a moment later, hurrying after Kins. "I have orders…" he walked around a fallen pile of rubble to the edge of the perimeter. He caught up with Kins after a small sprint. "Wait!" They were about halfway there. Kins turned on Cav and raised the knife, as if to stab. He did not, but Cav, who had left his gun behind, flinched.
"I don't care if he's your friend or your brother or your cousin or your precious little baby," Kins barked, "that coward has to die!" His shouts alone could have woken the orks. From around the jungle of ruins, men from both the 112th and the 89th emerged, some complaining about Mieel.
"I can shut him up," Cav replied, stepping in Kins' way.
"So can I," Kins replied. "You think that mewling little inbred has any place in the Emperor's armies? He's not even good enough for the damned PDF shotstoppers!" Kins, in full battle dress, was howling. "And if you don't move your face out of my way, I'll gut you too!"
"Lystartro said I'm to…"
"I don't care what Lystartro said you stupid Halivorian strawhead!" Kins unclenched his fist. Cav was on the ground, his temple burning from where Kins had just punched. A few cries of outrage leapt from the 89th. Cav saw three people, including Tigerson, swarm around Kins, shouting angrily.
"Here," strong hands helped him up. It was Lystartro. "What happened?" Cav ignored him, rubbing his head, he raced after Kins, dodging through the ruins. He walked around the corner of a destroyed building and froze. Kins stood there, along with the people who'd followed him, staring in shock into the crater where Mieel hid.
Mieel was sitting against the side of it, face flushed with tears, trembling. He wasn't crying: his eyes had dried themselves. He had his knees tucked into his chest. He didn't even comprehend anyone, not even Kins, with his drawn blade. He was staring at the corpses of the three 112th guardsmen he'd shared his hole with. Their bloody remains were strewn all around the place, in such a mess that Cav immediately suspected the killer had been messy on purpose. A skull there, a spine there, intestines there…it was awful. Mieel was covered in blood, though not his own. The corpses were not newly dead. Cav guessed they'd died the night before, when he first heard Mieel begin to cry.
"He's your damned mess now," Kins cursed, storming past Lystartro as he appeared.
…
"What did you see?" Cav asked again. He offered Mieel a ration tin. Mieel didn't take it. He hadn't said anything since the morning. He'd stopped sobbing, but that was it. His wide eyes stared off into space. Mieel had always been timid and clumsy, but now he was a vegetable. Totally unresponsive, he'd frustrated even Cav. Kins had spared him only because he was the only witness, though rumor abounded that Mieel had killed those men. Everyone who knew Mieel knew he couldn't have done it, especially to 112th guardsmen. Everyone else swore they saw nothing last night. Cav now sat alone with Mieel, behind a short, ruined wall near the middle of their secured zone. "It's me, Cav, you can tell me," he said. "Mieel? What did you see?" He prodded the frozen youth with the ration tin.
Useless.
"Battlefield shock, the worst I've ever seen, and I've been around," Lystartro said as he appeared over the lip of the crater. "Worst case is he'll just lose touch with the world." Cav patted Mieel's shoulder, trying to rub some life back into him. Maybe some assurances that he was safe from whatever he saw last night could help him recover? "Mieel, you have to tell us. Or write it down?" He offered him his diary.
"Don't let Kins see you take that out," Lystartro said with a weak laugh. Kins was currently overseeing the interrogations.
"Notren would want you to speak," Cav said. "Remember, riding the grox? I know he'd be helping you remember if he was here." Still nothing. "It's just me Mieel, it's just Cav." Lystartro sighed.
"Just lose touch," he muttered. "Admirable try, though."
"Does it get better?" Cav asked, "come on, he's got to know how badly we need to hear what he's got to say." He looked at Mieel. "I know you're in there. Talk to me. What did you see?"
"I'm amazed he's even awake," Lystartro remarked.
"Yeah. He was up all last night, screaming," Cav suddenly had to duck. An explosion roared to life a short distance away. Rocks flew everywhere, missing them by inches. Mieel screamed like an animal and ducked into the hole and was almost flattened by Cav and Lystartro. More explosions leapt up. Shouts were echoing from the perimeter. Then, lasfire!
"The orks have found us. Throne damn it," Lystartro cursed. "Get ready Cav, it's time to show me if you're worth it."
"I've killed an ork already," Cav proudly proclaimed, remembering that flyer's jacket and that oversized rocket.
"Good job. Kill more."
…
There were five men with him: two 89th and three 112th. Tigerson readied his weapon as solid slugs hammered into the stone around him. He ducked behind the pile of bricks with the others and prayed. He heard a rocket whiz overhead. A scream broke the din. This reminded him of Erson City, just not as unorganized.
"Get ready!" shouted the 112th sergeant, a man named Jhones. The others 112th were the vox-operator: a man named Husky, though he was missing his vox right now, and a man named Tokrox, a hairy fellow. Tigerson didn't know his rank.
An enraged alien cry split the wind. The shots stopped.
"Fire at will!" Jhones rose up and fired. Tigerson and the others followed. Through the ruins, Tigerson could see a small mob of greenskins rushing on. The front few toppled down, killed by the opening volleys.
Greenskinned and dirty, they were dressed in brown rags that were augmented with random fixtures of sheet metal and padded hide. A few wore helmets, which were just bowl-shaped pieces of scrap. They all carried guns, some in one hand and some in two. They were frightful, but Tigerson didn't fear them. Their alien faces just didn't scare him like a human. They were just animals, animals with guns.
"HAHAHA!" Tigerson laughed in delight at the easy targets. He emptied his lasgun into the closest: an ugly thing with a burly machine gun. He saw it stumble and stagger as his lasbolts smote it. At last, it fell, like a runner falling from exhaustion.
"Got one!" whooped Salson, the gruff 89th who'd been with Tigerson since the start of basic. He was violence-hungry brawler who thought he was invincible. Tigerson liked him.
"Get ready!" Jhones shouted, "we've got to go soon!" they were close. The orks had left over a dozen dead behind, but more were coming through the ruins. Wow, some were shooting vainly into the air. "Go!" Jhones warned, dodging into the maze of rubble with the other two 112th. Tigerson and Salson were up, along with Jayson, from the 89th. They got into cover, though Jayson took a shot to the knee. He lagged behind, then was brained by a shot that came through the wall. Salson laughed at the sick violence of it. He reloaded.
"Come on!" he shouted in bravado. Tigerson grabbed his arm and pulled him behind a wall.
"You're not invincible," he said. "Keep to cover." The lasfire around them grew more intense. No doubt, more orks were appearing. "We have to find a…" he paused as a great green ork stalked around the corner. It was grinning madly with its tusks, a rough snub-nosed pistol in its left hand and a whirling chainsaw in the other. The tattered remains of a PDF flack vest was draped across its rag-clad chest. So the boys shot it in the head. The ork still had time to roar in anger and swing its blade as it died, prompting Tigerson to shoot it again to keep it down.
"We split that one, okay?" Salson asked. He ducked down as loud metal rounds tore into the pile of rubble they stood opposite from. Some ork outside their vision had seen its buddy fall and was spraying them with bullets.
"Damn," Tigerson cursed, pulling away from the crack where the ork had come from. "Damn orks."
"Holy thorne!"
Salson was shooting wildly as a pair of orks crawled over the wall. One fired madly down with its pistol, somehow missing as it hoisted itself to the other side. The other carried a machine gun, fixed with a jagged bayonet. He was laughing as a shot he fired took the pistol ork in the face, knocking it off the wall and out of sight. It never returned. The other jumped down and let out a beastly roar, swinging its gun at Salson like a hammer. Tigerson took aim and shot it in the back of its helmeted head. Salson rolled to the side as the gun came down, missing him by inches. He stood up and fired into the orks gut while Tigerson shot its back. The ork stumbled as both boys stopped shooting. Salson grinned like a fiend as he walked up to the ork an bayoneted it in the gut, again and again. The ork did not fight back and fell backwards, hitting the ground like a sack of meat. Its gun went off as it died. The weapon rattled explosively as it discharged its last bullets into the wall.
"Ha! Another!" Salson laughed. His cheek was neatly cut, by the ork's bayonet. When he noticed it, he laughed harder. "Scar! Scar! It'll look great. We should give you one!" He poked his head around the wall, looking for more enemies. "Die!" he yelled, firing at something Tigerson could not see. "Hey ugly! Die!"
Tigerson was knocked down by the sudden explosion. When the dust settled, he could feel pains throughout his body. Salson lay dead a meter from where he had been: killed by a rocket. The wall was half destroyed. The dust cleared fast.
Three orks were coming through the dust, their large guns raised. One had a bolt for an eye and was scanning the ruins maliciously. Scanning for him. From where he lay, Tigerson raised his lasgun. The orks realized he wasn't dead just as he fired. One burst was a headshot, killin bolt-eye. The second burst was a headshot, killing the one with the topknot as it zeroed on him with its dual pistols. The third was a headshot, killing the bald one as it fired its first few shots. One lucky round grazed Tigerson's hat. He kept his lasgun raised and waited from where he lay.
Another ork came, carrying a rocket on a pole. A headshot dropped it. After five minutes of waiting had passed, Tigerson found he could think coherently again.
'Just killed four,' he thought. 'Am I crazy?' He found the strength to stand up. He was too busy to feel sorrow for Salson or fear. He swept through the ruins, closing in on the nearest source of fighting.
…
The maze of rubble was disorienting and close-quarters was a bad place to fight orks in. Kins knew that. Everyone in this sector knew that.
With Lystartro's two squads, they turned the corner to find another knot of orks, firing at something unseen from behind a fallen tower. Twenty lasguns raised and fired. One by one, the startled orks dropped.
"Sir!" someone shouted. Lystartro turned as an ork emerged from a hollow window from a nearby ruin as an ork lunged at him. The greenskin died on the spot, shot by nine different men. As it died it dropped a…
…a grenade!
"Cover!"
A guardsman Kins didn't know kicked the grenade as it went off. When the smoke cleared, two men were dead and the hero was missing his leg and thrashing like a fish. The captain spat out dust as he raised his shotgun at the ruin, in other words, at nothing.
"There's no damned…" Kins began. The walls of the ruin broke open in two places and orks poured out. More came from the windows. Jagged weapons, crude axes, makeshift clubs: all this and more could be seen in their massive paws. Kins clenched his teeth as he shot the nearest brute in the helmet while he drew his chainsword.
It was smaller than most designs, small enough to be sheathed. This was one of the distinctive features that made this chainsword truly Ersonian, as much a part of the planet's culture as the commissar himself. He felt proud as its teeth chewed through an orkish throat. Kins dodged back from the melee and shot an ork as it raised its cleaver to kill an injured man. He didn't stop the ork, but it was still satisfying to see the damage get done.
Lystartro's favourite lieutenant Frens was here. He'd been on Rynn's World with the captain and earned a good reputation among his men. He was a good fighter, that was clear. He killed three orks in the same way. He'd use his lasrifle to deflect their attack, twirl it around and shoot the ork in the face from point blank range. Block, twirl, blam! Block, twirl, blam! He alone had the trick mastered. Of course, he was a huge man, surpassed only by Lystartro himself.
Why did the captain fight with a shotgun? They took so long to reload and when there were orks pouring on you like rain, you needed to reload fast. Kins saw Lystartro lower his gun, knowing it was dry. An ork lunged at him, a piece of spiked pipe raised above his head in a two-handed swing. This was it, the captain was dead.
Kins felt admiration for the captain when he saw him scoop a fallen ork sword off the ground and step in to the attacker. The ork fell over him, the sword rammed to its hilt into its neck. His lapse almost cost him his life. Kins cut thorugh the attacking ork's gut just in time. The clumsy alien fumbled with its spilling guts and Kins cut the beast down with a backhand swing. The last few orks were dying. They'd taken a bite out of the squad, but Lystartro still had plenty of bodies. Kins looked around the dead to try and find Cav.
Nope, the strawhead was standing against the ruined wall, nursing his stomach with one hand and leaning on his lasgun like a crutch. His sleeves were pulled up and Kins could see his proud Angelspear tattoo, half-hidden under the dribble of blood that dripped from the cut on his arm. Damn.
…
Thirty-five dead. The number was tolerable, but angered Lystartro. This guy they were meeting had better be nothing less than a captain of the most esteemed Astartes chapter to be worth another day of this nonsense. When he learned that most of the dead were 112th, he felt some irritation. All this way, only to die here? On this stupid mission?
"Keep your eyes open, the orks will be back," he warned as he stood with Frens and Kins. "They'll always be back." He looked at Kins. "Another lesson from Rynn's World." Kins didn't reply. He too could feel their rivalry building. To have a commissar and the commanding officer dislike one another was far from healthy for the men. However, Lystartro's judgment was that Kins fell short of his duties to the commissariat in many places Secretly, he hoped this next attack would remove their little problem.
'Alternatively, I could not be a jerk to him,' he thought to himself. Not be a jerk to someone who made him angry? Ha! Leave diplomacy to the governors, killing people was his job.
"Captain," Kins continued, "there is the minor problem of Mieel. As he's the only surviving witness of what killed your…our men, I think you should know about him. Cav says he's gone missing." Finally, Kins was coming in handy.
"Missing?" Lystartro couldn't correct it. Explosions, yet again.
…
Cav had three power packs to use and one in his gun. He had nine young men of the 89th at his back. Coming across the ruins towards him was death by ork. Yet it wasn't what he had on his mind. Mieel wasn't where he left him. He wasn't with any of the group leaders. He was gone. He imagined Nortren, screaming at him in anger for losing track of Mieel. But what was he supposed to do?
"There they are! Kill them!" shouted Tigerson, his voice full of violence.
"Stay calm," Cav whispered to himself as he looked through the jungle of ruin. Thirty meters away, swarming like giant insects, were the greenskins. More rag-clad bodies, more metal scrap, more ugly helmets and more crude weapons. The orks had them outnumbered. He raised his lasgun to his cheek and reminded himself not to be frantic, to shoot carefully.
Their lasguns fired at once. Red spits of lasfire sliced into orkish bodies, shredding their flesh or popping off their armour plate. The mob continued spilling out of the ruins, rats from a hole, ants from a mound, in rising numbers. Too few of them fell. In a few seconds, they would reach the group.
"Scatter!" cried Cav, ducking behind a pile of wrecked brickwork. Someone fell dead against it, killed by the lead storm the orks were spitting at them. Two more of his fellow PDF died before they could properly disappear. Cav squinted through the dust the orkish bullets kicked up. That one rocket-berserker in his head was getting lonely. He would add more orks to give it friends.
Squinting, he took aim. Fire. Fire. Fire. No! Stay calm. How can he stay calm? Orks less than five seconds away. He fired and didn't notice if he killed anything. Shots pummeled his bricks. He ducked down and made his way across the debris-maze, with no rallying point except survival.
'Here's my honour,' he thought. 'Hooray for Angel's Peak.' He envisioned the bullets flying around him, the orks crushing his little pocket of survival and all the friends he'd lost. This didn't make him feel special. This wasn't glory. He dove into a shell hole and tripped over a 112th guardsman.
"Sorry…" Cav shut up when he saw the man had no head. It had been taken as a trophy by his orkish killer.
"That's not something the propaganda guys made up, they actually do that. I've seen it. And if you're lucky, you'll see it too. If you're unlucky…well…we'll all know who you are soon enough," had been Lystartro's words, way back when he was just another soldier instead of Cav's superior and the closest thing he had to a friend in the 112th. 'Not to me!' Cav thought with conviction. He would shoot off his own head before he would ever let an ork take it. 'Never, ever, EVER to me.' He could hear lasguns and the crude spit of ork weapons all around him. They came from all directions at once. He could only creep close to the nearest source.
Peeking around a corner of what might have been the still-standing corner of a long destroyed office was a furious exchange of fire between a number of 112th and the greenskins, who had taken cover in an especially large crater. All he could see of them were their guns and the tops of their evil heads. Finally: orks who weren't coming at him like maniacs.
He didn't get off a single shot.
He turned in time to see an ork round the corner he'd just crossed. He raised his lasgun and loosed a burst of shots before it could raise its pistol or charge at him with its axe. One…two…three of his shots hit its face, with a fourth knocking off its leather cap. The monster fired randomly as it fell down. A second ork appeared and bashed the first to one side before it fell. Cav held his breath and fired again. He hit the monster, but it only seemed to get angrier. It roared as a lasbolt melted off a tiny piece of the metal plate it wore on its shoulder. Cav ducked and ran, sprinting across open ground to take cover behind a heap of debris that was hidden from the pit of orks. Shots followed him on his way there. He jumped behind the pile and looked out in time to see the ork he'd hit chase him. Only when he'd taken cover did he notice it was in the middle of a half ring of fallen rockrete slabs to tall and smooth to climb. He was trapped here. Cav still raised his lasgun and forgot about staying calm as the ork came.
CLICK
The lasgun reported its emptiness. Cav hurried to reload. As for the ork, it lay in the dirt, brought down by the sheer number of lasbolts thrown at it. Cav had little time to celebrate as yet more orks came in the second one's wake. He ducked into cover, to hide. No shots were glancing off the rocks around him, giving him a little sense of safety. When he looked out, he saw the last of the group heave itself at the 112th.
A grenade blast shook the air over the mad gunshots. He saw a second cast through the air and towards the crater of shooting orks. Another explosion.
'Why stop and stare?" Cav thought. Those orks who'd passed him didn't see him. He now popped out and pumped lasbolts into their backs. Caught between him and the 112th, the greenskins were brought down one at a time, the last one falling almost on top of an injured 112th trooper. But there was no time to rest.
More orks poured in, hot on the heels of the little group they'd just massacred. Evidently the orks in the pit had been destroyed, because a number of 112th left cover and tried to move up. They almost ran into the fresh mob. In a hurry they fell back, firing, with a few being knocked to the floor by enemy bullets. From his position, Cav fired. He just fired. There was nothing left to do. He thought he saw Lystartro with these guardsmen, fighting alongside Frens as the orks fell upon the guardsmen. Cav took aim at the back of the orkish mob and fired. Whether or not he killed anything was hard to tell. Lasbolts and ork bullets were flying in all directions. He saw plenty of both die.
He gulped as he saw a mechanical ork enter the fray. Well…as it got closer, he saw it's metal face had eyeholes and its arm was bare to reveal green flesh, but the eight foot monster was in all other ways a brown metal effigy of a horned ork, complete with a pair of bladed hands. Cav saw it attack Frens and chop deep into him, throw him to the ground and stomp on his back. A vengeful 112th man rushed him, but lost his head to a sweeping cleave from those arms.
Cav swallowed in fear. There, like a necklace around its neck, hung a rotten human head, still wearing its officer's cap, like a grisly bead on a chain. He considered shooting the ork but realized he already had, and did nothing to its armour.
He reloaded in a hurry, ducking down as a howling greenskin charged him, waving a sword. The monster blades at him with its pistol, which it quickly exhausted. Cav saw it wouldn't work: he wouldn't reload in time. Springing up, he stabbed the ork with all his might, right in the gut. He ducked. The ork brought its sword around in a heavy swing, missing by inches. It still elbowed Cav's forehead with its sword arm. Emperor…it was strong. Cav fell back. He stabbed the ork again, but it only seemed to get angrier. As the ork wheeled its sword back to attack again, Cav stabbed it's arm, to keep it from attacking. The ork moved its pistol to whip him with, but shuddered, evidently struck from behind, shot no doubt.
Then, a power sword took its pistol-hand off.
Cav stumbled back as a stranger in grey carapace armour brought his laspistol to the ork's face and shot it through the eye. He caught a brief glimpse at a full rebreather mask and a helmet before his savior continued to the main battle. Two more masked men jumped down from the rockrete slabs around Cav, hoisting bulkier variants of the lasgun. They stood in a perfect firing stance, taking cover behind Cav's heap of rubble. He felt a fantastic thrill watching them kill orks, shooting blue bolts that killed with every headshot. Their leader danced from ork to ork, his sword leaving dismemberment in his wake. No ork who stood near him lasted long. The great machine-ork turned in time to take a power sword through the visor of its helmet.
More masked men jumped down, firing steadily. The remaining orks melted away under the hail of death the newcomers were pouring on them. The last member of the mob died as the swordsman clove it from forehead to groin.
"Come on," one of the newcomers said, his voice distorted by his speaker.
"What?" Cav asked.
"Get your squad to come with us. We have to go," he said. Cav didn't even know which one was speaking. He noticed their names were printed on their helmets. If it wasn't for those names, he'd have no way of telling these man-shaped suits apart. Then, he let out a little laugh. Never before had he ever been through so much danger. Now that it was past, it felt like a game.
Then, he began to tally his kills. How many was that? Four? The rocket-berserker was now one of many faces in his mind.
…
"I'm the person you were sent here to pick up," said one of the stormtroopers while their sergeant cleaned his sword. Lystartro had assembled the survivors and brought them to the middle of their safe zone. Opposite them stood eight faceless stormtroopers and their sergeant.
'Great, all those men lost for a few gloryboys,' Lystartro disliked the vaunted elite of the Imperial Guard, but knew better than to hate the stormtroopers themselves. It wasn't their fault that he'd been sent here to fight for them. He promised himself that if he ever hated this man, it wouldn't be because of what he was or what he'd made them do. But still…gloryboys? Why send in a while company to pick them up? And Lystartro had been told there was only one person who needed to be picked up. Odd.
"We can't leave, my vox is dead…" Lystartro began.
"You were never meant to leave," replied the sergeant, sheathing his power sword. "I'm…"
"Speak to my face, sergeant." The swordsman unfastened and unclipped his rebreather mask. It mechanically lowered down to show the face of a young man with sandy eyebrows. If he had hair, it was short and covered by his helmet.
"Like I said, your mission briefing was a cover for what you're really here for," replied the sergeant. "I'm sergeant Mhal Dannit, of the 69th Stormtrooper company."