One

"Your foe is well equipped, well-trained and battle-hardened. He believes his gods are on his side. Let him believe what he will. We have the tanks on ours."

-Colonel Joachim Pfeiff, Death Korps of Krieg 14th Armoured Regiment

Sergeant Almudena loathed this part of his world. Almudena was a young man in his early twenties with the brown hair and pale skin so common on his world, he was a bright lad with a quick grasp of things, this you could tell from his vibrant green eyes that shone with intelligence. All in all he was a pretty easy fellow to like, this was perhaps the main reason why he had risen to the rank of sergeant in the PDF at such a remarkably young age.

He had joined the Corbudan Planetary Defence Force out of a sense of patriotism, he had wanted to defend his world from the many alien horrors the priests told him were lurking in the galaxy, ready to enslave humanity. The fact he also looked dashing in the black and maroon uniform was also an added bonus.

When he signed up he had not expected he would be waging war on his own people. The thought that citizens of his world had turned against the Imperium galled him to the core, the people of the Khabarovsk plains were always known to be loyal, if slightly backward, Imperial souls and Almudena had never thought they could sink to the level of depravity as to burn temples and defile images of the beloved Emperor. It made him angry that these wretches breathed the same air as he did. If it were up to him he would have called a couple of SDF boats and lain waste to these Emperor-forsaken plains from orbit. But since he was sergeant Almudena and not Governor Almudena he was sent with a large PDF taskforce to bring the natives back in line and instil the fear of the Throne in them.

He had been marching through this place for weeks and, to his growing concern, he had found nothing in the locals that suggested they were anything other than loyal Imperial citizens. The locals looked frightened and edgy and when Almudena asked them what had them so spooked they responded with deranged tales of wolves who walked on two legs and stole people away in the dead of night to be devoured alive. They rambled on about entire villages that had supposedly been sacked by the creatures, their inhabitants butchered.

Sergeant Almudena had serious doubts about these claims and wondered if the locals were simply terrified of the insurgents and began to regard them as some sort of mythical creatures. Superstition was rife in backwater places like this, after all.

Still, these doubts plagued him throughout the long trek through the plains to find who, or indeed what, was responsible for all the unrest in the region. He looked at his map and located a small dot that represented a farming commune that was to be their next stop, he gazed at the map and then at the endless plains around him and sighed, he really did loath this endless sea of grass.

'How much longer do we have to march through this place, sarge?' trooper Ceferino asked. 'It gets on my nerves.'

'I hate this place as well,' Almudena said. 'But we have to get to that that farming village, our scouts are supposed to have reached it by now and they still haven't reported back.'

'Something is wrong here, mark my words, sir,' trooper Alejandrino muttered under his breath and made to reach the silver Aquila he kept on a chain around his neck.

'Enough of this talk,' Almudena snapped. 'We go in, blow this rebel scum to kingdom come and get our arses back to the capital so the Governor can pin a medal on our chests. Is that clear?'

The troopers under his command muttered their agreement and the long trek over the rural plains began anew, the monotony of the landscape was only broken by the occasional river or rock.

'Look sarge,' trooper Tacito called out and pointed at a rising slope. 'There's smoke coming from that hill.'

'That can't be right,' Almudena said and frowned his eyebrows.

'Why not, sir?' Tacito asked.

'Tell me,' Almudena began, 'what is required in order for smoke to form?'

'Wood,' Tacito suggested.

Throne, what an idiot.

'I do believe that there can only be smoke when there is fire,' Almudena said like he was explaining something to a child.

'Oh right,' Tacito said hastily. 'I knew that.'

'I'm sure you did.'

Almudena realized that beyond that slope the farming village lay and that it, judging by the level of smoke, was by now a smouldering ruin after being put to the torch. He whispered a short prayer to the Emperor and rammed a powercell in his lasgun.

'Belt up lads,' he said to his nine man squad. 'We are going to search that farm for survivors and learn whatever we can about the enemy's methods. Move out!'

His squad leapt to readiness in a gratifyingly small amount of time and wasted no time in loading their lasguns. They crested the hill and had their first look at the farm.

It was a ruin gutted by fire and obscured by smoke. All around it was a great ocean of cornstalks that had been left unattended for too long and had turned into a wilderness of stalks and long grass.

'See if you can vox the general,' Almudena told trooper Fulgencio who was the squads' voxtrooper.

As stated earlier Almudena's squad was part of a large PDF army sent by the Governor to pacify the plains. This army consisted of over half a million soldiers, and even that staggering amount of men was barely enough to cover the entire plains region. The general in charge of the operation had broken the army into smaller divisions of ten thousand men each, with his own command bunker safely behind a wall of his own men. But, and this fact was being kept from the rank and file for the sake of moral, the PDF command noted that these divisions were going dark one by one, no vox traffic came from them and no reply came when Command had demanded they supply them with updates. It was almost as if everyone in those divisions had simply vanished into thin air.

'I'm only getting static,' Fulgencio said. 'It's as if the link with Command has been broken.'

'Then we do this on my orders,' Almudena said and waved with his lasrifle in the direction of the farming village. 'Come on lads, into the long grass.'

It wasn't long before he started to regret those fateful words.

Ceferino was the first to die.

They were halfway through the forest of cornstalks, in a small clearing, when they heard a low growling noise. Almudena signalled a halt and the cautious advance came to a sudden stop. All of them strained to hear something over the rustling of the stalks, but no other sound was forthcoming. Almudena signalled to advance again when they heard it again, but now they heard it all around them. The PDF soldiers raised their weapons, the growling was definitely getting closer, then it stopped again.

Almudena was about to say something when Ceferino screamed, something had grabbed his legs and had already dragged his lower body in the stalk forest, thus obscuring his assailant. Tacito and Alejandrino rushed to his aid, but when they reached him Ceferino was dragged fully from view.

Now the nine remaining PDF only heard Ceferino scream, suddenly his shrieks reached an even higher crescendo, as if Ceferino had just encountered an unspeakable horror from his darkest nightmares. Little did the nine survivors realize that this was most likely the case.

Then the screaming stopped abruptly and they were under no illusions as to what meant to the fate of their friend.

'What do we do, sarge?' Tacito asked. 'What the frak do we do now?'

'Make for the farmhouse,' Almudena yelled. 'Move, Emperor damn your eyes!'

In retrospect, this decision was probably the worst one in Almudena's military career, but at the time he was too concerned with his frantic attempts at survival than to think like an officer. A fatal flaw.

His men wasted no time in running for their lives, they trampled cornstalks and pushed them asides in their desperate dash to safety. Running with the speed only panicked men can achieve.

Alejandrino swore at the man in front of him to move faster, he was about to shove him in the back to encourage to do just that when he disappeared from view. Two large hands, almost like the paws of a canine and covered in dark brown fur and claws were fingernails should be grabbed him and pulled him shrieking through the stalks. Alejandrino had never seen anything like that in his life and the gruesome fate of his unlucky comrade was enough to fill his legs with the strength to run like hell.

All around Almudena men, his men, were dying. They were being picked off one by one, snatched from the ground and dragged off to some unmentionable fate.

To be devoured alive.

The thought had hit him like a wrecking ball, almost making him lose momentum. Could it be that the locals were not simply afraid of some insurgents, but rather terrified of whatever was butchering his men?

He could see the farmhouse coming closer and closer, he was almost there.

'Come on,' he yelled to the trooper behind him, trooper Danilo. 'We're almost there.'

'Thank the Emper-' Danilo was viscously cut of as one of the fiends who were slaughtering them leaped on his back. It began to tear the screaming Danilo apart with its' teeth and claws.

Almudena looked in horror and realized that the locals had been telling the truth. The thing that was feasting on one of his men did look like a wolf, but it walked on two legs and had the height of man, it was armoured in crude black body armour and strapped to its' back was a large autogun of a design Almudena had never seen before. Almudena began to run again and one word came unbidden to his mind as he processed what he had seen.

Xenos.

His world was being invaded by aliens, then the coin began to drop as he scrambled inside the farmhouse, the civil unrest was their doing. And now the Governor had left the major cities weakened as their garrisons were chasing ghosts across the plains. That left most of the cities between the plains and the capital critically undermanned, if these aliens moved swiftly and in force Almudena had no doubts that they could easily overcome the PDF army in the plains and then nothing would stand in their way to reach the capital. And if the capital fell, then all of Corduba would not be far behind.

He looked about him and raised his weapon at three shapes coming at him from a doorway. He fired a couple of frantic shots at the silhouettes

'Wow!' Alejandrino called out. 'It's us, sarge!'

'Is that you, Alejandrino?' Almudena asked as he lowered his lasgun. 'Who's with you?'

'Tacito and Fulgencio, sir.' Alejandrino replied.

'What of the others?' Almudena asked.

'All dead, sir,' Alejandrino hunkered down next to him. 'But Fulgencio is still alive and his voxcaster is still operational, we can warn Command in the capital and ask for extraction. I think the Governor will want to know what we have seen here.'

'You're right,' Almudena said determined, many good men had died horrible deaths here and he would not have them be in vain. 'We must warn him, it might already be too late for the army on the plains, but with luck the Governor might be able to impose the draft and build a large enough force to drive these filthy aliens of our world, maybe even call in the Imperial Guard.'

Alejandrino nodded at his sergeant's words, silently grateful that Almudena had recovered his wits.

'Get on the vox,' Almudena told trooper Fulgencio. 'Tell the Governor all hell has broken lose and that its' coming to the capital.'