"Trophies, is not applicable to this situation, I do not think," Jauron's vox unit relayed, "We have not done anything yet that the guard could not do themselves."
"Well I still need a word for it then," Batbayar's tone seemed to welcome his battle-brother's denial.
"A word for what?" Enfield's vox was more static intermingled with words, but he was fine enough to keep it that way, if we could speak to each other well enough. I sometimes suspected more so if we couldn't.
To his credit, on the quieter days, Enfield did more than any of us could during most days, monitoring any infection by the xenos into the guard.
"For our scattering, our ordered boredom upon this world," Batbayar mocked, "For ninety days of standing in line with the guardsman, shooting at the alien whelps as they sprint through bombardments. For what we've been reduced to."
Batbayar, much later into our assignment, decided he would be composing some piece or another to commemorate our non-actions, and to keep his mind to some direction other than boredom. Whenever Sergeant Wilifrid told him that any hard copy of the work would not leave the records of the deathwatch, he assured me that there would not be any, but that he would carry it in his heart, if he did not forget it for a much grander tale.
"I agree with Jauron," Enfield's static spoke, "Trophies are shown to those who matter, and these guard do not."
"Then why your ministrations?" Batbayar challenged.
"To deny the enemy biomass, and to understand what, if any mutations I should be aware of."
"Cold," Jauron spoke. I had expected more than just that word, but knowing now, I shouldn't have.
"What about you, Sergeant, do you have a word for it?"
Wilifrid's channel overrode to ours, a volume higher than all my other battle brothers. I wonder if that was by design. I could never ask if he was as loud to them as he was to me. Never a question. They invited others in return, and I was too tired of lies by that point.
"Astartes. We have our orders, and we follow them. We are Astartes."
"What about you Antaeus, you've a word?" our poet asked.
I broke my view from the horizon for a moment, turning from the front to see a few guardsman staring. The slightest turn of my neck sent them scattering back to their tents or their designated defensive lines like birds in the face of a storm. Some instinctively saluted or made the sign of the Aquilla at me, as they would do any time we saw them holding anything other than a weapon, looking any direction other than the front. Despite our shared mission, they feared us. They fear us always. The inquisition; the deathwatch, to any who hold a lasgun, they are the same. But they fired alongside us, we the reminders of might and indomitable survival.
So I told our poet my answer.
"Statues. We are statues."