+++Three+++
Folke stepped out of the bakery building that had become his impromptu office space as confidently as he could fake. He had taken the time to clean the blood from his sword and dagger, inserted fresh powerpacks in his laspistol and the lasrifle he'd grabbed. Johansen carried his lasrifle at 'present arms,' a piece of ground grain sacking tied to the barrel in place of bayonet of an actual scrap of white cloth.
Behind him, his platoon had their lasrifles, grenade launchers, and heavy stubbers bristling from within windows, loopholes, and mouseholes cut into the walls. Forty-odd men lay in wait to protect him if things went down, and in the chill of the weak mid-day winter sun, Folke felt a fierce pulse of pride in his men. He walked the measured pace of a man going to meet his doom, and Johansen matched him for every stride. The road from the bakery's front door led to the central plaza after thirty meters.
Thirty meters in the open, in the center of the road, his officer's gold braid and insignia on his cap and tunic clearly visible to any keen-eyed marksman that looked for a plucky Lieutenant to round out his slain officers for the week. Folke took a breath, then stepped into the central square of the village. He took a look at the Imperial Shrine, where the altars to the Emperor and whatever Saints the locals had venerated would be. Plain wood and stone, it bore an Imperial aquila on the steeple that signaled it was a place of worship to all the locals for miles around. It probably contained the records of deaths, births, marriages, and naming ceremonies, going back centuries. It might even contain a statue of an anonymous Guardsman, in honor of those mustered millennia ago and sent millions of miles away to soldier for the Imperium. And, perhaps if they were lucky, how and when the sons of this place had died in the Emperor's service. Folke turned and made the sign of the Aquila over his chest, head bowed, for a moment. A cough interrupted his moment of reflection, and his hands dropped to sword and laspistol.
From the front entrance of the large manorial house came three people, a woman and two men. They wore the uniforms of the PDF regiments that the Guard normally would have counted as auxiliaries or militia to garrison areas behind the front, with the blue arm-band denoting Tau allegiance. Folke's eyes spotted the officer insignia of a Major and two Captains, and he smiled. They bore no flag of truce, but he could see the pulse and las-rifles, the heavy-stubber barrels sticking out of windows and whatever loop and mouseholes their infantry had carved out of the marble of the house, probably with nothing more than muscle and pickaxes.
In deference to the Aquila that always watched, to the courtesies of military protocol, Folke saluted. The Major's eyes widened, but he returned it on auto-pilot. Folke dropped it, then gestured at the village.
"A lovely place," he said. "Lovely farm land, lovely forests off in the distance, not too close to the planetary capital. Why, I bet even the girls are lovely."
"Now listen here, you jumped up foreign piece of Imperial scu-" the Captain that had started in on Folke was silenced by a swift elbow to the ribs from the female Captain, and Folke nodded his gratitude.
"I am a servant of His Imperial Majesty, the God-Emperor of Man on His Golden Throne upon Holy Terra," Folke said. "Negotiations don't usually feature as a part of an Imperial Guard officer's day. However," and here Folke held up a hand. "I am Lieutenant Alexander Folke, His Imperial Majesty's 312th Skanian Regiment of Light Foot. I would like to discuss a ceasefire to last no more than two hours while we gather our dead and prepare them for funerary rites."
"Major Nezda Losmian," the Major started. There was a scar across his throat that affected his speech, and so his voice was high-pitched and effeminate, but Folke knew looks and sounds could be deceiving. "176th Corcusani Planetary Defense Legion. These are my Captains, Peri Luwden and Matthias Paldir." At their leader's introduction, each nodded their heads. Behind them, Folke watched a heavy stubber set up on a staircase in the entrance hall of the manorial house track his movements.
"In the interest of full disclosure," Folke said, "I have been ordered to capture and secure the town. As you know, the Guard is advancing. However, my regiment is prepared to level this town the very earth if enough resistance is encountered." A lie. Folke's regiment was prepared to do no such thing, and he was gambling that they wouldn't know that. He watched the heavy stubber check gunner that her ammo belt was secure while she tracked Folke with her eyes. He ignored her, and ignored the two Imperial Navy fighters that shrieked by overhead. The two Captains had stopped watching him and were busy holding a whispered conversation, while Major Losmian merely looked at him.
Off towards the eastern horizon, there was a line of dark clouds moving diagonal to Folke's position. Miles away, the rumble of the artillery guns started again, probably as Guard units encountering resistance requested support to brush them aside. Corcusani was a beautiful world, he thought. Lots of green, with lovely rolling hills for farmland, and decently sized stands of trees. The villages, or at least the one he had seen, were pictesque. Folke took a breath and turned back to the enemy officers. They'd stopped their robust discussion, and were now staring at him.
"I'm sorry," Folke said with a small smile. "I'm from a hive, you see, and this area of your world is beautiful."
The Major smiled. "You should see the mountains, Lieutenant. The Tevisher Range is particularly lovely. I would vacation with my wife and children before the current-hm, unpleasantries. Perhaps if things are resolved you can visit?"
"I'd enjoy that, I think," Folke said. "But to return to the task we must be about, you must lay down your arms and submit to Imperial authority." He spread his hands out wide, to show that his orders were orders and that he'd had nothing to do with the ultimatum that he was now issuing.
The Major reached a hand into his tunic, and Folke tensed. Major Losmian reached his free hand up to put Folke at ease, and withdrew a long, flat box from an inside pocket. "Apologies, Lieutenant. Do you smoke cigarels?" He opened the box and offered a tube of what looked like brown paper rolled in a long, thick tube. It looked like a variant of lho-stick, so Folke nodded and took one. He pulled out his lighter from his tunic's breast pocket, a dull metallic slate gray color, with one side emblazoned with the Skanian planetary coat of arms, two crossed gold swords on a blue shield underneath the watchful aegis of the Imperial Aquila.
He lit it, and then copied what Losmian was doing, which he thought was taking a puff, like on a lho-stick. Instead, he wound up coughing, smoking coming out his nose. "Your first time?" Losmian nodded sympathetically when Folke murmured an affirmative. "The problem, as I see it," Losmian said, "is that the Guard wants this village. We have orders to hold the village. Your regiment has been ordered to level the village if resistance is too strong. Neither of us can simply go around the other. I can't pull back without being shot by a Commissar." Folke didn't say anything at that, but he did smile. "So what I suggest we do is-" Losmian was cut off by a flash of light hitting his throat, and then a puff of superheated flesh and blood boiling off in an explosion as the beam of the lasrifle shot ended.
Folke dodged to the side, knocking Johansen down as he did so. Another shot cracked through the air across his back, searing a burn in the back of his tunic and his back. Gritting his teeth, he forced Johansen's head back down as the man tried to lift it to see what was happening. Folke drew his laspistol, turned on one knee, and put a shot at the window he thought the fire was coming from. A return shot vaporized the dirt between his knee and leg, and he cursed. He fired instinctively, not bothering to aim, as he grabbed Johansen by his gear webbing and dragged him up. Rubbing his ear with his shoulder, Folke activated his platoon-wide combead.
"Kill that Emperor-damned sniper!" A volley of lasrifle and heavy stubber fire was the response. A fourth shot lanced out from the building, smashing the female Captain in the chest, and Folke started pushing Johansen away, for cover. Behind them, Captain Luwden started moaning.
"Please... please Lieutenant..." Her voice was strained, and when Folke glanced back at her, he saw she was trying to cradle guts that had been vaporized by the lasrifle shot back into her stomach. He took pity on her, recited the Oath of Mercy, and shot her. She fell limp, and then the PDF men that had been waiting in the big house to see what happened started firing. At Folke. He swore again, hustled Johansen behind a building. Panting, because getting shot at while trying to shove another man into cover wasn't fun, Folke wished he had brought the lasrifle.
[i]You fight with what you have, recruits, and if all you have are your teeth and fists, then the Emperor expects you to die biting and swinging.[/i] Training Sergeant Veradun had said that on the Founding Field, brought in from a mauled unit of Jantine Patricians to kick the new Founded Skanian regiments into shape before they deployed to a warzone vital to Imperial interests. Folke had his laspistol, his officer's saber, and Johansen. He turned to Johansen.
"You're going to go back to our buildings, and bring up the platoon with you. I don't know if the enemy can crack our communications net, but I don't want to find out. Tell First Sergeant Theodorus to position the heavy stubbers and grenadiers best for an assault on the manor house, with a fireteam to protect them. Repeat my orders back to me!"
Johansen quit shaking when Folke's firm tone of voice got to him, and drew himself up to his full height. "I'm to get back to the platoon, sticking to cover, then lead them up here to you. Comm net might be compromised, and I'm to have Sergeant Theodorus position the grenadiers and stubber teams to support an attack, with a fireteam to cover their backs."
"Well said," Folke told him. He handed Johansen his laspistol and the two extra power packs for it. "Let me borrow your lasrifle." Johansen gave his lasrifle over to Folke. Folke flipped the safety off and toggled the fire selectors to 'single' and 'full.'
"I'll cover you," Folke said. He pulled a smoke grenade off of his webbing, primed it, and then tossed it around the corner where Johansen was going to cross. He popped back out from the corner of the building on his side, sighted at a shadow in a window of the big house, and fired. The blue light of the lasrifle lanced out, hit in the center of the shadow, and it dropped with a strangled scream. Folke ducked back behind the corner of the building, and then a line of heavy stubber shells stitched their way across the dirt where he'd been standing a moment before. A chatter of return fire sounded from back where Folke's platoon was, and he was pleased that they were still doing their best to cover him. A glance showed Johansen was gone, but most of the smoke from the grenade still lingered, so Folke edged his way around that corner, back flat against the wall, rifle aimed at where an enemy might pop his head around the far side of the building.
Folke's back ran up against a wood door, so he turned and put a boot next to the handle. It fell inwards, and he went into the building fast. The room was some kind of workshop or garage, with a four-wheeled vehicle with an empty space in the back of it up on a rack. He checked the vehicle, then the tall cabinets that lined one side of the wall. The vehicle and cabinets were empty, but a thud from upstairs had him swiveling to cover the shadowed doorway. He toggled the fire selector to 'automatic' and shuffled forwards, body held as close to sideways as possible so that he'd present a smaller target. A jab of the bayonet through the arch indicated that no one was waiting on the other side to ambush him, and so Folke went through. He heard the krump of high explosive grenades going off and felt a grim sort of satisfaction.
[i]That'll teach you bastards to hole up in a stone and brick manor house in the center of the damn village.[/i] A whine of static came from his combead, indicated someone was trying to get in contact with him from outside of the max range, and a grin split his face. That meant it was either Company or Battalion, not any of his squads. Folke heard another thump from upstairs, so he advanced. The stairs led up to a darkened room, and another crackle of static from his combead almost deafened Folke. He pulled the damned thing out of his ear, letting it dangle by the wire down his shoulder.
There was no one waiting at the top of the stairs to riddle him with autogun or lasgun fire, and so he stood outside the two doors. He eased up to the first one, and repeated what he'd done on the outside. He placed his boot firmly next to the knob, and then kicked, hard. The door fell inwards, and Folke was through it in a flash, sweeping the room with his lasrifle. From outside the building, he heard the screeching of engines as Imperial Navy fighters soared overhead, escorting bombers as they hammered the capital city's defensive complexes while the massed guns of the Guard spoke the Emperor's wrath.
Folke checked under the bed, in the closet, and found nothing. Nothing out of place save a stuffed animal discarded or left behind in the closet, some sort of four-legged furry creature with big ears. He secured it in his webbing. A tinny voice from his microbead started talking, so Folke placed it back in his ear.
"Company to Second Platoon, over, do you read me? What is your status, Second?" It was Captain Scylfr, suddenly loud in Folke's in ear.
"Aye, sir! Whatever my vox-caster is doing, it's working." Folke responded. "We're currently engaged in the village of Beecher's Grove. We've suffered a few losses, but the last enemy resistance is holed up in the large house in the village center. We're keeping them pinned, but the rest of the company coming in from the flanks or side to take them by surprise would be great," Folke reports.
"Copy, Second," Scylfr responds. "We're on our way." There was a rattle of heavy-stubber fire that ripped through the outside brick wall and the wooden paneling on the walls, and Folke dived back out of the room, landing heavily on his back.
He cursed, and then there was a short, startled scream from inside the second room. It was cut off abruptly, as though by a hand covering a mouth. He stood, and stared at the door for a moment. If he tossed a grenade in, no one would know that they'd been anything other than combatants. On the other hand, he had an Emperor-given duty to restore this world, and its inhabitants, to Imperial rule. [i]Decent[/i] and [i]forthright[/i] and [i]honest[/i] Imperial rule, which from the briefings given before the first regiments took the spaceport in an orbital drop seemed to have been lacking from the Governor.
He put aside the issues of Imperial governance, and Folke got back to his feet. He checked that the bayonet was slotted tightly onto his lasrifle, and then kicked the second door in. The door was blocked from behind, and so his kick jolted him and knocked his cap askew when it did nothing. He picked the short cylinder with a brim up, then shined his cap badge, the diving eagle holding a lightning bolt, wreathed. It reminded him that there was a world worth defending from the Imperium's enemies, that the citizenry of this planet weren't all traitors. He decided to try a different tack, and slung the lasrifle on his back.
"It's okay," he called in the Low Gothic everyone knew. "It's okay," he repeated. "I'm an officer of His Immortal and Imperial Majesty's Guard, and we're here to liberate your world."
There was a muffled whisper from behind the door that he didn't quite catch, and then a voice, saying clearly in Low Gothic, "Go 'way!" There was a muffled sob, and Folke cocked an eyebrow. That was a girl's voice, Folke thought. He checked his watch. It felt like it had been longer than it really had been. He glanced at the door one last time, then turned. [i]If they're going to shoot me, they'd have done it by now,[/i] he told himself.
[i]She sounds scared and probably isn't alone in there. She can't be more than sixteen, seventeen. Aye,[/i] he decided. "All right," he called, still in Low Gothic. "I'm going to go, now. If you want food or shelter, come find the Skanian regiments. We'll take care of you. May the Emperor protect." He finished with the traditional benediction, then made the sign of the aquila. Unslinging the lasrifle from his back, he brought it up to his shoulder, prepared to face the crucible of war once more.
Folke went back down the stairs, cleared the bottom floor once more, and became aware of the continuous whine of lasrifle fire, dueling with the sharper bark of pulse rifles, and the deeper chatter of the heavy stubbers, contesting for supremacy of the village square. He went out the door he came in, still dangling off one hinge, and came face to face with Sergeant Carpelan, the leader of Squad One.
"Lieutenant," Carpelan nodded respectfully. He spoke in the war-cant of Skania, a language that some linguists on their homeworld said was as old as human existence on the planet itself. "Good to see you alive, sir. Johansen came running back about ten minutes ago."
"Good," Folke said. He spoke in the same language, Low Gothic laid aside for the moment. "What're the other three squads doing right now?"
"Assaulting the enemy position from the front, under cover from the stubbers and grenades," Carpelan responded. "Platoon Sergeant Theo thought it'd be a good idea to work in on the flank through the buildings and side alleys. Kai brought an axe he scrounged up from an outbuilding somewhere, for mouse-holing." Mouse-holing was the practice of knocking holes in walls to allow infantry to move through buildings unopposed from enemy fire elsewhere along a street or across a plaza, and was easily one of the most important things for urban combat that the Skanian regiments had learned after their Founding Day, on the Muster Fields before the troop ships arrived to take them to war.
"Good," Folke repeated. He heard three dozen male voices, rough and hoarse after the shouting and din of combat, raised in the Paean to Saint Pius, the patron of the Imperial Guard, Ollanius who stood beside the Emperor against the reviled Horus in his treachery. The voices came from the central square, around the building that Folke had mostly cleared. He left the lasrifle dangling across his chest and rolled his sleeves up, now that the sun had cleared the clouds. Kilometers away, artillery guns did their work. Overhead the Imperial Navy watched, collated data, and sent it to General Beauregard, commander of the Arkhan Corps that Folke's regiment belonged to.
"Let's go win a village. In the name of the Divine Emperor, we will take it!" he told the squad. They grinned in anticipation, and made the sign of the aquila. The courage of his men helped serve to inspire Folke, and so he returned the sign of the Aquila to them. A quote came to mind, from one of the few and excellent Colonel-Commissars: [i]From such heroes was the foundation of the Imperium laid, and with their blood as mortar were the stones of its walls secured.[/i] The Colonel-Commissar had been describing the stand of his regiment against a mob of Orks, but Folke thought it still fit.
Skanian regiments were noted for their discipline and steadfast courage, their willingness to advance under even the most determined of enemy fire. Today would prove their reputation once more. Elsewhere, though the Skanian 312th did not know this, their sister regiments, the 313th through 315th were spearheading the advance through fields, copses of trees, and small towns that served the farms around them. The Skanian 312th and nine other infantry regiments, with dedicated support from an artillery regiment, were the attacking anvil, while the 312th's sister regiments and the armor they were guiding around the enemy's flank would be the hammer that shattered the resistance outside the suburb towns that fed into Palaptinate.
The Imperial Guard was working a double envelopment, and this thrust of it had been entrusted to the Skanians in order to break the enemy defense before the Guard ever approached the capital city. Folke led the squad with him around the side of the building, and, under covering fire from the rest of the platoon, across the open street that would have been a killing ground as they worked to take the village's largest house and what probably served as town hall from the flank. Silence was the key, now, and so Folke gestured to the squad to move fast and quiet. They followed his lead across the cobbled road, bent over double, lasrifles held in one hand as they made their sprints. Folke covered them, standing in the open, lasrifle shouldered and ready to shoot. None of them drew fire as they ran, and so once all twelve men of Squad One were across, he withdrew behind the corner they'd rushed for.
"All right," he said. "We just need to clear this building, then go around the side. Fireteam one, stay here and cover our backs. Two, with me and we'll clear it." Folke led the way, putting his boot to the door, knocking it askew. The kick knocked his sword against his planted leg, rumpling his gold officer's sash. He went through the door, fast and hard, just like in Fundamental training. There was an enemy infantryman with his back turned to Folke, looking out a window. He started to turn to engage Folke, and Folke shot him twice. The man jerked back, slumping over the sill, and his finger tightened on the trigger of the lascarbine he was holding. The lascarbine sprayed into the wood and ruined the wall. Another man came down the stairs in the corner, yelling something in the local dialect of Low Gothic, and Folke shot him, too.
That enemy sprawled backwards, and the man behind him tripped. A lasrifle barrel poked its snout out from over Folke's shoulder and placed a shot in the man's back. "Thanks Sergeant," Folke said. A tap on Folke's shoulder indicated that Carpelan had heard his thanks. They moved into the building at speed, checking corners, clearing closets. It was some kind of townhouse, even with two stories, and empty other than the men they'd shot already. They left two of the better shooters in the squad on the second floor of the house and went back down to the road. Folke scratched at the scar across his face, the remnant of a memory, and handed the lasrifle to Johansen, panting, his face drawn and white.
"A fun little jog, Johansen?"
"Yes sir," he responded. The vox-set had to have been a gleaming target for Coruscani sharpshooters, and that Johansen had made it from Folke to the platoon and then caught up with Folke once more was a stellar indication of Johansen's courage or the Skanian ability to lay covering fire or both.
"Well done." Folke drew his officer's saber, a simple piece of metal with the slightest curve to it and a carved eagle's head for the pommel beneath the simple bar handguard. "Men of Skania!" He turned to face the squad, the men that would be storming the central building with him. "Our regiment has earned glory today. Glory for now and for always. But they will say that it was you, you men who won it with sweat and blood. Our sons will worship as we worship the ancestor spirits of the first Skanians, as we worship the Honored First that marched with Saint Langley to holy war in the Imperator's name. They will know our names forever. For the Imperator!" They made the sign of the aquila, rifles slung across their fronts as they did so.
He was out of smoke grenades, and Carpelan was too. So Folke looked at the squad. "Johansen, Ekberg, Lund. You'll cover us. The rest of you with me. To victory!" The assault group went around the corner at a sprinting crouch, lasrifles held useless while they went. Behind them, Johansen, Ekberg, and Lund started pouring fire into the windows and doorway visible on the large house, white hot shots lancing by overhead. Folke didn't bother to wait for the rest of the group to stack up on the door with him. He slammed it into, shoulder first, sending the door crashing inwards.
A bright blue lascarbine shot hit the wall next to his head, and Folke put a shot with his laspistol through the neck of the man that had bracketed Folke with his fire. Another man came yelling his defiance from a corner, and his struggles were ended by a las-rifle shot through the open door. The group that had followed Folke came in with fixed bayonets, hacking and stabbing at the traitors with the righteous fury of the devout.
There was a roar in his ears, Folke realized, and it was the pounding of his blood. Time seemed to slow as a PDF infantryman came at him with a bayonet fixed on his lascarbine, and Folke saw the anger and fear and hate in the man's green eyes. Folke thrust his sword forward, into the man's chest, where it stuck on a rib. The man stumbled back, then took another step forward before his head was blasted by two different shots. There was the smell of burning meat, and a heady vapor to the room from vaporized infantryman flesh.
Folke jerked his sword out of the man, who fell backwards, and then flopped once as Folke shot him. More bodies pushed into the room, and the roar of lasrifle fire and men fighting and dying with and to cold steel contributed to the din. Folke shook his head, trying to clear his ears, when he heard a voice that he recognized.
"Come on, you apes! The Emperor is watching, and I shan't let him see you shame me! Forward! Cut them down! Cut them down!" There was one man with a voice like that, that called them apes.
Commissar Geralt Dubreton's voice carried, ringing loud and clear through the din of battle, no doubt thanks to the efforts of the Commissariat schools. The regimental commissar, Folke wondered what he was doing here, when he was supposed to be with the main portion of the battalion, the other seven companies attempting to push through the enemy defenses while the company Folke belonged to mopped up the resistance that had been gone around.
They came through the rear doors and windows of the central square's big house with bayonets flashing in the flickering electric lights of the building. They came through the doors and windows, the Emperor on their lips and the business of killing His foes on their minds. They were the rest of Company I of the 312th, and they had Commissar Dubreton, Captain Scylfr, and Chaplain Viraden leading the way. Commissar Dubreton was a whipcord lean man with hard angles for a face, like something an Imperial Guard recruiting poster would use, and he used a power saber like he'd been born to it, easily hacking apart the enemy as they came.
With the combined strength of the rest of the company hitting them from the rear, Folke's platoon pouring fire in at the front, and Folke's assault group coming in from the side, they crushed the enemy between them. Commissar Dubreton and Captain Scylfr approached Folke, wiping blood from their swords and holstering sidearms. He did the same and saluted them both.
"Thank you, sirs," he said. "It was tough going there for a moment, but your surprise was as welcome as it was unexpected."
"Well done, Folke," Scylfr said. He was middling height, middling age, and slightly rotund about the waist, the mark of his previous occupation before joining the Guard. Scylfr had been a maystere, the elected officials that headed the rural towns outside of Stockarta Hive or the smaller cities on Skania. "A damned tough fight, looks like, Folke."
"Thank you, sir," he repeated. "May I ask what brings you and the Commissar here so quickly?"
"Orders, Lieutenant," Dubreton said. His voice was a smooth tenor, and Folke imagined that Dubreton had used it to seduce more than one woman in his time. "The regiment, in full strength, is to move to assist elements of a local PDF infantry regiment broadcasting with loyalist IFF codes. They, and elements of the Fourteenth Cecjan Drop Troopers, are pinned in a village that sits astride a bridge that General Beauregard's tacticians have designated as vital to an alternate supply route if we're to continue to prosecute this front of the battle for the planet."
"Do we know what kind of resistance there'll be?" Folke asked, and Dubreton shrugged. The Commissar took off his peaked cap, slicked his hair back with one gloved hand, and then replaced the cap. Like Folke, he had a scar across his face, although Dubreton's ran down his face, across his nose, and to the corner of his mouth, while Folke's was a combination of knife scar and proximity burn from a lasrifle's discharge.
"Whatever resistance there is, it's enough to pin at least an infantry regiment and four companies," Scylfr cut in. With his red hair, he was almost at odds with most of the rural Skanians, men with blue or green eyes and pale, almost colorless hair.
"We'll sweep the bastards aside," Scylfr went on. He gestured with a fist, particularly emphatic. "Sweep 'em aside, I say, and then link with the 79th Merdvenannan Tanks pushing up to support our attack."
"A flank march," the Commissar supplied, when Folke made a noise of polite confusion. "We're going to cross the river on foot at a ford that tac-scans from the Navy have identified, and pin the enemy in place against the river and village that friendly forces are occupying while the armor sweeps up to crush 'em while we clear the town." Folke nodded. "The regiment is half an hour's behind us," Dubreton went on. "First Company, as the light company, is to scout ahead. I trust I need not tell you your business, Captain."
"I say not, Commissar," Scylfr exclaimed. "We'll find the fastest route, don't worry!"
"The Emperor protects the virtuous," Dubreton said. "He protects the virtuous, and we are virtuous, for we seek to restore Civitas Imperialis to this planet, this system, and this sector. The Emperor knows our cause, and as our cause is service in His name, he knows we are righteous. Captain, get this company moving. We have allies to rescue."
"Quite so, Commissar," Scylfr agreed. "Vasa!" The Colonel's son approached, lasrifle slung and lho-stick lit. He had the pale hair and cold blue eyes of his father, but wore the altogether more open and approachable features of his mother, the Colonel's Lady Wife, and he was Scylfr's vox-operator.
"Ja, Captain?"
"You know what to do, soldier. Vox your father, let him know we've cleared the village and are marching to meet him. Folke? I want your lads up front, skirmish and advance order. Commissar, will you lead the company with a marching song?" Dubreton smiled at Scylfr's question while Folke saluted and left the Captain and Commissar there, in the building. He was met outside by Chaplain Viraden, who was making the sign of the aquila over one of Folke's dead. Folke did so as well, then knelt and closed the man's eyes.
"Are we allowed time to perform the proper funerary rites for these soul at final rest, Lieutenant?"
Folke stayed kneeling, and shook his head. "I'm afraid not, [i]prast.[/i] We're to meet the rest of the regiment and rescue a loyalist defense force regiment pinned by the enemy at a bridge the army needs secured."
"Bless you, my son," Viraden said. "The Emperor protects the virtuous. Go forth and bring His wrath to His enemies."