In the distance the rumbling of heavy weapons could be heard.
Jak took a swig from his canteen and quickly sealed the lid, leaning against the side of the trench. Rob and Arnold were playing cards, Dill was keeping watch while the platoon leader Guy checked his bolt pistol's cartridge. Jak made sure his bayonet was tightly on his lasgun for the dozenth or so time.
Dill turned around. "umm... some people are coming."
Everyone hurried to the opposite trench wall. Jak caught a quck glimpse of five marching men, carrying lasguns and wearing standard issue guardsmen cloaks.
Guy was the first to speak. "What is you platoon designation?" The men simply began walking faster. "Who is your commanding officer?" Guy yelled.
The hood of one of the approaching men fell down revealing a grotesque and twisted face. "Genestealer hybrid..." the foremost stranger leapt forward, lasgun falling from his arms, impaling Rob on claw-like hands before he could finish his final yell. The rest sprinted forward.
Jak back pedalled and pointed his gun at the beast's head. It was human in shape but the skin was white and slimy, and its mouths housed multiple rows of pointed teeth.
Jak squeezed the trigger. The face charred and disfigured and the hybrid crashed to the muddy trench ground.
Men from farther down the trench in either direction swelled in. The hybrids leapt down into the ditch, talons scything wildly.
It was an eternity of blood, gore, steel and claw. A hybrid's head exploded from bolt impact, showering blood and shattered exo-skeleton on those nearby. Nearby a man fell to the trench floor a gash across his throat muddying the ground in showers of crimson blood. A man wrestled with a hybrid only to be cut down from behind, he crashed to his knees as his mouth moved to words never to be utterred. The air was thick with flying blood, falling limbs, and the stench of burning tissue.
Jak stabbed a hybrid in the mid-section, and then kicked the still struggling xeno off his bayonet, to be trampled by the raging battle. Another one charged knocking aside Jak's lasgun and toppling him to the ground. Jak looked up fearfully at the dreadful enemy. Suddenly the hybrid crashed to the ground, revealing a young guardsman holding a shaking lasgun.
Jak leapt up and reentered the fray swinging his lasgun like a club. He continued to fire, stab, swing, and yell, attacking hybrid after hybrid, until he stood panting and sweating, and the trench was empty of enemies.
Jak leaned against the trench wall. "How many left?" It was Guy. "aye.." said Karj. Jak echoed after him. "bloody hell" whispered Guy. Jak looked downward, the entire trench floor was carpeted in corpses, Sigma platoon had been wiped out with three exceptions. Jak shuddered. So this was war. Each of those mutilated bodies had lived ordinary lives before the conscriptors came, and now they were gone, never again to tread upon the soil of an Imperial planet, never again to sing to His glory, never again to return to their homes and to greet those they loved.
Jak strode across the trench. trying to avoid stepping on the disfigured faces of those he knew, and struggling to suppress the scream that was building inside his throat.
So this was war.
In the background Guy was yelling into the vox-caster "this is Sergeant Guy, Sigma platoon, we have taken extreme losses, reinforcements are necessary to hold the perimeter..."
Jak peered above the trench "Emperor's blood..."
A horde of gaunts were charging across the muddy plain
Before Jak knew what was happening the three were sprinting away to the second line. Guy screamed into the vox-caster "We've got a bleepload of Gaunts, forward perimeter breach at one-five oh-five, repeat one-five oh-five..." Guy dropped the vox-caster and began running faster.
Blood-crazed flesh-borer beetles whistled through the air around them.
Jak's lungs ached for more air. Twisting he could see the nightmarish forms of the closest gaunts through the dust cloud thrown up by their fell feet. A flesh borer-beetle launched by a termagaunt screamed by his ear. Jak turned forward and pushed harder, his feet pounding against the dirt below him. Beside, Karj fell his body wracked by violent spasms, a bloody hole visible in his side where one of the dreadful beetles had burrowed. "Go.. on" he coughed between vomits of blood, struggling to lift his lasgun to fire at the enemy for a last time.
Jak continued to run. The second line was now in sight. It was only a matter of getting there. Jak wheezed as he sprinted onwards, his sides growing tighter with every step.
He stumbled into the trench. "welcome soldier," said Ian, lifting his lasgun in a mock salute. Jak could only nod faintly as he crumbled against the far wall.
The Guardsmen in the trench rushed to the wall, lifting their lasguns into firing position, opening fire on the advancing horde. Shooters and clawers crashed to the ground only to be trampled by their own surging line while the fell beetles whistled through the air above the trench.
Guy hefted himself up on his lasgun and joined the firing line. Struggling Jak followed suite. His sense of terror numbed, Jak shot into the Xenos feelinglessly, taking aim and firing, replacing his power-cell every eternity or so.
And still they came, they scampered over their dead, shooting their blasphemous weapons and brandishing their bloodthirsty talons.Their numbers were ever replenishing and they would still crawl forward even with half their limbs boiled away to a bubbling mess, dragging themselves on their remaining arms, intent only on destruction.
For every Gaunt killed the next one came a foot farther, and slowly but surely they were advancing across the plain.
And still they came.
They were almost upon them now, Jak could count the rows of teeth in their mouths.
Suddenly, the voice of the Commissar cut above the din of battle "Servants of the Emperor!" he roared "the Enemy is Legion, but so are we!"
Jak changed his lasgun's power-cell.
"The time is come for his judgement! Let all prepare to meet his unflinching gaze! For mankind! For the Imperium! For the Emp..." the commissar stumbled back from the edge of the trench, a blody hole in the middle of his face; but it mattered not, where he faltered, dozens now took up the cry "For the Emperor!!" It rang all along the trench. "For the Emperor!" yelled Jak squeezing the trigger of his lasgun. "For the Emperor!" cried an unnamed dying soldier hefting his lasgun to shoot one final time. They were Legion. They were the children of the Light. They were the hammer with which the Emperor would smite the darkness, and They would not be Broken!
"Death to the Xenos!" rang across the line as the Tyranids fell upon the trench, leaping through the maelstrom of las blasts.
Jak incinerated the head of a flying termagaunt, before tightening his bayonet and impaling the neck of the next one. Nearby the head of a guardsman went flying, propelled by the vicious swipe of a hormagaunts claw.
The air was heavy with flying blood, human and xeno, and thick with the shrieks and screams of the fallen.
And still they came.
Jak's world was reduced to scything talons and the movement of his own bayonet. Around him gaurdsmen fell, mouths frothing blood, the trench grew shallower and shallower as the dead piled up.
Nearby Ian crashed to the ground, a gaping wound on his side, pouring blood onto the muddy ground on which he lay. Jak pushed his bayonet through the flank of the offending gaunt, before turning to more enemies.
And still they came, leaping into the trench and onto screaming guardsman, apathetically crushing their own dead into the dirt as they tried to tear all living apart in their vicinity, sacrifices of biomass to the hive-mind.
Jak knew he was doomed.
Suddenly shapes were thundering down from the sky as if on wings of fire, forms obscured by the sun shining behind them. They fell into the trench twin-pistols blazing, gaunts exploding in showers of magenta blood. Seraphim.
The remaining Guardsman let out a yell and attacked with renewed vigour, while the holy flamers of the Daughters of the Emperor purged the enemy.
Jak was both in awe and fear of the arrivals, these were the Sisters of Battle, the Daughters of the Emperor, the Angels of His will.
And the enemy came no more.
Quickly the remaining gaunts were wiped out, then as promptly as they came, most of the Seraphim blasted off, jet-packs hoisting them into the air on trails of flame and smoke.
One who had stayed behind was now going from body to body scanning for vital signs.
"Do you agree?" murmured Ian, blood-crusted lips moving slightly.
"Yes" said Jak thinking how quickly the Sisters of Battle had wiped out the Tyranids, "I do." His gaze wandered to the shapely Seraphim medic. Jak smiled. "On both counts."
Jak wandered away, trying to find Guy, or what remained of him, mind dwelling momentarily on Karj, whose trampled and twisted body would now lying alone on the plain, along with any gaunts he managed to shoot down.
Jak turned to look at the broken form of Ian who the Seraphim medic was now leaning over, scanner at hand. With one swift movement Ian wrapped his arms around her pulling to the ground and kissing her on the lips.
The Seraph pulled away quickly raising her bolt-pistol, but glancing at her scanner, walked away. Jak smiled bitterly. Ian had been Ian to the last.
Among the pile of torn and bloody dead lying in the trench, one body had a small smile upon its face.