Diary.

I didn't manage to write yesterday because I was busy. The First Company, or what's left of it, has just joined us, along with Curth and the six surviving boys from his section of the 89th. Emperor above, so many dead. I had to work them into our unit and the whole of yesterday was just nonstop busy, securing everyone, writing reports, sorting out Curth as my second-in-command, now that there are too few of his unit left alive. He took it well.

I have a feeling we're about to lose a lot more. We're down here for now, but its only a matter of time before we do what Mhal brought us here to do in the first place.

Speaking of Mhal, I'm a little weary of him. He knows father and uncle Nordrenner both followed Halivor's rebels because he's been through this diary. He fought against the Angelspears during the uprising. I hope he doesn't become as big a pain as Kins.

…

"We have a problem," Osprey began to the mess hall table, now packed with officers from both companies as well as a few Water Dogs. Mhal stood at the front. Cav and Curth were the sole representatives of the 89th and they sat beside Lystartro so he could whisper any commands to them once they were agreed upon. "This is something we have dealt with before but it's a pain in the behind none-the-less." He nodded to the table. "More ork rangers are sniffing for us. If they find us…" He gave the table the thumbs down.

"You've dealt with this before?" Arcantillius asked, loud and commanding. Lystartro stared grimly at the table, brooding and thoughtful. The two were direct contradictions. Arcantillius looked younger by at least five years and was still somewhat youthfully handsome. He spoke like a nobleman and was what some troopers would call a "spit-and-shine" officer.

"Couple times," Osprey cleared his throat. "It's easy to kill, but if successful, we're all dead. Basically, a bunch of ork rangers are picking through the ruins, looking for signs of us."

"How do you kill them?" Kins demanded.

"Snipers kill them from hiding," explained Mhal, "while scout teams search the nearby area for big pockets of orks who could get drawn to the gunfire. If the snipers will attract the enemy, they do not shoot. Otherwise, they do. If the rangers get away, the scout teams cut off their retreat."

"It's a delicate process," Osprey concluded. "My Water Dogs and Mhal's stormtroopers should carry it out." The room agreed to this quickly. Cav had a feeling Osprey and Mhal took care of this problem whenever it arose.

"So, who's going to be on Plan B detail?" one of the Water Dogs asked. Osprey's casual mood noticeably tensed. He took out a six-sided die.

"Who wants to be one?" he asked.

"What in the name of the Throne?" Lystartro asked, looking up.

"Just a little backup measure," Osprey explained. "If the plan goes to hell, if the orks are attracted by the snipers, we always setup a small, pretend band of survivors and make it look like they were the ones who killed the rangers. They sacrifice themselves to sate the ork's bloodlust. The orks finish them off and wander away, thinking they've won." A few of the Water Dogs bowed their heads. "So we let the Emperor decide who dies if they have to." He shook the die. "Who's one?"

"Don't use that," Kins snapped. Arcantillius gave him a foul look and Osprey narrowed his eyes. "Use your head. Don't put it to that thing. If we had to get rid of someone, who should it be? How about the lowest, least skilled unit here. How about we send…"

A half hour later, Cav, Curth and Tigerson were sitting in the middle of the mess hall, which was now full of the 89th, enjoying a respite from chores around the Water Dog's lair. Water fungus was the staple food here and the groundwater made sure there was plenty to go around. Cav found it to be salty and chewy, but pretty good. He could pretend it was meat. But now, even a good meal couldn't lighten him up.

He looked at a few boys, sitting off on their own in the corner, coping with their own personal daemons, brought onto them by the horror of the war. A few handfuls were sitting together and playing card games and happily scarfing back their meal.

"Boom!" a meaty trooper from Curth's unit slammed a hand of cards on the table. "Three aces." His table burst into laughter. The trooper, evidently the winner of that meaningless round of cards, didn't even show hints that he had been one of the lucky survivors of Curth's sorry group.

"Hey, Cav," Tigerson said as assuringly as he could. "If it's too much, I'll tell em." Cav spat into his bowl.

"It's all because of Kins. It's all because he hates me. I'm the stupid strawhead," he squeezed his spoon.

"Look man, Kins is a jerk, but it's not your fault. I think Osprey would have picked us anyway," Curth whispered. "Hey, we're just the shotstoppers." Cav clenched his teeth and squeezed his spoon in anger.

"No, we're not shotstoppers, we're not nothings. We're soldiers. We've got to mean something." Cav thought of his people's proud warrior tradition and how they made it look so easy. "How do the Guardsmen stand it? One freaking nightmare to the next, day in, day out. Is it something they teach in Guard camp but not in PDF? How the hell am I supposed to tell them about this?" Tigerson sat back in his chair and looked distantly forward, his hand idly picking at the other hand's back, at the place where his gang tattoo once marked.

"Lystartro once said gangboys made bad armyboys because we're insubordinate losers," Tigerson muttered. Curth grinned.

"Oh, you mean you aren't?"

"We are, but I think he was wrong about it on one count, you know?" Tigerson's eyes began to imitate Mhal's: distant and unfathomable. "On the street, you see a lot of killing, you bury a lot of your friends. After a while, you get used to it. That's how they do it. They just forget about the hell and go with the flow." He patted Cav on the shoulder. "Come on you inbred, dirt-munching strawhead, you wanna stop being afraid? You've got to spend long enough in hell to get used to the screams." He smiled. "Yeah, I know it's not the sunshine and candy answer you wanted but that's how I do it."

"And, come on now, you're the one who was bragging about popping that ork with the rocket pack yesterday," Curth added, "you inbred, dirt-munching strawhead," he added with a smirk. Cav looked down into his bowl, at the bubbly white mess that his saliva made amongst the fungus. He got to his feet and took a deep breath to get everyone's attention.

The whole room listened.

Cav wasn't a good public speaker and it showed. He stumbled once when he couldn't find the right words. But he explained it adequately.

"I hope," he finished, "that we aren't needed. But if we have to, it's been a pleasure serving with you. We move out when we're called. As you were." The room was silent for a moment as a few boys cursed. But the games and talking resumed and many people laughed as jokes about their new orders were told. Cav sat back down and shook his head. "I sounded like a dork, right?"

"Sure thing," Curth patted his back. "Hey, it's just orders. Not like you're sending them up there." Curth crossed his hands and cleared his throat. "Of course, whatever the hell it is, it couldn't be worse than the damned cathedral." This was his first time mentioning it and Cav was suddenly interested. He knew of the fight but few details.

"What happened?" Cav asked.

"What you hear," Curth took a bite of fungus and chewed it for longer than he had to. Cav realized Curth was chewing so he didn't have to talk. Cav remembered how Lystartro told him every soldier had a story they wouldn't tell. Now, Curth had one too.

Cav loved to think about his war experience because the kills he'd made could make him feel strong, important, valuable to the Imperium. He had a sinking feeling that these orders would send him to the setting of the story that he would never tell.

He did not know it at the time, but he was right.

…

"Frens, are you dead yet?" Lystartro entered the Water Dog's infirmary (he was amazed they had one, and one that was actually quite well equipped,) and sat down on the cot next to the one Frens lay on. Arcantillius leaned on the doorframe and crossed his arms. Frens, who was bandaged quite heavily, opened his weary eyes at his captain and saluted, despite his injuries.

"Sorry to break your heart, sir," he gasped weakly. "I'm still kicking. You can't have my lasgun yet." Lystartro smiled as he set his things down around himself. He whispered a few prayers to his shotgun's machine spirit and prepared to go through his ritual of cleaning.

"Eh, he's got his old baby right there," Arcantillius added. "Wonderful place, this infirmary. Reminds me of Salsheema'dosh, but without the loose nurses." The three men began to laugh like boys, despite Frens' injury. Lystartro gave an agreeing nod and accidentally bumped an oiling rag off his cot. Arcantillius went in to get it. Still chuckling, Lystartro took the rag and continued working on his shotgun.

"I can't believe you're still thinking about that place. You've just lost most of your company on this stupid little expedition and Frens here might not make it," Lystartro said as the laughter died. "When I see the colonel next, I'm going to ask him about Mhal. I just want to knife that guy…" He gestured stabbing and a loose piece of shotgun bounced to the floor. "Emperor damn…Arcantillius?" The other captain leaned down to get it.

"Truly though," Arcantillius added, handing Lystartro the component. "Doesn't it seem odd that they'd send us here on two missions instead of one? I asked Mhal why the coverup and he said it was to hide our presence from any bandits who might be spying on our chatter. But, I mean, two missions? This hell with the cathedral wouldn't have happened if I'd been with the Fifth."

"The way I hear it, it was a stupid shotstopper and his grenade," Frens murmured.

"That's not the point," Lystartro said. "I can see where the captain's coming from. I thought it made sense when we first dropped in, but since Arcantillius came? And we still haven't found out who the hell twisted up the insides on our vox-sets. I'm starting to think they were like that to begin with. I don't think anyone here would have done it."

"Except for Mhal," Frens mumbled. Lystartro looked at him sideways but didn't say anything. He continued cleaning in silence.

"Why not? Maybe he's a psyker? We know nothing about him," Frens said.

"We know he's a stuck-up gloryboy," Lystartro muttered.

"His men are very good killers," Arcantillius added, "I wish they'd take off their masks…"

"Why? So you could kiss them?" asked Lystartro, aiming his shotgun at the wall.

"Just so I could tell them apart," Arcantillius replied. "It would be an honour to look upon such fine killers."

"Yup, so you could kiss them," Lystartro grumbled. He looked at Arcantillius. "We have to find out how Mhal contacted HQ so we can verify his story. Don't give him any ideas of what we're doing and don't spread rumors." He looked at Frens. "You focus on getting better. I need my lieutenant back."

"I'll stay right here," Frens replied.

"What do we tell Kins?" Arcantillius asked.

"He can use his position as commissar to bring Mhal to heel if he causes trouble. If Mhal doesn't cooperate, we know he isn't who he says he is," replied Frens.

…

He'd been calm and bored at first, but now he was bowstring tense.

It was midday and the city of Essendrav was just as grey as it always was, even if it looked different to Cav. Out here, on this narrow T shaped cross of streets that ran between a pair of crumbling offices, the city was no longer an urban wilderness devoid of life and full of shadow. To him, this was his final battlefield. Piles of rocks now looked different as did the shadows and the looming buildings. Cav didn't know how they looked different, but knowing that here was where he would rot and die made it look different.

It all began with a message on the short-range vox-set. As Cav and Tigerson listened, they heard the report from one of the Water Dogs. The heavy-voiced man told them all that had happened as they crouched in the ruins, waiting for the order to stand down and return underground. Then, after a few hours, they got that order. They had been told to wait on this street while Osprey sent someone to lead them back down. So Cav had his boys garrison the buildings on either side of the road and wait.

Then, just as they settled in, a flare shot off from one of the rooftops and high into the sky, exploding in a spectacular red burst. Cav realized what that meant and felt everyone else knew the same. The Water Dogs had led them to their graves and the flare was to attract the enemy. The gunshots had alerted the orks: Cav and the boys of the 89th Volunteers PDF were to die.

"Should…should we do something?" Curth asked Cav from his place at a ground level window, looking down the street ahead of them. It stretched off into an eternity to Cav. That endless grey, endless road. Endless death. The orks, he somehow knew, would come from there.

"What?" Cav asked, "I doubt Osprey will let us back down and he seems to know the orks will not stop looking for him until they kill a few of us." He raised his lasgun and swallowed some fear. "If we abandon cover the orks might hit us in the freaking open. If we walk around, we'll get lost." He looked at the small room he was in, at Tigerson and Josahik. "Emperor…what are we supposed to do?" He ignored Curth and looked back down the street.

This wasn't how he imagined it would be. Rather than hysterical with terror, Cav was nervous, like a child going to a new school. Cav congratulated himself for remaining calm. Perhaps for the last time? He swallowed. Perhaps for the last time? Everything he was doing could be his last! Why was he counting all his lasts? He should be preparing for the orks…

The explosion was so sudden that Cav's heart lost all its weight and beat like a machine gun. A second explosion, closer this time, blossomed in the tortured street. Cav heard a shrill whistle, then one of the buildings on the opposite end of the street was gutted, bringing the whole rockrete mess down until a drifting grey cloud and a sad heap was all that remained of the short office.

"Damn it, they'll pound us to death," Curth cursed, shaking. Tigerson and Josahik were both visibly calmer. When one shell landed especially close, enough to make Cav duck down, Tigerson began to cackle with violent joy.

"Come on you ork bastards! Come on! We're right here, come and get us!" Tigerson howled into the storm. He shook his fist. He looked like he was having fun. Cav swallowed one last mouthful of fear and aimed into the storm, not caring that he could die at any minute.

"Right here!" he heard himself shout. "Right here you orks! Right here!" He ducked away as another whistling shell smashed the top half off another abandoned office. Cav hid and felt Tigerson pat his shoulder.

"See Cav? Just get used to it. Nothing to it," he smiled. Cav's reply was silenced by the reports of lasfire all around them. Cav ducked his head up into the window and aimed, perhaps for the last time. The shells had stopped. He heard growling engines, not long and babbling like a tank, but in long bursts of mechanical ferocity.

"What? They have cars now?" asked Josahik. The rest of his words were drowned out as the sound of heavy machinegun fire tore the air. Cav ducked down just as a crazy orkish jalopy tore across the road, a roof-mounted machine gun spitting lead madly into the buildings. It passed, but Cav could still hear it, but he could hear more than that. Still, whistling bombs fell and still lasguns fired, but there were also rattling orkish guns in there too. He peeked over the window, forgetting his fear, as he looked down the street.

Rolling up the street, marching stiffly and flaunting their oversized guns, was a dense squad of the biggest orks Cav ever hoped to face. Their rippling dark muscles bulged out from between the cracks in their haphazard armour suits and most of them wore cumbersome helmets. Cav fired at them without thinking.

His lasgun was deadly and his aim was adequate. But each of his bolts burst uselessly apart against their suits. Even the shots that found flesh did little to slow the great aliens. One of them raised his gun, which was far too big for any human to use by hand.

"Back door!" Cav cried as he ducked down and ran for the door on the back wall, to a room further back. He made it thorugh with Tigerson just as a drumroll of steel thunderclaps ripped through the air. Massive ork rounds burst into the room they had just left, shredding and destroying everything.

"Run!" Cav cried, pushing past a 89th trooper who had been watching the hall. Curth jumped after him, unbalancing himself so he could run. Cav and Tigerson ran down the hall, which ran parallel to the room they had fled. The boy-trooper they passed shuddered violently as orkish shots exploded through the wall and continued, making grapefruit dents in the opposite wall. He flopped down the wall and died on the floor, the boy's organs spraying the wall he'd been in front of.

"Faster!" Curth ran towards a door at the hall's end, jumping over a splintered wooden crate that some unknown human had dumped there, either days or years ago. The three ran as fast as they could as the hall crumbled around them while ork shots tore it up. Cav realized he was screaming in exertion. He saw a bullet break through the wall ahead of him and flash past him. Curth jumped into the door, pushing it open and landing in a heap. Cav and Tigerson followed, tripping over him and nearly falling. They had to fall down anyways.

"Hi sir," Maxin greeted, crouching beside his friend Trennith. Both were covered in dust and crouching in the crater that had once been a room in the office. The door opened to to the open air. Curth lay at the bottom of the substantial crater, cursing.

"Big orks, lots," Cav gasped. The whole hallway thing had happened so fast, he was only now thinking of how terrifying it had been. "We can't stop them."

"Josahik," Tigerson whispered, peeking up from the crater and through the door. Josahik was still inside, on the floor and holding his right leg into his chest. Cav knew before he sat the blood that the young trooper was hit. He wasn't making a noise though.

"Can't get," Trennith whispered. Trennith's voice was naturally soft. "There's orks out there. I just saw a big truck."

"There's huge monsters out there with guns that'll make you pee yourself," Cav hissed back. "Do you know how many there are out there?" A stupid question.

"A trillion," Curth spat, taking his place at the lip of the crater and searching the empty street, watching for the orks who'd just shot at them. "Knowing my luck, it's prolly so." Cav took another look as Josahik.

"Are we going to save him?" he asked.

"You want to…"

"Orks! Orks! Right there! Right there!" Maxin said frantically, pointing from over the crater's lip. Sure enough a few of them were stomping up the street, machineguns ready. They were smaller and less armoured than the larger ones that sent Cav running. Josahik was forgotten as Cav took aim.

"Don't shoot till they get close…" Cav said. Tigerson was already blazing away. The orks snarled and jumped towards the nearest building, sheltering among the stucture's toppled rockrete bulk. Cav saw one of the orks get hit and bleed, but alien fortitude didn't let it die. Damn!

"Kill them!" he shouted. His lasgun emptied the clip he had fast. He ducked down to reload. By chance, he spotted the hallway they'd come out of. One of the huge ork gunners was filling it and taking aim at their crater. Cav ducked and slid down the crater towards the bottom. The first shots the ork took flew over their heads.

"Duck! Duck!" Cav screamed, fumbling with a fresh cell. Tigerson was beside him fast and fired up at the alien with impressive accuracy. Curth and Maxin added their shots too, though not as helpfully. Trennith was slouched against the crater's lip, his skull broken open and his brains exposed to the air.

"Kill it!" Cav shouted, raising his gun. The ork toppled over just before he could squeeze of his first round. Tigerson smiled to himself and gave an insane laugh.

"Let's get back to shooting the smaller things, eh Cav?" they returned to the lip of the crater, now studded with holes from the ork's heavy gun. The squad of orks had not stayed put. They were three quarters of the way to Cav's hole, some of them with blades in hand and some waving their guns like clubs.

"AH!" Cav let all his ferocity and fear out of himself in one splitting yell. He aimed as best he could and fired and hoped. The other boys scattered, having spent most of their clips on taking down the large ork. Cav stood alone. The orks were fast.

His gun was empty and two orks were down, but they didn't register on his mental kill-tally. He was already standing up and sprinting away, running, of all places, into the street. He hopes someone would see the orks chasing him and cut them down. He had no defense against running into more orks except faith.

The sound of orkish roars behind him told him they were still there. Cav continued his punishing sprint, making his legs work harder than they had ever before. The road and the empty buildings flashed by around him. The orks though, he still heard them. He saw an open door and ran into it. He almost crashed into the back of an ork warrior, standing in the room he found himself in.

Without thinking, he stabbed its back with all his might and ran off to the side towards the first doorway he saw, continuing his mindless dash for survival. He felt the bayonet break and the ork growl and fire its loud pistol. The window Cav ran past shattered as an ork ran through it, its swinging machine gun barely missing Cav's back.

Somehow still alive, Cav jumped through that doorway and up the stairs to the right, rather than into that noise-filled room behind the closed foor before him. He felt his balance in jeapordy on the narrow stairs as he charged up them. He heard an ork roar at him from the bottom of the stairs.

"Get ready!" shouted a boy's voice from the top of the stairs.

"It's Cav you bastards!" Cav screamed, knowing one jumpy trigger was all that was needed to kill him, slowly and terribly. He did not care. He came to the top of the stairs and held up his hands and lasgun as he burst into a spacious floor that looked like it has once been a workshop. There were enough tables to build a castle, and the barricades that surrounded the stairs looked almost strong enough to hold an ork back for a few seconds.

"It's one of us!" a pair of 89th boys beckoned for him to work his way behind the barricades. Others were there, aiming at the stairs from behind the tables. He saw a few dirty faces he knew by name and some who's names he forgot.

"Ork! Behind!" Cav gasped, catching his breath from the long sprint as he hurried behind the barricade. He hadn't managed to squueze behind it before an ork stormed up the stairs. Lasguns went off, but the stairs weren't the biggest concern.

"More of them!" one of the boys cried. "Over there!" It was that meaty survivor from Curth's unit. What was his name? He was pointing a large hand at a worrying hole in the wall, around which freshly fallen debris was clustered. Cav's heart skipped a beat when he saw a number, maybe six, of the infamous rocket berzerkers shooting towards it, axes in hand. Cav's mind and body reacted in an instant. He remembered his first kill, he remembered how he did it. Those big rockets made easy targets. As the other boys struggled to decide which enemy to shoot at, Cav squeezed his trigger. Burst after burst, towards the center.

The few shots Cav took wouldn't have killed an ork unless very precisely aimed. But they killed orks anyways. Cav shot their rockets. Not all of them exploded, but one of them did. There was an explosion just outside the hole. From the black curtain of smoke the explosion made came nothing. It cleared moments later to show nothing. The greenskins had been blasted away, perhaps to crash and die in the street.

Cav heard gunshots come from the stairs and an orkish yell as the greenskins tried to force their way up here. One of the 89th boys fell back fro mthe barricade, nursing a bloody shoulder. But with nowhere to go, he did not fall back. None of them did. They fought and fought.

...

Tigerson and Curth paused to take a breath. All the orks had gone after the others. He and Curth were safe. Where was Maxin? What did it matter? There was still a battle to die in. The distant gunfire was too good a reminder of that. Both boys were in the open street. Around them, there was nothing except the depressing grey of this urban world and faded signs. A few had words on them, But this ruin gave plenty of places for the boys to hide. They silently chose a crumbing shop. Only when they entered did they find the shop had been gutted and the interior was open to the street behind them.

An ork jalopy filled the street.

"Orks!" Tigerson whispered, his street-honed instincts making him take cover amidst the rubble before Curth, the bully who's targets didn't fight back. Curth, however, eased his friend with a wave.

"What in the Emperor's name?" he asked. Tigerson took a peek.

The jalopy was abandoned and its driver was dead: shot in the head. Its machine gunner was dead at his rooftop post, blown completely in half.

Around the street was were some familiar orks: the great muscular armoured ones with great guns. They all lay dead in pools of their own blood, their armour torn like paper mauled by scissors. Amongst them lay a few lesser orks, also messily slaughtered.

"What in the name of the Throne?" asked Tigerson. "Other resistance? Are we saved?"

"Don't call out," Curth warned, taking cover.

"Yeah, I know."

From around the corner of the ruined jalopy came a boy in a dirty 89th uniform. He looked around with simple eyes then looked over at Tigerson and Curth.

"Looks like some urchin found one of our uniforms," Tigerson whispered. "No good lunatic kids, homeless orphans who live like rats in the alleys. Theives all."

"Who do you suppose he undressed to…Wait," Curth said, looking harder. "Isn't that…?" The dirty boy stumbled wearily towards them, like they were wild predators on the verge of attacking. "Mieel!" Curth shouted. Tigerson blinked and looked harder.

"Well, it is," he whispered, disbelieving it.

"Mieel!" Curth shouted. Mieel ran over, bouncing over dead orks. "Aren't you one tough bastard?" Curth began. Mieel pounced on him, embracing him like a brother. Curth looked awkwardly at Mieel and looked uncertainly at Tigerson, who was snickering. Curth got annoyed. He wasn't used to being on the getting end of a bullying snicker.

"Get off!" he was about to compound it with a few threats, but then sympathy cursed him. Despite the hot sun, Mieel was shivering.