There's nothing in the whole camp we can burn to make fires, so we all end up in the main entrance's pillbox, clustered around an overcharged plasma torch jacked to a hotshot power pack.
This planet used to be inhabited by humans like us, but they long since turned to something else, something nocturnal and not even I dare go out at night unless it's really important. Standard procedure is to bunker up at night and wait for them to leave. We could take them on, sure, but that would be a waste of men and ammo… Of course, if you're too stupid to pick a decent hidey hole… Well, you were a waste of ammo and gear in the long shot, I suppose.
The pillbox has an opening the width of my head to the front and a man sized hole to the back, but we barricade the entrance with barbed wires and deployable cover before jacking the whole thing to another power pack, which leaves only the loophole, at shoulder height to us and ground level to anyone outside, through which we can see shadows trot by and hear their heavy breathing when they get close. Nothing touches the barbed wire nor the Titanium plate we use as a door, so I suppose they haven't noticed us or aren't stupid enough to try and get in.
Back in the main camp, we have tall walls and fences that let us walk around camp safely, but even then, some creatures slip in from time to time. But this is not the main camp, so everyone is barricaded in the strongest building they could find. Stupid planning, if you ask me, all patrols should be back by nightfall, but I guess the commissar thought we could use the stronghold's defences for the night.
Problem is, the makeshift guns were all melted by the bombardment. That's why the guys of the sixty-sixth were mad at us.
The Commissar wanted to hide in an old pre-fab armory, but I convinced her the pillbox was a better move, so we're all crammed in here, Plato, Ferenzky, Commissar Angley and me. Discussing strategy and geography around the blue flame.
Hard to believe, but it's in the less three digits out there, Celsius. This torch is all that stands between us and hypothermia.
"Are you a Sniper or a Designated Marksman?" Angley is unsure about how she's supposed to see Matthew… I mean Corporal Ferenzky.
Guy is scrawny, pale and seems to be carrying his luggage under his eyelids, not what you'd expect from some dead eyed sniper.
"Ah, no, Ma'am, I'm just a trooper, no specialty."
He's still the best shot I've seen in decades. Not sure where he learnt how to shoot, though, he got here for pretending he could see the future and making quite a fortune in his world's PDF by predicting his comrades' deaths. When his predictions proved right, the Inquisition paid him a visit and he quickly explained it was all a scam.
I'm still not sure it really was.
"I read your file," she tells Plato after a long and awkward silence, "you have a certain... Taste for bloodshed, don't you?"
His smile is eloquent. He's cutting himself a slice of bread using the same knife he took to kill those cultists. He's been with me ever since we came back and I don't recall seeing him wash the blade, an issue I am careful to avoid.
Plato… Plato just kills people. He always have and always will, he accepted and embraced that long ago. I respect that.
Then it's my turn, I guess I'm something special, since she signed me as her aide. She has no question, but feels like she owes me an explanation.
Never though Commissars owed anything to anyone.
"I saw in your interrogation file that you were convinced everything you did under the Red Wolves' order came straight down from the Emperor and that, to this day, you retained a fierce loyalty to Him…"
Obviously, she needs someone to watch her back, she'll pick the most fanatically loyal Legionnaire she can find. Makes sense.
"But I also heard about your loyalty to your men and this is something I was definitely looking for…"
She's sincere, I can't tell what she means by that, but the way she says it leaves no doubt that she thinks she just revealed some big secret.
Guess since her job is to shoot deserters and mine is to keep her from getting shot, that I'd be protective of our men and fiercely loyal to the Imperium would ensure some form of balance .
This is above my pay grade, but then, I'm paid so little, knitting is also above my pay grade.
I don't tell her that.
She's not the only one who thought the pre-fab structure was a smart move and we can hear the terrified screams of the troopers inside, followed by gunfire. Lasfire, actually, so these were members of the sixty-sixth. It ends quickly with the screams turning animal, only triggered by some primitive part of the brain that feels the need to warn the herd of incoming danger.
Angley wants to go help, I tell her, in very simple words, why it's a bad idea: "They're all dead already, if we go out there, we'll lose someone else, guaranteed."
At this point, she knows better than to disregard my advice. We all huddle closer around the torch, as if the heat and light could keep away the monsters lurking in the cold darkness.
0
0
0
Target is a freight train full of artifacts from the dark age of technology, the cultists think they are gifts from their god, the Commissar thinks they are weapons, I don't care, it's not my job to.
The trucks speed across the sand, the head vehicle now packed with weapons and supplies from the gutted armory and our raid of the mortar camp. We're cut off from official supply lines, but the sixty-sixth had plenty of gear for us to burrow and I even got myself a brand new lasgun.
Its previous owner used only eight percent of the charge.
That's, what, thirty seconds of sustained fire at maximum setting?
I, myself, went against the 'lurkers' only once, when I had my arm ripped off, they were drawn by the scent of blood and I was blind as a newborn cub. No moon, just stars to tell you which way is up. I could hear them getting closer every second, expecting cold claws to close around my ankle and drag me off to the night, and finally, I hid in a ditch where I froze half to death while they waited outside. They don't scream, they don't make a single noise; they hunt and kill in silence.
I shake myself. The Commissar sees my shivers and I see actual compassion in her eyes. She can't imagine how I can have survived outside on my own, she probably made up this glamorous warrior thing where I beat my way through with my dead foes' limbs or my own arm. Heh, I guess it's better off that way.
"Target in sight!" Plato roars from the front of the transport, his new Hellgun drawing complex geometric figures on the smooth reddish flanks of the train. He's not just shooting at the thing aimlessly, there are cultists firing at us from the rear wagon's rear and side doors.
The commissar and I are sat at the rear of the truck, so we can be the first to jump.
The driver pulls us up next to the side door and I shoot a cultist in the face before he has time to close the thing on us. Angley takes down two enemies just as they line up a shot at me.
We exchange a single nod and both soar through the gap, except one we missed one bastard and he slams his rifle's butt in my face straight after my boots hit the deck.
I manage to hold myself against the edge of the truck, both foot still in the train, but the guy is taking careful aim at my face and there isn't much I can do.
Angley is busy fighting off a guy even bigger than I am, so in extremis rescue is out of the question. I kick my cultist in the knee and throw off his aim just enough to draw another breath, but he's a step back now and I'm not going to use that trick twice, so I let go of one hand while he's taking aim and draw my sidearm, a stub pistol.
The mesh armor stops the slugs, but the impact still staggers the man, so I fire two more rounds and watch him fall off the opposite door.
Dumb skak.
Something happens and I'm not sure what it is at first; the train rise or the truck descends and I end up in an involuntary backflip that results in me sprawled in the truck's bed.
The transport is going down a slope and comes back up just as quick. I jump again to find out our Commissar cut her opponent in half vertically. The chainsword is still revving. A tiny part of my brain wonders if she cut him head to crotch or crotch to head. Nobody deserves to have a chainsaw taken to their genitals…
Moving on. We pass six bulkheads and half as many junctions between carts, all filled with crates and not a single living soul. The others are falling in behind us, inspecting the content of a few random boxes.
"Well, well, that's interesting." The voice is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, "People who aren't complete frakwits," Frakwits? First I heard that insult… I like it. "Think you can crack the labyrinth, make it to the head cart before the whole thing is torn apart? I promise you, you won't regret it."
Not everywhere; in my helmet Vox system.
"Who's this?" I bark, "Identify yourself."
No answer. We'll find out soon enough.
Angley frowns, she didn't hear a thing, but wants to push on as well. So we do. I can see a shoulder through the dirty window of the next hatch. Another one appears on the other side, but just a second. The first one dies when my fist rips through the wall and his ribcage, the second lasts a little longer, long enough to peek out the window and get a glimpse of a bolt down Angley's barrel.
Next wagon feels wrong, and I'm not just talking about the two corpses on the floor, it feels… Purposeful, unnatural. It's a trap, but how exactly? I'm no psyker, I just spend enough time seeing guys blown apart by improvised explosives to feel them coming, like a bad plot twist in some old vids.
The mechanical fingers of my prosthesis rip the lid off a crate and, sure enough, there's enough explosives here to vaporize everyone in the wagon and most likely in the next. I'm no EOD expert, so my solution is real simple; "Run!"