CHAPTER 8 ~ Hammer of the Emperor
Fear accompanies only the possibility of death. Calm ushers its certainty.
- Unknown, M2
Jens Sturm sat perfectly still in the eaves of the tall, ancient tree. He'd chosen his perch well. This tree was situated on the outer edge of the woodland and afforded a full view of the open fields and the wetlands beyond the forest. The dense canopy of leaves prevented him from being seen by ordinary eyes on the ground. Even if an enemy knew the precise location of the branch where he sat, a patrol could walk right up to the base of this tree and never once see him until it was too late.
Sturm was not deluded. It would not prevent what approached from finding him.
He put his eye to the rifle's scope. Some twelve hundred metres away, at the far edge of the open scrub beyond the trees was a high wall of unfamiliar, yellowing crops. The plants were tall and densely packed, become overgrown waiting for a harvest that no one presumably, was left alive to reap.
Next to him on the broad branch, his handheld targetting auspex began to bleep softly, displaying a series of numbers. One thousand six hundred metres... one thousand five hundred and ninety-five metres... one thousand five hundred and ninety-one metres... When the number dropped to seventeen hundred metres, Sturm turned it off. They could hear almost anything within this range.
He checked the focus, examining the minute detail of the crop heads revealed in the scope's reticule, and began his routine. His breathing became slow and rhythmic. With each inhalation, the stock against his shoulder was pushed downwards and the rifle's barrel rose. Each time he finished breathing out, it dropped into the perfect firing position.
Fire on a respiratory pause – that was the first lesson he'd been taught after qualifying for sharp-shooter training. The first of many, many lessons.
"There are a million things that go into being a sniper, and you have to be good at all of them," the instructor had told them on day one, "and trust me, these skills won't come easily."
But they had. Just like the demands made of them in basic training, such things came easily to Jens precisely because they were easy; easier than life in the freezing schola ophanarium in Tercis City, living on scraps and avoiding the beatings from the masters. It was easier than existence in the gang he'd joined after running away, always fighting — fighting to be allowed to join, fighting other gangs for territory, fighting to maintain one's status in the hierarchy.
By comparison, life in the Guard was paradise. Jens slept in a comfortable cot each night and no one tried to kill him. He wore a clean uniform every day. Best of all was the rations. He'd heard higher born recruits complain about the tasteless, pale grey sludge they were given three times a day, but Jens had never minded it. He was eating regular meals for the first time in his life. He put on weight until his ribs no longer jutted out painfully from his torso. They exercised daily outdoors, far from the stinking chem fumes of the factora that polluted Tercis City. His new bulk gradually became muscle and the breathing problems that had dogged him in childhood disappeared. His skin lost its corpse pallor and he no longer suffered from psoriasis and rashes.
Best of all though, for the first time in his life, Jens Sturm was good at something other than mere survival. In the Leigoran 32nd Rangers, he discovered that the instincts he'd developed as a child were perfectly attuned to learning the art of warfare.
When the night-master at the orphanarium had raged drunkenly through the dormitory, looking for some unfortunate to discipline with his flail, terrified, panicking orphans would either rise, seeking to flee, or thrust their heads under filthy blankets in an attempt to hide. Both were a mistake. Jens spotted very quickly that the thing to do was to lie perfectly still as if one was sleeping the sleep of the righteous. And he could do this, for he felt no fear when the master came near, breathing drunken fumes over him, waiting for any sign that he was feigning sleep. At such times of danger, Jens found that he fell into a near-perfect state of calm. It was not nerve or courage, as he saw it, it was simply survival. Some ancient instinct within him recognised at the moments of greatest peril that the best course of action was to remain in command of his faculties.
When the drill instructors raged at them — screaming questions at you with their faces inches from yours or waking you in the middle of the night, giving you just two minutes to appear outside on parade in full battle gear — it was precisely to try and evoke the fear response that caused exhausted, flustered recruits to stumble over their answers, or make them fumble at buttons and catches and fail to get their battle gear on in time. Jens saw these tactics for what they were and ignored them.
When the gunnery sergeant had screamed at him on the firing range to put him off, Jen's focus had become near total. He'd put a dozen shots through the centre of the target before the man stopped yelling. The next day, Jens Sturm had found himself in the advanced sharpshooters' programme.
Movement in the tall crops brought that familiar, icy-cold nothingness flooding through his veins. He dropped his eye to the long-las sights. In the scope's reticule, he saw a momentary glimpse of something dark and metallic.
Traitor Astartes. Two of them. Jens expelled the remaining breath in his lungs.
Then the gap in the crops closed and his view was immediately obscured. He allowed himself to breathe in again, doing some rapid calculations. Once the traitors left the field and were exposed, he had a few seconds — that was the time it would take them to cross the open scrub which lay between them and his tree.
Jens had seen at the battle of Leigora Primaris how abnormally quick these monsters of war were. He reckoned he had enough time for one shot, but not two.
Range and velocity were factors in his favour: las blasts weren't affected by wind, humidity or spin drift caused by a barrel's rifling. Only gravity could change the course of a las discharge. The pulse moved at millions of metres per second compared to the hundreds of metres per second of traditional ammunition. That meant by the time you saw someone was firing a las weapon at you, it had already hit. That gave him a tiny advantage over the space marines' bolters.
Chief among the many points against him was that power armour. There had been plenty of time for Sturm to study the space marine's battle gear during Lakond's long convalescence in the fortress-monastery. Their armoured suits were made of adamantium and plasteel plates, encased in thick ceramite. Two platoons of riflemen firing on the same areas in highly disciplined bursts stood a decent chance of injuring an Astartes in full armour.
For Jens to do the same in one shot was unthinkable. The bloated, bellowing, copper-skinned monster he'd dispatched on Leigora had worn no helm. He doubted his enemy now would be so obliging.
The reeds parted and two enormous figures in dark blue power armour emerged from the overgrowth. They paused for a moment, scanning the open grassland and the line of trees beyond it. At this range, Jens knew, they could hear human heartbeats. Any second now, they would detect his presence.
He knew rationally that he was about to die. But that thought wasn't relevant and he dismissed it. He no longer saw the two figures as traitor Astartes, heretics and monsters though they were. At this precise moment, they were simply targets of opportunity.
As slowly as possible, he pushed the last breath from his body and put his eye to the scope as his rifle stock dropped gently into the perfect firing position.