head questioning what he was doing, running towards the orks when every fibre of his being told
him he should be running away from them as fast as his legs could take him but he ignored it.
Ignored it and raced instead towards the trench to take his place with the other members of the
fireteam as they made ready to repel the assault.
“Five hundred metres,” Scholar said, already squinting at the oncoming orks through a targeter
by the time Larn threw himself into the trench and took his place on the firing step beside Bulaven.
“Remember, new fish,” Bulaven said. “When you hear the order to fall back, you grab a spare
fuel canister and stay close to me.”
“Yes, new fish,” Davir said from across him. “And while you’re at it, don’t go losing your
lasgun again. I will let you into a secret: your helmet is for protecting your head, not for the hitting
of gretchin. Now, get ready, puppy. Time to show the orks your claws.”
“Four hundred metres,” Scholar said.
Remembering this time to click off the safety catch, Larn hurriedly ran through his pre-battle
ritual, silently reciting the Litany of the Lasgun in his mind before adding a quick prayer to the
Emperor for good measure. Beside him he saw Davir, Scholar and Zeebers sighting in on the orks,
while to the side of them Bulaven checked the pump pressure on his flamer. Then, from behind him,
he heard the sound of mortars being fired and knew the battle was about to begin in earnest.
“Three hundred metres,” Scholar yelled. “On my mark… fire!”
Lasbeams. Mortars. Auto-cannon rounds. Frag missiles. From all across the line the Vardans opened
up with everything they had. All the while, as Davir, Scholar and Zeebers fired their lasguns from
the side of him Larn fired with them, remembering to aim high for the orks as Repzik had once told
him. And through it all, the orks kept coming.
There are more of them this time, Larn thought. Ten times more at least than when I was in the
trench with Repzik. Sweet Emperor! And we barely managed to hold out then!
“One hundred and twenty metres,” Scholar said, the orks having seemed to cover the intervening
distance between them with impossible swiftness. “Change magazines and switch to rapid fire.”
The orks came closer. Some of them were already gruesomely wounded by the Vardans’
remorseless hail of fire, all of them were red-eyed and eager in an apparently endless barbaric tide.
“Fifty metres,” Scholar’s voice counted down calmly. “Forty metres. Thirty.”
“Any time now would be good, fatman,” Davir said to Bulaven. “Are you actually going to use
that damn flamer, or just wait until the orks get close enough for you to try and fart them to death
instead?”
In response, Bulaven lifted the nozzle of the flamer, extending himself to his full height to point
the barrel over the trench parapet and unleash an expanding cone of yellow-black fire towards the
closest enemy group. Screaming, the orks disappeared in a burning agonised haze while Bulaven
sprayed bright fire at their comrades around them. Soon, all Larn could see directly ahead of him
was a rising curtain of flame while the air grew thick with smoke and the sickly odour of burning
Xenos flesh.
“Shoot to the sides, new fish!” Davir yelled. “Bulaven can deal with the orks ahead of us — it’s
our job to stop the others flanking round them!”
Following Davir’s lead, Larn began to shoot at the orks charging towards them from the right of
the curtain of fire created by the flamer while Scholar and Zeebers shot at those on the left. For an
instant, seeing the carnage inflicted on the orks, Larn thought he could see the beginnings of the
greenskins’ charge starting to falter. We are winning, he thought, exultant. We have beaten them.
There is no way for the orks to get past the flamer.
And then, abruptly, the tongue of fire jetting from the flamer spluttered and died.
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“Canister’s empty,” Bulaven said, hands already at the fuel line. “Reloading.”
“Grenades,” Davir yelled, his own hands at the grenades on his belt.
While Bulaven transferred the fuel line from one canister to another, the others threw two
grenades each towards the orks. By the time the last of the grenades had exploded, the line was
attached and Bulaven’s flamer was once more spewing fire. More orks died but it seemed to make
no difference. As though they had been given fresh impetus by the brief cessation in the flamer’s
attentions, the horde of orks crashed relentlessly nearer, some enveloped from head-to-toe in flame
and yet still they kept coming. Thirty metres became twenty-five. Twenty-five became twenty.
Twenty…
“Fall back!” Davir yelled. “The bastards are right on top of us. Scholar, arm the demolition
charge. The rest of you fall back.”
The retreat began.
Scrambling over the rear trench wall with his lasgun slung across his shoulder and dragging the
heavy weight of a spare flamer canister behind him, Larn began to run for the dugout emplacement
while Scholar threw the demolition charge at the advancing orks.
“Faster, new fish.” Scholar ran past Larn, his long legs eating up the distance. “It’s only a four
second delay!”
Suddenly, Larn heard a tremendous explosion behind him as clods of earth flew past his head.
For a moment, caught at the furthest edge of the blast, he stumbled and almost fell forward, only to
be saved as the weight of the canister served as an accidental counterweight behind him. Then, as he
tried to heft the canister on to his shoulder and pick up pace, he felt a painful blow at the back of his
head, the jarring force of it sending him spinning towards the ground.
Landing in the frozen mud, Larn felt a warm wetness spreading across his scalp. Putting his
hand to his head, when he brought it away again he saw red blood staining his fingers. He saw his
helmet lying upside down on the ground before him — a large dent left in its side by whatever
unknown missile had knocked it from his head. Incongruously, as he rose shakily to his feet, he
wondered what would have happened to him if he had fastened his helmet strap instead of leaving it
loose. Then, the guttural bellow of an alien war cry behind him put the thought abruptly from his
mind.
Whirling to look, Larn saw an ork charging towards him with an enormous pistol in one hand
and a broad-bladed cleaver in the other. The creature was huge: its body inhumanly and
disproportionately muscled. Larn saw a jutting jaw, yellowed, sickle-shaped tusks, a line of three
severed human heads hanging like grotesque spectators from a trophy harness above the monster’s
shoulders. He heard a bullet scream past him as the pistol fired. As though of its own volition his
lasgun responded, the first lasblast flying wide over the ork’s shoulder to hit one of the trophies.
Steadying himself, Larn fired again, hitting his enemy in the chest. Unfazed, the ork did not miss
a step. Larn shot at it again, firing off a rapid series of blasts that hit the creature in the neck, the
shoulder, the chest again, then the face. Until finally, just as Larn began to fear coming within reach
of its jagged blade, the ork gave a last enraged bellow, collapsed, and died. Though whatever brief
sense of elation Larn felt at his victory quickly evaporated as he saw more greenskins come
charging towards him in the dead ork’s wake.
“Get a move on, new fish!” he heard a voice yell behind him as a hand grabbed his shoulder.
“Damnation! Are you trying to take on the whole damn ork mob on your own?”
It was Davir. Firing his lasgun one-handed towards the approaching orks, Davir began to tug
Larn in the direction of the dugouts. Realising he had dropped the flamer canister when he had
fallen, his head still groggy from the blow, for a moment Larn tried to resist as his eyes scanned
around in search of the canister.
“It is too late for that, new fish.” Davir shouted, pulling hard now at his shoulder. “Leave it. I
need that canister right where it is.”
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Giving in, Larn turned to flee with Davir at his side, catching a last sight of the fallen canister
lost among the legs of the screaming phalanx of oncoming orks. Then, turning briefly back as they
ran towards the emplacements, Davir fired a snap shot toward it — the lasbeam ruptured the
canister’s body and it exploded in a plume of orange flame, incinerating the orks around it and
buying him and Larn time enough to reach their destination.
“You see there, new fish?” Davir said as the outstretched hands of eager Guardsmen helped
them to safety. “I told you I wanted the canister right where it was. Oh, and I saw you feeling at
your head earlier? You needn’t worry in that regard: it is still attached. Though for all that you seem
to use it, you might as well have left it with the orks.”
“You came back for me…” Larn said incredulously. “Even after what Bulaven said about
leaving the wounded, you came back and saved me…”
“I wouldn’t get too starry-eyed about it, new fish,” Davir said. “What I really wanted to save
was the flamer canister — events just got ahead of me, is all. Now, shut up and start shooting. You
have killed one ork. Only another twenty or so thousand to go.”
They were out of grenades. They had used the last of the flamer fuel. The auto-cannons, missile
launchers and lascannons had fallen silent. Even the las-packs were running short. And still, no
matter how many screaming greenskins died, the ork assault refused to falter.
Standing on the firing step along one wall of the emplacement, the barrel of his lasgun so hot in
his hand now it burnt his fingers, Larn fired a lasbeam into the face of an ork as it tried to climb over
the bodies of the dead towards him. Then another, and another. Firing without thought or pause,
barely even needing to aim so thick was the press of alien bodies charging towards him in wave
after screaming wave. They were surrounded now, cut off from the other emplacements by vast
throngs of orks, each emplacement a besieged and lonely outcrop amid an endless churning sea of
savage green flesh.
From the corners of his eye Larn caught glimpses of the others around him. He saw Bulaven, a
lasgun in his hands taken from another fallen Guardsman. He saw Davir. Scholar. Zeebers. He saw
Chelkar, his expression cool and detached, working the slide of his shotgun to send round after
round into the enemy. He saw Vladek. Medical Officer Svenk. The cook, Trooper Skench, a
laspistol blazing in his one remaining hand as he stood beside the others. He saw their faces: Scholar
drawn yet steadfast, Bulaven dutiful, Zeebers nervous, Davir spitting obscene and angry oaths at the
advancing orks. He saw steely determination and a refusal to go easily to death. As he saw it, Larn
felt a fleeting shame that he had doubted these men when he had first met them. Whatever their
manner they were all what a Guardsman should be. Brave. Resolute. Unbending in the face of the
enemy. These were the men on which the Imperium had been built. The men who had fought its
every battle. Won its every victory. Today, they were hopelessly outnumbered.
Today, it was their final stand.
“I’m out!” Davir yelled, pulling the last expended power pack from his lasgun and flinging it
towards the orks as his other hand went for the laspistol on his hip.
All about him, it was the same for the others. Around him, Larn saw the Vardans draw pistols or
fix bayonets, while he wondered how many shots he had left in his own power pack. Five? Ten?
Fifteen? Then, just as he rejected the idea of saving the last shot for himself, the question was
answered as he pulled the trigger and heard a final despairing whine from his lasgun as it died.
This is it, he thought, his hands moving with nightmare slowness to attach his bayonet to the
lasgun as an ork raised a bloodstained cleaver and charged towards him. Merciful Emperor, please!
It is so unfair. I can’t die here. You have to save me.
Abruptly, as though halted in its tracks by his silent prayer, the ork stopped and raised a bestial
face to look up towards the sky. For an instant, Larn was left dumbstruck. Then, he heard a sound
and suddenly knew what had given the ork pause. As from the sky above them, there came a
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cacophony of shrill and strident screams which at that moment sounded to Larn every bit as sweet as
the voices of a choir of angels.
Shellfire, he thought, recognising the sound. Hellbreakers. They are giving us artillery support
at last! We are saved!
“Into the dugout, new fish,” he heard Bulaven’s voice beside him. “Quickly! We have to get to
cover!”
Racing to the entrance of the dugout with the Vardans, Larn stumbled down the steps to safety
just as the ground began to shake with explosions. Breathing heavily and bolting the door behind
them to prevent the orks from following, they stood there for long minutes of silence. Listening, as
shells shrieked and roared and boomed above them.
“It makes a refreshing change don’t you think, new fish?” Davir said, after a while as the
bombardment continued. “For our own side to be shooting at the orks rather than us, I mean. Now,
assuming Battery Command keep this up long enough, I would say that is the last we will see of this
particular ork assault.”
He was right. Hearing the shelling finally end after several minutes, the Vardans cautiously
emerged from the dugout with Larn beside them to be greeted by the sight of a battlefield now left
deserted save for the mounds of the sundered bodies of the dead. The orks had fled. The battle was
over. Looking out at the scene of carnage and devastation before him, Larn felt a sudden dizzying
sense of joyful exhilaration.
Against all expectation, he was still alive.
101
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
22:35 hours Central Broucheroc Time
The Corpse-Pyres — Matters of Disposal and the Varied Uses of an Entrenching Tool — To See a
Perfect Sun
By necessity, he had long ago become inured to the stench of burning flesh.
Sweating at the heat, Militia Auxiliary Herand Troil used the hook of the long pole in his hands
to push another ork body into the enormous burning mound of corpses before him, then stepped
away for a moment to catch his breath. Finding it difficult to breathe through the charcoal-filled
filtration tube of his gas mask, he pulled it back from his face, opening his mouth wide to gulp at the
smoky air around him. Inadvertently swallowing a drifting fragment of ash he coughed, retching at
