“Good,” Lieutenant Karis said when it became clear there were to be no questions. “You now
have twenty minutes to check your equipment and make your preparations. Zero hour is at 00.00
hours. We go into no-man’s land at midnight.”
“A simple matter, he says,” Davir grumbled afterwards. “I tell you, someone should take that stupid
bastard’s swagger stick and shove it right up his arse.”
They were in the barracks dugout. In the wake of the briefing with the lieutenant, they had
returned there to be issued with black dubbing and lasgun lubricant by Vladek. Now, their faces and
all their equipment painted black, their knives and pistols oiled to glide silently from their sheaths,
they made their final preparations while time counted down to midnight. As they did, Larn was
suddenly struck by the thought he had been in Broucheroc almost exactly twelve hours. Another
three hours to go, he thought, and I will have made my fifteen.
“You ask me, it is the new fish’s fault,” Zeebers spat with sudden venom. “He is unlucky. A
jinx.”
“Shut up, Zeebers,” Davir spat back. “Bad enough I have to go stumbling around no-man’s land
in the dead of night, without having to hear you mewl and puke about luck and numbers like some
halfwit gambler on a losing streak. Shut up, or after I’m finished shoving the swagger stick up the
lieutenant’s arse I’ll stick my lasgun up yours.”
“How do you explain it then?” Zeebers said, defiant. “We’ve had nothing but a bad day ever
since the new fish got here. He’s a jinx. You saw what happened to the men he came here with in
the lander.”
“Shut up, Zeebers,” Bulaven rumbled. Then, while Zeebers fell silent and scowled at him, he
turned to Larn. “Don’t worry about what Zeebers said, new fish. You’re not a jinx. I only wish today
had been a bad day. Fact is, every day in Broucheroc is pretty much as bad as this, one way or
another. After a while you just get used to it.”
“But going out into no-man’s land at night is bad?” Larn asked, hoping the big Vardan could not
hear the nervousness in his voice. “Worse than usual, I mean?”
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“Yes, new fish, it is worse,” Bulaven said. “Especially after a battle. You remember I told you
how sometimes a wounded ork will seem dead, only to get up and start walking about a few hours
later? Well, right now, no-man’s land is full of the bodies of orks we shot during the battle. By now
some of them could be healed already, just about ready to wake up and start killing again while
we’ll be right in the middle of them. Then, to make matters worse, we’ve got to worry about running
into gangs of gretchin looking for spare parts as well.”
“Spare parts?”
“Orks are remarkably tough creatures, new fish,” Scholar said by the side of him. “If one of
them loses an arm or leg their surgeons will just staple the limb from another dead ork to them to
take its place. After a battle such surgeries are in great demand — so they tend to send gangs of
gretchin out into no-man’s land to cut undamaged limbs from the corpses. Of course, the real threat
lies not so much in the gretch themselves, but in the danger of getting into a firefight in the middle
of no-man’s land while the entire ork army is on top of us.”
“The short version, new fish, is that this whole damned business has the makings of a first class
snafu from start to finish,” Davir said. “So, this is what I say we do. We will follow Lieutenant
Arsehole’s orders so long as there’s no shooting. But the moment the shit starts to fly we get each
other out of no-man’s land as fast as we can and to hell with his orders. Now enough talking and
let’s get outside. We need to spend at least ten minutes in the dark to get our night vision working.
Considering what’s ahead of us, I’d say we’re probably going to need every advantage we can get.”
“Remember the signal, new fish,” Bulaven whispered quietly as they crouched in the darkness of
one of the forward firing trenches with the lieutenant and the others waiting for the order for the
mission to begin. “We keep to comms silence. But if you make contact with the greenskins you
squeeze the comm stud at your collar to create a squelch over the comm-link. You squeeze it three
times. Three squelches. You understand? That way we’ll know it’s you. Now, tell me it again so I’ll
know you’ve got it.”
“We go quiet,” Larn whispered back, reciting the things Bulaven had already told him twice.
“Staying low and keeping together until we get halfway into no-man’s land. Then, while Davir and
the lieutenant go forward to scout out the ork lines, the rest of us spread out into a wide diamond
formation with you at the base, Zeebers on the left flank, me on the right, and Scholar on point. If
any of us see or hear orks we squelch on the comm-line: one squelch for you, two for Zeebers, three
for me, and four for Scholar — so that way the others will know where the orks are.”
“Noise discipline, troopers,” Lieutenant Karis whispered testily. Then, cupping his hand over the
chronometer on his wrist as he pressed an illumination stud to briefly light its face, he gave the
order. “Zero hour. Time to move out.”
With Davir in the lead, they climbed over the lip of the trench and crawled out into no-man’s
land. Then, at a hand signal from Davir showing the way before them was clear, they stood into a
half-crouch and began to move slowly and quietly forward. Ahead, the night seemed impossibly
dark, the stars dim and distant. Seeing no sign of a moon in the sky to guide them, Larn found
himself wondering if the planet even had a moon or whether it was just hidden from his view.
Whatever the case, keeping close to the others he followed them further and further into the
forbidding wasteland between the human and ork lines. His every step wary, his senses sharp, his
heart beating a tattoo of restless anxiety in his chest.
Around them no-man’s land was silent, made even more threatening in the darkness now its flat
and desolate surface was covered over with the shadowy foreboding shapes of so many bodies.
There were corpses everywhere, strewn haphazardly across the landscape and fallen together so
deeply in places the going was made treacherous with splayed limbs and uncaring torsos. Feeling
the outstretched fingers of unseen hand touch his ankle, Larn looked down in sudden terror
expecting the monstrous form of a wounded and reawakening ork to rise up before him. Only to see
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he had inadvertently brushed against a severed hand lying in the mud. Another dead hand like so
many more around it.
They advanced further, slowly spreading out further apart from each other until they reached the
centre of no-man’s land. Then, as Davir and the lieutenant disappeared from view to go scout the
lines, Larn abruptly realised he could no longer see the others. For a moment he fought the urge to
call to them on his comm stud. Then, he reminded himself they had been ordered to maintain vox
silence: even if he did use the comm, no one would answer. Nor could he go in search of them.
Robbed of all sense of direction by the darkness and the unfamiliarity of the landscape around him,
it would take him a miracle to find anyone. Worse, hopelessly lost, he could easily stray into the ork
lines. Terrified, Larn held his position and did the only thing he could.
Alone in the darkness, he waited.
Time passed and as he stood waiting, afraid that every shadow might belong to some subtle and
stalking enemy, Larn realised it was the first time he had been on his own in weeks. More than that,
here in no-man’s land, surrounded by corpses and barely within a stone’s throw of thousands of
sleeping orks, he felt more alone than he had before in his entire life. So alone now, in fact, he might
as well have been the last man left in the entire galaxy.
Then, deep through the gathering haze in his mind of fear and loneliness, Larn heard a sudden
sound that set cold fingers at his spine and turned his blood to ice. A single squelch on the commbead
in his ear. Bulaven’s signal. The signal that meant the big man had made contact with the
enemy and from Larn’s point of view it meant something worse. It meant the enemy was behind
him.
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
00:37 hours Central Broucheroc Time
Giving Aid and Comfort to the Wounded — As Hell Breaks Loose Larn is Forced to a Decision —
A Final Madness in Zeebers’ Smile — Unknown, a Bullet Finds its Mark
One of the orks was moving…
Standing alone in the darkness of no-man’s land, not quite sure if it was only his imagination or
if he had really seen a slight movement in the legs of one of the corpses lying on the ground before
him, Zeebers decided it would be better to make certain the creature was dead. Sliding his combat
knife from its sheath as he dropped to his knees beside the body, he quickly pulled the ork’s
unresisting jaws open and silently stabbed the blade up through the weak point in the roof of the
mouth and into the brain. Then, pulling the knife free, he glanced briefly at the other corpses around
him and wondered if he should do the same with them as well.
I will do another three of them, he thought, wiping the blade on his trouser leg as he crept
towards a second body. That way I will have done four altogether. And I could do with some extra
luck, what with that bastard new fish being such a jinx.
“Help me,” he heard a failing voice whisper in Gothic as he knelt beside a second ork.
Startled, Zeebers turned to see an arm rise falteringly from beneath a nearby pile of bodies.
Going over to it, he saw a human face peering out from among a nest of greenskin limbs. One of the
Guardsman from the lander he realised, mortally wounded and left for dead in no-man’s land but
still clinging desperately to life.
“Please… help me,” the Guardsman said again, the weak voice was loud against the silence and
forced Zeebers to clamp a firm hand over his mouth to keep him quiet.
Weakly, the Guardsman began to struggle, his free arm flailing and flapping around him.
Feeling the man grab pleadingly at the edge of his greatcoat, Zeebers felt a sudden flush of disgust
and anger to find yet another new fish was endangering his life.
It cannot be helped, he thought as he pushed down once more with his knife. He is too far gone
to live much longer anyway. And he will bring the orks down on both of us if I don’t make him quiet.
Seeing the arm fall and the Guardsman’s spasms grow still, Zeebers pulled his knife free and
turned to get back to the orks. The Guardsman did not count, he decided. He was not part of the
pattern. Leaving Zeebers with another three orks to deal with if he was going to improve his luck.
Then, abruptly, he heard the signal. A single squelch over his comm-bead. The fathead Bulaven
must have run into some trouble.
For a moment Zeebers considered leaving him to it. He did not like Bulaven, or any of the
Vardans for that matter. It would be easy enough to slip back towards the line and claim he had lost
track of the others in the darkness. Just as quickly he was forced to abandon the idea, if Bulaven or
any of the others survived and thought he had left them to die they would frag him without even
thinking. No, for better or worse, he had better go and try to save the fat man’s hide.
Putting his knife back in its sheath, Zeebers turned to hurry in Bulaven’s direction. Then, as he
picked his way past a particularly large pile of ork corpses he saw shadowy movement at the corner
of his vision and realised he had blundered upon a gang of gretchin harvesting limbs. Swinging his
lasgun towards them while the gretchin were still dumb with confusion, Zeebers fired, hitting the
nearest gretch in the chest. Swiftly, he fired again, unleashing another half-dozen lasbeams, hitting
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two more gretch and causing the rest to flee. As Zeebers made to hurry once more on his way he
heard something scraping wet and eager behind him followed by the whine of whirring motors.
Turning, he saw a threatening shadow loom up in the darkness and knew the day he had feared for
months was finally upon him.
Tonight, his luck had finally ran out…
“Fall back! Repeat: fall back!” Davir’s voice shouted forcefully in his comm-bead as Larn heard the
sound of shots and all hell began to break loose around him. “Everyone back to the trenches!”
Lost and still on his own, Larn turned to move quickly towards what was his best guess at the
position of the human lines. Suddenly, he saw a staccato burst of white tracer lines in the distance to
the right of him as somewhere in the darkness a lasgun fired.
“Help me,” he heard Zeebers yell in fear and agony over the comm-line. “Sweet Emperor, it’s
got me! Someone help me.”
Unsure what to do, for the briefest instant Larn stood rooted to the spot. Then, as Zeebers’ voice
in his ear became a jumble of incoherent screams, he made a decision. Turning in the direction the
lasfire had come from he ran towards it, jumping and stumbling over the ork corpses littering his
path as he raced to help the pleading trooper. Seeing two shapes coming together in the darkness
ahead of him, Larn ran closer, only to find a scene of horror. He saw Zeebers, arms flailing in
useless spasms, belly ripped open and guts hanging out, held like a limp puppet in the hand of an
enormous ork while with its other hand the creature used a whirring circular blade to further
eviscerate Zeebers’ screaming flesh. Then, tossing Zeebers’ rag doll body aside, the ork turned to
look at Larn and began to advance towards him.
It was huge, wearing a bloodstained apron across its body and a thick-lensed monocular over
one of its eyes. Seeing the cruel curiosity written in the creature’s monstrous inhuman features, Larn
knew at once it must be one of the ork surgeons Scholar had mentioned. Instinctively raising his
lasgun to ward off its advance, he fired, the first blast flying wide to hit one of the corpses lying on
the ground behind it. Adjusting his aim, Larn fired again, hitting the monster in the stomach. Then
again. The chest. Again. The shoulder. Again. The face. The lasbeam briefly flaring brighter as it
burned through the lens of the monocular. Tearing the melted mounting of the device away uncaring
from the scorched socket of its now-blind eye, the ork kept coming no matter how many times Larn
hit it. It seemed unstoppable: as inured to the pain of its own flesh as it was to the agonies of others.
