turned to look at Vidmir. “What have you heard?”
“Sector Command says auspex is reading a lot of movement in the ork lines,” Vidmir replied.
“Sounds like Repzik was right. They’re going to be hitting us hard, and in numbers. Though, from
the sound of it, I think there’s more to this than just a matter of the orks getting excited over killing
the new fish’s friends. Could be they were already getting ready to launch an offensive. Which
would be bad enough, except it sounds like our own side is trying to get us killed as well. Battery
Command are refusing to give us artillery support until they are sure this is really a full-blown
assault and not just a feint.”
“A feint, my arse,” Kell grunted. “When have you ever known an ork to do anything by halves?”
“Agreed,” Vidmir said. “But, irrespective, it looks like we’re going to have to repel the orks on
our own. Emperor help us.” Then, turning towards Larn, Vidmir gave him the cold flash of a
graveyard smile.
“Congratulations, new fish,” he said. “Looks like not only did you manage to get yourself
dropped right into the middle of hell but you picked a bad day in hell besides.”
Repzik, Vidmir, Donn, Ralvs and Kell. These were the names of the five men who shared the trench
with him. Larn had learned that much about them at least in the quiet time as they waited for the
battle to begin. They were from a planet called Vardan, they told him. They and their regiment, a
group of hardened veterans known as the 902nd Vardan Rifles, had come to the city of Broucheroc
more than ten years ago and had been here even since. Ten years! He could hardly believe it. Nor
where those the only things that Larn had learned from the Vardans.
“I don’t understand it,” he said, looking out at the group of gretchin on the other side of noman’s
land. “What are they waiting for?”
Ten minutes had passed since the first alien appeared. Though the numbers of those waiting with
it had now increased to perhaps a couple of hundred, still the ranks of gretchin stood exposed and
out in the open on the other side of no-man’s land. Occasionally a squabble would break out, two or
three of the aliens suddenly breaking away from the main group to fight a bloody battle with tooth
and claw while their fellows watched with lazy interest. For the most part the aliens simply stood
35
there unmoving, their feral faces turned to stare unblinkingly towards the human lines. It was an
unnerving spectacle. Not for the first time, Larn found himself fighting the urge to take his lasgun
and fire at them. To shoot over and over again until every one of the ugly inhuman faces he could
see before him had been obliterated.
“It’s an old trick, new fish,” Repzik said. “They’re waiting for us to shoot at them and give away
our positions.”
“But that’s suicide,” Larn said. “Why would they be willing to sacrifice themselves like that?”
“Hhh. They’re gretch, new fish,” Repzik replied. “Willing doesn’t come into it. If their Warboss
tells ’em to go stand out in no-man’s land and wait to get killed, it’s not like they get much say over
it. Of course, even the fact that their boss is smart enough to think of using his gretch that way tells
us something. It means the green-skin leading the assault is likely to be one crafty son of a bitch,
relatively speaking. And that’s likely to be bad news for us, believe me. There’s not much worse
than a crafty ork. Now quiet down, new fish. There will be plenty of time for questions later, after
the attack. Assuming, of course, we survive it.”
At that Repzik fell silent once more, his eyes staring into no-man’s land with the rest of the
Vardans. Denied the distraction of further conversation, Larn began to realise just how tense the
atmosphere was in the trench. An attack is coming, he thought. Although these men have faced
dozens, perhaps even hundreds of such attacks in the past, still the tension is plain on every line of
their faces for anyone to see. Briefly, he tried to find comfort in that thought. He tried to tell himself
that if hardened veterans like these felt queasy in the face of the impending assault, there was no
shame in the churning of his own stomach but he remained unconvinced. Am I a coward, he
thought. I am afraid, but will my nerve hold so I can do my duty? Or will it fail? Will I fight when
the attack comes or will I break and run? But as forcefully as those questions rebounded around
inside his head, he could find no answer.
The waiting was the worst of it. Abruptly, as he stood there on the firing step, Larn realised that
until now he had been inoculated against fear by the sheer breathless pace of events since the lander
had been hit. Now, in the silence of the lull before battle, there was no hiding place from his fears.
He felt alone. Far from home. Terrified that he was about to die on a strange world under a cold and
distant sun.
“Ready your weapons,” Vidmir said, as more gretchin began to appear on the other side of noman’s
land. “This is it. Looks like they got tired of waiting.”
“We hold our fire until they’re three hundred metres away,” Repzik said to Larn. “See that flat
grey-black rock over there? That’s your mark. We wait “til the first rank of gretch reach that before
we fire.” Then, seeing Larn looking in confusion into no-man’s land as he tried to distinguish which
of the thousands of grey-black rocks was the mark, Repzik sighed in exasperation. “Never mind,
new fish. You shoot when we do. You follow orders. You do what we tell you to do, when we tell
you to do it, and you don’t ask any questions. Trust me, that’s the only way you going to survive
your first fifteen hours.”
Ahead, the group of gretchin out in no-man’s land had swelled to become a horde several
thousands strong. They seemed agitated now, jabbering to each other in incomprehensible alien
gibberish while the more brave or foolhardy among them pushed their way to the front of the group
as though restless for their wait to be at an end. Then, finally, the waiting was over as for the first
time Larn heard the sound of massed alien voices screaming a terrifying war cry.
Waaaaaaaghhhh!
As one, firing their guns into the air, the horde of gretchin came charging towards them. As
unnerving as the sight of the aliens had seemed to Larn earlier, they were nothing compared to the
horrors he now saw emerging into view in their wake. Just behind the onrushing gretchin he saw
countless numbers of much larger green-skins rise up to join the charge. Each one of them a
grotesquely muscled broad-shouldered monster more than two metres tall, screaming with ferocious
savagery as they took up the battle cry of their smaller brethren.
36
Waaaaaaaaghhh!
Sweet Emperor, Larn thought, half-beside himself with terror. Those must be the orks. There’s
so many of them and every one of them is huge!
“Eight hundred metres.” Vidmir said, sighting in on the enemy with the targeter clipped to the
side of his lasgun, his calm voice barely audible above the sound of approaching thunder as the
greenskins charged ever closer. “Keep yourselves cold and sharp. No firing until they reach the kill
zone.”
“Don’t fire until you see the reds of their eyes,” Kell snickered, as if he had found some grim
humour in the situation that eluded Larn.
“Six hundred metres.” Vidmir said, ignoring him.
“Remember to aim high, new fish,” Repzik said. “Don’t worry about the gretchin — they’re no
threat. It’s the orks you want to hit. We open up with single shots at first — continuous volley fire.
Oh, and new fish? You might want to release the safety catch on your lasgun. You’ll find killing
orks is easier that way.”
Fumbling at his lasgun in embarrassment as he realised the Vardan was right, Larn switched the
firing control from safe to “single shot”. Then, remembering his training and the words of The
Imperial Infantryman’s Uplifting Primer, he silently recited the Litany of the Lasgun in his mind.
Bringer of death, speak your name,
For you are my life, and the foe’s death.
“Four hundred metres,” Vidmir said. “Prepare to fire.”
The greenskins were closing. Looking past the scuttling ranks of gretchin, Larn could see the
orks more clearly now. Close enough to see sloping brows and baleful eyes, while thousands of
jutting jaws and mouths filled with murderous tusks seemed to smile towards him with eager and
savage intent. With every passing second the orks were coming closer. As he watched them
charging towards the trench, Larn felt himself gripped by an almost overpowering urge to turn and
flee. He wanted to hide. To ran away as far and fast as he could and never look back. Something
deep inside of him — some mysterious reservoir of inner strength he had never known before —
stopped him. Despite all his fears, the dryness of his mouth, the trembling of his hands that he hoped
the others could not see, despite all that he stood his ground.
“Three hundred and fifty metres!” Vidmir shouted, while Larn could hear the distant popping
sound of mortars being fired behind them. “Three hundred metres! On my mark! Fire!”
In the same instant every Guardsman on the line opened fire, sending a bright fusillade of lasfire
burning through the air towards the orks. With it came a sudden flurry of airbursts as dozens of
falling mortar and grenade launcher rounds exploded in mid-air in a deadly hail of shrapnel. Then
came the blinding flash of lascannon beams, the rat-a-tat crack of autocannons, the flare of frag
missiles streaking towards their targets. A withering torrent of fire that tore into the charging orks,
decimating them. Through it all, as the Vardans in the trench beside him ceaselessly worked the
triggers of their lasguns to send more greenskins screaming to xenos hell, Larn fired with them.
He fired without pause, as merciless as the others. Over and over again, his fears abating with
every shot, the terrors that had once assailed him replaced by a growing sense of exultation as he
saw the green-skins die. For the first time in his life, Larn knew the savage joy of killing. For the
first time, seeing orks fall wounded and dying to be trampled under the heedless boot heels of their
fellows, he knew the value of hate. Seeing the enemy die, he felt no sorrow for them, no sadness, no
remorse for their deaths. They were xenos. They were the alien. The unclean. They were monsters,
every one of them.
Monsters.
With a sudden insight, he finally understood the wisdoms of the Imperium. He understood the
teachings he had received in the scholarium, in the sermons of the preachers, in basic training. He
understood why Man made war upon the xenos. In the midst of that war, he felt no pity for them.
A good soldier feels nothing but hate.
37
Then, through the heat and noise of battle, Larn saw something that brought all his fears rushing
back to him. Incredibly, despite all the casualties inflicted by the Guardsmen’s fire, the greenskins’
charge had not wavered. Though the torrent of fire continued from the Vardans’ positions, the orks
kept on coming. They seemed unstoppable. Abruptly, Larn found himself uncomfortably aware just
how much he wanted to avoid having to face an ork in hand-to-hand combat.
“One hundred and twenty metres!” he heard Vidmir yell through the din. “Change cells and
switch to rapid fire!”
“They’re getting closer!” Larn said, his hands clumsy with desperation as he struggled to change
the cell in his lasgun. “Shouldn’t we fix bayonets — just in case?”
“Hardly, new fish.” Repzik said, his cell already changed and firing with the rest. “If this battle
gets to bayonet range we’ve as good as lost it. Now, shut up and start shooting!”
Out in no-man’s land the charging orks came ever closer. By now most of the gretchin were
dead, winnowed away by blast and shrapnel. Though the ranks of the orks had also been thinned,
from where Larn stood there looked to be thousands of them left. All bearing down across the
battered landscape of no-man’s land in a relentless and barbaric tide hell bent on slaughter.
There’s no stopping them, Larn thought. We’re going to be overrun!
He saw orks armed with short bulbous-headed sticks running at the head of the mob, the sticks
covered in a lethal profusion of spikes, blades and flanges. At first he took the weapons in their
hands to be some form of primitive mace or club. Until he saw the front rank of orks suddenly throw
the same “clubs” to land in the frozen mud before the trenches, each one exploding in a shower of
shrapnel. Instinctively, seeing one of the stick-grenades land a few metres from his trench, Larn
ducked his head to avoid the deadly fragments whistling through the air above it. An action that
drew a terse reprimand for Repzik.
“Damnation, new fish. Keep your fool head up and keep on shooting!” Repzik yelled. “They’re
trying to make us keep our heads down so they can get in close.”
Doing as he was told, Larn resumed firing. Only to look on in horror with the rest of the men as,
flying through the air so slowly it might almost have been moving in slow motion, another of the
stick grenades hit the parapet and bounced inside their trench.
“Stikk bomb!” Vidmir screamed. “Bail out!”
Rushing to evacuate the trench with the others, Larn scrambled over the trench wall behind him,
stumbling over his own two feet as he made it to ground level and turned to run for cover. He
tripped, his body already falling towards the ground as the blast of the stikk bomb ripped through
the air behind him. He felt a pain in his shoulder and a sudden pressure in his ears. Then, he hit the
ground and everything went black.
He became aware of a ringing in his ears, his face cold against the hard frozen mud beneath him.
Through the haze of returning consciousness, he heard men screaming and shouting, the sound of
lasguns being fired, the bestial roars and bellows of what could have only been orks. The noises of a
battle going on all around him.
Starting abruptly awake, with a surge of fear Larn lifted his head from the mud and looked about
him to try and gain his bearings. He was lying face down on the ground, the pain in his shoulder
having diminished to nothing more than a distant ache, while on every side around him Guardsmen
and orks fought in brutal combat. He saw an ork shot point-blank in the face, its feral inhuman
features burned away in the blink of an eye by a lasgun on full burst. He saw a Guardsman in the
