The effect was immediate, but less than Sebastev had hoped for. The monster’s expression
shifted from delinquent glee to abject hate and rage, but it didn’t die. Instead, it dropped the huge
cleaver and wrapped its arms around Sebastev, pulling him into a crashing bear hug. It was a bad
move on the ork’s part, the motion forcing Sebastev’s blade deeper inside its body. Howling in pain,
it craned its head forward and tried to snap at him.
15
Sebastev gagged on the beast’s stinking, rotten-meat breath, and reared his head back just in
time. Massive yellow tusks slammed together scant centimetres from his face. Making use of the
distance he’d created to gain momentum, Sebastev rammed his head forward with all his strength,
smashing the metal insignia on his hat straight into the ork’s nose.
As the monster reeled backwards, it loosened its grip. Sebastev yanked the hilt of his power
sabre hard to left and right, causing massive internal injuries to his foe. Reeking gore poured out
over his greatcoat. When the ork’s misshapen face finally went slack, Sebastev pushed free and
kicked the big body from the end of his blade.
There was no time to revel in the victory. He heard screams and calls for aid from nearby. Close
combat raged all around him. Sebastev spun, looking for his adjutant, suddenly aware that they’d
been separated.
There! There was Kuritsin, ten paces further up the trench, thrusting his gleaming bayonet at the
face of an ork that had just cut down a trooper from First Platoon.
Sebastev ran to join him, and began hacking at the ork’s wide back. The broad wounds he
carved in the dark green muscle steamed in the freezing air.
Assaulted on two sides, the ork was swiftly overcome, and went down with a final bestial
scream. “Thank you, sir,” said Kuritsin, “but there’s no time for a breather.” He pointed over
Sebastev’s shoulder. More orks were pushing their way into the cover trench, hacking at Sebastev’s
men as they came, stomping the bodies of those that fell. Sebastev and Kuritsin both rushed forward
to engage, calling others nearby to assist.
“You’re not going to horde all the glory for yourself, are you, captain?” someone shouted.
Sebastev looked in the direction of the voice and saw a black figure standing on the lip of the
trench, looking down into the mayhem below.
“For the Emperor and Holy Terra!” yelled the stranger. He launched himself into the trench,
crashing into Sebastev and barrelling him from his feet. There was a flash of gold at collar and
sleeve as the figure spun to face the orks. Sebastev heard the greedy purring of a chainsword before
it buried itself in green meat, stressing the motor, changing its pitch.
Sebastev leapt back to his feet with a growl.
“Your wait has ended, captain,” yelled the stranger as he hacked the orks apart with deadly
efficiency. “Your new commissar is here at last. Now, secure the area behind me, for Throne’s
sake.”
Sebastev’s first instinct was to cuff the man, once for knocking him down, twice for his verbal
audacity. But there was no time for that. The trench was choked with orks and men fighting on
every side. Kuritsin was helping First Platoon troopers to push back the orks attacking from the
northern end. The southern end was likewise choked. There was nothing else for it, Sebastev would
have to go up and over if he wanted to help his men. Sheathing his blade for a moment, he hauled
himself out of the trench. The instant he scrambled to his feet, however, he found himself in trouble.
To his right, a large slobbering ork with a black eye-patch had been looking for a place to jump
down into the fray. On seeing Sebastev, it changed its mind, bellowed a challenge and stomped
straight towards him, hefting a massive axe.
Sebastev drew his blade and hunkered down into his fighting stance, knees bent, sword ready in
his lead hand.
The ork’s opening move was a sweeping lateral backhander aimed at Sebastev’s head. Sebastev
ducked under the whistling blade with practiced ease, but the edge of the axe lopped a chunk from
the top of his hat. Freezing air rushed into the hole, chilling his scalp. He didn’t wait for the second
attack. His power sabre flicked out and sliced through the tendons of the ork’s thick wrist. Its fingers
went limp and the axe spun to the snow. The ork gaped for the briefest moment, surprised and
confused by the sudden uselessness of its hand. Sebastev took the opening without hesitation.
16
He stepped in with a powerful diagonal cut. The humming, crackling power sabre bit into the
ork’s right trapezius muscle with such force that it passed straight through, exiting the beast’s torso
below the left armpit.
The ork rolled quietly to the snow in two, lifeless pieces. Steam boiled up from a spreading pool
of blood.
“Son of a grox!” cursed Sebastev to himself. Maro should have warned me there was a new
commissar. That’s the last bloody thing I need.
He heard Lieutenant Vassilo’s voice over the vox, issuing orders to the men of his platoon. “The
orks are packed in tight. Get up on the trench lip. Fire down into the bottlenecks.”
Behind Sebastev, dozens of men pulled themselves up onto the snowfield and raced along the
trench lip, stopping to pour fire down onto the trapped greenskins.
With their numbers cut by the charge over open ground, and their close combat abilities
hampered by the narrow trenches, the orks had fared badly once again. Sebastev thanked the
Emperor that they didn’t learn quickly from their mistakes. But how long could it last? Sooner or
later, the greenskins would surprise them.
Sebastev thumbed his power sabre off, giving thanks to the machine-spirit of the weapon before
returning it to its scabbard.
Well done, my fighters, he thought. Let’s hope it’s the last attack before the rotation. But how
many did we lose? Will I still call this a victory when the headcounts come in?
It seemed unlikely that the orks would launch a third wave. It wasn’t their habit to hold forces in
reserve, and they’d waited too long to take advantage of any confusion or cover that the second
wave might have offered. Still, it was hard to fathom the workings of the alien mind. From an
official standpoint, it was heretical to even try. In all Sebastev’s experience with them, ork
behaviour was rarely as simple and predictable as Imperial propaganda made it out to be.
Returning to the cover trench, Sebastev sought out his adjutant. He found him standing over the
dismembered corpse of a fallen Firstborn.
“Bekislav,” said Kuritsin simply. “He got himself blind-sided.”
Sebastev bowed his head. Bekislav had been a good man. He’d served with Fifth Company for
almost eight years.
Lieutenant Kuritsin bore only a few shallow cuts and scrapes, nothing serious. The vox-caster on
his back, however, looked a little worse for wear. It bore a number of fresh dents.
Sebastev tapped it with a finger and said, “This thing still working?”
“About as well as before,” replied Kuritsin, “so far as I can tell. It’s temperamental, but it’s
tough. A little bit like—”
“Fine,” said Sebastev, cutting him off. “Check in with the other companies. Tell them our sector
is secure, and make sure the ork bodies are burned quickly. You know the drill.”
Left unattended, the ork corpses would shed their spores. They’d probably begun to do so
already. It was best to burn them all as quickly as possible.
As Kuritsin voxed the order over to the platoon leaders, Sebastev walked on, surveying the
results of the carnage. It was a grim picture. The red fabric of Vostroyan greatcoats peeked out from
beneath the heaped bodies of the foe.
Sebastev looked down at himself. His own coat was drenched with splashes of ork blood. He’d
have to get inside soon. He was losing too much heat through the hole in his hat. Maybe he could
stuff it with something in the meantime.
Warp damn this place, he thought. We can’t last like this. If Old Hungry doesn’t mobilise us
soon, we’ll die out here for nothing. We can’t afford to play a numbers game with the orks, not with
so few men.
Sebastev heard booted footsteps behind him and turned, expecting Kuritsin. But the man who
faced him wasn’t his adjutant. He wasn’t even Vostroyan.
17
“You, captain,” said a tall, dark figure with a very distinctive cap, “are an absolute bloody
mess.”
18
CHAPTER TWO
Day 681
Korris Trenchworks — 13:24hrs, -22°C
With the orks repulsed, the men of Fifth Company set about tending to their wounded, salvaging
equipment from the dead, and repairing their defences. The snows abated for a while, and the air
was filled with the black smoke of burning xenos corpses. Commissar Daridh Ahl Karif followed
Captain Sebastev through the winding maze of communications trenches to the man’s dugout.
The captain’s sour mood was all too apparent to the commissar, and he resisted any attempts at
conversation while they walked. Despite reminding himself not to judge the captain too swiftly,
Commissar Karif couldn’t help it. First impressions hadn’t been good.
Moving south along the supply trench, they arrived at a flight of steps cut into the frozen earth.
Captain Sebastev descended the steps and tapped a four-digit code into the rune pad on the
doorframe. With a hiss, the door opened and the captain went inside.
Karif didn’t wait for an invitation. It was far too cold to observe such niceties. Instead, he
hurried in after the captain, closed the door quickly behind them, and slapped the cold seal
activation glyph on the door’s inner surface. When he turned, he found himself in a dimly lit room
of dirt walls, with shabby furniture and a ceiling of wooden beams so low that they scraped the top
of his cap.
The stocky Vostroyan had no such trouble. As the captain removed his damaged fur hat, Karif
saw for the first time just how short Captain Sebastev was. The top of his head barely reached
Karif’s shoulders. At just under two metres, the commissar would have been considered a fairly tall
man on most worlds, but he’d met enough Vostroyans to know that Sebastev was below average
height for his people. It seemed that this dugout, with its preposterously low ceiling, had been
constructed with his exact proportions in mind.
Sebastev’s dugout may have been too small by half, but it was infinitely cosier than the freezing
trenches outside. A quartet of small thermal coils, one in each corner, hummed as they struggled to
take the chill from the air.
Both men removed their cloaks and scarves, and hung them on pegs hammered into the frozen,
dirt wall. Karif felt so much lighter without the heavy fur cloak weighing him down, but he’d been
glad of its warmth and protection in the open air. Not for the first time since planetfall, Karif cursed
this world and the personal disaster that had brought him here.
Damn you, old man, he thought, remembering the gloating look on the face of Lord General
Breggius as the man had informed him of his reassignment. I wasn’t to blame for your son’s death.
You must’ve pulled some long strings to get me posted out here, but I’m determined to make the
best of this. There must be some glory to be had in this campaign.
Captain Sebastev moved across the room and dropped himself onto the edge of a simple wooden
bunk. “Sit if you’ve a mind to, commissar,” he rumbled as he began unfastening the clasps of his
blood-covered boots.
Karif drew a rickety, wooden chair from beside a small, central table and sat down carefully,
half-expecting the thing to collapse under him. When the chair had accepted his full weight, he
placed his black cap on the table’s grubby surface and pulled a shining silver comb from his pocket.
As was his habit whenever he removed his cap, he ran the comb through his oiled black hair,
sweeping it back behind his ears.
19
Captain Sebastev grunted when he saw this.
Karif didn’t consider himself a vain man, but he believed that a position of authority brought
with it certain requirements of appearance. It was a matter of self-respect. And if such an appearance
happened to appeal to a particular class of lady, so much the better.
It was unfortunate that his appearance had also appealed to the Lord General’s son. He’d been a
charming boy with great potential as an officer, but he’d misinterpreted Karif’s friendship as
something… deeper. Karif hadn’t expected his rejection to lead to the boy’s suicide.
Clearly, Captain Sebastev would never suffer such difficulties. The man was almost beast-like.
Then again, Karif supposed as he watched Sebastev remove his carapace armour, his breeding
hadn’t given him much to work with. Compounding the captain’s limited height, he was so
disproportionately thick with muscle that, had he been painted green and set loose on the snowfield,
his own men could have mistaken him for an ork… albeit a very short one.
The captain’s black moustache was unkempt, clearly in need of waxing, and his hair was little
more than coarse stubble. His leathery face was split by an ugly diagonal scar that ran from his
forehead, across his left eye, all the way down to his jaw-line, tugging one side of his mouth into a
permanent snarl. All in all, Karif decided, without the accoutrements of his position, the
commanding officer of Fifth Company would be all but indistinguishable from an underhive thug.
Being a field commissioned officer, rather than an academy man, thought Karif, he may well
have come from the underhives. But I’m hardly catching him at his best. He must have some worthy
qualities. By all accounts, his fellow officers in the Sixty-Eighth Infantry Regiment rate him very
highly. Time will tell.
“Have you anything to drink, captain?” Karif asked hopefully, thinking a little alcohol might
take some of the chill off. The room’s thermal coils seemed inadequate to the task. “Amasec,
perhaps? I’ll even take caffeine if there’s any going.”
“Rahzvod,” said Sebastev, indicating a cabinet behind the commissar with a nod of his head. He
didn’t get up.
Whatever his qualities are, thought Karif, he needs a damned good lesson in manners. A
skunkwolf would be a more gracious host.
“Perhaps later,” said Karif, masking his irritation. “First, let me congratulate you on today’s
victory. It was most exhilarating to get my hands dirty after such a long trip through the Empyrean.
A fine introduction to serving with your company, yes?”
