Veridara ducked behind the flaming debris of a rockcrete barricade as another explosion from an Ork rocket shook the hallway. The reinforced walls of the ship were barely dented by the heavy ordnance being slung around; the men themselves, however, were not as lucky. A few broken bodies of Sand’s guardsmen rained down around her, accompanied by many more greenskin parts. Of course they would not be above friendly fire; on the contrary, they seemed to enjoy it. She annihilated the limbs with a gout from her flamer. Better not to leave any of those accursed spores in the air.
In the distance, another blinding bolt of energy streaked out from their lines and struck the lumbering Squiggoth in the neck: an anti-tank lascannon. The thick metal armour creaked and dropped, pierced clean through, but the scales below it were only mildly singed. In response, the creature roared and swung its tusks again, demolishing an entire knot of soldiers.
Around thirty gene-bulked men jumped on them as it tried to raise its head, holding down the teeth on the ground as a few more with massive hammers pounded down on them, attempting to shatter the monster’s greatest weapons. As they swung, promethium boosters in the hammers’ heads flared to life, amplifying the blow to crack through the tough minerals in the fungoid beast’s teeth. After a few seconds of struggle, it managed to shake them free, withdrawing with some chips and craters in the pseudo-ivory. A maximum-power lasgun bolt streaked up from the crowd and hit it in its horn, burning it severely. They were injuring it, but not fast enough.
The majority of the soldiers, however, were still tied up with smaller targets: emboldened by their massive pet, the Orks had reformed and charged again. Even as she blitzed past firing and cursing guardsmen, her auto-senses sought Sand among the melee. The colonel had quickly become separated from her in the chaos after the appearance of the Squiggoth. But there was no sign of him in the backlines. That meant he and that commissar of his had been swept up in the fighting.
“We are the Emperor’s Wrath! Falter not!” A few of her sisters were in the thick of it, the distinctive roar of their bolters rising above the melee. Sweeping blasts of burning promethium painted the frontlines every now and again. Above the battle, occasional muted cracks signalled the Ferrite snipers finishing off another troublesome foe.
“Why aren’t you fighting?” she screamed up at the nearest Skitarius sitting atop the flaming debris of the Chimera, apparently meditating. “The frontline needs our support!”
“It would be suboptimal to risk any more Mechanicus resources, given the calculated proximity of victory,” he responded from a chest-mounted synthesizer.
“Your men are dying!”
“They will be replaced. Additionally, in arguendo, we are assisting. Outside the range of the forward base’s data-tethers and nodes, our distributed cogitation is providing the extra computing power required to maintain C3I linkage across the battle-sphere. Diverting resources to active combat would likely detract from that role.”
“That’s not an excuse! You are being cowards!”
“You are correct. It is not an excuse. We have no need to excuse our actions to you.” The mechanical soldier went back to his meditation, drawing his snaking mechadendrites around him like a cocoon.
Her vox crackled as Sand’s garbled voice cut through the interference of panicked communications.
“I’m… you had something… do with it, palatine.”
“Sand!” She cleared her throat, trying to ameliorate her altogether unbecoming eagerness. “Colonel. I thought I warned you to stay clear of the frontlines.”
“Men needed encouragement… Gramps… Bolt pistol up my man’s… Diarrhoea everywhere.”
“What?” She shook her head. “Hold on. Where are you? I’m coming.”
“Knew you couldn’t resist… Look for… Ogryn… Sabrus… trouble.”
Those last few words made her stomach dive into the labyrinth of her intestines. “Roger that, I’m on my way.”
By Him on the Throne, she would have to flog that stupid girl until her skin resembled a Repentia’s battle honours. Slinging her flamer over her shoulder, she nodded briefly at her new acquaintances before vaulting over the barricade and sprinting full tilt towards the spot Sand had most probably indicated: the tight knot of ogryn Auxilia holding the unyielding centre of the frontlines.
Here, in the core of the frontier, the fighting was the thickest. The lumbering abhumans discharged their crude ripper guns with reckless abandon, taking full advantage of their height advantage to fire down into enemy lines. When an Ork got too close, one of them would swing their hefty weapon like a club, tearing its head open like overripe fruit. Clustered around their feet, a few of Sand’s more hands-on soldiers swarmed, wielding their mono-knives in a deadly and up-close dance with the much bigger xenos. A few of them even wielded crude approximations of Astartes power fists: huge gauntlets and harnesses hissing steam as inbuilt actuators turned their punches into earth-shattering blows. The remainder fell upon the old Militarum standby of massed lasgun fire. Their guns were head-and-shoulders above the crude models issued to non-Forgewolder peasantry: ornamented with gold and laced with intricate patterns of ornamental circuitry, their craftsmanship spoke of the work of generations of artificers oriented towards a singular goal: death.
And at the head of it all was Sand. He had taken a momentary reprieve from the fighting to preside over what appeared to be a makeshift court martial. Two glowering men were holding one of her sisters down on the ground. Even her power armour’s augmented strength was useless against their gene-forged strength and cybernetic musculature. Her weapons had been laid to the side, with obvious care and reverence. The Cult Mechanicum dared not disrespect the machine spirits, no matter their mistress’ crimes.
“How dare you lay hands on me?” Sabrus screamed, struggling against the grip of her warders. “You dare touch a servant of His will? Answer me, filthy machine-licker!”
“You’ve some nerve, sister, implying that we’re heretics,” one of the guards retorted. “I’m not aware of bigger heresy than blue-blue. What about you, sir? Those priests ever tell you of anything worse?”
“What’s blue-blue?” Veridara asked, pushing her way into the proceedings.
Sand turned his eyes to her. His sword hung loosely in his hand. From the looks of it, the disruptor field had given out already. However, there was enough fungoid gore on the blade to indicate that its wielder had not let that stop him. His face was flecked with an impossible amount of blood. So much that it made it hard for her to see his expression. Even then, she could almost feel the confused mixture of relief, frustration, and anger he felt when he saw her.
“Fratricide,” he said simply. “Friendly fire.”
She walked over and knelt in front of Sabrus. Her voice was a harsh whisper. “Foolish girl, what did you do this time?”
She huffed and turned her face away.
“Get a look for yourself, miss! Go on, show her!” Sabrus’ guard snarled, gesticulating at some of the men behind him.
They parted to reveal one of the ogryns sitting on the ground, panting as one of his fellow guardsmen tended to a massive, bleeding hole in his abdomen. His armour had ruptured outwards on the front. The shot had come from behind.
“Sabrus… You shot him?”
She scoffed. “It wouldn’t get out of the firing zone. So, I shot through the damn thing.”
Without another word, she whacked a gauntleted hand across her face. The strength of the power armour tore a spattering of blood out of her mouth. A single tooth fell out and clattered away on the floor.
Sand’s voice was colder than Valhallan permafrost, any traces of humour gone. “I can tolerate a lot, palatine. But I will not tolerate this.”
She turned around, standing up. “I will not ask you to. But please, don’t do anything you’ll regret. Hand her over to me.”
“She shot my soldier, Veridara. I cannot betray my men by letting this go unpunished. I will not.”
“It will not go unpunished. I will take her into our custody right now, and the Order of the Unbroken Line will ensure that she is punished adequately.”
“Don’t listen to her, sir! Those church-coddled nannies back at their shrine worlds won’t understand shit about what Nug and the others mean to us.” The soldier pulled out his pistol and jammed it against Sabrus’ temple. “Just give the order. We’ll give her justice. The right way. The field way.”
“You have no right!” She jerked her head away from the gun, again attempting to break free. “Where’s your commissar? You have no authority to pass judgement on me! I answer only to the Emperor!”
“Then let Him strike me down, if He indeed wishes for you to live. I don’t need to involve the commissariat. I don’t need to involve anyone. This is my battle, you are under my authority, and I am hereby issuing summary judgement as your commanding officer.”
“You are not my commander!” Sabrus threw her head back, looking at Veridara. “Palatine, tell him! Stop him!”
“What do you want me to do, sister? Shed more faithful blood, to save your life?”
“That thing is an abhuman! It exists to die for the Imperium!”
“Yes.” Sand sheathed his sword and drew his own, much more ornate pistol. “And so do you.”
“Sand, please.” She lightly touched his arm to keep it down, positioning herself between him and his target. “This will only make this worse.”
“Palatine. Out of my way.” His voice was completely level, almost as if he was being controlled by something higher. A directive. Duty. “Please.”
“Look. You want discipline? If you do this, my sisters… They are not going to take it well. More of your Auxilia are going to be targeted. Think of the bigger picture, colonel. Strategic interest.”
“Are you implying that you are unable to control them?”
“I am assuring that I will try.”
There was a tense moment. It was the greatest miracle of human emotion and perspective that, at a moment of personal and intimate crisis, everything appeared to stand perfectly still. Despite the raging battle around.
“Guardians, haul her to the backlines. We will decide what to do with her after we make contact with our preachers and commissars.”
An undercurrent of rebellion flashed across his soldiers’ faces, but they appeared to have understood her logic as well: they only grunted their disapproval while carrying out Sand’s orders.
Sand sighed, replacing his pistol back in its housing. “When I voxed you, I had no way to know that it was this bad. Might have held off on the jokes then.”
“You made the right choice.”
“I’m afraid your ship of ‘cooperation’ may have sailed already, sister. Word is probably spreading through the ranks right now. Your men… women… may not be able to count on our enthusiastic support anymore.”
“Oh, so nothing has changed?”
“Veridara.”
“I know.”
They walked over to where the ogryn was being tended to. The ad-hoc medic gave her a dirty look, but otherwise said nothing as she walked up and laid a hand on his bicep.
“Nug… right?”
“Pelteen.” He attempted to stand up and salute.
“Whoa! Stay down, big guy!” his minder scolded, tugging on a meaty finger to get him seated.
“I apologize for my sister’s conduct, Nug. Again. The Emperor is very cross with her, or so I’ve been told.” She eyed Sand for support. He smiled and gave him a small nod in response.
“Emprah… He’ll forgive her though, won’t he? He’z real nice!” He rifled around under his armour and pulled out a very worn-out quilt. “He’z give me blankie, for when I… I… scared! Scared, of bad dark ships! Very cold, damp… dark. Small. But when blankie with me, no scary! She didn’t mean it, kernel!”
Sand cleared his throat. “I’ll be sure to let Him know about your thoughts on the matter, Nug. When you’re feeling up to it, can you do me a favour and help Lukas back to the casualty zone? You know he’s a little clumsy.”
“Protikt Lukas!” He laughed and slightly nudged his medic, almost knocking him off his feet. “Clumsy Lukas! You’z want blankie? War not scary when you got blankie!”
Lukas gave him a small smile. “I’ll ask for one in the next letter.”
“Hah! Emprah not give Lukas blankie! Nug Emprah favourite! Nug give Lukas blankie, because Emprah says Nug shud be… ki… kind! Nug, be kind!”
“I’ll hold you to it then, buddy. Now, try to breathe again, yeah? Deeply?”
“Hard!”
“Try it again.” Lukas slightly adjusted the pressure on his wound.
She turned and nodded to Sand: a wordless ‘We should go’.
Once they were out of earshot, Sand ran his gaze over the shifting frontline again. “We’ll never get these greenskins past that arch, not with that big fething squig sticking its nose everywhere.”
“Did you make him that quilt?”
“Huh? Oh, blankie?” He chuckled. “No. Gramps did. He learned to sew in the Schola, apparently.”
“Still remembers it? After all these years?”
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
“He made one for every ogryn in the regiment.” Sand sighed. “We don’t call him the army grandpa for nothing, you know.”
“You… really care about them, don’t you?”
“You sound surprised.”
“No, just… How can it be so easy to care about things so small, with so much going on?”
“Well, if you would step outside your chapels in mind as you do in body, then perhaps you would see that there is life in living alone, not just in living it for something.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re awfully articulate for an underhive rat.”
“Yeah, I’ll be sure to file a complaint with the Schola Progenium Consortium for Monopolization of Proper Education. For now, though…” He vaguely waved his hands. “What the fuck do I do about this?”
Veridara palmed her comms. “Sergeant Bax.”
“Sister.”
“Report?”
“I’m observing from the backlines, near the Chimeras. The lines seemed to have crawled to a stalemate for now, but that Squiggoth is not making it easy.”
“Can we get them past the arch like planned?”
“With current forces? It’s more likely that we’ll be the ones on the backfoot soon.”
“Our rear forces are in position, Colonel Sand.” The Skitarii Alpha’s synthesized voice intruded into the channels. “Your advance appears to have lagged behind. This will reflect poorly on the twenty-first’s performance grade review.”
“Oh, piss off,” Veridara hissed, before Sand himself could respond.
“…Data inload acknowledged. You have encountered unknown contingencies.” He completely ignored her interjection. “Do you have an amended plan of action?”
“Nothing as of yet,” Sand breathed.
“Good. Adjusting fleshling stratagems to acceptable success chances is a vastly unoptimized exercise. No offence, colonel.”
“None taken.”
“Untruth. Irrelevant. Order a frontline retreat to the original rapid-response barricade position.”
“Retreat?” Sand tapped his vox bead. “Did you say retreat?”
“Affirmative. Retreat to the damaged machines.”
“That’s crazy!” He cleared his throat. “The Orks will rip into our backs.”
“Engaging any further is needlessly wasting Adeptus Mechanicus human resources. The Secretariat Majoris has issued clear directions. Abhuman detachment will cover your retreat.”
“They’ll kill them all!”
“I have given orders. Zeta-21, terminate.” The link went silent.
“Dammit.” Sand twisted a section of his wrist like a gear, extending a shimmering holo-lith of strange icons in a lazily rotating circle. Some were flashing. Others were grey and dead. “Dammit. Gana, Gana! Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, sir,” the voice crackled at the other end.
“Vox-ops at ground level are saturated. Relay my position to Gramps. Ask him to find Hurk and get here yesterday.”
“Hurk? Alright, you’re the boss.”
“Sir! You can’t seriously be thinking…” One of Sand’s men pushed through the ranks around him; judging by his regalia, he was a senior officer.
“You have an alternative, captain?”
“We’ll all hold the line, sir! The robes want someone to hold this point, right? Why not all of us?”
“Did you miss the part about the retreat? If we all stay here, we all die. Tell me, captain. Have we pushed the xenos back one single step in the past few minutes of combat?”
“No, but…!”
“Zeta was right. We don’t want to admit it, but he was. We’re bleeding men here. Take a look at this.” He thrust his arm and the shimmering holo-lith towards the officer. “There aren’t going to be men to save if we don’t act now.”
“They’re our men too!” The captain immediately seemed to regret his outburst, straightening and tugging at his collar. “This will be detrimental for troop morale.”
Sand studied his face for a long second. “If you want there to be morale left to decrease, Trevahl, give the orders.”
Captain Trevahl grudgingly saluted and turned on his heel, shouting for a vox operator.
“Sand, you know you don’t have to do this.” Veridara stepped in front of him as he attempted to head to a larger opening in the back.
“They have a plan. There has to be one.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No. I don’t. I believe that.” He sidestepped her and continued, just in time for the bloodied commissar to emerge from the heaving knots of soldiery. He was leaning on a similarly gory trooper for support, bleeding from a barely-bandaged hole in his leg.
“Gramps.”
“Damn Squig nicked me something good.” The old man grunted as he ducked out from the guardsman’s grip and hobbled forward of his own accord. “One more leg’s going to be metal, it seems.”
“You can take a breather now, you know.”
“Nonsense. What kind of commissar stands back from the line while his men bleed and die?”
“The kind that wants to stay alive?” she quipped.
“Bah! Who cares about that?”
“Fair enough.”
Without skipping a beat, he pulled out his pistol and fired over the heads of his men, nailing an Ork clambering over the lines right between his eyes. Its head exploded in a shower of gore.
“I ask nothing of my men that I would not do myself. What is it, colonel?”
“I’m ordering a retreat to the Chimera line.”
He froze. “What? Why?”
“Orders from above.”
The commissar’s eyes hardened. “Are you using the incompetence of your commanders to excuse your own cowardice, guardsman?”
“If you look into my soul and find a single shred of it not willing to die right here, I will put that bullet in my own head, commissar. But there’s no time to argue. The men will not obey quietly.”
Gramps gritted his teeth. “No guardsman balks at an order to fall back, Sand. What are you not telling me?”
Sand sighed. “I… We…”
“The ogryns stay behind to cover our retreat,” she interrupted. “That was the order.”
The anger in the commissar’s expression evaporated instantly. Or at least the warm anger of duty did. There was a different, deeper fire in his eyes now: the cold fury of personal loss. “Sand. Have you fallen this low too, then?”
“This was not my idea.”
“No. But you are willing to propose it.”
“It is not my decision.”
“You are their lord and commander, Sand. It is always your decision. Have you forgotten how to return the loyalty of your troops? Forgotten every lesson I have ever taught?”
“Are you going to kill me now?” San’s question was simple. There was no fear behind it, or frustration. It was a simple query, in the same way a cogitator might ask for an input before taking a decision.
“No. No, I will not. What you are proposing is standard and allowable procedure for the Imperial Guard. I will support this decision.” He sighed and sheathed his pistol. “But I suppose I expected… more than standard.”
“So did I.”
“Use your tally codes, colonel. Confirm the orders.”
“Sand…” she warned again.
With a tap on his wrist, he interfaced the holo-lith with his vox systems. “Captain Tervahl has communicated your orders for a general retreat. By my authority as Master of the Tally and your commanding officer, in accordance with regulations 211A and 323A of the Sanctus Ferrum Codex Militarum, I hereby confirm the order as genuine. Transmitting tally codes… Now.”
Every icon on the display except three blinked and flashed a harsh red.
“No tally fo’ us, kernel?” The bonehead, Hurk, lumbered out of the lines.
“No, Hurk. You and your men will cover the retreat. Once we’re at the secondary line, I want you to make a fighting retreat back to us.”
Hurk immediately saluted. “Fo’ the Emprah, sir!”
“To hell with that!” Lukas pushed past him and planted himself in front of Sand. “We’re not leaving them behind to die!”
Hurk blinked. “Die? No die! Kernel said we retreat—”
“He’s lying! You won’t live long enough to retreat!” Lukas turned to Sand. “Tell him… sir. He deserves to know.”
“Lie?” Hurk laughed. “Lukas joke good, kernel! Make jester! Kernel git ordahs from the Emprah, Lukas! Emprah never lies!”
His face hardened for a moment. “Lukas say Emprah lies. Lukas… heritik?”
“No, Hurk.” The commissar stepped forward. “Trooper Lukas is not a heretic. He is merely skirting dangerously close to insubordination.”
“In… In…”
“Never mind that, Hurk.” Sand cleared his throat. “But he is correct. There is a… significant chance that all of you will die doing this. So…”
“Oh… Okay!” Hurk shrugged and turned around.
“Hurk?” Lukas asked.
“Dyin’ for the Emprah is not bad! It good! Gramps say Emprah protect us after we die! No more noise, no more blood, no more smell. No more… No more boxes! Yuck! Death good!” He pushed back into the lines, grunting and hollering in his crude tongue for his men to understand.
“Like the Warp it is! Grab your guns, boys! We’re staying!” Lukas cocked his lasgun.
“Lukas…” Sand warned.
“All of you can go, sir. But I’m not leaving them behind. Even if my squad doesn’t stay, it’s fine. I will.”
“Lukas, it is my order that you go. Now.”
“No.”
“What was that?”
“No! I’m not—”
His next words turned into a muffled nonsense as they choked on the bolt pistol rammed into his mouth.
“I believe,” the commissar said evenly, his finger tightening on the trigger, “that your commanding officer has just given an order.”
Lukas’ eyes hardened with impotent anger, but he made no step to free himself or attack him. The guardsmen around them shifted in place, uncomfortable but unwilling to interfere.
“Go. Retreat.”
Lukas tried to say something again. In response, the old man drove the bolt pistol deeper into his mouth. A thin trickle of blood ran down the barrel from his brutalized cheeks.
“Listen to me, if you can. Fear me, if you must. Hate me, if you dare. But you will obey when I command. Follow!”
“Commissar. It’s fine.” Sand gently pulled down his arm. “No need to take it out on him.”
Lukas studied both of them for a moment. “Fuck you too, Gramps. Pack it up, boys. We’re falling back.”
With a few murmurs of assent, the men dispersed, preparing to leave their comrades to their fate with the grim resignation of good soldiers.
“Lukas?” Sand called.
“…Sir?”
“I’m staying.”
The guardsman staggered, as if struck. “What? No.”
“Sand, what are you thinking?” The commissar demanded.
“They’re going to be scared, and hurt, when the fighting starts to go bad. They’ll… They’ll need someone here, to encourage them.”
“No, sir! You’re more important! Let me stay!”
Sand shook his head. “My duty is to my men. Vuron will be here soon. He will assume command if… if I don’t make it back.”
“But—”
“He is the Tally Keeper. Until the Magi appoint a new CO, he will take good care of you all. Now go.”
“Colonel—” the old man started.
“I ask nothing of my men that I would not do myself. Please, Gramps. Let me do this.”
The commissar hesitated, then nodded. “Then I will see you back at camp, Sand. Getting yourself killed will be considered dereliction of duty, punishable by summary execution.”
He chuckled. “I’ll keep it in mind. Palatine, pull your girls back too. Get back to the camp. Whatever Zeta is planning… In any case, armour will be here soon. They’ll push the greenskins back.”
“If you’re staying…” Veridara cocked her flamer, checking the pilot flame.
“Veridara…”
“I am the beacon of the Emperor’s wrath, colonel. And His wrath never falters. I shall demonstrate by example. Let my sacrifice be my sacrament to His glory.”
“For the Omnissiah’s sake—” His vox crackled again.
“Formalities met?” Zeta’s voice queried.
“I—Yes. Yes. I have ordered the retreat. But the palatine insists on staying.”
“Good.”
“What?”
“The Squiggoth is creating… additional variables. Uncertainty parameters unacceptable. Eliminate.”
“How is one soldier, even a Sororitas, supposed to—”
“Ogryns are not intelligent, colonel. You are. Ideate.” The vox link went dead again.
Sand gave her a helpless look. Across the front, lines began to dissolve as soldiers began falling back. Their gaps were filled by the hulking forms of the ogryns, swinging and bashing with reckless abandon to create openings for their smaller brethren. The rush of men and materiel slowly drove the two of them apart, until she could no longer see him.
Veridara cursed and dashed across the rapidly shifting frontline, heading for the lascannon nest on the other side. In the distance, sounds of a depowered blade hitting thick flesh rose over the din. Sand. Despite herself, she muttered a prayer in his name as she dived behind the barricade.
“Soldier! What seems to be the holdup?”
The men manning the lascannon battery gave her a quick once-over. One of them nodded at her. “Sister. Shouldn’t you be on the lines?”
“Unlike your colonel, I believe commanders are better used in leadership than in bravado.” A crude grenade arced over the frontline and directly at their emplacement. Acting on instinct, she grabbed it out of the air and tossed it back at the xenos. A second later, a significant explosion sowed confusion among their seething ranks.
The man raised an eyebrow at the display. “My bad, palatine. The beast’s moving too fething much. We can target it just fine. It’s big and it’s dumb. But that armour covers every damn vital bit. Whichever crazy fething bastard kitted it out knew exactly what they were doing.”
“Can’t you shoot through the armour?”
“We can, but it’s segmented. Only a very small portion is destroyed. And with how much that thing’s thrashing… We can take it down, but it’s going to be a while until we clear up enough open space.”
The Squiggoth reared back and charged again, tearing a ragged hole through their makeshift line as the guardsmen leapt to avoid it or were crushed into paste. She felt a twinge in the pit of her stomach as one of her sisters came under its massive feet. Her cries rose over the battlefield for a brief moment before a bolt from a friendly lasgun ended her duty.
“We don’t have time.” She rested a palm against the barrel of a lascannon, bowing her head. It was searing hot from the last shot, but her gauntlet made it manageable. “Holy God-Emperor, hear my prayer. Let your Wrath guide the eyes of this faithful. Let your Strength fill his limbs. Guide his aim true.”
The warm prickling of power swelled in the air around them. A fraction of the God-Emperor’s gaze had turned to their piteous existence. Magnificent divinity coursed through her, the body a fragile vessel for His works. The guardsmen felt it too, their eyes widening as the sensations washed over them.
“The Emperor has much to tend to, guardsman! Take your shot!”
The gunner’s surprise was replaced by grim determination as he nodded and grabbed his weapon, swivelling it around to aim at an exposed spot on the beast’s neck. It was a tiny opening, no bigger than a fruit. Almost impossible to hit on a moving target with a bolter at this distance, let alone with an unwieldy cannon. But the Will of the Emperor would transcend all.
He fired. The las that poured from his gun was not the ordinary red, but a searing, radiant golden, raging with force of a billion suns as it screamed towards the gargantuan orkoid. In the split second it took to close the distance, the air around it boiled, creating deafening thunderclaps in the beam’s wake that shook the walls and bent the pillars. The Squiggoth turned on instinct to gaze towards the brilliance, and immediately roared in pain as its eyes blistered and boiled away.
Veridara, however, gazed fearlessly into it; the God-Emperor’s light never burned His faithful. Around the battlefield, time seemed to slow to a crawl as the soldiers stopped their fighting to look at the falling star streaking over their heads, the flame of defiance within their hearts reflected a thousand times over in the burning judgement of their immortal Master.
Then, the lascannon struck, dead in the centre of the unarmoured spot. The impact created a dome of slicing air, shredding every Ork nearby while leaving their own troops perfectly unharmed. The beast’s final keening was cut short as its entire body from the hind legs forward disappeared, vaporized in the light of a short-lived sun.
With a scream of pain, the lascannon’s operator fell backward, writhing on the ground and scratching at his face. The temporary boost in power had overloaded the weapon’s cooling mechanisms, leading to a mutilating feedback blast of heat.
His enhanced healing, however, was already getting to work, wounds healing or scarring over at a rate that would have seemed agonizingly slow to Astartes, but was positively supernatural to a baseline. She laid a hand on his chest, and the warm glow of the Throne’s benevolence enveloped him, stilling his pain somewhat. This calmed him down enough to allow some of his squadmates to drag him away.
“Frak, MedSec’s not here yet. Hang in there, buddy.”
With a pair of ocular augmetics, he would be ready to serve again in no time.
The Squiggoth was still twitching and thrashing as she jumped back out and headed for the lines, attempting to crush a few more guardsmen beneath its bulk: its last remaining instinct. More bursts from the lascannons ended its ambition.
In the distance, she could still dimly make out the ogryns fighting. Only ten, including their bonehead, holding back the entire tide. Nug was the only one not fighting, limping back alongside the retreat. Too injured. At least he could still walk.
A crackling nimbus of lightning rose briefly into the air as an Ork went flying back, bisected neatly: Sand’s power sword had received the respite it needed. But around him, the swings of his soldiers were getting slower and slower: even abhuman behemoths got tired. A roar of pain went up from one of them as an Ork ducked under his arms and rammed a cleaver into his side. His thick flesh stopped the blow before it could penetrate much, but copious amounts of blood still spurted as he grabbed the xeno’s head and ripped it off. Another grunted and stumbled back as a stub round tore off a chunk of flesh from his head. The bark of Sand’s pistol silenced the lucky gunman a moment later.
“Dammit. Wrap up! Get out of here! I have to… Have to…”
As she started forward, her knees gave out like jelly. Dimly, she felt herself hit the floor, blood rushing in her ears. Steam was coiling off of the surface of her armour. Her arm felt heavy and watery at the same time, refusing to move when commanded. The flamer fell from her grasp and clattered to the side, maddeningly out of reach. The miracle had taken more than she had assumed from her as well.
“Sister? Sister!” The guardsman’s voice was nothing more than a low growl: barely legible.
“Fine… Fine… Go…” The other arm would work. It had to.
For the first time in a long time, she was keenly aware of the metal grinding and servos whining as her augmetic arm helped her up. She had had it for so long that it was easy to forget that it existed at all. But unlike her pure body of flesh, its profane metal and wiring was cut off from the Emperor’s sacred light. It had no conception of His glory, or fear of His searing might. It would move, like the slave it was.
The crude neuro-cyber interface in her shoulder roused it to action as she knelt on the ground, shaking her head to hopefully resolve the dozens of afterimages in her eyes to one. The ogryns were kneeling now, physically holding back the greenskins using large plates of metal ripped out of the floor in a makeshift shield wall. Every now and then, one of the Orks would reach around and slash their arms, legs, or faces, laughing with genuine humour all the while.
“Hold on! For the Emperor, hold on!” Sand’s encouragements were watery. Indistinct. Unsure. Fatigued.
The low hum of his sword fizzled out again, overwhelmed by the number of enemies. It was replaced seconds later by the wet sounds of bare fists smashing into faces and bones.
She tried to get to her feet, but her legs refused to cooperate, depositing her back on the ground in a crumpled heap. Her arm reached for the flamer and raised it, firing a gout of flames over the crude wall. But it could not reach any enemy. It could not matter. Not until she could get closer.
Pairs of hands grabbed her from behind. Some bare, some gauntleted in sanctified power armour. They were trying to pull her back.
No. No. No.
“Veridara, get back!”
She fought. Weakly.
No. No. No.
“Veridara! Retreat, now!” Bax’s voice screamed into her earpiece.
No.
“You’ll be caught in it!”
Something small and silvery flew over her head. She saw it dimly, out of the corner of darkening eyes. A brief flash of purple.
And then they were in the real that was unreal.