Chapter 1 – 94 Rifles

 

The district was a graveyard – its main road a choked artery of burning metal and broken bodies. Every few dozen meters, the path ruptured and spilled its contents to the sides, bleeding dead men and machines alike. Most of them old, burned out, bloated, decaying. Some of them still fresh.

Around this road of death, for miles in all directions, only the husks of grey buildings remained. Pillars of metal and rockrete stretched upwards, the rubble at their bases deeper than any man is tall. And above, a thick orange smoke lingered.

From the tallest building still standing, barely 9 floors tall, a command rang out, shouted through clasped hands.

Cease fire!

It jumped from building to building, floor to floor. It split and multiplied. From lonely firing positions in cellars and barely concealed gun emplacements, men and women passed the words along.

“Cease fire!” Olly leaned out of a broken ground level window and shouted down the street. His voice was carried by others, through smoke so black and thick he could barely see the fruits of today’s ambush. A hundred traitors died today, maybe more.

His lasgun buzzed in his hands, a high-pitched whistle at its front, the barrel beyond hot. He slung it around his shoulder and some of the hair on his neck curled up and died. With heavy steps in ill-fitting boots and awkward tugging and pulling on a red auxilia coat too large, Olly climbed through the window onto the street.

Men he knew – friends – rushed from corpse to corpse, from one burned out wreck to another. Some laughed, some celebrated with drink in hand, most were silent. Under his feet, the shrapnel and debris were so thick, it sounded like walking on snow, or dried leaves.

“We’ve got a live one!” A man with tall widow’s peaks and a necklace of ears shouted – Borik. A moment later four soldiers were pulling a traitor from beneath a burning transport. His hands were raised. He was pleading. Every damn time there’s someone playing dead, hoping to be missed. Every time it would have been better to just catch a shot and be done with it.

At first, it’s slaps and insults. Hair pulling and spitting. Borik screams something and smears his collection of rotting ears in the poor lad’s face. Then come the punches, rifle butts and kicks. Then the knives.

One day, Olly hoped, he would get used to the sound of a scalping. He kept watching. As the first sliver of bone peaked out from beneath blood and skin, his only thought was home. Far away from all of this.

A young Terran girl with freckles on her round face walked towards Olly through the smoke, lasgun at her side. A clerk, maybe once. Or perhaps a mundane worker. Her goggles she stole from a workshop that fell two weeks ago and her helmet was ancient – the phrase front towards enemy was carved into it. The scarf around her face was a patchwork mess of cloth and coarse thread. The only thing that betrayed her as a faithful soldier of the imperium was a golden armband with a volunteer regiment identification – 13-69-ZeNaWro. What that meant, nobody knew.

“Zena!” Olly greeted her with a tired wave. She waved back, carefully stepping over broken stone, wobbling back and forth like on icy ground. “How many on your side?”

“Two. What about yours, Olly?” She responded, freeing her face from the scarf.

“One. Alik from across the street. Bolter tore off his head.” Olly didn’t know him well. They just waved to each other now and then. A few days ago, they shared a can of some jellied meat, salty and tasty.

And then today – boom. A hit somewhere to his lower right jaw. A wet rag of skin, hair and blood was all that remained of his head. He was gone.

“Alik? What a shame.” She said, without sadness in her voice.

They met a few steps behind the sound of screams and a knife on bone. Zena lifted a pack of Lho sticks from a pocket on her chest.

“Want one?”

“Nah. I heard those things kill you.”

For a moment they froze. A quick glance to the rivers of death around them. Then they laughed.

With stick in mouth, Zena leaned on the broken façade of a building. Olly slid down to the ground next to her. Before them, behind them, all around them there was only stone, metal and death. If the fighting in a small district was this bad, Olly could not imagine what must have still been happening in the macro cities.

Olly scratched his greasy black hair, a sharp kind of itch that returned stronger each time. It was better not to scratch at all. Underneath his fingernails yellow gunk gathered. Water was sparse these days. Ever since the red rain, only tanks and sealed bottles could be trusted.

“You think ours will come back?” Zena asked.

“What do you mean?” Olly responded, eyes dry from smoke and dust. Two volunteers rushed past them, giving a short nod to Olly; he raised his hand to greet back.

“Last Astartes was two weeks ago. Last Auxilia eight days. Besides Borik and the pelt hats, there aren’t even regulars around anymore. Folks left before and came back, sure. But it feels different this time.”

Olly did not know what to say. He noticed it too. There was no reaching any sort of command. What little they knew, they were told from others passing by. Even the buildings were too small to climb on top and get a better view. And that damn smoke above. Last he heard, they were bleeding the traitors dry before the Helios gate. But that was weeks ago.

“Who knows.” He said, standing up. He snapped his fingers like a pair of scissors and Zena passed the Lho stick. He pulled deep, his lungs stung, but this time, he beat the cough. Breathing out, he continued speaking with strained voice.

“We should be thinking about leaving ourselves.”

Zena swiped the Lho stick back.

“Oh piss off with that defeatist attitude. We’re grinding them up good out here.”

“This morning we were down to 94 rifles. A good chunk of that wounded, with fever or just too drunk to work a gun. A regiment-“ Olly laughed, just for himself. “A fine regiment that is.”

“Well, we’re just in this tiny district, no? There must be so many more of us out there.”

He couldn’t bring himself to tell her: I don’t care. I just want to go home.

Paint and canvas, a hot drink and laze around in bed all day. Not nobility, not by far. But rich nonetheless.

A familiar voice woke Olly from his daydream.

Council! Someone shouted further up the road.

With a short nod, Zena yelled down the street towards Borik. “Council!”

Smeared in blood as thick as oil, his teeth stained red but his smile big and happy, Borik rose from the ground and passed the word. The whole road erupted in a staccato of repetition. The man beneath his feet was not moving anymore and on Boriks chain a new ear dangled.

It took less than half an hour for the remnants of the 16-12^th volunteer regiment Pius to assemble in the bombed-out ruins of a small gallery they called Headquarters these days. Everyone was there. Borik, the pelt hats, the gun crews, the mortar brothers, Mecky the knife and even solitary Bontyr. Everyone but the sentries.

The hall was filled with a mess of uniforms and armors. Greaves taken from fallen Auxilia brothers, plates donated by regulars. The helmets alone could furnish a decent museum. Hugs and handshakes. Waving and smiling. Half the men were drunk, all of them tired. Trophies were passed around and packets of lho sticks flew across the room. Rare for the volunteers to get together like this. It helped numb the nightmares and strange sights of the last few days. Olly smiled.

The hall was a gallery once. Not too long ago, Olly dreamt of being one of the artists on show. In the few displays still standing, there was Tavior, who only used shades of black. Vantis de Porol and Belur na Nassi hung on the walls, their artworks were smears of colors over masterpieces that could have been holopics. A broken frame lay on the ground, an unknown master who used only red, beige and black.

Olly thought about smearing something on a wall himself, but there was nothing left to draw.

In the middle of the hall, standing on a small podium, square-jawed Sargeant Pellas spoke to someone, for just a moment. Then he whistled and the regiment fell in order.

“Good work today!” He yelled, his voice scratchy and much higher than his face would suggest. Some found it odd, to Olly it was endearing – inspiring even.

Then Pellas fell quiet. He chewed on his lower lip, once and smacked his tongue. A rare sight for stoic Pellas. Murmurs in the ranks.

“We got the auction cogitator running again. The lads across the palace are using wired communication meant for waste transport to write each other. We’re keeping our heads down, talking in code as much as possible, not disclosing where or how many exactly we are. It’s slow, definitely intercepted and unreliable but it’s something. You have to ignore all of the traitor nonsense though. They like writing as much as we do.”

Olly held his breath. A quick glance to Zena, her brow a deep wedge.

“It’s bad.” Pellas said, his pauses becoming longer and longer.

“The gate’s gone.” He continued, arms stretched out in a silent there’s nothing we can do “The trenches fell weeks ago.”

Silence in the hall.

Zena yelled.

“So they took Helios, so what? Look at how we’re bleeding them here. The megacities will be-“

“Not just Helios.” Pellas shouted back, lowering his head. “Indicus and Tropic, Montagne too. Kushito- our Kushito is gone as well.” Pellas said, voice barely raised. “The outer defenses are no more.”

“Piss.” Zena hissed, eyes wide open.

Ollys heart stung, a beat or two went missing. His mouth was cold and dry and his breathing droned in his head.

Pellas raised his head and took off his cap. With a slow look across the ranks he ran his hand over a thin layer of sweat on his naked scalp.

With empty voice he said: “We’re deep behind enemy lines.”

Chapter 2: 91 Rifles

 

The sky was on fire. Visible through a veil of atmospheric fog and smoke, hundreds of ships lingered in orbit and spewed flame on the planet. Olly didn’t know their names, but there were small ones, close to Terra and large ones so far away, it was as if they were hiding behind milky glass.

Earlier this day the dust above the micro district cleared a bit and the full scale of the disaster in orbit finally dawned upon the 16-12th. Every few steps down the street, someone was leaning out of a window or standing out in the open, staring upwards. A terrible sense of dread.

At any given moment one of the flames from orbit could be meant for them.

Olly held guard at a crossroad that led to their district, together with Bontyr – an old, bearded, tired man of few words. He wore the green uniform of his dead son, formerly with a burned out hole in its chest. Zena patched it with brown string and tried to add an aquilla above. It looked like tangled cables masking as a large, angry tick. But the thought was there; Bontyr liked it.

Their firing position was a few sandbags, camouflaged with rags, trash and debris. Olly narrowed his eyes, looked upward and tugged at the sling of the lasgun across his shoulder. Between the ships in orbit, ripples of blue, pink and purple crashed into each other. It looked like a film of oil on water – dim and soft and translucent. But they were there. And so was lightning. Quick, thin; jumping from ship to ship. It looked like someone was cutting the sky with the sharpest blade ever made.

Behind enemy lines. The thought clawed its way back into Ollys mind. He shook his head and desperate for distraction, he asked Bontyr the first thing that came.

“Oy, Bontyr. You fancied Voidcraft, right?“ Olly said to the white-bearded man sitting on a pile of mushy leaflets behind him. “What’s that purple and blue stuff?”

Bontyr strained his eyes as he stared towards the sky, with his mouth slightly open, as so many old men do for some reason. With a squint and pain, he looked to Olly.

“No idea.”

“Well, it’s gotta be something with the voidshields, right?”

“No. Shields don’t do that.” Bontyr looked down, shook his head and picked up one of the leaflets beneath him. “Nothin’ does.” He murmured.

Most civilians were gone by now. Seeking shelter somewhere deeper inside the palace, or more likely conscripted. Only the old, stubborn, truly unfit for service or excentric remained. In the early days, even before they reached this little district, Olly met a remembrancer, old as a man can be. With an ancient brush, half the bristles missing, he painted on the wall of some small warehouse, barely a mile in length. A hundred men, women and children were holding hands and dancing towards the end of the wall. Some were missing parts of their heads, some had wounds all over their body, some were burning, some had their necks snapped. And they all danced, big silly smiles across their faces.

Olly asked the man to come with them, to evacuate.

No. He said. Not until I paint us all.

What a shame. Olly thought. What a damn shame.

A company, they were back then, a regiment on paper.

By now the 16-12th must have been a sorry sight. The heroism and the sprint of the early days had vanished, all that remained was the marathon, the slog of every day – and the shivers. No one spoke of them, not in public. But huddling in firing positions, or hiding in some bombed out basement, men talked about something being wrong. Now and then, the world shivered. Vision blurred. Images, smells and thoughts came from somewhere else. A living dream, a nakedness of the soul.

By now, the shivers came every few days. They grew and stretched. It was worst when they came during sleep – dreams stretched on forever and something horrible was watching.

Olly shuddered and glanced over back to Bontyr, who was silently mouthing whatever was written on a soggy leaflet.

He wondered where his parents were and how the palace fared. Surely there was hope. There had to be. He glanced upwards once again and was not so sure of that anymore.

Chapter 3 – 90 Rifles

The ambush felt tired, hesitant. A routine of minimal effort – well aimed and clearly identifiable shots. The shooting was so restrained, he could even hear Zenas strange double shots from way down the street. Snap-Snap.

Olly lay deep in the room that was his home now and waited. On top of him was a blanket with trash sewn into it, ideal cover. Behind him were empty cans of food, neatly stacked in the corner; a selection of leaflets was next to those. “Victory or death!” Read one of them. “The Traitors will never reach Terra!” Read another. His bed was tucked in another corner, three mattresses stacked on top of each other, a benefit of holing up in a wealthy district.

To his far right, a barricaded door. In front of him, two tall, bombed out windows. It took days and dozens of dead to learn not to stand at those directly.

And behind those windows, on a smoke-filled street among burning vehicles, traitors.

Traitors.

His barrel followed a man, much older than himself, red paint on his armor – he dodged and weaved between incoming fire, finally kneeling behind a wreck. Behind him a woman with a green scarf was screaming something, emptying the pack of her lasgun as a stream of red flashes down the street. A girl ran close, sliding the last few steps into cover, scraping her knees bloody.

A little family. Olly smiled with venom.

Crack.

A shot to the neck and the man in red goes down.

Crack.

The woman with a green scarf snaps close like a folding knife, half of her head missing.

Crack.

For a moment the girl with bloodied knees limps upwards, sheer terror in her face and a burning hole in her chest. Then she stumbles and falls head first in the dirt.

A thought came, just for a moment. A sting in his belly. A jab to his insides. The woman with the green scarf looked like his mother. Thinner, younger – but the hair was curly just right and the nose had that small hook he remembered.

Mama.

Before he could indulge the luxury of melancholia – a warcry, more a screech, a metal door scraping on the floor, a barricade failing. Men in black and red, their faces twisted in anger, eyes white, black blood all around. Olly rushed to his knees.

Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack.

One of them falls forward, a knife slides across the floor. Boots stomp on his back, a tall mess of black and red rushes towards Olly.

Cracks melt into each other. Blasts of red light rip into black uniforms. The walls behind Olly turn into dust and shrapnel.

Fingerless gloves with rotting black nails reach Ollys lasgun, twisting it to the side. He lets go, tossing it and a wet black uniform to the side, screeching.

Where is his bayonet? Belt? Boot? He fumbles. His hands claw at empty pockets, in panic. The butt of a rifle-

Olly is on the ground. The only sound his own breathing, thick and dull and heavy in his head. His body shakes. Impacts. His hands are on his head, cowering.

Fear doesn’t come. Nothing does except the impacts.

And then they stop.

Boots shuffle before his eyes.

With each breath, his hearing strengthens.

A mid-aged man with glasses and widow peaks, in a greasy, spotty, sleevless shirt stabs and kills. On his face, a dumb grin, around his neck a chain of ears. Borik.

Get up. Get up Olly.

Olly struggled to his knees, his left hand numb. Blasts darted across the room, fewer with each moment. Before him, a dance of four black uniforms and a green one. A black uniform fell to the ground. Then another. Borik kicked one of them so hard, splinters of bone, or teeth or something else hit Olly in his face and prickled like lazy shrapnel.

Finally, the last one. A man with a tall black hat, a dozen pieces of paper with strange letters nailed into it – Borik stabs him in the stomach. Again. And again. He pushed him against the wall next to Olly. And with a terrible elbow to his face the man in the tall hat fell to the ground.

Then came silence.

Borik leaned forward in exhaustion, both his hands resting on his thighs, clenching weapons. In his right hand a knife. In his left an artisan’s hammer. He was out of breath and a thin layer of red and black blood covered him like grease.

“You alright Olly?” Borik said between labored breaths, his smile as wide and silly as always.

“Yes. Yes. I think. I don’t know. Have I been shot?” Olly asked, his right hand darting across his body, looking for anything wet, or warm or painful.

“Nah. You look fine.”

Outside, the fight died down into a trickle of lonely snaps and cracks across the street, louder and more precise than lasguns. Bolters?

Borik perked up, blood between his teeth and his eyes darted away from Olly.

“Come here.” He said, somewhere between giggle and command and tossed away his hammer. The man with the tall hat was trying to stand up. His hands smeared black blood across Ollys walls. Borik grabbed the man in the tall hat at his collar; he was spitting blood. “Come here!” He repeated.

The man with the tall hat wasn’t wearing a regular uniform. It was more a black robe, made from torn sheets, held together with clasps and belts. He tried to struggle. His hands were clumsy, tired – the blood loss. He fumbled around, as if halfheartedly chasing a fly or trying to catch a butterfly.

“Hold still.” Borik said, swiped away the mans hands and pulled on the tall hat. The man followed in his entirety, a loud squeal in tow.

“Haha. Fucker nailed a hat to his head.” Borik said with wide eyes and tugged on it. “Can you believe that? What a psycho.” Pulling on the hat, he bent the man’s head backwards – he looked like an animal close to slaughter, the neck overstretched backwards.

And with the familiar sound of knife on bone, Borik started scalping. No pleas came, just screams and blood.

“Wait!” Olly shouted. “Wait.”

Borik froze, his eyebrows a silent question.

Olly looked at the man with a knife between hat and skin and skull. He was young. Younger than expected. Around Ollys age. But much thinner, sicklier – his cheeks were fallen in, his eyes bloodshot with deep rings of black and purple beneath them. His skin was a net of white and purple and a dark red rash ran across his neck.

“Why? How?” Olly asked. “How could you betray the Imperium?”

The man looked at him, with eyes wide open. His lips parted – behind them missing teeth and bleeding gum. And with a smile close to tears, he said

“How could you not?”

Screams and the scraping on bone started again.

Olly limped outside. The world was a toxic swirl of meaningless colors and noise. A terrible pressure in his stomach – and he vomited what little he ate that day.

His arm was still numb, his head hurt and only now he noticed his nose was swollen shut. His lips stung and his breathing was more a high-pitched wheeze.

Men slowly walked down the street. Careful, anxious, their eyes fixed on something further down. Olly turned to whatever they were staring at, with a sharp pain in his neck.

Before him, just a few feet away, red ceramite, a golden eagle and a drop of blood – before him, just a few feet away, a friend.

“Do you require assistance?” A deep voice asked. Olly smiled and remembered the early days of the siege. Before their retreat from Spire Tenachrus.