[Imperial Guard 01] - Fifteen Hours

by Mitchel Scanlon - (ebook by Undead)

  “I see it,” Larn said, the words jumping breathless from him, unbidden. “Holy Emperor! Is that an ork?”

  “Hhh. I only wish orks were as small as that, new fish,” Repzik said, spitting over the parapet into no-man’s land again. “That’s a gretch. A gretchin. Keep looking and you should be able to see some more.”

  He was right. Ahead, Larn saw the creature stand upright once more. This time it stood where it was unmoving, its green flesh plainly visible against the contrast of the grey backdrop of the landscape behind it. Then, after a moment, Larn saw another dozen creatures appear beside it, all of them standing still and motionless as though trying to smell something on the wind. Each of them perhaps a metre tall at most, their stunted green bodies appearing curiously hunched and misshapen inside their rough grey garments. Watching them, Larn felt himself recoil in instinctive horror at his first sight of an alien species. Until, before he even knew what he was doing, his finger was on the trigger of las-gun at his shoulder as he sighted in on the Xenos.

  “Don’t bother, new fish,” Repzik said, laying a hand across his barrel. “Even if you did manage to hit one of the gretch at this range, you would be wasting your ammo. Save it “til later. Save it for the orks.”

  “I don’t like it,” one of the other Guardsmen said. “If the orks are sending their gretch out like that it means they’re planning on hitting us with a frontal assault. Another one. What is that now? Something like the third one today?”

  “Third time is right, Kell,” the Guardsman called Vidmir said, his face grim as he pressed a finger to his ear to listen to something on his comm bead. “You’ll have to remember to remonstrate with the orks about their lack of originality when they get here. From the reports I’m hearing over the tactical net, you should soon be getting the opportunity to do so.”

  “What is it?” the other Guardsman — Kell — asked, while the rest of the men in the trench 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 no-man’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 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 no-man’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.

  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.

  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 uniform of the Jumael 14th die screaming as another ork disembowelled him with the blade of a great gore-stained axe. He saw men and orks fighting, their feet slipping and stumbling over the bodies of their fallen comrades beneath them, the details of which side was winning or losing unclear in the f
og and haze of combat. He saw blood and he saw slaughter. He saw savagery from human and alien alike. His eyes opened, he saw the reality of war once all the noble pretensions were stripped away.

  Then, as the appalling spectacle continued to unfold around him, Larn’s heart began to beat wildly in his chest as a dreadful thought suddenly occurred to him.

  Where is my lasgun, he thought, looking about him in panic. Sweet Emperor, I must have lost it when I fell.

  Feeling suddenly naked, Larn began scrabbling frantically among the fallen bodies lying nearby in search of a weapon. No sooner had he started than he all but fell over a gretchin searching among the bodies for reasons of its own. For a second they stood face-to-face, the creature was as astonished to see Larn as he was to see it. Then, noticing a sly smile come over the gretchin’s face as it made to lift its gun and point it at him, Larn leapt screaming towards it.

  Knocking the gun from the gretchin’s hands before it could shoot, Larn made to grab for it himself, only for the gun to skip away from both of them as the force of their impact sent them falling to the ground. Pushing himself on top of the creature, desperately trying to hold it off with one hand as it clawed and bit at him, Larn felt the fingers of his free hand brush a hard object lying on the ground beside him and he grabbed it. As he raised the object and brought it crashing down into the gretchin’s face, Larn became dimly aware he was holding his own helmet but he was past caring. In a frenzy born of self-preservation, he raised the helmet and smashed it down into the gretchin’s face again and again. Repeatedly smashing the creature in the face until the helmet in his hand was slick with black ichor. Then, finally realising the gretchin had stopped moving long ago, Larn paused to catch his breath. By then, there was no trace left of the smile he had seen from the gretchin when it had tried to kill him. Below him, the gretchin’s face had been reduced to a battered shapeless pulp. The creature was dead. It could no longer hurt him.