Lord General Severian Holt was gritting his teeth as he saw the reports come in. That idiot Rurke had to charge headfirst into an enemy fleet ten times the size of his forces, and fielding a monstrosity that’d give a Gloriana-class battleship a run for its money.  Follow current novels on N0v3l.Fiɾe.net

He couldn’t have stayed behind on the planet, oh no. That would have required some semblance of tactical acumen and intelligence, and clearly, the man lacked both.

And now he was space dust, while Holt was left to make his glorious last stand on this green hell without proper orbital support.

At least he’s not a coward. Holt thought, his features twisted into a picture of rage and loathing. The Admiral, pitiful little man that he was, tucked his tail and ran at the first sign of actual danger. He didn’t even have the decency to offer the Astra Militarum high command on the planet extraction.

He just … turned around and fled, like some snivelling mongrel. Truly, that vermin knew nothing but how to suck up to superiors and heap praises upon them.

He took solace in the fact that the Lord Commander would string him up by his intestines for this. Hell, Commander Ebongrave might even convince himself that this somehow meant that the Admiral was in league with the Tau. That would mean treason.

After all, when something goes wrong, always blame the Tau and their sympathisers in the Imperium.

Holt snorted, which was probably why he was assigned to this shithole in the first place, sent to die a glorious death far away from his superiors. He’d never been one of those political animals. At least that meant he could die with some dignity, not running away and cowering.

The never sufficiently damned Kroot smelled the blood in the water. Many guardsmen thought them dumb Xeno beasts, little better than animals, before they met them in the flesh. They were maneaters, dressed in rags and hunted with primitive gear.

They were not stupid. Those bastards had a predatory cunning and a malicious intelligence; they knew how to hunt and stalk their prey like no other. They lived and breathed for it.

It was no surprise they pounced the moment they saw that the Imperial Navy was flagging, the majority of it pulling away from orbit. A few captains kept their ships in orbit still, even against the now overwhelming Tau forces above the planet, Emperor bless their brave souls. Still, the Kroot knew they no longer had to fear orbital retaliation for their raids, that they no longer had to be quick and meld into the jungles before a ship could get into position to blast them into smithereens.

The reports kept streaming in, camps going dark, screams coming through the vox before going dark, calls for reinforcement in more entrenched positions.

The Xenos scum was on the offensive, and it was no minor skirmish like before, no hit and run. No, this would be a battle that ended with one side’s annihilation, and General Holt was not delusional enough to think it wouldn’t be his.

“This is General Severian Holt,” he spoke into the vox, fingers gripping the table. “We’ve been abandoned by the cowardly Navy, only few true men holding the line above amidst the stars. We are all dead men walking, but we’d always been. We are the miserable lot that came to this wretched world of green death and halted the Xenos’ advance. We are the fists of the Emperor, we are his stubborn sons and daughters who saw the alien encroaching on what was His and said No. We bled for him, we made these accursed maneaters suffer for every bite of flesh they took from us. Today will be no different. We stand our ground. We bleed them, we make them pay for every life they take, let their victory taste like ash in their mouths. Stand strong, so our brothers and sisters who will fight them after us can slaughter them all with ease. Guardsmen, fight, bleed, die. Take as many of these wretched Xeno with you as you can. The Emperor’s with us! I will see you all before the Golden Throne! FOR THE IMPERIUM!”

He slammed his fist down, cutting off the transmission before turning around. He grabbed his laspistol and chainsword, then left the room, leaving behind the Mechanicus busybodies.

He would not die in some dusty old room. He was a Guardsman at heart; he would die among his brothers and sisters, standing on a mountain of corpses, with a bloodied chainsword in hand. As every Guardsman should.

His personal guard fell in step behind him, and the other Guardsmen currently resting or off-duty were joining him as he made his way towards the surface. He was proud to see no fear in their eyes, only hate and defiance.

The subterranean complex was massive, serving as the primary base of the Imperial Guard on the planet. Let it not be said they learned nothing from their enemies. The Kroot hid in their tunnels and caverns, knowing it to be the only place truly safe from orbital bombardment, but the Guard took that tactic and made it into something truly great.

Aboveground, the base was standard, and you’d find thousands of its like across the planet. Only the underground part differed. And the Shield, of course. It looked the same as the others, and would show up on sensors like that too, but there were entire levels underground dedicated to it, rows upon rows of generators and batteries. Even if by some cosmic luck, the Tau decided to send an orbital strike on this specific base, the Shields would weather it just fine.

Sounds of fighting reached the General’s ears, and his grip tightened on his holstered chainsword. It had been some time since he’d wet his blade, but he’d never stopped training and practising. A healthy and able body makes for a healthy and able mind. He wouldn’t cripple himself by letting himself grow fat or scrawny at his growing age.

He stepped out, and his gaze zeroed in on the dozens of towering, gangly aliens up on the perimeter walls. One of the bastards got hasty, and its wicked beak-like mouth was already chewing on the flesh of some poor sod.

Holt raised his laspistol and shot the bastard between the eyes out of principle. Heh, he’s still got it.

“Push the beasts back,” Holt ordered. “If any get to the generators, we are done.”

That was the one weakness of Void Shields like these. They didn’t stop slow-moving projectiles or foes, so the enemy could just walk through the Shield. Same with boarding pods and voidships.

As the guardsmen who’d previously been resting streamed out of the subterranean exits, a roar of righteous fury went up that almost shook the air. Holt felt himself grin, almost nostalgic at the thought of once again staring certain death in the eye and spitting in its face. With comrades like these, and the Emperor behind them, there was nothing they couldn’t do.

***

A massive explosion hundreds of meters above shook Holt out of his fugue state. He growled, tearing his roaring chainsword out of a Kroot’s chest and stumbling back, letting others take his spot as he looked up at the sky.

The usually translucent Void Shield was visible, and wobbling, still reeling from what must have been an orbital strike.

“Shit,” he muttered. That had been a massive explosion; any other base’s Shields would have popped under its force after weeks of attrition and wear on the generators. But not this one, and that was not a good thing, even if it saved their lives for now. The enemy knew this base was important, something worth protecting.

Any moment now, a dozen similar orbital strikes might fall on his head, and he didn’t trust even this base’s infrastructure to maintain its Void Shield under such an overwhelming barrage. They could have had as little as minutes, maybe not even a minute, until hell fell atop their heads with the fury of a thousand suns.

Holt growled, grip tightening.

“They come for us, but WE. WILL. NOT FALTER!” He roared, his commanding voice projecting over the chaos of the battle, cutting through even the lasfire and screams of the dying. “FOR THE EMPEROR!”

”””””” FOR THE EMPEROR!””””””

The accursed Kroot died in droves; they were made for hit-and-run tactics, ambushes in the deep jungles, not assaulting a fortified position. There were proper Tau forces too, one for every ten Kroot, but they were even more worthless. They couldn’t keep range with the Shield still up, and Tau were as easy to slaughter in close quarters combat as children who picked up the blade for the first time.

General Holt roared, grinning savagely as the teeth of his chainsword bit into flesh time and again. He had a gash running down his side, one of his eyes was shut from blood streaming down his temple, but he didn’t slow down. Adrenaline pumped in his veins, and the combat stimms he’d injected before the battle were still coursing through his bloodstream. They would take their toll on his health, but what did health matter to a dead man walking? All he cared about was how many of the Emperor’s enemies he brought down with him into the grave.

A number that he was growing one bloody, brutalised corpse at a time. He was frenzied, knowing time was running out. Just another enemy, just another second, just another swing of his sword, just another shot of his laspistol. A shot struck his shoulder, and his grip on his pistol went lax. The pain was not forthcoming, dampened by adrenaline and the stimms, but his hand still refused to obey him.

Holt grunted, clenching his clammy fingers around his oldest friend, his most trustworthy ally in the face of the horrors of the galaxy.

Two more Kroot fell to him before he fell back, falling to his knees with a serrated dagger lodged into his gut, its owner dying before him with a vicious glint in its bestial eyes. Holt heaved, gasping for breath as he held his stomach. He tried standing, but his body quivered and betrayed him, leaving him slumping back.

Some of his men saw him, gathered around him. He was just one more body among hundreds, worth no more than the others. There were no orders that could prolong this fight, no tactics or strategy he could implement to save their lives. He was just one, worthless, dying old man.

“Leave me,” he grunted, slapping away one of the veteran medics who tried to push him down and administer some sort of first aid. It didn’t matter. “Get OFF! Give me a blasted gun, and get back to killing more of the bastards-” he coughed, his body trembling under the agony his conscious mind wasn’t allowed to feel. “Kill them, kill them all. I’m dead. We are all dead. Give me a gun so I may send a few more of these bastards to hell myself before the Emperor claims my soul!”

Blessedly, someone did. One of the youngsters grabbed the lasrifle of his fallen comrade and handed it over to the General. The medic looked on with something between disapproval and annoyance. That man was a different breed.

A handful of guardsmen stayed around him, like an honour guard, firing at the Xenos crawling over the walls, and through the gaping hole they had blown into it some ten minutes ago. Holt fired in bursts at first, then when his vision started darkening at the edges, he switched to full auto.

They came in endless waves, or so it seemed for a while, but then they sputtered out. Holt’s fading mind was still sharp enough to connect the dots, knowing that the only reason they’d have pulled back was that a ship was in position for orbital bombardment.

The General slumped back, staring up into the sky, blessedly bereft of the never-sufficiently damned canopy of the jungle. He’d burned the plants and trees down to the earth in a hundred metres around the camp after Kroot jumped over the walls one too many times using the high branches.

He could just barely make it out. A ship of tremendous proportions floating in low orbit, its entire length pure white, coloured by the blue of the sky. He stared at it, glared, really, daring it to fire. Daring that monstrosity of engineering to fire, to kill him. He hung on by pure spite, one leg already through the gates of death. He could feel the pull on his soul, that call that would take him to the Golden throne to be judged by the God-Emperor.

He wanted to stare his own death in the eye, watch it come for him and finally kick him through the gates. He’d not flee, not now, not ever. Not from this.

Alas, fate had other plans, crueller plans. It denied the General even that final wish, as the explosion that tore through the base came not from above, but below. The shockwave slammed into him, along with several tonnes of earth and concrete, as he was sent flying. All across the base, the earth exploded outwards, molten slag and flames escaping from the cracks. A thunderous explosion followed in its wake, deafening all that were still alive to hear it.

General Severian Holt lived just long enough to feel weightless for one eternal moment where he and the debris that carried him so far reached the apex of their flight. Then darkness took him, spiriting away from his broken body, and into the maws of an awaiting legion of daemons smelling a feast.