The acid rain that had fallen all night showed no sign of stopping even after dawn.
While the corpse of the soldier whose head Vorkov had blown off with a bolt round the night before grew cold in the sewage pit, no one dared try to sleep. The trench floor was already awash above our ankles with rotten bloody water mixed with acid rain, leaving nowhere to lie down. Even when I pressed myself tight against a trench support, hugged my knees, and blanked out for perhaps five minutes, the agonizing pain of trench foot stabbing into my ulcerated toes would send a jolt through me and snap my eyes open. At the unpleasant squealing from somewhere far away beyond my gas mask filter, at the faint sound of a mound of earth softly collapsing in the fog, chills rose over my skin and my grip tightened around my lasgun barrel.
It was not sleep. It was only a miserable, horrific cycle: my body, crushed by terror and extreme exhaustion, would fail to endure any longer and pass out for a moment, only for the instinct to survive to slap me awake again.
From the First Platoon sector came the sound of a soldier seeing hallucinations and letting out low, strangled screams. Yet nobody tried to soothe or restrain him. Everyone merely rubbed the ash-gray frost from their gas mask lenses and numbly waited for the hour of death that was soon to come. My eyelids felt as gritty as though someone had poured them full of sand, and the feet submerged in the sewage pit were already losing all sensation.
At last, as the darkness of the black-red night retreated and damp, foul ash-gray fog slowly began covering No Man's Land and the trench line once more, artillery thunder erupted from the rear, shattering the grotesque silence that had enveloped the front.
Boom! Boom!
Three-second intervals. The vibrations of massive shells fired from the rear heavy artillery emplacements pounded the earth, traveling through the sewage on the trench floor and straight into my bones and teeth. Each time the blast struck my ears, clods of mud and splinters from the trench supports poured from the walls like rainwater.
The old me would have dropped to my knees, buried my head in the earthen wall, and wept as I begged the Emperor for mercy. But the first thing that sprang into my mind now was not a scream of terror.
Shell impact interval: three seconds. Trench-wall support cracks: acceptable. Brix's heavy machine gun has a clear firing angle. Distance to the barbed wire: fifty metres.
Cold numbers and terrain calculations passed through my head with the dull grind of frozen gears. Only once the calculations were complete did a dull terror finally wash over me, accompanied by a frantic trembling in my fingertips. The fear had not vanished. I was simply mechanically postponing the order in which I processed it in order to survive.
"The barrage is lifting! Everyone to firing positions!"
Sergeant Yakov's bloodshot shout tore through the mud.
With a gloved hand, I indifferently rubbed away the blood and bits of brain that had splattered across my gas mask lenses when the Commissar's bolt round blew apart a soldier the previous night. Through the smeared bloodstains, I braced my lasgun barrel firmly against the trench lip. The weight of Dorn's bloodstained power cells in my pocket, along with the angular cells taken from the dead soldier's belongings, pressed heavily against my stomach.
They emerged from the fog.
They were not simply rebel cultists draped in rags. The things walking out through the mist wore shattered Astra Militarum flak armour and thick steel plates crudely wrapped around their bodies as though welded to them. No ordinary man could have carried such weight while walking, yet they dragged those lumps of iron toward the trench line without showing the slightest strain.
"Those... aren't ordinary infantry."
Lazar swallowed hard, his hand gripping the trigger.
The exposed flesh at the backs of their necks and parts of their faces were grotesquely warped as though burned by fire, and torn-off officer insignia from the 88th Castigar Hive Guard Regiment hung upside down on their chests. A red beam from Lazar's lasgun punched a hole through the shoulder of the one at the front, but it did not let out a single scream. It was as though its very ability to feel pain had been torn out by the roots.
What flowed from the punctured wound was a black-red, viscous fluid that reeked horribly of sulphur.
"Mutants? Or men soaked in drugs?"
I saw that every trace of human will had gone out in their eyes. Those were not soldiers coming to fight. They were just lumps of meat, possessed by something and advancing without feeling.
Then, beyond the fog, an unpleasant hydraulic grinding sound and the heavy vibration of a diesel engine began thudding toward the trench line through the mist of No Man's Land.
Rumble...
The sewage on the trench floor rippled and shook. What emerged through the fog was a monstrous flame vehicle: a damaged Imperial tractor covered all over in thick armour plates crudely welded in place. An unpleasant orange preheating flame was already jetting from the nozzle at its front.
"Flame vehicle! Get down on the trench floor!"
Sergeant Yakov shouted, veins standing out in his neck.
The heavy machine gun mounted on its front began raking the trench lip, scattering clods of dirt and fragments of gas masks in every direction. Lazar, Brix, and I shoved our faces into the sewage pit and held our breath. If it came ten metres closer and unleashed its flames, every member of Second Squad trapped in this drainage trench would be roasted alive with their trench-foot-ravaged feet.
Amid the terror of the ear-splitting diesel engine and muddy water spraying in all directions, there was nothing I could do. All I could manage was close my eyes, clutch my lasgun to my chest, and press myself against the earthen wall.
Kra-ka-ka-boom!
Then, with an explosion loud enough to burst my eardrums, a hot gust of flame swept over the trench.
Brix's anti-armour lasgun, fixed at the trench corner, and one fragment from a shell blindly fired by Fourth Platoon from the rear had struck the gap in the vehicle's right armour plate at the same time through absurdly good luck. The leaking fuel-hydraulic line caught fire, and the hydraulic pump shrieked before exploding.
The hull crumpled to the right and its tracks were crippled. The flamethrower nozzle at the front pitched up above the trench sky, spewing a useless column of fire into empty air. It was sheer damned luck. Nothing more, nothing less.
"Now! They're coming in!"
At Sergeant Yakov's shout, I reflexively opened my eyes and hauled my upper body over the trench lip.
Behind the immobilized vehicle, enemies wearing scraps of flak armour crudely tied over ragged uniforms with string were splashing through the mud and climbing into the trench.
I barely came to my senses and pulled my lasgun trigger like mad. It was blind fire without even proper aim.
Crack! Crack!
One red beam struck the lead enemy's knee joint by luck. The steel plates torn from corpses and tied on with string did not protect its joints, and it lost its balance, crashing heavily into the mud at the trench floor.
Even with its leg bent wrong, it gave no scream as it crawled toward me, trying to grab at my boots with ulcerated hands. Fear surged back up inside me. Instead of screaming, I repeatedly pulled the trigger at the head of the thing sprawled on the ground with trembling hands.
Hiss—
That black-red, viscous fluid sprayed out once more from its punctured skull. The fingers of the thing that had been crawling with its knee blown apart convulsed several times, then went completely slack in the muddy water.
Shell impact interval: three seconds. Remaining enemy infantry: several.
The numbers turned dully in my head.
Looking down at the enemy corpse with its head blown apart, I removed the empty power cell from my lasgun with shaking hands and locked in a fresh one stained with Dorn's blood. Click.
It was not a victory. I had not survived because I was capable. The shell had merely missed by luck, the enemy vehicle had exploded by luck, and I had simply stupidly pulled the trigger first before they could get me.
The inside of my gas mask was damp with chills and cold sweat, and I barely propped my unsteady knees against the trench wall.
But I was not allowed even a moment to catch my breath. Behind the stalled flame vehicle, black shadows began pouring through the thick sulphur smoke and fog toward the trench line.
"They're charging in! Prepare for close combat!"
Sergeant Yakov's bloodshot shout burst out.
There were not just one or two. Dozens of enemies wearing scraps of flak armour torn from corpses and crudely tied over ragged uniforms began throwing themselves over the trench lip like machines that knew neither pain nor fear.
With the dull thuds of steel plates and weapons plunging into the mud, the entire trench in Second Squad's sector began to be swallowed by a bloody pandemonium.
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