The trail scratched into the mud by his fingers blurred away without a trace beneath the falling acid rain.
It must have been the last meaningless convulsion of a dying body. Muscles soaked in drugs or the sulfur gas steeped into the trenches had merely twitched mechanically. Settling on that conclusion, I drove my boot down hard, crushing his wrist deep into the sewage.
Crunch.
There was no further movement. The reason did not matter. If it had stopped moving, that was the end of it.
A low murmur leaked from another enemy corpse sprawled beside him. The macerated lips of the man with a lasgun hole through the side of his head were opening and closing mechanically.
"...The Emperor... is..."
I froze as I readjusted my grip on my lasgun. Standing in the sewage pit, I stared blankly down at the enemy's lips.
"What did you say?"
The question vanished uselessly into the blood-soaked stench of the trench. The enemy gave no answer. He merely glared at the ash-gray sky with empty, paralyzed eyes and let the next words slip through his ruined throat.
"...The gate... is opening..."
I had no idea what that meant. It was probably the ravings of a drug-soaked fanatic, or meaningless nonsense spilling out as his brain failed. Rather than trying to judge it, I lowered my barrel to his chest and pulled the trigger, silencing him.
Hiss—
"Second Squad, status report. All personnel."
As the sounds of battle died down and the choking smoke began to clear, Commissar Vorkov's cold voice came down from the trench line above. He did not so much as mention the joy of victory or the soldiers' efforts. His eyes, looking down at the corpses and sewage strewn across the trench floor, were as dry as if he were inspecting broken support beams.
"Report the number of power cells expended. Wounded personnel and personnel fit for immediate deployment. You have three minutes."
"Lazar has an injury to his arm."
Sergeant Yakov let out a rough breath as he shoved his laspistol into its holster.
Dark-red blood kept spilling through the gap in Lazar's flak armour. Strangely, the edges of the wound had discoloured to an unnatural black, and the blood dripped onto the sewage without clotting.
"This... isn't right. The wound burns too much..."
Lazar muttered, looking down at his arm with trembling hands. My sluggish mind gave his wound a cursory glance.
"It's the acid rain. That gas got mixed in with it too."
"Yeah... that must be it. The acid rain..."
Reciting my words as though they were a spell, Lazar leaned back against the trench wall. Whether it truly was the acid rain and gas, or some strange chemical those bastards had been smeared with, I did not think deeply about it. If it was not a wound that would kill him immediately, it was a problem for later.
"Recover the power cells and ammunition from the dead. A request for additional support has come in from Fourth Platoon's sector."
After giving the order indifferently, Vorkov stepped through the sewage toward the next squad's sector.
The names of the dead would not make it into the reports sent up the chain. All the immense system of the Astra Militarum demanded were perfectly measurable figures. Vorkov was a faithful executor of that system, and I too was operating according to those figures.
How many soldiers remained.
How many power cells.
How many minutes until the next attack.
I thrust my hand into the mud and searched the dead soldier's pockets. I pulled out two power-cell packs that brushed against my fingertips and stuffed them into my own pocket.
One.
The dull boom of heavy artillery shook the front in the distance. Through my gas mask lenses, I could faintly see a storm of mud rising in the middle of No Man's Land.
Two.
The earth-shaking vibrations traveled through the sewage on the trench floor into my boots and joints. Controlling my trembling fingers, I fixed the muzzle of my lasgun over the trench lip.
Three.
With a blast, a shell slammed into the middle of No Man's Land and poured mud-mixed sewage into the trench like a waterfall.
I rubbed the frost and bloodstains from my gas mask lenses with my glove, then laid my finger on the trigger. Keeping time with the vibrations that came every three seconds, I began waiting for the next sequence of kills.
But no new enemies came crawling out of the fog. Only the sound of rain and the scattered hiss of las-fire from distant platoon sectors filled the trench. The enemy's second charge had finally broken off.
"Situation concluded... cease supporting fire..."
Amid crackling static, the dry voice of platoon headquarters came through the vox. There was no announcement of victory, no words of encouragement. Just the terse order to cease fire.
I slowly relaxed the finger I had kept on the trigger. My knuckles were white and spasming, but I could not feel any pain. I propped my lasgun against the trench wall and collapsed onto the muddy floor.
Beyond my gas mask filter, all I could hear was my harsh breathing and the dull patter of acid rain striking my helmet.
"Ivan... got a cigarette?"
Lazar, slumped beside me and clutching his wounded arm in a trembling hand, asked the question. Unclotted blood still dripped from his blackened wound, mixing with the dark-red sewage on the floor.
"No."
Feeling the two power cells in my pocket, I answered indifferently.
"Thought so... Damn it, they're so wet they wouldn't light anyway..."
Lazar gave a hollow chuckle, leaned his head against the trench wall, and closed his eyes. I did not check whether he was dead or merely asleep from exhaustion. So long as he was still breathing for now, that was enough.
"Sergeant Yakov, eight cell packs recovered from the bodies here."
When I gathered the power cells I had fished out of pockets and mud and held them out to the Sergeant, Yakov nodded with an exhausted face. He manually checked the remaining charge in the cell packs and clicked his tongue softly.
"Half of them are drained. We'll have to turn them in at the supply depot later and put them on a charging rig or something."
"Are we moving to Fourth Platoon's sector?"
"No. That bastard Vorkov sent Third Squad over there. We're refitting this trench sector. Brace the support beams and throw the bodies out of the trench. Once they start rotting, the stench will keep us from firing."
Without another word, I grabbed a dead enemy by the nape and began hauling him up over the trench lip. The heavy scrape of flesh across the muddy ground grated at my ears. The enemy's rotten face struck against my combat boot, but I felt nothing. A living enemy was a target to kill; a dead one was merely an obstruction blocking our field of fire.
Beyond the corner of our sector, Brix was readjusting the tripod of his overheated heavy weapon with a dull groan. Blood seeped from the shoulder torn open by shrapnel, but he silently dragged his legs toward the communications dugout. Behind him, Talia, having wiped down and sheathed her dagger, followed without a word carrying the remaining ammunition boxes. They were probably on their way to reinforce an adjacent sector's firing angle or return depleted supplies.
I did not watch them for long. There was no reason to help them, nor any need to call out to them. As the dull sound of their footsteps spread into the trench fog and faded away, only Lazar, groaning softly, Sergeant Yakov driving in support beams, and I remained in this sector.
On the trench floor, where darkness was beginning to settle, enemy and friendly corpses were sinking into the sewage. Black, sticky bodily fluids that the acid rain could not wash away formed an oily black film throughout the trench. Iridescent bubbles swelled and burst across it. A fishy reek sharper even than rotten eggs pierced through the limits of my gas mask filter and stabbed at my nostrils.
I stared blankly at raindrops falling on the bodies and scratched the earth of the trench wall with my finger. Countless bullet marks and sharp shrapnel scars gouged into the wall caught against my fingertips.
One.
Two.
Three.
The interval between shell impacts was still being counted in my head with mechanical precision. Though the artillery had fallen silent for the moment, that three-second interval still repeated in my mind like a heartbeat.
At last, a vicious black night was descending upon an accessory of the trench.
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