02:50. With ten minutes remaining before the sortie, the trench was sunk in a silence worse than death.
Only the steady plop, plop of mud-rain striking our helmets could be heard. Not a single soldier spoke. We all knew that even one needless breath, even the faint metallic clink of kit knocking together, could reach the ears of an enemy marksman beyond No Man’s Land.
"Rookie, come over here."
Lazar beckoned me over. Crouched low, he was layering strips of black gas-mask maintenance tape over the indicator light on his lasgun’s power unit.
"That blue light on a lasgun is handy for checking your remaining charge under normal circumstances. But in No Man’s Land, it may as well be a sign saying, ‘I’m over here, please put a hole through my head.’ Smear mud over it or tape it up. Block out every trace of light."
Following Lazar’s instructions, I coated my fingers in mud and carefully covered the lasgun’s power indicator and the tiny luminous parts along the side of its nozzle. Lazar watched my hands in silence, then pointed to my bayonet sheath, whose blade lightly rattled against it every time I moved.
"Tie the end of that sheath down tight with a strip of cloth, too. That rattling metal is more dangerous than footsteps."
Just as I had when servicing toxic gas pipes in the hive city factories, I silently secured every piece of kit tight against my body. Beside me, Talia rubbed black gunpowder over the entire leaf-shaped blade of her bayonet to prevent reflections, while Brix stuffed scraps of padded uniform into the gaps around his ammunition box to muffle the scrape of his heavy weapons belt.
"03:00."
Sergeant Yakov murmured as he checked the dented military watch on his wrist. His face, streaked with burn scars, glistened grotesquely in the rain.
"Our patrol objective is the wreck of a destroyed Chimera armored vehicle, three hundred meters directly ahead. It is a likely enemy sniper observation point. We approach quietly, reconnoiter, and return. Do not fire first under any circumstances. If our position is exposed, it’s over."
Sergeant Yakov pointed at the wooden ladder hanging against the trench wall.
"Once you go over that ladder, the trench wall will no longer protect you. Go."
I placed my boot on the first rung.
In that brief instant when I raised my head above the trench lip, an icy shudder ran up my spine. This narrow, foul-smelling mud pit called a trench suddenly felt like the safest fortress in the world now that I was about to leave it. Beyond that ladder lay a pitch-black plain where I would be completely exposed and utterly defenseless.
From deep in the trench behind me, I could almost feel Commissar Vorkov’s cold gaze in the blackness. Enemy snipers ahead; behind me, an allied bolt pistol ready to punch through the skull of anyone who hesitated.
There was no choice. I swallowed and threw myself over the trench lip into the mud of No Man’s Land.
Squelch.
My upper body plunged into cold mud. Rainwater and sewage splashed across my gas-mask lenses. At once, I pressed myself flat against the muddy ground like a rat, using only my elbows and knees. Lazar, Talia, Brix, and Sergeant Yakov followed in turn, crawling over the trench lip and flattening themselves beside me.
Before us was absolute darkness. Every shell crater was filled with blood and rainwater, and the stench of rotting corpses pierced through my gas-mask filter and stabbed at my nostrils. Each time I reached forward to brace myself in the mud, my hand found the cold fingers of some nameless corpse or scraps of torn uniform.
Without a word, swallowing even the sound of our ragged breaths, we crawled through the darkness.
Then it happened.
Pshhhhew—!
From beyond the distant enemy lines, something launched high into the sky with a shrieking scrape.
"Flare! Don’t move!"
The moment Sergeant Yakov’s sharp whisper reached us, a grotesquely bright white flame burst in the middle of the sky.
Pop—!
In an instant, the night sky and the entire ground were painted in a ghastly, cold white light. The land shredded to pieces by bombardment, the corpses strewn everywhere, and all of us lying flat in the mud were laid bare over No Man’s Land, without a single place to hide.
While the white flare burned, it felt as though the world had stopped.
Under a glare so intense it was difficult to keep my eyes open, I buried my face completely in the mud and held my breath. The reek of putrid bloody water bored deep through my filter, but I could not move so much as a finger joint. If even the slightest twitch of my shoulder appeared in the enemy’s scope beneath this light, I would become a sniper’s prey.
Zzzzz...
The flare hanging overhead burned with an eerie sound, and our shadows cast in every direction writhed grotesquely across the mud. The corpse lying right beside me stared at me with its eyes rolled white. It was an Imperial Guardsman who had died days ago. The breath trembling from my gas mask touched his cold face.
"Don’t move. Don’t even breathe too loudly."
I recalled the feeling of lying flat on the floor without even breathing when massive industrial machinery started up in the hive city factory, lest I be caught between the gears. The cold of the mud pierced through my flak armour and twisted my insides, but if I wanted to live, I had to become a corpse myself.
At last, the white flame filling the sky gradually lost its light and fell earthward, like a piston running down.
Hissss...
Complete blackness returned to No Man’s Land. The silence was so intense that yellow afterimages lingered before my eyes.
"Crawl. Toward the Chimera wreck."
Sergeant Yakov’s murmur was quieter than a mosquito’s buzz. I swallowed softly and pushed through the cold mud with my elbows once more.
The destroyed Chimera armored vehicle that marked our objective was grotesquely twisted, like a heap of scrap metal. It must have taken a shell; its troop hatch had been blown clean off, and its armor plating had been crushed in together with the tracks. The enormous iron wreck made for excellent cover.
Scrape.
One by one, we slipped into the shadowed side of the Chimera. Brix hauled his heavy frame forward and pressed himself behind the armor plate first, followed by Talia and Lazar.
From within the wreckage came the smell of gunsmoke from a lasgun engagement, old oil, and the acrid stench of tank crewmen burned in formation inside the hull.
"Report."
Sergeant Yakov asked quietly as he scanned the surroundings.
"No scope glint from the enemy positions yet. But..."
Lazar continued, his eye pressed against a gap in the armored wreck.
"That sniper bastard will be watching this Chimera wreck. Any cover we can think of, they’ll naturally have their eye on too."
Before Lazar had even finished speaking, my fingertips caught on a twisted outer armor plate of the Chimera.
At the center of the plate was a smooth, bluntly punched hole. It was not the usual damage from shell fragments or a lasgun shot. It was the mark of an Imperial-made—or enemy-captured—high-powered sniper-pattern medium lasgun, its heat beam tightly compressed to increase penetration.
"Sergeant, over here."
I pointed to the hole in the armor plate. Sergeant Yakov and Lazar came closer and carefully examined the angle of penetration. The hole slanted gently from high to low, pointing toward the wreckage of an observation platform atop a destroyed watchtower that had toppled behind the enemy trench line beyond No Man’s Land.
"Found them."
Lazar’s eyes gleamed coldly.
"The wreck of that collapsed watchtower. From there, they can look down over all of Second Squad’s sector while avoiding the artillery barrage."
We had found the enemy sniper’s nest. But our satisfaction at confirming it lasted only a moment before a cold sound of acceleration quietly echoed from inside the armored wreck.
Chiiiii...
Something unknown was crawling out of the darkness within the Chimera. It was not merely the sound of wind and rain. There was the mechanical scrape of metal plates, and a grotesque low growl.
"Who’s there!"
Talia shouted low, gripping her bayonet in a reverse hold.
Two red eyes slowly emerged from the darkness inside the Chimera. It wore an Imperial uniform like tattered rags, but its face was rotted by sulphur gas poisoning, and it clutched a heavy grenade embedded with spikes.
It was a rebel ambush unit. It too had hidden inside the Chimera wreck and waited for us.
The instant it hooked a finger through the grenade’s safety pin and pulled, my eyes twitched.
If that grenade went off here, it would not only expose our position to the sniper, but tear all of Second Squad apart inside this scrap heap.
Without time to think, I thrust the muzzle of my lasgun forward.
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