In the trench line after the guns fell silent, instead of rain there hung the stench of rotting corpses and thick sulphur gas.
Even after the rebel cultists retreating into No Man's Land had vanished completely into the fog, we remained on our knees for some time, unable to move. Our fingers were frozen in the shape of gripping triggers, twitching spasmodically, while our breathing inside the gas masks came ragged with thirst and exhaustion.
"Second Squad... effective immediately, begin maintenance."
Sergeant Yakov braced himself against the trench wall and roughly pushed himself upright. Pieces of some unknown enemy's intestines had dried black against the surface of his dented flak armour.
"Collect ammunition from the dead, and clear the trench-floor drains. If the sewage doesn't drain, your toes will rot off first."
The Sergeant's orders were dry. Clearing corpses away and rummaging through dead comrades' belongings were as routine here as replacing a lasgun power cell.
Gripping my lasgun's stock in trembling hands, I barely managed to stand. Something gave dully beneath my boot. It was the corpse of the rebel soldier whose throat I had slit with my bayonet earlier. His upturned eyes stared blankly at the ash-gray sky. Without feeling anything, I shoved his chest aside with my boot and headed down the trench passage.
Squelch, squelch.
The trench floor was a sloshing, dark-red porridge of Imperial and enemy blood mixed with mud washed down by the barrage.
"Ivan."
Lazar called softly. He was crouching at the bend in the passage leading toward Third Squad's sector. In front of him, an infantryman whose entire chest had been blown away sat dead against the wall.
"This one has three lasgun power cells left. Take them."
Without a word, I walked over to Lazar and opened the dead infantryman's kit bag. The power cells against my fingertips were still cold. I packed the new cells one by one into my pocket, on top of Dorn's bloodstained ones. This was how the living stole the warmth of the dead to drag out another day. It was exactly like the next new hire inheriting the work clothes of a laborer who had died from illness in the hive-city factory district.
"How are your feet?"
Lazar asked as he pushed back his dented helmet. Dark purple circles covered the skin beneath his eyes, and scabs had formed over his cracked lips.
"I can't feel them."
"Don't take off your boots. If you do now, your skin will tear away with them like leather. Whenever you get the chance, use your fingers to bend your toe joints. If trench foot costs you your toes, those Commissar bastards will decide you're a waste of ammunition and put a bolt round in you first."
I silently nodded at Lazar's dry warning.
At a trench corner some distance away, Brix had his heavy body against the wall as he set a small tin can over a military solid-fuel burner. The bitter, ozone-like scent of recaf gently boiling in the dented can slightly masked the smell of blood.
"Drink."
Brix held out the hot tin can to me. As I gripped the handleless container, warmth flowed into my frozen fingertips along with a stinging pain. I twisted up the gas mask's face flap slightly and swallowed the blackened recaf down my throat.
The taste of rusty iron and bitter caffeine stabbed through my whole mouth. It was no different from the lowest-grade wastewater-extract tea I used to drink on the floor of the hive city's repair depot, but its warmth felt like the only salvation amid the hellish cold.
"When do you think they'll come again?"
When I handed the can back to Brix and asked, he spat wetly onto the floor and muttered without much interest.
"When the fog gets thick again, or once their rear-echelon resupply is done. They're not human. Just lumps of meat with brains melted by sulphur gas."
The trench fell quiet again. Nobody spoke of hope or home. The veterans knew well that the moment you remembered the past, you could no longer endure the despair of this mud pit.
Then crisp, orderly bootsteps along the wire patrol walkway above the trench broke the silence.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The friction of perfectly maintained leather boots, utterly unlike the dull sounds we made tramping through mud.
It was Commissar Vorkov.
His pitch-black coat, unstained by even a drop of blood, fluttered as he looked down over the trench line, still wearing a black leather glove on one hand. Vorkov's cold gaze passed over each face in Second Squad.
"Is morale holding up well, Sergeant Yakov?"
Sergeant Yakov immediately came to attention, cradling his lasgun against his chest.
"Second Squad has finished restoring all firing positions. We repelled the enemy's second assault."
Without replying, Vorkov quietly looked over the enemy corpses piled across the trench floor and the Imperial ammunition cases we had collected. There was no affection or sympathy for humanity in his eyes. Only the cold calculation of a factory overseer checking whether these expendable goods were still performing their function.
"When Third Squad's sector was breached, if your squad had not held the flank, the entire line would have collapsed."
Vorkov added in a low voice, his hand resting on the grip of the bolt pistol above his holster.
"The Emperor's mercy is infinite, but the Astra Militarum's materiel is limited. If anyone gives up the trench lip during the next attack... my bolt round will pierce his skull before the enemy's bullets do."
Leaving that brief warning behind, Vorkov walked toward Fourth Platoon's command post, his footsteps as immaculate as before.
After he was gone, an even heavier silence settled in the trench. Lazar spat on the ground and absently rubbed his lasgun barrel, while Talia viciously scrubbed the bloodstains from her bayonet with a rag.
I propped my chin on the trench lip, fingering Dorn's power cells and the ones I had just taken.
The battle was over, but there was no rest. The clockwork of the slaughterhouse had merely been unwound for a moment, until the next slaughter began. Beyond the ash-gray sky, acid rain began to fall one drop at a time.
The acid rain mingled with the foul runoff falling from the gray sky and swiftly turned into heavy sheets of rain.
Sizzle—sizzle—
Whenever rain struck our helmets and flak armour, it gave off a faint rasping sound along with acrid smoke. It was not enough to burn exposed skin, but it soaked into the cloth and caused an unpleasant itch along with a vicious chill. The dark-red mud pooled on the trench floor mixed with the acid rain and rippled even more grotesquely.
I rubbed the aching lenses of my gas mask clean with a gloved hand. Beyond the filter vents, the sharp smell of sulphur gas and acid rain seeped faintly through.
Black mud and propellant residue thrown up during the artillery exchange had clogged the filter holes solid, and it was a sign that the cheap Imperial filter canister handed out at the Castigar supply depot was already nearing the end of its service life. It was a miserable reality that the filter was already failing after a single day, but in this place, expecting proper supplies was a luxury in itself.
"Ivan, go over to the Third Squad passage and clear the barbed wire. If the rain gets any heavier, it'll be buried in the mud and we won't be able to recover it."
At Sergeant Yakov's short order, I took up a military shovel and headed toward the bend in the passage.
Third Squad's sector bore all the traces of a slaughterhouse. Where the enemy's heavily armed infantry had broken in, the earthen wall had burst apart and collapsed, while Imperial and enemy corpses lay half-buried in a pit of sewage.
"Hhk... ngh... Emperor... please..."
A quiet sound of sobbing came from beneath a trench support beam in a corner.
About to clear the barbed wire, I stopped and looked toward the sound. A soldier who seemed to be one of Third Squad's survivors was trembling with his head buried between his knees, clutching a lasgun to his chest. His uniform was caked in blood and filth, and his gas mask was gone, leaving his bare face exposed. Skin exposed to the acid rain and sulphur gas had swollen red and was beginning to burn.
I walked over and tossed him a rain cape that had been draped over a corpse.
"Put on the cape. Your skin's going to melt off."
The soldier jerked his head up. His eyes, bleached white with fear, had already lost all reason. Not even thinking to look at the cape I had thrown him, he practically collapsed at my boots and clung to me.
"N-next attack... they'll come again... the trench was breached... we're all going to die..."
His fingertips seized the leg of my flak armour trousers and shook madly. The same pure terror and despair I had felt only a few hours ago, when Dorn beside me had died spilling his brains, was written plainly across his face.
But what rose inside me was not sympathy or grief.
It was a brutally cold dryness.
"Take your hand off me."
My voice emerged muffled and cold through the gas mask filter.
"Take your hand off and put on the cape. Check your lasgun power cell. Otherwise, you'll die before the Commissar gets here."
I roughly shook off the soldier's hand and used the shovel handle to pull up the barbed wire trapped beneath the collapsed support beams. Whether he lived or died was none of my concern. Here, empathizing with someone else's fear was no different from boring a hole through your own skull.
The angular feel of Dorn's bloodstained power cells in my pocket, along with the cells taken from the dead man just now, pressed against my fingertips.
I had only been deployed a short time ago myself, but I was no longer the hive-city laborer who had choked back tears during the first barrage. I was becoming a component of the trench, standing atop others' corpses and waiting for my turn to die.
"Ivan! If you're done clearing it, get back here!"
Lazar's voice called from far away.
I roughly hooked the barbed wire over the trench lip, then left the trembling soldier behind and walked indifferently back toward Second Squad's sector.
Beyond the ash-gray sky, the acid rain was trampling the trench line harder and harder.
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