Chapter 2: I Judge You in the Emperor's Name
In the last light of the dying sun, traitors swarmed up the hillside toward the 6th Company's position like a tide of insects. Most carried crude close-combat weapons. A handful had rough-machined automatic firearms. All of them charged with a speed and violence that had nothing human behind it.
They did not fear the Guardsmen's lasguns. They did not fear their own artillery falling short. When a las-bolt hit one and failed to drop him outright, the man kept coming, crawling if he had to, clawing forward through the dead and the mud.
"I genuinely hate these lunatics." Stroud kept firing, kept cursing at those blood-red eyes below. "Do they even know what fear is?"
He and Duvette had rejoined the company. What remained of it. The 6th was down to a few dozen soldiers now, the rest having been ground up by the traitors' artillery and assault waves. The defensive line was a fiction at this point. The enemy could have gone around them on either flank and pushed on without issue. Instead, they kept pressing directly forward, as if taking 6th Company's skulls had become a matter of personal theology.
Duvette kept returning fire with his lasgun. The barrel was beginning to glow at the tip from sustained use. His accuracy was noticeably better than the Guardsmen around him, probably a residual benefit of the original body's Schola Progenium training. He had, more or less, made his peace with being here. There was no clear path back to his own world, and spending his remaining time grieving that fact would only accelerate the dying. He wanted to live. He wanted to stay as far from the Chaos cesspit as survival allowed.
He ducked below the firing step to swap out his power cell.
A sound hit him from the side. Boots crashing into a human body. Shouting, savage and incoherent.
"What do you think you're doing? Why did you step back? Coward! Kill! Kill! Kill!"
Duvette looked up.
6th Company's commander, Captain Calvin Beck, was kicking a soldier who had curled up with his hands over his head. The other men on the line were watching. None of them were moving.
"I was just... trying to fix my lasgun..." The soldier on the ground tried to explain between impacts.
Duvette looked at the status readout over Captain Beck's head. It had turned a deep red.
[Calvin Beck]
[Ash Watchers, 101st Regiment, 6th Company Commander, Captain]
[Loyalty: 20%] [Morale: 30%] [Status: Uninjured] [Stability: 10%] [Chaos Corruption: 86% (Irreversible)]
"That's gone too far," Duvette said quietly.
Stroud had crouched down beside him and was watching with the same expression. "What in the Throne's name. He's not even drunk. He's always been unpleasant but this is something else."
"If this continues, we all die here," Duvette said.
He rose to intervene, intending to use whatever authority his probationary commissar status could carry.
He was a half-second too slow.
One of the Guardsmen had already stepped forward and was trying to explain something on the downed soldier's behalf. Then a flash of red crossed Duvette's vision. The Guardsman who had stepped forward dropped to the ground with his hands at his throat, blood pumping between his fingers where a chainsword had opened him to the spine.
Captain Beck raised the weapon high. The chain teeth snarled. His voice carried to every man on the line.
"Cowards! All of you! Die! Kill! Kill!"
"Enough."
Duvette said it once. He pressed down the tremor in his hands and stepped forward.
"I am giving you an official warning, Captain Calvin Beck, in my capacity as probationary commissar. You are killing loyal soldiers of the Emperor."
"You want to stop me? Then you die too!"
Beck charged at him. The readout over his head went solid crimson.
Duvette took one breath. Raised the lasgun. Fired.
The shot punched through Captain Beck's skull cleanly, and the man was dead before he stopped moving.
"I judge you in the Emperor's name, traitor."
Silence fell over the position. Somewhere below, the traitors' shouting was getting closer and louder.
Duvette let himself breathe for a moment. He looked at the handful of dazed, shaken soldiers around him. Then he walked to Beck's body and picked up the fallen chainsword. He raised it and spoke at a volume the whole line could hear.
"Soldiers of the 6th Company. Calvin Beck betrayed the Emperor's glory. He has been executed by my authority."
He searched his memory for whatever he had read or absorbed about how men were rallied when everything was falling apart, and then he shouted.
"From this moment, I am assuming command. We have nowhere to retreat. Soldiers, for the Emperor! We fight to the last drop of blood!"
Silence for one second.
Behind him, Stroud was the first. One voice, raw and full-throated.
"For the Emperor!"
Then the soldier who had been on the ground under Beck's boots. Then the man beside him. Then the one beside that man. By the time every voice had joined, dozens of men were howling together and bringing their lasguns back to bear, pouring fire down the slope at the advancing traitors.
Duvette returned to Stroud's position. The lieutenant gave him a short whistle. "Well done, Commissar. Now you're the one in charge. I think we might actually have a chance."
Duvette said nothing. Whatever else could be said about Stroud, that first answering shout had mattered more than the man probably knew.
Then new text appeared in his vision.
[Congratulations. You have secured your first command. Reward: 100 Emperor's Wrath.]
He paused. That implied the System considered him the genuine commander of this remnant now. As if to confirm it, a second block of text opened in the upper right of his vision.
[Current Command: Ash Watchers, 101st Regiment, 6th Company]
He found he could access an overview of the company's collective status.
[Remaining Strength: 43] [Company Experience: Veteran]
[Overall Supply: 20%] [Overall Loyalty: 60% (Recovering)] [Overall Morale: 30% (Recovering)] [Overall Stability: 41% (Recovering)] [Chaos Corruption: 53% (Recovering)]
[Active Passive Bonus: Steel Ring (Beginner)]
[Issue your first order, Commissar.]
He exhaled and thought through his options. The traitors' shouting was closer with every passing moment. The final assault was almost here. His people were outnumbered, their supply readout was nearly bottomed out, and time was running out. He could not hold this position through firepower alone. But he could stretch what he had.
He scanned the Legion skill tree a second time and unlocked the first active ability in the War Doctrine branch.
[Focused Volley (Level 1)]
[For the duration of this skill's activation, ranged accuracy, ammunition consumption, and weapon wear for units under your command are each improved by a minor amount.]
[The machine-spirit is pleased, soldier.]
He had barely finished selecting it when the hillside below erupted.
The roar came up from several hundred throats at once. Final assault. He knew it immediately.
He did not hesitate. He climbed to the highest point he could reach in the trench, grabbed the regimental standard from where it had been jammed into the earthwork, and raised it above his head.
"Soldiers, for the Emperor! For humanity! Hold this line! Let the traitors learn the measure of our fury!"
[Focused Volley (Level 1): Activated.]
"For Terra! For the Emperor!"
Forty-three soldiers. But the weight of it in the air was nothing like forty-three.
Down the slope, the traitor commander noticed it first. The density of las-fire coming from the position had jumped sharply. More than that, the accuracy had climbed to something that should not have been physically possible at this range. At the extreme end of a lasgun's effective distance, a target the size of a man was barely worth the attempt. Yet nearly every burst was finding a skull.
The Guardsmen noticed it too. Their weapons felt different in their hands, steadier and more responsive. Some of the men had barrels glowing red, power cells that by all logic should have been exhausted long ago, but the shots kept coming.
"Throne above," Stroud said, his voice stripped of its usual sardonic edge. "Is this what they mean when they say the machine-spirit is truly content?"