Frozen Tundra

Weather: Heavy Snow, Light Winds
Predicted Temperature: -93˚C
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It was extremely cold. The temperature had dropped considerably, nearly thirty degrees, now that they were so close to the wall of ice that surrounded Dothen. The combat several days earlier had been brutal and devastating with casualties reaching several thousand. Despite that, despite the thousands who were now dead, rumors expressed a continued positivity and that the last battle had only scratched the surface of the 43rd’s full potential.

The storm troopers and grenadiers were grounded, last night all low-flying aircraft were suspended by the Navy from flying anywhere passed the ice wall. They were restricted to sorties around the city until the ground forces could find out what was screwing up the air wings’ auspices. Dothen even looked as if it had disappeared off the planet. Everyone has said that the city doesn’t even appear on orbital scans; like it never existed.

Squad Nine’s Chimera was parked next to the blackened remains of a Chaos predator, an ugly testament to the brutality of the fighting that had taken place on these now hallowed fields. Stretching for kilometers in every direction laid the bodies of the thousands killed, Imperial Guard and Chaos Marine alike. Destroyed, burned-out tank chassis and the crashed husks of aircraft littered the field like unhealthy blemishes.

The battle itself had been chaotic at best. There was no telling exactly what had been going on with all the gunfire, explosions, radio communiqués, and screams of the wounded and dying. Bodies were everywhere. There was no sense of dodging bullets or running for cover, it was all about who was in the back so that those who died in the front may save them.

Day after day, combat was steadily growing more and more brutal.

Latest news had been about the Lord-General’s plan for a breach. Using the multiple Shadowswords assigned to the battle-group, they would concentrate the fire of their Volcano cannons into a single spot. The intense heat and kinetic energy is, at least in theory, powerful enough to punch through anything. The enginseers have been working on a power relay to alternate charge so that the Shadowswords would not destroy themselves in the process.

She could see it from here. The massive power reactor had been erected not too far from where Thirteen was supposed to be. It pulsed with waves of ionic energy, powered by the cores ripped from several of the Mammoth mining vehicles that had helped them get this far. The super-heavy tanks had been at it for nearly thirty-six hours straight, punching through several hundred feet. But so far, there still was no sign of the other side. They had already reached the city’s outskirts, having already burned through several rockcrete structures. There was no telling how far they would have to go before they got through.

Hannah clutched the Aquila Andre had given her tightly between her fingers. She had not seen him since the attack had begun. Nine and Thirteen had been deployed nearly a kilometer apart with no safe way of contacting each other. In his absence she poured all of her worry into that tiny silver Aquila. Her squad was camped quietly around they’re Chimera, tucked snugly against the back of 3rd Company of the 28th Armored Regiment.

He had been on her mind every day since they met in that small bunker back in the snow fields before the assault. There was something about him that was just different from all the other guard she knew. Sometimes she wondered how he would have lived his life had he not been conscripted. Perhaps, maybe, he and Winry would have lived a happy life.

The private sat back down in the circle her squad had made around the ion-heater, grabbing her lasgun and beginning the process of cleaning it. It was hard to believe that when she had first started Guard training, Hannah felt that she would never adapt to any of these militaristic routines. In a sense, it amazed her how well the drill instructors had indoctrinated all the know-how into their soldiers. When she was in her first week, Hannah would never remember to service her rifle. Now, whenever she had a chance she would clean it and make it look as if it were new.

An Imperial Guardsman will do anything to occupy their mind, especially when they weren’t in combat. Idle minds brewed discontent and a lack of faith in the Emperor, often earning a soldier a commissar’s well-placed bullet to the head.

Hannah cleaned her lasgun... and worried about Andre.
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It was impossible for him to sleep with the constant electrical buzz of the power alternator that was about a hundred meters from where he was camped. Andre sat on top of his Chimera, a warm cup of caffeine clasped between his gloved hands, and watched as the Shadowswords slowly made progress through the ice wall.

The red and orange glow of the volcano cannons shimmered brightly through the dark night sky, reflecting strangely off of the thick snow. There were no other sounds in the air besides the hum of the Shadowswords.

Andre kept his vox-bead on, but the only chatter he could hear was in the binary language of the Mechanicus. Nothing he could understand. Occasionally he’d hear small communiqués about weapons exchanges or requests for medics, but nothing that would really catch his attention as he sat sipping his caffeine.

It was as if the war had come to a strange and idle standstill. His entire life since joining the Guard had been characterized by day after day of constant action, be it shooting at something, being shot at, or simply moving the army from one place to another.

He had remembered back on Valhalla how he often took for granted and even relished those chances he had to be in whatever tranquil silence he could find. Often times it would be at night after his shift at the manufactorium had ended and he was on his way back to his sparsely furnished hab block. In reality, it was never truly silent in Brivana. But the chorus of constant machinery became something he got used to and eventually missed when he finally shipped out with the Guard.

The quiet air around him now made him feel eerily uncomfortable. The true definition of the proverbial phrase ‘The calm before the storm.’

Andre was anxious.

Another binary coded message shot through his vox bead, garbled and indiscernible to the unmodified human ear. There was always something about the techpriest enginseers of the Adeptus Mechanicus that somewhat irked him. Their cybernetic implants, other-worldly language, and bright red uniforms made them seem like a completely different race all their own.

On top of all that, they were eerily mysterious about everything they did. It both earned Andre’s respect as well as his suspicion. The sergeant had heard stories of the Adept Magi who would assemble armies in the millions in order to retrieve a simple fragment of a data core. And sacrifice thousands upon thousands of men to safely recover an STC unit. Andre fully understood the importance of these artifacts, it was just the Mechanicus’ light-hearted disregard for the loss of life that scared him the most.

The Cult of Mars believed machines to be of a higher level than humanity itself, and for that he simply could not trust those red-robbed bastards...

Andre watched as a Salamander, painted in red and carrying half a dozen enginseers, zoomed passed in the direction of the alternator, kicking up a light cloud of snow as they went. He watched them disappear rapidly over the hill.

Only a handful of soldiers made up Squad Thirteen since planetfall. John was killed in a demolisher shell blast. Didn’t even know what hit him. While Chris had been shot in the head by a bolter round damn near the end of the battle. There was nothing anyone could do to save him. It left a grand total of five. A half strength squad... That was all that was left. The only reason they were still deemed combat-effective by company command was because they still had the meltagun and they still had the lascannon. That was it.

Finishing off his cup of caffeine, Andre hopped off of the roof of the Chimera, landing heavily in the snow. He opened the door to the transport and closed it quickly behind him. The other four troopers briefly looked at him before returning to whatever it was they were doing. Most of them were trying to get as much sleep as they possibly could. Vasily, however, was maintaining his lascannon with extreme care.

Their special weapons trooper, Jay, had been blasted by an autocannon with the only discernable remains of him being the meltagun that the former private turned special weapons trooper, Carson, now carried. It was a strange sight to see a small and skinny girl like her carrying as heavy a weapon as that. However, she was equally deadly with the short-range weapon as she had been with her long-las.

A sort of heavy stillness permeated the air around them. Circumstances had definitely changed. Everything was not as light-hearted or easy to joke about anymore. With their number dwindling, everyone was wondering who would be next.

The five soldiers in that Chimera had already defied the odds. In most cases, an Imperial Guard soldier had a life expectancy little under a week when in a combat zone. Often cases, squads such as Thirteen would be disbanded, its members taking command of squads all their own.

That’s what had happened to Andre and Mina, in the most unlikely of cases. Cassadore had seen many good soldiers die as well as countless new ones. Many of the people Andre was conscripted and trained with died in the first assault, only to be replaced by newer and stranger faces.

As a white-shield, both Mina and himself learned that camaraderie was hard to come by. You could make friends with someone, only to watch them die the next day.

It was in the brutal combat zones of Cassadore that Andre was moved from white-shield to standard infantry, having been one of a handful of conscripts to have survived since planetfall. And only a few days later, after having seen his squad leader be consumed by a Tyranid Carnifex, Andre was promoted sergeant and given command of his first squad.

Andre always asked why the Emperor had decided on him to be a sergeant and not one of the other men. Graduates of the Academy, all of them, whereas Andre was nothing more than a five-hour trained white-shield. He figured perhaps it was because he had seen more brutality in a week than all of them combined.

At this point in time, he was sure he had seen enough violence to last him a million lifetimes.

The sergeant poured himself another cup of caffeine from the small container they had and went back outside. Climbing on top of the Chimera, he seated himself up against the side of the multi-laser turret and quietly watched the Shadowswords.

He couldn’t help but think about Hannah. A lot had changed since they first met and he worried about her. Quietly of course. Since the assault on the wall, he had not seen her or heard of her condition. Andre figured that no news was probably good news. After all, he’d seen what she could do and was positive Hannah could take care of herself. Especially since Mina was watching over her too.

Then a sharp thought shot through his mind.

Eujenia Mathews. The way she had been staring at Hannah and then back at him had irked the sergeant. There was something about that girl that just didn’t feel quite right. It may be true that she served under him on Cassadore and had saved her on more than one occasion, but Andre felt he was simply doing the right thing at the time.

Now, he wasn’t quite sure anymore. Ever since the close of the campaign on Cassadore, Jena had clung to him. Pined for his attention, even going so far as to begging her squad leader Rike to transfer her to Thirteen. To no avail of course, but if someone was willing to go that far to be near another person, there was something that just didn’t feel right.

A familiar voice caught his attention. It was the 126th’s Colonel Komivosky with an order to prepare and mount up.

Finally. It was time.
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Hannah had been quickly forced awake by Mina, urgently telling her to get ready to move in. At first, the young private didn’t quite exactly know what was going on, half-dazed after having the only sleep she’d gotten in days forcibly interrupted. It was only after she had strapped herself into her seat inside the Chimera did she manage to realize that they had made a breach and were entering the city.

Her lasgun sat across her lap, cleaned and ready to go. Hannah’s heart was beating so fast she couldn’t even count it. They were finally about to enter Dothen and the fear of the unknown ate away at her.

The last recon report of the city was ages old, before any of this had happened. No one exactly knew what was inside that city. What was for certain, however, was that the Iron Warriors had torn right through it, conquering it in less than a day. Why they had stopped was a tactical mystery.

Dothen was an old and worn-out city. Its mining days having passed long ago, relegating it to nothing but lumber work.

It led up to the question as to why, exactly, were the Chaos Space Marines so focused on taking it and keeping it that way? It was a city of no true tactical value. There was nothing important there, at least as far as the Guard knew, that would have ever attracted them to such a forgotten and Emperor-forsaken place.

The tunnel they had dug was nearly two hundred kilometers long and made out of a frozen substance that almost had a mind of its own, like most manifestations of the warp. It had the characteristic of constant motion, unlike ice which was by every definition a solid in all aspects.

No one exactly had an idea of what it was capable of doing or how it got there. The only thing for sure was that it was strange, made by Chaos, and almost certainly dangerous. Thereby it was necessary to move the entire battle group as fast as humanly possible. For all they knew, the tunnel that had taken them days to bore might simply close in a manner of seconds. However short an opportunity it was, they must take advantage of it.

Several battalions of super-heavy tanks were in the lead, followed closely by the 126th that would help buffer the advance in the form of mechanized infantry. It was crucial that both divisions secure a beachhead for the rest of the battle group to bolster upon its arrival.

It was mostly silent aside from the constant rattle of the Chimera. None of the other members of Nine were looking at one another. Each looking into their minds before anything else would happen.

Hannah caught herself reciting a litany of security to the Emperor. Not for herself, as one might have imagined, but for Andre and her squad mates. She was praying that the Emperor might keep them safe.

Never before had Hannah felt any form of camaraderie with anyone but these people that surrounded her now. It was a strange sort of fellowship that could only be formed in a baptism of fire, standing shoulder to shoulder braving salvoes of bullets, lasers, and whatever else the archenemies of the Imperium are willing to throw at them. She let sigh pass between her lips, barely audible over the din of the engine.

She couldn‘t help but ask Mina about Talila’s condition. It had been nearly a week since she had last seen her. Her sergeant had little to say. Only that she was recovering slowly back in an infirmary safely in Lashvowe. For some reason, Hannah felt somewhat skeptical.

The Chimera picked up speed, jerking its passengers against the safety harnesses that kept them securely in their seats.

Hannah’s heart slowly started to beat faster and faster. This is it. She quietly thought to herself. All of that anticipation. All of the battles have led up to this. Hannah smiled smartly underneath her scarf. It’s about time we liberate this city.
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Just like every other squad in the 126th, Four was starting to dwindle in number too. Jena had tried saving some of them, but there was simply nothing you could do against a lascannon shot or a bolter round to the head. With only six of them left, Jena had long abandoned her long-las for a boltgun. In the city, the mid-range weapon would end up being much more useful than a sniper rifle.

Since Valeri was gunned down by a squad of Iron Warriors loyalists, Jena was now Rike’s second in command. To her, it felt strange finally being in some position of authority but she also found it somewhat satisfying. It was a different feeling when people were coming to you for answers instead of the other way around.

When the 126th and its sister regiment, the 448th, entered the city for the first time they were surprised to have not run into any type of resistance. One would have expected some kind of barricade or impromptu defense line to stop the Imperials as much as they could. But there was nothing. Quickly, the two regiments plus the 75th super-heavy tank regiment deployed and began slowly expanding into the city.

They soon found out that some sort of jammer or disrupter was in the city. As they grew farther and farther away from the temporary headquarters, their vox signals grew weaker and more garbled until they were forced to short relay communications. Eventually, orders came through to stop until reinforcements arrived.

Every day more of the battle group arrived, hundreds upon thousands of Imperial vehicles were cramped into the tiny space of a city known as Dothen. Street to street combat was going to be more than brutal. However, Jena was glad they were finally in a place that had a semblance of cover. Finally, no more running around an open field surrounded by tanks on both sides.

Squad Four was set up inside an abandoned hab-block between One and Nine. They formed the outermost perimeter of the defensive line that surrounded the ever-growing 43rd. It was their responsibility to relay any enemy information all the way back.

To relay anything back to HQ would take hours, and to relay anything forward would take just as long, being forced to pass a single order from one squad to the other. Especially for One, Four, Nine, and Seven; they were the tip of the defensive bubble. The sniper couldn’t help but feel that if they needed to fall back, the order to do so would come several hours too late. They would all be dead if that were to happen.

Right now, it was eerily quiet. Jena sat with a pair of magnoculars staring out across the streets from her rooftop vantage point. It felt as if the entire city was dead, there was no movement, no noise... Nothing.

Rike eventually came up with a container of caffeine for her and asked, “Anything new, Jena?”

Shaking her head, Jena responded. “Nope. Nothing new. Same old stuff, buildings and lots of snow.”

The sergeant gently chuckled as he started to head back down the stairs. “If you see anything, though, tell me immediately.”

“I can’t tell you how many times you’ve said that, Rike. I’m not a private anymore.”

Again, he chuckled before disappearing down the dark staircase.

Jena took a few sips of caffeine and sat quietly thinking. What would happen once this campaign was over? She couldn’t help but think about the millions of other planets that they would eventually make their way to. It was a frightening idea, to be so far away from the place which she had called home for so long. But it wasn’t so bad when she had Andre on her mind...

She picked up her magnoculars again before retiring into the hab for the night. On her last sweep, something caught her eye.
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The five members of Thirteen were quickly awakened by the chatter of las-fire in the distance. Soon enough, shots started to hit the walls of the building they had taken shelter in. Andre moved his troops against the window, magnoculars in hand to spot targets that were across the street.

Whoever was shooting at them had lasguns. There was no way they were space marines. They’re bulky hands would crush a lasgun... It had to be the PDF, those traitors who decided to side with Chaos rather than die as a loyalist to the God-Emperor of man.

Thirteen fired back to much greater success than the Dothen PDF and for a while it seemed as if they had the upper hand and advantage. Every now and then Andre would be able to spot a well placed shot take one of the opposing men down. A true testament to how the Imperial Guard were much more prepared and much more experienced than their Planetary Defense Force brethren.

Soon, though, the sheer number of las-shots being fired in their direction grew exponentially. However inaccurate they might have been, it was enough to keep Thirteen under cover, afraid to take a shot back for fear that one of the enemy’s might hit its mark.

Andre was able to glance across the street long enough to see that the PDF had been joined by cultists as well as poorly armed citizens clearly bearing the insignia of the Iron Warriors. The hab-block directly across the street and those around it were soon crawling with hostile people firing haphazardly at the five Imperial soldiers cramped in a housing room.

The only reason they were going to win this firefight was because of sheer number. There were so many of them now that Andre couldn’t even count them anymore! Stub rounds, shotgun pellets, and las-bolts hit all around them. Thirteen responded with a single shot, two if they were lucky.

Briefly looking out again, Andre was able to catch sight of a few PDF troopers setting up with a missile launcher on the roof of the building across the street. A wave of panic took over him. The sergeant turned to his soldiers and yelled as loud as he possibly could. “Move!”

They forced themselves on their feet and dove into the hallway as the rocket crashed into the room. A heavy cloud of dust and rockcrete filled the air around them. Andre managed to get back up, counting the white, moving soldiers on the ground, relieved that they were all alive.

He herded them down the stairs onto the first floor where they briefly took a moment to catch their breath. Carson threw herself against the door way, holding the late Jay’s meltagun close to her body. The trooper fired off a shot that incinerated a cultist on impact. The others who witnessed their comrade’s death froze for a second which gave Thirteen long enough to escape into an alleyway. From there they set up the lascannon against a fallen wall and waited for an expected attack.

Then a crackly, garbled message came through on Andre’s vox-bead. “All soldiers of the 126th and 448th, retreat back to the main defensive line and hold there until further instructions.”
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Jena fired off a shot from her boltgun and watched satisfied as the PDF soldier she had hit fell several stories off of the roof and onto the street with a sickening splat. Four had been able to quickly respond to the attack because Jena had seen them coming from several blocks away. Luckily, it seemed as if these Chaos soldiers thought they were facing far more than just six soldiers. They were cowering in fear inside the hab across the street.

The man next to her, Danov, loaded a krak missile into his launcher and steadied it up against his shoulder. Seconds later the explosive sound of an impacting missile filled their ears, blowing a hole in the side of the building killing all who had foolishly taken cover behind it. She shot the ones who were struggling to get back up.

Suddenly she heard someone screaming her name. She ran into the adjacent room to find Rike on the floor clutching his neck bleeding. Jena threw her boltgun across her back and knelt over him, firmly placing her gloved hands onto the wound doing her best to seal it.

The bleeding man firmly grabbed Jena by the wrist and forced her to look at him. With the same hand he took off his vox bead and handed it to her, managing to say two words. “Take it.” It was clear to the both of them that he wasn’t going to make it. With a single last breath, he lay still.

For a moment, all the sounds around her faded into the background. She sat there, immobile with the vox bead clutched tightly in one hand. Finally she managed to build up enough strength to put it on and the sound slowly filtered back into her mind. “Squad Four? Rike? Sergeant Rike are you there? Please respond.”

“This is Sergeant Rike’s second, Eujenia Mathews. Sergeant Rike is dead. What would you have me do.”

“You are ordered to take Squad Four, and retreat to the main defensive line and hold there until we are further instructed. Be sure to pass the order onto Nine.”

“Yes sir... I’ll be sure to pass it along.”
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Hannah fired her lasgun in short bursts and could hear Mina behind her, “Please repeat, Jena! Please repeat!” The private took cover behind the wall, letting the expanded las-pack of her gun fall free. Hannah did her best to listen to what Mina was saying as she inserted a fresh case into her gun. “Did you say we are to hold in place? Please confirm!”

“Yes. That’s confirmed, Mina. We are all to hold in place until further instruction.”

“Understood...”

Mina went back up against the wall and yelled over the sounds of combat around them. “Orders are to hold in place! We cannot let them through!” She leaned slightly out the window and fired off a few shots from her laspistol.

It was almost impossible to tell what exactly was going on. There was so much gunfire aimed at them that you could barely crack off a few shots before being pinned back into cover. She couldn’t exactly figure how their squad of seven was going to handle all these people...

Whenever Hannah took down a single soldier, two more would take his place. It was like there was an endless amount of them... She peeked her head over to try and take another shot, but a stub gun bullet glanced off her helmet and forced her back into cover. A continuous stream las-fire and boltgun shots slammed through the open windows and into the walls behind them.

Josef yelled over the noise at their sergeant, “Mina! We’re pinned down! We have to fall back now or we’ll be overrun!”

“No! We’ve been ordered to hold in place and that’s exactly what we’ll do!”

Hannah pointed her lasgun out and blind-fired a burst of las-bolts in the general direction of the gunfire. The sound of a firing missile only registered in her mind the few milliseconds before the resulting explosion threw her and her squad mates against the opposite wall. The private felt someone grab the collar of her great coat and pull her to her feet, yelling at her in a nearly inaudible tone, “We have to move!”

Nine braved the hail of shots to move from one building and taking cover in the next. The incoming gunfire had grown to such an exponential rate that it meant certain death for anyone to even try and fire back. Slowly they all began to realize that it was pointless to try to stand and fight when they were so greatly outnumbered.

Mina tried to raise Squad Four to reconfirm their orders, but after several attempts, nothing. All of their lives hung in the balance and the sergeant understood that it was no longer a matter of following orders, but a matter of saving the lives of her soldiers to better serve the Emperor another day. She gathered them together and came to the decision that they were going to fall back. Any consequences for disobeying their orders would fall to her.

Something about all of this made Hannah feel uncomfortable. It was as if someone was trying to mislead them to purposefully get them killed, but who in their right mind would want to do that? What exactly would they want to accomplish by doing that?

Whatever the reason or whatever the case might be, it was their priority to get back alive. Hannah unsheathed her combat knife from her belt and attached it to the end of her lasgun. It was probably reasonable to think that they were probably surrounded. They would have to fight through the PDF and cultists if they were to return to the 126th alive.

Each of them took a firm grip on their weapons, nodded briefly to one another. And with a tiny prayer of protection on their lips, they burst out of the rear of the building with guns blazing.
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Andre knew immediately that something was wrong from the moment he and his squad had returned. Nine was missing in action and he couldn’t help but frantically inquire as to what had happened to them. The only answer her was able to goad out of his platoon commander was that they went missing when the fighting started and hadn’t reported since.

As for which squads had been on the flanks of Nine, no one remembered because the PDF attack had happened so suddenly that most didn’t remember or were still recovering from the shock of Imperial betrayal.

The sergeant requested, asked, begged his lieutenant for permission to search for them. But he was denied each time, with his superiors calmly stating, “Soldier, we’ll look for them when the main attack on the city begins. Until then, you are instructed to remain in position and wait for further orders.”

It would take two or three more days at least before they would begin to enter the city and Andre hated how he had been forced to do nothing. He had seen how many soldiers there were and his half-strength squad wouldn’t be able to poke the eye of a force that large. Either way, there was no point in him risking what was left of his squad.

He prayed to the Emperor and sometimes others from his squad would join him in reciting the litany of protection. It was painful to think that Andre had lost one of his best comrades in arms as well as the girl he had sworn to protect. The shock of failure was just too unbearable for him to possibly think about.

The soldiers of his squad were worried about him. Never before had they actually seen their fearless leader look so distressed. It was hard for them to believe that the man who was now sitting by himself scribbling endlessly in his pocket-journal was the same person who would stand in plain sight, braving hails of gunfire, with his sword raised in a bloody fury.

It would seem that every soldier, even those who had seen as much combat as Andre, had their soft spots.

One evening, Carson brought him a cup of caffeine mixed with vodivilisk and sat with him. Andre was quiet, as he always was, when she took her seat. Accepting the cup with a nod and a simple thank you, Andre took a sip before turning to her and asking what she thought about life in the Guard.

“What exactly do you mean, Andre?”

“I mean exactly what I said.” He turned to her with a blank look on his face. “What do you think about life as an Imperial Guard soldier?”

“I believe it’s hard, but necessary.” She responded, lightly. “I think as an Imperial Guard soldier, we’re serving the Emperor in the best way we can.”

“What about the others back home? Those who work in the manufactoriums?”

“I think they’re serving the Imperium in their own way as well.”

Andre nodded silently to her.

After that they sat in silence for the next few hours, finishing off their drinks quietly. The sight of Andre in a state such as this had nearly always been what she had known of him, but something was extremely off this once. It was as if he simply didn’t care anymore.

He spent most nights on top of the Chimera, sitting quietly on his own doing a variety of different things. From maintaining his chainsword to cleaning his laspistol. To everyone in the squad, what was on their sergeant’s mind was nothing more than a complete and absolute mystery.

Only when the battle group was finally assembled and the final attack could begin did he seem to start acting like himself again. Taking command of his soldiers, Andre appeared to have returned to that fearless sergeant that they all knew so well. But still to the rest of the squad members of Thirteen, it seemed as if something about him was still strangely wrong.
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Nine had done their best to get through, but it was simply tactically impossible. They fought as hard as they possibly could, but there was just too many PDF and too many cultists. Hannah had been the only one not captured in the end, because Mina had bought her time by sacrificing herself.

She had managed to sneak away, but instead of returning to the front like Mina had ordered her to, she had followed them. Almost everyone was dead. Mina, Alexa, and Josef were the only ones left alive, but they were bound and being forced along at gun-point.

Hannah had dropped her lasgun earlier, and all she had as any form of weapon was her knife and a laspistol. Too little to do anything.

The PDF troopers led their captives in an abandoned Cathedral to St. Emiline of Valetron. Quietly sneaking in from one of the side doors, Hannah hid herself amongst the pews to watch. There were ten of them. She was almost sure she couldn’t take all of them on her own.

Chanting the names of the Chaos gods, they all formed a small circle around the three captive Imperial soldiers. Each of them were too tired... too exhausted to do anything to prevent the inevitable.

They shot Alexa first and Hannah cringed at the sight of her comrade’s body fall limp to the floor.

Josef spat in the face of the sergeant before he put a las-bolt between the Imperial soldier’s eyes.

Mina managed to bring her head up, pure anger and disgust plastered her face as the man pressed the barrel of his pistol against her forehead. “You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” Mina said roughly. “The Emperor will condemn you for your treachery.”

The last shot echoed through the church like a mourning bell chime.

The private sat there, motionless for several hours not sure exactly what to do next. Then, anger and hatred started to bubble deep within her heart. Nothing mattered to her anymore. Those men had killed them. Killed them all in the name of false gods. There was only one thing left for her to do: To kill the traitors.

Using the cover of the night, Hannah made her way out of the cathedral and was able to find the squad who had killed her comrades. They spent most of the hours patrolling until they saw the tell-tale signs of an incoming blizzard.

Hannah watched as the squad of traitor PDF entered an abandoned warehouse to take shelter. They walked with pride, obviously impressed that they had been given the honor of murdering her squad mates. As they sat around a fire smoking lho sticks, Hannah waited in the shadows.

Perhaps several hours had passed before the blizzard had let up and the men were still celebrating, drunk from amasec and rhazvod. One of them started dancing on a hill of snow that had formed on the warehouse floor, a steady flow of white flakes pouring in from a gap in the roof. As the other PDF soldiers focused on the one idiot in the middle, Hannah saw this as her chance to attack.

None of the men could fathom exactly what was going on because everything had started so fast.

Hannah used the serrated edge of her blade to cut across the throat of the man in the center, letting him fall to the ground gurgling. Stunned by his squad mate’s death, one of the soldiers stood frozen in shock unable to bring his lasgun up. The Valhallan soldier stabbed him and kicked him off of his feet as another one approached her. Wrapping her hand under his arm, she pulled him down and sunk her blade deep into his chest, throwing him aside.

Quickly, Hannah drew her own pistol dispatching two more as she walked forward towards the sixth. As he brought up his pistol to bear, she hit it out of his hands and grabbed him tightly by the neck. Using him as a shield, Hannah let several searing las-bolts hit the man as she murderously fired back hitting another PDF soldier in the head.

Tossing the dead soldier she had wrapped in her arm away, she climbed up a broken cat-walk and lobbed a grenade into a room where one of the men had taken shelter, smiling to herself in satisfaction when an anguished scream accompanied the concussive explosion.

Jumping from her perch, Hannah grabbed the lasgun out of one of the soldier’s hands, knocked him over, and shot him with his own weapon tossing it aside when she was finished.

Brutally kicking the last man down, Hannah watched him crawl as she slipped a fresh magazine into her pistol. He looked up at her, begging for his life and pitifully holding his hands up in front of his face in an attempt to prolong the inevitable.

Hannah aimed the gun down at him. And with the gentle squeeze of the trigger, a las-bolt shot through his up-raised hand and into his face.