Chapter 3: Part of the Plan
The next morning, Dos walked past the Regimental Command tent when he caught the word "mission" being spoken inside. Before noon, the entire 946th Regiment was already striking tents and packing gear throughout the camp.
No pre-battle speech, no rousing rhetoric, just a forced march. By nightfall, they found themselves in the middle of nowhere.
Dos's instincts screamed trouble. Were the tree trunks around them wide enough to hide a man behind each one?
Not that Dos was a coward, but every Krieg assignment was the kind of grand campaign other Astra Militarum veterans bragged about for the rest of their lives; he couldn't afford to be careless.
And his danger sense had always been sharp.
Dos raised his bolt pistol and fired at a suspicious tree. The mighty bolt shell blew both trunk and the man hiding behind it clean in half.
"Ambush!" he yelled, diving straight under the shelter of a nearby Leman Russ battle tank. He moved so fast the guardsman beside him hadn't even processed what was happening yet. Stand there and take a beating? Not a chance.
The tank's heavy stubber roared into the night, a metal whip reaping lives with ruthless efficiency. A rocket slammed into the Leman Russ's engine compartment, triggering a chain of sympathetic explosions.
Toxic smoke from incomplete promethium combustion billowed up, blinding the gunner, and only then did the death-dealing heavy stubber slow its merciless harvest.
Dos had made a wise call; he rolled and squeezed himself beneath the tank's armored belly.
After pinning down the enemy's rough position, the guardsmen fixed bayonets and advanced in hunched five-man fire teams. The enemy revealed themselves at last, cowardly heretics who'd attempted to ambush the regiment's rear guard.
Had Dos not been cautious, the entire unit would have marched straight into the kill zone. Why was Dos at the rear in the first place? Part of being a Krieg Commissar, ask fewer questions.
The guardsmen fired on the move, red las-beams weaving a tight web of death. The heretics' equipment was inferior, aside from lasguns; some still carried primitive autoguns, but even these heretics were more than the average Planetary Defense Force conscripts could handle.
Still, calling in the Death Korps felt like using an anti-aircraft cannon to swat mosquitoes.
When Dos heard the automatic-weapons fire taper off, he thought the engagement was over, only to regret that assumption immediately.
A series of thunderous footsteps approached rapidly, like a landslide scraping across low hills. Half of Dos's heart turned cold when he heard that sound. The other half froze solid the moment he recognized the distinctive bark of boltguns.
The enemy had Astartes!
Space Marines, also called the Adeptus Astartes, are gene-forged demigods of war. Over 7-8 feet tall (2.1-2.4 meters), muscles capable of generating tons of force, dual hearts, triple lungs, nanosecond reflexes, encased in ceramite power armor, and wielding boltguns that fired mass-reactive explosive rounds.
On the battlefield, they were known as the Emperor's Angels of Death. Ordinary soldiers also called them demigods made flesh.
They should have been the Emperor's finest warriors. Yet, some Astartes had betrayed Him in an event forever seared into Imperial history as the Horus Heresy, half their number had turned traitor, and the Imperium had been bleeding ever since.
Now one such terror stood just outside his shelter.
Dos's blue eyes trembled. His heart pounded like war drums, the surge of adrenaline blurring his vision. All he could see through the gap were pairs of boots racing toward the enemy.
What now? What the hell do I do? The question hammered inside his skull.
His tactical assessment was simple: a Lucius-pattern Type 98 lasgun couldn't penetrate ceramite armor. The Krieg soldiers' monomolecular bayonets might at best pierce the soft seals between armor plates. Only his bolt pistol and power sword could reliably wound an Astartes.
Well, the Leman Russ's battle cannon could too, but he could hardly crawl out and announce, "Hold on a moment, let me commandeer this tank first." Ridiculous.
Might as well ask the heretic Astartes to lay down his weapons and embrace the Emperor's mercy. Both requests were equally absurd.
So...power sword it was? Dos pictured himself charging out, screaming "For the God-Emperor!" only to be instantly shredded into bloody mist by bolter fire.
Forget it.
All he could realistically hope for was that the mass-reactive shells from his bolt pistol packed enough punch to do some damage.
As he drew his bolt pistol to act, he felt the ground shake again with approaching footsteps. Seriously? Give me a break.
Prudently, Dos shuffled even deeper beneath the tank's chassis; he just really appreciated the protective ambience down here.
This time the sound was different: a rumble like galloping warhorses, iron-shod hooves of thunder growing steadily louder. The Astartes clearly sensed lethal danger approaching.
Death Riders! The term flashed through Dos's mind like salvation. He knew he was saved.
Death Riders and their hunting lances could kill even the so-called demigods.
Boltguns roared faster in desperation. Then, after three colossal explosions that shook the earth, the firing fell abruptly silent.
Only then did Dos cautiously crawl out from beneath the tank.
He looked up to find one of the few people he actually recognized, Colonel 0361, mounted on his warhorse.
"Hah, fancy meeting you here." Dos stood, brushing dust and grime off his greatcoat, adjusting his cap, tightening his webbing—performing about eight hundred unnecessary movements per second, projecting calm while panicking internally.
"You've got potential as a scout, it seems."
"Just luck, pure luck," Dos deflected, trying to ease the awkwardness of the situation.
"Watch yourself, applying for a replacement Commissar is a bureaucratic nightmare." Imperial administration moved at a glacial pace. A simple requisition form could take months to process. The colonel meant it sincerely: three commissars dead in two months.
Dos thought: Can't you wish me something more encouraging?
Colonel 0361 ignored his expression, yanked his reins, and rode off without another word.
Counting his blessings, Dos wondered whether he should stay with the central column going forward. Why not request a mount? The smoking wreck of the Leman Russ beside him provided the answer.
"Right, when I get back, I'll write a book: One Hundred Tips to Survive Until Retirement." Grumbling to himself, he dusted off his coat once more.
Since joining the Krieg regiment, he'd grown increasingly fond of talking to himself. He shook his head, ready to rejoin the column, until he heard another Leman Russ approaching from behind.
Dos's face turned pale. He was pretty certain no one had been positioned behind him earlier, right?
Same spot, same posture, only this time with no Krieg guardsmen nearby to provide covering fire.
"Like I said," he thought as he dove back under, "I just really like the ambience here."
[End of Chapter]
A/N:- (Leman Russ Battle Tank: Reliable, versatile, and the Imperial Guardsman's most trusted companion on the battlefield—easily retrofitted for any mission profile.)