The sergeant did another quick visual sweep of the perimeter. He hadn’t seen anything worrisome yet, but he knew that could change quite instantly, especially after the “sneaky Orks” fiasco. Charr could scarcely believe the entire pretence of that fight in retrospect, it made him question everything he knew about fighting greenskins, and it was still keeping him on his toes two weeks later.

Charr practically refused to take a seat for the whole process of installing the last augur relay, and it seemed like he would remain similarly unseated throughout this one. Still, he thought, better to be out in the thick of it than stuck in the base. While the endless greenery about him was making him wary, it was a familiar feeling of readiness, one which kept the survival senses in the back of his head on and ready.

That focus got dragged away momentarily as he listened in on Corporal Mikael and the lady techpriest going over the repair rites for a damaged sight on the guardsman’s weapon.

“Well like I said, I already did every standard benediction that came to mind. Tried them all twice, even,” the corporal said, with a twinge of exasperation showing through his generally upbeat disposition.

“The orthodox must be invoked before the esoteric is employed,” returned the techpriest, cold as ever.

The sergeant didn’t need to look over to know that his comrade was stifling a sigh at the Mechanicum’s rigid mantra of logic. While the white-robed techpriest’s machine-lore was more than welcome to the men of the regiment, her inflexibility about procedures was grating to the more rough and tumble members of the 3rd Platoon. Still, anything that broke down was soon fixed, those who had suffered lost limbs had had cybernetic replacements fitted to them in only a few day’s time, and equipment was breaking down a lot less in general. Though none would admit to it the techpriest’s presence was a definite boon, even if few could stand to be in extended contact with her.

Ripping his vision from the treeline again, the Catachan looked over the techpriest’s ministrations. She had partially disassembled the corporal's optic device, and was carefully inspecting the components using her hands and mechadendrites both. She seemed in her element as she silently looked over the mechanisms, and judged their efficacy with a critical cybernetic eye. This concentration only erred when a loud clang of dropped girders came from the building site of the augur relay, as a labour servitor fumbled a heavy length of metal. The noise was loud enough to make some of the flightier xeno wildlife take off, and also certainly enough to break the techpriest’s concentration. Having nearly dropped the component she was inspecting in shock, Rileigh set it down gently with her manipulator mechadendrite and stood up to reprimand her charge.

The techpriest never yelled, Stagg had noticed. He kept an ear out for her synthetic voice while he continued watching the edge of the clearing. The crackle in her voice and dulcet smoothness of her speaking tone was easy on the ears, it reminded him nothing so much as of one of the more favourable pre-recorded Administratum announcements he had heard on occasion at voidstations and Munitorum depot worlds. While he couldn’t make out the individual words she was saying now, her voice was evident among the noises of servitors and the idle chatter of the other guardsmen even now.

Her nature too, of course, held her apart from the guardsman, and the rest of the Imperium for that matter, but at the same time her demeanour were somehow intriguing to the sergeant. Charr recalled all of the Ministorum catechisms and Administratum Thoughts for the Day that reviled curiosity, but he rationalised his interest in the techpriest as something more akin to his observations on the wildlife and flora of any new planet he arrived unto. The techpriest was simply a new feature in his current environment, and he wanted to learn more about her, that he might navigate that environment better.

Charr thought all of this over for the third time that day. Keeping on lookout all day was letting his mind wander, and led to him thinking about the white-robed techpriest more than he would ever admit aloud. More prominent than any thoughts about her, however, was the ever-looming threat of Orks, and worse yet, corporal punishment being meted out if his superiors deemed his relationship with Techpriest Rileigh to be going beyond that of a liaison into the territory of “fraternisation”. He still had a scar or two from the punishment he’d received for his last transgression of “borrowing” another regiment’s supplies. Charr had been lucky that his warrant officer was able to produce an impressive record of action, and reduced his sentence from an execution down to a long series of public lashes.

All the same, Charr’s thoughts lingered on the techpriest, regardless of how much he tried to focus on his assigned duties.

***

Once more Rileigh was annoyed and distraught with the uninitiated soldiers of the Imperial Guard. While she had been focused on assuaging the perniciously stubborn machine-spirit of the corporal’s lasgun sight, she hadn’t noticed the guardsmen aiding Draykon in setting up the augur relay. She had known this sort of thing would arise with the presence of the Catachans and their well-attested lack of care for protocol, ritual, and general cleanliness. She could only hope that this terrible mindset wouldn’t rub off on her tech-adept.

The dropped girder had, this time, been from a simple servitor error, but she knew that it was only a matter of time before the guardsmen would cause a far more serious disaster, if they were allowed to “assist” any further.

“The mysteries of the Omnissiah are not for the common laity, Draykon,” she admonished in Techna Lingua.

Draykon sighed and hung his head, “I simply calculated that the less time we were exposed out here in all of this,” he gestured to the greenery all about them, “the less vulnerable we would be to further attacks, and the more likely our works would be left untouched.”

The techpriest sighed. She was disappointed, but understood the error of her apprentice’s ways. She was very able to tell that Draykon was quite wary of leaving the compound, and his fear of another Ork attack was leading him to illogical conclusions. She thought for a few seconds on how to assuage his fears and deviate the adept from his flawed route of logic. With her enhanced social calculations these few seconds allowed her to arrive at a proper solution after only two dozen simulations.

Haltingly, Rileigh kneeled in front of the tech adept, to address him at his eye level. Her body had mostly healed from the discharge of her lumen blast, but her soft flesh was still tender in places. She gazed at his optic sensor with her own, ensuring that he understood her seriousness.

“Tech-adept. These soldiers of the God-Emperor are here to protect us and our works. Diverting their attentions from that mission endangers us more greatly than allowing their watch to go unabated. Your attempt at integrating your efforts with theirs was doomed from the start, as its conclusion was, ultimately, nonoptimal. Do you understand?”

“I… comprehend, ma’am. And I will obey, but… why must we be apart from them, if they too serve the Omnissiah in the guise they see him as?” Draykon asked, seeming almost lost.

The techpriest stood once more, using her power axe to haul herself up, and explained, “They are the laity, and we the priesthood. Their lot is to die for their God-Emperor, and ours is to serve the Omnissiah until we expire. Those may indeed sound like the same thing, but they are quite separate, as we must be. The Quest for Knowledge is not for non-Mechanicum to know of, and their glorious end is not for us to strive for. As such we must perform our duties, and not let our purposes be clouded.”

Draykon nodded slowly. Rileigh knew he was still young, and she remembered having some troubles of her own understanding the philosophies of the priesthood at his age. Though she had always had enormous technomatic aptitude, the mysteries of the Omnissiah had always eluded her young mind. She feared the same would be true of her apprentice as well. All the same it would be best if she helped dispel the wrong thoughts from the young tech-adept, that only the correct ones might linger in his mind.

“Now, what thoughts gave you the idea of entreating the Catachans to “assist” you and the servitors in the task I alloted you? This was to be something of a test to prove yourself, you know.”

The tech-adept fidgeted for a moment before coming clean, “Well… I was commanding the servitors myself, as you ordered. But the guardsmen asked to help, I attempted to decline their offer, but then they sort of barged in and forced past my protests.”

Rileigh’s hold on her power axe tightened. If the haft hadn’t been made of titanium with an adamantium core it would have warped under the pressure from her cybernetic arm’s constricting grip. The techpriest took a few seething, ragged breaths before inhaling deeply.

***

“SERGEANT!!!”

The craggy clearing reverberated with a tinny, furious screech, blasted at a volume well past the capability of an unaugmented human’s lungs. The head of every guardsman turned to see the source of the outraged yell, and a hush fell over the clearing as the various creatures on the dense, green, periphery fell silent. Stag froze for a half a moment before his hunter’s instincts asserted themselves, and he wheeled around to meet the challenge.

The white-robed techpriest was already on her way over to the guardsman, stepping heavily into the overgrown, burnt soil of the plant-carpeted glade. Her measured, automatic pace, combined with the thick cloud of incense pouring out of her incense chimney gave Rileigh the appearance of a furious locomotive, speeding down a mag-rail line which Stag was standing in the way of. As she descended the bluff that the augur relay was being built upon she began a tirade in machine-tongue, hissing and spitting what Charr assumed were insults, demands, and colourful commentary from her vocal implant.

Charr stood his ground, awaiting the predator’s approach as he’d done numerous times before when charged. While RIleigh approached he took stock of her armaments. She was loud, but her soft body was unlikely to do any real damage to him, but her cybernetics were another story. He had yet to see the techpriest use her power axe as a weapon, she seemed to just carry it about as a staff of office, but she had used it to conduct that electrical pulse that had fried a dozen Orks. Charr wasn’t sure she could do that again, but he most certainly didn’t want to be on the receiving end of such an attack, given how little had been left of the Orks that had been hit by it.

All in all, the sergeant honestly wasn’t that afraid of the techpriest. She lacked a killer’s instincts and was more suited to labouring over a machine’s internals. However, she did seem quite furious at the moment over… something. Charr hoped that she would stop ranting in her machine language so that he could disarm the situation, but she seemed to have gained a bit of furious momentum that had yet to disperse. Still, if he just stood there, glaring at her with his hand on the handle of his longknife, he doubted that she would stop any time soon. Adding on to this, his men were watching, and he wanted to prove that he was worthy of his rank.

Sergeant Stag cleared his throat, before saying evenly, but forcefully, “Lissen lady, I can’t understand a damn thing you say in your Mechanicus language, alright?”

While this initially had the intended effect of halting her tirade in the Mechanicus holy tongue, it also had the secondary effect of further frustrating the techpriest greatly. Rileigh growled out of her vocal implant, creating a garbled, low fidelity snarl. She then lashed out, attacking a nearby rock with her cybernetic foot, sending it flying across the clearing before bringing down her power axe on nearby shrub repeatedly, reducing it to disintegrated cinders after a few chops.

Charr grabbed the haft of the power axe as she brought it down again on the quite destroyed plant. Rileigh snarled once more, attempting, fruitlessly, to wrench back control of the weapon from the much more powerful guardsman. He held the weapon firmly, letting the techpriest tire herself out as she struggled vainly.

“You ungrateful- you ungrateful defiler!! How dare you put your hands upon my holy implements!”

Rileigh lashed out with her mechadendrites, attempting to encircle the guardsman’s throat. Charr had fought many tentacled creatures before, and he raised his arm that wasn’t holding the power axe to stop his throat from being encircled by the metallic tendrils.

“KNOCK IT OFF, MISS RILEIGH!” roared Charr. His own yell had the desired effect, as it caused her to be taken aback for a moment, letting him take the advantage. The techpriest’s grip lightened for a second and he pulled the power axe away with his right hand while grabbing both of her mechadendrites in the left.

“Now, what the hell is your problem?”

Not missing a beat Rileigh began her rant anew, this time in Low Gothic.

“Sergeant, you must have a better handle on your men! They have overrun my adept’s work, and fail to observe numerous, exceedingly important tech-rituals! How could you allow them to simply trod all over the Omnissiah’s work in this fashion? It reflects poorly on your leadership as well as the whole of the Imperial Guard. I expected far greater professionalism from the Munitorum, and were it not for my duties assigned by Metalica’s synod I would be leaving this pitiful, Machine God-forsaken world as soon as I could. Further-”

She looked at her mechadendrites that were now holding the sergeant’s arm. Stag watched a curious expression come over the Mechanicum as she slowly, almost reluctantly, withdrew her serpentine auxiliary limbs from the guardsman’s arm, moving them to wrap around the handle of the power axe, gently. Her biological eye met his, and he stared back, trying to decipher her expression, only prompting her to look away in what he assumed was shame?

“My… emotions took hold of me,” she said, in a way that conveyed her utter disgust with the concept. “If you would unhand my axe, sergeant.”

Charr let go of the cold rod of metal, allowing her mechadendrites to retract and bring it back to her cybernetic hand. He watched further as she tugged the red-rimmed white hood of her robes over her face, presumably to hide the flushed expression of what he assumed was embarrassment that had come over her face. Stagg was flushed too, but much more so with anger at the bodily assault than any kind of embarrassment.

“Now then,” he raised his voice unintentionally, stopping just short of yelling at the techpriest. “What do you want me to do about that?”

“Well, I would appreciate it if you would tell your men not to interfere with my adept’s work. I had assigned him this task as a trial to improve his adherence to the doctrines of assembly, and with their interference it only halts and recitation of the procedure on his part.”

“Alright, fine, " Charr turned away from the techpriest to holler at his men, “Boys! Let the small fry techpriest do the work hisself! He’s gotta learn how’ta do the tech-thing on his own!”

He turned back to Rileigh, annoyance written plainly on his face, to assure that she was satisfied with his orders. Instead he was met with what he assumed was cold disapproval leaking out from the shadows of her hood.

“Tech-Adept Draykon is not small, he is simply young. He is of a perfectly average height for his age.”

“Right, of course,” Sergeant Stag said, trying to hide his exasperation. “Do you want me to correct the record on that one?” Charr remembered when he was a young teenager, he was definitely not that small himself.

The techpriest shook her head, making the robe’s hood flutter a little.

“That will not be necessary.”

She started to make back towards her labours on the corporal’s lasgun sight, but paused after a single step. Rileigh spoke without turning to face Stag, but did look upon the guardsman with her optic mechadendrite.

“I suppose a thanks is in order. So thank you.”

Charr felt a twinge of gratefulness. He was becoming ever more convinced that the techpriest was, in some part, still human.

***

Zyrantiel’s orange-red sun sunk lower into the sky, bathing the surface of the world in all the colours of an inferno. The men from the second squad that Sergeant Stag had sent out to scout the glade’s perimeter had slain some greenskin stragglers, but no actual Orks had been spotted by the reconnaissance team. Corporal Vengur’s men had encountered and slain a half dozen gretchins, and later, taken out a small number of squigs in a nearby basin. They had hauled a number of the squig carcasses back to the clearing, and had proceeded to gut and butcher the creatures before cooking them. Despite Rileigh’s protests the men all enjoyed a hearty dinner of xeno flesh.

Charr wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that the xenos were dead, or to be wary from their presence. Orks were on Zyrantiel, of course, but the mountain range separating the frontlines from this flank would almost rule out any of the greenskins arriving here in force. However, the sneaking Orks, as well as the gretchin and squigs, were making the Catachan start to feel paranoid.

The paranoia was not rooted in fear, though. Charr’s only fear was that the Orks would get the drop on him again. He did not fear dying in the Emperor’s name, rather, he worried that he would suffer a dishonourable death that would prevent him from taking down the enemies of Mankind. If these lesser xenos, and the marauding Orks, were anything to go by, though, he would soon be given the chance to die, in one way or another.

To some degree Charr was glad to have the Mechanicus priests installing this series of augur relays. Hopefully the Munitorum had given them decent models, he wanted to know when the Ork’s war machines were coming en masse, and he wanted to be there when the scrapheaps they called vehicles were reduced to metal splinters by the Hydra’s guns. He wanted to sink his knife into the green flesh of the Orks and hear them squeal in pain once more. The sergeant lived for those moments when he and his men broke the fighting spirit of the xenos and had them flee before him, cutting them down with Catachan warknives and slicing them apart with bolts of las-fire.

The fiery colours of the vegetation around him must have been turning his thoughts to similarly sanguine matters. He didn’t often reminisce about his combat experiences like this. Charr could only assume that the fight with the Orks a few weeks ago had fired up his blood, as an appetiser before a banquet would only make one more eager to satiate their awakened hunger. He had been fiddling with his knife and lasgun more often, and bouncing his leg when he sat down at the barracks.

All the same, he’d held back from harming the lady techpriest. As much as he may have wanted to unleash his pent up bloodlust, he simply couldn’t do it towards her. Charr was glad that his respect for the clergy had stayed his hand, but he wasn’t entirely sure that it was just that. At the very least he felt an intense gratitude toward the Metalican, her aid was well-appreciated by him and the whole of the platoon. What worried the sergeant, however, was a feeling beneath the gratitude, one of a more personal nature, that he felt towards her. Charr traced a finger along the scar on the rear of his arm from his last lashing. He wasn’t eager to receive more.

Still, he allowed his eyes to wander over to this newest augur relay tower, and the techpriests attending it. The short tower began humming with function as the rites of the white-robed Mechanicum breathed life into it. Their small ritual was based around an armoured control-triptych that was connected directly into the internals of the tower, and Techpriest Rileigh hovered over the shoulder of her apprentice’s ministrations like a worried mother. At this point Charr wasn’t really surprised, the lady techpriest seemed to have a need to be in charge of machine-related operations. Still she hadn’t wrenched control away from the younger one yet, and in fact it seemed like she was backing off from the tech-adept.

Quick to anger, quick to cool. He was much happier with that being her temperament, rather than her taking to letting frustration fester and grow unseen. Charr knew that most techpriests had long memories, and oft times even more patience. As strange as the lady techpriest often was, this upfront attitude suited Charr, and it made her slightly less of a complete mystery. Rileigh being a known quality comforted the sergeant somehow, but he wouldn’t let it show. The men had all watched the confrontation, and being soft on someone who had just threatened to throttle him would be unbecoming of any red-blooded Catachan. Besides, the thought of backing down like that was nearly an impossibility to him.

As it turned out the techpriest was actually getting the attention of the guardsman, with some urgency. She shouted “sergeant!” in a much less aggressive tone that, while still loud, was not earsplitting. Charr broke out into a quick jog, escaping the long shadows of the treeline and making it to the raised, sun-drenched crag that the relay tower was set up on. The red-hot sunset reflected off of the white robes of Rileigh, making her look alight with the bloody twilight’s hue. While shadowed, Charr could see the concern etched on the organic portion of her face, despite how much she wished not to show it.

“I was going over Draykon’s work, to ensure that he had configured the augur relay’s systems appropriately, and that he had activated the machine-spirit’s awareness circuitry correctly.”

The sergeant nodded. He knew by now that interrupting her usually just made her get flustered and take longer. It was best to let the techpriest get to her point on the path of logic that she had laid out for herself. Charr crossed his arms over his chest and prepared for the rest of the preamble to her point.

“Now, his activation psalm was commendable, but I assumed that he had made an error when we detected a signal immediately. I have now triple-checked the calculations of the machine-spirit, and it seems that there is indeed some form of incoming, unknown aeronautica that are about 80.2 kilometres out, give or take a standard deviation of about 10 metres. I apologise for the inaccuracy, the aug-”

Charr’s eyes widened immediately.

“Show me, now.”

Rileigh brought him over to the control-triptych, and showed him the errant reading. The green display showed the outline of a pair of aircraft. Charr inspected them closely, observing their silhouette carefully. They were no Imperial craft. Clapping the diminutive techpriest on the back and thanking him gruffly, Charr bolted off before either of the Mechanicum could react.

“We’ve got two fast-mover Ork aeronautica, headed East towards our position! Kel, Hult, let’s wake up the Hydra. Callum, Mikael, get flakk missiles out to some nearby clearings on the double. Let’s get moving or those xenos are gonna rip us to shreds!”

With a strong, unified rallying cry the twilit clearing exploded into action as the guardsmen all around it leapt to action at the sergeant’s command.

Before long the platoon’s voxman, Yult, reported the situation to the regiment’s command, but as the 3rd Platoon were so far out from the the rest of the regiment, and indeed all of the Imperium’s forces on Zyrantiel, they wouldn’t be receiving any support for at least a few hours. That was a few hours against the few minutes that the platoon had until the Orks were overhead. They needed anti-air fire if they were going to survive the onslaught of the alien aircraft, and their best shot was going to be providing it themselves.

Charr looked over the men busying themselves. He watched the crewmen of the Hydra prepare the vehicle, the machine awakening with a roar. A loud, guttural clunk followed by a powerful electrical buzz signified that the scanning system’s cogitator was beginning to engage its auto-sanctification protocols.

“Sir I don’t know if the cogitator’s going to be online in time, it usually takes a couple minutes.”

Stag spat out a curse. They could fire blind but he’d need more specific information to do so with any efficacy. He glanced over at the relay tower. Its signal had likely caught the Ork’s attention, but it could also be his trump card in stopping them. If he could get the information off of the augur system he could probably fire on the Orks at maximum effective range and swat them down before they could be a problem. He called out to Rileigh, but much to his surprise she was already at his side. She must have followed him down from the bluff while he was issuing orders, and now she was staring at him in mild, expectant surprise.

“Techpriest, we’ll need the data on those aircraft, I need to know their distance, elevation, azimuth, and velocity to line up this shot. We don’t have the time for the cogitator to warm up so we’ll have to do it by hand.”

With that he began climbing the side of the Hydra, and ordering Kel and Hult to check the ammo feeds for the turret’s quad autocannons. Charr gave a quick look towards the augur relay to check on the techpriest’s progress. To his immediate shock she had not moved, and was seemingly just staring at the tower.

Right before he yelled at her to get a move on, the techpriest spoke, “The aeronautica are now 48.3 kilometres out, their elevation is 22.45 metres and 24.6 metres respectively, they are approaching from 272.3 degrees, and their respective velocities are 971.1 and 974.6 kilometres per hour. I will attempt to calculate a firing solution for you, one moment.”

The sergeant paused for a minute, going over the numbers in his head.

“Alright, set fuses to 33 seconds and put our gun’s elevation at 12 degrees. They’re skimming the trees and I want these shots hitting them in the face. We’ll readjust after we run through these mags, we might get to squeeze off another volley if we reload quick.”

In the rush of readying the weapon array the sergeant managed to glance at the techpriest. She seemed to have been a bit perturbed by the guardsman’s ability to calculate a firing solution. Charr let himself feel a small bit of satisfaction for having one over the coghead’s mental faculties.

Far off, beyond the treeline to the West, a low buzz was becoming audible, and as the anti-air autocannons were awakened the sound became louder and louder, evolving into a heavy rumble. The Hydra prepared to fire, the feeds of the weapon array rattled as munitions were readied for the barrage of explosive shells.

“FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!”

A veritable storm of cannonfire erupted from the Hydra’s quad guns. Each shot flew out low across the tops of the jungle’s trees, before exploding off in the far distance with a heavy thud that promised death and shrapnel. A part of that promise was fulfilled, as a huge explosion went off in the distance, followed by some subsequent, smaller detonations.

Still, despite this explosive storm of flakk, the remaining Ork aeronautica could be heard approaching, and before long shots came back from the alien aircraft. These shots were not aimed at anything in particular, Stag knew, the alien’s tiny brains simply couldn’t think of another response to being shot at besides returning fire at the explosions.

“They’re coming in for a pass, get down! Everyone get to cover!”

Sergeant Stagg grabbed the techpriest and hunkered her down behind the platoon’s Hydra along with himself. As the scream of the alien machines’ engines grew to a roaring crescendo, a series of explosions rang out before the aeronautica passed overhead, with a pair of flakk missile blasts starting off the choir of explosions. One went off just beyond the treeline, and another happened well beyond that point, as a flaming, red blur careened into the deeper jungle before exploding with a great fireball.

The nearby explosion left unprotected ears ringing, as it was likely a bomb from the Ork aeronautica that had been knocked loose or else had been dropped with timing that was just a split-second off. Charr looked to his side, seeing the faces of the first squad who had taken cover behind the nearby Chimera. They were rattled, and covered in debris, but otherwise fine.

“Alright, quite the snivelling. Vengur, gather up a demi-squad and go scout the crash, I want to make sure that the damn greenskin we lit up is dead for good.”

“Sir,” came the unsure voice of Lance Corporal Callum. “Corporal Vengur went back out to scout for further greenskins, at your command, about an hour ago, I think he was going to report in soon.”

The sergeant nodded, “Fine, we’ll wait for him to get back, then you and the rest of second squad can go check out the crash site.”

The lance corporal acknowledged the order quickly, and Stag climbed back up the Hydra to order the crewmen to be ready for further aircraft. Keeping the active scanning array on the Hydra would guzzle the vehicle’s promethium supply, but right now it was very necessary. The sergeant continued putting the guardsmen into order, until he noticed something staggering at the edge of the treeline into the glade. He sprinted over, ready to cut a wounded greenskin’s throat.

The person at the edge of the glade was no greenskin. Rather it was Private Alqin, who was barely stumbling forward, and, judging by the blood all over his uniform, barely hanging on. Stag yelled for a medic to attend him as he sat the young man down, assuring him that the team’s medics were approaching even now. Alqin was in a bad way, and only capable of mumbling incomplete words. As he handed the wounded guardsmen over to the platoon’s medical specialists, Charr called over Callum. He charged the lance corporal with finding Vengur’s demi-squad.

The sergeant had barely turned away from the lance corporal for a few moments before Callum emerged from the trees once more, bidding his commanding officer to follow. A scant dozen metres from the treeline, where the bomb had fallen, were the remains of the corporal’s demi-squad. Private Alqin had gotten off the easiest, as the remaining four men were nearly unrecognisable. Vengur, Reki, Treyaht, and Germin were all dead, with their remains strewn about the crater and surrounding forest. The lance corporal seemed queasy as he took in the gory sight, but Sergeant Stag only released a deep sigh.

“Make a pyre in the clearing, use some of the promethium from the Chimeras’ supplies. Also try to gather up their knives, and a head or two if you can find ‘em. I want at least one of their skulls to be treated right. The techpriests are done with their damned tower, so we can head back to base after we put them to rest and say a benediction for ‘em. Don’t worry about the crashed Ork, I’ll go make sure that the bastard is nothin’ more than a burned out crisp.”

***

In the end Sergeant Stag came back to the clearing with nothing more than a grim attitude and the clinging smell of oily smoke about him. He’d seen the smouldering remains of the Ork pilot with his own eyes, there was nothing that made it out of the crash alive. While he was gone the remains of the dead had been burned, and despite some minor clash with the techpriest over incinerating the dead with their cybernetics, the rest of the evening was quiet, with no further attacks.

As strict as he was, Stag took little joy in commanding his men to burn the dead. He had had to immolate his own share of mangled bodies, and he couldn’t let any of his men be too soft. Seeing what the alien would do to your fellow man hardened you, and prepared you for the end you would one day meet. That’s what Stag’s first sergeant, Sergeant Elta had told him, and he took it to heart, ever since he had laid the sergeant’s remains on a funeral pyre himself.

The lance corporal was promoted, and took the place of Corporal Vengur. The platoon had lost more men to the greenskins, and Sergeant Stag was getting quite eager to shed the alien’s blood in return.