Chapter 10: The Signal to Attack
Only when Doss reached his own trench line did he feel a sliver of relief. The Kriegers might not like him, but they didn't bully him either; he was still far closer to kin than any outsider.
Yet if he had to stay bottled up with these silent types, he'd suffocate. He had to find someone to talk to. So he hunted up a Probationary Commissar in the next sector.
Both had grown up in the Schola Progenium; they had plenty in common. The talk soon drifted to life after becoming full-fledged Commissars.
Listening, Doss almost wept tears of envy. Wasn't the guy living the very life he dreamed of? Bantering with veterans, throwing his weight around with rookies, plus an extra stipend every month, and he was still only a major. The comparison silenced Doss. Even a dog would shake its head at this.
They were about the same age, though, and quickly became friends.
Seeing Doss clam up, the other assumed dark battles had scarred his soul. After a few words of comfort, he let the matter drop.
Doss was grateful he didn't pry; he'd been a Commissar barely four or five days, performed atrociously, and didn't even have bragging material.
Thinking back, Doss reviewed his record: first, "lying low", under a tank chassis, that is.
Then a death-race with the Astartes in the trenches, followed by two whole days of cowering and slacking on his own line. Memories too painful to dwell on.
He suddenly realized that merely staying alive could be exhausting. The thought had barely settled when...
With a roar of engines, a huge shadow swallowed them. A Chimera personnel carrier rumbled overhead, showering clods of earth and wood chips.
A little farther off, a Leman Russ tank set off for the front in the same manner. Only then did Doss notice the Earthshaker Cannon had fallen silent.
From their grey-green paint, the tanks and APCs were clearly Stuar armor. Doss straightened.
"Fix bayonets!" Doss shouted, blowing the charge whistle. Under their officers' urging, the Stuar soldiers surged forward as well.
Under every watching eye, Doss had to scramble over the parapet, though he still hung at the very rear. The Guardsman assigned to keep tabs on him had long since vanished. Doss pressed forward anyway.
The enemy position was superbly sited: a machine-gun nest halfway up the slope poured plunging fire downward. Ten heavy guns worked in alternating cover, turning the flat ground before the hill into a killing field.
Doss counted eight Heavy missile launchers, plus possible hidden heavies and maybe mines. Wary of those, the Stu tanks had actually halted.
Gradually, the Krieg soldiers overtook them, and they would pay in blood for such rashness. Barring miracles, this company would be stricken from the rolls and rebuilt after the battle.
Doss drew his bolt pistol and power sword, firing into the air. "Advance, armor, speed it up!" He wouldn't stand by while the Stuar used Krieg's lives to probe enemy strongpoints.
"We can't confirm anti-tank weapons ahead; for safety, we cannot comply," the Leman Russ commander radioed back, leaving Doss gnashing his teeth in impotent fury.
Likewise, the Stuar infantry inched forward, shuttling between scraps of cover, while charging Krieg Guardsmen vanished one by one in the flash of mines.
Watching these cold, taciturn men, Doss finally understood the malice packed into the nickname "walking corpses." His jaw tightened.
Whether nobles, Departmento Munitorum officers, or other Astra Militarum troopers, none ever treated the Kriegers as real human beings. To them, these introverted, solitary soldiers were just handy consumables; trade them for ground and spare your own units' blood.
Seeing his own men hang back, the Probationary Commissar flushed with shame and rage. He waved his laspistol as he sprang to the fore: "For the God-Emperor, charge the heretics!"
Under his lead, the Stuar pace picked up slightly, but the effect was modest. Only after he cursed them and invoked the Inquisition did the assault truly quicken. It was hard to believe this was an Astra Militarum regiment.
"Five-man teams, cover the Grenadiers first!" Doss yelled, hoping these single-minded Kriegers might heed a word of advice.
Once the Grenadiers reached the hill's foot, those Deathstrike launchers would lose their bite. The squad's hellguns and melta grenades could silence enemy firepoints in seconds.
By the God-Emperor, whether through his rank or sheer luck, some soldiers actually obeyed.
"Give me covering fire, or I'll ship the lot of you to the Heresy Courts!" Doss copied the Probationary Commissar's threat, and it worked wonders.
At last, the Leman Russ and Chimera guns spoke. The infantry's autoguns stitched short bursts to pin the foe. Little actual slaughter resulted, yet half the enemy guns ceased firing so freely.
Casualties should be lighter than feared. This was the best Doss could manage.
What he never expected was the Company Champion choosing that moment to act. Even hundreds of meters away, the champion's bolter knocked out four machine guns with pinpoint shots.
Enemy snipers instantly returned fire. Hellshot ray carbines sent linked red lances hissing down, barrages fierce enough to wound or even kill an Astartes. Yet the champion drew the bulk of their heavy fire.
Coolly hugging the reverse slope, he swapped magazines while the tank line pressed forward, crushing any hope of enemy counter-attack. When their attention shifted, his bolter snapped off more rounds, dropping heavy-weapons crews.
Doss remembered the Schola lessons. He stroked his bolt pistol's receiver: "Come on, gun-bro! After this fight, I'll send you straight to the Tech-Priest for a full blessing, just perform for me now!"
After that prayer, he snapped off two shots, and the last two Deathstrike launchers fell silent. "Holy mother of—that actually works? I thought the instructor was bullshitting."
Doss didn't trust his marksmanship: at seventy meters, he'd miss every time, no argument. Yet today, past two hundred meters, he'd been dead-on. How?
Back when the Tech-Priest lectured on the machine spirit, Doss had scoffed. Determined to test it, he'd tried to borrow the instructor's bolt pistol, only to be refused. "Would you lend out your wife?" the man had said.
He'd taken it for a joke. Who would believe a machine spirit was actually real? And worked like this? Though he'd secretly used the instructor's sidearm anyway. Best not dwell on what that made him.
[End of Chapter]