Over the Parapet: A Warhammer 40k Story

Over the Parapet                    

 

      This world, like many others he'd seen was dirt. The ground beneath his feet was mud-slick and everywhere were the earthen walls of the trenches, high and entombing. In some places the bare soil was boarded together by sections of flakboard interspaced with scraped-sheer lengths of ochre brown and beige clay. Waterlogged, the slime underfoot was bridged sporadically by salvaged wooden pallets or broken crates, many if not all beginning to rot and flake away at the passage of time and thousands of guardsmen’s trampling feet. The fire-step beneath the parapet to the fore of the trenches was no different, a wide ledge cut from the same earth and reinforced here and there by yet more flakboard and pummeled stone collected from the surrounding waste of the battlefield. It needed to be firm, to guarantee proper aim. The men needed to be firmer.

It was a haphazard jumble of earthwork fortification and improvised retaining walls. The Warren of filthy, vermin infested, fly-strewn labyrinthine trenches was a ministorum clerk’s worst nightmare. It was the most beautiful thing Knarlos Varl had ever seen.

      The black mud squelched beneath his blacker booted feet as he made his rounds for what would be the last time. They had their orders. From within the breast pocket of his rockcrete-grey greatcoat he produced a shiny, silver-backed chronometer and checked it's glassy face through the thick lenses of a brown leathery gassmask. It was early still, the dull heartbeat throbs of artillery fire far in the distance seemed synchronized to his own. It had been a quiet morning. But what with the recent biogen attacks you could never be too careful. With deliberate care he replaced the precious timepiece in a pocket over the breastplate of his armor. It was not a common issue model. The little antique he'd taken with him at his very own founding. It had seen more worlds, more fighting, and more death than many of the men under his command. It was fitting that it was with him now.

     Ghosts began to emerge from the depths of the maze around. Living ones, armed and armored in the drab greys and browns of standard issue flak armor, battle dress, and cheaply pressed Mk. Five Lasguns. He nodded to them all as they filtered in, trooping up to the fire-step, but not mounting it. Not yet. Living all, yet a great deal many were about to not be.

     Knarlos’ own breathing seemed to be magnified, and locked inside the protective gas masks the soldiers - similarly attired - would like as not be unable to hear a word he said. Nonetheless he stopped to give each cluster of men a word or two. Greetings. Encouragement. Reassurances. Words to the Emperor. He recognized many, despite their uniformity. Baltek Khan with his great flamer dripping promethium. Eishard Vosse with his one augmetic eye shining redly through one of his mask’s lenses. The Mortgarde brothers, Keil and Than, inseparable as ever, clasping each other's forearms once more. All snapped smart salutes at his approach, both to him and the gleaming captains star on his lapel. Nearly all of them were young enough to be his sons. He felt as if that's exactly what they were. His boys.

      After a time Knarlos finally ran out of trench. The huge bulwark between the guardsmen sections rose up ahead. He trooped down to the waist-high flakboard desk there, with its Vox caster held up out of the mud. His own little command station. The Vox operators’ name was Tobias, a grizzled and worn veteran who had been at Knarlos’ side since he'd made captain, many years ago now on their first campaign. Like usual he wasn't wearing his gas mask and had the chunky receiver of the caster set pressed up against his ear, turning the focusing dial slowly, almost reverently.

     Knarlos squelched up over to him, and boarded the raised flakboard platform there just above the muck’s surface. The comms officer looked up but didn't salute out of familiarity, which suited the captain just fine.

     “Mask, Tobias. I have a… feeling about today.”

     The grizzled man grunted and held up the receiver to him and he took it.

     “That bad?” he growled quietly.

     Inside his own mask Varl nodded slightly.

     “Forty third armor is supposed to be leading the push, and you know what they're like. I don't want unnecessary risks today. Just the usual ones. Besides, we get out of this pit you have to be alive to be able to drink after.”

      He raised up the handset and pressed it firmly to his own ear behind the layer of rubberized mask lining.

     “Point.” muttered Tobias before pulling on his own mask.

     Knarlos listened through the set for a few moments, to the grainy static that sounded for all the world like rain, and to the heartbeat throb of more distant artillery. He keyed the sets microphone trigger.

     “Landlord, come in Landlord, this is Starlight thirteen, reporting for orders, over.”

     There was nothing through the receiver but more garbled static for a long minute and he was about to repeat the callsign transmission again when the wave burst forth with monotone chatter, an operator from the distant Field HQ relaying orders in a steady stream of times and locations and compass directions, likely reading them from a data-slate. Knarlos didn't mind. From a general or a clerk, orders were orders. At the end of the day, the Emperor’s work was his work.

After a few moments of one-sided conversation, he hung the receiver back on the set.

      “Bad?” came Tobias’ muffled question.

     “Excellent.” replied his captain. “Forty third has the charge. Then we're up. Full deployment.”

     The vox operator gave a low whistle through his mask.

     “Better go rouse the lads then.”

     Knarlos agreed and stepped back off the platform, leaving his friend alone. Back down the trenches and along the firing-step from whence he'd come.

     All along the row heads came up to look at him expectantly. Dozens of glass-filmed lenses from gasmasks glinted dully in the ruddy light of the sun filtering through the choking clouds of artillery smoke and promethium exhaust. He said nothing. Not yet. They gathered with him, a flock to a Shepard, a maelstrom of leaves caught in the wake of a passing boat’s tender. Squad formations coalescing out of a random jumble of bodies. When he reached the center of their parapets length he stopped and turned to survey them all. His men. His boys.

      There were nigh on a hundred of them there, a number that had once long ago been triple the size, worn down by the attrition of war. Then he spoke to them there, in the hour of their imminent doom, in tones high and clear and ringing despite the muffling mask about his face.

     “I could tell you.” be began. “Just how long we've been together.”

     “I could tell you. Of your father's sacrifices in my time - and Aye I knew them well.”

     Casting his own lenses around he could see they were at rapt attention, hanging on every word. And he was resolved, to do them proud this day, as they had him for all their short lives.

     “But now is your time! Hear me! Now is your destiny come!”

To a man their shoulders rose as they were roused, tall and proud. His boys.

     “Now, all those across the fields, all those above, behind, and aside us this day will look! And they will see! They will see our blinding light, they will see us thunder forth with the courage of a million strong, and they will know! “

     His voice trailed off almost to a mere whisper, hoarse and carrying that spoke into their every soul.

     “That we here, this day, are the gods of our own creation.”

Then suddenly to a bellowing roar.

     “Shine bright! Burn our enemies so that they may look up at the skies on Holy Terra and witness your victory!”

     To a man they raised their fists and weapons and responded with a wordless, primeval roar that thundered through the trenches and made the oily slick of water atop the mud quake where it lay.

     Then it was over. Sergeants began to coral their squads into double -line formations up against the fire-step. Knarlos took a stand between two such groups and found himself beside Baltek adjusting the worn valves on his hefty flamer, hissing butane through its blue flame igniter to his left, and Vosse with his red eye shining brightly through one of his mask lenses. In the far distance he could faintly hear the ringing tones of a commissar addressing the men of another section further down. Then his heart stopped. Or at least, it seemed to as the distant throb of artillery fire cut suddenly silent.

     “Brace!” came the call down the parapet from the littering of sergeants. The troops as one knelt to a knee in the muck of the trench bottom. The muffled sounds of muttered psalms and prayers drifted through the quiet that had overcome the line. To their credit, not one of his men shook or trembled. Not one of them leapt up and ran, as some were want to do at this time. None forced upon him that horrible duty of raising his holstered laspistol and shooting them down as they attempted to desert. They all faced forward and up, towards the parapet that obscured from view their destiny for the time being. Brave boys all.

     Then there came another sound. Quiet at first. A minute tremor that seemed apart of the murmurings of the trench around. Slowly it grew, first to a rumble that jolted the stagnant pools of grime below, then to a rolling thunder that shook his bones and the very breath inside his breast. It rose to a deafening crescendo nigh on unbearable, just as one of the men formed up to the line screamed “Tanks!”

     The first huge drab wedge lined by twin roaring tracks rocketed overhead at attack speed as the armored line from the forty-third pushed over them and towards the opposing trenches. It was a Hellound, leading the charge with its massive heavy flamer inferno cannon to flush out the fore-trench of the opposing force. There was a rank smell of promethium that entered onto his nasal passages despite the thick mask firmly secured over his face. He didn't need to look over to Baltek to know the big man was looking up in awe at the flamer tank as it sped over the top of the enclosed trench. On point, it'd act to soften the ground forces for those that followed. The huge promethium tank affixed to the rear was extremely vulnerable but the crew driving the machine were likely insane pyromaniacs who didn't care. In a blink it was gone, and more roaring vehicles followed in its wake.

     Stocky Leman Russ battle tanks and Executioners bristling with anti-personnel weapons suited to trench warfare more than the heavy shells of their brethren. Two waves of the hefty vehicles thundered over deafeningly. A final Leman crashed down into the trench itself, the earthen walls caving in around and atop those guardsmen who crouched protectively there. They were flattened instantly by the sheer weight of the thing, tracks still spinning and throwing up fountains of dirt as the tank clawed its way free to continue the charge. Anger flared within Knarlos. A waste.

As suddenly as the armored vanguard had appeared it was over again, the rumble fading away across the battlefield.

“Company! Up!” yelled the Captain.

     The gathered troops rose to a stand as one, checking over their lasrifles and drawing out the little half-shovel axe rakes they used as entrenching tools. Or as close quarters weapons.

     “Fix bayonets!” he shouted, and they obeyed with a clatter of dark steel knives snapped onto under barrel lugs.

     “Ready!” The men stood to, slightly leant forward towards the firing step. From within his long grey greatcoat Knarlos drew a short green paneled laspistol with one hand and held it point down at his side. It was time. There came a piercing high whistle from all around, cutting the air as the section commander somewhere behind them signaled the advance.

     “Forward! Over the parapet!” he cried at last.

     With a massed cry they charged up the fire-step and hauled themselves over the earthen wall that had marked the extent of their world for three years now.

It passed in a strange flow of time that seemed at once fast and achingly slow. The earthen wall crumbling beneath his fingers, dirt pushing up between the digits, the top of the parapet sinking beneath his rising form until quite suddenly he was up and over, standing, running forward with all the breath that the restrictive mask would allow.
     The wasteland of the front line was a torn, cratered expanse of shredded rusty cyclone wire that had been ravaged by the tanks’ charge. It rolled away to either side, down past the other sections and into the horizon distantly. The mud here was pocked and cratered by the rain of artillery long since fallen, the bowls frothing at the bottom with obscene sickly yellow water tainted by innumerable gas and chemical attacks. All those pelting across the no man's land shied away from those waters and the terrible deaths they held.

     The far fore-trench held by the enemy was a mere hundred-meter sprint away. There was no immediate response to their oncoming charge. The vanguard of tanks was tasked with the initial push to soften the enemy lines for the assault, and led by the terrible heavy flamer Hellhound, they seemed to have done their job. But it was far too quiet still.

     Half way across the wrecked and torn strip of earth the enemy replied to the onrushing charge. To either side of Knarlos, long hissing lines of tracer fire scythed into the men, the auto stubbers leaping solid rounds at them with barking retorts. The soldiers began to scream as they were cut down brutally, though those standing kept coming on. Small arms fire began to volley down upon the guard ranks. Zipping solid rounds from auto rifles were interspaced by the red-hot lines of lasfire lancing towards them from the hostile trenches. Twenty-five meters left to go. With a howl that cut the air, mortar rounds plummeted from the sky and geysered up fountains of mud, water, and human indiscriminately. Knarlos plunged his free hand into the depths of his greatcoat and drew out a long, wicked bladed trench knife while at the same time raising his laspistol to fire at the trench ahead lit with muzzle flashes. It bucked in his hand with each retort, loosing lines of red at the enemy line.

     “For the Emperor!” he screamed to the men either side of him.

     They too up the cry in thundering denial of the death that rained down all around them, lifting their own weapons to send streams of laser arcing towards their foes.

     Ten meters to go. Five.

     Next to him, Baltek lugging his bulky flamer opened up. A long curling cone of flame jetted forth from the weapons muzzle, wreathing a gap several meters wide before them along the trench in superhot flames. He dragged the gouting flamer side to side, bathing a wider section and immolating those firing out at them within.

     The fire died off. The rounds and lasfire zipping out at them had died away.   Surrounded by his guardsmen, Knarlos vaulted down into the enemy held trench for the first time. The opposing line was breached. Now the assault began in earnest.

The Captain took two squads and left his sergeants to their own work, delving deep within the Warren of enemy entrenchments extending beyond the front line. The bodies littering the ground were charred and sunken, features unrecognizable. Despite the ferocity of the push, he had yet to actually lay his eyes on the enemy troops that had fired upon them and that held this half of the vast battlefield. That was very quickly remedied.

Knarlos and his squads rounded a flakboarded corner with their weapons up. A line of heretics, cultists, and traitor soldiers faced them three abreast, weapons levelled. They were a ragged assortment of vermin, half dressed in looted breastplates, helmets, and jagged lengths of metal strapped across their bodies. Their weapons were as hideous and wicked as the wretches who carried them, rusting auto rifles and battered lasrifles, with a smattering of tubular scatter guns that would mow down Knarlos and his lads brutally and effectively in the confines of the trenches.

     They were a grotesque assemblage of things that had once been men, twisted and warped by their service and torture to and by the dark powers. Filthy, slat-ribbed where torsos were visible. Matted hair hung in stinking locks from their heads and not a one had bare uncovered skin that was not ruined with twisting mottled scars in the shape of runes and glyphs that made a sane man's stomach twist in tandem with his mind to look upon them. Though these were not sane men.

     The vermin of Chaos and Knarlos’ Imperial Guardsmen opened fire in the exact same instant. The cacophony was so utterly consuming in the confined space that there may not have been sound anyway, as he was instantly rendered utterly deaf.

     Or perhaps it was because something slammed into his chest and suddenly his legs wouldn't hold him upright. The smog-obscured sky reeled in his eyes and he was distantly aware of the ground meeting his back. It was strange. Otherworldly. His limbs didn't seem to want to respond, even as he struggled and fought to get back up, back into the fight with his lads. The ones he'd trained from green who were like sons to him. He wanted to do them proud. He wasn't ready to go. They had come so far, done so much together. Been shaped into men.

Next to him in the muck Vosse’s red eye shone glaringly through the one lens of his mask. He wasn't moving.

     Aye. Was his final thought as death took him.
       Proper bloody Guardsmen. His boys.