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Made in ca
Twisted Trueborn with Blaster



Ottawa

PREFACE: I’ve always found it odd and kind of funny that the Black Library releases novels centered on new tabletop models, such as Baneblade. More than once, I’ve been trying to imagine the publisher foisting this undesirable gig on the fresh-faced new writer: “So we’ve got this new model that’s about to come out, and we need you to write a full-length novel about it. That’s it. Your novel is a 300-page advertisement for a GW model.”

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how interesting this challenge could be. It is in this spirit that I wrote my first short story to be posted on this website, Chimera, as well as its prequel Salvation. This time I decided to go even further: are there good stories to be written about the most humble and ordinary things in the Warhammer universe? Moreover, can we take a break from legendary heroes saving entire planets from Chaos lords and hive fleets, and instead find adventure and dramatic tension in a tale that’s almost ridiculously low-stakes?

Behold — this is the harrowing tale of a soldier who lost his lasgun.





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“Take aim!” Commander Markhov yelled at the top of his lungs, his mechanically amplified voice cutting through the din of battle. To Niko, it almost sounded like a bad joke. Take aim. So thick was the green tide bearing down on the Eleventh Platoon, all he had to do was lift his lasgun to eye level and pull the trigger. Even a blind man would find it hard to miss.

Propping himself up on one elbow in the mud, Niko braced the stock of his lasgun against his shoulder and pressed his cheek to the polished wood, feeling the dozen kill notches against his skin. The notches were a lie. Niko had no idea how many foes he had brought down since coming to Armageddon. When fifty men fired a volley and twenty Orks went down, it was impossible to assign any one kill to any one man. Yet all soldiers carved those notches in the stocks of their lasguns, and Niko did not wish to be the only fool in the Valhallan army who claimed no kills to his name.

“Ready… FIRE!” roared Markhov, not a moment too soon.

Niko pulled the trigger, as did the rest of his platoon. A salvo of red beams crisscrossed the rapidly narrowing no-man’s-land between the two forces, their heat radiating against the young soldier’s face. No human would stand a chance to survive that. But Orks were not humans. They were too stupid to know when they were dead; you often had to remind them a few times. Some of the brutish xenos stumbled and fell, confusion plain on their pig-like faces, but most kept coming with crude maces and blades raised high, paying no mind to the holes burned into their green flesh.

Markhov’s voice cracked like a whip: “Fire at will!”

Another joke. The Orks were now so close, firing at will meant firing exactly once. The next volley was so disorderly that some men managed to miss from three paces away. And then the Orks were in their midst already, carving a path of broken corpses and severed limbs. The Valhallans fought back as best they could with bayonets, but every feat of arms was rewarded with swift and brutal death. When Commander Markhov shot the Ork leader point-blank between the eyes with his bolt pistol, the beast had time to crush his head between its two meaty hands before collapsing.

Why even try to be a hero?

Through it all, Niko huddled in his foxhole, clutching his lasgun as a drowning man might hold onto a buoy. He dared not even poke at the Orks’ legs with his bayonet. His cowardice saved his life — having nowhere to look but up, he was the first to see the pitch-black Valkyrie fill the sky above the trench and aim its twin rocket pods at the carnage. With a strangled cry, Niko curled into a ball to present a smaller target. A heartbeat later, a hail of tiny frag rockets tore through Orks and humans alike with shocking carelessness. To Niko it felt like the world ending in fire and thunder all around him. When a relative sense of quiet returned, he counted to ten and sat up, astonished to find himself sooty but unscathed in the middle of a mass grave.

The Valkyrie hovered lower. An impatient-sounding voice rang out from its vox system: “Attention, Eleventh Platoon. A full evac is underway. This craft has four seats left.”

The trench suddenly came alive. A dozen or so ragged Valhallan survivors got up and scrambled to claim a spare seat in a morbid game of musical chairs. Niko never stood a chance; he was too small to prevail in a human stampede. Twice he was knocked to the ground. By the time he reached the craft, the doors were sliding shut in front of him and the other unlucky ones.

“No… no!”

Desperation giving him more strength than he thought possible, he launched himself at one of the Valkyrie’s landing skids and just barely caught it with both hands. His legs flailed under him until he found purchase for his feet. The Valkyrie shot skywards in a shriek of jet engines.

As he held on for dear life under the vehicle, his knuckles already white, Niko realized his problems were only beginning.

He had lost his lasgun.




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There is no way I will survive this, thought Niko, hugging the landing skid as savage winds whipped his face. More than once he was tempted to just let go. Why delay the inevitable fall? But no; he had not survived a horde of Orks and hail of rockets just to commit suicide now. He steeled himself and looked down. He had quite a view from up here, and it was not a pretty view. The battlefield stretched out on every side for as far as the eye could see. Tens of thousands of brave men and women lay still in the dirt; elements of the Cadian 16th, the Vostroyan 105th, Niko’s own Valhallan 81st, and others. They had traveled so many light-years to come here, to Armageddon.

It was a long way to go just to end up with your face in the mud.

Soon the reason for the evacuation became clear. Shells rained from the sky, arcing down from beyond the mountains, but did not explode on impact. Everywhere the shells crashed, a yellow mist began to carpet the ground. Poison gas. All movement on the battlefield eventually ceased as the whole area was scoured of life both human and xeno. A passage from an old legend occurred to the young soldier: Kill them all and let the Emperor sort them out.

It was dusk when the Valkyrie lowered itself into the impact crater that sheltered the vast Valhallan camp, at the southern edge of the battlefield. It did not land, but hovered low enough for twelve haggard-looking passengers, four of them survivors from the Eleventh, to jump off. Niko just let himself drop, landing on his back a tad harder than he had intended. A platoon mate he knew by face but not by name gave him a hand to get on his feet.

“Niko, is that it?” she asked as the Valkyrie flew off.

Niko nodded and mumbled a few words of thanks, feeling a tad guilty not to know her name when she knew his. Soldiers came and went so quickly in the Valhallan army, how was one supposed to keep track?

“I’m Sofia,” said his squad mate. “Say, you had a nice view on the way back, didn’t you? What did you see? Any Orks left alive?”

Niko shrugged helplessly. The battlefield was so damn large and confusing. It was hard to get a good picture of the situation, even from an aircraft. Asking an officer for details was of course out of the question. The Valhallan brass seemed to think that the less a soldier knew, the better, and that excessive curiosity implied cowardice or disloyalty.

Sofia grunted. “I’m going to assume we’ll be fighting again tomorrow. I’d rather bayonet myself in the foot, but I don’t think they’d excuse me from combat over this.” She tightened her gun’s strap around her chest and headed out into the bustling camp. “Smells like meat stew over there. Better hurry before they run out. I swear could eat an Ork whole.”

“Uh… listen.” Niko almost had to run to catch up with her strides. “I, ah, lost my lasgun during the evac. Think they’ll issue me a new one if I ask?”

Sofia stopped dead in her tracks and whirled towards him. “You lost your lasgun?”

“Not so loud,” Niko pleaded, eyes darting about.

She lowered her voice. “You’re never supposed to let it out of your sight,” she breathed quickly. “Back at training camp, one of my tent mates got shot for losing his.”

“That’s… only when we’re outside combat, though,” Niko argued, trying to convince himself. “But in battle? People lose things all the time. Surely they understand, right?”

Sofia pursed her lips. “I really don’t know. But they’d better not find you without a lasgun on the morning roll call.” She looked thoughtful. “You could… ah… you could go back out there tonight and take a gun from a body. That’s what I’d do.”

“If they see me leave camp, they’ll shoot me for desertion!”

“What have you got to lose? Either you get shot, or you maybe get shot if they catch you.”

Niko’s jaw tightened. “Point.”

“You may have to bribe a sentry, though.” She edged closer to Niko and surreptitiously handed him five tiny white pills. “This should do it.”

Niko almost dropped the pills to the ground when he realized what they were. Dreamkillers. Powerful sedatives that granted eight solid hours of dreamless sleep. Officers cracked down hard on their use, for a soldier under their influence could sleep like a baby through a surprise attack, but they remained highly sought after by nightmare-haunted survivors. They were the grease in the gears of the military black market.

“Where’d you get this?” whispered Niko, shoving the pills in his pocket.

“Someone owed me,” said Sofia cryptically. “And now you owe me, too. When you’re robbing corpses, look for contraband. Smokes, booze, more dreamkillers. Anything you bring back, aside from a lasgun, is mine. If I decide it’s not enough, I’m never helping you again.”

Niko nodded. He should have guessed there would be strings attached. “Thank you.”

Sofia was already walking away towards the field kitchen. “Don’t thank me,” she called over her shoulder. “Until tomorrow morning, you don’t even know me.”




------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




Valhalla was a cold place, in more ways than one. The surface was a windswept expanse of ice where a man’s blood could freeze in his veins in a matter of minutes. The cities were austere, overcrowded tunnels of rockcrete, where masses toiled fourteen hours a day under merciless discipline just to earn their bunk bed and two daily meals of synth food. Most Valhallans did not so much live as merely survive. Some of the cleverest and most ambitious youths had a prayer of one day rising above their station, but to an unremarkable fifteen-year-old like Niko, the only way out was the army.

If you asked the recruiters why barely one soldier out of ten ever returned, they would claim that most of those brave men and women had settled on a greener world at the end of their service, rich as lords. Niko was not fool enough to believe them, yet he enlisted all the same on the day he came of age, as did hundreds of youths like him. He received his lasgun upon arriving at training camp. To the Adeptus Administratum clerk, handing out guns to the recruits was a mere formality; to a lad from the underhive, holding the wood and plasteel rifle between his fingers was a life-changing event. He was now a soldier. There was no turning back. His existence was henceforth tied to this rifle, how it served him, and how he served it in return.

“Move along, boy,” barked the clerk. “You’re holding up the line.”

Niko walked away distractedly and returned to his squad’s tent, marveling at the simple but beautiful design of the gun. Plain old Kantrael pattern, like the yellow toy gun from his childhood, except that this one was matte grey, full-sized, and an actual tool of death. If the lasgun was the archetypal rifle of the Imperium, the Kantrael was the archetypal lasgun. Billions upon billions had been made. It had served for centuries without a major change. It was far from the best model in the Imperium, but it was famed for its reliability, its ruggedness and its ease of maintenance. You could drag it with a rope across ten miles of bad land, and it would be battered but functional. And then you would be flogged for mistreating your weapon.

Niko’s original squad mates, their names now long forgotten, were looking at their own weapons with the same reverence. One boy had already named his rifle ‘Natalya’, after the girl he fancied in his native hive. Another pulled a knife and set about carving an elaborate bas-relief of a swooping bird of prey in the wooden stock; the only part of the rifle that soldiers were allowed to customize. When some complimented his woodworking, he offered to hire out his skills for contraband lho-sticks. Niko considered it, but decided against it. It was his rifle; only he was allowed to carve the stock, even if he had to learn the craft from scratch.

In the end, he had never gotten around to it.

Over the next two weeks, Niko would train to take apart and reassemble his lasgun until he could do it blindfolded. He would be taught the name and purpose of every moving part, and how to manufacture new ones from common materials if they broke or were lost. He would practice reloading and cleaning until his wrists ached. He would be made to recite the Prayer of the Marksman, sing the Hymn to the Rifle, and quote from memory all four pages of the Imperial Infantryman’s Uplifting Primer pertaining to lasgun maintenance and safety.

The only thing he would not learn at training camp was how to shoot. Ammunition was precious, after all, and was to be saved for battle.




------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




Niko came to with a start. He had allowed himself to doze off sitting on a barrel, with an empty bowl of stew still in his hands. For a moment he was seized by panic. Morning was upon him! They were about to make him stand for inspection! They would find him without a lasgun and shoot him! He fumbled for his pocket watch and squinted at it in the dark. Oh. It was barely 1227. Relief washed over him. He swallowed a stimulant pill, grabbed his helmet and stood.

It was well past curfew. No stars shone in Armageddon’s polluted sky. The camp had gone quiet, save for soldiers going to the latrines and back, but distant gunfire and the roar of engines rang out many miles away, outside the crater. Obviously the poison gas had not killed everything. Niko chose not to let it concern him. The main danger for him would be to get out of the camp. After that, he only had to snatch the first lasgun he saw and turn back. And to the Warp with Sofia and her greed; he could not afford to linger out there just to pay back a debt.

Slipping out of the camp turned out to be the easy part. Niko almost wet his pants when the first sentry to get in his way was a junior officer, but he offered his bribe of dreamkiller pills all the same and learned that corruption was not limited to the rank and file. The officer even told him which way to go to avoid detection by his comrades.

“If someone else spots you, they’ll know you got past me,” he explained, as if to make sure Niko did not mistake his pragmatism for generosity.

That went well, thought Niko as the camp receded behind him. Too well. One thing you learned early when you joined the Imperial Guard was to be wary of things going well.

It took him almost half an hour of stumbling in the mud to reach the nearest casualties; a dozen hulking Ork corpses and about as many brown-coated, gas-masked bodies of local Armageddon soldiers, lying next to the wreck of a Chimera transport. Jubilant, Niko picked his way through the remains in search of an intact lasgun. When he found one, his hopes crashed and burned. It would simply not do. It was the Voss pattern; two-thirds the length of the Kantrael and with a folding stock for ease of transport in a cramped vehicle. A worthy gun, to be sure, but Niko would stick out like a sore thumb if he carried gear that was not standard issue. Was it an execution-worthy offense? He did not know, and he did not care to find out.

With a sigh of resignation, Niko kept walking. Clearly he was here for a while.




------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




There were so many lasguns on the battlefield.

The Lucius pattern, favored by the Death Korps of Krieg. Modified for extra power, but with a fierce drain on power cells that meant it had to be reloaded often. Notorious for its frequency to overheat in extended firefights. Heavier than most lasguns due to its extra parts and its layer of insulating padding.

The Accatran Mark IV; the paratrooper’s friend. Compact and lightweight to avoid getting in the way during a drop. An ungainly-looking thing, with a boxy shape and a very short barrel. Unlike most patterns, could not be fitted with a bayonet. Niko tried to figure out how to take it apart, but it was so different from what he was used to.

The famed Triplex pattern. Adjustable power levels and firing rates. Could fetch high prices in civilian circles, but rumors said it was equally expensive to maintain due to the rarity of parts. Temperamental in difficult weather conditions. Advanced technology was well and good, so long as it was reliable. Which this gun was not, according to a veteran from Niko’s company.

Sleek, stripped-down Mars-pattern lasguns. ‘Long las’ sniper rifles. Handcrafted Vostroyan masterpieces that looked hundreds of years old. Even the hot-shot lasguns of elite Tempestus commandos, capable of punching through ceramite. Many Kantraels, too… but in the wrong colors. The young soldier wanted to scream in frustration as the first hour ticked by, then the second. If he could only find the bodies of fellow Valhallans. But the battlefield was vast and dark, and he was not even sure of the direction he was heading.

Still he kept walking. Once in a while he pilfered something from a corpse to pay back Sofia. A pack of lho-sticks or two. A vial of dreamkillers. A pair of night vision goggles that he promptly put on. An ornate dagger that looked like a trophy from another war. A medi-kit. A couple of gold teeth. Medals from many worlds and many battles. A deck of playing cards with lewd pictures instead of kings and queens. A bone flute. Before long, Niko had to commandeer a backpack to carry his burden. His guilt at robbing corpses gave way to greed. Truth to be told, he would still rather steal from Orks than men, but they carried nothing worthwhile. Just big, ugly guns and big, ugly blades to match their big, ugly owners.

Speaking of Orks, they were still out there. Niko could hear the ra-ta-ta of their crude machine guns in the distance, punctuated by flashes of light from returning lasgun fire. It was a long way off, but it kept him on his guard, eyes darting left and right whenever he imagined movement or sound. He almost jumped out of his skin when someone whistled at him. He spun frantically towards the noise, reaching for a gun that he did not have.

A trio of soldiers in Cadian uniforms emerged from behind the wreckage of a huge Ork walker. Though armed to the teeth, all held their hands up in a gesture of peace as they approached. The man leading the group flashed Niko an easy grin.

“You got anything to trade in that backpack?” he inquired, in the same tone one might ask for a smoke.

Niko blinked. “Come again?” he squeaked out.

The Cadian’s eyebrows went up. “You’re here to scavenge, aren’t you? That’s why we’re here, anyway.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at his own bulging backpack.

“I… uh… I’m just looking for a lasgun.”

“A lasgun? Are you joking?”

“Well… not just any lasgun. A grey Kantrael like the one I lost. Or they’ll shoot me.”

One of the Cadians — a woman — snorted. “Valhallans.”

Niko bristled. “What about Valhallans?”

“Your officers shoot you for looking at ‘em funny. That’s the deal with you Valhallans.”

Niko could not deny that, but still felt offended by her tone, as if he found some kind of twisted pride in the harsh treatment he and his compatriots endured. “What about you Cadians?” he snapped. “Your officers just let you stroll out and loot corpses?”

“Not officially,” said the man with a smirk. “Got to grease the right palms. There are many of us out there, from every army… Would you believe we met a whole party of Valhallan scavengers an hour ago? You’re a fool if you think your people are more scrupulous than ours.”

The third Cadian cleared his throat and spoke for the first time. “Time’s a-wasting, and Orks are a-roaming. Got anything to trade, boy? We have dreamkillers, booze, a power sword…”

“A grey Kantrael?” Niko interrupted, though he already knew the answer.

“Nope.”

“Then you have nothing I want.”

“We can tell you where to find Kantraels,” the leader chimed in. “For a small price. Just… a token of good will.”

Grumbling under his breath, Niko rummaged in his backpack, found a pack of lho-sticks and threw it at the Cadian, who deftly caught it and smiled.

“Whole bunch of Valhallan corpses about fifteen minutes’ walk this way,” he said, pointing the direction his group had come. “You should find the gun you’re looking for. Careful, eh? Not all Orks on the ground are quite dead.”

“Thank you.”

When Niko passed the Cadians by, the woman caught him by the arm and gave him a serious look. “Hey, lad. If you ever get tired of the Valhallan way, join the Cadians. Better gear, better food, and better odds. Just find a Cadian uniform your size and come to our camp. Lots of your people have gone Cadian since this campaign began. Our officers aren’t fooled, but they don’t mind. More manpower for them.”

Niko paused. That was definitely something to think about. “We’ll see,” he said. “Tonight I’ll be happy if I find a lasgun.”

The woman shrugged and let go of his arm. Niko forged ahead.




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The area the Cadian leader had mentioned was hard to miss. It was a large, zigzagging trench, much more heavily manned and fortified than the one where the Eleventh Platoon had made its last stand. A veritable tide of Orks had crashed there against the Valhallan defenders. Corpses from both races were massed there in such numbers that Niko could hardly see the color of the mud underneath. Some of the human bodies were shot up or lacerated. Others, more or less intact, had the contorted faces and bulging eyes of gas victims. Slain by their own side as they desperately fought for their lives against the other side.

They had Kantraels. Thank the Emperor.

Niko grabbed the nearest gun from the hands of a dead man. Its familiar weight and balance, its smooth surfaces, its cold steel barrel were a comfort to him. He peered at the stock of the weapon. Kill notches on the inner side; a custom carving of a naked lady on the outer side. He tsked in distaste. He looked at another gun. A poorly drawn image of a human skull. Niko set it aside too. Funny. An hour ago he would have wept at the sight of a grey Kantrael, but now that he was surrounded by them, he became picky. After some searching, he found one with a smooth, good-as-new stock. Not even the traditional phony kill notches. Perfect. When he felt ready, Niko would get to make his own design on this blank canvas. And he vowed not to carve a single notch until he made a proper, unquestionable kill.

He sat down on an Ork corpse to rest his tired legs and looked down at the dead man whose gun he had taken. No, not a man; a boy. He looked even younger than Niko. He lay on his back with a horrendous gut wound. His wide blue eyes stared up at the starless sky. Niko solemnly reached out and closed the boy’s eyelids. Exhaustion settled in his bones. He lit a stolen lho-stick, and was halfway through it when he began to nod off.

He jolted awake.

Had the dead Ork just stirred under him?

Niko sprang to his feet and drew back a few steps until he tripped and fell. When he stood, he saw it for sure; the Ork’s massive four-fingered hand was twitching. Panic gaining him, he pointed his new lasgun at the beast and squeezed the trigger. Nothing. Was the safety off? Yes. Out of ammunition, then. With a cry of desperation, Niko ran headlong towards the Ork and jammed the bayonet deep into its prone body. And again. And again. He made no attempt to aim for vital organs, not that he knew much about xeno anatomy in any case. He just stabbed. And then the Ork’s arm moved, faster than an Ork had any right to move. The huge green hand smacked the lasgun from below, slamming the barrel into Niko’s face. The Valhallan reeled and spat out a broken tooth. The coppery taste of blood filled his mouth. He gracelessly crab-walked away from the monster, only just managing to hold onto his weapon. Slowly, the Ork rose to its full height; nearly seven feet. Its green flesh was a lacerated ruin. Its red eyes focused on Niko and narrowed into slits. With a single hand, it clutched an axe that a human might find hard to lift with both. It opened its mouth wide.

“WAAAAAAAGH!” it roared, and Niko could swear he could felt the spittle from ten paces away.

The Ork moved towards him at a shuffling gait. Its breath was a hiss, like a slowly deflating balloon. It was slow. Perhaps it was still groggy from the gas, or perhaps it was dying from its wounds. Yet it kept coming. Niko scrambled to his feet and tried to run, but stumbled on a corpse, then another. On his third fall, he nearly knocked his head against exactly what he needed. A lasgun charge pack. As soon as his fingers closed around the small plasteel box, his training took over. His hands were a blur of movement as he reloaded his gun. The last click of the charge pack being locked into place was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. He lay on his side facing his opponent, took a split second to aim, and fired. The first beam took the Ork in the shoulder; it might as well have hit a brick wall. The second went through its heart, or where the heart of a humanoid should be. The beast barely noticed. Now it loomed over Niko. The third beam caught the Ork right under the jaw and blew out the top of its skull. The most perfect shot Niko had ever performed or witnessed. The Ork raised its axe to strike…

Impossible!

…and then it began to crumple forward, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Niko rolled out of the way in the nick of time, catching a faceful of mud. The fallen Ork bore a confused expression on its brutish face, as if still struggling to grasp the concept of its own death.

One, thought Niko, his heart thumping in his ears as he rose unsteadily to his feet. One confirmed kill. No one could claim this kill but him.

With a trembling hand, he drew his combat knife and carved a small notch in the stock of his lasgun. Near the back, to leave room for many more. He glanced at his compass and began the long walk back to his camp.




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Commander Velinsky was older than the late Markhov, with a full head of iron-grey hair and a once-athletic frame that was turning to fat. His voice was softer than his predecessor’s and always carried a hint of weary impatience, as if a lifetime of yelling had tired him out. No flexing the muscles of his authority, no grandstanding, no pointless bullying of his new soldiers as he inspected their ranks. He was all business, and his business was the battles to come.

“The Sixth, the Eleventh and the Thirteenth are no more,” he announced to the remnants of those three platoons. “From now on, the lot of you make up the Seventeenth and will be serving under my direct command. You’ll get your unit badges tomorrow, if you survive today.”

A dejected sigh rippled through the ranks, soft as a breeze. Of course they were being sent back to battle today. All had been expecting it, but some had dared to hope otherwise. Especially Niko, who had only gotten another hour of sleep since returning to camp.

“You,” said Velinsky, pointing at the blond lad right next to Niko. “Where is your lasgun?”

The weaponless soldier froze like a rabbit under the officer’s stare. “I — uh — I don’t have it anymore, sir. I dropped it when they airlifted my squad.”

Niko winced.

“Then why are you even standing here?” snorted Velinsky. “Go to the supply tent. Ask for a gun. And for the love of the Emperor, don’t lose this one. Damn things don’t grow on trees.”

The lad nodded frantically, saluted and retreated.

The commander addressed the rest: “Breakfast time. Half an hour. I want everyone ready to board the transports at eight sharp. Move, soldiers.”

“Aye, sir!” shouted eighty voices in unison.

When the ranks broke, Niko looked for Sofia. He found her engaged in rapid haggling with four other soldiers over some of the loot Niko had brought back from his nighttime incursion. The smile on her lips died when she met his icy glare. She wrapped up her sales quickly, lit a lho-stick and turned to face him with a look of feigned innocence that was perhaps a trifle overdone.

“They don’t actually shoot people for losing lasguns, do they?” Niko said coolly.

Sofia’s mouth opened and closed. She took a drag from her lho-stick. To Niko, she looked like she was trying to think up some lie or excuse but gave up. “I think it’s only a rumor they like to spread,” she admitted at last. “Always seems to happen to the friend of a friend of a friend.”

“You told me it happened to someone you knew.”

“Did I?”

Niko gritted his teeth. “You’re the one who encouraged me to go out there. You just wanted to get loot from the battlefield without risking your own neck.”

Sofia did not try to deny it. “Want a twenty-five percent cut?” she offered with a sheepish grin.

He considered it. “Forty.”

“Deal.”

“I’ll start with this.” He snatched the lho-stick from her fingers and put it in his mouth. Outrage flashed in her eyes, but she did not protest. “Be honest with me from now on,” he said. “Oh, and next time I’m the only one putting my life on the line, I’ll want a bigger cut.”

Some dreamkillers and lho-sticks exchanged hands. When Niko turned away to get breakfast, Sofia called after him: “Hey! You kill something last night?”

He stopped and looked over his shoulder. “What? Uh…”

“There’s a kill notch on your lasgun.”

Niko was glad in spite of himself that she had noticed, but tried to sound dismissive. “Oh, that? Everyone’s got a bunch of them.”

“Yeah, but they all lie. Who’d lie about having just one kill? Figured this one was for real.”

“It is.” He still had a throbbing pain in his mouth from his broken tooth. “I had quite a night. I can tell you the details over breakfast.”

“I’d like that.”

Breakfast was, as usual, a watery gruel with a moldy smell and mysterious black lumps that could be anything from dead maggots to rat feces. Even starved as he was, Niko found he did not have the stomach for more than a couple of spoonfuls. He and Sofia shared a long-suffering look. He was willing to bet the trio of soldiers from last night were feasting on buttered bread and sausages at this very moment.

“Hey, Sofia,” he sighed, “do you think the Cadian uniform would suit you?”





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This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2017/03/31 04:21:17


Cadians, Sisters of Battle (Argent Shroud), Drukhari (Obsidian Rose)

Read my Drukhari short stories: Chronicles of Commorragh 
   
Made in ca
Heroic Senior Officer





Krieg! What a hole...

Nice stuff, but... Baneblade was released in 2013, while the Baneblade itself was released in... I have no idea, but its in Dawn of War Winter Assault, which came out in 2005

Member of 40k Montreal There is only war in Montreal
Primarchs are a mistake
DKoK Blog:http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/419263.page Have a look, I guarantee you will not see greyer armies, EVER! Now with at least 4 shades of grey

Savageconvoy wrote:
Snookie gives birth to Heavy Gun drone squad. Someone says they are overpowered. World ends.

 
   
Made in gb
Liberated Grot Land Raida






Northern Ireland

Great story. Incredibly low stakes never read so well.
Its always good to appreciate the little things. The humble guardsman may be a nobody but at the end of the day its his life on the line. Its all he's got.
Lots of nice twists and turns going on here too. Thanks for sharing, I really enjoyed it.

   
 
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