Not This Way

Arun gazed down at the lasrifle on his lap, running his fingers across it slowly. He knew every inch of the weapon, every chip and scratch, with a clarity born of long familiarity. He could probably pick his weapon from a pile of similar lasrifles in complete darkness by using touch alone. His grip tightened around the stock, and for a long moment he fought back the urge to hurl it out of the Valkyrie's open hatch. He sighed.

"It wasn't supposed to be this way."

He waited, but only the howl of the wind rampaging through the Valkyrie's passenger compartment, snatching at his grey, shoulder-length hair and scouring the moisture from his eyeballs, answered him. Arun looked up and studied the other occupants of the compartment. Some stared down at the floor, others were busying themselves adjusting the equipment they were carrying, or fiddling with their weapons. Make-work, to stop themselves thinking. At the far end of the cramped space Dane was wincing as the medic wrapped a bandage around the livid wound on his bicep. Sweat was trickling down his face, his jaws clamped tight on a dirty rag to keep himself from crying out.

"It wasn't supposed to be this way," Arun repeated, and this time a few of the others glanced up. They looked at him with a mixture of irritation and shared empathy in their eyes.

"We heard you the first time," Baxter grunted. No sympathy in his gaze, only grim acceptance. But then he had never truly believed it was over. Only in death does duty end. He had said that more than once after a few too many pints of home-brew, but the words had rung hollow even then. Baxter hadn't believed that. He had simply been too cynical to accept that the Emperor was done with them, that their time to rest had finally come.

Of course, he had been right.

"We were done. We had served our time. It was....."

"Will you shut up?" That was Fenlon. He slammed the stock of his lasrifle against the floor, the clang of the impact snatched away almost immediately by the relentless wind. A couple of the others muttered something, perhaps trying to calm him down, but he ignored them.

"I mean, seriously, enough. You think we don't know? That we don't realise that we were supposed to have been finished? We know, Arun. We all frakking know. Just one problem though. Nobody told them." He pointed, his fingers quivering slightly, in the direction of the open hatch and the devastated ground beneath it.

"Maybe you should have mentioned it to them, Arun. Maybe they would have just gone away. I'm sure they would have been real sympathetic. Because the galaxy really gives a crap about you, and your dreams of a quiet retirement, and....."

"Enough." Fenlon opened his mouth to protest but Baxter glared at him, and after a few seconds he looked away. Nobody spoke for the next few minutes, each man lost in his own thoughts. The medic finished treating Dane's wound and sat back down in his seat, pulling the safety harness around his protruding stomach with some difficulty. Dane was still sweating, and Arun wondered idly if some of the enemy's poisons had got inside him. Hopefully the drug cocktail the medic had given him would stop them, otherwise Dane probably wouldn't survive another day. The others knew it too; Arun could tell from the way they carefully avoided looking at the wounded man.

The Valkyrie banked slightly to avoid a column of black smoke ascending rapidly into the sky. Something large was burning down below. From the stench in the air, Arun guessed it was a promethium refinery, which meant they were probably over Carterville. If the enemy had already made it this far, they would reach the capital in a day. They were inhumanly swift.

The sergeant stepped into the passenger compartment from the cockpit, large hands wrapped around the grab-handles set into the ceiling. "We'll be at the muster point in forty minutes, lads."

Arun's lips twitched despite himself. Lads. That word hadn't been appropriate in a long time, but force of habit die hard as far as the sarge was concerned.

"There's a large force assembling there, a big armour column too. Apparently there's even a frakking Baneblade. We'll be heading out pretty much as soon as we land, and we'll drive this scum off our world once and for all. They won't know what's hit them!"

He paused as if expecting a response, but none of them said a word. Most barely even looked at him. Arun saw a brief look of frustration on his face, which rapidly gave way to weary acceptance. The sarge knew what they were going through. How could he not? They had all shared the same dream.

"Close the damn hatch," he snapped, and went back into the cockpit. Arun leaned over and pulled the lever. In the distance he could see lights in the sky, hundreds of them, each descending rapidly towards the ground trailing smoke and fire. The fighting to come would be hard.

He was so tired.

The hatch slid shut.