Chương 64: Volume Two - Chapter Two - Squire Sylvia Nekoton

There were plenty of things she hated, but amongst all of those, Orks rated near the top. When Sylvia was sixteen, she joined the Planetary Guard. That was complicated somewhat by her position as a member of branch house Nekoton, but she was obstinate and believed that it was her duty to fight on the front, to help save the citizens of the Imperium against the growing threat rushing their way. If she could, she'd cuff her younger self behind the head.

There were strict rules designed to prevent mistreatment within the Imperial Guard, but those were relaxed in a planetary guard unit. And the rules didn't always protect young abhumans. Her first year in the planetary guard had been torture. Then she was deployed not too far from where she was now. Her task was to point a lasrifle at the incoming horde of orks and plink away at them. Half of her unit had died within a month. The next three years after the siege of 983 were less painful.

She went back home with a medal pinned on her lapel and some amount of knowledge under her belt. She'd still been damned young, and damned stupid. Still, her work had been honourable, and the pay was... enough that even her family found it decent. She took on some extra duties, did another tour in the north which mostly had her waiting around and being so bored she had taken up smoking to pass the time, and was then promoted to sergeant. Then the siege of 988. That one passed easily.

Her position was far from the front. Sure, she was a sergeant, but she was all of twenty-one. She commanded a squad that was mostly tasked with defending logistical convoys to the front, and honestly, that siege wasn't all that bad compared to some. She had three years of education at a schola. A bit of nepotism on the family's part. Sure, she was a child of the branch family, not someone who would ever be too impressive, but... Why not?

It would honour their little house more to have a lieutenant as a daughter than a mere sergeant. Then the siege of 993. She wasn't done with her education. The front changed that. A field promotion after a command centre was crushed under a stompa's tread. Promoted at twenty-six wasn't beating any records. It wasn't a good place to be, either. The first platoon she led was, slowly, lost to a man. The rate of attrition only grew worse over time as the siege went on for six months longer than expected.

When it ended, she was... not the same woman she had been before. Her right eye was long gone. Taken out by friendly artillery, of all things. She was in a medicae's bed when the siege broke and the orks were finally put down. So, she tried to retire from the front, but war was in her blood, in her dreams. She'd wake up shouting to fix bayonets, and had to sleep with a primed laspistol under her pillow and with a knife by the bed. Her family didn't approve of her desire. The head of the family even less so.

So, she was pushed towards a different career. Or at least, the beginnings of it. A squire of the House Nekoton. She was outfitted with a MIU that was three generations old and which made her neck twitch. They didn't have the fancy training capabilities of a big, proper Knight House like the Krast. Instead they had old simulators and the carcass of an armiger, strung up in a warehouse where she could get used to the controls. It wasn't all bad.

The long hours of reading were soothing, and she found that she liked the idea of one day being a knight. She also knew that it would never happen. House Nekoton had three knights to its name. The venerable Knight Castellan, The Eternal Pride, and a pair of old armigers. They had three pilots and six other squires, and the chances of them obtaining a new knight were nil. Then this year started. 999.

She was currently thirty-two, and had been reinstated as a Lieutenant, though she kept the rank of Squire because her family's honour required it. The orks didn't care about rank. That was the problem with orks. They didn't go down. About a thousand years ago, some fat fucking rock filled with orks had slipped into the system from the deepest pits of the warp and then it careened into Chrysis. Ever since then, they had become a recurring issue. It was almost something they could set their clocks to.

The sun rose, the tithe came, and every five years, the orks would rise up as a green tide, building scrap machines that they'd use to cross the deserts around their largest hive cities. The defensive fields were grand and extensive. Generations of trenches. The orks would run them over eventually. Only the last siege should have been the year prior. It was strange for the orks to be late. Some took hope in that. That hope proved to be a trap. This army was different. Not only larger, but better organized, smarter.

For some reason, command refused to believe it. So far, their defence was successful, but she wasn't sure how long that would last for. Sylvia was roused from her ruminating when she heard the all-too-familiar sound of boots thumping on muddy wooden boards. Chrysis was a desert world now. It had pockets of old arboreal forests, and a few spaces had woods that were regrowing and vibrant swamps and jungles, but after what the traitors did over ten thousand years ago, the world was turned from a jungle to a desert.

That didn't mean that it forgot its rain. Sylvia reached up, touching and pushing the auspex clamped to her face a little deeper in, so that it didn't pinch as much. Then she turned her attention to the side. The door into the bunker was opened with a squeak and three men stomped in. They were dressed in the beige and off-whites most common among Chrysis' planetary guard. Their shoulder armour had 54th in crisp painted numerals. About the only thing on them that was still describable as crisp.

All three saluted, and she dismissed it with a wave.

"What's going on?" she asked. Her bionic clicked as it locked in on the one she knew would speak first. Sergeant Hank Morgan was her senior-most NCO. He didn't like her much, and it was mutual, but the man was competent and she was trying very hard to be the same, so there was no hatred between them.

"Same as always," Morgan said.

"We have a force incoming on our long-range auspex. Riders again."

"Numbers?" she asked.

"Sixty, more or less," Morgan replied. She reached up and rubbed at her chin.

"Just that?"

"Looks like it. They'll be around in about an hour." Sylvia sighed.

"Have the 54th on the foremost... no, secondmost trench. Ask one of the auspex readers to check our fire. Extra rations to the squad that gets the most hits on target."

"Heh," said Carlsen. He was a shorter fellow, usually good for a laugh. A bit immature, in her opinion, and he was a little insubordinate, but his squad loved him, and he was good at relieving tension. She'd picked up the trick of turning some parts of war into a game from him. It kept morale relatively high. Most of this war, so far, was all about sitting in a muddy trench while it rained onto their heads, and working to keep their boots dry and their lasrifles unclogged. And yet, every day, the orks came.

They sent a wave of riders ahead, all of them on the backs of these huge squigs. There were records of orks from the past who favoured a nomadic lifestyle and who used squigs extensively. They were bigger and tougher than average, but also a little technologically behind. Insofar as that applied to an ork. This was different. These orks were big and tough, as they usually were, but they were more sophisticated as well. They rode in formation, and had shields to deflect lasfire.

They would return fire with their crude guns and even the little gretchen clinging onto them would fire out with pistols and smaller arms. Then they'd come close to the front, wheel around, and rush off back to the main ork camps several dozen kilometres away. The tactic didn't make sense to her. It felt like they were probing the front lines, and that may have been the case since they never approached the exact same section of the trenches.

She wished she had a way to easily vox the other lieutenants down the line and ask them if the other ork camps were acting the same way, but that may have been read as insubordination.

"I need a walk," she said as she moved towards the door.

"With me?" It was coached as a question, but wasn't one. She picked up her sword from where it was leaning next to the bunker door and fixed it to her belt. Her laspistol was hanging off her other hip. She made sure to fix her cap on as well, even if it pressed her ears in and made everything sound a little muffled. Better than that water in her ears again. Stepping out of her bunker, she started to walk down the trench. The men and women of the 54th were lingering around.

Some of them were trying to look busy, but for the most part there was little to do.

"If I catch you with that again Carlsen, I'm placing you on the cleanup crews," she warned a soldier who quickly tucked the bottle of amasec he'd been holding into a sac. She didn't need drunkards on her line. Though she understood the desire for a good drink. Reaching into her coat, she pulled out a pack of lho sticks and placed one between her lips. She lit it the moment she was in one of those small tunnels designed to let knights and tanks drive across the trenches.

It was a busy place, even if the added depth meant that the floor was soggier than usual. At least there was a hint of a ceiling here. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. She continued on, navigating the maze like it was second nature. It was midday. Something she only knew thanks to her chrono. The constant grey skies made telling time something of an art, and it was one she wasn't great at. Moving up, she came to the very foremost trench.

There were old concrete steps here. Something probably added a generation ago. They let soldiers walk up the steep walls so that they were able to have their entire chest-up level with the ground. From there, she could see the battlefield. It was kilometres of turned soil and craters. Some were positively ancient. The ground here refused to grow anything. Even weeds refused to plant themselves where a thousand years of shelling had contaminated the soil.

At the moment there was a crew in a modified Leman Russ tugging a lump of scrap across the field, bringing it back to the rear. The remains of some orkish contraption. So far, their losses were very minimal. A few unlucky guardsmen had taken shots to the dome, but otherwise, the orks weren't pushing hard. It didn't make sense to her.

"Do we have any reports about their camps?" she asked MacDonald. The man was thin and reedy. A sergeant promoted from vox-operator. One of her best, really. If he wasn't so shy he'd have made a good lieutenant, and she had already drafted and sent a letter of recommendation for him.

"Ah, yes ma'am," he replied before adjusting his spectacles.

"Aeronautica made a high-pass scouting trip over the camps late last night. We got the disseminated report a few hours ago." He reached to his side and pulled out a dataslate. She looked it over, frowning. The numbers were... concerning. There were a good twenty to thirty percent more orks out there than the last siege six years ago. More concerning was the mention of tarps covering much of the rear of the camp, and the presence of additional air-forces on the orks' side. What was going on out there?

It wasn't like them to camp for more than a day or two. It was approaching a month now. Sure, that let the planetary guard recruit and train more, and supplies were better than she ever remembered them being, but... She raised her head, ears perking up beneath her cap. There was a familiar thumping coming from off to the east. She glanced that way, then sighed. Three knights were moving along the outside of the trenches, stomping along flattened ground.

At the head of the formation were two smaller knights, Armigers. The Black Paw and Declawed. Behind them was the family's pride, literally. The Eternal Pride was an ancient Knight Castellan. It stomped forwards ponderously, slowly. Still, with the size of its legs, that covered much ground. Her station here was on their account. The family had pulled some of the few strings they had left to ensure that as many of them were on the same part of the battlefield as possible.

They weren't the only knights around, of course. House Galloway was just off to their immediate west, with their own ground to cover. She glanced that way. The Galloways were a bigger house, with significantly more prestige. She could see the distant form of one of their Questoris-pattern knights climbing up onto a platform behind the trenchlines. Knight support had been light so far. There was... something going on in the hive city, and the houses were all bickering. Another problem, really.

Of all times, now wasn't a good moment to start more noble in-fighting. They needed everyone working together.

"Look at that," Morgan said. He had a pair of binoculars up and was squinting through them.

"Enemy on approach, way off in the distance. Looks like... hmm, forty-odd squighogs, and a few vehicles with them. Smaller ones." She refocused and touched the side of her bionic eye while shutting her organic one. The zoom was atrocious, but it was enough to pick out some of the distant targets. Morgan was right. The usual number of riders with half as many small vehicles. They had guns... all over. Pretty typical for an ork vehicle, really.

"Too few for a proper push," she said. They'd be coming with a lot more, transports and flyers and a tide of rushing infantry when the real push came.

"Sergeant MacDonald, can you Vox area command, let them know that we could use some anti-vehicle support here?"

"Ah, um, yes ma'am," MacDonald said. She grunted, then waited while listening in to one side of the vox-conversation.

"No good, ma'am," MacDonald said.

"But they will let the knights know." A few dozen metres away, the Eternal Pride came to a slow stop. Its massive head turned, scanning the trenches, and she swore she could feel the ancient machine's attention on her before it turned and focused outwards. One day, maybe, she'd be able to pilot one of those. Not any day soon, however. Not without a lot of losses in the family, and maybe a lot of gains. Her house was... not in a position to win much, honestly.

Maybe it was for the best that she focus on her career in the Planetary Guard? She could make captain if this siege went well, or poorly. Then maybe Major one day. Joining the Imperial Guard was an option as well, but they were even less kind to abhumans than the planetary guard was. Her ears twitched as the Eternal Pride shifted its massive feet and positioned itself to face the enemy. House Nekoton didn't have many munitions to spare. The support the knight could provide would be minimal.

But the sight of it was maybe enough.

"Double rations for anyone that can take out an ork vehicle," she said.

"Hah! Sounds good to me," Morrison said.

"I'll get everyone lined up." She nodded, dismissing him. Then Morgan was off as well. Carlsen stayed, as her vox-operator, in case there was a need for it. She was going to move back as well, but the enemy was still way, way out. They wouldn't be here for a while.

"What a shit day," she muttered as she looked up and let the rain of Chrysis wash down her face.

"It's not so bad, ma'am," Carlsen said. She sniffed, then looked back down.

"I suppose. Could be worse." Just then, Carlsen's vox hissed. She recognized the tone. That was an unsecured message, sent across multiple channels. Carlsen flicked it on, and the speaker attached to his chest spoke.

"To all who would ally themselves with the usurper... we wish you nothing but death, loss, and destruction. The Houses of this world will rise. We will not be held back anymore. The Emperor's Will is that we reach out and capture the stars themselves, securing glory eternal for the Imperium and for Man!"

"What is this drivel?" she muttered. She reached into her coat and pulled out a lighter, flicking it on to illuminate the tip of her lho-stick. The small embers at the end burned brighter as she took a pull. Another succession war? Or no, maybe some of the houses were rebelling against House Krast, again? It occurred once every century or two. Her house had always stood with Krast. Only in the last civil... dispute did they not, choosing instead to stand aside. That had cost them.

Better to lose as a loyal ally than be discovered to be a timid friend. Not her business, in any case.

"--And those of you who have decided to take the coward's route. We shall suffer not the fickle. Houses who stand for nothing will not stand at all." She felt all of the many fine hairs across her body perking up. It wasn't too dissimilar to what she felt when standing next to a loaded plasma rifle. Turning, she glanced back, then dropped her lho-stick as the House Galloway Questoris fired one of its primary guns.

A beam of actinic light speared across the sky above her, then crashed into something on the front with a deafening boom. A few seconds later, the Questoris fired again. Two shorter bursts. Sylvia ducked, then spun and looked ahead. The Eternal Pride was slumping over to one side. It was bleeding smoke and fire even as it crashed down with enough force that even the reinforced trenches shook from the blow.

A reactor detonated, scarring her vision with bright light a moment before she was thrown back, and away from the edge of the trench and into the mud below. She coughed as she landed. What the hell had that been? Her mind split. First, the obvious. This was the opening blow of something bigger. A fresh civil war. And it seemed like one side was more than willing to play hard to win. There was a very real chance that they'd go further than just taking out some knights.

Or maybe they'd know better than to attack the Planetary Guard at a time when they were actively protecting the city from orks. Second, the orks would have seen this betrayal. The three knights at the front were part of their main defence against the incoming scouts, but also against anything bigger the orks might send their way. Without them, they weren't a fierce, capable foe. They were injured prey, waiting for the butcher's cleaver.