Ashes in the mud

The trenches yawned open, scars across Molech's broken face. Deep, choking. Elara Vorenn, cadet commissar, stood with her men, mud sucking at their boots. It was a stew of muck and blood, wanting to swallow them whole. A taste of war's cost, thick and heavy. Rain hammered down, relentless, soaking through their layers, turning the ground to red-tinged streams that snaked between leather. Days bled into each other, endless fighting. The field was a swamp of death now, hope drowned out.

The cadet commissars had joined the Imperial Guard's ranks. A clumsy fit. More whispers than cheers greeted them. Old Guard eyes didn't trust commissars, least of all green cadets untested in blood. They knew what it meant: hawk-eyed watch, iron discipline, and the ever-present shadow of a summary execution for the faint of heart. Elara and her lot didn't give a damn for respect or sympathy. Their job was simple: loyalty, order, no matter the price. That was their creed.

Hedek, a man weathered by a thousand skirmishes, watched the cadets from his perch above the trench. Rain lashed down, but his face was granite. No excuses, no failures. Hedek measured every decision Elara and the others made, his silence as heavy as the sucking mud. Words came seldom, but when they did, they landed like shrapnel. Today, his eyes, cold steel in the grey, assessed. Would these boys prove worthy of the titles stitched on their chests? He waited, watching, judging.

"Heard anything, Kael?" Jaxon asked, his voice tight against the damp chill that soaked through even the stiff grey uniform. He tugged at the collar, a futile gesture against the bone-deep cold.

Kael's face, pale as bone, eyes sunk deep from sleepless nights, shook. A negative. Just a shake. No words needed.

"Nothing new," he muttered, the words flat and worn like a well-trodden path. But silence, it chafed him. Didn't like it. Never lasted.

Elara watched the necrons rise on the horizon. Rows of them, metal skeletons against the bruised sky. Monuments to nothing but death. They didn't move, not a flicker. Just stood there, perfect in their inhumanity, rain slicking their surfaces. Green eyes glowed, slits in the gloom, like blades cutting through the wet dark. Machines? No. Something more. A coldness in their stillness, a purpose beyond smashing and breaking. The storm was nothing to them. They knew no weariness, no fear, no hesitation. Just that knowing. It sat heavy in Elara's gut, a stone lodged there.

The Imperial Guard company they'd been saddled with felt it too, the same bone-deep chill. Green uniforms hung loose on gaunt faces, etched not just by fatigue but by a distrust for those cadet commissars. One slip, one flicker of fear, and the punishment would be swift. Still, their eyes kept drifting to the Necrons. It wasn't just the rain pressing down; it was the knowing. This wouldn't be a fight. It would be a meeting with oblivion.

The sky was a bruised black, heavy as lead, ready to split. Rain hammered down, relentless. The ground, mud now, sucked at their boots with every step. A sloshing rhythm, boots and dripping coats, punctuated by the rumble of thunder far off. A bad symphony played all around them.

"Hedek," the cadet's voice cut through the rain-lashed night, sharp as a blade. Datapad glowing in his numb fingers, he looked up, face pale under the harsh light. "Necron shit's moving. Five minutes tops." The words hung heavy, a hammer blow against the silence.

Hedek turned his head, slow and deliberate, towards the cadet. Eyes half-closed, granite-set. He didn't wear emotions like a coat. But there was something in that look, a stillness, a knowing. The look of a man who'd stared into the belly of war and crawled back out.

"Lasers ready," he said, voice low, a growl cutting through the rain's drumming. "No retreat. This muck won't be our grave."

Elara's grip tightened on the laser pistol, its cold biting through her soaked gloves. Familiar weight, a small solace in the maelstrom. Around her, the other cadet-marshals moved like shadows, obeying Hedek's commands without question. A flicker of doubt, a tremor of fear, meant not just their end, but the company's. Death for all, swift and silent.