The shell dropped straight down. Its surface was coated in a filthy black glow; the traitors had clearly tampered with it somehow. Stedric watched helplessly as it fell in front of the trench. He did not think—or rather, he had no time to think.
Some instinct made him instantly hug the Lasgun in his arms tight and throw himself flat.
Dust billowed up, and a violent shockwave rolled through him. He tasted a rush of blood in his mouth, most likely from his teeth cutting the inside of it. The blast made his organs ache, and his right ribs hurt with a stabbing pain from landing on a stone. His hearing had blurred too; the tremendous roar left him temporarily unable to hear anything at all.
But now was not the time to worry about pain or the state of his body. On the front line, if you did not die immediately, you had to keep fighting.
The corporal gritted his teeth and climbed out of the mud. He slapped the dirt off the barrel of his M35 Lasgun, and his still-scattered vision quickly locked onto a great black mass of traitors charging toward them.
Every one of their foreheads was carved with Chaos's eight-pointed star. The blasphemous symbol made his stomach spasm. They rushed forward in excitement, not even carrying weapons; some of them were even waving human legs and hands they had picked up from who knew where.
He braced the Lasgun against his shoulder and pulled the trigger. The old companion in his hands, on which his life depended, faithfully repaid the careful maintenance he had given it all this time. He saw a beam strike a traitor in the upper body. The wound instantly vaporized, and a horrifying hole appeared in his chest.
The naked traitor