Hais, the adjutant, was dead. Of the reconnaissance squad that had gone with him, only one man had returned alive.
Captain Rocky walked through the hastily erected command post. His soldiers had worked quickly, digging a ring-shaped defensive position around the rift in just a few days. They had even felled large numbers of trees to reinforce the trenches and bunkers.
The soldiers cleared the woodland until there was no obvious cover within five hundred meters of the position.
They had also made firing stakes from wood to help the mortar teams determine their bearings.
Yet even these defenses could not reassure Captain Rocky, because the soldier who had escaped had described how effortlessly that enormous ice worm had slaughtered the reconnaissance squad.
An army of skeletons, giant worms capable of wielding weapons and casting spells...
Just how many secrets did this planet hold?
Captain Rocky sighed. Then he saw flocks of birds taking flight from the forest, while thunderous footsteps came crashing through the trees toward the position.
"All personnel, on alert!"
Captain Rocky roared. The soldiers immediately dropped behind the trench walls and aimed their weapons into the distance. The autocannons and heavy bolter teams hidden in concealed positions also readied themselves, silently reciting, Long live the Emperor, to steel their hearts.
"They're here!" A scout spotted the enemy through his binoculars. It was a vast mass of undead reduced to bare bones, clad in rotting rags and clutching rusted, broken scraps of metal.
These undead were not powerful. Even a farmer armed with a pitchfork could knock down three or five of them. Their strength lay in their sheer numbers; the portable auspex display was nearly drowned beneath red dots.
"For the Emperor! Kill every one of these unclean things!" Captain Rocky roared. In this age without