Pascal Hive City
Lower industrial district
Temporary quarters of the 103rd "Skulls" Regiment
General Sechter might never understand that what sustained this "Skull" regiment, allowing it to rise again and again from a hell of five hundred percent casualties and keep fighting, was not merely cold military discipline or fear of death.
Some things grew in deeper soil, abandoned by civilized society.
The Chimera armored transport carrying Warren, its paintwork mottled and peeling, rolled through the filthy streets of the hive city's lower industrial district, where unidentified oily sludge flowed, and stopped in an area temporarily designated as the "Skulls" Regiment's quarters.
It had once been the abandoned loading platform of a medium-sized component foundry. Thick, uneven alloy plates covered the ground, surrounded by tall, blackened factory walls with shattered windows.
The air smelled of rust, coolant, and a faint scorched stench drifting from a distant waste incinerator.
In stark contrast to these dilapidated surroundings stood the thousands of soldiers gathered on the platform, and an atmosphere so charged it verged on fanaticism.
A military chaplain clad in bloodstained vestments stood on a raised platform built from discarded wooden crates and metal parts, holding a staff inlaid with a crude icon of the Emperor and the planetary Insignia of Colchis.
"Who are we?!" The chaplain brandished his staff, pointing toward the crowd.
"We are the Emperor's wrath! The sword of the Lord of Colchis!" Hundreds of voices erupted from below in a ragged but extraordinarily loud roar.
Those answering were the "scum," "thugs," and "lost causes" who, not long ago, might have been stabbing one another over a mouthful of synthetic slop in the hive city's Underhive, raiding caravans on wilderness worlds, or rotting in prison for all manner of serious crimes.
"Where did we come from?!" the chaplain cried