"Pah! Pah, pah, pah!"
In an underground fortress somewhere on Olympia, Ding Xiu, a Loyalist Faction Company Captain of the White Scars, huddled behind cover and spat out mouthfuls of dirt.
A recent barrage of near misses had shaken a mass of dust and rubble loose from the ceiling. The fine particles had rained down, pouring into his shattered Power Armor and working their way into his hair. A large clump had fallen straight into his open mouth, coating it thoroughly.
Frowning, he spat several times before finally clearing the taste of earth mixed with blood from his mouth.
He ran his tongue over his teeth, still feeling the rough grit scraping between them, and could not help spitting again.
"This is so damn frustrating..." He wiped the corner of his mouth with his sleeve and grumbled bitterly, "Even fighting those bastards in the Second Legion during the Rangdan Xenocides wasn't this frustrating."
He sat cross-legged with his back against the rough concrete wall, his whole body tucked into the shadow of the barricade.
His Power Armor was covered in dust and scratches. Its once-white base had been blackened gray by Smoke, and the distinctive lightning emblem on his shoulder plate was almost buried beneath grime, with only a faint outline still visible.
Exhaustion was written all over his face, but his eyes remained bright, burning with an unyielding light.
Of the thousand Loyalist Faction warriors of the White Scars, fewer than six hundred remained after the initial orbital bombardment and the chaotic ground fighting that followed.
The faces of his fallen brothers, those riders who would never again race across the grasslands beside them, flashed through Ding Xiu's mind one by one.
Some had laughed heartily, some had been quiet and reserved, some had lived for battle, and some