The quiet trench line suddenly erupted into clamor. Carl saw the heavy artillery and the Solar Auxilia veterans begin to move.
War had come again.
The surge of adrenaline set the starving militiawoman in motion. Though her legs felt weak, the hormones drove her onward as she clutched her lasgun and dropped into position.
A familiar stench began to drift over. Carl expertly pulled on a pig-snouted gas mask, a piece of protective gear that covered her mouth, nose, and eyes, isolating her from the outside as much as possible.
The commissars, doubled as Solar Auxilia veterans, began roaring orders and directing recruits like them.
In truth, Carl had no idea how to fight a war. She fired wherever the commissar told her to fire; whether she hit anything was not her concern.
Holding the line and emptying the lasgun magazine in her hands was already the greatest loyalty she could offer the Emperor.
She shivered from head to toe. Even her thick military winter uniform could not keep out the cold, and this chill did not seem like anything mortals understood as cold.
Unsettling howls came from beyond the position, like a dying old man struggling to swallow the last wad of phlegm in his throat, or an ancient wooden house decaying under the erosion of time before finally collapsing into ruins with a creak.
It was not the ferocious roar of some beast, yet it stirred an even deeper instinctive fear in the human heart.
It was fear of death and disease.
A thick fog began spreading across the battlefield. The gray haze brought unease with it and dimmed the sunlight.
The Tech-priests and mortal technicians on the battlefield raised primitive chemical-fuel searchlights. Their feeble beams struggled to illuminate the gloom, giving the Auxilia soldiers and militiamen as