Eli seized an opportunity he would never have dared dream of. With a roar, he was the first to leap out of the trenches, leading the dumbstruck soldiers of the 404th Regiment through that bizarre gap in the enemy's fire and driving them like a dagger deep into the Orks' belly.
Something even more outrageous followed.
Eli led his assault squad, panting, toward an ammunition depot piled high with explosives behind the Ork lines, ready to blow it up even if it cost them their lives. He had only just raised his Chainsword, before he could even shout his battle cry.
Inside the depot, a seemingly drunken Squig beast blundered into a brazier and knocked it over.
BOOOOOM!!!
The earth-shaking chain detonation erupted one second before Eli launched his charge. The enormous shock wave hurled Eli and his soldiers to the ground, yet miraculously left them completely unharmed, while blasting the surrounding Ork defenders into the sky.
The battle was over.
The 404th Infantry Regiment, a unit regarded as cannon fodder, had somehow routed an Ork tribe over ten thousand strong at the absurd cost of fewer than fifty casualties.
Eli sat on the scorched earth, staring at the alien remains strewn everywhere, and rubbed his bald head in bewilderment.
"Holy crap. The instructors at the academy were right. Luck really is part of strength. Could I, Eli, really be a chosen one personally blessed by the Emperor himself?"
What he did not know was that, in the shadow of a sheer cliff three thousand meters from the battlefield, others were watching.
Several immense Space Marines in unpainted armor that blended perfectly with the rocky surroundings silently put away their ultra-long-range precision sniper rifles, still radiating Gauss heat.
They were the ones who had precisely severed the load-bearing axle of