Morning mist hung thick.
Dark clouds gathered above the Hive City. Dawn had arrived, yet the world remained shrouded in gloom.
On the outskirts of the Hive City, far from the Imperium-controlled zone.
Human soldiers lay packed across the slopes of a depression below ground level.
The officers looked composed, but the recruits wore all manner of expressions, some flushed, others pale.
A rustle of footsteps came from behind the soldiers, accompanied by a low voice calling repeatedly:
"Last half a Terran hour. Eat. Fix bayonets."
The messenger ran past in a crouch, but the recruits who heard "fix bayonets" could not stop their bodies from trembling.
If not for the veteran officers beside them, if not for Sith's hundredfold amplification of their almost depleted morale.
That command would have been followed by a succession of executions.
For just above their heads, beyond the level ground, lay an endless expanse of Orks, already forming a literal ocean.
And it was not merely endless Ork Boyz, bikes, and battlewagons. Amid the Green Tide stood a towering Ork war machine-a Gargant.
As the world gradually brightened, the Orks woke as well, beginning to ponder amid the uproar who they should fight today.
And the towering Gargant underwent more hammering and banging as the Ork Big Mek brought his underlings over to continue their work.
All manner of bones, sheet metal, and even wooden boards began piling onto the flagrantly unregulated war machine.
At the same time, the Gargant's bulk drew still closer to that of a human light Titan.
As several wildly flying rockets, used by the Orks to wake the Boyz, corkscrewed toward the towering Hive City farther away, its deep steel, never particularly "sunny" to begin with, actually exuded a dark, deathly stillness in the gloom.
The Hive City towered over the earth, its imposing bulk piercing the sea of clouds. Beneath the dim sky, it resembled an ancient steel tomb piled with the dead, waiting for outsiders to knock.
Even though he had prepared himself, the sight of the Hive City and the Orks before him still made Sith thank the Emperor in his heart yet again, and again, and again.
Then he turned toward the terrified recruits behind him, helplessness surfacing in his eyes.
After all, however high their hopes had been before, their desire to die was now just as intense.
"The Orks have only just woken up. This is the best time to launch a surprise attack."
Daviro's cold, electronic voice came from beside him, through his helmet.
Sith withdrew his gaze from the soldiers behind him and turned toward Daviro, who pointed to an enormous external passage at one corner of the Hive City.
Unlike the last Hive City Sith had been in, this one's external passage had been built exceptionally wide.
"We'll advance toward that passage. We already have the control codes supplied by the nobles at the spire's summit. Once we enter the Hive City, we only need to close the passage again to shut out the Xenos outside."
Having finished, Daviro did not look toward the soldiers. Instead, he looked earnestly at Sith:
"Charge across. Open the gate. Close it."
"It's that simple."
At those few brief words, Sith could not help drawing a deep breath. Beside him, the veterans, Brunok included, wore rigid expressions.
As for the recruits farther down, deserters to begin with, their faces turned utterly white at that brief command.
Daviro also knew he could not expect much from these deserters. After all, holding on upon the slope until now had already far exceeded what their previous morale would have allowed.
Glancing at the recruits behind him, who had almost stopped breathing, Daviro gave a rare sigh behind his helmet.
"Colonel Sith, perhaps you could encourage your soldiers before we set out."
Daviro was not an Astartes skilled at inspiring others, much less a Chapter Chaplain.
He could only hope Sith could rouse some measure of fighting spirit in the soldiers before battle.
By now, most of a Terran hour had passed. Fighting their terror, the recruits forced themselves to swallow their food and fixed their bayonets with trembling hands.
Only Sith's hundredfold amplification kept their bodies, which should long since have collapsed or fled heedlessly, nailed to their positions.
The distant sky grew brighter still. Daviro even abandoned concealment, standing straight up on the slope of the depression.
At the same time, his cold, electronic voice reminded Sith.
"Last five minutes."
At the electronic voice, the recruits' bodies shuddered violently.
Every gaze turned toward Sith, their eyes filled with an expectation they themselves could not identify.
Although Sith knew that whatever he said, these lives before him would very likely remain forever on that stretch of ground not far away, as he looked at the crowd and the terrified gazes they cast toward him, he ultimately did not deliver the impassioned rhetoric of an Imperial Commissar.
Sith merely raised his sidearm and long blade, his expression... actually somewhat reassuring:
"Nothing to be afraid of. I'll go first."
The air stilled. Daviro, who had expected nothing, froze at Sith's softly spoken words.
Even the other two members of the Deathwatch looked at the calm Sith in shock.
It seemed like a long time, yet also an instant.
The still air began to flow again.
And the recruits, who had been trembling all over, looked at Sith standing before them, neither scolding nor reproaching them, but actually offering only reassurance, and their bodies...
Gradually steadied!
Meanwhile, the stiffness on the faces of Brunok and the other veterans rapidly faded, and their eyes began to fill with bloodshot veins.
Without another unnecessary word, Sith turned after speaking and, before the mortal soldiers and the three members of the Deathwatch, Daviro among them, became the first to step onto the high ground.
As his foot came down, the distant Orks erupted into a raging tide!!!
Shells, rockets, bikes, great axes.
Across the broad earth, tens of thousands of mortals leveled their bayonets and charged toward the boundless Green Tide.
Blood and limbs were torn apart amid the explosions.
Mortals who drove their bayonets into Orks were then hacked in half by great axes.
Mortals who had mustered their courage frantically pulled their triggers, only for speeding bikes to smash them to pieces and send them to the ground amid frenzied war cries.
The few rocket troops fired long trails of flame into the distance, leaving cracks across the Gargant before its barrages blasted them into bloody mist.
There had been no small-scale battles to temper them, no reasonably balanced gap in fighting strength.
Tens of thousands of recruits converted from deserters charged with fervor, despite being far inferior to the Orks in physique, equipment, and skill.
Death played out around them without end. The scene before their eyes was even more horrifying than their earlier nightmares.
Yet this time, no one fled. Everyone merely clung to a single breath, their eyes fixed firmly on the figure at the very front.
Watching that figure, chasing that figure!
The Gargant's furious barrage swept past Sith, turning at least a thousand mortal infantrymen beside him into scarlet mist.
But Sith had no weapon capable of countering it. He merely hurried around the Gargant and charged toward the endpoint of this assault.
Daviro had already reached the gate with the two other members of the Deathwatch.
They uploaded the opening command, and the heavy gate slowly opened amid a mechanical roar.
The veterans kept seizing the opportunity to bolster morale. Having opened the gate, Daviro did not immediately enter and close it again. Instead, he stood at the entrance and actually began covering the mortals behind him.
When Sith also charged through the gate, Daviro and one other member of the Deathwatch desperately poured fire outside.
The remaining Deathwatch member stared at the warnings continually lighting up on the control console inside the gate, his right hand clenched into a fist.
"The closing command the nobles gave us is wrong!"
The Deathwatch warrior was furious. Hearing this, Sith instantly stared at him, then immediately turned toward the Orks surging through the gate in pursuit of his soldiers.
That towering Gargant was turning, bringing its outlandish gun muzzles to bear on the gate!
"Leave men to hold the rear. Use Melta Bombs to collapse the passage."
Daviro's electronic voice remained cold, but the soldiers around him who heard those words instantly looked toward Sith.
There was still a vast difference between almost certain death and certain death!
Sith fell silent only very briefly. His reaction was not even slower than Daviro's.
Looking straight at the veterans running at the very rear outside the gate, Sith was equally "cold."
Without words, with no time even to hesitate, Sith suddenly raised his hand and solemnly saluted the soldiers at the very back.
The veterans' anxious faces instantly went deathly still at the sight. There was no order, yet they all knew the order.
Their steps in pursuit of hope gradually slowed, until they stopped completely.
There was no terror or disappointment, much less discontent or madness.
The veterans merely looked deeply at Sith. Unable to return the salute, they shouted together:
"For the Imperium!"
The Orks were forced to halt. Daviro and the other two members of the Deathwatch personally fitted Melta Bombs to every gate at speeds far beyond those of mortals.
Then, with a tremendous roar, the endless steel above the gates collapsed thunderously, sealing them off.
Through the gap in that final instant, outside the gate came the rear guard mortals' still-fervent cries of "Emperor!"
Inside, the thunderous roar awoke the Hive City. The survivors looked deeper into the passage, toward the boundless dark figures surging beneath countless increasingly bright flames!