(A Warhammer 40K Tale)
Written by P.H. Boer
The corridor was narrow. Not narrow like architecture gone tight with age, but narrow
like a wound, freshly torn through the bowels of a hab-block forgotten by time. Metal walls
puckered and sagged. Pipes wept steam and mucous-colored liquids. The lighting flickered like a
dying star gasping its last breath. Every inch reeked of oil, sweat, and the dense, meaty perfume
of rot.
Trooper 77-Kilo-Null of the Death Korps of Krieg didn’t pause to consider the layout.
His boots were already pounding the ferrocrete floor, heavy with mud, dried ichor, and the
crushed bones of whatever had come before. His lasgun long spent, the rifle was slung across his
back, now nothing more than a bludgeon. In his hands, he gripped a trench knife with a chipped
monoblade and a rusted entrenching tool sharpened to a crescent grin.
Mission objective: Retrieve the heretic Seer.
Last known location: chamber beyond corridor.
Resistance expected.
Casualty projections: Absolute.
A door hissed open behind him. Screams spilled in.
His pulse thudded in his ears, slow, deliberate. A Kriegman’s heartbeat, trained like a
metronome of war.
Each inhale rasped through the gas mask like steam in a dying engine. The stale rubber of
the mouthpiece pressed hard against his face. Inside, the mask grew humid, metallic, suffocating.
Ahead, they waited.
Scavvers. Cultists. Human detritus swollen with faith and filth. They rose from the gloom
like tumors sprouting from the wall, tattooed flesh glistening, mouths open in fevered howls.
One raised a studded bat, another a chain-hook, a third clutching a serrated blade still wet with
earlier sins.
77 didn’t pray. Krieg had killed the idea of mercy centuries ago.
He surged forward.
The first impact was brutal. His shoulder cracked into the bat-wielder, smashing the
heretic against the wall. Bone gave way like wood in a furnace. A second cultist leapt over the
dying body, wielding twin bones sharpened into jagged daggers. 77 ducked low, his entrenching
tool coming up to split the man’s crotch like a butcher at a wet market. The scream that followed was drowned by the arrival of three more, two armed with broken industrial tools, one howling
and naked, her face carved into a permanent grin.
They came fast. Uncoordinated, but relentless. 77’s blade was already punching into the
woman’s throat, twisted as he drove forward. Blood geysered up his arm. The smell came
filtered through the chemical tang of his respirator, copper, bile, and the stench of heated
madness.
A hook lashed across his back. Pain like molten glass blossomed. He staggered. Another
strike to the ribs. Then another, his leg buckled as a pipe club smashed into his knee.
Pain is the debt of the living, he thought, eyes wild behind the round lenses of his mask.
His heart beat louder now, like a drum buried under meters of earth, demanding to be
heard.
And then, for a heartbeat, silence.
The kind that presses into the skin.
He could hear only the wet rasp of his own breath through the mask, and the steady thunk
of blood dripping from his blade.
He swept his shovel low, carving meat from shins and kneecaps. A scream erupted as one
cultist collapsed, flailing. The trench knife buried into another’s cheek, twisting until it cracked
teeth and jaw. A blow to the spine. Then another. 77 dropped to one knee, lashed out blindly,
caught something soft. Screams again. A metal pipe caught his helmet, sending shockwaves of
distortion in his vision.
His heart was thundering now. His breathing drew harder through the mask, each pull
like air through a wet sponge.
More piled forward. Too many. They crawled over their dead, stepping on those still
screaming, eager for a chance to break the invader. Their fingers clawed at him, digging beneath
his flak vest, reaching for his throat. A thumb found the strap of his mask and pulled.
No.
He smashed his forehead forward. The glass lenses cracked on impact. Blood splashed up
inside the mask. He tasted it through the filters, iron and filth and something else, joy. Not his.
The mask didn’t just filter air; it filtered the soul. Now it leaked, and he was tasting theirs.
They swarmed him. Four now. Five? Time bled. He was dragged down, boots scraping
the floor, limbs pinned beneath bodies tattooed with hexes and madness. One mounted his chest,
pressing a curved knife against his throat. The edge bit through rubber and caught flesh.
His breathing hitched. The respirator coughed under strain, pulling in foul air through
mangled filters.
Every breath was a burning inhale of metal, mold, and the stench of sin.
His heart slammed against his ribs like a bayonet trying to pierce its way out.
77 roared.
Not a scream. Not a battle cry. It was the sound of a dying world refusing to go quietly.
His shovel plunged up beneath the man’s ribs. Twisted. Tugged. Entrails spilled out like
hot sausages. He rolled, crushed the dying cultist beneath him, used the corpse like a shield as
another pipe came down. It burst open the man’s skull like a rotten melon. Bone shrapnel cut into
77’s neck. Warmth ran down his collar. He didn’t flinch.
He didn’t feel fear.
Something tore loose in him.
Not flesh, something deeper. He lunged like an animal, catching one heretic mid-charge
and slamming the sharpened edge of his shovel into the man’s mouth. The jaw split with a
sickening crunch, tongue fluttering.
77 didn’t stop. His trench knife disappeared into throats and kidneys.
Blood sprayed so hard it hissed off his lenses.
He staggered forward. Each step pulled glass deeper into his leg. Blood squelched in his
boot. That’s when they came again. One tried to leap onto his back but slipped on the gore,
crashing down with a shriek. 77 drove his foot into the man’s throat. Another tackled him
outright, biting at the hose of his respirator. He didn’t have time to scream.
Just swing.
Just bleed.
Just breathe.
One more. Two more. His muscles screamed with fatigue. His vision pulsed red. His
fingers slipped, smeared with blood not his own. But the blade still danced. A hooked blade
carved across his thigh. A hammer blow shattered two ribs. His left arm dangled wrong, bone
visible through rent flesh.
His flak vest was In ribbons. Cloth and ceramite hung like torn flags. A jagged shard of
rebar stuck out of his side, pulsing with every heartbeat.
A belt had snapped, his canteen and filters dragged behind him like entrails.
Still he walked. Still he fought. His body a cathedral of pain and ruin.
Each step tore new screams from his nerves. Each breath rasped blood through the mask’s
filters.
The air inside smelled like death and ozone, tasted like metal and hate.
The final cultist stood before the sealed door, twitching. An albino brute in a rebreather
and robes stitched from human skin. His eyes rolled white. He raised a cleaver etched in
forbidden runes and charged.
77 caught the blow on his arm, shattered it entirely.
Then he drove the entrenching tool into the beast’s face.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
And again.
Until the body twitched no more.
The door creaked open.
Inside, bound in barbed chain and whispering praises to dark gods, knelt the heretic Seer.
77 didn’t speak.
He collapsed onto one knee. Blood puddled around him. Inside his mask, the cracked
lenses flickered with dying light. He looked upon the Seer, and despite the agony, despite the
horror, he felt…
Nothing.
Not victory.
Not pride.
Just the cold.
The absolute cold of Krieg.
His heartbeat fluttered now, panicked and stuttering, like the wings of a wounded insect.
Breaths came shallow. The mask sucked inward with each pull, blood clogging one side
of the filter.
He tasted copper. Heard the pulse of his own veins. Time slowed. The corridor breathed
with him… or not at all.
Target acquired.
Trooper 77-Kilo-Null: awaiting extraction.
Status: terminal.
Last breath: faith made manifest.
And then he smiled.
But only the mask knew it.
Tales from the Boer’s Head 