The power core of the last laser cannon emitted a mournful whine before going completely dark.
On the right flank of the defensive line, the last of the heavy firepower fell silent.
"Hold the line! Use your bayonets! Use your teeth!"
A sergeant brandished his Chainsword and roared at the top of his lungs, but in the next second, his voice was drowned out by the swarming tide of flesh.
The Cultists launched their final all-out assault.
They were like a tsunami made of madness and blasphemy, relentlessly crashing against the precarious levee the Astra Militarum had built from corpses, scrap metal, and despair.
Ammunition had long since run out.
The soldiers could only use their bayonet-fixed lasguns, entrenching tools, and fists to engage in the most primitive and bloody hand-to-hand combat against monsters that were once their own kin.
The sound of metal tearing through flesh, the dull thuds of bones being crushed by blunt instruments, and the screams and frantic prayers of the dying wove together into a symphony of hell.
Valerius stood on the high ground of the makeshift command post, watching it all with an expressionless face.
His greatcoat snapped in the wind filled with gunpowder smoke, and his face, carved from granite, betrayed no emotion.
The defensive line was collapsing.
Not just in one place, but everywhere.
His soldiers were falling in swathes, like wheat being harvested.
He knew it was all over.
The request for reinforcements had been sent seventy-two standard Terra days ago, and the only response was a deathly silence of static noise.
This planet, along with all the souls upon it loyal to the Emperor, had been forgotten.
"Is this the price of loyalty?"
A thought, like a viper, slithered into his heart, which had been wrapped in layer upon layer of the imperial codex.
He immediately strangled that thought.
As a Political Commissar, he could not have doubts, nor could he falter.
His only duty was to enforce discipline until the very last moment.
He drew the Chainsword from his waist, the roar of its engine like the growl of a beast.
"For the Empire!"
Valerius's voice rang out across the battlefield one last time through the loudspeaker.
He leaped from the high ground like a black meteorite, smashing fiercely into the densest crowd of Cultists.
He was no longer a Commander, nor was he the embodiment of discipline.
At this moment, he was merely a highly efficient killing machine.
The Chainsword carved deadly arcs in his hands, each swing carrying away swathes of flesh and severed limbs.
He charged at the very front, using his own body to forcefully breathe a final breath of life into the defensive line that was about to break behind him.
A faint glimmer of light reignited in the soldiers' eyes.
They looked at their Political Commissar, the cold man who usually only raised his bolt pistol behind them, now carving a path for them like a god of war.
"Follow the Lord Commissar!"
"Charge!"
The remaining soldiers let out a final roar, following Valerius's footsteps in a counter-charge destined to fail.
Valerius cleaved a Cultist in half from head to toe with one stroke, hot blood and viscera splattering all over him, yet he did not even blink.
He was simply killing.
Mechanically, numbly, and efficiently.
He had slain ten, twenty, fifty...
Yet the number of enemies seemed endless.
His arm began to ache, and the engine sound of the Chainsword was no longer as high-pitched.
Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a young Medic being tackled to the ground by two Cultists, one of whom raised a sharp mining pickaxe, aiming it at the Medic's head.
In that instant, Valerius made a move that even he could not understand.
He abandoned an easy enemy in front of him, spun around violently, and used his own back to shield the Medic.
Puchi—!
Three sharp claws embedded deeply into his back.
It was a mechanical claw modified from a mining exoskeleton, which easily tore through his greatcoat and carapace armor, leaving three wounds on his back deep enough to see bone.
Excruciating pain, like a red-hot branding iron, instantly spread through his entire body.
Valerius let out a muffled grunt, his body trembling violently.
How long had it been since he had felt this pure, mortal pain?
"Lord... Lord Commissar..."
The Medic, shielded beneath him, opened their eyes wide in terror.
"Return to your post, soldier."
Valerius's voice carried a hoarse tremor due to the excruciating pain.
With his last bit of strength, he turned and fired a shot, blowing the head off the Cultist who had ambushed him, then kicked the other one away and pulled the Medic up from the ground.
"Go... treat the wounded."
He used all his strength to push the Medic toward the rear.
After doing all this, he could no longer hold on and fell to one knee.
The energy of the Chainsword was exhausted from continuous high-intensity combat, and the engine emitted an unwilling whine before shutting down completely.
He knelt in the mountain of corpses and sea of blood like a shattered statue.
The surrounding Cultists let out victorious, beast-like cheers and swarmed toward him once again.
An exceptionally tall, heavily modified Cultist leader broke through the crowd.
It grinned hideously, raising the massive weapon in its hand—modified from a siege Warhammer—high, aiming it at Valerius's head, which could no longer be lifted.
Death had arrived.
Valerius slowly closed his eyes.
He felt no fear.
Nor did he pray.
In his heart, only one last thought remained.
"Failed to complete the mission... failed to protect imperial property..."
"I... have failed the Emperor's trust..."
He waited for the final blow that would crush him into pulp.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
The expected excruciating pain did not come.
The deafening roar of the battlefield seemed to have vanished completely in that instant, eerily.
In its place was an absolute, death-like silence.
And...
A soft, warm light that seemed to penetrate into the depths of the soul.
That light, like the first ray of dawn at the beginning of creation, dispelled the smoke of the battlefield and soothed the fatigue and pain deep within his soul.
Valerius used his last ounce of strength to snap his eyes open.
Then, he saw it.
He saw a scene that he could not understand in this life, even if he exhausted his meager imagination.
The huge and holy spaceship that had appeared in the sky, no one knew when, was slowly opening its hatch.
A young girl with black hair reaching her ankles, guarded by another woman holding a long sword with silver hair like the moon, was slowly descending from the light.
She did not rely on any flight devices, but stepped through the void step by step, as if walking on the stairs of her own divine kingdom.
Her face could not be described by any mortal language.
It was a holy beauty that transcended race, aesthetics, and even life itself.
She looked at this hell of flesh and blood, and in those pure black eyes, there was no disgust, no pity, only a faint... helplessness, as if looking at a group of mischievous children.
Valerius stared at her blankly.
Watching the huge Warhammer about to smash into him being blocked by an invisible, soft force field less than an inch above his head, unable to move forward another inch.
Watching the violent Cultist leader, the moment it touched that holy radiance, the fanaticism and hideous grin on its face froze instantly, replaced by an extreme fear originating from the depths of its soul.
It threw away its weapon and, like a beast that had seen its natural predator, prostrated itself on the ground, trembling.
The entire battlefield stood still.
Everyone looked up, like a group of primitive people who had witnessed a miracle, staring blankly at the one descending from the sky...
A deity.
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