Private Ingo Hall rested on his long handled spade as the dust rolled about him in the still, parched air of the late afternoon. Sweat tickled his cheeks as it swilled about the inside of his toxin mask and exhaustion dulled his every sense. He felt empty, no less a husk than the countless dead about him.
The Imperial Guardsman looked up from his latest grave, to the carrion field that spread beyond the horizon. A sea of desiccated corpses lay under a patchy cloud of sand flies. This vista of fallen guardsmen was broken only occasionally by the rusting island of an armoured heretic. Ingo avoided these foul edifices. The bodies of his comrades, bleached to glinting bone and paper flesh by the hot sand, were more than he could count but it seemed the whole legion awaited his attention.
The lemon sky had already deepened to a parched apricot as the day waned about him. Ingo hefted his spade, and shambled over to his pack-cart. He jammed the spade in place and slung his lasgun across his back as he took up the twelve identity tags of the men he’d spent the day burying. He checked the ration packs and water bottles he’d recovered from their webbing and trudged off towards his camp. The pack-cart squeaked through the sand behind, freed from its auto cannon, but now burdened with the needs of survival.
***
A dry crimson night had fallen by the time Ingo reached camp. The Rhino’s machine spirit had already fired up its amber lamps in reaction to the coming dusk and the cloud of dusty light welcomed the weary guardsman to the place he’d made home. Ingo ducked under the roof-tarp and propped his lasgun carefully against the wall of a courtyard formed by supply crates. He decanted the contents of the gore-crusted water bottles into a purification vat, checked its level and carefully placed the new ration packs into a supply crate he’d marked ‘food’. He had provisions enough he thought, slapping his sides anxiously. Of course he could gather much more from the corpse field, but he’d resolved to only take from those he’d given a proper burial. Ingo was sure that without this incentive, he’d never complete the task. He secretly worried that he’d not have time to finish the task. There were so many men.
He rolled the stiffness out of his shoulders and peeled away the toxin mask. It sucked its protest and he winced at the stench of death that still cloyed about his clothing. Quickly Ingo stripped his battle suit away, dropping it into a storage crate, and dried himself in a sand bath. He towelled away the sweat-clogged sand, rubbed himself with a scent-stick and donned his camp clothes. Collecting a bottle of water and a ration pack, he clambered into the Rhino’s interior. The atmo-scrubbers throbbed gently and cooled the interior to a blessed oasis from the heat. Ingo, slumped into the command seat and took a long draft of cool water made bitter by the purification chemicals. He ripped open the foil ration pack and the contents fizzed and bubbled as they quickly cooked themselves. He consumed the thick stew greedily, licking the last drops from his beard as he scanned the vox-channels for any sign of life.
Ingo retrieved a steel shell-box from behind the bed he’d set up across the ready-seats, popped the lid open and dropped the identity tags in with the others. He checked his data pad and added the names and details of the men he’d buried today. The total flashed up at ‘6426’. Nearly six and a half thousand of his fellow guardsmen has been laid to rest by his hand. He was no priest of the Ministorum so did not know the proper cants for burial, but he said words of respect and gave silent homage to each so he was sure the Emperor would watch over them none the less.
Sleep began to take the exhausted guardsman, and as he led on his bed he activated the Rhino’s top hatch. It whirred open slowly to reveal the countless pink dot stars across a blood-black sky. He cupped his hands behind his head and thought of the verdant pastures of his home world. He missed the trees most of all. No, he missed people. He missed someone to talk to.
Tomorrow was to be an auspicious occasion. Six hundred days since he watched the last legion drop ship flare its engines away from the surface of Parsus VII. He’d been on his back then too, passing from consciousness occasionally, waking enough to catch fragment images of the withdrawal. His wounds had since healed well and perhaps tomorrow the rescue ships would return to take him home. He resolved to celebrate the day with an extra effort. Tomorrow he would bury fifteen. As sleep took him, he wondered who would bury him.