Episode 4: The Red Choir (Part 1)

Author’s Note: I went into this with a fun idea. Like all fun ideas it has ballooned a little more than I anticipated. This episode is longer than I set for myself. I wanted each episode to be 1000-2000 words. Keeps things compact and exciting. Unfortunately the premise of this and the next episode are exceeding that limit. YET they are stories I really want to tell. So I am breaking this one up into 2 parts. Part 2 is written and I should have it edited in the next couple days. Episode 5 on the other hand is outlined (as is 6, 7, and 8) BUT I am working on tightening it up so hopefully can get on track with a one ”page” story. I hope you all are enjoying it.

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The train of crawlers screeched to a halt outside the southern sally port of Forward Trench 7-K.  Edwin Hale stepped down into the mire. Fresh from shock trooper training he was heavier now, not from weight, but from gravity. Shock Trooper armor was not designed to carry hope. It was built for violence, for speed, and for men who would not wear it long.

He adjusted his belt, checked the matte-black gladius at his hip, and rubbed the dented cross around his neck, once dull, now faintly warm.  Hearing the commotion in the back of the convoy he looked back.  Fresh faced recruits were being hurried along by rough faced sergeants.  How long ago was that? A familiar voice growled from the haze. “Well, well. Look what the fog coughed back.”

Sergeant Weiss leaned against a beam of rusted support strut. He had not changed much. Still wore that eternal engineer’s scowl. Still had soot behind the eyes. “You still digging holes, Sarge?” Hale asked. “

“We call it reinforcing structural integrity, or don’t you remember?”

 They clasped wrists. Weiss gave Hale a quick look-over. “You believe in all this now?”

“As you taught me,” Hale shrugged, “the only way out is through.”

Weiss nodded and flicked his chin up at the fresh new meat coming out of the transports. “I’m here to get this lot. Take some of them to Malrick.  I might get a few of them”

Hale’s eye brows raised.  “Malrick?  He’s still alive?”

Weiss chuckled, his gravely voice making it sound like distant artillery. “Yeah. The bastard  is still here. I am guessing Malrick will be the last of us to pull out of here.”

“Hey, I would love to keep….” Weiss held up his hand.

“I get it. Shock unit’s bivouacked two bunkers down,” Weiss looked up and around at the fog. “Fog’s starting to hum again. Something is going to happen soon.”

The bunker where the Shock Trooper squad quartered was stale and lit only by a flickering sconce nailed above the steel doorway. Inside the first room of the bunker, the guard room, sat Sergeant Voss. Hale had heard of him back when he was still a combat engineer. Voss had taken a hit from shrapnel; his throat seared away in a fireblast. He was left mute and outfitted with an old-model voxx unit that rasped and crackled, speaking only in clipped, mechanical bursts.

Hale stepped through the entry, boots loud on the bunker floorboards. He could hear others, the squad, in the squad’s main room, reloading gear, sharpening blades, muttering low prayers.

Fresh from the academy, Hale snapped to attention. He did not know what else to do. “Corporal Hale, Edwin. Five-five-three-six-eight. Reporting.”

Voss looked up from the stack of reports on his desk. His eyes were sunken, unmoving. The voxx clicked to life, his voice filtered through static and cold metal. “OP. TOMORROW. TARGET. HERETIC MUNITIONS CISTERN. SEEK AND DESTROY.”

Then Voss turned his head toward the squad room and bellowed, “CORWIN. EQUIPMENT.” He jabbed a finger at Hale. From the shadows, a tall trooper rose. Muscular, silent, his expression unreadable. If he was irritated at having to babysit the newcomer, he did not reveal it.

“Follow me,” he said, already walking.

Corwin led Hale down a tight hallway past crates stenciled with “ORDINATUS” and “BLESSED LOAD-OUT B.” The armory door creaked open with a shove, revealing racks of weapons bathed in red light. The walls were lined with holy-marked rifles, purging kits, breacher charges, and racks of reinforced carapace armor, the blackened kind worn only by assault teams who were expected to breach and bleed.

He pulled a rifle from the rack. “Standard issue. Modified for close quarters.”

The weapon was compact, mag-fed, with a sanctified bayonet bolted beneath the barrel. Symbols of the Meta-Christ etched into the receiver. Corwin tossed Hale a fresh magazine bandolier and a compact charge pouch.

“Three breachers. Trigger rigged. Watch your pins. Armor’s over there, take what fits, then find your bunk. Op brief’s zero-five.” He walked out without waiting for a reply.

Hale looked around the armory. Took a moment to realize where he was and proceeded to get to geared up.

Hale could not be sure. It was that uncertain hour when muscle and memory argued over what time it truly was. The squad stood in a tight circle beneath the pale flicker of the trench head lamps. They wore their gear every bit of it silenced, weapons slung or resting against their chests. No salutes. No chatter. Just readiness. Sergeant Voss stood at one end of the tight circle, a pale figure against the gloom. His voxx unit snapped on. “MOVE. QUIET.” Then he turned, and the squad filed out of the trench under the watchful eye of the night watch.

Hale took his place in the middle column, behind a smaller trooper with a shaved head and holy glyphs tattooed down his neck, Denner.  He had learned the name during pre-combat equipment checks. The man was like a coil of wire, wound tight, but calm

Corwin walked point. At his back was a woman named Istra, the only one who had spoken more than a sentence since morning, her voice quiet but firm, checking the seals on Hale’s backplate before they left.

They moved through the outer trench wall, each of them put their gas masks on with a quiet hiss. Then each trooper disappeared into the fog-smeared expanse of No Man’s Land. The ground was pitted, crusted with ash and melted bone. The fog here did not retreat, it thinned just enough to see your boots and the man ahead of you. Beyond that, nothing.

Time stretched. Hale’s nerves tensed when a long-dead artillery crater came into view, filled with stagnant water and rusted limbs. No one even looked. These men and women were not just hardened, they were professionals. Performance was the only standard.

Every glance, every step, was practiced. Hale began mimicking their movements, stepping where they stepped, scanning as they scanned. The difference between survival and death was not brute strength. It was control. Precision. Knowing when not to breathe.

They crossed a collapsed trench. As they climbed the other side, Hale heard a whisper behind him. Denner, voice flat:  “Now it’s time to prove yourself.”  He handed Hale a breaching charge.

They reached a ridge, a half-buried pillbox overlooking a cratered basin. Below it, nestled against the far ridge, stood the cistern: a heretic munitions depot partially collapsed from old shelling. Scavenged plating and bone-charred iconography had been fused into its side like blasphemous growths. It was silent. No movement. No light.

Voss raised his fist. The squad dropped low in unison.

“SET POSITION,” the voxx choked out a low static. “BREACH ON COMMAND.”

Hale crouched behind a twisted rebar outcrop, scanning with the scope of his rifle. Something about the structure below itched at him. Not fear, felt that before. This was different. Like pressure behind the eyes. A wrongness in the wind. The kind of silence that was not empty but watching. He shifted position. Scanned again.

Still nothing. But something inside him stirred, a whisper in the marrow.  He felt something was not right.  Someone tapped him on the shoulder.  Months of training reflexes took over and he moved to the door.  With practiced hands he set the charge and moved back for the lead team.  He felt two taps on his shoulder and triggered the charge. The breaching charge went off with a muffled thump, more felt than heard. Dust curled out from the blast, and Voss rasped: “GO.”

They moved like a knife, clearing the entry with precision. Corwin and Istra led in low, rifles up. Hale followed tight, his breathing steady now, matching their rhythm. No resistance. No alarms. No screaming.

The interior was dim, a low glow from half-shattered sconces that lit the chamber like a tomb. Rows of metal drums lined the walls, stenciled with heretical markings. Symbols had been carved into the floor in looping spirals, each inlaid with copper wire and dried viscera. And there were bodies.

Dozens of heretics, slumped, kneeling, or posed with arms outstretched in supplication. Some had cut their own throats. Others had been sacrificed, bellies split open and organs arranged in ritual patterns. Their expressions were peaceful. Joyful. As if they had seen something beautiful before death.

Istra muttered, “What the hell is this…”