There is blood on the face of the emperor.

Like crimson tears, the red liquid slowly flows on the steel engraving. All around the small shrine, empty casing are rolling on the metal floor, bumping into each other and in the promethium puddle. Then, as my brain starts over, I remember..

This is war and I’m in the middle of it.

The smell of oil and burned iron rush into my nose and throat, scratch my tired lungs. The roar of the Leman Russ’s engine charging into battle shakes every part of my body, the sound of shell glancing on our armor makes my bones shiver. Finally a human hand grabs my own. Weird and warm, not at all like the grey steel of what I call my home.

• Emperor be fucking praised, you are not dead! Come on girl, on your feet.

A chunk of red enters my vision, then I recognise green eyes full of kindness, freckles, her perpetual smile.

• Charlie?

I managed to utter after I vomited some more bile, air and blood. Charlie asks If I’m good, if I’m hurt. She tells me I’m

lucky that the shell didn’t pierce the armor, that it’s only the shock of the impact that knocked me down. I barely hear her so I merely follow the sound of her words, the rhythm that her weird accent puts on the vowels.

Then her blood is splattered on my face.

The bullet tore right through the hull of the tank, proceeded its course inside the girl’s body and ended in the steel wall, a few inches above my face. She didn’t even shout, she just looked down with surprise at the blood pouring out of the gaping hole in her chest. Her mouth was still moving, but no sound came out, she fell into my arms, but there was already no warmth left.

Fuck. I loved this girl.

• Three O’clock, light them up, Foxy!

They didn’t realize. Cat is still giving orders, the blood flows from where she got hit. The bullet ripped her helmet, it was at the start of the ambush. Right before the platoon leader’s tank was blown up by a chaos Predator. Her golden hair is slowly turning crimson with the blood, still she continues shouting. I imagine her icy blue eyes jumping from map to map, looking for a way out. But there is none, and she knows it. Their guns are nothing like ours. Louder, bigger, deadlier, still, she won’t stop, because that’s what she is, a warrior.

• Blue! The fuck are you doing, feed the cannon!

Fox is calling me. She wonders why I didn’t load the next shell, she wonders why I’m so slow. She repeats my name several times before finally turning around. The anger turns to surprise, the surprise to tears. The same kind, green eyes, the same reddish hair, the same freckles.

I’m still hugging the body of her dead sister.

Outside, the last of our allied tanks is destroyed, the vox get more and more quiet as they all die. Soon, there is only us, the sound of our cry, the silence of desperation and the raging of the battle outside.