I glanced around the interior of the old church at my squad. They were a rag tag bunch of privates, apart from my good friend, Jeeves, and the radio operator, Carlson. Tonight would be our first mission together as Topaz squad. In my opinion, Davryk couldn’t have chosen a better place to garrison us. Wardaria was a small outer rim colony that specialised in the production of munitions. The real perk though, was that the planet was pretty much as far form a conflict zone as you could get. As far as the Imperial records went, The Legion hadn’t even made it past blockade D, which was roughly 3 systems away. I felt quite safe here, even with the rookies.

“Hey Marco? It’s just started to rain, just so you know,” one of the rookies said.

I took no notice. What did rain matter? We were inside a chapel, with walls roughly 3 foot thick, and a roof made up of intricately carved marble and then lined with lead. There was no way any rain would be getting inside any time soon. I looked over to the communication stack that Carlson was attending to, and wondered what exactly he was doing. He seemed to be staring it down.

I yelled over to him and he broke his gaze for several seconds, before looking back to the stack and replying with a swift, “What you want boss, I’m kinda busy at the minute.”

I knew better than to ask, but I guessed the rest of the squad were starting to become restless too.

“You brought your guitar right? Break it out; I want to hear some more of your insane shredding. It is quite um… What’s the word? Inspirational… That’s the one! I’m sure the rest of he guys would enjoy it to. It’s that or we get Jeeves to do some stand up comedy, and believe me, you don’t want that,” I said, before laughing so hard I almost couldn’t breathe.

I steadied myself and to my amazement he had left the stack and went over to his pack. I saw him rummage around briefly before returning with his antique Fender Stratocaster – one of the only remaining to have survived since the early 21st century. The only others that I knew about were in museums, but none of them were as loved and respected as much as Carlson’s. It gleamed, and looked spectacular, for an obsolete piece of kit anyway. The rest of my squad had since moved from where they were and now we were all bunched up in the centre of the chapel, anxiously awaiting Carlson to let off some insane metal riffs as he called them.

I remember him telling me that they were popular in the 21st century, and many artists used them. If I recall, he named but one metal band – Dragonforce. He said that he admired their technique, and so he had spent the past 20 years of his life mastering it. He played several riffs, and we were all blown away. He had improved since I had last heard him play, which was always a good thing.

Before he could play any more, a crack rang out in the distance and where Carlson’s head had been just a moment ago, there lingered a red haze, followed several seconds later by the sound of his guitar hitting the floor and splintering into several pieces. The oak doors at the front of the church flew open and a handful of shadowy figures rushed in with their rifles covering pretty much every angle of the room.

Instinctively the entire squad threw themselves into cover behind the pews, before grabbing their weapons and providing suppression fire. I was quite surprised that even the greenest member of my squad could do that instantly, without an order.

Training standards really have been going up, I thought, before picking up my modified FN35 and taking out the figure closest to the door with a clean headshot, and ducking back into cover, just as the pew splintered above my head due to the others now concentrating on me. The fire fight continued before the attackers abruptly retreated.

Cautiously, the others and I stood and assessed the damage. We had a KIA squad member, which also meant no one to operate the radio equipment, and a wrecked guitar. Jeeves immediately set himself to closing the door and stacking pews against it. The other two caught on and helped him. I went over to where Carlson’s corpse was and I swore under my breath. I carefully picked up his body and took it over to the altar where I covered him with my overcoat. I whispered more to myself than anyone that I would avenge him. I turned back to the door to see that they had created a nicely defensible position from the pews and general objects in the room. I told Private Gregory to attempt to get an SOS signal out to base, and I went over to the barricade where Jeeves and the rook stood. I told them to cover Greg whilst I checked out the catacombs quickly, just incase we needed to make a quick getaway. I hoped we didn’t, but it was necessary to do.

By Marc Peasgood

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Gazza C has not provided any biographical information.