Pvt. Levers patrolling near the Drax Hall Plantation.

“Shut it, private. I don’t care if you think this patrol is beneath your vaunted talents. You keep your head in a fight. You keep men alive. So get on with your orders, or you’ll be working latrine duty for a month.“—Captain Faltz of the 728th Cadian Regiment, responding to  Pvt. Lever’s complaint about a recon assignment

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Private Journal,
Pvt. Tyesha Levers
Dated: 3 781 745.M41

I almost got myself killed this morning.

The previous three days had been exhausting. Captain Faltz ordered 3rd Platoon to send a squad to the north of Drax Hall Plantation, the site of a major battle last year, and determine if the Tau were reinforcing their troops for another attack on our battle line.

I was told to accompany them. Although irritated by my sometimes cynical outlook of the war, the captain has decided I’m a “steadying force” in a crisis—and that’s condemned me to repeated assignments to tag along with various patrols and keep my colleagues-in-arms from getting slaughtered.

(Of course, that didn’t work at the Battle of Kroot Hill—but that was a cluster-feth of the first order.)

Kroot advance on 2nd Squad in numbers.

Anyway, I was attached to my old squad, 2nd Squad, 3rd Platoon, commanded by Sgt. Tander, and spent the next three days slogging our way through a humid, insect-infested forest trying to find the enemy.

They weren’t that hard to find. Some two kilometers in front of our lines, we could hear the Tau in the distance. But the xenos had Kroot screening their lines—the Emperor curse those daemons.

Two-meters tall, these muscular avians are a tough opponent. Particularly in wooded terrain, which is their natural habitat, the Kroot are uncanny in their ability to move quickly and quietly through the roughest terrain. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard reports of patrols being caught in an ambush, even when survivors swore they were diligently watching for trouble.

Yet the Kroot’s expertise in forest warfare isn’t what makes them truly scary. It’s the fact that they’re carnivores—and they consider guardsmen a potential meal. I’ve actually seen them stop in the middle of a firefight and begin to chow down on a still-screaming guardsman.

It’s unnerving in the extreme.

I give credit to Sgt. Tander. He knows how to lead a squad. He kept the men as far away as possible from any Kroot position, and he tried to keep us downwind of the xenos. If it was a choice of risking a fight, or returning without any useful intelligence, he always chose the first option.

I agreed with his decision wholeheartedly.

Once the Kroot made themselves known, Sgt. Tander ordered his guardsmen into two firing lines and retreated by having them leapfrog backwards, firing and falling back in stages.

Of course, our luck didn’t last. After two frustrating and incredibly tense days scouting the xeno positions, edging forward in hopes of finding a gap in the Kroot screen—and withdrawing quietly when we sensed the xenos ahead—the wind shifted direction. Suddenly we were upwind of the xenos—and they caught our scent.

That’s when things turned ugly. It wasn’t long before we heard a sudden outburst of hoots and caw-caws from the Kroot, a clear sign they were getting agitated. In seconds, Sgt. Tander was signaling for the squad to fall back.

I admit we withdrew hastily. No one had the stomach for a fight with the Kroot, at least not without friendly troops within support range. And we didn’t know how many Kroot were coming for us.

Thankfully, 2nd Squad consisted of battle-hardened veterans. Even then, though, our skirmish line got a big ragged, as the men were constantly looking over their shoulders for a sign that the xenos were close.

We crossed the first kilometer to our lines remarkably quickly. The sound of the xenos behind us was a very strong motivation for us.

But then our luck started to change. I was near the right flank of our skirmish line when I saw movement to the right—but also about 20 meters ahead of the man on the flank.

I shouted a warning, but almost immediately the man disappeared, the brush around him suddenly thrashing about as he screamed.

His name was Sylvez. Nice enough guy.

Click here to continue to Part II of this fight.

The artwork of Pvt. Levers was created with AI at NightCafe Studios.

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The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our gaming adventures in the fantastical sci-fi universe of Games Workshop.