Her face contorted in agony, but Kroeger kept pressing until he felt the splintered ends of bone grinding beneath the skin.

'What is your word worth?' repeated Larana Utorian through gritted teeth.

'Not much,' admitted Kroeger, twisting his grip and drawing a fresh cry of pain from Utorian, 'but you are possessed of a modicum of courage, prisoner, and you shall bear the fruits of that courage.'

Laughing, Kroeger released the woman's arm and said, 'This one shall be in the first wave.'

The first thought that penetrated the fog of Guardsman Hawke's semiconsciousness was that he had taken it too far this time, that he had drank something that had finally got the better of him. In all his notorious drinking sessions, he'd never felt such all over pain before, as though his body was one enormous bruise being pounded on by an angry carnosaur.

Darkness and dust surrounded him and he coughed as his lungs heaved, wondering what the hell was going on. He slowly opened his eyes, taking a moment to focus on the view before him. The rockcrete of what looked like the floor of the listening post was right in front of his face, but he could see nothing beyond that. Orange light and swirls of dust ghosted before him.

He tried to shift his position and hot pain stabbed in his left shoulder, drawing a colourful oath and a sticky wetness that ran down his arm.

Hawke turned his head slowly, trying to make sense out of the scorched, acrid-smelling place he was lying in. A blackened, lumpen mass lay against one wall, though he could not make out its nature in the gloom. Hawke's ears rang and every sound his movements made seemed tinny and far away. He shifted position once more, twisting onto his back and gritting his teeth as pain lanced through his shoulder again. But this time he was able to gain more of a sense of his situation. Something heavy lay across his legs and as he twisted around he could see it was the shattered carcass of the vox-unit.

Hawke dragged himself from under the bulky unit as the events of - how long ago now? - came trickling back into his consciousness. He propped himself up against one wall, exploring his injuries with his good arm and remembering the clatter of the grenades as they landed inside. He'd gotten one into the sump, but the other had detonated before he could reach. Thank the Emperor that the decrepit equipment installed in this wretched place was so clunky that it had shielded him from the force of its blast.

He rubbed his arm, feeling the pain from the gash at his shoulder flare anew then glanced over at the blackened shape across the bunker from him. The gleam of bone and the hand burned into a claw told him that it had once been his fellow squadmate, Hitch.

Hawke couldn't feel sorry for Hitch, he had his own problems to deal with - like what the hell was he supposed to do now? The equipment here was smashed and he was sure that there was no way he could fix it. He was stuck near the top of a fragging mountain with no sure way down, and his arm hurt like a cast-iron bitch.

With a groan Hawke pushed himself onto wobbling legs and leaned back against the wall of the listening post. His breath hurt in his chest and he wondered if any of his ribs had been broken. He lurched drunkenly towards a gunmetal footlocker, partly concealed beneath the remains of the assault cannon and vox-console. He kicked the debris clear and hauled open the locker lid, lifting out a canvas rucksack and rummaging around inside. He lifted out a small medi-pack and ripped it open, painfully shrugging off his uniform jacket and undershirt.

As he doused his wound in analgesic fluid and applied a pressure swab to his arm, he wondered who the hell had attacked him. The question only occurred to him as his thoughts became less disjointed and confused. He hadn't had much of a look at them, but whoever they were they were enormous. He'd had a fleeting impression of iron-grey vastness, too bulky to be anything but a Space Marine.

Hawke paused in his ministrations as the breath caught in his throat.

Space Marines…

He'd seen Space Marines a few times - when he'd been unlucky enough to pull a tour at the Hope and had watched them march from their armoured gunships. At first he'd been in awe of their stature, longing to ask one of them about his life, the battles he'd fought and the places he'd seen. But their stoic demeanour, martial bearing and enormous guns had made it clear that to do so would probably be the gravest and last mistake he'd ever make.

Still, there was something about the glimpse he'd had of the anonymous warrior that caused him to shiver in sudden fear. He was like no Space Marine Hawke had ever seen before. For all their arrogant superiority, none of them had, even when they deigned to glance his way, chilled him with such ancient malevolence. This was something else entirely.

A wry smile creased Hawke's ash-streaked features as he suddenly realised that his desire for action had been granted in the most concrete way possible. He had come eye-to-eye with the enemy and was still alive. The puzzle of why his attackers had let him live was solved when his gaze fell once more on the body against the wall. They'd seen Hitch's corpse and figured it for his. He laughed, the pitch a little too high.

'Well, Hitchy boy,' giggled Hawke, 'looks like you managed to do something useful with your life after all.'

Like most people had throughout Hawke's life, the enemy had underestimated him and he felt a sudden anger rise up in him. He was a soldier, damn it, and he'd make sure these bastards knew it.

Cradling his arm close to his chest, he fashioned a crude sling with bandages from the medi-pack and dumped the contents of the rucksack onto the floor, tossing aside items that were just extra weight and loading up with anything that looked useful, not that much had survived the explosion. He stuffed as many ration packs as he could find into his pack as well as a couple of plastic bottles of hydration capsules. He checked his uniform jacket for detox pills, sighing in relief as he felt the container in his inside pocket. Without them, he might as well put a bullet through his brains right now as the poisons within the atmosphere would cause him to sicken within the day unless he took the purgatives and cleansing chemicals the Adeptus Mechanicus Biologis distilled and manufactured for the soldiers. They were perhaps the foulest things Hawke had ever tasted, but if they kept him alive, then he guessed he could bear it. He didn't have too many left, though…

He rummaged around the locker, pulling out a battered respirator kit and stuffing it in the rucksack. The oxygen level inside was just over half-full, but it would come in handy if he got caught in one of the frequent dust storms that lashed the mountains.

Hawke grinned as he pulled out a portable vox-unit from the bottom of the locker, though calling it portable was a joke. The bulky battery packs weighed a kilo each and the vox itself would take up over half the space in his pack. Still, he'd heard it said that there was nothing more dangerous on the battlefield than a man with a means of communication.

Personally, he would rather have a lascannon, but such was life.

He emptied Hitch's and Charedo's packs, searching for anything useful amongst his former friends' gear.

A direction finder and a set of magnoculars once belonging to Charedo went into one pocket, as well as six energy packs for a lasgun. A gleaming knife and tooled leather scabbard, once the pride and joy of Guardsman Hitch, was buckled around his waist with a quick nod to the blackened corpse.

'You don't mind if I take this, do you? No, thought not. Cheers, Hitch.'

Satisfied that he had salvaged all he could from the listening post's meagre supplies, Hawke turned to search for his lasgun, overturning twisted debris and kicking aside drifts of amber dust that had drifted in through the door.