u/Butt_Speed

I absolutely love this section from The Sum of Its Parts by Rhuairidh James. Not only is it quite emotionally affecting, I think it offers a great window into the Imperium's complete disregard for human life. It's as if they've embraced the logic of "lives are the Emperor's currency" so completely that they've forgotten that saving up can pay off in the long run.

While this is a lengthy passage, it's only a portion of the full story. It's a hidden gem of a short that deserves more recognition.

>Commander Mariusz Othon has the kind of pain that gets into your dreams. He has heard other officers – those lucky enough to qualify for augmetic treatment but not lucky enough to be sent back to headquarters – talk about phantom limbs that haunt their sleeping moments or clench endlessly during the day, of an unmistakable sense that something is still there. Mariusz feels no such ghosts. He feels diminished: the world has the same bigness it has to a child. There is a medal waiting for him outside the augmetic centre. They are waiting for Mariusz to look heroic again before he accepts it. Mariusz looks and feels like a stump. Where once there was a man, there is now only a collection of regrets and short, useless limbs that terminate in scars.

>Eventually, fear forces him from the centre, half accustomed to his cheaply made, bulky augmetics. One day, he awakes to a commissar sitting at the foot of his bed. The commissar is a delicate little man; he has brought confectionery, he talks to Mariusz about food and art and only mentions in passing that if the old commander has ceased to be useful to the Imperium alive, he will make a fine martyr. Duly prompted, Mariusz manages to hobble through his ceremony of promotion under the watchful glare of the dozen or so men left from his old regiment, is applauded tersely and sent to command another battalion of unfortunates – the Vucciria Armoured Huszars, a minor regiment specialising in armoured warfare. [...]

>As with all regiments bar the most prestigious, the vehicles Mariusz has to choose from vary wildly in quality and type. [...] Mariusz feels overwhelmed. His mind is half useless with grief and pain, and he cannot afford to use the other half learning the operations and rites of a new vehicle. He asks to see the Russes. His fear of the new is applauded by the crowd as a decorous respect for tradition. The crews eye him warily. There is a boundary of rank where tales of glory serve as a warning. Mariusz looks down the line, hoping that his coldness reads as stoicism. The machines are in a dire state, as are their crews – everything is as tired and battered as he is. To the embarrassment of his superiors, it transpires that only one vehicle has a working two-way vox – Sebastian’s Lance. [...] His command is cautious at first. The regiment has been battered by countless heroes looking to spend men’s lives in exchange for more comfortable commissions. Mariusz lacks the bloodlust of a hero and already feels preposterous in his current rank. He has the vehicles audited. Perhaps two dozen are in fighting state, and even then, only barely. Age, war and poor maintenance have left the rest inoperable in the eyes of all but the Munitorum and high command, who demand crushing victories almost immediately. Mariusz quickly realises that he has been given a curious kind of death sentence. He has not been sent to command this regiment but to guide it gloriously to the grave. Their war is to be fought in posters and vox-broadcasts and in the endless names of the dead, carved into cold marble in grand mausoleums.

>‘You’re fighting orks,’ explains the soft-handed commissar. ‘They respect symbols. Shows of violence. If we teach them we’re willing to die to defend our worlds, they’ll think twice before they invade them.’ He sips his tea. Silently, Mariusz decides to disobey. He will not lead more men to their deaths for paper glories. He determines, through misery and spite, to win the war for Novo Deira.

>Victory is a harder, colder thing than glorious defeat. It means relentless drilling. It means always sleeping with an eye open, ever ready for the sound of gunfire. It means hiding in caves as the enemy rumbles overhead and praying silently to the Emperor they are not found. When they do engage directly, it is in bloody, vicious ambushes that last mere minutes. The orks are canny, savage enemies, capable of scavenging even the most meagre remnants from any loss and turning them against Mariusz and his forces. Thus, the slightest error threatens to imbalance a critical balance of materiel – not one tank can be spared or sacrificed to the enemy.

>Mariusz spends the campaign in Sebastian’s Lance, crouched next to the vox-officer or picking a new location to hide. He knows the regiment by call signs and little points on the map. When they need something, he requests it. When the request cannot be met, he has the enginseer strip it from his own vehicle. First, Sebastian’s Lance loses the last of its stores of ammunition. Next go the last remaining hull plates, then the guns. [...] When there is nothing left of Sebastian’s Lance to give, Mariusz gives of himself. His augmetic leg goes to a loader from Castellan of Wrath. His arm goes to the signal’s officer from Heart of Flame. When the electrics blow on the tank’s vox during the battle for the Gap, he replaces the smoking fuse with one from his right eye. The crew of Sebastian’s Lance rotates constantly; soon, there is a tanker on every vehicle in the regiment who Mariusz knows by name.

>To his surprise, living without the augmetics goes from unthinkable to second nature. He no longer feels small. In the heart of Sebastian’s Lance, he is compact and unintrusive; he hauls himself about on bars to offer advice to the driver, to clear a jam for the gunner, to check the viewslits. Sebastian’s Lance does not feel cramped; it feels like home. He knows it as well as his own body – better, even. Every click, every rumble, every scrape of metal on metal is familiar to him.

>The men do not call him commander but Avultu, after a scavenging, bone-eating bird from their home world. Mariusz assumes it is an insult, or a grim joke. Then, in one battle he hears it chanted from the hatches of a hundred tanks by half a thousand soldiers: ‘AVULTU! AVULTU!’

>Mariusz is ordered to make the final assault three times. [...] Every additional day buys the regiment more time to prepare. It is only under the threat of immediate court martial that he accepts. By now, he is ready.

>Mariusz refuses to allow any of his crew to remain with him. He does not need loaders and gunners. He does not need a driver – he has them weld the instruments in place. His regiment does not need a commander – he ensures that each crew knows their duty and place in the battle. All that is needed now is a symbol, a challenge the orks cannot refuse. Mariusz will lead a phantom charge, his cavalry sabre held before him like something from a propo-pict. The orks, too, know of Avultu. Each is eager to be the one who kills him. Mariusz has his long coat fitted with hidden rods, like a scarecrow, so his body will not fall, and so his deception will last even long past his death.

>Mariusz is not looking at the ork horde when he dies but at the vast cloud of dust behind them, a scourging storm. He knows that at its heart are the Vucciria Armoured Huszars, breaking hard for the rear of the ork host. He cannot see them, but he can hear their voices roaring on the wind: ‘AVULTU! AVULTU!’

"Satire Without Purpose Will Wander in Dark Places: How Warhammer 40,000 abandoned anti-authoritarianism for comfortable cowardice" by Tim Colwill

[Excerpt: The Sum of Its Parts] A Broken Man Earns an Epithet