He advanced cautiously towards the torn hole, a sudden chill enveloping him as he moved into the long shadow cast by the tower. Quinn drew his chainsword, his thumb hovering above the activation rune. He stepped onto the gritty surface of the grain, flicking on the illuminator slung beneath the barrel of his lasgun, and took a deep breath as he stared into the darkness within the silo. A thick stench, disguised by the cold air, filled his nostrils as he cautiously stepped into the silo, playing the spear of light from his illuminator around its interior. The light could only show the merest fragment of what lay within, but even that was too much.
He numbly waved his vox-operator forward.
'Get Sergeant Klein over here,' he whispered, his voice trembling, 'and tell him to hurry…'
Sergeant Learchus, Major Satria and Colonel Stagler of the Krieg regiment stood atop the frosted rampart of the first wall of Erebus city, watching the soldiers of its defence force training on the esplanade between this wall and the second. Men sweated and grunted below, the sound of their training eclipsed by the ringing of hammers and clang of shovels on the frozen ground as other gangs of soldiers dug trench lines before the walls.
Learchus watched the men below with a mixture of disappointment and resignation.
'You are not impressed, I take it,' said Satria.
Learchus shook his head. 'No, most of these men would not survive a week at Agiselus.'
'That's one of the training barracks on Macragge, is it not?' asked Stagler.
'Yes, it sits at the foot of the Mountains of Hera where Roboute Guilliman himself trained. It is where myself and Captain Ventris trained also.'
Soldiers worked in small sparring groups, practising bayonet drills and close combat techniques with one another, making a poor show of the skills they would need to keep them alive in the coming battles.
Upon his first inspection of the troops, Learchus had watched each platoon fire off accurate volleys of disciplined lasfire, blasting close groupings of holes in target silhouettes. He had marched to the first platoon and grabbed a lasgun from a nervous trooper, before returning to a surprised looking Major Satria.
'You are teaching them to shoot?'
'Well, yes. I thought that might be important in a soldier.' Satria had replied.
'Not against tyranids,' said Learchus. 'Have you ever seen a tyranid swarm?'
'You know I haven't.'
'Well I have, and they come at you in a tide of creatures so thick a blind man could score a hit ten times out of ten. Any man who can hold a gun can hit a tyranid. But no matter how many you kill with your guns, there will always be more, and it is our job to teach the men how to fight the ones that reach our lines.'
Since then, the organisation of a coherent training program had fallen to Learchus and in the week since he had ordered the gates of Erebus closed, he had fought bureaucratic intransigence and years of ingrained dogma to implement a workable regime.
At dawn the men would rise, practise field stripping their weapons and perform exercises designed to enhance their stamina and aerobic strength. Corpsmen from the Logres regiment had been instrumental in instructing the soldiers in good practices while exercising in cold weather, as each activity had to be rigorously controlled, lest a soldier develop a layer of sweat beneath his winter clothes that would later condense, degrading its insulating properties dramatically.
'These men must learn faster,' said Learchus. 'They will all die in the first attack at this rate.'
'You expect the impossible from them, sergeant,' said Satria. 'At this rate they will hate us more than the tyranids.'
'Good. We must first strip them of all sense of self. We must strip away every notion of who they think they are and rebuild them into the soldiers they need to be to survive. I do not care that they hate me, only that they learn. And learn quickly.'
'That won't be easy,' said Satria.
'Irrelevant,' said Stagler. 'The weakest men will always be the first to fall anyway. When the chaff has been removed, the true warriors will remain.'
'Chaff?' said Satria. 'These are my soldiers and I'll not have them spoken of like that.'
'Your soldiers leave a lot to be desired, Major Satria,' pointed out Stagler, his hands clasped behind his back. His patrician features were pinched by the cold, and his stern gaze swept the training ground in disapproval. Learchus agreed with Stagler and though he knew that Satria's men were trying, effort had to be combined with results to mean anything.
He watched a group of soldiers practising thrusting and parrying with bayonets, their movements encumbered by thick winter clothing. Originally the soldiers had been training without their webbing and winter gear, but Learchus had swiftly put a stop to that. Where was the use in training in ideal conditions when the fighting was never going to be that way?
Learchus firmly believed in the philosophy of Agiselus: train hard, fight easy. Every training exercise undertaken by its cadets was fought against insurmountable odds, so that when the real fight came, it was never as hard.
Even after a week's training, Learchus saw that the soldiers were still too slow. Tyranid creatures were inhumanly quick, their razored limbs like a blur as they speared towards your heart, and he knew that the butcher's bill among these soldiers would be high indeed.
Without a word of explanation he turned on his heel and made his way down the gritted steps that led from the ramparts to the esplanade below. Satria and Stagler hurriedly followed him as he stepped onto its slick cobbles.
He strode into the middle of the training ground and stood with his hands planted squarely on his hips. Activity around him gradually diminished until the soldiers began to slowly gather around the Space Marine at their centre.
'You have strayed from the ideals of Ultramar that the blessed primarch left you as his legacy,' began Learchus. 'You have been seduced by the frippery and comfort that comes from lives of indulgence and peace. I am here to tell you that that time is over. Comfort is an illusion, a chimera bred from familiar things and ways.'
Learchus marched around the circumference of the circle of soldiers, punctuating his words by slapping his gauntleted fist into his palm.
'Comfort narrows the mind, weakens the flesh and robs your warrior spirit of fire and determination. Well, no more.'
He marched to stand in the centre of the circle and said, 'Comfort is neither welcome nor tolerated here. Get used to it.'
The skin of the soldier's foot was waxy-looking, a white, greyish yellow colour, and several ruptured blisters leaked a clear fluid onto the crisp white sheets of the bed. Joaniel Ledoyen shook her head at this soldier's foolishness, jabbing a sharp needle into the cold flesh on the sole of his foot. The man didn't react, though she couldn't tell whether that was a result of the frostbite or the half-bottle of amasec he'd downed to blot out the pain.
Probably a mix of both, she thought, discarding the needle into a sharps box and scrawling a note on the man's chart that hung from the end of his bed.
'Is it bad?' slurred the soldier.
'It's not good,' said Joaniel frankly. 'But if you're lucky we may be able to save your foot. Didn't you receive instruction on how to prevent these kinds of injuries?'
'Aye, but I don't read so good, sister. Never had no call for it on Krieg.'
'No?'
'Nah, soon as you're old enough you're sent to join the regiment. Colonel Stagler don't approve of educated men, says it was educated men that got Krieg bombed to shit in the first place. The colonel says that all a man needs to do is fight and die. That's the Krieg way.'