So there she was, walking barefoot on the hot sand, her hands tied in front of her to the cart. With each pace, she heard them. They promised to kill her captors, to give her freedom, to make her insensitive from the whip, or to allow her to do the whipping... All lies, of course. But today, there was something different. From what seemed like far away, she heard a faint hum.

And the hum grew closer. And louder. It was not a whisper, and bore no promises, only a mix of happiness and rage. It was not cold, but warm as a campfire. A few hours later, it was as loud as if screamed by a thousand mouths. No wait, it really was: she could hear it with her real ears now. And the slavers could too, as they scrambled to their weapons, forgetting her.

Nobody was even looking in the slaves' direction now. Already was one of them working on the cart's hooks, and soon, as the slavers were shooting at the incoming doom, she was free to roam about, her hands still tied together but her mind very active. She could hear the assailants' voice both in reality and deep within her soul.

They looked exactly as they sounded: Strong, bluntly honest, carefree and enjoying life in every instant. She took a deep breath and made her decision. She opened herself up to the voice. As she tensed her muscles, the same scream was being born deep in her chest and as she leaped, she let it out:

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

Boy, now dat was an interesting sight. Boss Guldreg hadn't seen anyfing dat funny since at least a week. Dere was dat lil' humie, kind of like a grot, stabbin' and stabbin' and stabbin' dat other humie with its own teeny-tiny choppa, while screamin' like an Ork. But as Guldreg wondered what to do, one of da remainin' humies opened fire at him, and one boolet broke da chain of 'is squig. Da beast lunged right at da little one, baring its teef. Whoops.

It was over in a second. Da squig had never looked so serious, and Guldreg wondered why, especially since it was dead. Da pink grot ditched the dead squig and grabbed da fallen humie's shoota. As it began to fire happily, Boss Guldreg realized dat 'e needed a new pet...

The view was the same as it’d been all day, looking over the great, imposing hab-blocks of Hive Secundus. Below him, thousands of people were gathered, their faces hidden behind imposing rebreathers refitted into fearsome masks, their clothes painted blue-green, each with a hydra painted on their shoulders. Some had three heads, some five, some seven.

Fabian shrugged slightly. Clearly these were small fish. Didn’t even get the insignia right. Not all of them, anyway. He adjusted the sight of his long-las to look at the far end of the seemingly crowd, where a podium was being raised on top of a makeshift metal stage.

The man who eventually took the stage wasn’t just big. He was humongous. A giant of a man, at least seven feet tall, his face horribly disfigured and scarred beyond any recognition. His robes were more elaborate than those of his followers, clearly made of the finer textiles fabricated on Ghastis. The blue and green seemed to meld together as he walked, giving the impression that the robes were glowing with their own eerie light. He cut an intimidating figure, taking long, confident strides towards the podium, hands behind his back, looking over the crowd with the sort of stare that would kill lesser men. Would’ve made a smashing commissar, Fabian thought to himself.

“Cobweb Fabian”, they called him. He was part of the Ghastis PDF’s sniper wing, and lauded for his almost never-failing aim. Unfortunately, such accuracy came at the cost of rate of fire, and so a lot of the older snipers joked that when Fabian had finally loosened a shot, there’d be cobwebs on his long-las. The PDF commanders had seen his almost uncanny accuracy as less of a viability and more of a blessing when they’d sent him on this mission, however.

Of course, he was not alone. Scattered amongst the hab-blocks, out of sight of the frenzied cultists, were a regiment of Hive Secundus PDF troopers backed up by a local force of Arbites, armed to the teeth with close-combat riot gear. Yet the cultists outnumbered them significant, and in spite of their inferior arms, would probably win a straight confrontation with the sort of morale they exhibited now. Which is why they’d called on Fabian to ensure that morale would plummet to the ground faster than an Astartes drop pod. That cult leader had to go.

As his target took the stage, Fabian breathed in and got down on his knees, opting to use the railing on the stairs in front of him as a sort of temporary weapon support. He’d wait until the speech, when everyone would be focusing on the cult leader, and be too frenzied to realize the direction the hot-shot las-shot had come from.

“Fabian, I’ve lost him. Have you got him? Please tell me you’ve sodding got him.”

Fabian sighed to himself. Aleksandra, the other sniper who had been assigned to this hit did that to him. Aleksandra was not a native Ghastis, but a Void-born whose home vessel had dropped her off on the planet. Where Fabian was patient, Aleksandra was impulsive, and relied almost singularly on her apparent talent for sniping to get her through, having an attention span whose low could rival a Blood Claw. Of all the frakking snipers in his entire frakking regiment, he was stuck with Aleksandra.

“I’ve got him. Move to hab 04-51, you should have a clear shot from there. Let me take it first, though.”

“Frak that, I’ll get him.”

“Listen to me. We both know which of us is the better shot, so let me just take it so we’re sure we won’t frak something u-”

Before he finished his sentence, a hot-shot las-shot punctured the air, flying towards the skull of the yet-unsuspecting cult leader.

And missed.

He saw the shot go wild, punching into the podium the cult leader stood on, probably taking him through the knee. But it sure as frak wasn’t fatal.

The instant the cult leader missed, outroar began. The frenzied cultists looked around, most of them having recognized the direction the bolt of las-fire came from. He prayed to the Emperor they wouldn’t see Aleksandra. He lifted his long-las, hefting it up on his shoulder, taking in a deep breath. He had to take the shot now. They would guess his position in an instant, but he had to take them down before the push.

He held his breath so as to not obstruct his aim, carefully moving over to where the cult leader stood when he noticed the all-too familiar gleam. The frakker had a Refractor Field! He’d never punch through that with a long-las. He swore to himself, letting out air and throwing off his aim completely. He had to find a target, something.

He reconsidered when he saw Aleksandra on the hab across from him, punctured by autogun fire from two heavy stubbers. Down on the platform he saw the cult leader’s bodyguards moving up. Wisely, he stayed down when they tried to search the stairs that just a moment ago he’d used as temporary setup. Now, he was cowering just close enough to see the madness, but concealed enough that even if they found him, those stubbers wouldn’t get him. His heart was racing now.

I’m going to die, he thought. I’m going to die here, the mission will be a failure, the Arbites and PDF will run into a slaughter. And there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. As a sniper, he was used to changing the face of cult encounters like these. He’d done it before, cutting off the head of the snake. It worked on most of the small-time cults he’d done work on so far. Feeling as hopeless as this made him ever more frightful that they’d find him. He wouldn’t even be able to take one of them head-on. For all his sniper training, he could just barely outfight a ten-year old hive ganger in close combat. Provided the kid was alone, unarmed and unarmored, and he was carrying his flak armor and a decently sized combat knife, that is.

He dared crawl back to his position when he suddenly heard the high-pitched scream of a thousand damned souls crying out in unison. As he crawled back up to his vantage point, he saw the most glorious sight he’d seen in days.

The cult leader was lying at the bottom of the podium, his head missing. It was not lying in the vicinity, nor were the now fearful and frightened mob distancing themselves from anything. Someone had simply blown the cultist leader’s head off.

That’s when he heard a rumbling below him. As he looked down the stairs again, a hulking figure stood above him, clad in a deep grey suit of armor perfectly fit as camouflage for moving around the habs. Draped around his shoulders was a camo-cloak, it also outfitted for urban combat. In his hand was a, by human standards, gargantuan weapon, clearly made for sniping.

A Space Marine. One of the Ghost Walkers.

He wasn’t going to die. They were going to be alright. The Angels of Death had come.

The Astartes contemplated him for a second, then lifted his Stalker-pattern boltgun. An instant later, one of the bodyguards had lost his head. Fabian’s gob almost reached the ground. He was one of the PDF’s best snipers, and even he couldn’t make a kill-shot that fast. Frak, he doubted the Colonel could even do that.

Suddenly, bolter-fire started to ring from almost every corner of the hab, every Ghost Walker, for he knew it had to be them, were pummeling the cultists with so disciplined sniper fire that every bolt round fired sounded like it came from every direction. The scared cultists started firing back, wildly spraying autopistol fire around on the surrounding hab-blocks.

When the PDF and the Arbites struck, the crowd was in disarray. The Arbites Rhinos charged into mobs of cultists, disembarking its deadly inhabitants into the middle of the crowd with their riot shotguns. Behind them came the Ghastis PDF, armed in equal measure with lasguns and the same shotguns the Arbites bore. In the forefront was Major Julian, blasting away at the unmissable mass of cultists with a plasma pistol, all the while charging towards them with a revving chainsword.

His spirits raised, Fabian raised his sniper rifle once again. One of the bodyguards was still up, shooting down his friends with the heavy autogun fire. He took a deep breath and once again adjusted his scope. He knew that this was urgent, that people could die, but he took his time. He wouldn’t want to see another shot botched today.

When he finally lifted up his long-las and fired, there was instant gratification when the bodyguard dropped from his stubber, his face a charred mess. He wouldn’t be getting up again.

“I see that the years have been good to you, Fabian.” said the deep baritone voice of the Space Marine next to him.

“You...You know my name, my lord?”

“I make a habit of knowing people who taught me how to shoot.”

Fabian raised an eyebrow at the comment as the Marine removed his helmet.

“Laszlo. By the Emperor, it’s been years!”

Laszlo, now unmasked, nodded at Fabian. Laszlo had been one of the Space Marine candidates Fabian and his fellow snipers had been tasked with teaching. Young children on Ghastis who showed potential with stealth or shooting, usually recruited from either the Hive Gangs or the local youth PDF training centers were trained by the PDF snipers in accuracy, and the Ghost Walkers in stealth and silent movement. Laszlo had been a recruit of his twenty years ago.

“Indeed it has. You look older.”

“Not all of us have the benefits of immortality, now do we?” Fabian said, a grin from ear to ear. He was overjoyed whenever he met a Space Marine that he’d once trained.

“That’s true. On that note, I spot someone trying to rally the cult, about three hundred paces in that direction.” Laszlo pointed a finger in a vaguely north-east direction. “Wouldn’t want any of the inner circle to escape, would we?”

Fabian nodded, once more adjusting his scope, but before he even had the time to properly aim, the ring leader was dead. The disadvantage of working with Space Marines, Fabian thought, is that they’re all frakking showoffs.

Khorne didn't even really want their skulls, most days, gave them away to Bloodletters who'd enraged him (and survived) as a mocking gift.

So Kharn was really just hanging out here to pay an old debt he owed a fellow Berzerker. The guy was the one who'd made sure Kharn got his nice, shiny new commissar cap (currently onboard the good ship Killfrenzy, along with all of Kharne's kitties and cats that he loved so much.)

So, yeah, Kharn owed him a bit.

It was with these thoughts swirling in his head that Kharn reached the top of a small hill and saw a sight that made him, veteran of the assault on Holy Terra, ageless harbinger of death, stop dead in his tracks and drop Gorechild in sheer disbelief.

The Tau were charging.

There were only a handful of them. No mighty army, this- just a pack of Fire Warriors, out of ammo after the weeks-long battle for their world, cut off from reinforcements and supplies. Just a pack of ordinary Tau, who were charging Kharn- charging!- with nothing more to their name than a few rocks and a couple of tiny little combat knives, almost toys.

Kharn stared. There was not a drop of fear in their eyes, not a hint of cowardice in their hearts- they were going to charge an eight-foot-tall giant whose entire job description was melee combat, who wielded the mighty Gorechild, whirring chain-axe of death blessed by Khorne the Blood God everlasting.

And they had no fear.

A noise began like an engine clearing. Another soon followed it, then another, and another, until a mighty flood of laughter bellowed from Kharn, laughter born of pure shock and wonder.

" They're CHARGING! " Kharn yelled aloud, and laughed again, stunned into glorious wonder. Wonder! An emotion he had not felt in centuries! Surely Khorne was kind this day. " Men! The Tau! They are charging!"

One of the Berzerkers behind Kharn made a fatal mistake.

" Fools."

Kharn stopped laughing. Anger- an emotion that he was most definitely not unfamiliar with- filled him.

" No. Not fools. Brave. Have you forgotten bravery, brother-slaughterer? Forgotten what it feels like to tackle a truly mighty foe, one that could slay you easily? To tackle one knowing this, and yet..."

Kharn slowed in his speech. It was clear from the Berzerker's eyes that he had, in fact, forgotten. The lobotomy had taken more from him than just his fear- it had taken from him courage, too.

Kharn sighed, and then a thought occurred, and he started laughing again.

" Let me show you, my brother-slaughterer..." Kharn whispered with a ferocious smile, picking up Gorechild and revving its engine loud.

" YOU WILL KNOW FEAR!"

When the Tau reached the hill, Kharn had slain all his fellow comrades in a few moments- he was Kharn, he was so good at fighting he'd killed an assassin in his sleep once (literally, he hadn't known he'd done it until he woke up three hours later). The Tau had kept charging in the interim, unafraid, though confused.

Kharn let them win, pretended to go down under their blades, rocks, and the one guy swinging a Fire Warrior helmet (Kharn laughed at that, too). Bravery deserved reward.

There was a whole galaxy to burn; why not a little kindness, as reward for such tremendous bravery?

After all, it was not every day that someone as old as Kharn experienced a little wonder at the universe.