DILLEACHTA
DILLEACHTA
(Dy-aghtah) 'Orphans', in the speak of ancient Terran clansfolk, and the language of DohmHain.
'That the last of the Zabi?' Argoh sprawled back in his creaking chair, casting a warm glance toward Krona.
'Nah. This, while posessing a fine nose and smoky undertaste, is the product of our dear friend Vonin. Not so subtle or refined as the stuff from back home, but it tugs at my nostalgia all the same.' His voice is thick with sarcasm, but more so with honesty. The late Vonin would have appreciated the sentiment.
Argoh nodded sagely, his nose and cheeks red with drink and fatigue. They all missed home, and none more so than him. Many of the platoon were Orphans who had left no family behind, but Argoh was missing a wife and daughter. He had to stop himself from being swept away in the currents of memory. It wasn't worth it.
Somewhere down the billet, dice could be heard rolling across a wooden tabletop. It was probably Mack, losing all of his pay. He never won. Krona suspected that the youth had some sort of compulsion, to manage the stress most likely. Their life had become a running series of trench engagements, and every last one of them had picked up ways of coping. Mack gambled, usually dice to keep his hands busy. Argoh drank, and hit a heavy-bag. Krona counted the syllables of every conversation he could hear, by tapping his fingers - little, thumb, and middle. Others had more mundane coping mechanisms, like Buffalo or Roma. The only thing Buffalo had kept from his life on DohmHain was a collection of dog eared books. He hadn't even kept his name - none of them knew what he'd been called before, and many suspected that he had forgotten it entirely. He spent every quiet moment they had in a book. Roma preferred to create. He wrote constantly, a rolling documentation of their time spent in service to the Emperor. His scribblings were rife with crude tangents; what, in fact, the most holy Emperor looked like these days, or notes on the flexibility of a certain girl back on Fenn-Hold.
Argoh Grinned at that. They'd done their best to avoid sinking into the mire of synicism. Most of the men didn't have families to miss, but every one of them that fell was a blow to their newly inherited family - the Cruachan Remnants. Most were ex-steel factorum hivers who had cut their teeth fighting in work gang skirmishes and enduring the torment of brutish overseers. Argoh had worked as a line chief, mainly thanks to his own thuggish physique. His team had been composed mostly of youths, many of whom had lost their families or loved ones during the horrendous and sudden Tyranid invasion some years earlier. Infiltrating elements of the Hive Fleet had sprung upon the relatively unprotected civilian populace, and within a day the sky was darkened by descending bio-forms. It was a mystery how the planet’s auguries and orbital waystations had failed to produce any sort of warning. The creatures simply appeared out of the void, breaking into realspace like a great sea predator breaks the tranquil veil of a quiet sea. The population outside of the factorum stacks was almost entirely eradicated - PDF, civilians, most of the population of farming families.
The steel workers however, had closed the enormous gates to their forge-citadels, and survived. A fleet composed largely of Navy vessels ferrying Narmenian armor and heavy infantry, as well as a sizable contingent of Howling Griffons Astartes had arrived within the week, and zealously worked to cleanse those Xenos remaining on DohmHain. Pilgrims and desperate workers had been dropped into the remains of the great hive, and struggled to repopulate and reinvigorate the world. It was fourteen years later that the steel stacks were deemed inadequate in their production, and all able-bodied workers were conscripted into the ranks of the Imperial Guard. They became the Cruachan Remnants.
Down the billet, Buffalo perked up, resembling a large grazing creature struggling to reach a high branch. He screamed. 'Down, down and under the steel you Friggers'!' The entire platoon had grown to respect the giant man's keen eyes and ears, and they were sprawled amongst the dirt and overturned chairs in an instant, brushing aside crumpled playing cards and shot glasses. Sure enough, impacts could be heard out near the front lines, and they were getting closer. The enemy hadn't yet managed to land ordinance this far behind the front, and the Remnants had assumed they were lounging in relative safety. They wormed their way toward the listing billet door, all seventeen of them. Krona reached it first, pulling the shotcannon he kept at his waist out of it's heavy reptilian-leather sheath. Someone outside was yelling about the vox, and there was gunfire. How in the hell did the enemy push this far back without alerting them?
Krona kicked the door open, and corpse light lit the billet - white-grey-blue flares, used to illuminate ground assaults. Argoh could hear the shotcannon roar, once, twice. A third explosion registered, but it was behind him; a mortar had ranged right on top of their flak-board rec-billet, and thrown nearly every Remnant violently to the floor. He felt at his side - it was wet, but that didn't help. He was covered in mud and cold sweat, of course he was damp. His vision was blurry from the blast's concussive force, and the corpse-light didn't help. He could make out Krona still blasting his gun out into the trenches, with Buffalo at his side. A voice called out from nearby, a voice like Mack's, or maybe Poraigh's. Out of instinct, they were rallying the disoriented men. Finding his feet, Argoh grabbed the closest weapon-shaped thing he could find. A feral grin crossed the old laborer's muddy features, as he tightened his grip around one of the boys' old mattocks. The sounds of shelling became pneumatic hammers, and the rattling staccato of small-arms fire dulled to the buzz-snap of auto-riveters. Flicking blood and mud from his thick chin-beard as he shook his head, Argoh went to work.
