CHAMPION OF ABBAWAN

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ABBAWAN. IMMRIAN BELT SUB-SECTOR. ULTIMA SEGMENTUM

Annual Fall Tithe, 3rd Day of Idrayn, 103.M42

It was the fifth time in as many years that the Tithe Ambassadors drove their trucks up to the farm and implored Lon Dury to join the Imperial Guard. And it was the fifth time the tall, broad shouldered farmer shook his head, glanced shyly at the ground where his feet were planted firmly in the alluvial mud of his ancestors, and said 'I serve my wife and children now. I am sorry to offend you, your cause is a just one and worthy of consideration. But I am no longer a fighting man. I barely got through my service with the PDF in '98, what good would I be so far from my family and lands? You'll find younger and more willing men further south of the valley.'

The Ambassadors were six elderly men in the pale blue vestments of the local PDF Munitorum. Lon did not know them all, but the one in the passenger's seat was a familiar enough face. The man's name was Ralter, and both knew the ritual well. Ralter would beseech Lon to join the cause and Lon would decline and then apologise in his customary shy and straightforward manner. The very epitome of a good, honest, hardworking Abbawan farmer. Behind Ralter the troop transport was already half full of willing young men and women for the tithes demanded by the Imperium. But a man still had the right to decline Guard service upon the world of Abbawan, as it was far from the wars that waged across the galaxy in the Emperor's name. Even so, Abbawan never once came up short in its supply of eager young troops for the Imperial Tithes.

So, again, the old men shook their heads and the new recruits looked at Lon as though he were some inexcusable half-wit. Lon held his ground, as he always did, as shameful as the hopeful glances from the Ambassadors and the ignorant scowls of the younger men made him.

Like all young men and women of Abbawan Lon Dury had completed his mandatory service with the PDF with the dedication and determination of a man who wanted only to do his best, and get home as soon his two-year service was up. But within months of Lon's enlistment Abbawan ran afoul of the greatest conflict the agri-world had suffered in all its history. Lon had returned with medals pinned to his chest and scars stitched across his body. The worst, however, were the scars of memory: fighting alongside the Imperial Guard and the Astartes during the Virimak Uprising of '97 and '98 along the Ma-Ladriak Coast. That had been five years ago, and the stories of his heroism were still being told in garrisons and bars throughout the Southern lowlands to this very day. It was said he had killed an entire platoon of Virimak fighters with his bare hands, had numerously saved the lives of PDF and Guardsmen alike, and had single-handedly taken out a heavy-bolter bunker. Some of it was true, but much of it was rumour and fanciful fabrication. At least in the way the stories were being told. Lon had only done what any human would do. Protect your own, kill the enemy, do everything you can to get back home alive to see your family in one piece. War was simple that way. But they had turned his actions into the stuff of legend. So much so, that he could not even walk into town without being pointed at and slapped upon the shoulder, or visit a local bar without some idiot asking him to recount the tales of his heroic deeds and get paid with free ale all night. Everyone looked up to him, as though he were something more than an ordinary farmer, and the infamy only served to make him uncomfortable and reclusive.

'This isn't the Virimak we're talking about now, Lon.' Old Ralter said in even tones, attempting as he had each year before to change the younger man's mind. 'This is about protecting those that you love, your wife and your children. Protecting Artenville and the Southern lowlands – Emperor's mercy, all of Abbawan!'

Lon nodded slowly, unable to look the old ambassador in the eye.

'Lon, the Guard need men like you. To lead them, to show them the way. Men like you can make a difference out there.'

'I'm staying with the farm, Ralter.' Lon said quietly.

'But this is different now,' the ambassador urged. 'Things have changed out there. We're not talking about fighting against common heretics taking up arms against the Imperium; we're talking about things much more dire than that. We face the Xenos now. Greenskins!'

Lon looked up then, unable to avoid such striking news. 'Orks?' The word barely louder than a whisper.

The old ambassador nodded. 'They're pouring into the system by the millions. A true invasion this one, Lon. You must join the Guard. Other worlds upon the outskirts of the Immrian Belt are already forcing men to enlist into the Guard, such are the numbers of the Foe. We need you out there, Lon. Your world needs you.'

Lon swallowed and his throat made an audible clicking sound. His mind raced, he remembered everything from the Ma-Ladriak Coast, things he rarely pondered upon in the days since his return: men and women he had known since school, some who had tilled fields alongside his own, screaming and burning, plunging bayonets into one another, madness splitting their once humble lives asunder in every direction. The moan and roar of falling shells, his Commander blown to pieces, one moment standing there, howling for his platoon to brace themselves and move forward, then the next nothing but a fine red mist in the air, curls of dark, rancid smoke. He remembered the yellow-green nerve-gas floating into the trenches, the pyres of burning corpses, the oil fires that the citizens of Abbawan were still trying to put out to this very day, and he remembered the faces of the fifty-three men and women in his company who had died before him, some of them in his arms, unable to do anything but watch as each was swept away into the Emperor's light. Some slowly, others in a sudden bright flash like Commander Josett.

Then he thought about Orks, and his skin crawled.

'If they come to The Southern lowlands I'll be waiting for them. But I will remain here on the farm with my family.'

The old man nodded sadly. Some of the recruits in the transport shook their heads and spat over the sides, glaring at Lon as though he were some useless turncoat. As yellow-bellied a traitor as the Virimak had been. He wanted to grab them and smash his fist into their faces, to open up his flailed and wounded memories to them, to show them the hell they could barely fathom in their blithe, young brains, the hell he had lived through in its entirety back in '98. But he was no psyker to push his thoughts into the minds of other men. And the fearsome strength endowed within his limbs, to be able to pick a man up and hurl him off the truck, for he was big enough to do so, leached from him, afflicted by the shadow of strife and shame.

Ralter must have seen the dark struggle within the man. When he spoke again, his tone was sympathetic. 'Well, I guess we'll see you next year then?'

Lon half grinned, feeling the old man's words lift the cold weight of obligation from his back. 'I guess so,' he replied.

He watched the troop transport rumble away from the farm and up into the hills surrounding the peaceful valley until it was little more than a speck popping in and out between the pines before it finally disappeared from sight.

Lon stood there watching the wooded hills for a long while, his duties forgotten, simply breathing in the cool pine-scented air. It was sweet, soured only a little by the distant smog from the small town of Artenville. Merrywings and bluehoppers shrieked and trilled from a nearby copse of trees. Somehwere a woodcutter was working his way slowly through a pile of wood for the oncoming winter. Soon the land would be quilted in white, blanketed in crackling silence. It was a glorious time of year. Breathing was something he enjoyed, and never once took for granted. Many of those who had fought by his side upon the Ma-Ladriak Coast were not so lucky.

Greenskins, he wondered with an almost macabre curiosity.

The idea welled up a swathe of legendary tales from his childhood. Terrifying beasts twice the size of the largest man. He wondered at the prospect of aliens, actual malevolent xenos, invading the worlds near Abbawan, and the terror those poor worlds and their brave defenders now faced. War was coming, it was inevitable, no matter how hard he might try to hide from it.

When a pair of arms encircled him he could barely control the shock-bolt flinch that ran through him.

The arms tensed but then their owner pressed her hands against his broad chest and buried her face into the muscles of his back. He could feel her warmth suffusing him.

'I was going to ask who our visitors were,' his wife said to him, in that bright cheerful voice of hers that was the master of his heart and the peacekeeper of his mind. 'But from that reaction, I think I can guess.'

'I told them no, Iailia.' Lon said, relaxing into her embrace.

'I know,' she replied.

He turned around to face her. Her bright, chocolate brown eyes appraised him from a tip-toe. He pushed his fingers through the softness of her long blonde hair. She smiled, her face lighting up the shadows in his heart as it did every day since they had first met. He pulled her in close for a kiss. It was long and lasting, and gentle. No Greenskins here. No screaming. No howling of shells or the bark of autoguns and las fire. Just the love of his life sharing his pains and cutting their ferocity in half simply by her presence. He hugged her then and felt a rush of emotion flow through him.

As he breathed in the gingerlilly scent of Iailia's hair he could see their two boys watching them from behind the farmhouse, shirking their duties of woodcutting and cleaning out the ferigg pens, though he did not mind. Their sons would also be wondering who had visited the farm. And like the past two years, since the boys had been learning their histories at school, they would interrogate their father over supper, demanding to know why he was not charging across the galaxy to fight the good fight alongside the Imperial Guard to face the vile forces of the Green Horror.

Tonight, Lon Dury thought to himself as he pulled his wife tightly to him, it would be difficult to come up with a reason why he shouldn't. Old Ralter's words had struck hard. Leaving him not only with a sense of shame that he was shirking a higher duty to his people, higher than that required of his family, but a sense of imminent desolation in his refusal to fight. A slow, dawning dread crept forth from the back of his mind, like the nerve-gas that had floated down the trenches of Ma-Ladriak. It loped forward to crash against the cage he had bolted shut for five determined years. He had not allowed that beast to roam free in a long time. For some reason he could not calm its susurrations now as the sun sank low across the hills like the fading glow of a melta-blast.

War was coming to Abbawan, and Lon Dury could hide from it no longer.