Magnificent Bastards

I was sittin' there at the bar, having a drink with my mate Foley, right, and we're drinking to ease the pain. Me with one of my arms just fucking gone, from the elbow down, Foley with a gut wound, but our wounds were to our front, as they say. Honorable. No Commissar could say we didn't do our duty when the Eldar charged us like that, in the end.

Sitting there in the bar, well, we see a lot of people who look like Foley does, we never know if they're gonna make it or not. When you see a guy like that, wearing bandages around his middle, and his skin is that color, you tend to speak a little quietly around him, you don't bother him, you don't even go near him... right? It's superstition but you don't have anything to do with the walking dead if you can help it. Now, turns out Foley survived in the end, but anyway.

Now, we'd heard rumors that there was a company of Astartes supporting us there on this world Malhereux. Right? Of course, we figured the brass was just bullshitting us to make us fight better, because some of those Astartes will just kill a Guardsman like you or me, just like that, they think if we can't fight hard enough. And other Astartes will buy you a round of drinks, and those Astartes are popular with the girls and, well, us dogface grunts need all the help we can get on that front. Well, anyway, it turns out it was partially true, we were supported by Astartes. Just one squad, though, a dozen guys, just two support weapons.

They took a beating, a really bad one. Hundreds of us died, fighting off the Eldar, but our army is tens of thousands in this position alone, you know? But the Marines, there were just a dozen to start with, and by the time the Eldar up and left us, five were dead and five of the remaining Marines were wounded, one critically. Heh, the priest kept going over there to do the last rites but their officer got angry, picked him up in one hand and just tossed him out the door.

Anyway, so my mate Foley and I are sitting there having our drinks, right, my left arm is ghosted and hurting like hell, and he's pale and hunched over like always since he got hurt, and we're sitting there and thinking about buying a drink when we hear this machine noise real close by, heavy footsteps, and we're going "Shit, what the hell is that?"

And then, Emperor's truth, the door opens and in walks a Space Marine of the Adeptus Astartes, black and blue armor. Guy seems short for a Marine, he fits right in under the ceiling without ducking, but I guess they come in all sizes, right? Just like us. (Some people even say they're made from the flesh of living human beings, but I won't hear a word of it. That's human sacrifice, and that's heresy.)

And everyone in the place just shuts up. Shuts the fuck up. 'Cause we heard these Astartes were kinda cool with us lowly humans, but still, you're not gonna take your chances, and besides, their sergeant actually laid hands on a priest in anger, that's the kind of bad news that rubs off on everyone. But nobody dared leave either, because that would be a mortal offense to his honor.

Then we start noticing other things, like the patches in his suit where armor has been hastily welded on, or molten metal poured over cracks, and we notice he's limping, so Honored War-Brother Grimjaw there seems to have been in the fight, one of the walking wounded.

And Grimjaw just walks up to the bar and says to the bartender, polite as you please, he'd like a glass of liquor and a pitcher of water. And he reaches under his breastplate and pulls out a couple notes of Imperial scrip, and the bartender just waves him off, says it's free.

And the drink the guy gets, I can smell it from here, right? It's good stuff. He's holding the glass in one hand, and a pitcher of water in the other, and the pitcher in his hand looks like a glass in mine, right? And he looks around like he wants to sit somewhere.

Now, the bar's full, but when one of the Angels of Death shows up and wants to sit, people start getting edgy. On the one hand, you'd love to have him drink with you. On the other, first, he could drink you under the table, and second, everyone's at least a tiny bit scared of him. So people are getting restless... and then, I shit you not, Grimjaw just looks at us, sees our bandages and Foley's pale skin, and he goes, "Ah, my brothers in arms," and just walks right over and sits down at the free chair. And the thing actually sags under his weight, but somehow it holds. Amazing, right? He must have weighed at least half a ton in his armor. Then as soon as he's not looking at everyone else, people start finishing their drinks and leaving.

Anyway, we get to talking, he calls himself Brother Ammon, just like a monk, and he actually shook my hand when I explained how I lost part of my arm. Tells us just to call him Brother Ammon, drop the "Honored War-Brother" stuff, says he's tired of all the deference. I shit a brick. The Astartes turn out to be the humble servants the priests say we should be! Amazing.

Why was I telling this story? Oh, right. Had to do with Eldar. Yeah, we got to talking about the Eldar. "Magnificent bastards", he said.

See, I don't know if they told you this in training and indoctrination, but the Eldar aren't evil like heretics are evil. The Eldar are just mysterious and unpredictable, so they're really damn dangerous - ha ha ha, look at my claw here, right? But sometimes they'll show up and start slaughtering heretics or other xenos. So he told me about this one time his company was being just crushed by heretics, with armored support. They were there to kill the heretic leader who's in the middle of it, right? And he'd said his squad was just trying to hold fast, couple guys were down, they're running low on ammo for their heavy bolter, and they're drawing their cleavers and axes and waiting for the charge. And suddenly the tank that’s been helping the heretics pin them down is just gone, huge fireball in its place, and these guys in bright and colorful armor are running through the heretics and cutting them down left and right, until there's a counter-charge. The heretics turn around and start trying to hack them to pieces.

So Brother Ammon and his squad, there, their sergeant must've been insane, or had balls so big... He tells 'em to get up, and just charge the fucking heretics. Carve their way through, right? And then Ammon sees what's happening, the Eldar are going right for the heretic general too. Big guy, it turns out, actually a former Space Marine, he said. Ammon didn't know him but his sergeant did, that's why he was so mad. I don't think he was supposed to tell me that, 'cause I didn't know about the Traitors back then, but hey.

So he's telling me about this battle, and it's all hand-to-hand, and they're running and screaming their war cry and hacking away at the heretics, right, when suddenly they find themselves face-to-face with the Eldar, and the Eldar guy with the biggest hat says something, and the Sergeant just turns around and says, "Today, the enemy of my enemy is my friend! Don't touch the Eldar."

Wow. That is balls-out heretical, right? So I ask Brother Ammon, and he says no, xenophilia is when you seek out and try to help the aliens, but even the Inquisition works alongside them sometimes. And Foley actually laughed, when he heard that, and said it was either true or bullshit of such a high grade, that it deserved belief for now.

Anyway, he said, the heretics kept running at them, and the Marines were actually getting slowed down because they were being attacked from all sides, and Ammon says he personally felt his doom when someone tried to crowbar his helmet off from behind, and he turns around and this mutated hulk has a pry bar in either hand, and then he's just sliced apart and there's an Eldar standing there. And the alien says to him, in perfect formal Gothic, "I have your back. Help your brothers, O Ally." And so he did. It was like a ring of death, afterward, he said, the Marines on one side and the Eldar on the other, fighting back to back, and they were unstoppable. But they couldn't find the heretic leader's body at the end, or even a scrap of his armor.

Then the one Eldar with a bigger hat than the others steps forward with a severed head in his hand and he throws it at the sergeant and laughs. Doesn't say anything. Just stands there laughing and looking at the Marines. And the sergeant looks at him and goes, "This is what we came for," and the guy actually bows to the Eldar leader, and the Eldar bows back, and then the suckers just turn and run away.

"Magnificent bastards," he said.

I've seen 'em fight, myself. You know what, though? If the Astartes think the Eldar are so great, they can have 'em all to themselves. Hell with this, I miss my left hand. I liked it, I got it when I was born. At least I got a good prosthetic, working for the machine-adepts in their lab.

Hey, now, I bought the last round, it's up to you. If you're interested, I'll tell you about that one time we got tank-rushed, and got away without a scratch.