'Don't fucking touch me.' He says this even as I try to lift him from the dusty ground, a heretic's blade wound in his side. Instead he pulls himself to his feet, legs shaking. Haveloch is a testy one. A dog that snaps at whatever comes near him. I guess seeing your planet blasted to rubble will do that to you.
He grunts and shoves past me. Even stabbed and bleeding, he didn't drop his lasgun when the heretic bowled him over, which he performs his field checks with now.
'We need to stem that bleeding.'
'You need to shut your hole.'
'You'll die.'
He slaps the side of the lasgun and a charge within it makes a whine that raises in pitch until it can no longer be heard.
'If this lasgun stops working, we're all dead.'
And with that I think I begin to understand something about Haveloch. Death doesn't scare him, not like it scares me. His own death anyway. It's failure that scares him. He can't fail. Not like he did with Cadia, or he thinks he did anyway. Not again.
Paddy Dobson
26th December 2022