The bunker door slammed shut, dulling the wail of sirens and thunder of shell impacts to a low hum and faint thudding. 5th Platoon – full strength on paper, half strength to their CO, and substantially less than that in spirit – looked around at their new lodgings to be for the next few hours. It was agreed to be a homely affair, at best, lacking decor aside from a corpse in a dark greatcoat slumped in one corner and a pile of rubble in another.

‘Ello,’ said the rubble, cheerfully. It unfolded into the huge shape of an ogryn.

‘How long you been down here?’ someone asked.

The ogryn creased his brow, raised his hands in front of him, and slowly started lifting fingers one at a time. At seven, he stopped, and nodded. ‘Dunno,’ he grunted. ‘Got ‘ungry though.’

‘No food down here? We won’t last long.’

‘You’ve gotta remember, the Emperor is watching over us.’

A man cradling an empty grenade launcher spoke out. ‘You know what I reckon? I reckon the Emperor’s watching over us all right, and he’s dropped his trousers and sha-’

BANG.

The speaker’s head exploded, hurling blood and fragments of bone across cowering guardsmen and a nonplussed ogryn. When their ears stopped ringing, an inhuman voice croaked from the dark.

‘Heresy.’

In the corner, the corpse had sat up. A commissar, one leg missing at the knee and half his face burned away, but now upright with a bolt pistol steady in his hand. Very much alive, to no-one’s excitement. Least of all his own.

‘It seems the Emperor has not seen fit to call me to him just yet.’ The Commissar forced words from his charred lips. ‘I am Commissar Starn. I will not abide heresy, defeatism, or lollygagging.’

The guardsmen exchanged looks. One softly asked, ‘Sir, I’ve not heard of – what is lollygagging?’

BANG.

The dust settled again. Stern growled, ‘Lollygagging is time wasting – things like foolish questions. Your time is the Emperor’s time, and wasting the Emperor’s time is heresy.’

A woman with most of her head wrapped in a bandage asked in a slurred voice, ‘So lollyga – lolagug – lollagaggin’ is heresy – defeatinism too?’

Stern fixed her with a gimlet gaze from his remaining eye and nodded. There was silence for a moment, then the woman smiled. Sensing disaster, her comrades hissed at her to stay quiet. She did not. ‘So when you said y’ don’t abide heresy, defeatinism, or lollagagging, you coulda just said heresy, heresy, heresy? S’everything is heresy at the end of -’

BANG.

The ogryn absentmindedly licked some brain off his thick lips and nodded appreciatively.

‘He’ll run out of shells soon, then we jump the bastard,’ a scarfaced trooper whispered.

BANG.

‘Mutiny!’ Starn bellowed. ‘You would do well to know that my hearing is augmented. And, if you get any other ideas…’

He adjusted his great coat, revealing a belt of shells supplementing the pistol’s magazine. It stretched down to his knee.

Starn looked around at the drawn faces, and tried to inject a touch of softness into his voice: ‘Now. I understand this is a testing time, and my duty is to maintain morale. That cannot be done with stick alone, there must be some carrot. To that end, I will lead you all in a rousing hymn. Everybody with me, In his name, we fall, in his name, we die, in his name…’

The survivors started up a ragged chorus. 

BANG.

‘Insufficient zeal!’

BANG.

‘Only mouthing along!’

BANG.

‘Off key!’

BANG.

BANG. 

BANG.

‘Incorrect verse! Or, wait, am I misremembering? In any case, you should follow your senior officer!’

‘…in his name, we lay down our lives. In, his, name!’

Finally, the hymn came to a close. The choir had been reduced to Starn, the ogryn, and one pale faced guardsman.

‘There. A fine rendition, in the end. How is everyone’s morale now?’ Starn asked.

‘Wonderful, sir,’ the guardsman twisted his face into a rictus grin.

‘I like singin’ almost as much as I like eatin’,’ said the ogryn cheerfully. He zoned out for a moment, then carefully added, ‘But what I loves most, is servin’ the emprah. Like me sergeant always said to say. So I says it.’

‘At least someone here holds firm in their faith and devotion,’ Starn said to the guardsman. ‘Abhuman he may be, but you could learn much from his dedication to the Emperor’s cause.’

‘Oh yes, I love the emprah,’ smiled the ogryn. ‘When I’m dreamin’, he comes and touches me and makes me ‘appy.’

The guardsman and the commissar both creased their foreheads. Starn raised his eyebrow.

The ogryn was still smiling. ‘He’s big and warm an’ his arms stretch all round me. His hugs are like bein’ back in me mother’s arms, if me mother ‘ad ever hugged me. His robes are soft like a bedroll, one of the good ones not the itchy ones, and-’

BANG.

Starn pursed his lips. ‘Indecent thoughts. Heretical thoughts.’

The remaining guardsman made a choking sound, then let out a piercing shriek. ‘You’re insane! I’m trapped in a bunker with a mad man. In 30 minutes you’ve done what a year of fighting on this hellplanet couldn’t do and killed off twenty veterans! We fought for the Emperor. We were loyal when others weren’t! That ogryn was a bit odd but he probably didn’t deserve to die for dreaming about hugs! Nobody needed to die here, Commissar. Killing us only serves the enemy!’

BANG.

‘Heresy, with a touch of defeatism.’ Starn declared.