She was still alive, she realized as consciousness clawed itself back from the blackness much as she started clawing her way from the mound of her comrades corpses. A mixture of warm and cold air touched her face as the harsh wind blew the flickering embers of the battlefield that was covered in the bodies of fellow soldiers, filthy xenos, and the awakened insectoid creatures that leaked acid onto the blackened ground. Confused, she reached up to touch her rebreather only to find it missing, her gloved fingers instead touching flesh. A sense of shame washed over her as she realized she had somehow lost her precious lasgun and her rebreather, leaving her both defenseless and exposed to the likely infected air around her.
She moved over to one of the dead, kicking him with her boot to make sure he was gone before she started ‘relieving’ his body of its armaments. His lasgun had a small crack on its stock, but it was still serviceable. His rebreather however, was sewn to his face, leaving her to tear at the poorly done stitching to free it.

A distant sputtering cough pulled her attention away to look behind her where one of the terrible xenos sat up, what at first seemed to be the color of his robes she realized was in fact just blood and mud, his pale hair plastered to his face with crimson. She wrapped her finger around the trigger and slowly began to bring it up, hoping his attention was distracted when instead he pointed towards her.

“Behind you.”

She turned around to face the pile of corpses once more, where the bodies seemed to gently shake. Taking a step back, she felt the ground beneath her boots splitting before with a great roar and beast emerged from beneath the bodies, using its long bladed arms to pull one of the corpses into its mouth. Regaining her footing, she took aim and fired into one of its beady black eyes, acidic blood spraying outwards as it howled and used a long tail like whip to bat her away like a gnat, the sound of ribs cracking in her ears as more roars filled the air.

She tumbled back onto the ground, a hand wrapping around her arm to pull her back to her feet. The xeno was on his feet as well, one arm holding a wicked looking sword that seemed to glow with faint etchings, while the other hung somewhat limply at his side. Around them more of the creatures emerged from the ground, drawn by the smell of blood and flesh, yet rather than focus upon the buffet of dead, the monsters quickly began to converge upon the two.

“Shall I extend an offer of an alliance towards you, Mon’keigh? Or would you prefer to fix your bayonet and charge?” The xeno asked.

“What a stupid question,” she replied with a hard wheeze.

They backed up together, until she was practically leaning against his back.

“Consider this a temporary ceasefire until all immediate hostiles are dead, Xeno.”

“Likewise.”

The slavering monsters, with their black eyes staring down at the two, lunged. Her shots aimed for those eyes, those bright black eyes that turned into sizzled flesh that spilled acid outwards, behind her she could hear crackles of lightning and the smell of burning chitin. The feeling of her ribs moving was painful, but nothing she had not learned to ignore.

Her quarry that did not die from a solid shot through the head howled and moved towards her blinded, their uneasy movements leaving them to crash against one another or use their sharp claws on their fellows. A hand pushed against her back, forcing her forward as the charred corpse of one Tyranid fell to the ground where she formerly stood. She stared at the xeno across it for a moment, who in turn stared back at her before turning away to again face the ravenous beasts. She climbed over the still warm corpse as quickly as her wounds would allow her while still applying burning holes into the heads of the fiends with her lasgun. The xeno’s sword sang with the speed at which it was swung, slicing through the appendages that dared to stray too close, although he appeared more interested in roasting them alive with a glowing blue fire that made her uncovered eyes burn if she looked at it too much.

“These things are really frail,” she observed as she turned another one’s head into a greasy gristle-stump.

“They’re starved, likely, although their behavior is odd,” the Xeno replied, “surrounded by a feast, and yet they come towards us?”

She pulled the trigger, but the weapon did nothing. With what little time she had, she looked down at the crack on the stock, only to find it had spread into a gap exposing its inner workings. There was a loud yelp behind her, and she turned to see the xeno knocked down. A Tyranid slithered towards the fallen man, a long gray tongue lolling from its mouth and its mantis-like arms extending outwards. She moved over the xeno with barely any thought, snapping the bayonet off the lasgun to thrust it into the creature’s head, piercing its jaws together as it quickly withdrew with bloodied front appendages only for another six legged tyranid to crawl over its snarling form to lunge at her. She lifted her lasgun and smashed its broken form on it, where the lasgun finally snapped in two, half of it lodged firmly in its head as it fell to the ground twitching.

Something was covering her coat, and she looked down to see something greyish-purple with streaks of red hanging from her waist. Blinking, she slowly reached down to grab the soft tubing, gently trying to shove it back into the tear in her stomach. The sides of her vision was becoming hazy, blending colors together as she gazed out into the corpse strewn field.

She was dying, as a heretic or for The Emperor? The beasts were gone, but the Xeno… the one she had just defended… She tried to turn her head, but her body refused to respond in any other way besides collapsing, a soft slushing noise and the sight of her entrails pouring onto the ground below being the last thing her eyes took in before darkness swallowed her.

-----------

Lying near the fire, she watched the smoke make shapes in the cold air while the xeno leaned against an overturned leman that still had the body of a Tyranid laid out on top of it. “I’m going to die,” she said, imagining herself in the fire. If she was in any condition to, she would have crawled into it.

“It would be a waste if you did,” he replied. “I spent too much time looking for medical supplies for your flimsy body.”

“My apologies for being flimsy.”

“Oh, a sense of humor?”

“This is such heresy,” she muttered. “I didn’t even have the right sense to die in the charge.”

“Why are you so focused on death?” He asked, moving to sit next to her, leaning so his face was looking down at her in what she assumed was either an expression of smug superiority or concern. Perhaps both. “Most humans seem eager to survive.”

“That information is none of your business,” she grumbled.

“Would you at least tell me your name? I feel that addressing you as Mon’keigh would be rather rude at this point,” he asked.

“My short serial number is 51834134. Fifty-One if you need to address me.”

“I asked for a name.”

“You did.”

His hand moved down and she flinched, before it gently settled on the side of her face. It was… warm, soft even, and she felt a strange sense of comfort filling her veins although an unpleasant heat built up in her face. She wished she had her rebreather still. “Fifty-One is a number, not a name. But if you insist, I will call you that. My name is Aedh.”

“Does it matter? I’m either going to die from my wounds or your kind will kill me when they come for you. Names mean little to the dead.” She felt his hand slowly withdraw, and sorely missed its warmth in the cold.

“…We’re going to work on that pessimism of yours, Fifty-One. I do not quite feel like letting the woman who saved my life die, even if she is a primitive mammal.”

“So you will have me live with the guilt of such heresy of saving a filthy xeno and not dying to atone for my crimes and the crimes of the past?” She asked, looking up at him with a sullen stare. She was too tired and weak to muster much anger at him. “Your kind truly knows no mercy.” What would those back on the planet she was made on think, she wondered. Nothing, likely, she was already replaced a hundred times over by someone who looks just like her.

“Indeed, the worst punishment of all is making you live, isn’t it?” He said as lights began to slowly move through the sky. “Life is a gift not meant to be wasted; I hope I can make you understand that one day, Fifty-One. Ah, they’re here…”