"I want fire on that ridge! Do you hear me, make the scum eat laser!" Sergeant Elius bellowed into his headset, glaring across the acrid battlefield from the hastily-constructed barrier which constituted the front line. His voice was tinny, filtered through the beak-like rebreather, but the order was not misheard by his forces. After a few tense moments the ruby las-rays criss crossing the battlefield alighted upon the rocky ridge the traitors currently occupied. This was not the desperate spray of common lasguns, but the dangerous cracks of long-las sniper rifles as his marksmen painted the ridge with the blood of the traitors.

The traitor guard answered with their own weaponry, sheets of lasfire and searing gouts of plasma colouring the Icelusian outpost in stark primary colours. Elius was forced to throw himself down as a mortar shell screamed from above, the shrapnel eviscerating the poor soul happening to look up at the time, his shredded remains falling limply onto the barricade. Elius gritted his teeth and rose, squinting through his scope.

Eight hours. That was how long they were told to hold out against the onslaught of The Last Carnival, the former garrisoning regiment of the disputed world of Ivene III. The regiment, fresh from their victories against the encroaching Tau Empire, had turned on the colonists before the blood of the xenos had even dried. The war-weary planet fell into the embrace of the heretical soldiers within a day, and the Carnival had made worldwide preparations for something truly horrid.

Eight hours after planetfall, the Icelus 5th Volunteer Regiment was told it would be relieved. Elements of the 52nd Sarathan Rattlesnakes armoured company were en route to provide relief to the Icelusians, themselves a light infantry and irregular force, and to push back the Carnival.

It had been three days, and still no sign of relief came.