[Slow heat] When he was sixteen years old, Eric Vulganov was dragged out of the underground hive by a conscript officer and took the name of a noble child.
He didn't know what the Emperor was, all he knew was that his father's old laser gun had one last shot of power left in it.
He didn't know what an alien was, he only knew that something was watching him under the ice sheet.
He met five people: instructor Rezov, who had a suicide note hidden in his eyes; Vasily, whose pupils sometimes turned vertical; Ivan, who could hit the Wolf King with one shot in the snow; Grigory, who used heavy weapons to knock down anti-gravity tanks; Katya, who dug the snow with a shovel all night after the first murder.
Thirty years later, the Thirteenth Black Crusade ended, and all members of the Heroic Soul Company were killed.
Except him.
Eric returned to Valhalla alone and erected a stone tablet on the ice field, engraved with three hundred and seventy-two names.
Make a pot of Tana tea every year and talk to the stone tablet.
Some people say he is a hero, he said:
"I'm not a hero. I just outlived them by a few minutes."
But every time the aurora illuminates the ice sheet, he can always feel that the thing watching him under the ice is still waiting.
What are you waiting for?
Wait until he finishes telling the story.
