'Left For Dead' – Steve Lyons (Black Library)


Due to this weekend being what is was (full of things and lots of them), there wasn't an awful lot of time for reading; I was lucky to make it all the way through this twenty seven page Black Library short story to be honest. In a strange quirk of fate though, it turns out that I only have just enough time, today, to write about a twenty seven page Black Library short story... Funny that ;o)

Put that together with my soft spot for the Imperial Guard (sorry... Astra Militarum) and 'Left for Dead' is what we're going to be talking about today. Lets go...

After the horrors of war and the devastation of a world, one unnamed trooper from the Death Korps of Krieg – vat-born, grown to be a soldier – has had enough. Removing his uniform, he takes the identity of a fallen civilian and joins the workforce on the world he fought to liberate. But can this soldier overcome his conditioning and training and serve the Imperium in a new way, or will he forever be a warrior of the Astra Militarum?

'Left For Dead' is a bit of a bold move from Lyons as it effectively removes all the mystique of the Death Korps, leaving us with a clear look at what's under the gas-mask. As a faceless fighting force that is zealous in it's faith to the Emperor and absolutely will not retreat, the Death Korps are almost like the Imperium in microcosm and to take that all away almost feels like taking away the whole point of the Death Korps instead...

Stick with it though. If you're going to do something as drastic as this then you need to be able to replace the key concept with something utterly compelling and... Lyons does this easily, asking the hardest question you can ask of one of the Death Korps; what happens when the fighting stops and you've been left behind? The final answer may be a little predictable but the real fun here lies in watching Arvo work it out for himself, something he had never been able to do in his previous life. And all against the backdrop of a Hive being rebuilt after a war has ended... Has anyone ever seen a Korpsman work to rebuild what he originally set out to tear down? Well, you will if you read 'Left for Dead' and if you're like me, you'll appreciate the irony on display here.

'Left for Dead' is a bold move then but Lyons pulls it off in such a way that you end up wondering why you were worried in the first place. A very quick read but no less rewarding for it.

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