Colonel 186’s office was filled almost to bursting point. Crowded around his desk were numerous aides, his four company commanders and a couple of tech-priests. Hanrik, too, was flanked by a small contingent of PDF officers, and in the midst of all this stood a solitary young trooper, a recent recruit to judge by the thrown-together look of his scarlet and purple uniform.
‘Of course,’ Hanrik was saying, his chest swelling with importance as he held the floor, ‘as soon as the power went out, I despatched men to the main generatorum.’
‘None of them made it there,’ said the colonel, ‘but until now it was assumed that, in common with numerous other PDF squads inside the city, they had been ambushed. That assumption was challenged this morning.’
Hanrik took up the commentary, keen to explain the circumstances of his vital discovery, until the colonel grew impatient with him and interrupted again.
‘It seems,’ he said, ‘that both the 42nd and the 81st regiments were attacked as they neared the sites of the city’s secondary generatorums.’
‘We thought,’ said Hanrik, ‘that the power cut was an act of sabotage intended to panic the civilian populace and hamper our evacuation efforts, but what if it was more than that? What if our power is being drained for a purpose?’
‘Each time we have encountered the necrons,’ said the colonel, ‘their numbers have grown. We don’t know if there are still more asleep in that tomb of theirs or if they are pulling in reinforcements from further afield somehow. Either way–’
‘Either way,’ said Hanrik, ‘what if they are using our own power to achieve it? What if they can’t wake their troops or… or operate their beacon without it?’
‘For that matter,’ said one of the tech-priests, ‘we have all been frustrated by the necrons’ ability to regenerate themselves after almost any wound. It could be that the power to do this too emanates not from within their tomb but from without.’
The colonel called up the hololithic plans that Costellin had seen before. ‘There are three remaining generatorums in the city,’ he announced, gesturing with a pointer.
‘And, given the destruction the necrons have wrought,’ Costellin put in, ‘the fact that all three are still standing is suggestive in itself.’
‘At their current rate of progress, the 103rd should flatten this site, to the south, in approximately three and a half days, while our own regiment will reach the one here a little over two days after. That leaves only the central-most and largest installation, located here.’ The colonel indicated a site much deeper into the city.
‘May I presume, sir,’ spoke up one of the company commanders, ‘that the intention is to send in a team to take out that generatorum? If so, I would like to volunteer my company to undertake that mission, and myself to lead it.’
‘Thank you, Major Alpha,’ said the colonel. ‘That is indeed the plan, and the generals have asked this regiment to execute it. However, our primary concern is still the maintenance of our cordon about the city, and I will need all my senior officers to defend against a likely attack as we near the west-side generatorum.’
‘The bright side of that, I suppose,’ mused Costellin, ‘is that it should keep the bulk of the necron army occupied. Even so, it will be difficult to slip a force of any useful size past them. They have shot down most of Hanrik’s flyers already.’
‘That,’ said Hanrik with a measure of self-satisfaction, ‘is where Trooper Soreson comes in.’ All eyes turned towards the young trooper, who looked uncomfortable with the attention. ‘A squad of grenadiers under my command extracted Soreson from the city three weeks ago. He was fighting back against the necrons single-handed. As you can see, we immediately signed him up for the Planetary Defence Force. Before our current troubles, however, Mr Soreson was a mine overseer.’
‘Hieronymous City,’ said the colonel, ‘stands above an extensive network of mine tunnels. Trooper Soreson can guide our infiltration team through these.’
‘Right under the necrons’ feet,’ said Costellin approvingly. ‘Let us just pray that, when their tomb emerged, none of them remained underground.’
‘There is a mine entrance less than two blocks away from the main generatorum, sir,’ said Soreson. ‘If we can reach that…’
‘Unfortunately,’ said Hanrik, ‘we have no up-to-date plans of the tunnel system, such information was lost in the evacuation. As you have just heard, however, Trooper Soreson knows those tunnels like he knows the back of his hand.’
Soreson, for his part, seemed a lot less sure of this than the Governor-General was. ‘The tunnels don’t all link up, though,’ he volunteered. ‘To reach that mine entrance, we would have to break through two, maybe three walls.’
‘Thin walls,’ Hanrik added quickly. ‘We’ve been mining this ground for generations. Even where the tunnels don’t quite connect, they do run close to each other.’
‘I believe, sir, we still have an old burrowing vehicle aboard the Memento Mori,’ offered the second tech-priest.
‘A Termite,’ recalled Costellin, ‘but its engines make one Golden Throne of a racket. If these tunnels do run as close to each other as the Governor-General suggests, then a handful of mining charges may be rather more discreet.’
‘Have the Termite brought down,’ the colonel instructed an aide, ‘in case of need. In the meantime, General Hanrik, if you could find me some mining charges and have Trooper Soreson update your most recent plan of those tunnels… Major Alpha, I will take you up on that offer of troops, I think: a grenadier platoon from you, and also one from Gamma Company, to be led by…’
Costellin stiffened as he realised that the colonel had turned his gaze upon him.
‘Commissar, I know I cannot order you to do this, but since our losses on Dask you are the regiment’s most experienced officer.’
It was hardly an unprecedented request, and Costellin was certainly not one to hide behind a desk when the fighting started. However, he was used to choosing his own battles, and with considerably more regard for his own safety than the Death Korps officers tended to display for theirs. He had certainly never faced necrons before.
Momentarily, he wondered if the colonel was doing this on purpose, ridding himself of a commissar determined to question his every utterance. He seemed to have placed an undue stress on the word ‘experienced’, as if in judgement of Costellin’s longevity, a suggestion that a braver man than he would have been long since dead by now.
‘It goes without saying, of course,’ said the colonel, ‘that you would be doing the Emperor a considerable service.’
‘When you put it like that,’ said Costellin, tight-lipped, resenting the almost tangible expectations of the officers around him, ‘then how can I possibly decline?’
The following morning’s briefing was a tense affair, at least so it seemed to Costellin.
They discussed the timing of his mission, and agreed – or rather, Colonel 186 decreed – that he would set off two days hence at which point, if the necrons ran true to form, they would be busy defending the generatorum to the south from the artillery of the Krieg 103rd. Costellin’s team would go as far as the mine tunnels would take them, then await the colonel’s signal.
Their attack would be timed to coincide with the bombardment of the west-side generatorum. Costellin had to admit it to himself: the colonel was giving him every chance he could to succeed. With the Emperor’s favour, it was possible he might just make it in and out of the city without encountering a single necron.
Possible, Costellin thought, but almost vanishingly unlikely.
They were taking the Termite, after all. Hanrik didn’t yet have Trooper Soreson’s updated map and, when pressed, he confessed what Costellin had suspected from the start, that the former mine overseer’s memory was not as dependable as the Governor-General had boasted. The Termite would give them more options, should they take the wrong turning,
though it couldn’t carry more than ten passengers so most of the men would have to follow in the vehicle’s wake on foot.
Two grenadier platoons had been selected to accompany the commissar, and the colonel had fixed a time that evening for a preliminary briefing. Costellin spent the best part of the afternoon planning an uplifting speech that he knew was hardly required as he stripped down his chainsword and plasma pistol, cleaned and oiled them and said the requisite litanies to placate the machine-spirits inside them.
The next morning, he stood out on the ramp and prepared to welcome the new recruits. They marched out of their drop-ships, perfectly drilled, indistinguishable in their greatcoats and facemasks from any Death Korps Guardsman that Costellin had ever served with. As always when a ship landed, there were problems with the refugees on the hillside, incited by the suspicion that more lords and councillors would jump the queue to be evacuated ahead of them. However, the new recruits came to the struggling proctors’ aid, and the insurgents were brutally put down.
‘Magnificent, aren’t they?’ Commissar Mannheim was at Costellin’s shoulder.
‘Yes, I expect they are,’ Costellin conceded, ‘if you’re able not to think about what they have been through to get here.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Mannheim, but Costellin didn’t answer him. He was remembering his sole visit to the Krieg home world nineteen years before. He had thought it a good idea at the time, a means to a better understanding of his charges. Donning a mask and a rebreather unit, he had stepped out into a barren, frigid landscape, one inimical to all kinds of life. Yet somehow life had endured there.
Costellin had been told that the war on Krieg was long ended, had expected its ecosphere would have begun to recover by now. As he travelled under his neutral flag, however, masked faces had peered out at him from trenches that ran like bloody scars across the planet’s surface. Exploding mortars had gouged new holes in the blasted ground, and sent great plumes of ash up into the already choking air.
The men of Krieg were still warring, no longer to resolve their ideological differences but each now to prove himself worthy of dying for the Emperor.
‘You should have seen them last night,’ enthused Mannheim. ‘The 42nd, I mean, my regiment. It didn’t matter what the necrons threw at them, they kept going. They were indefatigable. Even I… When I saw those ghouls, it sent a chill down my spine, I can tell you, but the Death Korps, they never faltered, they never flinched.’
‘And eighteen hundred of them were massacred,’ Costellin pointed out.
‘Well, yes. Yes, they were, but our projections suggested–’
‘You expected to lose more. You thought you’d lose three thousand, four thousand, but that was all right as long as the battle was won. Acceptable casualties. It happens sooner than you think, doesn’t it? I still do it myself sometimes.’
‘Do what?’
‘Start to see them as numbers. Start to share the total lack of regard that the men of Krieg have for their own lives. Emperor knows, it is easier that way.’
‘I don’t think that’s fair,’ said Mannheim. ‘The necrons are a threat, not just to this world but to the whole of the Imperium. They have to be fought.’
‘Look at them, Mannheim. Look at those soldiers, try to see past their masks. They’re fresh from Krieg, do you know what that means? It means they are fourteen or fifteen years old, most of them, and already they have known a lifetime of conflict.’
‘It’s the same on many worlds,’ argued Mannheim. ‘Of course, conditions are harsher on Krieg than most, and that breeds a certain type of individual.’
‘No,’ said Costellin quietly, ‘it is we who do that.’
The first and smallest contingent of the newly-arrived Guardsmen, those whose lighter grey coats marked them out as being destined for the 103rd regiment, had formed up now and were being marched away by their new officers.
‘Maybe you should do what I did,’ said Costellin, ‘visit Krieg for yourself and you’ll see. You’ll see that its people aren’t inhuman, just dehumanised.’
‘I’m not sure I get the distinction,’ said Mannheim, but Costellin’s thoughts had drifted back again, this time to a brick tunnel and the stale odour of infinitely recycled air. Never before or since had he seen so many people packed into so confined a space. Most had been women, most with child, and all of them shuffling through their lives in a chemical stupor. There had been no need for masks, in that subterranean labyrinth, but the citizens of Krieg may as well have been wearing them anyway.
‘Perhaps,’ he sighed, ‘if I had spoken up… but no, I’m as certain now as I was back then that nobody would have wanted to hear me. I told you, Mannheim, I told you on the troop ship, that the Death Korps of Krieg are a valuable resource to the Imperium, the perfect soldiers. The question, I suppose, is how much should we be prepared to sacrifice for that ideal? To how many horrors must we blind ourselves?’
‘I’m sure it is not our place to question,’ said Mannheim stiffly.
‘But if not us, then who? Who will say when things have gone too far?’
‘I don’t like where you’re going with this, Costellin. I know you didn’t want to fight this war, but what was the alternative? If we had done as you wished, if we had destroyed this planet, then people would still have died. We could never have carried out a full evacuation in the time we had.’
‘I know that, Mannheim,’ said Costellin quietly. ‘I just worry, sometimes, about us. I worry that we are becoming as dehumanised as they are, too used to dealing in “acceptable casualties”, in numbers. We forget that behind each of those numbers is a life – an abused, joyless life perhaps, but a life all the same. Until the day comes when that life, that number, is our own – and who will be left to care about us, then?’
Chapter Fourteen
How long had it been now?
It felt like months since the Iron Gods had come. It felt like forever. The time before was a fading memory, already so distant that it was hardly missed, while the future…
The future was endless days like this one: backbreaking, fourteen-hour shifts in the ruins of the city, eating, sleeping, rising for work again. It was remarkable how routine this had become, how quickly the human body adapted to the aches and strains, and the mind – for fear of going mad – to the confines of the here and now.
Arex’s pickaxe had come to feel like an extension of her arms. She was barely aware of the calluses on her once-soft hands, beneath its wooden handle.
Sometimes, however, her mind could still slip its chains and drift to a white-carpeted bedroom in the High Spire or an illicit liaison in a downmarket eatery, to the brush of a loved one’s lips, and then she was staggered by the pain of all she had lost.
Arex sank to her knees and wept, drawing the attention of a grizzled overseer who screamed at her to resume her work and prodded her with a proctor’s baton. She tried to obey him, she honestly did, but the hunk of plascrete she had lifted without thinking about it a moment ago now seemed as heavy as the world itself.
The overseer activated the baton’s stun charge, and Arex cringed, waiting for the jolt to slam through her as had happened many times before. Instead, she heard angry voices, a scuffle, and she peered through her tears to see that a fellow slave had come to her defence. A ruggedly handsome man, she thought, like all of them grimy from the morning’s exertions. He had wrested the baton from the cowering overseer, and he seemed almost angry enough to use it too. Then common sense dampened the fire in his eyes, and he cast the weapon scornfully to the ground instead.
‘She’s tired,’ he growled, ‘that’s all. We’re all tired and hungry, and brutalising this young woman isn’t going to change that.’
He lifted Arex to her feet, put a water bottle to her lips. The overseer had recovered his baton, and his nerves, and was raging impotently: ‘You’re on half rations for three days, Tylar,
and I’m reporting this incident to Amareth, do you hear me?’
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said Arex regretfully, as the overseer stomped away to make good on his threat. ‘You shouldn’t have got yourself in trouble for me.’
Her saviour, Tylar, shook his head. ‘I’ve been in trouble for one thing or another since I got here. At least, this time, it was in the best of causes.’
‘I’ll share my rations with you,’ she promised. ‘I won’t see you go hungry.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort,’ said Tylar. ‘You must keep your strength up. You know what they do to people who can’t serve. Don’t worry about me, Arex, I’ll get by – on sheer stubbornness if needs be. I wouldn’t give that goon the satisfaction of breaking me.’
‘You know my name? But I haven’t–’
‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’
Arex looked up into his face, and tried to see past the dirt, past the untidy, overgrown strawberry blond hair, tried to peel back the years. ‘I… I do know you,’ she realised. ‘Tylar. Of course. Wasn’t your father an admiral?’
‘A lord admiral,’ said Tylar. ‘High up enough, anyway, to rescue me from the draft and set me up with a cushy administrator’s job. Well, you must remember that. I only mentioned it about a thousand times, I think, during our date, trying to impress you.’
‘I… I’m sorry,’ said Arex. ‘It’s just, my uncle, he–’
‘I know.’ Tylar smiled warmly at her. ‘You talked a lot about Governor Hanrik too, as I recall. You certainly didn’t approve of his choice of suitors for you.’
‘We were both so young,’ sighed Arex, ‘and the things we cared about back then…’
‘They don’t mean so much now, do they?’
Tylar eased himself away from her, and immediately she missed the reassuring press of his body. It had been comforting to return to the past, for however short a time, without regret, to learn that even a tiny part of it had survived. It had given her hope. But now, the empty present beckoned to Arex once more.
Honour Imperialis - Aaron Dembski-Bowden Page 73