Or perhaps they would have deplored his disobedience.
Did the young trooper feel a thrill of excitement – or perhaps of fear – as, for the first time in his life, he acted as an individual? Or did he ask himself if the recruiting sergeants had seen this coming, seen it in his psychological profile?
Perhaps that was the very reason why they had rejected him in the first place.
The trail led him away from the renewed sounds of mortar fire.
He found himself in a part of the city that no human eyes had seen in centuries. He left fresh footprints in the ashes of long-gone ages. The nuclear wind moaned in the young trooper’s ears like a lament of old ghosts. Like the ghosts of Colonel Jurten and his band of loyalist followers, who had fought here once for the soul of Krieg and won. A crusade – and a victory – well worth its terrible cost.
The xenos had remained undercover, as much as it could. It had slipped between the most intact of the city’s remaining structures, keeping to its deepest shadows. A few times, it had wormed its way into spaces inaccessible to its less flexible pursuer. The young trooper, however, found a way around each obstacle and always picked up the trail once more.
The splatters of the creature’s life’s blood were growing closer together. It was slowing down. At last. The young trooper became more cautious. He yanked an ancient, broken shield out from under some rubble, polished it on his sleeve.
He held the shield out in front of him, at an angle, as he advanced. His hope was to find the xenos by its reflection in the shiny surface. That way, he might be spared the full effect of its alien gaze.
That theory, however, was never tested. He heard his enemy before he saw it, heard its guttural growl and the scraping of its claws – against metal? It was just on the other side of that teetering section of wall. Almost within his grasp…
The noises ceased. Had the creature heard him coming, despite his attempts to be stealthy? Had it caught his scent on the wind? Was it waiting in ambush for him?
The young trooper stole up to the half-wall. He dropped into a crouch beside it. He held his breath, listening intently. He heard nothing. He used his shield as a mirror again, to peer around the wall’s edge. He saw no menace lurking there.
In the ground behind the wall, he found a hatchway. It was ancient, rusted shut; fused, too, into the concrete by the heat of some long-ago explosion. Rubble had been cleared away from atop the hatch, fresh marks scored into its surface. Claw marks. Most tellingly of all, dark blood was congealing around its edges.
The xenos had been here. And it had been trying to get below. Had it given up because its waning strength was not equal to the task? Or only because it had sensed that it was no longer alone?
Did this prove that the young trooper had done the right thing by following it?
It must have been weakened, else surely it would have stood its ground and fought him. The man of Krieg had become the predator now, and the xenos his prey.
Did that thought imbue him with extra confidence as he resumed the hunt?
He clambered through an arched window frame.
It was just too narrow for his ceramite-plated shoulders. His greatcoat snagged on a treacherous shard of glass, making him a sitting target. He tore himself free, hastily, and dropped into a stagnant darkness.
The young trooper was inside a temple. At least, it had been a temple once. Its wooden pews had been smashed to splinters, its altar desecrated so thoroughly that he couldn’t bear to look at it. A stark reminder of his people’s sins.
He stooped, instead, to examine the trail of blood. It was difficult to make it out in the darkness. The trail appeared, however, to lead across the temple floor and out through a hole in the opposite wall. Was it instinct alone that kept the young trooper from following it? Was it logic that suggested to him that he had been led here for a reason?
Or was the Emperor watching over him, even in this darkest of places?
Still crouching, he hefted his mirrored shield in front of him. He angled it to look over his left shoulder, then his right. And he saw it: A glint of purple in the shadows, right behind him. Those alien eyes!
He whirled around as the xenos sprang at him, hissing furiously.
It must have chosen this place of shadows to make its stand. It must have doubled back along its own trail to surprise him. It screeched, frustrated, as its claws were met by metal, the metal of the young trooper’s damaged shield. He recognised the terrible sound from before, from the square, and it made him wince.
The xenos fell back to its corner, glaring balefully at its opponent.
He was careful not to meet its purple gaze. He looked the creature squarely in its slobbering maw. His shield had buckled under the force of its attack, so he cast it aside; it had more than served its purpose. He raised his gun.
The xenos had run out of shadows in which to hide. It was well worth a small expenditure of las-power to end its threat. Such was evidently the young trooper’s judgement, anyway, and no one was present to gainsay him.
The xenos must have known it couldn’t run. It came at the young trooper again, in a whirlwind of teeth and limbs. Unflinching, he fired two beams into its twisted body. The first was deflected by the creature’s exoskeleton; the second burned a round hole through its cranium. It didn’t die.
If its tenacity surprised the young trooper, however, then he couldn’t afford to show it. He braced himself, transferring his weight to his back foot, to meet the creature’s charge. It almost bore him to the ground, even so.
Bony hands snapped shut around his lasgun and tried to wrench it from his grip. At the same time, claws swiped at the trooper’s throat. He deflected the latter with an armour-plated elbow, pushed when the xenos was expecting him to pull and rammed the stock of his lasgun into its gaping jaws. Teeth shattered, the creature howled and recoiled in pain, but the gun was lost.
He reached for his knife instead.
His foe was quicker. Its bloodied tongue lashed out like a whip, its aim unerring. Its tip pierced the young trooper’s heavy greatcoat, finding a gap in the armour beneath it. It skewered his shoulder above the clavicle, eliciting from him his first vocal reaction of the day: a sharp intake of breath.
Blood rushed to his head and his knees buckled. Did he know, in that moment, what the creature was doing to him? Perhaps, if the Imperium had been somewhat freer with its secrets. If he had been able to name it…
Genestealers existed to reproduce. And that was all. This one would have come to Krieg for that sole purpose, likely stowing away aboard a supply ship or troop carrier. Its vicious tongue doubled as something like an ovipositor.
It was trying to impregnate the young trooper with an embryonic organism, one that would rewrite his genetic code and corrupt his mind. Any offspring he sired, then, would be the genestealer’s offspring, mutant monsters like itself.
And the young trooper’s sole purpose, then, would be to bring such monsters into being – as many of them as he could manage – and to nourish them.
It wouldn’t work. He was a reject. And rejects were barred from participating in Krieg’s breeding program. So, win or lose this battle, the creature’s bloodline would end here either way. If only either of them – the human being or the alien – could have known it. If only either of them could have appreciated that brutal irony.
The young trooper swung his knife with all the force he could still muster. It was a last-ditch, desperate tactic. It bore fruit. His blade sliced through knotted muscle and he was deafened by a nerve-rending shriek. Stinking ichor spattered the lenses of his rebreather mask, and blinded him too.
The tip of a severed tongue was still embedded in his left shoulder. He felt for it and gripped it between his gloved fingers. He yanked the slimy appendage out of his bleeding flesh and flung it emphatically away from him.
By the time he was able to see
and hear again, it was over.
The xenos had given up its frantic struggle, and surrendered at last to its mortal wounds and radiation sickness. The young trooper picked himself up and gazed at the cadaver impassively. His thoughts were his own as they had always been.
One thought, however, must certainly have crossed his mind. He must have been aware that he had done more than just kill his enemy. Thanks to him – a lone reject, born of an unworthy people – the xenos scum had suffered the most cruel of all possible fates. A fate that the young trooper no longer had to fear himself.
It had died with its life’s purpose unfulfilled.
The war was over.
He could hear the general’s recorded voice again:
‘–repeat, the city has fallen to the invading forces. All surviving defenders should now return to their barracks.’
Did the young trooper breathe an inward sigh of relief at that pronouncement?
His encounter with the xenos had taken its toll on his body. His shoulder was stinging where its tongue had broken his skin. His temples were pounding and his face was drenched in sweat. His wound was probably infected.
‘You have tasted defeat today. But no matter. Remember, such an outcome was expected. The important thing is that you have served faithfully and well. You have justified your Emperor-given lives. Praise be to the Emperor!’
The young trooper staggered under the weight of his dead burden. His foot slipped between shifting hunks of debris; his ankle twisted.
The xenos’s body slid off his shoulders. It smacked into the ground face-first and lay, broken. An empty shell. He didn’t have the strength to try to lift it again. And who could know why he had brought it this far, anyway?
Had he thought it might prove useful to the specialists in the tunnels below? A fit subject for their study? Or had his motives been more selfish?
‘Remember, you must salvage as much equipment as you can from the fallen.’
Through his fever, the young trooper recognised a structure ahead of him: the great stone archway, which led into the city square. The square in which he had first come face to face with his destiny. His barracks were not far from here. If he could make it there, he would be able to eat, drink, sleep and receive medical treatment.
And be ready to fight again and die tomorrow.
That was, if he wasn’t executed for breaking bounds.
Did he wonder if his unauthorised absence had even been noticed?
The young trooper heard movement ahead of him. Through a haze – smoke settling from the battle or his own eyes misting? – he saw masked figures. Fellow rejects? No. They were far too well-equipped, with backpacks and belts that bulged and bristled with tools and weaponry. One even had a flamer slung across his left shoulder.
Two of them were crouched beside the prostrate form of a third: either tending to his injuries or administering his final rites, the trooper couldn’t tell which.
Six lasguns snapped up to cover him. He didn’t raise his own weapon in return.
Was it simply that he lacked the strength to do so? Or did the young trooper sense the futility of such an action? Had he thought himself safe because the exercise was over? At what point did he realise that this news hadn’t reached the enemy?
That their orders to kill on sight had not yet been countermanded?
Five of the six Death Korpsmen held their fire. There was no sense in wasting ammunition, after all. The sixth – the one that, by unspoken agreement, had the best shot – squeezed his trigger. He aimed for the eyepieces of his victim’s mask.
A single las-beam through the brain.
What final thoughts passed through the young trooper’s mind as he died?
Did he rail against the injustice of his demise: to be gunned down by one of his own kind after protecting their descendants from infection, safeguarding their people’s future? Hadn’t he proved the recruiting sergeants wrong about him, after all? Did he perhaps bemoan the fact that they would never be told of his heroism?
Or was it sufficient that his god, the Emperor, knew?
Perhaps he accepted a fate for which he had been thoroughly prepared. He might have felt contented, even, with the high price for which he had sold his life.
In the final analysis, of course, it didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter in the slightest what the young trooper felt or thought.
It never had.
The first troopship arrived that same evening.
The new recruits to the Death Korps of Krieg stood ready. Waiting.
They had formed up in platoons at the edge of the ruined city, their recent battlefield. Did any of them think about the bodies still lying in its rubble?
Somehow, they had managed to line themselves up perfectly, despite the trenches and potholes beneath their feet, the scars that ran across their planet’s dead surface. They kept their backs straight and their rifles shouldered.
They had sacrificed much for their meaningless triumph. If their superiors considered the casualty rate acceptable, however, then who were they to argue?
Yes, there had been some deaths. But the survivors had emerged from the exercise with skills honed and with experience that would certainly prove invaluable to them on the battlefields to come.
‘You have tasted victory today. But remember, such an outcome was expected.’
Vox speakers were attached to what remained of the crumbling city walls. The voice of a long-dead general blared out of each of them, loud, echoing and metallic. A recording, played a thousand – a hundred thousand – times before.
The new Korpsmen obeyed the voice’s orders.
They stood fast as two drop-ships descended onto the plain in front of them, their downdrafts blowing up twin hurricanes of ash and soot. Hatchways cycled open and access ramps were lowered, but no living being emerged from inside the vessels to breathe in Krieg’s deadly atmosphere. Few beings ever dared do that.
The Korpsmen set off towards the ships before the dust had begun to settle; they became silhouettes, striding through the poisonous clouds. Platoon by platoon, they filed aboard the first drop-ship, then the second.
‘The important thing is that you have served faithfully and well, and that you will continue to do so.’
Soon, these young soldiers would be conveyed to an obscure world, located near the outer rim of the Segmentum Tempestus. They would replace the newly-dead of three Krieg regiments there, to fight a losing battle against an ancient, powerful evil.
Their first real battlefield. For so many of them, their last.
And all the time, their generals’ voices would be ringing in their ears:
‘It has already been calculated that you cannot win this war. The Emperor’s most glorious triumph will not be achieved in your lifetimes.
‘But for every second you stand against the enemy’s guns, you deplete his resources. You make him weaker. Your lives may be worthless, but you can sell them dearly.
‘This, then, is your objective. It is your duty and your destiny: die bravely, die hard, and know that even the meagre sacrifice you make will be noted and weighed against your ancestors’ heresies.
‘You will be hastening the hour – that glorious, promised hour – when the sins of Krieg will at last be forgiven, and its sons redeemed in the Emperor’s all-seeing eyes.
‘And thus, your fleeting existences will have been justified.’
Mihalik was recalling his first encounter with the devil when the wind shifted slightly, rippling the tall grass in which he and Covone were lying. They took the opportunity to move forward again. Glancing to the sky, he noted that clouds were slowly rolling in, obscuring the stars. That meant the wind would continue to pick up and the two of them would be able to cover substantial ground. If the grass stopped moving, then they would have to as well. Although the cammo cloaks they
each wore would make them all but invisible, the tau sentries wore helmets with amplified vision and their perimeter drones were equipped with motion trackers. To stay completely hidden, he and Covone had to move in conjunction with their cover. When the brush moved, they moved. When the world was silent, so were they. Adapting oneself to the environment; that was the Catachan way.
The way of their enemy, on the other hand, was very different. The tau had arrived on Cytheria weeks ago, thinking it to be largely undeveloped and unpopulated; a perfect world for them to colonize. The Catachans, who for generations had used its vast grassy plains and dense, lethal jungles as training grounds, begged to differ. They mustered nearly every piece of armour they had, and threw it at the interlopers. When it was over however, the tau’s accuracy and superior range prevailed. Had the planet been occupied by a different regiment, things would have likely ended in capitulation. But this was a Catachan world. The struggle to evict the tau was devolving into a series of guerilla actions, and although such a prospect would have seemed grim to most other soldiers, it was one the Imperium’s famed jungle fighters relished; how the aliens would deal with it was the big question.
Something pulled at the leg of Mihalik’s pants. He froze and looked over his shoulder. Behind him, Covone tapped the minicomp on his wrist, and then held up a pair of fingers. Mihalik understood the gesture. They had two hours until the sun would rise. They had to be in position and ready to fire by that time, or the entire mission would be a failure. He nodded to Covone, responded with a hand signal of his own that said they were very close to their target, and continued snaking his way forward.
Throughout the night, their goal had been to reach a particular tree that stood two hundred feet inside the overgrown park. It had a wide trunk to hide behind and a large burl of roots that would make an excellent rifle rest; and, it had a car smashed into it. At some point during the tau’s occupation of the town, one of the local civilians had apparently driven his ground car up over the curb and ploughed it right into the tree. The front end had crumpled horribly and the chassis was angled sharply upwards, creating a sheltered area better than any duck blind either Mihalik or Covone could have ever built for themselves. Had the hand of some benevolent god reached down and placed the wreck there for them, it couldn’t have made a more perfect firing position.
Honour Imperialis - Aaron Dembski-Bowden Page 93