[Imperial Guard 06] - Gunheads

by Steve Parker - (ebook by Undead)

  As the other officers moved off, deViers decided to pull Bergen aside just as he was about to depart.

  Standing together, he found his eyes level with the younger man’s. Like the general, Bergen was taller than most Cadians. He was of a heavier, more muscular build than the general, too, but then, he was forty years younger. Rejuvenat treatments could only do so much. Face to face like this, deViers noted how much smoother and tighter Bergen’s skin was. Sometimes, when the general was awoken in the early hours of the morning by the need to relieve himself, he would catch his reflection in a mirror and gasp, shocked that his face could look so skull-like in a certain light. He knew that all the rejuvenat in the galaxy wouldn’t hold aging off forever. How long did he have left to achieve his dream?

  “A quick word before you go, Gerard,” said deViers. “Just wanted to wish you the very best out there.”

  Bergen gazed straight back at him and, for a second, deViers felt like he had entered some kind of staring contest. It was a strange moment, but then Bergen spoke, and the feeling, whatever its cause, vanished into nothing.

  “I appreciate that, sir,” said Bergen, “but luck is overrated is it not? I’ve never much liked relying on it.”

  DeViers nodded. “Don’t you worry. We’ll all come out of this as heroes.” He hesitated, trying to gain control over all the thoughts swimming around in his head. The commodore’s amasec was stronger than he had expected. It was difficult to put into order the things he wanted to say. In a rare moment of alcohol-induced frankness, he settled on saying, “You know, Gerard, my line — my bloodline, that is — ends with me. Perhaps I’ve mentioned that to you before.”

  Bergen’s mouth was a tight line. “You have, sir.”

  “Couldn’t father any of my own, you know. Not for lack of trying, by Throne, but my seed’s as thin as water, so the experts tell me.”

  “I’m sure that it’s none of my business, sir,” said Bergen.

  It was the cold, flat tone in which they were spoken, rather than the words themselves, that surprised deViers. He recovered quickly, however, clapping Bergen on the arm, and saying, “I suppose not, Gerard. I just wanted you to understand. A man must leave his mark on the Imperium. History must remember me. I’ve given my entire life to the Emperor’s service.”

  Bergen stared back quietly for second. “We all have, sir.”

  DeViers nodded, “Yes, of course. A fighting man’s outfit, my 18th Army Group. I’ve said it before. Good men we lead.”

  “Good men, sir,” said Bergen. “I’m not sure we deserve them sometimes.”

  DeViers couldn’t explain why, but those words hit him like a smack in the face. He gaped for a moment, unsure of how to respond. Bergen didn’t give him the chance.

  “With your permission, sir,” he said. “I should get some rest before I lead my division out. I want to be ready when we meet the foe.”

  “Permission granted,” replied deViers.

  Bergen snapped his boot heels together and gave a fine, crisp salute which deViers returned. Then Bergen turned sharply, and marched out of the room.

  DeViers watched him go. For a few minutes, he stood alone in silence, thinking how remarkable it was that the word we could be made to sound so much like you.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  After the general’s dinner, Bergen emerged into the hot night air to find his adjutant, Katz, awaiting him in the driver’s seat of an idling staff car, ready to take him back to his quarters. Despite the hour and the fact that he was due to lead his entire division out before dawn, Bergen wasn’t in the mood to retire quite yet, and waved Katz on, telling him he would return on foot after a short walk. Though he had limited his consumption to a polite minimum, Commodore Galbraithe’s rich amasec had numbed his fingertips, and he felt the need to walk it off. His stomach felt uncomfortably full and his mind was restless, awash with conflicting thoughts. He knew that sleep would not come easily. Perhaps a little time in the open air, even air tainted with the smell of sulphur, would do him some good.

  He walked without a specific destination in mind, keeping to areas where the ground was less heavily trodden and less brightly lit, bringing him in short order to the southernmost section of the base. This was not the first time Bergen had been posted to a desert region, and he had expected the temperature to plummet at night, as it so often did in the deserts he had visited on other worlds. But the constant cloud cover on Golgotha trapped a layer of heat in the lower atmosphere that would take many hours to dissipate, and he unbuttoned his jacket and shirt collar as he walked.

  Rounding the corner of a prefabricated barracks, he almost bumped into a squad of infantrymen on their way to the mess tents. They stopped to salute him smartly, though the colour of their berets said they weren’t from his division. He returned the salute without breaking stride, noting absently that he hadn’t recognised anyone he had passed so far. Nothing strange in that, of course. There were close to thirty thousand men in Hadron Base: two whole infantry divisions plus his own armoured, each at roughly ten thousand men apiece, not counting the drop-ship losses, and that was excluding the non-combat personnel so essential to basic operations.

  Thirty thousand, he decided, was a conservative estimate. Crowded into the space between the towering curtain walls, it seemed like a vast number, an unstoppable military force, but Bergen knew it was nothing of the kind. Despite the difficulties inherent in scanning the shrouded surface of the planet, what little data they had suggested that Golgotha still seethed with the foe. Those few probe-servitors that had returned safely had shown that the more temperate regions north and south of the desert were dotted with vast settlements wherever the terrain allowed. Even now, thought Bergen, legions of orks might be racing through the darkness, crossing the open sands towards the plateau, following grunted reports of lights in the sky on the promise of a good blood-soaked battle.

  Vermin, he thought. They’re a plague on the galaxy, the damned greenskins.

  He reached the foot of the south wall and began to climb a zigzagging staircase that led up to the battlements.

  There was a powered elevator inside the nearest tower, but he opted to ascend under his own strength, conscious of the excess of calories that General deViers had forced on him. As he moved from step to step, enjoying the steady rhythm of the exercise, his thoughts dwelled on the Golgothan orks.

  They’d had thirty-eight years of freedom to spread across the land, turning every scrap of captured or abandoned Imperial technology to their needs. Even taking into account the unprecedented hordes that had left this world and the surrounding systems to join Thraka’s onslaught of Imperial space, there had to be literally millions of orks still present, perhaps billions. Who could say for sure how many?

  Army Group Exolon was nothing in the face of such numbers and anyone who said otherwise was either a propaganda man, a fool, or both, as they so often were. Despite the general’s grand speech about the importance of their quest, Bergen still shared the most fervent hopes of his men that this would all be over quickly so they could join the fight on Armageddon. That was a fight worthy of his beloved armoured division, for if Armageddon fell, Holy Terra, the sacred Cradle of mankind, would be under direct threat for the first time since the divine Emperor had walked the stars.

  There could scarcely be a greater danger to the preservation of the Imperium in these dark times.

  As Bergen reached the top of the stairs, breathing heavily, his forehead damp with sweat and his quadriceps burning, he stopped and turned to look down on Hadron Base. It was quite something, he admitted. It sat shimmering like an island of light in a sea of absolute darkness. His gaze crossed the small airfield in the north-east quarter, its hangars nearing completion and awaiting the arrival of the Vulcan gunships that the commodore had promised. To the south of it, scores of water towers and storage silos stood in tight, ordered rows like men under close inspection. On the east side, next to one of the base’s massive reinforced gates, were the motor pool a
nd mustering field. Both were large and well lit, and filled with red-robed enginseers busily tending to row upon row of transports and war machines. There were hundreds of men in rust-coloured fatigues down there, too: troopers from the support echelons hefting ammunition and supplies back and forward, working hard against the clock. Large Guard-issue trucks — the ever-reliable Thirty-Sixers — were being driven into position so that fuel drums and supplies could be hoisted onto them. Scores of Sentinel walkers squatted in groups like flightless birds at rest, legs folded beneath them to allow for oiling and final weapons checks.

  To Bergen, all this was a beautiful sight, something he appreciated every time he saw it, and he stood watching, motionless, for long minutes. He felt lucky, in many ways, to be the man he was. From the age of six, from the moment that his mother had explained his destiny to him, that he was already marked for military service, the Imperial Guard was the only thing that had given real meaning to his life. It was the Guard that had shaped and defined him.

  He turned from his view of the base below and moved to the parapet wall, looking out into the black of the night. To his left, rows of Earthshaker guns sat silent, their machine-spirits resting until called upon to commit the explosive, long-range slaughter at which they excelled. Some of the gun-crews were absent, sleeping in their barracks or getting fed, most likely. Sirens would call them back to their stations in the event of an attack. Other crews had to remain on duty shifts. They sat by their guns, smoking, playing cards, a few of them sharpening knives or practising close-combat techniques with their fellows. Others moved in pairs along the wall, men on patrol duty, occasionally lifting night-vision magnoculars to their eyes and then dropping them again. Nothing to see out there.

  Footsteps sounded behind Bergen and he turned to find a short, scruffy trooper looking up at him with a pipe of styrene cups in one hand and a green flask in the other.

  “Care for some hot caffeine, sir?” asked the trooper a little nervously, eyeing the bright golden glyphs on Bergen’s collar and the bands at his sleeve.

  Bergen smiled.

  “Are you sure it’s hot, son?” he asked. There was no steam rising from the flask’s open lid.

  The trooper nodded earnestly. “My sergeant says it’s the atmospheric pressure, sir. Stuff doesn’t steam here. Not at normal temperatures, leastwise. He says if it’s steaming, it’ll put you in the med-block with burns. Can’t pretend as I understand it myself, but I’ll take his word for it, sir. He’s a smart one, is my sarge.”

  Bergen smiled, but refused a cup all the same. Any more caffeine tonight and he wouldn’t sleep at all.

  “What’s your name and outfit, son?” he asked.

  “Ritter, sir. Two-one-five-three-five. With the 88th Feros Artillery.”

  “So these are your guns?” said Bergen, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder.

  The little trooper looked proud. “Sure are, sir. Proper beauties, ain’t they? I’m hoping to crew eventually. I’m just support right now, though.”

  “They’re not half bad, private,” said Bergen, glancing over his shoulder at them. “Not bad at all. You must be proud that your regiment is part of this operation. One for the history books, this.”

  “I suppose so, sir,” said Ritter. “I mean, I just go where the regiment goes. So long as me and my mates are together, I don’t mind where. The air here stinks a bit, though. And… well, there’s no girls except them Medicae nurses. And it’s only the officers have a devil’s chance with any of that lot, isn’t it? Even the rough-looking ones.”

  Bergen laughed. “Glad you’ve got your priorities straight. A man has to keep things in perspective, eh?”

  “Too true, sir.”

  “Well, you’d best get back to it. I bet some of your mates could use a good shot of caff to keep them awake. Keep your chin up, soldier.”

  “Right, sir,” said Ritter. “Thank you, sir.” He fumbled with the flask and cups for a moment so that he could throw up a stiff salute before moving off to serve the gun crews he so hoped to join.

  Bergen watched him go and then started walking anticlockwise along the wall in the general direction of his quarters, gesturing for the men he passed not to rise on his account. Talking with Ritter had lightened his mood. There was an undeniable value, he believed, in taking the time to talk with the rank-and-file. Their answers were often refreshingly honest, unshaped by the hidden agendas that tightly governed the words of most career-minded senior officers. Some of the younger troopers were blessed with a shining optimism — born of blissful naivety, he supposed — that he couldn’t ever remember having possessed. Perhaps it was a class thing. Until the day he entered cadet school, his family, saints rest them, had worked tirelessly to prepare him for a life of war. The old phrase “harder than a Cadian grandmother” was born of fact, as the network of deep scars on his back attested.

  As he walked further along the wall, his thoughts shifted to General deViers, and the upturn in his mood was suddenly reversed again. Mohamar Antoninus deViers. Alarm bells had been ringing in Bergen’s head for months. There were no two ways about it, the general had been swiftly losing his grip on reality since the destruction of Palmeros.

  It should have been the old man’s crowning glory, the Palmeros campaign. He was long overdue for retirement and, if he had only managed to turn back the orks and save the majority of the planetary populace, he would certainly have received the coveted Honorifica, and would probably have been granted an Imperial title. Lord General Mohamar deViers: that would have gone some way towards satisfying his lust for fame. Instead, Ghazghkull Thraka had smashed the planet apart with seventeen massive asteroids, killing billions of loyal Imperial citizens and wiping a civilised world from the star-charts. DeViers had been forced to pull out fast with none of the everlasting glory he had anticipated. Perhaps he had imagined that the Palmerosi people would build statues in his honour. Yes, thought Bergen, he would have been looking forward to that.

  Without victory, there were no statues.

  Humiliated, the old man had scrabbled for another cause and, in his desperation, had settled on a hopeless one that other, more wily generals had manoeuvred carefully to avoid: a half-mad recovery mission that Sector Command promised would earn the general his place in the history books.

  What wouldn’t the old man sacrifice, Bergen wondered grimly, for something like that? He was the last of his line. He’d said it himself. His obsession with leaving some kind of legacy had put the entire army group at extreme risk.

  Bergen’s steps grew heavier as he began his descent from the high battlements eager to return to his quarters. The walk had done its job. Tiredness settled over him like a heavy blanket. As he trudged down one of the southeastern stairwells, boots ringing on the metal steps, he cast his mind back to the briefing session earlier that day, and the words the general had offered before dismissing his three divisional commanders.

  “Expect a fight when you get to Karavassa, Gerard,” deViers had said. “You can be sure that every damned outpost that Yarrick established during the last war has been infested with the buggers. They’ve had plenty of time to dig in, by Throne. Let’s hope all that time has made them soft and complacent. Regardless, I know you’ll get the job done. I must have secure supply lines before I set out to claim the prize.”

  “You still insist on taking to the field in person, sir?” Bergen had asked, knowing that it was as futile as ever to argue, but ploughing ahead anyway. With a glance at Killian and Rennkamp, he’d added, “I think all three of us would counsel you against it. It’s an unnecessary risk, to say the least.”

  “There’s nothing unnecessary about it!” deViers had barked, and Bergen had thought another volcano of anger was about to erupt. But it hadn’t. Instead, deViers had simply shaken his head and said, “Things of value demand risk. If the damned Munitorum thought I was too precious to risk, they wouldn’t have sent me out here, would they? But that’s beside the point. I’ve prayed for something like this to c
ome my way, Gerard. I deserve this chance. It’s my destiny to recover that Baneblade. And if any of you think I’m going to command from the rear on this one, you’re bloody well out of your minds.”

  Well, one of us is definitely out of his mind, Bergen thought as he recalled the conversation, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t me.

  He reached the rocky surface of the plateau, increased his walking pace, and soon spotted his quarters up ahead — a low, two-storey prefab that he shared with Colonels Vinnemann, Marrenburg and Graves. He was looking forward to slipping between cool sheets. Such comforts would be just a memory once he was on the move.

  Tired as he was, though, his mind still churned.

  He knew that thousands of men would die in the coming days. Given the unexpected drop-ship losses, it seemed all too likely that over two thousand already had. There would be worse to come. Golgotha would see to that. Scores of men had already reported to the med-block and they hadn’t even left the plateau yet. For some, it was the fines — particles of red dust so small that they could penetrate the cell membranes of the human body. The medics said there was little they could do beyond prescribing anti-toxic medication, but the real solution was to get off this blasted planet. The medicines induced short-term vomiting and cramps. Then there were the dannih — small chitinous bloodsuckers with powerful tripartite jaws. They seemed to get everywhere, even inside machines. If a man tried to pull one from his skin while it was feeding, only the fat red body would come away. The detached head would then burrow down into his flesh dispensing anti-coagulant, homing in on major arteries. A man could bleed to death if he wasn’t careful. It was a powerful deterrent against interfering with the creature’s feeding cycle. The only way to get rid of them without this happening was to douse the afflicted area of the body in strong alcohol, an unhappy solution on two counts. Firstly, troopers didn’t much like the idea of wasting their coveted liquor on shifting stubborn ticks, and, secondly, dousing oneself in alcohol was never a good idea. A handful of the heavier smokers had already discovered this first-hand.