‘It’s holder actually. The correct title.’
‘Apologies, holder.’
‘Van Am,’ Carson continued the introductions, ‘is the governor’s granddaughter.’
Zdzisław let his head fall a fraction and then jerked it back in the approximation of a nod. ‘Pleasure to meet you.’
Van Am stared at Carson. ‘I never said that.’
Carson held her stare lightly. ‘Do you really think that I’d allow myself or my men to go into danger alongside someone without knowing exactly who they are and what they might do?’
Van Am blinked. ‘No. I suppose not.’
‘Perhaps a rule to live by, then,’ he told her curtly and then followed Zdzisław towards his Valkyrie. Van Am went after them and received a second shock when she saw Zdzisław’s flyer. Many pilots, over time, grew attached to a particular craft. They would name it, record its victories, even start to believe that its quirks and defects were part of its own personality. Zdzisław had gone further. Much further. He was not fond of his Valkyrie, he was in love with it, worshipped it, was obsessed with it. Over the years he had painted every centimetre with lavish, elaborate, sometimes explicit, talismanic images. Each one he considered a labour of love, a symbol of his passion and gratitude for every occasion that the Valkyrie had taken him into battle and brought him home again.
The other pilots kept their eccentricities far better hidden, yet still Zdzisław had been promoted to squadron commander, in part because his devotion made his Valkyrie the most reliable, the most exceptional vehicle in the flight.
Van Am, however, had no clue as to this. She could only watch as Zdzisław went through his regular rituals of stroking and caressing the flyer’s nose, whispering into one of its vents, whilst his co-pilot performed the more mundane pre-flight checks.
Those completed, they took off, leaving the huddled settlement of Voorheid behind, and were soon jetting over the blue ocean. Van Am had taken a seat opposite Carson, but stayed silent throughout the trip. Carson was content not to have to shout over the Valkyrie’s engines and instead turned his thoughts to a more serious matter than how to handle a young woman frightened for her world. That matter was his prospective commanding officer, Major Stanhope.
The colonel had warned him about Major Stanhope, or rather he hadn’t. A Brimlock officer, when speaking to his junior, would never malign another, especially when that officer was the junior’s commanding officer. It simply wasn’t done. But the fact that the colonel, when he told Carson of the new appointment, did not recommend Stanhope as ‘good’ or ‘solid’ was far more damning than a whole litany of indictments from an officer of another world.
Stanhope was not one of us, Arbulaster had told him. Carson had heard that charge levelled at several officers during his career, applied to weak-kneed saps who fainted at the first sight of the enemy, to shell-shocked officers who spoke to flowers and expected a reply, to psychotic butchers who smeared themselves in blood and declared themselves the Emperor’s True Prophet. It was an accusation that meant nothing in specific and everything in general.
Carson’s relations with the former company commander, Captain Blundell-Hollinshed-Blundell, who was as ill-fated as he was ill-named, had started badly and continued in the same vein. The captain had been appointed towards the end of the Ordan campaign; Carson had returned with his company foetid and coated with mud from a long patrol slogging through the Katee river delta. Rather than present the company to their new commander in their bedraggled state, Carson had given them a few hours to rest and clean themselves up. Blunder nearly charged Carson with mutiny as a result for retaining command for that time.
Blunder’s drilling had not been petty vindictiveness, though; it had been ambition. It was an ingrained, insatiable ambition amongst the officer corps. Each one wanted promotion. Each one wanted to be part of the colour-guard. All of them craved the immortality that glory would bring with such a fierce desire as to push them to insanity. And none of them hesitated to spend their men’s lives in their quest, especially now in the crusade’s last gasps where colour-guards were going home after each campaign.
Such immortality, however, almost invariably came at the cost of the lives of the men who served under them.
Carson had expected the same from Stanhope, but when they finally met that morning, he had been surprised.
‘Lieutenant Carson? Major Stanhope,’ Stanhope had introduced himself at breakfast in the officers’ mess.
Carson rose to stand to attention, but Stanhope stopped him. ‘No need for that,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to disturb.’
Instead, Stanhope sat down with him. Carson regarded him as he adjusted his sword as he sat. He looked tired, even for early in the morning, and his uniform was rumpled as though he had slept in it.
‘It’s good to meet you finally,’ Stanhope said.
‘Yes, major,’ Carson replied. ‘You were on the Brydon with us?’ Carson had been waiting for the major to appear for weeks on board the ship, but he had never emerged.
‘The colonel tells me that there is some kind of administrative delay in signing the transfer papers. It appears I’m still not officially part of the regiment and so obviously can’t take command of the company. I thought it best for the men that I not be hanging around while my status was still… uncertain.’
His sentiments made perfect sense, yet Carson still instinctively disbelieved him.
‘I hope my absence did not cause you any problems,’ Stanhope concluded.
‘Not at all.’ Carson found the honorific ‘sir’ on his lips, but could not bring himself to use it for this man. ‘And have the administrative delays now been overcome?’
Stanhope didn’t reply, he was staring at Carson’s breakfast. ‘Would you like me to call a steward over?’ Carson offered.
Stanhope looked up, puzzled. ‘If you’d like something to eat?’ Carson continued.
‘No, no. I’ve eaten already,’ Stanhope replied. His eyes rolled lazily in their sockets as though searching for something in his own head. ‘The administrative delays, no, I’m afraid not. Tomorrow, the colonel says.’
Arbulaster really was playing Stanhope along as long as he possibly could, Carson considered. He waited for Stanhope to continue, but the silence stretched between them. Stanhope appeared to have no other conversation besides his initial objective and Carson did not want to continue eating while being watched. Instead, he stood and Stanhope instinctively did the same.
‘If you’d like to inspect the men first, major, I would be happy to arrange it.’
‘What?’ Stanhope said, surprised. ‘No, that’s fine, lieutenant. I’m happy to wait until everything’s official.’
‘Very well,’ Carson said; again the ‘sir’ stuck behind his tongue. Instead, he saluted. Prompted, Stanhope saluted in response and then walked away. Carson stayed standing until the major left the mess and then sat back down, shaking his head, to finish his breakfast.
‘We’re getting close,’ Van Am shouted, bringing Carson back to the present. ‘Look out the window.’
Carson did. For a split-second it looked like they were flying over a grey continent of dark tangled rock. They were clouds so thick as to appear almost as though the flyer could land upon them. They stretched across the entirety of Carson’s view, from one end of the horizon to the other.
The Valkyrie descended beneath the clouds and Carson caught sight of the black water of the ocean beneath. Then, in an eye-blink, they crossed the coast and were over the jungle.
He realised Van Am had leaned forwards and was staring out of the same porthole.
‘We’d barely touched Tswaing when the rok hit,’ she said. ‘We had just a few settlements on the coast. We thought we might be finished when we saw it coming towards us. First reports said it might be a planet-killer, thought we might have to abandon the place, everything we’ve don
e here. But the impact wasn’t as big as we’d feared. It had slowed itself down as it entered our atmosphere. I tell you, we thanked the Emperor then, thought it was a miracle.
‘These clouds, they formed after it hit. After the fire. The jungle didn’t burn easily, but then the temperature dropped, and that and the lack of sun are slowly finishing the jungle off.’
Carson glanced at her. She took it for concern.
‘Don’t mistake me. That was lekker by us. We would have had to clear the jungle anyway. The cold killed the disease bugs, forced the critters to move north to where it’s warmer. We even thought we could move up our timetable to expand.
‘Once the fire stopped, we sent out a flyer to inspect the crash-site. That’s when we discovered the interference. The first flyer didn’t come back, we didn’t know what had happened to it. Its vox cut off and we never heard from it again. The second we sent was a lot more cautious. As soon as the pilot felt the controls go, she dived and headed clear.
‘We sent in a group on foot. They made it all the way to the impact crater, didn’t see a single ork. The rok had buried itself under the ground.
‘They should have left it buried, but they didn’t know then that it was the orks. They were just trying to find the source of the flying hazard. They found the rok quickly enough, the interference was coming from inside. They went in and there they found them: thousands of orks all dead, all dead from the impact. Piles of them in every pocket in the rok. Caverns full of war machines smashed beyond repair. They searched for whatever was generating the interference, but you can’t tell ork tech from junk and so they decided to blow the whole thing.’
‘Why didn’t you?’ Carson asked.
‘We’re farmers, lieutenant. We didn’t have anything that would make a dent in it. We told your crusade. It crashed here because of you, we figured the least you could do is get us the explosives to finish it off.’
‘And did we?’
‘What do you think? Our request’s probably still on the desk of some doos at your Command. We were still waiting when our men on the crater got hit. The resupply team found them all dead. Clubbed to death most of them, others nearly torn apart. All their rifles, all their weapons gone. That’s when we first saw them, the orks. We didn’t know what they were, but we knew they weren’t native. The resupply team didn’t hang around to ask questions. We reported that to your crusade as well and that’s when they started talking back. Not help, just more questions. More delays.
‘Fok to that, we said. You weren’t going to lift a finger. We’d sort it ourselves. It took a couple of months, but Grandmother got a hundred men off the farms and sent them over. By that time, though, the orks had the crater. Our boys couldn’t even get close. Their boss was a muggie, didn’t have the nerve for a real fight. He lost a few men and turned them round and ran. That’s when they came and took us from the villages on the coast. Said they couldn’t be sure that the orks wouldn’t cross half the continent to butcher us in our beds.’
Van Am was interrupted by Zdzisław’s voice crackling around the cabin.
‘We’re over the first prospect point. I’ll open the hatch to allow you a better view.’
The occupants of the Valkyrie attached themselves to safety lines and the rear hatch opened. The green canopy appeared almost grey in the dim light. It covered the landscape like a sea, pooling into the deep crevices and breaking around the peaks showing the bare soil, baked hard by the now absent sun.
Mulberry and his beards were quickly standing near the edge, alternately checking their auspexes and peering out of the craft to try and see the jungle floor. It was soon apparent that they were not happy and Mulberry returned up the craft to Carson.
‘This is all dashed useless I’m afraid, Carson. Can’t see a dashing thing down there in this light. And there’s certainly nowhere to land. We’re going to have to go out on the dangle, I’m afraid.’
Carson nodded and passed the message through to Zdzisław to be ready to have the team abseil out. He worked his way to the rear and started clipping himself on. Van Am followed him and did likewise. He leaned over and took her hand to stop her.
‘Ma’am, no disrespect, but you’re not going down there.’
He expected her to snap back at him, but she just snorted in derision. ‘As I said, lieutenant, it’s holder. From landholder. No disrespect, but this is my land and no offworlder is going to tell me where I cannot go. But I’ll let you drop first, so if there are any fearsome critters you can shout us a warning as they take a bite out of you.’
Carson relented. He let her go and returned to his own harness. ‘So long as there aren’t any leathertooths;’ he said. ‘I hear they find the arses of Brimlock officers extremely tasty.’
That took the Voorjer girl off-guard. Van Am did not know if the Brimlock officer was joking with her or mocking her, and his dead-calm expression gave her no clues.
‘Your man, the muggie,’ Carson said, switching the subject. ‘He wasn’t wrong. I’ve fought orks. I’ve seen what they do. They care little for their own lives. Even less for those who aren’t of their kind. Some fights you can only win by not starting them in the first place.’
‘Maybe,’ Van Am said. ‘But if you stay dependent on others to fight your battles, to protect what you call your own, can you ever consider yourself truly free?’
Carson could not help shaking his head at that. In all his years, he had never heard such naïveté. On Brimlock, in the Imperium at large, freedom was not even a luxury, it was a myth. But he could see the conviction in the girl’s face and knew better than to try to dissuade her.
Survival, that was all that mattered. Your own and those for whom you cared. That was why he was still fighting. He’d had it confirmed with the medicae before he left Kandhar; one way or another this was to be his last campaign. The only thing left that mattered to him was that his men survived, and he would allow no idealistic Voorjers, no glory-seeking officers and certainly no dried-up, defunct commanding officers like Stanhope to threaten that.
With that in his mind, he checked that his pistols were fastened securely by his side, tugged on his harness, took a hold of the rope and jumped down through the trees of Tswaing.
Chapter Five
Voorheid, Brimlock landing area, Voor pacification Stage 1 Day 5
It had taken two further days of pathfinder flights before an acceptable landing site had been agreed. Arbulaster signalled the Brydon to ready the DOV and finally signed the transfer orders allowing Major Stanhope to take command of Carson’s company.
Carson was already awake when the notification arrived. Now he had given up on the medicae’s ineffectual drugs, he found he only needed a few hours a night. Along with the notification was the standard form request from Stanhope for a handover inspection. Carson glanced at them and took them straight to Red.
The handover inspection from one officer to another was a serious event; new commanders took it as an opportunity to pick as many holes in the unit’s readiness as possible, for after this they were liable for any flaw or defect the unit possessed. The unit’s sergeants took it as a personal crusade to ensure that as few flaws were found as possible. Red rousted Forjaz and Booth at once and the three sergeants then woke the whole company and had them cleaning their body armour, polishing their lasguns and buffing their helmets within a few minutes.
They were glad they had done so, for when the time came and the company stood to attention outside the makeshift barracks, they discovered that Major Stanhope was not the only new member of the regiment present: a dozen metres back Commissar Reeve was also watching the proceedings, his visor down against the sun.
The commissar had also joined them after Kandhar and he had already made an impression on the men. He was an easily recognisable figure. He dressed in the ubiquitous uniform of a commissar: black cap, black coat, black boots. His one touch of personalisation
, however, was that his coat was studded with skulls: hundreds and hundreds of miniature skulls.
The skulls were not for decoration, they were kill markings. Except for a commissar they would not have been kills. They would have been executions.
‘First platoon, ready for inspection, sah,’ Red told Carson and Stanhope. Stanhope nodded and led Carson down the line without stopping until he reached the end. He looked back and Carson waited for some comment, but there was none. Instead, Stanhope simply passed to the second line.
Forjaz then stepped forwards. ‘Second platoon, ready for inspection, sir,’ he said. Stanhope acknowledged him and started again, Carson a step behind. There came a point, Carson knew, when dirt became so ingrained in a fabric, or gunk so fouled a machine, that it could never be fully cleaned or made to operate again. The same was true of certain members of the company who, after twenty years of combat, had developed such dysfunctions that they could never fit back into the clean-cut press mould of the model Imperial Guard infantryman. Marble could never be stopped from jury-rigging any weapon he was given in order to improve it, Zezé from sweating through any uniform he wore in minutes and Repton from hissing when he spoke through the wounds on the side of his face. Nothing could be done to make the lumbering ogryn Frn’k at all presentable, nor to tear him from the side of his adopted brother, Gardner. Blunder had nit-picked a list of issues as a long as a lasrifle, but Stanhope merely walked past them with no expression, his face waxen.
For a moment, Carson believed that the entire inspection would pass without incident, but then Stanhope stopped in front of Ducky. Ducky stood perfectly at attention, his equipment all present and correct, with one glaring exception.
‘Where’s your weapon?’ Stanhope asked.
‘Sir, it’s missing, sir,’ Ducky snapped back.
Carson could see Reeve over Stanhope’s shoulder focusing on the major. Technically, a soldier could be shot for losing his weapon, yet Ducky had declared it as easily as he might have commented on the weather.
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