‘M’sorry,’ Carson muttered and took the knife away. He then coughed in surprise as Van Am punched him in the kidney.
‘Damnation, you could have killed me,’ she muttered, flustered. Carson rolled off and made to sit up, but found he couldn’t.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘You haven’t heard?’
Carson ordered his body to stand. It refused. ‘Heard what?’
‘The attack. It’s going to be tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow? Well, we thought that might happen, didn’t we.’
‘You didn’t know for sure? They said the word had gone out to all the company commanders.’
‘Then it would have gone to Stanhope, wouldn’t it?’ He started to lever himself up just using his arms.
She sensed his effort beside her. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ he said with a grimace. He felt her sit up beside him, felt her cool hands on his shoulder, on his arm. He gave up the struggle and allowed himself to fall back on his bed.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked her again.
She rolled onto her side. Carson felt her body pressing into his, the heat of her flesh burning his own. Her scent flooded his nostrils, the mixture of the familiar sweat and dirt that all bodies acquire after two weeks in the field and beneath that the heady essence of the female. He could not see her in the darkness, but he knew she was above him, looking down at him, her hair falling around her face, grazing his cheek.
He felt nothing.
He felt her lean in and he put his hand up against her chest to stop her. Her hand encircled his wrist and tried to push it aside, but he held firm.
‘Truly?’
He nodded and then realised that she could not see him in the darkness. ‘I’m afraid so.’
She retreated, sitting back on her knees. ‘So,’ she said after a moment’s silence, ‘is it just me, or is it all those like me?’
Carson knew what she was implying. ‘No, I’m not that way either.’
‘Then what way are you?’
‘I’m just…’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’m simply not in the game.’
He could tell that that answer had not satisfied her.
‘I think it would be better if you–’
‘Don’t send me away,’ she whispered softly. ‘Don’t send me away. There must be a dozen pairs of eyes who saw me come in here, and they’ll be watching us still. If you send me away so quickly… What will they think of me if they saw I could not interest you even a little?’
‘If your reputation is your concern, I’m surprised you came here at all.’
Van Am flashed from anxiety to amusement. ‘Perhaps, lieutenant, you and I have different ideas as to what I wish my reputation to be.’
He had no argument to that, but merely let the uncomfortable silence linger.
‘How is your man? Your medic?’
‘Blind,’ Carson answered curtly.
‘You weren’t there. And even if you were, what would you have done?’
‘I’d have done something. He was one of my company. I would have done something.’
‘If you had tried to stop it, Reeve would have just had you shot. And then shot Ducky as well.’
‘Reeve?’ he spat. ‘Commissars are human like the rest of us. They bleed and they die. I’ve seen them. There’s nothing special about them, nothing that we don’t create in our own minds.’
‘Do not be so sure,’ she replied thoughtfully. ‘My grandmother and the rest, they came here to be free of men such as him. To live free of Imperial dogma, to worship the Emperor, but to do it in their own way. To have lives of choice, not of blind suppression. And they found here… and we have had a century of freedom before men like Reeve have come chasing after us again.’
She was talking of the commissar, but Carson could tell it was not him alone she resented. It was all of them.
‘A century, yes, before the galaxy caught up. And then your grandmother called for help.’
Van Am grew defensive at that. ‘Don’t make light of her decision. It was an impossible one, but she had to make it. And we will have to carry the consequences.’
Carson felt the sudden coolness form between them. He had not wanted Van Am here, but he did not want her to leave carrying hatred for him. He reached out and took hold of her arm gently. ‘You should know, she made the right choice.’
Van Am covered his hand with her own and held it a moment, then moved away.
‘I think that should be time enough,’ she decided, sitting up.
‘Now it is you not considering my reputation,’ he said, trying to lighten the mood.
She laughed at that, quietly but freely.
‘Such a shame.’ He felt her hand, cooler now than it was before, on his temple and tracing up into his hair. ‘You’re beautiful, Laurence.’
‘Perhaps. In my day.’
‘No. You are more so now than you could have been back then. Your men, they all love you. They’d give their lives for you. Maybe that’s it? How can one woman compare when you have a whole company who adores you.’
He did not reply, and she knew he would not be drawn further. She sighed one last time.
‘Would it really be so bad? Just two trails crossing in the dark. We may die tomorrow. And even if we don’t, after you take the crater, I will go back to my farms and you will go back to your stars.’
Carson shook his head.
‘No,’ he replied, ‘we won’t be leaving.’
‘No?’
‘You really do not understand who we’re fighting, do you. The orks, they are not like any other foe you can imagine. You cannot just kill them once. Their spores float around them, they’re in the air. You can go through every jungle on this planet, you can shoot every one of them that lives, burn their bodies, and in a few years this place will be teeming again. Voor has not been attacked, it’s been infested, and you and your militia will never be enough.
‘On every world the crusade has encountered with this menace we have left a garrison, sometimes one regiment, sometimes two, sometimes more, all for that very purpose. Whether we take the rok tomorrow or not, we’re here for good.’
‘I see,’ Van Am said quietly. ‘I must go. I hope your man recovers.’
‘Thank you.’
She paused a moment. ‘If you had been there, if you could, would you really have stopped Reeve? Even if it meant…’
Carson did not hesitate. ‘Yes.’
Van Am turned to leave, but stopped suddenly as she saw a group of torches flash by. Men were running outside, quiet but urgent, all over the camp. One of them burst into the tent beside Carson’s and woke the officer sleeping within. Carson heard a mumble of voices, and then a sharp exclamation cut through the night air: ‘Attack! The orks are attacking!’
Carson tried to jump up, but his body collapsed beneath him. He swore and cursed. Not now. Not now!
Van Am stepped to help him, but then stopped short. ‘I’ll get Red, I’ll get one of your men.’
‘No!’ Carson demanded. ‘Help me up.’
‘But you don’t want them to see–’
‘I don’t give a damn how it looks. My men need me! Help me up!’
Corporal Dennett stood sentry on the fire-step of the fort wall and watched the darkness. He had little choice; there was nothing else to look at. The camp behind him was shuttered, the external floodlights were extinguished, any torches inside the tents were on a low-light, and the hopeful light from the moon and stars was smothered by clouds of dirt and ash. Without his noctocle he would not be able to see his own hand before his face. As it was, even with the small noctocle strapped over one eye, he had to strain to make out the detail beyond the walls. There was the ditch the beards had ploughed, the shallow glacis they had constructed with the spoil; beyon
d that were the stumps of the trees that had been lasered down so as to create a dead ground around the fort.
Beyond those were the ghosts of the trees which had been allowed to stay standing, the barest lines of their trunks and branches visible through the noctocle. Dennett counted himself lucky to have caught sight of the orks at all. He watched them now as they crept towards the wooden walls. They appeared to be having no trouble navigating in the blackness.
Dennett had fought orks before, he knew them to be tougher, stronger, more resilient than men. It seemed to Dennett that the same was true for most of the xenos races that the crusade had encountered. Each one outstripped men in some capacity: the eldar with their speed and their technology, the orks with their numbers and their savagery, the Karthadasim and the bewildering array of spined, horned, bestial mercenaries in their employ. And yet they had all been defeated by armies of men; men, who Dennett knew to be little more than weak, pink, fragile, with little granted by nature be it in defence or attack. How had they done it?
Through the noctocle Dennett could see that some of the orks were grouped together, holding aloft crude ladders made from the giant trunks and branches from the trees. A few hours earlier, those same logs the orks now carried had been felled by the beards. There must be some irony in that, Dennett reflected, but he doubted that either side would appreciate it. When he had fought the orks before, he had been one of the 74th, one of Ingertoll’s Ironsides. It had been they who had spearheaded the last strike against the Waaagh, had boarded the rok when it had been in space, had laid the explosives to cripple its engines and send it spiralling into the sun. Few of the 74th had survived. Those few believed they had succeeded. Those who had passed since had at least been spared this, the sight of the orkish taint upon another world.
Dennett heard a whisper from the man beside him and passed it along. The first of the orks were closer now, approaching the glacis. If he had not seen them by now, though, he most certainly would have heard them. They believed they were being stealthy, but they were young, little more than new-spawns. For all the fighting instincts that orkoids were spawned with, there were many lessons you only learned through experience. And sometimes the price you had to pay for that lesson was your life. There was probably some irony there as well, Dennett mused.
‘Fire!’
The volley of las-fire flashed along the length of the fort walls, illuminating the shocked orks for an instant before it burned into their flesh. They yelled in pain and surprise; some bodies dropped, others stumbled. Dennett had targeted one of the ladder carriers at the front. He had gone for the face, hoping for a kill-shot, but the ork had swayed a fraction just before the volley and the shot had struck the side of its temple instead. Dennett saw the shot hit, saw the ork’s head flick to one side as the shot scorched into it, saw it roar then shake itself and continue on. Dennett cursed. He had been tempted to go for the kill. He should have known better. He shifted his aim down and went for the legs.
‘Free fire!’ The order came just a second later from the officer a few metres away.
Dennett heard the whine of his lasgun as it finished its cycle and fired again. This time the ork, who had started to charge, stumbled. It lost its grip upon the ram and brought its two kin behind it down as well. The ram lurched and swung out of control. Better, Dennett judged.
The floods burst on, transfixing the orks with light for the moment it took for their red eyes to adjust. Dennett’s noctocle flared in his eye like a starburst before it cleared, shutting down automatically before it overloaded. He saw clearly now the sheer numbers of the wave of enemies about to break against them. The orks, blinded, surprised and confused, did what they always did when confronted with the unexpected: they charged, some of them even dropping their siege tools, so gripped were they by the instinct to rush forwards. They charged up the glacis towards the wall, waving their blades high in the air, thinking the slope would take them straight up to the walls, and then they tumbled down into the trench, pushed forwards by those behind, striking their kin as they flailed for purchase. Dennett heard their cries of alarm beneath him and then the plaintive blows as they vainly tried to chop through the thick trunks of the base of the wall.
‘Grenades!’ the order came down.
These ork whelps may have sprung from the ground born for war, but Dennett and all the other Brimlocks had lived it these last twenty years. The whelps had thought to try to take the 11th unawares. But Dennett and the other sentries had seen them coming even before they reached the dead ground, had alerted their officers who had roused the camp and readied the platoons that were now pouring fire into the outclassed besiegers. All the while the misguided orks slowly crept forwards, still believing that the advantage was theirs. It was time, Dennett thought with relish as he reached for a fragmentation bomb, to teach these newest pustules of the orkoid galactic pox the difference between instinct and experience, between savagery and soldiery.
Dennett activated the bomb, held it those crucial few seconds to ensure there would be no time for the foe to throw it back, and then tossed it down into the trench.
Carson heard the distinctive crack of the frag grenades as he struggled from his tent, his arm locked around Van Am and trusting her to take his weight. They staggered over to where his company was already formed up. Standing orders for such night flaps as these were for only those companies closest to a wall to respond to the attack.
He knew he must look ridiculous, reporting for duty, half-dressed, his arm slung over a woman. None of his men said anything and, to their credit, most did not think anything either. Red instantly came over and helped lower him to the ground. There were no orders, not that he could move out even if he were ordered to. Stanhope had turned out, looking almost as ridiculous, still dressed as a common trooper. He could see Carson’s predicament, but took no steps to take command. After what had happened earlier that night, Carson would not have let him anyway. Damn him, Carson thought, he’d ride to battle strapped onto Frn’k’s back before he’d let that man near his company. He just had to pray that his body responded before Major Roussell found a use for him.
Chapter Eleven
Fort Eliza, Tswaing, Voor pacification Stage 1 Day 18
The ork attack was in chaos. The trench hidden between the glacis and the fort wall was filled now with their dead. Those who survived the murderous shrapnel of the fragmentation grenades found themselves trapped there, having ditched their rams and ladders in the confusion of the Brimlocks’ fire. A few of them started trying to climb back up the glacis to go back and retrieve them, and they were easy targets for the troopers’ guns. The rest were left to hack desperately at the wall itself, trying to heave apart the wooden posts. Then the autocannons in the closest corner tower opened up and swept down the entire length of the trench, blowing both the dead and the living apart without discrimination.
For a few moments then there was relative peace. There was no sound from the trench aside from the high-pitched growls of a few squig pets, either mourning or eating their masters. Dennett lowered his hot lasgun. Behind him, the camp was still rising, officers were sending back for orders, sergeants were yelling men into their ranks. Dennett heard a horse whinny as an alarmed trooper pulled too tightly on its reins, and then the rumble of engines as the beards awoke their Sentinels. He heard some of his fellow troopers ask if that was it. One of them suggested that it had just been a raid to test their defences and steal from them an hour’s sleep. Another that the orks had seen how their first wave had been slaughtered, and had then tired of the fight.
From the darkness beyond the dead ground, a single horn sounded. First one, then another, then dozens. A light, a torch, flared amongst the trees. It split into two, then four, then dozens, then hundreds to either side as each ork warrior lit its torch from that of its neighbour, until the arc of fire stretched across the width of the jungle horizon.
Dennett heard the thudding step
s of another company of troopers as they ran up onto the wall and took up firing positions alongside them. He heard the autocannon crews in the towers call for more ammunition and the profanity uttered by the trooper who had proposed that the orks might have tired of the fight. Dennett leaned forwards again, sighted his gun and stroked his Ironsides insignia once more. An ork could no more tire of war than a man could tire of his own breath. They could only be killed, all of them, and that was exactly what Dennett intended to do.
‘How many of them are there?’ Major Roussell asked again, as he prowled around inside the tent at the centre of the camp.
‘Looks like at least a thousand,’ Captain Gomery replied again.
‘How many more might there be?’ Roussell asked again.
‘We don’t know,’ Gomery replied again.
Roussell stopped suddenly, the conversation was going in circles.
‘Are they attacking just the west wall?’ he asked.
‘So far.’
‘Are they going to attack the other walls?’
‘We don’t know,’ Gomery replied again.
‘Why not?’
‘Well, we can’t see into the jungle and the rok is still fouling up the auspexes.’
‘Well what use is that?’ Roussell exploded.
Captain Gomery bridled a bit. He wasn’t some lagging corporal Roussell could bawl out at the drop of a hat. He was an officer, and almost as senior as Roussell. He’d been a leader most of his life and even back at the cadet schola on Brimlock it had been he who’d captained the field game squad to a nearly unbeaten season, not Roussell. Gomery secretly suspected that if it hadn’t been for Arbulaster’s disapproval of Mister Emmett, then he would have been promoted above Roussell a long time ago. He certainly wouldn’t be here waiting for orders while Roussell paced up and down like a ratling trying to decide on his dinner.
‘Have we got through to Dova yet?’ Roussell cast about.
‘I don’t know–’ Gomery started.
‘Then go and find out!’
Imperial Glory Page 13