‘Trouble! Feed me!’ Gardner bellowed over the cannon-fire. The change in sound of the ammunition feeding in from its can told Gardner he was running low.
‘Grab another can!’ he yelled and the ogryn obediently turned around to pick up another. Gardner squeezed off another few rounds and then released the trigger to give the cannon a few moments to cool.
The light was fading fast and the shapes of the orks were increasingly indistinct against the churned up fungus that covered the crater’s floor. Gardner saw Gomery’s company coming around the base of Acorn, ready to deliver the final blow and roll the orks back for good. Gardner watched as the captain unslung his pack and removed Mister Emmett. Gomery held the ball out from his body and looked up, judging the distance. He took three quick steps and then hoofed it high into the air. The small ball with a crude face painted on went flying into the orkish horde.
‘Bully!’ he shouted to his men. ‘Get after him! Points for the first man to touch him down!’
His men cheered and advanced behind their captain. One of them would find Mister Emmett, one of them always did. All of Gomery’s men knew he was mad; he was still team captain, playing games back at schola. They had learned, though, that a mad officer who looked after them as his team-mates was far better than any sane one who treated them as so much human ammunition, so at times such as these they allowed his madness to infect them all.
Frn’k, with the care of a conscientious child, placed the new can beside the autocannon. Gardner got ready to fire off the last burst of the old can, when his attention was distracted. Advancing alongside Gomery’s men was Arbulaster’s Salamander, and inside it would be the colonel, and beside him would be Reeve.
‘He’s seen them, sah,’ Red reported as he watched Gardner through his monocular. Carson cursed silently again. Arbulaster’s command squad was still inside their Salamander; he could see nothing of Reeve at all.
‘Take us up as close as you can, Parker,’ Arbulaster ordered the driver. The hull-gunner was already firing his heavy bolter into the ork lines. The driver came to a halt on the near side of Gomery’s company, which was still advancing quickly. Arbulaster checked his pistol and power sword and made to exit.
‘Are you egressing?’ Reeve queried. His voice carried no intonation, but Arbulaster sensed a note of fear underneath.
‘Of course, commissar,’ Arbulaster replied. ‘We leave counting cartons to the staff officers at Crusade Command. Regimental-level officers should lead from the front. Guard doctrine, is it not?’
‘It is,’ Reeve replied, but Arbulaster would not let it go at that.
‘Will you be remaining within the Salamander?’ he asked, all politeness.
‘I will not,’ Reeve said and gathered himself to leave.
‘Very good,’ Arbulaster replied. He climbed out of the Salamander’s cabin and jumped down from its tailboard. He did not show it, but inside he was as sick now as he had been when he took his first command. There was nothing more he could do except rely on others. He glanced at Carson’s company firing from the slope of Acorn; they had the perfect angle on his squad, he could give them no better opportunity. Now all he could do was get out of their way.
‘Forward!’ he cried, and ran as hard as he could.
This was it, Carson knew, as he saw first the colonel and then the rest of his command squad pile out of the Salamander. He saw a flash of a bone-covered cloak and tried to track it, but Reeve had already landed on the other side of the vehicle. His shot was blocked.
Gardner watched Reeve stand up after his landing. He was right there in front of him. All he had to do was move his gun a fraction, just a few centimetres and he would have his brother’s killer in his sights.
‘Trouble! Another can!’ Frn’k had been idolising the commissar ever since he’d given him that commendation, and Gardner did not want him to see this.
Frn’k was confused and held up the can he already had.
‘Another one! Get another one!’ Gardner ordered and the ogryn dutifully turned around to pick up another. Reeve was striding away now, going after the colonel’s command squad, which had surged ahead after Gomery. Gardner fired off three rounds at the orks and then, not daring even to blink, slid his aim those vital few centimetres.
Carson saw Reeve’s peaked cap appear over the tracks of the Salamander. He was coming forwards. Another second and he would have him. Another second. Then Carson’s vision blurred as the Salamander accelerated away. Reeve was completely exposed. Carson nudged his sight back a fraction and pulled the trigger.
Gardner pulled the trigger.
Alongside Gomery’s company, Arbulaster suddenly heard a voice on the vox-channel blare with news that almost made him collapse in relief.
‘The commissar is down!’
It was Ledbetter. His cavalry had finally decided to intervene and now were galloping around the side of Acorn to where Reeve had fallen. Arbulaster fired another couple of shots at the beaten orks and looked back. It took him a few seconds in the poor light to identify the crumpled stormcoat on the ground.
He flagged down the Salamander and climbed onto the tailboard. ‘Parker! We have to go back for the commissar. Make certain he’s retrieved.’ And if he was still living, Arbulaster added mentally, make certain he wasn’t for much longer.
‘Good shot, sah. You hit him!’ Red shouted.
Carson’s breath was caught in his lungs. ‘No, I didn’t.’
He had not seen his shot impact, but a lifetime of marksmanship told Carson he had missed.
‘Blessed Marguerite,’ he whispered, tossing the Voorjer rifle to one side and then turning to Red.
‘It’s nearly dark enough now. Let’s get back before Forjaz has kittens.’
I’ve hit him, Gardner thought as he saw the coat collapse in on itself. I’ve done it. The words were all that ran through his mind. His body retained enough sense to push the autocannon back towards the retreating orks and then he felt the familiar large presence beside him.
‘’Nuvver can?’ Frn’k asked and laid the second can down beside the first.
‘Reload,’ Gardner said, and realised his voice was breaking because his mouth was so dry. He licked his lips. ‘Reload!’ he said louder, and he reached to release the empty can while Frn’k held the new one in place.
Gardner let his hands work automatically. He had never thought about what he would do afterwards. Some vestigial belief-form had led him to expect that the Emperor’s retribution for assaulting one of his servants would be instant. That the clouds would roll back and he would be scourged from the earth as a traitor. Had anyone even noticed?
The colonel certainly had, Gardner saw as he triggered the autocannon at the orks once more. His Salamander was returning, Arbulaster standing on the tailboard, but before he arrived the fallen coat was surrounded by horses. Ledbetter’s cavalry. Gardner watched as the colonel disembarked and marched up to them. Ledbetter trotted out to meet him and a furious argument erupted between them. Meanwhile, his cavalrymen were carefully lifting Reeve’s form up, ready to lay it out over one of their saddles. Ledbetter turned his horse from the colonel and, at an order, the cavalry trotted away, leaving Arbulaster alone and infuriated even as all around him his forces won his final victory.
Chapter Eighteen
Objective Bitterleaf, Tswaing, Voor pacification Stage 1 Day 18
Colonel Arbulaster stood on the Salamander’s hull and looked out from the top of Bitterleaf. It was fully dark now, but the crater was theirs. The last spoil-fort had been captured and his men were dragging the ork bodies into piles to burn.
It was another victory, it was to be his last victory. He should have been proud, triumphant, perhaps even a little saddened that his time leading the regiment was nearly at an end. That was what the men expected, and so that was the show he was putting on. In truth, he felt nothing like. His head was s
tuffed, his blood was pounding in his ears, he couldn’t breathe and he could barely see. A single thought echoed in his head: get away. Get away from the battlefield, get out of the crater, get back to Dova.
Reeve had been dealt with, but that damnable pious fool Ledbetter had taken him away. A load of nonsense about having no trust in his command, some rot that he had ordered Drum to fire on Ledbetter’s cavalry so as to stop them charging. The vox records bore him out, of course, but one could never convince the fanatics in the cavalry of anything they did not wish to believe. Ledbetter felt aggrieved, and when he saw Reeve fall, his mind concocted all sorts of conspiracies, so much so that he had removed his men entirely from the Brimlock camp and trusted only his own medicae to treat Reeve.
And that was how Arbulaster had learned that Reeve still lived. He was wounded, of course, perhaps mortally. Arbulaster hoped so, for short of leading a direct assault on Ledbetter’s company and wiping them from the planet, he had no other ideas on how to reach the commissar.
Arbulaster had made sure to cover himself, though. He’d had Lieutenant Mulberry quietly poke around the site where Reeve had fallen. Arbulaster expected Mulberry to come back with nothing so he could safely attribute the incident to ‘general enemy fire’, and indeed Mulberry found it difficult to discern the different weapon impacts given the number of times that piece of ground had been fought over that day.
Working under the lights from his Sentinels, however, Mulberry had made an intriguing discovery: a Voorjer bullet embedded in the slope of Acorn close to where Reeve had been standing. Mulberry looked at the angle and determined it had to have come from inside the settlement. As all of the Voorjers had been on top of Acorn, none of them could have made that shot.
Mulberry mentioned it to the colonel out of tangential interest only. In his opinion, no bullet fired from a Voorjer rifle could have travelled through a man and that far into the bank behind him. He soon found, however, that the colonel was of a different opinion, and soon a portion of Mulberry’s findings were documented, alongside accounts from a variety of different amenable troopers attesting to the fact that they had come under fire from ork marksmen wielding captured Voorjer rifles. Whether Reeve died under Ledbetter’s care or not, Arbulaster would have the final say as to what had happened to him.
Arbulaster felt how close he was, to the end, to the finish line, but he wouldn’t be safe until he was back behind Dova’s walls. Back there, he was protected, in control of everything around him. Out here, every single second he thought he would hear the shot, the explosion, the whistle in the air that would kill him. He could not bear being out here another moment. He wanted to run, but he couldn’t. He had to stand there upon that tank and shine proud over his troops, because that was what was expected.
His hands were shaking, and so he gripped them together as tight as a vice behind his back. He couldn’t stop his eyes blinking and so he tilted his head so they were hidden below the brim of his helmet. He felt his knee begin to twitch; he was going to fall off this damn tank and break his neck if he wasn’t careful, and wouldn’t that be a fine way to go!
‘Did you need something, sir?’ Parker spoke up.
‘Get off with you,’ he shouted back to him. He kept his voice gruff so as to prevent it cracking. ‘Give me a moment’s peace.’
His staff obediently left him to it, no doubt believing that their colonel had been momentarily gripped by some nostalgic emotion. That would have been acceptable; ah the old boy’s got a heart after all, they might say. Let them think that, Arbulaster thought, far better that than the truth.
He turned around, taking immense care not to lose his balance, and clambered down off the back of the tank. His knee gave out midway and he landed heavily in the dirt. There, in the small space between the Salamander’s tracks, he realised he was hidden from view. He collapsed onto his backside and tore open his collar and top-buttons with his shaking hands. He gasped in shallow breaths of the fuel-tainted air, panting like some first-day dispatch runner. He hugged his knees into his chest and buried his face between them while he desperately tried to regain his control.
Don’t let them see me this way, was all Arbulaster could think. Don’t let them see who I really am.
Gradually, his breathing slowed. The worst of it had passed. He pulled himself back to his feet and started to straighten himself up again. It had been less than a minute, but each second had been like an agonising hour fearing that he might be discovered. He brushed off the dirt from his uniform and turned the corner around the tank track and back towards the regiment. Not a moment too soon, as he saw his second stepping carefully across the slope towards him.
‘Brooce!’ Arbulaster called to the major. His second had done well this day, grabbing not only Endive, but leading his troops back to crush the orks’ other pincer, catching them from behind as they threw themselves at the four companies Arbulaster had deployed to protect that flank. He had no hesitation in leaving Brooce in command.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Call one of the Valkyries in. I need to get back to Dova, start the ball rolling on the next phase. And I should get in touch with our men back at the capital. I don’t know where that female’s granddaughter has disappeared to, she might have heard something. If word gets back to that female about what’s next before we’re ready, might get a bit sticky.’
Arbulaster saw the look on his second’s face. He had been talking too quickly; Brooce could tell something was wrong. He needed to cover himself, make as though everything was to plan. He forced himself to give the major a hearty smile. ‘Plus, I’ve got a little surprise for the men when they get back. Just need to do the last prep. Little reward for them.’
‘Oh?’ Brooce said, happily surprised. ‘Good show, sir. I’m sure that’ll do just the job. What’ve you got?’
Arbulaster tapped his nose.
‘Ah, I see,’ Brooce said. ‘I’ll keep the old flap buttoned.’
Arbulaster had nothing, of course, but he would have a few days to concoct some return celebration once he was back in safety behind the walls of Dova.
‘I’ll have Parker take me over the rim and meet the Valkyrie on the other side. Don’t want to take any chances of frizzing another.’
‘Actually, sir, that’s what I was coming to tell you, there’s one already inbound. It’s the Navy crews, they’re requesting permission to form a search party and go after Zdzisław.’
‘Fine, fine,’ Arbulaster brushed it off without thinking. ‘They’ll just have to wait until the Valkyrie has dropped me off to come back.’
‘Very good, sir.’ Brooce saluted and turned on his heel. Arbulaster paused for a moment and then stopped him.
‘Wait, major.’ Brooce halted and turned back. Arbulaster sighed heavily. ‘Zdzisław pranged his bird on the far side of the crater. It’s an hour’s march at least. We can’t have a bunch of bluebells stumbling around out there in the dark. Hold them here for the night. Then send ’em out with one of the light companies in the morning. Keep a picket around that pit tonight and then root out anything left inside tomorrow and get everything sewn up. Day after you head back to Dova. Understood?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Brooce nodded.
‘Good. Oh, and Brooce?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Don’t tell the bluebells the change in plan ’til I’m in the air.’
And with that, Arbulaster felt the fog in his head clear, his chest release, and the air pour into his lungs. He knew he shouldn’t be leaving, but he didn’t care. For twenty years he had stood in the fire, held firm in the face of bullets, bombing raids, berserkers and terror machines. He had seen his men diced into confetti by xenos weapons, or filleted from the inside even as they stood before him, and his only reaction had been to stand up and lead the charge. Twenty years of war in the Emperor’s name. Well, this last one He owed him.
‘To Booth. No better s
ergeant to protect you from your officers,’ Heal toasted.
‘To Booth!’ the other troopers around the fire toasted and drank. It was a muted celebration. Nothing to do with the dead. There were always dead, even with victory. It had everything to do with their camp being on the edge of Bitterleaf and with them having marched across a jungle and fought two battles in a single day with barely an hour’s rest.
For Carson and Red, however, their fatigue would have to wait. Once the casualty list was exhausted they wandered off together.
‘The story’s gone well around the regiment, sah,’ Red reported.
‘And the troopers believe it?’
‘Not about the ork marksmen, no. They all think the Voorjers somehow pulled it off.’
Carson considered it. ‘Are Van Am and her men in any danger? They’ve not stopped with us as they’ve done before. They’re keeping a very low profile wherever they are.’
‘Not from the troopers, sah. They’d give ’em a parade if they could. They’re saying that all Reeve had in his pockets were more of them little skull-trophies, for all the troopers he was planning to shoot on the way back.’
‘What about Gardner?’ Carson asked. ‘Does he know?’
‘He knows of it. Doesn’t believe it though.’
‘I’ve told Forjaz to keep a close eye on him. Closer than he did on Acorn. You do the same, Red. If he looks the least bit twitchy, bring me in to talk to him again.’
‘Right you are, sah. Let’s just hope the tin bellies don’t go digging around themselves.’
Carson looked about the different campfires checking for someone. He should be out, but would he be over here? A slight commotion over on the right told Carson he was.
Imperial Glory Page 21