The village boss hefted his weapon and caught Choppa’s eye. Choppa returned the challenge and turned to face him. The other combats around them fizzled out and fell quiet as all of the orks focused on the fight between the two champions. Choppa raised his club and, for the first time, hollered a battle-cry as he flung it straight at the boss. Surprised, the boss swung his weapon and batted the missile to the side with a hefty, satisfied swipe. His opponent’s desperate strike had failed and he had disarmed himself in the process. The fight, he believed, was practically over, but Choppa had not finished.
Even as the club was leaving his hand, Choppa was leaning forwards. As the boss shifted his focus to the club, Choppa started to run. He sprang and barrelled into the boss as he circled the weapon back and smashed them both to the ground. Choppa scrabbled at the boss’s face as he tried to defend himself and hang onto the weapon caught between them. He tried to lever it free, but Choppa held his weight down upon it. The boss howled in agony as Choppa plunged his jagged fingernails in and released his grip to press his hands into his face. Choppa jumped to his feet, gathering the blade and then buried it in the boss’s chest and cut off his screams. Then the screams began again as the victorious new-spawns set about their opponents and the massacre began.
Choppa’s warband killed those who were marked, sparing those few who were not on condition of their fealty to their new boss. The new-spawns ransacked the mounds for items, taking more weapons, food, necklaces of teeth, and anything else that caught their eye. The village and the fungus fields around it were the entire world to Choppa and now he had proved that he was the strongest of them all.
Once they had finished with their looting, Choppa gathered them up and led them back to where they had come from. Knobkerrie appeared before him again, incensed with anger. He tried to drag Choppa back to the village, but Choppa was not interested in returning. He had defeated the enemies who were there and brought back more warriors for his warband. There was nothing in the village for him; he had taken all he desired: the metal weapon that was now his. Knobkerrie threw up his hands and left him. He gathered together the gretchin who had been left masterless and, with them, he himself occupied the mounds.
Despite his earlier inclination, Choppa found himself returning to the village often. He felt a sense of ownership there, it was a prize for which he had fought and won. Those of his warriors who had come from the village, Mugkileen and the few others, had also returned to the village and had begun to order the gretchin about, much to Knobkerrie’s annoyance. Watching Mugkileen, Choppa began to understand the purpose of the mounds. They were warmer at night and when the weather turned cold, and when it rained they were better cover than a mushroom cap. The carcasses of the meat-beasts his warband killed could be better protected there against the predations of the carnivore squigs than out in the open or buried in the ground, too. He also discovered more new-spawns emerging, many of them appearing first around the fringes of the village.
Bit by bit, Choppa and his warband centred their world around the mounds, wordlessly reasserting his authority over Mugkileen and ensuring that all the new-spawns swore fealty to him. Choppa did not forget how Badrukken and many of his first new-spawns had appeared where he had killed his first enemy and so led regular hunting patrols searching not only for meat-beasts but also for more new-spawns to bring back.
Even with the names, Choppa found himself beginning to get confused between those new-spawns who had sworn themselves to him. He recalled the blue mark used by the old boss and decided he could do something similar. He discovered within one of the mounds a squig creature which excreted the blue colouring, but he did not wish to use the same mark, the mark of a loser. Instead, Knobkerrie showed him one that excreted red. Choppa used that to devise his own symbol, a single straight line, a ‘blood stripe’ as it came to be called, down his warriors’ foreheads and one of their cheeks. The only orks that did not wear it after a few days were those few new-spawns who Choppa had yet to get round to making declare him boss, and Choppa himself. He needed no mark to tell him who he was.
Chapter Nineteen
Impact Crater, Tswaing, Voor pacification Stage 1 Day 18
Two hours after the Battle of Highpoint concluded deep night had descended. In the air Colonel Arbulaster was aboard his Valkyrie with the lights of Dova in sight. In the crater Major Brooce was showing the frustrated Navy pilots to a fire where they would have to wait until morning. And out in the dark, an entirely more determined searcher caught his first glimpse of the site where Zdzisław went down.
The low-hanging clouds blocked almost all the light from the moons, but they reflected a little from the pyres back in the crater. No one else would have dared venture out in such darkness, but it was enough for Mouse.
The colonel wasn’t the only one looking towards his future. Mouse was the same. He had slipped away from the regiment as soon as he could, while the men were still dispersed dragging the ork bodies to the pyres. There was always the same confusion after a battle as the dead were counted, the injured tended to, equipment salvaged, and each man gave thanks to have survived the day. For Mouse, however, the battle was merely the preamble; his true work began now. For where others looked upon a battlefield with pride, sadness or disgust, he saw each battlefield as a field of harvested crops, ready to be gathered in.
This one, though, had not been promising. Not a great number of men had died, and they’d had their friends standing by them to recover their valuables. The Brimlock casualties had been concentrated within the crater, which was now under a watchful guard. The ork dead, well, they carried only their weapons and a few bone trinkets good only as novelties. Their bodies were already burning. The victory had been too easy. When the victory was too easy the regiment stayed in good order, casualties were accounted for quickly and Mouse went hungry. The hard-fought battles, where the foe had retreated but the regiments were too exhausted to take control of the field, the fast-moving fights where companies were redeployed as soon as the last enemy fell and small knots of soldiers were caught out of position and overwhelmed, those were the battlefields where Mouse ate.
He was not a thief. He was very clear about that. There had been thieves, to be sure, in the 11th. The ones who were brazen, or stupid, were quickly shot or hanged. Even the ones who were smarter, more careful, still fell foul of their comrades’ unofficial retribution. Some of them survived it, some of them didn’t. Because it didn’t matter how sly you were about it, soldiers always knew. And none of them, even if they were doing it themselves, wanted a thief about.
So Mouse was most definitely not a thief. He knew where the line was and he knew not to cross it. He would endure being called many things, but never thief. He was a scavenger, a reclaimer, a recycler. He took only from the dead, and kept their items amongst the living. He was a vital part of the regimental ecology.
He had learned other rules as well. Never take anything you do not know how to sell. Never try to take anything you can’t carry yourself. And, if it’s an officer who left a wife, you make sure she gets her fair share. He had learnt that last one in a particularly painful manner at the hands of the widow Murdoc and the sharp end of a scalpel blade that she had used to threaten his sensitive area.
That incident had turned out to have its compensations, however. After the next battle, when he returned certain items back to the new widows, whilst some of them ignored him and some of them spat at him, others were painfully grateful to have anything of their husbands back. They came to accept his little service, expect it even. The wives of the living officers protected him, knowing they might have to rely on it themselves one dark day, and with them came the tacit protection of their officer husbands. He realised he had security in his other endeavours and so his business thrived.
These orks had been very poor. Other orks they had fought during the crusade had been more rewarding. Nothing they made themselves, of course, but things they had loote
d. Eldar were the best. Everything they carried was a thing of beauty. Even a pistol carried by one of their lowliest troopers was gilded and patterned to be a work of art. Their armour was encrusted with jewels of the richest colours and deepest purity.
That had been a glorious campaign, for Mouse at least. The Brimlock casualties had been horrendous; none of the sandy towns of Azzabar were safe. The eldar attacked with the desert wind, haughty, elemental, but as Mouse discovered, mortal. He remembered his excitement when he first got his hands on one of their bodies. A large jewel on the centre of its breastplate would have made Mouse enough on its own to bribe his way out of the Guard for good. But then they were besieged, and the eldar suddenly quit their hit-and-run tactics and cut them off from any support.
It was a stand-off, which the company would ultimately lose. Red, when he discovered Mouse’s jewel stash, had tried to break it by tossing the lot of them out into the desert. Of even greater annoyance to Mouse was that it appeared to have worked. The next morning the jewels were gone and so were the eldar. Red had tried to have him put up against a wall for that one, only Carson had been able to calm him down.
Mouse brought his attention back to the moment and started stalking through the crash-site. He saw Zdzisław’s body, looking as inhuman as ever, and crept over to it. Personal effects, cash, sentimental jewellery, they were all worth something, either to Mouse or Zdzisław’s next of kin.
Mouse leaned over the body, deftly removing a neck-cord, a ring and some kind of spare part, either for the Valkyrie or for Zdzisław himself. A heavy hand landed on his shoulder.
‘Got you, you little rat.’
Mouse nearly jumped out of his skin.
‘Red! Sarge! Colour!’ he gasped. ‘Don’t do that to me.’
‘I’m going to do a lot worse to you, private. This time you’re going to be shot.’
‘What? Why? I just went to have a crap. I must have got lost on me way back. You can’t shoot a man for that?’
‘I can shoot him for desertion, for dereliction and for attempted theft, I can.’
‘Theft? Theft? I was only reaching to check to see if he was still breathing.’
‘Wiggle all you like, Chaffey. You won’t get out this time. The campaign is done. The lieutenant’s got no more use for you any more.’
Mouse switched to a different tack. ‘Then maybe other people might have a use for me about the lieutenant.’
That proved to be a mistake, Mouse realised, as Red smacked him hard on the Valkyrie’s fuselage. ‘I was hoping you were going to say that, you piece of filth. The lieutenant won’t shirk from having to deal with rats like you.’
Then Red stopped talking and released his grip on the front of Mouse’s uniform. Mouse looked up, half-expecting to be kicked down again and, when it didn’t happen, he wondered what had inspired the sudden change of heart.
What had inspired it was the ork warband standing all around them.
‘I understand you’re looking for me, lieutenant,’ Van Am said, meeting him in the darkness.
Carson paused a moment as he saw the coolness in her eyes. ‘Holder,’ he replied.
There was silence between them, until Carson finally ventured: ‘There are rumours going around the regiment regarding the injury to Commissar Reeve.’
‘We’ve heard them. A Voorjer bullet from a Voorjer gun. It is natural to assume a Voorjer would be shooting.’
‘I know it’s not true.’
‘I think, lieutenant, you can trust us to know the truth of which Imperial officers we have shot and when. We have reason, in short, to make a habit of it.’
‘Don’t be such a fool, girl,’ Carson chided her.
‘And yet the next time we meet you will be trying to kill me and I will be trying to kill you.’ Carson began to reply, but Van Am cut him off. ‘Don’t deny it, don’t even try.’
‘You don’t have to fight us.’
‘Yes, we do.’
‘The garrison is–’
‘The garrison doesn’t concern me any more. It’s the ones who’ll come now you’re here: the missionaries and the witch-finders, then the administrators and the quotas, then the arbitrators and the laws. Your laws. Your society. Not ours.’
‘That doesn’t have to be, but if you resist, we won’t have a choice.’
‘You’ll never have the choice. You’re an owned man, lieutenant. You all are. The Guard purchased you with food and protection and a uniform and a gun. You don’t have any choices.’
‘Then that is just the price you pay.’
‘For you to defend us?’
‘No, for living. On this world, in this system, in this galaxy, in this time. The Imperium is the price you pay to live as a human.’
‘No one lives in the Imperium, lieutenant. They only exist.’
There was silence between them. She knew that whatever might have been would never come to pass, but she was willing to tease out these last few moments of his company.
‘You’re leaving tonight, aren’t you?’ Carson guessed.
‘I’ll do you a favour, lieutenant,’ Van Am replied. ‘I won’t tell you. Then all you have to do is walk away, and you won’t have to choose whether to betray me to your superiors, or betray them for me.’
By the next morning it was noted that Van Am and her Voorjers had disappeared from camp. The pickets had been lax, distracted by the celebrations behind them, and the Voorjers had slipped away into the night. They could not be spotted on the trail back to Dova and so it was assumed that they had headed through the jungle towards the coast. Carson understood why they had gone, but it wouldn’t matter. It would take them a week at least to get to the sea. By then, Voorheid would be in the Guard’s hands. She was going to fight, Carson knew, but she wasn’t going to win.
What regret he felt, however, was instantly forgotten when Forjaz brought him the news that two of his men were missing.
It did not take Carson long to guess where Mouse and Red had gone. Whilst it was not unknown for two soldiers to disappear on some joint enterprise, he could imagine no unlikelier bedfellows than the two of them. Red must have gone after Mouse, and there was only one place in the area that would have appealed to the light-fingered scavenger. Carson applied instantly to Major Brooce for permission to lead a search party out to the Valkyrie’s crash-site, but when he arrived he found he was already half an hour too late.
‘I’m sorry, lieutenant,’ Brooce told him, ‘but I need your men here to scour whatever taint of the orks remain down in that pit. The Navymen left at first light to go and recover their dead, though; we will inform them of the circumstances and ask them to keep their eyes peeled.’
‘Major,’ Carson exclaimed, ‘Those bluebells couldn’t spot a trail any more than you or I could navigate a battleship. Roussell can burn out the orks, let my men and I–’
‘Major Roussell,’ Brooce interrupted, ‘already volunteered to provide the escort for the expedition. Personally.’
The realisation seized Carson instantly. ‘So Roussell and his lap-dogs,’ Carson’s voice rose in frustration, ‘baby-sit the bluebells while my company has to risk their skins again!’
Carson’s anger was attracting the attention of Brooce’s own troopers standing nearby. He gave them a quick glance to show them that he was still in control of the situation and, as he did so, caught sight of another officer striding up towards him.
‘Major,’ Stanhope launched in at once, ‘I’m afraid I have to report that two of my men are missing.’
Before Brooce even had a chance to open his mouth, Carson turned upon the newcomer with fury.
‘They’re not your men, Stanhope, they’re mine! My company! My men! So do me a good service and butt out!’
‘Lieutenant!’ Brooce warned sharply. Stanhope, surprised by the outburst, had retreated a step in the face of Carson’s glare.
‘Lieutenant Carson!’ Brooce said again and Carson turned back to him. ‘Yours is not the only other company risking its skin today, we will all be going down there to clear the place out. Major Roussell–’
‘Is a damned coward,’ Carson said, but Brooce maintained his tone.
‘–has the rank and the seniority. And his own expedition is by no means without peril. We will communicate the circumstances to him and he will investigate as far as he is able.’
Carson drew breath to reply, but now it was his turn to be cut off.
‘Stand down, lieutenant,’ Stanhope ordered and before Carson could object continued on to Brooce. ‘Major, I agree with you completely. With your permission, I will take responsibility to communicate the circumstances to Major Roussell and the naval expedition.’
Brooce raised his eyebrow at the request. ‘That’s hardly necessary, major, we have vox-officers here.’
‘Major, these are my men, I must insist.’
Brooce shook his head, but he replied. ‘Very well, you have my permission.’
‘Thank you, major.’ Stanhope then turned to Carson, and Brooce himself felt a chill from the cold look in the lieutenant’s eyes. ‘Lieutenant Carson, I hereby order you to proceed to the naval expedition headed for the Valkyrie’s crash-site and communicate our circumstances to Major Roussell in person, and then assist in searching for the missing men as appropriate. Do you understand?’
Carson did, but he did not believe it. He could only stare at Stanhope.
‘Major Stanhope,’ Brooce spoke up, ‘simply arrange for the message to be transmitted to Major Roussell. It is entirely unnecessary to send the lieutenant out in person.’
‘However, major,’ Stanhope countered, ‘such a communication might be intercepted by the enemy. If Mouse and Red are still alive and undetected, informing the enemy of their existence and their approximate location might put them at far greater risk.’
Imperial Glory Page 24