‘Intercepted by the enemy?’ Brooce said, incredulous. ‘The only communication devices these savages use are the two rocks they bang together!’
‘Nevertheless, I think you will find that it is a generally acceptable concern and, given that this is now my responsibility, I am justified in my orders.’
Brooce exhaled sharply in irritation but complied. ‘Very well, major. It is your responsibility.’
Brooce, having exhausted his patience and the time he could spare concerning a mere two men that morning, said nothing more and moved off to deal with one of the other dozen urgent issues requiring his attention. As he went, Carson stepped over to Stanhope and eyed him up and down. The major appeared quite different this morning. He still wore the same unexceptional uniform of an ordinary trooper and, like all the rest of them, had two days’ stubble on his face, but he appeared sharper, he stood straight, he was in focus.
‘I’m obliged to you,’ Carson told him simply.
Stanhope nodded a fraction. ‘Go and find your men.’
Carson gathered up Forjaz, who had remained standing beside his tent. He needed someone to watch his back out there and Forjaz was probably the closest to Red in the company, besides Carson himself. Five minutes after that, he’d requisitioned a Chimera transport and a driver from one of Captain Deverril’s armoured fist squads. Neither Stanhope nor Brooce had authorised it, but Deverril had given him what he wanted almost before he could tell him why.
The driver began his prayer to the Chimera’s machine-spirit, but then caught the look on Carson’s face and condensed the remaining twenty benedictory verses into a single command, slammed the ignition control and brought the engine roaring to life.
They quickly found the tracks of the naval expedition, heading straight in the direction of the crash-site. Roussell had a half-hour head start, yet Carson directed the driver onto a different route. Carson knew he could not afford to catch up with the expedition directly. Roussell could, and most likely would, just accept the message and order him straight back again. He had to get around them, and ahead. Until Roussell saw him, he was free.
Carson, looking out the Chimera’s open hatch, peered intently past the strange, bulbous landscape of lichen, thorny toadstools and less recognisable types of fungi. At this hour just the day before he had been confronted with this weird xenos world for the first time; now he was already used to it and ignored the vivid colours and strange shapes, searching only for the dull grey of Brimlock uniforms.
Interlude
Cawnpore, 1201st Auxilia – 656.M41 – Year 17 of the Ellinor Crusade
Stanhope sat in the darkness and waited for his men to come and kill him. He sat on his bed and cradled the distress ticker in his arms as he watched the messages appear, one by one, which told him his fellows were dead.
The orders had come through the day before. There was a black-out on all but the most critical communications. All commanding officers were to take personal charge of the signals room in each barrack. The doors were to be barred and no men were to be allowed in there under any circumstances. Command was desperate to contain the unrest, reasoning that news of one regiment’s turn would spur the others to action.
Command was correct, but their orders were far too late. Hacher’s network was perfectly able to transmit their messages wherever they wished. All it did was allow them free rein and seal the officers off away from their men.
The orders were pointless, but Stanhope had to follow them anyway. He had moved his bunk into the signals room so he could spend the night there. He did not bother to bar the door. He was the one Brimlock officer in the regiment; if his men wanted him dead then a single door would not stop them.
He had lain down, but could not sleep. He had kept his uniform on; if they came for him he refused to die in a night-shirt. He had paced back and forth across the small chamber. He tried standing still, but he found himself stamping his foot in agitation. All across the barracks his margoes were talking, arguing, making the decision that would either condemn him or condemn themselves.
He was desperate to go to them. Six times throughout the night, he took a hold of the door to leave and go to his men and hash it out with them. Emperor damn him, he agreed with them! He did not want to move against his own, but those were the orders and orders had to be obeyed!
There could be no latitude, no room for discretion in this matter. If there was then this entire campaign, the entire crusade would fall apart under self-questioning and hesitation. He had his orders and he had given them to his men. He could not go to them now and negotiate them. He had been their commanding officer for seven years; they either trusted him as he trusted his superiors, or his rank was trash. He had to wait.
He had tried to activate the vox, but all the lines were dead. All the other equipment had been deactivated as well. His only companion was the distress ticker.
The ticker served a single function. If a particular code was not entered at certain times each day, it sent a powerful signal to every other ticker and then melted itself down. It was the last resort if every other means of communication had failed. He had never even seen a message appear on it before. Each signal was short, carrying as little information as possible to avoid aiding the enemy. Its only use was if you knew the context.
There was no doubt in Stanhope’s mind as to the context at present. Every message was a regiment that had mutinied. Every message was a signal that the men had killed their commander. The check-time had come and he had entered his code, then he had lifted the ticker from the desk and gone to sit on the bed and wait for the numbers to appear.
Minutes went past and then the ticker started to hammer and the first digits appeared:
203076
That was the 452nd under Colonel Exton. Stanhope didn’t know him. The ticker hammered again:
583139
That was the 731st under Colonel Edmunds. Stanhope had met him once at a formal. Stanhope had met him, his woman and his young children. He prayed silently for them.
557096
That was the 1109th. Another auxilia regiment, but not from Marguerite, from Icena. He swore, he and Major King had taken their commands at the same time. He had known the man for years.
100120
Stanhope could not believe his eyes. That was the 47th under the fearsome Colonel Terrace. Every officer knew him, he had commanded the 47th ever since Brimlock. His men could not have turned against him. It must be a mistake. If his regiment could turn then any of them could.
The numbers kept appearing, but Stanhope could not keep looking. He put the ticker down on the bed and wrapped his blanket around it to try to silence it. He could not pull it off the wall, as it would send its own signal. He put his head in his hands and waited for the hammering of the ticker to be replaced by a hammering at his door.
The alarm on his chronometer sounded. It was reveille. In a few minutes his men were supposed to be lined up outside in the courtyard where he was supposed to read them the orders of the day. The men wouldn’t have to burst in. He had to go to them.
Stanhope clambered to his feet. Aside from his bed, he had brought nothing else from his quarters. He had no toiletries and no new uniform to replace the one he had spent the night in. He rubbed his face to hide the moisture that had appeared on his cheeks and straightened himself as best he could.
The only weapon he had with him was his regular sidearm, a standard issue laspistol. He left it off. It wouldn’t make any difference anyhow. He caught his breath and exhaled and inhaled. Then he opened the door and stepped out.
The light of the dawn hid the courtyard from him. He blinked and shaded his eyes with his hand. His men were already there. They stood in silence, not in their ranks but in a loose arc around his door. They stared at him.
Stanhope fought down the urge to fight for breath. He did not dare say a word. Instead, he stepped forwa
rds and looked for his second-in-command, Sub Pagedar.
A couple of the margoes stood to one side and there he was. He had fought by Stanhope’s side for seven years. They had not been commander and second, Stanhope had never treated their relationship as such. They had been partners and together they had led the regiment to greatness. But now, Stanhope had led them here.
Pagedar stepped forwards. He carried no weapon but the heavy blade by his side. Stanhope kept his head high and forced his eyes to stay open. Even now, Stanhope did not blame him. He was doing what his men willed. They had made their decision, but Stanhope could not stand aside.
Pagedar took a grip on the hilt of his fell-cutter and, with practised ease, drew it smoothly, high into the air.
Chapter Twenty
Impact Crater, Tswaing, Voor pacification Stage 1 Day 19
With Roussell and Carson away on their errands, Brooce commenced with the main objective of the day: the destruction of the rok and the burial of this last remnant of the Waaagh that had interrupted the Ellinor Crusade. Mulberry and his sappers took charge once more, just as they had done so many times before in this expedition. Their squads descended into the vertical pit the orks had dug, in order to ascertain the best detonation locations, both at the bottom of the pit and within the warrens drilled through the rok at the bottom. Mulberry knew that Brooce did not care for economy or style, he just wanted it done in a day. He split his sappers into as many teams as possible and sent them in, while Brooce provided a platoon of Guardsmen for each for protection.
Brooce kept Carson’s company out of the expedition, and so they were given the duty of burning the many ork bodies left in the crater. While his men felt slighted, the other companies looked at them with envy. They dropped down into the earth with flamers, grenades and explosive charges, expecting one final harrowing close-quarter battle.
Their expectations turned out to be incorrect. The orks, when they had retreated, had gone away from the crater and into the fungus. None of them had decided to make a fruitless last stand at the bottom of a hole. When the men of these companies emerged, and while their sappers gathered furiously comparing notes, they shared stories of what they had seen: the entire rok had become one great mausoleum, dead orks, real orks, none of these new-spawn whelps, lay in every chamber. Their exploration of the rok revealed nothing more than what the first Voorjer expedition had seen. Endless caverns of desiccated bodies, fully grown orks carrying guns and grenades, equipped with crude bionics and with hangars full of war machines that had been reduced to scrap in the impact. The original reports to Crusade Command had been wrong. No one had survived the crash. Every single ork that the 11th had faced and killed had grown here in the soil of Voor.
When the sappers were ready again, the platoons followed them back in, making half-hearted complaints about the chill and gloom down there, but in truth relieved not to have to endure the heavy, noxious task. It was after they had descended again that Stanhope approached Blanks.
‘Private Stones?’
‘Yes, major?’
‘Walk with me a while,’ Stanhope offered. Blanks dumped the corpse he had been dragging and went with him.
‘You did well yesterday,’ Stanhope began. ‘Quick, decisive, perfect instincts. It reminded me of how an officer should be.’
‘I’m just newly assigned,’ Blanks replied guardedly, not knowing where Stanhope was heading with this line of conversation.
‘Not just newly assigned. New to everything, isn’t that right? Clean slate. Mind a blank. And yet you fight as though you were born to it. You give orders as though you’re used to having them obeyed. You can size up a tactical situation in an instant. And you haven’t called me or any other officer ‘sir’. You’re a man with a mystery about him.’
Blanks considered it.
‘Then I suppose that makes us even then,’ he replied.
Stanhope looked at him, puzzled.
‘Your private soldier’s uniform?’ Blanks explained. ‘That sword you wear? You like people to know there’s a mystery about you as well.’
Stanhope looked out across the crater. ‘There’s no mystery about me, Blanks. Everybody knows my story. You just have to ask them.’
‘Well, I never did.’
Stanhope paused for a few moments. ‘Were you at Cawnpore, Blanks?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Of course you don’t. Well, I was. I was there for the fighting. I was there for the mutinies. I was there for what came afterwards. This sword,’ Stanhope reached down to the fell-cutter on his hip, ‘I was given this sword there. I was given it by the most honourable man I’ve ever known. He was a margo. You know what a margo is?’
‘The Brimlock auxiliaries from Marguerite.’
‘Hah,’ Stanhope gave a hollow laugh. ‘I believe if I asked every trooper in the regiment, I would receive no politer description than that.’
Blanks shrugged as if to say that others’ opinions were no reflection on his.
‘We “discovered” them on their world,’ Stanhope described. ‘Emperor knows how long ago, perhaps before the Imperium found us even. Once we’d taken it we renamed it after our saint, then we took their men to fight in our wars. And you know the strangest thing? If there was one here, and you asked him how he felt about that, you know what he would say? He would say he was grateful for all we men of Brimlock had done for him. It’s so strange. We hold the fell-cutters in this mixture of fear, awe and contempt as well. And yet all they feel towards us is gratitude.’
Blanks stayed quiet. Stanhope had decided to take him into his confidence and did not need prompting.
‘That was my regiment,’ Stanhope continued. ‘The 1201st. I was a captain in the 33rd when they offered it to me. Not only my majority, but the command of a regiment of my own to boot. My fellows in the 33rd said I was mad. They told me that no one comes back from the auxilia; I’d be stuck there, branded a “margo officer”, I’d never make it back to the line. I didn’t care. I just wanted to command. They’d be my regiment, the 1201st, Stanhope’s Own…’
Again he paused as the memories came back to him. ‘They were mine for seven years and they were the greatest, the most glorious, of my life. We blazed a trail across half a dozen planets. The fell-cutters were known before us, they were legend, but we were the ones that made the legend live again. For the troopers who fought beside us, a fell-cutter was no longer a story, a fable; they were flesh and blood creatures to fear when they opposed you and be thankful for when they were your allies.
‘I wonder if that was the reason why we were sent to Cawnpore. As if one legend might defeat another,’ he continued, his tone darkening. ‘Cawnpore was a mess. It was a fortress world, a whole planet of dug-outs, traps and ambushes. A whole planet designed to bleed an army of men. But Crusade Command, Ellinor himself, decided he wanted it. He wanted it because it was so infamous. If he could take that planet from the Karthadasim, he thought, then a half-dozen of their allied worlds would surrender. They’d see how much punishment his armies could take and yet still emerge victorious. The assault force certainly demonstrated the punishment. They fell short at the victory.
‘A dozen Brimlock regiments went in to reinforce them. Two dozen went in after that to reinforce the first batch of reinforcements. The Brimlock general wanted the prize, wanted so badly to please Ellinor, that he threw every single regiment he could pressure, bargain or bribe from the others into that poisonous place.
‘Eventually, he got his victory, but when we dragged the Kartha defenders into the light we were appalled at how few of them there were. And when the number of casualties it had taken to win was counted, even Ellinor baulked at the cost. Needless to say the Karthadasim’s allies were not overawed. Ellinor cancelled his inspection of the troops there, aborted the campaign decoration that was being designed, sent orders to switch us all to different warzones as quickly as we co
uld be ferried away.
‘The transport shuttles came to evacuate the first regiment due to leave. It was the 67th under Colonel Carmichael. But before Carmichael left, he had one last piece of business. On the final day of the pacification, one of his majors had refused to order his men to charge over a minefield. The pacification was almost over. Everyone knew it. The whole attack would have been irrelevant.
‘Carmichael, though, would not listen. Right or wrong, his orders were to be obeyed. He lined up a firing squad, three men drawn by lot from each of that major’s platoons, the very men he’d saved, and Carmichael gave them the order to fire.
‘The men did nothing. Carmichael told them then that he would have them all shot if they refused to fire and ordered them again. They still refused. And then the major, standing there against the wall, shouted the order himself. And that order, the men obeyed and the major died.
‘Carmichael would not let it rest, however. He had been defied. He ordered a platoon to round up the firing squad and put them under arrest, ready for execution. The first platoon he ordered refused to do it, and so did the next. Every platoon in his regiment refused to arrest the men of the firing squad.
Carmichael found he had run out of men and so he fled to the Brimlock general. He labelled it a mutiny and called in the storm troopers. The storm troopers went in to destroy the 67th, but found their barracks deserted. They’d fled. Some had gone out into Cawnpore, into the defence-systems and tunnels they had learned so well; the rest went to ground in other units, finding sympathetic Guardsmen and even officers. So many regiments were there, so many men had been lost, they found it easy to switch identities and conceal their past.
‘The storm troopers went hunting for those of the 67th who had stayed together, but there weren’t enough of them to cover the ground. The Brimlock general ordered the rest of us to be brought in, our redeployments delayed to squash this hint of rebellion. None of us wanted to find them, though, and so we obediently stumbled around the planet, to all intents deaf, dumb and blind.
Imperial Glory Page 25