‘But then the rumour went around that the 67th had established some kind of free-port where the Imperium had no authority and any Guardsman who came to them would be free of his duty to the Emperor. Men started disappearing from the regiments. More rumours went around that the 67th had discovered a Karthadasim treasure trove, the wealth of an empire that all the defences of Cawnpore had been designed to protect. It was a lie, but it was what so many Guardsmen wanted to hear. We heard the name of the ringleader. Hacher, his name was, though that itself was another fake. There was no Hacher in the 67th or any other any regiment on Cawnpore.’
‘It’s a verb,’ Blanks suddenly spoke up. ‘It’s from a Karthadasim word.’
‘What does it mean?’ Stanhope asked.
‘To chop, to cut to pieces.’
Stanhope nodded and then continued. ‘He was the coordinator of the 67th, obviously, a pseudonym to protect whomever was leading them. But the name became more than just a cover. Hacher became a ghost. A spectre. Whenever men went missing, Hacher had taken them. Whenever Chimeras broke down, Hacher had sabotaged them. He was a spirit, a joke, a traitor, a hero all at once.
‘The inevitable happened. One of the 67th turned and exposed much of their network, including the location of their free-port. We were finally going to turn our guns on our own. We were marched to our preparation positions and then readied ourselves for the worst. Hacher knew we were there. Whatever he could do to stop us, he’d do it that night, everything he could destroy, every man he could take, every regiment he could turn.
‘The next morning I came out for inspection. That was when you found out how badly you were hit, how many men had slipped away during the night. Some of the other regiments hadn’t reported in at all. The men had mutinied, killed their officers and gone to join Hacher and his cause.
‘My men didn’t even waver. They came out. All of them. Every man. Even the injured, even the bed-ridden came out, leaning on their comrades, some of them were even carried. But they wanted to be there. They wanted to be counted. They wanted me to know they were loyal. I was so proud of them that day. The most senior margo amongst them, Sub Pagedar, he had known I had stayed awake that night and told me that he was full of shame that I ever doubted them. He stood at their head and he drew his sword and he handed it to me. He took an oath then that the sword would be mine until he and his men had proved that they would never side against me as long as the Emperor and Saint Marguerite gave them breath.
‘We went out to battle. I had just received our orders. Because of Hacher’s infiltrators, every piece of information regarding the battle-plan was kept separate. None of us had any idea what the regiments around us were doing, where they would be. We only had to pray that the general in command knew what he was doing.
‘I sent my regiment in at the preordained time. The orders specified that I myself should hold back and keep passing reports to the general’s staff. My men were to attack without relenting. I knew we would be one of the first in; it was so early in the day. I thought they needed me to stay back so I could spot weaknesses in the enemy positions, that they needed my men to make the crack for other regiments to move up and exploit. It turned out that all the general needed from my men was for them to die.
‘Every defender knew we were the fell-cutters, every defender knew to fear us. Every gun they had was turned on us. My fell-cutters surged into the killing-ground because I told them that the other regiments would be advancing after. But there were no regiments behind us. It was when I saw the storm troopers burn in from high altitude that I realised what our role was. We were the diversion. I tried to order my men back, tried to get them away, but they kept on advancing. They were fell-cutters, no hesitation, no retreat. That was what had made them such a good decoy.
‘I was still stood there, rooted to the spot, when the extraction team came and got me.’
Stanhope went quiet and Blanks ventured a question.
‘And why had the general kept you back?’
Stanhope looked up into the clouds. ‘I asked him that, when he voxed around all the regimental officers to give his congratulations. He told me he hadn’t thought about it much, that maybe it was because he didn’t think that a Brimlock officer should die amongst a pack of margoes.’
‘And Hacher?’
‘The storm troopers got him. That’s what the general said. The whole place was kept closed off after the fight, so who knows? A person named Hacher had made himself the figurehead of the mutiny, and therefore he had to be killed. But who knows if he ever really existed? Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Maybe there was a dozen of them all using a single name to try and create a new legend. Perhaps that was why the general and Ellinor tried so hard to scratch every last memory of Cawnpore from the crusade.
‘After that, I thought I had been through it all. It had been the worst for me, but for everyone else the real horror came after. Hacher was gone, the free-port was buried, but what about all those other regiments who had refused to attack? Who had been driven to capture or kill their leaders? How many more were guilty and how many more were there to be punished?’
The engine was drowning. The same detritus and spores churned up by the tanks in their charge to the crater, that had choked the infantrymen struggling behind, were now congesting those same engines. Forjaz had tired of swearing at it and was now working alongside the driver, who was up to his armpits clearing out the fungus while Carson kept watch.
There was nothing he could do. Short of abandoning the Chimera entirely and ordering them to proceed on foot, which would slow them even further and rob them of the transport’s defences, there was nothing he could do. Nothing but stand there and watch and listen as the others worked around him.
Was this what it was going to be like, he wondered, when the myecyclone finally took hold and didn’t let go? Just to watch? Just to listen? Just to receive and never to act? If it was, then it was no life for him. He would end it himself if no enemy could. If Reeve still lived then he could take him along with him. Just reach out to him, hold him close and pull the pin from a grenade in his pocket. If only he could be sure that, being denied their culprit, his avengers wouldn’t extract their due from his men.
They were all that was left to him. Red had said it right, the night before. Twenty years of fighting, but how many more had passed for those back home. The dating of events in a galaxy where every inhabited world was a tiny speck in an ocean of darkness would always be susceptible to local practicalities. What do the workers on one world care that another world has twenty-four hours in a day if they have twenty-six? To them, a day will be when their morning begins and their night ends. Their years turn upon their seasons and their crops, not upon the rotation of a far-distant planet around a far-distant star. The communiqués from Crusade Command were of no benefit as they referenced everything from the year the Ellinor Crusade began. They said twenty years had passed, but what was that back on Brimlock? Was it the same? Five more? Ten more? Fifty? A hundred?
Crusade Command would never tell you, it wasn’t in their interests. They wanted their common men to feel connected, wanted them to feel as though the world they fought for was still the one they had left. Crusade Command would not want them to know how isolated they were, and Carson wagered that the men did not wish to know either. They knew they would never go home, but that did not mean they did not draw strength from knowing that their home and those they left behind were still out there.
They’re all dead, aren’t they. Those were Red’s words. And that meant that his men, indeed this whole regiment, were more than the survivors of an army; they were the survivors of an entire generation. He would not give up a single one of them, and he would damn any who thought to leave them.
The engine spluttered back to life with an oath from Forjaz and an alleluia from the driver. It didn’t matter, though, Carson knew. They were going to be too late.
Stanhope finally concluded his tale and he and Blanks returned to the rest of the men.
‘Why did you tell me that?’ Blanks asked as they walked.
‘Because I wanted you to know. I wanted you to understand why I am the way I am. Yesterday, you followed me up Acorn. You were watching out for me. That’s right, isn’t it?’ Stanhope stopped and regarded him carefully, the hard features, the heavy brow, coupled with the incongruous innocent stare he had.
‘Yes, I was. And I am.’
‘I want to be able to trust you. And the first step in that is you being able to trust me.’
‘Thank you,’ Blanks replied; he did not know what else to say.
‘Good,’ Stanhope said and started walking again, but Blanks stopped him.
‘In that spirit, major, perhaps there is something I should tell you.’
Stanhope turned back to him. The innocence in his gaze was gone.
‘I took them.’
‘What?’
‘That stuff you use. Those leaves. I took them and destroyed them.’
Stanhope gaped slightly. ‘When?’
Blanks shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Then why?’ Stanhope demanded.
Blanks contemplated it for a second. ‘Because I would never allow a soldier under my command to go into battle whilst intoxicated.’
‘I’m not under your command!’ Stanhope declared.
‘You’re certainly not under your own,’ Blanks countered and continued before Stanhope could protest further. ‘I’m watching out for you, major, in every way. You want to trust me, then this is part of it. The rest of them, Carson, the colonel, they want you out of your head so you’ll cause them no trouble. They want you passive. I do not.’
Carson’s Chimera had finally made it to Zdzisław’s crash-site and, Marguerite be praised, Roussell and the naval party were nowhere to be seen. He could only assume that they had been struck by even worse mechanical breakdowns than he had.
Even though Zdzisław had crashed more than a week previously, the crash-site still had an air of immediacy about it. His and his co-pilot’s bodies were still bound within their harnesses. The ground was still stained where the vehicle’s fluids had poured out. It was only if you looked closely that you could see the rugged algae trying to forge new life on the detritus closest to the ground.
Carson did examine it carefully and he found what he was looking for. The impression of a ring that had been removed, and pockets opened that would normally be closed. The body had been looted by an expert and, as Carson believed that an ork after the ring would have more likely yanked off the entire finger or even arm, the looter had been a human.
Now he knew Mouse had been here, he could guess that Red had been there as well. He looked through the ground. There were ork footprints everywhere. The tracks crossed and criss-crossed and were blurred and smudged where a struggle had taken place. Then they had headed off. Carson looked in that direction and was ready to return to his Chimera when finally Roussell and the naval party hove into view.
A half-hour later the news flashed back to the Brimlock camp on Bitterleaf. Second Lieutenant Carson had been placed under arrest. The charge: the assault and attempted murder of Major Roussell.
Chapter Twenty-One
Impact Crater, Tswaing, Voor pacification Stage 1 Day 19
‘This is an outrage,’ Carson stated again as he sat in the sealed-off rear compartment of a Chimera.
‘I have made a note of your feelings on the subject already, lieutenant,’ Brooce said a trifle wearily.
‘Then let me out of here so that I may return to my men,’ Carson said in a stern tone that attracted a look of pique from Brooce.
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Yes, you can,’ Carson shot back with even greater irritation. ‘You have the authority.’
‘Yes, you’re right’ Brooce agreed, testily. ‘I could release you; however, I choose not to do so. And do you know why I’m choosing not to do so?’
Carson knew exactly why. ‘It’s because, even though you know he’s a coward and a liar, you won’t tell Roussell that you think his charges are a pile of stinking–’
‘You’re wrong, lieutenant,’ Brooce cut him off. ‘It’s because of your reputation.’
‘My reputation? As what? A damn good officer? One of the best in this whole regiment?’
‘It is your reputation as a killer.’ Brooce snapped. ‘A killer of your fellow officers. How many has it been?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘All your duelling “partners”?’
‘They were private matters of honour, and how are you, Roussell or the colonel in any position to judge me on those?’
‘Captain Blundell?’
‘He was killed by the enemy,’ Carson asserted.
‘An alarming majority of the commanders you dislike succumb to uncommonly accurate enemy fire. Much as Reeve did yesterday.’
‘How is the poor commissar?’ Carson asked with mock concern.
‘If I were you, lieutenant, I would not show too much interest in Commissar Reeve’s well-being. It may be misconstrued. Sometimes I wonder if that was why the colonel gave you Stanhope in the first place. What spared him?’
Carson did not reply.
‘Let me lay it out for you, Carson. Tell me what you think. This man, this officer of such reputation, who is also known to own a fierce loyalty to his men, is hot on the pursuit of two he has lost. He’s then told by a senior officer he despises that he may not continue because there is need of his vehicle. Roussell is adamant that, when he gave you that order, you started to pull one of your pistols on him.’
‘I think that if I’d wanted him dead, he wouldn’t have even seen me pull my weapon,’ Carson snarled. ‘He’d be laid out in the fungus with a smoking hole in his chest.’
Brooce shook his head sadly. ‘You don’t understand, Carson. It’s sentiments such as those that has every other officer in this regiment running scared. You know it. You enjoy it. Lording it over them, while you’re still only a second lieutenant. I’ve already hauled Deverril over the coals this morning for letting you go with the Chimera in the first place. They all think you’re out to kill them. Because it’s only if they’re all dead that you’ll ever command more than a paltry company.
‘I can’t release you, Carson,’ Brooce continued, ‘because every officer in this regiment who dislikes you thinks you did it. And even the ones you count as your friends think you could have done it.’
Carson couldn’t bear to look at Brooce any more. ‘So, I’m to be sacrificed on the altar of general suspicion.’
‘Not at all,’ Brooce replied. ‘As soon as we get back to Dova, the colonel will perform his investigation, have a word with Roussell and the charges will be dropped. A misunderstanding. After all, he has need of good officers for the next phase. Especially officers who perhaps have the attention of Voorjers close to their governor. Don’t treat it as an arrest, Carson, rather a comfortable taxi ride home.’
Brooce was not going to budge. Carson could see him making plans for the future, and part of those plans would be to demonstrate that he could control ‘wild’ officers like him. ‘Very well, but I have a price.’
‘This is not a negotiation, lieutenant, but go ahead anyway.’
‘At least send another party out. My men, if you can’t spare any others. Give them the rest of the day to find out what happened.’
Brooce considered his response carefully. ‘Colour-Sergeant Towser is a sad loss, and my wife has spoken very highly of Private Chaffey, but it is out of the question. Every single vehicle is being overhauled to cope with these damn spores so it will be ready to function tomorrow. I’m afraid, lieutenant, there it is. Do you really expect you’d find them alive in any case?’
Mouse looked dow
n out of his cage as the latest ork warband arrived at the encampment. It was the third one to appear that morning alone, and this one was a big one, several hundred strong. Their chieftain, his skin daubed blue with paint, a bone stuck through his nose and his hair tied in a topknot, marched at their head. He was a full head taller than his bodyguards either side, who shoved aside any lesser ork foolish enough to be standing in their chieftain’s path. His warriors further behind him betrayed their discomfort, however, and they kept clustered together, eyeing the other warbands with great distrust.
Mouse had realised that, just a few days before, these warbands would have been at each other’s throats on the battlefield. Today, though, Mouse had counted orks from at least four major tribes: the blue faces, the ones with black war-paint around their eyes, those who draped themselves only in bones and had brought a giant squig-beast with them and, the most numerous, those with a red stripe down across one eye.
Even within these main divisions there were dozens of different warband variations, markings in yellow, black, white, red, blue, green and any other colour they could extract from the strange squig creatures and the fungus that grew wherever they travelled. Like the blue-faces, they did not mix or mingle, but sat in their groups, ready at a moment’s notice to hurl themselves at one of the other warbands. The orkish lust for battle was a powerful drive indeed.
Whatever was holding them back, Mouse concluded, must be even greater.
Nothing was going to restrain the blue-face chieftain, however. He headed straight for the entrenched den at the centre of the encampment. Bodyguards from all the other tribes already stood clustered around it, but they stepped aside as he passed and disappeared inside.
Capture was not a facet of war given much attention in Guard induction. Command knew that the vast majority of opponents viewed captives as good only for enslavement or consumption. The captured Guardsman, if not killed out of hand, most probably faced either torture and sacrifice in the name of dark gods, or being shackled to some xenos engine to endure the most bone-crushing conditions until the last ounce of life was wrung from him.
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