Imperial Glory

by Richard Williams

  Guard doctrine, therefore, had only one straightforward instruction in case of capture by the enemy: die quickly. Mouse considered, not for the first time, that a slavish adherence to Guard doctrine was not the right course for him. They had kept him alive for some reason. That must mean they wanted something from him. That meant that he must have something they wanted, and having something they wanted meant that he could bargain. If he could bargain then he could stay alive. It was as simple as that.

  Things were not so simple for the fellow occupant of his cage. Mouse at first thought that Red would not survive. He was bleeding a lot, but then head wounds always did. The thought struck Mouse then, that it might be better if he did die. If the orks had just wanted them for food they would have killed them back at the Valkyrie. They obviously wanted them for a purpose. Whatever it was, Mouse knew that Red would resist; it was just the type of man he was, and he would expect Mouse to do the same. He wouldn’t understand that it was their chance to survive. Mouse could do it. Mouse could make it. He could provide whatever they wanted from him yet hold back enough to ensure they kept him alive. He could do it, but only on his own, and so he willed the blood to pour quicker from the colour-sergeant’s head.

  ‘Just get on and die, old man,’ Mouse whispered.

  There was a commotion around the den. One of the red stripes had come out and fixed its gaze on Mouse. It started over towards him and a half-dozen more red stripes fell in behind it.

  Mouse felt himself freeze. He could only think of fleeing, but there was nowhere to go. He looked down at Red slumped on the cage floor. He grabbed his arm and started shouting in his ear.

  ‘Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!’

  Red began to stir as the red-stripe warriors lifted open the cage door and then yanked on the leashes tied around the Guardsmen’s necks. They pulled Mouse out and then slammed the cage door shut behind him. Making no attempt to lead him, one of the red stripes simply picked him up in the air and started back to the den. He was carried into the dark inside and dropped onto the dirt like a sack. He coughed and spluttered at such treatment, then curled up tight into a ball, protecting himself, fearing an attack at any moment.

  When twenty seconds passed and none came, he carefully stole a glance around him. In the murky light, he saw that he was surrounded by orks. They were watching him silently, a few with a trace of xenos interest, the rest with a bland expression of disinterest. The ork in the centre was the largest. It wore no war-paint whatsoever and carried only an almighty metal cleaver. It prodded Mouse with a heavy jab from the handle of the cleaver and Mouse scrabbled to his feet, yelping in protest.

  A low grumble rose from the circle. Mouse retreated a couple of steps, then sprung around as he sensed the orks behind him. He spun a few more times, trying to keep them all in his line of sight. He felt a solid, slightly spongy, hand carefully take his. He turned and saw that one of the orks was holding his left hand, appearing fascinated by it. Mouse backed away a step, but the ork followed, its step betraying a slight limp. Mouse let it explore his hand and it turned it round and peered at it all the closer. Then it took a grip with its second hand on Mouse’s pinkie finger and, with a swift thrust, yanked it back.

  Mouse screamed in pain and dragged his hand away from the ork’s clutches, cradling it in his arms. Another low grumble reverberated around the circle.

  ‘Listen! Listen!’ Mouse blathered. ‘You don’t have to hurt me. Just tell me what you want! Maybe, maybe, we can work something out?’

  The orks watched him as he spoke, but as soon as he finished they all turned back to the largest of their number. The red stripe who had carried him in there stepped into the circle. It held Mouse’s lasgun above its head. It looked to the big ork and the big ork nodded. The red stripe held out the lasgun and gave it to Mouse, and the other orks started watching him again.

  Mouse was confused. This was not how he expected it would go. He held the lasgun limply in his hand. The big ork, who must be the warboss, Mouse realised, said something to him and pointed at the red stripe. Mouse didn’t understand. The warboss repeated itself, stomping its cleaver for emphasis, and pointing at the red stripe even more emphatically. A third grumble started around the circle, but the red stripe suddenly launched itself at Mouse, bawling at him. Mouse instinctively fired and the beam of red light exploded in the small space. The red stripe fell growling to the floor. The other orks in the circle were interested now and all went to reach for the lasgun. Mouse whirled it at them, this way and that. He had a gun, he could get out of there. All he needed was to…

  A thorny hand from behind him wrenched it from his grasp and then started passing it around the others.

  ‘Smak!’ the warboss declared, and the others paused and slowly passed the gun over to him. The red stripe picked itself up off the floor, hand clasped over the las-burn on its side. It dragged itself across to the warboss and then presented its injury. The warboss stared at it, and then stared at the gun. It hooked a finger around the trigger and pulled in careful imitation of Mouse. The red beam flashed and a part of the roof of the den began to smoulder. Again there was a chorus of interest from the others.

  The warboss turned around. Behind him, Mouse saw a banner pole shoved into the ground. On its head was a totem, another sculpted orkish glyph. The warboss raised the lasgun up towards the totem, almost as though it was an offering to the gods. The totem glowed a dull red and Mouse sniffed the distinctive acrid smell of burning tech-equipment. The warboss turned back to the circle, pulled the trigger again and this time nothing happened. It tried it a second, then a third time. Still nothing. It looked around the circle, and this time the orks all made a sound of near agreement. The warboss held up the lasgun and then crumpled it in its single massive hand.

  ‘Waa-Choppa,’ it said. ‘Na Choppa!’ And it let the pieces fall to the ground.

  A Valkyrie flew in Mulberry’s munitions. They were loaded into Chimeras and ferried to the pit. Brooce left the troopers long enough for the sappers to lay their charges and then, after a very careful count to ensure all men were present and correct, Mulberry pushed the detonator. In an instant, the efforts of the Stone Smashas to unearth the falling star that had brought their kind to this place were annulled. Likewise, the interference that had protected that filthy cradle of xenos life was finally silenced.

  It was not over. It could never be over with the orks. The whole continent was infected. It would have to be watched. The Voorjers would not be enough; it would require the veterans of the Brimlock 11th and then, in a few years, it would be the turn of their children, then their grandchildren, and then their great-grandchildren after that. And, eventually, perhaps there would be sufficient manpower to raise a whole new regiment: a regiment of scouts and ork-hunters that could proudly add their strength to the Brimlock auxilia. Whether the Voorjers appreciated it or not, the Imperial Guard was here to stay.

  Should the Voorjers not appreciate it, not welcome the imposition of a permanent armed force on their world that would inevitably evolve into the planet’s new dominant faction, then the Brimlock 11th would have to assert their rightful position over these separatists at the point of the sword.

  That was the next phase. Arbulaster knew it. Brooce knew it. Carson had guessed it, and so had Van Am. The generous Imperium had finally granted their loyal Brimlock soldiers their prize; they just had to take it first.

  The Brimlock column broke camp an hour after dawn the next day. The most seriously wounded, aside from Commissar Reeve who had remained the guest of the betrayed Captain Ledbetter, had been airlifted by Valkyrie back to Dova. The stable wounded were given berths in Chimeras co-opted from their regular duty to act as ambulances. They headed out first, along with the pitiful remnants of the armoured company, while Mulberry and his sappers strode ahead of them in their construction Sentinels to ensure the trail was clear.

  One Chimera that did not find itself t
ransporting the wounded contained only a single passenger, with three guards. Major Roussell was rigid in his implementation of Guard doctrine regarding the captivity of Second Lieutenant Carson. Roussell did not want him marching with his former company, he did not want his men to even see him, and so he locked him away in a Chimera which drove alongside Roussell’s own company in the centre of the column. Carson’s company were banished to the far rearguard where, Roussell considered, with some luck they might never even make it back.

  Most of the Brimlock 11th, however, cared nothing for the enmity between Roussell and Carson. They were finally at liberty to think of the future. They had survived where so many million men had not. They had paid their service to the Emperor and now they could live for all those they had lost. The jungle, which had first appeared to them as a nightmare of gloom and danger, would now be remembered as the setting for a great victory, and when Private Heal began to hum, he found he could do so uninterrupted, for there was no colour-sergeant there to quiet him. For almost all of them, Voor would become a home for them and the families they would raise, and they would have years of comfort and plenty to offset the two decades of hardship and horror that they had endured.

  If there was any justice in the galaxy.

  Lance-Corporal Bowler sat in the turret gunner’s position inside his Chimera and watched the jungle go past. He did not think much about the future. He knew it would contain pretty much the same as the past. He was a Brimlock Dragoon through and through; he didn’t want out, he wanted to stay in. He was in a lot better position than some of the poor souls they were carrying. Two arms, two legs and one protruding organ was what Bowler had managed to keep hold of all these years. It didn’t matter how old or decrepit he got, he figured, so long as he could still sit in this chair, point the multi-laser and pull the trigger.

  The Guard had given him a lot. ‘Starve, steal or soldier’ the poster outside the rookeries had said. Well, he had tried the first two and found that the last option had let him live far better and far longer than running with the rook-gangs.

  He knew the driver, Baker, sitting beside him, felt the same way. They’d done well by each other, and planned to stick to it even after this. Bowler and Baker, there had been a few jokes about that when they were first assigned together back in the 371st. It didn’t help, either, that their commanding officer was Brooce. A few fists had to be thrown before the other crews realised that there really was no humour to be made from the coincidence.

  The 371st, now there had been a proper Brimlock regiment, before they were consolidated at least. Every company had its Chimeras, the whole regiment was an armoured fist, fast, hard-hitting, none of these pathetic foot-sloggers slowing everyone down. They were called the Brimlock Dragoons after all, not the Brimlock Draggers–

  ‘Fire!’ Baker shouted suddenly. Acting on instinct, Bowler’s trigger finger twitched, before he held it back.

  ‘What?’ he wanted to know, but Baker was busy grabbing the vox.

  ‘Chimera one-zero to Chimera zero-five. Tabor, you’re on fire!’

  Bowler twisted to see. It was true, there was the unmistakeable red glow of flames coming from the underside of the Chimera ahead. The driver tried to swerve off the trail, but ran out of room before he could fully make it off. Baker swerved the other way, voxing the rest of the transports to hold position and calling Mulberry’s Sentinels back.

  Bowler pulled out the extinguisher, cracked the hatch and shimmied out onto the dirt. He ran over to blast the flames before they could reach the fuel tanks while Baker went to open the back hatch and evacuate the wounded. Bowler gave the fire a full burst; it dimmed for a few moments and then grew wilder. He hammered on the side of the driver’s cabin.

  ‘Tabor, get your arse out here!’

  Tabor appeared, eyes wide, at the window.

  ‘Fire,’ he said.

  ‘I know that,’ Bowler ranted. ‘Get out and help!’

  ‘You’re on fire,’ he said.

  ‘No, you’re on fire,’ Bowler replied.

  ‘No…’ Tabor repeated. ‘You’re… on fire!’

  Bowler felt the heat on his forehead, went to touch his helmet and burned his hand on his targeter. He dropped the extinguisher, yanked off his smouldering helmet, turned around, and threw it to the ground. He swore violently, looked up, and saw a burst of flame coming from under his Chimera.

  ‘God-Emperor,’ he whispered. Tabor was trying to fight his fire, but it was useless.

  ‘The wounded!’ Bowler shouted at him as he grabbed the extinguisher he’d discarded. ‘Get the wounded out!’

  Bowler ran back to the rear hatch of his own Chimera. He pulled it open and got a face-full of smoke. The wounded pushed past him, dragging each other out of the burning vehicle. He looked back down the column for help, but the first half-dozen Chimeras were in the same way, their crews desperately trying to battle the flames.

  He looked ahead and saw something that would haunt him for the remaining few moments of his life: a Sentinel, still tottering back to respond to the distress call, burning in a column of fire with Mulberry’s blackened corpse still stock upright at the controls.

  In the jungle, Choppa lowered his totem and the red light that glowed from it faded. Its job done, Choppa raised his cleaver and roared the charge.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ambush site, Jungle Trail, Tswaing, Voor pacification Stage 1 Day 20

  The news came through garbled over the vox-receiver. Major Roussell’s comms officer tried to make sense of it, but Roussell grabbed the receiver off him and listened himself. The column was under attack. The Chimeras at the head had been halted and immobilised in some manner; the jerry-rigged tanks were being attacked by blue-faced orks shoving explosive spores and nests of hornet-like creatures into hatches and through vision slits. A substantial number of orks with black war-paint around their eyes had appeared and were attacking Brooce’s company. Orders were for all companies to advance and engage as fast as they could.

  Roussell passed the orders on to his men and saw them all grip their weapons a little tighter. It had been too early to think of the future after all. The orks of Tswaing had one last trick up their sleeves, it seemed. Ahead of them, Roussell saw Ingoldsby’s company advance to the quick. Then it was Colquhoun’s turn, but before any of his men took another step Colquhoun ordered his company to halt. No sooner had he done so, than Fergus, behind him, did likewise.

  Unwilling to push his troops past, Roussell went ahead himself. He strode quickly along the length of Fergus’s company and discovered the two captains there.

  ‘What, in Marguerite’s name, is the hold-up?’ Roussell demanded. ‘The column’s under attack!’

  ‘Quiet!’ Fergus shot back. Neither of them looked round at him; they both had their heads lowered as though listening to the earth. They were a mismatched pair: the black giant and his scarlet dwarf was how their men referred to them as they were often seen together. Only ever out of earshot, though; Colquhoun habitually carried an antiquated heavy halberd with which he ostentatiously cut his enemies into pieces, while the diminutive, red-haired Fergus became a raving berserker in battle, capable of any act of savagery. The terror they inspired, in their own men as much as the enemy, was a secret delight to them both, and each one constantly sought to outperform the other.

  It was perhaps this that influenced Roussell not to continue to rant at the two captains from a distance, but to cross over to discover what had caught their attention.

  ‘Yer think so?’ Fergus asked his fellow captain quietly.

  ‘For certain,’ Colquhoun replied.

  ‘What?’ Roussell demanded.

  The two captains broke their quiet conversation. Both rose and started shouting orders to their men.

  ‘Sergeants! Get the men in line!’

  ‘Weapons ready!’

  ‘Bayonets! Bayonets! F
ix bayonets!’

  The sergeants picked up the call and the two companies, driven by the urgency in their captains’ voices, snapped to obey. Roussell felt a moment of panic.

  ‘Firm up yer men, major,’ Fergus told him. ‘They’re coming from the south.’

  For a split-second Roussell wanted to demand the proper respect from this captain who thought to give him orders, but then he heard the noise, the rumbling from the depths of the jungle, which turned his blood cold.

  He hastened back to his men. The urgency of the preparations being taken by the men ahead had unnerved them, but Roussell had previously impressed upon them his disfavour for anticipation of his orders and so they stayed motionless. Roussell cursed them for the caution that he had formerly required from them.

  ‘Get in line!’ he bawled at them. ‘Ready weapons! Fix bayonets!’ His men scrambled gratefully to obey.

  Behind his company, he saw Gomery’s men quickly follow suit and, behind them, Rosa’s Griffons halt in confusion. The chain reaction flowed down the length of the Brimlock column as each man swiftly took the lasgun from his shoulder, slammed his bayonet into its socket and turned to his right to put himself in line. There was no fumbling for magazines as no veteran carried his gun unloaded, but a score of men cursed dumping their heavier weapons on transports so as to save themselves the labour of man-handling them back to Dova.

  It would be a matter of just a few minutes for every man to be ready and in position to create a wall of fire and steel facing towards the jungle to the south. It was a few minutes that the Brimlocks did not have.

  The distant rumble had grown louder, closer. It grew into a continuous rolling thunder that shook the vines and the leaves. The sergeants were already cautioning men to hold. Whatever its cause, it sounded to each as though it might be their doom. It wasn’t fair, they thought, it wasn’t just. They had survived their final battle; that was it, they were done. They couldn’t die here, on the way home. The Emperor surely wouldn’t allow it.