Imperial Glory

by Richard Williams

  The boss reluctantly obeyed and organised his boyz. At a signal from him, a dozen of them started pulling at the leashes to try and drag the big alien off balance. At the same moment, another dozen jumped at the autocannon to try to drag the weapon from its hands. It was dragged to its knees, but it held on tight. A few boyz grabbed for its arm, but it swatted them away, then took hold of one of the leashes and hauled. The boy on the other end was too stupid or too scared to let go and so was dragged from his feet. The others pulled all the harder and the big alien allowed them to pull him from the other boyz grabbing at the cannon. The boy who had been laid out scrabbled to his feet only to see the big alien running in his direction. It gave a little jump as it went and knee-dropped onto the boy’s chest. There was a sickening crunch as his bones broke as the alien’s full weight burst through his body.

  Choppa called the boyz off and the big alien retreated cradling the autocannon to itself. Choppa was not only impressed by its strength but also its cunning. The fight had also told him what the creature was. It did not fight as a warboss, it fought as a pet. That was what it was. And if it had been the grey aliens’ pet, then it might be his as well.

  It was exactly that possibility that Choppa was ruminating over when the first mortar shells fell onto Dova.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The mortars were not intended to do much damage. Their proper operators lay dead far back along the trail along with most of their ammunition. Many of the remaining shells had been ditched to squash as many men on board as could be carried. The few shots that Carson’s men fired were only designed to get the orks’ attention.

  In this they succeeded.

  Orks poured out of the gates of Dova and onto the plain. There were indeed more than a hundred, in fact nearly five hundred emerged from Dova to do battle. But it was not the distant Griffons that drew their attention. From the jungle to the south emerged an ancient aspect of war that was nevertheless new to these savage tribes. It was cavalry.

  Ledbetter formed the remains of his company up in a single line, helmets and breastplates shining, their weapons still holstered. The orks changed direction and headed towards them. Ledbetter responded and his men pushed their horses to the walk. They were in no hurry. The orks picked up their pace in excitement at the violence to come. None of them had killed foes like these before.

  As soon as the bulk of the ork force was out onto the plain, piling towards the cavalry, the other attack swung into motion. The Griffons burst from their firing points and motored out onto the plain. Their target was the gates, and they were not stopping for anything.

  Private Heal felt a sudden surge of excitement as he crouched on his Griffon’s weapon platform. He wanted to whoop with the thrill of the attack, but he suppressed the urge after seeing the serious faces jammed in around him. He could not help it, though. The horror was gone. The loss was gone. The uncertainty was gone. If these were to be his last few moments before being blown into His light and rejoining Zezé and Repton, then he wanted to live them out as he had wished to live every moment of his life. The joy he had never found in the squalor of his childhood or the back-breaking work resolving breakdowns on the Brimlock machine lines. Damn it, he said to himself, and he whooped. It was a whoop so quiet that no one heard it over the protesting engine, not even himself, but he knew it was there.

  He held on tighter as the Griffons neared the gates. He felt the thumps as they smashed aside the orks who thought to try and stop them. Then he saw the broken gates of Dova flash past. They were inside; they were inside the walls! The Griffon slewed to a stop and someone was yelling at him to disembark. He placed his hands on the Griffon’s tracks, praying they would not suddenly churn again, and vaulted over onto the ground.

  His comrades were jumping down all around him. The orks that had remained inside Dova had a moment’s confusion before following their natural instincts. Heal saw one, brought his lasgun to his shoulder and fired. The ork stumbled, but held itself up. Heal fired again with the same result. He ran a few steps, closed and fired again. He ran closer and closer, firing and firing until finally the ork collapsed, its body scored with las-burns. Heal was not done. He grabbed his gun by the barrel and swung it down like a mallet on the back of the ork’s head. It struck, but the skull still held.

  Someone was shouting at him now to get back to the line. He would obey in a moment, as he had always done, but he gave the dead ork one last hammer blow and was rewarded with the definite crack of its skull.

  That one was for Zezé, he said to himself as he spat on the body. Now for one more.

  Out on the plain, Choppa realised he had been outflanked and turned back to the gates.

  Carson’s men had driven the Griffons just through the gates of Dova before halting. Carson and half his men stayed with the vehicles to defend the gate, while Forjaz, Blanks, and the other half stormed forwards to annihilate any ork left inside. The longer they had before the main bulk of the ork force returned, the better. That was Ledbetter’s job.

  As Choppa turned his orks away, Ledbetter sounded the charge.

  ‘For the Emperor!’ he called. ‘Our faith, our shield and spear!’

  The line started to run, and some of the orks turned back again, anticipating the combat. The horses raced forwards and their riders drew their lances. The explosive tips of their weapons detonated as their charge hit home, blowing ork bodies to pieces. The horsemen then threw the wasted weapons aside, drew their pistols and tried to disengage. Ledbetter, his chainsword whirling, carved a path clear for his survivors, and led them round once again.

  Stanhope, meanwhile, had his own objectives. Whilst Carson and Ledbetter’s only goal was to wipe these ork warbands from the planet, Stanhope had insisted that he be allowed to do everything he could so that some of them might still be saved. First he tried the gates, but the mechanism was fused and useless. The wall-defence guns were the same. How had the orks managed it? Stanhope wondered. To have taken Dova so quickly?

  He then headed over to the Valkyries on the landing pad. The few orks, new-spawns who had been left behind by the warriors, were easily dealt with. As he had feared, though, when he first saw the Valkyries from a distance, their internals had been gutted. Neither was in any condition to fly.

  From the landing pad, he could see out onto the plain, to where Ledbetter’s cavalry were fighting in the midst of the ork horde; their horses jumping and swerving, their breastplates shining with the reflected flashes of their laspistols. They could not win, but they fought on anyway. In that instant, Stanhope remembered his margoes, the fell-cutters of the 1201st attacking up that slope to take the rebels’ fortress. He remembered his second, Sub Pagedar, as he held out his precious sword at the height of the trouble on Cawnpore, as assurance that none of his men would desert to the mutineers. They were dead, just as proud Ledbetter and his cavalry would soon be. Was the Emperor even aware any more, Stanhope wondered, of the gross injustices that good soldiers suffered in His name?

  The only excuse the Imperium had was that the alternative was far worse.

  ‘There’s nothing left for it,’ Stanhope returned to Carson, as his men fortified the defensive line they had formed with the Griffons. ‘We’ve got to take the vox tower.’

  If they could take the vox tower then they would at least be able to send a message to Voorheid to warn of what had happened, and thereafter to Crusade Command notifying them of the failure of the Brimlock 11th. The difficulty was that the vox tower lay at the top of the central bastion.

  ‘Forjaz and his merry band are already in there. Your man as well,’ Carson replied, keeping his eye on the growing defences. He was slumped on the back of a Griffon’s firing platform and leaned against the side. He had his arms folded and his infamous duelling pistols still in their holsters. Had these been any other circumstances, he would have been a picture of nonchalance. ‘And look what they’ve already returned to me.�
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  Carson cupped his hand around his mouth and called out. Two familiar figures came over.

  ‘Blessed Marguerite,’ Stanhope said when he recognised Red and Mouse. ‘They’re alive?’

  ‘Trouble as well,’ Carson pointed to where the ogryn sat with the same glassy expression as before. ‘His body at least. I suspect I know where his mind has gone.’

  Then, as Red and Mouse stepped before him, Stanhope noticed red stripes on them, running from hairline to chin and crossing one eye. ‘What’s happened to your faces?’

  ‘Heathen markings, sah. We’ll be removing them as soon as time permits, sah.’

  ‘So, it’s true what they say, colour. Nothing can kill you.’

  ‘Nothing has yet, sah. And nothing ever will.’

  Mouse chipped in. ‘Nothing can stop a righteous man in the execution of his duty to the Emperor.’

  ‘And that was you, was it Mouse?’ Carson asked.

  ‘No, sir. But I had one looking out for me.’

  Red cleared this throat pointedly and shouldered his gun. ‘On that note, Major Stanhope, as I understand that you’re now the most senior officer of this expedition, I hereby hand over to your custody Private Rit Chaffey, commonly referred to by the vulgar epithet of “Mouse”, and request he be charged with dereliction of duty, desertion in the face of the enemy and multiple counts of attempted theft and unauthorised salvaging. The penalty for each and every individual offence being immediate execution by firing squad. The men are a little busy at present, but I am happy to perform the sentence myself.’

  Mouse started to protest and Red gave him a pointed punch in the kidneys.

  Stanhope paused for a moment, taken aback. ‘Thank you, colour-sergeant. I hereby order that all charges be dropped. You’re a free man, Private Chaffey.’

  ‘I thought I was a Guardsman, sir,’ Mouse scowled, unamused, knowing that Red had been fully prepared to pull the trigger.

  Stanhope turned to Carson. ‘How long can you hold the line?’

  It was a damned silly question; Stanhope knew as soon as he said it that Carson would hold it as long as he could. ‘As long as it takes.’

  ‘Thirty minutes, you think?’ Stanhope asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t believe you’ll take that long, major.’

  ‘Understood,’ Stanhope said and very nearly left it at that, but Red spoke up.

  ‘You’re taking the vox tower, sah?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Red removed the heavy sash from over his shoulder and handed it to Stanhope. Stanhope took it, confused.

  ‘The colours, sir,’ Red said. ‘Run ’em up the tower. Get ’em flying again.’

  But Stanhope had a better idea. ‘You’re the colour-sergeant, Red. Come with us and raise them yourself.’

  Red shook his head. ‘Begging your pardon, sah. ’Fraid not, sah.’

  ‘Red?’

  The old warhorse looked over at Carson. ‘Another foxhole to keep my officer out of, sah.’

  Red stepped away and headed back to the Griffon-line. The men gave a small cheer, half-ironic, half-heartfelt when he took his place amongst them and he bawled them out.

  ‘Chaffey?’ Stanhope asked Mouse. ‘What about you?’

  Mouse watched Red, his persecutor and defender, trot smartly off to the Griffon-line to aid in the increasingly desperate defence. He thought of what they had been through together and found that his decision was far easier than he expected.

  ‘No troubles, major. I’m with you!’ Mouse said.

  ‘Good. Grab your pack, we might need your spares.’ Mouse scurried off and Stanhope turned back to Carson.

  ‘Anything more I can do for you, second lieutenant? Battlefield promotion?’

  ‘Not unless you can promote me to colonel. With all due respect, Stanhope, I’ve had my fill of majors.’

  Stanhope nodded. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Just leave me with my men.’

  The shout went up: the orks were heading back through. Whatever defences were in place had to be enough for these thirty men against five hundred.

  ‘Of course,’ he said and stepped down to the ground. ‘Good luck, lieutenant.’

  ‘Good luck, sir,’ Carson replied.

  Stanhope and Mouse ran to the entrance of the bastion. The orks had broken it open in their attack and, like the gates, never thought to fix it. They headed into the gloom, making for the main stairwell. A chorus of echoing screams greeted them. A group of three of Forjaz’s men, bleeding and bruised, stumbled past; the two walking wounded carrying the third.

  ‘Watch out, major,’ one of them warned. ‘He’s an animal. He’s tearing the orks apart!’

  The injured offered nothing more and stumbled outside. Stanhope and Mouse found themselves stepping over the dead and dying on both sides: orks charred and pierced by las-fire and bayonet, and the Brimlock troopers they had bludgeoned and battered with their crude weapons and heavy fists. Their blood pooled and mixed upon the floor. Some of the illumination still functioned, giving them hope that the vox tower might still have power as well.

  The screams had stopped now, and in their place sounded inhuman bellows and grunts. They reached the bottom of the stairwell and there they found Forjaz’s body, black with blood, ork flesh beneath his fingers and between his teeth where he had torn and bitten at everything he could reach. The orks had won. Mouse readied his gun and Stanhope pulled out his fell-cutter, preparing for the worst. They crept up the first flight of stairs and then they sensed the blood-dripping figure above them.

  Stanhope swung his weapon up.

  ‘The bastion is yours, major,’ Blanks said in reply.

  Mouse gasped behind him. Blanks crouched at the top of the stairway, looking down upon them. His helmet was missing. His armour was ripped, torn away in some places. His face was scorched. He was not covered in blood, he was drenched in it. None of it was his own. He sat there on his haunches, the only weapon in his hands his silver bayonet. He smiled.

  ‘And, major, there’s something you have to see.’

  Blanks led the way, dodging quickly, silently over the bodies of a dozen dead orks, blood draining from their throats, eyes and ears where the bayonet had struck.

  ‘I’m glad he’s on our side,’ Mouse whispered, and Stanhope could not have agreed more.

  The something Blanks had alluded to was at the top of the bastion, up on the shooting deck. Stanhope halted them at the command section for the vox tower beside it. Fortunately, the orks had exhausted their destructive tendencies on the lower levels and so only a little damage had been caused. Stanhope set Mouse to get the vox working and followed Blanks up to the last level and onto the deck.

  ‘I’ll keep an eye on the defences,’ Blanks said. ‘Leave you two alone.’

  ‘What?’ Stanhope said, but Blanks vanished. He looked about the shooting deck in the dimming light. The canvas chairs were still there, some knocked aside by the orks. The giant map of Voor on the wall was untouched. The grand table in the middle of the room showed damage and was stained with blood at its four corners, but there was no one else there.

  ‘Who… is there?’ a weak, indistinct voice emerged from one of the chairs in a dark corner.

  ‘I am Major Stanhope. Who’s that?’

  The voice groaned slightly. ‘Stanhope… why… of all my officers… did it have to be you…’

  ‘Colonel?’ Stanhope exclaimed and strode over. It was Colonel Arbulaster indeed. What was left of him. The orks had not been generous in this regard. His arms and legs hung limply from his torso. Stanhope realised that where once his limbs had been now there were merely bound stumps. The actual limbs were only attached by crude stitches which gaped horribly. His fingers, ears and toes had been separated and then resewn as well. They had blinded one eye and the other was nearly swollen shut with brui
sing.

  ‘It was the one with the bad leg…’ Arbulaster burbled in way of explanation, ‘I think… he was curious… why we don’t heal the way they do.’

  Mouse shouted up, ‘It’s working, major. Transmitting now!’

  ‘The big one… all he did was stand in here… stare at the map…’ Arbulaster continued. ‘You’ll have to keep… an eye on him, Stanhope…’

  Arbulaster’s face suddenly clenched hard and his throat let out a whimper.

  ‘What is it?’ Stanhope asked.

  ‘Lost… the regiment… lost… the colours.’

  Stanhope took off the sash, unrolled it a way to show part of the image of Marguerite, and held it up to Arbulaster’s eye.

  Arbulaster stared, then craned his neck forwards and buried his face in it like a child might with its blanket. His voice was muffled, but Stanhope could make out that he was repeating the same phrase again and again.

  ‘Praise Him… praise Him… praise Him…’

  Arbulaster’s mutterings collapsed into a splutter and he pulled his face free.

  ‘One last thing… Stanhope.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If we should meet each other… in His light… do something for me.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t stop... keep on walking.’

  Stanhope heard Mouse shout again, even more urgent than the last time.

  ‘Major, sir! I’ve got a message coming back.’

  ‘From Voorheid?’

  ‘No, sir. It’s a Valkyrie, and it’s coming in!’

  The missing Valkyrie, returning from a run to Voorheid, had accelerated as soon as it had received Mouse’s transmission. Now it was braking, banking, so as to stop and hover over Dova.

  ‘Mouse, connect it through up here,’ Stanhope ordered, and the rushing noise of a Valkyrie cockpit burst through the shooting deck.

  ‘This is Major Stanhope, acting commander of Dova. Who is that?’