Straken

by Toby Frost

  ‘We’re being transported to another battleground. I’m told that Signis Eight has been successfully pacified.’ The man turned aside to check a row of dials on the wall, then looked back. ‘My name is Locuris, surgeon-superior of the Radix Malorum. You took a bad knock to the head, colonel. One way or another, you’ve been out for almost three days. It’s lucky you’ve got so much metal in your skull already – had that tyranid not hit your cranial plate, you’d be more than just concussed.’

  ‘It wasn’t a tyranid that hit me.’ Memories returned like a fire rekindling. ‘The artillery shelled us. Throne-damned Gordarians…’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t know about that. At any rate, you’re fine. At least, the biological parts of you are.’

  ‘As are the machines.’ A new voice spoke. It was high and mechanical, not the product of vocal cords. Straken turned to look, realising the significance of the red robe he had glimpsed.

  A tech-priest stood on the other side of the pallet, almost entirely hidden by its heavy garment. A metal hand, much like Straken’s own, protruded from one sleeve. The other arm ended in a ropy mass of mechadendrites, blades, drills and micro-manipulators, grafted straight into the flesh. Straken turned his head to see what was under the adept’s hood, and glimpsed wires and metal sutures pushed into pale skin suffused with something that was not quite blood.

  ‘The workmanship is most exquisite,’ the tech-priest said. The high, flat voice was not comfortable to hear. ‘There was some minor disruption to the servos, but all parts have been fully tested. A degree of organic matter was lodged in the gearing, polluting the mechanism.’

  ‘That’ll be tyranid,’ Straken replied.

  The robed head nodded. ‘The purity of function has been restored.’

  ‘Does that mean it works?’ The tech-priest made Straken uneasy. All adepts of the Machine-God had that effect on him. There seemed to him something subtly yet deeply wrong with a person willing to replace his or her own flesh with machinery. He had acquired his own bionics like scars, in the line of duty, each a mark of a different campaign. To have them admired by such a creature made his skin crawl.

  ‘Of course it works. Sublime functionality,’ the tech-priest added. It occurred to Straken that the priest was several centimetres shorter than Locuris. He wondered whether it had started out as a woman, which did not make him feel any less uncomfortable. ‘You are, albeit by chance rather than design, closer to the Machine-God than most men will ever be. You should be thankful for that.’

  ‘Just get my arm working,’ he replied.

  The priest moved behind Straken’s head. He heard the clatter of typing. Suddenly, his field of vision widened as his bionic eye flared into life. He raised his metal arm and slowly flexed the fingers.

  ‘The purity of gears is the purity of motion,’ the tech-priest observed, apparently to itself.

  Locuris had moved back from the pallet. ‘You can sit up,’ he said.

  Straken grimaced and sat up. He felt a thin, high-pitched whine at the back of his head, as much a sensation as a sound, like a whirring drill. Probably something to do with his eye.

  ‘I suppose I ought to tell you that you’re very lucky,’ the surgeon said. ‘Your men brought you back almost dead.’

  ‘They’re good soldiers,’ Straken replied.

  ‘That’s not really what I meant. I meant that medically, you were fortunate not to have sustained greater injuries.’

  Straken got to his feet. He was bare-chested. The long knife, almost sword-length, was still strapped to his left thigh – few people would have tried to take a Catachan’s blade – but the lucky skull was gone from his hip.

  ‘Your personal gear’s in your quarters, colonel,’ the surgeon-superior said.

  He looked down. The dull metal of his implants spread down his side and across his chest like a parasitic plant, as if slowly consuming him. Straken pushed that thought aside, willing the tech-priest to leave. He pulled on a vest and his combat waistcoat. It was unusually light: someone had removed the grenades. Rolled up in the pocket was a simple red bandana, the symbol of the blood oath of his home world.

  It was time to find his men. ‘Thanks,’ he said as he tied the bandana over the metal plate that lay flush with his scalp. Locuris smiled, and the tech-priest made a sort of tiny bow.

  As he left the medical bay, Straken was struck by how quiet everywhere was. Somewhere far below, the hull of the Radix Malorum creaked. He realised that by now everyone from the Signis encounter must be dead, healed or comatose. It had been a long while since he had been in a medical bay and not seen someone in the process of dying from their wounds.

  Growing up on a death world, your home became the place you chose to make it. After years of campaigning, the Radix Malorum’s holds had begun to resemble shanty towns – in fact, Straken reflected, the temporary billets were considerably more sophisticated than many of the settlements he’d helped liberate in the course of his career. The air was old and smoky, full of grease from cook shops, the odour of lho-sticks and even at times the odd forbidden whiff of low-quality obscura, smuggled in from who-knew-where. He’d have to look into that – he couldn’t allow his men to lose their sharpness. Straken walked through the first hold, a hall large enough to generate its own atmosphere, and into a second. The walls were covered in a huge frieze, executed three times life-size, depicting Lord Solar Macharius addressing pristine ranks of troops.

  Compared to the figures in the frieze, the men below seemed unruly and rough. Straken saw converted uniforms, cut-down lasguns in racks, pictures that were anything but pious pinned up against partition walls. Soldiers came to life: men put down their food and stood up to salute him; some smiled. A few bold individuals greeted him by name.

  But there was no celebration of Straken’s awakening – at least, none that he saw. Nobody seemed at all surprised that he had recovered, as if getting back up from a serious head injury were no more unusual for Iron Hand Straken than waking from a good night’s sleep.

  Iron Hand? he thought. They should call me Iron Head.

  At last Straken climbed narrow steps to the officers’ quarters. The first two doors were marked ‘Tanner’ and ‘Lavant’.

  ‘Lavant, eh?’ he mused. The name was familiar, but he couldn’t put a face to it. Still trying to recall the man, he knocked on Tanner’s door and walked in.

  Captain Tanner was bulky even by Catachan standards, with a round face that continually seemed to be about to break into a wry smile. He was jovial outside battle and berserk in it, and followed Straken’s policy of leading from the front. Straken remembered the last time he’d seen Tanner fight: the man had run screaming at a pack of tyranid hunter-slayers, a knife in his fist.

  ‘Good to see you, sir,’ Tanner said.

  ‘It’s good to be back,’ Straken replied. ‘I gather we’re done with Signis.’

  ‘Done and dusted, Emperor be praised. On to the next one.’

  ‘Are we still with the Gordarian armour?’

  ‘No. When they heard we had a new mission, they had to run home and change their breeches.’ Tanner grinned.

  ‘That’s a damned shame. I was hoping to find the idiot who shot up my position. And then beat some sense into him.’ Straken realised that he had started to flex his metal fingers, as if readying them to punch. ‘What’s the new mission?’

  Tanner frowned. ‘Orks. We’re liaising with a bunch of other regiments in orbit of some place called Dulma’lin. General Greiss is heading out to take command. He’ll want to know you’re awake.’

  ‘I’ll check in with him. These other regiments, are any of them Catachan?’

  The captain shook his bald head. ‘Not as far as I know. There’s not been an official briefing, but from what I’ve heard, a lot of it is fancy armoured companies – pretty pictures painted on the sides of their tanks, that kind of stuff. Whatever they could scrape together, from the sounds of it. Command must want the orks off the planet pretty quick. Beyond that, I don�
��t know much.’

  ‘Orks. Hell. I can’t walk a kilometer sometimes without running into the Throne-damned orks. Ah well. The less of ’em there are in the galaxy, the better.’

  ‘My thoughts entirely.’

  Straken nodded. ‘Is Lavant going to be Corris’s replacement?’

  ‘That’s right. The general chose him personally.’ Tanner lowered his voice a little. ‘He’s a little… eccentric, but he’s good.’ He glanced at the door. ‘Demolitions,’ Tanner added, as if that explained everything.

  ‘I’ll see him now. Then I’ll find the general.’ Straken took a step towards the door, then looked back. ‘Is there a commissar on this job?’

  ‘Of course, sir. Man called Morrell.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘More-hell Morrell? He’s about an inch taller than the last one.’

  ‘You know where he’s from?’

  Tanner shrugged. ‘Not from Catachan, that’s for sure.’

  Straken sighed and left the room.

  Lavant answered his knock so quickly Straken wondered if he had been listening in. The new captain was a big man, perhaps a little wirier than usual for a Catachan. He wore his bandana as a necktie, and sported a neat little moustache. It looked ridiculous, Straken thought, and he realised that he had seen Lavant before. He had been a lieutenant back on Signis, crafty and eager. From the looks of it, the higher brass had chosen well.

  Lavant flicked up a quick, sharp salute. ‘Colonel Straken. It’s a pleasure to see you well, sir.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Straken walked into Lavant’s quarters. On a small table, the captain had been cleaning a plasma pistol with a bottle of blessed oil. A scrimshawing needle lay beside it. A small pile of books stood beside the desk.

  ‘How’re you finding being a captain, Lavant?’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘Good. Fight hard, do what I say and trust in the Emperor.’ Straken looked at the table. ‘Is that a plasma pistol you’ve got there?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I requisitioned it a while ago. Munitions were convinced its machine-spirit had deserted it. Personally, I think it just needs a little work.’

  ‘Looks like more than that. You know, I’ve seen plenty of people mess with a weapon and displease it, and then have it blow up on them for their trouble. I’d hate to think one of my own officers was taking a pistol apart without proper authorisation – badly.’

  ‘Sir,’ Lavant replied, ‘when you work with demolitions, you learn to take proper care.’

  ‘Well said. Carry on, then. And Lavant? Do something with that moustache.’

  As a mark of rank, Straken had his own quarters: two tiny rooms at the end of the corridor, full of engine hum as if located in a giant beehive. Guard doctrine stated that he was supposed to have his own servant, but it had been a long time since anyone had tried to supply him with one. After telling one quartermaster that, metal hand or not, he knew how to wash his own backside, they had left him alone.

  His spare clothes hung waiting. In an alcove he found a Munitorum supply box. It contained a data-slate, a box of foul-tasting cigars that had been a gift from a Cadian major-general he’d once helped out, a machete in a grox-skin sheath, and a small vox-phonograph, together with a row of neat little cylinders, each holding one of Guttman’s symphonies. Straken reached into the box, took out the data-slate and activated it at the Libram Devotio. He flicked it to a random page and, silently invoking the Emperor, read the first line he saw. It had been a superstition of Captain Corris, now deceased.

  ‘And they gathered at that place, for to make a host, and took the battle unto the unholy.’

  No doubt about that, Straken thought. A good omen.

  On the thin pillow on the fold-down bed, someone had laid the long skull of a land shark. It was the same one that had bitten off his right arm, the one he had killed back on Miral, when he had been certain that he was about to die. He’d carried it into a dozen battles since then, tied to his belt. The skull was cumbersome, but it brought him luck. At any rate, he hadn’t seen a land shark since. He tied it back in place and, feeling ready, strode out to meet the general.

  2.

  Some generals liked to surround themselves with officials, so that their quarters looked more like a scribarium than a war office. General Greiss had a personal staff of eight: six orderlies, a jittery servitor-scribe, whose circuits seemed to have been permanently set to ‘grim disapproval’, and one bodyguard. He only needed one.

  As Straken entered the room, men saluted and got back to work, monitoring the humming banks of cogitators along the wall. By the far door, an immense figure lumbered to its feet.

  Nork Deddog, ogryn and bodyguard, made Straken look like an infant. He was huge, almost two-and-a-half metres tall, a parody of the tough men around him. Heavy armour plates, rumoured to have been torn off a tank, roughly covered the monster’s shoulders. His face was a battered mess of scars, like a prize-fighter’s fist. The ogryn’s eyes were deep-set and vague, and his heavy brow creased into furrows as he tried to work out if he remembered Straken from before.

  ‘You,’ he said after a while. There was something both childlike and threatening about him. If he wanted to, Nork could just swat a man out of existence, the way the larger orks could do. Even Straken, with his bionics, would have found the ogryn a very difficult opponent.

  ‘Colonel Straken. I’m here to see the general.’

  ‘Uhuh.’ Nork squinted. ‘Yep, I remember you.’ He reached out and prodded the intercom with a finger like a fat pink cigar. ‘General? I got… er… Colonel Sacking here. You want to see him?’ Nork put one flat, ragged ear against the intercom. ‘Yup, gotta show you in.’ He paused again. Straken waited. Nork would get there soon enough.

  ‘In,’ the ogryn said, and he stepped aside from the door with surprising quickness. Straken went through, Nork following him like a tame bear.

  General Greiss had reached that level of seniority where his age no longer mattered. Provided his bionics didn’t give out, and provided he kept up the rejuvenat treatment, he would stay looking eighty for a hundred more years. He was tall and broad, like any Catachan, but time had dried him out, leaving him wiry and gaunt. But as he saw Straken he smiled, and there was a kindness in his face rare in an officer of the Guard. No wonder some of the veterans called him ‘Grandaddy’ Greiss – strictly out of earshot.

  Straken’s metal arm gave the general a crisp salute.

  ‘Come on in,’ Greiss said, waving Straken forwards with one wisp of a hand. ‘Commissar Morrell and I were just debating the finer points of ork intelligence.’

  ‘Unsurprisingly, the provost-major found him guilty of dereliction of duty,’ a voice declared from the far side of the room and Straken got his first good look at the man speaking.

  The faces of a few political officers flicked across Straken’s mind. Von Blacke, who had won the respect of the Catachans. Rammad, whom Straken had despised. Bulowe, who had died in the Urgan Rebellion, bayoneted by forces unknown. The commissars had all looked similar: thin, iron-hard, with long undertaker’s faces. Commissar Morrell was a different shape, but no less intimidating.

  This political officer was a bull of a man, one metre ninety, muscular and thick-necked. His hands were broad and murderous. He looked as if he could pick Greiss up and unscrew his head like the lid of a jar. Straken glanced at Nork, who was watching the commissar very carefully. Clearly Nork had realised the same thing.

  ‘Leave us please, Nork,’ Greiss said.

  ‘Be just outside,’ the ogryn said. ‘Anything you need, you call.’ He squeezed through the doorway.

  ‘I was telling the general about an interesting court martial at which I assisted,’ Morrell continued. His accent, the product of some distant agri-world, made him sound pugnacious and hoarse. ‘A certain Lieutenant Gordo. His men were overcome by orks – taken by surprise, he claimed. I’d never heard such nonsense. Deviousness is about the only vice the orks don’t exhibit. The ork is, ultim
ately, a creature of instinct, intent on satisfying its base and sacrilegious urges.’

  Straken felt sure that he’d seen exactly the same words in the Imperial Infantryman’s Uplifting Primer. Greiss turned to look at him.

  ‘What do you think, colonel?’ the old man asked.

  Straken, used to bellowing commands, had to choose his words carefully. ‘I think the orks are good at what they do.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Killing. Killing and smashing, pretty much.’

  Morrell stood with his hands behind his back and his shiny boots apart, a stance the schola progenium seemed to teach its commissars as standard. ‘Indeed. When we land, we can expect nothing but mindless brutality. Which I gather the Catachans are well-equipped to deal with.’

  Straken said, ‘Well, you don’t expect an ork to paint a picture, that’s for sure, but if you want a wall kicked down, it can do that easily. The way I see it, if you imagine a man, and take out all the parts of his brain that aren’t for fighting, then make him crazy and big – that’s pretty much what an ork is.’

  ‘Orks are animals,’ Morrell said.

  ‘Yes, they are. But smart animals. Sure, every ork wants nothing more than to bite out your throat, but if it has to build a tank to get there, or creep up on you first – it’ll do that too.’

  ‘You seem to have a very good understanding of the ork, ah, psyche,’ the commissar observed. He had small, deep-set eyes. Like a boar, Straken thought.

  ‘I’ve fought them more times than I can remember. But if you ask me, the best way to fight anyone is to be ready for anything. And that’s what my men are.’ Straken looked straight back at Morrell, and for a moment the political officer seemed to understand the challenge in Straken’s glare.

  Morrell nodded and glanced away. ‘I’m glad to hear it. Because once we make planetfall, we will have waves of them to fight.’

  There was a moment’s silence. ‘Commissar, I want to request an investigation,’ Straken said. ‘I want the moron who allowed those tanks to fire on my men severely disciplined.’