Straken

by Toby Frost

  Morrell stood watch on the top of the vox tower, where Marbo had been lurking. He didn’t want to spend time with the rest of the watch detail. He despised them, and he knew that it was mutual. They would be sitting in the control room, monitoring the vox, whiling away the hours with dirty jokes and impious chatter.

  From his earliest days at the Commissariat his instructors had taught him that being loathed by weaklings was the fate of the righteous servants of the Emperor. It was the duty of a commissar to drive the backsliders and the cowards forward, to force them to be strong and to destroy those who would never rise to the challenge.

  The Catachans were different, though. When he had served with the Krommenweld Dragoons, the weaklings had been just that: little men who cried and squealed about their families when the time came to pay back their dues to the Imperium. A good commissar learned to harden himself against their blubbering. The problem with the Catachans was that they weren’t cowards or idlers. They were born killers, tough, ferocious and skilled – they just had no respect.

  He turned and headed inside. As he climbed down, Morrell heard laughter from the control room, and decided to put a stop to it. He opened the door and heard a voice behind say, ‘Leash, boys!’ He walked in, and as he did so the men turned to their posts and an awkward hush fell on the room. Morrell stood there, aware that he technically had the power of life and death over these men, feeling increasingly sure that they were about to shout abuse. As his certainty increased, so did his anger. He’d nail this rabble, one way or another. He’d return from this wretched hole as the man who’d brought the Catachans to heel.

  ‘Report your status,’ he said.

  ‘We’re fine,’ the nearest soldier said. He was clearly the technician of the group.

  Morrell looked around the room, at the wires and data banks. ‘Any vox from Straken?’

  ‘None, commissar,’ said the soldier. Morrell was fairly sure that his name was Parnek, or maybe Loke. A lot of the Catachans looked alike to him. ‘The buildings break a lot of it up. The vox-sets don’t link in with these civilian rigs. Besides, if he’s in any of the temples round here, chances are the walls will block the signal.’

  ‘I see. So in order to contact us, he’ll need to–’

  The speakers yowled. The technician shoved his chair back and tore the headphones off as if they had bitten him. Morrell heard a crazed jumble of sound, a mix of human speech and grunting, boar-like noise. The sound seemed unusually clear, and suddenly he realised that he was hearing it not just through the man’s headphones, but through the walls of the room.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ the Catachan said, staring at the control panel. ‘It sounded like orks, but I don’t know…’

  Morrell reached to his side, for his power sword. ‘It’s orks all right,’ he growled.

  As if in answer, several kilometres to the north, a light corkscrewed into the air. It sailed up, over the vox tower. For a moment Morrell thought it was some kind of flare, and then he saw it burst against the cavern roof in a bloom of red fire. Other rockets went up from the city, as though a giant box of fireworks had caught light.

  ‘Emperor!’ the second Guardsman cried. ‘Look at that!’

  ‘Damn it,’ Morrell said. His voice was hard and tight. ‘Give me that.’ He snatched the vox-comm, held it to his head. ‘Put me through to the nearest support team.’

  A soldier said, ‘There’s one a kilometre south-east. Just linking up…’

  A voice in Morrell’s ear said, ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘This is Commissar Morrell. I am at the vox tower. We have serious ork activity in the north.’

  ‘Right,’ said the voice.

  ‘I need immediate support. Send heavy weapons and Sentinels.’

  ‘Who’s with you, commissar?’

  ‘What does that matter? I’m giving you an order. You,’ he said, jabbing a gloved finger at the technician, ‘stay here. The rest of you, with me. We’re getting Straken.’

  The two soldiers exchanged a glance, then followed him out of the room. Morrell’s boots pounded the stairs as he hurried down. In the distance, but not far enough away, something exploded.

  ‘That mining truck we came in on,’ Morrell said. ‘Either of you two know how to drive it?’

  ‘Yessir,’ Loke replied.

  ‘Good.’

  They hurried down the stairs, boots clattering, Morrell leading the way. ‘I assume the guards are still stationed outside?’

  ‘Yessir,’ said the younger Guardsman. ‘Hist and Deveranx are watching the doors.’

  ‘We’ll take them too. We need all–’

  The building exploded above them. The staircase shook and Morrell lurched into the wall. Great rattling crashes came from above, as though a monster were stamping on the roof. They ran downstairs, Morrell at their head, the building groaning around them. ‘They must’ve got the comms,’ one of the men panted. ‘The place’s coming apart!’

  They reached the ground floor. Morrell kicked the door open and strode out. Wreckage lay in the street. Two Guardsmen crouched beside the big mining truck, using it for cover. ‘Orks’ve shot the roof off!’ one yelled, and looking back Morrell saw that the entire comms room had been obliterated. Smoke poured from the windows. Nothing could have survived that. Two minutes longer, he thought, and I would be dead as well.

  ‘Get that truck going,’ he barked. ‘We’re getting Straken’s team.’

  They looked at him for half a second, clearly astonished that he’d think of helping anyone. Then one cried, ‘All right!’ and ran to the driver’s door. The engine growled into life.

  An ork dropped straight out of the sky. It landed nine metres from Morrell, thumping the tarmac jackboots-first, and pulled itself up. Astonished, he saw a jump pack strapped onto the alien’s back, covered in pipes and dials. Steam hissed out of leaks.

  The ork wore only black: a chipped helmet with a lightning-bolt glyph on the side, and a long, tattered coat, almost in a parody of a commissar. It looked at Morrell and roared.

  ‘Xenos filth,’ the commissar snarled, reaching to his side. ‘The Emperor protects!’ The ork swung its huge pistol up, but Morrell was much faster. The bolt pistol roared in his hand, spitting three shells into the monster’s chest. They detonated, and it dropped to all fours, struggling under the weight of its pack. Morrell drew his power sword and almost contemptuously sliced off its head.

  Something roared overhead, crashing into the city beyond. ‘Into the truck, dammit!’ Morrell bellowed. He leaped up, using the rear tyre as a stepping stone. Three men stood in the back, one manning the heavy stubber. Morrell thumped the roof of the cab with the butt of his sword. ‘Go!’

  The truck rumbled into action. They pulled off down the road, past the smoking ruin of the vox tower. ‘Look!’ one of the men gasped. Like meteors, half a dozen orks streaked overhead, hanging from rockets as though they were hang-glider pilots. One lost control and spiralled into the cavern roof.

  ‘Go faster!’ Morrell yelled, over the roar of the engine. He glanced left and caught the eye of one of the soldiers for a moment. The man looked almost impressed. Morrell looked away, angered. What, did the Catachans think he’d run off the moment orks arrived? No, duty required Straken’s team to be retrieved. Much as Morrell despised the man, the colonel was half of what drove the Catachans forward. Straken was the only officer who all of these thugs actually liked.

  ‘That crazy preacher set us up,’ Lavant said as they jogged back through the nave. ‘You don’t think he was working with the orks, do you?’

  Straken led them through the pillars where he had taken cover only minutes ago. He ducked under a statue of some furious sister of the Repentia, her shaven head daubed with red paint. The desecration enraged him suddenly, and he reached up and ripped a necklace of canines and shell cases from the statue’s neck.

  ‘No,’ Straken replied. ‘They’d probably have killed him if he’d tried.’ They ducked into a side passage, the walls s
uddenly very close, and ran towards the south doors. ‘I think he worshipped them.’

  Lavant said nothing, but his expression of disgust was enough.

  As they reached the side doors something crashed into the nave. Straken looked back, expecting to hear Sarr’s zealots raving about destruction. Instead a brutish roar ran down the corridor, like an animal gearing up to charge. ‘Orks!’ cried Corporal Stess. The wounded man, Thorn, flopped onto a bench and groaned.

  The doors opened. Straken stepped out into a flurry of lights, like massive distress flares, rockets sailed overhead, leaving trails of oily black smoke. Beyond the hab-blocks, distant but menacing, horns blared and amplified voices barked out commands.

  ‘Looks like we stirred things up,’ Straken said.

  Lavant looked back. ‘I doubt we can hold the temple, now the orks are inside. But maybe the crypts…’

  An ork flew into the side of the temple. The impact would have killed a man, but it clung there, the jump pack on its back pumping out smoke. It turned, tensing for its next leap. Lavant pulled his lasgun up and blasted a hole into the monster’s eye. It grunted and dropped off the temple roof like a broken gargoyle.

  ‘We fight our way back to the vox tower,’ Straken said. ‘Then we hold and call for reinforcements. After that, we’ll come back and take these scum out. Follow me!’

  He turned and started to run down the side of the temple, keeping as close to cover as possible. The team followed. Above them searchlights flicked across the cavern roof, sending clouds of bats whirling like embers over a fire. Flares hissed into the air. Straken cursed Sarr under his breath; the madman had certainly got the attention he had sought.

  Up ahead, just visible through the rows of hab-blocks, stood the narrow tower of the vox station. A light was on in the upper window. They must have seen it, Straken thought. They’ll have called in for backup by now.

  ‘There!’ one of the men shouted, and a volley of las-shots cracked out. Straken turned, saw an ork trooper stagger as it touched down, and blasted it with his shotgun. The beast crumpled. Behind it, others slowed down to land, retro-thrusters blasting from their jump packs. ‘Keep going!’ Straken called.

  He had gone three steps more before the vox tower exploded. Straken gritted his teeth. This was going to be hard.

  The truck rolled on, rockets roaring and looping over it, as if into the heart of a storm. Morrell stood in the back like a captain on the bridge of his ship, the engine growling and rattling around him. Ork tracer fire shot above them, much too high to hit, and he wondered what the xenos scum were doing. Were they trying to hit some other target, settling scores with one another, or just shooting for the hell of it? A shell rose up from behind, falling in a broad arc to land where the ork gunfire had come from. He realised that it was a mortar fired from one of the Catachan bases further back in the hab-zone. Emperor be praised, they at least had some support.

  Something rose up above the apartment blocks with a dull hum of rotors, too stable in the air to be a rocket-trooper. It was a gyrocopter, armoured but rickety, the front end bristling with guns. ‘There!’ Morrell shouted, pointing, but the men were already at the side of the truck, bracing their weapons on the metal. ‘Bring it down!’

  Heavy-calibre bullets banged into the side of the truck like hammers beating adamantium. Morrell did not flinch. He closed one eye, blocking out the racket – and fired at the pilot’s face. The bolt pistol lacked the range, but several las-shots hit home, and the craft dropped out of view, driven back but not destroyed.

  ‘Faith is our shield!’ Morrell shouted. He reloaded his pistol, and the copter swung into view again. The mismatched gun barrels let rip, setting the machine swaying. Shells banged against the truck, and with a loud hiss the right tyres went down. A soldier screamed and fell back beside Morrell, his chest suddenly open and red. The commissar stepped over him and bashed the cab roof with his gun. ‘Left,’ he shouted, ’left here!’

  The driver cursed, yelling that he knew where to go, and the truck swung out. Morrell stumbled and fell against the side, lurched upright and heard the ork flyer swing overhead. He raised his gun and fired five times. One bolt-shell punched through the crude armour. Belching smoke, it dropped back, las-fire pattering against its flanks. The pilot thrashed around in its chair, ork blood leaking from its shoulder. Morrell nodded, satisfied.

  He looked back at the road. The truck slowed as it came out of the bend, the deflated tyres flapping against the wheels. Morrell leaned out to get a better view and saw a hulking figure in an alleyway swing a rocket launcher onto its shoulder. Light flashed, and something hit him from behind, a sudden force heaving him up and over, and the road rushed forwards as he fell. The pavement smashed into him, yanking his leg a way it was not meant to go. He rolled, his coat flapping as if to smother him, and suddenly he lay on his back, panting, as the mining truck drove away. He saw a face in the back of the truck, the features set and angry. Morrell shouted, shook his fist and tried to rise.

  Pain shot through his leg like lightning. He gritted his teeth so as not to scream – a good commissar never showed discomfort – and a strangled noise came out as he flopped back onto the ground.

  Straken ducked into an alleyway barely more than a metre wide. He glanced back, saw that the men were all with him, and pressed on. ‘Move it back there,’ he called over his shoulder.

  Something snarled above him. Straken looked up and fired in the same motion, and the shotgun blasted a looming brute of an ork back out of sight as it scrambled into view. He heard it flailing, bellowing like a stuck grox, and wished for a moment that he could leap over the alley wall and finish the vile beast off.

  He ran out of the end of the alley, Lavant by his side. The captain called, ‘Are we still heading back towards the vox tower?’

  ‘You got any better ideas?’ Straken pulled cartridges out of his vest and loaded them into his shotgun.

  An ork ran into view around the corner of the road, on foot. It saw them and started firing wildly with a clumsy, long-barrelled gun. The shots went wide, but the beast came on, shouting, and behind it xenos voices roared in answer.

  Two plasma shots took the ork down, but others lumbered into view. A massive brute shoved past them, its upper body covered in a patchwork of armour plate. Straken took careful aim and hit the ork straight in the chest. Buckshot seemed only to enrage it.

  The Guardsmen fell back. Marbo killed two orks with two bullets from his ripper pistol. Lavant fired las-shots into heads and knees, slowing the orks where they were too heavily armoured to kill. But the horde kept on coming.

  A copter swung over the rooftops, its underbelly studded with spotlights. Stubbers rattled, and the ground burst around the Catachans. One of Lavant’s men was hit twice in a second, the heavy shells tearing through his shoulder and chest. Straken fired upwards, shattering the lights but doing little real damage. He cursed. For once, the stinking aliens had decided to keep out of range.

  A vehicle rolled out in front of them. Dozens of ork soldiers packed out the ramshackle wagon, clinging to the gun-slits and running boards. They began to dismount. The orks hung back, beating their weapons together, waiting until they were ready to charge en masse.

  Straken balled his steel hand into a fist. His men were cut off, trapped between the horde on foot and the gang climbing down from the wagon in front of them. Come on then, he thought. You want to take us, you’ll have to get close.

  ‘Catachans!’ he shouted. ‘Draw your knives!’

  The aliens rushed forward at some unseen signal. A huge grey vehicle rounded the corner and slammed into the back of the ork wagon. Sheet metal crumbled and orks were thrown howling across the road. The mining truck bashed the wagon aside, ploughed into its former occupants and ground to a halt. A trooper worked the heavy stubber on the back, sending shells chugging into the oncoming orks. The driver leaned out the window and beckoned, shouting.

  ‘Everybody on board!’ Straken yelled. ‘Move!’
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br />   The men rushed past him. Straken laid down covering fire until his shotgun was empty. The truck’s engine growled and it pulled backwards, ork gunfire slamming against the hull. Straken opened the passenger door as it picked up speed and threw himself inside.

  Morrell lay on his back and tried not to pass out. They would come and get him, if he could just hang on long enough. Hopefully. He stared at the cavern roof, and tried to ignore the pain blaring up from his leg. Somewhere, streets away, there was gunfire.

  He wondered what the odds of being rescued were. The Catachans had a bad record for losing their commissars. He had expected to be hated, of course, and he didn’t care what they thought of him, but that was no consolation for the fact that they might well have left him to die.

  The pain was sharp, but it made his head swim. Scraps of memory floated through Morrell’s mind. He remembered the massed ranks of Krommenweld cavalry kneeling before battle, singing the old hymn ‘My hands labour for the Emperor’. Well, Morrell’s hands had done the same. Too bad his legs weren’t up to it.

  He snapped back. He needed to assess his wounds. Morrell gritted his teeth and tried to rise. Pain jolted from his leg. He snarled like a dog between his teeth and heaved himself into a sitting position. His coat hindered him, like a pair of shattered wings. Very slowly, steeling himself, he pulled it back and assessed his wound.

  A white, three centimetre-long shard of bone protruded from his dress trousers, just below the knee. Around it the black fabric was shiny with fresh blood. The bone looked unnaturally clean against the dirty cloth. Morrell looked away, his stomach churning. The world faded again.

  Someone was coming towards him. He opened his eyes, and saw an ork running across the road. The drum magazine on its gun was as wide as a dinner plate.