by Toby Frost
Lavant stared at the map, arms folded. ‘All right then. When shall we do it?’
‘Tomorrow night. Get good men on the job – this is going to be hard work. But as soon as we’ve cleared this place, the industrial caverns’ll be open to us. Then we can nail Killzkar’s mechs and get the tanks back. How’s that sound to you?’
Tanner smiled. ‘Pretty good.’
When the lights were down and the painkillers in effect, you could remember all kinds of things.
A gaunt drill-abbot strode down the dormitory of the schola progenium’s outpost on Delta Pavonis, barking out the names by which the orphans would now be known. ‘Sextus, Septimus, Octavius,’ he called, pointing at each bed in turn. The children accepted their new names with the numb resignation of condemned men. They did not know it, but the drill-abbot had been using the same names for the past twenty years.
Three decades later, and rows of cavalrymen knelt beside their horses as the preacher gave them the Emperor’s blessing, their lances lying before them. They rose as one, the kneecaps of their long boots damp with dew, and mounted as the dawn turned to morning. And, on the far wing of the phalanx, their commissar swung himself into the saddle, his horse as black as his uniform.
And now the same commissar lay in an ancient, creaky bed at the back of the Dulma’lin auxiliary power station, propped up and riddled with drugs.
Morrell stared at the door. The medic, a miner with some first aid knowledge, was wary around him. She knew better than to get in the way of a commissar, Morrell thought. Occasionally, he would hear a male voice outside the door, a Catachan soldier sent to check on his progress. They clearly wanted him to live, or at least Straken did. Emperor only knew why. Perhaps they had some plan for him, some vicious revenge straight out of the jungle. He’d shoot himself before that happened.
The leg hurt like hell under the splints, but they said it was healing well. Soon he’d be upright, able to walk with a stick. The earlier he could be seen around the place, the better. It might make these Catachan savages remember that they served the Imperium as well as themselves.
Someone moved outside the door. The stripe of light under the door flickered as boots passed by. Morrell’s hand slid under the thin blanket, to the bolt pistol he kept by his side. It felt comforting, like the presence of a pet.
It would not be long before he’d be moving again. And then, he could get back to doing something useful. He leaned back, trying to make himself comfortable. One way or another, he was almost certainly going to die a martyr out here. It was strange to think that he would join the ranks of those sitting with the Emperor in the afterlife, their souls one with the Master of Mankind. The only real question, he reflected, was whether it would be the orks or his own men who sent him there.
14.
Straken bounded up the stairs, two steps at a time. The backs of his legs ached, but he’d known far worse. The men behind him had fought their way up five storeys of ork-infested building, and he felt a jolt of satisfaction that none of them had dared to speak a word of complaint. Then they were on the fifth and final landing, and as they began to sweep the top floor of the block there was nothing else to think of except killing orks.
Down the main corridor, the smell of dirt and old food turned the air stale. At the first door Straken nodded to the man behind him – a quick-witted, long-haired fellow called Lozasky – and stepped to one side of the door. Straken shouldered the door and charged in, shotgun first. Lozasky went second, straight into some family’s long-abandoned sitting room, swinging his lasgun to cover the exits while the third and fourth men threw open the big cupboards on the far side of the room.
There weren’t many hiding places, nor much reason for the orks to be here. Lozasky checked the bedrooms while Straken looked the kitchen over.
‘Empty,’ Straken said. ‘Next.’
There were six apartments on this wing, and they checked them all. Thumps and bangs came from the far side of the building as Sergeant Halda’s crew followed suit: no gunshots, but the sound of locks breaking and plasterwood being kicked in.
Mayne waited with the vox gear on the staircase, covering the rear. ‘Tell the others to report in,’ Straken ordered. ‘Let them know this place is almost clear.’
Six more teams were working through their own blocks, from cellars to rooftops, killing any orks in the way. They’d found the greenskins drinking, brawling, looting and some asleep. At points there had been the odd bored sentry, probably on the lookout for orks from rival clans as much as human attackers, but they had been easy to take out. Tanner had reported smashing up some kind of idol in mid construction, and Straken himself had thrown a grenade into a cellar, breaking up what had seemed to be some sort of gambling event – but there had been no centrally organised resistance, nothing beyond the wild, ragged ferocity of orks.
He dispatched the rest of the team to the roof while he listened to the reports. All was going well. Only the building to the immediate north remained, and then the whole hab-cavern would be purged.
Straken voxed off, satisfied. He and Mayne followed the others up onto the roof. Behind an overgrown communal garden, the soldiers stood at the railing, watching the northern building. Lasgun fire flickered in the windows.
‘Hell of a wake-up for the xenos,’ one of the soldiers said. A second man gave a brief grunt of amusement.
‘Just keep watching,’ Straken said. ‘They may try to get out via the roof. They know they’re cornered. Maybe they’ll get desperate.’ He’d seen the same with men, Chaos renegades during the jungle fighting on Tsaon IV. The cultists had even scrambled up trees at points, as if they could wait out the fighting there.
Something moved in a window. Straken raised his shotgun as a massive ork heaved a bipod onto the windowsill. A metre-long barrel, riddled with cooling holes, swung out to cover them, and above it a huge mouth gaped open in a brutish laugh. The men pulled up their lasguns, no longer spectators but soldiers in the fight, but they were slightly too slow.
A face appeared behind the ork’s shoulder. An arm snaked round its fat neck and yanked it off balance. The beast fell back, and a man almost its size leaned forward and drove a soot-stained knife into its throat.
‘Damn, that’s nice work,’ Mayne said.
The man stood up and calmly wiped his blade. He looked out, seeing Straken’s team, and Straken recognised him: Marbo. The Guardsman looked them over, without any apparent interest, and quietly turned away.
‘See?’ Lozasky said to the man beside him. ‘What did I tell you? That boy’s not right.’
They hauled the ork bodies into cellars that would not be needed, and sealed them inside. The Catachans damaged as many of the larger ork weapons as possible, tearing the same parts from the mechanisms wherever they could, and dumped them with the corpses. The orks weren’t worth looting: the explosives they carried were as much of a danger to themselves as to anyone they fought, and it was well known that the creatures’ weapons would not work in human hands – should anyone even want to dirty themselves in trying. Ork guns were crudely built and threw out enough recoil to dislocate an arm – besides, it was obvious that if a xenos weapon had an actual machine-spirit, it would be a vicious and truculent thing.
Straken ordered a second scan of the area, to make sure. The teams took civilian gear with them, specialised auspexes designed to detect buried miners in the event of tunnel collapse that were equally suited to finding ork biomass through rockcrete walls. At twenty-two thirty-eight local standard time, the last team voxed in. The area was clear. Hab-cavern Spelus Minoris, and now the entire main hab-zone, was purged of orks.
The colonel called his two captains to the roof of the last apartment block. To Straken’s surprise, Lavant arrived carrying half a bottle of amasec and three mismatched glasses. Tanner toasted to victory and Catachan, and Straken felt glad that the men couldn’t see Iron Hand Straken sipping from a glass.
But far more than that, he felt satisfied. Above, the ar
tificial lights dimmed and the dented mirrors turned in on themselves, darkening the cavern below. Straken looked across the rooftops and thought, It’s ours now.
‘You’ve done good work,’ Straken said.
‘Ah, it’s not work,’ Tanner said. ‘Killing orks is a pleasure. Now, digging latrines, going on parade – that’s work.’
‘Enjoy it while you can,’ Straken replied. ‘As soon as we’ve got this area consolidated, we move on the industrial caves. And Emperor only knows what we’re going to find there.’
‘A whole load of orks,’ Lavant said. ‘Except this time, they’ll have armour.’ He gazed out across the roofs. ‘I wonder how it’s going on Ryza?’
‘I’m sure they’re missing us,’ Tanner said, and there was a bitter edge to his voice. The Ryza warzone needed every man it could get.
‘Strange, isn’t it?’ Lavant added. ‘Most of the Dulma’lin population’s currently on the way to Ryza to fight the orks, and here we are, standing in their houses. If they wanted orks to fight, they could have just stayed home and saved themselves the bother.’
‘Welcome to the Guard, captain,’ Straken said. Tanner laughed, and Lavant cracked a smile. ‘Listen,’ Straken said, ‘we’re here, and what matters is that Killzkar never gets to Ryza. The orks came here to arm up – to loot the mining machinery, I guess. Whatever they’re doing, they’re doing it in the manufactoria, with our tanks. All we can do is make sure they never get off Dulma’lin.’
‘You think Killzkar’s here?’ Lavant said. ‘In Excelsis City? After all, there are other towns. Nothing like this one, but, still…’
Straken shrugged. ‘Even if he’s not, it doesn’t matter. When he sees the fight we’re going to give him, he’ll come running.’
Lavant filled Tanner’s glass. ‘I’ll drink to that!’ Tanner said.
Straken shook his head. ‘I never much liked booze, even before the medicae took half of my guts out.’ He put his glass down, half-full. ‘Killzkar wants to get to the real fighting – every ork does. And the real fighting’s off-world. Sure, he’d like to kill us, but he really wants to be breaking heads on Ryza. If he could lift off tomorrow, he would. But he needs those tanks. Once he knows we’re going after his armour, he’s going to go crazy, even for an ork. You’d both better be ready for it.’
‘Ready?’ Tanner chuckled. ‘Killzkar won’t know what hit him.’
‘Yes,’ Lavant said, ‘I’m ready.’
‘Then that settles it,’ Straken replied. ‘Now we go for Killzkar’s throat.’
General Greiss was finally on Purbech. It seemed to have taken weeks to get from high orbit onto a landing pad floating on the planet’s vast ocean.
The High Praetor’s hunting lodge looked out onto the ocean on all four sides. Almost all the lodge was underwater; only the grand ballroom protruded above the tides. The room was thirty metres square, but already full.
‘I gather that there’s been some excellent sport this morning,’ a young noble observed, his voice straining over the musicians clustered on the stage. ‘The High Praetor shot four sharks. Baited them himself, you know.’
Beside him, General Greiss tried not to scowl. This whole business was allegedly in his honour. He had turned down the offer of participating in the hunt, in the hope that High Praetor Osh’Preen would take the hint and get to business, but no luck. Clearly, Greiss’s visit was an excuse for the High Praetor to demonstrate his greatness to one and all.
‘I look forward to meeting him,’ he replied. ‘At last.’
On the stage, two girls swished about in feathers and not much else. Greiss ignored them. They all look like fish, he thought. The Purbech were very pale, and their skin had a slightly purplish tint, like something that had recently died. The waves outside, throwing rippling light across the ceiling, didn’t help, and the Purbech fondness for green glass gave the room a sickly, feverish quality. A mingled scent of spiced food and herbal smoke made the general’s stomach turn.
‘Hungry,’ Nork Deddog said behind him. ‘Where’d the plate go?’
He had already swallowed the whole contents of a silver tray of curried seafood, to the mingled horror and amusement of the guests, and showed no signs of discomfort – yet. The rest of Greiss’s party – six storm troopers, a servitor and Senex, the chief enginseer – neither ate nor drank. The musicians started up a new song, and Greiss thought about the Radix Malorum, hanging in orbit like a levitating city.
I wish I could give them a taste of the guns, he thought. Shoot a lance strike into one of their oceans and blast a few of their damned precious fish to the surface. That’d get the High Praetor’s attention. About the only thing Osh’Preen seems to get out of bed for is to go hunting.
But the damned trouble was that, if Greiss was to command any sort of army again, if they were ever going to return to Dulma’lin, he needed Osh’Preen’s help.
You’re getting sentimental, he thought. You can’t face the thought of leaving fellow Catachans behind. And then, his contempt rising as he glanced around the room, So what if I am?
The young nobleman had acquired an older female companion, whose silvery gown looked as if it had been blown against her in a high wind. She drew on a cigarillo and dipped her head to whisper something. The nobleman laughed at the ceiling, and Greiss felt the strong urge to conscript the pair of them on the spot. Then again, it was fairly likely that the fellow was already a Guard officer. Round here, promotion seemed to rely on birth rather than merit.
The music stopped, and the chatter of the guests dropped to a low hum. Someone laughed at the far end of the room, high and nervous, and was quickly shushed. Guards in plumed helmets pushed the guests back, clearing a path. Two carved wooden doors swung apart, and a figure entered.
‘The High Praetor!’ Hubrik Art’Aren called, and the band raised their instruments and blasted out a fanfare.
Lurgan Osh’Preen was about forty, wiry and black haired. He wore polished riding boots and a silver breastplate over a purple tunic. Medals glistened on a green sash. Osh’Preen strode into the room, raised his left palm in greeting, and continued between the guests.
A short, hard-looking sergeant waited at the end of the line of courtiers. Osh’Preen held out his plumed, polished helmet. The sergeant took it and backed away. For a moment the room was silent.
The High Praetor snapped his heels together with an audible bang. ‘Carry on!’ he called, and the crowd broke into applause. The sound of people talking again was like a collective sigh of relief.
Magister Senex stared up at the ceiling. Greiss glanced up, the priest’s metal face preventing him from following his gaze, and realised what the adept had seen. A scrollworked hatch had slid open in the roof, and half a dozen servo-skulls now hovered above the crowd, their grav engines inaudible over the rumble of voices. Scanners and guns flicked over the visitors below.
Our High Praetor is either less cocksure or more wily than he looks, Greiss thought.
The musicians started up again. A burst of high-pitched laughter hooted out from across the room. Behind Greiss, a woman said, ‘Entirely drunk, of course, and quite vulgar, really, but terribly witty!’
Smiling, the High Praetor approached. Greiss braced himself.
Osh’Preen was paler than most of the guests: it was a genetic trait of the aristocracy, Greiss realised, probably caused by inbreeding. The High Praetor halted, the smile still on the edge of his purple lips, and gave Greiss the smallest bow he had ever seen.
‘General. Such a pleasure to have you here.’
The skin around his eyes had the same purplish tint as his mouth. He looks like one of the sharks he hunts, Greiss thought. ‘The pleasure is ours, High Praetor. Your hospitality is much appreciated.’
‘It’s nothing, honestly.’ Osh’Preen waved a hand. He looked over Greiss’s shoulder and smiled. ‘Your slave there seems to be enjoying himself.’
Greiss turned. Nork had cornered a frightened serving girl, and was taking food from the
tray she held and stacking it in his massive palm. He kept glancing back at Greiss, almost impatient for someone to threaten him.
‘Is that a Catachan?’ Osh’Preen inquired.
‘No,’ Greiss replied, unable to keep all the distaste out of his voice. ‘That’s an ogryn.’ He remembered the barrack-room jokes from his own service, as he’d worked his way up the ranks: Catachans got big from having mated with ogryns. ‘I’m a Catachan. That’s an abhuman. A mutant,’ he added, with a little scorn. ‘Tolerated despite his impurity.’
The High Praetor’s purple lips stopped smiling.
‘You’re very kind to invite us here,’ Greiss said. ‘I only wish our visit could be purely social. Unfortunately–’
‘Ah, yes, your plea for aid. Frankly, I’m a little surprised that it’s necessary. I was under the impression that the Guard could manage perfectly well without me, for the time being. When I say me, of course, I refer to the people of this fine world.’
Greiss said, ‘The orks surprised our landing force. There were far more of them than we had been led to believe. Their technological level was much higher than our experts expected.’ He smiled, as if to say, And everyone knows how good our experts are.
‘I was under the impression that the orks were simple barbarians,’ Osh’Preen replied. A girl, probably the daughter of some noble house, passed by, her bare shoulders almost as white as her dress. She looked back over her shoulder; Osh’Preen smiled and bowed. She carried on, flushing a little, and when the High Praetor turned back to General Greiss, he was no longer smiling.
‘I think a lot of people thought that,’ Greiss replied. The room felt airless. The lights dancing on the ceiling, reflected from the water outside, were nauseating. ‘If there’s any lesson to be learned from this, it’s never to underestimate the greenskins.’
‘I’m glad that you feel there is a lesson to be learned.’ Osh’Preen beckoned over one of the serving girls and took a piece of cold fish from the platter she held. ‘It sounds like you were badly served, if I may say so. These Catachans sound like a rabble.’