Straken

by Toby Frost

  ‘Like what?’ Tarricus cried.

  ‘One, we know how to get up close. We’re jungle fighters – we’ve been killing things harder than orks at close range for centuries. We’ll use the city, lay traps, set ambushes – all the stuff we’ve been teaching you people. Two, this isn’t some conscript army we’re up against.’

  ‘You can say that again!’

  ‘Orks want to fight. They’ve got no real chain of command – it’s just the biggest ones giving the orders to anyone they can force to obey. If they see a chance to start beating each other, they’ll take it. And if Killzkar dies, his officers will fight to take his place.’

  Lavant said, ‘So if we go after Killzkar himself – assassinate him – then his army will fall to pieces? I’ve got to say it – I can’t see them leaving the chance to fight us.’

  Straken said, ‘Maybe. I can’t guarantee it. But it’ll slow them down. Kill the leader and they’ll have a real problem. Maybe without Killzkar they won’t ever get to Ryza at all.’

  ‘So they’ll be stuck here!’ Tarricus shook his head. ‘That’s fantastic. Maybe we could open a hotel.’ He laughed. There was an edge to his laugh that made Straken uneasy. ‘Why not? Five thrones a day to stay in our delightful city. Come, see the sights–’

  ‘That’s enough!’ Straken’s voice rang around the room. In the quiet that followed, Tarricus let out a long, shuddering sigh. Straken leaned forwards again. ‘Unless you want to go outside and offer your apologies to Killzkar for smashing up his gargant, we’re going to have to deal with a lot of angry orks. That goes for all of you. If we have to make sacrifices, so be it. But mark my words. I’ve been with this unit for nigh-on thirty years, and I have never allowed anyone, Guard or civilian, to throw my men away. No last stands to make a point of so-called principle, no stupid charges into enemy guns to give some drunkard general an excuse to drink to our memory. The same goes for this.

  ‘We find Killzkar, and we kill him. Then we pull back, split up and hunt orks through the ruins like they’re so many wild grox. They’ll come in here like a mob looking for trouble, and we’ll make damn sure they’ll walk straight into it. They’re going to regret the day they crossed the Catachan Second. Or any of you.’ He looked round the table. ‘All right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tanner said. ‘Sounds good to me.’

  ‘Of course,’ Lavant replied. He added, ‘I don’t see any other option, anyway.’

  Morrell gave a small, bitter smile. ‘Frankly, I think I’ve got more to offer the Commissariat than a glorious death on this rock. If we have to die, so be it – but we’ll fight first.’

  Ferrens grinned. For an ex-member of the Dulma’lin senate, Straken thought, she certainly was good at looking crazy and hard. Maybe some people were just born survivors. ‘It’s too late to turn back now,’ she said.

  Tarricus shrugged. He seemed very small among them, a child surrounded by killers. ‘I guess we’ll have to fight. What else can we do?’

  As if you had a choice, Straken thought. ‘We’ll fight fierce, but we’ll fight smart. I’m thinking two groups, striking through the cavern and from underneath.’

  ‘Underneath?’ Tanner said. ‘What, like… tunnels?’

  ‘Why not? We’ve got the drilling gear. And the men to do it,’ Straken added, glancing at Tarricus.

  Tanner said, ‘That’s a good point. I’m liking this.’

  ‘The orks have got to bottleneck around the gates to get inside. Every bomb, every tank shell we can put on them is going to count for a hell of a lot. Now,’ Straken added, ‘for the ones that get past, we’ll have a little welcoming committee.’ He tapped the map with a metal finger. ‘See this, running down the vault? It says on the map it’s some kind of park. We can use that.’

  Jocasta Ferrens said, ‘It’s called the Triumphal Gardens. The main administrative buildings run along the edges. At the top there’s the Senate House. I used to work there – a long time ago.’

  Morrell rubbed his chin. ‘Surely it’ll be seriously overgrown by now. The orks won’t have done anything with it unless they’ve burned it down. It’ll be like a jungle.’

  Straken merely looked at him, and a moment later the commissar realised what he had said.

  ‘Morrell,’ the colonel said, ‘that’s exactly what I want it to be.’

  ‘You’ll love this, sir,’ one of the new men said. The man in question, newly promoted Corporal Gratz, was showing off a knife he’d bought off a Tallarn desert raider. ‘There’s grooves on the blade,’ Gratz explained, ‘to make the blood run off, so it doesn’t make the grip slippery. I’ve got eight kills with this so far,’ he said. ‘Five of ’em are orks.’

  The demolitions team had made their headquarters in a clubhouse above a metalworking plant. Either the orks had not noticed the place or could not be bothered to climb the stairs. Most of the other buildings had either been wrecked out of spite or used to hold slaves, and were in a foul state.

  ‘Bah,’ Lavant said. ‘You’ll never get better than a Catachan Fang.’

  The demolitions crew had taken heavy casualties in their attack on the gargant, mainly from the moment when the orks had fired their ordnance into the rows of tanks. Lavant barely knew a lot of the replacements, drafted in from other teams. It was felt that, after their performance in the industrial caverns, the locals could be trusted with medium-range support and even some light artillery, freeing up more Catachans for the kind of close-up work that would put their skills to better use.

  A tank rolled past the window, one of the first vehicles liberated from the ork workshops. Three Catachans stood on top of it, using crowbars to prise off the glyph-plates that the orks had welded on. It was too bad, Lavant thought, that they didn’t have a tech-priest to reconsecrate the vehicles. The ork workmanship was not just crude, but blasphemous. No wonder that the machine-spirits of so many of the vehicles were enraged, and that so few of them worked.

  Lavant said, ‘Anyone know how many tanks we’ve got working yet?’

  One of the old hands, a dark-haired sapper called Meir, shrugged and raised his palms. He was missing the last two fingers on his left hand. ‘Not many, from what I’ve heard. I don’t know the exact numbers.’

  ‘But not enough.’

  ‘Right.’

  Lavant said, ‘Then listen, everyone. When the orks come, they’ll be bringing armour – it’s the only way they’ll get through the storm. We won’t have the guns to knock it out, but we’ve got the explosives. I want everyone to check that they’re familiar with the gear these miners use. It’s slightly different to our usual stuff. Also, I need all officers to check the map for detonation points, both in our territory and the main vault, where we can cause the most damage to the orks if they make it that far. Main buildings, natural formations, anything that can put some hurt on the greenskins.’

  Gratz raised a hand. ‘Captain?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What about cave supports?’

  There was a rustle of comments and whispers. Someone gave a brief snort of amusement, but almost all the faces Lavant saw were serious and hard.

  ‘Those too,’ Lavant said. ‘They’re not having this place. If we have to, we’ll bring the whole roof down on them.’

  Again, the low rumble of voices. Lavant heard someone say, ‘You reckon Iron Hand knows about that?’ But they looked grimly approving, especially the old hands, as if they’d brought Lavant up properly.

  The captain ground his lho-stick out. ‘You know what to do. Now get to it. I’ll be back in two hours. I’ve got something to sort out.’

  Lavant hurried down the stairs, past a heap of oversized metal vests. They had once been part of protective suits for venturing into the wind on the surface of Dulma’lin; the orks had nailed and welded on extra metal to make themselves body armour.

  He had business of his own to attend to, things that he needed to do alone.

  As he passed the workshops and factory yards, he felt strangely guilty, as if h
e had come to the cavern intending to steal from it. Lavant shoved his hands in his pockets and walked on.

  A great roar came from his left. He glanced round, startled, and heard an engine tear into life. In a great barn of a shed, a tunnelling machine had started to work. Men cheered it on. The metal nose cone spun faster, gathering speed. Half a dozen Catachans stood around it, mostly stripped to the waist, and beside them were just as many locals, in filthy overalls.

  Lavant hurried on as one of the workers slapped a purity seal onto the side of the machine. The power of the driller, and its jutting nose cone, made Lavant think of the land sharks back on Miral. Miral, the place where it had all gone wrong.

  Well, not any more. He quickened his pace.

  He commandeered a truck and had the civilian driver run him into the northern hab-zone. Soldiers waved as they passed. As they got nearer to the edge of the Mommothian Vault, the smiles came less easily, and the guns were in the men’s hands, not slung over their shoulders.

  Lavant saw a grim, grey school up ahead, its smashed windows reinforced with plasteel plate. A plain red flag hung outside. ‘Here,’ he said.

  As he climbed down from the cab the worry set in with a vengeance. It was the same fear he felt when he set his traps: the fear that he would get it wrong, that he would make another mistake and cause another disaster.

  No, he thought. This has to end. He walked to the door, took a deep breath and walked into the entrance hall. Half a dozen men were relaxing between shifts, sitting around a fire stoked with broken desks and old notebooks. On the wall behind them was a mural drawn by children long ago, entitled ‘Saints and Heroes’.

  One of the Catachans laughed and passed a flask to the man on his right. None of them looked like saints, and as heroes went, they were rough and dirty. Lavant cleared his throat.

  They looked up. Slowly, they stood upright. Lavant flicked them a salute and stepped towards them.

  ‘Give me that flask,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, hell,’ said the drinker. He held the flask out.

  Lavant sniffed the flask: the stuff inside smelt alcoholic and strong. The man on the furthest left muttered something under his breath. Lavant didn’t hear the words, but he knew the gist of it – that Captain Lavant was wired too tight, that he’d got a stick jammed up his back end, that he wasn’t really Catachan.

  He took a sip from the bottle. The stuff wasn’t bad. It burned as he swallowed, but it warmed him too. He passed the flask back to its owner. ‘I’m looking for a man called Serradus,’ he said.

  ‘Grim Serradus?’ The oldest of the men, a corporal, nodded to a door on the left. ‘He came off watch ’bout an hour ago. Probably sleeping. You want me to go and get him?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lavant replied. He watched the soldier go, feeling that he had set something massive into motion, something that would either heal or destroy him.

  One man came back, but it was not the one who had gone. The man was tallish and, for a Catachan, slight: heavily built by normal standards, but more wiry than obviously muscled. There were night vision goggles over his eyes. Unusually, he wore a long-sleeved shirt under his combat vest. His hands were gloved.

  Lavant stepped forward. He felt alert, as if he were about to fight. It felt doubly strange to see the sniper stop two and a half metres away and salute.

  ‘You called for me, sir.’

  The man’s voice came partly from the edge of his mouth and partly from the vicinity of his throat. No wonder he wore a collar, Lavant thought. There must be some bionics in there, tiny vox-mics… He felt intrigued, and then sick with guilt.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Serradus, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I need to talk to you. Outside.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  Lavant led the man outside. He felt the other men’s eyes on his back as he left.

  He offered the soldier a lho-stick. Serradus refused. Lavant lit up, took a drag and said, ‘You know who I am?’

  ‘Sure,’ Serradus said. He had trouble with the S. ‘You’re the captain.’

  Under the goggles, Serradus’s skin was fake. It must be some kind of leather, Lavant thought, a kind of mask. It covered his forehead, cheeks and upper lip, leaving a square gap for his mouth and lower jaw. The jaw was criss-crossed with deep, old scars, like the muzzle of an old grox. The mask was smooth; slightly too smooth to be real.

  ‘Just thought I’d thank you for your work at the gargant,’ Lavant said. ‘You killed an ork that was coming for me. If you hadn’t picked him off, he would’ve got me.’

  ‘No problem,’ Serradus replied. His voice, although distorted, was calm. ‘Just doing what they pay me for.’

  ‘Well, it’s appreciated. Nice work.’ Say it, Lavant told himself. Say it. ‘You used to be demolitions, didn’t you?’

  Serradus looked at him. The mask ended around the goggles, Lavant saw. They must be permanently attached to his head, perhaps bolted onto the skull by some enthusiastic tech-priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Lavant wondered how Serradus slept.

  ‘That’s right,’ the sniper said. ‘I-I was with the demo crews, back on Miral. It was back at Ascendancy Bridge where I, er…’ He gestured at his face. ‘Yeah. Miral didn’t work out so well.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ Lavant said. ‘Look… I was the one who set the charges. The one that went up too early and…’ He didn’t know how to finish, and he didn’t need to.

  Serradus said, ‘The one that blew up in my face, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Serradus said, ‘I’ll have that lho-stick, if you’re still offering.’

  ‘Sure.’

  The sniper took the stick, lit it and said, ‘If you don’t mind me asking, sir, why are you telling me this?’

  ‘Because it’s been bothering me.’ The phrase sounded clumsy and false. ‘I’m sorry it happened,’ he said.

  ‘Not as much as I am,’ Serradus said. He turned his head away, the blank lenses staring across the cavern. Lavant wondered what he was looking at. ‘But it’s not your fault, is it? You want to blame someone, blame the Ministorum for the knackered-out gear they send us. That’s what it was. The charges we laid were set fine. The det-cord dated back to the Heresy, though.’

  ‘I’m more careful these days. I check everything.’ It felt to Lavant as if he was confessing a sin.

  ‘That’s probably a good idea,’ Serradus replied. ‘Although you’re the expert. Look, I won’t lie to you. It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. If you called being stuck in the Guard having any kind of life, my life got pretty much ruined when that bomb went off. Emperor, when I think of it… Sometimes back then I felt like taking a walk in the jungle and leaving my knife at home, you know?’

  Lavant nodded.

  ‘But that’s passed now. I have good days, bad ones too, but nothing I can’t handle. I’m Catachan, right?’ Hampered by the mask, Serradus gave the captain a wry smile.

  ‘Right.’ Lavant ground out his lho-stick. He stared off into the distance, not wanting to look at Serradus. ‘I had nightmares about it. About getting it wrong again, about the charges going off too early. Couldn’t stop thinking about it, sometimes. Got to not trusting anyone else to lay them.’

  Serradus shrugged. ‘Well, there were some good men when I worked demolitions. I’d trust them if I were you. But it’s your choice. Listen, I’d best get back.’

  ‘Of course.’ Lavant held out his hand. ‘It’s been good to talk to you, Serradus. At last.’

  ‘You too, captain. Just, er, take things as they come, eh? That’s what I do.’

  ‘Right. As they come. Emperor protect, Serradus.’

  ‘You too.’

  Serradus turned and walked back inside. Lavant didn’t move.

  Just one of those things, he thought. Except sometimes ‘those things’ are terrible. The Munitorum sent a dud batch of explosives, and it was his bad luck to be caught instead of you. Bad things happen, he told himself. T
hey really do. The best you can do is to keep on going, and not let it ruin you.

  He started back the way he had come.

  Hell of a job not to let it get to you, though.

  Serradus walked back into the abandoned school. His three colleagues sat on chairs built for children, preposterous-looking compared to their bulk. ‘We’re just dealing a hand,’ one said, as he shuffled a pack of cards. ‘I’ve cleaned out Narry and Jef, so I might as well take your money as well, eh?’

  ‘Thanks, but I’ll sleep for a while.’

  ‘Sure. What did the captain want?’

  Serradus shrugged. ‘Nothing much. Just to thank me for shooting an ork when we hit the manufactoria.’

  Narry, a young man with one ear, shook his head. ‘He should’ve thanked me. The number of orks I’ve killed… If you ask me, that man is wound too damned tight. You wind yourself up like that, sooner or later you’re bound to snap.’

  ‘He’s been out on the front line too long,’ Serradus replied. ‘He’s had some bad luck, and now he’s paying for it. He’s not the only one,’ he added, and he headed towards the sleeping quarters, unfastening his mask as he went.

  In the north of the city, just below the Mommothian Vault, the snipers kept their watch. They marked the furthest expanse of Straken’s territory, and they guarded the borders assiduously. Almost invisible from the ground, gun teams covered the roads leading into the vault, turning the roads into a network of avenues of fire.

  Few orks came this way any more. A few green corpses lay in the streets, and occasionally a bulky shape might slip past a window before it was taken down; otherwise, nothing moved.

  On the Lannatri Road, a prayer-scroll flapped in a window frame, fanned by a sudden breeze. Marksman Halski pulled his gun in a little tighter. There was no wind down here. Something had set it moving. He frowned, widened the vision on his scope, and waited for the source of the movement to appear.

  Halski kept his eyes on the road. Movement, in a window – something rose and fell, the back of a creature or a man on all fours. The dark shape shook and shuddered. Halski licked his lips, as he always did when he felt tense, and waited for it to give him a good shot.