Commissar

by Andy Hoare

  ‘Emperor grant thy servant strength,’ Flint quoted the Dictum Commissaria as he threw himself forward and up, gripping hold of an access handle on the side of the cockpit. ‘That I might deliver thy judgement to the guilty!’

  Gripping tightly, Flint hauled himself upwards and hooked a leg about the front of the boxy cockpit. The Dictrix lurched violently sideways as it was thrown suddenly off balance and in a second Flint found himself face-to-face with the pilot, shielded behind the corroded mesh of his cockpit cage.

  The man’s eyes bulged wide in surprise as he saw an Imperial Guard commissar appear mere centimetres away. He drew backwards and the walker did likewise as he all but forgot the control column bucking in his hands. Flint hung on for dear life as the machine spun about, almost toppling before its self-righting mechanisms cut in and the pilot wrested control back once more.

  But before the pilot could shake his tormentor from his machine’s back, Flint let go of one hand and with a feral snarl drew his bolt pistol. The man saw his doom and hauled violently on the column, forcing the commissar to redouble his grip or be thrown clear and no doubt crushed beneath its splayed mechanical feet. But it wasn’t enough. As a storm trooper Flint had tallied four confirmed stalker kills in the swamps of Delta Suthi. He might be twenty years older, but the method was unforgettable.

  Hauling his bolt pistol around as the walker span crazily about, Flint grit his teeth against the growing centrifugal force. At the last, he levelled the pistol straight at the pilot’s face, the man screaming a valedictory curse that would ensure his soul was damned for an eternity.

  ‘By your own confession be judged!’ Flint spat as he squeezed the trigger. The pilot was dead before the bolt detonated, the explosion sending up a cascade of brain matter and bone shards as Flint kicked back against the cockpit and tumbled through the air to get clear of the madly spinning, out of control walker.

  The impact on the hard, wet ground drove the air explosively from his lungs but Flint was soon scrambling backwards and away as the Dictrix went down in a tangled mess of tortured metal and kicking mechanical limbs. At the last, the machine’s self-righting mechanism gave up and the limbs disengaged with a mechanical sigh.

  ‘Sir?’ the voice of Dragoon Kohlz came from somewhere off behind. ‘Are you…’

  But Flint never heard the rest of his aide’s question, with the now still wreckage of the walker being kicked violently aside as the second machine appeared overhead, bearing down on the commissar’s prone form. With a hiss of pneumatics, it raised one leg, ready to bring it slamming down on its intended victim…

  A single las-bolt rang out from the darkness, striking the second machine’s pilot straight between the eyes. The walker’s leg froze in mid-air and Flint rolled clear as the entire walker toppled backwards and crashed to the floor, lifeless.

  Flint knew without looking who had fired that shot. Wherever the medic Karasinda had learned to shoot, it certainly wasn’t in the Vostroyan defence militia.

  Vahn heard the rebels before he saw them, his instincts kicking in before his conscious mind had a chance to voice an objection. In a single motion, he swung his carbine down on its sling and tucked it in behind his right arm. An instant later the rebels stepped out of the portal and turned to walk off in the opposite direction.

  In the two or three seconds it took for one of the rebels to register Vahn’s presence, the other three penal troopers had clocked what was happening and stowed their own weapons. In an instant, the four press-ganged penal troopers became rebel convicts, for as long as they could get away with it at least.

  ‘Hey…’ the rearmost rebel growled as he caught sight of the penal troopers.

  ‘What?’ Vahn said brazenly, walking forward as if he had every right to do so. ‘What?’ he repeated, his three fellow troopers spreading out behind him. He cast a furtive glance into the flickering depths of the portal but all he saw were flames spouting from crude barrel fires.

  ‘What you doing here?’ the largest of the rebels snarled, hooking his thumbs into his belt as he looked down at the strangers. The man was almost as massive as the Catachan they had encountered during their escape attempt. The mess that had at one time been his face showed all the signs that he was some kind of pit fighter. The man’s bald cranium was pitted with metal studs, as were his knuckles. Definitely a pit fighter, Vahn thought, and a nasty one at that.

  Vahn thought on his feet. ‘Got a message for Bing,’ he said, plucking the name of a convict-worker he had once shared a geotherm sink work shift with from his memory. ‘He inside?’

  The pit fighter thought on it for a second, Vahn preparing to sweep his carbine upwards from behind his arm should the other man come to the wrong conclusion.

  ‘Dunno,’ the pit fighter said. ‘Who’s the message from?’

  ‘From the top,’ said Vahn. ‘That’s why we came four-handed.’

  The insinuation that Vahn was acting on behalf of the uprising’s leader had the desired effect on the pit fighter, yet several of his companions looked unconvinced. One, a wiry fellow who looked like a particularly ugly simian hybrid decided to face-off with Solomon.

  ‘I seen you before?’ Monkey Man snarled right into Solomon’s face.

  Solomon looked down at the rebel with barely concealed disgust, but he held his tongue, aware that one wrong move could bring the whole thing to a very messy end.

  ‘We don’t got time for this,’ said Vahn, pointedly addressing the pit fighter rather than Monkey Man. ‘You gonna let us pass or not?’

  Behind his back, Vahn flicked the safety off of his carbine and his three companions did likewise.

  The two Dictrix walkers were defeated, but Commissar Flint was in a foul mood. Those struck down by their neural whips were back on their feet having been dosed up with an unhealthy stimm-shot by Karasinda, who was observing the scene at the sub-chamber through the scope of her rifle.

  ‘Looks like Vahn’s going inside, sir,’ Karasinda reported. ‘Orders?’

  Flint ground his teeth as a hundred possibilities rushed through his mind at once. What if Vahn and his fellow scouts were overcome and made to talk? What if the two dead Dictrix pilots had reported his force’s presence? The rebels would learn of the 77th’s mission and maybe even their strength and deployment. Or perhaps Vahn was on the verge of betraying the 77th? After all, he’d meant to escape the penal generatorium but had ended up getting himself and his friends press-ganged into the Imperial Guard. Maybe he was having a second go at it.

  ‘Is he going willingly?’ Flint asked the medic.

  ‘Yes, sir, I’d say he is. I won’t have a clear shot for much longer though.’

  ‘Stand down, Karasinda,’ he ordered, deciding despite himself to place the entire mission in Vahn’s hands. If you let me down though, Flint swore, I’ll go in there and execute you myself…

  It took Vahn’s eyes a moment to adjust to the dark as he and his companions entered the sub-chamber. The vast space resembled the inside of a cooling tower, barely lit by guttering barrel fires, the smoke and embers rising upwards towards the opening above. Vahn’s earlier suspicions were soon proved correct – the sub-chamber was being used as a huge holding pen. The multiple barrel fires were strung together with heavy, barbed chains that formed the outer perimeter of a paddock in which several hundred moaning prisoners were held. The sight of inmates chained to one another and unable to move further than a metre brought bile to Vahn’s throat. To make things even worse, many were dead, their weight still useful to the rebels to restrain those forced to endure the horror of being tethered to a bloated, stinking corpse. And above it all, the low, mournful dirge of human suffering swelled and echoed around the curved walls of the chamber, echoing upwards along with the darting embers of the barrel fires.

  ‘Pash…’ Solomon cursed. ‘Why is it–’

  ‘Quiet!’ Vahn hissed, checking that none of the rebels had overheard Solomon’s outburst. Pit fighter and Monkey Man were talking conspiratorially an
d there were at least another twenty rebels guarding the prisoners, but with the barrel fires raging in the darkness it was all but impossible to be sure of their numbers.

  ‘We can’t do anything,’ said Skane as he came to stand beside Vahn. ‘I wish we could, but…’

  ‘I know,’ Vahn replied bitterly. ‘But we at least need to log this place, make sure the following forces do something about it. Then…’

  ‘Bing’s not here,’ Pit Fighter interrupted as he strode up to Vahn. ‘Mash says he’s with Khave’s crew.’

  Vahn fought to contain his surprise that his earlier ploy had paid off, finding himself suddenly faced with a new opportunity. ‘Where?’ he tried his luck.

  ‘Carceri control,’ the pit fighter replied. ‘Khave’s been ordered to attend the colonel after his frag-up over in Didactio. You’d think a big lad like him would be able to stop a bunch of runaways, but apparently not…’

  The Catachan. He was talking about the leader that would have ruined Vahn’s escape attempt mere days before had it not been for Flint’s intervention. Evidently, this Khave’s failure to stop Vahn and his companions escaping had earned the wrath of Colonel Strannik.

  ‘Carceri control, you say?’ said Vahn, scanning the scene of misery beyond the guttering barrel fires once more. ‘Then I think we should go pay them a visit.’

  It was only as Vahn walked back out through the sub-chamber’s portal that he realised he’d been had.

  ‘You looking for me, stranger?’ a phlegmy voice rasped. ‘Heard you got a message from the colonel.’

  The owner of the voice was a grotesquely obese individual attended by a mob of goons armed with lengths of iron bar and wickedly serrated shivs. No one had any business getting that fat, thought Vahn, not in a prison where food was a luxury and most of the inmates were chronically malnourished. The man’s skin was pale and waxy, his bare torso a mountain of heaving fat. His face was a twisted, mashed up mess and his eyes and mouth were little more than folds amongst layers of flesh.

  ‘Bing, huh?’ Vahn nodded slowly, reading what was about to unfold. There must have been at least two-dozen rebels up front, while Pit Fighter and Monkey Man, along with at least a dozen more were still behind inside the sub-chamber. But most importantly, only a handful of the rebels appeared to be carrying firearms, and most of those were improvised blunderbusses or practically useless breech-loaders.

  Vahn swung his carbine around on its sling, bringing it from behind his arm to point directly at the flesh mountain. In an instant, Skane, Rotten and Solomon had done likewise.

  ‘Cover the rear,’ Vahn told Solomon and Rotten.

  Amazingly, the obese rebel leader didn’t seem in the least bit intimidated by the las-weapons aimed squarely at his body. Perhaps the rebel was stupid enough to think he had the mass to absorb a few shots, Vahn thought, preparing to find out.

  ‘This ain’t gonna finish how you think it will,’ the obese man rasped. Heavy footsteps sounded from behind as Pit Fighter and Monkey Man had joined the party.

  Something inside Vahn was getting dangerously close to snapping. ‘To be honest, I don’t really give a crap how it ends. But you’re right,’ he added. ‘It is ending…’

  ‘Vahn?’ said Skane, his voice low so the rebels couldn’t hear him.

  Vahn was about to continue his death wish taunt when something in Skane’s tone made him pause. ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t look,’ the Elysian whispered. ‘Eleven o’clock, three hundred metres.’

  ‘Don’t look?’ hissed Vahn, ‘How do you expect me…’

  ‘Don’t!’ Skane hissed urgently. ‘Not if you want them to…’

  A flash of colour off in the shadows along the cliff-like rockcrete wall of the carceri chamber caught Vahn’s eye despite Skane’s warning.

  ‘What the…’ said the obese rebel leader.

  A las-bolt hammered out of the mists and slammed into the leader’s meaty shoulder. A puff of flash-boiled blood mushroomed upwards and a look of dumb, quizzical surprise crossed the man’s face before he toppled forward with a dull thud.

  Three more las-bolts lanced out of the fog, three more rebels falling to the ground, before anyone thought to react.

  ‘Move!’ Vahn roared, diving to his right as one of the rebels unloaded a blunderbuss directly at him. The air was filled with a mass of scything shot. Miraculously, Vahn and his companions avoided the blast as they dived across the ground.

  ‘Four,’ Solomon counted as he squeezed off a sniper rifle shot all but un-aimed. The weapon was never intended for use at such close quarters, but even firing from the hip Solomon took a rebel clean between the eyes and sent his brain matter vomiting from the back of his cranium.

  In a moment Vahn was up and pushing the gangly Jopalli before him as he scrambled to get clear of the killing zone. He fired his carbine into the mob as he moved, catching one rebel at the elbow and causing his severed arm to cartwheel backwards through the air, and another in the stomach causing him to double up as he dropped.

  ‘Rotten!’ Vahn yelled, spinning around as he cleared the immediate crossfire. The other two men were close behind, but the Asgardian wasn’t clear yet, pausing to let off more shots to cover his companions’ withdrawal. ‘I appreciate the thought,’ Vahn shouted. ‘But it’s time we were somewhere else, get moving!’

  Rotten looked almost disappointed as he squeezed off one last burst before upping and running. A shotgun blast split the air he had just vacated and tore up the ground he had been standing on.

  ‘Thanks,’ Rotten laughed madly as he overtook Vahn. ‘Where now?’

  The rebels were scattering in all directions and dozens of their fallen were sprawled across the ground. Most of the survivors were making for the safety of the sub-chamber and those without the sense to do so were being gunned down mercilessly by the closing Guard force.

  ‘Wait,’ said Vahn. ‘Crap…’

  ‘What?’ said Rotten as he shot down another fleeing rebel. ‘Vahn?’

  They’re heading back to the pens,’ he said.

  ‘Seven,’ said Solomon as he lined up and fired, his sniper rifle kicking back into his shoulder with its fierce recoil. ‘The prisoners?’

  ‘The prisoners,’ said Vahn, scanning the carceri chamber. ‘Where’s Flint?’

  ‘Over there!’ said Rotten, pointing towards the source of many of the incoming las-bolts. The majority of the rebels had by now reached the sanctuary of the sub-chamber and the weight of fire was lessening. ‘Right flank, by the gear shaft.’

  A group of troopers were firing from the cover of an oversized gear casing. Commissar Flint could be seen directing their fire and Corporal Bukin was further along the line, loosing shot after shot at the retreating rebels as he led his provost section in a wide flanking manoeuvre. Then Vahn saw the flash of colour again, and realised it was Becka, her acid green mohican visible through the drifting tendrils of airborne vapour. ‘Becka!’ he yelled. ‘Tell Flint there are multiple prisoners inside that sub!’

  Becka waved her confirmation that she had heard him. ‘And tell him we’re getting them out!’

  ‘He’s what?’ Flint snapped as the Savlar finished relaying Vahn’s message.

  ‘He’s getting them out, sir,’ Becka repeated, glancing nervously back towards the sub-chamber portal. The firing had died right down, reduced to the occasional solid slug unleashed indiscriminately from the shadows of the opening. Stray rounds were still zinging around and the gear shaft didn’t offer nearly as much cover as Becka would have liked.

  ‘I heard what you said,’ said Flint. ‘What the hell’s he playing at?’

  This time, Becka didn’t answer. ‘Can I go now, sir?’ she said, her discomfort in the presence of a commissar obvious to see, even with half of her face obscured by her ever-present rebreather.

  ‘Go,’ said Flint. ‘Muster the penal troopers under Corporal Bukin and be ready to move out at my command, understood?’

  ‘Well,’ Flint turned to Claviger-Primari
s Gruss. ‘It looks like Trooper Vahn has made a somewhat precipitous decision…’

  ‘You’ll be executing him in due course,’ replied the chief warden.

  ‘What?’ said Flint, distracted for a moment from the plan forming in his mind. ‘Execute him?’

  ‘For disobedience, commissar,’ said Gruss. ‘And for compromising the mission.’

  ‘He may not have done that, Claviger-Primaris,’ Flint replied. ‘We might be able to salvage something from this yet.’

  ‘You can’t be…’ Gruss started.

  ‘Serious?’ Flint cut him off. ‘I’m fragging serious, Gruss. Vahn went in there for a reason, came out, and now he wants to head straight back in again, even in the face of that.’ He jerked his head towards the entrance as a torrent of gunfire sounding like a dozen tree branches being snapped at once burst from the portal. ‘I don’t like him, and Emperor knows I’d put a bolt-round through his temple myself. But,’ Flint concluded, ‘In this, I’m deciding to trust him.’

  Gruss’ blank-faced visor held Flint’s gaze for a moment before he shook his head in evident resignation. ‘Where do you want my men?’

  Flint considered the question, weighing the options. Gruss’s clavigers were equipped with far superior armour than any of Flint’s troops, and that would be vital in an assault. In addition, they carried combat shotguns ideal for a close quarters storming action.

  ‘I need them taking that portal,’ he replied, knowing he was asking a lot. ‘Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed, commissar,’ said Gruss. ‘I’ll make preparations,’ he said, before departing to brief his men.

  Seeing Gruss departing, Kohlz tapped his headset and gestured towards the chief warden’s back. Flint got the message, but had more immediate concerns. With Vahn leading the scout element back towards the sub-chamber portal Flint saw no choice but to intervene before things got completely out of hand.