Commissar

by Andy Hoare

  ‘I’ll give him trouble,’ Flint snarled, drawing his bolt pistol. Flicking the safety off of his pistol, he blinked as the lightning flashed again and the rumble of thunder ground overhead.

  Movement, in the shadows perhaps a kilometre away. The lightning flashed again and Flint caught the sight a second time, figures clustered around the base of a towering drive head. The instant the lightning was gone his vision was replaced by seething after-flash. He lowered his night vision goggles and concentrated on the shadow at the base of the massive drive.

  ‘Emperor’s mercy…’ he breathed.

  ‘Sir?’ said Kohlz, appearing at his side. ‘What’s…. oh khekk…’

  ‘Bukin! Vahn!’ Flint bellowed. ‘Get everyone ready to move out, right now!’

  The two men turned and followed his gaze. With the next flash of lightning they saw what Commissar Flint had seen. A mass of rebel convicts was spilling around the base of the towering machinery and was even now charging outwards across the rain-lashed rockcrete floor of the carceri chamber. The water that spilled across the surface was transformed into a fine mist by the pounding of a thousand and more feet and a hateful roar was slowly rising as the rebels crossed the open space.

  For a moment, Commissar Flint stood transfixed by the sight of so many enemies surging forward towards his small force. Scenes from a dozen and more battles flashed across his mind. In its own way, each was just as desperate and uneven, yet somehow, he had walked away from them all. He had walked away from them because he was schooled in the dictates of the Commissariat, raised on the words of a thousand holy men. All their teachings distilled down into a single principle – the Emperor protects. When all else appears lost, a true servant of the Emperor knows that whatever else befalls him, he shall sit at the right hand of the Emperor for all eternity.

  But not just yet, thought Flint. Not while there’s a mission to complete, a regiment to call in and a warp-spawned mutant uprising to crush.

  Vahn, Bukin and the provosts herded the troopers into order and made ready to move out at Flint’s word but several of Skane’s group were making to head off on their own along the chamber wall in the opposite direction. The big Elysian was engaged in a bellowing altercation with another of his squad, the two men’s words lost to the crash of thunder and the growing roar of the onrushing rebel host. Snarling, he racked the slide of his bolt pistol. ‘What’s the problem here?’ he barked over the rumbling of thunder. ‘We’re leaving, now!’

  ‘We ain’t going with you!’ shouted the man Skane had been arguing with. ‘We ain’t…’

  ‘Barra!’ Skane snarled. ‘Don’t do this…’

  ‘Why the hell shouldn’t we?’ the penal trooper bellowed. ‘We’re leaving! We’d rather take our chances on our own!’

  Flint raised his bolt pistol and levelled it squarely at Barra, mere centimetres from his forehead. The man froze, his eyes fixed on the gaping barrel before him, and his companions stopped where they were. The sound of the onrushing rebel horde grew louder by the second, but right now, the only battle Flint cared for was the contest of wills between Barra and himself.

  ‘Barra,’ said Skane, his voice low but insistent. ‘Do as he says. It’s the only way.’

  Flint’s eyes bored into the other man’s and his finger tightened on the trigger of his bolt pistol. Barra blinked, knowing full well that Flint would enact his field execution if he had to, that he was trained to do so, and had performed the act dozens of times before. The sound of the baying rebel horde grew louder still, the first shots from crude, improvised firearms rippling up and down the front rank. Stray shots zipped through the air and impacted on the rockcrete chamber wall, making Barra flinch.

  Commissar Flint didn’t even blink.

  ‘Barra…’ Skane hissed.

  ‘Frag!’ Barras exclaimed. ‘Okay, we’re coming,’ he said to Flint.

  The commissar jerked his bolt pistol to the left and fired. The body of a fleeing penal trooper tumbled to the ground, his back blown open in a ragged mess. The fool had tried to flee under the cover of the confrontation, but Flint had seen every trick in the book and acted accordingly. Flint lowered the smoking weapon and returned his gaze to the other man.

  ‘That was your last warning,’ he said, loud enough for the whole group of would-be deserters to hear. ‘For all of you.’

  ‘Get them together,’ said Flint. ‘And if any give you trouble, you know what to do. They’ve had their warning. Understood?’

  Skane nodded grimly and turned his attention back to the onrushing mob. The sight reminded Flint of the death-wave tactics used by the Gethsemane rebels, each bellowing with incoherent anger as they all but tripped over one another in their thirst to close the gap and descend upon their foe. But these were no hate-fuelled fanatics. These were simple convicts, but they appeared to have descended to the level of mindless savages.

  Flint knew he had scant time to issue his orders. ‘Move back the way we came, Vahn first, by squads,’ he said, his eyes fixed on the nearest group of rebels which was now closing to within five hundred metres. ‘Bukin, you and I are leading the rearguard.’

  And that was all Flint had time to order as the first of the rebels closed towards the effective range of the lascarbines carried by the penal troopers. The first las-bolts lanced outwards, slamming into the horde and sending up puffs of red blood mist as rebels staggered and fell. More blasts spat out, felling more rebels, but those who followed simply trampled over the dead and the wounded alike, the horde’s momentum unaffected.

  ‘Move out,’ Flint shouted to Vahn, clapping him on the shoulder. The penal trooper and his squad were gone in a second.

  ‘Skane!’ Flint called. ‘Go!’ The Elysian’s squad dashed off along the wall close on the heels of Vahn’s group. Flint’s eyes narrowed as he watched Trooper Barra move out but he had other things to worry about.

  ‘Becka,’ Flint shouted to the next group along. ‘Go!’

  The Savlar made what Flint assumed was intended as a salute and shoved the nearest of the group she was leading, pushing the man after Skane’s squad. Flint almost chuckled as he caught the gist of the curse words she was snarling at her squad to get them moving. Almost.

  ‘Stank!’ Flint barked to the last group of penal troopers. Stank’s squad was pouring a torrent of disciplined fire into the oncoming horde, which Flint judged to be closing on four hundred metres with no signs of slowing up. ‘You’re next, move!’

  The troopers of Rotten’s mob squeezed off one more burst each, then stood and dashed off after Becka’s squad.

  ‘That leaves just us, sir,’ Bukin shouted over the combined roar of the rebel horde and the crash of thunder, slamming a fresh twenty-round magazine into his Mark III. ‘And them,’ he jerked his head towards Gruss and his squad of clavigers.

  ‘They can look out for themselves,’ Flint snarled, now entirely distrustful of the Claviger-Primaris and his motivations. Frankly, Flint couldn’t care less if Gruss left or not.

  Nevertheless, Gruss and his wardens were heavily armed and armoured and they knew the territory well. In addition, they appeared to have knowledge of hidden security measures and that made Flint distinctly uncomfortable. Evidently, he would have to suffer the clavigers’ presence a while longer.

  With the rebel horde closing, Flint decided it was time to be somewhere else. He bodily pushed Bukin forward to get the squad moving. Though Flint’s small force was massively outnumbered by the horde of rebels he knew he had one major advantage – the small size made it easy to outmanoeuvre the enemy and to lose them in amongst the clusters of oversized machine plant. The low light conditions and the mist and rain made that objective easier too, and within minutes Flint’s squads were gaining ground, each stopping to cover the one following on behind in a classic display of light infantry tactics that Flint knew his schola progenium drill abbot would have been proud of.

  Within ten minutes Flint’s force was pushing south across the carceri chamber floor and the
storm raging in the eaves kilometres overhead was steadily growing. Sheet lightning seethed deep within the boiling, grey clouds and the rain lashed down in a violent torrent. Flint maintained his position at the rear of the column, ensuring that no stragglers got separated from the force and keeping an eye on the pursuers even as the horde lost coherency and broke down into dozens of smaller groups. The rebels were scouring the carceri chamber for the interlopers, bawling their frustration as loud as the storm raging above. The screams and cries echoed weirdly through the charged air, reverberating from the massive engine casings and towering manifolds strewn across the chamber floor. Several times, one of those groups closed on the rearmost squads and Flint had to lead vicious counter-attacks to slay the pursuers before their presence was betrayed to the bulk of the rebel horde. Flint’s power sword hissed and spat in the downpour, the blood of his enemies washing away with the rain each time his squad clashed with the savage rebels.

  It was only when the column had finally put a kilometre between its rearguard units and the pursuers that Flint had could take stock of the situation. An hour into the pursuit the storm reached an unprecedented severity, rivalling violent and natural atmospheric phenomena Flint had witnessed on a variety of worlds. Ducking into the cover of an overhanging conduit to speak to his aide, he had to shout to make himself heard.

  ‘We need to get through to regiment!’ he bellowed into Kohlz’s ear as the two took temporary shelter from the driving downpour and the relentless pursuit. ‘Have you got the carrier signal back yet?’ he said.

  Kohlz hefted the heavy vox-set from his back and set it down at his feet, peeling back the canvas cover to reveal its controls. For several long minutes he worked its dials and levers, the horn pressed tight to his ear and his rain-slicked face a mask of concentration.

  After another minute, Flint said, ‘Well? Come on Kohlz, we really don’t have the time…’

  ‘I’m not getting a thing, sir,’ said Kohlz. ‘I don’t know if it’s the storm, the installation’s structure or if we’re being jammed, but I’m sorry, commissar. I can’t get a signal. I think we’re on our own…’

  TWELVE

  Rearguard

  For three gruelling hours, Flint led a tense rearguard action against the pursuing rebels, rallying troops verging on panic but stopping the retreat turning into a full-scale rout on several occasions. Flint saw no choice but to lead his force back through the carceri chamber, which seemed somehow twice the size it had on the way in, towards the insertion point. If he couldn’t call in the location of the rebels’ stronghold, there was no point in doing anything other than fight back to the regiment, but the commissar raged inside that the mission was unravelling with each passing minute.

  Though the retreat was conducted with commendable discipline, Flint knew from experience that many of his troops were on the verge of collapse. Most had been fatigued even before battle had erupted and the pace of the retreat had been necessarily relentless. To slow up for just a moment would have invited disaster and Flint and the provosts had been forced to motivate the troops to keep moving and fighting by every means at their disposal.

  Thirty minutes into the retreat, Flint’s force had taken its first casualty. A blunderbuss had been fired from a gantry high above and by sheer fluke found a target. One of Stank’s troopers, a man by the name of Skelt, stumbled and fell, his companions assuming he’d tripped over some piece of the debris scattered across the rockcrete floor. Turning back to aid his companion, Stank had cursed loudly when he saw the wound torn in Skelt’s neck. The man had died before Stank could help him, the blood washed away across the ground in the torrential downpour.

  Less than five minutes later a dozen rebels leaped down from a gantry that Vahn’s squad had been passing under, swarming down the heavy chains hanging from the walkway to splash heavily to the wet ground. Without even breaking stride, Vahn opened fire as he charged the enemy, unleashing a burst of semi-automatic lascarbine fire that cut down three of the snarling rebels before a brutal melee erupted. As the last of the rebels fell dead to the floor, Vahn saw that two of his own squad had fallen too and three more had sustained wounds that would slow them all down as they pressed back towards the extraction point. Vahn and the unwounded members of his squad helped their fellows on, refusing to abandon them to the murderous attentions of the pursuing rebels.

  Flint himself had been forced to draw his sword on several occasions, and each time he had used the opportunity to provide an example to the men and women under his command. It was a commissar’s duty to lead from the front, to do exactly what the troops were being asked to do, and to watch for signs of doubt or cowardice. On one occasion a group of rebel convicts had emerged from an oily sump Flint’s force had been dashing past, one of them catching hold of a penal trooper’s ankle and pulling the man down into the black depths. Even as the waters thrashed and foamed blood red, a dozen more rebels emerged, their bodies coated in oil that glinted every colour in the spectrum as it ran to the ground. Flint beheaded the first with a sweep of his power sword and was gratified to see the body erupt in blue flame as the sword’s generator touched off the flammable liquid clinging to the man’s form. Shouting a line from the Adoration of the Techno-Magi, Flint unleashed a roundhouse kick that propelled the flaming body through the air and sent it plummeting into the chemical sump. A moment later, the entire lot went up in a raging column of blue flame, consuming those rebels yet to emerge, as well as what remained of the penal trooper. The rest of the ambushers were cut down easily as they broke and fled, cut-off from their escape route.

  Though the ignition of the chemical sump had slaughtered untold numbers of the ambushers, the resulting conflagration had provided a beacon, to which countless more were drawn. Howling atavistic war cries or screeching ululating cries of delirium and bloodlust, the rebel convicts pressed in from all directions, forcing Flint to cut his way through a tide that threatened to drag him down from behind.

  When a trio of Dictrix walkers surged forward through the mob, the rebels scattered lest they got caught in the lashing attack of its neural whip. Flint knew there was no way his small force could face three of the hideous machines, and certainly not with thousands of screaming maniacs closing on them all the while. The Emperor was surely watching, Flint saw, as the walkers mistimed their attacks and caught dozens of their own compatriots in their arcing whip strikes. Those struck convulsed where they fell, and there were so many of them that the walkers were forced to wade through a carpet of twitching flesh and bone in their desperation to close with the fleeing Imperials. Incensed by the sight, more of the ground-pounding rebels turned on the walker pilots, swarming up the machines’ flanks and dragging the crews out by force. The last Flint saw of the machines was a pilot being torn into at least six separate chunks of meat by the baying, vengeful horde. As if to confirm the God-Emperor’s benefaction, no others among the enemy appeared able to re-crew the walkers, and with the horde in utter disarray, Flint’s small force was able to escape.

  Three hours in the mist and rain up ahead slowly thinned to reveal the kilometre high precipice of the southern wall. The column finally closed on the armoured portal that led through to the sluice chamber with its stinking weirs and raging torrents flooding in from the overloaded sinks every twelve minutes. Part of him was relieved to reach that milestone on the march back to the extraction point, but another, the greater part, was almost consumed with anger at the thought that the mission might be compromised by something as simple as the inability to transmit the rebel’s location to the main force of the regiment.

  But, as the ragged column approached the far end of Carceri Resurecti and Flint plotted the next phase of the forced march, he recalled something of the details of the structure, revealed to him by Claviger-Primaris Gruss the last time they were there…

  Distracted by his chain of thought Flint almost missed the group of rebels emerging from the ventilation gate in the side of a huge, corroded manifold. Karasinda shouted
a warning and Flint dove to the left, only just avoiding the first of the shotgun blasts that hammered through the air towards him.

  A moment later, Flint, Kohlz and Karasinda had thrown themselves into the shelter of a collapsed actuator housing, the rebels’ fire hammering loudly into the metal and sending up a shower of angry sparks.

  ‘We’re cut-off, sir!’ Kohlz shouted over the sound of shotgun pellets pounding the other side of the housing. ‘And we’re last in line!’

  Karasinda raised her lasgun to her shoulder and leaned calmly sideways out of the cover. She squeezed off three aimed shots and ducked back as a torrent of return fire scythed through the space she’d just vacated.

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ Flint said, slamming a fresh magazine into his bolt pistol. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Ready, sir,’ Karasinda replied, her voice as cold as her eyes.

  ‘Kohlz?’ said Flint, seeing that his aide was reaching the limits of his courage and endurance. Another shotgun blast hammered into the cover and Flint judged by the angle that the rebels were working their way around to the left. They would soon be in a position to unleash a lethal torrent of enfilading fire. ‘I need you alive for this, got it?’

  Kohlz swallowed hard and nodded, resolving not to let Flint down. ‘Got it, sir,’ he said, fumbling for his lasgun.

  ‘I’m serious,’ Flint growled. ‘I’ve got a plan, a way to call the regiment in. But I need you functional. Understood?’

  Kohlz saw that Flint was serious and the message got through.

  ‘On three, then,’ said the commissar, patting his aide on the shoulder and nodding to Karasinda. ‘Three!’ he said, and dove out of the cover on the opposite flank the rebels were heading in on.

  Karasinda’s lip curled as she unleashed a burst of covering fire, catching one rebel in the gut and sending the rest diving for cover. ‘Go,’ she told Kohlz calmly, then followed as he dashed after the commissar.