Commissar

by Andy Hoare

  As Kohlz searched furiously for a viable channel, a sense of dread settled over him just as Solomon knelt suddenly and raised his sniper rifle to his shoulder to squint down its scope. At first nothing was visible apart from the irregular grey surface; pipes, vents and slab-like projections jutting from it at seemingly random angles. Then something moved behind a ten-metre tall funnel.

  ‘Solomon?’ said Kohlz. ‘What is it? What have you seen?’

  Solomon didn’t answer at first, his only reaction a tightening of his stance as his aim jerked left and tracked a target that Kohlz couldn’t see. The Jopalli’s finger tightened on the trigger and the weapon bucked against his grip, its report swallowed up by the howling wind.

  ‘Eight,’ Solomon mouthed.

  The air filled with light and smoke as the firing line unleashed another salvo into the breach, forcing the mutant-hybrid-thing back once more. Flint added the weight of his bolt pistol to the fusillade, firing a well-placed mass-reactive shell into the centre of a howling face that appeared briefly at the wound in the gate. The bolt exploded with a shower of blood and gristle. The enemy forced temporarily back for what felt like the tenth time in as many minutes, Flint ejected the spent magazine from his pistol and slammed a fresh one into place.

  The platform was a scene of fevered activity as those warriors not assigned to the firing line struggled to construct a makeshift barricade from the flotsam and jetsam gathered from the churning sluice channels. Initially, Flint hadn’t been especially confident that the work detail would locate any materials of any great use but his hopes had stirred when the first of the detail returned dragging great lengths of heavy boarding behind them. Though not as tough as the flak board used to construct temporary field fortifications, those the troops had found were nonetheless useful enough. They must have been used in the fabrication of holding pens somewhere else in the complex. The plan was for the firing line to remain in place as long as possible while the makeshift barricade was erected behind them, and then to fall back to its cover once the breach in the armoured hatch was torn so wide that the troops couldn’t hold the rebels back any longer.

  It might just work, Flint thought to himself, so long as Kohlz could get the message out to the regiment and they could hang on long enough for help to arrive. The barricade was taking shape, a mass of misshapen boards and ragged stanchions lashed together with random lengths of cabling and barbed wire.

  With a howl of tortured metal the mutant monstrosity was back once again, its arms, now bloody and scorched from the mass of las-fire they had absorbed, reaching through the ragged tear. The mighty hands braced against the jagged sides and pushed outwards as Bukin bellowed for another salvo. The short distance between the firing line and the breach filled with bright darts of las-fire and billowing smoke, forcing the arms to retract as the mutant howled in rage and pain. It was driven off, but the breach was that little bit wider. Very soon, it would be wide enough to allow the rebels to press through.

  ‘Bukin!’ Flint shouted. ‘Hold the line.’

  Dashing across the platform to the edge of the uppermost weir, Flint came across a group of five men struggling to haul a large metal crate up towards the barricade. The waters were strewn with all manner of debris, including the dark forms of dead things looming under the oily surface. He made a mental note to ensure every member of the infiltration force was treated for contamination when, or indeed if, they made it back to the regiment.

  Another impact struck against the hatch and Flint stepped down towards the weir, striding knee-deep into the luminescent liquid. He grabbed hold of the leading edge of the huge metal container and added his strength to the effort to drag it from the water. In another minute or so Flint and the men had hauled the crate from the weir, dragged it across the rockcrete platform and lodged it at the end of the barricade.

  ‘That’ll have to do it,’ Flint said breathlessly. As if in confirmation the hatchway shook and the entire door buckled inward violently. The piston-like bolt snapped in two and the separate parts spun off across the rockcrete floor.

  ‘Bukin!’ Flint shouted. ‘Get ready to pull the firing line back. They’ll be through any moment.’

  As Bukin took his place behind the firing line, Flint located Dragoon Lhor and his assistant. ‘Sir?’ said Lhor, his face still black with the backwash from his flamer.

  ‘How much fuel do you have left, Lhor?’ Flint asked. Flint suspected Lhor would be sleeping with his heavy flamer by his side from now on so attached to the weapon had he become. ‘I may have a job for you.’

  Lhor frowned as he replied, ‘Not a lot, sir. One good blast in this flask, then one more load before I’m out.’ Lhor’s second was now carrying just a single fuel flask, the tank strapped to his back ready to be swapped out when Lhor had exhausted the one he was using. The two looked distinctly disappointed that their role as flame troopers might soon be ended with the last fuel flask.

  ‘Understood,’ said Flint. ‘I want you forward, covering the retreat when it goes off. One blast through the breach at the exact moment Bukin orders the line back. Got it?’

  Lhor nodded grimly as he hefted his flamer. ‘Got it, sir,’ he said before the two headed off towards their station. Flint drew his bolt pistol and braced it against the parapet of the barricade as another impact struck the hatch, scattering shards of metal and rockcrete across the space before the portal.

  ‘Bukin!’ Flint yelled over the tearing of metal and the roaring of the rebel convicts. ‘Stand by!’

  ‘Twelve!’ Solomon counted off his latest kill inbetween gusts of howling wind. The crack of his sniper rifle was whipped away by another gale, but Kohlz was focused on the console of his vox-set.

  ‘Repeat!’ he shouted over the howling wind. ‘Call sign Crimson Eagle to last sender,’ he shouted. ‘Repeat last, over.’

  The earpiece churned with static and howled with painful feedback, but Kohlz was sure he could hear a voice in amongst the hash. The console’s dials indicated someone was transmitting, but the structure of the installation, the atmospheric conditions and no doubt the effect of the complex’s internal jamming nodes were combining to interfere with the signal so badly he could barely keep a lock on the transmitting station.

  ‘…aquila, over.’ the voice said in a moment of relative quiet, the background static receding for a few seconds. ‘Repeat, authenticate aquila, over.’

  Thank the Emperor, Kohlz mouthed, fumbling to pull a small tactical data-slate from a pocket inside his coat. Invoking the authentication key, he quickly scanned the code table and identified the proper response. ‘Authenticate Beati, Nine, over,’ Kohlz transmitted.

  The channel howled and churned as he waited for a response, barely registering that both Solomon and Stank were now rapid-firing down at the chamber roof. Finally, the response came back, ‘Confirm authentication. Kohlz?’ the voice continued. ‘That you?’

  Kohlz smiled as he realised he was talking to Corporal Drass, a well-liked member of the signals platoon.

  A shot whined through the air nearby and he ducked instinctively. ‘Drass?’ he said urgently. ‘Flint wants the regiment forward, as soon as possible. We’ve located the enemy stronghold, over.’

  Another shot whined through the air as a dozen or more figures darted across the roof from cover to cover as they closed on the chimney spire. Solomon tracked the nearest enemy but he made cover before he could fire.

  ‘No need, Kohlz,’ Drass replied, the channel fizzing and popping as he spoke. ‘Graf Aleksis got bored waiting for you. He’s ordered the entire regiment forward already, over.’

  What? thought Kohlz, his mind racing. That wasn’t the plan. ‘Repeat last, Drass,’ he replied. ‘The regiment’s already inbound?’

  ‘Not just inbound, Kohlz,’ said Drass. ‘We’re deploying now. That’s why this signal’s so poor. We’re not in the open wastes, we’re already breaking in, over.’

  A bark of mad laughter came unbidden to Kohlz’s lips as he finally realis
ed what had happened. Aleksis, Emperor bless the old bastard, must have got tired waiting for the infiltration force to report back and ordered the main force forward. It was against the plan, which stated flat out that if Flint’s force couldn’t identify the rebel stronghold then the regiment wouldn’t be going anywhere. Thank the Emperor for gakked up plans, Kohlz thought…

  ‘Understood,’ Kohlz replied. ‘Transmitting our current coordinates now, over.’

  Kohlz sat back as the vox-set churned out the location of the infiltration force, daring to hope that things might not end quite so badly as it had looked like they might.

  At the edge of the platform, Solomon’s sniper rifle barked again. ‘Lucky thirteen,’ the Jopalli said, oblivious to anything other than the righteous slaying of the Emperor’s enemies.

  ‘Firing line!’ Flint bellowed over the howling of the rebels. ‘Prepare to fall back!’

  The mutant battering ram had torn a great gash in the armaplas hatch and the entire door was on the verge of being forced inwards. ‘Lhor!’ Flint shouted, raising his power sword above his head. ‘Now!’

  On Flint’s order, Lhor dashed forward with Hannen close behind and took position beside the breach. Raising the flamer towards the wound in the armoured hatch, Lhor braced himself as he looked back towards the commissar. Flint brought his power sword down in a chopping motion, and Lhor opened up.

  The Vostroyan angled his fire so that the stream of incandescent promethium arced through the breach and exploded against the first object it struck. That object, by the Emperor’s beneficence, turned out to be the mutant monstrosity. The thing bellowed like a wounded bull grox but instead of going down it charged forward as if the pain enveloping its senses drove it on with redoubled determination. The breach now resembled a gateway to some hellish dimension, a flaming portal through which the screams and howls of the damned competed with the raging of infernal conflagrations and the rending of metal. The flaming mutant thing braced its arms against the inner edges of the breach and pushed outwards with every ounce of its strength, its muscles cording and its vile face twisting with agony and rage.

  Lhor and Hannen staggered back as the huge hatch finally buckled and gave way explosively as the two halves crashed inwards.

  ‘Get clear!’ Flint bellowed to the two dragoons. ‘Firing line, back!’

  Damn it, Flint seethed, cursing the mutant’s seemingly preternatural vigour. Lhor’s burst of heavy flamer fire should have reduced it to greasy ash, yet still it came on. And now the gate was open and the hordes beyond were massing to press through.

  Lhor shrugged the spent fuel flask from his back and the two men bolted. The firing line was up and moving too, the warriors pausing every ten metres or so to turn, kneel and fire a quick burst of semi-automatic las-fire into the mutant and the howling convicts around it. Flint’s bolt pistol barked as he added his fire, the sound almost swallowed up by the enraged bawling of the mutant.

  The creature staggered under the weight of fire, its torso twisting as rounds hammered into it, but still it came on. In a moment it had clambered over the broken remains of the armaplas hatch and was finally able to draw itself to its full height. The beast was as wide at the shoulder as it was tall, standing almost three metres at the hunched-over shoulders. Like the creature Flint had encountered earlier, its massively overlarge, flame-wreathed arms were augmented with metal pistons, cabling and rebars, all adding to its already unnatural strength. Its torso was a mass of augmented muscle and its head appeared to be that of a man, its features dominated by a pugnacious brow, heavy jaw and small, porcine eyes. Those eyes were alight with uncomprehending, feral pain and entirely devoid of even a glimmer of lucidity.

  Flint fired again, the bolt hammering into the creature’s collarbone and exploding to leave a smoking crater but otherwise failing to slow its progress as it stumbled forward into the open. There was a roar and dozens of rebels pressed through the smoking portal, spreading out and charging on even in the face of a wall of concentrated las and shotgun fire. Dozens were gunned down before travelling more than a few metres forward. Dozens more clambered over the still-writhing forms of the dead and the dying.

  As the last of the firing line vaulted over the barricade and took their positions behind it, Flint realised that something drastic had to be done. Things looked desperate, but he’d been in such seemingly hopeless positions before. Visions of the Fall of Nova Tellus flashed through his mind, the final days of that epic campaign etched in his mind forever. The razing of the shrineworld of Volupia had taught him that faith was the greatest weapon that any servant of the Emperor had in his arsenal. As a commissar, Flint knew well how to wield it.

  ‘Warriors of the Emperor!’ Flint bellowed, drawing himself to his full height so that all could see and hear him. ‘Our Lord on Terra watches! Deliverance is at hand! We need but stand, and fight!’

  The troops at the barricade set their weapons to their shoulders and redoubled their rate of fire, a wall of las-bolts splitting the air and scything down rebels without mercy. But the mutant beast staggered on, its every step shaking the rockcrete platform. The first glimmer of doubt appeared in the warriors’ eyes.

  ‘We fight for the Emperor!’ Flint bellowed over the staccato crack of massed las-fire rippling up and down the barricade. ‘We fight for Vostroya!’ Knowing that only a portion of the force were from that world and were instead former convicts of Alpha Penitentia, each from a different world, Flint added, ‘We fight for deliverance!’

  ‘Deliverance!’ Bukin echoed, bellowing over the cacophony of war.

  ‘Deliverance!’ three-dozen more voices echoed Flint’s war cry, the light of zealous duty glinting in their eyes and chasing away any doubt.

  The mutant beast staggered to a halt, its imbecilic eyes glowering at the barricade. They came to rest on Flint and its drooling mouth twisted into a cruel sneer. Clearly, the mutant thing had taken Flint’s war cry for a challenge, and one that it fully intended to answer.

  The beast shrugged its massive shoulders, flexing its muscles even as the last of the burning promethium guttered out. Its skin was a blistered, bubbling mass, burned away in many places to reveal raw glistening muscle as well as tarnished steel beneath. Its blackened form gave off creeping tendrils of smoke as it moved. The stink of burned flesh was so powerful it stung the back of Flint’s throat.

  Then, it charged.

  Flint only barely registered one of his subordinates, probably Bukin, bellowing for all weapons to be brought to bear on the mutant as it charged across the rockcrete towards Flint. As its momentum increased it lowered its shoulders like a drunken ogryn, bearing down on its rival, scores of black las-wounds appearing across its form as it came on. The commissar barely had time to react but in the few seconds he guessed he had before the beast flattened him he knew he had to draw it away from the barricade. If he couldn’t, it would smash the entire structure aside and the battle against the remainder of the horde would be lost.

  ‘Come on then!’ Flint shouted directly at the mutant as he leapt back from the barricade. A massively oversized arm swung out to cleave the air where he had stood but a moment before, a trail of smoke stinking of burning flesh and metal billowing in its wake.

  The beast roared and bent double as its tormentor evaded it. Using all four limbs as pistons, it leaped into the air and came down on top of the barricade, warriors scattering in shock as it stood there swinging its mighty arms left and right. One man was too slow, his head crushed down into his shoulders by a brutal overhead impact while another was caught by a swinging arm and propelled twenty metres through the air to land in the glowing oily waters of the uppermost level of the weir.

  Seeing the flailing warrior splash into the water gave Flint an idea and he turned and ran for the water’s edge, yelling for the other troops to keep up their fusillade as he went. Las-fire strobed behind as he pounded the platform, the ground trembling as the mutant leapt from the barricade and powered after him.

 
; Flint turned at the water’s edge and raised his power sword. The mutant slowed to a halt, thinking it had him cornered, but the ground was still trembling and Flint knew why. He swung his power sword in contemptuous sweeps, baiting the mutant to come onward.

  The beast fixed him with its beady, vacant eyes, and took a step forward, clenching and unclenching its fists as if imagining them wrapped around Flint’s neck.

  ‘Monstrosity!’ Flint snarled, comparing this creature to the one he had faced previously. He’d thought that one superhumanly strong and unnaturally overgrown. This thing before him was twice as muscular and larger still. It was a grotesque anathema of the human form, and his heart swelled with hatred as it advanced. ‘You have no right to exist in the Emperor’s Imperium,’ he shouted over the increasingly loud rushing of the waters at his back. ‘I condemn you, beast!’

  The creature bent forward and roared in Flint’s face, its breath a wind as noisome as the chemical waters of the sluice channel. It took one step forward, the rockcrete ground shaking, and Flint’s blade lashed out, scoring a wound only a hair’s-breadth wide, but a hand’s span deep, in its arm. The beast squealed, the sound quite innocuous coming from such a massive bulk of muscle and flesh, then lashed out with its other arm.

  Flint sidestepped, his ankles suspended over the precipice as the waters rose. The weirs were filling rapidly as the sluice channel flooded and the roar of an oncoming tsunami filled Flint’s ears.

  The commissar ducked as another punch drove through the air over his head, the mutant surging forward until it too was right at the water’s edge. Flint sprang sideways and the mutant twisted to follow his movement. In that instant Flint had the beast exactly where he wanted it. Powering forwards, he rolled under the creature’s grasping arms and as he came up behind it, cut savagely behind with a backhanded swing of his power sword. The blade cut deep into the mutant’s hamstrings, flesh vaporising and cables sparking as both parted.

  The monstrosity roared, arching its back as its legs gave way beneath it. ‘Now!’ Flint bellowed as he dove clear.