Commissar

by Andy Hoare

  Reaching a prearranged phase line, the entire wave of Chimeras and other armoured vehicles slowed and by companies turned back to face the way they had come. The only vehicle that didn’t halt was Flint’s, which carried himself, his aide, Vahn and the best of his penal troopers. The driver followed his orders to press on for the towering weapons control platform at all costs. Flint holstered his bolt pistol and dropped through his hatch into the Chimera’s red-lit troop bay.

  A dozen faces looked back at him, their expressions grim but determined.

  ‘Ready?’ he shouted over the roar of the Chimera’s engines.

  ‘Go!’ Vahn barked as the Chimera’s assault ramp slammed into the ground. An instant later, Becka, Solomon, Vendell, Skane, Stank and the rest were charging out of the vehicle’s troop bay and into the rain and the all-consuming darkness outside. At a nod from Commissar Flint, Vahn followed his fellow penal troopers out into the open area beneath the target platform. Weapons control, the rebel colonel’s seat of power and, so Flint had ordered, the site of his execution.

  The air was alive with unreal etheric energy, seething arcs chasing up and down the metal structure of the weapons control platform. It was as if the tower was the very epicentre of the storm, though it was far from calm. The air was so charged the hair on the back of Vahn’s neck stood on end and his skin itched maddeningly.

  ‘Move!’ Vahn bellowed, knowing they had no time to waste. Already, the line of Chimeras was opening up again, pouring fire into the raging horde, which had changed direction and was surging back towards the regiment’s lines. Within minutes, what had been the horde’s rear rank and was now its leading edge would crash against the Imperial Guard lines and the slaughter would begin afresh. The 77th was wreaking bloody ruin on the mutants but it couldn’t stand forever.

  Vahn’s squad rushed the base of the control tower, rebel convicts emerging from amongst its girders and conduits. Becka was by his side the whole way, an avenging angel of scorn and fury. The penal troopers opened fire, discharging carbines from the hip as they ran for the metal steps leading upwards. A snarling brute of a man emerged from the shadows and lunged straight for the commissar. Karasinda, who Vahn hadn’t even realised was nearby, put a las-bolt through the rebel’s left eye without breaking stride. A dozen more rebels were cut down within seconds, and soon Vahn’s squad was pounding up the open metal stairwell, carbines raised into the darkness above as they advanced.

  His heart racing, Vahn mounted the steps, Becka just a step behind as the tread plate rang at their passing. Commissar Flint was close behind, his power sword drawn and a prayer that could be heard even above the roar of gunfire and rain on his lips. Vahn and Becka took the stairs three at a time, the need to end this madness all but consuming them. Vahn’s hatred for those who had led the uprising drove him on despite his fatigue until finally, he and his fellow penal troopers mounted the last few steps and charged out onto the carceri control platform.

  Gale force wind buffeted Vahn as he stepped out onto the open space, rain lashing his face mercilessly. Squinting against the onslaught he realised the platform was far higher than he had imagined from the base, rearing above the sea of mutant flesh far below. It was long and narrow, the far end obscured by the rain and a mass of machinery. Weapons control stations lined the central space, but all were long dead, their machine-spirits extinct and none of their original custodians alive to operate them. He cast around for his target with his carbine raised and a figure appeared out of the rain in the centre of the platform, its features obscured by shadow.

  No, Vahn realised. Not by shadow. By a blank mask.

  ‘Gruss…’ Becka hissed in warning, the other penal troopers loosing their own curses as they emerged from the stairwell and spread out behind Vahn.

  The Claviger-Primaris stood defiantly in the centre of the wind- and rain-lashed control platform but made no reply. Instead, he raised his right hand and levelled his snub-nosed plasma pistol past Vahn to a target behind the penal trooper.

  ‘Commissar Flint,’ Gruss said, his voice amplified above the raging storm by the phonocasters mounted in his black hardshell armour. ‘Leave this place now. You hold no authority here.’

  Bitterness threatening to overwhelm him, Vahn looked sideways as Flint stepped up to stand beside him and Becka. ‘What…’ he started, before Flint interrupted him.

  ‘Gruss!’ Flint shouted over the wind and the rain. ‘Stand aside. It’s him I’ve come for. He’s Guard, and this is Commissariat business.’

  Flint stood his ground even though the Claviger-Primaris had the plasma gun pointed straight at his head. In truth, Flint didn’t expect the chief warden of Alpha Penitentia to surrender Colonel Strannik, but he needed time to formulate a plan.

  ‘How is this any of your business?’ Gruss spat, his pistol tracking Flint as he edged sideways to get a better view of the figure that lurked at the end of the platform some distance behind the Claviger-Primaris. ‘Last chance, commissar,’ he said, jerking his pistol for emphasis.

  ‘You don’t want to do this, Gruss,’ Flint said, stalling for the last few seconds of time. ‘Your duty is to the Imperium, not to this corrupted clan.’

  ‘What clan…?’ Flint heard Vahn stammer from behind him. ‘Corrupted…?’

  ‘The Anhalz Techtriarchs of Vostroya,’ Flint growled. ‘And all their damned progeny.’ With that he made a sweeping gesture that took in the entire floor of the carceri chamber and the thousands of abominations swarming across it. ‘A noble clan I’m sure,’ he continued. ‘But one with more than a few secrets, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘All you had to do,’ Gruss snarled, his voice distorted by his armour’s systems, ‘All you had to do was let us deal with it…’

  Flint saw what would happen next and he dove suddenly to his right. An instant later a searing ball of plasma screamed by overhead, the leather of his storm coat’s back blistering so intense was the heat. He struck the metal of the platform’s surface right at its edge and for an instant was staring straight down towards a mass of thrashing, mutated limbs as the horde crashed against the 77th’s lines far below.

  A las-bolt whined by as Karasinda opened fire on Gruss. Flint rolled back from the edge of the platform and leapt to his feet, drawing his power blade as he did so. Gruss was moving back along the thin arm of the platform towards a mass of weapons control stations, writhing cables and unidentifiable machinery at its end. In just a few seconds the chief warden’s plasma pistol would be recharged and he would unleash another potentially devastating shot. This time, Flint doubted he would miss.

  It was now or never. Flint raised his power sword and pressed along the increasingly narrow arm of the control platform, the wind and rain threatening to pitch him into the ocean of mutated blasphemy raging far below. He heard the unmistakable high-pitched whine of the plasma pistol reaching full power. A shadow emerged from behind the mass of machinery at the very end of the arm, and Flint ducked.

  At that moment, the driving rain redoubled in force and Flint lost his footing, slamming to the surface of the platform, which by now was little more than a narrow gantry. He hit the metal so hard the air was driven from his lungs. Grasping desperately for purchase he almost lost his grip on his power sword, catching it an instant before it could drop into the chaos of the battle far below.

  Vahn pressed after the commissar, edging out onto the narrow arm at the exact moment the commissar fell hard to the surface. In that instant Vahn was sure Flint was dead, but somehow the commissar kept hold. Gruss had fled towards the end of the arm but as the penal trooper dashed forwards with his carbine raised and ready he saw the Claviger-Primaris appear from behind the machinery at the very end of the arm.

  His plasma pistol screeching, Gruss sighted on the prone form of the commissar. Vahn snarled with savage battle lust – Gruss hadn’t seen him. Snapping his aim to track the Claviger-Primaris even as his finger closed on the plasma pistol’s trigger, Vahn opened fire.

  The las-bo
lt caught Gruss in the right shoulder and spun him around. The incandescent burst of raw plasma lanced through the rain into the darkness overhead. Gruss staggered backwards, fighting to keep his footing on the narrow arm.

  Vahn lined up a second shot, determined to finish this hated enemy who was to him and his fellow penal troopers the symbol of all he had suffered throughout his incarceration in Alpha Penitentia. But his aim was spoiled as Commissar Flint surged to his feet in a blur of trailing leather storm coat.

  Vahn cursed as he sidestepped. He hoped to get a better angle but Flint and Gruss were already engaged in deadly combat. Flint’s blade swept in hard but Gruss stepped back deftly despite his wound, kicking out as he did so and almost catching Flint’s knee. Had the attack struck home, Flint would have been forced to the deck but it was a feint. The Claviger-Primaris was attempting to keep Flint at a distance.

  ‘By the authority vested in me by–’ Flint’s voice boomed, before he was interrupted.

  ‘You have no authority here!’ Gruss cursed, the pain of his wound evident in his voice. ‘Only Strannik!’

  ‘Then you add the sin of idolatry to that of treachery,’ Flint cursed, advancing as Gruss staggered backwards with one hand over his wound. ‘The Emperor is our creator, our lord, our father and our judge. I am the instrument of his judgement!’

  Flint drew back his power sword, its edge white hot and hissing in the driving rain and swept it around and down in a blinding arc. The Claviger-Primaris appeared to stand transfixed for one frozen moment. Then his body came apart in an explosive welter of blood and gore tumbling the way Flint’s power sword had almost fallen but an instant earlier.

  But Flint didn’t pause to savour his victory. Before Gruss’s remains had even struck the ground far below he was advancing once more. Soon, he was closing on the very end of the arm protruding out over the battle.

  At the end was a nest of tangled, pulsating conduits and rust-streaked machinery that must once have been the command pulpit for the surface-to-orbit defence battery that had so nearly downed Flint’s drop-ship. It was adorned with the remains of its previous operators and custodians, and in amongst the gristly flesh-and-bone throne, was Colonel Strannik.

  Flint had known his enemy would exhibit some form of mutation but he could never have anticipated the utter physical blasphemy that confronted him in the pulpit at the end of the platform’s arm. The colonel was a mass of pulsating flesh and distended limbs, his sagging body supported by a mechanical contraption of metal legs and callipers. Folds of stretched flesh were partially clad in the filth-encrusted remnants of a uniform, which Flint recognised as the remains of that of a regimental commander of the Vostroyan Firstborn. It was the same as the uniform worn by Graf Aleksis.

  The colonel’s face was a sack of purple, writhing flesh and his cranium was hideously distended as if his skull was struggling to contain the grey matter squirming within. The hideous familial resemblance to the mutants below was horribly plain to see. Flint was assailed by a wave of hate and nausea as he came to a halt, the colonel fixing him with eyes plainly touched by the soul-searing madness of the warp. Flint knew in that instant that the creature before him was some form of terrible patriarch, the sire and the master of the thousands of mutants below. Worse, he was exerting some form of control over them, their screams of anger and bloodlust hideously synchronised with the sickening pulse of his swollen cranium.

  One of the colonel’s distended, claw-like hands was hovering over a control rune set into an arm of his blasphemous throne. Fighting waves of madness, Flint focused on the rune and a nearby pict-slate, his mind struggling to interpret its significance through the palpable aura of warp-witchery.

  ‘Emperor’s man…’ the colonel sneered through horribly swollen lips, his eyes bulging as if inflated by corpse gas. ‘You’re too late…’

  Flint’s vision swam as darting, half-seen forms from stygian depths of the Sea of Souls threatened to break through the weakened skin between reality and the warp. Ghostly figures with slavering maws and grasping talons swooped down from above, serpentine bodies wrapping themselves suggestively about the supine body of the colonel. Flint was unsure whether or not the traitor noble could perceive the forms and the damnation they represented. Then, his tortured gaze settled on the shape revolving in the centre of the pict-slate and his blood turned to ice in his veins as he realised what it represented.

  ‘Yes, Emperor’s man…’ Colonel Strannik drawled, his Vostroyan accent audible even through the bubbling corruption that laced his voice. Projected on the screen was a targeting reticule, and it was centred on the drive section of the Toil of Kossia. ‘Soon, you and your lackeys will be trapped here, with us…’

  Flint’s ears filled with the howling of the damned as more ghostly figures rose up from the beyond to dash and dart about the end of the platform. Summoning the last reserves of his faith and his sanity, he saw that Colonel Strannik was entirely unaware of the leering, drooling gargoyles, and that one fact granted him the strength he needed to overcome the otherwise paralysing waves of utter, unfettered insanity and corruption radiating outwards from the mutant patriarch.

  The howling of the damned reached a deafening crescendo as the colonel’s finger stabbed downwards towards the rune that would launch the surface-to-orbit missile and destroy the Toil of Kossia, stranding the 77th Vostroyan Firstborn on a world seething with obscenity and damning them all to an ignominious slaughter.

  Flint vowed that would not come to pass.

  Bracing himself against a psychic wavefront so fierce the ragged tails of his leather storm coat billowed at his back, Flint drew his bolt pistol and with an unprecedented effort of will racked the slide.

  Levelling the pistol towards the colonel’s grossly pulsating head, Flint delivered his judgement.

  ‘Graf Strannik,’ he snarled. ‘By the authority vested in me by the High Lords of the Adeptus Terra, I hereby call you to account for the sins of mutation and warp-craft.’

  Flint’s bolt pistol barked once and the colonel’s head exploded in a fountain of sickly gore. Far below, the mouth of every single mutant abomination and every single enslaved rebel convict opened wide and emitted a piercing scream of grief and pain. The horde faltered and the Firstborn redoubled their fire. Then, the real killing started, and the sluice channels far below the complex were turned red with the spilled blood of countless thousands of traitors to the God-Emperor of Mankind.

  ‘Let Him on Terra be your judge,’ Flint concluded.

  Unseen by Commissar Flint or anyone else, a lone figure dressed in the crimson of the Vostroyan Firstborn had taken position just below the control platform, nestling herself in amongst the girders of the tower. With deadly grace and an economy of effort bordering on the preternatural, she levelled her ornate, hand-wrought lasgun and squinted down its master-crafted scope. The targeting reticle settled over the stooped and wizened form of Governor Kherhart as he scuttled for the imagined haven of one of the claviger-wardens’ secret access tunnels. For Kherhart however, just like Strannik and his vile progeny, there would be no escape. He had been entrusted with the rank of Imperial Commander, given power over an entire world, and he had betrayed those who had granted him that station.

  Unlike his kinsman Strannik, Kherhart never saw his fate. He believed he could escape right up until the moment his head vanished in a pall of red mist as Karasinda, or rather the agent of the Emperor’s justice who had taken on that name, pulled her trigger and ended his treachery for all time. When the regimental rolls of honour were later compiled, the very existence of a combat medic by that or any other name was strangely absent, those few who had known her assuming she had fallen in that final, glorious battle against the mutant horde of Colonel Strannik.

  EPILOGUE

  Last Words

  Commissar Flint deactivated the data-slate and turned from the huge, multi-paned viewport of the Toil of Kossia, the world of Furia Penitens hanging in the black void beyond. The commissar having
executed the renegade Firstborn Colonel Strannik, Aleksis had finally acquiesced to granting Flint access to his regiment’s archives. Aleksis hadn’t been offered much choice.

  The files secreted away in the deepest levels of the archives filled Flint with disgust and made him realise something of the true nature of the Firstborn regiment in which he had been called to serve. Colonel Strannik, he learned, had been hiding the fact that he was a mutant for many years. His attempts to conceal it led to the disaster of the Battle of Golan Hole, and after that, his mutations could be hidden no longer. When they became fully manifest and his corruption had got out of control his kinsmen had been forced to embark upon a course of action they hoped would hide their clan’s shame. Instead of being handed over to the League of Black Ships along with the psyker cull all worlds were required to gather, Strannik had been granted sanctuary with another of his line, Governor Kherhart, far, he hoped, from prying eyes. He’d established his own private domain of brutality and filth in the lowest reaches of Alpha Penitentia, his rule warranted and guaranteed by his familial link to the installation’s governor.

  What happened next would likely remain the subject of conjecture for years to come, or else be sealed away by bodies keen to avoid the unwelcome and unfamiliar glare of scrutiny. The mutant colonel’s sin had spread and over several decades a population of abominations had gestated in the penal generatorium’s lowest levels. Perhaps because the geotherm processes utilised the heat emitted by irradiated minerals far below the surface, the taint of the warp had mingled with that of genetic corruption and birthed the mutant army the 77th had confronted. Flint had no doubt that the agents of the Holy Ordos of the Emperor’s Inquisition, especially those of the warp-hunting Ordo Malleus, would be investigating the matter.

  Another question that nagged at Flint, despite the fact that he had more pressing concerns, was the use to which Strannik had intended to put his army, if he had any intention at all. Had the mutant colonel intended to declare the entire world of Furia Penitens his own, personal domain? Had he harboured some dark, treacherous desire to take his army off-world? The matter might never be fully uncovered, Flint knew, but he had no doubt that the Inquisition would be seeking the truth as a matter of urgency. He almost pitied any rebels subjected to the Inquisitions’ investigative methods. Almost.