[Imperial Guard 03] - Rebel Winter

by Steve Parker - (ebook by Undead)

  “Madness,” growled a loud voice. “One bloody company to hold the Eastern Front!”

  “Not madness,” answered another, “just plain, old-fashioned treachery!”

  Others agreed, adding their anger and their disbelief to the cacophony. But then the voices were joined by a new sound, a rhythmic clanging that cut through all the noise. Karif turned with the others to face its source. A grizzled old sergeant, scar-faced, grey-haired and built like a Titan, was striking the steel floor at his feet with the gilded wooden stock of his lasgun.

  When he had everyone’s attention, and their silence, he looked Karif in the eye and spoke. His was the kind of voice, quiet and controlled, that forced other men to listen. “You must forgive these lads, commissar, speaking out of turn like that. They mean no disrespect to the captain, the general or anyone else. But you must understand our frustration, sir. It’s not easy to walk away from Korris. We fought near enough two years just to hold it. A lot of good men died for it. It’s hard to watch the old foe just roll in. Vostroyan pride, see? In the end, it’ll kill more of us than winter, orks and rebels put together.”

  Karif let his eyes linger on the sergeant’s stripes until the man took the hint.

  “My apologies, sir,” said the sergeant with a short bow. “Sidor Basch, sergeant, First Platoon.”

  “Daridh Ahl Karif,” replied Karif with a smile and a bow of his own, “commissar.” Aware of the attention on him, he added, “Proud to serve with the Sixty-Eighth.”

  Basch thumbed for a young trooper opposite to vacate his seat. Karif sat down. The compartment remained quiet while the rest of the troopers listened in.

  “How long have you served with the Sixty-Eighth?” asked Karif. “Twenty years? Thirty?”

  “Thirty-five, sir. Longer even than Captain Sebastev, though he’s twice the man.”

  Karif wasn’t foolish enough to express his doubts about that remark, not while these men were being so frank, at least. But he still couldn’t reconcile himself with the boorish captain’s solid reputation, so he said, “General Vlastan doesn’t seem to think very highly of the captain. Why such bad blood between the two?”

  Basch grinned and said, “That’s a hard one for a chevek, sir. No offence intended.”

  “Make me understand,” replied Karif with good humour, “and I’ll forgive the mild insult.” Glancing at the seated men, he saw some of them stifling a laugh.

  “There are a lot of reasons why the general doesn’t like our Captain Sebastev, sir. The obvious ones are the biggest. Vostroya’s class divide is a proper chasm, and the higher ranks were always the province of the aristocracy. Most of them would like to keep it that way. Major Dubrin… well, it was the major’s dying wish that Captain Sebastev take over company command. Colonel Kabanov honoured that wish. Since General Vlastan owes the colonel a life debt from their early years of service, I guess he felt obliged to let it be, at least for a while. General Vlastan probably figured life on the frontline would be short for the captain, that it wouldn’t require any direct intervention on his part. Obviously it didn’t work out like that.”

  The old sergeant shook his head. “Like the men were saying, Captain Sebastev wouldn’t have pulled us out of there without direct orders. We still draw breath because the White Boar stayed behind to save us. It’s not the first time he’s done something like that. The general will spit fire when he hears about it. It’s a right mess. Mind you, for us grunts, none of that should matter a damn.” The sergeant threw a pointed look along the rows of listening troopers. “There’s little else should occupy a good trooper’s mind than orders, kit and the Emperor’s blessing.”

  Karif found himself quickly warming to the man. It seemed that Sergeant Basch had all the qualities of discipline, dedication and honour upon which the mighty Firstborn reputation was built.

  “Well said, sergeant,” said Karif. “Well said, indeed. I’m gratified to find that the ardour of the Vostroyan Firstborn is no myth. Solid discipline, martial skill and good old-fashioned grit: where these things abound, there is nothing we can’t achieve in the Emperor’s name.”

  “For the Emperor and for Vostroya!” called one of the troopers. The rest immediately took up the cheer. Basch leaned out from his seat and said to Karif, “It seems you have a way with words, commissar.” When the cheer died down, Basch addressed a young trooper at the far end of the row. “Let’s have a tune, Yakin,” he said, “something to stir the blood a bit.”

  The trooper, Yakin, began digging through his pack After a moment, Karif saw him pull out a long, black case. He drew a seven-stringed instrument and a bow from it, and the troopers around him began making requests. It wasn’t long before notes filled the air, clear and high over the rumble of the Pathcutter’s fuel-guzzling engine.

  Sergeant Basch smiled, sat back, closed his eyes, and nodded his head in time with the tune. “Have you an appreciation for the ushehk, commissar?”

  To Karif’s ears, the music sounded like the screeching of a wounded grot. It grated on his nerves, and he was forced to stop himself from wincing openly. “I hadn’t heard it until this moment, sergeant,” he replied. “I’ll have to assume one grows to appreciate it over time.”

  The skin at the sides of the sergeant’s eyes wrinkled as he laughed. “A very politic answer. Our Yakin isn’t the most talented player, but he’s better than nothing.” That’s debatable, thought Karif.

  The Vostroyans linked arms where they sat and stamped their booted feet on the floor in time with the music. Their earlier anger had been chased away for the moment by the musical reminder of their kinship and their home world.

  Karif found himself infected by the camaraderie they displayed. Despite himself, he began tapping a foot in time with their stomps. He might even have joined in but for the sudden change in Basch’s expression. It caught Karif entirely off-guard, and that was a rare thing. The sergeant leaned close and said, “Now that they’re occupied, commissar, perhaps you’ll be kind enough to tell me what in the blasted warp is really going on? All that stuff about orders and kit is right enough for the troopers. They needed to hear it. But any man with two stripes or more needs to know what he’s leading his men into. Are we heading straight for another fight, or did the White Boar pull us out on a simple pretence? If you know Basch, don’t keep me in suspense.”

  White Boar this, and Old Hungry that, thought Karif. And the Pit-Dog? What is it with Vostroyans and nicknames? Throne help the man who christens me with anything less than respectful.

  “It’s no secret, sergeant,” Karif replied. “Nhalich is under judge. The Danikkin Independence Army has made its push and there have been attacks from within the city, either by agents of the secessionist movement or by sympathetic civilians. Commissar-Captain Vaughn reported heavy fighting before comms were lost. We’ve heard nothing from Nhalich since then. Perhaps the relay station was struck in the fighting. We’ll know soon enough, I suppose. How a mere planetary defence force can hope to stand against the might of the Emperor’s Hammer, with or without its damned civilian militias, is quite beyond comprehension. Are they mad?”

  “We were fools who once believed so, sir,” said Basch. “Again, I mean no disrespect, but two thousand years of carving a life out in the deep winter, of straggling for survival without any aid from the Imperium… It changed these people. The Danikkin are a hard folk. That lord-general of theirs, Vanandrasse, is as black hearted and vicious as the winter night.”

  Karif’s jaw clenched. “The man is no lord-general, sergeant. He has turned his people from the Emperor’s light and doomed them to oblivion. Hard as ice, they may be, but the Emperor’s Hammer will shatter them. To that end, I will be unrelenting in my duty, and so will all of you.”

  Karif’s righteous fury had done for him what the Vostroyan music could not; his blood surged and he felt his pulse beat in his clenched fists and at his temples. He longed to personally smash aside the traitors on this world. Orks were foul, benighted things, and must b
e decimated utterly, but they had never known the Emperor’s light and never would. To know it and to turn from it was the greatest crime in the Imperium, and the mere thought of it sickened Karif.

  The worthless apostates, he thought, they’ve brought death down upon themselves.

  Sergeant Basch nodded and raised his hands to his chest, pressing them there, splaying his fingers in the sign of the aquila. “Inspiring words, commissar! They could have come from the lips of Commissar Ixxius himself That was all it took, a few simple words, poorly chosen, to shatter the bridge Karif had felt building between himself and these men. He stood quietly from his seat, holding back his irritation and disappointment.

  “Damn it, man,” he said to the confused sergeant through clenched teeth, “I am your commissar now. I won’t be constantly measured against the dead. Mark my words well, and tell your men.”

  Then Karif walked away, steadying himself against the juddering motion of the Pathcutter with the overhead grips as he moved. Sergeant Basch stared after him, dumbfounded.

  At the far end of the compartment, nearest the cockpit section, Karif hauled himself up the steep metal stairs to the top deck.

  Trooper Yakin brought his tune to an end with a final quivering note.

  Since leaving Korris, Stavin had been kept busy on the top deck of the transport while the commissar mingled with the men on the lower deck. He turned his head for only a moment when the music first began drifting up from the deck below. The Eyes of Katya, he thought with a smile. Someone’s playing The Eyes of Katya.

  “Focus, boy,” snapped Sergeant Svemir. “I need you to put pressure here and here. Hold that in place while I stitch this up.”

  Sergeant Svemir was a medic with Fifth Company’s Second Platoon. His head was round like a melon, and covered with grey stubble that looked so coarse you could light a match on it. The line of his jaw was likewise covered, but the waxed ends of a long, salt-and-pepper moustache hung over it.

  The first thing Stavin had noticed about the man was the absence of two fingers on his left hand. He tried not to stare. At least the loss of those fingers didn’t seem to hinder the sergeant while he worked.

  Though his eyes stayed on his wounded patient, Sergeant Svemir talked as he worked. “I don’t mean to snap at you, son. I appreciate you helping out, but you need to keep your eyes on your work. These brave fighters need our help.”

  The upper deck of the Pathcutter transport was currently functioning as a rather inadequate surgery. Commissar Karif had loaned his adjutant to the sergeant, remarking that Stavin needed exposure to the grim realities of life in the Guard. Stavin didn’t mind. These bleeding men had fought bravely against the xenos. They deserved to live. If he could do something to help them, he would.

  Sixteen of them, with wounds of varying seriousness, lay on bedrolls spread across the floor. It was no small relief that they were quiet now. The anaesthecium injections administered by Sergeant Svemir had really kicked in, bringing a welcome end to the groaning and the cries of pain. A few had needed flesh clamps, but most, according to Svemir, would get by with simple stitches. Stavin watched the sergeant carefully tug a long, black piece of shrapnel from a trooper’s arm. Then he lifted a curved needle and deftly stitched the wound shut.

  “This one got too close to a greenskin grenade,” said Svemir. “That’s a hard one, boy. Do you throw it back, or do you dive for cover? Half the time, the damned things are duds anyway.”

  Stavin didn’t take long to answer. “If it was just the one, sir,” he said, “I’d try for the return.”

  Svemir looked up, having finished stitching. “You’re a strange one, shiny. The accent is from Muskha, but the looks say you’re from The Magdan.”

  There it was again: shiny. Stavin wondered how long they’d call him that. It didn’t bother him all that much, but it was another barrier between him and acceptance. It was common knowledge that new things needed breaking in before they worked properly.

  Then again, he thought, I don’t really want their acceptance. I want to go home. I don’t belong here at all.

  “My mother is a Magdan, sir,” said Stavin. “My father was Muskhavi. I grew up in Hive Tzurka.”

  It was the first time he’d mentioned anything of his family since leaving Vostroya. No one had asked, not even the commissar. But something about Sergeant Svemir made Stavin want to open up. There was a strange comfort in the presence of a man who worked to save lives rather than take them. Stavin realised then that he was desperate to talk to someone, though he also saw the danger in that need.

  It was dangerous because Stavin was a keeper of secrets, and his greatest secret was that he had come to Danik’s World under false pretences. Basic training might have made him a soldier, but he’d never be true Firstborn on account of his older brother, the brother whose name he’d taken when he joined the Guard.

  “Hive Tzurka, eh?” said Svemir, shuffling across to the side of his next patient. He waved Stavin over beside him. “What was that like? I’m from Hive Ahropol in Sohlsvod. Never got out as far as Muskha.” He gestured for Stavin to raise the woozy trooper’s leg so that the blood drenched bandages could be replaced.

  Stavin wasn’t sure how to answer. Words didn’t seem adequate to the task of expressing the misery of existence in Tzurka’s slums. So he pretended he hadn’t heard the question, and tied off another fresh bandage in silence, noting how sticky his hands had become with the drying blood of other men.

  Sergeant Svemir interpreted the young trooper’s silence for himself. “That bad, huh?” he said. “I’d heard Hive Tzurka was rough. Trouble with anti-Imperial dissidents a while back, wasn’t there? I heard they took over a bunch of old munitions factories. You know about that?”

  Stavin nodded. His father had been a Civitas enforcer seconded to the local Arbites at the time. He’d been killed in the fighting. It was the turning point in Stavin’s life, the dark, pivotal moment that had thrown his family into poverty and desperation. But these were private pains. Stavin bit back on them and said simply, “That was eleven years ago, sir. They got them all in the end.”

  “Good to know,” said Svemir with a nod, “can’t have bastards like that running around on Vostroya. Though I admit the home world’s a fading memory to me these days. You’ll get like that before long. Fighting on so many worlds… after a while, the battles all merge together. You feel like you’ve been fighting your whole life without a break. Makes it easier to keep going, I suppose. The regiment becomes home.” His voice grew quieter. “Lost some good friends out here, sitting in the snow, waiting to finish this business. I’ll be glad to get off this rock when the time comes.”

  Stavin didn’t like all this talk of long years in the Guard. It made him anxious to be away, eager to return to the mother and brother he’d had to leave behind. They’d watched helplessly as the Techtriarchy’s much-hated conscription officers had dragged him off to their truck. It was for the best. They would have taken his brother, the real Danil Stavin, if they’d known about the switch of identity cards.

  Then again, thought Stavin, maybe those officers didn’t care who they took, so long as the numbers added up.

  Iador Stavin, that was his real name, had a brother just two years older who’d been born with a learning disability. Life in the Guard would have been brutal and short for Danil. For years, Stavin had endured nightmares about Danil being mistreated at the hands of xenos, heretics, or even other troopers. Neither he nor his mother could bear it. So Iador had become Danil, and Danil had become Iador.

  Now I fight the monsters from those dreams, thought Stavin. I don’t regret it, but I must find some way home. I must get back to them, one way or another.

  Sergeant Svemir had been lost in his own thoughts as he worked on. He emerged from them now and ordered Stavin to fetch a box of ampoules from the medical case he called his narthecium. Some of the men were coming round from the effects of their anaesthecium injections and would need to be administered a second dose
.

  As he raised his injector pistol, Sergeant Svemir said, “Twenty whole years in the Guard. Time pours through a man’s hands, by the Throne.”

  Stavin must have looked horrified, because the sergeant laughed and said, “You think that’s a long time? You think I should have left after my ten?” He shook his head. “You’re fresh, son. Your memories of home are still sharp. Give it time. Ten years from now, when the papers come through, you’ll tick the second box just like I did. When you’ve given such a chunk of your life to the Emperor’s service, it doesn’t take much to sign over the rest of it. A little guilt will do it. I could never have left knowing my brother Firstborn fought on. Retiring from the Guard is the coward’s way out.”

  Stavin’s jaw clenched.

  I’ll never tick the second box, he promised himself. If that’s what the Emperor asks of me, he can bloody rot on his Golden Throne. They can call me a coward as much as they like but, one way or another, I’ll find my way back to Vostroya.

  “My family, sir,” said Stavin. “I’ll want to return to them. When my term is up, I mean.”

  Sergeant Svemir was readying to dispense another injection, but he stopped and met Stavin’s gaze as he said, “Family is important to a good Vostroyan. It’s good that you feel this way. Think of the honour you do your family. What Vostroyan mother could be anything but proud to have her son serve with the finest regiment in the Imperial Guard?” He waved a hand over the wounded men that surrounded him and said, “They all left their families behind. They all made the same sacrifice you did. After twenty years of service, the Sixty-Eighth is my family now. It’s yours, too, though you’re too fresh to know it yet.”

  No, thought Stavin, I’m not like them. I’m no Firstborn son. My family is back in Hive Tzurka.

  Footsteps rang on the metal staircase to the lower deck, and Stavin knew before he turned that Commissar Karif was ascending. A moment later, the familiar black cap appeared, followed by the rest of the tall, dark form as the man pulled himself up the metal railing and stepped onto the top deck.