by Guy Haley
‘Sure,’ said the gunner. ‘I ain’t got nothing better to do.’ He picked up his tarabac cheroots.
Together the two men poked themselves up out of the hatches of the tank. The rain had stopped and it was warmer than Bannick expected. He dropped his coat back inside. The contrast between the fuggy interior of the tank and the warm breeze blowing over the plains prickled his skin, but he welcomed it. As always when he emerged from the Baneblade, he felt dirty. The triangle of sweat soaking the back of his vest chilled rapidly. Meggen lit a cheroot next to him. He offered one. Bannick declined.
The 477th were leaping up over the command decks of the Stormlords. Platoon standards waved as the men hurled grenades in through the ragged firing slits and the breaches, then poured inside.
The dark apertures of the fort flashed with las-fire, very brief. Resistance collapsed. A few minutes later, the standard of the 477th’s Eighth Company was held aloft atop one of the shattered stumps of the artillery turrets.
‘Honoured Captain Parrigar reports objective rho-sigma twenty-three secure, sir,’ voxed Epperaliant from below.
‘We’ve still got to go into the port,’ said Meggen.
‘Orders, Hannick?’
‘I’ve heard from high command. The Atraxians have encountered only light resistance to the north. This fort was the southern strongpoint. The enemy are surrendering. The spaceport is in our hands. Stand down, gentlemen.’
‘It’s over,’ said Bannick.
‘Just like that, all done,’ said Meggen, flicking ash from his cheroot.
Bannick pulled his vox-set off, letting the air refresh his sweating head. ‘Paragon be blessed, but I hate the way these things make my ears so damn hot.’
‘I can think of worse,’ said Meggen.
All around was a scene of utter devastation, but now the fighting was done, Bannick thought he could guess at the area’s peacetime use. ‘Fields. This was fields,’ he said.
‘It’s a basdacking mess now,’ said Meggen dourly.
Artillery still boomed in the distance, the crumping of shells a background noise that had become as natural as avian song to Bannick. Black smoke stretched to the sky from the city. The sound of small arms fire from a mile or so away crackled and popped. The stench coming off the mud was nauseating.
‘Still, the sun’s coming out,’ said Bannick. The dark clouds were parting. They were high, unnaturally so, the product of such massive atmospheric interference caused by planetfall, and all around the horizon the sky was the colour of beaten gold.
‘Boring place,’ said Meggen dismissively. ‘Very flat. Still, better than the last two dreckholes we’ve been.’ He withdrew inside and clanged his hatch shut.
Bannick remained out top, the pleasure of victory bringing a great calm to his soul. It would pass, then the nightmares would begin. In the past it was the shame of outliving his comrades. Here, with the enemy so very close to home, he expected his shame to be of a far worse kind.
Even so, a morbid curiosity led him to put one pad of his vox-set to his ear.
‘Epperaliant, signal Hannick.’
‘I have him, sir.’
‘Switch me to private comms.’
A click informed him Epperaliant had done so.
‘Sir, perhaps I should go to Honoured Captain Parrigar and offer my congratulations.’
‘It should be me,’ said Hannick, his breath laboured. ‘But you know...’
‘I understand,’ said Bannick. ‘I’ll come up with a plausible excuse.’
‘Thank you, Bannick,’ said Hannick gratefully.
Bannick went below to fetch his uniform jacket, greatcoat and weapons. Properly dressed and standing tall in the turret, he ordered Cortein’s Honour to the fort.
Chapter Five
A meeting of cousins
MATUA SUPERIOR
GERATOMRO
083398.M41
Bannick jumped down from the front of Cortein’s Honour and made his way to the lead Stormlord. He clambered up the access ladder at the back, and went across the fighting deck. Discarded canteens and packs were scattered against the parapets. He knocked on the armoured door leading into the command deck.
The slam of bolts being disengaged came a moment later. The door opened a crack, and the muzzle of a laspistol emerged, charge indicator on full, followed by a suspicious face.
‘Who the Throne are you, knocking on the basdacking door?’ said the man.
‘Honoured Lieutenant Bannick, of the Baneblade Cortein’s Honour, Seventh Paragonian Super-Heavy Tank Company,’ he said crisply, flashing his lieutenant’s pips at the man. ‘I am here on behalf of Honoured Captain Hannick to congratulate Honoured Captain Parrigar on our victory.’
‘Right,’ said the man, still suspicious. He opened the door. Behind him was a gloomy command deck radically different to Bannick’s own, so dominated by the mechanism of the mega-bolter that the crews stations were arranged around it. Other details he could not see, for the contrast between the light outside and the dark within was too pronounced.
Bannick looked down at the gun in the man’s hand, now pointed firmly at him.
‘Did you open the door so that we might converse more easily, or to allow you to cover me properly?’ asked Bannick.
The man gave him a level stare. ‘The Lucky Eights didn’t get that name by being careless. We don’t take kindly to strangers trespassing on the Righteous Vengeance.’
‘My apologies. And you are?’
‘Second Lieutenant Gulinar, SIC to the honoured captain.’
Bannick held out his hand. ‘A pleasure.’
Reluctantly, Gulinar took it.
‘Parrigar’s not here. He’s inside with Captain Dolisto of the Four Hundred and Seventy-Seventh.’
‘Where?’ said Bannick, peering past him into the tank.
‘Inside,’ said Gulinar, pointing up, in the general direction of the breach in the fort. ‘That’s where you’ll find him.’
He stepped back inside and shut the door behind him.
‘Charming,’ said Bannick. He clambered up the ladder at the side of the door and walked down the tank to the breach. The climb inside was harder than the infantry had made it look, a tight squeeze through a gap made dangerous by sharp edges and jagged reinforcement bars.
Inside was a scene of carnage. The star point was a single gallery with firing slits either side. Dead men lay where they had fallen. Some were shredded with shrapnel, especially near the breach. Further away most appeared to have died from bludgeoning overpressure. Vitae trickled from noses, ears and mouth. Eyes were red with ruptured blood vessels. Bannick picked his way through their tangled limbs, his heart sinking. The men were of a type similar to Paragonians. A little darker, perhaps, a preponderance of premature grey hair, but any one of them would have blended into the population of his home world without drawing remark.
Further on, the corpses were las-burned, many in the back. Among them he counted a handful of Paragonian dead. Most were Geratomran.
He went into the centre of the fort. Part of the hall had been cleared of corpses, and a medicae team worked on the wounded, Paragonian and Geratomran alike. He approached one.
‘I’m looking for Honoured Captain Parrigar and Captain Dolisto,’ he said.
‘In the central command hall, sir,’ said the medicae without looking up.
Bannick walked down a line of wounded waiting for attention. A hand grabbed at his ankle. He looked down to see a young Geratomran soldier, one eye swelled shut, a nasty wound in his forearm, leaning back against the wall, legs sprawled out in front of him.
‘Water, please,’ he croaked.
Bannick knelt by his side. He should hate this man for his treachery, but he could not. All he felt was pity. It was not the decision of common soldiers to secede. Bannick’s hand went to his canteen and
he pulled it from his belt, unscrewed the top and handed it to him.
‘I’m sorry, it is warm.’
‘You came in those tanks?’ said the man. Bannick figured he couldn’t be more than nineteen or twenty Terran standard years.
Bannick nodded.
‘I always wanted to see a Baneblade in action.’
‘Why did you rebel?’ Bannick asked.
‘Because I was told to,’ said the boy. ‘Isn’t that the way it works in the Astra Militarum?’
‘It is. But why did your governor turn traitor?’
‘The tithe.’
‘It was a question of economics?’
The soldier shook his head. ‘Not the exacta, the other one, the Munitorum Tithe. All of my brothers, my cousins, my father, my uncles. Gone. Drafted into the Astra Militarum. This planet is empty of men. The Munitorum came back for an ninth tithe in as many years. Our planetary commander told them what they could do with their requisition papers. What else could she do? There’s no one in the agricolae, no one mans the fabricators in the manufactoria. They said make women work. Our women work anyway. Now our children do too, youngsters who should be in the scholum. This planet’s dying, and the Emperor is the one who sucked it dry. If you’re going to ask me if I went along with my orders gladly, no, I didn’t. I’m a traitor. Do you know how that feels? But you know what? I don’t really think we had a choice, so here’s to the Governatrice.’
He raised the canteen in ironic salute and gulped from it thirstily.
Bannick stood up quickly.
The boy held out his canteen. ‘Thank you for the drink,’ he said.
‘Keep it,’ said Bannick coldly. He left shaken that someone could turn against the Emperor and talk about it so calmly.
He made his way around the fort hub by the circular corridor. There was only one door, and when he passed through it he found himself in the command centre. A group of Geratomran officers sat in the corner, their hands on their heads, guarded by a bunch of hard-bitten Paragonian infantry with unfamiliar regimental flashes. Burned-out stations lined the walls, their gel screens cracked and dribbling liquid. An honoured captain he assumed to be Parrigar was in deep, quiet consultation with another officer in the uniform of a Paragonian infantry captain; Dolisto, he guessed.
Sentries on the door saluted Bannick as he passed through. Parrigar looked up, and Bannick saluted.
‘Honoured Lieutenant Colaron Artem Lo Bannick, sir,’ he said. ‘Commander of the Baneblade Cortein’s Honour, Seventh Paragonian Super-Heavy Tank Company.’ He saluted Dolisto next.
‘Stand easy. Good to meet you.’ They shook hands Paragonian style, palm to palm. ‘This is Captain Dolisto.’
Parrigar was old Paragonian aristocracy, older than Bannick by twenty years at least, tall, thin faced, long fingers. Patrician was the word Bannick immediately settled on. Dolisto was younger than Bannick, but carried himself similarly to Parrigar. A man of a different generation, but with the same thoughts and feelings and prejudices.
‘What can we do for you?’ said Dolisto.
‘I came to get my eyes on the situation, get a breath of air and offer my congratulations on an engagement well fought.’
‘A breath of air,’ said Dolisto. ‘Must get stuffy in those tanks. Safe though,’ he said, and he did not mean it disparagingly, but spoke it as a jest between comrades. ‘Thank you for your congratulations. They did not put up as much of a fight as we expected. We lost seven men, I think.’ Dolisto looked over at the Geratomran officers. All but one, who glared ferociously, looked shamefacedly at the ground.
‘How many of theirs?’ asked Bannick guardedly.
‘In total? Two hundred, give or take,’ said Dolisto. ‘Most were dead already thanks to you. They didn’t stand a chance.’
‘Local defence militia. Not up to much,’ agreed Parrigar.
‘They still managed to frag all cogitators before we got in here, so that’s one success we won’t be able to report,’ said Dolisto. ‘But our primary mission objective, the securing of the spaceport, has been achieved. It would have been much harder without your company. Please pass my thanks on to your commanding officer.’
‘We were following orders given by better men than I, sir,’ said Bannick. He meant it lightly, but the memory of the boy in the corridor returned to haunt him as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Somehow it got mixed up with Tuparillio’s face in his head, and his smile froze.
‘Nevertheless, thanks are due, honoured lieutenant.’
Bannick bowed and departed.
On the way to the breach he heard panicked shouting, and a sudden fusillade of shots. He ran towards them, tugging out his own pistol from its holster and thumbing the battery coupling to engage. He arrived pointing it directly at the impossibly clean uniform of an Imperial commissar. At his feet slumped the bodies of the Geratomrans the medicae had been treating, smoking las-holes burned in their foreheads. The boy he’d spoken to lay staring lifelessly, mouth open, water glugging from Bannick’s canteen onto the floor. A pair of solemn Adeptus Ministorum deacons moved down the line of dead, drawing the sign of the aquila on bloody faces in scented oil and muttering the benediction of the dead.
‘Good afternoon, lieutenant. You appear to be holding a gun on me.’ The commissar’s face was surprisingly young under the shining peak of his cap, but his eyes were so piercing they were impossible to hold. Bannick holstered his weapon.
‘I... I am sorry, sir. I heard shouting, and gunfire. I feared a hidden unit of the enemy.’
‘Then you are to be commended for you initiative, if not your reaction.’
‘You executed them?’
‘Of course,’ said the commissar. ‘Is that not the appropriate action when dealing with traitors?’
He stepped in too close. Bannick tensed and held his ground.
‘We show mercy to the civilians. This is not their war. But there will be no mercy to men under arms who fight against the rightful rule of the Imperium.’
The commissar dabbed at a spot of blood on the white front of his greatcoat with a handkerchief, succeeding only in smearing it.
Bannick stared at him. The handkerchief smelt of flowers. The commissar frowned and tutted at the mark.
‘They were under orders. These men would have fought for us.’ Bannick doubted his own words. Maybe they were all as embittered as the young man had been, but this wholesale slaughter was not right.
‘They might have said they would,’ said the commissar. ‘And perhaps many of them would have held to their word. But tell me, how would you winnow the genuine traitor from the contrite soldier? If you have a solution, I would dearly like to have it. I dislike the waste of loyal blood as much as any man.’
‘Hey, Suliban, what’s going on here?’ An exhausted lieutenant in a mud-spattered uniform pushed his way past the priests.
‘I was just telling Honoured Lieutenant...?’
Commissar Suliban directed a quizzical look at Bannick.
Bannick stood to attention. ‘Honoured Lieutenant Colaron Artem Lo Bann–’
He never finished. The lieutenant’s face crumpled with rage, and without warning he slammed his fist into Bannick’s stomach.
Bannick collapsed, the wind driven from him. Gasping for air, he scrabbled for his gun. Suliban nodded one of the men over, and a foot descended on Bannick’s wrist, pinning it in place. The lieutenant moved in, fists clenched, but Suliban stopped him with a palm to the chest.
‘Do you mind telling me what this is about?’ he said to Bannick’s assailant. ‘I could shoot you, here and now, for striking a fellow officer.’
A flicker of fear passed over the lieutenant’s face, but anger overcame it. ‘This is him. This is the man that ruined my thrice-cursed life, with his pride and his duelling, and his desire to please himself! This,’ he shouted, trembling with rage, p
ointing a dirty finger at Bannick, ‘is my Throne-abhorred cousin.’
Suliban looked from man to man, his amusement plain to see. Bannick gaped, more in shock than from his winding. He recognised the man now. Last time he had seen him, he had been little more than a boy, the son of his mother’s sister.
‘J-Jonas?’ he gasped.
‘Yes, Jonas, you basdack.’ Jonas pushed against Suliban’s palm. Suliban shook his head with quiet authority.
‘Don’t make me restrain you. Do not make me discipline you. We have fought together, you and I, but I will not let that come in the way of my duty. I could and I will shoot you without compunction, and I would do so knowing the Emperor approved. Is that clear?’
Jonas Artem Lo Bannick tensed. Suliban pushed him back.
‘Away, Jonas. As this is that cousin, about whom I have heard so much, I shall overlook this incident. I am not a martinet. But just this once. Do you understand?’
Jonas stared at Suliban, but none could hold the man’s reptile gaze for long, and he turned on his heel and stormed away.
Suliban bent down and helped Bannick to his feet. He brushed Bannick down in a manner that was part sympathy, part condescension.
‘I can tell you think these executions harsh, honoured lieutenant, but justice cannot be gentle in so cruel a galaxy as ours. Brutality is a weapon that is too useful to put aside. Like all terrible weapons it must be used sparingly.’ He looked Bannick up and down, straightened his collars and stepped back. ‘There, that’s better. I would watch out for your cousin. He is very unhappy with you.’ He patted Bannick twice and departed, his guard casting derisory glances back at Bannick, standing numbly amid the slaughtered men, the mumbling of priests in his ears.
I’ll give you a choice, said the Devil-in-the-bush,
A choice between night and day.
I’ll give you a puzzle, said the Devil-in-the-bush,
A game you must assuredly play.
Choose life, choose love,
Choose the sun or the moon,
Choose from what I might give.
Choose to be a king,