[Imperial Guard 01] - Fifteen Hours

by Mitchel Scanlon - (ebook by Undead)

  “Open that ramp!” screamed Sergeant Ferres, pushing his way through the crowd of milling Guardsmen to where a small group stood studying the control panel governing the ramp’s mechanism. Seeing the group raise their eyes to look at him in confusion, he pushed them aside and stretched out a hand towards a metal lever set in a recess by the edge of the ramp. “Useless bastards!” he spat in contempt, his hand closing around the lever. “The master control panel must have been damaged in the landing. You need to pull the emergency release lever — like this.”

  Pulling the lever, Sergeant Ferres shrieked in sudden agony as one of the ramp’s explosive release bolts misfired, a bright tongue of yellow fire bursting from the side of ramp to engulf his face. Screaming, a halo of flame dancing around his head, he stumbled blindly against the assault ramp as the other bolts fired and the ramp fell open behind him. Falling into the suddenly vacated space, his body rolled down the ramp and came to a stop partway down it as one of his legs caught on a protrusion at its side. For a moment, seeing the strugglings of their sergeant’s body grow still as the life left him, his troops stood gazing at him in shocked silence, hypnotised by the brutal calamity of their leader’s death.

  “We have to move,” Larn heard someone say behind him as he realised how warm it had grown in the lander. “The smoke is getting closer. If we don’t get out of here now we’ll either burn to death or choke.”

  As one, the Guardsmen burst forward to rush down the ramp. The light outside seemed blinding in its intensity after the shadowed dimness of the interior of the lander. Barely able to keep his feet as the men behind him pushed to get out, Larn stumbled down the ramp with the rest, his first experiences of the new world before him registering as a disconnected jumble of sights and sensations. He caught snatches of an empty landscape through the press of bodies around him, saw a grey and brooding sky above them, felt a savage chill that bit gnawingly into his flesh. Worst of all was the sight of Sergeant Ferres’ burnt and disfigured face. The fire-blackened sockets that had once held his eyes glimpsed briefly at the edge of Larn’s vision as he followed the others down the ramp. Then, as the first ranks of Guardsmen reached the foot of the ramp and apparent safety, the frenzied herd instinct of a few moments before abruptly abated.

  Released from the crushing pressure of the crowd as the Guardsmen in front moved to take advantage of the open space before them, Larn was relieved to find himself able to breathe properly once more. Then, standing uncertainly with the others as they milled leaderless in the shadow of the lander, he turned to take his first clear view of the planet around him.

  This is it, he thought, his breath turning to white vapour in the cold. This is Seltura VII It doesn’t look much like how they described it in the briefing.

  Around him, as endless as the wheat fields of his homeworld, was a bleak and barren landscape — a flat treeless vista of frozen grey-black mud, punctuated here and there by shell craters and the rusting silhouettes of burned-out vehicles. To the east of him, he saw a distant cityscape of rained buildings, as grey, foreboding and abandoned as every other aspect of the landscape around it. It looks like a ghost town, he thought with a shiver. A ghost town, hungry for more ghosts.

  “I don’t understand it,” he heard a questioning voice say as he realised Leden, Hallan and Vorrans had come to stand beside him. “Where are the trees?” Leden asked. “They said Seltura-VII was covered in forests. And it’s cold. They said it would be summer.”

  “Never mind that,” said Hallan, terse at his side. “We need into get to cover. I heard shots hitting the hull when we landed. There must be hostiles around here some — ” He paused, stopping to look up with anxious eyes at the sky as, overhead, they heard the whistle of a shell coming closer.

  “Incoming!” someone screamed as the entire company raced frantically to seek shelter at the side of the lander. Seconds later, an explosion lifted up dancing clods of frozen mud thirty metres away from where they were standing.

  “I think it was a mortar,” Vorrans said, an edge of panic to his voice as he huddled with the others beside the lander. “It sounded like a mortar,” he said, jabbering uncontrollably in a breathless rush of fear. “A mortar, don’t you think? A mortar. I think it was a mortar. A mortar…”

  “I wish to the Emperor that was all it was,” Hallan said. Around them, more shots and explosions rang out. A fusillade that seemed to ominously increase in volume with every instant, as the noise of bullets and shells striking the hull on the other side of the lander grew so loud they had to shout to be heard over the roar. “Lucky for us whoever’s shooting is on the other side of this lander but we can’t stay here forever. We need to find better cover, or it’s only a matter of time before their artillery finds the range and starts to loop shells over the lander to land right on top of us.”

  “Maybe this is all a mistake?” Vorrans said, his face alive with the glimmer of desperate hope. “That’s it, mistaken identity. Maybe it’s our own side doing the shooting and they don’t know who we are. We could make a white flag and try to signal them.”

  “Shut up, Vors. You’re talking like an idiot.” Hallan snapped. Then, seeing Vorrans look at him in shock, he softened his tone. “Believe me, Vors, there’s nothing mistaken about it. There’s a ten-metre tall Imperial eagle painted on each side of the hull of the lander. The people shooting at us know exactly who we are. That’s why they’re trying to kill us. Our only way out of this is to try and make for our own lines. Though we’ll need to find out where they are first.”

  “There!” Leden said, his finger pointing eastward. “You see it — the eagle in the distance. Sweet Emperor, we’re saved.”

  Turning to follow the direction of Leden’s jabbing finger, Larn saw a flagpole rising from the rubble-strewn outskirts of the city. At its top a worn and ragged flag: an Imperial eagle, fluttering in the breeze.

  “You’re right, Leden,” Hallan said, the excitement in his voice drawing the attention of the rest of the company as dozens of eyes turned to look toward the flag. “It’s our own lines, all right. If you look closely you can see the outlines of camouflaged bunkers and firing emplacements. That’s where we should be headed.”

  “But it’s got to be seven or eight hundred metres away at least, Hals,” Vorrans protested. “With nothing between us and that flag but open ground. We’ll never make it.”

  “We don’t have any choice, Vors,” Hallan said. Then, seeing the eyes of every other Guardsman in the company were on him, he turned to them, his voice raised loud enough to be heard among the din of gunfire. “Listen to me, all of you. I know you’re scared. Zell knows, I am too. But if we stay here we are as good as dead. Our only chance is to make for that flag!”

  For a moment there was no response as the Guardsmen cast frightened eyes from the now burning lander to the wide expanse of open ground before them. Each man weighing an unwelcome decision: to stay and risk an undetermined death sometime in the future, or to run and risk an immediate death in the present. Then, suddenly, a shell landed on their side of the lander no more than five metres from where they were standing and the decision was made for them.

  They ran.

  Breathless, terror dogging his every step, Larn ran with them. He ran, as from behind them there came a remorseless tide of gunfire as the unseen enemy tried to shoot them down. He saw men die screaming all around him, red gore spraying from chests and arms and heads as the bullets struck them. He saw men killed by falling shells, bodies torn apart by blast and shrapnel, heads and limbs dismembered in an instant. All the time he kept his eyes glued on the flag - his would-be refuge — in the distance before him. His every breath a silent prayer in the hope of salvation. His every step one closer to making that salvation a reality.

  As he ran, he saw friends and comrades die. He saw Hallan fall first, his right eye exploding from its socket to make way for the bullet passing though it, his mouth open in a cry of encouragement to his fellow Guardsmen that would never be finished. Then
Vorrans, his torso ruptured and mutilated as a dozen pieces of shrapnel exploded through his chest. Other men fell: some he had known by name, others he had known only by sight. All of them killed as, just as breathless and desperate as he was, they ran for the flag. Until at last, with most of his comrades dead already and the flag still a hundred metres away, Larn realised he would never make it.

  “Here! Over here! Quickly, this way! Over here!”

  Suddenly, hearing shouting voices nearby Larn turned to see a group of Guardsmen in grey-black camouflage appear as if from nowhere to beckon him towards them. Changing direction to head for them, he saw they had emerged from a firing trench and raced towards it with enemy bullets chewing up the ground around him. Until at last, reaching the trench, he leapt inside to safety.

  Trying to catch his breath as he lay at the bottom of the trench, looking about him Larn saw five Guardsmen standing around him in the confines of the trench: all clad in the same uniform of grey-black patterned greatcoats, mufflers and fur-shrouded helmets. At first they ignored him, their eyes turned to scan the killing fields he had just escaped from. Then, one of the Guardsmen turned to look down towards him with a grimace and finally spoke.

  “This is Vidmir in trench three, sergeant,” the Guardsmen said, pressing a stud at his collar as Larn realised he was speaking down a comm-link. “We have one survivor. I think a few more made it to the other trenches. But most of those poor dumb bastards are dead out there in no-man’s land. Over.”

  “I can see movement on the ork side,” one of the other Guardsmen said, standing looking over the trench parapet. “All this killing must have got their blood up. They’re getting ready for an attack.” Then, while Larn was still wondering if he had really heard the word “ork”, he saw the man turn away from the parapet to look towards him.

  “Assuming that uniform you’re wearing is not just for show, new fish, you might want to stand up and get your lasgun ready. There’s going to be shooting.”

  Pulling himself to his feet, Larn unslung his lasgun, stepping forward as the other Guardsmen moved sideways to make space for him on the trench’s firing step. Then, as he checked his lasgun and made ready to put it to his shoulder, he saw something that caused him to wonder if his first combat drop might have gone even more badly wrong than he could have thought. As, from the corner of his eye, he spotted a bullet-riddled wooden sign erected behind and slightly to one side of the trench. A sign whose ironic greeting gave him pause to wonder if he really was where he thought he was at all.

  A sign that said:

  Welcome to Broucheroc.

  CHAPTER SIX

  12:09 hours Central Broucheroc Time

  Questions of Interstellar Geography and Other Revelations — A Bad Day in Hell — The Waaagh! — A Baptism of Fire — Hand-To-Hand against the Enemy — An Opinion as to the Best Method of Killing a Gretchin

  “They’re getting ready to move all right,” the Guardsman said next to him, spitting a wad of greasy phlegm over the trench parapet. “They’ll hit us hard this time, and in numbers. It’s the blood that does it, you see. Our blood, I mean. Human blood. The sight and smell of it always makes ’em more willing and eager for a fight. Though, Emperor knows, your average ork is usually pretty eager to begin with.”

  His name was Repzik: Larn could see the faded letters of the name stencilled on the tunic of the man’s uniform under his greatcoat. Standing beside him on the firing step, Larn followed the direction of his eyes to look into the landscape he now knew as no-man’s land.

  No matter how intently he stared across the bleak fields of frozen mud before them he could see no movement, nor for that matter any other sign of the enemy. Ahead, no-man’s land seemed as flat, featureless and devoid of life as it had when he had emerged from the lander to his first view of it barely ten minutes ago. The only difference now was the addition of the burning shell of the lander itself and with it the bodies of his company strewn haphazard and bloody across the frozen landscape. Abruptly, as he looked out at the remains of men he had known as friends and comrades, Larn felt the beginnings of tears stinging wetly at the corners of his eyes.

  Jenks is dead, he thought. And Hallan, Vorrans, Lieutenant Winters, even Sergeant Ferres. I don’t see Leden. Perhaps he is still alive somewhere. But nearly every man I came here with from Jumael is lying dead out there in no-man’s land. All of them slaughtered within minutes of landing, without even having fired a shot.

  “It’s a pity about your comrades,” Repzik said, his voice almost kindly as Larn clenched his eyes to try and stop the other men in the trench from seeing his tears. “But they’re dead and you ain’t. What you need to start thinking about now is how you’re going to stop yourself from joining them. The orks are coming, new fish. If you want to live you’re going to have to keep yourself hard and tight.”

  “Orks?” Larn said, trying to concentrate his mind on the practical in an effort to lay his grief aside. “You said ‘orks’? I didn’t know there were any orks on Seltura VII?”

  “Could be that’s true,” Repzik said, as beside him one of the other Guardsmen looked to the sky in silent exasperation. “Fact is, you’d have to ask somebody who’s actually been there. Here in Broucheroc though we generally have more orks than we know what to do with.”

  “Wait,” asked Larn, confused, “are you telling me this planet isn’t Seltura VII?”

  “Well, I wasn’t specifically commenting on it, new fish,” Repzik said. “But since you ask, you’d be right enough. This place isn’t Seltura VII — wherever in hell that is.”

  Stunned, for a moment Larn wondered if he had somehow misunderstood the man’s meaning. Then, he looked out again at the treeless landscape and was struck by all the troubling inconsistencies between what he had been told to expect on Seltura VII and the stark brutal realities of the world he saw before him. They had made the drop three weeks early. There were no forests. It was winter rather than summer. The war here was against orks, not PDF rebels. A catalogue of facts that, with a dawning horror born of slow realisation, pushed him inexorably toward a sudden and shocking conclusion.

  Holy Throne, he thought. They sent us to the wrong planet!

  “I shouldn’t be here,” he said aloud.

  “It’s funny how everyone tends to think that when they’re waiting for an attack to begin,” said Repzik. “I wouldn’t worry about it, new fish. Once the orks get here you’ll soon find yourself feeling right at home.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Larn said. “There has been a terrible mistake. My company was supposed to be going to the Seltura system. To a world called Seltura VII, to put down a mutiny among the local PDF. Something must have gone wrong because I’m on the wrong planet.”

  “So? What is that to me?” Repzik said, his eyes as he looked at Larn seemed little warmer than the landscape around them. “You are on the wrong planet. You are in the wrong system. Not to mention probably the wrong war. Get used to it, new fish. If that is the worst thing that happens to you today, you will have been lucky.”

  “But you don’t understand—”

  “No. It is you who does not understand, new fish. This is Broucheroc. We are surrounded by ten million orks. And right now some of those orks — maybe only a few thousand or so, if we are lucky — are getting ready to attack us. They don’t care what planet you think you should be on. They don’t care that you think you’re in the wrong place, that you’re wet behind the ears, or that you’re probably not even old enough to shave. All they care about is killing you. So if you know what is good for you, new fish, you will put all this crap aside and start worrying about killing them instead.”

  Shocked at the man’s outburst Larn said nothing, his reply dying on his tongue as he saw Repzik turn away from him to gaze darkly into no-man’s land once more. As though by some sixth sense the other Guardsmen in the trench had already done the same, all of them staring hard into no-man’s land as though watching something happening out there of which Larn was e
ntirely unaware. No matter how hard Larn tried, he could see nothing. Nothing except grey-black mud and desolation.

  Frustrated, wary of asking the others what they were looking at for fear of drawing another angry outburst, Larn turned to glance around him. Behind him, hidden from his sight when he had first landed by a gentle sloping of the ground, was a series of firing trenches and foxholes. All of them led down towards sandbag emplacements that covered the entrances to a number of underground dugouts set among the shattered husks of buildings at the outskirts of the city. Now his eyes had become accustomed to the relentless grey of the landscape, Larn could see other firing trenches around and to the side of their trench — their parapets cunningly camouflaged to look no different from the countless chunks of crumbling half-buried plascrete and other detritus that lay scattered across this wasteland. From time to time a Guardsman would suddenly emerge from one of the trenches to run half-crouched, zigzagging from one piece of cover to the next until he reached the safety of either another trench or the entrance to one of the dugouts. Behind them, in the distance, the main body of the city stood brooding across the horizon as though watching their lives and labours with disdain. A city of ruined and battle-scarred buildings set against a grey and uncaring sky.

  This is Broucheroc, Larn reminded himself. That is what they said the city was called.

  “There,” one of the Guardsmen said beside him. “I see green. The bastards are moving.”

  Turning to gaze once more into no-man’s land with the others, for a moment Larn found himself vainly struggling to see anything among the wearying grey of the world about them. Then, suddenly, at ground level, perhaps a kilometre away, he saw a brief glimpse of green flesh as its owner stood upright for a split second before abruptly disappearing once more.