[Imperial Guard 01] - Fifteen Hours

by Mitchel Scanlon - (ebook by Undead)

  So it went on, with Davir unleashing a constant tirade of insults and complaints as, trailing in his wake, Larn followed him up the low rise towards the firing trenches and the frontline. As they ran half-crouched towards their destination and the tirade continued, Larn abruptly found himself briefly entertaining a notion that until a few minutes before would have never occurred to him.

  Suddenly, he found himself feeling strangely nostalgic for the good old days of Sergeant Ferres.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  14:59 hours Central Broucheroc Time

  Casualties of War — Thoughts on the Killing of Generals — Scholarly Answers and Insights — On Vital Supplies & The Many and Varied Uses of Prophylactics — The Mathematics of Slaughter & Questions of Life Expectancy at the Front — The Facts of Life as According to Davir

  For once, the printing press was silent. Though Lieutenant Delias had always considered the constant clattering of the machine to be a source of much-cursed irritation, now it was idle he found the sound of its silence filled him with dread. Sitting at his desk in the claustrophobic confines of his cluttered office, he looked across the fractured glass of the top half of the partition wall separating him from the print room and felt his stomach churn in anxiety as he watched the militia auxiliaries who made up his staff go about their labours. The aged caretakers Cern and Votank were busy maintaining the ancient parts of the press itself: Cern oiling the machine’s rollers, while Votank topped up the ink reservoir ready for the next edition. Nearby, head bobbing and his face moving in involuntary tics, the feeble-minded cripple Shulen stumbled past them with a broom flailing spasmodically in his hands as he attempted to sweep the floor. Only the compositor Pheran was without a task. His features pinched in an expression somewhere between expectancy and annoyance, he stood beside the empty expanse of the typesetting board and gazed back towards Delias through the glass. Then, seeing he had met the lieutenant’s eyes, Pheran raised a hand to point at the chronometer hanging above the printing press in a gesture of mute accusation.

  1500 hours, Delias thought, his heart sinking as his eyes followed the direction of Pheran’s bony finger to glance at the chronometer. We only have an hour now before I have to deliver the late edition to Commissar Valkfor approval. A single hour! I must find something to write. Anything!

  Despairing, Delias returned his attention to the dozens of official papers piled in confusion across his desk. Among the jumbled mass of documents before him were copies of situation reports, battlefield dispatches, casually statistics, terse communiqués, comms transcripts: between them comprising a record of every event of consequence that had happened in the city of Broucheroc in the past twelve hours. Despite what seemed like hours now spent surveying the assembled weight of information before him, Delias had found nothing there to suit his purpose.

  There is no good news to report, he thought bleakly. Today, the same as every other day, there is only bad news and I cannot print that. The commissar would have me shot on the spot.

  His thoughts drifted back to the day two years previously when he had first heard the news that he was being posted to the imposing edifice of the General Headquarters building in the centre of Broucheroc. At first, sure he was going to be rewarded with a staff assignment, he had rejoiced. Then, when they brought him to the dingy basement print room to tell him it would be his task to produce a twice-daily newsletter and propaganda sheet for the edification of the city’s defenders, his heart had thrilled even more. It had seemed the answer to all his prayers: a staff and an office of his own, and more importantly a prestigious assignment that would keep him far from the fighting. He had soon learned however that the lot in life of an official propagandist was rarely a happy one. Even less so when it was his duty to put a brave face to a conflict as prone to sudden reverses and unmitigated disasters as was the war in Broucheroc.

  We are losing this war, he thought, so lost in the depths of his own misery now he was barely aware of any wider implication. We are losing this war. That is the reality and yet I have barely an hour to find some small piece of good news that will allow the newsletter to pretend otherwise. An hour. It just can’t be done. I need more time.

  Hearing the sound of his office door opening, Delias looked up to see Shulen shuffling through the doorway. Mouth working soundlessly, his body twitching with uncontrollable palsies, Shulen tottered towards him with a wastebasket in his hands, the ugly scar left by the ork bullet that had addled his brain clearly visible at his temple.

  “What is it, Shulen?” Delias sighed.

  “Cuh cuh cuh… cleaning!” Shulen said, stammering out a spray of spittle as he stooped to start shovelling the papers littering Dellas’ desk into the wastebasket.

  Aggravated, for a moment Delias idly wondered if there was a way of making Shulen bear the blame for his problems. I could tell Commissar Valk it is all Shulen’s fault, he thought. That we were just putting the finishing touches to the latest edition when Shulen blundered into the typesetting hoard, knocking it to the floor and destroying all our work. If the commissar decides to shoot the useless oaf in retribution, I for one would not miss him. Just as quickly he realised for the plan to work the other members of his staff would have to support his story. Pheran and the others would not wear it. They had always protected Shulen, coddling him like some idiot child, and would be sure to oppose any attempt to make him the sacrificial goat. Then, abruptly, Delias caught a glimpse of the words written on one of the crumpled pieces of paper in Shulen’s hand and knew he finally had the answer.

  “Stop that!” he snapped at Shulen, reaching out with a metal ruler to rap his knuckles. “Leave the wastebasket here and go tell Pheran I will have the copy for tonight’s edition ready for him in fifteen minutes.”

  “Fuh fuh fuh…”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Delias said, retrieving the paper he had seen in Shulen’s hand and smoothing out the creases so he could read it. “Now, get out of my sight.”

  It was a contact report, reporting an ork assault in Sector 1-13 two and a half hours earlier. What interested Delias more was the attached account of the event that had presaged the assault. A single lander bearing a company’s worth of battlefield replacements had crashed in no-man’s land. Reading it, Delias realised it was exactly what he had been looking for. Granted, the course of events would need a little rewriting. To keep Commissar Valk happy what had been an entirely futile waste of human life would need to become a resounding victory. All the basic substance of what he needed was there already: he would only have to change the details and the events in Sector 1-13 should suit his purposes admirably. Yes, this is exactly what I need, Delias thought, quickly running through a series of potential headlines in his mind. Enemy Assault Defeated By Landing From Space. A Sector-Wide Breakthrough. Orks Retreating in Disarray. Then, the hairs rising at the back of his neck, he thought of a new headline and knew he had cracked it.

  Orks Defeated in Sector 1-13: Jumael 14th Victorious!

  Smiling, Delias picked up a stylus and began to write a glowing report of the battle, carefully embroidering the account with a variety of the stock words and phrases he had developed over the years in the course of his duties. Heroic resistance! Brave and resolute defence! A triumph of faith and righteous fury over Xenos savagery! Occasionally, as he paused to construct some new sentence full of rhetorical zeal and fire, he felt the vague stirrings of his conscience troubling him but he ignored it. It was not his fault he was forced to lie and twist the facts, he told himself. The truth was always the first casualty in warfare. As an information officer, sometimes it was his task to be creative: to do otherwise would be to risk offering aid and comfort to the enemy. Yes, it was a matter of duty.

  And, after all, it was important to do everything humanly possible to keep up the morale of the troops.

  “A fire.” Davir said as they sat in the firing trench. “That’s what I would like to see. A fire to burn down General Headquarters and torch all the stupid bastards inside it. I
f another blaze could somehow be ignited at Sector Command as well then, all the better. It wouldn’t be that difficult. Give me a grenade launcher and a couple of phosphorus rounds, and I would have both damn places on fire in no time.”

  Appalled, Larn listened in disbelieving silence. In the last half an hour since they had reached the trench, Davir’s constant stream of complaints had slowly given way to extended musings in which he openly discussed methods of killing the General Staff responsible for the progress of the Broucheroc campaign. Though even more extraordinary to Larn’s mind was the fact that the other men in the trench had simply sat there and listened to it, as though it was the most normal thing in the world to talk lightly of mutiny and sedition. As Davir’s monologue wore on, Larn found himself with fewer and fewer doubts as to the reasons why the war in this city seemed to be going so badly if these men represented a representative cross-section of the city’s defenders.

  “Of course, I accept it will be difficult getting close enough to use a grenade launcher,” Davir continued. “What with the security perimeters around both buildings being so heavily patrolled and defended. But I have already foreseen a solution. It is only a matter of stealing the right credentials, and I can be inside the perimeter and killing the members of the General Staff before you can say poetic justice.”

  These men can’t be Guardsmen, Larn thought as he looked at the faces of the four men sitting around him in the trench. Granted, they fought off the ork attack well enough two hours ago. But where is their discipline? Their devotion to the Emperor? It is as though all the traditions and regulations of the Guard mean nothing to them. How can they just sit here and listen to this man spew treason without taking action?

  “You would never get away with it, Davir,” the Vardan sitting opposite Davir said. A tall thin man in his mid-thirties, his name was Scholar. Or at least that was what the others called him. Whether it was his profession or a simple nickname, given his stoop-shouldered build and the owlish cast of his face, the name seemed to fit him.

  “I am afraid it is a question of there being major flaws in your modus operandi,” Scholar said, fingers playing unconsciously at his chin as though stroking a nonexistent beard. “Even granting that you manage to obtain the necessary credentials, I doubt the perimeter guards would be willing to stand idly by while you shoot grenades at their generals willy-nilly. There are rules in the Guard against the wasting of ammunition, after all. Besides, even if you could somehow elude the guards, you can be sure that the buildings housing General HQ and Sector Command have both been extensively fireproofed. Not to mention equipped with damage controls systems, blast shields, extinguishing devices, and so forth. No, Davir, I think you will have to find some other method of getting your tally.”

  Could they he joking somehow, Larn thought. Is that it? Is this all some kind of joke, intended to do no more than help them pass the time? But they are talking about murdering officers! How could anyone mistake that for a laughing matter?

  “Then I will simply have to seize control of an artillery battery,” Davir said. “A few high explosive rounds aimed at the GHQ building and I should kill a few generals at least.”

  “But you wouldn’t want to do that either,” the third one, Bulaven, said earnestly. A hulking figure with a thick neck, brawny arms and a broad bearish build, Bulaven was the fireteam’s heavy weapons specialist. He also seemed the only man among the group to harbour anything in the way of concern for the lives of his superiors. “If you start killing generals, Davir, who would we have left to give us orders?”

  “You talk as though that is a bad thing, pigbrain,” Davir spat. “It is thanks to those arseholes in General HQ and their orders that we are in this mess to begin with! Not that I expect us to suddenly starting magically winning this war when they are all dead, you understand. Killing them couldn’t make it any worse. At least doing it would give me some small moments of satisfaction. Orders? Phah! As though they ever achieved anything with all their damned orders other than making things ten times worse. You want to know about orders? Ask Repzik. If it hadn’t been for some fool ordering Battery Command to withhold artillery support during the last attack, he’d probably still be alive. For that matter, what about our new friend here? You all saw what happened to that lander earlier. Ask the new fish what he thinks of the orders that sent him halfway across the galaxy just to make landfall on the wrong planet.”

  Abruptly, the other men in the trench turned to look towards him. Fully aware he must have looked like a rabbit caught in the searchlights of an oncoming vehicle, Larn could only gawp back at them, unsure of what to say.

  “Perhaps he is still in shock?” Bulaven said, his tone solicitous. “Is that it, new fish? Are you in shock?”

  “Wetting his pants in fear more like,” Zeebers, the fourth man in the trench, said. Thin and wiry, of average build, Zeebers looked younger than the others: perhaps in his mid-twenties where Davir and the rest were in their early to mid-thirties. Red-haired, with a pitted and pockmarked face, Zeebers looked nastily towards Larn and sneered at him. “Look at him. If his skin was any greyer you wouldn’t be able to see him against the mud. You ask me, he’s afraid if he says what he really thinks some commissar will hear him and have him shot.”

  “Hhh. Not much to be worried about on that score.” Davir said. “You hear me, new fish? You can speak freely. Granted, time was we’d always be getting commissars coming to the line to lead attacks and so forth. Thankfully, our friends the orks soon put paid to that. Any commissar who was crazy enough to want to join a frontline combat unit got himself killed off long ago. The commissars left now tend to be those with a sharper instinct for their own survival. Sharp enough to stay away from the front at any rate. So, come on, new fish. You must have an opinion? Let us hear it.”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Scholar. “I for one would be fascinated to know what you think.”

  “Come on, new fish,” Zeebers said, his tone harsh and goading. “What are you waiting for? Gretch got your tongue?”

  “Don’t rush him,” Bulaven said, more kindly. “Like I say, I think he’s still in shock. I’m sure he’ll tell us in time.”

  Faces expectant, the Guardsmen fell quiet as they waited for Larn to answer. Uncomfortable, painfully aware of the four pairs of eyes staring at him in silence, for a moment Larn could only sit there with his mouth open, the words dying on his tongue before he could even say them. Then, thinking about all he had seen and heard in the last few hours, in a voice thick with misery he gave them the only answer he had.

  “I… I don’t understand any of this,” he said at last. “None of it. Nothing that has happened to me so far today seems to make any sense.”

  “What is there to understand, new fish?” Davir had said. “We are stuck in this damned city. We are surrounded by millions of orks. Every day they try to kill us. We try not to let them succeed. End of story.”

  “A concise summary granted, Davir,” Scholar had said next. “Though you omitted to mention the promethium. And the stalemate. Not to mention some of the wider parameters.”

  “Fine, Scholar,” Davir had shrugged. “I think you’re wasting your time, but you tell him all about it then. While you’re at it, you might as well tell him how to go about brushing his teeth and wiping his backside. After all, I wouldn’t like to see the consequences if the new fish here somehow got those two vital functions mixed up. Whatever you do, do it from the firing step. It is still your turn to stand watch. And remember: just because we have to nursemaid a war virgin doesn’t mean the orks have forgotten they want to kill us.”

  “You see them?” Scholar said a few minutes later, standing pointing into no-man’s land from the firing step next to Larn while Davir and the others sat playing a card game on the trench floor below them. “That dark grey ragged line about eight hundred metres away? That’s the ork lines.”

  Looking through the field glasses Scholar had lent him, Larn followed the direction of the tall man’s pointing
finger to stare into the wasteland before them. There. He saw it. A sinuous line of ditches that ran the entire length of the sector on the other side of no-man’s land. Watching it, from time to time he saw a gretchin or ork head suddenly come into view. Only for the head to then swiftly disappear as its owner dropped out of sight below the parapets on the ork side once more.

  “I don’t understand how I didn’t see it before,” Larn said. “Having the field glasses helps. But it seems so clear now. How could I have missed it?”

  “It is a question of perception.” Scholar said. “You have noticed how grey the landscape is? The mud, the rocks, the sky, even the buildings? When a person first arrives here the details of the world about them can easily be lost in the same monotonous tone of grey. But there are subtle differences. Differences you become slowly aware of the longer you spend in this city. You have heard how some jungle-worlders have forty different words for green? In reality of course those forty words correspond to different shades of green. Shades which would all look the same to us. But to them, their perceptions heightened by living their entire lives in a green environment, the difference between each shade is as obvious as the difference between black and white. It is the same here in Broucheroc. Believe me, you’ll be amazed how acute you become to the palette of greys once you’ve been in this city a few months.”

  “Of course,” he continued, delighted to finally have an audience willing to hear a lecture, “normally you wouldn’t be able to miss the ork lines if you tried. There’d be an array of makeshift walls, dirt ramparts and bosspoles stretching from one side of the sector to the other. Or piles of burned-out vehicles and corpses used in place of sandbags. The details differ from sector to sector. Up to a month ago we were stationed in Sector 1-11. There, the orks used these large jury-rigged barricades that they would just smash their way through whenever they attacked us. Then they would rebuild them, smashing their way through them again whenever there was a major assault, and so on. You see, the orks don’t follow a centralised command structure as we do. Granted, when their Warbosses are not busy fighting it out amongst each other, they are usually united behind a single Warlord. But when it comes to the disposition of any particular ork sector, the local Warboss is free to do as he wants. And, as it happens, this particular boss seems to have taken a leaf out of our book — ordering his followers to dig camouflaged underground dugouts, foxholes and trenches rather than the usual ostentatious fortress. It could be he is brighter than the usual ork leader. Then again, perhaps he’s just aping our tactics without any kind of clear plan in mind. Really, it can be hard to tell with orks. Even after ten years here, I still find it difficult to tell the difference between a stupid ork and a clever one.”