13th Legion

by Gav Thorpe

  Yeah, and I didn't get to have her in the end anyway, did 1?' I take another swig of water to moisten my tongue and then cock my head to one side to listen to what's going on outside the trench. You boys better move over to this side of the trench/

  They look at me, Wide Eyes frowning, the older one with his mouth half-open, the others not really paying attention.

  'Move it! Now!' I snap, seeing if I can pull the parade ground trick as well as any real officer.

  The commanding tone in my voice makes them act instantly, leaping across to my side and thudding down in the muck as well. The sound of explosions gets rapidly closer and suddenly the whole trench line is engulfed in a raging torrent of shells. Red fire explodes everywhere, plasma shells spewing a torrent of molten death onto the far side of the trench where the recruits had been lounging.

  Stupid fraggers, did nobody tell them to use the lee of the trench to protect themselves during an artillery attack? And it goes without saying that they hadn't heard the pause in the gunfire that suggested a change of aiming point, or the whistle of the first shells heading our way. Emperor's blood, I would have made a brilliant training officer if I didn't have such a lousy temper!

  Strange as it seems, even the thunderous tumult of a barrage soon gets relegated to being background noise, and you learn to ignore the shaking ground.

  It's Wide Eyes who speaks first, pulling his collar up as a gust of wind sends the rain spraying beneath the overhang of the trench.

  "Why are you here if you're supposed to be on this prison planet?' he asks. First sensible thing anyone else has said so far. 'Did you escape or something?'

  'If I'd escaped, do you really think I would end up in this grave-bait war?' I reply with a sour look. 'I don't think so! But I did try to get out once. You have to understand that this world wasn't a prison like the brig aboard ship. There were only a few guards, and they had this massive fortified tower out on the central plains. Apart from that, you were just kicked out into the wastelands and forgotten. I mean, really! It's just like any other world, there're empires and lords and stuff. The meanest fraggers get to the top and the weak are just left by the wayside or killed and preyed upon. If you're strong, you survive, if you ain't...' I let it hang.

  'Anyway, I gets into the retinue of this guy called Tagel/ I tell them. One of the many people I've met and wish I hadn't. 'Big fragger from Catachan, and they breed 'em really big deep in that hellhole. He'd directed an artillery barrage on friendly troops 'cause his captain had called him names or some equally petty stupidity. He was fighting against a rag-tag bunch

  from across the other side of the valley, who had a nice little still going brewing up some really potent juice. Anyway, I kinda led some of Tagel's guys into an ambush on purpose, but before I can get to the other side they're hunting me. It may be a big planet, but when you've got that red-faced fragger chasing you everywhere you start getting the idea that this planet isn't the best place to be, know what I mean?

  'Anyway, there's this supply shuttle every few months. I holed up long enough until one was due and then forged my way across the plains. I hid for a few days, waiting nice and patient. Then the shuttle comes in, as I'd hoped. I sneak real close to the station while they're all excited about getting their visitors. Then the gates open so they can let out the latest bunch of sorry malcontents. In the confusion I scrag one of the guards and swipe his uniform. I slip into the complex just as the gates are closing and then it's time to head for the shuttle. I'd just bluffed my way to the landing pad when the body's spotted and the alarm's raised/

  Their eyes are fixed to me like a sniper's sight, hanging on each word. Can I tell a story or what?

  'So, I knife a couple more frag-heads to clear a way through and I'm up the ramp and inside. Just as the door's about to close there's someone up ahead of me. Without thinking I thrust with my stained blade into this guy's shoulder. He just takes it, can you believe that? A span of mono-edge in his arm and the guy just takes a pace back. I look up into his face, 'cause this guy is one big meatgrinder, if you take my mean­ing, and there's these cold blue eyes just staring at me, icy to the core. He backhands me, breaking my jaw as I later find out, and I go down. I get a boot in the crotch and then a pis­tol butt to the back of my head. Last thing I hear is this guy laughing. Laughing! I hear him say something which I'll never forget.'

  Their eyes ask the question before their mouths can move.

  '"Just my type of scum!" is what he says!' That's me, the Colonel's scum through and through.

  The barrage from Coritanorum has moved on, dropping its payload of death and misery on some other poor souls, not that I give them a second thought. Rations Boy asks the obvi­ous question. 'Who was he? How did he get you here?'

  That was the Colonel/ I say with due reverence. 'Colonel Schaeffer, no less. Commander of die Last Chancers/

  Wide Eyes jumps in with the next obvious question. 'Who are the Last Chancers?'

  The 13th Penal Legion/ I inform them grandly. 'Of course, there's been hundreds more than thirteen raisings, but we've always been called the 13th on account of our bad luck/

  Wide Eyes is full of questions at the moment. He takes his cap off and flicks water from the brim into the trench, reveal­ing his close-cropped blond hair. It's smudged with brown and black from the dirt and muck that this whole Emperor-damned world is covered in.

  %Vhat bad luck?' he asks.

  'Our bad luck to have the Colonel in command/ I say wim a grin. *We get the dirtiest missions he can find. Suicide strikes, rear­guards, forlorn hope for assaults. You name the nastiest situation you could ever imagine and I'd bet a week's rations the Colonel has been in it. And survived, more importantly. We get a hundred guys gunned down in the first volley and he'll walk through the entire battle without a scratch. Not a fragging scratch!'

  One of the others, silent until now, opens his thin-lipped mouth to ask one of the most sensible questions I'd heard in a long time. 'So why are you here? I know I've not had much experience of battle, but I know this isn't a suicide run. I mean, we're new here; why bother raising a whole new regiment just to tiirow them away?'

  You so sure it ain't a suicide run?' I say back to him, eye­brows raised. You seen the lights, flares heading up, to the west?' Nods of agreement. They ain't flares. They're landing barges evacuating this battle-zone. There are twenty or thirty transports up there in orbit, waiting to pull out. Guess they've decided to wipe out everything from space - virus bombs, mass drivers and all the rest. Coritanorum is a lost cause now. The rebels are too well dug in. In the past eighteen months, there've been thirty-eight assaults and we haven't advanced one pace. They're pulling back and guess who's left to hold the front line...'

  'But we're behind the front, so what're you doing back here?' Thin Lips points out.

  There's a distant whine behind us, getting louder and louder. The recruits duck into shelter, but I know what's coming and

  take a peek over the trench to see the show. Suddenly, there's a howling roar directly overhead and a squadron of Marauders streak across the sky, Thunderbolt fighters spiralling around them in an escort pattern. While the others cower in stupidity, I see a line of fiery blossoms blooming over the enemy posi­tions. Our own artillery has set up a counter-barrage and the incoming fire suddenly stops. Then die attack run of the Marauders hits, sending up a plume of smoke as their bombs detonate and the blinding pulses of lascannon smash through the enemy fortifications and explode their ammo dumps. The ground attack is over in an instant as the planes light their afterburners and scream off into the storm.

  'Hey boys!' I call down to them. Take a look at mis, you won't see another one for a while!'

  The recruits timidly poke their heads out, and give me a quizzical look.

  'Bombardment, air attack - next comes the orbital barrage/ I tell them. I've seen it half a dozen times, standard Imperial bat-tie dogma. Those damned rebels are in for some hot stuff tonight!'

  Just as I finish speaki
ng, the clouds are brilliantly lit up in one area and a moment later an immense ball of energy flashes towards Coritanorum. The fusion torpedo smashes into the citadel's armoured walls, smearing along the scarred and pock­marked metal like fiery oil. Several more salvoes rain down through the storm, some shells kicking up huge plumes of steam as they bury themselves in the mud before detonating, others causing rivulets of molten metal to pour down Coritanorum's walls like lava flows.

  Then the rebels' anti-strike batteries open up, huge turrets swivel skywards and blasts of laser energy punch through the atmosphere. For almost a minute the return fusillade contin­ues, dissipating the clouds above the fortress with the heat of their attack. The ship in orbit must have pulled out, as no more death comes spilling from the cloud cover.

  Half a minute later a siren sounds along the whole trench. Rations Boy looks up, face suddenly pale and lip trembling. That's the standby order. Next one sounds the attack/ he tells me.

  This is my big chance. In the confusion of the attack, it'll be easy to slip out the other side of the trench and get myself out

  of here. As stimulating as their company is, I don't want to be anywhere near these recruits for more than another half-minute.

  'I'd wish you luck, but I'm afraid I'm hogging that all to myself just for now/ I smile, but they don't look reassured. Never mind.

  Just then the grim-faced commissar comes striding round the corner of the trench, his beady eyes fixed on me. 'Bring the pris­oner with you when we advance. Let him go and I'll have all of you up on a charge of negligence!'

  Frag! Still, an order's one thing, but execution's another.

  Then the attack siren sounds. I'm being pushed out first, so I guess my new friends have learnt one thing, at least. I start sprinting cross the open killing ground to the next trench line. The enemy snipers, who I'd avoided so nimbly before, get a sec­ond chance at skinning my hide. There's a yell and Wide Eyes goes down as a bullet smashes through his neck, spraying spine and blood over my stolen uniform. I snatch up his lasgun and send a volley of shots from the hip into the sniper's probable hiding place. No more shots ring out for the moment.

  Then something grabs my leg. Looking down I see the hard-headed commissar down on his knees coughing blood, broken. He looks at me with those hard eyes and whispers, 'Do something decent with your life for a change, treacherous scum!'

  Without a thought I turn the lasgun round and grant him his wish. The beams of murderous light silencing him forever. I must be getting soft. I've never bothered with a mercy killing before now, especially this knee-deep in trouble.

  With the commissar down, this is my chance to break for it. I just have to turn round and ran straight back the way we came. I don't think the rebels are going to bother shooting at some­one running in the opposite direction. Just then I notice something, probably the enemy, casting a shadow in the light­ning, just ahead of us to the right. Damned snipers must be laughing it up tonight. I look about as a shot plucks at my tunic - maybe I was wrong about an easy getaway. There's a ruined farmstead on the left and I head for it. With the resumption of sniper fire, some of the rookie platoon is face down in the mud, hiding or dead, I don't know. The rest are standing

  around, milling about in confusion. Someone I don't know gets in my way, his eyes strangely vacant with desperation as more and more of the rookies are gunned down by hidden foes. I slam my fist into his weasel face and as he stumbles out of my way he goes down, his chest blown out by a bullet that would have hit me. Another couple of heartbeats and I'm over the wall of the farm and kneeling in some kind of animal pen.

  Right, now that I've separated myself from those no-hopers, time to formulate my escape plan. Then there's the thud of boots all around me and I realise that the platoon has followed me into cover instead of carrying on their planned advance to the next trench! A journey, I might add, that they would have never finished.

  One of the little soldier boys grabs my collar and shouts in my ear. 'Good thinking, sir! We'd have been butchered if you hadn't brought us here!'

  Frag! 'Brought you here?' I almost scream. 'I didn't fraggin' bring you here, you dumb rookies! Frag, you stupid wetbacks are gonna get me killed, hangin' around here with "target" written all over you as badly as if it was in bright lights five metres high! Get outta my face before I skin you, you stupid lit­tle fragger!'

  Chips of masonry are flying everywhere now as the snipers bring their high-powered rifles to bear on us. Well, as long as these space-heads are around, I might as well use them to my advantage. As Tagel used to say, an iron ball around your leg can still be used to smash someone's head in. Actually, that was prob­ably one of the longest sentences the dumb brute had ever used, so I figure he'd heard it from someone else. Pulling my thoughts back to the problem in hand, I point through the downpour towards the escarpment where the snipers are lying in cover.

  'Suppression fire on that ridge!' I bellow.

  Drilled for months while in transit to this hellhole, the pla­toon reacts without thought. The guys around me open up with their lasguns, a torrent of light pulsing through the dark­ness. I find the shattered casing of a solar boiler and use its twisted panes to get some cover from the shells knocking chunks off the plascrete wall of the outhouse. Little did my boys know, but the shuttles wouldn't hang around forever, and I've still got every intention of warming my behind on one of those seats.

  There's a shouted greeting and die remnants of another squad joins us, two of the guardsmen carrying grenade launch­ers. They start fiddling with their sights to get the correct trajectory but by diis time diere's more incoming fire as die snipers behind the ridge get reinforcements. I snatch one of the launchers, select a frag round and send the charge sailing through the air. I grin madly, along widi odiers I note, as diree bodies are tossed into view by the explosion. Casting die launcher back to the guardsman, I draw die concealed knife from my right boot and charge. Not too far now.

  As I leap over a mound of bodies, I see die rest of the platoon on either side of me, pouring over the ridge. Stunned by die sudden attack the traitors are soon hacked down in a storm of lasgun fire and slashing bayonets. I gut two of the rebel swine myself. From there it's just a matter of half a minute's jogging to the forward trench line. As the others set off I turn on my heel and start heading back to the second line, which now would hopefully be empty. I see the grox-breath lieutenant to my right. He sees me too. But before he can say anything, him and his command squad are knocked off their feet in a bloody cloud by a hail of fire. I see shadows moving up on the left, cutting me off from my route to die shuttles - for now at least.

  As I splash down in the front-line trench, I hear the sergeants crying out die roll-call. Lots of names get no reply and I guess they've lost about three-quarters of die men. The others are gonna die as soon as die rebels counter-attack, and I'm gonna make damn sure I'm not around to suffer a similar fate. Suddenly I notice everyone's looking at me, expectation in dieir eyes.

  'What die frag is this? What're you looking at, for Emperor's sake?' I snarl at them. It's the oldest one of my guards who makes die plea.

  'Lieutenant Martinez is dead! The command squad are all dead!' he says, high-pitched voice wobbling widi fright.

  'And?' I ask.

  And you saw to Commissar Caeditz!' he replies.

  'Yeah, and?' I ask again. I don't like die sound of this at all. I dare not believe it, but I have a feeling somediing bad is happening.

  'We're stuck here until another command squad gets sent up/ he explains. There's no one in command. Well, except you. You said you were a lieutenant/

  Teah, of a fraggin' penal legion platoon!' I spit out. That don't mean nothing in the real world/

  You got us this far/ pipes up another nuisance, his face streaked with rain and blood, his lips swollen and bruised.

  'Look, no offence, but the last thing I need right now is a bunch of wet-backed brainless fraggers like you weighing me down/ I explain to them. 'I got me dii
s far. You guys have just tagged along for the ride. There's a seat on one of those stellar transports with my name on it, and I fully intend to sit in it. Do you understand?'

  'But you can't just leave us!' comes the call from someone at the back.

  The pitiful misery in dieir eyes is truly galling. There's no chance in creation I'm gonna lumber myself with this diankless task. I set about rummaging through the packs they've dumped in the trench to see if I can scrag some rations. I feel a faint tremor in the ground and look up. I see movement in die dark­ness, and as the wind subtly changes direction it brings die faint smell of oil smoke. Out in the rainswept darkness of die night I can make out the silhouette of a rebel Demolisher siege tank rumbling forwards. By its course I can tell the crew haven't seen us yet, but as soon as diey pass a clump of twisted con­crete columns to our right, we'll be easy targets. Bad news, bad news indeed.

  'Listen up!' I call out, getting their attention. 'I am not in command! I am going to leave you to your fate! Make no bones, but there's a Demolisher on the prowl out there and he's gonna blow me to little pieces with that big gun of his if you give him the chance/

  I'm thinking really hard now. Maybe this would give me the chance I need to get away. I've survived for years on my wits, and I'm not going to give up tiiat easily now. Being alive is a hobby of mine, and I don't feel like giving it up right now.

  'Do exacdy what I say and I may just get out of this with my skin/ I say to diem, brain working overtime.

  They listen intendy, staring up at me widi expectant eyes as I detail the plan. I check they understand and as they all nod I send them on their way. As the Demolisher rumbles forward

  someone switches on the turret's searchlight. The tank's hull glistens with rain and the steady sheet of water pouring from the sky reflects along the beam's length. Damn! I hadn't thought of that! Still, it's too late now, the plan's in motion and to shout now would be asking for death. I signal my bunch of guys to hunker down more as the omers move out into posi­tion. I watch the Demolisher constandy as it slowly grinds its way through piles of bones, smashing aside small walls, its bulldozer blade creating a furrow in the deep mud. The search­light is swinging left and right, but we're slightly behind it now and the commander isn't checking every angle. If he spots us, that turret is going to turn round on us, slow as he likes and drop one of those massive Demolisher shells right on top of my head!