by Steve Lyons
In the past few days, however, he had witnessed a marked increase in the number of soldiers around him. He had felt, even before this morning’s new orders were read out, that the waiting was coming to an end at last. They were almost ready.
The afternoon brought a further distraction.
Gunthar’s squad was one of eight marched to Thelonius City in the company of three Centaur support vehicles. As lifter platforms cranked them up to the 110th floor, they passed well-lit bars and eateries, clubs and casinos, and it felt as if he was viewing an alien landscape. He had always believed that, by doing his job, supporting the mining operation, he was paying his dues to the Emperor. He understood now that he could, he should, have been doing so much more.
The truth of it was that, before the necrons, he had felt too safe.
The further they moved into the city, the more evident were its scars. Windows were boarded up, emporiums burnt out or looted. The skyways were strewn with refuse, and more than one white autocab had been upended and torched. Most shaming of all were the pro-necron slogans graffitied on the walls. Had Gunthar known no better, he could have mistaken this for a lower floor, somewhere in the mid-twenties at most, and attributed the vandalism to the usual mutant suspects.
He heard the rioters before he saw them, their voices united in an outpouring of fury. The proctors came into view first. There were four lines of them, ranged across the skyway, their shields raised but staggering beneath an onslaught of pure chaos. At the sight of the Imperial convoy, they parted gratefully, and the first of the rioters came flooding through the gap. When they saw what was waiting beyond it, many of them faltered, tried to turn back, but found the proctors moving to surround them.
Others were more game, or just out of their minds, and a hail of half-bricks and petroleum bombs came Gunthar’s way but shattered uselessly against armour plating and flak helmets. A Krieg Guardsman, sitting up in the turret of the leading Centaur, squeezed off ten rounds from his heavy stubber over the rioters’ heads, demanding their attention. Some didn’t heed the warning, or perhaps didn’t think it was serious, and they squared up to the oncoming juggernaut. A few hurled themselves at it, tried to climb its sponsons, but they were quickly seized by troopers, wrenched from their precarious perches and dashed to the ground.
One fell under the Centaur’s tracks and was crushed to death, but Gunthar felt no sympathy for him. He could almost have forgiven these people their previous ignorance, but to have learned of the necrons and reacted this way? Many of them were male and of draft age. They could have been fighting. Instead, their selfish concern for their own lives was impeding the war effort, an affront to the Emperor and a threat to everything He had built. A good number of them flew banners, proclaiming support for their erstwhile Governor and opposition to the Krieg ‘invaders’ of their world. He didn’t remember Hanrik being so popular in life.
The tumult had subsided a little, angry voices struck dumb by awe and doubt. This gave a PDF sergeant with a loudhailer a chance to be heard, which he used to order all citizens off the skyways. The PDF were leading this operation, a single Death Korps squad along to man the Centaurs: a familiar pattern. It was felt, Gunthar had heard, that the people of Hieronymous Theta were more likely to respond to their own kind, that the presence of alien soldiers in their homes would be a further incitement to them. Personally, he would have sent in the death riders to mow down anyone in their way, had it not been for the need to conserve ammunition.
Gunthar and his comrades moved into the crowd, displaying their guns although they didn’t want to have to use them, two Centaurs lurking in threat behind them. A scrawny young man attacked the trooper to Gunthar’s right, tried to wrest his lasgun away from him but found himself impaled on its bayonet instead. They were beginning to get their message across, and a lot of makeshift weapons had been dropped, a lot of trembling hands raised. Dispersal was a slow process, however, with everyone penned in as they were. Suddenly, there was an upsurge of activity ahead of Gunthar, and a phalanx of rioters broke through a proctor cordon and streamed away down a side street.
It was for this very reason that the third Centaur had peeled off minutes earlier, guided by the proctors towards the nearest heavy lifter, two squads of troopers trailing along behind it. By now, it would be wheeling up behind the would-be escapees, ready to give them a nasty surprise – and indeed, a moment later, Gunthar heard the staccato retort of its stubber and was satisfied that an example was being made.
He climbed through the smashed window of a food emporium, found a group of older men setting a fire in there and one filling a box with all the goods he could lay his hands on. Staring down the barrel of Gunthar’s hellgun, the old thief turned pale and pleaded, ‘It’s for my wife and my children. With all the upheaval, the unrest, the mines have been shut down and I can’t make an honest living.’
When he saw that Gunthar was unmoved by his plight, his face darkened and he growled, ‘I’m entitled to this. I’ve worked hard for the Emperor all my life, and what do I have to show for it? He abandoned us to die here!’
Gunthar was disgusted by him, by the waste of a life he represented. He squeezed his trigger, burnt a hole through the old thief’s head and watched dispassionately as his lifeless body crumpled. For a moment, he wondered if he had failed himself, allowed emotion to cloud his judgement. Then he saw the expressions on the remaining looters’ faces, heard their whimpered apologies and promises of future loyalty as they backed towards the window, and he knew that word of his single shot would spread and probably grow, and prove an object lesson to anyone who heard it.
He had used his resources well.
A half-track came to meet the returning convoy, pulling up alongside it. A thin-faced, young major spoke to a sergeant and was directed to another, who directed him in turn towards Gunthar. ‘Trooper Soreson?’ asked the major, and Gunthar blinked and took a moment to confirm that, yes, that had been his name. It had been so long since he had been addressed by it, he had almost forgotten.
He didn’t know why he had been singled out again. He didn’t ask. He was driven to the space port and taken upstairs to the office that had once been Hanrik’s, now Colonel Braun’s. Rising from behind his desk, Braun met Gunthar with a handshake and a vapid remark about the cold weather, as if greeting an old friend. He offered the nonplussed trooper a seat, and regarded him at length with a smile presumably meant to reassure him but decidedly strained.
‘I hear you’re just back from Thelonius City,’ said Braun.
‘Yes sir,’ said Gunthar. ‘We quelled the insurrection there.’
‘That’s good,’ murmured Braun, half to himself, ‘that’s good news. We have been finding it hard to recruit from Thelonius, but perhaps now…’
The colonel was flanked by two PDF lieutenants, while the major who had fetched Gunthar here had seated himself behind the door. It was a smaller gathering than the one to which he had last been summoned in these offices, with the Krieg Colonel 186 and his deputies being the absentees of most note, apart from Hanrik of course. Still, it was clear that something big was afoot, if only Braun would get to the point.
Commissar Costellin was in front of the window, leaning against the sill. His left arm was in a sling, and he looked as if he had aged ten years in the past three weeks.
Braun cleared his throat and fingered the ends of his moustache. ‘As you may have inferred from recent events,’ he said, ‘we are about to enter the decisive phase of this war of ours. We have driven the necrons back, corralled them quite nicely thank you very much, and we – that is to say, the Krieg officers and myself – have been making plans for one final push against them.’
‘You may also be aware,’ a lieutenant put in, ‘that there has not been an enemy sighting since the unfortunate events of a few weeks ago.’
‘You mean,’ said Costellin quietly, ‘since the necrons butchered thousands of civilians confined to the city by our own actions.’
‘Um, yes, qu
ite so.’
‘Evidently,’ said Braun, ‘they are hiding out in that tomb of theirs, licking their wounds. Our objective, then, is to destroy that tomb, and the necrons along with it. Unfortunately, its composition and internal layout remain a mystery to us, since our early attempt to send in a scouting party met with failure. Nevertheless, we – that is to say, our tech-priests and enginseers – consider that a small number of atomic mining charges ought to be sufficient to the task.’
Gunthar was starting to see where this was going. Costellin spelt it out for him: ‘We need a man to deliver those charges.’
‘That man would play no other part in the battle,’ said the lieutenant, ‘but to wait for the entranceway to the tomb to become clear. At that point, with the protection of his squad, he would, um, convey the charges inside.’
Colonel Braun added, ‘We – that is to say, Colonel 186 – remembered your mining experience, Trooper Soreson, and your invaluable assistance in our earlier, ah…’
Gunthar had heard enough. He could have mentioned that, to him, atomic mining charges were just a stock number on a requisition form, he had never actually handled one, but that was not what anyone wanted to hear. ‘I would like to volunteer, sir,’ he said, and was rewarded by his commandant’s expression of relief.
Evidently, Braun had never sent a soldier to his certain death before.
‘You are clear, I hope, on what is being asked of you here,’ said Costellin. ‘These charges will not be detonated remotely, nor by a timed fuse. Either circumstance would allow the necrons a chance to deactivate them. You would be giving your life, Trooper Soreson, as would the other nine members of your squad.’
‘When do we leave, sir?’ asked Gunthar.
Colonel Braun reached into his desk drawer. ‘I have something for you, Trooper Soreson,’ he said, ‘in recognition of your, ah, your dedication. I know you have only been with the Planetary Defence Force a short time, but in that time you have served with distinction, and what with the losses we have sustained… well, I understand your squad is short of a sergeant at present.’
He was holding out a pair of sergeant’s flashes. Gunthar took them and thanked him. It didn’t matter that he didn’t feel ready to wear them. It was the Emperor’s will.
‘I know it isn’t much,’ said Braun. ‘If it were up to me… I’ve been in discussion with the Departmento Munitorum, I was hoping to arrange… We may not be Imperial Guard, but these past months we have fought alongside them, lived alongside them, given as much as they have, more even, and I don’t see why… I feel that, under the circumstances, the Iron Aquila shouldn’t be out of the question.’
He didn’t understand, thought Gunthar.
They were digging their way into Hieronymous City.
Four Centaurs had been fitted with dozer blades and were bearing the brunt of the task. There was still plenty for individual soldiers to do, however, armed with spades and barrows, watching that the rubble didn’t slide and bury them all. A fine layer of snow had settled in the night, making their labours more precarious. Gunthar had slept for the regulation six hours – he had become used to closing his ears, switching off his brain and taking his rest when he could – and was now back on duty.
His sergeant’s stripes affected the way his comrades looked at him. He resented this to begin with, resented the way in which they seemed to expect him to think for them now. He preferred the anonymity he had enjoyed before. He soon learned, however, that little had changed really. The officers still made the decisions, gave the orders, and all Gunthar had to do was oversee their implementation, ensure that everyone understood and performed the functions assigned to them.
That afternoon, Guardsmen and troopers alike formed up for a briefing from Colonel 186, who arrived with his usual entourage of Krieg officers and a smattering of PDF ones, Braun among them. An almost tangible sense of anticipation hung in the air as the colonel declared their work here almost done. ‘We will enter the city at dawn,’ he announced, ‘as will our fellow regiments to the north, east and south, converging upon the necron edifice, where the final battle of this war will be fought and won.’
Then he outlined the plan to destroy the necron tomb, and revealed that the honour of striking that blow would fall to a PDF squad but didn’t say which one. He referred to Gunthar, but called him ‘Sergeant 1419’, an appellation that few were likely to recognise. A number of troopers glanced nervously about, at each other, or tried to make out the digits stamped into their sergeants’ dog tags, to reassure themselves that they weren’t the chosen martyrs. They didn’t understand either.
‘Why does it have to be a PDF squad?’ he heard one trooper complaining as they returned to their work, after the Krieg officers had departed. ‘Why can’t that faceless bastard send his own men to die for a change?’ Gunthar reminded him sharply that he was talking about a superior officer, and therefore about the Emperor, and the trooper scowled at him but was silenced.
He was far from the only malcontent, however. Gunthar heard them muttering wherever he turned:
‘–think their lives are more valuable than ours, but they don’t even–’
‘–Braun should stand up to them, tell them we won’t take it. Hanrik would have–’
‘–about the rest of us, that’s what I’d like to know. When that blast goes off–’
‘–got their rebreather units to protect them from the radiation, while we–’
He consoled himself with the thought that most of the complainants were recent draftees. Their training period had been even more cursory than Gunthar’s had been, and none of them had experienced real combat yet. They hadn’t seen the necrons.
It took forty minutes for one of them to approach him: a sandy-haired, freckle-faced youth, sixteen or seventeen years old, from his own squad. ‘Some of us were wondering, sergeant,’ he said, ‘if the troopers that are to… the squad they are sending into the tomb… Sergeant, would be that our squad?’
‘Yes, trooper, it would be,’ said Gunthar, and the boy’s face turned ashen.
An hour later, a Krieg watchmaster informed Gunthar that one of his men had been caught attempting to desert and shot dead. He felt ashamed, and angry with himself. He felt he ought to have foreseen that occurrence and acted to prevent it.
By the time Lieutenant Harker, the platoon commander, assembled Gunthar’s squad and drew them to one side, there was nobody left with much doubt about what he might have to say to them. The lieutenant spoke about the great honour that had been conferred upon these ten men – nine now, he corrected himself. He told them that their actions tomorrow would make them heroes, and then, to Gunthar’s surprise, he gave each of them a choice: a transfer to another squad, should they wish to accept it.
Three of them did so, hesitantly at first, perhaps suspecting a trick. Gunthar was disappointed in them, but proud of the five that remained – and he took heart in the fact that, once word went out, there was no shortage of volunteers to replace them.
It wasn’t the way he would have handled the situation, but he had to admit to himself that it had been effective. He had nine men again, all of whom he could trust. They would do what they had to do, die to ensure that he could deliver his crucial payload, because they all thought as he did.
They believed in a cause, and they needed no more motivation than that, no promotions or medals, to fight for it. It was enough to know that their lives would make a difference, and in this sense they were luckier than the men they had replaced. Those men would most likely die tomorrow anyway, more cheaply and in fear.
There was no fear for Gunthar and his squad, because the future for them was set. They were dead men walking, all of them – but now they had the comfort of knowing exactly how and when they would drop.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Costellin was packing.
He didn’t want to leave it to the servitors, didn’t trust them with the items important to him. Not that there was much. Hololiths of his four grands
ons at their passing-out parades. His first set of dog tags. An old, cracked data-slate inside which were locked the fond memories of a particular four-year period of his life. He wrapped them all carefully in his spare uniform, lowered them into a zip case.
The room looked empty, as it had when Costellin had first walked into it almost two months ago. It was funny how, in so short a time, it had become his room, his home. He wouldn’t miss Hieronymous Theta when he left it, but a small part of himself would remain in this room, as it had in all the other rooms, the many other rooms, on the many other worlds before this one.
Opening the bottom desk drawer, he was startled to find a pair of Krieg eyepieces staring up at him. He had forgotten he had put the mask and rebreather unit in there, forgotten he had retrieved them from the hab in the city. He had gone back for his chainsword and cap, lifted the floorboard beneath which he had stowed them to be transfixed by a dead man’s eyes.
He had remembered his promise to that dead man.
He should have left the mask where it lay. It had been a mistake to carry extra weight with him, wounded as he had been. Nevertheless, carry it Costellin had. A memento mori. He was getting as bad as the Guardsmen with whom he served. Yet one more reason, he thought, why the time had come.
‘I hear you are leaving us.’
Colonel 186 was in the doorway. Costellin was surprised to see him, and also a little guilty. He ought to have broken the news to his fellow officer in person. He had been putting off that ordeal, telling himself the colonel wouldn’t care anyway.
‘Once this campaign is over,’ he confirmed. ‘I have accepted a posting to a Royal Validian regiment.’
‘I will be sorry to lose you,’ said the colonel. Will you? thought Costellin uncharitably. ‘Your service with us has been long and distinguished, and in particular the mission you led into the occupied city–’