Flesh And Iron

by Henry Zou

  Baeder dropped his food baskets and went for his autopistol instead. He could see the five Riverine sentries lying face down. Each had a glistening wound on the back of their skulls, blunt trauma inflicted by blows from behind. Of the volunteer villagers, there was no sign, but Baeder could make out mud tracks leading away from the gunpit towards the camp. He considered sounding an alarm, but opted for a more subtle approach. He cocked his Kupiter .45 automat pistol and slid after the footprints in the mud.

  The horrors unveiled themselves to Baeder slowly. At the first two-man tent Baeder tracked the prints to, he found the occupant Riverine inside were dead, their throats slit and the ground damp with enormous blood loss. The next tent was the same. Baeder counted nine good men, lost in one night without so much as a shot being fired. Ten metres away he counted ten; Corporal Huder unceremoniously dumped into a clump of bracken with multiple stab wounds, still holding a hip flask in his hands. The corporal had likely been drinking alone at the edge of camp when he met his fate.

  At the third tent in a row, Baeder stuck to the shadows. He saw four murky figures standing around the canvas tent, obviously keeping watch. Even in the darkness Baeder could see the glint of weapons. Three of the men carried machetes and a fourth leaned against his two-pronged cassam spear. They were unmistakably the village volunteers and judging by their hunched, tentative postures, they were in the act of murdering Baeder's men.

  Baeder emerged from the shadows confidently, his pistol held behind his back. 'Good evening, gentlemen!' he said clearly.

  The Lauzon tribesmen started. As he walked towards them, they looked at him with stunned expressions, grasping for words. Baeder knew it was the split second moment where they were deciding whether they could construct a passable excuse for what they were doing inside the battalion camp, or whether they should rash the officer and overwhelm him. Baeder did not give them that luxury. He swung his pistol out from behind his back and popped off two shots in fluid succession. Two of the murderers collapsed wordlessly. Baeder caught the third as he leapt at him with a raised machete, shooting him twice point-blank in the chest. He put down the fourth man as he turned to run. Baeder showed the murderers the same absence of mercy they had undoubtedly shown his men.

  Alerted by the popping gunshots, another Lauzon murderer emerged from the tent flap, his business of killing interrupted. The machete he brandished was already wet with threads of blood. As he sprinted the several metres towards Baeder, he received a pistol shot in the abdomen. But small calibre rounds never guaranteed putting an opponent down, especially when he was running on desperation. Baeder back-pedalled and fired two more shots, both finding their mark in the murderer's torso. Yet he kept on coming. With an eight-round clip, the autopistol had one shot left. Baeder fired his last round into the attacker's neck, almost pushing the pistol barrel against him. There was a great burst of blood, but still the murderer rushed at him. A firearm's lack of stopping power was every Guardsman's worst nightmare. He remembered his power fist, locked up in the stow trunk on his swift boat, but it was too late to lament.

  Baeder threw his spent autopistol aside and grappled with the man's machete. They stumbled, pushing and straining in the clinch until they toppled over into the tent. Both went down in a tangle of canvas, rope and whipping limbs. Baeder found the man rolling on top, his many gunshot wounds pouring all over him. The murderer struggled, groaning and breathing hard in Baeder's ear. It was the worst experience of combat Baeder had ever suffered. With a final heave, Baeder swept his attacker and gained top position. By then, the pistol shots were draining away the attacker's strength and the villager, with his wide crazed eyes, was beginning to go limp. His movements slowed and finally, with a shudder, he was still. Baeder released his hold on the man's machete handle and kicked him away.

  The sounds of their struggle brought out the lurking silhouettes of the other Lauzon murderers from a nearby tent. But by now Riverine were emerging in various states of undress, half-asleep but gripping las-rifles.

  'Insurgents,' Baeder bellowed, pointing at the Lauzon. Immediately, a las-shot snapped out and dropped one of the Lauzon silhouettes. There was pandemonium as Riverine bolted out from their tents, simultaneously tugging on boots and fatigues and loading lasrifles. A great clamour roused the battalion from their sleep.

  But before the quiet was truly broken, up in the sky, a phos-flare was released.

  'Angel One,' Baeder muttered to himself.

  The flare hung suspended in the sky, trailing droplets of glowing white incendiary. The light it cast was a monochrome of white and stark shadow. But it was enough to reveal to Baeder what lay in wait amongst the tree line. No more than a hundred metres away, separated by just one grid of cassam paddy, Baeder saw hundreds, if not thousands, of faces staring at him. Insurgents lying in wait, their eyes white with intent, looking at him.

  Then with a roar that built up into a thick wall of sound, the Carnibales charged.

  DUPONTI DROPPED HIS Lightning like a stone, blazing away with hellstrike missiles. He strafed the length of the enemy advance, jamming his finger hard on the trigger button. Within seconds he had made his run, gaining altitude again.

  He craned his head about to inspect his damage. A wall of fire, two hundred metres in length, danced along where the farm met the forest. It consumed an entire strip of cassam paddies along with a shard of the first of the enemy wave. But from his vantage point, Duponti could see sprinting figures detach from the trees at the left and right flanks of the battalion camp. Mobs of tiny, surging people converged towards the Imperial position down below, seemingly unafraid of the Riverine las-volleys blistering them. Duponti was already out of hellstrike missiles, but he banked around anyway, determined to add his lascannons to the engagement.

  'Angel One, this is Baeder,' crackled Duponti's headset. 'It's heavy down here. How many can you see from where you are?'

  'They are moving in from all three sides inland, the delta is clear. I count thousands. I don't know if there are more under the canopy. Can you reach your boats?'

  'My men barely have their britches on. Frag! This was a trap, the Lauzon sold us out.'

  'I'm coming down to give them hell,' Duponti promised.

  'Give them what you can. We need all the time we can get. Out.'

  MAJOR MORTLOCK THREW himself down behind a low irrigation ditch and blasted a fan of las-fire to his front. Riverine Guardsmen spread out in a thin line around the camp, digging in behind the drainage canals or even the chest-deep water paddies to repel the enemy offensive. In the first few minutes of shock, the Riverine fired wildly, unleashing every firearm in their arsenal. Smoke and grit choked the air in a gagging, swelling cloud.

  Yet still the insurgents came. Mortlock was uncertain whether it was the light, but some of those rushing faces were terrifyingly inhuman. There were mutants amongst them. Under his scope, Mortlock was sure that some were not even true insurgents. Some were not armed. Mobs of shrieking Baston-born sprinted out from the rainforest, some clutching rocks, war clubs, machetes, even tools of agriculture. The insurgents amongst them, the ones who had guns and knew how to use them, blasted the Riverine lines from a distance of no more than thirty or forty metres. The short space between opposing forces soon became clogged by the dead and wounded as small-arms fire whipped back and forth.

  Mortlock knew to pick his shots. Here and there, he could spot the leaders of the pack offensive. They were unmistakably tall and glowed almost white in their warpaint. These gaunt warriors directed the attacks, urging mobs of attackers towards weak points in the Imperial line. Mortlock lined up a particularly rake-thin insurgent whose face was as white as a corpse. He breathed out and fired, dropping the insurgent as he was brandishing an autogun over his hand and yelling encouragement to his men. The pallid man rose to his knees, still screaming. Mortlock put two more shots into his chest, this time pinning him down for good.

  Smoke and intense heat from the burning cassam paddies washed over them. Mortl
ock's eyes stung. The air became searing. Dim shapes hurtled out of the smoking haze. Mortlock tried to shoot them down before they reached the battalion lines. There were so many. Troopers Carlwin and Vere on either side of him fired on automatic. Carlwin fell, a thrown hatchet in his chest. Above the roar of gunfire, the vox-unit on Trooper Vere's back blared with competing voices. Platoon commanders were screaming orders above each other.

  'Enemy are mutants,' crackled the vox.

  'Enemy are not mutants. Enemy are native insurgents.'

  'Enemy are mutant insurgents. Archenemy forces flanking left and right.'

  Mortlock ripped the vox receiver from Vere's back. 'Shut the frag up!' Mortlock screamed into the airwaves.

  No clear order could be gleaned. Communication between the various units broke down. The voices continued to step over each other. 'Clear nets! All units! Clear nets for vox silence!'

  'Mortlock!' Baeder screamed as he dropped belly down next to him. 'I need Serpent Company to go and pack their belongings fast, grab ammunition and rations, ditch the rest. Then Prowler, Ghost and Seeker in that order. After we're set to go, we'll make a fighting withdrawal. Got it?' he shouted. Unable to use the vox, Baeder had taken to doing things the old-fashioned way - he was sprinting from officer to officer, heedless of the firestorm that sliced around him.

  Mortlock nodded in between reloading his clip. 'Serpent, then Prowler, Ghost and Seeker, in that order. Got it!'

  With that Baeder got up, without regard for the volume of enemy fire, and ran to relay his order to the other junior officers. Rounds punched the dirt around him as the colonel sprinted in a crouch. He bellowed a curse at the enemy and Mortlock soon lost sight of him.

  'All right! You heard the Colonel. Serpent Company, move out!' Mortlock shouted. He pounded out sixteen shots in rapid succession to keep the enemy down as Serpent Company disengaged from the firing line to retrieve their belongings.

  An insurgent with a threshing flail leapt over the irrigation ditch and into the Riverine lines. Mortlock's suspicions were confirmed - the insurgent's lower jaw and mouth merged into a tiny, spiked orifice; a certain sign of mutation. It brought its threshing flail down hard on the back of Trooper Roscher and then once across his neck, killing the man as he rolled over. Mortlock blasted up with his lasrifle, catching the insurgent underneath the chin. Without turning to look, Mortlock tore a grenade from his webbing and hurled it into the night, deterring any follow-up attack on their position. Frustrated, the enemy shredded the lip of the ditch with a flurry of las-fire as Mortlock and the men around him kept their heads down.

  The fighting was the heaviest Mortlock had encountered on Baston. It might have even been the heaviest he had ever encountered. A rocket exploded thirty metres away, showering him in mud and blood. He began to get flashbacks of the swamp ferals on Ouisivia. But those greenskins were wild, like an elemental force. The insurgents running face first into their gunfire now had a logic and belief to their sacrifice. It made Mortlock's blood ran cold.

  It came as a great relief to Mortlock when Serpent Company returned to the lines, now dressed and prepped. He hid his fear well as he ordered Prowler to disengage and break camp. A heavy stub gunner exposed his upper body above the ditch to give them better covering fire. He fired a long ten-second spurt before a single shot blew out his eye and sent him tumbling back into the ditch. Mortlock slung his lasrifle over his shoulder and crawled over the dead gunner. The man had been Trooper Hennel of Seeker Company, a veteran of multiple engagements; he had earned his infantryman's combat badge at the age of sixteen. He had also been one of the best snook dice-players in the battalion. Mortlock checked his pulse, making sure that Hennel was dead. Then he unlatched the heavy stub gun from dead fingers and pulled out the remaining belt of rounds from the ammo-pack Hennel wore on his back.

  Holding the stubber one-handed while he laid the belt of ammunition across the open palm of his left, he knelt down behind the ditch and pelted out tracer in wide sweeps. In the night, muzzles flashed back at him; one shot in particular ricocheted off a rock to his front and showered him in molten pinpricks of shrapnel.

  'Don't be a hero,' Mortlock said to himself as he emptied the stubber and scrambled back behind cover.

  AT 03.45, EXACTLY thirteen minutes after the Lauzon Offensive had begun, the Riverine began to claw their way backwards in a fighting withdrawal.

  They trampled over the remains of their tents and non-essentials as the fighting receded into the campsite. Riverine dragged their wounded with them, determined not to leave them behind as they were forced to do with their dead. It was a sad, weary retreat with none of the glory implied in a ''fighting withdrawal''. Their shots were desperate as insurgents hounded them, attacking in mobs before concentrated firepower scattered them away to regroup.

  Baeder led a rearguard, two solid fighting platoons of Prowler Company with Captain Buren attempting to delay the thousands of rabid insurgents at the banks of the delta as the battalion loaded up onto their transports. Sergeant Pulver joined them from the direction of the Lauzon settlement. A crowd of emboldened villagers had followed him, hurling stones. Not at all fazed by the aggression, Pulver mustered four or five troopers, turned and directed a steady volley of fire at the Lauzon mob. The villagers broke at the sign of the first shot.

  It was a messy affair and although Baeder collected eighteen frag grenades, he had used them all before they even reached the bank. By the time Baeder was rushed onto a departing swift boat, he had depleted three lasrifle mags and two clips from his autopistol.

  And still the enemy followed them, surging into the water like a stampede. They hurled rocks and flaming alcohol jugs and those with crude firearms sang out parting shots. The gun-barges with their heavy flamers washed sheets of fire behind the flotilla, forcing the enemy up the banks. As they passed through the channel of the Lauzon township, some of the boat gunners began to fire on the houses in anger. Baeder voxed for them to cease fire and conserve ammunition.

  They remained alert as insurgents followed them up river, hounding them for five kilometres with potshots from the trees. Each attempt was met with a thunderous volley from the heavy weapons on board the Riverine vessels until, finally, the enemy gave up.

  Under the husky light of dawn, the Guardsmen finally dropped down on their decks, completely burnt out. Their faces were black with greasy ash and their throats stung from smoke. The fighting had taken a heavy toll on the battalion. Forty-five dead and a further nine wounded. The 88th Battalion lost more men in that one night of fighting than they had for the entire duration of the war.

  In the following morning, aerial reconnaissance from Angel One reported an estimated six hundred insurgent casualties. Bodies littered the entire Lauzon rural fields and down into the delta itself. The grim assessment did not embolden Baeder at all. The fighting had been ferocious, the enemy had been determined, and the battalion had not even reached their objective yet.

  THE TRIBES OF Solo-Baston had lived on the mainland and surrounding islands long before the arrival of the Imperium. Indeed, they continued to occupy their traditional land in the decades after the Ecclesiarchy formally annexed the islands. Although portions of the land along the coastal regions were dedicated to administrative cities and certain land had been given agricultural leases, fundamentally the use and enjoyment of the inland by the natives continued with little disturbance from the governing authorities after annexation. As long as the natives prayed to the God-Emperor and paid their rural tithes, there would be peace.

  The uprising, however, changed that. The inland and surrounding islands became red zones. It was said that the Imperium controlled the cities and the Carnibales controlled the rainforest. It was also true that ninety-five per cent of the landmass on Baston was rainforest. As a result, the Imperium clung to their coastal provinces while the insurgency raged like a stormy sea around them. On their small, mobile craft, the Riverine Amphibious were the first to deploy to the mainland and reinforce the remai
ning PDF elements. The coastal regions became the last bastion of Imperial control on Baston. Yet slowly, even that was beginning to change.

  On the one hundred and thirty-fifth day of uprising, a riot erupted in the administrative province of Union City, sixteen kilometres north-east of the Torre Gulf.

  Carnibales propagandists, disguised as inland traders, whipped up a frenzy of hate in the back alleys of Union. Excited, frenzied and intoxicated, for an entire day heretics rampaged through the city, killing Imperial officials and their families. Non-natives were beaten, stripped and mutilated, their bodies tipped into the Union Quay harbour. It took three thousand Riverine Guardsmen two days to restore order to the city and by then the damage had been done. Entire blocks of Union had been consumed by fire and bodies littered the streets and hung from street poles.

  CHAPTER NINE

  'LOOK AT THIS glorious land,' said Cardinal Avanti, sweeping his arms in a gesture that took in the expanse of broken, deforested earth before him. 'Waiting for the seed and harvest of honest Imperial folk.'

  Brigadier Kaplain watched as his fellow officers Montalvo and de Ruger nodded in clockwork agreement. Inwardly, Kaplain sighed. The land before him had been freshly chain-felled by Caliguan transport tractors and the spillage of broken trees all lay in one direction like the unburied dead, the smell of sap still strong in the air. Guardsmen of the Caliguan Motor Rifles were still in the process of registering and loading native tribesmen onto waiting troop-trucks. These men and women had, until the morning of that day, been ancestral owners of this land for thousands of years. But by mid-afternoon, the Ecclesiarchy had already moved in on one of Baston's many rimward islands and declared it annexed for the glory of the Imperium.

  'Where will these people go?' Kaplain asked, pointing at the miserable line of homeless tribesmen at the edge of the clearing.