[Imperial Guard 02] - Death World
Page 22
“So, what do I call you?”
He sighed. “Lorenzo, still. Just Trooper Lorenzo. A Catachan’s earned name—it’s given to him by his comrades. It’s like a mark of their respect, a sign that they accept him. And I’ve got no comrades left.”
“Maybe, when the other platoons hear—”
“Maybe. But hearing about it isn’t the same as being there. I’ll probably be assigned to another squad, with men who don’t know me, and they won’t care that my old sergeant meant to give me my name if he’d been able to think of one, if he hadn’t been too busy charging to his death. I’ll have to prove myself all over again. Anyway, what are they going to call me? What did I do that was so special? I wanted to… I wanted to be the one who held off the orks so Patch could escape, but he got there first. I wanted to be the one who took out Big Green, but I wasn’t strong enough. I wanted to stop the zombies, but Old Hardhead…”
“Sounds to me,” said Braxton, “like you got a suicide wish—like you think you can’t prove yourself unless you die in the process. What was it you just said to me? ‘You made it this far…’”
“By not being brave enough,” Lorenzo muttered.
“By taking everything this planet had to throw at you,” countered Braxton. “Birds, acid plants, lights, zombies, the earthquake… By facing all that and surviving! You think that was dumb luck? I’ve been watching you, Lorenzo, and okay, maybe you aren’t always the first to stick your head in the lion’s mouth, but that’s because you think about things, assess the situation, then deal with it—not in a showy way, not looking for glory, but efficiently. You get the job done. You were the first person to give me a chance, to look beyond the fact that Mackenzie had foisted me on you. Maybe it took the others too long to appreciate that, maybe they took you for granted. But I’ll bet that’s what Old Hardhead Greiss realised at the end there: that you were always there, for him, for all of us, that you were the most dependable man on this squad. I’ll bet if he were here now, he’d find a name for you to say all that. Something like… like… ‘Long Run’.”
“‘Long Run’?”
“‘Long Run’ Lorenzo. What do you think? Got a ring to it?”
“I don’t know. I…”
Braxton grinned. “You’ve got to accept it. You just told me, I’m one of you now.”
“You enjoy throwing my words back in my face, don’t you?”
“So I’ve a right to give you your name. The name you’ve earned. And I like the sound of Long Run.”
Lorenzo sat back, turned the words over in his head, tried to find an argument against accepting them, and smiled. “Yes,” he said. “I like it too.”
“So,” said Braxton, “what do you say, Long Run? Ready to move off?”
“I thought you wanted to sleep.”
“I feel okay now. More than okay. I think we should get some distance under our belts, while things are quiet.”
Lorenzo nodded. “Maybe Rogar hasn’t covered over the paths we cut through the jungle yet. We’re not likely to run into any more orks for a while. I reckon we can make this return trip in three days—less, if we hustle.”
“I guess that depends,” said Braxton, getting to his feet, “on how hard Rogar III tries to stop us.”
“Whatever it does,” said Lorenzo, straightening his bandana, “we’ll deal with it. We have to. We’ve got a story to take back. The other squads, the other platoons, they’ll be back from fighting orks by now, probably razed a few settlements. They’ll want to know how we got on, if any of it was worth the sweat. We have to warn them about Rogar. We have to tell them what it is, what they’re doing to it.”
“You think it’ll change anything?” asked Braxton.
Lorenzo shook his head. He remembered something Old Hardhead had said, on the morning they’d set out from the encampment. “Best thing we could do now would be to leave this world alone. That’s all it wants. But the Imperium won’t leave as long as the orks are here, and the orks won’t leave until we do. Neither side can afford to turn its back on the other, so we’ll just keep fighting.”
“Over nothing,” said Braxton.
“Over nothing.” Lorenzo agreed. “And in the meantime, our violence will breed violence in turn. They only started calling Rogar III a deathworld a month ago. You have to wonder, what will it be like in another month? A year? A decade?”
“I don’t know,” said Braxton, “but I’m counting on being around to find out.”
Lorenzo grinned. “Look forward to it.”
Then, like Sly Marbo before them, they disappeared into the jungle together, in near-total silence. They left only the faintest footprints to suggest that either of them had ever been here. And, a few minutes later, the deathworld had erased even them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steve Lyons has written novels, short stories, radio plays and comic strips for characters including the X-Men, Doctor Who, Strontium Dog and Sapphire & Steel. He has written several non-fiction books about television shows, and contributes to magazines. Death World is his twentieth novel.
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