Baneblade

by Guy Haley

  ‘Yes, sir. Sir, Lieutenant Colaron Artem Lo Bannick. This is Honoured Lieutenant Cortein.’

  Bannick found himself staring at a shoulder tattoo to match his own. Cortein followed his gaze.

  ‘I’m of Clan Bannick, lad, or I was, I left all that behind a long time ago,’ said Cortein.

  ‘Cortein is your matronymic.’ Bannick spoke rapidly, nervous. Cortein was a minor hero back home. ‘I have met your brother, sir, he worked with my father.’

  ‘Have you now? I suggest you think about dropping “Bannick” too, there’s probably a thousand Bannicks within five hundred metres of this post. It’s going to drive the brass crazy trying to tell us all apart, half a million Paragonian from five regiments in this warzone, with only a hundred and fifty clan names to go around. Hard enough to know who’s who if you’re from Paragon. Your loyalty is to the Emperor first and only, and not to either Paragon or your clan, do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Yes, sir, oh I like that, I like that very much. Keep that up and I might even grow to like you. Now, I’d get yourself familiarised with your station. We’re mobilising soon.’ He gave Bannick a look.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Lieutenant, get out of my way.’

  Bannick glanced across at the walls pressing in either side of him. ‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’ He and Radden backed away. ‘Sir…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I wanted to say thank you for bringing me aboard.’

  ‘Don’t thank me, boy, you’ve got to prove yourself to me yet.’

  ‘Well, whom do I thank? This is a great honour,’ said Bannick as civilly as he could. This commander was not behaving in a manner befitting the rank. He fought his irritation; his pride had wrecked his life back on Paragon and he’d tried to quash it, but it was in his blood.

  ‘If you feel the need to give thanks, thank the tank.’

  Bannick frowned. ‘Sir?’

  Cortein laughed. ‘I didn’t choose you, boy, Mars Triumphant did, or so the tech-priests say.’

  Cortein pushed his way past. Radden said they ought to go and sign Bannick into his billet. ‘Not that you’ll ever use it,’ the first gunner added. ‘This is home now.’

  Something made Bannick uneasy as he reached the ladder to the main deck. He turned before he ascended, and caught Tech-Adept Vorkosigen staring hard at him. The little man was almost lost in the darkness, but there was no mistaking the look of hostility on his face. He held an Emperor’s Tarot deck in his hand, a small black box with a single button and a screen to display its spread. The box rattled as it ran through a reading and stopped. Without looking at it or taking his eyes of Bannick, Vorkosigen went back into the recess under the engine of Mars Triumphant.

  Chapter 10

  Kalidar IV, Vorsanii Aridity

  3289397.M41

  ‘There they are, green basdacks.’ Ganlick spat over the side of the Salamander scout vehicle and offered his magnoculars to Bannick. He was disappointed to be away from the Baneblade so soon, he’d hoped to have got himself a little more acclimatised to the third gunnery station’s fire control systems, but he and Ganlick had been sent out a day ahead of the Baneblade to check their target, a medium-sized mining complex overrun by the orks.

  Ganlick pulled a stick of hi-energy wafer out of his top pocket. He offered it to Bannick, who waved it away. Ganlick shrugged. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said, and offered it to the three crew in the back of the scout tank and the Savlar accompanying them. They too declined his offer, intent on their instruments. The four crew of the Salamander had made it obvious they thought the tankers completely surplus to requirements, and were insulted by the implication that Cortein didn’t trust them to do their job, though they seemed even less at ease with the Savlar observer. They barely spoke, and had not even offered their names. Bannick was inclined to agree with their stance; the wisdom of sending two of the super-heavy’s crew out in front of their taskforce was suspect, but when he’d circumspectly asked Ganlick about this the veteran tanker had just growled at him. Radden had been right about the second gunner – he didn’t talk much, leaving Bannick alone with his thoughts on the Salamander. Why had Cortein sent him ahead? To test him? Radden had said something about Cortein wanting his own report on the target, but why two of them? It was dangerous, thought Bannick.

  ‘Well ain’t you all a bunch of miserable basdacks,’ grumbled Ganlick and stuffed the declined food up underneath his respirator masking. ‘I need a piss,’ he said. He jumped over the far side of the Salamander’s crew compartment. The sound of water striking the sand followed, along with a satisfied gasp.

  Bannick had the magnocular’s magnification up to maximum, multiple filtration subfunctions within them working hard to clear the scene below of whorls of dust curling in the lazy night wind. The mine head appeared in the grainy green of light amplification, ghost light trailing off the spotlights the orks had set up on its structure as he panned from left to right. The installation was set into a broad pit ten kilometres across. The majority of the mine comprised a tall gantry, some of which had collapsed in on itself. Low buildings lay half-buried in the sand around it.

  ‘This hasn’t been used for a long time,’ said Bannick as Ganlick rejoined him.

  ‘Well done,’ said Ganlick sarcastically. ‘Pocket geologian are we now? It’s been off the books for about sixty years. That’s why the orks got in so close – everyone forgot it was there.’

  ‘Easy to hide in a crater,’ said Bannick.

  ‘You could hide four armies anywhere on this rock. No comms, no sats, no pict, no vox, just noise. And it’s not a crater, boy,’ said the big surly man, putting his magnoculars back up to his face. ‘It’s subsidence. The crystals form in veins in the sand. The ones lower down, they’re older. The sand at that depth is pressed into soft rock, like under the hives. That’s where the big crystals are, the most valuable. The newer ones grow in sand that’s still loose. Machines work out in spiral from the installation there, scoop them up, chuck the spoil round the rim, move on, sand sinks in the middle. So, looks like a crater, but ain’t a crater.’

  Bannick did not challenge him on this. The Ganlick Clan were Paragon’s foremost mining people, busy deep in the many mountains dragged up by Mater Maxima’s gravitic grasp on the moon-world. Even a lowborn clansman like Ganlick would have a deep knowledge of the industry. And, like Radden had said of the surly second gunner, he had a knack for finding things out.

  ‘I’ll be glad of this.’ Ganlick grasped at his talisman, a lump of ore, hammer purified, decorated with the sail quills of a desert sandpike. ‘There’s always a resonance round these old workings, I’ve been told. Kalidar’s got it all, dust storms, sandpike, angry sandscum, greenies and ghosts.’

  Bannick scoffed. ‘That’s nonsense. That thing cost you a month’s pay, at least according to Radden.’

  ‘Radden’s a basdack; doesn’t know anything. Some of it is nonsense, granted, but lorelei crystals boy, they’re only reason we’re here. All about this planet, running through it like silver in the mountains, product of the star-tide from that big blue basdack in the sky. What? You think the orks came here ’cause the sky is green like them? No! Without this stuff, all that hoodoo the Scholastica domeheads pull off wouldn’t work half so well.’

  Bannick looked at him uncomprehendingly.

  ‘It’s witch stuff, city boy,’ said Ganlick, as if he were lecturing an idiot. ‘They put it in their rods and relays. lorelei has a

  psychoactive matrix, and some of the best of it comes from here. Why by Holy Terra do you think we’re on this sandbox? Why do you think there’s so many of his loyal citizens toiling away here? Lorelei, it’s the only reason any of us are here at all, and why the brass don’t bomb it from orbit and start all over again. I’ll bet it’s the same for the greenskins. This medallion’s made out of some charged ore or other, fragments of the
lorelei in it, y’see? Shorts out any residual activity, stops you seeing the ghosts. lorelei’s to blame for that too. Sandscum use ’em, stops ’em going mad. Lesson for you there, new meat, always talk to the natives.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bannick.

  ‘No you don’t,’ said Ganlick. ‘Emperor! You know, Cortein sent you out here with me because he trusts what I can find out and he wanted to see what you’d do. The report I’ve got in my head is not shaping up in your favour.’

  Bannick bit back his annoyance. Ganlick was enjoying speaking to him, a lieutenant, like this. Cortein had made it very clear to all aboard that, while under his command, Bannick was to be treated as of third gunner ranking, and not lieutenant, until he’d proven himself. For all practical purposes, everyone on Mars Triumphant bar the loaders outranked him. It made sense, Bannick had a lot to learn, but with Ganlick it was proving irksome.

  ‘We’re done here,’ said one of the scouts in surly fashion. ‘We have the necessary data. We need to report back.’

  The scout handed Ganlick an auspex. The big man flicked through the picts the men had gathered and grunted an affirmative.

  ‘Wait.’ The Savlar spoke for the first time all day. Bannick found the Savlar a strange people, their eyes hard, their skin seamed with unidentifiable dirt. They had a chemical odour to them, as if they washed in something other than water, if they washed at all. Radden had told him Savlar was a hole of a world, awash with deadly pollutants.

  ‘They’re thieves, dregs,’ Radden had said. ‘Keep your kit close to you when they’re about. Those bulky respirators they never take off? Nitro-chem inhalers in ’em. Stay out of their way in a fight, they can’t tell green from man when they’re in the gas fugue. They’re here because they’re survivors. They don’t raise them often, too difficult to control, only get ’em in for for places like this. That’s how fragged we are.’

  The Savlar dialect of Gothic was so thick that Bannick could only catch one in three words. Thankfully, their companion at least switched to a form of standard Low Gothic when speaking to him and Ganlick. ‘Let we wait,’ he said, his voice sibilant. ‘I have no signal from my Savlar command to tell main raider group in place, yes? We go now, we risking very nasty surprises. We go now, I outta range, no confirm.’

  Ganlick caught the man eying his medallion speculatively. He narrowed his eyes and shook his head, and shoved the ugly thing down his tunic top. The Savlar held his gaze for a while, and looked away.

  ‘Sir?’ said the Paragonian scout.

  Bannick looked to Ganlick.

  ‘You’re the lieutenant,’ said the big man.

  ‘Cortein said…’

  ‘We’re not on board Mars Triumphant now, are we?’

  Bannick hesitated, then nodded. ‘He’s right, no signal, and we’re not going in. We wait.’

  They watched then, under the crackling aurorae of the Kalidar night. The wind stilled entirely, dropping off as the temperature plummeted. The change was making the Paragonian scouts nervous. Visibility was improving, and the growing temperature differentials would make them an easy spot on broad spectral imaging equipment. Bannick had to admit he’d been grateful to find the orks did not possess that facility naturally, and that in fact their eyesight was poor all round.

  ‘There’s something going on down there,’ said Ganlick. The scouts joined the two tankers on the track housing.

  The door to the facility, reworked to resemble a fanged maw by the orks, swung open, its groan shattering the desert silence. Light from inside flooded out. A line of fast buggies roared out on broad tyres, their engines puttering in the distance, and swung away towards the south.

  Minutes passed. The door remained wide.

  A big party of orks, a hundred or more, came out onto the sand. They dragged pierced oil barrels with them and set a broad semicircle of fires within them round the facility entrance. Smaller greenskins the size of children ran to and fro, bringing out barrels of liquor and food. The voices of the orks rumbled out across the sand; they drank and became louder, discharging weapons into the air. The small greenskins roasted something in the fires, ignoring the squeals as others of their number were baited by the orks, one held head down over the flames himself, eliciting great hilarity from the larger xenos as it wriggled and screamed.

  ‘Nice party,’ grunted Ganlick. ‘Basdack greenskins.’

  Then came the men, a line of them, perhaps fifty or so, yokes holding neck and hands, chained together. No respirators or goggles. They stumbled as they walked, urged on by the whips of more orks laughing behind them.

  They were driven into a circle of whooping orks. Bannick had to stop himself swearing aloud as one of the green giants ran in and kicked a man so hard in the ribs he flew back three metres and collapsed in the dust. He did not get up again. The other orks were angered by this, and the aggressor was roundly beaten by his fellows as the remaining humans were kicked and shoved into a cage whose bars were lined with jagged barbs.

  Bannick soon learned why.

  He’d wasted one of their toys.

  More orks came up from inside, dragging horrific implements, cruel spikes, tables lined with hook and blade. They selected one of the captives and dragged him out. Human screams, thinned by distance, joined the noise of the orks.

  ‘Throne,’ Bannick muttered. ‘Throne.’ He realised he was saying it over and over again.

  ‘See the green ones, see them play,’ said the Savlar in a singsong voice. ‘Best not be taken by them, see?’ He looked on at the carnage with dead eyes, appearing more curious than anything else. Bannick wondered what kind of world could make a man that unfeeling. ‘Glad it’s not me, I am. Thank the Golden One it’s not me. Greenies are not like in the book, eh, officer man? Not like the book at all.’ There was a hiss from within the Savlar’s bulky breathing apparatus. He sighed and his eyes took on a glaze.

  ‘The Infantryman’s Uplifting Primer?’

  The Savlar giggled.

  ‘Not fit for burning,’ said Ganlick. ‘Those basdacks can grow eight feet tall and more. They can pull the head off a man as soon as think about it, and they don’t do much thinking. Takes a lot to kill them. The book’s full of crap.’

  Out into the night, where the sands were painted vividly by the shifting waves of Kalidar’s tortured electromagnetic field, a bright star burst quietly.

  ‘Hehehe, signal star,’ said the Savlar. ‘No vox, no good here. See, greenskins too gwoop to notice, too cruel,’ he said, lapsing entirely into his own version of battered Gothic for a space, then. ‘Now we go, yes, lieutenant sir?’

  Bannick managed to tear his eyes away from the horrors in the basin below. He had to swallow back bile before he could speak. ‘Your men are in place?’

  ‘Oh yes, signal star say so. My Savlar brothers, they no let down, they deep in transit tunnels, like back home Savlar, atomics ready to go they are, as soon as they fight in to ork nest.’

  ‘And all they need is a diversion,’ said Bannick. He checked his timepiece, embedded in the back of his leather gauntlet. ‘We’ve got an hour before they move in. We better make sure there’s no welcoming party for them. Let’s head back to the rendezvous point?’

  Ganlick put down his magnoculars. ‘Aye to that.’

  Mars Triumphant’s engine growled and the main deck shook.

  ‘Steady as she goes, Outlanner,’ said Cortein. ‘Reduce speed to two-thirds.’ Cortein flung the levers on the heading wheels, the bell rang. ‘Keep us in line with the support. Epperaliant, get on the signals, we’re being outpaced again.’

  Epperaliant nodded and took his headset off. The night was so clear they’d probably be able to raise the fleet if they wanted to, but Cortein had ordered vox silence until they hit the escarpment. Epperaliant clambered up into the turret, signal lamp in hand.

  ‘The ork encampment will come into view any time now, sir,�
� said Radden eagerly over the vox. ‘Shall I open fire as soon as?’

  ‘Wait for my orders, Radden, they’ve not got notice of us yet. Let’s get everyone in line shall we? I want this little operation to go with minimum bloodshed, no point trying to lift spirits if we lose half our men. Remember, we’re here to restore the battlegroup’s faith in the 7th. Losing Lux Imperator was a great blow to morale, we need to show that the rest of us have what it takes.’

  Cortein risked a few coded datasquirts, their carrier waves tuned near as could be to Kalidar’s background radiation, ordering the other vehicles into attack formation. Two Leman Russ flanked the tank, both standard-armed with battle cannon and heavy bolters. The three tanks approached the spoil rim around the sunken mine pit, the Leman Russ slowing to one-third to match the super-heavy’s speed, trusting that the orks’ noise would cover their advance.

  ‘Outlanner, halt. Epperaliant, do we have a ready signal from Lieutenant Strenkelios?’

  ‘Sir,’ replied Epperaliant over the internal vox. ‘They’re in place. But I can see them.’

  ‘Then signal them back. When we come over the depression rim, I want them completely hidden from view, that way the orks will get the full benefit of our surprise.’

  The Atraxian heavy infantry were holding a position half a kilometre back from the spoil rim, just one platoon, but heavy infantry well-equipped with carapace armour. Five Chimeras backed them up, and a further Leman Russ – the surprise. In place of its battle cannon, the tank mounted a punisher gatling cannon, a horrendous weapon capable of wreaking great havoc on infantry. Their rarity on Kalidar was much lamented.

  The orks in the mine were a fast company, mounted in light buggies and other vehicles that could swoop in, attack and be away again before the Imperials could react. They were a thorn in the side of the Imperial effort, harrying recovery teams trying to claim back wrecked vehicles from the Kostoval flats. With the planet’s subterreanean transit network as fiercely contested as the surface, and air transit nigh on impossible in the unpredictable weather, overland routes were the only option for supply convoys, and these were being mercilessly targeted by the orks’ light vehicle columns, guided onto them by means command could not fathom.