Baneblade

by Guy Haley

  He thought about finding somewhere quiet and letting the Long Winter do its work. He was empty inside, shame chilling him far more than the cold. He doubted. He did not deserve to live.

  But Bannick did not stop. He wandered through icy arcades. The night grew blacker. Powdery snow began to fall, so cold on the skin it pricked like needles. The canals broadened out, became the floating harbour, the buildings rippling upwards, pregnant with the promise of warmth and comfort, and Bannick knew where he was.

  The House of Mostinick rose up before him. Had it only been a day since he was here? It seemed a lifetime ago.

  It called to him, its drink and girls and machine-breathed warmth. Comforts of a life he’d lost yesterday.

  He looked at his fingertips. He’d left his gloves behind. They were blue, as numb as his heart. Get inside! part of him urged, Live and serve! and he obeyed, dragging his feet up to the carven gates. Unbidden, his hand rose up and pulled upon the bellcord.

  A vision panel slid back. The eyes it revealed widened and the door opened.

  ‘Master Artem Lo Bannick! What has occurred to you? Quickly, in! In!’ The door master peered out into the street, checking to see if Bannick had been seen; it would do his master’s business little good if the gossip casts picked up on his dishevelled appearance, for it would lead to pressure from the boy’s clan.

  The door master ushered the shivering aristocrat in, and the door rumbled closed on toothed wheels. Sealed, the door master activated the inner-entry of the heat lock, and warmth, lho-smoke, music, and laughter came washing out.

  ‘Have you been mugged sir? Shall I call out the Night Watch? Were you hurt?’ the door master, used to shepherding young nobles drunken into the night, had adopted something of an avuncular air towards his master’s clients. He grasped at Bannick’s shoulders. Bannick pushed his hand away when it strayed too close to the stick bandage on his cheek.

  ‘I’m fine, I’m fine. Thank you, Colleteno.’ He adopted a light manner, trying to approximate the way he’d been every other time he’d been when patronising Mostinick’s.

  ‘Oh, sir! Thank the Lords of Terra you are unhurt!’ As he fussed at Bannick’s fastenings Colleteno tipped a nod at a flunky within the inner-entry. Moments later a string of servants came back, bearing hot gleece and active thermal clothing. Bannick let them remove and stow his furs.

  ‘Drink sir, drink!’

  Bannick clumsily took the gleece goblet. He drank as the servants placed the vest on him, clipping its battery to his waist. Pain erupted along his fingertips as the vest and gleece cup warmed his body, his cut cheek burning.

  ‘Thank you, Colleteno.’

  ‘That’s better, sir. The colour is returning to your face.’ He took Bannick’s goblet, and frowned at the bandage. ‘Are you sure you are well, sir?’

  Bannick moved his face out of the light. ‘It’s nothing. I cut myself on my calf skating on Zero Night.’ He tried for a smile, but it cracked his face like ice breaking on water. ‘I had taken a lot of gleece.’

  ‘Very well, sir. Your friend Master Kalligen is here. Shall I inform him you have arrived, Master Bannick?’

  Bannick nodded. A servant departed, bearing the message.

  Bannick followed a girl into the dim red lighting of the House. The inner-entry clunked shut, leaving Colleteno to his vigil on the gate.

  In a small welcome suite he was led to a large padded chair. He sat, and more servants, all female this time, attended to him, bathing and rerobing him in soft indoor clothes. He batted them away when they became amorous. He began to feel better.

  He waved off their offers of further services, promises to fetch his regular girls. ‘Not tonight,’ he said. ‘I would like to join my friend. Take me to him.’

  One of the girls took him back out into the House. Stairs twined languorously round the bulging, fluidly formed walls, leading to the other entertainment levels, each one more debauched than the last

  Down on the ground floor, people sat and drank, ate, smoked and gambled. Aside from a bathhouse out the back, the floor was dominated by a single room, divided into booths by curtains and screens. Large carven buttress roots from the tropical jungles held up the ceiling. A band played tranquil music in one corner.

  Lazlo Kalligen sat at the back of the room, screened off by swags of gauze and fretted wood. He smiled when he saw his friend, but his eyes were troubled, and he was paler than usual.

  ‘What the blazes have you done to yourself?’ he demanded.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Bannick, and his wound throbbed.

  Lazlo stared at the bandage on his cheek. ‘Duelling?’

  Bannick nodded. It was enough.

  ‘You won again, I take it?’ Kalligen took a drink. ‘I knew you’d get yourself hurt eventually, good as you are.’ Ordinarily cheerful, Kalligen was subdued, no outburst of heretical irony for his friend today. ‘I would have come out to meet you but, you know, I’ve got a drink.’ Glazed eyes and a slight slur to his words said it was the latest of many. ‘Gleece for my friend,’ he said to the server. ‘Warmed, quickly now! He looks, well…’ he peered at Bannick in the gloom. ‘You look like shit.’

  ‘Where did you get to last night?’ said Bannick, and slid himself onto a velvet-upholstered bench opposite his friend.

  ‘Ah, sorry. I met a young lady who proved most… interesting.’ Kalligen gave a tired chuckle. ‘I’m not in a good way myself, really, really not. I better enjoy this drink, because it’s the last I’ll be getting for a long time. They don’t like the cadets drinking. I’m attempting to fill up on all the drinks I’m going to miss out on. I reckon I’ve about five thousand to go. Fancy helping me out?’

  A tray bearing a salver of heated gleece and a goblet arrived at the table. Bannick poured himself a drink and gulped it down, surprising himself with his thirst for it. Let them bring more.

  Kalligen sat up, his face bordering on petulant. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me what this is all about? “Ooh, why the melodrama Lazlo? What ails you?” And so forth? The usual friendly business?’

  ‘No, I’m not. Your behaviour is nothing out of the ordinary.’ He looked around the bar, searching for accusing looks but finding none.

  ‘Hey! Pay attention! I’m suffering here.’ Kalligen leaned forwards, picked up his own jug and eyed it speculatively. He tipped a few drips into his cup, put the salver aside and grabbed Bannick’s off his tray, filling up the goblet carelessly, slopping the daily pay of a foundryman’s worth onto the table.

  ‘Fine. What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘The training lasts three months, you’ll be back in here in no time, with a nice haircut and shiny boots to impress the ladies with; not even you can drink five thousand servings of gleece in three months.’

  ‘Ah, now my foster-brother, that is where you are wrong.’ Kalligen’s eyes glistened in the dark. ‘I won’t be drinking for some time, and certainly not here.’

  ‘Lazlo, I’m not some doxy who’ll give you a sympathy fumble. The planetary defence militia never leaves its homeworld. That’s why it’s called a planetary defence militia. It’s for defending the planet.’

  Kalligen blew out a shaky breath. It was his turn to peer into the dimly lit room. Certain they were not being overheard, he looked his friend in the eye. ‘Col, I’m not going into the militia. They’re calling a general draft, I was told this morning. Apparently my father’s known for days, but he didn’t want to spoil “my last Zero Night”.’ He rumbled out his impression of his father, serious and gravelly. ‘There’ll be a general newscast announcement tomorrow. Your uncle’s coming back. The 322nd Armoured, 62nd and 84th Mechanised Regiments and the 7th Super-heavy Company are coming home, along with a bunch of offworlders.’ He took a gulp of gleece. ‘They’ve already broken warp and are inbound from the Paragon Reaches. The Dentares war is over, but they need fresh meat for some place called Kalidar. Seems home i
s on the way. All militia applications have been transferred to the Departmento Munitorum for processing with immediate effect. My clan exemption’s invalid, because apparently I already agreed to be a soldier.’ He gave a pained smile. ‘So I’m not going into the militia. I’m off into the Throne-blasted Guard, Emperor save me. I’ll never be coming home again.’

  A sudden thought seized Bannick. Perhaps the confessor had been correct, opportunity did present itself at the behest of the Emperor. Maybe this was it, his chance to atone, to serve.

  ‘Who are they taking?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Kalligen shrugged. ‘Anyone, everyone. It’s to be a double raising, a tank regiment and mechanised infantry, plus fill-ins for the holes in the ranks of existing units. I’ve a cousin in tithing, he’s been up every night all week banging psych-messages out through the astropath relay to the sector Munitorum central officium. Reading between the lines, and he always does, our boys took a real hammering out there. You know they prefer to keep troops from certain worlds together, they need reinforcing before they’re redeployed, a surprise visit home after a victorious war will do a world of good on the propaganda fronts, we’re on the way to Kalidar… I’m sure the Lord is happy about that too, after all that business with his brother. It all makes perfect, perfect sense. For them, at any rate. For me, well, I’m shafted.’ He looked up quickly. ‘You tell anyone this, they will execute you, and me, so please don’t, there’s a good fellow, I’d hate to die at home when I can be gunned down out there in the stars. For the Emperor!’ he added loudly, raising his goblet. There were murmured acknowledgements from the rest of the room. ‘See, I’m going to be a bloody hero!’ He slammed back his drink and threw the cup onto the table with a clatter.

  Bannick’s mind raced. He was sure his killing of Tuparillio would be adjudged dishonourable. Ever since the fight, he’d been wondering what he could do to get away from his actions, and atone for them. This was a sign, this is what the Emperor wanted for him. ‘Lazlo, I am going to come with you.’

  ‘What?’ shouted Kalligen. Eyes and faces turned towards them, a break in the noise of the bar. He dropped his voice to a hard whisper. ‘Are you insane? Next year you’re to marry the warden of Clan Turannigen! You’ll be Clan Auditor of Bannick and Head of Turranigen before you’re sixty, and then it’ll be half a century of dancing girls and fancy banquets before you can even think about dying. By all means, give all that up so some stinking alien can turn your head into a drinking cup!’ he slapped the table hard and pushed himself back, exasperated. ‘You’re tired, you look like death. It’s pre-wedding nerves, that’s all.’ Kalligen spoke quickly, reassuring himself more than Bannick. ‘Some way to serve the Emperor outside of a ledger. Boyhood nonsense. Don’t do it. Let me out there to die alone, I’ll be happier knowing that you are still having a good time. It’ll be a comfort in my foxhole. Anyway, your father will never approve.’

  Bannick knew all too well what his father was going to say, on a great many matters. ‘The duel, Lazlo.’

  ‘And? What’s that got to do with anything? You duel all the time!’

  ‘Not any more,’ he said, and he told him how Tuparillio had died.

  Kalligen drew in a deep breath. ‘Looks like the two-headed eagle shat on both of us, my foster-brother. And for that, I need a basdack drink. Pass me the jug.’

  INTERSTITIAL

  By the flicker of the tarot, the common body of men scries the will of the Master of Mankind, and takes direction from its readings of his divine purpose for all, each and every one. All can be enlightened. All can know the truth!

  Reader prices start at 27 Estrillian Newmarks.

  Customisation options numerous.

  Extract from an Atraxian catalogue of devotional items.

  Chapter 15

  Kalidar IV, Penumbric Badlands

  3335397.M41

  Bannick awoke, disoriented, to a thick fug of stale air and fumes. It was totally dark, he was trapped in a slender space that jounced and bumped. Was he dead? He’d been dreaming of Paragon, the sun on the sea in the Glory, a party on the shore with Kalligen, warm girls, hot sand, the cold of winter a distant memory. He hadn’t prayed so much then, it hadn’t seemed so important, and for a few seconds it wasn’t important again. It seemed like the last three years had not happened at all, and he was the boy he had been, and that war was a distant story that filled him with the need for glory and pushed him on to drill and drill with his swordmaster; that the duel he fought had not been fought, and fighting was still a game.

  The bunk – he was in one of Mars’s three narrow bunks, mattress slick with the oils of engines and other human beings. The smell brought him crashing into the present.

  His mind cleared to the squeal of drivewheels on track as Mars Triumphant rode up onto rocks and crushed them to powder. His head took longer to attain clarity than it should, the after-effects of the drugs they’d all been forced to take lingering long.

  They were two weeks into their journey, and still he wasn’t over the drugs. A sleeping mind would tell the ork witch little, the confusion of human dreams too obtuse a puzzle to solve. All aboard but Outlanner had been tranquillised for three days. Bannick wondered if orks dreamt. Only the drivers and Captain Exertraxes, the man in command of the expedition, had remained awake. Cortein, designated second in command, had been put under, growling darkly while the medics hypo-sprayed him. He and Bannick had been dosed right there and then in the Chamber of Strategies, the crew shortly after.

  Exertraxes had their path as a series of the waypoints, the coordinates to the next stage of their journey contained in a sealed envelope to be opened when a waypoint had been reached. The drivers had been told nothing of their destination, only that Exertraxes was in command and that they were to follow his orders to the letter. Once they’d arrived on the forbidden zone around the basin, a place so thick with lorelei they thought not even the ork witch could see there, it didn’t matter who knew what. Three days later everyone else came round, stiff and sore from being unconscious at station, bladders painfully full or accidentally voided in sleep despite the anti-diuretics and hibernation shots. The dreams the lorelei brought had them screaming in their sleep as often as not, or more perniciously activated long-dormant memories of happier times, making the men surly and withdrawn when they awoke to the reality of their situation.

  It was an unhappy start to an unhappy journey.

  The storm that had begun the night of the ork attack howled with obscene vigour round the task force – Mars Triumphant, a company of Leman Russ, a platoon of fifty mechanised Atraxian heavy infantry and support vehicles, a lonely file of metal winding its way slowly across the immense desolate spaces of Kalidar, its cargo of men trapped inside, helpless as canned meat.

  Once they were within the psychically turbulent penumbra of the Ozymandian Basin, those of them that hadn’t been at the briefing had been told where they were going: Hive Meradon. Orktown. Right to the heart of the enemy’s lair. It was the kind of suicide mission you’d like to be asked to volunteer for, but they hadn’t been, and that didn’t help the mood aboard the tank. Bannick was thankful he wasn’t crammed into the back of one of the convoy’s Chimeras. The squads in them had not been able to disembark since they set off; too risky. The wind out there would flay you alive.

  He felt the need to pray now; he wondered how he had ignored it for so long as a boy and hoped it would not go against him. He did so, beseeching the Emperor for His aid in the coming battle and thanking Him for His continued protection.

  Religious duty discharged, Bannick yawned and rubbed his eyes. He checked his timepiece; he’d had his five hours, his turn to go on watch in the turret, to relieve Radden. He reached up over his head, grasped the handles and twisted, opening the bunk hatch. He pulled himself out, a difficult manoeuvre for the corridor was barely sixty centimetres wide. He looked at the place where the ork had been dismembered, metal shi
ny where it had been scrubbed clean. Who’d done it, he didn’t know, because he’d woken up in his chair and they were on the move. He was glad it hadn’t been him. He banged on the lids of the other two bunks. From within Ganlick mumbled and Ralt swore. Bannick pulled himself up the steps into the command deck without waiting for them. Meggen, Cortein and Epparaliant were on the command deck, eyes straining against the shifting patterns on the tank’s screens. Meggen sat in Bannick’s chair, its back hastily repaired with wire and tape. Bannick looked at the station where Marsello had died. It too, was spotless, scrubbed out by an anonymous maintenance crew.

  Nobody spoke, no one had shown the desire to for a week. The intense closeness raised tensions in the crew. Radden’s incessant chatter had gone from mildly annoying to deadly irritating. The click of Vorkosigen’s tarot deck drove them all to distraction. Ganlick had given up speaking at all, Ralt muttered obscenities round his lho-cigars, Meggen refused to come out of the shell locker, where he sat staring at the five lorelei shells they been issued with as if they’d suck his soul out. Not talking was the men’s way of coping. Too much conversation would provide a gap for their tension to get out, and once it did, there’d be no putting it back; they were Paragonians to a man and they would fight. Even Radden had finally, mercifully, shut up.

  It was oven-hot in the tank. The comfort of the crew, though low on the list of Adeptus Mechanicus priorities, had been taken into account by the Baneblade’s aeons-dead creators, the air coolant and filtration systems being extensions of the machinery that allowed the tank to operate in myriad inhospitable environments. But Mars Triumphant was a thousand years old. Despite its venerable age, it had been imperfectly built to corrupted schematics, and Kalidar taxed its systems to the limit. The dust, finer than cosmetic powders, clogged the filtration units’ intakes. Before the mission, they had been changed every other day. But time and the storm were against them. They could not get out and make camp. The air they were breathing was the same air they’d been breathing for a week, carbon dioxide processed over and again by the tank’s ancient scrubbers. The air should have been dry and acerbic, but it was thick with unfiltered scent, the smell of men trapped in close quarters with each other, of rations and excretion, of stale breath and staler sweat. Lho-smoking was regarded as unhealthy back home on Paragon, but Bannick was glad of Ralt’s habit, for it masked the stink of the tank. All the men were stripped down to vest and trousers. Sweaty, grimy, oily, no signifiers of rank to mark them apart, they all looked the same, gunner and lieutenant, commsman and loader: tired-eyed, dirty, jumpy.