Ashes

by Martin Allen

  Balbus was awakened in the dark from the horrific images that plagued his dreams by a gentle, yet firm hand over his mouth. Sergeant Curtius whispered in his ear:

  “Now’s the time lad, we’ve all had enough of this. Are you with us to get some of them out of here?” Balbus nodded; and the hand was removed. “The Black Guard generally sleep off the effects of their, pastimes, around now. We need to get moving. Start with Mya and those we know for we will only be able to save a few.”

  The squad had gathered their weapons and was waiting for Balbus to kit up. He did not fail to notice that several weapons had been lowered when he nodded his consent to the plan. He understood, for one word could raise the alarm and the scheme would fail.

  Calidius squad crept out into the night, keeping to the shadows. Even though they were spotted by a number of other squads on sentry duty they were merely nodded at and let past.

  “We have a number of the others in on this, try not to take out any Imperial Guardsmen, it’s the Black Guard we have to worry about.” hissed Sergeant Curtius as they passed the fifth sentry.

  Covering each other as they leapfrogged positions of cover the squad made good time towards the holding pens. Each man looked lean and hungry for action, as though a weight had been lifted from their shoulders. They had never worked in concert as efficiently before. Lieutenant Gratius was finally proud of the speed and efficiency of the rag-tag group he had come to command and respect. Doorways were inspected for hidden threats and corners cleared as the squad passed by like a shadow in the dim moonlight. The moon was but a slim crescent, the daring plan would not have stood much of a chance of success if there had been more or less illumination. With too much light they would be detected and with too little they would be unable to navigate the compound without knocking over obstacles or bumping into chain link fences. Balbus took the lead on the final leg and felt his bladder jump as he saw the shadow of a Black guardsman silhouetted against the entry of the alley he had just cleared. He flattened himself against the wall to provide as little a target for detection as possible. His breathing came shallow and quick, as his body attempted to regulate the adrenaline flowing through his system for he knew that fight or flight were not viable options here.

  The dark head snapped to the right as Sergeant Curtius stepped into the entrance of the alleyway behind the guardsman. The body hit the floor in a crumpled heap and lay unmoving.

  “Move that corpse, we can’t leave it here to be discovered by any more that might come!” hissed Sergeant Curtius.

  The corpse was a dead weight in Balbus’ hands but he managed to shove it behind some packaging that lay heaped up in against the wall of the alley. It would not hold up to more than a cursory inspection, but in the dark of the night, prior to any alarm being raised the place of concealment would suffice. After the alarm would be raised there would be no advantage in the body remaining hidden. Balbus glanced back and kicked an errant boot back under the wooden slats that covered the remainder of it. There was an air about this mission, unauthorised and treasonous as it was, that appealed to Balbus. Finally he would be doing the right thing, not chasing an end of his own ambition and selfishness. The knowledge was freedom and calm, like a cool breeze on the end of his mind, guiding yet allowing him the liberty of remaining himself and making his own choices as to how to proceed. The feeling reminded him of the gentle guiding hand of his father as he learned to walk. Allowing him to wander where it was safe, and yet ready should he attempt to reach riskier places or fall on those precarious steps of childhood. Although he knew he could die guiding the prisoners to safety Balbus had the feeling that everything would be all right, as though there was a plan and a purpose.

  Throughout the camp stragglers of the Black Guard were unceremoniously pulled into alleyways from behind or stabbed noiselessly should they find themselves in a position to discover the Imperial Guard that were creeping toward the prisoner compound. Behind them Guardsmen who had proved to be loyal to the Empire lay in their bunks soaked in their own blood, gaping wounds covering their necks. Not one word would escape from their mouths; they had been identified as potential risks and had not even been offered the choice Balbus had. These were those who found the killing and slaughter to be enjoyable, or had given that impression to their squadmates. The religiously zealous were similarly dispatched before they could wake for they would have lied about their affiliation so that they could have the full treasonous bunch betrayed along the way. As with the Empire, suspicion was the only proof required and doubtless some that would gladly have joined the endeavour had been killed needlessly for their loyalties were not fully known. It was only the deep sorrow and anguish that Balbus had shown that had saved him from a similar fate, that and his connection to the child, Mya. Calidius squad had debated for hours whether to give him the benefit of the doubt or not. The discussion had proved fruitless until Lieutenant Gratius had taken a walk and found himself by the children’s enclosure. There staring through the chain link fence had been Mya, she said not a word and had needed none. Lieutenant Gratius had looked into her eyes and the decision had been made. A resting sense of peace had pervaded his senses at the realisation that Balbus would never betray this child, a child that calmed all around her. Lieutenant Gratius could almost see the waves of calm radiating from her toward the other children and comforting the crying, easing the pain of the grieving and soothing the afflicted. As he gazed further and further into the child’s eyes he heard a voice, of the echo thereof, within the confines of his own head. It echoed the choice he had found he had made, reassuring him it was indeed the correct one and that in this his torment would be over, the soul he doubted he had as a result of all that he had stood by and watched be done, would be saved and become righteous.

  At the links of the fence separating the children’s enclosure Lieutenant Gratius was grateful for the lack of instructions given to him by the Investigator in his briefing, for he had in the squad’s kit various ways of getting past the fence with a minimum of fuss. Motioning forward Vice-Corporal Tarpeius Paetus he gestured to the fence. Paetus crawled forward and pulled from his pocket a can of pressurised liquid Nitrogen. The spray hissed from the nozzle of the canister towards the fence and the frosty tendrils of the forming ice spread over the links. The spray, deployed in a semi-circle, formed an arch which would be small enough to escape a quick glance but large enough for the squad to crawl through prone. One blow made a rattling noise that echoed away into the night as the small section of the fence fell outward, the cold having rendered the fence brittle at the points where the spray had made contact.

  Calidius squad lay prone listening for sounds of discovery or alarm at the sound of the fence falling, yet none came. Still longer they lay, allowing for a delayed reaction from what little sentries the Black Guard had set on the perimeter. None came. Silently they crawled forward into the compound fanning out to grab as many of the children as possible for such was their plan, to save what innocents they could before they were discovered. It had been mooted by certain members of the squads, Sergeant Curtius included, that the priority should be to raid the armoury and arm the remaining workers rather than rescue the children. This had been rejected as futile, for such an act would bring the might of the Empire down upon them and the armoury would be as nought before orbital bombardment or a concerted assault by the remaining might of the Empire. Sergeant Curtius had argued that the fact that they were on the Capital planet of the Empire meant that a full orbital bombardment would destabilise the Empire too much and all they would have to do was hold off the assault for enough time for the children to escape. This too had been dismissed in favour of a stealthy option, as it would allow the children to cross a perimeter that had yet to be erected, rather than to attempt to steal across hostile lines where the casualties would be horrendous.

  Balbus crawled deeper into the compound tasked with finding the only specified target of the mission, the child Mya. He had been chosen for he had spent more time with
her than most, and had established a special bond; the child had followed him with her eyes ever since she had been dragged aboard the Armoured Personnel Carrier in Egypt. The thinking was that he could best keep the child quiet for he was familiar to her. Even as he crawled wondering how he would find the small child lost in this morass of sleeping bodies, he felt himself guided by an oasis of calm calling to him, gently nudging him on one turn or another to take a particular route. The closer he got to a particular spot the calmer and more centred he seemed to feel, as though there as some power watching over him and bringing him here. His faith in that which he held Sol Invictus to be grew in strength, where before it had been waning. Through the murders and the starvation he had never felt so apart from that which he held to be holy, but now, in this place he was encompassed and held within the very embrace of faith that he had yearned for his entire life. As he reached a state of near Nirvana; Balbus saw the brown wavy hair of the girl he had come to save, the gentle rhythm of he breathing holding a quality akin to a lullaby, the children around her had even matched their breathing to hers as they slept. Reaching out to her he placed his hand over her mouth, so as to stop a star as she awoke, but the gaze of almost complete serenity that came from her eyes reassured him that even this simple precaution had been irrelevant for it seemed she had been expecting him. As she rose to join him, several of the closest children also rose in complete silence to join her.

  Investigator Celeris woke with a start, the ever close prescience that guided her startled her with the insistence that something was amiss, but she was at a loss to explain it. Never before had the guiding influence she attributed to Sol Invictus been this insistent. There were no alarms and no rushing of feet in the compound. All seemed quiet and managed. Dismissing the evidence of her eyes, for she trusted the unseen presence more than her own eyes, she crossed to the comm.-screen in her quarters and placed a priority call to Colonel Marius Galeo the man she had placed in charge of the Black Guard maintaining the perimeter around Rome.

  “I will shortly be arriving for an inspection of the operation, make preparations to receive me.” The Investigator tonelessly spoke as soon as the comm.-link was active.

  “Certainly, but what is the purpose of the inspection? We are proceeding on schedule and there have been no incidents of note.” The Colonel replied.

  “No incidents of note?” The tone of the Investigators voice seemed innocuous enough but the stress on the last two words spoke volumes.

  “Well , we did have an incident a couple of days ago when a member of the Imperial Guard attempted to stop one of my men enjoying one of the prisoners, but the incident was handled. There didn’t seem to be any reason to bring the matter to your attention.”

  “Have you ever heard of combat stress Colonel? Such an incident is EXACTLY the type of thing I wanted brought to my attention. Where there is rot in the ranks, it spreads. Sweep the perimeter immediately. I shall be on route ASAP. Investigator Celeris out.”

  Fully two hundred of the children had gathered by the hole in the fence and were feigning sleep when Balbus arrived with his small group of children. Half-starved and bedraggled, they were a dismal sight to behold, but this was not a surprise for the Squad as they had been rotated on and off the supervision of the children and had seen the deterioration of the children. They had been unable to assist with spare rations with the Black Guard surrounding them. Upon the arrival of Balbus he was motioned through and one by one the children already at the hole were gently pointed in the direction of the egress point. Balbus knew that his mission was to guide the children out and not to stop to assist the squad even if the escape were discovered. Lieutenant Gratius nodded directly to him, as though aware this would be the last time they would ever see each other, and with that he was through the gap and moving quickly and stealthily through the path already cleared by the entry of the Squad to the compound.

  Investigator Celeris strode into the Imperial Bunker at Rome, tired yet alert.

  “Give me all feeds on that screen there.” She yelled.

  “Investigator, my patrols have discovered nothing amiss, everything is under control here.” protested Colonel Galeo.

  “Are all the patrols accounted for?” she asked, intensely staring at the feeds she had requested on the main monitor.

  “Yes Investigator. They all reported in. There is no sign of any movement anywhere near the prisoners.”

  “Really, no movement? Would you not expect some movement in a large body of prisoners at night? Especially when many of those prisoners are children? Do they not wake in the night to relieve themselves? Show me the feeds for the compound housing the children.”

  The feeds indeed showed no sign of movement, the dark masking any slight shifting. Investigator Celeris peered at the screen for a moment. There was a large lighter area of the ground in the compound that seemed strange and the guiding presence that she had trusted to bring her here nudged that area of her curiosity.

  “Why is that area lighter? Shouldn’t it be the same as the rest of the compound?”

  “The patrols report that that area seems abandoned, in most likelihood it has been designated as a latrine area and the prisoners would not wish to sleep close to such an area.”

  The Investigator’s keen eyesight swept the edge of the area in question, searching for something the shadowy presence told her was there but seemed unable to give her a clue as to what she was searching for. She stepped closer to the screen before seeing something that wasn’t. She had been guided here to see something that wasn’t there, not something that was. Her hand struck out with the speed of a viper onto the general alarm button and harsh claxons sounded out, flashing red lights temporarily blinded those happening to be looking directly at them at the moment of alarm. The sound of running feet echoed around the compound as armed men ran down the corridors to their assigned posts, weapons clutched tightly ready for action and the use of lethal force.

  “The fence, Colonel! The fence has been cut.” The Investigator shouted pointing at the gap only just visible on the monitor “You have a perimeter breach!”

  Chapter 14

  Holding fast to designs of honour General Hostilius swung from the crude scaffold trying to keep his head held high. The iron spikes through his feet were all that kept him aloft in this precarious position. Should he rely on the bindings around his wrists to support his weight he would be unable to breathe as the weight of his body held down the movement of the intercostal muscles and he would slowly choke to death. With the sharp agony and burning tearing of the ligaments in his feet he knew he would be unable to maintain this position for much longer and he would have to revert to the more supine position which did not allow him to breath and tore at the bindings at his wrists. The elegant torture of this method was that the executionee was forced to cycle between a lessening of pain or breathing, and eventually exhausted the prisoner would slump and slowly suffocate dragged under to his demise by his own body weight. Investigator Celeris had painstakingly timed the execution so that it coincided with General Hostilius’ hangover. A small torture to be sure but the dehydration made the constant cycling between positions harder and harder. Though his spirit was flagging he had no physical strength to hold to life and the dignity he had achieved with his final act departed him and he sagged lower on the cross.

  The sweet embrace of nausea drifted him back over the recent memories. Shouting “Shoot the Investigator” and reaching for her gun, only to be easily stopped and thrown to the ground. As he hit the ground he glanced to his right and saw a Lieutenant swing his gun arm round only to have it shattered by the radial action of the Investigator as she leapt to intercept the aiming gun. She then wrapped her other arm around his neck and wrenched with a sick cracking sound. The revolt had been relatively quickly put down, only the troops in the bunker had heard the order, and then only some were suicidally foolish enough to attempt to follow it. The rest had stood around with a look of stupefied horror at such open rebellion c
oming from their decorated commander. As he lay on the floor General Hostilius had seen the Lieutenant smack down beside him his eyes glazed and yet staring directly into his own. As the blood trickled from his mouth a death rattle escaped the slightly parted lips.