Ashes

by Martin Allen

  Vice-Corporal Pulvillus motioned silently to his left and two soldiers stationed themselves by the door to a dormitory. Another hand signal and another door was covered by the next two Imperial Guardsmen. He knew he did not have enough men to deal with all the doors he had been tasked with, but with grenades in the cramped quarters the concussion blasts would be magnified and the entire room would be easily cleared of targets - his men could be moving to the other quarters even before the grenades went off. The remaining rooms would be cleared by sweeping fire as the sleeping soldiers were roused in confusion by the demise of their compatriots.

  Vice-Corporal Dolabella had a similar plan to Vice-Corporal Pulvillus, but tasked with the main common areas he had no shortage of men per door, his problem was that the rooms were much larger. More grenades were to be used, directed to different areas of the chambers and any survivors would be attacked by gunfire as his squad entered and cleared the target areas.

  Vice-Corporal Silanus was assigned only four men, two for each toilet, but this would be more than sufficient as any enemy combatants would be caught with their trousers down, almost all in a literal sense. They would provide very little resistance.

  Lieutenant Gratius ducked behind cover near the entrance as explosions reverberated first from the left and then from the right.

  He smiled grimly, he had diverted enough troops for long enough, “Grenades! Now!”

  Small round balls of explosive death were thrown over the cover crates and all his troops ducked down to weather the storm that followed. Although several crates were forced back towards the walls shoving the sheltering soldiers from their crouched positions, the majority them sheltered the Imperial Guardsmen from the blast entirely. Small arms fire was heard from the flanking corridors, and Lieutenant Gratius motioned for his Element to move forward to clear what little remained of the opposing forces. An occasional crack of a pistol echoed around the foyer of the bunker as a living Black Guardsman was found concussed or injured by the blast. There was no opportunity for mercy; the cold-heartedness of the slaughter in the square of Rome was revisited upon those that had actively participated in that slaughter.

  As each Element reported the wholesale success of their mission Lieutenant Gratius glanced around the interior of the bunker and referred to his schematic, “Right, now let’s find the command modules that control those bloody guns. It’s time for some payback!”

  Once again the massive barrels moved in their deadly ballet. This time they moved to an azimuth threatening to the Imperial might, their support to be lent to the cause of the rebels. Righteous anger would be communicated through their shells, though they were completely impervious to concepts such as right or wrong, pain or anger.

  Brief flashes of light illuminated the interior of the bunker through the viewing slits as the artillery released their payload of destruction. Each flash illuminating an expression of grim satisfaction or a grim grin of approval that such poetic justice would be revisited. Then there were the few minutes of waiting as the shells raced through the air towards their target and the slight tensing of muscles as they hit the Imperial bunker lighting up the distant hill with a red glow. Justice had been served.

  Sergeant Curtius sheltered in the ruins of the city as the shells impacted. Thanks to the pre-arranged signal he had had enough time to disengage before the entire area he had been in was immolated. The Black Guard that they had engaged, thinking it was but a temporary reprieve, had not pursued them and had been blown to kingdom come. Curtius could, through field binoculars, see that the Imperial bunker had been seriously damaged; a major breach had opened in the walls facing the rebels. He glanced around assessing his current situation. His troops although winded, were attentive and ready for action. They had achieved their mission and were buoyed up by this success. A desperate plan formed in his mind, although this was contrary to his orders to retreat to Rome proper.

  “Form up, we attack again!” He yelled at the men under his command. “Hit them while they are reeling from that pounding!”

  The soldiers ran to obey the command while the former prisoners were slower to respond, but still showed willing.

  “Sarge, aren’t we supposed to be heading back to Rome?” asked Balbus, who still clung to the surety of orders and command, despite their status as rebels.

  “Yes, but when in the field we are supposed to show initiative. There is a major breach in that bunker and it’s facing us. It’s still secure on the other side, which means that it can hold against the Imperials but not us. If we take it we have a tactical advantage.”

  “I see Sarge, but what about our orders?”

  “Let me worry about that, Halberdier. We have to take advantage of these situations as they present themselves.”

  The men ran forward expecting at any moment, from surrounding positions, cover fire to erupt to pin them down on their approach to try and deny them their prize. The steady loping gait, which covered ground quickly while allowing each step to be turned into a dive for cover, caused the thigh muscles to burn but the sacrifice of comfort would be worth it, should their lives depend upon the added agility the pose afforded.

  Halberdier Balbus kept track with the rest of the men, not elated by the sudden turn of events as they were, but disappointed by the sudden turn from the plan. He knew somehow that this was the wrong course of action but could not put his finger on why. His eyes scanned where he imagined hidden troops might be stationed looking for any sign that they were about to come under fire.

  There it was, a brief flicker of movement. Balbus strained his eyes to see what had caused it, was it some sniper waiting until they moved into a firing line to pick them off one by one? Again the flash of movement occurred, disappearing as quickly as it had appeared. Strangely it seemed to disappear over the mounded fortifications behind the bunker.

  “Sarge? Sarge!” He yelled desperate to get his commander’s attention.

  “What now Balbus?” retorted Sergeant Curtius halting the troops so that he could deal with the irritating objection he felt sure Balbus would raise.

  “I saw what looked like two Black Guard disappear over the mounds there, behind the Bunker” reported Balbus.

  “What? They should be trying to stop us getting in there. Once we get that we should be able to hold it for ages against almost anything they can throw against us!”

  Sergeant Curtius raised his binoculars again and almost immediately saw a black figure with its cloak flowing behind it saunter over the rise, as though nothing was wrong and a major tactical advantage had not been gained by the rebels.

  “Back! Back to fucking cover NOW!” yelled Curtius as he recognised the Investigator that had given them this screw-up of a mission.

  The men all made for cover, abandoning the semi-crouched pose they had adopted on the approach. This was a mad sprint for safety.

  “What was it Sarge?” asked Balbus as they reached a place of concealment.

  “That was that fucking Investigator, the one that sent us here! She just walked out as though she didn’t have a fucking care in the world! She’s planned something and I don’t like it, not one bit. That was a good spot Balbus. I know it doesn’t mean much what with us being traitors and everything, but I’m promoting you to Vice-Corporal. You can take charge of the former prisoners, under me.”

  “Thanks Sarge, but what do we do now? We can’t just sit here waiting.”

  “Don’t rush me, we have to be careful. It’s obvious they expected us to rush the bunker. I need to work out if they also laid a plan to deal with us if we carried on retreating.”

  “How could they do that Sarge?”

  “I don’t fucking know! That’s the fucking problem!” swore Curtius.

  It was at that moment that the windows of the bunker blasted out, followed by the walls themselves.

  “Fuck! They stayed in there during an artillery strike with that much explosive primed to go off?” Yelled Sergeant Curtius “They must be FUCKING psycho!”
<
br />   “Or driven, Sarge. They must believe that the sacrifice is worth the potential gain.”

  “In the military? No, we just nod our heads in the direction of the Temple and get on with what they pay us to do.”

  “Up until recently, the thought of the heretics and apostates escaping the judgement of Sol Invictus was as anthemic to me as it must be to them. The potential damage those explosives would do to the cause of the Empire is minimal, but to us having taken the bunker it would have been catastrophic. Our fight would have been over. Whoever planted the explosives was a true believer, and more than that, was one step ahead of us.” Vice-Corporal Balbus pointed out.

  “That’s as may be, but for now we need to link up with the Lieutenant. Let’s high tail it out of here, and as we go why don’t you think of the things you would do if you were in charge and a “true believer” over there?”

  Lieutenant Gratius held position at the rendezvous point and waited for the main force of his men. He had been puzzled by the explosion at first. He had been sure all the artillery rounds had already landed and the fire suppression systems would have dealt quickly with any stray fires near the magazine. On top of all that the explosion was far to uniform to have been triggered by an accident, the entire complex had gone up at the same time. It had not been long before he came to the same conclusion as Vice-Corporal Balbus. He had then started worrying that Sergeant Curtius had managed to storm the bunker. Curtius, while not a great tactical thinker knew an advantage when he saw one and would not have passed up a gift of a bunker, especially as their cover in Rome was woefully inadequate against many of the weapons the Empire had at its command. He ordered his men back into cover and when satisfied crawled over to one of the Heavy Weapon Specialists and held a whispered but unhurried conversation with him. There was a lot of pointing towards the bunker that had just exploded, but after a while this turned into downward hand gestures and counting on fingers. Eventually the Heavy Weapons Specialist, called Halbadier Tuditanus, sighed and crawled out into a clear elevated space and erected a multi-armed and dished structure which emitted a strange whirring sound and was linked to a video comm. unit on his belt. He then pulled a large tube from his back and settled back into cover and waited.

  Sergeant Curtius swore under his breath, not wishing to waste the precious oxygen. He ran hard and fast leaping over small walls and tearing through alleyways as fast as he could push himself. There had to be a basement deep enough around there somewhere. He was uncomfortably aware that he was dangerously close to the rendezvous and he had had no wish to draw what was coming to Lieutenant Gratius but the meeting point had been chosen specifically for its density of cover in case things went wrong. Things had definitely gone wrong. A sentry posted with a sniper rifle had picked up the black spot in the air before anyone had guessed its significance. It hadn’t been long before Sergeant Curtius had received the news over the comm. There was a heavy bomber on approach on an intercept with his men. Try as he might Sergeant Curtius had not seen anything that could come close to withstanding an air strike, so he and his men had run, hoping to find something on the way. Nothing had presented itself and he was now on top of where he was to link up with the infiltration squad.

  A trail of smoke made its way past Sergeant Curtius as he looked up tracking its progress, as he did so his foot snagged on an almost buried brick in the dirt. Had it been loose he would merely have stumbled, but it seemed to be still attached to a buried wall and he sprawled face first into the dirt. The acrid dust catching in his throat, he choked and spluttered. Strong hands lifted him to his feet and slapped his back until the coughing subsided.

  “I wouldn’t have thought that you would be caught lying down on the job at a time like this!” came the almost jovial tones of Lieutenant Gratius.

  “Sir! Heavy Bomber, on intercept. Get under cover!” Curtius stammered, not yet recovered from the lungful of dirt.

  “Give it a sec,” came the calm unhurried response. Sergeant Curtius was gently turned around by his Commanding Officer top face the direction the Heavy Bomber was due to come from.

  A bloom of fire appeared in the sky, and folded in on itself. A black dot trailing grey smoke could be seen detaching itself on a downward trajectory. As it gently pirouetted down toward an impact with a distant hillside the black dot seemed to slowly catch on fire. Upon contact with the green hill red spread itself replacing the lush green and spewing more black smoke.

  “Were the maths correct?” Lieutenant Gratius asked Halbadier Tuditanus.

  “Yes Sir, direct hit on their new front lines. Their line is completely decimated, unfortunately, as we feared; their secondary line was too far back to be affected.”

  “You used their own bomber to bomb their front line?” gasped Sergeant Curtius.

  “Certainly, after all who else’s were we supposed to use? I’m afraid I left MY Heavy Bomber in my other uniform.” chuckled Lieutenant Gratius.

  Chapter 17

  Whilst surveying the macabre spectacle of General Hostilius strapped in place to survey the coming horror Investigator Celeris felt a foreign presence brush across her mind like a chill breeze. She had felt it a couple of times previously but had dismissed it without thought. This time it seemed more insistent, more forceful. Holding station at the edge of her awareness, as though on the periphery of vision, it exuded a sense of disapproval and calm acceptance. Investigator Celeris was perturbed, the voices had never disapproved of her actions before, they had previously served only to spur her further forward to ever more violent and extreme acts. She had previously wondered if these voices had merely been the external hallucinations of her inner desires, but had quickly put this down as a test of her faith, for Sol Invictus would not rest on his laurels having saved her for this higher purpose. He would surely test her more and more as the final hour of triumph approached to make sure that she was worthy to command the weapons of his vengeance and visit the death and punishment upon the ungodly that they so richly deserved.

  The light presence hovered around the edge of the battlefield examining that which had been brought to it. There were souls of peace captured in this infernal struggle, but it could not understand why. The back marble of the Investigators mind pulled all around it into darkness. The light reflected upon the concept of a singularity: yes, this was an apt comparison despite the inherent difference between the spirit and matter. Such torment had once again come to visit it; nothing had been further from the plan. Had these creatures ever been receptive to its message? Purity of love and acceptance had been the watchwords, once, long ago. It was so hard to keep track in this plane, for time pulled and wrenched with the gravitational forces and the screaming distracted. The light had come firstly to a place where it had once been and departed, once left in agony for to visit love to those who would hurt and hate it. The sacrifice had, for a time been worth it as conditions locally had improved, if somewhat temporarily. The purity had returned in part and the little that had had calmed the incessant brutality of the species wide birthing cry. Then the other had come; the other reminded the light of the mind of the Investigator, dark and compressed in on itself, with no room for anything else. This had haunted the new influence and warped it into itself and the screaming had started in earnest again. Surprisingly the screaming had not been centred on the birth of the now perverted message, but at the birth of the screams that had preceded it, but so amalgamated was the message in the din that it could no longer be removed and purified. Time had passed and the horrors continued and spread, dragging the light wherever its message had been spoken. Temporal certainty had escaped it in that miasmic whirl of the agony of these creatures, but after a culminating deafening, soul rending double blast of horrific agony there was relative calm. Out of that calm had emerged, soiled and stained the original message, escaped like a pearl from an oyster.

  Now the horror had returned and the suffering held the light once again. Darkness abounded and propagated around the light. Yet even here where th
e noise was so great there were oases of calm created by the souls that contained that tranquillity the light so desired to enable its rest. Mya was one such soul, calming the ripples of pain around her, yet the timeline held little for her. The light mourned for the loss of potential that would surely occur, for there was little to envisage hope here.

  The light recoiled, for the other had touched upon its presence, the emanating waves from whence it had been born caused a pain of which there was no compare on the mortal plane. Red, and burning the agony washed and swirled over the light turning it round in its attentions. No longer was Mya a source of tranquillity, but she was obscured from its sight. Had the light been able to hold to her it would have been able to function, having a point of reference on this plane. Yet, even in the centre of the darkness there had been another, sullied and torn, yet with vestiges of that which the light sought to magnify. It had been but the work of a moment to nudge a process already in action in this mind. The mind had been surprisingly pliable, this species was amazingly susceptible to the effects of simple pieces of matter. They lived and died by the movements of these things, some small, some large. It was almost incomprehendable how fragile they really were. The damaged light had died slowly in this one, hope almost extinguished, yet it had given one last spark before the end. This act in and of itself seemed insufficient, guided by a need it did not understand the light moved on.