by Peter McLean
They had run out of grenades yesterday.
‘We’re going in circles,’ Cully hissed to Rachain, keeping his voice too low for the others to hear. ‘We passed this manufactory yesterday.’
‘Nonsense,’ Rachain snapped.
Cully keyed his lamp pack for a moment, illuminating the dead cultist he knew was hanging sprawled out of a loading dock. He had shot the man himself, after all.
‘What’s that, then?’
Rachain cursed and dropped into a crouch, taking a very small sip from his canteen. They were dangerously low on water now, and none of them had eaten anything since the morning before last.
‘Emperor save us,’ Rachain whispered. He pulled the auspex out of the thigh pocket of his combat uniform and shook it, cursed it, prayed over it. Nothing worked. The thing was as dead as they’d all be, soon. ‘How are we for ammo?’
‘Hopeless,’ Cully said. ‘No one’s got more than ten per cent left, now. One more firefight and we’re done.’
‘Remember Vardan?’ Rachain said, as though Cully would ever be likely to forget it. ‘We were short of supplies there, too. Power packs recharge if you leave them out in sunlight.’
‘There isn’t any sunlight,’ Cully hissed at him. ‘There isn’t going to be any sunlight, not here. Not ever.’
‘Maybe not,’ Rachain said, ‘but I remember something those Catachans told us. If you’re really stuck, and I’d say we are, you can get some charge back in a power pack by cooking it in a camp fire.’
Cully nodded slowly. He remembered that too, now that the sergeant mentioned it.
‘Where’s it safe to light a fire, where it won’t be seen?’
‘In there, I reckon,’ Rachain said, nodding towards the hulking ruin of the manufactory. He laughed hollowly. ‘We’ve already cleared it out once, after all.’
Cully nodded. He waved the squad up, and together they crept into the building and swept it with their lights. It was empty. He detailed Limardi and Bonsell to building a fire, using the discarded packing foam and sacking that littered the place as fuel. It stank but it caught well enough, and was soon a crackling blaze in the middle of the blackened rockcrete floor.
‘We’ll just do one first, see if it works,’ Rachain said.
He took Morran’s lasgun and ejected the almost-spent power pack, and set it carefully at the edge of the fire. They settled down to wait, huddling around the blaze to warm themselves. Cully was starving but he was at least warm for the first time in days, and he felt himself beginning to doze.
The concussive shock of the explosion threw him onto his side, probably the only thing that saved him from the shrapnel that flew over his head and shredded Trooper Leehan where he sat.
Cully lay prone, his almost empty lasgun tracking in the dark, looking for an enemy who wasn’t there.
‘The power pack,’ Kallek said, her voice sounding flat and dead as she stared at what was left of Leehan. ‘It blew up.’
Rachain cursed, picked up a lump of broken rockcrete and hurled it across the factory space in a blind rage. Cully sat up and put his head in his hands. Just for a moment then he had been almost happy, and now the nightmare was back.
‘Right,’ Rachain said, getting himself back under control. ‘Fix bayonets. Save every shot you’ve got left until it’s a sure kill. If we have to do this like animals, then we will.’
‘I heard something,’ Sawbones said. ‘Outside.’
‘Someone heard the explosion?’ Dolven asked.
Cully could only shrug. He finished fitting the long, wicked bayonet to his lasgun and moved towards the window in a low crouch. There was something moving in the street outside, too dark to make out. He sighted along his las but without using the lamp pack he couldn’t get a target, and he knew that if he did he’d give them away. He squinted, willing his fire-blind eyes to soak up every scrap of the almost non-existent light.
Stub fire tore in through another window. Someone screamed. A lasgun cracked once, twice. Cully dropped and rolled, bringing his bayonet up as a dark shape surged through the window just above him. He felt resistance as his blade met flesh, then a hot rush of liquid on his hands. He tore and hacked with the bayonet, turning his lasgun into a spear like the most primitive of feral-worlders. He snarled, rearing up over the fallen cultist and stabbing down with the bayonet to be sure of his kill.
Somewhere in the firelight and confusion Rachain was roaring curses. The stubber barked again, then there was a single crack of las-fire and it fell silent.
‘Yes!’
Dolven whooped with joy at his kill, then a cultist loomed up behind him and ran him through with a crudely made sword. Cully sighted and fired in a single move, the las-shot taking the cultist full in the face and spinning him around and down onto his back with smoke rising from his ruined head.
Silence fell, broken only by Rachain’s snarls. He was crouching beside the fire, his lasgun in one hand and a spare bayonet in the other, both running red.
Dolven and Leehan were dead for sure, and Sawbones and Bonsell were both down and not moving. Cully held his breath and counted to twenty, in a taut firing position with his weapon hard to his shoulder and his heartbeat thundering in his ears.
‘Clear,’ he said at last, and sagged to his knees with relief.
Kallek was staring into space, her bayonet dripping blood and a look of horror on her face. She had a dead cultist at her feet, a serrated axe clutched in his hands. Limardi and Cinkosky checked the fallen while Morran sat by the fire clutching his leg, which was bleeding heavily again.
‘Sawbones is dead,’ Cinkosky said.
Limardi looked at Cully and nodded. ‘So’s Bonsell.’
Cully just nodded, and glanced at Morran. With the state of his leg and the medic gone, he didn’t give much for his chances, either.
‘Check them for weapons, food, anything we can use,’ he said.
He left them to it and crossed to Rachain.
‘Pull yourself together,’ he hissed at the sergeant. ‘You still have the command here.’
Rachain blinked and looked at his friend, and let out a long sigh.
‘I nearly…’ he started, and looked down at the bayonet in his hand. ‘In the confusion, I nearly stabbed Sawbones.’
Cully looked at the fallen medic, at the gaping bayonet wound in his gut. He licked his lips nervously, looked at Rachain again.
‘These things happen,’ he said. ‘Looks like someone else got him, hey?’
Rachain nodded, wiped his weapons clean on a dead cultist’s clothes and got to his feet.
‘What have we got?’ he asked.
‘Some rusty junk turned into close-combat weapons,’ Kallek said. ‘Nothing worth having.’
‘They had a stubber, at least one,’ Cully protested.
The woman shrugged hopelessly. ‘Well, they haven’t now,’ she said. ‘Survivors must have taken it and run.’
Cully let his head rock back on his shoulders, and offered up a prayer for salvation to the Emperor. Rachain was barely in his right mind, Kallek looked like she’d given up, and Morran was white with blood loss. That left him, Limardi and Cinkosky in a fit state to fight, and one of them would have to virtually carry Morran. It was no good, it wasn’t going to work. He looked at Morran again, sitting slumped by the fire and drifting in and out of consciousness.
Rachain looked up and met his eyes, and Cully knew they were thinking the same thing. Without another word Rachain crossed to Morran and spoke the Emperor’s Benediction over him. His blade came down hard and fast, and at least it was over quickly.
Limardi and Cinkosky were staring at him with looks of horror on their faces, while Kallek was just looking at the wall and seeing nothing at all.
‘Move out,’ Rachain said.
Cully’s chrono had been broken in the fighting, and he had no way
to gauge time in the constant darkness. At least another day must have passed, perhaps more. They slept when they could, hiding like rats in the freezing rubble. The hunger was maddening now, and he was so thirsty he was beginning to hallucinate.
That morning, Limardi had been so crazed by thirst that she had drunk from a puddle of polluted water, lapping it up on her hands and knees like a frantic animal. Now the poison in the water was killing her even as they crept along the edge of what seemed to be a main thoroughfare into the heart of the city. She stopped to vomit yet again, shaking and weeping in a broken archway as she brought up blood and filth.
‘I’ll stay with her,’ Kallek said. ‘Go on, I’ll catch you up.’
Cully and Rachain exchanged looks, but they nodded and pressed on. When Kallek caught up with them ten minutes later she was alone, and no one asked any questions. Cinkosky had the point, Rachain behind him, and Cully on the six. He waved Kallek into position between him and the sergeant.
Sometimes a trooper had to be helped to enter the Emperor’s Grace, and that was just how it was.
Up front, Cinkosky hissed a warning.
‘Light, up ahead,’ he whispered. ‘Looks like a camp fire.’
They joined him hurriedly, peering around the corner of a fire-blackened building and down an incline to a low courtyard. There were flames flickering down there, and three hunched figures crouched around them. Something was roasting on a spit over the fire, and Cully almost moaned as the scent of cooking meat reached his nostrils. One of the cultists lifted a flask to his lips and took a long swallow of something, and that decided it.
Rachain tapped his bayonet, put a finger to his lips, and crept out of the shadows with the others behind him. The four of them spread out around the tiny camp, surrounding it as best they could. Rachain let out a furious bellow and they charged as one, stabbing and hacking in a desperate frenzy. That fire, that meat and drink, was the difference between life and death.
They chose life.
When it was done Cully snatched up a flask and gulped water as fast as he could, hardly caring any more whether it was clean or not. The others were doing the same, he saw, and then Rachain was using his bloody bayonet to cut meat from the roast on its long spit and the smell was heaven and the taste was life and salvation and Cully ate and drank until he was sobbing with relief.
They had almost eaten their fill when Cully sat forwards to warm his greasy hands over the flames, and he saw what was lying in the ashes under the roast meat.
It was a blackened set of Guard ident-tags.
He swallowed, and looked across the fire at Kallek and Cinkosky and Rachain. They looked so content, and he knew he couldn’t take that away from them. He looked down at the meat, and wondered which of the missing members of Two Squad they were eating.
Corporal Cully whispered a prayer for the Emperor’s forgiveness, and cut himself another slice.
They camped there for a while, sleeping in pairs while the other two kept watch. Cully had drawn the second watch with Kallek, and they talked in low voices while Rachain and Cinkosky snored behind them, wrapped in the dead cultist’s stinking blankets.
‘I never wanted to join the Guard,’ she said. ‘I suppose most people don’t.’
‘I did,’ Cully said. ‘It was that or work myself to death to meet my hive’s production targets week after week until I was too old and broken to be useful anymore. Better to die serving the Emperor.’
‘The hives serve the Emperor too,’ Kallek said. ‘Toil in His name is a virtue.’
Cully looked at her and nodded slowly. She was devout too, in her way, he realised.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that it wasn’t.’
‘I worked a power-loom,’ she said. ‘I was good at it, too. Top tenth percentile for production on my work cycle three quarters running. I was… I was proud of that. But the Guard needed troops so they held a founding, and I was called up.’ She was silent for a moment, then she shrugged. ‘So I went. What else could I do?’
‘Nothing,’ Cully said. ‘When the Emperor calls, we answer. The Emperor expects every man to do his duty.’
‘And every woman.’
‘Exactly that,’ Cully said. ‘We ought to get them up.’
Kallek nodded, and they roused Rachain and Cinkosky from their sleep and together they breakfasted on the cold roast meat they had left. Cully had managed to hide the ident-tags while no one was looking, and he had forced himself not to read them to see who it had been. He didn’t want to know.
‘Let’s see what we’ve got, then,’ Cinkosky said, and he began to ransack the cultist’s belongings.
They found three stubbers, heavily modified and etched with the same vile Chaos sigils that were carved into the cultists’ arms. The Mark of Baphomet, Cully had come to think of it as, and it made him sick to look at it. There were belts of ammunition too, and more canteens of drinkable water. Cully looked at the enemy weapons and felt his stomach turn over. The taint of the Archenemy was so strong on the things he could almost taste it.
Rachain was sitting away from the others, keeping watch down the street while they searched.
‘I don’t think we ought to use them,’ he said to Rachain, once he joined him on the rise.
‘What?’ Rachain said, blinking up at him in surprise.
He had his bayonet in his right hand, and he quickly hid his left arm behind his back when he saw Cully looking at him. Cully licked his lips nervously, turned to check that the others were out of earshot.
‘What’s wrong with your arm?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing, my boot, Rachain,’ he snapped. ‘Show me.’
The sergeant shrugged, his eyes narrowing with distrust.
‘I got a scratch in the fight last night, that’s all.’
‘I’ve got a medi-pack I took off Sawbones,’ Cully said. ‘If you’re wounded then it needs dressing. You could get any sort of infection out here.’
‘Yeah,’ Rachain admitted. ‘All right.’
Cully produced the med kit and Rachain reluctantly held his arm out. Cully swallowed. He had already known by then, but still it was like being kicked in the guts.
Sergeant Rachain had been cutting the Mark of Baphomet into the back of his left arm.
Cully dressed and bound the wound without comment, but things were different between them now. He remembered the bandage around Sergeant Wyman’s left arm as she boarded the drop-ship with her men. All of them wounded, filthy. They knew, he realised. The Cadians they had relieved had all been tainted by Chaos, as he feared Rachain now was, and they knew the city hadn’t been cleansed at all, but had been letting the cultists continue their vile worship unopposed. The whole of Beleth City was a trap, and that meant it was more vital than ever that he get a warning out to HQ.
He should kill Rachain, he knew that. Had his hand on his bayonet, even, as the sergeant stared out into the endless darkness, but where would that get him? The vox station was close now, he could feel it, but he knew he’d never reach it with just Kallek and Cinkosky. Rachain was a veteran and a killer, and he needed him.
And he was his oldest friend.
‘There you go,’ he said, sealing the bandage with a stretch of binding tape.
Rachain just nodded.
‘Collect the stubbers and ammo,’ he said. ‘We’ll move out in a few minutes.’
‘I still don’t think we should touch them,’ Cully said, but he knew it was no good.
‘Collect the stubbers,’ Rachain said again. ‘That’s an order, corporal.’
There was nothing Cully could do but salute and do as the sergeant said.
They set off shortly after that, Cully, Rachain and Cinkosky each struggling with the weight of a stubber and its ammo belts while Kallek had two lasguns and all their power packs.
; ‘How does this thing work, corporal?’ Cinkosky hissed at him, fumbling with the stubber’s mechanical belt feed. ‘We never saw these in basic.’
Cully showed him quickly, wincing as his foot turned on a loose chunk of rubble he hadn’t even seen. It skittered across the road, the sound painfully loud in the cold darkness. He stumbled, nearly fell, and Kallek put out a hand to steady him.
‘What’s that?’ Cinkosky asked suddenly, turning to look behind them, and then there was the familiar, dreaded whummmppff of a flamer.
The street lit up bright as day as a jet of fire belched out of a doorway and consumed Cinkosky. He flailed and shrieked as he burned, arms pinwheeling in his agony. Kallek shot him out of mercy, then turned and sent a cracking volley of las-fire in the direction the flames had come from.
The air reeked of promethium and roast meat.
Rachain was firing and screaming together, his stubber blazing in his hands. Stub fire was coming back at them, making it obvious that the flamer man wasn’t alone.
Cully slammed the charging handle of his own weapon forward, braced it as best he could, and squeezed the crude trigger.
The recoil staggered him, the weapon bucking and leaping in his hands as it tore chunks out of the building. A moment later, there was an almighty explosion as the flamer’s tanks went up, taking its user and his accomplice with it.
Cully lowered his weapon, the barrel glowing hot in the dark, and turned to Kallek.
‘Thanks,’ he said, but she was down in the dirt with a gaping bloody hole in her stomach where the burst of sub rounds had torn through her.
Cully dropped to his knees beside her. She looked up at him, tears in her eyes.
‘I was… good with a power-loom,’ she whispered, blood running from the corner of her mouth. ‘Remember me.’
And with that she was gone.
Cully stood up and faced Rachain. They were the last ones standing, all that was left of Delaney’s platoon. The two old friends locked eyes.
‘Let’s finish this,’ Cully said.
They took the uplink station an hour later, each of them armed with a Chaos-marked stubber and as much ammunition as they could carry. Two old veterans came calling in the endless night like death walking, and they slaughtered anything that moved until their hands were numb from recoil shock and the barrels of their stubbers were glowing red hot.