Hero of the Imperium, page 3
Gradually, without seeming to have any specific destination in mind, I was heading for the vehicle park. I’d almost reached it when I ran out of time.
‘They’re here!’ someone shrieked, opening up with a lasgun. I whirled at the distinctive crack of ionising air, in time to see a trooper I didn’t recognise going down beneath a dark, nightmare shape which plummeted from the sky like a bird of prey. I didn’t recognise him because his face was gone, eaten away by the fleshborer the thing carried.
‘Gargoyles!’ I shouted, although the warning could barely be heard above the unearthly shrieking which presaged a bioplasma attack. I leapt aside just quickly enough to avoid a seething bolt of primal matter vomited up by a winged horror swooping in my direction. I felt the heat on my face as it went past, detonating a few yards away and setting fire to a tent. Without thinking I drew my chainsword, thumbed the selector to full speed, and waved it over my head as I ducked. Luck was with me, because I was rewarded by a torrent of stinking filth which poured down the neck of my shirt.
‘Look out, commissar!’
I whirled, seeing it swooping back towards me in the light from the fire, screaming in rage, ragged entrails streaming behind it like a banner. Erhlsen was kneeling, tracking it with the barrel of his lasgun, leisurely, as if he was at a recreational target shoot. I threw myself flat, just as he squeezed the trigger, and the thing’s head exploded.
‘Thanks, Erhlsen!’ I waved, rolled to my feet, and drew my laspistol left-handed. He grinned, and turned to track another target.
Time to be somewhere else, I thought, and ran as hard as I could towards the vehicle park. On the way I shot frequently, and swung my humming chainsword in every defensive pattern I could recall, but whether I hit anything only the Emperor knows. Apparently I struck a heroic figure, though, shrieking what was taken for a stirring battle cry rather than an incoherent howl of terror, which encouraged the men no end.
The Hydras were firing continuously now, stitching the air over the compound with tracer fire which looked dense enough to walk on, but the gargoyles were small and fast-moving, evading most of it with ease. Craning my neck around for potential threats, I saw most of the guardsmen taking whatever cover they could find; anyone left out in the open was in no condition to move by this time as the fleshborer fire and bioplasma bolts rained down furiously. My attention thus diverted, I tripped, going down hard on something which swore at me, and tried to brain me with the butt of a lasgun.
‘Jurgen! It’s me!’ I said, blocking frantically with my forearm before he could stave my skull in. Even over the smell of the gargoyle guts I could tell who it was without looking. He’d dug in between the tracks of a Salamander, protected from the blizzard of falling death by the armour plating above him.
‘Commissar.’ He looked relieved. ‘What should we do?’
‘Get this thing started,’ I said. Anyone else might have argued, but Jurgen’s dogged deference to authority sent him out into the open without hesitation. I half expected to hear a scream and the wet slap of a fleshborer impact, but after a moment the engine rumbled to life. I took a deep breath, and then another. Relinquishing the safety of overshadowing armour plate for the exposed deck of the open-topped scout car seemed almost suicidal, but staying here for the main assault would be worse.
With more willpower than I believed I possessed, I holstered the pistol, tightened my grip on the chainsword, and rolled out into the open.
‘Up here, sir.’ Jurgen reached down a grubby hand, which I seized gratefully, and swung myself up behind the autocannon. Something crunched under my bootsoles: tiny beetle-like things, thousands of them, discharged by the gargoyles’ fleshborers. I shuddered reflexively, but they were dead, not having found living flesh to consume in their brief spasm of existence.
‘Drive!’ I shouted, and was almost thrown off my feet as Jurgen accelerated. I ducked below the gunner’s shield, dropped the melee weapon, and opened fire. It had little effect, of course, but it would look good, and anyone seeing us would assume that the extra firepower was the reason I’d commandeered the vehicle.
Within moments we were beyond the camp perimeter, and Jurgen began to slow.
‘Keep going!’ I said. He looked puzzled, but opened the throttle again.
‘Where to, sir?’
‘West. The mines. As fast as you can.’ Again, I was expecting questions, doubts, and from any other trooper I might have had them. But Jurgen, Emperor bless his memory, simply complied without demur. Then again, in his position I’d have done the same, relieved to have been ordered away from the battle. Gradually the noise and fireglow began to fade behind us in the night. I was just beginning to relax, estimating the time remaining until we reached safety, when the Salamander shook violently.
‘Jurgen!’ I yelled. ‘What’s happening?’
‘They’re firing at us, sir.’ He sounded no more concerned about it than he did about making his regular report as latrine orderly. It took me a moment to realise that he trusted me to deal with whatever we were facing. I pulled myself up to look over the gunner’s shield, and my bowels spasmed.
‘Turn!’ I screamed, as a second venom cannon blast scored the armour plating centimetres from my face. ‘Back to the compound!’
Even now, after more than a century, I still wake sweating from dreams of that moment. In the pre-dawn glow the plain before us seemed to move like a vast grey ocean, undulating gently; but instead of water it was a sea of chitin, flecked with claw and fang rather than foam, rolling inexorably on towards the fragile defensive island of the artillery park. I would have wept with disappointment if I wasn’t already too terrified for any other emotion. The ’nids had outsmarted me, sweeping round to cut us off and block our escape.
I bounced off the hull plating, falling heavily back into the crew compartment, as Jurgen threw one of the tracks into reverse and swung us around, practically on a coin. My head cracked painfully against something hard. I blinked my swimming eyes clear, and recognised it as a voxcaster. Something like hope flared again, and I grabbed the microphone.
‘Cain to command! Come in!’ I screamed, voice raw with panic. Static hissed for a moment.
‘Commissar? Where are you?’ Mostrue’s voice, calm and confident. ‘We’ve been looking for you since we drove off the attack...’
‘It was a diversion!’ I yelled. ‘The main force is coming from the west! If you don’t redeploy the guns we’re all dead!’
‘Are you sure?’ The colonel sounded doubtful.
‘I’m out here now! I’ve got half the hive fleet on my arse! How sure do you want me to be?’ I never found out, as the aerial melted under the impact of a bioplasma blast. The Salamander shook again, and the engine howled, as Jurgen pushed it up past speeds it had never been designed to cope with. Despite my trepidation I couldn’t resist peering cautiously over the lip of the armour plate.
Merciful Emperor, we were opening the distance! The incoming fire was becoming less accurate as the scuttling swarm receded slowly behind us. Emboldened, I swung the pintel-mounted bolter around and fired into the densely packed mass of seething obscenity; there was no need to aim, as I could hardly miss hitting something, but I pointed it in the general direction of the largest creature I saw. As a rule, the larger the creature the higher it was in the hive hierarchy, and the more vital it was to co-ordinating the swarm. And seeding swarms, I vaguely recalled from some long-forgotten xenobiology lecture, tended to be thinly supplied with them. I missed the tyrant I’d spotted but one of its guard warriors went down, mashed instantly to goo by the weight of the swarm scuttling on and over it.
The compound was in sight now, ant-like troopers lining the fortifications, and, Emperor be praised, the Hydras rumbling into position to defend them, their quad-barrelled autocannon turrets depressing to face the oncoming tide of death. I was just beginning to think we might make it–
When, with a loud crack and a shriek of tortured metal, our howling engine fell silent. Jurgen had pushed it too far and we were about to pay for that with our lives. The Salamander lurched, slipping sideways, and slewed to a halt in a spray of sand.
‘What do we do now, sir?’ Jurgen asked, hauling himself up out of the driver’s compartment. I grabbed my chainsword, suppressing the urge to use it on him; he could still be useful.
‘Run like frak!’ I said, demonstrating the point. I didn’t have to be faster than the ’nids, just faster than Jurgen. I could hear his boots scuffing in the sand behind me, but didn’t turn, that would have slowed me momentarily, and I really didn’t want to see how close the swarm was getting.
The Hydras opened up, shooting past us, gouging holes in the onrushing wall of chittering death, but barely slowing it. Lasgun bolts began following suit; although the small arms fire would only be marginally effective at this range, every little helped. Return fire from the warriors was sporadic, and directed at the defenders behind the barricades rather than us, the hive mind apparently deciding we weren’t worth the bother of singling out. Suited me fine.
I was almost at the berms, encouraging shouts from the men in the emplacements ringing in my ears, when I heard a cry from behind me. Jurgen had fallen.
‘Commissar! Help!’
Not a chance, I thought, intent on reaching the safety of the barricades, then my heart froze. Ahead of me, angling in to cut us off, was the huge, unmistakable bulk of the hive tyrant, accompanied by its attendant bodyguards. It hissed, opening its jaws, and I dived to one side expecting the familiar blast of bioplasma, but instead a ravening blast of pure energy detonated where I’d stood seconds before, throwing me to the ground. I rolled upright, moving as far away from it as I could, and found myself running back towards Jurgen. He was on the ground, a hormagaunt about to disembowel him with its scything claws, and its brood mates lining up to dice what was left. Caught between the ’gaunts and the hive tyrant the choice was clear; I had an outside chance of fighting my way through the swarm of smaller creatures, but going back would mean certain death.
‘Back off!’ I screamed, and swung my chainsword at the ’gaunt attacking Jurgen. It just had time to look up in surprise before its head came off, spraying ichor which smelled nearly as bad as Jurgen did. He rolled to his feet, snapping off a shot from his lasgun that exploded the thorax of another, which I’d barely had time to register was about to eviscerate me. Looked like we were even. I glanced around. The rest of the brood were hemming us in, and the tyrant was getting closer, looming huge against a sky reddened by the rising sun.
Then suddenly the tyrant wasn’t there, replaced by shreds of steaming flesh which fell almost leisurely to the sand, its attendant warriors exploding around it. One of the Hydras had rolled around the edge of its emplacement to get a clear shot, the hail of autocannon rounds taking the entire group apart at almost point blank range.
I swung the chainsword to block a sweeping scythe from the closest ’gaunt, and missed as it abruptly pulled away. The whole swarm was hesitating, milling uncertainly, deprived of its guiding intelligence.
‘Fire! Keep firing!’ Mostrue’s voice rang out, clear and confident from the barricades. The gunners complied enthusiastically. I swung the chainsword again, fear and desperation lending me superhuman strength, carving my way through the ’gaunts like so many sides of grox.
Abruptly the swarm broke, scattering, scuttling away like frightened rodents. I dropped the chainsword, trembling with reaction, and felt my knees give way.
‘We did it! We did it!’ Jurgen let his lasgun fall, his voice tinged with wonder. ‘Emperor be praised.’ I felt a supporting arm go round my shoulders.
‘Well done, Cain. Bravest thing I’ve ever seen.’ Divas was holding me up, his face alight with something approaching hero worship. ‘When you went back for Jurgen I thought you were dead for sure.’
‘You’d have done the same,’ I said, realising the smart way to play it was modest and unassuming. ‘Is he–?’
‘He’s fine.’ Colonel Mostrue joined us, and looked at me with the old tutor domus expression. ‘I’d like to know what you were doing out there, though.’
‘Something didn’t feel right about the gargoyle assault,’ I improvised hastily. ‘And I remembered tyranids tend to use flanking attacks against dug-in defenders. So I thought I’d better go out and take a look.’
‘Thank the Emperor you did,’ Divas put in, swallowing every word.
‘You could have assigned someone,’ Mostrue pointed out.
‘It was dangerous,’ I said, knowing we’d be overheard. ‘And, let’s be honest, colonel, I’m the most expendable officer in the battery.’
‘No one in my battery’s expendable, commissar. Not even you.’ For a moment I saw a flicker of amusement in those ice-blue eyes and shivered. ‘But I’ll remember your eagerness to volunteer for dangerous assignments in future.’
I’ll just bet you will, I thought. And he was as good as his word, too, once we got to Keffia. But in the meantime he had one more favour to do me.
‘I’ve been thinking, commissar.’ Mostrue glanced up from the hololith, where the image of our newly-arrived fleet was enjoying a rare turkey shoot against the vastly outnumbered bioships. ‘Perhaps I should assign you an aide?’
‘That’s hardly necessary, colonel,’ I said, flattered in spite of myself. ‘My workload’s far from excessive.’ That wasn’t the point, though, and we both knew it. My status as a hero of the regiment demanded some recognition, and assigning a trooper as my personal flunkey would be a public sign that I was fully accepted by the senior officers.
‘Nevertheless.’ Mostrue smiled thinly. ‘There was no shortage of volunteers, as you can imagine.’ That went without saying. The official version of my heroism, and my self-sacrificing rescue of Jurgen, was all over the compound.
‘I’m sure you’ll make the right choice,’ I said.
‘I already have.’ Suspicion flared, and I felt the pit of my stomach drop. He wouldn’t, surely...
My nose told me that he had, even before I turned, forcing a smile to my face.
‘Gunner Jurgen,’ I said. ‘What a pleasant surprise.’
FOR THE EMPEROR
Editorial Note:
What, for want of a better phrase, I will henceforth be referring to as the ‘Cain Archive’ is, in truth, barely deserving of so grandiloquent a title. It consists merely of a single dataslate, stuffed full of files arranged with a cavalier disregard for chronology, and to no scheme of indexing that I’ve been able to determine despite prolonged examination of the contents. What can be stated with absolute certainty, however, is that the author was none other than the celebrated Commissar Ciaphas Cain, and that the archive was written by him during his retirement while serving as a tutor at the Schola Progenium.
This would pin the date of composition to some time after his appointment to the faculty in 993.M41; from occasional references to his published memoirs (To Serve the Emperor: A Commissar’s Life), which first saw the light of day in 005.M42, we can safely conclude that he was inspired by the process of writing them to embark on a fuller account of his experiences, and that the bulk of the archive was composed no earlier than this.
His motives for so doing we can only guess at, since publication would have been impossible; indeed, I placed them under Inquisitorial seal the moment they came to light, for reasons which should be immediately apparent to any attentive reader.
Nevertheless, I believe they are worthy of further study. Some of my fellow inquisitors may be shocked to discover that one of the Imperium’s most venerated heroes was, by his own admission, a scoundrel and self-seeking rogue; a fact of which, due to our sporadic personal association, I have long been aware. Indeed, I would go so far as to contend that it was this very combination of character flaws which made him one of the most effective servants the Imperium has ever had, despite his strenuous efforts to the contrary. For, in his century or more of active service to the Commissariat, and occasional less visible activities at my behest, he faced and bested almost every enemy of humanity: necrons, tau, tyranids and orks, eldar, both free of taint and corrupted by the ruinous powers, and the daemonic agents of those powers themselves. Reluctantly, it must be admitted, but in many cases repeatedly, and always with success; a record few, if any, more noble men can equal.
In fairness, it should also be pointed out here that Cain is his own harshest critic, often going out of his way to deny that the many instances in which he appears, despite his professed baser motives, to have acted primarily out of loyalty or altruism were any such thing. It would be ironic, indeed, if his awareness of his shortcomings should have blinded him to his own (admittedly often well-hidden) virtues.
It is also worth reflecting that if, as is often asserted, courage consists not of the absence of fear but the overcoming of it, Cain does indeed richly deserve his heroic reputation, even if he always steadfastly denied the fact!
However much we may deplore his professed moral shortcomings, his successes are undeniable, and we can be thankful that Cain’s own account of his chequered career has at last been discovered. To say the least, these memoirs shed new light on many of the odder corners of recent Imperial history, and his eyewitness accounts of our enemies contain many valuable, if idiosyncratic, insights into understanding and confounding their dark designs.
It is for this reason that I preserved the archive and have spent a considerable amount of leisure time in the years since its discovery editing and annotating it, in an attempt to make it more accessible to those of my fellow inquisitors who may wish to peruse it for themselves. Cain appears to have had no overall structure in mind, simply recording incidents from his past as they occurred to him, and, as a result, many of the anecdotes are devoid of context; he has a disconcerting habit of beginning in media res, and many of the shorter fragments end abruptly as his own part in the events he is describing comes to a conclusion.
