Death or Glory, page 30
[59] Probably in a restaurant on Keffia, where little biscuits containing slips of paper with pious platitudes on are unaccountably popular.
[60] As commissars are outside the chain of command, Cain wasn’t technically a superior officer. However, some soldiers salute them as a matter of courtesy, or possibly prudence, and it’s clear from his memoirs that many of the troopers he served with did so out of respect for his personal qualities.
[61] How Cain discovered this we can only speculate; perhaps it came up in the course of a casual conversation. Or not.
[62] Local law enforcers.
[63] A forgeworld tradition, where the production facilities of a sector are closed down for routine maintenance, and the workers relocate en masse to a recreational facility.
[64] Quite unlikely in actual fact, as the greenskins’ innate tendency towards group action would mean that any isolated stragglers would either be on their way from one known location to another, like the one Cain encountered shortly after landing, or in search of loot, which would be scarce to say the least in the middle of the desert.
[65] A popular ditty among pre-schola juvies in the sector.
[66] A small rodent native to Kengraym Secundus, which migrates across the central continent in kilometre-wide, swarms devouring everything in its path. They breed in coastal inlets, spending the entire summer in the shallows, breaking into a run as they first scent the sea. In the course of this final frenzied rush the smaller and weaker members of the swarm are trampled to death (and then eaten).
[67] A phrase common among enginseers and junior tech-priests, expressing appreciation of a favour or considerate behaviour. The connotation appears to be something generally unnoticed but essential to keeping things running smoothly, which I suppose does sum Jurgen up rather well.
[68] Cain was, in fact, to spend most of his career attached to Valhallan units.
[69] Actually, just after dawn, the air would still be quite chill.
[70] A familar form of address often used by a senior NCO to the lieutenant in charge of their platoon, in the same way that their own subordinates might address them as ‘sarge.’
[71] A common sign of status among greenskins, presumably intended to show that they’ve overcome something even bigger and nastier than they are.
[72] Grasshopper is a game popular on most of the worlds in the Britannicus cluster, presumably so called because of the number of times the players leap into the air in an attempt to intercept the ball after it’s been struck by the one with the bat. Its rules are arcane in the extreme, making little sense to anyone not native to one of the worlds where it’s played. Matches have been known to last for anything up to a month, not counting stoppages for rain, which are frequent, and even then usually end in a draw.
[73] Both, in fact, becoming lay brothers of the Mechanicus in later life.
[74] In fact a few other survivors of the regiment surfaced later on, having continued their guerilla campaign in the south of the continent. Sautine and her crew had gravitated northwards after becoming separated from their parent company, which had been almost wiped out in the initial ork assault.
[75] Since this is the first point in the narrative where Cain and Felicia appear to be on first-name terms, we can infer that they spent some time together which he hasn’t bothered to record, although Emperor knows how either of them found the time for socialising.
[76] Perhaps wrongly: some medevac units designate each vehicle in the formation with an identifying letter, often expanded into an arbitrarily chosen word for ease of pronunciation over the vox. For some reason, no doubt deeply embedded in the military psyche, feminine names are particularly popular.
[77] The 597th Valhallan. As previously noted, his exploits with them make up the bulk of the material disseminated so far, and need not detain us any further at this juncture.
[78] A species of proverbially timid ground-dwelling fowl, indigenous to the deep mountain valleys of equatorial Valhalla.
[79] A reference to a peculiar annual ritual on several of the Imperial worlds coreward of the Damocles Gulf, in which life-sized dummies representing enemies of the Imperium are ceremonially burned on communal bonfires. After which the local ecclesiarchs lead prayers of thanks for the Emperor’s protection, and everyone else indulges in an evening of wild debauchery.
[80] Evidently the nickname of the unit Sautine and her crew were originally attached to.
[81] In fact Cain’s status at this point was still officially ‘killed in action.’ His brief flurry of communication after making orbit should have changed this to ‘missing, believed dead,’ but thanks to the usual bureaucratic inertia of the Administratum this adjustment wasn’t made until shortly after he rejoined his regiment. The ensuing confusion was to take over a year to sort out; after a few more such incidents the munitorium issued standing instructions that he should be kept on the active roster at all times whatever reports they received to the contrary. (Which accounts for the fact that he’s the only person in the history of the galaxy to still be officially regarded as on active service subsequent to being buried with full military honours.)
[82] The ork garrison in the town of Sandsedge was wiped out in the engagement, the Imperial column having taken them completely by surprise. They took some casualties themselves, of course, but by this time the steady trickle of newly contacted stragglers joining the group more than made up for the losses they sustained.
[83] Probably around three hundred soldiers, if Cain is being literal, although as usual he’s infuriatingly vague about specifics.
[84] Technically, all such promotions conferred by a commissar would be subject to subsequent ratification by the munitorum, although, since to oppose the decision would be likely to attract commissarial attention to the objector, this would just be a formality in all but the most exceptional of circumstances.
[85] Company Sergeant Major, the senior NCO of a company.
[86] By this time Sautine’s Leman Russ had been joined by two more tanks of the same type, a Basilisk, and a pair of captured orkish battlewagons apparently based on a looted Chimera chassis.
[87] Cain is exaggerating somewhat: even a Warhound would have to kneel down in order to drop below the roofline.
[88] If Cain is being accurate about this, rather than exaggerating for effect, we can infer a horde of anything up to two and a half thousand orks; a formidable prospect to say the least.
[89] Unless she hadn’t even noticed it. Tech-priests do have an unnerving tendency to concentrate on their mysteries to the exclusion of what, to the rest of us, would seem like more pressing concerns.
[90] Presumably she’d picked up the Valhallan oath from Cain or Jurgen at some point during their journey together.
[91] A widespread Perlian nickname for the members of Cain’s ad hoc fighting force, first used as the title of a popular holodrama about their exploits, and which subsequently stuck. Cain himself disliked the production intensely, not least because of a wholly invented subplot in which one of the militia recruits has a clandestine love affair with him, and because, almost inevitably, Jurgen fails to appear at all.
[92] Although at first sight this may seem like a gross overestimation, it is quite possibly accurate nevertheless. The network of valleys directed the floodwaters through the remains of several villages in which orkish garrisions were known to have been bivouacked, and the backwash probably accounted for the ambushing force waiting for the convoy further down the pass as well.
[93] According to his autobiography, All Life Forms Large and Small, Ariott had acted purely on impulse without even being aware of how much danger he’d been in until afterwards. Ironically, neither of the troopers he’d attempted to save survived.
[94] Presumably he means the Earthshakers themselves, which the 12th deployed on static platforms, relying on Trojan towing vehicles to move them about when required, rather than the self-propelled Basilisk variant which never appeared in their inventory. In either case, the artillery crews would normally have relied on ancillary vehicles to maintain ammunition supplies, the shot locker aboard the Basilisk being too small to contain enough shells for a prolonged battle.
[95] From The Precepts of Saint Emilia: rather an unlikely tome for Cain to have taken to heart, given his frequently expressed and somewhat trenchant opinion of the pious, but her keen appreciation of human frailty seems to have struck something of a chord with him, and several quotations from it appear in his commonplace book.
[96] Somewhat ironic given that, as I mentioned in my preliminary remarks, this portion of his memoirs was recorded shortly before he was to be swept up in the momentous events of the Black Crusade.
[97] Presumably it had been designed to allow easy access for whatever heavy machinery might be required to effect repairs to the aqueduct.
[98] A Valhallan colloquialism, one of many, which Cain had picked up from his prolonged association with the natives of that world. The reference is to a species of animal generally too torpid for a hunter to miss, even at long range, and therefore not considered much of a challenge.
[99] Cain is clearly writing with hindsight here, as at the time he would have had no knowledge of the prevailing strategic situation.
[100] By this point the convention of naming the militia teams after the regulars commanding them seems to have become firmly established.
[101] A factor, which probably contributed greatly to the element of surprise, the defenders not realising the approaching convoy was anything other than routine ork traffic until it was too late.
[102] Command, Control and Communication.
[103] It seems that out of habit, Cain was continuing to use his commissarial clearance to monitor the rest of the battlefield communications, thus getting a more general overview of events; which makes his single-minded concentration on his own experiences to the detriment of the wider picture even more frustrating.
[104] In all likelihood he’d armed it before being struck down, and the timer finally gave out at this point.
[105] The chaplain of the schola where Cain was appointed tutor of the commissar cadets.
[106] An uncharacteristically introspective passage, which may point to a side of his character that he seldom acknowledges. Or perhaps it was the amasec.
[107] Actually just killed, in most cases.
[108] Clearly an exaggeration, as examples of this so-called ‘mega-armour’ in the possession of the ordo xenos, exhibit weaponry roughly equivalent in calibre to an Imperial storm bolter or autocannon.
[109] By impetuously engaging Cain himself, Korbul had effectively made it a duel between the two of them which his captains would be reluctant to interrupt. To do so would be interpreted as an insult to the warboss, implying that he was too weak to win on his own, which in turn would be taken as a challenge to his leadership. Since they’d normally expect him to kill a pair of humans in short order, followed immediately by any presumptuous challenger, none of them would be willing to risk it.
[110] An oath prevalent on the lower levels of many hive worlds, and extremely harsh by Cain’s usual standards.
[111] Probably both.
[112] Felica’s pict recording of the end of Cain’s duel with Korbul had two effects: in the short term it provided unequivocal confirmation of the death of the warboss, which shaped Imperial strategy to best take advantage of the ensuing confusion among the greenskins, and in the longer term it made Cain a popular hero throughout the sector, particularly once the Commissariat decided to release it to the newscasts.
[113] The last few raiders are believed to have been tracked back to their base on the fringes of the system and finally eradicated in the early 950s, although, as in so many things where the greenskins are concerned, it’s hard to be entirely certain that they’ve been eliminated for good.
[114] The loss of so many of his subordinate commanders, who in the normal course of events would have been tribal leaders in their own right, probably hastened this process of disintegration as their would-be heirs fell upon one another in the manner Cain described after Korbul’s death.
[115] Later analysis shows that the greenskin defences were rather less formidable than Cain’s earlier remarks would indicate, having been intended simply to deter an attack while their numbers swelled to a level sufficient to mount a successful invasion of the west. The Imperial forces had adopted a defensive posture at the other end of the peninsular largely because, with the entire eastern continent under orkish control, the effort required to cross the land bridge with the forces remaining to them would have been futile. Once the back of the orkish occupation had been broken, and beachheads established in the east by the newly-arrived Imperial Guard regiments, the strategic picture had changed completely, allowing an advance to take place relatively unimpeded.
[116] The crew of one managing to hold out long enough to be rescued by the approaching Imperial forces.
[117] All in all about seventy per cent of the group seem to have made it through this final skirmish, quite a remarkable achievement.
Sandy Mitchell, Death or Glory
