Death or Glory, page 8
The consequences had been severe for everything else in the vicinity, however, including the building we had taken refuge in, the rent in the wall through which we were able to observe all this was clearly the result of flying debris from the explosion.
‘That made a mess,’ my aide commented superfluously. I nodded.
‘Let’s hope it took most of the greenies with it.’
‘As the Emperor wills,’ Jurgen agreed, a phrase he tended to trot out as the verbal equivalent of a shrug. Keeping close to the line of the building, we slipped through the hole, and began to move cautiously deeper into the ruined town.
At first, we saw no signs of life, although there was plenty of evidence of its opposite, and I began to hope that I was right after all and the greenskins had abandoned the place.
Bodies lay everywhere, humans mostly, all ages and both sexes, apparently gunned down or hacked to pieces as they tried to flee. The enemy hadn’t had it all their own way, though, there were greenskin corpses lying around too, massively muscled brutes like the ones we’d fought off in the desert and a few scrawnier specimens roughly the size of their human victims.
‘This happened some time ago,’ I concluded, pausing to examine the corpse of a local arbitrator[45] who had apparently died trying to defend a group of civilians. His weapon had gone, of course, looted by the greenie that had killed him, but it had evidently been some sort of high calibre autopistol judging by the wounds it had left in a nearby gretchin[46]. The corpse, like all the others, had become desiccated by the merciless sun, mummified by the constant arid heat, which meant it had been there for some time. Jurgen nodded, staring at the greenskin cadavers, and clearly wishing he had a can of promethium to hand.
‘Looks that way,’ he agreed.
If anything, the prospect grew even worse as we penetrated deeper into that blighted town, which, ironically, we came to realise from the municipal signage and the business premises we passed, had rejoiced in the name of Prosperity Wells. Everywhere we looked, we saw signs of the savagery of the invaders, death and destruction wrought purely for its own sake, and despite my usual pragmatic temperament, I began to feel angry at the sheer wantonness of it all. What Jurgen felt I can only imagine, and for the first time I began to understand the depth of the hatred the Valhallans felt for these creatures. To see a peaceful community despoiled in this way was hard enough; to know that such things had been done to your homeworld, even generations ago, would be an intolerable affront.
By this time, Jurgen and I had separated by perhaps a score of metres, taking it in turns to cover one another while we moved from one patch of concealment to the next, relying on the commbeads to keep us in touch; although, from habit, we continued to supplement the vox link with hand gestures, keeping transmissions to a minimum. I was just about to leave the shelter of a shop doorway, an apothecary’s if I remember right, when he held up a hand to forestall me and slipped into the shadow of a refuse bin.
‘Hostiles,’ he voxed, readying his weapon. I steadied the laspistol against my other arm, crouching low, and taking aim along the street. I didn’t have to wait long for a target. A moment later a mob of gretchin ambled into view, chattering and screeching among themselves in their barbarous tongue, pushing a large handcart. A single ork was with them, clearly in charge, urging them along with inchoate bellows and frequent blows, which the smaller greenskins generally ignored in favour of squabbling among themselves. The cart was loaded with corpses, and remembering the grisly snack I’d discovered in the locker of the buggy we’d acquired, I had a horrible suspicion as to their eventual destination.
‘Hold fire,’ I replied, as quietly as I could. In the distance, my aide nodded grimly. Tempting as the target was, and consumed as we both undoubtedly were with the righteous anger all subjects of the Emperor would have felt at that moment, there was no point in drawing attention to ourselves by giving way to our emotions. The faint wash of static in my commbead intensified for a moment.
‘–ay again?’ a tenuous voice enquired, and faded back into inaudibility. I glanced at Jurgen, prepared to repeat the instruction, but he was looking back in my direction, and even at this distance I could make out the expression of puzzlement on his face (which was no great trick, given how familiar I was with it).
‘Commissar?’ His voice sounded in my ear as clearly as if he were standing right next to me. I glanced back at the cavalcade of greenskins, but they were clearly still unaware of our presence, moving away now at as brisk a pace as their ork overseer could urge them to. I gestured him to silence.
‘There’s someone else on this frequency,’ I told him, and boosted the gain as best I could. Fortunately, he had enough sense to keep quiet after that, and just nodded an acknowledgement before returning his attention to the retreating greenies. I listened hard, trying to make out another voice through the hissing in my earpiece. ‘Unidentified contact, respond.’
‘–ergeant Tayber, Bravo squa–’ filtered through the static. ‘–who the –ing warp –ou?’
‘Commissar Cain, serving with the 12th Valhallan field artillery,’ I said. ‘What’s your position?’
‘–ing desperate.’
The greenskins were out of sight by this time, and Jurgen was moving back to join me. Even broken up by static as it was, the voice took on an incredulous edge. ‘–id you ju –ay Comm –ar?’
‘Yes. Where are you?’ I repeated, unsure how much of what I was saying was getting through. I was used to Imperial Guard vox nets, but this sounded like a PDF setup, which was liable to be far less sophisticated. For all I knew, we could have been practically on top of him.
‘South –ector, hydro –ation. Wha –eft of it.’
‘South sector hydro station,’ I confirmed. ‘We’ll find it.’
‘If the –nies don’t –nd you first,’ the voice added encouragingly. ‘–he whole tow– crawling with the –ing –ds.’
‘We’ll proceed with caution,’ I assured him as my aide returned to my side, and cut the link.
This didn’t sound promising. Whoever this Sergeant Tayber was, it seemed he was halfway across this ork-infested killing zone, and joining him would entail a significant risk. Probably the safest thing to do would be to head back to the buggy and resume our journey as best we could. On the other hand, he was the first Imperial soldier we’d been able to contact since we’d landed on this Emperor-forsaken rock, and might know where the bulk of our forces were. All in all, it seemed my best chance of survival was to try to link up with him, and if some of his squad was still around too, so much the better. The more troopers I had standing between the orks and me the happier I’d feel.
‘South is that way,’ Jurgen said, looking up from the compass he’d extracted from somewhere in his collection of pouches, and pointing helpfully in the direction the foraging party of greenskins had just taken. I sighed deeply.
‘It would be,’ I said.
CHAPTER NINE
Despite my obvious apprehension, our journey through the heart of the devastated town passed without incident; which is to say that, to my vague surprise, Jurgen and I made it to the south sector without getting killed. There were a number of narrow squeaks, however. The closer we got to the centre of things, the more greenskins we saw, and other sights too, which even at this remove I’d rather not dwell on. Once we passed a shrine to the Emperor, shattered and desecrated, its offerings looted, now, judging by the stench, being used by the orks as a makeshift latrine[47]. Even that, vile as it had been, was eclipsed by our first sight of the main Administratum building in the centre of the town.
It had clearly once been an elegant and well proportioned structure, facing a wide, paved square in which fountains had played and artfully sited colonnades had provided shade for the townspeople going about their business. Now it bore a garland of twisted corpses, hanging from windows and statues, no doubt the civic and spiritual leaders of the community judging by the number of Administratum and ecclesiarchy robes I could see. Few had died easily, that much was clear, despite the familiar desiccation of the cadavers.
Jurgen hawked and spat, and I nodded, my own feelings far beyond words. In later years I was to see just as bad, if not worse, on far too many occasions, but at that time I had yet to encounter the minions of the Dark Powers, the necrons, or the infinitely refined sadism of the Chaos-touched eldar, and perhaps for that reason the memories remain so strong. Right then I wanted nothing more than to exterminate every greenskin on the planet, with my bare hands if I had to, but my survival instinct reasserted itself before I could give way to the impulse to avenge these sorry victims on the next of the creatures to cross our path.
There were plenty of them to be seen, large and small, scuttling around on incomprehensible errands of their own, most of which seemed to involve shouting very loudly or hitting one another. On a couple of occasions, we saw weapons drawn to resolve a quarrel, although none of the combatants seemed to take permanent harm from a mere axe wound or bullet hole, and most of the others in the vicinity simply ignored the fracas. Adding to the din was the perpetual roar of their ramshackle vehicles, which hurtled about the place with complete disregard for the safety of either their occupants or any pedestrians in their path. As well as the buggies and bike things we’d seen before, I was able to make out some larger vehicles which looked vaguely like heavily armoured trucks, and once something which might have been intended as a tank, but which looked like nothing so much as a daemon possessed pile of scrap metal rattled past[48], crewed by whooping orks.
On several occasions, we saw foraging parties like the first we’d encountered, although not all were in search of fresh meat. Some of the carts were piled high with stuff only a tech-priest would recognise, while other groups seemed bent on collecting nothing but scrap metal. To my shock and surprise, in some cases what I’d assumed to be even scrawnier gretchin than usual, proved, on closer inspection through the amplivisor, to be human prisoners. I pointed out the haggard, shuffling figures to Jurgen with an inarticulate sound of revulsion, and he nodded grimly.
‘They’ll not last long,’ he said, and I was forced to agree. Indeed, they must have possessed exceptional fortitude, or faith in the Emperor, to have survived their enslavement for as long as they had. No doubt, the atrocity of the Administratum building had been intended to intimidate the survivors into acquiescence, and it looked from here as though it had succeeded in that aim.
‘There’s nothing we can do for them,’ I said, moving a little deeper into the cover of a shattered wall. Trying to liberate the poor wretches would only get us killed, and none of them looked in any condition to make a run for it anyway. Nevertheless, it was in a sober mood that we continued our perilous journey.
At length, we hit a watercourse and took to it gratefully, wading waist high in the blessedly cool liquid. The sun was almost at its zenith, and the relief from the baking heat was more than welcome. I drew the line at drinking it, however, continuing to use the canteen at my waist for that. No telling where it had come from, or what was contaminating it, especially with an army of greenskins in town. If you think that makes it remarkably foolish for us to go paddling in the stuff, you’ve clearly never experienced desert heat, or tried playing tag with orks, let alone both at the same time.
Despite moving as carefully as we could to avoid betraying our presence by sloshing around too loudly, we made good time. For most of its length, the aqueduct was lined with rockcrete walls, which rose higher than our heads, making it hard to see our surroundings, but by the same token giving us some welcome concealment from the greenskins surrounding us. Jurgen’s compass told us we were moving in roughly the right direction still, and after a while, during which time the hubbub of the ork host going about their business had faded away again, I deemed the time was right to stick our heads up and see where we were.
Fortunately, at this point the walls of the aqueduct were sloping, and lined with pre-cast rockcrete slabs, which afforded excellent footing, so we were able to make our way to the top and lie completely concealed below ground level apart from our heads. I raised mine cautiously, seeing no sign of life, and scrambled up, Jurgen at my heels as always. While he dropped into a crouch, lasgun at the ready, I raised the amplivisor.
‘We’re here,’ I said, picking out a sign on a nearby industrial unit informing me that it was the property of South Sector Plumbing Supplies. Like everywhere else we’d so far seen in this stricken community, the buildings bore the scars of fighting or ork vandalism, although there were fewer corpses in the street and more of the structures seemed to have roofs. I activated the commbead. ‘Tayber, this is Cain. Respond.’
For a moment nothing happened, and I listened to the familiar hiss of static in my ears with tension winding inexorably at my gut. If this turned out to be a sump rat chase, and we’d come through all those orks for nothing…
‘Wait one,’ a voice said in my ear, surprisingly clearly. The channel must have remained open, though, because I was able to distinguish a muttering of voices, though not the words. A moment later the voice returned. ‘He’s on his way.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘And who are you?’
‘Grenbow, sir, commissar, I mean. Sir. Vox specialist second class, sir, I mean commissar…’
‘One or the other will do,’ I said, hiding my irritation as best I could. PDF without a doubt, probably never seen a scarlet sash in their lives before, and with only the haziest idea of what a commissar actually was. I suppose proper Guardsmen would have been too much to hope for, but if this Grenbow was typical of the locals it sounded as though I’d have been better off following my first impulse and just getting the hell out of Prosperity Wells while I’d had the chance. Oh well, too late to worry about that now, and at least it sounded as though Tayber had a few grunts with him I could hide behind. After all, if they were still on the loose this long after the orks had occupied the town, they must have something going for them. ‘How many of you are there?’
‘Seven effectives, two walking wounded.’ A new voice came on to the vox, calmer, more resolute, and vaguely familiar; obviously whoever it was I’d spoken to before. ‘Where are you?’
‘We’re outside a plumbing supplies warehouse on Oildrum Lane.’ I’d been able to read the street sign quite clearly though the amplivisor. ‘How do I reach your position?’
‘You don’t.’ Tayber sounded about as trusting as Colonel Mostrue. ‘For all I know you’re a greenie collaborator with a scavenged vox. We’ll come to you.’
‘Frak that!’ I said heatedly. ‘If you think we’re going to sit around here in the open waiting to be picked off…’
‘Then find some cover.’
The vox went dead. Jurgen and I looked at one another. Clearly this Tayber was as cautious as I was. Despite the clear breach of protocol, I began to think I’d made the right choice after all, and if it turned out I hadn’t, I could always shoot him for insubordination.
‘Well you can hardly blame the man for being cautious,’ I said, trying not to grin at my aide’s outraged expression. I gestured towards the warehouse. ‘We might as well wait in there.’
‘Very good, sir.’ Crouching low, behind a pallet of surprisingly undamaged ceramic sanitary units, we began making our way towards the refuge it offered. We were almost there when Jurgen hesitated, and raised his head. ‘Can you hear that, sir?’
‘Yes.’ The sound drifted towards us on a light breeze, which struck pleasantly cool through the gently steaming fabric of my trousers. I nodded grimly at the unmistakable crack of las bolts, and the harsher bark of crude firearms. ‘Gunfire.’
It seemed Sergeant Tayber wouldn’t be joining us after all.
‘What do we do now, sir?’ Jurgen asked. I shook my head, regretfully. The way I saw it, prudent retreat would be the most sensible course of action, before the noise of the firefight attracted the attention of every greenskin within earshot. Hard luck on the gallant sergeant, of course, but there didn’t seem anything I could do about that now. He’d just have to take his chances with the rest of his men.
‘We get the frak out of here,’ I said, an instant before the commode beside my head shattered into a thousand pieces. Three orks were charging towards us, blazing away with their crude bolt pistols, fortunately with the complete lack of accuracy common to their kind. That wouldn’t be enough to keep us unscathed for long, though, so we returned fire with a will, taking the time to aim our own shots carefully. Time and again I’ve found that the fraction of a second it takes to make sure each las bolt counts is worth more than all the wild firing in the galaxy. Of course, if you just blaze away in the general direction of the enemy you’ll usually persuade him to keep his head down, unless you’re dealing with greenskins, necrons, or Khornate loonies of course, but if he’s got a cooler head than yours he’ll be using that time to make sure he takes it off at the shoulders with his next squeeze of the trigger. Far better in my view to make sure you’re the one taking the trouble to aim, and if he’s doing the same, do it first.
Anyway, I remembered enough from our skirmish back at the crash site to go for a headshot, taking down the leader with a las bolt to the cranium, while Jurgen did the same for his flankers. Remembering how hard they’d been to kill, I didn’t take any chances, running forward as soon as they’d dropped to take what remained of their heads off with the chainsword. I didn’t care how resilient they were; they weren’t going to get back up after that.
‘Right behind you, sir,’ Jurgen assured me, his distinctive odour announcing the fact a second or so before his voice did. ‘Which way?’
‘Down there,’ I said, gesturing in the opposite direction to the one our erstwhile assailants had appeared from. If there were any more of them, it was carrots to credits they’d be up that way too. Jurgen nodded, and checked the level of the powercell in his weapon. It seemed satisfactory, and he levelled it, while I took a quick look around. Sure enough, there was a flash of movement, just where I most dreaded it would be, and we started moving, angling away from the approaching reinforcements, keeping our heads down and hoping the warehouse had a sufficiently large stock of commodes to conceal our progress.
