Honour Imperialis - Aaron Dembski-Bowden

by Warhammer 40K

  Bolder Guardsmen, urged on by the lack of resistance being offered by the storm-troopers, were now heading out onto the open street section and cracking off shots at the fast-moving Mortensen. Heaving himself up to the opening, the major crawled through. Getting down the relatively serene far side of the wall was much simpler and just required letting go.

  The fall was untidy and involved bouncing off the wall halfway down and striking out his left leg for a landing. Although he couldn’t feel much of it, something gave in the leg upon impact and Mortensen found that his descent wasn’t quite over, toppling forward and crashing into the floor.

  Instinct made him grab the leg; he couldn’t extend it but he couldn’t tell whether it was broken or just badly sprained. There was little time for such trivialities, however, as a second later he was set upon: a rifle butt smashing his face, while a series of boots and blows rained down on his head and back. This went on for an indeterminable amount of time: whenever he brought up his face, to get a look at his attackers or mount an attack of his own, he was met with another savage staccato of fists and rifle stocks. At last the brutal assault came to an end and Mortensen could open his eyes. One still burned white, while the other could detect a slender shadow that passed across the ground in front of him.

  ‘Bring him to me,’ came the clipped, cultured tone of an officer, and before he knew it, Mortensen had been dragged and deposited in a heap in the next room: the hub, he presumed.

  Ultimately it was a disappointment, little more than an open space with some benches, a table, a vox and a handful of men. House banners decorated the walls and gang symbols – the Underbloods, by the look of the scrawl that had been dashed onto all available surfaces by hivers with more paint than talent.

  Mortensen couldn’t tell whether his plan to flood the street section with Volscians had been successful or whether the whole revolt had been managed from this squalid little showing. He reasoned that it didn’t take much to lead men to lose themselves or to uncage the savagery in men’s hearts, after their treatment at the hands of Commissar Fosco and his staff. The major spat his bloodied disgust, as well as a tooth or two, at the floor: he couldn’t stand weakness in those around him and the men in the room just made him want to vomit. In many ways they deserved each other and if Mortensen could have been anywhere else than between them, then he would have been: even Deliverance’s rancid bilge.

  Through the wall the havoc had begun. The Shadow Brigade must have been at the door because Mortensen could make out the distinctive thud of autopistols amongst the combined, ragged whoosh of lasrifles: there was no need for silencers now. The two hulking sentries that Eckhardt had retained, the two that had given the major such a welcome, now wrenched him up, thick, meaty fingers clenched under each arm.

  Something burned in the corner of the room and the reek of roasted flesh clung to everything. The charred remains were curled up in a foetal mercy stance, shreds of black leather lining the smouldering scene. Mortensen could only guess this to be Cadet-Commissar Bohrz, Fosco’s despicable apprentice. The good commissar himself was still alive, although beaten to blackness like a rotten fruit and tied up securely on one of the benches.

  He was bare to the waist and the sparse hair stringing its way across his shiny, bald pate was wet. Droplets of something Mortensen could only guess was promethium were rolling down the commissar’s sour face and sagging belly. A barrel near the doorway confirmed this and supported the elbow of First Lieutenant Diezel Shanks.

  Shanks gave Mortensen his dead-fish eyes. There had always been something dark and unhealthy living behind those eyes, something that had found expression in the murderous chaos of the revolt, but that would have surfaced, regardless. Eckhardt and Fosco might have driven each other to desperate measures but Shanks would have found a way to stray from the path sooner or later; in turn the extra poison he would have poured into his company captain’s ears would have ensured it.

  Eckhardt turned.

  Obadiah Eckhardt was a spire-born: hive nobility through and through. He was young for his rank and impulsive – as the revolt had proved – but he was a charismatic leader, tall and almost romantic in his looks and language: the antithesis of Mortensen himself.

  Despite the unruly demeanour of his mutinous troops, he was still dressed immaculately, his uniform and cap crisp, a rich cloak hanging from his wide shoulders and a glorious sabre hanging at his side. He still displayed the sashes, trinkets and tattoos of his fellow Volscians, but they were worn with moderation and taste. He even managed a good-natured smile.

  ‘Major Mortensen: we missed you at your quarters,’ Eckhardt began contritely. ‘I’m sorry about that. We might have saved you the trip.’

  ‘No trouble,’ Mortensen rumbled back.

  ‘Knew you’d throw your lot in with this bastard and his minions,’ Eckhardt censured.

  Fosco suddenly roared to life, spitting forth insults and accusations with swollen lips and a jaw that barely worked. Eckhardt closed on the commissar, bawling back his own effete abuse, the rabid exchange – without doubt one of many over the passing hours – ending with a savage back-handed slap from the captain that spun the commissar’s body off the bench and onto the floor.

  Getting a grip on himself, Eckhardt turned back on Mortensen. ‘Men like you can’t think for themselves. You take solace in your orders and your duty when all the while, all you amount to is a tyrant’s plaything. That’s why I sent my people down there – to slit your damned throats.’

  ‘Still breathing over here,’ Mortensen goaded the officer.

  A skull-cracking blow to the back of the head put Mortensen back on his knees, followed by a rhythmic pummelling that fell on him from above. As Eckhardt’s bully boys administered their brutal reprimand, Fosco erupted again, prompting Shanks to step forward and bury his boots in the commissar’s kidneys.

  ‘Enough!’ the captain screamed. Eckhardt was shaking, his eyes tensing and narrowing with each breath.

  ‘You’re a mindless animal, Mortensen: those cowards holed up on the bridge have sent you to make their representations…’

  Mortensen’s back began to throb with crude laughter. Eckhardt’s face screwed up further: a mask of hatred and righteous fury.

  ‘You think this humorous, freak?’

  ‘Save it!’ Mortensen growled through his fading mirth. ‘I’m not here to negotiate with you, Eckhardt. I’m here to kill you; and as for orders and duty, I can assure you that the pleasure will be all my own.’

  The hulking hiver sentries went to fall on him again with the stocks of their rifles but Eckhardt belayed them with a single, strained utterance. The captain’s eyes glowed bright with odium and insanity and then suddenly there was calm and he returned to his charming self.

  ‘Well, look at you. You do look a state. Where you’ve been, I can’t quite imagine. Lieutenant, let’s make the major a little more presentable shall we?’

  Shanks extracted a pail that had been bobbing around the inside of the barrel and filled it with promethium. Stepping forward he doused Mortensen with the harsh liquid – the same treatment that Fosco had presumably received and definitely the same as Cadet Bohrz.

  ‘Refreshing,’ Mortensen informed them as the sentries lowered their weapons and took a step back. Usually the rebels would be treated to thrashing and screaming, as the chemical torment washed over burns, cuts and wounds. The major simply blinked determination back at them.

  ‘Well, we shall be refreshing something for you, major,’ Eckhardt promised darkly. ‘Your memory, I hope. Gomorrah, wasn’t it? Burned from top to toe, they say. They say you can’t feel a thing. Let’s put that to the test, shall we, freak? Shanks. Flare.’

  As the first lieutenant handed Eckhardt the tube with relish, Mortensen slipped the Volscian hive dirk from his boot. Perhaps it was the genuine fear – if Mortensen fancied he felt such a thing – of burning alive (again
), or the simple fact that it was probably his last opportunity to act, but the blade was out and it was hungry.

  Thrusting the dirk upwards, one hand on the hilt, the other behind its small pommel, Mortensen sank the blade up into the first sentry’s throat. He was preparing for the light show and had held his rifle slack by his side. The second bully boy brought up his weapon, but desperation had made the major faster, swinging the blade back around in a wide, forceful arc that sliced across the other Volscian’s throat.

  The moment of panic that the sentry had felt the moment before he died spread and both Eckhardt and Shanks were galvanised into action. The captain tried to fire off the flare but Mortensen was already moving, shouldering the toppling sentry into the noble and sending the pyrotechnic harmlessly at the bay ceiling.

  Shanks had gone for his weapon – a plasma pistol. Stumbling over the prone form of the commissar, Mortensen fiercely sunk his fingers into the shorter man’s neck and smashed his head into the wall. Grasping him by the back of his flak vest, and almost losing his knife, Mortensen toppled the senseless lieutenant head first into the barrel of promethium. He would have kicked and flailed, if it weren’t for the fact that he was already unconscious and so therefore had no other choice but to drown.

  The storm-trooper suddenly felt the tug of his back flesh tearing. He couldn’t feel the pain, only the momentum of Eckhardt’s sabre as it effortlessly sliced through the flak plate and into his skin.

  Spinning forward Mortensen rolled along the wall, making a failed attempt to scoop up Shanks’s plasma pistol. Eckhardt’s spire blade was there also, sparking off the outside of the barrel and then carving up the wall as Mortensen twirled aside in an ugly pirouette. The Volscian captain’s form was excellent, not that Mortensen knew much about such things; he was more of the school of, the blade goes in and the guts come out, swordplay. Bringing up his own pitiful blade he managed to turn aside several elegant flourishes before the captain danced the sabre across both his forearm and forehead.

  Blood cascaded down over his good eye and for a moment the major was temporarily blinded, falling back into the corner and trampling the funeral pyre that was Cadet Bohrz’s remains. A venomous slash across the shoulder convinced Mortensen that he couldn’t defend against a blade he could not see and so dropping his own, he lurched forward, feeling for the captain’s throat with eager digits.

  The two soldiers fell back rolling, with the heavier Mortensen pinning Eckhardt to the ground. The sabre was too long to slip inside their homicidal embrace and so amongst the grunts and gasps, all Eckhardt could do was crack the storm-trooper in the side of the shaven head with his elaborate guard. Mortensen wasn’t letting go, however. Now that he had his filthy palms around the rogue captain’s throat he proceeded with pneumatic force and patience to crush the life out of the Volscian.

  All but blind, Mortensen saw little of the Shadow Brigade officer’s last moments: the bulging whites of his eyes and dread gape of his mouth as he felt it all, including his life, slip away. The major heard it though, in the gargle and crack of the officer’s windpipe and the clatter of his fine sword, as it tumbled from his impoverished grip. Mission complete.

  The next thing that Mortensen heard was the swollen rasp of Regimental Commissar Fosco across the floor at him: ‘Well, get over here, you fool, and help me up.’

  Wiping the blood from his eyes Mortensen ignored the commissar and picked up Eckhardt’s elegant blade. Cleaving the razor-sharp edge through what was left of the Volscian’s shattered neck, Mortensen grabbed the captain’s head and hobbled across the room with it.

  ‘Bloody savages, the lot of you,’ Fosco bleated at the apparent mutilation. ‘Now bring that blade over here.’

  Mortensen dropped the sword and fell into a crouch, like a discus thrower, and tossed Eckhardt’s horror-stricken head across the armaplas wall and down into the street section on the other side. Hovering for a moment, the major tuned into the sound of rapidly dissipating las-fire and the gathering murmuring of rebel forces, coming to terms with the grotesque reality that they were leaderless.

  Snatching the vox-hailer from the set on the table Mortensen adjusted the channel. It took him a moment to raise Rask on the bridge, while Fosco watched him with rising bile, no doubt planning in detail the long reach of his vengeance on board Deliverance and its implementation as soon as he was free. And perhaps that was one of the reasons Mortensen hadn’t freed him.

  The major kept it brief on the vox: ‘It’s done: send in naval security and the damned medics.’ Rask went to say something, probably congratulatory, but Mortensen cut him off.

  Grabbing Fosco by his binds, Mortensen hauled him up and slapped him back down on the bench before collapsing beside the commissar. Leaning forward he put his head between his knees, the sickening tang of adrenaline subsiding, and slowly bled.

  ‘Look here, major,’ Fosco put to him, the imperious edge that was a constant feature of his voice barely dulled by his circumstances. ‘There is much work to be done. The Emperor’s justice must once again prevail on this ship. Common fighting men need to know their place and you and I are going to escort them there. Now a strong stomach will be needed and consequence employed, but most where it is most needed. Do you follow me, sir?’

  Mortensen let the commissar’s words hang before mumbling: ‘You are talking about firing squads. Executions.’

  ‘Well of course I’m talking about bloody firing squads, you idiot – have you smacked your head or something? The 1001st will be purged of its backward hive-world ways and seditious allegiances: there is only one true loyalty and that is to the Emperor himself. In punishing the many, we may still save the souls of the few: for the good of the Guard. Now, are you with me?’

  The commissar held up his bound wrists in expectation. Mortensen’s head swam with Fosco’s terrible words, the words of Eckhardt and Rask and his own.

  It was done before his heart settled upon it, but settled upon the dark course of action it had. His elbow shot up, hammering Fosco’s ridiculous head full force and snapping it backwards. The commissar’s neck whipped back, his head settling back on his body. Gore rolled from the ragged cavity in the centre of Fosco’s face. His nose was now situated somewhere inside his brain, along with several shards of skull. Mortensen sat there for a moment as the commissar tried to speak.

  ‘For the good of the Guard,’ Mortensen told him, getting to his feet and limping away, leaving Regimental Commissar Fosco to blink his haemorrhaging life away.

  ‘Not him. Have him taken to whatever passes for an infirmary in this roach nest…’

  ‘This isn’t a simple procedure. I don’t have the staff or the equipment for this. You’re asking me to put this patient through a complex and unnecessary operation that will undoubtedly cause him further suffering. To attempt such an aggressive course of treatment at this late stage will almost certainly kill him. When they’re this far gone, the warden usually has me make them comfortable and let them go…’

  ‘The canoness may still have some use for him. The choice is simple, sawbones. Fix him or share his fate…’

  ‘No, not that one you idiot. I need something with a haemostatic clamp, something that I can diffraction fuse to the bone. Damn it! He’s bleeding out again.’

  ‘He wants to live: I’ll give him that. Stats – nominal to profile. He’s going to need another transfusion, though. Gets worse; guess who his rhesus match is? Luthar-Zeke Troggs, the Malfunction Junktion Maniac. Couldn’t have been me or you or one of the guards? No, our boy’s only match is a solitary confinement crazy with over two hundred and twenty-five confirmed kills. Well, let’s get this over with. He needs plasma. Grab the ether gas-gun and a transfusion kit. Let’s hope Troggs is in the giving vein…’

  Krieg was awake. It hit him all at once: the rush of sensation. The nerve-shredding screams; the tang of saniseptic; light – clinical and harsh. His body felt at onc
e leaden and feather light and he lay there for a moment, taking deep lungfuls of air with a chest he could barely feel.

  Once more the silence was smashed by a fresh eruption of agony from the next gurney. Allowing his head to roll to one side, Krieg could make out the dull tiles and outdated medical equipment of a small sickbay. Behind a flapping drape a shadow puppet theatre played out a gruesome scene, with two shapes struggling with a third, projectile blood spurts slapping against the thin plastic and trickling down the inside of the curtain.

  ‘Emperor’s wounds! Hold him down,’ shot a voice Krieg faintly recognised, though he struggled to place it with his drug-addled brain. ‘You’re as bunglefingered as you are witless.’ More miserable roars followed. Something finally gave as an upsurge in the shrieking led to one of the shadows stumbling at the curtain. ‘Would you look at that?’

  A gore-smeared glove slipped out of the drape and deposited a wickedly serrated piece of shrapnel in a surgical basin on a nearby trolley. As the curtain opened, Krieg caught a brief glimpse of the trio beyond. The glove belonged to a lofty surgeon-type, all aquiline nose and tombstone teeth, dressed in a spattered apron and thick goggles. The patient was still quivering with pain, his ribcage heaving and the back of his blood-matted head coming to rest in the crackling folds of a plastic pillow. Equally, his face was a pulpy mess and partially obscured by the shoulders of a close-shaved orderly, but the uniform was Navy, so Krieg reasoned that it must be one of the gunners or air crew.

  This got Krieg wondering what his own face looked like. He tried to reach for a speculum on the gurney cabinet but found that his right arm was heavily bandaged and trussed to his chest, his fingers resting on his left shoulder. Struggling over onto his side he managed to grasp the mirror with his other hand and inspected the damage. A child’s painting was the first thought that came to mind: a child working with only red, black and blue on its palette. Everything seemed to be working and in its place, but Krieg didn’t feel like he was looking at his own features. One notable addition was a ragged scar, bifurcating its way across his cheek, lips and chin. The stitches were neat and tight and gave the impression of a zipper running across his face.