by Dan Abnett
Zweil nodded, indicating something over Caffran’s shoulder. Caffran turned.
The child, a boy of about nine or ten, had come out from under the shelves. Although it was much too big for him, he had picked up Leclan’s lasrifle and was pointing it at Caffran and the priest.
“Get back, father,” Caffran breathed. He looked at the child and smiled encouragingly. “Come on, little man, give me that.”
The boy fired three shots, the weight and discharge staggering him. Then he threw the weapon aside and ran.
“Caffran? Caffran!” Zweil yelled. He bent down and cradled the Ghost in his arms. There was blood everywhere, pumping from a huge, messy wound in Caffran’s chest. “Medicae!” Zweil shouted. “Medicae!”
Caffran gasped.
“Hold on, you hear me,” Zweil demanded, trying to support Caffran and staunch the bleeding at the same time. “You hold on. Help’s coming.”
Caffran’s eyelids fluttered. He looked up at Zweil for a moment. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t. His left hand clawed at the vest pocket of his battledress tunic, trying to unbutton it.
“Medicae! Medicae!” Zweil yelled over his shoulder. “Someone!”
He looked back at Caffran. He swallowed hard as he saw the distant look in Caffran’s eyes, the receding light. As a priest in war, he had seen it before, too many times. Caffran’s bloody left hand still fumbled with the pocket fastening. Zweil reached over and undid the pocket for him, and took out what was inside. It was a Tanith cap badge. Caffran’s mouth tried to form words.
“I am an ayatani of the Holy Creed,” Zweil said softly. “Be calm now, my friend, for the God-Emperor of Mankind is rushing here to present you with the gift of peace you crave. Is there anything you wish to confess at this hour?”
Caffran didn’t respond. Zweil continued to hold him up, his hands and arms wet with Caffran’s blood.
“I hear and understand those sins as you have confessed them to me,” Zweil said, his voice hoarse, “and I absolve you of them, as I absolve you of all other sins you cannot enumerate. It is in my power to do this thing, for I am an ayatani of the Holy Creed. The winds have blown your sins away, and the beati has blessed you and, though there is pain, it will end, as all pain ends, and you will ascend without the pain of the mortal world to the place the God-Emperor of Mankind has set aside for you at the train of the Golden Throne of Terra. These last rites I give you freely and in good faith…”
PROPER BLOODY
GUARDSMEN
I
Twenty days exactly after the initial wave of assaults had hit Gereon, the first retirement orders were sent through. Front-line units who had been on the ground since day one were drawn back, or switched out for fresh brigades from the carrier fleet. A quarter of a million new Guardsmen were dropped into the field. The exhausted soldiers they were relieving filtered slowly back along lines of transport to base camps, and then back to the fleet.
AT 137 was retired just before noon on the twentieth day, and moved back along the line with a Krassian division. The Krassians had taken especially heavy losses during the citadel war that had raged in the heart of K’ethdrac’att Shet Magir between days six and fourteen of the liberation.
In a single afternoon, AT 137 walked back the fourteen kilometres they had covered in the previous twenty days, through the gutted city, under a sky full of smoke, passing the newcomers marching in.
Brigade bands were playing, and colours were being carried high. The new arrivals they passed looked clean and healthy. They cheered and applauded the retiring troopers when they saw them. The retiring troopers tried to muster the effort to return the salutes.
Dalin wondered if the new blood knew what they were walking into. He wondered if he ought to stop and talk to them about the things he’d seen and the things he knew. There was a hell of fight left to be fought.
He decided to keep walking, because he believed Sobile might shoot him if he started telling people about the shit ahead. Bad for morale. Besides, no one had ever bothered to warn him.
They reached a dispersal point on the coast, and waited three more, leaden days in the Munitorum camp for extraction. Conditions were hot and dusty, but there was fresh food and clean water at least. Munitorum staffers processed each man in turn, and filled out forms and audits. Each man got a paper tag with his destination and redeployment details written on it riveted to his collar.
Dalin slept for a while in the grubby shared tents pitched along the shore behind the sea wall, lying in a bed roll that had been used by fifty men before him. It was hard to sleep, because he was wound up so tight, and though he tried, his mind and body would not unclench. He wondered if the tension would ever ease. It didn’t feel like it would. He felt he would be two heartbeats from ducking and firing for the rest of his life. The instinct had been ground into him. Every sound from outside the tent made him reach for his weapon.
When he did sleep, it was a troubled slumber. Dreams plagued him, though on waking, he couldn’t remember the details. The wounded were being processed through the area and, at night, he could hear their moans and screams coming from the hospital stations.
On the third day, they were directed to a row of drop ships waiting on the hillside above the shore.
The drop ship took them up out over the bay. Through the heavy armoured ports, Dalin saw the sea far below, like a sheet of chipped plate glass. He saw the city behind them, receding. The enemy city. The corpse of a city. Then it was gone in the haze, and it seemed as if Gereon had been entirely reduced to a realm of dust and smoke where nothing solid remained.
He fell asleep in his restraint seat, his head knocking and rolling limply against the backrest as the ship jolted. This time he didn’t dream. This time his mind slid off the edge of some precipice and dropped into nothingness.
They rode the hydraulic platforms up through the decks of the carrier from the drop hangar. Most of them sat on the metal decking, their kit and weapons clutched to their chests, cold weather ponchos draped around their shoulders. The climate on the carrier was a good eight degrees colder than the surface, and the air had a metallic, chemical flavour.
Sobile stood on his own at the edge of the rising platform, hands clasped behind his back, watching the thick cross-sections of deck slide past. Downdraft air gusted down the riser shaft. There was a lot of noise from the repair decks: voices, machine tools, metal on metal. Dalin saw a row of fifty Leman Russ battle tanks drawn up ready for transportation. Twenty-three days earlier, he would have been thrilled by such a sight. He tried to remember what his twenty-three day younger self had been like, but all he could imagine was another young corpse face down in the white dust of K’ethdrac.
On the fifth deck level, they climbed down into the dispersal area. Munitorum officials mobbed around, sorting men and checking them off. The chamber was milling with personnel and ringing with chatter. Steam billowed up from under-deck vents.
“What does this mean?” Dalin asked, holding out the tag pinned to his collar. “What does this mean?” The Munitorum staffers passing by ignored him.
“Company, form up!” Kexie yelled. “Quick time, now!”
All that remained of AT 137 gathered in a row in the middle of the deck. It wasn’t an impressive sight. Every one of them was dirtier than Dalin thought it was possible to be. They stank. Their kit was shredded.
“Stand to, stand to, ech,” Kexie said, walking the pitifully short line. He looked no better than they did.
Sobile had been talking to some Munitorum officials. He wandered over to face them.
He held up a data-slate and read from it.
“Attention. Hereby order given this day of 777.M41 that reserve activation has now been suspended. This detail, afforded the name Activated Tactical 137, that is AT 137, now stands deactivated, and the individuals here should report to their original regiments or divisions. So, you’re free to return to your units. All obligation to RIP details is done with.”
Sobile lowere
d the data-slate and regarded them with a blank, humourless look. “I can’t see the good of that. You all started out morons and you’re morons still. The likes of you give the proud tradition of the Imperial Guard a bad smell. I have never gone to war with such inadequate soldiers. In my opinion, you should be on RIP for the rest of your bloody lives. You’re shit. I’m glad to wash my hands of you.”
He looked at Kexie. “That’s all. Sergeant, carry on.”
“Salute!” Kexie thundered.
They saluted. Sobile looked at them for a moment longer, and then turned and walked away.
They lowered their hands.
Kexie stood in front of them for a moment, chewing the inside of his cheek. His hands clenched and unclenched, as if imagining Saroo. Saroo was in a locker somewhere, waiting for him, waiting to greet the next RIP detail.
He looked at them, his eyes moving from one man to the next. Dalin hadn’t realised that Kexie was quite so old. Perhaps it was the dirt caking his lined face.
With a final, diffident sigh, he saluted them.
The salute was straight backed and firm. They all returned it instinctively. Dalin felt something hot on his face, and realised that tears were rolling down his cheeks.
“Ech,” said Kexie, with a half smile. “Proper bloody Guardsmen.” He dropped the salute and walked away.
Left alone, the row of them slowly disintegrated. Some of them sat down on the deck. Others wandered away. Fourbox was one of the ones who sat down. He dropped his kit and weapon beside him, and bowed his head, drawing his hands up over his scalp. Dalin saw that his hair was growing back in. The hard edges of his scalp cut were gone.
“Screw all this,” Wash said. Brickmaker sniggered. “Screw all this and all of you,” Wash continued. “I’ll see you in the Basement.” He picked up his kit and walked off.
Dalin picked up his rifle and rested it across his left shoulder. He scooped up his filthy kit bag in his right hand.
“See you, Fourbox,” he said.
Fourbox looked up at him. “Yeah, I’ll see you.”
He called out as Dalin turned. “Holy?”
“Yes?”
“We did it,” Fourbox said.
“Did what?”
“Whatever that was. We did it. We lived.”
“You say that,” Dalin replied, “like it’s a good thing.”
Dalin crossed the deck, looking for an exit. He’d gone quite a way before something occurred to him and he turned back. By then, Fourbox had disappeared.
“What are you looking for?”
Dalin looked around. Merrt was there, watching him.
“I was looking for Fourbox,” Dalin said.
“Why?”
“Because I suddenly realised I have no idea what his real name is.”
Merrt shook his head, amused.
“You know what?” Dalin said to him. “All of this, all of this, and I don’t think any of us have learned a single fething thing.”
“You have,” said Merrt. “You just don’t know it yet. Come on.”
“Where to?”
“We’re supposed to report to our units,” said Merrt. “I think you should follow me.”
“Why?”
“Where else are you gn… gn… gn… gonna go?”
Dalin walked alongside the Tanith soldier across the bustling deck.
“Hey,” said Merrt, pointing. “Isn’t that—?”
Through the press of bodies ahead of them, Dalin could see a figure waiting. A woman, tall and slender, wearing dark combat gear and the pins of a sergeant.
“Yeah,” said Dalin.
“Count yourself lucky,” said Merrt. “My mother never waited on any dispersal deck to meet me.”
Dalin nodded, but he didn’t feel especially lucky. As he walked towards Tona Criid, she spotted him and moved forwards to meet him. He saw the look in his ma’s eyes, and felt even less lucky than before.
“Ma?” he whispered. His throat was dry and he dearly wished his canteen wasn’t empty.
She had something in her hand.
It was a Tanith cap badge.
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