Imperial Glory

by Richard Williams

  Blanks did not care about the pay. It was in regimental scrip that couldn’t be used anywhere that had anything worth buying. He did not even miss the conversations that he’d had whilst he’d gambled it away. They had been awkward. The men of his platoon spoke in their own language of short, truncated sentences, whose fuller meaning had been established over the years that they had been in one another’s company. Their words were riddled with obscure references to battles long-fought and men long-dead. During one game, another trooper had walked past, looked at the position on the board and made a noise like a straining animal. The other players creased up in laughter and Blanks could only stare on while he waited for the game to continue. But that one occasion where Mouse had asked about him had been even worse.

  ‘You don’t know anything?’

  Blanks fished out his tags. ‘Just what’s on here. Trooper John Stones. Thirteenth Dragoons.’

  ‘The Thirteenth?’ Mouse said. ‘I heard they all bit it in the drop on Jug Dulluk last year.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve heard as well.’

  Mouse paused at that, frowned and unconsciously tucked his lower lip behind his teeth in thought.

  ‘You don’t remember anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s the first thing you remember?’

  ‘Waking up in a medicae station on Kandhar.’

  ‘And what happened then?’

  ‘I was tired. I fell asleep.’

  Mouse asked again and Blanks told him what he could. While the 11th and the 29th and every other Brimlock regiment that had survived the crusade completed the lengthy process of reducing the fortress-world of Kandhar, he had been tucked up safe in a bed, trying to bring the man he had been back from the darkness. None of the medicae knew how he had come to be there; their only interest was keeping him quiet and then turfing him out. The 13th Dragoons had been wiped out, so there was no one there to ask. But even that small piece of knowledge caused him trouble.

  The grey-haired sergeant of the second platoon, Forjaz, had called him aside:

  ‘This thing, about you being one of the Thirteenth.’

  ‘Yes, sergeant?’

  ‘Don’t spread it around any more.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ Blanks said. ‘I haven’t spread anything, sergeant. I don’t know anything, just that that was my last regiment.’

  ‘That’s what I’m talking about. Don’t spread it around any more.’ Blanks still did not understand. ‘I’m only looking out for you. They can be a superstitious lot, Guardsmen. They hear you’re the only survivor of a regiment that got hit, it starts them thinking.’

  ‘Thinking what?’ Blanks asked.

  ‘That maybe you think you’re special?’ Forjaz replied, irritated at the question. ‘Maybe you think you’ve been touched by the Emperor?’

  ‘I don’t, sergeant.’

  ‘Or that maybe you’re lucky? The kind of luck that means you’ll walk away even when the rest of your platoon bites it.’

  ‘I don’t think that at all.’

  ‘Good,’ Forjaz said bluntly. ‘But maybe some of the others do. If they think they’ve got a man of destiny amongst them, it starts them thinking. It starts them thinking that they don’t want to be the trooper that takes the shot that was meant for you. That they don’t want to be the trooper who follows you on some mad charge that means their death and your glory. They don’t like men with a destiny; they tend to get everyone else around them killed.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Blanks stated. ‘I don’t think I have a destiny. I just want to serve.’

  Forjaz paused a moment. ‘Who?’ he quizzed. ‘Who do you think you serve?’

  It was a question Blanks hadn’t expected. Guardsmen served. There was a never a question of who; you served Him. ‘The Emperor,’ Blanks said.

  ‘Wrong,’ Forjaz corrected. ‘Out here, there is no Emperor. You serve me. You serve the lieutenant. You serve the platoon. You serve the man beside you. That’s how we make it through. All together. You understand me? If you wanted to be a hero, you shouldn’t have joined the Guard.’

  Perhaps, Blanks considered, Forjaz had had good intentions. But it was plain even to Blanks that if Forjaz knew something, it would have gone around the company a dozen times already.

  Forjaz was the only man left in the company whose wife and children had won the ballot to travel with the regiment. His family, along with the others, were required to keep their own company. His wife worked for the gastromo, his daughters helped the medicae and his son was himself a cadet-sergeant in the Boy Company, soon to join the ranks as a full Guardsman. They were kept separate on board ship from the unmarried men and those rest periods when the men talked, Forjaz spent in the married men’s quarters.

  It was this that made him an odd man out. He ran the platoon with precision and efficiency, and could bawl a private out with the best of them. But unlike Lieutenant Carson, whom the men adored, and Colour-Sergeant Red, who struck terror into them, Forjaz was only ever simply obeyed. The men of second platoon respected his rank, but he was not one of them.

  Forjaz might have been an odd man out, but he certainly was not the oddest man out in the platoon. That honour belonged elsewhere.

  ‘Yes, I’d agree. It’s too late for you now,’ Ducky, the company medic, told Blanks as he waited with the rest of the platoon for their routine examinations.

  ‘What?’

  Ducky hissed through his teeth as he studied the chart in his hand. ‘We’re going to have to take that foot.’

  ‘What? What’s the matter with my foot?’

  ‘It’s quite abnormal, I’m afraid. Almost mutated. The toes are hugely splayed and elongated. Your big toe is nearly entirely dislocated. I’m surprised you can even wear those boots.’

  ‘The boots feel fine. My foot feels fine. Which one are you even talking about?’

  Ducky stared down, then stared at the chart, then turned it upside down.

  ‘Ah, my mistake, trooper. That’s a very healthy-looking hand you have there.’

  There was a chortle from the other men, not so much at the laboured wisecrack, but at Blanks’s confusion.

  ‘Are you really the medic?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s what it says on my badge.’ Ducky replied. The lanky Guardsman with the permanent half-grin proudly displayed a piece of white plastic he had pinned to his uniform. It had ‘MEDIC’ handwritten on it in black ink and a crude copy of the medicae helix drawn below.

  ‘That’s not official,’ Blanks said.

  ‘Are you trying to be funny?’ Ducky replied sternly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s a shame. I need all the help I can get.’

  And so it went with Ducky. If you got him alone he could be serious and sensible enough, but put him in front of a group and he couldn’t help performing. The constant barrage of puns and jokes were almost involuntary, a nervous tick developed either as a symptom of his madness or as the only way he had kept himself sane all these years.

  When working, however, Ducky could be very serious.

  ‘Are you having trouble remembering anything that’s happened since?’ Ducky examined Blanks’s torso. His chest was as big as a barrel and had old scars and burns enough to make his skin look diseased. Whatever the problems with his mind, Blanks’s body was in great condition, especially amongst the ageing Brimlock troopers. Doubtless that was the reason that the old hands of the platoon had given him no trouble when he joined.

  ‘No. That’s been fine.’ Blanks sat up on the slab in the tiny med-chamber the regiment was allowed. ‘The medicae before, they told me it was probably shock. That it might just be a matter of time.’

  Ducky ignored him. ‘And you don’t remember anything before. Nothing of your old regiment? Nothing of Brimlock? Not even a sight or a smell? Nothing in your dreams?’

&nbs
p; ‘No, it’s all blank.’

  ‘Hence the name.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Blanks said, ruefully. ‘Why do they call you Ducky?’

  ‘There, my friend, you have a choice between the mundane and the slanderous,’ Ducky said, studying the auspex readings on the panel beside him. ‘The mundane is that my name is Drake and that your average trooper is unable to resist such an obvious soubriquet. The slanderous is that I am a coward who tosses away his lasgun and ducks for cover at the merest hint of an enemy.’

  ‘And that’s not true?’

  ‘Oh, no, it’s true. But the reason I do it isn’t because I’m a coward.’

  Blanks thought on it a moment. ‘Why is it then?’

  ‘It’s because I don’t want to kill people.’

  Blanks laughed out loud, but Ducky was serious.

  ‘That’s another joke, right? It’s a good one.’

  ‘I’ve seen a lot of men die. Some of them even had my hands in their chests as they went. But none of them died because of me. And that’s the way it’s going to stay.’

  ‘You’ve never killed at all?’ Blanks said in disbelief. ‘How long have you been in the Guard?’

  Ducky looked up from the auspex readings. ‘I’m only a Guardsman because they put the pen in my hand and the gun to my head and I didn’t want to put them to the trouble of cleaning my brain off the wall. Humanity owes the Emperor its existence, and He can have my life if He so chooses. But I can’t give Him another’s. It’s not my right.’

  Blanks was stunned. He had never heard such sentiments expressed before. Had he been a commissar he would have been obliged to execute Ducky on the spot. Killing, especially killing enemies of the Imperium, was not an ethical dilemma, it was a religious imperative.

  ‘I’m surprised you’ve lasted this long, if that’s what you believe,’ Blanks said.

  Ducky was not fazed by Blanks’s attitude. ‘I think, private, as you come to know this platoon and this company, you will find that there is one and perhaps only one characteristic that all of us share.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘That we do what it takes to do what we do and live with ourselves afterwards.’ The smile had vanished from Ducky’s face.

  ‘Can we just get this over with?’ Blanks stood up, eager to be away from the medicae bay and its strange occupant. ‘When’s my memory coming back?’

  ‘Are you sure it isn’t already? You certainly salute well.’ Ducky’s voice had a touch of a sneer.

  ‘I guess you’d just call that habit,’ he spat back.

  ‘Well, I’d call it an automated learned response personally, but that’s why I’m the doctor and you’re the patient.’

  Blanks felt his hands clench into fists. ‘When, Ducky?’

  Ducky examined the auspex readings one last time. ‘Your memory’s not coming back.’

  ‘Not ever?’ If this was another of Ducky’s jokes, Blanks was going to deck him.

  ‘Would you like a second opinion?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘That uniform does absolutely nothing for your complexion.’

  A few moments later, Blanks had stormed away, venting his irritation on the examination slab rather than Ducky’s face. Left alone, Ducky sighed and shook his head. He felt sorry for the trooper, but there was no doubt. The signs of Commissariat mind-cleansing were there if you knew what you were looking for, and no Imperial medicae was going to try to reverse it, so that was that. He could only wonder what the poor wretch had ever done to deserve it.

  Chapter Three

  It was at times such as these that Arbulaster rued the great distance between himself and Crusade Command that prevented him from reaching out and throttling the boneheaded incompetents who worked there with his bare hands. Discreet inquiries! That was what he had wanted. Discreet inquiries! A scratch of someone’s back, a word in the right ear. He most certainly had not wanted this!

  He paced, furious, back and forth in front of his second-in-command, Major Brooce, who was holding the two offending communiqués. The first was from the office of the High Admiral stating that all battleships capable of planetary bombardment were fully engaged and that none could be spared to make a round-trip to Voor, even just to bomb a small part of it. The second one was from the office of the Imperial Governor of Voor, who had been copied in on the first communiqué which included a lengthy study demonstrating that any such bombardment on the scale necessary would cause such ecological damage to the planet as to force the colony to be abandoned. It included a short personal note from the governor herself, somewhat wryly observing that they had only begun colonising the world a century ago and that she had wondered how long it would take the Imperium to want to start blowing pieces of it up. That note had been copied into the office of Lord-General Ellinor.

  Discreet inquiries. That was what he had asked for. But how could he wield his influence effectively from inside this rust-bucket of a ship, speeding into the abyss? Thabotka had certainly known what he was doing, packing them off so quickly; with a few weeks on Kandhar near the general, he might have manoeuvred himself out of it altogether. Even if not his men, at least himself.

  ‘Shall I take care of it, sir?’ Brooce offered.

  ‘And how would you do that?’ Arbulaster replied, still seething.

  ‘Clarificatory communiqué to all parties concerned citing that the original request was truncated, mistranslation by the astropath concerned; strongly refuting any suggestion that you will not be carrying through your duty to the greatest capacity possible. The usual.’

  Arbulaster thought on it. ‘Yes, yes, Brooce, take care of it exactly like that. Good. Very good.’

  Brooce had learned a lot from him, Arbulaster decided.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Brooce said. ‘And, sir? The officers have arrived.’

  ‘What officers?’

  ‘The new officers, sir. Your personal interviews. We have delayed them as long as we could.’

  ‘Oh, Blessed Marguerite, if I must I must.’ Arbulaster found such rituals excessively tedious and entirely pointless. He could make a far better judgement of a man after observing him in action for ten minutes than he could after days of courteous conversation. Then he remembered exactly who he had been given, and the details he had read in the service records. Perhaps it would not be entirely pointless in that particular case.

  ‘Get them together, Brooce,’ Arbulaster said, retreating behind his desk. ‘And tell Parker to save you-know-who for last.’

  Major Stanhope sat in the colonel’s antechamber with the five other transferring officers. He had been waiting a long time and the benches around the sides of the small room were not comfortable, but he did not mind. A steward had come round and offered them tanna, and the other officers chatted amongst themselves as their drinks were poured. Stanhope heard their conversation, the careful verbal reconnaissance that each man was performing, testing the ground, determining their rung upon this new ladder. They noted the rank markings, they noted the medals, they noted the insignia of their former regiments. They asked innocuous questions in order to determine who had been promoted to captain first, who was assigned command of a company first, who had been the first to see combat. Such things mattered to them, even here at the end.

  Except, of course, it was not the end. Not for them, perhaps. They all knew it was to be the last campaign of the old Brimlock 11th. But after it was done and the men were granted their release, the regiment’s colours would be sent home, laden with its battle honours, and would be used to raise a new Brimlock 11th. And the colonel and a few chosen others would accompany them as the colour-guard. Of the ten million men who had left Brimlock at the beginning of this crusade, only the colour-guard would ever set foot on their home world again. There they would be fêted, rewarded, promoted, and then they would form the elite of the new regiments, reborn under colours soaked
in history, and they would go and wage the Emperor’s wars in another part of the galaxy.

  None of the other officers spoke to Stanhope, but that was fair as he did not speak to any of them. They noted his rank, they noted his medals, but then they noted his old insignia and the thick curved blade hanging from his belt frog, and they knew that he was no competition. Stanhope did not notice their glances; instead, his eyes were fixed upon his drink. He had put a blob of honey on the inside of his cup and watched the thick, golden liquid slowly ooze down towards the brown tanna. They touched and, for a few moments, the honey retained its shape like oil in water, one liquid separate within another; then they intermingled and the honey disappeared.

  The door to the colonel’s office opened and the adjutant poked his head out. He called for a Captain Ledbetter and the officer dressed in the uniform of a cavalry captain put his cup to one side and, with a trace of self-satisfaction, followed the adjutant in. The jaws of the other officers tightened a fraction and they occupied themselves so as to appear nonchalant. As Ledbetter went in, they all heard the colonel’s voice raised in hearty salutation.

  One by one, the other officers had their names called and they walked through the oak-panelled door. Stanhope blinked and realised that he was alone. He looked down at the undrunk tanna in his hand. It was cold. He put it down and decided to stand. He stamped his feet a little to quicken the blood, and stretched and adjusted the fell-cutter in its scabbard, so it hung flat against his thigh.

  ‘I’m very pleased to be here,’ the officer enthused. ‘The Eleventh has quite a reputation.’

  Arbulaster tried to recall the name of the officer he was interviewing. He stole a glance at the docket on his desk. Ah yes, Lieutenant Mulberry of the sappers, being consolidated from the 713th Heavy Pioneers. He should have guessed it from the beard; it seemed to be part of the uniform for sappers, though in Mulberry’s case it appeared to have grown through an omission to shave, rather than through any deliberate intent.

  ‘Glad to hear it, lieutenant,’ Arbulaster replied, hoping that Mulberry wasn’t going to try and reach across the desk and shake his hand. ‘The 713th had quite a reputation as well, hope you’re going to keep our standards high.’