Commissar

by Andy Hoare

  Vahn led his group of convicts through another three kilometres of labyrinthine passageways before passing under a wrecked scrubber valve and into the upper galleries of Carceri Didactio. The carceri was one of the largest of the dozen geotherm plant chambers radiating from the central spire and was large enough to house many thousands of inmates.

  The interior of Carceri Didactio resembled a vast hybrid of monumental architecture and capital engineering. Vertical planes of rockcrete intersected with surfaces resembling the outer faces of engine casings, all rendered hugely out of scale. The chamber’s dimensions reduced the human form to utter insignificance, the empty, weightless voids of space pressing downwards on the inmates with unbearable, crushing pressure. Kilometres beneath the chamber, the geotherm sinks plunged deep into irradiated mineral deposits, the decay heat from which the generatorium used to produce power. It was an irony of tragically epic proportions that the vast reserves of power were put to no actual use – the toil was the punishment.

  The vaulted ceiling was lost to smog and darkness high overhead, even though Vahn’s group had emerged into one of the highest galleries. Vast chains hung from rusted gurneys high in the vaults and narrow metal gantries cut across the void, intersecting seemingly at random. Each walkway was strung with further chains as well as lifeless sconces and cracked lumen bulbs.

  ‘Keep low,’ hissed Vahn as he moved out along the gallery, Becka and the other convicts following behind. The gallery was little more than a corroded iron scaffold, the levels beneath visible through the rusted mesh decking. Vahn drew his sharpened iron bar as he came to an opening in the rockcrete wall, the door to one of the hundreds of cells set into the rockcrete wall of the chamber.

  Gesturing for silence Vahn edged towards the cell door to peer around the doorjamb. It took his eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darkness inside and to discern its contents. When they had, Vahn wished they hadn’t.

  Vahn snapped his head back from the doorway as he suppressed a wave of disgust and nausea. Memories of the first few hours of the rebel convicts’ uprising flashed to mind, staccato images of men and women tearing one another apart in an orgy of violence. The strong had dragged the weak off into the shadows to perform the most barbarous acts which years of incarceration and forced labour had bred within their souls. The cell was one such shadowy hole in which such barbarities had been enacted.

  ‘Pass it along,’ Vahn whispered to Becka as she sidled up. ‘Keep clear.’

  Becka studied Vahn for a moment then nodded her understanding. As she passed the instruction back along the chain, Vahn crept silently to the edge of the scaffold and looked downwards towards the distant floor at least a hundred metres below.

  The hard rockcrete ground was obscured by a miasma of foul air, no doubt the result of the fires unleashed during the uprising. With the disabling of the geotherm scrubbers the air was dank and still, the smog hugging the ground instead of being sucked away and cleaned. Through the greasy haze, Vahn could just make out a line of figures winding from a distant entrance towards a portal on the other side of the chamber, herded along by dozens of rebels. The clink of chains drifted upwards, underpinned with the low, mournful wailing of the rebels’ prisoners.

  ‘That portal,’ said Becka as she set herself down next to Vahn. ‘The one they’re coming from?’

  ‘Yup,’ said Vahn.

  ‘That’s where we’re going, right?’ she said.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Vahn. ‘It’s the only way through to the gate hall.’

  ‘Somehow I knew you’d say that,’ sighed Becka. ‘So what’s the plan?’

  ‘Wait ‘til the line passes through, then we go in,’ he said. ‘Any guards still down there, we take them out.’

  ‘What about the prisoners?’ said Becka, indicating the snaking line.

  Vahn sighed, not wanting to play the callous bastard but knowing there was little choice. ‘Best we can do for them is get through to the Guard and get this done with. Either way, we can’t help them right now.’

  ‘Understood,’ said Becka. Reading her eyes Vahn saw that she meant it. Life was tragically harsh in Alpha Penitentia and it had got a thousand times harsher since the uprising. Despite himself, Vahn was glad she thought no less of him.

  ‘Best get moving then,’ Vahn said as the last prisoners in the line passed out of the chamber entrance. There were still dozens of guards left milling around the portal, but Vahn had known all along that his small force would have to fight its way through at some point. Estimating how much time had gone by since he’d led his force away from the agreed route through the conduits, Vahn guessed that Skane and Vendell’s groups should be nearing the gate soon. They however would be appearing on ground level within a few dozen metres of the portal. For the attack on the portal to be coordinated between all three groups, Vahn’s would have to be down there as soon as possible.

  Vahn gestured to the other convicts to duck down into the shadows before setting foot on the debris-strewn ground of the chamber floor. The descent through the levels of the scaffold had taken longer than he had intended, the group slowed up by the need to tread carefully or have the creaking of rusted metal tread plates betray them to the rebels guarding the chamber entrance. By the time Vahn’s convicts had reached the lowest gallery the line of bound prisoners was all but gone having disappeared through the stinking smog that clung to the ground level. Though the prisoners had been led away across the chamber towards the next vestibule, several dozen guards had remained to watch over the portal.

  Vahn had anticipated that this portal would be well guarded, for beyond it was the route towards the gate hall, the last vestige of the governor’s control over Alpha Penitentia. If the convicts that refused to join or surrender to Colonel Strannik managed to escape the entirety of the complex would be under Strannik’s control, only the gate hall and a few insignificant out structures remaining in the claviger-wardens’ hands. Vahn had no way of knowing what might lie beyond the portal but it must be better than waiting to be caught by Strannik’s murderers.

  The guards milling around the portal looked like the worst sorts of scum Strannik had recruited. Only the brutes of his personal bodyguard were more muscular or cruel. The guards were all large men, for they’d spent the years of their incarceration coercing food rations from weaker prisoners. Every one of them had served in the Imperial Guard and been consigned to Alpha Penitentia for some transgression not quite bad enough to earn a death sentence but too serious to be dealt with by their regiments’ own commissars. They carried an array of crude weaponry, mostly iron clubs and hatchets. But one of them, Vahn saw as he watched from the shadows, was carrying a combat shotgun, prized no doubt from the dead grip of a slain warden. The man carrying it must have been a Catachan or else born on some similar world. His frame was almost grotesquely over-muscled. The high gravity death world of his birth bred the very strongest of men and women and other Guardsmen serving alongside its famous jungle fighters sometimes referred to them as ‘baby ogryns’, though never to their faces. Just like the brutes the nickname referred to, the man was a mountain of iron-hard muscle, but unlike ogryns, Catachans were quick-witted and intelligent – they had to be just to survive more than an hour on their hellish birth world.

  The Catachan was clearly the leader of the guard detail and the others were visibly cowed by his sheer physical presence. The slightest growl from his thuggish lips and the other guards obeyed without question. Barking an order to a group of around two-dozen rebels, the Catachan pointed towards a nook in the chamber wall and the men moved across to take up position inside it. Vahn’s eyes narrowed in suspicion and the hairs stood up on the back of his neck. The Catachan crossed to another nook and Vahn realised the two positions were on either side of the entrance to a small service tunnel leading into the chamber. The tunnel was the one his own group would have entered the chamber from had he not felt the need to take a detour. Worse still, Skane and Vendell’s groups would soon be emerging from the tunnel.
They would be walking right into an ambush.

  FIVE

  Infiltration

  The return journey from the gate hall to the regimental laager had passed in silence, Aleksis apparently brooding on what had passed between himself and his regiment’s new commissar. Upon reaching the laager, Flint followed the graf and his staff back into the command post and was greeted by the shouts of several junior officers. As Aleksis and Polzdam made for their tactical stations to ascertain what was happening, Flint headed for the intelligence chief, Herrmahn.

  ‘Just in time, commissar,’ the officer said, not taking his eyes from the flickering data-slate in front of him.

  Flint removed his cap and passed it to his aide. The tri-D representation of the hybrid power and penal facility revolved on one of Herrmahn’s screens, but the main image was zoomed in on one particular generatoria zone, labelled Didactio.

  ‘You’ve achieved machine-communion with the installation’s systems?’ said Flint, surprised and mildly suspicious that the intelligence chief had access to the complex’s security grid.

  ‘Strictly speaking,’ said Herrmahn, casting a sideling glance at Flint, ‘No.’

  Flint decided not to press the issue further, even if it was technically a crime Herrmahn could be consigned to the Penal Legions for. ‘So, what’s happening at Didactio?’

  ‘So far as I can tell, some localised disturbance,’ said Herrmahn. ‘Could be trouble between rival factions within the uprising, or it could be a sideshow to get us looking.’

  ‘A diversion?’ said Flint. ‘If that’s the case, what don’t they want us looking at?’ he mused.

  ‘Can’t tell,’ said Herrmahn. ‘This is the best resolution I can achieve. If you really want to find out what’s happening in there you’ll have to confirm it yourself. Terran-pattern, Mark I eyeball. It’s the only way to be sure.’

  ‘No, commissar!’ said Aleksis, looking up sharply from his command station. ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘With respect, sir,’ said Flint, fighting to keep his tone level despite his frustration, ‘My mandate grants me the command authority.’

  Aleksis glanced at his second-in-command and Lieutenant-Colonel Polzdam nodded subtly in reluctant confirmation of Flint’s assertion. Seeing his opportunity, Flint pressed on before Aleksis could object further.

  ‘If I lead a scouting party in and find out what’s really going on in there, we can get this mission on track. It’s on my authority as regimental commissar, so you don’t have to worry about ascendancy or upsetting the in-laws, Aleksis. It’s on my head, it’s my call, and I’m taking it.’

  Aleksis sighed, the staff officers gathered about the command post not daring to meet his gaze. ‘You’ll not be able to take a line company,’ he said. ‘You know that, commissar?’

  ‘I know that, graf,’ said Flint, getting somewhere at last. ‘I’ll take my provost section. We’ll travel fast and light, find out what’s happening, then get out.’

  ‘Then do so, commissar,’ said Aleksis. ‘Needless to say, I cannot help you in this, you understand?’

  Recalling the conversation earlier and the talk of lines of ascendancy and patronage of the Vostroyan Techtriarch clans, Flint nodded. ‘I understand. Thank you, graf.

  ‘Good luck, Commissar Flint,’ said Aleksis. Flint threw him a salute and received one back in return.

  Flint spent the next hour assembling an infiltration force from amongst the regiment’s flotsam and jetsam. Denied access to the line companies he was forced to scour the various headquarters and support platoons for individuals skilled enough to undertake the reconnaissance mission he had planned. Fortunately, the Firstborn were the product of the cyclopean manufactoria of Vostroya and Alpha Penitentia wasn’t so alien an environment to them. After ex-loading Major Herrmahn’s tri-D plan of the complex to his personal data-slate Flint was able to plot a course towards carceri chamber Didactio easily enough, or so he thought until several of his newly recruited team corrected his planning and suggested a far quicker and more secure route.

  The team he selected consisted of Dragoon Kohlz, who Flint was beginning to trust as a capable aide, Corporal Bukin and his goons, a combat medic named Karasinda, Dragoon Lhor and two other huge men from the logistics platoon. Flint had consulted with Kohlz on the selection to ensure that no fractious elements were allowed to slip through. The last thing he needed on the mission was a disagreement, fight or even a desertion attempt with the enemy so close at hand.

  The medic Karasinda represented something of an exception in the ranks of the Firstborn. By ancient tradition the people of Vostroya rendered their firstborn sons to service in the Imperial Guard, but the daughters weren’t subject to that oath. The very few women serving in the Firstborn regiments were volunteers and they were regarded by their peers with a mixture of suspicion and respect. Karasinda put herself forward for the mission as soon as word got out that Flint was looking for volunteers and he had been suspicious of that fact to begin with. Speaking to her however, Flint had found Karasinda to be a curiously intense woman and he was soon convinced that genuine duty compelled her to volunteer, not just for his mission but for service in the Imperial Guard itself. Such spirit was rare indeed amongst the rank and file of the 77th Vostroyan Firstborn and Flint was loath to discourage it. Besides the fact of her volunteering for the duty, Karasinda was by her own, modestly advanced account, a highly capable medic who, unlike many amongst her peers, had actually seen combat. Karasinda claimed to have served in an expedition into the ruins of the vast Derzhinsky tank manufactorium when she had been indentured to the Vostroyan planetary defence force, taking part in a three-month long campaign to rid its southern reaches of a population of mutant scavengers. Though not a first line combatant, Karasinda had earned a higher kill-rate than any other member of her company and received high commendation for her service.

  Having selected his team Flint ensured they were properly equipped for the mission. Dragoon Lhor had drawn a heavy flamer from the quartermaster’s post and the two fellow logistics platoon members were assigned as his assistant and his ammo-lugger. Flint sincerely hoped that he would have no need to order the huge weapon’s use, for to do so would be a sure sign that things had gone badly wrong. Nevertheless, it paid to be prepared. Raw muscle would be provided by Bukin’s provosts, and Flint hadn’t had to order them to arm up. They did so themselves, each man equipping himself with a heavy Vostroyan-pattern Mark III combat shotgun. The weapons were crude and as ugly as the provosts but supremely effective in the cramped environs the team would be moving through.

  At the last, Flint dispatched Kohlz to requisition a set of night vision goggles for each warrior. The quartermaster staff had objected strongly to the request until Flint’s aide informed them on whose authority the requisition was being made. The storesman demanded the goggles be returned intact when the mission was over. Kohlz had considered reminding the man that a commissar hardly cared for such things but found it easier to lie through his teeth that they would be returned safely.

  Three hours after the mission had been devised Flint was leading his small team out from the laager. The sun was setting and the group was moving on foot and already the air was getting uncomfortably cold. Despite the discomfort Flint couldn’t afford to move the team in by armoured transport, there being a need to keep the mission secret from Governor Kherhart’s surviving forces. It was unlikely the rebels would detect the presence of a single Chimera rumbling across the wastes but Kherhart’s men most likely would and that would just complicate things. Once again, Flint cursed the fact that the regiment seemed more focused on politics than the mission.

  ‘Sir?’ said Kohlz, following close behind Flint with his heavy vox-set on his back.

  Realising he must have muttered his curse out loud, Flint shook his head. ‘Nothing, dragoon,’ he said, looking up at the grim façade of the nearest of the complex’s subsidiary structures. Carceri Didactio was less than an hour’s march away and was one of the vast ge
otherm plant chambers arrayed about the central spire and joined to it by knots of huge pipes and armoured vestibule tunnels. The grey rockcrete caught the last light of the setting sun, the numerous small cracks and fissures etched on its surface giving it the appearance of aged leather. Columns of smoke still drifted up from several of the blocks, evidence of the destruction the rebel convicts had unleashed within.

  ‘Nothing,’ Flint repeated as his aide drew up beside him. ‘Anything on the vox?’

  ‘Channel is not good, sir,’ said Kohlz, ‘But the governor’s staff are telling the graf everything is fine and there is no need to send anyone in to help.’

  Flint smiled grimly at that. ‘Any response from Aleksis?’

  ‘Odd, that, sir,’ said Kohlz. ‘Seems the graf just can’t get a clear channel. Every time Kherhart asks for an assurance that we aren’t sending anyone in to intervene, the channel goes down.’

  ‘That is odd, isn’t it,’ said Flint, glad that Aleksis was playing along. How long the graf could keep his deception going was another matter of course. Flint was painfully aware he wouldn’t have long to complete his reconnaissance and get his team out again before the governor got suspicious.

  ‘Pick it up,’ Flint said to Corporal Bukin at the thought of the mission’s time constraints. ‘Double time!’

  ‘You heard the commissar,’ said Bukin, his words slurred around the unlit Vostroyan cigar in the corner of his mouth. ‘Double time, ladies!’

  It wasn’t long before the laager was lost to view behind the jagged craters and boulders scattered about the wasteland around the generatorium, though the sky above glowed with the reflected illumination of the camp’s numerous arc lights and the sound of its generators grumbled across the land. As they marched, Flint was reminded of the trek from the crashed drop-pod to the laager the night before, and was suddenly aware that he hadn’t slept a wink since planetfall. Despite that, he was wary, and he saw that the others who had undertaken that trek were too.