Commissar

by Andy Hoare

  Taking advantage of the brief respite, Flint ejected his almost spent bolt pistol magazine and replaced it with what he realised was his last spare. At this rate, by the time relief arrived he’d be long dead. That grim thought reminded Flint of his aide and the mission he must by now have completed and he turned to look down the stepped tiers of the weir pools and out across the sluice channel. The waters in the sluice channel were at their lowest ebb and on the verge of rising once more. The overflow was getting ever more frequent and soon the entire area would be inundated. Movement at the base of the slime-coated weir ramp caught Flint’s eye as two figures struggled upwards. Both were coated in chemical filth and giving off a coiling miasma of vapour but they were clearly his men.

  ‘Kohlz?’ Flint called out. The two men struggled onwards, their fatigue obvious in their every step.

  Militarily, it mattered not at all which of the dragoons had returned, only that they had completed their allotted task. With a mild shock however, Flint realised in that moment that he did care. These were his troops, and they were fighting not just for the Emperor, their regiment or anything else. They were heeding his words and following his example, he was almost overwhelmingly proud of them.

  The battle at the gate raged on, the sound of gunfire echoing out over the waters and Flint knew he had no time to waste in sentimentality. Renewed gunfire boomed from close behind, the loudest reports those of the wardens’ shotguns, the clavigers fighting side by side with the penal troopers they had guarded not so long before. Though he was needed back at the barricade Flint had to know the result of the mission.

  Finally, the nearest of the men stumbled up the last few metres and hauled himself up onto the lip. Flint reached out a gloved hand and helped the man up. Only when he wiped his face clear of a portion of the filth caking his features was it revealed as Trooper Stank.

  Bending double, Stank stumbled up onto the lip. With his hands on his knees he threw up a great gout of luminescent liquid. Flint left him to it and proffered a hand to pull the next one up. From the man’s gangly frame it was clearly the Jopalli, Indenti Solomon.

  ‘Kohlz?’ Flint said flatly as he helped Solomon up onto the lip.

  Solomon started to speak, then spluttered and like Stank before him coughed up a stream of garish liquid. Stank straightened up as Solomon spewed his guts across the wet rockcrete and answered the commissar’s question. ‘We got separated on the way down, sir.’

  ‘Separated?’ Flint repeated, guessing the trooper’s meaning straight away. The last overflow had been the worst yet and the geysers that had erupted from the sluice vents had reached halfway up the chimney at least.

  ‘Did he get through?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Solomon said, straightening up. ‘The regiment’s already inbound, sir.’

  ‘Time to contact?’ Graf Aleksis barked, not taking his eyes from the dozens of icons flashing across his command console.

  ‘Estimated five minutes, sir,’ Karsten replied. ‘Lead tracks report increasing resistance but nothing coordinated.’

  ‘Yet,’ Aleksis muttered to himself as he oriented his position on the glowing tri-D map on his main viewing slate. The dull crump crump crump of an autocannon firing from one of 1st Company’s Chimeras sounded from close by, followed a moment later by a sharp explosion. The graf’s blood was up and he was starting to enjoy himself. For so many years he had watched other, lesser men write their names in the histories of Vostroya. Now finally, he was the one wielding the auto-quill.

  ‘Time to get into the fight, then,’ he growled, reaching above his head to unlock the Chimera’s turret hatch.

  ‘Sir?’ Karsten’s voice came over the vehicle’s intercom. ‘Might I suggest you leave that to someone…’

  Aleksis ignored his chief of operations and pushed the hatch upwards so that its two halves clanged loudly on the upper armour.

  ‘If Lord-Marshall Supovka had stayed on his command barge at the Siege of Thaltor, do you think the Blood Angels would have delayed their drop? Hah! If General Kolskoi had not led the assault on King Tancred’s fortress from the command deck of his Leviathan, do you think that fate would have granted him another day before the death of that entire world?’

  Warming to his subject, Aleksis dredged up still more examples from the annals of Vostroyan military history. ‘What of the 109th at Kvalgron, or Battlegroup Volga at Horthn IV, or Lord-General Royanz in the death-glades of Nashe’s World?’

  ‘No?’ Aleksis pressed when Karsten dared not advance any more objections. ‘Quite right,’ he said, pulling himself up through the open hatch. The noise of the outside world flooded in and threatened to overwhelm the graf’s senses with a cacophony of clattering tracks, gunfire and roaring engines. Pulling himself up, Aleksis seated himself high in the turret and took hold of the twin-gripped pintle-mounted stubber. He took a deep breath but grasping for his rebreather he immediately wished he hadn’t.

  The air stank, and not just of the engine fumes of the vehicle in front. It was tainted and damp, thick with corpse-gas and pollution. It was an unutterably vile cocktail of chemicals and decay. The armoured column was grinding its way along the barrel-vaulted tunnel of Vestibule 39 and according to reports was closing on the main entrance into the vast generatoria chamber called Carceri Resurecti. The bulk of the headquarters company was rolling along at full speed, smashing aside the piles of debris scattered all about. Ahead of them, the ‘armoured fist’ Chimera-borne infantry of 1st Company were approaching the chamber entrance while the other four battle companies were following behind the HQ. With the air-scrubbers disabled the air was so thick with mist and the exhaust fumes of dozens of vehicles that visibility was reduced to less than a hundred metres.

  Aleksis activated his vox-pickup and opened a channel to his company commanders. ‘All commands, this is Cobalt Lead,’ he said identifying himself by his designated call sign. ‘This is it, gentlemen, the first battle honour of many. The 77th Firstborn shall this day be reborn! You have your orders; follow them and glory is ours. Cobalt Lead, out.’

  A series of affirmatives flooded back over the vox as the company commanders joined in with their commander’s show of bravado. Listening to their oaths and affirmations, Aleksis was proud and suddenly very aware of his place in history. The 77th had served for countless generations and won hundreds of battle honours but Aleksis and his fellow intake of officers had much to prove.

  The crackle of gunfire brought the graf’s attention back to the head of the column as it passed under the archway and pressed in to Carceri Resurecti. The Chimeras of 1st Company’s armoured infantry platoons spread out as they ground into the chamber with turrets tracking left and right as they unleashed a torrent of autocannon, multi-laser and heavy bolter fire on an enemy Aleksis couldn’t yet see. Hull-mounted weaponry added its weight to the fusillade and individual vehicle commanders were manning the pintle-mounts atop the turrets. Soon, the entire firing line was shrouded in the discharge of dozens of heavy weapons, the rolling smoke lit from within by continuous, strobing muzzle flares.

  It was a stirring sight, making Aleksis eagerly tighten his hold on his stubber’s twin grips as his Chimera trundled towards the archway. His blood pumped hard as the sounds of battle increased, the back and forth updates of his subordinate commanders a constant background buzz in his ears.

  As the Chimera passed under the archway, the buzz cut out as Lieutenant-Colonel Karsten engaged his override. ‘Sir? I really must insist you allow someone else to…’

  A sudden movement in the shadows to the right caused Aleksis to swing the stubber around on its mount. A figure wrapped in trailing bands of ragged fabric rose from a pile of stinking rubbish and raised a purloined heavy combat shotgun to its shoulder.

  Aleksis found himself staring down into the gaping barrel of a weapon obviously taken from the dead hands of a pious servant of the Emperor and knew utter contempt for his foe. But before he could draw a bead the man pulled the shotgun’s trigger.


  The blast was deafening, but to his total shock Aleksis was unharmed. It seemed that time itself was frozen like a clock hand unable to move past the hour. The rebel convict groped for a reload but before he could retrieve a fresh cartridge Aleksis snapped out of it. Squeezing the stubber’s grips hard, he ground his thumbs into its trigger plate, gritting his teeth against the anticipated recoil and the sight of his foe being ripped to shreds by the close range burst…

  …but nothing happened. The two men locked incredulous gazes and the rebel’s face twisted into a feral sneer. The Chimera ground on, the driver oblivious to the one-on-one battle for life and death being enacted outside. The rebel darted forwards, tensed his rag-clad body and pounced upwards towards Aleksis.

  Acting purely on instinct Aleksis reached to his belt and withdrew his laspistol, an heirloom weapon carried into battle by seven generations of his line’s firstborn sons. He might never have fired a heavy stubber in anger but he was well practiced in the noble art of duelling and the pistol was like an extension of his very body.

  With a flick of his thumb the safety was off. With a squeeze of a finger the weapon spat an incandescent blast that for an instant chased away the shadows beneath the archway. The las-bolt struck the rebel at the very apex of his leap, his hands twisted into atavistic claws and struck him a glancing blow to his left shoulder. Momentum carried the rebel forward, slamming him into the Chimera’s side armour, but instead of slumping down its side his arm was caught in the tracks as they clattered over the topside of the nacelle.

  The Chimera ground on and the mortally wounded rebel, now screaming as he saw his impending death, was dragged along with the track. In a moment he was lost to the graf’s view and the scream cut-off abruptly with a sickening crunch.

  A moment later, the Chimera passed out of the archway, and into the staggering vastness of Carceri Resurecti.

  ‘Warriors of the Emperor!’ Flint bellowed over the roar of the rebel horde. ‘Deliverance is at hand!’

  His bolt pistol spat its last burst as it stitched a line of exploding craters across the bodies of a wave of rebels clawing their way over the barricade. Flint had never seen such hatred in his foe, even when facing the most fanatical of the insurgents on Gethsemane. The rebels had been whipped up into a frenzy beyond anything Flint had ever encountered and were on the verge of overwhelming what remained of his force.

  His bolt pistol spent and with no spare magazines to hand Flint dropped his weapon, unable to spare the second of precious time it would take to holster. As another pair of rebels clambered over the barricade his power sword was up and blood was flying.

  Even amidst the anarchy of hand-to-hand combat Flint knew well enough that the position was untenable and would fall within minutes. The roar of the rebel horde was so loud it echoed back through the sluice chamber and by its pitch and volume the enemy were as good as numberless. Fallen rebels were piled up before the barricade, the dead and the dying hideously intertwined as those following after used the broken bodies as a ramp to assault the Imperial position. Countless more were pressing through the ruined hatch, pushing the rest forward by the sheer mass of the endless tide.

  ‘There’s no end to them!’ Flint heard a penal trooper nearby shout, the unmistakable edge of panic in his voice. ‘We have to fall back!’

  ‘Nowhere to fall back to, lad,’ Bukin bellowed in response. That didn’t help.

  ‘Shut the hell up,’ Flint shouted at Bukin. ‘And let me do my job.’

  The defenders were on the verge of a rout, yet, as Bukin had so crudely put it, there really was nowhere to go with the surging waters of the sluice channel cutting off any retreat or redeployment. Though the regiment was inbound there was no way of knowing when they might arrive as the lost Kohlz had the only high powered vox-set. In such situations, Imperial commissars had two means of motivating the troops – make an example or be an example. Punish fear or overcome it.

  Flint hauled himself onto the barricade where everyone, friend and foe, could see him. Immediately, a dozen screaming rebels surged towards him and he was forced to hack all about in a crude arc just to keep them at bay. Most recoiled from the scything blade while those not quick enough or unable to push back against the pressure behind lost limbs and lives.

  ‘At this, our moment of need!’ Flint bellowed over the roar of the enemy and the crack of lasguns discharged at impossibly close range, ‘The Emperor casts his gaze upon us!’ It was the twenty-ninth Catechism of Duty, which the drill abbots had taught the adolescent Flint and his fellow progenia so many years before. The words came to him without conscious effort yet the troops needed more.

  ‘We are the instruments of the Emperor’s will!’ he invoked the twelfth chapter of the catechism. ‘Through our deeds his enemies are felled!’

  This is it, Flint thought, the moment of truth. As the rebel hordes roared and surged forwards once more, he decided to commit his fate to the God-Emperor in whose glory he was raised. In so doing he would set such an example to his warriors that the impossible odds facing them might seem as nothing.

  Flint leaped off the barricade and into the chaotic mass of frothing enemies.

  The mist parted in coiling vortexes as Aleksis unleashed a stuttering rain of heavy stubber rounds at the silhouetted rebel horde. With the turret weapon adding its weight of fire to his own he could barely even hear the weapon that jerked and bucked in his grip. The vast chamber had come alive with the fury of battle as groups of rebels emerged from side passages and floor vents to throw themselves at the 77th as the Chimeras ground across the debris-strewn floor. Bones crunched under his vehicle’s treads as Aleksis ordered his driver onwards, plunging through the dense mists enshrouding the entire chamber floor.

  ‘Have at it, you bastards!’ Aleksis yelled with savage battle lust, his voice inaudible over the roar of the engines of dozens of Chimeras and the constant report of their weapons. ‘For the Grey Lady!’ he invoked Nadalya, the patron saint of his home world. ‘For the 77th renewed in glory!’ With a loud, metallic clack, the stubber’s ammo feed dried up and he hauled on the release that freed the hopper. Even as he slammed in a fresh box and cranked the belt home a massive shape loomed out of the mists towards his vehicle.

  It was too close for the turret to engage but Aleksis brought the stubber to bear on the fresh target, this time ensuring its action was clear. His eyes widened as the huge shape resolved into something only vaguely resembling a humanoid body, its proportions grotesquely exaggerated by some unwholesome and probably forbidden process.

  ‘Mutant,’ he growled, suddenly reminded of the stories of the twisted creatures that dwelled in the ruined industrial badlands of Vostroya’s northern polar regions. ‘Filthy, dirty…’

  The rest of his tirade was snatched away as he pressed his thumbs hard into the heavy stubber’s trigger plate. The weapon erupted in his hands, its stabilised mount only barely able to contain its savage recoil. A hundred rounds and more scythed through the air and hammered into the mutant’s upper torso. Though the air was still too hazy for the graf to see his target clearly or to judge the effectiveness of his fire, it staggered under the weight of the stream of rounds, its arms thrashing about as if the bullets were bothersome insects it was trying to swat away.

  Incredibly, the mutant monstrosity wasn’t cut down by the opening burst. It bellowed, splitting the air with a shrill cry unlike that of any natural creature. It lowered its shoulders and rushed on through the mists. Aleksis kept his thumbs on the trigger plate as the form became fully visible through the mists, a prayer for deliverance forming on his lips.

  The beast’s vile features twisted in savage rage, its naked body a mockery of the human form. Its head was set low between the rippling slabs of its shoulders and its over-muscled arms ended in forearms and fists the size of barrels. Its legs were bent at the knee and undersized compared to the rest of its body, lending it a hunched gait and its skin was smeared with oily filth.

  Worst of all, Aleksis caug
ht sight of corroded machine augmetics protruding from angry purple wounds in amongst its seething muscles and he knew that such a creature was unsanctified by the machine priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus and therefore impure.

  Aleksis unloaded another long, steady stream of heavy rounds, hammering them one after another into the knotted muscle of its chest. Yet, now the thing was in motion, nothing appeared capable of stopping it.

  Nothing perhaps except thirty-eight tonnes of armoured transport travelling at full pelt straight over it.

  The Chimera crashed into the mutant at around seventy kilometres per hour. The beast roared as if challenging a rival and brought its massive fists hammering down onto the glacis plate the instant before impact, inflicting a pair of huge dents before it was dragged under the bow and the vehicle ground overhead.

  It was far from dead; Aleksis could tell that from its shrill and frenzied cries as it receded behind, punctuated every few seconds as another Chimera ground over it. But the column was closing on the portal leading from the carceri chamber to the area beyond, where according to reports, Flint’s beleaguered force was holed up. The seething mass of rebel scum pressed in around the wrecked gateway into that chamber was all the confirmation Aleksis needed that the commissar and his troops were there.

  ‘All commands!’ Aleksis shouted into his vox-set as he cranked the heavy stubber’s mechanism. ‘Close on target as per orders.’

  ‘In the name of the 77th!’ he added as he opened fire on the rearmost of the horde. ‘Cut them down!’