Commissar

by Andy Hoare

  With a snarl, Flint drove his power sword into the Catachan’s back, forcing it through the mass of sinew and muscle. As the blade plunged into the man’s innards Vahn twisted and an instant later the sword was sunk all the way to its hilt. With a shout, Flint twisted the blade and drove it straight upwards, through the Catachan’s upper torso, and out of his right collarbone.

  His torso split in two, a fountain of blood spat upwards as the two halves peeled apart. Gore spattered at Flint’s feet and the body finally collapsed, its eviscerated organs tumbling forth.

  ‘Frag!’ Vahn spat, looking up at Flint from the butchered corpse on the ground between them.

  ‘Commissar Flint?’ The commissar heard in his ear.

  ‘What?’ said Flint as he fought for breath, his heart pounding after the exertion of the deathblow.

  ‘That was…’ said Vahn as he fought to regain his own breath having been choked almost to death.

  ‘Commissar Flint?’ the voice repeated.

  His mind catching up and his head clearing of the battle lust that had driven him through the last few seconds, Flint raised a hand to silence Vahn.

  ‘Flint here,’ he said into his vox-pickup. ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Dragoon Kohlz, sir,’ the voice said. ‘Commissar Flint, you’ve got multiple…’

  ‘What?’ Flint demanded, thinking for a moment the confusion of combat and the pounding rain had addled his mind. ‘Repeat last, over.’

  ‘I said, this is Dragoon Kohlz, commissar. Listen, please, I don’t have time to explain, sir, but you have multiple mutants closing towards you, and…’

  ‘Mutants?’ Flint demanded, recalling the two abominations he had already faced.

  ‘Yes, sir, mutants,’ Kohlz pressed. ‘Thousands of…’

  ‘Mutants…’ Flint growled. ‘Filthy mutants…’ Glancing around, Vahn’s penal troopers had slaughtered the majority of the Catachan’s fellow rebels and the rest were scattering. But Flint knew it wouldn’t last long.

  ‘Vahn, Bukin!’ he shouted. Vahn looked half dead. Bukin looked like he’d been enjoying himself. ‘Get the detachment ready to move out, right away,’ he barked, wiping blood and rain from his eyes with the back of his hand.

  ‘Where are we going, sir?’ Bukin replied.

  ‘We need to find the colonel,’ Flint said. ‘Right now, or this is all over.’

  It took Flint and his small force the best part of twenty minutes to locate Graf Aleksis and his staff, and as he did so, Kohlz filled in the spaces in his report and provided a running description of what he was seeing. By the time Flint had pushed his way through the bustling staff manning the graf’s command post he had a good idea what was going on and he was utterly livid.

  ‘You won’t deny it?’ he thundered at Graf Aleksis, his rage incandescent. ‘The leader of this rebellion is,’ he paused for breath, ‘is your own cousin?’

  ‘I will not deny it, Commissar Flint,’ Aleksis replied, his command post falling silent with shock. In a moment, only the rain pounding the awning overhead and the sound of ominously close gunfire was audible. ‘He is, as you say, my cousin.’

  ‘And when were you going to tell me this?’ Flint raged. No wonder, he seethed inwardly, the archive on Strannik was sealed.

  ‘In truth,’ the graf replied defiantly as he faced off against the furious commissar, ‘I was hoping to deal with the matter without sullying my clan’s good name.’

  ‘Your clan’s…?’ Flint spat incredulously, the ignominious fate of the 77th’s predecessors forcing its way into his consciousness. ‘You gave me your word, graf. You swore you would not repeat the sins of your forebears and allow your loyalties to be split…’

  ‘I understand your reaction, commissar,’ Aleksis insisted, ‘But rest assured, I have every intention of bringing my… cousin, to account for his deeds.’

  Flint was about to retort with a barbed reply when he saw something in the graf’s expression that made him hold his tongue. He nodded for Aleksis to continue.

  ‘This sort of thing...’ Aleksis started, uncertainly at first but with increased resolution as he spoke. ‘It is normally dealt with by way of certain… formalities.’

  ‘Meaning?’ Flint replied.

  ‘Meaning,’ Aleksis went on, ‘We of the Anhalz Techtriarchs prefer to keep our own house in order, and not involve outside parties.’

  Flint fixed the graf with an ice-cold stare, weighing up the man’s future on the balance of his words. ‘You do realise, graf,’ he growled, his words punctuated by the heavy rain, ‘That I could have not just your regiment for this. I could have your life.’

  Aleksis held Flint’s gaze a moment, before replying, ‘Yes, commissar. I am very much aware of the extent of your powers.’

  In that moment, Flint’s mind was made up. ‘Then prove it.’

  ‘I intend to, commissar, believe me. I intend to clear this entire damned installation of every last rebel scum lurking within it,’ he growled, his voice low and vengeful. ‘It was one of my clan that started this and so it is I who must end it,’ he concluded.

  ‘This Strannik,’ Flint replied. ‘If he’s one of your Techtriarch clan, why is he here, in Alpha Penitentia?’

  A number of the senior officers looked to one another uncomfortably and Polzdam opened his mouth to object. But Aleksis raised a hand to forestall any interruption and answered Flint’s question. ‘He’s here because he deserves to be, commissar.’

  ‘Meaning?’ asked Flint, growing impatient to end the discussion with the abominations Kohlz had reported closing all the while.

  ‘You have read that the 77th was destroyed at Golan Hole, that there were no survivors,’ Aleksis said darkly.

  ‘Sir!’ Polzdam interjected.

  ‘No!’ Graf Aleksis rounded on his executive officer with a savage burst of anger. ‘This cannot go on! It shall not go on. Commissar Flint will have the truth of it, and you shall not say a word more, unless you want me to call the provosts, understood?’

  Polzdam fumed silently, but said no more.

  ‘The records of the Battle of Golan Hole state that every last member of the 77th perished…’

  ‘The records lie?’ said Flint.

  ‘The records were doctored. One individual survived.’

  ‘Strannik.’ Flint said coldly.

  ‘Graf Strannik,’ said Aleksis. ‘My kinsman, and my predecessor as colonel of the 77th Vostroyan Firstborn.’

  ‘How?’ Flint asked. ‘And why was he imprisoned?’

  ‘How, I cannot fully explain, though I suspect his crimes extend beyond the moral. I believe that he has manifested certain… abilities, deemed blasphemous by the creed we all share.’

  ‘So he’s a mutant,’ said Flint. ‘Are you suggesting he’s manifested psychic powers too?’ If that was the case this mission might not be completed without the intervention of an Ordo Hereticus strike force, and that would escalate matters by an entire order of magnitude.

  ‘Possibly,’ said Aleksis. ‘I cannot be sure. But as to the second part of your question, he is here because he has sufficient rank to have the death sentence such crimes should lead to commuted. He is a traitor and a coward; his actions led to the destruction of the 77th, and he is a mutant and an unsanctioned psyker. Believe me, I intend to settle this…’

  ‘And the prison governor is his kinsman,’ Flint interrupted.

  ‘Indeed,’ Aleksis replied dejectedly.

  With time running out and it being futile to press the matter further, Flint changed tack. ‘Graf Aleksis,’ he announced, loudly enough for every officer nearby to hear clearly. ‘We have a mountain to climb, and an abominable enemy to defeat if any of us are to see the daylight again.’

  ‘I suggest you gather your officers, Aleksis, and issue a warning order. I suggest this regiment gets advancing, sir, right now.’

  Dragoon Kohlz had been following the mutant horde for what felt like hours, always close enough to be sure of its course yet never so close that his pre
sence might be discovered. Had he been seen, he would have been torn limb from limb or eaten alive by the unutterably vile creatures of the mutant horde. The young Firstborn’s deeds went unrecorded, for there was no one else there to write up a citation. In balance however, this was a good thing, for there was one deed that Kohlz would never want written up in any form of communiqué.

  Kohlz had tracked the horde for over an hour and had only just avoided detection by a gang of stooped, ghoulish fiends with mouths dripping with congealed blood when the familiar silhouette of a Vostroyan Firstborn warrior loomed in the shadowed entrance of a waste grinder, just like the one the infiltration force had been forced to travel through hours before. The shaggy fur headgear and the long, crimson coat were unmistakable, and it was all Kohlz could do to stop himself calling out to his kinsman.

  It was fortunate indeed that he didn’t, for the twisted ghoul creatures appeared to have picked up the other Firstborn’s scent and were looping back to investigate. Kohlz ducked into the cover of a wrecked flatbed cargo hauler and was just about to open a channel on the personal vox-net when he realised the identity of the trooper emerging from the tunnel. It was Dragoon Slavast – better known in the ranks of the 77th as ‘Slug’. Immediately, the bruises earned at the hands of Slug and his goons just a few days before started throbbing as bitterness and shame at the beating he had received swelled inside.

  His eyes narrowing as he watched, Kohlz saw that Slug wasn’t alone. He was leading his squad and several of the meatheads were further inside the tunnel, struggling with boxes of heavy ammo. Obviously they had been tasked with bringing fresh ammunition to the fighting units, but they were shirking that duty like the cowards they truly were.

  Kohlz lifted his thumb from the vox-switch, deciding against warning his fellow troopers of the imminent danger. Even as he watched from the shadows, the ghouls closed across the open chamber floor, and it was only at the last that Slug caught sight of them.

  Instead of standing and fighting like they had been trained to do, the squad fell back into the tunnel, compounding their crime of cowardice with that of dereliction of duty as they dropped the ammunition and fled.

  With a blood-curdling shriek, the ghoulish mutants dashed by Kohlz’ss hiding place, so close he could see the pallid translucency of their shrivelled, filth-encrusted hides. An instant later, they were pressing cautiously into the waste grinder, sniffing the damp ground as they followed the scent of Slug and his fellows.

  His mind suddenly clear, Dragoon Kohlz broke cover and dashed for the opening of the waste grinder. A moment later he was by its mouth, the sound of shouting emanating from within. It sounded very much like Slug and his goons were attempting to call for help over the personal vox-net, and a blinking telltale on his set confirmed it.

  Whichever station was receiving Slug’s distress call, it was never completed. Kohlz slammed his fist down upon the waste grinder’s activation rune, causing the toothed, metal walls of the tunnel to stir into sudden motion. A roar like that of a million gears shifting as one blasted from the tunnel mouth, followed a moment later by the twitching gristle that had once been the ghoul-like mutants and the half a dozen Firstborn, mingled together into a steaming gruel of mangled flesh and shattered bone.

  Kohlz slammed his fist down on the rune a second time, the gears disengaging with a wet, metallic rumble. Hefting his heavy vox-set, he resumed his pursuit of the mutant horde, resolving never to say a word of Slug’s fate.

  SIXTEEN

  Judgement

  The charge of the 77th Vostroyan Firstborn Dragoons was, as Graf Aleksis had said it would be, a glorious thing indeed. Dozens of Chimeras formed into a line several kilometres wide straddling the centre of the southern end of Carceri Resurecti and advanced through the driving rain to meet the mutant horde head on. The vast darkness of the carceri chamber was lit as bright as day as the Chimeras’ heavy weapons opened up on the shambling, howling mass of abominations seething across the floor. Heavy artillery, following the main push in bounding advances, lobbed hundreds of high explosive shells overhead, their passage as loud as a freight conveyor and their detonations sending limbs and greasy, black smoke arcing high into the air.

  Commissar Flint was riding high in the turret of one of the HQ Company’s Chimeras, every one of the regiment’s armoured vehicles advancing and every one of its guns blazing away at the horde up ahead. The acid rain stung his eyes and the already polluted air was tainted further by the discharge of so many weapons. The roar of engines made communication all but impossible in his exposed position, but Flint no longer had need to communicate. Kohlz had given him the last piece of information he needed.

  Following in the wake of the horde, an act of extreme courage for which Flint had already decided his aide would be commended, Kohlz had maintained a continuous reconnaissance. Eventually, he had located the target Flint had ordered him to find and reported his sighting back to the commissar.

  Colonel Strannik.

  As the line of Chimeras closed to within a hundred metres of the enemy, Flint finally got a close look at the creatures the force was up against. The shambling mutants were obviously related to the two he had faced already, yet those two must have been the more controllable of the mass for the rest appeared a riot of screeching, thrashing limbs and gaping maws. Each was at least as tall as an ogryn but represented no stable abhuman strain. These mutants were grotesquely malformed, each limb a different size. Some hauled themselves along on massively oversized arms, their legs so atrophied they couldn’t even walk. Others were all barrel-shaped, contorted torso, arms and legs jutting out at improbable angles. Some had limbs protruding from entirely the wrong point of their bodies, creating the overall impression of a wall of disjointed muscle and flesh surging across the chamber floor.

  Flint bellowed a prayer to ward off the foulness of genetic corruption, most of his words snatched away by the rush of air and the roar of bullets but enough of them getting through to his vox-pickup that the rest of the regiment could hear and take heart. Captain Bohman, the chief of signals, relayed Flint’s words through the regimental vox-net and every dragoon in the 77th Firstborn heard him as they charged towards their foe.

  As the range closed, Flint opened fire with his pintle-mount, keeping up his tirade of zealous invective even though he couldn’t even hear his own words. The heavy stubber spat a stream of fire towards the line of mutant flesh and he was gratified to see torsos exploding and limbs cartwheeling overhead. Soon Flint could make out individual faces and he was struck by an almost overwhelming sense of revulsion. He had reached the conclusion that these mutants must have bred, or been bred, in the deepest, darkest geotherm sinks beneath the penal generatorium, though from what corrupted stock he had yet to discover. The heat that drove the generatoria was derived from the radioactive decay of sub-surface minerals, so perhaps that had something to do with the obscene process. Whatever the cause, their very existence was a blasphemy against the God-Emperor of Mankind. Once more, Flint would be the instrument of judgement.

  Finally, the charge of the 77th Vostroyan Firstborn Dragoons struck home. The wall of steel met the wall of flesh and battle was joined.

  The Chimeras ground through and over the first ranks of the teeming mutant horde, crushing hundreds to gristly pulp within seconds. But despite the devastation those mutants not slain in the first few seconds threw themselves forward without fear or hesitation as if compelled beyond reason to tear down all that was pure and unsullied by corruption in the world. Flint angled his heavy stubber almost straight downward, firing continuously with no need to aim. An ocean of thrashing limbs and rippling muscle surged beneath him, grossly distended claws reaching up like breaking waves to pull him down. The sound was nigh deafening and the stench was beyond description. It was like the mutants had gestated within an irradiated, amniotic sack swelled with chemical fluids in which a million corpses had slowly rotted and their otherwise naked bodies were smeared with all manner of unimaginable filth
.

  The Chimeras ground onward into that undulating sea of mutant flesh, firing hull and turret weapons without pause. Top hatches swung outwards by prearranged order and the men and women of the 77th rose from the armoured troop bays and took position atop their transports. Lasguns, flamers, plasma guns and grenade launchers were discharged at all but point-blank range, often right into the howling faces of the enemy who were attempting to swarm up and over the Chimeras.

  Gunning their engines against the sheer force of the press of mutant bodies, the drivers pressed on. Though a seemingly crude tactic, the attack was in essence a classic heavy cavalry charge. The drivers were under orders to press on at all costs, to break through the horde before turning around and hitting it again. They couldn’t stop, for to do so would be to shed momentum and then all would be lost. Even when dragoons were pulled screaming from fighting compartments to be dragged into the horde still they couldn’t stop. Even when vehicles were swamped and disappeared beneath a wave of thrashing corruption, they had to keep on going.

  Almost as soon as the armoured assault crashed home it was breaking through the other side of the mutant horde. Flint spun the cupola about just in time to witness the bloody path his Chimera had crushed through the mass of bodies disappear as the mutants pressed in. Several nearby Chimeras were overrun by howling mutant abominations and the dragoons within torn limb from limb, but there was nothing he could do – the plan was all.

  Ahead of the advance was an open area of the carceri chamber floor dominated by a high platform resembling an oversized gallows. Fittingly, the platform was the control pulpit for the surface-to-orbit weapons battery that had shot Flint’s drop-ship down what seemed like weeks earlier. It was Flint’s target, because Kohlz had reported it was where Colonel Strannik waited, watching and directing his blasphemous horde as it surged across the chamber.

  Flint drew his bolt pistol and checked its action. He’d only had the time to scare up a single spare magazine. Let that be sufficient, he prayed to the Emperor. Let your will be done…