The Last Ditch

by Sandy Mitchell

  Such apparent profligacy with the energy reserves such harsh worlds normally husband more carefully is less foolhardy than it might seem, since Primadelving, and the string of smaller towns and outhabs which surround it in the province known as the Leeward Barrens, are literally sitting on an inexhaustible supply. An asteroidal impact long before humanity first set foot on the world fractured the planetary crust, creating a ring of fissures, through which magma continues to seep not far below the surface, and into which the Adeptus Mechanicus has been able to tap by great ingenuity and the blessing of the Omnissiah. The towns and cities of the lesser provinces, being less well favoured, are forced to rely on fusion generators and fossil fuel furnaces instead, which, though effective enough, leave them less attractive to the discriminating wanderer; although the far-famed Ice Cathedral of Frigea is worth taking a shuttle flight to visit, if only to see one of the few permanent surface features erected by the Nusquans.

  TEN

  After all the excitement of our arrival, it was almost a relief to get stuck into the war, which we did with alacrity. Or, to be more accurate, the regiment did: I found it far more congenial to hang around in the relative warmth and comfort of Primadelving, while the Valhallans made the most of what they seemed to regard as the next best thing to a holiday resort52.

  Despite the damage our precipitous arrival had done to the orkish warbands lurking in the Spinal Range, there were still more than enough of them infesting the Barrens to keep everyone happy, and the 597th spent the first couple of months happily reducing their numbers even further. If anything, we seemed to be running out of greenskins to kill remarkably quickly, which should have been good news all round; but instead I was left feeling pensive and uneasy.

  ‘The number of raids on outlying settlements and installations has dropped by nearly fifty per cent in the nine weeks since our arrival,’ I said, projecting a series of graphs and graphics on the ornately gilded hololith which dominated the middle of the operations room. Strictly speaking, I needn’t have bothered with such an elaborate presentation, and if I’d only been discussing the matter with Kasteen and Broklaw I wouldn’t have done, but we’d been either blessed or cursed (I had yet to make my mind up either way) with a planetary governor who took a lively interest in the progress of the campaign, and who insisted on remaining fully informed. Kasteen seemed to have hit it off with her at once, which meant that Her Excellency Milady Clothilde Striebgriebling had an unnerving tendency to wander into strategy meetings with little or no warning, and it would have been discourteous to present things in a manner she’d find difficult to follow. Besides, I’d never been averse to a bit of makework which would keep me away from the fighting, and the bitter cold up on the surface.

  ‘Then you’re clearly doing an excellent job,’ Clothilde53 congratulated us, with a particularly warm smile at Kasteen. Blonde and high cheekboned, she carried herself with confidence, but lacked the hauteur which so often went with it, and which generally made the aristocracy such tedious company. She looked as though she was in her early forties, which probably meant she was at least double that, if not heading into her second century, given the fondness of the nobility for the occasional juvenat treatment; but if that were so, at least she’d had the common sense not to arrest her age at a ridiculously low one out of misguided vanity, electing instead to reflect the maturity she’d acquired along with her responsibilities. Her gown was simple, pale grey and white, offset with a minimum of carefully selected jewellery, an understated simplicity which somehow made her the focus of the room, however many other people were crowding it.

  Which in this case were rather too many, in my opinion. In addition to Her Excellency, and Kasteen and Broklaw, there was the colonel in command of the nascent Nusquan 1st, now up to four companies, her second-in-command, and a scattering of senior people from the PDF, who looked at them both with a mixture of respect and resentment, no doubt wishing they were still junior enough to have some chance of selection for the two companies which were still in the process of formation. Clothilde, of course, was surrounded by a coterie of advisors and hangers-on, who all seemed erroneously convinced that their opinions were of interest to someone other than themselves, and would therefore express them at every conceivable opportunity. The local Arbitrator’s office54 had sent a representative, the only man in the room apart from Broklaw and myself, who made no secret of his complete lack of interest in the entire proceeding; but at least we’d been spared the presence of anyone from the Ecclesiarchy or the Adeptus Mechanicus, whose members tended to a prolixly which would have slowed proceedings to a crawl.

  And then there was the commissar attached to the Nusquan 1st, fresh out of the schola progenium if I was any judge, and a damn sight too eager by half for my peace of mind. She leaned forward now, thin-lipped, her dark eyes narrow with disapproval.

  ‘The regiment from this world has performed extremely well too,’ she reminded the governor prissily, ‘not to mention the PDF.’ She turned an appraising eye in the direction of Kasteen, Broklaw and myself. ‘Though I’m sure we’re all grateful for the assistance of these new arrivals, perhaps we should also remember the sacrifices your own citizens have made.’ The Nusquan officers present puffed themselves up appreciatively, exchanging smug little half-nods with one another.

  ‘Sacrifices which, in many cases, were completely unnecessary,’ Kasteen responded tartly, provoking a raised eyebrow from the tyro commissar, who was clearly unused to the idea of troopers who talked back.

  ‘Would you care to explain that remark?’ the young woman asked coldly, in a manner she no doubt intended to sound intimidating. Knowing Kasteen rather better than she did, I settled back in my excessively padded chair, my concerns about the anomalous intelligence reports put on one side for the moment, in favour of the entertainment to come.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought I’d have to,’ Kasteen snapped back. ‘Just because the greenskins make head-on attacks at every opportunity, that doesn’t mean we should respond in the same way. Your casualty figures are three times ours, and the PDF’s are even worse.’

  ‘Only cowards avoid combat,’ the young woman said, ‘and they have no place in the Imperial Guard.’

  I saw Kasteen’s hand twitch towards her sidearm, and stepped in quickly before matters got too out of hand. I knew she had more sense than to draw the weapon, let alone use it, but the insult was a grievous one, and her self-control far from infinite. The governor had been kind enough to make one of the ballrooms of her palace available to us as a command centre, and I was certain that whatever alternative arrangements we’d be able to make if we wore out our welcome by an unseemly display of bad temper, particularly if it left bloodstains on the polished wooden floor, would be far less comfortable. So why take chances?

  ‘Commissar Forres,’ I said evenly, ‘I suggest you withdraw that remark. I’ve served with Colonel Kasteen for the last ten years, and found her courage and devotion to duty beyond question.’ Kasteen and Broklaw exchanged a look which I can only describe as quietly smug.

  ‘Then perhaps your standards are lower than my own,’ Forres shot back, her hackles visibly rising.

  ‘I’m sure they are,’ I replied, wrongfooting her nicely with an indulgent smile. ‘But mine have been tempered with a little more experience of the real galaxy. You may also note that the number of confirmed kills by the 597th is a little more than double that recorded by your own regiment, and three times that of the PDF, which would hardly have been the case if they had indeed been avoiding contact with the enemy.’

  ‘It’s called using tactics,’ Kasteen added. ‘You might find it worth a try.’

  Forres tightened her jaw, glaring at her with open dislike. ‘I can see your standards have been tempered a great deal,’ she told me, in what she no doubt fondly imagined was a withering tone. ‘Rather more than I would have expected from a man of your reputation.’

  Jurgen’s remarkable odour materialised at my shoulder, the collection of data-s
lates he’d been minding for me cascading to the floor as he leaned in to speak quietly to me. ‘If you’ll be requiring a second, again, sir,’ he said, in a confidential undertone which carried to every corner of the table, ‘I’ll get on with the arrangements.’

  ‘What’s he talking about?’ Clothilde asked, with a faint frown of bafflement.

  ‘The last time a commissar from another regiment accused Colonel Kasteen of being unfit for command,’ Broklaw told her, clearly speaking more for Forres’s benefit than for the governor’s, ‘Commissar Cain called him out.’

  ‘You fought a duel for your lady’s honour?’ The governor looked at me in manifest surprise, and then at Kasteen with a hint of a conspiratorial smile. ‘How very gallant.’

  ‘Colonel Kasteen and I are merely comrades in arms,’ I assured her hastily, not wanting to give the wrong impression, and all too aware of how rapidly gossip can spread. ‘Any more personal relationship between us would be highly improper. The challenge was merely a matter of principle.’ And because Tomas Beije was an infuriating little Emperor-botherer who’d been trying to get me shot for cowardice at the time, and I’d finally run out of patience with him.

  ‘I’m sure it was,’ the governor said insincerely, inclining her head in Kasteen’s direction. ‘And I’ll look forward to hearing all about it the next time Regina is free to take tea.’

  Forres looked at me, then at the worn and battered chainsword at my waist, no doubt contrasting it with the almost forge-fresh condition of her own. ‘I withdraw the remark,’ she said tightly. ‘We’re here to kill greenskins, not one another.’ Which was the first sensible thing I’d heard her say since we’d sat down.

  I leaned back lazily in my chair, sure that an appearance of complete unconcern would be the most likely way to get under her skin, and damned if I was going to let such a callow whelp get the last word in. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘But I had no intention of killing you.’ Or even challenging her to a duel in the first place, but she didn’t need to know that. ‘Just knocking a few of the rough edges off.’

  Her face flushed, and the colonel of the Nusquan 1st exchanged a brief, startled glance with her second in command, which was followed almost at once by two hastily-suppressed grins. It seemed that young Forres had wasted no time in making a strong impression on her new regiment.

  ‘So what’s happening to the orks?’ Kasteen asked, bringing us all back to the point with rather more tact than most of the people around the table seemed capable of mustering.

  ‘A good question,’ I said, switching my attention smoothly back to the matter at hand. ‘If they’re not attacking us, they must either be gathering for a really big raid against a strongly defended target somewhere, or they’re migrating to another region, hoping the pickings will be easier.’

  ‘And which of those would be your guess, commissar?’ the Nusquan colonel asked, clearly addressing the question to me. Which, given that I’d seen more action against the greenskins than anyone else in the room by a considerable margin, should have been obvious. But before I could reply, Forres cut in, no doubt assuming that as the question had come from the commander of the regiment she’d been attached to, she was the one whose advice had been sought.

  ‘They’re obviously running away,’ she said, as though there couldn’t be the slightest doubt in the matter. ‘Greenskins never have the stomach for a protracted fight against a well-armed foe.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ I interjected, more amused by her precocity than annoyed at the interruption, ‘orks live for combat. They will retreat if they take sufficient casualties, but only in order to regroup; which, given the nature of the species, can often take some time, while they sort out the new pecking order. If they’re avoiding our patrols instead of engaging them, and harrying fewer outposts, they’re almost certainly gathering somewhere in the Spinal Range, getting ready for a full-scale invasion of the Barrens.’

  ‘Then we must strengthen our defences in readiness,’ Clothilde said decisively, which was to save countless lives in the weeks ahead, although hardly in the manner which she envisaged at the time.

  I nodded my agreement. ‘That would be prudent,’ I concurred, ‘particularly around the foothills, and the approaches to Primadelving. That’s the biggest prize on the planet, and if the greenskins are massing in sufficient numbers, they’ll make for it like a ripper scenting blood.’

  ‘They’d never dare attack us here,’ Forres scoffed. ‘We’re far too well defended.’

  ‘That didn’t stop them during the invasion,’ I said, remembering the desperate defence we’d had to mount against a seemingly unstoppable tide of the creatures, and how hideously close they’d come to overrunning the city before being beaten back at the very last minute.

  ‘There are nothing like the same number of greenskins on the planet as there were then,’ Clothilde said, and I realised for the first time that she’d probably been sitting right here while the barbaric creatures besieged her capital55, keeping an anxious eye on the state of the war.

  ‘For which we must all thank the Emperor,’ I agreed.

  ‘I hate to labour the obvious,’ Forres put in again, ‘but if they are pulling back because the resistance in the Leeward Barrens is too strong, where are they likely to go instead?’

  ‘A very good question,’ I said, to her manifest surprise, and called up a detailed image of the mountain range. ‘The largest concentrations we were able to detect by orbital reconnaissance before the weather closed in were here, here, and here.’ Green icons flared, marking their positions, as Jurgen tweaked the controls on the elaborately inlaid control lectern. ‘If they’ve returned to their old encampments, the most likely path of migration over the mountains is through these passes, which would place the western fringes of the Bifrost Marches most at risk. Particularly the townships along the Twilight Crevasse, and the manufactoria in Frozen Gorge.’

  ‘A couple of companies ought to be enough to keep them bottled up in the mountains if they try to break out that way,’ Kasteen said speculatively. ‘At least until reinforcements arrive. I suggest the Nusquans deploy there, as they know the local terrain far better than we do.’

  ‘We’ve got no intention of being sidelined,’ the Nusquan colonel objected. ‘My troopers would consider it a slur on their fighting ability.’

  ‘For Throne’s sake,’ Kasteen riposted irritably, ‘no one’s implying anything of the sort. But it probably wouldn’t hurt to redeploy them while you’ve still got a few left.’ Which may have been true, but was hardly tactful.

  Eventually, a compromise was arrived at, which basically boiled down to palming the job off on the PDF, and the meeting broke up in an atmosphere of simmering acrimony.

  ‘Where do you think the greenskins are hiding themselves?’ Kasteen asked afterwards, as we made our way along the corridor towards the elegant dining room which was now doing duty as the officers’ mess.

  I shrugged, feeling far from reassured, despite the measures we’d put in place to contain them in the event of an attack. In my experience, they were a foe it was easy to underestimate, and invariably fatal to do so. ‘I suppose we’ll find out before long,’ I said, little guessing how horrifying the answer would turn out to be.

  ELEVEN

  After that somewhat strained introduction, it was hardly surprising that the two regiments had as little to do with one another as possible, sticking strictly to their own areas of operation. The Valhallans went on applying the lessons learned in their centuries-long vendetta against the orks, while the Nusquans, urged on by Forres no doubt, persisted in squandering lives and materiel in head-on attacks at every opportunity. The PDF were, if anything, even more reckless, every trooper determined to win a place in the Guard, and apparently convinced that acts of desperate bravado were the way to attract favourable attention, although what they mostly seemed to attract was copious amounts of incoming fire.

  ‘We’ll be running out of both at this rate,’ I commented sourly to Kasteen one
evening. ‘Orks and Nusquans.’

  ‘Would that be so bad?’ she joked, surveying the regicide board between us through the cloud of steam rising from her tanna bowl. ‘Zyvan could leave us here to garrison the planet for a bit.’ Which would undoubtedly be a very appealing prospect to a Valhallan. I could live with it, too, come to that, especially if the governor continued to be as hospitable as she had been, and I could avoid setting foot on the snowfields too often.

  ‘Just in time for the rest of the greenskins to come out of hiding and invade the province,’ I riposted, failing to find a move which wouldn’t hand her victory on a platter.

  Kasteen grinned. ‘You’re definitely talking me into it,’ she said, staring at me expectantly, until I bowed to the inevitable and conceded the game. Accepting my surrender with a courteous nod, she began to set up the board for a rematch.

  Before we could make the first move, however, we were interrupted by a familar phlegm-laden cough from the doorway. ‘Sorry to disturb you, sir, ma’am,’ Jurgen said, ‘but Major Broklaw would like you to join him in the command centre. The greenskins are up to something.’

  ‘We’ll be right there,’ I told him, wondering what could be serious enough to warrant our attention as well as the major’s.

  I began to understand why he’d felt the need for reinforcements as we approached the command post, however, as several female voices were echoing down the corridor to meet us. The thick drapes and lavish carpeting would have muffled them at a normal conversational level, but most were raised and forceful, carrying easily to our ears. ‘Does that sound like the governor to you?’ I asked, and Kasteen nodded.

  ‘It does,’ she said grimly, as conscious as I was that anything serious enough to get Her Excellency out of bed was hardly likely to be a minor skirmish.