[Imperial Guard 01] - Fifteen Hours

by Mitchel Scanlon - (ebook by Undead)

  “Yes, captain, I know you have your orders,” said Corporal Grishen nearby, still talking into the vox-com before pausing to listen to a reply through his headphones. Then, with every man in the dugout now silent as they stood listening to the stop-start rhythms of Grishen’s side of the conversation, the corporal began once more.

  “Yes, I realise that, captain,” Grishen said. “And you are right: the Guardsman’s first duty is obedience. But, even granting that you have your orders and it is your duty to obey them, if those orders are mistaken…”

  A pause.

  “No, of course, you are right, sir. The divinely ordained command structure of the Imperial Guard precludes any possibility of your orders being mistaken. If I may rephrase myself, however? What I really meant to say, of course, was that perhaps the problem here lies not in the orders themselves, but in the practical aspects of their execution…”

  Another pause.

  “Oh no, sir. I wasn’t for a moment questioning your competence…”

  And another.

  “Yes, sir, as you say: your battery runs like a well-oiled machine. But you must concede that, seeing as we are unquestionably under bombardment, a mistake must have occurred somewhere…”

  Another pause.

  “Yes, of course, sir. You concede nothing. Yes, I understand. No, sir, you are correct. General Headquarters is not known for promoting fools to the rank of captain…”

  And so it went on, while from above Larn heard the distant roar of explosions as the bombardment continued. Until, at last, he heard a door open behind him and turned to see Sergeant Chelkar step grim-faced into the dugout. Then, as the group of assembled Vardans huddled in the dugout silently parted to give way before their sergeant, Larn saw Chelkar stride purposefully over to Grishen at the comms system.

  “Yes, sir.” Corporal Grishen said, raising his eyes as he saw Chelkar approach him. “Naturally, you are right. If there is any mistake here it was ours in being present in a sector scheduled for bombardment. But, if you will excuse me for a moment, my company commander has just entered the room. Perhaps it would be better if you and he discussed this matter directly.”

  “What is going on, Grishen?” Chelkar said, laying the shotgun he had been carrying down across the table before him. “Why in hell are those idiots still shelling us?”

  “I am on the line to the captain commanding the battery in question now, sergeant,” Grishen said, diplomatically releasing the “send” button on the vox-corn so his listener at the other end could no longer hear them. “I have tried to explain things to him, but he refuses to accept anything I say. He claims that according to his situation map this entire sector fell to the orks three days ago — meaning he would be quite within his rights to bombard it even if he didn’t already have signed orders from Battery Command telling him to do so. And as for ending the bombardment? He says in keeping with his orders the shelling will cease in precisely one hour and twenty-seven minutes’ time. Not a moment sooner. He is most definite on that point, sergeant. Frankly, some might even say a little intransigent.”

  “I see,” said Chelkar. “Hand me the vox-com, Grishen. I want to talk to this son of a bitch myself.”

  “This is Sergeant Eugin Chelkar,” he said, taking the headphones and pressing the button to activate the vox-com. “Acting regimental commander of the 902nd Vardan Rifles. Who am I speaking to?”

  For a moment, like Grishen before him, Chelkar went quiet as he listened to the voice on the other end of the line through his headphones. Then, his tone becoming grave and forceful, he spoke once more.

  “Captain Meran, the 16th Landran Artillery?” Chelkar said. “I see. Well, I have a message for you, captain. No, I am well aware you outrank me, but you will listen to what I have to say all the same. I am giving you two minutes, captain. Two minutes. And, if this bombardment hasn’t ended by then, I am going to come over to whatever hole you are hiding in and kick you up the arse so hard that you will taste leather every time you swallow. Not that you will have to worry about that for long, you understand. The arse kicking will only be for my own amusement. After that, I fully intend to put a shotgun blast through your skull. Have I made myself clear?”

  Again, there was another pause while Chelkar listened to the captain’s reply on his headphones.

  “No, it is you who does not understand the situation, captain,” Chelkar said after a moment. “I don’t give a damn about your rank or your orders. Nor do I care if you report me to the Commissariat. In fact, please feel free to do so: if nothing else, they can serve as pallbearers at your funeral. What you fail to understand is that, even if you have me arrested, there is an entire regiment of men standing around me who are quite prepared to make good on my threat. And, if you think the Commissariat will be willing to arrest an entire frontline combat unit to save you, I think you overestimate your own value to the war effort of this city. Oh, and by the way, captain, the chronometer is counting down. You now have only one minute and twenty seconds to make a decision. Chelkar out.”

  Giving the vox-com and headphones back to Grishen, Chelkar stood waiting beside the table. Listening intently, like every other man in the dugout to the sound of shelling going on above their heads.

  “I don’t understand,” Larn whispered. “Surely the sergeant has just written his own death warrant by talking to an officer that way?”

  “Maybe,” Bulaven whispered back. “You don’t know Chelkar though, new fish. In seventeen years I have never seen him be afraid of anything. If there is something that needs to be done, he is the man to do it. Whatever the cost. All the same, I wonder if even he has gone too far this time. If the captain should vox a complaint to the Commissariat…”

  “Ach, you are both like children frightened of your own shadows,” Davir muttered beside them. “You especially should know better, Bulaven. When has Chelkar ever failed us? The sergeant knows what he is doing. These artillery monkeys always think frontline troops are crazy to begin with. This arsehole captain won’t dare call the Commissariat. Trust me, he is probably already soiling himself in fear and is giving the order to cease fire even as we speak.”

  Above, as though in confirmation of Davir’s opinions, the guns abruptly fell silent. At first no one spoke, all of them listening to hear whether the shelling would begin again. Until, as the seconds passed into a full minute with no further sound of explosions, it became clear the bombardment was ended.

  “There, you see, Grishen?” Chelkar half-smiled. “It is simply a matter of knowing how best to talk to these people to get your point across.” Then, taking up his shotgun once more and turning away from the corporal, Chelkar noticed every man in the dugout was looking at him with faces caught in expressions of awe and gratitude.

  “It was nothing so much,” Chelkar said to them. “Still, it was probably better that I let our friend the captain think he was going to have an entire regiment after his blood if he didn’t stop the shelling. If he’d known the 902nd Vardan was only made up of a single company perhaps he would have felt man enough to take us all on. It is not unusual for these rear echelon heroes to have a bloated sense of their own abilities.”

  At that the men smiled, some even laughed in nervous relief. Seeing the mood of reverence had been successfully dispelled, the sergeant’s manner became more business-like.

  “All right,” he said. “Now, enough of this hiding underground. Back to your posts. We don’t want to leave the firing trenches undefended and make the orks think it is a worthwhile time launching another attack. Go on. Get moving, all of you.”

  As the men in the dugout began to hurry out towards their trenches again, Larn’s last sight of Chelkar came as he saw the sergeant turn to towards Corporal Grishen once more with further instructions.

  “Grishen, I want you to contact General Headquarters,” he heard the sergeant say. “Inform them Sector 1-13 is most certainly not in ork hands and make it clear we would consider it a great personal favour if they would adjust t
heir situation maps accordingly. Oh, and you had better try voxing Battery Command as well to ask them if in future they could please refrain from ordering people to shoot at us. It probably won’t work, of course. But I suppose we should at least pretend we believe the men in charge of this war have some idea of what it is they are doing.”

  INTERLUDE

  As Above, So Below

  or

  Grand Marshal Kerchan and the Genius of Command

  By any standard of measurement, the war was going badly.

  Brooding as he sat through yet another interminable briefing His Excellency Grand Marshal Tirnas Kerchan, Hero of the Varentis Campaign and Supreme Commander (All Forces) of the Most Glorious Armies of the Emperor in Broucheroc, considered the facts he had learned so far that day and found there was nothing there to please him. For the best part of two hours now, from his place at the head of the long table inside General HQ’s Central Briefing Room One, he had listened as a succession of his commanders read aloud their latest situation reports to the assembled General Staff. Through it all, through all their pasty-faced dissemblings and pathetically transparent attempts to lay the blame for their failures on others, the message at the heart of each man’s report was exactly the same.

  They were losing the war.

  “Grand Marshal?” he heard his adjutant, Colonel Vlin, whisper from his chair by the side of him, breaking his train of thought.

  Disturbed from his despairing reverie, the Grand Marshal abruptly realised he had lost track of the briefings. Looking up he saw the eyes of every man at the table were turned to gaze his way, nervously awaiting his reaction to the substance of the last report. For a moment, unable to remember the name of the man standing before him who had presented it, he found himself stymied.

  “Yes, good. Very good.” Kerchan harrumphed, then floundered. “Most cogent and concise. An excellent analysis, General… ah…”

  “Dushan,” Vlin said sotto voce, raising a sheath of papers in front of his mouth to hide the words as he spoke them.

  “Yes, General Dushan,” the Grand Marshal said, inclining his head toward the officer in question and giving him a curt nod by way of encouragement. “Your grasp of the situation is to be commended.”

  Clearly relieved, his face all but beaming at the praise, the ferret-faced Dushan puffed out his chest with pride and bent forward in a low bow in grateful acknowledgement before taking his seat once more.

  Look at him, the Grand Marshal thought sourly. The man is an idiot. Still he is hardly unique in that regard. I am surrounded by idiots. This whole damned city would seem to be staffed from first to last with idiots, cowards and incompetents.

  Briefly, the Grand Marshal idly wondered whether it might not be better to make an example of Dushan. To denounce him, here and now, and order him taken away to stand court martial on charges of incompetence. That might put the fear of the Emperor into the rest of them for a while, he thought. Force them to buck their ideas up for fear they’d he facing more of the same themselves. As attractive as the idea was, he found himself forced to dismiss it. He had just praised the man, after all. To go back on that praise so quickly might make him seem indecisive. No, like it or not, for the rest of the day at least the idiot Dushan was beyond arrest, almost as inviolable to the Grand Marshal’s powers as the body of an Imperial saint. It was a matter of maintaining the proper respect for the chain of command. Once the Grand Marshal had given voice to an opinion on a man there could be no turning back.

  And besides, thought Kerchan, I was the one who gave Dushan his position in the first place. To punish him for his inadequacies now might be perceived as an admission I was wrong to promote him. No matter what, a Grand Marshal can never admit to having made a mistake. He must be seen to be infallible. To give credence to any thought otherwise would be to fatally undermine the rightful awe every Guardsman naturally feels for the wisdom of their superiors. Well, the awe that most of them feel anyway. It is the nature of war that, occasionally and inevitably, there will always be dissenters.

  With a distant stab of quiet anger, the Grand Marshal found himself remembering the officer whose place Dushan had taken on the General Staff. What was the man’s name, he thought. Minor? Minaris? Minovan? He was about to turn to Colonel Vlin to ask him the name of Dushan’s predecessor, when abruptly it came to him. Mirovan! That was the man’s name. The remembered name brought with it a clearer picture in his mind of the individual to whom it belonged and Grand Marshal Kerchan found his bleak and unhappy mood growing even darker.

  Of all the men on his staff, Mirovan had always seemed the best and brightest. An exemplary field officer with an admirable record of citations for bravery behind him, Mirovan had made general in a creditably short space of time. If the man had any flaw at all, it was in the one single characteristic Kerchan could never abide in a subordinate.

  Insolence.

  Mirovan had been so insolent in fact that two weeks ago he had even had the temerity to question one of the Grand Marshal’s military decisions during a staff meeting. Enraged, Kerchan had demoted the man on the spot, busting him down to the rank of common trooper and ordering him to be immediately posted to a frontline combat unit. Next, in a hasty decision the Grand Marshal now bitterly regretted, he had promoted the man’s less than able second-in-command, the men-colonel Dushan, and ordered him to serve on the General Staff in Mirovan’s place. Though he had felt quite sure humbling Mirovan had been the right thing to do at the time, the Grand Marshal now experienced a troubling sense of ill-defined unease. In many ways Mirovan was an admirable man, he thought sadly. Certainly, he was a damn sight more competent than most of the toadies and feckless lackeys who bedevil me sitting around this table day after day. I wonder what happened to him?

  “He was a good man in his way,” the Grand Marshal said. “It would be a pity if such a man were dead.”

  All around the table, the others were staring at him. Kerchan realised he must have inadvertently spoken his musings aloud, interrupting the flow of conversation around him as the members of the General Staff discussed the significance or not of Dushan’s report. On every side of him, as though not entirely sure how they should react, generals stared towards him with expressions ranging from uncertainty to quiet trepidation. Even the ever-faithful Vlin seemed to be looking at him strangely. Kerchan, however, felt no embarrassment. If nothing else, a lifetime spent commanding soldiers had taught him a simple truth. A man with the absolute authority of life-or-death over others should never feel any need to have to apologise for his own behaviour.

  “I was remembering Mirovan,” he said, turning to look toward General Dushan. “After his demotion he was given over to your command, Dushan. What happened to him?”

  “I… I am not sure, your excellency,” Dushan said, almost squirming before the Grand Marshal’s gaze. “I left the matter of assigning him to a new posting to one of my aides. As to where precisely he was sent, I should have to check the battalion rosters…”

  Faltering, failing miserably to hide his discomfort, Dushan’s voice gradually trailed away to guilty silence. He probably had the man posted to the worst unit and the most dangerous duties he could find, Kerchan thought. Somewhere right in the thick of the action no doubt, where Mirovan would have been lucky to survive a week. After all, with their former general still alive there would always be the danger of dissent and mutiny among the men who had served under him. So, Mirovan is likely dead then. Not that I can fault Dushan’s decision-making in that regard, of course. Dissent is a cancer. If I had been in his position, I would have done the same myself.

  Then, looking at the eyes of the men seated around him, the Grand Marshal realised his mention of Mirovan’s name had apparently had an entirely unforeseen consequence. Every man there seemed in the grip of the same queasy discomfort as Dushan, as though the recollection of Mirovan’s sudden fall from grace had spooked them. Watching them, the Grand Marshal began to understand he had quite inadvertently achieved his orig
inal purpose. Mentioning Mirovan did the trick, he thought. That seems to have put the fear of the Emperor in them, all right. Not for the first time, Kerchan was left dazzled by the extent of his own genius when it came to motivating the men under his command. I didn’t even realise I was doing it, he thought. And yet still, by some happy accident, I seem to have created exactly the effect I wanted. No, not an accident. Unconsciously or not, the fact I achieved my aim means I must have intended to do so all along. There are no accidents when one is a Grand Marshal. Then, making the effort to summon his most carefully unreadable sinister half-smile, the Grand Marshal spoke to Dushan once more.

  “No matter, Dushan,” he said, noting with satisfaction that the man seemed little reassured by his manner. “It was simply an idle thought, nothing more. Now, on to other matters. Colonel Vlin? Who is scheduled to give the next briefing?”

  “Magos Garan, your excellency,” his adjutant said. “He wishes to advise us on the monthly production figures from the city’s munitions manufactoriums.”

  His brief mood of good humour abruptly evaporating, the Grand Marshal watched with a sinking heart as the hooded figure of the archmagos of the Adeptus Mechanicus in Broucheroc rose slowly to his feet. As much machine as man, covered in whirring devices that had kept their owner alive for far past the normal span of life, what could be seen of the magos’ aged and withered body from beneath his cloak no longer looked entirely human. Most disquieting of all were the mechadendrites: four thin tentacle-like mechanical arms that would periodically emerge from the folds of the magos’ cloak to make minute adjustments to the other machines that covered his flesh.

  Though as disturbing as he had always found the creature’s appearance, the real root of the Grand Marshal’s dislike of Magos Garan lay more in practical considerations than in anything so flighty as matters of aesthetics. Unlike the rest of the men seated around the briefing table, Magos Garan did not serve at the Grand Marshal’s whim. As the most senior member of the Adeptus Mechanicus in the city Garan was not here as a subordinate. Without the machine-adepts to keep the city’s manufactoriums working, the Grand Marshal would have no munitions for his troops. No new las-guns. No missile launchers. No replacement power packs. No grenades, mortar rounds, artillery shells, or any of the hundreds of other things the Guardsmen of the city needed daily to help them keep the orks at bay. As such, the Grand Marshal found himself forced to deal with Magos Garan as though he was the representative of some foreign power. A man to be negotiated and entreated with, but never commanded. An equal, not an inferior. Not being by inclination a man much given to the subtle intricacies of diplomacy, Kerchan had long found dealing with the haughty Magos to be a difficult burden to bear.