by Henry Zou
‘Thank you, lieutenant. I appreciate that,’ crackled the headset. ‘Look, we won’t need you right now so get some sleep while you can. I have a feeling that over the coming weeks you’ll become my favourite person, Duponti. Expect to hear from me plenty, over.’
‘I’ll catch a nap when I can, sir. Nothing further? Over.’
‘Nothing further. Out.’ The vox-channel went dead.
With that Duponti tilted his Lightning into a tight ascent. His pupils were dilated and his breath was coming sharp and fast from the stimms. There was no way he could get to sleep now. The dawn sun bathed his cockpit in a hard orange glow and Duponti continued to chase it, engines burning as he climbed the sky.
Chapter Four
Mautista wandered into the village in a daze.
He had no idea how long he had been walking, or how far he had walked. He only knew that his bleeding feet had carried him into a rural hamlet, deep inland.
It was a village that Mautista did not recognise. Rows of huts with roofs of rusting corrugated metal lined a dirt road. Poultry pecked aimlessly on the ground, fish dried on racks in the sun and old men squatted on the stoops of their huts. Behind both rows of homes, a grid of paddy fields provided much of the village’s sustenance and trade during the dry season. It was a familiar sight, like most Bastón villages, but Mautista had never been here before.
‘Where are the Dos Pares?’ Mautista began to howl. ‘Where? If they defend Bastón, where are they when it matters?’
The villagers shrank away from the newcomer who had wandered into their town. Most walked briskly in the opposite direction, darting frightened glances in his direction, and even the wandering poultry were startled by his outburst.
‘Where are you? Show yourselves!’ Mautista screamed. Mad with grief, he stumbled towards the closest hut. A middle-aged woman shushed her curious children into the house and slammed the tin sheet door, just as Mautista reached it. Delirious, he began clawing at the door. He knew that every village in Bastón had a contact with the insurgency in some way, whether it be child-spy or fisherman but, either way, the Dos Pares had eyes and ears in all places.
A handful of stout village men encircled him warily – the mad man in Kalisador garb, dishevelled though he was, was no less a frightening sight. They surrounded him but kept a hesitant berth. ‘Fetch help,’ one of them decided, and with that they left Mautista well alone to howl at the sky. Soon, most of the village had shuttered their windows and barred their ramshackle doors, leaving Mautista to vent his anger alone.
Mautista collapsed on the ground and fell asleep. When he awoke, he was roused by the rumble of engines. He felt as if he had slept for hours, but it could not have been for long as the villagers had yet to re-emerge. Bleary eyed, Mautista pulled himself up and looked down the single dirt-track that led out of the village. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he saw approaching vehicles in the distance. As they rumbled down the winding dirt road from the hills, he could make out an agri-truck and a rural autobus. By the time the vehicles applied their squealing brakes, Mautista was waiting for them alone in the middle of the dirt-track. He already knew who these people were – they were insurgents of the Dos Pares, they were Carnibalès. The truck and autobus ground to a halt just metres before him, wheels throwing up a fan of dust.
Almost twenty Carnibalès fighters piled off the vehicles – an entire insurgent warband. At first glance they looked like any other villagers, clad in rural canvas garb and salvaged scraps of PDF leather armour. But there was a ferocity to their demeanour. Mautista had seen livestock bandits before and these men had the same ruthless look about them. Some were shaven-headed while others styled their hair into oiled topknots. Many others hid their faces beneath wound strips of leather so only their eyes could be seen. One brute even had traditional protective scripts tattooed into his shaven scalp: text and diagrammatic shapes criss-crossing his entire head and neck.
‘I want to join the Dos Pares cause,’ Mautista began. ‘I want to kill Imperial men–’
The brute with the tattooed scalp punched him in the jaw before he could finish speaking. Before he realised what had happened, Mautista was on his back looking up at the sky.
‘Balls of a great ape,’ spat the insurgent. ‘Who do you think you are? Coming into our region and causing enough trouble for these folk to send for us.’ The insurgent stamped down on his ribs with the flat of his hemp sandal. ‘Well we are here now. Is this what you wanted?’
Mautista did not have a chance to reply. The other Carnibalès swarmed over him, beating his prone form. The Kalisador fought back even as the warband laid into him, groping out and catching someone’s hand in the kicking, stamping mess. Immediately, Mautista began to apply a wristlock, one of the basic principles of Kalisador duelling known as ‘defanging the snake’. He applied pressure by bending the victim’s hand even as someone stepped hard on his ankle. A kick broke his nose with a wet snap. Someone else began to pull at his mane of hair but Mautista would not relinquish the wristlock. The Kalisador swore to himself, even as fists pounded the back of his head, that he would break that hand if it cost him his life. Finally, as his vision hazed from concussion, he wrestled the hand into an unnatural angle and snapped it. There was a popping crunch, but Mautista had no time to savour his victory. The beating continued as the village crowd gathered around, watching.
Eventually, the blows wilted and slowed. With one last kick, the Carnibalès warband parted away and towered over the Kalisador. Mautista did not know what he looked like, but judging by the blood rolling in oily sheets down his forehead, he must have been a mess. He breathed heavily and bubbles of blood frothed at the corners of his mouth. He staggered onto his feet, wincing as bruised joints clicked into place.
One of the insurgents in the mob began wailing. ‘He broke my hand!’ he shouted, nursing his shattered wrist. ‘Frag! He broke it!’
The insurgents glared at Mautista as one. Twenty wild, ferocious men staring at him with murderous rage.
‘He fragging deserved it,’ Mautista managed to say. When he smiled, blood drooled out of his numb lips.
The insurgents immediately surged forwards, a swarm of flailing fists. The Kalisador turtled up, shielding his head from the worst of the blows. Rough hands seized his clothing, pulling and tearing at him. For each hand that lingered too long, Mautista reached out and snapped fingers. Disarming an opponent’s weapons or neutralising his ability to fight was one of the primary methods of Kalisador unarmed fighting and, although Mautista had never excelled in that area, he was more than capable against untrained combatants. Mautista continued to break fingers and he counted seven digits. It was the only thing that kept his mind off the pain.
When the insurgents had finished with him, Mautista was wedged against the wooden fence palings of a poultry coop. His left eye had swollen shut and his right eye was almost the same. Hazily he could see villagers forming a curious ring around the Carnibalès who encircled him. In a way, Mautista was glad he could not see them properly, if he had perhaps he would not have been so brave.
‘I broke seven of your fingers, something to remember me by,’ the Kalisador croaked. He tried to laugh, but it hurt to breathe and he trembled instead. He was sure they were going to kill him. He wanted them to kill him. He wanted to die so he could see his tribe again. The insurgents edged in closer, several of them nursing mangled hands. Then tattoo-neck slid a knife from his rope belt with slow deliberation. Mautista tried to get up.
‘Tacion, enough. That one is a tough and very stupid boy,’ called a man as he stepped from the autobus’s accordion doors. The Carnibalès parted to let him through and Mautista almost thought he was not a man at all. He was one of the tallest men Mautista could ever remember seeing, taller even than the off-worlders. The man’s entire bone structure seemed elongated, with shank-boned forearms and tall blades for shins. This unusual appearance was enhanced by white chalk
daubed all over his skin and black paint smeared on his mouth and around his eyes. With slow, unfolding strides, the man approached Mautista, his ex-militia leather armour creaking.
‘I want to become a Carnibalès,’ Mautista wheezed.
‘Yes, you do,’ agreed the ghost face. ‘I can see that you do.’ He crouched down next to the Kalisador and cupped Mautista’s head in his hands. His fingers were cold and strong, pinning Mautista’s head against the fence. With thumb and forefinger, he stretched the skin around Mautista’s eyes, while peering into them.
‘Are you looking to see if I lie?’ said Mautista without flinching.
Ghost-face smiled in reply. ‘No. I’m checking for concussion.’ Finally satisfied, ghost-face gripped the backplate of Mautista’s crab shell, levering him upright with surprising ease. As he patted dust and blood off the Kalisador’s breastplate, Mautista realised that he was a full head and shoulders taller.
‘Are you of the Dos Pares?’ Mautista dared to ask.
‘I am a Disciple. One of many direct students of the Dos Pares. I will tell you my name once you tell me yours.’
‘Mautista of the Taboon people,’ Mautista began, and then haltingly corrected himself. ‘I was of the Taboon people.’
‘I am Tabinsay. I have the authority to recruit you to become a Carnibalès. Is that really what you want?’
‘I’m bleeding all over the dirt, am I not?’
Tabinsay clapped his hands in soft amusement. ‘Very true.’ Standing up, the Disciple beckoned towards his men. ‘Blindfold our guest. We’ll take him with us.’
Mautista did not even have time to say his thanks before the mob was on him again, binding his hands with cord and lashing a cloth around his eyes with a brusqueness that was all too familiar. Soon they were frog-marching him up onto the agri-truck, ready to take him to the inland hills.
Mautista began to count in his head, slowly, one by one, focusing his mind on the rhythm of one number following another. The road up the hills was rough and nauseous. Blindfolded as he was, Mautista felt every bounce along the dirt-track as the truck’s wheels sought purchase along the steep climb. So it was of great relief when the truck finally lurched to a halt. Mautista had lost count by then and he had no idea how long it had been.
As the blindfold was wrenched off his head, Mautista squinted out of the truck’s flatbed and took in his surroundings. They were in an isolated village, so deep inland that the air seemed thick with leaves. Everywhere he looked, vines and creepers criss-crossed his vision, while drooping beards of curtain figs touched his head from an eighty-metre high canopy. Amongst the deeply ridged trunks of moss pillars, rings of lean-tos crouched beneath their girth. Mautista had expected some kind of military base like the militia installations from before the war, or perhaps a fortress of some kind. This settlement, with its scattering of lean-tos, was not where the proud resistance was based. Or, at least, that was what Mautista had envisaged.
‘Is this the Dos Pares camp?’ Mautista asked the insurgent seated next to him. The insurgent shot him a knowing smile.
‘You’ll see.’
And see he did. The insurgents concealed their vehicles with tarpaulins before stooping into a nearby lean-to. The sheet of tin, propped against sprawling taproots, concealed a trapdoor below it. Mautista slid down feet first, followed by the insurgents one after another. The opening was barely wide enough for his shoulders and once inside it was little better. They moved along at a semi-crouch, scraping their heads against the low wooden rafters above. Luminite strips glowed dull blue along the tunnel, sometimes branching off in forks, leading them deeper and deeper into the subterranean depths. At certain intervals, Mautista had to avoid knocking over caches of arms: strongboxes of ammunition and lasguns propped upright against the walls.
‘Who built these?’ Mautista asked.
‘We did,’ replied Tabinsay from behind him. ‘The Dos Pares planned this, and our people dig. Sometimes I don’t see the sun for weeks,’ he said, his white pallor almost luminescent in the dim lighting. ‘We come out only in the night.’
In some parts the tunnels dipped into wider, larger bunkers, their walls supported by interlocking logs and hard-packed clay. Some of these bunkers were lined with rows of sleeping cots, while others were storage sheds. One in particular was some sort of crude weapons factory, scattered with workbenches and tools of a metal smith. The insurgent labourers looked up from their work to glare warily as Mautista crept past them.
‘Through here,’ Tabinsay instructed, pointing at a small, square opening in the wall no more than fifty centimetres in height and width. It would no doubt require Mautista to crawl on his hands and knees, an agonising task considering the injuries he had sustained. But on he crawled through the serpentine stretch, as his bruised ribs rubbed against the ground the entire way.
Mautista shimmied out into a bunker, Canceo following close behind. He found himself in another underground chamber girded by logs and lit by vapour lanterns. The sodium glare illuminated overlapping maps and charts on the walls. More paper spillage lined the floors, printed leaflets of propaganda showing crude pictures of happy, smiling villagers standing over a trampled Imperial aquila.
‘Simple, but fine illustrations, aren’t they?’
Mautista was surprised to see a trio of tall, white-painted men squatting around the bunker where he didn’t see them before. Like Tabinsay they too were raw-boned and lean – somehow stretched – yet there were subtle differences. One of them, the closest to Mautista, had long tendrils of hair, like white tentacles that seemed to merge seamlessly with the flesh of his scalp. Another Disciple seemed even more distorted, the bones of his shoulders and knuckles distended to thick, rock-like proportions. The abnormal changes fascinated Mautista and the Kalisador instantly knew that these men were somehow different from the regular Carnibalès.
‘Yes. Quite beautiful,’ Mautista replied, picking up a leaflet. While looking at the sketched renderings of the joyous villagers and the Imperial defeat, the Kalisador thought about the Taboon people and felt a strong yearning. There was something to the strokes of ink on that paper which stoked a surge of pride in him. For the first time since the massacre of his people, Mautista’s anguish was replaced by a hot spike of purpose.
‘You no doubt wish to join our cause? Otherwise you wouldn’t be here alive,’ said the Disciple with the flesh-ridged scalp. He spoke to Mautista while barely acknowledging him, working a guillotine rack with deft, practised fingers, chopping wide sheaves of papers into smaller blank leaflets.
‘More than anything,’ Mautista proclaimed.
‘I’m curious, Kalisador,’ said the one with distorted shoulders. When he spoke, his voice was low and garbled, as if his jawbones were too wide for his skull. ‘You look a frightful, bleeding mess. Why?’
‘I can explain that,’ said Tabinsay. ‘We beat him. Hard. But he wouldn’t stay down, kept fighting back and even broke the hands of several of my best shooters.’
Suddenly, all three Disciples in the bunker looked up and regarded him with raised eyebrows of respect. ‘A true Kalisador,’ said one.
‘We can find a place for you in the insurgency, if you are willing to learn amongst normal Bastón-born men – farmers, boatsmen and beggars alike.’
Mautista nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘Good,’ grunted blunt-jaw. ‘Blood-brother Tabinsay will take you to the barracks. You should clean up, rest. Tend to your injuries. We’ll call for you before dawn tomorrow and assign you to a training mob.’
‘When do I get a gun?’ Mautista asked.
‘Soon. Now go,’ said the Disciple, waving him away.
For the first several days, the 88th Battalion slid along the Serrado Delta. They travelled slowly, particularly along the narrow winding inlets. There amongst the needle rushes and overhanging bowers, insurgents liked to take potshots at passing river patrols
and, in such confined areas, the snipers often picked off two or three soldiers before melting into the wilderness. As a consequence, the convoy crept with their engines humming quietly, guns facing all directions, all eyes scrutinising the dense undergrowth for any signs of irregularity, perhaps the curve of a hat, or a patch of cloth amongst the green.
However, the battalion received no fire in those few days of the operation. They were still close to the green zone and it was well known that the insurgents were terrified of straying too far along the coastal regions. They were too frightened to come within range of Imperial support weapons to engage troops so close to Imperial-controlled provinces.
They were far too frightened of the Vultures.
This close to the seaboard base camps, a Vulture gunship could be voxed and en route within minutes. With an operative distance of five hundred kilometres, the gunships threatened a wide radius of wilderness that the Carnibalès insurgents had taken to calling the ‘death circle’. Only the hardiest or bravest insurgents dared to operate within the death circle. At any moment, a Vulture could rise above the canopy, its presence heralded by the ominous whup whup whup of turbine engines. The sound itself was enough to send insurgents scrambling into hiding. There the Vultures would hover above the canopy, pivoting on the spot while hunting for movement. Once sighted, the Vulture would sound its guns, thunderous and clapping like a locomotive chattering through a tunnel.
Vultures were heavily favoured by the 31st Riverine. Back home on Ouisivia, the swamp orks were so wary of these war machines that they considered them an incarnation of Gork’s wrath. And indeed, there was a crude resemblance; painted in the jade green and tan of the Riverine with its sloping, pugnacious profile, the Vulture was a predator in the field of war. A chin-mounted heavy bolter was housed below the cockpit, while two autocannons were cradled in hard points beneath its wings. These weapons discharged in rotation so that while one fired, the others would load, generating enough firepower to flatten a hectare of mangrove into quagmire within a minute.
