by Gav Thorpe
‘How, sir?’ I ask, curious as to what happened to the other lieutenant, one of the hundred and fifty Last Chancers who was alive two days ago and now is food for the flesh-ants of the nameless planet below us.
‘He was diced by a strangleweb,’ the Colonel says coldly, no sign of any emotion on his face at all. I wince inside – being slowly cut up as you try to struggle out of a constricting mesh of barbed muscle is a nasty way to go. Come to think of it, I’ve never thought of a nice way to go.
‘I am leaving it to you to organise the rest of the men into squads and to detail special duties,’ the Colonel says before stepping past me and striding down the corridor. A Departmento flunky swathed in an oversized brown robe hurries down to the Colonel carrying a massive bundle of parchments, and then they are both lost in the distant gloom.
‘Inside,’ orders an armsman from behind me, his nametag showing him to be Warrant Officer Hopkinsson.
The massive cell doors clang shut behind me, leaving me locked in this room with ten score murderers, thieves, rapists, heretics, looters, shirkers, desecrators, grave-robbers, necrophiles, maniacs, insubordinates, blasphemers and other assorted vermin for company. Still, it makes for interesting conversation sometimes.
‘Right!’ I call out, my voice rebounding off the high metal ceiling and distant bulkheads. ‘All sergeants get your sorry hides over here!’
As the order is passed around the massive holding pen, I gaze over my small force. There’s a couple of hundred of us left now, sitting or lying around in scattered groups on the metal decking, stretching away into the gloom of the chamber. Their voices babble quietly, making the metal walls ring slightly and I can smell their combined sweat from several days on the furnace-hot planet below. In a couple of minutes eight men are stood around me. I catch sight of an unwelcome face.
‘Who made you a sergeant, Rollis?’ I demand, stepping up to stand right in front of his blubbery face, staring straight into his beady black eyes.
‘Lieutenant Green did,’ he says defiantly, matching my stare.
‘Yeah? Well you’re just a trooper again now, you piece of dirt!’ I snap at him, pushing him away. ‘Get out of my sight, you fraggin’ traitor.’
‘You can’t do this!’ he shouts, taking a step towards me and half-raising a fist. My elbow snaps out sharply and connects with his throat, sending him gasping to the floor.
‘Can’t I?’ I snarl at him. ‘I guess I can’t do this either,’ I say, kicking him in the ribs. Forget about the murderers, it’s the out-and-out traitors like him that make me want to heave. With a venomous glance he gets to his hands and knees and crawls away.
‘Right,’ I say, turning to the others, putting the fat piece of filth from my mind. ‘Where were we?’
Alarm sirens are sounding everywhere, a piercing shrill that sets your teeth on edge. I’m standing with a pneu-mattock grasped in both hands, its engine chugging comfortably, wisps of oily smoke leaking from its exhaust vents.
‘Hurry up, wreck the place!’ someone shouts from behind me. I can hear the sound of machinery being smashed, pipelines being cut and energy coils being shattered. There’s a panel of dials in front of me and I place the head of the hammer against it, thumbing up the revs on the engine to full, the air filling with flying splinters of glass and shards of torn metal. Sparks of energy splash across my heavy coveralls, leaving tiny burn marks on the thick gloves covering my hands. I turn the pneu-mattock on a huge gear-and-chain mechanism behind the trashed panel, sending toothed wheels clanging to the ground and the heavy chain whipping past my head.
‘They’re coming!’ the earlier voice calls out over the din of twisting metal and fracturing glass. I look over my shoulder to see a bunch of security men hurrying through an archway to my left, wearing heavy carapace breastplates coloured dark red with the twisted chain and eye mark of the Harpikon Union picked out in bold yellow. They’ve all got vicious-looking slug guns, black enamelled pieces of metal that catch the light menacingly. People hurrying past jostle me, but it’s hard to see their faces, like they’re in a mist or something. I get a glimpse of a half-rotten skull resembling a man called Snowton, but I know that Snowton died a year ago fighting pirates in the Zandis Belt. Other faces, faces of men who are dead, flit past. There’s a thunderous roar and everybody starts rushing around. I realise that the Harpikon guards are firing. Bullets ricochet all over the place, zinging off pieces of machinery and thudding into the flesh of those around me. I try to run, but my feet feel welded to the floor. I look around desperately for somewhere to hide, but there isn’t anywhere. Then I’m alone with the security men, the smoking muzzles of their guns pointing in my direction. There’s a blinding flash and the thunder of shooting.
I wake up from the dream gasping for breath, sweat coating my skin despite the chill of the large cell. I fling aside the thin blanket that serves as my bed and sit up, placing my hands on the cold floor to steady myself as dizziness from the sudden movement swamps me. Gulping down what feels like a dead rat in my mouth, I look around. There’s the usual night-cycle activity – mumbles and groans from the sleepless, the odd murmured prayer as some other poor soul is afflicted by the sleep-daemons. It’s always the same once you’ve dropped into the Immaterium.
I’ve had the same nightmare every night in warpspace for the past three years, ever since I joined the Imperial Guard. I’m always back in the hive on Olympas, carrying out a wreck-raid on a rival factory. Sometimes it’s the Harpikon Union, like tonight; other times it’s against the Jorean Consuls; and sometimes even the nobles of the Enlightened, though we never dared do that for real. There’s always the walking dead as well. Folks from my past come back to haunt me: people I’ve killed, comrades who have died, my family, all of them appear in the nightmares. Lately I’ve realised that there’s more and more of them after every battle, like the fallen are being added to my dreams. I always end up dying as well, which is perhaps the most disturbing thing. Sometimes I’m blown apart by gunfire, other times I’m sawn in half by a poweraxe or a chainsword, sometimes I’m burnt alive by firethrowers. Several people have told me that the warp is not bound in time like the real universe. Instead, you might see images from your past or your future, all mixed together in strange ways. Interpreting warp dreams is a speciality of Lammax, one of the ex-Departmento men. I think they threw him into the penal legions for blasphemy after he offered to read the dreams of a quartermaster-major. He says it’s my fear of death being manifested.
Suddenly there’s a demented screaming from the far end of the cargo hold where we’re held, down where the lighting has gone fritzy and its arrhythmic pulsing gives you a headache. Nobody’s slept down there for months, not since there was enough room for everyone to fit in at this end. With everyone gathered in one cell now, someone must have had to try to get to sleep down there. I push myself to my feet and pull on my boots over my bare feet. As I walk towards the commotion, I rub a hand across my bared chest to wipe off the sweat. My body tingles all over with a bizarre feeling of energy, the map of scars traced out across my torso feels strangely hot under my fingertips. I look down, half-expecting the old wounds to be glowing. They’re not.
I tramp into the gloom, watched by most of the others. The screaming’s loud enough to wake up the Navy ratings on the next deck up. I understand their suspicion and morbid curiosity, because sometimes when a man starts screaming in warpspace, it’s not with his own voice. Luckily it’s never happened to anyone I know, but there are guys here who tell tales of men being possessed by creatures from the warp. They either go completely mad and kill a load of people before collapsing and dying, or they get taken over totally becoming a body for some strange creature’s mind, in which case they’ll stalk along the corridors calmly murdering anyone they come across. And that’s even when the Immaterium shielding is still working. You don’t want to know what happens on a ship whose warp-wards collapse under the continual assault from
formless beings intent on the death of the ship’s crew.
‘Emperor of Terra, watch over me,’ I whisper to myself as I’m halfway towards the source of the screeching. If it is a Touched One, this could be some really serious trouble. They don’t allow us anything that can be used as a weapon, so we’re virtually defenceless. Still, that’s just as well really, because there’d be a hell of a lot less of us left if we were armed. Fights break out a lot, but despite what some people think it takes a while to beat someone to death and somebody usually breaks it up before there’s a casualty. That said, if I wanted to kill someone I could, particularly if they’re sleeping.
My whole body’s shaking, and I’m not quite sure why. I try to tell myself it’s the cold, but I’m man enough to admit when I’m scared. Men don’t scare me, except perhaps the Colonel. Aliens give me shudders now and then, especially the tyranids, but there’s something about the idea of warp creatures that just shivers me the core, even though I’ve never had to face one. There’s nothing that I can think of in the galaxy that’s more unholy.
I can see someone thrashing around in a blanket ahead, just where the lights go gloomy. It’s hard to see in the intermittent haze of the broken glow-globe, but I think I see Kronin’s face twisting and turning. I hear footsteps behind me and turn suddenly, almost lashing out at Franx who’s got up and followed me.
‘Just warp-dreams,’ he tries to reassure me with a crooked smile, his big hands held up in reflex.
‘Like that makes me feel better,’ I reply shortly, turning back to the writhing figure of Kronin. I can just about make out words in the shrieks bursting from his contorted mouth.
‘And from the deeps… there arose a mighty beast, of many eyes… and many limbs. And the beast from the… darkness did set upon the light of mankind… with hateful thirst and unnatural hunger!’
‘Don’t wake him!’ Franx hisses as I reach out a hand towards the struggling figure.
‘Why not?’ I demand, kneeling down beside Kronin and glaring back at the sergeant.
‘Preacher Durant once said that waking a man with warp-dreams empties his mind, allows Chaos to seep in,’ he says with an earnest look in his face.
‘Well, I’ll just have to risk a bit of corruption, won’t I?’ I tell him, annoyed at what seems like a childish superstition to me. ‘If he carries on like that for the rest of the cycle, I’m not going to get any sleep at all.’
I rest a hand on Kronin’s shoulder, gently at first but squeezing more firmly when he continues to toss and turn. It still doesn’t do any good and I lean over him and slap him hard on the cheek with the back of my hand. His eyes snap open and there’s a dangerous light in them for a second, but that’s quickly replaced by a vague recognition. He sits up and looks straight at me, eyes squinting in the faltering light.
‘Saint Lucius spake unto the masses of Belushidar, and great was their uproar of delight,’ he says with a warm smile on his thin lips, but his eyes quickly fill with a haunted look.
‘Guess that means thanks,’ I say to Franx, standing up as Kronin lowers himself back down onto the blanket, glancing around once more before closing his eyes. I stay there for a couple more minutes until Kronin’s breathing is shallow and regular again, meaning he’s either really asleep or faking it well enough for me not to care any more.
Why the hell did Green have to get himself killed, I ask myself miserably as I trudge back to my sleeping area? I could do without the responsibility of wet-nursing this bunch of frag-for-brains criminals. It’s hard enough just to survive in the Last Chancers without having to worry about everyone else. I guess I’ll just have to not worry, let them take care of themselves. Hell, if they can’t do that, they deserve to die.
It’s a few days after the incident with Kronin, and we’re sitting down for mess in the middle of the cell, sprawled on the floor with dishes of protein globs in front of us. We have to spoon it out by hand; they won’t let us have any kind of cutlery in case it can be sharpened into a blade of some sort. It’s this kind of attitude that can really break a man – them not trusting you to even be able to sit down for a meal without being at each other’s throats. The food is also picked to grind you down. I know for a fact that they brought hundreds of horn-heads on board from the plains around Deliverance, but do we see any sign of freshly slaughtered meat? Do we ever. No, it’s just the same brown, half-liquid slush that you have to shovel into your mouth with your fingers, feeling it slide horribly down your throat with the consistency of cold vomit. You get used to it after a while, you have to. You just shove it in, swallow and hope you don’t gag too much. It doesn’t even taste of anything except the brackish water it’s mixed with. It’s cold and slimy, and more than once I’ve felt like hurling the stuff back into the armsmen’s faces, but that’d just get me a kicking and the chance to go hungry. For all of its lack of delights, it certainly fills your stomach and keeps you going, which is all it’s supposed to do.
As usual I’m sitting with Franx and Gappo, who are the closest thing to friends that I’ve got in this miserable outfit. We spend a few minutes cramming our faces with the sludge, before washing it down with reconstituted fruit juice. For some people, fruit juice might seem like an extravagance, but on board ship, where the air’s constantly refiltered over and over, and there’s only artificial light and close confines, it’s the best way of stopping any diseases. There are tales of whole ships’ crews being wiped out by Thalois fever or muritan cholettia, and that’s too much of a risk to take when you only need to give a man half a pint of juice a day to stave off the worst.
‘Ever thought of trying to get out while on board?’ Franx asks, using one of his little fingers to wipe the last bits of protein from the rim of his dish.
‘I’ve heard it isn’t impossible,’ Gappo says, pushing his dish away before digging into his mouth with a fingernail to extract a fragment of protein chunk lodged somewhere.
‘Some of the crew reckon there’s places a man can hide forever,’ I add before pouring the rest of the fruit juice in my mouth and swilling it around to remove the horrid texture left in there from the goop. ‘This ship isn’t that big, but there’s still hundreds of places where no one goes any more, places between the decks, in the ducting and down by the engines. You can creep out and steal what you need to eat, it wouldn’t be difficult.’
‘Yeah,’ Franx says with a curled lip, ‘but it ain’t exactly bloody freedom, is it?’
‘And what would you call freedom?’ Gappo asks, lying back onto his elbows, stretching his long legs out in front of him.
‘Not sure,’ the sergeant says with a shrug. ‘Guess I like to choose what I eat, where I go, who I know.’
‘I’ve never been able to do that,’ I tell them. ‘In the hive factories it’s just as much a matter of survival as it is here. Kill or be killed, win the trade wars or starve, it’s that simple.’
‘None of us knows what freedom is,’ Gappo says, rocking his head from side to side to work out a stiff muscle. ‘When I was a preacher, all I knew were the holy scriptures and the dogma of the Ecclesiarchy. They told me exactly how I was supposed to act and feel in any kind of situation. They told me who was right and who was wrong. I realise now that I didn’t really have any freedom.’
‘You know, I’m from an agri-world,’ Franx says. ‘Just a farmer, wasn’t much hardship. Had lots of machines, single man could tend fifteen hundred hectares. Was always plenty to eat, women were young and healthy, nothing more a man could want.’
‘So why the bloody hell did you join the Guard?’ Gappo blurts out, sitting bolt upright.
‘Didn’t get any fragging choice, did I?’ Franx says bitterly, a sour look on his face. ‘Got listed for the Departmento Munitorum tithe when orks invaded Alris Colvin. I was mustered. That was it, no choice.’
‘Yeah,’ I butt in, ‘but you must’ve settled in all right, you made major after all.’
‘But as you got promoted, that must have changed,’ Gappo interjects, leaning back again.
‘Did, that was the problem,’ Franx continues, ruffling his curly hair with a hand. ‘Higher up the chain of command I got, less I liked it. Soon making decisions that get men killed and maimed. All of a sudden it seemed like it was all my responsibility. Colonel was a born officer, one of the gentry, didn’t give a second thought to troopers, was just making sure he could sneak his way up the greasy pole of the upper ranks, hoping to make commander-general or warmaster.’
‘That’s why you went over the edge?’ I ask, knowing that Franx was in the Last Chancers for inciting subordination and disobeying orders.
‘Right,’ he says, face grim with the memory, voice deep and embittered. ‘Stuck in the middle of an ice plain on Fortuna II, been on half rations for a month because the rebels kept shooting down our supply shuttles. Got the order to attack a keep called Lanskar’s Citadel, two dozen leagues across bare ice. Officers were dining on stewed horndeer and braised black ox, drinking Chanalain brandy; my men were eating dried food substitutes and making water from snow. Led my two companies into the officers’ camp and demanded supplies for the march. Departmento bastards turned us down flat and the men went on the rampage, looting everything. Didn’t try to stop them, they were cold and starving. What was I supposed to do? Order them back into the ice wastes to attack an enemy-held fort with empty stomachs?’
‘That’s kinda what happened to you, Gappo,’ I say to the ex-preacher, making a pillow out of my thin blanket and lying down with my hands behind my head.
