Hark deflected the strike with his augmetic hand. Drilled chips of steel and black plastek flew off his hand-plant as the buzzing weapon wrenched away.
A knife was one thing, but you didn’t fool with a chain fist. It offered no latitude, no second chances. The moment the chain fist appeared, the situation stopped being aggravating and became serious. Fight time spun faster.
The man was saying something. Hark didn’t let him start or finish. He kicked the man in the groin, punched him in the mouth, then gripped him around the throat and slammed him back against the filthy wall of the mess well. He kept the grip tight, reinforcing it with his knee and the rest of his body weight. His augmetic arm pinned the chain fist out, helpless.
“Drop it,” Hark instructed.
“Ghhk!” the man choked.
“Now would be good.”
“Gnhh!”
“Two or three more seconds will make the difference between penal service and summary execution. Write your own sentence.”
The man shook the chain fist off his hand. It dropped onto the ground, bounced twice, and lay there, twitching like an insect, eating into the deck.
“Penal service it is,” Hark said. He stepped back and let go. The man staggered forward, regaining his breath.
“One last point,” Hark added. He punched the man in the side of the head with his augmetic. The man tumbled the length of the wall and fell on his face. His skull was probably fractured. A mercy, Hark considered. Thirty years on a penal colony would probably pass a lot easier if you were simple from brain-damage.
Fight time ceased. Breathing hard suddenly, Hark took a step backwards and checked himself. No damage. No wounds. You could take a lot in the unreality of fight time and only learn about it afterwards. He’d been taught that on Herodor. When the loxatl had blown his arm off, he hadn’t realised at first.
He looked around at the grunting, coughing bodies around him.
“You stupid bastards,” he said. He reached into his coat pocket and hooked out his vox.
“Hark to Commissariate control.”
“Reading you, commissar.”
“Verify my position via vox-link.”
“Verified, commissar. One eight one oh low quarters.”
“Thank you. Despatch a handling team to that location. Five, repeat five Hauberkan troopers for detention. Zero tolerance. I’ll file charges later.”
“Handling team on its way, commissar. Do you require medicae attention?”
“Yes, for them.”
“Also despatched. Will you remain on station, sir?”
Above, at gangway level, the troupe was passing by again. Hark heard the pipes, and the tune got into his head for a second time. Like a dream when—
“Sir, will you remain on station?”
Hark shook himself. He saw the coat and cap lying on the ground.
“Feth… Ludd…”
“Sir?” the vox crackled.
“No, I won’t. Deal with this.” He started to run, towards the stairs, up them two at a time. He came up onto the busy gangway, and knocked his way through the capering troupe. The piper stopped playing.
“Hey!” he complained.
“Not now,” Hark warned.
Ludd took his auto-snub out of his pocket and aimed it at the strong-arms.
“That’s close enough,” he said. He wondered what was wrong with them. He had a gun to them, and they weren’t backing down.
The pound music behind him had got louder suddenly.
“We have a problem?” asked a silky voice.
His eye and aim still on the circle of strong-arms, Ludd glanced sideways and saw Pawer beside him. Pawer was calmly standing there, side on to Ludd, looking at the muscle.
“Yes, we have a problem,” Ludd said tightly.
Pawer nodded. “You, I don’t know,” he said, still not looking at Ludd. “You, you’re new to me.”
“Nahum Ludd, Commissariate,” Ludd said.
“Well, they all say that, don’t they?” Pawer chuckled. The strong-arms nodded.
Ludd gently took a step or two backwards until he was covering Pawer and the thugs. Pawer turned slowly to face him.
“I am Junior Commissar Nahum Ludd,” Ludd stated.
“Junior commissar, is it?” Pawer nodded. That’s nice. A nice touch of reality. A nice detail. More credible. Junior commissar. Here’s a tip. Next time you play the part, get yourself a cap and a coat. Live the role.”
“I’m going to reach for my insignia now,” Ludd said, his left hand straying towards his breast pocket. “No one do anything stupid.”
Pawer shrugged in a “take your time” kind of way. “Only one of us here doing that,” he said.
Ludd flashed his warrant card.
“All right then,” Pawer admitted. “You’re a commissar. I don’t want any trouble. I run a decent establishment and—”
“Stop talking,” said Ludd. “This place persists thanks to the tolerant attitude of this vessel and its Commissariat function. In fact, it’s not an ‘establishment’. It’s a hole in the wall. It’s a den. You so much as cough wrong and we ship you out. You have no rights, no influence, and feth all authority. So stop pretending like you run the finest saloon on Khan Nobilis.”
Pawer nodded. “I understand my place, Junior Commissar Nahum Ludd. I am a little man, and I scrape by. Let us reach an understanding. What is the nature of your problem?”
“Your men were busy killing one of my troopers,” Ludd said.
“That ugly shit?” Pawer shrugged. “You even care what happens to him? He broke house rules. He staked too high against the bank. My cash hurts me when someone plays rough with it. Yes, my boys were going to kill him. A lesson.”
“You admit it?”
“Where’s the point in denying it?”
“You wouldn’t get away with it,” Ludd said.
Pawer brought out a lho-stick and lit it. He exhaled smoke. You know the turbine halls, Junior Commissar Nahum Ludd?”
“By the reactor engines? Yes.”
“Furnace domes down there. Big and hot. Melt skin and bone in a second. We kill a trooper or two who insults my establishment, there’s no trace. All gone in a puff of ash. No awkward questions. No come-back. Tidy. This I do to keep the peace.”
“You’re admitting to murder?”
Pawer shrugged.
“Why would you do that? To me? I’m a juni—I’m a commissar! I’ve got you at gun-point. I—”
He hesitated. The strong-arms laughed. Pawer smiled.
“You’ve got me, haven’t you?” Ludd asked.
Ludd felt the cold nudge of a pistol’s muzzle at the nape of his neck. Pawer hadn’t emerged from his den alone. Another of his boys stood behind Ludd, gun aimed at the back of his head.
“One body into the furnace domes? Two? Makes no odds to me. I’m a business man, Junior Commissar Nahum Ludd. I’ve got a hole in the wall to run.”
Pawer pinched the lho-stick between his lips and took out a roll of notes. “If you’d like to walk away” he said, edging the words out around his smoke. “I can make it worth your while. How much does your blind eye cost?”
“If I took your bribe,” Ludd said, “I could still report you.”
“Ah,” said Pawer, halting his shuffle of cash. “You’ve seen the flaw in my argument. You know too much.”
Something odd happened. Time seemed to dilate. Ludd flinched, expecting to feel the hot round scorch through his brain case from behind, and his finger began to squeeze the trigger of his auto-snub. A gunshot rang out, and something hot and wet splashed across the back of Ludd’s head and shoulders.
Pawer was yelling. The strong-arms were moving. Ludd fired, and dropped the first of them with a bullet to the chest.
“Balance of power restored,” said a voice. “Get your hands on your heads, you feth-wipes.”
Viktor Hark stepped into Ludd’s field of vision. He was aiming a large combat automatic at Pawer. The muzzle was breathing sm
oke.
“On your knees!” Hark growled. Pawer and his men obliged quickly. The man Ludd had shot lay on his face in a slick of blood.
“All right, Ludd?” Hark asked.
Ludd nodded. He looked behind him. A body lay on the ground, a pistol in its hand. The headshot had blown most of its cranium away. Ludd realised what was dripping down his back.
“Commissar Hark,” Hark announced, routinely. “This is the end. Expect no mercy and resign yourselves to a life of misery.”
Pawer started to wail. Hark kicked him in the ribs.
Ludd stepped past the cowering men and reached Merrt. “We need a medicae,” he said, after a quick inspection. “Right now.”
Hark nodded and reached for his vox.
Pawer’s Place closed forever about fifteen minutes later. It wasn’t the first establishment on the swelter decks to come and go so fast, and it wouldn’t be the last. As the Commissariate troops led Pawer and the strong-arms away in chains, the girls grabbed their things and fled.
“What about Merrt?” Ludd asked.
“What about you?” Hark answered. “You sure you’re all right?”
“It was weird for a moment,” Ludd confessed. “Back there, I mean. Thank you, sir. I thought I was dead.”
“These things happen. Weird how?”
“Ah, well… everything seemed to speed up and slow down, all at once.”
Hark nodded. “Fight time,” he said, as if that explained everything.
V
Larkin let the view through the sniper scope drift and settle until the reticule was framing his target. The young man. A boy really. How old was he? Eighteen standard? The very thought made Larkin feel as old and leaden as a dying sun. He couldn’t remember being eighteen himself. Wouldn’t, actually. Trying to remember being an eighteen year old required him to recall a place and a time, and that place was Tanith, in the deep woods. Larkin didn’t like to think about Tanith. After all these years, it was still too bleak and private a loss.
He remembered the boy, though. The kid must’ve been about ten when he’d come to them. That had been after Vervunhive, after that grinding war, when the First-and-Only’s ranks had been swelled by the Verghastite intake. Just a refugee kid, with a baby sister, another two souls dragged along with the followers on the strength. A pair of orphans rescued and protected with maternal fury by a bleach-blonde hiver girl with too many piercings and too many tats.
The hiver girl’s name had been Tona Criid. Now she was Sergeant Criid, the regiment’s first female officer, a comrade and a friend, her military record outstanding, her worth proved ten times over. Larkin owed her his life, more than once, and had returned the favour, more than once. Seeing her that first time, on the embarkation fields outside Vervunhive, scrawny, dirty, full of rage and spite, dragging two filthy children into the landers with her, Larkin would never have imagined befriending her, or admiring her.
How times changed. He admired her now. For everything she’d done, and everything she was, and every charge she’d led against the Archenemy of Mankind. But most of all, he admired her for being a mother to two kids who weren’t hers. For raising them in this squalid, itinerant life.
She’d done a good job. The boy was tall, strong, good looking. Like his father. He had a confidence to him, and smarts, and an easy way with others. And it wasn’t just what he was. It was what he represented.
Larkin watched Dalin Criid approaching through his scope for a while longer, then lowered it and pretended to clean it. He had sat himself down outside the main hatch of the barrack hall, his back against the khaki metal of the wall. The excuse was that the uninterrupted length of the concourse outside gave him the chance to test and recalibrate his gunsight.
He took out a patch of vizzy cloth, and began polishing the lenses. His long-las, broken down, lay on the deck beside him in its bag.
People came and went down the echoing concourse. Dalin came up to him.
“Keeping your eye in, Larks?” he asked, coming to a halt over the cross-legged man.
“Never hurts,” Larkin replied.
Dalin nodded. He paused. He didn’t expect much, but he thought there might be something. A comment about his first day, perhaps.
“You all right?” Larkin asked looking up.
“Yes. Yeah, I’m fine. You?”
“Golden as the Throne itself,” Larkin said, and returned his attention to his work.
“Well. Good. I’ll see you, then,” Dalin said.
Larkin nodded. Dalin waited a second longer and then walked away through the hatch into the barrack hall.
Larkin touched his micro-bead link. “He’s coming,” he said.
“He’s coming,” said Varl. “Are you coming?”
Gol Kolea sat on the edge of his cot, turning the pages of an instructional primer on spiritual faith.
“He won’t want me there, getting in the way,” Kolea replied.
“Yes, he will,” said Varl, arms folded, leaning on the frame of the billet cage.
“Why?”
Varl shrugged. “Dunno. Perhaps because you’re his father? Stop pretending to read and get off your arse.”
Kolea scowled. “How do you know I’m pretending to read?”
Arms still folded, Varl very slowly and very gently tilted his upper body over until his head was almost upside down. “You’re holding that book the wrong way up.”
Kolea blinked and stared at the primer in his hands. “No, I’m not.”
Varl straightened up. “Yeah, but you had to check. Stop prevaricating and get off your arse.”
Kolea tossed the book aside and got up. “All right,” he said. “But only because you used a word like ‘prevaricating’ and now I’m scared to be alone with you.”
“He’s coming,” said Domor.
“Already?” Caffran replied.
“Larks just voxed.”
“Did you get it?” Caffran asked. He was busy folding the blanket back on the billet cage’s cot.
Shoggy Domor’s eyes would have twinkled in an avuncular manner if they hadn’t been oversized augmetic implants. He reached into his musette bag and slid out the bottle of sacra. The bottle, a re-used water flask, had a handwritten label “Try Again Finest”.
“The real stuff,” said Domor, tossing it to Caffran. Caffran caught the bottle and smiled at the label.
“Not fresh and burn-your-belly out of Costin’s still,” Domor added. “That’s the real thing. Matured. Vintage. Laid down.”
“Laid down?”
“In Obel’s foot locker, for ‘future pleasures’, but it’s the stuff.”
“It cost?”
Domor shook his head. “When I told Obel what it was for, he just handed it over. ‘Wet the baby’s head’, he said.”
“He’s not a baby.”
“He’s not.”
“He’s not!”
“I know he’s not.”
“Just so we’re clear. How do I look?”
Domor shrugged. “Like a tight-arse feth? What did you do, starch your uniform?”
Caffran paused. “Yes,” he confessed.
Domor sniggered. “Then you have succeeded in looking like a tight-arse feth.”
“Thanks. Why are you my friend again?”
“Pure fething accident,” Domor smiled.
A head poked round the cage door. It was gnarled and ugly, like the protruding head of a startled tortoise.
“Hello, father,” said Domor.
“He’s coming!” announced Zweil.
“We know, father. So are we,” Caffran replied.
“Big day,” Zweil added. He looked at Caffran and frowned. “Tight-arse feth. Was that the look you were shooting for, son?”
“Be quiet,” said Caffran.
Barrack Hall 22 was a vast enclosure given over to the billets of the Tanith First-and-Only. Across the concourse, the Kolstec 15th were housed in similar conditions. Something over four thousand troopers, packed away for the long voyage, fo
r the long walk down Glory Road.
The billets themselves were metal-framed boxes five storeys deep. Each trooper had a cage-walled cell, like animals in a battery farm. Every cell had a cot and locker, and most troopers improved privacy with strategically arranged ground sheets and camo-cloaks.
It was sweaty-hot and noisy. A fug of smoke hung in the chamber roof from the lho-sticks and pipes. A chemical stench issued from the latrines at the southern end. The Tanith lay around, relaxing, leaning on staircases, playing cards and regicide, basking on folding chairs. In the open space beyond the billet cages, troopers were playing a loud game of kick-ball, stripped to their vests. Tanith, Verghastite, Belladon. Three races now bound together as one fighting unit.
Dalin walked in through the campsite. He felt a vague despondency. No one acknowledged him, not even the men who he regularly chatted to. A few “hellos”, a few nods. No one asked how his day had gone.
That was all right, though. He didn’t want a fuss. He had been one of them for a long time, but not one of them. Now, finally, he was turning eighteen, and training for his tags. This had been his aspiration, his whole life. To be one of them, equal, an Imperial Guardsman.
Dalin sometimes wondered if he would have aspired to the Guard if his life had followed a different path. If war hadn’t blown out the home-hive he grew up in, He probably would’ve become a seam miner, like his dad. His real dad. But war had embraced him, and warriors had carried him away, and their calling was all that appealed to him now. To be a Guard. To be a Ghost, more importantly. One of Gaunt’s chosen.
To fight and, if necessary, die, in the name of the God-Emperor of Mankind.
He hurt. Damn Kexie and Saroo. He hurt, and all he wanted was to collapse on his cot and sleep the pain off.
He walked around the end of the fifth cage block and into the circulating space where troopers dozed and gamed. He heard a strange sound, staccato, like gun-fire.
It was applause.
To a man and a woman, the Ghosts had risen to their feet all around him, and were clapping wildly. He stopped and blinked.
“Dalin Criid! Dalin Criid! First day in ‘I’, everyone! Dalin Criid!”