Contents

Cover

The Only Good Ork – Sandy Mitchell

Notes

About the Author

An Extract from ‘For The Emperor’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

The Only Good Ork

by Sandy Mitchell

There’s never a good time to come face to face with an ork, but doing so while crawling from the wreck of a crashed Salamander is one of the least propitious. What made the surprise even less welcome was that, until that moment, I’d had no idea that any of the creatures were even in the area at all. I suppose I shouldn’t have been completely taken aback; Frumenta had been infested with them a few decades prior to the experience, until the Guard had arrived to clear them out – a job they’d performed with commendable efficiency. But, as always, there had been occasional localised outbreaks in the years since, which the Frumentan militia had been more than capable of mopping up. At least until they’d turned out to be infested with genestealers, turned on one another and sparked a full-scale civil war, which the Astra Militarum had been sent back in to deal with.

I’d been dragged into the whole dismal affair, despite being officially retired by now, by virtue of passing through the void station that the task force was assembling around at just the wrong moment. Refusing to tag along at the lord general’s personal request would have put more of a dent in my undeserved, but undeniably useful on occasion, reputation than I could afford, not to mention our personal friendship. And then there was Amberley, and my well-concealed avocation as one of her Inquisitorial errand boys – a hitherto unsuspected genestealer infestation on such a scale was sure to be of interest to the Ordo Xenos. Which meant, in turn, that she was liable to be a bit miffed with me if I passed up the chance to acquire some intelligence on the spot, a complication my life could well have done without.

So, with carefully concealed reluctance, I let my waiting sinecure on Perlia slide still further into the indefinite future, and embarked for an unremarkable agri-world little different to a score of others. On arrival I attached myself to the general staff, made sure my successor wasn’t being too much of a nuisance to Zyvan (which she wasn’t, as I’d made sure the Commissariat would appoint someone pragmatic enough to just let him get on with the job before I left) and busied myself making morale-boosting visits to whichever regiments seemed sufficiently far away from the fighting at the moment, picking up whatever scraps of information I could for Amberley along the way.

Which was how I’d eventually found myself in the Cascades, an area of high peaks, deep gorges and spectacular waterfalls, which had been a popular tourist destination away from the intensely cultivated zones in more peaceful times. Many of the genestealer cultists retreating in the face of the Guard advance had sought refuge there, counting on the rugged terrain and sparse population to let them effectively disappear. It might even have worked if the narrow, twisting roads over the mountain passes hadn’t funnelled their vehicles into a limited number of transit corridors, making them sitting waterfowl for our air corp’s Vendetta gunships. I’d just finished a typical visit to one of the forward airstrips, where I’d dispensed a few platitudes, shaken a few hands and enjoyed an indifferent lunch, when we drove into an ambush, presumably set for the supply trucks which kept the flyboys fed.

My first intimation of trouble was a las-bolt, which impacted on the rim of the Salamander’s open passenger compartment, followed by a number of others as I ducked behind the comforting solidity of the armour plate.

‘Jurgen,’ I voxed, tapping the comm-bead in my ear, ‘we’re taking fire.’ Not that I was particularly concerned. The sturdy little scout vehicle could shrug off a great deal worse than that, and had probably come as a nasty surprise to the insurgents, who’d no doubt been expecting nothing tougher than a lorry or two they could disable and loot.

I scrambled behind the pintle-mounted heavy bolter, which afforded me some protection as I stood, and pulled the trigger, hosing down the cliff face from which, judging by the angle of the incoming fire, the bulk of it had come. I was rewarded with a sudden cessation of the rain of las-bolts, and a few flickers of movement among the scrub clinging hopefully to the near-vertical surface as our assailants scrambled for something more solid to hide behind.

‘That seems to have dampened their enthusiasm.’

‘Pleased to hear it, sir,’ my aide responded from the driver’s compartment, opening the throttle as he spoke. If anyone else had been at the controls I’d have found the sudden surge of acceleration distinctly alarming, given that our left-hand tread was mere centimetres from the precipice edging the highway, but I knew Jurgen’s exceptional driving skills of old, and merely tightened my grip on the bolter a little to help maintain my balance; a reflex which might well have saved my life. I just had time to register a bright streak in the air ahead of us before a rocket hit the corner of our front armour plate, shredding one of the tracks with the resulting shower of shrapnel.

The Salamander lurched violently. Jurgen swore, or began to, his oath choked off half-finished as the sturdy little vehicle veered over the cliff-edge.

Fortunately, as I’ve mentioned before, there was a fair amount of scrub, even a tree or two, clinging to the face of the gorge, and, by the grace of the Emperor, the cliff face here wasn’t quite vertical. After a heart-stopping moment in which we seemed to be suspended in mid-air, the breath was driven from my lungs by a bone-jarring impact, and our crippled Salamander began slithering down the scree, rocks and shattered vegetation spraying out all around us. I clung to the bolter for dear life, my teeth rattling in my head, while the sky and the rocks around us pinwheeled; then, with a jolt, a bounce and a squeal of abused metal, the entire vehicle tilted over on its side, and at last came to rest, a few metres from the stream running energetically along the floor of the gorge.

After a moment I realised I wasn’t dead after all, and crawled out from under the bolter mounting, bumping my head on the way. Still dazed, I rolled off the armoured floor, which until recently had been the Salamander’s side plates, feeling gravel and a few larger, harder stones pressing against my back, and looked up into a face that more properly belonged in a nightmare. Indeed, for a moment I thought that was precisely what it was, a hallucination shaken out of my scrambled cortex by the violence of our descent – until I realised that no figment of my imagination could possibly have exuded breath as feculent as that.

‘Waaaaaaghhhh!’ it bellowed, punching a dent in the armour plate behind me as I rolled out of the way in the nick of time, scrabbling for my laspistol as I moved. My hand closed on nothing at all, the precise distance above an empty holster that the grip should have been, and I rolled again, evading another killing blow, catching sight of the weapon just under the heavy bolter mount, where I couldn’t scrabble for it without getting my skull stove in from behind in the process. A loud clanging from the distorted hatch of the driver’s compartment, accompanied by a litany of profanity in my earpiece, made it abundantly clear that I wasn’t going to get any help from Jurgen in the next few seconds – I was on my own, at least until he managed to force it open.

Fortunately, I still had my chainsword, and I drew it, scrambling to my feet while my orkish assailant remained unbalanced from the failure to connect. Before I could take a swipe at him,[1] however, a fusillade of lasgun fire burst around us, spanging from the mangled metalwork of the Salamander, and gouging a couple of wounds in my attacker which would have put a human down in an instant, probably for good. It simply seemed to enrage him, however, and he whirled around to face this new threat with an even louder bellow of defiance than before.

‘What’s happening, sir?’ Jurgen asked, hardly surprisingly under the circumstances, while I dived for the cover of the overturned passenger compartment, taking the opportunity to grab my laspistol while the ork’s attention was diverted.

‘Rebels,’ I said, taking in the situation with a rapid glance. The squad of troopers advancing up the defile were wearing local militia uniforms, but by now I’d seen enough genestealer hybrids to notice the subtle wrongness about the way a few of their number carried themselves. Emboldened by their presence the survivors of the ambushing party on the road above sent a few las-rounds in our direction too, but what with the extreme range and awkward angle they might just as well not have bothered; all the couple of bolts that actually hit the crippled vehicle did was reinforce my inclination to stay put. Which, with an angry ork practically in punching distance, wasn’t really much of an option.

‘Be right with you, sir,’ my aide assured me, while the banging and swearing from the driver’s compartment both increased in volume. The ork turned back to me, murder in his eyes, and I brought the laspistol up, hoping I’d be able to find a weak spot in that phenomenally thick skull. Then another possibility occurred to me.

‘Oldyt!’[2] I bellowed, as loudly as I could, keeping the pistol on aim in case he didn’t. But the results were as successful as I could have hoped for. An expression of almost comic confusion at being addressed in his own barbarous tongue[3] furrowed his bestial visage. I gestured at the advancing hybrids, who were considerate enough to draw his attention to them with another burst of automatic fire, which ricocheted around us, fortunately creating more noise than damage in the process. ‘We kill them first. Then each other.’

The ork frowned for a moment, trying to work it out. Then, to my intense relief, he threw back his head to emit a harsh bark of laughter.

‘Kill them first,’ he agreed. Then his eyes fell on the heavy bolter. ‘Shoota!’[4]

‘Help yourself,’ I said, wondering whether handing an enemy our most powerful weapon was altogether wise. On the other hand, I couldn’t use it where it was, firmly attached to the Salamander, and, right this minute, the genestealer brood seemed the greater threat. Marginally. Come to that, I’d never seen an ork without a weapon of some kind before, or on his own, and that worried me. Time enough to think about that later, though, if I got the chance.

A fist large enough to have crushed my head seized the heavy weapon, and wrenched it from its mounting with a groan of protesting metal. Hardened steel twisted and tore, and I found myself once again marvelling at the sheer brute strength of these creatures. The ork hefted the heavy bolter with an unmistakable expression of satisfaction, fumbled for the trigger, and emitted a frustrated grunt as his ploin-thick forefinger proved too bulky to fit through the trigger guard. With an irritated exhalation he pinched the thin strip of metal between finger and thumb, and pulled it away, like Jurgen disposing of a scab. His gaze fell on me, and I have to confess to a shiver of apprehension, which I concealed as best I could, flourishing my own weapons and glancing in the direction of the oncoming enemy.

‘Kill them first!’ he bellowed, taking the hint. ‘Waaaghhhhh!’

And, to my inexpressible relief, he lumbered off in their general direction, brandishing the bolter. A moment later he’d levelled it, and a withering blast of explosive projectiles made a satisfying mess of the first few hybrid troopers, while the rest scattered, no doubt unpleasantly surprised by this sudden turn of events. Taking advantage of the distraction of both sets of enemies, I turned back to the crippled vehicle behind me.

‘Move away from the hatch,’ I voxed Jurgen, thumbing the speed selector of my chainsword to maximum, and beginning to hack at the hinges. Thankfully, they gave way almost immediately, in a shower of sparks, and the circular slab of metal fell away with a clang! that echoed around the narrow valley. My aide emerged, cocooned in the odour of month-old socks, clutching his lasgun and looking around warily.

‘Who’s firing the bolter?’ he asked, flicking the safety off, ‘And who at?’

‘An ork,’ I said, deciding to keep things as simple as possible, ‘and some hybrids. This way, while they keep each other busy.’ I started to lead the way along the edge of the stream, keeping the bulk of the wrecked Salamander between us and the combatants. The hybrids were returning the greenskin’s fire by now, from whatever cover they’d been able to find, and with any luck they’d take care of each other while we made ourselves scarce.

I suppose anyone else would have responded to a statement like that with a stream of questions, but Jurgen, phlegmatic as ever, simply shrugged, and fell in at my shoulder as usual, his lasgun readied for use. ‘Knew I should have brought the melta,’ he said, spitting ruefully into the stream.

‘This sector was supposed to be clear,’ I reminded him; this was no time to get distracted with pointless reproaches. ‘I can see I’ll have to have a little word with our analysts when we get back.’ If we got back. But that was a line of thought I had no wish to pursue. And, in all honesty, I could hardly blame anyone else for our predicament – we wouldn’t have been out here on our own at all if I’d thought there was the remotest chance of blundering into the enemy. Just our luck to stumble across a handful of stragglers.

‘So where did the ork come from?’ Jurgen asked, as we rounded a curve in the stream bed, which revealed a wider section of the gorge. There was a small shingle beach here, the walls of the defile covered in vegetation, but the only thing which registered with me was the scattering of dead orks decorating it. All had been killed with Imperial ordnance, and a gratifying degree of thoroughness; judging by the miasma of greasy smoke hanging over everything, and the charred condition of most of the corpses, someone had doused the dead in promethium and set fire to them, a detail which left Jurgen nodding in satisfaction.[5]

‘Here would be my guess,’ I said, glancing around for any more which might still be twitching. In my experience it was never wise to count any of the creatures out entirely, however chewed up they were, their resilience bordering on the preternatural. But I needn’t have worried; these were as dead as they looked, a fact I verified as simply as possible by putting a couple of las-bolts into each of them from a safe distance. ‘Looks like they’d set up camp here.’ Not that there was much evidence of that left, beyond a crude firepit formed from some of the larger rocks, in which the remains of a fire still smouldered.

Jurgen nodded agreement. ‘That looks like a den,’ he said, pointing to a tangle of brushwood piled up next to the cliff face. As I took a few more steps towards it, I saw what he meant. The branches had been laced together to form a crude shelter, which, judging by the smell emanating from it, had been in use for some time. A primitive spear, formed from a sapling, a chipped rock lashed to its tip, lay on the ground nearby, and I prodded it with my foot, feeling somewhat bemused.

‘Where’s their kit?’ I asked.

My aide shrugged. ‘We’re walking on it.’ He stirred the shale underfoot with the tip of his boot, and I belatedly recognised the flakes as the knapped detritus left by the creation of stone tools. ‘These must be recently spawned.’[6]

‘You’d know,’ I said, deferring to his greater knowledge of the creatures, honed over generations of keeping his home world free of any further infestations. The distant sound of bolter fire drifted towards us on the breeze, indicating that my erstwhile companion was still enjoying himself, but he was probably running out of genestealer hybrids to shoot, and would no doubt be turning his attention to us before much longer. By which time I fully intended to be a long way from here, lurking in ambush, or both. I’d seen what a heavy bolter could do far too frequently to have any intention of being on the wrong end of one.

Or lasguns, come to that. The unmistakable crackle of several bursts echoed around the defile, and one of the stones by my boot burst from the sudden thermal shock of a las-bolt hit. More of the genestealer hybrids were charging at us from further up the defile, firing as they came, wild unaimed bursts intended to pin us in position while they closed, or force us to run so they could shoot us in the back. A crude tactic that might possibly have worked against the local loyalists, but Jurgen and I had been on far too many battlefields to make either mistake, throwing ourselves prone behind the nearest smoking greenskin corpse instead; which smelled about as pleasant as you might imagine, but at least it masked my aide’s distinctive aroma and soaked up the bulk of the incoming fire perfectly satisfactorily.

‘Pick your targets,’ I cautioned, quite unnecessarily given the decades Jurgen and I had served together, but my aide nodded, and began placing precise single shots among the onrushing hybrids, dropping the lead one with a neat hit between the fellow’s torso armour and helmet. A cauterised crater replaced most of his face, and he fell forwards into the stream, raising a cloud of spray.

‘Let ’em waste their ammo,’ Jurgen agreed, as several of the troopers switched to full-auto, chewing away determinedly at the ork corpse behind which we were sheltering. ‘Frakwits.’

‘They’re trying to keep our heads down,’ I said, apprehending the danger just in time, and turning to shoot at another hybrid rappelling down the cliff face, his lasgun slung over his shoulder, ‘while the ones from the road flank us!’ I missed him, of course, given the range and the angle, but the las-bolt struck close, and he lost his grip on the rope, falling the last few metres. That wasn’t enough to finish him off, but his leg must have been broken, because he flapped about like a recently landed fish until Jurgen administered the coup de grâce with another precisely aimed shot.

‘Well, they’re succeeding,’ my aide muttered, abandoning his lasgun for a moment while he fumbled in his collection of webbing pouches, and produced a grenade. ‘This ought to return the favour.’ He lobbed it over our reeking makeshift barricade, following up with a couple of others.

The first detonated in the middle of the squad attempting to pin us down, shredding a couple of the nearest troopers with its spray of shrapnel, and sending the rest scattering left and right in an instinctive scramble to get away from the site of the explosion. Right where Jurgen had placed the other two frag charges, of course, which went off almost simultaneously a second or two later, wreaking similar havoc among the injured and shell-shocked survivors. Not all the tainted squad were down, but the majority were, and I felt a degree of vindictive satisfaction at the realisation that most of the survivors were limping.

‘Nicely done,’ I said, potting one of the nearer walking wounded for good measure, and turning my attention to the latest threat. Not that the handful of remaining hybrids from the first squad could be counted out, of course – their connection to the brood mind kept them focused on their objective long after most human troopers would have retreated to regroup, or simply fled for their lives – but at least they’d stopped shooting at us for the time being. Which reminded me, the distant sounds of bolter fire had ceased; either the ork had been killed, or he’d run out of ammunition. Either way, that would be a problem for later.

I glanced at the enemy gathering by the cliff face, their boots crunching on the rocky beach as they shrugged free of their rappelling lines: a potential way back up to the road, and help, if we could reach them. The airstrip we’d left so short a time before was only a few kilometres away, and Jurgen and I could walk it in an hour or so; but with any luck someone would have noticed we were missing before then, and sent out a search party we could hitch a ride with. Right now, though, I might as well wish for the Emperor Himself to turn up and offer us a hand – the dangling ropes, and the arduous climb they promised, were well out of reach, cut off from us by a horde of well-armed, human-looking abominations. The battered survivors of the other squad were joining them, and I counted a dozen or so enemy troopers in total.[7]

‘Got any more of those grenades?’ I asked, and Jurgen nodded soberly.

‘Two more frag. And a couple of krak ones.’ Which might have been of some use if the enemy had a vehicle, but we both knew the armour-piercing charges would be pretty much useless against dispersed infantry, other than startling them with an unexpectedly loud bang.

‘Then frag it is,’ I said, eyeing the next dead ork to our left, which seemed to offer a bit more cover against the new direction of the enemy advance than our rapidly decaying current refuge. ‘Better make ’em count.’

‘I will that.’ My aide followed the direction of my gaze, reading the situation just as clearly as I was. ‘That one there?’

‘That one there,’ I confirmed. ‘On three.’ I took careful aim at the cultist with the sergeant’s rank insignia (they were all part of the brood mind, so taking out the nominal leader wouldn’t actually make a blind bit of difference, but I couldn’t see any point in overriding my normal targeting priorities) and pulled the trigger. ‘Three!’

The shot was a good one, taking him squarely in the chest. I couldn’t see if it had penetrated his torso armour from this distance, but I don’t suppose it actually mattered. He staggered from the impact, and Jurgen and I moved, running for the next cadaver, crouching low to minimise our profiles, and popping off a few rounds in the general direction of the enemy. A few desultory las-bolts followed us in return, but by the grace of the Throne none came close enough to actually hit.

I threw myself down behind the shielding corpse, driving the breath from my lungs against the hard-edged stones, briefly envying my aide his body armour, an instant before the hybrids found the range again, and the dead ork twitched as though disturbed by dreams as half a dozen las-bolts slammed into it.

‘Oh no you don’t.’ Jurgen snapped off a double tap,[8] and one of the figures by the cliff face folded, the rocket launcher which had presumably done for our Salamander dropping to the ground beside it. He must already have primed the warhead, because it detonated inside the tube, spraying a satisfactory amount of shrapnel in all directions, which more or less halved the number of our opponents in one fell swoop. (Quite literally, in the case of the couple standing nearest to him.) Jurgen nodded, in quiet satisfaction. ‘Thought that would be a frag charge.’

‘Nicely done,’ I told him; it may have been a happy accident, but he might as well get the credit. I began to think we might get out of this after all.

Then a familiar bellow ripped through the air, and the ork reappeared – not dead as I’d hoped after all, but very much the worse for wear. He was limping, his whole torso pockmarked with the stigmata of lasweapons. One ear was missing, along with enough muscle and skin to expose the teeth along that side of his jaw, and an ecstatic grin stretched across what was left of his face. Even by the standards of his own species he seemed remarkably resilient, although I’d seen the like often enough before: I’ve practically lost count of the number of orks I’ve encountered too stubborn or stupid to realise they’re dead, lumbering on long after they should have dropped, fuelled by nothing but bloodlust and rage.

‘Killed them all!’ he roared, picking up speed, his eyes fixed on Jurgen and me. ‘Now you!’ The bolter was still in his hand, but it seemed I’d been right about him running out of ammunition; he was brandishing it like a club, and it seemed to have acquired a patina of congealed blood, to which a few patches of what looked like hair, brain and bone fragments adhered to give it a little variety. He seemed so fixated on ripping Jurgen and me to shreds that he might not even have noticed the remaining hybrids if they hadn’t made the obvious mistake of opening fire on him as he closed with us, no doubt in the hope of ridding themselves of all three of us at once.

‘Not all!’ I yelled back, keeping my aim on the other enemy with an almost preternatural effort of will. If I turned to face him the hybrids would rush us, and it would all be over, even if, by some miracle, the ork didn’t finish me off first. ‘Still them!’ I fired in their general direction to reinforce the point. ‘Kill them first!’

It was touch and go, I don’t mind admitting it; once an ork is carried away by bloodlust, there’s practically nothing in the galaxy that’ll divert them from their intended target, unless it’s some idiot making themselves look like a better one. Or, in this case, half a dozen idiots. Three or four las-bolts impacted on him, the rest hissing by harmlessly, or expending themselves in the corpse I was cowering behind. His head turned.

‘Waaaaghhhhh!’ he roared again, turning and breaking into a stumbling run. A barrage of las-rounds tore into his chest, exposing his ribcage, but by now he’d picked up so much momentum he could probably have shoulder-charged a Leman Russ and barged it out of the way. The first hybrid to stand his ground fell in an instant, his head reduced to a gore-drenched mist by a single swing of the heavy bolter, the second and third going down an instant later on the backswing. The remaining hybrids broke and ran, affording Jurgen and me an easy target apiece, and then the last went flying against the cliff face, his neck broken by a single blow from a fist the size of my head.[9] He stood there for a moment, trying to force air into his exposed lungs, then turned slowly to face me.

‘Killed them all,’ he said.

‘Killed them all,’ I agreed, shifting my stance a little, bracing for what I knew was about to come. The chainsword hummed in my hand, and I slipped the laspistol back into its holster, ready to take a two-handed grip if I needed to. ‘Now each other.’

I spoke the fateful phrase at the same moment he did, and then the ork charged.

To this day, I don’t know how much difference the damage he’d already taken made; I have, after all, faced so many of his kind in hand-to-hand combat that I honestly have no idea of the number, and at least half of them have been completely uninjured. But in my experience, that doesn’t seem to count for much, the brutes’ abhuman resilience allowing them to shrug off injuries a man would have found instantly fatal. His charge did seem to me to be a little slower than most, however, and I sidestepped his first blow easily, the teeth of the chainblade whining and raising a shower of sparks as it deflected the mass of metal in his hand.

The makeshift club gouged into the shingle, raising a storm of stinging stones, and I stepped back, anticipating another wild swing, and hoping to open up enough distance between us for Jurgen to get off a shot without running the risk of felling me instead – but the ork followed up almost instantly, bellowing with rage, closing the gap too quickly for my aide to intervene. My boots slithered on the pebbles as I took another step backwards, and the next swipe grazed past my face close enough that I felt the breeze of its passing. If I let the brute continue to press his attack, I’d be dead in a handful of heartbeats.

The only way to regain the initiative was to close the distance, so I stepped in under a vicious downward blow, bringing my blade up to block it, and sliced clean through his forearm. The mangled heavy bolter fell to the shingle, still grasped in the hand that had held it, and I drove in hard, putting all my weight behind a thrust which ripped through his ruined chest cavity, and deep into his heart.

The ork fell to his knees as I tore the blade free through the side of his chest.

For a moment I thought he was about to say something, then his eyes dulled, and he pitched forward, crashing to the stones. I flicked the blade free of the bits of macerated ork still clinging to it, and stepped back, still wary, but the creature remained motionless, and at last I sheathed the weapon, sure that he was dead.

Jurgen slung his lasgun and began rummaging in his collection of pouches again. ‘Didn’t know there were greenskins around here,’ he said.

‘No one did.’ I shook my head. ‘We’ll have to send recon teams out. Make sure there aren’t any more of them.’

‘There are always more of them,’ Jurgen said, accurately but unhelpfully. He held out a thermal flask. ‘Tanna?’

‘Most welcome,’ I said. I tapped the comm-bead in my ear hopefully, but, as I’d expected, the vox-gear in the Salamander seemed not to have survived our precipitous descent. It seemed we’d be walking back after all. I sighed and approached the nearest dangling rope. ‘It looks like we’re in for a strenuous afternoon.’

Notes

[1] Since they appear to reproduce by spore diffusion, orks are technically genderless, but are generally referred to exclusively by the masculine pronoun – which, given the physical strength and spectacular stupidity of most of their kind, is, I suppose, inevitable. Amberley Vail, Ordo Xenos.

[2] Orkish for ‘wait’, or ‘I saw it first.’ A.V.

[3] Which, as noted elsewhere in the edited portions of his memoirs, Cain acquired a basic working knowledge of during his successful guerilla war against the orkish occupiers of Perlia’s eastern continent early on in his career. A.V.

[4] A generic Orkish term for any firearm or energy weapon, preferably as noisy and destructive as possible. Since it’s unlikely that Cain proposed his truce in plain Gothic, he seems to be translating selectively here in the interests of clarity. A.V.

[5] Their home world having once been invaded by orks, Valhallans set great store by disposing of their ancestral enemies as comprehensively as possible. A.V.

[6] The prevailing theory among the magos biologis studying these creatures is that some innate knowledge, including the construction and use of weapons, is somehow genetically coded within them – if so, this group clearly lacked the resources to build ‘shootas’ from scratch. A.V.

[7] Presumably he’d taken a few of the ambushers on the road out with the heavy bolter before the Salamander crash, or the group had already been severely depleted in earlier clashes with the Imperial Guard. A.V.

[8] Two shots in quick succession. A.V.

[9] Possibly a slight exaggeration, but maybe not by much. A.V.

About the Author

Sandy Mitchell is the author of a long-running series of Warhammer 40,000 novels about the Hero of the Imperium, Commissar Ciaphas Cain, as well as the audio drama Dead In The Water. He has also written a plethora of short stories, including ‘The Last Man’ in the Sabbat Worlds anthology, along with several novels set in the Warhammer World. He lives and works in Cambridge.

An extract from ‘For The Emperor’ by Sandy Mitchell,

taken from the Warhammer 40,000 omnibus Hero of the Imperium.

One of the first things you learn as a commissar is that people are never pleased to see you; something that’s no longer the case where I’m concerned, of course, now that my glorious and undeserved reputation precedes me wherever I go. A good rule of thumb in my younger days, but I’d never found myself staring down death in the eyes of the troopers I was supposed to be inspiring with loyalty to the Emperor before. In my early years as an occasionally loyal minion of his Glorious Majesty, I’d faced, or to be more accurate, ran away screaming from, orks, necrons, tyranids, and a severely hacked off daemonhost, just to pick out some of the highlights of my ignominious career. But standing in that mess room, a heartbeat away from being ripped apart by mutinous Guardsmen, was a unique experience, and one that I have no wish to repeat.

I should have realised how bad the situation was when the commanding officer of my new regiment actually smiled at me as I stepped off the shuttle. I already had every reason to fear the worst, of course, but by that time I was out of options. Paradoxical as it might seem, taking this miserable assignment had looked uncomfortably like the best chance I had of keeping my precious skin in one piece.

The problem, of course, was my undeserved reputation for heroism, which by that time had grown to such ludicrous proportions that the Commissariat had finally noticed me and decided that my talents were being wasted in the artillery unit I’d picked as the safest place to sit out my lifetime of service to the Emperor, a long way away from the sharp end of combat. Accordingly, I’d found myself plucked from a position of relative obscurity and attached directly to Brigade headquarters.

That hadn’t seemed too bad at first, as I’d had little to do except shuffle datafiles and organise the occasional firing squad, which had suited me fine, but the trouble with everybody thinking you’re a hero is that they tend to assume you like being in mortal danger and go out of their way to provide some. In the half-dozen years since my arrival, I’d been temporarily seconded to units assigned, among other things, to assault fixed positions, clear out a space hulk, and run recon deep behind enemy lines. And every time I’d made it back alive, due in no small part to my natural talent for diving for cover and waiting for the noise to stop, the general staff had patted me on the head, given me another commendation, and tried to find an even more inventive way of getting me killed.

Something obviously had to be done, and done fast, before my luck ran out altogether. So, as I often had before, I let my reputation do the work for me and put in a request for a transfer back to a regiment. Any regiment. By that time I just didn’t care. Long experience had taught me that the opportunities for taking care of my own neck were much higher when I could pull rank on every officer around me.

‘I just don’t think I’m cut out for data shuffling,’ I said apologetically to the weasel-faced little runt from the lord general’s office. He nodded judiciously, and made a show of paging through my file.

‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ he said, in a slightly nasal whine. Although he tried to look cool and composed, his body language betrayed his excitement at being in the presence of a living legend; at least that’s what some damn fool pictcast commentator had called me after the Siege of Perlia, and the appellation stuck. The next thing I know my own face is grinning at me from recruiting posters all over the sector, and I couldn’t even grab a mug of recaf without having a piece of paper shoved under my nose with a request to autograph it. ‘It doesn’t suit everybody.’

‘It’s a shame we can’t all have your dedication to the smooth running of the Imperium,’ I said. He looked sharply at me for a moment, wondering if I was taking the frak, which of course I was, then decided I was simply being civil. I decided to ladle it on a bit. ‘But I’m afraid I’ve been a soldier too long to start changing my habits now.’

That was the sort of thing Cain the Hero was supposed to say, of course, and weasel-face lapped it up. He took my transfer request from me as though it was a relic from one of the blessed saints.

‘I’ll handle it personally,’ he said, practically bowing as he showed me out.

And so it was, a month or so later, I found myself in a shuttle approaching the hangar bay of the Righteous Wrath, a battered old troopship identical to thousands in Imperial service, almost all of which I sometimes think I’ve travelled on over the years. The familiar smell of shipboard air, stale, recycled, inextricably intertwined with rancid sweat, machine oil and boiled cabbage, hissed into the passenger compartment as the hatch seals opened. I inhaled it gratefully, as it displaced the no less familiar odour of Gunner Jurgen, my aide almost since the outset of my commissarial career nearly twenty years before.

Short for a Valhallan, Jurgen somehow managed to look awkward and out of place wherever he was, and in all our time together, I couldn’t recall a single occasion on which he’d ever worn anything that appeared to fit properly. Though amiable enough in temperament, he seemed ill at ease with people, and, in turn, most preferred to avoid his company; a tendency no doubt exacerbated by the perpetual psoriasis that afflicted him, as well as his body odour, which, in all honesty, took quite a bit of getting used to.

Nevertheless he’d proven an able and valued aide, due in no small part to his peculiar mentality. Not overly bright, but eager to please and doggedly literal in his approach to following orders, he’d become a useful buffer between me and some of the more onerous aspects of my job. He never questioned anything I said or did, apparently convinced that it must be for the good of the Imperium in some way, which, given the occasionally discreditable activities I’d been known to indulge in, was a great deal more than I could have hoped for from any other trooper. Even after all this time I still find myself missing him on occasion.

So he was right there at my side, half-hidden by our combined luggage, which he’d somehow contrived to gather up and hold despite the weight, as my boot heels first rang on the deck plating beneath the shuttle. I didn’t object; experience had taught me that it was a good idea for people meeting him for the first time to get the full picture in increments.

I paused fractionally for dramatic effect before striding forward to meet the small knot of Guard officers drawn up to greet me by the main cargo doors, the clang of my footsteps on the metal sounding as crisp and authoritative as I could contrive; an effect undercut slightly by the pops and clangs from the scorched area under the shuttle engines as it cooled, and Jurgen’s tottering gait behind me.

‘Welcome, commissar. This is a great honour.’ A surprisingly young woman with red hair and blue eyes stepped forward and snapped a crisp salute with parade ground efficiency. I thought for a moment that I was being subtly snubbed with only the junior officers present, before I reconciled her face with the file picture in the briefing slate. I returned the salute.

‘Colonel Kasteen.’ I nodded an acknowledgement. Despite having no objection to being fawned over by young women in the normal course of events, I found such a transparent attempt at ingratiation a little nauseating. Then I got a good look at her hopeful expression and felt as though I’d stepped on a non-existent final stair. She was absolutely sincere. Emperor help me, they really were pleased to see me. Things must be even worse here than I’d imagined.

Just how bad they actually were I had yet to discover, but I already had some presentiment. For one thing, the palms of my hands were tingling, which always means there’s trouble hanging in the air like the static before a storm, and for another, I’d broken with the habit of a lifetime and actually read the briefing slate carefully on the tedious voyage out here to meet the ship.

To cut a long story short, morale in the Valhallan 296th/301st was at rock bottom, and the root cause of it all was obvious from the regiment’s title. Combining below-strength regiments was standard practice among the Imperial Guard, a sensible way of consolidating after combat losses to keep units up to strength and of further use in the field. What hadn’t been sensible was combining what was left of the 301st, a crack planetary assault unit with fifteen hundred years of traditional belief in their innate superiority over every other unit in the Guard, particularly the other Valhallan ones, with the 296th; a rear echelon garrison command, which, just to throw promethium on the flames, was one of the few all-women regiments raised and maintained by that desolate iceball. And just to put the cherry on it, Kasteen had been given overall command by virtue of three days’ seniority over her new immediate subordinate, a man with far more combat experience.

Not that any of them truly lacked that now, after the battle for Corania. The tyranids had attacked without warning, and every Guard regiment on the planet had been forced to resist ferociously for nearly a year before the navy and a couple of Astartes Chapters had arrived to turn the tide. By that time, every surviving unit had sustained at least fifty per cent casualties, many of them a great deal more, and the bureaucrats of the Munitorium had begun the process of consolidating the battered survivors into useful units once again.

On paper, at least. No one with any practical military experience would have been so half-witted as to ignore the morale effects of their decisions. But that’s bureaucrats for you. Maybe if a few more Administratum drones were given lasguns and told to soldier alongside the troopers for a month or two it would shake their ideas up a bit. Assuming by some miracle they weren’t shot in the back on the first day, of course.

But I’m digressing. I returned Kasteen’s salute, noting as I did so the faint discolouration of the fabric beneath her rank insignia where her captain’s studs had been before her recent unanticipated elevation to colonel. There had been few officers left in either regiment by the time the ‘nids had got through with them, and they’d been lucky at that. At least one of the newly consolidated units was being led by a former corporal, or so I’d heard. Unfortunately, neither of their commissars had survived so, thanks to my fortuitously timed transfer request, I’d been handed the job of sorting out the mess. Lucky me.

‘Major Broklaw, my second-in-command.’ Kasteen introduced the man next to her, his own insignia equally new. His face flushed almost imperceptibly, but he stepped forward to shake my hand with a firm grip. His eyes were flint grey beneath his dark fringe of hair, and he closed his hand a little too tightly, trying to gauge my strength. Two could play at that game, of course, and I had the advantage of a couple of augmetic fingers, so I returned the favour, smiling blandly as the colour drained from his face.

‘Major.’ I let him go before anything was damaged except his pride, and turned to the next officer in line. Kasteen had rounded up pretty much her entire senior command staff, as protocol demanded, but it was clear most of them weren’t too sure about having me around. Only a few met my eyes, but the legend of Cain the Hero had arrived here before me, and the ones that did were obviously hoping I’d be able to turn round a situation they all patently felt had gone way beyond their own ability to deal with.

I don’t know what the rest were thinking; they were probably just relieved I wasn’t talking about shooting the lot of them and bringing in somebody competent. Of course, if that had been a realistic option I might have considered it, but I had an unwanted reputation for honesty and fairness to live up to, so that was that.

The introductions over I turned back to Kasteen, and indicated the tottering pile of kitbags behind me. Her eyes widened fractionally as she caught a glimpse of Jurgen’s face behind the barricade, but I suppose anyone who’d gone hand to hand with tyranids would have found the experience relatively unperturbing, and she masked it quickly. Most of the assembled officers, I noted with well-concealed amusement, were now breathing shallowly through their mouths.

‘My aide, Gunner First Class Ferik Jurgen,’ I said. In truth there was only one grade of gunner, but I didn’t expect they’d know that, and the small unofficial promotion would add to whatever kudos he got from being the aide of a commissar. Which in turn would reflect well on me. ‘Perhaps you could assign him some quarters?’

‘Of course.’ She turned to one of the youngest lieutenants, a blonde girl of vaguely equine appearance who looked as if she’d be more at home on a farm somewhere than in uniform, and nodded. ‘Sulla. Get the quartermaster to sort it out.’

‘I’ll do it myself,’ she replied, slightly overdoing the eager young officer routine. ‘Magil’s doing his best, but he’s not quite on top of the system yet.’ Kasteen nodded blandly, unaware of any problem, but I could see Broklaw’s jaw tighten, and noticed that most of the men present failed to mask their displeasure.

‘Sulla was our quartermaster sergeant until the last round of promotions,’ Kasteen explained. ‘She knows the ship’s resources better than anyone.’

‘I’m sure she does,’ I said diplomatically. ‘And I’m sure she has far more pressing duties to perform than finding a bunk for Jurgen. We’ll liaise with your Sergeant Magil ourselves, if you have no objection.’

‘None at all.’ Kasteen looked slightly puzzled for a moment, then dismissed it. Broklaw, I noticed from the corner of my eye, was looking at me with something approaching respect now. Well, that was something at least. But it was pretty clear I was going to have my work cut out to turn this divided and demoralised rabble into anything resembling a fighting unit.

Well, up to a point anyway. If they were a long way from being ready to fight the enemies of the Emperor, they were certainly in good enough shape to fight among themselves, as I was shortly to discover.

I haven’t reached my second century by ignoring the little presentiments of trouble which sometimes appear out of nowhere, like those itching palms of mine, or the little voice in the back of my head which tells me something seems too good to be true. But in my first few days aboard the Righteous Wrath I had no need of such subtle promptings from my subconscious. Tension hung in the air of the corridors assigned to us like ozone around a daemonhost, all but striking sparks from the bulkheads. And I wasn’t the only one to feel it. None of the other regiments on board would venture into our part of the ship, either for social interaction or the time-honoured tradition of perpetrating practical jokes against the members of another unit. The naval provosts patrolled in tense, wary groups. Desperate for some kind of respite, I even made courtesy calls on the other commissars aboard, but these were far from convivial; humourless Emperor-botherers to a man, the younger ones were too overwhelmed by respect for my reputation to be good company, and most of the older ones were quietly resentful of what they saw as a glory-hogging young upstart. Tedious as these interludes were, though, I was to be grateful for them sooner than I thought.

The one bright spot was Captain Parjita, who’d commanded the vessel for the past thirty years, and with whom I hit it off from our first dinner together. I’m sure he only invited me the first time because protocol demanded it, and perhaps out of curiosity to see what a Hero of the Imperium actually looked like in the flesh, but by the time we were halfway through the first course we were chatting away like old friends. I told a few outrageous lies about my past adventures, and he reciprocated with some anecdotes of his own, and by the time we’d got onto the amasec I felt more relaxed than I had in months. For one thing, he really appreciated the problems I was facing with Kasteen and her rabble.

‘You need to reassert some discipline,’ he told me unnecessarily. ‘Before the rot spreads any further. Shoot a few, that’ll buck their ideas up.’

Easy to say, of course, but not so easy in practice. That’s what most commissars would have done, admittedly, but getting a regiment united because they’re terrified of you and hate your guts has its own drawbacks, particularly as you’re going to find yourself in the middle of a battlefield with these people before very long, and they’ll all have guns. And, as I’ve already said, I had a reputation to maintain, and a good part of that was keeping up the pretence that I actually gave a damn about the troopers under my command. So, not an option, unfortunately.

It was while I was on my way back to my quarters from one such pleasant evening that my hand was forced, and in a way I could well have done without.

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