Cadre

Josh Reynolds

The ground trembled beneath the worn treads of the Munitorum half-tracks. The grey-hulled, trough-shaped vehicles had been scoured of all Imperial insignia, and now their armour plates dripped with exotic unguents and sinister sigils that scarred the eye of any who looked at them for too long. Each of the half-tracks carried ammunition and power cells for the hive city’s defence batteries.

Badly grafted vox-speakers blared out abominable hymns to unspeakable gods as the half-tracks navigated the devastated streets, and pintle-mounted stubbers swung to and fro as the gunners watched warily for attack as overcharged engines vomited oily black clouds into the already smoky air of the fallen hive city.

Over the roar of the debased vehicles, the thunder of siege-guns could be heard. The hive shuddered to its very foundations with every impact upon its outer defences. The Imperium did not intend to let Khost Hive remain in the hands of its renegade aristocracy. One way or another, the hive city would fall. Whether to the forces without, or to those within, it would fall. The only question was one of time.

At least, that was the only question that Manse Jah-Hlley, Tutor of the Mentors Chapter, considered worthy of consideration, in the three-point-eight seconds prior to the destruction of the second of the three half-tracks. The Space Marine noted the time as it registered on his helmet’s built-in chronometer and recorded it for future review, even as he swept aside the debris that had concealed him. His normally ivory and emerald hued power armour was covered in a coat of ash and dirt, in order to blend in with his surroundings. It would require many months to purify the armour after this campaign was concluded, but, on the whole Jah-Hlley considered the tedium of purification rituals preferable to dying. The Codex tactica relating to the preservation of all resources necessary to prosecute further stratagems applied as much to battle-brothers as bolter ammunition.

Jah-Hlley, a grenade in either hand, rose up in front of the second half-track before the driver of the vehicle had even registered his presence. A frag grenade bounced into the open compartment, even as a krak grenade rolled between the vehicle’s treads. The two explosions were nearly simultaneous. Jah-Hlley pivoted, raising his bolter. He fired methodically, targeting the gunners on the back of the lead vehicle. The latter exploded a moment later, pelting Jah-Hlley with flaming debris. He clucked disparagingly over the vox-channel.

‘Oh what now?’ someone complained, their exasperation obvious despite the crackle of static that marred the channel. Harper, Jah-Hlley thought, of course.

‘You blew up the lead track, Harper. You were supposed to take out the last one,’ Jah-Hlley said as he stepped around the burning hulk of the second vehicle.

The gunners on the remaining half-track had realised their predicament. They opened up with more enthusiasm than accuracy, swinging the stubbers around to blaze away at the Space Marine. Bullets caromed off of his power-armour, and he idly recorded the data. If his armour was penetrated, it was best to record at what velocity and range the penetration occurred, in order to aid the Chapter’s armourers in seeing that it didn’t happen again.

‘First, last, what’s the difference? The only good enemy is a dead enemy,’ Harper growled.

Jah-Hlley made a note to suggest that Harper’s caff-ration be docked. The man was anxious and irritable, both of which could get him, or one of his companions, killed. Neither was acceptable. The dead couldn’t learn.

‘Yes, but it wasn’t the plan,’ another voice chimed in. ‘Now you’ve dumped one of the Emperor’s Own right in it, you idiot!’ That was Arta, Harper’s superior in this resistance cell. There were a dozen such cells active in Khost at the moment, thanks to the brutal pogroms initiated by the renegades. The battle-brothers of his own cadre were scattered about the embattled hive, advising and assisting other such groups.

That was the Mentors’ method of operation. Though Space Marines were the greatest warriors of the Imperium, they were finite and could not be everywhere at once. Other Chapters threw themselves into war on behalf of the citizens of the Imperium, but the Mentors served by ensuring that the citizens could fight their own battles. Chapter Master Nisk Ran-Thawll had a saying – ‘One war, one cadre’.

Arta and her rag-tag group were not as efficient as Mentors, but they fought hard nonetheless, adapting to his suggested stratagems with an enthusiasm he found infectious. They were brave, but fragile. Yet that fragility lent them cunning. Jah-Hlley found them fascinating and endlessly inventive – indeed, they had taught him much. Each war was its own classroom, with its own unique lessons. Even so, he found it hard not to simply take command of the group, for their own protection. But they were not children to be coddled. While he was assigned to them, they were brothers-in-arms. More than that – they were cadre, his cadre, to teach and be taught by.

‘He’s fine! Look at him,’ Harper protested. ‘He’s like a small tank!’

Granted, some of them are harder to think of that way than others, Jah-Hlley noted. ‘Commendations and condemnations can wait, I feel. Now is an opportune moment to apply adaptive stratagems,’ he interjected. ‘I suggest flanking manoeuvre zeta-six.’

‘Right, you heard him,’ Arta barked over the frequency. ‘Up and at ’em, boys and girls!’ Men and women rose up out of the ruins to either side of the road and began firing at the renegades. They were displaying a remarkable restraint, Jah-Hlley noted, with some pride. They were learning. The pride was replaced with chagrin as half a dozen of the resistance fighters charged towards the remaining vehicle, whooping and shouting. Harper was in the lead.

The renegades were terrible shots, but quite effective at close range. They leapt from the half-track and went to meet their attackers with ululations of their own. They were outnumbered, but that did not deter them. Jah-Hlley grunted in annoyance and waded into the struggle in order to prevent Harper’s idiocy from getting any of the others killed. He doled out quick, efficient trip-hammer blows with his fists, palms and fingers, popping nerve clusters and rupturing organs. Unaltered humans had over one hundred vulnerable points, and a Mentor had memorised where each was before they graduated from aspirant to brother, for those occasions when the use of a chainsword or combat knife was inadvisable.

As he drove his palm through the breastbone of a knife-wielding renegade, Jah-Hlley saw Harper fall onto his rear. A renegade raised a bayonet-tipped lasgun over Harper for a downwards thrust. He reached the two even as the bayonet descended, and he grabbed the stock of the weapon. He yanked it from its owner’s hands and hurled it aside.

‘I said manoeuvre zeta-six, not gamma-eight, Harper,’ Jah-Hlley said as he grabbed the back of the renegade’s neck and stabbed his stiffened fingers through the rear of the man’s skull with a nasty sound. ‘If you die, you will never learn.’ Jah-Hlley jerked his hand free and the man flopped to the ground, limbs jerking in his death-throes.

Harper goggled up at the Space Marine.

‘You – you saved me,’ he said.

Jah-Hlley held out his hand. ‘You are cadre. And next time, you will save yourself.’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Author of the novels Knight of the Blazing Sun, Time of Legends: Neferata and Gotrek and Felix: Road of Skulls, Josh Reynolds used to be a roadie for the Hong Kong Cavaliers, but now writes full time. His work has appeared in various anthologies, including Age of Legend and several issues of the electronic magazine Hammer and Bolter.

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