Legends of the dark ange.., p.112
Legends Of The Dark Angels, page 112
A nervous serving girl approached Regan and the Space Marine and offered to pour them some wine. Tigrane waved her away impassively but Regan accepted a full cup and instantly gulped down half of it. While he had been in the presence of Space Marines before, he had never felt comfortable around them. While mere men, if they were blessed with good health and avoided a stint in the Imperial Guard, could live for the better part of a century, Space Marines could live for far longer. It was rumoured that the Adeptus Astartes were essentially immortal and that their lives could only be ended through violence. Quite apart from the fact that a Space Marine could kill a man with flick of his wrist or a spray of saliva, it was this reminder of his own mortality that was the root of his unease. More now than ever, in light of his circumstances.
‘But I am not here to talk about me. I want to know about you, Colonel Regan Antigone, Hero of the Imperium. Where did your life take you after I carried you from that trench all those years ago?’
‘You flatter me, lord. My life has not been that interesting at all in comparison to yours, I’m sure.’
‘Granted, but please, I insist.’
‘Very well. After that last time you came to visit me in the medicae, they operated on me to save my leg. Although the limb is still intact, they couldn’t retain much function and that’s why I carry this.’
Regan raised the cane to show the Space Marine but then quickly dropped it to the floor again when he realised he was brandishing it like a sword. The Dark Angel smiled and gestured for Regan to continue.
‘They invalided me out of the Guard and, when it became clear that we’d fought back the invasion, I was proclaimed a hero. I was made an honorary colonel of the newly founded 1st Procel Regulars and showered with medals and accolades. Parades were held in my honour and there were countless feasts and banquets where I was made to tell my story over and over again. They even erected a statue of me and I’m told that there’s a small island in Procel’s southern hemisphere where half of the boys born since the liberation have been named Regan.’
Tigrane was listening intently but Regan noticed that his brow was furrowed.
‘Something wrong, lord? Is my story not interesting enough?’
‘Not at all. It’s just that something puzzles me. When my battle-brothers and I relieved you in that trench, we carried away three survivors, but you are speaking as if you were the only one.’
‘My apologies, lord. I thought you knew. Tarrick never came out of his coma and they switched off his life support only days after the liberation. Murtock managed to regain consciousness briefly, but the blight was so strong in him that he was dead within weeks. Even now the toxins the enemy unleashed during the siege are killing people…’
Regan’s voice trailed off and the Dark Angel stared at him as if he could see right through him, peer into his very soul.
‘What aren’t you telling me?’
For the first time, Regan looked the Angel of Death in the eyes.
‘It’s me. For some reason I didn’t contract as virulent a strain of the blight as the others. It’s been killing me, but it’s been killing me slowly. Even so, the chirurgeons tell me that I only have weeks to live, months if I’m lucky. I’m dying, my lord. The enemy couldn’t kill me with bullets or bombs twenty-five years ago, but they got me in the end.’
The Dark Angel’s façade slipped briefly and something approaching emotion registered on his face.
‘That… saddens me, Regan Antigone. No man deserves a slow, lingering death, especially such a brave servant of the Golden Throne.’
The Space Marine’s features hardened again and he locked Regan with his steely gaze.
‘I should honour you in some way.’
‘Please, lord. That is unnecessary. I have already been honoured more than one man deserves in a hundred lifetimes.’
‘Then indulge me. Tell me your story again. Tell me how you and two of your comrades held off an entire arch-enemy attack and ensured that Amadis did not end up in their clutches. Tell me so that I can record it accurately in the annals of my Chapter and remember your glory for all eternity.’
Regan glanced towards the back of the hall in the vain hope that another surprise guest would make an entrance and spare him having to lie once more. There was to be no saviour this time.
‘As you wish, lord.’
‘Another wave incoming! Man the walls and don’t shoot until you‘re sure you have a definite kill. Conserve your ammo – there’s plenty more of these bastards out there.’
The colonel’s command tore through the unnatural silence and, unslinging the lasrifle from his shoulder, Regan joined the other members of his unit perched atop the muddy trench that had been home for the past two months. He stared out into the soupy miasma clinging to no-man’s-land and waited until he could make out shapes in the mist. The man lying next to him in the redoubt – Tarrick, bottom dwelling trash who would kill you just as soon as look at you – squeezed off a shot and a dozen weapons fired back in response. Now that the enemy had made their positions known, the men of the 1st Procel Irregulars easily picked off the front rank and, as successive phalanxes of the enemy stepped over the corpses of the fallen, more of them entered the kill zone and succumbed to relentless Imperial fire.
‘Tarrick. My power pack’s spent. Pass me another,’ Regan yelled over the din of battle.
The former ganger loosed another shot out over the lip of the trench then reached a tattooed hand into the breast pocket of his filthy tunic and tossed Regan a power pack. He smiled, revealing a set of false metal teeth, the intricate inkwork around his lips distorting to make it appear as if he had a rictus grin.
‘Don’t let Telomian hear you. He thinks we should be able to repel these attacks with nothing more than our bare hands and a few choice curse words.’
Regan caught the power pack, ejected the spent one from his rifle and replaced it. He resumed his position and, spying one of the attackers, took aim and pressed the firing stud.
Nothing happened.
Sharing an anxious look with Tarrick, he released the new power pack and frantically started clearing out the mud that had conglomerated in the weapon’s clip housing. The enemy soldier was only metres away and, realising that Regan would not have his weapon functioning in time, Tarrick concentrated his fire on the advancing cultist. Preternaturally, the onrushing attacker avoided all of the tattooed ganger’s shots and launched himself over the top of the trench landing right on top of Regan and throwing him against the hard earth of the back wall. Tarrick swung around and aimed at the interloper but the Chaos-mutated freak raised a distended arm and knocked him from the top of the trench, his weapon spilling into the mud below. The cultist turned to face Regan, opening its maw in a grotesque parody of a smile and released a burbling, guttural roar.
The thing’s lips were ringed with rotting fangs and maggots crawled over its tongue. Its eyes were like those of a fly and the scrappy remains of its uniform did little to cover the bulbous layers of oozing fat that made up its torso. Raising both its club-like arms to the air it prepared to land the killing blow on the still prone Regan. He closed his eyes and awaited the inevitable.
It never came. Instead he heard the sound of a single las shot followed by the wet thud of a body hitting the muddy trench floor.
He opened his eyes to see the beaming face of Murtock, another Irregular recruited from the midships levels of Amadis, looking down at him, chubby hand held out to help lift him from the muddy trench floor. Regan accepted it gratefully and rose to his feet. Tarrick stood unaided and using the butt of his rifle, rolled over the bloated cadaver to check that it was really dead.
‘Bastard’s uglier than me.’
‘Thanks, Mur. I owe you one,’ Regan said, futilely brushing the mud from his uniform.
‘Don’t thank me. Just promise me that when this is over and we’re all back in Amadis you’ll name your firstborn after me,’ the teenage Guardsman said as he picked up Regan’s lasrifle and handed it back to him.
The three men laughed, the shared moment a rare break in the relentless horror of life in the trenches before picking up their weapons and resuming the business of killing.
The assault though ferocious, was not as unrelenting as many of the previous attacks and within an hour the waves of enemy combatants spewing forth from no-man’s-land ceased and the defenders could take stock and lick their wounds. The dead would be counted, their bodies burned
A shot rang out from further along the trench and Regan and Tarrick dropped the dead Irregular they were carrying and reached for their weapons in anticipation of another attack. They soon relaxed again once they realised it was merely one of their own snipers picking off wounded cultists and mutants who had fallen before they’d reached the trench.
‘What took you so long? I thought you were going to fetch us some water?’ Regan said. ‘I can’t shift the taste of mud from my mouth and Tarrick reckons his is so dry the Tallarn have requested to use it for combat exercises.’
The podgy figure of Murtock ambled through the sludge towards the two seated men, shoulders slumped in defeat. Crouching down so that his head was no longer in line with the lip of the trench, he removed his helmet to reveal his shock of curly, auburn hair.
‘There’s none left.’
‘What do you mean “there’s none left”? We’re stationed in a muddy gash in the earth where water pisses out of the very walls we’re trying to defend.’ Tarrick twisted a finger into the dirt wall of the trench and pulled it out with a wet pop. To prove his point, a trickle of water seeped down towards the ground leaving a narrow channel in the trench wall in its wake.
‘Orders are not to drink it,’ said Murtock. ‘Something to do with that Emperor-forsaken mist that’s clinging to the ground. It contaminates everything it touches. Some of the lads billeted further round the trench, caught a small canid in no-man’s-land and ate it. When they were found the next morning in their bunkhouse it looked as if they’d been pulled inside out. That’s what I heard anyway.’
‘So what are we supposed to do in the meantime?’ Regan queried. ‘We’ll all be dead of dehydration by the time the next attack wave comes.’
Murtock simply shrugged. Regan removed his water bottle from his belt and shook it, but it didn’t make a sound. Tarrick did likewise with the same result. They both looked at Murtock, who fumbled his own bottle from his belt and imitated his comrades. Nothing.
‘What about him?’ Tarrick pointed a tattooed finger at the corpse they’d just unceremoniously dumped in the sludge. Murtock and Regan shared an anxious look.
‘C’mon, Tar. You know that orders are that corpses are to be recovered with their kit so it can be redistributed. Telomian will have you up on a charge if he finds out,’ Murtock cautioned.
Ignoring his friend’s protest, he leant down to the corpse and, after removing a half-full water bottle from the dead man’s belt, began rifling through his pockets.
‘What’s this then?’ Tarrick’s stubby fingers emerged from the inside of the cadaver’s tunic grasping a small silver flask. He unscrewed the cap and put the container to his nose.
‘It’s not amasec, my friends, but it looks like…’ He plunged his hand inside the dead man’s tunic again and it re-emerged holding a set of dog tags. ‘Trooper Meslen here was in possession of prohibited materials, to wit – and I quote the Guardsman’s primer here – “liquids of an intoxicating or stupefying nature likely to impair or inhibit a Guardsman’s ability to fight if imbibed”.’
The tattooed former ganger screwed the cap back onto the flask and slipped it away in the folds of his own tunic.
‘Way I see it, I’m doing old Meslen here a favour. Wouldn’t want that kind of stain on his service record. I mean, what would his grieving family think if they found out that he were both dead and a drunkard. I don’t think I could have that on my conscience, quite frankly.’
‘So not only are you unable to follow a direct order from me not to shoot until you have a confirmed kill, but it appears you can’t follow a simple standing order to recover casualties with full kit.’
The three Guardsmen turned in alarm. They’d been so distracted by Tarrick’s corpse looting that they’d failed to hear Colonel Telomian and his vox-trooper, Linkmel, approaching. Whereas Linkmel and the three other Irregulars were caked in filth from head to toe, the colonel appeared as if he had just slipped into a fresh uniform, the only giveaway that he’d strode the half kilometre from his command bunker the couple of centimetres of wet, brown stain that caked the bottom of his grey field coat. Despite his fresh attire, the colonel’s bearded face looked as tired and battle-weary as any of the rank and file troops in the trench. His wide, bloodshot eyes lent him a crazed bearing that was beginning to make itself evident in his voice too.
‘Or, alternatively, by making that first shot I drew the enemy into revealing their positions,’ Tarrick said, a cocky lilt evident in his tone. ‘We used to pull stuff like that all the time in Ship’s Bottom. There was this one time–’
Telomian had run out of patience with the insubordinate ganger and looked ready to strike him with the gloved fist balled at his side when the vox-unit on Linkmel’s back sounded.
‘Forward Nineteen? This is Amadis Prime. Do you copy? Over.’
Linkmel reached an arm around to pick up the vox receiver on his back but Telomian spun the trooper roughly around and picked up the handset himself. ‘This is Forward Nineteen. Go ahead, Amadis. Over.’
‘Reinforce and resupply denied. We’re on our arses up here and can’t spare food or water, let alone able bodies. You’re on your own, Forward Nineteen. Good luck and good hunting.’
Telomian was just about to protest when the line to Amadis Command went dead. In frustration, he threw the handset away along the trench, causing Linkmel to slide through the mire to retrieve it. Nostrils flaring, he turned his attention back to the three men. Fearing the full brunt of the colonel’s wrath, and noticing his hand straying towards the bolt pistol holstered at his waist, Regan, Tarrick and Murtock began to edge away slowly. Then, abruptly, the colonel’s demeanour cooled and sanity embraced him again.
‘I could have you all up on charges for your conduct but, in light of current circumstances, I believe that would be counter-productive. However, as you saw fit to deprive your fellow soldiers of food and water–’
‘In fairness, sir, it was only water. We didn’t actually find any…’
The colonel’s piercing stare withered Murtock where he stood.
‘As you saw fit to deprive your fellow soldiers of food and water, it is only fitting that you should make amends by finding them food and water.’
‘And how do you propose we do that, sir?’ Regan interjected. ‘Walk up to the enemy trenches and ask them if they’d mind lending us a barrel of fresh water and a couple of ham hocks?’
Another piercing stare. Another Guardsman withered.
‘Not a bad idea, Trooper Antigone. Let’s call that the back-up plan. What I’m actually ordering you to do is march back to Amadis and see what you can lay your hands on. Tarrick here must still have some contacts among the criminal fraternity and, failing that, there’s a finely stocked zoological garden on the upper levels that I’m sure will provide several days supply of fresh meat.’
The three olive-clad troopers looked around at each other in amazement. Regan motioned with his eyebrows at Tarrick, encouraging him to speak. When the ganger didn’t bite, Regan stepped up.
‘With the greatest of respect, sir, that’s the most ridiculous thing we’ve ever been ordered to do. Even if the three of us could make it to Amadis and back with enough food and water to make it worthwhile, I’m not prepared to deprive the people we’re trying to defend. We might as well poison the water supply ourselves and spare them the slow death of dehydration or starvation.’
The other two Irregulars looked on apprehensively, anticipating the colonel’s hand finding its way back to the butt of his pistol.
‘Thank you for being honest and forthright with me, trooper,’ the colonel said.
Murtock and Tarrick visibly relaxed, grateful that neither they nor Regan would be the victim of battlefield justice.
‘In that case, we’ll be going with the back-up plan.’
‘Why did you have to go and open your big mouth? If he’d sent us back to Amadis, all we had to do was go AWOL for a few hours and then come back empty handed.’
Even at a whisper, the rebreather he was wearing ensured Murtock’s voice carried across the barren, muddy expanse of no-man’s-land and his two comrades, advancing in front of him, cut him glances that told him to ‘shut up’ in no uncertain terms. Regan had considered the possibility of pulling a fast one before he’d answered back to the colonel but, given Telomian’s current frame of mind, returning from Amadis without food or water would be tantamount to signing their own death warrants. Far better to take their chances on patrol in no-man’s-land or, as the colonel had put it: ‘Reconnoitre the enemy positions and determine the strength and troop types arrayed against us.’
Or, to put it in yet clearer terms: a suicide mission.
Time and distance had lost all meaning in the flat, brown terrain and the three Irregulars had no idea how long it had been since they’d left the relative safety of the trench. Though they were fairly certain they were still continuing in a straight line, the cloying mist made it impossible to tell just how close they were getting to the enemy trenches..
Regan stopped suddenly, held up his hand and motioned his comrades to halt. The enemy had not mined the contested zone, but other obstacles awaited anybody foolhardy enough to venture there and it was the rotting corpse of an enemy combatant that had drawn Regan’s attention. Satisfied that the monstrosity was dead, but not daring to touch the corpse in case it had been booby trapped, he signalled for them to continue advancing.
