Kill team, p.6
Kill Team, page 6
It’s Stroniberg who wakes first, his withdrawal-induced sleeplessness rousing him only a couple of hours after midnight. I watch him from the darkness, sitting up in bed, startled by the fluttering paper that drops to his lap. He picks it up and turns it to the faint light from the dimmed glowglobes above, trying to see what it is. He slides his feet out of bed and sits on the edge. I don’t move a muscle, I just look at him. He must have noticed me out of the corner of his eye, because he twists sharply to look at me, alarm on his face. I raise my finger to my lips to keep him silent and then point at his bed. He gets the message, lying back down again, the parchment crumpled in one hand.
The others rouse themselves when the lights flicker into daytime brightness at the end of the eight-hour sleep cycle. One by one they wake, making confused exclamations or just scratching their heads upon finding their mortuary tags.
‘Form up!’ I shout, pushing myself to my feet. They fall and scramble out of their beds, standing to attention in front of their bunks.
‘So now I’m leading a squad of corpses,’ I tell them scornfully, walking the length of the dormitory. ‘Well, that’s the mission fragged good and proper, isn’t it?’
None of them reply, they all look straight ahead, not meeting my gaze as I walk past them. I walk back again slowly, deliberately, teasing out the suspense, aggravating their anxieties. Stopping at my door again, I spin on the spot to face them, hands behind my back.
‘Next time I shall use a knife,’ I warn them, meaning every word of it. ‘And I won’t think twice about cutting you. As for your embarrassing performance last night, I have this to say: you are all corpses, and as we all know, corpses don’t eat, so there will be no meals today and battlefield water rations only. Do any of you have a question?’
Tanya steps forward, concern on her face.
‘Yes, Sharpshooter?’ I say.
‘You were in here last night, Last Chance?’ she asks worriedly.
‘Almost the whole night, Sharpshooter,’ I tell her with a smile. ‘Does that worry you? Don’t you trust your training lieutenant, Sharpshooter?’
‘I trust my training lieutenant, Last Chance!’ she replies quickly.
‘Then you’re an idiot, Sharpshooter,’ I snarl at her, striding down the room towards her. She flinches as I stop in front of her. ‘There’s not one person in the Emperor’s dark galaxy that I would trust, least of all me. I am not here to be nice to you, Sharpshooter. I am not here to look after you.’ I round on the rest of them and bellow at them. ‘I am here to make sure that when the time comes you can look after yourself, and me, and the rest of your squad!’ I whirl on her again. ‘I’ll break you in half on a whim, Sharpshooter, so don’t ever trust me unless I tell you to. Is that clear?’
‘No, Last Chance, it isn’t,’ Quidlon replies, stepping forward. ‘If we can’t trust you, then how are we supposed to trust you when you say that we can, given that you may be lying to us about trusting you?’
‘Exactly my point, Brains,’ I tell him with a grin. ‘Now, all of you get cleaned up. Breakfast time will be spent in the armoury doing weapons maintenance drill. I will join you at the normal time for today’s new adventure. In the meantime, I believe there is still some fresh meat left in the officers’ kitchen, which I shall be enjoying.’
They break ranks and busy themselves with getting ready. I turn to walk out when something occurs to me.
‘Oh, one more thing,’ I say to them, causing them to pause in their preparations. ‘If any of you can tag me with one of those, you all earn one day’s rest and recuperation. However, if any of you try and fail, then it’ll be another day without food. That sounds fair, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, Last Chance!’ they reply in unison.
‘Good. I’ll be seeing you shortly,’ I tell them, whistling a jaunty tune that my dead comrade Pohl taught me a couple of years ago. I won’t bore you with the bawdy lyrics, but suffice to say it’s called the Hangman’s Five Daughters.
The next day, and the day after that, they all look exhausted. None of them have got any sleep as far as I can tell. I suspect they’re having disturbing dreams of me sneaking around with my knife. Good, that was the point. I overheard them this morning discussing a watch rota. That should be interesting to see in action, considering the variable length of the nights that I’ve requested. I’ve decided to give them another week before I try anything again. That’ll show whether they can keep their guard up night after night, or whether they lapse into a false sense of security again.
I think it’s time to start doing some squad-based training now. After breakfast on day twenty-four I lead them to training bay six. We’re kitted out with full equipment; we’ll be spending the next several days in there without coming out. I’ve issued everyone with lasguns, the standard Imperial Guard armament, as well as knives, ammunition for a hundred shots each, rations, water canteens, bedrolls and everything else. I also gave them new uniforms, with a common brown and green camo scheme. They don’t have name badges to remind them who they are now. Not one of them has slipped up so far on that front, but I’m waiting for it. They’re starting to get tired. Weary from irregular sleep and day after day of me bawling them out, pushing them hard, relentlessly driving them on.
It’s for their own good. If they can’t take the training, how in the Emperor’s name are they going to fare in real combat? Like I said, their pasts mean nothing to me, all of their previous achievements count for nothing. Here, and on the mission, is where they’ll prove themselves to the Colonel. And prove themselves to me, as well. I’m spending a lot of energy myself, doing this for them.
It’s been tiring work for me too. Somehow, I doubt they appreciate the effort I’ve put in on their behalf.
When it comes down to it, I’m starting to feel responsible for them, like I’ve never felt responsible for anyone else before. I tell myself that if they get themselves killed, if they foul up and the mission goes up like a photon flash flare, ultimately it’ll be their own fault. But inside, I know that isn’t one hundred per cent true. I know that if I miss something out, if I take anything for granted, if I go easy on them for just a moment, I will have failed them, and through them the Colonel.
Anyway, we’re all decked out in battledress and heading into the training bay. We pass through a couple of airlocks monitored by white-robed tech-priests, whose job it is to maintain the stable environments inside each of the bays. At the end of it a large double-doored portal rolls open.
It’s amazing. On one side of the door is metal mesh decking. On the other side steps lead down into rolling hills and fields. I can see a small pre-fabricated farmhouse a few hundred metres to my left, smoke drifting lazily out of its chimney. We walk down the wide stairwell on to the grass, gazing around us like first-timers in a brothel. With a clang, the doors slam closed behind us.
I assume the walls have some kind of image painted on to them, because the agri-world landscape stretches as far as the eye can see. Above our heads, small puffy clouds dot a deep blue sky. I blink in disbelief as I notice the clouds are drifting across the ceiling.
‘Last Chance…’ Iyle whispers in awe. ‘Sorceries of the machine god.’
He’s looking behind me and I turn to see what he’s staring at. The doors have disappeared, as have the steps. As in every other direction, the hills stretch as far as the horizon. In the far distance I can just make out the purple slopes of a mountain range, topped with snow. The others are murmuring suspiciously, shrinking back from the open sky above.
‘Yes, magic, the most powerful techno-magic,’ I say quietly in agreement, awed and afraid at the nature of our surroundings.
‘This is unbelievable…’ gasps Quidlon, dropping to his knees and running his fingers through the grass. ‘It feels real, and even smells real.’
I notice that he’s right. It smells like an agri-world. There’s even a faint breeze blowing from our left. Fresh air, on a ship where the air gets constantly cycled through great big refiners, breathed millions and millions of times before until it’s almost thick with age. I was expecting something pretty special, after the Colonel told me there were only a couple of dozen of these ships in the entire navy, but nothing as extravagant as this. His powerful contacts have been working hard for him again.
‘It is real,’ I say ominously, a sudden shiver of unnatural fear coursing through me. ‘I think it’s been grown here by the tech-priests.’
This is wrong, a voice at the back of my mind tells me. Ships don’t have woods and meadows on board them. They have engines, and guns, and they’re built out of metal, not dirt. At that point a voice blares out, seemingly from the air itself, shattering the illusion.
‘This is Warrant Officer Campbell,’ the heavenly voice tells us. ‘Tech-priest Almarex will be monitoring you in training bay six. If you need to contact him, adjust your comm-sets to shipboard frequency seventy-three. When you wish to leave, return to this point and transmit a signal on shipboard frequency seventy-four and the doors will open. Oh, and a word of warning. Our climate regulators predict rainfall for most of the night, so set up a good camp. Good luck with your training.’
‘Rainfall?’ Tanya laughs nervously. ‘We’re going to get rained on aboard a starship? There’s a first.’
‘No fauna though,’ Quidlon continues, looking around.
‘No what, Brains?’ asks Trost, who’s sat on his pack, tossing a grenade from hand to hand.
‘No fauna,’ Quidlon repeats himself, squinting up into the sky.
‘What Brains means is there aren’t any animals here,’ Stroniberg explains, squatting down next to the ex-Officio Sabatorum agent. ‘No birds, no animals, no insects. Only vegetation.’
‘Why didn’t he just say that!’ complains Trost, ripping up a handful of grass and letting it scatter between his fingers.
‘Okay everyone, daydreams in paradise time is over!’ I snap at them. ‘We are here to work, not rest. Flyboy, you have the map, find out where we are.’
Strelli pulls off his pack and starts to rummage through it, looking for the chart one of the tech-priests handed to me as we passed through the bay entryway.
‘Emperor’s blood, Flyboy,’ Iyle swears at Strelli, pulling the pack from him and tipping its contents on to the ground. He finds the chart and waves it angrily under the pilot’s nose. ‘What in hell’s use is a map that you can’t find?’
‘Well, you take care of the map then, Eyes,’ Strelli snaps back, gathering together his stuff and piling it back into his backpack.
‘Flyboy keeps the map,’ I tell them, snatching it off Iyle and handing it to Strelli.
‘Why, Last Chance?’ asks Iyle. ‘I was in recon, remember. I can find places with my eyes closed.’
‘That’s why you don’t need to learn how to use a map, you stupid son-of-an-ork!’ I shout at him, pushing him onto his backside. I glare at the others.‘ And that’s why Flyboy here is in charge of the map! When Eyes gets killed, who else is going to know what to do?’
‘Don’t you mean if I get killed, Last Chance?’ says Iyle defensively. I round on him and kick him in the chest, flattening him again.
‘The way you’re going, Eyes, it’s most definitely “when”, not “if”,’ I spit at him. ‘When everyone has finished arguing, we might carry on. Right, our mission for today is to take and attempt to hold that farmstead.’ I point at the clutch of buildings about half a kilometre away.
‘This whole area is to be considered hostile. We’re expecting the place to be reinforced at dusk, so we have to be in by then. There will be targets appearing during the course of the day, and our progress will be monitored by the tech-priests. This evening we will set camp and have a full debriefing. Now, Flyboy, show me that map.’
The others gather round as I spread the chart onto the grass. It shows that the farm is in the cleft of a shallow valley between two hills. We have no way of knowing how accurate the map is though, but there appears to be a road or track of some kind, leading in from what I reckon to be the north.
‘How would you attack, Demolition Man?’ I prod Trost in the arm.
‘Wait for cover of darkness, then sneak in, Last Chance,’ he tells me. ‘I could rig something up with the squad’s grenades, blow the whole thing to tinder.’
‘Great, then we get to defend a pile of sticks,’ Strelli points out. ‘Listen to the orders, fraghead. Take and hold, not level the place.’
‘Well, the orders are stupid,’ Trost huffs, stepping away from the group.
‘Flyboy’s right, Demolition Man,’ I say, standing up and dragging him back to the map. ‘When we find out whatever it is we’ve got to do, there’ll be a plan, and everybody has to stick to the plan. You may be used to working on your own, but unless you want a bolt pistol pointed between your eyes, you better start learning to share.’
‘So what would you do, Last Chance?’ Stradinsk asks, squatting down and looking at the map again before turning her eyes on me.
‘I want to hear what you meatheads come up with first, and then you get a chance to shoot holes in my plan,’ I tell them, pulling my pack off and sitting down on it. ‘Come on, Sharpshooter, let’s hear what you’ve got to say.’
So we spend an hour or so discussing different ways of taking that farm. We go over frontal assaults, flank attacks, diversionary feints, fusillade and half a dozen other ways of kicking a potential enemy out. As the time passes, I let them get on with it more and more, and soon they’re discussing the good points and the pitfalls without any intervention or prompting from me.
I let them think that they’re going to have their say, although I decided straight away what we’re going to do. It’s best to let them get it out of their system first before I start giving them orders. Hopefully, they’ll learn a thing or two, including following the man in charge. One of them distracts me from my thoughts. ‘What was that?’ I ask, looking around. ‘Someone say something?’
‘I asked what type of support we can expect, Last Chance,’ Quidlon tells me. ‘You know, air support, artillery, tanks, that sort of thing.’
I just laugh. I laugh until I’m red in the face. They look at me like I’ve gone insane, which to them probably isn’t too far from the truth.
‘You got sod all, Brains,’ I say, grinning like a fool. ‘This is it. No planes. No tanks. No artillery. Just the eight of us, with our lasguns and frag grenades and our heads switched on.’ I rein myself in and get serious. ‘I’m training you for a real mission, when all we’re gonna have is us. Forget about support and what you don’t have, that’s how dead men think. True soldiers think about themselves and what they can do, without help from anyone else. So, have you agreed on a plan yet?’
‘We think we have one that will work, Last Chance,’ Stroniberg informs me solemnly.
‘Good, now forget it,’ I tell them. My statement is answered with objections and confusion, and they start to try and tell me anyway, arguing that it’ll work. Trost hurls abuse and stomps away angrily.
‘I don’t give a frag about your plan, I’m in charge,’ I tell them harshly, slapping away Stroniberg’s hand, which he laid on my arm when he was arguing with me. ‘I never said we’d use your plan for the actual attack, I just asked how you would do it. Now, shut the frag up, and listen to what I’m going to tell you. If we don’t take this farmstead, nobody eats tonight and we try again tomorrow, is that clear?’
They answer sullenly, like children who’ve been told that they can’t play. Tough.
‘This is the plan. Any of you fail to follow orders, it’ll be bad for all of you,’ I tell them. They gather around the map while I point out the various locations.
‘Demolition Man, Eyes, Hero and myself will infiltrate the farm and sneak into this building,’ I point to a barn-like structure within the compound, about twenty metres from the main house. ‘If we encounter any resistance we take them out quickly and silently, using knives only.’
I glare at them to make my point. If this was a real fight, any noise would probably bring down all kinds of crap onto us before we even got started.
‘Sharpshooter and Stitcher will take up positions on this ridge,’ I point to the slope to the east of the objective. ‘Find some good cover with flexible firing positions. Your job is to bring fire down onto the farmhouse before our assault begins, and to cover our backs when we go in. We die, it’s your fault.’
The pair of them nod seriously, understanding the importance of their role. The only way to take that building is to get someone actually in there and clear it room by room. However, that would be worthless if reinforcements came in behind us or surrounded us before the others could bolster any defence we might muster.
‘You two,’ I say, looking at Strelli and Quidlon, ‘will move into position once the others begin their fusillade. Get on to the roof of this outhouse,’ I indicate a large building just behind and to the left of the one we plan to assault from, ‘and provide covering fire on the target as we move in. Once we’re inside, take over our position ready to follow us in quick when I give the shout.’
Quidlon is studying the map intently, a slight frown creasing his flat forehead.
‘You have something to say, Brains?’ I ask, turning my gaze on him.
