Kill team, p.7
Kill Team, page 7
‘The attack is all centred on the south and east, Last Chance,’ he points out, drawing an arc around the farm with his finger. ‘You’ve got nothing to protect you from the north and west.’
‘We can’t spread ourselves too thin,’ I reply patiently. ‘Any less in the assault team and we risk getting kicked out straight away. One person on the ridge won’t be enough to keep any enemy heads down before we go, and won’t be able to cover their own back. The same goes for you two inside the compound with us. The main road comes in from the southwest.’ I trace the point of my dagger along its length on the map. ‘So we’ll have run into anything along there. The objective itself will shield us from any counter-attack from the opposite direction, ’cos the enemy will have to either enter from the opposite side of the building, which puts them in front of us, or circle round to where we go in and get caught in a crossfire by you guys and the team on the hill.’
‘You talk about enemy moving round and encircling, but aren’t these just pop-up targets like on the shooting ranges, Last Chance?’ asks Trost.
‘I’ve got two answers to that,’ I snap at him. ‘First, this whole area is littered with those targets and the tech-priests in control can raise and lower them in sequence to simulate movement. Second, and more importantly, this is a battle. Don’t think of this as an exercise, something to pass the time. When we’re on the mission, we’ll be fighting real bastards who will want to kill us, and I don’t want any of you getting into a routine where the enemy stays in one place. A soldier who sits still too long is a dead soldier, and useless to me and the Emperor, or an easy target if he’s fighting for the other side.’
‘That’s true,’ agrees Stradinsk. ‘First rule of the sniper is to take a shot and then move on.’
‘Well, thanks for your support, Sharpshooter,’ I say sourly before getting back to the attack. ‘This has to be timed right, everyone needs to act when and how I tell you. Eyes goes in first and scouts around, and reports back to me. We’ll make any changes then, and after that you follow your orders no matter what happens. Is that understood?’
They all nod, although Quidlon and Trost seem doubtful.
‘Once we have a clear route, Stitcher and Sharpshooter get into position on the ridge,’ I continue, ‘I’ll give you half an hour to make your way there. You can see the whole thing from where you’ll be, or you should be able to if you get in the right place. Sharpshooter, once you’re up there point out a few good places for Stitcher to settle.’
‘I’ll pick a couple of good spots, Last Chance, don’t worry,’ she assures me with a tight-lipped smile.
‘I bet you will,’ I agree, remembering her lethal record. ‘When you see everyone else in position, open fire on the building. The covering team in the compound,’ I look at Strelli and Quidlon, ‘will open fire only when the assault teams fire. Direct your shots at other parts of the building to the ones we’re firing at. When we get inside, get off the roof, don’t waste any time at all, and then get into where we were. Don’t anyone even think about firing into the farm once we’ve gone in, you’re there to keep the grounds clear. Anyone shoots me, I’ll come back and haunt you for the rest of your fraggin’ lives and make you even more miserable than you are now.’
‘No firing on the building once you are inside, I can remember that,’ says Quidlon with a nervous nod.
‘Relax, Brains,’ I tell him. ‘I’ve been through more blood and guts fighting than you could imagine, and I know what I’m doing. Now, everyone tell me what the plan is.’
I make them repeat it to me three times each, first all of the attack in the order I explained it. I then get them to tell me their own parts, pointing at them each in turn, then doing the same again but picking on them randomly. Satisfied they understand what’s expected of them I wave them away to get their kit together.
We move out some time in what I guess to be mid-afternoon. I forgot to ask how long the ‘day’ was supposed to last in here. That said, I don’t know how much information we’ll have on the actual mission so some flexibility and adaptation won’t be out of order. I mean, the Colonel and Inquisitor Oriel had been planning Coritanorum for years and we still had to make it up as we went along at some points. For all I know, we might just get dropped into a big mess and be forced to improvise the whole thing from the start. It’s too much to expect this bunch to be able to do that at the moment, though. I’d rather they learnt how to follow orders to the exact letter, and can get their heads around a plan without it taking hours to explain.
Everyone is lined up with their kit on, and I shoulder my own pack and join them.
‘Right, we’ll move out in single file, ten paces apart, Eyes goes on point thirty paces ahead,’ I tell them, waving the recon specialist on with my lasgun. ‘Everyone keeps their eyes and ears open and their mouths shut, I don’t know what surprises this place has got in store for us. You see the enemy, hit the dirt and wave everyone else down. Don’t fire until I give you the order. I want this to be disciplined and calm, no mad firefights unless I say so.’
‘Yes, Last Chance!’ they chorus back.
‘Right, let’s move out,’ I give the order, and we set off across the field.
Marching across the fields of the training bay brings back some memories. Memories I’m not sure I want. While half my brain scans the surrounding grasslands, the other begins to wander, remembering the faces of all those comrades left broken and bleeding on a dozen battlefields. I look at the others in front of me, fanning out to sweep a track ahead, and wonder how many of them are going to die. And then I get to wondering how much of it will be my fault if they do. I picked them. I plucked them out of their cells and held the gun to their heads, so to speak. I’m also the one who’s training them, teaching them what they’ll need to know to survive. If I fail them, if they die, then some of it must be down to me, mustn’t it? All those other bodies, all those dead faces that haunt my dreams, they weren’t my fault, I’m sure of that. I wasn’t the one who put them there, I wasn’t the one who was responsible for them. But these Last Chancers, these are my team. Chosen by me, trained by me, and I suppose led by me when the time comes.
The weight of that dawns on me and my hands begin to tremble. I’ve faced horrors blade to blade and gun to gun that you wouldn’t dream of in your worst nightmares and not given it a second thought, and here I am shaking like a new recruit in their first firefight. I drop back a bit so that the others won’t notice, pulling the map out of my leg pocket to make out I’m checking something. The paper shakes in my hand and I feel my heart flutter. There’s something wrong. This doesn’t happen to me, I’ve killed more people then most have met. So why am I getting a massive attack of the jitters in an Emperor-damned training bay?
‘Okay, rest up for a few minutes while I check something,’ I call to the others just as the first of them, Iyle, reaches a hedgeline across our advance.
They drop into the grass and I walk off a little ways, down into a shallow hollow, and dump my gun on the ground. Spots start dancing in front of my eyes and my whole body is trembling now. I sit down heavily, my legs pretty much buckling under me. The straps of my pack are tightening across my chest and I wrench them off and let it fall behind me. Every muscle in my body seems to be in spasm at once. I can’t stop clenching and unclenching my fists.
This isn’t just nerves! I scream at myself. This is some kind of pox I’ve caught, perhaps in that Emperor-forsaken prison. My breathing is ragged, my head swimming. A shadowy figure wavers in front of me and I can just about hear what they’re saying over the hissing and pounding in my ears. I wonder vaguely why the sky’s behind them.
‘Are you okay, sir?’ I dimly recognise Tanya’s voice.
‘Name’s Last Chance,’ I slur back, trying to focus on her face, which sways from side to side. ‘No rations for anyone this evening.’
I feel someone grabbing my shoulders firmly and a face leers into mine, making me recoil with surprise.
‘Hold him still,’ snaps Stroniberg and hands clamp on my legs and arms, pinning me down in the grass. I taste something metallic in my mouth and gag.
There’s an explosion to my left, and I hear screaming. It sounds like Quidlon, or maybe Franx. It’s all a bit unclear. My eyes are playing up: one moment I’m lying there on the grass in the field, the next I’m in some kind of ruined building, bullets tearing the place up around me. I get dizzier, and a surge of frustration fuels my anger, threatening to rip me apart from the inside.
‘Open your mouth, Kage, open your mouth!’ Stroniberg shouts at me, and I feel his fingers on my jaw, and realise my teeth are welded together. ‘Dolan’s blood, somebody take that knife off him before he does any more damage!’ he snaps to the others, who I can just about see around me in between flickers of the dark, ruined city. One of them pulls it from the cramped fingers of my right hand. I didn’t even realise I was holding one. Something wet is dribbling down my throat and chest, and I try to reach up to touch it, but my arm is held firm.
‘What the frag is he screaming about?’ I hear Strelli asking.
I don’t know who he’s talking about, I can’t hear any screaming. I try to sit up and look around to find out who it is. For Emperor’s sake, we’re supposed to be in the middle of a battle here, if someone’s making that much racket, they’ll have hell to pay when I’m feeling a bit better.
I feel a sharp stinging pain in my face that brings tears to my eyes and makes my ears ring.
‘This is just getting better and better!’ I hear Trost shouting. What’s he talking about? I’m just feeling a bit ill, that’s all. If they’d just give me some room, I’ll be alright. I try to wave them away, to give me some air. Something heavy lands on my chest, pinning me down. I try to heave it off, but a stabbing pain in my leg distracts me.
Suddenly all the strength leaves me. I can feel it seeping out, starting at my fingers and toes and spreading up my body. A wave of panic hits me as I can no longer feel my heart beat and a moment later everything goes black.
When I open my eyes, it’s to a vision of insanity. Right in front of my face are dozens of glass lenses, clicking in and out of an arrangement of tubes, a bright light shining through, almost blinding me. Tiny chains and gears spin back and forth rhythmically, accompanied by a low humming. Little cantilevers wobble erratically, pumping a dark green fluid through a maze of transparent tubes. My nostrils catch a mix of oil and soap, along with the distinctive smell of blood.
I try to turn my head, but I can’t. I feel something hard and cold around my face, like bars running across my chin and forehead and down my cheeks to a block under my jaw. As sensation slowly returns I can feel more restraints. Glancing down past my chin, I can see heavy metal clamps across my chest and legs, held in place with serious-looking padlocks. I can feel things in my arms and throat, piercing the flesh in half a dozen places. I turn my attention back to the apparatus around my head, my eyes tracing cords and cables that disappear into the mass of the machinery. My ears catch the squeaking of a badly-oiled wheel somewhere in the mechanism.
I open my mouth to say something, but my jaw can’t move and it just ends up as a cross between a growl and a moan. The lights in the machine flicker and go off, leaving me bathed in a lambent yellow glow. With a whirr the apparatus pulls back from my face, its lenses and levers folding in on themselves, retracting into a small cube that disappears from view above my head. I can see the ceiling and far wall: brick painted in a light grey.
I hear a door latch and then the sound of a door closing to my right, and a tech-priest enters my field of vision. He wears light green robes, spattered with dark patches of what looks like blood. A heavy cog-and-skull sigil hangs from a silver chain about his neck. His face is old and lined, creased heavily like a discarded shirt. A variety of tubes and wires sprout from his neck and head, lost from view over his shoulders. In his hands he carries what looks like a gun with a needle instead of a barrel.
‘Am I audible to you?’ he asks, his voice a hoarse whisper. ‘Blink your eyes for an affirmative.’
It takes me a moment to realise he wants to know if I can hear him. I blink once for yes.
‘Am I visible to you?’ he asks next, moving to the left side of the bed I’m bound to.
Another blink. I hear the door opening and closing again, and I see Stroniberg walk to the other side of me. He exchanges a look with the tech-priest, who nods once and then turns his attention back to me, his dark brown eyes regarding me clinically.
‘So it is mental, not physical,’ Stroniberg says, as much to himself as me and the tech-priest. He still hasn’t looked at me, busying himself instead with a sheaf of papers hanging from a hook at the foot of the bed.
I lie there, helpless as a new-born, my mind starting to race as I recover my wits. What the hell has happened to me? What did Stroniberg mean by ‘mental, not physical’? Surely I’ve just caught a dose of something? All I did was get a bit shaky and dizzy, nothing too serious about that.
I want to ask him what the frag is going on, but as before it just comes out as a meaningless mumble between my teeth. It attracts his attention though and he comes and stands by my left arm.
‘There’s no point trying to speak, Kage,’ he tells me, not unkindly. ‘You’re in a restraint harness for your own safety. And ours. You really are a good fighter, aren’t you.’
One blink. Yes I am.
‘No one on board fully understands what happened to you. We don’t have anyone who has done much more than a cursory study of this area of madness,’ he continues, turning and pulling a chair to the bedside before sitting down. I can just about still see him out of the corner of my eye. ‘You are suffering from some kind of battle-induced vapours leading to a self-destructive trauma. Do you understand what I’m saying, Kage?’
No blink. He could be speaking in foul ork speak for all I know what he’s on about. He chews his lip for a moment, obviously in thought, choosing his words.
‘Okay, I’ll start with the basics,’ he says with a sigh. ‘You are insane, Kage.’
I try to laugh, but the jaw restraint constricts my throat, making me cough instead. When I recover, I direct a vicious frown at Stroniberg.
‘Your years of intense fighting have allowed dangerous amounts of ill vapours to build up in certain parts of your brain, affecting your mental state,’ he carries on explaining, patiently and slowly. ‘Something that happened in the training bay triggered another release of these vapours, which have begun eroding your senses of judgement, conscience and self-preservation. Are you following me?’
No blink. I never did know much about medicine, and all this mad talk of vapours eating my brain sounds like grox crap. I mean, I’d feel it if my brain was melting.
‘The symptoms you displayed in the training bay all point towards a serious battle-psychosis developing, hence your suicide attempt,’ he tells me.
Suicide attempt? What the frag is he talking about? I’ve never even thought about killing myself, not in all those long months and years of fighting and locked alone in that cell. Suicide is for the weak, the ones who have nothing useful left to offer. I’d never kill myself! Emperor, what kind of soldier does he take me for?
‘You tried to slit your own throat,’ he confirms, seeing the disbelief in my eyes. ‘Luckily, the madness vapours had also affected your ability to control your muscles so you just ended up slashing your jaw. You severed a tendon, which is why we’ve had to bind your jaw shut until the muscles knit together again.’
In a flash of memory, I recall the metallic taste of blood in my mouth during the seizure, and my teeth locking in place.
‘I think we caught this before too much damage could be done to your brain, and Biologis Alanthrax,’ he indicates the other man, who is still regarding me dispassionately, much as he might look at an interesting specimen, ‘was able to perform the surgery and release the vapours before they became fatal.’
Surgery? What in the Emperor’s name have these blood fiends done to me? I guess my expression must show what’s passing through my mind, as Stroniberg lays a hand on my arm, to try and comfort me I guess. I flick it irritably away with my fingers, one of the few parts of me that I can actually move.
‘It is a fairly standard practice, though not common,’ he tries to reassure me. ‘Biologis Alanthrax has performed it several times before, with almost fifty per cent of his charges making full recoveries. It is a simple matter of temporarily removing a portion of your skull, making an incision into the affected area to release the vapours and then bone-welding the cranium back in place.’
You stuck a knife in my brain! I want to scream at him. For Emperor’s sake, you bastard, you stuck a knife in my brain! I’d rather take my chance with the madness than have these sawbones chopping me to bits. I try to push myself up, but there’s no give in the restraints at all. Pain shoots through my face as I clench my teeth and snarl at Stroniberg. Emperor damn it, I didn’t go through hell and back with the Colonel to die on some damn surgery table under the knife of a jumped-up tech-priest who’s got more in common with the knife in his hand than me.
How could the Colonel let them do this to me? He can’t believe in all this garbled nonsense. What the hell does he think he’s doing, putting me under the knife? Mother of Dolan, I’ve seen as many men die at the hands of cretins like these as from bullets and blades. I’ve seen men dying in agony from rotting wounds, cut into them by these sadistic bloodmongers.
‘You need to remain calm, Kage,’ Stroniberg tells me, standing up, concern written all across his face. ‘You need to allow your body to heal.’ He glances across at Alanthrax, who steps forward with the gun-like needle. I try to spit a curse at the Emperor-damned pair of them as he pushes it into my forearm and squeezes down on the trigger. As before, sleep washes gently over me.
