[Imperial Guard 02] - Death World Read online

  Mackenzie had displayed a rough map of the area, and pointed out the known ork strongholds. He was planning an attack on one of these, intelligence suggested that it was lightly defended, the orks depending on the jungle itself to protect them. A derisive snort had gone up from the Catachans at this point.

  The whole of A Platoon, ogryns and all, was committed to this offensive, while two of D Platoon’s four squads were to set traps and lay in wait for reinforcements from the other ork camps. Other squads would target supply lines—hit and run tactics, to divide the enemy’s attention.

  Lorenzo’s squad had been the last to learn its assignment—and its ten men had let out a cheer when Mackenzie had explained that it was the most vital, and most dangerous, of all. The commissar had shouted at them to be silent.

  “One particular ork has been giving us trouble,” he had said. “Their current warboss in this region. You know how it is—we take out one, another takes its place. But this one has a few more brain cells than most. The troops have taken to calling him Big Green. He’s actually got the beasts organised, to an extent. Their last few raids on us were almost well planned. And this ork has a keen sense of self-preservation. Most warbosses lead from the front, this one stays behind the lines. He’s become a legend to the orks, if only because he’s lasted longer than his predecessors. He’s good for their morale. Too good. I want him dead!”

  According to the commissar, the Imperial Guard had been close to finding the warboss’ hideout when, in his own words, “the jungle became impassable”. They knew its general location, but the lair itself was well concealed. The Catachans’ job was to find the ork warboss and do the necessary deed. A stealth mission, a single assassination. Sounded simple, Lorenzo thought.

  Then, Mackenzie had thrown a spanner in the works.

  “Given the importance of this mission,” he had said, “I will be leading it myself. Silence!” he bellowed in response to the Catachans’ howls of protest.

  Sergeant Greiss, who a moment earlier had sported a broad grin on his face, now looked as if he had been slapped. “With respect, sir,” he had growled, “you aren’t a Jungle Fighter. Better if the men take their orders from someone used to—”

  “Contrary to popular belief, sergeant.” Mackenzie had sneered, “they do teach us to do more than sit around and drink amasec in officer training. I am fully qualified in jungle warfare—and more importantly, in command. Now, I’m sure your style of leadership is adequate for charging at the enemy with your bayonets fixed—but this is to be a precision strike. For that to work, I need…” He raised his voice to speak over the growing grumbles of dissent. “I need a well-drilled, efficient squad of men, who know what’s expected of them and will comply without question or complaint. With respect, sergeant, I doubt you can provide that.”

  Lorenzo wasn’t looking forward to serving under Mackenzie. Still, he wouldn’t have swapped this assignment for any other. He felt proud at the thought that Colonel Graves might have recommended his squad above all others—although he wasn’t kidding himself. He knew that, if they had been recommended, it would have been for Greiss’ experience or the distinguished war records of Dougan and Armstrong. Chances were, the colonel didn’t even know Lorenzo’s name. Anyway, it seemed more likely that Mackenzie had made the choice himself, probably just for the opportunity to laud it over Greiss.

  The Catachans had insisted on providing their own night watch, to the chagrin of the Validians already standing sentry over the camp. Lorenzo had volunteered for the duty, but he hadn’t been quick enough. He slept soundly, knowing he was safe in the charge of his comrades—until, in the dark hours of the morning, some inbred danger sense woke him.

  He opened his eyes, instantly alert, to face a yellow stare.

  A jungle lizard, just a little larger than the one he had seen yesterday. Somehow it had slipped by the Guardsmen of two regiments, and crept up on him. Its eyes stared into his eyes. It was perfectly still, its trailing body propped up by two legs like miniature tree trunks. Tiny nostrils quivered as it breathed, slowly and calmly. Its mouth was a thin line, perhaps a little upturned at the edges. As if it was mocking him, gloating.

  Lorenzo had seen lizards that could breathe fire and spit poison, or eviscerate a man with their claws in seconds. He had seen one burrow into a man’s stomach and attach itself to his nervous system, working him like a puppet. He had no idea of the capabilities of this one, but he didn’t doubt that it was deadly. Deathworlds bred no other type of animal. And it had the drop on him.

  He lay still as a rock, staring into those yellow eyes, looking for the slightest glimmer of intent, the warning that the lizard was about to strike.

  Slowly, painfully slowly, so slowly that his muscles screamed in protest, Lorenzo’s fingers worked their way down his leg. Toward his Catachan fang.

  The lizard made its move.

  Its mouth gaped open, impossibly wide, almost larger than its head—and during the briefest split-second that followed, Lorenzo got the impression of a coiled red tongue with a glistening needlepoint end. He snatched his knife from its sheath, tried to roll out of the way, but he knew there was no time.

  Something flashed through the air. Something metal.

  Then there was blood—thick, green blood—and Lorenzo was up and armed, but only because the expected attack had not come.

  A Catachan fang was buried up to its haft in the lizard’s head. Its blade had passed through the creature’s mouth, pinning its tongue, and into the scorched earth beneath it. An ordinary man might have thanked the God-Emperor for sparing him, but Lorenzo had long since learned there was no divine intervention in such matters. He thanked good comrades instead.

  “Sorry “bout that, pal,” said Myers, reclaiming his knife from the dead lizard’s head and casually wiping off its blood and brain matter with a leaf. “These critters are like chameleons, they can change their scale patterns to blend in with their surroundings.”

  As usual, Myers was accompanied by Wildman Storm—a muscular, bearded Catachan who often looked like he would tear off your head as soon as look at you, until his features broke into a dazzling grin. “We’ve picked off a few tonight,” he said, “but we didn’t hear this one until it was already past us. Took a minute to find it.”

  “No problem,” said Lorenzo, adding a grateful nod for the rescue.

  No longer pinned, the lizard had toppled onto its side. Its ruptured tongue lolled out of its mouth, leaking venom and blood. From above, no longer eye to eye with it, it seemed small and insignificant. It was easy to forget the real threat it had posed just a few seconds earlier. Lorenzo wondered what its poison would have done to him—weakened him, paralysed him, killed him outright?

  “Do you suppose these are the ‘invisible monsters’ they talk about round here?” asked Storm.

  Lorenzo shrugged.

  “Hope not,” said Myers, as he re-sheathed his knife and sauntered away. “I was hoping for something more of a challenge.”

  Breakfast for the Catachans was a vegetable broth, brewed by Dougan from local plants. It was the best meal Lorenzo had tasted in weeks—made even more so when Storm dropped a hunk of lizard steak into his bowl. The men were in high spirits, looking forward to their missions. The only shadow on the horizon was that of Commissar Mackenzie—and Greiss in particular was taking the usurpation of his position badly.

  “You tell me what the Imperium is even doing here,” he grumbled over his soup. “We’re out at the rear end of nowhere, there aren’t any minerals here worth a light, and as for colonising, forget it! I’ll tell you this much: if the orks packed up tomorrow and left Rogar III, we wouldn’t be too far behind ’em. Seems to me the only reason we’re here is because they are, because the Emperor’s armies can’t be seen to be turning their backs on the enemy. The only reason the orks won’t leave is because they won’t turn their backs on us, so we just keep fighting.”

  “Hey, steady on, sergeant,” said Woods. “You’re starting to s
ound like a heretic!”

  “Hell, don’t get me wrong,” said Greiss, “I’m as up for a scrap as the next man. I’d just rather orks and Guardsmen alike moved their backsides out of here and left us to it. Jungle Fighters against the jungle, the way it should be.”

  “Yeah, I can get on board with that,” grinned Woods.

  “Course,” sighed Greiss, “ours is not to reason why. We just move where we’re told to move, fight who we’re told to fight, jump when we’re told to jump.”

  Lorenzo remembered what the sergeant had said back on the ship, how he wanted his blaze of glory. He was unlikely to get it with Mackenzie calling the shots. He told himself there’d be other chances for the grizzled sergeant, but he could see it in Greiss’ despondent eyes: he’d convinced himself that this would be his last hurrah. Lorenzo had seen what happened to men who began to think that way. It was a thought that tended to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  The hall was beginning to empty when a Validian approached Lorenzo’s table, and took a seat beside him. He was in his thirties, but still baby-faced. He wasn’t exactly fat, but then nor were his muscles exactly toned. He was beginning to grow jowls. Sizing him up in a second, Lorenzo concluded that he’d never have reached half his present age on Catachan.

  Greiss looked up from his meal. “You’re at the wrong table, boy,” he growled, although the Validian couldn’t have been much younger than he was. “Your lot are over that side of the hall.”

  “I know that, sergeant,” said the Guardsman. “I wanted to introduce myself before we set out. Braxton.” He held out a hand, which Greiss ignored. “Commissar Mackenzie’s adjutant—and I report for the Eagle & Bolter. Didn’t anyone tell you? I’ve been attached to your squad. I’m coming with you this morning.”

  “Like hell!” snapped Greiss, and he pushed his bowl aside and stormed out of the hall. Woods shot Braxton a mocking sneer, then followed. Myers and Storm, further down the table, were absorbed in their own conversation, which left Lorenzo effectively, awkwardly, alone with the newcomer.

  “Don’t mind Old Hardhead,” he said. “He’s had his nose put out of joint by your boss.”

  Braxton nodded. “The commissar does seem to have a talent for that.” The Validian and the Jungle Fighter shared a brief smile. “I just thought you ought to know we aren’t all like him,” said Braxton. “Or Enright.”

  “Enright?”

  “The sergeant who started the trouble yesterday. Talk about noses being out of joint! Or if it wasn’t before the fight, your trooper over there sure saw to it… Enright and his cronies can’t face the fact that we need your help. They think we should be able to handle a few orks by ourselves.”

  “But the orks aren’t the problem.” Lorenzo pointed out.

  “I know,” said Braxton. “Rogar III has changed. I think I’ve noticed it more than some of the others, because… well…” He shifted in his seat. “Since I got this assignment, I haven’t seen much action, you know? But last week, I went out there, into the jungle, for the first time in a while, and…”

  Lorenzo’s ears pricked up, eager for some hint of what was to come. “I swear,” said Braxton, “those jungle lizards had doubled in size since the last time I’d seen one—and they’d never been so vicious. They used to run for cover when we got within ten metres. We used them for target practice. Now, they’re getting bolder, sniffing around the camp itself. One of them stung Marks. The veins in his neck, and then his face, they turned black, throbbing. He was screaming, begging us to put him out of his misery. We had to do it. He’d have brought the orks down on us.”

  “I just wanted to say,” said Braxton, “that it’s good to have the experts here.”

  “Not according to Mackenzie,” said Lorenzo.

  “I know—and if it were up to me, we’d leave you to do your jobs. We’re only going to slow you down out there. But the commissar—he’s young, he wants to prove himself. I think he wants to be the one to tame the famous Jungle Fighters. And deal with Big Green, of course.”

  “And you just go where Mackenzie leads, huh?”

  “My job is to report his glorious victory—if I’m lucky.”

  Lorenzo regarded Braxton with a newly sympathetic gaze. It occurred to him that he was only obeying orders, like anyone—and that, in his own milieu, he was probably an able fighter. But, like most Guardsmen, he would have been conscripted at the age of sixteen or seventeen, already an adult. Lorenzo had been taught to defend himself with a knife before he could walk. By the age of eight, Catachan children were expected to be able to tame a wild grox, a harsh lesson that some did not survive, but such was the nature of life on a deathworld. You could be forged in its jungle heat, or you could wither and die in it.

  Beneath Guardsman Braxton’s words was an unspoken plea for help. But the men of Lorenzo’s world—like those of all deathworlds across the Imperium—obeyed only one law: that of the jungle. Survival of the fittest.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was another clear day. The sun blazed bright and hot, the morning temperature far in excess of that of the previous evening, the air bereft of breeze. Most of the Validians had been forced out of their stuffy huts, and some were evidently finding the heat uncomfortable. The Catachans, however, revelled in it. It opened Lorenzo’s pores and invigorated him.

  The clearing was full of sweaty bodies, moving in time to barked commands. Jungle Fighters were forming up in their squads and moving out. The men of A Platoon were arming themselves with autocannons and heavy bolters, and tuning up the three Sentinels that would precede them into battle.

  Mackenzie was in the thick of the activity, dispensing words here and there to the sergeants, complaining repeatedly about the Catachans’ lack of a formal uniform. “Uniforms get damaged.” Colonel Graves told him, “when you’re out in the jungle.” But it didn’t seem to calm Mackenzie’s ire.

  Greiss would normally have had his squad doing circuits or squat-thrusts by now, instead, he sat with his knees to his chest, and snarled at anyone who dared come near him. Muldoon had acquired the dyes of some indigenous plants, and was adapting his body camouflage to the local shapes and colours. A few other Catachans had followed his lead, Myers and Storm among them, glad to let the sun caress their skin. Lorenzo, however, was no artist, he would have to make do with his heavy jacket, and with a few streaks of dubbin across his face.

  Mackenzie was annoyed to find the squad not standing to attention, awaiting his inspection, he made his displeasure known to Greiss, who shrugged and climbed to his feet in his own time. The Catachans fell in sloppily, making their feelings for the young officer clear. In turn, Mackenzie griped about the absence of regulation shoulder guards with identifying numbers, but there wasn’t much he could do about it at this stage. He gave a stern speech that was mostly a reworking of the previous day’s—“whip you rabble into shape”, “smartest Guardsmen in the Imperium” and so forth—with a few clichés added: “When I say ‘jump’… I expect you to crawl on your bellies over broken glass…”

  “We’re facing a four-day journey together,” concluded the commissar. “Eight days, for those lucky enough to make the return trip. It’ll go much easier if we all pull together.” He produced a sheet of paper, then, and began a roll call. “Sergeant Greiss.”

  “Yes!”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, sir!” said Greiss with a sneer.

  “Trooper Armstrong.”

  Patch Armstrong answered to his name, and Mackenzie went through the others, giving each trooper in turn an appraising look as he committed his face to memory. Dougan, Storm, Myers, Donovits, Muldoon, Woods, finally, Lorenzo and Landon.

  Braxton, of course, was already well known to the commissar. The Validian had found an ill-fitting camouflage jacket in the stores, and was looking uncomfortable. Mackenzie was in camouflage too, though he had retained his peaked cap. It was a little too large for him, but his jutting ears kept it from sliding down. “Do you think it’s a good id
ea to be going into this with an eagle-shaped target on your head, sir?” Greiss asked, with measured disdain.

  “It’s a symbol of authority, sergeant,” snarled Mackenzie. “You’ll learn. By the time I’m finished with you, you’ll all learn.”

  They moved out, at the commissar’s insistence, at a quick march in two ranks of five, with Greiss leading the way. Mackenzie brought up the rear, occasionally shouting orders.

  They broke step, however, as they crossed the tree line—and Lorenzo noted that Mackenzie worked his way into the centre of the group, so that there would always be a Catachan between him and any potential threat. The commissar had a rough sketched map, which he kept to himself, and a compass. He kept the squad moving on a bearing of approximately twenty-five degrees. “We’re taking a circuitous route,” he explained when questioned, “to avoid a small ork encampment to the north-west of here.”

  “I’m sure we could take ’em, sir,” offered Woods.

  “I’m sure we could, trooper,” said Mackenzie icily, “but as I explained at the briefing last night, this is a stealth mission. A single ork gets wind of our presence in this area and lives to tell of it, and we may as well pack up and go home—because our chances of getting within shooting distance of their warboss will be zero.”

  “I still say we could take ’em,” muttered Woods resentfully. But Mackenzie was right, and he knew it.

  The jungle closed in above them, sparing them the fiercest of the sun’s rays, though the air was still sweltering. Braxton was sweating, wiping his damp forehead with his sleeve every few steps. The burnt odour lingered, and the Catachans’ feet crunched on dead, blackened leaves. This area had been torched—and recently—but with little effect. Some of the plants and trees seemed to have been growing here for years.

  Their progress was punctuated by cracks of las-fire, whenever a jungle lizard was sighted. Myers and Storm had warned everyone of the creatures’ chameleonic properties, and Lorenzo had added the information he’d received from Braxton, so the whole squad was on the alert. Out loud, each man swore he would never end his days like Braxton’s ill-fated friend, pleading for the mercy of a quick death. Privately, Lorenzo knew—as the others must have known—that stronger men than he had been broken by such pain as only a deathworld could inflict.