Kill Team, page 9
‘We have to call off the exercise,’ he growls.
‘Oh right,’ I snarl back. ‘Like we’d call off the attack if this happens on the real mission. Don’t be so fraggin’ stupid. Now, get back to covering that gateway before I put a bullet through your head! And get Sharpshooter to shift her arse over her, we need to get moving. You,’ I turn to Quidlon. ‘Get into that control room and shut down the transport power.’
They all stand there like statues.
‘Emperor damn it,’ I curse, punching Trost square across the jaw and buckling him at the knees. ‘Emperor so help me if you don’t get moving now I will break every bone in your fraggin’ bodies!’
He stumbles away, cursing like a navy rating, and Quidlon hovers for a moment before seeing the look in my eye. He grabs his gun from the floor and sprints over towards the entranceway. The smoke is beginning to thin and I see Trost bent over, talking to Stradinsk, who’s sat on the ground by the looks of it. I run over to them and catch the end of what Trost is saying.
‘…will kill you if you don’t get moving,’ he’s telling her, shaking her by the shoulder. He sees me approaching and legs it for the gateway, unslinging his gun from his shoulder as he runs through the smoke.
Tanya is sat cross-legged on the hard floor, staring straight ahead, her gun lying next to her.
‘On your feet, Sharpshooter,’ I shout at her. ‘Grab your weapon and come with me.’
She doesn’t move a muscle, doesn’t even blink. I snatch up her rifle and thrust it towards her, but it just falls out of her limp hands into her lap. Snarling, I grab a handful of tunic and drag her to her feet, where she stands swaying slightly, eyes still unfocussed.
‘Pick up your rifle, Sharpshooter,’ I say to her slowly and deliberately. ‘That is an order, soldier!’
She doesn’t move. I stare down at her, right in the eye, my face nearly touching hers. There’s nothing there at all, her eyes staring through me at something in the distance I suspect only she can see.
‘Never mind about me,’ I say to her softly, calming myself down at the same time. ‘If the Colonel sees this, we will both get shot. Don’t you understand? You have to pick up your rifle.’
I grab the weapon and slowly ease it into her unresisting hands, before closing her fingers around the stock. She stands there doing nothing, absolutely out of touch with everything around her. The gun clatters to the ground again as I let go of her hand.
‘Emperor damn you, snap out of it!’ I scream at her, smashing the back of my hand across her face, splitting her top lip. She sways and staggers for a second before righting herself. I see a glimmer of life in her eyes then, a moment too late as her boot smashes up between my thighs and knocks me to the ground.
‘Bastard!’ she screams, kicking me in the midriff as I roll around the floor. I think I feel a rib crack under the blow. ‘I don’t want to shoot anyone again. Don’t you understand? I’m not a killer, I’m not this true soldier you keep talking about. I’m never picking up a gun again. You can’t turn me into a murderer!’
I sit up, clutching my ribs and wincing. Slowly I push myself to my feet. I stare at Stradinsk for a long, long time, my face expressionless. With a deliberate slowness, I reach down and pick up her sniper rifle. She eyes it with disgust, barely able to bring herself to look at it. I pull the slide and eject the spent casing.
‘Why didn’t you say we had live ammunition?’ she asks quietly, looking at the cartridge on the floor.
‘What did you expect?’ I answer calmly. ‘This is not some kind of game we’re playing here. We’re not doing this for fun, Sharpshooter.’
‘Don’t call me that!’ she snaps, recoiling away from me. ‘I hate that name.’
‘It’s who you are,’ I tell her viciously. ‘That or a corpse, like Stroniberg.’
‘Don’t you mean Stitcher?’ she replies sourly.
‘When he was alive, and he was useful, he was Stitcher,’ I say, glancing over my shoulder at his cooling corpse. ‘Now he’s just a useless dead lump of meat.’
‘I’m not Sharpshooter, my name is Tanya Stradinsk,’ she argues. ‘Do what you like to me, I’m not firing a gun again.’
I toss the rifle at her and she catches it easily. Her grip is loose and sure, used to handling the weapon without thinking. She looks down at it and then drops it to the ground with a clatter. I pull the short stub gun out from the belt of my fatigues and cock it in front of her face. I point it at her, right between the eyes and move my finger onto the trigger.
‘Pick up your gun, Sharpshooter,’ I warn her. She shakes her head. ‘Pick it up, damn you, I don’t want to kill you!’
‘I’d rather be dead,’ she tells me defiantly.
‘Is that right?’ I ask, uncocking the stubber and thrusting it back into my belt. I grab Tanya and drag her across the concourse to where Stroniberg lies in a pool of deep red.
‘That’s what you’ll look like, that’s all you’ll be,’ I snarl at her. She tries to look away, tears in her eyes. I grab her by the hair and push her to her knees next to Stroniberg. She gives a whimper as I pull out the stubber again and place it to the back of her head. ‘Is this really what you want?’ I demand.
‘I can’t fire a gun again,’ she pleads, looking up over her shoulder at me, her cheeks streaked with tears.
‘I’m not asking you to fire it, Tanya,’ I say softly, lifting the gun away. ‘I just need you to pick it up.’
She hesitates for a moment, wiping the back of her hand across her face, and then gets to her feet. She glances at me and I nod towards the rifle. I follow her as she walks over to it. She bends down, her hand hovering above it.
‘Just pick it up,’ I prompt her, my voice level. Her hand closes around the barrel and she pulls it to her. She stands there for a second, holding it away from her like it’s a poisonous snake or something.
With an anguished cry, she falls to her knees, cradling the rifle to her chest.
‘What have I done?’ she asks between sobs.
‘You killed a man,’ I answer bluntly, turning away from her. The sight of her sickens me to the pit of my stomach. I’m gonna have hell to pay with the Colonel over this whole fragged up mess. ‘You killed a man,’ I say again. ‘It’s what we do.’
As I expected, the Colonel is less than happy with the day’s events. I’m in his cabin, which looks surprisingly familiar to the one he had aboard the Pride of Lothos. I guess he has his own furniture or something and brings it with him. The walls are panelled in a deep red wood, behind him is a glass-fronted bookshelf with a handful of books on the top shelf. His plain desk and chair sit in the middle of the room, a pile of papers neatly stacked in one corner. Schaeffer himself is pacing up and down behind the desk, his hands balled into fists behind his back.
‘This was a simple training exercise, Kage,’ he growls at me, not even looking in my direction but pouring his scorn onto the universe in general. ‘Now my team has a dead medic and a sniper who can barely bring herself to hold a gun.’
He rounds on me at that point, and I can see that he is really, really angry. His eyes are like shards of glittering ice, his jaw is tight and his whole body tensed.
‘Stroniberg I can live without,’ he admits angrily. ‘But Stradinsk? The whole plan we have devised relies on her making that shot. She will only get one chance at it, one chance. You promised me you could get her to fire that shot. And you? Collapsing in the middle of an exercise and trying to kill yourself! What happened to the Kage that was with me on Ichar IV? Where’s the hardened killer that watched my back on False Hope? Where’s the good soldier that was with me in Coritanorum? Now, only weeks away, am I going to have to inform my superiors that the whole mission has to be abandoned?’
He stops in his tirade and takes a deep breath, turning away from me. I just stand there at attention, waiting for it to start again. My mind is reeling, I’ve got no idea what he’s going to do next. Is he really going to call off the assassination? Is it his decision, or someone else’s? If he does, what happens to me and the Last Chancers? What happens to him? As these thoughts fly through my head, he turns back to me.
‘I am very disappointed in you, Kage,’ he says solemnly, shaking his head. ‘Very disappointed indeed.’
His words cut me more than any knife can, and all I can do is hang my head in shame, because he’s right to be disappointed. I’ve failed.
‘Climb faster!’ I bellow at Stradinsk, standing at the bottom of the travel terminal’s command tower in the mock-up battle dome. She’s hauling herself up the side of the building on a rope, painfully slowly in my eyes. ‘You’ve got thirty seconds to reach the top, from start to finish. Climb faster!’
She glances back down over her shoulder at me before renewing her efforts, her tired arms dragging her slowly, metre by metre up towards the observation chamber.
‘I can’t see why this is so necessary, Last Chance, considering there are stairways inside the tower,’ Quidlon says, standing next to me and looking up. ‘Is this supposed to be some kind of punishment, perhaps?’
‘No, this isn’t a punishment, Brains,’ I reply, keeping my eyes on Tanya. ‘This is called playing it safe. If something goes wrong and you can’t open the doors to the terminal for some reason, I want there to be a back-up plan. Sharpshooter has to be in position for that kill, whatever happens to the rest of us.’
Tanya’s only a couple of metres from the top now, but slowing badly. All it needs is one final effort and she’ll be up, but she just hangs there, exhausted. Okay, this is the tenth time she’s made that climb in the last hour, but she needs to build up the right muscles.
Moerck is standing beside me on the other side, intently looking at the climbing figure.
‘She’ll fall,’ he says simply, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye. ‘I think losing our sniper now would be a bad thing.’
He’s right, the rope is swaying badly, and it looks as if she can only just about hang on, never mind climb any further.
‘Motivate her,’ I tell Moerck, crossing my arms. He pulls out his laspistol and readies it, the gun emitting a short, high-pitched whine as the power cell warms up.
‘Sharpshooter, listen to me!’ he bellows, deafening me. His voice could carry through an artillery barrage in a thunderstorm. ‘I am going to count to three and then I’m going to shoot you if you’re still hanging on that rope!’
She glances back again and sees him turn side on and raise his pistol towards her, assuming a duelling stance and sighting down the length of his arm. He stands as still as a rock, attention fixed on the struggling woman.
‘One!’ he shouts out. Tanya begins to haul herself up once more, reaching deep into her reserves of energy, dragging herself painfully up the rope.
‘Two!’ he continues, not moving a muscle except to adjust his aim higher. Tanya gets a hand to the rim around the top of the building, then the other. She pulls herself up onto the edge and then rolls over, disappearing from view. I turn to Moerck and nod appreciatively. Tanya pops her head back over and hurls abuse down at us, waving an angry fist.
‘And you all think I’m a cruel training officer,’ I comment to Quidlon, shouldering my autogun and heading off towards the tower door.
‘The difference is, I wouldn’t have fired,’ Moerck calls out as I walk away. ‘You would have.’
I stop and turn back towards them, looking at Quidlon then Moerck. ‘That’s true,’ I agree with a nonchalant shrug.
Strelli lunges at me with the knife, making a jab towards my midriff. The attack is low and fast, but I manage to step back, using the outside of my right arm to deflect his hand away before stepping back in and driving my fingers towards his throat. He sways back, the blow falling just short, and tries to chop down on my wrist with his left hand. I roll my wrist over his and grab his arm, dragging him forward onto my knee, but he jumps at the last second, performing a forward tumble and rolling to his feet.
We stand there panting for a few seconds, eyeing each other warily.
‘Okay, that’s good,’ I tell him, stepping away and wiping sweat from my forehead with the sleeve of my tunic. ‘Quidlon and Iyle, you’re next.’
The two of them circle each other, blades held back, away from the enemy until they’re ready to strike. Iyle feints to the left and slips round to the right, but Quidlon’s not fooled and meets the move, dropping low and driving his foot into Iyle’s left knee. The scout stumbles but recovers quickly enough to leap aside as Quidlon lunges for him. Iyle rams his fist into the small of Quidlon’s back, knocking him forward, but Quidlon turns the blow into a roll, rising up and spinning on the spot with an easy motion, a grimace on his face. The mechanic tosses the knife into his left hand and makes a slash at Iyle, who is forced to dance back a couple of steps. Quidlon follows up immediately, switching hands again. Iyle tries to take the initiative back and makes a sloppy stab. Quidlon easily avoids it, trapping Iyle’s knife arm against his body and dragging him forward onto his own blade. Iyle gives a startled cry and flops sideways, pulling the blade out of Quidlon’s hand. He sits there on the mat, legs out in front of him, blood pouring down his stomach and pooling in his lap.
‘Good blow, Brains, now finish him,’ I say, my voice quiet. Quidlon glances back at me, a confused look on his face. Iyle pulls the knife free and lets it drops through blood-slicked fingers.
‘Last Chance?’ Quidlon asks, taking a step towards me. I toss him my own knife, which he catches easily, and point at Iyle.
‘Finish him,’ I say with a shallow nod towards the wounded man.
Iyle stares up at me with a look of fear, still holding his guts. He tries to say something, but just croaks hoarsely, glancing between me and Quidlon. I see understanding dawn on him, and a look of determination crosses his face.
‘Do it, Brains,’ hisses Trost from my left, eager for blood.
‘Leave him be!’ Tanya argues from the other side, darting a murderous look at me. ‘Don’t do it, Brains!’
‘He won’t,’ I hear Strelli mutter, standing to one side, arms casually crossed. ‘He hasn’t got the instinct for it.’
Quidlon’s still looking at me, a shallow frown creasing his brow. He looks back at Iyle and then at me. I just nod. He turns away and takes a step towards Iyle.
‘I’ll make you eat the fragging thing!’ Iyle gasps, trying to push himself to his feet. It’s a good attempt, I’ll give him that, but with that wound he’ll get nowhere. Quidlon takes a running step and kicks Iyle square in the face, smashing him to his back. He leaps on top of him, driving a blocky fist into the scout’s nose. Winded and concussed, Iyle can do nothing as Quidlon forces his head to the ground and pushes the knife point up under his chin. Quidlon closes his eyes and thrusts, sliding the blade up through Iyle’s mouth and into his brain. Just as slowly, he pulls it out and stands up, facing away from me, the bloodied dagger in his hand.
‘I can’t believe he actually did it,’ exclaims Strelli in astonishment. ‘Maybe brains aren’t all you’ve got.’
I look at Iyle’s corpse and nod to myself. He died like a soldier. He died fighting for his life, not begging for it. I can respect that.
‘You just murdered Eyes, you scum!’ Tanya shrieks at Quidlon, turning away in disgust.
‘No,’ Quidlon replies slowly, turning around to face us, a splash of blood across his face. His voice is flat, his expression blank. ‘I was just following orders.’
‘Welcome to be being a true soldier, Brains,’ I say to him, stepping forward and clapping him on the shoulder.
‘This seems like a damn fool way to get a lot of men killed, if you excuse my plain speaking, lord,’ the Imperial Guard captain proclaimed. He was standing with the robed inquisitor in the shuttle bay of the Imperial transport Pride of Lothos. His bullet-head and broad shoulders gave him a brutal look, but his soft spoken burr and quick eyes betrayed the fact that he was far smarter than he looked. Dressed in a simple uniform of black and grey camouflage, Captain Destrien was a tall, imposing figure. Yet the elderly man with whom he was speaking seemed to command much more attention. The black robes that he wore were a mark of the Adeptus Terra, the priesthood of Earth, yet Destrien was not fooled. This was no Administratum bureaucrat.
No adept of Terra carried themselves with such authority and confidence, yet with no hint of pompousness or pride.
No, though he chose to act as something else, the captain knew full well that he spoke to a member of the Inquisition, and the inquisitor knew it too.
‘I agree that your orders are highly irregular, captain; one might even say unorthodox,’ the inquisitor said with a smile, leaning heavily on his cane. ‘Be that as it may, they are your orders and have been countersigned by your superiors, including Warmaster Bane himself.’
Destrien stiffened at the mention of Bane, Warmaster and overall commander of the Imperial forces in the Sarcassa region. This inquisitor wasn’t playing around. He had organised this thoroughly, from the top down.
‘You’re right, those are my orders, and I’ll follow ’em, but don’t expect me to like it,’ complained Destrien, knowing that any argument was useless, but wishing to make his protest all the same. ‘We’ll be here for another week at least, while we resupply.’
‘I believe there are several lighters currently waiting to dock as we speak,’ the inquisitor countered, still with the same polite smile on his face. ‘I thought it would be necessary to resolve this matter as expeditiously as possible, and brought some of my… influence to bear on the Departmento Munitorum on your behalf. I believe the new uniforms and equipment specified in your orders are aboard. See that they are issued to your men in due course.’
‘I just bet you could nail a fog cloud to a wall, couldn’t you, lord?’ Destrien answered grumpily. He was well and truly cornered here. He’d been hoping to use the week to get in contact with Warmaster Bane and try to get this assignment shoved onto someone else, but the inquisitor was one step ahead of him all the way.
