Clear
It's all gone to hell.
Two weeks ago we were winning this war. Now?
Now, we'll be lucky to get off this stinking planet alive. I check the auspex – more for something to do than anything else. The screen crackles with green static. We could be right in front of the enemy and we'd never know.
"Anything?"
Keller, face taut, the scar above his eye a livid purple.
"No." It's best to keep things short where Keller's concerned. I offer a wan smile. "Sorry."
He nods dumbly and crawls back to the others. A burst of lasfire crackles to one side of me, near enough to push me down further into the all-pervasive mud. I scan the landscape warily, but the mist has rolled in, cutting down vision to a handful of metres. My brain's telling me that our lines are behind us, but the truth is they could be anywhere. If I'm being brutally honest, that last firefight has totally screwed my sense of direction.
A voice sounds, shouting something. It's too far away for me to hear exactly what it's saying, but the language is low gothic. There's pain in the voice. A lot of pain. We listen to him for a minute or two, crying out into the mist. I wonder if he's one of us. Or one of them. Two weeks ago, I'd be able to tell. Today, I wouldn't have a clue. It's not just my sense of direction that's frakked.
This world used to be a hive world. I honestly can't remember the official Administratum designation for it, but the locals call it Solace. Nice name. Seems funny now.
We were sent in to reclaim the south-western continent after some of the locals got massacred by an off-world cult. By the time we arrived three months ago, it was already in cultist hands and the southernmost tip of the eastern one was falling, too.
Sergeant Velper scurries towards me, his boots slipping and sliding on the treacherous ground. His face is grim.
"I'm going to check that out. Stay here." I stare at him. What does he think he's doing? Evidently he can see the disbelief in my eyes. He scowls. "He could be one of ours, Wyke. We owe it to him."
I don't bother arguing. Velper's a cold fish, but maybe even he's beginning to feel the slowly growing doubt gnawing away at us. Two days we've been out here. If we don't find our way back soon…
I watch Velper crawl away, the mist swallowing him slowly.
"What's going on?"
Shevlin's voice is hoarse. Brust slouches at his side, thin weasel face partially covered by a dirty scarf. He mutters something I don't quite catch.
"Brust wants to know whether we can trust the sarge."
Slowly, I turn. I try to appear irritated, affronted by such an insolent, insubordinate suggestion. It's difficult. I've been thinking the same thing for the last couple of hours.
"Tell your friend to keep his frakking thoughts to his frakking self," I whisper fiercely. "The only way we're going to get out of this is if we stick together, right?"
Shevlin twitches a little but nods. Brust just looks at me and turns away. Behind them, belatedly aware that something's gone on, Keller looks across, questioningly. I just shrug and grip my lasrifle a little more tightly.
"We wait," I say with a firmness I don't really feel. "He'll be back soon."
That's the problem with this war. We started off fighting a clearly-defined enemy – a rag-tag army of insane indigents, mouths frothing, skin pierced in ways you just don't want to know, eyes bulging from their heads as if they'd seen all the horrors the galaxy had to offer and their minds just couldn't contain them.
Two weeks ago, all that changed. When we entered this sector, just under half the units in the Juriel XXII – my regiment, warp take it! – turned on our allies and started firing. We've still no idea why, but what I do know is that we almost lost the whole damn' war that day. It was only Colonel Gunnlaugsson's quick thinking in ordering our flanking Sentinel squadrons to pin the traitor units down that prevented us from being pushed back to our supply lines. It took us another week to get straight after that and the regimental commissars were busy every second of it.
Two days ago, Gunnlaugsson ordered another attack, sending me and the rest of D company into no man's land to push the traitors and cultists back. And we were doing pretty well, too.
Then this frakking mist rolled in and…
Movement to my left. I swing the lasrifle round and relax a little as the figure emerging from the mist resolves itself into Sergeant Velper. I listen carefully, but sometime in the last few minutes, the agonised voice has fallen silent.
Velper's face is grim. He's carrying something in his hand.
"Not one of ours," he mutters before slipping the object he's holding back in his pocket. Not looking at me, he begins to move away. To my surprise, I grab him by the arm.
"Is that it?" I ask and I can feel all the tension and waiting and confusion of the last two days lend their weight to my words. "You go, you come back and that's all there is to it, is it?"
Velper shakes me off angrily.
"Keep your filthy hands to yourself, Wyke, or…" He trails off, looking at me with sudden confusion. "What…"
"He's one of them!" Shevlin hovers nervously just out of Velper's reach, voice quivering like a high-tension power cable. All around us, the mist swirls. Brust adjusts his scarf. Keller stares fearfully between us. For a moment, I experience a weird sense of dislocation – as if, out here in this wasteland, we've been cut off from the world we know, held in suspension, waiting for… Something. Something terrible.
"Don't be stupid, Shevlin!" Velper spits. "I'm just trying to get us all home."
"What's in your pockets?" I glare at him. How long have I known Velper? Two years. Almost three. He's a stranger to me now, his face strained and dark with fury. I gesture with my lasrifle, but the gesture turns into something else. Before I know it, the lasrifle is at my shoulder and I'm staring at Velper down its sights. "Empty them. Now."
"Wyke…" Keller's voice. Stupid, slow. Dammit, why can't he just shut up and let me handle this?
Velper's mouth is a thin hard line; his eyes gleam in the half-light. "You're out of line, soldier. Stand down!"
The mist clings to my legs, cold and damp. I see wisps of it curl around Velper's shoulders and arms. He's trying to bully me, trying to stop me thinking.
I lick my lips, try to keep my voice even, reasonable. "You've been leading us round in circles for days, Sarge. Ever since the attack and…" I have no idea what I should say next. I just want to get out of here. Why can't he see? The others are staring at us. I can't make out their faces properly. This bloody mist.
Velper takes a step towards me.
"Empty your frakking pockets!"
Velper digs into his flak jacket pocket, furious, still not understanding what's happening. There's something in his hand, something oblong, flashing metallically in the dim light. He brings it up, holding it out to me, pointing it at me, fingers tightening around it…
I pull the trigger and a neat, cauterized hole appears in Velper's forehead. He falls backwards and the mist clears enough for me to see the small, oblong shape of a confec-sho bar, its silver wrapper gleaming as it catches the light, tumble to the muddy ground.
No one speaks for a moment and then Keller starts gabbling. I can't make out what he's saying. I don't think even he knows.
I stare at Velper's body, the lasrifle suddenly heavy and unwieldy in my hands. I've killed a superior. I'm a dead man.
Keller's starting to make sense.
"… hang you for that, Wyke. You… you shouldn't have… Why did you do it? Why? Why!?!"
I turn to Shevlin and Brust. They're staring at me, oddly silent.
It's an effort to speak. "Going to turn me in? Shoot me?" Part of me wishes they would.
Shevlin smiles, crookedly. "Why would we do that, Wyke, when you've done our job for us?"
A sudden numbness falls upon me. I watch Brust reach up to unwind the scarf around his face. His jaw is a mess of bulbous growths and his nose is a slender flap of blood-encrusted skin. There's something horribly wrong with his mouth.
"No," I say, softly, even as Keller starts to back away. "Nononono…"
"What's it going to be, gentlemen?" Shevlin's voice is calm, reasonable. He runs a hand over his close-cropped hair. "You can stay here…" He looks around him, his gaze taking in the muddy wasteland, the ever present mist hovering in wispy clots above it. "Or you can come with us." He glances at Velper's body. "Looks like you've already made your choice, Wyke."
"Traitors!" screams Keller. "The Emperor…"
"Isn't here, is he?" snaps Shevlin and Brust shoots Keller in the chest. Once. Twice. I hadn't even seen him draw. I watch Keller's heavy body flop in the mud for a moment and then lie still.
What I'm seeing is not Keller's corpse, but my own. Willan Karl Wyke, Guardsman, Juriel XXII, veteran of the Galados and Vennia campaigns. Loyal to the Emperor. Dead. Gone.
The mist is back, rolling in to cover Velper and Keller, a clean white fog, cocooning us, protecting us, washing away what we've done.
From somewhere nearby, there is the sound of movement, a soft, shuffling sound. Dark shapes, their outlines indistinct, are moving in the fog. They seem to float above the filthy ground.
Shevlin moves to stand by me, Brust on the other side of him.
"It'll be alright," Shevlin says, staring out into the swirling white. "If you look into the mist, everything becomes clear. Wonderfully, beautifully clear."
I nod, feeling a strange sense of calm settle on my flesh, and wait for the arrival of my new comrades.