+++TWO+++
"We remind you that victory is the Emperor's right, and any found hampering or delaying this will be treated as heretics." - Regimental Standard
The map had lied. They had taken thirty minutes to get to the rally point, and the platoon spent the entire time cursing the Navy and whatever lazy bastard had been running the auspex. Folke thought he'd jogged nearly double the distance, considering he'd gone up and down the column, encouraging, chivvying, and castigating his men into moving faster. They were the 312th Light, Emperor damn it, and they would prove the light infantry's reputation again today. First to fight, last to leave, three miles' march in half an hour was nothing compared to what the Honored First had done at one of the numerous battles of Cadia, marching for thirty-two hours straight and then hitting the flank of a heretical Blood-sworn regiment.
The company had one mortar team. They were busy dropping smoke shells into their tube as fast as they could, and Folke's platoon passed the expanded rifle pit they were using as an emplacement at a jog, lasrifles held high, Folke leading the way. One of the ammo bearers waved jauntily between tossing shells to the loader called 'Emperor protects, brothers!'
"Nielsten," Folke called. Nielsten, the runner, came up running, rifle slung across his chest. Erik didn't salute, for the men were under strict orders not to do so in the field. He indicated a stand of trees to the left of the road that he wanted Nielsten to check. Nielsten nodded and then began jogging forwards. There was the echo of pulse rifle report, and then he toppled back, smoke rising from the neat remnants of his head, where the enemy had placed a well-aimed shot.
"Sniper!" someone yelled, and Folke dropped to the well-trod dirt of the path. He snatched the man's m/79 Lasrifle from where he'd fallen backwards, then squirmed his way behind the body, where it absorbed a badly-timed pulse rifle shot aimed at Folke's head. He reached for the man's bayonet, tried to tug it loose. It was stuck at an awkward angle under the body, so he scrabbled in the dirt for the whole thing, sheath and all. He swore, gave it up as a bad job, and then cut the damn thing free with his own dagger. He attached the bayonet to the lug on the lasrifle, then rolled the runner's body over on its side to provide a taller piece of cover.
He waved frantically at the sergeant of First Squad, caught his attention, mimed popping a smoke grenade. The sergeant nodded, then did the same with Second. Folke eased the lasrifle over the dead man's arm, looked for the tell-tale window or sandbag on a roof indicating a sniper's preferred perch. The village, he knew from the dataslate maps, was laid out in a square grid, with the road they were on coming from the east, while the grand house was in the center of town, across the square from the local shrine. Navy scans had indicated the presence of civilians still in the town, and a traitor weapons cache in the big house. There was another pulse rifle shot, then the deep chatter of two of the platoon's m/56 heavy stubbers answered it, shredding the wall around the window where the sniper had been spotted.
There was a soft, muffled koff as the smoke grenades across their route of advance went off. Someone had thoughtfully tossed one ahead of Folke, and so he pushed himself to his feet. He let off one shot at the sniper's building, then it was too obscured by smoke, so he began the rush forward.
He rejoined his men in that mad rush, where Second Platoon of First Company dashed themselves against the brick-and-stone construction of Beecher's Grove. Tau pulse rifles, dumped by Tau merchants at the orders of their political masters for the traitor planetary defence forces, hurt the assault badly.
They made it across the open ground around the village and to the ditch that ran around it, collecting and then carrying the Grove's waste to whatever passed for their sewage system. Folke dove into the rockcrete lined ditch with a foul-smelling splash, came up, propped his lasrifle in a scrape, and strained his eyes to see through the shreds of smoke and into the darkness of the village's windows.
Grimacing, Folke racked his brain for what to do next. They were pinned, the mortar team had fallen silent (the enemy aided by the greater range of the xeno pulse rifles,) and the rest of their battalion was occupied with their own small villages to capture, while the other battalion was busy maneuvering around an enemy fortress several miles away. He reached a hand up to the aquila and leaf around his neck, clutched them through the material of his gray tunic. He slithered back down below the crest of the rock-crete lined ditch, propped his lasrifle against the 'crete, and withdrew the dataslate from the pouch on his combat webbing.
He activated it with the appropriate prayers to the machine spirit and ritual, and the white words on black background came up as usual. With a muttered prayer of thanks to the machine-spirit, he pulled up the map of the village, zoomed in on where they were. The Navy's Dauntless-class light cruiser in orbit, the Dunedin, had taken up station over this portion of the planet and was constantly updating the maps of the Guard with real-time, high-powered transmissions. There had been a lecture on it on the troopship, but Folke hadn't been paying attention, so as far as he knew, it was simply techmagic the warships were using.
The Dunedin's auspexes were taking thermal images, due to the cloud cover, and so Folke saw himself and his own men as bright-white against the cold black of the ground and buildings. He ignored the big house in the central village square, instead comparing the map to what stood in front of him. Overhead, a flight of Avenger Strike Fighters shrieked by, heading for some target too far for the Basilisks of the 145th to hit. They appeared as motionless dots briefly on the map, and then were gone as fast as they had shown up as soon as it updated.
"So it's not truly real-time," Folke muttered. Several heat signatures in one of the houses near them looked like they made up a heavy stubber nest. It hadn't yet shot at them, and so the suspicious part of his mind suspected that they were waiting for a final advance from him to the walls of the village's buildings proper before shredding his men. "Aye, then. Grenadiers!" They kept their heads ducked as they made their way to him, the five men with grenade launchers instead of lasrifles, one from each squad. "I'm going to order a volley of covering fire for you," he told them. "Then you're going to shoot the shit out of the building I indicate on the map, here." He showed it to them, the home over what he thought was a shop that was barring their advance.
The goal is to retake the planet for Imperial rule. If the locals haven't risen to support us in that, then they're traitors, Colonel Vasa had said before the regiment left the troopship. "Who got hit?" Folke asked, and the litany of men reported left him scowling. He'd lost eleven men since passing the mortar pit, because Tau pulse rifles meant they were dead. They weren't all from the same squad, which would have left him an entire squad short, but…
Langley, this isn't how this was supposed to go. Throne damn it! He stood, because the Imperial Infantry Officer's Guiding Primer said that all infantry officers needed to lead from the front and show their men that they were always willing to go first, and Folke was nothing if not willing to lead his men from the front. "Covering fire in volleys! First Squad, fire!" He called the last word at a roar, and then indicated their target by shooting at the shadowy shapes in the window.
The lasrifle shots started pouring out, bright red against the dour brown of the brick-and-wood construction of Beecher's Grove. Each squad stood and fired in turn, then ducked back into cover. Folke stayed standing, because bayonet leaders led from the front, and the best of leaders were bayonet leaders. The grenadiers waited for six volleys, enough time for the enemy fire to be drawn to Folke himself, who wished he cut a more imposing figure than a man half-drenched in sewage, and then they stood. Their grenades were on target with the krump and then explosions of impact, cracking the building open like Folke had cracked the skull of Karl the law officer in Stockarta against the 'crete of the alley. He bared his teeth in defiance.
The wall fell inwards, crushing whoever was unlucky enough to have survived the initial explosions. Then things were completely booked when the grenadier to Folke's left fell forwards without a head. "Hit the dirt!" He roared in Skanian, and tackled the grenadier to his right. Damn it, the forest was supposed to be clear! He gave half a thought to blaming the mechanized infantry that had marked the village as an enemy strongpoint that needed taking before bypassing it on their Thunder Run to the former Imperial capital of Palaptinate.
Fuck it, he decided. He activated the platoon-wide micro combead link. "Squads One and Three! Cover the rear! Stubber gunners from Squads Two and Four stay here and cover us. The rest of Two and Four, with me. Grenadiers, give me another volley on my mark." The Skanian 312th were light infantry¸ and they should never have been assaulting a fortified enemy point, even if it was 'just' a village. They should have been maneuvering around the flanks of the enemy, hitting them from the side and then fading back into the tree line, turning the enemy line.
Folke wanted to curse the Guard for sending him here, but he was the one that had taken the Emperor's cronr in exchange for a ticket off-planet and immunity from the local law patrolmen for himself and Elise. He checked that the men's bayonets were fixed, and then slotted the dead grenadier's bayonet onto his rifle. "The plan," he told the platoon over the commnet, "is that Squads Two and Four are going to follow me into the village, under cover from the stubbers. Grenadiers, you launch smoke grenades, and then we'll clear the village. We'll proceed to cover Squads One and Three, grenadiers, and stubber gunners while they pull back to the village. Vox operator!" He bellowed the last words, and the boy of sixteen standard years came running, head held lower than necessary.
"Contact Company, tell them we need assistance, get one of the sergeants to help you with our location. The Emperor protects," Folke finished. This would be it for him, then. The xeno-loving traitors probably knew he was the officer and would be gunning for him. The thought of going across another stretch of open ground, open to fire from both front and rear, from an enemy with Tau pulse rifles-well, his will was current and with the regimental clerks. All his backpay and worldly possessions went to Elise, and she was under firm orders to find a nice officer to ingratiate herself with, even if he wasn't a Skanian.
It was a good death, Folke decided. Rifle in hand, leading his men in the Emperor's name against enemies of the Golden Throne. Still, he felt a bitter pang of regret that he wouldn't survive to put the fear of Ollanius Pius in whatever scum thought they were worthy of Elise. He signaled the grenadiers, and they launched their volley of smoke grenades.
"Come on then, you sinners," he roared, and scrambled to stand on the lip of the ditch. "Fifteen thousand years from now, when the Imperium is at peace and our descendants celebrate this regiment's Founding because we celebrated it, the standard will have this as a battle honor on the flag next to the Aquila! Our finest hours are yet ahead of us, and the city of Palaptinate cries out for liberation from the xeno-loving traitors! Deus Imperator Vult!"
They roared their approval at him, his men. Arne, the huge Corporal from Squad Four that liked kittens, and Jan, the small, wiry marksman from Two who hated the law patrol officials from Skania with a passion that belied his ability to pick the wings off a bird at a thousand meters with the iron sights on the standard issue lasrifle. Tanel, the best scrumball player of them all. They roared their defiance in the face of being outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and outgunned. Folke felt a fierce swell of pride in his breast, and he grinned like one of the feral, hungry dogs that prowled the lower levels of Stockarta.
They went over the top of the ditch at a run, the heavy stubbers working over-time to keep the heads of the enemy behind cover. He heard a strangled scream from ahead, suddenly cut off by the report of a pulse rifle, and he felt a sort of grim exultation at the fact they were shooting their own wounded. Thus to heretics, traitors, and xeno-lovers. The Emperor and Langley protect! No shots rang out in their direction, and the two squads and Folke hit the wall of the first home above a shop with their shoulders. Squad Four covered their backs while Two and Folke went around the corner, rifles held tight against their shoulders. No pulse rifles sounded their death knell, so Two stacked up against either side of the door in the right side-wall of the building.
The narrow alley drew tight on him, but Folke knew that was simply because he hadn't been in as enclosed a space surrounded by so many men in a while, since the troopship two weeks ago. He took a breath, and then shot the door off its hinges. He went in through the door before the noise of his rifle had stopped echoing. He knocked it askew with his shoulder, where it hung from the bottom hinge loosely. The platoon's heavy stubbers still roared their disapproval of such xeno-loving traitors outside from the ditch. Keeping his body turned to the side, to present a thinner target, Folke cleared the first room. It was a bakery. He checked behind the icebox and the fire-brick oven, nothing.
The first room was empty of any enemy activity, save for a helmet tossed haphazardly on the display counter at the front of the store. Folke activated the microbead comm's platoon-wide net, reaching every one of his remaining soldiers. "Squads One and Three and attached stubber gunners, come up to the building. Squad Four will cover you while Two and I clear the top floors, over." He was greeted by the simple affirmative click from each Sergeant, four in total. Squad Two followed behind him as he went up the two-person wide stairs, spaced appropriately so as to not all die to a well-placed grenade.
There was no such grenade, and so the door at the top of the stairs stayed closed. If they're only enemies, then the Emperor will forgive me for this. He thought he felt the small symbols of his religion hanging from around his neck tingle, but he ignored it. Folke switched the fire selectors on his lasrifle to auto and full power shots. He stood back from the door, and then began pumping shots through it, vaporizing the door wherever he shot. Finally, the spent battery pack ejected from the top with a loud ping. The Corporal behind him passed Folke a new one, and he jammed it into the top of his lasrifle while the Sergeant covered the door for him.
The bolt snicked into place correctly, shoving the battery pack into contact with the circuitry connecting it to the focusing chamber in the rifle's receiver, and the soft whine of the rifle being ready to fire reached his ears. He kicked the door's remnants in after blowing the hinges once more and went in. He saw two bodies on the carpeted flooring, blood soaking into the floor from where slivers of wood had entered their necks and faces. There was a third body slumped against the wall, a fourth hung over the heavy stubber facing out a window with a perfect kill-zone for a unit coming out of the trees, across from the door. A fifth and sixth were lying, gasping, against each other and the wall to Folke's right. One wore a peaked cap like the kind preferred by higher-ranking officers and Commissars, and he tried to bring a pulse pistol to bear against Folke.
Folke kicked it out of the man's hand, then put a boot into his stomach, where the man was holding what was probably a ricochet wound. "Vox operator!" He called. Erikr Johansen came up, looking pale and drawn beneath his shock of red hair. He's sixteen, not twenty-two and a killer, Folke reminded himself. "Can you get in contact with regimental HQ and ask what we're supposed to do with political officers?" Johansen nodded, and Folke turned back to Peaked Cap.
"You are a political officer, inte sant?" The man spat at Folke, his face twisted with rage and hate. The blood-laden spittle flecked on Folke's boot, and Folke grinned, then kicked the man in the teeth. "You misunderstand me, comrade Political Officer. I'm the one in charge here." Folke squatted on his heels before the man. He placed the buttstock of his rifle against the floor very gently.
"This can go two ways, Political Officer," Folke said. "I can keep kicking you while you're down, or I can get the medic in to look at you. The medic only happens if you tell me what I need to know, though." Peaked Cap merely spat again.
"Sioyoxo Illani Culhun, 99773-450." Folke scowled, tapped the butt of his rifle against the floor. The man repeated it, and so Folke turned away once more, and nodded to Jan. Fanatics unwilling to give anything up would go to the grave with a smile on their lips and thoughts of glory in their brains. But part of being a decent leader, Folke had learned, was knowing when to take a walk. So he left Jan to his task and went back down the stairs. Erikr Johansen went with him, nodding along to something coming over the vox handset held to his ear.
Back down the stairs, Folke found a piece of bread that hadn't been snatched up by the village inhabitants, its defenders, or any of his men that came in with him, and he set his mind to the task of clearing the village while defending from the force outside still. Squads One and Three had taken it upon themselves to clear the buildings next to the one he was occupying with Two and Four, which would serve as a decent base of sorts to finish the enemy force still inside Beecher's Grove.
The door they'd come in through was some sort of side door, perhaps for necessary restocking of the vital things the bakery needed to operate. The alley had enough cover to make it to the wall of the next building, but Folke didn't want to leave his men vulnerable to sniper fire. Throne-damned snipers. They had their uses, and Folke liked his own marksman decently enough, but he preferred it if enemy snipers were operating far from him.
"Axelsen!" The Sergeant of Squad Two sauntered up, lasrifle dangling by the sling around Axelsen's shoulders. The older man had in front of him a boy of about fourteen, who grinned up at Folke from beneath a mop of blond hair held carefully in check by a cap that ran roughly along Guard lines. Folke looked from the boy to Axelsen.
"Squad One found this one hiding in a closet next door while you were chatting with the political officer upstairs, sir," Axelsen threw Folke a casual salute, which he returned. Folke cocked an eyebrow, and Axelsen smiled. "He doesn't speak Low Gothic. 'leastwise, not our version of it. Little bugger sure as Throne recognizes 'Aquila' and 'Emperor,' though." Upon Axelsen mentioning the Aquila and the Emperor, the boy made the sign of the aquila over his chest, and repeated what Folke thought was supposed to be 'God-Emperor.'
"Okay, okay," Folke told the boy. "Don't get your knickers in a twist, praise the Emperor and strike down his foes." Folke made the sign of the aquila back at the boy, who grinned even wider, if such a thing were possible. One of the men from Squad Two handed the lad a ration pack, probably to keep him out of their hair while they conducted the business of vanquishing the Emperor's foes.
Folke was about to bite into the bread he'd snagged when Johansen tapped him on the shoulder, gripping his gray field cap like he wanted to choke it.
"S-sir," Johansen started. "I couldn't get in contact with battalion HQ, but I managed to get Company. They've engaged their objective and expect to be finished soon, Emperor willing."
"Praise Him," Folke responded automatically. A rote response, even though Folke considered himself devout, it also served to buy him time to think about whether or not he'd be better off trying to offer the enemy terms for the village. His orders were capture it and eliminate the foemen. If he could capture the village without having to expend his men's lives in a costly and drawn out engagement, it'd be eminently preferable.
"Okay," he said. "Theodorus!" Folke called, and the Platoon Sergeant popped his head around the door in the stairwell. "Keep the political officer up there, but get the other injured ones down here for the medic to look at." Theo called an affirmative response, and Folke stood to the side as two men from Squad Four carried the last survivor down the stairs. He looked at Folke, and Folke tried not to read anything into the look the man gave Folke. Behind them came another squaddie from Four with the heavy stubber from upstairs, to check that it was clean, serviceable, and to put it to use for the platoon.
Thinking of Elise, how she was learning to smile again, and how much farther he was willing to go to protect her, Folke pulled a pack of lho sticks and lighter from his tunic's breast pocket, and headed back up the stairs. The political officer still lay slumped against the wall, so Folke helped him stand and hobble over to the now empty heavy stubber mount.
The man stood leaning heavily one hand, and so Folke offered him the lho pack. He nodded and took one, so Folke handed it to him and lit it for him. Peaked Cap had gratitude in his eyes at the gesture the lho-stick seemed. Folke respected him for his courage in defying 'enhanced interrogation,' even if it had been as brief as it had, and so Folke would grant him a soldier's death. The political officer turned to look out the window at the sun burning off the morning mist, and half-way through his first puff, Folke shot him in the back of the head.
The political officer fell sideways, sprawling across the mount, and Folke holstered his still-smoking laspistol. He took a half-step forward and pulled the still gently burning lho-stick from the man's mouth, crumpling it in his hand. He stood and looked at the body for a moment, and then spoke quietly. "In the name of the Immortal-God Emperor on His Golden Throne upon Holy Terra, I, Lieutenant Alexander Folke of His Majesty's Imperial Guard sentence you to die, in accordance with His Immortal Will and Field Order Number 98-7234. May His Will be done."
In the khaki drab of the Corcusani Planetary Defense Forces, Folke felt that the man could have come from a brother Guard regiment. Hell, he thought, it could have been us if our governor wasn't loyal. The death of Vidkunsen still weighed on his conscience, even as deserved as it was, and Folke knew he could discuss the death of the political officer, even mandated as it was by the Field Order, with the Commissar or Chaplain, but Vidkunsen would stay safely locked in his memory for the rest of his life.
"Alright, but it's for Elise. It's all for Elise." Folke told himself. "Now enough Emperor-damned moping, Folke, you've got a job to do." He turned his back on the body and went down the stairs once more, filled with a restored sense of determination. When he made it down, he saw Axelsen teaching the boy how to play Emperor's Tarot, Theodorus filling his canteen from the water tap in a corner, and Johansen thumbing through a well-worn copy of the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer.
"Theo." The man turned at Folke's voice, then nodded once. "Get a piece of white cloth, get it attached to somebody's rifle. We're going to offer them terms." The Platoon Sergeant snorted once, then saw Folke was deadly serious and caught himself before he went into laughter.
"By the Emperor," Axelsen said. "I'm pretty sure they outnumber us, boss," he continued. Folke nodded, then pulled out the dataslate from its pouch in his webbing. He skipped the ritual of activation, merely offering the machine spirit a prayer, but it seemed to suffice, for the thing turned on. He went back to the map, turned it to show Axelsen.
"We're here," Folke pointed to the three buildings that Second Platoon occupied. He drew a semi-circle with his finger outside the village, where they'd come from and where there hadn't supposed to have been any enemy contact. "They've got, or so the Navy says, a company in the trees. The rest of First Company is here," this time the finger jabbed three miles away. "Navy's maps say that there was a concentration of enemy force in company level there, so that's what the rest of the Company is doing. Johansen, tell 'em what you told me on our way to this place."
The vox operator chimed in at Folke's word, suitably encouraged by both Folke's lack of reaction from shooting an unarmed man and a chance to be in the spot light. "Captain Scylfr said that they were mopping up the last resistance at the farm and house and expected to be here in three hours, an hour ago."
"So we've got two hours to fortify our position and take the village, by force or by guile. The enemy doesn't know that our only reinforcements, the rest of the company, are two hours away. For all they know or think, we're the advance scouts for a regiment or even a division." Folke smiled at Johansen and Theo and Axelsen. "I'll go out under a flag of truce and request an hour to retrieve and bury our dead, and to return theirs to them. That'll get us halfway to the company arriving."
"What happens if the Chaplain doesn't think that negotiating with traitors is acceptable and shoots you, or worse, reports you to the Battalion Commissar?" That question came from Theodorus, and it seemed to Folke to imply a sort of amusement at Skanian regiments having Chaplains at the company level.
Folke thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Then I will accept the Chaplain or Commissar's judgement as necessary, for they are the Emperor's instruments, while I am only His servant. I appreciate the concern, but we have a village to take, gentlemen. I want all squads covering me while I go out under the truce-flag and once I secure it, Squad Two will go out and recover our dead while the rest fortify and prepare to hold, and the Emperor will protect." he finished. They responded with the appropriate rejoinder, and Folke grinned, then bit into the bread.