Six
The first they knew of the 24th Atalantan Armor approaching was the sound of engine after rumbling engine approaching up a paved road. The road was Folke's assigned task, and his platoon was covering it with all lasrifles in the tree-lines on either side, heavy stubbers forming the pins of the L-shaped ambush he had laid. He stood in the road, his men unseen to either side of him, lasrifle slung casually on one shoulder. They weren't sure if this was the right armor column approaching, and so Folke stood in the road, lasrifle slung, pistol holstered. Because they couldn't risk a friendly fire incident. A Skanian artillery officer had ordered his men to shoot short, and he had been flayed alive for the Guard regiment that his men's shots had slaughtered.
Folke took a drag on his lho-stick, doing his best to project an air of indifference. Inside, he was chanting a litany of prayers to the Sky-Father and Langley that this was the right armor column. They came around the corner of the road slow, with a recon vehicle up front. The gunner swiveled to aim at Folke almost as soon as the vehicle slowed, and then stopped. Folke raised his hands from his sides.
"Hallo?" He called in Low Gothic. Folke took a breath, then waved. A tank came around the side of the recon truck, main gun aimed very deliberately at the tree-line. Even going slower than walking pace, the engine's rumble was a huge roar that blasted his ears, and it was easily twice the size of the recon vehicle. On the rear of the turret, Folke saw a flagpole, with an Imperial Aquila hanging from it. He recognized it as a Leman Russ with an extremely long gun barrel, probably a Vanquisher, thanks to "Friend or Foe?" briefings on the troop ship.
"Advance and be recognized, suh," drawled the tank's commander. His head came out of the turret, and he swivelled his auto-stubber to aim directly at Folke. The man on the gun of the recon vehicle swivelled his to cover the other tree line, and Folke had the feeling that this was a routine they'd gone through before. He took the requisite number of steps forward, stopping when told.
"Lieutenant Folke, Light Company of the Skanian 312th," he said. The commander of the Leman Russ pulled himself out of the turret hatch and stood on the top of the tank, small black cap tilted jauntily. He crossed his arms across his chest, gazing at Folke.
"Captain Wickham Zebulon, suh," the man on the tank drawled. Folke stared back at him, steady and waiting. The man's brown hair was slicked back on the top beneath the cap and shaved at the sides, and his brown eyes held no trace of wariness or temper. "I have the pleasure and honor of being commander of Company A, 2nd Battalion, 24th Atalantan Armored. Wave your men forward, suh," Zebulon drawled. Folke did so, and his fellow officers in the Light Company came out of the treeline. Ljonhalm greeted Zebulon, and they began discussing the coming march.
Folke turned to Carpelan and led him, and his squad leaders, away from the tank. Once they were a few meters distant, nearer the treeline than the road, Folke posed them a question. "How're the lads doing?"
"Morale's good," Carpelan answered instantly. "We've lost a few lads, and they know it, but we haven't stopped winning fights since we've landed planetside, and they know that, too."
"Good. I don't know what kind of fight we're in for after we start advancing again, but the armor support should be nice." This was new territory for Folke. He'd been an officer for all of four months, now, and some aspects of command were still ethereal and all of it seemed a little unreal to him at times.
Folke wished Theodorus still lived. The Troscan had been a good Sergeant and quite capable of guiding Folke without it seeming like he was ordering him around.
"The lads are ready for a dust-up," Carpelan said. "They want the locals to know that the men from Skania's Ulandr district are here, and ready to go down to cold steel if needed." Folke nodded. He knew that his men liked him, because they hadn't fragged him or ignored orders and they'd followed him, willingly, into the fights after they'd disembarked at the spaceport and helped secure the surrounding area. He'd led a squad in clearing a compound in Lethorn, the city around the spaceport, and that had seemed to cement their opinion of him, even though the division commander, General Zweibroken, had approved him as a transfer to the 312th from the 311th.
Behind them, someone called Folke's name. He turned, and was greeted by the Atalantan tank commander having clambered down. He extended his hand for Folke to shake, and Folke accepted it. "Ya'll boys ready for a ride, Lieutenant?" Zebulon's grip was firm, and aside from the bushy mustache on his upper lip he seemed like a decent sort to Folke. "Your captain has said we're moving behind ya'll boys."
"Ja," Folke answered. "It should be clear, but our Colonel is worried about partisans coming out of the trees, or remnants of the traitor PDF forces. We will march, herr Captain, and do our duty."
Their duty was thing that weighed on Folke's shoulders like a mountain. Duty to the Emperor. Duty to the Guard. Duty to his sister and her son, duty to his men. All of them mountains crushing him beneath their weight, and what would he do if they diverged? When they diverged? What I must, Folke decided. He was in the Guard to protect his sister and her son. What I must. Whatever that is, and I pray the Saint and Emperor my soul to keep.
Ljonhalm called the company from their positions in the woods where they had been covering the woods on either side of the blacktop, with the most under-strength platoon, Third, left as a quick reaction reserve. The men filtered onto the road in their fireteams, three or four men, sharing jokes and lho-sticks as they did. Folke stood to the side, scanning his platoon as they formed up for the march back to the town that was currently their home.
He pulled his own pack from a tunic's breast pocket, and lit it. Folke let it dangle from his mouth as he paced up and down the road beside his platoon, making sure each man's alignment was correct as the tanks rumbled behind them. Finally, Ljonhalm signalled for them to begin the march, and the Skanians stepped off with enthusiasm, someone starting a rendition of Long Way to Tunnsjaenen. Folke hummed it as well while he marched beside his men. Their pace, the grueling quick march pace demanded by the Skanian war-manuals for light infantry regiments, was the 140-beat per minute pace that the very first Skanian skirmishers had used to protect the armies of the Saint as they cleansed the world of the enemy that had come so close to destroying it.
It was a burden, too, and Folke felt it keenly. For three thousand years, Skanian light infantry had marched to war with the same pace that their ancestors had used to keep ahead of the Saint's armies. Does she even care that we struggle in her and the Emperor's names?
While they marched, Folke struggled with questions of faith that he wasn't sure he should ask the prast for help with. Of course the Saint cared, he told himself. That was what the holy text and the Skanian Ecclesiarchy all said: she cared, she heard, and she spoke with the Emperor in his long internment on the Golden Throne. So it was said. But did she actually? He swallowed, lho-stick left forgotten in his lips. The Saint was there, he knew. Hadn't his necklace felt warm, before they went into the enemy defenses?
The Saint would see him through, Folke told himself. His parents had believed, and so he believed. He didn't know if it was enough, though. He took a drag off his lho-stick, which burned brightly. This was what the emperor's administration paid them for. March fast, smoke lho-sticks, and kill the Emperor's enemies. But Folke knew deep in his heart that he was barely better, if at all, than the rural scum he led. After all, and no matter the High Gothic lessons, he was hive scum. Worse than the lowest of lows, in this regiment and battalion drawn from the rural districts that kept Stockarta fed and fueled.
But he'd prove them wrong. If it was the last thing he did, Folke would buy his sister and her son a decent life with his blood and sweat. He finished his lho-stick with one last drag, tossed it into the road in front of him, and ground it out beneath his boot on the next step.
He could feel the tiredness, now. Most of two days' fighting wore on a body, and it made itself known to him by the burning in his eyes, the weight of the lasrifle on his shoulder. His canteen thumped into his hip at an awkward angle, and he reached down to shift it. The hair on the back of Folke's neck stood up, and then the hair on his forearms did so as well. He straightened, turned his head to look.
The broadleaf trees that lined the gravel road and gave it shade hid no one. They were spaced too far apart on the sides of the road, and the fields beyond were empty of their crops, harvested before the Imperium came to reassert dominance. Still, Folke was convinced that someone had been watching him, but it hadn't been the dangerous way that underhive gang scum watched an easy mark.
He thought about it for a moment, feet still going up and down, one after the other, and then dismissed it. Unknowingly, a hand drifted to his saber, clenched the grip tightly.
A crackle in his ear told him that someone wanted to speak with him on the microcom beads. He acknowledged it, and the voice of his superior filled his ear. "Folke," Ljonhalm said. "Pick up the pace. The Regiment has received orders- we're diverting from scouting for the 24th Atalantan in the assault on Palaptinate to the small city of Breisol. The Noctae VI 489th has declared themselves... free of Guard discipline and the rulers of Breisol. The 312th has been ordered to show them the error of disobeying the Lord General's orders."
"Ja, herre," Folke responded. That meant a brutal city fight. Worse, it meant a brutal Guard versus Guard fight in a city, and he couldn't think of a more hellish environment to try and survive in. To lead his men through. I might be hive scum, but Sky-father and Saint give me an open field fight any day of the year, he thought.
He cut the line to Ljonhalm and motioned to Carpelan. He fell out of formation and took up pace beside Folke. "Mutiny suppression," Folke said curtly. Carpelan swore, and the men that heard in the formation beside them voiced their displeasure.
"Silence!" Carpelan snarled, and the mutterings diminished, although they didn't quite stop. Instead, they, and Carpelan and Folke, switched to their war-cant.
"I don't think killing our fellow Guardsman is what we signed up for, Lieutenant," Carpelan said. Folke shrugged.
"What we signed up for is to fight the Emperor's enemies and protect the Imperium's citizens, Sergeant," Folke replied. "Now it seems that there's work to be done."
"There's always work to be done, Lieutenant. Nobody said we'd cover ourselves in glory once it's done, though." Carpelan spat, lit his own lho-stick. At the end of the day, Folke knew, it would come to what it always came down to: mud, blood, and cold steel showing the enemies of the Sky-Father the error of their ways. But until then, it was up to Folke as an officer and gentleman to lead his men both in battle and out. And that meant knowing when to ask for help.
"Captain," he activated his micro com-bead. "Permission to ride with the tanks?"
"Granted," Ljonhalm's voice crackled over the communications link. "We'll make faster time, and I don't think Colonel Vasa will care much about upholding the light infantry reputation when it's something as important as breaking a mutiny." Folke wanted to make the sign of the Aquila at the word, but he didn't. Mutiny was insidious. He had heard stories of entire Guard armies succumbing to the disease, all because one or two generals hadn't thought it a serious threat. It would start with whispers at the platoon or company level, and then the men would find officers to side with them, as high as they could until finally they would execute whichever officers stayed loyal to their oaths and the God-Emperor. Mutinous regiments committed terrible crimes- the Rape of Torban Hive could be laid at the feet of two sister regiments, the Exlorcan 145th and 146th. They had been routed out of their holes with bayonet and grenade and all the fury that the Skanian 222nd had been able to muster, and now it fell to a different set of Skania's sons to do the same to another regiment.
Folke would see the Emperor's justice done. If it killed him. I'm sorry, Elise. Some things are more important than seeing you and little Jan secure. She couldn't hear his silent apology, of course- she was safe with the rest of the regiment's dependents at the space port. She would be safe there, even if he died. His blood would win her safety, if it had to.
He waved the lead tank, with Atalanta Superbia written on the side, to a halt. It did so, huge engine rumbling as it idled, and Captain Zebulon popped out of his hatch, lifting his goggles from his eyes as he did so.
"What's the hold up, old chap?" He called out over the tank, and Folke clambered up on the front of the mighty iron steed, leaning on the gun. Stenciled on the gun, in Low Gothic, was The Emperor Sends his Regards. Folke thought it amusing.
"Orders from Army Headquarters directly, Captain," Folke replied. "We, that is, the Skanian 312th and 24th Atalantan Armored, are ordered to move to the city of Breisol and induce the Guard regiment there, the Noctae VI 489th, to cease their mutiny."
"By the Emperor, suh," Zebulon cursed. "The scum have mutinied?"
"Ja, herr," Folke replied. "Will you allow our company to ride on your tanks?"
"Of course," Zebulon said. He swapped to his regiment's war-cant, incomprehensible to Folke, and behind them the Leman Russes of the armored regiment slewed to the sides of the road to allow the Skanians ease of access to the sides and rear of the tanks to mount them, and Folke wondered what happened to the 79th Merdvennan that they were supposed to meet outside the village that had been a village of death.
The Most Ancient and Honorable City of Breisol burned. Not all of it, certainly, but swathes and sections lit the night sky with their flames. Squads of Imperial Guardsmen, Imperial aquilas ripped from their tunics and armbands, ranged far and wide through the city, their particular hunting grounds the residential sections of the city. Some of them got drunk off looted bar stock, or high off confiscated narcotics. For some, their vices ran more to the human side of things, and these men terrorized the city the most as they ransacked it looking for their prey. Four Commissars and all the regiment's officers dangled from makeshift lynches tossed over lamp-posts and statuary, but some bore the death-wounds earned in savage fighting.
They had tried to bring the Noctae VI 489th Regiment under control after the first signs of mutiny and dissension showed in the ranks. And they had died for their troubles. Now the 489th ran rough-shod over Breisol, taking as they pleased, slaking their lust for vengeance against the Guard that had taken them so far away from home on the Imperial citizens they were sworn to protect.
Breisol burned, and was sacked in an orgy of blood and violence. And miles away, two regiments drew closer. The Skanians and Atalantans were coming, and neither regiment had a soft reputation. But in Breisol, the 498th ruled with blood and terror. Citizens cowered in their homes, praying that the renegade Guardsmen would pass over them, and, cursing the God-Emperor when those prayers fell on deaf ears.
The Guardsmen cursed, too. They cursed the Emperor, the Imperium, the Guard, and the officers that had led them here to war, and then led them badly. The Guardsmen cursed when the Navy jammed all their communications devices, and when Navy fighters flew overhead on reconnaissance runs. Some of them prayed, and a few went to ground in the city, taking off their issued fatigues as fast as possible and scrambling desperately for a hiding place from the vengeance that they suspected was coming.
In a small church that lay in a suburb on the outskirts of Breisol, a woman in a long black coat and peaked cap clutched a laspistol tightly to her chest, praying silently and desperately to the God-Emperor. There came a roar from outside, and she flinched back from the sound that entered through the locked and barred door, and she prayed for deliverance.