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  Baphomet by Night – Peter McLean

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  Baphomet by Night

  Peter McLean

  The drop-ship hit a wall of turbulence that almost rammed Corporal Cully’s spine out of the back of his neck. He was used to drops, him and Sergeant Rachain, but they were the only ones who were. The other corporal too, maybe. Jemsin, she was called, and she looked tough enough, but the green troops they had been given for a platoon were pale with fear as the drop-ship plunged through the impenetrable thick black clouds of pollution that shrouded forge world Baphomet.

  Garrison duty was good though, Cully thought. He felt he was owed a break after the Vardan campaign, him and Rachain both. He had his doubts about the lieutenant, this Delaney, who didn’t look old enough to shave, but so what? A platoon didn’t need much of an officer if it had a good enough sergeant, and he knew his old friend Rachain was one of the best in the regiment.

  The drop-ship slammed into another pocket of turbulence, then fell like a brick for half a mile before levelling out again. Cully felt his ident-tags and the old silver aquila he wore around his neck lifting off his chest in the suddenly reduced gravity. One of the recruits leaned forward in his harness and vomited on his boots. Another looked like she might be about to cry.

  Cully shook his head, silently thanking the Golden Throne that they weren’t actually going into battle with these children.

  The turbulence eased as the drop-ship continued to shed altitude, but Cully still couldn’t see anything except choking black clouds outside the viewport. Eventually the ship broke through the cloud cover, its lights showing him brief glimpses of shattered ferrocrete and bombed manufactories, an uplink mast towering over the centre of Beleth City. It was the middle of the night, and visibility was so bad the pilot was coming in on auspex alone. At least no one was shooting at them this time. The war for Baphomet had been over for a week or more, the Chaos cult that had overrun the planet defeated, and the ruined forge world was finally back in the hands of the Imperium where it belonged.

  The ship banked, and Cully saw the lights of a dropsite picked out below them, jerry-rigged from standard issue Guard lamp packs. There was a temporary camp down there, lit by dim glow-lamps, and what looked like a few semi-permanent shelters made from flakboard and camo netting.

  The roar of the drop-ship’s engines rose to a shrill scream as it decelerated violently. The recruit who had vomited earlier found it in him to heave up again, into his own lap this time. Puke Boy, Cully immediately named him.

  He never bothered learning raw recruits’ actual names until they had survived their first firefight. It simply wasn’t worth the effort. Rachain caught his eye across the troop bay, and winked. The thing with the names was an old joke of theirs, almost a tradition by then, and he wondered if the sergeant had had the same thought.

  The ship crashed down onto the cracked rockcrete of the dropsite with a bang that jarred Cully’s teeth in his skull, clouds of greasy steam venting from the inertial dampers as it settled onto its landing gear. Cully hit the quick-release latch on his drop-harness and got to his feet, hurriedly un-racking his lasgun and pack from the webbing beside him. Rachain was already equipped and bawling orders.

  ‘Up!’ the sergeant roared. ‘No time for dallying in the Astra Militarum. Up and deploy. This is beautiful Baphomet, and it’s home until the Emperor says otherwise.’

  Muttered curses echoed through the drop-ship as the recruits fumbled their way out of their harnesses, getting their packs and lasguns tangled in their haste to obey the sergeant. The drop-ramp slammed down and cold air rushed into the crew bay, carrying the smell of smoke and stale fyceline.

  Rachain was down the ramp now, waving the recruits out. Jemsin was first, her pack over her heavy shoulders and her lasgun held in combat order as she herded her squad out. Cully would have been surprised if this lot had practised drop deployment more than once back in basic training, and it showed. He rounded up his own squad, Puke Boy and Crying Girl among them, and stamped his way down the ramp into the cold darkness.

  ‘Deployed, sergeant,’ he said to Rachain.

  ‘If that’s what you call it,’ Rachain muttered, then looked towards the camp. ‘Hold up, here come the welcoming committee.’

  A burly Guard sergeant was approaching them with two men at her back. She was filthy and her flak armour was cracked, and she had a long, stained bandage covering her left forearm where her sleeve had been torn away. Delaney stepped forward to greet her as other Guardsmen began to show themselves, packs already over their shoulders.

  ‘Lieutenant Delaney, Reslian Forty-Fifth,’ he introduced himself. ‘We’re your relief.’

  ‘Didn’t think you were here sightseeing,’ she said. ‘Sergeant Wyman. I’m the CO here, since we lost the lieutenant.’

  She didn’t offer their regiment, Cully noticed, but their violet eyes and tattered insignia told him they were Cadians. There only seemed to be about ten of them left at the outpost, and they were all wounded and dirty. He offered up a silent prayer of thanks to the Emperor that they had been spared the actual fighting this time – it looked like the battle for Baphomet had been hard won.

  ‘We’ve left you well supplied,’ Wyman added. ‘You won’t go hungry on your little holiday.’

  Delaney just nodded at that. The tactical briefing he had held for his officers before they left the troop ship had included a message from the Departmento Munitorum to that effect. The outpost might be low on troops but there was enough food and ammunition there to last them months, which at least spared them from having to unload the usual heavy supply crates. Baphomet was turning out to be the softest posting Cully could remember.

  ‘Transport’s ready when you are, Wyman,’ Rachain said to her.

  ‘Oh, we’re ready,’ the big woman said. ‘Have fun.’

  She led her surviving men up the ramp and into the waiting drop-ship without another word, and Rachain hurried their platoon out of blast range as its engines began to rumble.

  ‘Right, well, we’ll show ourselves around then, shall we?’ Cully muttered to himself.

  Puke Boy looked like he was about to say something, but as soon as he opened his mouth the drop-ship’s engines let out a bellow that drowned him out. It lifted off the rockcrete and took to the sky with a noise like thunder.

  Cully turned and led his squad into the camp, and found Rachain walking at his side.

  ‘“The camp will be found in good order,”’ the sergeant said, quoting the words of the Departmento Munitorum from their briefing. ‘“A full handover will be received from the departing personnel.” Of course it will.’

  Cully shrugged. The Munitorum were a bunch of stylus-pushing chair-polishers, as far as he was concerned, and he had long since learned not to rely on anything they said.

  ‘So what else is new?’ he said.

  ‘Named your squad yet?’

  ‘Puke Boy and Crying Girl, so far,’ Cully said, and the sergeant laughed. ‘Does that Jemsin know a lasgun from a lho-stick?’

  ‘Seems to,’ Rachain said. ‘I hate getting put in a leftovers unit like this where we don’t know anyone. Troops are all green as grass, though, not that it should matter. I can’t see we’ll be doing anything but playing dice for the next two months anyway.’

  ‘Suits me,’ said Cully. ‘I’m for my bunk unless you need me. We can have a poke around in the morning.’

  Rachain nodded and went to help Dela
ney set up in the camp’s command post, which was little more than a damp flakboard shack. Cully found the bunkhouse, picking his way by the light of the glow-lamps that had been strung up on cables running off the site generator. It was cold, and the camp stank, but at least no one was shooting at him and they weren’t likely to start, so on the whole he reckoned he was winning. He claimed a bunk, stowed his gear, said his nightly devotions to the Emperor, and lay down. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

  It was still the middle of the night when Cully woke up. He could hear someone snoring in another bunk, but the smell of caff was wafting in from outside the bunkhouse and he was wide awake now anyway.

  He shoved his feet into his boots and walked outside, past the sleeping men and into the lamp-lit darkness.

  ‘What time do you call this, corporal?’ Rachain asked him.

  He was tending a cook stove, stirring a pan of caff that looked to have the consistency of used sump oil from a halftrack.

  Cully blinked at him, then looked at his chrono. It read 8am, local time.

  ‘Throne. Sorry, sarge,’ he said, then frowned. It was still pitch dark beyond the feeble reach of the camp lights. ‘Did… We did set chronos for local time, right?’

  ‘We did,’ Rachain said. ‘I think this is as light as it gets.’

  Cully remembered the blanket of solid black pollution that the drop-ship had come down through.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Rachain said. ‘Welcome to beautiful Baphomet, shame you can’t see it.’

  ‘Who’s got the patrol?’ Cully asked.

  ‘Three Stars and Snotty and another one, from Jemsin’s squad,’ Rachain said.

  Cully smirked. Three Stars was a girl of eighteen with a badly tattooed star worked on the side of her neck and another one on the back of each hand. A former ganger before she got conscripted, by the look of her, wiry and tough-looking. He hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting Snotty yet, but he sounded delightful. A thought struck him.

  ‘Have we got enough lamp packs?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean, if it isn’t ever going to get light here, we’re going to need a lot just for guard duties, never mind patrol. A lot.’

  Rachain grunted and poured the caff into two battered tin mugs.

  ‘Are you trying to depress me, Cully?’

  ‘Sorry, sarge.’

  The sergeant sipped his caff and sighed.

  ‘No, you’re right. And no, we haven’t.’ He winced. ‘This caff is truly hideous.’

  Cully sniffed his and took a sip that made him grimace. Guard-issue caff was never what you’d call good, but this stuff had a slick, oily sheen to it and a taste that coated his tongue and made him feel like he’d been licking rancid meat.

  ‘Tastes like my boot,’ he agreed. ‘Where did you get it from?’

  Rachain jerked his head in the direction of the supply shack.

  ‘It was in there, same place everything else is. It smells like your boot in there too, Cully.’

  Cully took another sip then tipped the rest out onto the ground.

  ‘Must be a bad packet,’ he said. ‘I’ll go kick my mob out of their bunks and then we can–’

  He was interrupted by a scream, and the sharp crackle of a lasgun being fired on full auto.

  ‘What the–’

  Rachain was on his feet then, weapon ready as he scanned the dark camp. The harsh bark of a stubber came from somewhere away beyond the perimeter.

  ‘Get your squad up!’ Rachain ordered, and raced off towards the shooting.

  Cully charged into the bunkhouse and hammered a metal support pole with the butt of his lasgun, making a clanging noise fit to raise the dead.

  ‘Attack!’ he roared. ‘Defend the camp!’

  Recruits rolled out of their bunks and grabbed their weapons. They would have drilled this enough times in basic, at least. Cully grabbed his vox-bead and ran back out of the bunkhouse. He activated the lamp pack attached to his lasgun as he got into cover. A thin beam of sharp white light cut through the gloom and he swung the weapon in a tight arc, hunting targets.

  Puke Boy ran past him with his lasgun at the hip, firing wildly at nothing in obvious panic.

  ‘Down!’ Cully shouted at him, and the boy dropped like he’d been shot.

  Away to his left came two tight, measured shots, the las cracking with cold professionalism. Rachain, or maybe Jemsin. The recruits were firing blind, shooting wildly and lighting up the darkness as though a whole greenskin warband was charging them.

  ‘Hold fire!’ Rachain bellowed from somewhere to his right. ‘Hold, you idiots!’

  Cully snugged the butt of his lasgun tighter to his shoulder and wondered where the lieutenant was. The stubber opened up again, its muzzle flash bright in the darkness. None of their platoon had stubbers. Cully shot straight at it.

  ‘Underhive!’ screamed a woman’s voice in the distance, followed by another long burst of wild las-fire. ‘For the underhive!’

  Three Stars, then. There was a harsh bark of stubber fire, and she fell silent.

  ‘Jemsin, forward,’ Rachain ordered over the vox, his voice crackling in Cully’s ear.

  ‘Two Squad, on me and advance!’ Jemsin shouted from Cully’s left.

  Her squad followed the light of her lamp pack.

  ‘One Squad, hold perimeter,’ Cully said. Another burst of las-fire from some idiot. ‘No shooting, you half-wit, you’ll hit Two!’

  Silence fell, Two Squad’s nervous advance the only sound. Cully could see the beams of lamp packs cutting the darkness as they moved. Jemsin’s was steady and purposeful, the others trembling and swinging wildly around, illuminating a street of bombed-out buildings carpeted with rubble and broken plasglass. The outskirts of Beleth, he realised.

  ‘Clear,’ she voxed back.

  ‘Hold position,’ Rachain told her. ‘One Squad, leapfrog and advance.’

  ‘Sir,’ Cully acknowledged, and waved his troops after him.

  He passed Jemsin’s position in a low crouch, his weapon set to his shoulder and the beam of his lamp pack playing down the street ahead of him, heading towards where he had seen the muzzle flash from the stubber. There was no sign of the weapon or whoever had been firing it, but a moment later his light washed over a pool of fresh blood. He froze, following the blood until the light caught a pale, outstretched hand.

  A woman’s hand, crudely tattooed with a star.

  ‘Medic!’ he bellowed.

  Sawbones hurried to his call. Cully swallowed as the young field medic crouched beside Three Stars’ body. He turned to Cully a moment later, and shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said, and Cully sighed.

  ‘Corporal, over here,’ Crying Girl said.

  Cully went to her, his lamp illuminating what she had found.

  There were two young Guardsmen lying dead against the wall, their flak armour punched through with multiple holes from stub rounds. Snotty and the other one, Cully could only assume. Cully bowed his head and offered a prayer to the Emperor for their souls. He turned to Crying Girl, who had survived her first firefight.

  ‘Remind me what your name is?’ he asked her.

  ‘Trooper Kallek, corporal,’ she said.

  ‘Right then, Kallek, get back to camp and tell the sergeant what you found. Don’t shout about it to the others, don’t make a fuss. Understand?’

  ‘Corporal,’ she said, and she went.

  She was pale and shaken, but she wasn’t crying anymore. Cully nodded to himself. She’d do, he thought. He sank down onto his haunches to guard the bodies and wait for Rachain to tell him what to do.

  ‘Dammit, man, I need a signal!’ Lieutenant Delaney barked at Squawk. ‘I have to report the attack to HQ.’

  The vox officer hadn’t left the command post during the fi
ghting any more than Delaney himself had, so he didn’t deserve a proper name yet, as far as Cully was concerned. Kallek did, and so did Morran who had been Puke Boy, and the others, but not Squawk. Not yet, anyway.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Squawk said, fiddling yet again with the field vox. ‘It’s just static all the way across the band. It must be all the pollution in the air, and everything left over from the bombing.’

  Delaney swore and gulped from a flask of sacra that he shouldn’t have had, his hand trembling. They were in the command post, all three officers huddled around the field vox with Delaney and Squawk, and three of the platoon were lying dead under tarps in the medicae tent.

  ‘We didn’t kill any of them?’ Delaney asked for the third time.

  ‘No, sir,’ Rachain said again. ‘Or if we did, they took their dead with them, which I doubt. Chaos cultists… don’t usually do that.’

  ‘Perhaps if we’d had more men fighting, we might have done,’ Cully said. ‘Sir.’

  ‘Stow it, corporal,’ Rachain snapped at him.

  Cully looked at his friend for a moment, then down at the floor. The sergeant was right, of course – being insubordinate to Delaney now wouldn’t change the fact that the lieutenant had hidden in his command post and left Rachain to take charge during the attack. He sighed. Three Stars had been undisciplined, of course, as gangers always were, but she’d seemed like a tough kid. At least she’d gone down fighting, the way the Emperor expected. He looked up and gave Delaney a glare.

  ‘Corporal,’ Rachain said in a low voice, ‘I want you to go and check the stores. Right now.’

  Cully nodded and went before he said something he really shouldn’t have done. That wasn’t the first time Rachain had saved him from himself in front of an officer, and he knew it wouldn’t be the last, either.

  He ducked out of the command post and headed across the camp to the supply shack, finding his way by the light of the glow-lamps. He pushed the flakboard door open, and almost gagged as the smell hit him.

  The ration packs were stacked neatly on metal racking against the walls the way they should be, the big drums of water lined up underneath, all done by the book. Except that half the ration packs had black gunge seeping out of them, dripping slowly onto the floor. Cully swallowed bile. He’d have to detail a couple of troopers to sort through them all, he thought, clear out everything that was rotten so it didn’t spread to the stuff that was still good.