Old Soldiers Never Die - Sandy Mitchell Read online

  “Keep back!” I cautioned, with every intention of heeding my own advice, and got my first good look at the thing we were facing. It was unquestionably the cadaver of one of the Vostroyan soldiery, the extravagant moustaches cultivated by the Guardsmen from that world[13] standing out even more fully than usual against the with­ered flesh and sunken skin of its decomposing face. Its eyes were blank, rolled so far up into the orbits that they showed little other than white, but the animate corpse seemed aware of our presence nonetheless; it raised a twisted hand, the nails of which seemed to have been elongated into talons by the decay of the fleshy finger­tips behind them, and shambled forwards. I fired the laspistol again, with no more effect than the last time.

  “Stay dead, damn it!” I snarled, although whether that was terror manifesting as anger or desperate entreaty I have no idea.

  Jona seemed to take it for the former, however, aiming a tight smile in my direction, in spite of the fresh ambulatory carcasses bursting out of their wooden chrysalides on all sides of us. “Remind you of anything?” he asked sardonically, backing away as he spoke. Now that he came to mention it, it did; the way the animate cadavers moved, with grim fixity of purpose, their expressions blank, was uncannily reminiscent of the mob which had attacked us on the way in from the starport.

  The main difference was the sound, which I presumed the body­work of the car had insulated us from before. This time I could hear it, a low, muffled groaning, emanating from all of them, as though they’d just woken to the kind of hangover where even your eyelashes ache. For all I know, they had[14] . At any rate it got on my nerves, and I fired a third time, taking the nearest revenant in the throat. This time the shot did have an effect, as it staggered, then began to move in short random jerks, bumping into its fellows and the biers as it did so.

  Encouraged, I put a second las-bolt in the same spot, this time suc­ceeding in severing the spinal column which the first had exposed through the ruin of the revenant’s neck. It dropped like a puppet with severed strings, a disquieting thought, because it rather begged the question of who was pulling them.

  “Will you stop frakking around and just run?” I demanded, as the whole shambling mob began to close in on us. Which was easier said than done, as the aisle was still clogged with panicking local dignitaries. Among them I caught a glimpse of Kasteen, grimly ford­ing her way towards us against the current, but unable to use her bolt pistol for fear of hitting an innocent bystander.

  “Avaunt!” Callister cried, having a sudden and inconvenient rush of courage or misplaced piety to the head. He’d taken the golden aquila from round his neck, and was brandishing it in the general direction of the shuffling horrors bearing down on us. “In the name of the Emperor, begone!” Then the closest of them made a sudden snatch, which would surely have seized his arm and dragged him into the reach of its charnel-reeking jaws if its grotesquely elongated nails hadn’t snagged in the trailing sleeve of his chasuble. Exquisite embroidery tore as the talons ripped through it, and the hierophant leapt backwards with a squeak of alarm, bringing down his crozius on the crown of his assailant’s head as he did so. The heavy gold icon of Him on Earth crushed the revenant’s skull, and it slumped to its knees, foul-smelling fluid seeping from its eyes and nose.

  “Well done, your grace,” I called encouragingly, hoping that he’d finally come to his senses after a squeak that narrow, and he nodded, looking both surprised and pleased with himself. “Now move your arse!” I’d like to claim that my choice of phrase was a deliberate ploy, hoping to shock him into acquiescence by the sudden descent into profanity in these hallowed precincts, but if I’m honest I was simply too annoyed to care. There were still too many witnesses around for me to simply cut and run, however much I might wish to, and the longer these idiots insisted on lingering, the longer I’d be in immi­nent danger. Fortunately he listened this time, and scuttled back in my direction; which, with Jona now getting mired in the rush for the main door, left me in the uncomfortable position of being closest to the revenants.

  Unwilling to turn my back on them, in case they rushed me as soon as they saw an opening[15] , I backed away slowly, keeping my chainsword raised in a guard position; which, though I had no idea of the fact at the time, looked as though I was covering the hierophant’s retreat, and did my fraudulent reputation no end of good. The one the prelate had poleaxed was on the floor now, still twitch­ing, but in short, spasmodic movements, while the rest of the pack shuffled around it, spreading out slowly, like a patch of oil on the surface of a pond. Which was a worrying development. Already the ones on the edge of the group were approaching the limits of my peripheral vision, and I found myself worrying about being flanked as soon as I couldn’t keep all of them in sight at once.

  I needn’t have worried too much on that score, though, as the revenants seemed to be wary of me, or perhaps of the weapons I carried. None had sufficient intellect left to seek cover, dropping below the level of the pews as I would have done, but they didn’t seem discour­aged either, just moving forwards at a steady walking pace towards the gradually diminishing knot of struggling dignitaries jammed in the doorway. I put a couple more las-bolts into the nearest, trying for head shots as these seemed the most effective, but succeeded only in blowing away part of its face and jaw, before an inconvenient pillar hid it from view.

  “Ciaphas!” Kasteen shouted, breaking free of the scrum at last. “Look down!” I did as she bade, and recoiled in horror; the revenant the hierophant had felled was crawling towards me, leaving a clotted trail of noisome fluid as it came, an outstretched hand on the point of seizing my ankle. I struck down with the chainsword, severing the limb at the elbow, but the animate cadaver didn’t even slow down, continuing to advance as inexorably as a necron. I hacked at it again and again, carving it into foul-smelling chunks, but it only stopped moving once I’d severed the spinal column.

  “Go for head shots!” I called to the colonel, alarmed to see that while I’d been occupied the undead Guardsmen had dispersed even more widely. Of the hierophant there was no sign at all, which was encouraging in a way, as I’d be able to take the credit for saving his neck, but disconcerting too, as I’d hoped to see where he went and follow him as quickly as possible.

  “No need,” Kasteen said, a trifle smugly, and fired her bolt pistol at one of the revenants closing in on Jona. Its ribcage blew apart as the explosive-tipped bolt detonated, decorating the intricate wood carving on the end of the nearest pew with half-rotted entrails. I took a shot at the other, which hit, but proved as ineffectual as ever, the las-bolt simply gouging a chunk out of the obscene thing’s right shoulder. Undeterred, it reached out for Jona with its left.

  Warned by the slightly soggy explosion of Kasteen’s bolt, Jona looked up in alarm, and ducked out of the way in the nick of time. Unfortunately that left him between two pews, backing up as the motile cadaver plodded relentlessly after him. Even more unfortu­nately, one of the pillars supporting the ceiling was at the end of the gap, instead of an exit to the next aisle; a fact the young gov­ernor only became aware of when he backed into the immovable obstruction.

  The brief flurry of activity had given another knot of undead troop­ers enough time to shamble uncomfortably close to me, so I turned and hurried up the nave, having little inclination to try my blade against the three of them at once; it would only take a single misstep or mistimed blow for one of them to get under my guard, and once that happened the weight of numbers would be certain to tell. The one on the left was wearing a Valhallan artilleryman’s uniform, and I glanced at what was left of its face as I retreated with a faint sense of anticipatory dread, but of course it wasn’t one I recognised. Few of the gunners I’d served with would still be attached to the 12th after all this time.

  Finding myself coming abreast of the Vostroyan revenant chasing Jona I took an opportunistic swipe at its neck with my chainblade, decapitating the thing neatly. It collapsed where it stood, only a trickle of foul-smelling fluids seeping fr
om the wound, in marked contrast to the geyser of blood which usually accompanied the sev­ering of a head. The governor stared at me, wide-eyed, although he didn’t seem to be hyperventilating this time, which was probably just as well considering the reek of the twice-killed corpse.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, because I was supposed to, and the servo-skulls were still flitting about the place picting the scene.

  “Think so,” Jona said, holding a handkerchief to a slight scratch on his cheek. “Wouldn’t have been in another minute.” He stepped fas­tidiously over the body. “Thank you.” His words were almost drowned out by a crackle of gunfire, which echoed around the cathedral. Now that their lines of fire were no longer blocked by panicking civilians, the rest of the Imperial Guard officers had begun picking off the remaining revenants, and not before time if you asked me.

  “What just happened?” Kasteen asked, joining us, her eyes still flick­ering in every direction in search of a target.

  “I haven’t a clue,” I told her honestly, hustling Jona ahead of us, towards the welcoming arch of sunlight beyond the ornately carved door. “But we need to find out fast.” Something was very wrong on Lentonia, and if past experience was anything to go by, it was going to get a whole lot worse.

  Editorial Note:

  Though not strictly necessary, I’ve decided to include another extract from Worden’s account at this point. Cain provides enough information to make the events of the intervening period before he picks up his own narrative again perfectly clear; but since the additional material is available, it seemed sensible to use it.

  I have rather less confidence in the wisdom of inflicting the second extract on my readers, but it does at least elucidate the military position into which the 597th was unceremoniously pitched; and those without the patience to wade through it are per­fectly at liberty to skip the entire passage. Positively encouraged to, in fact.

  From The Liberation of Lentonia, by Jonas Worden, uncompleted manuscript.

  After the incident in the cathedral made the true nature of the crisis we were facing all too horrifically apparent, no effort was spared to trace the source of the outbreak, and make sure it was properly contained. Having had the role of governor thrust unwillingly upon me, I was far out of my depth, but I was determined to do whatever was necessary to preserve Lentonia from any further harm. Though the job seemed incredibly daunting, I had the good advice of the Martial Law Council to rely on, not to mention the reassuring pres­ence of Commissar Cain, who had faced and overcome many perils before. His experience, I was sure, would stand us in good stead in the dark days to come.

  Ultimately, however, the decisions were mine alone to make[16] , and I was determined to face and fulfil my responsibilities.

  From Like a Phoenix on the Wing: the Early Campaigns and Glorious Victories of the Valhallan 597th by General Jenit Sulla (retired), 101. M42.

  Ever the woman of action, Colonel Kasteen lost no time in appris­ing the senior officers of the regiment of the full implications of the grisly discovery made by her and Commissar Cain. Not a woman or man among us could have entirely suppressed a thrill of primal horror at the revelation that our true foes were not the misguided insurrectionists we’d been called here to force back to acceptance of the Emperor’s light, but the very dead themselves, ripped untimely from their graves by the foulest of warp-spawned sorceries. With so many of our gallant comrades-in-arms fallen victim to the con­tagion which had swept through their ranks, it fell to us, the only regiment thus far unscathed, to bear the brunt of this new and ter­rifying threat. Thus it was that the daughters and sons of Valhalla took to the streets of Viasalix, determined to guard it, and the rule of the Golden Throne, at all costs, including our own lives if necessary.

  A price which, ere long, it seemed we might all be called upon to pay.

  FOUR

  “Are you sure?” I asked, despite knowing that no one would have said a thing like that if they weren’t completely certain, and the magos biologis seated on the opposite side of the hololith nodded soberly in reply. I felt a faint flicker of surprise at that, as in my experience members of the Adeptus Mechanicus weren’t often given to such human gestures, but I suppose in his field of expertise he would have had less inclination to indulge in wholesale augmenta­tion than the majority of his colleagues.

  “All the tests we’ve been able to run confirm it,” he said, in a natu­ral voice, tinged with a bone-deep weariness which, in its own way, was even more startling. Cogboys[17] tend to affect a calm, emotionless delivery, if they haven’t had their vocal cords replaced by a vox-coder to save them the bother; if this particular one was past caring how he sounded, the situation must have been dire indeed. “We are undoubtedly dealing with an outbreak of the Plague of Unbelief.”

  “I’ve heard the stories, of course,” I said, looking from one horror-struck face to another, “but I always thought they must have been exaggerated.” As befitted a crisis of this magnitude, we’d convened in the central command bunker of the Lentonian militia; which seemed fair enough to me, as there were hardly enough of them left on their feet to make use of it themselves. It was ideally suited to coordinating our own scattered forces, however. Those of us physically present were clustered around a hololith projector, in which the faces of the regimental commanders and other officials too busy to attend in person floated like worried-looking balloons, flickering occasionally in the manner of such devices, and occasionally drifting through one another, or the three-dimensional image of the city above which they bobbed.

  “It’s real enough, believe me,” Colonel Samier, the commanding officer of the Tallarn contingent, assured us, his loose desert tunic rustling as he leaned forwards for emphasis. “We encountered simi­lar revenants on Ferantis.”

  “Then you’ll know how to beat them here,” Jona interjected, his voice fizzling with static as his projected image flickered like an ill-attended campfire. One of the hovering tech-priests poked hopefully at the projectors, and the governor stabilised a little, although he still faded in and out of focus.

  “With the Emperor’s guidance,” Samier agreed, making the sign of the aquila as he spoke.

  “If you’ve identified the virus, you must be able to begin treating it,” Kasteen said, her voice and image flickering almost as badly as the governor’s. With the 597th at full stretch, holding down most of the city on its own, both she and Broklaw had been too busy to attend this meeting in person; I, on the other hand, had no desire to find myself pitchforked into the front lines again, and had been more than happy to spend a bit of time in the most heavily fortified bunker on the planet, in the name of effective cooperation with our fellow regiments. By way of a bonus, morale among what was left of the militia would have to improve to even reach rock bottom by this point, and having a Hero of the Imperium apparently going out of his way to liaise with them was helping no end with that.

  “I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” the magos said, and I glanced surrep­titiously at the data-slate on the table in front of me, trying to pick out his name. Moroe, that was it. I vaguely remembered being introduced to him at some reception or other shortly after our arrival, but we’d only exchanged a few words, tech-priests not being exactly renowned for their social skills. “According to the records, the virus mutates rap­idly No two outbreaks are ever the same, and an effective treatment has yet to be found. The only thing to be done is quarantine everyone known to have come into contact with the infection, and terminate any of them showing symptoms before they can pass it on.”

  “What about vaccination?” my old sparring partner, Colonel Mostrue, put in. Like most of the other regimental commanders he was here only as a projection, which didn’t stop him giving me the fish eye just as coldly as if he’d been present in person.

  “Haven’t you been listening?” Moroe snapped, in a most untech-priest like manner; clearly his researches had been taking even more of a toll than I’d realised. “There are so many strains of the v
irus, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  “With the Tallarns?” I suggested, earning a glare from Samier for my pains. Knowing how sensitive the natives of that desert world could be, I turned a little in my seat to address him directly. “You must have been exposed to the virus on Ferantis.” I took another covert look at my data-slate as I spoke, finding that, as I’d expected, it had been the last warzone they’d fought in. “You might have developed an immu­nity to it. Even if it’s a totally different strain, as Magos Moroe has suggested, it could be a place to start.”

  Samier started to nod, but before he could speak, the magos biologis cut across him. “Perhaps it’s not a different strain,” he said thought­fully. “You arrived before the rest of the regiments, and worked closely with the militia, who were the first to show symptoms. From there it spread to the Guard, and out into the civilian population.” He started punching keys and bringing up displays on his own slate, with a speed and precision which hinted at augmetic enhancements in his fingers and cortex, even though they weren’t particularly visible.

  What I could see of the Tallarn colonel’s face behind his extrava­gant beard and voluminous burnoose darkened dangerously. “You dare to suggest that we brought this contagion to Lentonia?” he said slowly.

  “It’s by far the most probable vector,” Moroe said, clearly missing the warning signs.

  Samier’s jaw tightened. “Then explain to me how my men are almost entirely free of the disease,” he challenged.

  Moroe looked uncomfortable. “I can’t,” he said. “Unless they’re car­riers, somehow immune, but still able to pass on the virus.”