Salvation's Reach Read online

  The shot echoed down the cavity. The round clipped the lip of a tin pot, and made it judder. He’d been aiming for a mark on the pot about a middle finger’s distance away from what he’d actually hit.

  Hopeless. Fething hopeless.

  To even be considered for a lanyard, he’d have needed to partially overlap the target spot.

  ‘That is a poor shot.’

  Merrt jumped. It wasn’t so much that someone had surprised him, it was that someone so big had miraculously appeared in his line of sight.

  He scrambled up, knocking over the stand.

  ‘Gn! Gn! Gn!’

  Surprise gave way to fear.

  The White Scar squinted down the range, then looked back at the human with the rifle.

  ‘Very poor,’ said Sar Af. ‘Pathetic. Why do you even bother?’

  ‘Gn… gn… gn…’

  ‘Speak up? Are you simple?’

  ‘I’m gn… gn… gn… practising!’

  Sar Af frowned. He coughed, and then rubbed the tip of his nose with armoured fingers that could crush bone.

  ‘You will be here a long time,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve been here a long gn… gn… gn… time already,’ said Merrt.

  Sar Af nodded. He held out his hand.

  ‘Give it to me.’

  His voice reminded Merrt of Jago. Dry winds, gusting forlornly through dusty valleys. Sandstone eroded by the air. Merrt handed him the rifle.

  Sar Af took it; a stick, a toy. He sighted down the barrel, holding it one-handed, as if to check the barrel was actually straight. The trigger guard was entirely too small for his fingers.

  He handed it back.

  ‘I cannot use that. Shoot again.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Again.’

  Merrt reached to reset the stand and pick up the sand socks.

  ‘Do not bother with that. Just take a good shot from where you are. Just aim and shoot.’

  Merrt slunked the bolt, ejected the shell case, took another round out of the box at his feet, and chambered it. He glanced at the Space Marine. The giant was simply staring down at him, impassive.

  Merrt put the gun up to his cheek, chose a tin cup, sighted, breathed out, and fired. The shot clipped the cup hard enough to spin it off the block. It made several dull, hollow sounds as it bounced on the hold deck.

  ‘Still pathetic,’ said Sar Af. He looked at Merrt ‘Good enough for Guard fire on a field, I suppose, but not precise enough for anything else.’

  Merrt didn’t know what to say.

  The White Scar was still looking at him, but his mind was far away. It felt to Merrt like the Space Marine was precisely playing back at a painstakingly slow rate the memory of Merrt taking the shot so he could analyse it.

  He stopped, looked back at Merrt, and then suddenly reached out a hand, grabbing Merrt by the jaw and throat. The hand turned Merrt’s head to the side. Merrt struggled and choked.

  ‘This jaw. This augmetic repair, it is your problem,’ said Sar Af. ‘You are being defeated by your own concentration. Your focus is so intense that as you fire the gun, it stimulates the neurodes in your jaw and you twitch.’

  ‘I gn… gn… gn… twitch?’

  ‘Just as you fire. Your jaw clenches.’

  Sar Af let him go.

  ‘It is physically impossible for you to shoot well.’

  Merrt swallowed.

  ‘Come back again tomorrow,’ said Sar Af.

  The main refectory was in the mid decks. The walls and floor were plated with dull, galvanised steeling, and the metal tables and benches were bolted in place. There was a constant clatter of utensils and dishes against metal surfaces, and the air frequently fumed with steam from the galley.

  Wilder picked at the slab on the plate in front of him.

  Meryn sat down opposite. He had a covered dish of food and a tin beaker. Meryn drank the contents of the beaker in one swallow, then slid the empty beaker across the table to Wilder.

  Wilder looked at the cup. Meryn took a fork out of his top pocket and began to eat.

  ‘How’s yours, Jakub?’ he asked, pleasantly.

  Wilder didn’t reply. He picked up the empty beaker and looked in it. There was a little brown paper wrap in the bottom of the cup.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Happiness,’ replied Meryn, still eating.

  ‘For me?’

  Meryn chewed to empty his mouth before replying.

  ‘They’ll make our mutual friend Blenner happy, which is the same thing.’

  Wilder put the cup down again as if he had no intention of touching the little bag of narcotic pills.

  ‘Where are they from?’

  ‘Costin,’ said Meryn.

  ‘He grows them on a special tree, does he?’

  ‘Do you want them or not?’

  Meryn leant his elbow on the table, rocking the fork in his hand. He stared at Wilder, chewing another mouthful.

  ‘Do you know where we’re going?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Wilder.

  Meryn sighed.

  ‘Yes, I suppose if I don’t get told, you certainly wouldn’t.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means some people get on and some don’t, Jakub. Some people enjoy favour. You were right, what you said to Gendler about Gaunt’s brat.’

  ‘Why would I have lied?’ asked Wilder.

  ‘No reason. Gaunt’s got my adjutant running around looking after the spoiled little brat. The kid’s no soldier. Not old enough. Doesn’t look like he’s done a hand’s turn in his life. Certainly never fought. He’d blow away if the Archenemy so much as farted. Got his own cabin, though.’

  ‘His own cabin…’

  Meryn grinned.

  ‘Can you believe that? Gaunt pretends he wants him treated like all the others, like every common lasman, but then his psychobitch lifeguard – because every common lasman has a lifeguard, don’t they? Then his lifeguard says he can’t share a general billet with other men. Oh no. She insists. She needs him behind a door she can defend.’

  ‘She said this to Gaunt?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Meryn. ‘She says it to me. See how he did that? He declares that we’re going to treat the brat like everyone else, then makes it my problem, so that the stink of favouritism doesn’t stick to him.’

  ‘What did you do?’ asked Wilder.

  ‘Gave him the small end cabin on the officer quarter block near mine.’

  Wilder sat back, and sipped from his beaker.

  ‘Doesn’t that undermine Gaunt’s wishes?’ he asked.

  ‘Gaunt’s passive aggressive. He says one thing, but he means another. Come on, Wilder, you know how this goes. If I’d stuck to my guns and made the boy sleep in the general barrack, I’d have suddenly found myself getting all the shit details. It would have become E Company’s turn to hose out the latrines, or spearhead the next attack.’

  ‘So Gaunt gets his way and it looks like someone else’s idea,’ said Wilder.

  ‘You’re beginning to see the Imperial truth,’ grinned Meryn.

  ‘Why do you hate him so much?’

  Meryn shrugged.

  ‘He killed my world. My life. That deserves payback, sooner or later. But it’s not that, so much. Everything I have, everything I’ve built up, I’ve made it for myself. Company command. Rank. Privilege. Influence. I did it all myself. I don’t get things handed to me. I’m not part of his inner circle.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Kolea. Baskevyl. Mkoll. Even Rawne these days, because apparently Rawne left his balls behind on Gereon. I don’t owe Gaunt anything. He owes me everything. And he’s never going to give it, so I’m taking everything I can.’

  ‘What about Gendler?’

  ‘Gendler’s the same,’ said Meryn, cutting another mouthful with the side of his fork, ‘Gaunt took his life away. You have to understand, Didi was a rich man on Verghast. Up-spine. Noble blood. Lost it all in the Zoican War, family, propert
y. And what choice did he get? Live in poverty in Vervunhive during the long years of post-war rebuild and deprivation, hoping that one day his legal claims for compensation might be heard in the assizes? Or take the Act of Consolation, where the dispossessed could join the Guard and start a new life?’

  ‘Gendler made his choice,’ said Wilder.

  ‘Yes, he did. He said goodbye to his old life, to what family he had left, and came to serve Gaunt. And has Gaunt ever recognised him? Seen fit to make him more than sergeant? Didi cut ties with his relatives forever, but Gaunt? They bring his fething son through the warp to be with him. He gets to bring his past with him. He gets to have a life. He gets to have a family. The Emperor’s Imperial Guard makes sure of that. We sacrifice so he gets to be what he is. It’s always about favour, Jakub, just like I said. It’s always about favour and who you know.’

  Wilder thought about it. Meryn watched his face.

  ‘I know you feel it too, Jakub,’ said Meryn. ‘Just like us. Your brother. His command. His regiment. And look how they treat you. Like a joke.’

  Wilder put down his fork.

  ‘Life’s unfair,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Right. So you make it fairer,’ said Meryn.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well Didi says we should kill Gaunt’s kid,’ said Meryn.

  He smiled at the horrified expression on Wilder’s face.

  ‘Calm down. Didi’s just a bit angry. It’s the Vervunhive connection. Gaunt’s not even up-spine blood, and he gets noble favour. Seriously, it’s a joke. We’re not going to murder anybody. Didi had sunk a few. He was just being toxic. There are less dramatic things we can do that will be just as satisfying.’

  ‘Like what?’ asked Wilder.

  Meryn nodded to the beaker.

  ‘You take those,’ he said, ‘you put them to work. That’s a start.’

  He got up, stepped off the bench and picked up his plate.

  ‘Where I came from,’ he said, ‘men were raised as hunters. Hunters plan. They stalk. They take their time. You know what a hunter’s greatest weapon is, Jakub?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Patience,’ said Meryn.

  Eyes that were remarkably good copies of Trooper Pol Cohran’s watched the shift change at the deep hold containment area.

  It had taken a few hours to find out where on board the prisoner was being held. The armoured well of an old battery magazine had been converted into a cell. That was smart thinking. The battery magazines had thicker walls than the discipline brig.

  The enemy had placed security measures in the hands of a dedicated squad. The squad, first platoon of E Company, had been granted Commissariat S status. They were also regimental veterans, die-hard Ghosts, so there was little chance of co-opting or turning one.

  Cohran watched from the shadows. He checked the approaches, the ways to and from the cell, the routines. Where did food come from? How was it brought? How many times a shift? What opportunities were there to intercept and tamper with it? At any time, there were four of the S Company guards around: two outside the hatch, two in the tank.

  Cohran, at least the thing that was playing the role of Pol Cohran, was patient. Observation times were limited, because Cohran’s absence from the quarters deck would be noticed at certain times. He didn’t want to give up the identity. More particularly, he didn’t want the state of alert to be heightened because a trooper had gone missing.

  But he was also keenly aware that his opportunities – and he had to choose one quickly – had fast-approaching expiry dates.

  Blenner poured himself a second mug of caffeine and fantasised about slugging a dash of amasec in it. He had never been comfortable making shift, the day-less nights and night-less days, the dreams, the dislocation. He hadn’t been sleeping well. The prospect of days or even weeks more did not fill him with relish. Give him a nice world and a straight fight instead. Actually, the fight could belong to someone else. Just a nice world would do.

  He took another disdainful look at the data-slate he had been reading from. Excerpted pieces from the service record of Novobazky, pulled from the regimental archive. Wilder had been right. Novobazky could certainly talk. For hours at a time. It was giving Blenner a headache.

  He took a pill. There were only a few of them rattling around in the bottle now. He didn’t like to think of them as a crutch, but he really didn’t like to think of facing life without them.

  ‘You look terrible,’ said Fazekiel, sitting down at his table in the staff section of the refectory.

  ‘Is there no beginning to your charm?’ asked Blenner.

  She grinned, and began to arrange the food on her tray. She’d made them serve items like slab and veg paste on separate dishes. There was a lot of fibre, and a large canister of thick grey nutrient drink rather than caffeine.

  She saw Blenner staring.

  ‘Healthy mind in a healthy body,’ she said.

  ‘In an entirely miserable and deprived body maybe,’ he replied. He looked at her drink. ‘What’s wrong with caffeine? That stuff will kill you. And what’s with the separate dishes?’

  ‘I don’t like things to touch,’ said Fazekiel. ‘It’s messy and undisciplined.’

  ‘Really?’ Despite the hour and his heavy head, Blenner grinned. Luna Fazekiel was always immaculate. He’d never known anyone adhere to dress code so exactly, even by the demanding standards of the Commissariat. She was obsessively clean and punctual, obsessively regimented and organised.

  ‘Something funny?’ she asked. She was a handsome woman, and a highly effective commissar, but control smoked off her like blood fog off a power blade. There was no margin for error with her. No give. The troop mass saw that in her, and that’s what made them respect her.

  ‘No, no,’ he said.

  ‘Thought you’d be at the inspection,’ she said.

  He looked up.

  ‘Weren’t you the one who postponed it?’ she asked.

  ‘Ah,’ he said.

  ‘Where is this trooper?’ asked Edur.

  ‘Sir, I don’t know, sir,’ replied Yerolemew, rigidly at attention.

  Edur looked at Wilder.

  ‘Comment, captain?’ he asked.

  ‘The trooper’s absence is unauthorised,’ said Wilder, staring at the empty cot. In the hold space around him, the bandsmen of his command stood beside their made-up cots in perfect rows. He knew they would all have been looking at him if they hadn’t had eyes front.

  ‘There’s the absence itself,’ said Edur, ‘and then there’s your sergeant major’s ignorance.’

  ‘I think they’re connected,’ said Wilder. ‘If Sergeant Major Yerolemew knew where the trooper was, the absence wouldn’t be unauthorised.’

  ‘Don’t get clever, captain,’ said Baskevyl.

  Wilder could see that Major Baskevyl was uncomfortable. From what he’d heard, the major was a fair man who was probably unhappy seeing the good name of Belladon put under pressure.

  ‘What’s the trooper’s name?’ asked Edur.

  ‘Cohran, sir,’ said Yerolemew.

  ‘I will issue a citation,’ said Edur. ‘It will be for both the trooper and–’

  ‘Cohran is shift-sick,’ said Blenner. He’d walked into the hall behind the inspection party.

  ‘It’s a bad case,’ he added. ‘Afflicted a lot of personnel this time out. You had a touch yourself, didn’t you, captain?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Wilder.

  ‘I signed a chit and sent Cohran along to the infirmary,’ said Blenner.

  ‘The sergeant major was unaware,’ said Edur.

  ‘Because I’ve only just done it, and I was coming to tell the sergeant major about it,’ said Blenner.

  Edur stared at him for a second.

  ‘That’s the thing about surprise inspections,’ said Blenner pleasantly. ‘They don’t fall at neatly punctuated moments.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Edur. ‘Let’s carry on.’

  The inspection continued for a
nother forty minutes. When Edur and Baskevyl were gone, Blenner took Wilder to one side.

  ‘Find two or three troopers you can trust. That girl, for example. Get them to find Cohran.’

  Wilder nodded.

  ‘You didn’t send him to the medicae, did you?’

  ‘No,’ said Blenner. He wrote out a permission slip, tore it off his workbook, and folded it. ‘Get this to him, and tell him where he was supposed to be. Fast. Then tell him to come and find me and we’ll make sure this never happens again.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Wilder.

  ‘Don’t thank me. My neck’s on the line too.’

  Wilder thought for a moment, and then took something out of his pocket.

  ‘I wondered if you could do anything with these,’ he said.

  Blenner took the small bag of pills.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘I found them,’ said Wilder.

  ‘Where?’

  Wilder shrugged.

  ‘Could there be… more of them?’ asked Blenner.

  ‘Probably,’ said Wilder. ‘Troopers are always finding a way of getting their hands on stuff. I’m sure some might turn up again.’

  ‘I see,’ said Blenner. He looked at the little bag and put it in his coat pocket. ‘I’ll take care of it, captain.’

  ‘Good,’ said Wilder. ‘I thought that would be for the best. Just thought we should keep it quiet.’

  They looked around as Sergeant Major Yerolemew approached them.

  ‘Begging your pardon, sirs,’ he said. ‘Message just received. ‘The full regiment’s to assemble on the main excursion deck in an hour. The commander’s going to address us.’

  ‘I suppose now we’re underway,’ said Wilder, ‘we get to find out where we’re going.’

  ‘I suppose we do,’ said Blenner.

  There was great activity through the mid-decks of the ship as the regiment assembled for the address. At his bridge position, Shipmaster Spika watched his passengers bustling like hive insects through the oily tunnels and dank companionways. He adjusted settings and switched the pict view of several screens.

  People intrigued him. People who didn’t live in the void, like he did, seemed so contained by the fabric of the ship, so penned in. They were cattle, being transported to market. They did not inhabit the vessel the way he and his crew did.