-- Num ---- Username ---- Category ------------- Posted -- Expires --- Pages ---
| 44549 | STU_RSFURR   | STORIES              | 12/17/92 | 12/31/92 |    39    |
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| Description: unfinished story                                                |
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     A giant, ancient spacecraft was heading in to the planet.
 An observer in real space would have seen a chunk of starfield
suddenly blur in rainbow colors, then darken into a wedge of
solid black, with a faint glow of red at one end. The wedge would
shift a little across the sky, twisting and rotating as it went.
Then faint lines of rainbow light would scan their way across the
wedge, becoming wider and wider as they approach the ends, and
then the spaceship would have been gone in a burst of light and
radiation.      Naturally, all this would have occurred only if
there was an observer in real space.
     To look at it another way, imagine if you were able to see
into warpspace, at about the same space as the imaginary
observer. There in front of you is the rose-tinged fog of a sun.
All around you are the black shapes of warp creatures, misty
shapes that would almost look like something very familiar, but
then blur and shift away. If you twist your head, you might see
the blasting yellow light of the Astronomicon, pulsing and
rotating, like a lighthouse, or a pulsar, guiding human starcraft
across the galaxy. Looking closer, you might be able to see the
smaller lights of the lesser minds that help maintain the
Astronomicon, smaller polychromal sparks against the radiance of
the Emperor. Far away, on the edge of vision, you can see the
bright green streaks of the Eldar planetoids, or maybe the bright
dots of the Tyranid hiveworlds, or even, if today is a very clear
day, and the gray mist of warpstorms are far away, the occasional
pure white of a Slann vessel.
     Got all that?
     Good.
     Now, then, imagine a blood-red scream of light, blasting
past you faster than your eyes can track. Shift your imagination.
Catch up with the wedge of red, that thing that looks like a
knife cutting a long wound through warpspace.
     There's no atmosphere in warpspace, which is good.
Otherwise, you'd hear a brain-scattering noise, static so loud it
would break your eardrums in an instant, just before your
eyeballs started bleeding. Instead of that, there are small waves
of force that shimmer along the length of the spacecraft, never
quite in any recognizable pattern.
     Up your speed. Go a little faster. The blood-red isn't quite
as pure as it looked on first glance. There, at the head of the
wound in space, the red shimmers a little, defining the shape of
the spacecraft. Look closer, and you'll see the yellow glow that
says "Here is a psyker. Here is the astropath." The glow is
muted, the astropath is asleep. There are no warpstorms here
today, and the Navigator can guide the ship himself. Look even
closer, and there is the dim purple sphere of the Navigator,
imbedded in the ruby of the ship like a fly in amber.
     Look still closer, and you can see the individual lights of
all the crew of the ship, and all the lights of its cargo.
     Move inside the ship, and track down the red-purple-red
prisms that are corridors in real space.
     Suddenly, the ship is gone from warpspace, the Navigator has
taken it out into real space to check his bearings against the
universe, and all that is left in warpspace is a faint, blue fog
of dispersing atmosphere. Our imaginary observer sees it now, and
now he sees it go away, as the Navigator finishes his
measurements and returns to warpspace. Green phosphor lines of
transparent light sketch the starcraft, as if shaping a blueprint
in three dimen-sions. The lines are filled in by the blood-red,
and the long wound is once more torn through warpspace.
     The spacecraft is back, so follow the corridor along to a
large, magenta cube inside. Up, to your left are many little
colored dots. Those colored dots are this ship's cargo, so rotate
your imagination so that they're on the bottom of your field of
view. Look at them. There's a large group of dots, nine of them,
gathered in a circle, and two more against the wall. Lower
yourself to the ground, and shift your vision from seeing
warpspace into "normal" vision . . .
 
     "I hate this." He turned his head inside the helmet and
spat. The little glob of saliva gleamed against the battered
metal of the floor. "Look at those bootnecks. Look at 'em! Odds
nine to one that they'll all be dead in ten hours, and what do
they do? Do they try and improve the odds any? Maybe, I dunno,
check and see if their bolters are actually working?" He spat
again. "No, they just stand there and mumble. Mumble mumble
mumble, the fucking hoppy bastards."
     "Turing, shuddup." the taller figure said, reaching over the
speaker's head and pushing the helmet faceplate down.
     "Would you stop doing that?" Turing bellowed, and turned to
glare up at the other trooper. "Look, Eastwood. Either you stop
messing with my helmet, or I fucking well am gonna feed you your
liver!"
     "I'm scared." Eastwood paused in his ceaseless polishing of
the massive weapon in his lap, to twist a small knob back and
forth on the side. "Look, Turing. Get this straight. No matter
how many times you save their butts dirtside, no matter how many
times you bring back a bag of geneseeds, the knights will still
dump you out the airlock if you step out of line. If you step out
of line when they aren't in some stupid marine ritual, anyway."
     "But look at 'em! They're . . ."
     "So they're dips. Big deal. They're all gonna die, and then
we cut their fucking heads off, bring 'em back up, and bam, six
months later we've got the same damn canheads we know and hate.
Bitching about it isn't gonna change anything. And who knows,
maybe this time, maybe they won't do anything stupid." Eastwood
stood, hauling the giant gun to his shoulder, where it locked
into a hinge on his shoulderplate. "But I doubt it. Come on,
Turing. Honor guard time's over. They're about ready to do
whatever the hell it is they do when they throw us out." He
turned and clomped his way to the door, his heavy boots making
echoes in the large room. Turing followed, his short legs making
him trot to keep up with Eastwood, who, at six feet, was about
two feet taller.
     The nine men in the circle had finished with their chants,
and stood up from where they were kneeling. The one in brown
powered armor, and the bionic arm, shouted "Your duties are
ended. Go!" not noticing that the two had already gone.
     There was a pause.
     Then the speaker continued. "I must now ask for your names
of battle, that they may be entered properly in the Record of the
Order of Saint George, that the names of the Knights who perish
shall never be forgot. I will begin. I will be known as Saint
George." He was in brown armor, with a single white
shoulderplate, his other arm being glossy metal. He was bald, and
half his head was covered in metal.
     He turned to look at the man next to him, who looked back,
then into the center of the circle. "I will be known as Martel."
He was in white powered armor, as were the other seven. His left
shoulderplate was covered in gold studs, his right was decorated
with a dark red cross. He held an axe, its blade too shiny for
such a battered weapon. What looked like power cables stretched
the length of the haft, and plugged into the blade and a small
box at his waist. This was a power axe, and its blade could cut
through armor steel as easily as through wood.
     "I will be known as Callahan." This marine held a single
weapon, a bolter, firing rocket-propelled explosive rounds.
"I will be known as Decker." He too had a bolter.
     "I will be known as Palin." He held a needle gun, a weapon
that fires small drugged needles, not very effective, but the
ring he wore on his right hand made up for it. It was of alien
manufacture, and in its tiny volume, it somehow replicated the
ability of a small flamethrower. It had been his for hundreds of
years, and had saved his life many times. Then again, it had not
saved his life even more times, and he had stuck it in his mouth
with his last effort, to be brought back with his head and
geneseed.
     "I will be known as McCoy." This marine was different, his
armor having a red caduceus instead of the gold pins on the
shoulderplate. He held a bolter in one hand, and a small needler
in the other.
     "I will be known as Dilvish." At his side hung a chainsword,
a weapon much like a chainsaw, and he held a bolter in his hand.
     "I will be known as Ripper." This marine was helmetless, his
eyes being covered by large red goggles. He wore a powersword at
his side, and held a bolter pistol in his hand.
     "And I will be known as Von Braun." The last marine in the
circle held a bolter in his hands.
     "The names are entered in the Record. The Order will know of
our blood, and of our efforts, in the name of lost Christendom,
to be worthy of Jerusalem." said Saint George, looking around the
circle. His bionic arm whined a little as he reached into a pouch
at his waist. "Here is blood spilled by the Knights last battle."
he said as he withdrew a bottle, "Inside is my blood. Inside is
Decker's blood, and Palin's, and Dilvish's." He uncapped the
bottle, poured some on his hand, and wiped red blood on his
shoulderplate, painting a new, red cross where the old, red-brown
one was. He handed the bottle to Martel, who freshened his own
cross.
     So it went around the circle.
     When it was done, Saint George capped the bottle and
replaced it. "Let us now prepare ourselves for battle. For
Emperor. For Empire. For humanity."
     There was silence in the giant, dark, empty room. The nine
stood in a circle.
 
     Eastwood opened the door, which swung inward only after he
pushed hard on it. The two stepped into the small, brightly lit,
carpeted room, and waved at the other five in the room. Metal
chairs were arranged in rows, with four people sitting down, and
one standing. Turing trotted over to where the other two squats
were sitting, and pulled himself up a chair. Eastwood dropped his
weapon at the door with a loud clunk, and sat at the back,
putting his feet on the chair in front of him.
     A smaller man, his balding hair covered by the helmet he
wore, stood at the front of the room, his clean brown flack
jacket standing out against the dingy yellow wall. A map was
tacked to the wall, and he held a pointer in his hand. He spoke
"Okay, honor guard all over now?" Turing and Eastwood nodded.
"Good. Now, I know you all hate this just as much as I do," Wads
of paper flew across the room, some actually hitting him. "But if
the rules say we do this, we do this." He paused and looked at a
notepad he held in his hand. "Okay. Step one, hi, I'm Jameson,
first sergeant, you know the rest, blah blah blah, welcome to the
Convocation of the Brothers of the Order of Saint George, the
best damn infantry unit in the Empire or so they keep telling us,
let us all honor, well, anybody we damn well feel like honoring
is how I look at it. Anyway. Step two, this is where we're going
to hit." He turned and pointed at the map.
     "This is Cisab, about two weeks from the Monastery through
warp, or about ten thousand years the hard way. It's a small
planet, not much in the way of land mass, not much in the way of
anything. Not a deathworld, but it's not that much fun to live
there either, if what this map says is true. The only thing that
it does have going for it is that a whole bunch of the Jokero
social groups have landed on it. A whole bunch. Nobody knows why,
maybe it's a tourist attraction for lunatic apes, but if a Jokero
spaceship comes within twenty light years of this planet, it
makes a detour and lands. Which means that the place is a
clearing-house for gizmos like our friend Palin's finger flamer."
The Jokero were an alien race that looked pretty much like some
sort of ape. They only had two distinguishing features to set
them apart from other intelligent races. First, it was totally
impossible to communicate with them, and second, they built
things that couldn't be built by any other race, like ring-sized
flamethrowers, or hand-held missiles that could destroy a
battlecruiser. They wandered the universe in spacecraft
apparently built out of nothing but pipes and force fields,
raiding occasionally for spare parts, and in general, confusing
nearly everyone. Their weapons were incredibly miniaturized, and
they could put together pretty much anything they needed in the
course of a battle. Other races counted it lucky that there
weren't more of them, and picked up their leftovers to use
themselves.
     "There was a search group on this planet, and they found a
weapon there about the strength of a planetary defense laser."
 "Boom!" Turing whispered to Eastwood, making a small explosion
gesture with his hands. Eastwood pushed Turing's visor down in
response.
     "As usual, the Jokero threw in a little extra. This weapon
is about as big as a bolter." The other six blinked at that.
Planetary defense lasers tended to be about as big as the average
barracks, and were used to vaporize things up to the size of
small planetoids.
     "Man, that's what I want for my birthday!"
     "Shut up, Turing. Anyway, one of the group picked it up, and
accidentally killed all of the rest of the group with it. He
severely wounded himself, but survived long enough to call it in
to the local Empire outpost. That's fine. Where we come in is
this: It's a safe bet that an Ork battlewagon picked up the call,
and at least one group of pirates that operates near here did
too. A band of Orks with this little gizmo wouldn't be pleasant
to be around, and pirates would be even worse."
     "Yeah," muttered Eastwood, "The pirates would know which end
of it to shoot with."
     "We gotta get there first, get the gizmo, and get out. If
we're lucky, either it won't be there anymore, or we'll be the
first there." Jameson sighed. "Of course, this being the Order of
St.George we're talking about here, we'll have to fight somebody,
somewhere, somewhen. Oh. Planetfall to pick the gizmo up is in an
hour."
     He looked back at his list. "Step three. This is stupid, but
we gotta do it anyway."
     "We're all sticking together this battle, if there is a
battle. This means no wandering off to kill any dreadnoughts,
Turing. You keep you and your plasma pistol close by." Jameson
turned to one of the squats, a red-haired man in a plain white
tunic and grey pants. "Flagg, you keep Turing out of trouble.
You're also to keep Neumann alive." He turned to the last squat,
who was quietly smoking a cigar. The squat wore a white, padded
jacket, and a heavy helmet. "Neumann, the techmarine has done
something to your thudd gun ammo supply. Supposed to give it
longer range or something. Rocket boosters, I guess. Have fun
with it. If it gets hairy, thudd away."
     "Eastwood, you and Granada are to keep Manson alive. He
drives our most powerful asset, and I don't want him dying on me.
Keep your heavy bolter in one place, too. I don't want you
wasting time with the stabilizer this trip."
     "And lastly, Manson, kill things. Don't waste the multi-las
on infantry, though. Kill big things. Enough said."
     "Anyway, the marines, the knights, whatever you want to call
'em, will be dropping in first, and we'll be following as soon as
they know that the landing area's safe."
     "And lastly, I had a word with the Abbot before we left. The
Knights are stupid. We're supposed to be smart. Stay alive, and
if they bounce off for some weird knight reason, remember that
they are marines, and therefore suffer from brain damage. The
Brothers of the Order are there to keep the Knights out of
trouble, okay? Okay. Good. I've got an hour, I want some sleep.
Get me when we're supposed to leave. Rah rah Emperor and all
that." With that, Jameson left the room.
     As soon as the door had clanged shut, a helmet hit the wall
near the door and bounced off.
     "Missed, Manson." said Neumann, pulling his cigar out of his
mouth and blowing a smoke ring at the ceiling. "Next time, hit
the door at least."
     Manson stood up, glared at the squat, and forced his way
through the chairs to where his helmet lay, golden against the
brown carpet. He kicked at it, and grabbed it out of the air as
it bounced off the wall. He stomped back to his seat, and threw
the helmet again. It hit the door right in the middle.
     "Happy now, ye worm-muckin stunty?" Manson said.
     "Thrilled." replied Neumann through another smoke ring. "I'm
sure the orks will be impressed too."
     "Shut yer rotten mouf, ya mutant!"
     "Make me."
     Manson sputtered for a second, then launched himself at
Neumann. A fight ensued.
     After a few moments, Granada stood up, his helmet hitting
the ceiling as he did so. Ducking a little, he walked through and
over the chairs to the back of the room, where Turing and
Eastwood were sitting. "Um." he said.
     "Um back." replied Turing, carelessly examining the ceiling.
    "About them two, um..."
     "What about 'em, bucky?" Turing evidently found the ceiling
to be more fascinating than he had at first suspected.
     "Well, shouldn't someone stop them?" said Granada, concern
radiating from every inch of his lanky frame and shaven face.
"Why?" Turing had exhausted the entertainment possibilities of
the ceiling and had shifted his attention to the wall.
     "Ah? What? Why? Well . . ."
     "Don't let him mess with you, kid." Eastwood was aiming a
small piece of stretched elastic at the combatants. "They're the
short-timers of the unit. They've been in for seventeen years
each, and they're naturally like that. I guess you might think
it's a little strange, bein' new and all." Eastwood released the
elastic, and with a small "whif"ing noise, it had hit Manson in
the face. Manson didn't notice, his attention currently occupied
with fitting Neumann into the trash chute.
     "Seventeen years?" Granada's craggy face shifted its expres-
sion from concern to awe, in a process not unlike continental
drift. "How many battles?"
     "I don't know, kid. I've been through thirty myself, and
Turing here says he's hit fifty-three, if you count the border
patrols along Icco Five, but we've been in only, what, ten,
eleven years? So, they might have mebbe sixty, eighty fights
under their belts, huh?"
     Granada was looking more and more awestruck.
     "It's not that big a deal, kid." Eastwood ducked as Manson
threw a chair at Neumann, which missed, and hit the wall. "After
five years they geneseed you. Anyway, Neumann and Manson have
another year and a half, standard Monastery time, before they get
taken off combat duty, and then another year and a half before
they go home. They've seen a lot of strange shit, they've been
through stuff that even Turing and I haven't, which means, they
tense up before a battle.
     "Get 'em to tell you about the Koranis Ridge battle." Turing
interrupted. "If they don' know what yer talking about, say 'The
time on Syn-Mede where you shot down a blimp.'"
     "Yeah, do that, kid. To hear them tell it, the Order unit on
Syn-Mede was attacked by blimps, and them two were the only
survivors. Anyway, to get back to the point, me and Turing, we've
got eight years to go before we get out, we don't have a hell of
a lot to lose in a battle, but Neumann and Manson, well . . ."
 "But so what if they get killed? They'll get put back
together, won't they? You said you get geneseeded?" Granada
looked confused now.
     "Sure they'd get put back together, but medical time gets
counted as desk job time. At half a year per reseed, it eats up
your Monastery time quick. They don't want to trade half a year
of a cushy job planting carrots for half a year of pain and
surgery. After you get killed a few times, you start really
getting afraid of getting shot." The two contestants were panting
now, facing each other in a mass of overturned chairs. "Anyway,
they get tense, and they get nervous, and either Manson takes it
out on Neumann or Neumann takes it out on Manson." Eastwood
pushed his helmet back a little on his head. "How come you don't
know this stuff, kid? Don't they teach you anything in
Orientation?"
     "They took me straight from the Eye campaign to this ship,
and said that they'd take me in to the Monastery afterwards. Then
the two marines who brought me laughed and left."
     "Oh. Right. They would have wanted to keep the beachhead
unit filled up, and with Thompson getting his head sewed back on,
they just stuck you in here. Efficient as ever, the Abbot."
     Turing looked at Granada, as if he had just noticed him.
"Kid." said Turing, blowing a smoke ring at the ceiling.
"Yeah?" said Granada.
     "How'd you get picked up, anyway? If you don't mind talking
about it that is."
     "I shot these orks off of an Order Land Raider. Nothing
impressive. Then the driver told me that he liked my style, and
that I could shift from the infantry to the Order, and get out in
twenty years instead of being in the army until I die. It sounded
like a good deal to me, so I said fine." Granada looked over at
the two combatants. They were both lying, unconscious, in a pile
of chairs. "And here I am. Why would I not want to talk about
it?"
     "Well," said Turing, "Some people are still kicking
themselves for coming over. You might have noticed that these
marines are a little crazier than the normal bunch. I mean, the
Blood Angels are maniacs and all that, the Blue Blazer Regulars
are lunatics, but these guys are weird. What the hell is a
Crusade and why the hell are they looking for a place called
Jerusalem? And who the fuck is 'the Pope'? Even Manson doesn't
know who the Pope is, and he knows the Abbot personally."
     "I wouldn't know. These marines are the only ones I've ever
seen."
     The light in the room dimmed to red, then came back up.
"Time to go, kid." Turing stood up. "It's showtime. Go get Manson
and I'll handle Neumann."
 
     Light years away, another spaceship was making for Cisab.
Shaped like a highway accident, if the human spacecraft was a
knife cutting through warpspace, this ship was a wooden club
bashing its way through space. Its course wasn't steady, and it
had a disturb-ing tendency to drop out of warp at odd intervals.
In warpspace, it shone bright green, then pulsed blue, then had a
go at the entire rainbow at once, before glowing white, and
dropping into real space. It came back into warpspace with a
mauve burst of light, and continued on its way. It lurched
through space as if its pilot was in a fight.
     Which, of course, he was.
     This being an Orkoid ship, the odds of half the ship's
complement actively trying to kill the other half approached
certainty, it being a long and boring drive from the nearest Ork
planet, and the Orks being Orks (i.e. green, with bad underbites
and even worse dispositions. An Ork that wasn't permanently
annoyed was either dead or on heavy drugs. Orks weren't big on
technology, nor were they the universe's biggest fans of
intellectual pleasures, but you couldn't get any race more
interested in mindless mayhem. Not without severe genetic
surgery.) At any rate, the Orks had heard the broadcast from
Cisab two weeks ago, and the Ork commander, a fairly rational Ork
named Harboth, had immediately said "This good, eh, wot? You!
Stoopid pilot! Go there! Now!", while accidentally slicing off
the head of his second-in-command with his fingernails.
     Any human ship could have made that distance in four days.
These being Orks, two weeks was barely enough time, what with the
running gun-battle in the engineering section (six days, fifteen
casualties), the attempted coup by the cooks (two days, three
casualties, and half the food supplies escaped), and the
subsequent effort to recapture the food animals (three days, five
casualties.)
      Nevertheless, the doughty Ork battlewagon Pulp The
Stunties! was in system now, and ready to boogie. Mick, the
standard bearer was practicing his battle cries and singing
"H'an' she'z buyink uh staaairwey . . .", the offical fight song
of Harboth's Own Ballstompers. Harboth himself was sharpening his
axe and humming, and the second platoon was barricaded in the
mess room and demanding to talk to someone not in authority.
 
     Another ship was already in the Cisab system, carefully
hidden on the second moon of Cisab. Days earlier, this craft had
slipped into the system, quietly, almost drifting with the
currents of warpspace, until it had ascertained that no other
ships were inside detection range, whereupon it had suddenly
accelerated to danger-ously high speeds, and whipped into orbit
around Cisab. Two orbits, and then it had landed on the moon,
under an overhang in a small crater.
     Its red-hot exhaust vents cooled quickly, and the ship's
skin changed its appearance from bright metal to stone grey,
indistinguishable from the rock around it. Now it was almost
impossible to find, unless you knew exactly what you were looking
for, and exactly where to find it.
     Two figures in black marine armor dropped out of the
airlock, falling ten feet down to the dusty surface of the moon.
They were carrying oddly-shaped boxes, and trailing black cables
behind them.
      The radio waves crackled. "Hey, Dez?" One of the figures
paused.
     "Hey what?"
     "Where we supposed to put these things? Huh?"
     "Anywhere where it can see the planet. The captain explained
that already,  Vin, didn'cha listen?"
     "Sure I listened, sure, but I can't unnerstand him now that
he's got him that artifickle lung-thing. He sounds all grindy
now."
     "I could understand him fine."
     "But my ears aren't all better from back on that planet. I
near got blown up, remember Dez? An' my ears took so long to work
again?"
     "You shoulda been wearing your helmet, but yeah, I remember.
Didn't you talk to the doc about that?"
     The two figures had reached the edge of the crater.
     "No, I don't like him. Remember when we took Larre in and he
just cut Larre up for spare parts? All that was wrong with Larre
was a broken arm, remember?"
     "Good point. Well, next time we get shore leave, we'll take
you by a real doc, and get your ears all fixed up. Okay?"
     "Okay."
     The boxes were in place, and the two pirates slid down the
slope towards their ship.
     "Vin?"
     "Yeah, Dez?"
     "Remember to tell the sally boat mate about your ears. Maybe
we can get you left behind for this trip. We can't have a deaf
gun running around in a battle, y'know."
     "You think there'll be a battle this time? Ain't we just
going in to pick up some sorta zapper?"
     "There's gotta be a battle. The captain said we didn't know
where the gun was, so we gotta wait for someone else to come in
and show us where it is, so we can go down and get it from them."
    "Oh. Well, be careful, then, Dez."
     And with that, the two figures reentered the pirate ship.
     In warpspace, following the red trail left by the Order's
spacecraft, was a black mass of no definable shape. It was always
changing, shapes appearing and disappearing as if one was always
looking at it from the corner of one's eye. The shapes never
repeated themselves, but in their very chaos, they maintained a
disturbing similarity. The shapes in the mass were such that they
attracted with an sexual urgency, and simultaneously repelled
with such force that an observer might be driven mad with disgust
and loathing.
     Inside the mass were things that once had names, but now
were no longer named. They had once been intelligent, but now
could only be said to be cunning. They had once been honorable,
and now knew nothing of honor.
     They had once been men.
 
     The Order's spacecraft was in orbit around Cisab now, having
dropped out of warpspace for the final time three hours ago. The
Navigator had taken his time bringing the ship in, straining with
every electronic and psychic sense he possesed to detect any
thing man or Ork-made in the star system. He failed in his
effort.
      The great airlock in the belly of the ship had opened, and
the Knights stood exposed to empty space in their powered armor,
their feet held to the floor by powerful magnets as they stared
down at the cloud-wrapped sphere below. The Brothers were
strapped into seats in the landing shuttle next to the Knights, a
silicon and steel affair that apparently had the flightworthiness
of a brick, but nevertheless showed the marks and black streaks
of many landings in many different atmospheres.
     Saint George raised his backpack antenna, and a low, almost
inaudible hum could be heard across the neutrino waves by the
other Knights.
     "Knights," he said. As one, they all crossed themselves.
"On three," he continued. "One!" The Knights shuffled forward to
stand on the very brim of the airlock. "Two!" The Knights drifted
away from the airlock floor as they turned off their foot
magnets. "Three!" The airlock was filled with superheated gas as
the Knights activated their backpack jets and fell (or flew) down
into the atmosphere in tight formation. They left trails of light
like falling sparks as friction began its work on them.
     Inside the landing shuttle, the mood was much less formal.
    "When the hell we gonna go, Jamey-boy?" Turing took a swig
from a metal bottle. "Ahhh!" he said, swishing the fluid around
his mouth.
     "Any moment now, Turing." Jameson replied, not looking up
from the clipboard he held. "When were you born anyway, Turing?"
   "Dunno the month, but it was forty thousand, two hundred and
five, Empire Standard. Why?"
     "Just filling in some forms." The inside of the landing
shuttle was badly lit, with a low ceiling. The lights that were
there cast long shadows from the many seats. Jameson raised the
clipboard into better light. "Why do you think they want to know
your home world gravity?"
     "I dunno. It was two point three gees, though."
     Eastwood began to snore as, in the very back of the compart-
ment, Neumann and Manson began arm-wrestling. Flagg hummed
quietly to himself, and Granada stared at the ceiling, his
knuckles white as he gripped the armrests.
     "Kid?" Turing tapped Granada on the shoulder. "Tense?"
Granada turned his head towards Turing in one quick jerk of his
neck muscles. "What? What?" he nearly screamed.
     "What the fu-? Kid, relax. Calm down, fer bilssake."
     "I can't. I-I-I always do this before a battle."
     "How many battles have you been in, then?"
     "C-counting this one?"
     "Sure."
     "Two."
     "Fuuuck." Turing breathed the word slowly. "And the Knights
picked you your first time out. I always knew they were morons."
   "H-hey. . ."
     "Relax, kid. I didn't mean nothin by it. But look, ya got
nothin to worry about. See, this here's the baddest bunch of
footsloggers you're gonna find in this galaxy. Manson back there,
you've seen his bolter pistol, those notches on the handle? About
twenty of 'em, right? He don't cut notches in his pistol for just
anybody. He cuts notches for dreadnoughts he's killed. And . . ."
    "D-dreadn-noughts?" Granada interrupted.
     "You don' know what a dreadnought is? What do they teach you
in the Army these days? A dreadnought's about twelve feet tall,
usually carries like four bolters, or something like that. It's
faster'n you, it's tougher'n you, and it's got more guns than
you. It's like a tank on two legs, a bigger version of marine
armor, get it?"
     "Oh, I've s-seen them. The L-land Raider got those in the
last b-battle."
     "Good. Anyway, he's cut one big notch on his pistol. That's
for a Ork tank he killed. An Eastwood and I, well, we've done our
share of that sorta thing too, and then there's Neumann. Sooner
or later, you're gonna love the thudd gun. It eats Orks for
breakfast. Which means that, unless it really starts raining Ork
shit, you're as safe as you're gonna get outside'a yer mommy's
arms."
     "R-really?"
     "Yeah. It's the Knights who gotta worry."
     "Why? You and Eastwood mentioned something like that b-
before."
     "Kid, I'm grateful to the Order for getting me out'a the
Army, and I love the work, and the times at the Monastery ain't
half bad. But the Knights are the one thing that any Brother of
the Order's gotta worry about, and they piss me off. They're
nuts. They're stupid. They're . . . I don' know. They just die.
Every fucking battle, if every one of them doesn't die, it's a
fucking miracle. We'll be over in a corner frying Orks, and
they'll bounce off in some fucking stupid 'heroic' charge, or
they'll decide that, hey, all this bolter stuff isn't macho
enough, and they've gotta go cut the bad guys into lunchmeat, and
nine times out of ten, the bad guys will see them coming, turn
around, and shoot them. And then they die, and then we win the
battle, or we survive until the battle's over, and we go and cut
their heads off, or take their entire bodies back to the
Monastery, and when they get regrown they haven't learned a
fucking thing from getting shot. Which..." At that moment, the
landing shuttle lurched and drifted forward. "Enough talking,
kid. Like I always say, 'It's showtime.'"
     The shuttle fell out of the sky, down towards the white-
wrapped blue marble, towards a small gray-green speck that
quickly became a large, irregular blot against the blue, and then
all sight was cut off by the fire of reentry.
 
     The knights reentered smoothly, their ceramic shells
shedding heat as they skimmed through the atmosphere down towards
the Imperial base, which was situated on the largest island on
Cisab. Their contrails crossed half the planet as they slowly
began decelerating.
     Then, as they crossed the island, each seperate marine was
suddenly enveloped in a burst of yellow light, and small boxes on
their belts suddenly vaporized, as the mechanisms inside
converted their forward momentum into light and heat. They hung
in air, miles above the island, and then as the effect of the
decelerators faded, dropped slowly, tumbling before their
internal gyroscopes came on line.
     They fell like milkweed.
 
     The infantry shuttle fell like a rock, shortly after the
last knight hit dirt.
 
     "All right, cruddies, we are down." Jameson poked his head
through the doorway. He'd spent the trip down in the command
cabin, watching the little metal box pilot the shuttle, and
wishing that he knew enough to be able to fix it if it decided
that the ground was further down than it really was. Jameson
didn't like reentry, but he was down on the ground now, and he
damn well liked that a lot better. "Get out, set up, we got us a
little hike in front of us." And with that, he pulled himself up
into the command cabin, there to nap for the next half hour.
"I hate it when he does that." Turing growled as his short
fingers worked at the strap buckles.
     "When he does what?" Granada was already unstrapped and
groping  underneath his seat for his helmet.
     "He always tells us what to do, and then while we're doing
it, he goes off and snores until we've done it. And _then_, he
comes down and offers to help! Man, if I ever meet him on shore
leave at Lio Ten, he's gonna get fed to a streetlight!"
     "What? How?" Granada paused. "Fed to a streetlight? But
streetlights are just globalls on poles, aren't they?"
     "Not on Lio Ten, they're not. Let's just say that it's not a
good idea to stand too long in one place at night there. Help me
with th' damn strap, here. It's fuckin' stuc- . . . oh, thanks."
Turing hopped down from his seat, and started walking past
Eastwood on his way to the embarkation door. "Move yer fuckin
botty, Eastwood!"
     Eastwood began snoring at that point. Turing turned to
Granada. "He's crocked again. Help me get 'im outta the shuttle,
huh?"
     "How?" said Granada, looking at the way Eastwood was wedged
into his seat, heavy bolter on his lap.
     "Like this." Turing said as he grabbed Eastwood by his
helmet strap and hauled him up. "Grab his feet."
     With a small amount of struggle, the two got Eastwood out of
the shuttle and stretched out on the purple vine-like plants that
seemed to be Cisab's version of grass. Behind them, the shuttle
sat on a patch of burnt and burning vegetation.
     "Granada! Turing!" Manson called. "Help get the guns out!
Yowtch!" he cried as he put an ungloved hand on the still hot
metal of the shuttle's hull. "Damnfirkinfasitcbleeder!"
     The weapons were contained in a pod on the rear of the
shuttle, sealed in a silicone foam, which supposedly protected
them from the heat of reentry. It also protected them from anyone
who wanted to use them. Granada and Manson pried open the pod
hatch, and a wad of foam spilled out, white and fibrous.
     The rest of the infantry reached in to help pull the foam
off of the weapons. However, the foam resisted, and only after an
endless time of ripping and pulling did they managed to free the
weapons from its grasp.
     "Is that the thudd gun?" Granada asked, pointing at a
vehicle that looked like a wheelbarrow on treads, with a long,
four-tube barrel wrapped in copper-colored bands. Manson stepped
up to the small gun-carrier, sat down in its chair, and backed it
out of the pod.
     "No, that's Manson's baby. Lascannon, it is. It'll burn
right through almost anything in one shot." Turing replied as he
was pulling two hand-weapons off mounts on the wall. "What's your
weapon?"
     "What?" Granada turned away from looking at the gun-carrier
slowly chugging its way out of the pod.
     "What's yer weapon? What gun do y'shoot things with?"
     "Oh! Uh...a Dalas 4.5 autogun."
     "'Dalas 4.5 autogun.'" Turing mocked. "Kid, seein' as how
yer the only trooper fool enough to carry an autogun, y'don't
have ta be so specific." Turing looked around the mounts and
pulled the long-barrel, heavy-stocked weapon off the wall.
"Catch." he said, as he tossed it to Granada.
     Granada snatched the gun out of the air, and swept his eyes
over it, checking it carefully. "What's wrong with an autogun?"
     "Won't kill Orks."
     "It will too. I got two orks with this!"
     "Luck."
     "All right, then what do you carry that's so much better?"
     "Short-capacity plasma gun, with double-burn ability and the
spray attachment. An' I got a bolter pistol for close work."