This story is an unofficial story based, without permission, on the Warhammer/Warhammer 40,000 intellectual property owned by Games Workshop Ltd.
"The Greats come alive, the water's on fire
Have I been to this place before?
Yeah, we danced through the night as the flames burned bright
And the Patron's passed out on the floor"
Callus sighed. The warm water of the shower ran through his hair and into the dirty drain below. Leave. Finally. He'd been shifted off the front for two days. Yesterday had been the first. In the meantime, from what he had heard, all hell had broken loose. The Orks had taken Liberation Square and somebody had assassinated the Lord-Deacon. Apparently the Governor suspected that an inside job was going down. Michael didn't care. He just wanted to get out of this God-Emperor forsaken hive alive and well. He'd already lost three friends to this death-pit, he did not intend to lose any more. The shower protested with a squeak as he turned it off and stepped out, ruffling his hair with a white towel. Quickly drying himself he pulled on his olive drab BDUs and black boots. The rest of the showers in the bathroom were empty as he walked down them, his boots clacking against the tiles. It had to be about noon. Last night had been quite an adventure.
He turned a corner into the bunks. Daniella was smiling at him from his bed. She was covered in his blanket and nothing else. He grinned like a fool. Quite an adventure.
"Glad to see you're up," he said to her, walking towards the bed.
Approaching the footlocker on the end of the bunk he opened up and pulled out another set of BDUs and some boots, passing them to her.
"These will be too big for you, but better than what you had on. Sewage musk isn't the most attractive smell."
She giggled.
"Ork blood isn't the best cologne in the galaxy either, Corporal."
"Really? Damn. And it costs so much, too."
This time they both laughed. She rose and walked towards the shower.
Callus sat down on the foot of the bunk and pulled out a black cigarette and lighter. Even for a day off, he was surprised there hadn't been any Commissars by to bash his head in. He could hear the cloves crackling inside the paper as he lit the cigarette and took a drag off of it. It tasted like vanilla. He breathed out, smoke crawling in tendrils around his head. The barracks were dimly lit, and there was no sign of Jackson or Ox. They must have gone out already. Probably already drinking. He took another drag. The smell of vanilla filled his throat. The shower started to run. How many days and nights had it been since he had shown up on this world? He didn't even know. He was fairly sure that he had been fighting for at least days. Weeks? No. Days, yes. It was so difficult to tell in this hive, where the sun never managed to break through the constant cloud of smog. What was left of his biological clock was holding on for dear life at this point. Callus finished his cigarette and was pulling on his belt and holstering his las-pistol when Daniella emerged, buttoning the front of her BDUs. They were too big for her, but she looked cute in them. He smiled. In the drunken haze of the previous night, they had let the mutual attraction that had been running through them both go. Callus was surprised they hadn't invoked the wrath of the officers with all the noise they must have made.
"Let's get something to eat, shall we?" he asked.
"Sure. I've never been to the spire before, but things are quite pricey up here."
Callus laughed.
"You're with the Imperial Guard now. When I got here I received eight months worth of pay. I've barely gone through two weeks worth in the bars. I think we'll manage."
***
"Forty eight hours. That's how long we'll give them, Enough time to make it look like we had a real investigation into the matter." Gonsalves took another sip of his Brandy. "And then we can get the hell off of this forsaken world."
Flaviun nodded back, stoical as ever. "The Lord-General has made another request for aid from my Storm Troopers."
"Denied, as always. Tell him that the Governor feels unsafe without his personal guard around him. But get your men in line to mobilize against the Kazarkanians once I give the order. Prepare an assault on the command center. I want the good Lord-General to be as dead as possible as soon as possible. If this assault becomes difficult for Drazgar he might not look kindly on our deal."
"Of course."
"You have the Penal Legion and the Armored Corps at your command as well. I won't risk being defeated by these off-worlder. I will call for the populace to rise up. Dismissed, Colonel."
Flaviun saluted and left. Gonsalves ran his hand over the finely crafted needle pistol on his lap. He didn't trust the Colonel farther than he could throw him. When the time came, he would deal with him.
***
Daniella squealed with delight when the dish was served, a salad made of leaves imported from another sub-sector, and the finest dressings and toppings in the Imperium. Callus got a large juicy steak, also imported from somewhere off world, and they shared a bottle of wine on ice. It cost him nearly three months worth of his pay. The up-hive waiters were clearly quite disdainful to have such dregs as Imperial Guardsmen in their restaurant, but neither of them cared. The food was delicious and the wine was exquisite. Finally Callus broke the silence with the question he had been longing to ask.
"When this war is over and we're shipping off this world I, uh, well I was wondering, uhm..."
Daniella just gazed at him.
"Well I was wondering if you wanted to come?"
Silence followed. Callus had a sudden urge to stare into his steak. Instead he laughed nervously and smirked.
"Yes."
Callus finally let out the breath he had been holding in.
"Will they let me?"
"Yea. There are always stragglers. They don't care. Camp followers and what not. There are so many people, you'll never be noticed."
She was beaming. Callus smiled himself. He was afraid that the answer would be quite different. The only reasoned he asked was because she had previously mentioned that she had no family in the hive, and he assumed, nothing holding her there besides an inability to leave.
"Well, we should probably find Jackson and Ox. You want to hit the clubs again?"
"Of course."
The spire never slept. Not even in the midst of an Ork invasion did the clubs and bars close down. Later, when the greenskins were charging through the doors and wallowing in the slaughter of young nobles, the denizens of the spire would find that the decision was quite regrettable.
***
The command center was a tempest of command data and tactical information. Montego was in his element standing at the core of a raging sea of adjutants, servitors, psykers, and priests, as the eye of a storm, issuing a thousand orders at a time, dividing his attention, dividing his attention to ten people at a time and yet somehow processing all this information effortlessly. One did not attain the rank of Lord-General in the Imperial Guard for no reason. He had not a single augmentation to his normal body. He didn't believe in them. Montego was of the philosophy that machines and augmentations harmed the purity of the Emperor's form, in which all mankind was made. He was a highly religious man, and had no time for such toys, which he regarded as corrupt. He would use servitors and cooperate with the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, but he secretly found them to be loathsome. He saw the squadron of blue-clad storm troopers enter the room as soon as they did so. He started to shift his attention away from them when he realized that they were raising their hell-guns. He caught the barely audible whirr of a las-weapon charging, and the stench of super-heated air wafted into his nostrils. His bolt pistol was out of his holster and in his hand before the first shot was fired. He and the first trooper fired at the same time. The scarlet beam grazed his left shoulder. The bolt round buried it's way into the troopers head an detonated, turning his skull into so many blood stained chunks. The command center became mayhem. Las-rounds and bullets were tearing the air apart. Montego dived behind a terminal of computers and drew his power sword, his thumb passing over the activation rune and igniting it. Diving out he fired a three round burst, one hitting a far wall and the other two burying into the chest of a second trooper, blowing out his heard and lungs.
Somehow Montego was not surprised by this. What the motivation was, he did not know, but he had known not to trust the Governor or his Colonel ever since he had arrived on Hargon. In front of him, a servitor was torn to shreds by hell gun rounds. A bodyguard in the blue uniform of a volunteer in the New Gurgenstein Penal Legion raised his las-pistol at the troopers. Two hell rounds cut through his head, turning him into a smoking corpse. Montego rose from his running crouch and sliced his sword through the air, knocking the head of the newest trooper clean off it's shoulders. He raised his pistol and shot another in the throat. Four down. Six more. Another was felled by a lucky Legionnaire, a lasgun round cutting through his chest and sending him down. Montego whirled, slicing through an abdomen of one and chopping of the other one's legs at the knees. He shot the next in the back of the head as he turned to fire at a Legionnaire. Montego whirled to find a hell gun in his face. The last trooper was standing at point blank range, his barrel nearly touching Montego's nose. There was nothing he could do now. And then a thin red bolt of light sliced into the trooper's left temple and toppled him. Montego turned.
It was Farthing, standing, las-pistol drawn. Montego nodded curtly in thanks, and then shouted out to the half-destroyed command center.
"SOMEBODY FIND OUT WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED!"
***
"Colonel Flaviun on the vox for you, Lord Governor" The secretary's voice came into his darkened office.
"I'll take it."
"We have encountered a problem. My assassination squad was eliminated. The target survived."
Gonsalves sighed and finished his brandy in one swig.
"Very well. We will move things ahead of schedule. Mobilize your troops. Dismissed, Colonel."
Alphonse Gonsalves cut off the vox on the colonel and contacted his personal pilot.
"Mr. Greenwich, prepare my yacht for departure. We are leaving this world imminently.
***
In the spire, in one of the many night clubs, strobe lights flashed and music played ear-deafeningly loud. Michael Callus danced with Daniella Auburn, and tried to forget the world for as long as he could, enjoying the night, knowing that in the morning they would be rotated back to the front and the slaughter would start all over again. And he might never get to go off world with this young beauty because there was nothing like a guarantee that either of them would survive. And the Corporal was acutely aware of the fact that they were losing. That the Imperial lines were being pushed back and that reinforcements had not yet come, and that it had been too long. He had inferred from the orbital strikes the orks had sent down that the ships that had delivered him to Hargon must have been long destroyed. He didn't know if Daniella knew, or if Ox and Jackson did, dancing with their own women on the floor, but he had every intention of sheltering her as long as he could, and he knew that if it came to it he would be willing to die to protect her. And he didn't even know why. He had only known her for a matter of days and yet he could already contemplate life with her. However short it might be at this point.
And as night fell over the Hive, blue clad storm troopers opened fire on their Kazarkanian allies, and the Governor's voice appeared over the city's vox network and told his citizens of Lord-General Montego's insurrection, and bade them to rise up and defend their home against these off-world tyrants just as they would rise up to defend themselves against the foul xenos menace. The Orks marched on, and reinforcements had still not arrived, and the Gonsalves Heresy began. And the eleventh hour ticked away.
Hive World Terra