Culcis rejoined the major who was conversing with Corporal Speers.
Siegfrien had just raised them on the vox and Crimmens was handing over the receiver cup.
‘Give me that,’ Regara snapped at the vox officer, his ire obvious and enflamed. ‘Negative,’ he barked down the cup at the Castellian captain. ‘Pull back, we’re returning to camp for an immediate debrief and mission post-mortem.’ He thrust the vox at Crimmens, punching it into his chest, and stalked off.
Regara never made eye contact with Culcis once.
It was going to be a long walk back to the deployment zone and an even longer drive back to Sagorrah.
Grim. That was how Regara had described the situation on their return to camp. Culcis was forced to agree with him. The major had requested a private audience with Commissar Arbettan to discuss what went wrong during the mission and his concerns regards ‘warp taint’ evident in the slums. Culcis wasn’t so sure it was only confined to that area. At least they hadn’t seen the Kauth again. Either the Longstriders were keeping a low profile and they’d just missed them in the throng or they’d never gone back to Sagorrah. In any event, it was a small mercy as far as Culcis was concerned.
Sitting at one of Refectorum B-62’s benches, idly fingering his Guard-issue mess tin and knife, Culcis was lost to his thoughts.
Drado snapped him out of it. ‘Mind if I sit, sir?’ he said, setting down opposite the lieutenant.
‘Looks like you already have,’ Culcis answered dryly. ‘What’s the word in the camp?’ he added, watching Drado attack the Guard chef’s slop with too much gusto. Sometimes Culcis wondered whether the corporal was Volpone at all, that perhaps he’d been switched with another regiment for some Munitorum clerk’s amusement. Not so. Drado’s blood was as blue as any of them.
The Royal 50th had their own chef, of course, their own small army of retainers and staffers in fact. Culcis had chosen to slum it in the ranks. Something wasn’t right and he wasn’t about to discover the source by staying in the regiment. Most of the men were disgruntled at having to lower their standards. Drado, despite his fierce aristocratism, was actually coping rather well.
There was a low hubbub of aggression pervading throughout the mess hall, several disparate regiments jammed together in its hot, sweaty confines. The men were on edge, the Harpine especially. Losing one of their captains, though the circumstances had been covered up, was chaffing at what little fortitude they had left.
‘If I might be so bold,’ ventured Drado. ‘What do you think happened out there?’
Culcis shook his head slowly. ‘Fegged if I know, corporal.’
‘That Harpine – what was his name again? Jedion, that was it – he just seemed to lose his mind. And then there were the glyphs...’ Drado let his theory trail off, as if fearful that voicing it out loud would give it power.
‘I’ve heard of combat stress taking men to the brink, but I’ve never seen a trooper shoot his own regimental sergeant over a petty squabble.’
‘Undisciplined dogs,’ Drado muttered, shooting daggers at a belligerent group of Harpine who’d just bustled their way inside. ‘Sir...’
Culcis had seen them too. His gaze was weary. The atmosphere was on a knife-edge. When the Harpine had settled into line, the lieutenant relaxed the grip on his hellpistol, snug in his belt and concealed beneath the mess table.
‘No sign of that feral mob?’ he asked Drado.
‘None at all. Speers reckons they never came back to camp. How would we find them if they did, anyway?’
‘Why would we want to?’ asked Culcis, though he still had the cigars given to him by Captain Hauke. Didn’t feel right to discard them. Perhaps he was the one who’d swapped regiments when he wasn’t looking. They were all different since Nacedon. Even Regara, though the major fought it with every aristocratic fibre.
Drado leaned in close. ‘I did hear about another sixteen scheduled executions this morning. And the number of violent acts of misconduct has doubled since yesterday.’
After their disastrous foray into the slums, the Volpone had returned through the night. By the time they’d made reports, broken down kit and secured it in the armoury at their billets, it was approaching another arid Sagorrah morning.
‘Only sixteen?’ Culcis remarked dryly.
‘Apparently, Arbettan has a long list of offenders he’s working through,’ Drado replied. ‘Hold on...’ he added.
Culcis followed his anxious gaze to the mess line where Corporal Speers had just cut in.
‘Stinkin’ glory boys, what gives you the right?’
Evidently, the Harpine weren’t pleased. One, a big fellow as broad as the Volpone’s Colonel Gilbear, advanced on the corporal.
‘Step back, dreg,’ Speers replied, with an arrogant side glance at the disgruntled Harpine trooper. His tags read: Maggon.
‘I say again, what gives you the right?’ This time the Harpine trooper got in the Volpone’s face, determined to make his point. He prodded the corporal’s arm with his finger.
Speers first looked down at the finger then up at the Harpine. The Volpone were big, strong men, of fine stock, but this Maggon was a giant. The top of Speers’s shaven head only came up to the Harpine’s chin. It didn’t seem to faze him. ‘You want to lose that, keep talking. Otherwise, get back in line and know your place.’
‘You arrogant bastard...’ The Harpine was about to seize the Volpone’s arm when a shot rang out, hard and heavy like a bell chime. Blood and tiny chunks of brain matter spattered Speers’s face as Maggon’s head exploded like a crushed egg.
Vengo was on his feet, a smoking bolt pistol in his outstretched hand.
‘Oh shit...’ Culcis was up too, pulling out his hellpistol with frantic fingers. ‘Put the weapon down, sergeant.’
The refectorum was plunged into shocked silence. The Harpine lolled against the mess counter as his legs gave way before slumping into a heap at Speers’s feet. The corporal turned on Vengo.
‘What in the hells are you doing, sergeant?’
Vengo’s eyes were blank of expression. His face was utterly devoid of emotion.
‘Gun down. Now,’ insisted Culcis, his tone level.
Maggon’s blood was spilling across the refectorum floor, wetting the boots of the men in line next to him, including Speers.
‘Put it down, sergeant,’ the corporal pleaded, hands up in a plaintive gesture for calm.
‘Throne above, Vengo,’ said Drado. ‘Just do it.’
Culcis had moved up alongside and saw Vengo’s left eye twitch. He shifted the bolt pistol, aiming for the next Harpine in line.
‘Dogs in the sun...’ he chuckled. ‘Need putting down,’ and tensed the trigger.
Culcis shot him in the side of the head.
Vengo fell, the bolt pistol skittering out of his grasp for Speers to stoop, retrieve and disarm.
The room breathed a collective sigh of relief.
‘Everyone stay where they are,’ Culcis ordered. The other troops in the hall were too shocked to disobey. It wouldn’t last. The lieutenant crouched next to Vengo’s cooling corpse. ‘You see this?’ he asked Drado, who squatted down next to him.
The left eye had a purple tinge, just like the cultists.
‘Holy Throne...’ breathed the corporal.
Culcis flashed a glance at the rest of the Harpine in the refectorum. It didn’t look good. Only Regara and Arbettan entering the room stopped things from getting really ugly.
Relief had turned to anger. There was shouting, accusation. Some of the men were pulling side arms – the ones who carried them, anyway. Others were seizing mess knives for improvised weaponry. Blood was in the air, that same metallic stink that laced the breeze around Sagorrah and the slums.