Stars and Shadows - Chapter 5 (Patreon)

Here we go! Draft one of Stars and Shadows continues!

Sikari collapses against the wall, furiously wiping a stray trickle of blood from her scalp out of her eye and slamming a fresh las-pack into her rifle. The air is ringing with the sound of gunfire, shrapnel, scrap ammo and buckshot ricocheting off of a dozen different walls, pinging over and over in a cacophony only interrupted by the wet sounds they make when they hit flesh instead. The lasfire her and her squadron are putting out is meager in comparison, supplemented by a few autoguns they’ve scavenged, but there’s a trail of discarded ammunition and weapons behind them. Jaks, Veronica and Marquis are nowhere to be found, scouting ahead and slaughtering outliers, killing messengers and those that distance themselves from the packs of gangers roaming through the underhive. Meanwhile Sikari leads the main body of the squadron deeper, keeping in contact as much as possible. They’ve run into trouble and conflict every step of the damned way, from ambushes to traps to stumbling into outright gang-wars in mid battle. Three days of fighting and a dozen resupplies later and they’re no closer to finding any more of their targets.

It’s been weeks since the initial slaughter of that strange mutant cult, weeks since they were given the order to clear out the underhive, and since then it’s been nonstop operations. Arbiter Quentin insists, with total certainty and the absolute authority to back it up, that there are more of those individuals down here. Where they might be is as much of a mystery to her as anyone, however. It seems that the Arbiter doesn’t much care how the results are achieved, or even much of when; the way things have been going, her squadron will have had to fight and clear the entirety of the underhive and circled back to do it all over again before finding more of the mutants they’re looking for. The Enforcers, with their exponentially greater numbers and armored divisions, are better for surgical strikes and prolonged sieges against the larger gangs, of course, but they (or the higher authority behind them) have calmly and repeatedly refused to help. Maybe Quentin (as Sikari refers to her in the privacy of her thoughts) thinks that a squadron of Guardsmen works best in a warzone, and is using them to create that same environment here in the city. Sikari dearly hopes that isn’t the case, considering how fucking stupid that would be.

Not that stupidity is news to higher authorities she’s had to deal with, unfortunately.

All that can wait. She’s back on her feet now, the moment she took to breathe and privately bitch about the situation over with. Her last frag flies out of cover perpendicular to her as she breaks towards the next cheap barricade down the tunnel, the detonation infinitely more lethal in the packed quarters of the gangers standing too close. Jacobi lays down cover fire with Jacobi acting as a close-range shotgunner, laying traps and ambushes to cover their rearguard and clearing closer tunnels as the larger of the two rips through larger groups with the scavenged autogun he picked up earlier.

Michael lends his assistance best he can, focusing on stims, keeping the radio safe and making sure everyone is as supplied with ammunition as they can be, Tah helping him keep track of minor repairs and, with her unerring accuracy for numbers, the amount of ammo they have left. Keeping her with the radio lets her manage their descent, pick out places that can broadcast and guide the squadron through the labyrinth that she knows so very well. Liones, kept as a guard between them both but often acting as a support to Sikari and Jacobi, tends to fire rapidly but accurately, his las-rifle obsessively maintained even in the shit they’ve been trudging through for days and the grime all around them. Most shots he fires he lands, acting less as cover fire and more a sharpshooter. Where Sikari targets anyone who looks like a leader or who’s giving out orders, tactically aiming for whatever would cause the most damage, Liones takes whatever target pokes their head up.

The rest of them are left wild, of course. Not much to be done about Grieve in a scenario like this, where slaughter is high and there’s so very many targets. He’s left to run wild, Jaks as his handler and partner in slaughter, cleaning up his leftovers in the form of watching his back and making sure those he rips through die… relatively cleanly. Veronica and Marquis are also left to their devices, sent ahead to scout, find information, and, in between battles if Sikari thinks they aren’t too worn, trying on their own to find some hint of the prey they were, in theory, sent down here to hunt.

Between the three groups, they’ve cut a swathe through the underhive. The Gunrippas, the Black Queens, the Reds- all of them eliminated. Simpler gangs, ones up near the bottom of the general residential areas or dug through the walls of old, easy-to-access systems. They’re the easy ones, but the more of them they kill the more they themselves become a presence. She’s heard rumors from those who’ve transferred in from out of system or off world of other hive worlds with far worse ganger problems, but the problem is relative at best. Especially for a single squadron of guardsmen. It’s one thing to fight vicious but untrained and poorly armed gangs. It’s another thing entirely to fight the vicious, often mutated gangs that are deeper and becoming more common, that when riled can cause riots and ruin sections of the hive for weeks before being purged. The ones they fought to get here were the sort of gangs younger Sikari would feel alright with crossing the territory of.

The gang they’re fighting right now is an entirely different story. The Reapers, named both because the narcotics they produce have a reliance on saltpeter and maggots, best farmed from the recently deceased, and because of just how entirely they’ve killed anyone and everyone who’s tried to interrupt them. Nothing can stand forever against the Enforcers or the forces of the God Emperor, of course, but in the seven years since the last great purge and intra-city war, they established themselves with lightning speed and built an empire out of the ashes of the gangs slaughtered behind them.

And now, after losing some of their best buyers, they’ve come up to investigate, only to find the cannon fodder of the Imperium digging down through their territory. They’ve responded with a rather generous amount of violence.

The tunnel sounds like it’s exploding, the sounds of the heavy weapons firing at their position echoing violently enough that Sikari can’t help but give a quick prayer of thanks to the God Emperor for His generosity in granting their helmets audio-dampeners. Whether or not the Reaper’s hearing will turn out alright is a bygone concept, as most of those operating their big guns are already crippled to their purpose, backs bent and limbs broken and reset incorrectly to make them more servile and better at firing the massive guns. Two autocannons stitch lines of fire on the metal and rockrete of the tunnel all around them, a massive sewage system almost two-hundred feet tall meant to allow the drainage of the chemical waste built up by the eastern Factorum and its manufacturing processes. Only in use about once a week, most of the time it’s used as a tunnel for transit from one end of the hive to the other, used by those cast off by the hive or who actively seek it out.

Jacobi returns fire in tune with Tah’s prayers, trying to regain ballistic ownership of the battlefield, but a jam in his belt feed puts him out of commission and forces him to duck a burst of auto-fire that nearly takes his arm off. Jacobi covers, slinging an improvised cluster bomb built from the pipe bombs and homemade explosives they’ve picked up as an explosive bolo. It’s shot out of the air before it has a chance to land, filling the air with shrapnel and fire and a blinding flash of light. Sikari takes the opportunity to peek over the edge of cover and fire in return, blasting away at anyone that looks like they could call out orders, might have explosives on them, or is helping in the operation of the autocannons.

“Reload!” She yells back to Michael, pointing him to Jacobi. “Help with the belt feed! Liones, focus fire, kill any stragglers or solos!”

They follow, Michael scurrying towards the taller guardsman immediately and Liones taking his time to respond but switching his fire pattern over nonetheless. As the enemy reels in response to the impromptu flashbang she moves them forward, keeping track of where Grieve and Jaks are supposed to be, ripping through a tunnel behind their targets (hopefully). If they can break through, they’ll have the firing line in front of them pinched off from both sides. She moves, fires, moves, fires, getting closer, risking it, getting almost too close, drawing fire her way as Jacobi clears the autogun-

An explosion sends the piece of warped metal she was using for cover flying, the edge of it shooting up at such an angle that it knocks her helmet roughly off her head. Knocked on her ass, there’s a half-second where the smoke and fire of the hit keeps her out of sight. She feels at the cut in a daze and it doesn’t feel concave, like her skull caved in, and there’s almost enough time for a prayer of thanks for her life. The cut is still wide and bleeding freely, cutting up into her hairline on her forehead and scalp, obscuring her vision as the blood flows into her right eye. It’s hard to fire a gun accurately without depth perception but she compensates, flipping the safety on her gun into auto-fire and sending out a random volley in the vague general direction of the enemy.

“Praise be to the tunnels, to the warren of steel sky, to the blessed builders that fill the pipes that are the veins of our home-“ Tah prays/sings as she fires, one hand firing her autopistol without any regard for aiming while the other helps Jacobi lift and manage his weapon to fix the belt feed.

Jacobi’s autogun starts firing again, providing cover with a sound of a deep, heavy thumping contrasting the sharp, rattling drone of the enemy autocannons. He does his best to give Sikaei enough room to scramble backwards into another corner of twisted metal for cover. She throws a grenade over the lip of her barricade towards the enemy lines and curses, violently and loudly, as it lands in the sewage almost twenty yards before their lines. She feels a line of fire, from a group brave or stupid enough to ignore Jacobi’s cover, pass just barely over her, the heat and whizzing air catching on the ground around her. At least one pulls violently against her, ricocheting off the ground and passing through the cloth covering her flak armor. It drags her for the inch it takes to pass through and skip off the armor, and she nearly falls over, shoving herself backwards into cover before she slips into the kill-box that is the wider hallway. She can already feel the bruise forming, and it’ll be worse to come, but she’s alive and she’s moving. There’s a brief scream that’s cut off into a gurgling cry as someone jumps into the enemies from behind, bloody and cutting and slashing and saving their lives for another moment, it seems.

Grieve is among them, and Jaks isn’t far behind. They came from some side tunnel, led here by the sound of slaughter as Grieve often is. The tunnel in question is a good ten feet off the ground, a doorway carved into the side of the main waste system it’s a part of, and he falls among them like an animal, tearing into them. He doesn’t waste time, though. As easy as it would be if he just went and died, he has a terrifying efficiency, each blow either landing on its mark or leading into another right behind it, each one dedicated to spilling as much blood as possible. Jaks throws a scavenged grenade into the middle of the tunnel, some fifty feet ahead of where Grieve landed and began his slaughter. The detonation rings true this time and clears a path, silencing one of the heavy gunnery positions.

Sikari has to puzzle it out a moment after the fact, but even through the blood she sees the opening it leaves in their lines. “Jacobi, Tah, grenades, flanking, now!” she screams, loud enough that the ringing in her ears is interrupted for a moment. “Jacobi, move, keep suppressing! Liones, concentrate fire, take the rest of their gunners! Forward!”

It’s a charge for the ages. Her old drill sergeant would be proud to see it, she thinks with a note of bitterness.

With the roar of the squad’s autocannon pinning down the left side, where most of the armed rabble remain, and the booming thunder of frag grenades detonating far behind the enemy and ripping through their back lines, Sikari, Jacobi, Tah, Liones, Jacobi and Michael all charge forward across no-man’s land. Las-fire stitches through the air in bright red bursts, burning through enemy lines and scorching their remaining barricades, lighting some of them ablaze with the heat of the lasers. The right flank remains a disorganized mess, Grieve a whirlwind of blades and teeth and brutal, horrifying efficiency supported and kept alive by the actions of Jaks striking decisively and carefully, equal in ferocity if not in mindless slaughter. There’s a moment, despite the sudden push, where it looks like this contingent of Reapers might rally, the few remaining leaders (two of which are mutants, larger and more powerful than the rest) yelling and screaming orders at the leftover rabble and the few well-equipped gunmen with them. The tide begins to shift, the last entrenched position surrounding a final emplaced auto-cannon dropping from their desperate running to taking places behind cover once again. The mass of half-slaughtered gangers on the right is broken but can’t get away fast enough from Grieve to free up space for him or Jaks to advance, giving a slight window in which things could still be salvaged for the enemy.

Somehow, even over the sounds of the rest of the lasfire from the squadron, Liones’ rifle still sounds just a bit louder. Maybe it’s just her opinion, shaping the effect of the next second retroactively, but… no, she’s certain she hears it, loud and clear. She sees it hit a millisecond before she hears it, even; she was staring right at the officer who is shot, a perfect hole burned through his forehead. One moment, she’s staring at the tallest of the mutants with a painful intensity, her arm burning with delay as she turned her rifle over towards them, the knowledge of exactly how his death would break their rally aflame in her mind, and then, in the exact instant she thinks it, pictures it so clearly, in the exact place she sees it happen in her mind’s eye, he dies. She blinks, as if briefly unsure whether she’s seeing something true or if the stress of battle has her overactive imagination creating delusion, but the rest of the gangers surrounding the freshly made corpse shriek and panic as their lines fall apart completely.

She doesn’t stop or let it make her hesitate. They’re synchronized, working in tune with her so deeply that they know her orders. Or maybe they’re competent enough that their actions are the best courses to take, the courses she can see. It doesn’t matter.

With the mutant now dead, the horde finally breaks. Ammo counters running low, stock of grenades emptied, all of them tired and wounded, they charge forward after what’s left of their enemy. The grime at the bottom of the tunnel runs red with mutant blood, until the only members left are the ones that started running early and vanished before the rout.

Sikari doesn’t let herself collapse, but there is a moment where she knows that if she tried to walk, she would fall. Grieves is busy walking among the wounded, taking his grisly trophies, and Jaks is resting nearby, only getting up to silence the voices of those Grieves mutilates but leaves alive. Beyond those two, everyone is stopping, taking a moment to rest and recoup. Jacobi and Tah are going among the dead and picking through their weapons for more ammunition, checking to see if anything is salvageable or useful, but Jacobi, Michael, Liones… everyone is lying still.

She scans the tunnels branching from this main duct for any signs of movement, any signs of life, but for now, nothing. She briefly remembers that, years ago, this level had carrion feeders, skinny things that seemed barely human and were more than comfortable consuming the flesh of the fallen. They might still emerge here, she thinks. Easier to think of that than to think of how fuck-off tired she is.

“We can’t keep this pace, boss,” Jacobi says from behind her, startling her.

She sighs quietly. “I know, Jacobi.”

“Then why’re we still down here, instead of heading topside for a resupply?” He asks, quiet but insistent.

“Same reason we’re here in the first place,” she replies. “Because I say so. Because our boss says so, because a Judge says so. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy pissing off someone who makes a Commissar look like a damn pup.”

“I don’t want to get on her bad side either. Fuck, Sikari, a Judge is what they call in when a planetary Governor fucks up, you think I can’t imagine what she can do to people like us? You think I don’t remember what it’s like, an Arbites bolter on the back of my neck? But we’re gonna die ugly down here just as easy ‘less something changes. There’s got to be more to this. Jacobi’s got a dick big enough for a hundred of these bastards and I’m not too far behind, but come on, no Judge is an idiot. We can’t clear this whole hive by ourselves. There’s, what, nine billion people on this planet? More than half of them in this city.”

“Not enough ammunition in the entire Precinct for an operation like that,” Liones murmurs darkly from nearby. It reminds her just how close they all are, and just how closely all of them are listening.

Except Grieves. Grieves is busy.

“We do as the Judge commands, Jacobi. And if that means we get tired, or that some of us die, that’s the job. We can’t do this on our own, you’re right. It’s an impossible mission. But you’re right about another thing, too: no Judge is an idiot. This is a woman who is blessed by the God-Emperor himself, whose will and actions are behind divine sanction. I know that doesn’t mean everything to everyone, but at the end of the day it means that her word is beyond law, and that she’s proven she can wield it properly. She knows we can’t kill a billion people on our own, that’s beyond stupid, and people like her don’t make stupid decisions like that, because it gets them fucking killed, and a few planets besides. So she knows we can’t do this job, but us being here, doing what we can, is important, because the most important person any of us have even heard the name of says it is.”

“Maybe that means that there’s something else that we’re the distraction for. Maybe we’re bait. Maybe we’re a tiny piece of a much larger group killing mutants and we’re just the loudest. I don’t know. But the biggest, baddest bitch on the planet, probably in the sector, told me to do it. If we don’t do this, the best we can hope for is to get executed for our trouble. So we’re going to keep doing it, and the first one of us that stops or compromises any of the rest of us is going to get shot in the head by me. Because that’s the only way we all live through this.”

“We’re not going to live through this anyways, going through these tunnels like we are,” Liones says, snarling as he says it.

“Shut the fuck up, you fucking dog!” she yells, loud enough that it echoes. He flinches back at the sound, and she steps forward, grabbing him by the collar of his flak-jacket. She tries to lift him, but just succeeds at pulling him off his seat so he falls into the muck, and pretends she meant to do that all along.

“You don’t speak like that. You don’t moan and bitch about a job from a woman like this. You don’t! The moment that one of you fucks starts acting up about this, the moment one of us lets them know how fucking stupid this all is, we all get sent to some fucking hell-world that makes this place look a paradise. We go through these tunnels, we resupply when we have to, we kill who we have to, because that is the only way any of us survives rather than none.”

The tunnel is silent after that. She sees the look in their eyes, the resentment, the anger. She could’ve played that better. Should have. Should’ve said the right thing, the perfect thing, to get them all to want this, not just obey. But she didn’t. It’s enough, though. She sees that in them too. Before, it was just resentment. Now, there’s fear, with just a hint of solidarity, just a touch of realization about how truly fucked they all are. They either row together, or they all drown.

And she just has to pretend that she believes that they’re rowing towards something, and not just off a cliff.