Authors: Simon R. Green
Men and women came running out of the square stone houses to watch the pinnaces falling out of the sky. Legion might be able to fool espers and sensors, but even it couldn’t hide the roar of so many thundering engines from the people directly below them. At least, not yet. The townspeople gathered by the high stone walls surrounding their town, and watched and babbled excitedly as the ships just kept on coming. It didn’t take them long to figure out what was happening. They’d spent most of their lives expecting and preparing for an invasion. The day the Empire came to reclaim Mistport as its own. Men and women ran to get their weapons and hide the children from what was to come.
Troops filed out of the long narrow ships, weighed down by armor insulated against the bitter cold, carrying swords and energy weapons and force shields. The pinnaces had disrupter cannon, but they were being saved for Mistport. Marines moved quickly to establish a perimeter around the landing field, ignoring the town for the moment. Imperial troops stood in ranks, waiting for the word. Cold-eyed, seasoned, disciplined killers, eager to make a start. Sergeants barked orders, officers strolled into position, and still the ships fell, and more men came marching out onto the snow and ice.
Toby Shreck and his cameraman Flynn, wrapped in heavy-duty furs, lumbered out into the cold, swore briefly, and began filming. They’d been instructed to cover everything, and Lieutenant Ffolkes was right there to see that they did. He watched the army assembling, and swelled with pride. It was days like this that made you glad to be a member of the Imperial Fleet.
And finally, from out of the last ship to land, came the commander of the Imperial forces, Investigator Razor. He hadn’t bothered with insulated armor or furs, wearing only the blue and silver of an Investigator’s formal uniform. He didn’t feel the cold, but then, everyone knew Investigators weren’t really human. The Empress herself had placed Razor in charge of all ground troops. Partly because he had led invasion forces in the past, before his retirement, and partly to show that the Empress trusted him entirely, despite his age and Chojiro connections.
Razor’s staff officers gathered around him, bringing him up-to-date, anxious to show that everything was as it should be. Razor nodded curtly. It had never occurred to him that it wouldn’t. Beginnings were easy to plan. His personal staff officer handed him a pair of binoculars, and he studied the town and the surrounding area. Normally he would have linked into the ship’s computers through his comm implant, and accessed the sensor arrays, but with Legion blocking all frequencies, he’d had to arrange for low-tech aids for himself and his troops. Apart from the town there was nothing but snow and ice for as far as the eye could see, except for the long range of the Deaths-head Mountains, plunging up into the sky. They looked cold and indifferent, as though nothing that happened below them could possibly be of any significance. Razor smiled slightly. He’d change that.
He studied the ten-foot-high stone wall surrounding the town. It was solid stone and mortar, sturdy and well-constructed. A few energy blasts would take care of it. Men and women from the town stood watching from catwalks along the top of the inner wall. Most were armed with swords and axes and spears, but a few had energy weapons. Nowhere near enough to make any difference, though, and both sides knew it. The townspeople were all dead. They just hadn’t lain down yet. Razor breathed deeply of the icy air, centering himself. This high up on the plateau, there were few mists, and the air was sharp and clear. He gave the order to begin, and a hundred marines opened fire with their disrupters. The stone wall exploded, stone fragments and bloody flesh flying in all directions.
Smoke rose up, and sharp-edged rubble and small body parts pattered to the snow in an awful rain. There were shouts and screams as the survivors fell back from the great gaping hole in the wall. A few stayed to try and drag wounded from the wreckage, but the marines picked them off easily. More troops had moved into position on the other side of the town, and they blew that wall out, too. The townspeople had nowhere to go now, trapped between two advancing forces. Razor nodded to his staff officers, drew his sword and gun, and led the way into the small town of Hardcastle’s Rock.
The battle was grim and bloody, but it didn’t take long. The marines had the advantage of far greater numbers, massed energy weapons, and force shields. The townspeople fought bravely, men and women standing their ground fiercely. Swords rose and fell, and blood flew on the air, hot and steaming. There were screams and battle cries and roared orders, and bodies and offal lay scattered across the churned-up snow. There was no room or time for heroes, only two mismatched forces struggling in blank anonymity. Above the bedlam of battle came the occasional roar of energy weapons, followed by the sudden stench of roast meat. The troops couldn’t use disrupters much for fear of hitting their own people, but the few townspeople with energy weapons barricaded themselves in their houses and sniped desperately from shuttered windows. But in the end, the Imperial forces were able to pinpoint which houses were being used, and blew them apart with concussion grenades and shaped charges. The squat stone houses collapsed inward as the powerful explosions ruptured the walls, bringing down the roofs and crushing those inside. The marines advanced remorselessly from both ends of the town, driving all before them, cutting down those who wouldn’t or couldn’t fall back fast enough. Until finally the townspeople were caught and trapped and slaughtered in the middle of their own town.
When finally it was over a sullen quiet fell across what had been the town of Hardcastle’s Rock. The last defenders had fallen, and the few who had thrown down their weapons and surrendered, mostly women and children, stood huddled together in small, well-guarded groups. Houses burned to every side, crimson flames licking out darkening stone windows. The dead lay everywhere, mostly townspeople, some marines, well within acceptable losses. A few dozen marines moved among the fallen, marking wounded troopers for the med teams, and putting the wounded rebels out of their misery.
Investigator Razor stood in the middle of the town, in a small open space his troops had cleared for him. He looked unhurriedly around, not too displeased with the way things had gone. He’d lost more men than he expected, but then he hadn’t expected energy weapons in the hands of rebels. He raised a hand and summoned his main staff officers and his Second in Command, Major Chevron. Chevron was a tall, well-muscled man who looked as though he’d been born to wear body armor. He crashed to a parade halt before the Investigator, but didn’t salute. Technically, he was superior in rank to Razor, but they both knew who was in charge.
“The town is secure, sir,” Chevron said calmly. “The townspeople are either dead or prisoners, apart from a few still hiding in their homes. The town has fallen.”
“They had energy guns, Major,” said Razor. “Why wasn’t I informed that the townspeople would have energy weapons?”
“There were only a few, sir. Like the town walls, they were there to defend against local predators. Nasty things called Hob hounds. It was mentioned in the original briefings, sir.”
Razor just nodded, neither accepting nor rejecting the implied criticism. “Are we sure there are no more rebel settlements in the area?”
“Quite sure, sir. Just a few farmsteads, here and there. We can hit them from the air while traveling to Mistport. Word won’t get there ahead of us. Legion is jamming all frequencies. Apparently it’s not uncommon for communications to break down from time to time out here. Mistport won’t worry about lost contact for quite a time yet. By the time they do realize something’s wrong, we’ll be hammering on their front door.”
“So we have some time to play with. Good.” Razor smiled slightly. “Gather all the prisoners together and execute them.”
“Sir?” Major Chevron blinked uncertainly at the Investigator, caught off guard. “It was my understanding that prisoners were to be used as hostages and human shields . . .”
“Then you understood wrong. Was my order not clear enough? Kill them all. That includes those hiding in their houses. Do it now.”
“Yes, sir. Right away.”
The Major gathered up the nearest officers with his eyes, and gave the orders. They passed the order on to their men, who drew swords and axes already crusted with drying blood, and set about their task with calm, detached faces. Blades rose and fell, and the women and children and few men were quickly cut down. They barely had time to scream, and the only sound on the quiet air was the dull thudding of heavy blades sinking deep into human flesh. The hacking and chopping went on for some time, finishing off those who wouldn’t die immediately. Women tried to shield their children with their bodies, to no avail. The marines were very thorough.
Razor smiled. He wanted his marines to be sure of their duty. And besides, it was important that people not think he was growing soft in his old age. He knew there were those watching from the sidelines, waiting to take advantage of any perceived weaknesses in his handling of this mission. Starting very definitely with Major Chevron, who’d made no secret of the fact that he thought he should have been in charge.
Marines gathered around the few houses still holding rebels within. They tried setting fire to them, but the stone walls and slate roofs were slow to burn, so the marines settled for shooting out the shuttered windows, and tossing in grenades. A few townspeople burst out of their doors rather than wait to be finished off by fire or smoke or explosions. They came charging out, roaring obscure battle cries and waving their swords and axes, and the marines calmly shot them down from a distance. It didn’t take long, and soon every house in Hardcastle’s Rock was burning, sending a heavy pall of black smoke up into the lowering evening skies.
Toby and Flynn were right there in the thick of it, recording everything. Flynn kept his camera moving in and out of the action, flying quickly back and forth on its antigrav unit, hovering overhead when the action got a little too close, while Toby kept up a running commentary. Flynn grew sickened by the slaughter and wanted to stop filming, but Ffolkes wouldn’t let him, even putting a gun to the cameraman’s head at one point. Toby just kept talking, and if his voice grew a little hoarse at times, well there was a lot of smoke in the air. Toby and Flynn had grown used to recording sudden death in close-up on the battlefields of Technos III, but nothing there had prepared them for this. Technos III had been a war between two more or less equally matched sides. This was just butchery. Ffolkes wasn’t around when Razor gave the order for the executions. Flynn looked at Toby.
“I can’t do this. I can’t.”
“Keep filming.”
“I can’t! This is obscene. They’ve already surrendered.”
“I know. But it’s important we cover everything.”
Flynn glared at him. “You’d do anything for good ratings, wouldn’t you?”
“Pretty much. But this is different. People have to see what happened here. What Lionstone is doing in their name.”
Flynn’s mouth twisted into an ugly shape, and his eyes were wet with tears, but he got it all on film, right down to the last bloody cough and shuddering body. When it was over he sat down suddenly in the blood-splattered snow and cried. His camera hovered overhead. Toby stood over Flynn, patting him on the shoulder comfortingly. He was too angry to cry.
“Bartok will never let this film be shown,” Flynn said finally. “He’ll censor it.”
“The hell he will,” said Toby. “He’ll be proud of it. His troops won a great victory here today. The first on Mistworld soil. You don’t understand the military mind, Flynn.”
“And thank the good God for that.” Flynn got to his feet again, waving away Toby’s offer of help. His camera flew down to perch on his shoulder again. Ffolkes came over to join them. There was blood on his armor, none of it his, and his face was very pale. He looked at the pathetic piles of mutilated bodies, then looked at Toby and Flynn almost desperately.
“Don’t worry,” said Toby. “We got it all.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Ffolkes said thickly. “This isn’t war.”
“Yes it is,” said Investigator Razor, and Ffolkes spun around immediately. Razor stirred one of the bodies with the toe of his boot. “These are scum. Enemies of the Empire. There are no innocents here. Just by choosing to live on Mistworld, they are automatically traitors and criminals, and condemned to death.”
“What about the children?” said Flynn. “They didn’t choose to live here. They were born here.”
Razor turned unhurriedly to look at him. “They would have grown to be traitors. Don’t have much stomach for this, do you, boy?”
“No,” said Flynn. “No, I don’t.”
“Don’t worry, boy. This is nothing, compared to what’s going to happen in Mistport. I’ll make a man of you yet.”
And he strode away, calmly giving orders. The marines gathered up the bodies of the fallen townspeople and piled them together in one great heap in the middle of the town. The pile grew steadily larger, the marines having to clamber up and over bodies to pile them higher, until finally it was all done. The great mound of bodies rose up above the burning roofs of the nearby houses. And then Razor had them set on fire, too. Smoke billowed up, and the scent of roasting meat was thick on the air. This was too much for some of the marines. They turned away from the bodies curling up in the flames, from the bloody flesh blackening and cracking, and they vomited into the snow. Officers stood over them and shouted abuse and orders. Flynn got it all on film.
“I’ll see Razor dead,” he said finally. “I swear I’ll see him dead.”
“He’s an Investigator, Flynn. Ordinary people like you and me don’t kill Investigators.”
“Somebody has to,” said Flynn. “While there are still some ordinary people left.”
The billowing black smoke rose high above what had once been the town of Hardcastle’s Rock, population 2031, as the marines trooped back to their ships for the flight to Mistport.
Two marines strode down the main street of Hardcastle’s Rock, passing a bottle of booze back and forth between them. Buildings burned to either side of them, and the great funeral pyre blazed fiercely in the middle of the town, sending a great pall of greasy black smoke up into the evening sky. For Kast and Morgan, career marines, it was just another job. They’d seen and done worse in their years serving under Bartok the Butcher. There wasn’t much to choose between the two marines. Both large, muscular men in blood-spattered armor, with broad cheerful faces and eyes that had seen everything.