‘Oh holy God-Emperor, Rachain, don’t you see it? He hated gambling. He hated wet-behind-the-ears officers and he hated weakness, too, in every form he saw it. Webfoot fell over in the swamp and gave our position away, and Hangnail threw up when she saw Webfoot’s corpse, and the lieutenant…’
‘Shut. Up,’ Rachain said, and the tone in his voice made Cully take a long, hard look at him.
‘You know I’m right,’ Cully said. ‘He’s purging us. Getting rid of what he sees as the weak links in Alpha Platoon.’
‘What about Gesht?’ Rachain said.
Cully gave him a level look.
‘Gesht’s next,’ he said.
Gesht wouldn’t hear it, of course.
There was no way, according to her, just no bloody way. Her Drachan was dead, everyone knew that. Of course he was. He’d gone down fighting orks like an Imperial Hero. He was an Imperial Hero.
He hadn’t survived, of course he hadn’t. Heroes never did.
He wasn’t the man who was hunting them. Killing them.
Eating them.
Except of course he was.
Cully and Rachain and Steeleye knew damn well he was. Deep, deep, deep down, Gesht had to admit she knew it too.
She remembered how Drachan had walked her back from the mission where they had used heavy flamers on an unmapped rural settlement, how he had kept her together afterwards. The settlement hadn’t been on the Munitorum survey.
Afterwards, no one could put their hand on their heart and swear that the settlement hadn’t been Imperial after all.
Drachan had just shrugged. ‘They might have been orks,’ he had said to her.
Yeah, they might have been orks, Gesht told herself, for the hundredth time since that dark, burning day.
‘Better safe than sorry,’ Drachan had told her.
Always.
Always better safe than sorry, she knew that now. That was what you learned, on Vardan IV. It was always better to be safe than sorry, however sorry that made you.
So you creep into a settlement, rotting prefabs standing in a jungle clearing. What’s on the other side of that wall?
An ork warband?
A scholam?
A hospital?
A nest of anti-aircraft guns?
Who knows.
Darn it, throw a grenade over. Better safe than sorry.
Bodies are bodies, meat is just meat.
Burning.
The roar of the flamers.
Bodies, burning in the jungle.
At least it’s them not me.
Burn it all, he had said. Better safe than sorry. Burn it all, and tell no one.
I know, Gesht thought, all at once. I know it’s you, you mother lover.
She straightened up all at once, checked her webbing and her reloads. Looked across their camp fire, saw the slick gleam of the snot that oozed forever out of Steeleye’s face. Met the other woman’s eyes.
‘I’m doing this,’ Gesht said. ‘Tonight. Come, or don’t.’
‘I’m coming,’ Steeleye said.
She stood up, and she shouldered her long-las, and followed Gesht.
Cully looked at Rachain, and the veteran sergeant looked back at him.
‘Yes,’ Rachain said.
