Boots

[The Acid Dog]

Everyone always asks me about him now. “What was he really like? Who was he, deep down? Did he really have the look of eagles about him?” How am I supposed to answer that? He was just a kid when I met him. A funny looking kid, standing on the wrong world at the wrong time, walking into the meat grinder like the rest of us.

 

 

***

 

Attia's Respite was a beautiful world. No, beautiful was not a good enough word for it. My mother was beautiful. Keyla, the girl my young heart yearned after back home, was beautiful. They were nothing compared to Attia's Respite. It was a paradise world. Paradise. That is what the preachers say we are rewarded with if we live our lives in the Emperor's grace. That is something that we are supposed to get after we have died. Attia's Respite, however, was a real, living paradise.

 

I imagine all of the things one expected of paradise were once true there. This was a world inhabited only by its keepers and those that came to live out their twilight years. Rich nobles, great generals, high ranking officials, bishops, cardinals and all that lot would come to die peacefully here. A man like me would never end up on a world like Attia's Respite. Not in all the millennia since the Day of the Emperor's Ascension. It is not that I am a bad man, because I am not. Sure, I ran with a gang back home, but who among us had not? I shed my share of blood running with them, but that is a truth of living in a hive city: people die. A lot of people die. If you do not want to die yourself, you are going to have to send someone else in your place. No, I pray, I go to confession, I keep the holy days, and my life serves the Imperium. I may not be a good man, but I am certainly not a bad one.

 

It would not be a dirty soul that meant I could never live on Attia's Respite, anyway. It is my distinct lack of wealth and influence. Only the rich and powerful can afford paradise in this lifetime. The poor and the subservient have to die first to get there. It was another one of those great injustices in the galaxy that no one that has any power will ever do anything about. There was only ever a specific set of circumstances that would see me on a paradise world. I would not have chosen to go under those circumstances. Of course, choice was not allowed to play a part. An army of traitors had come to make an example of the world. Men like me were sent to push them back.

 

***

 

I hissed as the fire burnt my fingers and I threw down the lho-stick, annoyed at having been disturbed. I had been daydreaming again. I doused the stick in the dirt and reached under the flak plate on my shoulder for another from my pack. There were only a few left. I flipped my lighter on and took a drag, staring intently at the tree that had been my focus for what had likely been hours. It was a dead husk, all black bark and empty branches, but it was the first real tree I had ever seen. I really wished I knew what it had looked like when it was alive. Blossoming, maybe. I had heard some trees do that. I could see it in my head. It was swaying in the breeze, a few of its flowers floating gently to the ground. A golden sun barely kissed the top of the sea behind it, winding its way down to make way for a clear night sky. Or at least, I could see a hive-dweller's best approximation of that. The sun was still there, of course, but you could not see it much anymore. The once perfect blue sky had long been marred by stinking clouds of chemical vapor and the smoke of a million fires. That was just one of the scars that war had left on the world. There were many other scars, but I could still see it in my head. For one fleeting moment I could see paradise.

 

An ungentle nudge broke my reverie. "Hey, uh, Milika?"

 

I sighed and closed my eyes, the moment gone forever. "What, Vessan?"

 

I was lying back in the dugout, my legs crossed and my head on my helmet. Vessan was sitting next to me, leaning close and staring intently at one of those damned puzzlebooks that he loved so much. He scratched at one of the gang tattoos on his bald head, his face twisted up in confusion. Back home we would have tried to kill each other on sight, but the Imperial Guard put an end to that. Five years and two campaigns later, we had saved each other's lives more times than we cared to count. "What's the name of that saint? You know the one. The patron of people who can't remember anything?"

 

"That's Saint Aret the Lethecant, and he's not the patron of people who can't remember things, you moron. He's the guardian of things best left unremembered," I only know that because I read the holy books when I can, an old habit I got from my dad. That, and Saint Aret holds importance to me, now. Things best forgotten, and all that.

 

"Well, maybe I'd remember that if he'd stop making me forget," Vessan said, laughing at his own joke. I sat up and looked around. Most of my decem were around the dugout. Georji, Sahdan, and Videk were clustered around a game of cards. Georji towered over both of the old members of his gang. He was current champion of the fighting pits, a diversion we entertained ourselves with between deployments. He had only ever lost once, but that fight had seen his opponent disqualified and permanently barred from the pits. Georji still bore the scars. Sahdan was staring at his cards in one hand while he rubbed the ends of his moustache with the other. He might as well have been in love with it, for all the grooming he did. Videk folded and picked up his vihwel, absently plucking at the strings as he tried to remember some half-heard song from back home. Grigor was over near a fallen column, carving our names under "II Decem", proudly declaring that we were there. Yoahn quietly sat vigil at the magnox, letting them peak over the sandbags while he kept his head down. I saw him check his chrono and signal no contact over the vox. Mischen and Decanus Var were in a nearby dugout, chatting it up with other legionnaires. I could hear them laughing.

 

We had all known each other a long time by then, but Mischen and I knew each other from our ganger days. He was always smiling like he was enjoying a joke no one else knew about. His eyes always lit up with genuine mirth, and even more so when he laughed. Everyone got along with him famously. Except for me. We had been best friends back home, and we had both volunteered for the Imperial Guard Legion-Regiments together. He had originally been assigned to a different decem, the number of which I cannot recall. It does not matter, anyway. They all died, cut off from the rest of us, except for Mischen. I saw him come back after that. We had all seen action by that point, and gotten well used to violence. The way Mischen came back, though. Haunted is not the right word. I do not know what is. Changed, obviously, but that is far too vague. Perhaps I was the only one to see a difference in him, but I still could not shake the feeling I would get when I looked at him.

 

He was a bit of a hero, then. He was the sole survivor of a mission that, in spite of the odds, had been successful. When the campaign ended he had entered the fighting pits, and he was the one who took down Georji in the championship bout. He was interrogated by the commissars for a month afterward. Soon after he was released he was smiling and joking again. Even Georji welcomed him when he was signed over to our decem, but I was still unsure what to think of my old friend. His smile was not the same anymore. I realize now that I was afraid of him.

 

I grabbed my lascarbine and set about disassembling and cleaning it, applying the sacred unguents and reciting the prayers that kept the machine spirit ready and willing for combat. When I heard the footsteps next to me I looked up. It was a kid, about sixteen, looking down at me through hilariously thick focals.

 

"What do you want, Boots?" I said, going back to cleaning my weapon. He hesitated before replying.

 

"I'm looking for Decanus Var?" He was trying to act confident. I did not bother to look up.

 

"Do you see a Decanus patch on my shoulder? You've got the wrong guy, kid."

 

Vessan piped up after me, before the newcomer could say anything back.

 

"Hey, Boots, can you actually see through those things? I can't. Are there even eyes behind those?" he said, pointing at the focals. I smiled, as bad as the joke was. Boots' face was probably turning red, but I could not tell. I still had not looked back up.

 

"Could you tell me where he is?" His face was definitely red.

 

"Yeah, sure, Boots. Just have a seat up on the sandbags and he'll be here in no time." Vessan said, and went back to his puzzlebook. He mumbled something about boots who could not see could at least get in the way of a shot for the rest of us.

 

"Someone looking for me?" Decanus Var entered the dugout with Mischen. He looked small next to my old friend's wide-shouldered figure.

 

"Yes, Decanus, I -"

 

"You're the replacement. Welcome to second decem. Get acquainted with the men." Var said as he turned and crouched down next to Yoahn. Boots proceeded to sit down next to me. I cut him off before he could utter a syllable.

 

"When's the last time you cleaned your weapon?"

 

He answered, but I was not listening.

 

"Clean it again."

 

A few minutes later, he offered his hand. I did not take it. "I'm - "

 

"Your name is 'Boots' until you've earned a real name." I snapped.

 

"And how do I do that?" His face was probably turning red again.

 

"You'll find out if you make it." I said sourly. He kept quiet after that.

 

***

 

II Decem, IV Centum, VII Maniple, V Cohort, IX Legio, XIX Army. That was our official designation. The second ten men of the fourth hundred men of the seventh thousand men of the fifth ten thousand men of the ninth hundred thousand men of the nineteenth army of one million men sent to serve the Imperium from Marius V. Five years ago, I would have been lost at a thousand, but at the very least the Imperial Guard gave me an appreciation of numbers. I thought that a million was a frightening amount when I had first heard it. My gang was perhaps only a hundred, and we were a force to be feared where we lived. Who for Throne's sake could possibly have use for a million soldiers? Then the propaganda films during training told me the population of my homeworld. 276 billion people at last census. The last census was over two hundred years before then. I had never felt so small. Training, however, had a way of making us all feel like unstoppable killing machines. Mankind's armies held the galaxy in an iron fist, after all, and how could we argue with that? Still, I do not know how they managed it, but they did. I imagine that he still felt that way, on his second day at the front line.

 

***

 

We were moving along a colonnaded highway. V Cohort had been ordered into the outskirts of the temple city of Agophos from the south. II and VI Cohorts were moving up the flanks to surround the city. Chatter was that the traitors were fortifying the city's four massive acropoli. If they managed to get artillery into position on them then any kind of land approach would leave us all a bloody smear on Respite's green fields, and so we were ordered in before they could. The throaty engines of Leman Russ battle tanks and Chimera transports rumbled as they rolled in behind us. I Decem was nearby.

 

"Hey, I think I see someone." Boots said, pointing across the street at the ruins of what must have been a noble's massive estate. We all instinctively dropped behind cover. I Decem saw us and immediately did the same. "Where is he, Boots?" Vessan said softly. He and the kid were sheltering behind a wrecked groundcar that had been turned on its side.

 

Boots pointed out the spot. It was across the street on the second floor, near a collapsed portion of the building. I risked a glance and immediately saw what he had seen. The top of a head, poking up over a window sill as pretty as could be. Sahdan's voice came in over the micro-bead.

 

"Looks like Boots isn't blind after all, Vessan. You owe me a pack of lho." I smiled at what I knew would come next.

 

"Double or nothing says he can't hit him." Vessan said, true to form. Boots peaked around one side of the groundcar, and Vessan looked around the other, both taking aim with their lascarbines.

 

"Done." Sahdan said. Boots' lascarbine cracked and Vessan cursed. Blood spattered the wall behind Boots' target and another man broke cover nearby, running for all he was worth. Another shot from Boots' carbine put him down hard. We found out later that Boots had not missed a single target in training, from his first shot to his last. He would have been made a sniper if it were not for those focals he wore.

 

 

We all watched and waited for a few minutes, but, aside from echoes and the rumble of the tanks, the city around us was silent as the grave. We eventually signalled all clear and moved on. Every once in a while we would hear the sound of a skirmish in the distance, but it would end as quickly as it started. We encountered almost no resistance entering the city, and had established a strong foothold by the end of the day. The Legates were pleased. Everyone else from the Centurions down were on edge. Boots was still smiling, though. He expected he had earned his name, but I just shook my head when he asked. Getting blood on your hands did not make you worth a name in the Nineteenth.

 

***

 

We were all going to die. That was the simple fact of the matter. Agophos was a city built as a grid. The roads were perfectly straight, and crossed each other at perfectly perpendicular intersections. The tech priests constructing the city had delighted in the work, and each measurement was made down to the micrometer. The city was both a symbol of order and of beauty in an otherwise ugly galaxy. That also made it a death trap in our case. By the time V Cohort had secured the outer areas of the city and started to advance toward the southern acropoli, II Cohort had arrived in the city and was moving inward as well. VI Cohort came in an hour later and swung the door shut. No traitor was leaving the city alive.

 

I can still remember seeing the southwest acropolis the next day as it shook loose what must have been tonnes of dust when the artillery batteries massed on top of it first made themselves known. The other acropoli quickly followed suit. After realizing we were not all dead we breathed a collective sigh of relief. It was quickly apparent that the artillery had completely overshot us. Instead of raining down on us, the entire outer edge of the city was smashed to dust under hundreds of thousands of pounds of ordnance. Then messages over the vox came in of support and reinforcement columns being destroyed by pinpoint accurate artillery fire. Once we saw the map of the city we knew why. Determining range is easy when the battlefield is covered in perfectly symmetrical square blocks. We may as well have voxed them coordinates ourselves. I heard a rumor that an officer was shot for gross incompetence.

 

Support stopped trying to get in when it became obvious that the traitors would destroy anything that came within range of their guns. Our guns, meanwhile, were down closer to sea level, and could do nothing to help us. The shock of knowing we were trapped and could be destroyed at any moment without even being bracketed settled in. The Legates decided there was only one option: a head-on assault of the acropoli. The cohorts were ordered to mount up and take the acropoli by any means necessary. Of course, the manoeuvre was an obvious one, and the traitors had no intention of letting us go anywhere.

 

***

 

A missile flashed past and struck the Chimera right in the driver's viewport, punching straight through and exploding inside. The multilaser turret flew off when the missile detonated, flipping end over end, and the entire front half of the transport exploded outward in a storm of fire and shredded armor. Grigor was thrown flat on his back, and I grabbed his webbing and dragged him back behind some fallen masonry.

 

“The Chimera's gone, Decanus!” My voice was raised, but only so that I could be heard over the vox-net. I peaked out of cover and fired my lascarbine, dropping an enemy trooper too enthusiastic to keep his head down. The shot burned through his armor and the flesh beneath, searing the valves of his heart shut. I stole a glance at the acropolis and saw that it was surrounded by the flak explosions and tracers of anti-aircraft fire. The Imperial Navy was trying to bomb the traitor artillery, but even I could see they would not be getting anywhere near it.

 

“Missile crew! One block down. Blue building. Rooftop!” Grigor called out, spotting the missile crew that had destroyed our transport. He fired his carbine, but the weapon's crew were behind cover already, likely displacing and finding a new firing position. The enemy swarmed out of buildings, and I could see tanks coming down the street. Our heavy bolters opened up, their mass reactive shells chewing up rockcrete and flesh with equal enthusiasm. Hundreds of men disappeared with a thunderclap and a cloud of bloody mist. A few bloody scraps and spatters of blood on the ground were the only testament that men hit by bolters ever lived at all.

 

A Leman Russ crashed through a low wall nearby, its heavy bolters roaring. The battlecannon fired into the building where the missile crew had been and the corner of the building collapsed, crushing a squad of enemy troopers in the rubble. Lasfire stabbed at the remains, cutting down the few traitors who stumbled out of the building's ruin.

 

“Grigor, come on,” I said as I ran for the makeshift barricades the rest of the decem was sheltering behind. Grigor slid in behind me, reloading his carbine. Dead men lay in piles on both sides of the barricades, but it was the traitors charging and they were taking the brunt of it. I snapped off a few more shots, winging someone. None of the decem were down, though Sahdan's helmet was missing and blood smeared the left side of his face. Yoahn was on the vox, and Decanus Var was nearby barking out messages in between shots. It all happened so fast. Videk pushed Boots down and lay over him as a torrent of fire washed over the barricade just above them. A moment later, Georji's heavy flamer spit back a reply, burning six men out from behind a pileup of groundcars. The stink of burnt flesh was so thick I could taste it. It sickened me that I was so familiar with the stench, but if you smelled it when the enemy was charging it only ever meant one thing. They were going to reach you. There was a palpable heave in the flow of the battle as the enemy rose up and charged en masse. V Cohort opened fire all down the line, killing them by the thousands, but it was not enough. The enemy wanted to taste our blood, and they would have it. I caught sight of Mischen, then, just before they hit us. There was a smile on his face, but it was not one I had ever seen before.

 

I heard a scream above me and threw myself to the side, turning onto my back and firing my carbine as I brought it up. The shot took off the traitor's head just above his left eye. I heard the adamantium teeth of Var's chainsword shriek just before I was sprayed with gore. Grigor pushed aside the muzzle of an enemy trooper's lasgun and stuck a knife between his ribs. I regained my feet just in time for two more traitors to mount the barricade and attack. The first screamed and stabbed his bayonet at me. I pushed the thrust aside with my carbine and smashed the stock into his face, shattering his jaw and knocking him flat. The other pulled out his knife and tackled me, knocking my carbine from my hands. I felt the impact on the side of my flak plate where he tried to put the knife in me. I grabbed his knife arm and forced it up behind him, bending it at the elbow. I twisted it sharply and it gave, the traitor crying out as his shoulder cracked and popped out of its socket. I took advantage, grabbing his knife and rolling us over so I was on top of him. He clawed at me with his good arm, trying to stop me. I stabbed him in the side of the neck and cut his throat out from behind.

 

I stood and drew my laspistol with my other hand, shooting a traitor in the back as he went for Grigor. Something bumped into me and I snarled as I turned around. It was Mischen, throwing a traitor face first into the blood-soaked ground. I shot a traitor behind him but he did not even notice. Mischen had no weapons, so he ripped his helmet off and bashed the traitor's skull in with it. I think I heard him laughing as he did it, but the traitors were on us and I had no time to pause. I shot another in the chest as he came over the barricade and lunged back into the fight.

 

***

 

The southwest acropolis was destroyed. A few more shell detonations bloomed from its surface, but the artillery fire had smashed it so completely that it was little more than a giant mound of rubble. VI Cohort had taken one acropolis, and then another, turning their artillery on the bastions still in enemy hands. The enemy army holding the city had exhausted itself on our lines, and what little remained of them were being hunted down by fresh reinforcements now that the enemy artillery had been silenced. We were left standing in a street piled high with bodies.

 

Sahdan was dead. Vessan had found his body and dragged it out from under the others. We could not tell what killed him, but it did not matter. I watched Vessan pull two packs of lho-sticks out of his pocket and put them into Sahdan's pack, then turn away. Yoahn lay unconscious in Georji's arms, the last of his life bleeding out of him from where a knife had cut open the artery in his leg. A medicae stood up and shook his head, moving on. Grigor and Var stayed there with Georji. I could hear Videk playing an old requiem his vihwel. Other legionnaires sat around him, their heads down.

 

I could not see Mischen or Boots anywhere and I went looking for them. I do not know what possessed me to look for Mischen first, but I found him in an alley, staring absently at nothing. He was not smiling.

 

“Help...” someone said, and he looked down. A hand was raised among the dead. From where the blood had not stained his fatigues, I could see that it was a traitor soldier. Mischen stared at him.

 

“Water...” the dying man said.

 

My old friend blinked, flicking away his lho-stick and pulling out his canteen. He crouched down next to the man and took a drink. The man reached for the canteen, but Mischen set it down just out of reach. That same smile I had seen before crept onto his face. In the next moment Mischen was straddling the man, and his hands were clasped tightly around the dying man's throat, throttling what little life he had left out of him. I watched. I watched Mischen strangle him, even after he was clearly dead. He cursed the man again and again, and I left him there.

 

 

When I made it back Boots was there. He was shaking and asking Vessan for his weapon. I walked over to where Vessan had gotten him to sit down, picking up a lascarbine on the way. I offered it to him.

 

“Is that mine?” he asked, clearly confused.

 

“Yeah, kid, it's yours,” I said.

 

I put the weapon in Boots' hands and nodded. The boy looked around at the scene, as if seeing the carnage for the first time. I was glad that he had lived through the battle, but saddened knowing how he felt as his eyes welled up at the horror of it all. Even with all of my years running with gangs in a hive city, my eyes had done the same after my first battle, years ago. I do not believe any man is ready to see violence on that scale.

 

The others had joined us. Each of us at some point looked down at Boots' feet. His boots, so fresh and clean only a few days ago, looked aged and torn. They were encrusted with dried blood. I spat on my thumb and rubbed it over the nameplate on his armor. Vessan said it first, followed by Georji, then Var, Videk, Grigor and Mischen until it came to me. Georji slapped him on the shoulder, and Videk put a lho-stick between his lips and lit it for him. All of us managed a smile. For his sake at the very least. I offered him my hand and he took it. A few tears dropped, but his grip was firm.

 

“Hossan.” I said to him, “Well met.”

 

That was the first time I said the Saint's name. Like I said at the beginning, I had no idea of his fate then. All I knew was that he had gotten his boots bloody and earned his name. That was all any of us needed to know about him from then on.

[Wulfkry]

damn that was a good read need.... MORE!!!

[Olis]

A good read indeed. The formatting needs to be corrected and unified, however, as the change in font near the end and the sentences that have been returned to the line below midway through is somewhat jarring. Correcting these issues is necessary if you don't wish to break immersion.

[The Acid Dog]

Thanks for the compliments! And thank you for the tip, Olisredan.  The text didn't copy very well from the document I had it stored on, and the entire story was like that. I got most of it but it seems I missed some. I'll go fix it now.

[Messor]

Very involving read, sir, nice work!

[Scott913]

That was incredible! Good job, looking forward to more!