The Understudy studied the gangers with no more animosity than if they had been squabbling children making a noise round about him. I cannot say that Ivan and Anton and myself were particularly gentle with them. I’ve never really cared for people who shoot at me.
The gangers were hauled off for either execution or forced conscription and we returned to patrolling the streets and keeping our eyes open for devotees of the Angel of Fire.
It was another typical day on the streets of Irongrad. I remember it only because it was that night we met the girls.
We sat in the cellar of the Angel’s Blessing. I studied the room from my seat in the corner. It was small, it was dark and it was full of fug from lho sticks and glittersmoke. Small gas-lights guarded by crystal bowls threw flickering light out into the gloom. Behind the bar, a shaven-headed local dispensed rotgut alcohol from bottles that inevitably displayed on the label some scene from the career of the Angel of Fire or one of his many associated saints, and the name of the factorum that produced it.
I looked across the table at Anton and Ivan and the New Boy. They all had glasses in front of them. Ivan had an open bottle which he was reserving for his own exclusive use. The rest of us went the more conventional route and had a waitress bring us drinks.
‘Well this is cosy,’ said Anton. Locals were coming down the narrow stairs, taking in the clientele at a glance and mostly leaving. At least the men were. Some of the local girls stayed. It was the usual pattern. You see it on a thousand worlds.
There were plenty of men from our unit there. Some wore the local trinkets, little metal angel pins or chokers. Others had more sinister souvenirs, numbers made up of small skulls inked on arms and necks and foreheads with the name of Irongrad underneath them. The tattoos were an old regimental way of indicating how many people they had killed in that battle. Some of those were lies, some of them were boasts and some of them were understatements. I thought it was premature. I was not entirely certain that the battle for the city was really over. The gangs were still fighting in the streets. There was unrest in many of the hab-zones and no one really knew what had happened to the cultists who had caused so much trouble.
‘Did you see the Understudy today?’ the New Boy asked. ‘He walked through the hail of fire as if he never even noticed it.’
‘Maybe he didn’t,’ I said.
‘I can’t believe it’s the same man I had to carry out of the cockpit of Number Ten.’ How easily he called it Number Ten, I thought. It was almost as if he had spent ten years in the tank the same as me, and not the few days he had. I felt like telling him you had to earn the right to use the nickname but what was the point.
‘He’s gone daft,’ said Anton.
‘You know it’s pretty bad when Anton calls you daft,’ said Ivan.
‘I am serious,’ said Anton. ‘Come on, we’ve all seen it. Sometimes men snap. Something in their brain breaks and it changes them. Remember Yuri after we pulled him out of the bunker on Jurasik? Kept gibbering that the green men were all around and coming to get him.’
‘Well, we had been fighting orks,’ I said. ‘So he was probably right.’
‘We had killed them all. He was seeing bloody invisible orks.’
‘You can’t see invisible things,’ Ivan pointed out. ‘That’s what being invisible is all about.’
‘You know what I mean. He was mad, gibbering mad.’
‘The Understudy is not like that,’ I said.
‘I know but it’s a similar thing. Sometimes men see something and their minds break.’
‘You’re safe then,’ said Ivan. ‘You don’t have a mind.’
‘Ha bloody ha!’
The New Boy shuddered and took a swig of his greenish-coloured drink. ‘I think there are things here that might do that to a man, if he stuck around long enough.’
He was starting to get round to it now, the thing that was really on his mind. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, to give him a reason to go on talking.
‘I mean what are all those cages about?’
‘They are for putting people to death,’ I said.
‘Who the hell puts anyone to death that way?’
‘Does it matter? People die whatever.’
‘Yeah but...’
‘We use firing squads,’ I said. ‘They use cages.’
‘It’s not the same,’ the New Boy said.
He was right of course, but there was drink in my belly and I was feeling contrary. I usually do once I’ve had a few. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘You know it’s not, Leo,’ said Ivan. ‘One way is quick and clean, the other is slow and cruel.’
‘And yeah, the Imperium is never slow or cruel,’ I said.
‘Not this way.’
‘Ivan’s right, Leo,’ Anton said. ‘There’s something rotten about killing people that way, something strange. It’s the work of those priests.’
‘You may be right,’ I said.
‘You know I am. It has the stink of heresy to it.’
The debate might have taken a downright theological turn but we were interrupted.
Corporal Hesse came in. His uniform was clean. His boots were polished. His small moustache was well-trimmed. He had a girl under each arm. He did not look like much, did the corporal, but he was always a hit with the ladies. He looked kind and jolly and he was always generous to them so I suppose it was understandable. His presence dispelled the last of the gloom hanging over the table even though all he did was sweep past us, slap some of the local scrip on the table and say loudly, ‘Have a farewell drink for old Number Ten on me.’ Then he was gone. It was like a personal ritual he had to perform and we all have some of those.
‘Thanks, corporal,’ I said to his departing back. ‘I don’t mind if I do.’
Anton nudged me in the ribs with an elbow. I glanced up to see what he was looking at. A group of three pretty young women had entered.
‘Just what I need to take my mind off your gloomy chatter,’ he said. He rose and went to introduce himself. He spoke for a while and returned to our table, leading a small blonde girl by the arm. ‘This is Katrina,’ he said.
He indicated a tall, dark girl. ‘This is Lutzka and this is Yanis.’ The third was a plump and pretty girl. ‘They are nurses at the Hospice of Saint…?’
‘Saint Oberon,’ said Katrina. ‘It’s the best hospice in the hive. All of the nobles go there for treatment.’ She seemed very proud of that.
‘I’m sure they do,’ said Anton smoothing his hair. ‘And I’m sure you give them the treatment they deserve.’
Ivan dragged over some chairs for them with a courtliness you would not have believed possible and they sat down. Katrina was next to Anton. Lutzka was next to Ivan and Yanis was next to the New Boy. I was stranded in my corner, next to none of the girls. Not that I cared enough to move anyway. I was in a foul and contrary mood.
They settled down to chat and smooch and I settled down to drink. Maybe I should have chatted to one of the girls. If I had my life would have been much different. I would probably not have fallen in with Anna for one thing. I had a few more drinks and then I staggered back to the barracks. We had a patrol in the morning. The others did not seem to mind. Their attention was all on the women.
It was crowded in the Chimera. I didn’t care. I was in the turret, watching the streets go by. On these, the deeper levels of the hive, it was always the same. The buildings towered over us, festooned with metal seraphim. A titanic angel glared down on us from gigantic murals set in the roof, details picked out by wandering spotlights on the hab-tops. Trash had piled up like snow drifts along the side of the buildings, where maintenance tubes had broken down and services were impaired. Rats the size of a man’s head watched us with glittering, malign eyes and chittered to each other in the language of their kind.