Guard fic 3.7
End of the chapter, and this is the bit that led to me being pretty stuck earlier. It didn't end the way I'd been expecting.
In the cell, the troopers were eager for any word of what had happened. He didn’t blame them for being interested, nor for being jealous that he had been outside these walls more times already in his short stay than they had been in the preceding weeks. He updated them regarding Rossaria’s progress and the fact that she would in all likelihood be joining them here, and clarified that he would take responsibility for the necessary damage to their uniforms in the cause of unit morale. Given the long list of charges Aloysius had thrown at him and the various others that one could almost certainly add by now, the odds were that a few missing buttons would be the least of his worries.
Then he got to the crux of the matter: investigating what he had got from the medical lab. Particularly paranoid after Robes’ comment about not leaving him and Rossaria to talk in private King was fairly convinced there was a sensor in the room, most likely in the luminator in the ceiling, based on the simple logic that that’s what he would have done. There was some isolated space in the waste reclamation area as they had hung their bedsheets as curtains to afford some privacy, but four people crowding into the toilet would undoubtedly raise some questions.
He gathered them into the corner where the unwanted mattresses were stored and sometimes used as crashmats, ensuring that people were angled so as to block what they were doing from any direct sight. Then he explained what he had done and produced the two items for them to try to fathom a use for.
They were different, that much was clear. All to the good, maybe that would increase their range of options. The fact did remain that he had no idea what they were however, and without Rhys here with her specialist medical knowledge they would be unlikely to find out the true purpose of the metal sticks. They should be able to work out something however.
As it was, they turned out to be remarkable easy to identify. Both had buttons on: when pressed one lit up with a reddish glow and the other produced on its base a black rectangle about half a centimetre long and a just under two millimetres wide. Pressing that rectangle against something left a black mark in its wake.
“It’s a pen!” Hunter marvelled.
“A chunky ridiculous pen!” Bill agreed.
“No! It’s amazing, they’re turning power cells into permanent marks with no heat or gouging! Look, it writes on skin as easily as the flo…” King grabbed the pen off her, but not before she had put a small black spot in the middle of the clear white-grey floor. They looked at it in horror as Hunter realised the significance of the mark.
“Get. That. Off.” King intoned coldly, each word falling like a grave marker. Hunter scrubbed at it with her fingers and then with the hem of her shirt, but it stayed resolutely unchanged. Bill and Bellis joined in the effort, even trying to carve a hole in the floor to get it off, but with no effect. Suddenly Bellis jumped up and stood on it, drawing his boot back hard against the floor. Nothing happened. He tried again with the side of his boot, and managed a ling thin scrape of rubber covering the stain from the pen. It wasn’t ideal and it certainly wasn’t the best solution, but it was the best they could manage without some kind of cleaning acid.
“Good thinking.” King commended him, before turning to Hunter in fury. “You frakking idiot! One mistake, and it’s all over, you understand!? Not just any escape chance, but they’ll happily kill any or all of you just to upset me. That’s why they took the command team - they didn’t need anyone except the people I work closely with. We cannot give them any excuse!”
“Sorry sir.” She replied, looking genuinely contrite.
“It’s not just your own damn life you’re risking here, Hunter, it’s any of you. You misbehave, they’ll kill Bill. Or ‘Jaks’ here. There are risks we have to take and risks that are just frakking stupid mistakes that *will* get someone killed!”
“Sir, with every respect.” Bellis began tentatively, obviously not sure how to ask his question. King turned to him and tried not to glare as the soldier continued.
“With every respect sir, why did you risk stealing stuff if it could get us killed?”
“Fair question, trooper.” King replied, and the relief was clear on the kid’s face. “Because I don’t believe for a minute that the Tau are going to let us go. They assume we’ll kowtow and join their greater good, forsaking our comrades and our Emperor. Once they realise that’s not going to happen, they’re not going to release us so we can skip back to the front line to stand against them. We need to take acceptable risks to escape, but every risk we take is dangerous. It’s a very high stakes game we’re caught in, but we don’t get to sit this round out.”
Bellis nodded, somewhat awestruck. King turned back to the crux of the matter.
“So, it’s a torch and a pen. Could be better, could be a lot worse. Is there anything we’ve got to write on?”
Slowly, a plan came together. Not an escape plan yet, but a plan to at least proceed further. Long before night fell and they were able to work on it however, the door opened once more and Robes came in, escorting Rossaria who was supported between two of the six fire warriors accompanying her. She had found her clothes once more and was neatly dressed, King resolved to never speak a word of that to anyone. Bill and Bellis ran forward unprompted to support her rather than leaving her leaning on the Xenos, and her head was high and proud as she acknowledged their efforts. Her hair was released from its usual high braid and fell in cascading blonde waves down the length of her back, the softer image disturbingly at odds with the uniform of a commissar and all the authority that came with it. King hadn’t registered the change of hairstyle when he had seen her lying down, he had had enough to focus his mind at that point, but now she was upright it seemed oddly almost more intrusive than the clothing thing.
She stepped gingerly on her right leg, putting as little weight on it as possible, but from nearly dead to nearly walking in around a day was a disturbingly good testament to the Xeno’s skills as surgeons.
“She needs a support, a crutch or something.” King told Robes, but Rossaria shook her head.
“They don’t trust me with a stick.” She explained. “He thinks with a stick I’d be able to kill them all - as if I couldn’t do that unarmed.”
“Rookie mistake.” King told Robes, in all sincerity. “You’ve obviously never met a Commissar. Let alone this one.”
Once inside the room Rossaria waved away her support, standing balanced on her good left leg with the air of one who could keep this up all day. King had guessed right when he read her initial file: she was not one who showed weakness easily.
“Walking aids will not be required, our medic has said you will be fully well in three days. Three days is an acceptable time period. Por'O Tau’na J’karra Ko’vash Mi’tesh indicates that he will be available for discuss tomorrow.”
“Understood.” Rossaria gave a curt nod. “You may leave us now.”
Since he had been about to do so anyway Robes and the warriors left, probably unaware of the put down. Unlike when King had arrived this time the troopers were not so quick to crowd round the new arrival, so King started the discussion.
“Welcome to our current quarters, Lord Commissar. Slightly warmer than we’re used to, but that’s more than made up for by the lack of privacy, activity, freedom or purpose. I’d give you the tour, but you’ve seen everything already.”
Rossaria gave him a look that indicated her opinion of the situation, and obtained from the guardsmen a brief rundown of who each one was and how they had been captured. She wasn’t as effusive as he had been in praising Bill’s decision regarding Bellis/Jaks, but did acknowledge that it was preferable under the circumstances to his being bayonetted on the ground. Then she ordered them to leave her and King in peace to talk. The guards looked to their Commander for confirmation and when he nodded, they scarpered gratefully to the farthest side of the room, breaking out the buttons and discussing loudly so as to not hear the command conversation. It was no more than King would have expected, but given the laxity in discipline that can easily occur in these circumstances, he was glad they followed the instructions so exactly.
Antonius helped Rossaria to the pile of mattresses so they could sit as far from the rank and file as possible.
“It’s good to see you recovered Rossaria.” He said honestly. “I didn’t think I’d would see you again when they got you. Didn’t think I’d see anything again, in fairness.”
“No.” She replied, in a tone that made clear that she wasn’t so happy about his continued existence as he was about hers. King told her everything - how they’d made their peace entreaty out of the blue, how he’d spun out the conversation as much as possible to give Trevanus time to arrive, how Commissar Haine had reacted, why he had decided that keeping the Tau away from their destination (even quietly he didn’t think it a good thing to mention in an enemy base) was the most important thing. How he had refused to go with them until his conditions were met, and his attempt at suicide thwarted by the weakness in his injured arm. Once he was done, Rossaria sat unmoving and silent for a very long moment, made longer by King’s nerves. He looked straight ahead as trained, not prepared to show nerves or any doubt in his actions.
“Do you have any understanding of quite how many regulations you have broken? Abandoning the fight, surrendering to the enemy, trying to kill yourself, striking a Commissar, impeding him in the course of his duty. He’d be quite within his rights to execute you on the spot for each of them, especially a man of your rank. You should be setting an example! Under the circumstances I feel he was very generous to allow you the option of appealing for the penal legion. I’d have had you as a servitor within a week!”
“I would point out I didn’t strike him, just pushed his hand down. But the rest is true.” He shrugged “I know exactly what I did, and if I had the chance to do it over, I’d do it again. I’m not some wet behind the ears little rookie just out of training, I know what the regulations say, and I know what my duty is. When the two clash, I’ll pick my duty to the Emperor every time.”
“Don’t quote His name like a shield against your treachery!”
“What treachery?” King had to struggle to keep his voice low, trying not to be heard by the guardsmen. “I broke regulations and I’m not denying that. I sacrificed myself for the sake of the mission, and I corrected a man who misunderstood the situation. The colour of that man’s sash doesn’t prevent him being, in this instance, wrong.”
“You don’t have the authority to decide that.”
“Tell me I’m wrong!”
“You’re wrong!” She shouted back, then dropped her voice to a low hiss. “You are very wrong to think that you have any right to override a Commissar’s decision. You are wrong to think that your arrogance allows you to make that choice no matter what your rank or reasons. A breakdown in discipline overshadows all else and is never forgivable no matter what the circumstances.”
“So I was right to surrender to save the mission, but wrong to tell Aloysius I was right?”
Her eyes narrowed. “No Antonius, you were wrong in every way. You blatantly, fragrantly and intentionally disobey regulations and no matter when or why you do that you will never be right. What you were, is excusable. Impeding a Commissar however, particularly in front of troops, can never be excused.”
“So what should I have done?” King demanded in frustration.
“You should have stood straight and proud as a solder and let him shoot you in the head until you were dead. That was your duty to the Emperor.”
“Then the mission would have failed.”
Rossara sighed, shaking her head. “You really don’t know what you’ve done, do you? You really don’t.” She looked directly into his clear blue eyes. “If I was someone else, someone without the training and the things I’ve seen, I think I would feel sorry for you.” She looked down, clearly trying to work out how to phrase this.
“I recall what you said to Rhys, that the artefact could save billions of lives. However, those same billions *are* being saved, every day, by discipline: discipline that you just worked to destroy. You stood in front of the men who worship you and told them that anyone can ignore a Commissar if you think your reasons are strong enough. They’ll have taken that lesson to heart, Antonius, and the only way they can unlearn it will be by seeing what happens to you for doing it.”
King couldn’t keep his feelings from showing at that. Instead, he dropped his head to his hands.
“Frakk. You’re right. I didn’t think of it like that.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.” She said dryly. “You also didn’t think of what it will do to this regiment when I have to put you on public trial for your crimes and find you guilty on every count. They’ll have to be disbanded of course, this will practically turn them into renegades.”
“There’s no way that’ll happen and we both know it - if you or the Tau won’t shoot me before then I’ll do it myself.”
“And die a martyr to your disobedience? Even worse. You’ll make it to that trial and you’ll be crucified. Those who rebel on seeing their hero cast down - and some will, you know that as well as I do - will be shot, and eventually the whole regiment will be disbanded. That’s what will have to happen Antonius, because the alternative will be worse, on them and on the Imperium.”
“I gave him an out. You must have had Commissars be wrong before.”
“He gave you an out: the penal legion. A chance to at least try to ensure your death has meaning. As I said, it’s far more than I’d have done. And no, we have never had Commissars be wrong before, because Commissars are never wrong, that is the base that all military discipline is built upon. If a Commissar tells you that black is white, then black is white because a Commissar is never wrong. That is our duty.”
King wanted to reply, to fire back the winning argument that proved he was right and she was wrong, but though several options presented themselves none of them could work. Because the Lord Commissar was right.
In the cell, the troopers were eager for any word of what had happened. He didn’t blame them for being interested, nor for being jealous that he had been outside these walls more times already in his short stay than they had been in the preceding weeks. He updated them regarding Rossaria’s progress and the fact that she would in all likelihood be joining them here, and clarified that he would take responsibility for the necessary damage to their uniforms in the cause of unit morale. Given the long list of charges Aloysius had thrown at him and the various others that one could almost certainly add by now, the odds were that a few missing buttons would be the least of his worries.
Then he got to the crux of the matter: investigating what he had got from the medical lab. Particularly paranoid after Robes’ comment about not leaving him and Rossaria to talk in private King was fairly convinced there was a sensor in the room, most likely in the luminator in the ceiling, based on the simple logic that that’s what he would have done. There was some isolated space in the waste reclamation area as they had hung their bedsheets as curtains to afford some privacy, but four people crowding into the toilet would undoubtedly raise some questions.
He gathered them into the corner where the unwanted mattresses were stored and sometimes used as crashmats, ensuring that people were angled so as to block what they were doing from any direct sight. Then he explained what he had done and produced the two items for them to try to fathom a use for.
They were different, that much was clear. All to the good, maybe that would increase their range of options. The fact did remain that he had no idea what they were however, and without Rhys here with her specialist medical knowledge they would be unlikely to find out the true purpose of the metal sticks. They should be able to work out something however.
As it was, they turned out to be remarkable easy to identify. Both had buttons on: when pressed one lit up with a reddish glow and the other produced on its base a black rectangle about half a centimetre long and a just under two millimetres wide. Pressing that rectangle against something left a black mark in its wake.
“It’s a pen!” Hunter marvelled.
“A chunky ridiculous pen!” Bill agreed.
“No! It’s amazing, they’re turning power cells into permanent marks with no heat or gouging! Look, it writes on skin as easily as the flo…” King grabbed the pen off her, but not before she had put a small black spot in the middle of the clear white-grey floor. They looked at it in horror as Hunter realised the significance of the mark.
“Get. That. Off.” King intoned coldly, each word falling like a grave marker. Hunter scrubbed at it with her fingers and then with the hem of her shirt, but it stayed resolutely unchanged. Bill and Bellis joined in the effort, even trying to carve a hole in the floor to get it off, but with no effect. Suddenly Bellis jumped up and stood on it, drawing his boot back hard against the floor. Nothing happened. He tried again with the side of his boot, and managed a ling thin scrape of rubber covering the stain from the pen. It wasn’t ideal and it certainly wasn’t the best solution, but it was the best they could manage without some kind of cleaning acid.
“Good thinking.” King commended him, before turning to Hunter in fury. “You frakking idiot! One mistake, and it’s all over, you understand!? Not just any escape chance, but they’ll happily kill any or all of you just to upset me. That’s why they took the command team - they didn’t need anyone except the people I work closely with. We cannot give them any excuse!”
“Sorry sir.” She replied, looking genuinely contrite.
“It’s not just your own damn life you’re risking here, Hunter, it’s any of you. You misbehave, they’ll kill Bill. Or ‘Jaks’ here. There are risks we have to take and risks that are just frakking stupid mistakes that *will* get someone killed!”
“Sir, with every respect.” Bellis began tentatively, obviously not sure how to ask his question. King turned to him and tried not to glare as the soldier continued.
“With every respect sir, why did you risk stealing stuff if it could get us killed?”
“Fair question, trooper.” King replied, and the relief was clear on the kid’s face. “Because I don’t believe for a minute that the Tau are going to let us go. They assume we’ll kowtow and join their greater good, forsaking our comrades and our Emperor. Once they realise that’s not going to happen, they’re not going to release us so we can skip back to the front line to stand against them. We need to take acceptable risks to escape, but every risk we take is dangerous. It’s a very high stakes game we’re caught in, but we don’t get to sit this round out.”
Bellis nodded, somewhat awestruck. King turned back to the crux of the matter.
“So, it’s a torch and a pen. Could be better, could be a lot worse. Is there anything we’ve got to write on?”
Slowly, a plan came together. Not an escape plan yet, but a plan to at least proceed further. Long before night fell and they were able to work on it however, the door opened once more and Robes came in, escorting Rossaria who was supported between two of the six fire warriors accompanying her. She had found her clothes once more and was neatly dressed, King resolved to never speak a word of that to anyone. Bill and Bellis ran forward unprompted to support her rather than leaving her leaning on the Xenos, and her head was high and proud as she acknowledged their efforts. Her hair was released from its usual high braid and fell in cascading blonde waves down the length of her back, the softer image disturbingly at odds with the uniform of a commissar and all the authority that came with it. King hadn’t registered the change of hairstyle when he had seen her lying down, he had had enough to focus his mind at that point, but now she was upright it seemed oddly almost more intrusive than the clothing thing.
She stepped gingerly on her right leg, putting as little weight on it as possible, but from nearly dead to nearly walking in around a day was a disturbingly good testament to the Xeno’s skills as surgeons.
“She needs a support, a crutch or something.” King told Robes, but Rossaria shook her head.
“They don’t trust me with a stick.” She explained. “He thinks with a stick I’d be able to kill them all - as if I couldn’t do that unarmed.”
“Rookie mistake.” King told Robes, in all sincerity. “You’ve obviously never met a Commissar. Let alone this one.”
Once inside the room Rossaria waved away her support, standing balanced on her good left leg with the air of one who could keep this up all day. King had guessed right when he read her initial file: she was not one who showed weakness easily.
“Walking aids will not be required, our medic has said you will be fully well in three days. Three days is an acceptable time period. Por'O Tau’na J’karra Ko’vash Mi’tesh indicates that he will be available for discuss tomorrow.”
“Understood.” Rossaria gave a curt nod. “You may leave us now.”
Since he had been about to do so anyway Robes and the warriors left, probably unaware of the put down. Unlike when King had arrived this time the troopers were not so quick to crowd round the new arrival, so King started the discussion.
“Welcome to our current quarters, Lord Commissar. Slightly warmer than we’re used to, but that’s more than made up for by the lack of privacy, activity, freedom or purpose. I’d give you the tour, but you’ve seen everything already.”
Rossaria gave him a look that indicated her opinion of the situation, and obtained from the guardsmen a brief rundown of who each one was and how they had been captured. She wasn’t as effusive as he had been in praising Bill’s decision regarding Bellis/Jaks, but did acknowledge that it was preferable under the circumstances to his being bayonetted on the ground. Then she ordered them to leave her and King in peace to talk. The guards looked to their Commander for confirmation and when he nodded, they scarpered gratefully to the farthest side of the room, breaking out the buttons and discussing loudly so as to not hear the command conversation. It was no more than King would have expected, but given the laxity in discipline that can easily occur in these circumstances, he was glad they followed the instructions so exactly.
Antonius helped Rossaria to the pile of mattresses so they could sit as far from the rank and file as possible.
“It’s good to see you recovered Rossaria.” He said honestly. “I didn’t think I’d would see you again when they got you. Didn’t think I’d see anything again, in fairness.”
“No.” She replied, in a tone that made clear that she wasn’t so happy about his continued existence as he was about hers. King told her everything - how they’d made their peace entreaty out of the blue, how he’d spun out the conversation as much as possible to give Trevanus time to arrive, how Commissar Haine had reacted, why he had decided that keeping the Tau away from their destination (even quietly he didn’t think it a good thing to mention in an enemy base) was the most important thing. How he had refused to go with them until his conditions were met, and his attempt at suicide thwarted by the weakness in his injured arm. Once he was done, Rossaria sat unmoving and silent for a very long moment, made longer by King’s nerves. He looked straight ahead as trained, not prepared to show nerves or any doubt in his actions.
“Do you have any understanding of quite how many regulations you have broken? Abandoning the fight, surrendering to the enemy, trying to kill yourself, striking a Commissar, impeding him in the course of his duty. He’d be quite within his rights to execute you on the spot for each of them, especially a man of your rank. You should be setting an example! Under the circumstances I feel he was very generous to allow you the option of appealing for the penal legion. I’d have had you as a servitor within a week!”
“I would point out I didn’t strike him, just pushed his hand down. But the rest is true.” He shrugged “I know exactly what I did, and if I had the chance to do it over, I’d do it again. I’m not some wet behind the ears little rookie just out of training, I know what the regulations say, and I know what my duty is. When the two clash, I’ll pick my duty to the Emperor every time.”
“Don’t quote His name like a shield against your treachery!”
“What treachery?” King had to struggle to keep his voice low, trying not to be heard by the guardsmen. “I broke regulations and I’m not denying that. I sacrificed myself for the sake of the mission, and I corrected a man who misunderstood the situation. The colour of that man’s sash doesn’t prevent him being, in this instance, wrong.”
“You don’t have the authority to decide that.”
“Tell me I’m wrong!”
“You’re wrong!” She shouted back, then dropped her voice to a low hiss. “You are very wrong to think that you have any right to override a Commissar’s decision. You are wrong to think that your arrogance allows you to make that choice no matter what your rank or reasons. A breakdown in discipline overshadows all else and is never forgivable no matter what the circumstances.”
“So I was right to surrender to save the mission, but wrong to tell Aloysius I was right?”
Her eyes narrowed. “No Antonius, you were wrong in every way. You blatantly, fragrantly and intentionally disobey regulations and no matter when or why you do that you will never be right. What you were, is excusable. Impeding a Commissar however, particularly in front of troops, can never be excused.”
“So what should I have done?” King demanded in frustration.
“You should have stood straight and proud as a solder and let him shoot you in the head until you were dead. That was your duty to the Emperor.”
“Then the mission would have failed.”
Rossara sighed, shaking her head. “You really don’t know what you’ve done, do you? You really don’t.” She looked directly into his clear blue eyes. “If I was someone else, someone without the training and the things I’ve seen, I think I would feel sorry for you.” She looked down, clearly trying to work out how to phrase this.
“I recall what you said to Rhys, that the artefact could save billions of lives. However, those same billions *are* being saved, every day, by discipline: discipline that you just worked to destroy. You stood in front of the men who worship you and told them that anyone can ignore a Commissar if you think your reasons are strong enough. They’ll have taken that lesson to heart, Antonius, and the only way they can unlearn it will be by seeing what happens to you for doing it.”
King couldn’t keep his feelings from showing at that. Instead, he dropped his head to his hands.
“Frakk. You’re right. I didn’t think of it like that.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.” She said dryly. “You also didn’t think of what it will do to this regiment when I have to put you on public trial for your crimes and find you guilty on every count. They’ll have to be disbanded of course, this will practically turn them into renegades.”
“There’s no way that’ll happen and we both know it - if you or the Tau won’t shoot me before then I’ll do it myself.”
“And die a martyr to your disobedience? Even worse. You’ll make it to that trial and you’ll be crucified. Those who rebel on seeing their hero cast down - and some will, you know that as well as I do - will be shot, and eventually the whole regiment will be disbanded. That’s what will have to happen Antonius, because the alternative will be worse, on them and on the Imperium.”
“I gave him an out. You must have had Commissars be wrong before.”
“He gave you an out: the penal legion. A chance to at least try to ensure your death has meaning. As I said, it’s far more than I’d have done. And no, we have never had Commissars be wrong before, because Commissars are never wrong, that is the base that all military discipline is built upon. If a Commissar tells you that black is white, then black is white because a Commissar is never wrong. That is our duty.”
King wanted to reply, to fire back the winning argument that proved he was right and she was wrong, but though several options presented themselves none of them could work. Because the Lord Commissar was right.