Killing Ground

Sometimes the ghosts of the past won't let you go…

The bar was crowded and the simmering air of resentment that filled its smoky depths was like a current running through Hanno Merbal's body. He could sense the hatred of what he represented in every muttered syllable, every furtive glance and every hostile stare. He lifted the glass before him and knocked the harsh spirit back in one gulp.

The crude liquor burned his throat and he coughed, wondering for a moment if the sour-faced bastard behind the bar had simply served him a glass of promethium as some kind of sick joke. He slammed the glass down onto the beaten metal bar and looked into the man's yellow eyes, seeking confirmation of his suspicions.

Yes, the man wore a mask of ungrateful resentment etched into his face, just like all the other locals. Hanno wouldn't have put it past him to try and poison a decorated Imperial soldier of the Achaman Falcatas, but as the heat of the liquor spread through his gut, he smiled as the strength of the drink eased the frantic screaming inside his skull.

Hanno lowered his head until it rested on the cool metal of the bar.

'Another one,' he said, and another measure was duly poured and set before him. Hanno took a deep breath, inhaling the stink of his own sweat and guilt, and closed his eyes against the sight of his rounded belly and sagging chest.

He lifted his head, studying the bar and the drink that sat upon it.

From the pattern of the rivets and the faded markings along its length, Hanno could tell that the bar had once been the side of a Chimera. Slots that had once been fitted with integral lasguns were now repositories for spent and crushed lho sticks. The drink was a cloudy, gritty concoction distilled in a corroded drum that had once been a Hellhound's fuel tank. It was lethal stuff, but it was the only thing that helped Hanno Merbal blot out the memories of the Killing Ground.

He lifted the drink and again drained it in a single swallow, coughing at its potency.

'Damn, but that's good stuff,' spluttered Hanno, tossing a crumpled handful of the new Imperial currency onto the bar. 'Give me the bottle, you robbing bastard.'

Hanno heard the rustle of conversation drop a notch and he looked around, a soldier's instincts for danger not yet completely obliterated by the alcohol he'd consumed. Through the haze of hookah smoke and stinging eyes, Hanno saw that virtually every face in the bar was turned towards him.

'What are you looking at?' he yelled, his resentment overcoming the deeper desire that gnawed at his sanity.

'I got every right to be here. We beat you. You lost. Deal with it.'

'Here's your drink,' said the barman, slamming an unlabelled blue bottle down beside him, 'and keep your damn cash, I don't want your blood money. Now get out.'

Hanno snatched up the bottle, but made no attempt to retrieve the notes from the bar. He pulled the cork from the neck of the bottle with his teeth and poured himself another drink.

'Why do you keep coming here?' asked a voice beside Hanno. He spun unsteadily on his stool to see a tall, rangy man with a shaved head and a long, forked beard tied in braids looming over him. A knot of pale scar tissue creased the left side of his head. Hanno knew enough veterans to recognise a las-burn when he saw one.

The man wore the same faded brown work tunic as everyone else, but where most others on this dismal world favoured ash-grey storm cloaks, this stranger wore the green and gold double wrapped cloak of the Sons of Salinas.

'I could have you arrested for wearing that,' said Hanno.

'I'd like to see you try,' said the man. Hanno's eyes focused as he took a closer look at the man. He was unarmed, but wore the threat of violence like a weapon and his eyes shone with controlled anger.

'What's your name?' asked Hanno.

'You know my name, I think.'

'I think I do,' said Hanno, seeing a number of men behind the stranger slide their hands beneath their storm cloaks. 'There's a reward for your capture, or death. I forget which.'

'Are you planning on collecting it?'

Hanno shook his head. 'Not tonight. It's my day off.'

'Very wise,' said the man, 'but you never answered my question. Why do you keep coming to this place? I hear you come in every night and get blind drunk on raquir before insulting everyone and staggering back to your barracks alone.'

'Perhaps I like the company,' snapped Hanno, waving his hands at the walls, 'or perhaps I like the aesthetic of rusted battle tank interior.'

'Are you looking to get killed?' asked the man, leaning close and whispering.

'And if I was, would you be the man to do it?' Hanno whispered back. 'Would you?'

'I think you should go. A lot of people here want to kill you,' said the man, 'and I'm not sure I should stop them.'

'Then don't, please.'

The man leaned back with a curious expression on his face. 'Is that it?' he asked. 'Did Barbaden send you here to get killed so he can unleash Kain and her Screaming Eagles?'

'Barbaden?' spat Hanno. 'He's got nothing to do with me, not anymore.'

'No?' asked the man, reaching out and lifting a flap of Hanno's long trench coat to reveal the faded scarlet uniform jacket of a lieutenant in the Achaman Falcatas, the silver buttons straining to hold in his generously proportioned belly. 'Last I heard, the Falcatas were still Barbaden's old regiment.'

Hanno snatched his trench coat closed and returned his attention to the bar, rubbing a hand over his stubbled jaw and bleary eyes. He looked back at the man with the forked beard and said, 'I'm sorry. I… We never meant—'

'Are you apologising to me?' interrupted the man, his anger even more plain.

'I'm trying to,' said Hanno, but before he could say more a series of knocks sounded at the entrance to the bar and the man turned and ran for the back way out. Within moments it was as if the incident had never happened, the shadowy denizens of the bar returning their attention to their drinks and studiously avoiding Hanno's gaze.

He turned on his stool as the tall, stoop-shouldered form of Daron Nisato ducked under the iron girder welded to two wrecked tank chassis that served as a lintel and stepped into the bar with an expression of disappointment. He flicked a piece of floating detritus from the lapels of his enforcer's tunic and looked around the bar until his eyes fixed on Hanno.

'I thought I'd find you here, lieutenant,' said Nisato.

'What can I say?' replied Hanno. 'I'm a creature of habit.'

'Only bad ones,' said Nisato, and Hanno was forced to agree.

'You'll never guess who was just here,' said Hanno, by way of conversation.

'Who?'

'It doesn't matter,' giggled Hanno, looking over to the rear of the bar as Nisato took a seat next to him. 'No one important.'

Daron Nisato was a handsome man in his fifties with sharp features, quick eyes and dark skin. His hair was tightly curled and had turned to grey at the temples at an early age, giving him a distinguished look that had served him well when he'd been a commissar in the Achaman Falcatas.

'You want a drink?' asked Hanno.

'Of raquir? No, I think not. I don't think you should have any more either.'

'You're probably right, Daron, but what else is there?'

'There's duty,' said Nisato. 'You have yours and I have mine.'

'Duty?' barked Hanno, waving his hands around the bar. 'Look what duty's done for us. Made us the enemy on our own world, a world we fought and bled to win. Some prize, eh?'

'Keep your voice down, Hanno,' cautioned Nisato.

'Or what? You'll arrest me?'

'If I have to, yes. A night in the drunk tank might do you some good.'

'No,' said Hanno, 'there's only one thing that'll do me any good.'

'What's that?'

'This,' said Hanno, drawing an immaculately polished pistol from beneath his trench coat.

Nisato was instantly alert. 'What are you doing, Hanno? Put that away.'

Hanno reached into his trench coat again and pulled out something that gleamed gold beneath the flickering globes strung on looped wires from the corrugated metal roof of the bar. He tossed the object onto the bar, where it spun like a coin, rattling on the metal as the image of a fiery eagle wobbled on its golden surface.

'You still keep your medal?' asked Hanno.

'I never received one,' replied Nisato. 'I wasn't there.'

The medal ceased its rotation and lay flat on the greasy surface of the bar.

'Lucky you,' said Hanno, his eyes filling with tears. 'You don't see them then?'

'See who?'

'The burned ones… The ones… The dead?'

Hanno saw the confusion in Nisato's face and tried to speak, but the awful, unforgettable smell of seared human meat rose in his nostrils and the words died in his throat. He gagged, tasting ashen bone and smelling the acrid reek of promethium as though a soot-stained flame trooper stood right next to him.

You were there.

'Oh no… No, please…' he sobbed. 'Not again.'

'Hanno, what's the matter?' demanded Nisato, but Hanno could not reply. He looked around as searing flames leapt to life all around the bar, hot, yellow and unforgiving. As though fanned by some unseen wind, the flames displayed an appetite beyond measure and greedily devoured everything in their path with a whooshing roar. Within moments the entire bar was aflame and Hanno wept as he knew what would come next.

The patrons of the bar rose to their feet, clothes ablaze and faces transformed from surly and hostile to molten and agonised. Like some monstrous host of fiery elemental, they marched towards him, and Hanno turned to Daron Nisato, hoping against hope that the former commissar was seeing what he saw.

Daron Nisato was oblivious to the flaming carnage filling the bar, looking at him with an expression of worried concern and pity.

Hanno cried out as black smoke boiled from the ground, choking and reeking with chemical stink. Shadows moved through the haze like fiery marionettes jerking to the dance of some lunatic puppeteer.

He heard Daron Nisato's voice, but the words were lost to him as he saw a horrifyingly familiar form emerge from the smoke and fire, a girl child, no more than seven years old.

Her dress was ablaze and her arms were, as always, held out to him, as if seeking his affection or rescue. Her skin bubbled and popped, meat and fat running from her bones like molten rubber as her limbs creaked and contracted in the terrible heat.

'You were there,' said the little girl, her face a searing mass of bright flame that ate through her skull and into her brain-pan. A dreadful, spectral light filled her eyes, all that the fire had not yet dared to consume.

'I'm sorry,' said Hanno, as a suffocating wave of guilty remorse clamped his heart.

He drew in a deep breath and in the blink of an eye the inferno of the bar, the melting child and the burning men vanished. All was as it had been moments before. Hanno snatched at the bar to steady himself as the world spun crazily around him, his senses trying to reorient to normality in the wake of such horror.

'What the hell was that?' demanded Nisato beside him, completely unaware of the nightmarish things that Hanno had just experienced for the thousandth time. The enforcer took hold of his arm and said, 'Let's get out of here. You're coming with me.'

'No,' wept Hanno, shrugging off Nisato's grip, 'I'm not. I can't go on like this.'

'You can't,' agreed Nisato. 'That's why you need to come with me now.'

'No,' repeated Hanno, snatching up his pistol and the medal from the bar. 'There's only one place I'm going: Hell.'

Hanno Merbal thrust the pistol into his mouth and blew the back of his head off.