Chapter 16 : The Misdirection
Corso's fist hit the table before Nash finished speaking.
"Three hundred people." She stabbed a finger at the map — the northern sector, sixty kilometers from the settlement's perimeter, where a cluster of hand-drawn symbols represented something the scout's report had reduced to numbers. "Three hundred humans, no military leadership, no fortification, and Gorgrim's main column is heading straight for them."
"In approximately four days," Nash confirmed. "The column is moving at standard Ork march pace. Twelve kilometers per day through urban rubble."
The command post held the usual faces — Corso, Priscilla, Sigma-9, Father Marcus — plus the unusual one. Volkov occupied his standard position at the doorframe, but tonight his posture had shifted. Leaning forward instead of back. Engaged instead of observing.
"We rescue them," Volkov said. Not a question.
"If we mobilize a relief force large enough to extract three hundred people through sixty kilometers of contested territory, we expose this settlement's location." Nash drew the route on the map. "Gorgrim's scouts are operating in a fifteen-kilometer radius around his column. Any force we send crosses their detection envelope."
"So we're quiet about it."
"Sixty kilometers, Commissar. Three hundred civilians, including wounded and children per the scout report. There is no quiet version of that operation."
The room went still. Nash watched the understanding land — the arithmetic of compassion versus survival, the equation that had no right answer.
"You're suggesting we let them die." Father Marcus's voice carried no judgment. He was asking, not accusing. The distinction mattered.
"I'm stating the tactical reality. A rescue mission reveals us. Gorgrim redirects. Instead of three hundred dead, we get three hundred plus six hundred and eighty dead."
"And if we do nothing?"
"Then three hundred people die and Gorgrim's attention stays focused elsewhere. We gain time. Weeks, possibly. Time we need for fortification, production, training."
Priscilla's stylus had stopped moving on her data-slate. She stared at the map with an expression Nash recognized — the administrator calculating cost, the human being rejecting the result.
Volkov stepped off the doorframe. "The Imperium does not abandon its citizens to xenos butchery. That is not a tactical consideration. It is doctrine."
"Doctrine written for armies with supply lines and reinforcements. We have neither."
"Then we improvise. You've been improvising since the bunker, Garrett. Improvise a rescue."
Nash's teeth pressed together. The Commissar's words hit the exact nerve — the tension between the pragmatist who counted resources and the man who remembered every face tagged as deceased. He could feel both parts pulling, the system offering probability calculations while something older and less quantifiable pushed back.
"He's right. And he's wrong. And I have a third option that's worse than either."
"There's another way."
The room shifted. Nash pulled a separate map — Ork territory, northern sectors, the distribution of Gorgrim's forces compiled from weeks of scout reports and intercepted vox traffic that Sigma-9 had been translating.
"Gorgrim's WAAAGH! is unified because he killed the opposition. But the absorption was recent — the integrated warbands aren't loyal to Gorgrim. They're obedient because he's the biggest and meanest thing in the room. That loyalty is skin-deep."
He pointed to three marks on the map. "Three sub-bosses. Nob-level leaders of the absorbed factions who survived the purge by bending the knee fast enough. They still have networks. They still have ambitions."
"You want to turn them against Gorgrim," Sigma-9 said. Her middle lens had dilated to maximum — the explorator processing implications at machine speed.
"Not directly. I want to kill Gorgrim's favorite Mek — the one maintaining his vehicle fleet — and frame one of the sub-boss factions for the murder. Plant evidence. Create suspicion. Ork warbosses don't investigate — they retaliate. Gorgrim purges the suspected faction, the other sub-bosses get nervous, and the whole structure destabilizes."
Silence. Then Corso, slowly: "An Ork civil war."
"A manufactured one. We don't fight Gorgrim's army. We make his army fight itself."
"That's..." Corso paused, searching for the word. "That's effective."
"That's dishonorable." Volkov's voice carried the weight of absolute conviction. "Assassination. Deception. Framing enemies for crimes they didn't commit. These are the tools of heretics and xenos, not servants of the Emperor."
"The Emperor's servants are dying sixty kilometers north of here because Gorgrim has two thousand Orks and we have six hundred and eighty humans. Honor is a luxury paid for in lives we don't have."
"Honor is not a luxury. It is the foundation—"
"Foundation of what?" Nash met Volkov's stare. "The Imperium that abandoned this planet? The military that collapsed in the first hour? The relief force that hasn't come in five weeks?" He kept his voice controlled — flat, data-driven, the voice that didn't shake even when the hands wanted to. "We work with what we have. What we have is intelligence, opportunity, and the willingness to fight ugly."
Volkov's jaw clenched hard enough to make the muscles stand out like cables.
"Council vote," Nash said. "Corso?"
"In favor. It's the only option that doesn't risk this settlement."
"Sigma-9?"
"The mathematical superiority of indirect conflict is self-evident. In favor."
"Father Marcus?"
The priest stood at his customary post near the door, brass aquila in his clasped hands. His face held something Nash hadn't seen before — not disapproval, but the careful stillness of a man weighing his conscience against his pragmatism. The same expression Nash imagined chaplains wore when blessing soldiers headed for ugly work.
"I abstain," Marcus said quietly. "The Emperor's will is not mine to interpret in matters of blood."
"First time he hasn't backed me. First time he's looked at what I'm proposing and couldn't find the prayer to justify it."
"Three in favor, one opposed, one abstention." Nash folded the map. "The operation proceeds."
Volkov's hand rested on his bolt pistol. Not gripping — resting. The deliberate placement of a man reminding everyone what authority he carried.
"I will accompany the team," Volkov said. "Personally."
Nash had expected this. "Agreed."
"Not as oversight. As a participant. If dishonorable work must be done in the Emperor's name, I will bear witness from inside it — not from a comfortable distance."
The words landed with intent. Nash recognized the tactic — Volkov was inserting himself into the mission to observe Nash's methods at close range. Every decision, every system-guided movement, every insight that a clerk shouldn't possess, witnessed at arm's length by a man with Investigate 60.
"Then you'll see exactly how it's done, Commissar. We move at midnight."
Nash spent the evening hours in preparation.
The mission was simple in concept, brutal in execution. A five-person team — Nash, Volkov, and three of Vasquez's best infiltrators — would penetrate Gorgrim's outer perimeter, locate the Mek's workshop, eliminate the target, plant fabricated evidence pointing to the Nob faction of one Boss Gutsnag, and extract before the camp erupted.
The system painted the plan in tactical overlay: approach vectors, patrol timing windows, sentry positions extrapolated from weeks of scout data. Nash translated each element into hand-drawn briefing materials, careful to introduce the deliberate imperfections that made his work look human rather than machine-calculated.
Vasquez selected the team: Specialist Dren — a former hive hunter who moved through rubble like water; Corporal Tash — the best shot in the garrison after Vasquez himself; and Private Olek — a young woman who'd survived the first battle and volunteered for every dangerous patrol since.
Nash briefed them at 2300 in the command post. Volkov sat in the corner, greatcoat buttoned, cap squared, bolt pistol freshly maintained. He said nothing throughout the briefing. His eyes recorded everything.
After the team dispersed to gather equipment, Nash sat alone in the command post with a lasgun across his knees. He'd been issued a proper weapon two weeks ago — Volkov's armory contribution, standard Kantrael pattern, maintained to specification. His hands knew it now. Not expertly — the system still rated his marksmanship as "marginal" — but familiarly, the way a tool becomes an extension through repetition.
"I'm going to kill someone tonight. Not in the chaos of a defensive battle, not by collapsing a ceiling on a charging Nob. I'm going to sneak into a camp, put a las-bolt through a skull, and frame someone else for it. Cold. Calculated. Murder."
"On Earth, the worst thing I did to a competitor was steal their best developer with a signing bonus. Now I'm planning an assassination."
"Is this who I become? Is this what the forty-first millennium makes of project managers?"
He cleaned the lasgun. Checked the power pack. Stood.
The infiltration team assembled at the eastern gate at midnight.
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