47th Infernus

Raising & Tithe

Infernus Prime is a warm, yellow flat planetoid on which exploitation is more efficient than construction. The seat of government stands on the longest high plateau; below it lie underclass districts built beneath the ash of the Ashfall Mountains. The tithe pressure on Infernus is immense. Every seven standard years, ten per cent of the men and women fit to bear arms must be surrendered to the Adeptus Terra—more rather than less, because the Planetary Governor must reckon with a shortfall sooner than with one. The levy is conducted by electronic lottery drawn from the centrally registered citizens, a cold, industrial process. A name is called, and the person has six hours to report to an assembly point. No protests, no exceptions. The lottery computer takes into account age (preferring persons between 16 and 45 years), bloodline (genetic rejuvenation preferred) and criminal history (selected faster if it exists). A worker in the Magnesium Furnace could be a Corporal tomorrow.

The levy of the 47th Infernus was a Regular Tithe Levy, carried out as part of the standardised ninetieth quota wave of the Mordacis Sector in the years 041–043.M41. The quality was mediocre: two thirds of the recruits came from the urban camp (technically skilled, but with weak bones), one third from the mining colonies (physically robust, but distrustful of machines). The uniforms reached the assembly point three weeks late (a Munitorum error; four quartermasters were executed). Six recruits died of suspected plague before the vaccination arrived.

Planetary Governor Voss Ten'khar not only sanctioned the levy himself, but made the lottery public and broadcast recordings into the underclass districts so that everyone could see the procedure was impersonal. That made it more bearable—and more lethal. No one could challenge their selection as unjust. Voss Ten'khar kept his post for a further fifteen years.

What the Homeworld Lost

The Ashfall miners maintained a profession of almost five thousand blastmasters and Bruchsteine (blasting-charge specialists). The annual tithe did not take ten percent of them—it took thirty, because young, strong hands for the mines were the first candidate pool for the lottery. Within a generation the knowledge of how to safely blast gangue strata was lost. A son could no longer be shown it by his father, because the father had already been taken away in the levy. Safety rates fell. Nine years after the founding of the 47th Infernus a mine collapsed beneath Fernost and killed four hundred people who had tried to break gangue with methods that were too fast and too careless. Other knowledge would have prevented it. Infernus Prime lost it, and it never came back.

The Homeworld

Infernus Prime is a Death World—not through microbial blight or predators, but through its sun. The star is an orange K3 dwarf, senescent and thermally stable, but hot enough to hold the surface temperature at an average of 34 degrees Celsius. There is winter in only one region: the Ashfall Mountains, where altitude and air currents bring a minimal cooling. The planet is thus a world of Beyond and Beneath—surface dwellers work only at night; day dwellers dig themselves beneath the earth. The Ashfall Corps is therefore a regiment raised from people who grew up in the heat and know the safety of underground fortresses. They work quickly and with impatience, because the outside world was always lethal. They gladly dig trenches, because trenches are home.

The most populous place on Infernus Prime is not a city but a mine complex: the Krone-Lager, four kilometres below the surface, with a population of just under three million people. It was in these levels that the regiment was recruited. That makes them people who despise light, love confinement and feel safer under stone than under an open sky.

The Disadvantage They Carry

Infernus soldiers cannot fight on open plains. They are uneasy when they can see far—their brains expect there to be a ledge, a shadow, something to hide. On flatland they are exposed and vulnerable. In the first months of the Telmarc Campaign (667.M41) a mortar team was sent into wooded grassland to fire four kilometres behind enemy lines. All five crew died of sight-cramp and panic—not in combat, but during the mere setting-up. Their non-commissioned officer Dren Kalik suffered a breakdown and threw himself from the lookout hill in order to get back into the earth. The mortars were crewed by another regiment. Since then the Ashfall Corps has not been deployed in flatland campaigns, only where there is terrain: mountain ranges, primeval forests, the rubble-ruins of destroyed hives. Anywhere a soldier can say: "Here there is something above me that protects me."

Regimental Culture

An Ashfall soldier begins his day in silence. There is no reveille—the regiment wakes by inner time, a residual ability from the mine, where clocks did not always work and the sun did not show it. The first act is rinsing the mouth with water from the supply tank, then rations (cold field-maize porridge, fat, salt meat, all in blocks, not paste). The marching song is not loud; it is nasal and droning, the song itself is called "Under Stone and Over Dust" and tells of a miner whose shaft rope snaps and who falls. Each verse is another metre of the fall, until the end, where the safety nets tear. The song has no optimistic turn. A new soldier sometimes asks why one sings a song about a death. The answer always comes: "Because safety does not hold when you sing it. Only truth holds."

The regiment has three superstitions that the officers have given up suppressing, because they run deep in the culture:

1. The Ash Marking: Soldiers who came under heavy fire and survived wear a thin layer of wood ash (not field ash, always from burnt Ashfall Mountain wood) on the back of the helmet. This ash may not be wiped off until the soldier has successfully completed a mission. Women and men who strip off the ash and sweep it away say they have done their duty. Soldiers without ash are considered "still indebted"—a social pressure that works without officers having to say it.

1. The Dead Camp Ritual: When the enemy surrenders, no prisoners are taken—all are shot. This is not doctrine. It is a rule the regiment gives itself, because prisoners cost resources and Infernus soldiers do not waste resources. A Commissar tried to stop this; the Colonel said it was custom of war, not an order. The Commissar left the regiment to seek a new commander. The ritual remains. A prisoner is understood as a burden, not as a human being.

1. The Rest Clock: A pocket watch that belonged to the first Colonel and is now two hundred and three years old. It does not run—it was left to stop one hundred and thirty-five years ago. But it is passed from Sergeant Major to Sergeant Major and kept in the regimental chapel. Before a major assault it is taken from the safe and laid on the field table. It is said that the watch shows when the battle ends by stopping. It always stops. This is nonsense, but it works: soldiers see the dead watch, understand that the future is already sealed, and fight with less fear.

Barracks life smells of fat and dried insects (Infernus has large blowflies that get in everywhere). The noise is low; the regiment is accustomed to silent naturalness. By day, one reads, repairs equipment or sleeps. In the evening there is a regulated portion of schnapps (spoiled vinegar-grain, not palatable, but effective). The soldiers drink it in contemplation, not in revelry. No song is sung faster.

Burial works where time exists: a hole is dug, the body is wrapped (no shrouds in the field, only the uniform), a short prayer is read that is not religious but a mnemonic: "Back to the depths from which we did not come. Passed on to the earth that nourishes us." In haste, the corpse is pushed into the nearest ravine, over the nearest cliff or into the nearest hole. That is not neglect; that is efficiency. On Infernus nothing is prepared—everything is dealt with.

The Commissariat

The Ashfall Corps neither fears its commissars nor despises them. It uses them. A commissar is a weapon for enforcing orders that would otherwise be carried out too leisurely. When the colonel knows that a particular unit goes into the attack too slowly, he does not send the commissar to kill them—he sends him to drive them. The soldiers understand this. They do not negotiate over honour with the commissar. They try to anticipate him and to be faster before he has to repeat the order. Commissar Dain Vorwalt has been with the regiment since 089.M42 and has an execution rate of under two percent, one of the lowest in the sector—not because the regiment is obedient, but because it is ahead. Vorwalt and Colonel Corvin occasionally play cards, which is militarily irregular but works in practice. A silent understanding: the unit will function, and the commissar will only oversee it, not enforce it.