Harold's Last Day

(NARRATIVE OF YESTERDAY'S GAME. THERE ARE A COUPLE OF NOTES I'LL ADD IN THE COMMENTS)

"Alright, everyone take five."

Marcus set his own casket down, the heavy crate nestling into the weird fungal growth that coated every surface in the area. He knuckled his lower back as he stood, wincing, and nodded his head toward a nearby ladder. "Caitlyn, go high."

"Yes sir," the young woman saluted smartly. Seemingly none the worse for wear after hauling heavy crates for miles, she shouldered her long rifle and trotted off.

Zevi, the machinist, thunked her own crates down with less grace.

"Captain," she panted, sitting heavily on the low casket, "I could use the rest as much as anyone, but we're rats in a bucket out here."

Marcus pulled off a heavy gauntlet and wiped at his brow. "I agree, but we've still got a ways to go and we'll be even more vulnerable if we're exhausted. We need to conserve our energy."

The last member of their detachment simply nodded in silence. The old man's bushy mustache still somehow remained a pristine white, despite the night's labors.

Marcus appreciated the old sergeant's silent support. There was a natural separation between leadership and subordinates that would always be there to maintain discipline. But Harold, a grizzled old veteran of the underhive who had never bothered to seek promotion beyond sergeant, had earned every patrolman's respect. His agreement with Marcus's decision would go a long way to keeping the younger troops from from resisting Marcus at every turn.

"Captain," Caitlyn's voice hissed in his earpiece, "I've got movement."

"Shit," Zevi cursed, staring up at where Caitlyn had hunkered down behind a broken steel panel atop a crumbled wall. "What's going on?"

"Maintain vox discipline!" Marcus hissed, whipping his eyes back at Zevi before trying to see where Caitlyn had her rifle trained. Unfortunately, the ruin around them closed off most of their sightlines. The crumbled structures they'd used to haul the crates of payroll undetected now seemed more like a perfect ambush point.

"Caitlyn, what've you got?"

"It looks like Escher," she responded, speaking low into her vox. "I can't tell how many but I see at least a couple."

Zevi swore again, but at a sharp look from Marcus she nodded sheepishly.

In silence, Harold grabbed one of his caskets and began dragging it behind some tumbled scrap. Marcus nodded gratefully, before gesturing to Zevi. "Get the rest of the payroll back there."

As Harold and the young machinist began repositioning the rest of the caskets, Marcus unclipped a gas grenade from his belt, along with a length of cord.

Gunfire started echoing among the ruins, none of it from Caitlyn's sniper rifle. Say what you would for the young, ambitious sergeant but she had the cold nerves of a hardened killer when she was behind that scope.

Finally, her rifle barked, and Marcus smiled to himself. His expression fell immediately, however, at her next words.

"Shit! I'm jammed!" He could hear the sound of her struggling with the rifle's action over the vox, trying to cycle the bolt to fire again.

Harold and Zevi having dragged all the caskets into cover, Marcus pulled the pin on his gas grenade, cord wrapped around the spoon to keep it from going off. He carefully began stringing the cord around the caskets, and grabbed some of the fungal growth off of the floor, tossing it on the boxes to try and disguise the ad hoc gas trap.

"Don't worry," he heard Harold saying to Zevi, his voice raspy and calm. "I'm retiring tomorrow. I haven't made it this long by letting a few stimmed-up poisoners box me in. We'll get you out safe."

"Captain, I can't-" Caitlyn's voice came across the vox, before it cut out and he heard an agonized scream from her position atop the wall.

Harold had taken up a position to their left, his concussion carbine trained steadily at a corner he could expect them to come around. Zevi had retreated to their right and huddled into a crevice against the wall Caitlyn had climbed, the machinist's eyes wide and her shotgun clutched to her chest like a talisman.

"Keep it together, Zevi," Marcus snapped. "Remember your training!"

"I'm a machinist!" she wailed. "My training is maintaining the guns! I shouldn't even have been on this run!"

Marcus snarled in frustration; Zevi was right. Their precinct was understaffed and underfunded. The four of them were the only ones available to retrieve the payroll shipment; an old man who should've been riding a desk into the sunset, a nerd who never should've been let out of her arms locker, an heiress who had walked away from a life of luxury to "make Necromunda great again", and the fucking captain who had better fucking things to be fucking doing.

"Movement", Harold's rasp came over the vox. Marcus dashed to the side and took cover behind a stairwell, eyes trained on the largest avenue into their position.

Hearing a pained groan behind him, he glanced over his shoulder to see Caitlyn gracelessly dropping down from the top of the wall, crawling and clambering her way down the broken structure with a hand to her abdomen. She was bleeding, and it was bad.

Noise erupted from Harold's side of things, and Marcus watched as a cloud of eye-searingly pink gas sprayed over the old man. Marcus felt his heart seize... and then Harold simply coughed once, waving the gas away from his face, and began to draw his concussion carbine back up to fire.

Before the veteran could draw a bead, however, one of the Escher thugs was upon him. Her hair a riotous crest of powder blue, she was on Harold in an instant, a stiletto sword thrusting for the man's gut and a plasma pistol unloading at the old man's face.

He dodged the pistol shot and batted the sword aside as though it were the easiest thing in the world.

Marcus's attention was drawn away from the display by the sight of another of the Escher murderers charging through the ruin toward him. With a grim smile, the captain unslung his grenade launcher and sighted down the path.

And then his world exploded in blinding pain as he took a laser to the ribs. Crying out in agony, he fell to the ground and saw, standing atop the wall where Caitlyn had been posted, an Escher matriarch. The manic smile on her face as she lowered the lasgun filled Marcus with a dread he had never known.

"Now!" he heard Harold shout.

From where he lay, Marcus could see that somehow, Harold had convinced several of the Escher women that hidden reinforcements had sprung a trap. The one that had been coming down the lane at Marcus, and the one engaged in melee with Harold, both turned to look behind them.

The next thing Marcus knew, Zevi had her hands under Marcus's arms and was dragging him away. "They want the money," she grunted to him as she dragged him from where the caskets were tucked away. "We can get out of here."

Marcus gritted his teeth against the tearing pain in his side. "Harold... and... C-Cait..."
"Caitlyn's stable, and she's moving. I can't do anything for Harold."

Marcus watched as one Escher murderess joined her friend in the melee, rushing in to fire at Harold at point blank range. Then the criminal scum that had been coming down the laneway, robbed of the wounded captain as a target, instead joined her sisters in assaulting the old man.

"Dammit, he retires tomorrow!" Marcus gurgled out, fresh blood pouring from the wound in his side. The pain overwhelmed him, and the captain passed into blessed unconsciousness.

*****

Days and miles later, the three of them rounded a bend and came in sight of the Precinct. Marcus, had he been conscious, would have wept with relief. Unfortunately, the captain had been either unconscious or delirious for the last 40 hours.

Caitlyn, having recovered from her injury enough to help Zevi carry their superior officer on an impromptu stretcher, wept enough for the three of them. Zevi simply stared, her physical and emotional exhaustion preventing further reaction.

"Hey,"

Caitlyn gasped upon hearing the soft rasp from behind them. Zevi simply turned around and looked on numbly as Harold leaned against a wall to catch his breath. His face was covered in dried blood from a nasty scalp wound, and his right arm was badly burned.

"Har-... Harold?" Zevi finally asked, blinking. "You're alive?"

"I told you we'd get you out safe," he grizzled old veteran said, seeming somewhat affronted that she hadn't believed him.

Caitlyn dropped Marcus's feet, eliciting a groan from the addled officer. She rushed forward and hugged the old man, who grunted and tried to keep her from touching his injuries.

"Harold," she cried into his shoulder, "you... you do get to retire!"

He sighed, and gingerly put his arms around the young woman's shoulders. He looked at the weeping girl in his arms, the addled officer on the ground, and the shell-shocked machinist staring dazedly at him.

"No... no, I don't." He pulled Caitlyn away and looked grimly into her eyes. "These gangs have been treating this precinct like it's their own private playground.

Harold gently pushed Caitlyn to the side and walked over to pick up the end of Marcus's stretcher before heading toward the door of the precinct. He looked over his shoulder at the two young women. "Rent's come due. It's time to collect."