Hero of the Imperium, page 15
‘We can still throw them out, my lord general.’ One of the officers cut in. ‘It would take longer than we’d anticipated, but–’
‘We would end up mired in a protracted campaign. Maybe for years.’ Zyvan cut him off dismissively. ‘And, to be blunt, I doubt the planet is worth it.’
‘With respect, lord general, that isn’t your decision to make,’ the officer persisted. ‘Our orders are–’
‘For me to interpret,’ Zyvan said. The officer shut up, and the general turned to Donali. ‘You still believe a diplomatic solution is possible?’
‘I do.’ Donali nodded. ‘Although, with the civil unrest persisting, it may prove more difficult. Not to mention the matter of the ambassador’s assassination.’
‘But the tau are still willing to negotiate?’ Zyvan persisted.
‘They are.’ Donali nodded again. ‘Thanks to Commissar Cain’s resourcefulness last night, we still have a residue of good faith to draw on.’
Everyone but Rakel, who seemed more interested in the underside of her recaf cup, looked approvingly at me.
‘Which brings me to the assassination itself.’ Zyvan tried to attract the woman’s attention. ‘Rakel. Has the inquisitor made any progress in the investigation?’
I suppose I should have expected it, especially after my suspicions about Orelius the previous night, but I’d still been half inclined to dismiss them as the result of Divas and his drunken fantasies getting lodged somewhere in my brain. I stared at Donali.
‘You knew about this?’ I murmured.
‘I suspected,’ he replied, sotto voce. ‘But I didn’t know for sure until Rakel turned up this morning with a message bearing the inquisitorial seal.’
‘What did it say?’ I whispered, ignoring the young psyker’s attempts to reply. Donali shrugged.
‘How should I know? It was addressed to the lord general.’
‘The investigation continues. Yes.’ Rakel nodded eagerly, forcing herself to concentrate with a visible effort, her flat, nasal voice grating against my sleep-deprived nerves. ‘You will be informed. When the conspiracy is exposed.’ She paused, cocking her head as though listening to something, and stood abruptly. ‘Have you got cake?’ She wandered over to the food table to check.
‘I see.’ Zyvan tried to look as though she’d made some kind of sense.
‘If I may, lord general.’ I spoke up, trying to sound confident. ‘I suspect that there may be a faction here with an interest in provoking conflict between us and the tau.’
‘So messire Donali informs me.’ Zyvan seized the opportunity to return the meeting to business with barely concealed relief. ‘Which is the main reason I invited you to join us. Your reasoning appears sound.’
‘No cake. No frakking cake!’ Rakel muttered in the background, scuffling around the food table. ‘I can’t eat that, it’s too green...’
‘Thank you.’ I acknowledged the compliment, and tried to ignore her.
‘Does it extend as far as to who might be responsible?’ Zyvan asked. I shook my head.
‘I’m a soldier, sir. Plots and intrigue aren’t really my specialties.’ I shrugged. ‘Perhaps the inquisitor can enlighten us when his enquiries are complete.’
‘Perhaps.’ Zyvan looked a little disappointed, no doubt hoping I could have helped him to second-guess the inquisition. Rakel returned to her seat, clutching a cyna bun, which she proceeded to nibble at for the rest of the meeting; at least with her mouth full she kept quiet.
‘The other reason I wanted to consult you, commissar, is that you’ve met Governor Grice. What’s your assessment of his understanding of military matters?’ I shrugged.
‘About as good as his understanding of anything else, if I’m any judge. The man’s an imbecile.’ More indrawn breaths around the table, but Zyvan and Donali nodded their agreement.
‘I thought as much,’ the lord general said. ‘Although you’ll no doubt be gratified to hear that he was very impressed with you.’
‘He was?’ I couldn’t imagine why, until Donali spoke.
‘After all, you did save his life last night.’
‘I suppose I did,’ I said. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it.’ Which was perfectly true; I’d disarmed the tau to save my own skin, and so much had happened since then it had driven almost everything else out of my mind. Luckily, this was exactly the sort of thing everyone expected me to say, so I had the unexpected pleasure of receiving a warm smile of approval from one of the most powerful men in the Segmentum. Of course, that would come back to haunt me in time, which only goes to prove that no good deed ever goes unpunished.26
‘Well, he’s been thinking about you,’ Donali said. ‘He wants to give you some sort of medal.27’
‘That may have to wait,’ Zyvan said. ‘We’ve a more urgent problem to deal with right now.’ He touched a control stud on the arm of his chair, and the surface of the table lit up from within, proving to be a hololithic display of a size and resolution I’d seldom seen before. If I’d realised, I’d have been a bit more careful with the teapot. I wiped the ring of beverage away with my handkerchief as the image flickered drunkenly in the air before me, finally steadying into decipherability as Zyvan leaned forward and banged the tabletop hard with a clenched fist. He must have spent considerable time with the techpriests, because it functioned perfectly after that, staying sharp and in focus more than half the time.
‘That’s the city,’ I said, stating the obvious. Rakel nodded, spraying crumbs across the image like block-sized meteors.
‘All the little people look like ants,’ she said, resting her head on the tabletop. The scale was far too small to show individual people, of course, or vehicles, even ones the size of a Baneblade, but she was bonkers, after all. ‘Scurry, scurry, scurry. Looking up when they should be looking down. You never know what’s under your feet, but you should, ‘cause you could trip up and fall.’
I ignored her, picking out the salient tactical information with the instinctive ease of years of practice.
‘There’s still fighting going on.’ I could see a handful of hotspots across the city. ‘Haven’t the Arbites managed to restore order yet?’
‘Up to a point.’ Zyvan shrugged. ‘Most of the civilian rioters have either been arrested, shot, or got bored and gone home. The big problem now is the rebel PDF units.’
‘Can’t the loyalists sort them out?’ I asked. It seemed obvious from where we were sitting that the xenoists were outnumbered at least three to one in most cases. Zyvan looked disgusted.
‘You’d think so. But they’re bogging down. Half of them are refusing to fire on their own comrades, and the rest might just as well not be bothering for all the good they’re doing.’ He hesitated. ‘So the governor has, in his infinite wisdom, petitioned the Guard to go in and clean up his mess for him.’
‘But you can’t!’ Donali was aghast. ‘If the guard mobilise in the city the tau will too! You’ll spark the very war we’re trying to prevent!’
‘That hadn’t escaped my notice,’ Zyvan said dryly.
‘The man’s a cretin!’ Donali was fuming. ‘Can’t he see the consequences of his actions?’
‘He’s panicking,’ I said. ‘All he can see now is the prospect of the rebellion spreading. If the xenoists in the general population join them–’
‘We’re frakked,’ Donali said.
‘Not quite.’ Zyvan compressed his lips into a grim parody of a smile. ‘I can still play for time. Briefly. Can you use it to convince the tau that any Guard deployment in the city is no threat to them?’
‘I can try,’ Donali said, without much enthusiasm. Zyvan nodded encouragingly.
‘I can’t ask for more than that.’ He turned to me. ‘Commissar. Would you say that the tau have reason to trust you?’
Well of course they didn’t, but that wasn’t what he wanted to hear, so I nodded judiciously.
‘More than most other Imperial officers, I suppose. I did save them a bit of a walk last night.’ As I’d expected, my modest joking at my own expense went down well, fitting these idiots’ idea of a hero. Zyvan looked pleased.
‘Good,’ he said, and turned back to Donali. ‘You can inform the tau that Commissar Cain will be overseeing the operation personally. That might allay their concerns.’
‘It just might.’ Donali looked a little happier at the prospect. Which is more than I was, you can be sure. After all I’d been through the night before, the prospect of being sent back to the firing line again was agonising.
But I was supposed to be a hero after all, so I sat there impassively sipping tea, and wondered how I was going to get out of this one.
EIGHT
‘Inquisitors? They’re sneaky bastards. Useful, yes,
even necessary, but I wouldn’t buy a used aircar from any of them.’
– Arbitrator General Bex van Sturm.
In the end, of course, I had no choice but to go along with it. The lord general himself had picked me for this mission, so all I could do was hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Fortunately, Donali’s negotiations with the tau gave me a bit of a breathing space, and I was able to devise a plan of action which gave everyone the impression of leading from the front while staying sufficiently far back from the firing line to appreciate the full tactical overview. Kasteen and Broklaw had been fired with enthusiasm as soon as I took them into my confidence, certain that the lord general’s special interest in me boded well for the future of the regiment, so I was able to let them take the lead without really seeming to. Between us, we’d come up with a plan which actually looked like it might work, at least, if the bluies (as the troopers had begun to refer to the tau, picking up on the local slang) could be persuaded not to take our incursion into the city in bad faith. That, of course, was a question only the Emperor could answer, and he was otherwise engaged, so I just thumbed my palm28 and got on with the things I could do something about.
Even then, I couldn’t quite shake the suspicion that we were overlooking something important, that whatever shadowy cabal was trying to ignite a full-scale war on this worthless mudball wasn’t about to give up that easily, but thinking about it only worried me, so I tried to forget it. For the life of me I couldn’t see what anyone could hope to gain by forcing a confrontation, and unless you know what your enemies are after, you can’t devise any countermeasures to their plans. I don’t mind admitting that it irked me a little. I’m used to my innate paranoia keeping me a jump ahead of most things, but even Chaos cultists generally have an agenda of sorts (even if it’s just ‘kill everything on the planet’) which makes itself obvious after a while. Still, that’s what we have inquisitors for, so I wished Orelius the best of Imperial luck and gave up thinking about it in favour of the best way to give the rebellious PDF units a bloody nose. This was just as well, I suppose. If I’d had a clue as to what was really going on I’d have lost even more sleep, believe me.
‘They couldn’t be making it easier for us if they tried,’ Broklaw said with some satisfaction as he looked at the hololith. I’d prevailed on the lord general to lend us the conference suite he’d summoned me to before, citing the need to co-ordinate the input of more than one regiment, and Broklaw was as pleased with the tabletop display unit as a juvie with his first set of toy soldiers. I half expected to find it smuggled aboard the troopship when we departed. He gestured at the disposition of the xenoist units. ‘What’s that phrase you artillerists use? Clusterfrag?’
‘Close enough.’ Colonel Mostrue of the 12th Field Artillery nodded curtly, his ice blue eyes, as always, regarding me with something akin to suspicion. Throughout my posting to his unit he’d always tried to give me the benefit of the doubt, but of all the battery officers I’ve come across, he’d come closest to guessing the truth about Desolatia, and never quite seemed to trust me after that. Which was extremely sensible of him when you think about it. Certainly, he’d responded with almost indecent haste on the few occasions I’d been forced to call in a barrage close to my own position, but, in turn, I’d preferred to think he was just doing his job as efficiently as possible. He hadn’t changed a bit in the years since I’d seen him last, unlike the visible marks the passing of time had left in Divas. The major was with him too, still limping slightly after our brawl with the xenoist supporters a week or so ago, and grinned at me with the same unrestrained enthusiasm he always displayed.
‘It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel,’ he declared confidently.
‘For you, maybe,’ Kasteen said. ‘But we’ll be where the fish can shoot back.’ The xenoists were lightly armed, for the most part, with nothing much stronger in terms of firepower than missile launchers, so the artillery unit wouldn’t have to worry about return fire, but unfortunately they’d had enough sense to dig in, for the most part in the area around the Heights. That meant winkling the survivors of the barrage out building by building, which would be hard, bloody work if things didn’t go well. Fortunately, Kasteen and Broklaw’s experience of urban fighting was just what was needed here, and I hoped the men and women of the 597th would find the PDF defectors easy meat after the tyranids they’d faced on Corania.
‘We’ll keep their heads down for you,’ Divas promised. ‘All you’ll need to clean them up afterwards is a mop.’ Kasteen and Broklaw exchanged glances, but let it go. Divas might have had only the vaguest idea of what city fighting entailed, but he did know his artillery, and I’d spent enough time with his unit to understand his confidence. The xenoist defectors had gradually linked up as they pulled back to the Heights, packing tighter and tighter into the network of boulevards and parkland around the mansions, until they might just as well have been standing there with a big target painted around their perimeter.
‘It’s all a little too neat for me,’ I said. ‘You’d think they’d have had the sense to disperse.’
‘Amateurs.’ Mostrue’s contempt was obvious. Like most senior guard officers, he had a low opinion of the majority of PDF regiments, although I’d come across a few in my time who could have given a Guard unit a run for their money. In this case, though, his opinion seemed more than justified. A heavy barrage would take out the majority, I had no doubt. Of course, the survivors would be well dug in and hard to shift, especially with all that fresh rubble to burrow into, but I couldn’t see there being too many of them. Certainly nothing the 597th couldn’t handle in pretty short order.
Even allowing for the defectors’ lack of experience, though, it seemed remarkably stupid of them to offer so tempting a target, and the tingling sensation was back in my palms. I tried to concentrate on the briefing, and not think about the undercurrents of conspiracy I was sure Orelius was tracking down even as we sat here. I had hoped to set my mind at rest by interrogating the PDF idiots who’d shot down the tau aircar, and determining once and for all whether it had been a simple act of stupidity or part of a more sinister agenda, but despite my order to arrest them, the perpetrators had simply vanished. Or joined the defectors, which raised even more questions I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to.
‘What do you make of this?’ Broklaw asked, studying the display more closely. I followed the line of his finger, to where a platoon of loyalist PDF troopers had cordoned off a couple of blocks of an industrial zone near the Old Quarter, and shrugged.
‘The local boys afraid to get their fingers dirty.’ The icon at the centre of the cordon marked a hostile contact, but they didn’t seem to be in any hurry to close the noose. Presumably some stragglers, too late to join the exodus to the Heights, I thought. That was followed by the sudden realisation that I could use this little anomaly to my advantage.
‘I’ll swing by and see if I can buck their ideas up,’ I said. ‘It’s not far out of our way.’ And by the time I’d finished the extra piece of makework I’d just found for myself, Kasteen and Broklaw should have the xenoist survivors pretty much dealt with. If all went well, most of the dust would have settled before I got anywhere near the firing line. It seemed my luck hadn’t deserted me after all.
‘Are you sure, commissar?’ Kasteen was looking at me curiously, and that old expression was back in Mostrue’s eyes. ‘It doesn’t seem all that important. Surely it can wait until we’ve dealt with the main force?’
‘It probably can.’ I shrugged. ‘But the lord general himself is trusting me to clean up this mess. I don’t want a nucleus of rebellion left to deal with after we’ve broken the back of the conspiracy. I’d feel a lot happier if we knew for sure they weren’t going to break out before we can get to them.’
‘Good point.’ She nodded. I decided it was time to lighten the mood, and smiled.
‘Besides,’ I said, ‘It’s not as though any of you need your hands held. I think you know one end of a lasgun from another by now.’
Kasteen, Broklaw and Divas laughed, and Mostrue essayed a wintery grin.
‘I’d rather not divide our force, though,’ Kasteen added. ‘If we’re going to mop up the bluie-lov... The xenoist sympathisers, I want to keep our net tight.’
‘Agreed,’ I said. ‘We’ll stick to the timetable. I’ll just peel off, put the fear of the Emperor into the PDF drones guarding the perimeter to make sure none of the rebels inside escape while we’re busy, and catch up. I should be back with you before the fun begins.’
‘I’d put money on it.’ Kasteen smiled. ‘I’ve seen the way Jurgen drives.’
She would have lost the bet, of course. I was going to make damn sure I got delayed sorting out the PDF rabble until after the shooting stopped. That was the plan, anyway. If I’d known what I was letting myself in for as a result of that little diversion, I’d have led the charge into the Heights in a heartbeat.
