For The Emperor, page 18
‘You can take the brute force approach if you like.’ Sorel sighted along the length of his long-las, and made a minute adjustment to the targeter. I’d taken the trouble to find the weapon that used to be assigned to him, knowing that a sniper gets as attached to his weapon as I was to my old pistol, and that he would have customised it in a dozen subtle ways to improve its accuracy. ‘I’ve got all the edge I need right here.’ He must have realised the strings I’d had to pull to obtain it for him, because he met my eyes at that point and nodded, a barely perceptible thanks. I was astonished. Up until then I’d been convinced he had no emotions at all.
‘Just make sure you keep it pointed in the right direction,’ I said, with enough of a smile to take most of the sting out of the warning. It was still there, though, and an expression I couldn’t quite identify came close to surfacing on his habitually impassive face.
‘I could use a few more pressure pads,’ Holenbi said, inventorying the medkit with the speed of long practice. I gestured to the primary aid box bolted to the Chimera’s inner bulkhead.
‘Help yourself,’ I invited. He burrowed rapidly through it, scavenging several items which made the bag on his belt bulge, and stowed a few more in other pouches and pockets, discarding a couple of ration bars to make room for them.
‘Better eat that,’ Velade advised, taking the seat next to him. ‘You’ll only get hungry later if you leave it.’
‘Yeah, right,’ he agreed, breaking one in half and offering the rest to her. She took it with a smile, their hands touching for a moment as her fingers closed around it, and Amberley grinned at me.
‘Aww,’ she mouthed, her back to them. ‘How sweet.’
Maybe to her, I thought, but to me it was little more than another potential complication in a catastrophe just waiting to happen. I quelled my irritation, and picked the remaining bar off the bench.
‘She’s got a point.’ I split the bar with Amberley. ‘Better stock up with carbohydrates while you can. You’ll be burning a lot of energy soon enough.’
‘You’re the expert,’ she said, as though anyone else’s opinions mattered a damn on this foolhardy expedition. She sniffed at the grey fibrous mass, and bit into it cautiously. ‘You people actually eat this frak?’
‘Not if we can help it,’ Velade said.
‘Then I’m definitely surviving this.’ Amberley swallowed the remains of her ration bar with a grimace of distaste. ‘No way that’s going to be my last meal.’ The troopers all laughed, even Sorel, and I marvelled again at her powers of manipulation.[39] By playing the civilian outsider, she’d reinforced their sense of identity as soldiers with great subtlety. I doubted whether it would be quite enough to weld them into a cohesive unit, but that wasn’t really an issue on this assignment. All that was necessary was that they work well enough together to get Amberley the intelligence she required. And me out in one piece, of course.
There were still far too many weak links for my liking, though. Kelp and Trebek were professional enough to put their rivalries aside for long enough to get the job done, I hoped, especially with an inquisitorial pardon up for grabs, but the way they kept avoiding eye contact with each other was a far from encouraging sign. And whatever was going on between Velade and Holenbi might just be enough for them to put their concern for each other ahead of the mission objective, or the survival of anyone else. Like me. And as for Sorel; well, he flat out gave me the creeps, and I was determined not to let him get anywhere I couldn’t keep an eye on him. I’d met psychopaths before, and he had all the hallmarks. He wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice the rest of us to save his own skin, of that I was sure.[40]
And then there was Amberley. Charming as I found her, she was still an inquisitor above all else, and that meant that all we were to her was a means to an end. A noble and important one, no doubt, but that would be of little comfort to me when the black bell tolled.[41]
So it was little wonder that my palms were tingling as I closed the tail ramp and activated my combead.
‘All right, Jurgen,’ I said. ‘We’re ready to go.’
This time, there were no waves and cheers as we left the compound, although I had no doubt that the rumour mill had spread the news of our departure just as far as before. I was quietly relieved by that, to be honest, as this was to be no easy victory for our newly forged regiment to take pride in and celebrate. This would be a desperate struggle for survival, I didn’t need my itching palms to tell me that. Although how desperate, and against how terrible a foe, I still at that time had no inkling. (And that was a mercy, let me tell you. If I’d known then what awaited us in the undercity of Mayoh, I would probably have broken down in hysterics from sheer terror.)
As it was, I masked my concern with the ease of long practice, and kept a stern eye on the troopers, hoping any agitation I felt would be mistaken for vigilance. To my relief they seemed to be settling, focussing more on the mission now that it was underway, and if they weren’t exactly on the same wavelength yet, at least they weren’t jamming each other.
That reminded me I hadn’t reported our departure to Kasteen yet, so I retuned my combead to the command frequency and exchanged a few words with her. As I’d expected, her mood was sombre, and she wished me luck as though she thought I might actually need it.
I was beginning to find the tense atmosphere inside the vehicle a little claustrophobic, not to mention being rattled around like a pea in a can by Jurgen’s habitual driving style, so I popped the turret hatch and stuck my head out for some fresh air. The sudden rush was invigorating, almost taking my cap with it as I emerged, and I checked the heavy bolter so I’d have an excuse for staying out there for as long as I could. It was primed and ready, of course, Jurgen having done his usual thorough job, so I was able to settle back and enjoy the spectacle of the local civilian traffic swerving out of our way. There seemed to be a lot of it, I noticed, particularly in the main boulevards; but there was no obvious pattern to the movement. There was just as much going in each direction, and when I glanced down the crossways, they all seemed choked as well.
‘Inquisitor,’ I subvocalised, switching to the channel Amberley had given me earlier. I hadn’t seen any sign of a bead in her ear, but that didn’t surprise me. For all I knew, she’d disguised it in some way, or was stuffed with augmetics that did the same job. (And a great many others, as I was to discover over the course of our association.) ‘There seems to be a lot of civilian activity. Anything we should be aware of?’ There was actually a great deal we should have been aware of, of course, the conspiracy we tracked was far more extensive and dangerous than we had imagined, but at that point, I was still blissfully ignorant of how much trouble we were in.
‘Probably lots of things.’ Amberley sounded wary, though not particularly concerned. ‘But we’ll just have to make do with what we know, and proceed with caution.’
Easier said than done with Jurgen driving, I thought, but she was the expert. I watched as he swerved us around a slow-moving cargo lifter, its flatbed jammed with civilians carrying hastily assembled bundles of possessions. Probably just spooked by our raid on the Heights, but the implications troubled me. I began to look out for similar sights, and found several in the space of a handful of seconds. I voxed Amberley again.
‘It’s looking like refugee traffic up here,’ I said.
‘Intriguing,’ she responded, a note of curiosity entering her voice. ‘What would they be fleeing, I wonder?’
‘Nothing good,’ I said, speaking from bitter experience, although in truth it wouldn’t be that unexpected for anyone who could to be leaving the city by now. The political and military situation was still balanced on a knife-edge, and it wouldn’t need someone of Mott’s intellect to deduce that things would be a lot healthier somewhere else if it all boiled over. No harm in checking everything, I thought, so I hopped through the tactical frequencies, finding a lot of garbled traffic on the PDF net. Very little of it seemed to be making sense, though.
‘Commissar.’ Kasteen’s voice cut in suddenly. ‘I think you should know. We’ve just had instructions to go to combat readiness.’
‘Who from?’ Amberley interrupted before I could respond. I suppose I might have resented her butting in, let alone monitoring my supposedly secure messages, but right then I was too busy swinging the bolter round and taking the safety off. A thick column of smoke was visible ahead of us, rising from a burning truck in the middle of the road, and the traffic was beginning to stall and gridlock as panicked drivers tried to find a way around it or turn back. Bright las-bolts were scoring the air, but who was shooting and what they were aiming at remained obscured behind the smoke.
‘By order of the governor,’ Kasteen said.
‘Imbecile!’ Amberley said, along with some qualifying adjectives which I’d last heard in an underhive drinking den when someone turned out to have more than the conventional number of emperors in their tarot deck. I began to suspect that Governor Grice’s political future was going to be short and uncomfortable. ‘We’ll have the tau on our arses like flies round a corpse.’
‘I think we already have,’ I said. Something was moving inside the smoke, fast and agile, twice the height of a man. It wasn’t alone, either. There were more of them moving back there, and the whole pack of them was surrounded by little darting dots. I suddenly remembered the flying platters we’d seen at the tau enclave, and that they were armed too.
Abruptly, unnervingly, the leading dreadnought (the same type El’sorath had called battlesuits) swung its head in our direction, and turned, a pair of long-barrelled weapons mounted on its shoulders coming to bear. We were still a long way away from being an easy target, but I’ve always been cautious, so I hailed our driver.
‘Jurgen!’ I shouted, ‘get us out of here!’
By way of reply, he swung us abruptly towards a narrow alleyway, crushing a raised bed of ornamental shrubs beneath our left-hand tread, and barging a small, sleek groundcar out of the way. The driver’s volley of profanity was drowned out by a sudden thunderclap of displaced air as something hit the front of an omnibus right where we’d been a moment before, reducing its entire nose to metallic confetti before raking the length of it, blowing a tangled mass of wreckage, blood and bone out of the back. Before I could see anything more, we were behind the shelter of a building, our hurtling metallic shell gouging lumps out of the walls, our tracks leaving a trail of burst and flattened waste containers in our wake.
‘Emperor’s bowels!’ I said, stunned by the narrowness of our escape.
‘What was that?’ Amberley asked, her voice almost drowned out by the complaints of the troopers around her. I tried to explain the best I could, still shaken by the range and accuracy of the weapon deployed against us. ‘Sounds like a railgun,’ she said, apparently unperturbed. ‘Nasty things.’
‘Could it have damaged us?’ I asked, making sure the spare ammo boxes were in easy reach. There was nothing ahead of us now except more panicking civilians, but I wasn’t planning on being taken by surprise twice, you can be sure.
‘Easily,’ she replied cheerfully. ‘Even at that range it could have gutted us like a fish.’
‘The Emperor protects,’ Jurgen said piously. Well He hadn’t done a hell of a lot for the bus passengers, I thought, but decided it wouldn’t be tactful to say so. He’d only take it as a sign that we were important to His ineffable plan anyway.
‘Who were the tau engaging?’ I asked.
‘The PDF,’ Kasteen said. ‘Who else? We’re getting reports in that some of the loyalists have mutinied, and opened fire on the tau compound. The diplomats are trying to calm things, but the bluies are claiming they have a right to retaliate, and have entered the city. They’re engaging every PDF unit they come across.’
‘What about the Guard?’ I asked, already sure I wouldn’t like the answer.
‘The governor’s orders are to contain the situation by any means necessary. The lord general is asking for clarification.’ Playing for time, in other words. If the Guard units entered the city, they’d be caught in the middle; with half the PDF unreliable, they’d become a target for both sides. My stomach lurched, and for once, it wasn’t due to Jurgen’s driving.
‘Well, that’s it then,’ I said, the words like ashes in my mouth. ‘We’ve run out of time.’ The war so many people had sacrificed so much to avoid was upon us at last, and it seemed there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it.
Editorial Note:
It goes without saying that the unrest which Cain noticed breaking out across the city was being duplicated to a lesser extent across the whole of Gravalax; although with the bulk of both the Imperial and tau expeditionary forces based around the capital, the situation deteriorated further and faster in Mayoh than anywhere else on the planet. Minor clashes did take place around several of the starports, as both sides realised keeping them open or denying them to the enemy would be vital in either reinforcing or evacuating their forces. For the most part, the warfare was internecine, pro- and anti-xenoist factions within the PDF turning on one another with the terrible ferocity unique to civil war.
The following extract may prove useful in appreciating the wider picture.
From Purge the Guilty! An impartial account of the liberation of Gravalax, by Stententious Logar. 085.M42
Thus it was, spurred by the workings of a vast, malign conspiracy, the entire world was rent asunder in an orgy of fratricide which shames the survivors and their descendents even to the present day. If anything at all can be said to have been learned from these terrible events, it must surely be this; that however benign they may appear, the alien is not to be trusted, and that turning aside from the word of the Emperor in even the smallest respect is the most certain route to damnation for us all.
It must have been the belated realisation of this which spurred the loyal cadre of Planetary Defence Force regulars into turning on the traitors in their midst, taking heart from the salutary way in which the Imperial Guard had dealt with the alien-lovers who had dared to desecrate the streets of an Imperial city with open rebellion. Their patriotic fervour at last aroused, His Divine Majesty’s most loyal servants began to cleanse the hideous stain on their honour in the only way possible; by shedding the blood of those whose craven panderings to the aliens in their midst had led the whole planet to the very brink of the abyss.
At first, the renewal of martial spirit was sporadic, beginning with the arrest of those unit commanders whose loyalties were, for one reason or another, suspect. Inevitably, however, faced with the threat of exposure, those whose souls were stained with the guilt of collaboration resisted, proving their black-heartedness by opening fire on the heroic defenders of Imperial virtue. The rot spread exponentially after that, until almost every PDF unit was engaged on one side or the other; indeed, such was the confusion that many were unable to tell friend from foe and simply engaged every other unit they encountered indiscriminately.
Under these circumstances, it was hardly surprising that the most fervent of the loyalists lost no time in placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of those ultimately responsible, the xenos themselves, and resolved to rid our world of the taint of their presence without further delay. These heroes of legendary proportions, whose names would undoubtedly ring down the ages of Gravalax forever more if enough of their bodies had remained intact to identify, turned on the corruption at its source and threw themselves against the very citadel of the invader.
Alas, faced with the overwhelming firepower of this redoubt of the unholy, they were cut to pieces, but the damage had been done. Aware for the first time of their own vulnerability, the tau advanced into the city to slaughter the righteous, and the very future of Gravalax hung in the balance.
Throughout these events, one question remains unanswered. Why did the Imperial Guard take so long to respond? Accusations of cowardice are clearly ridiculous, if not treasonous, the lord general’s reputation alone being sufficient to belie them without a moment’s thought. Once again, the only credible explanation is that of conspiracy, some dark machination hindering their deployment for reasons we can only guess at. As to the hand behind that conspiracy, a careful sifting of the evidence once again points us firmly to the shadowy presence of the rogue traders...
[And after a reasonably concise summary of events up to that point, he veers off on his personal obsession once more. Perhaps it’s just as well, though; if anyone were to deduce the real enemy we were facing, we would have to take steps to obscure the truth.]
ELEVEN
Whatever happens, we have got
The Emperor’s blessing. They have not.
– From ‘The Guardsman’s Duty,’
a popular ballad. (Trad.)
The warehouse was just as we’d left it, which is to say it was a tangled mess of collapsed rubble and gently smoking debris. As we disembarked from the Chimera, the scent of old burning caught at the back of my throat, making me cough. We hadn’t seen any more of the supernaturally fast tau dreadnoughts before we reached our destination, but I remained cautious nevertheless, ordering the troopers to consider the area enemy territory as we left the relative safety of the armoured carrier. What little I’d been able to glean from the vox traffic was less than encouraging, and my attempts to get through to someone more senior at divisional HQ for clarification were futile; no one there seemed to have a clue what was going on either. Besides, this was the inquisitor’s little expedition, and she showed no sign of calling it off, so I gave up after a while and just let her get on with it.
