Hero of the Imperium, page 20
‘I suppose he is,’ I said.
‘Well, there they are,’ I said. ‘They’re all yours.’ Amberley nodded, and walked along the line of troopers, meeting their eyes one by one. They were as sullen a bunch as I remembered, gazing back at us in silence.
I’d had them marched to one of the storage sheds in our sector of the compound at the double, and was pleased to note that none of them seemed particularly out of breath, so their weeks of confinement hadn’t left them as out of condition as I’d feared; but then, I don’t suppose they’d had much to do except exercise anyway. They’d looked vaguely surprised when I dismissed the guards, except for Sorel, whose expression never seemed to change whatever happened, and stared at me as I sat casually on a nearby crate.
‘I promised you a chance to redeem yourselves,’ I said. ‘And that chance has now come.’ That got their attention. Velade looked vaguely apprehensive, Holenbi baffled as always, and even Sorel seemed to take slightly more interest than usual. Kelp and Trebek just stared at me, but at least they didn’t seem inclined to go for one another again. Perhaps it was my personal charisma, or my unmerited reputation, but it was most likely the laspistol in the holster at my hip which I’d visibly left unfastened for a quick draw. I gestured to Amberley, who stepped forward from the shadows, the black cloak she’d worn before rendering her almost invisible until she moved. ‘This is Inquisitor Vail. She has a little job for us.’
Velade gasped audibly as Amberley raised her hand, and her electoo flashed into visibility. Dressed in black as she was, she fit the popular conception of an inquisitor far more closely than the sultry lounge singer that I’d first encountered, or the cheerful young woman I’d been getting to know, and I could tell that most of them, at least, were properly intimidated.
‘What kind of a job?’ Trebek asked. I waited for Amberley to reply, but after a moment I realised she was leaving the briefing to me. Not that I knew much more than the rest of us, of course, but I’d pass on everything I could. The longer they survived, the longer I could hide behind them from whatever was waiting for us in the tunnels below.
‘Recon,’ I said. ‘Into the undercity. Resistance is expected.’
‘Resistance from who?’ Trebek asked. I shrugged.
‘That’s what we’re supposed to find out.’
‘I take it we aren’t expected to survive,’ Kelp cut in. Amberley met his eyes, staring him down.
‘That rather depends on you,’ she said. ‘The commissar certainly intends to. I suggest you follow his lead.’
‘It’s not going to make any difference to us anyway, is it?’ Velade asked, with surprising vehemence. ‘Even if we get through this one alive, we’ve only got another suicide mission to look forward to.’
‘I’d worry about that later if I were you,’ I said. But Amberley was nodding slowly, as though she was being perfectly reasonable. I certainly wouldn’t have mouthed off to an inquisitor in her boots, but I suppose she felt she had nothing to lose in any case.
‘Good point, Griselda,’ she said. Velade and the others looked a little taken aback at the use of her given name. I recognised the technique as a subtle piece of psychological manipulation, quietly enjoying the chance to watch an expert at work. Amberley smiled, suddenly, the full force of her capricious personality manifesting itself again. ‘All right, you need an incentive. If you make it back in one piece, you have my word you won’t be transferred to a penal legion. How’s that?’
A total pain in the fundament so far as I was concerned. The paperwork alone would be a nightmare, not to mention the morale and disciplinary problems which would undoubtedly ensue from trying to integrate such an insubordinate rabble back into a line company. I wasn’t about to undermine my own authority by having it verbally overridden by an inquisitor in front of them, though, so I stayed quiet. Maybe I could get them transferred to another command, or assigned somewhere relatively harmless after she’d gone. The local PDF could certainly use a professional training cadre to bring them up to scratch once this mess was sorted out, and we were hardly likely to be coming back to Gravalax...
‘All of us?’ Holenbi asked, clearly not quite believing his own ears. Amberley shrugged.
‘Well, she did ask first. But I suppose so. Wouldn’t be much of an incentive for the rest of you otherwise, would it?’
No one answered, so I resumed the briefing.
‘An undetermined number of hostiles are holed up down there. Our job is to find out how many, their disposition, and what they’re up to.’
‘Do we have a map of the tunnels?’ Kelp asked. For what it was worth, they seemed to be focussing on the mission at least. I turned to Amberley.
‘Inquisitor?’ I asked. She shook her head.
‘No. We didn’t penetrate very far the first time before we were forced to retreat. We have very little idea of their extent, or what’s down there.’
‘Who’s we?’ Trebek asked.
‘My associates,’ Amberley replied. Trebek glanced pointedly around the shed.
‘I can only see you.’
‘The others were injured. That’s why I need you.’ No mention of the dead ones, I noticed, which was probably just as well. It wouldn’t fool the troopers anyway, they knew enough about firefights in confined spaces to realise that not everyone she’d gone down there with would have made it out.
‘So, to recap,’ Kelp said, ‘you want us to go into an unmapped labyrinth, looking for something you think might be down there, but you don’t know what, protected by an indeterminate number of heavily armed guards, and the last time you tried you were the only one who made it out in one piece.’
‘That about sums it up, yes,’ Amberley admitted cheerfully. ‘But you are forgetting one thing.’
‘Which is?’ I asked, already sure I wouldn’t like the answer.
‘They know I’m on to them now.’ She smiled, as though it were a tremendous joke. ‘So this time they’ll be expecting us.’
‘Another question.’ Sorel spoke up for the first time, puncturing the sombre silence. ‘Your generous offer notwithstanding , you’ve obviously chosen us because we’re expendable.’ His voice was as flat and colourless as his eyes. ‘I assume you’re not expecting many survivors from this little excursion.’
‘As I said before, that rather depends on you.’ Amberley nailed him with her eyes. ‘I certainly intend to come back. So does the commissar.’ She’d got that right, at least. ‘And your question is?’
‘What’s to stop any of us putting a las-round through your head and disappearing over the horizon the first chance we get?’ His wintry gaze swept the other prisoners. ‘Don’t tell me you’re not all thinking about it.’
‘Good point.’ Amberley smiled, the amused expression I’d seen before back on her face. If it disconcerted Sorel he gave no sign of the fact, but it certainly worried the others. She jerked a thumb in my direction. ‘There’s always the commissar to get past before you can reach me, of course.’
‘And I’ll execute any one of you who even looks like they’re thinking of making a run for it,’ I promised. I would, too, because they’d have to kill me as well if they were to have a hope of getting away with it, and that would be a highly undesirable outcome from my point of view.
‘Even if you could take us both,’ and the amusement was abruptly gone from her voice, ‘and I sincerely doubt that, I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve met who thought they could outrun the Inquisition. But you might as well give it a try if you really want to.’ Then the undercurrent of mirth was back in her voice. ‘After all, there’s a first time for everything.’
I smiled too, to demonstrate my confidence in her, but none of the others did. Sorel nodded, slowly, like a debater conceding a point.
‘Fair enough,’ he said.
No one had anything constructive to add, so after a few more desultory questions about the mission parameters (the answers to which all boiled down to ‘Emperor only knows’ in any case), I led them outside to where Jurgen had a Chimera waiting, its engine running, and tried to look confident. I would have preferred my usual scout Salamander, given the choice, but there wouldn’t have been room for the entire team aboard it, and besides, the fully enclosed passenger bay would discourage any last-minute attempts at desertion, or so I hoped.
‘Your equipment’s already aboard,’ I told them, standing well back until they’d embarked, like an ovinehound shepherding a flock through a gate. (Although the canines tend not to use laspistols to emphasise the point, of course.) Five bundles of kit were waiting for them, each one wrapped in a carapace vest with a name stencilled on it, and they all picked out their own as they boarded.
‘Check it carefully,’ Amberley told them. ‘If there’s anything missing you won’t get a chance to come back for it.’
‘Discharge papers?’ Trebek said, raising a tension-relieving laugh from Velade and Holenbi.
‘Something’s wrong here,’ Kelp said, shrugging into the body armour. ‘It fits. Quartermaster must be slipping.’ It was an axiom among the Guard that kit only came in two sizes – too large and too small.
‘I had a word with him,’ Amberley said. ‘He assured me that there wouldn’t be any complaints.’
‘I’ll just bet he did,’ Kelp muttered.
‘Hellguns. Shady!’ Velade hefted her new weapon, looking incongruously like a juvie on Emperor’s day morning. As a regular line trooper, she was only used to handling a standard-issue lasgun, the more powerful variant normally being reserved for storm-troopers and other special forces. At least her evident enthusiasm for her new toy seemed to be keeping her apprehension in check.
‘Nice,’ Kelp agreed, snapping a powercell home with practiced precision.
‘We thought the extra punch might come in handy,’ I said. Amberley had suggested I replace my battered old laspistol with the handgun version of the heavier weapon, but after some hesitation, I’d demurred. I’d got so used to it over the years that it was more like an extension of my own arm than a weapon, and no amount of added stopping power would compensate for the different weight and feel of a replacement throwing off my instinctive aim. In a firefight, that could mean the difference between life and death.
I’d grabbed a set of the body armour, though, and wore it now, concealed beneath my uniform greatcoat. It felt a little heavy and uncomfortable, but a lot less so than taking a las-bolt to the chest.
‘It just might,’ Trebek agreed. She was busily hanging frag grenades from her body harness. Most of them had a couple, along with smoke canisters, luminators, spare power packs, and all the other odds and ends troopers carry into the field. The exception was Holenbi, who carried a medpack in place of the grenades, but his expertise in battlefield medicine made him more valuable patching the others up if the necessity arose. And if it came down to grenades in a confined space, we were pretty much fragged in any case, so a couple more or less wouldn’t make any difference.
‘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.41So 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.
