The Emperor's Finest, page 3
Gries highlighted an open area between the trench line and the building, which common sense and experience told me had to be covered by emplaced weapons from at least two directions. 'This is our landing zone,' he said. 'My team and the commissar will present our compliments to Governor DuPanya, while Sergeant Trosque's squad will move out at once to ensure the safety of the cathedral and the shrine of the Omnissiah.'
The sergeant, who I'd already picked out by virtue of the chainsword scabbarded at his hip, opposite the holster of his bolt pistol, made no visible sign of acknowledgement, but his voice responded at once. 'One combat squad should suffice for each objective. Mine will safeguard the shrine, Veren's the cathedral.'
'What about the Thunderhawk?' I asked, hoping the answer would be something to the effect of it staying on the ground with its engines running in case we needed a rapid dustoff, but knowing this was extremely unlikely.
'Seek and destroy,' Gries said, which made perfect sense. With the local loyalists dug in at four known enclaves, pretty much anything else that looked military would be renegade units, attached to one or other of the squabbling factions, and fair game for the circling gunship. 'Let the rebels know we've arrived.'
Given the amount of firepower I'd seen while boarding, that was hardly going to be difficult. I nodded, with every outward sign of approval. 'Might as well start as we mean to go on,' I agreed.
Gries manipulated the controls of the pict-screen again, and the image changed to an external view, relayed from part of the fire control system judging by the targeting graphics superimposed on it. We were still at high altitude, but undeniably within the atmosphere 3 . As I watched, transfixed, the smoking ruins of Fidelis rolled over the horizon, and I found myself trying to pick out the landmarks Gries had highlighted during his briefing. The cathedral was the easiest, still dominating the quarter in which it stood, despite the tumbled ruins of most of its spires. With that to orientate me, I was soon able to pick out the blank-sided slabs of the Administratum ziggurat, and the burnished steel cladding of the Mechanicus shrine. The governor's palace was another matter, however, less tall than the others and still some distance away, surrounded by a cluster of lesser mansions and their grounds, like a she-grox with young. As we grew closer, it became evident that many were burned out, and all had been pillaged, in a manner which put me in mind of mob violence rather than battle damage.
Then the pall of smoke cleared, and we skimmed over the outer wall of the palace grounds, too fast to be targeted by ground-to-air fire, the upturned faces of guards and besiegers alike identical masks of astonishment 4 . Abruptly, I found myself pressed hard against the crash webbing, as the pilot kicked in the retros, killing our forward momentum, then my stomach seemed to float free of my body as we dropped towards the ground. It was just as well Jurgen wasn't with me, I thought, as he was prone to airsickness at the best of times, and this was hardly one of those. Without warning, an ork-sized boot seemed to kick me in the fundament, and the noise of the engines died back to almost bearable levels. We were down.
'Prepare to disembark,' Gries said, as the ramp began to drop, letting in a swirl of damp air, lightly scented with burning vegetation from the heat of our landing thrusters. Trosque's fire-team 5 deployed first, jogging down the ramp and securing it; I was pleased to see that they were taking nothing for granted, even though we were supposed to be meeting allies. After a moment the sergeant assured us that all was well, and Gries and his command squad followed. Seeing no reason to delay any further, and convinced that if there was treachery afoot there could be no better place to discover the fact than from behind a solid wall of bolter-carrying ceramite, I trotted after them, trying to look as imposing as I could given that my head barely came up to the level of their pauldrons.
As my bootsoles hit solid ground, crunching a little on the ashes and baked mud which still smoked gently beneath the Thunderhawk, I got a lungful of smoke and tried to suppress the reflex to cough. No one else was, and I didn't want to be the one to undermine the dignity of the occasion.
As Gries stepped off the bottom of the ramp, he paused for a moment, two of his companions at either shoulder and an exact pace behind. Taken briefly by surprise, I stopped too, just short of walking into the back of him, and level with the other four Astartes, completing the line, and, of course, completely invisible from the front.
'Welcome to Viridia,' someone said, and I shuffled sideways a little to get a better view. We were evidently expected, as a delegation had come to meet us: ceremonial troopers, their gaudy uniforms looking rather the worse for wear by now, who held their lasguns like men who'd recently discovered exactly what they were for, and were ready to employ them in an instant, surrounding a man in robes so ridiculously over-ornamented there could be little doubt as to who he was, even before he announced the fact. 'I'm Governor DuPanya.' Then, to my astonishment, he went down on one knee. 'You honour us by your presence.'
'Please rise,' Gries said, the vox system of his helmet, perhaps mercifully, purging any traces of surprise or amusement from his words. 'We have much to discuss, and little time to waste on ceremony.' He reached up, removing the helmet, and DuPanya relaxed visibly as the captain's face came into view. It wasn't exactly a hololith, consisting as it did mainly of augmetics and scar tissue, but it looked a great deal more friendly than a blank visage of pitted ceramite. 'I am Captain Gries of the Reclaimers Chapter, these are my battle-brothers and this...' he turned, apparently surprised to find me so close to hand, 'is Commissar Cain, our liaison with the Imperial Guard elements of the task force.'
'Imperial Guard?' DuPanya asked, standing up as he'd been bidden and giving me my first proper look at him. He appeared to be in early middle age - although I was too familiar with the nobility's fondness for juvenat treatments, even on a backwater world like this one, to put much faith in outward appearance - and running slightly to fat. His eyes, however, were keen and looked at me appraisingly. 'I was not informed of their arrival.'
'They're still in the warp,' I told him, reflecting somewhat ruefully that I could have saved myself a considerable amount of inconvenience if I'd delayed my departure to travel with them, and whatever piece of gung-ho idiocy Lokris had been planning to drag me into could hardly have turned out to be worse than the metal abominations I'd barely escaped with my life from on Interitus Prime.
'Emperor willing, they should be here within the week.' In fact they should be there within the next couple of days, if the warp currents hadn't shifted appreciably since the last estimate I'd heard, but nothing to do with the Realm of Chaos itself is ever certain, and I preferred to err on the side of caution. I raised my voice a little, above the scream of the Thunderhawk's engines, which were powering up again now that Veren's team had disembarked behind us. 'But perhaps this isn't the best place to be discussing operational matters.'
'Quite so,' Gries agreed, his voice cutting through the din as though it were little more than the murmuring of wind through the trees.
'Having come here to ensure your safety, it seems a little unwise to be talking where the enemy could deny us our objective with a lucky mortar round or a sniper's bullet.' This didn't seem to have occurred to the governor, who, to his credit, seemed relatively unconcerned at the possibility. Nevertheless, he turned and led the way inside, his escort looking considerably relieved as they regained a little hard cover. Gries and his entourage followed, while I oscillated between the two parties, connected to both by ties of protocol, but properly part of neither.
As we reached the heavy wooden doors of the palace and passed inside, I glanced back at the Thunderhawk, which was rising from the ground like a raptor in search of prey. Beneath it Trosque and Veren were leading their sections towards the perimeter wall, in diverging directions as each made for the gate closest to his objective, and I breathed silent thanks to the Throne that I'd be well under cover before the serious shooting started. I had no doubt that the Astartes would make short work of any traitors standing between them and their targets, but the initial contact for both teams would be close enough for us to attract any collateral damage that might be going.
Well, perhaps the Thunderhawk could help clear the path for them. It circled lazily over our heads one final time, then roared away to find something to shoot at.
Watching it go, I felt a faint sense of unease, reflecting that, for better or worse, I was now committed to the defence of this beach-head, with nowhere to go unless it was through the enemy. Then reason kicked in, and reassured me that I must be as safe here as anywhere on Viridia. After all, the palace hadn't fallen yet, and it had now been reinforced by five of the most formidable fighters in the Imperium. Plus me. I should be able to avoid trouble here, surely.
Editorial Note:
Cain has alluded in passing to the subsector-wide importance of Viridia, but knowing a little more about the world, and the system of which it is a part, makes it abundantly clear why its pacification was important enough to warrant the deployment of an Astartes expeditionary force. The following extract is almost as idiosyncratic as Cain's own prose, but serves its purpose of filling in sufficient background to clarify much of what follows without sacrificing readability to pedantry. Anyone wanting greater detail is referred to the Compendium of Takings of the Damocles Gulf and Bordering Regions (Abridged), Volume MCLXXIV, appendices 17, 2,378 and 3,452,691, which may be consulted at any Administratum archive, once the appropriate requests have been filed in triplicate. Eventually.
From Interesting Places and Tedious People: A Wanderer's Waybook, by Jerval Sekara, 145.M39.
THE AGRI-WORLD OF Vidia lies a little to spinward of the more populous regions of the Damocles Gulf, but can be reached surprisingly easily, due to the large volume of traffic to and from the neighbouring hive-worlds. This makes it a useful stopover point, since passage there, and to whatever eventual destination the wayfarer may settle upon once its decidedly bucolic charms have begun to pall, may be easily obtained.
It is, however, worth a brief sojourn, as it manages to combine both rural simplicity and urban sophistication in a manner which, if not unique, is certainly uncommon in this part of the Imperium. In part this is due to the sheer volume of shipping, since enterprising grain barge captains compete energetically with one another to wring some kind of profit from the inward leg of their journeys, ensuring a steady supply of offworld merchandise of a variety almost unparalleled elsewhere in the subsector. As the local saying has it, if you can't find it on Viridia, it probably doesn't exist.
All of which has made the world itself tolerably prosperous, with a thriving mercantile class, who, in the manner of parvenus everywhere, fritter away their profits on grandiose architecture and philanthropic enterprises intended to better the lot of the artisans, whether they want it bettered or not. As a result, the planetary capital, Fidelis, is positively awash with grand public buildings, ornamented to within an inch of their lives and separated by a profuse scattering of parks and gardens. The local populace is hardworking and pious, to such an extent that almost every street contains a chapel or shrine to the Emperor. Notwithstanding, they throw themselves into any excuse for a celebration wholeheartedly, with the annual festivals dedicated to some aspect or other of the agricultural cycle being particularly popular. The epitome of ecclesiarchial architecture, however, must surely be the cathedral in Fidelis, which in size and splendour can rival those to be found on far more populous worlds, and which attracts pilgrims from all over the Viridia System.
For, unlike most other agriworlds, Viridia exports a great deal more than just foodstuffs. The rest of the planetary system of which it is a part is exceptionally rich in minerals, and millions of its citizens live offworld, in orbitals, void stations and mining habs, dedicated to harvesting this bounty as assiduously as their pitchfork-wielding cousins on the surface do theirs. In fact, it's no exaggeration to say that around half the total Viridian population have never set foot on the planet they nominally call home, and never will. The raw material they gather is dispatched to the manufactoria of the neighbouring systems in a never-ending stream, slaking the hunger of their production lines just as efficiently as the grain barges do the workers who labour thereon.
THREE
DUPANYA AND HIS bodyguard led us through the palace at a rapid pace, down carpeted corridors lined with tapestries and through wooden-floored galleries whose polished surface fared badly under the heavy stride of the Space Marines, the rich, warm sheen of generations of waxing scuffing and splintering wherever they set foot. The deathmasked faces of the governor's ancestors stared down disapprovingly from the walls at this casual vandalism, although DuPanya didn't seem to mind much, or even notice; after all, the damage was slight enough, compared to the devastation the rebel artillery had already wrought on his home.
The Astartes seemed equally indifferent, walking in the same synchronised fashion I'd noticed before among their comrades, each left foot striking the floor at exactly the same time, then the right, with the precision of servitors. Every time they took a step the floor shuddered under the combined impact, and I felt the shock of it travelling up my legs, to the point where I began to feel as though I was aboard some slightly unstable watercraft. Fortunately the sensation was relatively short-lived, as, before long, the wooden floor gave way to bare rockcrete, the walls roughly finished in the same material, and I realised we were now in a bunker beneath the palace itself. As we descended several levels, I found my unease diminishing; this hidden redoubt had survived innumerable artillery bombardments unscathed, and would undoubtedly continue to do so. It was, therefore, with something approaching a light heart that I stepped through a pair of reinforced blast doors, currently propped open by a brace of guards in the same comic opera uniforms as their compatriots, who at least had the grace to pull themselves into a semblance of attention as we passed them, to find myself in a reasonably well-equipped command centre.
Dragging my attention from the solid buttresses and thick ceiling protecting us, I caught intermittent glimpses of pict screens and data lecterns between the towering figures in power armour which blocked most of my view, but could make out little until they fanned out, indicating that we'd reached the operational area at last.
'Governor.' A middle-aged man in a rather more practical uniform than the ones we'd seen so far, resembling standard Imperial Guard fatigues, mottled in greys and mid-blues 1 , looked up from the hololith which dominated the centre of the space. A faintly flickering image of the city was being projected in it, spattered with icons I was fairly certain marked the positions of friendly and enemy troops. 'The Astartes are assaulting the enemy outside the east and north-western gates.' If he was surprised to see me or my companions, he gave no sign of the fact, merely nodding a preoccupied greeting in our direction, and I decided I liked him, whoever he was. Either he was keeping his mind on the business of defending our enclave, or he'd simply decided he was damned if he was going to look impressed by us, a game I knew well, and always enjoyed playing myself.
Gries nodded, no doubt being kept up to date with his men's progress by monitoring systems built into his armour, and I began to regret discarding the bulky headset I'd been wearing before we left the Thunderhawk. It had been heavy and awkward, true, having been designed for a head far larger than mine, but I'd got so used to following the progress of a battle through the comm-bead I habitually wore that I found myself feeling cut off from events without it - a sensation no member of the Commissariat ever feels comfortable with, particularly one as paranoid as me. Well, I'd just have to make do with the hololith to follow what was going on. 'They are,' the Reclaimers captain confirmed, 'and proceeding to their objectives. Resistance is light.'
From where I was standing it looked like the enemy were throwing everything they could at the two combat squads, but I suppose from Gries's point of view, having just seen off a tomb world full of necrons, a rabble of rebellious PDF troopers afforded little more than a handy bit of target practice.
'Thank you, general.' DuPanya discarded his robe with evident relief, turning out, to my surprise, to be wearing a uniform similar to the officer who'd greeted him beneath it, but without the rank pins at the collar. 'That's better.' He handed the richly patterned material to the nearest guard, and smiled at me, in the manner of a man imparting a confidence. 'Can't stand the blasted thing,' he said. 'Makes me look like a sofa.'
I couldn't really argue with that, so I didn't try. Instead, I turned to the hololith and addressed the general. 'You no doubt know who we are,' I said, 'so I won't waste time with introductions.' Especially since I didn't have a clue who three of Gries's companions were in any case; with their helmets on they all looked alike to me, and I doubted that removing them would have left me much the wiser. 'What are we looking at here?'
'The dispositions of all the units we're currently aware of,' the man in blue and grey replied, apparently just as happy to dispense with the formalities as I was. 'Blue for loyalist, yellow, green and red for the different enemy factions. They've been gunning for one another as much as us, so we're happy to let them get on with it while we wait for the relief force to arrive.'
'It has arrived,' Gries reminded him, looming suddenly at my elbow and staring at the display with a thoughtful expression on his face. 'These deployments make no sense.'
I looked at the display more carefully, trying to see what he meant. The red, yellow and green icons were clustered around the blue enclaves like scum round an outfall, each encircling whichever Imperial redoubt fell in the sector of the city they controlled. One each, plus the palace, which seemed to be on the cusp of their zones of influence, and which was bordered on the south and east by red, yellow to the north, and green to the west.
