Hero of the Imperium, page 30
‘What the hell’s that?’ Kasteen asked, over the sound of Sulla being violently sick.
‘A genestealer implant,’ Amberley explained. ‘Once it takes root in a host, it gradually subverts their own genetic identity, turning any offspring into hybrids. A generation or two after that you start to get purestrains showing up, along with hybrids almost indistinguishable from humans, and the taint continues to spread.’ She indicated an identical wound on Velade’s torso. ‘They were both infected when the ‘stealers overran them.’
‘The disorientation was the real giveaway,’ I added. ‘The implant messes with the brain chemistry, so the host remains unaware of being infected. All they recall is a confused impression of fighting, and assume they’ve escaped.’
‘It’s often mistaken for combat fatigue,’ Amberley finished. ‘Luckily, the commissar could tell the difference, or your regiment would have been leaving hidden stealer cults behind wherever you were deployed.’
‘I see.’ Kasteen nodded once, crisply, and turned to the sergeant. ‘Burn the bodies.’
‘A wise precaution,’ Amberley said as the three of us turned away, and the sergeant went looking for a flamer.
‘Colonel! Commissar!’ Broklaw was waving from the ramp of a command Chimera. ‘One of our patrols found some tau down there too. They’re on their way back to the surface now!’
Amberley and I looked at one another, and went to meet the survivors of the shas’la we’d met in the tunnels. Trepidation churned in my gut as the little group, reduced to three now, staggered into the sunlight. One had lost his helmet, and squinted at the sudden brightness. I shivered, finding myself plunged into shadow as a Devilfish troop carrier swept overhead and grounded to receive them. They looked disorientated, it was true, but they would have been as exhausted as we were, and I just couldn’t be sure what the cause might be. These were xenos, after all, and I just couldn’t read them the way I could my own kind.
So I stood there, paralysed with indecision, while they staggered up the ramp and into the transport, aided by their fellows, and by then it was too late anyway. As I turned away, sick with apprehension, I found Amberley watching me with what I can only describe as a smile of satisfaction.
For some reason, that failed to raise my spirits. If anything it had quite the opposite effect.
Editorial Note:
Once again we need to turn to other sources for a wider perspective on the aftermath of the affair than Cain’s typically self-centred account gives us.
From Purge the Guilty! An impartial account of the liberation of Gravalax, by Stententious Logar. 085.M42.
And thus it was that the world we so dearly love was saved from the depredations of the alien by the heroism of the warriors of His Divine Majesty and the martial fortitude of heroes whose names live on in the glory of their deeds. Even those of the calibre of the celebrated Commissar Cain, who, though his own contribution to this campaign was never more than peripheral, was no doubt proud to have been associated with so noble an endeavour. It is indeed a pity that, like most of the Imperial Guardsmen deployed in this most glorious of enterprises, he was able to do no more than remain on the sidelines, but he was at least in at the death, so to speak, having been present when the treacherous Governor Grice at last met deserved retribution at the hands of the Inquisition. Indeed, some even assert that he witnessed the celebrated duel to the death between the wretched traitor and the inquisitor herself, although like most conscientious historians I must reluctantly concede that this is, in all probability, nothing more than a charming myth. After a thorough examination of the evidence, it seems far more likely that an officer of his calibre would have been in the thick of the battle for control of the palace, especially once the perfidious tau had moved in to try to protect the puppet their insidious rogue trader accomplices had installed on the throne there.
Be that as it may, the Battle of the Palace was undoubtedly the true turning point in the history of our fair globe, when the grip of the xenoist interloper was finally broken, and the relieved and grateful populace brought back at last under the protection of the Divine Emperor and his tireless servants. Broken and dispirited, the tau departed, slinking away like the vagabond thieves they were, having failed to seize the fair world of Gravalax for their own. Within hours of their defeat at the hands of the Imperial Guard, they withdrew, not only from the city, but from the planet itself. One by one they fled aboard their starships, retreating back into the hinterland of space from whence they’d come, never to trouble us again.
For you can be sure that we, the generations that followed, have been careful not to make the mistakes of our ancestors, and remain ever vigilant against the hour of their return. Even now, our PDF units stand ready, at a moments’ notice, to defend the sacred soil of His Majesty’s most holy dominions to the uttermost drop of their blood, and it is our most fervent hope that one day the cream of these doughty warriors may be found worthy to take their place in the blessed ranks of the Imperial Guard itself.
As to the rogue traders, we must be equally on our guard, for they remain among us, spreading their insidious web of treachery...
[And so on, and so on...
From which you might fairly deduce that the genestealer infestation remains a secret known only to a few; and since those few are either servants of the Inquisition or members of an Imperial Guard unit never likely to return to the wretched place, it’s a secret which will remain secure. As to why this should be so important...]
EPILOGUE
‘Stories are much tidier than real life. Stories have neat, happy endings, but all you ever really get is unfinished business.’
– Janni Vakonz, holo director.
I’d seen little of Amberley in the week that followed our adventures in the undercity, but we both had plenty to keep us occupied over those few days, so I hardly found her absence surprising. Jurgen was still recovering slowly, so I’d lost my principle buttress against most of the tedious minutiae of my job, and found my workload drastically increased as a result. Add to that the fatigue and minor injuries I’d sustained, and I did little else apart from eat, sleep, and shuffle datafiles. Divas dropped round one evening with a bottle of amasec, which provided a pleasant enough diversion, and filled me in on the latest gossip (which, after the last time, you can be sure I did my utmost to ignore; no point in taking any chances).
‘No one can understand it,’ he said at one point. ‘The tau are just pulling out.’ I’d heard as much from other sources, most of them a good deal more reliable thanks to my connections in the lord general’s office, but I nodded nonetheless as I poured us both refills.
‘Well, that’s xenos for you,’ I said helpfully. ‘Who knows why they do anything?’ It still didn’t make much sense when Donali explained it to me, but he seemed to know what he was talking about, and Amberley confirmed it later, so it’s the best I can do.
You see, peculiar little devils that they are, they don’t seem to value the objective of the fighting purely for itself, the way we do. As best as I can understand it, they reckoned that if we were that determined to pitch into a meat grinder war to hang on to this worthless mudball, we might as well have it. They’d go off and do something more productive until we got bored or complacent or distracted, and come back for it later when we couldn’t put up a decent fight for the place.59 And in the meantime, there was the hive fleet to worry about, assuming it was actually out there. (Which, as we were subsequently to discover, it most certainly was.)
So, as you can appreciate, I was pleasantly surprised when a message arrived from Amberley inviting me to dinner at a discreet waterfront restaurant in a quarter of the city which seemed to have escaped the worst of the fighting; even more so, given that I’d never expected to see her again. (Just how far off the mark that assumption was you’ll find ample evidence of elsewhere in this memoir, as I’ve already mentioned.)
‘How’s Jurgen?’ she asked, over a mouthwatering smoked vyl crêpe. Touched by her solicitude, I filled her in on his recovery, and asked how her associates were getting on in return. (Reasonably well, as it turned out: Rakel was up and about and as bonkers as ever, and Orelius had already returned to his ship.)
She nodded at the news. ‘I’m glad to hear it. He’s a remarkable man.’
‘He’s certainly unusual,’ I agreed, savouring the local vintage she’d obtained from somewhere – light and piquant, it complimented the food wonderfully. She smiled at that.
‘More so than you realise.’ Something about the way her tone changed alerted me, and I began to pay more attention to her words. This was more than mere small talk. ‘I don’t think we’d have made it out of the tunnels without him.’ I thought back to my desperate duel with the patriarch.
‘If he hadn’t scrounged that melta from somewhere–’ I agreed, but she cut me off before I could finish.
‘That isn’t what I meant. Do you know what a blank is?’ I must have looked baffled, because she went on to explain. ‘They’re incredibly rare; about as rare among psykers as psykers are compared to the rest of us.’
‘You think Jurgen’s a psyker?’ I asked, laughing in spite of myself, and inclining my body slightly to the left to give the waiter room to remove my plate. The idea was so ridiculous I just couldn’t help it. But Amberley shook her head.
‘No. Quite the reverse. He’s a blank, I’m sure of it.’ I echoed the gesture.
‘You’ve lost me,’ I admitted.
‘Blanks are like anti-psykers,’ she explained. ‘They can’t be affected by psykers or warp entities. They block telepathic communication. You saw how the patriarch reacted to him...’
‘It seemed to get disoriented when he got close to it,’ I said, remembering. ‘And Grice was desperate to keep him away.’ Amberley nodded.
‘Exactly. His presence disrupted the brood telepathy.’
‘That explains a lot,’ I said, recalling a number of incidents over the years which had seemed no more than mildly puzzling at the time, but which I now realised formed a pattern, confirming my aide’s resistance to psychic attack. ‘How long have you known?’
‘Since the first time I saw him,’ she admitted. ‘When Rakel had a seizure while he was trying to help her into the Salamander.’ A terrible suspicion began to form.
‘You’re going to recruit him, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘If he can face down daemons and sorcerers you’re not going to leave him buried in an obscure Imperial Guard unit.’ She was smiling again, as though something amused her.
‘The Inquisition is an odd organisation, Ciaphas,’ she said. ‘Not like the Guard, where everyone’s united against a common foe, and you can rely on your comrades and your command structure.’ I wasn’t sure what she was driving at then, but I’ve had rather more dealings with the Inquisition since than I’m comfortable with, and believe me, it makes sense. Just take my word for it, and hope you never have cause to find out. ‘We’re not very big on sharing our sources and resources, because we never really know who else in the ordos we can trust.’ As you’ll appreciate, astonishment barely begins to cover what I felt listening to those words. ‘So, no, I think for the time being I’d rather leave him where he is. It’s safer that way.’
‘Safe? In a front line Guard unit?’ I thought she was joking at first, until I got a good look at her eyes. Blue and guileless, they shone with a sincerity that would have been impossible to fake. (Believe me, I’m an expert at that.) She nodded again.
‘I’ll be able to find you again if I need you. Either of you.’ And I was so caught up in the moment that the full implication of those words never struck me at the time. ‘But if I take him on as one of my staff he’ll attract attention. The sort I’d rather avoid.60’
‘I see.’ I didn’t really, but the main point seemed to be that I wouldn’t have to worry about losing my aide after all, at least in the short term. And it also hadn’t escaped my notice that while he was around I wouldn’t have to worry about any passing psykers ferreting out secrets I’d rather leave buried. I started in on my toffee cream dessert with well-deserved enthusiasm.
‘Good.’ Amberley grinned again, the mischievous expression I found so appealing back on her face. ‘Besides, Rakel’s hard enough to deal with at the best of times, without passing out on me every five minutes.’
‘I’m sure,’ I said. The silence stretched awkwardly for a moment, so I made an attempt to change the subject. ‘You’ve heard about the tau withdrawal?’ She nodded.
‘El’sorath still insists that the world is theirs by right, but they’re agreeing to respect the status quo for the time being. I guess they blinked first.’ She shrugged. ‘Besides, they’re spooked by the idea of a hive fleet moving in, even if they don’t want to admit it. They’ve had a few skirmishes with splinter fleets in the last couple of centuries, and they’re under no illusions about what a full-scale invasion would mean.’ Neither was I, and I shuddered at the thought. ‘Hanging on to one small planet doesn’t mean much in the face of that, especially if it would weaken their response to the greater threat.’
‘Speaking of which...’ I coughed delicately. ‘I’m still not entirely sure those pathfinders... You know...’
‘Who cares?’ Amberley sipped at her wine appreciatively. ‘If they were, then at least it’ll draw the hive fleets down on them instead of us a few generations down the line. And in the meantime, we can exploit the chaos in the tau empire for our own ends.’
‘Good for us, then,’ I said. I raised my own glass. ‘Confusion to our enemies.’
‘And kudos to our friends.’ Our glasses clinked together, and Amberley grinned at me again. ‘Here’s to the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’
Not to mention half a lifetime of running, shooting, and bowel-clenching terror, of course. But looking back, I have to say she made it well worth the effort.
[And on that somewhat ego-boosting note, this extract from the Cain Archive comes to a natural conclusion].
FOOTNOTES
1. A common mistake. It is, of course, virtually unheard of for an entire Astartes Chapter to take the field at once, let alone two; what Cain obviously means here is that elements from two different Chapters were involved. (A couple of companies apiece from the Reclaimers and the Swords of the Emperor.)
2. He’d heard wrong, or is possibly exaggerating for effect. The newly appointed colonel of the 112th Rough Riders was a former sergeant, true, but had already recieved a battlefield promotion to lieutenant during the defence of Corania. None of the senior command staff in any of the recently consolidated units had made the promotional jump directly from non-commissioned officer.
3. Not the most flattering or accurate description of His Divine Majesty’s most holy Inquisition, it must be admitted.
4. Slate of Organisation and Equipment. Not actually a physical dataslate, but an archaic term for the details of the disposition of troopers and equipment within an Imperial Guard unit. Still in use among many regiments with more than a thousand years of unbroken tradition.
5. Cain is correct in this assumption. Strictly against regulations, of course, but boys will be boys...
6. This is, of course, entirely untrue. As His Divine Majesty’s most faithful servants, we’re most definitely above such petty emotions as resentment.
7. 837.M41, according to surviving records. Like many amateur historians, Logar is long on rhetoric and short on actual scholarship.
8. Or Logar couldn’t be bothered to do the research.
9. Cain was part of the invasion force which cleansed Sanguia. His account of this action is also recorded in the archive.
10. It was hardly unprecedented for men and women to serve together in the Imperial Guard. Notable units in which this was the norm included the Omicron Rangers, Tanith First, and Calderon Rifles. However, with women making up fewer than ten per cent of the total number under arms, and the vast majority of those serving in single-sex regiments, it wouldn’t be that surprising if the 597th excited a certain amount of curiosity among the onlookers present.
11. A widespread, though unofficial practice among units experienced in urban warfare. So much so that it’s now become part of the standard operating procedure in many regiments, the ad hoc arrangement persisting to become a permanent feature of their organisation.
12. A Valhallan slang abbreviation for ‘kilometre’. Cain served with Valhallan units for most of his life, and inevitably his speech became peppered with colloquialisms acquired from them.
13. The most affluent area of the city, where it began to rise up into the surrounding hills. Though tau influence on the local architecture was widespread, as Cain notes elsewhere, it was more overt here than anywhere else on Mayoh. As a result, it was popular with the most radical of the pro-tau citizens, and a natural focus of protest for the Imperial loyalists. As the political situation continued to deteriorate, clashes between the two factions became commonplace here.
14. A reasonable assumption on both accounts. Details of Cain’s subsequent activities as my ‘errand boy,’ as he puts it, can be found in the Ordo’s libram if any readers care to check the official accounts; his own version of these events can be found elsewhere in the archive, but need not concern us at the moment.
15. A famous military blunder in the Spiron campaign, which took place on 438.926.M41. Captain Gannack’s sentinel troop, from the 3rd Kalaman Hussars, misinterpreted their orders and charged an ork redoubt containing an artillery battery. No one survived.
