For The Emperor, page 6
‘They claim they’re just here to safeguard their trading interests,’ Divas said. We both snorted with laughter at that one. We knew how often the Imperium had said exactly the same thing before launching an all-out invasion of some luckless ball of dirt. Of course when we did it, it was true, and it was my job to shoot anyone who thought otherwise.
‘One for the diplomats, then,’ I said, signalling for another round. A nicely rounded waitress bustled over, full of patriotic fervour, and replenished our glasses.
One thing I can say for Divas, he knew how to find a good bar. This one, the Eagle’s Wing, was definitely in the loyalist camp. The wide, smoky cellar full of Planetary Defence Force regulars were delighted to see some real soldiers at last, and fulminating at the governor for not letting them loose on the aliens years ago. The owner was a corporal in the PDF reserves, recently retired after twenty years’ service, and he couldn’t seem to get over the honour of having a couple of real Guard officers in the place. And once Divas had introduced me, and I’d been appropriately modest about my earlier adventures in the Emperor’s name, there was no question of us having to pay the bill either. After signing autographs for some of the civilian customers – all of whom urged us to pot a few of the ‘little blue bastards’ on their behalf – and charming the waitress had begun to pall, we’d retreated to a quiet side booth where we could talk uninterrupted.
‘I think the diplomats could be getting a little help on this one,’ Divas said, tapping the side of his nose conspiratorially as he lifted the glass. I drank a little more slowly, acutely aware that we’d have to start making our way back through a potentially hostile city soon, and wanting to keep a reasonably clear head.
‘Help from who?’ I asked.
‘Who do you think?’ Divas dipped his finger in the glass, and sketched a stylised letter I with a pair of crossbars bisecting it on the surface of the table, before erasing it with a sweep of his hand. I laughed.
‘Oh yeah, them. Right.’ I’ve yet to arrive any place where the political situation’s fluid without hearing rumours of Inquisition agents beavering away behind the scenes, and unless I happen to be the errand boy in question, I never believe a word of it. On the other hand, if there aren’t any rumours, then they probably are up to some mischief and no mistake about it[14].
‘You can laugh.’ Divas finished his drink, and replaced the glass on the table. ‘But I heard it from one of the Administratum adepts, who swore he’d got it from... somewhere or other.’ An expression of faint bewilderment drifted across his face. ‘I think I need some fresh air.’
‘I think you do, too,’ I said. Leaving aside what I thought then were his ridiculous fantasies about the Inquisition, he’d still given me a lot to think about. The situation here was undoubtedly far more complex than I’d been led to believe, and I needed to consider things carefully.
So we took our leave of our kindly hosts, the waitress in particular looking sorry to see me go, and staggered up the stairway and into the street.
The cold night air hit me like a refreshing shower, snapping me back to alertness, and I glanced around while Divas communed loudly with the Emperor in a convenient gutter. Fortunately, the bar he’d steered us to was down a quiet side alley, so no one saw the dignity of the Imperial uniform being sullied. Once I was sure there were no more eruptions to come, I helped him to his feet.
‘You used to be able to hold it better than that,’ I chided, and he shook his head mournfully.
‘Local rotgut. Not like the stuff we used to drink. And I should have eaten something...’
‘It would just have been a wasted effort,’ I consoled him, and glanced around, trying to get our bearings. ‘Where the frak are we, anyway?’
‘Dock zone,’ he said confidently, hardly swaying on his feet at all now. ‘This way.’ He strode off towards the nearest luminated thoroughfare. I shrugged, and followed him. After all, he’d had three weeks to get his bearings.
As we made our way through the well-lit street, however, I began to feel a little apprehensive. True, we’d been deep in conversation on our way to the bar, but none of the landmarks looked familiar to me, and I began to wonder if his confidence had been misplaced.
‘Toren,’ I said after a while, noticing a gradual increase in the number of scalplocks and murderous glances among the passers-by, ‘are you sure this is the way back to our staging area?’
‘Not ours,’ he said, the grin back on his face. ‘Theirs. Thought you’d like to get a look at the enemy.’
‘You thought what?’ I yelped, amazed at his stupidity. Then I remembered. Divas bought the myth of my purported heroism completely and without question, and had done ever since he’d seen me take on an entire tyranid swarm with just a chainsword when we were callow youths together. Purely by accident, as it happened, I’d had no idea the damn bugs were even there until I’d blundered into them, and if I hadn’t ended up inadvertently leading them into the beaten zone of our heavy ordnance and saving the day, they’d have torn me to pieces. Waltzing up to the enemy encampment and thumbing our noses at them probably struck him as the kind of thing I did for fun. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘It’s perfectly safe,’ he said. ‘We’re not officially at war with them yet.’ Well, that was true, but I still wasn’t keen on jumping the gun.
‘And until we are, we’re not going to provoke them,’ I said, all commissarial duty. Divas’s face fell, like a child denied a sweet, and I thought I’d better put a gloss on it that would match his expectations of me. ‘We can’t put our own amusement ahead of our responsibilities to the Emperor, however tempting it is.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said reluctantly, and I began to breathe a little more easily. Now all I had to do was manoeuvre him back to the barracks before he got any more stupid ideas. So I took him by the arm, and turned him around. ‘Now how do we get back to our compound?’
‘How about in a body bag?’ somebody asked. I turned, feeling my stomach drop. About a dozen locals stood behind us, the street light striking highlights from their shaven heads, a variety of improvised weapons hanging purposefully from their hands. They looked tough, at least in their own minds, but when you’ve been face to face with orks and eldar reiver slavers you don’t intimidate that easily. Well, all right. I do, but I don’t show it, which is the main thing.
Besides, I had a laspistol and a chainsword, which in my experience trumps a crowbar every time. So I laid a restraining hand on Divas’s shoulder, as he was still intoxicated enough to rise to the bait, and smiled lazily.
‘Believe me,’ I said, ‘you don’t want to start anything.’
‘You don’t tell me what I want.’ The group’s spokesman stepped forward into the light. Fine, I thought, keep them talking. ‘But that’s what you Imperials do, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t quite follow,’ I said, affecting mild curiosity. Movement out of the corner of my eye told me that our retreat had been cut off. A second group emerged from the alley mouth behind us. I started calculating the odds. If I made a move to draw the laspistol, they’d rush me, but I’d probably manage to get a shot off. If I took out the leader with it, and ran forward at the same time, I stood a good chance of breaking through the line and making a run for it. That assumed they’d be surprised or intimidated enough to hesitate, of course, and I was able to open up a decent lead. With any luck they’d turn on Divas, buying me enough time to get away, but I couldn’t be sure of that, so I continued to play for time and look for a better chance.
‘You’re here to take our world!’ the leader shouted. As he came forward fully into the light I could see that his face was painted blue, a delicate pastel shade. It should have made him look ridiculous, but the overall effect was somehow charismatic. ‘But you’ll never take our freedom!’
‘Your freedom is what we’re here to give you, you xeno-hugging moron!’ Divas broke free of my restraining arm, and lunged forward. ‘But you’re too brainwashed to see it!’
Great. So much for diplomacy. Still, while he was set on re-enacting Gannack’s Charge,[15] I might be able to make a run for it.
No such luck, of course – the surrounding heretics drove in on us as a concerted wedge. I just managed to draw my laspistol and snap off a shot, taking out half the face of one of the group, which, I’m bound to say, didn’t make much of a difference to his overall personal charm, before an iron bar came down hard on my wrist. I’ve been in enough mêlées to have seen the blow coming, and to have ridden it, which saved me from a fracture or worse, but that didn’t help the pain, which exploded along my arm, deadening it. My fingers flew open, and I ducked, scrabbling after the precious weapon, but it was futile. A knee drove up into my ribs, slamming the breath from my lungs, and I was down, cold, hard rockcrete scraping the skin from my knuckles (the real ones anyway), and knowing I was a dead man unless I could get away somehow.
‘Toren!’ I screamed, but Divas had problems of his own by now, and I wasn’t going to get any help from that quarter. I curled up, trying to protect my vital organs, and tried frantically to get at my chainsword. Of course, I should have gone for that first, holding the mob at bay with it, but hindsight’s about as much use as a heretic’s oath, and now the bloody thing was trapped under my own bodyweight. I scrabbled frantically, feeling fists and boots thudding against my ribs. Luckily there were so many of them that they were getting in each others way, and my uniform greatcoat was thick enough to absorb some of the impact, or I’d have been in even worse shape than I was.
‘Greechaah!’ something shrieked, an inhuman scream that raised the hairs on the back of my neck, even under those conditions. My assailants hesitated, and I rolled clear, in time to see the largest of them yanked back by sheer brute force.
For a moment I thought I was hallucinating, but the pain in my ribs was all too real. A face dominated by a large hooked beak was gazing down at me, surmounted by a crest of quills that had been dyed or painted in some elaborate pattern, and hot, charnel breath washed across my face, making me gag.
‘You are comparatively uninjured?’ the thing asked, in curiously accented Gothic. It’s hard to convey in writing, but its voice was glottal, most of the consonants reduced to hard clicking sounds. It was perfectly understandable, mind you. My stupefaction was due entirely to the fact that something that looked like that was able to talk in the first place.
‘Yes, thank you,’ I croaked after a moment. Whenever you don’t have a clue what’s going on, I’ve always found, it never hurts to be polite.
‘That is gratifying,’ the thing said, and threw the heretic in its left hand casually away. The others were standing around aimlessly now, like sulky schola students when the tutor turns up to spoil the fun. Then it extended the same thin, scaly hand equipped with dagger-like claws towards me. After a heartstopping moment, I divined its intention, and accepted the proffered assistance in gaining my feet. As I did so, it turned to the sullen group of heretics.
‘This does not advance the greater good,’ it said. ‘Disperse now, and avoid conflict.’ Well, that was a challenge if ever I’d heard one. But to my surprise, and, I must admit, my intense relief, the little knot of troublemakers slunk away into the shadows. I eyed my rescuer a little apprehensively. He (or she – with kroot it’s impossible to tell, and only another kroot would care anyway) was slightly taller than I was, and still looked pretty intimidating. They’re tough enough to take on an ork in hand-to-hand combat, and I, for one, wouldn’t be betting on the greenskin, but if it wanted me dead, it would only have had to wait a few moments. I retrieved my fallen laspistol anyway, and tried to get my breath back.
‘I’m obliged to you,’ I said. ‘I must admit I don’t understand, but I’m grateful.’ I fumbled the weapon back into its holster with some difficulty. My arm was swelling up now, and my fingers felt thick and unresponsive. My rescuer made a curious clicking sound, which I assumed to be its equivalent of laughter.
‘Imperial officers murdered by tau supporters. Not a desirable outcome when the political situation is tense.’
‘Not a desirable outcome at any time when one of them is me,’ I said, and the xeno made the clicking noise again. That reminded me of Divas, and I staggered across to check on him. He was still breathing, but unconscious, a deep gash across his forehead. I’d picked up enough battlefield medicine to know he’d recover soon enough, but have the Emperor’s own headache when he woke, and that was fine with me – serve the idiot right for nearly getting me killed.
‘I have the honour to be Gorok, of the Clan T’cha,’ the creature said. ‘I am kroot.’
‘I know what you are,’ I said. ‘Kroot killed my parents.’ And thereby got me dumped in the Schola Progenium, and thence into the Commissariat, instead of following my undoubted true destiny of running some discreet little house of ill repute for slumming spirers and guilders up from the sump with more money than sense to splash around. I vaguely resented that, far more than the loss of my progenitors, who hadn’t been all that much to have around while they were alive, to be honest. But it never hurts to grab the moral high ground. My new acquaintance didn’t seem terribly concerned, though.
‘I trust they fought well,’ he said. I doubted it. They’d only joined the Guard to get out of the hive ahead of the Arbites, and would certainly have deserted the first chance they got, so there must be something in genetics after all.
‘Not well enough,’ I said, and Gorok clicked his amusement again. It was a slightly unnerving experience, feeling that something so unhuman was able to read me more readily than my own people.
‘Go carefully, commissar,’ he said. ‘And feed on your enemies. May we have no cause for conflict.’
Well, thank the Emperor for that. But somehow I doubted that it was going to happen, and of course, I was right. I was surprised, though, by how quickly the crisis came upon us.
Editorial Note:
It is perhaps worth pointing out at this juncture that the account of his background that Cain gives during his conversation with the kroot, although superficially plausible, doesn’t quite hold together on further examination. For one thing, admittance to the Schola Progenium is a privilege usually reserved for the offspring of officers. If he was indeed the son of common troopers his parents must have acquitted themselves with singular valour in the action which resulted in their demise, which, to say the least, seems remarkably at odds with his characterisation of them. Moreover, he implies that they enlisted and served together. Although mixed units are, as pointed out elsewhere, not unheard of in the Imperial Guard, it would have been extremely unusual for this to have been the case.
Cain makes frequent references throughout the archive to having spent his early years on a hive world, but never specifies which one; which, in turn, makes the verification of any such claims virtually impossible. However, no hive world of which I’m aware raised a mixed Guard regiment in the time frame consistent with his narrative.
We should also bear in mind that, by his own admission, the man was a pathological liar; given to saying anything he judged would be effective in manipulating his listeners.
FOUR
It’s often remarked that diplomacy is just warfare by other means. Our battles are no less desperate for being bloodless, but at least we get wine and finger food.
– Tollen Ferlang, Imperial Envoy to
the Realm of Ultramar, 564-603 M41.
‘Are you sure you’re fit enough?’ Kasteen asked, a faint frown of concern appearing between her eyebrows. I nodded, and adjusted the sling I’d adopted for dramatic effect. It was black silk, matching the ebony hues of my dress uniform, and made me look tolerably dashing, I thought.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, smiling bravely. ‘The other fellows got the worst of it, thank the Emperor.’ In the day or two since the brawl with the heretics, my arm had more or less healed, the medicae assuring me that I’d suffered nothing worse than severe bruising. It was still stiff, and ached a little, but all in all I thought I’d come off lightly. Far better than Divas had, anyway. He’d spent the night in the infirmary, and still walked with a stick. For all that, though, he was as irritatingly cheerful as ever, and I’d been finding as many duties as I could to keep me out of the way whenever he suggested socialising again.
Luckily for me, he’d lost consciousness before the kroot turned up, so my reputation had received another unmerited embellishment. He assumed I’d seen off our assailants single-handed, and I saw no good reason to disabuse him. Besides, the conversation I’d had with the creature had been curiously unsettling, and I found myself reluctant to think about it too hard. I noticed Divas’s account had tactfully glossed over the reason why we were in the thick of the tau sympathizers’ heartland, so maybe they’d finally knocked a little common sense into him. Knowing Divas, though, I doubted it.
‘Well, that’s what they get for picking on the Imperium’s finest,’ Kasteen said, eager to buy the generally accepted version of events, as the latest evidence of my exceptional martial abilities reflected well on the regiment she led. She adjusted her own dress uniform, tugging the ochre greatcoat into place with every sign of discomfort. Like most Valhallans, she had an iceworlder’s tolerance for cold, and found even the mildest of temperate climates a little uncomfortable. Having spent most of my service with Valhallan regiments, I’d long become inured to their habit of air conditioning their quarters to temperatures which left the breath smoking, and tended to wear my commissarial greatcoat at all times, but they were still adjusting to the local conditions here with some difficulty.
