Hero of the Imperium, page 8
Things weren’t as far gone as I’d feared, however, as I turned back to look, a squad of Arbites forced their way through the crowd and began laying into the juvies with shock batons. Good order was still being maintained here, by the Emperor’s grace, but for how much longer?
That, I very much feared, depended on us.
We reached our staging area without further incident, fanning out through a complex of warehouses and manufactoria which had been set aside for our use. We weren’t the only regiment quartered there, I recall, as the Imperium had been fortifying against an expected incursion by the tau for some time, and I gathered that the Righteous Wrath’s complement (three full regiments apart from our own) brought the total up to around thirty thousand all told. That should have been more than enough to keep a backwater planet, even spread out across the whole globe, but rumour had it we could expect still more reinforcement, which worried me more than I wanted to show. With that amount of build-up it seemed the aliens wanted this place quite badly, and we’d more than likely be expected to hold it the hard way.
We were quartered next to one of the Valhallan armoured regiments – the 14th I think – but I couldn’t tell you who most of the others were. There was definite evidence that the Rough Riders were still somewhere in the vicinity though, so you had to watch your feet, but apart from that I hadn’t a clue. Except for one other unit I already knew well, of course, which I’ll come to in a moment.
I was still feeling spooked from our journey through town, so I was relieved to come across Broklaw posting sentries around our corner of the compound as I left Jurgen to sort out my quarters and went for a wander around to get my bearings. I haven’t reached my second century by not knowing where the best boltholes and lines of retreat are, and finding them was always a high priority for me whenever I found myself somewhere new.
‘Good thinking, major,’ I complimented him, and he gave me a wry grin.
‘We should be safe enough here,’ he said. ‘But it never hurts to be careful.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I agreed. ‘There’s something about this place which really gets under my skin.’ The warehouses around us all had that peculiar rounded-off look I’d noticed before, and the subtle sense of wrongness left a vague apprehension hovering around me like Jurgen’s body odour. The major knew his business, though, setting up lascannon in sandbagged emplacements to cover the gaps between the buildings around us, and sharpshooters on the roof. I was just admiring his thoroughness when the ground began to shake, and a couple of our sentinels appeared, clanking and humming and swivelling their heavy multilasers as they took up position in front of the main loading doors which gave access to the ground floor where our vehicles were parked.
Somewhat reassured by this, I made my way across the compound, passing into areas controlled by other units, watching the familiar bustle of troopers coming and going, and finding the familiar air of controlled chaos and the constant background hum of vehicle engines and profanity curiously soothing. I wasn’t sure quite how far I’d gone when an engine note both louder and deeper than the others cut through the babble of sound around me.
For a moment, I was assailed by that formless sense of recognition that you get when something you once knew so well it never registered consciously comes back to your notice after a passage of years, and then I turned my head with a nostalgic smile. A Trojan heavy hauler, with an Earthshaker howitzer in tow, was growling its way across a vast open area which had probably once been used to park the private vehicles of the workers who toiled here in happier times, but which was now choked with equipment and supplies. I hadn’t seen one of those up close in a long time, but I recognised it at once, having started my long and inglorious career in an obscure artillery unit. The flood of memories the sight brought back, a few of them even pleasant, was so overwhelming that for a moment I was unaware of the voice calling my name.
‘Cai! Over here!’
Now, I’ve never been what you’d call oversupplied with friends, it goes with the job I suppose, but of the few I’ve acquired over the years only one has ever had the presumption to use the familiar form of my given name. So, despite the changes that the years since I’d seen him last had wrought, there was no mistaking the officer who was running across the compound towards me, grinning like an idiot.
‘Toren!’ I called back, as he sidestepped another Trojan just in time to avoid being squashed into the tarmac like a bug. ‘When did they make you a major?’ The last time I’d seen Toren Divas he’d just made captain, and was nursing a hangover as he saw me off from the 12th Field Artillery. I remember thinking at the time he was probably the only man in the battery who was sorry to see me go. ‘And what in the name of the Emperor’s arse are you doing here?’
‘The same as you, I suppose.’ He came panting up to me, the familiar lopsided grin on his face. ‘Keeping order, purging the heretics, same old thing.’ There were streaks of grey at his temples now, I noticed, and his belt was out another notch, but the same air of boyish enthusiasm still hung around him as on the day we’d first met. ‘But I’m surprised to find you in a backwater like this.’
‘Same here,’ I said. I turned my head, taking in the bustle surrounding us. ‘This seems like an awful lot of firepower to put the frighteners on a bunch of stroppy provincials.’
‘If the tau mobilise, we’ll need every bit of it,’ Divas said. ‘Some of their wargear has to be seen to be believed. They’ve got these things like dreadnoughts, but they’re fast, like Astartes infantry but twice the size, and their tanks make the eldar stuff look like they were built by orks...’
As usual, he seemed to be relishing the prospect of combat, which is easy to do when you’re kilometres behind the front line chucking shells into the distance, but not so much fun when you’re facing an enemy close enough to spit at you. And if that’s all they’ve got in mind think yourself lucky, unless they’re one of those Emperor-forsaken xenos that come equipped with venom sacs.
‘But it won’t come to that, surely,’ I said. ‘Now we’re here they’d be mad to attempt a landing.’ To my astonishment, Divas laughed.
‘They won’t have to. They’re here already.’ This was new and unwelcome information, and I goggled at him in surprise.
‘Since when?’ I gasped. Now I’d be the first to admit that I’m seldom that diligent when it comes to reading the briefing slates, but I was sure I’d have noticed something that crucial to my well-being in my cursory glance through it. Divas shrugged.
‘About six months, apparently. They were already deployed on the planet when the Cleansing Flame dropped us off here three weeks ago.’
This was seriously bad news. I’d been looking forward to a nice brisk round of target practice on civilian rioters, or, at worst, a turkey shoot against the odd renegade PDF unit. But now we were facing a foe that could give us a real run for our money. Emperor’s bowels! If half of what I’d heard about the tau and their technosorcery was true, we could be the ones getting our arses kicked. Divas grinned at my expression, misinterpreting it entirely.
‘So you could see some fun after all,’ he said, clapping me on the back. I could have killed him.
I didn’t, of course. For one thing, as I’ve said, I don’t have so many friends that I can afford to waste them, and for another, Divas had been here long enough to pick up some vital information which I currently lacked. Namely, the location of the nearest bar we could get to without attracting too much attention to ourselves.
So we set out through the streets of Mayoh together, my commissar’s uniform getting us through the guard on the compound gate without any argument, although he did give us a word of caution.
‘Be careful, sir. There’s been disturbances up in the Heights,13 they say.’ That meant nothing to me, so I smiled, and nodded, and said we’d be careful, and checked with Divas that we’d be going nowhere near there as soon as we were out of earshot.
‘Good Emperor, no,’ he said, frowning. ‘It’s crawling with heretics. The only way you’d catch me up there is with a squadron of Hellhounds to cleanse the place.’ Needless to say, he’d never seen what incendiary weapons can do to a man, or he wouldn’t have been half so keen on the idea. I have, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Actually, there are one or two I would wish it on, come to think of it, and sit there happily toasting caba nuts while they screamed, but they’re all dead now anyway, so it’s beside the point.
‘So where did they all come from?’ I asked, as we made our way through the streets. Dusk was falling now, the luminators and the cafe signs flickering to life, and the swirl of bodies around us growing thicker as the night descended. Small knots of passers-by stood aside to let us pass, intimidated no doubt by our Imperial uniforms and the visible sidearms we carried – some with respect, and others resentful. Several of the latter had the curious tonsure the heretic juvie had sported, their heads shaved except for a long scalplock. The significance of it wasn’t to dawn on me until some time later, but even then, I realised it was a badge of allegiance of some kind, and that those who bore it were liable to turn traitor if the shooting started. For now, though, they were content merely to mutter insults under their breath.
‘They’re local,’ Divas said, not deigning to notice them, which was fine by me. Of all the ways I could have ended up dead over the years, getting sucked into a pointless street brawl would have been among the most embarrassing. ‘The whole planet’s infested with xeno-lovers.’
A bit of an exaggeration, that, but he was more or less right, as I was later to discover. To cut a long story short, the locals had been trading with the tau for several generations by now, which wasn’t terribly sensible, but what can you expect from a bunch of backwater peasants? The end result was that most of them were quite used to seeing xenos around the place, and despite the sterling efforts of the local ecclesiarchy to warn them that no good would come of it, a lot of them had started to absorb unhealthy ideas from them. Which was where we came in, ready to guide them back into the Imperial fold before they came to too much harm, and all very noble of us too I’m sure you’ll agree.
‘The trouble is,’ Divas concluded, downing the rest of his third amasec in one, ‘the hard core are so far gone they don’t see it like that. They think the tau are the best thing to hit the galaxy since the Emperor was in nappies, and we’re the big bad bullies here to take their shiny new toys away.’
‘Well, that might be a little more difficult now the tau are digging in,’ I said. ‘But I’m surprised they’re prepared to risk it.’ I followed suit, feeling the smoky liquor warming its way down through my chest. ‘They must know we’ll never allow them to annex the place without a fight.’
‘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?’
