For The Emperor, page 17
I wasn’t, you can take my word for it, but I couldn’t refuse a direct request from an inquisitor, could I? (Although if I’d known what I was getting into, I’d probably have given it a damn good try.) So I nodded, and tried to look confident.
‘You can rely on me,’ I said, with all the sincerity I could fake, and from the grin which quirked the corner of her mouth, I could tell she wasn’t fooled for a second.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she said. ‘I gather your regiment has had a great deal of experience in city fighting, so I’m sure they’ll be ideal.’
‘I’ll ask for volunteers,’ I said, but she shook her head.
‘No need.’ She skimmed a dataslate over the tabletop to me. I stopped it, a premonitory tingle beginning in the palms of my hands. ‘You’ve already assigned some.’
I glanced at the list of names, already knowing, in the way you can see the avalanche start even before the rocks begin to slide, what I’d read there. Kelp, Trebek, Velade, Sorel and Holenbi. The five troopers on the planet I’d least trust to watch my back, unless it was to stick a bayonet in it. I lifted my head.
‘Are you sure, inquisitor? These troopers are hardly the most reliable–’
‘But they are the most expendable.’ She grinned at me, the mischievous light back in her eyes. ‘And I’m sure you can keep them in line for me.’
It was official, then. This was a suicide mission. I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry.
‘You can count on it,’ I said, wondering how in the name of the Emperor I was going to get out of this one.
TEN
‘Trust? Trust’s got nothing to do with it. I just don’t want them out of my sight.’
– General Karis, after promising full access
to his command bunker to the local PDF
commanders on Vortovan.
‘Are you sure about this, commissar?’ Kasteen asked, clearly as troubled by the prospect as I was. She and Broklaw had joined me in my office at my request, and I’d filled them in on as much of the assignment I’d been handed as Amberley would permit. I sighed deeply.
‘No, I’m not,’ I admitted. ‘But the inquisitor was quite insistent. These are the troopers she wants.’
‘Well, we’d better give them to her,’ Broklaw said. ‘At least they’ll be off our hands at last.’ Kasteen nodded, clearly cheered by the prospect.
‘That’s true,’ she conceded. Despite my best efforts to arrange their transfer to a penal legion, the Munitorium was proving as slow and obstructive as usual, and didn’t seem the least bit inclined to send a ship all the way out here just to pick up a handful of cannon fodder. Normally, that wouldn’t have been a problem, I’d simply have found space on the next outbound freighter or something, but Gravalax wasn’t exactly the hub of the Segmentum, and even what little shipping there normally was had almost dried up as the political situation deteriorated. Even if the worst-case scenario I’d been shown on the hololith didn’t come to pass, it looked as though we were going to be stuck with the five defaulters until we returned to Imperial space, which was going to be months away at this rate.
Which, in turn, had meant they were our responsibility for the foreseeable future, which wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind when I cheated Parjita out of his firing squad back aboard the Righteous Wrath.
‘And on the plus side,’ Broklaw went on cheerfully, ‘at least we won’t be losing anyone we’ll miss.’ He stopped suddenly, realised what he’d just said, and floundered in a way I would have found comical under any other circumstances. ‘Not you, commissar, obviously. I mean, we would miss you, but I’m sure we won’t. Have to, I mean. You’ll be back.’
‘I certainly intend to be,’ I said, with more confidence than I felt. I still hadn’t been able to think of a plausible reason to wriggle out of the assignment, so I’d bowed to the inevitable and started trying to find ways of ensuring my own survival instead. None of the troopers could be trusted, that much was certain, but Amberley seemed confident enough so my best bet was to stick close to her and hope she had a plan of some kind. On the other hand, chances were that Orelius’s luckless bodyguards had thought the same thing. Like most hivers, I was comfortable enough in a tunnel complex unless someone was actually shooting at me, so maybe the most prudent thing would be to get conveniently lost at the earliest opportunity and make my way back to the compound after a reasonable interval had passed. Then again, if I did that and Amberley survived she wouldn’t be terribly pleased with me to say the least, and the prospect of hacking off an inquisitor wasn’t one to contemplate lightly.
The upshot of all this was that I’d spent a largely sleepless night vacillating about my non-existent choices until sheer exhaustion had tumbled me into old nightmares of fleeing from gleaming metal killers down endless corridors, heaving grey masses of tyranid chitin roaring in towards me like a tide of death, and a green-eyed seductress trying to suck the soul from my body in the name of the Chaos power she worshipped.[38] And probably others too, which I was glad not to recall on waking.
Jurgen appeared at my elbow, presaged by his usual miasma, and poured me my habitual bowl of tanna leaf tea. Instead of withdrawing as he normally did, though, he hesitated next to my desk.
‘Was there something else, Jurgen?’ I asked, anticipating some routine query about paperwork I couldn’t be bothered to deal with. If I was going to die today, I wasn’t going to waste my final hours filling out forms in triplicate. And if I didn’t, which I swore to the Emperor I was going to do my damnedest to achieve, he could sort it out for me while I was gone. That was supposed to be an aide’s job, after all. He cleared his throat stickily, and a faint expression of nausea ghosted across Broklaw’s face.
‘I’d like to go with you, sir,’ he said at last. ‘I wouldn’t trust any of those frakheads further than I could throw a Baneblade, if you don’t mind me saying so, and I’d feel a lot better if you’d let me watch your back.’
I was touched and I don’t mind admitting it. We’d been campaigning together for the best part of thirteen years by that point, and faced innumerable perils together, but his loyalty never ceased to amaze me. Probably because the nearest I’ve ever got to the concept myself is looking it up in a dictionary.
‘Thank you, Jurgen,’ I said. ‘I’d be honoured.’ A faint flush crept up from behind his shirt collar, which, as usual, was open at the neck and stained with something that probably used to be food. Kasteen and Broklaw looked suitably impressed, too.
‘I’d best go and get ready then.’ He sketched a salute, about turned with the closest I’d ever seen him get to precision, and marched out, his shoulders set.
‘Remarkable,’ Broklaw said.
‘He has a strong sense of duty,’ I said, feeling cautiously optimistic about my chances of survival for the first time since Amberley dropped her bombshell. We’d been in some pretty tight spots together over the years, and I knew I could rely on him completely, which is more than I could say for anyone else in the team.
‘He’s a brave man,’ Kasteen said, seemingly surprised by the idea. Most people tended to avoid him, put off by his appearance and body odour, and the vague sense of wrongness he exuded, but I’d been close to him for so long I’d got used to seeing past that to his well-hidden virtues. Though I was the last person you’d normally expect to appreciate them.
‘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.
