Hero of the Imperium, page 7
I waited until they’d shuffled out, assisted by the shock batons of the escorting provosts, and turned back to Parjita.
‘Will that satisfy you, captain?’
‘I suppose it’ll have to,’ he said sourly.
‘Congratulations, commissar.’ Kasteen raised a glass of amasec, toasting my victory, and the mess hall erupted around me. I smiled modestly, walking towards the table occupied by the senior officers, while men and women clapped and cheered and chanted my name, and generally carried on as though I was the Emperor Himself dropping in for a visit. I half expected some of them to try patting me on the back, but respect for my position, or an understandable reluctance to get too close to Jurgen, who was dogging my heels as usual, or both, held them in check. I held up my hands for silence as I reached my seat, between Kasteen and Broklaw, and the room gradually fell quiet.
‘Thank you all,’ I said, injecting just the right level of barely perceptible quaver into my voice to suggest powerful emotion held narrowly in check. ‘You do me too much honour for just doing my job.’ A chorus of denial and adulation followed, as I’d known it would. I waved them to silence again. ‘Well, if you insist...’ I waited for the gale of laughter to die down. ‘While I have everyone’s attention; and that’s a refreshing novelty for a political officer...’ More laughter; I had them in the palm of my hand now.
I waved them to silence again, adopting a slightly more serious mien. ‘I would just like to offer some congratulations of my own. In the short time I’ve had the privilege of serving with this regiment you have all far exceeded my most optimistic expectations. The past few weeks have been difficult for all of us, but I can state with confidence that I have never served with a body of troops more ready for combat, and more capable of seizing victory when that time comes.’ With confidence, certainly. Truthfully? That was another matter entirely. But it had the desired effect. I picked up a glass from the table, and toasted the room. ‘To the 597th. A glorious beginning!’
‘The 597th!’ they all shouted, men and women alike, swept along with cheap emotion and cheaper rhetoric.
‘Nicely done, commmissar,’ Broklaw murmured as I sat. The cheers were still deafening. ‘I believe you’ve turned us into a proper regiment at last.’
I’d done something a lot more important than that, of course. I’d established myself as a popular figure among the common troopers, which meant they’d watch my back if I was ever careless enough to find myself anywhere near the actual combat zone. Pulling them together into an effective fighting force was just a useful bonus.
‘Just doing my job,’ I said as modestly as I could, which is what they all expected, of course. And they lapped it up.
‘And not before time,’ Kasteen added. I kept my features carefully composed, but felt my good mood begin to evaporate.
‘We’ve had our orders?’ Broklaw asked. The colonel nodded, picking at her adeven salad.
‘Some backwater dirtball called Gravalax.’
‘Never heard of it,’ I said.
Editorial Note:
Given Cain’s complete, and typical, lack of interest in anything that doesn’t concern him directly, the following extract may prove useful in placing the rest of his narrative in a wider context. It must be said that the book from which it comes isn’t the most reliable of guides to the campaign as a whole, but it does, unlike most studies of the Gravalax incident, at least attempt to sketch in the historical background to the conflict. Despite the author’s obvious limitations as a chronicler of events, his summing up of the causus belli is substantially correct.
From Purge the Guilty! An impartial account of the liberation of Gravalax, by Stententious Logar. 085.M42
The seeds of the Gravalax incident were sown many years before the full magnitude of the crisis was realised, and in retrospect, it may well be easy to discern the slow unfolding of an abhuman conspiracy over the span of several generations. A historian, however, has the perspective of hindsight, which, alas, cannot be said of the actual participants. So, rather than pointing an accusatory finger, with righteous cries of ‘how could they have been so stupid?’ it behooves us more to shake our heads in pity as we contemplate our forebears’ blind stumbling into the very brink of destruction.
It goes without saying that no blame can be attached to the servants of the Emperor, particularly those concerned with the ordering of His Divine Majesty’s fighting forces and the diligent adepts of the Administratum; the Ultima Segmentum is vast, and the Damocles Gulf an obscure frontier sector. After the heathen tau were put in their place by the heroic crusader fleet in the early seven-forties, attention rightly shifted to more immediate threats; the incursion of hive fleet Leviathan, the awakening of the accursed necrons, and the ever-present danger from the traitor legions not least among them.
Nevertheless, the tau presence remained on the fringes of Imperial space, and, all but unnoticed, they began once again to encroach on His Divine Majesty’s blessed dominions.
Up until this point Gravalax had been an obscure outpost of civilisation, barely noticed by the wider galaxy. Enough of its landmasses were fertile to keep its relatively sparse population tolerably well fed, and it possessed adequate mineral reserves for such industry as it supported. In short, it had nothing to attract any trade, and an insufficient population base to be worth tithing for the Imperial Guard. It was, to be blunt, a backwater, devoid of anything of interest.
If Gravalax thought it was to remain undisturbed indefinitely, however, it was sadly mistaken. Within a century of their drubbing at the righteous hands of the servants of the Imperium, the black-hearted tau were back, spreading their poisonous heresies through the Gulf once more. When they first chanced upon Gravalax no one knows,7 but by the turn of the last century of the millennium they were well established there.
It will come as no surprise to my readers, aware as we must be of the innate treachery of all aliens, that they had arrived at this pass by an insidious process of infiltration. And, shocking though it is to record it, with the willing assistance of those whose greed and thoughtlessness made them the perfect dupes of this monstrous conspiracy. I refer, as you have no doubt already guessed, to the so-called rogue traders. Rogues indeed, who would place their own interests above those of the Imperium, humanity, and the divine Emperor Himself!
[Several paragraphs of inflammatory but non-specific denunciation of rogue traders, omitted. Logar seems to have had something of an obsession about their untrustworthiness. Perhaps one owed him money.]
How and why these pariahs of profit first began trafficking with the tau, history does not record.8 What is certain is that Gravalax, with its isolated position on the fringes of Imperial space, and close to the expanding sphere of influence of these malign aliens, became the perfect meeting place for such clandestine exchanges.
Inevitably, the corruption spread. As trade increased, it became more open, with tau vessels becoming a common sight at the new and expanding starports. Tau themselves began to be seen on the streets of the Gravalaxian cities, mingling with the populace, tainting their human purity with their soulless, alien ways. Heresy began to run rife, even ordinary citizens daring to use blasphemous devices unblessed by the techpriests, supplied by their insidious offworld allies.
Something had to be done! And at last it was. The rising stench of corruption eventually attracted the ceaseless vigilance of the Inquisition, which lost no time in demanding the dispatch of a task force of the Imperium’s finest warriors to purge this festering boil in the body of His Holiness’s blessed demesne.
And that’s precisely what they got. For in the vanguard of this glorious endeavour was none other than Ciaphas Cain, the martial hero at whose very name the enemies of humanity trembled in terror...
THREE
‘Old friends are like debt collectors; they have a tendency to turn up when you least expect them.’
– Gilbran Quail, Collected Essays.
As I’ve rattled around the galaxy I’ve seen a great many cities, from the soaring spires of Holy Terra itself to the blood-choked gutters of some eldar reiver charnel pit,9 but I’ve seldom seen anything stranger than the broad thoroughfares of Mayoh, the planetary capital of Gravalax. We’d disembarked in good order, the freshly sewn banner of the 597th snapping proudly in the breeze that blew in gently across the rockcrete hectares of the starport as the Valhallans formed up by company, and I resisted the temptation to lean across and compliment Sulla on her needlepoint. I doubt that she’d had anything to do with procuring it, but it wasn’t that which dissuaded me. She just wasn’t the kind to take a joke, and was still harbouring a germ of resentment at the organisational changes I’d instituted. We were a fine sight to behold, I have to admit, the other regiments glancing at us sidelong as they marched away; although that may just have been surprise when they realised we were a mixed unit.10
‘All present and accounted for, colonel.’ Broklaw snapped a drill manual salute, and fell into place beside Kasteen. She nodded, inflated her chest, and then hesitated on the verge of giving the command.
‘Commissar,’ she said. ‘I think the honour should be yours. This regiment wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for you.’
I don’t mind admitting I was touched. Although I have overall authority in whatever unit I’m attached to, commissars are always outside the regular chain of command; which means I don’t really fit in anywhere. By letting me give the order to move out, she was demonstrating in the most practical form imaginable that I was as much a part of the 597th as herself, or Broklaw, or the humblest latrine orderly. The unaccustomed sense of belonging choked me for a moment, before the more rational part of my mind started gloating about how much that would mean in facilitating my own survival. I nodded, making sure I looked suitably moved.
‘Thank you, colonel,’ I said simply. ‘But I believe the honour belongs to us all.’ Then I filled my chest, and bellowed: ‘Move out!’
So we did. And if you think that sounds like a simple proposition, you haven’t thought it through.
To put it into some kind of perspective, a regiment consists of anything up to half a dozen companies – five in our case, most of which had four or five platoons. The exception was Third Company, which was our logistical support arm, and consisted mainly of transport vehicles, engineering units, and anything else we couldn’t find a sensible place for on the SO&E. All told, that came to much the same thing in a headcount. Factor in five squads a platoon, at ten troopers each, plus a command element to keep them all in line, and you’re looking at nearly a thousand people by the time you’ve added in the various specialists and the different layers of the overall command structure.
Just to add to the confusion, Kasteen had decided to split the squads into five-man fire-teams, anticipating that any open conflict was likely to take place in and around the urban areas. Beating off the tyranids on Corania had convinced her that smaller formations were easier to coordinate in a city fight than full-strength squads.11
All this made for a fine martial display as we moved out, you can be sure, with banners flying, and the band thumping and parping away at If I Should Forget Thee, O Terra, as though they had a grudge against the composer. There hadn’t really been time for rehearsals, what with all the excitement aboard the Righteous Wrath, but they were making up in enthusiasm for whatever they lacked in proficiency, and a high old time was being had by all. It was a fine fresh day, with a faint taste of salt in the breeze from the nearby ocean; at least until our chimeras and transport trucks started up and began farting promethium fumes into the air.
We intended to make an impression with our arrival, and by the Emperor, we surely did, setting out to march the ten kloms12 or so into the city. Most of the troopers were glad of the exercise, revelling in the fresh air and sunshine after so long between decks, and swung along the highway, lasguns at the slope. Being an old hive boy myself, it was all one to me, but I was affected by the general holiday atmosphere I think, and I don’t mind admitting to a general diffuse glow of well-being as we got underway.
Kasteen and Broklaw couldn’t march, of course, having to look grander than the common ground-pounders, and so trundled along at the front of the regiment in a Salamander, and I seized the excuse to do the same.
‘Can’t have the regiment’s most vital officers plotting behind my back,’ I’d said at the briefing, smiling to show I didn’t mean it, and pouring everyone a fresh cup of recaf to show I was part of the team. So I lounged back in the open compartment at the rear of a scout variant, which Jurgen kept half a track’s length behind theirs in the interest of protocol and reinforcing the impression of my generally assumed modesty, and took the opportunity to feel rather pleased with myself. The synchronised slapping of two thousand boot soles on the surface of the highway and the squarking of the band almost drowned out the throb of our engine, and we must have looked a splendid sight as we left the main cargo gate of the starport behind us and began to approach the city.
It was then that my palms began to itch again. There was nothing I could put my finger on initially to explain my gradually intensifying sense of disquiet, but something was definitely tapping my subconscious on the shoulder and whispering ‘That’s not right...’
As we entered the city itself my disquiet grew. I wasn’t surprised to find the streets free of traffic, the local authorities having cleared the way for us; a thousand troopers and their ancillary equipment take up a lot of room, and we were far from the first regiment to have disembarked. Indeed, the occasional muffled curse from behind me which cut through the din made it all too clear that the front few ranks would have preferred it if the Rough Riders could have been held back for a while longer instead of being sent through immediately ahead of us. Come to that, I don’t suppose Kasteen was too thrilled about having to gaze at a street’s width of horse arses for the duration of our march either. But the broad thoroughfares were a little too quiet for my liking, and a little too open as well. I’m not agoraphobic by any means, not like some hivers who never feel comfortable under an open sky, but there was something about those wide streets that made me think of snipers and ambush.
That made me scan the buildings as we passed, and my unease grew the more I saw of them. There was nothing wrong with them as such, not like the bizarre architectural forms of a Chaos incursion which seem to twist reality and which hurt to look upon, or the brutal slapdash functionalism of orkish habitations, but there was something in their sweeping forms which seemed vaguely inhuman. I was put in mind of some eldar architecture by their elegant simplicity, and then it finally hit me: there were no right angles anywhere, even the corners having been rounded and smoothed. But beneath this strange styling, the shapes were clearly those of warehouses, apartment blocks, and manufactoria, as though the whole city had been left out in the sun for too long and had started to melt.
That alone should have been enough warning of an insidious alien influence at work here, but before we reached our destination, I was to see far more than that.
‘There’s something seriously wrong here,’ I said to Jurgen, who looked up briefly from the road ahead to nod in agreement with me.
‘Something doesn’t smell right,’ he agreed, without a trace of irony. ‘Have you seen the civilians?’
Now that he came to mention it, there were remarkably few of them lining the route. Normally a big military parade would have brought them out in droves, waving their aquila flags and their icons of the Divine One, cheering themselves hoarse to see so many of the Emperor’s finest ready to see off the foe so they could scuttle back to their meaningless lives without the fear of having to fight for themselves. But the pavements were half empty, and for every shopkeeper or habwife or juvie who cheered and waved, or smiled wanly at us with sidelong glances at their neighbours, there were just as many who scowled or glared at us. That put a shiver down my spine, awakening uncomfortable and all-too-recent memories of the mess hall riot, and the blood-maddened troopers a hair from turning on me.
At least no one was shouting, or throwing things. Yet. But I reached down unobtrusively, and loosened my laspistol and my trusty chainsword ready to be drawn in a hurry if I needed them.
And right on cue I noticed the first of the banners. ‘MURDERERS GO HOME!’ it said, in shaky capitals, hand lettered on what looked like an old bedsheet. Someone had strung it from a luminator pole so that it hung out across the street, comfortably above head height, but low enough to brush irritatingly over the head and shoulders of anyone riding in a vehicle.
Or on a horse, for that matter. As I watched, one of the Rough Rider officers reached up irritably and tore it down.
Bad move, I said to myself, expecting some trouble from the crowd, but beyond a little catcalling from a small knot of juvies nothing happened. But I was getting a distinctly uncomfortable feeling about all this. There was a perceptible undercurrent of tension in the air now, like a fainter echo of the incipient violence I’d felt aboard the Righteous Wrath.
‘Go back to your Emperor and leave us alone!’ a pretty girl shouted, her head shaven, apart from a single shoulder-length braid, and I felt as though I’d been doused with cold water. Your Emperor. The words had been unmistakable.
‘Heretics!’ Jurgen said with loathing. I nodded, still unable to credit it. Could the Great Enemy have a foothold here, as well as the tau? But common sense argued against it. If that were the case we’d have bombarded the place from orbit, surely, and the Astartes would have been sent in to cut out the cancer before it could spread.
