Dark Hunters: Umbra Sumus

SIX

Hominum Fragilitatum

General Pavul Dietrich did not suffer fools gladly, which was unfortunate, since he sometimes seemed to find himself surrounded by them.

‘What do you mean, the vox is down?’ he asked with simmering impatience.

The engineer officer set a hand on the comms bench, and the stubbornly flashing red lights thereon.

‘Sir, Dardrek is offline. We no longer have any communication with our forces there.’

‘When was our last vox from them?’

‘Fourteen hours ago, general. Since then, nothing.’

‘Are we being jammed?’

‘Not that I can tell. We managed to bypass their jamming frequencies two days ago, and since then we had been getting regular reports. Colonel Brix is very reliable, sir.’

‘Thank you for pointing that out, lieutenant. You will keep trying until I say otherwise.’

‘Yes, sir.’

It was uncomfortably warm in the bunker, despite the ventilators, and with every passing day of the dry season it grew hotter.

Ras Hanem was a bleak world which had once, by all accounts, been beautiful. Several thousand years of Imperial occupation had seen the tropical forests felled, the rivers drained and the savannahs polluted. Save for the domed enclaves where intensive agriculture was pursued, the planet was now a sand-swept wasteland.

But below the sun-baked surface of the world the true treasure of Ras Hanem had been exploited for generations. Palladium, uranium, and above all adamantium ores were present in the guts of the planet in bright-seamed abundance. They had drawn the Imperium here, and led to the construction of massive armaments manufactoria. The Departmento Munitorum rated Ras Hanem as a priority asset, to be defended at all costs, and to its voice was added that of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

On this planet the chassis and armour plating of Titans were designed and forged, to be taken off-world in heavily escorted tranports to Cypra Mundi, the capital of the entire sector. On this planet, giants were born.

On this planet, I sit, waiting for the hammer to fall, Dietrich thought grimly.

‘Dardrek is gone,’ Commissar Von Arnim said. ‘That must be assumed.’

‘If it is,’ Dietrich grunted, ‘then they didn’t make much of a fight of it. Fourteen hours ago the planet was only just reporting the arrival of the enemy fleet. There was a full regiment under Brix, Cadian trained.’

The commissar took off his peaked cap and wiped his forehead. He was lean as a thorn, with a face so heavily lined it looked as though someone had whittled it out with a knife. His eyes were pale as rockcrete, and held about as much softness.

‘Dardrek is only three days away. They are taking down the system world by world, general.’

‘And leaving us until the last. Well, there’s honour in that I suppose. We have a timetable now, Ismail. We must keep to it.’

Three days. Dietrich shook his head. He had counted on more. The outer planets had fallen far too quickly.

‘Let’s walk outside. It’s too damned warm in here, and I’m sick of breathing other men’s air.’

The bunker was deep buried, part of a huge subterranean complex which was the size of a moderate town. Home to thousands of Administratum servants, servitors and military personnel, it was designed to withstand a direct atomic strike. It was also humid, crowded, and stinking, the condensation running in streams down the ferrocrete walls and the ventilation systems never quite adequate. A stone jungle, Dietrich thought it seemed, full of too many useless mouths. When real war came to this world, he would leave it behind gladly.

Above their heads, fifty million more people were enclosed within the circuit of the sprawling blast-walls. In manufactoria and atmosphere domes and soaring hive-scrapers the greatest concentration of humanity in the entire system lived and died. This was the teeming metropolis of Askai, capital of Ras Hanem, and chief city of the Kargad System.

A place which Dietrich had come to know and loathe intimately in the few months he had been here.

The heat blasted them as the vault doors opened, a malevolent dust-choked wind which made Commissar Von Arnim utter a swift curse and tug at the lapels of his leather overcoat. Dietrich sucked the hot air deep into his lungs, even as it dried the sweat on his face to a salty powder. He had been born on a desert planet on the other side of the Segmentum Obscurus, and this oven-bright atmosphere reminded him of his childhood.

Another reason to hate it.

‘We must brief the governor,’ Von Arnim said.

‘Protocol – yes I suppose we must, for all the good it’ll do. It never fails to amaze me, Ismail, how such mediocrity rises so high within the Imperial Administratum. Do you know what he was doing this morning? Designing a new uniform for his bodyguard. So important was this to him that he kept me kicking my heels for half an hour in his anteroom, being stared at by boys in scarlet tunics with lasguns as big as themselves. Soldiers! They still had their mother’s milk on their mouths.’

‘The Imperium decided to continue with the hierarchy it found when the planet was brought into compliance,’ the commissar said in a tired tone that intimated at the repetition of this conversation. ‘Riedling’s family have been rulers here for thousands of years, and it was not thought necessary to disrupt that tradition.’

‘There will be disruption aplenty in the next few weeks, and that painted ass will no doubt contribute to it,’ Dietrich snarled. He spat, his cotton-dry mouth producing a white gobbet of foam which the wind took away. ‘No matter. The thing is on our doorsteps now, and there will be no more politicking – just a soldier’s fight. We must have an orders group this evening, all heads of department–’

‘Including the Administratum?’

‘Damn it, yes. It’s their planet, after all. Were it not for that damned warp storm we wouldn’t be here at all.’

Von Arnim pursed his thin lips. ‘Perhaps now is the time to implement the course of action we discussed earlier, general.’

‘Martial law? I’d love to. But according to regulations I can only do so with Riedling’s cooperation. We are not yet under attack, and until the fighting begins my position is unclear. I command a regiment, but Marshal Veigh is leader of all the home-grown forces: five divisions.’

‘They are not the Imperial Guard,’ Von Arnim said with a sneer of contempt that made Dietrich smile.

‘I know, my friend. But remember, I was not ordered here to take command. It is mere happenstance that the 387th is on Ras Hanem at this time. I have been ordered to cooperate with the planetary authorities, not supplant them.’

‘When the bolts begin to fly, they will appoint you commander-in-chief, or I will know the reason why,’ Von Arnim said. ‘This world is too important to lose, and the 387th is by far the strongest formation upon it. There are precedents, general – I have made sure of it.’

‘Good. I should hate to lose my head to the Adeptus Arbites before I lose it to the cultists.’

‘You jest, so I shall let that comment go.’

‘Forgive me, Ismail, sometimes flippancy is all that stops me from tearing my hair out.’

‘What hair?’ Von Arnim asked, and Dietrich snorted with laughter, running one hand over his smooth scalp.

The sandstorms of the last few days had died down to a brown haze along the horizon, and there was even a hint of blue at the apex of the sky. Pollutants and dust so fogged the atmosphere of Ras Hanem that it was a rare thing to see, and Dietrich stared at it as the transport took him over the teeming bulk of the city towards the towering cloud that was the citadel, to the north-east.

To his right, four kilometres away, was the deep channel of the Koi River. In what passed for Ras Hanem’s wet season it would run with ochre-coloured water a metre deep and a kilometre wide, hugging the ravines and deep draws of the western bank, but now it was as dry as Dietrich’s throat, a wide, cracked, flat-bottomed valley with the cliff of the city’s blast-walls rearing up over it.

It was spanned by three bridges of graceful swooping sandstone which were millennia old, testament to a time when the river had existed in more than name. Beyond them was a sere yellow plain which stretched for dozens of kilometres to the east, until it was brought up short by the first rumpled foothills of the Koi-Niro Mountains.

It was under those mountains that the mineral wealth of Ras Hanem lay, buried deep in the bedrock of the planet. The mineworkings went down five kilometres, and buried highways now connected them to the city itself, rendering the ancient bridges redundant.

Closer to, the bulk of Askai itself was inelegant, ill-thought-out and badly designed. The city had formed along the banks of the Koi over many centuries of ad-hoc building, and sprawled in an ungainly corridor for over fifty kilometres. In the last millennium the Imperium’s engineers had, in a gargantuan feat, encircled all of this long snake of urban crush with two-hundred-metre-high blast-walls of reinforced ferrocrete, but in the years since, the city had continued to grow, and now whole districts lay beyond those walls; the famed adamantium gates of Askai had not been closed in living memory. They had become artefacts in their own right, emblazoned with the sun and swords of the Riedling family, and blessed time and again by priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, who revered them for their inviolability and ancient workmanship.

A congregation of the tech-priests were working on the gate mechanisms even now, trying to get the damned things to work.

An acrid cloud enveloped Dietrich for a moment and he cursed, while his pilot muttered apologies over the speeder’s vox.

‘Sorry, general, it’s hard to avoid over this part of the city.’

‘Just get us through it.’

The thick columns of black smoke rose from the foundries of the manufactoria day and night. The Imperial factoria employed eight million people in this city alone, and the Armaments District was almost a city unto itself, with its own inner walls and fortifications, its hive-slums and refectories, all supplied by a deep aquifer which ran under Askai in parallel with the Koi River.

Dietrich had lobbied for some of the manufactoria to switch to shell production for his tanks and artillery batteries, but so far the governor had refused, citing Administratum requirements and deadlines.

Perhaps the news, or rather the silence, from Dardrek, would reorder Riedling’s sense of priorities. Dietrich fervently hoped so. His regiment had enough of its own ammunition for one good engagement, no more.

We’re not even supposed to be here, he raged to himself. Were it not for the warp snaring our transports, we’d be in the middle of the Wendakhen campaign right now, fighting as part of the division.

He rubbed the smarting smoke and sand out of his eyes. Well, beggars would ride, if wishes were horses.

They passed the Armaments District, and ahead of them the tall shade of the citadel loomed out of the brown haze. At its foot was the spaceport, around which his regiment was encamped for the moment. He could just make out the long lines of vehicles parked neatly on the borders of the landing-fields, and the sight of them lifted his spirits. He had not commanded the 387th long, but they were a veteran formation, recently brought up to full strength for the shift to Wendakhen, and what he had seen of them thus far pleased him greatly.

By the Throne, he vowed, it will take more than fourteen hours to silence this army.

‘On final approach. Landing in thirty seconds,’ the pilot said.

They were flying into the face of a mountain, it seemed. The citadel was an immense structure, a fortress half a kilometre high that was studded with brutal gun-emplacements and girded with blast-walls a hundred metres thick. On its summit, the governor’s palace caught the sun above the smog for a moment, a glint of gold on the gilded tiles of its spires and towers.

There was no time-killing in the anteroom this time. Dietrich was ushered into the audience hall without delay, and found himself waylaid by the chamberlain as soon as he was through the doors.

‘General, the governor is in his conference room with his captains. I am to lead you straight in.’

Gardias the Chamberlain was a tall, upright old man with the bearing of a soldier, one of the few on the governor’s staff that Dietrich felt any modicum of respect for. He followed him past the scarlet-clad bodyguards sweating along the sides of the hall to a door near the dais at its end, the hobnails in his worn leather boots echoing loud upon marble. There were several score others in the hall, courtiers and administrators and hangers-on, some of whom he recognised, all of whom he ignored.

‘General!’ As Gardias retreated, closing the door behind him, so Lord Riedling, Planetary Governor of Ras Hanem, came forward, holding out one hand and smiling widely as though Dietrich were an old friend he had not seen in years. He had the dissembler’s gift for false bonhomie, and shook Dietrich’s gloved fist with a fine relish. Dietrich bowed slightly in response, and said nothing. He saw that the news he had meant to deliver had run ahead of him.

Riedling was a slight, dark man with a sharp beard and narrow shoulders, but his eyes missed nothing, and there was no smile in them to match the one on his mouth.

‘Marshal Veigh has grave news for us – perhaps you would like to hear it retold.’

Dietrich looked at Veigh, a tall pale ghost of a man, but a passable soldier. ‘Dardrek?’

The marshal nodded, his face as grey as his hair. ‘We are the last remaining Imperial outpost in the system, general. It is likely the enemy are on their way here even now.’

‘We estimate three days at the earliest,’ Dietrich rasped, ignoring the governor, who had opened his mouth to speak. ‘Do you concur?’

‘It may be longer. Ras Hanem is better defended than anything they have hit thus far. They will have to regroup their forces for the assault.’

Dietrich nodded.

‘What are we talking about here, general?’ Lord Riedling broke in, shrill with alarm. ‘An invasion? I thought this was a system-wide series of raids, no more.’

Dietrich regarded the governor with weary patience. ‘They have been too systematic. If it is a raid, then it is one that follows the logic of an invasion. Best to prepare for the worst, my lord governor.’

Riedling sputtered. ‘You tell us they have only light ships. Surely if they were coming here to stay they would need a heavier fleet.’

‘They would, if the system were better defended,’ Dietrich said grimly. ‘My lord governor, we must begin to concentrate our own forces also. The Hanemite Guard is scattered all over the planet. It must be brought back to the main cities. He who tries to defend everything, defends nothing.’

‘The capital must be held. You are right, general. Marshal Veigh, you must withdraw the bulk of your forces here to Askai. It is the only adequately fortified city on the planet – there is no hope of holding the others.’

What a poltroon, Dietrich thought with disgust. But the aggravating thing was that the governor was right. He had arrived at the same conclusion as Dietrich himself, but through cowardice, not any strategic insight.

‘My lord, I must protest!’ Veigh burst out, a little less grey than before – anger flushed his face. ‘It would mean abandoning hundreds of millions to the mercy of, of–’

‘The Great Enemy, they are called by the Adeptus Astartes,’ Dietrich interrupted. ‘This is not some pirate band, or a mob of ork marauders, marshal. Read your history. They were here once before, over a hundred years ago, and they swept the Imperial forces from the system like so much chaff. Were it not for the Adeptus Astartes, they would be here still.’

‘My men know their jobs, general. Do you doubt their ability to repel these invaders?’ Veigh asked with an angry sneer.

‘We must plan for all contingencies, marshal. That is why we have informed Cypra Mundi of the situation. For weeks now, we have been sending out vox messages asking for reinforcements. Some of those messages must have got through. We need only hold on here until the Imperium relieves us.’

‘That’s right!’ Riedling said, slapping his palm with one fist. ‘They cannot let a world as valuable as this one be overrun by… by the enemy. You have the right of it, general. We have only to sit tight, and hang on.’

Veigh looked at his diminutive governor with ill-concealed contempt, and Dietrich, noting the expression, thought that he and the marshal might yet be able to work together.

‘Lord Riedling is wholly correct in his analysis of the situation,’ he said briskly. ‘Galling though it is to admit it, we cannot hold the entire planet – we do not have the men. Marshal Veigh, I recommend you withdraw all your forces to the capital. They can fight side by side with my armour. Askai can be made into a fortress, if we start on it at once.’

‘Once word gets out, the refugees will flock to this city in their millions,’ Veigh said slowly, tiredly. The grey was back in his face again. This was his home world, and dulling his eyes now was the knowledge that most of it was about to be abandoned to an enemy more terrible than any he had ever faced before.

‘If Chaos becomes entrenched on this world,’ Dietrich said quietly, ‘then the Adeptus Astartes will burn it down to the stone, along with every man, woman and child who inhabits it. There is no arguing with the Angels of Death, marshal. We must choose the lesser of two great evils.’

Veigh nodded slowly. He rubbed his eyes. ‘I will give the necessary orders,’ he said at last.

‘But be discreet, marshal,’ Lord Riedling told him. ‘Askai is already a powder-keg of speculation.’

‘I know my job, my lord,’ Veigh snarled. ‘Attend to your own.’

Then, to Riedling’s astonishment, he turned on his heel and strode out of the chamber, calling for his aides to follow him as he went.

Riedling followed his departure with cold eyes. ‘I will not forget such insubordination, when all this is over,’ he hissed.

‘My lord governor,’ Dietrich said wearily, ‘when all this is over, the memory of a moment’s insubordination will be long gone, and perhaps us with it.’