The Emperor's Finest

TWO

HAVING NO BETTER plan in mind, I followed Drumon to the bridge. If necessary, I was prepared to argue that my position as liaison officer made it my business to remain abreast of any unexpected developments, although to be honest I just thought that would be the best place to find out what in the Throne's name was going on. I've been involved in a fair number of space battles in my time, far more than any Guardsman has a right to expect, and in all too many of them the only thing I could do was sit there and wait for the troopship to take a hit. At least on the bridge you can watch events unfolding in the hololith, which introduces a curious kind of detachment into the proceedings, as the contact icons go through their stately dance of life and death.

In the event, however, no one challenged my right to be there, which came as a welcome surprise. In fact, the only thing which surprised me more was that until Drumon arrived, there were no Astartes on the bridge at all.

'Techmarine.' The vessel's captain, who for some reason rejoiced in the title of shipmaster[7], vacated his control throne and inclined his head respectfully. (Not something the Navy would appreciate, having the man in charge abandon his duty for the sake of protocol in the middle of a battle, but the Space Marine Chapters, as I was already beginning to grasp, have a different perspective on things. Quite how different I wouldn't fully understand for a few more decades, however.)

'Carry on, shipmaster.' Drumon acknowledged the greeting with a barely perceptible nod of his own, and the shipmaster resumed his seat, absorbed again at once in the flurry of information blizzarding across his pict screen. One of the control stations ranged about the hushed and dimly lit chamber, through which the muted chanting and clouds of incense from the tech-adepts servicing the targeting systems drifted, remained vacant, and as the towering figure of the Techmarine took his place before it, I realised that it was placed higher than the others, where a standing man more than two metres tall could work at it comfortably. The other lecterns were manned by Chapter serfs in uniforms similar to those of the Imperial Navy, although their insignia were different, no doubt reflecting their affiliation and status in some manner I couldn't be bothered to enquire about at the moment.

'What's happening?' I asked, and Drumon glanced briefly in my direction as though surprised to be reminded of my presence, his gauntleted fingers continuing to rattle the keys of the data lectern. A blizzard of images, changing too rapidly for me to assimilate, danced across his face, reflected from the display in front of him.

'We have sustained only minimal damage,' he assured me, which came as a tremendous relief. The last time I'd been aboard a vessel under fire I'd ended up breathing vacuum, fortunately for no more than a handful of seconds, although it had seemed a great deal longer to Jurgen and I. The Revenant was made of sterner stuff than the venerable troopship which had delivered me to Perlia, however, being designed to be capable of holding her own against a ship of the line, and the voices around me were reassuringly calm.

'Who from?' I persisted, and if Drumon was irritated at all, he was too polite to show it. By way of reply he activated a nearby pict-screen, and I found myself looking at a slightly blurred image of a System Defence corvette.

'Viridian vessel, this is the strike cruiser Revenant, of the Reclaimers Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes,' the shipmaster said, his voice clipped. 'Break off and surrender, or be destroyed in the name of the Emperor.'

'They're turning,' one of the vassals said, his voice equally matter-of-fact. 'Looks like another attack run.'

'Gunnery stations stand by,' the shipmaster said, then glanced at Drumon for approval.

The Techmarine nodded again. 'All weapon batteries charged and ready,' he assured the crew, his voice carrying easily to every corner of the bridge.

'Fire when ready,' the shipmaster said, his voice as calm as if he'd just ordered a mug of recaf. 'Wait for a positive lock.' The seconds stretched unbearably, the image of the attacking vessel growing ever larger on my screen, until I expected to see ravening beams of energy lancing out from it with every heartbeat.

'Target acquired,' another of the bridge crew said, seeming equally relaxed, and I finally realised that it was Drumon's presence which was making them so dispassionately efficient. Nobody wanted to be the one to let the crew down in front of their masters, so they were all doing it by the book, instead of cutting corners and giving way to impulsive profanity like the Guard troopers I was used to herding so often did when the las-bolts started flying.

A moment later the attacking corvette broke apart, like a seed-head on the wind, as our starboard batteries tore the guts out of it, to leave a slowly dissipating cloud of debris drifting apart in the void.

'Who were they, though?' I asked, not really expecting an answer, but the auspex man answered me anyway.

'The IFF beacon tagged it as the Lady Helene, one of the local System Defence boats[8].'

'Then they ought to have been on our side,' I said, beginning to feel that matters weren't going to be quite so simple after all. If part of the SDF had mutinied, then the chances were that a substantial proportion of their counterparts in the PDF had followed suit (or, more likely, led by example).

'Acknowledged,' Drumon rumbled, and for a moment I thought he'd responded to my comment, before I realised that he'd probably been too busy listening to the voice in his comm-bead to have even heard it. 'I will inform the commissar.'

'Inform me of what?' I asked, already more than half-convinced that I didn't want to know. His first words were enough to tell me I was right about that.

'The situation has deteriorated significantly,' he said, with commendable restraint. 'According to our signal intercepts, a state of civil war now exists throughout the system.'

'Frakking great,' I said, seeing little need to restrain myself under the circumstances. 'Does Captain Gries have any suggestions for dealing with it?'

I'd got to know Drumon well enough by now to be fairly confident that the expression which ghosted across his face was one of faint surprise that I'd even bothered to ask. 'Intervene at once,' he said, then broke off to listen to a voice in his earpiece. 'He is embarking in the hangar deck as we speak, and extends an invitation for you to join him.'

Not, needless to say, an invitation I could even consider refusing. I was there to liaise with the Reclaimers' command staff, which basically meant Gries, so wherever he went, I had to go too. At least until the Imperial Guard forces turned up, and I could find some plausible excuse to go and bother them instead.

'I'd be delighted,' I said, hoping I sounded as though I meant it.

I'D ARRIVED ABOARD the Revenant by teleporter, and been unconscious at the time into the bargain, so this was my first sight of the warship's hangar bay. My immediate impression as I walked through the airtight hatch, which slid closed behind me with a squeal of metal against metal, was one of purposeful activity. The inevitable crowd of Chapter serfs was bustling about under the supervision of a handful whose bearing and demeanour betokened higher rank than their fellows, even though the iconography of their uniforms continued to be strange to me. A startling number of them had visible augmetics, which either indicated a fair degree of hazard in their occupations (even by the standards of serving aboard a warship), or the kind of willingness to voluntarily adopt whatever enhancements would assist their work I'd previously encountered only among the Adeptus Mechanicus. I suspected the latter, as I'd gathered from the skitarii aboard the Omnissiah's Bounty that some kind of pact existed between the Reclaimers and the acolytes of the Machine-God, but there was no time to think about that now. Gries and his entourage were clearly visible in the distance, towering over the surrounding crewmen, and I set off across the echoing metal plain between us as quickly as possible.

Like every hangar I'd ever been in, the chamber was vast, but the very scale of it felt curiously comforting; for the first time since coming aboard I felt a measure of relief from the nagging sense of strangeness I'd experienced everywhere else about the vessel, whose corridors and hatchways had been designed to accommodate the greater-than-human bulk of Space Marines, and left me feeling curiously shrunken. Unlike the docking bays I'd passed through while embarking and departing from troopships, however, the vast space felt clinically efficient. All the apparatus required to refuel and rearm the pair of Thunderhawks currently occupying it was neatly stowed, and there was a marked absence of cargo pallets and other detritus cluttering up the place.

The Thunderhawks were impressive enough, too, and I slowed my pace a little as I neared the closer of them. They weren't as large as the platoon-sized drop-ships the Guard routinely used, let alone the company-sized behemoths I'd ridden in on occasion, but their blocky solidity looked immediately reassuring. Their heavy armour could doubtless soak up a lot of incoming fire, and they seemed more than capable of dishing it out as well as taking it, judging by the amount of ordnance I could see hanging off their airframes. They were painted yellow and white, like the armour of the Astartes marching up the boarding ramp of the one I was approaching, their simultaneous footfalls echoing off the metal mesh like drumbeats, and looked as fresh as if they'd just been rolled out for the first time. Having gathered a little of how much tradition meant to a Space Marine Chapter, I had no doubt that they were considerably more venerable than they appeared, perhaps even centuries old, but their immaculate condition was a tribute to Drumon and the serf enginseers he supervised. It heartened me, too, I have to admit, as I found it hard to conceive of an enemy capable of standing against such a formidable vessel.

I trotted up the ramp in the wake of the power-armoured giants ahead of me, and found myself in a passenger compartment constructed on the same cyclopean lines as everything else sized for Astartes. Only about half of the seats were occupied, and I scrambled into one of the empty ones, feeling oddly like a child in an adult's armchair as I fumbled with the crash webbing. My feet hung awkwardly above the deck plates, and I was unable to draw the webbing quite as tight as I would have wished, but at least I had room for my chainsword without having to remove it from my belt, as would have been the case aboard an Imperial Guard landing barge.

'Commissar.' Gries's helmet turned in my direction, easy to identify, as it was as richly ornamented as his armour and surmounted by a crest of green and black. 'Are you prepared?'

'By the Emperor's grace,' I replied, falling back on one of the stock responses which I generally used to avoid committing myself, and feeling it wouldn't hurt to look a bit more pious than usual surrounded by so many paragons. There were fifteen of them in all: Gries's command squad, which I was pleased to see included Sholer, his narthecium ready for use on his left vambrace, and ten tactical troopers, already broken down into two combat squads. Most carried bolters, which I was more used to seeing mounted on armoured vehicles, as easily as a Guardsman handled his lasgun, while two of their comrades were equipped with heavy weapons it would have taken a team of ordinary troopers to use effectively on the battlefield. One carried a missile launcher, several reloads pouched at his waist, while another casually hefted the first man-portable lascannon I'd ever seen without a groundmount. The faceplates of their helmets were all the same yellow as their gauntlets, although the captain's shone with the lustre of gilding rather than pigment.

'May He watch over us all,' Gries intoned in response, although, to my surprise, he made the cogwheel gesture I generally associated with members of the Adeptus Mechanicus rather than the sign of the aquila.

I didn't have much time to think about that, though, because the boarding ramp was retracting, and the engines fired up to a pitch which left my ears ringing. It might have been fine for the Astartes, whose heads were cocooned inside their helmets, but it was distinctly uncomfortable for me. There was no point complaining about it, however, even if anyone could have heard me, so I just pulled my cap down as far as it would go, and quietly resolved to get hold of some earplugs before I accepted another lift in a Thunderhawk.

'Look in the locker to your left,' the nearest Reclaimer said, his words just about audible over the howling of the engines, even amplified by the vox built into his helmet. With some difficulty I followed his suggestion, since everything was laid out for far longer arms than mine, and discovered a comms headset with padded earpieces and a vox mic on a stalk. I donned it gratefully, and found the noise almost instantly reduced to a level I considered bearable.

'Thank you,' I responded, feeling faintly foolish.

'This is our primary objective,' Gries said, activating a pict screen. It seemed someone on his staff had been busy in the relatively short time since our arrival in-system, and had managed to gather a remarkable amount of information. 'Fidelis, the planetary capital, currently being fought over by three of the major rebel factions. The loyalist forces are dug in around the Administratum cloister, the cathedral precincts, the Mechanicus shrine and the governor's palace, no doubt hoping the rebels will whittle one another down for them.' The landmarks he'd indicated flared green on the map. 'We'll deploy from the palace. If we can assure the safety of the governor, then the Emperor's rule should be swiftly restored.'

I found myself nodding in agreement - always assuming the man was still alive, of course. If he wasn't, and had been inconsiderate enough to expire without leaving a clear line of succession, the resulting confusion as conflicting claimants brawled for the throne would probably make things ten times worse.

'I take it you have good reason to believe he's still in charge,' I said, more to show I was paying attention than anything else. Gries's helmet dipped in almost imperceptible acknowledgement.

'He made a pictcast five hours ago, appealing for calm and promising retribution against all who continued to defy the Emperor's will. The rebels responded as one might expect.'

'Shelling the palace?' I asked, and the captain's helmet inclined again.

'Given the amount of damage the building has already sustained, we can infer that he managed to survive the latest bombardment with little difficulty.' He adjusted the image on the pict screen, and the palace and its grounds rushed towards us, filling the frame. Either the Revenant carried some of the most sophisticated long-range sensors I'd ever come across, or Drumon had managed to gain access to the PDF's orbital net, because according to the time stamp in the corner the image was a current one. The palace itself showed signs of extensive damage, an entire wing burned out and roofless, while the rest of the structure was pocked with the stigmata of heavy ordnance. The perimeter walls, which had been designed with this sort of contingency in mind, had evidently withstood several assaults already, and been shored up or strengthened in a few places, although, to my relief, I couldn't see any actual breaches. The muddy wasteland separating the two, which had presumably once been formal gardens, was criss-crossed with trenches and the tracks of armoured vehicles, several dozen of which could be seen parked around the place. That was good news, if nothing else, as it meant there would be a substantial garrison of PDF loyalists to hide behind if, by some inconceivable quirk of fate, I was to run out of Space Marines.

Gries highlighted an open area between the trench line and the building, which common sense and experience told me had to be covered by emplaced weapons from at least two directions. 'This is our landing zone,' he said. 'My team and the commissar will present our compliments to Governor DuPanya, while Sergeant Trosque's squad will move out at once to ensure the safety of the cathedral and the shrine of the Omnissiah.'

The sergeant, who I'd already picked out by virtue of the chainsword scabbarded at his hip, opposite the holster of his bolt pistol, made no visible sign of acknowledgement, but his voice responded at once. 'One combat squad should suffice for each objective. Mine will safeguard the shrine, Veren's the cathedral.'

'What about the Thunderhawk?' I asked, hoping the answer would be something to the effect of it staying on the ground with its engines running in case we needed a rapid dustoff, but knowing this was extremely unlikely.

'Seek and destroy,' Gries said, which made perfect sense. With the local loyalists dug in at four known enclaves, pretty much anything else that looked military would be renegade units, attached to one or other of the squabbling factions, and fair game for the circling gunship. 'Let the rebels know we've arrived.'

Given the amount of firepower I'd seen while boarding, that was hardly going to be difficult. I nodded, with every outward sign of approval. 'Might as well start as we mean to go on,' I agreed.

Gries manipulated the controls of the pict-screen again, and the image changed to an external view, relayed from part of the fire control system judging by the targeting graphics superimposed on it. We were still at high altitude, but undeniably within the atmosphere[9]. As I watched, transfixed, the smoking ruins of Fidelis rolled over the horizon, and I found myself trying to pick out the landmarks Gries had highlighted during his briefing. The cathedral was the easiest, still dominating the quarter in which it stood, despite the tumbled ruins of most of its spires. With that to orientate me, I was soon able to pick out the blank-sided slabs of the Administratum ziggurat, and the burnished steel cladding of the Mechanicus shrine. The governor's palace was another matter, however, less tall than the others and still some distance away, surrounded by a cluster of lesser mansions and their grounds, like a she-grox with young. As we grew closer, it became evident that many were burned out, and all had been pillaged, in a manner which put me in mind of mob violence rather than battle damage.

Then the pall of smoke cleared, and we skimmed over the outer wall of the palace grounds, too fast to be targeted by ground-to-air fire, the upturned faces of guards and besiegers alike identical masks of astonishment[10]. Abruptly, I found myself pressed hard against the crash webbing, as the pilot kicked in the retros, killing our forward momentum, then my stomach seemed to float free of my body as we dropped towards the ground. It was just as well Jurgen wasn't with me, I thought, as he was prone to airsickness at the best of times, and this was hardly one of those. Without warning, an ork-sized boot seemed to kick me in the fundament, and the noise of the engines died back to almost bearable levels. We were down.

'Prepare to disembark,' Gries said, as the ramp began to drop, letting in a swirl of damp air, lightly scented with burning vegetation from the heat of our landing thrusters. Trosque's fire-team[11] deployed first, jogging down the ramp and securing it; I was pleased to see that they were taking nothing for granted, even though we were supposed to be meeting allies. After a moment the sergeant assured us that all was well, and Gries and his command squad followed. Seeing no reason to delay any further, and convinced that if there was treachery afoot there could be no better place to discover the fact than from behind a solid wall of bolter-carrying ceramite, I trotted after them, trying to look as imposing as I could given that my head barely came up to the level of their pauldrons.

As my bootsoles hit solid ground, crunching a little on the ashes and baked mud which still smoked gently beneath the Thunderhawk, I got a lungful of smoke and tried to suppress the reflex to cough. No one else was, and I didn't want to be the one to undermine the dignity of the occasion.

As Gries stepped off the bottom of the ramp, he paused for a moment, two of his companions at either shoulder and an exact pace behind. Taken briefly by surprise, I stopped too, just short of walking into the back of him, and level with the other four Astartes, completing the line, and, of course, completely invisible from the front.

'Welcome to Viridia,' someone said, and I shuffled sideways a little to get a better view. We were evidently expected, as a delegation had come to meet us: ceremonial troopers, their gaudy uniforms looking rather the worse for wear by now, who held their lasguns like men who'd recently discovered exactly what they were for, and were ready to employ them in an instant, surrounding a man in robes so ridiculously over-ornamented there could be little doubt as to who he was, even before he announced the fact. 'I'm Governor DuPanya.' Then, to my astonishment, he went down on one knee. 'You honour us by your presence.'

'Please rise,' Gries said, the vox system of his helmet, perhaps mercifully, purging any traces of surprise or amusement from his words. 'We have much to discuss, and little time to waste on ceremony.' He reached up, removing the helmet, and DuPanya relaxed visibly as the captain's face came into view. It wasn't exactly a hololith, consisting as it did mainly of augmetics and scar tissue, but it looked a great deal more friendly than a blank visage of pitted ceramite. 'I am Captain Gries of the Reclaimers Chapter, these are my battle-brothers and this...' he turned, apparently surprised to find me so close to hand, 'is Commissar Cain, our liaison with the Imperial Guard elements of the task force.'

'Imperial Guard?' DuPanya asked, standing up as he'd been bidden and giving me my first proper look at him. He appeared to be in early middle age - although I was too familiar with the nobility's fondness for juvenat treatments, even on a backwater world like this one, to put much faith in outward appearance - and running slightly to fat. His eyes, however, were keen and looked at me appraisingly. 'I was not informed of their arrival.'

'They're still in the warp,' I told him, reflecting somewhat ruefully that I could have saved myself a considerable amount of inconvenience if I'd delayed my departure to travel with them, and whatever piece of gung-ho idiocy Lokris had been planning to drag me into could hardly have turned out to be worse than the metal abominations I'd barely escaped with my life from on Interitus Prime.

'Emperor willing, they should be here within the week.' In fact they should be there within the next couple of days, if the warp currents hadn't shifted appreciably since the last estimate I'd heard, but nothing to do with the Realm of Chaos itself is ever certain, and I preferred to err on the side of caution. I raised my voice a little, above the scream of the Thunderhawk's engines, which were powering up again now that Veren's team had disembarked behind us. 'But perhaps this isn't the best place to be discussing operational matters.'

'Quite so,' Gries agreed, his voice cutting through the din as though it were little more than the murmuring of wind through the trees.

'Having come here to ensure your safety, it seems a little unwise to be talking where the enemy could deny us our objective with a lucky mortar round or a sniper's bullet.' This didn't seem to have occurred to the governor, who, to his credit, seemed relatively unconcerned at the possibility. Nevertheless, he turned and led the way inside, his escort looking considerably relieved as they regained a little hard cover. Gries and his entourage followed, while I oscillated between the two parties, connected to both by ties of protocol, but properly part of neither.

As we reached the heavy wooden doors of the palace and passed inside, I glanced back at the Thunderhawk, which was rising from the ground like a raptor in search of prey. Beneath it Trosque and Veren were leading their sections towards the perimeter wall, in diverging directions as each made for the gate closest to his objective, and I breathed silent thanks to the Throne that I'd be well under cover before the serious shooting started. I had no doubt that the Astartes would make short work of any traitors standing between them and their targets, but the initial contact for both teams would be close enough for us to attract any collateral damage that might be going.

Well, perhaps the Thunderhawk could help clear the path for them. It circled lazily over our heads one final time, then roared away to find something to shoot at.

Watching it go, I felt a faint sense of unease, reflecting that, for better or worse, I was now committed to the defence of this beach-head, with nowhere to go unless it was through the enemy. Then reason kicked in, and reassured me that I must be as safe here as anywhere on Viridia. After all, the palace hadn't fallen yet, and it had now been reinforced by five of the most formidable fighters in the Imperium. Plus me. I should be able to avoid trouble here, surely.

Editorial Note:

Cain has alluded in passing to the subsector-wide importance of Viridia, but knowing a little more about the world, and the system of which it is a part, makes it abundantly clear why its pacification was important enough to warrant the deployment of an Astartes expeditionary force. The following extract is almost as idiosyncratic as Cain's own prose, but serves its purpose of filling in sufficient background to clarify much of what follows without sacrificing readability to pedantry. Anyone wanting greater detail is referred to the Compendium of Takings of the Damocles Gulf and Bordering Regions (Abridged), Volume MCLXXIV, appendices 17, 2,378 and 3,452,691, which may be consulted at any Administratum archive, once the appropriate requests have been filed in triplicate. Eventually.

From Interesting Places and Tedious People: A Wanderer's Waybook, by Jerval Sekara, 145.M39.

THE AGRI-WORLD OF Vidia lies a little to spinward of the more populous regions of the Damocles Gulf, but can be reached surprisingly easily, due to the large volume of traffic to and from the neighbouring hive-worlds. This makes it a useful stopover point, since passage there, and to whatever eventual destination the wayfarer may settle upon once its decidedly bucolic charms have begun to pall, may be easily obtained.

It is, however, worth a brief sojourn, as it manages to combine both rural simplicity and urban sophistication in a manner which, if not unique, is certainly uncommon in this part of the Imperium. In part this is due to the sheer volume of shipping, since enterprising grain barge captains compete energetically with one another to wring some kind of profit from the inward leg of their journeys, ensuring a steady supply of offworld merchandise of a variety almost unparalleled elsewhere in the subsector. As the local saying has it, if you can't find it on Viridia, it probably doesn't exist.

All of which has made the world itself tolerably prosperous, with a thriving mercantile class, who, in the manner of parvenus everywhere, fritter away their profits on grandiose architecture and philanthropic enterprises intended to better the lot of the artisans, whether they want it bettered or not. As a result, the planetary capital, Fidelis, is positively awash with grand public buildings, ornamented to within an inch of their lives and separated by a profuse scattering of parks and gardens. The local populace is hardworking and pious, to such an extent that almost every street contains a chapel or shrine to the Emperor. Notwithstanding, they throw themselves into any excuse for a celebration wholeheartedly, with the annual festivals dedicated to some aspect or other of the agricultural cycle being particularly popular. The epitome of ecclesiarchial architecture, however, must surely be the cathedral in Fidelis, which in size and splendour can rival those to be found on far more populous worlds, and which attracts pilgrims from all over the Viridia System.

For, unlike most other agriworlds, Viridia exports a great deal more than just foodstuffs. The rest of the planetary system of which it is a part is exceptionally rich in minerals, and millions of its citizens live offworld, in orbitals, void stations and mining habs, dedicated to harvesting this bounty as assiduously as their pitchfork-wielding cousins on the surface do theirs. In fact, it's no exaggeration to say that around half the total Viridian population have never set foot on the planet they nominally call home, and never will. The raw material they gather is dispatched to the manufactoria of the neighbouring systems in a never-ending stream, slaking the hunger of their production lines just as efficiently as the grain barges do the workers who labour thereon.