The Emperor's Finest

EIGHT

JURGEN TOOK THE news of our imminent departure in his usual phlegmatic fashion, although I'm bound to say that I was less than enthusiastic at the prospect of getting back aboard a starship so soon after making planetfall. But then, for Jurgen, orders were sacrosanct. I sometimes suspected that he believed the chain of command to extend unbroken all the way to the Golden Throne, so even matters as mundane as the appointment of the day's latrine orderly were imbued with the unassailable authority of the Emperor Himself. At any event, he simply nodded and busied himself about packing my effects with no more than a simple ''Very good, sir. Will you be wanting a bit of lunch before we leave?''.

'I believe so,' I told him, after considering the matter. I'd lost little time in requisitioning a comm-bead from the newly arrived Guard contingent, to replace the one the necrons had vaporised along with the Omnissiah's Bounty, so I was able to follow the Astartes' preparations for departure without bothering Gries, which probably came as a relief to both of us. Recovering their active combat squads, who were scattered across half the system, was going to take a little time, even for warriors of their formidable efficiency, and, true to the code of their Chapter, none of them would be willing to break contact with a still-living enemy and leave the task they'd been allocated half-done.

Lunch would also be a good opportunity to take my leave of Mira (who I'd managed to detach myself from in the command bunker as quickly and tactfully as possible), on reasonably good terms. Her words had shaken me, which, given some of the perils I've faced in the Emperor's name, you might find surprising, but at least you know where you are with a charging ork. When a woman tells you she wants to talk ''about us'', the one thing you can be sure of is that no amount of combat experience is going to get you out unscathed.

To my surprise, and, I must confess, relief however, my invitation went unacknowledged, save by a sour-faced ladies maid, who informed me with mingled relish and disdain that her mistress was '''not available''. Remembering the sulky expression on Mira's face as I'd prised her from my arm and found urgent business with the intelligence analyst I'd tried to speak to before, I could well believe it. It had been obvious to me from the moment we'd first got involved with one another that our liaison would be as fleeting as all the others I'd had over the years, my position and duty to the Commissariat making it inevitable that I'd be moving on to another war as soon as the situation on Viridia had stabilised, but Mira's little world had always revolved around her, and I was beginning to realise, somewhat belatedly, that she wasn't going to take kindly to my departure on anyone's terms but her own.

Oh well, too bad, I thought. Heiress to a planet she may have been[40], but I couldn't see that having much weight with Gries if she tried to argue him into leaving me behind. For a moment the mental picture that conjured up, of the petulant young aristocrat haranguing the Space Marine captain, raised a fleeting smile, before I dismissed it and turned my attention to more pressing matters. 'See if they've got any of those little lizard things, and some of that smoked fish pate, in the kitchen,' I told Jurgen. The rations aboard the Revenant were adequate, of course, but fairly basic, the little comforts of life generally coming low on the list of priorities of a Space Marine, and I intended to make the most of the skills of the governor's chef while I still had the chance. 'Otherwise, use your initiative. And get something for yourself, too.'

'Very good, sir,' he said, and departed as quickly as he could without compromising the air of dignity he felt appropriate to someone in the exalted position of a commissar's personal aide, and which he endeavoured to maintain at all times, in blissful ignorance of the fact that it was completely invisible to everyone but him. He returned a short while later with a large covered tray, the contents of which he laid out for me, and a thermal bag leaking steam, which, to my unspoken relief, he bore off to his own quarters, there being few things in the galaxy more likely to curtail the appetite than watching (or listening to) Jurgen stuffing his face.

After concluding our meals there was nothing much else to do, since we had little enough kit between us, and Jurgen had already stowed it, so I found myself in the unwelcome and novel position of time hanging heavily on my hands. I busied myself with make-work, visiting the bunker for one final time to pass on what information I could about the state of affairs the Astartes were leaving behind (a lot of dead heretics, mainly), and pick up the latest news of the Guard campaign in case, in defiance of my expectations, Gries turned out to be interested. (I was right, as it happened; he wasn't. As soon as we'd left the Viridia System, his attention was focussed entirely on the pursuit of the space hulk, and I can't recall him ever mentioning the campaign there again.)

To my relief, I didn't run across DuPanya anywhere in the corridors of the palace, as I was by no means certain how much he knew of my association with his daughter, or of her recent displeasure. As it happened, I never set eyes on him again. I did find Orten hanging around in the command centre, marginalised by the Guard officers but gamely determined to do whatever he could to prevent them from making too much of a mess of his home world, and made sure I said my farewells to him as publicly as possible: I don't know if that made anyone take him a little more seriously, but I hope so[41].

Of Mira, I saw nothing before quitting the palace, which I must confess to being ambivalent about. On the one hand, I couldn't help feeling a certain sense of relief at having avoided a confrontation which would probably have ended in recrimination, but on the other, I've never liked leaving unfinished business behind. As Jurgen drove us out of the main courtyard and through the wreckage of the gardens along the main causeway, which stood out clearly as a straight strip of mud marginally less churned up than its surroundings, I found myself glancing back over the armour plate protecting the crew compartment of the Salamander he'd requisitioned from somewhere to scan the hundreds of windows in search of a flash of blonde hair; but in vain. At last, as we passed through the battered gate in the outer wall through which Trosque had launched his attack on the besiegers, the palace disappeared from sight, and I directed my attention to our immediate environment.

I hadn't seen much of Fidelis in the relatively short time which had elapsed since our arrival. On the few occasions I'd ventured out to compare notes with Guard commanders or Astartes in the field it had been aboard a Rhino which my hosts had thoughtfully dispatched, the arrival of which always seemed to excite a certain degree of interest among Guardsmen and PDF loyalists alike. It seemed the Reclaimers were still taking the matter of my personal safety as seriously as the Terminator sergeant had intimated, which was fine by me. The only downsides that I'd discovered so far were an inability to see anything beyond the interior of the APC, which was considerably roomier than the Chimeras I was familiar with, and the fact that the bench seats were to the same scale as the fittings aboard the Thunderhawk: fine for the superhuman stature of a Space Marine in powered armour, but distinctly uncomfortable for us ordinary mortals. The upshot of which was that I'd only seen snapshots of the city, as it were, generally a disputed part, where the amount of ambient noise and incoming fire made loitering to sightsee decidedly unwise.

Now, as Jurgen cannonballed us through the streets at his usual breakneck pace, swerving around those few obstacles too solid to bounce our tracks across, I found myself pleasantly surprised. The tide of war had evidently receded from the capital at last, only a few rockpools of unrest remaining to be dealt with, and the first signs of something approaching normality were beginning to appear, like shoots of green among the ashes of a forest fire. The road to the starport was clear of debris, the worst of the cratering marring its surface patched with raw rockcrete dressings, which I suppose was only to be expected given the amount of military traffic rumbling along it in both directions. What I hadn't anticipated was the number of civilian vehicles threaded in among them, overloaded cargo haulers for the most part, jammed with furnishings, possessions and grim-faced people clinging on for dear life among the detritus of their lives. They were, I suppose, returning to their homes, or the sites where once they stood, hoping to pick up where they'd left off, in defiance of all reason. Most of the ramshackle transports were graced with icons of the Emperor, and a few meagre offerings had been left at the shrines beside the road, where, no doubt, they'd be purloined as soon as dusk fell, in defiance of the curfew[42].

The side streets, which Jurgen eventually took to, impatient with the restrictions the density of traffic on the main thoroughfare placed on his natural inclination to open the throttle to its maximum and leave it there, were more cluttered, of course, but even here there were signs of returning life, which I found cheering. People were moving among the rubble of the sundered buildings, salvaging what they could, although if the emporium I'd encountered the sentries of the brood mind in was anything to go by, I doubted that the looters would have left them much[43]. In a few places the smoke of cooking fires rose from within the ruins, where enough of the original structures remained to keep the rain off, occasionally supplemented with tarpaulins or other makeshift materials.

Few of the people we passed spared us a glance, with the inevitable exception of the children, who were playing amid the ruins with the total absorption in the concerns of the moment peculiar to the very young. They tended to glance up as we hurtled by, stones and chunks of pulverised rockcrete scattering from our treads, shouting or waving, before returning to their games.

As yet, there seemed little in the way of organised rebuilding, although we caught occasional glimpses of what might have been the beginning of a coordinated effort at returning Fidelis to habitability. A handful of tech-priests seemed to be abroad, roaming the city in ones and twos, making earnest notes in their data-slates or poking about in conduits, while a party of sappers from one of the Vostroyan regiments was erecting flakboard huts in a park Jurgen couldn't be bothered to circumvent, presumably intended to house the hopeful occupants of the lorries we'd seen earlier. The only building under active repair that we passed was a local temple, where ragged refugees were laying bricks under the supervision of an elderly ecclesiarch, no doubt in exchange for the promise of food and a bed for the night[44].

A few moments later our progress began to slow again, and I poked my head over the armour plate surrounding the passenger compartment, reaching for my laspistol by reflex as I did so. Normally I liked to have the Salamanders I requisitioned fitted with a pintel mount, so I'd have something a bit more lethal to hand if things went ploin-shaped, but Jurgen had just had to take what he could find in the vehicle pool, leaving me to make do with my sidearm if push came to shove. A Caledonian sergeant, in a mottled camo-patterned uniform similar to the one Orten favoured, was flagging us down, the squad of troopers with him regarding us with the wary eyes of combat veterans. They were keeping their lasguns trained on us, just as they should have done with so much PDF kit still in the hands of insurrectionists and troublemakers, and I was pleased to see that they kept them on aim even after my uniform had become visible.

'Commissar.' The sergeant nodded a greeting, no doubt wondering if he or any of his men were in trouble, but determined not to show it. Very few Guardsmen are pleased to see a red sash, which no doubt accounts for the inordinate number of my colleagues felled by friendly-fire accidents. 'We weren't toid to expect you.'

'Probably because I had no idea any of our people were down here,' I said, noting the faint stirring of relief among the soldiers. 'My aide and I are on our way to the aerodrome.' I smiled at the troopers, who were still keeping us covered. 'You can stand down. We're not hybrids or 'stealer puppets.'

'Of course not,' the sergeant agreed, stepping forwards, a trifle nervously, with a portable auspex. 'But if you wouldn't mind indulging me, sir? I'm sure you wouldn't want us to neglect our orders.'

'By no means,' I agreed, reholstering my laspistol and climbing down to the roadway so he could take his genescan a little more easily The unit beeped, and a rune flashed green, after which everyone looked a little more comfortable, particularly once Jurgen was confirmed to be a reasonable approximation of a human as well. 'You're to be commended for your caution.'

That went down well, as I'd known it would. There are far better ways of managing troops than simply putting the fear of the Emperor into them, as I try to convince the young pups in my care these days, in the vague hope that their careers will last a bit longer than their first night patrol.

The sergeant nodded. 'That's the worst thing about fighting 'stealers,' he agreed. 'You never know who might turn out to be a hybrid or an implant. Squadmate of mine turned on us on Keffia, just like that, no warning, been with us since basic. Had to shoot him myself.'

'I was there too,' I said, not wanting to remember too much about it. 'Similar thing happened. Bad business all round.'

The sergeant shrugged. 'I never liked him, mind. And I got his stripe. For showing initiative. So it could have been worse.'

I smiled again. 'You're a born optimist, sergeant. The Guard needs men like you.'

'Kind of you to say so, sir.' And, Emperor help me, he actually blushed. 'But you'll have to go round, I'm afraid. The street's impassable.'

'We'll get through,' Jurgen said, with quiet confidence, taking the statement as a challenge, as I'd known he would.

The sergeant shook his head. 'I doubt it,' he said. Jurgen might have been about to argue the point, but subsided, at a look from me.

'Impassable how?' I asked, and the sergeant shrugged.

'It's not there,' he said simply. Well, that sounded distinctly peculiar, so I left the Salamander with its engine running, and walked off down the rubble-strewn carriageway. For the first hundred metres or so, nothing seemed to have changed, the ravaged cityscape looming over me, and my bootsoles scraping against the smaller chunks of debris littering the 'crete.

Then the road ended, as sharply and abruptly as if excised with a knife. For a few metres the road surface became rippled, like a hardened lava flow, then simply dropped away into a broad pit, some three or four metres deep. It may seem incredible, reading this now, but my first thought was simply how lucky we'd been to have run into the troopers when we did; if they hadn't flagged us down, we might well have discovered the hole by falling into it. Then, as I began to take in the way the edges of the buildings around me had also melted and flowed like candle wax, realisation belatedly hit. This was where Mira and I had fought our desperate battle beneath the ground, and come so close to extinction before the Thunderhawk had torn the roof off to allow the Terminators to come to our rescue.

I can't be sure how long I stood there, reliving the horror and marvelling at the precision of our saviours, before a familiar odour brought me back to myself.

'That's a big hole,' Jurgen commented, materialising at my shoulder, his lasgun held ready for use as always.

I nodded. 'It is indeed,' I agreed, picking out the tunnel the pure-strains had emerged from at last. Nothing was left of the creatures which had attacked us, save a few greasy stains on the rain-streaked rockcrete below; some of the Terminators had carried flamers, and made sure that every last one had been consigned to the pyre before they broke off. I couldn't help wondering how many more of the xenos spawn still lurked beneath our feet, though, or how many apparent innocents still carried their taint. But that wasn't my problem any longer, thanks to Gries and the libratory tech-priest Yaffel.

'It'll take some filling in,' Jurgen added, after a moment or two of further deliberation.

'I'm sure it will,' I said, turning away at last, before my imagination could start playing tricks with the echoes. 'Can you find your way round it? We've still got a shuttle to catch.'

Jurgen nodded. 'Leave it to me,' he said.

THANKS TO MY aide's usual robust driving style, the unexpected detour didn't detain us overmuch: we reached the landing pad just as the Thunderhawk I'd arrived aboard, or its identical twin I'd noticed in the hangar bay, roared in over our heads and snuggled itself down between the blast walls like a raptor returning to its nest. Mine wasn't the only head turning to follow it: the scores of Guardsmen and Navy hands scurrying about the place were undoubtedly accustomed to the ceaseless arrival and departure of Valkyries, Aquilae and Throne alone knew how many other types of shuttle, drop-ship and combat craft, but the distinctive silhouette of the Astartes vessel grabbed their attention at once.

Jurgen, fortunately, remained as phlegmatic as ever, apparently considering it nothing more than a ship like any other, and weaved his way through the distracted ground crews with his usual aplomb, missing cargo haulers and foot sloggers by a typically narrow margin. Fortunately the noise of our engine, and the idling Thunderhawk, drowned out the comments which followed us, although the gestures which accompanied them were more than sufficient to convey their gist.

As he steered us through the slalom of blast walls surrounding the pad[45], it became clear that Jurgen and I weren't the only guests of the Chapter intending to embark for the Revenant that afternoon. Magos Yaffel was there too, oscillating even more than usual in the backwash from the idling thrusters, accompanied by a handful of tech-adepts, and a couple of servitors, which were busily engaged in transferring an unfeasibly large collection of boxes and bundles aboard. As Jurgen coasted the Salamander to a halt, and began collecting our kit together, I hopped down and nodded a cordial greeting to the cogboys[46].

'Magos,' I said, raising my voice a little to be heard over the screaming engines, 'I wasn't aware that you'd be accompanying us.'

'The Omnissiah directs our footsteps along the path of knowledge,' Yaffel replied, cranking up the volume of his voxcaster to overcome the din. Refraining from pointing out that in his case that would be singularly difficult, I merely nodded, as if the evident quotation[47] meant something to me. 'And the potential store of data to be reaped on this endeavour is incalculable.' At the time I thought his words to be no more than a simple figure of speech. If I'd known then what he was driving at, I'd have clambered back aboard the Salamander and told Jurgen to head for the horizon with all the speed he could squeeze from it (which I've no doubt would have been considerable). As it was, however, I merely exchanged a few more reflexive pleasantries, before following my overloaded aide to the bottom of the boarding ramp, and dodging out of the way of a servitor on its way back for another load of whatever Yaffel and his cronies considered essential on the voyage.

As I regained my balance, another vehicle drew up smoothly alongside our abandoned Salamander, and I felt a strange unease descend upon me. It was a groundcar, long and sleek, its armourcrys windows polarised to the same glossy black as the bodywork. For some reason I was put in mind of the blank, reflective faces of the metal killers I'd fled from on Interims Prime. Which I'd almost rather have faced again, if my sudden intuition about the car's passenger turned out to be right.

It was. A uniformed chauffeur, in a livery I'd come to know well since my arrival here, unfolded himself from the driver's compartment and glided round to the rear door. As he opened it Mira emerged, the sudden change in her expression a clear indication that the vehicle was soundproofed as effectively as it was shielded from the vulgar gaze of the hoi polloi, and waved cheerfully in my direction.

I waved back, masking my relief at her evident good humour with a faint smile meant to convey pleased surprise, and she came trotting over, grinning like a puppy who's just discovered how to open the meat locker. She'd evidently got tired of playing soldiers, as she'd discarded the dress-up uniform in favour of something a little more feminine: an indigo blouse, low-cut, like pretty much everything else in her wardrobe, and a crimson knee-length skirt, which, like the blouse, was fashioned from some material that shimmered slightly as the light caught it. In the turbulence thrown up by the Thunderhawks idling thrusters it rippled constantly, so that Mira seemed to be clothed by a nimbus of rainbows. Her footwear was surprisingly practical: calf-high boots made from the hide of some local animal, although I doubted that their original owner had been quite so fluorescently pink.

'Mira,' I said, exhaling a little more strongly than I intended as she enveloped me in a hug which would have cracked an ork's ribs. 'It was kind of you to come and see me off.'

'I'm not.' She grinned again, and with a definite sense of foreboding I belatedly registered the fact that the chauffeur was removing what looked like almost as much baggage as the tech-priests had accumulated from the car. 'I'm coming too. Isn't that a wonderful surprise?'

'Wonderful doesn't even begin to cover it,' I said truthfully.