1_For_The_Emperor Page 5

  1 Cain was part of the invasion force which cleansed Sanguia. His account of this action is also recorded in the archive.

  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.1

  '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

  1 It was hardly unprecedented for men and women to serve together in the Imperial Guard. Notable units in which this was the norm included the Omicron Rangers, Tanith First, and Calderon Rifles. However, with women making up fewer than ten per cent of the total number under arms, and the vast majority of those serving in single-sex regiments, it wouldn't be that surprising if the 597th excited a certain amount of curiosity among the onlookers present.

  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.1

  AH 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, О 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 prome-thium 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 kloms2 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

  1 A widespread, though unofficial practice among units experienced in urban warfare. So much so that it's now become part of the standard operating procedure in many regiments, the ad hoc arrangement persisting to become a permanent feature of their organisation.

  2 A Valhallan slang abbreviation for 'kilometre/ Cain served with Valhallan units for most of his life, and almost inevitably his speech became peppered with colloquialisms acquired from them.

  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.

  Things weren't as far gone as I'd feared, however, as I turned back to look, a squad of Arbites forced their way through the crowd and began laying into the juvies with shock batons. Good order was still being maintained here, by the Emperor's grace, but for how much longer?

  That, I very much feared, depended on us.

  We reached our staging area without further incident, fanning out through a complex of warehouses and manufactoria which had been set aside for our use. We weren't the only regiment quartered there, I recall, as the Imperium had been fortifying against an expected incursion by the tau for some time, and I gathered that the Righteous Wrath's complement (three full regiments apart from our own) brought the total up to around thirty thousand all told. That should have been more than enough to keep a backwater planet, even spread out across the whole globe, but rumour had it we could expect still more reinforcement, which worried me more than I wanted to show. With that amount of build-up it seemed the aliens wanted this place quite badly, and we'd more than likely be expected to hold it the hard way.

  We were quartered next to one of the Valhallan armoured regiments - the 14th I think - but I couldn't tell you who most of the others were. There was definite evidence that the Rough Riders were still somewhere in the vicinity though, so you had to watch your feet, but apart from that I hadn't a clue.

  Except for one other unit I already knew well, of course, which I'll come to in a moment.

  I was still feeling spooked from our journey through town, so I was relieved to come across Broklaw posting sentries around our corner of the compound as I left Jurgen to sort out my quarters and went for a wander around to get my bearings. I haven't reached my second century by not knowing where the best boltholes and lines of retreat are, and finding them was always a high priority for me whenever I found myself somewhere new.

  'Good thinking, major,' I complimented him, and he gave me a wry grin.

  'We should be safe enough here/ he said. 'But it never hurts to be careful.'

  'I know what you mean/ I agreed. 'There's something about this place which really gets under my skin/ The warehouses around us all had that peculiar rounded-off look I'd noticed before, and the subtle sense of wrongness left a vague apprehension hovering around me like Jurgen's body odour. The major knew his business, though, setting up lascan-non in sandbagged emplacements to cover the gaps between the buildings around us, and sharpshooters on the roof. I was just admiring his thoroughness when the ground began to shake, and a couple of our sentinels appeared, clanking and humming and swivelling their heavy multilasers as they took up position in front of the main loading doors which gave access to the ground floor where our vehicles were parked.

  Somewhat reassured by this, I made my way across the compound, passing into areas controlled by other units, watching the familiar bustle of troopers coming and going, and finding the familiar air of controlled chaos and the constant background hum of vehicle engines and profanity curiously soothing. I wasn't sure quite how far I'd gone when an engine note both louder and deeper than the others cut through the babble of sound around me.

  For a moment, I was assailed by that formless sense of recognition that you get when something you once knew so well it never registered consciously comes back to your notice after a passage of years, and then I turned my head with a nostalgic smile. A Trojan heavy hauler, with an Earthshaker howitzer in tow, was growling its way across a vast open area which had probably once been used to park the private vehicles of the workers who toiled here in happier times, but which was now choked with equipment and supplies. I hadn't seen one of those up close in a long time, but I recognised it at once, having started my long and inglorious career in an obscure artillery unit. The flood of memories the sight brought back, a few of them even pleasant, was so overwhelming that for a moment I was unaware of the voice calling my name.

  'Cai! Over here!'

  Now, I've never been what you'd call oversupplied with friends, it goes with the job I suppose, but of the few I've acquired over the years only one has ever had the presumption to use the familiar form of my given

  name. So, despite the changes that the years since I'd seen him last had wrought, there was no mistaking the officer who was running across the compound towards me, grinning like an idiot.

  Toren!' I called back, as he sidestepped another Trojan just in time to avoid being squashed into the tarmac like a bug. "When did they make you a major?' The last time I'd seen Toren Divas he'd just made captain, and was nursing a hangover as he saw me off from the 12th Field Artillery. I remember thinking at the time he was probably the only man in the battery who was sorry to see me go. 'And what in the name of the Emperor's arse are you doing here?'

  'The same as you, I suppose.' He came panting up to me, the familiar lopsided grin on his face. 'Keeping order, purging the heretics, same old thing.' There were streaks of grey at his temples now, I noticed, and his belt was out another notch, but the same air of boyish enthusiasm still hung around him as on the day we'd first met. 'But I'm surprised to find you in a backwater like this/

  'Same here/ I said. I turned my head, taking in the bustle surrounding us. This seems like an awful lot of firepower to put the frighteners on a bunch of stroppy provincials/

  'If the tau mobilise, we'll need every bit of it/ Divas said. 'Some of their wargear has to be seen to be believed. They've got these things like dreadnoughts, but they're fast, like Astartes infantry but twice the size, and their tanks make the eldar stuff look like they were built by orks…/

  As usual, he seemed to be relishing the prospect of combat, which is easy to do when you're kilometres behind the front line chucking shells into the distance, but not so much fun when you're facing an enemy close enough to spit at you. And if that's all they've got in mind think yourself lucky, unless they're one of those Empero
r-forsaken xenos that come equipped with venom sacs.

  'But it won't come to that, surely/ I said. 'Now we're here they'd be mad to attempt a landing/ To my astonishment, Divas laughed.

  'They won't have to. They're here already/ This was new and unwelcome information, and I goggled at him in surprise.

  'Since when?' I gasped. Now I'd be the first to admit that I'm seldom that diligent when it comes to reading the briefing slates, but I was sure I'd have noticed something that crucial to my well-being in my cursory glance through it. Divas shrugged.

  'About six months, apparently. They were already deployed on the planet when the Cleansing Flame dropped us off here three weeks ago/

  This was seriously bad news. I'd been looking forward to a nice brisk round of target practice on civilian rioters, or, at worst, a turkey shoot against the odd renegade PDF unit. But now we were facing a foe that could give us a real run for our money. Emperor's bowels! If half of what I'd heard about the tau and their technosorcery was true, we could be the ones getting our arses kicked. Divas grinned at my expression, misinterpreting it entirely.

  'So you could see some fun after all/ he said, clapping me on the back. I could have killed him.

  I didn't, of course. For one thing, as I've said, I don't have so many friends that I can afford to waste them, and for another, Divas had been here long enough to pick up some vital information which I currently lacked. Namely, the location of the nearest bar we could get to without attracting too much attention to ourselves.