‘Well, it’s put a stink on things,’ said Blenner. ‘On me. Just now, I am not regarded with the same warmth as I once enjoyed.’
‘You did your job, didn’t you?’
‘It’s not a popular job. The Belladon–’
‘It’s a dirty job, is what you mean?’
Blenner nodded. Kolea eyed him. He’d never thought Vaynom Blenner much of a soldier, and his lack of discipline made him a poor discipline officer. Kolea suspected he’d only ever become part of the company because he and Gaunt went back. Now Gaunt was elevated above the Tanith, Blenner had no ally to hand, no shadow to lurk in. His chief value had always been his endless cheer and informal conduct, which Kolea had to admit had been an asset to morale at times. Even that seemed dimmed.
‘A dirty job indeed,’ Blenner said.
Kolea felt a pang of pity for the man. Blenner was good for little, but Kolea knew all too sharply what it felt like to lose status and relevance, or at least to stand on the brink of that.
‘Bask doesn’t trust you?’ he asked.
‘No, and I don’t blame him,’ said Blenner. ‘No one seems to. I’m sort of out of the loop a little. Shunned, you might say. Throne knows, I’m–’
He shrugged, as if unwilling to finish any searching self-reflection.
‘Good old Vaynom, you know,’ he said with a half-smile. ‘Good for a laugh. Fond of a drink. Fun to have around until the laughing stops.’
‘Do you know what I think?’ Kolea asked.
‘Please tell, sir,’ said Blenner.
‘I think it’s shock.’
‘Mine?’ asked Blenner.
‘Theirs,’ Kolea replied. ‘You have a reputation for… good humour. People forget you’re a commissar. You just reminded them. You executed a killer. You upheld the dictats and discipline of the Astra Militarum. You showed your true self to them. Give them a few days to reconcile that with the Blenner they know.’
‘Well, I suppose. That’s kind of you to say.’
‘And there are always duties,’ said Kolea. ‘Gendler was Meryn’s man, so I’d be looking at Meryn pretty hard right now if I was a commissar.’
‘Ah, well, ah… Fazekiel is in charge of the investigation,’ said Blenner nervously. ‘I can’t be involved in that, seeing as I was the one that pulled the trigger and all…’
‘I suppose,’ said Kolea. ‘But there’s always other work. You don’t have to be asked. Do the asking yourself. For a start, it smells like there are drains to be unblocked.’
‘I’m not unblocking drains, major,’ said Blenner with a waspish smile.
‘No, but you can order someone to,’ said Kolea. ‘Get on with things and make this situation better. Show them you don’t care what they think of you.’
‘Sage counsel, sir, thank you.’
‘Blenner?’
Blenner looked at him.
‘You did your job, and you saved her, didn’t you?’
‘I did, yes.’
‘Gaunt’s daughter, Blenner.’
‘Ah, Throne knows what that maniac Gendler might have done…’
‘Take pride in that, then. Gaunt knows what you did. Throne above, I know what it’s like to be a father. Despite everything.’
‘Despite…?’ Blenner asked.
‘What I mean is, that’s a bond that ties a man’s soul. Children. The future, and all that. If Gendler had threatened Yoncy, or Dal, I’d like to think a good man like you would have stood up to defend them. And I’d be blessed thankful for that. You did your job.’
Blenner looked almost embarrassed. Or ashamed. It was hard to read the expression on his face. For a moment, Kolea thought the commissar was going to blurt something out, as if he carried some awful burden he needed to set down.
‘Major,’ he said. His voice was hesitant. ‘Gol, I–’
Raised voices suddenly echoed down the hallway, and they both looked around.
‘Someone’s annoyed,’ said Blenner with forced lightness.
‘Indeed.’ Kolea looked back at Blenner. ‘You were going to say something.’
‘No, nothing,’ Blenner laughed. ‘Nothing, nothing. Just an idle… Really nothing.’
‘All right,’ said Kolea. ‘Let’s see what this is.’
Their spur of the undercroft hallway met another coming in from the vaults to the left. Baskevyl was arguing with a Munitorum overseer, with Bonin and Yerolemew looking on. The overseer’s three man work crew, lugging their equipment panniers and bulky in their yellow overalls, stood sheepishly behind their boss. A small crowd of women and support staff from the retinue was gathering to watch.
‘There’s nothing to unblock, sir!’ the overseer snapped.
‘There fething well must be!’ Baskevyl snarled back.
‘I’m telling you, I know my trade,’ the overseer retorted.
‘Fifteen centimetres of soil-water in the second and third billet halls would seem to suggest otherwise,’ said Bonin.
‘Do I tell you how to fight?’ asked the overseer.
‘Would you like to?’ asked Bonin, stepping forward.
‘Whoa,’ said Yerolemew, arresting Bonin’s arm with a tight grip.
‘Yeah, listen to the old chap,’ the overseer said. ‘We haven’t come down here to do no brawling.’
‘You misunderstand,’ the old bandmaster told him. ‘I just wanted it fair. Start with me, and see how you get on against a one-armed man. Then you can have a crack at the big time.’
The crowd laughed at this. The overseer blinked rapidly.
‘We’ve checked the drains through to the north outfall,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing blocked. I don’t know where the water’s coming from.’
‘What about the lights?’ asked Baskevyl.
‘Circuit systems is on a different docket,’ said the overseer. ‘My docket says waste overflow.’
‘Your docket is about to say “ow, my face hurts”,’ said Yerolemew.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Kolea, stepping in.
They looked at him. A broad smile crossed Baskevyl’s face.
‘Gol,’ he said, and gave Kolea a hug. Blenner looked on from the edge of the group. That was how good comrades greeted each other. He sighed.
‘Back on duty?’ Baskevyl asked.
‘Back on the slog,’ said Kolea. ‘And not before time, looks like.’ He glanced at the overseer. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Taskane,’ the man replied. ‘Technician, first class.’
‘I’m Kolea. Major Kolea. My company, we were pretty pleased to be staying in a palace for the duration. But it’s hardly palatial.’
‘Well, I grant you–’
‘Taskane, I know you’ve got orders. Dockets, in fact. So have I. The Lord Executor wants his personal regiment well taken care of.’
‘The Lord Executor?’ asked Taskane.
‘You’ve heard of him?’
‘Well, of course.’
‘He’s an absolute bastard,’ said Kolea. ‘Kill you as soon as look at you. We don’t want that. We don’t want complaint reports filed with names on them, do we? What’s that form again?’
‘K 50715 F,’ said Blenner quickly, trying not to grin.
‘That’s the very one, commissar,’ said Kolea. ‘Thank you. Oh, and commissar? Please keep your weapon holstered. This isn’t a discipline matter.’ He looked at Taskane and pulled a face. ‘He’s a right bastard too,’ he whispered. ‘We don’t want to get him riled up.’
‘We do not, sir,’ said Taskane.
‘So we’ve got water, backflooding.’
‘I explained this, sir.’
‘Soil water too, so from the latrines not the drinking supply. So that’s a hygiene matter, which will bring in the Medicae.’
‘I’ve explained,’ said Taskane. ‘It’
s the weather. Unseasonal quantities of rain, backing up the waste flows. We’ve checked the pipework.’
‘You could check it again, though?’ asked Kolea. ‘I mean, a thorough double-check. Thorough never hurt, did it? Then maybe pole it out with extenders. Run a rod right through?’
‘I could do that…’ Taskane began.
‘Then flush the whole system with a chem-sluice. It’s old, stone built, so there’s no danger of corroding metal pipe. And if that fails, you could set up a pump or two, and evacuate the flood water using suction tubes.’
Taskane hesitated. ‘How come you know so much?’ he asked.
‘I was a miner before I took to soldiering,’ said Kolea. ‘I know how to dry-down a flooded section. Lives depended on it.’
‘Well, I can imagine…’
‘But I’m no expert,’ said Kolea. ‘Not municipal, like this. That’s your area. I’ll bet with your skills, you can get this handled by nightfall.’
‘We’ll get to it, sir,’ said Taskane. He glanced at his men and directed them back the way they’d come. ‘And we’ll take a look at the circuit system too,’ said Taskane. ‘The problems could be related.’
‘I appreciate it, overseer,’ said Kolea. ‘The Emperor rewards diligent service.’
The overseer and his team trudged back down the hall towards the flooded section.
‘Direct orders from the Lord Executor?’ Bonin asked.
‘I may have re-worked the actual truth a little there,’ Kolea said with a smile. ‘Then again, I think there was a little invention at work with the complaint forms too.’
Blenner winked. ‘Made the whole fething thing up,’ he said.
‘It’s good to have you back,’ Baskevyl said to Kolea.
‘It is.’
Kolea glanced around. Dalin had appeared, gently pushing his way through the amused crowd of onlookers.
‘Hello, son,’ said Gol.
The morning showed no signs of ending. From the darkness outside the chamber windows, it looked like it was night already, and they had sat through the entire day, but Merity knew that was just the storm hanging over Eltath, a turbulent, rain-belting blackness that had despatched any sign of daylight.
Senior Tactician Biota had seized the room ‘by order of the Lord Executor’, a phrase he seemed to enjoy using. The chamber was a prayer chapel adjoining the hub of the main war room, a vast place teeming with people that Merity had only glimpsed as they had gone past it.
The chapel was small, but a cogitation station and a strategium display had been brought in, along with an old, solid table that could accommodate ten. As part of the war room area, the chapel was screened and proofed against scanning and detection. The trunking on all the device cables was thick and reinforced, there was a small back-up power unit, and the walls had been crudely over-boarded with panels of bare flakboard that sandwiched suppression materials against the original stonework. Even the windows had been treated with anti-invasive dyes, which further darkened them, adding to the gloom, though Merity could still see the shifting speckle of raindrops striking them.
The back-up power unit was also an asset. Main palace power kept fluctuating, and twice during the morning had blink-failed entirely, causing displays to go dark. Biota had taken to kicking the power unit automatically every time the lights dimmed, to make it whirr into action. It had become a reflex gesture: he did it even when he was talking, without even looking at it.
She quite liked Biota. She believed his name was Antonid. He was a veteran, but no soldier. The small, bespectacled man had spent his career in the Departmento Tacticae, and he seemed fiercely clever, though his people skills were clumsy. She suspected he was the cleverest man she had ever met. Throughout the morning, he had led the way through a slew of documents, discussing everything from ‘geographical suitability’ to ‘Munitorum Asset efficiency’, and displayed a knowledge of everything. He didn’t even need to consult lists to be able to name, with accuracy, specific divisions, companies, unit commanders, or the numbers of men active in any bracket. Now he was leading the way through a review of orbital images, pointing out details she wasn’t able to detect.
It was fascinating, yet still boring. Merity had a decent general grasp of the situation at Eltath, and on Urdesh at large, but the minutiae were lost on her. She could barely follow the logistic data, the deployment specifics, or the tactical nuance. Biota’s team had spent ten minutes debating the weight tolerance of a single bridge in Zarakppan.
But she had always been fascinated by the sight of people, expert people, doing what they did best. There was a wonder to it. And these individuals, hand-picked by Biota to form her father’s tactical cabinet, were the best. Among the best in the entire Imperium, and certainly within the crusade host.
It reminded her of the long afternoons when she had been forced to attend the congress meetings of House Chass, where matters of hive politics and house business affairs were discussed in forensic detail. Now, as then, she was but a witness. Beltayn had assured her she would come to grasp the finer points soon enough. She certainly had nothing to offer, except her attention and the promise of direct access to the Lord Executor, should the need arise.
She did not have an actual seat at the table. Biota had vaguely pointed her to a row of chairs in the corner. She started off taking notes, but Beltayn had seen her doing this and had shaken his head.
‘Why?’ she’d whispered.
‘It’ll end up in the burn box as soon as you leave the room. I’ll get you an encrypted slate for tomorrow.’
Merity had put the noteblock aside, and tried to rely on her memory.
Aside from Beltayn and Biota, there were three others present. Two wore the same tacticae uniforms as Biota: a younger man named Willam Reece, who had the darkest skin she’d ever seen, and a rather tall, haughty woman called Geneve Holt. Neither seemed to smile, ever, and they matched Biota’s pace and knowledge detail for detail.
The other person was a fierce, body-armoured Tempestus Scion called Relf. Relf had been assigned to guard Merity, and the Scion had taken it upon herself to remain standing throughout, at duty beside the door. Biota had broken his flow several times to offer the Scion a seat.
‘Thank you, no,’ Relf had replied each time.
Eventually, around mid-morning, Biota had insisted she sit down.
‘You’re in my eye-line every time I look at the display,’ he said.
‘I would prefer to stand,’ Relf had replied. ‘Standing, I can react more swiftly to danger presenting at the doorway.’
‘If danger presents at the doorway, then the palace has fallen,’ remarked Holt, ‘and then we’re all screwed, and you being here will make little odds.’
Reece had actually laughed at this.
‘Take a seat, Scion,’ Biota had said. ‘I insist. By order of the Lord Executor.’
Relf had, reluctantly, sat, though she had taken Merity’s chair and forced Merity to shift one seat down so that Relf could be between her and the doorway.
Merity hadn’t argued. She was used to this kind of protection work. It wasn’t the first time she’d had a lifeward.
Biota was finishing up the orbital scans when there was a knock at the door. Relf answered immediately, and after some wary discussion with the porters, admitted a very fierce woman in the uniform of a lord militant.
‘Ah, Marshal Tzara,’ said Biota. ‘We’re ready for your presentation. Please, take a seat.’
Tzara, het-chieftain of the Keyzon host and Mistress of the Seventh Army, eyed the chapel room and its occupants stiffly.
‘The Lord Executor asked me to report to you and deliver yesterday’s data from the suppression in the Northern Claves. I’m not sure why I couldn’t send an adjutant to do this, nor why I am asked to report to a broom cupboard.’
‘The Lord Executor wants the chain of command kept as
short as possible, Marshal,’ Biota replied. ‘Senior officer briefings only, to reduce data dispersal and the risk of breaks in the confidence chain. Reporting to me, you may consider yourself reporting to the Lord Executor himself.’
‘This is undignified,’ said Tzara. ‘This is his… tactical cabinet?’
‘Yes, well…’ Biota faltered slightly.
‘Triage,’ Beltayn hissed at him.
‘You have requested his audience several times, and it was granted this morning,’ said Biota.
‘Indeed–’ Tzara began.
‘One does not need to be an expert on human behaviour to see that you want to ingratiate yourself with the new First Lord.’
‘Is that so?’ Tzara said. The tone of her voice dropped the temperature in the room.
‘Well, yes,’ said Biota. ‘No one likes to fall from grace.’
‘I have not fallen from grace,’ Tzara snarled.
‘No,’ said Biota, ‘but the precipice is close and sheer. You backed others in the move to disempower Macaroth. You’ve held on to your position, like Lord Blackwood and Lord Cybon, but there is a cloud over you. You need an ally, and the Lord Executor is the best ally to have. So please, take a seat. Consider my polite request an order of the Lord Executor.’
Tzara sat down.
‘He really likes saying that,’ Merity whispered to the Scion beside her. Relf trembled slightly. Merity realised the Scion was trying to suppress a snigger.
‘Please walk us through yesterday’s efforts in the Clave theatre,’ said Biota. ‘Be as specific as possible. We have received a summary document, but you will have detailed lists of enemy strengths and so on.’
Marshal Tzara produced a data-slate from her belt pouch. She took a last, sneering look around the room.
‘The Astra Militarum has protocols,’ she remarked. ‘I fear they are being forgotten. There is a common line trooper here.’
She glanced at Beltayn, who suddenly found his notes fascinating.
‘And as for her,’ Tzara added, nodding in Merity’s direction. ‘I did not realise that the Guard had become a family business.’
‘I was asked to attend,’ Merity replied before Biota could answer.
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