by Dan Abnett
“Faragut!”
Faragut was talking to a couple of the senior Inquisition officers. Cirk was nearby. She was looking washed out and not a little taken aback. The sight of armoured Imperial troopers herding members of the resistance was a hard thing for someone like her to see.
She caught Gaunt’s eye and shook her head.
“Faragut!”
Faragut turned. “I’m too busy to deal with you now,” he said. Gaunt grabbed him by the lapels.
“No, you’re not.”
“Get off me!” Faragut snorted. Inquisition troopers nearby had stepped back and were suddenly aiming their guns at Gaunt.
“Get off me, now!” said Faragut. Gaunt slowly released Faragut’s jacket. “It’s all right,” Faragut said to the guards. “Lower your weapons.”
“What the hell is this?” Gaunt asked, his voice a whisper.
“This is the business of the Inquisition,” replied Faragut, who clearly seemed to be enjoying the situation. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an identity module. When he activated it, it displayed the rosette of the Inquisition. “I have been seconded to ordo operation with the permission of Commissar-General Balshin.”
“Of course you have,” said Gaunt. That bitch tricked me. I’m a fool. I should have known she had a deeper agenda.”
Faragut clicked off his module and put it away. “Gaunt, you are a regimental officer. In almost every respect, you’re disposable. There’s no reason at all that you should have been kept in the loop on this.
“You didn’t need to know, and you’re not important enough to have an opinion.”
“My men were ordered to stage at Cantible, and then exploit our prior knowledge of the Untill and the resistance to establish a line of contact with the Gereon underground,” Gaunt said, “so as to develop cooperation, and hasten the liberation effort. You’ve used us.”
“You’re a soldier,” Faragut said, with a light, mocking laugh. “What the hell did you expect, except that you were going to be used? You’re such an idiot, Gaunt. You’re far too liberal and highly principled for the Imperial Guard.”
Gaunt pulled back a little. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Now explain this. I will not stand by and watch these men and women manhandled like prisoners of war.”
“No, you’ll not stand by. You’ll stand down. Your job is done. Contact with the resistance is established. We’ll take it from here. In fact, as soon as I’ve got clearance, you and your Ghosts can ship out back to Cantible.”
“No,” said Gaunt. “You’ll have to do better than that. I’m not going anywhere all the while it looks like I’ve sold these people out.”
Faragut smiled and leaned in close to Gaunt’s face. “You know, I used to quite admire you. High minded, strong, always with the right, brave turn of phrase ready to dish out for the benefit of the common dog-soldiers. But now I see it for what it is. It’s just hot air, isn’t it? What in the name of the Throne can you do about this? Have a tantrum?”
“He might kill you,” said a voice from behind them.
Gaunt and Faragut both looked around. Inquisitor Lornas Welt walked up the camp decking to join them.
“I thought you commissars were trained to read body language, Faragut?” Welt said. “To know when to goad a man and when to refrain? Isn’t that in your Instrument of Order?”
“Yes, lord,” said Faragut.
“I don’t think you’re reading Gaunt very well, Faragut. I think you were about twenty seconds away from a field execution. Wasn’t he, Gaunt?”
“More like sixty. But, yes.”
“Hello, Gaunt,” said Welt. He smiled. “Let’s have a conversation.”
II
“Let’s be clear about this,” said Welt. “Let’s be clear so there is no misunderstanding. The Inquisition can be very heavy handed. The Inquisition will be very heavy handed. Here, in the next few weeks, the agents of the ordos will not be gentle. Which is unfortunate, because these brave people deserve better. However, don’t expect me to apologise, and don’t expect me to order restraint. What we are engaged in here is vital work. It’s potentially the most important thing I’ve undertaken in my career.”
Gaunt blinked. “What?” he replied.
“I’m not joking, Gaunt,” Welt said.
They had withdrawn to one of the upper habitat platforms, suspended in the tree canopy over the green waters. Down below, Welt’s soldiers were securing the camp and watching over the bewildered partisans. Troopers with flamers were moving out into the swamp to fell trees and clear the canopy wide enough to form a landing zone.
“Why do you think the Crusade moved on Gereon, Gaunt?” Welt asked.
“Because the Second Front needed to start winning back territory to bolster its legitimacy. Because we could not suffer to have the Archenemy bedded in amongst us. Because individuals like Cirk and me have been petitioning for a liberation effort since we returned.”
“All valid reasons,” said Welt. He was a short, broad man with receding grey hair and a black goatee beard on his boxer’s jaw. The pupils of his eyes were so large, the blue of the iris filled his lids to the edges, showing no white. He wore a brown leather storm coat, and the rosette of his office was strung across his breast on a pectoral. Like all the inquisitors Ibram Gaunt had ever known, Welt was frustratingly ambiguous. Commanding, authoritative, appealing in his great intelligence and polymath learning, yet treacherous and untrustworthy in that nothing was too precious to be sacrificed if it served his ends. Lilith had been like that. So had Heldane.
“But?” asked Gaunt, weighting the word.
“There is one other, better reason. The most compelling reason of all.”
“Which is?”
“You, Gaunt. You are the reason. The fact that you came back.”
Gaunt shook his head in disbelief and turned away. He walked to the edge of the platform and leant on the rope rail, staring down. The first time he’d ever been up on a camp platform like this, he’d been fighting for his life against the monster Uexkull. This conversation seemed somehow far darker and more dangerous.
“You still obsess with this?” Gaunt asked. “I thought we’d laid it to rest. The tribunal—”
“Was just a formality.” Welt walked over to join him. He had a habit of looking people in the eye and not wavering. “You and your mission team came here, to an enemy occupied world, and were here for sixteen times the recommended length of exposure. You were changed, of course. Such an ordeal would change anyone. But you were not tainted. You came away uncorrupted. This is a remarkable thing, Ibram. A remarkable thing.”
“So you have told me, inquisitor. I supposed I might have been dissected by now.”
Welt smiled. “This isn’t the Dark Ages,” he said.
“Oh,” said Gaunt, “I rather think it is.”
Your own theory was that you had survived corruption because you had been blessed by the beati herself said Welt. “As theories go, it’s reasonable. And not without precedent, historically. But there are other ways of looking at it. Ways that my colleagues and savants believe may repay examination.”
“You mean that this place is the reason?” asked Gaunt. “That this place has some property that counters the touch of Chaos?”
The inquisitor nodded. “Gereon… and, most specifically, the famously impenetrable Untill. You’ve spoken to me of this, and I’ve read your reports carefully. Cirk has also divulged a great deal. In the case of every single one of you, and especially in the case of Trooper Feygor, organic extracts derived from the Untill’s singular, toxic biology appeared to combat the effects of taint.”
“Feygor died on Ancreon Sextus,” said Gaunt.
“I know. And his body was not recovered. If anyone should have been dissected, it was him. Alas, we never got the chance.”
“Are you saying the Imperial Guard and allied Crusade forces… millions of men and vast quantities of material… have been committed to the invasion of Gereon… because
Murt Feygor died in battle?”
“That’s an over-simplification.”
Gaunt laughed. “Murt would have loved that. Say what you like about him, he appreciated good irony even if he couldn’t voice it.”
He looked back at Welt. “So you haven’t come back for Gereon? You’ve done all this on the long shot that the Untill might be hiding something?”
“If the Untill has what we’re after, it will change the course of history. It will change the destiny of the Imperium and mankind. It will liberate us from our greatest enemy.”
“A cure for Chaos?”
“Too trite. But yes. I suppose that’s how it will be seen.”
“There’s no such thing here,” said Gaunt. “I could have saved you a great deal of effort. It’s not here. It never has been. The Nihtgane may know of some extracts with strong medicinal properties, but not the miracle you’re looking for. Mkvenner, one of my original team, had a notion. He reckoned Chaos didn’t destroy us. It didn’t taint and infect like a disease. It didn’t work like that at all, which is why there could be no cure.”
“He believed in force of will, I presume,” said Welt.
“Precisely. Chaos isn’t evil. It simply unlocks and lets out our propensities for evil and desecration. That is why it is so pernicious. It brings out our flaws. Force of will, determination, loyalty… these are the qualities that combat Chaos taint. If a man can remain true to the Throne, Chaos can’t touch him. A hatred and rejection of Chaos becomes a weapon against it.”
“The armour of contempt,” said Welt. “I am familiar with Inquisitor Ravenor’s writings. The idea was not original to him.”
He stepped back from the rope rail. “You may be right. It is an enobling notion. We might save mankind by strength of character, rather than by an extracted tincture of moth venom. History will like the former better.”
He looked back at Gaunt. “But you’ll forgive me for testing the moth venom.”
III
“It was a cellar,” Caffran told Rawne. “Under the habs over that way. Street eighteen, I think.”
Leclan nodded as he took a swig from his canteen. “Street eighteen.”
“I went in first, Leclan behind me,” Caffran continued. “Black as pitch. I could smell something.”
“I said there was something,” Leclan put in.
“He said there was. I could smell it. I was pretty sure we’d run another excubitor to ground. I was all for lobbing a tube-charge in and sorting the bodies after.”
“You said that. You did,” Leclan agreed.
“But, you know, orders,” Caffran said. He scratched his chin and squinted up at the sun.
“Go on,” said Rawne.
“I almost shot him,” said Caffran. “I had a lamp on, sweeping, and I saw movement. I just reacted. I almost put a las bolt through his head.”
“But you didn’t,” said Rawne.
“I almost did. His face. He was so fething scared.” Caffran nodded across the ruined street to a nearby aid station. Under the close scrutiny of Inquisition troopers, Dorden and his corpsmen were treating the latest batch of emaciated civilians that the sweeps had flushed out of Cantible’s hidden corners. The head count, according to Hark’s tally, was now five hundred and fifty-eight survivors, all of them in a terrible condition. Dorden was treating a child, a boy of about ten standard, whose shrunken frame looked more like that of a five year old. The child was dazed, bewildered, in shock. That much was obvious, even from across the street.
“I don’t know how long he’d been down there,” said Caffran. “But he was too scared to come out.”
“This is happening a lot,” said Baskevyl. “The survivors have been living in terror for too long. Most of them have been reduced to the level of animals. We’re just men with guns, Rawne. They’re too messed up to realise we’ve come to save them.”
“We have to finish the sweeps. We have to clear the entire town,” said Rawne.
“I know,” said Baskevyl.
“There’s no other way.”
“I know,” Baskevyl nodded. “But nobody wants to be the first to shoot one of these poor wretches by mistake.”
“Those fellows aren’t helping much,” said Zweil. They all looked around. The old ayatani had squatted down nearby, resting his feet. He indicated the agents of the Inquisition nearby. “We promise them they’re safe, and we bring them out of hiding, and then those fellows take over.”
Some of the Inquisition soldiers were leading a troop of liberated souls away down the street towards the pens that had been erected in the town’s main square. Under the direction of Interrogator Sydona, the agent in charge of the Inquisitorial forces that had arrived the day before, Cantible was being turned into a processing camp for the dispossessed. Sydona had made it clear to Rawne that the Ghosts were expected to act as security for the camp, and several sections had been seconded to help raise the wooden palisade fences of the pens. Sydona had also made it clear that Cantible would be expecting a further influx of survivors from the outlying districts over the coming weeks.
Rawne didn’t like it much, and he knew none of the Ghosts did either. They were picking their way through the most miserable waste of a town, seeing small horrors everywhere they looked. The few people they found were dragged off for interrogation and internment. Rawne understood it had to be this way. No one who had lived on Gereon through the Occupation could be trusted. They had to be processed, and examined for taint or corruption. Many were likely to be executed. Quite properly, the Inquisition would take no chances whatsoever with taint. But it made the Ghosts feel as if they were staffing a concentration camp for Imperial citizens. It made Rawne wonder why they’d ever bothered with a liberation effort if this was all they could offer the people of Gereon.
“I’ll speak to Sydona,” Rawne said. “But I think this is how it’s going to be. This is Imperial policy, and even if we did suddenly find ourselves in a topsy turvy world where the Inquisition listened to the opinion of the Imperial Guard, I’m not sure they’re not right anyway. The Archenemy has held this place for too long. What was it Gaunt said? There’s nothing left to save.”
“I don’t think that attitude does much for morale,” said Baskevyl.
“Feth take morale,” snapped Rawne. “I’d give most of all I have to help Gereon. This last year or so, I’ve dreamed of coming back and bringing the relief they begged us for. Now, I wish we’d never come.”
“Because they’re not flocking out of their houses and cheering us, and crowning us with victory garlands for liberating them?” Zweil asked.
Rawne’s face darkened. “Because this is no more than a death bed vigil.” He strode away to find the interrogator. A couple of minutes later, the noise of a small explosion—a grenade or a tube-charge—rolled in from a neighbouring street, and Baskevyl set off to investigate.
Caffran remained where he was, staring across the street at the boy he’d almost shot.
“He’s about the age Dalin was,” Caffran said.
“What?” asked Zweil.
“That boy. He’s about the age Dalin was when Tona found him and Yoncy in the ruins of the hive. And I found all three of them a few days later. They were feral. Scared. Hiding. Just like him. I could have shot them by mistake. Like I nearly shot him.”
Zweil had been fiddling with his ill-fitting boots. He stood up, leaning on Leclan for support. “Are you due off on another sweep?” he asked.
“Streets twenty-six and twenty-seven,” said Leclan. “Another ten minutes, once the section has rested.”
“I’m coming with you,” Zweil said.
“I don’t think so,” said Caffran.
“Well, I am. If you’re just men with guns to them, maybe having a priest with you will help. I’d like to believe I can help diffuse their fears. Maybe coax them out of hiding a little less traumatically.”
“Father, there are still things hiding in this place,” said Leclan.
“So?”
&n
bsp; “So you’ll be in the line of fire,” said Caffran.
“And about time too,” Zweil replied. “Do you know how old I am, Dermon Caffran?”
“No, father.”
“Neither do I. But it’s high time I did something more useful than catalogue plants.”
Caffran and Leclan exchanged wide-eyed glances.
“This is why I came along,” Zweil said. “To do real good. It’s been a long time since I did any real good.”
“Whatever you like, father,” said Caffran. “In truth, I could use the help. But if you get yourself killed, don’t be blaming me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Zweil grinned. “If I’m killed, I’ll just take the matter up with a higher authority.”
“Just do your job, major,” said Interrogator Sydona. He was a tall, slender man in red and black garments, robed like royalty. He had a thin face and a thinner mouth.
“I assumed you’d say that,” Rawne replied, “but for the sake of my own conscience, I had to ask.”
Sydona shrugged. “I commiserate, major. Sometimes our holy duty is painful and ugly. But it must be done. Those we find who are still true, bless their courageous souls, will thank us one day.”
“I’m sure,” said Rawne, not sure at all.
“If I might say so,” said Sydona, signing a data-slate one of his aides held out for him, “I find your concerns quaint. In a good way I have had many dealings with the Imperial Guard. I have, most usually, found the soldiers of the Guard to be base and soulless. Your attitude does you credit.”
“I’ve kept good company over the years,” said Rawne.
“You mean Gaunt? I’m looking forward to meeting him. I’ve heard so much about him from my inquisitor. A rare creature, as I understand it. Honourable and highly principled. A total misfit, of course. They say when Warmaster Macaroth dines with his senior staff, he always asks to hear the latest stories of Gaunt and his ways. They amuse him so very much. Gaunt is a throwback to another era.”
“Which era would that be, sir?” Rawne asked.
Sydona laughed out loud. “I have no idea. A better one, perhaps. One that progress has left behind. He is atavistic. Noble, yes, but atavistic. We may enjoy the luxury of admiring him, but his breed is dying out. There’s no place for sentiment in the Imperium. No place for his kind of nobility either. If you’re career minded, major, you might consider a transfer to a unit with a more rational commander. Gaunt’s wearisome honour will get you killed.”