by Dan Abnett
Thank you, Midas. It is best I know. Now play again, so I can lose myself in your tunes.'
Strangely, I came to enjoy Bequin's visits most. She would bustle in, tidying around me, tut-tutting at the state of my water jug or the collapse of my bolsters. Then she would read aloud, usually from books and slates Aemos had left, and often from works that he had already declaimed for my edification. She read them better, with more colour and phlegm. The voice she put on to do Sebastian Thor made me laugh so hard my ribs hurt. When she got to reading KerlofFs Narrative of the Horus War, her impersonation of the Emperor was almost heretical.
I taught her regicide. She lost the first few games, mesmerised by the pieces, the complex board and the still more complex moves and strategies. It was all too 'tactical' for her, she announced. There was no 'incentive'. So we started to play for coins. Then she got the gist and started to win. Every time.
When Midas visited me next, he said sourly, 'Have you been teaching that girl to play?'
Towards the end of my third week of recuperation, Bequin arrived in my apartment and declared, 'I have brought a visitor/
The ruined side of Godwyn Fischig's face had been rebuilt with augmetic muscle and metal, and shrouded with a demi-visage mask of white ceramite. His lost arm had also been replaced, with a powerful metal prosthetic. He was clad in a simple, black jacket and breeches.
He sat at my bedside, and wished me a speedy recovery.
"Your courage has not been forgotten, Godwyn/ I said. 4Vhen this undertaking is over, you may wish to return to your duties on Hubris, but I would welcome your presence on my staff, if you choose so/
'Nissemay Carpel be damned/ he said. 'The High Custodian of the Dormant Vaults may call for me, but I know where I want to be. This life has purpose. I would stay here in it/
Fischig remained at my side for hours, long into the night, by ship-time. We talked, and joked occasionally, and then played regicide with Bequin
looking on. At first, his problems in manipulating the pieces with his unfamiliar new limb afforded us plenty of amusement. Only when he had beaten me in three straight games did he admit that Bequin, in her infinite wisdom, had been coaching him for the past few weeks.
I had one last visitor, a day or two before I was finally able to walk and go about my business uninterrupted by periods of fatigue. Heldane wheeled him in on a wire-spoked carrier chair.
Voke was shrunken and ill. He could only speak by way of a vox-enhancer. I was sure he would be dead in a matter of months.
'You saved me, Eisenhorn,' he husked, haltingly, through the vox aug-metic.
'The astropaths made it possible for us to live,' I corrected.
Voke shook his gnarled, sunken head. 'No… I was lost in a realm of damnation, and you pulled me back. Your voice. I heard you call my name and it was enough. Without that, without that voice, I would have succumbed to the warp.'
I shrugged. What could I say?
'We are not alike, Gregor Eisenhorn,' he continued, tremulously. 'Our concept of inquisition is wildly at variance. But still I salute your bravery and your dedication. You have proven yourself in my eyes. Different ways, different means, is that not the true ethic of our order? I will die peacefully – and soon, I think – knowing men such as you maintain the fight.'
I was honoured. Whatever I thought of his modus operandi, I knew our purposes pointed in the same direction.
With a weak gesture he beckoned Heldane forward. The man's raw, damaged head was no prettier than when I had last seen it.
'I want you to trust Heldane. Of all my students, he is the best. I intend to recommend his elevation to the level of high interrogator, and from there, inquisitional rank beckons. If I die, look to him for my sake. I have no doubt the Inquisition will benefit from his presence.'
I promised Voke I would do so, and this seemed to please Heldane. I didn't like the man much, but he had been resilient and unfaltering in the face of savage death, and there was no doubting his ability or dedication.
Voke took my hand in his sweaty claw and rasped 'Thank you, brother.'
As rr turned out, Commodus Voke lived on for another one hundred and three years. He proved nigh on impossible to kill. When Golesh Constan-tine Pheppos Heldane was finally elected to the rank of inquisitor, it was all Voke's doing. The sins of the father, as they say.
Invasion training began three weeks off 56-Izar. Initially, Admiral Spat-ian's plan was for a fleet action, a simple annihilation of any targets from orbit. But Lord Rorken and the Deathwatch insisted that a physical invasion was required. The recovery and destruction of the xenos Necroteuch
had to be authenticated, or we would never know for sure that it was truly gone. Only after that objective was achieved could extreme destructive sanction be unleashed on 56-Izar.
All that could be learned from my associates and the surviving Gudrunites concerning the saruthi tetrascapes – ironically, we were using Malahite's term by then – was collated during a scrupulously searching series of interviews conducted by naval tacticians and Brytnoth, the Death-watch's revered librarian and strategist.
The collected information was profiled by the fleet's cogitators, and simulations created to acclimatise the ground forces. To my eyes, the simulations conveyed nothing of the wrongness we had experienced on the world of the plateau.
Brytnoth himself conducted my interviews, accompanied by Olm Madorthene. Shaven-headed, a giant of a man even without his armour, Brytnoth was nevertheless cordial and attentive, addressing me with respect and listening with genuine interest to my replies. I tried to do verbal justice to my memories of the experience, and additionally related the theories that Malahite had expounded during that fateful seance.
Eschewing the luxury of a servitor scribe or clerk, Brytnoth made his own notes as he listened. I found myself engrossed watching the warrior's paw working the dwarfed stylus almost delicately across the note-slate.
We sat in my apartments for the sessions, which often lasted hours. Bequin brought in regular trays of hot mead or leaf infusions, and Brytnoth actually extended his little finger as he lifted the porcelain cups by the handle. He was to me the embodiment of war in peacetime, a vast power bound into genteel behaviour, striving to prevent his awesome strength from breaking loose. He would lift the cup, small finger extended, consult his notes and ask another question before sipping.
The fact that small finger was the size and shape of an Arbites' truncheon was beside the point.
4Vhat I'm trying to establish, brother inquisitor, is whether the environments of the saruthi xenos will hinder our forces or deprive them of optimum combat efficiency/
'You can be sure of that, brother librarian.' I poured some more Olicet tea from the silver pot. 'My comrades were disoriented for the entire duration of the mission, and the Gudranite riflemen had broken because of the place more than anything else. There is a wrongness that quite disarms the senses. It had been conjectured by some that this is a deliberate effect used by the saruthi to undermine sentients used to three physical dimensions, but the traitor Malahite made more sense in my opinion. The wrongness is a by-product of the saruthi's preferred environments. We can expect the effect to be the norm on any homeworld of theirs.'
Brytnoth nodded and noted again.
'I'm sure your chapter's experience and specialised sensor equipment will be a match for it/ put in Madorthene. 'Myself, I'm worried about the guard. They'll be the mainstay of this action/
'They've all seen the preliminary briefing simulations/ Brytnoth murmured.
'With respect, I have too and they hardly do justice to the places we will find ourselves in.' I looked across the table into Brytnoth's face. His rugged features were sunken and colourless, the common trait of one who spends most of his life hidden within a combat helmet. His hooded eyes regarded me with interest. What wars, what victories, had those eyes witnessed, I wondered. What defeats?
'What do you suggest?' Brytnoth asked.
'Adverse cross
-training,' I replied. I'd thought about it long and hard. 'Olm here knows I'm no military man, brother-librarian, but that's the way it seems to me. Make the troops practise overburden and off-balance. Blindfold them in some exercises, cuff them in others, alter gravity in the training vaults. Make the weighted packs they carry off centre and awkward. Switch light levels without warning. Crank the temperature and air pressure up and down. Simply make it hard for them. Train them to run, cover, shoot and reload in off-putting extremes. Make them learn all their essential combat procedures so well they can do them anywhere, under any circumstances. When they hit the ground at 56-Izar, let the fight be all they worry about. Everything else should be instinctive.'
Madorthene smiled confidently. 'The infantry forces at our disposal are primarily navy troopers and Mirepoix light elite from the Imperial Guard, seasoned soldiers all, unlike the poor Gudrunite foundees you had to nursemaid, Gregor. We'll put them through the hoops and raise their game for the big push. They've got the combat hours and the balls to do it.'
'Don't stint,' I warned Madorthene. 'And those foundees you refer to –Sergeant Jeruss and his men. I want them with me when I go in.'
'Gregor! We can give you a crack squad of Mirepoix who-'
'I want the Gudrunite survivors.'
'Why?' asked Brytnoth.
'Because whatever their combat inexperience, they've seen a tetrascape. Those are the men I want at my side.'
Madorthene and Brytnoth exchanged glances, and the procurator shrugged. As you wish.'
As for the others, like I said, don't stint on the training regime.'
'We won't!' he chuckled, mock-outraged at the idea. The drill masters will work the regiments so hard, they'll yearn for real battle.'
'I'm serious/ I said. 'Every man that deploys on to 56-Izar – the venerated Deathwatch chapter included, Emperor bless them – should be ready to lose control of his senses, his judgment, his fortitude and even his basic mental faculties. They're going to be hit hard, but in an insidious way. I don't care if every man jack of them forgets his own mother's name and wets himself, they must still know how to hold a line, fire and reload, adore the Emperor and respond to orders/
'Succinctly put/ Brytnoth said. 'I will, of course, temper your proposals before I put them to my battle brothers/
'I don't care what you tell them/ I chuckled, 'as long as you don't let on who it came from/
'Your anonymity is assured/ He smiled. A wonder, that. I consider myself one of the very few mortals to have made a librarian of the Adeptus Astartes smile. To have seen a librarian of the Adeptus Astartes smile even.
Brytnoth pushed his slate and stylus aside and looked over at me with curiosity. 'Mandragore/ he said.
The bastard child of the Emperor? What of him?'
'I'm told you killed him yourself. In single combat. Quite a feat for one such as you – and I mean no disrespect/
'No disrespect is taken/
'How did you do it?' he asked frankly.
I told him. I kept it simple. Brytnoth made no reaction but Madorthene was quietly agog.
'Brother-Captain Cynewolf will be fascinated/ Brytnoth said. 'I promised him I'd find out the details. He was dying to ask you about it, but he didn't dare/
Now that was funny.
We prepared ourselves for the approaching war. It was going to be arduous, and, unlike most campaigns, not divided into two sides. I observed training sessions, impressed by the efforts and the discipline. I even had the terrifying pleasure of watching Captain Cynewolf s kill-team conduct a target-decoy hunt through the hold levels. We were ready. Ready as we'd ever be.
In the ninth week of transit, Lord Inquisitor Rorken and Admiral Spatian issued a joint declaration, officially enforced by will of the Ecclesiarchy A Mandate To Purge 56-Izar, as the term and parameters are understood in the Imperial codes. That was the seal on the action. There was no turning back now. We were heading through the immaterium at high warp to invade and, if necessary, destroy the saruthi world.
Through my weeks of convalescence, I dreamed little. But on the last night before our arrival at 56-Izar, the blank-eyed, handsome man returned to stalk the landscape of my dreams.
He was talking to me, but I couldn't hear his words, nor understand his purpose. He led me through drafty halls in a ruined palace, and then departed silently into the dream wilds beyond, leaving me alone, naked, in a ruin that tottered and crumbled down onto me.
The saruthi were in my dreams too. They rose through the brick debris of the collapsed palace effortlessly, finding angles and pathways that I could not see. The multiple nostrils on their swaying heads flared as they got the taste of me. Their skulls coruscated with energy…
* * *
I woke, soaked with night-sweat, more out of my wide bed man in it. Dislodged bolsters were scattered over the floor.
The vox-link on my night stand was beeping.
'Inquisitor Eisenhorn?'
'Sorry to wake you/ said Madorthene. 'But I thought you'd want to know. The fleet exited the immaterium twenty-six minutes ago. We are entering invasion orbit of 56-Izar/
T W E N TY-T H RE E
Invading the invasion.
Bent angles.
In the gardens of the saruthi.
The war had already begun.
56-Izar hung like a pearl in space, milky white and gleaming. Vivid flashes and slower blossoms of destruction underlit its translucent skin of cloud. The heretic fleet had arrived two days ahead of us, and had begun its assault of the planet.
I kept thinking of it as Estrum's fleet, but it wasn't of course. I'd made certain of that. This was Locke's battle fleet now, I was sure.
The thirteen ships had blockaded 56-Izar in a non-standard but effective conquest pattern. Serial waves of their fighter-bombers, interceptors and dropships rained down on the planet and the orbiting heavies bombarded the surface wim their entire batteries.
They detected our battle-pack the moment we came out of warp. Their picket ships, the heavy destroyers Nebuchadnezzar and Fournier, wheeled round to protect their hindquarters. Admiral Spatian held our battle-pack off orbit and chased the frigates Defence of Stalinvast, Emperor's Hammer and Will of Iron straight in to clear the way.
On their heels, he sent out the massed fighter squadrons of the expeditionary force, and diverted the battleship Vulpecula to engage the enemy flagship, a heavy cruiser named the Leoncour.
The Emperor's Hammer and the Will of Iron pincered and torched the Nebuchadnezzar after a brief but fierce exchange. The explosion lit the void.
The Defence of Stalinvast and the Fournier locked each other tightly in a longer, slower dance of warships, and eventually slammed together, squeezing boarding parties and naval security units into each other's hulls.
The locked ships tumbled away, in an embrace of death.
The Vulpecula raced forward and misjudged the Leoncour's evasion, suffering a trio of broadsides. Coming about, spilling debris into the gulf, the Imperial battleship raised its guns and hammered the Leoncour so hard and so furiously that the enemy flagship broke up and blew out like a dying sun.
Limping, the Vulpecula turned slowly and began its long-range harrying of the enemy ships closer to the target world's atmosphere. Spatian committed the rest of his group then, ranging them forward in a three-pronged division, of which the central and largest was headed by the majestic Saint Scythus.
Distances closed. The near-space of 56-Izar was awash with fire patterns and the streaking comets of missiles. Now the ferocious, high-velocity small ship phase began as waves of interceptors and light bombers from both fleets met and buzzed around each other like rival swarms of insects. The tiny lights whirled and danced in the void, faster and more numerous than the unaided eye could follow. Even the tactical displays overwhelmed the senses: pict-plates flickering with thousands of type markers and flashing cursors, spinning, overlaying, vanishing and reappearing.
The heretics had seeded a buffer zone behind their deplo
yment with mines, and the Emperor's Hammer, spurring forward in a fleet intruder role, suffered heavy damage and was forced to break away. Heretic interceptors fell upon the stricken ship like carrion flies on a dying beast.
The Will of Iron moved past the Emperor's Hammer and began to sweep a path through the mine zone with its specialised clearing devices. Triggered by probing force cones, the floating weapons began to detonate in their thousands.
Spatian's intent was to cut a wedge into the enemy's wide formation and bring at least some of his ships within range of the planet's surface. Once that bridging objective was achieved he could begin to unleash the planetary assault, confident of providing the dropships with some covering fire.
The Saint Scythus was first to secure such a position. Its main guns mercilessly disposed of the heretic cruiser Scutum and forced the carrier frigate Glory of Algol into a desperate retreat.
Hundreds of dropships rushed like a blizzard out of the battleship and the two frigates and the Inquisitorial black ship that had moved in behind it.
Most of the dropships were the grey landing boats of the Imperial Guard, jets firing as they hammered down into the cloudy atmosphere of 56-Izar. But scattered among them were a handful of scarab-black landing craft and drop-pods of the Deathwatch chapter.
The counter-invasion had begun.
* * *
Within the first hour of the war, we managed to land more than two-thirds of our one hundred and twenty thousand Mirepofx Light Elite Infantry on the surface of 56-Izar, almost half of the motorised armour brigades, and all sixty Adeptus Astartes warriors of the Deathwatch.
Sensor sweeps showed 56-Izar to be a bland, unremarkable world beneath its heavy veil of atmosphere. Vast, low continents of inorganic ooze punctured by ranges of crystalline upland and surrounded by inert chemical oceans. The only signs of advanced life – of life of any kind, indeed – were a string of city-sized structures arranged in a chain along the equatorial region of the main continent. The nature and composition of these structures was virtually impossible to read from orbit. The heretics had concentrated their invasion efforts on the three largest structures, and Admiral Spatian was targeting these areas, judging that the enemy would not be wasting time invading unviable sites.