by Various
‘I hope so,’ I said, earnestly. ‘I hope he is there.’
Then I stole a quick glance at Torghun, suddenly concerned that he would look down on that sentiment, that he would see it as somehow laughable.
‘But you can never tell,’ I said, as lightly as I could. ‘He is elusive. They all say that about him.’
I smiled again, to myself that time.
‘Elusive. Like a berkut. That is what they all say.’
II. Ilya Ravallion
I saw Ullanor for the first time from the crew deck of the fleet lander Elective XII. The fighting had only been over for three standard months by then and local space was still crawling with warships. We dropped rapidly through the midst of those huge, hanging giants, and the dark sweep of the planet’s surface rose up to fill the realview portals.
It was odd, to see it with my own eyes at last. For so long, Ullanor had dominated my every waking thought. I could reel off statistics – how many billion men had been transported on how many million troop carriers, how many crates of raw supplies had been lifted down from how many cargo conveyers, how many casualties we’d taken (actual) and how many xenos we’d killed (estimate). I knew facts that almost no other person in the Army knew, perfectly useless ones, like the grade of plasteel used in standard ration boxes, and absolutely essential ones, like the time it took those boxes to move to the front line.
Some of those statistics would never leave me. Other people, I imagined, regretted not being able to retain information; I regretted never being able to lose it.
As a young woman I had thought of my eidetic habits as a curse. As it turned out, the Imperial Army valued my aptitudes. I’d made it all the way to general with them, and so had become one of those many greying, anonymous, unsung members of the war machine. We didn’t get much praise once the fighting was over, and we got plenty of abuse from stressed field commanders while it was under way, but if we hadn’t existed then there would have been no victories to celebrate. War didn’t just happen on the whim of warriors – it was planned, orchestrated, fed by supplies and enabled by transportation.
We had been the Corps Logisticae for a while, then a division within the naval administration, then – briefly – overseen by Malcador’s people. Only shortly prior to the Warmaster’s appointment had we been hived off into a full Departmento, with all the bureaucratic advantages that brought us.
Departmento Munitorum. A dour name for a necessary job.
Mistakes had been made, certainly. Confusion over planetary coordinates, non-standard equipment reaching the Legions. For a while we even had two expeditionary fleets operating under the same numerical designation at opposite sides of the galaxy.
I tried to relax in my cramped seat, feeling the buffeting movement of atmospheric entry. I wasn’t looking forward to what was to come once we made planetfall, so worked to take my mind off it by looking at the view.
The world’s surface looked ravaged. Dark clouds raced across its surface, broken and straggling like snarls of wire wool. The land beneath was a puckered mass of ravines and defiles, worming through continents like masses of tiny cranial folds.
Only on one zone of Ullanor had that disorder been tamed. Before setting off I’d heard stories from Mechanicum contacts about what had been done to the remnants of Urrlak’s fortress, and back then I hadn’t quite believed them – they liked to boast about what they could do to worlds once they got their augmetic hands on them.
As I gazed out of the portal and down on to what they had done, I believed them. I saw the route of the victory procession, a scar of rockcrete hundreds of kilometres long. I tried to estimate how wide the ceremonial plaza I was looking at could have been – two hundred square kilometres? Twice that? It glistened under the broken cover of clouds like polished ebony, a colossal plain of stone smoothed out for the sole purpose of giving the Emperor a suitable site for his triumph.
What a piece of work is mankind, I thought then. What infinite faculties we have given ourselves.
The shuttle plunged down towards the cloud cover. I began to feel nauseous, and looked away.
I knew that the Emperor had long gone; returned, so they said, to Terra. I also knew that the Warmaster – as we then had to think of him – was still aboard his flagship, but I didn’t know how long he planned to linger. It would have been helpful to know that so we could start to think about resupply for the 63rd Expedition, but there was no sense in trying to pin a primarch down to specifics, especially not that primarch.
In any case, my mission did not concern the Warmaster. It concerned one of his brothers, one about whom I knew very little, even from hearsay, and who had a reputation for being – among other things – hard to track down.
I didn’t like the sound of that. I didn’t like the thought of spending weeks waiting for an audience, and I liked the thought of being granted one even less.
I closed my eyes, feeling the structure of the lander begin to shake.
The things we do for the Emperor, I thought.
Heriol Miert looked tired, like he hadn’t slept for days. His dark green uniform was creased and the lines under his eyes were deep, like they’d been etched in ink.
He welcomed me into his makeshift headquarters with the shuffling, slightly glassy look of a man who really needed to see a bed soon.
‘First time on Ullanor, general?’ he asked as we walked up the stairway to his private office.
‘It is,’ I said. ‘And I missed all the action.’
Miert laughed – a weary chuckle.
‘We all did,’ he said. ‘We’re the ones still standing.’
We entered his room: a modest steel-frame box perched atop a column of prefabricated admin units (Terran origin, I guessed, from the frame press-marks). We were a long way from where the Warmaster’s investiture ceremony had taken place, but through the windows I could just make out the grandiose towers on the horizon. A few lonely Titans still walked out across the huge expanse of stone, their immense outlines hazy in the drifting cloud.
I began mentally cataloguing their types – Warlord, Reaver, Nemesis – and had to stop myself.
‘So how are you, colonel?’ I asked, sitting down on a metal chair and crossing my legs.
Miert sat opposite me, and shrugged.
‘Things are easing off now,’ he said. ‘I think we can be proud, all things considered.’
‘I agree,’ I told him. ‘What’s your next assignment?’
Miert smiled.
‘Retirement,’ he said. ‘Honourable discharge, then home to Targea.’
‘Congratulations. You’ve earned it.’
‘Thank you, general.’
I envied Miert a little. He’d done his duty and had got out while the going was good. At that stage, still several years away from my own retirement, I had very little idea what role lay ahead for me. The gossip running through the Army hierarchy was about large-scale demobilisation. We were running out of planets to conquer, after all.
Not that retirement didn’t appeal. Others had done it, and I’d seen what kind of life could be lived after the fighting was over. I didn’t want to slog over the figures forever; the idea of going on indefinitely, of one’s service ending only in death, that struck me as almost uniquely depressing.
‘So you wish to know about the White Scars,’ Miert said, sitting back in his chair.
‘I was told you know as much as anyone here.’
Miert laughed again, cynically.
‘Possibly so. Don’t assume that amounts to much.’
‘Tell me what you know,’ I said. ‘It’ll all be helpful.’
Miert crossed his arms.
‘Liaising with them has been a nightmare,’ he said. ‘A nightmare. It’s mostly been Luna Wolves here, and they’re a dream: they do what they say they’re going to do. They keep us informed, they make sensible requisitions. The Scars – well, I never know where they are or what they want. When they finally turn up they’re very, very good – but wh
at use is that to me? By then I have reserve battalions running out of food and unused kit sitting in warehouses halfway across the sector.’
He shook his head.
‘They’re frustrating. They don’t listen, they don’t consult. We’ve lost men over it, I’m sure.’
Miert gave me a sidelong look then.
‘Is that what you’re here for?’ he asked. ‘Is that why you want to see him?’
I smiled tolerantly.
‘Just the facts, please,’ I said.
‘Sorry. From what I hear, they have no close links with the other Legions. They’re not hostile exactly, just… not close. They’ve retained too many habits from Mundus Planus.’
‘Chogoris.’
‘Whatever. In any case, it’s a strange place. They don’t use standard rank designations. They don’t even use ordered companies – it’s all “of the hawk” this and “of the spear” that. You can imagine how hard that makes it to coordinate with anyone else.’
‘What of the primarch?’ I asked.
‘I know nothing. As in, literally, I know nothing. The other ones call him the Khan, but all White Scar captains are called khan, so that doesn’t help. I don’t even know where he was fighting at the end. He was seen, so I’m told, on the primarchs’ balcony when the Emperor was here, but it’s hard to get any reliable accounts of what happened before that.’
Miert smiled to himself – the look a man gives when he’s spent too long grappling with impossible tasks but will soon be free of them.
‘And they’re obsessed with courtesy,’ he said. ‘Courtesy! When you meet them, be sure to learn their titles and use them correctly. They will know all of yours. If you carry ceremonial weaponry, anything of value, they’ll want to know about that too.’
I didn’t carry anything of value. My life was too organised, too exact, to bother with antique swords. I wondered if I should try to source something.
‘What of the Stormseers?’ I asked.
‘They have a role,’ said Miert. ‘We just don’t know what it is. There are different theories: that they’re just like Librarians; that they’re entirely different. There’s a rumour Magnus the Red thinks highly of them. Or maybe not.’
He spread his hands, admitting defeat.
‘You see?’ he said. ‘It’s hopeless.’
‘This Stormseer, the one you’ve arranged for me to meet,’ I said. ‘Is he senior? Does he have the ear of the Khan?’
‘I hope so,’ said Miert. ‘He was hard enough to find, and I had to call in a few favours. Don’t blame me if he’s not, though – we honestly did what we could.’
I didn’t feel like I was learning very much.
‘I’m sure you did, colonel,’ I said. ‘We will have to make do and hope for the best. Unless there was anything else?’
Miert gave me a slightly impish look.
‘You may have noticed a superficial likeness to the Sixth Legion, the wolves of Fenris,’ Miert said. ‘You know, the whole barbarian thing.’
He rolled his eyes.
‘Don’t bring it up,’ he warned. ‘We’ve been burned by that before. It makes them very annoyed.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Envy? But, seriously, leave it alone.’
‘Then I will, colonel,’ I said, feeling more pessimistic about the upcoming meeting with every equivocal morsel of information that emerged. I needed more. I needed details. Those were the things that made me function. ‘Thank you. You’ve been helpful.’
I took a crawler – an Augean RT-56, Enyiad variant by its track-pattern – out from the triumph plain and into the badlands beyond. It was uncomfortable and hot. The air tasted of grit, and it was impossible not to imagine the stench of ork spoor lurking under it all.
He didn’t make himself easy to find, just as Miert had warned. I never got the impression that he was deliberately being difficult, just that he had absolutely no concern whether I stumbled across him or not. His locator beacon flickered in and out of existence as we travelled, blocked by the dense ranks of undulating rock around us. When I finally homed in on it, we had been travelling for over four and three-quarter hours.
I did what I could to make myself look presentable before disembarking – smoothing down my greying hair and adjusting the creases of my dress uniform. Perhaps I should have made more effort. Physical appearance had always been the least of my concerns, a trait that age had only accelerated.
Too late now. I took a swig of warm water from my canteen and dabbed some on my sweating forehead.
He must have seen us coming. Even then he made no effort to come to us, remaining high up on a long ridge that was too steep for the crawler to negotiate. I left it at the base, stepping out on the dusty surface – the true surface – of Ullanor for the first time since making planetfall.
‘Stay here,’ I told the crawler’s crew, including the security detail Miert had sent out with me. I had little concern for my own safety, but I did worry about somehow offending him by going up mob-handed.
Then I started to climb. I was not in the greatest shape – years of filing reports in Administratum vaults had not given me a battle-hardened body and I’d never bothered much with juvenat treatments.
I wondered what he would make of me when he saw me – a slight, hard-faced woman in a general’s uniform. I felt my skin grow sweaty again as I laboured, and the creases I’d smoothed in my uniform crumpled. I would look frail to him, possibly ludicrous.
I stumbled as I reached the top. My foot slipped on loose scree, and I staggered against the rock. I reached out with my right hand, hoping to catch hold of the lip of the ridge. Instead of stone, my fingers clamped on to an armoured hand. It held me firmly.
I looked up, startled, to find myself staring into two golden eyes set in a leather-brown face.
‘General Ilya Ravallion, Departmento Munitorum,’ said the owner of the face, inclining his head politely. ‘Be careful.’
I swallowed, holding onto his gauntlet tightly.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I will.’
His name was Targutai Yesugei. He told me that as soon as I’d dusted myself down and recovered my breath. We stood, the two of us, on the ridge. The dry gullies and defiles of Ullanor ran away from us in every direction, a maze of charred debris and gravel. Above us, dark clouds drifted.
‘Not much of a world,’ he said.
‘Not any more,’ I agreed.
His voice was like the voice of every Space Marine I had ever encountered – low, resonant, held quiet, echoing up from his barrel chest like crude oil slapping at the sides of a deep well. If he ever chose to raise it, I knew it could be terrifyingly loud. Back then, though, it was a curiously calming sound to hear, out there in the aftermath of devastation.
He wasn’t as tall as some I’d met. Even clad in his armour plate, I had the impression of a certain wiriness; a compact, lean frame under sun-hardened flesh. His bald head was crowned with a long scalp-lock that snaked down around his neck. Tattoos had been inked into the skin on his temples. I couldn’t make out what they signified – they looked like the letters of a language I didn’t understand. He carried a skull-topped staff, and wore a glistening crystalline hood over the shoulders of his armour.
Amid a lattice of other ritual scarring, he had a broad, jagged mark running down his left cheek, from just under the eye socket almost to the chin. I knew what that was. For a long time that custom had been the only thing I’d known about them. They did it themselves once they’d been inducted – they made the scars that gave the Legion its name.
His eyes seemed golden. His irises were almost bronze, and the whites were a pale yellow. I hadn’t expected that. I didn’t know then whether all of them were like that, or whether it was just him.
‘You fight on this world, Ilya Ravallion?’ he asked.
He spoke Gothic awkwardly, with a thick, guttural accent. I hadn’t expected that either.
‘I did not,’ I said.
‘What
are you doing here?’
‘I was sent to seek an audience with the Khan.’
‘Know how many he grants?’
‘I do not.’
‘Not many,’ he said.
A half-smile played over his brown lips as he spoke. His skin creased with every smile, wrinkling at the eyes. He looked like he smiled often and easily.
In those early exchanges, I could not decide whether he was toying with me or whether he was serious. His clipped delivery made it hard to divine his meaning.
‘I was hoping, lord,’ I said, ‘that you might assist me.’
‘So you do not wish to speak to me,’ he said. ‘You use me to get to him.’
I decided to stick to the truth.
‘That is correct,’ I said.
Yesugei chuckled. It was a tight, hard, wind-dried sound, though not without humour.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I am… intermediary. That is what we do, the zadyin arga; we speak from one, to the other. Worlds, universes, souls – is much the same.’
I was still tense. I couldn’t tell whether things were going well. A great deal rested on the meeting I had been sent to arrange, and it would be hard to go back having achieved nothing. At the very least, though, Yesugei was still talking, which I took as a good sign.
All the while I took in details, storing them away, my mind working automatically. I couldn’t help myself.
His armour is Mark II. Indicates conservatism? The skull on his staff is unidentifiable; Chogorian fauna, no doubt. Equine? Check with Miert later.
‘If you had your audience,’ he asked, ‘what would you say?’
I had dreaded that particular question, though it had been bound to come up.
‘Forgive me, lord, it is for his ears only. It concerns business between the Fifth Legion and the Administratum.’
Yesugei gave me a shrewd look.
‘And what would you say if I reached into your mind, right now, and took the answer? Do not think you are shielded from me.’
I stiffened. As soon as he made the suggestion, I knew he could do it.