‘I am assured that the judges are taking a hands-off approach, ma’am.’
‘Good.’
‘After last week’s events, I am sure they are aware of today’s sensitive nature.’
Governor Shonai nodded, watching as the square before the palace gates began filling.
By the Emperor, they’d better be.
YET MORE EYES watched the crowd from the upper storey of a marble building set within a low-walled garden with entirely different sentiments. Nine men worked with the quiet hustle of professional soldiers, stripping from plain grey uniforms and changing into black leathers and carapace breastplates. They carefully removed jangling dog-tags as well as any other identifying items and placed them in a canvas pouch.
Their command post was set up in a plain summer-house belonging to the Honan cartel. Dustsheets covered the furniture and the place reeked of abandonment. It was perfect.
No one spoke as another two men entered the room, the first talking softly on a portable vox-caster carried by the second.
The leader of this group, a man named Amel Vedden, handed his subordinate the vox handset and observed the thousands of people streaming into the city. He remained unimpressed. In this situation numbers meant nothing: he had sufficient force to break this demonstration into pieces.
Any idiot could break up a crowd. The key was to strike quickly and with maximum violence, so that the survivors were left stunned and unable to respond in any meaningful way.
But he did not want to break up this demonstration, he wanted it transformed from the sleeping giant into a rampaging monster, and that was even easier.
Vedden was a professional and disliked leaving anything to chance. To that effect, he had stationed another ten men downstairs with flame units and assault weapons, and the roof had been cleared, ready for their extraction by ornithopter.
His vox operator gathered up the canvas bag of dog-tags as Vedden turned to his men, now all clad in the threatening black carapace armour of Adeptus Arbites judges. Most carried automatic combat shotguns, but two carried bulkier, drum-fed grenade launchers. The slow-moving crowd was now almost in the noose of Liberation Square and he knew it was time for action.
He picked up his own shotgun and the ten ‘judges’ turned on their heels to leave the room.
FROM THE SAFETY of one of the gold-roofed palace towers Jenna Sharben, Ario Barzano and Sergeant Learchus also watched the gathering crowd. Learchus could see that the Arbites woman was unhappy about being here: she wanted to be down on Liberation Square with her comrades and he could understand that.
At first, he had been resentful of being left behind on Pavonis, but when Captain Ventris had explained the oath he had sworn to Lord Macragge, Learchus understood the honour and trust the captain had placed in him.
That did not make it any easier to know that he was denied the honour of battle. Still, as the Blessed Primarch was fond of saying, ‘What the Emperor wills, be sure it will seek you out.’
From here they had a prime spot from which to observe the people of Pavonis voice their discontent. The animated
singing and music were a muted, tinny sound through the armoured glass.
It did not sit well with Learchus that a populace behaved in this way. Where was their discipline and pride in working for the betterment of society? This kind of mass demonstration would never have occurred in Ultramar, there would have been no need for it.
On Macragge, you had discipline thrashed into you at an early age at the academies and woe betide the boy who forgot the lessons of youth.
The Arbites woman fidgeted constantly, straining against the glass to better observe the deployment and movement of her fellows, who were sensibly keeping a low profile at the palace gates and approach roads.
Heavy handed tactics would only incite the crowd to violence and Learchus just hoped that a cool head commanded the judges this day.
VIRGIL ORTEGA WAS sweating inside his carapace armour and, though he told himself it was the heat, he wasn’t sure he sounded convincing. The sheer scale of the demonstration was unbelievable. Every report indicated that such an undertaking was far beyond the capabilities of the Workers’ Collective, yet here it was in front of him.
His line of judges was solid. Every one of them had their shotguns slung and their suppression shields held in the guard position. Parked behind them, a line of Rhinos, most armed with powerful water cannon, were idling, ready to haul them out of trouble.
The mood of the crowd did not seem overtly hostile, but you could never tell with these kind of things. One second all would be well, and a heartbeat later, the smallest provocation would cause an eruption of violence. He would do all in his power to make sure that did not happen today and hoped that whoever had organised this felt the same way.
Ortega had expressly ordered his troops not to fire unless he ordered it. He glanced over at Collix. He couldn’t see his face beneath the protective visor of his helmet, but had made especially sure that the sergeant had understood his orders. Ortega was keeping Collix close nonetheless.
The demonstrators had halted some fifteen paces from their line and, sensibly, were making no further move towards them.
Ortega could see that half a dozen people had climbed the statue of the Emperor in the centre of Liberation Square and were using its wide plinth as a podium from which to address the crowd. They carried bullhorns, shouting to their audience, punctuating each remark with a sweeping gesture, punch at the sky or pointed finger.
Ortega could not make out many of the words from this distance, but he could hear enough to know that there were no cries demanding the crowd rise up.
Cheers and claps greeted each statement from the orators and Ortega sighed in relief.
It seemed the people of Pavonis had nothing more troublesome on their minds.
VEDDEN’S TEN MAN squad emerged from the Honan’s summer house and into one of the approach streets that led to Liberation Square. The street was jammed with people and they roughly pushed their way through with their shields. Shouted oaths followed in their wake, but the march organisers had been insistent: there must be no violence.
This was to be a peaceful show of unity before the planetary rulers, and thus the judges passed unmolested through the crowd.
They emerged onto Liberation Square, less than five hundred metres from the palace gates and the line of genuine Adeptus Arbites. Directly ahead of them, Vedden could see the statue of the Emperor and six people shouting at the crowd through bullhorns.
Vedden did not listen to the words.
‘Wedge formation,’ he hissed, and his men formed into an arrowhead shape, three either side of him with their shields facing outwards, and three men in the centre with their shotguns cocked and loaded.
‘Let’s go.’
They moved off, pushing a path towards the statue.
VIRGIL ORTEGA SCANNED the crowd, eyes alert for trouble, despite the avowed intentions of the speakers on the
Emperor’s statue. He’d just received check-ins from each of his squads and thus far, all was well.
A flash of movement and a ripple of shouting through the crowd caught his attention as he saw a group of judges emerge from the approach street ahead and to his left. He frowned in puzzlement.
Whose squad was that and what the hell were they doing out of position?
Ortega cycled through his vox frequencies, checking every squad’s location and coming up with everyone in their proper place. Had the chief put more squads on the ground?
Instantly, he discounted that possibility. The chief was not so idiotic as to put uniformed troops in the square and not tell him.
A shiver passed down his spine, despite the day’s heat, as he watched the unknown judges form a wedge and begin pushing their way through the crowd.
His eyes traced where their route would take them.
‘Hell and damnation, no!’
‘Sir,’ inquired Collix.
Virgil Ortega dropped hi
s shield and ran back to where the Rhinos rambled throatily. He jumped on the front bull-bars of the nearest and lifted his helmet visor, scrambling up onto its roof.
The judge inside popped the top hatch and poked his head out.
‘Sir?’
‘Give me the damn loud-hailer. Now!’
The judge retreated into the Rhino, emerging seconds later with the loud-hailer handset which Ortega snatched from his outstretched hand.
He flicked the talk button and shouted, ‘Attention. Attention. This is Judge Virgil Ortega, you people on the statue, get down now!’
The Rhino’s loud-hailer was easily able to carry across the square, but his plea was ignored. Scattered shouts and jeers greeted his words and a few inaudible replies were hollered from the statue’s plinth.
Damn them! Didn’t these fools realise he was trying to save their lives?
He tossed the handset back and jumped from the Rhino’s roof. Running back to the judges’ line, he grabbed Collix and a handful of judges.
‘Judges, form wedge on me. We have to get to that statue quickly. Come on.’
With practiced precision, the judges formed a wedge around Ortega, the twin of the one already within the crowd. Ortega knew he had to get to the statue first.
But even as they set off, he could see they would be too late.
THE SHOUTS SURROUNDING their advance through the crowd were getting louder, but Vedden ignored them. The statue of the Emperor was their objective and anyone who wasn’t quick enough to get out of their way was brutally clubbed aside. A few kicks and punches were aimed at them, but their solid shields made fearsome bludgeoning weapons and soon most people were getting out of their way rather than defy them.
Vedden heard a rough voice ordering the speakers to get down from the statue, and saw a judge commander standing on the back of a Rhino shouting and waving his arms frantically.
But the cretins on the podium ignored him. They were making it too easy.
Like a pebble thrown in a pond, angry ripples of their advance were spreading outwards, as more people began stumbling back, braised and bloody. A threatening rumbling spread as news of the judges’ aggressive tactics began filtering through the crowd. The people on the statue now saw Vedden and his men approaching, and turned their attention to them.
Cries of abuse and self-righteousness were hurled at them, as the speakers denounced the criminal violence employed by the lackeys of a morally bankrupt administration.
The mood of the crowd had turned ugly, but it didn’t matter, they were almost there.
A ring of heavy-set men surrounded the statue’s base and there was no mistaking their threat. Vedden stopped as a wiry man with a long beard addressed him directly from the podium.
‘Brother! We are doing no harm, we have assembled peacefully. Let us continue and I guarantee there will be no trouble.’
Vedden did not answer him. He unlimbered his shotgun. He racked the slide.
And in full view of thousands of demonstrators, shot the man dead.
ORTEGA SAW THE leader of the unknown judges unsheath his shotgun and pull the trigger as though in slow motion.
The sluggish echo of the weapon’s discharge washed over him as he saw the man on the podium hurled languidly backwards against the alabaster effigy of the Emperor of Mankind. His blood splashed up the statue’s thigh as he toppled over a carven foot and tumbled to the ground. His skull burst open with a sickening, wet crack on the cobbles of Liberation Square and, as his brains emptied from his cranium, time snapped back into focus.
The judges in the killer’s shield wall crouched, bracing their shields on their thighs as the ones in the centre of the wedge took aim at the stunned survivors on the statue’s podium. A volley of automatic shotgun fire blasted the remaining speakers from the Emperor’s feet and Virgil knew that they would be lucky to live through this.
MYKOLA SHONAI SQUEEZED her eyes shut as she heard the echo of the shotgun blast and saw the man fall. That was it, she knew. There would be no coming back from this.
A final line had just been crossed and nothing would ever be the same again.
JENNA SHARBEN SURGED to her feet as the man toppled from the statue’s plinth, a shout of denial on her lips. She faced Barzano, her face full of mute appeal, dumbfounded at what had just occurred. Barzano chewed his bottom lip, his fists curled.
She made to move past him, but he grabbed her arm with a strength that surprised her and his previously bland features took on a steely hardness. He shook his head.
He dragged his eyes from hers and scanned the crowd, taking in the tactical situation in Liberation Square in an instant. He turned to Sergeant Learchus.
‘Sergeant, I need you down there.’
Gone was Barzano’s jocular tone and in its place was a full, rich voice, obviously used to giving orders and having them obeyed.
Learchus had seen all that Barzano had, and understood the situation as well as he.
‘What would you have me do?’ asked the massive Space Marine.
‘Whatever you can.’
VEDDEN FIRED ANOTHER volley of shotgun blasts into the crowd, relishing the screams of pain and terror he was causing. Those nearest to him frantically pushed away from the slaughter, but the press of bodies in the square was preventing them from getting out of the way quick enough.
Too bad for them, thought Vedden, pulling the trigger again.
Damn, but it felt good to be killing something, even if it was just dumb civilians. He’d wanted to have a crack at the judges themselves, but his orders were specific: only civilians. Kill as many as you can, capture one of their leaders and get back.
It made sense to capture one of the leaders. The Workers’ Collective would demand that leader’s release from the Arbites precinct house and the judges would truthfully claim that they were not holding anyone. Of course they would not be believed and it would be taken as another sign of the corruption rife within the planetary administration. It was perfect.
Vedden rushed forwards, stepping over the twitching bodies of the speaker’s bodyguards and picked up a weeping girl, no older than twenty and roughly shucked her over his shoulder. She screamed in pain and he slammed his fist into her face to shut her up.
His men formed a rough circle and he stepped into their midst.
‘We’ve got what we came for: now let’s get out of here.’
HIS ARMOUR WAS dented in a dozen places and blood ran freely from his temple as he pushed another screaming man from
his path. Ortega tasted blood and its coppery stink reeked of failure. He had failed to stop the senseless murders of the demonstration’s speakers, failed to keep the Emperor’s peace and now all hell was breaking loose.
He heard the hollow boom of more shotgun blasts from the far edges of the square and despaired. He hoped that none of his troops had fired these shots, but if things were going to hell elsewhere as badly as they were here, then he could not discount the possibility.
Bodies pressed in all around him and he angrily shouldered them away. This could not last much longer, it was only a matter of time until they were overwhelmed and killed. He slammed another man aside as he heard a series of cough-thumps and suddenly white smoke was clouding up in billowing geysers.
Grenade canisters of choke gas fired from the line of judges at the palace gates landed amongst the crowd, spewing caustic fumes outwards in obscuring banks of white. The canisters were landing just in front and beside his group and Ortega made a mental note to thank whoever had given the order to fire them. He slammed down his visor, engaging his rebreather.
Through a gap in the choking smoke, Ortega espied the retreating squad of murderers.
Knots of stunned demonstrators stumbled aimlessly through the clouds of smoke, eyes streaming and chests heaving. Many vomited on the cobbles or curled up in foetal balls.
The noise was incredible, like a great beast had awoken and roared. Ortega knew they were in the belly of that beast. He sprinted aft
er the architects of this carnage, weaving round stumbling workers and leaping the dead bodies left in the killer’s wake.
Collix and the six judges he had hastily pulled from the line charged after him, similarly eager for revenge. He shoulder charged a man wildly swinging a huge wrench, his eyes bloody where he’d torn at them.
Then they were at the mouth of the approach street and he could clearly see the backs of the killers as they made their way towards a plain white building.
He yelled an oath and levelled his shotgun. The range was not good and he couldn’t get a good bead with his visor down.
Virgil squeezed the trigger and one of the killers fell, clutching his shoulder. Collix also fired and scored a hit, but neither of their shots were lethal and the wounded men were dragged along by their comrades.
‘Come on,’ he shouted. ‘Before they get into cover!’
Their prey skidded to a halt and formed a disciplined firing line. Ortega was surprised, but not so surprised that he didn’t drop to his knees and brace his shield before him as their enemy’s shotguns fired controlled volleys down the street. The shield rocked under a terrible impact, and a fist-sized dent appeared in the metal next to Ortega’s head. But it held and screams ripped the air as demonstrators who had chased them down the street were hit.
He sprang from behind his shield, and was punched from his feet as a second, unexpected volley hammered into the breastplate of his armour.
Ortega granted, more in surprise than pain as he hit the ground. Collix rolled over to him.
‘Sir? Are you hurt?’
Ortega groaned, and pushed himself upright and winced as he felt a sharp pain stab into his chest. The breastplate had absorbed the majority of the shot’s impact, but it was holed, and blood streamed down its front. He was surprised at Collix’s concern, but shook his head.
‘Maybe a rib broken I think. Nothing serious.’
Collix hauled him to his feet and they continued down the street. Both men swore as they saw their prey dart through a thick, timber gate in a high wall that led into the grounds of a large town house.
The Ultramarines Omnibus Page 20