‘The Fabricator Marshal shall hear of this,’ said van Gelder as a parting shot.
‘I will make it my business to see that he does,’ promised Satria.
Van Gelder’s eyes narrowed, unsure if the major was mocking him, and slammed the door in his face. The limousine’s gears ground as its driver attempted to turn it on the narrow road.
‘I think we might have upset him,’ smiled Satria.
‘Good,’ replied Learchus.
MELTED SNOW STREAKED across the fogged glass of the land train’s window, running in long, wobbling lines. Lieutenant Quinn briefly wondered how fast they were actually travelling: it was hard to tell when everything he could see beyond the glass was a uniform white. He gripped the handrail as the land train swept around a bend in the track and leaned over to wipe a gloved hand across the glass, smiling at the young family seated across from him.
‘No need to worry,’ he said. ‘It won’t be long before we’re in Erebus. Just one more stop to pick up the people at Prandium.’
The man nodded, his wife looking fearfully at the white-steel of the lasgun he held across his knees. It was a look he had seen many times on this journey, the terror that armed conflict had come to their once-peaceful world, but he couldn’t bring himself to feel sorry for them. After all, was it not the duty of every Imperial citizen to stand against the enemies of Mankind?
He and his platoon had emptied six farming collectives of their populace and packed them on this long land train in order to bring them to the safety of Erebus. Dozens of other platoons were performing the same job all across the continent and with any luck they would be able to complete their mission without incident. Over sixty carriages snaked back from the labouring engine car and they were already nearing capacity, each carriage crammed with fearful people.
Already Lieutenant Quinn could envision the scenes of outrage when he would have to order these people to discard their belongings to make room for the people of Prandium.
Sergeant Klein, his adjutant, made his way along the carriage’s central aisle with difficulty, pushing past protesting citizens, his thick jacket and combat webbing catching almost everyone he passed. Klein held his rifle raised, the sling wrapped around his arm and said, ‘Sir, we’re just about to pull into Prandium.’
‘Excellent. Nearly done, eh, sergeant?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Order the men to stand to. I’ll take First squad, you take Second.’
Klein nodded and made his way back through the carriage as Quinn felt the train’s deceleration. He rose from his seat and eased his way through the crowds packing the train towards the main doors where a knot of his soldiers from the Logres regiment waited to disembark. He sketched a quick salute and wiped his hand across the glass of the doors, seeing the silver steel of the platform approaching. Something struck him as odd, but it took him a second or two to realise what it was.
The platform was empty.
Whereas some communities had been reluctant to abandon their homes, most had been only too eager to be escorted
back to the safety of Erebus, their departure points thronged with anxious people, packed and ready to leave.
But not here.
Quinn sighed as he realised they were probably going to have to convince more stubborn farmers to abandon their lands and come with them. He should be used to it, he supposed. Each time the Tarellians attacked one of the sea farms on Oceanus, they would run into bull-headed krill farmers who’d be damned if they’d abandon the holdings their family had farmed for generations. In Quinn’s experience, those types always ended up dead sooner rather than later.
The train slid to a graceful halt and the doors smoothly opened. Freezing air sucked the warmth from the carriage, to the groans and complaints of its passengers. Quinn stepped onto the frosted platform, feeling ice crunch under his boot.
That was unusual. He would have expected the station’s servitors to have kept the platform free from ice. The windows of the station building were opaque with frost and long icicles drooped from the eaves of the main station house. The hanging sign that creaked in the low wind clearly declared that this was Prandium.
He could see Sergeant Klein’s squad further down the platform and waved his adjutant over.
‘This is peculiar,’ he said.
‘I agree,’ said Klein. ‘No one’s been here for a while.’
‘Another train hasn’t passed this way before us, has it?’
Klein pulled out the small orders pad he kept in his thick winter coat’s breast pocket and shook his head. ‘No, not according to my information, sir.’
‘I don’t like it,’ stated Quinn.
‘What do you want us to do?’
‘Move into the town,’ ordered Quinn. ‘And stay sharp. Something doesn’t feel right here.’
Klein saluted and made his way carefully along the platform to rejoin his squad.
‘Right,’ said Quinn, ‘let’s move out.’
Using small, careful steps, he crossed the slippery platform and flicked off the safety on his lasgun as he reached the top of the steps below a sign that indicated the exit. The stone steps were slick with ice and more icicles hung from the underside of the banister. Slowly, and with great care, Quinn and his squad made their way down the stairs, emerging into the farming collective of Prandium.
Its snow-filled streets were eerily quiet, only the low moan of the wind and the crunching footsteps of his platoon disturbing the silence. Not even the lonely call of a bird sounded. The buildings were sturdy-looking, prefabricated structures, similar to those on a thousand other worlds, fashioned from local materials and built with the sweat and toil of their inhabitants. A generatorium building stood abandoned beside them and a trio of vast grain silos towered above the community at the far end of the street.
There was a tension in the air: even Quinn could feel it. Prandium reeked of abandonment. There had been nobody here for a long time and the sense of neglect was painfully evident.
‘Let’s go,’ he said and led his squad into the settlement, crunching through the knee-deep snow. The streets felt narrow and threatening. Through a gap in the buildings, he could see Klein’s squad advancing on a parallel course to their own.
A door banged in the wind and everyone jumped, lasguns swinging to face the direction the sound had come from. Quinn’s feeling that there was something wrong here rose from a suspicion to a certainty. Even if these people had left on an earlier transport that he didn’t know about, any farmer worth his salt would have found the time to make sure his property was closed up for the winter.
Two large harvesters stood rusting at the end of the street in the shadow of the huge grain silos and Quinn motioned his squad to follow him towards them. Even though the icy air dampened any odours he might have smelled, he could still taste the reek of rotted grain. As they circled around the harvesters, he saw something that made him pull up short and raise his fist.
At the base of the nearest grain silo, a three-metre tear had been ripped in the skin of the tower, the metal peeled back and buckled. A sloping pile of frozen grain spread from the tear.
He advanced cautiously towards the torn hole, a sudden chill enveloping him as he moved into the long shadow cast by the tower. Quinn drew his chainsword, his thumb hovering above the activation rune. He stepped onto the gritty surface of the grain, flicking on the illuminator slung beneath the barrel of his lasgun, and took a deep breath as he stared into the darkness within the silo. A thick stench, disguised by the cold air, filled his nostrils as he cautiously stepped into the silo, playing the spear of light from his illuminator around its interior. The light could only show the merest fragment of what lay within, but even that was too much.
He numbly waved his vox-operator forward.
‘Get Sergeant Klein over here,’ he whispered, his voice trembling, ‘and tell him to hurry…’
SERGEANT LEARCHUS, MAJOR Satria and Colonel Stagier of the Krieg regiment stood atop the fro
sted rampart of the first wall of Erebus city, watching the soldiers of its defence force training on the esplanade between this wall and the second. Men sweated and grunted below, the sound of their training eclipsed by the ringing of hammers and clang of shovels on the frozen ground as other gangs of soldiers dug trench lines before the walls.
Learchus watched the men below with a mixture of disappointment and resignation.
‘You are not impressed, I take it,’ said Satria.
Learchus shook his head. ‘No, most of these men would not survive a week at Agiselus.’
‘That’s one of the training barracks on Macragge, is it not?’ asked Stagier.
‘Yes, it sits at the foot of the Mountains of Hera where Roboute Guilliman himself trained. It is where myself and Captain Ventris trained also.’
Soldiers worked in small sparring groups, practising bayonet drills and close combat techniques with one another, making a poor show of the skills they would need to keep them alive in the coming battles.
Upon his first inspection of the troops, Learchus had watched each platoon fire off accurate volleys of disciplined lasfire, blasting close groupings of holes in target silhouettes. He had marched to the first platoon and grabbed a lasgun from a nervous trooper, before returning to a surprised looking Major Satria.
‘You are teaching them to shoot?’
‘Well, yes. I thought that might be important in a soldier,’ Satria had replied.
‘Not against tyranids,’ said Learchus. ‘Have you ever seen a tyranid swarm?’
‘You know I haven’t.’
‘Well I have, and they come at you in a tide of creatures so thick a blind man could score a hit ten times out of ten. Any man who can hold a gun can hit a tyranid. But no matter how many you kill with your guns, there will always be more, and it is our job to teach the men how to fight the ones that reach our lines.’
Since then, the organisation of a coherent training program had fallen to Learchus and in the week since he had ordered the gates of Erebus closed, he had fought bureaucratic intransigence and years of ingrained dogma to implement a workable regime.
At dawn the men would rise, practise field stripping their weapons and perform exercises designed to enhance their stamina and aerobic strength. Corpsmen from the Logres regiment had been instrumental in instructing the soldiers in good practices while exercising in cold weather, as each activity had to be rigorously controlled, lest a soldier develop a layer of sweat beneath his winter clothes that would later condense, degrading its insulating properties dramatically.
‘These men must learn faster,’ said Learchus. ‘They will all die in the first attack at this rate.’
‘You expect the impossible from them, sergeant,’ said Satria. ‘At this rate they will hate us more than the tyranids.’
‘Good. We must first strip them of all sense of self. We must strip away every notion of who they think they are and rebuild them into the soldiers they need to be to survive. I do not care that they hate me, only that they learn. And learn quickly.’
‘That won’t be easy,’ said Satria.
‘Irrelevant,’ said Stagier. ‘The weakest men will always be the first to fall anyway. When the chaff has been removed, the true warriors will remain.’
‘Chaff?’ said Satria. ‘These are my soldiers and I’ll not have them spoken of like that.’
‘Your soldiers leave a lot to be desired, Major Satria,’ pointed out Stagier, his hands clasped behind his back. His patrician features were pinched by the cold, and his stern gaze swept the training ground in disapproval. Learchus agreed with Stagier and though he knew that Satria’s men were trying, effort had to be combined with results to mean anything.
He watched a group of soldiers practising thrusting and parrying with bayonets, their movements encumbered by thick winter clothing. Originally the soldiers had been training without their webbing and winter gear, but Learchus had swiftly put a stop to that. Where was the use in training in ideal conditions when the fighting was never going to be that way?
Learchus firmly believed in the philosophy of Agiselus: train hard, fight easy. Every training exercise undertaken by its cadets was fought against insurmountable odds, so that when the real fight came, it was never as hard.
Even after a week’s training, Learchus saw that the soldiers were still too slow. Tyranid creatures were inhumanly quick, their razored limbs like a blur as they speared towards your heart, and he knew that the butcher’s bill among these soldiers would be high indeed.
Without a word of explanation he turned on his heel and made his way down the gritted steps that led from the ramparts to the esplanade below. Satria and Stagier hurriedly followed him as he stepped onto its slick cobbles.
He strode into the middle of the training ground and stood with his hands planted squarely on his hips. Activity around him gradually diminished until the soldiers began to slowly gather around the Space Marine at their centre.
‘You have strayed from the ideals of Ultramar that the blessed primarch left you as his legacy,’ began Learchus. ‘You have been seduced by the frippery and comfort that comes from lives of indulgence and peace. I am here to tell you that that time is over. Comfort is an illusion, a chimera bred from familiar things and ways.’
Learchus marched around the circumference of the circle of soldiers, punctuating his words by slapping his gauntleted fist into his palm.
‘Comfort narrows the mind, weakens the flesh and robs your warrior spirit of fire and determination. Well, no more.’
He marched to stand in the centre of the circle and said, ‘Comfort is neither welcome nor tolerated here. Get used to it.’
THE SKIN OF the soldier’s foot was waxy-looking, a white, greyish yellow colour, and several raptured blisters leaked a clear fluid onto the crisp white sheets of the bed. Joaniel Ledoyen shook her head at this soldier’s foolishness, jabbing a sharp needle into the cold flesh on the sole of his foot. The man didn’t react, though she couldn’t tell whether that was a result of the frostbite or the half-bottle of amasec he’d downed to blot out the pain.
Probably a mix of both, she thought, discarding the needle into a sharps box and scrawling a note on the man’s chart that hung from the end of his bed.
‘Is it bad?’ slurred the soldier.
‘It’s not good,’ said Joaniel frankly. ‘But if you’re lucky we may be able to save your foot. Didn’t you receive instruction on how to prevent these kinds of injuries?’
‘Aye, but I don’t read so good, sister. Never had no call for it on Krieg.’
‘No?’
‘Nah, soon as you’re old enough you’re sent to join the regiment. Colonel Stagier don’t approve of educated men, says it was educated men that got Krieg bombed to shit in the first place. The colonel says that all a man needs to do is fight and die. That’s the Krieg way’
‘Well, with any luck, I’ll have you fighting again soon, but hopefully you can avoid the dying part,’ said Joaniel.
The soldier shrugged. ‘As the Emperor wills.’
‘Yes,’ nodded Joaniel sadly as she moved away. ‘As the Emperor wills.’
So far today, she had treated perhaps fifty cases of mild hypothermia and a dozen cases of frostbite, ranging from mild blanching of the skin to this poor unfortunate, who, despite her optimistic words, would probably lose his foot.
Joaniel snapped off her rubber gloves and disposed of them as she made her way painfully back to the nurses’ station at the end of the long row of beds. She favoured her right leg, pressing her palm against her hip. and watching as corpsmen from the Logres regiment circulated in the long, vaulted chamber. They used thermal bandages to gradually restore heat to frostbitten limbs of the injured men in a controlled manner. Thankfully, the beds in the District Quintus Medicae facility were still largely empty – the building was designed to cope with over a thousand patients – though she knew that the steadily increasing trickle of soldiers being brought to her wards would soon become a raging
torrent once the war began. Remian IV had taught her that.
She rubbed her temples and yawned, pulling out the cord that bound her ponytail and ran a hand through her long blonde hair. Tall and statuesque, Joaniel Ledoyen was a handsome woman of forty standard years, with smoky blue eyes and full features that spoke of great dignity and compassion. She wore a long, flowing white robe, bearing the crest of the Order of the Eternal Candle, one of the Orders Hospitaller of the Convent Sanctorum of the Adepta Sororitas, pulled in at the waist by a crimson sash.
Unlike the battle sisters of the Orders Militant, the sisters of the Orders Hospitaller provided medical care and support for the fighting men and women of the Imperial Guard, as well as setting up missions for the needy and impoverished of the Imperium.
Many wounded soldiers had the sisters of the Orders Hospitaller to thank for their survival and it was a source of great comfort to those on the front line to know that such aid awaited them should they be injured.
One of her junior nurses, Ardelia Ferria, looked up and smiled as she saw Joaniel approaching. Ardelia was young and pretty, fresh from her training as a novice and had only recently completed her vows on Ophelia VII. She liked her and though the youngster had yet to witness the true horrors of war, Joaniel felt Ardelia would make a fine nurse.
‘All done for the night?’ asked Ardelia.
‘Yes, thank the Emperor. Most of these men will live to fight another day’
They are lucky to have you to look after them, Sister Ledoyen.’
‘We all play our part, Sister Ferria,’ said Joaniel modestly. ‘Have the fresh supplies arrived from the upper valley yet?’
‘No, not yet, though the city commissariat assures me that they will be here soon,’ said Ardelia, with more than a trace of scepticism.
Joaniel nodded, sharing Ardelia’s misgivings and well used to the vagaries of the city’s commissariat, but knew that the supplies would be desperately needed in the coming days. She would need to contact the commissariat in the morning and demand to know what had become of them.
‘I can look after the wards for the rest of the night,’ said Ardelia. ‘You should retire for the evening, Sister Ledoyen. You look tired.’
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