“How do I look?” she asked, taking a sip of amasec from the crystal goblet in her hand.
We were sitting in the forward compartment of her Aquila, which had been repainted for the occasion in the drab livery of the Munitorum, and which now looked, from the outside at least, like a utility cargo hauler that hadn’t seen the inside of a maintenance bay since the Gothic Wars. Precisely the kind of thing, in other words, that I might have requisitioned to transport me on a low priority administrative errand. (But it would have been considerably less comfortable, of course, not to mention lacking in cunningly concealed firepower.)
“Very fetching,” I assured her, accurately enough. “You ought to pass for a soldier, if no one looks too closely.” That was more or less true of the rest of them as well, I supposed. After all, next to Jurgen, even Simeon looked like a storm trooper. With his implants hidden beneath the traditional Valhallan greatcoat and hat he looked more human than I’d ever seen him, a massive dose of some tranquiliser or other stilling the usual range of twitches and tics. Pelton looked the part too, his years in the Arbites no doubt contributing to the air of disciplined efficiency the uniform lent him.
The weak link, of course, was Zemelda, who, try as she might, would never look like anything other than a civilian in borrowed clothes to anyone familiar with the Imperial Guard. She’d done her best, though, even returning her hair to its natural colour for the occasion, which turned out to be a rather pleasant shade of brown. Faced with Amberley’s implacable determination to bring her along I’d bowed to the inevitable, merely suggesting that we add a bandage or two to give the impression that she’d recently suffered a head wound in action. Anyone noticing some oddity of posture or behaviour might just ascribe it to the kind of disorientation I’d become all too familiar with myself in the last couple of weeks. The hope was a faint one, admittedly, but since we were going to be dealing with PDF personnel, who were barely a step up from civilians in uniform themselves, we might just get away with it.
Needless to say Zemelda was just as thrilled at this chance to dress up and play act as she had been when asked to impersonate a lady’s maid, and had to be prevailed upon in no uncertain terms not to wince and limp like a mummer in a mystery play.[1] At least, to my intense relief, Rakel and Yanbel had both been left behind, since even Amberley’s relentless optimism had baulked at the prospect of successfully disguising either of them as soldiers. [1. A common custom on many of the worlds around the Damocles Gulf, in which citizens celebrate holy festivals with amateur theatrical performances drawn from the lives of the saints or the Emperor, in which devotional material is inextricably linked with the most vulgar of knockabout comedy.]
I sipped my own amasec, trying to still the flutter of apprehension in my stomach. She knew what she was doing, of course, I took that for granted; the trouble was, I had no idea of what that might be. The theory certainly seemed sound enough: infiltrate her people in the guise of my escort, which ought to raise few eyebrows, since taking one was well within the bounds of established protocol for the kind of investigation I was pursuing. After all, if the Gavarronians did turn out to be riddled with hybrids, I could hardly rely on their own comrades to back me up in a physical confrontation.
With that grim possibility in mind I’d intended bringing Lustig or Grifen’s squad with me, until Amberley had proposed this imposture, and truth to tell I would still have preferred to do so. I had no doubt of her people’s fighting ability if push came to shove, but I hadn’t been in action with them as often as I had with the Valhallans, and I couldn’t rely on them to cover my back in quite the same way. Their primary loyalty would be to Amberley, the Inquisition, and whatever mission she was on. I had no doubt at all that if a conflict of interest arose they’d hang me out to dry without a second’s hesitation. Not only that, I still had no more than the vaguest idea of what they might be doing once we’d arrived at our destination, and I have to admit that it was probably just as well. If I had realised what they were hoping to find, you can be sure I’d have been even more apprehensive than I already was.
At least I knew I could trust Jurgen implicitly, and I resolved to stick as closely to him as I could, despite the obvious disadvantages of doing so. He’d accepted the necessity of leaving his favourite toy behind, a melta hardly being the kind of thing a commissar’s aide carries around routinely on a fact-finding mission, but had been manifestly unhappy about ditching it, no doubt anticipating the possibility of further trouble. (Which, given the way things had gone since we’d arrived on this Emperor-forsaken joke of nature, I could hardly fault him for.) Denied the solace of some serious firepower he remained slumped in his seat, his las-gun cradled on his knees, obsessively checking the functioning of every component and reciting the appropriate litany from the Book of Armaments repeatedly under his breath. At least it kept his mind off his usual airsickness, so I thanked the Emperor for small mercies, and tried to get a picture of the fiefdom of Gavarrone as Pontius circled widely around it, preparing to bring the shuttle in to land on the pad in the main PDF compound.
My first impression was one of neatness, in marked contrast to the other plateaux I’d flown into since my arrival on Periremunda, the usual disorderly sprawl of human habitation or untrammelled nature tidied to within an inch of its life. Broad, straight avenues cut through well-tended fields in which any weeds or wildflowers with the temerity to stick their heads above the soil would be expunged as ruthlessly as heretics, bordered by squared-off hedges whose corners seemed to form perfect right angles. The town we passed over was laid out with an equal degree of geometric precision, its streets forming a precise grid, leading naturally to the vast square in its centre where the temple of the Emperor soared majestically skyward in a positive effusion of buttresses, crenelations, and superfluous statuary.
“It’s like a toy town,” Zemelda said, a note of disapproval in her voice, no doubt comparing it unfavourably to the cosy human confusion of Principia Mons, and I nodded in agreement. The relentless perfection of it all, no doubt intended to display devotion to Him on Earth in the little details of everyday life, struck me as sterile, as alien to the cluttered human psyche as the smooth functionality of a tau sept.[1] She craned her neck for a better view of something in the distance. “Is that where we’re going?” [1. At the time of which he’s writing Cain had yet to visit one of the tau’s own worlds, but he was certainly familiar with their architectural style from his time on Gravalax, so the analogy might indeed have struck him then, rather than being the product of several decades’ hindsight as might otherwise be inferred.]
“No.” Amberley shook her head. “That’s the convent. We’re putting down on the PDF landing field.”
Despite myself I was unable to resist turning my gaze in the direction they were looking. The Order of the White Rose, it seemed, was not exactly constrained by vows of poverty. The convent looked more like the country estate of some provincial nobleman on an agriworld somewhere, long white buildings rising no more than three storeys from the ground forming a complex series of interlocking quadrangles in which fountains played and flowers nodded gently in the breeze. Other, larger squares clearly had more utilitarian purposes, Sisters in power armour drilling or practising combat techniques with a precision Sergeant Lermie[2] would have nodded grudging approval of, or full of glossy black Rhinos ornamented with votive iconography that made them look more like self-propelled chapels than practical AFVs. The amount of detail I could make out was astonishing, given that our destination was supposed to be several kilometres from the place, and I felt a familiar tingling sensation beneath my gloves. [2. The 597th’s senior drill instructor.]
“Aren’t we getting a bit close to their airspace?” I asked, and Amberley nodded.
“We are,” she agreed, sounding more intrigued than alarmed by this development, and voxed the cockpit. “Pontius, what’s going on?”
“Inquisitor?” Our pilot sounded genuinely baffled by the question. “I’m following the co-
ordinates the local traffic controller gave me. Do you want me to break off our approach?”
“No, not yet.” Amberley nodded thoughtfully, as if something she strongly suspected had just been confirmed. “Let’s play this one out, and see what happens.” She looked at me, and grinned. “I think he’s just made his first mistake,” she said, a palpable tone of satisfaction in her voice. “You must really have got him rattled.”
“Who?” I asked. “Metheius?” Amberley nodded again.
“Him too, probably,” she agreed. That old, and profoundly disagreeable, sensation of not being told everything that was going on began to grow in me again, but there was no sense in letting my disquiet show, so I merely glanced across to where Jurgen was sitting. He seemed satisfied with the condition of his lasgun at last, and snapped the power cell into place with a finality that no doubt comforted us both.
“We’re on the final approach, ma’am,” Pontius voxed a moment or two later, and I glanced outside again, trying to orientate myself. The wide, close-clipped lawns surrounding the convent suddenly vanished, along with everything else except a panorama of desert impossibly far below, and I suddenly realised that they bordered the sheer drop of the plateau edge. Unlike the starport on Hoarfell, however, there was no fence to prevent an incautious misstep pitching an unfortunate stroller into infinity, and not for the first time I found myself wondering if the blessed Sisters were a couple of beads short of a rosary.[1] I just had time to notice a brief, actinic flicker in the lowering clouds to our south-west, like the largest bolt of lightning imaginable, before the smooth green grass was back below us, much closer this time. We passed low over a grove of fruit trees, whose branches waved lazily in the breeze from our passing, and skimmed a couple of red-tiled roofs, in which repeating motifs of aquilae and fleur de lys had been picked out in contrasting hues. [1. More likely they trusted the Emperor to protect them from harm; quite ironically, as things turned out.]
“We’re on final approach,” Pontius told us, a moment before arresting our forward motion entirely, and the familiar hollow sensation in the pit of my stomach combined with Jurgen’s audible discomfiture to inform me that we were dropping vertically towards the landing field. White walls rose past the viewports, to enclose us on all sides, and a moment later a faint bump echoed through the fuselage as our landing gear made contact with the surface of the pad. Pontius powered down the engines.
“Right,” Amberley said, standing decisively, “let’s go and see what all this is about.” I nodded, following suit.
“Jurgen,” I said, and waited for my aide to take up his usual position at my shoulder, before savouring my small moment of self-assertion. I raised a hand to forestall Amberley from leading the way out of the passenger compartment. “Carry on, corporal,” I instructed.
“Commissar.” She saluted briskly, falling into the role she’d assumed at once with barely a hint of amusement, and formed the others up into a passable impersonation of a short team,[1] which followed me down the ramp, their lasguns at the port. Jurgen had slung his own weapon, as was his habit on these occasions, leaving his hands free to respond more readily to any request I might make of him. [1. A fireteam reduced in number by the loss of casualties, but still able to be deployed effectively. Short squads, known to the troopers as “remnants’, are a common feature of many Guard platoons, and are often little more than independent fireteams themselves in all but name.]
We emerged onto a wide landing pad, surrounded by the white buildings of the convent, and a gaggle of power-armoured Sisters strode forward to meet us, bolters at the ready. Stilling the growing sense of apprehension knotting my stomach I nodded an affable greeting, and waited for them to move within earshot.
As our feet hit the rockcrete Pontius powered up his engines again, and the Aquila rose gently into the air behind us. The immediate departure of our transport shuttle would be perfectly normal if we were all who we purported to be, and the last thing we wanted to do was give our unseen adversaries (if they even existed) the smallest hint that there was anything out of the ordinary about my errand. Instead of returning to Principia Mons, however, Pontius would loiter in the immediate vicinity of Gavarrone, safely below the rim of the plateau, in the blind spot of any local auspex systems that might reveal his whereabouts.
As the roar of his engines faded I became aware of a faint rumbling in the distance, like far off artillery, and remembered the flash of light I’d seen from the air.
“Thunder?” Jurgen asked, glancing suspiciously up at the sky.
Amberley shook her head. “The Navy,” she said. “There must be a large concentration of ’nids around here somewhere.”
“Lovely,” I muttered under my breath, eliciting a brief, unmilitary grin from the disguised inquisitor, before her cover reasserted itself. Assuming an air of easy confidence I strode forward, addressing the Sister Superior of the Battle Sisters approaching us, and raised my hand in formal greeting.
“Commissar.” The woman returned the gesture curtly, her ash blonde fringe bobbing as she did so, and I noticed that the fleur de lys tattoo on her right cheek was bisected by a thin white line of healed scar tissue. This, as much as her manner, marked her out as a veteran warrior, and someone not to be trifled with. Well, fair enough, so was I. “Welcome to the Convent of the White Rose.” Her eyes flickered past me to Amberley and her entourage, evaluating any potential threat they might have posed, and clearly coming to the conclusion that they didn’t present much of one. “I wasn’t informed that there would be others in your party.”
“My aide, Gunner Jurgen,” I said, indicating him with an offhand wave. “He always accompanies me on official business.” I glanced at Amberley, as though barely aware of who she was. “This is Corporal Vail, commanding my escort detail.”
“Ma’am,” Amberley said, saluting, and, to my faint surprise, falling into a perfect parade rest as though waiting for further orders. The others all remained at the port, their guns ready, but not yet aimed, which was just as well considering we were outnumbered by two to one and the Sisters had power armour and bolters.
“This is something of an unexpected pleasure,” I said, determined to retain the initiative. “I was given to understand that we would be landing at the PDF garrison.”
“The decision to divert you here was taken at the highest level,” the Battle Sister assured me, with a faintly reverential air that stirred the hackles on the back of my neck. Zyvan and Keesh were certainly both under the impression that we were sticking to the original plan, and, apart from Amberley, I wasn’t aware of any higher authority on the planet. But then the Ecclesiarchy tended to play entirely by their own rules, and I began to wonder if barging into one of their pocket kingdoms uninvited had been quite such a good idea after all. The armoured woman turned, gesturing to us all to follow, and surrounded as we were by heavily armed fanatics I was understandably disinclined to argue the point. “If you’ll come with me, the inquisitor will explain everything.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“The inquisitor?” I echoed, glancing briefly in Amberley’s direction in spite of myself, but she continued to play the part of the stolid Valhallan non-com without missing a beat, and no one else seemed to notice my momentary lapse. The Sister Superior nodded as I fell into step beside her, the rest of her squad forming up around our little group in a manner that, despite the appearance of an honour guard, I had no doubt at all would erupt in a hail of bolter fire the moment we did anything they construed as untoward, and we set off across the landing field towards a wide doorway in one of the buildings surrounding us.
The air seemed remarkably fresh, I recall, no doubt because of our proximity to the brink of the plateau, scented with the fragrances of newly clipped grass and fruit blossom, which were quite readily discernible even over the earthier aroma of Jurgen. At this altitude the sun was clear and bright, with a residue of warmth, although the breeze carried a chill that quite justified my greatcoat and those of my companions.
Real Valhallans would have disdained the heavy garments of course, preferring shirtsleeves until there was at least a decent coating of frost over everything, but the Sisters seemed mercifully ignorant of the fart.
“His presence here is a secret,” she explained, as though that was obvious. “I’m sure you understand the need for discretion in these matters.”
“Indeed I do,” I said, nodding gravely, despite the vortex of confusion into which my mind had just been plunged. Amberley didn’t seem overly surprised at this development, which led me to suspect, quite correctly as it turned out, that she’d been aware of this other inquisitor’s presence all along. I’d gathered the impression from some of the remarks she’d made since our association began that not everyone in the inquisition was necessarily quoting from the same sermon, so to speak, but it had never occurred to me until then that her real target on Periremunda might be one of her own colleagues. If that was indeed the case, of course. Suppressing my confusion as best I could, I tried to sound as calm and matter-of-fact as my hostess. “Batdes have been won or lost before now thanks to a careless word.”
“Well said,” a new voice chimed in, as we entered a large marble atrium festooned with icons of the Emperor, and the inevitable fleur de lys, the sight of which I was beginning to feel heartily sick of. The speaker was a well-muscled man with brown hair and eyes, who appeared to be in early middle age, although I’d seen too many centenarians who looked half that thanks to an over-enthusiasm for juvenat treatments to take his physical appearance as a reliable indicator of how old he might actually have been. As our little cavalcade entered the building he rose from a bench next to a trellis choked with sweet-smelling roses the colour of fresh fallen snow to greet us, smiling affably, and stuck out a hand for me to shake. “I can see your reputation is hardly exaggerated.”
[Ciaphas Cain 05] - Duty Calls Page 27