‘It seems the Chapter Master is anxious lest we embarrass him,’ he said, quietly so the seneschal would not hear it.
‘I wouldn’t take it personally,’ answered Zahariel. ‘It is difficult for him. He is a great warrior, but he is not true Astartes. Even after all these years it must be hard to reconcile that fact, especially when we meet our brothers.’
‘True,’ said Nemiel as he made a sour face. ‘We can only hope that the White Scars appreciate his efforts.’
Zahariel raised his hand in quiet admonition. ‘Careful. Remember, our honour is at stake. If you say anything to offend them, it will reflect badly on Hadariel, our Chapter, and the Legion.’
Nemiel shook his head. ‘You worry too much. I’ve no intention of offending anyone, especially not the White Scars. They are our brothers and I have nothing but respect for them. Anyway, they had the right idea in leaving this planet and heading out to find real action. If I have cause for annoyance, it’s that someone chose us to take up their duties as guard dogs in their stead.’
CHAPTER MASTER HADARIEL had briefed his senior officers around the wide table of the strategium onboard the Wrath of Caliban nearly three weeks earlier.
‘We have received new orders,’ he had said. ‘We are to split our strength. A portion of the Legion is to continue on to Pheonis, while the rest will go ahead to relieve the White Scars at a planet called Sarosh.’
‘So, an emergency call for aid, then?’ asked Damas.
Always inclined to open his mouth before he thought things through, Company Master Damas was the first to speak. ‘Our brother Astartes have bitten off more than they can chew, eh?’
‘No,’ said Hadariel, his face, like a mask, betraying no sign of emotion. ‘From all accounts, the situation at Sarosh is peaceful. It is more a matter of the re-disposition of forces. We are being sent to Sarosh to enable the White Scars to be moved on to duties elsewhere in the galaxy.’
It was Nemiel who gave voice to the question forming in the others’ minds. ‘Forgive me, Chapter Master, but it sounds like you are saying the White Scars are judged more important to the Crusade than the Dark Angels, that we’re being shunted sideways to a quiet posting just so the Great Khan’s followers will be free to find a real war.’
True to form, Damas jumped to conclusions. ‘The Lion would never agree to this!’
Hadariel slapped his open hand down on the table, the noise like a gunshot. ‘Silence! You speak out of turn, Master Damas. You show yourself too full of choler. One more outburst and I will relieve you of duty. Perhaps a few days’ meditation would restore the balance of your humours.’
‘My apologies, Chapter Master,’ said Damas, bowing his head. ‘I was in error.’
‘Indeed you were, and, what of you, Brother Nemiel?’
The Chapter Master’s eyes turned like a laser. ‘I would have thought you would know better. If I want your opinion on any subject, particularly as regards the interpretation of orders, I will ask for it. Is that understood?’
‘Perfectly, Chapter Master,’ bowed Nemiel in a more grudging fashion.
‘Good,’ nodded Hadariel. ‘As Damas says, you were both in error, probably more so than you realise. Our orders are from the Lion and Luther, and if our leaders tell us we can serve them best by travelling to Sarosh, we do not argue.’
‘THIS IS A weighty duty,’ said Shang Khan, the ranking leader among the White Scars. ‘There is no glory in it and no Astartes would gladly seek out this task. It is an onerous chore thrust upon us. There is no battle to be won here. Or, at least, not any battle of the kind we were made for. And, without battle, we lack all purpose. We are bereft. We are incomplete.’
Shang Khan stood facing the Lion on the observation deck of the battlecruiser Invincible Reason, flagship of the 4th Imperial Expedition Fleet. Luther and a White Scar named Kurgis stood on either side of them as witnesses to the ceremony, while Astartes from both Legions, as well as a delegation of senior officers and dignitaries from various arms of the fleet, watched the exchange from a respectful distance.
Zahariel watched with Nemiel as the solemn ceremony of welcome played out the last of its rites and their Legion accepted the task of maintaining law and order on Sarosh.
‘Such is the way with duty,’ continued Shang Khan. ‘It weighs down on our shoulders, but we feel its weight more keenly in our souls. Brother, do you accept this burden?’
The White Scar held out an ornate brass cylinder with a scroll rolled inside it.
‘I accept it,’ replied the Lion. He held out his hand and took the cylinder. ‘By my life and by the lives of my men, I swear to do honour in this matter by my Legion and the Emperor. Let these words be witnessed.’
‘They are witnessed,’ said Zahariel and his White Scar counterpart in unison. ‘It is good,’ nodded Shang Khan.
The White Scar crossed his arms across his chest in the sign of the aquila, saluting Zahariel and his Chapter Master. ‘You are well-met, Lion El’Jonson of the Dark Angels. On behalf of the White Scars Legion, I bid you welcome you to Sarosh.’
THEY CALLED IT a ceremony, but it hardly merited the title.
To mark the transfer of command of the 4th Imperial Expedition Fleet from the White Scars to the Dark Angels, a scroll was passed from hand to hand and an oath was made. If anything, meagre as they were, the trappings of ceremony attached to the event outweighed the substance of the transfer itself.
The 4th was one of the smaller expedition fleets of the Great Crusade, incorporating seven vessels in total: the flagship Invincible Reason, the troopships Noble Sinew and Bold Conveyor, the frigates Intrepid and Dauntless, the destroyer Arbalest, and the White Scars strike cruiser Swift Horseman, soon to be replaced by the Dark Angels’ ship, Wrath of Caliban.
The handover of control between the two Legions had been carried out with due respect and reverence, but in reality the fact that there was an Astartes contingent present at all was something of an anomaly. Strictly speaking, the 4th was still a second-line fleet. Lacking the firepower, training or resources to mount a full-scale military campaign against a hostile world, its job was to oversee the transition to compliance among worlds that had already shown they were friendly to the Imperium’s aims.
With Sarosh, however, there had been problems.
Initial contact with the planet had been made nearly a year earlier, and, on the surface, its people were friendly. They had welcomed the Imperium with open arms, loudly proclaiming their willingness to accept the Imperial Truth. Yet, in the twelve months since, little or no progress had been made in bringing the planet to compliance.
There had been no violence, and no outright acts of resistance, but each of the procedures embarked upon by Imperial envoys to effect compliance had so far ended in abject failure. Each time a new initiative was launched, the Saroshi government promised to do everything in their power to ensure it would be a success. And, each time, the promised support had failed to materialise.
The government would make fulsome apologies. They would make excuses, citing misunderstandings caused by the differences in customs and language as the reason behind the impasse. They would blame the intransigence of their own bureaucracy, claiming five thousand years of stable ordered society had left them with a bureaucratic system that was both enormously top-heavy and remarkably complex.
Certainly, there seemed to be some truth in their claims. Experienced Imperial envoys, who had overseen the compliance of many worlds in their time, would shake their heads in despair whenever the vexing question of the Saroshi bureaucracy was raised.
The problem was that the bureaucrats of Sarosh were part-timers. The planet’s laws allowed its citizens to set aside a generous part of their tax burden by agreeing to spend a proportion of their time working as bureaucrats.
Accordingly, the latest planetary census, compiled at three-monthly intervals on Sarosh, indicated that twenty-five per cent of the adult population held some form of bureaucratic position, with the remainder co
mprising those who had failed to pass the planet’s exacting Examination of Basic Bureaucratic Proficiency.
Based on the same census data, that meant there were currently more than one hundred and eighty million bureaucrats working on Sarosh.
With so many bureaucrats taking part in the process, Imperial envoys had found it almost impossible to get things done. It did not matter whether the planet’s government agreed to a measure: for it to be put into practice it still had to navigate the apparently endless levels of local bureaucracy, including various pardoners, petitioners, notaries, exemptors, signatories, exegetists, resolutionists, codifiers, prescriptors and agens proxy.
Worse, the system had grown so complicated in the course of the last five millennia, it was often the case that even the bureaucrats had no idea how to make it work. By common opinion among most of those charged with ensuring Sarosh was brought to compliance, in the last twelve months they had achieved almost nothing in the way of real progress. The planet was still as far from true compliance as it had been on the day it was first discovered.
The Swift Horseman had lain at high anchor above the planet through the entire process, as the fleet’s envoys straggled to make sense of Sarosh’s bureaucratic labyrinth. It was a hangover from the planet’s initial discovery, left behind in the hope that the presence of the Astartes might focus the minds of the Saroshi leaders and encourage them to complete the process of compliance quickly.
Instead, for twelve months, the White Scars had found they had to endure an extended period of enforced idleness.
It had not sat well with them. The fleet’s senior commanders had grown to dread the weekly strategic briefings when Shang Khan would demand to know how much longer he and his men were to be expected to sit in space doing nothing. The White Scars leader seemed to reserve special contempt for Lord Governor-Elect Harlad Furst, the man assigned to oversee the Sarosh territories in the name of the Emperor once they were compliant.
‘If these people are compliant, then certify that compliance so we can leave this place!’ Shang Khan was heard to roar at the governor-elect on more than one occasion. ‘If they are not compliant, tell me and we will go to war to show them their folly! You may choose it either way, just so long as you make a damn decision!’
In truth, Lord Furst and his functionaries had not made the decision. In a bureaucratic masterstroke, they had continually put off reaching any final judgement, utilising every excuse at their disposal in an attempt to delay the matter indefinitely, in precisely the kind of manoeuvring that often caused the Astartes to look with such disfavour on the growing non-military element accompanying the Crusade.
In such a way, twelve months had passed unproductively while the White Scars had grown ever more frustrated until at last, a signal was sent to Lion El’Jonson requesting that he and his Dark Angels be assigned to stand watch over Sarosh for an interval of two months to allow the White Scars to be moved on to other duties.
Meanwhile, a message was received by Lord Governor-Elect Furst pointedly reminding him that the 4th Imperial Expedition Fleet was needed elsewhere and could not be expected to stay in orbit around Sarosh forever.
The message instructed Furst that he had been granted a period of grace. He had two months to decide the question of the planet’s compliance one way or another. If he failed to resolve the matter in that time he would be stripped of his governorship and it would fall to Lion El’Jonson to decide the fate of Sarosh as he saw fit.
LATER, ONCE THE ceremony was over, it came time for the inevitable social formalities. The Astartes and the assorted dignitaries began to mingle and talk, as attendants in fleet livery circulated amongst them bearing silver trays overburdened with wine and food.
Always uncomfortable in such gatherings, Zahariel did his best to merge with the background. Before long, he was standing beside the wide vista of a panoramic view-portal, staring out at Sarosh slowly turning in the void, much as he had been a few hours earlier when he had stood with Nemiel on the Wrath of Caliban.
Perhaps it spoke volumes of the peculiarities of the Dark Angels mindset, but at that moment he was struck most by how much larger the observation deck on the Invincible Reason was compared to the one on the Wrath of Caliban.
Influenced in part by the monastic traditions of the Order, the Dark Angels tended to a spartan austerity in their ways. Every centimetre of space on a Dark Angels vessel was at a premium. From the fire control room overseeing operation of the ship’s main batteries, to the practice cages where the Astartes honed their skills, everything served a warlike purpose.
In contrast, the interior of this ship put Zahariel more in mind of a nobleman’s palace than it did a warship. He supposed there was an argument to be made that a ship should be decorated in keeping with the scope and wondrousness of the Imperium. Yet, to his eyes, to have layers of ornamentation choking almost every inner surface of the ship seemed overly elaborate, even ostentatious on a vessel made for war.
Naturally, the Dark Angels’ ships had their own share of decoration in an understated style, but the doors, walls and ceilings of the Invincible Reason were cluttered with gilded excesses. If a room was a conversation between the architect who built it and the people who made use of it, this observation deck was currently shouting in a dozen competing and raucous voices.
The deck was vast, with an immense vaulted ceiling reminiscent of the great ruined cathedrals of ancient Caliban. One entire wall was dominated by the view-portal that Zahariel was standing beside. More than sixty metres tall, the portal was composed of a number of tall arched panels like stained glass windows in some pagan house of worship.
It was not so much the view-portal itself, but what it represented. The observation deck might be decorated in a manner in keeping with the Imperium’s message, with frescos depicting some of its finest victories as well as mural portraits of every captain who had commanded the ship in her two hundred year history, but equally it resembled many of the places of idolatry that the people of Caliban had brought to ruin in the planet’s earliest age.
‘It looks like a joygirl’s house of business,’ said a gruff voice behind him, offering a different perspective.
Zahariel’s enhanced sense of hearing had warned him of the approach of a brother Astartes. He turned and saw Kurgis facing him, two goblets of wine held dwarfed like thimbles in the White Scar’s hands.
‘I’m sorry? I don’t follow you, brother’
‘This place,’ Kurgis inclined his head, indicating the grand sweep of the observation deck around them. ‘I was saying I think the same of it as you do, brother. There is too much glitter about it, too much that is golden. It is like the joygirl palaces in the cities of the Palatine, not a ship for warriors.’
‘Am I so transparent?’ asked Zahariel. ‘How could you know what I was thinking? Are you one of your Legion’s Librarians?’
‘No,’ said Kurgis. ‘I’m no psyker. Some men are gifted when it comes to hiding their thoughts from others: you could watch their faces for a thousand years and you’d never know what they were thinking. Not you. I saw the sour look you gave this place as you glanced around. From that, I could guess what was in your mind.’
‘It was an accurate guess,’ conceded Zahariel.
‘It helped that I could recognise the emotion. My thoughts were identical to yours on seeing this place. But enough of this, I have brought you a drink. When brothers meet, it is good they share wine and make a drinking oath.’
Kurgis offered him one of the goblets, lifting the other up in a toast.
‘To the Dark Angels,’ said Kurgis, ‘and to the Primarch Lion El’Jonson!’
‘To the White Scars,’ answered Zahariel, holding up his own goblet, ‘and to the Primarch Jaghatai Khan!’
They drained the goblets, and once he had finished his drink, Kurgis threw the goblet against a wall. The sound of the sharp crack as the metal cup shattered was greeted with a start by some of the dignitaries standing nearby.
&nbs
p; ‘It is tradition,’ explained the White Scar. ‘For the words of a drinking oath to have value, you must break the cup so no one else can swear an oath on it.’
He nodded in approval as Zahariel followed his example, shattering his goblet against the same wall.
‘You are well-met, brother. I wanted to talk to you, because we owe you our thanks.’
‘Thanks?’ said Zahariel. ‘How so?’
Kurgis indicated some of the other White Scars around the room. ‘You have set us free, you and your brothers. I am only sorry that such noble warriors must take up our former position, keeping lonely watch over this miserable dung heap of a world.’
‘We were happy to accept the assignment with good grace,’ said Zahariel. ‘It is a matter of duty.’
‘Yes, it is duty,’ said Kurgis, lifting a questioning eyebrow, an expression that emphasised the network of thin honour scars criss-crossing his cheeks. ‘But you are being diplomatic, brother. I know it. I am sure dissenting voices were raised when you received your orders. The Dark Angels are too brave and resolute a Legion to accept such a command quietly. As Shang Khan said, it is a weighty duty and a hard one for Astartes to bear. We are warriors, all of us, the Emperor’s finest. We should be roaming the galaxy, making war on our enemies. Instead, we find ourselves forced to act as guard dogs.’
He stopped speaking abruptly, and stared at Zahariel closely.
‘What is it?’ the White Scar asked. ‘You are smiling. I have said something funny?’
Zahariel shook his head. ‘Not funny, no, it’s just that your words reminded me of something a friend said earlier. He also said we were being treated like guard dogs.’
‘He did? He is an intelligent man, this friend of yours.’
Kurgis turned to look back at the wider room around them. ‘You have brought a great many warriors with you, I understand? I only ask because I was surprised to see that your squads were led by your Chapter Master.’
‘We are led by the Lion and Luther,’ said Zahariel.
Descent of Angels Page 26