by William King
You could see the evidence of the wealth when you set down on the space-field. It was as big as a city and crammed with ships of every shape, size and classification. Enormous warehouses lined the edges or lay beneath the blast pads of the landing zones. I watched one huge treasure argosy being unloaded as we marched down the ramp from the sub-orbital shuttle. I had seen several more through the portholes in the ship’s side as we waited to disembark.
Emperor’s Glory was the first world on which I had stood in a long time where the sky was blue, the sun was bright, the air was fresh and no one seemed all that keen to kill me. In the air at the space port, you could just smell the odd metallic tang I have come to associate with docked sub-orbital ships, a compound of cooling metal, drive ozone and recycled atmosphere being released from the locks to mingle with the local air as you emerged from the hatch.
I did not need my rebreather mask. Even after all this time the fact that I could think that still stunned me. I was born on a hive-world, where pollution was everywhere in the sealed corridors of the city. The external air beyond the hive was even more deadly. The idea that there was a place where you did not need to make sure your protective filter-mask was always available was still little short of miraculous to me. I could tell from looking at Ivan and Anton and the way they looked around with wonder that they felt the same way. Macharius just looked as if it were normal. His home world had most likely been like this. He certainly seemed at ease here.
A highly ornate airship descended on our landing zone. It was as big as a small orbital shuttle. and you could see that beneath all the gold-plating it was heavily armed and armoured. Even here in the new sector capital, seat of Macharius’s power in these conquered worlds, no one except the general himself was taking any chances with his safety.
We went down the ramp ahead of Macharius, weapons drawn, as if we were making planetfall on some rebel world. It was mostly for show, of course, but it meant we kept in practice. Drake and his storm troopers followed us down the ramp.
From the airship a horde of attaches and executive officers emerged, all moving towards Macharius, all carrying reports and petitions and missives that must be delivered only by hand. They swarmed together, almost elbowing each other out of the way as they moved forwards. We stood our ground as they came towards us like charging orks.
They appeared almost surprised that common soldiers would not get out of their way. We had done this before.
‘Make way for the Lord High Commander,’ the Undertaker said, in his flat, strange voice, and they halted. Almost any sane man would when confronted by his vacuum-empty eyes and emotionless manner. ‘He will speak to you in order of rank, when he reaches the palace. Now stand aside and do not obstruct the Emperor’s business.’
His manner made it quite clear that he meant what he said. It seemed perfectly possible that he would order us to shoot if these office boys did not get out of our way. They sensed it too and our way parted. They fell into line and followed us back onto the airship, though. I could already see them jockeying for position, claiming precedence, forming small cabals and alliances.
Suddenly I missed the cold violence of the war front.
The palace that Macharius was building would be one of the wonders of the sector when it was complete. So much was obvious as we made our approach. It was the size of a small city, built in a shape that suggested the aquila when seen from overhead. Hundreds of thousands of workmen swarmed over the sides of the structure: painting, sculpting statues and gargoyles, working on the enormous victory masks of Macharius worked into the walls.
Once, I had walked across a completed section of one of the roofs. There were hundreds of statues of Imperial angels there, regiments of them, ready to storm heaven at Macharius’s command. It had seemed to me to be a colossal waste. I was probably the only person who had looked upon them since the sculptors had departed for a new sector of the palace. I might well be the only person to do so until the end of time. Yet someone had seen fit to order them built. I wondered if it was some bureaucrat growing fat on contractor’s bribes, or an architect swollen with megalomania from being commissioned to build this monument to one man.
I wondered about all of it sometimes. What made Macharius sanction the construction of such a monument to his vanity? He was already the most famous man in the Imperium save the Emperor. His name would ring down the millennia for as long as mankind endured. What did erecting this titanic palace add to its lustre?
It was indicative, though, that something monstrously proud was growing within the Lord High Commander, something that needed this confirmation in plascrete and ceramite of his importance. Or perhaps I do him a disservice. Perhaps it was being built because that is what was expected of him. He was hardly the first Imperial commander, or indeed the first great conqueror, to leave monuments littered about the galaxy. I doubt that he will be the last.
Still, it made me uncomfortable as the airship swung in towards the landing tower and made its final approach. Beneath us I could see the great geodesic dome of the Hunting Grounds. It was full of exotic jungle plants and great carnivores brought from across the sector to provide sport for Macharius and his chosen guests. It was a place of death and danger, as I would find out for myself one day.
‘Gentlemen, you are dismissed for the moment,’ said Macharius as we stepped across the threshold of the palace. A new detachment of his personal guard stood ready to greet him. They were spotlessly garbed in their green lion’s head tunics, drawn up as if for review.
The words were spoken with a pleasant, comradely smile, and their tone made it clear that he valued us greatly. I felt almost embarrassed by the thoughts I had been having about him just a few minutes ago on the airship. We stood at attention, though, until he was gone and Inquisitor Drake with him. After that, the Undertaker said, ‘You’re not on duty any more. There’s no need to just stand there.’ Taking himself at his word he strode off into the palace. The bodyguard split off into small groups and I was left standing with Anton and Ivan.
‘How is the arm?’ Anton asked, slapping it roughly.
‘Better,’ I said, ‘or you would be spitting teeth right now.’
‘Where are you going to get ten extra men in a hurry?’ Anton said.
‘Is that how much help you think you’d need?’ I asked.
‘No. I meant you would need them to…’ His words trailed off as he realised what he was saying. He let out a long sigh, then stared off into the distance, back in the direction of the airship. Servitors were already start to unload huge trunks full of plunder and wargear.
People in the green tunics of palace servants lounged nearby. They watched us, just as they had watched Macharius depart. ‘How many of those guys are spies, do you think?’ Ivan asked. His voice sounded slightly better since his mechanical parts had been upgraded, but it could still not remotely be described as normal.
‘All of them,’ Anton said. ‘That’s what Lady Patricia says.’ Lady Patricia was his latest flame. A highborn lady from Emperor’s Glory.
‘She would know since she’s one herself,’ Ivan said.
‘No, she’s not,’ said Anton, a little too quickly.
‘Yeah, she would tell you if she was,’ Ivan said.
‘She’s not.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She’s just interested in your good looks and personal charm.’
‘That’s right,’ said Anton.
‘Funny that,’ said Ivan. ‘Since you don’t have any.’
‘Look who’s talking,’ said Anton.
‘So before you became Macharius’s bodyguard, how many highborn ladies threw themselves at you?’ I asked.
‘I think we all know the answer to that,’ said Ivan.
‘I had a few,’ Anton said.
‘I don’t remember any,’ I said.
‘I don’t think you’re in any position to criticise me,’ said Anton. ‘I’m not the one who fell into bed with an Imperial assassin.’
‘Hush!�
� I said. I always regretted the drunken time I had told the pair of them about my involvement with Anna, back on Karsk. ‘That’s the sort of fool statement that could get you killed. It could get all of us killed.’
I smiled as though I were making a joke and I kept my tone very light, but I was looking around to see who was listening. Nobody seemed to be, but, of course, that meant nothing. All of these people were adroit at appearing to notice nothing while noticing everything, and that was not taking into account the possibility of all manner of technological eavesdropping devices being focused on us. The very powerful found it useful to keep even such minor members of Macharius’s retinue as us under surveillance. After all, you never knew when someone like Anton would let something slip they shouldn’t. Someone like me too, I suppose.
Even Anton had the good grace to look abashed. He had learned something in our time with Macharius after all. He considered his words for a while and said, ‘Look, I know what the Lady Patricia sees in me.’
‘Nothing,’ Ivan suggested, a little cruelly under the circumstances.
Anton continued with an air of mock dignity, as though he had not been interrupted. ‘But you’ve got to remember, I am using her as much as she is using me. How often does a common soldier like me get to bed down with a highborn bedroom acrobat like her?’
‘She teaching you some new tricks, is she?’ I asked.
‘I am teaching her some, actually. Anyway, I don’t tell her anything she does not already know.’
‘How do you know what she knows?’ Ivan asked. He looked quite genuinely curious.
‘She tells me.’
‘And no woman has ever lied to you,’ I said.
‘You leave me to worry about that. You worry about your own women. I suspect you’re in much more trouble than me.’ He reached out and picked a goblet from a tray being carried by a passing servant girl, swigged a mouthful of the yellowish nectar in it and walked on. He did it as though it were his right, which it was. Everything was available to one of Macharius’s bodyguards within the palace, and I do mean everything. It was a life of staggering luxury compared to the one which we had grown up with on Belial. In this palace, even common soldiers like us could live like merchant princes on our home world. It was one of the advantages of being there.
Anton let out a sudden loud whoop that had everyone looking at him, including Ivan and me. He just grinned his idiot grin and said, ‘Did you ever think we would be living like this, lads?’
It was infectious. I found myself grinning back. ‘No,’ I said.
‘Best thing that ever happened to us was running into Macharius,’ Anton said. He believed that right till the end.
My chambers were in the same sector of the palace as Macharius had his. They resembled what I had always imagined luxury to look like, until I caught sight of the way the generals lived. It was not a barracks room. It was a suite with a living room and a massive four-poster bed in the centre. There was a naked woman in mine when I entered. I recognised her too. ‘Anna,’ I said. It was not her real name, of course. I never found out what that was. It was the first one I had known her by, though, all those years ago on Karsk. It is the name I still think of her by now.
‘Leo,’ she said. She was a good-looking woman, no doubt of that: compactly built, hair very short, large, deceptively trusting eyes. Her beauty could not be compared to the striking, surgically-enhanced glamour of the local noblewomen – she would barely have been noticed among them, which was the whole point, of course – but she was lovely. Her face was the same today as it had been when I first met her. It did not have to be, she could change it as she liked, but she knew I had a sentimental attachment to that look. Maybe she did too.
On the dresser beside her sat a large, custom-made pistol. I had no doubt there were half a dozen other weapons within easy reach. She was not a woman who ever entered a room without being prepared to fight her way out of it. ‘I saw the reports that said you were back in one piece.’
I very carefully unbuckled my belt and placed my holstered sidearm on top of the chest of drawers. Her reflexes were much faster than mine. She was much stronger too. Somewhere, sometime, the strange archeotech of the ancients had been used on her, transforming her into something other than human.
No, let me rephrase that. She was still a human. If she had not been, our lords and masters in the Imperium would have terminated her. She was an augmented human in the same way that Ivan was, although she had been changed in ways invisible to the naked eye and with much greater sophistication.
‘I confess, I am surprised to find you here,’ I said.
‘No, you’re not,’ she said. She tilted her head to one side. ‘You expected that we would meet again. We always do.’
There was some truth in that. I did expect to meet her at unusual times and in unusual places. We had encountered each other off and on a dozen times since the start of the crusade. We had occasionally been lovers. I suspected it was part of her job to keep tabs on Macharius’s security contingent, but I like to think it was something more to it as well, that it is within the realms of possibility that she liked me.
‘Why is that exactly?’ I asked.
‘You know why,’ she said.
‘Apparently I have hidden the knowledge from myself.’
‘I am here to question you, to pick your brains.’
‘I thought it was because you find me attractive.’ She smiled with genuine amusement.
‘You see, you did know the reason after all.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘I both like you and find you attractive, and I am still here to pick your brains.’
‘And that works better while you are naked,’ I said, sliding onto the bed beside her.
‘I thought we might amuse ourselves before I interrogated you,’ she said, kissing me. I ran my hands over her flesh. There were areas beneath the skin that were harder and heavier than they ought to have been. She was still very lovely.
Afterwards we lay on the bed. She studied me, head tilted to one side, cat-like. ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked, reaching out to touch my cheek.
‘I am still wondering why you are here?’
‘You are not the soul of romance, Leo.’
‘Nor are you. Let us not pretend otherwise.’
She shrugged and her face was for once mask-like. It was most unlike her.
‘Is someone going to die?’ I asked.
‘You know I would not tell you even if someone was.’
‘No. You would just leave me to find the bodies, like on Masara.’
‘You are still angry about that, I see.’
It was difficult to keep the anger out of my voice, even with this very dangerous woman, who could read me all too easily. ‘You killed two officers in Macharius’s guard.’
‘They were in the pay of the Autocrat of Absalom,’ she said. ‘They felt they had been overlooked for promotion and that their honour had been insulted.’
‘I know. We found convincing evidence of that afterwards. Very convincing.’
‘Too convincing is what you were going to say, Leo.’ She held my gaze steadily.
‘Can there be such a thing as evidence that is too convincing?’ I said.
‘Sometimes things need to be spelled out in such a way as there is absolutely no doubt. Particularly when the criminals are well connected, with relatives who have considerable influence in the high councils of humanity.’
‘This was spelled out in such a way that a child could have no doubts about it. Diaries, journals, letters, decrypted communications protocols, all pointing in only one direction.’
‘All of them authentic,’ she said. I rose from the bed and turned my back to her. If she was going to kill me I would not have been able to stop her anyway, and I did not want her to be able to look at my face and read my expression.
‘I can read the tension patterns of the muscle groups in your back as easily as I can read your facial expressions
, Leo,’ she said, as if she knew what I were thinking, which I suppose she did. ‘It is one of the things I was trained to do.’
‘What is going on?’ I asked, turning to face her again.
‘I am here to be certain things go as they should with Macharius.’
‘He is still alive and the crusade rolls on,’ I said.
‘There are those who want him dead,’ she said.
‘Heretics have tried to kill him before. He is still here.’
‘It’s not just heretics, Leo. There are those in the Administratum who wish to see him fail.’
‘Why would they want that? He has added more worlds to the Imperium than any man since the time of the Emperor.’
‘Precisely because that is so.’
‘What?’ I turned to look at her.
‘Powerful men make powerful enemies, Leo, and Macharius is the most powerful man in the galaxy at the moment, with the exception of the one who sits in the Golden Throne on Terra.’ Her voice was flat but still she managed to communicate a surprising amount of reverence when she mentioned the occupant of the Throne. ‘There are some who fear what he might do with that power, now that he has accumulated so much of it.’
‘Macharius is a loyal servant of the Emperor,’ I said.
She shook her head almost pityingly. Her voice was very soft. ‘Leo, Leo, Leo.’
‘He is.’
‘I do not doubt it for a moment, but it is not me he has to convince. Macharius makes enemies just by being who he is. He demands efficiencies in the supply chain for his armies, that arms and supplies appear where they should when they should and with the minimum of spoilage.’
‘What is wrong with that? It is merely sound generalship.’
‘The wealth of merchant dynasties has been built on making sure those supply chains are not efficient. What Macharius sees as inefficiency, powerful men see as sources of revenue.’
‘Powerful, corrupt men,’ I said.
‘I do not disagree. The word to place the emphasis on is powerful, with money to spend and friends in high places. And Macharius is giving even the High Lords reasons to mistrust him.’