by Henry Zou
‘Gentlemen, please. I only ask to re-establish my case again. We know the Medina Corridor is of little strategic merit in the context of subsector conflict. We know the Archenemy are utilising slaves in mass excavations. We know all this.’ Gurion paused, panning his eyes across the gallery, waiting for a challenge.
‘Regardless of the Old Kings, the question remains why the Chaos vanguard would choose to attack Medina. At the very least, Imperial forces must defend core worlds until we can define Archenemy objectives and neutralise them. That is all we ask.’
Varuda opened his mouth to speak but was cut off by the resonant collision of metal on metal. It sounded like a forge anvil, slow and rhythmic hammering.
The gallery all turned to see the Space Marine clapping gently. The ceramite gauntlets that sheathed his massive paws reverberated through the chamber. Nodding his shaven head in approval, the Space Marine even dipped his head in respect to Gurion.
The lord inquisitor bowed once and retreated back to his seat next to Roth. As another officer took the stage to make his report on fuel supply, Roth whispered to Gurion, ‘Do you think you’ve swayed them?’
Gurion snorted. ‘Definitely not. But I’ve made my point. Besides, if all else fails I’ll force this down their throats.’ He dangled his rosette from a chain on his wrist.
Roth arched his eyebrows with equal parts surprise and revelation. He should have known. It was a fundamental principle taught to all ordos candidates – move in soft, then bring their whole damn world crashing down around their ears, if you have to. His mentors had coined the term ‘being a smiling pirahnagator’.
Roth’s reaction summoned a chuckle of amusement from Gurion. ‘Oh my Roth, you have a lot to learn regarding Inquisitorial diplomacy.’
Inquisitor Roth racked the slide against the receiver of his stripped-down plasma pistol, checking for slick lubrication.
The parts of his MKIII Sunfury were laid out neatly at the foot of Gurion’s bed. Barrel, cocking cam, trigger assembly, bolt assembly. The weapon was a monster, a gas-operated cyclical pistol, carapaced in plates of insulating brass.
Despite its firepower, the pistol was subtle and that was what Roth admired the most. It was a gentleman’s Parabellum with the bark of a military-grade cannon. He holstered it in a shoulder rig and continued with his equipment check.
He limbered up, checking the smoothness of his Spathaen fighting-plate. The fluid interlocking plates of chromatic silver were fitted in such a way as to allow complete fluidity of movement. Everything from the shoulder domes to the sleek shin greaves were designed to slip and turn the ballistic properties of an attack.
Satisfied with its condition, Roth then donned a knee-length tabard of tiny tessellating obsidian scales. As he moved, the tiny panes of psi-reactive glass clinked like the scales of a sea serpent.
Finally he checked the feedback of his power fist. His right hand hummed with a low magnetic drone. The weapon was a Tang War-pattern power fist, a slim-fitting silver gauntlet. Lighter and smaller than the standard designs issued amongst Imperial officers, this elegantly slender power fist had been seized from the armoury of a narco-baron on Sans Gaviria during Roth’s tenure as an interrogator. An artist, a gentleman and a connoisseur, the narco-baron had been like Roth in many ways. He had had a fine taste for artefacts of both utility and style.
Bastiel Silverstein was likewise making his own preparations. He had upended his luggage next to Gurion’s well-stocked sideboard, chasing shots of oak-aged bramsch as he sorted through his array of hunting equipment. For Silverstein, it was a matter of selecting the proper tools for the job.
Repeating crossbows, hunting autos, long-las, needle pistols and even a harpoon-throwing rig were piled up around him. From his carry cases, the huntsman selected a bullpup autogun, slender and spidery in frame. He played the weapon in his hands, feeling out its balance and its weight. Shaking his head, Silverstein placed it back in its case and took out a scoped autorifle. This one was much longer, its stock painted in dashes of greens and greys. Silverstein tested the trigger with a click, toggled the safety and racked the bolt. He fired again with an audible click. Satisfied, Silverstein slammed back a shot of bramsch and placed the weapon aside.
Ever conscious of style, the huntsman was still dressed in his tailored coat of green leather, with jackboots polished to gloss-backed sheen. Over this, he grudgingly struggled into a flak vest, a basic piece of Guard kit that Silverstein had hand-painted a woodland camouflage onto. The huntsman did not trust the tools of his trade to anyone else.
Strapping on a utility belt, the huntsman began to stuff items into the various pouches – composite-polymer cord, auspex, tranquillisers, bolos and a large serrated skinning knife. Looking pleased with his preparations, he stood up and bounced on the balls of his feet, listening for loose straps or rattling pouches. He was as quiet as a hunting cat.
Wordlessly, the inquisitor and his hunter continued to adjust buckles and load magazines, latching and unlatching various large and ominous luggage cases. Neither of them looked up as Gurion, Celeminé and a CantiCol officer entered the stateroom.
‘Are you planning on starting on a war?’ asked Gurion.
‘No. Joining one,’ replied Roth without looking up. He was working out a knot in the release latch of his harness with his teeth.
Gurion nodded sagely. ‘You will head the Task Group to Cantica then?’
‘If that’s where I’m needed.’
‘I knew you would.’
As he spoke, Roth glimpsed the newcomer in his peripheral vision – the young staff officer who had accompanied Gurion into the room. Although he wore the rank-sash of a captain, he was too young. The brown felt of his jacket was loose on him, and his white kepi hat sat oddly on his head.
‘Who is the young scrapper?’ Roth said, nodding towards the captain.
‘I am Captain Leyos Pradal, sir,’ announced the boy, his eyes staring straight ahead in severe military discipline.
Gurion smiled apologetically at Roth. ‘Captain Pradal will be your adjutant. He is a fine marksman and has seen combat experience.’
‘What experience?’ Silverstein snapped from across the room.
‘Oh… I… uhm, limited skirmishes with rogue bandits on Cantica,’ Pradal said.
‘What kind of bandits?’ Silverstein pressed.
‘Hinterland raiders,’ said Pradal.
‘You mean Cantican bandits who shared one autorifle between five men,’ Roth called to Silverstein.
Pradal puffed his chest and piped up again. ‘I also score ninety out of one hundred on our graded shooting classes,’ the young captain said.
‘Hitting a target at a shooting range is one thing. The game is different when you have explosives going off overhead and the enemy is rushing you with a large axe,’ Silverstein explained as he slipped rounds into a curved magazine.
‘I see what you are saying,’ Captain Pradal said. ‘I am not here to boost your combat capability, but to liaise on your behalf with Cantican command staff. I can look after myself.’
Roth sighed. Gurion did not look pleased either. The last thing Roth needed was an inexperienced field officer on his task group. But if it would help smooth over some of the friction with High Command, then perhaps he could accommodate. Roth nodded curtly at Captain Pradal, then returned to his preparations.
Gurion picked his way around the clutter of spilled baggage and settled down in his armchair. ‘Before you do go, I should tell you that there is already another Conclave Task Group on Cantica headed by Marcus Delahunt. They have been there since almost the beginning.’
Roth spared Gurion a look as he counted out fusion canisters for his pistol. ‘I know Marcus. So why are our services still required? Or perhaps I am missing something?’
‘We believe they are dead.’
‘Ah,’ said Roth, his expression unchange
d.
‘High Command has not established any comms with Cantica for the past twenty-seven days. Likewise, the Conclave hasn’t been able to make astropathic contact with Inquisitor Delahunt for that same time.’
‘Convenient.’
‘Roth, please listen to me. If you still choose to go ahead onto Cantica, we need you to find Delahunt and to extract intelligence about the state of Cantica.’
‘This keeps getting better, sir,’ smiled Roth.
‘I will contact you during the Cantican dawn on the fifth day, by astropath. Have Celeminé prepare herself for conveyance. In the event I am not able to reach you, I will repeat the conveyance once every second day, for a week. After that…’
‘You can assume we’re dead,’ Roth finished for him.
‘Be serious, Obodiah,’ Gurion said, assuming his paternal tone. ‘We cannot afford any chances here. You will be carving your path into the lion’s den. Are you certain you are prepared to do this?’
Roth unholstered his Sunfury and loaded a fusion canister into the pistol grip. With habitual ease he expelled a tiny spur of gas from the venting assembly, toggling the weapon to dormant-safe.
‘Well, Master Gurion, of course I’ll go. Dressed as I am now, it would be terribly embarrassing of me not to.’
Chapter Three
Byrsa Prime had fallen. Sibboeth had fallen. Iberia had fallen. The city-states of Cantica were collapsing and Central Buraghand would be no different.
Although Cantica was the defensive buttress of the Medina Corridor, its military had fallen under the invasion. Within the subsector, Cantica was strategically insignificant, yet within Medina the planet was a lone sentry. The archeo-world, its ancient geography appearing as an orb of yellowed parchment from orbit, had been assaulted with the full force of the Archenemy invasion, a heavy blitzing attack that had allowed the Cantican Colonial Regiments no time to formulate a cohesive defence. The CantiCol, a formation of light infantry spread thin over the entire star system, had not been enough to even temporarily slow the Archenemy momentum.
The invasion had begun with a surgical, probing attack. It had started four months previously with an aerial deployment of Archenemy Harrier-class raiders that perforated the Imperial Naval pickets.
Corsairs of Khorsabad Maw – the Ironclad, raiders well versed in the art of amphibious warfare – stormed the beachheads of the Cantican Gulf. An enemy force, primarily infantry numbering some one hundred and fifty thousand.
In the eleventh week of invasion, Lord General Dray Gravina wrote in his journal, ‘The Archenemy, having resolved to make an amphibious landing, have amassed their forces in a stalemate along our coastal defences. It is our intention to deny the Archenemy access to inland routes. This shall be achieved by concentrating our resources in the sea-forts of the eastern and northern Gulf. It is a favourable opportunity to allow the enemy to disperse themselves like waves against our curtain defences.’
In that event, it was precisely what the Archenemy pre-empted. The Cantican Guardsmen were stretched thin across the coast against a diversionary assault. In the sixteenth week, the Ironclad began aerial deployment into the undefended Cantican heartland. Legions of mechanised and motorised infantry and fighting vehicles were inserted, almost directly into population centres. Significant urban sprawl covered the majority of Cantican continents, yet these low-lying clay forts and sprawling terracotta cities were prime targets for high-altitude deployment.
What followed would be remembered as the Atrocities. Estimates made at a later date indicated that the total number of civilians and prisoners of war massacred during the first two weeks of the Archenemy occupation was well over four million.
An Imperial missionary by the name of Villeneuve made pict-recordings and first-hand spool reels of the Atrocities. He died but his recordings were later retrieved by Imperial intelligence. The infamous Villeneuve recordings revealed mass live burials, and slave columns marched into the wastelands, presumably for excavation. Lord General Gravina was publicly executed. The Archenemy unceremoniously dragged his body, in full military regalia, through the streets of the government district.
The journal entries and letters of dead civilians uncovered from the ashes were the worst. Within the scorched pages of a diary, one man wrote, ‘I fear I have gone mad with the obscenity of these circumstances. Yesterday the occupiers discovered the language scholam where the local children have been hiding. They were loaded onto trucks and driven to the outskirts of the city. I do not know where those children may be. They were screaming “save our lives” as they passed my house.’
The conquest of Cantica, the largest core world of the Medina Corridor, heralded the beginning of the end for the Imperial war effort.
Roth could see the plumes of smoke that rolled off the shattered spine of Buraghand from the high altitude of his stratocraft. The panoramic wilderness of bomb-flattened debris and impact craters made him realise he was in the land of the enemy now.
The stratocraft swept in on an arcing descent. It hurtled low, hugging the ocean surface of the Cantican Gulf to reduce its auspex signature. The servitor pilot skimmed so close, its turbine burners hollowed out a tail of steam and boiling water in its wake. On the horizon Roth could see Buraghand, the central city-state of Cantica, rise like a thousand-tiered pyramid.
Snarling hard on thunderous thrusters, the stratocraft skimmed along the western coastal ridge of Buraghand. The craft was a modified Naval sixty-tonner, its armaments stripped to carry exhaust dampeners, counter-stealth generators and extended fuel capacity. Had it been spotted from the ground, the craft would have appeared as a dart, its needle-like cockpit perched on massive quad-engines. Toothless, sharp, its profile had a minimal auspex cross-section and its dampeners reduced its thermal footprint, rendering it almost invisible to Archenemy surveillance.
It traced the seawall, a towering curtain of mosaic that fortified the seaboard for fifty kilometres. They trailed it for forty, until the servitor pilot found a breach within its defences. The stratocraft shot in through the opening, flying no more than twenty metres above sea level.
They were going so fast, Roth was overcome with inertia. The visual blur was too fast for his eyes. He barely caught glimpses of the Cantican city, structures of terracotta and heavy copper shaped in ascending tiers.
The city was defined by its masonry. Shaped without plumb lines or spirit levels, the masons seemingly improvised as they built. The buildings were teetering affairs, with blunt edges, curvaceous parapets and leaning walls that lent the city a dizzying effect. Between the structures, webs of open-air staircases connected the multiple city strata from the minarets of the upper tiers to the fossilised ruins many kilometres below the ground.
Still maintaining a recklessly low skim, the stratocraft entered the stack ruins of lower Buraghand. An archaeological wasteland spilled down the slopes from the city-state’s apex in a rambling scree. Broken-toothed ruins chopped past them, so precariously close they whispered past their wingtips with subsonic sighs. Finally, the stratocraft banked hard, rolling almost belly up before it decelerated underneath a mess of exposed wooden frame supported by crumbling pillars. Roth could not tell what the building had once been, perhaps a shrine judging by the copper dome that dominated the roof. Regardless, the rusted ceiling would shield the craft from enemy radar sweeps.
The stratocraft’s monstrously snorting thrusters settled into a soft purr as the servitor-pilot powered off. He deactivated the stratocraft into hibernation. Slowly and wordlessly, the members of Roth’s task group emerged from the lander, weapons ready.
Inquisitor Roth stalked out of the craft first, hunched low, the chrome of his Spathaen fighting-plate frictionless and silent. With a running crouch, he sprinted for cover behind a revetment of rubble. Drawing the plasma pistol from his chest rig, Roth took up a firing position and scanned his surroundings. Turning to the stratocraft, the inquisit
or signalled the all-clear.
Captain Pradal and Silverstein appeared next. With practiced precision they sprinted down the ramp, boots crunching on the carpet of crushed stone as they went to ground, taking up firing positions on Roth’s uncovered flanks. Celeminé was the last to emerge, clad in her egg-yellow bodyglove that seemed at odds with the desolate environment.
‘Get on your guts!’ Roth hissed from his position. Celeminé settled into an awkward crouch, suddenly aware that the wilderness of disintegrating masonry could hide any number of unseen gunmen.
‘Silverstein, I need you to fix me a position,’ the inquisitor said as he squinted into the ragged flames on the horizon. To Roth, Upper Buraghand was just a silhouette of ragged spine-like buildings, but to a huntsman with bio-scopic lenses it was a different matter.
The xenos game-hunter reared up, the yellow lenses of his pupil augmentations narrowed to targeting reticules as they homed in on distant targets. A tabulation of data began to scroll down the periphery of his vision, analysing the distance, climate and movement signatures.
++Buraghand, Upper city state – Cantica: 7255 metres distant.
Visibility Spectrums: Noon Visible Heat/Wind: High/High Movement Signatures: 41%.+++
‘Sire, I’m picking up a lot of movement, probably enemy patrols. If we stick to a north-east route, we should avoid the majority of it,’ said Silverstein.
Roth nodded and turned to the others. ‘Delahunt’s last known position was a garrison fort in Upper Buraghand, roughly seven kilometres due north. That’s our destination. This is enemy territory now, so stay sharp and keep moving. Good?’
The others primed their weapons and nodded. As one, they rose and picked their way through the ruins towards the burning metropolis. Far away, the echo of sporadic gunfire and the screams that followed were carried on gusts of wind and wisps of blackened ash.
They edged into the desolate, shell-scarred remnants of a fortress compound. Within the terracotta walls, the marshalling ground was pockmarked with shrapnel and shot. An artillery shell had found its mark in the central keep, caving the command tower inwards like a collapsed ribcage. Blood and death had seeped into the porous earth and a pall of gun smoke still hung heavily in the air.