Honour Imperialis - Aaron Dembski-Bowden

by Warhammer 40K

  The only other vessels in dock were the newly arrived Purgatorio, a Dictator-class beauty, and a pair of Firestorm-class frigates; they had been escorting a small convoy consisting of a nimble Guard carrier, two bloated supply ships and the Ursa, a superheavy transport.

  As Rosenkrantz banked towards the flotilla, a small alarm bell rang in the cockpit. Benedict reached over and disabled it before scanning his runescreen and rapidly digesting the data it was feeding him. ‘Flight lieutenant, we have a proximity warning, port-side aft.’

  Rosenkrantz stared out of the canopy, but all she could see was stars.

  ‘I’ve got nothing.’ Her instrument panel suddenly came alive followed by an explosive force from port that violently rocked the gun-freighter. ‘What the hell was that?’

  In answer to her question a pair of Interceptors surged past them, rolling wing over wing and forcing her to veer to starboard. Like a pair of shepherds, the fightercraft guided the assault carrier off course.

  ‘I’m getting a vox message,’ Benedict informed her, clutching his headset. ‘We are ordered to abandon our present heading. They are transmitting new coordinates.’

  ‘Confirm and execute,’ Rosenkrantz ordered, unbuckling her safety harness to get a better view out of the reverse of the canopy. Then she saw it: the oily shimmer of reflected stars. They had nearly run into a cloaked vessel: something with stealth plating or an advanced optical shielding system. ‘Scan for threshold beacons, taxiway signatures…’

  ‘Affirmative. I have a partial reading for you, flight lieutenant.’

  ‘Proceed.’

  Rosenkrantz watched the data flick up on her sensorium: Dread Sovereign – Inquisitorial Corvette. ‘Cease datastream,’ she snapped, ‘and terminate the scan.’

  ‘But flight lieutenant–’

  ‘Do it! And give me those coordinates,’ she said, strapping herself back in.

  ‘Affirmative.’

  Rosenkrantz heard footsteps on the companionway.

  ‘Skipper.’ It was Spreckels, one of the Spectre’s gunners. Rosenkrantz didn’t turn around.

  ‘Spreckels, I’m a bit busy at the moment.’

  ‘Chief’s respects, skipper. He wondered if he might have a word–’

  ‘Tell him I have no idea what beats a quartz flush in crazy eights.’

  ‘…on a secure channel.’

  ‘What?’ Rosenkrantz peered around with a scowl. Spreckels wasn’t the only one in the companionway. ‘What is this, a vrekkin’ town meeting?’

  When Spreckels realised that there was someone behind him the colour dropped from his face and he pinned his back to the cockpit wall. Krieg stepped forwards, fully clothed this time. For less licentious reasons, Rosenkrantz wished that he wasn’t.

  ‘Commissar,’ she acknowledged, taking in the gleaming black greatcoat and peaked cap. Krieg ducked in under the canopy, past a completely oblivious Benedict and spotted their Interceptor escort.

  ‘Problems, flight lieutenant?’ Krieg asked her. Rosenkrantz looked at the fighters, then back at the commissar.

  ‘One or two.’

  III

  The aircraft found Deliverance in low orbit, nestled between the two portly transports, at the rear of the convoy. The Defiant-class carrier rode out the swells, the blade of the Voss-pattern prow cutting through the ionosphere.

  As the Spectre’s ramp caressed the deck Rosenkrantz’s flight crew crowded the hold but parted like drapes as Krieg dropped from the companionway, cutting a black swathe through the Navy gunners in his boots, breeches, leather coat and cap.

  He was met on the flight deck by a master sergeant and a grizzled captain who sported a cocky smile and a limp. Captain Rask apologised for the major’s absence, explaining that Deliverance had just been ordered off station and that Mortensen had been called to a meeting with the Brigadier. Rask seemed likeable and tried to make regimental small talk. The lacklustre exchange barely carried them across the hangar. The surly sergeant continued to look as if he’d just swallowed a bug and eyeballed Krieg from below his crooked beret with obvious suspicion and sour hostility. His name was stencilled into his flak jacket: ‘Conklin’. It might as well have read ‘Maniac’. Krieg noticed that his hand never strayed far from the fat autopistol that dangled from his belt. He hoped that it was a veteran’s twitch rather than a signal of open hostility at his arrival.

  As they made their way around the stacked freight and super-charged fire support variants of the redoubtable Centaur chassis, Krieg noticed Rask’s limp become more pronounced, attempting to keep up with his own bold strides.

  ‘Injury?’ Krieg enquired.

  ‘Permanent,’ Rask replied with a smile.

  ‘Want to see something permanent?’ the master sergeant droned, holding back with Rask and sticking two fingers up at the captain. The bionic replacements hung in a provocative ‘V’. Rask beamed at the sergeant with irresistible charm. Conklin just chuckled to himself.

  Krieg’s modest quarters were situated on the deck above the storm-troopers’ billets; his superior’s were port-side aft, with the officer’s quarters of the 364th. It was clear that Rask was thrilled to hand the cadet-commissar over to his assigned aide, Specialist Golliant, at the door. The captain then went about his business, leaving Conklin to strike up a filthy cigar and wait a little way down the corridor. A young Volscian Guardsman walked passed, dripping with Tactica-unapproved adornments like a bandana and a sheath of stiletto knives across his chest. Krieg went to remonstrate the hiver but caught himself: he’d only been on board a few minutes. As the Volscian passed Conklin, he hovered. The sergeant stamped his boot and hissed, ‘Boo!’ driving the young soldier off down the corridor.

  To Krieg’s relief Golliant wasn’t one of Mortensen’s men, he was a thoroughbred Volscian – he had the square jaw and grim, garrison world eyes of that besieged planet. Golliant was unusually broad, even for a native Volscian, his powerhouse shoulders rounding off girder-thick arms and a neck that would have been at home on a grox. He’d been a champion wrestler before PDF and subsequent Guard service intervened and had lost all but the gargled whisper of a voice to an early opponent who’d garrotted him with a length of razor wire. This wasn’t an illegal move on Volscia and Golliant had fought on and won the bout. He still wore the ragged, stapled scar across his throat to prove it.

  In the Shadow Brigade his monstrous biceps had found natural work wrapped around an equally monstrous heavy bolter but he was now assigned as a cadet-commissar’s aide. An unusual move – but Krieg thought he could follow his superior’s thinking. As a representative of the Commissariat amongst mean, hive-world trash like the Volscians, Krieg would need someone to watch his back on the battlefield and just about anywhere else for that matter. The commissar clearly trusted in Golliant’s simple loyalty and had even more faith in the nightmare wrestler’s ability to dissuade any but the most foolish of gangers from interfering with the cadet-commissar’s business.

  ‘Commissar Udeskee will see you now, sir,’ Golliant rasped and opened the door. Krieg mumbled thanks and ducked inside.

  Udeskee’s quarters were a marked difference to the spartan simplicity of his tent back at Camp Carfax. Early Farranbourgs and other pieces of quality furniture littered the room, including a qualmwood desk blanketed with parchments, optipicts, data-slates and hololithic maps. There were several tapestries and a nicra mural, depicting one of the Emperor’s early conquests in the Anoarch systems, dominated one wall. The fittings took the cold edge off the otherwise functional cabin and provided a contrast to the hyperbaric oxygen tent in the middle of the room.

  Two of the commissar’s attendants busied themselves over by the desk, momentarily flicking their eyes up at him before returning to their work. Pushing through the small forest of plastic sheeting, Krieg made his way inside the oxygen tent. Through the last sheet, the cadet-commissar could make out a bed and
the wet hackle of laboured breathing.

  ‘It’s there to protect me from you, not the other way around, you fool,’ came a bitter voice. It was brittle with age but still possessed the mettle of a man used to giving orders.

  Parting the curtain, Krieg stepped through to the chamber beyond. He blinked and rubbed his nostrils in the oxygen-rich atmosphere. The bed was empty, with only a striking young attendant changing some kind of catheter arrangement on the far side. Upon seeing Krieg, the attendant’s face creased with sudden churlishness, losing none of its winsome quality, before he became lost in the folds of the plastic sheeting. Having only spent a number of hours as an Imperial commissar, Krieg had already grown used to such a reaction and thought nothing more of the insolence. ‘So, you’re Krieg, are you?’ came the same voice.

  Krieg turned to greet his superior, expecting some steely-eyed Imperial hero to be sitting there with a boltgun wound and a glass of amasec. Words from the Infantryman’s Uplifting Primer suddenly came to him: ‘The Emperor looks down on the man who expects nothing with benefaction, for he shall never be disappointed.’ As a young Legionnaire, Krieg had found these words to be at best cryptic and at worst completely unhelpful. Staring at the desiccated little basket case sitting in a wheeled-chair by the bed, the commissar couldn’t help but feel cheated. This was Udeskee? Regimental Commissar Udeskee – his sponsor and mentor?

  ‘Like staring into a crystal ball, eh?’ the commissar laughed nastily through a device that looked like a water pipe inserted into his neck. His eyes were cloudy and his skin scaly and stretched over his sharp bones. His immaculate greatcoat hung by the bed, but he still wore his eagle-emblazoned cap.

  ‘Sir?’ Krieg still couldn’t get his head around it.

  ‘Accelerated decrepitude,’ the man explained, each breath an agony. ‘Symptom of Mortlock’s Disease. Caught it on Pariah V. Don’t worry, it’s past the contagious phase. One sneeze from you could kill me though, so keep your distance.’

  Krieg took an obligatory step back. ‘You sent for me, sir.’

  ‘I’ve been through your records,’ Udeskee cackled. ‘Well, there’s no fault in proficiency. But, you lack experience and you’ve probably already got a rod up your backside about the state of this regiment and both of those things are going to get you killed around here.’

  ‘If I’m responsible for the welfare of these men, how can I let them indulge in practice that is detrimental to their physical and spiritual safety?’ Krieg entreated. ‘I had to walk past thirty Tactica citations just to get up here.’

  The attendant suddenly reappeared between them and straightened the plastek of the curtain, resonating hostility towards Krieg that was clearly lost on the commissar. He busied himself with the valves and various pipes running into Udeskee’s enfeebled body.

  ‘Patience. The Imperium wasn’t built in one day,’ Udeskee assured him. ‘You think it can be: so did your predecessor and see where that got him. Not a bad thing you’re assigned to the storm-troopers. But make no mistakes, Mortensen is not a man to be trifled with. He expects a member of the Commissariat to be a pain, an inconvenience – but start stuffing the Imperial Creed down his throat and waving your pistol around and you’re not likely to make it down the corridor.’

  ‘Has the galaxy gone mad?’ Krieg exploded. ‘It is the Commissariat that should be feared…’

  ‘Now you’re sounding like an inquisitor,’ the commissar told him grimly. Krieg swallowed and found himself staring at the floor. ‘A dead one. The major won’t need to do anything. His men will do it for him, without orders. They are fiercely loyal and won’t need much excuse to dispose of one of our kind. And as for the Volscians: most of them would gut you soon as look at you.’

  ‘What am I even doing here?’ Krieg put to the commissar, knowing deep down that there was more than one answer to that question.

  ‘The Emperor’s work… Slowly. Change, at a pace. The Volscians are by and large hive gangers, and savage ones at that. Go back far enough and each them has a common ancestor who fought in an affiliated confederation of clans. For most of these people, ancient grudges have been put to rest and a common cause embraced.’

  ‘The Emperor’s cause,’ Krieg reminded him.

  Udeskee gibbered to himself. ‘Wring the starch from your shirt, lad,’ the commissar finally scolded.

  ‘Or the blood, if I don’t play dice.’

  ‘You said it.’

  The two men stared at one another for a while.

  ‘What am I to do?’

  ‘Your job,’ the commissar spat. ‘The Imperial Guard is our lord’s bastion among the stars. Each regiment, each troop, is unique and has something different to offer the Imperial cause. A commissar’s role is more than just citation and the sensationalism of battlefield executions. Lead by example, from the front. Let them see the doctrines you prize so highly in your words and actions. Inspire these men and bring them back to the one true path. In turn, it is your responsibility to understand these people, their history, culture, their way of life and the tragedies that have befallen them. Familiarise yourself with their equipment and tactics: “When in Terra” et cetera. You must be their voice out there: where, despite their gallantry and servitude, they’ll be most misunderstood. Do what any commissar must, but try and bury these men wholesale and they’ll send you back to the Pontificals with your balls in a sling. You won’t be attached to them, of course.’

  ‘Charming,’ said Krieg.

  Udeskee began to pull at the swollen knuckles of one crooked hand, the pain obvious on his face. The belligerent aide swooped in to help the aged commissar, the smooth olive skin of his own digits the very antithesis of Udeskee’s spotted, wrinkled claws. With some gentle persuasion, the aide managed to slip the commissar’s seal ring from his crippled finger and placed it on the bed in front of Krieg. He picked it up and inspected the winged-skull signet of the Imperial Commissariat it bore.

  ‘Put it on,’ Udeskee instructed. Krieg slipped it dauntlessly on his finger. ‘Do your duty. And mine. A load of good it’s going to do on the finger of a ship-bound cripple. You carry the full authority of an Imperial commissar in your right hand. Use it wisely. I’ll sign off on your determinations, if you’re around long enough to make any.’

  Krieg looked up from the ring. Then it struck him. The young attendant was still holding the commissar’s lame hand. Udeskee appeared to be holding it back. The commissar attempted a bleak smile. ‘Try not to get yourself killed on your first day,’ he cackled. ‘Might want to insert a few more flak plates in that coat of yours eh? Might I suggest a few in the back as well?’

  Krieg saluted and left Udeskee to his sick humour. As he pushed his way back through the oxygen tent’s plastic sheeting, he could feel the bile slowly creeping up the back of his throat: a sensation of disgust, though not in the way he might have expected. It seemed Udeskee was infected with more than just Mortlock’s Disease. He was infected with complacency; the lack of vigilance that allows other scourges to take hold of men’s souls.

  As he left Udeskee’s quarters, the signet heavy on his finger, Krieg couldn’t help but feel conflicted, his own soul swiftly becoming a battleground between the poison in his ears and the steel in his heart.

  And then she shot him.

  Mortensen had half-expected to lose consciousness again but the oblivion never came. The battle-sisters were summoned and pulled his lifeless arms over their broad, armoured shoulders. Between them they dragged the major around the other side of the table and dumped his rag doll body in the remaining chair, pinning him against it with the side of the table to keep him upright. The battle-sister sat opposite, boring her interrogator’s eyes into him. Her henchwomen stood at ease either side of him.

  ‘What did you stick me with, bi–’

  ‘Name and rank,’ the battle-sister cut in with imperious authority.

  ‘It might disappo
int you to learn that this isn’t the first time I’ve been tortured,’ the major informed her, his words dripping with scorn.

  ‘You can relax,’ the battle-sister told him, amused at her own little joke. ‘I don’t intend laying a finger on you.’

  ‘More’s the pity.’ Mortensen coughed a laugh and gave her a dirty grin. Then he coughed again. The grin faded; the sister waited. It suddenly felt as though his throat was bone dry and tightening.

  ‘Come on,’ the battle-sister taunted, ‘it’s easy. My name is Diamanta Santhonax, Canoness Regular of the Order of the Immaculate Flame. Now, trooper, your name and your rank.’

  Mortensen screwed up his eyes and gagged. It felt like he was being strangled with glass wire. No air was getting to his brain and the veins in his temples pulsed horribly. Networks of blood vessels bulged across his neck and face.

  ‘M-M-Mortensen!’ he blurted painfully. Something gave and air surged down his throat, rejuvenating his lungs and making him feel dizzy and warm inside. ‘Troop Major Zane Mortensen, Redemption Corps.’ It was out before he knew he had said it.

  Pulling back the longslide on the needler, the canoness deposited a second empty crystal canister on the table. Picking it up between finger and thumb she held it in the dim light. ‘The first was the enhanced venom of the Catachan lugwasp. Actually quite harmless, but you won’t have control of your lower body for some time.’

  ‘You’d better get a mop then,’ the major scoffed.

  ‘This, however, is synthesised. A veracity compellent. I don’t know what they make that from. Classified. I do know that it’s very powerful: I’ve tried it myself. The Sisters of the Immaculate Flame prize truth over all things, so if you want to keep breathing, you’ll give me the truth and nothing but. I wouldn’t want you to choke on your own lies.’