by Dan Abnett
‘That was my role, sir.’
‘You had agents in the field?’
‘I did, Lord Commander,’ Rukhsana said. ‘Most of them were long-range observers and spotters.’
Namatjira consulted the data-slate. ‘But you had at least one intelligence officer inside Mon Lo the morning this hubbub began?’ He waved his hand distractedly in the direction of the window.
Rukhsana pursed her lips and looked down. ‘Yes, sir, I did. Konig Heniker.’
‘Heniker? Yes, I know him. He’s a reliable man. What happened to him?’
‘He had entered the city covertly once already, sir, and briefed me afterwards. His intelligence was of good quality. He inserted that morning, very early, intending to collect data on the Kurnaul and north wall areas. He never came back.’
‘Ah, I see,’ the Lord Commander sighed. ‘Thank you, Uxor Rukhsana.’
Honen Mu stiffened. The ’cept link between uxors was never that strong, especially between a fading veteran and a blossoming youngster, but Honen Mu could feel it all the same, a cloying dampness in the mind. Rukhsana was lying or, if not lying, shielding some truth.
She looked at Rukhsana. The other woman did not meet her eyes. She turned to go.
‘You might as well stay, Uxor Rukhsana,’ Namatjira told her. ‘You’ll hear of this soon enough.’
He looked at Honen Mu. ‘Uxor Honen. My compliments. You, of course, know something these others do not. Tell them, because it’s about to become common knowledge.’
Honen Mu cleared her throat. ‘Tel Utan was taken thanks to the secret contrivance of the Astartes Alpha Legion,’ she said.
Major General Dev’s mouth dropped open. Rukhsana blinked.
‘That’s right, the Astartes have sent forces to assist us,’ Namatjira said. ‘Not before time. Lord Alpharius has committed units to help us break this struggle. We will meet with him tomorrow, openly.’
Namatjira rose to his feet and looked at them. ‘In his messages to me, the Lord Alpharius has confided that the First Primarch personally urged the Alpha Legion to assist with this compliance. Furthermore, he has recognised that there is something about Nurth that defies conventional attack, and claims to possess special techniques that will remediate the Nurthene’s ghastly wizardry. Those techniques seemed to work at Tel Utan, as Uxor Honen will testify. Let’s hope they work here too.’
Namatjira looked around at Major General Dev. ‘So it’s all right, Dev,’ he smirked, ‘the Astartes are coming to rescue your reputation.’
‘I’ll take care of my own reputation, thank you, sir,’ Dev replied.
‘Good man, well spoken. Mu? You’re the only one of us who has dealt with the Legion face to face. What do you make of them?’
‘I have found them to be highly effective, sir,’ Honen replied. ‘They are Astartes, after all.’
Namatjira nodded, but seemed unconvinced. ‘I cannot help wishing,’ he remarked, ‘that it was a different Legion coming to our side. One of the first, the old breed. Lord Alpharius and his warriors are comparative newcomers, with only a few decades’ experience. I know, I know, they’re Astartes, and our beloved Emperor does not found a Legion without full confidence in its abilities, but still…’
‘What is it that troubles you particularly, sir?’ Honen asked.
Namatjira frowned. ‘They’re not like the other Legions. They don’t fight like the other Legions. They practise war in the most insidious way. Guilliman has said to me, on more than one occasion, that he finds their methods underhand and discreditable. They are sly and devious, and unnecessarily opaque.’
‘Perhaps,’ Dev ventured, ‘that is why Lord Horus thought them ideally suited to this devilish war?’
Namatjira nodded. ‘Perhaps. All I know is, they were already operating here, undisclosed, before I knew anything about it. Name me one Lord Commander who would be pleased to discover other men fighting his wars for him, without invitation, consultation, or consent?’
‘It certainly lacks respect,’ replied Dev, ‘for them to have got involved without your knowledge, sir.’
‘Respect be damned!’ said Namatjira. ‘What about strategy? How can I properly orchestrate a war if I don’t know what a part of my force is up to? The potential for contradiction and misunderstanding is unacceptable. It amounts to manipulation, and that’s the Alpha Legion’s trademark. I do not appreciate being played.’
He sat back down and stared thoughtfully at his pet. ‘It makes me wonder about this present fiasco. I do hope it’s not significant that the moment the Alpha Legion embroils itself in my affairs, things go to hell in a land speeder.’
THERE WERE PREPARATIONS to be made. The Lord Commander dismissed them, and Major General Dev left the room with the two uxors.
‘Dinas?’ Namatjira called when the door had closed behind them.
One of the Lucifer Blacks moved quickly to his side. The Blacks did not walk, they padded, as silently and fluidly as cats. As if recognising an alpha male, the thylacene got up and moved out of the man’s way.
‘Uxor Rukhsana?’ the Black asked.
Namatjira grinned. ‘You noticed it too?’
Dinas Chayne looked identical to the other Lucifer Blacks in the room. The brigade made no great show of rank or duty markings. Only an expert in Late Strife Era regimental ephemera would have recognised the trio of embossings on his left shoulder plate that identified him as a bajolur-captain. ‘It was obvious in her body language, sir,’ Chayne said. ‘The set of her head, the position of her feet.’
‘Hiding something?’
‘Undoubtedly.’
Namatjira nodded. ‘Yes, I thought that. Place her under scrutiny. These are depressing times, Dinas, when we have to watch our own shadows.’
‘There are shadows in our shadows, sir,’ Chayne replied, citing an old Ischian proverb. ‘This war has become a business of counterfeit and duplicity. We manipulate, and are in turn manipulated.’
The Lord Commander shook his head sadly. ‘It is the latter I seek to avoid. Place her under scrutiny.’
‘UXOR?’
Rukhsana stopped in her tracks and looked back. The palace hallway was busy with mustering troops and servants hurrying with platters of food. A servitor was lighting the night lamps. Honen Mu stood a few steps behind Rukhsana, staring at her.
‘Was there something else, Mu?’ Rukhsana asked.
‘I’m sorry you lost your agent,’ Mu said.
‘So am I.’
‘Is… is everything all right?’ Honen Mu asked. ‘What do you mean?’
The tiny girl shrugged. ‘I don’t know you, uxor, but I am your friend. I sensed a tension in you back there.’
Rukhsana combed her long, straight hair back behind her ears with her fingers. ‘We were called to attend an angry Lord Commander, uxor. I think tension may have been inevitable.’
Mu nodded.
‘Are you accusing me of something?’ Rukhsana asked. ‘Of course not. I was simply offering my support, uxor to uxor. If support were necessary.’
‘It’s not. But, thank you.’ They nodded to each other.
‘Tomorrow, then.’
‘Tomorrow.’
Honen Mu stood and watched Rukhsana walk away until she was lost in the crowd. Then she turned and went to locate her waiting aides.
They rose like hungry fledglings as she entered the anteroom, snapping and yabbering all at once.
‘Settle!’ Mu ordered.
‘What’s happening?’ Nefferti asked.
‘What did the Lord Commander say?’Jhani wanted to know.
‘Settle!’ she repeated, snapping with her ’cept. They fell quiet. ‘Tiphaine?’ Mu said. The oldest of her blonde aides looked up brightly. ‘Yes, uxor?’
‘Go and find Boone for me.’
‘Boone? Really, uxor?’
‘Just go and do it, girl,’ Mu snapped. Tiphaine darted away, slamming the anteroom door behind her. The other aides began whispering and chattering to one another.
<
br /> I will not see the Chiliad disgraced, Mu thought to herself, I simply will not permit it. If there is canker in our ranks, I will root it out before it comes to light. The Geno Chiliad, worthy Old Hundred, will clean its own house. I will not leave it to others to purify us of contamination.
‘Uxor?’ Jhani called.
‘What?’
‘There is a hetman waiting to take audience with you. He has been waiting three hours.’
‘A hetman? Which hetman?’ Mu asked. ‘Soneka of the Dancers,’ Jhani replied.
MU WALKED INTO the side room where her aides had left Soneka waiting. Rush lights flamed in the wall brackets, and myrrh had been left burning in small scoop bowls. The shutters had been lifted, so that the cold and clear night air could be admitted. Through the window, Mu could see the distant outline of Mon Lo, shimmering in the darkness. The dull echo of its screaming came in on the wind. ‘Peto,’ she said.
He rose to his feet from a low couch. He had been cleaned up a little, but there was no disguising the fact that he was thin and unshaven. His clothes were ragged and ill-used, and he had been given a non-issue canvas jacket to wear.
‘Uxor,’ he nodded.
She went straight over to him, and hugged him, her small embrace barely encircling his upper arms.
‘Oh, I thought you were dead!’ she cried into his chest.
‘So did I,’ he admitted.
She stepped back to look at him. ‘I was told Tel Khat was a massacre! A surprise attack… they said no one made it out of the Nurthene ambush.’
‘Virtually no one did,’ he replied. ‘I got lucky. With Lon and Shah and about a dozen others, I fought my way out. It was a terrible day. We were…’ he paused. ‘We were almost dead, every step of the way. We fled into the hills behind the Tel, and laid low in the cave pools for a day and a night. When the place went quiet, we dared to come out. The Nurthene had gone. Everyone we found had been butchered. So we trekked across country, made it to CR668, and picked up a transport there.’
Mu sat down on one of the couches and reached out with her ’cept. Nefferti came in immediately.
‘Food and wine, girl, right now,’ Mu ordered.
Nefferti ran off to do her uxor’s bidding.
‘They’ve brought me food and wine already, Honen,’ Soneka said, sitting down on the couch opposite her.
‘You’re starved. You need more,’ she replied. ‘You say Lon made it? Shah?’
He nodded. ‘Both of them, eight other troopers. We lost Attix, Gahz, all the other bashaws. It was a slaughter.’
He wiped his good hand across his mouth. A faltering smile appeared from under it, as if by some conjuring trick. ‘The Dancers have danced their last, I’m afraid, uxor.’
She hung her head. ‘At least you’re alive.’
‘At least that.’
He drew a breath and stared at her. ‘What happened about the body, Honen?’ he asked quietly. ‘About the what?’
‘The body.’
She hesitated. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Peto.’ He frowned at her. ‘Yes, you do. The thing Bronzi voxed you about from CR345.’
‘Voxed? When was this?’
His eyes grew narrower. ‘About a week ago, the day before the massacre. Bronzi spoke to you on encrypt for several minutes.’
Honen Mu returned his look cautiously. ‘I swear on the Emperor’s life, Peto, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I took no call from Hurtado.’
She looked at him as if he were slightly mad.
Peto Soneka felt an odd sensation, as if the world were gently swallowing him up. The last five days had been little short of hell, but he’d weathered everything by focusing on one thought. Bronzi’s words.
My ace in the hole.
‘Where’s Bronzi?’ Soneka asked.
‘Look,’ said Honen Mu. ‘There seems to have been an unfortunate lapse in the channels of communication. Why don’t you start from the beginning, Peto?’
There’s been no lapse, Soneka thought. We spoke to you. I heard your voice on the vox set. You were the only one who knew. And the next day Tel Khat was annihilated. Oh shit, you’re part of it.
The chamber door opened behind Mu.
‘Uxor? You sent for me?’
Mu looked around. Franco Boone stepped into the room. He ambled forwards, smiling at Mu, then blinked in surprise as he recognised Soneka.
‘Dancer het? God’s grace have me, I thought you were dead, man!’
‘Apparently not,’ Soneka said, forcing a smile onto his face. Franco Boone, the genewhip? What the hell is he doing here? Unless… he’s part of it too.
‘We were just talking,’ Mu said. ‘Peto was telling me how he’d survived the ambush.’
‘I’d like to hear that myself,’ Boone grinned. ‘Juicy stuff, I bet. What happened, Soneka? I heard it was bloody.’
He sat down on the couch beside the uxor, looking at Soneka eagerly. Boone was a powerfully built man, with a nose like an axe’s blade and a small tuft of black beard on his chin. He was uterine, but his abnormally high IQ, an atavistic aspect that was occasionally generated by the Chiliad’s gene pool, had qualified him for the special role of genewhip. Genewhips were the strict regulators of the Chiliad’s ethos, specially empowered to maintain levels of conduct and morale, and to enforce discipline and punishment. In another age, Boone might have been called a political officer.
Peto Soneka decided it was time to shut up.
‘It was bloody, sir. But I’ve been out in the desert a long time,’ he said, ‘and I fear a lack of food has addled my brain, not to mention the wine the uxor’s aides have been plying me with. Forgive me, I am all out of sorts. I’ll tell you the story some other time.’
‘Peto?’ Mu said. ‘What was that other matter? Something about Bronzi and a body?’
Soneka shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I think I may be slightly delirious. I keep doing that. Lon’ll tell you. I keep talking about dreams as if they’re real. It’s the fatigue. Forgive me, uxor, I need sleep.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I’ll find a billet and dream this off. Tomorrow, you may get more sense out of me.’
‘Peto? Are you sure you’re all right?’ she asked.
‘Good rest to you, uxor,’ he said, and closed the door behind him.
Soneka strode away down the hall. He was perfectly wide awake. His world was unravelling from a point he didn’t think it could possibly unravel from.
Just for the time being, he realised, there was no one he could trust.
‘WOULD YOU LIKE to explain that curious moment?’ Boone asked, once Soneka had gone. Boone helped himself to a cup of wine from the tray Nefferti had just brought in.
‘I’m not sure I can,’ said Honen Mu. ‘I think Soneka was a little too tired for his own good. He was saying something about Bronzi.’
Boone smiled. ‘And a body, as I heard it.’
‘I know. It makes no sense. The poor man, he must be so strung out.’
‘Soneka wasn’t why you summoned me, then?’ Boone asked, leaning back and sipping his wine. ‘Not at all.’
‘So why am I here, exactly?’
Mu told him of her encounter with Uxor Rukhsana.
‘She was clouding something with her ’cept,’ Mu said. ‘Something she didn’t want the Lord Commander to know. If there’s treachery within the Chiliad, we have to deal with it ourselves, for the sake of our regimental honour. This must not become an exterior issue.’
Boone nodded.
‘You don’t seem surprised, Franco.’
‘Someone’s been playing games with us since we arrived on this damn planet,’ Boone said. ‘I’ve been aware of it, all the genewhips have. Insurgency. The enemy is trying to pick us apart from within, by means of guile and subterfuge. Subterfuge is like an iceberg. All the real weight is hidden under the surface. Let me look into it. I’ll find out what Uxor Rukhsana is hiding.’
RUKHSANA ENTERED HER quarters and bolted the door behind her. She went into the bedchamber
and froze.
John Grammaticus slowly lowered the laspistol he had been aiming at her.
‘Terra’s sake!’ she mumbled.
‘Sorry.’
‘I’m going out on a limb for you here, Kon.’
‘I know. You didn’t tell anyone?’
She made a face at him. ‘No.’
‘No one knows I’m here?’
‘No!’
He nodded and sat down on the end of the bed, the pistol across his lap. ‘I’m sorry, Rukhsana,’ he said.
He’d been saying that a lot, ever since he’d sneaked back into her chambers two nights previously. The man she knew as Konig Heniker had been dirty and dishevelled, and clearly distracted by an experience he didn’t want to discuss. He’d told her, briefly, that things had gone wrong in Mon Lo, and that he’d had to extricate himself quickly. He hadn’t been willing to add much more, except to say that his cover had been compromised and he didn’t know who he could trust besides her.
‘I believe I’ve been quite patient, Kon,’ she said.
He looked up at her. ‘You have. You certainly have.’
Rukhsana shrugged. ‘This feels more and more like something I shouldn’t be doing. Concealing you here, denying all knowledge of you… it feels like treason.’
‘I suppose it might.’ Grammaticus knew that he was asking a lot of her, and he was uncomfortably aware that she was only his ally because of the intimacy they had shared. She was now risking her career. She was risking execution. He had never meant for her to become involved in his business. The bond between them had grown out of honest attraction. He had not courted her just to use her.
But you’re quite prepared to use her now, aren’t you, he thought to himself, and despised his own weakness.
Almost all of his instincts screamed at him to get out, to get off Nurth and fade into the background, to segue back through the fleet from one false identity to the next, the way he’d got in. But that would mean abandoning the mission, and he simply couldn’t bring himself to do that, because he knew how vital it was. A chance remained. He was still ideally placed, despite the set-backs, to accomplish the goal. With time, the sort of time he might buy from a sympathetic uxor, he could broker the contact and put the Cabal’s scheme into play. It would require sacrifices. Grammaticus wanted to make certain Rukhsana wasn’t one of them. He owed her that much.
