Angel of Fire

by William King

  Nothing happened when he moved the switches. Nothing would unless the cut-outs on my controls kicked in which would most likely mean I was dead or so wounded I did not care. Or I toggled the switch and asked the machine to hand over control. I watched him. He was a good kid, careful. Everything went back into neutral when he had finished with it. Even though he was not directly communing with the spirit of the vessel he was taking no chances.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Who?’ I asked although I already knew who he meant. Vehicles like this you were usually sitting in some dead man’s chair.

  ‘The one who sat here before me.’

  ‘He died,’ I said. ‘It’s an occupational hazard.’

  ‘I see you two have met,’ said a voice behind us. It had the relaxed, born-to-command tone of the Upper Hives. I turned to look at the lieutenant. He was a big man with a bleak-looking face and a shadow of stubble on his massive jaw he could never quite get rid of. His uniform was covered in braid. His eagle epaulettes were enormously ornate. Campaign medals festooned his broad chest. I have always suspected our officers’ elaborate uniforms were designed as a deliberate contrast to the plain tunics of the common soldier in our regiment. It emphasises the class difference and our rulers on Belial have always liked to do that.

  Behind the lieutenant was the Understudy, a moon orbiting the lieutenant’s planetary presence, hoping to reflect some of his authority. His uniform braiding was scarcely less elaborate than the lieutenant’s. The Understudy did not look much older than the New Boy. He was trying to appear relaxed the way the lieutenant did. Maybe in another twenty years he would have mastered the trick but somehow I doubted it. The lieutenant had been born the way he was. Or perhaps decanted from a glass jar, the way some of the Schismatics had been.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. I did not quite get the words out of my mouth as fast as New Boy. He still had the discipline and the eagerness to please of the training camps on him.

  ‘Very good,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Private Lemuel, I expect you to look out for Private Matosek. Show him the ropes, make sure he doesn’t reverse us into a lava field, that sort of thing.’

  ‘He’s already started, sir,’ said New Boy, not realising that it was unnecessary. It was just the sort of thing the lieutenant felt called on to say for the good of morale, mostly his own.

  ‘I would have expected nothing less,’ said the lieutenant in his most inspirational manner. In spite of myself, I was pleased.

  The lieutenant lounged back in his commander’s chair and invoked the controls. The command consoles emerged from the floor of the hull and locked into place around him as the spirit of the ancient tank responded to his prayers. The Understudy moved to a position two paces behind the throne and studied the screens as if his life depended on it. Maybe one day it would. The lieutenant studied the holo-images.

  ‘I don’t like the pressurisation on turret two,’ the lieutenant said in the quiet murmur the upper classes always use to let you know that you should not be listening but even if you are, it does not really matter any way.

  ‘You’re right, sir,’ said the Understudy. His private school had most likely provided him with a certificate in obsequiousness and daily lessons in toadying. ‘Shall I have words with the repair crews, sir?’

  ‘Hesse is already looking at it with Antoniev,’ the lieutenant said. From his expression, you would have thought the Understudy imagined the lieutenant had uncovered this by some supernatural means instead of having issued orders for it this morning. ‘If anything needs to be done I will petition it through the proper channels and with the proper offerings.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ the Understudy said.

  ‘Still, all things considered, I think we’re set right to carry the Emperor’s word to the heretics.’ The lieutenant sounded sincere when he said that. It was a gift of his. ‘What do you think, Private Lemuel?’

  ‘I think they’ll be sorry they ever saw us, sir,’ I said with the right amount of stupid enthusiasm and bloodthirsty malice. It was what the lieutenant expected from us Lower Hivers and who was I to disappoint him?

  ‘We’ll know soon enough,’ he said, taking his pipe from his pocket, stuffing it with lho weed and lighting it. I knew something big was coming. He puffed away for a few moments, like a Baneblade’s exhausts on a frosty morning on Belial. He looked unspeakably cheerful, the way he always did when he was about to break very good or very bad news. ‘We’d better put on a good show tomorrow.’

  ‘Why is that, sir?’ I asked. The Understudy glared at me. He had wanted to ask that question himself even though he had most likely already known the answer.

  ‘Because we are under the eyes of the Lord High Commander Macharius himself.’

  ‘He’s here on Karsk IV, sir?’ I was as impressed as the lieutenant intended me to be. Macharius was the most successful general the Imperium had produced in a millennium, although you’ve got to remember this was before the campaigns that really made his name.

  ‘He soon will be,’ the lieutenant said. ‘His ship is in orbit.’

  It seemed that Karsk IV was even more important than I had thought if Lord High Commander Macharius himself had come to supervise the opening of the campaign.

  ‘It’s possible there will be a surprise inspection tomorrow. Not a word of this to anybody,’ the lieutenant said, tapping the side of his nose. He might as well have winked. If he had not wanted me to spread the word among the crew he would never have said anything.

  Two

  ‘So Macharius is really here?’ Anton said, studying his cards with the sort of concentration he normally reserved for his prop-nov. He sounded impressed. Everyone around the little counter in the Baneblade’s galley looked that way, even the engine-room boys who normally didn’t give a toss about anything.

  I considered my hand. It was the usual rubbish that Anton always dealt me. It was such a regular event that if I had not known better I would have suspected him of being a card sharp.

  ‘Apparently so,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not the sort of thing the lieutenant is usually wrong about,’ Ivan said, raising a finger to indicate that Anton should deal him a new card. A low whistle emerged from the corner of his mouth. I wondered, as I always did, whether he knew he was doing that. He looked at it for a moment and discarded the Four of Cogs. He drummed his metal cheeks with his fingers. There was the faintest of echoes.

  ‘True.’ Oily rubbed his grease-stained fingers on the chest of his uniform. It was how he had got his nickname. He raised two fingers and Anton handed him two cards. A frown flickered across his face. ‘How do you do it, Anton? How do you always manage to give me exactly what I don’t need?’

  He discarded the two cards. One was the Black Commissar; the other was the Tech-Priest. I winced. Those two cards might have given me a winning hand in spite of Anton’s skill at dealing trash.

  ‘Why do you think he’s here?’ Anton asked. ‘Macharius, I mean?’

  ‘The lieutenant told me he wanted to check up on you,’ I said. ‘He heard you would make a good Space Marine.’

  ‘Piss off,’ Anton said.

  Ivan gestured for another card and slotted it into his hand. He held all of his cards close to his chest. He looked at them for a moment, put them face down on the table and poured himself another glass of Oily’s specially distilled coolant fluid, then unwrapped a ration bar and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth. He crunched it with his metal teeth as he frowned down at his cards.

  New Boy entered the galley and looked at us. ‘Playing Shonk?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Anton replied. ‘We’re not.’

  Oily looked up at him. ‘Yes we are. Don’t believe Anton. He lies.’ There was nothing friendly in his tone. He was just annoying Anton.

  ‘Can I play if a seat comes free?’ New Boy asked.

  ‘They never come free,’ Anton said.

  ‘It’s another dead man’s chair, is it?’ New Boy asked. Silence settled on
the game like a shroud. It was exactly the wrong thing to say and you could tell that Matosek suddenly appreciated that. He had spoken out of irritation and triggered more than he bargained for. Nobody looked at him. It was as if he wasn’t there.

  The game went on. Fingers were raised to indicate the number of cards people wanted. Glasses were filled from the coolant flask. Hands were tossed in as players folded. Eventually New Boy got the message and left. The air thawed perceptibly when he was gone.

  ‘That boy has a lot to learn,’ Oily said.

  ‘He’s all right,’ I said. ‘He’s just nervous.’

  ‘Let’s hope he’s not nervous when we meet the heretics,’ Anton said. ‘That could get us all killed.’

  ‘You won’t have to worry about that,’ Ivan said. ‘Macharius will have made you a Space Marine by then.’

  ‘Ha bloody ha.’

  Drums sounded. Bugles blared. We lined up outside our tanks, dressed in our parade best. The heat made us sweat but we stood still as statues. We’d been standing that way for hours. We’d keep standing that way for as long as it took. It was a general inspection, and Lord High Commander Macharius himself was conducting it.

  I swallowed. The ash in the air was making the back of my throat dry and tickly. I kept my mind deliberately blank for as long as I could and when I could not do that any more I let my thoughts wander where they would to memories of Belial and Charybdis and Excalibur and Patrocles. The back of my right arm itched but I could not scratch it. The combat shotgun it was my special privilege as a driver to carry felt heavy against my shoulder. I fought down the urge to fidget. That just made things worse.

  Suddenly he was there, Macharius, flanked by his bodyguards and the colonel, the ranking commissar and the other high muckety-mucks and an orderly who carried his personal lion’s head banner. He walked slowly along the line, looking the men in the eye, stopping for a word or two with some veteran, usually one decorated for valour or service. Within a couple of minutes he was close enough for me to see clearly.

  Macharius was exactly what you expected an Imperial hero to look like. He was a big man, broad-shouldered, leonine. His hair was golden, his eyes were golden, his skin was golden. He moved with an easy grace. His uniform fitted him perfectly. Even then he was past what would have been middle age for a normal citizen but the juvenat treatments had taken perfectly. He looked no older than me. Hell, he looked younger and a lot fitter. He looked like you imagine the Emperor did when he walked amongst men; more than human.

  When he spoke, he sounded the part as well. His voice was deep and perfectly modulated. There was an edge to it. It was the sort of voice you would expect a great predatory cat to have. His gaze settled on me as he passed. At first it was chilling. There was something cold about those golden eyes, something inhuman, but when he smiled, his face lit up and he seemed pleasant enough.

  Beside him were others almost as intimidating, regimental officers, members of the High Command and others including Old Walrus Face, the colonel of the Seventh. One man in particular stood out. He radiated an air of cold authority noticeable even in the shadow of Macharius’s dominating presence. He was a tall man with the long, pale, ascetic face of a priest. He wore heavy robes and a long cloak with the cowl down. This was Drake, as I was later to learn and wish I had not. Even then I sensed he was not a man whose eye you wanted to catch. My instincts about such things have always been good.

  Surrounding the party were others; half-man, half-machine, members of the Adeptus Mechanicus. They circled around constantly. One or two of them carried huge devices that might have been weapons. They had long copper-covered barrels and strange lenses glittered at their extremities. Similar things were mounted on huge tracked vehicles on the edge of the parade area. They swivelled everywhere, tracking Macharius and his group. Like every Guardsman there, I wondered what they were for.

  Macharius seemed well pleased. I imagine it flattered his ego to be the centre of attention for tens of thousands of soldiers. I did not, at the time, know the half of it.

  Macharius swept past us and at first it seemed the inspection was over, but no signal to disperse was given. Instead, he went over and stood in the shadow of one of the Baneblades, Number Ten if the truth be told. He paused for a moment and then with the lithe agility of a great cat he scrambled up the Indomitable’s side. He stood poised above the track-guards studying the assembled army, one hand shading his eyes. Beneath him the tech-priests focused their strange weapons on him, like assassins getting their target in their sights. Macharius just stood, unworried. He clearly knew what was happening. As ever, his certainty communicated itself to the watching troops.

  Beneath him, the chief of the tech-priests made a symbolic gesture. The smell of ozone and technical incense filled the air and suddenly, in the air above us was the face and form of Macharius, magnified a dozen times, looking down on us like that of the Emperor himself as you have seen him on many a painted ikon. The huge handsome visage considered us all for a moment and then Macharius spoke, his voice rippling out over the assembled army like that of a primarch during the Great Crusade. I did not know it then but his speech was being relayed out across the system even as he spoke, to every orbiting ship, to every soldier in the vast army sweeping through the skies of the worlds of the Karsk system, to every soldier in the force descending onto the soil of Karsk IV, and every word was being recorded for posterity.

  ‘Soldiers of the Emperor,’ he said. His thunderous amplified voice was rasping and calm and filled with a quiet authority that commanded attention and belief. There was a trace of the accent of the backwater world that had birthed him, a rough metallic burr that marked his speech and which only vanished when he was talking to the very highest notables. ‘We stand on the brink of a mighty war.

  ‘Soon you will face the first battle of many against those who would defy the Emperor’s will and keep these human worlds buried in the foetid darkness of heresy and unbelief.

  ‘For their own selfish reasons they seek to withhold from their fellow man the Blessings of the Emperor’s Word and the goodness of His holy rule. We are here to save our fellows from this wickedness and restore order and light to these long-abandoned worlds.’

  He paused for a moment as if overwhelmed by the scale of the evil he was contemplating. Not coincidentally, the pause gave his audience a moment to reflect on what he had said.

  It was not the words themselves that convinced you. It was the tone in which he said them. When you heard Macharius speak you knew that he believed utterly in what he was saying, and that you should too. There was something about his blazing conviction that forced you to push aside any doubts and reassess your own thoughts on the matter.

  The man had an immense presence, an enormous authority, an aura that enveloped him and everything he touched and transformed if not the words themselves then your perception of those words. All around me, hardened soldiers strained to hear what he had to say, listened as if their hope of salvation depended on it. More than any priest, more than any commissar, Macharius made you believe, in him if nothing else.

  ‘Today we take the first step towards our greater goal. It is an important step. If we falter here, we will fail. If we do not harden our resolve, foreswear false mercy and carry ourselves with the firmness of purpose this great task deserves, we will condemn billions of our fellow humans to lives of squalid darkness and eternities of torment in the toils of the daemons who feast on the souls of the damned. Do not let your finger rest on the trigger of your weapon. Sparing our enemies merely extends their lives for a pitiful eye-blink in the Emperor’s sight and condemns their souls for all eternity. Show mercy to the heretic and you do the work of daemons yourself.’

  We’ve all heard similar sermons preached before battles and on High Holy Days and I am damned if I can tell you what it was about Macharius that made his words different. Perhaps his lack of doubt communicated itself, but that could not be all. Many commissars I have known were every bit his equ
al in faith. No – it was something about the man. When Macharius spoke you could have been listening to the Emperor speaking to you from the depth of his Sacred Throne. I know it sounds like heresy, but that is what it felt like. Something had touched Macharius; maybe the light of the Emperor, maybe something else.

  And then, in a moment, the whole mood of the thing changed. Macharius went from being a priest preaching a sermon to an officer talking to his men, telling them the plan, letting them know what they needed to know.

  ‘The way forwards is harsh. It carries us through lava seas and across great chasms where the jaws of the earth could swallow a Titan whole. It passes through sandstorms so powerful they can strip a man to the bloody bone in seconds. It takes us through clouds of poison so deadly that one breath is fatal.’

  It should have sounded off-putting but he made it sound as if these were the sort of challenges that true men should expect to face and which it was their glory to overcome. His slight grim smile told you that he knew you, you personally, could overcome them. And he was letting us know that we were all in this together.

  ‘This is all to the good.’ He paused and smiled and as he had expected the whole army laughed at the joke, feeble as it was. Then his expression was grim again. ‘I am serious. It is all to the good. While we are doing this, the second part of our force will be assaulting Hive Irongrad from the south, along the easy route, the way they expect us to come. They will not expect a massive armoured assault from the north-west, and we shall hit them where we know the defences are weakest. We will have the pyrite refineries and the weapon factorums. We shall bring millions of lost souls into the Emperor’s Light.’

  He paused again, to give what he had said time to sink in. We knew now where we were going, a hive city. He had even told us why.

  If you have never had any experience of being a soldier in the Imperial Guard, you will probably not realise how unusual it was for a ranking general like Macharius to say things like this to an assembled army. He was telling us the plan – personally. He was letting us know that there was one and that it was a good one, that he and his officers knew what they were doing, and that he personally was taking the time to communicate the details to you so that you understood your place in it, and you shared his faith in its efficacy.