“Another grand victory for the rule of the Emperor’s Law,” grunted his deputy, Korte, beside him, handing his commander a water flask as he watched the troops under his supervision brutally and mercilessly subdue the prisoners. Byzantane said nothing—if any other man under his command had voiced such an opinion, he would not have hesitated to have had him disciplined at once. Korte was a fine Arbiter and a loyal servant of the Emperor, and should have attained the rank of marshal primus himself by now, but sometimes Byzantane was glad that the big hiveworlder’s habit of speaking his mind too freely ensured that he could always count on having such an able and dependable second-in-command at his side.
“Have faith, Marshal Secundus Korte,” said Byzantane, in tones of mock reassurance. “Remember that it is the duty of the mighty Adeptus Astartes Chapters and the glorious Imperial Guard to wage the Emperor’s wars and the duty of the fearless Imperial Navy to guard the Emperor’s spaceways, but it is to his loyal servants the Adeptus Arbites that His Divine Majesty in His infinite wisdom entrusts the most sacred duty of all—”
“Keeping in check the lawless heretic rabble that passes itself off as the Emperor’s worthy subjects,” smiled Korte, completing the familiar old precinct-house joke.
It was a welcome moment of levity in what had so far been a long and arduous operation. All day the Arbitrator squads had been methodically searching through the maze of beggar district hovels and workhouses that festered in the shadow of the rock of the regent’s palace. The planet, Belatis, and its capital city, Madina, were far from the battle-lines, but even here the effects of the cataclysmic war raging throughout the rest of the Gothic sector were keenly felt. Like the rest of the rear echelon Imperium worlds, Belatis had been bled dry to provide manpower and materials for the war, and Byzantane knew that many of those captured in the round-up today would end up as press-gang recruits in the warships of Battlefleet Gothic or fighting in the new penal regiment detachments that the Adeptus Munitorium was forming to replace the horrific losses amongst its Imperial Guard armies. He knew also that there was no chance that any of those arrested today would ever see their homeworld again.
From the command Rhino transport nearby came crackling bursts of vox-caster traffic as the other Arbiter squads deployed throughout the area reported in their progress so far. It was wearying, thankless work, Byzantane knew, conducting a street-by-street, building-by-building search of this worst of Old Madina’s many crumbling and crime-infested hab-districts, where every kicked-in doorway or uncovered hide-hole could reveal Emperor-only knew what kind of threat or trap. They had swooped down on the area in force, columns of Arbiter vehicles rumbling out of their precinct-fortress to surround and seal off the beggar quarter in the hours before dawn. It was a show of Imperial strength of the kind that Belatis had not seen in generations: almost the world’s entire Arbites force mobilised to throw a ring of steel around a whole section of the planet’s capital. It was a swift and brutal reminder of the presence of the Imperium here on Belatis; not just for those caught like rats in a trap within the Arbites circle, but also for a select few outside it also.
Byzantane glanced up at the sheer face of the towering rock escarpment that hung over the rest of the city, wondering just how many pairs of eyes were now staring down at him and his men from behind the latticed windows and terraces of the palace citadel built atop it. If Byzantane had wanted to stage a show of Imperial strength, he could hardly have picked a better place than here, right under the noses of the local planetary overlords.
As if on cue, the Arbitrator manning the command Rhino’s vox-caster equipment signalled to him.
“For you, commander. First Security Minister Kale.”
Byzantane nodded reluctantly and took the offered vox-cast handset, sharing a look with Korte. For his part, Korte noisily cleared his throat and spat its contents onto the ground at the mention of name the governor-regent’s security advisor.
“Emperor’s greetings, Minister Kale,” said Byzantane, barely attempting to keep the disdain out of his voice. “My men and I are busy administering the rule of the Emperor’s law, so you’ll understand that I have little time for interruptions.”
“Emperor’s greetings to you too, marshal.” The voice on the other end of the vox-cast was smooth and unperturbed, and Byzantane could imagine the eminence grise figure of First Security Minister Jarra Kale sitting in his high-vaulted office in the palace, possibly watching the image of Byzantane on the vista-plate on the desk in front of him as it was beamed to him from any of the so-far undetected spy drones that Kale had undoubtedly deployed to monitor the Arbitrators’ search.
“I have just spoken with his majesty the governor-regent, and he too shares my concern regarding your decision to go ahead with this operation without informing this office of your plans.”
“I answer to the Divine Emperor, Minister Kale,” said the Arbites marshal, “not to the governor-regent of this world or his security minister. However, in this instance I did not see it as necessary to inform you of my decision. You are aware of the recent increase in the Munitorium’s demands for manpower for the valiant forces of Battlefleet Gothic. As senior Imperium official on this world, it falls to me to decide how these demands are best met. A mass press-ganging of the criminal rabble of the Rook district would seem to be in the interests of both Gothic Sector command and the Emperor’s loyal and law-abiding subjects here on Belatis.”
Yes, and if your security force of local inbreds had done its job properly, Byzantane added with his own unspoken thoughts, then criminal refuge ghettoes such as this would not have been allowed to fester unchecked right here in the heart of your capital.
A pause, and then the first minister’s voice sounded over the vox-link, its tone unchanged by the Arbitrator’s criticisms, either those spoken aloud or merely implied.
“None have a greater wish to serve the Emperor or his appointed servants more than I or the governor-regent, Marshal Byzantane. No, our only concern is that we were not informed of the press-gang operation early enough to allow our own security troops to also take part in it, should you require them.”
Emperor knows I wouldn’t want to call your planetary security force away from their normal duties of racketeering, collecting bribes and intimidating the governor-regent’s political opponents, Byzantane thought sourly to himself as he keyed open the vox-cast handset to respond.
“My thanks for your generous and loyal offer, First Minister Kale. The next time such an operation becomes necessary, I shall be sure to advise you in advance so that we may properly pool our respective forces.”
Byzantane abruptly cut off the link, looking up to see the knowing half-smirk on the face of his deputy. “You think he believed you?” asked Korte.
“I don’t care,” growled Byzantane, “just as long as we keep him and his hired thugs out of here until we’ve accomplished what we came here to do.”
The marshal primus turned to survey the scene around him, seeing only the low-level mudbrick dwellings and buildings that made up the vast extent of the Rook. Each building merged into the next, built without plan or purpose and interconnected by a twisting, intestinal labyrinth of passages and blind alleys. Byzantane knew that the maze system extended inside the buildings too, with holes knocked through the walls between many of the dwellings, so that it was possible to travel under cover through the entire area, entering a building at one edge of the Rook and exiting another again on the far side of the place.
The Rook was not unique—areas such as this festered on every even halfway-civilised world within the Imperium—and as one of the Emperor’s appointed lawkeepers, Jamahl Byzantane knew such areas all too well. Breeding grounds for criminals and troublemakers. Refuges for outcasts and fugitives. Bolt-holes for renegades and heretics.
The operation to clear out the Rook and round up press-gang recruits for the Imperial Navy was real enough, Byzantane knew, but it was also a convenient cover for the real purpose of the Adeptus Arbites
’ presence here today. The Gothic sector was under attack, not just from the warfleets of Abaddon the Despoiler, but also, and more insidiously, from their allies within the many heretic cults that secretly thrived on almost every Imperium world within the sector. When the conflict was over, the cruel attentions of the Inquisition would descend in force on the Gothic sector, for it was now horribly apparent that the enemy had spent years laying their plans before launching their sector-wide assault, and that agents of the Dark Powers had infiltrated far into the governments and planetary defence forces of many Imperium-controlled worlds.
At the outbreak of the war, as the Despoiler’s warfleets burst out of the Arx Gap to fall without warning upon the forces of Battlefleet Gothic, Abaddon’s allies and followers within the secret covens of Chaos worshippers had also come out of hiding at their master’s bidding. Chaos-inspired uprisings and rebellions had occurred on more than two dozen worlds, drawing away vital forces and resources from the main war. More than one coven-controlled world had fallen to the enemy without a shot being fired, and, if their populations considered that they might merely be exchanging one set of oppressive masters for another, they would have realised their terrible error as soon the dark shapes of the first Chaos drop-ships fell out of the skies from the orbiting warships and they saw the faces of the things that were to be their new overlords. On other Imperium worlds, these cults remained in hiding. Waging guerrilla war against the Imperial forces of the Gothic sector. Sowing fear and dissent amongst the population. Sabotaging military and industrial instillations. Infiltrating all available Imperial forces and giving secret aid and information to the enemy.
And spreading. Always spreading. Once the Chaos contagion took root amongst a world’s population, it all too often presaged the loss of that entire world to the light of the Emperor.
Yes, thought the marshal primus, the merciless judgement of the Inquisition would cut like a scythe through the ranks of the local planetary governors, Ecclesiarchy invigilators and Administratum officials of the Gothic sector once this war was over, for it was their laxity and failure that had allowed such heretic cults to first exist undetected and then thrive and spread unchecked.
But not here. Not on Belatis. Not on Jamahl Byzantane’s watch.
Although it was not one of the front-line systems, Belatis was abundant with natural resources and supplies vital to the war effort. Adamantium ore for the diamond-hard armoured prows of the mighty warships of Battlefleet Gothic. Unprocessed promethium fuel for the war machines of the Imperial Guard, and plentiful grain and meat exports for the Guard’s legions of hungry troops. It was not the greatest, nor the most populous or strategically important world within the Gothic sector, Byzantane knew, but, like every other of the million worlds within the vast, galaxy-spanning Imperium, it belonged to the Master of Mankind, and for that reason alone was worth defending. Or dying over, the grim-faced Arbiter thought, remembering the oaths he had sworn thirty years ago as a cadet in the Adeptus Arbites training collegium on Anderton’s World.
To serve the Emperor. To protect His domains. To judge and stand guard over His subjects. To carry the Emperor’s law to all worlds under His blessed protection. To pursue and punish those who trespassed against His word.
To enforce the rule of Pax Imperialis.
Byzantane had only recently begun to suspect the presence of agents of the Dark Powers here on Belatis. There had been no reported acts of sabotage, no discoveries of secret heresies, no attempts to undermine the authority of the Imperium, but, still, he felt the presence of… something lurking here. Close, but unseen. Hidden, but waiting. His Truthseeker psykers too felt it, reporting strange new fluxes in the warp, disturbing patterns that hinted of some vast and calamitous event that was yet to unfold. “Like the calm before the storm,” was how one troubled senior Primaris adept had attempted to describe the phenomenon to Byzantane.
Like the calm before the storm, thought the marshal primus, surveying the scene as his Arbitrator squads continued their sweep search of the area. The psyker seers of the Adeptus Arbites could provide him with no more information about this potential looming threat, but Byzantane had other sources of information available to him; sources that, as one of the stern-faced guardians of the Emperor’s Law, he trusted and understood far more than the visions and prophecies of any witch-psyker. He had a network of spies and informers within the dregs of Belatis’s criminal underworld, and it was not long before he heard the first whispers of secret gatherings somewhere within the confines of the Rook. If there was a coven of Chaos worshippers here, he was confident that his men would find it.
Byzantane looked to Korte, who had been monitoring the incoming vox-cast reports. Korte shook his head in response, already knowing what his commander would ask.
“Nothing yet. Just the usual rabble of lawbreakers and malcontents, most of them hardly fit enough to make the grade as the poorest quality press-gang fodder. Vandire’s teeth, we could spend a week razing this stinking sump pit to the ground, and still not find what we’re looking for!”
“Perhaps not such a bad idea, Arbiter Korte,” said Byzantane, sharing his deputy commander’s grim humour. “But let us hope it will not come to that. At least, not yet,” he added, after a considered pause.
Byzantane turned towards the open hatch of the command Rhino, directing his next comment to the figure sheltering there in the cool shadows inside the armoured vehicle.
“Truthseeker Shaulo. What help can you give us?”
The Adeptus Arbites psyker reluctantly emerged into the harsh glare of the Belatis midday sun, taking care to properly adjust the protective goggles covering his weak, pink-hued eyes. Psykers were mutants, Byzantane knew, and even those few tolerated by the Imperium and judged strong enough to withstand the lure of the powers of the warp without undergoing the agonising soul-binding ritual with the mind of the Emperor carried with them some physical mark of their difference from the rest of humanity. Shaulo was an albino, a fact that would have undoubtedly have assured him to have been killed at birth back on Byzantane’s own savage and unforgiving homeworld of Skyre. Skyre was now half a lifetime and several thousand light years away, but Byzantane still felt uneasy in the presence of psykers, even if this one was a brother Arbiter.
“Nothing so far, marshal primus. It is possible that they could be using a null-shield or some other trickery to hide themselves from my senses…”
Shaulo abruptly broke off, looking up in confusion and flinching as he saw two Arbitrators just about to break down another doorway further up the street. Byzantane was already moving, the finely-honed instincts that were part of his barbarian warrior ancestry picking up on the feelings of fear and alarm now emanating from the psyker. Even before he knew why he was reacting, Byzantane was already halfway across the street, drawing his bolt pistol and calling out in a warning that he already knew would come too late.
The doorway exploded apart as the one of the Arbitrator’s heavy, reinforced boots came into contact with it. The explosion was not as large as Byzantane had feared, but the screaming Arbitrators were instantly enveloped in a spreading cloud of sickly ochre mist.
“Tox-bomb! Rebreathers on!” bellowed Byzantane, as the faint, dry season breeze carried the first trails of the deadly mist out into the street, revealing the bubbling remains of what only seconds ago had been two human beings.
Caught on the edge of the spreading cloud, one man—one of Marian’s junior troopers from Precinct Tertius, Byzantane recognised—screamed, coughing up bloody matter as he fumbled with the release catches of his rebreather mask. The men caught in the booby-trapped doorway had died almost instantly from the catastrophic effects of such close and concentrated exposure to the tox-bomb’s virulent contents, but the virus weakened as it dispersed, and at this range it would take the trooper minutes—long, agonised minutes—to die as the virus spores multiplied like wildfire within his body, causing his body to rot apart around him.
Byzantane didn’t hesita
te, shooting the dying man through the heart, silently intoning a few words of the Second Litany of the Emperor’s Mercy as he pulled the trigger of his bolt pistol.
He was suddenly aware that there was gunfire all around him. His helmet’s vox-link crackled with shouts of alarm and the broadcast echoes of the same sounds of gunfire. He cursed to himself in the guttural tongue of his homeworld. An ambush, with the detonation of the tox-bomb as the signal for it to be sprang. They had come seeking the hiding place of a suspected coven of Chaos worshippers and instead they had been lured into an ambush.
He heard the drumming boom of an autocannon opening fire, saw a burst of its high-calibre shells scythe down the length of the street behind him, catching one of his Arbitrators and scattering him in bloody pieces against the mud-brick walls of the surrounding buildings.
“On the roofs! They’re firing down on us from up on the roofs!” shouted an unidentified voice in warning from over the vox-net.
Byzantane looked up, seeing a dark figure on the low rooftop above him, perfectly silhouetted against the bright Belatis sky. Byzantane raised his bolt pistol, firing instinctively. The figure folded sharply, dropping heavily to the ground in front of the Arbites marshal. Byzantane glanced in revulsion at the dead thing that lay in the dust before him. He saw the fingers fused into curled claws, the glowing tattoo-shapes that writhed with a life of their own beneath the thing’s greasy, translucent skin. Here was all the proof he needed to know that the foul taint of Chaos had indeed touched this world, and in far greater strength than any would ever have dared fear, if mutations as severe as this could have remained undiscovered and unchecked for any length of time.
The sound of gunfire continued—the stuttering chatter of crude heavy stubbers and autorifles built in local crime-den workshops, the high-pitched crack of lasgun fire—but interspersed amongst it Byzantane heard the welcome and distinctive blast roar of Arbites shotguns as his troopers rallied from the initial shock of the ambush and began to return fire.
[Battlefleet Gothic 01] - Execution Hour Page 8
