Angel of Fire

The New Boy rubbed his eye and said, ‘They say that the psykers the Black Ships take join the Emperor. Might this not be the same?’

‘I don’t think you can compare the Emperor with the Angel of Fire,’ said Anton. He sounded outraged. Maybe it was the drink.

‘Why not? They say that the Angel of Fire stands at his right hand.’ Lutzka said. I could see the girls nodding.

‘Only on this world,’ said Ivan. ‘I think if it was true we would have heard of it on Belial and all the other worlds.’

‘How do you know it’s not?’ Anna sounded annoyed now at the faith being called into question. ‘Have you visited every world in the galaxy?’

It was a fair point. Silence fell. I wondered why she had pushed things so far. She could be arrested for trying to undermine morale. Strictly according to regulations we should be locking her up and taking her for trial. The girls looked at us. Most of them pushed their chairs back, as if trying to put some distance between them and Anna but at the same time there was approval in their faces. Anna had said something they had all thought, had voiced their resentments for them. Maybe all she was trying to do was fit in, a new girl in a new place trying to make new friends. She did not realise it could get her killed.

Anton and Ivan looked at me. They knew as well as I did that things could go very sour very quickly from here.

‘No, we haven’t, but in this we are right,’ I said, staring at her very hard, hoping she would take the hint, realise what she was doing. ‘I am sure that in your heart of hearts you feel the truth of that.’

She kept staring at me challengingly. Inwardly I cursed her. She was really so drunk and stubborn that she could not see what was happening here. I held her gaze and slowly her eyes sank and her face flushed.

‘You are right,’ she said eventually. Her hand played with the small ikon of the Angel of Fire that rested between her breasts.

2

The next morning I sat up and pulled on my tunic. Anna stirred in the bed beside me. Her hair was mussed. Her eyes were full of sleep. She looked very pretty. Her face was chilly for a moment then she smiled and it brightened wonderfully.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘I’ve got to report for duty,’ I said. I could not say any more.

‘If you stick around we can have some breakfast,’ she said. ‘There is a stall in the corridor that does the best skewered drop-frog.’

‘Sounds like a prime local delicacy,’ I said. I checked her clock. I still had an hour before I had to report. My head felt thick and muzzy. My mouth felt dry. I remembered leaving the bar with her early in the morning and a long walk to this hab-block. I remembered endless corridors and endless alcoves all filled with statues of the Angel.

I looked at the room. There were the usual small personal belongings you find in a hab-cell. Some pictures of Anna as a girl with her family, some little trinkets – sacred prints, knick-knacks. You can see them in a billion, billion hab-cells anywhere in the galaxy.

She looked at the pictures on the tabletop as if some memory were coming back to her. I reached out a hand to help her up. She rose to her feet lightly, but as I tugged, just for a moment, before she got into motion, she felt heavier than she looked. I remembered getting the same impression last night when I had lifted her onto the bed. I put it down to drunkenness then but it was odd that it had returned now.

‘You want to go get breakfast?’ ‘Sure,’ I said.

There were people in the corridors outside the hab-cell. Just like on Belial, there is no real quiet time in a hab-block. People are always coming and going. One or two of them stared at my uniform but not for long when I stared back. A group of young gangers shouted abuse from a crossroads. They were armed. So was I. It made for a tense few moments. Anna looked a lot calmer than I would have expected but I supposed she was used to such sights. They were common enough on Belial where I grew up as well. Anna did not look at all troubled. At the time, I thought that perhaps she was just used to such things from her experience in the underhive. Or that maybe my presence reassured her.

Fortunately the gangers were not on blaze or any of the other synthetics. Otherwise there might have been trouble. They just wanted to let everybody know how tough they were.

We found the stall Anna mentioned. It was crowded with people. Mostly workers coming or going from their shifts. Again most of them looked at me. There were odd tensions written on people’s faces, as if they knew something I did not. Uneasiness settled in my stomach. I told myself it was just my imagination.

I let Anna order for both of us and I paid. She was right. The food was good. We ate in silence for a while with that odd embarrassment that two people feel when they have gone to bed drunk with a stranger and then have to make conversation in the morning.

‘How long do you think you will be in Irongrad?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’ I really didn’t but I would not have told her anyway if I had. Regulations. ‘When do you have to go to work?’

‘It’s an off half-day for me. That’s why we were all in the bar last night. My shift doesn’t start until noon.’

‘Lucky you,’ I said.

‘Lucky me,’ she agreed. ‘You get any off-days?’

‘A soldier of the Emperor is always on duty,’ I said. It was the sort of thing the square-jawed hero always said in the prop-novs Anton read. She laughed.

‘You don’t take me seriously,’ I said.

‘I think you are a very serious man.’

I took another bite of some sort of flat-bread. It was tough and chewy but not unpleasant. There was some kind of protein baked in.

‘Would you really report me to your commissar?’ she asked quietly. I was glad she was so cautious. I remembered threatening to do some such thing during our argument the previous night. I thought it funny what could spark a night of passion. I remembered saying other things as well.

‘It’s what I am supposed to do,’ I said. ‘Otherwise I imperil my soul as well as yours.’

She considered that for a moment. I could see she was turning things over in her mind. At least I thought that then.

‘What are they like, your commissars?’

‘They are not gentle with unbelievers,’ I said. ‘Or with anybody else for that matter.’

‘Why did you become a soldier? Were you conscripted?’

‘I volunteered, believe it or not. It’s most likely one of the reasons we are talking.’

‘How so?’

‘The Imperial Guard are the elite of the planetary levies. One of the things they look for is superior motivation. Volunteers have more of that than conscripts.’

‘You volunteered out of a desire to fight then. You wanted to do your duty out of love of the Emperor.’ There was a sarcastic tone to her voice that needled me a little. Maybe it was meant to.

I shook my head. ‘Anton and Ivan and I were wanted by a gang boss. He would have killed us if we had stayed on in the hive and kept working at the guild factorum. The Guard was a way out.’

‘You worked in a factorum?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you make?’

‘Gear sprockets for tanks.’

‘I can’t really picture you doing that.’

‘I can easily picture you as a nurse,’ I said. I could too. She had a coolness about her that told you she would behave well under pressure. And there was a detachment to her as well, I thought for a moment.

She laughed and it made her look younger and suddenly I liked her. You know how it is.

She looked at me sidelong as if a thought had just struck her.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘It’s strange. For so long we were isolated here. We only traded with the other worlds in the system. The Imperium was just a legend. Now, you are here, telling us we are part of it, that we never left it.’