The two of them spoke but I could not overhear what they said and then they turned and walked beneath the huge awning outstretched beside the command vehicle. In its shadows they sat and exchanged words and Macharius beckoned us over and Sejanus spoke.
‘It seems that the Imperium owes you men a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid,’ Sejanus said. We just looked at him. None of us were going to contradict him. It was the sort of thing that every soldier wants to hear and very seldom does. Believe me, in the Imperial Guard, it is not often that you are found worthy of praise by your superiors. When it happens, you luxuriate in it.
‘When it is time, I will see that they are suitably rewarded,’ Macharius said. ‘But right now there is much to be done and very little time to do it in if we are to save this world from the powers of darkness.’
The two generals began to plan. Orders were barked to servitors, holo-map grids invoked, orderlies came and went. We stood there apparently forgotten. No one had dismissed us so we stayed.
I was on the edge of dozing off when the earth shook. A commotion erupted around the table. I noticed everybody gazing at the map. It crawled and changed even as I watched. In the centre was still the huge angel-topped hive of Irongrad. Around it were still the snaking cables of the great pipelines. There was something else, something new, something that reminded me of what I had seen on my way through Irongrad. The earth was splitting all around the hive. Lines of fire appeared.
‘What is going on?’ Sejanus asked. Macharius looked at Drake.
‘The ritual is nearing its climax. The tectonic plates of the world itself are shifting. The power of the Angel of Fire is manifesting.’
The wastelands were split by great fiery chasms. Lava bubbled forth, forming rivers and lakes. It looked as if a new lava sea was being born in front of us.
‘It’s a moat,’ said Sejanus. ‘It won’t keep us out for long.’
‘It doesn’t have to,’ said Drake. ‘Just long enough for them to finish their ritual and summon the Angel of Fire.’
Macharius looked at them. ‘Suggestions? Thoughts?’ he asked.
Sejanus looked back at him steadily. ‘We could evacuate.’ He said in a tone of utmost seriousness. Macharius just stared at him and then they both laughed. It seemed like it was some sort of joke between them but for whatever reason I could not see the funny side. Evacuation seemed like a good idea to me.
‘No way to get armour through that except airdrop,’ said Sejanus. ‘We could request our comrades in the Adeptus Astartes drop on top of the cathedral and interrupt the ritual.’
‘Without support, with the number of psykers in there?’ Drake asked. ‘With a daemon-god about to manifest. They might be able to do it but…’
‘But we need to be certain,’ Macharius said. ‘I will not ask a Chapter of Space Marines to perform a suicide mission unsupported…unless I have to.’
You could see he had something else on his mind. He really did not want to send the Adeptus Astartes to a potentially fatal last stand but it was not just that.
Later, when I got to know Macharius better, I knew what it was. He did not want them getting all the glory. This campaign was his campaign. The Space Marines were not going to bail out Lord High Commander Solar Macharius. This was going to be a triumph for the Imperial Guard and for its leader or it was going to be nothing.
If that seems selfish and self-aggrandising on the part of Macharius, what can I tell you? He was an Imperial general. Even in the humblest-seeming of those there is a lust for glory. They all want to write their names in the history books and none of them wants to be put there as the fool who was saved, yet again, by the Space Marines. The least of them are like that, even the weakest, the most venal and the most incompetent. Macharius was none of those things.
‘The Death Spectres are tied down on Karsk VII anyway,’ said Sejanus. ‘We need them there.’
Translating that from High Command speak, what he really meant was that he would see himself in hell before he would let the Adeptus Astartes get his share of the glory.
‘Can we neutralise the daemon-summoners?’ Macharius asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Drake. ‘If we mass all of our sanctioned psykers and I call in all of my agents in place, maybe… We would need to get very close though.’
‘We can send in a strike force mounted on Valkyries and Vultures,’ said Sejanus.
Macharius said, ‘They won’t be able to fight their way into the heart of the Cathedral Zone unsupported and we’d lose too many to the air defences. We need to get our armour in and the bulk of our army behind it. We need to call on the people in the city who hate the priests to rise up and they need to know there is a force there that can support them. I am going to stop those damn heretics now and end their threat once and for all.’
You could tell that he meant that and I would not have given a lot for the chances of any pyromancer he personally encountered surviving. Of course that was something a lot different from breaking into the hive and seizing the cathedral.
‘That’s all very well, but how are you going to do it?’ Drake asked. ‘The earth is shifting, lava lakes are bubbling up, there’s no easy way for us to get through in time.’
He was merely saying what we were all thinking. He was probably the only one there except for the Understudy who had the nerve to question Macharius. Macharius glared out through the canopy.
‘We will find a way,’ Macharius said.
We were not the most optimistic of groups. All of us looked at the great holo-map and contemplated the possibility of failure.
We knew we could take the hive. We had already done so once. That was not in doubt. What was in doubt was our ability to bridge the great moats of lava sliding into place around the city in time to stop the ritual. None of us wanted to contemplate what would happen if we were still on-planet when the Angel of Fire manifested. One look at Drake’s sickly features was enough to convince me that it was not likely to be a pleasant experience.
There was a growing horror in the chamber. In part I suspect it was a product of the manifestation of the Angel. Even people with as much sensitivity to psychic events as a desert rock could sense that there was something wrong. There was a pressure in the air such as you get before a great storm. A cloud of gloom and despair had settled over our entire army. Macharius stared hard at the holo-map. All of his attention was focused on it. He glared at it as if he believed his hope of rebirth in the Emperor’s Light depended on it. I suppose in a way it did. Concentrating, Macharius did not fidget. He merely stood there, statue-still, looking completely at rest. His gaze was fixed unwaveringly on the map, on the great hive that it was his desire to reclaim. A cold light burned in his eyes. It was as if he was staring at some hated personal enemy.
The rest of the command bustled around, bringing dispatches, discussing matters in low voices in the corner of the room. Sejanus lolled in an old padded armchair that looked like it had been brought directly from his family estate, and smoked a cheroot. Clouds of vile-smelling smoke drifted towards the ceiling of the pavilion and were sucked out into the even fouler air beyond by the extractors. The flexi-metal sides of the enormous tent bulged and rippled in response to pressure differentials. The Lion Banner of Macharius hung once more beneath the central frame of the tent. I wondered where they had dug that up from.
The Understudy looked like a machine that had shut down. His face was slack. His eyes half-closed. He was staring at the map as well and I wondered what he was seeing with those strange blue eyes.
Anton and Ivan stood in a corner like schoolboys in our old class in Ironforge Academy. They seemed to be hoping that no one would notice them and it was perfectly possible that in this august company no one would. I walked over to them.