‘You’re not my mother, Garner. Now let’s move before we find some more at our throats.’
They began running again. Dietrich jerked his arm as he ran, flicking the warm blood off his gauntlet-blades before retracting them. It had been a long time since he had killed an enemy with cold steel, and there was a strange, savage joy in it that he had quite forgotten.
‘Sir – sir! General, I have Marshal Veigh on the vox!’ The drawn white face of the signaller was transfigured. For days he had been labouring at the master vox in the stifling confines of the tank, and for days the useless garble of static had been his only reward. But now he held out the receiver to Dietrich as though it were a holy icon, a wide grin on his face.
‘Well done, Prokiev. Let’s hope he has something good to tell us.’ Dietrich set one hand on the boy’s shoulder – for he was just a boy – and felt a moment of apprehension before setting the receiver to his ear.
Around him, all talk in the command compartment of the Baneblade died out for a second, and the signallers stared blindly at their screens and dials.
Dietrich’s adjutant, Lars Dyson, folded his arms and blew air out through pursed lips, relief written all over his stitched face.
‘Mind your work,’ Dietrich said gruffly. But he closed his own eyes for an instant before speaking.
‘Marshal Veigh, this is a long-delayed pleasure.’
‘Indeed, general. I had thought it might be a pleasure indefinitely postponed. Our foes have been rather keen to prevent us from passing the time of day.’ Veigh sounded old, tired, but not yet beaten. His voice seemed to come from a great distance, and in the background was the never-ending din of artillery.
‘Are you aware of the assault we made this morning?’
‘Yes. We watched it from the citadel. It was very well done. My compliments to you and to the commander who led it.’
Dietrich turned to the young signaller. ‘Prokiev, you’re sure this is an encrypted frequency?’
‘Positive, general. It’s not been used before. It’s pure chance the citadel is running it.’
‘Good boy.’ Dietrich rubbed the filth-ingrained furrows of his forehead.
‘Marshal, our forward positions are now on the southern edge of the spaceport, about two kilometres west of the river. I intend to mass my remaining armour there and try to break through the enemy lines to the citadel itself. We will need your utmost support for this operation. Can I count on it?’
‘One moment, general…’ The line was muffled, as though Veigh were holding his hand over the receiver. Dietrich frowned.
‘Our ammunition levels for the heavier ordnance are at a critical level, general. We can support you with the lighter weaponry, but we must retain a reserve for our key batteries.’
Dietrich’s eyes widened. He clenched the receiver as though it were a snake he meant to strangle.
‘Marshal, with respect, if we do not receive support from your heavy batteries, then the operation will become extremely hazardous. I need your anti-air to keep the fighter-bombers from picking off my armour on the landing pads, and I need your heavy metal to break up the inevitable counterattack. Your lighter pieces do not have the necessary heft or range to do that.
‘You must understand, marshal. I have ammunition in plenty here in the Armaments District, and you have the big guns to use it. If I can break through to you, then your ammunition shortages will be a thing of the past.
‘But we must link up if we are to endure until relief arrives.’
There was a long silence, hissing static. Dietrich wondered if the comms link had been broken. He looked questioningly at signaller Prokiev but the boy shook his head.
‘Still connected, sir.’
At last the reply came back. Veigh’s voice was heavy with disgust. ‘General, I am afraid I cannot authorise the support of our heaviest calibre guns for your attack. We simply do not have the munitions to – to waste on an operation which is at best hazardous and at worst, futile.’
Futile?
‘Whose words are those, marshal? They are not your own, I’ll warrant.’
‘I am subject to the orders of the planetary governor, Lord Riedling.’
‘And he’s standing beside you now, isn’t he, marshal?’
‘General, this discussion is at an end.’ A pause. ‘Good luck.’
Then there was a squawk of static as the comms link was severed.
Dietrich sat looking at the silent receiver as though it had bitten him. He handed it back to the signaller, staring at the blank steel wall of the Baneblade’s compartment.
‘He’s given up on us,’ Dyson said, rubbing so hard at his stitched face that it began to bleed again.
‘It’s Riedling,’ Dietrich said. ‘He’s a coward, right through his marrow. He thinks he can hole up in the citadel until the Imperium sends a relief expedition, and be damned to everyone outside. But he’s wrong. The citadel will fall, and it will happen sooner than anyone thinks.’
Dietrich stood up, and strode into the outer compartment. There was more space here, though it was no less stifling. Even through the chemical-proofed ventilation system of the Baneblade, he could still smell the reek of death from outside. He had been a soldier all his life, but he had never yet known so much killing in so short a space of time.
Twelve days.
Perhaps it was all for nothing. There was no telling how long it would take Cypra Mundi to organise a relief force. It could be months.
He stared at the outer ramp as though things were written upon the blank steel.
Dyson joined him. Hesitantly, he said: ‘Sir, Commissar Von Arnim has left a message on the vox, requesting orders.’
Dietrich smiled. Ismail, he thought, you are one constant in a precarious world.
He straightened.
The hell with it. We were going to make the attack anyway. Might as well follow through with the plan.
‘Put me through to him,’ he said.
He punched out the combat blades on his gauntlet. They were still striped with black cultist blood.
I had forgotten what it was like, he thought.
I had forgotten how good it felt.
NINE
In Tenebris Hospites
The ship moved through space – a great multi-faceted jewel set with sails. It was an artefact of immense beauty, but something in its lines, the very curves of its hull, would strike the human observer as profoundly unsettling. It was beauty, but not as any human being knew it. Beauty which connected aesthetically, but which had at its core something entirely alien.
The great, strange vessel and its multi-hued solar sails cruised through the void like a ghost, invisible to most augurs.
The Adeptus Astartes had starships that were thousands of Terran years old, but this vessel had been created when mankind was still in its flint-wielding infancy.
The ship was older than the Emperor himself.
‘I love these spaces,’ Te Mirah said, looking out at the elongated forest which carpeted the Runground. For fully a kilometre, the park opened out, the shields drawn back so all the vegetation might have a glimpse of real, unadulterated sunlight from the star.
‘They are the gems of our race. Relics of memory.’
‘From a time when we had entire worlds under our feet. I understand these things, Jellabraiah. I seek only to share a momentary impulse, a second’s pleasure.’
‘I understand, my lady.’
‘You do not, and never will. I mean no insult, Jellabraiah. I merely state fact. I am old, and you are not.’
Jellabraiah bowed.
She ran her slender fingers along the thorns and antlers of her subordinate.
‘Leave me now, my fine and beloved. Go to your work, and blessings be upon you.’
‘Isha protect you, my lady.’