The muscle men had been bought with various combinations of favours, promises, stolen Adeptus scrip and crude liquor. They thought they were working for a slightly elevated version of themselves, someone with rackets to protect and reputation to enforce. They didn’t know Kovind Shek’s place in the Traditions. It worked best that way. Now they shoved the victims into position, immobilised one pesky struggler with two heavy heel-stomps to his knees, and backed away. They were barely out of range when Kovind gave the signal and the crane operator let the grip claw disengage. Two of the men screamed, and then the pitted and blast-burned side of the Skybreaker hulk came down on them like a boot on a beetle.
The crane operator and Kovind exchanged thumbs-up acknowledgements. The muscle men guffawed and clouted each other on the shoulder to prove how unmoved they were. Jopell heard a choking cry from under the overturned hulk, but by the time he walked over to join Kovind it had already faded and rattled out.
‘Yes, I heard you,’ Kovind snapped at him, although Jopell hadn’t spoken a word apart from that first message. But the man was talking to himself. ‘Here for Him,’ he rasped again, more quietly now, staring up at the tiny dark blemish in the sky just as Jopell had done. ‘Less time than we thought. We have to move.’
‘A Rune Priest?’ Demi-Lector Vosheni asked. ‘Wait, no, have I misheard?’
‘I don’t know, Master Demi-Lector, have you? Is there a reason to suppose you have?’ It was the first time in hours that Sister Sarell had spoken, and several of the Adeptus started at her voice. Vosheni spent a moment gnawing the fold of leathery ushpiil leaf in his hand before he answered.
‘You’re the one to explain it,’ he said at length. ‘Look, does anyone else remember this? Emperor grant I’m recalling correctly, but I find myself thinking of that one as an Adeptus Astartes rank, not a Mechanicus. Anyone else? Or have I breathed in a gulp of hotstone and set my brain to decaying? An Adeptus Mechanicus Rune Priest – has anyone ever heard of one?’
‘I’ve not even heard of an Adeptus Astartes Rune Priest,’ put in Kinosa as she reached determinedly for the platter of seedmash before Vosheni could finish the lot. Like Vosheni, Kinosa was Administratum: the military liaison with the Guard garrison. Vosheni was from the reconstruction and tithing taskforce, and it had been his idea to convene a regular meal for the seniors of each Adeptus contingent at the Chillbreak fortress reconstruction site. Jers Adalbrect didn’t mind the meals, but he wished that they didn’t keep falling on his fast days. He politely sipped a cup of water and listened to the others bickering.
‘Adeptus Astartes?’ piped up Vocator Nember, and Sarell rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t recall seeing one, but then perhaps I did and didn’t recognise him! Nearly a day I spent around them, when the Iron Snakes’ emissaries attended upon–’
‘You’re remembering the Pageant of Asaheim, sir,’ Adalbrect quickly put in before Nember could tell the story yet again. ‘The play of the Apostate being crushed on Fenris. There’s a song near the end of the first act that refers to Rune Priests among the Space Wolves.’
‘Thank you,’ said Vosheni through a mouthful of leaf. ‘So this one’s Mechanicus?’
‘I don’t believe the ranks are the same,’ said Sarell, ‘and it sounds more like a name coined outside the Mechanicus for someone whose actual function is rather harder to describe. Shall we ask this visitor’s real title when he arrives?’
‘If we even get the chance,’ Nember snorted through his moustache, peering into his wine glass. ‘What’s the bet he stays hiding in their shrine in the middle of that damned graveyard and we never see a scrap of him? He arrived in one of those ships they use to lift Titans. Titans! I don’t care what reasons they dress this up in in their communiques, he’s not here to do any of that ceremonial crap they said they needed this big damn dignitary to do. I’ll bet he’s a junior enginseer who’s drawn the short straw and has to sit out in this sandhole loading dead machinery onto that so-called Headstone of his to keep it out of our hands.’ After a pause just long enough to be rude Nember added a little twitch of his hand to demonstrate that ‘our’ meant the Adeptus around the table, but none of them were fooled. ‘Our’ meant the deeply mercenary consortium of trade houses from Bardolphus who’d managed to get themselves some sort of Administratum marque and were clawing for a foothold in the Ashek reconstruction. When the edict had gone out from the Mechanicus that the legions of Woe Machines the Archenemy had left behind were to be collected in a monstrous graveyard over the Chillbreak Delta, all that Nember’s masters had seen was an attempt to shut them out of something. It was an open secret that Nember was there as a spy.
‘I’m wondering if he’s here to inspect the works,’ said Vosheni gloomily, looking at a stain on his cuff where he’d let his tunic sleeve dip into the sauce dish. ‘The number of accidents, the violence...’
‘Your job to fix,’ Nember scolded him.
‘And his!’ Vosheni shot a finger out at Adalbrect. ‘The Missionaria Galaxia is here to make sure these people are obedient servants to the Throne! What are you putting in your sermons about diligence? Temperance?’ Kinosa took advantage of his distraction to get the last of the seedmash.
It’s more complicated than that, Adalbrect started to say, it always is. Why did people have this ridiculous idea that the Missionaria just had to shout a sermon at someone to throw some sort of switch in their heads marked instant obedience?
‘The work crews here are frail and mortal, Demi-Lector, as are we all.’ Sarell got in before him. ‘Most are war displacees, some are refugees from elsewhere on the world, some are refugees from other worlds repaying the cost of their transp–’
‘I know about the blasted workforce, Sister, I administer it,’ Vosheni cut her off, and then caught himself. ‘Apologies, Sister Dialogus.’
‘Accepted, Demi-Lector. But bear with my point. Spiritually these people have lain too long prostrate beneath grief and darkness. We are helping them back to their feet.’ Adalbrect grinned. She was taking from his sermon of two mornings ago. He liked compliments. ‘But until they get their strength back, sometimes they will stumble.’
‘Y’know what we need to do?’ Nember asked. His goblet was empty and his voice a little too loud. ‘We need to get into that graveyard. See what it is they’re doing in there. It’s not right that these work crews get mark... marched in there and we don’t get to follow them and see what they do with all that.’
‘Inside the graveyard is acknowledged Mechanicus ground,’ said Kinosa, ‘same way as the temple compound belongs to the Ministorum,’ and she tilted her head at Adalbrect and Sarell. ‘And anyway, maybe you’ve forgotten that what they’re collecting in that graveyard are unholy war machines that robbed many brave Throne soldiers of their lives. It was the Mechanicus that broke them so the aquila could return here. Show some respect.’
That shut Nember up, but Vosheni had taken one of his adept’s braids in his fingers and was twirling it thoughtfully.
‘Nevertheless.’ They all looked at him. ‘Nevertheless, let’s not miss an opportunity. Our friends of the cog are reserved, but that doesn’t make them our enemies. We’re all Adeptus. Beyond a certain professional distance, I’ve found Enginseer Daprokk quite agreeable to work with.’ He smiled at Nember, who blinked at him. ‘I think this great dignitary they’ve flown in, this great magos, is just as important as they’ve told us he is. And I think that a request... no. I think that an announcement that a delegation of the most senior Adeptus officials at the Chillbreak reconstruction site will be pleased to present their credentials and welcome such an important visitor to Ashek II is the least that such a position justifies.’