Similarly, Lansung wasn’t at all interested in speaking to Ekharth, other than to cultivate the loyalties between Navy and Administratum. He was telling a story at Ekharth so he could get Zeck’s attention, and be seen to be the close and genuine confidant of the Provost Marshal.
Maybe I should draw up a map, thought Vangorich. A map or chart, some kind of visual aid, a diagram of the basic interpersonal relations of the High Twelve. It could be colour-coded to reveal areas of contempt, deceit, insincerity, political expediency and outright rancour. Yes, I might do that and present it to the Senatorum one day under ‘any other business’, he thought.
At the other end of the table, Kubik, the Fabricator General of the Adeptus Mechanicus, was conducting a dialogue with Mesring, the Ecclesiarch of the Adeptus Ministorum, and Helad Gibran, the Paternoval Envoy of the Navigators. Kubik was, of course, the other extensively augmented person present, but his alterations had been elective and had begun at an early age, rather than being the result of repair and injury like Zeck’s. Vangorich watched Kubik’s actions and movements with great interest. He had only limited experience of killing servants of the Mechanicus, and it was a skill he felt he ought to develop given the vast political and materiel power of Mars. He thought, instinctively, they would be hard to kill. The Navigators, equally inhuman, at least seemed physically frail and vulnerable.
Vangorich had already prepared methodologies on some of the other ‘sub-species’ at the table. The haunted, spectral servants of the Astronomican, represented in the High Twelve by Volquan Sark, the Master of the Astronomican, were still human enough for conventional processes. The telepaths… Ah, the telepaths were a different order of things. Abdulias Anwar, the Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, was typical of their malevolent and discomforting kind. To deal with telepaths, with the Imperium’s most powerful sanctioned telepaths… Well, that was why Vangorich had brokered such close ties with Wienand and her ilk.
Juskina Tull, the Speaker for the Chartist Captains, was the eleventh of the High Twelve. A magnificent woman in an almost theatrically ostentatious gown, she occupied a role that many thought was the most trivial of all the seats. On the other hand, the Merchant Fleets represented nearly ninety per cent of the Imperium’s interstellar capability. In times of crisis, the Speaker wielded power greater than the Lord High Admiral.
A bell sounded. The delegates moved to their places, even the most exalted of them. Cherub servitors and vox-recorder drones buzzed around the Cerebrium as though it were an aviary.
Lord Guilliman entered the crowded, panelled chamber and took his seat. He bowed his head to his eleven senior fellows. He was the Lord Commander of the Imperium, the commander-in-chief of all Imperial military assets. His head was shaved, and the huge old scar traversing his scalp and neck was very visible. Though beyond any single discipline or arm of the Imperial war machine, he wore a braided uniform that was, in style at least, an echo of the grand admiral’s uniform he had worn during his illustrious pre-Senatorum career.
His name was Udin Macht Udo. He was not the first human to hold the chair of the Senatorum Imperialis, but like all his predecessors, human and transhuman alike, he used the formal, honorary title of his office, the name of the first Lord Commander: Guilliman of Macragge.
Udo glanced around the chamber. His eyes, the left one glazed and milky under the lip of the long scar, fixed upon Ekharth, the Master of the Administratum.
‘Bring us to order, sir,’ Lord Guilliman said.
Ekharth nodded, activated the cogitator-recorder that was crouching on the table in front of him, and began to type on the quivering spindle keys that unfurled from it like the wings of a giant moth.
‘High Lords, we are now in session,’ Ekharth began.
Five
The loops and coils of the tunnels ahead resonated with the dull clack-clack-clack noise that told Slaughter what was waiting for them.
More fierce resistance. More of the new, more powerful warrior-forms. Many more.
The Imperial Fists had smashed and torn their way into the outer layers of the Chromes’ huge blisternest. Daylight Wall had made the first entry, an honour mark for their company, and then Hemispheric Wall had punched through about ten minutes later on the far side of the vast edifice’s sloping sides. Brothers of the shield-corps were now pouring into the alien nightmare of the Chromes’ nest through two dozen breaches.
The blisternest was an organic structure the size of a large Terran hive. Its walls, compartments, chambers and linking tunnels were curved and organic, and seemed to have been formed or grown from some greyish, semi-transparent material that had been extruded and then woven, hardening in the air. From the outside, it looked like a swollen blister. Inside, it was like venturing through the chambers of some alien heart. There was a general dampness and humidity, and sections of the structure throbbed and pulsed wetly, heaving with pus-like fluids that pumped and writhed through the building’s skin. The compartments and chambers inside were more like valves and organic voids, the spaces inside living structures. There was mould and fungal growth, and pockets of vapour. The echoing tubes throbbed with the tek-tek-tek sound, and the deeper agitation of the more powerful warrior-forms.
At regular intervals the interior sounds generated by the nation of Chromes were drowned out as airstrike support howled in overhead. Low-flying attack runs left blossoming trails of firestorm fury in their wake, engulfing the upper levels of the blisternest. Flights of Caestus rams, specialist vehicles designed for ship-boarding actions, had been unleashed too, driving their armoured prows into the skin of the vast nest to deliver assault squads of shield-corps brothers.
Slaughter waged his own war through the dank, miasmal chambers. The muzzle-flash of his bolter, jumping and sun-bright, lit up the green twilight of the nest. He kept his sword drawn. The big warrior-forms tended to get the bolter rounds. The regular Chromes met his blade’s edge. In places, the dipping, curved floor of the nest tunnels was ankle-deep in swilling Chrome ichor. The standing fluid reflected the crackling light of multiple fires, and crimped with ripple patterns every time an airstrike shook the ground.
A pack of Chromes rushed him down the flue of a tunnel. Slaughter stood his ground and set in with sword and boltgun. Severed or exploded aliens peeled away on either side of his resolute form, or were hurled backwards into their kin. Slaughter bellowed the battle cry of Daylight Wall, and urged his brothers up the ducts and grimy arterial conduits that the nest used as corridors.
His yellow armour was flecked with soot and slime. He smashed a charging Chrome away from him with the back of his fist. The thing broke as it hit the nest wall and left a spatter of juice as it slid down. One of the bigger, darker things attacked. With a grim smile, Slaughter realised he was thinking of these things as ‘veterans’. They were the old guard. He admired their skill and their power. They had fought wars for their benighted race out among the stars. He could see that in them. They had protected their own and perhaps conquered territory. He wondered which xenos species they had battled that he had also fought.
The first thing a good warrior always did was respect his enemy. He evaluated and assessed his foe, and woe betide him if he failed to appreciate what his opponent brought to the field. Slaughter had nothing but appropriate respect for the ‘veterans’. He’d seen them gut and dice enough of his shield-brothers that day already. The losses were going to be high. At least, he reflected, the damn lordlings and politicos would be pleased. The war against the Chrome advance was proving that serious threats still remained, and that military forces like the Imperial Fists were not expensive luxuries.