‘Leave the capital untouched,’ Argel Tal had informed Baloc Torvus at the preceding war council. ‘I will release the Gal Vorbak upon Crachia and take their queen’s head myself.’
The fleetmaster had nodded. ‘And what of the remembrancers? They’ve barely been with us a fortnight, yet already I’m suffering hourly beseeching from their representatives, begging that they be allowed to witness an assault.’
The Crimson Lord shook his head. ‘Ignore them. We are conquering a world, Baloc, not nursemaiding tourists.’
Baloc Torvus had grown deeply patient in his advancing age, which was one of the fleetmaster’s many virtues that his men admired and his fellow commanders relied upon. Argel Tal saw the beginnings of cracks in that ironclad facade now, showing in the lines around the ageing man’s eyes, and the way he adjusted his white cloak to calm himself before replying.
‘With respect, lord–’
Argel Tal raised a hand in warning. ‘Don’t fall into formalities just because you disagree with me.’
‘With respect, Argel Tal, I have been ignoring them on your behalf since their arrival, and for over a year before that. I have mouthed platitudes and composed missives refusing them access to the fleet, citing a hundred and more reasons that it would be inappropriate, impossible, or impractical to deal with them. Now they are here, and they come equipped with Imperial seals from the Sigillite himself, demanding that they be allowed to record the Great Crusade. Short of shooting them – and don’t think I can’t see that smile – how am I to continue delaying them?’
Argel Tal chuckled, the first break in his foul mood the fleetmaster had seen today. Whatever news the returning Chaplain had brought, it was not sitting well with the Chapter Master. ‘I see your point. How many have joined the fleet?’
Torvus consulted a data-slate. ‘One hundred and twelve.’
‘Very well. Make them choose ten. We’ll take them down with us in the first wave, and give them a minimal Army escort from the Euchars. The rest can follow once the landing zones are secure.’
‘What if they encounter significant opposition?’
‘Then they die.’ The Crimson Lord made to leave the room. ‘I do not care, either way.’
Torvus took several seconds to make sure Argel Tal wasn’t joking.
‘By your word.’
TWENTY-TWO
An Idea
Brothers
The Ordained Hour
Ishaq was faintly concerned that he was going to die down here, but that wouldn’t stop him enjoying it while it lasted.
The other remembrancers whined on and on, badgering their Echuar aides about where would be best to observe the battle without actually getting anywhere near it. Apparently they’d forgotten the honour of getting sent down here shortly after first setting foot on solid ground. Most of them seemed dedicated to completely missing the whole point of making planetfall in the first place, but that was fine by Ishaq. He wasn’t here to babysit their careers.
The ride down to the surface had been an uneventful drift through the afternoon sky – anticlimactic after all the tension of being selected, and boring enough for Ishaq to start wondering if there was really a war going on at all. The limited view from the dirty window had revealed a distant city of obviously human construction below.
Strange, to consider waging war against such a familiar scene.
Their lander was an Army troop transport, a shaking, rattling example of the ancient Greywing-class shuttles that he’d assumed were out of service these days, replaced by the smaller, sleeker Valkyries. Ishaq had looked at the boxy underslung compartment where the thirty passengers were evidently supposed to travel. He’d looked at the sloping wings, ran a gloved hand over the armour plating, pockmarked from battle and painted with faded lightning bolts from the Emperor’s Unification Wars on Terra two centuries before.
And he’d fallen in love.
He snapped several picts of the venerable old girl, pleased with each and every one of them.
‘What’s her name?’ he asked the pilot, who was standing around with the two dozen Army soldiers on the hangar deck and looking just as annoyed.
‘They didn’t name them back when she was made. Too many, produced too fast, by too few facilities.’
‘I see. So what do you call her?’ He pointed at the faint, stencilled print along the hulclass="underline" E1L-IXII-8E22.
The man thawed a touch at Kadeen’s interest. ‘Elizabeth. We call her Elizabeth.’
‘Sir,’ Ishaq grinned. ‘Permission to come aboard your fine lady.’
So it’d started well. Once they were down, things took a turn for the worse. The officer in nominal command of their expedition wasn’t an officer at all – he was a Euchar sergeant who’d drawn the short straw and had to babysit the gaggle of pretension and nervousness that made up ten highly-strung artists in a warzone.
Ishaq half-listened to the sergeant arguing with a handful of the other remembrancers about just where would be acceptable for them to enter the city. He was already bored, standing on the edge of a rise about three kilometres from the city limits. The place itself looked no different from any industrialised sprawl on Terra, and there weren’t even any obvious signs of battle.
The nature of Astartes assault presented a problem for the people attempting chronicle the event. A direct drop-pod attack against the palace meant the remembrancers had to cross an entire hostile city alone, or would remain outside the city limits and ultimately witness nothing at all. The former was never going to happen. The latter almost definitely was.
Ishaq Kadeen was a naturally suspicious soul, and he felt a bleak sense of humour behind all this. Someone, perhaps even the Crimson Lord himself, was making fun of them all. Inviting them down here, but keeping them tediously safe and out of the way.
He trudged over to his minders: two men in the neat ochre uniforms of the Euchar 81st. Each of the remembrancers was similarly guarded. Ishaq’s own sentinels looked both bored and annoyed all at once, which was quite a feat for human facial expressions.
‘What if we just flew over to the palace?’ he suggested.
‘And get shot down?’ The Euchar was practically spitting. ‘That piece of shit would catch fire and fall out of the sky as soon as it came into range of the anti-air guns.’
With effort, Ishaq kept his smile cordial. ‘Then fly really, really high, and come down sharp on top of the palace. Then find somewhere to land.’ He demonstrated this feat of aeronautics with his hands. They didn’t seem convinced.
‘Not happening,’ one of them said.
Ishaq turned without another word, heading back into the dark confines of the Greywing’s passenger pod. When he emerged again, he had a plastek personal grav-chute pack tucked under one arm, clearly taken from the overhead storage lockers.
‘Then how about this? We fly really damn high, and anyone who actually wants to do their job can jump out and do it.’
The two soldiers shared a glance, and called their sergeant over.
‘What is it?’ the sergeant asked. His face painted enough of a picture: he needed another whining artist like he needed a hole in his head.
‘This one,’ the soldier pointed at Ishaq. ‘He’s had an idea.’
It took twenty minutes for the idea to become reality, and Ishaq regretted it right about the same time he jumped out of the gunship and started falling.
Below him sprawled the white-stone palace, like something from Ancient Hellas in Terra’s decadent past. It was coming up to meet him with surprising speed, while the wind was doing its best to beat him unconscious.
This, he thought, may have been a mistake.
He tapped the switches on his chest buckle that would engage the grav-chute. First one, then the other. First one, then the other.
‘Wait twenty seconds before you switch it on,’ the sergeant had said to the few of them that were making the drop. ‘Twenty seconds. Understood?’