“Ave Imperator.”
The general gestured at each of the tech-priests in turn with his glass. “Through the wisdom and
scientific mastery of the Adeptus Mechanicus, may our guns blaze fierce and our engines never
stall.”
“Ave Imperator,” said the officers, but the tech-priests replied “Ave Omnissiah!” and deViers
heard Bishop Augustus mutter a quiet curse under his breath.
“Throne above,” the general went on, “even the Navy is doing its part!”
Some of the colonels and majors grunted in brief disapproval.
“Come now, you men,” chided deViers, still smiling. “Commodore Galbraithe sends us his best
liquor and has promised me a Vulcan close-support wing once our hangars are finished. I won’t
exclude him from my toast.”
“May we not also raise our glasses to Major General Bergen?” asked High Commissar Morten.
He turned to face Bergen down the length of the table and said, “The very best of luck to you, sir, in
your coming assault on Karavassa. The orks will crumble before you and the might of your glorious
tanks.”
“Hear, hear!” agreed the other officers noisily.
“Thank you, high commissar,” said Bergen. “I’m confident my division will more than live up to
the general’s expectations.”
Bishop Augustus raised his glass in Bergen’s direction and said, “May the Light of all mankind
watch over you and your men, major general, and grant you victory in His Name. You go with the
blessings of His Most Holy Ministorum.”
“The Emperor protects!” said deViers sharply, irked that the high commissar had seen fit to
hijack his toast.
“The Emperor protects!” chorused the guests, and together, excepting the tech-priests as always,
they drained their glasses. At a sign from Gruber, the general’s servants emerged from the side
corridor again to withdraw the chairs from around the table, signalling an end to the general’s soiree.
As the guests started filing out of the room’s broad double-doors, each saluting him as they went,
deViers heard Tech-Magos Sennesdiar addressing Major General Bergen.
“I miscalculated the probability of your attendance tonight, major general,” said the magos. “Are
your preparations complete? May I assume that your enginseers are performing optimally?”
28
“They are,” answered Bergen. “As for my attendance, the general insisted. Perhaps he sought to
distract my mind. Time to think is not always a welcome commodity the day before deployment.”
“Epinephrine,” said Tech-Adept Armadron.
“I’m sorry, adept?” said Bergen.
“And norepinephrine,” said Tech-Adept Xephous. “Armadron is correct. Troopers under study
showed greatly increased levels of both hormones prior to engagement with the enemy. Sections of
the brain may be excised to inhibit this, major general. Our skitarii legions do not experience the
problem.”
Bishop Augustus was hovering nearby. Overhearing them, he interjected acidly, “That must be a
great comfort to them.”
Tech-Magos Sennesdiar turned his cowled head to face the Ministorum man. “Their comfort is
irrelevant, priest. Their efficiency is not.”
General deViers saw the bishop’s face flush and moved quickly to intervene. Before the bishop
could respond and escalate matters, he gripped the bishop’s hand in his. “I was greatly honoured by
your attendance tonight, your grace. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Remember, if there’s
anything you need from me, you may contact my adjutant, Gruber, directly. He’ll alert me to
anything that requires my attention.”
Bishop Augustus gaped for a moment, and then, his tone still edged with displeasure, said,
“Most kind, general. I won’t forget. And congratulations once again on such a fine banquet. I shall
look forward to your next, providing the guest list is a little more… exclusive.”
Throwing a last contemptuous look at the tech-priests, the bishop lifted the hem of his robe from
the floor and stalked out of the room. A string of officers moved up to salute the general and thank
him. Without further discourse, the tech-priests took this opportunity to leave.
As the other officers moved off, deViers decided to pull Bergen aside just as he was about to
depart.
Standing together, he found his eyes level with the younger man’s. Like the general, Bergen was
taller than most Cadians. He was of a heavier, more muscular build than the general, too, but then,
he was forty years younger. Rejuvenat treatments could only do so much. Face to face like this,
deViers noted how much smoother and tighter Bergen’s skin was. Sometimes, when the general was
awoken in the early hours of the morning by the need to relieve himself, he would catch his
reflection in a mirror and gasp, shocked that his face could look so skull-like in a certain light. He
knew that all the rejuvenat in the galaxy wouldn’t hold aging off forever. How long did he have left
to achieve his dream?
“A quick word before you go, Gerard,” said deViers. “Just wanted to wish you the very best out
there.”
Bergen gazed straight back at him and, for a second, deViers felt like he had entered some kind
of staring contest. It was a strange moment, but then Bergen spoke, and the feeling, whatever its
cause, vanished into nothing.
“I appreciate that, sir,” said Bergen, “but luck is overrated is it not? I’ve never much liked
relying on it.”
DeViers nodded. “Don’t you worry. We’ll all come out of this as heroes.” He hesitated, trying to
gain control over all the thoughts swimming around in his head. The commodore’s amasec was
stronger than he had expected. It was difficult to put into order the things he wanted to say. In a rare
moment of alcohol-induced frankness, he settled on saying, “You know, Gerard, my line — my
bloodline, that is — ends with me. Perhaps I’ve mentioned that to you before.”
Bergen’s mouth was a tight line. “You have, sir.”
“Couldn’t father any of my own, you know. Not for lack of trying, by Throne, but my seed’s as
thin as water, so the experts tell me.”
“I’m sure that it’s none of my business, sir,” said Bergen.
29
It was the cold, flat tone in which they were spoken, rather than the words themselves, that
surprised deViers. He recovered quickly, however, clapping Bergen on the arm, and saying, “I
suppose not, Gerard. I just wanted you to understand. A man must leave his mark on the Imperium.
History must remember me. I’ve given my entire life to the Emperor’s service.”
Bergen stared back quietly for second. “We all have, sir.”
DeViers nodded, “Yes, of course. A fighting man’s outfit, my 18th Army Group. I’ve said it
before. Good men we lead.”
“Good men, sir,” said Bergen. “I’m not sure we deserve them sometimes.”
DeViers couldn’t explain why, but those words hit him like a smack in the face. He gaped for a
moment, unsure of how to respond. Bergen didn’t give him the chance.
“With your permission, sir,” he said. “I should get some rest before I lead my division out. I
want to be ready when we meet the foe.”
“Permission granted,” replied deViers.
Bergen snapped his boot heels together and gave a fine, crisp salute which deViers returned.
Then Bergen turned sharply, and marched out of the room.
DeViers watched him go. For a few minutes, he stood alone in silence, thinking how remarkable
it was that the word we could be made to sound so much like you.
30
CHAPTER FOUR
After the general’s dinner, Bergen emerged into the hot night air to find his adjutant, Katz, awaiting
him in the driver’s seat of an idling staff car, ready to take him back to his quarters. Despite the hour
and the fact that he was due to lead his entire division out before dawn, Bergen wasn’t in the mood
to retire quite yet, and waved Katz on, telling him he would return on foot after a short walk.
Though he had limited his consumption to a polite minimum, Commodore Galbraithe’s rich amasec
had numbed his fingertips, and he felt the need to walk it off. His stomach felt uncomfortably full
and his mind was restless, awash with conflicting thoughts. He knew that sleep would not come
easily. Perhaps a little time in the open air, even air tainted with the smell of sulphur, would do him
some good.
He walked without a specific destination in mind, keeping to areas where the ground was less
heavily trodden and less brightly lit, bringing him in short order to the southernmost section of the
base. This was not the first time Bergen had been posted to a desert region, and he had expected the
temperature to plummet at night, as it so often did in the deserts he had visited on other worlds. But
the constant cloud cover on Golgotha trapped a layer of heat in the lower atmosphere that would
take many hours to dissipate, and he unbuttoned his jacket and shirt collar as he walked.
Rounding the corner of a prefabricated barracks, he almost bumped into a squad of infantrymen
on their way to the mess tents. They stopped to salute him smartly, though the colour of their berets
said they weren’t from his division. He returned the salute without breaking stride, noting absently
that he hadn’t recognised anyone he had passed so far. Nothing strange in that, of course. There
were close to thirty thousand men in Hadron Base: two whole infantry divisions plus his own
armoured, each at roughly ten thousand men apiece, not counting the drop-ship losses, and that was
excluding the non-combat personnel so essential to basic operations.
Thirty thousand, he decided, was a conservative estimate. Crowded into the space between the
towering curtain walls, it seemed like a vast number, an unstoppable military force, but Bergen
knew it was nothing of the kind. Despite the difficulties inherent in scanning the shrouded surface of
the planet, what little data they had suggested that Golgotha still seethed with the foe. Those few
probe-servitors that had returned safely had shown that the more temperate regions north and south
of the desert were dotted with vast settlements wherever the terrain allowed. Even now, thought
Bergen, legions of orks might be racing through the darkness, crossing the open sands towards the
plateau, following grunted reports of lights in the sky on the promise of a good blood-soaked battle.
Vermin, he thought. They’re a plague on the galaxy, the damned greenskins.
He reached the foot of the south wall and began to climb a zigzagging staircase that led up to the
battlements.
There was a powered elevator inside the nearest tower, but he opted to ascend under his own
strength, conscious of the excess of calories that General deViers had forced on him. As he moved
from step to step, enjoying the steady rhythm of the exercise, his thoughts dwelled on the Golgothan
orks.
They’d had thirty-eight years of freedom to spread across the land, turning every scrap of
captured or abandoned Imperial technology to their needs. Even taking into account the
unprecedented hordes that had left this world and the surrounding systems to join Thraka’s
onslaught of Imperial space, there had to be literally millions of orks still present, perhaps billions.
Who could say for sure how many?
31
Army Group Exolon was nothing in the face of such numbers and anyone who said otherwise
was either a propaganda man, a fool, or both, as they so often were. Despite the general’s grand
speech about the importance of their quest, Bergen still shared the most fervent hopes of his men
that this would all be over quickly so they could join the fight on Armageddon. That was a fight
worthy of his beloved armoured division, for if Armageddon fell, Holy Terra, the sacred Cradle of
mankind, would be under direct threat for the first time since the divine Emperor had walked the
stars.
There could scarcely be a greater danger to the preservation of the Imperium in these dark times.
As Bergen reached the top of the stairs, breathing heavily, his forehead damp with sweat and his
quadriceps burning, he stopped and turned to look down on Hadron Base. It was quite something, he
admitted. It sat shimmering like an island of light in a sea of absolute darkness. His gaze crossed the
small airfield in the north-east quarter, its hangars nearing completion and awaiting the arrival of the
Vulcan gunships that the commodore had promised. To the south of it, scores of water towers and
storage silos stood in tight, ordered rows like men under close inspection. On the east side, next to
one of the base’s massive reinforced gates, were the motor pool and mustering field. Both were
large and well lit, and filled with red-robed enginseers busily tending to row upon row of transports
and war machines. There were hundreds of men in rust-coloured fatigues down there, too: troopers
from the support echelons hefting ammunition and supplies back and forward, working hard against
the clock. Large Guard-issue trucks — the ever-reliable Thirty-Sixers — were being driven into
position so that fuel drums and supplies could be hoisted onto them. Scores of Sentinel walkers
squatted in groups like flightless birds at rest, legs folded beneath them to allow for oiling and final
weapons checks.
To Bergen, all this was a beautiful sight, something he appreciated every time he saw it, and he
stood watching, motionless, for long minutes. He felt lucky, in many ways, to be the man he was.
From the age of six, from the moment that his mother had explained his destiny to him, that he was
already marked for military service, the Imperial Guard was the only thing that had given real
meaning to his life. It was the Guard that had shaped and defined him.
He turned from his view of the base below and moved to the parapet wall, looking out into the
black of the night. To his left, rows of Earthshaker guns sat silent, their machine-spirits resting until
called upon to commit the explosive, long-range slaughter at which they excelled. Some of the guncrews
were absent, sleeping in their barracks or getting fed, most likely. Sirens would call them
back to their stations in the event of an attack. Other crews had to remain on duty shifts. They sat by
their guns, smoking, playing cards, a few of them sharpening knives or practising close-combat
techniques with their fellows. Others moved in pairs along the wall, men on patrol duty,
occasionally lifting night-vision magnoculars to their eyes and then dropping them again. Nothing to
see out there.
Footsteps sounded behind Bergen and he turned to find a short, scruffy trooper looking up at
him with a pipe of styrene cups in one hand and a green flask in the other.
