the wake of the army.
Laron had seen the mechanised enhancements and weapons of fallen tech-guard servitors being
recovered as the Imperials pushed ever forward and he knew that they were used to create more
lobotomised, unfeeling soldiers. Brigadier-General Havorn had spoken of what became of the flesh
of the fallen tech-guard and Laron had been horrified.
It was like some archaic necromancy, he thought, to reuse the flesh and armaments of the dead
to create new soldiers to throw thoughtlessly at the enemy. It was morbid and repugnant, and he
tried as best he could to keep his men away from them. What was it that the magos called them?
Skitarii? They were unnatural and they made his men uneasy. Hell, they made him uneasy. Soldiers
that had no notion of fear or self-preservation, he was certain they would all march straight off a
cliff to their doom at a word from the magos.
Soldiering was meant to be glorious: heroes were made on the battlefield and the victories of
those heroes would be recorded for ever more back on Elysia, recounted in song at the great banquet
feasts and balls of his home world. War was a noble act where one could gain honour and standing.
There was no such honour or heroism amongst the Skitarii. They were little more than automata,
playing pieces of their callous masters. What honour was there to be gained fighting alongside such
as them?
He had been fascinated and horrified in equal measures when he had first seen inside one of the
mobile factorum crawlers. The motionless shapes of pale-fleshed humans were held in vast aisles of
bubbling vat-tanks, kept in a dormant state. That single factorum must have held ten thousand inert
bodies, or “flesh units” as the magos called them. Darioq had coldly explained that while the
Mechanicus was capable of creating its own vat-grown host bodies, it was time consuming and
resource heavy, so most of these soldiers were from the other Imperial Guard units within the
Crusade. They had suffered grave injuries, leaving them alive, but brain-dead. Others were criminals
and deserters, and the punishment for their crimes was to be turned over to the Mechanicus.
They were destined to become battle servitors, all semblances of their former selves erased with
mind-wipes and the removal of their frontal lobes. Indeed, Darioq had stated, the entire right
hemisphere of the brain was removed from all but a few, those used as shock-troops and specialists,
where a certain degree of adaptability and autonomous decision making, albeit severely limited in
nature, was required.
Such concepts as creativity were clearly frowned upon within the Mechanicus and Laron had
found this galling, for it was anathema to the way that the Elysians operated. Adaptability, being
able to react to changing directives, objectives and situations, and the ability to operate effectively
deep behind enemy lines with little or no direction from the upper echelons of command, were all
favoured skills in the ranks of the Elysians. Those same traits were deplored as dangerous and
heretical amongst the adepts of the Machine-God.
“Deep in thought, acting colonel?” asked a voice behind him and Laron turned to see the
approach of the leather-clad figure of Kheler walking towards him.
“Commissar,” said Laron in acknowledgement. The commissar had been his shadow ever since
Havorn had assigned him to watch over Laron and he had certainly not been lax in his duty.
Wherever he turned, the man was there, watching and listening, waiting for him to slip up.
“Survived another day without getting shot then, acting colonel?”
“The day isn’t over yet, Kheler.”
The commissar chuckled. It was insulting and belittling to have the man watching over him and
the threat of his presence was obvious. His uniform demanded respect, yet he was a canny warrior
and a highly capable officer.
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The swiftness and the severity of his judgement was shocking. The commissar had been smiling
and talking with one of Laron’s men, but had executed that same man without a thought not an hour
later when the trooper had turned to flee because his lasgun’s powercell had run dry. A laspistol
blast in the man’s head had shown all the troopers that cowardice of any kind would not be
tolerated.
“You do not flee the enemy under any circumstances!” he had roared. “The Emperor watches
over you! If your power cell runs dry, you pick up the weapon of a fallen comrade. If that runs out
of ammunition, you draw your pistol. If you have no pistol, you fight with your knife. If your knife
breaks, you fight with your bare hands. And if your hands are cut off, still you do not flee, you
attack the enemy with any weapon that you have. You bite their damned kneecaps off if that’s all
you can do!”
That had got a scattered laugh and Laron had marvelled at the commissar’s skill. The man had
just killed one of their comrades and he had got them to laugh.
“But you do not flee!” Kheler had shouted severely, his eyes wide and threatening. “Or I
promise you, as the Emperor is my witness, I will gun you down like traitorous dogs.”
“Motivation,” the commissar had explained to Laron. “That is what I provide to the regiment.
The threat of a bullet in the back of the head is good motivation not to turn tail and run.”
The man switched from jocular comrade to ruthless executioner in a second. Even knowing this,
Laron found it hard to dislike the man.
“Aren’t you hot in all that get up?” asked Laron, motioning towards the commissar’s long,
black, leather coat and hat. The temperature over the last days had soared and any sign of the storms
of the week before were long passed.
“Hot, acting colonel? Yes, I am damn hot, but do you think I would look such a commanding
figure if I were stripped down to my undergarments? And besides, I look damn good in black.
Dashing is a word that springs to mind.”
Laron snorted and shook his head.
“We are only flying to the front to see if the enemy truly are retreating into the plains, or if it is
some ploy.”
“Must keep up appearances, acting colonel,” replied Kheler.
“Hold on to your hat, commissar,” said Laron as the dark shape of a Valkyrie approached
overhead and the Elysian clicked his visor down over his eyes.
The screaming reverse thruster jets of the Valkyrie blew salt dust up into the air as they rotated
towards the ground. Laron smirked as the commissar shielded his eyes with one hand while the
other was clamped down on his leather hat to keep it from blowing away in the hot blasts of air
coming from the engines.
The aircraft touched down onto the ground and its door slid open. With a nod to the men inside,
Laron climbed aboard and turned to help the commissar. The man fell into his seat, blinking salt
dust and grit from his eyes. Laron stood in the open doorway grabbing the overhead rail tightly as
the Valkyrie left the ground and began a vertical ascent into the air, turning slightly.
The Imperial battle force was spread out beneath him. Lines of tanks rolled towards the front
and tens of thousands of men marched in snaking columns over the rough ground below. Free of the
constriction of the ravine, the army moved forward quickly and in good order. It was surprisingly
tiring to organise the dispositions and lines of advance, but no doubt that was why Havorn had
ordered him to do it, to test how he progressed.
It was certainly very different from being a captain. He had not thought it would be quite as
difficult and exhausting as this. A lot of thankless organisational and logistical work required his
attention, and he found that he was weary beyond words. He was far more tired than he had ever
been when engaged on the front line, or even more than when he had been when engaged in deep
missions on enemy territory. At those times he would snatch sleep when he could get it, an hour
here, a few minutes there, but at least that sleep had been deep and restful, even if it was in the
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middle of a siege barrage. Now he felt as if he hadn’t slept for weeks and when he did sleep he was
still filled with concerns and worries.
There were a thousand and one jobs that needed his agreement, his sign-off and his input, and he
had found it overwhelming. He was floundering and he couldn’t see how he could get on top of it
all. It was difficult at first to know what truly needed his attention and what could be delegated to
his captains. His respect for Havorn had grown immeasurably as he realised the responsibilities of
command that must weigh upon him. But he never showed it. He was always the tough old
campaigner and none doubted his judgement.
His captains: it still sounded strange to him. He was no longer one of them. Now he was their
colonel and the easy camaraderie he had once shared with them was long gone. He grinned at that.
In truth, there had never been any easy camaraderie with most of the other captains. They had
always seen him as an arrogant bastard, the “glory boy” captain of the storm troopers. And they
were mostly right.
It felt good to be in the air again and away from the pressures of his position, and he hated
slogging along on foot. That was grunt’s work. He was a glory boy, damn it, and if they were going
to say it anyway, he might as well live like one.
“You think the enemy is truly retreating, colonel?” asked the commissar, though Laron knew
that he already knew the answer. This was for the benefit of the men around them. He noted that in
the presence of other members of the 72nd the commissar left out the acting part of his title. No
doubt that was something else to do with motivation. He was a clever bastard.
“It’s been hard and we have lost a lot of good men, but the enemy are falling back. I just want to
see the traitors fleeing with my own eyes. The Emperor is with us! We will make them pay for the
deaths of the men of the 72nd.”
He saw a slight smile in the eyes of the commissar as he played along.
“Motivation is vitally important,” the commissar had said earlier, “whether it comes from the
threat of a bullet, the impassioned speech of an officer, or propaganda from the mouth of a
commissar, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that your soldiers fight and that they have fire in the
bellies. For some that comes from faith, for others it is from outrage. It doesn’t matter. But you must
never miss an opportunity to inspire your men. It’s not much, but a word here and there goes a long
way with the common soldiers.”
These conversations with the commissar had been playing on his mind and he had begun to
wonder if that was another reason why Havorn had attached the commissar to his staff, to teach him
the power of motivation in all its forms.
“By the Emperor’s name, they will pay,” said Laron once more.
The view on the grainy, black and white pict screen had been astonishing as Marduk’s Thunderhawk
made its approach into Shinar. It was almost unrecognisable from the original Imperial city. From
this high in the air, nothing of it could at first be seen, but the immense Gehemehnet tower that rose
into the atmosphere. It was as if some astral deity had hurled a mighty spear into the planet,
skewering it. It could be seen for thousands of kilometres all around when the air was clear.
Beneath the tower, lower in the atmosphere and hanging directly over Shinar, was a thick, oily,
black smog. It was roiling and contorting as if alive and it was swirling around the tower that rose in
its midst. The tower was the very centre of the gaseous maelstrom and the fumes were thickest
there, the winds strongest.
Nothing could penetrate the thick, noxious smog cloud, not even the Thunderhawk’s sensitive,
daemon infused sensor arrays. Marduk knew that the Gehemehnet was creating a wide cone of warp
interference that spewed out through the atmosphere and beyond. This interference would
effectively make the entire side of the planet all but invisible to the enemy. Just as he thought of
this, the Thunderhawk’s pict-screen flickered and degenerated to static. The power of the
Gehemehnet was indiscriminate in whose equipment it affected. The gunship was still around two
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hundred kilometres from Shinar, but had clearly entered the wide cone of disruption. The
Thunderhawk had no need for concern—it did not rely upon technical arrays and its witch sight saw
all the more clearly within the warp field.
Marduk felt the field close over him and his twin hearts palpitated erratically for a moment, his
breath catching in his chest. It was joyous to feel the power of the Immaterium wash over him. He
heard the whispers of daemons in the air. He felt his sacred bond to the warp strengthen and his
power with it. The Dark Apostle was wielding some powerful faith to have created a warp field of
such potency.
Movement flickered at the corner of his eyes and he felt presences brush past him. The barriers
between the realms of Chaos and the material plane were thin. He could almost make out the
daemonic entities straining from beyond to cross the thin walls and enter the physical world. Soon,
he whispered to them. Soon the barriers would be stripped away like flesh from bone and then they
would be able to take corporeal form and bring hell to this world.
He felt a certain amount of apprehension as he approached Shinar and the Dark Apostle. To
wield such power! Never had he been witness to such a feat of strength from the holy leader as this.
He had not imagined that Jarulek would have been able to create such a powerful Gehemehnet. He
had believed that the Dark Apostle had long reached the apex of his rise and that his own rise would
eclipse Jarulek’s power over the next millennia. Could he have underestimated him?
An uncomfortable and uncharacteristic flicker of doubt squirmed within him. Could he wield
such power? He knew that he could not, not yet, but he was certain that his powers would treble
once he passed the full indoctrinations required to become a true Dark Apostle. He would take up
that mantle and soon, no matter what the cost or sacrifice required. Long had he waited for his
moment to arise and he would be damned before he saw his opportunity splutter and die out like a
blood-wick before it had even begun to blaze.
He was rocked as strong winds buffeted the Thunderhawk. The engines screamed as they fought
against being sucked into the swirling morass rotating around the Gehemehnet. The speed of the
