Yarrick: The Pyres of Armageddon Page 2

  Given what happened to Armageddon, the widespread belief is that the monocle was a spectacular failure. Given what happened to von Strab, I’m not so sure. I think the device could only have strengthened what was already present in that devious mind.

  On that day, however, I was less concerned with the function of von Strab’s lens than with doing what I could to prise something useful out of this meeting. I didn’t know what von Strab had in mind for me. My duty, at this moment, was to express my concerns. I knew in my gut that something was coming. But if I wanted von Strab to listen, I would have to find a better way of communicating a sense of urgency than intuition and foreboding.

  ‘Commissar Yarrick,’ von Strab said. ‘Welcome. I’ve heard many startling things about you. Very busy on Basquit, weren’t we?’ The voice that emerged from his thick lips was deep and nasal. It was oiled with a self-satisfied attempt at charm, but edged with a perpetual, defensive petulance.

  ‘We were,’ I answered. ‘The 252nd distinguished itself in heroic combat.’

  ‘So I’ve heard. So I’ve heard.’ He drummed the fingers of his right hand on a data-slate perched on the arm of the throne. He didn’t look at its screen. ‘A great victory, you would say.’

  ‘I would. The orks on Basquit have been exterminated. However–’

  He cut me off. ‘Be that as it may, the victory was not without sacrifice.’

  ‘No war is.’

  ‘Basquit lost its overlord.’

  ‘True. But Albrecht Meinert wasn’t killed by orks.’

  ‘No. My cousin was murdered by his successor.’

  Ah. I began to see where I stood. ‘I heard the rumour,’ I said, non-committal.

  ‘And you let such treason stand.’

  The remarkable thing was von Strab spoke without a trace of irony. I responded in kind. ‘My duty was to rid the planet of orks, not to police its internal politics.’ All of which was true, but I was allowing myself the small pleasure of being as disingenuous as the overlord. Meinert had been an active hindrance to the Basquit campaign. He had insisted that the bulk of the troops be held in the defence of land and homes of the agri world’s ruling families. Lord Berthold Stratz had shown himself to have a much more realistic grasp of military necessities. He had also had designs on Meinert’s throne. While Brenken turned a blind eye, I had met with Stratz. We had spoken in bland, unobjectionable circumlocutions, and Stratz had departed convinced that the Imperium would welcome a new regime on Basquit with himself at the top. Within a day, Meinert was dead, Stratz was overlord, and the 252nd had been freed to bring the battle to the orks.

  ‘Your duty was to protect Basquit,’ von Strab said. ‘The orks were defeated, but there were incalculable losses of land and property.’ By which he meant the nobility’s holdings. Those lush valleys had become the battlefields where we had trapped the orks and exterminated them.

  ‘I did whatever I felt was necessary in the service of the Imperium.’

  Von Strab smiled. ‘Of course you did. As do I.’

  He meant the last statement as a threat. I used it instead as an opening. ‘Good. Then I must inform you that I am greatly concerned that the ork raid on Basquit was just the first sign of a much larger threat.’

  ‘Oh?’ Von Strab leaned back on his throne, signalling just how ready he was to take me seriously.

  ‘An ork incursion this deep into Imperial space is already one thing, but we have no adequate explanation for how they arrived there. We had no warning of any sort of approaching fleet. There were no ork vessels in orbit over Basquit.’

  ‘The greenskins travel the immaterium too.’

  ‘Indeed. And the reports I gathered on Basquit imply they fell planetside in a space hulk. But it was a small one, just large enough to hold the force we encountered. It may have come out of the warp, but it would have been too small to survive there for any length of time. I believe it was a fragment of something larger.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were given to such unsupported speculation, commissar.’

  Not as much as I am given to hopeless tasks, I thought, but I forged on. ‘There is more. During the battle, I heard the orks chanting.’

  Von Strab was looking more and more amused. ‘And what was it they were chanting?’

  ‘It sounded like Ghazghkull.’

  ‘You speak greenskin, don’t you, commissar?’ He spoke as if that made me as contemptible as the orks. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘I believe it is a name.’

  Von Strab shook his head. ‘So the brutes shout the name of their warlord. Please tell me you don’t believe that to be unusual.’

  ‘What was unusual was the depth of their fervour.’

  ‘Their fervour? You read the greenskins’ minds now? Are you a psyker, commissar?’ He laughed, pleased with his joke. An appreciative, dutiful snicker did the rounds of the honour guard.

  I knew how this would end, but I did not give up. I would see my duty through. The odds against its success were irrelevant. I ignored von Strab’s jibe and summarised my position. ‘Orks attacked a planet in a strategically critical sub-sector. They were, I believe, united in their fervour for a single warlord. They must have emerged from the warp. There is a warp storm brewing. The conjunction of these factors should not be ignored.’

  Von Strab regarded me for a few moments. ‘Are you done, commissar?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then I thank you for this diversion. I hope you don’t mind if I turn to the reason I sent for you.’

  My jaw clenched. I swallowed my rage. It would serve no purpose. ‘You are taking no action at all?’

  ‘About what you have just told me? Of course not. You are aware that the Feast of the Emperor’s Ascension is almost upon us? You know the scale of the celebration. I have enough to think about without indulging in surmise and fantasy.’

  The fingers of my left hand twitched. The movement was very slight. I was barely conscious of it myself. Von Strab saw it, though. The monocle whirred faintly, and his eyes narrowed. He smiled again, much more broadly than before. ‘What are you doing, commissar? Are you reaching for that bolt pistol? What are you thinking? That I am guilty of dereliction? Shall I be executed? By you?’

  I said nothing.

  He laughed, enjoying himself. ‘We have much in common, don’t you think?’ He paused just long enough for my silence to turn into an insult. ‘No?’ he continued. ‘It’s true, though. We are both willing to do what is necessary. Without exception. Well, almost. I believe you are betraying your own principles at the moment. If I should die, why am I still speaking?’ The smile grew broader yet. I could see his teeth. They were yellow.

  Whatever else von Strab was, and whatever his catastrophic weaknesses, he was a superb politician. A politician of the most leprous sort, but a brilliant example of his species. At this moment, he was demonstrating the skills that had made him overlord of Armageddon, and had kept him alive. Not only was I stymied, it was all I could do to keep my temper and not have myself gunned down.

  In the years to come, I would ask myself if I made the right decision by staying my hand. I would wonder if events might have turned out differently. The questions still come to me during sleepless hours. If I had drawn my pistol, I would have been dead in the next second. But might I have been fast enough? Could I have killed von Strab then and there? Would my sacrifice have been worth it? Was there any chance it would have saved billions of lives?

  I believe I made the right choice. The coming agony of Armageddon cannot be put down to the incompetence and venality of a single man. The Enemy racing our way was far too strong.

  Even so, the questions still come.

  I didn’t answer von Strab. I clasped my hands behind my back and waited.

  When he saw I wasn’t going to be goaded, von Strab chuckled. ‘Well then,’ he said. ‘Well then. Enough of th
at.’ As if the conversation had been nothing more than banter between old friends. ‘The reason you are here, commissar, is to reap the rewards of your efforts on Banquit.’ And he had already made clear what he thought of those efforts. ‘Indeed, the rewards of your exemplary career.’ His bottom lip glistened with contempt.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You have earned your retirement, Commissar Yarrick, and I have wonderful news.’ A pause and a quick, pursed grin. ‘I have intervened on your behalf with Lord Commissar Seroff. He has generously acceded to my request that we retain your services here on Armageddon. For the remainder of your service, you will have the honour of overseeing recruitment in Hades Hive.’

  So he was ignoring my concerns, and putting me out to pasture. There was a role for political officers in the process that led to the formation of regiments. New recruits needed reminding of the singular purpose of their lives. Whether from the more privileged strata of society or from the depths of the underhive, they had to feel the impact of the commissar before the battlefield. They had to fear someone more than their sergeants.

  But the role von Strab was assigning me was one normally reserved for commissars convalescing from war wounds. Officers temporarily unfit for combat. Such tours of duty rarely lasted for more than a few months. I didn’t believe the narrative von Strab was presenting, but I did believe he and Seroff had contrived this punishment together. Between them, they would ensure that I would spend the rest of my days in the most menial fashion possible.

  I gave von Strab a crisp nod. ‘I see. Will that be all, overlord?’

  ‘You are dismissed.’

  I turned on my heel and left the chamber. I was supposed to feel humiliated. I was enraged, but not because of my punishment. I was sure that something infinitely worse was coming to us all.

  2. Mannheim

  He woke with thoughts of burning. A single, fading image from his unconscious lingered before his mind’s eye: a flare of suns.

  Princeps Kurtiz Mannheim of the Legio Metalica Titan Legion sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for his head to clear. He cursed the softness of the mattress. He was, at the insistence of Herman von Strab, quartered in a guest chamber one level down from the overlord’s residence. Von Strab wanted all the senior military currently stationed on Armageddon to be on hand for the feast day. Mannheim despised the posturing spectacle. But it would be over in two more days.

  He stood and walked to the half-circle window in the east wall. The stained glass was black with night. He could see nothing out of it. Even if he could, the staging grounds of the Legio Metalica would not have been visible. His Iron Skulls had a base on the outskirts of Infernus many kilometres to the west. He hadn’t had sight of Steel Hammer for three days now. The absence of connection to the Imperator-class Emperor Titan was an acute spiritual pain and growing weakness, like a slow loss of vitae. The implants at the base of his skull had no surface feeling, yet he experienced a phantom lack. That was a distress he expected, though. It began whenever he uncoupled from Steel Hammer. Something more had jolted him to consciousness. His frame tingled with a sense-­memory of pain and an anticipation of disaster.

  He moved to the footlocker beside the bed. He had no choice but to accept the overlord’s hospitality. That did not mean he had to indulge in the decadence of too many members of Armageddon’s ruling class. He would not insult his uniform by placing it in the chamber’s armoire. It was a bronze monolith, its size dictated, as far as Mannheim could tell, by the need to support the heraldry of both the von Strabs and the von Kierskas. The more Mannheim had to do with the nobility, the more disgusted he became, and the more fervently he clung to his faith in the Imperium’s structure. The chain of command and the oaths that held it together were stronger than the unworthy leaders who weakened individual links. Mannheim had no respect for von Strab, but he would give his life for the order that dictated he obey the overlord’s commands. The Emperor was at the top of that order. Mannheim would rip out his implants before he challenged a state of being dictated by the Father of Mankind.

  He opened the footlocker and began to dress. The unease of his awakening refused to fade. It lay over his thoughts like a slick of promethium. He could not ignore it. So he would seek clarity. There was someone he could consult.

  He wondered if her sleep had been as broken as his.

  3. Yarrick

  The librarium was a few dozen levels down from the peak of a spire just to the south of the one housing the overlord’s and governor’s residences. It was still above the thick of the hive’s popu­lation cauldron, though there was little of the luxury here that surrounded von Strab. The librarium was clean enough, but its air was stale with neglect. The shelves had grown shabby with age, the rockcrete floor webbed with hairline cracks, and the stacks of volumes and scrolls smelled musty. It was not a place many went. This was not surprising. Armageddon was not a planet where life was conducive to study, and this librarium was not connected to any of the major chapels in the hive. It was almost forgotten.

  Meeting here felt clandestine. That worried me. It had since the morning, when Brenken had found me and asked me to attend the gathering.

  I was greeted at the door by a scribe as faded and mildewed as his archive. He didn’t speak. He bowed, gestured down the main aisle for me to proceed, then withdrew into the shadows.

  The others were waiting for me in the small rotunda at the centre of the librarium. With Brenken were Kurtiz Mannheim and a woman I had not met before. Her red robes, trimmed in yellow, white and black, declared her service to the Legio Metalica. She was a psyker, with a serpent coil of mechadendrites around the back of her skull. The use of her powers had withered her physical form. Her skin was tight against her bones, thin, brittle, a translucent yellow. Her eyes glittered with the intensity of her vision. She sat at a small reading table just behind the two officers.

  Mannheim nodded in greeting. ‘Thank you for meeting us, commissar,’ he said. ‘Colonel Brenken spoke to me of your concerns.’

  ‘She said you share them.’

  ‘I do. Especially after last night.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Mannheim turned to the psyker. ‘This is Scholar Arcanum Konev. I consulted her after I experienced…’ He searched for the words, then admitted, ‘I don’t know what I experienced.’

  ‘The tempest in the immaterium is growing worse,’ Konev said. Her voice rasped like sand over bones. ‘The ripples are reaching many.’

  ‘I asked Scholar Konev to draw from the Emperor’s Tarot,’ Mann­heim said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘The Great Hoste, reversed,’ Konev recited, hoarse tones taking on the rhythms of a chant. ‘The Despoiler, reversed. The Shattered World.’

  I felt the sickening tightness in my chest of the worst being confirmed. I was no psyker, and I was no reader of the Tarot. But I had a rudimentary knowledge of the cards, and I could tell that what Konev had read was nothing good.

  ‘A great enemy is coming,’ she said. ‘His forces are overwhelming. This is a foe such as the Imperium has rarely seen. What lies in his path will be smashed, and we are in his path.’

  Konev would be choosing her words carefully. A great enemy, she had said. Not the Great Enemy. The dark forces from the Eye of Terror were not on the march, then, at least not here. But that was little comfort.

  ‘Can this still be orks we’re talking about?’ Brenken asked. ‘Their threat isn’t exactly rare.’

  ‘This one must be,’ I said. ‘We must never underestimate the orks. There’s a good reason we have been forced to fight them on so many fronts: they are very successful in spreading their plague. But in this case…’

  ‘Would you tell me what you told the overlord?’ Mannheim asked. And after I had done so, he said, ‘If you’re right that we face a greenskin threat, then it must be incredible for it to be of an order to generate this reading.’
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  ‘The warp storm is part of this,’ I said. ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘A worrying conjunction,’ Mannheim admitted.

  ‘What is our course of action, then?’ Brenken asked. ‘Other than to increase our level of preparedness.’

  The question fell into a silence leaden with our own powerlessness. The threat was still too vague. There were no countermeasures to take against it.

  Mannheim sighed. ‘Scholar Konev and I will speak with von Strab. Perhaps this reading, and a reframing of Commissar Yarrick’s points, will convince him at least to build up the defensive posture of the hives.’

  ‘Warn the other senior officers too,’ I said. ‘Before the overlord explicitly forbids doing so. And what about the Navy?’

  ‘I have an acquaintance with Admiral Isakov,’ Mannheim said. ‘I’m sure the warp storm is already a point of concern for him. I’ll speak with him.’

  The actions felt inadequate, but I could not see much else to be done at this point. ‘We should also send out an alert beyond the system,’ I said. ‘If the warp storm grows much worse, we will be cut off from the rest of the Imperium. If no one thinks to look this way during that period…’ I left the thought unfinished.

  Mannheim nodded. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘There is something else that concerns me,’ I said. ‘Why did we meet here?’

  ‘For discretion,’ said Brenken. She gave me an apologetic shrug. ‘Word of how you stand in von Strab’s eyes has spread quickly.’

  ‘I imagine he made sure of that.’

  ‘If the overlord knows we’ve had this conversation, he is less likely to listen to Princeps Mannheim.’