The Beast Arises

He would be wrong to think he had rattled her. She had been bracing to face hard questions when he arrived. No, she wasn’t a military commander. She was aware of that. Yet this was a campaign that she had mounted, and that she was directing. She had Verreault and Zeck on board, but she had to be cautious about using them as resources. She had arranged to have the Astra Militarum regiments spread out through the Armada as a means to provide some structure to the civilian troops. But the move also diluted Verreault’s leverage. He, Zeck, Mesring, Ekharth — all of the allies in the Crusade had some pull, but only she had control of the Armada itself. The captains answered to her, so she had final say on disposition and launch.

And tactics.

The plan of attack was not a sophisticated one. Then again, if it was, it couldn’t be carried out. The ships were crewed by merchants. There were able pilots aboard many, pilots who had brought their ships through threats as lethal as any faced by the Imperial Navy. Their skills, though, were individual. They had no experience fighting in formation. They fled conflict. They didn’t seek it out.

She asked herself the question she had been avoiding since first announcing the Proletarian Crusade. Was she making a mistake? She made herself think through the consequences. She ran through possible balance sheets, measuring investment against risk, potential gain against possible loss.

She was oddly reassured.

If the Crusade failed, political damage would be the least of her problems. Retribution would be far from anyone else’s mind. Defeat would mean the loss of everything. Success, however, would place her in an unchallengeable position. That was the equation, then: victory of the Armada meant her personal victory, while defeat meant no one else would be the victor. There was no question. This was the smart move.

It was also so much more than that. She believed in what she was doing.

The crowd in the Fields was the biggest yet seen. The people there now were not volunteers. The last of those had embarked hours ago. Gathered now were celebrants, well-wishers, families. The excited, the curious, the hopeful. The desperate. They were all the desperate.

Tull had given them hope. She had given all of Terra hope. That was a singular achievement. She was proud of it. This was Terra’s greatest crisis since the Siege, the worst moment in the living memory of every human being on the planet. The plague of despair had been upon them, Zeck’s Adeptus Arbites had been unable to end the panic, and she, with a single speech, had turned the tide. She had given the billions determination, direction, purpose. An endeavour of legend had sprung into being at her urging, and despite the doubts of Vangorich and Lansung, it was not a folly. Lack of action would have been a folly. And what other options were there? The cry for help had gone out, but there were no elements of the Navy or the Adeptus Astartes that could reach Terra in time.

How do you know? That was the question she could not answer. It kept prying open her doubts. She closed them again with reason. Whatever cause the orks had for waiting, they would not wait until help had arrived. Tull thought it likely that the orks believed they had already won, and had the leisure of invading when it best suited them.

She walked across the chamber to the door. It was time to head to the Great Chamber. Time for another speech. Time to show the orks that they were wrong.

Time to launch.

‘We’re going in on that?’ Kord asked.

Their shuttle was drawing up to the Militant Fire’s landing bay.

‘What did you expect?’ said Haas. ‘A grand cruiser?’

‘Of course not. But this… It’s so small.’

He was right.

‘I can see even smaller,’ she pointed out.

‘That makes me feel a lot better.’ He craned his head to look up through the viewing block next to his bench. He squirmed in the grav-harness. ‘I was hoping for maybe one of the mass conveyors.’ He pointed to something Haas couldn’t see from her angle. ‘They’ll be carrying thousands.’

‘No room for everyone on them. They’re mainly reserved for Imperial Guard companies, from what I heard.’

‘I know that,’ he said, irritable. ‘I was just saying what I’d hoped. Those ships are strong. They can take some hits. This will get swatted in the first seconds of the attack. We’re cannon fodder.’

‘That’s a revelation to you?’

He shrugged. He didn’t look at her, watching as the shuttle entered the Fire’s bay.

Haas said, ‘What did you think was going to happen when we joined this endeavour?’

Another shrug.

‘Look at me,’ she said.

He did. His jaw was set. There was doubt in his eyes.

‘I didn’t want to join the Crusade,’ she said. ‘I thought our duty was to the maintenance of the law, and nothing else.’

‘I’m sorry—’ he began.