The Beast Arises

‘I find myself struggling with what to call you. Plain “Koorland” doesn’t quite do your position justice. Chapter Master no longer seems entirely appropriate either.’

‘You could call me Slaughter.’

Vangorich felt that he was expected to smile, and did. The Imperial Fist did not.

‘A pleasure speaking with you, Grand Master,’ said Koorland, turning away.

‘The defence of Terra permits no rest, does it?’ Vangorich called after the Space Marine’s broad shoulders. ‘Your diligence in preparing the Palace’s defences has been inspirational. Given the circumstances.’

‘I hold,’ said Koorland, face half turned over the black fist that emblazoned his left pauldron. ‘That is my duty. The circumstances are never irrelevant, but they will never change that fact.’

‘When I walk the Palace grounds I see Space Marines on the walls again. I realise that they can never replace the Imperial Fists, and yet Daylight, the others, the symbol they now wear…’

Koorland’s gaze dropped almost imperceptibly, brushing the curve of his pauldron plate — the black fist on its white field.

This time Vangorich’s smile was his own and quite genuine. Guile and discretion were the principal tools of his Officio, but there always came the time when an operative had to step out of the shadows and show the knife. Metaphorically, of course. But the good ones, the really good ones, could time their move so perfectly, manoeuvre their weapon so expertly, that they never wound up with blood on their hands.

‘You have been an inspiration even to them, lord. And the regular forces even more so. The Lucifer Blacks have worn, well, black, since before the Unification Wars, but I believe I have seen some yellow starting to appear these past weeks. They worship you, and I’m not speaking figuratively — you are as close to the God-Emperor as any of them will ever come.’

Koorland turned back. ‘I do not serve for accolades.’

‘Higher words of praise were never spoken within these walls, trust me. But from whom do you think those soldiers would rather take their orders? Some distant lord who hasn’t set foot beyond the Inner Palace since greasing his way out of the Navy, or one of the true defenders of humanity?’

‘I fight, I serve and I hold. That is all.’

Vangorich tilted his head back and looked pointedly up. A hairline fracture ran across the chapel’s ceiling, a millimetre incontinuity where the latest round of tremors had moved the north wall marginally westward relative to the south. This was a minor shrine, frequented by nobody of importance but the Grand Master of a shadowy Officio that few higher authorities much cared for. The repair detail was mired in the bureaucracy of the Administratum.

‘We need more from you. If the orks tire of our dithering tomorrow and launch their assault, what will happen? Can you hold Terra without the full backing of the Astra Militarum? Let’s say that you can, that you do, and that we are all still here to conduct the hunt for the Beast that you have been calling for. Do you really want to do it fighting the Navy, the Astropathica, and the Administratum every step of the way?’

Koorland said nothing. It was an opening, and Vangorich took it.

‘You do wish to confront the Beast?’

‘A firm defence is central to the avoidance of defeat, but a strategy of containment will never win a war. The Siege was the greatest defensive action in history, but it was the Emperor’s defeat of Horus that finally ended the Heresy.’

‘Politics is very much like war,’ Vangorich agreed softly. ‘Sometimes the only solution is to strike for the figure at the top.’

‘I serve the Imperium loyally,’ Koorland returned, shocked, angry.

Sometimes a failing organ needed to be shocked, Vangorich thought.

‘Have you paused recently to ask yourself what the Imperium really needs?’

The Imperial Fist fell silent, his eyes running deep.

Vangorich offered a slight bow and left the transhuman to his thoughts. He was not nearly important enough that the Senatorum would wait on his arrival, and Koorland had a lot to think about.

Thirteen

Prax

The matt-grey Thunderhawk gunship Penitence descended hard on the planet’s night side, ventral thrusters blasting up a tsunami of dust as the assault craft levelled out and dropped its troop doors. Dust billowed through the open hatch, whipping through handgrips and cargo netting and smothering the armoured forms of Veteran Squad Anatoq. With the enhanced senses of smell and taste granted by his neuroglottis, Zerberyn sifted the storm of particulates. Small stones. Dead soil. Bone chips. Blood. It chopped up the twelve helmet beams and the weak pastel glow of wall-mounted panels, banging and rattling inside the troop compartment.

‘Quickly in and quickly out,’ voxed Veteran-Sergeant Columba over the squad channel, one hand wrapped around a ceiling handgrip.