Ciaphas Cain (Novel One)

FOR THE EMPEROR



I just bought the first Ciaphas Cain-Omnibus on Amazon and wow, I'm glad I did it!
I've finished the Shortstory Fight or Flight, which started the Ciaphas Cain-Chronicles, and the first chapter of For the Emperor by now, and man, I already love this book!
So, I don't really know how long I can keep this project up, but I want to show you how great this story is, step by step.
If you got questions, just ask by commentating it. But I don't think there will be much to ask by now, although I think I will link to the Lexicanum sometimes.

I hope to inspire you to buy the books if you like the story, I did, although I've got scans of the story before (which I didn't read 'til I got the book xD).
on Amazon, you can buy the first omnibus for less than 10€, contains three in-between shortstories and the first three novels For the Emperor, Caves of Ice and The Traitor's Hand.
It's worth it's money!

PS: WOAHAHA! Just owned the Ciaphas Cain Chapbook 'Traitor's Gambit' on ebay <333 it's limited to 1000 pieces, so I'm happy now ♥
Ciaphas Cain (deutsch)

Diese Romanreihe von Sandy Mitchell umfasst die Erlebnisse des imperialen Kommissars Ciaphas Cain während seiner Dienstzeit, unter anderem mit zwei valhallanischen Regimentern. Die Romane werden in der Ich-Form geschrieben und sollen die Bibliographie von Cain - To serve the Emperor: A Commissar’s Life - darstellen, die aufgrund der brisanten Informationen über Cain und seine Abenteuer von der Inquisition unter Verschluss gehalten werden. Inquisitorin Amberley Vail editiert die Aufzeichnungen von Cain und kommentiert sie, um historische und örtliche Hintergründe zu erläutern beziehungsweise die Äußerungen von Cain ins rechte Licht zu setzen. Die Romane folgen dabei nicht unbedingt einer chronologischen Reihenfolge. Band 4 erzählt ein Ereignis vor denen der ersten drei Bände, während Band 5 eine Begebenheit wiedergibt, die chronologisch zwischen Band 2 und 3 liegt.

Die Person des Kommissar Cain wurde durch die erfolgreiche Romanreihe von Harry Paget Flashman und der Blackadder-Serie inspiriert. Alle zeigen einen Antihelden, der eigentlich feige ist, sich unter allen Umständen aus Konflikten und Kriegshandlungen heraushalten möchte, dennoch durch den Zufall bedingt am Ende als der große Held erscheint. Die Cain-Reihe wirft damit einen gewissen zynischen Blick auf das Warhammer 40.000-Universum und zeichnet sich durch die Verknüpfung von Ich-Erzähler und Kommentierung duch eine zweite Person durch unterschiedliche Perspektiven aus. Aus diesen verschieden Perspektiven resultiert eine sehr humorvolle Erzählweise, wie sie ansonsten nicht in den W40k-Romanen zu finden ist.

WH40k-Novel-Preludium

IT IS THE 41st millennium. For more than a hundred
centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden
Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the
will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the
might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass
writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of
Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for
whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that
he may never truly die.
YET EVEN IN his deathless state, the Emperor continues
his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the
daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route
between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican,
the psychic manifestation of the Emperors will. Vast
armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds.
Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes,
the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their
comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and
countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant
Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.
TO BE A man in such times is to be one amongst untold
billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody
regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times.
Forget the power of technology and science, for so much
has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the
promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim
dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst
the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and
the laughter of thirsting gods.

Editorial Note:

What, for want of a better phrase, I will henceforth be refer­ring to as the 'Cain Archive' is, in truth, barely deserving of so grandiloquent a title. It consists merely of a single dataslate, stuffed full of files arranged with a cavalier disregard for chronology, and to no scheme of indexing that I've been able, to determine despite prolonged examination of the contents. What can be stated with absolute certainty, however, is that the author was none other than the celebrated Commissar Ciaphas Cain, and that the archive was written by him during his retirement while serving as a tutor at the Schola Progenium.
This would pin the date of composition to some time after his appointment to the faculty in 993.M41; from occasional references to his published memoirs (To Serve the 'Emperor: A Commissar's Life), which first saw the fight of day in 005.M42, we can. safely conclude that he was inspired by the process of writing them to embark on a fuller account of his experiences, and that the bulk of the archive was composed no earlier than this.
His motives for so doing we can only guess at, since publica­tion would have been impossible; indeed, I placed them under Inquisitorial seal the moment they came to light, for reasons which should be immediately apparent to any attentive reader.
Nevertheless, I believe they are worthy of further study. Some of my fellow inquisitors may be shocked to discover that one of, the lmperium's most venerated heroes was, by his own admis­sion, a scoundref and self-seeking rogue; a fact of which, due to our sporadic personal association, I have long been aware. Indeed, I would go so far as to contend that it was this very combination of character flaws which made him one of the most effective ser­vants the Imperium has ever had, despite his strenuous efforts to thz contrary. For, in his century or more of active service to the Commissariat, and occasional less visible activities at my behest, he faced and bested almost every enemy of humanity: necrons, tau, tyranids and orks, eldar, both free of taint and corrupted by the ruinous powers, and the daemonic agents of those powers themselves. Reluctantly, it must be admitted, but in many cases repeatedly, and always with success; a record few, if any, more noble men can equal.
In fairness, it should also be pointed out here that Cain is his own harshest critic, often going out of his way to deny that the many instances in which he appears, despite his professed baser motives, to have acted primarily out of loyalty or altruism were any such thing. It would be ironic, indeed, if his awareness of his shortcomings should have blinded him to his own (admit­tedly often well-hidden) virtues.
It is also worth reflecting that if, as is often asserted, courage consists not of the absence of fear but the overcoming of it, Cain does indeed richly deserve his heroic reputation, even if he always steadfastly denied the fact!
However much we may deplore his professed moral shortcom­ings, his successes are undeniable, and we can be thankful that Cain's own account of his chequered career has at last been dis­covered. To say the least, these memoirs shed new light on many of the odder comers of recent Imperial history, aruf his eyewitness accounts of our enemies contain many valuable, if idiosyncratic, insights into understanding and confounding their dark designs.
It is for this reason that I preserved the archive and have spent a considerable amount of leisure time in the years since its discov­ery editing and annotating it, in an attempt to make it more accessible to those of my fellow inquisitors who may wish to peruse it for themselves. Cain appears to have had no overall structure in mind, simply recording incidents from his past as they occurred to him, and, as a result, many of the anecdotes are devoid of context; he has a disconcerting habit of beginning in media res, and many of the shorter fragments end abruptly as his own part in the events he is describing comes to a conclusion.
I have therefore chosen to begin the process of dissemination with his account of the Gravalax campaign, which is reasonably coherent, and with which the members of our ordo will be at least passingly familiar as a result of my own involvement in the affair. Indeed, it contains an account of our first meeting from Cain's perspective, which I must admit I found rather amusing when I first stumbled across it.
For the most трап, the archive speaks for itself, although I have taken the liberty of breaking up the long and unstructured account into relatively self-contained chapters to facilitate read­ing. The quotations preceding them are something of an indulgence on my part, having been culled from a collection of such sayings compiled by Cain himself for the apparent amuse­ment and edification of the cadets in his charge, but I justify this as perhaps providing an additional insight into the workings of his mind. Apart from this, I have confined myself to occasional editorial interpolations where I considered it necessary to place Cain's somewhat self-centred narrative into a wider content; unless otherwise attributed, all such annotations are my own, and I have been otherwise content to let his own words do the work.

Amberley Vail, Ordo Xenos

Chapter One

I don't know what effect they have on the enemy, but by the Emperor, they frighten me.

- General Karis, of the Valhallans under his command.

One of the first things you learn as a commissar is that people are never pleased to see you; something that's no longer the case where I'm concerned, of course, now that my glorious and undeserved repu­tation precedes me wherever I go. A good rule of thumb in my younger days, but I'd never found myself staring down death in the eyes of the troopers I was supposed to be inspiring with loyalty to the Emperor before. In my early years as an occasionally loyal minion of his Glorious Majesty, I'd faced, or to be more accurate, ran away screaming from, orks, necrons, tyranids, and a severely hacked off daemon-host, just to pick out some of the highlights of my ignominious career. But standing in that mess room, a heartbeat away from being ripped apart by muti­nous Guardsmen, was a unique experience, and one that I have no wish to repeat.
I should have realised how bad the situation was when the commanding officer of my new regiment actually smiled at me as I stepped off the shuttle. I already had every reason to fear the worst, of course, but by that time I was out of options. Paradoxical as it might seem, taking this miserable assignment had looked uncomfortably like the best chance I had of keeping my precious skin in one piece.
The problem, of course, was my undeserved repu­tation for heroism, which by that time had grown to such ludicrous proportions that the Commissariat had finally noticed me and decided that my talents were being wasted in the artillery unit I'd picked as the safest place to sit out my lifetime of service to the Emperor, a long way away from the sharp end of combat. Accordingly, I'd found myself plucked from a position of relative obscurity and attached directly to Brigade headquarters.
That hadn't seemed too bad at first, as I'd had lit­tle to do except shuffle datafiles and organise the occasional firing squad, which had suited me fine, but the trouble with everybody thinking you're a hero is that they tend to assume you like being in mortal danger and go out of their way to provide some. In the half-dozen years since my arrival, I'd been temporarily seconded to units assigned, among other things, to assault fixed positions, clear out a space hulk, and run recon deep behind enemy lines. And every time I'd made it back alive, due in no small part to my natural talent for diving for cover and waiting for the noise to stop, the general staff had patted me on the head, given me another commendation, and tried to find an even more inventive way of getting me killed.
Something obviously had to be done, and done fast, before my luck ran out altogether. So, as I often had before, I let my reputation do the work for me and put in a request for a transfer back to a regiment. Any regiment. By that time I just didn't care. Long experience had taught me that the opportunities for taking care of my own neck were much higher when I could pull rank on every officer around me.
'I just don't think I'm cut out for data shuffling', I said apologetically to the weasel-faced little runt from the lord general's office. He nodded judiciously, and made a show of paging through my file.
'I can't say I'm surprised', he said, in a slightly nasal whine. Although he tried to look cool and composed, his body language betrayed his excitement at being in the presence of a living legend; at least that's what some damn fool pictcast commentator had called me after the Siege of Perlia, and the appellation stuck. The next thing I know my own face is grinning at me from recruiting posters all over the sector, and I couldn't even grab a mug of recaf without having a
piece of paper shoved under my nose with a request to autograph it. 'It doesn't suit everybody.'
'It's a shame we can't all have your dedication to the smooth running of the Imperium,' I said. He looked sharply at me for a moment, wondering if I was taking the frak, which of course I was, then decided I was simply being civil. I decided to ladle it on a bit. 'But I'm afraid I've been a soldier too long to start changing my habits now.'
That was the sort of thing Cain the Hero was sup­posed to say, of course, and weasel-face lapped it up. He took my transfer request from me as though it was a relic from one of the blessed saints.
'I'll handle it personally', he said, practically bow­ing as he showed me out.
And so it was, a month or so later, I found myself in a shuttle approaching the hangar bay of the Righteous Wrath, a battered old troopship identical to thou­sands in Imperial service, almost all of which I sometimes think I've travelled on over the years. The familiar smell of shipboard air, stale, recycled, inex­tricably intertwined with rancid sweat, machine oil and boiled cabbage, hissed into the passenger com­partment as the hatch seals opened. I inhaled it gratefully, as it displaced the no less familiar odour of Gunner lurgen, my aide almost since the outset of my commissarial career nearly twenty years before.
Short for a Valhallan, Jurgen somehow managed to look awkward and out of place wherever he was, and in all our time together, I couldn't recall a single
occasion on which he'd ever worn anything that appeared to fit properly. Though amiable enough in temperament, he seemed ill at ease with people, and, in turn, most preferred to avoid his company; a ten­dency no doubt exacerbated by the perpetual psoriasis that afflicted him, as well as his body odour, which, in all honesty, took quite a bit of getting used to.
Nevertheless he'd proven an able and valued aide, due in no small part to his peculiar mentality. Not overly bright, but eager to please and doggedly literal in his approach to following orders, he'd become a useful buffer between me and some of the more onerous aspects of my job. He never questioned any­thing I said or did, apparently convinced that it must be for the good of the Imperium in some way which, given the occasionally discreditable activities I'd been known to indulge in, was a great deal more than I could have hoped for from any other trooper. Even after all this time I still find myself missing him on occasion.
So he was right there at my side, half-hidden by our combined luggage, which he'd somehow contrived to gather up and hold despite the weight, as my boot heels first rang on the deck plating beneath the shut­tle. I didn't object; experience had taught me that it was a good idea for people meeting him for the first time to get the full picture in increments.
I paused fractionally for dramatic effect before striding forward to meet the small knot of Guard officers drawn up to greet me by the main cargo
doors, the clang of my footsteps on the metal sound­ing as crisp and authoritative as I could contrive; an effect undercut slightly by the pops and clangs from the scorched area under the shuttle engines as it cooled, and Jurgen's tottering gait behind me.
'Welcome, commissar. This is a great honour.' A surprisingly young woman with red hair and blue eyes stepped forward and snapped a crisp salute with parade ground efficiency. I thought for a moment that I was being subtly snubbed with only the junior officers present, before I reconciled her face with the file picture in the briefing slate. I returned the salute.
'Colonel Kasteen.' I nodded an acknowledgement. Despite having no objection to being fawned over by young women in the normal course of events, I found such a transparent attempt at ingratiation a lit­tle nauseating. Then I got a good look at her hopeful expression and felt as though I'd stepped on a non­existent final stair. She was absolutely sincere. Emperor help me, they really were pleased to see me. Things must be even worse here than I'd imagined.
Just how bad they actually were I had yet to dis­cover, but I already had some presentiment. For one thing, the palms of my hands were tingling, which always means there's trouble hanging in the air like the static before a storm, and for another, I'd broken with the habit of a lifetime and actually read the briefing slate carefully on the tedious voyage out here to meet the ship.
To cut a long story short, morale in the Valhallan 296th/301st was at rock bottom, and the root cause of it all was obvious from the regiment's title. Com­bining below-strength regiments was standard practice among the Imperial Guard, a sensible way of consolidating after combat losses to keep units up to strength and of further use in the field. What hadn't been sensible was combining what was left of the 301st, a crack planetary assault unit with fifteen hun­dred years of traditional belief in their innate superiority over every other unit in the Guard, par­ticularly the other Valhallan ones, with the 296th; a rear echelon garrison command, which, just to throw promethium on the flames, was one of the few all-women regiments raised and maintained by that desolate iceball. And just to put the cherry on it, Kas­teen had been given overall command by virtue of three days' seniority over her new immediate subor­dinate, a man with far more combat experience.
Not that any of them truly lacked that now, after the battle for Corania. The tyranids had attacked without warning, and every Guard regiment on the planet had been forced to resist ferociously for nearly a year before the navy and a couple of Astartes Chap­ters¹ had arrived to turn the tide. By that time, every surviving unit had sustained at least fifty per cent casualties, many of them a great deal more, and the bureaucrats of the Munitorium had begun the process of consolidating the battered survivors into useful units once again.
On paper, at least. No one with any practical mili­tary experience would have been so half-witted as to ignore the morale effects of their decisions. But that's bureaucrats for you. Maybe if a few more Adminis-tratum drones were given lasguns and told to soldier alongside the troopers for a month or two it would shake their ideas up a bit. Assuming by some miracle they weren't shot in the back on the first day of course.
But I'm digressing. I returned Kasteen's salute, not­ing as I did so the faint discolouration of the fabric beneath her rank insignia where her captain's studs had been before her recent unanticipated elevation to colonel. There had been few officers left in either regiment by the time the 'nids had got through with them, and they'd been lucky at that. At least one of the newly consolidated units was being led by a for­mer corporal, or so I'd heard.² Unfortunately, neither of their commissars had survived so, thanks to my fortuitously timed transfer request, I'd been handed the job of sorting out the mess. Lucky me.
'Major Broklaw, my second-in-command.' Kasteen introduced the man next to her, his own insignia equally new. His face flushed almost imperceptibly, but he stepped forward to shake my hand with a firm grip. His eyes were flint grey beneath his dark fringe of hair, and he closed his hand a little too tightly, try­ing to gauge my strength. Two could play at that game, of course, and I had the advantage of a couple of augmetic fingers, so I returned the favour, smiling blandly as the colour drained from his face.
'Major.' I let him go before anything was damaged except his pride, and turned to the next officer in line. Kasteen had rounded up pretty much her entire senior command staff, as protocol demanded, but it was clear most of them weren't too sure about hav­ing me around. Only a few met my eyes, but the legend of Cain the Hero had arrived here before me, and the ones that did were obviously hoping I'd be able to turn round a situation they all patently felt had gone way beyond their own ability to deal with.
I don't know what the rest were thinking; they were probably just relieved I wasn't talking about shooting the lot of them and bringing in somebody compe­tent. Of course, if that had been a realistic option I might have considered it, but I had an unwanted rep­utation for honesty and fairness to live up to, so that was that.
The introductions over I turned back to Kasteen, and indicated the tottering pile of kitbags behind me. Her eyes widened fractionally as she caught a glimpse of Jurgen's face behind the barricade, but I suppose anyone who'd gone hand to hand with tyranids would have found the experience relatively unperturbing, and she masked it quickly. Most of the assembled officers, I noted with well-concealed amusement, were now breathing shallowly through their mouths.
'My aide, Gunner First Class Ferik Jurgen,' I said. In truth there was only one grade of gunner, but I didn't expect they'd know that, and the small unofficial promotion would add to whatever kudos he got from being the aide of a commissar. Which in turn would reflect well on me. 'Perhaps you could assign him some quarters?'
'Of course.' She turned to one of the youngest lieu­tenants, a blonde girl of vaguely equine appearance who looked as if she'd be more at home on a farm somewhere than in uniform, and nodded. 'Sulla. Get the quartermaster to sort it out.'
'I'll do it myself', she replied, slightly overdoing the eager young officer routine. 'Magil's doing his best, but he's not quite on top of the system yet.' Kasteen nodded blandly, unaware of any problem, but I could see Broklaw's jaw tighten, and noticed that most of the men present failed to mask their dis­pleasure.
'Sulla was our quartermaster sergeant until the last round of promotions', Kasteen explained. 'She knows the ship's resources better than anyone.'
'I'm sure she does', I said diplomatically. 'And I'm sure she has far more pressing duties to perform than finding a bunk for Jurgen. We'll liaise with your Sergeant Magil ourselves, if you have no objection.'
'None at all.' Kasteen looked slightly puzzled for a moment, then dismissed it. Broklaw, I noticed from the corner of my eye, was looking at me with some­thing approaching respect now. Well, that was something at least. But it was pretty clear I was going to have my work cut out to turn this divided and demoralised rabble into anything resembling a fight­ing unit.
Well, up to a point anyway. If they were a long way from being ready to fight the enemies of the Emperor, they were certainly in good enough shape to fight among themselves, as I was shortly to dis­cover.
I haven't reached my second century by ignoring the little presentiments of trouble which sometimes appear out of nowhere, like those itching palms of mine, or the little voice in the back of my head which tells me something seems too good to be true. But in my first few days aboard the Righteous Wrath I had no need of such subtle promptings from my subcon­scious. Tension hung in the air of the corridors assigned to us like ozone around a daemonhost, all but striking sparks from the bulkheads. And I wasn't the only one to feel it. None of the other regiments on board would venture into our part of the ship, either for social interaction or the time-honoured tradition of perpetrating practical jokes against the members of another unit. The naval provosts patrolled in tense, wary groups. Desperate for some kind of respite, I even made courtesy calls on the other commissars aboard, but these were far from convivial; humourless Emperor-botherers to a man, the younger ones were too overwhelmed by respect for my reputation to be good company, and most of the older ones were quietly resentful of what they saw as a glory-hogging young upstart. Tedious as these interludes were, though, I was to be grateful for them sooner than I thought.
The one bright spot was Captain Parjita, who'd commanded the vessel for the past thirty years, and with whom I hit it off from our first dinner together. I'm sure he only invited me the first time because protocol demanded it, and perhaps out of curiosity to see what a Hero of the Imperium actually looked like in the flesh, but by the time we were halfway through the first course we were chatting away like old friends. I told a few outrageous lies about my past adventures, and he reciprocated with some anec­dotes of his own, and by the time we'd got onto the amasec I felt more relaxed than I had in months. For one thing, he really appreciated the problems I was facing with Kasteen and her rabble.
'You need to reassert some discipline', he told me unnecessarily. 'Before the rot spreads any further. Shoot a few, that'll buck their ideas up.'
Easy to say, of course, but not so easy in practice. That's what most commissars would have done, admittedly, but getting a regiment united because they're terrified of you and hate your guts has its own drawbacks, particularly as you're going to find your­self in the middle of a battlefield with these people before very long, and they'll all have guns. And, as I've already said, I had a reputation to maintain, and a good part of that was keeping up the pretence that I actually gave a damn about the troopers under my command. So, not an option, unfortunately.
It was while I was on my way back to my quarters from one such pleasant evening that my hand was forced, and in a way I could well have done without.
It was the noise that alerted me at first, a gradually swelling babble of voices from the corridors leading to our section of the ship. My pleasantly reflective mood, enhanced by Parjita's amasec and a comfort­able win over the regicide board, evaporated in an instant. I knew that sound all too well, and the clat­ter of boots on the deck behind me as a squad of provosts double-timed towards the disturbance with shock batons drawn was enough to confirm it. I picked up my pace to join them, falling in beside the section leader.
'Sounds like a riot,' I said. The blank-visored head nodded.
'Quite right, sir.'
'Any idea what sparked it?' Not that it mattered. The simmering resentment among the Valhallans was almost cause enough on its own. Any excuse would have done. If he did have a clue, I never got to hear it; as we arrived at the door of the mess hall a ceramic cup bearing the regimental crest of the 296th shattered against his helmet.
'Emperor's blood!' I ducked reflexively, taking cover behind the nearest piece of furniture to assess the situation while the provosts waded in ahead of me, striking out with their shock batons at any target that presented itself. The room was a heaving mass of angry men and women punching, kicking and flail­ing at one another, all semblance of discipline shot to hell. Several were down already, bleeding, scream­ing, being trampled on by the still active combatants, and the casualties were rising all the time.
The fiercest fighting was going on in the centre of the room, a small knot of brawlers clearly intent on actual murder unless someone intervened. Fine by me, that's what the provosts were for. I hunkered down behind an overturned table, scanning the room as I voxed a situation report to Kasteen, and watched them battle their way forward. The two fighters at the centre of the melee seemed evenly matched to me; a shaven-headed man, muscled like a Catachan, who towered over a wiry young woman with short-cropped raven black hair. Whatever advantage he had in strength she could match in agility, striking hard and leaping back out of range, reducing most of his strikes to glancing blows, which is just as well, as a clean hit from those ham-like fists would likely have stove her ribcage in. As I watched he spun, launching a lethal roundhouse kick to her temple; she ducked just a fraction slow, and went sprawling as his foot grazed the top of her head, but twisted upright again with a knife from one of the tables in her hand. The blow came up towards his sternum, but he blocked it, opening up a livid red gash along his right arm.
It was about then that things really started to go wrong. The provosts had made it almost halfway to the brawl I was watching when the two sides finally realised they had an enemy in common. A young woman, blood pouring from a broken nose, was unceremoniously yanked away from the man whose groin she'd been aiming a kick at, and rounded on the provost attempting to restrain her. Her elbow strike bounced harmlessly off his torso armour, but her erstwhile opponent leapt to her defence, swing­ing a broken plate in a short, clinical arc which impacted precisely on the neck joint where helmet met flak; a bright crimson spurt of arterial blood sprayed the surrounding bystanders as the stricken provost dropped to his knees, trying to stem the bleeding.
'Emperor's bowels!' I began to edge my way back towards the door, to wait for the reinforcements Kas­teen had promised; if they hadn't been before, the mob was in a killing mood now, and anyone who looked like a symbol of authority would become an obvious target. Even as I watched, both factions turned on the provosts in their midst, who disap­peared under a swarm of bodies. The troopers barely seemed human any more. I'd seen tyranids move like that in response to a perceived threat, but this was even worse. Your average 'nid swarm has purpose and intelligence behind everything it does, even though it's hard to remember that when a tidal wave of chitin is bearing down on you with every intention of reduc­ing you to mincemeat, but it was clear that there was no intelligence working here, just sheer brute blood-lust. Emperor damn it, I've seen Khornate cults with more self-restraint than those supposedly disciplined Guard troopers displayed in that mess hall.
At least while they were ripping the provosts apart they weren't likely to notice me, so I made what progress I could towards the door, ready to take com­mand of the reinforcements as soon as they arrived. And I would have made it too, if the squad leader hadn't surfaced long enough to scream, 'Commissar! Help!'
Oh great. Every pair of eyes in the room suddenly swung in my direction. I thought I could see my reflection in every pupil, tracking me like an auspex.
If you take one more step towards that door, I told myself, you're a dead man. They'd be on me in sec­onds. The only way to survive was to take them by surprise. So I stepped forward instead, as though I'd just entered the room.
'You.' I pointed at a random trooper. 'Get a broom.'
Whatever they'd been expecting me to say or do, this definitely wasn't it. The room hung suspended in confused anticipation, the silence stretching for an infinite second. No one moved.
'That was not a request', I said, raising my voice a little, and taking another step forward. This mess hall is an absolute disgrace. And no one is leaving until it's been tidied up.' My boot skidded in a slowly congealing pool of blood. 'You, you, and you, go with him. Buckets and mops. Make sure you get enough to go round.'
Confusion and uncertainty began to spread, troop­ers flicking nervous glances at one other, as it gradually began to dawn on them that the situation had got well out of hand and that consequences had to be faced. The Guardsmen I'd pointed out, two of them women, began to edge nervously towards the door.
At the double!' I barked suddenly, with my best parade-ground snap; the designated troopers scur­ried out, ingrained patterns of discipline reasserting themselves.
And that was enough. The thunderstorm crackle of violence dissipated from the room as though sud­denly earthed.
After that it was easy; now that I'd asserted my authority the rest fell into line as meek as you please, and by the time Kasteen arrived with another squad of provosts in tow I'd already detailed a few more to escort the wounded and worse to the infirmary. A surprising number were able to walk, but there were still far too many stretcher cases for my liking.
'You did well, I hear', Kasteen was at my elbow, her face pale as she surveyed the damage. I shrugged, knowing from long experience that credit snowballs all the faster the less you seem to want it.
'Not well enough for some of these poor souls', I said.
'Bravest thing I ever saw', I heard from behind me, as one of the injured provosts was helped away by a couple of his shipmates. 'He just stood there and faced them down, the whole damn lot..' His voice faded, adding another small increment to my heroic reputation, which I knew would be all round the ship by this time tomorrow.
'There'll have to be an investigation.' Kasteen looked stunned, still not quite capable of taking in the full enormity of what had happened. 'We need to know who started it, what happened...'
'Who's to blame?' Broklaw cut in from the door. It was obvious from the direction of his gaze where he thought the responsibility should lie. Kasteen flushed.
'I've no doubt we'll discover the men responsible', she said, a faint but perceptible stress on the pro­noun. Broklaw refused to rise to the bait.
'We can all thank the Emperor we have an impar­tial adjudicator in the commissar here', he said smoothly. 'I'm sure we can rely on him to sort it out.'
Thanks a lot, I thought. But he was right. And how I handled it was to determine the rest of my future with the regiment. Not to mention leaving me run­ning for my life yet again, beginning a long and unwelcome association with the Emperor's pet psy­chopaths,³ and an encounter with the most fascinating woman I've ever met.

¹ A common mistake. It is, of course, virtually unheard of for an entire Astartes Chapter to take the field at once, let alone two; what Cain obviously means here is that elements from two different Chap­ters were involved. (A couple of companies apiece from the Reclaimers and the Swords of the Emperor.)

² He'd heard wrong, or is possibly exaggerating for effect. The newly appointed colonel of the 112th Rough Riders was a former sergeant, true, but had already received a battlefield promotion to lieutenant during the defence of Corania. None of the senior com­mand staff in any of the recently consolidated units had made the promotional jump directly from non-commissioned officer.

³ Not the most flattering or accurate description of His Divine Majesty's most holy Inquisition, it must be admitted.

Chapter Two

'You get more with a kind word and an excruciator than with just a kind word.'

- Inquisitor Maiden.

'So what you're trying to tell me', I said, turning the piece of crockery over in my hand, 'is that three peo­ple are dead, fourteen still in the infirmary, and a perfectly serviceable mess hall reduced to kindling because your men didn't like the plates they were served their meal on?' Broklaw squirmed visibly on one of the chairs I'd had Jurgen bring into my office for the conference - I'd told him to fetch the most uncomfortable ones he could find, as every little bit helps when you're trying to exert your authority -but the major's discomfiture wasn't due to just that alone. Kasteen was still visibly suppressing a smirk, which I was planning to wipe away in a moment.
'Well, that may be overstating it a little...' he began.
'That's precisely what happened', Kasteen cut in acidly. I hefted the plate. It was good quality porce­lain, delicate but strong, and one of the few pieces remaining intact after the mess hall riot. The regi­mental crest of the 296th was prominent in the centre of it. I turned to the dataslate on my desk, and made a show of paging through the reports and witness statements I'd spent the past week col­lecting.
'According to this witness statement, the first punch was swung by a Corporal Bella Trebek. A member of the 296th prior to the amalgamation.' I raised an inquisitive eyebrow in Kasteen's direction. 'Would the colonel care to comment?'
'She was clearly provoked', Kasteen said, losing the smirk, which seemed to hover in the air for a moment before jumping across to Broklaw.
'Just so.' I nodded judiciously. 'By a Sergeant Tobias Kelp. Who, it says here, threw his plate down declar­ing that he would be damned if he ate off some..' I made a show of getting the quotation scrupulously correct. '"Mincing tart's front parlour tea service." Does that strike you as a reasonable comment, major?'
The smirk disappeared again.
'Not particularly, no', he said, clearly wondering where this line of questioning was going. 'But we still don't know the full circumstances.'
'I think the circumstances are perfectly clear', I said. 'The former troopers of the 296th and the 301st have cordially detested one another since the regiments were amalgamated. Under the circum­stances the use of the 296th's regimental dinner service was bound to be regarded as an insult by the stupider elements of the former 301st.' Broklaw flushed at that. Good, let him get angry. The only way to salvage the situation was to make radical changes, and that wouldn't work unless I could get the senior officers to feel passionately that they were necessary.
'Which begs another question', I went on smoothly. 'Just who was stupid enough to order the use of the dinner service in the first place?' I aimed my second-best intimidating commissarial glare at Kasteen for a fraction of a second, before snapping it round to nail the junior officer sitting at her right. 'Lieutenant Sulla. That would be you, would it not?'
'It was founding day!' she retorted. That did take me by surprise. I didn't often get people bouncing back from a number two glare, but I concealed it with the ease of long practice. 'We always use the reg­imental ceramics on founding day. It's one of our proudest traditions'
'It was.' Broklaw broke in with sardonic amuse­ment. 'But unless you've got some traditional adhesive..'
Both women bristled. For a moment I thought I was going to have to put down a brawl in my own office.
'Major', I said, reasserting my authority. 'I'm sure the 301st had their own founding day traditions.' That was a pretty safe bet, as practically every regi­ment celebrated the anniversary of its First Founding in some way. He began to nod, before my use of the past tense registered with him, and then an expres­sion curiously close to apprehension flickered across his face. I leaned back in my chair, which, unlike theirs, I'd made sure was comfortably padded, and looked approving. It's always good to keep people off-balance. 'I'm glad to hear it. Such traditions are important. A vital part of the esprit de corps we all rely on to win the Emperor his victories.' Kasteen and Broklaw nodded cautiously, almost together. Good. That was one thing at least they could agree on. But Sulla just flushed angrily.
'Then perhaps you could explain that to Kelp and his knuckle-draggers', she said. I sighed, tolerantly, and placed my laspistol on the desk. The officers' eyes widened slightly. Broklaw's took on a wary expression, Kasteen's one of barely suppressed alarm, and Sulla's jaw dropped open.
'Please don't interrupt, lieutenant,' I said mildly. 'You can all have your say in a moment.' There was a definite edge in the room now. I had no intention of shooting anyone, of course, but they weren't going to like what I was about to say next and you can't be too careful. I smiled, to show I was harmless, and they relaxed a fraction.
'Nevertheless, you've just illustrated my point per­fectly. While the two halves of this regiment still
think of themselves as separate units, morale is never going to recover. That means you're sod-all use to the Emperor, and a pain in the arse to me.' I paused just long enough to let them assimilate what I'd just said. 'Are we in agreement on that, at least?' Kasteen nod­ded, meeting Broklaw's eyes for the first time since the meeting began.
'I think so', she said. The question is, what do we do about it?'
'Good question.' I passed a slate across the desk. She took it, and Broklaw leaned in to scan it over her shoulder as she read. 'We can start by integrating the units at squad level. As of this morning, every squad will consist of roughly equal numbers of troopers from each of the former regiments.'
That's ridiculous!' Broklaw snapped, a fraction behind Kasteen's far from ladylike exclamation. The men won't stand for it.'
'Neither will my women.' Kasteen nodded in agree­ment with him. So far so good. Making them feel they had common cause against me was the first step to getting them to co-operate properly.
'They're going to have to', I said. This ship is en route to a potential warzone. We could be in com­bat within hours of our arrival, and when that happens they'll have to rely on the trooper next to them, whoever it is. I don't want my people getting killed because they don't trust their own comrades. So they're going to train together and work together until they start behaving like an Imperial Guard regiment instead of a bunch of pre-schola
juvies. And then they're going to fight the Emperor's enemies together, and I expect them to win. Is that clear?'
'Perfectly, commissar.' Kasteen's jaw was tight. 'I'll start reviewing the SO&E.¹'
'Perhaps it would be best if you did so with the major's help', I suggested. 'Between you, you should be able to select fire-teams which at least have a rea­sonable chance of turning their lasguns on the enemy instead of one another.'
'Of course.' Broklaw nodded. 'I'll be pleased to help.' The tone of his voice said otherwise, but at least the words were conciliatory. That was a start. But they really weren't going to like what was coming next.
'Which brings me on to the new regimental desig­nation.' I'd been expecting some outburst at this, but the trio of officers in front of me just stared in stupe­fied silence. I guess they were trying to convince themselves they hadn't heard what I'd just said. The current one just emphasises the divisions between what used to be the 301st and the 296th. We need a new one, ladies and gentleman, a single identity under which we can march into battle united and resolute as true servants of the Emperor.' All good stirring stuff, and for a moment, I actually thoughtthey were going to buy it without any further argu­ment. But of course it was that daft mare Sulla who burst the bubble.
"Уou can't just abolish the 296th!' she almost shouted. 'Our battle honours go back centuries!'
'If you count slapping down stroppy colonists as battles.' Broklaw rose to the bait. 'The 301st has fought orks, eldar, tyranids-'
'Oh. Were there tyranids on Corania? I guess I was just too busy with my needlepoint to notice!' Sulla's voice rose another octave.
'Shut up! Both of you!' Kasteen's voice was quiet, but firm, and stunned both her subordinates into silence. I nodded gratefully at her, forestalled from having to do the job myself, and pleasantly sur­prised. It was beginning to look as though she had the makings of an effective commander after all. 'Let's hear what the commissar has to say before we start inventing objections to it.'
'Thank you, colonel', I said, before resuming. What I propose is to treat the date of amalgamation as a new First Founding. I've had the ship's astropath contact the Munitorium, and they've agreed in principle. There is currendy no regiment designated the Valhallan 597th, so I've proposed adopting that as our new identity.'
'Two-hundred-and-ninety-six plus three-hundred-and-one. I see.' Kasteen nodded. 'Very clever.'
Broklaw nodded too.
'A very neat way of preserving the identities of the old regiments', he said. 'But combined into some­thing new'
'As was always the intention', I agreed.
'But that's outrageous!' Sulla said. "You can't just redesignate an entire regiment out of existence!'
'The Commissariat gives its servants wide discre­tionary powers', I said mildly. 'How we interpret them is a matter of judgment, and sometimes tem­perament. Not every commissar would have resisted the temptation to discourage further dissension in the ranks by decimation, for instance.' Quite true, of course. There were damn few who'd go quite so far as to randomly execute one in ten of the troopers under their command to encourage the others, but they did exist, and if ever a regiment was so undis­ciplined that such a drastic measure might have been justified, it was this one, and they knew it. They were just lucky they'd got Cain the Hero instead of some gung-ho psychopath. I've met one or two in my time, and the best thing you can say for them is that they don't tend to be around long, particularly once the shooting starts. I smiled to show I didn't mean it.
'If the new designation is unacceptable', I added, 'the 48th Penal Legion is also available, I'm told.' Sulla blenched. Kasteen smiled tightly, unsure of how serious I was.
'The 597th sounds good to me', she said. 'Major Broklaw?'
'An excellent compromise.' He nodded slowly, let­ting the idea percolate. 'There'll be some grumbling in the ranks. But if ever a regiment needed a new beginning, it's this one.'
'Amen to that', Kasteen agreed. The two senior offi­cers looked at one another with renewed respect. That was a good sign too.
Only Sulla still looked unhappy. Broklaw noticed, and caught her eye.
'Cheer up, lieutenant', he said. That would make our next Founding Day...' He paused fractionally, glancing at me for confirmation as he worked it out. '258.' I nodded. 'You'll have nearly eight months to come up with some brand new traditions.'

Of course, the changes I'd imposed didn't go down too well with the rank and file, at least to begin with, and I got most of the blame. But then I've never expected to be popular; ever since I got selected for commissarial training I've known I could expect very little from the troopers around me apart from resent­ment and suspicion. As my undeserved reputation has snowballed, of course, that's got to be the case less and less of the time, but back then I was still tak­ing it more or less for granted.
Gradually, though, the reorganisation I'd insisted on began to work and the training exercises we put the troopers through were beginning to make them think like soldiers again. I instituted a weekly prize of an afternoon's downtime for the most efficient pla­toon in the regiment, and a doubling of the ale rations for the members of the most disciplined squad within it, and that helped remarkably. I felt we'd really turned a corner the morning I overheard one of the new mixed squads chatting together in the
freshly repainted mess hall instead of splitting into two separate groups as they'd tended to do in the beginning, and exulting over their higher place in the rankings than a rival platoon. These days, I'm told, 'Cain's round' is a cherished tradition in the 597th, and the competition for the extra ration of ale still hotly contested. All in all, I suppose there are worse things to be remembered for.
The one problem we still had to resolve, of course, was the matter of those responsible for the riots in the first place. Kelp and Trebek were for it, there was no doubt about that, along with a handful of others who had been positively identified as responsible for the worst of the deaths and injuries. But for the time being, I'd put off the question of punishment. The wholesale reforms I'd instigated, and the subsequent improvement in morale, were still fragile, and I didn't dare risk it by ordering executions.
So I did what any sensible man in my position would have done; dragged my feet under the pretext of carrying out a thorough investigation, kept the defaulters locked away where, with any luck, most of their comrades would forget about them in the gen­eral upheaval, and hoped something would turn up. It was a good plan, and it would have worked too, at least until we arrived in a warzone somewhere and I could quietly return them to a unit or have them transferred away with no one any the wiser, if it hadn't been for my good friend Captain Parjita.
Technically, of course, he was well within his rights to demand copies of all the reports I'd been
compiling, and I hadn't thought there was any harm in letting him have them. What I'd been for­getting was that the Righteous Wrath wasn't just a collection of corridors, bunkrooms, and training bays; it was his ship, and that he was the ultimate authority aboard. Two of the dead had been his provosts, after all, and he wasn't about to sit back and let the perpetrators get away with it. He wanted a full court-martial of the guilty troopers while we were still on board, and he could make sure they were punished to his satisfaction.
'I know you want to be through', he said one evening, as we set up the regicide board in his quar­ters. 'But frankly Ciaphas, I think you're overdoing it. You already know who the guilty parties are. Just shoot them and have done with it.'
I shook my head regretfully. 'But what would that solve?' I asked. Would it bring your men back to life?'
That's not the point.' He held out both fists, con­cealing playing pieces. I picked the left, and found I was playing blue. A minor tactical disadvantage, but one I was sure I could overcome. Regicide isn't really my game, to be honest - give me a tarot deck and a table full of suckers with more money than sense any day - but it passed the time pleasantly enough. 'There really can't be any other verdict. And every day you delay just leaves the cowardly scum cluttering up my brig, eating my food, breathing my air...' He was getting quite emotional. I began to sus­pect that there had been more than a simple line of
command relationship between him and one of the dead provosts².
'Believe me', I said. 'There's nothing I'd like better than to draw a line under this whole sorry affair. But the situation's complicated. If I have them shot the whole regiment could unravel again. Morale's just starting to recover.'
'I appreciate that.' Parjita nodded. 'But that's not my problem. I've got a crew to think about, and they want to see their comrades avenged.' He made his opening move.
'I see.' I moved one of my own pieces, playing for time in more senses than one. Then it's clearly long past time that justice was served.'

'Are you insane?' Kasteen asked, looking at me across the desk, and trying to ignore the hovering presence of Jurgen, who was shuffling some routine reports I couldn't be bothered to deal with. 'If you condemn the defaulters now, we'll be right back where we started. Trebek's very popular with the...' she shot a quick glance at Broklaw, seated next to her, and overrode the remark she'd been about to make. 'With some of the troopers.'
'The same goes for Kelp.' Broklaw moved quickly to back her up. Exactly the reaction I'd been hop­ing for; now the regiment was beginning to function properly, Kasteen and Broklaw had begun to slip into their roles of commander and execu­tive officer as smoothly as if the bad feeling between them had never existed. Well, up to a point, anyway; there was still an air of strained politeness between them occasionally, which betrayed the effort, but they were well on the way. And to be honest it was far more than I could have hoped for when I stepped off the shuttle.
'I agree', I said. 'Thank you, Jurgen.' My aide had appeared at my shoulder with a pot of tanna leaf tea, as was his habit whenever I was in my office at this time of the morning. 'Could you get another couple of bowls?'
'Of course, commissar.' He shuffled away as I poured my own drink, and pushed the tray to the side of my desk. The warm, aromatic steam relaxed me as it always did.
'Not for me, thank you', Broklaw said hastily as Jur­gen returned, a fresh pair of teabowls pinched together by a grubby finger and thumb on the inside of the rims. Kasteen blenched slightly but accepted a drink anyway. She kept it on the desk in front of her, picking it up from time to time to punctuate her side of the conversation, but never quite getting round to taking the first sip. I was quietly impressed. She'd have made a good diplomat if she hadn't been so honest.
'The problem is', I went on, 'that Captain Parjita is the ultimate authority aboard this ship, and he's well within his rights to insist on a court martial. If we don't let him have one he'll just invoke his command privilege and have Kelp and the others shot anyway. And we simply can't let that happen.'
'So what do you suggest?' Kasteen asked, replacing the teabowl after another almost-sip. 'Regimental discipline is supposed to be your responsibility after all.'
'Precisely.' I took a sip of my own tea, savouring the bitter aftertaste, and nodded judiciously. 'And I've been able to convince him that I can't have that authority undermined if we're to become a viable fighting unit.'
'You've got him to agree to some kind of compro­mise?' Broklaw asked, grasping the point at once.
'I have', I tried not to sound too smug. 'He can have his court martial, and run it himself under naval regulations. But once they're found guilty, they'll be turned over to the Commissariat for sen­tencing.'
'But that takes us right back to where we were before', Kasteen said, clearly puzzled. 'You have them shot, and discipline goes to the warp. Again.'
'Maybe not', I said, taking another sip of tea. 'Not if we're careful.'

I've seen more than my fair share of tribunals over the years, even been in front of them on occasion, and if there's one thing I've learned it's this; it's easy to get the result you want out of them. The trick is simply to state your case as clearly and concisely as possible. That, and making damn sure the members of it are on your side to begin with.
There are a number of ways of ensuring that this is the case. Bribery and threats are always popular, but generally to be avoided, especially if you're likely to attract inquisitorial attention as they're better at both and tend to resent other people resorting to their methods.³ Besides, that sort of thing tends to leave a residue of bad feeling which can come back to haunt you later on. In my experience it's far more effective to make sure that the other members of the panel are honest, unimaginative idiots with a strong sense of duty and a stronger set of prejudices you can rely on to deliver the result that you want. If they think you're a hero, and hang on your every word, so much the better.
So when Parjita announced his verdict of guilty on all charges, and turned to me with a self-satisfied smirk, I had my strategy worked out well in advance. The courtroom - a hastily converted wardroom gen­erally used by the ship's most junior officers - went silent.
There were five troopers in the dock by the time the trial had begun; far fewer than Parjita had wanted, but in the interests of fairness and damage limitation I had managed to persuade him to let me deal summarily with most of the outstanding cases. Those guilty of more minor offences had been demoted, flogged, or assigned to latrine duty for the foreseeable future and safely returned to their units, where, in the unfathomable processes of the trooper's mindset, I had somehow become the embodiment of justice and mercy. This had been helped along by a little judicious myth-making among the senior officers, who had let it be known that Parjita was hellbent on mass executions and that I had spent the past few weeks exerting every iota of my commissarial authority in urging clemency for the vast majority, finally succeeding against almost impossible odds. The net result, aided no end by my fictitious reputation, was that a couple of dozen potential troublemakers had been quietly integrated back into the roster, practically grateful for the punishments they'd received, and morale had remained steady among the rank and file.
The problem now facing me was that of the hard­core recidivists, who were undoubtedly guilty of murder or its attempt. There were five of them facing the courtroom now, wary and resentful.
Three of them I recognised at once, from the melee in the mess hall. Kelp was the huge, over-muscled man I'd seen being stabbed, and Trebek, to my complete lack of surprise, was the petite woman who had almost disembowelled him. They stood at opposite ends of the row of prisoners, glar­ing at one another almost as much as at Parjita and myself, and if it hadn't been for their manacles, I had no doubt they'd be at one another's throats again in a heartbeat. In the centre was the young
trooper I'd seen stab the provost with a broken plate; his datafile told me his name was Tomas Holenbi, and I'd had to look twice to make sure it was the same man. He was short and skinny, with untidy red hair and a face full of freckles, and he'd spent most of the trial looking bewildered and on the verge of tears. If I hadn't seen his fit of homici­dal rage for myself I would hardly have believed him capable of such insensate violence. The real irony was that he was a medical orderly, not a front line soldier at all.
Between him and Trebek was another female trooper, one Griselda Velade. She was stocky, brunette, and clearly out of her depth as well. The only one of the group to have killed a fellow trooper, she had claimed throughout that she'd only intended to fend him off; it was an unlucky blow that had crushed the fellow's larynx and left him to suffo­cate on the mess room floor. Parjita, needless to say, hadn't bought it, or cared whether she intended mur­der or not; he just wanted as many Valhallans in front of a firing squad as he could manage.
On Holenbi's other side was Maxim Sorel, a tall, rangy man with short blond hair and the cold eyes of a killer. Sorel was a sharpshooter, a long-las special­ist, who snuffed out lives from a distance as dispassionately as I might swat an insect. Of all of them, he was the one who most threw a scare into me. The others had been carried away by the blood-lust of a mob, and hadn't really been responsible for their actions past a certain point, but Sorel had slid a
knife through the joints of a provost's body armour simply because he hadn't seen any reason not to. The last time I'd looked into eyes like those they'd belonged to an eldar haemonculus.
'If it was up to me,' Parjita said, continuing, 'I would have the lot of you shot at once.'
I glanced down the line of prisoners again, and noted their reactions. Kelp and Trebek glared defi­antly back at him, daring him to make good on the threat. Holenbi blinked, and swallowed rapidly. Velade gasped audibly, biting her lower lip, and began to hyperventilate. To my surprise I saw Holenbi reach across and give her hand a reassuring squeeze. Then again, they'd been in adjoining cells for weeks now, so I suppose they'd had time to get to know each other. Sorel simply blinked, a complete lack of emotional response that sent shivers down my spine.
'Nevertheless', the captain went on, 'Commissar Cain has been able to persuade me that the Com­missariat is better suited to maintaining discipline among the Imperial Guard, and has requested that they be permitted to pass sentence according to mil­itary rather than naval regulations.' He nodded cordially to me. 'Commissar. They're all yours.'
Five pairs of eyes swivelled in my direction. I stood slowly, glancing down at the dataslate on the table in front of me.
'Thank you, captain.' I turned to the trio of black-uniformed figures sitting at my side. 'And thank you, commissars. Your advice in this case has been
invaluable to me.' Three solemn heads nodded in my direction.
This was the trick, you see. My earlier contact with the other commissars on board had unexpectedly paid off, showing me who would be the most easily swayed by my arguments. A couple of eager young pups just past cadet, and a jaded old campaigner who had lived most of his life on the battlefield. And all of them flattered from here to Terra to be taken into the confidence of the celebrated Ciaphas Cain. I turned back to the prisoners.
A commissar's duty is often harsh,' I said. 'Regula­tions are there to be obeyed, and discipline to be enforced. And those regulations do indeed prescribe the ultimate penalty for murder, unless there are extenuating circumstances - circumstances, I have to admit, I have striven to find in this case to the best of my abilities.' I had them all on the hook by now. The fans in the ceiling ducts sounded almost as loud as a chimera engine. And to my great disappointment, I have been unsuccessful.'
There was an audible intake of breath from practi­cally every pair of lungs present. Parjita grinned triumphantly, sure he'd got the blood vengeance he lusted after.
'However', I went on after a fractional pause. A faint frown appeared on the captain's face, and a flicker of hope on Velade's. As my esteemed col­leagues will undoubtedly agree, one of the heaviest burdens a commissar must carry is the responsibil­ity to ensure that the regulations are obeyed not
only in the letter, but the spirit. And it was with that in mind that I took the liberty of consulting with them about a possible interpretation of those regulations which I felt might offer a solution to my dilemma.' I turned dramatically to the little group of commissars, taking the opportunity to underline that it wasn't just me cheating Parjita out of his fir­ing squad, it was the Commissariat itself. 'Again, gentlemen, I thank you. Not only on my behalf, but on behalf of the regiment I have the honour to serve with.'
I turned to Kasteen and Broklaw, who were observ­ing proceedings from the side of the courtroom, and inclined my head to them too. I was laying it on with a trowel, I don't mind admitting it, but I've always enjoyed being the centre of attention when that doesn't involve incoming fire.
'A commissar's primary concern must always be the efficiency of the unit to which he is attached,' I said, 'and, by extension, the battlefield effectiveness of the entire Imperial Guard. It's a heavy responsi­bility, but one we are proud to bear in the Emperor's name.' The other commissars nodded in sycophantic self-congratulation. And that means that I'm always loath to sacrifice the life of a trained soldier, whatever the circumstances, unless it's the only way to win His Glorious Majesty the victories He requires.'
'I assume that you're eventually going to come to a point of some kind?' Parjita interrupted. I nod­ded, as though he'd done me a favour instead of
disrupting the flow of an oration I'd been practising in front of the mirror in my stateroom for most of the morning.
'Indeed I am', I said. 'And the point is this. My col­leagues and I', - no harm in reminding everyone again that this was a carefully contrived consensus, not just me - 'see no point in simply executing these troopers. Their deaths will win us no victories.'
'But the regulations..', Parjita began. This time it was my turn to cut him off in full flow.
'Specify death as the punishment for these offences. It just doesn't specify immediate death.' I turned to the line of confused and apprehensive pris­oners. 'It's the judgement of the commissariat that you all be confined until it becomes expedient to transfer you to a penal legion, where an honourable death on the battlefield will almost certainly befall you in the fullness of time. In the interim, should a particularly hazardous assignment become available, you will have the honour of volunteering. In either case you can expect the opportunity to redeem your­selves in the eyes of the Emperor.' I raked my eyes along the shabby little group again. Kelp and Trebek, their truculence mitigated by surprise, Holenbi still bewildered by the sudden turn of events, Velade almost sobbing with relief, and Sorel... Still that blank expression, as though none of this mattered at all. 'Dismissed.'
I waited until they'd shuffled out, assisted by the shock batons of the escorting provosts, and turned back to Parjita.
ЛУШ that satisfy you, captain?'
'I suppose it'll have to', he said sourly.

'Congratulations, commissar.' Kasteen raised a glass of amasec, toasting my victory, and the mess hall erupted around me. I smiled modestly, walk­ing towards the table occupied by the senior officers, while men and women clapped and cheered and chanted my name, and generally car­ried on as though I was the Emperor Himself dropping in for a visit. I half expected some of them to try patting me on the back, but respect for my position, or an understandable reluctance to get too close to Jurgen, who was dogging my heels as usual, or both, held them in check. I held up my hands for silence as I reached my seat, between Kas­teen and Broklaw, and the room gradually fell quiet.
'Thank you all', I said, injecting just the right level of barely perceptible quaver into my voice to sug­gest powerful emotion held narrowly in check. 'You do me too much honour for just doing my job.' A chorus of denial and adulation followed, as I'd known it would. I waved them to silence again. 'Well, if you insist...' I waited for the gale of laugh­ter to die down. 'While I have everyone's attention; and that's a refreshing novelty for a political offi­cer...' More laughter; I had them in the palm of my hand now.
I waved them to silence again, adopting a slightly more serious mien. 'I would just like to offer some
congratulations of my own. In the short time I've had the privilege of serving with this regiment you have all far exceeded my most optimistic expecta­tions. The past few weeks have been difficult for all of us, but I can state with confidence that I have never served with a body of troops more ready for combat, and more capable of seizing victory when that time comes.' With confidence, certainly. Truth­fully? That was another matter entirely. But it had the desired effect. I picked up a glass from the table, and toasted the room. 'To the 597th. A glorious beginning!'
The 597th!' they all shouted, men and women alike, swept along with cheap emotion and cheaper rhetoric.
'Nicely done, commmissar', Broklaw murmured as I sat. The cheers were still deafening. 'I believe you've turned us into a proper regiment at last.'
I'd done something a lot more important than that, of course. I'd established myself as a popular fig­ure among the common troopers, which meant they'd watch my back if I was ever careless enough to find myself anywhere near the actual combat zone. Pulling them together into an effective fighting force was just a useful bonus.
'Just doing my job', I said as modestly as I could, which is what they all expected, of course. And they lapped it up.
'And not before time', Kasteen added. I kept my fea­tures carefully composed, but felt my good mood begin to evaporate.
'We've had our orders?' Broklaw asked. The colonel nodded, picking at her adeven salad. 'Some backwater dirtball called Gravalax.'
'Never heard of it,' I said.

¹ Slate of Organisation and Equipment. Not actually a physical dataslate, but an archaic term for the details of the disposition of troopers and equipment within an Imperial Guard unit. Still in use among many regiments with more than a thousand years of unbro­ken tradition.

² Cain is correct in this assumption. Strictly against regulations, of course, but boys will be boys...

³ This is, of course, entirely untrue. As His Divine Majesty's most faithful servants, we're most definitely above such petty emotions as resentment.

Editorial Note:

Given Cain's complete, and typical, lack of interest in anything that doesn't concern him directly, the following extract may prove useful in placing the rest of his narrative in a wider context. It must be said that the book from which it comes isn't the most reliable of guides to the campaign as a whole, but it does, unlike most studies of the Gravalax incident, at least attempt to sketch in the hustorical background to the conflict. Despite the author's obvious limitations as a chronicler of events, his summing up of the causus belli is substantially correct.

* * *

From Purge the Guilty! An impartial account of the liberation of Gravalax, by Stententious Logar. 085.M42

The seeds of the Gravalax incident were sown many years before the full magnitude of the crisis was realised, and in retrospect, it may well be easy to discern the slow unfolding of an abhuman conspiracy over the span of several generations. A historian, however, has the perspective of hindsight, which, alas, cannot be said of the actual participants. So, rather than pointing an accusatory finger, with righteous cries of 'how could they have been so stupid?' it behooves us more to shake our heads in pity as we contemplate our forebears' blind stumbling into the very brink of destruction.
It goes without saying that no blame can be attached to the servants of the Emperor, particularly those concerned with the ordering of His Divine Majesty's fighting forces and the diligent adepts of the Administratum; the Ultima Segmen-tum is vast, and the Damocles Gulf an obscure frontier sector. After the heathen tau were put in their place by the heroic crusader fleet in the early seven-forties, attention rightly shifted to more immediate threats; the incursion of hive fleet Leviathan, the awakening of the accursed necrons, and the ever-present danger from the traitor legions not least among them.
Nevertheless, the tau presence remained on the fringes of Imperial space, and, all but unnoticed, they began once again to encroach on His Divine Majesty's blessed dominions.
Up until this point Gravalax had been an obscure outpost of civilisation, barely noticed by the wider galaxy. Enough of its landmasses were fertile to keep its relatively sparse population tolerably well fed, and it possessed adequate mineral reserves for such industry as it supported. In short, it had nothing to attract any trade, and an insufficient population base to be worth tithing for the Imperial Guard. It was, to be blunt, a backwater, devoid of anything of interest.
If Gravalax thought it was to remain undisturbed indefinitely, however, it was sadly mistaken. Within a century of their drubbing at the righteous hands of the servants of the Imperium, the black-hearted tau were back, spreading their poisonous heresies through the Gulf once more. When they first chanced upon Gravalax no one knows,¹ but by the turn of the last century of the millennium they were well established there.
It will come as no surprise to my readers, aware as we must be of the innate treachery of all aliens, that they had arrived at this pass by an insidious process of infiltration. And, shocking though it is to record it, with the willing assistance of those whose greed and thoughtlessness made them the perfect dupes of this monstrous conspiracy. I refer, as you have no doubt already guessed, to the so-called rogue traders. Rogues indeed, who would place their own interests above those of the Imperium, humanity, and the divine Emperor Himself!

[Several paragraphs of inflammatory but non-specific denunciation of rogue traders, omitted. Logar seems to have had something of an obsession about their untrustworthiness. Perhaps one owed him money.]

How and why these pariahs of profit first began trafficking with the tau, history does not record.² What is certain is that Gravalax, with its isolated position on the fringes of Imperial space, and close to the expanding sphere of influence of these malign aliens, became the perfect meeting place for such clandestine exchanges.
Inevitably, the corruption spread. As trade increased, it became more open, with tau vessels becoming a common sight at the new and expanding starports. Tau themselves began to be seen on the streets of the Gravalaxian cities, mingling with the populace, tainting their human purity with their soulless, alien ways. Heresy began to run rife, even ordinary citizens daring to use blasphemous devices unblessed by the techpriests, supplied by their insid-ious offworld allies.
Something had to be done! And at last it was. The rising stench of corruption eventually attracted the ceaseless vigilance of the Inquisition, which lost no time in demanding the dispatch of a task force of the Imperium's finest warriors to purge this festering boil in the body of His Holi-ness's blessed demesne.
And that's precisely what they got. For in the van-guard of this glorious endeavour was none other than Ciaphas Cain, the martial hero at whose very name the enemies of humanity trembled in terror...

¹ 837.M41, according to surviving records. Like many amateur his­torians, Logar is long on rhetoric and short on actual scholarship.
² Or Logar couldn't be bothered to do the research.

Chapter Three

'Old friends are like debt collectors; they have a tendency to turn up when you least expect them.'

- Gilbran Quail, Collected Essays

As I've rattled around the galaxy I've seen a great many cities, from the soaring spires of Holy Terra itself to the blood-choked gutters of some eldar reiver charnel pit,¹ but I've seldom seen anything stranger than the broad thoroughfares of Mayoh, the planetary capital of Gravalax. We'd disembarked in good order, the freshly sewn banner of the 597th snapping proudly in the breeze that blew in gently across the rockcrete hectares of the starport as the Valhallans formed up by company, and I resisted the temptation to lean across and compliment Sulla on her needlepoint. I doubt that she'd had anything to do with procuring it, but it wasn't that which dissuaded me. She just wasn't the kind to take a joke, and was still harbouring a germ of resentment at the organisational changes I'd instituted. We were a fine sight to behold, I have to admit, the other regiments glancing at us sidelong as they marched away; although that may just have been surprise when they realised we were a mixed unit.²
'All present and accounted for, colonel.' Broklaw snapped a drill manual salute, and fell into place beside Kasteen. She nodded, inflated her chest, and then hesitated on the verge of giving the command.
'Commissar,' she said. 'I think the honour should be yours. This regiment wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for you.'
I don't mind admitting I was touched. Although I have overall authority in whatever unit I'm attached to, commissars are always outside the regular chain of command; which means I don't really fit in anywhere. By letting me give the order to move out, she was demonstrating in the most practical form imaginable that I was as much a part of the 597th as herself, or Broklaw, or the humblest latrine orderly. The unaccustomed sense of belonging choked me for a moment, before the more rational part of my mind started gloating about how much that would mean in facilitating my own survival. I nodded, making sure I looked suitably moved.
Thank you, colonel', I said simply. 'But I believe the honour belongs to us all.' Then I filled my chest, and bellowed: 'Move out!'
So we did. And if you think that sounds like a simple proposition, you haven't thought it through.
To put it into some kind of perspective, a regiment consists of anything up to half a dozen companies -five in our case, most of which had four or five platoons. The exception was Third Company, which was our logistical support arm, and consisted mainly of transport vehicles, engineering units, and anything else we couldn't find a sensible place for on the SO&E. All told, that came to much the same thing in a headcount. Factor in five squads a platoon, at ten troopers each, plus a command element to keep them all in line, and you're looking at nearly a thousand people by the time you've added in the various specialists and the different layers of the overall command structure.
Just to add to the confusion, Kasteen had decided to split the squads into five-man fire-teams, anticipating that any open conflict was likely to take place in and around the urban areas. Beating off the tyranids on Corania had convinced her that smaller formations were easier to coordinate in a city fight than full-strength squads.³
All this made for a fine martial display as we moved out, you can be sure, with banners flying, and the band thumping and parping away at If I Should Forget Thee, О Terra, as though they had a grudge against the composer. There hadn't really been time for rehearsals, what with all the excitement aboard the Righteous Wrath, but they were making up in enthusiasm for whatever they lacked in proficiency, and a high old time was being had by all. It was a fine fresh day, with a faint taste of salt in the breeze from the nearby ocean; at least until our chimeras and transport trucks started up and began farting prome-thium fumes into the air.
We intended to make an impression with our arrival, and by the Emperor, we surely did, setting out to march the ten kloms⁴ or so into the city. Most of the troopers were glad of the exercise, revelling in the fresh air and sunshine after so long between decks, and swung along the highway, lasguns at the slope. Being an old hive boy myself, it was all one to me, but I was affected by the general holiday atmosphere I think, and I don't mind admitting to a general diffuse glow of well-being as we got underway.
Kasteen and Broklaw couldn't march, of course, having to look grander than the common ground-pounders, and so trundled along at the front of the regiment in a Salamander, and I seized the excuse to do the same.
'Can't have the regiment's most vital officers plotting behind my back', I'd said at the briefing, smiling to show I didn't mean it, and pouring everyone a fresh cup of recaf to show I was part of the team. So I lounged back in the open compartment at the rear of a scout variant, which Jurgen kept half a track's length behind theirs in the interest of protocol and reinforcing the impression of my generally assumed modesty, and took the opportunity to feel rather pleased with myself. The synchronised slapping of two thousand boot soles on the surface of the highway and the squarking of the band almost drowned out the throb of our engine, and we must have looked a splendid sight as we left the main cargo gate of the starport behind us and began to approach the city.
It was then that my palms began to itch again. There was nothing I could put my finger on initially to explain my gradually intensifying sense of disquiet, but something was definitely tapping my subconscious on the shoulder and whispering 'That's not right...'
As we entered the city itself my disquiet grew. I wasn't surprised to find the streets free of traffic, the local authorities having cleared the way for us; a thousand troopers and their ancillary equipment take up a lot of room, and we were far from the first regiment to have disembarked. Indeed, the occasional muffled curse from behind me which cut through the din made it all too clear that the front few ranks would have preferred it if the Rough Riders could have been held back for a while longer instead of being sent through immediately ahead of us. Come to that, I don't suppose Kasteen was too thrilled about having to gaze at a street's width of horse arses for the duration of our march either. But the broad thoroughfares were a little too quiet for my liking, and a little too open as well. I'm not agoraphobic by any means, not like some hivers who never feel comfortable under an open sky, but there was something about those wide streets that made me think of snipers and ambush.
That made me scan the buildings as we passed, and my unease grew the more I saw of them. There was nothing wrong with them as such, not like the bizarre architectural forms of a Chaos incursion which seem to twist reality and which hurt to look upon, or the brutal slapdash functionalism of orkish habitations, but there was something in their sweeping forms which seemed vaguely inhuman. I was put in mind of some eldar architecture by their elegant simplicity, and then it finally hit me: there were no right angles anywhere, even the corners having been rounded and smoothed. But beneath this strange styling, the shapes were clearly those of warehouses,
apartment blocks, and manufactoria, as though the whole city had been left out in the sun for too long and had started to melt.
That alone should have been enough warning of an insidious alien influence at work here, but before we reached our destination, I was to see far more than that.
There's something seriously wrong here', I said to Jurgen, who looked up briefly from the road ahead to nod in agreement with me.
'Something doesn't smell right', he agreed, without a trace of irony. 'Have you seen the civilians?'
Now that he came to mention it, there were remarkably few of them lining the route. Normally a big military parade would have brought them out in droves, waving their aquila flags and their icons of the Divine One, cheering themselves hoarse to see so many of the Emperor's finest ready to see off the foe so they could scuttle back to their meaningless lives without the fear of having to fight for themselves. But the pavements were half empty, and for every shopkeeper or habwife or juvie who cheered and waved, or smiled wanly at us with sidelong glances at their neighbours, there were just as many who scowled or glared at us. That put a shiver down my spine, awakening uncomfortable and all-too-recent memories of the mess hall riot, and the blood-maddened troopers a hair from turning on me.
At least no one was shouting, or throwing things. Yet. But I reached down unobtrusively, and loosened my laspistol and my trusty chainsword ready to be drawn in a hurry if I needed them.
And right on cue I noticed the first of the banners. 'MURDERERS GO HOME!' it said, in shaky capitals, hand lettered on what looked like an old bedsheet. Someone had strung it from a luminator pole so that it hung out across the street, comfortably above head height, but low enough to brush irritatingly over the head and shoulders of anyone riding in a vehicle.
Or on a horse, for that matter. As I watched, one of the Rough Rider officers reached up irritably and tore it down.
Bad move, I said to myself, expecting some trouble from the crowd, but beyond a little catcalling from a small knot of juvies nothing happened. But I was getting a distinctly uncomfortable feeling about all this. There was a perceptible undercurrent of tension in the air now, like a fainter echo of the incipient vio­lence I'd felt aboard the Righteous Wrath.
'Go back to your Emperor and leave us alone!' a pretty girl shouted, her head shaven, apart from a single shoulder-length braid, and I felt as though I'd been doused with cold water. Your Emperor. The words had been unmistakable.
'Heretics!' Jurgen said with loathing. I nodded, still unable to credit it. Could the Great Enemy have a foothold here, as well as the tau? But common sense argued against it. If that were the case we'd have bombarded the place from orbit, surely, and the Astartes would have been sent in to cut out the can­cer before it could spread.
Things weren't as far gone as I'd feared, however, as I turned back to look, a squad of Arbites forced their way through the crowd and began laying into the juvies with shock batons. Good order was still being maintained here, by the Emperor's grace, but for how much longer?
That, I very much feared, depended on us.

We reached our staging area without further incident, fanning out through a complex of warehouses and manufactoria which had been set aside for our use. We weren't the only regiment quartered there, I recall, as the Imperium had been fortifying against an expected incursion by the tau for some time, and I gathered that the Righteous Wrath's complement (three full regiments apart from our own) brought the total up to around thirty thousand all told. That should have been more than enough to keep a backwater planet, even spread out across the whole globe, but rumour had it we could expect still more reinforcement, which worried me more than I wanted to show. With that amount of build-up it seemed the aliens wanted this place quite badly, and we'd more than likely be expected to hold it the hard way.
We were quartered next to one of the Valhallan armoured regiments - the 14th I think - but I couldn't tell you who most of the others were. There was definite evidence that the Rough Riders were still somewhere in the vicinity though, so you had to watch your feet, but apart from that I hadn't a clue. Except for one other unit I already knew well, of course, which I'll come to in a moment.
I was still feeling spooked from our journey through town, so I was relieved to come across Broklaw posting sentries around our corner of the compound as I left Jurgen to sort out my quarters and went for a wander around to get my bearings. I haven't reached my second century by not knowing where the best boltholes and lines of retreat are, and finding them was always a high priority for me whenever I found myself somewhere new.
'Good thinking, major,' I complimented him, and he gave me a wry grin.
'We should be safe enough here', he said. 'But it never hurts to be careful.'
'I know what you mean', I agreed. 'There's something about this place which really gets under my skin.' The warehouses around us all had that peculiar rounded-off look I'd noticed before, and the subtle sense of wrongness left a vague apprehension hovering around me like Jurgen's body odour. The major knew his business, though, setting up lascan-non in sandbagged emplacements to cover the gaps between the buildings around us, and sharpshooters on the roof. I was just admiring his thoroughness when the ground began to shake, and a couple of our sentinels appeared, clanking and humming and swivelling their heavy multilasers as they took up position in front of the main loading doors which gave access to the ground floor where our vehicles were parked.
Somewhat reassured by this, I made my way across the compound, passing into areas controlled by other units, watching the familiar bustle of troopers coming and going, and finding the familiar air of controlled chaos and the constant background hum of vehicle engines and profanity curiously soothing. I wasn't sure quite how far I'd gone when an engine note both louder and deeper than the others cut through the babble of sound around me.
For a moment, I was assailed by that formless sense of recognition that you get when something you once knew so well it never registered consciously comes back to your notice after a passage of years, and then I turned my head with a nostalgic smile. A Trojan heavy hauler, with an Earthshaker howitzer in tow, was growling its way across a vast open area which had probably once been used to park the pri­vate vehicles of the workers who toiled here in happier times, but which was now choked with equipment and supplies. I hadn't seen one of those up close in a long time, but I recognised it at once, having started my long and inglorious career in an obscure artillery unit. The flood of memories the sight brought back, a few of them even pleasant, was so overwhelming that for a moment I was unaware of the voice calling my name.
'Cai! Over here!'
Now, I've never been what you'd call oversupplied with friends, it goes with the job I suppose, but of the few I've acquired over the years only one has ever had the presumption to use the familiar form of my given name. So, despite the changes that the years since I'd seen him last had wrought, there was no mistaking the officer who was running across the compound towards me, grinning like an idiot.
Toren!' I called back, as he sidestepped another Trojan just in time to avoid being squashed into the tarmac like a bug. "When did they make you a major?' The last time I'd seen Toren Divas he'd just made cap­tain, and was nursing a hangover as he saw me off from the 12th Field Artillery. I remember thinking at the time he was probably the only man in the battery who was sorry to see me go. 'And what in the name of the Emperor's arse are you doing here?'
'The same as you, I suppose.' He came panting up to me, the familiar lopsided grin on his face. 'Keep­ing order, purging the heretics, same old thing.' There were streaks of grey at his temples now, I noticed, and his belt was out another notch, but the same air of boyish enthusiasm still hung around him as on the day we'd first met. 'But I'm surprised to find you in a backwater like this.'
'Same here', I said. I turned my head, taking in the bustle surrounding us. This seems like an awful lot of firepower to put the frighteners on a bunch of stroppy provincials.'
'If the tau mobilise, we'll need every bit of it', Divas said. 'Some of their wargear has to be seen to be believed. They've got these things like dreadnoughts, but they're fast, like Astartes infantry but twice the size, and their tanks make the eldar stuff look like they were built by orks...'
As usual, he seemed to be relishing the prospect of combat, which is easy to do when you're kilometres behind the front line chucking shells into the dis­tance, but not so much fun when you're facing an enemy close enough to spit at you. And if that's all they've got in mind think yourself lucky, unless they're one of those Emperor-forsaken xenos that come equipped with venom sacs.
'But it won't come to that, surely', I said. 'Now we're here they'd be mad to attempt a landing.' To my astonishment, Divas laughed.
'They won't have to. They're here already.' This was new and unwelcome information, and I goggled at him in surprise.
'Since when?' I gasped. Now I'd be the first to admit that I'm seldom that diligent when it comes to reading the briefing slates, but I was sure I'd have noticed something that crucial to my well-being in my cursory glance through it. Divas shrugged.
'About six months, apparently. They were already deployed on the planet when the Cleansing Flame dropped us off here three weeks ago.'
This was seriously bad news. I'd been looking for­ward to a nice brisk round of target practice on civilian rioters, or, at worst, a turkey shoot against the odd renegade PDF unit. But now we were facing a foe that could give us a real run for our money. Emperor's bowels! If half of what I'd heard about the tau and their technosorcery was true, we could be the ones getting our arses kicked. Divas grinned at my expression, misinterpreting it entirely. 'So you could see some fun after all', he said, clap­ping me on the back. I could have killed him.
I didn't, of course. For one thing, as I've said, I don't have so many friends that I can afford to waste them, and for another, Divas had been here long enough to pick up some vital information which I currently lacked. Namely, the location of the nearest bar we could get to without attracting too much attention to ourselves.
So we set out through the streets of Mayoh together, my commissar's uniform getting us through the guard on the compound gate without any argument, although he did give us a word of caution.
'Be careful, sir. There's been disturbances up in the Heights,⁵ they say.' That meant nothing to me, so I smiled, and nodded, and said we'd be careful, and checked with Divas that we'd be going nowhere near there as soon as we were out of earshot.
'Good Emperor, no', he said, frowning. 'It's crawl­ing with heretics. The only way you'd catch me up there is with a squadron of Hellhounds to cleanse the place.' Needless to say, he'd never seen what incendiary weapons can do to a man, or he wouldn't have been half so keen on the idea. I have, and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Actually, there are one or two I would wish it on, come to think of it, and sit there happily toasting caba nuts while they screamed, but they're all dead now anyway, so it's beside the point.
'So where did they all come from?' I asked, as we made our way through the streets. Dusk was falling now, the luminators and the cafe signs flickering to life, and the swirl of bodies around us growing thicker as the night descended. Small knots of passers-by stood aside to let us pass, intimidated no doubt by our Imperial uniforms and the visible sidearms we carried - some with respect, and others resentful. Sev­eral of the latter had the curious tonsure the heretic juvie had sported, their heads shaved except for a long scalplock. The significance of it wasn't to dawn on me until some time later, but even then, I realised it was a badge of allegiance of some kind, and that those who bore it were liable to turn traitor if the shooting started. For now, though, they were content merely to mutter insults under their breath.
'They're local', Divas said, not deigning to notice them, which was fine by me. Of all the ways I could have ended up dead over the years, getting sucked into a pointless street brawl would have been among the most embarrassing. 'The whole planet's infested with xeno-lovers.'
A bit of an exaggeration, that, but he was more or less right, as I was later to discover. To cut a long story short, the locals had been trading with the tau for several generations by now, which wasn't terribly sensible, but what can you expect from a bunch of backwater peasants? The end result was that most of them were quite used to seeing xenos around the place, and despite the sterling efforts of the local ecclesiarchy to warn them that no good would come of it, a lot of them had started to absorb unhealthy ideas from them. Which was where we came in, ready to guide them back into the Imperial fold before they came to too much harm, and all very noble of us too I'm sure you'll agree.
The trouble is', Divas concluded, downing the rest of his third amasec in one, 'the hard core are so far gone they don't see it like that. They think the tau are the best thing to hit the galaxy since the Emperor was in nappies, and we're the big bad bullies here to take their shiny new toys away.'
'Well, that might be a little more difficult now the tau are digging in', I said. 'But I'm surprised they're prepared to risk it', I followed suit, feeling the smoky liquor warming its way down through my chest. 'They must know we'll never allow them to annex the place without a fight.'
'They claim they're just here to safeguard their trad­ing interests', Divas said. We both snorted with laughter at that one. We knew how often the Imperium had said exactly the same thing before launching an all-out invasion of some luckless ball of dirt. Of course when we did it, it was true, and it was my job to shoot anyone who thought otherwise.
'One for the diplomats, then', I said, signalling for another round. A nicely rounded waitress bustled over, full of patriotic fervour, and replenished our glasses.
One thing I can say for Divas, he knew how to find a good bar. This one, the Eagle's Wing, was definitely in the loyalist camp. The wide, smoky cellar full of Planetary Defence Force regulars were delighted to see some real soldiers at last, and fulminating at the governor for not letting them loose on the aliens years ago. The owner was a corporal in the PDF reserves, recently retired after twenty years' service, and he couldn't seem to get over the honour of hav­ing a couple of real Guard officers in the place. And once Divas had introduced me, and I'd been appro­priately modest about my earlier adventures in the Emperor's name, there was no question of us having to pay the bill either. After signing autographs for some of the civilian customers - all of whom urged us to pot a few of the 'little blue bastards' on their behalf - and charming the waitress had begun to pall, we'd retreated to a quiet side booth where we could talk uninterrupted.
'I think the diplomats could be getting a little help on this one', Divas said, tapping the side of his nose conspiratorially as he lifted the glass. I drank a little more slowly, acutely aware that we'd have to start making our way back through a potentially hostile city soon, and wanting to keep a reasonably clear head.
'Help from who?' I asked. 'Who do you think?' Divas dipped his finger in die glass, and sketched a stylised letter I with a pair of crossbars bisecting it on the surface of the table, before erasing it with a sweep of his hand. I laughed.
'Oh yeah, them. Right.' I've yet to arrive any place where the political situation's fluid without hearing rumours of Inquisition agents beavering away behind the scenes, and unless I happen to be the errand boy in question, I never believe a word of it. On the other hand, if there aren't any rumours, then they probably are up to some mischief and no mistake about it.⁶
'You can laugh.' Divas finished his drink, and replaced the glass on the table. 'But I heard it from one of the Administratum adepts, who swore he'd got it from... somewhere or other.' An expression of faint bewilderment drifted across his face. 'I think I need some fresh air.'
'I think you do, too', I said. Leaving aside what I thought then were his ridiculous fantasies about the Inquisition, he'd still given me a lot to think about. The situation here was undoubtedly far more com­plex than I'd been led to believe, and I needed to consider things carefully.
So we took our leave of our kindly hosts, the wait­ress in particular looking sorry to see me go, and staggered up the stairway and into the street. The cold night air hit me like a refreshing shower, snapping me back to alertness, and I glanced around while Divas communed loudly with the Emperor in a convenient gutter. Fortu­nately, the bar he'd steered us to was down a quiet side alley, so no one saw the dignity of the Imper­ial uniform being sullied. Once I was sure there were no more eruptions to come, I helped him to his feet.
'You used to be able to hold it better than that', I chided, and he shook his head mournfully.
'Local rotgut. Not like the stuff we used to drink. And I should have eaten something...'
'It would just have been a wasted effort.' I consoled him, and glanced around, trying to get our bearings. Where the frak are we, anyway?'
'Dock zone', he said confidently, hardly swaying on his feet at all now. 'This way.' He strode off towards the nearest luminated thoroughfare. I shrugged, and followed him. After all, he'd had three weeks to get his bearings.
As we made our way through the well-lit street, however, I began to feel a little apprehensive. True, we'd been deep in conversation on our way to the bar, but none of the landmarks looked familiar to me, and I began to wonder if his confidence had been misplaced.
'Toren', I said after a while, noticing a gradual increase in the number of scalplocks and murderous glances among the passers-by, 'are you sure this is the way back to our staging area?' 'Not ours', he said, the grin back on his face. 'Theirs. Thought you'd like to get a look at the enemy.'
'You thought what?' I yelped, amazed at his stu­pidity. Then I remembered. Divas bought the myth of my purported heroism completely and without question, and had done ever since he'd seen me take on an entire tyranid swarm with just a chainsword when we were callow youths together. Purely by accident, as it happened, I'd had no idea the damn bugs were even there until I'd blundered into them, and if I hadn't ended up inadvertently leading them into the beaten zone of our heavy ordnance and sav­ing the day, they'd have torn me to pieces. Waltzing up to the enemy encampment and thumbing our noses at them probably struck him as the kind of thing I did for fun. 'Are you out of your mind?'
'It's perfectly safe', he said. 'We're not officially at war with them yet.' Well, that was true, but I still wasn't keen on jumping the gun.
'And until we are, we're not going to provoke them,' I said, all commissarial duty. Divas's face fell, like a child denied a sweet, and I thought I'd better put a gloss on it that would match his expectations of me. 'We can't put our own amusement ahead of our responsibilities to the Emperor, however tempting it is.'
'I suppose you're right', he said reluctantly, and I began to breathe a little more easily. Now all I had to do was manoeuvre him back to the barracks before he got any more stupid ideas. So I took him by the arm, and turned him around. 'Now how do we get back to our compound?'
'How about in a body bag?' somebody asked. I turned, feeling my stomach drop. About a dozen locals stood behind us, the street light striking high­lights from their shaven heads, a variety of improvised weapons hanging purposefully from their hands. They looked tough, at least in their own minds, but when you've been face to face with orks and eldar reiver slavers you don't intimidate that eas­ily. Well, all right. I do, but I don't show it, which is the main thing.
Besides, I had a laspistol and a chainsword, which in my experience trumps a crowbar every time. So I laid a restraining hand on Divas's shoulder, as he was still intoxicated enough to rise to the bait, and smiled lazily.
'Believe me', I said, 'you don't want to start any­thing.'
'You don't tell me what I want.' The group's spokesman stepped forward into the light. Fine, I thought, keep them talking. 'But that's what you Imperials do, isn't it?'
'I don't quite follow', I said, affecting mild curiosity. Movement out of the corner of my eye told me that our retreat had been cut off. A second group emerged from the alley mouth behind us. I started calculating the odds. If I made a move to draw the laspistol, they'd rush me, but I'd probably manage to get a shot off. If I took out the leader with it, and ran forward at the same time, I stood a good chance of breaking through the line and making a run for it. That assumed they'd be surprised or intimidated enough to hesitate, of course, and I was able to open up a decent lead. With any luck they'd turn on Divas, buy­ing me enough time to get away, but I couldn't be sure of that, so I continued to play for time and look for a better chance.
'You're here to take our world!' the leader shouted. As he came forward fully into the light I could see that his face was painted blue, a delicate pastel shade. It should have made him look ridiculous, but the overall effect was somehow charismatic. 'But you'll never take our freedom!'
'Your freedom is what we're here to give you, you xeno-hugging moron!' Divas broke free of my restraining arm, and lunged forward. 'But you're too brainwashed to see it!'
Great. So much for diplomacy. Still, while he was set on re-enacting Gannack's Charge,⁷ I might be able to make a run for it.
No such luck, of course - the surrounding heretics drove in on us as a concerted wedge. I just managed to draw my laspistol and snap off a shot, taking out half the face of one of the group, which, I'm bound to say, didn't make much of a difference to his over­all personal charm, before an iron bar came down hard on my wrist. I've been in enough melees to have seen the blow coming, and to have ridden it, which saved me from a fracture or worse, but that didn't help the pain, which exploded along my arm, dead­ening it. My fingers flew open, and I ducked, scrabbling after the precious weapon, but it was futile. A knee drove up into my ribs, slamming the breath from my lungs, and I was down, cold, hard rockcrete scraping the skin from my knuckles (the real ones anyway), and knowing I was a dead man unless I could get away somehow.
Toren!' I screamed, but Divas had problems of his own by now, and I wasn't going to get any help from that quarter. I curled up, trying to protect my vital organs, and tried frantically to get at my chainsword. Of course, I should have gone for that first, holding the mob at bay with it, but hindsight's about as much use as a heretic's oath, and now the bloody thing was trapped under my own bodyweight. I scrabbled frantically, feeling fists and boots thudding against my ribs. Luckily there were so many of them that they were getting in each others way, and my uniform greatcoat was thick enough to absorb some of the impact, or I'd have been in even worse shape than I was.
'Greechaahl' something shrieked, an inhuman scream that raised the hairs on the back of my neck, even under those conditions. My assailants hesitated, and I rolled clear, in time to see the largest of them yanked back by sheer brute force.
For a moment I thought I was hallucinating, but the pain in my ribs was all too real. A face dominated by a large hooked beak was gazing down at me, sur­mounted by a crest of quills that had been dyed or painted in some elaborate pattern, and hot, charnel breath washed across my face, making me gag.
You are comparatively uninjured?' the thing asked, in curiously accented Gothic. It's hard to convey in writing, but its voice was glottal, most of the conso­nants reduced to hard clicking sounds. It was perfectly understandable, mind you. My stupefaction was due entirely to the fact that something mat looked like that was able to talk in the first place.
'Yes, thank you,' I croaked after a moment. When­ever you don't have a clue what's going on, I've always found, it never hurts to be polite.
'That is gratifying', the thing said, and threw the heretic in its left hand casually away. The others were standing around aimlessly now, like sulky schola stu­dents when the tutor turns up to spoil the fun. Then it extended the same thin, scaly hand equipped with dagger-like claws towards me. After a heartstopping moment, I divined its intention, and accepted the proffered assistance in gaining my feet. As I did so, it turned to the sullen group of heretics.
'This does not advance the greater good', it said. 'Disperse now, and avoid conflict.' Well, that was a challenge if ever I'd heard one. But to my surprise, and, I must admit, my intense relief, the little knot of troublemakers slunk away into the shadows. I eyed my rescuer a little apprehensively. He (or she - with kroot it's impossible to tell, and only another kroot would care anyway) was slightly taller than I was, and still looked pretty intimidating. They're tough enough to take on an ork in hand-to-hand combat,
and I, for one, wouldn't be betting on the greenskin, but if it wanted me dead, it would only have had to wait a few moments. I retrieved my fallen laspistol anyway, and tried to get my breath back.
'I'm obliged to you', I said. 'I must admit I don't understand, but I'm grateful', I fumbled the weapon back into its holster with some difficulty. My arm was swelling up now, and my fingers felt thick and unre­sponsive. My rescuer made a curious clicking sound, which I assumed to be its equivalent of laughter.
'Imperial officers murdered by tau supporters. Not a desirable outcome when the political situation is tense.'
'Not a desirable outcome at any time when one of them is me', I said, and the xeno made the clicking noise again. That reminded me of Divas, and I stag­gered across to check on him. He was still breathing, but unconscious, a deep gash across his forehead. I'd picked up enough battlefield medicine to know he'd recover soon enough, but have the Emperor's own headache when he woke, and that was fine with me - serve the idiot right for nearly getting me killed.
'I have the honour to be Gorok, of the Clan Tcha', the creature said. 'I am kroot.'
'I know what you are', I said. 'Kroot killed my parents.' And thereby got me dumped in the Schola Progenium, and thence into the Commissariat, instead of following my undoubted true destiny of running some discreet little house of ill repute for slumming spirers and guilders up from the sump with more money than sense to splash around. I vaguely resented that, far more than the loss of my progenitors, who hadn't been all that much to have around while they were alive, to be honest. But it never hurts to grab the moral high ground. My new acquaintance didn't seem terribly concerned, though.
'I trust they fought well', he said. I doubted it. They'd only joined the Guard to get out of the hive ahead of the Arbites, and would certainly have deserted the first chance they got, so there must be something in genetics after all.
'Not well enough', I said, and Gorok clicked his amusement again. It was a slightly unnerving experience, feeling that something so unhuman was able to read me more readily than my own people.
'Go carefully, commissar', he said. 'And feed on your enemies. May we have no cause for conflict.'
Well, thank the Emperor for that. But somehow I doubted that it was going to happen, and of course, I was right. I was surprised, though, by how quickly the crisis came upon us.

¹ Cain was part of the invasion force which cleansed Sanguia. His account of this action is also recorded in the archive.

² It was hardly unprecedented for men and women to serve together in the Imperial Guard. Notable units in which this was the norm included the Omicron Rangers, Tanith First, and Calderon Rifles. However, with women making up fewer than ten per cent of the total number under arms, and the vast majority of those serving in single-sex regiments, it wouldn't be that surprising if the 597th excited a certain amount of curiosity among the onlookers present.

³ A widespread, though unofficial practice among units experi­enced in urban warfare. So much so that it's now become part of the standard operating procedure in many regiments, the ad hoc arrange­ment persisting to become a permanent feature of their organisation.

⁴ A Valhallan slang abbreviation for 'kilometre/ Cain served with Valhallan units for most of his life, and almost inevitably his speech became peppered with colloquialisms acquired from them.

⁵ The most affluent area of the city, where it began to rise up into the surrounding hills. Though tau influence on the local architecture was widespread, as Cain notes elsewhere, it was more overt here than anywhere else in Mayoh. As a result, it was popular with the most rad­ical of the pro-tau citizens, and a natural focus of protest for the Imperial loyalists. As the political situation continued to deteriorate, clashes between the two factions became commonplace here.

⁶ A reasonable assumption on both accounts. Details of Cain's sub­sequent activities as my 'errand boy/ as he puts it, can be found in the Ordo's libram if any readers care to check the official accounts; his own version of these events can be found elsewhere in the archive, but need not concern us at the moment.

⁷ A famous military blunder in the Spiron campaign, which took place on 438.926.M41. Captain Gannack's sentinel troop, from the 3rd Kalaman Hussars, misinterpreted their orders and charged an ork redoubt containing an artillery battery. No one survived.

Editorial Note:

It is perhaps worth, pointing out at this juncture that the, account of his background that Cain gives during his conversa­tion with the kroot, although superficially plausible, doesn't quite hold together on further elimination. For one thing, admittance to the Schola Progenium is a privilege usually reserved for the offspring of officers. If he was indeed the son of common troopers his parents must have acquitted themselves with singular valour in the action which resulted in their demise, which, to say the least, seems remarkably at odds with his characterisation of them. Moreover, he implies that they enlisted and served together. Although mixed units are, as pointed out elsewhere, not unheard of in the Imperial Guard, it would have been extremely unusual for this to have been the case.
Cain makes frequent references throughout the archive to hav­ing spent his early years on a hive world, but never specifies which one; which, in turn, makes the verification of any such claims virtually impossible. However, no hive world of which I'm aware raised a mixed Guard regiment in the timeframe con­sistent with his narrative.
We should also bear in mind that, by his own admission, the man was a pathological liar; given to saving anything he judged would be effective in manipulating his listeners.

Chapter Four

'It's often remarked that diplomacy is just warfare by other means. Our battles are no less desperate for being bloodless, but at least we get wine and finger food.'

- Tollen Ferlang, Imperial Envoy to the Realm of Ultramar, 564-603 M41

'Are you sure you're fit enough?' Kasteen asked, a faint frown of concern appearing between her eyebrows. I nodded, and adjusted die sling I'd adopted for dramatic effect. It was black silk, matching the ebony hues of my dress uniform, and made me look tolerably dashing, I thought.
'I'm fine', I said, smiling bravely. 'The other fellows got the worst of it, thank the Emperor.' In the day or two since the brawl with the heretics, my
arm had more or less healed, the medicae assuring me that I'd suffered nothing worse than severe bruising. It was still stiff, and ached a little, but all in all I thought I'd come off lightly. Far better than Divas had, anyway. He'd spent the night in the infirmary, and still walked with a stick. For all that, though, he was as irritatingly cheerful as ever, and I'd been finding as many duties as I could to keep me out of the way whenever he suggested socialis­ing again.
Luckily for me, he'd lost consciousness before the kroot turned up, so my reputation had received another unmerited embellishment. He assumed I'd seen off our assailants single-handed, and I saw no good reason to disabuse him. Besides, the con­versation I'd had with the creature had been curiously unsettling, and I found myself reluctant to think about it too hard. I noticed Divas's account had tactfully glossed over the reason why we were in the thick of the tau sympathizers' heart­land, so maybe they'd finally knocked a little common sense into him. Knowing Divas, though, I doubted it.
'Well, that's what they get for picking on the Imperium's finest', Kasteen said, eager to buy the generally accepted version of events, as the latest evidence of my exceptional martial abilities reflected well on the regiment she led. She adjusted her own dress uniform, tugging the ochre greatcoat into place with every sign of discomfort. Like most Valhallans, she had an iceworlder's
tolerance for cold, and found even the mildest of temperate climates a little uncomfortable. Having spent most of my service with Valhallan regiments, I'd long become inured to their habit of air condi­tioning their quarters to temperatures which left the breath smoking, and tended to wear my com-missarial greatcoat at all times, but they were still adjusting to the local conditions here with some difficulty.
'If I might suggest, colonel,' I said, 'tropical order would be perfectly acceptable.'
'Would it?' She hovered indecisively, reminding me again how young she was to be in such an elevated position, and I felt an unaccustomed pang of sympa­thy. The prestige of the regiment was in her hands, and it was easy to forget how heavily the responsibil­ity weighed on her.
'It would', I assured her. She discarded the heavy fur cap, disordering her hair, and began to unfasten the coat. Then she hesitated.
'I don't know', she said. 'If they think I'm too infor­mal it'll reflect badly on all of us.'
'For the Emperor's sake, Regina', Broklaw said, his voice amused. 'What sort of impression do you think you'll make if you're sweating like an ork all evening?' I noted his use of her given name, the first time I'd heard him do so, with quiet satisfaction. Another milestone on the 597th's march towards full integration. The real test would come with their first taste of combat, of course, and all too soon at that, but it was a good omen. 'The commissar's right.'
The commissar's always right', I said, smiling. 'It says so in the regulations.'
Well, I can't argue with that.' Kasteen pulled off the coat with evident relief, and smoothed the jacket beneath it. It was severely cut, emphasising her figure in ways that I was sure would attract the attention of most of the men in the room. Broklaw nodded approvingly.
'I don't think you need to worry about making an impression,' he said, proffering a comb.
'So long as it's a good one.' She smoothed her hair into place, and began buckling her weapon belt. Like mine it held a chainsword, but hers was ornately gilded, and worked with devotional scenes that decorated scabbard and hilt alike. The contrast with my own functional model, chipped and bat­tered with far too much use for my liking, was striking. The holster at her other hip was immacu­late too, the glossy black leather holding a bolt pistol which also gleamed from every highly pol­ished surface and which was intricately engraved with icons of the saints.
'No doubt about that', I assured her.
Her nervousness was quite understandable, as we'd been invited to a diplomatic reception at the gover­nor's palace. At least I had, and in the interests of protocol, the colonel of my regiment and an appro­priate honour guard would also be expected. This sort of soiree was quite beyond her experience, and she was all too acutely aware that she was out of her depth.
I, on the other hand, was well within mine. One of the many benefits of being a Hero of the Imperium is that you're regarded as a prime catch by a certain type of society hostess, which meant that I'd had plenty of opportunity to enjoy the homes, wine cel­lars, and daughters of the idle rich over the years, and had developed an easy familiarity with the world in which they moved. The main thing to remember, as I confided to Kasteen, was that they had their own idea of what soldiers were like, which had very little to do with the reality.
The best thing you can do', I said, 'is not to get sucked in to all that protocol nonsense in the first place. They'll expect us to get it wrong anyway, so to the warp with them.' She smiled in spite of herself, and settled a little more comfortably into the uphol­stery of the staff car Jurgen had found somewhere. Armed with my commissarial authority, which let him requisition practically anything short of a bat­tleship without argument, he'd developed quite a talent for acquiring anything I considered necessary for my comfort or convenience over the years. I never asked too many questions about where they'd come from, as I suspected some of the answers might have complicated my life.
That's easy for you to say', she said. 'You're a hero. I'm just-'
'One of the youngest regimental commanders in the entire Guard', I said. 'A position that, in my opin­ion, you hold entirely on merit.' I smiled. 'And my confidence is not lightly earned.' It was what she needed to hear, of course; I've always been good at manipulating people. That's one of the reasons I'm so good at my job. She began to look a little happier.
'So what do you suggest?' she said. I shrugged.
'They might be rich and powerful, but they're only civilians. However hard they try to hide it, they'll be in awe of you. I've always found it best at these things just to be a plain, simple military man, with no interest in politics. The Emperor points, and we obey..'
'Through the warp and far away' She finished the old song line with a smile. 'So we shouldn't offer any opinions, or answer questions about policy.'
'Exactly', I said. 'If they want to talk, tell them a few stories about your old campaigns. That's all they're interested in anyway.' That was certainly true in my case. I was sure I'd only been invited as patriotic win­dow-dressing, to impress the tau with the calibre of the opposition they'd be facing if they were foolish enough to try and make a fight of it with us. Of course, in my case, that meant they could pretty much run their flag up the pole of the governor's palace any time they felt like it, but that was beside the point.
'Thank you, Ciaphas.' Kasteen put her chin on her hand, and watched the street lights flicker past out­side the window. That was the first time anyone in the regiment had addressed me in personal terms since I joined it. It felt strange, but curiously pleas­ant.
'You're welcome... Regina', I said, and she smiled.
(I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong. I did come to think of her as a friend in the end, and Broklaw too, but that's as far as it went. Anything else would have made both our positions untenable. Sometimes, looking back, I think that's a shame, but there it is.)

The governor's palace was in what the locals called the Old Quarter, where the fad for tau-influenced architecture which had infected the rest of the city had failed to take hold, so the vague sense of unease which had oppressed me since we arrived began to lift at last. The villas and mansions slipping past out­side the car had taken on the familiar blocky contours of the Imperial architecture with which I'd been familiar all my life, and I felt my spirits begin to rise to the point where I almost began to anticipate enjoying the evening ahead of us.
Jurgen swung the vehicle through an elaborate pair of wrought-iron gates decorated with the Imperial aquila, and our tyres hissed over raked gravel as we progressed down a long, curving drive lit by flickering flambeaux. Behind us the truck with our honour guard followed, no doubt mak­ing a terrible mess of things with its heavy duty tyres, the soldiers making the most of the grand­stand view afforded by its open rear decking to point and chatter at the sights. Beyond the flicker­ing firelight, we could make out a rolling landscaped lawn, dotted with shrubs and orna­mental fountains - automatically, some part of my mind was assessing the best way of using them for cover.
An audible gasp from Kasteen signalled that the palace itself had come into view from her side win­dow, and a moment later, the curve of the drive brought it into my field of vision.
'Not a bad little billet', I said, with elaborate casu-alness. Kasteen composed herself, wiping the bumpkin gawp off her face.
'Reminds me of a bordello we used to visit when I was an officer cadet', she replied, determined to match my blase exterior. I grinned.
'Good', I said. 'Remember we're soldiers. We're not impressed by this sort of thing.'
'Absolutely not', she agreed, straightening her jacket unnecessarily.
There was a lot of the building not to be impressed by. It must have covered over a kilome­tre from end to end, although of course much of that area would be given over to courtyards and interior gardens currently hidden behind the outer wall. Buttresses and crenellations protruded like acne from every surface, encrusted with statuary commemorating previous governors and other local notables no one could now remember the names of, and vast areas had been gilded, reflecting the firelight from outside in a manner which was to prove eerily prophetic had we but known. At the time, though, it simply struck me as one of the most stridently vulgar piles of masonry I'd ever encountered.
Jurgen pulled up outside the main entrance, halt­ing at the end of a red carpet as skilfully as a shuttle pilot entering a docking port. After a moment the truck pulled up behind us and our honour guard piled out, deploying on either side of it a full squad, five pairs of troopers facing each other across the crimson weave, lasguns at the port.
'Shall we?' I extended an arm to Kasteen as a flunkey dressed as a wedding cake bustled up to open the door for us.
'Thank you, commissar.' She took it as we emerged, and I stopped for a moment to have a word with Jur­gen.
'Any further orders, sir?' I shook my head.
'Just find somewhere to park, and get yourself something to eat', I said. Strictly speaking I could have had my aide accompany us, but the thought of Jurgen mingling with the cream of the Gravalaxian aristocracy was almost too hideous to contemplate. I turned to the noncom in charge of the honour guard, a Sergeant Lustig, and tapped the combead I'd slipped into my ear. 'You too', I added. 'You might as well be comfortable while you wait for us. I'll contact you when we're ready to leave.'
Yes sir.' A faint smile tried to form on his broad face before discipline reasserted itself, and he inhaled.
'Squad... Atten... Shun!' he bellowed, and they snapped to it with nanosecond precision. No sur­prise that they'd won the extra drink ration this week, I thought. The crash of synchronised heels caused heads to turn all around us, minor local nobles look­ing mightily impressed, and their chauffeurs even more so.
'I think we've made an impression', Kasteen mur­mured as we gained the elaborately carved entrance doors.
'That was the idea', I agreed.
Inside, it was exactly as I'd anticipated, the kind of vulgar ostentation too many of the wealthy mistake for good taste, with crystal and gilt and garish tapes­tries of historic battles and smug-looking primarchs strewn around the place like a pirate's warehouse. The high arched ceiling was supported by pillars art­fully carved to mimic the bark of some species of local tree, and my feet sank into the carpet as though it were a swamp. It took me a moment to realise that the weave would form a vast portrait, presumably of the governor himself, if viewed from the upper land­ing, and I noted with faint amusement that someone had trodden on a dropped canape making it look as though his nose was running. Whether it was a gen­uine accident, or the act of a disgruntled servant, who could say? Kasteen's lips quirked as she absorbed the full opulence of our surroundings.
'I take it back', she said quietly. 'A bordello would have been done out in far better taste.' I suppressed a smile of my own as another flunkey ushered us for­ward.
'Commissar Ciaphas Cain', he announced. 'And Colonel Regina Kasteen.' Which at least established who we were. It was pretty obvious who the unhealthy-looking individual sitting on a raised dais at the end of the room was. I've met a good few plan­etary governors in my day, and they all tend towards inbred imbecility¹, but this specimen looked like he should take the prize. He somehow contrived to look both undernourished and flabby at the same time, and his skin was the pallor of a dead fish. Watery eyes of no particular colour goggled at us from under a fringe of thinning grey hair.
'Governor Grice', I said, bowing formally. A plea­sure.'
'On the contrary', he said, his voice quivering a lit­tle. The pleasure's entirely mine.' Well, he wasn't wrong on that account, but he was ignoring me entirely. He stood, and bowed to Kasteen. 'You hon­our us all with your presence, colonel.'
Well, that was a new experience, being ignored in favour of a slip of a girl, but I suppose if you'd ever met her you'd understand it. She was pretty striking, if redheads were your thing, and I supposed the old fool didn't get out much. Anyway, it enabled me to fade out of the picture and go looking for some amusement of my own, which I did with all due dispatch.
As was my habit I circulated widely, keeping my eyes and ears open as you never know what useful little snippets of information will come in handy, although the main thing that caught my attention was the enter­tainment. A young woman was standing on a podium at the end of the room, surrounded by musicians who sounded almost as well rehearsed as our regimental band, but they could have been playing ork wardrums for all I cared because her voice was extraordinary. She was singing old sentimental favourites, like The Night Before You Left and The Love We Share, and even an old cynic like me could appreciate the emotion she put into them, and feel that, just this once, the trite words were ringing true. Snatches of her husky contralto car­ried through the room wherever I was, cutting through the backbiting and the small talk, and I felt my eyes drifting in her direction every time the crowd parted enough to afford me a view.
And the view was well worth it. She was tail and slim, with shoulder-length hair of a shade of blonde I've never seen on anyone else before or since, hang­ing loose to frame a face which nearly stopped my heart. Her eyes were the hazy blue of a far horizon, and seemed to transfix me whenever I looked in her direction. Her dress was the same colour, almost exactly, and clung to her figure like mist.
Now, I've never believed in sentimental nonsense like love at first sight, but I can say without a word of a lie that, even now, after almost a century, I can close my eyes and picture her as she was then, and hear those songs as though she's still in the same room.
But I wasn't there to listen to cabaret singers, how­ever enchanting, so I tried my best to mingle and pick up whatever gossip I could that would help us fight the tau if we had to, and keep me out of it, if at all possible.
'So you're the famous Commissar Cain,' someone said, passing me a fresh drink. I took it automatically, turning a little to use my right hand and emphasize the sling, and found myself looking at a narrow-faced fellow in an expensive but understated robe which positively screamed diplomat. He glanced at the sling. 'I hear you nearly started the war early'
'Not from choice, I can assure you,' I said. 'Just defending an officer who lacked the self-restraint to ignore a blatant piece of sedition.'
'I see.' He eyed me narrowly, trying to size me up. I kept my expression neutral. 'I take it your self-restraint is a little stronger.'
At the moment', I said, choosing my words with care, 'we're still at peace with the tau. The internal sit­uation here is, I'll admit, a little disturbing, but unless the Guard is ordered to intervene, that's purely a mat­ter for the Arbites, the PDF, and His Excellency.' I nodded at Grice, who was listening to Kasteen explain the best way of disembowelling a termagant with every sign of interest, although his retinue of syco­phants was beginning to look a little green around the gills. 'I'm not averse to fighting if I have to, but that's a decision for wiser heads than mine to take.'
'I see.' He nodded, and stuck out a hand for me to shake. After a moment's juggling, more to put him off balance than anything, I transferred the glass to my other hand and took it. 'Erasmus Donali, Imper­ial Envoy.'
'I thought as much.' I smiled in return. 'You have the look of a diplomat about you.'
'Whereas you seem quite exceptional for a soldier.' Donali sipped his drink, and I followed suit, finding it a very pleasant vintage. 'Most of them can't wait for the shooting to start.'
'They're Imperial Guard', I said. 'They live to fight for the Emperor. I'm a commissar; I'm supposed to consider the bigger picture.'
'Which includes avoiding combat? You surprise me.'
'As I said before', I told him, 'that's not my decision to make. But if people like you can solve the conflict by negotiation, and keep troopers who would have died here alive to fight another enemy another day, and maybe tip the balance in a more important bat­tle, then it seems to me that you're serving the best interests of the Imperium.' And keeping my skin whole into the bargain, of course, which was far more important to me. Donali looked surprised, and a little gratified.
'I can see your reputation is far from exaggerated', he said. 'And I hope I can oblige you. But it may not be easy.'
That wasn't what I wanted to hear, you can be sure. But I shrugged, and sipped my drink.
As the Emperor wills', I said, a phrase I'd picked up from Jurgen over the course of our long associ­ation. Of course when he says it he means every word; from me it's just the verbal equivalent of a shrug. I've never really bought the idea that His Divine Majesty can spare some attention from the job of preventing the entire galaxy from sliding into damnation to look out for my interests, too, or anyone else's for that matter, which is why I'm so diligent about doing it for myself. 'The diffi­culty, I take it, being the public support for the tau in certain quarters.'
'Exactly.' My new friend nodded gloomily. 'For which you can thank the imbecile over there talking to your colonel.' He indicated Grice with a tilt of his head. 'He got so carried away counting his bribes from the likes of him...' another tilt of the head to the far corner of the room, 'that he hardly even noticed his planet slipping out from under him.'
I turned in the direction he'd indicated. A cadaver­ous, hawk-nosed individual dressed in unwise scarlet hose and a burgundy tabard was holding forth to a knot of the local aristocracy. Flanking him were a couple of servants in livery, who looked about as comfortable as an ork in evening dress; hired guns if I'd ever seen them. A scribe hovered next to him, making notes.
'One of the rogue traders we've heard so much about', I said. Donali shrugged.
'So he says. But no one here is entirely what they seem, commissar. You can certainly depend on that.'
Well he was right on the money so far as I was con­cerned. So I exchanged a few more inconsequential words and resumed circulating.
After a few more conversations with local digni­taries whose names I never quite caught, my glass was in need of replenishment, and I headed towards the table at the far end of the room where an entic­ing display of delicacies had been laid out. On the way, I noticed Kasteen had managed to extricate her­self from the governor's presence, and was working the room as though she'd been a habitue of high society since she could walk. The air of confidence she now radiated was remarkable, especially set against her earlier nervousness, but the ability to seem calm and in control whatever the circum­stances is a vital quality in a leader, and for all I knew, she was shamming it as shamelessly as I was. It cer­tainly looked as though she was enjoying herself, though, and I gave her a light-hearted salute as our eyes briefly met. She responded with a flashing grin, and whirled away towards the dance floor with a couple of aristocratic fops in tow.
'It looks like you've lost your date', a voice said behind me. I turned, and found myself falling into the wide blue eyes of the singer I'd been watching before. Uncharacteristically for me, I was momentar­ily at a loss for words. She was smiling, a plate of finger food in her hand.
'She's, ah, just a colleague', I said. 'A fellow officer. Nothing like that between us. Strictly against regulations, for one thing. And anyway, we're not-'
She laughed, a warm, smoky chuckle which warmed me like amasec, and I realised she was pulling my leg.
'I know', she said. 'No time for romance in the Imperial Guard. It must be grim for you.'
'We have our duty to the Emperor', I said. 'For a sol­dier, that's enough.' It's the sort of thing I usually say, and most civilians lap it up, but my beautiful singer was looking at me quizzically, the ghost of a smile quirking at the corner of her mouth, and I suddenly got the feeling that she could see right through me to the core of deceit and self-interest I normally keep concealed from the world. It was an unnerving sen­sation.
'For some, maybe. But I think there's more to you than meets the eye.' She picked up a bottle from the nearby table with her free hand, and topped up my glass.
There's more to everyone than meets the eye', I said, more to deflect the conversation than anything else. She smiled again.
That's very astute, commissar.' She extended a hand, slim and cool to the touch, the middle finger ornamented with a large and finely wrought ring of unusual workmanship. Evidently she was extremely successful in her profession, or had at least one wealthy admirer; I would have laid money on both. I kissed it formally, as etiquette demanded, and to my astonishment she giggled.
'A gentleman as well as an officer. You are full of surprises.' Then she surprised me by dropping a curt­sey, in imitation of the bovine debutantes surrounding us, the light of mischief in her dazzling eyes. 'I'm Amberley Vail, by the way. I sing a bit.'
'I know', I said. 'And very well too.' She acknowl­edged the compliment with a tilt of her head. I bowed formally, entering into the game. 'Ciaphas Cain', I said, 'at your service. Currently attached to the Valhallan 597th.' Her eyes widened a little as I introduced myself.
'I've heard of you', she said, a little breathlessly. 'Didn't you fight the genestealers on Keffia?' Well I had, if you count hanging around drinking recaf while the artillery unit I was with dropped shells on the biggest concentrations of stealers we could find from kloms away as fighting. I'd been in at the death, so to speak, and emerged with a great deal of the credit, more by luck than good judgement. It was one of the early inci­dents that had laid the foundations of my undeserved reputation for heroism, but my misadventures since had tended to overshadow what most of the galaxy still regarded as a minor incident on a backwater agriworld.
'Not entirely alone', I said, slipping easily into the modest hero demeanour I could adopt without thinking. 'There was an Imperial battlefleet in orbit at the time.'
'And two full divisions of Imperial Guard on planet.' She laughed again at my astonished expres­sion. 'I have relatives in Skandaburg.² You're still talked about back there.'
'I can't think why', I said. 'I was just doing my job.'
'Of course.' Amberley nodded, and again I got the feeling that she wasn't fooled for a moment. 'You're an Imperial commissar. Duty before everything, right?'
'Absolutely', I said. 'And right now, I think it's my duty to ask you to dance/ It was a transparent attempt to change the subject, which I hoped she'd put down to modest embarrassment, and I half expected her to refuse. But she smiled, discarding her plate of half-eaten delicacies, and took my uninjured arm.
'I'd love to', she said. 'I've a few minutes before my second set.'
So we drifted across to the dance floor, and I spent a very pleasant few minutes with her head on my shoulder as we spun around to an old waltz I never learned the name of. Kasteen galloped past a couple of times, a different swain in tow on each occasion, raising an eyebrow in a way which forewarned me of some relentless leg-pulling on our drive back to the compound, but just at that moment I couldn't have cared less.
Eventually, Amberley pulled away, with what seemed like reluctance unless I was succumbing to wishful thinking, and began to return to the stage. I walked with her, chatting to no purpose, intent sim­ply on prolonging a pleasant interlude in what otherwise promised to be a dull evening, and it was thus that I noticed a quiet, vehement altercation between Grice and the hawk-faced rogue trader.
'Do you know who that is?' I asked, not really expecting an answer, but it seemed my companion was well-versed in the intricacies of Gravalaxian pol­itics. It came with performing for the aristocracy, I supposed. She nodded, looking surprised.
'His name's Orelius. A rogue trader here to deal with the tau. So he says.' The qualification was deliv­ered in precisely the same tone of scepticism as Donali's had been, and for some reason I found myself remembering Divas's cloak-and-dagger fan­tasies from our night in the Eagle's Wing.
'Why do you say that?' I asked. Amberley shrugged.
'The tau have been dealing with the same traders for more than a century. Orelius arrived from nowhere a month or two ago, and tried opening negotiations with them, through Grice. It may just be a coincidence, but...' She shrugged, her dress slipping across her slim shoulders.
Why now, with the political situation destabilis­ing?' I asked. She nodded.
'It does seem a little unusual.'
'Perhaps he's hoping to take advantage of the con­fusion to strike a better deal', I said. Orelius turned on his heel as I watched, and marched away trailed by his bodyguards. Grice was pale and sweating, even more than usual, and reached out to pluck a drink from a nearby servitor with a trembling hand. 'He's thrown a scare into our illustrious governor, at any event.'
'Has he?' Amberley watched him go. 'That seems a little presumptuous, even for a rogue trader.'
'If that's what he really is,' I said, without thinking. Those depthless blue eyes turned on me again.
'What else would he be?'
'An inquisitor', I said, the idea taking firmer root in my head even as I said it. Amberley's eyes widened.
An inquisitor? Here?' Her voice became a little tremulous, as though the enormity of the idea were too huge to grasp. 'What makes you think that?'
The urge to impress her was almost irresistible, I have to confess; and if you could only know how bewitching she was, I know you'd have felt the same. So I looked my most commissarial.
All I can say', I told her, lowering my voice for dra­matic effect, 'is that I've heard from a reliable military source' - which sounded a lot better than 'from a drunken idiot/ I'm sure you'll agree - 'that there are Inquisition agents active on Gravalax.'
'Surely not.' She shook her head, blonde tresses fly­ing in confusion. 'And even if there were, why would you suspect Orelius?'
'Well, just look at him', I said. 'Everyone knows that undercover inquisitors disguise themselves as rogue traders most of the time.³ It's by far the easiest way of travelling incognito with the rabble of hangers-on they all seem to attract.'
'You could be right', she said, with a delicate shiver. 'But it's no concern of ours.'
Well, I couldn't agree more, of course, but that's not what my heroic reputation leads people to expect of me, so I put on my best dutiful expression and said 'The security of the Imperium is the concern of all of His Majesty's loyal servants.' Well, that's true too, and it lets me out, but no one needs to know that. Amberley nodded, sombrely, and trotted back to the stage, and I watched her go, cursing myself for an idiot for puncturing the mood.
As you'll no doubt appreciate, the rest of the evening promised to be anticlimactic, so I drifted back to the food and drink. Our rations back at the compound were adequate enough, but I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to savour a few delicacies while they were there for the taking, and it was as good a vantage point as any to enjoy Amberley's per­formance from. It was also, as I'd learned from uncountable similar affairs, the best spot from which to cull gossip, since everyone gravitated there sooner or later.
Thus it was that I made the acquaintance of Ore-lius, without the faintest presentiment of the trouble that innocent conversation would lead to.
If anything, I suppose, it was the sling that was to blame. It had seemed a good idea at the time, but now I came to fill a plate the damn thing got in the way, preventing me from reaching out for the palovine pastries perched on the opposite side of the table. If I transferred the plate to my left hand I was
turned awkwardly, my centre of mass shifted, so I still couldn't reach. I was trying to work out a way of getting to them when a thin arm reached across to pick up the dish.
'Allow me.' The voice was dry and cultured. I trans­ferred a couple of the delicacies to my plate, and found myself addressing the man I'd almost con­vinced myself was an inquisitorial agent. It was ridiculous, of course, but still...
Thank you, sieur Orelius', I said. 'You're most kind.'
'Have we met?' His eyes were shadowed, the irises were almost black, and had an unnerving piercing quality that increased his resemblance to a bird of prey.
Your reputation precedes you', I said blandly letting him make of that what he would. I don't mind admit­ting I was less relaxed than I tried to look. If he really was an inquisitor, there was a good chance he was a psyker, too, and might know me for what I was, but I'd encountered mindreaders before and knew that mey weren't as formidable as most people thought. Most of them can only read surface thoughts, and I was so long practiced at dissembling that I did so without any conscious awareness of the fact.
'I'm sure it does.' He was an old hand at this game too, I realised, an essential skill whether his profes­sion was as it appeared or as I had surmised.
'You seem to have the ear of His Excellency', I said, and the first momentary flicker of emotion appeared on his face. I'd got in under his guard, it seemed.
'I have both. Unfortunately, His Excellency appears to lack anything between them.' He took one of the pastries for himself. 'He's paralysed with indecision.'
'Indecision about what?' I asked ingenuously.
'Where his best interests lie. And those of his peo­ple, of course.' Orelius bit into the delicacy as though it were Grice's neck. 'Unless he starts showing some leadership, this world will go down in blood and burning. But he sits and vacillates, and hopes it will all go away'
'Then let's hope he comes to his senses soon', I said. The keen eyes impaled me again.
'Indeed.' His voice was level. 'For all our sakes.' He smiled then, without warmth. 'The Emperor be with you, Commissar Cain.' My surprise must have shown on my face, because the smile widened a fraction. 'Your reputation precedes you too.'
And then he was gone, leaving me curiously troubled. I didn't have long to dwell on my unease, though, because the flunkey who'd announced our arrival was back, looking a little flustered. He'd called out a number of names since Kasteen and I had made our entrance, but it was clear that this time he expected to be listened to. He pounded a staff on the polished wooden floor, and the babble of voices gradually dimin­ished; Amberley's trailed away in mid-chorus, which was a real shame. The flunkey's chest inflated with self-importance.
'Your Excellency. My lords, ladies, and gentlemen. O'ran Shui'sassai, Ambassador of the tau. '
And for the first time since arriving on Gravalax, I was face to face with the enemy.

¹ Like many of Cain's sweeping generalisations, this does contain an element of truth. The majority of planetary governorships are heredi­tary positions, and many of the incumbents aren't up to the challenge of the job. However, the truly incompetent tend to be weeded out by the ceaseless round of dynastic power struggles and coups d'etat which keep the aristocracy amused, and in cases where Imperial interests are directly threatened, we can always turn to the Officio Assassinorum.

² The provincial capital of the smaller of the Northern continents. Most of the action in the cleansing of Keffia took place on the south­ern continent, where the genestealer cult was most deeply entrenched; so Skandaburg and its population would have been relatively untouched by the fighting.

³ It is indeed regrettable that this predilection has become so widely known. Personally, I blame popular fiction for perpetuating the stereo­type, although it has to be said that some inquisitors are simply woefully lacking in imagination when required to adopt a disguise.

Chapter Five

yet to be released =p

Editorial Note:

yet to be released =p

Chapter Six

yet to be released =p