Sandy Mitchell - The Emperor's Finest

'Seek and destroy,' Gries said, which made perfect sense. With the local loyalists dug in at four known enclaves, pretty much anything else that looked military would be renegade units, attached to one or other of the squabbling factions, and fair game for the circling gunship. 'Let the rebels know we've arrived.'

Given the amount of firepower I'd seen while boarding, that was hardly going to be difficult. I nodded, with every outward sign of approval. 'Might as well start as we mean to go on,' I agreed.

Gries manipulated the controls of the pict-screen again, and the image changed to an external view, relayed from part of the fire control system judging by the targeting graphics superimposed on it. We were still at high altitude, but undeniably within the atmosphere [9] As he does so often in the course of his memoirs, Cain is clearly compressing events here for dramatic effect; even at maximum acceleration, the Thunderhawk would have taken several hours, or possibly longer, to reach Viridia from the Revenant's closest viable point of re-entry to the materium. . As I watched, transfixed, the smoking ruins of Fidelis rolled over the horizon, and I found myself trying to pick out the landmarks Gries had highlighted during his briefing. The cathedral was the easiest, still dominating the quarter in which it stood, despite the tumbled ruins of most of its spires. With that to orientate me, I was soon able to pick out the blank-sided slabs of the Administratum ziggurat, and the burnished steel cladding of the Mechanicus shrine. The governor's palace was another matter, however, less tall than the others and still some distance away, surrounded by a cluster of lesser mansions and their grounds, like a she-grox with young. As we grew closer, it became evident that many were burned out, and all had been pillaged, in a manner which put me in mind of mob violence rather than battle damage.

Then the pall of smoke cleared, and we skimmed over the outer wall of the palace grounds, too fast to be targeted by ground-to-air fire, the upturned faces of guards and besiegers alike identical masks of astonishment [10] Clearly an exaggeration, as the Thunderhawk would have been past far too quickly, and at too great an altitude, to be able to make out facial expressions on the ground. . Abruptly, I found myself pressed hard against the crash webbing, as the pilot kicked in the retros, killing our forward momentum, then my stomach seemed to float free of my body as we dropped towards the ground. It was just as well Jurgen wasn't with me, I thought, as he was prone to airsickness at the best of times, and this was hardly one of those. Without warning, an ork-sized boot seemed to kick me in the fundament, and the noise of the engines died back to almost bearable levels. We were down.

'Prepare to disembark,' Gries said, as the ramp began to drop, letting in a swirl of damp air, lightly scented with burning vegetation from the heat of our landing thrusters. Trosque's fire-team [11] The Imperial Guard term for their equivalent of a Space Marine combat squad. deployed first, jogging down the ramp and securing it; I was pleased to see that they were taking nothing for granted, even though we were supposed to be meeting allies. After a moment the sergeant assured us that all was well, and Gries and his command squad followed. Seeing no reason to delay any further, and convinced that if there was treachery afoot there could be no better place to discover the fact than from behind a solid wall of bolter-carrying ceramite, I trotted after them, trying to look as imposing as I could given that my head barely came up to the level of their pauldrons.

As my bootsoles hit solid ground, crunching a little on the ashes and baked mud which still smoked gently beneath the Thunderhawk, I got a lungful of smoke and tried to suppress the reflex to cough. No one else was, and I didn't want to be the one to undermine the dignity of the occasion.

As Gries stepped off the bottom of the ramp, he paused for a moment, two of his companions at either shoulder and an exact pace behind. Taken briefly by surprise, I stopped too, just short of walking into the back of him, and level with the other four Astartes, completing the line, and, of course, completely invisible from the front.

'Welcome to Viridia,' someone said, and I shuffled sideways a little to get a better view. We were evidently expected, as a delegation had come to meet us: ceremonial troopers, their gaudy uniforms looking rather the worse for wear by now, who held their lasguns like men who'd recently discovered exactly what they were for, and were ready to employ them in an instant, surrounding a man in robes so ridiculously over-ornamented there could be little doubt as to who he was, even before he announced the fact. 'I'm Governor DuPanya.' Then, to my astonishment, he went down on one knee. 'You honour us by your presence.'

'Please rise,' Gries said, the vox system of his helmet, perhaps mercifully, purging any traces of surprise or amusement from his words. 'We have much to discuss, and little time to waste on ceremony.' He reached up, removing the helmet, and DuPanya relaxed visibly as the captain's face came into view. It wasn't exactly a hololith, consisting as it did mainly of augmetics and scar tissue, but it looked a great deal more friendly than a blank visage of pitted ceramite. 'I am Captain Gries of the Reclaimers Chapter, these are my battle-brothers and this...' he turned, apparently surprised to find me so close to hand, 'is Commissar Cain, our liaison with the Imperial Guard elements of the task force.'

'Imperial Guard?' DuPanya asked, standing up as he'd been bidden and giving me my first proper look at him. He appeared to be in early middle age - although I was too familiar with the nobility's fondness for juvenat treatments, even on a backwater world like this one, to put much faith in outward appearance - and running slightly to fat. His eyes, however, were keen and looked at me appraisingly. 'I was not informed of their arrival.'

'They're still in the warp,' I told him, reflecting somewhat ruefully that I could have saved myself a considerable amount of inconvenience if I'd delayed my departure to travel with them, and whatever piece of gung-ho idiocy Lokris had been planning to drag me into could hardly have turned out to be worse than the metal abominations I'd barely escaped with my life from on Interitus Prime.

'Emperor willing, they should be here within the week.' In fact they should be there within the next couple of days, if the warp currents hadn't shifted appreciably since the last estimate I'd heard, but nothing to do with the Realm of Chaos itself is ever certain, and I preferred to err on the side of caution. I raised my voice a little, above the scream of the Thunderhawk's engines, which were powering up again now that Veren's team had disembarked behind us. 'But perhaps this isn't the best place to be discussing operational matters.'

'Quite so,' Gries agreed, his voice cutting through the din as though it were little more than the murmuring of wind through the trees.

'Having come here to ensure your safety, it seems a little unwise to be talking where the enemy could deny us our objective with a lucky mortar round or a sniper's bullet.' This didn't seem to have occurred to the governor, who, to his credit, seemed relatively unconcerned at the possibility. Nevertheless, he turned and led the way inside, his escort looking considerably relieved as they regained a little hard cover. Gries and his entourage followed, while I oscillated between the two parties, connected to both by ties of protocol, but properly part of neither.

As we reached the heavy wooden doors of the palace and passed inside, I glanced back at the Thunderhawk, which was rising from the ground like a raptor in search of prey. Beneath it Trosque and Veren were leading their sections towards the perimeter wall, in diverging directions as each made for the gate closest to his objective, and I breathed silent thanks to the Throne that I'd be well under cover before the serious shooting started. I had no doubt that the Astartes would make short work of any traitors standing between them and their targets, but the initial contact for both teams would be close enough for us to attract any collateral damage that might be going.