Xaphen smiled.
Making war upon another human culture was always a distinct kind of poison, and Argel Tal loathed every time it became necessary.
These were unclean wars, and fought with bitterness bred into every soul doomed to take up arms against the Imperium. It wasn’t that the enemy dared resist that discomfited the Crimson Lord, nor was it the expenditure of munitions or the fact each of these worlds was peopled by defenders he came to admire for their tenacity. Those aspects grieved him, but the waste of life and potential from their defiance – that was what left scars.
He’d tried to raise the point with Xaphen in the past. With characteristic bluntness, the Chaplain had lectured him on the rightness of their cause and the tragic need to crush these cultures. Such discussion told Argel Tal nothing he didn’t already know. Similar talks with Dagotal and Malnor had progressed the same way, as had one with Torgal. The Gal Vorbak dispensed with all ranks outside of Argel Tal’s own, rendering all its warriors equal under the Chapter Master, and the former assault sergeant had struggled hardest to understand what Argel Tal was trying to explain.
‘But they are wrong,’ Torgal said.
‘I know they are wrong. That’s the tragedy. We bring enlightenment through unification with mankind’s ancestral home world. We bring hope, progress, strength and peace through unmatched might. Yet they resist. It grieves me that extinction is so often the answer. I pity them for their ignorance, but admire them for the fact they will die for their way of life.’
‘That is not admirable. That’s moronic. They would rather die being wrong than learn to embrace change.’
‘I never said it was intelligent. I said it grieved me to reave a world clean of life because of ignorance.’
Torgal mused on this, but not for very long. ‘But they’re wrong,’ he said.
‘We were wrong once, too.’ The Chapter Master held up a gauntleted fist to make the point: it was crimson, where it would once have been grey. ‘We were wrong when we worshipped the Emperor.’
Torgal had shaken his head. ‘We were wrong, and we adapted rather than be annihilated. I do not see the source of your grievance, brother.’
‘What if we could convince them? What if the flaw is with us, that we merely lack the words to win them to our side? We are butchering our own species.’
‘We are culling the herd.’
‘Forget I mentioned it,’ the Chapter Master conceded. ‘You are right, of course.’
Torgal would not be moved. ‘Do not mourn idiocy, brother. They are offered the truth and they have refused. If we had resisted the truth unto destruction, then we would have deserved our fate, just as these fools deserve theirs.’
Argel Tal hadn’t tried again. A treacherous and unworthy thought plagued him in those grimmest moments – how much of his brothers’ unquestioning belief was born of their own hearts, and how much was bred into them by their gene-seed? How many souls had he consigned to destruction himself, silently urged into bloodshed by sorcerous genetics?
Some questions had no answers.
Reluctant to burden Cyrene with his own troubles when she already served as confessor for hundreds of Astartes and Euchar soldiers, the only other time he’d spoken of his unease was with the one soul he knew he needed to guard against.
Aquillon understood.
He understood because he felt the same, sharing Argel Tal’s subtle lament at the need to destroy entire empires simply because their leaders were blind to the realities of the galaxy.
The latest world to earn destruction was called Calis by its inhabitants, and 1301-20 by the 1301st Expeditionary Fleet. A planetwide invasion was in the making even as Calis’s primitive orbital defences fell, burning, back into the atmosphere.
The population was sentenced to destruction on account of their dealing with xenos breeds. The purestrain human biological code of Calis’s citizens had been unalterably corrupted by the introduction of alien genetics. The people of the world below would not surrender the exact details to the Imperium, but it was clear from blood samples that the Calisians had cultured alien deoxyribonucleic acid into their own cells at some point in time.
‘Most likely to cure hereditary or degenerative disease,’ Torvus suggested. But the reason was meaningless. Such deviation could not be tolerated.
General Jesmetine’s Euchar regiments were tasked with taking hold of twelve major cities across Calis’s scarce landmasses, each with support from several Astartes squads.
The capital city – a sprawl of industrial decay by the name of Crachia – was also the seat of the planetary ruler, who claimed the evidently hereditary title of ‘psychopomp’.
It was this woman, Psychopomp Shal Vess Nalia IX, that had rebuffed the Word Bearers’ emissaries. And it was this woman, swollen with corpulence, who had signed her culture’s death warrant.
‘Leave the capital untouched,’ Argel Tal had informed Baloc Torvus at the preceding war council. ‘I will release the Gal Vorbak upon Crachia and take their queen’s head myself.’
The fleetmaster had nodded. ‘And what of the remembrancers? They’ve barely been with us a fortnight, yet already I’m suffering hourly beseeching from their representatives, begging that they be allowed to witness an assault.’
The Crimson Lord shook his head. ‘Ignore them. We are conquering a world, Baloc, not nursemaiding tourists.’
Baloc Torvus had grown deeply patient in his advancing age, which was one of the fleetmaster’s many virtues that his men admired and his fellow commanders relied upon. Argel Tal saw the beginnings of cracks in that ironclad facade now, showing in the lines around the ageing man’s eyes, and the way he adjusted his white cloak to calm himself before replying.
‘With respect, lord–’
Argel Tal raised a hand in warning. ‘Don’t fall into formalities just because you disagree with me.’
‘With respect, Argel Tal, I have been ignoring them on your behalf since their arrival, and for over a year before that. I have mouthed platitudes and composed missives refusing them access to the fleet, citing a hundred and more reasons that it would be inappropriate, impossible, or impractical to deal with them. Now they are here, and they come equipped with Imperial seals from the Sigillite himself, demanding that they be allowed to record the Great Crusade. Short of shooting them – and don’t think I can’t see that smile – how am I to continue delaying them?’
Argel Tal chuckled, the first break in his foul mood the fleetmaster had seen today. Whatever news the returning Chaplain had brought, it was not sitting well with the Chapter Master. ‘I see your point. How many have joined the fleet?’
Torvus consulted a data-slate. ‘One hundred and twelve.’
‘Very well. Make them choose ten. We’ll take them down with us in the first wave, and give them a minimal Army escort from the Euchars. The rest can follow once the landing zones are secure.’
‘What if they encounter significant opposition?’
‘Then they die.’ The Crimson Lord made to leave the room. ‘I do not care, either way.’
Torvus took several seconds to make sure Argel Tal wasn’t joking.
‘By your word.’
TWENTY-TWO
An Idea
Brothers
The Ordained Hour
Ishaq was faintly concerned that he was going to die down here, but that wouldn’t stop him enjoying it while it lasted.
The other remembrancers whined on and on, badgering their Echuar aides about where would be best to observe the battle without actually getting anywhere near it. Apparently they’d forgotten the honour of getting sent down here shortly after first setting foot on solid ground. Most of them seemed dedicated to completely missing the whole point of making planetfall in the first place, but that was fine by Ishaq. He wasn’t here to babysit their careers.
The ride down to the surface had been an uneventful drift through the afternoon sky – anticlimactic after all the tension of being selected, and boring enough for Ishaq to start wondering if there was really a war going on at all. The limited view from the dirty window had revealed a distant city of obviously human construction below.
Strange, to consider waging war against such a familiar scene.
Their lander was an Army troop transport, a shaking, rattling example of the ancient Greywing-class shuttles that he’d assumed were out of service these days, replaced by the smaller, sleeker Valkyries. Ishaq had looked at the boxy underslung compartment where the thirty passengers were evidently supposed to travel. He’d looked at the sloping wings, ran a gloved hand over the armour plating, pockmarked from battle and painted with faded lightning bolts from the Emperor’s Unification Wars on Terra two centuries before.