V2 Chapter 118: Are You Ready to Witness the Might of the Imperium?
The air on Tanith was always humid and oppressive.
The influence of the endless forest meant that every breath carried a scent that never quite went away: damp wood shavings, rotting leaves, and the sap of something that had no name outside this world. Most outsiders wrinkled their noses on the first inhale.
Outside the walls of Tanith's capital, Magna, on a clearing that had been hastily prepared as a regimental assembly ground, three regiments' worth of soldiers had already gathered.
They did not look like the Astra Militarum depicted in Departmento Munitorum recruitment illustrations. Some sat on the ground. Others crouched beside their packs. Others clustered in small groups talking quietly, occasionally breaking into bursts of noise over someone's joke.
Viewed from a distance, they looked more like hunters, smugglers, and labourers who had been rounded up from the forest, the lower city districts, and the logging camps. They wore standard-issue uniforms and had been organised into three loose formations, but the general impression of disorder was very hard to conceal.
The planetary governor standing at the rear of the assembly ground knew that these people had received some training.
They had learned basic drill, how to respond to formation orders, and how to operate the standard-issue lasguns. But discipline required time, and Tanith's people had never been known as a culture that responded well to regimentation and silence.
The heavyset man stood beneath a temporary shelter, checking his pocket watch at intervals and looking up at the sky, which was darkening quickly.
Tanith's dusk came fast. The shadows at the forest's edge were already pressing across the assembly ground. In the distance, the canopy of nalwood trees swayed in the hot wind, making the cleared area feel temporary in a way that matched its nature.
The governor wiped the sweat from his temple. His anxiety was not easy to conceal.
When news reached him that an Imperial fleet was inbound, he had proposed letting the new troops rest for a night and conducting the recruitment speeches and the exercise the following day. The light was already going. Three regiments had been called in on short notice and a number of things were not properly arranged.
The orders that came back allowed no discussion.
[All operations commence immediately upon arrival of the expedition fleet. Tanith's three regiments are to assemble at once, await inspection by their new commanding officer, and cooperate with expedition exercise arrangements.]
The tone of those orders had been entirely serious.
The governor did not know what had happened at the front. He did not know whether something had gone wrong with the Tanith recruitment plan. He had come here himself to manage everything, terrified that the Imperial officers would arrive and find something to disapprove of.
He was still looking up at the sky when the sound finally reached them from a distance.
Several lines of red engine exhaust cut through the dusk, descending rapidly from high altitude toward a cleared area near the assembly ground where guidance lights had been planted at the edges. The trees had been temporarily removed from the landing zone.
The noise on the assembly ground began to fall away.
A tall, broad-shouldered man with a thick beard looked up at the streaks of fire in the sky, his kit bag still hanging from one hand.
"I hope the Imperial officers won't be as cold-blooded as the stories say." He said quietly. "At least give us a way to survive."
"Ha."
A lean, wiry man leaning against a nearby nalwood gave a contemptuous sound. He turned a face that was handsome in an unsettling way and measured the sky with a look that carried active malice.
"All those fething Imperial bastards are the same." He said. "They won't even give us one more night's sleep."
"Rawne!"
The large man's brow came together and he lowered his voice into something sharp.
"That's about right though," said a third voice.
The speaker was continuously cleaning the lasrifle across his lap, the stock carved from nalwood and worn very smooth by long use. He was lean and hollow-faced, with the look of someone who slept badly and saw things other people did not. His eyes moved in an unfocused way, as though tracking something out of view.
"It's not like any of us are coming back anyway." He gave a quiet, odd laugh. "We'll probably be dead in the next fight. Ha."
"Larkin!"
The large man turned on him, and there was real heat in his voice this time. "I don't want to hear any more of that. If the Commissars overhear you, you'll both end up in a bad way."
Rawne gave a single contemptuous sound and looked away without speaking.
Larkin exhaled slowly, clutched his rifle, and looked up at the large man.
"Alright, Corbec. You're the boss."
Corbec looked at the pair of them and felt the headache forming behind his eyes again.
He raised his eyes. The silhouette of the transport was visible now. Those Imperial machines were descending with the weight of something that did not ask permission. The engine sound was growing. The Tanith people on the assembly ground were being forced, one by one, into a reluctant quiet.
"Let's hope this goes well."
That was what Corbec said.
Fething awful weather.
That was the first thought that formed in Duvette's mind as he came down the ramp from the transport bay.
No wind. Air like a damp cloth pressed against the face. The thick commissar's greatcoat produced a film of uncomfortable sweat almost immediately, and the collar pressed against his neck and made everything slightly worse.
He had always hated this kind of weather. Apparently that had not changed between worlds.
The transport hatch unfolded behind him and the hot air of the landing zone pushed past. In the distance, the high walls of Magna were visible, and beyond them the temporary clearing that had been prepared as the assembly ground.
He looked back at Gaunt.
The man still wore the same composed, severe expression. His black commissar's uniform was immaculate. The humid heat did not appear to be affecting him, at least on the outside.
Must be reasonably fortunate. Not hard to see how someone like that ends up winning over a hive city noblewoman.
Duvette found himself quietly amused at the thought.
Behind them came several officers, a vox operator, and the two Salamanders. The heat radiating from the green power armour in Tanith's humid air was considerable, and the local officials who had come to receive them clearly did not know what to do with their faces when they saw it.
The planetary governor reached them at a near-trot.
He pressed a welcoming expression onto his face and looked at the two Imperial Commissars and the expedition officers. Despite the heat, his formal attire was still in order, though the sweat at his temple told a different story.
"Welcome, welcome to Tanith, Imperial heroes." The governor bowed. "I am the planetary governor. The representative council of Magna has made every preparation for your arrival."
Duvette shook his hand briefly and without warmth. "Duvette Erdmann. Major General-Commissar. Commander, 112th Combined Battle Group."
Gaunt gave a short introduction as well.
When the governor heard Gaunt's name, he produced another smile. "Commissar Gaunt. Your three regiments are assembled and awaiting inspection on the ground."
After the brief exchange, Duvette did not give the governor space for further pleasantries. He gestured toward the temporary platform set up across the ground. "Take us over there."
The governor gave an immediate nod. "Please follow me."
The assembly whistle sounded shortly afterward.
The sharp sound carried across the clearing and the Tanith people who had been sitting scattered began getting to their feet and finding their places. Sergeants and local training officers worked through the crowd, calling at people to make the three formations look more like an Imperial regiment.
Duvette, Gaunt, and the officers followed the governor up onto the platform.
Looking down from that height, the Tanith people were at least arranged in three formations. But they were still visibly rough. Uniforms sat loose. Stances were uneven. Green cloaks were worn carelessly. A considerable number of them were studying the two Commissars on the platform with unconcealed curiosity.
There was quiet talking.
Some were looking past Duvette at the Salamanders behind him.
Others were watching the transports still coming down in the distance and had clearly not committed their full attention to the platform at all.
The governor's expression became uncomfortable.
He looked carefully at the two Imperial Commissars, and found that neither Gaunt nor Duvette seemed to be angry.
Duvette was studying the three formations below with something like genuine interest, privately wondering which of these groups would become the First-and-Only in the original sequence.
They did not look like much.
Lean, scruffy, undisciplined, and carrying the very particular quality of a local population that had not yet been worked into soldiers. They were not Cadians. They were not Krieg. They were nothing like the 112th veterans he was used to.
That did not mean they had no value.
People who grew up in a world where the forest itself moved would have capabilities that outsiders simply could not replicate.
Gaunt stepped forward and took the vox-caster.
His expression suggested he was not particularly impressed with what he was inheriting. Compared to the 8th Hyrkan, these three regiments looked like raw material that had not yet been properly worked.
But Gaunt did not let any of it show.
He stood at the front of the platform and delivered a commissar's address in a composed, controlled voice. He spoke of the Emperor. He spoke of the Sabbat Crusade. He spoke of the duty of the Astra Militarum and the honour that awaited the three Tanith regiments.
It was a correctly structured commissarial speech. The content was sound. The delivery was steady. Duvette stood to the side and listened, and thought that if this address had been delivered to a regiment that had already completed its training, it would have been well received.
The Tanith people below responded with something closer to indifference.
The applause was scattered and slow. The oath responses were quiet. Many of them simply mouthed the words along with the person nearest to them, and the resistance to a distant war that none of them had chosen was visible in most faces.
When Gaunt finished, he was quiet for a moment, then passed the vox-caster to Duvette.
His expression had not changed significantly, but Duvette could read what was behind it well enough.
Duvette took the vox-caster and showed his teeth.
He raised an eyebrow at Gaunt. The meaning was clear.
Watch this.
Gaunt blinked.
Duvette had already walked to the front of the platform. He slapped the vox-caster once and blew sharply into it.
The amplifier produced a harsh burst of feedback. A number of Tanith people winced. At least one person down there responded with a word that needed no translation.
Duvette's smile widened.
He raised the vox-caster and shouted.
"How are you all doing, Tanith! Look at the fething state of you! You look like a pack of monkeys that crawled out of a swamp!"
The assembly ground went still for a moment.
The next instant, noise erupted from three directions at once.
"What did you just say?!"
"Fething Commissar!"
"You're the one who looks like he crawled out of a swamp!"
"Get off the platform!"
The mixture of Tanith regional accents was, if nothing else, considerably louder than anything the oath-taking had produced.
The governor's colour left his face.
He stepped forward to call for silence, but Duvette raised a hand and stopped him.
"Easy, Governor."
Duvette narrowed his eyes and looked down at the outraged Tanith people with obvious satisfaction.
That was more like it.
He did not wait for the noise to die down on its own. He reached to his hip, drew the plasma pistol, and aimed it at empty air above and to the side.
He pulled the trigger.
The blue-white plasma discharge tore through the dusk and burst into a point of searing light high above them. The shockwave and the detonation rolled across the clearing and over everything else, and the assembly ground went abruptly silent.
Every Tanith head came up to look at the sky.
The anger on many of their faces became surprise. The ones who had been shouting loudest closed their mouths.
Duvette gave a satisfied nod.
"Much better."
His voice went out through the vox-caster across the entire assembly ground.
"I know you didn't want to be conscripted. I know you didn't want to leave home. You have families, friends, forests you know the way through, trees that walk around of their own accord, and your fething local drinks and your local problems."
No one down there spoke.
In the crowd, Corbec watched the Commissar on the platform, the one who seemed, impossibly, to have understood the insults shouted at him in a Tanith regional dialect, and said nothing.
Duvette went on. "But none of that matters any more, starting now. You've been drafted. You're leaving Tanith. You're joining the Astra Militarum. You're going to a war that most of you could not have imagined, and a good number of you will die in it. And honestly, the odds are that your deaths won't particularly matter."
The governor had gone a colour that suggested he might need to sit down.
"I am not going to tell you about grand ideals." Duvette said. "Those are too far away for any of you right now. Most of you don't even know yet what you are supposed to be fighting for."
He raised the plasma pistol and pointed it toward the sky in the distance.
"So before you understand what you are fighting for, take a look at what soldiers who already know their purpose look like."
Duvette showed them that smile again, the one that had been making the governor nervous since he arrived.
"Are you ready to witness the might of the Imperium?"
The words had barely left the vox-caster when a heavier sound reached them from deep in the sky.
Engine fire opened behind the cloud cover. At first it was a few points of light. Then it became dozens. Then hundreds. Heavy landers, transports, and assault craft spread across the descent corridor from high altitude and separated into their assigned approach routes.
Some of the transports came down toward the marked landing zones near the assembly ground. More of them cleared the walls of Magna and moved toward the spaceport, the forest edge, and more distant secondary landing areas.
The dusk was lit by engine exhaust.
High above, in the low orbital bands, the silhouettes and reflected light of warships were faintly visible. The great Imperial vessels could not enter the atmosphere, but they were enough to make the people standing on the ground understand that the actual machinery of war had arrived above their heads.
Every person on the assembly ground looked up.
They watched heavy landers open their ventral bays and the outlines of armoured vehicles emerge in the firelight. They watched transport formations come down in the distance and raise clouds of disturbed earth. They watched more points of light crossing the high sky, delivering force to places they could not see.
Corbec opened his mouth. Then closed it again without speaking.
The contempt on Rawne's face had faded somewhat.
Larkin hugged his rifle and murmured, "Alright. That's considerably more interesting than the recruitment speech."
Duvette stood on the platform and looked down at the Tanith people who had been stopped cold by the fire in the sky. The smile had not left his face.
"Welcome to the Astra Militarum, people of Tanith."
His voice carried across the assembly ground.