The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,15

by every Navy frigate the Praeses Command could scrape together. After a meagre two weeks of no doubt understaffed preparation, they would be gone, so I got up, and watched him do the same. We walked to the doorway together, me shuffling under my heavy robes, he striding awkwardly, carrying old wounds.

‘May He preserve you out there, general,’ I said, standing at the threshold.

He gave me a curt nod. We were both observant, but neither of us thought that it really worked like that. I knew with perfect clarity that the man was going to his death, as were the half a million souls he took with him. Whether that would achieve anything, whether it would even slow the collapse, was another question.

‘We fight out there,’ he said, making the sign of the aquila, then looking at the over-fashioned pillars of gold around him. ‘You fight in here. I don’t know which of us has the worse job.’

Then he was gone, turning on his boot heel and limping down the corridor.

‘I do,’ I murmured, watching him go.

The engagement put me in a foul mood. For the first time in a long while, I found the bottomless mire of Terra’s slow-working procedures pointless and frustrating. I was as much a master of those mazes as any who had ever lived, and yet the wheels turned with agonising slowness in the face of annihilation. Everything told us that the walls would be breached, that the flood would rise to engulf us, and yet we did what we had been doing for ten thousand years – raised fresh regiments, sent entreaties to wilful Chapter Masters, argued over precedence and sector commands in Council.

I strode down the corridors towards my secure command hall, ignoring the many staff who attempted to get my attention.

All but one. I could never refuse Jek, who was as much a part of me as my synthetic lungs. She wasn’t as old and broken as I was, and yet had the quick mind and steady intelligence needed to thrive in this old fen of competing rivalries.

‘How was he?’ she asked, walking briskly beside me. That’s what we always seemed to do – conduct hurried conversations while on the move to some fresh crisis.

‘It breaks my bloody heart,’ I growled.

‘It’s his duty.’ That word again – duty. Perhaps, once, there had been more than that.

‘Tell me how we stand,’ I said.

‘We have an agreed date,’ she said, letting a note of triumph slip into the statement. This was what we’d been working for – slogging for days and weeks with the offices and sentinels and gatekeepers of the Twelve – and I finally looked up at her. ‘The Ninth of Decimus. All have agreed.’

‘Even Raskian?’

‘Even Raskian.’

Oud Oudia Raskian was Fabricator-General of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and the hardest of all the Twelve to pin down to a general assembly at the Senatorum, since his physical form was more building than body and required extensive modification to travel from Mars at all. It would take eight Basilikon megalifters to get him to the Palace, and all that required tedious orbital clearance.

Still, he’d agreed. We’d done it.

‘At last, some good news,’ I muttered, still walking. Ahead of me loomed the heavy bronze doors of my command hall, flanked by gun-drones and a brace of house guards in purple livery. ‘It doesn’t give us much time to organise the orders of inquiry. Arx has been pushing for her damnable intra-ordo summit madness, and it’s got to stay off the agenda.’

You’ll understand, I hope, the need for the flurry of names here, for the politics was complicated – Kleopatra Arx was the Inquisitorial Representative, and had been agitating for a grand reorganisation of the labyrinthine layers of cells and cabals within her purview, something that required a majority of the High Lords to warrant. I wanted this tortuous and largely administrative proposal nowhere near the table, for it could only delay the truly important matters at hand.

‘I’ve put out feelers, chancellor,’ said Jek. ‘The Provost is opposed, so we should be able to defer until the next scheduled session.’

As the doors opened, revealing the vast dome within, my mind was working hard. I barely saw the hundreds of menials and savants toiling over their comm-stations and scholaric pedestals. Through high windows above us the towering profile of the Inner Palace could be seen against the sky, all of it grey and monolithic.

For some time, virtually the entire set of mechanisms at my command had been devoted