The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,55

so for millennia. Its very existence was dependent on an endless rota of incoming cargo ships – any halt in that procession triggered starvation, and the effects would begin to be felt only a few days from now.

That was our greatest weakness. The military installations had supply reserves for months, but for the civilian masses there was no such luxury. Once the multitudes realised that the cargo-drops were slowing due to the security cordon, an already restive populace would become ungovernable. If the authorities on this most priceless world had devoted just a tithe of the funds used to maintain their thousands of cathedrals on grain silos then our defence would have been so much less precarious, but such were the times we lived in.

I met Urbo amid a howling gale atop one of the big dropsites north of the wall. I saw ranks of Valkyrie gunships out on the apron, all of them whining up to full power. Squads of Stalwarts were racing across the apron, their faces hidden behind rebreathers.

‘My Lord Custodian,’ Urbo greeted me, bowing and making the sign of the aquila.

He was a squat, short man with piggish eyes and a nose that must have been broken more than twice. He spoke with a guttural catch in his voice, and I detected the black glint of augmetics at his neck. He was surrounded by his regimental staff, twenty of them, all decked in the same green fatigues save for the commissar in black and a bewildered looking astropath in pale robes.

‘You stand at full complement?’ I asked.

‘Ninety-eight per cent, lord,’ he said immediately, with some pride.

‘And you know your orders?’

‘Deployment complete within forty minutes, lord. The first gunships are leaving now.’

As if to underline the point, at the far end of the long dropsite a Valkyrie boomed into the air, accompanied by two fighter escorts. Another followed it almost instantly, and the apron trembled beneath our boots.

The defence pattern had been determined a long time ago and regularly reviewed. Platoons of infantry would be dropped into strategic firepoints commanding views across the great jumbled mass of hive-spires and Ecclesiarchy monuments. A regular overwatch of gunships would act as a quick-response force, backed up by three standing reserves of four hundred troops each equipped with heavy weapons and Sentinel walkers. All across the thousands of kilometres of the perimeter similar schemes were also taking shape.

‘We shall survey the sector, then,’ I said to Urbo, who nodded and gestured for me to walk with him over to where a big command lifter waited, steaming on the rockcrete.

‘Your pardon, but can you tell us anything more, lord?’ the colonel asked, scurrying to match my long stride. ‘Our two sanctioned psykers are both in restraints and screaming. The astropath’s speechless and can’t remember his own name. And, well, you can see the sky.’

‘A precaution, colonel,’ I said. ‘When the situation is confirmed, you will be the first to know more.’

The command lifter was a big machine, squat and black and bristling with close-range gunnery. Its main hold was one of the few in the regiment’s arsenal that could accommodate me comfortably, and offered a decent view from slatted armourglass panes along each flank. We embarked, the doors slammed closed and the turbines swung us up into the air.

It was only when airborne that I fully gained an appreciation for what was taking place. We pulled clear of the wall, driving low over a banked line of lascannon emplacements, and were greeted by a vista of inferno. The horizon was aflame from north to south, the clouds burning incarnadine and weeping trails of black soot. I could feel it on my skin, even under the protection of my armour – Terra was always hot, but now it was painfully so. More lightning danced across the stricken cityscape, orange and vivid.

Normally the skies would have been filled with traffic, but now only military vehicles were aloft. Columns of smoke rose from the carcasses of aircraft knocked off course by the bursts of static. When the Astronomican had gone dark it had blown the electrics of equipment halfway across the planet. Here, near the epicentre, most of the hive-spires were still dark.

I cannot explain just how it felt, knowing that the beacon was gone. It was not a visible thing, of course – we did not lose a physical column of light over our heads – but the psychic loss was palpable. We had all perceived it, but until Italeo’s tidings we had