“Yes. He drew a gun on me first, without provocation.”
Gaunt was quiet for a moment.
“You’d think these bastards didn’t want us to fight for them,” growled Grizmund.
“Their pride is hurt. The inadequacies of their command systems were shown up clearly today. They’re looking for others to blame.”
“Screw them if they try to pin anything on me! This is crazy! Won’t Sturm back you up?”
“Sturm is too busy trying to please both sides. Don’t worry. I won’t let this continue a moment longer than it has to.”
Grizmund nodded. Loud footsteps, unpaced and overlapping, reverberated down the dank cell-block behind them. Gaunt turned to see Commissar Tarrian enter with an escort of VPHC troops.
“Commissar Gaunt. You shouldn’t be here. The Narmenian insubordination is a matter for the VPHC Disciplinary Review. You will not interfere with Verghastian military justice. You will not confer with the prisoners. My men will escort you back to the elevator.”
Gaunt nodded to Grizmund and walked over to the VPHC group, facing Tarrian for a moment. “You are making a mistake both you and your cadre will regret, Tarrian.”
“Is that some kind of threat, Gaunt?”
“You’re a commissar, Tarrian, or at least you’re supposed to be. You must know commissars never issue threats. Only facts.”
Gaunt allowed himself to be marched out of the stockade.
The thirty-third dawn was already on them, with heavy rain falling across the entire hive, the outer habs and the grasslands beyond. Marshal Croe was taking breakfast in his retiring chamber off the war-room when Gaunt entered.
The room was long, gloomy and wood-panelled with gilt- framed oil paintings of past marshals lining the walls. Croe sat at the head of a long, varnished mahogany table, picking at food laid out on a salver as he read through a pile of data-slates. Behind him, the end wall of the room was armoured glass and overlooked the Commercia and Shield Pylon. Backlit by the great window and the grey morning glare, Croe was a dark, brooding shape.
“Commissar.”
Gaunt saluted. “Marshal. The charges against the Narmenian officers must be dropped at once.”
Croe looked up, his noble, white-haired head inclining towards Gaunt like an eagle considering a lamb. “Because?”
“Because they are utterly foolish and counterproductive. Because we need officers of Grizmund’s standing. Because any punishment will send a negative message to the Narmenian units and to all Guard units as a whole: that Vervunhive values the efforts of the off-world forces very little.”
“And what of the other view? You heard it yourself: one rule for Vervun, one for the Guard?”
“We both know that’s not true. Grizmund’s actions are hardly capital in nature, yet the VPHC seems hell-bent on prosecuting them to the extreme.
“I’m not even sure this so-called ‘insubordination’ was even that. A tribunal would throw it out, but to even get to a tribunal would be damaging. Narmenian and Guard honour would be slighted, and the VPHC would be made to look stupid.” At the last minute, Gaunt managed to prevent himself from saying “even more stupid.”
“Tarrian’s staff is very thorough. They would not undertake a tribunal if they thought it would collapse.”
“I am familiar with such ‘courts’, marshal. However, that will only happen if the VPHC are allowed to run the hearing themselves.”
“It is their purview. Military discipline. It’s Tarrian’s job.”
“I will not allow the VPHC to conduct any hearing.”
Croe put down his fork and stared at Gaunt as if he had just insulted Croe’s own mother. He rose to his feet, dabbing his mouth with a napkin.
“You won’t… allow it?”
Gaunt stood his ground. “Imperial Commissariat edict 4378b states that any activity concerning the discipline of Imperial Guardsmen must be conducted by the Imperial Commissariat itself. Not by planetary bodies. It is not Tarrian’s responsibility. It should not be a matter for the VPHC.”
“And you will enforce this ruling?”
“If I have to. I am the ranking Imperial commissar on Verghast.”
“The interpretation of law will be murderous. Any conflicts between Imperial and Planetary rules will be argued over and over. Do not pursue this, Gaunt.”
“I’m afraid I have to, marshal. I am not a stranger to martial hearings. I will personally resource and provide all the legal precedents I need to throw Tarrian, his thugs and his pitiful case to the wolves.”
A Vervun Primary adjutant hurried into the retiring room behind Gaunt.
“Not now!” barked Croe, but the man didn’t withdraw. He held out a data-slate to the fuming marshal.
“You—you need to see this, sir,” he stammered.
Croe snatched the slate out of the man’s hands and read it quickly. What he read arrested his attention, and he went back and re-read slowly, his eyes narrowing.
Croe thrust the slate to Gaunt. “Read it yourself,” he said. “Our observers along the South Curtain have been picking it up since daybreak.”
Gaunt looked through the transcripts recorded by the wall- guards as they scrolled across the glowing screen.
“Heritor Asphodel,” he murmured. He looked round at Croe. “I suggest you release Grizmund now. We’re going to need all the men we can get.”
* * * * *
Gaunt and Croe left the retiring room together and strode down the short hall into the great control auditorium of House Command. Both the lower level and the wrought- iron upper deck of the place were jostling with activity. Hololithic projections of the warfront glowed upwards into the air from crenellated lens-pits in the floor, and the air throbbed with vox-caster traffic, astropaths’ chants and the clack of the cogitator banks.
A gaggle of Munitorum staffers, Vervun Primary aides and technical operators hastened forward around the marshal as he entered, but he waved them all away, crossing to the ironwork upper deck, his boots clanging up the metal steps. Vice Marshal Anko, General Sturm, Commissar Kowle and General Xance of the NorthCol were already assembled by the great chart table. Silent servitors, encrusted with bionics, and poised regimental aides waited behind them. An occasional vox/pict drone bumbled across the command space. Gaunt hung back at the head of the stairs, observing.
“Kowle?” asked Croe, approaching the chart table.
“No confirmation. It is impossible to confirm, lord
