Courage and Honour

'To attack on such a wide front will take time and numbers,' said Winterbourne. 'It means spreading their forces, and, if your Admiral Tiberius is correct, and this is an explorator fleet, they probably don't have the numbers to mount such an offensive.'

Uriel nodded. 'And if they can break through quickly they will split our forces in two.'

'We can't allow that to happen,' said Winterbourne. 'If it does we are lost.'

'I will lead the bulk of the 4th to Olzetyn,' said Uriel. 'It is imperative the city holds. The tau need to win quickly, and we need to hold them for long enough for reinforcements to arrive.'

'And how long will that be?'

'I am not sure,' admitted Uriel. 'Admiral Tiberius will have sent word to Macragge and sector command. Help will be on the way. We just have to hold on long enough for it to get here.'

'What do you require of me, Uriel?' asked Winterbourne, standing to attention.

'Guard our flanks. I believe the tau will seek to make a decisive thrust through Olzetyn, but it is also likely they will try to encircle us and trap us in a pocket. If they succeed, this war is over.'

Winterbourne saluted with his good arm. 'You can count on the 44th.'

'I know I can, Nathaniel,' said Uriel.

At that moment, Techmarine Achamen emitted a blurt of binary code that cut across their words. The augmitters fitted within the hololithic table crackled to life as they translated the binary into Imperial Gothic. The artificially rendered voice was devoid of any sense of urgency, but the words galvanised everyone who heard them.

'Incoming enemy aircraft,' said the voice. 'Multiple target tracks inbound on this location. Assessment: altitude, bearing and formation consistent with airborne assault patterns.'

TWELVE

Though Koudelkar had no frame of reference by which to judge its merits, the prison camp on the shores of Praxedes was certainly more comfortable than he had been led to believe such institutions were typically appointed. He and his mother had been given a private chamber within a smooth-walled structure containing another fifty prisoners, though the soldiers shared one long dormitory room and a single ablutions block.

Built on one of the vacant landing platforms that jutted out to sea, the structure was clean and comfortable, blandly furnished, softly lit and apparently impervious to graffiti or carving. Along with another twenty such structures, Koudelkar's new home sat within an enclosure bounded by thin posts topped with domed discs and patrolled by armoured squads of what he learned were called Fire Warriors.

Some Guardsmen had tried to escape on their first day of imprisonment, but painful jolts of invisible energy coursing between the posts had hurled them back. Koudelkar sat on the steps of his structure, looking out to sea and enjoying the warm sunlight as it tanned his skin. His mother was inside, lying on her back and staring at the featureless ceiling, almost catatonic in her resignation.

'How can you just sit there?' asked Lortuen Perjed, limping unsteadily now that the tau had taken his walking cane. 'We should be planning our escape.'

'Escape? To where?'

'It doesn't matter where, Koudelkar,' said Lortuen, sitting beside him. 'And it doesn't even matter if we succeed. All that matters is that we try. I've been speaking to some of the senior sergeants and they agree that it is our duty as Imperial citizens to inconvenience these xenos scum any way we can.'

Koudelkar looked over at the rippling force barrier that surrounded their enclosure. Beyond the unseen energy field, a number of heavily armed battlesuits moved through the subjugated port city as yet more of the wide-winged craft descended from orbit with fresh supplies and soldiers.

'I don't think we'd inconvenience them that much, Lortuen.'

'So we just sit here, meek and compliant?'

He sensed Adept Perjed's steely glare and shrugged. 'What would you have me do, Lortuen? Organise a revolution? We are surrounded by an enemy army, and I don't think we'd last too long if it came down to a fight.'

'It doesn't matter,' pressed Lortuen. 'You are the Planetary Governor and these men look to you for leadership.'

'These men?' hissed Koudelkar. 'These men are Lavrentians, they think of me as little more than a puppet ruler that they're here to watch as much as to serve. They don't need me for leadership, but if you want to foment rebellion, then go ahead and die for it.'

'A man should have the courage to die for what he believes is right, and fighting these aliens is what's right.' Perjed waved a liver-spotted hand at the tau warriors. 'We don't know what's going on beyond Praxedes. By sitting here and doing nothing, more and more of these abominable Fire Warriors might be freed to fight on the front lines. If we cause trouble, then they have to stay here and guard us. That could make all the difference in the war.'

'You don't know that.'

'No, I don't,' agreed Lortuen, 'but I could not live with myself if fighting men died because I did nothing. How will you look yourself in the mirror every day with those deaths on your conscience? Think of your honour!'

'We are prisoners of war,' said Koudelkar. 'What honour do we have?'

'Only what we bring with us,' said Lortuen wearily, lapsing into silence.

Lortuen's words struck a chord within Koudelkar, and he knew he should be filled with righteous anger and hatred for the aliens. But instead of anger, all he felt was fear and a growing sense of abandonment. He looked away from Lortuen, gazing out to sea once more.

The awful carnage at Galtrigil was still fresh in his mind: the spraying blood, the torn up bodies blown apart from the inside by superheated plasma, or cut in half by sawing blasts of bullets. He could still smell the stench of blood and emptied bladders. He could hear the frantic screams of the dying men before more bullets had silenced them.

Though battle still raged, the battlesuit with the flaming sphere insignia had carried him and his mother from the fighting, before heading south in a series of running bounds, while its companion carried Lortuen. His mother had screamed nearly the entire journey south to Praxedes, and while Koudelkar had been frightened, he had not been unduly worried. If this El'esaven planned to kill them, he could have simply gunned them down when the bullets started flying.

Clearly, the tau recognised some worth in having him as a captive, and now, a few days after their arrival at the Praxedes camp, Koudelkar had begun to form an idea of what his value might be.

'I wonder if my aunt is still alive,' he said apropos of nothing. 'Perhaps she is in some other prison camp. Or maybe the Ultramarines rescued her.'

Lortuen grunted. 'I know which fate will be worse for her.'

'You must hate her,' said Koudelkar.

'Don't you? She consorted with xenos, and, thanks to her, we are in their prison camp.'

'I am angry with her, yes, but try as I might I can't hate her. It must have been galling to see everything she and others had worked for over the years taken from them like toys from an unruly child.'

'Pavonis had rebelled,' Lortuen said, as if Koudelkar needed reminding. 'It was only my recommendation that allowed Mykola to retain her role as governor. Look where that got us!'

'Yes, but for the remainder of her term of office as Planetary Governor, Pavonis was, for all intents and purposes, under martial law, with the governor relegated to a figurehead role.'

'You tried to change that, I know,' said Lortuen. 'Perhaps I should have let you.'

Koudelkar sighed. 'I believe I was making some progress too, but all that good work has been undone by my aunt's meddling. This will never be our planet again, will it? Not now.'