‘It’s doomed.’
‘So why lead it? I never tagged you as suicidal.’
‘No choice,’ Lansung said. ‘If I don’t lead the fleet, I’m a coward.’
‘So?’
‘So?’
‘If the effort is doomed, what does it matter to you that you’re saving face? You’ll be dead.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘That you must stay. If Tull’s scheme fails, Terra will need something to hold the orks back until help arrives.’
‘You’re putting a lot of faith in a single flagship and her escorts.’
‘And her commander.’
Lansung looked thoughtful. He didn’t drink. ‘And if the Proletarian Crusade fails because the Autocephalax Eternal left the civilian fleet to be slaughtered?’
‘With the number of ships involved, how much of a difference would the Autocephalax make?’
Lansung shrugged. ‘Some.’ He frowned. Vangorich watched him work out the vectors of the coming void war. ‘In the end,’ he said, ‘the fleet will get through or it won’t regardless of the Navy’s assistance.’
‘Then hold back. Live a bit longer.’
Eyes exhausted by failure, Lansung said, ‘And can I quote you, Grand Master, as having urged my cowardice?’
‘You mean your sanity.’
The Fields of Winged Victory had not been true fields for over fifteen hundred years. The last trace of greenery had burned during the Siege, and the area had been paved over with rockcrete during the reconstruction. The name retained some justification in the fact that this was one of the few large spaces of the Imperial Palace that was open to the sky. It covered over a thousand hectares, and its normal use was as one of the great parade and exercise grounds for Terra’s regiments of the Astra Militarum. Though the material of its surface was utilitarian, it was painted with giant reproductions of the regimental arms. It took a company’s worth of artisan serfs to keep the heraldry in good repair.
The Fields were lower than the surrounding regions of the Palace. As they walked down the Boulevard of the Militant Witness, Haas had a good perspective of the activity. The preparations for the myth the Proletarian Crusade would surely become were a wonder in their own right. The volunteers were pouring in by the thousands along roads feeding into the southern third of the Fields. Along the periphery, Administratum officers channelled the arrivals towards the hundreds of registration stations. The ranks of the stations took up the middle third of the Fields. From there, the recruits moved towards mustering points in the north section where shuttles took them off to the starports. Thence, they would be transported to the waiting ships in orbit.
Haas paused at the top of the descent. Awe robbed her of movement and breath. From this vantage point, she saw the shaping of a confused flood into ordered geometry. She was looking at a great army in the process of creation. Out of the street crowd came phalanx upon phalanx, each a thousand strong. She knew that most of the people below had never held a weapon, unless they had emerged from the underhives, for Mesring’s voice had reached there too. These were civilians, not soldiers. They had no training, nor would they receive any. There was no time. And yet, as the phalanxes moved turn by turn to the shuttles, the vision was one of military precision, of the individual transformed into a sublime war machine. The people were nothing as simple as cogs. Their incorporation into the greater being was at a much more intimate, more elementary level. Cogs were still components. Here, at the end of the process, the individual had ceased to be, its existence making way for a new, larger whole. A molecular alchemy.
Haas started walking again. She caught up to Kord. Stunned, he had slowed to a stumble. They had lost Baskaline in the flow of the crowd.
‘When is the embarkation?’ Haas asked.
‘It’s happening now. The Armada is launching tomorrow.’
I just came to see, Haas told herself. I just came to see. The refrain was weak. Even stronger than the physical current was the rush of purpose.
For the first time in days, Haas no longer heard Mesring’s summons. Another voice spoke to the assembled volunteers. Massive pict screens, fifty metres on a side, rose above the edge of the Fields at regular intervals. They all showed the same recording. Juskina Tull towered over the recruits in all her magnificence. Mesring was the voice of the call, but hers was the voice, and hers was the face, of the Crusade itself. It was her vision that had been given material form. She wore robes of purest black, and a diagonal sash of deep crimson. She gave the impression of being in uniform, though the design did not belong to any regiment. She was regal, yet humbled by the people who were making her plan come to pass. She was imperious, her profile cold in its perfection. In her bearing, she was a colossus, presiding over the shifting formations of insects below. Her voice was the ringing iron of command. But in her words, she was welcoming, she was warmth, she was the delight of triumph.
‘Warriors of the Proletarian Crusade, I thank you for the struggle you are about to wage.’ She paused. Her smile became ferocious. ‘I thank you for the victory to come!’
The Fields of Winged Victory echoed with the roar. Haas had faced the great scream of the masses when the orks had arrived. Now she was swept up by their desperate challenge to the enemy. There was an edge of hysteria to the joy, but it was real all the same, and Haas joined in.
She and Kord were now a few steps away from the Administratum officials controlling the flow at the end of their street.
In the recording, the Speaker for the Chartist Captains paused, her smile becoming almost gentle. The illusion was perfect. It seemed to Haas that Tull really saw the masses, and listened to their cry, and waited for the people to have their moment. Then she spoke again.
‘You are not trained soldiers. But you are warriors. The ships that you will board are not warships. But they will wage war. And know that you will have at your side the strength of the Imperial Guard.’ She turned her head, as if focusing on a different group in the grounds below her projection. ‘Let yourselves be heard, heroes of the Astra Militarum! Granite Myrmidons! Auroran Rifles! Jupiter Storm! Eagles of Nazca! Orion Watch!’
As each regiment was called, another roar went up, from different regions of the Fields. The bulk of the Astra Militarum contingents were not mustering here. They were being transported directly from their barracks to the Armada. But entire companies from all of them were present. They were being attached to the civilian formations to give them direction and boost their bravado even more.
Haas understood the purpose behind the integration. She could see how perfectly orchestrated the operation was. And she found it very hard to care, because it was all necessary. If the Proletarian Crusade was to be successful, the participation had to be massive.
And it had to succeed, she thought. The consequences of failure were so dark that she couldn’t consider them. No one of faith would dare.
She barely noticed that they had passed the Administratum checkpoint and been channelled towards a registration station three rows up and ten aisles over. The queue was long but moved steadily. Haas couldn’t take her eyes off Tull, couldn’t turn away from the message being vox-cast across the Fields of Winged Victory. She had difficulty remembering why she had come here in the first place. To observe? Really? What was she thinking?
What sort of faithless coward came to observe the heroes and martyrs, and then walked away?
She brought her hand to her belt. She tapped the handle of her shock maul. More than a weapon, it was her staff of office. It represented the task to which she had devoted her life. She had to be sure that she was not abandoning her duty for the sake of selfish adventure. She closed her eyes for a moment. She could still hear Tull’s speech, which had looped back to praise of the Chartist Captains. She was shielded, though, from the sight of the Speaker’s overwhelming charisma.