He would be wrong to think he had rattled her. She had been bracing to face hard questions when he arrived. No, she wasn’t a military commander. She was aware of that. Yet this was a campaign that she had mounted, and that she was directing. She had Verreault and Zeck on board, but she had to be cautious about using them as resources. She had arranged to have the Astra Militarum regiments spread out through the Armada as a means to provide some structure to the civilian troops. But the move also diluted Verreault’s leverage. He, Zeck, Mesring, Ekharth — all of the allies in the Crusade had some pull, but only she had control of the Armada itself. The captains answered to her, so she had final say on disposition and launch.
And tactics.
The plan of attack was not a sophisticated one. Then again, if it was, it couldn’t be carried out. The ships were crewed by merchants. There were able pilots aboard many, pilots who had brought their ships through threats as lethal as any faced by the Imperial Navy. Their skills, though, were individual. They had no experience fighting in formation. They fled conflict. They didn’t seek it out.
She asked herself the question she had been avoiding since first announcing the Proletarian Crusade. Was she making a mistake? She made herself think through the consequences. She ran through possible balance sheets, measuring investment against risk, potential gain against possible loss.
She was oddly reassured.
If the Crusade failed, political damage would be the least of her problems. Retribution would be far from anyone else’s mind. Defeat would mean the loss of everything. Success, however, would place her in an unchallengeable position. That was the equation, then: victory of the Armada meant her personal victory, while defeat meant no one else would be the victor. There was no question. This was the smart move.
It was also so much more than that. She believed in what she was doing.
The crowd in the Fields was the biggest yet seen. The people there now were not volunteers. The last of those had embarked hours ago. Gathered now were celebrants, well-wishers, families. The excited, the curious, the hopeful. The desperate. They were all the desperate.
Tull had given them hope. She had given all of Terra hope. That was a singular achievement. She was proud of it. This was Terra’s greatest crisis since the Siege, the worst moment in the living memory of every human being on the planet. The plague of despair had been upon them, Zeck’s Adeptus Arbites had been unable to end the panic, and she, with a single speech, had turned the tide. She had given the billions determination, direction, purpose. An endeavour of legend had sprung into being at her urging, and despite the doubts of Vangorich and Lansung, it was not a folly. Lack of action would have been a folly. And what other options were there? The cry for help had gone out, but there were no elements of the Navy or the Adeptus Astartes that could reach Terra in time.
How do you know? That was the question she could not answer. It kept prying open her doubts. She closed them again with reason. Whatever cause the orks had for waiting, they would not wait until help had arrived. Tull thought it likely that the orks believed they had already won, and had the leisure of invading when it best suited them.
She walked across the chamber to the door. It was time to head to the Great Chamber. Time for another speech. Time to show the orks that they were wrong.
Time to launch.
‘We’re going in on that?’ Kord asked.
Their shuttle was drawing up to the Militant Fire’s landing bay.
‘What did you expect?’ said Haas. ‘A grand cruiser?’
‘Of course not. But this… It’s so small.’
He was right.
‘I can see even smaller,’ she pointed out.
‘That makes me feel a lot better.’ He craned his head to look up through the viewing block next to his bench. He squirmed in the grav-harness. ‘I was hoping for maybe one of the mass conveyors.’ He pointed to something Haas couldn’t see from her angle. ‘They’ll be carrying thousands.’
‘No room for everyone on them. They’re mainly reserved for Imperial Guard companies, from what I heard.’
‘I know that,’ he said, irritable. ‘I was just saying what I’d hoped. Those ships are strong. They can take some hits. This will get swatted in the first seconds of the attack. We’re cannon fodder.’
‘That’s a revelation to you?’
He shrugged. He didn’t look at her, watching as the shuttle entered the Fire’s bay.
Haas said, ‘What did you think was going to happen when we joined this endeavour?’
Another shrug.
‘Look at me,’ she said.
He did. His jaw was set. There was doubt in his eyes.
‘I didn’t want to join the Crusade,’ she said. ‘I thought our duty was to the maintenance of the law, and nothing else.’
‘I’m sorry—’ he began.
She held up a hand. ‘Let me finish. You were right. I was wrong. This is what we’re supposed to be doing. If we win, we preserve Terra and the law. If we lose, both are gone. I’m proud to be here, Ottmar. You should be too. I don’t have any illusions about what’s going to happen, though. Nor should you. Yes, we’re cannon fodder. Of course we are. So is every single member of the Crusade. No exceptions.’ The shuttle came to a halt with the bang of landing struts on the deck. The engines cut out. Haas undid her harness and leaned forward. ‘That’s why this might work,’ she said. ‘No one element of the Armada is more important than another. It doesn’t matter who gets through, as long as enough of us do.’ She stood up. ‘There’s a reason cannon fodder is used. It works.’
Kord remained seated. The shuttle’s side door opened. Hydraulics hissed as its boarding ramp lowered to the deck. The squad of Jupiter Storm disembarked first. The other thirty passengers followed. Other than Haas and Kord, they were all civilians. Haas wanted to be out in front of them, but Kord was unmoving. ‘Ottmar?’ she said.
‘So glorious deaths await us,’ Kord said. He was hoarse. His voice was thin.
She clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Important ones, anyway. Let’s go.’
His face looked as it did when the ork moon had become visible over the Fields of Winged Victory. Haas had never had cause to question Kord’s courage or his dedication to duty. She was dismayed that he was forcing her to do so now. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. Death had been no stranger in their years of enforcing the Emperor’s law.
His lips moved. His whisper was too faint.
‘What?’ Haas said. She leaned forward.
‘It’s too big,’ Kord repeated. ‘We’re too small.’
She understood him, then. She wished she hadn’t. He drew his confidence from his faith in the strength of the greater body that he represented. He was a terror on the streets because he felt the might of the Adeptus Arbites behind him. But now, when he acted for the survival of the Imperium itself, he did not believe it was strong enough to defeat the orks.
‘Stand up,’ she told him.
He obeyed, shame and pleading contorting his features.
She stalked out of the shuttle and down the ramp. She was disgusted, but he still wore the uniform of an Arbitrator. She would not allow him to disgrace it in her presence.
Kord followed her.
There were about five hundred souls in the cargo bay. Most of them were civilian. There was a scattering of Arbitrators from other precincts. Haas counted three squads of the Jupiter Storm. They were looking at the people who would be their charges with bemused scepticism.
The captain of the Militant Fire appeared on a platform overlooking the bay, flanked by his first mate. He started to speak, but was drowned out by the babble of conversation on the floor. The woman, her bearing marking her as a Guard veteran, put two fingers in her mouth and whistled for silence.
‘Thank you, First Officer Kondos,’ the captain said. To his human cargo, he said, ‘Welcome. My name is Leander Narkissos, and I’ll have the honour of transporting you into battle.’