The Space Marine looked at Ekharth, his face stony with contempt.
‘I have proposed no such thing,’ Koorland said. ‘I am calling for the creation of a new force entirely. We cannot use a blunt weapon against the orks. We must strike with precision, swiftly, giving them no chance to mount a defence. Our force will be composed of independent kill-teams. The members of each kill-team will be determined by the needs of the mission and will be drawn from across the Chapters.’
‘Independent to what degree?’ Zeck asked, sceptical.
‘Completely autonomous with regards to the completion of the mission. Answerable to a centralised command.’
‘And whose command would that be?’
‘Mine.’
‘Not the Council’s?’
Wienand was impressed Koorland did not snort in disbelief. ‘No,’ he said.
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Zeck.
‘This is monstrous,’ said Mesring. The Ecclesiarch of the Adeptus Ministorum spoke with a trembling voice. The tremor was so pronounced, he barely managed a croak. His skin had a bad sheen to it. When he leaned close to the other Lords, their faces twitched as if they were holding their breath.
Before Mesring could speak again, Juskina Tull jumped in. ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘It is monstrous.’
The authority of the Speaker for the Chartist Captains had been in ruins since the disaster of the Proletarian Crusade. Wienand wondered if she saw an equivalence in Ullanor, and a chance to regain ground at Koorland’s expense.
‘Monstrous,’ Koorland repeated.
‘You are using this crisis for the political gain of the Adeptus Astartes,’ Tull said. ‘We have not forgotten why the Legions were broken up into the smaller Chapters. And now you would bring together all the Adeptus Astartes under a single authority, answerable only to you?’
Koorland’s eyes narrowed. ‘You are wilfully misunderstanding me,’ he said. He spoke calmly, but Wienand could hear the rumble of anger in his deep voice. ‘The force will consist exclusively of mission-specific kill-teams. These are not armies. They will not be engaging the orks in great fields of battle. That is the strategy that has failed us. We must think otherwise, and wage a new kind of war, or face annihilation.’
‘Of course you are not proposing unification,’ Lansung said. ‘You know the Council would never accept it. Furthermore, the casualties on Ullanor were too great to permit a mass assembly. You are being disingenuous. We can see where this path leads. Once these teams are formed, there will be nothing provisional about them. Consolidation will follow.’
Vangorich snorted. ‘You’re taking a lot for granted,’ he said. ‘So the Blood Angels and the Ultramarines will happily consent to submit to the authority of the lone Imperial Fist?’
Lansung waved the objection away. ‘If the plan is moving ahead, then the internal politics have been resolved.’
‘This is a coup!’ Ekharth shouted. ‘It will not succeed! We will not allow it!’
‘Monstrous.’ Mesring had not moved on from his initial judgement. The Ecclesiarch stood up from his seat, quivering, shaking his head back and forth like a wounded animal. ‘Monstrous, monstrous.’
‘Why?’ Vangorich asked.
Mesring snapped his mouth shut. Still quivering, he looked at Vangorich with wide, nearly maddened eyes. He stared at the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum for several long seconds. Then he said, ‘It cannot work. It will never work. It is against the divine will. It must never be attempted. It is unholy. Unholy.’ He paused. He looked up at the dome of the Chamber. ‘Unholy,’ he said again, more quietly, more to himself than to Vangorich.
Wienand leaned forward, watching Mesring carefully. There was something wrong with him. She couldn’t tell if the shaking was due to mental paroxysm or physical debilitation. Perhaps both. There had been fear in the look he had given Vangorich, yet his need to speak his truth had won out. Only his truth sounded odd. The other High Lords articulated their fears, and Wienand thought they were wrong. How they imagined the Dark Angels and the Space Wolves surrendering their independence was beyond her, but she could understand the logic of their anxieties. From her vantage point, just far enough away to see the entire Council at a glance, she could picture the High Lords as game pieces on a regicide board, the moves of one blocking and shaping the moves of the others, the ones with the least current power feeling they were the most vulnerable, and so making the most aggressive attacks.
Mesring, though, was puzzling. She should have been able to place him easily. He should, in this context, have been one of the more quiet members of the Council. The Ecclesiarchy had little to say when it came to strategy. As long as the orks were defeated, its power was unlikely to be diminished. Its only true fear should be the triumph of the greenskins.
So why was he frightened? she wondered. What possible threat would the kill-teams be to him?
Why? she wondered.
No, she corrected herself. She was asking the wrong question. It was assuming Mesring was acting out of the same self-preserving, territorial motives as the other High Lords. The assumption was wrong. Mesring’s dismay at Koorland’s plan was genuine. Wienand saw true religious horror in his reaction. He believed in what he was saying.
How could this possibly be against the Emperor’s will? That was the question to ask.
It had no answer.
The other High Lords were wrong-footed by Mesring’s reaction too. They did not appear to know how to respond. Even Tull was thrown off. She had tried to build on his horror from a political perspective. She clearly did not know how to do so from the perspective of faith. Wienand wasn’t sure of the depth of Tull’s piety, but it didn’t matter. Whatever theological turn Mesring had taken, no one else present could follow him.
Abdulias Anwar ignored the Ecclesiarch completely. The Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica spoke as calmly as Koorland. His voice was a barely audible sibilance, insinuating rather than commanding. It wrapped itself around Wienand’s will and tried to make itself one with her consciousness. She was used to being on her guard in the presence of Anwar, and she raised mental barriers, consciously pushing away the words of the telepath. She saw the slight shifting of positions on the dais as the other High Lords assumed their own forms of wary readiness.
‘I cannot speak to matters of faith,’ Anwar said. ‘I will speak to matters of principle. What the Lord Commander of the Imperium proposes is the destabilisation of the governance of the Imperium.’
Relief washed over the Council. Anwar had returned sanity to the debate. The ground was familiar once again. The opposition was clear. One after another, the High Lords railed against Koorland. They were unified in their accusations. Wienand found the unity significant. They were frightened. They saw his plan as a power play, not a strategy. They attributed their own motives to him.
The war, she saw, had taught them nothing.
Not all the High Lords spoke. Kubik and Veritus were quiet. The Fabricator General’s servo-motors clicked. His optics whirred as they turned from one member of the Council to another. Most of the time, his attention was on Koorland. Veritus was just as intent on the Space Marine. They were listening and evaluating. They did not support his position, but they did not take a stand against it. They were seeing possibilities, Wienand thought. So was she. The potential for Koorland’s force beyond the immediate need was amorphous.
‘Cross-Chapter kill-teams will have no reason to exist beyond the present crisis,’ Koorland was saying now. ‘There will be no need for them, and the circumstance that makes their formation possible will cease to hold sway.’
‘You cannot believe that,’ Zeck said. ‘If you go ahead with this madness, you will create a precedent. A pretext will always be found to keep the teams in place. That’s why this can’t happen even once.’