The sergeant's face was thunderous as he marched back along the road towards van Gelder.
He pointed at the crowd that had gathered and the line of vehicles extending from the gate, shouting, 'Enough! This stops now. There will be no more departures from Tarsis Ultra. Get back in your vehicles, turn them around and get back within the city walls where you belong!'
Satria grimaced at Learchus's lack of tact and even van Gelder was momentarily taken aback. But he was not a man to be cowed easily.
'Do you know who I am?' he blustered.
'No,' said Learchus, dismissively. 'Nor do I care. Now turn this vehicle around before I do it myself.'
Having seen the Space Marine's strength demonstrated upon the track, van Gelder was under no illusions concerning Learchus's ability to do such a thing, and reluctantly climbed into the back of his limousine.
'The Fabricator Marshal shall hear of this,' said van Gelder as a parting shot.
'I will make it my business to see that he does,' promised Satria.
Van Gelder's eyes narrowed, unsure if the major was mocking him, and slammed the door in his face. The limousine's gears ground as its driver attempted to turn it on the narrow road.
'I think we might have upset him,' smiled Satria.
'Good,' replied Learchus.
Melted snow streaked across the fogged glass of the land train's window, running in long, wobbling lines. Lieutenant Quinn briefly wondered how fast they were actually travelling: it was hard to tell when everything he could see beyond the glass was a uniform white. He gripped the handrail as the land train swept around a bend in the track and leaned over to wipe a gloved hand across the glass, smiling at the young family seated across from him.
'No need to worry,' he said. 'It won't be long before we're in Erebus. Just one more stop to pick up the people at Prandium.'
The man nodded, his wife looking fearfully at the white-steel of the lasgun he held across his knees. It was a look he had seen many times on this journey, the terror that armed conflict had come to their once-peaceful world, but he couldn't bring himself to feel sorry for them. After all, was it not the duty of every Imperial citizen to stand against the enemies of Mankind?
He and his platoon had emptied six farming collectives of their populace and packed them on this long land train in order to bring them to the safety of Erebus. Dozens of other platoons were performing the same job all across the continent and with any luck they would be able to complete their mission without incident. Over sixty carriages snaked back from the labouring engine car and they were already nearing capacity, each carriage crammed with fearful people.
Already Lieutenant Quinn could envision the scenes of outrage when he would have to order these people to discard their belongings to make room for the people of Prandium.
Sergeant Klein, his adjutant, made his way along the carriage's central aisle with difficulty, pushing past protesting citizens, his thick jacket and combat webbing catching almost everyone he passed. Klein held his rifle raised, the sling wrapped around his arm and said, 'Sir, we're just about to pull into Prandium.'
'Excellent. Nearly done, eh, sergeant?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Order the men to stand to. I'll take First squad, you take Second.'
Klein nodded and made his way back through the carriage as Quinn felt the train's deceleration. He rose from his seat and eased his way through the crowds packing the train towards the main doors where a knot of his soldiers from the Logres regiment waited to disembark. He sketched a quick salute and wiped his hand across the glass of the doors, seeing the silver steel of the platform approaching. Something struck him as odd, but it took him a second or two to realise what it was.
The platform was empty.
Whereas some communities had been reluctant to abandon their homes, most had been only too eager to be escorted back to the safety of Erebus, their departure points thronged with anxious people, packed and ready to leave.
But not here.
Quinn sighed as he realised they were probably going to have to convince more stubborn farmers to abandon their lands and come with them. He should be used to it, he supposed. Each time the Tarellians attacked one of the sea farms on Oceanus, they would run into bull-headed krill farmers who'd be damned if they'd abandon the holdings their family had farmed for generations. In Quinn's experience, those types always ended up dead sooner rather than later.
The train slid to a graceful halt and the doors smoothly opened. Freezing air sucked the warmth from the carriage, to the groans and complaints of its passengers. Quinn stepped onto the frosted platform, feeling ice crunch under his boot.
That was unusual. He would have expected the station's servitors to have kept the platform free from ice. The windows of the station building were opaque with frost and long icicles drooped from the eaves of the main station house. The hanging sign that creaked in the low wind clearly declared that this was Prandium.
He could see Sergeant Klein's squad further down the platform and waved his adjutant over.
'This is peculiar,' he said.
'I agree,' said Klein. 'No one's been here for a while.'
'Another train hasn't passed this way before us, has it?'
Klein pulled out the small orders pad he kept in his thick winter coat's breast pocket and shook his head. 'No, not according to my information, sir.'
'I don't like it,' stated Quinn.
'What do you want us to do?'
'Move into the town,' ordered Quinn. 'And stay sharp. Something doesn't feel right here.'
Klein saluted and made his way carefully along the platform to rejoin his squad.
'Right,' said Quinn, 'let's move out.'
Using small, careful steps, he crossed the slippery platform and flicked off the safety on his lasgun as he reached the top of the steps below a sign that indicated the exit. The stone steps were slick with ice and more icicles hung from the underside of the banister. Slowly, and with great care, Quinn and his squad made their way down the stairs, emerging into the farming collective of Prandium.
Its snow-filled streets were eerily quiet, only the low moan of the wind and the crunching footsteps of his platoon disturbing the silence. Not even the lonely call of a bird sounded. The buildings were sturdy-looking, prefabricated structures, similar to those on a thousand other worlds, fashioned from local materials and built with the sweat and toil of their inhabitants. A generatorium building stood abandoned beside them and a trio of vast grain silos towered above the community at the far end of the street.
There was a tension in the air: even Quinn could feel it. Prandium reeked of abandonment. There had been nobody here for a long time and the sense of neglect was painfully evident.
'Let's go,' he said and led his squad into the settlement, crunching through the knee-deep snow. The streets felt narrow and threatening. Through a gap in the buildings, he could see Klein's squad advancing on a parallel course to their own.
A door banged in the wind and everyone jumped, lasguns swinging to face the direction the sound had come from. Quinn's feeling that there was something wrong here rose from a suspicion to a certainty. Even if these people had left on an earlier transport that he didn't know about, any farmer worth his salt would have found the time to make sure his property was closed up for the winter.
Two large harvesters stood rusting at the end of the street in the shadow of the huge grain silos and Quinn motioned his squad to follow him towards them. Even though the icy air dampened any odours he might have smelled, he could still taste the reek of rotted grain. As they circled around the harvesters, he saw something that made him pull up short and raise his fist.
At the base of the nearest grain silo, a three-metre tear had been ripped in the skin of the tower, the metal peeled back and buckled. A sloping pile of frozen grain spread from the tear.