The Liberator's Day Off: (Part 15)
Author's note: my goal: to entice Zahariel into posting the next chapter of Warmaster of Chaos before Liberator's Day Off catches up to his chapter count. I'm almost exactly halfway there!
Anyway, onward with the story!
Vesker Vance wondered what the hell he was doing here at the arse end of nowhere in yet another armpit of the galaxy.
Grant you, he had been raised in an armpit of the galaxy. THE armpit, as a matter of fact, although as a Cadian he was required to call it something less smelly and disdainful, like the 'orbit of the Eye' to match the dignity of the term 'Eye of Terror.' Eye was the wrong term for the warp rift, but if there was anything Cadians liked more than standing on a pile of demon corpses, it was standing on their dignity, and thus calling it the Eye was important.
After all, he thought mordantly, if we called it something more accurate like the 'Sphincter of Terror' it would make us Cadians look far less heroic for standing in the way of the shit that flew out of it.
And to be fair, Vance reflected, even he, in his private grousing, didn't go so far as to think of Cadia as the butt plug. No, armpit would do. He had some pride. He was, after all, Cadian.
Though what could have induced Lord Castellan Creed to wind up her latest grudge match with a rebellious provincial governor with uncharacteristic speed and brutality, load five regiments into a ship, and go streaking across the galaxy as fast as the warp could carry them…well. let's just say that Vance, for one, had been less than eager to find out exactly what sort of cesspool lay at the end of this particular jaunt.
The rumor mill was particularly lacking on this point as well. Usually someone would have dropped a flea in his ear by now about when and who and where. Although, come to think of it, the accuracy of the grapevine had dropped considerably ever since the old lady had come back from Cadia with her father's name and without her flabby coffeeboy orc-bait aide Major Argent. Vance hoped the major had at least been good in bed, because otherwise his singularly useless lips had flapped looser than an unsecured tarp on a cargo-8 in a gale-force storm and had vastly undermined the Lord Castellan's authority every time he opened his cowardly maw. Nobody particularly missed him except fellow cowards who traded in gossip.
That was no longer a problem, and not even the Lord Castellan seemed to miss him. All in all, the Lord Castellan's new boy toy was a great improvement: sour, dour, tight-lipped, more than half metal, an obvious veteran of courage and wrath and, if rumor had it right, had once been a penal legionnaire for shooting an officer. Most of the rank and file would have nothing to do with such a soldier, except may be a little sneaking respect for managing to do what they'd only fantasized about, but the man had come back from the shattered remains of Cadia with violet eyes and barely a word to anyone.
In any case, the man had become a near permanent fixture bolted to the Lord Castellan's side, and a doggedly loyal one. It was nice to see the old lady get the sort of help her competence should have bought her decades ago, and a refreshing change to witness.
But that was the rewards of putting your own house in order. Vance wondered if she'd shot Argent herself.
Nobody seeing Mac Ossian's seething glare at any who might belittle his commander doubted that for an instant. And, as if freed from the deadweight of the past, the Lord Castellan, always a superior tactician and strategist, had finally applied her brilliance to Cadian politics as well.
"About time she figured out how to pander to the rank and file," Vance thought, a cracking a smile. 'Cadia stands' means beating the crap out of our enemies, not tolerating resentful little worms as our so-called friends. Her father, the warrior, had known that, though her mother, the planetary governor and consummate politician, had not.
The universe twisted, and wrenched as the single ship dropped out of the warp. They were here.
Wherever 'here' was.
The trouble with being a part of a Ratling's entourage, instead of in the train of Ciaphas Cain, was that you couldn't exactly hide behind the man. Especially not when the Ratling was lurking in some rubble, spying, and expecting you to do the same.
Jurgen didn't actually lurk all that well. He was far more adept at hiding in plain sight, behind someone like the Liberator.
Cain was tall and broad enough that almost any human that wasn't an ogryn could physically shelter behind his body. Physically tucking himself unobtrusively behind Sigan was impossible, given that even Jurgen, (not the tallest man by any means), was four heads taller than Sigan even when the little lord was clogging around in those fancy Rogue-trader-style platform boots of his.
Yet both Cain and Sigan radiated a shear force of personality that somehow made that irrelevant. Jurgen had mastered the art of fading into the wall as part of his role as Cain's amanuensis. It was a talent his maiming into a blank hadn't affected, since he hadn't used psychic power to do it, but it was a waste of effort. He could honestly have been decked out in the latest Borg neon luminator tech and followed around by Slawkenberg's famous 137-instrument slash-rap symphony orchestra, and yet people like Cain and now Sigan would somehow still manage to upstage him simply by breathing.
Jurgen reminded himself, for the several hundredth time, that Commissar Fossick was Ciaphas's name, here in the heart of the imperium. And he reminded himself of his own role as 'Inquisitor.'
And even Sigan was about to be upstaged by the personas about to meet on the newly-reclaimed field of the Viasalix spaceport today. Besides, both of them were supposed to be lurking.
The vast dropship had landed, bringing with it a full company of Cadians in full battle dress. All of their gear was well-kept, well mended, but not new.
At their center, a proud veteran in a beaten coat stood, her banner carrier marching behind her, her brown-white hair and blazing violet eyes sweeping like an auspex around the field. A solitary figure in red and blue was striding out to meet her, a hoard of servoskulls trailing, a messenger bag swinging jauntily from his shoulder. He paused a courteous distance from the company of Cadians, 'courteous' being 'just outside krak grenade range.'
"Extra, extra! Worden Courts Cadia's Creed! Lentonia Relieved by Cadia's Finest! Read all about it in today's Bugle!"
Parker's gloved hand was waving an unrolled paper, the bold gothic lettering clearly visible. "Ten crowns for today's edition," He declared.
Jurgen did his best to be unperturbed. Cadians had a reputation as a proud people. But Lentonians were no less proud, and they had most recently bought their traditions in blood. Would Cadia honor them?
A sergeant walked forth from the company, lasgun slung, hands free of weapons. A glint of gold glimmered in one hand. He flicked the coins one by one to Parker, the spinning gold arcing through sunlit air. Parker danced with approval, rolled up the paper, and, and sent it in an underhand toss to the sergeant's waiting hand.
Jurgen breathed a sigh of relief. The Cadians had passed Lentonia's first test. The Cadians had bought the paper.
The Sergeant carried the paper back to his company, and presented it to the Lord Castellan waiting in front of her flapping standard.
She unfolded the paper, studying it with interest.
Then she spoke. Her voice rang across the field, amplified by a vox. It was clear and powerful. Instead of the usual crackle of static, the vox crackled with command.
It took Jurgen a moment to realize she was reading the paper out loud.
"The Lord Castellan of Cadia, fresh from the front, arrives in Viasalix today, the first reinforcements in Lentonia's battle against the Great Enemy to arrive since Lord General Greydon's Panacea Fleet."
"This redoubtable warrior, steel in her soul and the emperor's blessed fire in her unwavering violet eyes, stood fast at the battle of Califax. Her superior generalship and indomitable spirit held against the whispering cultists of Faux Terra. Her unbending acumin saved the Margo Cluster, and her refusal to leave before every last refugee made it aboard ship on the doomed planet Maselvage is the stuff of legends. Cadia stands, and Ursula Creed stands for Cadia. "
"Today, this paragon comes to Lentonia- not to fight the battle we won, not to raise the siege we already lifted…but to find Lentonia still standing. "
"And Lentonia stands! Lentonia is not the rubble of Viasalix, or the mechanicus shrines of the deep sump, or even the fertile fields most recently watered with the blood of our beloved citizens. Lentonia is the people- a people just as bold, brash, brave, and loudmouthed, proud and competent as that magnificent bastard Governor Jonas Worden. "
"We of Lentonia know that Governor Worden is the most bloody-minded son of a disinherited governor's daughter and a muckracking newspaperman to successfully conspire against corrupt nobility for the privilege of then fighting off a chaos incursion. "
"Worden, who trumpeted his defiance in the face of the Great enemy…and won! Worden, who glued together Viasalix long enough for Lentonia to save itself! Worden, who proclaimed the memory of our dead, who declared the heroism of our lives, who ground a stubborn, overwhelming enemy to paste with sheer bravado! Worden, who could and did stand as hard and fast as those of lost Cadia."
"Because of Worden, Lentonia Lives. We live, and yet, we all know it comes with a steep price."
"And that price is Worden. Lentonia lives because we all know what it means to live with Worden…a man who actually claims to like the taste of candle-roasted sump-rat, a man who will send back grammatical corrections to your dying grandmother's self-written obituary, and a man still fighting a losing war to repopularize the limerick!"
"For Worden, not just any partner will do. We need no hothouse flower of the sort that tried to sell our souls and our world to the great enemy. We need the sort of ruthless courage that can write elegies for fifteen of his closest friends, eat a dish of rats and corpse-starch tea, publish the morning edition of the paper on time, and still manage to sport the world's most unfashionable mustache through a plague mask. Perhaps someone who can haul a wounded whiteshield over her shoulder through a hoard of shrieking demons in the remains of her own shattered world while fighting off a traitor and remaining completely unselfconscious about her own receding hairline is exactly right match for our Worden!"
"Lentonia, have hope, for we have heard magnificent things about how much Cadia can stand!"
The Lord Castellan stopped reading. She stood tall and proud, and closed the paper with a snap. "Y'all really know how to court an old girl. Why the warp not?" She asked. "Cadians!" She called. "What do we do?"
"Cadia stands!" Her company roared back.
"Lentonians!" The Lord Castellan of Cadia called across the field. "What do you do?"
A surflike roar arose from the putatively empty field, as every Lentonian who has squirreled themselves away to try and record or watch this historic moment decided, as one, that, what the hell, they might as well become active participants. As one, a thousand voices roared back:
"Lentonia Lives!"
"Then let's see if you can live with the likes of us!" The Lord Castellan bellowed back.
The field exploded into cheer as, clad in the most garish tweed chemical warfare suit imaginable, the Governor of Lentonia emerged from a concealed rathole to meet his suitor.
All in all, Jurgen thought, that had gone rather well.
I was doing my best to make myself invisible as the governor of the planet I was currently stranded on and the frakking Lord Castellan of Cadia entered into what charitably might be called a courtship, but was far more akin to a business deal.
I was more grateful than ever that Mechwright Paverick's machinations had landed me with a near permenant face mask, as was the style on Lentonia, because the problem was I had crossed swords with the Lord Castellan of Cadia before. Quite literally so, back before she had taken the surname Creed.
I'll grant I had been in Liberator armor at the time and desperately trying to avoid getting sucked into a head-on war with the imperials over, of all things, the salvage rights to a derelict chaos-tainted imperial cruiser. I'd gotten a taste of Ursula's nasty, grinding use of siege tactics then, as well as the occasional lightning-fast flanking maneuver, and only a quiet bit of treason on the part of one of her more worm-like subordinates had let me get out of her trap unscathed. Of course, she would have tried a lot harder if she'd actually known the Liberator had been caught in what I had thought was a far safer side-show than the main thrust for the Liberation Crusade out of the Torredon subsector, but fortunately she hadn't known it was me.
Yet Governor Worden, in an uncharacteristic display of nerves, had wanted duenna for his courtship so of course I got detailed with the job.
Especially after Jurgen had pointed out that, of the four people with the rank to play the part of buffer between a planetary governor and an imperium-wide legend, Jurgen as 'Inquisitor Tannaman' was still incognito, Commissar Forres was still far too junior, wet-behind-the-ears, and recovering from having her brain hijacked by the genestealer taint, and Sigan, it turned out, had dated Ursula for a number of years before, when given a choice between marrying him and High Command, Ursula had turned him down for a set of general's stripes. Which left me.
Fortunately, I didn't have to do much but watch the show.
"Quite the bit of theater." Creed said sharply into a small chair in the corner of Worden's editor's office. "You're quite lucky none of my men shot any of your concealed Lentonians around that landing field."
"They all know to stay politely well out of longlas range." Worden disagreed. "And I can hardly keep free Lentonia citizens out of a public place."
"That was my personal company of Cadian shock troopers." The Lord Castellan disagreed. "You were not out of longlas range."
Worden tilted his head. "Noted." He said. "I'm glad you didn't introduce yourself to Lentonia by shooting one of my people. That would have been of far less value as a propaganda piece than the one you gave us. As it stands, my people are rather impressed."
"The ought to be." The Lord Castellan grunted. "Cadia prides itself on making an impression. Usually a fist-shaped one in a demon-hide, but we know a bit about the other means of waging war."
"Indeed." Worden said, his tone displaying the wintery smile his mask concealed. "So are you here to wage a war?"
"I rather thought, based on Inquisitor Sigan's note, that I was here to conduct a whirlwind romance." The Lord Castellan said the words so utterly straightfaced I simply knew she had to be taking the frack. "Although Sigan is something of a hopeless romantic, for all that he can and will play the dynastic game. His parents managed to marry for love and it has rather warped his expectations for a pairing."
"My parents married for love." Worden snorted. "And my adoring citizens are not exactly mistaken about how much of a right bastard I am because of it."
"A survivor, though." The Lord Castellan noted neutrally.
"Yes. At any cost, except my soul." Worden's eyes would have looked haunted if they haden't been so utterly dead. The look mirrored the one in the Lord Castellan's equally blighted, violet eyes.
Then she smiled. "Love is quite out of the question." She said. "I have my own arrangements there, and it's no secret that you still mourn a husband and don't really have a taste for women."
Worden shrugged. "I'm more gay than bi, to be sure, but no, you're not the type of women my tastes would run to. That is, however, irrelevant to the present matter. I know why Lentonia needs you and yours. However, Sigan signally failed to pass me the word as to why Cadia might need me and mine."
In response, the Lord Castellan reached into her coat and produced a small dataslate. She passed it over to Worden.
He pressed the forward key and a tinny sound of trumpets emerged from the voxgrill.
"Cadia stands!" A voice proclaimed.
I craned my neck a little to see the small screen. The Lord Castellan was there, clad in power armor and brandishing a power sword. "Once more Lord Castellan Creed stands upon the soil of fallen Cadia. Winning forth through hoards of the Great Enemy, the Lord Castellan and Cadians of every stripe, from the newest brown-eyed whiteshield to the grizzled violet veterans brought back critical intelligence to the Primarch Lord Guilliman himself. Truly Cadia Stands!"
The piece fell silent in another tinny blare of trumpets. Worden tilted his head politely.
"In your professional opinion, Governor Worden, Chief Editor of the Bugle, how good is that piece?"
Worden blew a raspberry. "I've shat more inspiring pieces of propaganda than that load of crap."
"Yes, Sigan included a few of your lesser works in his missive. What exactly is wrong with it?"
Worden proceeded to make mincemeat of the short piece in less than five minutes of biting commentary, winding up his critique with 'and whoever submits junk like that to the Bugle gets busted back to the streets as a newsboy to relearn what actually fires people up."
The Lord Castellan's grin was entirely mirthless. "And yet, that is Cadia's best." Her lips twisted. "Rather, the imperium's best. Cadia lost most of its propagandists in the fall."
Worden sat back with a considering harrumph. "The footage was real." He noted neutrally. "It had…potential."
"Yes." The Lord Castellan said, her voice like gravel. "I lost more than half a squad creating that footage. Their demon-gnawed bodies deserve far better than *potential.* the future of Cadia, our future as a people, demands better than *potential.*"
"Lentonia demands far better tales for its dead. I demanded it. I still demand it." Worden said inflexibly. "Why haven't you made such demands?"
"I can make such demands." The Lord Castellan said. "Yet I cannot demand the skills to do better to come from nowhere. It will take time, and…telling stories is not…not a Cadian speciality. We're better about doing legendary things with quiet competence than…than shamelessly bragging about it after. When we had solid ground to stand on, that was enough. But now, as scattered pieces floating through the void…" Her eyes narrowed, and she looked levelly at Worden. "We need to sound a call. To trumpet our triumphs. To mark the passing of our honored fallen. Something to shine bright as we swim through endless night."
"A poet!" Worden cackled suddenly. "A woman after my own heart. I majored in poetry, back when Lentonia was decadent enough to have things called universities. So you're looking for a bugle-boy, to rally scattered Cadia?" He sounded suddenly entertained. "Your people are legend, you know. As are you. It would be a joy to lionize that legend." His tone grew abruptly serious. "And yet how do you envision Lentonia fitting in to your quest to reunite Cadia?"
"If there's one lesson pounded into me on that damnable last mission to Cadia," the Lord Castellan growled, "It's that the person who tells the story first and best that has the power. I can fight hell itself day in, day out, and win, and the half-assed propaganda minister from the asscrack of the Administratum who writes the story determines if I get a resupply or if it goes to the bloody Vostroyan Bluebloods better at telling old soldier tales. Sigan tells me you're the best, and" she reached into a bag, pulling out a stack of Bugles, "reading this, I damned well want to dive into the Lentonian sump and fight demons beside Wendy Darling, and I'm a sixty-year veteran who knows exactly what that means. And your story fires me up to do it anyway."
Worden shrugged. "People can stand almost anything. The God Emperor made us that way. But people live for stories."
"We do." The Lord Castellan shook her head. "I'll tell you a story, then. There was a soldier once, who carried a mighty sword. She heard tell of a poet, deadly with his word. They had courage to spare, pain to share, and stories left to tell. And both of them alone had fought through a galaxy of hell. The sword and the pen, both objects of great might…"
"Welded both together, held off endless tides of night." Worden whispered. "I hadn't shared that poem with anyone. It isn't finished yet. It's barely begun. How did you…" then he rolled his eyes and grunted in disgust. "Sigan."
"No datapad is safe from Sigan." She agreed. "I just leave him nasty notes in my locked files. He still gets them anyway but I have the satisfaction of chewing his arse when he does." But she went back to the matter at hand, dismissing the snoopy inquisitor. "You say the poem isn't finished. We're not finished yet either. We've barely begun. Yet we will have wars to fight and deadlines to meet." The Lord Castellan said. "It's a start. And it's a good enough start for me."
"It's not good enough for me." Worden growled. "I can do better. We can do better. Lentonia-Cadia deserves our best." He grimaced. "Starting with a better name. Something that preserves our two history, yet lets our successors- descendents, what have you- march together as one."
"Lencadia?" Creed grimaced. "No, it needs to be armed, and ready for battle, and something we can cry when charging demons."
"C.L." Worden snapped his hands abruptly. "Cadia-Lentonia, but pronounced 'Seal.' As in 'Seal this holy pact, this Cadian Sword and Lentonian Pen, united against all…" he trailed off, his furious train of thought taking off faster than his mouth could shape the worlds.
It was odd, I thought, continuing to make myself invisible and unnnoiced, as the more they talked, the more the odds of an unfriendly Cadian invasion of Lentonia went down and the more an eventual invasion of the rest of the galaxy by the combined power of Cadia and Lentonia went up. My borrowed commessarial authority was entirely unecessary.
Instead, I was treated to the spectacle of a man seducing a women with honeyed words and rhyming poetry. But instead of flattering words about her appearance and demeanor, he flattered her courage and bloody-minded obstinacy. Instead of pretty words about dress and decorum, he praised her logistical train and self-confident command.
He enthralled her with a tale of the legend they would build together- a legend that, did I but know it, would rattle the gates of hell and send demons fleeing before it for a thousand years to come.
But, by that time I had other worries and it was very much not my problem anyway, and the demons they attacked more than had it coming.
I knew it was a done deal, when, at the end of it all, they called each other 'Ursula' and 'Jona.'
—-
Mac Ossian has just two question for the Lord Castellan.
"Is he worthy of Cadia?" He growled in his vocodor's monotone.
"Oh, yes." She said, her eyes bright with tales of Lentonia and Cadia's future.
"Is he worthy of you?" He growled, his voice even lower.
"Of my life, the fortune of my people, and my sacred honor as Creed?" She nodded. "Yes. But he will never be worthy of my bed." She shook her head. "I much prefer to play Doctor."
Mac Ossian grunted in approval.
"You might care to check him out." She said, speculatively. "He and that techpriest AutoOctavius clearly have something going on, and you could…"
Mac snorted. "Ursula, I love you, and I'll shag the living daylights out of you whenever you want, but your nobility is showing. I was a penal legionnaire. A *slave.* I don't see powerful people as 'someone to seduce because they're my type.' I see them as deadly threats." He shook his head. "The only reason you get a pass is you literally hauled my ass out of hell. You were there in the thick and the bad and the crazy. I remember it. I remember your smell. And my body- my trauma reflexes- my deep hindbrain knows and remembers it. I feel safe in your arms."
He snuggled closer. "I know how much I've been through. I've seen it from both sides. Doctor and patient. I'm not going recover from this anytime soon, if ever. So no, thank you, but I'm not going to fuck your fiance."
She hugged him back, one of two mementos from lost Cadia she was entirely unwilling to surrender. "I would rather like to borrow your medical expertise where he's concerned, however. He has agreed to provide an heir to the name of Creed."
Ossian paused, obviously carefully considering his next words. "You didn't do so well, raised by an absent legend of a father." He pointed out. "And as best as I can figure Lentonia already has Parker-Worden as heir."
"I don't really doubt that Governor Worden be a good father. Parker is a charming lad and utterly terrifying as a warrior." Ursula said. 'But I don't intend to be an absent mother, and that's means the child will need to follow my duty. Any child of mine will damned well know I at least tried to care for it long before their fifties. And especially when they are young." She looked at Mac levelly. "So I rather hoped you would stand with me as primary parent."
Mac froze, visions of bouncing a small child on his knee, of piggy-back rides and scraped knees and diapers and spoon-feedings and a few toddling steps dancing through his head.
"I…" his breath caught in his artificial lungs. "I would be honored."
"Good." She said with characteristic ruthlessness. "Because you're right. I am too damned noble. I want you around to teach the child who is worthy of trust and who is not…from a slave's eye view. And that courage is not the sole inheritance of nobility." She snorted. "I'm probably dreaming too far ahead here, but dammit, any child of mine is going to have to be a scrapper and you're the best man I know to teach someone how to have your back in a fight."
"Only because you kept faith with me first."
"Mmm. Sweet talker. Tell me more."
"You're honorable."
She grinned.
"You're worthy."
Her smile grew somehow wider.
He planted a kiss on both of the prominant cheekbones she had so clearly inherited from Ursekar Creed. "And I can barely stand how *hot* you are."
"Cadia stands." She growled.
"So…" he said, folding one arm around her. "Now that we've established I won't be hopping into anyone else's bed…care to test out my bedside manner?" He said, a playful gleam glinting from a mechanical eye.
"Always."