Helena stared at herself in the mirror. Her face was every inch the Administratum ideal, in that it was unadorned by any form of cosmetics, neither overly attractive or unattractive. It was the kind of face designed to fade into the background behind greater figures. Helena held no illusions about her station, she was a facilitator for the greatness of others, any pride she had would come from achievements that others took from the opportunities she provided. The Administratum thought of the Imperium as a great machine, and the people within as small cogs who may never understand the purpose to which they are bound, but without whom the machine can never function. Her mistress was another cog, but a far larger one that spun many smaller dials.

She ran her fingers through her hair, bright blonde and flowing down to her shoulders, it was not in keeping with the spirit of the Administratum. As a rule, clerks shaved their hair; it was long, it got in the way and it was a dangerous expression of individuality that went against their core values and standards. But it was not against the standards of the Inquisition, because the standards of the Inquisition varied from Inquisitor to Inquisitor. Helena justified her frivolous locks with the argument that she may, at some as yet undetermined point in time, be required to operate covertly and that having hair is less likely to stand out in an Imperial crowd than not. In truth, Helena was simply beginning to discover the wonders of individuality, and rather liked the idea of something that separated her from the Administratum she had left behind. She still maintained an utmost dedication to duty, and so the hair was hidden beneath the hood of her plain grey robes.

Having a mirror at all was still somewhat of a novelty; the defence force had been bending over backwards to accommodate their guests, and had given an entire wing of their Officer’s Mess over to them. For the first time in her life Helena had a room all to herself and, though it was hard to get used to sleeping without the dozen or so other menials on the Prime Agent’s staff, the sense of privacy was liberating. Tucking a leather-bound notebook and a data slate into a pouch hanging off her belt, Helena left her room and the Inquisition Enclave, as their wing had come to be known.

The Officers mess was adequate for their needs, but Helena eyed the dusty corridors and chipped paintwork with a critical eye, though her mistress would never admit such, Helena felt such dilapidation spoke poorly of the Regiment’s abilities. Still, Helena mused, they had certainly been accommodating, as a sea of Officers parted before her. Truthfully, Helena disliked the attention she and the others were being given. Officer’s who, by all rights, were many times her senior stood to one side as she passed and many bowed their heads reverently. Helena lived in the background, and it was all she could do not to run at the unwanted and unwarranted stares. Still, it did mean she’d been able to cut through the bureaucratic inertia with ease, as the regiment scrambled to assist her every inquiry.

Helena paused before exiting the mess to ensure her hood was drawn as far down as possible. The hood now served a dual purpose; it continued, as it always had, to hide her face and prevent undue attention but it also now served the far more important role of blocking her sight of anything except the ground. Amelia had been born in the lower hive of a spire so large she had never bothered to learn its name; as far as she had been concerned there simply was nowhere else. As a child she had demonstrated mathematic ability, and so had been whisked away from her parents to the Administratum compound, a small walled city of only three square kilometres. There her world had shrunk even further as she was taught the insular ways of the Administratum, and came to view the compound as the only place in the universe. Upon transferring to the Inquisition, she spent her entire time aboard the ship, never coming close to any windows, and had spent her time on Nova Iberia in the windowless confines of the Precinct-Fortress. Upon arriving at Fort Badajoz, she had made the mistake of looking up and had become paralysed by agoraphobia, relying on muttered recitals of the Catechisms of Faith to keep herself from collapsing. A vast expanse of blue emptiness stretched above her head and the ground spread out before her only ending when it hit the mountain walls an impossible distance away. Eventually she managed to navigate her way to the Regimental Headquarters, where the Station Commander had given over his offices to the Inquisition. Helena took up a receptionist’s desk, mercifully facing away from the uncovered window. Helena would have drawn the blinds, but the Prime Agent enjoyed having a view.

She began to thumb through transmissions sent and received in the day since they had arrived, and was pleased to see a communique from Marshal Taimur’s staff. The 43rd Cazadores were underequipped even by the standards of other PDF’s, and her mistress had tasked Helena with sourcing better equipment as fast as possible. She had passed the word on to adepts in Marshal Taimur’s own staff, and they had been scouring through their newly inherited holdings to find anything capable of hurting an Astartes. The Iberian PDF was rather unique, in that it was divided into two separate organisations. The smaller Special Forces Command received the lion’s share of funding and equipment, as well as feeding into the General Staff. The remainder of the PDF were left to settle with primitive equipment far below the expected standard on such an industrialised world; when required to contribute to the Guard the majority would go from Special Forces command, whilst PDF troopers hastily given imported Flack Armour and Lasguns would make up the rest of the tithe. The end result was a regiment with no heavy weapons whatsoever, and very little in the way of vital support staff such as qualified Enginseers.

Whatever adjutant of Marshal Taimur’s staff she had been spoken to over the vox had managed to find an armoury nearby that held weapons meant for the commandos, and had petitioned the Marshal to release those weapons for issue to the Regiment. He had agreed, transmitting access codes for the sealed warehouses. Helena now had to liaise with the Regimental Staff, and arrange for one of the Stormtroopers to accompany whatever men they sent to collect the weapons. It had been the work of hours to get to this point, and it would be hours still before it was done. Helena was running herself ragged between this, ensuring the aircraft were fuelled and ironing out the kinks in an Inquisitorial Cell that had just moved halfway across the planet.

Her thoughts were interrupted as the Prime Agent herself passed through her office. Helena stood and bowed to the supreme authority for hundreds of miles, and received a brief nod for her efforts. If she worked hard enough then the Agent would never be aware of her struggle, or the herculean task she had placed on Helena’s head. Adjutant Brazier was not supposed to attract the attention of her betters, even praise was to be avoided, as it distracted them from their duties. Her job was to ensure her mistress could focus on higher matters, without having to worry about the work of the small cogs that kept her spinning.

Corporal Al’Said sat in the back of the transport aircraft, checking over his Hellgun and Armour. He was only travelling to a warehouse but life in the Guard, and then the Inquisition, had made him justifiably paranoid. Like the majority of the Inquisitor’s Stormtroopers, Qaboos Al’Said had been drawn from the remnants of the Tallarn 75th Mechanised Regiment, pressed into the service of the Inquisitior to quell the Aprior Heresy, and having remained with him since. Others, like Sergeant Flavius, were drawn from the Schola Progenium, and resented the Tallarn as much as the Tallarn resented them. Certainly, they presented a united front to the rest of the Inquisition but internally the Stormtroopers were divided between those whose experience came from combat, and those trained by the Schola Progenia.

Al’Said looked around the interior of the aircraft, his eyes resting on the platoon of men from the 43rd, each of whom was looking around the aircraft as if it were wrought by saints rather than men. Annoyingly, they looked at Al’Said’s equipment with much the same expression. They cut a rather contemptuous figure with their flimsy steel helmets and simple automatic weapons. Al’Said could not help but pity the poor figures. These men had been denied every chance to become part of something greater than themselves, the main appeal of service to the Throne. They were a force it seemed the Planetary Government preferred to ignore; calling upon them only to put down riots or provide disaster relief. Very few of them would find the Emperor’s service, as he had, and those that did would be cast into space inadequately prepared for the work He would demand from them.

Tallarn was a desert world, and the vast majority of its population lived their lives in tunnels beneath the surface, where every resource mattered. Water and food were strictly rationed on Tallarn and everyone had a duty to contribute to their planet and the Imperium as a whole; whether by toiling in the underground mines, sifting the sands for usable silicone or serving in the Guard every citizen of Tallarn made sure their planet earned the regular shipments of water sent by the Administratum. The waste he had seen on worlds that had so much more than his own horrified Qaboos, and this planet may have been the worst offender yet. They let brave, loyal, citizens fall by the wayside in order to preserve their own privileges, they viewed service to the Imperium as the prerogative of the Nobility, rather than the one opportunity every Imperial had to truly matter in the Emperor’s eyes.

The Pilot broadcast the five-minute warning, and Al’Said moved towards the ramp, the 43rd Logistics Officer moving to stand next to him. Like most Officers in the Throne’s service, he carried a pistol, a small semi-automatic stubber, and a sword that served as his badge of office. The Imperium held that its officers should be concerned with directing the flow of battle, and that issuing them with rifles risked them being distracted by combat with the enemy, and losing sight of their command. Technically the man outranked Al’Said by a significant margin, but elite forces were often given higher status, and his association with the Inquisition placed him as an agent of the Emperor Himself in the Officer’s eyes.

The plane shifted as its vector thrust engines directed thrust upwards, to bring them to a controlled descent. The men, unused to aircraft that weren’t limited to lateral movement, shifted unsteadily in the hold, but they were able to stand, the Acolyte of the Inquision enough motivation to keep them on their feet. The plane shuddered as it touched down, the ramp dropped and the platoon rushed out, the Stormtrooper following at an intimidating walk. The pilot, an expert at his trade, had landed the aircraft at the end of a long road not fifty metres from the armoury’s doors, there being no airstrip on the base.

The guards manning the gate, disarmed by Inquisitorial order, could do nothing as the platoon of men entered the facility, the black clad terror at their head handing a paper through the window that carried higher authority than either of the two men had ever seen before or since. They watched as the man went up to the Armoury building that they, not being of any particular importance, had never been allowed inside. He imputed a code into the great iron doors and they slid aside with the horrific screeching of tortured metal, revealing a room laden with weapons more advanced than the two guards had ever seen.

Al’Said poured over the crated melta guns approvingly; he had always liked the melta, though it burned through precious oxygen far too quickly for use on Tallarn. He felt there was a wondrous simplicity to the weapon; the natural evolution of a kid with an aerosol can and a match. More importantly, the weapons would be enough to give a Traitor Marine pause, if the Cazadores could get close enough to use them. There were also melta bombs hanging from long racks along the length of one of the walls. Meant for breaching doors or static fortifications the suicidal could run up to an enemy tank and slam one on its side. Whilst there was theoretically enough time to clear the blast area before it detonated, it was still a job for only the most devout or desperate. As the platoon loaded the crated weapons onto the waiting plane, Al’Said reflected that they may very well soon be desperate enough to try.

Sergeant Marcus Flavius stood atop a raised platform overlooking the airfield; what had once been a graveyard of aircraft now filled with every serviceable helicopter in the region. The curious aircraft relied on the flow of air over a spinning rotor to stay flying and as such were exclusively used by Planetary Defence Forces, who seldom had to worry about deploying from orbit. They were joined a small squadron of propeller planes, whose dumb-fire missiles had been replaced by more advanced models ‘liberated’ from a nearby armoury.

He stood just behind Colonel Forjaz, and they were both overlooking the entire 43rd; one thousand two hundred men arrayed in ranks before them. Sergeant Flavius decided he liked Forjaz, the man was a career soldier, and had risen as highly in the Iberian PDF as was possible without noble blood. Though he naturally couldn’t match the progeny of the Schola Progenia, he was still one of the best products of the civilian education system Marcus had seen. A grey-haired man nearing the end of his career he had, despite never having seen combat, bent over backwards to ensure his Cazadores were fit to fight. Flavius had heard rumours he had called in every favour he was owed to prepare for the assault, and his admiration for the man had only increased as a result.

Flavius also stood behind the Prime Agent, who had gracefully left the Colonel the spotlight. Though she wasn’t a product of the Schola, she was a Psyker, and as such had been as much a ward of the State as Marcus was. Unlike him, she had learned her trade on Holy Terra itself and, if barrack rumours about psykers were to be believed, had been brought before the Emperor himself to be judged. That unique vetting elevated her beyond question in Flavius’ eyes. It was a pity, he thought, that she had become more distant since ascending to her new title. In a way he missed the scared girl who had liquified a man’s brain in the tunnels of the Precinct, but he understood the bonds of duty that now existed between them.

The regiment had been assembled to be briefed on their mission, before they deployed the next morning. They were listening with rapt attention, ready to finally learn the task that had brought them the attentions of the Inquisition, and uprooted them from their uneventful lives. As the Colonel stepped up to the platform a cry came up from the Regimental Sergeant Major.

‘General Salute! Present Arms!’

As one, the regiment brought up their rifles, whilst the officers raised their swords in salute. Whatever else could be said about the quality of the Regiment, they were certainly well drilled.

‘At ease.’ Colonel Forjaz began, followed by another sharp cacophony as arms were lowered.

‘For the past twenty-four hours, you have worked harder than ever before. You have brought us out of the slow decline the 43rd has been slipping into for a very long time now. Your blades, dulled by inaction, are sharp once again and we are ready to strike against our foe.’

‘You have done this, because our world has suddenly got a lot larger. Agents of the Holy Inquisition have graced us with their presence and honoured us with a task of utmost importance.’

‘In the mountains, not a hundred miles from where we now stand, foul rituals have been conducted. For thousands of years, elements of our society have gone into these mountains on a pilgrimage in service of foul gods. For thousands of years men and women who are supposed to be the best of us, have gone into these mountains to test themselves and earn dark favours.’

‘For thousands of years this heresy has stained our planet, and our people, in the eyes of the Emperor. For thousands of years our own nobility has worked against us, secreting Commando’s off into the armies of renegades and heretic despots.’

‘I know you’ve heard the arguments of the nobility, that we must look to our own, rather than the Imperium. I know this, because I’ve heard the arguments myself. Some of you may even be bound to noble families through ancient lines of servants. In a way, they’re right.’

‘The nobility doesn’t need the Imperium, but we do. The nobility doesn’t work in our mines or factories, exporting steel to a hundred different worlds, but we do. The nobility doesn’t live inside the spires, where the only air is filtered through the divine machines of the Tech-Priesthood of Mars, but we do! The nobility doesn’t need the grain ration, imported from dozens of worlds to feed them, but we do! The Imperium is something greater than any of us, it is our faith and the source of our duty. We feed it, because it feeds us.’

‘Now the Imperium is asking us to take a mountain. The Raptor’s Nest is perched atop a natural plateau at the centre of the mountains to our south, surrounded by smaller forts on the other peaks. The Inquisition wants the main base intact, so fighting there will be purely an infantry affair. The mountain peaks, on the other hand, will be hit by our aircraft, as well as by limited orbital bombardment. The fighting will be hard, harder than any training we’ve undergone, but we will succeed. The Emperor himself watches over our deeds and we will not fail him!’

The regiment cheered; any doubts now banished from their mind. The Colonel would make a good political officer, Flavius thought to himself.

‘Now, Sergeant Flavius of the Inquisition will take you through what we will face.’

Flavius stepped up to the lectern and tried to keep the fear off his face. He still wasn’t quite sure how he was supposed to tell this backwater militia that they may have to fight Astartes.