Angel of Fire

Rumours abounded in the Angel’s Blessing that night. The city was on the verge of open rebellion. Macharius had been wounded at the new war front. Macharius had been killed. The Death Spectres had gone off-world to deal with an ork invasion fleet. Plague had erupted on Karsk V and would be coming our way soon. We sat in the dark and drank our rotgut and tried not to pay too much attention. We were looking for distraction.

That night the girls brought a friend. She was tall, dark, and strikingly pretty with dark hair cut very short. Her name was Anna. I studied her as she sat opposite me. She seemed quiet and self-possessed and calm. She had the competence that nurses always have but she was distant.

‘She’s as new around here as you are,’ Yanis said, as if making a joke.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

Anna smiled a little coldly, I thought. ‘She means I just transferred in to St Oberon’s. I was working two levels down in the old Flat Tunnel Hospice.’

‘Might as well have come from another planet,’ said Yanis. There was some tension between the two. ‘It’s a different world down there.’

‘It’s poorer, if that’s what you mean,’ said Anna. ‘But people still need healing.’

‘I never said they didn’t.’

‘It is different down there,’ Anna said. ‘Darker, more dismal. The nobles who come to St Oberon’s have no idea what it’s like.’ She let that hang in the air, with the implication it was not just the nobles.

‘It’s always the bloody same,’ said Anton. ‘The higher up the hive you go, the snottier people get.’ That got him some nasty looks from the other nurses. Not that Anton cared. He never paid too much attention to what other people thought.

Katrina looked at the table and said, ‘Do we need to talk about this? There are other more interesting things to talk about. I’ve never been out of the hive, let alone to a different planet, neither have you, Yanis or Anna. You boys have. What was it like?’

‘Dangerous,’ said Anton. ‘The bloody places always seemed full of people who wanted to shoot us for some reason.’

Ivan gave him a dark look. ‘It’s understandable. I feel that way every time I look at you.’

‘Ha bloody ha!’

Katrina’s attempt to change the subject and the booze worked though. We spoke of the campaigns we had fought in – Jurasik, Elijah, Lucifer and the others. We did not talk about anything we were doing at present but it would not have mattered very much – if they had been spies they could have learned a lot just from the stories we told of the old times and about the battles we had fought in. It did not seem very likely that they were spies although you can never tell. Little did I know…

‘Tell me about the Angel of Fire,’ the New Boy asked.

I frowned at the way he spoke. It seemed to me that he was more interested in the Angel of Fire than he ought to have been. He was a studious lad with a scholarly turn of mind and this was his first campaign and his first time off the leash on an alien world. He was curious about everything – I suppose if I had been in the same situation I would have been too. My friends were drunk and I knew what they were thinking anyway so I concentrated on the girls, wondering about their response.

It was interesting. Anna and Yanis wore the conventional pious look of the faithful. Lutzka looked blank and far more interested in her drink. Katrina looked angry and stared off into the distance, biting her lower lip and frowning. I wondered what she was thinking so I asked. She just shook her head and looked even more angry and then she got up and stalked away towards the ladies room. Anton looked at me annoyed as if I had done something wrong. ‘What was that all about?’ He asked of no one in particular. The other girls looked embarrassed and a little afraid.

‘Her brother was burned by the Sons of the Flame,’ Yanis said at last.

‘He was not the only one, judging by the number of cages I have seen recently,’ said Anton with his usual mastery of the diplomatic arts.

‘It’s not that common,’ Yanis said.

‘It looks as if they burned thousands,’ said Anton.

‘And what are thousands or even tens of thousands in all the millions that a hive contains.’

‘It matters to the thousands,’ I said.

‘It teaches the rest of us to respect the Angel,’ said Anna. ‘You need to be firm to keep a hive under control.’ I thought I heard an implied criticism there; that we were not being firm enough with the locals. Maybe she felt things were starting to spin out of control.

‘So what was Katrina’s brother being taught to respect?’ I asked.

‘Ask her,’ she said, not responding well to the aggression in my voice. Maybe I had had too much to drink. ‘It’s not my business to say. I am new here.’

‘I’ll tell you,’ said Lutzka. ‘They are burned for their own good.’

We all turned to look at her. She seemed to deflate a little then her jaw firmed and she said, ‘Well, it’s true.’

‘Would you care to explain that?’ I asked.

‘You’re not very nice,’ Anna said.

‘Because I want an explanation?’

‘Because you have a nasty manner.’

‘I would still like to know how you burn someone alive for their own good. Call me an apostate but I can’t see how that works.’

‘Their souls go to join the Angel,’ said Lutzka. There was a dreamy look in her eye, the sort you sometimes see on the faces of the really devout when they are at prayer. ‘The flames cleanse them of their sins and they join his choir purified and free of the bonds of flesh.’

‘I doubt there is much flesh left on them at this stage,’ I said.

‘Scoff if you like but it’s what it says in scripture.’

The New Boy rubbed his eye and said, ‘They say that the psykers the Black Ships take join the Emperor. Might this not be the same?’

‘I don’t think you can compare the Emperor with the Angel of Fire,’ said Anton. He sounded outraged. Maybe it was the drink.

‘Why not? They say that the Angel of Fire stands at his right hand.’ Lutzka said. I could see the girls nodding.

‘Only on this world,’ said Ivan. ‘I think if it was true we would have heard of it on Belial and all the other worlds.’

‘How do you know it’s not?’ Anna sounded annoyed now at the faith being called into question. ‘Have you visited every world in the galaxy?’

It was a fair point. Silence fell. I wondered why she had pushed things so far. She could be arrested for trying to undermine morale. Strictly according to regulations we should be locking her up and taking her for trial. The girls looked at us. Most of them pushed their chairs back, as if trying to put some distance between them and Anna but at the same time there was approval in their faces. Anna had said something they had all thought, had voiced their resentments for them. Maybe all she was trying to do was fit in, a new girl in a new place trying to make new friends. She did not realise it could get her killed.

Anton and Ivan looked at me. They knew as well as I did that things could go very sour very quickly from here.

‘No, we haven’t, but in this we are right,’ I said, staring at her very hard, hoping she would take the hint, realise what she was doing. ‘I am sure that in your heart of hearts you feel the truth of that.’

She kept staring at me challengingly. Inwardly I cursed her. She was really so drunk and stubborn that she could not see what was happening here. I held her gaze and slowly her eyes sank and her face flushed.

‘You are right,’ she said eventually. Her hand played with the small ikon of the Angel of Fire that rested between her breasts.

The next morning I sat up and pulled on my tunic. Anna stirred in the bed beside me. Her hair was mussed. Her eyes were full of sleep. She looked very pretty. Her face was chilly for a moment then she smiled and it brightened wonderfully.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘I’ve got to report for duty,’ I said. I could not say any more.

‘If you stick around we can have some breakfast,’ she said. ‘There is a stall in the corridor that does the best skewered drop-frog.’

‘Sounds like a prime local delicacy,’ I said. I checked her clock. I still had an hour before I had to report. My head felt thick and muzzy. My mouth felt dry. I remembered leaving the bar with her early in the morning and a long walk to this hab-block. I remembered endless corridors and endless alcoves all filled with statues of the Angel.

I looked at the room. There were the usual small personal belongings you find in a hab-cell. Some pictures of Anna as a girl with her family, some little trinkets – sacred prints, knick-knacks. You can see them in a billion, billion hab-cells anywhere in the galaxy.

She looked at the pictures on the tabletop as if some memory were coming back to her. I reached out a hand to help her up. She rose to her feet lightly, but as I tugged, just for a moment, before she got into motion, she felt heavier than she looked. I remembered getting the same impression last night when I had lifted her onto the bed. I put it down to drunkenness then but it was odd that it had returned now.

‘You want to go get breakfast?’ ‘Sure,’ I said.

There were people in the corridors outside the hab-cell. Just like on Belial, there is no real quiet time in a hab-block. People are always coming and going. One or two of them stared at my uniform but not for long when I stared back. A group of young gangers shouted abuse from a crossroads. They were armed. So was I. It made for a tense few moments. Anna looked a lot calmer than I would have expected but I supposed she was used to such sights. They were common enough on Belial where I grew up as well. Anna did not look at all troubled. At the time, I thought that perhaps she was just used to such things from her experience in the underhive. Or that maybe my presence reassured her.

Fortunately the gangers were not on blaze or any of the other synthetics. Otherwise there might have been trouble. They just wanted to let everybody know how tough they were.

We found the stall Anna mentioned. It was crowded with people. Mostly workers coming or going from their shifts. Again most of them looked at me. There were odd tensions written on people’s faces, as if they knew something I did not. Uneasiness settled in my stomach. I told myself it was just my imagination.

I let Anna order for both of us and I paid. She was right. The food was good. We ate in silence for a while with that odd embarrassment that two people feel when they have gone to bed drunk with a stranger and then have to make conversation in the morning.

‘How long do you think you will be in Irongrad?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’ I really didn’t but I would not have told her anyway if I had. Regulations. ‘When do you have to go to work?’

‘It’s an off half-day for me. That’s why we were all in the bar last night. My shift doesn’t start until noon.’

‘Lucky you,’ I said.

‘Lucky me,’ she agreed. ‘You get any off-days?’

‘A soldier of the Emperor is always on duty,’ I said. It was the sort of thing the square-jawed hero always said in the prop-novs Anton read. She laughed.

‘You don’t take me seriously,’ I said.

‘I think you are a very serious man.’

I took another bite of some sort of flat-bread. It was tough and chewy but not unpleasant. There was some kind of protein baked in.

‘Would you really report me to your commissar?’ she asked quietly. I was glad she was so cautious. I remembered threatening to do some such thing during our argument the previous night. I thought it funny what could spark a night of passion. I remembered saying other things as well.

‘It’s what I am supposed to do,’ I said. ‘Otherwise I imperil my soul as well as yours.’

She considered that for a moment. I could see she was turning things over in her mind. At least I thought that then.

‘What are they like, your commissars?’

‘They are not gentle with unbelievers,’ I said. ‘Or with anybody else for that matter.’

‘Why did you become a soldier? Were you conscripted?’

‘I volunteered, believe it or not. It’s most likely one of the reasons we are talking.’

‘How so?’

‘The Imperial Guard are the elite of the planetary levies. One of the things they look for is superior motivation. Volunteers have more of that than conscripts.’

‘You volunteered out of a desire to fight then. You wanted to do your duty out of love of the Emperor.’ There was a sarcastic tone to her voice that needled me a little. Maybe it was meant to.

I shook my head. ‘Anton and Ivan and I were wanted by a gang boss. He would have killed us if we had stayed on in the hive and kept working at the guild factorum. The Guard was a way out.’

‘You worked in a factorum?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you make?’

‘Gear sprockets for tanks.’

‘I can’t really picture you doing that.’

‘I can easily picture you as a nurse,’ I said. I could too. She had a coolness about her that told you she would behave well under pressure. And there was a detachment to her as well, I thought for a moment.

She laughed and it made her look younger and suddenly I liked her. You know how it is.

She looked at me sidelong as if a thought had just struck her.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘It’s strange. For so long we were isolated here. We only traded with the other worlds in the system. The Imperium was just a legend. Now, you are here, telling us we are part of it, that we never left it.’

I tried to imagine what it must be like for her. This world had only been contacted by rogue traders for millennia. Those contacts could easily have been centuries apart. The Imperium itself had only made contact a decade ago. The rulers of the world had pretended not to believe in the legitimacy of the contact. They had ruled too long to give up power without a fight.

I had a vision too of the strangeness of it all. The Angel of Fire Cult had grown up on this world in a time when there had been no contact with the true faith of the Imperium. It has its roots in the same theology but had grown wild and strange, mutated over all those long centuries of isolation. Who knew what had really happened here, how the Sons of the Flame had gained their powers. No one could challenge them with the Imperial truth and slowly and surely they had bent the faith of an entire system of worlds to their will and now plunged that system into an unwinnable war with the Imperium of Man.

‘You are looking thoughtful,’ Anna said.

‘It’s nothing,’ I said, looking around, suddenly very aware that I was a long way from home and surrounded by strangers. I felt oddly vulnerable although there was no menace in any of the faces around me. Overhead though, the Angel of Fire’s thousand metal incarnations stared down at me with their blind eyes. I sat in the shadow of its fiery wings.

‘I have to go,’ I said. Something in the back of mind told me I had better be getting back.

When I got to the barracks everything was in a frenzy of activity. I entered our room and saw that the others were already there.

‘Where have you been?’ Anton asked. He looked more than a little upset.

‘I think you can guess if you cast your mind back to last night,’ I said. ‘There was a girl involved…’

‘You haven’t heard then?’

‘Heard what?’

‘There’s been a massive heretic counter-attack, backed up by space-drops. Macharius has been shot. Some say he has been killed.’

I looked from face to face to see if they were kidding me. All of them looked equally serious just like all the others I had seen on my way in.

‘That’s not possible,’ I said. Their expressions told me that they thought differently.