[48]

Wessex's discovery hinged on a note in the margin of a report about trees growing 2% slower than planned:

"Chlorinated Thiophosphonates in bacterial excreta insufficient to explain correlation."

That meant almost as little to Wessex as it did to me. But he recognized "chlorinated thiophosphonate" from the list of possible chemical byproducts that might be associated with the manufacture of the Eldar nerve toxin.

The report concerned the re-forestation of Vogel and its surrounding farmland. I should explain why:

The Orks had sacked Vogel in year 722. I was there. My family and most of the village of my birth had already died. I and the other refugees went to Vogel. I had an aunt and uncle there. They died. Ninety thousand more people died when the Orks took the city.

Shelling and firebombing and orbital strikes burned the Orks out, destroying most of what was left of the city. But even after they were defeated there and in the surrounding country, their spores remained. The Orks had had a dense population, hosts of them, boiling out of their half-crashed invasion hulks. Not the strike forces that were stopped in the Denma and Prag regions—a whole army, tens of millions. Almost all of them were killed during the war, but the spore-hazard infested the whole Vogel region.

Planetary Governor Naermund chose ecological containment, not extirpation. Denma and Prag would hold the line, and Vogel would be abandoned for forty years. The dense conifer forests that previous generations had cleared would retake farmland, villages, and towns. Their growth would be encouraged by aerial seeding and fertilizers. Even the city itself would fill with plants.

Then, when the forest is dense and deadfall litters the ground, there will come a dry year. Sometime between 760 and 770.M41, we will burn the Vogel region to ash in one great and terrible wildfire. If somehow I am still alive and still on Gaervalt, I would like to see it. I would be in my late forties then.

It is hard to remember, I was very young, but I think the village of my birth had a tradition of prayer-fires. Like prayer-candles but out of doors and held in common, in the circle of our ancestors' skulls. To me the fire will be a prayer-fire the size of an administrative region, burning away the Orks and their spores in one towering inferno. When the ashes cool, we will build our towns and villages again, plant crops again. The dead city will ring with industry and laughter again. And people will walk through the fields—there will be no forests yet—without being afraid.

Wessex summarized the report. I will try to repeat it.

The re-forestation was progressing slightly slower than the planners had forecasted.

Groundwater contamination was suspected, but chemical causes were not found.

Instead, the water-samplers found bacteria. The bacteria were not the kind that can cause sickness, but they were strange enough to notice. They were an unknown kind. Their gene-traces were unnaturally similar to one another. And they had the "thiophosphonates."

The report suggested a link between the bacteria and the bad tree growth and suggested killing the bacteria with a "targeted phage-virus," but Wessex was no longer interested. He was digging through all of the old report data for bacteria density counts.

He had been following the bacteria density amounts along a map while we were in The Maze that morning. And tracing after tracing led his stylus back to Vogel. The data were good enough to indicate just a quarter of the city, near the Voghast river. On his map, he found the old water purification complex. A huge, abandoned industrial chemistry facility. A region where we had completely neglected to look.

Nobody had thought of Vogel as the Eldar base. It was uninhabited. Eldar are predators and they are not given to patience. Grendel thought they must be in or near a city or large town, somewhere they could take prisoners to sate their sadism. And Vogel was as unsafe for Eldar as humans. Eldar do not prey on Orks, but Orks prey on Eldar.

Nevertheless.

"I think the bacteria are designed," Wessex said. "Perhaps by Man for water purification, and they mutated and escaped. More likely by the Eldar, to hide their toxin-process. You see? That is why we cannot find the toxin byproducts no matter where we search! They eat them! Not the Eldar—the bacteria eat them! And we only find traces in their blessed bacterial excrement! But they are bad for trees, through some ecological process given directly by the hand of God!"

He was still enthusiastic when he explained his theory to Grendel. If he was correct, a fifth of the planet had been reduced to a quarter of a city. And the city was Vogel—entirely abandoned, already consigned to destruction by fire. If necessary we could call down orbital laser-strikes and flights of bombers to level their base.

Grendel was less optimistic, but he believed it was worth checking. We spent the rest of the day poring over maps.

Wessex suggested covertly landing a sampling team directly downstream of the water purificatoria.

There were several mid-sized industrial buildings in that area that I liked for landing sites. Their roofs were gone and they lacked windows to be shot from, but their walls were still standing and would provide concealment and cover for the landed Arvus. I pointed them out, but Wessex didn't like any of my choices.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

He said, "They might have residual industrial runoff that would corrupt the samples. And it will be hard to move along the river-front to collect a range of samples." He tapped the map in a residential-administrative district nearby. "I would land here, Inquisitor. In the shelter of the ruined bridge. Excellent water access, good concealment for the approach."

Grendel agreed with Wessex and we marked the ruined bridge as our tentative landing point. He set the date of the operation for 290.738, six days away. It would begin in mid-morning; daylight would weaken the effectiveness of Eldar stealth.

Palatine Elin and the full Order would spend the first two days reviewing maps and blueprints of the region and practicing relevant urban assaults. Then the second two days would be spent covertly redeploying the Order to the regional Imperial Guard airbase, Gaervalt Vogel 1-1. The last two days would be used for integration exercises with the Guard force under a strict communication blackout.

If the target was identified, Guard bombers and orbital laser artillery would strike the target. Guard grav-chute troopers would establish a broad perimeter. Air-mobile Sororitas shock troops who had spent nine weeks training specifically to fight Eldar in urban terrain would close with and destroy the enemies of God.

Grendel cautioned us against optimism. He said he thought the chance that Wessex was right about the city was no better than a blind guess, one in ten. The bacteria could be completely unrelated.

"Nevertheless." Grendel rolled his shoulders. They made a crackling sound. "If you are correct, Throne Agent, then you have found not only the city but a marker pointing to the enemy's heart. A one in ten chance of a city would be useless. A one in ten chance of total victory with only small detection risk? A treasure beyond price."

Wessex bowed low. We went back to our maps and our vox-units and our plans.

❖ ❖ ❖

​

Our role in the operation was to be simple. The seven of us would accompany Grendel and two tech-adepts named Seg and Ik'tar as a security element. Grendel had offered Wessex Ik'tar's seat in the Arvus, but Wessex declined. "My skills are not as useful. I will come in with the assault force and bask in the glory of victory."

We were to have no part in the assault itself unless something went catastrophically wrong. Our only task was to secure the landing area and protect the Inquisitor and his tech-adepts while they confirmed or disconfirmed Wessex's theory with the bulky portable laboratory machines that would be crammed into the Arvus with us.

If they declared the target confirmed, we would reposition as the combined Guard and Sororitas force flew in and lasers hammered the target from orbit. We would leave Grendel, the tech-adepts, Castor, Adem, and Mak'ti with the perimeter security. Then Tara, Verity, Hana and I would attach ourselves to Palatine Elin's reserve force.

Grendel estimated the remaining Eldar force on the planet as having approximately a strength equivalent to one to two well-armed platoons. We would be striking it with a battalion-strength combined force and orbital supporting fires, not our one under-strength squad.

Still, we drilled and studied hard. If our role would be small, then I wanted our small role to be perfect. We had orbital picts and old maps and blueprints.

The Order began redeployment on day 286, which left us the Maze mostly to ourselves, except for Enforcers. We simulated moving and fighting through every rubble-strewn, plant-choked meter of our drop zone and every block around it, from the sub-metro train station two blocks north to the burned-out hab-blocks to the south.

On day 289, we redeployed, too. After arriving, we spent the day resting, praying, and drilling Seg and Ik'tar in their role if things went wrong: abandon the equipment, stay low, and stick to Grendel no matter what.

Even though no contact with the enemy was expected, Grendel had full armor for himself and the tech-adepts. It looked almost primitive, except for the face protecting respirators. The chest plates and helmets were Guard-issue carapace, but arms, legs, lower abdomen, and throat were all covered by chainmail so fine it was almost like cloth, or liquid. It would surely not stop a bullet or even a bad ricochet. But it would be almost as good as power-armor for stopping a shard rifle at more than a few meters distance.

Castor reminded us that there was a nine in ten chance that there would be no assault, no Eldar, and nothing but some odd bacteria. He and Adem pretended to complain about not being allowed to get drunk that night. I offered to ask the Inquisitor if we could drink on the flight back, if nothing happened.

"Excellent idea," he said. "We'll make Wessex buy it: I want amasec, amasec, amasec!"

It wasn't really funny, but except for Mak'ti we all laughed.

Morning of 290 came. We spent a few hours preparing. We donned our armor, prayed the rites, boarded the Arvus, and left. We flew low over the river towards the dead city of Vogel. We would arrive around 09:00. The sky was mostly clear, good for seeing the shimmer of Eldar and for effective orbital laser-fire.