13th Legion by Gav Thorpe

Author:Gav Thorpe
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2011-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

six

typhos prime

+++ Operation Harvest complete. Preparing to commence Operation New Sun. +++

+++ There can be no more delays. New Sun must go ahead on schedule or all will be lost. +++

Compared with some of the places I’ve been with the Last Chancers, and considering that it’s been torn apart by bloody civil war for the past two years, Typhos Prime seems very civilised. After touching down at one of its many spaceports, a Commissariat squad escorts us through busy city streets, with people coming and going as if there weren’t battles being fought less than two hundred kilometres away. There are a few telltale signs that everything isn’t as cosy as it seems, though. There are air raid warning sirens at every junction – huge hailers atop six-metre poles – and signs marking the route to the nearest shelters. Arbitrators patrol the streets, menacing with their silvered armour over jet-black jump-suits, wielding shock mauls and suppression shields.

As we pass along a wide thoroughfare, there are shuttered windows amongst the stores along both sides of the wide road. There are a few people around, swathed against the autumnal chill and damp in shapeless brown coats and thick felt hats, trailing brightly coloured scarves from their necks. A smog hangs above the city, visible over the squat buildings to either side, mixing with the cloud that stretches across the sky to cast a dismal gloom over the settlement. A column of Chimeras led by two growling Conqueror tanks, resplendent in blue and gold livery, grumbles past along the road, horse carriages and zimmer cars pulling aside to let them pass. In a reinforced underground staging area, we embark on a massive eight-wheeled roadster designed for long-haul troop movements, and the twelve of us spread out, trying to decide in which of the three hundred seats we want to sit. The Colonel parks himself up front with the driver, intently ignoring us.

‘Reminds me of tutelage outings,’ jokes Franx. ‘Head up the back where bad boys hang out!’

I’ll take his word for it, I never had that kind of education. I was brought up as part of an extended family, with a dozen brothers, sisters and cousins, and my first memories are of chipping at slag deposits with a rusted chisel and mallet, trying to find nuggets of iron and steel. The roadster jolts into life, the whine of the electric engines soon being relegated to the back of my mind, out of conscious thought. Linskrug and Gappo join us and we sprawl happily, each across a three-wide seating tier.

‘This is a bit of a royal treatment, is it not?’ suggests Linskrug, peering out of the tinted windows at the low buildings blurring past outside. A faint rain has started, speckling the windows with tiny droplets of moisture. ‘It’s much more what I’m accustomed to.’

‘He wants to keep us contained,’ I point out to him. ‘Of all the places we’ve been, this is the best one to get lost in. Billions of people live on Typhos Prime; a man could quite happily disappear here, never to be seen again.

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