Aemos nodded. The enemy was dug in. It was ferocious, brutal. Brutal-ising. And the climate. Two white dwarf suns, no cloud cover. The most punishing heat and light, not to mention ultraviolet burning/
'Ruins the skin/1 murmured. 'Makes it weatherbeaten and prematurely aged/
Everyone looked at the taut, lined face of the body on the slab.
Til get a list of the veterans/ volunteered Wrex.
'I already have one/ said Aemos.
'I'm betting you find the names Brell Sodakis and Vim Venik on it/ I said.
Aemos paused as he scanned. 'I do/ he agreed.
'What about Quater Traves?'
'Yes, he's here. Master Gunnery Sergeant Quater Traves/ 'What about Omin Lund?'
'Ummm… yes. Sniper first class. Invalided out of service/
'The Sameter Ninth were a mixed unit, then?' asked Bequin.
All our Guard foundings are/ Wrex said proudly.
'So, these men… and women../ Midas mused. 'Soldiers, been through hell. Fighting the corruption… your idea is they brought it back here with them? Some taint? You think they were infected by the touch of the warp on Surealis and have been ritually killing as a way of worship back here ever since?'
'No/1 said. 'I think they're still fighting the war/
It remains a sad truth of the Imperium that no virtually no veteran ever comes back from fighting its wars intact. Combat alone shreds nerves and shatters bodies. But the horrors of the warp, and of foul xenos forms like the tyranid, steal sanity forever, and leave veterans fearing the shadows, and the night and, sometimes, the nature of their friends and neighbours, for the rest of their lives.
The guards of the Ninth Sameter Infantry had come home thirteen years before, broke by a savage war against mankind's arch-enemy and, through their scars and their fear, brought their war back with them.
The arbites mounted raids at once on the addresses of all the veterans on the list, those that could be traced, those that were still alive. It appeared that skin cancer had taken over two hundred of them in the years since their repatriation. Surealis had claimed them as surely as if they had fallen there in combat.
A number were rounded up. Bewildered drunks, cripples, addicts, a few honest men and women trying diligently to carry on with their lives. For those latter I felt especially sorry.
But about seventy could not be traced. Many may well have disappeared, moved on, or died without it coming to the attention of the authorities. But some had clearly fled. Lund, Traves, Sodakis, Venik for starters. Their habs were found abandoned, strewn with possessions as if the occupant had left in a hurry. So were the habs of twenty more belonging to names on the list.
The arbites arrived at the hab of one, ex-corporal Geffin Sancto, in time to catch him in the act of flight. Sancto had been a flamer operator in the guard, and like so many of his kind, had managed to keep his weapon as a memento. Screaming the battlecry of the Sameter Ninth, he torched four
arbites in the stairwell of his building before the tactical squads of the judiciary vaporised him in a hail of gunshots.
'Why are they killing?' Bequin asked me. 'All these years, in secret ritual?'
'I don't know/
'You do, Eisenhorn. You so do!'
Very well. I can guess. The fellow worker who jokes at the Emperor's expense and makes your fragile sanity imagine he is tainted with the warp. The rug-maker whose patterns suggest to you the secret encoding of Chaos symbols. The midwife you decide is spawning the offspring of the archenemy in the mid-rise maternity hall. The travelling evangelist who seems just too damn fired up to be safe.'
She looked down at the floor of the land speeder. They see daemons everywhere.'
'In everything. In every one. And, so help them, they believe they are doing the Emperor's work by killing. They trust no one, so they daren't alert the authorities. They take the eyes, the hands and the tongue… all the organs of communication, any way the arch-enemy might transmit his foul lies. And then they destroy the brain and heart, the organs which common soldier myth declares must harbour daemons.'
