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Eradicant – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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ERADICANT

R S Wilt

At the rear of the Valkyrie’s troop compartment, Medicae-Adept Daviland watched the golden coin dance across Trooper Durlo’s knuckles. Durlo, the squad’s demolitions expert, had been fiddling with the thronepiece since he came aboard. It flitted between his fingers, backwards and forwards. He flipped it into the air, caught it, and sent it rippling across his hand once more. She found his ability to do this in heavy leather gauntlets astonishing.

‘How long have you been with First Eradicant?’ she asked, glancing up from the coin’s undulating motion.

‘Eight months,’ Durlo replied, as the coin traversed his knuckles.

Daviland raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s a long time in an eradicant.’ The gunship hit a pocket of turbulence, pressing Trooper Actis against her right side. Irritated, she pushed him back upright and away from her.

Actis glanced at her, shook his head and looked away.

Durlo flipped the coin again. ‘Not really,’ he said. He indicated Trooper Norroll beside him. ‘He’s been here since First Eradicant was formed.’

‘Not formed,’ Norroll corrected, ‘so much as re-established. Eradicants get wiped out all the time. It’s in the name. Troublesome Scions get retrained on the hardest missions, or die. Win-win, for Regiment.’

‘I see,’ Daviland said. ‘And how long have you been here?’

‘Since the Weeping Stars,’ Norroll replied proudly.

‘That’s quite a while. You’ve been deemed unfit to return to regular duty after all this time?’

Next to Daviland, Trooper Bissot snorted.

Even obscured beneath his helmet, Daviland could practically feel Norroll’s glare.

‘Three minutes to dropsite,’ the Valkyrie’s pilot announced over the gunship’s vox.

‘Confirmed,’ Tempestor Traxel returned. ‘Final checks,’ he said over squad vox. Glancing to the rear of the troop compartment, he added, ‘Durlo, stow it.’

The thronepiece pinged upward a final time with a quick pop of Durlo’s thumb. He snatched the coin out of the air and displayed an empty hand to the Tempestor.

Beneath them, the city burned.

Even before the World Eaters descended on Tecerriot, the world had been wracked by worldwide uprisings. Riots had consumed entire cities in fire and blood. Two days earlier, the 36th Xian Tigers, Militarum Tempestus, had arrived to reinforce the beleaguered Adeptus Arbites divisions and Astra Militarum regiments that were barely managing to hold planetwide anarchy at bay.

Daviland wondered if a single regiment of Tempestus Scions could make a difference on this world. She concluded that, in a theoretically perfect universe, with perfect intelligence, perfect deployment and perfect support, they could.

From where she was sitting, however, it looked little enough like that universe – and saving this world was beyond the scope of their orders.

The sliding doors on either side of the aircraft were open to the night air. The Valkyrie’s door-gunners panned their heavy bolters across a sea of smoke that obscured the city lights and fires below. The corpses of burned-out mega-towers intermittently pierced the miasma like skeletal fingers of plasteel and rockcrete.

‘Why are we dropping so far from the palace, when there are riots everywhere across the city?’ Norroll asked, running a final calibration on his auspex.

‘You miss the briefing?’ Bissot shot back, not looking up from the bolt casing she was etching with a steel stylus. ‘Rooftop Hydra batteries would drop this bird before we got close, and then the governor would have to rescue himself.’ She wiped away tiny brass flakes with her thumb as the Valkyrie juddered in an updraught.

‘I was there, and my objections remain. I still believe Regiment is wasting significant time and resources on one official,’ Norroll said.

‘Governor Marschesik’s bio-idents are the key to this world’s infrastructure,’ Traxel explained patiently. ‘Tecerriot’s people are habitually inclined to solve their problems with violence. Makes it an attractive prospect for the Departmento Munitorum, not so much for the planetary elites. The ruling house started implanting dead-man’s switches in its governors generations ago, ostensibly to ensure the peaceful transition of power and safeguard them in the event of a crisis. If Marschesik dies, the whole planet’s systems go dark, and we start from zero until the Adeptus Mechanicus can get things working again.’

‘I’ll hold my breath until the incense clears,’ Actis sneered.

Daviland stared at him. Her omnishield helm concealed her shock at Actis’ unseemly ridicule of the Martian Priesthood.

‘One man, holding everything,’ Norroll scoffed. ‘What could go wrong?’

The medicae-adept stifled a gasp at Norroll’s flippancy. It was more than enough that he had questioned their orders in front of the rest of the squad – to say nothing of the Naval door-gunners – but to deride the Imperial governor was outrageous. She was beginning to understand why these Scions had been posted to an eradicant.

‘He served with my mother, you know?’ Bissot said, looking up from her engraving as the gunship hit another pocket of turbulence.

‘Who?’ Actis asked.

‘Governor Marschesik. He was a general during the Argovon Campaign. I’m going to ask him about her, once we find him.’

‘What makes you think he knew her, Favae?’ Norroll asked. ‘An entire primus battle group fought in the Argovon Campaign.’

Bissot glared at him. ‘She was posthumously awarded the Star of Terra. The Bell of Lost Souls tolled for her. Perhaps you could forget a Hero of the Imperium, Gry, but I expect Governor Marschesik would not.’

Actis laughed.

‘Do they always carry on like this, Tempestor?’ Daviland asked, perplexed by Traxel’s indifference to such indecorous behaviour.

Traxel said nothing.

Daviland had never dared believe Tempestus Scions could behave as these did. In her experience, extraneous conversation between troopers during missions was unheard of. She found Actis’ and Norroll’s irreverence odious, but was particularly vexed by Traxel’s apparent tolerance for it.

‘Seems like you were able to repaint your carapace just in time,’ Durlo said to Daviland. ‘I didn’t think Regiment got progenia from anywhere but the scholam on Abstinax.’

‘We never had a medicae assigned to us, either,’ Bissot interjected. ‘Were you posted here as punishment, Daviland?’

‘I wasn’t–’

‘Over dropsite in ten seconds.’

‘Everybody up,’ Traxel ordered as the gunship’s rear ramp opened. ‘Norroll, you’re point.’

‘Aye, sir,’ Norroll acknowledged as he moved to the back of the troop hold. At the ramp’s edge, he turned to look directly at Bissot. He gave her a curt nod before he dropped, backwards, out of the Valkyrie and into the night.

Daviland glanced at Bissot, who visibly bristled, even beneath her carapace. Bissot caught the medicae-adept’s gaze and hissed an exasperated sigh.

It was a competition between them, Daviland realised. Norroll was the most senior and proficient Scion in the eradicant, and his rubbing Bissot’s nose in it, however subtly, rankled her.

Following Norroll, the rest of the squad stepped off the gunship’s back ramp, plummeting through the canopy of smoke below.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

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Cover illustration by Jaime Martinez.

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