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  ‘It was founding day!’ she retorted. That did take me by surprise. I didn’t often get people bouncing back from a number two glare, but I concealed it with the ease of long practice. ‘We always use the regimental ceramics on founding day. It’s one of our proudest traditions.’

  ‘It was.’ Broklaw broke in with sardonic amusement. ‘But unless you’ve got some traditional adhesive...’

  Both women bristled. For a moment I thought I was going to have to put down a brawl in my own office.

  ‘Major,’ I said, reasserting my authority. ‘I’m sure the 301st had their own founding day traditions.’ That was a pretty safe bet, as practically every regiment celebrated the anniversary of its First Founding in some way. He began to nod, before my use of the past tense registered with him, and then an expression curiously close to apprehension flickered across his face. I leaned back in my chair, which, unlike theirs, I’d made sure was comfortably padded, and looked approving. It’s always good to keep people off-balance. ‘I’m glad to hear it. Such traditions are important. A vital part of the esprit de corps we all rely on to win the Emperor his victories.’ Kasteen and Broklaw nodded cautiously, almost together. Good. That was one thing at least they could agree on. But Sulla just flushed angrily.

  ‘Then perhaps you could explain that to Kelp and his knuckle-draggers,’ she said. I sighed, tolerantly, and placed my laspistol on the desk. The officers’ eyes widened slightly. Broklaw’s took on a wary expression, Kasteen’s one of barely suppressed alarm, and Sulla’s jaw dropped open.

  ‘Please don’t interrupt, lieutenant,’ I said mildly. ‘You can all have your say in a moment.’ There was a definite edge in the room now. I had no intention of shooting anyone, of course, but they weren’t going to like what I was about to say next and you can’t be too careful. I smiled, to show I was harmless, and they relaxed a fraction.

  ‘Nevertheless, you’ve just illustrated my point perfectly. While the two halves of this regiment still think of themselves as separate units, morale is never going to recover. That means you’re sod-all use to the Emperor, and a pain in the arse to me.’ I paused just long enough to let them assimilate what I’d just said. ‘Are we in agreement on that, at least?’ Kasteen nodded, meeting Broklaw’s eyes for the first time since the meeting began.

  ‘I think so,’ she said. ‘The question is, what do we do about it?’

  ‘Good question.’ I passed a slate across the desk. She took it, and Broklaw leaned in to scan it over her shoulder as she read. ‘We can start by integrating the units at squad level. As of this morning, every squad will consist of roughly equal numbers of troopers from each of the former regiments.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous!’ Broklaw snapped, a fraction behind Kasteen’s far from ladylike exclamation. ‘The men won’t stand for it.’

  ‘Neither will my women.’ Kasteen nodded in agreement with him. So far so good. Making them feel they had common cause against me was the first step to getting them to co-operate properly.

  ‘They’re going to have to,’ I said. ‘This ship is en route to a potential warzone. We could be in combat within hours of our arrival, and when that happens they’ll have to rely on the trooper next to them, whoever it is. I don’t want my people getting killed because they don’t trust their own comrades. So they’re going to train together and work together until they start behaving like an Imperial Guard regiment instead of a bunch of pre-schola juvies. And then they’re going to fight the Emperor’s enemies together, and I expect them to win. Is that clear?’

  ‘Perfectly, commissar.’ Kasteen’s jaw was tight. ‘I’ll start reviewing the SO&E.’[4]

  ‘Perhaps it would be best if you did so with the major’s help,’ I suggested. ‘Between you, you should be able to select fire-teams which at least have a reasonable chance of turning their lasguns on the enemy instead of one another.’

  ‘Of course.’ Broklaw nodded. ‘I’ll be pleased to help.’ The tone of his voice said otherwise, but at least the words were conciliatory. That was a start. But they really weren’t going to like what was coming next.

  ‘Which brings me on to the new regimental designation.’ I’d been expecting some outburst at this, but the trio of officers in front of me just stared in stupefied silence. I guess they were trying to convince themselves they hadn’t heard what I’d just said. ‘The current one just emphasises the divisions between what used to be the 301st and the 296th. We need a new one, ladies and gentleman, a single identity under which we can march into battle united and resolute as true servants of the Emperor.’ All good stirring stuff, and for a moment, I actually thought they were going to buy it without any further argument. But of course it was that daft mare Sulla who burst the bubble.

  ‘You can’t just abolish the 296th!’ she almost shouted. ‘Our battle honours go back centuries!’

  ‘If you count slapping down stroppy colonists as battles.’ Broklaw rose to the bait. ‘The 301st has fought orks, eldar, tyranids–’

  ‘Oh. Were there tyranids on Corania? I guess I was just too busy with my needlepoint to notice!’ Sulla’s voice rose another octave.

  ‘Shut up! Both of you!’ Kasteen’s voice was quiet, but firm, and stunned both her subordinates into silence. I nodded gratefully at her, forestalled from having to do the job myself, and pleasantly surprised. It was beginning to look as though she had the makings of an effective commander after all. ‘Let’s hear what the commissar has to say before we start inventing objections to it.’

  ‘Thank you, colonel,’ I said, before resuming. ‘What I propose is to treat the date of amalgamation as a new First Founding. I’ve had the ship’s astropath contact the Munitorium, and they’ve agreed in principle. There is currently no regiment designated the Valhallan 597th, so I’ve proposed adopting that as our new identity.’

  ‘Two-hundred-and-ninety-six plus three-hundred- and-one. I see.’ Kasteen nodded. ‘Very clever.’ Broklaw nodded too.

  ‘A very neat way of preserving the identities of the old regiments,’ he said. ‘But combined into something new.’

  ‘As was always the intention,’ I agreed.

  ‘But that’s outrageous!’ Sulla said. ‘You can’t just redesignate an entire regiment out of existence!’

  ‘The Commissariat gives its servants wide discretionary powers,’ I said mildly. ‘How we interpret them is a matter of judgment, and sometimes temperament. Not every commissar would have resisted the temptation to discourage further dissension in the ranks by decimation, for instance.’ Quite true, of course. There were damn few who’d go quite so far as to randomly execute one in ten of the troopers under their command to encourage the others, but they did exist, and if ever a regiment was so undisciplined that such a drastic measure might have been justified, it was this one, and they knew it. They were just lucky they’d got Cain the Hero instead of some gung-ho psychopath. I’ve met one or two in my time, and the best thing you can say for them is that they don’t tend to be around long, particularly once the shooting starts. I smiled to show I didn’t mean it.

  ‘If the new designation is unacceptable,’ I added, ‘the 48th Penal Legion is also available, I’m told.’ Sulla blenched. Kasteen smiled tightly, unsure of how serious I was.

  ‘The 597th sounds good to me,’ she said. ‘Major Broklaw?’

  ‘An excellent compromise.’ He nodded slowly, letting the idea percolate. ‘There’ll be some grumbling in the ranks. But if ever a regiment needed a new beginning, it’s this one.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ Kasteen agreed. The two senior officers looked at one another with renewed respect. That was a good sign too.

  Only Sulla still looked unhappy. Broklaw noticed, and caught her eye.

  ‘Cheer up, lieutenant,’ he said. ‘That would make our next Founding Day...’ He paused fractionally, glancing at me for confirmation as he worked it out. ‘258.’ I nodded. ‘You’ll have nearly eight months to come up with some brand new traditions.’

  Of course, the changes I’d imposed didn’t go down too well with the rank and file, at least to begin with, and I got most of the blame. But then I’ve never expected to be popular; ever since I got selected for commissarial training I’ve known I could expect very little from the troopers around me apart from resentment and suspicion. As my undeserved reputation has snowballed, of course, that’s got to be the case less and less of the time, but back then I was still taking it more or less for granted.

  Gradually, though, the reorganisation I’d insisted on began to work and the training exercises we put the troopers through were beginning to make them think like soldiers again. I instituted a weekly prize of an afternoon’s downtime for the most efficient platoon in the regiment, and a doubling of the ale rations for the members of the most disciplined squad within it, and that helped remarkably. I felt we’d really turned a corner the morning I overheard one of the new mixed squads chatting together in the freshly repainted mess hall instead of splitting into two separate groups as they’d tended to do in the beginning, and exulting over their higher place in the rankings than a rival platoon. These days, I’m told, ‘Cain’s round’ is a cherished tradition in the 597th, and the competition for the extra ration of ale still hotly contested. All in all, I suppose there are worse things to be remembered for.

  The one problem we still had to resolve, of course, was the matter of those responsible for the riots in the first place. Kelp and Trebek were for it, there was no doubt about that, along with a handful of others who had been positively identified as responsible for the worst of the deaths and injuries. But for the time being, I’d put off the question of punishment. The wholesale reforms I’d instigated, and the subsequent improvement in morale, were still fragile, and I didn’t dare risk it by ordering executions.

  So I did what any sensible man in my position would have done; dragged my feet under the pretext of carrying out a thorough investigation, kept the defaulters locked away where, with any luck, most of their comrades would forget about them in the general upheaval, and hoped something would turn up. It was a good plan, and it would have worked too, at least until we arrived in a warzone somewhere and I could quietly return them to a unit or have them transferred away with no one any the wiser, if it hadn’t been for my good friend Captain Parjita.

  Technically, of course, he was well within his rights to demand copies of all the reports I’d been compiling, and I hadn’t thought there was any harm in letting him have them. What I’d been forgetting was that the Righteous Wrath wasn’t just a collection of corridors, bunkrooms, and training bays; it was his ship, and that he was the ultimate authority aboard. Two of the dead had been his provosts, after all, and he wasn’t about to sit back and let the perpetrators get away with it. He wanted a full court-martial of the guilty troopers while we were still on board, and he could make sure they were punished to his satisfaction.

  ‘I know you want to be thorough,’ he said one evening, as we set up the regicide board in his quarters. ‘But frankly, Ciaphas, I think you’re overdoing it. You already know who the guilty parties are. Just shoot them and have done with it.’

  I shook my head regretfully. ‘But what would that solve?’ I asked. ‘Would it bring your men back to life?’

  ‘That’s not the point.’ He held out both fists, concealing playing pieces. I picked the left, and found I was playing blue. A minor tactical disadvantage, but one I was sure I could overcome. Regicide isn’t really my game, to be honest – give me a tarot deck and a table full of suckers with more money than sense any day – but it passed the time pleasantly enough. ‘There really can’t be any other verdict. And every day you delay just leaves the cowardly scum cluttering up my brig, eating my food, breathing my air...’ He was getting quite emotional. I began to suspect that there had been more than a simple line of command relationship between him and one of the dead provosts.[5]

  ‘Believe me,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing I’d like better than to draw a line under this whole sorry affair. But the situation’s complicated. If I have them shot the whole regiment could unravel again. Morale’s just starting to recover.’

  ‘I appreciate that.’ Parjita nodded. ‘But that’s not my problem. I’ve got a crew to think about, and they want to see their comrades avenged.’ He made his opening move.

  ‘I see.’ I moved one of my own pieces, playing for time in more senses than one. ‘Then it’s clearly long past time that justice was served.’

  ‘Are you insane?’ Kasteen asked, looking at me across the desk, and trying to ignore the hovering presence of Jurgen, who was shuffling some routine reports I couldn’t be bothered to deal with. ‘If you condemn the defaulters now, we’ll be right back where we started. Trebek’s very popular with the...’ she shot a quick glance at Broklaw, seated next to her, and overrode the remark she’d been about to make. ‘With some of the troopers.’

  ‘The same goes for Kelp.’ Broklaw moved quickly to back her up. Exactly the reaction I’d been hoping for; now the regiment was beginning to function properly, Kasteen and Broklaw had begun to slip into their roles of commander and executive officer as smoothly as if the bad feeling between them had never existed. Well, up to a point, anyway; there was still an air of strained politeness between them occasionally, which betrayed the effort, but they were well on the way. And to be honest it was far more than I could have hoped for when I stepped off the shuttle.

  ‘I agree,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Jurgen.’ My aide had appeared at my shoulder with a pot of tanna leaf tea, as was his habit whenever I was in my office at this time of the morning. ‘Could you get another couple of bowls?’

  ‘Of course, commissar.’ He shuffled away as I poured my own drink, and pushed the tray to the side of my desk. The warm, aromatic steam relaxed me as it always did.

  ‘Not for me, thank you,’ Broklaw said hastily as Jurgen returned, a fresh pair of teabowls pinched together by a grubby finger and thumb on the inside of the rims. Kasteen blenched slightly but accepted a drink anyway. She kept it on the desk in front of her, picking it up from time to time to punctuate her side of the conversation, but never quite getting round to taking the first sip. I was quietly impressed. She’d have made a good diplomat if she hadn’t been so honest.

  ‘The problem is,’ I went on, ‘that Captain Parjita is the ultimate authority aboard this ship, and he’s well within his rights to insist on a court martial. If we don’t let him have one he’ll just invoke his command privilege and have Kelp and the others shot anyway. And we simply can’t let that happen.’

  ‘So what do you suggest?’ Kasteen asked, replacing the teabowl after another almost-sip. ‘Regimental discipline is supposed to be your responsibility, after all.’

  ‘Precisely.’ I took a sip of my own tea, savouring the bitter aftertaste, and nodded judiciously. ‘And I’ve been able to convince him that I can’t have that authority undermined if we’re to become a viable fighting unit.’

  ‘You’ve got him to agree to some kind of compromise?’ Broklaw asked, grasping the point at once.

  ‘I have.’ I tried not to sound too smug. ‘He can have his court martial, and run it himself under naval regulations. But once they’re found guilty, they’ll be turned over to the Commissariat for sentencing.’

  ‘But that takes us right back to where we were before,’ Kasteen said, clearly puzzled. ‘You have them shot, and discipline goes to the warp. Again.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ I said, taking another sip of tea. ‘Not if we’re careful.’

  I’ve seen more than my fair share of tribunals over the years, even been in front of them on occasion, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s this; it’s easy to get the result you want out of them. The trick is simply to state your case as clearly and concisely as possible. That, and making damn sure the members of it are on your side to begin with.

  There are a number of ways of ensuring that this is the case. Bribery and threats are always popular, but generally to be avoided, especially if you’re likely to attract inquisitorial attention as they’re better at both and tend to resent other people resorting to their methods.[6] Besides, that sort of thing tends to leave a residue of bad feeling which can come back to haunt you later on. In my experience it’s far more effective to make sure that the other members of the panel are honest, unimaginative idiots with a strong sense of duty and a stronger set of prejudices you can rely on to deliver the result that you want. If they think you’re a hero, and hang on your every word, so much the better.

  So when Parjita announced his verdict of guilty on all charges, and turned to me with a self-satisfied smirk, I had my strategy worked out well in advance. The courtroom – a hastily converted wardroom generally used by the ship’s most junior officers – went silent.

  There were five troopers in the dock by the time the trial had begun; far fewer than Parjita had wanted, but in the interests of fairness and damage limitation I had managed to persuade him to let me deal summarily with most of the outstanding cases. Those guilty of more minor offences had been demoted, flogged, or assigned to latrine duty for the foreseeable future and safely returned to their units, where, in the unfathomable processes of the trooper’s mindset, I had somehow become the embodiment of justice and mercy. This had been helped along by a little judicious myth-making among the senior officers, who had let it be known that Parjita was hellbent on mass executions and that I had spent the past few weeks exerting every iota of my commissarial authority in urging clemency for the vast majority, finally succeeding against almost impossible odds. The net result, aided no end by my fictitious reputation, was that a couple of dozen potential troublemakers had been quietly integrated back into the roster, practically grateful for the punishments they’d received, and morale had remained steady among the rank and file.

  The problem now facing me was that of the hardcore recidivists, who were undoubtedly guilty of murder or its attempt. There were five of them facing the courtroom now, wary and resentful.