I'm re-reading the Horus Heresy, and this is my review of Heralds of the Siege , book 52 in the series. Heralds of the Siege is an anthology, consisting of several short stories, and I'm going to review each one. Duty Waits is the twelfth short story in the book, written by Guy Haley.
Placing this story right after Dark Compliance is a little stroke of genius. At the end of the previous story, after witnessing Horus summoning daemonic allies to lay waste to a "non-compliant" world, you might be tempted to think that the Imperium are the Good Guys™ of Warhammer 40k. Sure, the Imperium is an empire. Sure, they colonise planets and slaughter xenos for being xenos. But that's just the harsh reality of survival, right?
And then there's this story.
The story of Duty Waits isn't shockingly new at this point, but it serves as a gentle reminder that the Imperium of Man is an oppressive fascist regime. It's a simple story of a change. I don't know whether it's actually change or whether it's just change in the eyes of the narrator, but the point is that somebody thinks something has changed on Terra. Specifically, some Imperial Fists are tasked with what's actually police work. Simple crowd control. Shouldn't be a problem for trans-human soldiers, in theory. After all, these are men genetically designed for war, so herding a crowd of humans ought to be trivial.
Already it's sounding like a setup for a surprise attack from gene stealers, or the reveal that Nurgle is already here. But no, the task really is as simple as the pitch. There's a bunch of humans in queue for food rations, and it turns out that no food's been delivered today. Send in a few Imperial Fists to disperse the crowd.
In theory, the mere appearance of Imperial Fists should send the humans obediently wandering back to their hab units. But that's not how it goes. The humans are pretty concerned about why there's no food today, and they seem concerned that maybe there won't be food tomorrow. The presence of Imperial Fists is seen as an act of coercion.
True to life, the inevitable eventually happens. The Imperial Fists open fire, killing the humans they were created to protect. The humans are desperate. Some run, some fight back, a lot of them die.
Sadly in 2023, at least as a native of the USA, this story doesn't surprise or even horrify me the way it should. It's accurate documentation of a police state. When you train people to resolve conflict with death, that's the avenue they take, even if it is against the people they're meant to keep safe.
Some pretty serious questions can come to mind after reading this story. But keeping the story in-world, you at least have to wonder who the good guys are in Warhammer 40k. It's not the guy who summoned a daemonic force to slaughter the IT department. But it's also not the system that turns on itself and kills people for needing food.
That's Warhammer 40,000.
This story starts the "third act" of Heralds of the Siege. We've had stories about life on the front line, we've had stories about the forces of Chaos, and now we're getting stories about Terra and what it's having to do to deal with the oncoming threat. It's a good story, but it tells an intense and painful story.
All images in this post copyright Games Workshop.