‘On the agri world of Bacchus, vile xenos beasts threaten the loyal citizens of the Imperium!’

As the narrator’s voice crackled into life, the panned shot revealed an Imperial citizen fleeing, dragging a child behind her. Their attire was not in keeping with Bacchus, for the image had been cut from a far older pict and crudely spliced into the more recent footage. The work was sloppy, either that of an amateur or someone who cared little for their subject or reputation.

The woman stumbled, falling just as the ork loomed behind her, its spear poised for the killing blow. She tried to cover her child with her body, even as the boy glared at the ork with undisguised hatred.

I paused the playback, the image freezing.

The footage presented some classic archetypes: the mother embodying noble sacri­fice, her child angry and defiant despite the xenos threat ably represented by the ork. I could see the intent. But the seams between the cuts were painfully apparent, noticeable to even the most dull-witted menial worker. The footage of the ork was genuine from what I could tell; the way its feet sank into the burnt-orange swamp would be difficult to simulate. Conversely, the woman had been deposited on a convenient stretch of rock in a crude attempt to disguise the pict-seam. She was beautiful in a restrained way, and I was sure I had seen her in a previous vid. Beware the Foul Mutants! perhaps, or All Heretics Will Fall.

‘Restore playback,’ I murmured.

The ork raised its spear, poised to impale both mother and child.

‘But the God-Emperor protects the faithful. Look to the skies!’

The narrator’s intransient optimism was grating. But at his words all three figures raised their heads, glancing upwards as if on command. Cue the roar of an engine, the pict zooming in on a distant spec hurtling through the sky.

The ork barely had time to raise its hand-hewn weapon before a las-bolt sheared off its head. It stood a moment, despite the absence of cranium, before pitching forward, the focus of the vid shifting to the mother and child. Both stood proud, her arms crossed in the sign of the aquila, her son offering a salute crisp enough to satisfy even the most stringent commissar.

‘No matter how craven the xenos or foul the heretic, we need not fear. The brave pilots of the Aeronautica Imperialis are our impenetrable shield!’

An aircraft zoomed overhead, the shot cutting to the pilot, who returned the boy’s salute even as his Thunderbolt fighter hurtled over the swamplands. The fighter’s top speed is over one thousand miles per hour, and the pilot would barely have seen the child, let alone been able to plant a tank-piercing las-bolt between the ork’s eyes. But here he was, finding time to make nice with the citizenry during his fly-by.

It was galling.