Lotara stood with Skane atop a slaughtered ore-smelter and looked over those of her crew and Legion gathered in the gloom, each of them waiting for her to speak. The first time they’d gathered, there had only been a few dozen of them.
She’d spoken then too, and it had come dangerously naturally to her. It had to be her taking the reins. She was the captain. If Lotara Sarrin, mistress of the Conqueror, was ready to abandon ship, they found it far easier to countenance doing the same. She couldn’t just be their ally. She had to be their leader.
‘The biggest gathering yet,’ Lotara said under her breath. At her side, Skane nodded.
Almost fifty World Eaters stood arrayed in rankless packs, many of them twitching or grunting at the tics forced upon them by the Butcher’s Nails embedded in their brains. Their armour joints snarled with each muscle spasm, as the servos and fibre-bundle cabling in their degrading suits of war-plate registered and magnified even the smallest motion. Power packs hummed aggressively enough to make teeth ache in their sockets.
The mortal crew gave the World Eaters a wide berth, standing in their own clusters and numbering over three hundred souls. Some were officers, some were slaves who would be useful for what was to come. With the power out in this district of the ship, the traitors met by torchlight and lamp pack, cutting the absolute blackness with beams of stark illumination across each other’s filthy and half-starved faces.
‘My friends.’
They moved closer, to hear Lotara quietly speak. Just like always.
‘It’s time to get off this ship.’
She spoke for almost an hour, outlining the details of her intent. At several points, Skane joined in with his halting tones, and other World Eaters and bridge officers – Guhuj among them – offered their own insights. Several others asked questions; she handled them patiently, meticulously, leaving no stone unturned and no possibility unexplored. Everything had to be precise. No practice runs, no second chances.
One of the World Eaters, Maruuk, asked the question everyone else had avoided, as if speaking a certain name would bring a curse upon them all. As a company captain, he was the highest-ranking legionary among the mutineers.
‘What about Khârn?’
Skane shook his ruined head. ‘Khârn won’t cuh-come. Khârn won’t luh-leave the monster’s side.’
That started more murmurs. ‘But once we move, he’ll know,’ Maruuk said. ‘He’ll know. He always knows.’
It made Lotara’s skin crawl, to hear of her closest companion being spoken of not as a man, or even a bloodthirsty warrior, but as a force of nature. What was worse was that she had no argument against it.
‘Khârn is n-not a concern.’ Skane was adamant. ‘So long as he… nnhh… knnn-knows nothing.’
‘Easier said than done.’ Several of the others nodded at Maruuk’s doubts. ‘We’ve kept our secrets so far, but once we make our move, Khârn and the others will scent blood in the water.’
Lotara cleared her throat, taking command of the moment once more. She met the warrior’s eyes as she spoke, brooking no further argument.
‘Leave Khârn to me. I’ll deal with him when the time comes. Everyone else needs to focus on getting to the evacuation points. We’ll only have one shot at this.’
III
‘…with gun-shattered steel
Sundering
Thundering
Drumbeats across a dance floor
Spreading across the heavens
A ballroom among the stars
Bathing its hostess in a million lights of pinprick fusion.’
The Conqueror roared its way back into real space. The warp drives whined into abeyance and the plasma drives shouldered the burden of propulsion alone, as smoky trails of dissipating soul-mist raked at the re-emerging warship. She trailed several of her brutal Ursus Claws, the ship-killing harpoons torn loose from their moorings in previous battles and now dragged behind her as she sailed.
All souls aboard felt the translation from the Sea of Souls back into the cold void; the ship juddered around them with a momentary flicker of switching gravities – and something in the Conqueror’s guts, which had once been the Emperor’s son, sent its rage vibrating through the vessel’s bones.
‘I think the warp eases its pain,’ Guhuj remarked, gazing at nothing with shadowed eyes.
‘His,’ Lotara corrected him.
‘Ma’am?’
‘His pain. It’s still Angron.’
Guhuj looked dubious. More than that, he looked at her with pity. ‘As you say, captain.’
Lotara let it slide. She was keying commands into the armrests of her throne, sending data-spurts across the length of the warship. Her will, to be carried out at once. Signals, in some cases, to awaken the cell to action.
Ahead of them, around them, there was nothing but star-studded blackness. For now, the Conqueror sat alone in space.
Lotara kept typing. Legitimate duty rosters had been arranged ahead of time, allowing the mutineers to be where they needed to be. Others had been falsified as necessary, to achieve the same goal. Sections of the ship were pre-sealed or unlocked as required, with repair crews and Legion squads diverted elsewhere. At her keyed commands, ship-to-ship hauler shuttles were being fuelled in the portside hangar bays – five in total, enough to carry the refugees from the mad ship across to their destination.
She watched an auspex readout of World Eaters squad leaders moving throughout the ship. The reading was almost hysterically unreliable given the degradation of the Legion’s wargear and discipline, but Lotara Sarrin worked with what she had. It was no different from organising a battle; the manoeuvring in three dimensions, arranging the pieces to move hither and thither, for some to cross paths and others to never meet at all. She played a game with squad disposition, ostensibly diverting those loyal to the escapees’ cause to where they’d be needed most.
Several World Eaters officers and three of her own subcommanders worked with her in unspeaking unity, directing the flow of personnel aboard the ship. Weeks of coordination, unfolding in a stream of quiet effort.
So far, so good.
‘Khârn.’ She spoke over a personal link, bound straight to Khârn’s helm vox. ‘Khârn? Respond, please.’
Nothing.
That was… less good.
Guhuj was watching her. She pointedly ignored him, trying a second time to raise Khârn.
Eighteen minutes later, the XII Legion frigate Bestiarius tore back into real space within the same astronavigational span, dropping anchor only an hour’s flight coreward. That was as close as any of the World Eaters fleet would come to the flagship, these days. It was a lesson hard-learned, involving no shortage of Legion boarding teams and massacres aboard allied vessels that had drawn too near to the Conqueror’s hull.
Officers reported the fleet-ship’s arrival with weary efficiency. Lotara’s stare drifted over the motley assortment of souls that comprised her bridge crew. Once they’d been the elite of the Great Crusade, a highly trained, precise regiment of crisply uniformed officers. They were merciless. They were vicious. They were the best.
And now? Half of the original crew were gone, not lost in battle with the Imperial foe but ravaged through the World Eaters’ riotous shipboard purges: when the warriors of the XII tore through their own vessel, howling and baying for blood, always for blood, never enough blood. If they couldn’t kill the enemy, they killed each other. If their gore-cravings couldn’t be met with battle, they turned to slaughter. Day by day, the crew diminished from execution, random destruction and – so it was said – being fed to the thing in the hold. The thing that had once been Angron; the thing that wallowed knee-deep in blood, stretching its chained wings high in the iron rafters, bellowing its fury through the ship’s metal bones.
Many of the bridge crew were missing limbs and had been biomechanically fused
to their stations out of naked need for their expertise. Far, far too many were dead and gone, replaced by junior officers or imprinted servitors. Once, Lotara would have pitted her beloved Conqueror against any ship in the Imperium, sure that she’d emerge victorious. Now she found herself hesitating to dwell on thoughts of Terra, dreading going into battle with her mauled and inexpert crew.
She thought of Tobin, dead on the deck. And Khârn, drenched in his blood.
She thought of Tobin, dead in her bed. He’d never even been inside her quarters in life, yet in death the Conqueror had brought him right to her.
‘Captain?’ called one of the vox-officers.
‘A moment.’ Lotara blinked to clear her thoughts.
The Bestiarius was early, but no matter. She opened a tight-beam pulse to the distant vessel and sent nine encrypted code phrases in succession, timed at prearranged intervals. Even the rhythm of the signal was part of the code. Any deviation would mean the plan was compromised.
Lotara keyed in the final code, then leaned forward in her dark throne. ‘Speak.’
‘The Bestiarius has translated four hours earlier than expected, but requests permission to bring aboard supplies at your convenience, ma’am.’
Serving as occasional granary for the rest of her fleet was one of a flagship’s less dignified roles. Usually supply ships and bulk cruisers would handle such mundanity, but all sense of normalcy had been abandoned in the fragmented Word Bearers and World Eaters fleet that had broken and run from Ultramar. All bets were off in the race to Terra.
The captain watched the moving hololiths as squads and armsmen teams drifted into, or out of, position. No turning back now.
Lotara looked up and nodded to the vox-officer. ‘Send word to the Bestiarius. Tell them we’re ready to transfer supplies.’
It was simple, as the best plans usually are. It went smoothly, as the best operations often do.
Lotara was one of the last to move. Almost everything else was already done. It had to be this way. The captain of a Gloriana-class warship couldn’t just get out of her seat and go for a stroll through her cursed, scream-soaked vessel on a whim. She had to make sure everyone else was safely away first.
Four of the supply craft were in the void, streaking towards the waiting Bestiarius. Only one remained. That was to be her ride.
Skane was amongst the few that lingered with her. Armed and armoured, he was one of only a handful of legionaries on the command deck, and he stayed close to her throne. This wasn’t an unusual level of devotion; the World Eaters were rightfully and righteously loyal to their flagship’s captain. Lotara Sarrin was a point of Legion pride. She’d earned the Blood Hand badge of honour in her ascension to command one of the most regal ships in all of the nascent Imperium.
‘A murderess,’ they called her, back in the time when they were all more capable of speech, ‘but our murderess.’
She rose from her throne only when her shift was complete. Skane stiffened as if waking, as did Maruuk, across the command deck. Lotara cleared her throat.
‘Major Thrallen, you have the con.’
Gaya Thrallen, a scarred veteran of almost six decades, inclined her head. ‘Ma’am,’ she acknowledged, taking the black throne that Lotara vacated.
Lotara strode from the central dais, the sound of her boots lost in the mess of conflicting sounds that always made up the busy bridge. Skane and Maruuk fell into step behind her, and the three of them moved as one.
The last shuttle was waiting, its ugly bulk bathed in the crimson glow of the hangar’s pre-launch lighting. All notations of additional supplies being dispatched to the Bestiarius had been explained away and easily justified. The administration wasn’t a problem.
Lotara, dressed in mechnicians’ overalls, walked just behind Maruuk and Skane as they made their way across the wide, soot-washed deck. She added what she thought was a subservient hunch to her posture, though she didn’t bother with the hood that would have hidden her features. Menial crew like hangar-techs and armament thralls belonged to a caste of servants and slaves that would never look upon their captain’s face outside of shipwide propaganda messages, and Lotara had never enjoyed giving many of those. She wasn’t worried about being recognised. If she was, Skane and Maruuk would take care of it; and if they didn’t, the sidearm concealed in her overalls could.
They were late. The cargo whale’s engines were cycling up, already breathing smoke.
‘Hold the gang-ramp,’ Skane voxed ahead. ‘Final boarders.’
‘We’re going to make it,’ Maruuk was murmuring to himself. ‘We’re going to make it.’
Lotara heard the click of compliance as the shuttle’s servitor pilot acknowledged them. Her heart was racing, thumping against her ribs; she felt as if she could hear it over the rising roar of the shuttle’s spooling engines.
Maruuk was right. They were going to make it.
The World Eaters were first up the iron gang-ramp. Lotara had a boot on it, feeling it shudder with every heavy step the warriors took ahead of her. Maruuk disappeared into the shuttle’s insides. Skane, however, turned around. He saw she’d frozen.
‘C-Cnnnnh… Captain?’
He reached out a hand to her. Beckoning. A broken man, a shattered warrior, offering his aid.
If she took another step, if she placed both boots on the shuttle’s gang-ramp, she’d leave the Conqueror’s deck. Maybe forever.
‘Cnh. Cnnh. Captain. Come on.’
Lotara looked up at Skane by the shuttle’s boarding door. She steeled herself, ready to take a step. She wasn’t sure in which direction she’d go.
‘Captain!’ Skane called. He pulled his axe free. Baring his teeth now, but not at her. Behind her. Across the deck.
Lotara didn’t look over her shoulder. She didn’t need to. She knew exactly who she’d see.
‘Betrayer!’ Khârn screamed from across the hangar. ‘I see you!’
Skane pounded down the gang-ramp, gripping Lotara’s arm. His face twitched and pulled, his mind at the mercy of the pain engine in his skull.
‘G-go,’ he said, blocking Khârn’s view of his captain. ‘Get to s-safety. He doesn’t knnnh-know it’s you.’
‘Skane,’ she said. ‘Skane…’
He didn’t hear her. Skane tore away, breaking into a run, boots striking sparks on the deck. His chainaxe revved in his hands. Khârn sprinted towards him, his axe doing the same. Behind Khârn, a row of World Eaters looked on, twitching with blood-need and thwarted slaughter. They bayed like beasts, as they always did in their Legion’s duelling arenas.
Scarce seconds later the shuttle’s gang-ramp started to withdraw, pulling back on its slow hydraulics. Maruuk, having reached the cockpit, had made his decision. He was making the most of Skane’s sacrifice, leaving with or without Lotara.
She tumbled from the gang-ramp, rolling hard, bringing herself to her feet on shaky legs. She had to get away from the launching shuttle; dying in the flare of its engines would be a death even stupider than the ones that had threatened her so far. The peace of that instant incineration flashed through her mind, but too late, too weakly – she was already running, fleeing that fate.
Engine wash, smoky and blurring the hangar with heat mirages, bathed her. It reminded her of the choking heat all those months before, when every drop of water aboard the Conqueror turned to blood.
Behind her, the shuttle blasted its way from the deck and roared into the void. Ahead of her, Skane fought Khârn, brother against brother.
Skane was a Destroyer. He was granted permission to wield the Legion’s forbidden weapons: the pistols with radiation-saturated rounds, the grenades that detonated with toxic miasma mist, the launchers that lobbed acid-bursting shells capable of eating through enemy armour.
He had none of his wargear with him now. His failing cognition and decaying manual dexterity made wielding th
ose weapons a dangerous trial. But he had his axe. An axe is an honest weapon, and Skane swung it with the desperate force of a warrior that no longer had anything to lose.
It locked, blade on blade, against Khârn’s own axe. The two chain weapons kissed with interlocking teeth, each trying to devour the other.
Skane knew he was dead. He threw an elbow that didn’t land. He tried a headbutt that didn’t connect. He landed a kick that barely moved Khârn an inch. The rotting weakness inflicted upon him by sanctioned weaponry, and the corruption of the Conqueror, had slowed him rather than elevated him.
Khârn backhanded him with enough force to floor an ogryn, rocking his brother back. Skane refused to fall, but it was too late for defiance to make any difference. Khârn followed his staggering kinsman, and bang, bang, bang went the warrior’s fist into the Destroyer’s unprotected, mutilated face. Bang, bang, bang. Reinforced bone gave each time, first with dry snaps, then with wet crunches.
Skane fell. He knelt, panting, his face miserable with blood.
‘I… will d-die on my feet,’ he swore.
‘Maybe.’ Khârn pulled his helmet free, baring his own scarred features. ‘But you’ll still die.’
Skane tried to stand. Lotara saw the muscles and tendons stand out in his neck, just as they’d done when he once had to struggle just to speak.
‘I n-never wanted to leave the Luh… the Legion. Just the ship, Khârn. Just. Just the ship.’
‘Hush now.’ A boot to Skane’s chest sent the Destroyer down to the deck for good. Khârn’s bloody eyes focused on Lotara as she drew near. He spoke through gore-pinked teeth. ‘Maruuk escaped?’
The Conqueror’s captain nodded. ‘You were late.’
Khârn’s armour snarled as he twitched with another muscle-shudder. ‘No matter. No matter. Hnnnh. All the ships are still in the sky. Hnnh.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Not tempted to leave too, captain?’
Lotara smiled, too. She didn’t reply. Instead she looked down, meeting Skane’s remaining eye, that single window of sense in the bloodstained mess of his skull. She saw the grief there. The pain at her betrayal.
A Rose Watered With Blood Page 2
