Chaplain Gerataus, having had a similar idea to Agentha, was already in that section and, after relieving her of several of her most pertinent star charts, took his leave along with a number of dusty tomes of indeterminate age.
The battle-brother who had been ordered to watch over her did not take kindly to lugging armfuls of books from the archive to the her cabin but, remembering that the Castellan had ordered him to aid the Sister Dialogus, grudgingly relented. Now, safely within the four metal walls that had been home for the past eighteen months, Agentha was deep into the task of identifying the world whose dust belt they were now sheltering in.
Agentha’s skillset was firmly in the realms of the linguistic, but two decades of ten-hour days spent studying with the order had conditioned her for research, and after the simple matter—for her at least—of deciphering the keys to the star charts, she had begun to narrow her search down to a handful of sub-sectors in this region which contained worlds similar to the one below. Her initial hopes that it was a planet called Culchare was dashed when further research proved that world had been destroyed entirely during the Great Heresy. Other promising candidates soon fell by the wayside: Jindran—only discovered four thousand years ago; Osiris—destroyed by the Inquisition; Durmian VII—its surface of boiling sulphur was completely unlike like the inert world below.
For hours Agentha referenced and cross-referenced, eliminating many worlds from her study but coming no closer to the identity of the planet. When her final long shot—that the world may have shifted orbit in the intervening millennia—didn’t pay off, she slumped over the charts on the table, utterly exhausted. She rubbed her eyes and contemplated unpacking her bedroll for some much-needed sleep, but could not bring herself to do so. Castellan Kaleb was only indulging her for as long as they were stopped for repairs. As soon as the warp drive, shields and weapons systems were functioning again, they would bring the foul xenos to battle, then be on their way. The signal would be lost, possibly forever. She had only one chance and needed to make every minute count. If only it were like deciphering a new language...
And that’s when it struck her.
Being careful not to disturb the thick layer of charts coating the table, she moved over to the door of the chamber and pulled hard on the lever that activated the lock. She swung it open and poked her head out into the gangway. There, exactly where she had left him many hours earlier, was the Black Templar who had escorted her to the archive.
“Beg your pardon, my lord,” she said with mock timidity. “Is your armour’s vox keyed into the ship’s?”
“It is. Why do you need to know?”
“I’d like you to ask the Castellan something, please. It’s to do with my research.”
The Black Templar paused for a moment, contemplating. “Very well. What do you need to ask him?”
“It’s regarding the dust belt. I need him to sweep it with the auspex and let me know its composition.”
The Black Templar hailed the Castellan and after relaying Agentha’s message there was an awkward pause while they both awaited the response.
“Very well, I’ll let her know,” the Space Marine said eventually, breaking the silence. “The Castellan doesn’t quite understand it. He had expected the auspex to return readings of naturally occurring rock and minerals, but the dust belt is comprised entirely of man-made alloys and materials. He says that if you can offer an explanation, I’m to escort you to the bridge immediately.”
“If you could give me just a little while longer, I’m sure I’ll have all the answers the Castellan requires, and more.” The Black Templar nodded and Agentha retreated once more into her chamber.
It was just as she’d suspected. Just as languages evolved and developed, so too had this world. Where languages gained new words over time, this planet had gained its dust belt. The fact that it was comprised of man-made materials strongly suggested that a space battle had taken place around this planet at some point. If Imperial forces had been here during the Great Crusade, then it was probable that it had been fought more than ten thousand years ago.
She carefully removed the top few layers of star charts from the table and began to reassess the maps she’d discounted early on in her studies. If the battle had been as vast as she imagined, then once she discovered the name of the planet, finding out more about it should be a relatively straightforward task.
Carefully moving aside a brittle, yellowed parchment she unveiled a hand-drawn chart that had started to develop brown patches on its mottled surface. Gently moving her finger over the lines and circles denoting worlds and long-forgotten routes, her eyes widened as she found the name of the tomb world the Black Templars and Executioners had so recently cleansed. Hurriedly, she traced a line to the galactic east and her finger came to rest on the tiny dark circle that indicated the world below.
And once she knew the name of that world, she needed no book to discover exactly what had happened here. She already knew.
The quiet of the bridge had given way to the noise of activity during Agentha’s hours of study, and as her Black Templars escort led her in, only the Castellan and Chaplain paid her any heed. The repairs to the Inevitable Retribution were almost complete, and systems were being checked and rechecked in preparation for the counterattack against the eldar pirates.
“It would seem you are too late, Sister. Chaplain Gerataus has already solved the riddle of our mystery transmission.”
“With the correct charts, it was a simple task to identify this world and the matter of mere minutes to cross-reference the relevant tomes in our archive,” the Chaplain began.
Yes, and if I’d had access to that material then we would have all been standing here having this discussion a lot sooner. Agentha considered vocalising her thoughts but prudence and survival instinct won out.
“The world we orbit is Remonora Majoris, one of the many planets brought to compliance by the Emperor himself during the Great Crusade,” Gerataus continued. “His fleet arrived here to find a sophisticated human culture that had persisted through Old Night but, bereft of the Emperor’s benevolence and rule, had degenerated into a debauched society that readily embraced depravity and sought personal gratification above all else.”
“Yes, but—” Agentha attempted to interject. Gerataus simply ignored her.
“After the Emperor’s initial communications with the world were rebuffed, He chose to enlighten them in the ways of the Imperium. To urge the people of Remonora Majoris to step off their path to damnation and expose them to the Imperial Truth. For two entire days, the iterators of His fleet broadcast to the planet but to no avail. So caught up were they in the pursuit of pleasure that their eyes had been blinded to the obvious and so, when it was clear that Remonora would not come to compliance willingly, the Emperor Himself addressed the population.”
“But that’s not—”
Gerataus once again ploughed through Agentha’s interruption.
“He urged them to see sense and offered to show them mercy. ‘Become one again with mankind or suffer its wrath,’ he told them, but still they did not listen and thus that wrath became manifest. With unswerving fury, Imperial forces landed and put an end to the perverted ways of Remonora Majoris. The spaceports filled with those trying to flee the Emperor’s judgment, but the instant their craft broke from the atmosphere, the weapons of the fleet were brought to bear on them and this...” He swung an arm towards the occulus, gesturing at the dust belt. “This was the result. A graveyard of the impious.”
“Please—”
Gerataus was no longer registering her presence, let alone her words.
“In less than a day, Remonora Majoris was brought to compliance and took its place in the Imperium, while the Emperor departed to carry out His great work and bring yet more worlds back into to the fold and under His protection.” The Chaplain moved towards the vox-array. “Ten thousand years ago, this was the site of a great Imperial victory, and today it shall be so once more. On that day, t
he sons of the Emperor went to war with His voice ringing in their ears, and so too shall we!”
He wrenched the headset from the vox and the speakers kicked in allowing the sound of the iterator’s voice to once again fill the bridge. He turned to Agentha, finally acknowledging her. “Your work here is done, girl, and your efforts are... noted. Brother Atreus will escort you back to your chamber. We will summon you when we find a suitable planet upon which to set you down so that you my seek passage back to your order.” He turned to speak to the Castellan.
“You’re wrong,” Agentha said, clearly and calmly.
Gerataus slowly turned to regard her, his augmetic eyes burning like balefire.
“You’re wrong,” she repeated.
Impossibly swiftly, the Chaplain advanced on the Sister Dialogus, but Castellan Kaleb loomed in front of her, barring Gerataus’s way. Kaleb held up a palm in placation. “Let us listen to what the Sister has to say. She is on this mission for her expertise and it would be churlish of us to dismiss her out of hand.”
The Chaplain’s gaze bore through the Castellan. “Very well,” he said. The Castellan nodded at Agentha to share her thoughts.
“My lord’s research was very thorough and, in the main, highly accurate,” she began.
“Of course it was. My sources date back to the years immediately following the Great Heresy. They are as accurate as if I stood there and witnessed the events myself.”
The Castellan once again raised his palm, this time to impede the Chaplain’s tongue.
Agentha cleared her throat. The date of your source is its very problem. In the years following the Warmaster’s betrayal, millions of books and documents were either destroyed or put beyond reach because they told of the heroic acts that the Traitor Legions had once performed for the Emperor and the glory they brought upon his name. Any work or text that venerated a Traitor Legion or fallen primarch was expunged and history was either erased or altered to match the new Imperial Truth, the new version of history built upon the ashes of betrayal.
“Lies and heresy! Show me the nearest torpedo tube and let us be done with this wretch’s untruths. How could she possibly know all this?” The Chaplain’s ire was up.
“I know this because I have translated and transcribed such documents. Although the overwhelming majority were put to flame many thousands of years ago, from time to time one will surface in the personal effects of a heretic, or buried deep beneath the ruins of a long forgotten city. When they do, it is the task of the Order of the Fractured Cipher to interpret them so that our masters within the Ecclesiarchy can determine the fate of the text.”
“That is all well and good, Sister, but why do you believe that the Chaplain is wrong?” The Castellan was still strategically placed between Gerataus and Agentha.
“I know that the Chaplain is wrong because one of my first duties upon ascension to the Sisterhood was to translate a manuscript detailing the pacification of Remonora Majoris. It was written by a scribe who accompanied the sixteenth Legion during the Great Crusade and was found upon the wreck of a vessel formerly belonging to that Legion.” She pushed her eyeglasses back up the bridge of her nose. “When the iterator on that broadcast stops speaking—in, by my estimate, about fifteen minutes, Terran standard—it will not be the voice of the Emperor that you hear. It will be the voice of Horus.”
The Chaplain lunged forwards, but the Castellan thrust his palm against Gerataus’s chest and shoved him back. He looked ready to pounce once again, but the voice of the ship’s captain cut through the tension.
“My lords, the xenos craft are currently passing overhead, carrying out a sensor sweep. If we strike now then we would have surprise as our advantage.”
“How close to full operational capacity are we?” asked the Castellan, his gaze still fixed upon Gerataus.
“Warp drive is functioning again, shields at eighty per cent. Bombardment cannon is still under repair but all other weapon systems are online.”
The Castellan took no more than a few seconds to assess the situation before answering. “Captain. Bring the Inevitable Retribution out of orbit and let us avenge the loss of the Executioners and Guillotine with the blood of our enemies.”
The noise of activity rose as the bridge crew busied themselves for battle, almost drowning out the woman’s voice emanating from the vox. Gerataus finally turned from Agentha and strode over to the vox-array. He forcefully spun one of the dials all the way to the right and the iterator’s voice rose in volume to an uncomfortable level. “Come. Let us go to battle knowing that soon we will be blessed by the voice of the Emperor!”
The Inevitable Retribution burst from the dust belt of Remonora Majoris like a leviathan from the deep, its prow breaking the surface and showering its hull in the debris of long-destroyed spacecraft. Caught unawares, two of the sleek eldar craft found themselves directly in the strike cruiser’s line of fire and soon became yet more celestial flotsam orbiting the world below. The remaining xenos vessels altered their courses and swung back around, stabbing lances of energy weapons discharge heralding their path, but bouncing futilely from the Inevitable Retribution’s shields. With the element of surprise on the Black Templars’ side, the battle was taking a very different course this time.
On the bridge, the iterator’s voice was reaching a crescendo, at a volume so great that the sound of alien weapons fire hitting the shields was barely audible. Through the occulus, Agentha watched as another eldar ship was torn apart by the weapons batteries of the spacefaring fortress, the darkness of space illuminated by the orange bloom of explosions. She saw two of the xenos ships peel off from the main formation and target the bridge of the strike cruiser. The first was shot down and tumbled away into the void, but the second was helmed by a pilot of some skill. The small craft jinked and swerved, deftly avoiding incoming fire while all the time keeping its weapons targeted on the bridge. The shields held, and as the eldar marauder grew overconfident, the Inevitable Retribution’s guns found their mark, shearing a wing from the alien ship. Even with his doom imminent, the pilot kept true to his course and in one final act of defiance attempted to ram the bridge with his ailing craft.
“Shields full forward!” the captain shouted across the bridge.
The eldar ship exploded against a wall of energy. Agentha had to cover her eyes, such was the glare from the blast, and when her vision returned, she saw that more enemy craft had peeled away from the main formation, emboldened by their comrade’s actions.
“What do we have left in the shields, captain?” the Castellan barked, struggling to be heard over the sound of klaxons and the voice of the iterator.
“That hit took a lot out of us. Down to under forty per cent.”
All of the Inevitable Retribution’s forward-facing weapons opened up at once, putting a wall of fire between it and the eldar raiders. More of the alien craft perished, but more still broke off from the main formation until all of the xenos ships were using their superior manoeuvrability to full advantage, striking swiftly before retreating beyond the range of the Black Templars guns. Another eldar ship took a direct hit, this one spinning away and barrelling into another of its kind.
Through the occulus, Agentha saw one of the smaller ships weaving around the debris clouds and weapon discharge, mimicking the actions of the earlier vessel which had so very nearly breached the shields. Castellan Kaleb saw it too.
“All gunnery stations, target your fire on the smaller vessel,” the Castellan commanded over the ship-wide vox.
Spears of orange and yellow energy lanced towards the small alien ship, but its diminutive size made hitting it near impossible. As it closed on the bridge of the Inevitable Retribution, one shot came close to scoring a direct hit, but instead of eliminating the onrushing craft all it did was scorch its hull.
“Brace for impact!” Kaleb ordered as the craft sped inexorably towards the rapidly failing shields.
The last thing that Agentha heard before the blackness took her was the
iterator’s speech finally coming to an end.
Agentha came back to consciousness to find a Black Templars Chapter serf dressing her head wound; it had reopened during the impact. Squinting, her eyeglasses having fallen to the ground after she blacked out, she looked out through the occulus at the blackened carcasses of eldar vessels hanging in the void. From the absence of activity on the bridge, and the lack of the alert klaxons, she presumed the Black Templars had won the battle.
But another noise was absent too.
The serf tied off the bandage leaving a few strands of her auburn hair poking out from beneath it, and took his leave. She rose to a kneeling position and began to pat around on the deck, attempting to locate her eyeglasses. As she did so, a giant shadow crept over her. She looked up, expecting to find Chaplain Gerataus, but instead saw Castellan Kaleb. His massive hand was outstretched and in his palm lay her eyeglasses, one lens cracked but otherwise intact. She took the proffered optics and pushed them snugly onto her nose.
“The signal? Did it—?” She began, but broke off when she saw where the Castellan was pointing.
There, off to one side of the bridge sat the smashed remains of the vox-array, Chaplain Gerataus’s crozius arcanum embedded in it.
Agentha looked up at the Castellan, who smiled down at her sadly. “Brother Atreus. Please escort Sister Agentha back to her chambers,” he commanded. Atreus nodded and was quickly by her side. Agentha readjusted her robes slightly and wiped her fingers down them, leaving red smears in their wake.
“And Sister?” the Castellan said just as she was on the threshold of the bridge. She turned back to see the Black Templar still wearing that same sad smile. “Please try and stay out of the Chaplain’s way for the rest of your voyage with us.”
Agentha simply pushed her eyeglasses back up the bridge of her nose and took her leave.
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