by Dan Abnett
‘Garviel,’ he smiled.
‘It doesn’t do to keep him waiting,’ Aximand grumbled. Loken wasn’t sure if Little Horus meant Abaddon or the commander. ‘What were you two gabbing about? Like fish-wives, the pair of you.’
‘I was just asking him if he’d settled Vipus in,’ Torgaddon said simply.
Aximand glanced at Loken, his wide-set eyes languidly half-hooded by his lids.
‘And I was reassuring Tarik that I had,’ Loken added. Evidently, Torgaddon’s quiet heads-up had been for his ears only.
‘Let’s enter,’ Abaddon said. He raised his gloved hand and pushed the gold and crimson doors wide.
A short processional lay before them, a twenty-metre colonnade of ebon stone chased with a fretwork of silver wire. It was lined by forty Guardsmen of the Imperial army, members of Varvarus’s own Byzant Janizars, twenty against each wall. They were splendidly appointed in full dress uniforms: long cream greatcoats with gold frogging, high-crowned chrome helms with basket visors and scarlet cockades, and matching sashes. As the Mournival came through the doors, the Janizars brandished their ornate power lances, beginning with the pair directly inside the doorway. The polished blades of the weapons whirled up into place in series, like chasing dominoes along the processional, each facing pair of weapons locking into position just before the marching captains caught up with the ripple.
The final pair came to salute, eyes-front, in perfect discipline, and the Mournival stepped past them onto the deck of the strategium.
The strategium was a great, semi-circular platform that projected like a lip out above the tiered theatre of the flagship’s bridge. Far below lay the principal command level, thronging with hundreds of uniformed personnel and burnished aide servitors, tiny as ants. To either side, the bee-hive sub-decks of the secondary platforms, dressed in gold and black ironwork, rose up, past the level of the projecting strategium, up into the roof itself, each storey busy with Navy staff, operators, cogitation officers and astropaths. The front section of the bridge chamber was a great, strutted window, through which the constellations and the ink of space could be witnessed. The standards of the Luna Wolves and the Imperial Fists hung from the arching roof, either side of the staring eye banner of the Warmaster himself. That great banner was marked, in golden thread, with the decree: ‘I am the Emperor’s Vigilance and the Eye of Terra.’
Loken remembered the award of that august symbol with pride during the great triumph after Ullanor was done.
In all his decades of service, Loken had only been on the bridge of the Vengeful Spirit twice before: once to formally accept his promotion to captain, and then again to mark his elevation to the captaincy of the Tenth. The scale of the place took his breath away, as it had done both times before.
The strategium deck itself was an ironwork platform which supported, at its centre, a circular dais of plain, unfinished ouslite, one metre deep and ten in diameter. The commander had always eschewed any form of throne or seat. The ironwork walk space around the dais was half-shadowed by the overhang of tiered galleries that climbed the slopes of the chamber behind it. Glancing up, Loken saw huddles of senior iterators, tacticians, ship captains of the expedition fleet and other notables gathering to view the proceedings. He looked for Sindermann, but couldn’t find his face.
Several attendant figures stood quiet around the edges of the dais. Lord Commander Hektor Varvarus, marshal of the expedition’s army, a tall, precise aristocrat in red robes, stood discussing the content of a data-slate with two formally uniformed army aides. Boas Comnenus, Master of the Fleet, waited, drumming steel fingers on the edge of the ouslite plinth. He was a squat bear of a man, his ancient, flaccid body encased in a superb silver-and-steel exoskeleton, further draped in robes of deep, rich, selpic blue. Neatly machined ocular lenses whirred and exchanged in the augmetic frame that supplanted his long-dead eyes.
Ing Mae Sing, the expedition’s Mistress of Astropathy, stood to the master’s left, a gaunt, blind spectre in a hooded white gown, and, round from her, in order, the High Senior of the Navis Nobilite, Navigator Chorogus, the Master Companion of Vox, the Master Companion of Lucidation, the senior tacticae, the senior heraldists, and various gubernatorial legates.
Each one, Loken noticed, had placed a single personal item on the edge of the dais where they stood: a glove, a cap, a wand-stave.
‘We stay in the shadows,’ Torgaddon told him, bringing Loken up short under the edge of the shade cast by the balcony above. ‘This is the Mournival’s place, apart, yet present.’
Loken nodded, and remained with Torgaddon and Aximand in the symbolic shadow of the overhang. Abaddon stepped forward into the light, and took his place at the edge of the dais between Varvarus, who nodded pleasantly to him, and Comnenus, who didn’t. Abaddon placed his helm upon the edge of the ouslite disc.
‘An item placed on the dais registers a desire to be heard and noted,’ Torgaddon told Loken. ‘Ezekyle has a place by dint of his status as first captain. For now, he will speak as first captain, not as the Mournival.’
‘Will I get the hang of this ever?’ Loken asked.
‘No, not at all,’ Torgaddon said. Then he grinned. ‘Yes, you will. Of course, you will!’
Loken noticed another figure, removed from the main assembly. The man, if it were a man, lurked at the rail of the strategium deck, gazing out across the chasm of the bridge. He was a machine, it seemed, much more a machine than a man. Vague relics of flesh and muscle remained in the skeletal fabric of his mechanical body, a fabulously wrought armature of gold and steel.
‘Who is that?’ Loken whispered.
‘Regulus,’ Aximand replied curtly. ‘Adept of the Mechanicum.’
So that was what a Mechanicum adept looked like, Loken thought. That was the sort of being who could command the invincible Titans into war.
‘Hush now,’ Torgaddon said, tapping Loken on the arm.
Plated glass doors on the other side of the platform slid open, and laughter boomed out. A huge figure came out onto the strategium, talking and laughing animatedly, along with a diminutive presence who scuttled to keep up.
Everybody dropped in a bow. Loken, going down on one knee, could hear the rustle of others bowing in the steep balconies above him. Boas Comnenus did so slowly, because his exoskeleton was ancient. Adept Regulus did so slowly, not because his machine body was stiff, but rather because he was clearly reluctant.
Warmaster Horus looked around, smiled, and then leapt up onto the dais in a single bound. He stood at the centre of the ouslite disc, and turned slowly.
‘My friends,’ he said. ‘Honour’s done. Up you get.’
Slowly, they rose and beheld him.
He was as magnificent as ever, Loken thought. Massive and limber, a demigod manifest, wrapped in white-gold armour and pelts of fur. His head was bare. Shaven, sculptural, his face was noble, deeply tanned by multiple sunlights, his wide-spaced eyes bright, his teeth gleaming. He smiled and nodded to each and every one of them.
He had such vitality, like a force of nature – a tornado, a tempest, an avalanche – trapped in humanoid form and distilled, the potential locked in. He rotated slowly on the dais, grinning, nodding to some, pointing out certain friends with a familiar laugh.
The primarch looked at Loken, back in the shadows of the overhang and his smile seemed to broaden for a second.
Loken felt a shudder of fear. It was pleasant and vigorous. Only the Warmaster could make an Astartes feel that.
‘Friends,’ Horus said. His voice was like honey, like steel, like a whisper, like all of those things mixed as one. ‘My dear friends and comrades of the 63rd Expedition, is it really that time again?’
Laughter rippled around the deck, and from the galleries above.
‘Briefing time,’ Horus chuckled, ‘and I salute you all for coming here to bear the tedium of yet another session. I promise I’ll keep you no longer than is necessary. First though…’
Horus jumped back down off the dai
s and stooped to place a sheltering arm around the tiny shoulders of the man who had accompanied him out of the inner chamber, like a father showing off a small child to his brothers. So embraced, the man fixed a stiff, sickly grin upon his face, more a desperate grimace than a show of pleasure.
‘Before we begin,’ Horus said, ‘I want to talk about my good friend Peeter Egon Momus here. How I deserved… pardon me, how humanity deserved an architect as fine and gifted as this, I don’t know. Peeter has been telling me about his designs for the new High City here, and they are wonderful. Wonderful, wonderful.’
‘Really, I don’t know, my lord…’ Momus harrumphed, his rictus trembling. The architect designate was beginning to shake, enduring direct exposure to such supreme attention.
‘Our lord the Emperor himself sent Peeter to us,’ Horus told them. ‘He knew his worth. You see, I don’t want to conquer. Conquest of itself is so messy, isn’t it Ezekyle?’
‘Yes, lord,’ Abaddon murmured.
‘How can we draw the lost outposts of man back into one harmonious whole if all we bring them is conquest? We are duty-bound to leave them better than we found them, enlightened by the communication of the Imperial Truth and dazzlingly made over as august provinces of our wide estate. This expedition – and all expeditions – must look to the future and be mindful that what we leave in our wake must stand as an enduring statement of our intent, especially upon worlds, as here, where we have been forced to inflict damage in the promulgation of our message. We must leave legacies behind us. Imperial cities, monuments to the new age, and fitting memorials to those who have fallen in the struggle to establish it. Peeter, my friend Peeter here, understands this. I urge you all to take the time to visit his workshops and review his marvellous schemes. And I look forward to seeing the genius of his vision gracing all the new cities we build in the course of our crusade.’
Applause broke out.
‘A-all the new cities…’ Momus coughed.
‘Peeter is the man for the job,’ Horus cried, ignoring the architect’s muted gasp. ‘I am at one with the way he perceives architecture as celebration. He understands, like no other, I believe, how the spirit of the crusade may be realised in steel and glass and stone. What we raise up is far more important than what we strike down. What we leave behind us, men must admire for eternity, and say “This was well done indeed. This is what the Imperium means, and without it we would be shadows”. For that, Peeter’s our man. Let’s laud him now!’
A huge explosion of applause rang out across the vast chamber. Many officers in the command tiers below joined in. Peeter Egon Momus looked slightly glazed as he was led off the strategium by an aide.
Horus leapt back onto the dais. ‘Let’s begin… my worthy adept?’
Regulus stepped towards the edge of the dais and put a polished machine-cog down delicately on the lip of the ouslite. When he spoke, his voice was augmented and inhuman, like an electric wind brushing through the boughs of steel trees. ‘My lord Warmaster, the Mechanicum is satisfied with this rock. We continue to study, with great interest, the technologies captured here. The gravitic and phasic weapons are being reverse-engineered in our forges. At last report, three standard template construct patterns, previously unknown to us, have been recovered.’
Horus clapped his hands together. ‘Glory to our brothers of the tireless Mechanicum! Slowly, we piece together the missing parts of humanity’s knowledge. The Emperor will be delighted, as will, I’m sure, your Martian lords.’
Regulus nodded, lifting up the cog and stepping back from the dais.
Horus looked around. ‘Rakris? My dear Rakris?’
Lord Governor Elect Rakris, a portly man in dove-grey robes, had already placed his sceptre-wand on the edge of the dais to mark his participation. Now he fiddled with it as he made his report. Horus heard him out patiently, nodding encouragingly from time to time.
Rakris droned on, at unnecessary length. Loken felt sorry for him. One of Lord Commander Varvarus’s generals, Rakris had been selected to remain at Sixty-Three Nineteen as governor overseer, marshalling the occupation forces as the world transmuted into a full Imperial state. Rakris was a career soldier, and it was clear that, though he took his election as a signal honour, he was quite aghast at the prospect of being left behind. He looked pale and ill, brooding on the time, not long away, when the expedition fleet left him to manage the work alone. Rakris was Terran born, and Loken knew that once the fleet sailed on and left him to his job, Rakris would feel as abandoned as if he had been marooned. A governorship was intended to be the ultimate reward for a war-hero’s service, but it seemed to Loken a quietly terrible fate: to be monarch of a world, and then cast away upon it.
Forever.
The crusade would not be back to visit conquered worlds in a hurry.
‘…in truth, my commander,’ Rakris was saying, ‘it may be many decades until this world achieves a state of equity with the Imperium. There is great opposition.’
‘How far are we from compliance?’ Horus asked, looking around.
Varvarus replied. ‘True compliance, lord? Decades, as my good friend Rakris says. Functional compliance? Well, that is different. There is a seed of dissidence in the southern hemisphere that we cannot quench. Until that is brought into line, this world cannot be certified.’
Horus nodded. ‘So we stay here, if we must, until the job is done. We must hold over our plans to advance. Such a shame…’ The primarch’s smile faded for a second as he pondered. ‘Unless there is another suggestion?’
He looked at Abaddon and let the words hang. Abaddon seemed to hesitate, and glanced quickly back into the shadows behind him.
Loken realised that this was the question. This was a moment of counsel when the primarch looked outside the official hierarchy of the expedition’s command echelon for the informal advice of his chosen inner circle.
Torgaddon nudged Loken, but the nudge was unnecessary. Loken had already stepped forward into the light behind Abaddon.
‘My lord Warmaster,’ Loken said, almost startled by the sound of his own voice.
‘Captain Loken,’ Horus said with a delighted flash of his eyes. ‘The thoughts of the Mournival are always welcome at my counsel.’
Several present, including Varvarus, made approving sounds.
‘My lord, the initial phase of the war here was undertaken quickly and cleanly,’ Loken said. ‘A surgical strike by the speartip against the enemy’s head to minimise the loss and hardship that both sides would suffer in a longer, full-scale offensive. A guerrilla war against insurgents would inevitably be an arduous, drawn out, costly affair. It could last for years without resolution, eroding Lord Commander Varvarus’s precious army resources and blighting any good beginning of the Lord Governor Elect’s rule. Sixty-Three Nineteen cannot afford it, and neither can the expedition. I say, and if I speak out of turn, forgive me, I say that if the speartip was meant to conquer this world in one, clean blow, it has failed. The work is not yet done. Order the Legion to finish the job.’
Murmuring sprang up all around. ‘You’d have me unleash the Luna Wolves again, captain?’ Horus asked.
Loken shook his head. ‘Not the Legion as a whole, sir. Tenth Company. We were first in, and for that we have been praised, but the praise was not deserved, for the job is not done.’
Horus nodded, as if quite taken with this. ‘Varvarus?’
‘The army always welcomes the support of the noble Legion. The insurgent factions might plague my men for months, as the captain rightly points out, and make a great tally of killing before they are done with. A company of Luna Wolves could crush them utterly and end their mutiny.’
‘Rakris?’
‘An expedient solution would be a weight off my back, sir,’ Rakris said. He smiled. ‘It would be a hammer to crash a nut, perhaps, but it would be emphatic. The work would be done, and quickly.’
‘First captain?’
‘The Mournival speaks with one voice, lord,’ Abaddon sa
id. ‘I urge for a swift conclusion to our business here, so that Sixty-Three Nineteen can get on with its life, and we can get on with the crusade.’
‘So it shall be,’ Horus said, smiling broadly again. ‘So I make a command of it. Captain, have Tenth Company drawn ready and oathed to the moment. We will anticipate news of your success eagerly. Thank you for speaking your mind plainly, and for cutting to the quick of this thorny problem.’
There was a firm flutter of approving applause.
‘Then possibilities open for us after all,’ Horus said. ‘We can begin to prepare for the next phase. When I signal him…’ Horus looked at the blind Mistress of Astropaths, who nodded silently ‘…our beloved Emperor will be delighted to learn that our portion of the crusade is about to advance again. We should now discuss the options open to us. I thought to brief you on our findings concerning these myself, but there is another who positively insists he is fit to do it.’
Everyone present turned to look as the plate glass doors slid open for a second time. The primarch began to clap, and the applause gathered and swept around the galleries, as Maloghurst limped out onto the stage of the strategium. It was the equerry’s first formal appearance since his recovery from the surface.
Maloghurst was a veteran Luna Wolf, and a ‘Son of Horus’ to boot. He had been in his time a company captain, and might even have risen to the first captaincy had he not been promoted to the office of equerry. A shrewd and experienced soul, Maloghurst’s talents for intrigue and intelligence ideally served him in that role, and had long since earned him the title ‘twisted’. He took no shame in this. The Legion might protect the Warmaster physically, but he protected him politically, guiding and advising, blocking and out-playing, aware and perfectly sensitive to every nuance and current in the expedition’s hierarchy. He had never been well-liked, for he was a hard man to get close to, even by the intimidating standards of the Astartes, and he had never made any particular effort to be liked. Most thought of him as a neutral power, a facilitator, loyal only to Horus himself. No one was ever foolish enough to underestimate him.
