Garro glared at him. ‘How can you believe that?’
‘I know it, as I know Horus. We served alongside the Sixteenth Legion. There was much to admire about them. We share similar hearts, the same free souls resistant to those who would corral us, like your master the Sigillite and the so-called Council of Terra. Administrators and bookkeepers dictating the paths of warrior-kings?’ He cleared his throat and spat. ‘That shall not stand. The Legiones Astartes are masters of their own destiny. Horus will carry us to victory!’
‘So the White Scars have rejected the rule of the Emperor?’ Rubio asked the question Garro could not countenance. ‘Has Jaghatai Khan denied his father?’
A flicker of annoyance crossed Hakeem’s face. ‘No. Sadly, my primarch is still blinded by the Emperor’s lies. And many of my battle-brothers have yet to see the same truth I have. But they will, eventually.’ He held up his blade. ‘And if they do not…’ Hakeem let the statement hang.
‘The Khan will never go to Horus’ banner,’ said Garro. ‘You are deluded to believe that it could be so. Give up this insanity before it ends you, Hakeem. The lodges have tainted you, but you can still atone for what you have done.’
‘Repent, you mean? Like some religious heretic?’ Hakeem released a bellowing, cruel laugh. ‘I will not recant my words. I have set them in blood. My warriors follow the same path. The Daggerline’s crew follow me. Only you stand in our way.’ Hakeem lowered his sword, the tip touching the deck, and held out his hand. It slowly closed into a fist. ‘I would offer you the chance to join us, but I know that you would never do so. I see you, Garro. I see how you bask in the Emperor’s light as if it were some holy radiance. You will never reject Him. And if, when the moment comes, my battle-brothers amongst the Fifth Legion speak the same words, then they too will be put to the sword as Khorarinn and Rakishio were. Even the Great Khan himself, if he fails to kneel to the Warmaster, will not be spared.’
‘You are mad,’ muttered Rubio.
‘Am I?’ Hakeem’s grin returned. ‘We will see.’ The warrior’s words hung in the still air of the chamber, the moment stretching to breaking point.
Fittingly, it was Varren who gave voice in reply. ‘We finish this.’
The battle was blood and it was fire.
It was sword and boltgun, fist and helm. White clashed with grey. Blood jetted and bones shattered. The Imperium’s gene-forged warrior sons were turned against one another in a fight that only death could end.
And that end seemed certain, a span of seconds, minutes at the most, before the overmatched legionaries were beaten down and terminated by the superior numbers of Hakeem’s traitors. Nonetheless, Garro, Rubio and Varren fought with the full measure of their martial skills, never once flinching from the fight, putting aside the nature of their foes. This was the war in microcosm, the battle for ideology and fidelity become action. Each side believed that they carried the sword of truth, and with that weapon they were justified in the acts they committed.
Brother against brother, loyalist against traitor, rebellion against conformity. Ultimate victory would grow from a thousand small battles like this one, or else it would breed an eternity of waste and devastation.
Rubio was drawing into a small war of his own, fighting down a pair of White Scars renegades as they attempted to flank him. He released a surge of telekinetic force to blast them back against the bulkhead, but no sooner had he turned than another of Hakeem’s men was upon him.
It was Harouk, the Techmarine. A single augmetic eye glared at Rubio from the warrior’s sallow face, and arching up over his back, like the tail of an iron scorpion, a third machine-limb swooped down to bludgeon him. It ended in a heavy, sawtoothed claw that snapped open and clamped about his shoulder, contracting on hissing pistons. Rubio’s armour cracked and deformed under the bone-crushing pressure. In moments, the inexorable force would splinter ceramite and plasteel, grinding his bones and flesh into pulp. Gritting his teeth, he raised his hand and channelled a burst of psionic lightning from his fingertips.
The Techmarine took the full force of the mind-power and died screaming as the energy savaged him from within. Rubio shrugged off the juddering claw and cast around, ready for the next attack. As a new adversary came in to challenge him, he saw Garro and Varren nearby, side by side in the full flow of combat.
‘You can’t win,’ spat Hakeem. ‘Surrender, and I’ll grant you the mercy of a swift death!’ He engaged them both, crossing a paired set of curved power tulwars to meet their blades.
Varren advanced on the White Scars warrior. ‘You may have my life, traitor. I give it freely. You need only meet the price.’
‘Name it.’
‘You die first!’ The World Eater’s blade creased the traitor’s face and slashed across Hakeem’s eye, splitting it. But for all his fury, Varren was slowing. His wounds were many, and not even a berserker could go on taking such punishment without consequence.
‘Varren, raise your guard!’ Garro called out a warning, but even half blinded, Hakeem saw the opening and took it, crossing both his swords to slash at the World Eater’s throat.
Varren fell, and the killing strike came down after him. ‘You will not kill him!’ shouted Garro, and Libertas flashed in the air, blocking the blow before it could land.
‘Then you die in his stead, Death Guard!’ Hakeem roared, his eyes alight. ‘I’ll take your head as a gift for Mortarion!’
‘And I will end the shame of your betrayal, in the Khan’s name!’ His power sword blazing, Garro forced the White Scars renegade to retreat, fighting with the same unchained wrath that Varren had shown his enemies. He broke one of Hakeem’s blades in two with the violence of his blows, and the other he unseated, sending it spinning away. The fury of it felt worthy, it felt true.
Hakeem fell back, into the line of his warriors, his face streaked with crimson. ‘I grow weary of this blade-play,’ he grunted. ‘Bolters high! Take aim!’
The rest of the turncoat White Scars fell back, bringing their guns to bear.
‘Garro, Varren!’ Rubio roared their names. ‘To me!’ Garro turned to find the Codicier crouched over Khorarinn’s corpse, his hand upon the dead Custodian’s chest.
‘He can’t aid us, psyker,’ said Varren wearily. ‘We die now.’
Rubio shook his head. ‘You are wrong. Look here.’ Garro saw something in Rubio’s fist, pulled from Khorarinn’s belt. A rod-like device, webbed with a matrix of flickering indicator lights. ‘I told you there was another way.’
The warriors drew up, boldly facing the guns of the White Scars, and Garro fixed Hakeem with a thin smile.
‘I will wipe that grin from your face,’ snarled the traitor. ‘We will cut you down like the animals you are.’
‘Not today.’ Garro heard the high tones of energy crackling from out of the air around him. ‘You will shed no more loyal blood.’
Khorarinn’s teleport homer went active in Rubio’s grip with a flash. Sheets of emerald fire enveloped the three warriors, and in the blinking of an eye, they were gone.
No one aboard the battleship Nolandia had expected to see the legionaries again. Garbled transmissions from the Daggerline and Hakeem’s pronouncement had been enough for the shipmaster to reassume direct command. He was a loyal, if unimaginative officer of the Imperial armed forces, and he had no intent of fulfilling any orders other than the ones Khorarinn had left.
And so the Nolandia remained at station, her gun crews calmly and systematically exterminating every refugee ship that tried to flee, or fight back. Thus, the return of Garro and his cohorts was akin to death itself striding into the strategium. The battle-captain’s blood-smeared, smoke-darkened face was fierce and wrathful.
‘You will cease fire!’ Shock robbed the crew of immediate action, and Varren loomed over the commander, reeking of murder.
‘Silence those guns!’ The World Eater knocked the
shipmaster to the deck and finally, the lasers went dark.
Garro strode to the centre of the chamber. ‘Pass this to all decks, all crew. The Custodian Khorarinn was killed by agents of the Warmaster Horus. We have isolated the traitors aboard the frigate Daggerline. Gun crews are to rearm and make ready to fire, on my command.’ He threw the psyker a look. ‘Rubio. See that the astropaths are prepared for communion. I want all details of what has transpired here to be sent directly to the Imperial Palace. Malcador must know the truth of this before rumours can spawn.’
‘Aye, captain.’ Rubio hesitated. ‘What about Hakeem and his turncoats? They’ll try to run now, escape back to Horus and his rebels.’ He nodded towards the frigate, hanging in space beyond the Nolandia’s bow.
Garro did not answer him. Instead he gestured to the battleship’s master of gunnery. ‘Target the Daggerline. All weapons.’ The warrior hesitated, then beckoned Varren to him. ‘This choice is not mine to make, kinsman. Capture or execution. I will leave the method of Hakeem’s punishment to–’
‘Destroy them.’ Varren bit out the words and marched to the great oval portal at the bow, there to bathe in crimson death-light.
Garro was starting to think of the moon’s silent tower as the closest thing he had to a home. Given that the Somnus Citadel had been, for a time, as much a prison as it was his place of solace, that was a sorrowful reckoning indeed.
He had hoped that in his new mission for the Sigillite, he would find purpose. And he had, to a degree. But not the full measure of it, not yet. The light of events in the distant Kuiper Belt had thrown this into stark relief for the warrior. Garro was looking for a truth that he had yet to discover, an elusive certainty that seemed to recede each time his mind tried to frame it.
Where is this path leading me? He had no way of knowing.
‘And what happened then?’ said Malcador. He hesitated, glancing up at the Regent of Terra. His master studied him from beneath his hood, the details of his face lost in the shadow. But the eyes… The Sigillite’s eyes were always clear, always watching. Garro was as glass to him. He could hide nothing.
‘Hakeem was executed, along with the rest of the traitors. There were no survivors.’
Malcador nodded slowly. He had said little during Garro’s report on what had transpired aboard the Daggerline, only clarifying small points here and there as the legionary relayed the grim story. Just once had he shown something like a true reaction, at the description of Khorarinn’s death. Garro knew that it would fall to the Sigillite to tell the Emperor the details of how one of His trusted Custodians had perished.
‘Grave events indeed,’ said the Sigillite. ‘The loss of life is regrettable, but the safety of the Imperium was upheld. You served the Emperor well, Garro. My instinct to send you was affirmed. Had your… “Knights Errant” not been at hand, circumstances would have favoured the arch-traitor Horus.’
‘Regrettable?’ The word seemed almost an insult to the dead. ‘My Lord Regent, no ship in that flotilla survived the day intact. They came to us with hope and we met them with suspicion and death.’
‘These are the times we live in, Nathaniel.’ Malcador looked away. ‘The luxury of trust no longer exists. Each confrontation is a stone in the water, spreading out ripples that create new battles to be fought. In the confusion following Khorarinn’s death, when the refugee fleet splintered, a single ship was lost in the melee. It escaped detection and passed deeper into the solar system. I suspect that whomever was aboard it is an agent of the Warmaster. But I have already set other operatives to work on that matter.’
Garro silently assimilated this new information as Rubio approached, pausing to bow to the Regent. At the Codicier’s side was Varren, the World Eater’s expression morose and distant. His blood-spattered wargear had been taken from him, and now he too wore the same featureless slate-grey armour as Garro and the psyker. Varren’s power sword lay inert in its back-scabbard, the heavy brass grip the only flash of metallic colour upon him.
Malcador raised an eyebrow. ‘Your next recruit?’
‘It seemed fitting, Lord Sigillite,’ said Rubio.
Varren lifted his head. ‘Garro told me that your mission serves the Emperor’s will and punishes the traitors.’
‘In a way,’ Malcador allowed.
‘Good enough,’ said Varren. ‘My sword arm is yours, until the day dawns that I die or I run out of enemies to kill.’
The Sigillite inclined his head. ‘Then you are welcome within our ranks, Macer Varren. But I warn you… I warn all of you. What happened out there, what Hakeem did… You may well see the like of it again. The lines between loyalist and traitor are blurring, as the opposing forces in this war take shape for the battles ahead. Hakeem’s renegades are not the only turncoats you will face.’ He walked away, his staff tapping against the floor. ‘Even now there are conspirators walking the corridors of power, on Terra and the core worlds. Men and women, fools, dupes and zealots. They are paving the way for the invasion that must come. For Horus’ attack upon the Imperium’s beating heart.’
‘Show them to me,’ said Varren. ‘They’ll die.’
‘In time.’ Malcador nodded to himself. ‘All things will come in time.’
Garro studied the Sigillite’s unreadable expression, searching for some understanding of Malcador’s intent. He did not find it. ‘What do you wish of us now, Lord Regent?’
‘I have many missions for you to undertake, Captain Garro,’ came the reply. ‘And when they are done, I promise that you will pass full circle to the black roots of this bloody insurrection. But before that day, you will be my eyes and ears, my knife in the darkness. You will find these collaborators, and terminate them.’
Garro bowed his head and placed his hand on the hilt of Libertas, pushing away the shadow of something dark at the edges of his thoughts. ‘As you command,’ he said, ‘so shall it be.’
Part Two
THE SHIELD
Seven
The Phalanx
Stone man
Burden of duty
In the skies above Terra, the forces of the Imperium of Mankind were preparing for war. The birthworld of the human species turned beneath a haze of ash, the surface pockmarked by colossal city-sprawls and hive-plexes. It was a clenched fist of iron and stone, and from it rose spindly orbital elevator towers and the thruster trails of heavy transports.
The planet was ringed by platforms and way-stations of varying size and complexity, littering the low orbit and the gravity-null clusters of the Lagrangian points. Ships crossed between them like motes of mercury over black velvet, engine exhausts glowing. A shroud of ever-moving armour turned about Terra, constructs as large as continents drifting as if they were gargantuan metal clouds. Some were gunnery complexes, little more than free-floating weapons aimed outwards into the void, like cannons atop ancient castle battlements. Others were command-and-control facilities, staging posts. Shipyards and star-docks bristled with battle vessels of every make and tonnage, old hulls being refitted with new weapons.
Some orbitals were the private habitats of Imperial nobles and dignitaries, but even their exalted status did not protect them from the Order of Fortification. No one was exempt from the diktat that the Emperor had handed down. Terra was on a war footing, donning her chainmail and sharpening her blades. Watching. Waiting.
Out past the orbit of Luna, secondary and tertiary lines of defence were already in place. Fields of autonomous cannon-drones and sensor webs floated in the darkness. Asteroids dragged in by tenders from the belt beyond Mars formed the bastions of the Ardent Reef, the Hecate Shoal and other portcullis groups.
They prepared for the day they knew would come, the day when the sky would brim with the battlefleets of Horus Lupercal’s rebellion. The turncoat Warmaster had never let his gaze fall from Terra.
The planet was more than just the spiritual heart of the Imperium,
more than the capital world and origin-point of mankind. Pragmatic tacticians could say that a successful war against the Emperor might never even need to reach the light of Sol, but no one truly believed that it would not.
Horus would come here. This was his father’s house. If he did not burn it or take it for himself, then he could never claim that ultimate victory. This, the Emperor knew full well. And so He made ready.
The architect of the fortification was one seemingly born to such a task. Rogal Dorn, most steadfast and unswerving of the Emperor’s sons, primarch of the VII Legiones Astartes, the Imperial Fists. It was said that Dorn was the greatest master of defensive strategy in the galaxy, and that a stronghold designed by the Fists could never be breached. Horus would put that claim to the test.
Dorn oversaw the great reinforcement effort from his flagship and star fortress, the mighty Phalanx. The size of a small moon, it was forced to remain clear of Terra’s shipping lanes for fear that its great mass would exert a tidal pull on the lesser orbitals. Standing sentinel over the ongoing work of the defences, the star fortress was a grand artifice of gold. Ramparts and towers, cathedral-like halls and acres of domes covered its flanks. The Phalanx was not only the flagship of the VII Legion, but also their home, with room for hundreds of thousands of warriors and support serviles in its habitat tiers. Lines of military traffic and freighters dotted the approaches to the fortress, a complex dance of starships moving back and forth under Dorn’s supreme command.
Among them, lost in the mess of auspex returns and radiation back-scatter, a small shuttle-pod crept closer on stealth-cowled engines.
The ship was barely worthy of the name. No bigger than a Land Speeder, the shuttle-pod carried only a single occupant, a rudimentary drive system and auto-navigator. What other space remained inside the seamless, scan-resistant hull was packed with sensor baffles and reflex shield devices. Craft such as this were typically deployed by Imperial agents or the killers of the Officio Assassinorum. But in this instance, the passenger was of a markedly different intent.
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