The mutant shape on his pale skin could not be called a scar. That word simply wasn’t grotesque enough to encompass the abhorrent nature of the brand on the assassin’s flesh. It was, in some fashion, an eight-armed star. An octed, Haln had heard it called. But it was also a festering stigmata, ever-bleeding and raw, a cut that smoked rather than oozed, a monstrous and abnormal wound not just in the meat of the man, but greater than that. Haln instinctively sensed that the mark went soul-deep.
He shrank back, recoiling as carefully as he could so as not to show how squeamish it made him feel. Haln had opened the flesh of hundreds and never felt anything as base as the repulsion he experienced at that sight.
Mercifully, the assassin hid his horrible grace back inside the glove, eyeing him. ‘You have been here a while. How was that possible? They couldn’t send too many with the pathfinders, the scry-seers in the towers would read it…’
‘I came here through more conventional methods,’ Haln said, gripped by a sudden need to fill the air in the cramped cabin with anything other than the thought of that cursed mark. ‘My insertion was with a group of refugees… Previously I served my masters with disinformational sorties and proxy attrition. Then I was tasked with a direct intervention.’ Normally, Haln would never have voiced even a fraction of this detail to someone from outside the legion hierarchy, but he suspected that the assassin would never live beyond the completion of this mission to tell of it. He had swept the cabin and pronounced it clean of listening devices that very afternoon. The only person who can hear my words is a dead man walking, he thought.
‘On Terra?’ prompted the assassin.
‘Not at first.’ Haln shook his head as the room tilted, the Walking City clanking and heaving over some ravine far below. ‘I was put aboard a flotilla of ships running to Sol after escaping the rebellion…’ He had to remember to call Horus’ act a rebellion, not an insurrection or a revolt, as he did when speaking in the character of his cover. ‘It went… poorly. The Custodian Guard intervened and there were many deaths. But I was able to escape in a small craft and reconnect with our assets already in-situ.’
The assassin grimaced at the mention of the Legio Custodes and looked away. ‘Those arrogant, gold-plated wretches! I should like to kill one of them, under the gaze of all their cohorts. Just once. To remind them they are not perfect. Let them know there are better weapons.’ He glared up at Haln and the barely restrained violence the man had shown earlier was back again. ‘I want a target, do you hear me? I need it. There’s no purpose for me otherwise!’
Haln’s eyes narrowed. ‘I can’t just find you someone to murder, even in a place like this. Not in the way that you do it.’ He nodded toward the marked hand, the killer’s gun hand, and remembered the dead at the sanctuary once again. ‘It would be too risky. Traces would be left behind, too difficult to explain away.’
‘Then find me what I came here for,’ spat the killer. ‘Quickly.’
What the followers had made their church had once been a vast section of a sluice mechanism, a crevice between two large coolant channels that could direct waste water away from the atmosphere processors and into the air below Hesperides as dirty rainfall. Accumulated layers of rust and grime told Garro that the system had not worked for years, perhaps decades. This was borne out by the silence coming from the coolant pipes; nothing flowed in there. The whole area of the orbital plate was inert and largely abandoned, buried as it was deep on the floating city’s keel where sunlight never fell.
The church was suspended on one of dozens of gridwork deck frames, each of them layered atop one another in complex profusion. He made his way down to one of the lower levels and found a point to watch what took place overhead, and wait.
Above the legionary, the believers moved back and forth, none of them pausing to consider that an intruder had already found his way into their house. Once, he saw the believer who had escaped the thugs in the marketplace, heard him talking to his comrades about the dangers out there in the alleyways. While the specific threat of the bearded man and his friends had been removed by Garro, there were others that these poor fools were only vaguely aware of.
The best part of a day passed. Garro willed his body into a state of solidity, becoming static and unmoving as he lingered. He did not require water or food. His bio-implants were more than capable of sustaining him for months on the stored nourishment distributed throughout his artificial organs. He let his mind drift, absorbing the sounds of the believers at their worship. He listened to them as they quietly sang old forbidden hymnals, or recited pieces of the Lectitio’s texts. For the most part, though, they kept together in small groups and their conversations, no matter what aspect they wore, orbited around the same unpromising subject. When will the Warmaster come to Terra?
Then a voice Garro had not heard for years reached into his quiet mind and brought him back to the surface of full awareness.
‘Hello, my friends.’ The legionary raised his head to get a better view of the church’s dais, just visible through the holes in the floor plates, and there he saw an old man. ‘I’m pleased to find so many of you here.’
Once upon a time, that old man had worn the robes of a high Imperial iterator and he had spoken only of the Emperor’s crusade against idolatry, religionism and the plague of superstition. But since the evolution of one young woman into Sainthood, the man had become the greatest convert to a new understanding – the veneration of the Emperor of Mankind as a living god.
Kyril Sindermann clasped his hands together and bowed to the assembled group. Garro could tell by the creaking of the deck above his head that the makeshift church was filled to capacity, even though none of the attendees spoke louder than a murmur.
Despite his advanced years, Sindermann’s voice carried over them with the clarity born of zeal. ‘I know you are afraid,’ he began. ‘Of course you are. It is true, what many of you fear. We are on the edge of an abyss, and a step too far will send us to our end. Not just death, mind. Not the material ending of our flesh and bone, but of our souls. Our faith.’ He broke off, chuckling to himself. ‘There were days when I did not believe in such ephemeral notions,’ admitted the iterator. ‘No longer. My eyes were opened by the Saint, who in her glory, showed me a brief glimpse of the God-Emperor’s will… and the darkness He is ranged against.’
A ripple of apprehension echoed through the space, and Garro held his own counsel on the exemplars of that darkness that he too had seen.
‘The archenemy has a force of such great fatality at his fingertips,’ Sindermann continued. ‘And as we stand here and draw breath, it closes the distance to Terra. Inevitable. Inexorable. When Horus… arrives…’ The iterator stumbled over the Warmaster’s name, as if it were ashes in his mouth. ‘…there will be such horror. This will come to pass. The God-Emperor knows it, and by His wish so does the Saint and so do we. Know that I speak truth to you when I say we have gruelling days to come. The sky will burn and blacken. Death in manners undreamt of shall stalk the world.’
The crowd were utterly silent now, and even Garro felt his breath stilled in his chest by the old man’s steady, purposeful sermon.
‘Some of you question,’ said Sindermann, the deck rasping as he walked off the dais and out among the gathered followers. ‘You ask why we must face this terror. Why does He not leave the Imperial Palace and show His face, why does He not cast down the Ruinstorm from the sky and take the war to His errant sons? I tell you it is because even now, in the bowels of this planet, the God-Emperor fights on another front, in another war. A war that only He can wage.’
The legionary’s eyes narrowed. How was it possible that Sindermann could know such a thing? Garro had heard many rumours about the Emperor’s absence on the stage of conflict, but never anything stated with such certitude.
‘We are being tested, my friends,’ Sindermann was saying, his words echoing off the iron walls. ‘Tempered in these m
oments to become something greater for the coming battle. To be made ready for the advance of such chaos, we must be primed for it. We must grow to be unafraid.’ He took a long breath, and his tone became almost fatherly. ‘Doubts are not forbidden. Questions are not silenced in this chapel. Ours is not a faith that is so delicate that it cannot stand up to hard questions. That is why we swept away the old churches and the false gods during the Great Crusade! We erased every ancient, crumbling belief because they were weak. Their credo could not resist the test of a keen mind, or questions not easily answered. They asked for blind faith in something that could not be perceived, touched or experienced. We do nothing of the kind. Our deity lives among us. He can be seen, and in some small manner, He can be known to us!’
A few of the believers picked up on Sindermann’s words and called out in affirmation, and he continued. ‘We question, and we have answers. We emerge the stronger for it, and so we shed our fears.’ He paused again, and the room quieted. ‘I am unafraid because I have walked the path to reach this place and on that journey I have learned. Now I look to the road ahead, the road that leads to the edge of the abyss and see it for what it is. Not fate. Not some pre-destiny scripted by a phantom deity that puppets me like a toy. No. No!’
Sindermann’s voice shifted again, taking on a hard, defiant edge that seemed strange coming from the elderly iterator. ‘This is the duty we have! This is the path we are on! Resist! Resist and survive and resist again! For the God-Emperor of Mankind is not the engine of our future, no, my friends. We are the engine of His.’ The old man’s words rose to fill the chamber. ‘He empowers us and we empower Him! And through that unity, we will know glory!’
The church erupted in a cacophony of cries and applause, and for a moment even the legionary felt his spirit lifted by the power of Sindermann’s oratory. The decking above his head shuddered, resonating with the righteous power of the followers. That was why Garro did not become aware of the child until it was too late.
Beneath the shouting, he heard the clank of movement somewhere nearby, on the same underlevel. Moving as quickly as he could in the cramped space, Garro came about and found himself face to face with a small girl. The child had the delicate features and red hair characteristic of some Jovian commoner bloodlines, and her dirty clothes suggested she might be a refugee from one of the outer moons.
Her eyes were very wide and her face was pale with shock. ‘Wait,’ he rumbled, keeping his words soft.
Her scream was high and piercing, and it seemed to go on and on. How a little frame with such tiny lungs was capable of emitting so sharp a sound was beyond the legionary, and the girl scrambled away before he could reach her. Cursing himself for his momentary lack of focus, Garro pushed out of his hiding place and took two quick steps across the lower deck. The child vanished up towards the church proper, scrambling along pipes and through gaps that would barely have accommodated the warrior’s hand, let alone his body. Cries of alarm were spreading through the gathered followers, and he caught the sound of lasguns powering up. Clearly, the beliefs of the Saint’s followers did not stretch to pacifism.
There was no point trying to hold on to his meagre cover now it had been well and truly blown. Better instead, he decided, to use what Space Marines were best at. Shock and awe.
With a growl of effort, Garro launched himself upwards and bulled his way through layers of the metal deck, forcing rusted metal outward until he crashed out on to the floor before the dais. He rose to his full height, his face set in an imperious glare, casting a cold gaze over the followers as they stood terror-struck before him. In the front rank there were eight people with short-frame Naval-issue beam rifles, and as one they trained their weapons on the giant that had risen into their midst.
Of the child who had raised the alarm there was no sign, nor could Garro see Kyril Sindermann. He guessed that the iterator had been rushed out of the chamber the moment the screaming started.
‘Is that it?’ said a frightened voice, from somewhere among the faces hiding behind the ranks of pews.
‘First Salvaguardia and now here!’ said another. ‘He’s come to kill us all!’
Garro raised his hand, but panic detonated like a bomb, and suddenly the crowd behind the followers with guns was fragmenting, some groups rooted to the spot, others flooding towards the hanging blackout cloths that were the entrance to the church.
The legionary read the faces of the believers before him and he saw the glitter of determination in the eyes of the one that would shoot first – a wind-burned woman with hair in tight black rows. Garro’s right hand was already snapping back to the hilt of Libertas with transhuman speed, running to a clock that was far faster than any unaugmented response. His tactical mind told him that he could put down these eight with only two cuts of the blade, killing outright at least half of them and leaving the rest to bleed out in minutes. Without his armour, the concentrated las-fire of multiple rifles at close range could gravely wound him. A lucky shot might even end his life.
But he was not here for battle. These people had been waiting for an enemy, and in his haste, Garro had presented that to them. No killing today, he told himself. Not here, at least. Even though this chapel was nothing more than a repurposed drain-way, it felt disrespectful to shed blood here.
In a lightning-fast flash, Garro drew the sword in a downward flourish that took off the front quarter of the woman’s rifle as easily as trimming a plant stem. She recoiled, staring at the sparks bleeding from the end of the ruined gun.
The sharp crack of superheated air sounded, and Garro hissed – more in annoyance than genuine pain – as a single laser bolt grazed his shoulder. He turned a hard glare on one of the other armed followers, a gangly dark-skinned youth who looked at his rifle as if it had betrayed him by going off on its own.
Garro’s unflinching gaze was enough that the youth dropped the weapon and backed away. ‘I am not here to kill anyone,’ intoned the legionary. ‘I was at… Salvaguardia, or whatever you wish to call it. The Afrik sanctuary. But I was too late to halt what happened there.’
The woman with the broken gun tossed it away, trying to recover some of her earlier courage. ‘Or maybe you did it. Maybe the Regent sends you and his phantoms to cross us off, eh? One at a time.’ She shook her head, her wary gaze never leaving his. ‘Men of the Legion, they don’t come to read the book. We don’t trust.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Garro told her. ‘The book… Its reach is further and higher than you can know.’
‘You need to go,’ she shot back, unwilling to listen to him. She knew – they all knew – he could end them, and yet they still stood against Garro. They were as brave as they were devoted.
He opened his mouth to reply, but a commotion at the back of the chamber stilled his words. He heard an argument taking place, and Sindermann’s voice raised in great annoyance. Suddenly, the iterator burst through the blackout cloths, shrugging off the grip of those around him as he went.
The old man took a few steps and stopped, his hand rising to his mouth as he caught sight of the standoff. ‘Oh, infinite. Yes.’ He came forward, an honest smile breaking out across his lined face. ‘Captain Garro…? It is you, isn’t it? Alive and well.’
What happened next was quite alien to the legionary. The iterator pushed his way through the armed followers and embraced Garro like a long-lost sibling – or at least, as much as he could given the discrepancy in their heights.
‘Do you know who this is?’ Sindermann demanded of the believers, some of whom were now warily filing back into the chamber. He threw a derisive wave at the woman and her armed cohort, speaking to them like they were disobedient children. ‘Do not court further insult. Put those guns away. This person is a friend to the Imperial Truth. He is always welcome among us.’ Sindermann’s manner shifted and briefly he was the great orator again, his words filling the air. ‘You look upon the face of Battle-Captain Nathaniel Gar
ro, and you should be honoured! He is a true hero, a rescuer! He saved my life, and that of the Saint… We would be long dead at the hands of the archtraitor if not for his fortitude and daring.’
Garro heard his name rush back and forth across the church in a wave of whispers, and the strange moment made his skin prickle. ‘Well met, Kyril Sindermann,’ he offered, then faltered over his next words. Now he was here, he was not sure how to ask the question that had been gnawing at him for months.
‘The last time you came to my chancel, you made a forthright entrance.’ Sindermann nodded towards the buckled floor plates. ‘And so again. You could have used the door, Captain.’ He smiled up at the legionary.
‘I… erred on the side of caution. Perhaps too much so.’
The iterator nodded gravely. ‘Zeun was right when she said that the Legiones Astartes are uncommon in these halls… but all are welcome. After a fashion.’
‘There are many among my kindred who would hear you,’ Garro told him. ‘If they could.’
Sindermann touched Garro’s hand and his smile returned. ‘They will. In time.’ He gestured towards the dais and an area beyond it hidden behind more of the heavy black drapes. ‘Come, my throat is parched and I need a drink. We’ll talk.’
Garro nodded, and carefully returned his sword to its sheath. As he turned away, he met the gaze of the dark-haired woman Sindermann had called Zeun.
‘You owe me a weapon, phantom,’ she told him. ‘You good for it?’
‘We’ll see,’ he replied.
Above the endless clanking tread of the Walking City, there came a sharp rapping on the metal hatch of the cabin. The assassin burst from the place where he had been crouched for the past few hours with such velocity that Haln almost drew his shimmerknife in shock. The killer had been so silent, so still, that Haln had begun to wonder if he had fallen into a slumber of some kind. Now he realised that the man had only been at rest, waiting for a target of opportunity.
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