by Unknown
'I speak only with respect,' said Shadrak.
'You have shown the Council precious little respect,' said Aan Kolver, the ClanFather of Ungavarr.
'Indeed, because you have warranted none,' said Shadrak. 'I speak with respect to our genesire.'
'Escort the captain from this place immediately,' said Vircule to Aug. 'He needs time to level his head and dull his tongue.'
'WHAT ARE YOU playing at?' Aug asked. Shadrak could feel the Iron Father's anger radiating out like a force field.
They stood on the caustic shoreline of the sulphur lake. Acid vapour swirled like battlefield smoke.
'What? We bite our lips now? Even now, in this predicament?'
'Sorrgol has no clanfather here,' said Aug. 'You shame us in the company of—'
'I shame you?' Shadrak shook his head. 'Is that really what matters now? The shame of speaking out? Fates above, we are shamed enough! The clan leaders are groping around, trying to recover something we have lost forever. By the time they reach a decision, we will be discovered and slaughtered. Or if they reach a decision, it will be the wrong one, and we will be slaughtered anyway!'
'We need unification, Shadrak,' said Aug. 'For morale alone.'
'I agree. But under one warleader, with one purpose.'
'One leader?' Aug laughed bitterly. 'Who?'
'You, perhaps?'
Aug spat and looked away.
'No one wants it,' said Shadrak. 'None of us. Not a single captain, not a single Iron Father. That's why the clanfathers have taken the lead. They are projecting a sense of security, of unity, through our blood heritage. A reassurance in this time of loss through the bonds of fraternity. But it's a group decision, so that no one shoul ders the burden alone. No one bloody wants it! That's why no one has stepped forward and called the rally around him.' He looked at Aug. 'No one wants to be seen as trying to replace the Gorgon. No one wants to replace Amadeus DuCaine. No one wants to be seen as that impertinent or disrespectful. I understand it.'
He paused.
'But we need to raise the storm again. No one wants the command. No one wants to appear so arrogant as to imagine that he can assume the primarch's role. But it's not a matter of want, or pride, or vainglorious ambition. It's a matter of necessity.'
'This talk will get you killed, Terranborn,' said Aug.
'No!' Shadrak snapped, pointing towards the monastery. 'That talk will get us killed.'
He lowered his hand. The augmetic graft had not fully healed and still ached abysmally. The violence of the gesture had jarred it.
'I have it on good medical authority that you can't graft on a new head,' he said.
Jebez Aug uttered a dry laugh. He shifted his fleshspare frame and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 'You don't need to be a medical authority to know that,' he replied.
'I'm not suggesting that anyone pretend to be the Gorgon. I'm not proposing that anyone presumes he can command as well as Ferrus Manus, or attempt to be such a master. I am simply talking about focus of authority. One mind, one will, one iron drive strong enough to compel us for long enough to…'
'To what?'
'Do what needs to be done.'
'Which is what? Survive?'
'No.' Shadrak looked out over the misted lake. 'You can't graft on a new head, but you can cut off an existing one.'
He turned to the Iron Father. 'We need to focus long enough to get Horus. To cut off his head. We decapitate the traitors.
We do to them what they did to us. We shatter them, and scatter them to the winds. We end this treachery.'
After a moment, he added, 'Then we can die, for all I care.'
EMBARKATION HAD BEEN ordered. Stormbirds and lifter ships rose from the surface of Aeteria and soared up to the waiting warships.
Shadrak had been posted to the strike cruiser Iron Heart. They were to escort the flotilla's flagship Crown of Flame.
Iron Father Aug gathered the officers of Clan Sorrgol while the ship prepared to make way. The clanfathers had instructed the respected veteran Aug to take command.
'I believe we have Meduson to thank for this,' he said.
'What have I done now?'
'Our clan has the weakest numbers after Avernii,' said Aug, 'so we have been told by the Council to absorb the overspill into our formations. We are to coordinate with the Salamanders and Raven Guard squads as they are brought aboard, too.'
'So we are bastardised while the other clancompanies stand more or less intact?' asked Captain Lars Mechosa.
'No one's intact,' whispered Shadrak.
'I'd ask you to watch your words, brother,' Augos Lumak said to Mechosa. 'You absorb my Avernii too. Do we make you bastards?'
'No, you make us fatherless,' snarled Mechosa. 'Where were the favoured Avernii at Isstvan? Saving the Gorgon?
Why, no! They were dying at his feet.'
'Damn your eyes!' Lumak cried, rising from his seat.
'Sit down, Lumak!' Aug shouted. 'Captain Lumak of Avernii! Sit yourself down! This clanunit is mine to command.'
'Then bring your foulmouthed dogs to heel, Iron Father!' Lumak snapped. 'If you expect me to recognise your authority, then you damned well better exercise it and put Mechosa in his place.'
'Captain Lumak—'
'Or I'll do it,' Lumak added.
'Oh, really?' replied Mechosa. 'I would love to see you try, you toothless cur.'
Lumak reached for his sword, but another hand clasped over his before he could draw the blade.
'Don't, Lumak,' said Shadrak through gritted teeth. 'I mean it. Don't.'
'Let go of me,' said Lumak, looking Shadrak in the eye.
'Yes, let him go!' mocked Mechosa. 'I yearn for some sport.'
'Do not unsheathe your blade,' Shadrak whispered into Lumak's face. 'Not in here. Not like this, against a brother.
Once it's drawn, it can not be put away.'
'You Sorrgol bastards,' growled Lumak, 'covering for each other, dishonouring the—'
'My loyalty to Clan Sorrgol becomes more frayed with each passing hour,' said Shadrak. 'I would rather cut it and cast off my chosen name of Meduson. I would go back to my Terran birth name. My loyalty is only to the Tenth, and to the memory of the Gorgon.'
'Then unhand me,' said Lumak.
'We're in the middle of a civil war against traitor Legions,' said Shadrak slowly. 'Is this really time to start another one, inside our own?'
He looked at Mechosa.
'Apologise,' he said, 'right now.'
Mechosa looked down and hesitated.
'Civil war is the greatest crime humanity has known,' Shadrak said to him. 'Brother betraying brother? The very thought sickens me. What about you, Mechosa? Or are you of that disposition too? Do you find it a matter of nothing to draw arms against your own?'
Mechosa looked up, his eyes burning brightly. 'Damn you, Shadrak,' he said.
'Already good and damned,' Shadrak replied. His grip on Lumak's sword hand had not diminished.
'I'm no traitor,' said Mechosa.
'Then stop acting like you're about to become one,' said Shadrak.
Mechosa cleared his throat.
'Brother Lumak, I apologise for my words. We have endured too much. Tempers are weak… Ahh, I make no excuses. There was no call for that.'
Lumak looked at Shadrak. 'Unhand me, brother.'
Shadrak released his grasp. Lumak let go of his sword grip, walked around the table and offered his hand to Mechosa.
'I would that all of Avernii had died, and more besides, if we could have saved the genesire,' he said. 'You were not there. You did not see. We did not shirk. We gave all we could. It was not enough. That fact will haunt me until the day I die, surrounded by the butchered corpses of traitors.'
Mechosa took his hand.
'I do not doubt it. I would gladly join you in that death.'
Shadrak sat down as the officers retook their places. His graft throbbed from the effort of keeping Lumak's hand in place.A thin thread of water
y blood sobbed from the cuff of his armour.
A FIST THUMPED on the outer hatch. Shadrak rose, rebinding the bloodsoiled wrap around his wrist. He was stripped to the waist, his torso and shoulders showing a hundred old scars. His flesh was inlaid with augmetic circuitry.
On his right side, his entire ribwall was an augmetic plate grafted to his fleshspare bone. That had been part of him since the Battle of Rust.
'Come!' he called.
His quarters were small and cluttered. Space was limited on the Iron Heart.
The hatch opened with a scrape of metal on metal, and Jebez Aug stepped inside.
He looked around.
'Your chamber is no better than mine,' he remarked.
'What do we need more than a deck to sleep on?' asked Shadrak.
Aug smiled. 'I sleep standing up.'
'Are we underway?' Shadrak asked. He knew that they were. He had felt the yawing slip of translation an hour before. His question had been a soft way of asking where they were going.
Aug nodded.
'I need a Hand Elect,' he said, cutting right to it.
To recompense Aug and Sorrgol for becoming a bastard clan, the Council had declared him acting warleader of the fleet under their uithority. In practice, this simply meant he was responsible for the clanfathers' protection. But however compromised a warleader's role was, a warleader always needed a reliable deputy.
'You're asking my advice?'
'I considered Mechosa, of course, because of his record, but he's an illtempered brute.' Aug paused, and idly scratched the back of his shaven head. 'I also considered Lumak, as a gesture of good faith towards the Avernii. After today's altercation, I can't favour one without offending the other.'
He looked at Shadrak.
'By the way, my thanks for that,' he added. 'You defused a bad moment.'
'I spoke my mind, Iron Father. That's all.'
'As a Hand Elect should.'
'Me?'
'Yes, sir, you, sir.'
'No one likes me,' said Shadrak.
'One of your most appealing qualities. You have been pretty blunt about your demand that somebody steps up and take the reins of authority.'
'Yes, but not me. I have no ambitions above line command.'
'Wasn't that your very point?' asked Aug. 'No one wants the responsibility? The Gorgon's gone, and none of us want to suggest we could take his place.'
'Yes.'
Aug sat down on the cot.
'Shadrak, you're Terranborn. That means that we Medusans, no matter how brotherly we are, either think you're superior because you were genereared before us, or dismiss you as not actually Medusaborn truestock. You favour the welfare of the Salamanders and the Raven Guard more than most. You seem to understand them and liaise with them better than others. You speak your bloody mind all over the place. The clanfathers despise you. And you're the only man I know who seems to have a clear and singular vision of what we should be doing.'
'Which is?'
'Focusing command and killing that bastard Horus.'
'So you were listening to me.'
'Shadrak… for the dubious reasons I've just enumerated, you seem to me to be the wisest choice. I can't think of a better Hand Elect, not when it comes to helping me keep what's left of this clan in line.'
'I suppose the Hand Elect would get a privileged look at our line orders?'
Aug reached into his thigh pouch and produced a dataslate. He tossed it to Shadrak, who caught it, instinctively, with his left hand, and winced.
'What's the matter?' asked Aug.
'Graft's still healing. The augmetic's fine. The flesh is weak.'
He speedread the slate's summary.
'Several aspects of this I don't like already,' he said.
'I knew you wouldn't,' said Aug.
'Can I consult the other Legions? Share this with them to get tactical feedback?'
'My Hand Elect can do just as he damn well pleases,' said Aug.
DALCOTH, NUROS AND their seniors slapped their fists to their breastplates as Shadrak entered the chamber.
'No need to salute,' he said.
'I think there is,' said Nuros softly. 'You are the Hand Elect. Discipline and respect remind us we're not dead.'
They took their seats around an oval table. Shadrak placed the dataslate in front of him.
'You've seen the data,' he said.
'Troubling,' said Dalcoth.
'Enlighten me.'
'You know already,' said Nuros.
'Doesn't hurt to hear someone else say it.'
'Your clanfathers are all transiting together on the Crown of Flame.'
'The Council stays together,' says Shadrak.
'And forms one nice, big target,' said Dalcoth. 'Idiocy.'
'Clan council business and clan council words,' said Shadrak. 'They are collectively our leadership, now. No one has preeminence. They stay together. Consider them as one being our leader.'
'And one big target,' Dalcoth repeated.
'How did the Tenth ever conquer worlds?' asked Nuros.
'Brute force,' said Shadrak. 'And rigid discipline. It served us well. Superbly well. But we always had the Gorgon and DuCaine to remind us when to break the rules. Now we haven't got the numerical strength to deliver any great degree of force, and we're hidebound by the traditions of our Legion. The clan council has always gathered in times of need, to maintain a sense of union and solidarity, especially in the absence of the primarch or the lord commander. I think the custom was all well and good when those absences were temporary.'
'Your Legion must unlearn their old ways,' said Nuros.
'I know.'
'Or one of you must step up,' Dalcoth added.
'Jebez Aug has been named as warleader for this endeavor,' said Shadrak.
'An honorific only,' said Nuros. 'That is, if I understand the obscure and shifting lines of allegiance and fealty within your Legion. Jebez Aug answers to the clan council. He is only as much of a warleader as they will let him be.'
'I know that too.'
'You should also know,' said Dalcoth, 'with respect, I'm not sure how long the Eighteenth or the Nineteenth can stay with the Tenth Legion formations while this attitude prevails. Singular vision of war leadership is essential, even if it is then divided between autonomous splinter fleets.'
'A council can only advise,' said Nuros. 'It can't command. How long will it take them to reach any tactical decision in the heat of combat?'
'Longer than usual,' said Shadrak. 'No one wants to make the call. Unless we can learn to graft heads back on.'
'What?' asked Dalcoth.
'Nothing. No matter.'
'Let's move on,' said Nuros.
'Oh, let's,' agreed Shadrak.
Dalcoth tapped the slate's screen. 'And this is what we're doing? This is our undertaking?'
Shadrak nodded. 'Subvox communiques have been received. Coded. Iron Tenth battlecant. There's an Iron Hands flotilla waiting in concealment in the solar shadow of Oqueth Minor. They have Raven Guard forces with them. They're awaiting reinforcement. We're moving to join them. Council's orders. United, we'll form a reasonably serious battlegroup.'
'If I was Horus,' said Dalcoth, 'and I was hunting the remnants of my enemy, I'd want to lure them out of hiding. I'd pretend to be a friend and call for help.'
'Is that Raven Guard tactics?' asked Shadrak.
'Sometimes.'
'Do the traitors know Iron Tenth battlecant?' asked Nuros.
'Why should they?' asked Shadrak.
'Why wouldn't they?' asked Dalcoth. 'We study each other. We all do it. We observe the strengths and weaknesses of our fellow Legions. You can be sure as hell the traitors have done it. How else did they overwhelm us so entirely at Isstvan? We trusted them, and they were right inside our commnets.'
'Fulgrim and your genesire were good comrades of old,' said Nuros quietly, 'as close as any brothers. There was trust there. But Fulgrim cut off the head of Ferrus Manus without a mome
nt's hesitation. By comparison to that foul act, how little do you think he would have agonised over stealing your ciphers?'
'So this is a trap?' asked Shadrak.
'No,' said Dalcoth. 'We're saying it could be a trap.'
'I invite your recommendations,' said Shadrak.
'IF IT COMES to a boarding action, or a counterboarding response, we'll do it the old way,' said Jebez Aug. 'Tubes.
Launches. Shiptoship teleportation requires a vast expenditure of power, and it's notoriously unreliable. We're likely to lose a fifth of our forces to an unsecured teleport during combat.'
'Don't worry,' muttered Shadrak, 'they'll mainly be Raven Guard.'
'Your humour grows ever darker, brother,' said Aug.
'Are we going to employ their expertise or not?'
'The clanfathers will never approve it.'
'They don't have to. You have command. This ship is yours. You are the acting warleader.'
'Is this the true advice of my Hand Elect?' asked Aug.
'You'd better hope so,' replied Shadrak.
Aug pursed his lips, and then nodded.
'Good,' said Shadrak. 'Next, tighter field control on the shields.'
'Useless against longrange fire.'
'But perfect for close quarters, which is what this is going to be if it happens. Next, all ship munitions set for impart detonation rather than timed or ranged. Next...'
SHADRAK HAD NEVER even made it onto the surface of Isstvan V. The clancompanies of Sorrgol had been in the second line with Amadeus DuCaine, an orbital reserve for the Gorgon's main assault.
They had seen the horror blossom across the world below in disbelief. Then it had become a frenzy first to extract any of their brethren still alive, then simply to fight their way clear. Ships had flamed out all around them. The heavy killships of the IV and XVI Legions had come in gunning, raking their way across the orbital line.
The Ionside's escape had been stalled by the cluster strike across her port side. With the drives offline, they had been boarded. The Sons of Horus had poured in through the breach, hungry to take the killing to a personal level. They had fought in corridors where the decks were streaming with blood. They had fought in voided compartments where the space around them was full of spinning debris and wobbling bubbles of gore and fluid.
