He didn’t know.
The Imperium Secundus had been a practical in response to a theoretical whose foundations he could not trust.
Prayto’s idea engaged with active conditions, and proposed a possible course of action. The search for a way forwards had failed so far. The signals from the other strike forces were becoming more broken and erratic, and they were no closer to finding the path to Terra.
‘We regroup,’ Guilliman said, ‘and then we make another attempt following the last route.’
‘And the other strike forces?’
Guilliman scanned the parchments chattering out of servo-skulls hovering over the table. They were transcriptions of astropathic communications arriving from the other battle group. They were more and more vague. The distances were taking their toll. The Ruinstorm was becoming a wall between his ships. He had gone as far as he dared down this path. ‘Signal them,’ he said. ‘We’ll gather the fleet and start the search again, spreading outwards from this position.’
The tacticarium table blinked.
‘Contact,’ said Caspean. ‘Not ours.’
‘Analysis and theoreticals now,’ Guilliman ordered. ‘Doors open.’
The strategium opened up to the bridge. Guilliman strode through the doors while they were still grinding apart. The primary oculus revealed the Ruinstorm in full anger. Searing vortices and uncolours exploded in the dark. There were no stars. The void screamed, and in the insanity to the fore of the ship, other vessels were closing.
‘I want energy signatures and I want identities,’ Guilliman said. ‘Shipmaster, set an attack vector. Communications, get me Chapter Master Iasus.’
One step behind him, Prayto said, ‘This cannot be a coincidence.’
‘It isn’t,’ Guilliman agreed. ‘It’s an ambush.’
‘The alert has been sent to all ships,’ Altuzer said, anticipating his order.
‘If we rush the enemy with only two ships…’ Prayto began.
Guilliman cut him off. ‘Theoretical – if it’s an ambush, our retreat will already be accounted for. Practical – disrupt the enemy formation with maximum aggression.’
‘We have Chapter Master Iasus,’ said Junixa Terrens, the vox-officer.
Guilliman turned to a vox-unit on the pulpit that overlooked the bridge.
‘The Cavascor stands ready, lord,’ the commander of the 22nd Chapter said.
The companies of Destroyers would be straining at the reins to bring their violence to the traitors. By the standards of Guilliman’s Legion, they were brutal, even under the moderating command of Iasus. He would be glad to unleash them today. ‘It will be our two ships,’ Guilliman said. ‘The others are too far away to reach us in time.’
‘So I presumed.’
‘Forwards elements identified,’ Nestor Lautenix at the auspex array station called. ‘The lead ship is the battle-barge De Profundis.’ The grey-haired officer frowned. ‘I think,’ he said. ‘There are anomalies…’
‘There would be,’ Prayto said. ‘Trust your initial judgement, lieutenant.’
‘Word Bearers,’ Guilliman breathed. His right cheek twitched once.
‘More contacts,’ Lautenix said. ‘Another squadron coming in below the ecliptic, thirty degrees to port. Elements of the Twelfth Legion. Battle-barges and strike cruisers closing at ramming speed.’
‘To be expected,’ Guilliman said, dismissive. ‘The World Eaters wouldn’t think of anything beyond a brute force attack.’ The hololithic display of the tacticarium table became populated with signals. Guilliman stared at the rune of the De Profundis. His fists clenched. ‘Take us at full speed into the vermin of the Seventeenth.’
‘The World Eaters won’t expect recklessness from us,’ said Prayto approvingly. ‘And this will take the Samothrace and Cavascor out of the direct line of the attacks.’
‘And tear the heart out of the Word Bearers,’ Guilliman snarled.
Battleship and strike cruiser accelerated towards the Word Bearers formation. Guilliman watched through the oculus for the enemy to emerge from the Ruinstorm. He felt the rising power of the engines as an expression of the Samothrace’s wrath.
Then torpedoes slammed into the stern shields.
The crow had haunted the bowels of the Invincible Reason before. He had been the spectral shadow, a thing of darkness and talons, tearing apart any who hunted him. He had claimed an entire region of the capital ship as his own, taunting his brother by stealing what was his.
It was fitting, then, the Lion thought, that Konrad Curze should be deep in the night of the Reason once more. If he liked it so well, he should dwell in it. His domain was much smaller, though. It was a cell, isolated at the end of a long corridor, two hundred feet from the rest of the prison. An iron chair sat against the left wall for the Lion’s use. The chamber’s ceiling was low, not much more than ten feet above the deck. It was high enough, though. High enough to keep the Night Haunter suspended above the floor. Adamantium manacles the length of his forearms held him to the wall, his limbs outstretched. The crow’s wings were spread, but he would not fly. The door to the cell was ten feet thick. The walls were twice that. The cell was a vault. The crow was caged. There was nothing for him to haunt except memories.
And yet he smiled when the Lion entered the cell. Black lips stretched over black teeth. His white flesh was the colour of drowned hope. His eyes were dark as rotten blood. They glittered with madness, with pain, and with amusement born of perfect despair.
‘Do you really think it will be that easy?’ Curze said.
The Lion made a point of ignoring him. He walked past his brother and sat in the chair, judge and gaoler, forcing Curze to turn his head awkwardly to see him. Curze did, still smiling.
‘Do you?’ said Curze.
The Lion remained silent.
‘You are not going to Terra,’ Curze said.
The ship jolted, struck by a series of huge waves in the immaterium. The Lion waited for the deck to settle, then finally spoke. ‘You think not.’ He was not amusing himself. He was not here for petty reasons. He wanted to see what knowledge he could make Curze let slip. The Night Haunter’s vision was twisted, but he also saw further than any of his brothers. If the Lion could parse the lies from the hints, he might be left with fragments of the future to use in the struggle ahead.
Curze glanced up, as if looking through the ceiling. He frowned slightly, touched by curiosity. ‘My sense of wonder died long ago,’ he said. ‘And there isn’t much for me to wonder about any more. I know where everything leads. I know the truths you try to hide from yourself, brother. Even so, I wonder how you travel.’ He paused. The grin became an insinuation. ‘You do get around. Much more easily than Roboute or poor, suffering Sanguinius.’
‘I’m sure you have a point, Konrad.’
Curze could not shrug. Instead, he cocked his head to one side. ‘I just think this secret of yours is interesting. You are on a journey with it. Your destination will be fascinating.’
‘My destination is Terra.’
‘Did you come here just to wilfully misunderstand me?’
‘You claimed I would not reach Terra. I tell you that I will.’
‘No. You are wrong.’
The statement was unusually direct, coming from Curze.
‘I see,’ the Lion said. He permitted himself a small, grim smile. He showed his mad brother his lack of concern. ‘You know this as an immutable fact, do you?’
‘I do.’
‘Then where are we arriving?’
‘That would be telling, wouldn’t it?’
There was still the icy glint of mockery in those abyssal eyes, mockery lashing out from the depths of the most profound anguish. But the Lion caught Curze’s hesitation. It was tiny, a fragment of a fragment of a second. It was real, though. Curze’s facial muscles contracted in a microscopic g
esture. The change would have been invisible to anyone except the Lion. He knew about secrets, how to keep them, and how to detect them. He saw one now. The Night Haunter had just shown him uncertainty.
You don’t know, the Lion thought. There is something you aren’t sure about, and that bothers you. For a moment, the thought of Konrad’s bloody conviction being shaken at all was satisfying. Then the emotion shaded into concern. Curze rattled, however minutely, was an omen. The question was how to read it.
The ship jolted again, this time with the hard shock of the translation to the materium. The Lion forced down a grunt of surprise. This was too soon. He had not expected the jump to end now.
His vox-bead buzzed for his attention.
Curze laughed, his breath a foetid wheeze. ‘News!’ he rasped. ‘News! Enlightenment is upon you, brother. Will you stay and share the moment with me?’
‘I was not to be interrupted,’ the Lion said to the vox.
‘Your pardon, my lord,’ said Captain Stenius. ‘But your presence is needed on the bridge.’ The urgency of the request lurked beneath its flat delivery.
The Lion stood. ‘On my way,’ he said.
At the entrance to the cell he paused and met Curze’s eyes. ‘I think you’re curious, Konrad,’ he said. Then he slammed the vault door behind him.
‘Have we arrived at Terra?’ the Lion asked Stenius as he marched towards the grav lift that would take him to the bridge.
‘We have not.’
‘Then where are we?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘The identity of the Samothrace is confirmed,’ said Grel Kathnar. The Word Bearer bowed his head and returned to his station.
‘Will he be on board?’ Phael Rabor asked Quor Vondor.
‘That is his flagship,’ the Chaplain answered. ‘He’ll be there.’ His hand went to his belt and touched the hilt of the athame. He saw Phael Rabor make the same gesture. We are nemesis, he thought. Guilliman had not died on Calth, because his death had been reserved for the two of them. They had earned the blessing through trial and through faith. The proof of the favour granted them sat on the transformed command throne of the De Profundis.
The entire bridge had undergone a profound change. It was barely recognisable as the command deck of a battle-barge. The walls and the oculus rippled like curtains. Curving columns radiated from the throne, crossing the floor and rising up the walls, partitioning the bridge as if it were gripped by a great talon. The claws were outlined by glowing fissures. The cracks extended through the entire length of the De Profundis. The empyrean was pressing through, splitting the ship and holding it together.
Below the throne, the workstations had become shifting sculptures. Their shapes were ornate, slowly waving flames. The silhouettes were laden with meaning. They were the manifestation of truths unutterable by human tongues. They were another form of the Word, speaking truth to the real, eroding the illusions of the universe, each movement another razor wound opening the way to revelation. They could no longer be operated by unaltered mortals. Word Bearers were at the posts, at one with the lethal truths as they governed weapons systems and prepared attack vectors. But Quor Vondor recognised the actions as the dying echoes of the former being of the ship. The De Profundis would not attack as it once had.
The oculus twitched. Streaks of light appeared, heading for the blue glint of the Samothrace. The World Eaters’ attack. Quor Vondor sniffed in contempt. The World Eaters were useful, but barbarians. The Night Lords, even now launching the rear assault, were closer in their beings to the primordial truth, even though their faith was lacking. They had their uses, too.
‘The Thirteenth and Twelfth Legions might finish him off before we get a chance,’ Phael Rabor said.
‘They won’t.’
‘There are only two Ultramarines vessels.’
‘Do you think Guilliman is going to die so easily?’
‘No,’ the captain admitted.
‘No,’ Quor Vondor repeated. ‘Do your doubts come so easily?’
‘I have none,’ said Phael Rabor.
‘That is well.’ There could be no more doubts. Not after Calth.
Not with Toc Derenoth sitting on the command throne.
The Unburdened turned his horned head to look at Quor Vondor, as if he had heard the Chaplain’s thoughts. The elongated jaws gaped in anticipation. Before his ascension, Toc Derenoth had been a mere legionary. Now Quor Vondor had to look at him as a wonder.
The underworld war on Calth had been raging for years before he and Phael Rabor had encountered Toc Derenoth. The ascended Word Bearer had fought on since the destruction of Kurtha Sedd, killing Ultramarines without rest. But his transformation had also been a continuous evolution, an ever more complex fusion of the daemonic and the human. He had communed more and more deeply with the gods. And he had gone deeper and deeper into the darkness of the planet.
He had touched the octed.
He had learned.
And in the end, through him, Quor Vondor and Phael Rabor had completed their penance too. They had brought their forces to the octed in the purity of worship and devotion to Chaos. They were present without thought of ambition or rivalries.
The octed tore open the night of stone, and swallowed the devout. And in the warp, the celebrant appeared. It was a being of the immaterium, yet Quor Vondor had seen something of his own calling in it. The celebrant was a Chaplain, though of a kind and of an order far beyond anything human.
The celebrant brought them a mission. Quor Vondor still wondered if the mission was a sign that he and the others with them had purged the weakness of their failure, or if the gauntlet of Calth had instead been the proving ground. Perhaps it had been the fire through which he and Phael Rabor had been destined to walk so they might reach this point, this moment, when at last they would unsheathe the athames they had been given on Davin and drive them home.
The spark of Guilliman’s vessels grew brighter. The two ships became visible. They were rushing in, as if eager for the doom awaiting them. The ships flashed.
‘Torpedo launches,’ Phael Rabor said. ‘A sound strategy, trying to break up our formation with a hard run.’
‘It would be,’ said Quor Vondor. He looked at Toc Derenoth once more. The Unburdened had withdrawn into himself. Shadows gathered around his monstrous form. He was feeding on the ritual performed by the faithful throughout the ship. His lidless eyes burned with the intensity of his concentration. He was the conduit of what was coming. His role was as precise as the one given to Quor Vondor and Phael Rabor. They would wield the blades. Toc Derenoth would bring them to Guilliman.
The Unburdened had the power to do this because the De Profundis had also earned a gift from the celebrant. It had been badly damaged in the battle over Calth. It had limped out of the system, and existed as a raider in the years that followed. Its injuries grew worse, more and more of its crew died, until at last it was a husk, its machine-spirit raging impotently in the void. The warp had taken it at last, and its faithful service to the Word was rewarded with this last mission.
Quor Vondor had found himself aboard the battle-barge in the midst of its transfiguration. In the midst of the changes, he had looked out between the gaps in the vessel’s being. He had caught glimpses of the Intercessor, and of the vastness that brought its blessing to the De Profundis. That such things had being had brought him and Phael Rabor worshipfully to their knees. In these visions, the truth of the faith was confirmed. The sublimities were the agents of the Word’s fulfilment.
‘The Ultramarines are increasing speed and rate of fire,’ said Grel Kathnar.
A wave of torpedoes and missiles cut through the void towards the De Profundis. A warning klaxon sounded, its voice a moan that rose and fell. There was nothing machinic about the sound any longer, and the cry was one of celebration, not distress. Culmination was at hand.
‘You mean he would be,’ Quor Vondor said, ‘if this ship and we were as we had once been.’ He grinned. His jagged, curving incisors drew blood from his lips as they pulled back.
Phael Rabor nodded. ‘As you say, Chaplain. And he is behaving as you predicted.’
‘Rushing onto the point of our blades.’ He drew the athame.
Phael Rabor followed his example. ‘The moment is upon us?’
‘It is.’ Quor Vondor gestured at the columns on the walls. The glow of the warp was blinding. The structure of the ship trembled.
Toc Derenoth hissed. The Unburdened seemed to grow bulkier. The tendons of his arms, running along armour and flesh without distinction, were rigid and thick as chains. His monstrous head reared back in the ecstasy of his great work. He was the conduit for the force that held the De Profundis together, and that was shaping its final attack.
Quor Vondor and Phael Rabor moved to the fore of the elevated platform that held the command throne. Quor Vondor stood in the pulpit. ‘Faithful of the Word,’ he called, and the legionaries below turned from their stations to look at him. ‘Your mundane work is done,’ he said. ‘Now there is only glory. Prepare, and bear witness to the glory of Chaos. We go to kill a primarch.’
The Word Bearers bowed as one, then turned to face the oculus. They took up bolters and chainswords. The bridge rang with the clank and growl of weapons being readied. The klaxons shrieked in a frenzy as the Ultramarines ordnance closed in. From aft, on all sides, the Word Bearers fired back. The attack would not be enough to kill the battleship and the strike cruiser, but it would strain their void shields.
The Night Lords maintained pressure from the rear, and Guilliman’s ships were lit by the throbbing aura of flaring energy. The World Eaters squadron was altering the course of its run, having overshot the Ultramarines. The ships were making their turns, slow as continents. Quor Vondor pictured the fury of the captains aboard. Their cannons lashed out in anger, lines of fire cutting across the spirals of the Ruinstorm.
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