by David Guymer
'This is it,' she replied.
'Last chance.'
Her eyebrows arched theatrically.
'Last chance to run off with me. Ganymede is quite beautiful, for a hive world. It's all right, anyway. I've seen worse.' He gave a broad smile; his gums dark and shrunken. 'And the pension for a colonel's widow isn't unrespectable.'
'It gets a bit less respectable split two ways with your wife, though, doesn't it?' She gave him a stern look. 'Assuming it is only two ways.'
Ibran's smile relaxed into something settled. 'Ahh, my wife. It'll be good to see her again, I wonder if they're still living in the same hab by the Nanshe catena.'
'I'm sure they are.'
'The regiment promised they'd cover it.'
'I'm sure they did.'
Milein didn't mention that Ibran had only the slimmest of chances of returning to the Terran system outside of a stasis drawer alongside Luc, Samuel, Eric, Karl and the others. He knew. Forcing a bright smile, she went back to her flipboard. The invalid form was a different colour to the previous. Her stylus touched the dotted line requiring her signature, imagining all of a sudden an ochre-and-grey world she had never seen, a medicae who wouldn't know Ibran Grippe from any other soldier being presented with a similar but differently coloured form. KIA. The nib bled ink.
'There.' She blinked quickly, and smiled up at Ibran. 'All official.'
The colonel reached out with red and shaking fingers to take her hand. For a kiss presumably. Such a chivalrous ass. The corpsman slouched over the trolley's push-handle blew out and rolled his eyes.
She extended her hand as the doors to the deck crashed in.
The good-natured badinage between the invalided soldiers that had been following in behind their dead ceased. Everyone shifted in their trolleys to look back. Milein frowned towards the doors, and shrank in sudden, inexplicable dread.
Intep Amar of the Thousand Sons was huge in full armour, as red as freshly spilled blood and just as frightening. His unhelmed face was skeletal, cherry-red, his eyes huge. An angel of death. The white headdress that hung from his iron hood twisted and fluttered as he strode towards Milein and the Arvus. Legion serfs with the Apothecarion helix sewn into their liveries hurried after their master, carting heavy equipment cases.
'What's this?' She surprised herself with her own voice, and flinched.
Ignoring the question, the Librarian pointed to the shuttle. 'I want the bodies removed from that shuttle.' One of the serfs, a supercilious medicae wearing a long red coat, white gloves and unhygienic gold piping handed her a piece of paper. 'All prior repatriation and transfer orders have been rescinded.'
'What?' said Ibran, pushing himself up in his trolley.
'Orders of the Expedition commander.'
'Cicerus would never—'
'You have your orders.'
Milein read the orders to the bottom as Legion serfs charged past and up the ramp to the Arvus, unloading their equipment and piling their trolleys with the dead. Tull would have fought. He would've kicked, screamed, made a fuss, made a scene.
Tull wasn't here.
'The rest of you.' Amar waved vaguely over the Galileans, as if saving his strength. 'Into the shuttle.'
Ibran's face screwed up in pained incomprehension. 'But you said the transfers were rescinded.'
Milein carefully folded the orders, giving her hands something to do other than shake. She tucked the paper into the breast pocket of her coat and looked up at Amar. The Librarian's eyes were bleeding. His skin was red, the shape of his skull visible behind the face She wondered if this was what Magnus looked like and felt sick at the thought.
A little personal adversity, a little taste of actual mortality, and now his golden ideals were smoke. Tull would've been fascinated.
'You believed in the Crusade,' she whispered. 'What happened to you?'
The same Apothecarion serf that had handed her the orders brandished a data-slate. He handed it to Milein. The Librarian tapped the plastek frame, his gauntleted finger as wide as her wrist.
'Sign the orders.'
Tull would have fought.
She hung her head. She didn't want Ibran to see her face. And signed.
From Ferrus' cage, Akurduana could see across the Practice Hall from end to end. Several hundred Iron Hands had congregated.
Silent. Like an ocean in darkness. It was there, but one powerful sense of it was absent.
'You will need your armour,' said Ferrus.
Akurduana almost found himself chuckling.
'I will have it sent for.' Ulan Cicerus stood on the bottom step. The point of his spear was wedged into the right angle of the steps, and he leaned into it. He called for Akurduana's serfs. There was a minor commotion at the periphery of the crowd, but it was impossible to focus on.
Ferrus Manus loomed over him. The primarch was bigger by far even than Gabriel Santar had been in Cataphractii plate when they had duelled on Vesta. His armour had suffered for its confrontation with the Gardinaal. A gouge had been torn from the breast-plate, an unsympathetic infill where the fusion of molten ceramite and liquid sealant had formed a ceramic crust of scar tissue. The gauntlet emblem on his heavy, dog-toothed shoulder guard had been scratched to tracks of white nothing by particle fire. The cloak of mail that hung from his broad shoulders was tom, bent and creased by twisted links, and whispered of its anger with a crinkling of metal. His pale, scarred face was framed by the high back of his riveted gorget, lit coldly by the reflection of its silver trim. Newer injuries furrowed into a scowl as he looked down.
Akurduana was faintly disappointed that Ferrus stood before him with bare fists rather than Forgebreaker: to pit his swords against the hammer that his Father had made would have been an honour. He chided himself. What was he thinking?
He was about to face a primarch.
'I have never been able to find a challenge amongst my own sons.' Ferrus remained as still as a mountain as the III Legion serfs clattered into the cage, pushing an arming dummy encased in Akurduana's magnificent battleplate. Piece by piece, they began unbuckling his training leathers and drilling him into his war harness, ignored by the primarch as he spoke 'Even the Legion's ancients can only match me so far. I built this cage myself, for my brothers.'
Akurduana held out his arms while his serfs machined on plates and engaged the seals. 'Then these bars could tell some stories.'
'Fewer than you might think. My brothers are surprisingly reluctant.'
Akurduana's eyebrow arched. The armourers moved to his legs. 'Oh.'
'Fulgrim would joke that he would die with shame, were his sons to see him defeated.' Ferrus snorted. 'Vulkan said that he did not want to hurt me.' And again, looking to his clenching fist. 'Me. I told him that I would make him a finer weapon than that I gifted to Fulgrim if he would try.'
'And?'
'And these bars have few stories to tell.'
'But not none.'
Ferrus' eyes glinted like daggers. His smile did not blunt their edge.
'I am honoured, lord.' The armourers pulled and prodded at Akurduana's seals. Satisfied with their work, the ranking serf approached with his helmet. Akurduana waved him away. He was about to fight a primarch and he intended to savour it.
'I do you no honour.'
'I know.'
'Your birth father fought the Emperor.'
'He did.'
'My brother speaks highly of you.'
'I know.'
'He says you have no equal.'
Akurduana shrugged, but felt a tingle of pride. Not so much in the fact as that it had been spoken by a primarch. 'The Emperor's Children boast many fine swordsmen. Ravasch Cario has the potential to be great. And there is a brilliant young legionary in Second Company called Lucius who may yet reach my standard. If he can tear his face from the mirror.'
'But they are not you.'
'They are not me.'
'I know how that feels.'
Akurduana pivoted around the waist, made some
practice punches, testing the armourer's work. The power servos whined as he drew Timur and Athenia. The serfs had re-belted his scabbards over his power armour, and the two charnabal sabres emerged from their silks with the most expectant of sighs. An unmodified mortal at the farthest part of the Hall would have felt it.
Ferrus' eyes flickered with self-hatred.
'Begin.'
The anarchy of a warzone had nothing compared to a launch bay in the grip of pre-flight. Aircraft howled, slurped promethium from hoses that lay in tangles along the deck, chewed on ammo belts as they were fed into the huge riveted hoppers of autocannon and heavy bolters. Aircraft never looked more imposing than they did up close on the ground. X Legion serfs crisscrossed, skipping over the knotted tangle of rubber fuel lines and ducking under protruding wings. Servitors pushed trolleys laden with missiles. Helmeted logisticians with spatial sorting matrices appended to their flesh brains waved fluorescent paddles. Magnetic cranes guided by machine intelligence and algorithmic wafer descended from the hex-grid of overhead rails, manoeuvring aircraft into mag-slings in prepared formation.
It was coldly efficient. Perfect.
The open launch-bay doors shimmered with the blue of a coherence field under assault by atmospheric pressure. The void beyond was shifted to the blue end of the spectrum, the stars hidden by the light of it, analogous to a daylit sky on a virginal world, but the bald grey hemisphere of Gardinaal was too huge to be filtered by a little light.
It was not the world's fault that it was ugly, but the sight of it offended Ortan Vertanus just the same. He pitied its people, forced to dwell on such a drab orb. Even Chemos, an exhausted desert of hollowed mountains and drained seas, had possessed bright spots, oases where beauty lingered. But not this place, this homogeneous morass of rockcrete and plasteel and human subordination.
'Where are you taking us?' said Paliolinus. Edoran, Thyro and Sekka crowded in behind him where they would not find themselves in the path of a draught servitor. They were all dressed in their flight armour, looking around in horrified fascination at the almost sorcerous autonomy of the lifting cranes and the hideously - but effectively - altered crew serfs. Paliolinus raised his voice as a machine-driven cart carrying a repair detail growled past. 'We need to prepare for launch.'
'It's a surprise.'
'We lost a pilot. I will not be shown up a second time.'
'We won't.'
Vertanus put his hands on the wing commander's shoulders and turned him towards a squadron of five broad-nosed, thick-bodied heavy fighters, sitting on their landing gears. Their hull armour was black, trimmed with silver and with white streaks from the harsh overhead lighting, war paint that shifted depending on position and mood. The underslung missile pods were so heavy they seemed to drag the wings into a downward slant and the belly of the craft to the deck. The tailfins spiked upwards from the rear end of the craft, a brutalist, functional sheet of black metal. He sighed, hands on hips as he admired the lead craft. She was a pugilist. Her scars only enhanced her fierceness. Her broken bones only made her tougher. Good looks were for onlookers. What could be more beautiful in battle than taking all your enemy could throw, seeing that in his eyes in the split second before he was annihilated by your guns?
What indeed?
'Then with the losers let it sympathise, for nothing can seem foul to those that win.'
As the Shakespire had said.
'Primaris-Lightnings,' Paliolinus breathed.
'They were damaged prior to Vesta. Their pilots were assigned other roles for the war games and so were left behind with the bulk of the Fifty-second.'
Edoran frowned at the inelegant aircraft, unconvinced.
'They are greatly favoured by the Mechanicum,' said Thyro.
'So are red robes,' Edoran snapped back.
'They are perfect,' Paliolinus announced.
Vertanus dipped his head. 'The Gardinaal no longer has an aeronautica to speak of. There is no need for an interceptor squadron. And—'
'Hush, brother.' Paliolinus emphasised the command with a wave of his hand. 'Do not oil your words with practicalities like an Iron Hand would his wargear. We will fly them for Moses, and carry our wing-brother with us in spirit by riding in the machines he loved best.' Vertanus smiled, but said nothing. Their brothers nodded in understanding. Paliolinus laid a hand on the nose of the lead aircraft. 'Purple Sun. We will honour him in our way, by doing our utmost to surpass his every achievement.'
The legionaries embraced, a circle of five, a sixth in spirit. When they separated they were five again, hurrying for their fighters.
Ferrus Manus attacked before the command to begin had left his mouth. Given his goliath physique his speed was staggering. A lesser duellist than Akurduana would have been pulverised on the spot, and even he was forced into an admiring gasp as the smouldering metal fist thundered past his eyes. The primarch was holding nothing back, and with a roar he came again.
A thrilling combination of terror and elation filled Akurduana as he jinked between blows, under them, away, fed by a lightness of heart he had not felt with a sword in his hand since the first time he had stood before old Corinth. Before Unification had been won. Ferrus bellowed and swung with his left. Akurduana bent under it and allowed it to clang into the bars. He rolled back. Always back. He did not bother using his swords to parry.
It would have been like blocking a Baneblade.
He ducked and weaved, danced and slid, swords a blur of feint and misdirection. His movements were intuitive, faster than genhanced thought, but compared to the gap between audacious youngster and grizzled Thunder Warrior, that between legionary and primarch was a yawning one.
He grinned. He was going to have to try.
With sheer, bludgeoning power Ferrus forced him up against the bars. His swords bit at the vulnerable joints in the primarch's armour. Ferrus ignored them. Stings from a persistent insect. He feinted with Timur, drawing the primarch's eyes, then used the length of Athenia to stab at the primarch's groin. The master-crafted sabre pierced the heavy mail only to become wedged between a pair of crushed rings. Ferrus gave a snarl and smacked the blade with his wrist. The ancient Grekan blade shattered, rune-inscribed metal shards daggering the floor at Akurduana's feet. The force of the blow splintered his gauntlet, sent hairline fractures running up Akurduana's vambrace and almost pulled his shoulder from its socket. He cried out in glee.
'Why do you laugh?' Ferrus drew back. Even unarmed, he had reach.
Akurduana could only shrug, enfolding Timur in a two-handed grip. 'Because.'
Spitting with anger, Ferrus drove his fist at Akurduana's chest. Too big to avoid. Too fast. He cried out in shock as his breast-plate caved in, splitting the palatine aquila into frayed halves, gold leaf fluttering around the hot liquescence of Ferrus' arm. Knuckles ground in. His rib plate cracked. Then shattered. Before he had even registered the pain he was flying, crashing into the bars with force enough to break more bones. The bars themselves were made of firmer stuff. Built by Ferrus' own hand to contain the might of a primarch. They did not bend. Vibrating with a metallic basso profundo, they flung him back into the ring, sprawled on his chest and crying out for the pain of his fractured ribs.
A great weight pushed into his shoulder, elicited a murmur of pain, then closed over it, to haul him up by the golden fretwork.
Ferrus' eyes burned into his, consumed them in his, his expression incandescent as he drew back his arm to deliver a finishing blow.
'I, too, once fought the Emperor. He is a greater being than you could imagine. How did your mortal father manage it?'
Akurduana could barely see the fist before him. His eye was swollen, his face puffed and bloody. 'He wished to give him every opportunity to yield.' He gave a laugh, coughing it up in gurgles.
Ferrus frowned. 'Tell me why you laugh.'
'Do you not see?'
Ferrus' grip tightened, a splintering of ceramite. Akurduana chuckled, winced, then chuckled again.
'T
his is what we were born to do. Both of us. To fight. And eventually one day lose. It feels… good.'
Some of the aggression left Ferrus' eyes. 'In one thing at least I was right. Our Legions have much to learn from one another.' He lowered Akurduana to the ground, where the captain proceeded to fold bonelessly over his knees. 'What has now passed was your war, what now commences shall be mine. There will be no feast of celebration, no proclamation of victory. I do not claim worlds. I conquer them. My victories are their own proclamation. I will present my brother Guilliman with ash around a barren star - that shall be my proclamation, and the Gardinaal shall forever more be remembered only for the manner in which they fell.' His gaze passed over his warriors, silent before his scorn, for what they had just witnessed was not a contest. It was a lesson.
'I have sought to lead as Fulgrim or Guilliman would have led, but that is not my way. It is not the Medusan way. The Gardinaal have had ample opportunity to yield.'
Grumbles of agreement swept the Hall. Akurduana swayed on the spot, blinking up at the primarch, and it fell to Cicerus to speak out.
'The Emperor desired these worlds intact.'
'The Gardinaal rule over eleven worlds. I will give my father ten.'
'The 413th Expedition will not act in defiance of the Emperor.'
'You are derelict, Chapter Master.'
Cicerus straightened against his wedged spear. 'I serve the Emperor of Terra, the ideals of his Great Crusade, my father and his brothers. In that sequence I will not defy the first of my masters by ordering the destruction of Gardinaal Prime.'
For a long time, Ferrus glared down at the Ultramarine. Then a smile found its way across his face. 'Perhaps if you were with the 413th where you belong then you would have known. You are no longer in command of the Expedition Fleet.'
'You do not have that authority.'
'Guilliman can restore your command once he arrives. I will be done with you by then. Until that happens, your orders come from Iron Father Mor. He knows what I expect of my warriors.' Cicerus bowed his head, too weary to defend himself any longer. 'Your Ultramarines will have the honour of the first assault.'
