by Dan Abnett
Her warp drives going critical was like the dawning of a miniature sun, a silent flash of awesome light that seared my retinas. I rode the resulting bow wave of pressure, my armour crystallising with hoarfrost even as I felt the explosive burn of the Gorgonesque' s dramatic last breath.
'I REMEMBER LITTLE more after that,' I told my accusers, the Obstinate s black deck resolving before me as I left the memory of the Retiarius behind, 'save waking in your apothecarion and being marched to this hangar bay for summary judgement.' I could not keep the bitterness from my voice.
'You believe you are being treated harshly, Legionary Gallikus?'
I declined to reply, my head bowed with the cold weight of the axe blade upon my neck. The dead stares of my decapitated brothers frozen on the deck seemed mocking. And I was about to join them.
'Before you kill me,' I said at length, 'tell me, did we break the blockade?'
My accuser came forwards into the light. I heard some gesture he made, the whirring of old servos in a wrist or elbow, and felt the pressure against my neck ease. I looked up into the face of an Iron Father, but not one that I recognised.
He was badly scarred and his left cheek and part of his skull shone dully in the halflight. A tight grey beard like wire wool was shaved into a speartip on a jutting, imperious chin. The venerable Iron Father looked down upon me like I was the dirty oil he had to scrape from his weapons.
'We failed,' he replied. 'We were weak.'
There were two others with him, a Salamander and one of the Raven Guard.
This is barbaric…' I heard the son of Vulkan mutter, despite the low hum of the Obstinate's impulse engines partly masking his voice. His eyes flared like burning coals.
The Raven Guard gently raised his hand, warning the Salamander to silence, and they stepped back as one. This was Iron Hands business, conducted in the Medusan way as our father had taught us.
I was finding it hard to process the situation, the incongruous presence of the other Legion warriors, the mood of fatalism emanating from the Iron Father. Then there was the last figure in the room with me, my wouldbe executioner, one I felt I recognized and that stirred a disquiet in me that I could not explain at the time.
'Then what are our primarch's commands? Is Horus defeated? Is Isstvan still contested?' I had so many questions.
'What of the Retiarius?'
The Iron Father shook his head, sadly. 'It's over, Legionary Gallikus. You were the sole survivor of the attack on the Retiarius. The war for Isstvan is done. We lost…' He paused, as if to telegraph the blow that was coming so I could be ready for it. 'Ferrus Manus is dead.'
'Dead?' I tried to rise from my knees but a strong hand held me down. 'Release me!' I snapped, turning to meet the haunted eyes of an old friend. For a moment, I let slip my other concerns. 'Azoth?'
He gave no recognition of the fact I had just spoken his name. I thought he had died and yet here he was, aboard the Obstinate. But something was very wrong. His flesh looked cold, gelid, like the severed heads in front of me. Azoth's fire had been extinguished. Ice filled his veins and countenance. A dead man stood before me with the axe, dead and yet animate, bereft of any sense of cognition that would mark him out as the warrior I once knew.
'What have you done?'
'What was necessary. Horus defeated us, scattered us. Shattered our Legions.'
Looking back at the Iron Father, I saw he held my breacher shield. It had been reforged, made whole, even as we ourselves had fractured.
'You have erred,' he said, 'and so you must atone…'
I took the proffered shield, stunned into silence by the revelations I had just heard.
The Iron Father met my gaze and I saw the determination in his eyes, the bitterness and soulshriving desire for revenge.
'Such is the fate of all Immortals…' uttered a voice behind me. The voice of Azoth, the echo of our damnation.
GREY TALON
CHRIS WRAIGHT
It WAS A lucky ship, one upon which the fates smiled. Its hull had been laid down on the forge world Aphret in the one hundred and thirtieth year of the Crusade. Seventeen other destroyers had been completed in the same series, their superstructures filled out to the same template, each one also destined for Legion fleets.
This one was number seven, a good number, free of the defects that were always found in earlyrun models. As war fronts had multiplied and the Mechanicum worked to evermore punishing schedules, such defects were possible whatever the magi might have claimed.
From Aphret's orbital shipyards it was delivered to the distribution hub at Tallameder for fitting out and ritual dedication. Legion brokers crawled over the voiddocks in huddled packs, observing, noting, checking and scheming.
They knew the consequences of returning to their masters bearing lowerquality materiel than their rivals, and so bidding was fierce.
The Luna Wolves had a reputation. They were tough, dragged to maturity on Cthonia with none of the refinement of, say, Fulgrim's agents. Ship captains from other Legions whispered that Horus had insiders throughout the requisition bureaucracy, and as a result his own fleet had the edge. That might even have been true, although ship captains whispered all sorts of things.
The unmarked ship was snapped up by a Legion agent named Flak Trakus, along with five more of the series. He said he liked the looked of number seven. All were quickly marked with provisional XVI Legion iconography, before being escorted under low burn to the Luna Wolves' forward base at Ipheriax Tertius for trials. Two failed to meet the Legion's exacting standards, leaving four to be given the full livery.
The ships' induction was overseen by Ezekyle Abaddon, deputising for his primarch, who remained at the cutting edge of the Crusade. The First Captain did his duty perfunctorily, eager to be back at his master's side. He looked so observers reported at the time deeply bored.
Number seven was named Grey Talon, and given to the command of what had been the 19th Chapter of the Luna Wolves. Its first legionary captain was Lucial Vormar, a Cthonian with ambitions to rise within the Legion and an enthusiastic lodge member right from the inception of the quiet orders. The Talon was small by the standards of the fleet, slotting between a pure torpedo boat and a line frigate. Such vessels were often referred to as destroyers, though the forward lance mounted under the main prow shield was uncommon for the class, making it weaponheavy for its void displacement. The configuration performed well during seventy years of constant warfare, and it was only returned to its home berth twice for refit and overhaul. Four more captains and two more shipmasters took the helm during that period, each of them using it as a springboard for greater things.
Soon the Talon had reinforced its reputation as a fortunate ship, one that promised advancement for its crew, and it found a regular place in actions across the everexpanding battlefront of the Great Crusade.
By the time of Isstvan III, it was under the command of Hierek Mon, a member of Vormar's lodge with an enviable killtally and a reputation for void flair. He defied orders to remain on a highorbit blocking station and entered the bombardment zone in the wake of Angron's disastrous intervention, earning the ire of the Legion command. His reward was to be placed in a suicidal position during the fleet deployment for the subsequent inferno at Isstvan V, given little cover and expected to atone for his zeal in death.
Once again, though, the Grey Talon defied expectations, riding its everpresent luck during the ruinous battle over the scrapfilled void space. Mon almost survived the entire encounter, poised to rejoin the main warfleet with honour restored, but for the intervention of a fleeing Salamanders boarding party on a captured lander. The loyalists used it to break into the destroyer as she came about, and after a brief but brutal action took it from within.
Mon died on his bridge, screaming out curses as his limbs were hacked from him. During the confusion of the loyalist withdrawal, the Grey Talon managed to clear the system and enter the warp, its innards still riddled with closequarters fighting as the Salamande
rs assumed full control.
It was renamed after that, given the title of Nocturne's primary city, Hesiod. Other refugees were found and taken on board, including Bion Henricos of the X Legion and the renowned White Scars Librarian Targutai Yesugei. The ship was drawn into a new kind of war, running the shadows, hunting down isolated advancepacks of the enemy and cutting their throats. It was dangerous work, testing the good fortune that had by then been burned into the ship's spars.
The end almost came under the broadsides of the Death Guard frigate Mind's Resolve. With the charred orb of Prospero below it, the Hesiod was surrounded in a corona of fire, knocked offbeam and rolled into macrocannon range of three more cruisers. Its fortune held out, though, arriving in the shape of the main White Scars battlefleet. The fighting swept over it, dragging it spinwards, leaving it listing but still airtight. By then Henricos was its commander, cheated from the death he had confidently expected and left to brood as his powereddown ship drifted silently from the battlesphere.
The Hesiod was retrieved six hours later and pulled into the V Legion's ambit. Techcrews discovered then that the enginechamber had been punctured and that it had been only minutes from destruction. The White Scars had laughed at that. Henricos hadn't he knew the reputation of the ship, the one it had carried since its hull had been laid down, and did not see survival as something necessarily to aspire to.
With the last of the Salamanders dispersed throughout the fleet, Henricos was joined by new White Scars on the bridge. The ship's name was switched again, restored to Grey Talon as it had been before, and its colours reverted to those of the Sons of Horus. Its ongoing role was decided even before the policy came down from the Khan himself it would be an infiltrator, a chameleon, a snake in the shadows. Outright warfare, openly declared, was no longer an option.
Henricos never left the bridge during the refit. He worked obsessively, driving the menials to extreme lengths to refashion the engines and realign the weapons. Those who saw him during that time sent shocked reports back up the V
Legion hierarchy.
He was like a devil, they said. A tortured spirit.
Perhaps that was why they sent Hibou to him, to act as some kind of exemplary punishment. That was possible, though not likely. The primarch had doled out penance in sorrow rather than rancour.
Moreover, Hibou knew to what manner of ship he had been assigned. It had cheated death before, and might do so again, whatever odds it sailed into. They had all told him that Nozan, Torghun trying to improve his mood before they were sent on their own deathmissions. Even in the face of their great error, locked down by the shame of it, they could still see a path into the future. A way back, if fortune smiled on them.
And the Grey Talon was a lucky ship, they said. One upon which the fates smiled.
FOR A LONG time after boarding, Hibou Khan did not leave his cell. He felt the vibrations as the plasma drives keyed up, thrusting the ship clear of the already dispersing White Scars fleet. Some time later, this changed to the highpitched whine of warp engines, followed by the lurch of entry into the aether. After that was the eerily quiet passage through the immaterium, punctuated only by the creak and snap of the Talon's flanks.
It felt like they had been in the warp for a long time. The campaign on Chondax had been a nearconstant series of jumps, bridging the vicious combatphases on the system's farflung worlds. He'd had plenty of time back then to consider the Legion's place of dishonour, to listen to the words of Hasik NoyanKhan, to talk to fellow members of the lodges and take in their grievances. The fighting had become almost secondary to the question that had come to dominate discourse in the brotherhoods.
What next?
And the answer to that had been: the Warmaster. Distrust of Imperial command structures had become so absolute, so ingrained, that aligning with Horus had come to seem not so much as prudent as inevitable. The entire Legion admired Horus. They knew of the regard between him and the Khan. Out of all the Eighteen, only the Thousand Sons had been closer, and relations with Magnus's sons had been conducted largely through the Stormseers.
So it had been natural. When he was in the mood to find excuses, Hibou would remember that. On other days, when the shame made him want to ram his face into the metal walls of his cell until the blood ran, he would remember the warnings of his heart, the tremors of unease when the transmissions came in from beyond the veil around Chondax and the strange light in the eyes of some of his fellow loyalists.
Loyalists. None of them had been loyalists. That term was now reserved for those who had cleaved to the Throne, while those who had been drawn to Horus's magnetic presence had been cast into the darkness, reviled as traitors and consorts with yaksha.
That had never been part of the draw. No one had shown them the destination at the end of that path, and if they had done so the revolt would have been snuffed out long before it could have threatened the Legion's cohesion.
It made him nauseous to think how close they had come. The vidcaptures from the Vorkaudar, the Word Bearers ship captured by Yesugei, had made the implications plain.
It would have started with a vow. The vow would have been made in good faith.
At times, musing on that, Hibou regretted not taking the deathoath, the tsusan garag, which would at least have sealed his pact and left no room for reconsideration. If he had done so, he would now be dead, his hearts pierced by the primarch's own blade. As it was, he had been left the path of penance to cleanse his soul by taking the fight ahead of the main fleet, striking with no hope of survival, carrying the anger of betrayal back to its heart.
He was of the sagyar mazan now. They would find absolution only by returning the pain to its origin to blood the archtraitor as he had blooded them. Deeper, more sharply.
But there would be weeks before he could unleash his blade again, and until that moment he had to negotiate the inner warrens of the starship with a soul who hated him almost as much as he hated the ones who had cast their lot with damnation.
Sighing, Hibou Khan adjusted his robe over his armour, and made to leave his cell. It could not be put off forever. If they were to fight together, they would first have to learn to speak.
HENRICOS WORKED ON the machine. He had been working on it since the day he had been taken on board by Xa'ven.
In contrast to the Vorkaudar, it was a good, clean machine, one that he could engage with and improve. The Sons of Horus had not fallen quite so deeply into debauchery as the Word Bearers, at least not by the time of the Dropsite Massacre when the ship had been taken over, and the metal remained unsullied. It smelled of them still the fusty pelts they wore, the Cthonian hides but it functioned more or less as a machine should.
For as long as he worked, he could forget the anger. If his hands, bionic and organic, were occupied then they did not itch to carry a weapon. In any case, there were no weapons on board that were worthy of his adoption. He still had his Medusan bolter, though no blade to go alongside it. The White Scars had offered him dozens of their own, and it had been hard not to laugh at them for that. Their metalwork was capable enough but they had fouled the metal with sweeping Chogorian runes, and the shafts were too basic, too unaugmented. Nothing they had offered him had had the same heft and killing potential as a true Medusan zweihander, and so he had rejected everything.
He leant over his navigation station, staring at the images on the vidfeeds. He had been looking at the scan for hours, and his eyes were beginning to have trouble focusing. He could have let the cogitators take the strain, but they were poor on detail, and detail was everything.
The task consumed him. By the time he sensed the other presence on the bridge, it was hard to guess how long he had been there.
Damned Chogorian stealth.
'What do you want?' Henricos rasped, never taking his eyes from the screen.
Hibou Khan drew closer. Henricos could smell him too old ceremonial oils on his ceramite, the last gift from his brothers in the Legion that had banished him. That h
ad been sentimental and a waste. Henricos would have killed them all and recycled the geneseed and weapons. Why trust a part that had already failed?
'I do not know our trajectory,' said Hibou, in accented but reasonably fluent Gothic. It seemed that not all of them had the same impediment as their stormwitch.
'And?'
Hibou stiffened. 'We are destined to fight together. Perhaps I should know something of your plan.'
Henricos let a long breath slide out of his clenched lips, then stood up. 'Nine of you. All traitors. You will know the plan when I tell you. Until then, you would do well to keep your mouth closed and your eyes away from my scanners.'
To his credit, Hibou absorbed the spite. His tanned face, marked with the pucker of selfinflicted scars, flickered by just an infinitesimal amount.
'If we had been traitors, we would be dead,' he said.
Henricos could feel his humours darken. Even looking at the White Scar made him angry, just as almost everything else made him angry. 'I do not wish to do this now,' he muttered.
Hibou stood his ground. 'We have been in the warp for a week. I would train, if I knew what I was training for.'
Henricos turned on him. 'What do you need that you do not possess? You have your blades. All fighting is much the same.'
'You truly believe that?'
Henricos drew closer. 'So what fighting have you seen, White Scar? Greenskins?'
It was so easy to bring it back the skies above the dropsite, flared red, streaked with the contrails of falling assault claws. There had been seven primarchs in that slaughter. Seven. The killing had been industrial.
'I know you underestimate us,' said Hibou evenly. 'Do not think that this will anger me. We are used to it.'
'Damn you!' spat Henricos, clenching his metal fist. 'Underestimate you? I know the damage you can do.' He edged even closer, his sour breath washing over the scarred face before him. 'Tell me why I should even suffer you to look at me. I fought as the Gorgon was being cut apart. I fought as my Legion was being cut apart. I have fought every second since, and will fight until fate stops my hearts, and you. You. You were not even sure who the enemy was.'