Grey Knights: Sons of Titan

by David Annandale

  She looked down at him from where she sat in the command throne. The seat was an isolated one, rising from the end of a platform that projected into the space of the bridge like a spur from the rear wall. Orbiana’s position was four metres above the deck. She had a clear view of the oculus and of the activity below her. She was present before her crew, but far beyond their level. The architecture of the bridge was symbolic, and symbols could have a direct impact, shaping the perception of power and its currents. ‘The greenskins crave violence like a drug,’ Orbiana continued. ‘This is an agri world. It isn’t worth much of their attention.’ She gestured at the oculus. ‘Clearly, they know this. How many ships at anchor do you see?’

  ‘None,’ Montgelas said after a minute.

  ‘Precisely. The orks who seek sport here are landing. Their kin won’t tolerate waiting around without a battle coming their way. We’ll have the near space of Squire’s Rest to ourselves. Don’t concern yourself unduly about the greenskins. How close are we to the coordinates I gave you?’

  ‘We’re nearly there.’ Montgelas was standing at a pulpit in the centre of the bridge, a few metres forward of Orbiana. When she was absent, the station gave him the authority he needed. When she was in the throne, Montgelas’s subordination to her will was reinforced. He was the shipmaster, but the Scouring Light was hers. Every soul aboard served the will of the agent of the Ordo Xenos. ‘Auspex,’ Montgelas said to the woman sitting at the station to his immediate left. ‘Please show us the target.’

  Marga Furth tapped some keys, and runes appeared on the oculus, highlighting the goal of Orbiana’s journey. It was very close to a cluster of ork landing sites.

  ‘That could be better,’ Orbiana muttered. ‘What do we know of the vicinity?’

  ‘Farmland,’ said Furth. ‘Sparsely inhabited. The specific destination is not immediately adjacent to cultivated areas.’

  Orbiana nodded. ‘So the orks will have little reason to venture there.’

  ‘They will if we’re there,’ Montgelas said.

  ‘Then we’ll be discreet.’ She mentally ran through the risks. Montgelas was right, of course. If the orks decided her landing party was interesting, then the mission would come to a quick end. She decided that the danger was a manageable one. ‘Get the shuttle ready,’ she said and stood up. She wanted to make her preparations for landing, keep herself busy. She didn’t want to listen to the small, grating voice in the back of her mind, the one whose accusations made her chest pinch.

  She didn’t want to listen, but as she walked along the platform and off the bridge, she heard what it said anyway. It complained that she had only pretended to weigh her options, and that she had decided on her course of action before she had even known how close the greenskins would be to the target. That was true. Of course she had. She had decided months before arriving in Sanctus Reach.

  The full truth? There was no decision to be made.

  She commanded the voice to be silent.

  The Scouring Light was Orbiana’s personal vessel. A modified Viper-class sloop – it was not a combat ship, though it had slit the throat of many xenos threats. It was fast, stealthy, its dark plating almost as effective at concealment as that of the Black Ships. It was a shadow that slipped into enemy territory and brought the Emperor’s Light in the form of purifying death.

  Orbiana made her way down from the superstructure and headed forward. Midway to bow, she turned off the main corridor. She took maintenance tunnels, dropping three more levels and weaving through multiple intersections before she arrived outside a closed vault door. ‘Is he here?’ she asked the guard stationed before it.

  ‘No, inquisitor,’ one answered. ‘He said he was going to rest.’

  ‘Has he been gone long?’

  ‘About an hour.’

  She nodded her thanks. She walked on another hundred metres, and then took a staircase up a level. She stopped before another door. This one was as nondescript as the one below was massive. They both protected objects of great value. She rapped once on the door. After a few seconds it opened.

  The man who admitted her to the small sleeping quarters was twice her age and a head shorter. He seemed even smaller thanks to his rounded posture. His hair was lank and grey and his chin sprouted rough, greasy-looking whiskers. His robes bore multi-coloured chemical stains, and there were pinprick burns in the sleeves. His face was sallow, its flesh hanging loose. He looked exhausted.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb your sleep,’ Orbiana said to Ertuo Andoval.

  ‘Not at all, inquisitor,’ the sage answered. ‘You know how much I value our exchanges.’

  ‘Are you making progress?’

  He shrugged, embarrassed and modest. ‘Some, I think. Always forwards, inquisitor, always forwards. I have, I believe, stumbled onto what might be some very promising variants, but of course we can’t know with any certainty. We need more material–’

  ‘You’ll get it. Plenty of it.’

  ‘And the other…?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve come to tell you. We’ve arrived.’

  ‘Will I be coming down with you?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  Andoval looked crestfallen. ‘But what we’re looking for is so specific…’

  ‘I know very well what we require. Are you questioning my skills?’

  Andoval shook his head quickly and took a step away, head bowed. ‘I would never think to do that.’

  ‘Good. And this is for your own safety. The orks are here before us. You are too valuable to risk taking you there.’

  ‘I will continue my research while you are gone, then, inquisitor.’

  ‘No,’ she snapped. She used her tone as a whip. Andoval recoiled as if struck. Good. ‘You will do no such thing. You will never do that work when I am not on board. Am I clear?’

  ‘Yes, inquisitor.’

  ‘Am I clear?’

  ‘Yes, inquisitor,’ Andoval repeated, hunching lower as if he might kneel.

  ‘Good. We are close,’ she said more gently. ‘I have strong hopes that we are only a few cycles away from the answer. Such an accomplishment is worth a bit more patience, isn’t it?’

  Andoval nodded. ‘It is.’

  She gave him a long stare, then said, ‘Thank you, Ertuo,’ and left.

  As she walked away, she faced the idea of Andoval disobeying her command. She knew that he would not. He was loyal. He held the authority of the Inquisition in great awe, as he should. He knew the dangers. He would not disobey.

  But he had proposed a course of action that should never have crossed his mind. So Orbiana made herself confront the possibility of Andoval’s disobedience. When she did, she felt more than a pinch in her chest.

  She felt terror.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AN END TO REST

  ‘That is no ork vessel,’ Styer said.

  With the full squad of Grey Knights in attendance on the bridge, the Tyndaris had begun a reconnaissance of Squire’s Rest. The auspex scan had revealed massive ork deployments on the surface, but only one other ship in orbit, and that was the Imperial sloop the strike cruiser was now approaching.

  ‘Squire’s Rest must be interesting in more ways than we think,’ Epistolary Gared remarked.

  ‘I recognise that ship,’ Furia said. ‘The Scouring Light. It is the private vessel of Inquisitor Malia Orbiana, of the Ordo Xenos.’

  ‘You do not sound pleased. Isn’t what is happening below more her domain than ours?’ Styer said.

  ‘If she has the means of stopping this invasion on her own, then I hope she shares that knowledge with the rest of the Imperium.’ Furia shook her head. ‘I doubt her reason for being here is to counter the greenskins.’

  ‘A coincidence? That seems unlikely.’

  ‘If the Ruinous Powers are at work here, then we should expect stranger coincid
ences than this.’

  Styer nodded, conceding the point. ‘But you haven’t answered my question. Why does her presence anger you?’

  ‘Inquisitor Orbiana’s methods are unsound.’

  ‘She’s a radical?’

  ‘Yes. A Xanthite.’

  Styer looked at the Scouring Light with a new suspicion. He understood and shared Furia’s distaste for that philosophy. Furia was an Amalathian. Her respect for Imperial orthodoxy was adamantine. She and Styer worked well together. From the perspective of the Grey Knights, the radical factions in the Inquisition were little better than outright heretics who had somehow avoided excommunication and execution. Their beliefs and practices put their souls, and by extension the Imperium itself, at risk. If a Xanthite was up to something dangerous, Styer found it increasingly plausible that a daemonic event could occur on Squire’s Rest. Xanthites had no compunction about using the darker powers of the warp to achieve their ends. Worse: they sought out those powers, and their research was misguided in the extreme. Styer knew the value of a full knowledge of the Ruinous Powers, but only for the sole purpose of destroying them. The Xanthites hoped to harness what they found. That was madness.

  ‘I imagine you are feeling a greater confidence in the prognostication,’ Furia said softly, for Styer’s ears alone.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He still found the situation disturbing. Had they travelled to Squire’s Rest solely because of what Orbiana was about to do? Was the prediction of the incursion not based on a location, but on a person? And still he wondered why here, and at this moment. Xanthites were inherently dangerous. He and his brothers would have nothing to do with them. Even so, Orbiana and her like were inquisitors, and they were not triggering incursions every cycle. And though he shared Furia’s doubts about Orbiana’s reasons for being in Sanctus Reach, the fact of the ork waaagh! meant that her presence was entirely justified.

  Styer felt as if he were seeing the first links of a dark chain of events being forged. There was logic at work that he did not like, though he could not put his finger on the precise reason for his discomfort.

  ‘We must go aboard that ship,’ Furia said. ‘We must learn Orbiana’s purpose.’

  ‘Agreed.’ It was the only way to know what role, if any, she had to play in the foretold crisis. ‘Hail the Scouring Light,’ he ordered.

  There was no answer at first. The sloop maintained vox silence until the Tyndaris was almost upon it. When the Scouring Light’s shipmaster finally responded, Styer had been on the verge of having the boarding torpedoes readied. Even then, Lowell Montgelas extended no welcome. He acknowledged the hails, assured Shipmaster Bruno Saalfrank of the Tyndaris that all was well, and said nothing else.

  Styer took the vox. ‘Shipmaster Montgelas,’ he said. ‘I am Justicar Styer. Your estimation of your well-being is of little interest to me. My mission is. You will receive me, my squad, and Inquisitor Furia aboard the Scouring Light.’

  ‘But without the authorization of Inquisitor Orbiana…’ Montgelas began. There was a quaver in his voice. He was clearly terrified by his own defiance.

  Styer granted him a degree of respect for doing his assigned duty. He granted the man nothing else. Certainly not mercy. ‘You will drop your shields and open you starboard landing bay to our gunship. You will do so immediately, or be destroyed.’

  Montgelas complied.

  The orks hadn’t come yet. There were larger farms to the west. The land in the plains below the shelf that Brauner and Stumar worked was more fertile, though a far cry from how bountiful it had been in centuries past. There were larger population centres in that direction too. More fun for the greenskins.

  There was news from those farms. It came in the form of distant conflagrations and smoke that rose in huge clouds from the land.

  Brauner was talking with Stumar outside his house. Dietrick had done as ordered and gathered the farmhands inside. The building was a low, long, brooding, stone structure, holding his quarters as well as the barracks. It was solid, not built for war, but ready if it came. After a decade of raids, and centuries of benign neglect on the part of the rest of the Imperium, there weren’t too many homes on Squire’s Rest that hadn’t suffered damage or decay. Stumar’s had been hit the year before, and half the length of its barracks was still a burnt-out shell. Brauner had been lucky. His land had been spared to date. His walls were the strongest. So when the time came, Stumar would pull her workers back to here, and together the two groups of veterans would make a redoubt of Brauner’s home.

  That way, Brauner joked to Stumar, and to her alone, they should last another five minutes.

  ‘Any sign they’re moving our way?’ he asked Stumar now.

  She shook her head. ‘For the time being, they aren’t interested, or haven’t noticed we’re here.’

  ‘Let’s hope they’re blind. That eastern windbreak of yours might make all the difference.’ The trees that marked the boundary between the farms stood close together. It wasn’t easy to see through them to the cultivations on the other side.

  She looked at him for a long time before answering. ‘That doesn’t sound like you. You know the greenskins have been on my land before.’

  ‘Different ones, different time. No reason to think they shared the knowledge.’

  ‘Magical thinking. What’s wrong with you?’

  He had been avoiding asking himself that question. Perhaps what was wrong was that he knew the end had come for all of them this time, and he was trying to fill up the time between now and then with a pretence of meaningful action. Perhaps he didn’t want to believe in the inevitability of the burning of Squire’s Rest, and the death of everyone.

  Or perhaps he feared some deaths more than others.

  He didn’t fear his own. He had had that particular anxiety beaten and scorched out of him decades ago. He couldn’t remember if he had ceased to care about his own mortality during his training period or after, during his first campaign in the trenches of Beria. The distinction didn’t matter. He wasn’t afraid to die.

  He was afraid of Stumar’s death.

  He could tell himself that, though it was more than their friendship was worth to let her know. She was cut of the same tough leather as he. Too stubborn to die. Almost too chewed up to live. Their lives of brutal toil and blood had won them a reward, and their slice of paradise had been, in reality, just a doorway to more toil. And now the final measure of blood was going to be exacted from them. Some of their farmhands had retained enough illusions to start families. Brauner had not.

  He had never allowed himself to articulate the thought of Stumar as something other than a fellow former officer, a valued comrade in the battle to keep the fields of Squire’s Rest fruitful, a trusted neighbour. A best friend.

  No, he had never allowed himself to think anything more, because the life he had led – the life they both had led – was not one where such thoughts had a place. They were too soft. They were parasites that weakened their hosts, leaving them vulnerable to misplaced hope and wide-eyed blindness.

  Even so, the thought that Stumar might die terrified him.

  And that, he realised, was why he was indulging in the ridiculous speculation that the orks would not notice the two farms on this shelf.

  ‘Don’t know what I’m saying,’ he told Stumar. ‘Tired old man.’

  ‘You’ll have plenty of time to sleep after the orks are done with us.’

  ‘True, true.’ He slapped the wall of the house. ‘So what are we thinking? This will hold them for a bit. Then what? We make them burn us out?’

  She grimaced. ‘Not my first choice.’

  ‘Another retreat, then?’

  ‘If we don’t leave it too long, maybe. Where to?’

  They looked up at the slope behind the house. Brauner’s land continued for some distance yet to the east of here, but the soil was no longer arable. It was
too thin, then too rocky, then too steep. There was a rough forest for the first half kilometre, and it gave way to scrub, then scree.

  ‘Not much shelter,’ Stumar said.

  ‘I can think of one possibility.’

  ‘Really? Not what I would call ideal.’

  He shrugged. ‘Strong walls, though.’

  ‘Do you think–’ she began, then stopped.

  The roar of engines. Airborne. Coming closer. They looked up. Some of the armed farmhands emerged from the house. For a moment, Brauner expected to see the silhouettes of an ork bomber squadron. But no, he realised: the engines, though deep-throated, weren’t the ugly, chugging, snarling abominations of greenskin technology. And there was a single set.

  The vehicle was Imperial. It drew closer, its shape acquiring definition as it dropped in altitude. It was a shuttle, sleek, expensive enough to belong to a wealthy merchant, but with heavy, dark shielding, and front-mounted heavy bolters. There were no identifying markings. That fact alone told Brauner that whoever commanded the craft was formidable. His instinct for self-preservation, honed over hundreds of battlefields, warned him to keep his questions to himself.

  The shuttle kept dropping. It slowed, then ceased its forward flight and descended to the field opposite the farmhouse. Maize burned in the wash of its retro-motors. Bits of crop flew, hail in a whirlwind. Brauner didn’t blink at the damage. It would all be ash soon enough anyway.

  The shuttle landed, its engines fell silent, and an access door opened on its side. A staircase dropped to the ground. A moment later, a woman in power armour started down them.

  ‘The Sisters of Battle…?’ Stumar began.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Brauner said. He had encountered a few of the Adepta Sororitas in his time. They were forbidding figures, as was this woman, but there was an aura of piety that was missing. The seals and wards that adorned the crimson-and-emerald armour did not appear to be religious icons. At least, not ones that he recognised as such. Then there was the pendant. It hung over her chestplate from a thick, iron chain. It was a rosette in the form of a column with a skull at its centre.