by Guy Haley
‘What occurred during the first insertion was a regrettable incident, my lord,’ said Plosk. ‘I have discussed the matter with Magos Nuministon. It appears he undertook the second sounding himself, without consulting me. I of course would have dissuaded him from this course of action. I apologise for the peril that it put your warriors in. Forgive him, Magos Nuministon is not used to the field of combat.’
‘Then why send him? The mission was jeopardised.’
‘It will not happen again. He has been disciplined. And you must admit, lords, that the risk was perhaps worth it. See how detailed our data is!’ He paused. ‘As regards the speed with which we must act, I refer not to my permissions. Magos Nuministon has redeemed himself.’
‘How?’ said Caedis. His voice had lost its elegance, as if he had to force the words from his throat.
‘He has examined the data presented by the noble adepts of the Blood Drinkers further, that appertaining to the arrival and departure of the hulk. We have three days at most before it begins its journey back into the warp.’
‘By what mechanism?’ said Galt.
‘That we would dearly love to know ourselves, lord captain,’ said Plosk. He bowed his head. ‘The quest for knowledge is unending.’
‘So demands the Omnissiah,’ intoned the tech-priests in the room.
‘If I find you have withheld information from me again, magos,’ said Galt warningly. ‘I will not have a repeat of your previous errors.’
‘I will share all. In fact, I will reveal to you now something else that Magos Nuministon has uncovered within the hulk.’
A graphical representation of the some binaric information leapt into the air, a striated, three-dimensional graph that undulated repetitiously.
‘And what is that?’ said Caedis. ‘Speak, magos, we do not understand the ideograms of machines.’
Plosk smiled. He did not speak for a moment. His gaze darted around the room. ‘This, I believe, is the data signature of a fully functioning, intact STC datacore. Not a printout, although there are surely many within the Death of Integrity, and not just one priceless device, but the collected knowledge of all the long millennia of the Dark Age of Technology. This is the holiest of holies of our priesthood, the goal we have striven for millennia. If we retrieve this, it will transform the Imperium, lords, and you will be heroes for all eternity.’
Galt and Caedis glanced at each other. The chamber was plunged into uproar. All within had some inkling as to what such a find would mean.
Samin, sat with Plosk and Nuministon, leaned forward and whispered to his masters, his words lost amid the shouts. ‘Forgive me, master, I am but young still. Tell me, these other energy signatures, in the sigma ostrakon range. What do they betoken?’
Plosk gave his tutelary a stern look. ‘For another time, Samin. Ask later when we are in unmixed company.’
Galt was calling for order, but the tumult continued. Caedis spoke. His quiet, sibilant voice cut through the noise like a knife.
‘Enough!’ He was paler than usual. ‘You will wait, magos, as Lord Captain Galt dictates. We have our plan and you a prize beyond reckoning, but you heed our words or it will slip through your fingers.’ Caedis forced himself to his feet with great effort. ‘There are rituals to be performed aboard the Lux Rubrum and Novum in Honourum.’
Plosk opened his mouth to speak, then pursed his lips. ‘Very well,’ he said finally. ‘We will do as you demand.’ He made to sit, but stopped, as if something had just crossed his mind. ‘Let me ask, my lords, how do you intend to descend to the cavern?’
‘By these passages,’ said Mastrik. The Imagifer flashed as he passed his hand over them. ‘Seven descent routes.’
Plosk examined them. He nodded his head. ‘There are many obstacles.’
‘There are,’ said Aresti. ‘They will be removed.’
‘Cutting through with plasma torch and chainfist will take time,’ said Plosk. ‘Perhaps I might suggest a better way? There are certain machineries aboard Excommentum Incursus that we will avail you of, so that the assault will go the quicker.’
‘No tricks, magos, no omissions,’ said Galt.
‘Of course, lord captain. I merely propose to gift you a road.’
‘That would be welcome,’ said Sorael. He and the other two captains on the floor of the hall looked to their masters. Galt and Caedis nodded.
‘I will see to it immediately,’ said Plosk. He inclined his head.
‘Then let us be about our business,’ said Caedis. ‘Whatever the magi believe they will find here, we have our own purpose, and that purpose is the destruction of this most pernicious of threats. Not content to slay the sons of Terra, genestealers want nothing more than to poison the very genetic wellsprings of humanity. So has it been since the first of their vile breed stole onto a ship out of the moons of Ymgarl, so it will be for all time. But, brothers!’ His voice rose, regaining something of its strength and diction. ‘This branch of their plague stops here, in the orbit of Jorso, by our blades and bolts! We are to send nigh two hundred Terminator-armoured brothers into battle. Such a deployment is the stuff of legend, and has been witnessed by the galaxy but few times since the birth of the Imperium. We are Adeptus Astartes, of two storied, noble Chapters. The magi have their goal, we have ours. Service! Death! Purgation!’ Caedis held up his arms and stood tall, seeming to grow in size.
‘Service! Death! Purgation!’ shouted the warriors of two Chapters.
Caedis smiled and nodded. He slumped a little, diminished by his effort. ‘Let us see to our souls and to our weapons. The joy of battle awaits.’
Ninety-six Terminator suits stood in alcoves within the Armor Armourium, the great arsenal of Novum in Honourum. Clamps held the armour in place on stands behind glass screens; for the moment they were empty of occupants. Five Techmarines walked the rows of armour, a coterie of servitors equipped with fine-tooled limbs following them. They checked the armour in batches of five, chanting the canticles of waking and good function as they opened the alcove’s glass fronts. Light flooded each alcove as the priests of iron opened them. The suits, mounted on wheeled turntables, came out from the wall. The Techmarines carried on their hymnals as they checked the exterior of the armour, rotating them carefully. Then the Techmarines opened panels and inserted their diagnostic tools into the armour’s external access ports.
Each set of plate came alive for five seconds, energy plants online, visors shining, suit lights blazing. They flexed in their cradles as fibre muscles contracted deep under adamantium rods and plasteel and ceramite plating. The Techmarines made the ritual responses to the machines’ proper activation, the implants in their minds filling with data from the sensoriums telling them precisely the condition of every component. When they were satisfied the armours were properly functional, the Techmarines withdrew and the suits slumped back from attention. Scented oil was spattered onto each as servitors droned Gothic hymns and chittered binaric blessings, and the next five suits were approached and the process begun again. In this way each suit was checked, activated, diagnosed, deactivated, and blessed. None were found wanting.
Patiently, and with great devotion, the Techmarines worked through the night.
In the Grand Chapel many decks above, the majority of the Novamarines were assembled; more than two hundred and twenty brothers of three companies. Only those in the infirmary or on sentry and command duties aboard the fleet’s sundry vessels were absent. Hooded and silent in their robes of bone-and-night-blue, they kneeled in the lambency of candles and prayed for victory.
The walls of the shrine reverberated to the songs of war as choirs of serfs gave voice to their desires to see their masters returned safe and victorious from battle. Chaplain Odon stood with two other Chaplains within the presbytery of the chapel, the sacred space reserved for the Chaplains within the apse. Their platform was reached by three broad steps in a recessed semicircle. Behind them, the sanctuary rose, wherein at the top of a steep flight of stairs was Corvo’s Mem
orial, an exact copy of the sarcophagus within the Great Tomb of Fortress Novum. An effigy of Corvo lay in repose atop it, armoured in stone, his sword clasped in both hands, point towards his feet. Odon and the others were dressed all in black, their skull tattoos sinister in the shadows of their hoods. Odon held the Cup of Brotherhood in his hand, his crozius held horizontal on a stand behind him. Chaplain Kornak stood to his right, Chaplain Ardio to the left, both carrying their croziuses. Black-clad servitor-worshippers and serfs flanked them.
Odon blessed each of the brothers in turn as they stepped forward, granting each a sip from the Cup of Brotherhood which contained the waters of Honourum blended with those of Macragge. This ritual was one of the first undergone by the novitiate Novamarines, and remained principal to their creed throughout their lives. The taste of two homes intermingled, representative of the Legion their ancestors had left behind, and the territory their founder had sworn to defend forever. The cup was small, the brothers in multitude. Apparently of worn wood, the cup’s nature was mysterious. Not until the last brother had sipped at the cup and the blessings of Corvo painted on his face with its water did it run dry. There was always precisely enough, no matter if it were a squad blessed or the entire Chapter, although such a gathering had not taken place for twenty centuries. Traditionally guarded by the First Company, the cup was among the most holy of the Chapter’s relics, touched as it was by the lips of every Novamarine from the time of Corvo to the present day.
The ritual was unhurried. The brothers themselves were silent as they approached Odon’s place, cowls up and hands thrust deep into the sleeves of their robes. They took their sip and the whispered blessing of the Chaplain without speaking before returning to their pews. Once the last had returned to his place, the songs of the serfs dropped to their ordinary susurrations, the sound of the wind of Honourum intertwined with the oaths of fealty Lucretius Corvo had made so many thousand years ago.
The First Company veterans were called forward. The majority of them were in one place for the first time in living memory – eighty-seven Space Marines of the highest order, men who had fought for the Emperor for generations of normal men’s lives. Tattooed with so many icons and scenes of triumph their skin was blue-black, between them they were hung with every badge of honour known to the Chapter. There an iron halo, here the aquila, there the laurels of defiance, and more.
The veterans knelt before Odon in a broad semicircle, still silent. Sergeant Voldo, most senior and decorated of all, knelt at the centre, the Chapter ancient to his left, the Chapter champion to his right. In front of him, on the second of the three steps leading up to Corvo’s Memorial, Captains Galt, Aresti and Mastrik, and Epistolary Ranial took their places. Kneeling behind them on the first step, but in front of Voldo, were the other officers of the Chapter – the lower ranking Librarians, the four Apothecaries, those Techmarines who did not labour in the arsenal – fourteen officers in all.
Odon walked down from the memorial platform, and passed the cup to Chaplain Kornak, who followed him. He went to Voldo first, bent low, and kissed him upon both cheeks. ‘Corvo’s might be yours,’ he said, then dipped his finger into the cup in Kornak’s hand. He drew a circle on the sergeant’s forehead. ‘This circle symbolises the nova for which we are named,’ he said quietly, the words intended for Voldo alone. ‘This circle symbolises the territories we are sworn to respect, this circle symbolises the eternal oath of Corvo.’
Odon and Kornak passed from Voldo to the next man, then the next, blessing them all in the same fashion. As he went from Space Marine to Space Marine, the serfs’ and servitors’ song became louder again, the brothers of the Third and Fifth Companies joining their song; a long complex plainsong speaking of loyalty, honour, and the glory of death for the higher purposes of mankind.
By the time Odon returned to the officers, forty minutes had passed. He likewise blessed them in their turn, two kisses, the giving of might, the drawing of the circle, the description of its meaning.
Chaplain Ardio went to the foot of the steps leading up to the memorial. He paid obeisance at the bottom, then mounted the stairs. At the top, he made a series of complex passes over the warrior-lord’s stone face. A drawer slid from the stone, lined in blue velvet. He leaned into it, and took out Corvo’s relic.
There were fifteen sacred relics of Corvo, many at home on Honourum, the rest entrusted to the largest taskforces of Novamarines. Novum in Honourum was fortunate indeed to play host to the hilt of the hero’s shattered sword. Only Corvo’s laurels, bestowed upon him by Roboute Guilliman himself, and enshrined forever in Fortress Novum, were more holy to the Chapter.
With the ceremony appropriate to such an item, Ardio walked down the stairs. The First Company joined their brothers in song, and the Grand Chapel echoed loudly to their gathered voices. The song changed the quality of the place, transmuting it into something more than a chamber within a spacecraft. The unity of their song removed the walls between the individual warriors, making them one in mind and soul.
Odon took the sword hilt of Corvo from Ardio. It was so ancient, almost as old as the Imperium itself. The features of it were worn smooth, metal shone with the touch of a hundred generations of Chaplains. Spots marred this lustre, dark rust eaten into the metal. The fragment of blade that projected from the hilt was dull, the components of the mechanism that had once imbued the blade with the ferocious power of a disruption field had corroded into an undifferentiated mass.
Yet this was still the sword of Corvo.
The song reached a crescendo, and swooped low to a deep finish that left the fabric of the chapel reverberating.
The song departed, unity remained.
Odon held the hilt high.
‘This is the sword of Lucretius Corvo!’ he said. ‘This is the weapon he wielded at the side of Roboute Guilliman himself, the sword he lifted when he renewed his fealty to the Emperor, the sword he bore on Astagar where he destroyed the dread Titan Fellghast, the sword he held in both hands as he had made his oath to defend the Ultima Segmentum in the name of the Lords of Macragge and the Emperor of all mankind!’
‘We take the oath, we renew the oath,’ intoned Kornak and Ardio.
‘We renew the oath,’ shouted the Novamarines, and the chamber shook.
‘Corvo said, “As I leave Macragge for the last time, I swear to you”,’ said Odon, reciting the oath of their founder. ‘“Lord Roboute Guilliman, primarch of the Emperor and my sworn liege lord, that I and my successors shall undertake the protection of the Ultima Segmentum from now unto eternity’s end. Not death nor dishonour nor wavering of spirit shall distract us from this task. Though death take me, though my soul be riven. Nothing shall sway me from this duty, not for now nor until the end of time. This I swear. This is my oath!”’
‘This we swear! This is our oath!’ shouted the Novamarines.
‘Unity! Honour! Strength of purpose!’ said Odon.
‘Unity! Honour! Strength of purpose!’ roared the Novamarines.
Minds cleansed by the waters of their homes, oath reaffirmed, Odon led the Novamarines in prayer. Silently the brothers of the Third and Fifth Companies filed out of the Grand Chapel and returned first to their arming chambers, and then to their cells. In the confines of their simple rooms, they spent the night fasting and checking their weaponry, preparing themselves for the morrow. The cloistered habitation decks were alive with the clicking of guns disassembled and rebuilt, and whispered prayers.
The First Company veterans remained in vigil in the Grand Chapel, thoughts bent only on their duty to the Lord of Man, and through that duty, victory.
They did not sleep.
The Hall of Life sat at the centre of Lux Rubrum, the very heart of the mighty vessel, and a heart it resembled; red and hot.
In shape, the hall was a wide circle, the walls bulging like a ribcage as they ascended, curving back inward to meet as a pointed dome. From this high ceiling censers depended, clouding the air with fragrant blue smoke that reeked o
f the fireblooms of San Guisiga.
Six-sided pillars of porphyry quarried from the flanks of Mount Calicium braced walls of red-brown granite. These alternated with pillars of skulls, the stacked trophies of five thousand years of war. Slabs of the same granite that made up the walls made up the floor. This stone was polished bright, so that all who looked into it would see their face reflected as from a pool of drying blood. Lights were set within bowls carved into the pillars, casting a ruddy glow on the ancient battle honours and standards that lined the stone walls. Glass sarcophagi topped with elegant metalwork and statuary held the bones of the Chapter’s most honoured dead, skull-faced cybernetic vat-children crouched at the head of each vitreous tomb, ready to whisper the great deeds of those within to any who would pause by their sides.
At the centre of the chamber a depression was sunk into the granite, the shape of the blood drop of the Chapter. Square channels cut into the floor led to it, turning this way and that in a continuous line, so that they formed the chalice of the Blood Drinkers insignia below the blood drop. Thirty more channels ran out from it, to alcoves set within the walls. At the narrow end of the drop, an altar soared high. A relief of helmetless armoured brothers circled it carved of red carnelian, each one with a skull for his head, bowed over hands clasped around the hilts of swords and axes.
Upon the altar channels were also cut, below manacles of bright adamantium, leading from places that would correspond to the major arteries of the human body’s limbs should a person be laid out upon it: carotid, femoral, ulnar and radial. The channels ran from these points to gather, then as one led to the apex of the blood drop.
The altar was empty and it gleamed. Behind it, a stained glass window five times the height of an adept. Holos’s stern features, captured in glass, stared down at the hall in eternal judgement. The fires burning on the other side of the glass made his eyes glimmer with life.
A pulpit was above the altar, an angel’s wings spread wide formed its sides. The angel also was of carnelian, and had a fleshless face. It held a sword in one hand, an hourglass in the other. Everywhere in the Hall of Life were skulls: skulls of the righteous dead, skulls of stone, skulls of volcanic glass. This was a place of life only for the brothers of the Blood Drinkers, to all others it brought death.