THE COLOURS ON the palette swirled before Serena’s eyes, and the blandness of them infuriated her beyond measure. She had spent the best part of the morning attempting to create the red of the sunset she had seen on Laeran, but the emptied pots of paint and broken brushes scattered around her bore mute testament to her failure. The canvas before her was a mess of frantic pencil strokes, the outline of a painting that she was sure would be her greatest work… if only she could get this red to mix properly!
‘Damn you!’ she shouted and hurled the palette away with such force that it smashed to splinters on the wall.
Her breath came in short, painful gasps as the frustration built within her. Serena put her head in her hands and tears came on the heels of hard, wracking sobs that hurt her chest.
The anger at her failure surged through her body, and she snatched up the broken stem of a paintbrush and pressed the jagged edge of wood into the soft skin of her upper arm. The pain was intense, but at least she could feel it. The skin broke and blood welled around the splintered wood, bringing her a measure of relief. Only the pain made anything real, and Serena ground the wood deeper into her flesh, watching as the blood ran down her arm over the pale ridges of her older scars.
Long, dark hair hung in lank ribbons to Serena’s waist, stained with spots of colour, and her skin had the unhealthy pallor of one who had not slept in days. Her eyes were bloodshot and grainy, her fingernails cracked and encrusted with paint.
Her studio had been turned upside down since she had returned from the surface of Laeran. It was not vandalism that had brought about such a transformation, but a frenzied passion to create that had reduced her once immaculate studio to something that resembled the aftermath of a battle.
The desire to paint had been like an elemental force within her that could not be denied. It had been thrilling and a little bit frightening… the burning need to create art of passion and sensuality. Serena had filled three canvases with colour and light, painting like a woman possessed before exhaustion had claimed her and she had fallen asleep in the ruin of her studio.
When she had awoken she had looked at what she had painted with a critical eye, seeing the crudity of the work, and the primitive colours that had none of the life and urgency she remembered from the temple. Serena had dug through the disarray of her studio for the picts she had taken of the temple and the mighty coral city, its gloriously masculine towers and wondrously hued skies and ocean.
For days she had tried to rekindle the rapturous sensations that had filled her on Laeran, but no matter what proportions she mixed her paints in, she could not achieve the tonal qualities she sought.
Serena cast her mind back to Laeran, remembering the sorrow she had felt when Ostian had been denied a place in the craft travelling to the planet’s surface. Guiltily, that sorrow had vanished when they had broken the cloud cover, and she had seen the vast blue expanse of the oceans of Laeran spread before her.
She had never seen such a glorious, vivid blue and had snapped a dozen picts before they had even begun their descent towards the Laer atoll. Circling the floating city had stirred feelings within her that she hadn’t known existed, and Serena had ached to set foot on its alien structure more than anything.
Upon landing they had been escorted through the broken ruins of the city, every one of the remembrancers staring open mouthed at the wonderful otherness of it all. Captain Julius had explained that the tall conch towers had screamed all through the war, though all but a handful were now silenced, brought down by explosives to render them mute. The few ululating screams Serena could hear sounded impossibly distant, achingly lonely and infinitely sad.
Serena had taken pict after pict as they were led through the wreckage of battle, and even the torn corpses of the Laer could not detract from the thrill of walking on a city that floated above the ocean. The sights and colours were so vibrant that she couldn’t take it all in, her senses stimulated to the point of overload.
Then she had seen the temple.
All thoughts other than achieving entry to its mysterious interior were banished from her mind as Captain Julius and the iterators had led the way towards the towering structure. A hungry, intense determination had seized the remembrancers, and they made their way towards the temple with unseemly haste.
Picking their way through the rubble, she had smelled the strange, smoky aroma of what she had at first thought to be incense, burnt by the Army units to mask the stench of blood and death. Then she saw the ghostly wisps of pink mist seeping from the porous walls of the temple and realised that it was something of alien origin. A delicious, momentary panic filled her until she smelled more of the strange musk and decided that it was quite pleasant.
Arc lights had been set up inside the cave-like entrance of the temple, and the brilliant glow illuminated wondrous colours and murals of such lifelike imagery that they took her breath away. Gasps of astonishment came from all around her as artists attempted to capture the scale of the murals, and imagists took panoramic picts of the scene.
From somewhere inside, Serena could hear music, wild, passionate music that lodged like a splinter in her heart. She turned from the murals, following the blue hair of Bequa as the siren song of the music grew louder and drew them both onwards.
From nowhere, her anger at Bequa suddenly pounded hot in her veins, and she felt her lip curl back in a snarl. Serena set off after Bequa, the music of the temple swelling within her the deeper she went. Though she was conscious of people around her, Serena paid them no mind, her thoughts filled with the sensations flooding her system. Music, light and colour were all around her, and she put a hand out to steady herself as the sheer excessiveness of it all threatened to overwhelm her.
Serena pushed herself onwards, rounded a corner into the temple’s interior… and dropped to her knees as she saw terrifying beauty and awesome energy in the lights and noise of the temple.
Bequa Kynska stood in the middle of the great space, her arms raised in a V as she held up the wands of a vox-thief and the music poured over her.
Serena thought she’d never seen anything so beautiful in all her life.
Her eyes burned with colour and it had been all she could do not to weep at its perfection.
Now, back in her studio, she had spent all her energies trying to recapture that brief, shining moment of perfect colour without success. Straightening her back and wiping her tears on her sleeve, she picked up another palette from the detritus strewn around her and began mixing her paints to try, once again, to capture it.
She mixed cadmium red with quinacridone crimson, leavening the red with some perylene maroon, but already she could see that the colours weren’t quite right, the tone off by a fraction.
Even as her anger built again, a droplet of blood fell from her arm into the paint as she was mixing it, and suddenly there it was. The colour was perfect and she smiled, understanding what she had to do.
Serena picked up the small knife she used for cutting the nibs of her quills and drew the blade across her skin, cutting into the soft flesh above her elbow.
Droplets of blood fell from the cut and she held the palette beneath it, smiling as she saw the colours forming.
Now she could begin painting.
SOLOMON DUCKED BENEATH the swinging cut of a sword, bringing his own weapon up in time to block the reverse cut to his chest. The blow rang up the length of his arm, and he gritted his teeth as his freshly healed bones protested at the rigours he was putting them through. He backed away from Marius as the captain of the Third came at him again with his sword aimed at his heart.
‘You are slow, Solomon,’ said Marius.
Solomon swept his sword down, pushing aside the clumsy thrust, and spun to deliver the deathblow to his opponent, but pulled up short as Marius’s blade clove towards him. He twisted out of the way, his body feeling as if it was coming apart at the seams.
‘Fast enough to see you coming, old man,’ laughed Solomon, though he knew it was onl
y a matter of time before Marius wore him down.
‘You’re lying,’ noted Marius, throwing his sword down to the mat. He backed towards the racks of weapons that lined the walls of the training hall and selected a pair of Sun and Moon spear blades. The double-headed daggers were impractical in a real fight, but made for a deadly training weapon. Solomon threw aside his own sword and picked up a pair of Wind and Fire wheels.
Like his opponent’s weapons, these too were largely decorative, the circular blade held by a textured grip and embellished with curved punch spikes around its circumference, but Solomon enjoyed training with weapons that were beyond his normal range. He faced Marius and extended his left arm, while keeping his right hooked at his side.
‘Maybe I am, maybe I’m not,’ grinned Solomon. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’
Marius nodded and stormed towards him, the twin bladed daggers spinning before him in a web of glittering steel. Solomon blocked first one strike then another, each ringing clang forcing him back towards the wall.
He swayed aside from a high, slashing cut and sent a low, sweeping blow towards Marius’s legs. Marius stabbed one of his daggers down, the tip lancing through the centre of the circular weapon and pinning it to the floor. Solomon jumped back, forced to leave it behind as the second blade was thrust towards him.
‘Have you heard the news?’ gasped Solomon, desperate to distract Marius and buy himself some space.
‘What news?’ asked Marius.
‘That we’re to be issued some new chemical stimulant for testing,’ said Solomon.
‘I’d heard, yes,’ nodded Marius. ‘The primarch believes it will make us stronger and faster than ever.’
Solomon frowned at his friend’s tone, the words sounding as though he was speaking them by rote, but didn’t really believe them. Solomon paused in his retreat and said, ‘Aren’t you a little bit concerned at where it came from?’
‘It comes from the primarch,’ said Marius, putting up his dagger.
‘No, I mean the drug. It hasn’t come from Terra, I know that much,’ said Solomon. ‘In fact, I think it was made right here. I heard Apothecary Fabius saying something about it before he transferred to the Andronius.’
‘What difference does it make where it comes from?’ asked Marius. ‘The primarch has authorised its use for those that wish it.’
‘I’m not sure,’ admitted Solomon as Marius began to circle him. ‘Perhaps none at all, but I just don’t like the idea of some new chemical being pumped into me when I don’t know where it came from.’
Marius laughed and said, ‘All the genetic enhancements done to your flesh in the laboratory and you choose now to worry about chemicals in your body?’
‘It’s not the same thing, Marius. We were created in the image of the Emperor as his perfect warriors, so why do we need more?’
Marius shrugged and lunged with his dagger. Solomon swatted it away with his remaining weapon and groaned in pain as he felt something tear inside. The bout was over.
Deciding that his mind would break before his body would heal, he had removed himself from the apothecarion and returned to his company’s arming chambers. Gaius Caphen had been pleased to see him, but Solomon could tell that his subordinate had enjoyed the brief taste of command and knew that he would need to see about getting him his own company.
As the days passed with no sign of the Diasporex, he had trained fiercely to rebuild his strength, and had taken to visiting Marius Vairosean for gruelling sparring matches, none of which he had the strength to win.
‘Fulgrim has said we should do so,’ said Marius, as if that were an end to the matter.
‘He has, but I still don’t like it,’ gasped Solomon. ‘I just can’t see why it’s needed.’
‘What you see or don’t see is irrelevant,’ said Marius. ‘The word has been given, and we are duty bound to obey. Our ideal of perfection and purity comes from Fulgrim, and it passes down through the lord commanders to us, the company captains, whereupon it is beholden to us to enact the primarch’s will amongst our warriors.’
‘I know all that, but this just feels wrong,’ said Solomon, breathing heavily and tossing his dagger to the floor. ‘Enough, I’m done. You win.’
Marius nodded and said, ‘You are getting stronger every day, Solomon.’
‘Not strong enough,’ said Solomon, slumping to his haunches on the training mat.
‘No, not yet, but your strength will return soon enough and then perhaps you’ll give me a decent fight,’ replied Marius, sitting down next to him.
‘Don’t you worry about that,’ promised Solomon. ‘I’ll have you beaten soon enough.’
‘You won’t,’ replied Marius without irony. ‘I’ve been training the Third harder than ever before and we’re at our very best. I’m at my very best, and with this new chemical I’ll be even faster and stronger.’
Solomon looked into his friend’s eyes and saw the desperate yearning to atone for his failure on the atoll. He reached out and placed his hand on Marius’s arm.
‘Listen, I know you know this already, but I’m going to say it anyway,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Marius, shaking his head, ‘don’t. The Third were shamed and you will only make it worse if you try and excuse our failure.’
‘It wasn’t a failure,’ said Solomon.
‘Yes, it was,’ nodded Marius. ‘If you can’t see that, then perhaps you were lucky to have been shot down before you got there.’
Solomon felt his choler rise and said, ‘Lucky? I almost died.’
‘It would be easier if I had died,’ whispered Marius.
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘Perhaps not, but the fact remains that the Third failed in its appointed task, and until we atone for that, I will ensure that my company follows the primarch’s orders without question.’
‘No matter what they are?’ asked Solomon.
‘Exactly,’ said Marius. ‘No matter what they are.’
NINE
Discovered
Blayke
An Honest Counsellor
THE FERRUM SLIPPED through the bright corona of the Carollis Star, her shields keeping the worst of the electromagnetic hash from scrambling her systems as the crew hunted for the solar collectors of the Diasporex. Her hull had been patched and the ruptured elements of her superstructure repaired, though she would still need some time in docks to undo all the damage that had been inflicted upon her.
Captain Balhaan stood at his command lectern, the frustrating routine of disappointment his menial command consisted of having long grown stale. Iron Father Diederik stood at surveyor control next to Axarden, and though Balhaan knew that he deserved no less for his failure to protect his ship, the fact that he had to share command of the Ferrum with another still rankled.
Diederik oversaw every command decision and had glared pointedly at every order he issued, but Balhaan knew that his presence was a necessary reminder of the dangers of complacency. The Iron Father’s body was largely augmetic, his organic parts having been replaced long ago to bring him closer to mechanised perfection and the eventual interment in the sarcophagus of an ancient Dreadnought.
‘Is your surveyor sweep finished yet?’ asked Balhaan.
‘Just about, sir,’ replied Axarden.
‘How is it looking?’
‘Not hopeful, sir. There is so much interference that we could be right on top of them and not know it,’ explained Axarden, as much for the Iron Father’s benefit as his captain’s.
‘Very good, Axarden. Let me know if there is any change,’ ordered Balhaan.
He leant on the lectern, trying to remember periods of history where the great men of the age had been forced to endure such tedious duties. None sprang to mind, though he knew that history tended to leave out the parts between the heroics, and concentrated on the battles and drama of the passage of time. He wondered what the remembrancers of the 52nd Expedition would write of this portion of the Great Crusade, kn
owing that in all likelihood, it would not even be recorded. After all, where was the glory in scores of ships scouring the outer edges of a sun for solar collectors?
He remembered reading a passage in his Herodotus that spoke of a battle on the coast of an ancient land known as Artemision in northern Euboea, between two mighty fleets of ocean-going vessels. The battle was said to have lasted three days, though Balhaan could not conceive of such a thing and wondered how much of that battle had actually been spent fighting.
Very little, he suspected. In Balhaan’s experience, battles at sea tended to be short, bloody affairs where one war galley would quickly gain the advantage and ram the other, sending its crew to an icy death at the bottom of the ocean.
Even as he formed such gloomy thoughts, Axarden said, ‘Captain, I think we might have something!’
He looked up from his melancholy reverie and all thoughts of the long, empty stretches of history were banished at the excited tone he heard in his surveyor officer’s voice. His fingers swept across the command console, and the viewing bay lit up with the brightness of the star beyond.
Immediately, he saw what Axarden had seen, the shimmering gleam of reflected starlight winking on the giant, rippling sails of a solar collector.
‘All stop,’ ordered Balhaan. ‘No sense in letting them know we are here.’
‘We should attack,’ said Diederik, and Balhaan forced himself to mask his annoyance at the Iron Father’s impetuous interruption. Hadn’t the Ferrum fallen foul of just similar thinking?
‘No,’ said Balhaan, ‘not until we have alerted the expedition fleets.’
‘How many collectors are there?’ asked Diederik, turning to Axarden.
The surveyor officer leaned in close to his plotter, and Balhaan waited anxious seconds as Axarden sought to answer the Iron Father.
‘At least ten, but there are probably more I can’t yet pinpoint,’ said Axarden. ‘The star’s radioactive output appears to be highly concentrated here.’
Balhaan moved from behind his lectern, descended the steps that led to surveyor control and said, ‘It does not matter how many there are, Iron Father. We cannot attack.’
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