War Without End

by Various

  ‘No, Chief Custodian.’

  ‘Then let us proceed with the dawn report.’

  As Stentonox took his Captain-General through the matters of the day, with Arcadias filling in the blanks, his mind moved from one weighty consideration to another. The morning alone was an agitated crowd of duties and responsibilities to push through, each vying for his urgent attention. There were defensive vulnerabilities created by the Warmason’s work on the Byzan Wall. One of Valdor’s auric-envoys, Abhorsiax, was returning from Old Aethiopia, where the Chief Custodian had sent him to arbitrate the labour wars that had broken out between the Danakil mineral conglomerates and Hive Abyssin. The recently trialled protectorate rotations operating out of the Dolorite quad-bastions still required refinement. Consuls from the Collegia Titanica were requesting a baptismal Palace walk-by, involving the newly constructed Warlord-class Battle Titan Vigilantia Victrum, which the Chief Custodian was almost certain to reject out of committee. Papers, references and pict-files on the forty or so Palace sub-ambassador appointees still required the Chief Custodian’s seal. A consignment of breaching munitions due for delivery to the Palace armouries had understandably not materialised from Mars, but the consignment’s replacement order had similarly not arrived on schedule from the forge world of Phaeton. The Legio Custodes fleet of orbital monitors were well overdue an inspection. The Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites had requested an audience to discuss the dangers posed by a number of seditionist movements, all speaking against the Emperor, as well as a recent incident involving a troubled citizen firing a shot at one of the Palace’s street-level barbicans, only to be killed in return fire by the Custodian foot knight on duty there. Witchseekers of the Silent Sisterhood were convening to discuss the maintenance of the Palace defences that no one could actually see – the Emperor’s immaterial security measures. Beyond these existing matters of gravity, both Stentonox, as Master of the Watch, and the Chief Custodian had several dozen lesser meetings and consultation sessions – more, now that the shield-captain had completed his watch report.

  ‘Thank you,’ Valdor said to the shield-captain. ‘Arcadius, is there anything else?’

  As the sentinel-securitas checked his lists, their group approached a towering sentry gate. The arch’s barricade was raised and hung over a pair of Aquila Terminators like a bad omen. The bulkheads were one of the many improvements that Rogal Dorn had approved for the Palace interior. Every grand design and architectural flourish now had to be adapted to new purpose: the high, decorative archways occurring at intervals down the arterial corridors were now tri-layered barricade-bulkheads, that would come down in the event of wall-breaches and slow the advance of an enemy force through the Palace.

  The sentries bowed low – despite it being difficult to do so in their Tactical Dreadnought plate – and rested their helmets against the ceremonial halberds they clutched before them. As the Captain-General, sentinel-securitas and Master of the Watch passed, the pair rose back to their impressive height, resuming their silent vigil like golden gargoyles.

  Arcadias only had one other order of business: a report that Stentonox had requested himself.

  ‘The nodical-session Blood Games are almost at an end,’ Arcadius told them, and Valdor nodded with approval. With intelligence pointing to a security threat that was only growing in imminence, the Captain-General had doubled the theatre-diagnostic, pitting the best he had from the ranks of the Legio Custodes against the Palace defences. The sentinel-securitas examined both failures and near-successes to anticipate possible enemy strategies and review the Emperor’s security. With the galaxy in turmoil and Valdor’s days increasingly dominated by actual threats rather than hypothetical ones, the Chief Custodian had less time for the tactical rituals. It had been Stentonox’s relative success in a previous round of the Blood Games that had elevated him to shield-captain, and he thought to rekindle the Chief Custodian’s appetite for updates. It had worked.

  ‘Any surprises?’ Valdor asked.

  ‘Jerichstein was intercepted in Hive Persepol,’ Arcadius confirmed. ‘Ran into some trouble with an entire precinct of Arbitrators. Nicator was taken by one of our gunships during a pursuit over the Caucasus. A servo-drone picked up Einocratus while mapping a section of ancient sewerage trenches beneath the Palace. The Fourth Ward fire was started by Caesarion, and Gesh was responsible for the Black Sentinels and foot knights missing from their sentry-points in the hanging gardens. But they both failed isometrics at the Cantica-Consentrica, Barbican East. I fear they were working together, which is of course prohibited by the rules of the Games.’

  ‘The enemy won’t play by our rules,’ Valdor said. ‘Will they, Stentonox?’

  ‘It is difficult enough to get our allies to do so, most of the time,’ the shield-captain offered.

  ‘Exactly,’ Valdor agreed.

  ‘Which is why I’ve taken the unusual step of both commending and censuring the pair of them simultaneously,’ Arcadius said.

  Valdor laughed. ‘Kalibos?’

  ‘Taken climbing the Maximillias Wall – previously identified as a weak spot in our surveillance,’ the sentinel-securitas informed Valdor.

  ‘Did you not favour the Maximillias Wall with your infiltration?’ the Chief Custodian asked Stentonox.

  ‘The Espartic Wall, my lord.’

  ‘Not an easy climb,’ Valdor said.

  ‘Difficult by design. Soon to be made impossible,’ Stentonox said, nodding to Arcadius and adding a mental note to his duties for the day.

  ‘But Kalibos was taken?’

  Arcadias confirmed it. ‘But he did not concede easily. Four of my sentinels are in the infirmatory.’

  ‘And Zantini?’

  ‘Made it through to the Halls Econium disguised as a plenipotente from the Technovingian Sovereignty, but the new frequency fields installed beneath the flags unmasked him.’

  ‘But they’re getting closer,’ Valdor admitted.

  ‘Their near-successes honour us,’ Arcadius said. ‘But with every cycle of the Games we learn more of the arts of infiltration. The weaknesses and complacencies our enemies will use against us.’

  ‘Any Custodians outstanding?’

  ‘One,’ Arcadius told Valdor and the shield-captain. ‘Belisarius.’

  Stentonox prided himself on knowing all of the Custodians he worked with, but he knew some better than others, and Belisarius he barely knew at all.

  ‘His genotrace was identified by syn-grids in the Kaspasian Basin,’ Arcadius continued, ‘at Sinai-Persis and Hive Saqqara. Travelling west, away from the Palace. Perhaps his approach was compromised by these recent captures.’

  As they approached the giant statue-lined galleries of the Bronze Arcade, the burnished doors of the Heliosicon Tower parted to reveal the large grav-carriage and its pair of passengers. Sister-Commandress Duesstra Edelstyne was a blistering vision in silver plate and rich furs. An ornate half-helm covered her stapled lips, the vaulting nose guard of which cut between the dark intensity of her eyes. At her side stood a shaven-headed novice glossator.

  As a Sister of Silence, Edelstyne was Confidente-Tranquil to Lady Krole herself and ranking maiden among the Raptor Guard allocated to the Palace’s First Ward. Her sisters were stationed throughout, attending meetings in silence and standing sentinel in the halls and corridors, not unlike their Custodian counterparts; in many ways, her role was analogous to Stentonox’s own. While providing empyreal protection in the Palace against witchbreeds and their invasive, immaterial probings, the Sisterhood’s warriors were also welcome additions to the Palace security forces.

  But this necessitated coordination, and an obligatory meeting between Edelstyne and the Master of the Watch. Stentonox had scheduled the time and the place but this was neither. He acknowledged the silent stab of her glare with a nod, but turned his attention back to the Chief Custodian.

  ‘Sounds like Be
lisarius just doesn’t want the game to end,’ Valdor said. ‘But then again, who does? Monitor his progress. Keep me posted.’

  Arcadius nodded. ‘Thank you, Chief Custodian.’

  ‘And good luck to you, shield-captain.’

  ‘Thank you, Captain-General,’ replied Stentonox. He saluted before Valdor, Indemnion and the Ares Guard peeled off into a chasmal corridor.

  ‘Commandress,’ Stentonox boomed across the arcade. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Her gauntlets signed out a rapid series of gestures, the speed and insistency of which even the shield-captain could interpret as urgent. From the tender lips of the novice glossator came the translation.

  ‘Shield-Captain Stentonox. There is something you should see.’

  The Heliosicon Tower was one of the tallest thrusting skyward from the Imperial Palace. It was so called because of the views it commanded of the Terran sun rising above the chromatic haze of atmospheric pollution. The bulbous minaret at the top boasted not only its own donjon and signum-complex, but also crenellated terraces outfitted both decoratively for observation, and defensively with interceptor missile launchers.

  As the bronze doors slid open, Stentonox strode out onto the first terrace, accompanied by Arcadius and the two women. A Custodian tower sentry fell briefly to one knee as the Master of the Watch passed, but Edelstyne and her novice followed without acknowledgement, the sunlight glinting off their polished battleplate. Edelstyne signed.

  ‘There.’ The novice glossator pointed out to the south-west.

  Stentonox followed her direction out over the haze, across the excavation-mauled plateaus of the Himalazia. Something was emerging from the tarnished clouds beyond. Something huge.

  From its size, it could only be one of Terra’s great orbital plates, grazing the planet’s upper atmosphere and moving slowly, but surely, over the mountain peaks. While each orbital plate was different – no less the victims of hideous engineering enhancements and ungainly accretions than the hives that housed billions at ground level – this one reminded Stentonox of some colossal, flattened jellyfish. The greater metropol-platform was like a parasol, with a nest of sky docks, stratomoorings and the orbital’s gravitic engine column hanging down through the clouds beneath it. From the shape of its silhouetted outline, the colossal plate looked like Arcus, one of the smaller orbital conurbatia.

  What alarmed the shield-captain was the fact that the swarm of tugs and shunt-craft manoeuvring the humongous plate seemed to be dragging it towards the Imperial Palace.

  Stentonox and Arcadius exchanged glances of simultaneous realisation and alarm.

  ‘Patch me through to the signum-complex,’ the shield-captain ordered. Arcadius nodded and conferred briefly with the tower sentry.

  A voice came across the encrypted vox-channel. ‘Signata-Heliosicon for the Master of the Watch.’

  ‘This is Shield-Captain Enobar Stentonox,’ he replied. ‘Ident – Tarantis, Halcyon, three-fifty-two, sixty-four. Confirm.’

  ‘Confirmed, shield-captain. Standing by.’

  ‘Heliosicon,’ Stentonox said. ‘I am on the battle-terraces of your tower and I am looking at what appears to be an orbital about to breach both Palace air and void-space. Confirm for me, please.’

  ‘Confirmed, shield-captain. We have orbital plate Arcus on a Himalazian approach vector.’

  ‘Negative, Heliosicon Tower, negative. Orbital plates do not have trajectory clearance to pass over the Imperial Palace.’

  ‘Arcus Orbital has clearance, shield-captain,’ the tower voxed back. ‘Special dispensatorial order, Metacarp Three-Sixteen.’

  ‘Clarify special order, tower.’

  ‘That’s a Legiones Astartes code,’ Arcadius told Stentonox. ‘Imperial Fists. It’ll be the Warmason, or Dorn himself.’

  ‘Tower, I am Master of the Watch – how could I not have been informed of this?’ The vox went silent. ‘Heliosicon Tower, respond.’

  ‘We’re collating that data for you now–’

  ‘No,’ Stentonox interrupted. ‘Connect me to the ranking authority on Arcus right now.’

  ‘Yes, shield-captain.’

  ‘This is a mistake,’ Stentonox told Arcadius, his voice threaded with steely authority. ‘An oversight of monumental proportions. I want to know how this happened.’

  Under the stabbing glare of Duesstra Edelstyne, Stentonox waited, the orbital plate moving through the clouds, kilometre by kilometre, into the Palace’s airspace. At first, Stentonox was patched through to the orbital’s stratoport admiral, who could not help him; then through a selection of gubernatorials, proctors and berg marshals who claimed that their authority on the plate had been superseded. Finally, with his anger rising, Stentonox was connected to the high commissary of the Danakil conglomerates, who told him that Arcus was currently under their mercantile sovereignty.

  ‘Commissary,’ Stentonox voxed, making each word sharp and clear. ‘This is Shield-Captain Enobar Stentonox of the Legio Custodes. I am giving you a direct order – cease your approach. Your vector and presence in our airspace have not been cleared with us. You are in violation of aegis protocols and imperata of the highest–’

  ‘Heliosicon Tower,’ a voice intruded, as deep and sharp as Stentonox’s own. ‘This is Captain Demetrius Katafalque of the Imperial Fists Legion. I am in command aboard Arcus. This orbital will not slow or alter its vector. My orders are to see us in anchorage above the Fourth Ward and the concentrica between the inner and outer walls. These are my primarch’s orders and it is not for me to deny them. Check your protocols, Heliosicon Tower. Check your protocols.’

  ‘Arcadias?’ Stentonox said grimly.

  The sentinel-securitas turned from his conference with the tower sentry and the signum-complex.

  ‘Special dispensatorial order “Metacarp Three-Sixteen” authorises Arcus to moor above the Palace and supply millions of workers from the Danakil mineral conglomerates to the Warmason Vadok Singh, for the purposes of improving the Palace fortifications,’ Arcadias reported. ‘The orbital is to remain, providing mobile quarters for the imported workforce.’

  Stentonox shook his head. ‘How could we not know about this?’

  ‘Metacarp Three-Sixteen is still in committee. Lord Dorn must be pushing ahead with the fortifications. It is unlikely that the primarch will be denied, given the present situation, but an objection was lodged with the Administrator Primus and a hearing scheduled. We have not been informed, because Three-Sixteen has not yet been authorised.’

  ‘Who lodged the objection?’ Stentonox asked.

  After a moment’s further clarification, the sentinel-securitas told him. ‘Luna did – Lady Krole of the Silent Sisterhood.’

  The pair of Custodians turned to Duesstra Edelstyne. The commandress gave a shrug of her armoured shoulders that needed no translation.

  ‘Captain Katafalque,’ Stentonox voxed. ‘This is Enobar Stentonox, Master of the Watch. Your breach of our airspace puts the Imperial Palace and the Emperor at intolerable risk. The orbital plate Arcus is not authorised to be here. I urge you, captain – order your tugs to take Arcus away from this approach vector.’

  ‘Rogal Dorn does not have time to waste on your meaningless bureaucracy,’ Katafalque returned brusquely. ‘Permissions have been sought. Check your protocols. I have authorisation from my primarch, just as he has authorisation to fortify the Imperial Palace. These are my orders.’

  ‘I cannot allow–’

  ‘These are my orders,’ Katafalque repeated, ‘and I intend to follow them. I have no more choice in that than the sun has in rising above the horizon. Do what you must, shield-captain. This is Arcus, inbound on vector-Himalazia. Katafalque out.’

  ‘Katafalque!’ Stentonox called down the vox, but the Imperial Fist was gone.

  Stentonox didn’t speak for a few moments. Both Arcadias and Edelstyne stared at the
shield-captain in silence as Stentonox glared at the distant orbital plate.

  ‘Arcadias.’

  ‘Yes, shield-captain.’

  ‘Contact Damari Ambramagne aboard the Aeriax,’ Stentonox ordered. ‘Tell him I want all available Legio Custodes gun-skiffs on station above the Fourth Ward, vector-Himalazia.’

  Arcadias nodded, but said nothing.

  ‘You think it premature?’ Stentonox asked.

  ‘No, shield-captain.’

  ‘Good, because next I want you to signal-crash the Palace. Take us to Defence Readiness Xanthus. All Custodians, Sisters, armsmen and... aye, even the Imperial Fists, are to assume their alert postings, and await further orders.’

  ‘What about the Chief Custodian?’

  ‘Inform him of our defence readiness and status,’ Stentonox said, his instructions heavy with the accountability they carried. ‘And ask him to attend me on the battlements, for it is he who shall be issuing those orders.’

  As the orbital plate descended, it eclipsed the bleak light of the rising sun. The Palace citadels and towers – having felt the reaching touch of dawn’s light – were now plunged back into gloom. Terraces, parapets and balconades were crowded with Palace officiates and visitors, all alerted to the emergency by the sounding of situation-Xanthus alarms and the rapid movement of Palace defence forces. Viewing glasses, magnoculars and fearful faces were directed skywards to the monstrous approach of Arcus and the triple-tier lines of engagement being formed by the Legio Custodes gunships.

  Like a wall of gold plate, ornamentation and ordnance, the gun-skiffs, stratobastia and grav-monitors of the Legio Custodes extended the Palace defences into the sky. The battle line was pugnacious and imposing. The craft held position above the slums and conurbatia bordering the outer fortifications and walled enclaves of the Palace, and presented their ornate gunnery to Arcus.