Across the compartment, Khorarinn called out his final commands. ‘Target is locked. Charge the guns.’
‘Mistral, if you can hear me, turn back!’ Garro tried one last time to reach someone on the tanker.
But it was already too late. The Custodian gave the order to open fire, and the backwash of livid laser light flooded the strategium with the colour of blood.
Five
Splintered
I name you traitor
A piece of silver
It was nothing short of overkill.
One single pulse-barrage would have been enough to crack the tanker’s compartment bulkheads and destroy its reactor core. Instead the salvo of beam fire from the Nolandia obliterated the transport vessel completely. The Mistral’s heedless, headlong flight was over before it could begin, and the brief supernova of its death throes cast a shimmering light over the bows of the other craft crowding behind the Daggerline. Fragments of white-hot hull metal and clouds of vaporised plasteel billowed in the darkness, backlit by flashes of radiation and plasma-fire.
Their lesson delivered, the Nolandia’s turret guns returned to their previous stations.
For a moment, a stunned silence held sway across the warship’s command deck; then Garro was advancing on the Custodian, his hand on the hilt of Libertas.
‘You callous–’
Rubio stepped into his path, grabbing his hand before he could fully draw his sword from its scabbard. ‘Captain, don’t.’
Khorarinn stepped forwards, opening his hands, inviting attack. ‘No, “captain”, please do. Please defy me as well, so that I may confine you to the brig and complete my mission without further interference.’
‘You forced that to happen,’ snarled Garro. ‘Just as you goaded Varren. There was no need to destroy that ship. There was time. Rubio and I could have teleported aboard, taken control of it…’
‘Perhaps.’ The Custodian gave a broad shrug. ‘But I do not deal in vagaries, Garro. There is either obedience or anarchy. Order or chaos. I gave those fools fair warning. They ignored me at their own peril.’ He advanced, pushing Rubio aside until he and Garro were a hand’s span apart. ‘There is no room for confusion here. And now every ship in that fleet understands, as you too should understand. Those who do not obey will suffer the same fate.’
It took all of Nathaniel Garro’s will to let Libertas slide back into its scabbard. ‘To hell with you.’ He ground out the words and marched away.
‘I do not believe in such delusions,’ Khorarinn said to his back, as Rubio followed after him.
The Daggerline was an ancient vessel, old at the start of the Great Crusade, and a veteran of many, many wars. The ship had been tested to its limits hundreds of times over its lifespan, and this was to be its last voyage.
A final, heroic race across the void leading those who still held to their oaths. A pilgrimage, if one would dare to speak so pious a word in the heart of Terra’s secular empire. But all for nought now, so it seemed. The ship would never fall under Earth-light again. It would rust and corrode out here among the ice asteroids, forever in sight of Sol but forbidden to approach it.
Macer Varren did not think in such ways. His cunning, martial mind was not open to sorrowful ideals. He lived in the moment, fought his way through life second by second. And he was ill at ease, angry. This was not why he had come back to Terra. Not to see his ships destroyed, his liberty sundered.
Such was his preoccupation that he almost missed the figure waiting for him in the corridor’s gloomy shadows. He halted, and turned his cold eye to the darkness. In the wake of the Mistral’s obliteration, nothing could be trusted.
‘I know you are there,’ he snarled. ‘Show yourself, or face a bolt-round!’
‘Brother-Captain Varren.’ A ghost emerged from the shadows.
‘Garro…’ Varren’s bolt pistol was instantly in his hand, the muzzle only inches from the legionary’s face. ‘You dare to call me brother? I should kill you where you stand. You have no right to show your face here! How did you even get aboard this ship?’
Garro inclined his head. ‘The Daggerline’s tertiary shuttle bay is poorly guarded. And I made sure we were not tracked by the Nolandia.’
‘We?’ Varren’s grip on the gun tightened.
‘Rubio waits below. He guards our transport. He clouds the thoughts of any who might look too closely.’
‘So Khorarinn did not send you.’ Slowly, Varren’s finger curled away from the pistol’s trigger. After a moment he let the gun drop.
‘I have already ignored his orders by leaving the battleship,’ Garro insisted. ‘I had to come back, Varren. To speak with you. So we might gain the full measure of one another, and speak plainly.’
‘Plainly?’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘That gold-plated whoreson destroyed an unarmed transport ship, and you did not stop him! Is that plain enough? If the Daggerline were not such a wreck, I would pilot it into the battleship’s bridge to spite that braggart.’
Regret clouded Garro’s scarred face. ‘Believe me, I tried to prevent it. But Khorarinn is inflexible. He considers you traitors in all but name.’
‘But not the White Scars, eh?’ Varren’s pistol went back into its holster. ‘The rest of us he would hang, but not Hakeem’s cadre. How is that fair and just? How is that the Imperial Truth?’
Garro paused a moment before he replied, framing his words. ‘It is true the sons of the Khan have proven their loyalty in this schism.’
‘But the rest of us are thought corrupted by the actions of the greater number.’ Varren wanted to fling the accusation back at him like a blade, but Garro knew it already. His Legion, like Varren’s, were vow-breakers. ‘You know the sting of that, I’ll warrant,’ he went on.
‘Aye,’ admitted the other warrior, regret weighing heavy in that admission.
‘I was not cut out to lead like this, Garro. I am a killer, a meat-cutter!’ Varren shook his head angrily. ‘Not a brood mare struggling to protect a clutch of weak and feeble runts. I lead warriors, not common folk.’ His gauntlet closed into a heavy fist and cold fury burned within him. ‘Damn Horus Lupercal for this. Damn him for his treachery and false promises. If he had not sundered the Legions, we would not be here. No one would need to die without purpose!’
‘I feel as you do, brother,’ said the former Death Guard. ‘The Warmaster has turned warrior against warrior. Oaths made in blood and fire have been broken. His betrayal casts the blackest shadow across the Imperium. It threatens everything we have worked for, fought for… died for. Everything has changed, Varren. Trust turns to sand. Men like the Custodian Guard are ascendant now. Ruthless men with too much to lose, and a gaze too narrow to see the complexities of the moment.’ He took a step closer, opening his hands in a gesture of comradeship. ‘We must work together if we are to end this spiral of suspicion. Find the truth before Khorarinn’s distrust leads him to even greater bloodshed.’
‘What truth?’ Varren asked warily.
Rubio waited at the foot of the Arvus lighter Garro had co-opted from the Nolandia, casting a glance back at the blank-eyed pilot-servitor enclosed behind the cockpit bubble. The machine-slave was a savant, highly trained to fly the little shuttle but utterly incapable of any other interactions or thought processes. It had been relatively simple to appropriate its punch-card control memes and order it to take them across to the frigate. In the aftermath of the tanker’s destruction, the zone of space around the battleship was heavy with particulate debris that fouled the scry-sensors. On low power, it had been possible to make the transit from one ship to another unseen. Getting back would be a different matter, though. They would not be fortunate enough to slip the net twice.
He retreated back into the shadows under the wings of the Arvus, where the only light came from the eldritch glow of his psychic hood. The illumination bathed his face in cool whispers of energy, his power
helping to hide him and the lighter from passing gazes.
His abilities were returning to full potential, to the strengths they had reached before the Decree of Nikaea. For Rubio, it was like staring at an indistinct image as layers of haze faded away. In time his gifts would be at their peak once again.
He reached into his memory and felt for the ghostly shimmer of psychic noise that he had felt last time they were aboard the frigate, grasping telepathically for the brief but distinct form–
–and he found it.
‘It comes again…’ A shock passed through him. The impression of the hidden and the dangerous, the same ephemeral trace he had sensed aboard the Mistral, but here, now.
Rubio took a step forwards, and hesitated. Garro had charged him with guarding the Arvus while he set off to find Varren, but the inaction chafed upon him. He knew they were risking much to come here, but to stand by and do nothing… That seemed like weakness.
He could not wait for Garro’s return, and the sense of the untoward was already starting to fade from his thoughts. He could not ignore it. With grim determination, Rubio threw a last look at the lighter, and set off into the depths of the Daggerline.
Garro studied Varren carefully. He knew that with a single wrong word, at the slightest trace of duplicity, the World Eater would turn on him. The sons of Angron went to violence as their first tool in all things, and he could see that Varren’s temper was worn paper-thin by the events of the day. ‘Whom do you trust?’
Varren answered without hesitation. ‘My kinsmen.’
‘The ones who came with you,’ Garro corrected. ‘But not the ones who stayed to follow Angron.’
‘Don’t play games with me,’ spat the World Eater. ‘You know what I mean. It is not easy to see an oath you lived for ripped apart by those you once called brother.’
Garro nodded gravely. ‘I do. What Horus has done… It will change the Legions in ways we have not yet begun to comprehend. He has broken something that can never be remade.’ A thought that Garro had never before voiced, one he had carried since Isstvan, now left his lips. ‘From now until the last of us perishes, there will always be a doubt in the minds of every legionary, as he looks upon his brother. He will wonder, even if only for a moment, Will my kinsman ever turn from the Emperor?’ Varren nodded, knowing it was true. ‘We know that potential is in us,’ Garro continued. ‘It has been revealed and proven. A splinter of suspicion that will forever lie in our hearts. Tell me, what do you know of the “lodges”?’
The other warrior’s expression became a brooding scowl. ‘That idiocy that came from the Davinites? A pointless thing. I forbade my men to participate in them. Secretive meetings in shadowed alcoves are for the fops of the Imperial court, not Space Marines.’
Garro nodded again. He had avoided the lodges for similar reasons, and like Varren he had paid the price for standing alone. ‘What about Rakishio? Does he share that sentiment?’
‘Do I trust him, you mean?’ Varren’s hand strayed to his face, rubbing at the scars on his chin. ‘Like all of the Emperor’s Children, he’s a peacock, but put a sword in his hand and he becomes a hurricane of blades. I would be dead a dozen times over if not for Rakishio. He found us a way out from Isstvan. Lost plenty of his men doing it, too.’ At length, he nodded. ‘Yes. He shed blood for me. I trust him.’
‘In these turbulent times,’ said a voice from above, ‘that is good to know.’ A legionary in full armour descended from a walkway crossing the corridor and Garro turned to face the other warrior, his hand falling to the hilt of his sword. Neither he nor Varren had been aware of his approach, and that was of grave concern.
‘What did you hear?’ he demanded.
‘Enough.’ Rakishio approached them, his hands open but his aspect cold. ‘First you and the Custodian challenge us, then you massacre innocents? Now you return to cast doubt upon our honour and call us to heel like lapdogs? I might expect such behaviour from a mortal, but not one of us, Garro.’ He struck the golden palatine aquila across his chestplate with the heel of his fist, and the ceramite rang with the impact. ‘Did you forget what this means?’ His anger began a slow rise. ‘Or did you lose that along with the colours of your Legion?’
‘I forget nothing,’ Garro retorted. ‘And I need not prove myself, to you, or any other. I had no hand in the destruction of the Mistral. But perhaps you can explain why it fled the line?’
The question seemed to take the warrior by surprise. ‘Do you seek to accuse me of something? Look to Khorarinn. His words sparked a panic. And now he shouts out orders to us, as if we were neophyte recruits, or fresh from our mother’s breast!’
‘What orders?’ said Garro.
‘The reason I came down here.’ Rakishio turned to Varren. ‘Brother-captain, the Custodian has demanded that representatives of the Legions assemble on the landing deck to await his arrival.’
‘How far is he going to push us?’ Varren spat on the deck. ‘Does he want us to draw our weapons?’
‘I assure you, I have no knowledge of this,’ insisted Garro.
Varren seethed. ‘Then if we wish to know more, it seems we have little choice but to come to heel.’
‘And where will you stand, Garro?’ said Rakishio. ‘With him, or with us?’
Garro opened his mouth to reply, but the answer was lost to him.
Garro’s presence in the Daggerline’s landing bay drew a collection of stares from the assembled legionaries, some of them authored by surprise, others cold disdain or outright disgust. He showed nothing, but behind the blank mask of his face, he was conflicted. They placed the blame equally upon him as they did upon the Custodian, and the sting of guilt was strong. No matter how hard he tried, Garro could not accept that the brutal execution of the Mistral was justified.
He was not one to shrink from hard choices. He had made many in his time as a legionary and a commander, but Garro had never been ruthless. That cold, dark well of intent that some men drew from did not exist in his heart. He hoped it never would.
Garro glanced up at the landing bay hatch, waiting for it to grind open on its massive brass cog-wheels, but he soon realised that Khorarinn had opted for a different entrance, one with a much greater display of shock and awe.
In the centre of the deck, a flickering seed of emerald energy faded out of nothing. It cast out flails of lightning, sketching an expanding sphere of shimmering colour.
Rakishio saw it first and called out to the others, forcing them away. ‘Back! Back, I say!’ He shouted across the bay. ‘Clear the umbra!’
Each of them knew the signs of a teleportation precursor. Anyone caught too close to the displacement aura would risk being sucked in, to merge with the new arrivals in a malformed mess. Garro shielded his eyes as a viridian orb crashed into existence upon the deck, the phantoms of dozens of figures within gaining solidity and dimension.
At their head, Khorarinn surveyed the chamber with that same imperious manner he had on first meeting Garro. ‘Stand to,’ he ordered.
Varren did not obey. ‘What is the meaning of this?’
Khorarinn advanced, stepping away from over a dozen armed Naval troopers in full carapace armour, his sword-bolter already drawn. ‘Any one of you who touches a weapon will be considered an enemy of the Emperor and treated as such.’ His eyes found Garro, and he sneered. ‘Of course. I should have known you would be here with the rest of them. Did you bring the witch-mind too?’ He shook his head, dismissing him. ‘No matter. I’ll deal with you later.’
Garro could stay silent no longer. ‘I came here to correct your mistake, Khorarinn.’
‘It is you that is mistaken,’ he said, without even a look. Instead, the Custodian addressed the other legionaries before him. ‘Heed me! I am hereby taking direct command of the refugee flotilla. You will submit to my authority, in the Emperor’s name.’
‘I won’t allow it,’ said Va
rren.
‘You won’t stop me,’ he replied.
‘You think so?’ Varren stood before the Custodian. ‘Call back to your battleship for a few more platoons of those troopers, and I might just start to take you seriously.’
For a moment, Garro thought Khorarinn was about to strike the former World Eater, but instead the warrior in gold and crimson beckoned to a Mechanicum emissary hiding amongst the soldiers, and the adept ambled forwards on iron feet. ‘It seems you are the short-sighted barbarian I took you for,’ he began. ‘This isn’t about posturing or your honour, Varren. This is about facts. Truth.’
At a word from Khorarinn, the adept operated a portable hololith capsule, beaming a hazy image into the air over their heads. Garro recognised what appeared to be the bridge of a civilian starship, and saw a halo of data indicators flickering across the display.
‘After the Mistral was interdicted, I dispatched a team of Mechanicum scouts to survey the wreckage of the tanker-transport.’ Khorarinn’s voice took on a lecturing tone. ‘Their drones recovered the ship’s central archive record. It preserved the last few moments of the vessel’s life.’
‘Why show us this?’ said Hakeem, eyeing the image.
‘Watch, and be illuminated,’ Khorarinn told him.
All of them turned to do so. There on the hololith, clear as day, came a figure in the full power armour of a legionary. A heavy bolt pistol filled his fist. The log recorder showed him as he strode across the Mistral’s bridge, carefully executing the tanker’s crew, one after another. It was as if the atmosphere was suddenly excised from the landing bay.
Dread marred Rakishio’s perfect face. ‘This is impossible!’
Garro stiffened at the sight of the sudden, brutal burst of carnage, as a ripple of grim disbelief echoed from the legionaries around him. He felt a terrible, familiar sensation wash over him; a sickening horror at such open butchery from the hands of a battle-brother. He had witnessed such things before, at Isstvan, and again at Calth, all at the command of Horus.
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