Rubio frowned. ‘More than Hakeem?’
‘No,’ admitted Varren. ‘But if I can alert them…’
‘How? If they’re jamming our vox, we are silenced.’ The psyker cast around, as if he could find an answer at their feet.
The World Eater straightened, the call to action upon him. ‘Then we have to move, right now!’
Garro held up a hand to halt him. ‘Wait! Listen…’
The Daggerline’s intercom system crackled to life, broadcasting throughout the vessel, and the voice they heard was being sent further still, back to the Nolandia and out to all the refugee starships in the fleet. ‘This is Hakeem of the White Scars Legion. I have hard news.’
‘What is that whoreson doing?’ growled Varren.
‘Moments ago, the traitor Rakishio, now revealed as a spy for the Warmaster, escaped captivity with his followers and assaulted my men…’
‘And now it begins,’ muttered Garro. ‘The gallows of lies.’
‘It is with deep regret I must report the death of the esteemed Custodian Khorarinn, who fell in glorious battle with Rakishio and his turncoats. Rest assured that my warriors and I have avenged Khorarinn’s murder. The Emperor’s Children have been executed, one and all. But the danger has not yet passed. Before he died, Rakishio revealed that other spies lurk amongst you. These collaborators must be found and expunged. Therefore, I am declaring martial law throughout the flotilla. The White Scars will hunt down all traitors. There will be no mercy!’
The transmission ceased and left the three of them to take in what they had heard. Rubio spoke for them all: ‘The only truth in those words is that Khorarinn and Rakishio are dead.’
‘We must attempt to make contact with the Nolandia. This will spiral out of control unless we act with alacrity and focus. They’ll be looking for us. We are all that stands between Hakeem and his greater treachery.’ Garro placed a hand on Varren’s shoulder, meeting his gaze. ‘I know your blood sings out for battle, kinsman. I know your soul at this moment better than any man alive, believe me. But there are more lives at stake than just ours. I need to know you will follow me if I ask it of you.’
‘The traitors will pay for their duplicity,’ hissed the World Eater.
‘That has never been in question.’
Varren’s hard, scowling face did not alter, but at length he gave a single, sharp nod. ‘I will follow you, brother. For the moment.’
Out in the darkness, Hakeem’s words rang out from ship to ship, his voice the only sound that could be heard.
‘I am declaring martial law throughout the flotilla.’
The crews of the refugee ships had been pushed to the ragged edge of panic by the destruction of the Mistral and the menacing threat of the Nolandia. Aboard each craft, different microcosms of the same drama unfolding on the Daggerline were playing out.
On the cruiser Sylvinus, the refugees had rioted and the Naval crew all lay dead. Now they were fighting amongst themselves, pushed beyond reason into mindless mob rule. Aboard the Tessen, a colonist barge, a vicious mutiny had been put down, but the ship had lost all life support and the crew were suffocating. On other ships, the fearful and the desperate were looking past the gunnery drones and the battleship, wondering if the risk of flight was one worth taking.
‘The White Scars will hunt down all traitors. There will be no mercy!’
Anarchy, fuelled by terror, took hold, and the fleet collapsed into disarray. A formation kept in line by fear suddenly broke apart, engines flaring as a dozen ships tried to escape at once.
The Sylvinus burned too hard and too fast, colliding with the Tessen before either craft could veer off. The cruiser’s needle-nose bow sliced down the side of the barge, a lance opening up the flank of a wallowing beast. Together they bled fire and atmosphere into the vacuum, great plumes of breathing gases flash-freezing into clouds of oxygen ice.
Eight thousand souls across two ships were immolated in a sphere of fusion fire. Their terror had killed them as readily as any boltgun. And still the tide of panic rose.
Nearby, the Nolandia’s gunners readied their weapons and took aim, Khorarinn’s last order ringing in their ears.
The Daggerline’s vox-array should have been a hive of activity, with dozens of servitors and tech-adepts operating the frigate’s internal and external communication systems, but the compartment was a charnel house scattered with their corpses. The three legionaries took in the bloody display in silence. Crimson vitae pooled on the deck or dripped from ornate brass consoles, where it had been cast by the opening of throats.
‘Hakeem’s men were thorough,’ noted Varren.
‘It is how they are trained,’ said Garro. ‘The White Scars will not take prisoners.’
Rubio shook his head ruefully. ‘Hakeem doesn’t deserve to hold that name any more. The Khan would never accept what he has done.’
‘The lord of his Legion is not here,’ said Varren. ‘In this moment, I fear we are beyond the sight of all reason.’
Garro picked his way through the bodies, searching in vain for any sign that someone might have survived, but Varren’s estimate was correct. He moved to the primary communications console, with its multitude of controls and viewer-lenses. The system was an order of magnitude more complex than the vox-module built into his battleplate, and without an adept to operate it, he could not hope to amend its functions. But still, Garro knew enough to fathom what had been done here. ‘All contact channels are being jammed. Squad-level vox-communication, internal, ship-to-ship. Hakeem has made certain that only his words will be heard.’
‘What of the astropaths?’ said Varren.
Rubio shook his head again. ‘He won’t have let them live.’
‘Hakeem can broadcast whatever fiction he wants and no one will be able to challenge it.’ Garro frowned, piecing together the whole of the treachery from the pieces before him.
‘Harouk, the Techmarine in Hakeem’s command. He would be capable of such subterfuge,’ added Rubio.
‘And more, no doubt.’ Varren nodded at a gas-lens viewer. ‘The hololith from the Mistral.’
‘It could be done,’ agreed Garro. ‘Perhaps Hakeem sacrificed one of his own to take the tanker, and Harouk worked a lie to alter the visuals of the log record.’ He considered the bleak implications of the deduction. Tarring Rakishio’s contingent of Emperor’s Children was only the first element in the traitor’s plan. If unchecked, Hakeem would be able to engineer events so that only he and his brothers would survive the unfolding turmoil.
Garro imagined the treacherous White Scars returning to Terra, without anyone to speak against them. Unchallenged, they would be free to tell any tale they wished, to set themselves up as the heroes of the day. And once on Terra, they would be perfectly placed to do the secret bidding of the Warmaster.
‘This is a fool’s errand.’ Garro gestured towards the hatchway with his weapon. ‘Hakeem is intelligent. He may guess that we will come to this place.’
‘I did.’ The gas-lens flickered and came to life, framing the White Scar’s craggy aspect. He leered at them through the display. ‘Ah, Garro. That is the greatest weakness of the Fourteenth Legion. You are as predictable as the turn of the seasons.’
‘To arms!’ Rubio shouted out the alarm and Garro spun around to see a group of warriors in white-and-red armour crowd into the chamber, their faces hidden behind plumed battle helms. He froze, as did Rubio and Varren. The White Scars halted with their weapons trained.
Varren’s lip curled in disdain. ‘Have you not the courage to face us yourself, traitor swine?’
‘There are more important tasks,’ grinned Hakeem. ‘It matters not who kills you, World Eater, as long as you die along with the Sigillite’s lackeys. I’ve already executed all the men you brought with you. It’s fitting you lived long enough to learn that. To know you led them to their deaths.’
‘You wish that were so.’ Hakeem waved a gauntleted hand towards the other White Scars. ‘End them and be done with it.’ The lens viewer went dark.
It was the most grave of errors to force a World Eater into his rage. These were not warriors who would experience emotion in the same fashion as other legionaries. To them, agony and fury were constant companions, the air in their lungs and the blood pumping through their veins. Unleashed, a son of Angron was rage made real. He was butchery and brutality. He was hate and vengeance.
Varren gave a wild shout of anger and attacked the White Scars in a frenzy of gunfire and sword blows. Hakeem’s provocation set him loose and he became a berserker, smashing his way across the vox-chamber and into the midst of the White Scars. He took on the squad alone, and belatedly Rubio and Garro followed to assist him, though they could not come too close for fear of Varren’s wild state.
Rubio saw Varren spear the throat of one legionary through his neck-seal, then rip the helm from another and beat him to death with it. The World Eater took hit after hit but dismissed every one of them. His aura was a searing blood-red, wreathing him in invisible flames.
The stories of the XII Legion, of their pain-blocking brain implants and their blood-soaked way of war, were well known. But he had never seen it so close at hand. It shocked him to wonder how such martial power would fare in the hands of those who plotted death for the Imperium.
Varren killed the last of the squad with a slash of his sword, and halted. His white armour was patterned red with splashes of fresh gore. ‘Not enough,’ he hissed, through clenched teeth. ‘My brothers are dead and it is not enough.’
In the void, the flotilla fragmented. Drive plumes flashed like burning torches in the darkness, and a dozen different vessels made their panicked bids for freedom. Some called out for lenience across deadened vox-channels, hoping that their entreaties might stay the hands of the Nolandia’s gunnery crews. Others went to their own ineffectual point-defence batteries, as if the las-weapons built to fight off local pirates and asteroid storms could even scratch the armour of an Imperial battleship. All of them hoped to flee the madness, but they had done no more than offer up their own death warrants. To disobey the Custodian’s final order was suicide, the very act that Hakeem had driven them to take.
A storm of coherent light and particle beam fire left the muzzles of the Nolandia’s turrets, joined micro-seconds later by slaved shots from the drifting drone platforms. Force walls designed to deflect space debris were instantly punctured, void shields collapsing in flickers of false-colour radiation. The torrent of burning brilliance melted fissures through hull plating and into the delicate internal spaces of the civilian ships. Iron evaporated, plasteel became slag, and those who did not perish in the immediate heat-surge died when they were vented into the pitiless void.
Bursting like rotting fruits, the freighters and tugs, tankers and transports became expanding globes of glittering, metallic ash and sparking wreckage.
Distant alert sirens sounded as they made their way aft from the vox-array, encountering more of Hakeem’s warriors, and with them new reinforcements.
Rubio did not hesitate and unleashed a blast of psionic lightning, immolating the common soldiers who had made new fealty to the White Scars. ‘Naval troopers,’ he scowled. ‘They’ve turned the crew against us.’ Rubio cast white fire from his fingertips, but he took nothing from the act. He had little stomach for the culling of the unwary. ‘Damned fools! Why do they resist?’
‘Because they are more afraid of Hakeem than they are of us,’ said Garro. He cast a look over his shoulder, watching Varren as the World Eater brought up the rear. The bleak cast across the other warrior’s face held firm, and his eyes were unreadable. A dozen wounds bled fiercely, but Varren paid them no heed. He seemed numb.
Garro pointed with Libertas. ‘This way. We’ll make for the landing tiers. We can take a Stormbird, get off this craft, and return to the Nolandia.’
‘That is a coward’s plan.’ Varren grated.
Garro shot him a look. ‘It is a survivor’s plan, Captain Varren. I know your pain, I know you want vengeance… But we must pass on the truth of what is happening here.’
‘Then you go. Take the psyker, and flee. I will stalk the halls of this ship until I have found and murdered every last one of these bastards.’
Rubio snorted. ‘You won’t last long on your own. They outnumber us three to one. And if Hakeem has rallied the Daggerline’s crew to their side, told them we are the traitors, he’ll have even more arrows to his quiver.’
‘I care nothing for those odds.’ Varren drew himself up to his full height. ‘I am an Eater of Worlds! Gladiator Son! I will stand, and fight, and avenge!’
‘And die?’ Garro met his gaze.
‘Without hesitation. And so will you. Hakeem has your measure, Garro. Even now, he has warriors covering each approach to the landing bays. You won’t get within a hundred metres of a Stormbird before a lascannon blasts you apart.’ He made a snarling noise in his throat. ‘I said I’d follow you. But to war, Garro. To a glorious death.’
‘I have another option.’ Rubio halted before them, the crystal matrix of his psychic hood glowing with ethereal light. ‘There is another way off this vessel. If we take it, we can reach the Nolandia and end this madness. Hakeem will have to face his crimes.’
‘He will do that at the tip of my sword,’ said the World Eater.
‘And will it be enough, Varren? Your life for his? We can give you a chance to carry your vengeance forward. To Horus. To Angron. But you must live for it.’ Garro’s words seemed to reach him, and behind those sullen eyes, something changed. Varren gave a slow nod.
‘I will hear you out, psyker.’
‘If we are to live beyond this day, I must find a spectre of the newly dead.’ Rubio closed his eyes, extending feelers of telepathic power away down the corridors of the frigate. ‘We don’t have much time. The spirit fades. Follow me.’
If the sight of the massacre in the vox-chamber had not been enough, what awaited them in the cargo compartment sickened Nathaniel Garro to his core.
‘Blood’s oath…’ He had witnessed butchery before, but to find it here, so close to Terra’s halls, was grotesque.
Cold air thick with the odour of coppery blood and the stinging burn of cordite clouded the space. The chamber was littered with the fallen, the full number of the warriors from the III Legion lying discarded where they had dropped. The Emperor’s Children had suffered honourless deaths, executions instead of fair combat. For want of a better word, a cull had taken place here.
‘This is a galaxy gone mad,’ rumbled Varren, his rage momentarily stilled.
Rubio knelt by one of the corpses and grimaced as he examined the massive blast-crater in the dead man’s armour. ‘Shot in the back, at close range. This one perished without the grace of knowing who killed him.’
Garro had seen much that he struggled to accept since the beginning of the Warmaster’s rebellion, but nothing appalled him so much as this, the central and fundamental horror upon which the whole insurrection was based. Brother killing brother, setting aside oaths of comradeship and honour, murdering without pause or regret. He simply could not comprehend where such an impulse could stem from. It made him feel hollow inside.
Rubio moved from one body to another, grimly cataloguing the names of the dead. He came across the commander and paused. ‘Rakishio… His throat was slit.’
The World Eater pointed towards the shadows, to bodies lying in a lake of spilled blood. ‘I see gold, there. Though it seems that Khorarinn took many of the traitors with him before he perished.’
‘What kind of honourless war breeds this slaughter?’ said Garro. ‘Is this how Horus wishes to fight for the Throne? This is not our way. There is no principle in it.’
‘I do not–�
� The psyker froze as he moved towards the Custodian’s body, stiffening. His head jerked suddenly, and he glared into the deep shadows. ‘We are not alone!’
From out of the blackness in the far reaches of the chamber, came figures in white battleplate with fire-red trim. At a count, it was the full number of Hakeem’s warriors on board the Daggerline, all gathered here for this last confrontation.
‘What is wrong, witch-mind?’ Hakeem smiled. ‘Did you not sense us waiting for you? Were your preternatural powers fogged?’ He nodded languidly towards one of his warriors, who turned another of the silver lodge medallions over between the armoured fingers of his gauntlet.
Varren took steps forwards, his sword flashing to life, but Garro held him back, his own blade in hand. ‘You did this, Hakeem,’ he said, trying to understand. ‘To your kinsmen. How can you justify it? How can you live with this deed on your conscience?’
The White Scar seemed amused by the questions. ‘I do so with ease. How many legionaries have you killed, Garro? Warriors you might have shared battle with, in years past?’
‘Too many,’ he admitted. ‘But I never wished for it. A part of my spirit was lost with each one I fought.’
‘What sentiment.’ Hakeem’s smile became a mocking grin. ‘I did not think a Death Guard capable of such a thing.’
‘And I could not believe a White Scar capable of this atrocity!’ Garro gestured angrily at the carnage all around them. ‘Why, Hakeem? Tell me why!’
The Chogorian nodded to his men, and they spread out into a skirmish line, blocking all routes of escape, surrounding the three warriors. His manner shifted, becoming one of ruthless zeal. ‘You know the answer already, Garro. You were at Isstvan Five. You saw the absolute determination shown by the Warmaster. The vision.’
‘Is that what you call it?’ said Varren.
‘Horus Lupercal is the first among equals!’ cried Hakeem. ‘He is Warmaster! And if he wants the galaxy, he will have it. His victory is inevitable. It is unquestioned. The old order has grown stale. The Emperor’s time is over.’
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