But those who looked with sharper eyes, those who could perceive the foulness tainting those distant beacons of light, they saw the threads of corruption reaching from world to world. The suns burning out and the planets becoming ashen, barren and forgotten. In the silence, the galaxy screamed.
Nathaniel Garro did not hear it. He remained behind the walls of his own mind, in the company of thoughts that moved with a glacial slowness in the thrall of the half-sleep. For the former Death Guard there were only the questions that never left him. The doubts and the fears.
Keeler. Where are you?
His unquiet spirit pulled at the tethers of his soul, resisting the truths he had set out for himself. If he did have faith, as he had told the scribe, then why was it so hard to accept the way of things? Was there still some small part of Garro that longed to see the rebellion end peacefully? Was there a vain hope that all the terrible acts he had seen committed might somehow be undone?
There were too many secrets, too many unknowns. Garro had come to Riga searching for meaning, driven by his doubts, by the words of Rogal Dorn and Meric Voyen, and more. And for his folly he had uncovered only more questions. And so a more pressing uncertainty was left at the fore.
What is Othrys?
The voyage seemed to go on forever, and he dreamed as only a legionary could dream, as the ship fell through space towards the answer.
But finally, at journey’s end, after time unreckoned by the silent, unmoving warrior and his reluctant companion, the old and wounded corvette allowed itself to be captured by the gravity well of a cloudy, umber sphere.
Had there been an observer at the portals on the command deck, they would have noted that from a distance, the planetoid seemed to be without surface features of any kind. But upon closer approach, it became clear that this world was shrouded in a thick mantle of billowing haze, held aloft by constant, powerful winds.
The Akulan shifted course and dropped towards the ocean of shade, manoeuvring thrusters jetting out blasts of fire to set it on the correct path. Other craft that had come in from differing points of the aetheric compass were following the same mandated route. Some of them were near-wrecks like the corvette, others newer vessels fresh from forge world shipyards all across the Segmentum Solar and beyond. All of them had come here in secret purpose, their crews either lobotomised half-minds or a scant number of souls gifted with a most confidential trust.
Reaching the point of atmospheric interface, the craft cut into the dense, alien sky, briefly transforming into a lance of thunderous fire before tearing through. The Akulan’s last flight was almost over, and rather than be taken by the teeth of mindless breaker-rigs hungry for raw material, it would be reborn. The derelict’s iron bones and steel skin would be repurposed here instead by other hands, for duties unguessed at by the Imperium at large.
Emerging from out of the thick, swirling cloud base, the ship began a wide turn over the coast of a rolling methane sea, tacking into the harsh wind and a driving wall of hydrocarbon rain. It passed through a howling primeval typhoon, crossing sculpted crags of black ice and cryovolcanic ridges, towards a forest of human-made structures jutting into the air. Akulan’s engines fired one final time to settle it into the grasp of the towering cranes that would disassemble it.
Swallowed by the unknown sky, the dying note of the main drives fell to stillness. Othrys had taken another claim and the count was far from ended.
The cutters set to work before the old corvette had cooled from the heat of re-entry, paring it down as a servant might carve a roasted animal for the pleasure of their master’s supper.
Garro shouldered open the hatch and stepped out into the harsh chemical rains, holding Tallery to him as he sprinted across the docking gantry. ‘Quickly, scribe. We must get clear of the ship.’
She nodded weakly. ‘All right. What is…?’ Tallery’s hands rose as she became aware of her circumstances. ‘What have you put on my face?’
‘A breather mask,’ he explained, letting her step down. ‘The atmosphere on this planet is nitrogen-rich. My augmented lungs can process it, but you would choke to death.’
‘Oh, of course.’ She found her feet and staggered forwards a few steps. ‘I feel weak.’
‘A side effect of the stasis,’ Garro explained. ‘It will pass.’
Tallery clung to a support stanchion and peered out into the amber clouds. ‘Have we found Othrys?’
Garro nodded. ‘We have reached the end of our search.’
‘Throne… Look at this place!’ She pointed behind them, to where lines of decommissioning bays stretched away towards a broken ridgeline of dark peaks. They resembled the shipyards of Riga, but here it was clear that the reclaimed vessels were being remade into something quite different. A grand pattern of cannibalisation was in progress.
Monorails and grav-lifts carried repurposed metals towards a vast construction site in the shadow of a great black mountain, a gigantic circular pit that had been laser-cut into the stone-hard ice that lay underfoot. Garro glimpsed the work of countless construction teams in hazard gear and exoskeletons, some toiling as they laid rockcrete foundations, others assembling vast blocks of marble and granite into walls, battlements and donjons.
Scaffolding that reached from the lowest levels of the pit to beyond the height of the tallest crane swayed gently in the wind, warning lamps blinking through the constant, oily drizzle. He saw pieces of a large construction through the framework and, as his head tilted up to take it all in, he had a sudden jolt of insight.
Growing from the dead centre of the work pit was an artificial pinnacle that rose almost as high as the mountain that overlooked it. Although, like everything else before them, it remained unfinished, the legionary immediately understood that he was looking at a stronghold of some kind. The great citadel was the heart of the edifice, and at its feet the roots had been laid for many more buildings of similar scope and majesty.
‘What are they building here?’ whispered Tallery. ‘I have never seen the like before.’
‘I have,’ said Garro, with grim certainty. ‘On Barbarus, made after the coming of the Emperor. It is an echo of similar constructions on Baal, Macragge, Fenris and other worlds. This is a battle fortress. A place from which wars will be waged.’
Tallery shivered as a chill washed through her and she blinked, wiping rust-red rain from the lenses of her breather mask so that she might see more clearly. The closer she looked, the more it became clear that the fortress was nearing completion. Her gut twisted as she considered what kind of army such a bastion could house. The scribe was no tactician, but she understood numbers and logistics all too well. Even at a conservative estimate, she guessed that the great castle and its dominion would be able to support thousands of soldiers and war engines. Taking cover behind a rocky crag, they surveyed the site in greater detail. Garro was silent for a long time, but the grim cast of his expression spoke to his mood.
‘I see no Legion sigil. No mark of garrison or company that I recognise anywhere in sight.’
‘Just like your armour.’ She glanced at him. ‘So Othrys is a secret, hidden base, as we suspected. That makes sense. All the hardware, all the equipment being secretly diverted from Riga, it’s been coming here. They’re using it to build everything we can see.’
‘Not just from Riga. I’ll warrant that the data you uncovered on the orbital plate was just one stream of supplies.’ Tallery could see Garro was deeply troubled by the portent of their discovery. ‘To keep such a thing secret is no small feat. One would need to draw off just enough not to raise the alarm, and do it a hundredfold across the Imperium. In time of conflict, it would be a simple matter to misplace a ship here, a freight convoy there…’ He trailed off.
Tallery felt sick inside. ‘This is so much worse than I thought it could be. We have uncovered more than just some corrupt governor lining his pockets. This is a nest of the Wa
rmaster’s collaborators on our side of the battle lines! I can hardly believe it, that such a thing could go unseen.’
Garro’s expression showed more a sense of grim resignation than concern. ‘It has happened before, damnable though that truth is. Horus’ cohorts built and then stole the warship Furious Abyss… This is an evolution of the same tactic, only played out on an even grander scale. Assemble a secret stronghold deep inside the territory of your enemy, use it to strike at their vulnerable underbelly. The genius of it is that the traitors have used our own infrastructure to build it.’ He showed her a brittle smile. ‘I almost admire the arrogance.’ Garro raised a gauntleted hand and pointed towards a series of skeletal iron spires on the ridgeline surrounding the colossal construction site; purple-red energy crackled along their length, dissipating in clouds of sparks at their apex. ‘Those are detector baffles,’ he explained. ‘There are dozens of them surrounding the whole site, projecting an energy grid that would confuse any scry-sensors looking this way. With that and the cloud cover, a ship passing within scanning range of this world would see nothing amiss here.’
‘But who could orchestrate a scheme of this magnitude?’ Tallery felt her indignation rise. ‘No one could construct a fortress inside Imperial space and avoid detection forever.’
He eyed her. ‘They did not avoid it, Scribe Tallery. You found them.’ Garro was about to say more, but then he nodded over her shoulder and she turned to see a cadre of hooded figures.
They trudged in lockstep across the rain-slick ground, and each wore robes of muddy crimson lined with a cog-tooth trim. The brass shapes of their bionic limbs caught the weak light as they walked. ‘The Mechanicum,’ she said quietly, recognising the familiar cast of the figures.
‘It would seem their treachery has grown beyond the insurrection on Mars,’ said Garro. ‘Come. We cannot tarry here.’
The diffuse glow of day through the orange sky waned, and night fell across the surface of the planetoid. It brought with it a chill that turned the oily rain into a greasy fall of chemical snow. Garro knew that remaining out on the perimeter of the construction site would eventually lead to their discovery. Keeping Tallery close to his side, he moved as fast as he dared, down into the work pit.
They stole aboard a pressurised monorail wagon and allowed it to take them the rest of the way to the citadel. Peering through a grate, he saw the skeletons of incomplete battle bunkers passing by, and gun towers armed with repurposed starship lascannon batteries. Nothing was going to waste in the forging of Othrys. It was a design that would rival the siege works of the Imperial Fists when complete.
But only if they allowed that to continue.
Garro considered the idea of making a stealthy approach into the heart of the citadel itself. If it followed the design protocols of a standard Imperial fortress template, there would be a mighty power reactor on the core levels. He knew how to weaponise such a device, but a catastrophic overload would obliterate everything for five kilometres in all directions. The secret of Othrys would be consumed in fire, but it would likely take him and Tallery with it in the blast.
Garro frowned. He had no way of knowing their exact location within the Imperium, and even if he managed to destroy this place, those responsible for creating it would not be brought to account unless word of their deed could be sent back to Terra. There would be nothing to stop them from beginning anew elsewhere. At best, he would only delay their plans. And what if this was only one installation among many?
To end this, the full truth behind the scribe’s unwitting discovery had to be brought into the light.
‘My lord.’ Tallery called to him from further down the cargo wagon. ‘Come look at these.’
‘What have you found?’ He approached, finding her standing over a pallet of pressed-metal cargo boxes.
‘These all bear item codes I recall from Curator Lonnd’s files.’ Tallery had prised open the lids of several of the shipping containers. Inside, Garro recognised myriad offensive munitions and weapons elements. He saw racks of fusing cores for melta bombs, and boxes of heavy-gauge bolter ammunition. In another crate, there were complex frames for heavy weapons, directed energy cannons of a kind he had only a passing familiarity with.
‘What kind of firearms are those?’ asked the scribe.
Garro hefted one of the guns, turning it in his hands. ‘These are conversion beamers. An uncommon firearm, not in wide use across the Legions or the auxilia. It is rare to see so many in one place.’
Tallery peered into the depths of the container. ‘There are dozens here. No powercells in any of them, though.’
He returned the inert energy weapon to its rack and considered it. ‘Whoever is gathering this army wants it to be very well-equipped. A single one of these beamers can obliterate heavy armour with one shot.’
In the distance, the mono-train sounded its horn and its motivators clattered over points in the overhead track.
‘We’re slowing down,’ said Tallery.
‘The loading bay is up ahead,’ noted Garro. ‘Reseal those cargo containers, quickly. Be ready to jump on my order. We can’t be on this train when it reaches the dock.’
Tallery quickly closed the crates and pulled her breather mask back into place. He heard her whisper something under her breath, like a litany. ‘Ave Imperator.’
‘Indeed,’ he offered, and then pulled on the lever that opened the cargo wagon’s hatch. The pressure change was instant and painful, but he shrugged it off, staring out at the deck flashing past outside.
He decided not to give Tallery the chance to question his choices and pulled her to him in a protective embrace. She cried out, but it was too late, and they had already leapt into the air.
Fourteen
Shield of lies
Titan
Obey or perish
Damp drifts of methane slush cushioned their fall, allowing Garro and Tallery to make their way along the service course beneath the monorail platforms at the wide base of the fortress. Staring up through the gridded metal decking, they had a perfect view of the carriages as bipedal walker-mechs driven by gasmasked workers unloaded their cargo.
‘You must take in all that you see here, scribe,’ he told her. ‘Study everything, omit nothing. That eidetic memory of yours will serve as witness.’
She nodded, but with little confidence. ‘What good are my memories if I perish before I can recollect them?’
‘You will survive, Tallery. You are the mission now. I will do everything in my power to see you to safety. The truth behind Othrys must be made known.’
Something slow and heavy darkened the low clouds as it descended from the sky, and presently a wallowing iron barge fell towards the citadel on spears of retro-thrust. At first, the legionary thought it was another cargo vessel, but Tallery corrected him. ‘It’s not a freighter. I recognise the configuration. That is a medicae transport. A mercy ship.’
The warrior frowned, watching as the great craft settled into a landing cradle extending out from the sheer walls of the citadel. As the sound of the thrusters faded, hatches clanged open all along its flanks. Instead of supplies, weapons or materiel, the new arrival deposited men. Garro’s enhanced sight allowed him to pick out lines of injured soldiers, some being helped along by their comrades. The faces were recognisable to him – although he did not know these men, he knew their kind. The war-wounded.
Garro had seen such men alongside him in battle on many worlds during the Great Crusade, or in the halls of his Legion, amongst the neophytes. Warriors all, but young with it, and still untested even though the fires of their martial fury burned bright. It made no sense to see such men here. ‘Each time I think I have some grasp upon this mystery, another twist reveals itself.’
The scribe agreed. ‘This place is no hospice.’
But as she said the words, an answer began to form in Garro’s mind, creeping into his th
oughts like the cold wind over his flesh. Upon the hull of the mercy ship he saw the heraldry of a world that he knew. Mertiol.
Lost now, so the astropaths reported, lost to the warp storms and the iron grasp of the Warmaster, its cities burning and its people subjugated. Only a handful of ships had managed to flee the colony before Horus’ war fleet blackened Mertiol’s skies, and the question before Garro was now why this loyalist craft had fallen into the grip of Othrys, and not returned to safe harbour along with all the other refugees.
That cold understanding crystallised with a jolt. ‘Those men are all dead.’ Tallery gave him a curious look and he went on. ‘Their names will have been struck from record, their ship listed as missing in the void. I think I understand. They will be healed, and then given purpose anew. Do you comprehend? The army of Othrys will be made of ghosts.’
The scribe rounded on him, her eyes wide behind the visor of her breather mask as terror took hold. ‘How much more do we need to see? You have brought us to some misbegotten ball of black ice and poisoned skies, a place crawling with Mechanicum renegades. We have no means of escape, no way to call for help. You’ve doomed us both! And damn you if you tell me to have courage!’ She tensed as if she wanted to run, but both of them knew there was nowhere to flee to.
Garro gave a solemn nod in return. ‘We will both be damned if we do not finish what you began back on Riga. The Imperium must know of this place, this hidden outpost at the heart of a web of secrets. Othrys cannot be allowed to exist.’
‘We’ll need a ship,’ panted Tallery. ‘Something a lot faster than that barge.’
He drew his bolt pistol. ‘Follow me.’
Tallery moved as quickly as she could in Garro’s wake, but it was difficult to keep up with him. Even in the bulk of his unadorned, slate-grey battle armour, the legionary was more nimble than she could have hoped to be. He made it look effortless, and he moved without fear or doubt.
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