The Flight of the Eisenstein

by James Swallow

  THE HORUS HERESY

  James Swallow

  THE FLIGHT OF THE EISENSTEIN

  The heresy unfolds

  v1.2 (2011.11)

  The Horus Heresy

  It is a time of legend.

  Mighty heroes battle for the right to rule the galaxy. The vast armies of the Emperor of Earth have conquered the galaxy in a Great Crusade – the myriad alien races have been smashed by the Emperor’s elite warriors and wiped from the face of history.

  The dawn of a new age of supremacy for humanity beckons.

  Gleaming citadels of marble and gold celebrate the many victories of the Emperor. Triumphs are raised on a million worlds to record the epic deeds of his most powerful and deadly warriors.

  First and foremost amongst these are the primarchs, superheroic beings who have led the Emperor’s armies of Space Marines in victory after victory. They are unstoppable and magnificent, the pinnacle of the Emperor’s genetic experimentation. The Space Marines are the mightiest human warriors the galaxy has ever known, each capable of besting a hundred normal men or more in combat.

  Organised into vast armies of tens of thousands called Legions, the Space Marines and their primarch leaders conquer the galaxy in the name of the Emperor.

  Chief amongst the primarchs is Horus, called the Glorious, the Brightest Star, favourite of the Emperor, and like a son unto him. He is the Warmaster, the commander-in-chief of the Emperor’s military might, subjugator of a thousand, thousand worlds and conqueror of the galaxy. He is a warrior without peer, a diplomat supreme, and his ambition knows no bounds.

  The stage has been set.

  CONTENTS

  THE FLIGHT OF THE EISENSTEIN

  The Horus Heresy

  CONTENTS

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  PART ONE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  PART TWO

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  PART THREE

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  The Primarchs

  HORUS, Warmaster and Commander of the Sons of Horus Legion

  ROGAL DORN, Primarch of the Imperial Fists

  MORTARION, Primarch of the Death Guard

  The Death Guard

  NATHANIEL GARRO, Battle-Captain of the 7th Company

  IGNATIUS GRULGOR, Commander of the 2nd Company

  CALAS TYPHON, First Captain

  ULLIS TEMETER, Captain of the 4th Company

  ANDUS HAKUR, Veteran Sergeant, 7th Company

  MERIC VOYEN, Apothecary, 7th Company

  TOLLEN SENDER, 7th Company

  PYR RAHL, 7th Company

  SOLUN DECIUS, 7th Company

  KALEB ARIN, Housecarl to Captain Garro

  Other Space Marines

  SAUL TARVITZ, First Captain of the Emperor’s Children

  IACTON QRUZE, ‘THE HALF-HEARD’, Captain, 3rd Company, Sons of Horus

  SIGISMUND, First Captain, Imperial Fists

  Non-Astartes Imperials

  MALOGHURST ‘THE TWISTED’, Equerry to the Warmaster

  AMENDERA KENDEL, Oblivion Knight, Storm Dagger Witchseeker Squad

  MALCADOR, The Sigillite, Regent of Terra

  KYRIL SINDERMANN, Primary iterator

  MERSADIE OLITON, Remembrancer, documentarist

  EUPHRATI KEELER, ‘The New Saint’; remembrancer

  BARYK CARYA, Shipmaster of the frigate Eisenstein

  RACEL VOUGHT, Executive officer of the frigate Eisenstein

  TIRIN MAAS, Vox officer of the frigate Eisenstein

  PART ONE

  THE BLINDED STAR

  ‘If the sole trait these Astartes share in common with we mere mortal masses is their bond of brotherhood, then one must dare to ask the question – if that were lost to them, what would they become?’

  — attributed to the remembrancer Ignace Karkasy

  ‘We are the voice and the clarion call; We are tyrant’s ruin and rival’s fall.’

  — from the battle mantra of the Dusk Raiders

  ‘As with men so it is with silk; it is difficult to change their colours once they have been set.’

  — attributed to the ancient Terran warlord Mo Zi

  ONE

  Assembly

  A Fine Sword

  Death Lord

  IN THE VOID, the vessels gathered. Shifting gently in the silent darkness, the crenellated hulls and great ornate shapes appeared as a congregation of Gothic edifices, cathedral-wrought in their complexity, drifting as if torn from the surface of worlds and carved into warships. Great sculpted bows filigreed into arrow points turned, stately and lethal, to face into the dark on a uniform heading. Torches burned on some, in apparent defiance of the airless vacuum. Plasma fires trailed white-orange streams of turbulent gas from chimneys along the kilometres of gunmetal hulls. These beacons were lit only when conflict was in the moment. The flares of wasteful, daring heat they generated were signs to the enemy.

  We bring the light of illumination to you.

  The craft that rode at the head of the flotilla was cut from steel the shade of a stormy sky, with a prow sheathed in dark ocean green. It moved as a slow dagger might in the hand of a patient killer, inescapable, inexorable. It bore little in the way of ornament. The ship’s only decorations were martial in nature, etchings on the plough-blade bow in letters the height of a man, long lines of text that recalled an age of battles fought, worlds visited, opponents lain to wreckage. Her only adornments of any note were two-fold: a golden spread eagle with two heads across the face of the flying bridge and a great icon made of heavy nickel-iron ore, a single stone skull set inside a hollow steel ring in the shape of a star, at the very lip of the spiked blade, watchful and threatening.

  More ships fell into line behind her, taking up a formation that mirrored the spear tip battle-patterns of the warriors that were her payload. In echo of the unbreakable resolve of those fighters, the warship proudly bore a name in High Gothic script across her iron hull: Endurance.

  Behind her came more of her kind, ranging in class and size both larger and smaller: the Indomitable Will, Barbarus’s Sting, Lord of Hyrus, Terminus Est, Undying, Spectre of Death and others.

  This was the fleet that gathered beyond the umbra of the sun Iota Horologii, in order to bring the Great Crusade and the will of the Emperor of Man to one of the gargantuan cylinder worlds of the jorgall. Carried in their thousands aboard the ships that served their Legion, the instruments of that will were to be the Astartes of the XIV Legion, the Death Guard.

  KALEB ARIN MOVED through the corridors of the Endurance in a swift dance of motion, holding his heavy cloth-wrapped burden to his chest. Years of indentured service had bred in him a way of walking and behaving that rendered him virtually hidden in plain sight around the towering forms of the Astartes. He was adept at remaining beneath their notice. To this day, even with so many years of duty glittering in the dull rivets fixed to his collarbone, Kaleb had not lost the keen awe at being among them that had filled him from the moment he had bent his knee to the XIV Legion. The lines on his pale face and the grey-white of his hair showed his age, but still he carried himself with the vitality of a man much younger. The strength of his conviction – and of other, more privately held ones – had carried him on in willing, unflinching servitude.

  There were few men in the galaxy, he reflected, who could be as content as he was. The truth that never left him was as clear to him
now as it had been decades ago, when he had stood beneath a weeping sky of toxic storm clouds and accepted his own limitations, his own failures. Those who continued to strive for what they could never reach, those who punished themselves for falling short of the dizzy heights they would never reach, they were the souls who had no peace in their lives. Kaleb was not like them. Kaleb understood his place in the scheme of things. He knew where he was supposed to be and what it was he was supposed to be doing. His place was here, now, not to question, not to strive, only to do.

  Still, he felt pride at that. What men, he wondered, could hope to walk where he walked, among demigods cut from the flesh of the Emperor Himself? The housecarl never ceased to marvel at them. He kept to the edges of the corridors, skirting the broad warriors as they went about their preparations for the engagement.

  The Astartes were statues come to life, great myths in stone that had stepped off their plinths to stride about him. They walked in their marble-coloured armour with green trim and gold flashing, some in the newer, smoother models of the wargear, others in the older iterations that were adorned with spiked studs and heavy-browed helms. These were impossible men, the living hands of the Imperium going to their deeds with shock and awe trailing around them like a cloak. They would never understand the manner in which mortal men looked upon them.

  In his indenture, Kaleb knew that some among the Legion considered him with disrespect, as an irritant at best, worth no more than a drooling servitor at worst. This he accepted as his lot, with the same stoic character and dogged acceptance that was the way of the Death Guard. He would never fool himself into thinking that he was one of them – that chance had been offered to Kaleb and he had fallen short in the face of it – but he knew in his heart that he lived by the same code they did, and that his meagre, human frame would die for those ideals if it would serve the Imperium. Kaleb Arin, failed aspirant, housecarl and captain’s equerry, was as satisfied with his life as any man could hope to be.

  His load was awkward in its wrapping and he shifted it, cradling the object in a diagonal embrace across his chest. Not once had he dared to let it touch the deck or pass too close to an obstacle. It filled him with honour just to hold it, even through a thick cowl of forest green velvet. He found his way forward and up via the twisting and circuitous corridors, over the access ways that crossed the reeking, thunderous industry of the gun decks. He emerged on the upper tiers where the common naval crew were not allowed to venture, into the portions of the ship that were allotted exclusively to the Astartes. Should she wish to, even Endurance’s captain would need to seek the permission of the ranking Death Guard to walk these halls.

  Kaleb felt a ripple of satisfaction, and unconsciously ran a hand over his robes and the skull-shaped clasp at his collar. The device was as big as his palm and made from some kind of pewter. The mechanisms within it were as good as a certified passage paper to the machine-eyes and remote scrying systems on the ship. It was, after a fashion, his badge of office. Kaleb imagined that the sigil was as old as the warship, perhaps even as old as the Legion itself. It had been used by hundreds of serfs, who had died in service to the same role he now fulfilled, and he imagined it would outlast him as well.

  Or perhaps not. The old ways were fading, and there were few among the senior battle-brothers of the Death Guard who deigned to keep the careworn traditions of the Legion alive. Times, and the Astartes, were changing. Kaleb had seen things alter, thanks to the juvenat treatments that had extended his life and given him a fragment of the longevity of his masters.

  Forever close to the Astartes, but still held at a distance from them, he had seen the slow shifting of mood. It had begun in the months following the Emperor’s decision to retire from the Great Crusade, from the time that he had bestowed the honour of Warmaster upon the noble primarch Horus. It continued still, all around him in silent motion, shifting slow and cold like glacial ice, and in his darker moments, Kaleb found himself wondering where the new and emerging way of things would take him and his beloved Legion.

  The housecarl’s face soured and he shook off the sudden attack of melancholy with a grimace. This was not the time to dwell on ephemeral futures and anxious worries of what might come to pass. It was the eve of a battle that would once again enforce humanity’s right to stride the stars unfettered and unafraid.

  As he approached the armoury chamber, he glanced out of a reinforced porthole and saw stars. Kaleb wondered which one was the jorgall colony world, and if the xenos had any inkling of the storm about to break upon them.

  NATHANIEL GARRO RAISED Libertas to his eye line and sighted along the length of the blade. The heavy, dense metal of the sword shimmered in the chamber’s blue light, a wave of rainbow reflections racing away from him along the edge as he tilted it down. There were no imperfections visible in the crystalline matrix of the monosteel. Garro didn’t look back at his housecarl, where the man waited in a half bow. ‘This is good work.’ He gestured for the man to stand. ‘I’m pleased.’

  Kaleb gathered the velvet cloth in his hands. ‘It’s my understanding that the servitor who attended your weapon was a machine-smith or a blade maker in its previous life. Some elements of its original artistry must remain.’

  ‘Just so.’ Garro gave Libertas a few practice swings, moving swiftly and easily in the confines of his Mark IV power armour. He let the smallest hint of a smile creep out across his gaunt face. The nicks that the blade had suffered during the Legion’s pacification of the Carinea moons had troubled him, the result of a single mis-blow on his part that cut through an iron pillar instead of flesh. It was good to have his favourite weapon in his hands once more. The substantial mass of the broadsword completed him, and the idea of venturing into combat without it had troubled Garro on some level. He would not allow himself to voice words like ‘luck’ and ‘fate’ except in mocking humour, and yet without Libertas in his scabbard he had to confess he felt somehow… less protected.

  The Astartes caught sight of his own reflection in the polished metal: old eyes in a face that, despite its oft weary countenance, seemed too young for them; a head, hairless and patterned with pale scars. A patrician aspect, showing its roots from the warrior dynasties of ancient Terra, pale-skinned, but without the pallidity of his brother Death Guard who hailed from cold and lethal Barbarus. Garro brought the blade up in salute, and slid Libertas back into the scabbard on his belt.

  He glanced at Kaleb. ‘It predates even me, did you know that? So I have been told, some elements of the weapon were fabricated on Old Earth before the Age of Strife.’

  The housecarl nodded. ‘Then, master, I would say it is fitting that a Terran-born son wields it now.’

  ‘All that matters is that it turns in the Emperor’s service,’ Garro replied, clasping his gauntlets together.

  Kaleb opened his mouth to respond, but then a motion at the chamber door caught his eye and immediately Garro’s housecarl sank again into an obeisant bow.

  ‘Such a fine sword,’ came a voice and the Astartes turned to watch the approach of a pair of his brethren. As the figures came closer, he resisted the urge to smile wryly.

  ‘A pity,’ the speaker continued, ‘that it cannot be placed in the care of a younger, more vigorous warrior.’

  Garro eyed the man who had spoken. In the fashion of many of the Death Guard’s number, the new arrival’s scalp was shaven, but unlike the majority he sported a tail of hair at the back of his head, in black and grey streaks that dangled to his shoulders. His face was craggy and broken, but the eyes set there had sardonic wit in them.

  ‘The folly of youth,’ Garro replied, without weight. ‘Are you sure you could lift it, Temeter? Perhaps you might need old Hakur there to help you.’ He gestured to the second man, a wiry figure with thin features and a single augmetic eye.

  Rough humour emerged in a scattering of dry laughter. ‘Forgive me, captain,’ replied Temeter, ‘I only thought to exchange it for something that would better suit you… say, a walking st
ick?’

  Garro made an exaggerated show of thinking over the other man’s proposal. ‘Perhaps you are right, but how could I hand my sword to someone whose breath still smells of his mother’s milk?’

  The laughter echoed through the chamber and Temeter raised his hands in mock defeat. ‘I have no recourse but to bow before our great battle-captain’s age and venerable experience.’

  Garro stepped forward and clasped the other man’s armoured gauntlet in a firm grip. ‘Ullis Temeter, you war dog. You only have a few years less than me on your clock!’

  ‘Yes, but they make all the difference. Anyway, it’s not about the years, it’s the quality that counts.’

  At Temeter’s side, the other Death Guard kept a dour face. ‘Then I’d venture Captain Temeter is sadly lacking.’

  ‘Don’t give him any support,’ Andus replied to Temeter. ‘Nathaniel has enough barbs without you helping him!’

  ‘Merely assisting the commander of my company, as any good sergeant should,’ said the veteran with a nod. Someone who did not know Andus Hakur as well as his captain did might have thought the veteran’s insulting turn against Temeter to be honest, and indeed Garro heard a sharp intake of breath from his housecarl at the words; but then Hakur’s manner was dry to the point of aridity.

  For his part, Captain Temeter laughed off the comment. Both he and Garro had served with the older warrior in the years before they had risen to lead their respective companies. It was a point of mild dispute between them that Garro had persuaded the old Astartes to join his command squad over Temeter’s.

  Garro returned Hakur’s nod and drew Temeter aside. ‘I hadn’t expected to see you until after the assembly on the Terminus Est. That’s why I was here.’ He patted the sword’s pommel. ‘I didn’t want to step aboard Typhon’s warship without this.’

  Temeter flicked a questioning glance at the housecarl, then smiled slightly. ‘Aye, that’s not a vessel to be unprotected aboard, is it? So, then, I take it you haven’t heard the news?’