The Flight of the Eisenstein

by James Swallow

  Garro felt the decking turn to mud beneath his boots and his chest caught in an invisible vice, returning to him the same sickening sensations that he had felt in the corridor outside the navis sanctorum and in the grip of the xenos war beast. As he had there, he reached for and found the strength of will that had carried him this far.

  My faith.

  ‘Are you blind?’ he whispered.

  Dorn was thunder incarnate. ‘What did you say to me?’

  ‘I asked if you were blind, lord, because I fear you must be.’ The words came from nowhere, even as some part of Garro marvelled at the mad daring of what he was saying. ‘Only one struck by such a terrible ailment could be as you are. Yours is the blindness that only a brother might have: that of a keen judgement clouded by admiration and respect, clouded by your love for your kinsman, the Warmaster.’

  It was not often that Rogal Dorn’s stern mask cracked, but it did so now. The fury of a god made flesh erupted upon his aspect and the primarch drew his powerful chainsword in a flashing golden arc of roaring death. ‘I rescind my former statement,’ he bellowed, ‘get to your knees and accept your death, while you still have the chance to die like an Astartes!’

  ‘Lord Dorn, no!’ It was a woman’s voice and it came from across the room, but it carried with it a wave of such emotion that every man in the sanctorum, even the primarch himself, hesitated.

  QRUZE TURNED AND saw the girl Keeler running across the blue marble tiles, her boots clacking against them. Behind her were Sindermann, Mersadie Oliton and a pair of Imperial Fists with their guns at the ready. Iacton felt the echo of Euphrati’s voice resonate through him and he remembered the strange warmth he had felt from her hands upon his chest, aboard the Vengeful Spirit as things had turned to hell.

  ‘What is this intrusion?’ snarled Dorn, his humming blade still hanging at the end of his swing towards Garro’s throat.

  ‘They demanded entry,’ said one of the guards. ‘She… The woman, she…’

  ‘She can be very persuasive at times,’ noted Qruze.

  Fearlessly, Euphrati stepped forward to face the primarch. ‘Rogal Dorn, Hero of the Gold, Stone Man. You stand upon a turning point in the history of the Imperium, of the galaxy itself. If you strike Nathaniel Garro down for daring to give you his candour, then you truly are as blind as he says.’

  ‘Who are you?’ demanded the figure in gold.

  ‘I am Euphrati Keeler, formerly an imagist and remembrancer of the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet. Now I am only a vessel… a vessel for the Emperor’s will.’

  ‘Your name means nothing to me,’ Dorn retorted. ‘Now stand aside or die with him.’

  He heard Oliton whimper and bury her face in Sindermann’s shoulder. Qruze expected to see fear bloom on Keeler’s face, but instead there was sadness and compassion. ‘Rogal Dorn,’ she said, holding out a hand to him, ‘do not be afraid. You are more than the stone and steel face that you show the stars. You can be open. You must not fear the truth.’

  ‘I am the Imperial Fist,’ he shouted, and the words hit like hammers, ‘I am fear incarnate!’

  ‘Then see the fidelity of Nathaniel’s words. Look upon the proof of his veracity.’ She beckoned Oliton forward, and with the iterator giving her support, the documentarist came closer. Qruze smiled a little as the dark-skinned woman composed herself enough to show a facade of her more usual elegant manner.

  ‘I am Mersadie Oliton, remembrancer,’ she announced with a curtsey. ‘If the lord primarch will allow, I will provide a recollection of these events to him.’ Oliton pointed to a hololithic projector dais mounted in the floor.

  Dorn brought his sword to his chest, fuming. ‘This will be my last indulgence of you.’

  Sigismund stepped up and directed Mersadie to the hololith. With care, the documentarist drew a fine cable from among the brocade of her dress and traced it along the seamless crown of her hairless, elongated skull. Iacton heard a soft click as a concealed socket beneath the skin mated to the wire. The other end she guided to an interface plate on the dais. This done, Oliton sank into a cross-legged position and bowed her head. ‘I am gifted with many methods in which I may remember. I will write and I will compose image streams, and this is aided by a series of mnemonic implant coils.’ She brushed a finger over her head once more. ‘I open these now. What I will show you, my lord, is as I witnessed it. These images cannot be fabricated or tampered with. This is…’ She faltered, trembling, her words thick and close to tears. ‘This is what happened.’

  ‘It’s all right, my dear,’ said Sindermann, taking her hand. ‘Be brave.’

  ‘It will be difficult for her,’ explained Keeler. ‘She will experience an echo of emotions from the events.’

  The hololith came to life with an opaque jumble of images and half-formed shapes. In the dreamlike mass, Qruze saw glimpses of faces he knew and some he did not: Loken, that degenerate poet Karkasy, the astropath Ing Mae Sing, Petronella Vivar and her bloody mute Maggard. Then the mist shifted and for a moment Oliton looked around the room, the hololith screening what she saw. Her gaze froze on Dorn and he nodded.

  THE HAZE OF the hololith changed and Garro found his attention was caught by the dance of motion and replay within it. He had only heard Qruze’s secondhand explanation of what had transpired in the Vengeful Spirit’s main audience chamber, but here he was seeing it first-hand, through the sight of an eyewitness.

  Scenes of battlefield butchery transmitted from the surface of the Choral City on Isstvan III hovered before them and Oliton sobbed a little. Garro, Qruze and the men of the Imperial Fists were no strangers to war, but the obvious, wanton horror of the combat was enough even to give them pause. He saw Sigismund grimace in disgust. Then the recording turned as Mersadie looked to the Warmaster upon a tall podium, his face lit with a cold, hard purpose. ‘You remembrancers say you want to see war. Well, here it is.’ The relish in his voice was undeniable. This was not a warrior prosecuting a necessary battle, but a man running his hands through tides of blood with open satisfaction.

  ‘Horus?’ The name was the ghost of a whisper from Dorn’s lips, but Garro heard the question in it, the puzzlement. The primarch saw the wrongness in his brother’s manner.

  Then, through Mersadie Oliton’s eyes, they watched the bombing of Isstvan III and the Choral City. Darts of silver surged from the ships in orbit like diving raptors falling on prey, and as the voices of remembrancers long since gunned down by Astartes bolters gasped and screamed, those darts struck home and coiled into black rings of unstoppable death.

  ‘Emperor’s blood,’ whispered Sigismund, ‘Garro told the truth. He bombed his own men.’

  ‘What… what is it?’ asked Oliton, speaking in unison with her own voice on the recording.

  Keeler’s recorded words answered her. ‘You have already seen it. The Emperor showed you, through me. It is death.’

  The recording jumped and unspooled. In fast blinks of recall, they saw Qruze fight the turncoat bodyguard Maggard in the launch bay, the escape from Horus’s warship, the attack of the Terminus Est, and more.

  Finally, Dorn turned away. ‘Enough. End this, woman.’

  Sindermann gently detached the cable from the hololith and Mersadie jerked like a discarded marionette as the images died.

  The cold, clear air inside the sanctorum was rich with tension as the primarch slowly sheathed his chainsword. He ran his fingers over his face, his eyes. ‘Perhaps… Did I not see?’ Dorn looked to Garro and some measure of his great potency was dimmed. ‘Such folly. Is it any wonder I would rebel at the reality of so mad a truth, even to the point of killing the messenger who brought it to me?’

  ‘No, lord,’ Garro admitted. ‘I had no wish to believe it either, but the truth cares little for what we wish.’

  Sigismund looked to his commander. ‘Master, what shall we do?’ Garro felt a stab of compassion for the first captain. He knew the pain, the shame that the Imperial Fist had to be feeling at that moment.

  ‘
Convene the captains and brief them, but see this goes no further,’ Dorn said after a moment. ‘Garro, Qruze, that order includes you. Keep the Eisenstein survivors silent. I will not have this news spread through my fleet uncontrolled. I will choose when to reveal it to the Legion.’

  The Astartes nodded. ‘Aye, lord.’

  Dorn walked away. ‘You will leave me now. I must think on this matter.’ He threw a last look at Sigismund. ‘No one is to enter my chambers until I emerge.’

  The first captain saluted. ‘If you wish my counsel, lord—’

  ‘I do not,’ The primarch left them, and after they left, Garro could not help but see the expression of deep concern on Sigismund’s face as he sealed the sanctorum shut behind them.

  Garro saw Keeler standing by the door and glimpsed a single tear tracing a line down her cheek. ‘Why do you weep?’ he asked. ‘Is it for us?’

  Euphrati shook her head and gestured to the heavy locked hatch. ‘For him, Nathaniel, because he can’t. Today you and I have broken a brother’s heart, and nothing will ever mend it.’

  DORN’S FLEET READIED itself for a return to the warp, and the men and women of the Eisenstein found themselves left outside the work and progress, isolated in temporary quarters deep inside the stone corridors of the Phalanx. Meditation did not come so easily for Garro, and so he prowled the archways and passages of the great star fortress. Once, the Phalanx might have been a planetoid or a minor moon of some distant world, but now it was a cathedral dedicated to the business of war and the glories of the VII Legiones Astartes. He saw galleries of battle honours that went on for kilometres and corridors to whole sections of the fortress that duplicated the conditions of different combat environments for training purposes. Garro dallied in a vast chamber that replicated the Inwitian frost dunes where legend said Dorn had grown to manhood. All around him, warriors in golden armour moved with sober intent, without pause or doubt as he stepped carefully, still smoothing out the limp from his battle injury. He felt out of place, the marble and green of his wargear ringing a wrong note among the hornet-yellow and black trim of the Imperial Fists.

  Finally, in such a way that he could almost fool himself into thinking it was happenstance, Garro found himself outside the quarters that had been granted to Euphrati Keeler.

  She opened the door before he could knock. ‘Hello, Nathaniel. I was preparing a little tisane. Would you like some?’ Keeler left the door open and vanished back into the chamber. He sighed and followed her in. ‘There has been no word from Lord Dorn yet?’

  ‘None,’ confirmed Garro, examining the spare space of the quarters. ‘He has not left his sanctorum for a day and a night. Captain Sigismund maintains command authority in the meantime.’

  ‘The primarch has a lot to consider. We can only begin to imagine how troubled our news has made him.’

  ‘Aye,’ he admitted, taking a cup of the pungent brew from Keeler’s delicate hands. He shifted, taking the weight on his augmetic. The machine limb was the least of his concerns these days.

  ‘What of you?’ she asked. ‘Where has this turn of events brought you?’

  ‘I had hoped that I might find some time to rest, to take sleep. It has been elusive, however.’

  ‘I thought you Astartes never slept.’

  ‘A misconception. Our implants allow us to maintain a semi-dormant state while still being aware of our surroundings.’ Garro sipped the infusion and found it to his taste. ‘I have tried this past day, but what awaits me there is disquieting.’

  ‘What do you see in your dreams?’

  The Death Guard frowned. ‘A battle, on a world I do not know. The landscape seems familiar but difficult to place. My brothers are there, Decius and Voyen, and Dorn’s warriors as well. We are fighting a creature of some loathsome aspect, a beast of disease and pestilence like the things that boarded the Eisenstein. Clouds of carrion flies darken the air, and I feel sickened to my very core.’ He looked away, dismissing it. ‘It is just a mirage.’

  There was a sheaf of Divinitatus tracts on her desk, and a thick candle burning on the mantle. ‘I read Kaleb’s papers. I think I have a better understanding of what you people believe.’

  Euphrati saw where he was looking. ‘The flock have been keeping to themselves since the rescue,’ she explained. ‘There haven’t been any more gatherings.’ She smiled. ‘You said “you people”, Nathaniel. Is that because you don’t think you’re one of us?’

  ‘I am Astartes, servant of the Imperial truth—’

  Keeler waved him into silence. ‘We’ve had that conversation before. The two do not have to be mutually occlusive.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘You are carrying so much weight upon your shoulders, but you’re still reluctant to let others bear it with you. This message… the warning, it is not yours alone. All of us who fled the murder at Isstvan, we carry it as well.’

  ‘Perhaps so,’ he allowed, ‘but that does nothing to lighten my burden. I am in command…’ He faltered for a moment. ‘I was in command of the Eisenstein, and the message remains my duty. Even you told me that it was my mission.’

  Keeler shook her head. ‘No, Nathaniel, the warning is just an aspect of it. Your duty, as you said just now, is the truth. You have risked your life for it, you have gone against every will in your heart to join your kinsmen to serve it, you even stood in the face of a primarch’s fury and did not flinch.’

  ‘Yes, but when I think of all the darkness and destruction that will come of it, I feel as if I am about to be crushed! The import of this, Keeler, the sheer magnitude of Horus’s betrayal… It will unleash a civil war that will set the galaxy alight.’

  ‘And because you carry the warning, you feel responsible?’

  Garro looked away. ‘I’m only a soldier. I thought I was, but now…’

  The woman drew closer. “What is it, Nathaniel? Tell me, what do you believe?’

  He put down the cup and produced Kaleb’s papers and the brass icon. ‘Before he died, my housecarl told me I was of purpose. At the time I did not understand what he meant, but now… now I cannot question it. What if Kaleb was right, if you are right? Am I the instrument of the Emperor’s will? Your prayers say that the Emperor protects. Did He protect me so I could fulfil this duty?’ Garro spoke faster and faster, his words racing to match the pace of his thoughts. ‘All the things I have seen and heard, the visions that touched my thoughts… Were these to strengthen my resolve? Part of me cries out that this is the highest hubris, but then I look around and see that I have been chosen by Him. If that is so, then what manner of being can the Emperor be but a… divine one?’

  Keeler reached out a hand and touched his arm. Giving voice to the words tore the breath from his chest. ‘At last you see with clear eyes, Nathaniel.’ The woman looked up at him and she was crying, but they were tears of joyous faith.

  A SUMMONS WAS waiting for him in the sleeping cell where Garro had been billeted. He followed Sigismund’s terse message to a pneu-train that carried him up through networks of rail tunnels more complex than those of a planet-bound hive metropolis. He arrived at the fortress command centre and a hard-faced Imperial Fists sergeant escorted him to an audience chamber that rivalled the Lupercal’s Court for size and grandeur. Garro felt an uncomfortable flash of memory. The last time he had been called to an assembly like this, it set in motion the events of the Warmaster’s heresy.

  Iacton Qruze was already there, along with the captains from each of many companies of the Imperial Fists. The warriors in yellow barely acknowledged the arrival of the Death Guard, with only Sigismund granting him a terse nod in greeting.

  ‘Ho, lad,’ said the Luna Wolf. ‘It seems we’re to know our fate soon enough.’

  Despite it all, Garro felt a new wellspring of vitality deep inside, the words of his conversation with Keeler still fresh in his thoughts. ‘I’m ready to meet it,’ he told the veteran, ‘whatever it is.’

  Qruze smiled a little, sensing the change in him. ‘That’s the spirit. We’ll see
this through to the end.’

  ‘Aye.’ Garro studied the other men in the room. ‘This is Dorn’s senior cadre? They seem a sombre lot.’

  ‘True enough. Even on the best of days, the Imperial Fists are a stiff breed. I remember battles my lads of the Third fought with Efried, my opposite number.’ He indicated a bearded Astartes in the other group. ‘Never saw him crack a smile, not once in a year-long campaign. That’s Alexis Polux over there, Yonnad, and Tyr from the Sixth… It’s not for nothing they call them the Stone Men.’ He shook his head. ‘And now, they’ll be grimmer still.’

  ‘Sigismund told them about Horus?’

  Qruze gave him a nod. ‘But that’s not the sum of it. I’ve heard rumours that sounds of violence were heard inside Dorn’s quarters. One can only imagine the destruction a primarch’s temper might wreak when awakened.’

  ‘And Rogal Dorn would never be one to vent his frustration openly.’ He studied the other captains again. ‘The humour of a primarch sets the manner of his Legion.’

  ‘It’s their way,’ Qruze noted. ‘They bury their rages under rock and steel.’

  The tall doors at the end of the chamber yawned open and from the dimness beyond came the master of the Imperial Fists. The battle armour he had worn when Garro had first seen him was gone, and instead Dorn was clad in robes of a simple cut, but the change in dress did nothing to diminish his presence. If anything, the primarch seemed larger still without the trappings of ceramite and flexsteel to confine him. Sigismund and the other captains bowed, with Garro and Qruze following suit.

  Given what he knew of the Imperial Fists, Garro expected some sort of ceremony or formal procedure, but instead Dorn strode firmly to the middle of the chamber and cast around, looking at each man in turn.

  Garro saw anger set hard in granite behind those eyes, the echo of the rage that he had briefly seen directed at him. His mouth went dry. He had no desire ever to come that close to it again.

  ‘Brothers,’ rumbled the primarch, ‘something has begun in the Isstvan system that goes against every tenet of our oath to the Lord of Terra. While the full dimensions of it are not yet clear to me, the matter of what must be done about it is.’ He took a step towards the Death Guard and the Luna Wolf. ‘For good or ill, the statement brought to us by Battle-Captain Garro must be taken onward to its ultimate destination. It must reach the Emperor’s ears, as only he can decide how to act upon it. That choice, as much as I regret it, is beyond even me.’