‘Ever the sycophant,’ said Belagosa. ‘Your grovelling at Ekodas’s feet is quite pathetic.’
‘You cannot goad me into breaking the truce of Sanctus Corpus,’ said Ankh-Heloth. ‘You speak nothing but poison and bile.’
‘Brother Belagosa has a point,’ said Sarabdal, mildly.
‘Oh? Please enlighten me,’ said Ankh-Heloth.
‘You are a puppet,’ said Sarabdal. ‘Nothing more than Ekodas’s pet, and the 11th Host is nothing but an extension of his own. Like a dog, you grovel whenever your master deigns to throw you his scraps.’
The dull humming of the archivist-servitors’ impellor motors reigned over the chamber. Belagosa was grinning broadly now, and Marduk too found it hard to hide his amusement as the blood drained from Ankh-Heloth’s face. His entourage had gone very still.
‘These are not my words, of course,’ said Sarabdal mildly, pretending not to have noticed the effect on the incensed Dark Apostle of the 11th Host. ‘Just… what I have heard said.’
‘Who says such things?’ hissed Ankh-Heloth.
‘Everyone knows you are Ekodas’s whipping boy,’ said Belagosa, relishing Ankh-Heloth’s incandescent rage.
Marduk had heard through Jarulek, his one-time master and the previous holy leader of the 34th Host, of the dubious manner in which Ankh-Heloth had come to power. Jarulek had told Marduk that while it was the Council of Sicarus that had instated Ankh-Heloth as the First Acolyte of the 11th Host, this was only at Ekodas’s insistence. Less than a decade later Ankh-Heloth ascended to the position of Dark Apostle after his predecessor was killed under circumstances engineered, many believed, by Ekodas.
Marduk smirked, thinking of how he himself had come to power.
‘Something amuses you, Apostle?’ said Ankh-Heloth, staring venomously. His body was quivering with rage.
‘Of course not, honoured brother,’ said Marduk, his tone mocking. ‘Such obviously slanderous rumours against one weaken us all.’
‘We all know that the only reason we suffer your presence on this crusade,’ spat Ankh-Heloth, ‘is because you have in your possession the device that Jarulek unearthed. Let’s hope it was worth the trouble.’
‘That is the only thing that you’ve said here that has made any sense,’ said Belagosa.
‘Agreed,’ said Sarabdal.
Marduk swallowed back his fury.
‘I have fought and bled to attain and unlock the secrets of the Nexus Arrangement, dear brothers,’ said Marduk, glaring at the other three Apostles. He clenched the barbed railing of his pulpit with such force that he threatened to tear it loose. ‘Tens of millions have died in order that it came to me. Worlds have perished. It will win us this war, and when it does, it will be I who shall reap the rewards. In time, you will all bow your heads in deference to me, hearken to my words.’
Belagosa laughed, deep and rumbling. Sarabdal looked amused at the outburst.
‘Tread warily, Marduk,’ warned Ankh-Heloth. ‘An Apostle can fall from grace very quickly if he does not learn to respect his betters.’
‘His betters?’ snarled Belagosa, quickly turning back on his favoured target. ‘And you include yourself in that mix? Marduk may well be nothing more than a whelp, but remember it was not so long ago that you yourself were a lowly First Apostle, Ankh-Heloth. I can still remember when you were first inducted into the Legion. Even then you were a self-aggrandising worm.’
Ankh-Heloth turned his cold eyes on Belagosa. His entourage, standing in the shadowed alcove behind his pulpit, was tense. Ankh-Heloth’s hulking Coryphaus clenched his hands into fists, the ex-loaders of his gauntlet-mounted bolters chunking as they came online. The warrior resembled a hulking primate, his back hunched and his augmented arms grossly oversized.
Belagosa’s honour guard responded in kind, the daemons within their bodies straining to break from their bonds, just waiting for the trigger word from their master that would release them.
‘You go too far, Belagosa,’ hissed Ankh-Heloth. ‘But I shall not be the one to break conclave peace, as much as you might wish it.’
‘Still the coward,’ said Belagosa.
‘Enough!’ snapped Sarabdal, forestalling Ankh-Heloth’s reply. ‘This bickering demeans us all.’
Of the four Apostles present, it was Sarabdal who had led his Host the longest, Sarabdal who had been groomed to become Dark Apostle of the 18th by none other than blessed Lorgar himself. Raised in the scriptorums of Colchis, Sarabdal had been little more than a child when he had taken part in the brutal Schism Wars that fractured the Covenant, the dominant religious order of the feudal planet. Impressed with the youngster’s fanaticism and fiery demeanour, Lorgar had taken the boy under his wing and once reunited with his Legion, had personally chosen Sarabdal for indoctrination into the Word Bearers. Few Dark Apostles garnered more respect than Sarabdal, and Belagosa and Ankh-Heloth fell into sullen silence at his rebuke.
It was a formidable gathering of might here in this chamber, Marduk thought, and a slight smile touched his lips.
Between them, the four Dark Apostles commanded the loyalty of over five and a half thousand Astartes warriors. Together with the might of Ekodas’s Grand Host, that number swelled to over nine thousand. Add onto that the battle-tanks, Dreadnoughts, daemon-engines and assault craft of the five Hosts and the number was swollen further.
Over a million fanatical cultists of the Word accompanied the Hosts, brainwashed men and women crammed together like cattle in hulking slave vessels. These pitiful wretches were subjected to an endless torrent of maddening warp-noise by floating Discords. After months and years of such unceasing abuse, their free will and resistance had long been broken, and they were now true devotees of Chaos. Of little tactical worth, they would be herded into the guns of the enemy, across minefields and sacrificed by their Astartes masters, and they would do it willingly.
Last of all, the fleet was accompanied by a single bulk-transporter of Legio Vulturus, a grim vessel twice the size of the Crucius Maledictus. Within its cavernous stasis hold resided a full demi-Legion of god-machines: twelve of the most potent war engines ever constructed on the forgeworlds of the Mechanicum. As part of the Ordo Militaris wing of the Collegia Titanica, they had fought in nigh on constant battle since the start of the Great Crusade. The Legio Vulturus had declared their allegiance with the Warmaster Horus, turning their guns against their brethren mid-battle, wreaking terrible havoc among the Legios Gryphonicus and Legio Victorum, destroying nigh on forty battle engines in that one unexpected engagement. This particular demi-Legion of Vulturus had fought alongside the Word Bearers since the start of the Crusade, and many within the XVII Legion credited Erebus himself with turning them to the cause of the Warmaster.
‘This is outrageous,’ snarled Belagosa. ‘If I have to wait one more minute for Ekodas to grace us with his presence, I’ll–’
His words were cut off as the blast-doors behind the domineering rostrum above them slammed open, venting steam and oily, incense-laden smoke. A procession of Terminator-armoured veterans stamped through the open portal. They stepped deferentially aide, and Ekodas walked forwards to take his place at his podium.
Ancient and heavily augmented, Ekodas’s face bore the ravages of thousands of years of war; his features were cratered and cracked. There was nothing flamboyant or extravagant about his appearance. A simple black robe hung over the plain, austere plates of his armour. His only adornment was a handful of charms looped around his neck. These fetishes of bone and blood-matted hair were strung upon lengths of sinew, and Marduk recognised the characteristic style of the shamanistic priests of Davin. He carried no weapon or staff of office. It was said he preferred not to dirty his hands, preferring to let his underlings fight his battles.
‘Don’t let me interrupt,’ said Ekodas. ‘I am most interested to hear what you have to say.’
Ekodas looked down at Belagosa, his black eyes burning with contained fury. His sizeable entourage, vastly outnumbering those of the oth
er Apostles, continued to file in behind him. It was an unsubtle display of military strength.
Belagosa’s jaw twitched.
Ekodas’s attention shifted and, as the full force of the Grand Apostle’s gaze struck him, Marduk fought the urge to kneel. He was a Dark Apostle of Lorgar, he reminded himself angrily; he need bow to no one but the Urizen himself. He saw amusement written in Ekodas’s burning orbs and his anger flared, hot and potent.
There is great strength to be found in anger, said Ekodas, jolting Marduk as the words stabbed painfully into his mind. Ekodas’s lips didn’t move, but Marduk heard the words as if they had spoken directly, and he knew instinctively that no one else had heard them.
An Apostle’s mind was like a fortress. It had to be so that he would not be overwhelmed by the crushing power of the warp, nor his sanity ripped apart by any of the billions of deadly entities that dwelt beyond reality. With walls erected by centuries of mental training and conditioning, with ramparts constructed of unshakeable faith and utter belief, an Apostle’s mind was virtually unassailable, yet Ekodas had torn straight through those defences as if they were nothing.
Yet always be certain that your anger is directed at the real enemy, young Apostle, continued Ekodas, his voice pounding. He continued to hold Marduk’s gaze, his eyes burning with the fires of fanaticism, even as Marduk struggled to look away and reassert control.
Ekodas broke contact suddenly and painfully. Marduk clenched the pulpit railing as a wave of vertigo crashed over him. He felt physically drained, and a dull headache throbbed behind his eyes.
‘Is everything well, my lord Apostle?’ said Ashkanez, leaning forwards to whisper in Marduk’s ear. Ignoring the First Acolyte, Marduk glared up at Ekodas. He was angry at being taken by surprise, that Ekodas had so easily breached his mental defences.
Had Ekodas gleaned anything of import? Had he learnt of Marduk’s promise to Erebus, of the shocking suspicion that the First Chaplain had?
It was doubtful, for even the most talented psykers were generally only able to read those thoughts uppermost in an individual’s mind with any consistency. Even then it was difficult to gain any coherency amidst the bewildering array of random images and emotions. Still, there was no way of truly knowing what Ekodas might have gleaned.
He realised then that he had misjudged the Apostle. He had always seen Ekodas as an unsubtle priest, a sledgehammer that overcame his opponents, both in war and in politics, through confrontation. Now, Marduk was forced to readdress his preconceptions.
‘You have nothing to say then, Belagosa?’ said Ekodas, his attention returned to the other Dark Apostle. Who knew what silent communication was being conducted between them. ‘There is nothing that you wish to say to my face, brother?’
‘No, my lord,’ said Belagosa finally, lowering his gaze.
Ekodas flashed a glance at Marduk full of staggering, domineering force.
I am not your enemy, his voice boomed. A trickle of blood ran from Marduk’s nostrils.
The conclave was short and to the point. Ekodas’s Coryphaus, Kol Harekh, ran through the final assault plans, his words spoken with the calm authority of one used to being obeyed.
In the open space between the Apostles’ pulpits hung a three-dimensional hololithic projection of a binary solar system: the target of the crusade’s wrath. The image flickered with intermittent static, and flashes of warp interference occasionally overlapped the visual feed, showing screaming daemons and other horrific images.
Ignoring these anomalies, Marduk stared intently at the hololithic projection. As the details of the attack were laid out, he watched the tiny planets and moons of the binary system slowly orbiting each other, revolving lazily around the two suns at its heart. One was a massive red giant in its last few billion years of life and the other, its killer, a small parasite that burned with white-hot intensity.
Twenty-nine planets circled the two suns, as well as a handful of large moons. Streams of data scrolled down the screen of Marduk’s lectern, relaying geography, population, defences and industry for each of the planets as he tapped its surface. Eighteen of the planets were inhabited. Three of those were naturally conducive to carbon-based life forms, while others had been terraformed to create atmospheres suitable for human habitation. The populations of the other inhabited moons and planets existed within domes large enough to have their own weather systems, within hermetically sealed stations pumped with recycled air or labyrinthine subterranean complexes.
An asteroid belt a thousand kilometres thick formed a ring within the solar system, dividing it into the inner core worlds and those beyond. The inner core worlds constituted the bulk of the inhabited planets, with only a few isolated mining and industrial facilities located on those celestial bodies in the cold outer reaches.
‘The Boros Gate,’ said Ekodas, ‘staging ground of the End Times, according to the Rubric Apocalyptica. For ten thousand years Chaos has tried to take this system. For ten thousand years we have been denied. Until now.’
Throbbing red icons overlaid the hololithic system map, marking warp-routes to and from the system.
Streams of information bled across the data-slate of Marduk’s lectern, and across the lesser terminals accessed by Kol Badar behind him. Desiccated servitors hardwired into the control feeds coralled this constant flood of data with serpentine tentacle fingers.
The information regarding the system and its defences was as accurate as could be obtained by the small, shielded drones that had been dropped out of warp-orbit into the outer reaches of the enemy system. Almost invisible to conventional scans and relay sweeps, they were currently hugging the system’s thick asteroid belt and sending back steady streams of valuable information. It was a delicate process: too much data-flow and the enemy would register the feed and be ready for them; too little and they would be blindly entering one of the Imperium’s best defended regions of space – only the Cadian Gate was more fiercely guarded.
The system was not particularly rich in mining deposits, nor was it an agri-hub that fed other systems. No sacred shrineworlds existed within it that needed defending, nor did it house any forges vital to the Imperium’s ongoing existence. It was heavily populated and very rich, certainly, but that in itself was not enough to warrant such protection, nor the ferocity with which the XVII Legion desired it.
The key to the importance of the system was its wormholes. They were the sole reason it was so hotly defended and so jealously regarded by the Legions that had been loyal to the Warmaster.
Even for the Legions dedicated to Chaos, the warp-routes through the immaterium were often convoluted and difficult to navigate. Thousands of overlapping routes existed through the warp, twisting and turning in constant flux. There were fast moving streams that wound their way through the immaterium, allowing remarkably swift passage from one area of realspace to another, but also stagnant areas of null-time where a fleet could become becalmed for years or decades at a time. Skilful Navigators were able to predict and read the warp like a living map. The best of them were able to remain fluid, adapting to the changeable flow of the immaterium and making the most of its fluctuating ways. Often, a fleet would be forced to slip sidewards across several streams, being buffeted to and fro, pulled months off-course by the malign forces that dwelt there before slipping into the warp-route that would take them to their destination.
However, there were some rare warp-routes that remained stable and unchanging through all the passing centuries and millennia. Highly prized, and violently defended at their egress points, the most favoured of these stable wormholes allowed entire fleets to be shifted from warzone to warzone almost instantaneously, utilising the routes like mass transit highways that bridged the gaps between distant subsectors. The Imperial system that the crusade was soon to descend upon was the hub of one such cluster of wormholes.
In essence, the system was a transportation hub, a waypoint that allowed impossibly swift transference between almost two-dozen other, vast
ly distant locations. Anyone who controlled it would be capable of practically instantaneous travel to positions millions of light years away.
One such location was only a relatively short jump from Terra, the birthplace of mankind and the centre of the Imperium itself. The very thought of what it meant should they take the system made Marduk salivate.
Several Word Bearers crusades had tried to gain control of the region, but none had ever returned. In all, seventeen Hosts of the XVII Legion had been thrown against this system over the past centuries, and all had been wiped out. The Black Legion had lost double that number trying to find a way around the heavily guarded Cadian Gate. Other Legions too had suffered when attempting to strike at the region, most notably the Death Guard of Mortarion and the Iron Warriors of Perturabo.
A substantial fleet was docked at a devastatingly powerful space bastion orbiting the system’s capital planet. That bastion alone had enough firepower to destroy half the Word Bearers crusade, but it was neither the fleet nor the bastion that was the system’s most formidable defence. Nor were the standing armies that protected each of the inner core worlds, nor their fortress-like cities, warded by potent defence lasers, cannons and orbital battery arrays. Nor even were its Astartes protectors and stewards, the genetic descendants of those that Marduk and his kin had once called brother.
The true strength of its nigh-on impenetrable defences lay in the wormholes themselves.
Allowing practically instant transportation between a score of other systems, they also allowed the full might of the Imperium to marshal at a moment’s notice. As soon as the system registered that an enemy fleet was attempting to breach from the warp, an alarm call would be sent out. Hours after an enemy fleet made realisation into the binary system’s outer reaches, an Imperial armada of truly titanic size would emerge from the wormholes to combat the threat.
To go against this region was not merely to go against one system’s defences and its Astartes guardians, but rather to go against the fleet of an entire subsector. It was to go against the entire force of the Astartes Praeses – an order of Space Marine Chapters that permanently patrolled the flanks of the Eye of Terror, ever vigilant for incursions from within. Utilising the wormholes of this region, the Adeptus Praeses were a thorn in the side of the Chaos Legions, able to quickly manoeuvre their companies to wherever they were needed.
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