by Guy Haley
‘The Lion’s men, the Angel and Guilliman, such a happy family. Horus would reward us well for this information,’ Skraivok said neutrally, wary of sharing the daemon’s revelation directly. ‘If the Lion’s men are there, I wonder too if our Lord Curze is nearby?’
‘Why would he be?’
‘After the battle at Tsagualsa, Night Haunter threw the Nightfall at the Dark Angels command ship when he made to attack the Lion again. If he survived, is he there, I wonder? Is he a prisoner? Is he dead?’
‘We would know if he were dead,’ said Krukesh. ‘Our psykers would have sensed it. Speaking of psykers, dear Gendor, where is yours?’ said Krukesh.
‘Perhaps the machine can show us where our father is,’ said Skraivok, evading the question. Berenon was gone, and the sword that had arisen from his remains he had gifted to Kellenkir. Gingerly. He had not touched it himself. To his glee, Kellenkir had been very pleased with the gift.
‘Probably,’ said Krukesh. He moved the view over the city, taking in the reinforced defences, the large numbers of men under arms. A pale shape in the sky took his attention, and he focused upon it. A wrecked battleship, floating as serenely as a moon.
‘Then search for him!’ said Skraivok when Krukesh made no move to do so. ‘We must find the Night Haunter.’ The others were quiet, but they wanted to find Curze as much as he did. He could feel it.
‘Why? Why should we look for him? He was always a distant and disapproving father,’ said Krukesh. ‘Insane, by any measure of sanity. If I find him, what then? Do we seek to gather the Legion only to throw it away freeing him from whatever trap he has cast himself into? Do we spill our blood to bring him back, then grovel at his feet and suffer his loathing? I say no. I am not Sevatar, to go following him like a beaten cur. He hates us, he abandoned us, Skraivok, and for me at least the feeling is mutual. I will not look for him, because I do not want to find him. I will not set our brothers upon that path.’
‘And what do the Atramentar have to say of it?’ said Skraivok. He looked to Krukesh’s Terminator bodyguard. They were Curze’s enforcers, loyal to Sevatar, but they made no reaction.
‘They have been convinced,’ said Krukesh. ‘Times are not what they were. They are mine now.’
‘What path would you rather, then, my brother?’ said Skraivok acidly.
‘Let’s look for another of our exalted leaders instead, shall we?’ said Krukesh. ‘Barabas, refocus the machine.’ He looked pointedly at Polux, chained to the torture frame. ‘Do you require me to refocus your attention also?’
‘No, my lord,’ said Dantioch. He moved over his machines. Skraivok watched him closely. Krukesh paid the warsmith little attention, but to Skraivok’s eye he did not seem to be doing very much.
‘Show me more. Show me Sevatar.’
The machine responded, the distant quantum-pulse engines grinding with effort.
The vista of Magna Macragge Civitas vanished. A dark chamber took its place – a maximum security holding cell, with one naked occupant. A mean amount of light lit the thick walls of adamantium bounding the circular floor. They were flawless, offering no handhold, the circumference of the tube too wide for a man to brace himself against.
The occupant was a Space Marine, Nostraman at that, with the pale skin of all their kind. A metal gag circled the lower part of his face. About his neck was a collar. His arms were manacled behind him. Multiple chains ran from his bindings to hooks set in the floor, four from his collar alone. He was forced into a crouch that must have been agonising to hold. His hair was unkempt, half hanging over a face that was spattered with clots of dried blood.
There was no mistaking who it was.
Sevatar was facing away from the viewing stage but as the cell came into focus, Skraivok saw him stiffen.
‘Delightful!’ said Krukesh, stepping forward. As he did so there was some shift in the atmosphere, and a draught of freezing air blew from the image. Skraivok watched Dantioch closely. Again, he did not seem to be doing much of anything but passing his hands over buttons and dials.
Krukesh went to stand directly behind the chained Space Marine. Sevatar struggled to turn, but was held fast.
‘Ah, Sevatar, how the mighty are fallen. Do you see, Atramentar, how lowly your leader has become? Are you not glad you follow me? I would not allow myself to be captured so. But then I would never abandon you as he has.’
Skraivok expected a reaction to this provocation, but the Terminators remained motionless.
Krukesh stepped around in front of Sevatar so that he might look his lord and rival in the face. The Night Lords in the room moved forward in disbelief.
‘Warsmith, what is the meaning of this?’ asked Skraivok. ‘How can he be within the room?’
Dantioch bobbed his head humbly. Skraivok felt nothing but contempt for him. Iron Within, Iron Without indeed. He was as weak as any mortal, his resolve crumbling as soon as his friend was threatened.
‘An illusion. The environment projected by the Pharos is three-dimensional, but it is not real. No technology has such power.’
‘I wonder where you are, Sevatar?’ Krukesh said. ‘It appears you are in something of a bind!’ He laughed at his own humour. ‘If only we could locate you, then we might consider rescuing you. As things stand, we instead require a new leader. I was thinking of putting myself forward. Do you think you might give me your blessing?’
Sevatar jerked in his chains. The line of his scar crept above his gag, suggesting he was attempting to speak, but he could make no sound, and stared balefully at Krukesh. Skraivok felt an anger then, one that was not his own, but which overlaid his own emotions in a greasy, eerie manner. It was Sevatar’s anger he could feel, transmitted by the device. As he realised this, he felt Krukesh’s triumph also.
‘No? Such a shame.’ Krukesh grinned mockingly. ‘I will be sure to tell the others you are alive when I reassemble the fleet.’ He reached out a hand to Sevatar’s face, then snatched it back in puzzlement.
Quickly the Kyroptera strode out from the cell, and it faded into the black rock of the chamber walls once again. He went straight for Dantioch, and seized his masked face in both hands.
‘Tell me, warsmith. What other uses does this machine possess?’ He was excited and angry, his words hard and urgent.
‘None but what you have seen!’ said Dantioch. ‘It is a beacon and a communications device, that it all.’
‘What were you focusing it upon when we arrived?’
‘We were speaking with those who will destroy you,’ said Dantioch calmly.
‘There are no uses in transport, no ability to transmit matter as well as data?’ Krukesh squeezed at Dantioch’s head, his knuckles whitening. The metal of Dantioch’s mask creaked under pressure.
‘None!’ spat the warsmith. ‘Now release me, or you shall know nothing of any of its secrets.’
‘Lies, lies, lies!’ roared Krukesh. He threw the warsmith backwards into the bank of Mechanicum machines. Dantioch cried out as the impact jarred his ruined body. Krukesh walked over to him and kicked him in his crippled leg, and the warsmith fell hard.
‘Do not lie! I touched him. I felt Sevatar’s flesh under my gauntlet. I was there. I was in his cell with him.’
‘Impossible,’ groaned Dantioch. He attempted to rise. Krukesh kicked him to the floor again.
‘Lies!’
‘Interstellar teleportation?’ said Skraivok.
‘Yes,’ said Krukesh. He glared at the warsmith. ‘That is what it is, isn’t it, Dantioch? You lie to me again! For that we shall hurt your friend, and kill one other.’
Before Krukesh could give the order, Skraivok interrupted.
‘If you will not attempt to search for Curze, we must free Sevatar. He’s the only one of us who can hold the Legion together.’
‘No,’ said Krukesh. ‘He has earned what he has.’
‘We will not.’ Krukesh waved two of his men forward. They helped Dantioch to his feet. ‘We know where the others are. Let us contact them, set a new rendezvous and bring the Legion together. Then we shall seek out Horus and rejoin his war! Claw masters, prepare your men to return to their ships. This is a pretty toy, but we shall soon have had all we need from it.’
‘They will not follow you, Krukesh,’ said Skraivok. ‘You exceed your authority.’
‘We shall see,’ said Krukesh, ‘when I am giving orders from the bridge of the Nightfall itself. I will take the ship, and with it, command of the Legion. Warsmith, you will prepare your Pharos to focus upon the Nightfall, maximum power.’
‘I cannot do as you ask!’ said Dantioch. ‘I do not know where your flagship is. The calibration of the device takes time.’
‘Then why did it find Sevatar so readily? You are lying to me, warsmith. Perhaps your usefulness is over.’
‘I speak the truth! The battle has damaged the chambers it relies on to function. If we had weeks, then–’
A Night Lord ran into Primary Location Alpha from the promontory, one of the men who had taken the Lightkeepers’ place in the Emperor’s Watch.
‘My lord! My lord Krukesh!’ he shouted. ‘News from the fleet.’
‘Speak.’
‘An attack. Imperial ships coming at us at speed. The Ultramarines are here!’
‘Our time is running out,’ said Skraivok.
‘We will destroy them. Contact my ship. Have the platform’s cyclonic torpedoes target the Pharos. If they triumph, we will leave them nothing but a smoking ruin, as I deduce was Guilliman’s original intent. How delightfully ironic to fulfil his wish for him. Warsmith, I will not ask you again. You will find me the Nightfall, and send me there. If you refuse,’ he turned and pointed at the bound Polux, ‘I will take your friend’s eyes and tongue.’
The preceding spread of solid-mass fire took the Night Lords fleet by surprise. Two of their ships were atomised as munitions travelling a substantial portion of the speed of light slammed into them. Others were crippled, left floating in high anchor over Sotha and restricting the manoeuvrability of those craft left undamaged. A form of panic gripped the Night Lords fleet, as the vessels searched the skies for an enemy they had not anticipated. No Imperial or known xenos craft travelled so swiftly; by all measures of contemporary combat doctrine, Corvo came from nowhere.
The fleet came soon after the first spread of weapons fire, keeping a wide margin between themselves and the Night Lords’ anchorage. They fired again as they passed, still decelerating. They went too swiftly for most of their enemy to formulate firing patterns and loose their weapons. Some did anyway, casting hot slugs of metal and beams of light into the vastness of space in the hope of a hit. A second return volley from the Ultramarines did less damage, but the intention was not destruction, but provocation. Neither side scored any appreciable damage on their enemy during that exchange.
Then the loyalist fleet was past, leaving the Night Lords reeling.
Aboard the command deck of the Glorious Nova, Lucretius Corvo watched his initial gambit play out through information already minutes old by the time he received it. No forward psychic scrying had been successful, and he had to rely upon the ship’s augurs. Every decision he must make now was constrained by the sluggish nature of light. He watched tensely, counting energy spikes and visible light flares indicative of hull breaches on the enemy side. Corvo peered into the past, helpless to change it, and gambling his own future on the unknowable present caught invisibly between.
A cheer went up across the battered command deck as an angry gabble of vox-traffic blared across the void. One third of the Night Lords ships slipped anchor and pursued their attackers.
Corvo scrutinised the information tumbling across the tactical screens and holo-projectors. The attack had gone to plan. Several bright ionisation trails crossed the planet’s atmosphere where stray projectiles had burned up. The amount of energy they had imparted to the atmosphere would have stirred up some mighty storms, but that was rather to his advantage. None had impacted on the surface. So far as he could tell, the Glorious Nova and the Watcher had not been detected.
Now came the difficult part.
‘Strike force, to the embarkation decks. We ready for planetary insertion.’
Corvo conferred with his newly-appointed shipmaster, cast one last critical look over all the other main stations of the deck. Much of the damage from the Pharos cut-out had yet to be repaired, and the ship was running through a patchwork of auxiliary systems and hastily installed workarounds. But the Glorious Nova sailed true. Corvo was a good commander, well respected for his grasp of naval combat and the close-quarter brutality of man-to-man void war. Where he saw minor faults in the work of his staff, he let them go. Better they have confidence in their abilities than they hesitate while he effected his landing.
He was tense as he exited the conveyor running down the command spire to the drop assault platforms.
Drop pods waited with their leaf-doors down, their angular heads gripped in loading claws. Servitors, Mechanicum adepts and human deck crew in the uniforms of Ultramar’s navy prepared the launch tubes. Several of the pods were to be sent out empty of legionaries, and loaded with supplies. There would be a limited amount the taskforce could carry, and no space for armour spares or replacement weapons. Such infiltration roles presented problems to power-armoured warriors that lighter units did not face.
Corvo’s own calculations suggested they would have barely enough. They would have to loot their enemy’s equipment to maintain combat effectiveness if their battle lasted longer than three or four days. Wars were won by strategy and logistics, rarely by decisive blows. But he must focus now. Success in battle came one practical at a time.
His men waited at attention, arrayed in perfect ranks, their wargear immaculate. Crisp oath papers fluttered from the pauldrons of many.
Three squads represented his finest veterans. They had taken to wearing Corvo’s quartered livery of bone and blue on their pauldrons.
Once his men’s adoption of his colours would have been frowned upon. When he had taken his warriors to task for their actions, they had said that he was the hero of Astagar, the bearer of the Laurel of Defiance, honoured by Guilliman himself, and that they sought only to honour him in their turn. Corvo disliked it, but he allowed the practice to continue. To censure his legionaries for their respect would have been an insult.
The rest of the units standing before him wore the standard blue of the Legion. All were capable warriors, with four squads of fifteen outfitted for a flexible tactical role.
Two squads of support legionaries rounded out his taskforce. He brought few heavy weapons. Even equipped with suspensor units to take their weight down they remained bulky, and would be difficult to bring through the dense woodland of Sotha. He had ordered many flamers and meltaguns to be brought in the stead of more of the heavier guns. Short-ranged and deadly, they were ideal for the task ahead of them.
There were one hundred twenty-six, all in all. Perhaps too many, perhaps too few. There had to be enough to drive through to the quantum engine room of Primary Location Ultra, but not so many that they were too soon noticed and annihilated.
Corvo had no time for pretty speeches. His men expected none.
‘Activate mission chronos. Mark of Sotha to commence… now.’ The chronometer chimed in his helmet and began its count.
He spent a brief moment surveying his troops. He knew them all, they were his brothers, and all were worthy. ‘We march for Macragge. To your drop pods.’
They turned and stamped their feet. The boom of it drowned out the racket of mission preparation. One squad at a time they boarded their drop pods. The doors squealed up.
Atmospheric seals hissed. Before the last squads were aboard, the first pods were being hoisted upwards by clanking loading cranes that bleated out doleful alarms as they slid slowly across their ceiling tracks. More and more mechanical voices joined the choir, until the blare of warning klaxons filled the metal world of the deck.
Corvo watched the first pod brought into position. The round doors of the tube slid aside, and it was lowered into place. He waited until its top fins had disappeared out of sight and the crane was withdrawn before he motioned to his command squad that they should join him in theirs.
He was in first, pulling down his drop cradle while his men secured their specialist gear in adapted crew bays. They were as taciturn as their leader in the main. Brothers Gollodon and Cerean shared a joke with one another by the look of it, but they were mindful of their captain’s character, and kept their chatter private.
The drop pod lurched upward. Corvo brought up a feed from the command deck in his visor. He was occupied by it, and hardly registered the doors of the drop pod lifting and closing him in. His world became one picked out by machine lights, the steady blinking of good function, the reflected ruby shine of his own eye-lenses on the door interior. To see his fellows, he must turn his head sharply to one side, and even then he gained only an impression of their presence. He cut into their vox-feeds. Apothecary Hephtus was working through a verbal checklist, his pre-battle ritual. Gollodon and Cerean were still talking to one another. The others, his vox-operator Bellephon and Vexillary Damius, were silent.
‘Sound off,’ he said.
One after the other they spoke their name and rank. Corvo checked his squad network, bringing up their vital signs and checking through the status of their equipment and ammunition counts.
The drop pod swayed to a halt.
‘Crassus, give me your status,’ he said.
‘Yes, captain,’ said Crassus, transferring the data to the network. He was one of the few sergeants to have been with Corvo on Astagar. So many had died, others of his men had moved on, transferred to other companies to fill ranks depleted by war. Crassus remained doggedly by his side. Corvo fully expected him to succeed him as captain of the 90th one day.