by Guy Haley
Voldo was heavily tattooed with scenes depicting important moments from his life. Some were crude and faded with time; those given him centuries ago by his human family before he was chosen by the gods to live in the halls of the dead and fight for the Sky-Emperor. Some were Chapter icons. Others were full images, glorious in their colour and artistry. There was little room left upon Voldo’s skin for more. Every millimetre of his bald head was covered with marks of honour. They covered his neck, and crept from the sleeves of his robes to wrap delicately around each finger of his hands. As with all of the brothers, the Chapter badge was tattooed upon his forehead. This was the first mark they received upon initiation, but in Voldo’s case each trough between the rays of the nova were filled with long-service studs, forming a secondary starburst of unyielding adamantium.
‘How can this be, brother?’ asked Galt. A complex mix of emotions troubled him, catching at his voice. ‘You live, I saw you not an hour ago.’
Voldo rested a hand on the balustrade and looked out over the plain. ‘The dead are not subject to the laws of time as are the living, lord captain. This place is eternal. Time has no meaning here. I died a long time ago. Or yesterday. Or tomorrow. It matters not. We are all here, all the brothers past and all the brothers yet to be. You are here, as am I. Tell me, are you living, or are you dead? Do you know yourself?’
Galt started to say something, but thought better of it. He fought to regain his poise. It was not wise to query the dead too closely. What was not openly displayed by the flesh art was not for other men to know. And so he too turned to the stony plains of Honourum, unreal and empty below him. Far away, a lone figure struggled across the broken stone pavements, fleeing the storm. He went up and down the peaks and ridges of the rock, as small and insignificant as an ant.
Galt watched the man’s progress a while before speaking. ‘I am troubled by this. Honourum is illuminated as if the sun shines strong, and yet black storms wrack the sky. What does it mean?’
Voldo ran a hand over his head and smiled wryly. ‘You know our world boy; storm and chill and golden light.’ No other would address Captain Galt with such familiarity. No one else had the right.
‘Not in the dream-place, not together, not like this.’
Voldo put his other hand on the balustrade and leaned fully on it. His robe fell away from his straightened arms, revealing more tattoos. Here an ork died, there a city celebrated liberation; moments in time captured in ink on flesh. ‘Light and dark struggle together, First Captain. This is what the storm represents.’
‘Who prevails?’
Lightning cracked. The void shields flared purple and green; oil on troubled waters.
‘Our kin down there will say the gods are fighting,’ said Voldo, nodding at the man in the distance. He had made his way to the edge of the plains of crazed stone, and was ascending a spur in the mountain carved into a lunging aquila. One head of the eagle looked down at the figure with an expression of avarice; the other looked away in dismay. Galt did not recognise the statue, but that was nothing strange. The geography of the Shadow Novum was not entirely the same as that of the real.
‘They also say the Fortress Novum is the kingdom of the dead,’ said Galt. ‘They do not think of us as alive at all.’
‘And they are right. Do you not seek counsel of the dead? The physical Novum stands upon Honourum, but you stand here. Which is the phantom? All men inducted to the Chapter die in the service of mankind, only time stands between life and death, and time is nothing at all. You will know yourself, soon enough.’
‘You speak like Reclusiarch Mortiar.’
Voldo gave a gruff laugh, a single sound, quickly gone. ‘I am dead. I am entitled to. Ask him, he too resides in these halls. All reside here.’
‘Do I?’
Voldo did not answer directly, he shifted, scanning the horizon. ‘Listen to what I say, lord captain.’
Galt tried to remain impassive. Seeing the living Voldo as the honoured dead could betoken nothing good, but to show concern in the presence of his shade would be inexcusable. ‘You have not answered my question, Brother Voldo, as is your duty as the honoured dead. Favour your living brother, who will prevail in this age-old contest; light or dark?’
Voldo gave a small smile, almost imperceptible. The same smile Galt remembered so well from the moment of his choosing at the end of the Contest of Fire, and later from his time as a novitiate, serving in Voldo’s Scout squad in the Tenth, the same smile he had seen on Voldo’s living flesh that very morning.
‘Who said they were fighting with each other, First Captain? Difficult times are ahead. Be wary.’
‘And the figure, the tribesman who flees the storm? Why does he climb? What does he signify?’
‘Who told you he was of the tribes, or that he runs from the storm?’
Lightning blasted at the void shields directly, its discharge rushed across energy shields in splintering branches. Thunder boomed, the void shields crackled as loud as gunfire reply.
With a jolt, Galt left the Shadow Novum. His vision-quest was done; abruptly, without warning, as was always the way.
The quiet songs of the Reclusiam serfs standing in a circle about the couch welcomed him back. Galt’s eyes opened. The air was dry and still. The couch vibrated slightly with the ship’s reactor.
‘The ritual is complete, my lord. My work is done.’ The auto-artisan withdrew its needles from Galt’s shoulder. The auto-artisan had once been a man. What remained of it was barely human. One arm had been replaced by a jointed metal prosthetic which, in place of a hand, carried a drum mounted with dozens of fine needles and jars of pigment. It had no legs, its torso being affixed to a gimballed arm that allowed it to move around the tattooing couch in the Sanctuary of Marking. Where the serf’s other arm had been, the robe was sleeveless.
‘A fine piece to commemorate a grand deed,’ the auto-artisan croaked. Its voice was weak, unaccustomed to use.
Galt flexed his arm and craned his neck to look upon the artwork. Dots of blood oozed from the microscopic holes the needles left. They clotted rapidly, the effect of the Larraman cells, another of his Space Marine gifts. The skin was red, irritated by the tattooing, but Galt could see how it would look once he had healed. The new art depicted him with his bolter upraised, the corpses of eldar reavers and their strange battle-machines about his feet.
‘A good addition,’ he said. ‘I thank you.’
‘I am glad it pleases you. Thanks are not necessary. You do your duty, lord, and I do mine.’ The auto-artisan bowed its head and crossed its arm over its chest. The gimbal withdrew, pulling the half-man back into the alcove where it resided in hibernation between the times its services were needed. Somewhere upon its body would be the tattoo that told how it had come to be this way, how a young aspirant to the plate of the Novamarines had become nameless, wizened flesh trapped by metal.
Cold gasses engulfed it. The alcove door slid shut.
Chaplain Odon, spiritual leader of Galt’s company and lord of the Grand Chapel of Remembrance, stepped into view. He grasped Galt’s newly marked shoulder and made a noise of approval. ‘A good likeness, brother-captain, it augurs well. Surely this image alone will swell the Emperor’s heart with pride when the time comes for him to judge the tally of your deeds.’
‘By the marks upon thee, shall he know thee,’ said Galt.
‘And so judge the iron of a brother’s soul,’ responded Odon.
Galt sat up and faced the Chaplain. Odon’s robes were black and he was hooded, the skull tattooed over the features of his face only just visible in the candlelight of the chapel.
‘Your dreams, did they bring you anything, brother-captain? Did the honoured dead speak to you of victory?’
Galt was silent.
‘You are troubled, brother. Unburden yourself.’
‘Tell me, Chaplain, what does it portend when
the living appear within the Shadow Novum?’
Odon’s face became thoughtful, causing the skull to move as if it had a life of its own, a face upon a face. ‘This man, he is among us?’
‘Yes. It was–’
Odon laid a hand on the First Captain’s shoulder. ‘No brother, do not speak his name, not to me nor to anyone else, and especially not to him. Time is meaningless in the place beyond. The ancestor-grounds of the Shadow Novum are populated by all those who have died, and will yet die. For the living to see one there who still breathes is unusual, but no cause for alarm. Indeed, for the shade of a man who still lives to seek out a supplicant is a sign of great honour, you should be proud, brother-captain.’
Galt nodded hesitantly. ‘Yes, Brother-Chaplain. It is an omen of ill-fortune for the man who will become the shade, is it not?’
Odon made a noise of affirmation. ‘Death is soon to come for the brother whose phantom so shows itself. It is best the living brother not know of the closeness of his shade, no matter that his presence in the Shadow Novum tells us his soul is safe.’
‘Chaplain, there was something else.’
‘Yes brother-captain?’
‘A great storm raged in the heavens, although the land below was bright. At first the two – light and dark – seemed to fight, but the shade told me this was not so. A man fled across the Plain of Judgement before the western face of Fortress Novum and ascended Mount Bordon, in my vision carved into the likeness of the aquila. What does it portend?’
‘You saw another figure?’
‘Far in the distance. A tribesman perhaps.’
‘Troubling,’ said Odon. He frowned, although the skull superimposed on his features continued its eternal grin. ‘I will think on it. There are forces at play around us at all times that we cannot understand. Nor should we try to. Such understanding is the gift of the Emperor alone, for he sits in the doorway between the worlds of the living and dead. It is not for we, the children of his children, to contemplate. Still…’ Odon paused. His grey eyes narrowed in the tattooed sockets of his second skull.
A quiet fanfare interrupted them, an all-ship vox announcement followed. ‘Brothers and servants of the Novamarines, hearken! All attend your duty. Prepare for real space translation.’
A countdown commenced, the culmination of three days’ preparation to leave the warp. Galt and Odon waited for it to reach zero.
The battle-barge’s reactor built to a terrific howl. Warp engines pulsed with arcane forces that sent shudders rippling through the ancient vessel’s fabric. The lights flickered as all power was diverted to the bracing fields that helped hold the craft’s enormous mass together. A strange sensation settled over Galt, a feeling of impermanence, as if he were only the possibility of Mantillio Galt, and not the actuality of him; a ghost of himself. Coming so soon after seeing the shade of the still-living Voldo, this was an unsettling sensation.
The feeling ceased. Galt was who he was, real and flesh, a servant of mankind and the Emperor unto death. The thrum of millions of tons of plasteel under his feet grounded him in reality even as the vessel hung precipitously on the cusp of non-existence. Galt’s faith in the ancient ship calmed him.
The ship quaked, and was still.
‘Rejoice, brethren! Geller fields deactivated. Safe translation to real space accomplished,’ the ship-wide vox said.
‘We have arrived then, and in good time. Shall I accompany you to the bridge?’ said Odon.
‘Yes, Brother-Chaplain.’ Galt stood and pulled on his habit, covering his coloured flesh. As their fortress home was never finished, so the flesh art was never done, not until a brother fell in battle and the record of his achievements was buried with him. Galt called out his signifex code, engaging a vox in the ears of a nearby statue of an angel. ‘Captain Galt orders Captains Mastrik and Aresti, Epistolary Ranial, and Master of the Forge Clastrin to the bridge.’
Odon smiled, his second skull spreading wider its own awful grin. ‘I do not know why you call Forgemaster Clastrin, brother. Where else would he be today, when there is treasure in the stars?’
Galt smiled and gave a quiet grunt of affirmation. ‘You are right. Let us go. I don’t want Mastrik getting impatient and ordering the ship forward before I get there.’
The chorus of Reclusiam serfs around the couch, gold-masked and dressed in bone-and-blue, dipped their heads as Galt stood. Their circle parted to let the captain and the Chaplain through. As they left the sanctuary and entered the main body of Novum in Honourum’s Grand Chapel, Galt’s serf aides Artermin and Holstak stood up from the pews where they had been praying and fell in behind him, their ship’s uniforms emblazoned with the Chapter heraldry. They were not weaklings, these lesser men, but vigorous starfarers. Nevertheless, Galt and Odon towered over them. Six black-clad servitor-worshippers detached themselves from alcoves in the walls, and fell in behind.
‘We have arrived,’ Galt said to the men, ‘and I would look upon our foe.’
On the way out of the chapel, the party turned and bowed as one to the statue of Lucretius Corvo, founder of their Chapter, which stood five times life-size by the soaring doors.
Odon led them in a request for guidance. Not as an ecclesiarch would beseech the Emperor, but as a respectful officer asking advice of a much-loved leader. They were all brothers after all, even if long millennia separated their births.
They left the chapel to its serfs. Their songs continued, gentle as the breeze that blew unceasingly over Honourum’s stony plains.
Chapter 2
Brothers in Arms
‘First Captain on the bridge!’
Galt stepped onto the bridge of the battle-barge. Chapter serfs and full brothers alike snapped to attention. Servitors, oblivious to his rank, went about their ponderous business. A fragment of flesh half-hidden in a web of cybernetic command and life-support cables turned to the door – the remains of a brother. The entirety of the machine he occupied rotated with him.
‘Brother-Captain Galt, we have arrived in-system.’
‘Brother-Captain Persimmon, how goes it?’
‘A smooth translation, Novum in Honourum serves us faithfully as always.’
Persimmon was a wreck of a man, crippled in battle by a vicious xenos species never encountered before or since. Neurotoxins had destroyed his limbs and much of his musculature. Only chance had brought him to the Novum in Honourum’s infirmary and not delivered the bolt of the Emperor’s Grace. The Apothecaries had been ready to send his soul to the Shadow Novum, where he would await the final call to battle from the Emperor. Yet he had lived, clawing his way back from the dead with his single, bloodied hand. Somehow, his body had healed itself enough to remain viable, and so he had also escaped the sarcophagus of a Dreadnought.
Unfit for combat duty, Persimmon had been invested as the Chapter’s Master of the Fleet and installed directly into the bridge of the Novum in Honourum. Technically Novum was Galt’s command, but Persimmon was the true captain of the ship, body and soul. Already noted for his great acumen in naval engagements, his skill had only grown after his injury and subsequent bonding with the vessel. In many respects he was Novum in Honourum.
Persimmon’s cradle occupied the space where the command throne of the battle-barge had once been. A Shiplord’s Seat had been installed to one side of the cybernetic captain; this was Galt’s place, but he walked past it to stand on the walkway over the operations pits and their many-tiered rows of servitor drones, wired in as Persimmon was directly to the ship, before the broad windows of the bridge.
Others of the officer clade of the Chapter were there. Clastrin, Master of the Forge, worked busily, surrounded by human serfs and servitors, and aided by two Techmarines. He, unlike the other Space Marines present, wore his power armour. It was as red as rust, only his right shoulder pad bearing the bone-and-blue colours and badge of the Chapter. Tentacles of metal dar
ted out from the harness upon his back, working controls. Chitters from his augmitter of rapid binaric, the tech-speak of the priesthood of Mars, compelled both his own cyborgs and the bridge servitors to greater efforts. His helmet was off, and his face, marked by strange tattoos that owed more to the Omnissiah than the traditions of Honourum, was tense with anticipation.
Captain Lutil Mastrik and Epistolary Ranial stood side by side on the walkway in front of the windows; Mastrik animated as always, Ranial distracted. Odon and Galt’s retinue dispersed, and the captain and Chaplain joined the Librarian and Mastrik.
Galt looked to the main window, its armourglass covered by external and internal blast shielding.
‘You waited for me, brother?’ he said.
‘I was sorely tempted not to,’ said Mastrik.
‘Brother-Captain Aresti?’ said Galt.
‘En route from Corvo’s Hammer, brother-captain,’ said Mastrik. ‘He is late as usual.’
‘Our brother has problems that require his attention,’ said Clastrin. His words were doubled, his organic voice overlaid by a melodious second projected by a vox-emitter. The two spoke with simultaneous disapproval.
‘Shall I engage the chartdesk, brother-captain?’ asked Persimmon. ‘We have good pict captures of the hulk already.’ Persimmon indicated the black glass bed of the chartdesk, eight by eight metres, situated in front of his throne. ‘Forgemaster Clastrin has excelled himself today.’
Galt shook his head. ‘Open the blast shields, I wish to see the hulk with my own eyes first. Let us get a feeling for our battleground, before we lose ourselves in the detail of it.’
A chorus of grinding servitor voices spoke as one. ‘Compliance.’
‘You paraphrase Guilliman, brother’ said Mastrik. ‘The wisdom of the Codex is never far from your lips.’
‘As it should not be far from your own, brother,’ said Galt mildly.