by Paul Kearney
Gothically carved balustrades and buttresses arced fantastically above Calgar’s head, many gilded and garishly painted, as he strode down the nave. There were alcoves wherein votive lights flickered, a softer light than the blinking of the endless consoles, and rivers of cables coursed like pythons of old Terra in protective channels. Colour-coded and painted with runes, they shone with supplicatory oils, and in the air was the blue scent of incense. The ship’s tech-priest, Masala, knew his work, and kept the machine-spirit of the Fidelis placated with proper ritual, aided by a small staff of underlings and servitors. He and the shipmaster, Martyn Tyson, worked well together.
They had served the vessel together these twenty years, and Calgar felt no need for the Fidelis to have an Adeptus Astartes commander. The Ultramarines needed every battle-brother in the fighting line, now and always. It was not for them to see to the minutiae of the fleet. They gave orders and saw to it that they were obeyed. They did not concern themselves with the warp and weft of voidsmanship, though there was in their ranks an enormous level of expertise in that particular skill.
Tyson bowed as Calgar approached the dais, and Masala inclined his hooded head, the ocular implants in his face shining red. Around them, banks of servitors hard-wired into the ship systems muttered to themselves in binaric, and two enginseers sat immobile on tracks, their heads twitching back and forth as information was relayed to them in floods of data.
As well as these, there were several human officers, fleet lieutenants by their badges, and a pair of armsmen with laspistols strapped to their thighs. The dais was large enough to accommodate them all with ease, for it had been built with the Adeptus Astartes in mind, and the floor under their feet was not metal or alloy, but the stone of Macragge itself, brought here and embedded within the ship, a fragment of the home world. It was smoothed and pitted by the passage of centuries of feet – for the Fidelis was old, by the terms of normal humanity. In comparison to the millennia-old cruisers that the Ultramarines fleet possessed, though, it was a mere parvenu.
‘My lord, I am glad to have you back aboard,’ Tyson said. He was a short, burly man with a shaved head and a cogitator implant behind one ear, the better to stay linked to the running of the ship.
‘I trust the Guard welcomed you with suitable fanfare,’ Masala said. His mechadendrites were folded inside his robe. Save for the face, his form was almost human under the scarlet robe of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
‘It was satisfactory,’ Calgar said briefly. The Astra Militarum outpost on Istria VI had paraded before him for half a morning, two full divisions of Ultramar-recruited men who would remember that morning for the rest of their lives.
But to Marneus Calgar it was just one more ceremonial occasion. He had learned more from the briefing by the colonel in charge. All was well. All was quiet. This sector of the Fringe had not seen a xenos incursion of any strength since the Behemoth wars. It was well garrisoned all the same, as were most of the Ultramar border systems.
Most. Not all.
To defend everything is to defend nothing. Calgar knew that. And yet he had spread his forces thin in the last two years or so. His strategy veered towards risk, even hubris. If another tyranid fleet appeared, there would be a scramble of weeks, if not months, before a powerful armada could be gathered to counter it.
One of the gambles he made in defending a vast sea of space with limited resources. The same might be said of the entire Imperium of Man. It had been thus since the Heresy. It had been thus since the Fall itself.
‘My lord, we have received a vox communication, relayed through Parmenio,’ Tyson went on. ‘It is somewhat irregular, from a border world far into the Fringe. Zalidar. I confess I had to consult the data archives to even find the place. Its governor, one Lucius Fennick, has extended an invitation to you personally.
‘It would seem this Fennick has just completed the construction of a functioning spaceport, the first in that system, and would–’ here Tyson cleared his throat as if embarrassed – ‘and would be honoured if you would make personal inspection of it and the world he is entrusted with. Zalidar is not yet fully Imperial-compliant. It is a jungle planet, and–’
‘Fennick,’ Calgar said thoughtfully. His mind worked on the name, roaming over masses of data in the blink of an eye.
‘He fought in the Thrax campaign with the 387th Armoured. A battlefield commission, and then transfer to Zalidar with a single company. Zalidar is a new world, settled barely a half-century. But it was not ravaged by Behemoth. Fennick did well. It is why I confirmed him as governor. A temporary expedient which I have not yet seen fit to revise.’
‘A mere Guard lieutenant?’ Masala asked in his clipped, metallic tone.
‘He showed promise. And from what I could gauge, he cared more about his responsibilities than his ambitions. Such men are unusual – and thus valuable.’
Masala bowed.
‘So, he wants me to see what he has made of his planet, does he?’ Calgar said, and his face lightened a little. ‘The man is enterprising.’
‘He borders on insolence,’ Tyson said. ‘The vox did not go through channels, but was widecast to several of our bases. Lord Joule seeks your permission to chastise him for his presumption. The security risk alone–’
Calgar held up a hand. ‘Lord Joule will do no such thing. And as for security, shipmaster, do you really think that my presence here in the Fringe is still a secret? No.’ He paused a moment. In his mind he was calculating revised timings, possible warp trajectories, and overlaying them with his timetable as it currently stood.
‘If we make best speed for three days we will be able to spare sixteen hours on Zalidar before making a warp jump for Seventh Company. You will make it so, shipmaster. It will do no harm to have a look over what this Fennick fellow has achieved on Zalidar. The planet must be in good shape, or he would not have been so keen for me to see it.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Are we agreed?’
Tyson bowed. Masala’s oculars glinted. ‘Your calculations are correct,’ the tech-priest said.
‘I am relieved to hear it,’ Calgar said dryly. ‘They have no astropaths on Zalidar, or I miss my guess. Get a vox relayed there. Let this Fennick fellow know that in three days we shall make planetfall.’
‘You do him too much honour,’ Proxis said.
‘It is not a question of honour, brother,’ Calgar told the Ancient warrior. ‘I am not unaware of what my office means to others. I am a name in this part of the galaxy, one which men recognise. Sometimes men’s hearts need to be lifted by a bolt from the blue.’
‘Ultramarine blue,’ Proxis said, and he bared his teeth in a fierce grin. Marneus Calgar actually laughed.
The Fidelis picked up speed and altered course for the Zalidar System. At the same time as it was travelling through the Fringe from the Galactic West, so from the far darkness of the East something else was moving through the serried systems and scattered, isolated worlds of mankind.
A cloud, a shadow, it appeared at first on the augur scopes of far-travelling freighters and cargo-tramps. As it drew nearer, so it thickened. It solidified into what seemed to be a cluster of ragged, mismatched asteroids, hundreds of them wheeling through the Eastern Fringe in a formationless skein of dots and blobs that lit up the sky.
There were no astrophysicists in this part of the Imperium to theorise on it. Perhaps a far-flung moon had disintegrated under the tidal gravitics of the stars and was now bound on a long, slow sweep through the universe. Except that the asteroids were moving quickly, and now and then an energy bloom would flare up within them. Two alloy-rich meteors smashing together in their dark transit perhaps. It was an interesting phenomenon, but not a unique one. Many strange things were seen and told of this far out from the heart of human space.
No one on any world of any consequence followed the path of the asteroid cluster, so they did not note that it changed course from time to time. Som
e asteroids left the main body and crashed down on sparsely populated moons and worlds that it encountered in its path, but the main body of the cluster remained together.
It travelled in an unerring line, and if a voidsman of any skill had taken out a galactic map and plotted its course, they would have found that it led squarely through the Zalidar System, and that it would make up the distance in a matter of a few Terran days.
But no one took any note of it. Those that had were all dead already. The asteroid cluster left darkness and silence in its wake, worlds going quiet as it passed them. Such was the unreliability of the vox in this part of the galaxy that their voices were not missed – not yet.
The creeping silence came on unremarked, unnoticed. The massive asteroids with their momentary energy blooms coursed through system after system, and cohered as they came, drawing together. Their course steadied. In a matter of days, they would be in the skies of Zalidar itself.
Eight
It was something to be vindicated. Fennick had overseen the hanging of the banners on the Vanaheim Gate himself. Sixty-five feet long, they were deep blue, with the sigil of the Ultramarines near their crest. Crowds had come to see them hung, and more massive hordes cheered the governor now as he walked among them, hemmed in by the escort from the First Zalidari, all white-faced and sweating under their helmets. His grav-car was waiting just inside the gate, ready to take him to the spaceport. Ready to meet Marneus Calgar himself.
There was a quivering apprehension about Zalathras that he had never known before, an almost religious sense of anticipation that was three parts outright fear.
He felt it himself. And he wondered again at his own temerity.
I did this, he thought as he walked down the broad Avenue of Dromios towards the gate. And Throne, I hope it does not blow up in my face.
The cheering crowds were out in their hundreds of thousands. Not just from Zalathras itself – half the surrounding countryside was within the walls of the city also. The news had run across the planet like wildfire.
In between the cheers, that sense of wonder, of awe. Despite the troops on the streets, there would be no public order issues here today. Fennick knew that. The crowds stood like an assembled army. They did not quite know what to expect, but they knew the legends of the Adeptus Astartes, written in terrible letters across a thousand rumours and tall tales. Mercy was not a quality associated with them. There would be no unseemliness here today.
Word had come through from the Fidelis, the personal transport of Marneus Calgar, not three days ago. The Master of Ultramar would be touching down on Zalidar this morning. A small part of the most glorious history of the Imperium of Man would be written upon this long-forgotten world, if only for a few hours.
Now, Vanaheim, Fennick thought, waving at the crowds, how do you like that?
Boros was waiting for him, and there were other grav-cars there. They had all, Fennick noted, been repainted in Ultramarine blue. The Council members stood by theirs, waiting for him. There was Kurt Vanaheim, with a face torn between excitement and thunder; Ferdia Rosquin, who was as inscrutable as always, but who dipped his head to Fennick as though in a momentary little salute; Rear Admiral Glenck, who did not acknowledge his governor with so much as a nod. And Roman Lascelle, who was not a member of the Council but whose lineage could not be ignored. He was the only one to leave the line of speeders and stride out to meet Fennick. He had a rapier at his hip, and a deep blue sash under his belt. He held out his hand.
Fennick could hardly hear him over the baying of the crowds, but he could read the two words on his lips as they shook hands.
‘Well done,’ the young aristocrat said, with something like a genuine smile.
They clambered into the grav-cars. Behind, the more ungainly wheeled transports of the militia brought up the rear, a hand-picked regiment in their finest uniforms. A full division was already lined up at the spaceport, no doubt already sweating buckets in the heat of the morning.
‘I hope he’s not late,’ Boros said, as he and Fennick relaxed in the back of the grav-car. A shadow passed over them as they travelled under the immense fastness of the Vanaheim gate.
‘If he is, will you reprimand him?’ Fennick asked with a smile.
‘I’m thinking of the men on the landing pads. It will be baking hot out there.’
‘Of course.’ Fennick realised with a tiny shock that he had forgotten about them, he who had once been a sergeant of the Guard.
I really have changed, he thought. The men in uniforms – they do not mean what they did to me. They are not brothers in arms any more, but mere pawns and window dressing. Is that what it means to become a politician? Throne, I hope not.
‘Take the salutes, Boros,’ he said to his companion. ‘Enjoy it while you can. For this one day, we are the cynosure of the entire Eastern Fringe, of Ultramar itself. Today, history comes calling.’
‘May the Throne be merciful,’ Boros said in a low whisper.
‘Thirty seconds,’ Brother Markos said over the shipboard vox. ‘Initiating launch sequence. Thrusters armed, clamps retracting… now.’
There was a series of clanks and bangs up and down the long, angular hull of the Thunderhawk Alexiad. Marneus Calgar sat back in the immense cradle that supported his armoured form and closed his eyes for a second. He was bare-headed, the better to display himself to the people of Zalidar, but arcing over his skull was an Iron Halo that crackled slightly with the protective field it generated. He wore artificer power armour of such antiquity that no one had ever been able to date it reliably. It was conceivable that parts of it had been worn by Guilliman himself. A thing of beauty as well as brutal utility, the armour resembled a Mark IV pattern, but had been repaired and embellished so many times over the millennia that he doubted a single plate of the original ceramite remained. It was a relic of the past, but still fully functional, and combined with his scarlet cloak it looked suitably impressive.
Other elements of the Chapter Master’s wargear were stowed in the stern compartment. The Gauntlets of Ultramar were too bulky for use in any environment other than a genuine battlefield, but he took them everywhere. His helm was here with him, a simple Mark VI Corvus with a gold wreath and enhanced vox capabilities.
That was all. He would be on the ground for only a few hours, and Zalidar was a peaceful world. There was no need to be bringing an arsenal down to the planet. Two Thunderhawks, the Alexiad and the Rubicon, would make the journey while the Fidelis orbited above.
The Rubicon was piloted by Brother Dextus, and in addition to the ship’s Ultramarine crew there was a half-squad of battle-brothers inside. But the majority of its passengers were Guardsmen of the Astra Militarum, a platoon of thirty Imperial storm troopers of the First Ultramar Guards, packed in the Rubicon’s hold like bolter rounds in a magazine. Cadian-trained, they were as good as wholly human troops could be, and would fulfil most of the security details that came with the presence of the Ultramarines Chapter Master. Their officer, Lieutenant Bran Janus, was a career soldier whose rank belied his varied combat experience.
Calgar glanced down the cavernous belly of the Alexiad at the other occupants of the hold. Close-up security for the Lord of Macragge was provided by Calgar’s own battle-brothers. Only two members of his honour guard, Orhan and Proxis, were present on this trip, both in the ornate winged helms of their calling, both bearing power axes that had seen torrents of blood in their time. They, too, were in artificer armour, sealed and blessed and streaming with prayer scrolls.
In battle, Proxis was entrusted with the Chapter Banner – it was back on Macragge at present – and was one of the oldest remaining battle-brethren in the Chapter. He had been a member of First Company for a time, and he had his Terminator badge,but his secondment to the honour guard had saved his life when all of First Company died shoulder to shoulder during the Behemoth campaign. He had almost broken down, the day the firs
t relief teams found his dead brethren. Now he had few intimates in the Chapter save for Marneus Calgar himself, who owed him his life several times over.
Brother Orhan had been seconded to Mars for Techmarine training, but had left of his own accord after the Chapter was attacked, and made his own way back to Macragge in time to join in the destruction of the hive fleet. While not a Techmarine per se, he still had a vast knowledge of the workings of the various systems and machinery that were used in the Chapter, and his expertise had proved useful time and again. He was a perfectionist, and took failure of any kind hard, constantly striving to better himself, in knowledge, in fighting prowess, in strategic insight. There was a captaincy in his future, Calgar had often thought, perhaps even Master of the Forge, but Orhan had never evinced interest in advancement, content to remain in the honour guard.
The rest of the Adeptus Astartes contingent was made up of aides and specialists and line warriors. Brother Valerian was an Epistolary Librarian who had fought in the Behemoth and Thrax campaigns. Young for his station, his psyker abilities were in the Alpha range, and he was a new addition to Calgar’s retinue. He sat now with his hood pulsing blue light, his eyes closed, his face oddly troubled.
Brother Mathias was the party’s Chaplain, and he wore the tar-black power armour of his calling. His helm was a white skull of sculpted ceramite. A fierce advocate of Codex orthodoxy, he was also an inspiration in battle. His rosarius glimmered round the neck of his armour, and in one gauntleted hand he held the crozius arcanum of his calling, the eagle-topped stave which was both badge of office and deadly weapon.