And then Aster was there, followed by Gorfillio, advancing on the dais. Their guns spoke, and now the bolts buried themselves deep. Galt’s charge had bought the Sternguard time to change their magazines for those holding vengeance rounds, the unstable fusion cores of these bolts allowing them to penetrate the thick armour of the constructs. Even so, such was the density of the materials used to make the wraithguard that evidence for the explosions of the rounds within was but a splintering upon the surface.
The ghost machines did not react as living beings would. They were neither knocked back by the rounds nor did they convulse. They simply stopped; one remained standing, becoming the statue the Space Marines had originally taken it for, the fingers of one hand splayed to grab at Galt. The other folded in on itself and sank to the floor.
‘Thank you, my brothers,’ said Galt. He deactivated his sword, and went to retrieve his helmet. As he went he called up the embarkation deck flight control of Novum in Honourum. ‘This is Captain Galt,’ he said. ‘Immediate retrieval required. We are done here. Imperator vincit omnis. One casualty, Brother Verderio. Inform the infirmary and Chaplain Odon. We commend his soul to the Emperor.’
‘Brother-captain!’ called Aster. In his hand he held a jewel, similar to the one the captain had toyed with. ‘What shall we do with their stones? Should we keep them? They may be useful as bargaining chips in the future.’
Galt’s face hardened. Aster was being pragmatic. They knew enough of the eldar to understand how important their jewels were to them and their vile alien religion. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I do not deal with the alien. Crush them.’
The scene melted away, the essence of the action against the eldar even now being pinned to Galt’s flesh with needle and ink. He returned to the no-place between waking and dreams, and awaited judgement.
The rush and roar of air going into and out of his lungs became the crash of vast oceans. He felt a gentle tugging at his mind. Home called to him.
His actions were deemed worthy by the spirits of his departed brothers. Deep within his skull he felt a subtle shift as his gifts, the Hibernator and the Unsleeper, worked in concert to push him fully into the trance. He smelled bo-heather and cold, wet rock.
He opened his eyes. He was no longer in the tattooing chair within the Grand Chapel of Remembrance. The battle with the corsairs retreated once more into memory. Rough stone was beneath his bare feet, a wide vista before him. He stood upon a small balcony carved directly from the mountain, the cliff it projected from dropping to rocky plains riven with crevasses. To either side of the balcony an endless array of bastions, turrets, statues and galleried windows stretched away, chipped from the mountains by generations of Novamarines.
Galt was in the Fortress Novum, or rather he was within the Shadow Novum, the dream of the real place, although to invoke dream does not adequately convey what Galt experienced. It was as if he were there upon the ramparts, while his fleet sailed a thousand light years away from Honourum. He had not put into port there for many long years, and so he treasured his rare visits, even to this facsimile.
He marvelled at the veracity of his vision. He closed his eyes and breathed deep of the thin atmosphere, and he smiled at the chill of it on his lungs.
The fortress-monastery of the Novamarines was vast. It had never been completed. It was said it would only be finished when the last Novamarine had laid down his life in the service of mankind. Every victory saw a new hall hewn from the living stone, every dead brother a fresh shrine consecrated. After eight thousand years, the fortress-monastery occupied three-fifths of the Heavenward Mountains. No one, living or dead, was aware of its true extent, and its deepest halls contained mysteries beyond the knowledge of all but the Chapter Master himself.
Like men, so too do Chapters have their secrets.
There was no sound in this shadow of Novum beyond that provided by nature, and no brothers or their servants. Not living, at least. The Shadow Novum was the hall of the dead, home of the shades of Novamarines gone before, a place where guidance could be sought from the heroes of the past. Why else did the living carve ceaselessly at the mountains? The dead needed their barracks and armouries as much as the living, and their numbers grew with every passing year.
Galt leaned his hands upon the balustrade. The sky boiled with black cloud. Lightning lit it from within, making strange sculptures of the heavens. Green aurorae flared where the storm brushed the fortress-monastery’s void shields, a foretaste of the shifting patterns the defences spread across the stars when night fell. The monastery sculpted the world it occupied – tangible and intangible aspects both – as the world sculpted the men who became the brothers who resided within the monastery; a pleasing symmetry.
The sky was dark, but below the storm the land was bright. It was late afternoon, and Honourum’s young sun threw its rays under the attention of the tempest building around the mountains. Light painted the sculpted peaks and hard plains golden. Honourum was a harsh but beautiful world, a world of painter’s light and its contrasts. Galt stared at the horizon, letting the sun and the wind refresh his soul.
He had not been home for so long.
Galt waited. He must be patient. The storm drew blackness over the sky, the slot of sky the sun shone through narrowed. Thunder rumbled. Fat spots of rain speckled Galt’s robes, sleet quickly followed, cutting slanted lines through the air. He watched crystals of ice melt on the warmth of his skin.
A movement behind him, more than the wind.
His guide had arrived, a hero drawn from the halls of the dead to this halfway place to aid him; the boon of the tattooing ritual.
Galt turned. A figure stood in the doorway leading out onto the balcony. Like him he wore a bone-coloured habit, a deep-blue tabard hanging down the front displaying the Chapter badge: a skull surrounded by a stylised starburst. A silver sash embroidered with many campaign markings, the honours of a Deathwatch kill-team veteran, crossed the brother’s chest. This gave Galt a start, he knew that sash. He knew it too well. He prayed it was mere coincidence; the Novamarines were an old Chapter, it was not impossible two brothers separated by millennia could have won identical badges.
Not impossible, he thought, but unlikely.
‘Brother, what aid may the dead grant the living?’ said the figure, and Galt’s heart chilled. The voice was as familiar to him as his own. The figure stepped forward, pulling back his hood as he did so.
Galt frowned. It was as he had feared, the spirit wore the scarred face of Veteran-Sergeant Voldo, the man who had overseen Galt’s training as a neophyte and his creation as an initiate, the man who was as good as a father to him.
Voldo was heavily tattooed with scenes depicting important moments from his life. Some were crude and faded with time; those given to 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.
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