by David Guymer
Venn regarded them all dispassionately before again interceding with the door's intelligence on their behalf. They bobbed through. The administrator pointed down the right arm of the corridor in the direction of the shooting. It was getting closer. 'Go that way.' The pacifier gave a questioning look.
'The High Lords unfortunately require you to delay the invaders on our behalf.'
The woman puffed up her chest and tensed into a rigid salute. The two older men looked less certain, but a genetic disposition towards obedience saw them bumping after her down the corridor.
Dekka watched them go without emotion. 'The Imperial fleet could blast our ship out of orbit. Why have they not?'
'The High Lords think they are looking for you.'
'Me?'
The administrator shrugged as the three internees disappeared through the far door hatch. 'It was the consular caste to whom they feigned their protestations of peace. Perhaps they see you as valuable somehow? I do not know. The High Lords have not seen fit to apprise me on that subject.' The hammering of bolter-fire and an unpleasant splattering noise from the next corridor proved ample distraction from such questions.
'I am told that the Imperium encompasses a thousand stars,' Dekka murmured.
Venn shook his head. If he was at all ruffled by the scraping noises from beyond the far hatch then nothing of it showed. 'The High Lords have decreed that the wanton exaggerations of the Imperial envoys are to be disbelieved by all citizens. The arrival of one additional reinforcement fleet in no way corroborates their false claims.'
Dekka's eyebrow lifted at that new information. Venn, meanwhile, glanced down the corridor, facial muscles resisting the deep-buried urge to bite his lip. 'That said, I am sure the High Lords would not disadvise us from hurrying.'
FOUR
The medicae decks of the XIII Legion strike cruiser Executor were just beginning to return to normality. Servitors with thousand-metre stares and radiation welts on their skin mopped the bloodstained tiles with monotonous, repetitive motions. The air cyclers whirred, the restorative odours of ambergris and eucalypt mixing unpleasantly with those of counterseptic and burn gels to produce something sickly. It was too warm. The lumens were sepia tinted, conspiring with heavy doses of anaesthetic to usher dying men towards sleep. It wasn't helping Tull Riordan stay awake.
He limped through the whoosh of a decontamination curtain, his cane clicking erratically on the metal tiles. The chrono on the wall read 03:20. Or possibly 08… something. The display fuzzed out of focus as he squinted. He'd always been a restless sleeper. Especially when men were dying.
'What the hell are you doing? Are you insane?'
Milein Jaskolic, a medicae attached to the Serranic Peltasts, was tending to an unconscious soldier. The man was bound in burn dressings but for his eyes and nose, the skin there a scrappy red as if badly sunburned. A feed tube wormed into his mouth through the layers of wrapping. Numerous lines connected him to drip bags and bleeping monitors, the luminosity dialled to minimum. Milein herself was outfitted in full biohazard gear, a flexible soft-suit that resembled a partially inflated blue-green waste sack, with a large plastic visor that hung down to her chest. Her face was lit from beneath by a string of lumen spots.
'You look ridiculous,' said Tull.
'You want ridiculous? Try walking into a contamination ward wearing nothing but a surgical coat. These men are irradiated.'
Tull walked to the small and ill-kept admin desk by the ward entrance, wincing at the splintering pain in his knee. A sleepless night always aggravated the pins in his kneecap. He hooked his cane over a peg meant for surgical coats, picked up a clipboard and, blinking away sleep, began to study the patient logs for the hours since his last round.
'Are you listening?' Milein insisted.
'I assume you know what the penetrative depth of alpha emissions is.'
'I assume you know what a melanoma is.'
'I'm wearing two vests.'
'Tull! Don't be a bloody martyr.'
'A martyr?' Tull scowled, eyebrows lifting as he flipped through the logs. 'These men are martyrs. They had an atomic arsenal dumped on them and four days later here they still are. If being in the same room makes me a hero, then it's a sorry world you and I live in, isn't it?'
Milein shook her head. Her baggy plastic suit didn't move. 'We all do our part. I think the men down there were happier for knowing we were up here waiting for them.'
Muttering under his breath, unconvinced, Tull ran his fingers down Milein's appalling handwritten scrawl. The gloves made it difficult to wield a stylus, but Doctor Jaskolic presented with a classic case of medicae handwriting. 'Colonel Grippe's showing increased pain responses.' He tracked a little further down. 'Wild stab in the dark, but it could be because of the reduction in pain blockers you've authorised.'
'We're rationing the doses. There's a lot of wounded. You of all people should know that.'
'Maybe we can knock them out with amasec like in the old days.'
'Tull…'
'No. Hell with that.' He clicked his fingers and summoned an almsman who had been checking the intravenous lines on the neighbouring bed. Hariban, Tull thought, but the ancillary staff were rotated so regularly it was difficult to keep track. Even when they weren't suited up like genetors for a xenos autopsy. 'Load me a syringe with a quarter-shot of metanephrin.' The almsman nodded and walked to the narcoceutical lockers.
'Metanephrin is a stim,' said Milein.
'Really? We must've gone to the same medicae scholam.'
'Get some sleep, Tull,' she snapped. Tull saw then she was every bit as exhausted as he was. 'You turn into a real arse when you've not had any in four days.'
'I'm always an arse,' he muttered as Hariban returned with a loaded syringe. The almsman pulled apart the plastek sheath and looked questioningly at Tull.
He made a 'give me' gesture as he unbuttoned the figure-tight sleeves of his violet coat and rolled them up over his forearms. They were coarse with white hair, bruised with old ink, thick with muscle despite everything time had been able to throw at them. Even with all the rediscovered technologies of the Crusade, setting a bone, tying an artery, restarting a heart or, Terra forbid, performing a field amputation of a limb was hard, real work. He tightened the rolled cuff under the elbow, bringing out the veins in his wrist, and gestured impatiently for the syringe.
The almsman nodded and did as he was told.
'Damn it,' swore Milein, turning to look the other way.
Tull grunted as the needle slid into his ulnar vein. He depressed the plunger, blinked a few times, then withdrew the needle, pressing his lips to the head of blood that welled up from his wrist. 'Hotter.'
'A normal person would just sleep,'
'I can't, I…' He shook his head, trying to rid of the faces that haunted the edges of his dreams. Sanderson getting his tetani shot. Merret, a drill yard sprain. Julan, headaches. Kirril, a born anatomist; Tull had run him through basic field aid, for all the good it had done him under an atomic bloody strike. Fatigue muted their accusations, but he doubted he would be sleeping a while yet. 'I can't.'
Milcin frowned at him, then walked to the desk, picked something off it, and pinned it none too gently to the breast of his coat.
'Ow,' he said, and looked down at the yellow rad-pin that now stuck from his breast pocket on a slant.
'When it starts to turn black I'm calling for the orderlies.'
Tull grimaced. 'Sorry. And look.' He readjusted the rad-pin so that the skull motif was facing the right way up. 'I'm really not trying to get myself killed.'
'I know.' Her face softened. 'These men are your regiment. I understand. But you're surgeon-general for the entire 413th. Your responsibilities are elsewhere.'
'What do you think I've been doing when I'm not here? Research?'
'Most of these men are going to die,' she pressed. 'There's not a lot that you or I can do for them besides make them comfortable.'
The mummy on the bed
behind her groaned, and tried to prop himself up. 'If I were a general, would I get a pillow?'
Milein blanched. Tull growled under his breath, and pushed past the unprotesting doctor to the man's bedside. Colonel Ibran's dressings distorted as he smiled. Checking over his shoulder to ensure that the almsman had moved on, Tull slipped him a lho from the stash in his breast pocket. Ibran fed the paper roll through his dressings and between his lips.
'Probably best not light it, though,' said Tull, indicating the impregnated wraps. 'Naked flames and all that.'
Ibran's chest rocked lightly, but his body was too exhausted to laugh. 'She's not so bad, you know. She's prettier than you are.'
'You're supposed to be unconscious. Our relative prettiness should be moot.'
'What can you do?'
Tull tried not to smile, failed. 'I'll talk to the Chapter Master, see if I can scavenge some more meds from somewhere.'
'It's all right.' He settled back into his cot, sucking on the unlit lho. 'They'll be shipping us back after this, right?'
'Damn right, sir. While you've been enjoying the comforts of Doctor Jaskolic, I've been up half the night filling out your invalid papers.' He patted Ibran's chest. The dressings were spongy, warm with the heat they'd drawn from the colonel's injuries. 'Find a decorative case for your sidearm and pack a dress uniform for the welcome home parade. You'll be catching the Jupiter rise before you know it.'
Ibran smiled as he drifted back to sleep. 'I wonder what my… children… will… look like…'
Tull bowed his head, a burn in his eyes. He patted Ibran's chest again, lightly, lest he wake him. 'It's all right, son. It'll be all right.' He looked away only as cold vapours pinched his tear ducts tight, a decontamination hiss drawing his attention towards the opening door.
The gases parted before an immense figure. His broad chest was draped in a toga praetexta, pure white with a border trim of cobalt blue. A golden laurel wreath lay across one shoulder. Tull supposed that a little radiation posed no hazard to Ulan Cicerus. His features were broad and heavy with the gigantism of his altered kind, the eyes set deep under his thickened brow blue and fair.
They were the eyes of a gene-bred warrior and leader of warriors, but one who, true to the ideals of his creation, had yet to forget why it was he fought or asked others to fight and die beside him. He studied each of the medicae cots in turn, and his transhuman features expressed pain, compassion, grief, enough for every man in their turn. And remorse.
Before assuming the post of surgeon-general, Tull's principal interest had been in psychologia, specifically post-battle trauma, and despite the guilt and pain he had for himself in spades, he found himself fascinated by how the Ultramarine would react to the same. Would he become timid, agonising over every decision, or would he overcompensate with acts of bravado? Or would his genhanced psychology simply shrug it off, as easily as his physiology would any other kind of wound?
Tull snatched his cane from the peg and limped towards the giant warrior.
'You must've read my mind, sir. I was just about to have someone find you.'
The Ultramarine spread his hands slightly, as if he were at Tull's service rather than the other way around. 'What can I do for you, Tull?'
The proper awe at finding oneself on first-name terms with a lord of the Ultramarines made a goodly imprint on the wall of tiredness about Tull's brain, but couldn't break it down. 'We're running short on pain meds. These men gave their lives to the Crusade. If the best we can offer them is their final hours free of pain, then I think that's what they've earned.'
'I'll see what I can do,' said Cicerus, and as with every word from the Chapter Master's mouth, Tull believed it absolutely.
'How is Amar pulling together?' he asked, and the Ultramarine's jaw visibly clenched at the reminder.
'He drills what forces we have left. I have never seen him so driven.'
Tull shook his head in amazement. The last time he had seen Intep Amar, the Librarian had been so radioactive that the Thousand Sons Apothecary tending him hadn't even dared touch his armour to remove it. That he'd survived the atomic conflagration was a miracle. That he was already on his feet and apparently in fighting condition shattered what little he thought he knew of Space Marine biology.
'We take it as well as we give it,' said Cicerus blackly, with a finality that killed that line of conversation. But it was one Tull would need to have with him sooner or later. Preferably before he led less invincible warriors into battle again. Cicerus turned to regard the man in the bed. 'Colonel Ibran Grippe. Of the Fifth Galilean Mixed Infantry.'
Tull nodded. 'He was fifteen kilometres from ground zero. One of the lucky ones.'
'I am looking for the ranking Army officer,' said Cicerus.
'You won't find him here. Ibran's been invalided out. He's done. The paperwork will be with your staff by now.'
'That is your decision. But you misunderstand me, lieutenant colonel.'
Tull stiffened involuntarily. 'Been a while since anybody called me by that title. I forgot I had it.'
Cicerus gave him a sorry look. 'I suspect that you are about to get used to it. You are the senior active officer in the 413th now.'
'Pity on us all.'
Cicerus' eyebrow arched.
Tull sighed, rubbed his eyes. 'Just tired. So now you've found your officer, what do you want with him?'
'You haven't heard?'
'Heard what?'
Cicerus looked over the occupied beds. 'I suppose you would not have.'
'Heard what?'
'Reinforcements have arrived, Tull.'
Tull almost laughed with disbelief. 'It's been four days. How could the Twelfth have got here so quickly?'
'It is not the Twelfth.' Cicerus looked more anguished than he already had. 'It is the Iron Hands. Ferrus Manus is here.'
FIVE
The throne was Medusan iron, as hard as ten years of solitude in the bleak shadowlands, black as winter shale. Like all things wrought by the primarch's hand, it was beautiful. A high back of hand-woven metal plaits, fretted arms, thick bars of dark iron wound over and over like serpents, etched with silver scales. The feet were those of a Dreadnought. No ordinary Space Marine (and to Ferrus Manus, all Space Marines were ordinary) could sit in it without appearing absurd, a child in the seat of the Gorgon. There was but one being in the cosmos it could accommodate, and he brooded from its high seat like a god over a flawed creation.
He lifted his gaze, and the Thousand Sons Librarian, Amar, recoiled as though struck. The Librarian was a ghost in a blood-red cloak. His face was blistered, in parts black, one eye milky as if pupil and iris had been burned off under a promethium torch. His mind, however, was a constant, probing menace against Ferrus' brow.
'You were sent here to negotiate the surrender of the Gardinaal, correct?
'Their submission, lord primarch.'
Ferrus ignored the correction. 'I am told your talks lasted less than a day.'
'The Gardinaal had no interest in peace.'
'The initial report of Chapter Master Cicerus says otherwise.' He turned to the Ultramarine.
Unlike many of his brothers, Ferrus had never sought to unite his people or bring a fractious world to heel. Harsh worlds bred harsh men, and harsh masters harder warriors, hungry for every scrap of praise grudgingly bestowed, wary, always, of provoking his wrath with failure. To his chagrin, Ulan Cicerus did not rise to the provocation.
'In fairness, lord, I never sat at a table with them. Amar did. He reported that their intent was to use negotiations as a ploy to leverage concessions through arcane means. We should take him at his word.'
'Then I shall.'
He was not the reckless bellicose that Dorn held him to be. Remembering how his dour brother had once had the gall to rebuke him, in the company of both their warriors, and on Ferrus' own bridge no less, for some perceived lapse of restraint, filled him with fury as if his brother were here in his chamber with him. He felt his hands expand, th
e metal heating in response to his trembling anger.
With the mastery of a demi-god that knew well his own mind, he turned his thoughts away from one brother and towards another. Immediately, he felt his humours balance.
They were so different, yet so alike.
The elegant Phoenician and the hideous Gorgon.
Ferrus bore his brother no animosity for coining that particular sobriquet. It fit. Like a glove of liquid steel. Where Fulgrim was contemplative and beatific, he was belligerent and headstrong. Perturabo, whom many that had not been forced to endure his company would have considered a more natural brother, had once asked what he and Fulgrim had to talk about. That was the first and last time that the Iron Warrior had made Ferrus Manus laugh. But he had not given an answer. Ferrus knew too that he had a reputation for being enigmatic, but there was no aspect of his character that had not been moulded perfectly to his nature. He was difficult to like, and he liked his brothers little enough.
With one exception.
To his mind they were more akin than any primarch was to another or the Emperor to his sons. Their differences, so pronounced, were superficial, and it had taken neither being long to recognise what it was they shared. Perfection. Both carried a need for it, strove for it, demanded no less from those bound by blood and love to call them father. Only in their methods did they differ. Where Fulgrim would scale any obstacle to reach the heights beyond, Ferrus would shatter it through raw determination and walk over the rubble of its defiance. The ultimate goal and the conviction to claim it first were the same.
He drew a breath, ice water over boiling iron, and commanded it to cool his mind. Perfection. He would demonstrate to all and beyond any doubt - Ferrus Manus was the first amongst his brothers. He glared icily at the Ultramarine.
'On retrieving the Librarian and learning of his failure, your immediate response was to deploy the Imperial Army to encircle the capital city of Gardinaal Prime.'
'It was,' said Cicerus. He stood with a straight back, his cobalt-blue armour polished to a high shine and bedecked with the garlands of Ultramar. He stared, unblinking, at the primarch's throne but not, Ferrus noted, at the primarch himself.