Know no fear. The Battle of Calth

1

Who are the first to die?

Most commentaries will cite Honorius Luciel (captain, 209th) and seventeen others by the hand of Sorot Tchure on the company deck of the cruiser Samothrace at mark: -00.19.45, but these are not in fact the first combat fatalities.

The fleet tender Campanile is mob-boarded and taken off the Tarmus Apogee approximately one hundred and thirty-six hours [sidereal] before count start as a preliminary to the Calth assault.

Three thousand seven hundred and nine crew members are executed, including the ship master, the Navigator, the echelon port master, two fabricators from the yards, and a detail from the Neride Regulators 10th serving as deck protection.

Proof of the loss of the Campanile, delivered to Primarch Guilliman around mark: 01:30:00 demonstrates calculation and planning on behalf of the adversary, and establishes what Primarch Guilliman refers to as a ‘preparatory phase of acquisition’, which refutes any claims that the conflict was born out of mistake or misadventure.

This represents a ‘precondition of malice’ on the part of the adversary, and strengthens Primarch Guilliman’s hand in that it removes any compunction to resist or fight back with full military force.

There is no longer any point trying to reason with his brother, because his brother is not, in fact, mistakenly trying to kill him at all.

Lorgar has been planning it all along.

Precise details of the circumstances surrounding the loss of the Campanile are lost and alone in such darkness, on a deceleration arc past the outer moons, one small ship, overweight and wheezing, over three and a half thousand souls because no log record or data canister is recovered from the wreck which had been penetrated by something in the night, made in the night, made out of the night, a void-hard darkness with teeth and eyes, squirting through every airgate and hatch seal and vent tube like pressurised oil though it is assumed that the vessel was overhauled by a fighting ship from the XVII Legion’s fleet and taken with all hands all of them screaming as they were blinded and suffocated, nowhere to flee to, no escape, no door that would open except to bare and airless space, and still the thing made of night filling the Campanile up, every compartment and deckway, every chamber and access, like black storm water flash-flooding an underground habitat, blinding and choking and drowning everything, filling rooms, filling mouths, filling lungs, filling ears, filling stomachs, stewing brains, smothering gunfire, blunting blades, swallowing the screams of the dying and the overcome, stealing the screams away and laughing them back in mocking voices that promised that screams were nothing more than the chamber music of dark monarchs mankind had only just begun to dream of so that its anchorage codes could be used to penetrate the platform yards.

Course irregularities are noticed of the Campanile by Calth System Control at mark: -136.14.12 and again at mark: -135.01.20 and mark: -122.11.35.

Vox contact is recorded as lost at mark: -99.21.59.

Two hours later, Calth System Control marks the Campanile ‘cause for concern’, and the Master of the Port determines that a support intercept should be sent out if nothing further is received by the end of shift. There are one hundred and ninety-two thousand items of shipping traffic in the Veridian System that day because of the fleet conjunction.

The support intercept is not sent out because the Campanile resumes code transmission at mark: -88.10.21.

The crew of the Campanile is listed on the roll of the fallen in the aftermath of the battle, though none are ever seen again / except they were, but not in any form that they could be recognised, apart from their screams.

The first of the fleet advances have hauled their scarred hulls into the arrestor slips and come to full stop in the high anchor station above Numinus City. They are warships that have gone a long way, and killed a great many things, and they wear the insignia and colours of the XVII proudly.

Luciel opens the airgate hatch. His company has been assigned close protection of Numinus High Anchor. He has requested the duty personally.

Tall as one big man on another big man’s shoulders, broad as any three muscle-heavy athletes, his bulk augmented by the massive ceramite plate of gleaming Praetor-pattern armour, Luciel opens the airgate hatch.

The light inside finds him blue and gold. His skull-close helm is in place. Behind the visor slits, Luciel’s eyes react as fast as the optic augmetics in the slit rims. Involuntary combat instincts take over: a new space is revealed, so he must consider it and assess any threats. An airgate compartment, sixty cubic metres, grav supporting decking, self-seal armoured skinning, neutral normalised atmospherics (though Luciel can feel the pressure decay of the air pumps’ end-cycle). There’s a reciprocal airgate hatch at the other end of the gate compartment.

There is a figure in front of the door. It is another Space Marine in full wargear.

Luciel is XIII Legion, an Ultramarine. Blue and gold, clean and sharp. Armour burnished to a silk gleam. The Praetor-pattern is a new variant, locally fabricated at Veridia Forge, not yet a formally accepted mark within the Legiones Astartes.

The other is XVII Legion, a Word Bearer. His pattern is the current Mark IV, the Maximus, built for Imperial supremacy. Its fixed frontal armour and angular helm are familiar.

Its colours are not. Dark crimson, with gunmetal edging. Company symbols and squad brands lacquered in dark shapes, almost undecipherable, as if they have been erased or are yet to be painted. Where is the plasma-etched grey of the old scheme?

The Word Bearer is almost unrecognisable. For a nanosecond, the figure registers to Luciel as an unknown, a threat.

Transhuman responses are already there, unbidden. Adrenaline spikes to heighten an already formidable reaction time. Muscle remembers. Luciel wears his boltgun, an oiled black pit bull of a weapon, in his thigh holster. He can draw, aim and fire in less than a second. The range is six metres, the target unobstructed. There is no chance of missing. Maximus plate, frontally augmented, might stop a mass-reactive shell, so Luciel will fire two and aim for the visor slits. The airgate skin-sleeve is self-repairing, and will survive las-fire damage, but a bolter shot will shred it open, so Luciel also braces for the explosive decompression of a ricochet or a miss-hit. At a simple, subconscious neural urge, boot-sole electromagnets charge to clamp onto the deck plates.

Luciel thinks theoretical, but of course there is no theoretical. There is no tactical precedent for a Space Marine to fight a Space Marine. The idea is nonsense. He thinks practical, and that directs him to the visor slits. He can make a clean kill headshot in less than a second and a half, two rounds for kill insurance, and probably protect the atmospheric integrity of the airgate.

All this, all this decided, unbidden, instinctive, in less than a nanosecond.

The Word Bearer raises his right hand. Moving it where? Moving it towards his primary weapon, a plasma cannon in a pull-to-unlock sheath?

The hand spreads, opens like a flower, palm forward, the light glinting off the tiny mail links.

‘Luciel,’ says the Word Bearer. ‘Brother.’

‘Tchure,’ Luciel replies, his voice a growl over the helmet speaker. ‘Brother,’ he adds.

‘Well met,’ says the warrior of the XVII, stepping forward.

‘A long time,’ says Luciel, coming to meet him. They embrace, forearm guards clattering off backplate panels.

‘Tell me, brother,’ says Luciel. ‘What new things have you learned to kill since last we met?’

2

Aeonid Thiel, Ultramarine, marked for discipline and censure, boards the blue and gold Stormbird on a landing strip two thousand kilometres south of Numinus City. The sun, which is a star named Veridia, is a dot of pearl in the pale sky. A beautiful star, Thiel has heard it said. A beautiful star and a fine world.

Before him, the Dera Caren Lowlands, the district of manufactories and assembly halls, matt metal in the sunlight. The buildings, clean, simple and utilitarian, wisp white vapours into the clear sky through rotating roof vents and cycle chimneys. Areas of forest have been preserved between the finishing concourses where the labour force can rest and mingle between shifts.

In the west, just a cloudy ghost low in the sky, one of the orbital shipyards has just risen like a moon. Thiel knows of eight others. Soon, Calth will rival Macragge’s manufacturing output, perhaps in two or three decades. There is already talk of a projected superorbital plate. Like Terra. Terra has superorbital plates. The master worlds of the Imperium have plates. Calth will join Macragge, Saramanth, Konor, Occluda and Iax as one of the master worlds of the Ultramar sector, and between them, they will govern a vast swathe of the Ultima Segmentum. Calth will be one of the anchor points of the coming civilisation.

Calth is an embodiment of the reward that centuries of warfare have been leading to.

For this reason, Calth must not fall. For its status as part of the dominion of Ultramar, it must not fall. For its shipbuilding capacity and its forge world, it must not fall.

Intelligence has been received from Horus. A theoretical has been identified. It must be a great deal more than a theoretical, Thiel believes, for mustering and conjunction to have been taken this far, unless the new Warmaster is anxious to prove his authority. To mobilise the XIII, the largest of all the Legions, in an essentially singular war effort, that takes balls. To tell Roboute Guilliman, the primarch with the least to prove, how to do his duty, that takes balls of adamantium. To suggest that Guilliman might need help…

Horus is a great man. Thiel is not ashamed to admit that. Thiel has seen him, served with him, admired him. His selection as Warmaster makes reasonable sense. It was only going to be one of three or perhaps four, no matter how other primarchs might deceive themselves. To be the Emperor’s avatar, his proxy? Only Horus, Guilliman, Sanguinius, perhaps Dorn. Any other claims for viability were delusional. Even narrowed down to four, Dorn was too draconian and Sanguinius too ethereal. It was only ever going to be Horus or Guilliman. Horus always had the passion and the charisma. Guilliman was more clinical, considered. Perhaps that tipped it. So did, perhaps, the fact that Guilliman already had responsibilities. An empire, half-built. Ultramar. Administration. Populations. A culture. Guilliman had already evolved beyond the status of warlord, where Horus was still a killer of worlds and a subjugator of adversaries.

Maybe Warmaster Horus is aware of this disparity, that even in his triumphant election, he has been outstripped by a brother who does not even want for the honour of Warmaster any more. Perhaps that is why Horus needs to exercise his authority and give orders to the XIII. Perhaps that is why he is conjoining them with the XVII, a Legion they have never been comfortable with.

Or perhaps the new Warmaster is rather more creative than that, and sees this as a chance for Lorgar’s rabble to borrow a little gloss from Guilliman’s glory by association and example.

Aeonid Thiel, Ultramarine, has said these thoughts out loud.

They are not the reason he is marked for discipline and censure.

They are loading munitions crates at the docks on the south shore of the Boros River. Numinus City faces them across the wide grey water.

The work is hard, but the men, Imperial Army, every one, are laughing. After the loading, a meal break, a last drink, then lifters to orbit.

The crates are scuffed metal, like small coffins, full of local-pattern lasrifles, the Illuminator VI, a refined variant pressed out at Veridia Forge. The men hope to be using them within a fortnight.

The wind blows in along the estuary, bringing scents of the sea and the coastal dredgers. The men are all from the Numinus 61st, regular infantry. Some are veterans of the Great Crusade, others are new recruits inducted for the emergency.

Sergeant Hellock keeps the spirits up.

‘Will it be greenskins? Will it be the greenskins?’ the rookies keep asking. They have heard about greenskins. He assures them it will not.

‘It’s an exercise in cooperation,’ Hellock says. ‘It’s an operational show of force. This is Ultramar flexing its muscles. This is the Warmaster flexing his muscles.’

Hellock is lying to them. He lights a lho-stick, and smokes it under the shade of a tail boom, the collar of his dark blue field tunic pulled open to let the sweat on his collarbones dry. Hellock is on good terms with his captain, and Hellock’s captain confides in him. Hellock’s captain has a friend in the Ultramarines 9th Company, part of the encouraged fraternisation. His captain’s transhuman friend says that the threat is not theoretical. He calls it a ‘likely excursion of the Ghaslakh xenohold’, which is a shit-stupid way of describing it. Bastard greens. Bastard orks. Bastard bastards, gathering at the sector edge, working up the courage to come and ransack Calth. Not frigging theoretical at all.

That’s why you take the whole bastard XIII and the whole bastard XVII and all the Army units you can scare up, and you throw them at the Ghaslakh bastard xeno-bastard-hold, thank you so very much. You drive a bastard system-killing compliance force through their precious xenohold, and put them down dead before they put you down, and you kill their barbarian empire at the same time. Just kill it. Dead, gone, bye-bye, clap the dust off your hands, no more threat, theoretical or bastard otherwise.

You take a compliance force the scale of which hasn’t been seen since Ullanor or the early days of the Great Crusade, two full Legions of the Emperor’s finest, and you piledrive it through the septic green heart and rancid green brain and green frigging spinal cord of the Ghaslakh xenohold, and you end them.

This is how Sergeant Hellock sees it.

Sergeant Hellock’s forename is Bowe. None of the men in his command know this, and only one or two who survive will learn it later when they read his name on the casualty lists.

Bowe Hellock will be dead in two days’ time.

It will not be an ork that kills him.

Sergeant Hellock has gone for a smoke. The men slow the pace. Their arms are aching.

Bale Rane is the youngest of them. He is absolutely raw, a week out of accelerated muster. There’s been a vague promise he’ll get an hour to say goodbye to his bride of six weeks before he lifts that evening. He cannot bear the idea of not seeing her. He is beginning to suspect it was an empty promise.

Neve’s on the other side of the river, waiting for him on a public wharf; waiting for him to wave from the ferry rail. He can barely stand the idea that she will be disappointed. She will wait there all night, in the hope that he’s only late. It will get dark. The refinery burn-pipes will glitter yellow reflections off the black river. She will be cold.

The thought of this hurts his heart.

‘Pull your collar up,’ Krank tells him, clipping his ear. Krank is an older man, a veteran.

‘Work in the sun,’ he scolds, ‘it’ll burn you, boy. Cap on, collar up, even if you sweat. You don’t want skinburn. Trust me. Worse than a broken heart.’

The ‘mark’ of Calth means two things. First, it refers, as per XIII Legion combat record protocol, to the elapsed time count (in Terran hours [sidereal]) of the combat. All Ultramarines operations and actions of this period may be archivally accessed for study, and their elapsed time count mark used as a navigation guide. An instructor might refer a novitiate to ‘Orax mark: 12.16.10’, meaning the tenth second of the sixteenth minute of the twelfth hour of the Orax Compliance record. Usually, this count begins at either the issuing of the operation order, or the actual operational start, but at Calth it is timed from the moment Guilliman ordered return of fire. Everything before that, he says, wasn’t a battle: it was merely treachery.

Secondly, the ‘mark’ of Calth refers to the solar radiation burns suffered by many of the combatants, principally the human (specifically non-transhuman) troops.

The last of these veterans to die, many years later, still refuse graft repair and wear the mark proudly.

3

Remus Ventanus, Captain of the 4th, has command of the Erud Province muster. It’s supposed to be an honour, but it doesn’t feel like it.

It feels like a desk job. It feels like labour for a bureaucrat or an administrator. It feels as if the primarch is teaching him another valuable lesson about the responsibilities of transhumanity. Learn to take pride in the work of governance as well as war. To be a ruler as well as a leader.

Remus Ventanus understands this. When the war is done, as it must eventually be done, when there are no more enemies to end and no more worlds to conquer, what will the transhumans who have built the Imperium do then?

Retire?

Pine away and die?

Become an embarrassment? A gore-headed reminder of older, more visceral days when humans needed superhumans to forge an empire for them? War is acceptable when it is a necessary instrument of survival. When it is no longer needed, the very fact that it was ever a necessary instrument at all becomes unpalatable.

‘It is the great irony of the Legiones Astartes,’ Guilliman had told his captains and masters, just a week ago. ‘Engineered to kill to achieve a victory of peace that they can then be no part of.’

‘A conceptual failure?’ Gage had asked.

‘A necessary burden,’ Sydance suggested. ‘I build your temple, knowing that I will not worship in it.’

Guilliman had shaken his head to both. ‘My father does not make mistakes of that magnitude,’ he had said. ‘Space Marines excel at warfare because they were designed to excel at everything. Each of you will become a leader, a ruler, the master of your world and, because there is no more fighting to be done, you will bend your transhuman talents to governance and culture.’

Remus Ventanus knows that his primarch believes in this sincerely. He doubts the likes of Primarch Angron or Primarch Russ regard the prospect of a peaceful future with such optimism.

‘Why are you smiling?’ asks Selaton, at his side.

Remus glances at his sergeant.

‘Was I smiling?’

‘You were looking at the data-slate and smiling, sir. I was wondering what was so amusing about a manifest list of eighty superheavy armour pieces.’

‘Very little,’ Remus agrees.

Beyond the observation port, mass-loader engines carry four-hundred-tonne tanks into the bellies of bulk liftships.

Brother Braellen is young, and has not yet fought the greens. His captain has. In the sunlight of the ground camp in the Ourosene Hills, some impromptu training takes place while they wait for the signal to stow and board.

‘Ork, theoretical,’ says Captain Damocles.

‘Head or spine, mass-reactive,’ replies Braellen. ‘Or heart.’

‘Idiot,’ grumbles Sergeant Domitian. ‘Heart shot won’t stop one. Not guaranteed. Filthy things soak up damage, even boltguns.’

‘So, skull or spine,’ says Braellen, corrected.

Damocles nods.

‘Ork, practical?’ he asks.

‘What do I have?’ asks Braellen.

‘Your bolter. A combat sword.’

‘Skull or spine,’ says Braellen, ‘or both or whatever works. Maximum trauma. If it comes to close combat, decapitation.’

Damocles nods.

‘The wrinkle is, don’t let it ever get that close,’ says Domitian. ‘They’ve got strength in them. Shred your limbs off. Sometimes, the damned things keep going when their skulls are off or open. Nerve roots, or something. Keep them at bay, if you can – ranged weapons, bolter fire. Maximum trauma.’

‘Good advice,’ says Captain Damocles to his grizzled sergeant. He looks at the brothers in the circle. ‘And from a man who has fought greenskins six times more than I have. It is six, isn’t it, Dom?’

‘I think it’s seven, thanking you, sir,’ replies Domitian, ‘but I won’t grieve if you won’t.’

Damocles smiles.

‘You have left out one caveat on the practical assessment, though,’ he says.

‘Have I, sir?’ asks Domitian, honestly surprised.

‘Anyone?’ asks the captain.

Braellen raises his hand.

‘Round count,’ he says.

Domitian laughs and tuts to himself. How could he have forgotten to cover that base?

‘For the benefit of the others, Brother Braellen?’ prompts Captain Damocles.

‘Round count,’ says Braellen. ‘Maximum trauma, maximum damage, but watch your load counter and try to balance damage delivery against munitions rationing.’

‘Because?’ asks Damocles.

‘Because, with orks,’ says Domitian, ‘there’s always a shit load of them.’

Brother Androm has also not fought greenskins before. When the captain breaks the circle and sends them to duties, he speaks to Braellen.

They have both recently rotated up from the reserve companies, ready to complete their novitiate period through service in the active line. Both are grateful and proud to have been given places in the 6th Company, to serve under Saur Damocles, and to etch – if only temporarily – the company’s white figure-of-eight serpent emblem onto the blue fields of their shoulder guards.

Oll has land on the estuary at Neride.

The land is about twenty hectares of good black alluvial soil. The hectares are service-shares. Oll has service, and a yellowing record book at the bottom of a store-room drawer to prove it. Good years of service, marching behind the Emperor’s standard.

Oll is Army.

His service ended on Chrysophar, eighteen standard years past. Then, he was known as ‘Trooper Persson’. He got his papers, and his service ribbon, and a stamp on his record book, and service-shares, proportionate to years served. The Army always rounds down.

Oll spent two years on a cattle-boat coming to Calth from Chrysophar. The posters and the handbills all called Ultramar ‘the New Empire’. The slogan seemed a little disloyal, but the point was made. The rich new cluster of worlds that great Guilliman had made compliant, and wrangled into a brawny frontier republic, had the look of a new empire about it. The posters were trying to appeal to the settlers and colonists streaming out towards the Rim on the coattails of the expeditionary fleets. Come to Ultramar and share our future. Build your new life on Calth. Settle on Octavia. New worlds, New destinies!

If you claimed your service-shares on a rising world like Calth, the administration paid your passage. Oll came with the thousand people who would be his neighbours. By the time he reached Calth, he was known as ‘Oll’, and only those who saw the fading ink on his left forearm knew about his past in professional killing.

The fusion plants of Neride generate the power that lights the lamps of Numinus City and Kalkas Fortalice. The plants pump river water to wash the smudge-carbon off their clean-stroke turbines, and thus warm the estuary with a rich black swill that makes the river valley one of the most fertile places on the planet. It’s good land. There’s always a stink of beets and cabbage in the humid air.

Oll has no wife, and knows only toil. He grows swathes of bright flowers to decorate the tables and vases and buttonholes of the Numinus City gentry, and then, on the season turn, he cycles a second crop of swartgrass for the sacking industry. Both crops require seasonal labour forces. Oll employs the young men and women of neighbouring families: the women to cut and pack the flowers, the men to harvest and roll the swartgrass. He keeps them all in line with an ex-Army loader servitor called Graft. Graft cannot be conditioned not to call him ‘Trooper Persson’.

Oll wears a Catheric symbol around his neck on a thin chain, the gift of a wife he had barely got to know before she died and was replaced by Army life. The symbol, and his faith, are two of the reasons he came to Ultramar. It is, he feels, easier to believe out here in the Ultima Segmentum.

It’s supposed to be, anyway.

Some of his neighbours, who have been his neighbours these eighteen years and whose children he employs, laugh at his faith. They call him ‘pious’.

Others attend the little chapel on the edge of the fields with him.

It’s swartgrass season, and the men and boys are in the fields. Two weeks of hard work to go.

There are a lot of ships in the top of the sky today. Troop ships. Munitions ferries. Oll squints into the sun as they pass over. He recognises them. Farmer, colonist, believer, whatever he is, he’s still Army underneath it all.

He recognises them.

He feels an old feeling, and it reminds him of the lasrifle hanging over his fireplace.

At Barrtor, east of the Boros River, 111th and 112th Companies of the Ultramarines are stationed in pre-fab cities in the forest hem. At the word from Vared, Master of the 11th Chapter, they will mount their Land Raiders, Rhinos and long-body Rhino Advancers, and advance to Numinus Port for embarkation.

Ekritus has just taken the captaincy of the 111th from Briende, who fell on Emex. It was a hard loss for the company. Ekritus is a fine commander in the making. He wants a good fight, a fight that will hammer the 111th back into shape and show them he’s a worthy replacement for the beloved Briende.

‘I’ve never seen a man so eager to make shift,’ says Phrastorex, Captain of the 112th. ‘Have you, Sergeant Anchise?’

‘No, sir,’ says Anchise.

They’ve come to join Ekritus on the embankment below the trees. It forms a natural viewing platform. They can see the floodplain, the encampments of Word Bearers companies who made planetfall the night before, the tent cities of the Army, and the fields of Titans. The war-engines are powered-down, dormant, standing in groves like giant metal trees. A column of armour and towed artillery pieces is grumbling down the highway below. Interceptors flash by on a low pass. There is a blue haze.

Ekritus grins at them. Phrastorex is a veteran, an old soul. Ekritus understands that Vared has pushed Phrastorex into a mentoring role during the transition. A company is a considerable entity: you do not take on its command lightly.

‘I know one should not be in haste to greet war,’ Ekritus says. ‘I know, I know. I have read my Machulius and my Antaxus, my Von Klowswitts–’

‘And your Guilliman, I hope,’ says Phrastorex.

‘I’ve heard of him, certainly,’ says Ekritus. They laugh. Even Anchise, at attention, has to cover a grin.

‘I need to close the men on a target. A practical threat, not a theoretical one. There’s only so many rousing speeches I can give before they need me to simply lead by example.’

Phrastorex sighs.

‘I commiserate. I remember when I accepted the commander’s stave after Nectus passed. I just needed that first match to blood the men. Hell, I needed it. I needed them to bond with me against an enemy, not bond against me as an outsider.’

Ekritus nods.

‘Is that right, sergeant?’

Anchise hesitates.

‘Perfectly correct, sir. The theory is sound. The focus of battle makes men forget other issues. It is an excellent way to bind them to a new commander. Gives them an experience they have shared. Of course, in the specific case of Captain Phrastorex, he’s never been able to bond with us or prove his worth.’

All three of them laugh out loud.

‘I might have wished for something more streamlined,’ says Ekritus. ‘The scale of this mobilisation is ridiculous. The logistics alone are slowing everything down.’

‘They say we’ll be away by tonight,’ says Phrastorex. ‘Tomorrow at the latest. Then what? Two weeks’ ship time, and you’ll be up to your eyes in ork blood.’

‘It can’t happen soon enough,’ says Ekritus, ‘because no damn thing is ever going to happen here.’

If you start with many and end with a single victory, then the cost in between is acceptable.

Guilliman reads back what he has written. The tactical sentiment is not original to him: it was told to him by a T’Vanti wartriber. He has… polished it.

He’s not even sure if he believes it, but all military concepts and aphorisms are worth recording, if only to understand how an enemy’s mind works.

The wartribes believed it. They were honourable allies, able fighters. Low tech, of course, nothing compared to his Legion. The T’Vanti had agreed to serve as auxiliaries. It had been a diplomatic move on Guilliman’s part. If he allowed the locals to share in the victory, then they might also take responsibility for maintaining the compliance of their world. But the orks moved mercurially that day; some unpredicted pulse of contrariness fluttered through their mass. They turned west, against all sense. Guilliman’s force was delayed by a day. The wartribes went ahead without them, and took the hill at Kunduki, decapitating – literally – the greenskin command.

The T’Vanti seemed delighted by their achievement, and utterly oblivious to the eighty-nine thousand men it had cost them.

Guilliman turns the stylus in his hand, thoughtful. It takes discipline to die in such numbers. It is one of the reasons that a bladed T’Vanti cordulus hangs on his compartment wall. He believes he has the most disciplined military force in the Imperium, and given the quality of the other Legions, that is quite a claim. Still, he is not sure even his Ultramarines would display such a deep degree of discipline, such a T’Vanti degree.

‘They will never have to,’ he reflects, out loud.

Guilliman sits back. The seat flexes to support his armoured bulk. He is shaped like a man, but he is far more than that, far more than even the transhuman giants of his Legion. He is a primarch. There are only seventeen other beings like him left in the universe.

He is the thirteenth son of mankind’s Emperor. He is the Master of the Ultramarines, the XIII Legion. He is one of the more human of his kind. Some are more like angels. Others are... otherwise.

From a distance, one might mistake him for a man. Only when the distance closed would you realise he is more like a god.

He is handsome, in a plain way. He is handsome the way a regent on an old coin is handsome, like a good sword is handsome. He is not handsome like a ritual weapon, the way Fulgrim is. He is not angelic, like Sanguinius. Not heartbreakingly angelic. None of them are that beautiful.

There is a dutiful line to his jaw, like his good brother Dorn. They share a nobility. There is the great strength of Ferrus and the vitality of Mortarion. There is, sometimes, the rogue glint of the Khan in his eyes, or the solemnity of the Lion. In the architecture of his nose and brow there is, many claim, the energy and triumph of Horus Lupercal.

There is none of the bitterness that shadows Corax, or the persecuted despair that haunts poor Konrad. There is never any of the deliberate mystery that obscures Alpharius or Magnus, and he is more open than that buried soul Vulkan. He is accomplished, very accomplished, even by the standards of the primarchs. He knows that the breadth of his accomplishments troubles his more single-minded brothers like Lorgar and Perturabo. He never displays the pitch of fury found in Angron, nor do his eyes ever ignite with the psychotic gleam of Russ.

He is a high achiever. He knows this about himself. Sometimes it feels like a fault that he has to excuse to his brothers, but then he feels guilty for making excuses. Few of them really trust him, because, he feels, they always wonder what he’s going to get from any compact or cooperation. Fewer still like him: as friends, he counts only Dorn, Ferrus, Sanguinius and Horus.

Some of his brothers are content to be the instruments of crusade they have become. Some of them don’t even pause to consider that is what they are. Angron, Russ, Ferrus, Perturabo… They are just weapons, and have no ambition beyond being weapons. They know their place, like Russ, and are content to keep to it, or they have no idea that any other role might be possible or desirable, like Angron.

Guilliman believes that none of them were made to be just weapons. No war is meant to last forever. The Emperor, his father, has not raised disposable sons. Why would he have gifted them with such talents if they were destined to become redundant when the war is done?

He turns the stylus in his hand and reads back what he has written. He writes a great deal. He codifies everything. Information is power. Technical theory is victory. He intends to compile and systemise it all. When the war is done, perhaps, he will have time to properly compose his archives of data into some formal codification.

He uses a stylus by choice, recording in his own handwriting. The stylus marks directly onto the lumoplastek surface of his data-slate, but even so it is considered antiquated. Key plates seem impersonal, and vox-recorders or secretarial rubricators have never suited his process. He tried a thought-tap for a time, and one of the newer mnemo-quills, but they were both unsatisfactory. The stylus will stay.

He turns it in his hand.

His compartment is quiet. Through the vast, tinted armourglas doors behind him, he can see his Chapter Masters gathering for audience. They are waiting for his summons. There is a great deal to do. They think he’s idling, recording notes and not keeping his eye on the dataflow.

It amuses him that they still underestimate him.

He has been writing notes on T’Vanti war practices for seventeen minutes, but he has still noted and marked fifteen hundred data bulletins and updates that have tracked across the secondary screens to his left.

He sees and reconciles everything.

Information is victory.

The Chapter Masters await their primarch. From the antechamber, they can see him through the tinted armourglas of the doors. He sits like a commemorative statute in an otherwise empty chapel. Every now and then, his hand moves as he makes a notation on the hovering slate with his antique pen. The compartment, Guilliman’s compartment, is stark and bare. Steel-fold floors and adamantium-ribbed walls. The far end is a crystalflex wall through which orbital space is visible. Stars glitter. A glare comes up through the blackness from the radiant world below.

Marius Gage is First Master. They’re not all here yet. Twelve have arrived so far, and that is, in itself, quite an assembly. By the day’s end, there will be twenty.

The XIII Legion, largest of all the Legiones Astartes, is divided into Chapters, a throwback to the old regimental structures of the thunder warriors. Each Chapter is formed of ten companies. The basic unit currency is the company, a thousand legionaries, plus their support retinue, led by a senior captain. A company, Gage has often heard his primarch comment, is more than sufficient for most purposes. There is an old aphorism, popular in the XIII. It is, perhaps, boastful and arrogant, and there are certain opponents such as the greenskins and the eldar to which it does not apply, but it contains a basic estimation of truth:

To take a town, send a legionary; to take a city, send a squad; to take a world, send a company; to take a culture, send a Chapter.

Today, at Calth, twenty of the XIII’s twenty-five Chapters will conjunct for deployment. Two hundred companies. Two hundred thousand legionaries. The remainder will maintain garrison positions throughout the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar.

Such a gathering is not unprecedented, but it is rare. The XIII hasn’t been oathed out in such numbers since the early days of the Great Crusade.

And you can add to their mass the equivalent of five Chapters of the XVII, the Word Bearers.

The level of overkill is almost comical. What exactly does the new Warmaster think the Ghaslakh xenohold has in its magazine?

‘I hope,’ says Kaen Atreus, Master of the 6th Chapter, ‘I hope,’ he says out loud, ‘we open up the heart of the biggest greenskin nest in known space.’

‘You hope for trouble?’ asks Gage, amused.

‘Remark 56.xxi,’ says Vared of the 11th. ‘Never wish for danger. Danger needs no help. There is no such thing as fate that can be tempted, but morale is never improved by an active lust for war.’

Atreus scowls.

‘I would rather tempt a little fate,’ he says, ‘than waste my time for the glory of others.’

‘Which others have you in mind?’ Gage wonders.

Atreus looks at him. A scar bisects his left eye and turns the corner of his mouth down. When he smiles, it is an act of stealth.

‘This compliance is designed to achieve two objectives, and neither of them is military,’ he says. ‘We’re to lend a little gloss to the clumsy reputation of the Word Bearers by operating in concert. And we’re to demonstrate the authority of Horus by jumping twenty full Chapters to his whim.’

‘Is this a theoretical or a practical assessment, Atreus?’ Banzor asks, and all the masters laugh.

‘You’ve seen the tactical audits. The Ghaslakh greenskins are a joke. There is some doubt they’ve even advanced to Golsoria. Their threat has been over-sold. I could take a company from the reserve and crush them in a week. This is about glorification and the demonstration of authority. This is about Horus throwing his weight around.’

Some murmurs, many of agreement.

‘Horus Lupercal,’ says Marius Gage.

‘What?’ says Atreus.

‘Horus Lupercal,’ says Gage. ‘Or Primarch Horus, or Warmaster. You may not consider him a worthier being than our primarch, but the Emperor does, and has bestowed the rank. Even informally, among ourselves, like this, you will refer to him with respect. He’s Warmaster, Atreus, he’s our Warmaster, and if he says we go to war, we go to war.’

Atreus stiffens, and then nods.

‘My apologies.’

Gage nods back. He glances around. Fourteen Chapter Masters have gathered now. He turns to the doors.

They open. Sub-deck hydraulic pistons pull them apart.

‘Enter,’ Guilliman calls. ‘I can see you fretting out there.’

They enter, Gage leading. Their retinues and veterans remain outside.

Guilliman does not look up. He makes another mark with his stylus. Data scrolls across hololithic plates, unobserved, to his left.

Now they are in the compartment, the view through the crystalflex wall has become more spectacular. Below them, the vast hull of the flagship gleams in the sunlight as it extends away. Macragge’s Honour. Twenty-six kilometres of polished ceramite and steel armour. Flanking it, at lateral anchor marks, eighteen fleet barges, each one the size of a city, gleam like silver-blue blades. In tiers above, grav-anchored like moons, are shining troop ships, carriers, Mechanicum bulkers, cruisers and grand cruisers and battleships. The space between is thick with small ships and cargo traffic, zipping between holds and berths.

Below, cargo-luggers raise hauls of materiel from the orbital platforms. They look like leafcutter ants, or scorpions bearing oversized prey in their claws.

Below that, a frigate test cycles its engines in the nearest orbital slip.

Below that, Calth, blue-white with reflected sunlight. Pinpricks mirror-flash in the glare: liftships coming up from the surface, catching the sun.

Gage clears his throat.

‘We had no wish to disturb you, primarch, but–’

‘–there is much to do,’ Guilliman finishes. He glances at his First Master. ‘I have been watching the datastream, Marius. Did you think I hadn’t?’

Gage smiles.

‘Never for a moment, sir.’

A hundred labours, simultaneously. The primarch’s ability to multitask is almost frightening.

‘We wanted to make sure you’d caught every detail,’ says Empion of the 9th. Youngest of them. Newest of them. Gage covers a smile. The poor fool still hasn’t learned not to underestimate.

‘I believe I have, Empion,’ says Guilliman.

‘The Samothrace–’

‘Requires further engine certification,’ says Guilliman. ‘I have told Shipmaster Kulak to divert servitors from orbital slip 1123. Yes, Empion, I had seen that. I had seen that the Mlatus is eighty-two hundred tonnes overladen, and suggest the yard chiefs reassign the 41st Espandor to the High Ascent. The Erud Province muster is running six minutes behind schedule, so Ventanus needs to get Seneschal Arbute to increase handling rates at Numinus Port. Six minutes will expand over the next two days. Kolophraxis needs to get his ship in line. Caren Province is actually timing ahead of schedule, so compliments to Captain Taerone of the 135th, however I doubt he has accommodated the rainstorm predicted for later this afternoon, so he needs to be aware that surface conditions will deteriorate. Speaking of the 135th, there is a sergeant inbound. Thiel. He is marked for censure. Send him to me when he arrives.’

‘That’s a discipline matter that can be dealt with at master level, sir,’ says Antoli. The 13th is his, and the role falls to him.

‘Send him to me when he arrives,’ Guilliman repeats.

Antoli glances at Gage.

‘Of course, my primarch.’

Guilliman rises to his feet and looks at Antoli.

‘I just want to talk to him, Antoli. And, yes, Marius, I am micromanaging again. Indulge me. Loading an army is a precise but tedious occupation, and I would like a little diversion.’

The masters smile.

‘Any show of our principal guests?’ Guilliman asks.

‘Primarch Lorgar’s fleet has been translating into the system since midnight, Calth standard,’ says Gage. ‘The first retinues are assembling. We understand the primarch is crossing the system terminator, inbound at high realspace velocity.’

‘So… sixteen hours out?’

‘Sixteen and a half,’ says Gage.

‘I was rounding down, like the Army does,’ says Guilliman. The men laugh. The primarch looks through the crystalflex wall. Amongst the rows of starships that glint like polished sword blades there is already a scattering of darker vessels, like bloodied weapons that await cleaning.

The first of Lorgar’s warships, docking and manoeuvring, taking up their places in the line.

‘Hails have been received from the arriving captains and commanders,’ says Gage. ‘Erebus requests an audience at your convenience.’

‘He can wait a while,’ says Guilliman. ‘The man is quite deplorable. I’d rather we tolerated them all in one go.’

His masters laugh again.

‘Such indiscretions are for our circle only,’ Guilliman reminds them. ‘This operation is designed to demonstrate the efficiency of the new era. It is entirely designed to glorify my brother Horus and reinforce his authority.’

Guilliman looks at Atreus, who smiles, and Gage, who glances away.

‘Yes, I was listening, Marius. And here’s the thing. Atreus was right. This is show, and this is pomp, and this is, essentially, a waste of time. But – and here’s the thing – Horus is Warmaster. He deserves glorification, and his authority needs to be reinforced. Marius, meanwhile, was quite correct too, Atreus. You will refer to the Warmaster at all times with full respect.’

‘Yes, my primarch.’

‘One last matter,’ says Guilliman. ‘There was a vox signal interrupt six and half minutes ago. I have the details recorded. Probably solar flare distortion, but someone check, please. It sounded for all the world like singing.’

The interrupt is checked, and attributed to solar distortion. A vox artefact. The void forever creaks and whispers around the audible and electromagnetic ranges.

Half an hour later, a rating aboard the Castorex reports hearing voices singing on a vox-link. Twenty minutes later, chanting blocks out the main orbital datafeed for eleven seconds. Its source is unidentified.

An hour later, there are two more bursts, unsourced.

An hour after that, Communication Control reports ‘a series of malfunction events’ and warns that ‘further communication disruption may be expected during the day until the problem is identified’.

An hour after that, on the night side of Calth, the first of the bad dreams begins.

There are many clues. There are many portents. Given the extraordinary thoroughness with which the XIII Legion maintains its readiness, it might be considered tragic, or incompetent, that so few are heeded.

The simple truth is that, in this instance, the Ultramarines do not know what to look for.

Down on the surface of Calth, in the morning light, Tylos Rubio waits with his squad to board transports. They are all of the 21st Company, under Captain Gaius.

Rubio’s head aches. There is a pain behind his eyes. He ignores it. He considers, briefly, mentioning it to an Apothecary, but he does not. They have gone without rest periods for several days during the preparation phase. It has not been possible to shut down higher mental functions and sleep, or at least remedially meditate.

He puts the ache down to this, to background fatigue. It is just another frailty of human flesh that his transhuman biology will target and neutralise within an hour.

It isn’t fatigue. Later, Rubio will regret not mentioning his ailment. He will regret it more bitterly than anything else that happens on Calth. The remorse will hound him to his grave, many years later.

After the death and the slaughter, after the firing and the killing, when fate has taken an extraordinary step and removed him from the field of war, when there is finally a moment to think, Tylos Rubio will realise that in his determination to follow the edicts of the Emperor, he ignored a vital warning sign.

He is not alone. Amongst the two hundred thousand or so Ultramarines on or around Calth that day, there are hundreds of gifted individuals like him, all selflessly and obediently reduced to ordinary ranks. They all ignore the headaches.

Unlike Rubio, few survive the event long enough to regret it.

4

‘I asked to join the advance,’ says Sorot Tchure. For the first time since their reunion, Luciel notes a discomfort in his friend’s disposition.

And for the first time, he also reflects that they are not friends at all. What would be a better word? Comrades, perhaps?

They have met once before, eight years previously. Happenstance drew their companies together in the defence of Hantovania Sebros, the last of the tower cities of Caskian. Side-by-side, for four Terran months, they fought off an insect species whose name or language they never learned. Comrades of circumstance.

Circumstance makes decisions for us all.

The simple truth, unglossed, is that the Legion Astartes XIII Ultramarines and the Legion Astartes XVII Word Bearers are not close. Despite their superficial similarities, they are worlds apart in terms of their organisation and combat ideology. They are as unlike each other as the primarchs who lead them.

Any fool can see that the Emperor’s original purpose, in creating his Legions and his sons, was to generate a variety of fighting forces that would embellish and complement one another. Their various strengths and characters were supposed to shine in contrast. There is, in uniformity, weakness.

And as brothers are different, so they clash. There are rivalries and arguments, fallings-out and bickering, envy and competition. This, too, is supposed to be part of the healthy organic processes of the Legiones Astartes. This is the Emperor’s vision. Let his sons compete. Let his Legions challenge one another. That way, they will spur one another on. That way they will do better. The Emperor, and his oldest, wisest sons, are always there to stop things going too far.

Honorius Luciel and Sorot Tchure stand on the observation deck above the principal hold of the cruiser Samothrace. They have greeted each other with respect and affection, and spent the day supervising the transfer distribution of Army personnel and munitions from Tchure’s warcarrier to the troop ships in Luciel’s oversight. They are alike – alike in stature, alike in rank; one red, one blue, as though stamped from identical fabricatory presses and then finished in different paints.

‘We have a bond, I believe,’ says Tchure. ‘I hope I am not wrong.’

‘We do,’ Luciel agrees. ‘It was an honour to serve with you on Caskian.’

‘We are, therefore… unusual,’ Tchure ventures.

Luciel laughs.

‘You asked to join the advance,’ says Luciel. ‘I imagine your primarch was supportive?’

‘He was.’

‘Just as mine was,’ Luciel replies, ‘when I requested the duty of close protection of Numinus High Anchor. We are cast in the roles of ambassadors, brother.’

‘This is my feeling,’ Tchure nods, greatly relieved that it is now, after hours in each other’s company, at last being spoken of.

‘We are, I believe, the only genuine point of friendship between our Legions,’ says Luciel. ‘No wonder we find ourselves paving the way for the conjunction.’

They walk along the deck, under the immense arches of the hold rib-vaults.

‘My Legion’s pride is bruised,’ says Tchure.

‘Of course it is,’ Luciel replies. ‘Wounded, I would say. And this is the remedy. Our Legions will serve alongside each other in collaborative effort, and thus bond. Our experience serves as an example in miniature.’

‘There has been talk of this as an exercise,’ replies Tchure. ‘That the Warmaster is flexing his authority by commanding two of his brothers, especially one who is so mighty in his own right. But that is smoke. I think Warmaster Horus is displaying remarkable insight. He knows that, as things stand, the unity of any line formed by the Word Bearers and the Ultramarines will be flawed.’

‘Warmaster Horus, in his infinite wisdom, has clearly studied the report on the Caskian Campaign.’

‘He has, I think.’

Bad blood can take a long time to dilute. Sometimes it must be let out. The point of contention, the bruised pride, is simple. Dissatisfied with the progress and performance of the XVII during the Great Crusade, the Emperor sent the Ultramarines to chastise them. It was an absolute and humiliating rebuke, and stemmed from the Emperor’s distaste for the Word Bearers’ zealotry, especially when it came to the veneration of his own person as divine. The Emperor’s truth was the secular Imperial truth. He tolerated more pious attitudes amongst his sons, but only so far.

It was, perhaps, the Ultramarines’ misfortune to be used in such a way. Not just any Legion, but the largest, the most secular, the most efficient, the most disciplined. The most, it could be argued, successful.

Luciel is sympathetic. He has spoken, privately, with his primarch on the subject on several occasions, because Guilliman is evidently bothered by it too. To be used as an instrument of humiliation, and as an example of perfection, does not sit comfortably. Guilliman is concerned that things will never be right in his relations with the Word Bearers. It is clear from the way he has repeatedly quizzed Luciel, the only officer of the XIII to have ever engineered a reasonable confidence with an officer of the XVII.

For the Word Bearers have only ever been loyal and devoted. Luciel knows this. He has no doubt about the level of Tchure’s absolute loyalty. They had their devotion questioned and vilified by the very object of that devotion.

Horus Lupercal, Warmaster, is demonstrating his wisdom and perception right at the start of his command. He is healing wounds. He is actively working to set two of his largest Legions at ease with each other, and close the bitter rift.

‘On Caskian,’ says Luciel, ‘I learned a lot from you, Sorot. I learned to wonder at the stars, and to appreciate the humbling scale of our galaxy.’

‘And I learned from you,’ Tchure replies. ‘I learned the close analysis and appraisal of my enemies, and thus re-measured my own capacity as a warrior.’

The exchange is candid. On Caskian, Tchure reminded Luciel of his place in a greater universe. Though he did not try to convert the Ultramarines captain to any form of spiritual belief, he was able to help him glimpse the ineffable, the cosmic mystery that reminds a man, even a powerful transhuman, of his tiny part in the great design, which forms the beating, vital heart of any faith. In effect, Tchure gave Luciel perspective that beneficially diminished Luciel’s sense of self in the face of the universe. It showed Luciel his place, and reminded him of his purpose.

In return, Luciel demonstrated to Tchure the rigors of practice and theory, a robust schooling that pierced the veil of spirituality with a welcome pragmatism. Luciel reminded Tchure he was superhuman. Tchure reminded Luciel he was only superhuman. Both benefitted immeasurably from the exchange of perspectives.

‘I would know great joy,’ says Luciel, ‘if our brothers on both sides could come to celebrate their common differences the way we have.’

‘I have no doubt,’ replies Tchure, ‘that this conjunction will bring an end to the hostility between our Legions.’

Aeonid Thiel, marked for censure, awaits his interview. He has been aboard the Macragge’s Honour for some hours.

He was told to wait. He is expecting to be called into the presence of Sharad Antoli, Master of the 13th Chapter. He is braced for this. The rebuke will be unstinting, and discipline duties will follow.

He has already been through it once from Taerone, his company captain. During this interview, Thiel made the mistake of attempting to justify his actions. He will not repeat the error when he is called before Chapter Master Antoli.

Thiel has been obliged to wait in a huge anteroom on the fortieth deck. It is a display arsenal, lined with weapons. There are burnished practice cages on raised platforms down the centre of the chamber.

After three hours of standing perfectly still, he relents, removes his helm, and begins to wander the empty chamber, admiring the weapons on display. Most are blade weapons, many master-crafted. They represent the peak weaponcraft of a thousand cultures. This is an exemplar collection, where the highest ranking officers of the XIII come to study weapon types, rehearse and practise with them, and thus improve their theoretical and practical differentials.

Thiel knows he is unlikely to ever come so close to such perfect specimens again. He fights the temptation to take some of the weapons down and examine them. He wants to feel the comparative weights, the individual balances.

When no one has come for a great stretch of time, Thiel reaches a hand out towards a longsword suspended against the wall on a gravity hook.

‘Sergeant Thiel?’

Thiel stops and quickly withdraws his hand. A deck officer in ceremonial dress has entered the chamber.

‘Yes?’

‘I have been asked to inform you that you will not have to wait much longer.’

‘I will wait as long as I am required to,’ replies Thiel.

‘Well,’ the officer shrugs, ‘it will not be much longer. Logistical issues have taken priority. The primarch will call you shortly.’

He turns to leave.

‘Wait, the primarch?’

‘Yes, sergeant.’

‘I was waiting to be called by Chapter Master Antoli,’ says Thiel.

‘No, the primarch.’

‘Ah,’ says Thiel.

The deck officer waits a moment longer, concludes that their conversation is done, and walks out.

The primarch.

Thiel breathes out slowly. It is safe to estimate that he is in about as much trouble as it’s possible to be in.

In which case…

He takes down the longsword. It has extraordinary balance. He sweeps it twice, then turns towards the nearest practice cage.

He halts. He turns back.

Might as well be damned for the whole as a part.

He takes down a Rathian sabre, half the length of the longsword, almost the same weight. A blade in each hand, he walks to the cage.

‘Rehearsal, single sparring mode. Dual wielding, extremity level eight. Commit.’

The cage hums into life, the armature system rises around him, clattering as it begins to turn.

Thiel hunkers down. He raises the two, priceless blades…

Their lift is delayed. Something about a storm out over Caren Province. The sky in the east goes mauve, like a blood bruise.

Sergeant Hellock tells them to bed down and wait for the call. Their lift is delayed, but not in any way that will allow Trooper Bale Rane to leave the site and go see his girl.

‘Standing orders apply, no exceptions,’ says the sergeant. Then he softens slightly. ‘Sorry, Rane. I know what you were hoping.’

Bale Rane sits down and leans his back against a loader pallet. He’s beginning to think that he will spend the rest of his life looking at Sergeant Hellock’s face and never see Neve’s again.

The truth could hardly be more contrary.

‘Is that singing?’ asks Krank. He gets up.

‘That’s singing,’ he says.

Rane can hear it. Two hundred metres away, on the other side of some perimeter fencing, is a compound occupied by Army forces that have arrived with the XVII. A ragged mob, they look. Just the sort of fringe-world vagabonds you’d expect to come scurrying along on the heels of the zealot Word Bearers. They had received a great deal of critical commentary from Sergeant Hellock as they disembarked, criticism that included uniform code, formation, equipment maintenance and parade discipline.

‘Oh, that’s just embarrassing,’ Hellock says, lighting a lho-stick as he watches them dismount from the troop landers. ‘They look like bastard vagrants. Like shit-stupid hunters from some arse-end world.’

The soldiers from off-world indeed do not look promising. They are ragged. There is a wildness to them, as though they have been deprived of something vital for too long. Their skin is pale and their frames are thin. They look like plants that have been starved of light in a cave. They look like heathens.

‘That’s just what we need,’ says Hellock. ‘Heathen auxiliary units.’

They are singing, chanting. It is not a comfortable or attractive sound. It’s atonal. It’s actually quite unpleasant to listen to.

‘That’s going to have to stop,’ the sergeant says. He grinds the butt of a lho-stick under his heel.

He crosses the yard to have a word with the commander of the other unit. The chanting bothers him.

5

Raindrops come out of the dry air like bolter rounds. They explode like black glass against the hood of the speeder that Selaton is gunning down Erud Highway.

Everything’s dust: dust-dry land, dusty-caked metal, a fog raised by lifters and engines and traffic. The flat landscape is pale, harshly lit. The sky has gone oddly dark, opaque. From the passenger seat of the armoured speeder, Ventanus can see the distant line of the hills, swathed in green.

There’s a rainstorm swimming up from the south. Vox says it’s already a mire down in Caren.

It’ll be a mire here too, before very long, Ventanus thinks. The light is so weird. The sky so black, the ground so light. The raindrops look like glass beads, like tears. They explode all over him, all over his armour, all over the speeder, wet black streaking the film of white dust all surfaces have acquired during the day.

The raindrops hit the dusty ground, the highway, the scabby verge, making millions of little black entry wounds, little black craters, little puffs of white. Far away, little silver threads of lightning glitter in the low cloud, like seams of bright ore exposed in coal.

Selaton drives like an idiot. The speeder is a hefty two-man machine with forward gunmounts, its cobalt-blue armour flaked with dust and bruised with the dents and scrapes of use. The cockpit is open. Grav plates keep the ground at bay, and the drive-plant is over-powered to help it slide all that armour around.

It’s a light recon vehicle that’s mean enough to fight its way out of bother. Ventanus requisitioned it for the day as staff transport.

Now Selaton’s driving it like an idiot.

He’s affecting just about maximum horizontal velocity, pluming a white tail of dust out behind them along the flat, straight roadway. The rain is trying to wet the dust back down, but it’s too thick. A nav-track display to the left of the driver blinks a route overlay. The display is armoured and grilled against wear and tear. The speeder is a working machine with bare metal along most seams.

The twitching cursor on the illuminated display is supposed to be them. The etched line is the highway. At the foot of the screen is a blob, that’s Erud station. At the top, a triangular icon.

Red hazard hatching appears on the etched line ahead of the cursor.

‘Slower,’ says Ventanus over the helmet link.

‘Too fast?’ Selaton replies, eager glee in his voice.

Ventanus doesn’t even look down. He taps the screen of the nav-track.

Selaton glances, sees it, eases off the throttle immediately. They’re coming up on the tail of a muster convoy. Even as they bleed off speed, they hit the dust wake of the moving column.

Selaton steers out, crosses the centre of the highway, starts to overtake. Trundling troop transports, cargo-20s, towed artillery, tank transporters, laden. Each hulking vehicle zips by and falls behind, each one glimpsed for a second as they pass it in the odd light, in the air that is both dry with dust and wet with rain. Troop truck, gone. Troop truck, gone. Troop truck, gone. Troop truck, gone. A garland of cheers and hoots from a transport load of Army troopers, waving them past.

Self-propelled guns now, zipping past, barrels up to sniff the sky. Ten, twenty, thirty units. The damn column is forty kilometres long. Shadowswords. Minotaurs. New Infernus-pattern armour and regimental troop carriers.

Ventanus watches beads of rain, black with soot, crawling and quivering over the hood of the speeder.

He’s had to leave Sydance in charge at Erud, with reliable sergeants like Archo, Ankrion and Barkha to back him up. There’s something to sort out with the Numinus seneschals. Local politics. Ventanus hates local politics, but this has come from the primarch’s staff directly. Port affairs. Handling rates. Diplomacy.

Ventanus knows what to do with a boltgun.

This is another unnuanced exercise in teaching them the other crafts their lives will one day require. Courtesy. Effective management. Authority. Basically, anything that doesn’t involve a boltgun. It has Guilliman’s handprints all over it.

It’s the sort of issue that Ventanus would prefer to resolve with a quick vox order, but he’s been told to handle it in person. So, a forty-minute wasted trip to the port where the seneschals he needs to see aren’t, now an hour up the Erud Highway instead to… where was it?

The Holophusikon. Holophusikon.

Ventanus isn’t stupid. He knows what the word means. He just doesn’t know what it is.

A triangular icon on the navigation display.

Selaton makes a sound. It’s a murmur of something. Surprise. He’s impressed by something.

He drops more speed.

They’re coming up on Titans. Titans marching down the highway towards the port, single file.

They trudge. They are immense. Outrider gun-carts and skitarii speeders with flashing lights surrounding their feet, waving Ventanus wide.

They pass through their trooping shadows. Shadow, sunlight, shadow, sunlight. Each shadow is a darkness like the underworld. The Titans are caked in dust. They look weary, like ramshackle metal prisoners, giant convicts shuffling towards the stockade.

Or a gibbet.

The odd, hard sunlight catches their upper surfaces and cockpit ports. A gleam in the eye. A killer gaze. Ancient giants that have endured all wars, obediently marching towards the next one.

Ventanus finds himself looking up, looking back, gazing at them as they pass. Even he is impressed. Forty-seven Titans. He can hear the tectonic boom of their footsteps over the howl of the speeder’s engines.

The biggest are filling the highway. A supply convoy moving in the opposite direction has been forced to pull onto the shoulder and wait to let them pass. Marshals wave batons and lamps.

Selaton, urgent, has pulled wide. Now the shoulder is filled with stationary transports, so he pulls wider still, crossing the highway marker, the shoulder, the culvert and ditch, riding off the transit way onto the scrub beyond, building speed again, raising a foxtail of grey dust. He uprates the grav elements, lifts another fifty centimetres for terrain clearance, and opens the throttle again. They bank, accelerating. The speeder’s drive wails. They’re moving parallel to the highway.

Ventanus looks back.

He fancies one or two of the Titans turn their massive heads to watch; disdainful, grumpy. Who is that in the tiny speeder, racing past? Why are they so impatient?

Where are they going in such a damned hurry?

The Holophusikon. It turns out it is a triangle, like the icon.

A pyramid. Actually, a pyramid raised on three smaller pyramids, each one supporting a base corner of the largest. It is made of faced ashlar and cream stone. Ventanus notes that it is an impressive building, in terms of both scale and design.

It might even be beautiful. He’s not sure. He has no expertise in such determinations.

They can see it from ten kilometres away. The Erud Highway passes it, linking to the Holophusikon’s own feeder roadways, and the township of service buildings and garrisons. Numinus City resolves as a gleaming skyline on the horizon.

The Holophusikon is stately, immense, planted in the open space of the plains. Though there is an ample town of buildings around it, it still looks new, as though it has just been built and is waiting for a city to sprout around it.

Or it looks as if it has been sent into wilderness exile for punishment.

The rain has stopped, briefly. The wind is up. The light catches the monolith’s sunward faces, bright. The other aspects are deep brown shadows. Its perfect geometry is emphasised.

Approach roads are avenues hung with banners that jump and flap in the wind. Golden masts, gilt canopy poles, lamp stands. The banners bear the heraldry of the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar, of Terra, of the Imperium, of the XIII. Ventanus hasn’t seen so many banners in one place since he last looked at picts of the Triumph at Ullanor.

There are gardens in the ground too. They are very green. Irrigation has dragged water from the Boros River out into the arid plains to create an oasis. Pools shimmer. Hydration systems fill the air with spray. Miniature rainbows form. Palms nod.

‘Slow down,’ says Ventanus.

They ride up under the flapping banners, and through the cool darkness under a grand arch, and coast into an inner courtyard. There is a great flight of steps like the processional advance to a temple. More banners drape from the walls of the inner precinct. There are other vehicles in sight, and dots that are people dwarfed by the immensity of the enclosure. Motorised staircases with ceramite treads flow silently on either side of the main flight.

They dismount. The speeder wobbles like a small boat as their weight leaves it. Liveried footmen approach to take care of the vehicle.

Ventanus starts up the steps, his sergeant behind him. He unclasps and removes his helm, breathes unfiltered air, feels heat and light on his face.

‘The Holophusikon,’ says Selaton.

‘A universal museum,’ says Ventanus.

‘I understood that.’

Ventanus has little patience for, or interest in, such places. He is prepared to admit that this is a flaw in his character.

They arrive at the top of the towering flight. A standard human being, even an exceptionally fit one, would be slightly short of breath at the end of such a climb in the sunlight. If anything, their pace is faster by the time they reach the top.

A marble platform, a broad entrance. Beyond, a huge and airy stone space, lit by natural light through slots in the roof. Cool. The spacious echo of murmured voices.

Ventanus approaches through the broad entrance. It is rectangular, landscape in form. A vast slot. The lip of the doorway overhead is thirty metres wide.

There are a few other visitors, tiny clumps of figures in the vast interior space. Ventanus is struck by the scale of the space, by its hollow, empty sound. Around the edges of the great chamber there are alcoves, podiums, plinths, displays. The exhibits, he supposes. That’s where the visitors are. Why build such a vast space and then dot the few exhibits around the edges?

‘What is this supposed to be?’ asks Selaton.

‘I don’t pretend to understand curation,’ replies Ventanus.

More liveried footmen approach them.

‘How may we serve, sir?’ asks one.

‘Ventanus, Captain, 4th Company, First Chapter, XIII,’ Ventanus replies. ‘I am looking for–’

He has memorised the names.

‘–Seneschals Arbute, Darial and Eterwin. Or, in fact, any senior municipal servant whose portfolio encompasses the starport.’

‘They are all in the building,’ the footman replies. He is clearly being fed behind the eyes by some direct-to-retina datasystem. Ventanus can tell from the slightly glassy way his eyes de-focus to verify the names.

‘Could you fetch them?’ asks Ventanus.

‘They are in session all afternoon,’ replies the footman. ‘Is it urgent?’

Ventanus chooses his next word carefully. It’s not so much the word as the hesitation he places in front of it, the hesitation that says I am wearing battle plate, I am armed, and I am doing my very best to be polite.

‘Yes,’ he says.

The footmen hurry away.

The Ultramarines wait.

‘Sir, is that–?’ Selaton starts.

‘It is,’ Ventanus replies.

Ventanus walks towards the distant figure that they have recognised. The figure is kneeling in front of one of the exhibit plinths. Attendants wait for him at a respectful distance.

The kneeling figure sees Ventanus and gets up. The gears and motors of his armour hum. He is taller than Ventanus, broader, the bulk of his plate master-crafted and finished with expansive golden wings, lions, eagles. He is leaning on a broadsword that is fully the height of a standard human.

‘Lord champion,’ Ventanus says, saluting.

‘Captain Ventanus,’ the giant replies. He eschews a salute, hands off the mighty sword to a bearer, and clasps Ventanus’s steel-cased hand between his own.

Ventanus is flattered to be recognised by such an august person.

‘What are you here for?’ the giant asks. ‘I thought you were running the Erud muster.’

‘You are well-informed, tetrarch,’ says Ventanus.

‘Information is victory, my brother,’ the tetrarch says, and laughs.

Ventanus explains his errand, the diplomatic function.

The tetrach listens. His name is Eikos Lamiad. His rank is tetrarch and also Primarch’s Champion. The four tetrarchs represent the four master worlds that command the fiefdoms of Ultramar under the authority of Macragge: Saramanth, Konor, Occluda and Iax. Lamiad’s fiefdom is Konor, the forge world. The tetrarchs are the four princes of Ultramar, and they rule the Five Hundred Worlds, standing in the hierarchy of power below Guilliman and above the Chapter Masters and the planetary lords.

‘I know the seneschals,’ says Lamiad. ‘I can introduce you.’

‘I would appreciate that, my lord.’ Ventanus replies. ‘It is a matter of expediency.’

Half of Eikos Lamiad’s face, the right half, is heroically handsome. The other half is a pale porcelain blank seamlessly embedded into the flesh, an elegant estimation of the missing face. The left eye is a gold-pupilled mechanism that winds and counter-circles like an antique optical instrument.

Lamiad was grievously wounded during the defence of Bathor. Shuriken shrieker rounds blew his skull apart and dismembered his body, but the worshipful Mechanicum elders of Konor Forge rebuilt him, respectful of his service and his good governance of their world holding.

It is said he would inhabit a Dreadnought chassis now, but for their ministrations.

‘Do you like the Holophusikon, Ventanus?’ the mighty champion enquires. His entourage of servitors, bearers, aides and battle-brothers is silent and stoic. All of them are in rich, ceremonial dress.

‘“Like”, lord?’

‘Appreciate, then?’

‘I have not given it much thought, lord.’

Lamiad smiles, the half of his face that can.

‘I sense a reservation, Remus,’ he says.

‘If I may speak candidly?’ Ventanus says.

‘Do.’

‘I have been to many worlds, lord, Imperial and not Imperial. I have, I think, lost count of the number of repositories of all wisdom I have been shown. Every world, every culture has its great library, its archive of wonders, its data store, its trove of lore, its casket of all secrets. How many ultimate archives of all universal knowledge can there be?’

‘You sound jaded, Remus.’

‘I apologise.’

‘Cultural archiving is important, Remus.’

‘Information is victory, lord.’

‘Indeed,’ says Lamiad. ‘We need to store our learning. We have also, during the Great Crusade, learned vast amounts by acquiring the archives of compliant cultures.’

‘I understand the–’

Lamiad raises his hand, a soft gesture.

‘I wasn’t reprimanding you, Remus. While I acknowledge the import of careful data gathering, I am also tired of the overly reverential way in which places like this are regarded. Oh, another holy repository of the most secret secrets of all, you say? Pray tell me what secrets you might keep that I have not learned from a thousand crypts just like this?’

They laugh.

‘You know what I like about this one, Remus?’

‘No, lord. What?’

‘It’s empty,’ says Lamiad.

The Holophusikon was commissioned thirty years before, during the development of Numinus City. It is younger than both of them, younger than their careers. Construction work has only recently been finished. Curators have just begun to import objects and data for display and storage.

‘They are usually so old, aren’t they?’ Lamiad remarks. ‘Dusty tombs of information, closed and guarded for unnumbered centuries, with special keys, and special rituals to get in, and all that tedious mystery. What I like about this place is its emptiness. Its intent. It is a proposition, Remus. It’s a great undertaking that looks forward, not back. It is open, and ready to be filled with mankind’s future. One day it will be a universal museum, and perhaps it will stand, alongside the libraries of Terra, as one of the greatest data repositories in the Imperium. For now, it is an ambition, built of stone. A deliberate statement of our intention to establish a robust and sophisticated culture, and to maintain it, and to record and measure it.’

‘It’s a museum of the future,’ says Ventanus.

‘Well said. It is. A museum of the future. For now, that is exactly what it is.’

‘And that’s why you’ve come here?’ asks Ventanus.

Lamiad shows him the exhibit he was inspecting when Ventanus arrived. In a sterile suspension field is the stabilised corner of a fire-damaged banner. Body heat triggers the hololithic placard, revealing origin details.

It is part of the banner that Lamiad carried on Bathor. This exhibit, one of the first few hundred chosen, honours him and his achievement, and commemorates that great battle.

‘I have tours of service planned that will take me from Ultramar for at least ten years,’ Lamiad says. ‘I felt I should come and see this before I embarked. See it with my own eyes.’

He looks at Ventanus.

‘Well, with my flesh eye and the one the Mechanicum made for me.’

They talk of the muster for a while, and of the coming campaign. Neither of them mentions the XVII.

Then Lamiad says, ‘They say Calth will be named a major world soon. It is developing fast, and its strengths are evident. The shipyards. The fabrication. Its status will be upgraded, and it will control a fief of its own.’

‘I will not be surprised,’ replies Ventanus.

‘It will have its own tetrarch too,’ says Lamiad. ‘It will have to. As a major world, it will be obliged to appoint a military governor, and produce a champion and a champion’s honour guard for the primarch.’

‘Indeed.’

‘There is talk of Aethon. Aethon of the 19th. As a potential candidate for the post.’

‘Aethon is a fine candidate,’ Ventanus agrees.

‘There are others in consideration. There is, I am told by our beloved primarch, some art to the choosing of a tetrarch.’

‘And it can’t be a tetrarch, can it?’ says Ventanus. ‘Perhaps you will all become quintarchs once there are five of you?’

Lamiad laughs again.

‘Perhaps they will coin another title, Remus,’ he says. ‘One that is not numerically specific. Calth won’t be the last, merely the next. Ultramar grows. As we meet the future and fill this Holophusikon, we will have more than Five Hundred Worlds, and more than five fiefdoms. Like the emptiness of these halls, we must be ready to accommodate the changes and the expansions to come.’

He turns. Figures in long, pale green robes are approaching them, followed by attendants.

‘Here come the seneschals,’ says the Primarch’s Champion. ‘Let me introduce you so you can get your business done.’

6

At the orbital Watchtower, Server of Instrumentation Uhl Kehal Hesst communes with the noosphere.

The code is speaking. It is gabbling.

The pleats of his floor-length Mechanicum robes are so crisp, he looks as if he has been carved by stone-masons. He stands at the summit of a Watchtower that is similarly straight and slender. The tower casts its shadow across Kalkas Fortalice, the armoured citadel that faces Numinus City across the glittering width of the Boros. It is a cauldron of walls and castellated towers, a city in its own right, but a place of defence, a lifeguard set to stand at the shoulder of Numinus and protect it from harm.

Ten thousand people work in the Watchtower, and another fifty thousand function in the gun towers and administration buildings around it. It is alert, a sentient place, its noospheric architecture designed on Hesst’s forge world, Konor, and supported by technologies supplied directly from the fabricatories of Mars.

The Watchtower’s command deck is vast, and bustling with staff. Windows, their blast shutters raised, gaze out across the river and the city to one side, and out towards the lowlands on the other. Hesst can image the traffic at the starport, the dust raised by marshalling on the plains, the bright land and the storm-tinted sky, but he is not interested in the view.

The tower supports its own manifold field, and is inloading data to him and the other seniors at a rate equivalent to the noospheric broadcast of eight hundred Battle Titans. Sixty moderati of the highest quality, working in amniotic armourglas caskets set into the deck, help to cushion that flow and parse it for comprehension.

From this deck, from this summit, Hesst can issue – by means of a simple code command across his permanent MIU link – the order to commit the planet’s weapon grid. Two hundred and fifty thousand surface-based weapons stations, including silo launchers and automated plasma ordnance, plus tower and turret guns, field stations, polar weapon pits. He can activate the immense void shield systems that umbrella Calth’s principal habitation centres. He can bring on-line the nine hundred and sixty-two orbital platforms, which include outward-facing protection systems and surface-aiming interdiction networks. Furthermore, he can harness and coordinate any and all available forces on the ground, and any fleet composition assembling at high anchor or in the shipyards.

Which means that, today, because of the conjunction, Server Hesst has immediate personal control over more firepower than Warmaster Horus. Or, it’s conceivable, the Emperor himself.

This consideration does not impress Server Hesst, or fill him with anxiety. Hesst is aware, however, that Magos Meer Edv Tawren is reading his elevated adrenal levels.

Tawren is young and efficient, tall, fully modified. She has excelled in her advancement through the developmental levels of the Mechanicum, and is profoundly good at her work. She supervises the Analyticae. Hesst is fond of her. He seldom accesses his emotions, but on the rare occasions that he decides to use them, he always notices the warmth with which he perceives her. Her modifications are technically pleasing, and her base organics possess a certain aesthetic.

“You are running hot”, she blurts to him in binaric code, a microsecond transmission on the intimate direct mode. It is non-verbal, but the blurt contains code signifiers for Hesst, and for a Titan battle unit straining its drives.

“Not at all. Rumination: Today is simply demanding.”

Tawren nods. She is ghosting his overwatch. He is aware of her presence in the manifold at his shoulder, just as she is standing next to him on the deck in the fleshsphere. Her fingers are trembling, touching invisible keys, coordinating data via the subtle haptics. Today’s difficulty is not shooting at things.

With two fleets in conjunction, traffic density above Calth is singularly high. Virtually all of it is moving according to non-standard or adjusted traffic patterns, extraordinary situational shifts of movement, course and proximity that are not coded into the regular watch registers. This is a one-time thing, for one day only: their responsibility is the safe and assured orchestration of a vast armada.

Calth’s weapons grid has multiple redundancies and stratified forms of cross-check and authorisation. It cannot be abused or used in error by any single individual: not Hesst, not the forty other servers in the Watchtower, not the six thousand two hundred and seventy-eight magi and adepts stationed planet-wide, or the garrison commanders of the Army or the local divisions. Nothing can happen without his personal consent.

Every time a ship arrives, or moves, or passes another, or joins formation, or enters a yard, or docks, or begins to refuel, or begins a sunward circuit to certify its drives, an alarm sounds. Every non-standard motion or manoeuvre system-activates the grid, and Hesst has to reject a firing query.

It’s actually the most superb test and demonstration of Calth’s grid, but it is becoming tiresome. From the summit of the Watchtower, Server Hesst controls the effective firepower of a major fleet, that firepower distributed across the surface and orbit. The system is hyper-sensitive, so that nothing can take it by surprise and secure an advantage. Every non-standard movement triggers an automatic firing solution from the grid, which Hesst has to personally reject in discretionary mode. He’s currently getting between eighteen and twenty-five a second.

Tawren knows that standard Mechanicum operating practice under such conditions, as advised by both the forgemasters of Konor and the exalted elders of Mars, is to temporarily bypass the multi-nodal automatics of the grid‘s alert processors and, for the duration of the fleet manoeuvres, transfer approval control to the automatic stations. Let the sentient machines of the platforms shoulder the burden. Let them cross-check the constant inload of data. Let them verify the anchorage codes and the traffic registration marks.

She also knows that Hesst is a determined individual who takes great pride in his work, and in his duties as a server. Calth’s planetary grid is optimised to run on multi-nodal automatics with a server or servers supplying final approval of all operations. To switch out to automatics alone is to admit the weakness of the fleshbrain. It is to resort to machine alone rather than bioengine synthesis. It is to acknowledge the limits of man, and to submit to the clinical efficiency of cold code.

They have discussed this. They have even discussed it using fleshvoices and vocal chords, unplugged. Hesst has the purest vision of the Mechanicum’s dream, and she adores him for it. It is not, as so many of the unmodified in society believe, the adoration of the machine. It is the use of the machine to extend humanity. It is apotheosis through synthesis. To stand back and allow the machines to do the work is disgusting to Hesst. He probably finds the concept more abhorrent than an unmodified human would.

“It’s not an admission of failure, you know?” she blurts. She is resuming a conversation they were having two days before, as if no intervening time had elapsed.

He acknowledges the fact, recognising the conversational marker appended to her code that reopens his saved file of that exchange.

“It is, in fact, a practice recommended by Mars.”

Hesst nods.

”If we build systems we cannot run, what is the point of building them? Tell me where that leads, Magos Tawren? ”

”The annihilation of self. The abnegation of sentience. ”

‘Exactly,’ says Hesst. His use of fleshvoice surprises her, but she instantly realises that he has switched from binaric in order to make a symbolic point. This amuses her, and she shows him that she is amused by using a facial expression.

‘You think this is about my pride, don’t you, Meer?’ he asks.

She shrugs. Like him, she is still, simultaneously, making subtle haptic gestures and scouring the noosphere’s dataflow. ‘I think that no one, not even an adept of the rank server or above, has ever run an operation like this on discretionary mode alone. I think you’re attempting some kind of record. Or trying to win a medal. Or trying to rupture a major organ.’

Her voice is clean, as pure as code. He sometimes wishes she would use it more.

‘It is simply a question of security and efficiency,’ he says. ‘The grid is designed to be multi-nodal. That is its strength. It has no single heart, no single brain. It is global. Take out any point, even this Watchtower, even me, and any other ranking server or magos can take over. The grid will adjust and recognise the discretion of the next in line. This tower could topple, and a server on the far side of the planet would instantly take over. Multi-nodal redundancy is a perfect system. You cannot kill anything that has no centre. So I’d prefer not to weaken the integrity of this planet’s defence system even slightly by opting out of discretion and transferring approval oversight to the orbital engines.’

‘This conjunction is expected to continue for another day or two,’ she remarks. ‘When would you like me to take over from you? Before or after you stroke out and tumble to the floor?’

Tawren realises he isn’t listening. He has become preoccupied with the inload.

‘What is it?’ she asks.

‘Scrapcode.’

Any complex information system will produce scrapcode as a result of internal degradation. She knows that. She wonders what he means, and peers into the manifold.

She sees the scrapcode, dull amber threads of diseased information buried in the mass of healthy data. There is two per cent more of it than any Analyticae projection has calculated for the Calth noosphere, even under the irregular circumstances of the day. That is an unacceptable margin.

”Filtration isn’t clearing it. I don’t know where it’s coming from. ”

He has reverted to binaric blurt. There is no time for words.

Criol Fowst has been given a blade, but it proves impractical to use it. He uses his sidearm instead. The oblators need to be killed cleanly and quickly. There isn’t time to fool about with a knife.

Outside the shelter, his appointed officers are rousing the men in song. Chanting fills the air. They have been encouraged to bring viols and qatars, tambours, pipes, horns and bells. It is supposed to sound like a celebration. The eve of battle, honoured allies, the anticipation of glory, all of that nonsense. It is supposed to sound joyous.

And it does, but Fowst can hear the ritual theme inside the noisy singing. He can hear it because he knows it’s buried there. Old words. Words that were old before humans learned to speak. Potent words. You can set them to any tune, to the verse-and-chorus of an Army battle reel. They work just the same.

The singing is loud. It’s quite a commotion, six thousand men in this corner of the muster fields alone. Loud enough to drown out his shots.

He pulls the trigger.

The matt-grey autopistol barks, bucks in his hand, and slams a single round through the temple it’s pressed against. Blood and tissue spray, splashing his jacket. The kneeling man flops sideways, as if the weight of his punctured head is pulling him down. There’s a whiff of fycelene in the air, a smell of powdered blood, burned flesh and blood vapour.

Fowst looks down at the man he has just shot and murmurs a blessing, the sort one might offer to a traveller embarking on a long and difficult voyage. His mercy almost came too late that time. The man’s eyes had begun to melt.

Fowst nods, and two of his appointed officers step forward to drag the body aside. Now the corpses of seven oblators lie on the groundsheet spread out to one side.

The next man steps up, stone-faced, unfazed at the prospect of imminent death. Fowst embraces him and kisses his cheeks and lips.

Then he steps back.

The man, like the seven who have come before him, knows what to do. He has prepared. He has stripped down to his undershirt and breeches. He’s given everything else away, even his boots. The Brotherhood of the Knife uses whatever equipment it can gather or forage: hauberks, body armour, ballistic cloth, sometimes a little chainmesh. There’s usually a coat or cloak or robe over the top to keep out the weather, always dark grey or black. With no more need for any field gear, the man has given away his good coat, his gloves and his armour to those who can use them later. His weapons too.

He’s holding his bottle.

In his case, it’s a blue glass drinking bottle with a stoppered cap. His oblation floats inside it. The man before him used a canteen. The man before that, a hydration pack from a medicae’s kit.

He opens it and pours the water out through his fingers so the slip of paper inside is carried out into his palm. The moment it’s out of suspension in the hydrolytic fluid, the moment it comes into contact with the air, it starts to warm up. The edges begin to smoulder.

The man drops the bottle, steps forward and kneels in front of the vox-caster. The key pad is ready.

He looks at the slip of paper, shivering as he reads the characters inscribed upon it. A thin wisp of white smoke is beginning to curl off the edge of the slip.

His hand trembling, the man begins to enter the word into the caster’s pad, one letter at a time. It is a name. Like the seven that have been typed in before, it can be written in human letters. It can be written in any language system, just as it can be sung to any tune.

Criol Fowst is a very intelligent man. He is one of a very few members of the Brotherhood who have actively come looking for this moment. He was born and raised on Terra to an affluent family of merchants, and pursued their interests into the stars. He’d always been hungry for something: he thought it was wealth and success. Then he thought it was learning. Then he realised that learning was just another mechanism for the acquisition of power.

He’d been living on Mars when he was approached and recruited by the Cognitae. At least, that’s what they thought they’d done.

Fowst knew about the Cognitae. He’d made a particular study of occult orders, secret societies, hermetic cabals of mysteries and guarded thought. Most of them were old, Strife-age or earlier. Most were myths, and most of the remainder charlatans. He’d come to Mars looking for the Illuminated, but they turned out to be a complete fabrication. The Cognitae, however, actually existed. He asked too many questions and toured datavendors looking for too many restricted works. He made them notice him.

If the Cognitae had ever been a real order, these men were not it. At best, they were some distant bastard cousin of the true bloodline. But they knew things he did not, and he was content to learn from them and tolerate their theatrical rituals and pompous rites of secrecy.

Ten months later, in possession of several priceless volumes of transgressive thought that had previously been the property of the Cognitae, Fowst took passage rimwards. The Cognitae did not pursue him to recover their property, because he had made sure that they would not be capable of doing so. The bodies, dumped into the heat vent of the hive reactor at Korata Mons, were never recovered.

Fowst went out into the interdicted sectors where the ‘Great Crusade’ was still being waged, away from the safety of compliant systems. He headed for the Holy Worlds where the majestic XVII Legion, the Word Bearers, were actively recruiting volunteer armies from the conquered systems.

Fowst was especially intrigued by the Word Bearers. He was intrigued by their singular vision. Though they were one of the eighteen, one of the Legiones Astartes, and thus a core part of the Imperium’s infrastructure, they alone seemed to exhibit a spiritual zeal.

The Imperial truth was, in Fowst’s opinion, a lie. The Palace of Terra doggedly enforced a vision of the galaxy that was rational and pragmatic, yet any fool could see that the Emperor relied upon aspects of reality that were decidedly unrational. The mind-gifted, for example. The empyrean. Only the Word Bearers seemed to acknowledge that these things were more than just useful anomalies. They were proof of a greater and denied mystery. They were evidence of some transcendent reality beyond reality, of some divinity, perhaps. All of the Legiones Astartes were founded on unshakeable faith, but only the Word Bearers placed their belief in the divine. They worshipped the Emperor as an aspect of some greater power.

Fowst agreed with them in every detail except one. The universe contained beings worthy of adoration and worship. The Emperor, for all his ability, simply wasn’t one of them.

On Zwanan, in the Veil of Aquare, a Holy World still dark with the smoke of Word Bearers compliance, Criol Fowst joined the Brotherhood of the Knife, and began his service to the XVII primarch.

He was able. He had been educated on Terra. He was no heathen backworlder energised by crude fanaticism. He rose quickly, from rank and file to appointed officer, from that to overseer, from that to his current position as a confided lieutenant. The name for this is majir. His sponsor and superior is a Word Bearers legionary called Arune Xen and, through him, Fowst has been honoured with several private audiences with Argel Tal of the Gal Vorbak. He has attended ministries, and listened to Argel Tal speak.

Xen has given Fowst his ritual blade. It is an athame blessed by the Dark Apostles. It is the most beautiful thing he has ever owned. When he holds it in his hand, byblow gods hiss at him from the shadows.

The Brotherhood of the Knife is not so-called because it favours bladework in combat. The name is not literal. In the dialect of the Holy Worlds, the Brotherhood is the Ushmetar Kaul, the ‘sharp edge by which false reality might be slit and pulled away to reveal god’.

Fowst’s attention has wavered. The oblator has finished keying in the eighth name. The slip of paper is burning in his hand. Smoking scads are falling from his fingers. He is shaking, trying not to scream. His eyes have cooked in their sockets.

Fowst remembers himself. He raises the sidearm to deliver mercy, but its clip is empty. He tosses it away, and uses the athame that Battle-brother Xen gifted him.

It is a messier mercy.

Eight names are now in the system. Eight names broadcast into the dataflow of the Imperial communications network. No filter or noospheric barrier will block them or erase them, because they are only composed of regular characters. They are not toxic code. They are not viral data. But once they are inside the system, and especially once they have been read and absorbed by the Mechanicum’s noosphere, they will grow. They will become what they are. They will stop being combinations of letters, and they will become meanings.

Caustic. Infectious. Indelible.

There are eight of them. The sacred number. The Octed.

And there can be more. Eight times eight times eightfold eight…

Majir Fowst steps back, wipes blood from his face, and welcomes the next man up to the vox-caster with a kiss.

Still over twelve hours out of Calth orbitspace, the fleet tender Campanile performs a series of course corrections, and begins the final phase of its planetary approach.

7

‘I can assure you, sir,’ says Seneschal Arbute, ‘the labour guilds are fully aware of the importance of this undertaking.’

She’s a surprisingly young woman, plain and businesslike. Her robes are grey.

Sergeant Selaton revises his estimate. What would he know? She’s not so much plain, just unadorned. No cosmetics, no jewellery. Hair cropped short. In his experience, high status females tended to be rather more decorative.

They have accompanied her from the Holophusikon to the port, following her official carrier in their speeder. She is a member of the Legislature’s trade committee. Darial and Eterwin have more power, but both insist that Arbute has a much more effective relationship with the guild rank and file. Her father was a cargo porter.

The port district is loud and busy. Huge semi-auto hoists and cranes, some of them looking like quadruped Titans, are transferring cargo stacks to the giant bulk lifters on the field.

Captain Ventanus seems to have wearied of the effort. He stands to one side, watching the small fliers and messenger craft zip across the port like dragonflies over a pond. He leaves Selaton to do the talking.

‘With respect,’ says Selaton, ‘the guildsmen and porters are falling behind the agreed schedule. We’re beginning to get back-up in the mustering areas.’

‘Is this an official complaint?’ she asks.

‘No,’ he replies. ‘But it has been handed down from the primarch. If you can put in any kind of word, my captain would appreciate it. He’s under pressure.’

She smiles quickly.

‘We’re all under pressure, sergeant. The guilds have never undertaken a materiel load on this scale. The estimated schedule was as accurate as they could make it, but it is still an estimation. The porting crew and loaders are bound to hit unexpected delays.’

‘Still,’ says Selaton. ‘A word to their foremen. From a member of the city legislature. A little encouragement, and an acknowledgement of their effort.’

‘Just so I know, what is the shortfall?’ asks Arbute.

‘When we came looking for you, six minutes,’ he says.

‘Is that a joke?’

‘No.’

‘Six minutes is… Forgive me, sergeant. Six minutes is nothing. It’s not even a margin of error. You came to find me, and dragged me here from the Holophusikon ceremonies because of a six-minute lag?’

‘It’s twenty-nine minutes now,’ replies Selaton. ‘I do not wish to sound rude, seneschal, but this is a Legion-led operation. The tolerances are tighter than in commercial or regular military circumstances. Twenty-nine minutes is bordering on the abominable.’

‘I’ll talk to the foremen,’ she says. ‘I’ll see if there’s any reserve they can draw on. There has been bad weather.’

‘I know.’

‘And some incidence of system failure. Junk information. Corrupt data.’

‘That happens too. I’m sure you will do what you can.’

She looks at him, and nods.

‘Wait here,’ she says.

‘In your considered opinion?’ Guilliman asks.

Magos Pelot is the senior serving Mechanicum representative aboard the flagship Macragge’s Honour, and he’s just been required to present the primarch with awkward news. He thinks for a moment before replying. He does not want to tar his institution with verdicts of incompetence, but he has also served the primarch long enough to know that little good ever comes of sugaring the pill.

‘The scrapcode problem we have identified is a hindrance, sir,’ he says. ‘It is regrettable. Especially on a day like today. These things do happen. I won’t pretend they don’t. Natural degradation. Code errors. They can occur without warning for any number of reasons. The Mechanicum dearly wishes we weren’t being plagued by them during this event.’

‘Cause?’

‘Perhaps the sheer scale of the conjunction itself? Precisely because today is important. The simple mass of data–’

‘Is it proportional?’ asks Guilliman. ‘Is it the proportional increment you would naturally expect to find?’

Magos Pelot hesitates. His mechadendrite implants ripple.

‘It is slightly higher. Very slightly.’

‘So it’s an abnormal level, in the experience of the Mechanicum? It’s not natural degradation?’

‘Technically,’ Pelot agrees. ‘But not in any way that should be deemed alarming.’

Guilliman smiles to himself.

‘So this is just… for my information?’

‘It would have been inappropriate not to inform you, lord.’

‘What are the implications, magos?’

‘The Server of Instrumentation insists he can continue to oversee the operation, but the Mechanicum believes his attention would be better spent identifying and eradicating this scrapcode problem before it develops any further. For the duration of that activity, the server would suspend discretion, and oversight would be managed automatically by the data-engines in the orbital yard hub.’

Guilliman considers this. He looks out through the crystalflex at the stars.

‘A group of seniors from the Mechanicum, your esteemed colleagues, Pelot, dined with me on Macragge just a month ago. They were extolling the virtues of the newest generation cogitators that had been installed to run the Calth yards and grid. They were immensely proud of their machines.’

‘So they should be, lord.’

‘They spoke about them as if they were… as if they had personalities, as individuals. I took that as an indication of their near-perfection in the development of the machine-spirit.’

‘Indeed, my lord.’

‘We can build a world of greater perfection and higher performance than the human form, magos. We can exceed the natural limits of humanity.’

‘Sir.’

‘I’m saying, perhaps we should trust your wonderful machines to do the job for a time while the server removes the problem.’

Pelot nods.

‘That is our feeling, lord.’

‘Good. I will make our visitors aware that there is a scrapcode issue, and gently investigate if it’s something they have brought with them by mistake. They have been on the fringes of late. And your server will need their cooperation in his investigation.’

‘Very good, lord.’

‘Pelot?’

‘My lord?’

‘With regard to the natural limits of humanity, it’s worth noting that during our dinner, your colleagues did not really ingest any actual food.’

‘Yes, my lord. In fairness, I doubt you needed to either.’

Guilliman smiles.

‘Very good, magos.’

He turns to his deck officers.

‘Arrange and establish a live link, please. As quickly as possible,’ he instructs. ‘I want to talk to my brother.’

Telemechrus wakes, but it is not time for war.

He has been taught things, and one of them is to control his anger until it is needed. It is not needed now, so he controls it.

He analyses. He scans. He determines.

His determination is this: he is in his casket, and his casket is being moved for transit. Something, perhaps some clumsy or inexpert handling of his casket, has woken him.

It is not time for war. This disappoints him.

He controls his disappointment, just as he has been taught. He controls his anger. He realises he needs, additionally, to control his anxiety. Anxiety is akin to fear, and fear is an abomination previously unknown to him, and he has resolved absolutely not to let it in. Thus, his anxiety increases.

Telemechrus lived his life as a legionary of the XIII. Ten years’ service, from his genetic construction to his death in combat, and all that time he knew no fear. None whatsoever. Despite everything he faced, even death when it finally came, he was never afraid.

During the first conversation he had with them, after his death, the techpriests told him that things would be different from now on. His mortal remains, the remains of Brother Gabril Telemach, 92nd Company Ultramarines, were no longer viable. Too much of his organics had been vaporised for there to be any continuation of life as he could understand it. But he was, in respect of his courage and service, and because of his compatibility, going to be honoured. His mortal remains were going to form the organic core of a cyberorganic being.

He was to be made a Dreadnought.

As a man, as flesh and blood, Gabril had thought of the Dreadnoughts as ancient things. They were veterans, brothers taken at the brink of death and installed inside indomitable war machines. They were old. Some were a century old. Some had been alive in those machine-boxes for a hundred years!

Gabril Telemach was not old. Just a decade of service.

Now he was trapped in a box forever.

There were adjustments to be made, the techpriests said. Mental adjustments. He accepted, first of all, that every Dreadnought, even the most venerable, had to be new at some point. Dreadnoughts were a vital part of the Legion’s fighting power, and they were lost from time to time. So new ones needed to be constructed at intervals, when the combat chassis were available, and when war-loss produced suitable and compatible organic donors.

The techpriests told him that he would lack many things his flesh body had taken for granted. Sleep, to begin with. He would only sleep when they placed him into stasis hibernation. He would experience – or rather not experience – long periods of this, because they would ensure he slept most of the time. They would wake him if it was time for war and his participation was required.

The techpriests said that this was because of the pain. There would be pain, and it would be constant. His pitiful mortal residue was sheathed in a cyberorganic web, laced into electro-fibre systems, and shut in an armoured sarcophagus. There would be no opportunity to manage pain the way he had done as a man, no mechanism for pain control.

For the same reason, he would find himself prone to emotional variations he had not known as a man. He would probably be prone to rage, to anger. Despite the devastating power bequeathed to him as a Dreadnought, he would miss his mortal state. He would resent his death, regret the circumstances of it, fixate upon it, come to hate the cold-shell life he had been given in exchange.

To spare him this bitterness, and the pain, and the anger, he would be encouraged to sleep for great periods of time.

He would also, they told him, probably be prone to bouts of fear, especially early on. This was, they explained, because of his profound change of state. His consciousness had been shorn away from a linear, mortal scale, from any timeframe he could recognise or understand, from time itself, in fact, because of the prolonged hibernations. Fear, anathema to the Space Marine, was merely part of the mind’s adjustment to this extreme fate. It was natural. He would learn to control it, and to use it, just like his anger. Eventually, fear would evaporate, and be no more. He would be as fearless as he had been as a legionary.

It would take time. There would be gradual and careful adjustments of his hormones and biochemical mix. He would receive hypnotherapies and acclimation pattering. He would be mentored by others of his kind, the venerables, who had grown used to their strange fates.

He had said to the techpriests, ‘I was fearless as a battle-brother, even though I might fall. Now you have rendered me invincible, you say I am prey to fear? Why then call me a Dreadnought? I was a dread nought before. I dreaded nothing as a man!’

‘This is the anger we spoke of,’ they had replied. ‘You will adjust. Sleep will help. Begin hibernation protocols.’

‘Wait!’ he had called out. ‘Wait!’

Justarius is his mentor. Justarius is venerable. Justarius is also sullen and, despite his greater lifespan as a Dreadnought, seems not to have shed the bitterness or the anger. Justarius prefers to sleep. He is curmudgeonly when woken. He seems, at best, ambivalent to Telemechrus’s concerns.

‘It’s Telemach,’ says Telemechrus.

‘My name was Justinus Phaedro,’ grumbles Justarius in reply. ‘They rename us like machines. Or they forget. I forget which.’

Telemechrus is the newest Dreadnought in the ranks of the XIII. He is Contemptor-pattern. He has yet to see combat.

They wake him once, during routine resuscitation in the vaults at Macragge. His implant clock tells him that he has been dormant for two years. The techpriests inform him that an operation has been announced. He will be installed in his chassis and shipped to Calth for deployment, and then woken when it is time for war. The war will be with orks. Telemechrus has questions, but they return him to his hypnotherapeutic dreams.

‘Wait!’ he says.

Telemechrus wakes, but it is not time for war.

He has been taught things, and one is to control his anger until it is needed. It is not needed now, so he controls it.

He analyses. He scans. He determines.

His determination is this: he is in his casket, and his casket is being moved for transit. Something, perhaps some clumsy or inexpert handling of his casket, has woken him.

His implant clock tells him it is eighteen weeks since that routine wake-up on Macragge. Locator systems, reading noospheric tags, tell him that his casket is under transfer in the orbital yards at Calth. The staging post. The place of conjunction. He has roused too early. They’re not at the war front yet.

He wonders why he has woken. Was it clumsy handling? A loader jarring his casket? Justarius and Kloton and Photornis are nearby, in their own caskets, and they are still in hiber-stasis.

Was he physically disturbed? Or was it some scrapcode abnormality causing his cogitation systems to fibrillate?

Telemechrus doesn’t know. He is new to this. There are no techpriests nearby. He wants Justarius to wake so he can ask him.

Is this normal? What do these traces of scrapcode mean? He feels trapped. He feels anxiety. Fear will follow.

He is aware of the hibersystems trying to pull him back into unconsciousness where he belongs. They are trying to spare him the pain and the anger. There is no need to wake. You woke too early. You don’t need to be awake.

The techpriests are wrong.

It’s not the pain a Dreadnought is afraid of.

It’s the silence. It’s the oblivion. It’s the sleep.

It’s the inability to escape from yourself.

Guilliman looks at Gage and nods.

Gage speaks to the lithocast operators and they activate the system.

Guilliman steps onto the hololithic plate as it starts to come to life. The tiered stations of the flagship’s bridge rise up around the vast plate like the stalls of an amphitheatre.

Light blooms around him.

Figures resolve, there but not there at all. Light has been captured, folded and twisted to give the illusion of reality. Guilliman knows that, somewhere, millions of kilometres away, other deck systems are fabricating images of him out of light. He is appearing as a hololithic presence on the lithocast decks of other stages, for the benefit of the august commanders whose ghosts are manifesting to him here.

One in particular.

‘My worthy brother!’ Lorgar exclaims. He steps forward to greet Guilliman.

The simulation is remarkable. Though luminous, there is true density and solidity to his flesh and his armour. There is no lag to his audio, no desynchronisation between mouth and voice. Remarkable.

‘I did not expect to meet you like this,’ Lorgar says. His grey eyes are bright. ‘In person, so I could embrace you. This seems premature. I was informed of your request. I have had no time to dress in ceremonial attire–’

‘Brother,’ says Guilliman. ‘You see that I greet you in regular battle plate too. There will be time for personal greeting and full dress ceremony when you arrive. You are just a few hours out now?’

‘Decelerating fast,’ Lorgar replies. He looks at someone not caught inside the hololithic field of his bridge. ‘The shipmaster says five hours.’

‘We will meet together then, you and your commanders. Me and mine.’ Guilliman looks at the warlords whose images have appeared around Lorgar’s. They all appear to be connecting from different ships. He’d forgotten the imposing bulk of Argel Tal. The lipless sneer of Foedral Fell. The predatory curiosity of Hol Beloth. The hunched gloom of Kor Phaeron. The lightless smile of Erebus.

‘Some of you are already here,’ Guilliman notes.

‘I am, sir,’ says Erebus.

‘We will meet shortly, then,’ says Guilliman.

Erebus inclines his head, more an accepting bow of the head than a nod.

‘My vessel is entering orbit,’ says Kor Phaeron.

‘Welcome to Calth,’ says Guilliman.

The light phantoms salute him.

‘I’ve asked for this brief communication,’ Guilliman says, ‘to discuss a small technical matter. I do not wish it to mar our formal conjunction, nor do I wish it to create problems for your fleet during approach and dispersal.’

‘A problem?’ asks Kor Phaeron.

There’s a stiffness to them suddenly. Guilliman feels it, even though they are only present as handfuls of light. When they first appeared, he realises, they seemed like a pack of dogs, padding into the firelight, teeth bared in smiles that were also snarls, gleefully inquisitive. Now they seem like wild animals that he should never have brought so close to the hearth.

The Word Bearers have been fighting brutal, heathen wars of compliance in the ragged skirts of the Imperium. They’ve been fighting them dutifully and ferociously for decades, since that fateful day on Monarchia that changed the relationship between XIII and XVII forever. There is something coarsely barbaric about them. They have none of the praetorian nobility of Guilliman’s men. They don’t even evince the passionate devotion of their misguided days. They look sullen, world-weary, as though they have seen everything it is possible to see and are tired of it. They look hardened. They look as though all compassion and compunction have been drained out of them. They look like they would kill without provocation.

‘A problem, lord?’ Argel Tal repeats.

‘A machine code problem,’ Guilliman replies. ‘The Mechanicum has advised me. There is a malicious scrapcode problem in the Calth datasphere. We’re working to eradicate it. I wanted you to be aware of it, and to take steps accordingly.’

‘That could have been summarised in a databurst, sir,’ remarks Foedral Fell.

‘A connected matter,’ Guilliman says carefully, ‘is that the source of the scrapcode remains unidentified. There is a strong possibility that it is a data artefact that has been inadvertently brought in from outside the Calth system.’

‘From outside?’ asks Lorgar.

‘From elsewhere,’ Guilliman states.

There’s a look in Lorgar’s eyes that Guilliman hopes never to see again. It’s hurt and it’s anger, but it’s also injured pride.

Lorgar raises his hand and draws it across his neck in a cut-throat gesture. It takes Guilliman a moment to realise that it’s not a provocation, a curt insult.

The hololithic images of his officers and commanders freeze. Only Lorgar’s remains live. He takes a step towards Guilliman.

‘I have suspended their transmissions so we may speak plainly,’ he says. ‘Plainly and clearly. After all that has passed between us and our Legions, after all that has been toxic these last years, after all the effort to engineer this campaign as a reconciliation… Your first act is to accuse us of tainting you with scrapcode? Of… what? Of being so careless in our data hygiene we have infected your precious datasystem with some outworld codepox?’

‘Brother–’ Guilliman begins.

Lorgar gestures to the frozen light ghosts around them.

‘How much humiliation do you intend to heap upon these men? They want only to please you. To earn the respect of the great Roboute Guilliman, a respect they have been lacking these last decades. It matters what you think of them.’

‘Lorgar–’

‘They’ve come to prove themselves! To show they are worthy to fight alongside the majestic Ultramarines! The warrior-kings of Ultramar! This conjunction, this campaign, it’s a point of the highest honour! It matters to them. It matters very much! They have waited years for this honour to be restored!’

‘I meant no insult.’

‘Really not?’ Lorgar laughs.

‘None at all. Brother Lorgar Aurelian, why else would I have communicated informally? If I’d saved this matter to sully our ceremonial greeting, then you might have considered it an insult. A private word, between trusted commanders. That’s all this is. You know scrapcode can develop anywhere, and adhere to the most carefully maintained systems. This could be us, this could be you, it could be an error from our datastacks, it could be some xenos code that‘s been stuck to your systems like a barnacle since you left the outworlds. There’s no blame. We just need to acknowledge the problem and work together to cleanse it.’

Lorgar stares at him. Guilliman notes just how thoroughly his brother’s flesh is covered with inked words.

‘This was not meant to spoil our long-overdue reunion,’ Guilliman says. ‘This was my attempt to stop the reunion being spoiled.’

Lorgar nods. He purses his lips and nods. Then he flashes a smile.

‘I see.’

He nods again, the smile flickering in and out. He raises a palm to his mouth, then laughs.

‘I see. Then very well. I should not have spoken that way.’

‘I should have been more circumspect,’ replies Guilliman. ‘I can see how it might have seemed.’

‘We’ll check our systems,’ says Lorgar. His smile is back. He nods again, as if convincing himself.

‘I should have been more circumspect,’ Guilliman insists.

‘No, you’re right. There is clearly a tension here that needs to be overcome. An expectation.’

Lorgar looks at him.

‘I’ll get to it. We’ll see if we can trace the code. And then we will meet, brother. In just a few hours now, we will meet, and everything will be put right.’

‘I look forward to it,’ says Guilliman. ‘We will stand side-by-side, we will take down this ork threat that our brother Warmaster has identified, and then history will be rewritten between us.’

‘I hope so.’

‘It will be so, brother. If I had not believed that the unfortunate rift between our Legions could not be healed by good society and the companionship of shared martial effort, I would not have agreed to this. We will be the best of allies, Lorgar. You and I, our mighty Legions. Horus will be pleased and the Emperor our father will smile, and old slights will be forgotten.’

Lorgar smiles.

‘They will be forgotten completely. They will be put to rest,’ he says.

‘Without delay,’ says Guilliman.

Criol Fowst sacrifices his last oblator. In the landing camps of the XVII and its army auxiliaries, landing camps that are spread across the surface of Calth, hundreds of majir just like Fowst are concluding similar sacrificial rituals.

The Brotherhood is chanting. So are the men and women of the Tzenvar Kaul, the Jeharwanate and the Kaul Mandori, the other three principal cult echelons.

At the orbital Watchtower, Server Uhl Kehal Hesst of the Mechanicum has switched from discretionary mode in order to pursue and eradicate the scrapcode issue. He will fail to do so. He will spend the rest of his life failing to do so.

The scrapcode issue is no longer resolvable by means of the Mechanicum.

The Octed is implanted.

8

Aeonid Thiel wakes. He only slipped into rest mode briefly. He was bored. He has been waiting a long while. No one has come.

He wakes because he is no longer alone in the fortieth deck anteroom.

He bows at once.

‘Are you Thiel?’ asks Guilliman.

‘Yes, lord,’ Thiel replies.

The primarch seems distracted. He can probably tell which weapons have been used and put back, which practice cages have been operated.

‘You’ve been waiting here for some time.’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘There’s a lot to do today. My attention has been elsewhere.’

It’s not an apology, it’s just a basic explanation. Thiel wants to say that he doesn’t really know why the primarch’s dealing with it at all, but he knows better than that.

‘Were you amusing yourself?’ asks Guilliman, taking a broadsword off a wall rack and examining its edge.

‘I… I decided to pass the time in practice,’ Thiel answers. ‘There are weapons here I am unfamiliar with. I thought that I might benefit from–’

Guilliman nods. The nod means shut up.

Thiel shuts up.

Guilliman studies the sword he is holding. He doesn’t look at Thiel. Thiel has risen to attention, waiting. His helmet, with its crude, red paint-wash to indicate censure, is tucked under his arm.

‘I didn’t come here for you,’ Guilliman says. ‘I came away to think. I forgot you were here.’

Thiel makes no comment.

‘That’s a depressing thought,’ says Guilliman, sliding the sword back onto the rack. ‘I forgot something. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t share that unguarded confession with anybody.’

‘Of course, lord. Though I hardly blame you for forgetting me. I am a very minor detail.’

Now the primarch looks at him.

‘Two things to note there, sergeant. One is that there is no such thing as a minor detail. Information is victory. One cannot and should not dismiss any data as inconsequential until one is in a position to evaluate its significance, and that only comes with hindsight. So all detail is important until circumstances render it redundant.’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘What’s the second thing, Thiel?’

Aeonid Thiel hesitates slightly before answering.

‘By any scale of decency,’ he replies, ‘my infraction was reprehensible. I am, therefore, not a minor detail anyway.’

‘Quite,’ says Guilliman.

The primarch turns and looks up at the high ceiling of the chamber. There is a slight heat-haze distortion in the air above the practice cages that Thiel has spent the last hours overworking.

‘I think I may have offended him,’ says Guilliman.

‘Lord?’

Guilliman looks back at Thiel. He fixes him with a thoughtful gaze.

‘This is a day of great sensitivity,’ he says. ‘We’re building a part of the Imperium’s future as surely as if we were making a star system compliant. We’re cementing a relationship. Repairing a weakness. It’s political. The rift between XIII and XVII is a rift in the Imperial line. Horus knows that. That’s why he’s sewing it up, and we can all swallow our distaste over it.’

Guilliman rubs his cheekbone with his fingertips. He is pensive.

‘The future depends on the solidarity of the Legions,’ he says. ‘Where solidarity is weak, where it is lacking, it must be repaired or enforced. And this is forced. This is us getting along with each other for the greater good.’

Thiel chooses to remain silent.

‘He is so… changeable,’ Guilliman says. ‘He is so prone to extremes. Eager to please, quick to take offence. There is no middle to him. He’s so keen to be your best friend, and then, at the slightest perception of an insult, he’s angry with you. Furious. Offended. Like a child. If he wasn’t my brother, he’d be a political embarrassment and an impediment to the effective rule of the Imperium. I know what I’d do with him.’

‘I’m sure I could demonstrate how, lord,’ says Thiel, and then winces.

‘Was that a joke, sergeant?’

‘I may have just made a very unfortunate attempt at humour, lord,’ Thiel admits.

‘It was actually quite funny,’ says Guilliman.

He turns to leave.

‘Remain here. I’ll get to you in due course.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Trooper Persson,’ Graft calls as he whirrs up the track. The estuary wind is rising, swishing the swartgrass. There’s an empty, metal smell of cold water and mud. It will be night soon. The lights are coming on in and around the fortalice, and their reflections are bobbing on the black river.

‘Trooper Persson,’ the servitor calls.

It’s time to stop. The end of the day’s toil. Wash up, grace and supper. Oll is weary, but he’s about eight rows back from where he thought he’d be. Too much of the day spent looking up at the sky, at the running lights of ships. Too much of the day wasted watching the heavy landers glinting as they pass overhead.

Graft trundles up to him. The servitor’s huge bulk-extension upper limbs, built for ammo loading, have been replaced by basic cargo shifting arms.

‘Time to stop, Trooper Persson,’ Graft says.

Oll nods. They’ve done what they can with the light.

But he doesn’t feel like it’s time to stop. It feels like something’s about to start.

Ventanus and Selaton watch Arbute talking to another gang of labour guild officials. Behind them, a bulk-lander as huge and drab as a cliff face is slowly backing into a cargo silo. Oil stains shine on the rockcrete ground.

‘I don’t know why it’s so difficult,’ says Selaton. ‘She tells them to work harder, they work harder. She’s got the authority.’

‘It’s more complex than that.’

‘Is it, captain? They’ve been doing it all day. As far as I can tell, the main quibble seems to be the length and regularity of rest breaks.’

‘Fatigue is an issue,’ Ventanus reminds his sergeant. ‘A human issue. We need cooperation. We have to acknowledge their qualities.’

‘Weaknesses you mean.’

‘Qualities.’

‘It makes me profoundly glad I’m not an elective human,’ says Selaton.

Ventanus laughs.

‘Still, it’s us who’ll get strung up by the primarch if the muster falls behind.’

‘No, it’s me who’ll get it,’ said Ventanus. ‘And we won’t fall behind. The seneschal is pretty persuasive.’

‘Really, sir?’

‘I think the guild was dragging its heels because it thought bonus payments should be on offer.’

‘Deliberately going slow?’ asks Selaton, the notion alien to him.

‘Yes, sergeant. They make a fuss about overwork, negotiate themselves some hefty bonus fees, and then have a little slack they can take up so they look like they’re working hard. I think our new friend Seneschal Arbute has made them buck their ideas up by introducing new concepts such as patriotism, and the favourable disposition of the primarch.’

Selaton nods.

The sky over the starport is fulminous grey, with rack rides of cloud chased by the wind and backlit by the setting sun. The lights of incoming transports shine especially bright.

‘We’re losing the light,’ says Selaton. ‘Earlier than estimated.’

‘A result of the storm,’ says Ventanus.

‘Probably,’ agrees Selaton.

The fleet tender Campanile passes the inner Mandeville Point of the Veridian System, outer marker ring 16, and the local picket. It broadcasts full and correct anchorage codes to the watch ships at ring 14, and to the Veridius Maxim Star Fort. The Star Fort retracts its target acquisition lock and signals the tender to pass.

The ship appears to be decelerating.

Teleport flare. The crackle of the energy burst shivers across the open hillside, and ozone taints the cold northern air.

Erebus, Dark Apostle, becomes flesh, and emerges from the scratch of light. He is not clad in ceremonial armour, he is wearing wargear that has been stripped down to fighting weight, darkened with ashes and inscribed over its entire surface with tiny, spidery script.

A strike team is waiting for him. Its leader is Essember Zote of the Gal Vorbak, a warrior of the most incendiary fury. His sword is already drawn. His armour is the colour of blood.

This is how their enemies will know them. Blood red, the colour of fire, the colour of hell, the colour of gore, the colour of the Octed.

Zote has a work party of the Tzenvar Kaul with him, seventy men, all childless. They have been working since they arrived at dawn on one of the first ships.

The Satric Plateau, two thousand kilometres north of Numinus City, is a lonely place. The hard winter has already arrived. Because of its size and terrain, the Satric region was chosen as one of the sixty-eight staging fields for the operation. Landers are parked all along the line of the slope, cargo hatches open to the grey sky.

Erebus inspects the work.

This particular area of the Satric Plateau, sheened with frost, is especially perfect. It took several days of comparative study with the orbital scans to determine its perfection compared to other potential sites. It is consistently flat in relation to sea level. It is aligned according to magnetic north and the tidal process, and has favourable moonrise on the day of the conjunction. It possesses other qualities too, other qualities that could not be disclosed by standard Imperial physics. Immaterium vectors are in alignment. The skin of the empyrean is thin here tonight.

This is the true conjunction. Erebus reflects upon how remarkably perfect it is. Not just workable or suitable or acceptable. Perfect. From today, for the next sixty days. It is as though some power somewhere manufactured the perfection at exactly the right time.

The men of the Kaul have laid the circle. Polished black rocks, each taken from the volcanic slopes of Isstvan V and marked with a sigil, are arranged in a perfect circle a kilometre in diameter.

Erebus takes the last rock from Zote. They are summoning stones. The latent power in them makes him feel sick, just taking one in his hand.

He places it in the gap in the circle. It clacks against the stones on either side as he sets it.

‘Begin,’ he tells Zote.

The men of the Tzenvar Kaul approach, carrying other offerings from the Isstvan system. In procession, they bear along portable stasis flasks like censers in some Catheric worship. The fluid in the stasis flasks is murky with blood. Harvested progenitor glands. Harvested gene-seed. The lost life of betrayed souls now offered for the final blasphemy. There is Salamanders gene-seed here, Iron Hands, Raven Guard. Erebus knows that the Ruinous Powers make no distinctions, so there is other gene-seed here besides: Emperor’s Children, Death Guard, Night Lords, Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, Alpha Legion, even Luna Wolf. Any that fell during the secret abominations of Isstvan III or V are suitable.

Erebus stops the first man in the procession, and strokes the glass of the stasis flask. He knows what’s in it, the mangled tissue in the cloudy suspension.

‘Tarik…’ he whispers.

He nods. The Kaul start to carry the flasks into the circle. The moment they cross the stones, the bearers start to whimper and retch. Several pass out, or suffer strokes, and fall, smashing the flasks.

It doesn’t matter.

The moon is rising, a pale curl in a mauve sky already busy with lights.

Zote hands Erebus a data-slate, and the Apostle checks the approach timings. He is data tracking using anchorage codes.

He hands the slate back and takes the vox-link in exchange.

‘Now,’ he says.

‘Acknowledged,’ replies Sorot Tchure.

He walks back to join the others. His men are mingling with the men of Luciel’s company on the company decks of the Samothrace. They have finished the formal dinner that Luciel had arranged. None need to eat, certainly not the fine foodstuffs that Luciel provided, but it is a symbolic gesture. To dine as allies, as warrior-kings. To bond ahead of the coming war.

‘Problem?’ asks Luciel.

Tchure shakes his head.

‘Some question about loading platforms.’

Tchure looks at Luciel.

‘Why have you changed your markings and armour field?’ asks Luciel.

‘We are remaking ourselves,’ Tchure replies. ‘A new scheme to celebrate our new beginning. Perhaps it is down to the character of our beloved primarch, may the cosmos bless him. We have never quite found ourselves, Honorius. Not like you. We have struggled to realise a proper role for ourselves. I do not believe you appreciate how fortunate you are. The clarity of your purpose and position as Ultramarines. From the start you had a reputation that never needed to be questioned, and a function that never needed to be clarified.’

He pauses.

‘For years, I have despised Lorgar,’ he says quietly.

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

‘Sorot, you mustn’t–’

‘Look at your primarch, Honorius. So singular in aspect. So noble. I have envied you, envied the Imperial Fists, the Luna Wolves, the Iron Hands. And I am not alone. We struggle with a mercurial mind, Honorius. We labour under the burden of a brilliant but fallible commander. We no longer bear the word, my friend. We bear Lorgar.’

‘Some fall into their roles quickly,’ says Luciel firmly. ‘I have thought about this. Some fall into their roles quickly. Others take time to evolve, to discover what their purpose is to be. Your primarch, great Lorgar, is a son of the Emperor. There will be a role for him. It may turn out to be far greater than any that falls to Guilliman or Dorn. Yes, we’re lucky to have clarity. I know that. So are the Fists, the Hands, the Angels. Terra above, so are the Wolves of Fenris and the World Eaters, Sorot. Perhaps the lack of clarity you have laboured under thus far is because Lorgar’s role is yet unimaginable.’

Tchure smiles.

‘I can’t believe you’re defending him.’

‘Why can’t you?’

Tchure shrugs.

‘I think we may be finding our purpose at last, Honorius,’ he says. ‘Hence our new resolve. Our change in scheme and armour colour. I… I was asked to join the advance.’

Luciel frowns, quizzical.

‘You told me that.’

‘I have things to prove.’

‘Why?’ asks Luciel.

‘I have to prove my commitment to the new purpose.’

‘And how do you do that?’ asks Luciel.

Tchure doesn’t answer. Luciel notices how the Word Bearer’s fingers stir, tapping the tabletop. What agitation is that? Nerves?

‘I learned something,’ Tchure says suddenly, changing the subject. ‘A little piece of warcraft that I thought you would appreciate.’

Luciel lifts his cup, sips wine.

‘Go on,’ he smiles.

Tchure toys with his own cup, a straight-sided golden beaker.

‘It was on Isstvan, during the fight there.’

‘Isstvan? There’s been fighting in the Isstvan system?’

Tchure nods.

‘It hasn’t been reported. Was it a compliance?’

‘It’s recent,’ says Tchure. ‘The full reports of the campaign are still being ratified by the Warmaster. Then they will be shared.’

Luciel raises his eyebrows.

‘Guilliman won’t appreciate being left out of the loop for any length of time. Is this how the Warmaster intends to conduct the Great Crusade from now on? Guilliman insists on sharing all military data. And Isstvan was compliant–’

Tchure holds up his hand.

‘It’s recent. It’s fresh. It’s done now. Your primarch will hear all about it in due course. The point is, the fight was bitter. The Imperium faced a foe that had discovered the mortal power of treachery.’

‘Treachery?’ asks Luciel.

‘Not as a strategy, you understand. Not as a tactic to surprise and undermine. I mean as a property. A power.’

‘I’m not sure I know what you mean,’ smiles Luciel. slightly disarmed. ‘It’s as though you’re talking about… magic.’

‘I almost am. The enemy believed that there was power in treachery. To win the confidence of your opponent, to mask your animus, and then to turn… Well, they believed that this actually invested them with power.’

‘I don’t see how.’

‘Don’t you?’ asks Tchure. ‘The potency, they believed, depends on the level of betrayal. If an ally suddenly turns on an ally, that’s one level. But if a trusted friend turns on a friend. That was the purest kind of power, because the treachery ran so deep. Because it required that so many moral codes be broken. Trust. Friendship. Loyalty. Reliance. Honesty. Such an act was powerful because it was beyond belief. It achieved a potency that was akin to the most powerful blood sacrifice.’

Luciel sits back.

‘Interesting, certainly,’ he says. ‘For them to believe that. Culturally, it speaks a great deal to the strength of their honour codes. If they believed this invested them with power, then it seems like an act of superstition. It has little strategic merit in terms of warcraft or technique, of course. Except, I suppose, psychologically.’

‘It certainly worked for them.’

‘Until you crushed them, of course.’

Sorot Tchure does not reply.

‘What’s the matter?’ asks Luciel.

‘It’s like a sacrifice,’ says Tchure. ‘You identify and commit the greatest betrayal possible, and it is like a sacrifice to anoint and begin a vast ceremony of victory and destruction.’

‘I still don’t understand. It has no tactical methodology.’

‘Really? Really, Honorius? What if it does? What if there is an entirely other kind of warfare, one that extends beyond all practical techniques, one that defies and eclipses all the martial law codified by the Ultramarines and recognised by the Imperium? A ritual warfare? A kind of daemonic warfare?’

‘You say that as if you believe it,’ Luciel laughs.

‘Think about what I’m saying,’ says Tchure quietly. He looks around the chamber, at his men talking and drinking with Luciel’s. ‘Think of this… If the Word Bearers turned against the Ultramarines, wouldn’t that be the greatest betrayal of all? Not Lorgar turning on Guilliman, for they dislike each other anyway. Here, in this chamber, between two men who have actually managed to become friends?’

‘That would be the most atrocious deceit,’ Luciel agrees. ‘I concede it would have some power. As shock value in the Legion. We are immune to fear, but horror and surprise might unman us briefly at the unimaginable nature of the act.’

Tchure nods.

‘And it would be the centrepiece,’ he says. ‘The sacrificial spark to ignite the ritual war.’

Luciel nods gravely.

‘I suppose you’re right. It would be well to understand, and allow for, an enemy who carried such conviction in the power of infamy.’

Tchure smiles.

‘I wish you understood,’ he says.

The Campanile crosses the inner ring, its codes accepted by the defence grid. The mass of the fleet disposition lies ahead of it, the yards. The bright glory of Calth.

As it passes within the orbit of Calth’s moon, it begins an abrupt acceleration.

‘Understand what?’ asks Luciel.

‘I was asked to join the advance,’ says Tchure.

‘And?’

‘I have to prove my commitment to the new purpose.’

Luciel stares at him.

For just a second. A second. And in that second, he finally realises what Sorot Tchure has been trying to tell him.

That in order not to betray one impossible bond, Sorot Tchure is required to betray another.

The goblet falls from Luciel’s grip. His hand is already moving, through instinct alone, for his sidearm. Only sheer, disfunctioning shock is slowing him down.

Tchure’s plasma pistol is already in his hand.

The goblet hasn’t even hit the tabletop yet.

Tchure fires. Point blank, the plasma bolt strikes Honorius Luciel’s torso. The bolt is as hot as a main sequence star. It vaporises armour plate, carapace, reinforced bone, spinal cord. It annihilates meat, both hearts, and secondary organs. It turns blood into dust. The shot’s hammer blow impact knocks Luciel down, through the table, smashing the tabletop up to meet the falling goblet, spinning it into the air in a semi-circle of wine.

Luciel’s men are turning, caught by surprise, not understanding the noise and motion, not understanding the weapon discharge or the violent collapse of their captain. Tchure’s men simply draw their guns. They are not distracted by the gunfire. Their eyes never leave the men they are talking to, men who are turning away in confusion.

Luciel rolls on the deck, limbs thrashing, as the smashed table falls around him. The goblet bounces off the deck plate beside his head. His eyes are wide, straining, staring. The plasma shot has burned a massive hole clean through him. His body is cored. The deck plating is visible through his twitching torso. The edges of the gaping damage are scorched and cooked by superheating. His armour is likewise punctured, the cut edges glowing. Larraman cells cannot hope to clog or close a wound quite so catastrophic. Tchure is on his feet, his chair tipping backwards behind him, toppling. He swings the plasma weapon down, aims it at Luciel’s face, and fires again.

Around him, the chamber shakes with a sudden storm of gunfire. Twenty or thirty boltguns discharge almost simultaneously. Armoured bodies, blown backwards, fall. Blood mist fills the air.

The goblet lands on the third bounce, rolls in a circle, and comes to rest on its side next to Honorius Luciel’s seared and shattered skull.