The Flight of the Eisenstein

In a flash of understanding, the nature of his foe was revealed to him. The Warsinger could not be brought down by the energy of light and heat. Only raw sound would be enough to kill her.

From the terrible mantra filling the dome space, the Warsinger teased out a single line of screaming clam­our and spun it into a fist of glowing resonance. Garro saw the blow coming and shoved Decius aside, dodging away from her. She moved at the speed of sound, and with a sonic boom shocking the air into white rings of vapour, the Warsinger hit Garro with a hammer made of hymnals.

Deafened. Falling. Pain.

Decius's mind reeled with the edges of the impact, clinging to the simplest of reactions, barely able to process the sudden violence wrought upon him. The dome spun around and he felt the rough surface of the ziggurat rise up and strike him as he fell back along the slope of it. Decius's power fist slapped down flat and open palmed on a jutting piece of aged gargoyle and the fingers closed around it with a snap.

The stone statuary chipped and cracked, but held, halting his ignominious descent. His head tolled like a struck bell, a strange fuzzy pressure crowding in on his eyes. Decius swore a guttural Barbarun oath under his breath and righted himself. His hyperaware senses told him of contusions and minor breaks in some of his bones, but nothing that would warrant more than passing notice. Garro… Captain Garro had saved his life up there, pushing him out to the edge of the Warsinger's attack.

Something sparked inside, an anxious flare of emo­tion that was as close to panic as an Astartes might ever get. Where was he? Where was the battle-captain? Decius came to his feet, pleased to find his bolter still at hand, the strap wrapped about his wrist guard, and batted away an Isstvanian's clumsy attack. He swept the flank of the pyramid and found his commander. Garro's marble-grey armour was stained with the rich red of Astartes blood. A warrior of the Emperor's Children was standing over him, Tarvitz, he remem­bered. Garro had spoken well of this man in the past. Still, a dart of offended pride rose in Decius's chest at the idea of a man from the III Legion coming to the aid of a Death Guard, honour brother or not.

Ignoring the grinding pain of bone on bone in his legs, Decius sprinted back up the ziggurat, regaining some of the ground he had lost in his headlong tum­ble. He caught a snatch of conversation between the two captains as he came closer.

'Hold on, brother/ Tarvitz was saying.

'Just kill it/ Garro coughed, blood on his lips, his head bare where the Warsinger's blow had sundered his battle helmet.

'I have him/ said Decius, stepping up. 'He'll be safe with me.'

Tarvitz threw him a nod and then began his ascent.

The Astartes turned back to his commander and his gut knotted as the stink of fresh blood filled his nos­trils. The smell was familiar and hateful to him. There were patterns of crushing damage to Garro's torso and his arm, and somewhere up there he had lost his bolter. But in his other hand, his good hand, the bat­tle-captain still gripped the hilt of Libertas with grim fury, clutching the sword like a talisman. Thin blades of shattered granite and obsidian punctured him, shock-gel pooling around the places where they had punched through the captain's ceramite weave like bullets, but the worst of the wounds was the leg.

Decius's face soured behind his breath mask and he was grateful that his commander could not see his expression. Less than a hand's span down Garro's thigh his right leg simply ended in a wet red scrap of fleshy rags, burnt bone and charred meat. It could only be the potent flood of coagulants, neuro-chemical agents and counter-shock dmgs from his gland implants that were keeping the captain conscious.

Contemplating the sheer agony of the wound took Decius's breath away. The Warsinger hadn't simply torn Garro's leg from its socket. She had sheared it off with a serrated blade of pure sound.

'How do I look, lad?' asked the captain. 'Not so pretty as the Emperor's Children?'

'It's not that bad.'

Garro spat out a pain-wracked chuckle. 'You're such a poor liar, boy.' He waved the Astartes forward. 'Help me up. Saul will finish what we started.'

'You're in no condition to fight, lord/ retorted Decius.

Garro dragged himself up to use the Astartes as a crutch. 'Damn you, Decius! As long as a Death Guard

draws breath, he's in a condition to fight!' He cast around, unsteady with the pain. 'Where's my bloody bolter?'

'Lost, sir/ Decius noted, guiding him downward.

The battle-captain spat. 'Terra curse it! Then help me into sword range and I'll cut these fools down instead!'

Together, leaving a trail of blood down the flank of the ragged pyramid, Decius and Garro hobbled to the floor of the dome and back into the thronging melee. Decius was aware that above them the Warsinger's song was shifting and changing, but his mind was narrowing to the controlled murder of the close bat­tle at hand. He became his captain's rock, feet spread and standing firm in the roil of combat, gunning down black hoods with his bolter in one hand and punishing those who strayed closer with his mailed fist encasing the other. Garro stood to his back, hold­ing himself up with his damaged arm and cutting shimmering arcs of death with his racing sword. Blood pooled at their feet, the captain's mingling with that of the Isstvan turncoats.

Decius yelled into his vox pick up for a medicae, but only scratches of static returned to him. The impact from the fall had probably damaged his com­munications gear, and even at the top of his lungs, his shouts could barely match the screaming of the Warsinger. Finally, Garro slumped, the Herculean effort and blood loss too much for even his Astartes physiology. Decius helped the battle-captain to the ground and propped him against the ziggurat wall. 'Sir, take this.' He slammed a full clip of ammunition into his bolter and laid it on Garro's lap.

'Where are you going?' his commander asked thickly. Garro was having trouble keeping focus.

'I'll be back, captain.' Decius turned and charged into the maelstrom, using the power fist to punch his way through the enemy ranks. Isstvanian fighters were thrown and gored as he barrelled through them, cutting a channel across the dome through the figures in dark cowls. They moved like water, churning around him and pooling back into the path he made.

At last Decius found what he sought and roared as loud as he could. Voyen! Hear me!'

The Death Guard Apothecary's head snapped up from the body of a brother who had been cut apart by laser fire. 'I can do no more for this one,' he said grimly.

'The Emperor knows his name/ shouted Decius, 'and the captain will join that roll of honour as well, unless you come with me now!'

'Garro?' Voyen sprang to his feet. 'Show me, boy, quickly! The captain of the Seventh won't perish if I can help it.'

They waded back into the morass, fighting and moving. 'This way!'

'He's still my commander/ grated Voyen, 'do you understand that? No matter what is said and done, that will never change. Do you understand, Decius?'

'Who are you trying to convince, Voyen? Me, or yourself?' Decius threw him a hard look. At this moment I don't care a damn for you and your blasted lodge. Just save-'

The rest of the Death Guard's words were lost in a final, shrieking exultation of noise from the top of the pyramid. Every man who could clapped his hands to his ears in blind reflex as the Warsinger sang her last, desperate attack, and died. Decius looked up and saw two figures in shimmering purple at the peak, saw a torn shape in diaphanous robes fall away and tumble unceremoniously down the steep face.

'Eidolon!' cried an Astartes at their side. 'Eidolon made the kill! The bitch is dead!'

An oval object arced though the air trailing white streamers and Decius grabbed it before it could impact on the ground. He turned it over in his hand and found it was a human head. 'The Warsinger/ he pronounced, holding it up by the woman's long pale tresses. The neck had been severed by a single clean blow. With a grimace, he tossed it to the warrior of the Emperor's Children and pushed on, ignoring the cries of victory. As one, the surviving black hoods stopped fighting. Some had fallen to their knees and were weeping, rocking back and forth, or cradling their headsets in their hands, mewing over the sud­den loss of their precious song. Most of them just stood there, milling around like lost children, chok­ing the dome with their numbers.

'Out of my way, out of my way, you turncoat cattle!' bellowed Decius, fighting against the moaning crowd. He began punching them down where they stood, cut­ting the Isstvanians like wheat before the scythe. Other Astartes joined in, and soon it became a wholesale cull. The Warmaster's orders had not spoken of prisoners.

By the time they forced their way back to the foot of the ziggurat, Garro lay before them deathly pale and silent. An Apothecary from the III Legion knelt at his side, frowning.

Voyen, his face tight with distress, shot a hard look at the other medicae. 'Stand aside. You're not to touch him!'

'I saved his life, Death Guard/ came the terse reply. 'You should be thanking me. I did your job for you.'

Voyen cocked his fist in anger, but Decius stopped him halfway. 'Brother/ he began, turning to the other man, 'thank you. Will he survive?'

'Get him to an infirmary within the hour and he may live to fight another day.'

Then he will.' The young Astartes saluted in the old martial fashion. 'I am Decius of the Seventh. My com­pany is in your debt.'

The Apothecary gave a slight smile to Voyen and made to leave. 'Fabius, Apothecary to the Emperor's Children. Consider my care of your captain a gift among comrades/

Voyen's words dripped venom as the Astartes left. 'Arrogant whelp. How dare he-'

"Voyen, snapped Decius, silencing the other man. 'Help me carry him/

Garro was falling forever.

The warm void around him was thick and heavy. It was an ocean of thin, clear oil, as deep as memory, and beyond his ability to know its edge. He sank into it, the warmth wrapping around him in gossamer threads, in through his mouth and nostrils, filling his lungs and gullet, weighing him down. Down and down, deeper. Falling. Still falling.

He was aware of his injuries in a vague, discon­nected way. Parts of his body were blacked out in his sensorium, nerve clusters dark and silent while the patient engines of his Astartes physiology went to work on keeping him alive. 'My wounds will never heal/ he said aloud, and the words bubbled past him, solidifying. Why had he said that? Where had that come from? Garro wondered with elephantine slow­ness and pushed at the thoughts in his mind, but they were impossible to shift, large as glaciers and ice-cold to the touch.

The trance. Part of his brain eventually provided him with this small fragment of data. Yes, of course.

His body had closed its borders and sealed him inside it, all other concerns and outside interests forgotten as his implants worked in concert to stop an encroaching death. The Astartes was in stasis, of a kind: Not the artificially generated fashion, where flesh was chilled down and chemical anti-crystallisation agents were pumped into the bloodstream for long-duration, low-consumable starflight. This was the semi-death of the wounded man and the near killed.

Odd how he could be at once so aware of it and yet so unaware as well. This was the function of the catalepsean node implanted in his brain, switching off sections of his cerebellum as a servitor might douse lamps in the unused rooms of a house. Garro had been here before, during the Pasiphae Uprising, after a suicide attack on the Stalwart's pod decks had ripped the flank of the battle-barge open and tossed a hundred unprotected men into space. He had sur­vived that, awaking with new scars and months of missing time.

Would he live through this? Garro tried to probe his thoughts for an exact recall of his last conscious moments, and found rough, broken perceptions and spikes of brutal pain. Tarvitz. Yes, Saul Tarvitz had been there, and the lad Decius as well. And before that… Before that there was only the humming echo of white noise and heart-shrinking pain. He let him­self drop away, let the agony shadow fade. Would he live through this? Garro would only know when it happened. Otherwise, he would fall and fall, sink and sink, and the captain of the Seventh would become another soul lost, a steel skull-shaped stud the size of his thumbnail hammered into the iron Wall of Mem­ory on Barbarus.

He found he did not have a will to fight. Here, in this non-place, coiled inside himself, he only was. Marking time, waiting, healing; that was how it had been after Pasiphae, and so that was how it should be now.

How it should be.

But he knew something was different even as the thought drifted through him. That shattering pain down in the dome, that had been like nothing he had ever experienced before. Hundreds of years of warfare had not prepared him for the Warsinger's brutal kiss. Garro knew now, too late, after the fact, that she had been an enemy of a kind he had never before encoun­tered. Where her power sprang from, what form it took… These were things new to him in a universe where the Astartes had thought himself incapable of being surprised. That would teach him not to be com­placent.

In his own way, the battle-captain marvelled at the play of events. It was incredible that he had survived to fall into a healing trance after challenging the Warsinger. Other Death Guard, other Emperor's Chil­dren, had also met her might and died of it. He thought of poor Rahl, crushed like a spent ration can. There would be no more wagers or games for him. As those brothers lay dead, Garro lived still, clinging to the raw edge of life. 'Why?' he demanded. 'Why me and not them? Why Nathaniel Garro and not Pyr Rahl?'

Who made the choice? What scales were balanced by a man's death or his life? The questions hooked into him and pulled the Astartes back and forth, burrowing deep. It was such foolishness to ask these poindess things of an uncaring universe. What scales? There were no scales, no great arbiter of fates! It was pagan

idolatry to consider such notions, to insist that the lives of men ran in some kind of clockwork beneath the winding fingers of a deity. No: here was truth, Imperial truth. The stars turned and men died without a creator's plan for them. There were no gods, no here-fores and hereafters, no futures but those we made for ourselves. Garro and his kinsmen simply were.

And yet…

In this place of death sleep, where things were at once murky and clearer, there seemed instances where Nathaniel Garro felt a pressure upon him that came from a place far distant, beyond himself. At the corners of his sensorium, he might perceive a small fragment of brilliance thrown across countless light-years, the merest suggestion of interest from an intellect that towered over his. Cold logic told him that this was wishful, desperate thinking dredged up from the crude animal core of his hindbrain. But Garro could not quite let go of the feeling, of the raw hope that the will of something greater than he was acting upon him. If he was not dead, then perhaps he had been spared. It was a giddy, perilous thought.

'His hand lies upon all of us, and every one of us owes Him our devotion.'

Who spoke those words? Was it Garro or someone else? They seemed strange and new, echoing from a distance.

'He guides us, teaches us, exhorts us to become more than we are,' said the colourless voice, 'but most of all, the Emperor protects.'

The words disturbed Nathaniel. They made him turn and shift in the thick sea, his comfort fading. He sensed the pressure of dark storms brewing out in the impossible spaces around him, the visions of them coming to his mind through someone else's eyes;

through a soul not far from his, yes, bright like the distant watcher, but only a single candle against the greater light's burning sun; black clouds of churning emotion, seething and pushing at the warp and weft of space, looking for a weak point through which they could flow. The storm front was coming, inex­orable, unstoppable. Garro wanted to turn away but there was no place in the drifting fall where he did not find them. He wanted to rise up and fight it, but he had no hands, no face, no flesh.

There were shapes in the gloomy shifting coils that rose and fell, some resembling the spirals of symbols he had seen inside the dome on Isstvan Extremis, oth­ers he had glimpsed on the uncommon banners of the Lupercal's Court, and repeating, over and over, a three-fold icon that seemed to be seeking him out wherever his attention moved: a triad of skulls, a pyramid of screaming faces, three black discs, a trio of bleeding bullet wounds, and other variations, but always the same arrangement of shapes.

'The Emperor protects,' said a woman, and Garro felt her hands upon his cheek, the salt tang of her fallen tears on her lips. The sensations came to him from far, far away, drawing him to them and out of the haze of the threatening storms.

Nathaniel was rising now, faster and faster, the warmth turning chill upon him, the pain coiling around his legs and stomach. There was… there was a woman, a head of short hair framed in a penitent's hood and…

And agony, awakening.

'Eyes of Terra!' gasped Kaleb, 'he's alive! The captain lives!'

* * *

'I would like to see him,' said Temeter stiffly.

Sergeant Hakur frowned. 'Lord, my captain is in no state to-'

Temeter silenced him with an upraised hand. 'Hakur, old blade, out of respect to you for your ser­vice and record, I won't consider your obstreperous manner to be discourteous to my rank, but do not mistake what I just said for a request. Get out of my way, sergeant.'

Hakur gave a shallow bow. 'Of course, captain. I for­get myself

Temeter stepped around the veteran and strode purposefully into the Endurance's tertiary infirmary, throwing nods to men from his own company who were still healing from wounds taken on the jorgall world-ship. Most would not return to combat status, but would suffer the comparative ignominy of becoming permanently stationed as ship crew, or else return to Barbarus to live out their days as comman­dant-instructors to the noviciates. Ullis Temeter hoped that Garro would not share such a fate. The day that the battle-captain was forced to step off the battle line would be the day the man's spirit perished.

He entered a cordoned-off medicae cell and found his comrade there in a support throne, surrounded by brass technologies and glass jars of fluids piping gen­tly into the sockets of Garro's implanted carapace. The battle-captain's housecarl jumped as Temeter swept in and came to his feet in a jerk of shocked motion. Kaleb clutched a fist of inky papers to his chest and blinked with watery eyes. Temeter immedi­ately had the sense that he had caught the serf doing something wrong, but he decided not to press the matter.

'Has he said anything?'

Kaleb nodded, tucking the papers into an inner pocket in his tunic. 'Yes, sir. While the captain was healing, he spoke several times. I couldn't divine the meaning of it all, but I heard him speak names, the Emperor's chief among them.' The housecarl was anxious. 'He has not been in contact with anyone else beyond the medicae staff and myself since his healing coma concluded.'

Temeter looked at Garro and leaned closer. 'Nathaniel? Nathaniel, you old fool. If you're done sleeping, there's a crusade on, or haven't you noticed?' He kept a note of good humour, masking his own concern. His smile became genuine when Garro's eyes fluttered open and fixed on him.

'Ullis, can't you handle a fight without me?'

'Ha,' said Temeter. 'Your wounds haven't dulled that wit of yours, then.' He laid a hand on Garro's shoul­der. 'Word from that peacock Saul Tarvitz. He's back on the Andronius, but he wanted to thank you for soft­ening up the Warsinger for him.'

The captain grunted in amusement, but said noth­ing.

Your lads were concerned,' Temeter continued. 'I hear Hakur was afraid he might have to step up and take the eagle cuirass.'

'I can still carry it, if only these sawbones would let me go.' Garro winced as a wave of pain shocked through him. 'I heal better standing up.'

Temeter shot a look out into the infirmary proper where Voyen hovered silently. He took a breath. 'How's the leg, Nathaniel?'

Garro's face went a little grey as he looked down the chair. His right limb was misshapen and out of place. Instead of a form of strong, firm muscle and sinew, there was a skeletal construct of dense steel and plates

made of polished brass that mimicked the planes of a thigh and calf. The augmetic leg was of excellent qual­ity, but it was no less shocking to see it there. Conflicting thoughts warred over Garro's expression. 'It will suffice. The chirurgeons tell me that the nerve bonding went without incident. According to Brother Voyen, in time I will not even be aware of it.'

Temeter heard the thinly veiled disbelief in his comrade's voice, but chose not to respond to it. 'That's the battle-captain I know. What other man can leave a good cut of himself on the field and still come back for a rematch with teeth bared?'

Garro gave a wan smile, his voice strengthening. 'I hope that will be soon. Tell me, brother, what have I missed while I was healing? Did I sleep through Isstvan's pacification and the rest of the Great Cru­sade?'

'Hardly' Temeter worked at keeping a light tone, even as he saw where Nathaniel was taking the con­versation. 'Orders from the Warmaster have come down from Lord Mortarion. The fleet's at high anchor over Isstvan HI as we speak. All the turncoat's local orbitals have been taken down by the Raven squadrons and what system ships we encountered are wreckage. The skies belong to Horus.'

'And the attack on the Choral City? If you are here then I assume it's still to come.'

'Soon, brother. The Warmaster himself has chosen the men who will form the speartip against Vardus Praal's forces.'

Garro frowned slightly. 'Horus is picking the units? That is… atypical. That's usually a task for the Legion Master.'

'He is the Warmaster,' Temeter replied with a hint of pride. 'Atypical is his prerogative.'

Garro nodded. 'He chose your unit, didn't he? No wonder you're so happy about it.' The captain smiled. 'I look forward to fighting alongside you again so soon after the jorgall assault.'

And there it was. As much as Temeter didn't want to show a reaction, he knew he did, and he saw that Nathaniel caught it.

The ends of Garro's smile tightened. 'Or not?'

'Nathaniel/ he sighed, 'I thought I should be the one to tell you, before that dolt Grulgor made sport of it. The Apothecaries have not declared you fully healed and therefore you are deemed unfit for battle­field operations. Your command remains at a limited duty standing.'

'Limited.' Garro bit out the word and shot a savage, angry glare at Voyen, who hurriedly turned and walked away. 'Is that how I am considered, as limited7 .'

'Don't be petulant,' snapped Temeter, heading off his friend's anger as quickly as he could, 'and don't take it out on Voyen. He's only doing his duty to the Legion, and to you. If you tried to lead the Seventh Company now, you'd risk failing them and that's a chance the Death Guard can't take. You're not going down to Isstvan III, Nathaniel. Those orders come direct from First Captain Typhon.'

'Calas Typhon can kiss my sword-hilt,' growled Garro, and Temeter saw his housecarl blink in shock at the normally stoic captain's insult. 'Get this cage of ornaments off me,' he continued, forcing away the medicae monitors and philtre vials.

'Nathaniel, wait.'

With a grunt of effort, Garro shoved himself off the support throne and on to his flesh and metal feet. He took a few firm steps forward. 'If I can move then I can fight. I'll go to Typhon and tell him that in

person.' Garro pushed away and paced out of the cell, fighting off a hobble in his walk with each angry step.

Kaleb watched his master rise from his sickbed and stride away, the steel and brass of his new limb as much a part of him as his iron will to survive. Alone again for a moment in the small chamber, he pulled out the sheaf of papers tucked in his pocket and spread them smooth on the rough matting of the support throne. With furtive care, from a chain around his neck the housecarl drew a small metal fetish carved out of a bolt shell case. It was a rudi­mentary thing, rough in form but cut with the sort of care that only devotion could bring. Held to the light, thin lines of etching and patterns of pinholes showed the outline of a towering figure haloed by rays from a sun. Kaleb put the small icon down on the top of the papers and ran his palms over one another.

Now he was convinced, as ridiculous as the idea was that he might have required further proof for his faith. As his honoured master had dallied between death and life there before him, Kaleb had stood sen­tinel over Captain Garro and read in hushed whispers the words that traced across the dog-eared leaflets. 'His hand lies upon all of us, and every one of us owes Him our devotion. He guides us, teaches us and exhorts us to become more than we are, but most of all, the Emperor protects.'

Indeed, the Emperor had protected Nathaniel Garro. He had answered Kaleb's entreaty to save the life of his master, and shown the Death Guard the way back from the brink. Now the housecarl fully understood what he had only suspected before. Garro is of purpose. The Astartes lived, not through chance or caprice of action, but because the Lord of Mankind

wished it to be so. There would come a moment, and the housecarl instinctively knew it would be soon, when Garro would be set to a task that only he could fulfil. When that time came, Kaleb's role would be to light the man's way.

Kaleb knew that to speak of this to his master would be wrong. He had kept his quiet beliefs to himself for this long, and the moment was not yet right to speak openly of them. But he could see it. He was sure that Garro was gradually turning to the same path that he already walked, a path that led to Terra and to the only truly divine being in the cosmos, the God-Emperor Himself.

When he was sure he was not being observed, the housecarl began to pray, his hands spread wide across the pages of the Lectitio Divinitatus, the words of the Church of the Holy Emperor.

Garro's face was hard with chained anger, and he felt it surge each time the new leg made him limp. The minute gyroscopic mechanisms in the limb would take time to learn the motions and kinetics of his body movement, and until they did, he would be forced to walk as if lame. Still, he reflected, at least he could walk. The ignominy of relying on a cane or some other support would have been difficult to bear.

Temeter kept pace with him. The captain of the Fourth had given up trying to convince him to return to the infirmary, and followed warily at his side. The uncertainty on Temeter's face was clear. Garro's battle-brother had not seen him in such a foul humour before.

They reached the Endurance's commandery, the nexus of private chambers and sanctorum their pri-march took as his own while he was aboard, crossing

the small atrium to the entrance. Garro saw another Death Guard walking in front of him, intent on the same destination, and to his concern he realised it was Ignatius Grulgor. The commander of the Second Company turned at the sound of a steel foot on the marble tiles of the floor and gave Garro a disdainful, appraising look.

'Not dead, then.' Grulgor folded his arms and looked down his nose. He was still wearing his wargear, where Garro had only simple duty robes.

'I hope that's not too great a disappointment to you,' Garro retorted.

'Nothing could be further from the truth,' lied the commander, 'but tell me, in your invalid state, would it not be safer for you to keep to your sickbed? In such a weakened condition-'

'Oh, for once in your life be silent,' snapped Teme-ter.

Grulgor's face darkened. 'Watch your mouth, cap­tain.'

Garro waved the other Astartes away. 'I don't have time to spar with you, Grulgor. I will have the pri-march's ear' He continued on towards the doors.

'You're too late for that/ came the reply, 'not that the Death Lord would have deigned to spare his attention to a cripple. Mortarion is no longer aboard the Endurance. He's with the Warmaster once again, in conference on matters of the Crusade.'

'Then I'll talk to Typhon.'

Grulgor sneered. 'You can wait your turn. He sum­moned me here only moments ago.'

'We'll see who waits/ snapped Garro, and slammed the commandery doors wide open.

Inside, First Captain Typhon's head jerked up from the battle maps laid out on the chart table before

him. Typhon's hulking armoured form was framed by a tall stained-glass window that looked out over the length of the warship's dorsal hull. 'Garro?' He seemed genuinely surprised to see the battle-captain up and walking.

'Sir/ replied Nathaniel, 'Captain Temeter informs me that my combatant status has not been restored.'

Typhon gave Grulgor a slight sign with his hand, a command to wait. This is so. The Apothecaries say-'

'I care little for that at this moment/ Garro broke in, ignoring protocol. 'I request my command squad be immediately tasked to the Isstvan III assault!'

A quick, almost imperceptible look passed between Typhon and Grulgor before the first captain spoke again. 'Captain Temeter, why are you here?'

Temeter hesitated, wrong-footed by the question. 'Lord, I came with Captain Garro, in, uh, support.'

Typhon gestured to Garro with a wave of his hand. 'Does he need support, Temeter? He can stand on his own two feet.' He gave a sharp nod at the comman­dery doors. 'You are dismissed. Attend to your company and the preparations for the drop.'

The captain of the Fourth frowned and saluted, giv­ing Garro a last look before he exited the chamber. When the doors banged shut, Nathaniel met Typhon's gaze again. 'I'll have an answer from you, first captain.'

'Your request is denied.'

Why?' Garro demanded. 'I am fit to lead! Damn it, I stood and fought on Isstvan Extremis with a leg torn from me, and yet I cannot prosecute the Emperor's enemies with this tin prosthesis bolted to my torso?'

Typhon's hard amber eyes narrowed. 'If it were up to me, I would let you do this, Garro. I would be will­ing to let you stumble into that war zone and live or

die on your own stock of bravado, but the word comes from his lordship. Mortarion makes this com­mand, captain. Would you oppose the will of our primarch?'

'If he were here in this chamber, aye, I would.'

'Then you would hear the same words from his lips. If time enough had passed and your injury was fully healed, then perhaps, but not here and now.'

Grulgor couldn't resist the opportunity to twist the knife. 'I'll bring a little glory back for you, Terran.'

Garro's ire rose in a hot surge, but Typhon's gruff voice snapped out again before he could speak.

'No, Captain Grulgor, you will not. It is my decision that you will also remain with the orbital flotilla dur­ing the Isstvan III operation.'

The commander's arrogant bluster died in his throat. 'What? Why, lord? Garro, he is injured, but I am at battle-ready strength and-'

Typhon spoke over him. 'I called you here to give you this order personally, before I departed to board the Terminus Est. I was going to send a runner to Cap­tain Garro with his orders, but as he has presented himself here before me, I see no reason why I shouldn't inform both of you together.'

The first captain stepped around the chart table towards them and took on a formal, commanding tone. 'Based on the battle plans of his excellence the Warmaster Horus and our liege the Death Lord Mor­tarion, it has been determined that you will both be assigned to duty stations with your command squads aboard an Imperial warship. This will be a supervi­sory posting. The rest of your great companies will remain in reserve. During the assault on Isstvan III and the Choral City, you will provide standby tactical support for the drop-pod deployment operation, and

remain on alert to perform rapid-reaction interdict duties.'

A servitor approached Garro and handed him a data-slate containing the details of the official battle edict.

'Interdiction against what?' demanded Grulgor. 'Praal's army has nothing that flies, we destroyed it all!'

'Which of us will have operational command?' asked Garro in a low, resigned voice, paging through the content of the slate.

'That responsibility will be shared jointly' Typhon replied.

On some level, Garro felt defeated and empty, but at least he could draw small consolation from the fact that he would not have to face Grulgor lording his superiority over the men of his command squad. In an instant, the burning discontentment that had flooded through him cooled and faded. Garro's old, usual manner of dogged endurance came easily back to the fore. If Mortarion said it was to be so, then in all truth what right did he have to say otherwise? He hid a sigh. 'Thank you, first captain, for illuminating me. At your discretion, I wish to assemble my men and brief them on this new task.'

Typhon nodded. 'You are dismissed, Captain Garro.'

Nathaniel Garro turned and walked away, the click­ing of the steel foot a ticking metronome for his discontent.

Grulgor made to leave as well, but Typhon shook his head. 'Ignatius, a moment.' When Garro had left the chamber, he stepped closer to the commander. 'I know you feel that I have slighted you, brother, but believe me, the reverse is so.'

'Indeed?' Grulgor was unconvinced. 'The key batde of this campaign and you tell me I must watch it from orbit, corralled in a tin can with a gang of swabs, and Garro playing the wounded martyr? Please, my esteemed first captain, tell me how this thing does me such great honour!'

Typhon ignored the sarcasm. 'I spoke to you before of our master's desire to bring Garro to the Warmas-ter's banner over Terra's, but we both know that Garro will not change. He's too much the Emperor's dutiful warrior.'

Grulgor's brow furrowed. 'Isstvan III… Could this be the turning point?' Typhon said nothing, watching him. 'Perhaps…' He nodded slowly, forming his thoughts. 'I think I see an intention emerging: the unusual pattern of mission assignments to specific units from the Legions, instead of complete compa­nies. One could imagine that the Lord Horus seeks to isolate the elements that do not share his convictions.'

Typhon nodded. 'When the turning point, as you call it, arrives there are certain duties Horus would have you perform.' His voice dropped. 'Despite Mor-tarion's munificence and lenience towards him, I know Garro will attempt to betray our liege lord and the Warmaster.'

Grulgor nodded in return, for the first time exactly aware of his position in the scheme of things. 'I will not allow that to transpire.'

Garro stood in the centre of the armoury chamber and repeated Typhon's words. He forced away the chill impression of storm clouds and building threat, the sense of vast and silent machinations thundering unseen above him. Garro put these things aside and spoke to his men as their brother and commander,

preparing them for the battle to come. There were grumblings of dissension, but Hakur stamped on them immediately, and in good order the assembled squads of Astartes began their arming procedures prior to embarkation to their new posting.

'This ship, sir,' said Sendek, 'the vessel where we're to be sent. Do you know anything of it?'

'A frigate,' replied Garro. 'It's called the Eisenstein!

SEVEN

Hard Landing Life-Eater Decision

Itwas the honour of the death guard that they be the first Astartes to set foot on the surface of Isstvan III,in the mission to restore the world to compliance. Ullis Temeter's heart swelled with martial pride to know that he and the men of his company would form the very point of the spear tip. The captain's drop-pod hammered into the compacted mudflats adjoining the Choral City's trench lines with a solid thunder of torn earth. The concussion of the landing echoed over and over as hundreds more pods rained from the sky in burning red-orange streaks, half-burying themselves in the dirt.

The invasion force numbered in the thousands, with warriors of every rank and stripe coming in hard, cold fury to the surface. In the minds of each Astartes there was anger and censure for the rebels, and the Death Guard were but a part of the multiple brigades of warriors and war machines turned to that purpose.

The flanks of Temeter's pod flew open, propelled by explosive bolts, and he took his first breath of Isst-vanian air to call out to his men.

'For Terra and Mortarion!' The captain led his com­mand squad out of the shallow crater their landing had created and opened fire, laying down a chattering fan of tracer against a group of turncoat soldiers who had ventured close to observe.

Vardus Praal had prepared his defences well, gutting the forest that had previously stood in this place and making the flat landscape into a sparse killing ground of Uenches, tunnels and low bunkers. Beyond it, a few kilometres distant, were the outskirts of the Choral City itself. The cool blue-white sunlight of the day made it glitter and shine. Temeter saw more streaks of fire descending on the city proper, towards the striking shapes of the Precentor's palace and the Sirenhold: the drop-pod assault elements of the World Eaters, Emperor's Children and the Sons of Horns.

He smiled. The Death Guard would meet them soon enough, but first he had a punishment to mete out. The ttaitor Praal's men had fashioned these earthworks in defiance of the Emperor's call to obedience, and it was Captain Temeter's duty to show them the error of their ways. It would have been a simple matter for the Astartes invasion force to bypass the uench lines and land behind them, but to do that would have sent the wrong message. It would have implied that the fortifi­cations were somehow a challenge to Imperial might, when clearly they were nothing more than a minor impediment. So, Temeter and the Death Guard would walk into the fire corridors of the Isstvanian lines. They would rend and destroy them, and march on to the Choral City to show these deluded fools the math. Nothing could stand in the way of the Emperor's will.

The Astartes moved across the dull mud in a thick line of marble-grey and green armour, a heavy wave of ceramite and flexsteel fording snarls of razor wire and barriers made of rough-cut tree trunks. They strode through kill points and shrugged off hails of stubber bullets. Some of Temeter's troops paused here and there as they found concealed pop-up hatches and closed them permanently with melta bombs.

The captain glanced back and saw the venerable dreadnought Huron-Fal moving to his right flank, the spread clawed feet of the hulking warrior churning up the mud. Sprays of fire from the twin-mounted can­nons on Huron's right arm lanced out and blew huge divots of clotted earth from the enemy lines, sending traitor soldiers scattering.

The defenders of the Choral City wore drab fatigues that matched the colour of the dull mud, but such pitiful attempts at camouflage were rendered useless by the image intensification lenses and infra-red prey sight functions of an Astartes helm. He gave the com­mand in battle-sign for the line to split into skirmish parties and watched as the warriors broke into packs.

Temeter knew most of the men in this detachment by name or reputation, although there were some Death Guard here today that he had never fought with. The Warmaster's deployment plan for the assault, while sound, was not one that Temeter him­self would have constructed. Rather than follow the traditional lines of unit by company division, Horus had combed the Legions for individual squad-level elements and assembled a force that drew men from dozens of different companies.

It was the captain's understanding that this had happened not only with the Death Guard, but also in the World Eaters, the Emperor's Children and Horus's

own Legion. He had to admit, the strategic thinking behind such a selective deployment was beyond him, but if the Warmaster had ordered it to be so, then he had no doubt there was a reason for it; privately, the captain of the Fourth was pleased to have a battlefield to himself for a change, able to fight without taking a back seat to Grulgor's grandstanding or Typhon's bru­tal tactics.

The foe was regrouping, recovering from the shock of the initial landing to the point where their fire was no longer random. Over the flat blares of ballistic shot, Temeter's keen hearing captured scratchy, atonal sounds that sounded like singing. He had read the after-action chronicles from Isstvan Extremis and knew of these so-called 'Warsingers' and their strange choral witchery. It seems that here on the third planet, the arcane power of their peculiar music also held sway. Temeter raised his combi-bolter and began a symphony of his own.

The Eisenstein was an unremarkable vessel, an older pattern of ship in the frigate tonnage grade, just over two kilometres in length from bow to stern. It bore some resemblance to the newer Sword-class craft, but only inasmuch as most Imperial ships shared a simi­lar design philosophy. Almost every line vessel in service to the Lord of Terra was constructed of con­gruent elements: the dagger prow, the massive block of sub-light and warp drives, and forged between them amidships of crenellations and complex sheaves of steel.

'It doesn't look like much/ Voyen remarked quietly, peering through the Stormbird's viewport as they crossed from the Endurance. He was still wary around Garro and it showed in his voice.

'It's just a ship/ replied the battle-captain. 'There or elsewhere, we do our duty no differently'

In the frigate's landing bay, which seemed cramped and narrow in comparison to the Endurance, the ship's master was waiting to greet the Death Guard with a formal bridge party.

'Baryk Carya/ he said, with a clipped accent and a brisk salute. 'Commander Grulgor, Battle-Captain Garro. As the primarch has ordered, this ship is yours until death or new duty.'

Carya was thickset and tawny, with a matting of stubbly grey hair around his head and chin. Garro noticed the shine of a carbon-plated augmetic at his cheek and saw the stud-plug cords dangling in a queue from the back of his skull. He was terse in manner, but just on the right side of obedient.

As ship's master, Carya would be de facto captain when a ranking Astartes was not on board, and he didn't doubt the man had some resentment about stepping out of that role for this assignment. The ship­master glanced at the lean, thin-faced woman at his side. Garro recognised the status pins on her epaulets as those of executive rank. 'My deck officer, Racel Vought.' She bowed and made the sign of the aquila.

Grulgor took this opportunity to sniff in slight dis­dain. 'You may carry on, shipmaster. When Captain Garro or I require you attention, you will be made aware of it.'

Carya and Vought saluted and left. Garro watched them go, aware that Grulgor was already attempting to place himself in a position of superiority less than a minute after they had stepped on to Eisenstein's decks.

He looked back towards the aura-field holding out the vacuum of space as the last of the Stormbirds

drifted into the landing bay on darts of blue thrust, angling to land next to the transports assigned to the elements from the Second and Seventh Companies. A momentary crease of uncertainty crossed Garro's face. He counted the Stormbirds. Surely the new arrival was one too many for their needs? It wasn't as if the entirety of their commands had come with the two unit leaders.

The ship settled and folded its raptor wings to its fuselage. The captain watched it from the corner of his eye, waiting for the embarkation hatch to drop open to release more of Grulgor's men, but it remained static. There were no passengers aboard, then? Perhaps the ship only carried inanimate cargo.

Grulgor crossed his line of sight and showed Garro a thin, humourless smile. 'I intend to make an inspec­tion of this vessel to ensure it is fully prepared for the battle.'

Very well.'

The commander signalled to a handful of his men and strode away without looking back. Garro sighed and turned to Kaleb, where the housecarl stood, bowed. 'Supervise the Eisenstein's servitors to unload our wargear and equipment.' He paused. 'And report to me any information about the payload from that last Stormbird.'

'Aye, lord. I'll have the crew install the gear on the frigate's arming racks.'

Garro looked at Sergeant Hakur. Andus, take the men and find us a good billet before Grulgor's men take the choice spaces.' Off the veteran's salute, the battle-captain turned to his command squad. 'I'm going to the bridge. Decius, Sendek, you'll join me.'

Voyen gave him a look. 'While Grulgor stalks the lower decks? Forgive me, lord, but I find something about his manner unsettling.'

Who doesn't?' offered Sendek.

'He's your superior, Apothecary/ Garro said, more bluntly than he had intended. 'He has the authority to do as he wishes, within reason.' Nathaniel waved Voyen away. 'Go with Hakur. I'm in no mood for idle speculation at this moment.'

With his warriors following him, Garro walked to the elevator platform that would take them up to the frigate's central tiers. He kept his face neutral, but Voyen had struck a sore point. It would be divisive and unseemly for the battle-captain to have spoken openly in front of line Astartes, but the truth was Garro too suspected an ulterior motive on Grulgor's part.

Have we come to this? His thoughts echoed in his mind. When men of the same Legion cannot look upon one another without a bloom of distrust? There is rivalry between warriors and then there is enmity… And this… What am I sensing?

'Captain !' Temeter looked up into the face of one of his junior officers. 'Sir, our approach on the northern flank is being forced into a bottleneck. The defenders have a twinned quad-barrel cannon sweeping the area. It is emplaced in a ferrocrete bunker. Shall I give the command to go around?'

Temeter snorted. We are Death Guard, lad. When we encounter a boulder in our path, we do not slink and flow around it like water. We strike and shatter it!' He rose and beckoned his command squad with him. 'Show me this impediment'

They moved low over undulating ground, leaping over shallow trench works clogged with Isstvanian dead and shell casings. The crack and screech of shots whizzed around them, and still Temeter heard the

doleful droning dirges of the enemy. Crossing a shal­low incline, the captain deliberately stepped out of line and stomped on a fallen speaker horn where it had fallen from a support pole. The device sparked and fell silent.

There, lord/ said the officer.

It was a flat hexagon set deep in the grey mud, the clean shade of ferrocrete not more than a few years old. Pits were being dug in the facia of it from bolt rounds as Death Guard sharpshooters sniped from cover. As the young Astartes had said, the wicked bar­rels of the quad-guns were spitting an endless stream of tracer out over the approaches. A handful of bro­ken bodies in the killing zone showed where battle-brothers had advanced and died in the attempt. Temeter frowned. 'Shot and shell won't do the deed. Bring up the men with flamers and plasma weapons.'

The order was relayed and a troop of Death Guard carrying inferno guns came forward. Temeter tossed his combi-bolter to the young officer and beckoned another man closer. 'Your torch, give it to me.' The captain took the warrior's flamer and shook it, hear­ing the satisfying slosh of a near-full tank of liquid promethium. 'Bolters, draw their attention. Flamers, give them the heat.'

The Astartes opened fire and as Temeter expected, the heavy quad-guns inched around to track on them. His men understood the plan without the need for him to lay it out in detail. The moment the quads were depressed, the Death Guard with flamer and plasma weapons crested their cover and sent jets of superheated gas and burning fluid washing over the sides of the bunker and into the interior. The defend­ers couldn't range the guns back fast enough, and

within moments, Temeter had led his men to the very wall of the low blockhouse. For good measure he had a sergeant toss a fist of krak grenades through the aiming slot and then projected himself up and over the bunker roof.

Temeter ran and dropped down into the S-shaped entry tunnel, smashing a hooded trooper into the fer­rocrete with an ugly crack of bone. He heard the confusion inside the dugout and waded into it. Within, black smoke and licks of guttering fire clung to the walls and the heat radiating from the thrum­ming quad-guns was thick. The captain triggered the borrowed flamer and hosed it across the space before him, a hissing red whip of flame carving through the air at chest height. Men became torches and boxes of unspent ammunition in compartments below cooked off in blaring detonations. One of the Isst-vanian soldiers ran at him, shrieking and aflame, and pulled Temeter into an embrace. The captain let the flamer drop from his grip and ripped the man in two, tearing him apart. He beat out the flames and gri­maced as the rest of his troop waded in and finished the task.

The bunker silenced, Temeter glanced into the tun­nel mouths that branched downward from it. 'Seal all of these,' he ordered. 'We don't want rats popping up behind us after our line advances past this point.' Without the roar of the cannons, once again the cap­tain became aware of the reedy caterwauling issuing from a vox-speaker. He punched it into pieces with his fist. 'Destroy those repeaters wherever you see them,' Temeter continued. That oath-forsaken noise is damaging my calm.'

'Sir!' called one of the men, pointing out through the gun slit.

Temeter saw a huge shadow dropping towards the horizon on pillars of retro-rocket fire, and then felt the earth tremble like a struck bell. Every Astartes in the bunker left the floor for a split second, and he heard the ferrocrete roof crack with the Shockwave. The cap­tain peered out and saw a massive cylinder standing upright in a shroud of steam, some distance beyond the zone where the drop-pods had put down. It was easily the size of a hive-city habitat block, guidance fins still glowing cherry-red with the heat of re-entry. There came a mighty moan of stressed metals and the sides of the cylinder fell away, trailing flexible pipes and streams of white vapour. From inside the monstrous drop-capsule came the hooting call of a battle-horn, and then planes of steel and iron emerged from the smoke to become a colossus bristling with armour and guns. The ground resonated with each thunderous footfall as the Imperator-class Titan strode out towards the Choral City.

'Dies Irae', said Temeter, naming the massive war machine. 'Our cousins from the Legion Mortis have decided to join our outing.' He allowed himself to marvel at the huge battle construct, then shook it off. 'Signals/ he called, 'contact the Irae's princeps and update him on the battle situation.'

The young Astartes officer handed Temeter back his combi-bolter and frowned. 'Lord, there is a concern with the vox.'

'Explain,' he demanded.

'We're having difficulty making contact on some channels, including the feed to the Titan and our ships in orbit.'

Temeter glanced up. Are the locals jamming us?'

The Astartes shook his head. 'I don't believe so, cap­tain. The drop-out is too selective for that. It's as if…

Well, it's as if certain vox frequencies have just been switched off.'

He accepted this with a brisk nod. 'We'll work around it, then. If the problem gets worse, then inform me. Otherwise, we proceed with the attack plan as determined.' Temeter bounded out of the cloying air of the dead bunker and strode forward. 'On to the Choral City,' he called. A vast shadow hove above him and the captain looked up to see the underside of the Dies Irae's foot as it passed over him, descending to fall upon another bunker some dis­tance ahead. The heavy impacts of artillery were starting to converge, coming down in twists of smoke. 'Death Guard!' he called, shouldering his bolter, 'we'll let the giant take the brunt of the big guns. Into the trenches, brothers. Sweep the ground clean of these rebellious scum!'

Carya looked up as the brass leaves of the bridge iris whispered open to admit Garro and his two warriors. The man shot a quick, nervous look across at the woman Vought and then put up the mask of sullen authority that he had worn in the landing bay. 'Battle-captain on the bridge,' he intoned, and saluted.

Garro accepted the honour with a nod. 'Ceremony was appeased down below, Master Carya. Let's not overburden ourselves with it here, and stick to the necessities instead, yes?'

As you wish, captain. Are you going to take the conn?'

He shook his head. 'Not wfthout good reason.' Garro took in the layout of the ship's command chamber. It was unornamented, as was fitting to the lean and spare intentions of a vessel in the service of the Death Guard. Unlike some starships, where

decorative panels of wood or metal covered the walls, the Eisenstein's conduits and workings were bare to the eye. Twisted snarls of cables and piping ranged around the bridge space, clustering around cogitator consoles and viewports. They reminded Garro of the gnarled roots of ancient trees.

Vought seemed to catch on to Garro's train of thought. 'This vessel may not be pretty, but it has a strong heart, captain. It's been an unswerving servant of the Emperor since the day it left the Luna ship­yards, before I was born.' He noticed how she was careful not to look directly at his injured leg. Even under his power armour, the stiffness in his gait made the aftermath of his recent injury obvious.

Garro put a hand on the central navitrix podium, studying the etheric compass enclosed in a sphere of glass and suspensor fields. A discreet gunmetal plaque fixed to the podium's base showed the ship's name, class and details of the frigate's launching. Nathaniel read it to himself and felt amusement tug at his lips. 'Fascinating. It seems the Eisenstein took to space in the same year I became an Astartes.' He glanced at Vought. 'I have a kinship with her already'

The deck officer returned his smile, and for the first time Garro felt a moment of genuine connection with a member of the crew.

'Eisenstein', ventured Sendek, rolling the word over his lips. 'It is a word from an old Terran dialect, of the Jermani. It means "iron-stone". It is fitting.'

Carya nodded. 'Your warrior is correct, Captain Garro. It also shares its name with two noted men from the Age of Terra, one a remembrancer, the other a scientist.'

'Such history for a mere frigate,' Decius opined.

The shipmaster's eyes flashed for an instant. 'With respect, lord, in the Warmaster's military there is no such thing as a mere frigate.'

'Forgive my battle-brother/ said Garro mildly, 'he has grown too comfortable in the spacious bunks aboard the Endurance'.

'A fine ship/ Carya replied. 'We'll do well to match the battle record of so illustrious a vessel.'

Garro smiled slightly. 'We're not here to win acco­lades, shipmaster, just to do our duty' He approached the front of the bridge, where rows of consoles and operator pulpits glowed with the actinic blue of pict-screens. What is our status?'

'At station-keeping/ said Vought. 'The Warmaster's orders were to hold at these co-ordinates until all Astartes were aboard, then await further commands'

The battle-captain nodded. 'I am afraid that we may not be making much history today. Our pri-march has ordered that we maintain orbit here at high anchor and watch for enemy ships that may attempt to escape Isstvan III under cover of the ground assault.'

Garro had barely finished speaking when a bell chime sounded from a shadowed nook off to the star­board side of the bridge. A heavy sound-curtain was bunched up to one side of the dim recess, held open by a thick silver cord. It was a vox hide, an alcove where important communications could be received in relative privacy during combat operations. A gan­gly young officer wearing a complex signalling collar and holding a data-slate in his hand stepped out into the light and snapped to attention. 'Machine-call message, prioris cipher, expedite immediate.' He wavered, looking between Garro and Carya, unsure of who to address. 'Sir?'

The shipmaster offered an open hand. 'Let me have it, Mister Maas.' He glanced at Garro. 'Captain, if you will permit me?'

Nathaniel nodded and watched Carya page quickly through the data. 'Ah/ he said, after a moment. 'It seems Lord Mortarion has decided to make a differ­ent use of us. Vought, bring manoeuvring thrusters to standby'

Garro took the slate as the deck officer carried out her directions. 'Is there a problem?'

'No, sir. New orders.' The shipmaster bent over the helm servitor and began giving out a string of clipped commands.

The data-slate was curt and to the point. Directly from the vox dispatch nexus aboard the Vengeful Spirit, marked with the signet runes of the Death Lord and Horus's equerry Maloghurst, the fresh directives were for Eisenstein to depart from the current naviga­tion point and drop into a lower orbital path.

Like all Astartes of senior rank, Garro had training and experience in starship operations and he fell back into the learning drilled into his mind by hypno-conditioning as he read, figuring the status of the frigate once the new co-ordinates were reached.

He frowned. Typhon had told him that Eisenstein was to act as an interceptor for Isstvanian absconders, but once settled at this new posting, the ship would be too close to the edge of the third planet's atmos­phere to react quickly enough. To function correctly in their assigned role, the frigate had to stay high, giv­ing the gunnery crews time to spot, target and destroy enemy ships. The drop in altitude only narrowed their field of fire. Then he studied the corresponding planetary co-ordinates and his concern deepened. The orbital shift would put the Eisenstein directly over

the Choral City, and Garro was certain that no void-capable craft had been left intact down there.

He handed the slate back to Maas, his frown deep­ening. Had they been carrying drop-pods and Astartes for a second assault wave, then the reasoning behind the orders would have been clear, but the frigate was not configured for those sorts of operations. It was, in the most basic sense, only a gun carriage. Decked with weapons batteries that emerged from her flanks in spiky profusion, Eisenstein's only function when ranged so close to a world was one of stand-off plan­etary bombardment, but such an action seemed unthinkable. After all, Horns had already eschewed Angron's demands to blast the Choral City into ashes at the war council. The Warmaster would surely not change his mind so quickly, and even if he had, there were hundreds of loyal men down there.

Garro became aware that Carya was looking at him. 'Captain? If you have nothing to add, I'm going to execute the orders.'

Garro nodded distantly, feeling an ill-defined chill wash through him. 'Proceed, Master Carya.' The Death Guard stepped closer to the main viewport and stared out through the armourglass. Beneath him, the cloud-swirled sphere of Isstvan III began to drift nearer.

'Something wrong, lord?' Decius spoke in a sub-vocal whisper, below the hearing of the crewmen.

'Yes,' said the battle-captain, and the sudden hon­esty of the admission surprised him. 'But by Terra, I don't know what it is.'

Kaleb shrank deep inside the folds of the ship-robes and moved with care along the edges of the service gantry. Over the years he had become quite adept at being unseen in plain sight and to an outside

observer the housecarl would have resembled noth­ing but a common serf. His badge of fealty to the Death Guard and the Seventh Company was swad­dled beneath the grey material. There was a part of his thoughts that cycled an endless loop of anxious warn­ings against what he was doing, but Kaleb found himself moving forward despite it, going onward.

How had he changed so? What he was doing had to be some sort a criminal act, masquerading as an Eisenstein crewman instead of openly walking with his real identity visible, and yet, he felt filled with the Tightness of his actions. Ever since the Emperor had answered Kaleb's prayers in the infirmary and saved his master Garro, the housecarl had become embold­ened. His orders were coming from a higher power. Perhaps they always had, but only now was he sure of it. The battle-captain had told him to follow the Stormbird's cargo, and he was about it. If it was Garro's wish, then this was the Emperor's work, and Kaleb would be right in doing it.

After the men of the Seventh had left the landing bay, Kaleb had placed himself where he could give directions to the frigate's servitors but also observe the last Stormbird. It had only been a few minutes before one of Grulgor's men had returned to the bay – the boorish one, Mokyr – and drawn off a work gang of serfs to unload the shuttle's cargo. Kaleb watched the heavy steel cubes roll out of the vessel, and then watched the serfs bind them to chain car­riages and shift them towards the aft. The containers were identical: blocks of dull metal scarred and pit­ted from use, detailed with the Imperial aquila and stencilled warning runes in brilliant yellow paint. They could hold anything. From this distance, Kaleb could not read the lading scrolls fixed to the flanks.

He watched with interest as one of the helot teams fumbled and a crate slipped on its moorings, falling a metre before the men caught the slack and stopped it slamming into the deck. Mokyr stormed over to the foreman and backhanded him to the floor. Over the constant noise of the bay, Kaleb could not fathom the words he spoke, but the tone of the Death Guard's ill-temper was obvious.

In a steady train, the crates shifted up and away. Kaleb watched them, hesitating. He had orders to supervise the equipment transfer, yes, but Garro had also demanded information on the nature of the Stormbird's cargo. Kaleb convinced himself that the latter was the more important command.

So, keeping his distance, the housecarl threaded his way through the Eisenstein, keeping the convoy of containers in sight, careful to stay out of Mokyr's eye-line. The crates were halted in the service gantries that ran down the spine of the frigate. On either side of the open steel tunnel were loading gears and hopper mechanisms for the ship's primary weapons batteries. Large open gun breeches lined the walkway, ready to accept war shots from the ammunition magazines that towered above them. The crates were being shifted to the staging areas near the portside guns. Kaleb's face showed confusion and he let his gaze fol­low the length of one huge cannon out beyond the hull through the armoured slits of the sighting port. He saw the dim reflection of a planetary surface out there, drifting in the dark.

The work gangs had some of the crates open and he shifted forward to get a better look, slipping over the lip of seal plates where wide emergency barrier partitions would drop into place in the event of a munitions dis­charge or misfire. Kaleb's dismay grew stronger when he

recognised the tall, broad shapes of Death Guard stand­ing watch over the serfs while they worked. Bareheaded and intent, Commander Grulgor was at their forefront, shouting out orders and giving directions with sharp jerks of his hand. The crate closest to him gave out an oiled hiss and unfolded like a gift box. Inside there were hexagonal frames, and racked upon them were a dozen glass spheres. Each one was at least a metre in diameter, and all of them were filled with a thick chemical slurry of vomitous green fluids.

A black symbol made up of interlocking broken rings decorated each capsule, and some basic animal reaction made Kaleb's hands clench around the rail­ing he hid behind. A quick mental calculation told him that if all the crates were identical, then there were over a hundred of the spheres in Grulgor's cargo. Things added up: Mokyr's abrupt anger, the com­mander's presence at the unloading, the exaggerated delicacy with which the crewmen moved the cap­sules. Whatever the liquid was inside them, the glass pods represented something utterly lethal.

The thought crystallised in Kaleb's mind with such an impact that it pushed him back up to his feet. Suddenly, all the bravery he had felt at his clever litde disguise evaporated, and stabs of fear shot through him. The housecarl spun about to run and slammed into an ambling servitor with a tray of tools. The piston-legged machine slave tipped over and collapsed, sending its gear flying. The tool-parts sent up a cacophony of sound, drawing the attention of Grulgor's Astartes. Kaleb saw Mokyr start towards his hiding place and the housecarl fled into the deeper shadows.

Fear enveloped him as readily as the thick material of the ship-robes. It was only as his eyes adjusted to the dark that the housecarl realised he had backed

into a wide alcove with no other exits. The dead-end stopped with a sheer wall of hull metal and hanging catwalks overhead that he couldn't hope to reach. He would be found. He would be found and they would know who he was and who had sent him. Nerves in the servant's legs twitched. Grulgor would end his life, he was certain of it. He remembered the look in the commander's eyes back aboard the Endurance, the loathing. But that death would be nothing compared to the crushing failure it represented. Kaleb Arin would die and he would perish having failed both his master and the Master of Mankind.

Mokyr gave the servitor a sideways look and kept coming, straight towards Kaleb, one hand resting on the hilt of his combat blade. The housecarl prayed silently. Emperor, Lord of Man, protect me and hold me safe against the enemies of Your Divine Will-In the next second he was yanked from his feet and felt strong hands pull him off the deck, up and away. Kaleb thrashed, coming to face a serious aspect there in the dimness.

'Voyen?' he whispered.

The Apothecary put a finger to his lips and held Kaleb tightly. The housecarl looked down from the catwalk and watched Mokyr run a cursory glance over the alcove below them, then snort and stride back to Grulgor. After a moment, Voyen relaxed his grip and let Kaleb settle on to the scaffold.

'Lord?' whispered the servant. 'What are you doing here?'

Voyen's voice was a low rumble. 'Like you, my sus­picions were piqued. Unlike you, my skills in stealth are of a decent standard.'

'Thank you for saving me, sir. If Mokyr had found me there-'

'It would not have gone well.' It was clear the Apothecary was deeply troubled.

Kaleb looked back at the loaders and the glass spheres.

'Those orbs, what are they?' The work gangs were busy detaching the warhead cowlings from thruster-guided glide bombs, exchanging the explosive charges inside for the globes of liquid.

Voyen tried to speak, and it was as if the words caught in his throat, too distasteful for him to even bring to bear. Those are Life-Eater capsules,' he managed. 'It is an engineered viral strain of such complete lethality that it can only be deployed in the most extreme cir­cumstances, usually against the most foul xenos.'

He looked away and Kaleb felt a chill at the war­rior's mien. If an Astartes could be fearful of these things…

'It is a bane-weapon of the highest order, a world-killer. Only the largest capital ships are permitted to carry it in their armouries'

'They brought it from the Endurance!' Kaleb blinked. 'Why, lord? Why are they loading it to fire on the planet?'

Voyen gave him a hard look. 'Kaleb, listen to me. Go to the captain and tell him what we have seen. As fast as you can, little man. Go. Go now!'

And so Kaleb ran.

'What's this?' Decius heard the warning tone in Carya's voice and looked up from the hololithic dis­play and across the frigate's bridge. The shipmaster was speaking to Maas, the vox-tender. There aren't any scheduled movements in this battle sector. Did the deployment pattern get altered without my knowledge?'

'Negative,' said Maas. 'No recorded changes, sir. Nevertheless, this signal from the Lord of Hyrus is clear. A craft from the Andronius is on our scopes and it does not register a mission flight plan.'

The Andronius is Eidolon's ship/ said Sendek. 'Has he suddenly become eager to join our battle-brothers down on the surface?'

'Perhaps the scent of all that glory was too much to resist,' added Decius.

Captain Garro walked back from the far end of the chamber, grimacing a little as he limped. 'Are you sure?' he asked, addressing his demand to the com­munications officer.

Maas nodded and brandished a data-slate. Very sure, captain. An Emperor's Children Thunderhawk is passing through our engagement zone.'

A fine way to get yourself shot down,' murmured Sendek, drawing a wry nod from Decius. The Astartes toggled the hololith to show the data from Maas's report and his eyes widened. Not only was there a Thunderhawk arrowing through Eisenstein's patch of space, but behind it was a cluster of Raven intercep­tors and they were in an attack delta.

Garro was speaking to the woman, Vought. 'Smells like trouble. Put us on an intercept course.'

Decius looked to his commander as the deck officer relayed Garro's orders. 'Lord, is this some sort of test? First we are taken off our assigned duty station and now our own ships are launching without authorisa­tion?'

'I have no answer for you.'

'Captain!' Sendek called out urgently. 'The fighters trailing the Thunderhawk… They have just opened fire on it.' The shock was clear in his voice.

A warning shot,' suggested Carya.

Vought shook her head. 'No. Cogitators are detect­ing energy blooms on the vessel's hull. The drop-ship is taking hits.'

The familiar bell chime sounded once more, and Maas emerged from the alcove again. 'Battle-Captain Garro, I have a message sent in the clear on the gen­eral vox channel.'

'Quickly,' Garro ordered.

'From Lord Commander Eidolon, starship Andro-nius. Message reads: Fugitive Thunderhawk is acting against the Warmaster's commands and is to be con­sidered a renegade. All fleet elements are ordered to destroy the ship on sight.'

'Shoot down one of our own vessels?' Sendek was clearly aghast at the mere thought of such an idea. 'Has he taken leave of his senses?'

'The Thunderhawk is turning/ reported the deck officer, 'he's seen our approach. Confirm, the Thun­derhawk is closing in on us.' She looked up at Garro. 'He's well within lascannon range, lord.'

Carya's face was stony, and a hard silence fell across the bridge. 'What are your orders, Captain Garro?'

Decius's commander threw him a look, and then turned to Maas. 'Can you get me a ship-to-ship link with that Thunderhawk?'

'Aye, sir.'

'Then do it now.'

'But, lord, the orders-' began Decius.

Garro shot the warrior a sharp glare. 'Eidolon can give all the orders he wants. I will not fire on a fellow Astartes without first knowing why' The battle-captain strode to the mouth of the vox hide and snatched a hand communicator from Maas. 'Thunderhawk on a closing course with the Eisenstein! he barked, 'identify yourself!'

Through the crackle of interference came an anx­ious reply. 'Nathaniel?' Decius saw the colour drain from Garro's face in recognition. 'It's Saul. It's good to hear your voice, my brother!'

'Saul Tarvitz/ whispered Sendek, 'First Captain of the Emperor's Children. Impossible! He's a man of honour! If he's turned traitor, then the galaxy has gone insane!'

Decius found he couldn't look away from Garro's shocked expression. 'Perhaps it has.' It was a long moment before Decius realised the words had been his.

PART TWO

A SUNDERED VOW

EIGHT

Point of no Return

Sacrifice Oath of Moment

Tollen Sendek prided himself on his orderly mind and his controlled, regimented will. It was a point of honour for him to be logical and intent in his service to the XIV Legion and to the Emperor. He eschewed irrationality and the incautious nature that some of his brethren embraced. Rahl had often made fun of him about it, joking that Sendek took the word 'stoic' to new extremes, but he thought of his dead comrade now and wondered what Pyr would have made of the look on his face, the purely emotional surprise that gripped him.

It had taken only a moment to bring him to this state. The rogue Thunderhawk, the signal from Eidolon, the incredible command to terminate the fleeing vessel and the ranking Astartes officer aboard it… Sendek shook his head, trying to fight off the con­fusion. Had Decius been correct, was it a test? Some bizarre sort of battle drill to assess the mettle of the

Eisenstein's command crew? Or could it be true that Saul Tarvitz had indeed turned renegade and was fit only for execution? If it was possible for an Imperial governor like Vardus Praal to go against the Emperor, then perhaps an Astartes might do the same.

Captain Garro gripped a vox microphone in his hand and was speaking urgently into it, his knuckles white around the device. 'Tarvitz? What in the name of the Emperor is going on? Are those fighters trying to shoot you down?'

Sendek flashed a look at the Eisenstein's hololith. The answer to Garro's question was self-evident, as the frigate's sensors showed flickers of beam fire dash­ing from the flight of Ravens, snapping at the Thunderhawk's stern. As he watched, the raptor-like interceptors adopted an attack posture. They were lin ing up to make a final strike.

He heard Garro shout into the vox, demanding some explanation, any explanation. 'Be quick, Saul. They almost have you!'

Tarvitz's next words made Sendek's guts knot. This is treachery!' bellowed the captain of the Emperor's Children, desperation filling his voice. 'All of this! We are betrayed! The fleet is going to bombard the planet's surface with virus bombs'

At once, everyone on the bridge in earshot of the vox speaker was shocked rigid. 'What? No!' said Vought, shaking her head. Officers at other deck sta­tions looked up from the command pit in disbelief.

That cannot be/ began the shipmaster, taking a wary step forward.

Decius's face was tense. 'He's mistaken. Our broth­ers are down there-'

Their voices overlapped one another in loud pro­fusion, and Sendek heard only snatches of Garro's

conversation with Tarvitz. 'On my life, I swear I do not lie to you/ cried the captain. Sendek's comman­der sagged, as if the weight of the man's claim was pressing down on him. He caught Tarvitz's final, frustrated words. 'Every Astartes on Isstvan III is going to die!'

He looked back at the hololith. Tarvitz's life was measured only in ticks of the clock. The Thunder-hawk was wallowing badly, bleeding fuel as the Ravens moved in for the kill.

Captain Garro shoved himself away from the vox alcove and stormed across the bridge. 'Weapons!' he shouted. 'I want lascannon command, this very sec­ond!'

Vought's fingers danced over her console. 'Close-quarters batteries are active, sir/ she reported, 'cogitators are computing a firing solution.' The woman blinked. 'Sir, are… are you going to shoot him down?'

'Give me manual control.' Garro waved her away from the panel. 'If anyone is to pull this trigger, it will be me.' The battle-captain gripped the side of the pul­pit and then stabbed at an activation rune.

'Firing/ reported one of the toneless servitors.

On the Eisenstein's dorsal hull, a cluster of high-energy laser cannons swivelled and shifted in unison, tracking to face the Thunderhawk and the Ravens. The guns discharged silently through the void, for a single instant filling the dark with a storm of flickering energy. Spears of collimated, coherent light reached out and found their target, tearing through armoured hull metal, ceramite and plastic. Fusion cores detonated in a flashing cas­cade, a thick cloud of radioactive debris riding out

in a perfect sphere behind a wall of electromagnetic radiation.

Sender's eyes narrowed as light flared in through the bridge's viewing slits and the hololith bloomed with a sudden globe of crackling, impenetrable static. The Astartes looked to Garro as his captain stepped down from Vought's console and limped back to Maas's sta­tion at the vox hide. 'He killed him.' Tollen's voice was barely audible. 'Blood's oath, he killed Tarvitz.'

Decius eyed him, conflict visible on his face. 'Those were the orders.'

'Those were Eidolon's orders!' Sendek snapped, his usual calm disintegrating. 'You see that eagle carved upon the captain's vambrace? Tarvitz has one just like it, Hakur told me of it! Garro and Tarvitz are honour brothers! He wouldn't just murder him in cold blood!'

'But if Tarvitz had turned…'

The battle-captain gave the communications officer Maas a hard shove and pushed him out of the vox hide. Garro bent to allow his armoured form into the alcove and yanked the sound curtain across the entrance with a savage swipe of his hand, cutting himself off from the bridge.

Sendek heard Vought's question to Carya. What is he doing in there?'

'Reporting back to Eidolon,' suggested the shipmas­ter.

The Astartes leaned down, almost with his face in the edges of the hololith cube. Flickering storms of energy and colour made it impossible to read. The power of the explosion out there reflecting off the planet's upper atmosphere would fog the ship's sen­sors for several minutes.

Tollen,' began Decius, 'whatever bond the battle-captain had with Tarvitz, that cannot rise above the duty of the service. Eidolon is a lord commander. He outranks Garro.'

'No.' Sendek shook his head, working the controls on the hololifh's projector podium, spooling back the time index record. 'I refuse to accept he would do such a thing. You know him as well as I do, Solun. "Straight-Arrow Garro", the men call him. He is an archetype for the nobility of the Legiones Astartes! Can you ever imag­ine our commander agreeing to slay a battle-brother on the whim of one of the Emperor's Children?'

'Then, what happened out there?' demanded Decius. 'You saw the Thunderhawk explode!'

'I saw an explosion', countered Sendek. He toyed with the controls and then let the hololith run the brief engagement again in slow motion. Indicators showed the Eisenstein turn and fire, the bolts sweep towards the other craft, and then the stormy aftermath. The Astartes nodded slowly. 'He didn't target the Thunderhawk at all. The shots must have struck the lead Raven. The other interceptors were in close formation. The detonation would have caught them all in the Shockwave.'

'Then, where is Tarvitz?'

Sendek pointed at the deck. 'He was close to Isstvan Ill's atmosphere. I'll warrant he's using the sensor dis­ruption to slip away'

Decius glanced around to be sure that the rest of the frigate crew were not aware of what they were dis­cussing. 'So Tarvitz escapes and five pilots are killed in his stead?'

'They were only crew-serfs, not Astartes. I doubt Eidolon will weep over their loss.' Sendek looked across to the vox hide. 'He's not talking to the Andro-nius in there,' he said, with grim certainty.

'If you are correct, then we have just witnessed our commanding officer disobey a direct order from his superior. That is dereliction of duty, grounds for severe chastisement at the very least!' Decius frowned. 'You know I have no love for Fulgrim's fops, but if the Warmaster learns of this, it will taint all of us, the entire Death Guard!'

Sendek grimaced. 'How can you be so quick to set your colours? Our captain would never act without conscience! If he has done this thing, then there is no doubt in my mind that he has a credible motive. Will you not at least learn what that is before you begin lamenting for your reputation?'

Decius's eyes flashed. Very well, brother. I shall ask him, now.'

Before Sendek could stop him, Decius rounded the hololith and strode quickly to the vox hide and grabbed the sound-deadening drape. As he wrenched it back, both Astartes heard the battle-captain speak­ing into the vox.

'Luck of Terra be with you/ he said. Only static answered him.

Garro looked up from his crouch by the commu­nications pulpit and met their gazes. The hollow, broken look upon his face cut Decius to the very core. Even when he had seen the captain in his heal­ing trance after falling on Isstvan Extremis, he had not seemed so empty and ill as he did at this moment.

'Lord?' he asked. 'What is it?'

'The storm is coming, Solun/ the battle-captain said in a dead voice.

8SS

It took great effort for Garro to propel himself out of the vox hide, as Tarvitz's revelations churned in his mind, sapping the will and strength from his muscles like some strange malaise. The things he had said… The import of them was staggering. He took heavy steps away, ignoring the loaded stares of the Eisen-stein's crew and the visible distrust radiating from Maas as the comms officer made for his alcove once again.

Garro threw a command at Maas over his shoulder. 'Contact Andronius. Tell them that the rogue was destroyed, and the explosion claimed their pursuit ships as well. No survivors.'

'Is that what really happened?' asked Decius accus­ingly.

'Tarvitz brought me… brought us a warning. You heard what he said on the vox.'

'Lord, all I heard was some wild shouting about betrayal and virus bombs. On that alone you have gone against orders?'

Sendek and his brethren moved to the rear of the compartment, instinctively keeping their voices pitched low.

'If Tarvitz spoke of it, then it was no falsehood,' insisted Garro softly.

Decius sneered. With respect, captain, I did not know the man and I do not hold that hearsay is enough to let a direct command be ignored-'

Garro's temper came back in a hot rush, and he grabbed Decius by the gorget and pulled him off bal­ance. 'I do know Saul Tarvitz, you whelp, and his word is worth a thousand of Eidolon's!' He thrust his vam-brace up before Decius's face. 'You see this, the etching there? That mark is all the guarantee I need! When you have fought for as long as I have, you will

learn that some things transcend even the commands of your masters!' Furious, he released the other war­rior and his fists tightened.

Sendek's face was pale with shock. 'If what he said was true, if there are ships in the fleet preparing to drop blight warheads on the planet, it would mean the wholesale slaughter of thousands of our kinsmen.' He shook his head. 'Oath's sake, there is no need to sacrifice men to wipe out the Choral City. Why would Horus allow such a thing to happen? It makes no sense!'

'Exactly/ said Decius, recovering his composure. 'What possible reason could the Warmaster have for doing this?'

Garro opened his mouth to speak, to actually say the words aloud to his battle-brothers for the very first time, and found that he could not. The sheer hor­ror of it, the ripping, echoing void inside his thoughts stopped him dead. Betrayal. He couldn't make the word, couldn't force it from his throat. That Horus himself, great Horus, the beautiful and magnificent Warmaster, had done this… The idea of it made him go weak. And with that realisation there came another. If Horus had prepared this treachery, then he had not done it alone, it was too big, too monumen­tal an endeavour even for the Warmaster to have managed by himself. Yes, Horus's brothers would be a part of it too: Angron, ever ready to take any path that led him to more bloodshed. Fulgrim, convinced of his own superiority and perfection over all, and the Death Lord himself, in secret conspiracy with the Warmaster.

'Mortarion…' Garro saw those hard amber eyes once again, remembered the questions and the intent of his primarch. It is important for my brother Horus to

have unity across the entirety of the Astartes. He had said those words. We must have singular purpose or we will falter.

Was this duplicity the purpose Mortarion had alluded to? Garro turned away, pressing the heel of his palm to his forehead, fighting down the conflict inside him. He saw a frantic, shuddering figure come rushing in through the iris hatch of the bridge, face tight with fear. 'Kaleb?'

The housecarl bowed shakily. 'My lord, you must come quickly! Brother Voyen and I… In the ship's gunnery racks, we discovered…' He struggled, sucking in gasping breaths of air. 'Grulgor and his men are loading the main guns… loading them with Life-Eater globes!'

'Virus bombs/ said Sendek, in a cold, distant voice.

'Aye, lord. I saw it with my own eyes.'

Garro pressed down the turmoil within and drew himself up. 'Show me.'

Voyen looked on, aghast. With each new sphere that emerged on the back of the loader crews, he felt his horror plunge deeper. As a trained Apothecary, it was his duty to be knowledgeable in the patterns and pathologies of many types of biological warfare agents, and the Life-Eater was known to him. He wished it was not. He flashed on a moment of mem­ory, a day during his advanced training with the Magos Biologis when the mentors had given live demonstrations on condemned criminals of the effects of various toxins upon unprotected flesh. He had seen the damage a single droplet of the voracious virus could do, watching it eat into a screaming heretic from behind impenetrable armourglass. Out there, in those globes, there were gallons of the thick

green transmitter medium, every cupful swarming with countless trillions of the killer microbes. He esti­mated that the war shots aboard the Eisenstein alone would be enough to wipe out a large city.

Commander Grulgor walked carefully among the loaders and his own men, showing no fear, directing the arming process personally. He was taking respon­sibility for it, Voyen realised, doing it himself to put his own stamp of perverse pride on the deed.

He turned as soft footfalls across the maintenance gantry caught his attention. Garro, his face like thun­der, arrived with Sendek in tow and Kaleb panting at the rear.

The battle-captain spoke without preamble. 'Is it true?'

'It is.' Voyen pointed. 'Look there. The sigil on the spheres is unmistakeable. It is the rot-bane, lord, a weapon even the Emperor is loath to use.' He shook his head. Why has Grulgor done this? What madness has possessed him?'

Garro's eyes were hard and flinty. 'It is not madness, brother. It is treason.'

'No,' insisted Voyen, desperately tying to rationalise the situation as he had been since he sent Kaleb run­ning. 'Perhaps, if I spoke to Grulgor, I could discern the truth. I could approach him, as a lodge brother. He would listen-'

The captain shook his head. 'He will not. Mark me, this will end only one way' Garro stood up, coming out of the shadows of the gantry, and walked slowly and deliberately down the ramp to the main level of the loading bay. He ducked beneath the hanging lip of a blast hatch and called out. 'Ignatius Grulgor! Come here and explain yourself!' The captain's voice boomed off the tall, wide corridor above the gun carnages.

Voyen and the others followed warily, and the Apothecary saw Grulgor's expression stiffen at the new arrivals.

'Garro,' he sneered. 'It would be best for you to take your men, turn about and leave. What occurs here is not of your concern.' All around him, the work gangers and the Astartes from the Second Company became still.

Garro's hand was on the hilt of Libertas. 'That will not happen.'

Grulgor nodded, a smile of amusement on his lips. It was clear he had expected no less.

'Answer me,' commanded Garro. 'In the Emperor's name, you will answer me!'

The commander's face twisted in a grimace. The Emperor,' he said in a mocking tone. 'Where is he now? What coin does his name carry in this moment?'

'Blasphemer!' spat Kaleb beneath his breath.

'Why should we answer to him?' Grulgor snarled. 'He abandoned us! When we needed him the most, he cut away, left us behind out here and fled back to your precious Terra! What has he done since that day, eh?' The commander spread his hands, taking in his men. 'He has sold off our birthright to a council of fools and politicians, taken civilians who have never known hardships or the kiss of war and made them lords and lawmakers in our stead! The Emperor? He has no authority over us!'

Voyen blinked back his surprise at such a raw, sedi­tious pronouncement, and gasped when he heard a chorus of angry assent among the men of the Second.

'Only the Warmaster and the Death Lord can com­mand us!' Grulgor continued. 'What we do here, we do by the will of Horus and Mortarion!'

Garro advanced menacingly, and with his thumb he nicked the hilt of Libertas so that a length of the blade emerged from its scabbard. 'You and your men will stand down and quit this insanity.'

Grulgor chuckled. 'You are three Astartes and a housecarl. I have my entire command squad and a handful of naval crew. The odds do not favour you.'

'I have right on my side/ Garro said, 'and this will be the last time I ask you.'

The commander studied the battle-captain. Very well, then. Go ahead.' He tipped back his head and showed his bare throat. 'Kill me, if you will.' When Garro wavered, Grulgor's rough laugh cut through the tense air. 'You can't! I can see it in your eyes. The thought that you might have to take the life of another Astartes, it horrifies you!' He looked away. 'You're as crippled in spirit as you are in the flesh! That is why you fail to see, Garro. Beneath that rigid exterior you are weak. You are too afraid to do what must be done.'

Garro's mailed fingers were clasped around the sword's hilt, but it seemed cemented in the scabbard, unwilling to be drawn. Curse Grulgor, but Garro knew that on some level, the braggart was right. For a brief instant, the words of the jorgall psyker were there in his mind again, pressing at his will. Death Guard, so confident of your Tightness, so afraid to see the crack in your spirit.

He gasped, and Grulgor saw the hesitation. Suddenly the commander was tearing the stubby frame of a bolt pistol from his belt and shouting. Garro saw it coming up and Libertas leapt into his hand, the metal flashing. Time skipped and there was gunfire in the chamber, shouts and the crashing of metal on metal.

'Check your fire!' Grulgor bellowed, drawing a bat­tle knife with his free hand.

Garro was aware of Voyen and Sendek slipping away into battle stances and he saw Kaleb duck out of the line of fire. He thought of Decius, up on the bridge where he had left him. The youth's close com­bat skills would have been a useful asset, had he been here. Grulgor had not lied. The odds were indeed stacked against them, but the clutter of machinery and equipment across the gunnery decks and the presence of the volatile warhead globes made it awk­ward for his men to move in and engage. On a level battlefield, the fight would already have been over.

Not here. Garro surged forward and advanced at the commander, but two of his men blocked his path, each armed with heavy combat hammers. He moved swiftly, parrying a blow from the left with the sword and striking out to the right with a punch that stag­gered the second opponent. Garro spun in place and used Libertas to cleave the haft of one hammer and send the owner falling backward with a sword gouge down the torso of his armour. Following through, Garro struck the second man again, this time with the heavy pommel of the blade. The Astartes dropped, his face a red ruin of smashed bones.

This was not the first time Nathaniel had shed the blood of his battle-brothers in combat. On many occasions he had fought to a standstill against live opponents in the practice cages, but those incidents were always under controlled circumstances and never with fatal intent. Inwardly he cursed Grulgor for forcing him into this situation. Off to the edges of his sight, he saw Voyen and Sendek had their own battles to fight. Garro sensed another aggressor com­ing to his rear and shifted just as a fractal-edged steel

knife blade scraped at his shoulder. Reacting without conscious thought, the battle-captain reversed his grip on Libertas and thrust it backwards under his armpit. The sword ran through his attacker and he turned to draw it back out. Garro's heart tightened in his chest as he watched his kill fall away to the deck plates with a crash. A Death Guard was dead, and it was by his hand.

The scrum of crewmen swarmed over Kaleb, kicking and punching him to the floor. Not one of them had the courage or stupidity to take on an Astartes, and so en masse they had sought the next best target. The house-carl railed at them for taking Grulgor's side over Garro's, but he wasted his breath. The swabs saw only which captain had the greater numbers and gave their loyalty to him. Kaleb fought as well as he could, but it was wild and mad, clothes and skin tearing, hair ripping away.

He felt sharp-nailed fingers rend his tunic and snatch at his neck. His collar pulled tight against him and he felt a surge of anger. Kaleb head-butted his attacker and swore, finding new rage to fuel him. 'Emperor curse you filthy whoresons!'

A blocky metal shape rose up before him and clubbed his temple. Kaleb shook off the blow and grabbed at it. He smelled the odour of gun oil. It was a stub-pistol. The housecarl shoved against the men trying to hold him and snatched at the small weapon. It went off with a spitting crack of sound and someone screamed. Kaleb rolled free of the mob and came up still gripping the hot metal ingot. His fingers easily found the trigger and grip, and he blasted the next man to come at him through the eye. The gun was his salvation, a gift from his divinity. The God-Emperor protects!' he snarled. 'I am His ser­vant and His subject!'

He staggered away, breathing hard. Kaleb blinked and saw a figure before him in the marble-white and green trim of a Death Guard captain. The Astartes was aiming a bolt pistol into the melee with great care. Instinctively, the housecarl looked to see who the target was.

Garro was oblivious to the imminent kill-shot, grimly fighting hand-to-hand with another warrior.

No! He cannot die! The thought burned like fire across the serfs mind. / will not permit it. The God-Emperor has chosen him! Kaleb raised the tiny gun and spoke a prayer aloud. 'Divine One, guide my hand.'

He fired. The shot was released an instant before Grulgor's finger tightened on his trigger. The stub-bullet from the handgun was of such small gauge that all it did was nick the metal of the bolt pistol where it struck the frame, but even that was enough to deflect the commander's aim. The bolt shell from Grulgor's pistol went wide, keening off a girder near Garro's head and arcing away in a ricochet.

Grulgor reacted with preternatural speed and turned, throwing his battle knife at the housecarl. The Astartes blade buried itself in Kaleb's chest, the impact throwing him down to collide with one of the gunnery bay's control lecterns. It all happened in an instant, barely a second from the report of the stub-gun.

Blood filled Kaleb's mouth, his throat and his lungs as a new sound crossed the room, a brittle, fierce noise, eggs breaking, ice cracking, glass shattering. Through his fogged vision Kaleb saw a thin line of dark haze issuing from one of the warhead spheres, hissing with virulent potency.

S**

'The globe!' shouted Voyen, kicking away from the thick of the fight. Grulgor's deflected bolt round struck a glancing hit, webbing the frangible glass ball with a spreading fan of fractures. 'Get away!' He yanked at Sendek's arm, pulling him backward.

Black gas was forming into a slow, malevolent haze, buzzing like a swarm of gnats. Work gangers close to the mist were already vomiting and clawing at their exposed skin. In moments, it would fill the width of the gunnery chamber.

Garro's line of sight swept the room and he found Kaleb staring fixedly at him, pink froth leaking from his lips. 'Lord!' he cried, blood bubbling in his throat. 'You are of purpose! The God-Emperor wills it!' The house-carl lurched up on to the conttol lectern, wheezing. 'His hand lies upon all of us! The Emperor protects!' Garro reached out a hand in a warding gesture as Kaleb threw himself forward, using the last of his strength to press down on an emergency release switch.

Sirens blared and in the steel ceiling overhead, huge cogwheels disengaged, letting walls of thick iron drop down towards seal wells in the deck. Garro flung him­self under the falling blade of metal, landing hard and rolling out to where Voyen and Sendek were crouched in the next compartment. One of Grulgor's men, the warrior named Mokyr, threw himself after Garro, clutching at his heels. Mokyr landed short, with only his upper body across the well. The iron wall slammed shut across him, the massive guillotine severing the body of the Astartes with a sickening crunch of bone and ceramite.

Garro's heart hammered against the inside of his ribcage, matching the pounding of fists from the inside of the thick gate. A phantom ache hummed through his augmetic leg.

'Blast shields,' gasped Sendek. He swallowed hard.

Voyen nodded. 'He saved our lives. The hatch is proof against the bane. The little man gave himself up to save us, and the ship.'

The banging on the metal doors grew softer and softer, until finally it ceased altogether. Garro got to his feet and crossed to the shield, placing his palm against it. It felt blood-warm, probably from the virulent chemical reactions of the rot taking place inside. He tried to block out thoughts of the carnage contained in there, the bodies bursting with liquefied organs and organic decay. He tried and he failed.

Kaleb's words echoed in his mind. It was clear now that the voice that had spoken to him of the Emperor and divinity through the fog of his heal­ing coma must have been Kaleb's. And now, the loyal servant had given his life in trade for his mas­ter's.

'I am of purpose,' Garro mumbled. 'What purpose?'

'Sir?' Sendek came to him, calling out to be heard over the hooting roar of the klaxons. 'What did you say?'

He turned away from the shield. 'Purge that com­partment! Tell Carya to vent the air in there to space! The Life-Eater reaction will spread to every one of the container spheres and release the entire war load, but it can't exist without an atmosphere. I want it off this ship!'

Voyen nodded. 'And the bodies in there, captain? They will be decaying and-'

'Leave them,' he snapped, fighting off the dark mood settling upon him. 'We must move swiftly, unless we wish to join them in death.' Garro frowned

and slammed Libertas back into its sheath. The die has been cast.'

Like the Endurance, the Eisenstein had her own observatorium on the dorsal hull, situated just for­ward of the frigate's command tower. It was nowhere near as large, however, and with the broad and tall figures of several Astartes crammed into it, the open chamber seemed smaller still. Decius's face set in a grimace as the hatch opened and another two Death Guard entered. The Apothecary Voyen stepped into the chamber with Sendek at his side and the expres­sion upon both of their faces was enough to give him pause. Decius looked across to where Sergeant Hakur was standing with men from his squad, and he saw that old Andus shared the black disposition of the new arrivals.

'Meric, what is going on?' demanded the veteran. 'I'm suddenly ordered to drop everything and come up here, tell no one… and I hear distant sirens and snatches of scuttlebutt from the swabs about gunfire and explosions?'

'There were no explosions,' said Sendek grimly.

'Where is the captain?' asked Decius.

'He'll be here in a moment/ Voyen replied. 'He's gone to fetch some others.'

Decius wasn't content with another evasive answer. 'When I was on the bridge there was a fire alert from the gunnery decks. An entire compartment amidships was sealed off. That's four weapon carriages disabled, according to the control servitor. Then I hear you on the vox shouting for an emergency decompression down there?' He pointed at the Apothecary. 'First the lodges, then Tarvitz, and now this? I want an expla­nation!'

The captain will give it to you/ the other man retorted.

'Saul Tarvitz?' Hakur broke in. 'What about him? The last I heard he was on the Andronius'.

'By now he'll be in the Choral City, if he didn't burn up on the way down/ Sendek said grimly. 'He broke protocol, stole a Thunderhawk and made for the sur­face of Isstvan III. Lord Commander Eidolon ordered that he was to be shot down.'

Hakur's disbelief was palpable. That's ludicrous. You must be mistaken.'

Decius shook his head. 'We were all there. We heard the order, but Garro disobeyed it. He let Tarvitz escape.' The younger Astartes was still smarting over what had taken place, his loyalties pulling him in dif­ferent directions over his commander's actions. 'It is sedition.'

'Yes, it is.' Garro's voice issued from the hatch as he entered, with the Shipmaster Carya and the deck offi­cer Vought following behind. The woman closed the seal behind them at Garro's nod and it was only then that Decius noticed the housecarl wasn't with them.

The battle-captain moved into the centre of the room and placed a folded cloth packet on the obser-vatorium's control dais. He took in all of them with a heavy, calculating stare. Decius had the impression that Garro was reticent to move on, to say the words that were pressing at his lips. Eventually, he sighed and nodded to himself, as if he had made a choice. 'When we leave this room, we will be rebels/ he began. The guns of our brothers will be turned against us. I will call upon you to do questionable things, but there is no other path now. There is no choice. We alone may be the only souls capable of carrying the warning.'

'What warning is this, lord?' One of Hakur's men asked, scowling deeply.

Garro looked at Decius. 'A warning of sedition.'

Carya cleared his throat. Unlike his second-in-command, the shipmaster did not seem ill at ease being outnumbered by so many Death Guard in so close a proximity. 'Honoured battle-captain, with all due respect, this is my ship and I will have you explain what has gone on aboard her before we go any further.'

'Indeed, as is right/ nodded Garro. He looked down at his mailed hands and took a deep breath. In a solemn, metered voice, Decius's mentor relayed the events of his confrontation with Grulgor. Shock took hold as he spoke of the virus bombs, turning into a grim, loaded silence as Garro went on to convey the commander's declaration against the Emperor and the horrifying result of the melee on the gunnery decks. Decius felt his head swim with the import of these things. It was as if the floor was turning to mud beneath his boots, dragging him down into disarray and confusion.

Vought was pale as paper. 'The Life-Eater… it will not spread?'

Sendek shook his head. 'It was contained in time. The viral strain burns out very quickly'

'1 would recommend the compartment not be opened for the next six hours/ added Voyen, 'to be certain. The war load will have dissipated harmlessly into space after the atmosphere vents were opened, but dormant clades might linger in the bodies of the dead.'

'Our own men.' Hakur shook his head. 'I can barely believe it. I knew Grulgor was a braggart and a glory seeker, but this… Why would he do something so

outrageous?' The veteran looked to Garro, an almost naive imploring in his eyes. 'My lord?'

Garro wanted to explain Grulgor's actions away. Like Voyen, some secret part of him had hoped that perhaps this was all some strange dream, or a tempo­rary madness that had taken hold of his rival, but the moment he had looked Ignatius in the eye, he had known it was not so. Grulgor would never ally him­self to a cause if he thought it might have a risk of failure. The certainty, the complete assurance on the other Death Guard's face, that sealed the truth of it for Garro. Grulgor was the proof of Tarvitz's warning, the damning reality snapping hard into place like a mag­azine into the breach of a bolter.

All the small things, the little asides and the moments of doubt, the dark feeling of ominous import, the mood aboard Endurance and the Vengeful Spirit, every element that had troubled Nathaniel these past days turned in place and became a part of the same whole.

'Saul Tarvitz, my honour brother and friend, brought me a forewarning. In risk to his own life, he fled the ships of the Emperor's Children to the planet below in order to tell our kinsmen down there that a viral attack is imminent. For this, Eidolon attempted to have him killed before he could succeed.' Garro nodded again. 'I chose not to follow that command. As a result, Saul is on Isstvan III as we speak, doubtless rallying men of the Legiones Astartes to find cover before the attack begins. My faith in what he told me is ironclad, as strong to me as my bond is to you.' He extended a hand and tapped Hakur on the shoulder, then began to walk around the room. Garro met the gaze of each person there as he did so, impressing his own truth

upon them. 'Here is the horrific truth. Grulgor and Eidolon are not two errant souls pursuing some per­sonal agenda, but soldiers in a war of betrayal that is about to unfold. What they have done is not of their own volition, but under the orders of the Warmaster himself He ignored the scattering of gasps that the statement brought forth. 'Horus, with the support of Angron, Fulgrim, and though it sickens me to say it, our master Mortarion, has done this.'

Across the chamber, Carya almost collapsed into an observation chair. He was struggling to make sense of Garro's words. Vought stood beside him, her face twisted as if she were ready to be physically ill. 'Why?' asked the shipmaster. 'Terra take me if I can see the logic and truth in all this, but why would he do it? What would Horus have to gain by turning against the Emperor?'

'Everything,' muttered Decius.

Voyen's head bobbed in a rueful nod. 'There has been talk of the Warmaster at second– and third-hand in the lodges. Talk of how far away the Emperor is, and of discontent over the commands of the Council of Terra. The tone of things has been strained ever since Horus was injured at Davin, after he returned from his healing.'

'The veiy tip of treason's blade, glimpsed in hidden places,' said Sendek.

Garro pressed on. 'Horus personally chose all the units for the assault on the Choral City. He picked only the men he knew would not turn if he called them to his banner. The bombing will rid him of the only obstacle to open insurrection.'

'If this is so/ demanded Decius, 'then why are we not down there as well? Your staunch loyalty to the Emperor and Terra is hardly a secret, sir!'

Garro gave a cold smile and tapped on the thigh plate of his armour. 'If the Warsinger on Isstvan Extremis had not forced this piece of pig-iron on me, I have no doubt we would be alongside Temeter and his troops, unaware that a sword is poised at our necks, but the turn of events has played in our favour, and we must seize our opportunity.'

Tarvitz's escape will not remain undiscovered for­ever,' said Vought. 'When the Warmaster learns of what you did, Eisenstein will be under the guns of the entire fleet.'

'I have no doubt of that,' Garro agreed. 'We have a few hours, at most.'

What do you propose?' asked Sendek. 'This frigate is only one ship. We cannot hope to assist the ground forces by intercepting the bombardments or attempt­ing to engage the Warmaster.'

Garro shook his head. 'If Saul succeeds, we'll have no need to stop the bombing. If not…' He swallowed hard. 'There is nothing we can do to help those men.'

Decius saw it first. 'You plan to flee.'

'Watch your tone!' snapped Hakur.

Decius ignored the veteran. You want us to run.'

We have no choice. If we remain, we will perish, but if we can get this ship out of the system, there is a chance we can still stem the tide of this Ueachery. We must finish the mission that Saul Tarvitz began. We must carry the warning of this perfidy to Terra and the Emperor.' He looked at the dark-skinned man. 'Master Carya, can the Eisenstein make space for the Sol system, or at the very least a star close to the Imperial core?'

He shook his head slowly. 'On any other day I would say it could, but today, I cannot be certain.'

'The warp has become increasingly clouded in recent weeks, full of storms and turbulence,' Vought

broke in. 'Interstellar travel has become very difficult. If we attempted to translate now, our Navigators would be virtually sightless.'

'But you could still make the jump,' Hakur noted. 'We could still get away, even if we went into the warp blind.'

Carya snorted. The ship would be cast to the etheric currents! We could find ourselves light-years off the charts… anywhere!'

'Anywhere but here', said Garro with finality. 'I want preparations made. Baryk, Racel.' He fixed them with a hard eye, using their given names for the first time. 'Will you resist me on this?'

The two naval officers exchanged glances, and he saw that they were with him. 'No,' said the shipmaster, 'many of my men are faithful Terrans and they won't falter, but there are some who will baulk. I imagine I have men who follow Horus among my crew.'

'There's also the matter of Grulgor's other Astartes on board,' added Sendek. 'They will be asking ques­tions very soon.'

Garro looked to Hakur. 'Hakur, take what you need and secure the ship. Apply whatever force is required, understood?'

There was a moment of silence as the reality of Garro's command became clear. Then the veteran saluted. 'Aye, lord.'

Garro bent over the control dais and unwrapped the cloth bundle he had brought with him. In it were a dozen thin slips of paper dense with writing in a quick, forceful hand. The battle-captain handed one to everybody in the observatorium, including Carya and Vought.

The woman frowned at the piece of parchment. 'What is this?'

'An oath of moment,' said Decius. 'We will swear our duty upon it.'

Garro opened his mouth to speak, but the clang of the hatch stilled his tongue. The communications officer blundered headlong into the observatorium and skidded to a halt, mouth agape at the clandestine meeting he had interrupted.

'Maas!' bellowed Carya. 'For Terra's sake, man! Knock before you enter!'

'Your pardon, sir/ puffed the vox operator, 'but this priority signal came in for Commander Grulgor's eyes only. He doesn't answer-'

Carya snatched a data-slate from him and paled as he scanned it. He read aloud. 'It's from Typhon on the Ter­minus Est. Message reads: Weapons free, bombardment to commence imminently. Permission granted to ter­minate any and all impediments to operation.'

All eyes turned to Garro. The subtext of the message was clear. Typhon was handing Grulgor the authority to kill Garro and his men. He held up the paper. 'The oath, then,' he rumbled, pausing to take a breath. 'Do you accept your role in this? Will you dedicate yourself to the safe carriage of the warning to Terra, no matter what forces are ranged against us? Do you pledge to do honour to the XIV Legion and the Emperor?' The cap­tain drew Libertas and held the sword point down.

Hakur was the first to place his hand upon the blade. 'By this matter and this weapon, I so swear.' One by one, the Astartes followed suit, with Decius the last. Then Carya and Vought gave the vow as well, as Maas looked on wide-eyed.

As they filed from the chamber, Decius caught his commander's arm. 'Fine words/ he said, 'but who was there to act as witness to them?'

Garro pointed out at the stars. 'The Emperor.'

NINE

A Prayer

Rain of Death

Refugees

Hewas alone in the barracks compartment. hakur and the others were out about the ship, executing his orders to take Eisenstein under their complete control. Distantly, Garro thought he heard the faint echoes of bolter reports, and his lips thinned. There was only a handful of Grulgor's men still at large on board the frigate. Like his Seventh Company, the majority of the late commander's Second was scattered elsewhere about the fleet, with only a few squads here to oppose Garro's plans. Carya's willing agreement to take the oath of moment had cemented his trust in the ship­master, and through him he had control of the bridge officers. He had no doubt there would be malcon­tents among the naval ratings, but they would quickly fall into line when the Astartes gave them orders, and if they refused, they would not live for long.

By rights he should have been out there doing the job of securing the ship himself, but the thundering

churn of emotion inside him was making it hard for Garro to concentrate. He needed a moment with his own counsel, to centre himself in the face of the events that had been set in motion.

Over and over he thought of the men he had fought alongside in the hosts of the Death Guard and won­dered how and why they could turn their faces from the Emperor. For the most part, his brothers were good and honourable men, and Garro thought he knew the colour of their hearts, but now he doubted that certainty. The awful realisation of it was, not that his kinsmen were ready to shake off the Emperor's commands and embrace treachery, but that most of them were merely weapons. They would not pause when orders came to them, even if those orders were beyond their comprehension.

It was the lot of an Astartes simply to do, not to question, and he felt damned by the understanding that Horus would play that unswerving allegiance to his bitter ends. He had considered briefly the idea of opening up all of Eisenstein's vox transmitters to max­imum power and broadcasting the truth of the treachery across the entire 63rd Fleet. There were noble men out there, he was sure of it, warriors like Loken and Torgaddon in the Warmaster's own Legion, and Varren of the World Eaters… If only he could contact them, save their lives; but to do so would have meant suicide for everyone on the frigate.

Every minute they kept their silence was a minute more for Garro to plan an escape with the warning. Kinsmen like Loken and the others would have to find their own path through this nightmare. The mes­sage was far more important than the lives of a handful of Astartes. Garro only hoped that once his mission had been fulfilled he might see them again,

either back on Terra at the end of their own escape or here once more with a reprisal fleet at his back. For now, those men were on their own, as were Garro and his warriors.

The battle-captain crossed to the arming alcove that Kaleb had set aside for him, seeing the eagle cuirass mounted there on a stand. It was polished and per­fect, as if the armour had come from a museum and not been battered in combat less than a week ago. He laid a hand on the cool ceramite and allowed himself to feel his full regret at the housecarl's death. 'You died well, Kaleb Arin,' he told the air, 'you did honour to the Death Guard and to the Seventh.' Garro wished mat he could promise the man's memory some form of tribute. He wanted to place the serfs name upon the Wall of Memory on Barbarus, give him the credit as if he had been a full-fledged battle-brother, but that would not happen, not now. Garro doubted that he would ever see the dank skies of the Death Guard's home world again, not after the events at Isstvan. Kaleb's spirit would have to be content with the esteem of his master.

Garro's lip curled. 'Here I am, thinking of spirits, talking to myself in an empty room.' He shook his head. 'What is happening to me?'

Next to the cuirass, a bolter lay upon a folded green clouh, and like the armour it too was pristine and unblemished, fresh from the Legion artificers. Garro took off a gauntlet and ran his fingers over the slab-sided breach. The weapon was deep with etchings in High Gothic script, combat honours and battle records listed along the length of it. There were names imprinted here and there, lined in dark emerald ink, each the name of a battle-brother who had carried the gun into war, and perished with it on them. Garro's

weapon had been lost to him on Isstvan Extremis, destroyed by the brutal sonic attack of the Warsinger. Nothing but shattered, brittle metal had been left. This bolter, then, was to be his new sidearm, and it was with bittersweet pride he took it up and held it to parade ready. A new name glittered on the frame: Pyr Rahl. Thank you, brother,' whispered Garro, 'I will take a dozen foes with it in your name.'

As was the way of the Astartes, Rahl's wargear was salvaged and what could remain in use to the XIV Legion did so. In this manner, the Astartes kept the memories of their dead kinsmen alive long after they had perished. Garro's eyes fell to find a carry-sack made of roughly woven fabric, lying forgotten in the corner of the alcove. He dropped into a crouch and took it up.

Kaleb's belongings. He sighed. When an Astartes died, there was always a brother ready to gather up the meagre possessions he might have left behind and see to them, but there were no provisions for a simple housecarl. Garro felt an unfamiliar kind of sorrow over Kaleb's passing. It wasn't the hard fury he had for the death of Rahl or the hundreds of others he had witnessed. Only now that Kaleb was gone, did Garro understand how much he had valued the little man, as a sounding board, as a servant, as a comrade. For a moment the captain considered ditching the sack in the nearest ejector chute and making an end of it, but that would have been ignoble. Instead, with a gentleness belied by his large, heavy hands, Garro traced through Kaleb's effects: utility blades and armoury tools, some changes of clothing, a trinket made from a bolter shell…

He turned the object between his fingers and held it up to the lamplight. A matrix-etching of the Emperor

stared back at him, beneficent and all-knowing. He pocketed the icon in a belt pouch. With it there were dog-eared papers held together by a worn strap. In places they had been taped where they had become ripped. Some of the pages were on different kinds of paper, some handwritten, some from a crude mimeo­graph with words smudged and blurry from hundreds of reproductions. Garro found sketchy illustrations that made little sense to him, although he could pick out recognisable elements, iconogra­phy of the Emperor, of Terra, repeated again and again. 'Lectitio Divinitatus', he read aloud. 'Is this what you kept from me, Kaleb?'

Garro knew of the sect. They were common people who, despite the constant light of the secular Imper­ial truth, had come to believe that the Emperor of Mankind was himself a divine being. Who else, they argued, had the right to crush all other belief in gods, than the one true deity himself? Was not the Emperor a singular, god-like entity?

Despite his open rejection of such beliefs, the Emperor instilled such dedication and devotion. Immortal and all-seeing, possessed of the greatest intellect and psychic potential of any living human, in the eyes of the Lectitio Divinitatus, what else could he be but a divinity?

Yes, now Garro saw it, he realised Kaleb's connec­tion to the Cult of the God-Emperor had been there all along, simmering beneath the surface. A hundred tiny words and deeds suddenly took on new meaning in the light of this discovery. He had decried Grulgor on the gunnery deck for speaking blasphemy against the Emperor, and before in the murk of his healing coma, Garro had heard the invocation from Kaleb's lips, the entreaty for protection. 'You are of purpose,'

he intoned flatly, the housecarl's final words return­ing once again. 'The God-Emperor wills it. His hand lies upon all of us. The Emperor… the Emperor pro­tects.'

He knew that it was wrong to go any further, that it went against the letter of the Imperial truth he had dedicated his life to, but still Nathaniel Garro read on, absorbing the words of the tracts, page by tattered page.

Although he would never have showed it openly, the passing hours had shaken him to his core. He had always imagined himself as a blade in the Emperor's hand, or as an arrow in mankind's quiver to be nocked and sent tearing into the heart of humanity's foes, but what was he now? All the blades were blunted and twisted upon one another, the arrows broken about their shafts.

The firm ground Garro's beliefs stood upon was turning to quicksand beneath them. It was almost too much to contain within his mind! His brothers, his battle lord, his very Warmaster all ranged against him; the blood of a Death Guard on his sword and much more to come; the foreboding pall at the boundaiy of his thoughts; the omen of the blinded star, the smug prophecy of the dead xenos child and Kaleb's dying plea.

'It's too much!' Garro shouted, and sank to his knees, the papers tight in his hand. The horrible taint of this knowledge was a poison that threatened to shrivel his soul. Never in centuries of service had the Astartes felt himself to be so totally, so utterly vulner­able, and in that moment, he understood there was only one to whom he could reach out.

'Help me/ he cried, offering his entreaty to the dark­ness, 'I am lost.' Of their own accord, Garro's hands

found the shape of the aquila, palms open across his chest. 'Emperor,' he choked, 'give me faith.'

Behind his eyes, Garro felt something break loose inside him and leap, a sudden release, a flood of energy. It was beyond his ability to describe it, and there in the gloom of the half-lit alcove, he felt the ghost of a voice brush over the edges of his psyche. A crying woman, pale and elfin, strong and delicate all at once, was calling him: the voice from his dream.

Save us, Nathaniel.

Garro cried out and stumbled backwards, fighting to recover his balance. The words had been so clear and close, it was as if she had been in the chamber with him, standing at his ear. The Death Guard recovered his composure, panting hard, and got back to his feet. He sensed a peculiar, greasy tang in the air, fading even as he noticed it. The stroke upon his thoughts had been like the jorgalli's intrusion into his mind, but dif­ferent. It shocked him in its intimacy, and yet it did not feel wrong like the telepathic touch of the alien. Garro took a shuddering breath. As quickly as it had hap­pened, the moment vanished like vapour.

He was still staring at the bundle of pages in his hand when Decius stormed into the chamber, anger tight on the younger man's face.

Solun Decius watched his commander stuff a fold of papers into a belt pouch and turn away, as if he wasn't ready to look the Astartes in the eye. 'Decius,' he man­aged. 'Report.'

'Resistance was encountered,' he growled. 'I… We dealt with the remainder of Grulgor's men. They made an attempt to reach the landing bay. We suf­fered some casualties as they were repelled.' Decius's face became a grimace. 'It was a slaughter.'

Garro eyed him. They would have done the same to us, if we had given them the opportunity. Why else do you think that Typhon placed both Grulgor and me aboard this ship, if not to have my command ter­minated when the moment came?'

Decius wanted to snap out the angry reply boiling in his thoughts, to say that maybe that was true, but perhaps it was only Garro who had been on the tar­get list. He stared angrily at the deck. What exasperated him more than anything was that he had not been given the choice! His fate was tied to the battle-captain's now, whatever happened. Yes, per­haps this might have been what Decius would have chosen had he been given the opportunity, but the sheer fact he had not made him rebel against it!

His mentor read the emotion on his face. 'Speak plainly, lad.'

'What would you have me say?' Decius retorted hotly.

'The truth. If not here and now, then you may never get another chance/ Garro replied, keeping his tone level. 'I would have you speak your mind, Solum'

There was a long pause as Decius worked to frame his resentment. 'I put down three men wearing my own colours back there/ he said, jerking his head at the corridor and the ship beyond, 'not xenos or mutants, but Death Guard, my brother Astartes!'

'Those men ceased to be our brethren the instant they chose Horas's path over the Emperor's.' Garro sighed. 'I share the pain of this, Solun, more than you can know, but they have become traitors-'

'Traitors?' The curse exploded from him. 'Who are you to decide that, Battle-Captain Garro? What authority do you have to make such a determination, sir? You are not Warmaster, not a primarch, not even

a first captain! Yet you make this choice for all of us!' Garro watched without responding. Decius knew that daring to take such a tone with a senior officer was worth punishment and censure, but still he raged on. What… what if it is we who are the traitors, captain? Horus will no doubt paint us as such when he learns of what you have done.'

You have seen what I have seen/ said his comman­der evenly. 'Tarvitz, Grulgor, the kill orders from Eidolon and Typhon… If there is an explanation that would undo all of that, that would make this all go away, I would give much to know it.'

Decius advanced a step. 'There is something you fail to consider. Ask yourself this, my lord: What if Horus is right?'

He had barely uttered the question when the com­bat alert sirens began to wail.

'Say that again!' snapped Temeter, pulling the Astartes holding the long-range vox towards him.

With the constant drumming of shellfire back and forth between the Death Guard assault force and the Isstvanian defenders, it was difficult to hear the man's words. Another blistering salvo of vulcan bolter fire from the Dies Irae roared over their heads, blotting out everything else as the Titan continued its slow advance.

'Lord, I have fragmentary signals! I can't make head nor tail of them!'

'Just give me what you have/ Temeter said, crouch­ing down behind a broken ferrocrete emplacement, ignoring the whine of needier rounds and the snap-crack of crimson laser beams.

'Still nothing from the orbital elements/ continued the Death Guard, 'I caught an intercept to the Sons of

Horns, Squad Lachost, from Lucius of the Emperor's Children.'

'Lucius? What did he say?'

'It was very garbled, sir, but I distinctly heard the words "bio-weapon".'

Temeter's eyes narrowed. 'Are you certain? There was nothing in the mission briefing to indicate the Isstvanians have that capability. This is their holy city, after all. Why would they deploy something like that-'

Temeter suddenly broke off and looked up. The overlapping sounds of the battle had become back­ground noise to him, a constant rush of shot and shell, but suddenly something had changed.

It was the Titan. The Dies Irae was only a few hundred metres from where Temeter crouched, and he had quickly become accustomed to the ground-shaking impacts it made with every footfall, anticipating the rhythm of them, but the massive humanoid machine had stilled and now it stood there, a vast iron citadel, joints hissing and ticking. Mortar shells arced past them and impacted harmlessly on Dies Irae's torso hull, drawing no reaction from the crew. The Titan's mighty guns were still pointed directly at the enemy lines, but they were silent.

'What in Terra's name is that fool up to?' Temeter snarled. 'Raise the Titan! Get Princeps Turnet on the vox and have him explain himself!'

The captain of the Fourth Company scanned the hull of the machine with his optics. There was no vis­ible damage of such scale that would cause a Titan to shut down, no possible reason that Temeter could see for it to just stop. His line of sight passed over the access hatches in the hull and he saw all of them were shut fast. Temeter searched for and found power shaft

vents in the thigh armour of the mechanism. Nor­mally they would be puffing with the release of spent coolant gasses, but instead they were sealed. Chill knives of apprehension stabbed into him.

'I can't raise the Dies Irae', said the other man. "Why don't they answer? They must be able to hear us!'

'A bio-weapon.' Temeter reached up and checked the seals at his neck, a creeping sensation of trepida­tion coming over him. The captain's head tipped back, his gaze moving to take in the yellowish sky over the Titan's huge iron shoulders. He saw twin­kling glitters up there, streaks cutting through the upper atmosphere with trails of white vapour behind them. The sight shocked him into action. 'Squad-wide comms, now!' he shouted. 'All Death Guard disengage and seek cover! Bio-war alert! Make for the bunker complex to the west.'

The other Astartes relayed his orders into the vox even as he and Temeter broke from their meagre cover.

Temeter saw the dreadnought Huron-Fal turning in place. 'Ullis Temeter!' The venerable warrior's syn­thetic machine-voder was loud and scratchy. 'Who has done this?'

'No time, old friend,' he said on the run. 'Just get the men inside, nowV With every pounding step he took, a part of Temeter's mind was reeling with the import of what was taking place. The bombs were falling, and there was only one person who could have sent them.

Garro and Decius made it up the ramp to the win­dowed gallery overlooking the barracks chamber in time to witness the ships of the Warmaster's fleet open fire on Isstvan III. A myriad of silver streaks,

almost too fast to see with the naked eye, streamed over and around the Eisenstein and the other smaller ships at low anchor above the Choral City. Although they were just blurs, Garro didn't need to see them clearly to know what they were: Atlas-class heavy war­heads converted for space-to-surface functions, servitor-guided missile bombs and multiple impact penetrator munitions. It seemed as if only Eisenstein's guns remained silent, as if every capital ship in the 63rd Fleet were taking some part in the brutality. The bombs came in a solid rain of murder, falling fast, turning and converging towards pre-designated target points all across the planet. From this terrible god's-eye view of the onslaught, the distant grey-white patch upon the main continent that was the Choral City was easily visible.

Garro watched in abject horror as the instruments of Horus's betrayal flared red as they punched through the atmosphere and fell upon his battle-brothers. At his side, Decius's face was rapt with a peculiar, grotesque fascination as he struggled to comprehend the magnitude of the destruction.

Temeter and Huron-Fal were at the shallow ridge before the bunker's steel hatch, shouting at their kinsmen to run and run, to ran and not look back. Temeter felt a pang of fear, not for himself, but for his men. They had responded perfectly to his command, falling back in good order and surging away from the enemy along the trench lines they had already cleared. Hundreds of them were already in the bunkers, sealing themselves in to weather the immi­nent bombardment, but there were many more he knew would not live to make it to the doors. He looked up again at the sickly sky and Temeter became

torn inside. Who betrayed us, he asked himself, echo­ing the aged dreadnought's question? Why, in Terra's name, why?

'Ullis!' barked the old warrior, stomping to his side. 'Get in there! We have only a few seconds!'

'No!' he retorted. 'My men first!'

'Idiot!' growled Huron-Fal, throwing protocol to the wind. 'I will stay! Nothing will be able to crack my hide. You go, now!' He shoved Temeter with his colossal manipulator claw. 'Go inside, damn you!'

Ullis Temeter stumbled back a step, but his gaze was still on the sky. 'No/ he said, just as flickers of brilliant light turned the day a glittering white.

At high altitudes overhead, the first wave of the virus warheads detonated in series, a wall of airbursts instantly unleashing a black rain of destruction. The viral clades, capable of hyper-fast mutational change and near-exponential growth rates, feasted on native airborne bacteria. The thin, dark bloom of the death cloud rolled out over the Choral City, just as the sec­ond wave fell. The shells did not explode until they hit the ground, bursting to smother city districts, open fields and trench lines with tides of destructive haze.

The Life-Eater did as it had been engineered to do. Where a molecule of it touched an organic form, it spread instant, putrefying death. The Choral City, every living thing, every human, animal, plant, every organism down to the level of microbes was torn apart by the virus. It leapt boundaries of species in a second, burning out the life of the planet. Flesh rot­ted and blood became ooze. Bones shredded and turned brittle. Isstvanians and Astartes alike died screaming, united in death by the unstoppable germs.

Temeter saw the warriors running towards him, dying on their feet. Figures fell to the mud as their corpses turned to a red broth of fleshy slurry, viscous fluids seeping from the chinks in their power armour. He knew that he had dallied too long, and he shouted with all his might. 'Close the hatch. Close it!' The men in the bunker did as he told them, even as he tasted blood in his mouth and felt his skin prick­ling with budding lesions. The metal door slammed shut and hissed with a pressure seal, locking him out. Temeter hoped they had been quick enough. With luck, they would not have taken any of the virus inside with them. He managed two stumbling steps before he fell, the muscles in his legs singing with agony.

Huron-Fal caught him. 'I told you to ran, you fool.'

The captain flung off his helmet with a final, ago­nised gesture of defiance. It was useless now, the virus having moved effortlessly through the breather grille and into his lungs. His hand flailed at the metal flank of the dreadnought and traced a runnel of dark fluid. Even through the pain, Temeter understood. There was a small fracture in the old warrior's ceramite cas­ing, not enough to have slowed him on the battlefield, but more than the virus needed to reach inside the dreadnought's hull and savage the rem­nants of flesh inside. 'You… lied.'

'Veteran's prerogative,' came the reply. 'We'll go together then, shall we?' Huron-Fal asked, embracing Temeter's body to him, moving swiftly away from the bunker.

It took every last effort from Temeter to nod. Blinded now, he could feel the tissues of his eyes burning and shrivelling in his head, the soft meat of his lips and tongue dissolving.

Huron-Fal's systems were on the verge of shut­down as he stumbled to a safe distance, skidding to a halt. This death,' rasped the voder, 'this death is ours. We choose it. We deny you your victory.'

With a single burning nerve impulse, the mind of the warrior at the heart of the dreadnought uncou­pled the governor controls on his compact fusion generator and let it overload. For a moment there was a tiny star on the battered plains outside the Choral City, marking two more lives lost within a maelstrom of murder.

Garro turned away from the blossom of darkness across the dying world and glared at his protege. 'Now do you believe it? With a planet scoured of life before your eyes, do you have proof enough of this madness?'

Decius spoke in an awed whisper. 'It… it is incred­ible. The power of such destruction…'

Garro felt unsteady and held out a hand, placing it on the thick armourglass of the gallery window. 'It is not over yet. There is one more strike to come before this killing is complete.'

'But the virus, it is consuming the whole planet… all life, everywhere! What other devastation can the Warmaster turn upon it?'

Garro's words were weary and hollow. "With so many dead, so fast, the Life-Easter bums out quickly, but the mass of corpses it leaves behind moulder and rot' His face soured. The… remains turn to gaseous putrefaction and decay. Imagine it, Solun, a whole world turned into a gigantic charnel house, the very atmosphere stinking and choked with the stench of new death.'

Out in the fleet, the ships were shifting, the forma­tion parting so that a single vessel could move into a

pre-determined firing position. It was the Warmaster's flagship, the bright sword-blade shape of the Vengeful Spirit.

'Of course,' Garro said bitterly, 'Horus. He comes to make the killing shot himself. I should have expected no less.' Garro wanted to close his eyes, to look away, but everywhere he turned his gaze he was haunted by the faces of the men that he had left alone down there. He saw Temeter and Tarvitz, imagined them dying in the onslaught, hoping, even praying that they might have survived the first wave. 'Now they must survive the final blow.'

The Vengeful Spirit drifted to a halt and turned with stately menace to point her bow down at Isstvan III. In the silence, there was a flicker of light from the maws of the warship's twin lance cannons along the flanks of the hull. The bolts of blinding fire touched the atmospheric envelope of the planet and a new colour bloomed among the blackened clouds: the searing orange of a firestorm.

'A match to tinder/ breathed Decius. The fumes from the decayed dead are lit. The flames will burn across the world.'

'All by the hand of Horus,' said Garro, fighting off the sickness in his heart.

They stood there for what seemed like hours, watching the fires cross continents and raze cities as the Warmaster's flagship orbited above it all, the lone arbiter of Isstvan Ill's destruction. Time fell away as the two Astartes stood witness to the distant slaugh­ter.

At last, a loud chime sounded through the chamber over the frigate's inter-craft vox net and shattered the silence. 'Captain Garro to the bridge.' It was Carya's voice, low and toneless. 'We have a problem.'

Nathaniel finally turned from the windows and walked away. Decius remained a few moments, his eyes glittering, before he followed suit, running to keep up with his commander.

Baryk Carya couldn't bring himself to look out of the bridge's forward viewports. The slow death of the planet below was abhorrent to him, a brutal act that went against every fibre of his being. He had not taken an oath of fealty to be part of such horror. He scanned the chamber and found Maas glaring at him from the vox alcove, still gripping the message slip the shipmaster had given him. He advanced towards the junior officer, working to maintain his outward mask of authority. 'Is it done?' he demanded.

'I…' Maas grimaced. 'I have sent the signal you ordered me to send, sir.'

The young man's displeasure was clear on his face, although Carya could have cared less for his unwill­ingness to broadcast what was an outright lie. The master snatched the paper from his grip and shredded it between his fingers. The message had gone to Termi­nus Est with Grulgor's command rune carefully forged by Vought. In terse phrases that he hoped would emu­late the speech of an Astartes, Carya had informed First Captain Typhon that Eisenstein had suffered a weapons malfunction that prevented it firing on Isstvan III. It was a poor ruse, as thin as the paper he had scribbled it on, but it would buy them time.

'What you have done will cost you your rank/ hissed Maas in a sullen voice. 'You are upon the verge of open mutiny against the Warmaster's command!'

'Get your terms straight, boy/ retorted Carya. 'Mutiny is when the enlisted men take over a vessel. When the ship's master does it, it's called barratry.'

'Whatever name you give it, it is wrong!'

'Wrong?' Carya's anger went white-hot in an instant, and he grabbed Maas by the scruff of the neck, dragging him from the alcove and across the bridge. 'Do you want to see wrong, boy? Look at that!' He forced the vox offi­cer's face towards the viewports and the distant carnage. He gave him a half-hearted shove. 'Get back to your damn station, and keep your thoughts to yourself!'

Vought came to his side. 'Sir, your pardon? The other ship, I have confirmed it. It's on an approach vector at full military thrust.'

'Within gun range?'

She nodded. 'I've taken the liberty of getting a firing solution, although that earlier trick won't work this time. If we kill it, the whole fleet will see.'

The bridge hatch irised open and the commander of the Seventh Company entered with one of his men, his eyes hollow. 'Shipmaster,' said Garro gravely, 'is there a matter of urgency?'

He nodded. 'There is. Racel, show him.'

Vought manipulated the controls on the hololith to display a close-range globe of space around the frigate. A red arrowhead was moving steadily towards the vessel. 'Another Thunderhawk,' she explained, 'on an intercept vector.'

'Tarvitz?' asked the other Astartes, the one called Decius. 'Has he been in orbit all this time, or returned from the surface?'

Racel shook her head. 'No, this ship's idem codes are different. The designation is Nine Delta. It belongs to the Sons of Horus, assigned aboard the Vengeful Spirit!

'He knows,' said the vox officer. 'Horus knows what happened here. He's coming to-'

'Shut up, Maas!' snapped Carya.

'He could be right/ said Decius.

Garro ignored the hololith and went to the view­port, searching for the transport with his own eyes. After a moment he pointed. 'There, I see it.'

'Captain, what are your orders?' The shipmaster shifted uncomfortably, perturbed by the strange sen­sation of events repeating themselves. This was how it had all begun, with a lone Thunderhawk, with Tarvitz and his warning.

Some emotion Carya couldn't identify crossed Garro's face like a cloud passing before the sun. Then he turned on his heel and marched to the communi­cations panel. Without preamble he snatched up the vox pickup and spoke into it. 'Thunderhawk gunship, identify yourself Garro glanced back at Vought and threw her a look that said be ready.

A throaty voice thick with a Cthonian accent growled from the speaker. 'My name is Iacton Qruze, formerly of the Sons of Horus.'

'Formerly?' repeated Garro.

'Yes, formerly.'

Decius nodded to his commander. 'I know of this one, sir, an old campaigner, past his time, the third captain under Horus. They call him "the Half-Heard".'

Garro took this without comment. 'Explain your­self,' he demanded. Carya found that his hands were tight, his knuckles bloodless with the tension.

He heard the agony beneath the veteran's next words, even through the crackling hiss of the vox channel. 'I am no longer part of the Legion. I can no longer be a party to what the Warmaster is doing.'

The battle-captain held the vox away and rubbed at his face.

'It could be a rase/ insisted Vought. 'That transport could be packed with Astartes from Horus's ship!'

'Let them come/ growled Decius. 'I would prefer honest battle to all this subterfuge.'

'Or perhaps a bomb

'No.' Garro's voice brought silence. 'She is aboard. He does not lie.'

She? Carya's brow furrowed. Who is he talking about?

'There are refugees on that vessel, I am certain of it. Open the landing bay and prepare to take the Thun-derhawk aboard,' he ordered.

The blocky ship manoeuvred uneasily into the cap­ture cradle and the thrusters flared out. With grinding hisses, the deck servitors worked the manipulator arms to bring the Thunderhawk forward and down on to the same grating where Garro and his men had arrived less than a day ago. Hakur and his squad were ready with their combi-bolters cocked and aimed, but Garro refused to draw a weapon. He saw Voyen and the others watching him carefully, the question clear on their faces. They thought him mad to do this, he realised. He would have said the same in their place.

He did not blame them, but then they did not see as he did. Even Garro himself found it hard to articu­late the compulsion he felt in his heart. He had knowledge. That was it. Although he could not explain it, he knew with absolute certainty that the ship before him carried a cargo as precious as the warning he had dedicated himself to delivering. The dream… It all came back to the dream.

The Thunderhawk's forward hatch spat atmos­pheric gasses and yawned open, allowing four figures to disembark. At the head was a craggy, aged warrior in the power armour of the Sons of Horus. He walked with the same stiff pride Garro had seen in a hundred other Cthonian Astartes, but his expression was one

of sorrow, of a soldier who had seen too much. He bore the signs of recent combat, new wounds still wet with freshly clotted blood, but he paid them no mind.

'So you are Garro,' he said. 'Young Garviel spoke of you once or twice. He said you were a good man.'

'And you are Iacton Qruze. I would like to say well met, captain, but that is as far from the truth as it could be.'

Qruze nodded heavily. 'Aye.' He paused for a moment and then met Garro's gaze. 'You'll want this, then, I suppose.' The old warrior held out his bolter and the other Astartes tensed at the motion. 'Take it, lad. If you mean to end us, then do it with this, if that is to be the way of things. We can run no further.'

Garro took the gun and handed it away to Sendek. 'I'll have it cleaned and returned to you,' he said. 'I fear I will need every able man in the coming hours.' The captain stepped forward and offered Qruze his hand. 'I have a mission to take warning of Horus's perfidy to Terra and the Emperor. Will you join me in this?'

'I will at that/ Qruze said, accepting the gesture. 'I pledge my command to your mission, such as it is. I'm afraid all I have to offer from the Third Company is a single Luna Wolf, getting along in his years.'

'Luna Wolf?' repeated Decius. 'Your Legion-'

The old soldier's eyes flashed with anger. 'I'll not be known as a Son of Horus again, mark that well, lad.'

Garro gave a small smile. 'Just so, Captain Qruze. I welcome you to the motley company of the starship Eisenstein. We number less than a hundred battle-brothers.'

'Enough, if the fates smile kindly.'

Garro nodded at Qruze's injuries. 'Do you require a medicae?'

The Luna Wolf waved the question away, instead turning to gestured to the other passengers from the shuttle. 'I am remiss. Loken asked me to keep these people safe and that I've done by bringing them here. You should greet them too.'

Nathaniel looked down at an elderly fellow and recognised him instantly. 'You, I know you.'

The old man wore the robes of a highly-ranked iter­ator, now somewhat the worse for wear, but still with the manner of his esteemed office beneath his trou­bled expression. He managed a weak smile. 'If it pleases the battle-captain, I am Kyril Sindermann, primary iterator of the Imperial truth.' The words trickled out of his mouth by rote, but the pat response crumbled as he said it. 'Or, at least I was. I fear that in recent days I have come to a moment of transition.'

'As have we all,' agreed Garro, musing for a moment. 'I remember, I saw you on board the Venge­ful Spirit, passing through the landing bay. You were going somewhere. You seemed disturbed.'

'Ah, yes/ Sindermann threw a look back at the other two passengers. 'Such is my vanity that I hoped you might have known me from my speeches, but no matter.' He composed himself. Clearly the escape from Horas's ship had taken its toll on the man. Sin­dermann placed a wary hand on Nathaniel's vambrace. 'Thank you for the sanctuary you have granted us, Captain Garro. Please, allow me to pre­sent my companions. The lady Mersadie Oliton, one of the Emperor's documentarists…'

'A remembrancer?' Nathaniel watched with interest as the ebon-skinned woman's head emerged from beneath a roughly woven travelling hood. She had a peculiar skull that extended beyond the back of her neck far more than that of a normal human, and it

shimmered like glass. He instantly thought of the jor-gall psyker, but where that xenos child had been a thing of haphazard, ugly mutation, the documen-tarist was dainty and brimming with grace, even under these trying circumstances. Garro caught him­self staring and nodded. 'My lady. Forgive me, I have never met a storyteller before.' She was quite different from what he had expected. Oliton seemed as if she was made of spun glass and he was afraid to touch her for fear she might break.

You remind me of Loken/ she blurted suddenly, the outburst seeming to surprise her. You have the same eyes.'

Garro nodded again. 'Thank you for the compli­ment. If it was Captain Loken's desire to see you kept safe, then it is mine as well. Do not fear.'

Sindermann saw the brittleness in her and gently guided the remembrancer to one side. 'One other refugee, captain-'

Nathaniel saw the last figure and his throat tightened. It was a woman in simple robes. He blinked, unsure if what he saw before him was real or some kind of strange vision. You/ he managed. Garro knew her even though they had never met. He had felt the salt tang of her tears on his face, the ghost of her voice in the depth of his healing Uance, and again in the barracks.

'My name is Euphrati Keeler/ she said. The woman laid her hand flat upon his chest plate and smiled warmly. 'Save us, Nathaniel Garro.'

'I will/ he said distantly, for long moments losing himself in her steady, shimmering gaze. With effort, he tore himself away and gestured to his men to stand down. Garro took a breath and beckoned Voyen. 'Get these civilians to the inner decks where they will be safer. See to their wellbeing and report back to me.'

Qruze hovered at his side. 'Do you have a plan of action, lad?'

'We fight our way out/ said Hakur as he approached. 'Punch through and go to the warp.'

'Huh, blunt and direct. How very like a Death Guard.'

Hakur eyed the Luna Wolf. 'I've often heard the same said of your Legion.'

The old Astartes nodded. 'That's true enough. The humours of our brotherhoods do find themselves in lockstep.' He looked at Nathaniel. 'To battle, then?'

Garro watched Keeler and the others walk away, his thoughts conflicted. 'To battle/ he replied.

TEN

Terminus Est

The Gauntlet

Into the Maelstrom

As Isstvan III revolved beneath them, the ships of the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet moved with it, following the planet as it turned from the watery sunlight of day and into the leaden darkness of twilight. The ships remained in geostationary orbits, the swarm curled around the world in a loose, iron-fingered grip. As night fell, the burning cities still smouldering from the passage of the firestorm were visible, the glow of the massive pyres sullen and shimmering through the murky cloud. So much ash and fumes had been thrown into the planet's atmosphere that the skies were turning into a shroud of chemical haze. In time, the climate would start to shift, becoming colder as the warmth from the Isstvan star was blotted out. If there had been any native flora or fauna remaining, this would have been the death sentence for them, but everything that had evolved to life on Isstvan III was already dust and cinders.

The fleet kept watch, sensors to the surface in search of any who might have survived the virus bombard­ment, and with the attention of the other ships elsewhere, it had become possible for the Eisenstein to shift slowly out of formation. Carya and his crew allowed the frigate to come up from the high anchor station, fading into the press of the other warships, but now they had gone as far as they could without courting suspicion. If Eisenstein were to escape the Isstvan system, it would not be by stealth.

Master Carya peered into the hololith tank, looking through the glowing symbols to Garro, the Luna Wolf Qruze and the other Death Guard warriors. The fin­gers of Carya's left hand were mechanical augments, replacements from an accident years earlier when a plasma holdout gun had overloaded in his grip. Inside them were delicate slivers of circuitry that, among other things, allowed him to manipulate the virtual shapes in the tank as if they were real objects.

The hololith showed a basic representation of the Isstvan system, distorted to present the close orbital space around die third planet in greater detail. Carya pointed to a stylised cross drifting high up over the star system's ecliptic plane. Vought has computed a mini­mum distance vector for us, using the ship's cogitator chorus. If we can reach this point, we will be beyond the c-limit and free to make a warp translation.'

'Naval terminology was never my strong point,' grumbled Qruze. 'Indulge an old war dog and explain it to me in terms a soldier might grasp.'

'We can't go to the warp while we're still inside the gravity shadow of the sun,' said Sendek briskly, indi­cating the Isstvan star. 'That is the threshold the shipmaster speaks of.'

Carya nodded, a little surprised to find a line Astartes with a basic grasp of astrogation. 'Indeed, the footprint of the solar energy interferes with the warp transition. We must go beyond it and reach the jump point in order to enter the immaterium with any degree of safety.'

'It's a long distance,' mused Garro. 'We'll have to travel several light-seconds at maximum burn to get there, and with the drives at full, it will light a torch to show Horus where we're heading.'

Qruze leaned into the hololith. 'There are capital ships all around. It would only take a couple of them to lay their lances on us and we'd be finished. Some­how I don't think the Warmaster will be willing to let us leave unchallenged, eh?'

'Our void shields are at full capacity,' continued Carya. 'We can weather a few indirect hits and we have agility on our side.'

Decius gave a humourless chuckle. While it heart­ens me to see that the good master here has confidence in his ship and his crew, if must be said that only a fool would not think the odds are stacked high against us!'

'I don't deny it,' retorted the naval officer. 'Given the circumstances, I rate our chances of survival at one in ten, and in that, I am being more than generous.'

Vought spoke up cautiously. 'At this time, Eisenstein is close to the rear edge of the fleet pattern. I took the liberty of informing the fleet master's office that we were suffering a malfunction in one of our tertiary fusion generators. It is standard naval procedure for a ship under those circumstances to drop back from the main formation, to prevent other vessels being dam­aged in case of a cascade failure and core implosion.'

'How long will that lie last us?' asked Garro.

'Until the moment we fire our main engines,' replied the woman.

Qruze made a tsk noise under his breath. 'We can't fight our way out on this little scow, and we can barely run. We may be able to duck and dive, but how far do you think we'll get before one of those mon­sters…' he stabbed a finger at the large warships flanking them, 'before one of them gets its fangs into our throat?'

'Not far enough/ said Sendek grimly.

Carya tapped his metal fingers on the control con­sole. 'It is true that the Eisenstein lacks the velocity to make it to the jump point clear of any pursuit. That is, if we follow the most direct course.' He traced a straight line from the ship's orbital location to the cross icon. The shipmaster pulled at the course indi­cator and stretched it in another direction. Vought has come up with an alternative solution. It is not without risk, but if we succeed, we will be able to out­run the Warmaster's guns.'

Garro studied the new course plot and smiled at the daring of it. 'I concur. This is so ordered.'

'A bold action/ countered Decius, 'but I must high­light the single large impediment to it.' The Astartes leaned in and pointed at a massive vessel floating off to the port. 'That course takes us right across the arc of this ship's engagement zone.'

Typhon's command/ said Garro, 'the Terminus Est!

Calas Typhon fingered the cutting edge of his man-reaper with bare fingers, letting the keen blade pull at the hardened skin there, drawing faint lines of dark Astartes blood. His mood was a mixture of conflicting, polar emotions. On one level, he felt a simmering ela­tion at the unfolding events around him, an

anticipation of what great things were coming to pass. Typhon felt liberation, if an Astartes could know such a thing, a cold and cruel joy to know that after so long, after so many years of nurturing and hiding his secret wisdom, he would soon be free to walk openly with it. The things he knew, the words he had read in the books shown to him by his kinsman Erebus… The enlighten­ment the Word Bearers chaplain had brought to Calas Typhon had changed him forever. But Typhon was angry with it. Oh, he knew that his master Mortarion was slowly coming to the same path as he was, thanks to the direction of Horus, but both the primarch and the Warmaster were only just starting down that road. Typhon and Erebus and the others… they were the ones who had been truly illuminated, and it chafed at him that he was forced to play the role of dutiful first captain when in fact it was his knowledge that out­stripped theirs.

The time would come, Typhon promised himself, and it would be soon, when he would cut loose from Mortarion's shadow and stand alone. With the patronage of darker powers, Typhon would become a herald before which whole worlds would tremble. From his command throne, the Death Guard's gaze ranged across the bridge of the Termi­nus Est to take in the servants and Astartes toiling in his service. Their loyalty was to him, and it was emboldening.

With that, Typhon's thoughts turned to Grulgor. He frowned and rubbed the black stubble of his beard. In the hours since he had sent Ignatius the command to remove Garro and join the attack on Isstvan III, the braggart commander had been uncommonly quiet. Now the bombardment was over and Horus's plan was in a moment of ellipsis, he had pause to reflect.

Grulgor was not a man to stay silent about his victories, and Typhon knew that Ignatius would relish the chance to relay the story of how he had murdered Nathaniel Garro. The commander's powerful dislike for the battle-captain had grown into full-fledged hate over the years, as Grulgor used Garro as a target for his every ill-humour and odium. Typhon had no idea where the roots of the enmity had been born, and he did not care. It was Typhon's nature to seek and exploit weakness. The rivalry had become a thing that fuelled itself, and Typhon had taken advantage of it. It was easy to use the poison in Grulgor's heart to make him his attack dog, and through Grulgor the first captain had been able to touch the lodges hidden inside the XIV Legion and guide them as well.

He gestured to a Chapter serf. You, check the com­munications logs. Have there been any machine-calls from the frigate Eisenstein2 .'

The servile was back in a moment. 'Lord captain, we show a signal to the fleet command, a message regarding a weapons malfunction, and then another, with refer­ence to an ongoing issue with the ship's power system. The former bears Commander Grulgor's authorisation.'

'Nothing else?'

The serf bowed low. 'No, lord.'

Typhon rose and placed his battle scythe across his bridge throne. 'Where is the Eisenstein now?'

'Moving on a transition vector, captain,' answered a deck officer. 'Port high quadrant.'

'Where is he going?' A creeping discontent pushed at Typhon's thoughts. Vox! Hail the Eisenstein and get me a voice link. I want to talk to Grulgor, now'.

Maas listened carefully to the tinny voice in his headset, his opposite number on board the Terminus

Est repeating the orders of Captain Typhon with flat, emotionless precision. He had the vox pickup in his fingers, holding tightly to it, trembling slightly. Maas hazarded a sideways look at Carya, Vought and the other Astartes. They were all engaged in conversation, watching as the frigate made its way along the path that the deck officer had set.

Maas licked his lips, the tension making him thirsty. It was still difficult for him to fully grasp the chain of events that had led him to this point. His assignment to the Eisenstein had been recent, and in his eyes, it had not come soon enough.

Years of dogged service aboard armed transports and system boats had finally been rewarded with a promotion to an actual expeditionary fleet, and while the Death Guard's exploits were not as glamorous or renowned as those of other Legions, it was a step up for Maas's ambitions. He coveted command, and there wasn't a day that passed when he didn't think of a future where it would be Shipmaster Tirin Maas at the throne of a cruiser, running a vessel like his own private kingdom.

Now, all of that was in danger of crumbling away. The posting he had been so euphoric to be granted was turning into a millstone around his neck. First this high-handed Garro had taken command and set things awry, and now Carya himself was following the fool's insane orders! If what he had gleaned was true, this Death Guard had already murdered several of his own, allowed another turncoat to escape destruction and wilfully destroyed a dozen fighters! Maas felt as if he was the only sighted man in a room full of blind people.

He looked around the bridge for any glimmer of expression on the faces of the other officers,

anything at all that might have shown him they felt as he did, but there was nothing. Carya and his arrogant executive had them all playing along! It was inconceivable. The shipmaster had defied the decrees of Horus himself, and then Vought had compounded things with her falsification of signals. Maas had tried to reason with Carya, and what had he got in return? Censure and violent reproach!

He shook his head. The vox officer felt soiled by the willing piracy unfolding before him. They had sworn an oath to the fleet, and Horus was at the head of that fleet. What did it matter if the orders the Warmaster gave were distasteful? A good captain did not question, he served! But Tirin Maas would never get to do that now, not after Carya's rebellion. Should he survive, Maas would be tarred with the same brush as the shipmaster, labelled disloyal and doubtless executed.

The young man stared at the vox unit. He had to take steps. Already, he had broken protocol and secretly disabled the enunciator circuits so that the bridge would not be alerted to incoming signals unless he wished it. That alone was a flogging offence, but Maas saw it was necessary. It was clear that he could only trust himself, and that meant he alone bore the responsibility to warn the rest of the fleet of the duplicity brewing aboard the Eisenstein. He raised the communicator to his lips and drew back into the vox alcove. Maas was afraid, that was undeniable, but as he began to speak in a careful whisper, a sense of purpose and strength came to him. When this was done he would have the gratitude of Horus himself. Perhaps, if Eisenstein wasn't destroyed as an object les­son after the rebellion had been put down, he might

even solicit the Warmaster for command of the ship as his reward.

'Repeat yourself,' demanded Typhon. He loomed over the Chapter serf at the vox console, the broad form of his armour dark and menacing.

The helot bowed. 'Lord, the message comes from a person claiming to be Eisenstein's communications offi­cer. He says that Grulgor is missing, and that the ship's command crew are in revolt. He claims tteachery, sir.'

The first captain rocked back, and in his mind the pieces of an unwelcome picture fell into place. 'The bellicose idiot failed me! He tipped our hand to Garro.' Typhon spun in place and barked out orders to the ship's crew. 'Sound general quarters! Power to the drives and the prow lances! I want an intercept course to Eisenstein, and I want it now!

'Captain, the vox officer,' said the serf, 'what shall I tell him?'

Typhon smiled grimly. 'Send him my gratitude and the commiserations of the Warmaster. Then get me a link to Maloghurst aboard the Vengeful Spirit'.

Garro saw the brief flicker of fear on Carya's face as the sing-song siren call blared from the forward com­mand console. Vought was already at the station, punching control strings into the keyboard.

'Report!' said the shipmaster.

Vought paled. 'Sense-servitors are registering a dis­tinct thermal bloom emanating from the drive blocks of Terminus Est, sir. In addition, there are readings of possible bow configuration changes in line with lance battery deployment.'

-'He knows/ snapped Qruze. 'Warp curse him, Typhon knows!'

'Aye/ agreed Garro, facing Carya. 'It's time. Give the order.'

The naval officer swallowed hard and threw a nod to Vought. 'You heard the battle-captain. All decks to combat stations, release drive interlocks and make for maximum military speed.' He gestured to a junior rating. 'Get below and alert the esteemed Sev-ernaya to prepare himself for the jump. I want him ready to go.' Carya saw the question in Garro's look. 'Severnaya, the Navigator/ he explained, pointing at the deck. 'Two tiers below us. Spends his days med­itating inside a null-gee sphere. I'll warrant he doesn't have the slightest idea what's going on up here. He lives only for the thrill of the jump, you see.'

Garro accepted this. The warp is stormy. Do you think he will baulk to enter it when your order comes?'

'Oh, he'll go all right/ said Carya, 'but what I fear is whether he will survive the leap.'

Vought broke in to the conversation. 'What about the gun batteries, sir?' she asked, her voice taut with tension.

Carya shook his head. 'Make them ready, but I want all available power to be on hand for the void shields and the engine clusters. What we need is strength and speed, not firepower.'

Aye sir, all ahead full/ she replied, and went to work implementing the orders.

Garro felt a faint shudder through the soles of his boots as the frigate's decking trembled with the abrupt application of velocity. Chimes and bells from the enginarium relays sounded as Eisenstein went instantly from a stately drifting course to a full battle pace.

'Terminus Est is moving from her orbital station/ said Sendek, reading the data from a pict-screen repeater. Turning now, swinging guns to our bearing.'

'Any other ships following suit?' asked Garro.

'I don't see them, lord/ he replied, 'only Typhon.'

'Captain Garro/ Vought called, 'we have no records of the warship's capabilities. What can Typhon field against us?'

'Sir, if I may?' broke in Sendek. 'Terminus Est is a unique craft, not of a standard template construct pattern, well armoured but ponderous with it and very burdensome on the turns.'

Carya nodded. That we can play to our advantage.'

'Indeed, her forward armament is formidable, how­ever. Typhon has an array of bow-mounted lances, and more in turrets that prey abeam and ahead. If he pulls alongside us, we're finished/ he concluded grimly.

We'll keep the behemoth out of our baffles, then/ said the shipmaster. Watch the reactor temperatures!'

'How did he guess?' Decius snarled at his comman­der. 'Could it not be a coincidence? Perhaps he is only taking the ship to another orbit?'

'He knows/ Garro repeated Sendek's words. This was inevitable.'

'But how?' demanded the younger Astartes. 'Did he have a seer pluck your intentions from the ether?'

Garro's eyes strayed to the vox alcove and met those of the man cowering there, his face pale and sweaty. 'Nothing so arcane/ said the battle-captain, reading the truth in the naval officer's expression. In three swift steps he was across the bridge chamber and dragging Maas to his feet. The vox officer appeared to have been crying. 'You/ growled Garro, his eyes turn­ing flinty. 'You alerted Typhon.'

Hanging there in his grip, Maas suddenly jerked and flailed at Garro, weak blows rebounding off his power armour. 'Traitor bastard!' he shouted. 'You're all conspirators! You've killed us with your duplicity!'

'Fool!' Carya retorted. 'These are the Emperor's men. It's you that's the traitor, you arrogant dolt!'

'My oath is to the fleet. I serve the Warmaster Horus!' Maas bellowed as he started to weep. 'Until death!'

'Yes/ agreed Garro, and with a savage twist of his wrist, the Death Guard broke the vox officer's neck and let him drop to the floor.

There was only a breath of silence after the killing before Vought's voice called out across the bridge. 'Lance discharge, port rear quadrant! We're under attack!'

The crew turned their faces away from the viewports as a dazzling sword of white light crossed over the frigate's bow. The shot was a miss, but the edges of the lance's energy nimbus crackled over the exterior hull. On the bridge a handful of stations flickered and popped as the backwash raced through the control systems.

'I think he wants us to heave to,' muttered Qruze.

'A request so politely phrased as well,' said Sendek. 'We'll show him our exhausts by way of reply'

'Look sharp!' snapped Garro, turning away from the man he had just executed. 'Warn Hakur and the others to be ready for impacts and decompression! I want those civilians kept alive-'

The next shot was a hit.

At the periphery of its range, the lance fire from the Terminus Est was at its weakest, and yet the collimated beams of energy were still enough to inflict serious

damage on a ship with the tonnage of Eisenstein. The bolts cut through the void shields and sent them flickering. They raked over the dorsal hull at an oblique angle that tore decks open to space and ripped several portside gun turrets from their mount­ings.

Puffs of gas and flame popped and faded. Cascade discharges vaulted down the corridors of the frigate, blowing out relays and setting combustion. In a sin­gle secondary explosion, an entire compartment on one of the tertiary tiers became a brief, murderous firestorm as stored breathing gas canisters ignited.

A handful of Garro's men left there to stand guard died first as the air in their lungs turned to flames. The backdraft flooded over their bodies, torching the liv­ing quarters and sanctum of Eisenstein's small astropathic choir. Safety hatches slammed shut, but the damage was done, and with no more air to burn, the chambers became dead voids of blackened metal and ruined flesh.

Some of the impact transferred into kinetic energy that staggered the ship and made it list, but Carya's officers were battle-hardened and they did not let it turn them from their course. Terminus Est was moving upon them, the massive battleship filling the rear­ward pict screens with its deadly bulk.

'An explanation, Typhon,' growled Maloghurst over the crackling vox link, 'I await an explanation as to why you saw fit to draw me from my duties during this most important of operations'

The first captain grimaced, glad he did not have to look the Warmaster's equerry in the eye. There was no great esteem held between the Son of Horus and the Death Guard, a holdover from an incident years

earlier when they had disagreed fiercely over a matter of battlefield protocol. Typhon disliked the man's insouciant manner and his barely restrained arrogance. That Maloghurst was known by the epithet 'The Twisted' was, in Typhon's opinion, an all too accurate description. 'Forgive me, equerry/ he retorted, 'but I thought it important you be informed that your primarch's grand plans are in danger of faltering!'

'Don't test my patience, Death Guard! Shall I call your primarch to the vox to have him chastise you instead? Your ship has left the formation. What are you doing?'

'Attempting to excise an irritant. I have received warning that one of my battle-brothers, the lamenta­bly conservative Captain Garro, has taken control of a frigate called the Eisenstein and even now attempts to flee the Isstvan system.' He leaned back in his com­mand throne. 'Is that matter enough for your attention, or should I address myself directly to Horus instead?'

'Garro?' repeated Maloghurst. 'It was my under­standing that Mortarion had dealt with him.'

Typhon snorted. 'The Death Lord has been too lenient. Garro should have been allowed to die of his wounds after the battle on Isstvan Extremis. Instead Mortarion hoped to turn him, and now we may pay for that folly'

Maloghurst was silent for a moment. Typhon could imagine his unpleasant face creased in thought. 'Where is he now?'

'I am pursuing the Eisenstein. I will destroy the ship if I can.'

The equerry sniffed archly. 'Where does Garro think he can go? The storms in the warp have grown fiercer

with every passing hour. A small vessel like that can­not hope to weather a journey through the immaterium. He'll be torn apart!'

'Perhaps,' admitted Typhon, 'but I would like to make sure.'

'I have your course on my data-slate,' said the other Astartes. 'You'll never catch him in that cumbersome barge of yours, he has too much distance on you.'

'I don't need to catch him, Maloghurst. I just need to wound him.'

Then do it, Typhon,' came the reply. 'If I am forced to inform Horus that word of his plans has been spread unchecked, it will be you who feels his dis­pleasure soon after I do!'

The first captain made a throat-cutting gesture and his vox attendant severed the connection. He glanced down from his command throne to where the shipmaster of the Terminus Est was bowed and waiting.

The man spoke. 'Lord Typhon, the Eisenstein has altered her course. It's travelling at full burn towards Istvaan Ill's satellite, the White Moon.'

'Come to new heading,' snapped Typhon, rising once more. 'Match Eisenstein's course and get me a fir­ing solution.'

The shipmaster faltered. 'Lord, the moon's gravity well-'

'That was not a request,' he growled.

'Still with us.' Vought read the distance vectors from a pict-screen. Aspect change confirmed. Terminus Est is following, no other signs of pursuit.'

'Just so,' said Carya. 'Continue on a zigzag heading. Don't make it easy for Typhon's gunners to get a fir­ing angle.'

Garro stood directly behind the shipmaster, looking over his head and out of the viewports. The stark, chalk-coloured surface of Isstvan Ill's largest moon steadily grew larger as he watched it, craters and mountains tak­ing shape on the airless surface. To an untrained observer, it might have seemed like the frigate was on a collision course. 'Be honest with me.' Garro spoke qui-edy, so only Carya could hear him. What chance is there that Vought's computations will be in error?'

The dark-skinned man glanced up at him. 'She's very good, captain. The only reason she hasn't been given a ship of her own is because she has a few issues with fleet authority. I have faith in her.'

Garro looked back at the moon. 'My faith is in the strength of a starship's hull and the power of gravity/ he replied, but even as he said the words, they seemed hollow and incomplete.

Carya eyed him curiously. Perhaps he sensed the captain's disquiet. 'The universe is vast, sir. One can find faith in many places.'

'Coming up to first course correction,' called the deck officer. 'Stand by for emergency manoeuvres.'

'Mark/ said a servitor in a toneless voice. 'Executing manoeuvre.'

The frigate's deck yawed and Garro felt the motion in the pit of his stomach. With all the available energy channelling into the drives, the ship's gravitational compensators were lagging behind and he felt the turn more distinctly than usual. He gripped a support stanchion with one hand and put his weight on his organic leg.

'Thermal bloom from their bow/ warned Sendek, having taken it upon himself to assist the bridge crew at the sensor pulpit. 'Discharge] Incoming fire, multi­ple lance bolts!'

'Push the turn!' shouted Carya. He said something else, but the words were drowned out as heavy rods of tuned energy struck the aft of the Eisenstein and pitched her forward like a ship cresting a wave. The compensators were slow again, and Garro's arm shot out and grabbed the shipmaster, halting his fall towards a console. The battle-captain felt something in Carya's wrist dislocate.

'Engine three power levels dropping!' shouted Vought. 'Coolant leaks on decks nine and seven!'

Carya recovered and nodded to Garro. 'Increase thrust from the other nozzles to compensate! We can't let them gain any ground!'

The ship was trembling, the throbbing vibration of a machine pushed to the edge of its operating limit. Sendek called out from his station. 'We're entering the White Moon's gravity well, captain, accelerating.'

Carya gasped as he snapped his augmetic hand back into place. 'Ah, the point of no return, Garro/ he said. 'Now we'll see if Racel is as good as I said she was.'

'If her calculations are off by more than a few degrees, we will be nothing but a new crater and a scattering of metal shavings/ Decius said darkly.

The moon filled the forward viewport. 'Have faith/ Garro replied.

'Lord, we have been captured by the lunar gravita­tional pull/ reported Typhon's shipmaster. 'Our velocity is increasing. I would humbly suggest we attempt to evade, and-'

'If we break contact now, the Eisenstein escapes/ the first captain said flatly. 'This vessel has power enough to pull free, yes? You'll use it when I order you to and not before.'

'By your command.'

Typhon glared at the gunnery officer. 'You! Where are my kills? I want that frigate obliterated! Get it done!'

'Lord, the ship is agile and our cannons are largely fixed emplacements'

'Results, not excuses!' came the growling retort. 'Do your duty or I'll find a man who can!'

On the giant pict screen over his command throne, Typhon watched the trails of fumes and wreckage spilling from Eisenstein and smiled coldly.

Racel Vought blinked sweat out of her eyes and pressed her hands on the flat panel of the control con­sole. The reflected ivory starlight from the White Moon's surface illuminated the bridge with stark edges and hard lines. It was a funerary glow, devoid of any life, and it seemed to draw her energy from her. She took a shuddering breath. The lives of every person aboard the frigate were squarely in her hands at this moment, gambled on a string of numbers she had hastily computed while Isstvan III had died before her eyes. She was afraid to look at them again for fear that she might find she had made some horrible mistake. Better that she not know, better she hang on to the fragile thread of confidence that had propelled her to this daring course in the first place. If Vought had made any miscalculations, she would not live to regret it.

The theory was sound, she could be sure of that. The gravity of the dense, iron-heavy White Moon was already enveloping the Eisenstein, dragging it down towards the satellite's craggy surface. If she did not intervene, it would do exactly that, and like the dour Death Guard had said, the frigate would become a grave marker.

Vought's plan was built on the mathematics of orbits and the physics of gravitation, a school of learning that extended back to the very first steps of mankind into space, when thrust and fuel were pre­cious commodities. In the Thirty-first Millennium, with brute force engines capable of throwing star-ships wherever they needed to go, it wasn't often such knowledge was required, but today it might save their lives.

Racel glanced over her shoulder and found both Baryk and the Death Guard battle-captain looking back at her. She expected judgemental, commanding stares from both men, but instead there was silent assurance in their eyes. They were trusting her to ful­fil her promise. She gave them an answering nod and went back to her task.

Klaxons warned of new salvos of incoming fire. She tuned them out of her thoughts, concentrating instead on the complex plots of trajectory and flight path before her. There was no margin for error. As Eisenstein fell towards the planetoid, the drives would shift and ease her through the White Moon's gravita­tional envelope, using the energy of the satellite to throw the frigate about in a slingshot arc, boosting the vessel's sub-light speed, projecting her away towards the jump point. The Terminus Est would never be able to catch them.

The frigate's shuddering grew as the craft entered the final vector of the slingshot course. 'Prepare for course correction,' Vought shouted over the rumbling. 'A/tarkV

Streaks of fire jetted from the Eisenstein's port flank as the autonomic trim controls slewed the ship away from the moon. The bow veered as if wrenched by an

invisible hand, shifting the axis with brutal force. The extremes of tension between the lunar gravity and the artificial g-forces generated inside the vessel knotted and turned. Hull plates popped and warped as rivets as big as a man sheared off and broke. Conduits stressed beyond their tolerances ruptured and spewed toxic fumes. Forced past her limits, Eisenstein howled like a wounded animal under the punishment, but it turned, metre by agonising metre, falling into the small corridor of orbital space that would propel the frigate away from Isstvan III.

'Typhon!' shouted the shipmaster, throwing proce­dure aside by daring to address the first captain without the prefix of his rank. 'We must evade! We cannot follow the frigate's course, we'll be drawn down on to the moon! Our mass is too great-'

Furious, the Death Guard struck the naval officer with a sudden backhand, battering the man to the decking with his cheekbones shattered and blood streaming from cuts. 'Evade, then!' he spat, 'but warp curse you, I want everything thrown at that bloody ship before we let him go!'

The rest of the bridge crew scrambled to carry out his orders, leaving the mewling shipmaster to tend to himself. Typhon snatched up his manreaper and held it tightly, his anger hot and deadly. He cursed Garro as the Eisenstein slipped out of his grasp.

The Terminus Est bore down, the warship's drives casting a halo of crackling red light, a shark snapping at a minnow. The craft groaned as the monstrous thrust of her drives tore the ship out of the White Moon's gravity well, the blade-sharp prow crossing the path of the frigate. As it did so, every lance cannon

on Typhon's battle cruiser erupted as one in a scream­ing concert of power, tearing across the dark towards the fleeing vessel.

'Incoming fire!' barked Sendek. 'Brace for impact!'

Garro heard the words and then suddenly he was airborne, the deck dropping away from him. The Death Guard spun and tumbled across the bridge, rebounding off stanchions and clipping the ceiling before the energy of the slamming impact dissipated and he collided with a control console.

Nathaniel shook off a daze and dragged himself back to his feet. Small fires were burning here and there as servitors struggled to bring the bridge back to any semblance of order. He saw Carya sprawled over the command throne, with Vought at his side. The woman had a severe cut across her scalp, but she seemed to be unaware of the streaks of blood down her cheek. Dimly, he heard Iacton Qruze swear in Cthonian as he climbed off the deck.

'Report,' Garro commanded, the rough metallic smoke that hazed the air tasting acrid on his tongue.

Sendek called out from the other side of the cham­ber. 'Terminus Est has broken off pursuit, but that last salvo hit us hard. Several decks vented to space. Drive reactors are in flux, engines are verging on critical shutdown.' He paused. 'Slingshot manoeuvre was suc­cessful. On course for intercept with jump point.'

Decius grunted as he pushed aside a fallen section of panelling and stepped over the lifeless body of a naval rating. 'What good is that if we explode before we get there?'

Garro ignored him and moved to Carya's side. 'Is he alive?'

Vought nodded. 'Just stunned, I think.'

The shipmaster waved them off. 'I can stand on my own. Get away.'

Garro disregarded the man's complaints and pulled him to his feet. 'Decius, call the Apothecary to the bridge.'

Carya shook his head. 'No, not yet. We're not fin­ished here, not by a long shot.' He staggered forward. 'Racel, what's the Navigator's status?'

Vought cringed as she listened to a vox headset. Even at a distance, Garro could hear yelling and shouting from the tinny speaker. 'Severnaya's still alive, but his adjutants are panicking. They're climb­ing the walls down there. They are weeping about the warp. I can hear them screaming about darkness and storms'

'If he's not dead, then he can still do his job,' Carya said grimly, chewing down his pain. 'That goes for all of us.'

'Aye,' said Garro. 'Order the crew to make the prepa­rations for warp translation. We will not have a second chance at this.'

'We may not have the first chance/ grumbled Decius beneath his breath.

Garro turned on him and his face hardened. 'Brother, I have reached my bounds with your doleful conduct! If you have nothing else to volunteer but that, I will have you go below and join the damage control parties'

'I call it as I see it,' retorted Decius. 'You said you wanted the truth from me, captain!'

'I would have you keep your comments to yourself until we are away, Decius!'

Nathaniel expected the younger Astartes to back down, but instead Decius stepped closer, moderating his tone so that it would not carry further. 'I will not.

This course you have set us upon is suicide, sir, as surely as if you had bared our throats to Typhon's scythe.' He stabbed a finger at Vought. You heard the woman. The Navigator is barely sane with the terror of what you ask of him. I know you have not been deaf to the reports of the turbulence in the warp in recent days. A dozen ships were displaced just on the voyage to Isstvan-'

That is rumour and hearsay/ Qruze snapped, com­ing closer.

'Are you sure?' Decius pressed. They say the warp has turned black with tempests and the freakish things that lurk within them! And here we sit, on a ship held together by rust and hope, with intent to dive into that ocean of madness.'

Garro hesitated. There was truth in Decius's words. He was aware of the talk circulating about the fleet before the attack on the Choral City, that there had been isolated incidents of Navigators and astropaths going wild with panic when their minds stroked the immaterium. The sea of warp space was always a chaotic and dangerous realm through which to travel, but so the reports had hinted, it was rapidly becom­ing impassable.

We have already tested ourselves and this ship beyond all rational margins/ hissed Decius. 'If we touch the warp, it will be a step too far. We will not endure a blind voyage into the empyrean.'

The skin on the back of Garro's neck prickled. The innate danger sense that was second nature to an Astartes sounded in him and he turned towards the bridge's main hatch. Standing in the doorway, wreathed in thin grey smoke, the woman Keeler was watching him. The battle-captain blinked, for one moment afraid that reason had fled from him and

she was some kind of ephemeral vision, but then he realised that Decius saw her too.

Keeler picked her way through the wreckage and came to stand directly in front of him. 'Nathaniel Garro, I came because I know you need help. Will you accept it?'

'You're just a remembrancer/ said Decius, but even his bluster was waning before her quiet, potent pres­ence. 'What help can you offer?'

'You'd be surprised/ murmured Qruze.

'The survival of this ship is measured in moments/ she continued, 'and if we remain in this place we will surely die. We must all take a leap of faith, Nathaniel. If we trust in the will of the Emperor, we will find sal­vation.'

'What you ask of him is blind belief in phantoms/ Decius argued. 'You cannot know we will survive!'

'I can/ Keeler's reply was quiet, but filled with such complete certainty that the Astartes were given pause by it.

From the forward consoles, Vought called out. 'Captain, the ship's Geller Field will not stabilise. Per­haps we should abort the warp jump. If we enter the immaterium, it may fail completely and the ship will be unprotected.'

'You have only one choice, Nathaniel/ said Keeler softly.

There will be no abort, deck officer' Garro watched the shock unfold on Decius's face as he spoke. 'Take us in/

ELEVEN

Chaos

Visions

The Resurrected

The Eisenstein fell.

The warp gate opened, a ragged-edged wound cut through the matrix of space, and it drew the damaged frigate inside. Unreal energies collided and annihi­lated one another. With a brilliant flicker of radiation, the ship left reality behind.

It was impossible for a person possessed of an unal­tered mind to comprehend the nature of warp space. The seething, churning ocean of raw non-matter was psychoactive. It was as much a product of the psyches of those that looked upon it, as it was a shifting, wil­ful landscape of its own. On Ancient Earth there had once been a philosopher who warned that if a man were to look into an abyss, then he should know that the abyss would also look into the man. In no other place was this as true as it was in the immaterium. The warp was a mirror for the emotions of every liv­ing thing, a sea of turbulent thought echoes, the dark

dregs of every hidden desire and broken id mixed together into a raw mass of disorder. If one could apply a single word to describe the nature of the warp, that word would be chaos.

The Navigators and the astropaths knew the imma-terium as well as any human could, but even they understood that their knowledge stood only in the shallows of this mad ocean. Description of the warp was not something they could easily relay to the lim­ited minds of lesser beings. Some saw the realm as if it were made of taste and smell, some as a fractal back-cloth woven from mathematical theorems and lines of dense equations. Others conceived it as song, with turning symphonies to represent worlds, bold strings for thought patterns, great brass reveilles for suns, and woodwinds and timpani for the ships that crossed the aurascape. But its very existence defied comprehen­sion. The warp was change. It was the absence of reason unleashed and teeming, sometimes mill-pond calm, sometimes towering in titanic, stormy rages. It was the Medusa, the mythic beast that could kill an unwary man who dared to look upon it unguarded.

Into this the wounded starship Eisenstein had been thrown, the shimmering and unsteady bubble of her protective Geller Field writhing as the insanity tried to claw inside.

The blast baffles slammed shut over the bridge view­ports the instant the ship began its transition. Garro was grateful for it. The familiar lurching sensation in his chest that a warp jump forced upon him made the Death Guard grimace. There was something that dis­turbed him on the deepest, most primal level about the hellish light of warp space, and he was glad not to be bathed in it as the frigate translated.

'We're through,' gasped Vought. 'We're away!'

Qruze patted her on the shoulder as a rough-throated cheer sounded from the crewmen, all except the shipmaster, who gave Garro a grim-faced look. 'We shouldn't take our glories too soon, lads,' he said, addressing his men, but facing the Death Guard. 'As of now we have only traded one set of dangers for another'

The shaking, rolling gait of the Eisenstein showed no sign of easing. If anything, the smooth voyage through normal space was a distant memory, and the rattling swell it rode through had become the norm. 'How long will it take us to reach safety?' Garro asked.

Carya sighed heavily, the fatigue he had been hold­ing at bay brimming over to flood him. 'It's the warp, sir,' he said, as if that would explain everything. *We could be in Terra's shade in a day or we might find our­selves clear across the galaxy a hundred years hence. There are no maps for these territories. We simply hold on and let our Navigator guide us as best he can.'

The ship rocked and a moaning shudder rippled the length of the bridge chamber. 'This is a tough old boat/ Carya added grimly. 'It won't go easily'