Текст книги "Age of Darkness"

Автор книги: Кристиан Данн

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

FORGOTTEN SONS

Nick Kyme

Landfall

I

HEKA’TAN ROSE FROM the smoke cloud like a statue of living onyx. The woman was alive but unconscious. Grey tendrils of smoke coiled off the warrior’s ebon skin from where he’d shielded her from the blast. Debris crunched underfoot – most of the ceiling, together with the lume-strip array, had collapsed. Somewhere in the crawl space above, an orange glow flickered.

The fire hadn’t reached the meditation chamber yet and the billowing smoke coming through the vents was escaping upwards. At least she wouldn’t choke to death on the fumes. Others might be injured, in need of rescue. The ship lurched suddenly, throwing Heka’tan against the wall. It was in its death throes now. He could feel the shuddering of the failing engines through the bulkhead, hear the whine of rapid depressurisation from the gash in the fuselage.

The door was blocked. Heka’tan felt the heat beyond it and heard the crackle of flames ravaging the adjacent corridor section. During meditation, his battle-plate was secured in the armourarium. He recalled the oaths of moment affixed to his shoulder guards and greaves. One of those vows was echoed in the onyx flesh of his naked torso too, branded eternally.

Protect the weak.

It was written in sigil-language, the ancient tongue of Nocturne. Heka’tan was born from fire on this hell-world. Rather than debilitate, the blaze invigorated him. He tore the door off its hinges, closing his eyes as the flames swept out and over him. They burned out quickly, devouring the oxygen. Heka’tan stayed anchored in place until it was done, a light tingling on his skin the only lasting evidence of the fire’s touch.

A corridor stretched in front of him. The air hazed with the heat of conflagration. Again, the ship bucked. Not long now before impact. He glanced back at the woman.

The vox alongside him crackled to life, the pilot’s last words.

‘ …ing down. Brace… selves… impact. Emperor… preserve us…’

Detached and calm, even in the face of imminent and violent landfall, Heka’tan found the last remark curious. It sounded almost like a prayer.

The engine drone became a scream. For a few seconds, Heka’tan remembered… The screaming, the death and blood. ‘Hell made real’ – they were Gravius’s words. Heka’tan staggered, but not from weakness or fatigue. He staggered at the memory of it, of that place where so many had died and so much had gone wrong.

Father.

The thought was a painful one, forming unbidden.

Vulkan was alone. He was alone and surrounded. They were coming for him. He was… he…

…shook his head to banish the nightmare. The smoke in the chamber and the corridor was thickening. Heka’tan heard shouting above the roar of the flames. The desperate ship was arrowing through the sky too fast, too steep. Its sides shuddered hard, presaging a terminal impact.

A sudden change in pitch signalled the ship was coming to the end of its fiery trajectory. The hold was ahead. Heka’tan was halfway down the corridor when he realised he wouldn’t make it in time. Arcadese would have to protect the others, assuming he wasn’t already dead.

‘I’m coming, human…’ he muttered, turning on his heel and racing back through the door. At least he could save one life.

As Heka’tan embraced her, the Stormbird hit the ground with all the force of a drop-pod and the world exploded into hell and fire.

II

EARLIER…

Persephia eyed her master with fear.

Hulking plates, edged with gold, sat atop his shoulders. A blade as thick and long as her arm was strapped to the warrior’s thigh. Cobalt metal armoured his form. She found only cold grey stone in the giant’s eyes, glaring back at her with piercing intensity, and looked down again.

The Immortal Emperor’s Legiones Astartes, His Angels of Death – no, that wasn’t right – hisAngels of Death, created to protect mankind from threats beyond the stars. A billion, billion worlds; a million, million cultures all compliant – now at war.

Who will protect us from ourselves? Persephia wondered, keeping her eyes on the shaking deck. Who will protect us from you?

War was everywhere, or so it seemed, so the propagandists, the rabble-rousers and Imperial Army press-gangers would have the galaxy believe. Where then the promised era of prosperity and peace made possible through the pre-eminent Imperium? The reality was a galaxy divided.

Join the Emperor, a distant, untouchable figure – after all, who beyond His favoured sons had ever even seen Him? – or be denounced as traitor. Heretic.

No, that wasn’t right again.

Great pains had been taken to assert the empirical fact that the Emperor was not a god. There were no gods.

The propagators, the pamphleteers, had not been seen or heard from again. Idolatry was to be stamped out – science and reason were the future; logic would bring the human race to its apex, and yet… there were whispers.

And what of the other choice? Horus. Warmonger, planet-killer, ruthless demagogue of a bloody crusade allied to old religion, old faith. The smear campaign had been waged with military brutality on Terra. Vilified, demonised, Horus was a monster, a thing of childhood nightmares. How quickly the gilded could fall.

‘Be still,’ said the cobalt giant.

Persephia could barely hear her own thoughts above the droning engines, let alone her actual voice. The giant had heard her as easily as if they were engaged in polite conversation in a quiet room. And his voice had carried with all the force of a thunderclap.

‘My lord?’

‘I said, be still,’ the giant repeated. He had a stylised ‘U’ on his chest plate. A curved helmet, with a vox-grille for a mouth and cold crimson lenses, sat mag-locked to his thigh. Even without his full complement of weapons, secure in the ship’s locker, he was still formidable.

‘The vessel you’re riding in is a Stormbird – though, it scarcely resembles one any more – it has endured harder journeys.’

Persephia was humble and contrite. ‘Yes, my lord. I’m sorry.’

Seemingly satisfied, the warrior shifted back in his grav-harness but was no less threatening. Bionics beneath his armour whirred as he moved, betraying old injuries. It was why the giant had missed out on front-line duties and part of the reason Persephia accompanied him. She had once been an artisan, but since the Edict of Dissolution her role as a remembrancer was a memory long dead. War had come to the galaxy and Persephia’s talents were put to the forge like the rest of the human race.

No one wanted to remember any more.

A bout of turbulence rocked the ship, causing Persephia to stumble.

The pilot’s voice came from the cockpit through the vox.

‘Entering Bastion’s atmosphere. Experiencing wind shear. Attempting to correct.’

Persephia’s gaze alighted on the cobalt giant. His eyes were closed, his respiration barely visible in the movement of his chest.

‘I am not supposed to be here, not like this.’ She clenched her fists tightly, willing the turbulence to abate.

‘You and I have something in common, human. Neither of us should be here. We’ve both been left behind.’ His eyes snapped open, tainted with hurt and anger. ‘Heka’tan’s meditations are almost over. He will have need of his armour.’ The giant closed his eyes again as the artificer moved towards the back of the ship. His sonorous voice followed her.

‘Forgotten… both of us.’

III

HEKA’TAN WAS NAKED but for a pair of training fatigues. He had prepared the ash and the brazier. He had observed the rites and warmed the branding iron. The flame was born in the cradle, and within its blazing grasp he found purity and a sense of truth. Repressed memory came with it…

The drop-ship was taking fire from all sides. Much of its armour plating was punched through by lascannon blasts and several of its heavy bolter armaments were destroyed. Heat emanated from the interior. Shadows lurked there, of broken bodies silhouetted a visceral red from the incendiary fires inside. The guts of the ship lay strewn across the Isstvan plain where a cloying fug of smoke roiled. Hot tracer whickered through air screaming with the discharge of bolters and heavy cannon. Somewhere in the distance, by a shrouded ridgeline, an explosion blossomed.

‘Ta… king… vy… ire…’ The broken vox report crackled in Heka’tan’s ear.

‘Gravius! Is that you, brother?’

‘Affir… mative, brother… aptain…’

‘Fall back immediately and assume defensive postures.’

Around him, the fight was intensifying. Gunfire, scores of overlapping bolter bursts, rose to a deafening frenzy. Enemy cohorts were massing from the east and west, and advancing on their position.

Enemy cohorts.

The notion was insane, a crazed nightmare brought to life on a dead world with only the dead to witness it. For surely, that’s what they all were.

‘Brother… aptain…’ There was a pause not caused by the static interference.

Figures were resolving through the artificial fog. Their hulking forms wore the colour of hard steel, of grey unyielding metal. Iron.

The Urgall Depression was no place for a last stand. The ravine resembled a charnel field and not a place about which great deeds were sung. There would be no glory, face down in the blood-drenched tundra slain by one’s own brothers.

Gravius continued and for once the link was clean. ‘What’s happening?’

Heka’tan had three hundred and sixty-two Legiones Astartes left in his command. They had forged a ring around the shattered drop-ship. Over half that number again was forever entombed inside their vessel, lost before the fight had even begun, a fight the brother-captain didn’t understand.

‘Assume defensive postures,’ he answered, for want of something better, something that made sense.

The line of iron opened up with its weapons. Fusillade met fusillade as both sides engaged, hundreds of muzzle flares ripping up the smoke like jagged knives of hot light.

It was but a skirmish in a maelstrom of death. This was a battle like no other. It was a reckoning. It was a show of force. But above all else it was fratricide on an epic scale.

Heka’tan’s words to Gravius sounded hollow even to him. ‘Hold out as long as you can.’

It was over. Even before he’d seen the armoured column advancing behind the infantry, Heka’tan knew it. He took a round to the shoulder, the explosive impact nearly tearing off the pad and spinning him. A second struck him in the chest and he staggered.

One of his own, Ikon he thought, died to a throat wound. More followed, too numerous and rapid to count. Apothecaries were a pointless luxury during this nascent massacre. The air shimmered with the heat of shells passing so close that some struck one another and deviated from their original targets. Above, Thunderhawks and Stormbirds tried to escape. Heka’tan saw several in the livery of the Raven Guard and Iron Hands plunge from the smoke-blackened sky like broken comets. Distant explosions announced their destruction.

Bleak was not the word for their chances.

Fatalism, yes, but capitulation was not amongst Heka’tan’s emotional vocabulary. Sons of Nocturne were born of sterner stock. They came from the earth and its fiery heart-blood. They would not go to Mount Deathfire with the foe unbloodied.

‘Burn them!’

A wave of super-heated promethium spewed from the Salamanders’ serried ranks. Several Iron Warriors fell to the flamers, first going to their knees before collapsing onto the shell-strewn earth.

It wasn’t enough. More were coming. Tongues of fire spilled off their armour like bright vapour contrails. They brought autocannon and multi-lasers, Rapier and Tarantula guns.

Brother killed brother in an endless firestorm that had yet to even reach its full fury.

Now, the long turrets of the battle tanks made themselves known. It was easy to imagine skulls being crushed beneath their tracks, the slow and steady disintegration of civilisations under their massive bulk. Kill markings marred their hulls. How many would be attributed to the Salamanders Legion before this madness was done, Heka’tan wondered?

The tanks were still manoeuvring into position when the Son of N’bel fell upon the line of iron, bending it to his will. A gleaming figure surged into the Iron Warriors, distant but still magnificent. Vulkan and the Pyre Guard slammed into the betrayers with unrelenting vengeance. The primarch’s hammer smashed a bloody wedge into the throng, slow to react to the flank attack.

From below, Heka’tan found it hard to keep track of his father, but saw enough to know iron helms were sundered and chestplates crushed against his wrath. A spit of flame drove the traitors back up the hill, colliding with the advancing armour. Vulkan’s gauntlet engulfed them in a conflagration so intense that power armour was no defence against it.

He reached the first of the battle tanks, a Demolisher that the primarch lifted with his bare hands and turned over. A second he punched through the hull with his hammer, wrenching out the crew within before the Pyre Guard, his retinue and inner circle warriors, followed up with grenades. The back of the tank blew out in a plume of fire, smoke and shrapnel.

Then Heka’tan was running, back up the hill towards his father.

‘Forward in the name of Lord Vulkan! Unto the anvil!’

The ring of three hundred took up the charge, ragged banners snapping defiantly in the icy wind. Snow turned to slush with the heat of their flamers, levelled at the crumbling line of Iron Warriors.

‘Perturabo!’ The voice shook the very ridgeline as deep and forbidding as a Nocturnean lava chasm. Vulkan was enraged, battering tanks aside like children’s toys. He was not the most gifted swordsman, nor was he a master strategist or a psyker of any note, but his strength and fortitude… in that, the Eighteenth Primarch was unrivalled.

Had Ferrus Manus lived there might be cause for debate, but with the Iron Hands primarch’s head lying separate from his body in the shrinking snow that point was now moot.

The low whine of a missile barrage cutting through the air at speed answered Vulkan and he looked to the heavens.

Heka’tan followed his primarch’s gaze a second later and saw the danger too late.

Fury lit up the ridgeline, ripping tanks and bodies the same, tossing Salamanders and Iron Warriors indiscriminately. The backwash boiled down the hill in a fiery bloom, thundering into Heka’tan just as Vulkan was obliterated from his sight. Then the world faded, darkening in every sense and–

–he awoke.

Something was scratching at the Salamander’s fingers. The efforts were frantic but ineffective. Heka’tan opened his eyes, still shaking. His hand was clenched around a woman’s throat. Eyes narrowed, he released her.

‘What are you doing here?’ He rose from his haunches but the artificer backed off when he tried to approach her. She massaged her throat, trying to breathe.

The skin around her neck was already bruising and there were burn marks where Heka’tan’s fingers still carried the brazier’s heat.

‘Brother Arcadese…’

‘Should not have sent you.’ Heka’tan glowered.

The artificer shook her head. ‘What did I do?’ She was raving a little now, afraid and a little incensed.

Heka’tan rose to his full height, and loomed over her. ‘The rites of Nocturne are for Vulkan’s sons alone.’ There was obvious reproach in his voice. The artificer’s annoyance melted away with the sudden fire blazing in the Salamander’s eyes. They were red but stoked like a furnace. The effect, coupled with the warrior’s ebon skin, was disturbing. ‘Nor do we have use for artificers.’ He would speak to Arcadese later.

‘You’re my first Salamander,’ she admitted, mustering her courage in the face of the diabolic warrior.

‘Then you’re fortunate, for there are few of us left.’ Heka’tan turned away. ‘Now leave me. A Salamander must be fire-touchedbefore battle.’

‘Battle? I thought this was a diplomatic mission?’

The Salamander glared at her. ‘Do I look like a diplomat to you?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘Don’t call me that. I am not your lord, I merely am. Now, go.’

A sudden jolt through the chamber sent the artificer scurrying for footing. Heka’tan caught her. His grip was gentle this time.

A vox crackle made them both turn towards the receiver unit on the wall. The frantic voice of the pilot quickly followed.

‘…vasive action… brace for… mpact!’

‘Huh–’ The half-formed thought was smothered by the explosion rocking the hull and the blast wave ripping through the ceiling.

Heka’tan bore down on Persephia like the coming of night.

Then came smoke and the scent of burning.

Debris

I

THE SLEEK VESSEL touched down with barely a tremor. Its long silver prow shone in the setting Bastion sun, slightly at odds with the functional grey and bronze of the docking towers. This was not a sleek, smooth shipyard; it was a place of hard edges, of logical, minimalist architecture, of sprawling technological megaliths and super-rigs.

Servitors, haulers, deckers, overseers and foremen clogged companionways, thronged dizzyingly high gantries and lofty work platforms. This was industry. It was grind and solidity. This was Bastion.

Cullis was its prime-clave. A hard city, full of hard men, not just workers and engineers but military men, and it was their might and native arsenal that had afforded them choice.

No real opposition to a Legion, Bastion none the less represented an expenditure of time, a manoeuvring of resources – a surfeit that neither side was willing to commit. Armies were stretched the length and breadth of the galaxy as it was. Better to court its people with words and argument than risk turning Bastion into a wasteland that was no use to either faction.

Ortane Vorkellen knew this as he stepped onto the gangramp of his cutter, shielding his gaze against the dipping sun.

‘Smells of oil and metal,’ muttered Insk, his scrivener. ‘Should’ve brought rebreathers.’

‘And risk offending the natives,’ Vorkellen returned in a quiet voice, his painted smile pitched perfectly for the greeting party.

A gaggle of archivists, lex-savants and codifiers followed him and Insk down the ramp as they descended to the deck floor.

‘Greetings, travellers,’ uttered a moustachioed clave-noble. He towered over the visitors in a bespoke rigger, an exo-skeletal frame of bronze that added a metre to his height and bulked out his limbs with its chassis. Weapon mounts, ordinarily positioned at either shoulder and below the abdominals, were absent, a concession that this was to be a peaceful engagement. Likewise, the noble’s three marshals wore only ceremonial flash-sabres – no barb-whips, no rotor-threshers or other hand-held cannon. A high-marshal accompanied them, making five men in total.

The Bastionites were a people that appreciated all things martial. Perhaps that was why compliance had been so easy to achieve here, despite the world’s obvious military might – they respected strength and knew its measure well. Certainly Perturabo’s Legion had experienced harder-fought, longer campaigns than the one to assimilate Bastion and its annexe-worlds. They had simply recognised the power of the Space Marines and sworn fealty then and there without the expected siege. A contingent of Iron Warriors had been left behind, presumably to garrison the planet, but had left prior to the outbreak of the war with no reason given. Their primarch’s influence was still felt, however, in the statues of Perturabo that rose from the cities like spires.

‘Greetings from the clave,’ added the noble. His russet and silver jacket was pressed and pristine, perfectly accenting the polished bronze of his exo-rigger. His boots, fastened in the machine’s stirrups, were black and shining.

Vorkellen had never been to Bastion, but he had researched the world and its customs. He knew the clave represented the socio-political-martial inner circle of the world’s infrastructure and that every one of Bastion’s nine continents, be they ice-plain, desert flatland or mountain fastness, adhered to the will and guidance of a clave. A naturally occurring thermo-nuclear resource provided light and heat, heavily shielded and stockpiled in underground silos that ran throughout Bastion like arteries. Cullis was the capital and the prime-clave, which was why Vorkellen had travelled there for the negotiations.

‘My lord brings you greeting and honours the clave,’ he replied, bowing at the foot of the gangramp in the custom befitting obeisance to a clave-noble of Bastion. ‘Lord Horus conveys through me his gratitude at this meeting.’

The noble nodded. ‘It is received and noted by Cullis-Clave. Please follow.’ He turned then, his exo-rigger whirring with servos and pistons and pneumatics, and proceeded to clankacross the dock towards a great mechanised gate. It was magnificent on account of its size and the inner workings, displayed like a body’s perfect organs on a mortician’s slab. But it was ultimately artless and cold.

Vorkellen followed, his lackeys in tow. ‘You’ve prepared our petition?’ he asked Insk.

The scrivener proffered the data-slate to his master.

Vorkellen took it and proceeded to read. The guards, high-marshal and clave-noble paid them no heed, eyes front and marching to the rapidly approaching gate.

The visitors were shown into a long gallery festooned with banners and laurels.

‘This is where you’ll await audience with the clave-nobles,’ the high-marshal said.

As he was taking in the austere surroundings, Vorkellen asked, ‘Have the representatives from Terra arrived yet?’

‘They are delayed.’

‘Doubtless the Emperor would prefer a show of overwhelming force to bend the clave’s will.’

The high-marshal scowled. ‘You will get your opportunity to present your case to the clave in due course.’

‘Of course, sire. I merely hope to settle this matter of allegiance quickly,’ he replied contritely. A pity we cannot unleash the World Eaters on this place and raze it, he thought behind a strong smile that spoke of his sterling character and honourable ideals.

The high-marshal saluted – a gesture curiously similar to the old sign of Unification, a clenched fist striking the chest. ‘The clave convenes in two hours and thirteen minutes.’

Horus’s iterator smiled again, this time it was thinner, like an adder’s lipless mouth.

Even Erebus couldn’t pull this off as well as me, he thought, hubris overflowing.

‘We’ll be ready,’ he promised.

II

THE STORMBIRD’S SIDE hatch burst open with a well placed kick. The portal was drooling smoke as a broad, flame-limned silhouette filled it.

Arcadese was wearing his battle-helm and had the pilot’s body slung over his shoulder. The human was blood-stained, his fingers and hair blackened by soot.

The angle was wrong as he reached the hatch’s threshold. The Stormbird had hit nose-first, crumpling its cockpit and breaking off portions of wing. Fuselage and engine components lay scattered in the wake of their descent like entrails. A dozen fires ravaged the hull but they were burning out.

Arcadese leapt from the hatch, landing squarely a few metres from the wreck. The ground yielded underfoot and the Ultramarine sank a few centimetres. The lights and industry of Cullis were pinpricks on the horizon, no more than an hour’s march away. In the distance he could see the stilts lifting the platforms and rigs above the grey-brown ash sump surrounding it. It was a petro-chemical mulch, redolent of power plant refuse and engine yard effluvia.

He set the pilot down and returned to the ship.

‘Salamander,’ he called into the dissipating smoke. Emergency lighting flickered.

A figure emerged from the smog, another smaller one in his arms.

‘I’m here.’ The artificer was cradled in Heka’tan’s arms. Her eyes were red-ringed and stinging, and she coughed.

A word resolved in Arcadese’s mind when he saw her: Burden.

‘What of the others?’ Heka’tan asked, stomping into the light halo from the broken hatch.

‘One survivor. Outside. Where is your armour, brother?’

‘Within,’ said Heka’tan.

Arcadese reached for the woman. ‘Give her to me. Go retrieve your armour and our weapons. We may not be on neutral soil after all.’

Heka’tan handed the female over and headed back into the carnage of the ship.

III

AN AWKWARD SILENCE persisted between Arcadese and the artificer.

‘How will we get back?’ she asked at last.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Were we attacked?’

‘It appears likely.’

She glanced around the industrial sump fearfully. ‘Are we safe here?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Will we–’

‘Cease with your questions!’ The Ultramarine turned his steel gaze on her and Persephia shrank a little.

‘I’m sorry,’ she sobbed. ‘I was trained to question… when I was asked to remember.’

Arcadese looked away, his face like stone. ‘Not any more,’ he stated flatly and resumed his vigil outside the broken ship.

IV

ARCADESE WAS RELIEVED when Heka’tan emerged at the hatch carrying two bulky munitions crates. Each was Legion-stamped, the Eighteenth and Thirteenth respectively. He tossed them onto the ground, one after the other, and leapt out.

Heka’tan frowned when he saw Persephia. ‘Is she injured?’

‘She’s human, brother – that is all,’ Arcadese replied, busy with unlocking the crate. He smiled at the sleek, gunmetal stock, the spare clips cushioned in tight-fitting foam. Running his gauntleted hand across the bolter, he found the grip and tugged the weapon free.

‘Are you hurt?’ Heka’tan asked the artificer.

‘I’m fine,’ she snapped, whirling to face him. She wiped at her tears. ‘I’m fine. Just let me do my work.’

Arcadese was about to intercede when Heka’tan stopped him. ‘Leave her.’

The Ultramarine snorted, shucking the bolter around his shoulder on its strap. ‘There’s no threat out here, brother.’ He pointed towards Cullis. ‘Our enemies are in there.’

Heka’tan had started to pull on the mesh under-layer of his power armour. He allowed Persephia to assist with some of the rear-mounted joints and clasps. ‘These are peaceful negotiations, Arcadese.’

‘You of all people should know the falsehood of that.’

Heka’tan didn’t answer.

‘We are forgotten sons, you and I,’ Arcadese continued, ‘you by the Imperium and I by my Legion. To be revived from a coma and faced with this… Nikaea, Isstvan V, our beloved Warmaster a traitor – it is beyond comprehension. I should be at Calth with my father and brothers, not on this backwater world, playing diplomat.’

Heka’tan attached his greaves and chest plate in silence.

An incredulous grunt from the Ultramarine made the Salamander look up.

‘Don’t you want vengeance?’ Arcadese asked.

He was referring to Isstvan and the massacre.

‘I don’t know what I want. Duty will suffice for now.’

Arcadese approximated a shrug and went to retrieve the prone pilot.

‘Leave him.’

The Ultramarine stopped, looking to Heka’tan for clarification.

‘He’s dead.’

V

THERE WAS A jagged tear in the fuselage, fringed by incendiary burns. ‘I’ve seen a lot of downed ships. This looks like outside in rather than inside out.’

‘Indeed,’ Heka’tan replied. With Persephia’s help he was fully armoured, a forest-green monolith.

Arcadese was nearby and could barely contain his anger. ‘We were shot down.’ He wanted retribution.

Heka’tan could relate to that. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it now.’

‘What about her?’ Arcadese gestured to the artificer who stood a way back from the wreck, her head bowed.

‘She’s coming with us.’

‘She’ll slow us down.’

‘Then consider it a mercy that no one else survived.’ The rest of the small crew were all dead. ‘I’ll carry her if needs be.’

With an all human crew, the Stormbird had been retrofitted and re-appropriated as a diplomatic vessel, shedding armour and weapons for private chambers, archives and sleeping quarters. Considering the condition of the wreck, Heka’tan wondered at the wisdom of those measures now.

‘This work,’ said Arcadese at length, ‘does not honour warriors.’

‘We are warriors no longer,’ Heka’tan answered, tired of the Ultramarine’s dissatisfaction, and traced his finger down the jagged blast gouge.

Arcadese stalked off, ignoring the artificer. ‘Do what your conscience dictates, brother.’

Heka’tan was no longer listening. He dwelled on the broken Stormbird. It reminded him of another damaged vessel, on another battlefield…

…They were fleeing the landing zone, Stormbirds little more than armoured pyres with his brothers inside.

He was being dragged. Lucidity eluded him, ears ringing with the sound of the blast.

Burned into his mind, Heka’tan saw his father engulfed by fire and death. For a moment he panicked, and struggled against the two Salamanders hauling him.

‘Where is he? What happened? Why are we leaving?’

He tried to get free but he was too weak. His armour was broken and bloody.

A beaked battle-helm, the forest-green streaked with arterial crimson, looked down at him. ‘He is gone, brother.’

‘What? No!’ Heka’tan struggled again, but a jolt of pain from his injuries crippled his efforts. ‘We have to go back.’

‘There is no back. There is nothing there. Vulkan is gone.’

Railing that they had to turn around, they had to find him, Heka’tan passed out and saw only darkness.

Suddenly aware of being watched, Heka’tan came to and looked around. A landman, one of the labour-claves that worked the sump farms at the periphery of Bastion’s major cities, stood watching him. He wore a rebreather, anti-rad coat and sumper-boots. In his left hand, he carried a tilling-stave used to test the depth of sump-ash.

The landman, never before looking upon such a warrior, nodded.

Persephia had gone after Arcadese. Heka’tan nodded back, then went after them.

Negotiation

I

‘RELINQUISH YOUR WEAPONS, brother.’

Heka’tan kept his voice calm and level inside the gallery. Beyond it, through a vast stone doorway, was the auditorium where Bastion’s clave-nobles would hear their petition. As well as being sealed for the duration of the proceedings, weapons were strictly forbidden in the chamber.

It was a fact the Ultramarine didn’t take well.

‘A Legiones Astartes does not surrender his arms. Prise my weapon from my cold, dead fingers – that is the only way a warrior of Ultramar would give up his bolter, so says my Lord Guilliman.’

‘And my Lord Vulkan counsels temperance in the face of impasse. That pragmatism not pride is the solution to seemingly irreconcilable discord.’ Heka’tan unloaded his bolter clip and sprang a shell from the breech before handing it over to a sanctum-marshal. ‘Relinquish it, Arcadese. We cannot negotiate armed and armoured. Nor can we go back.’