‘Drunkard. Idiot,’ Gaunt hissed. ‘He got men killed. Most of Raglon’s platoon. I showed him mercy instead. Damn him.’
‘We have a number of reports of Costin being conspicuously wealthy,’ said Fazekiel. ‘Off duty, he’s always got money for good drink, good food, money to gamble. He gets his hands on better amasec than the senior staff.’
‘He didn’t do this alone,’ said Gaunt. ‘Who does he associate with?’
‘Gendler,’ said Hark.
‘Meryn,’ said Rawne.
‘But we’ve nothing on either of them,’ said Fazekiel. ‘Costin’s the only one with ink on his hands, and even then, it’s circumstantial. We haven’t interviewed. We haven’t interrogated.’
‘No interviews. I want to give the order for punishment execution,’ said Gaunt. Ludd didn’t think he’d ever seen such bitten-back fury in Gaunt before.
‘I don’t want to execute our only lead,’ said Hark, ‘even to make an example of him.’
‘And do we want that kind of example a few hours before a raid?’ asked Fazekiel.
‘He’s not walking away from this,’ said Gaunt. ‘Nobody involved in this is going to escape punishment.’
‘I’m not suggesting they should,’ said Hark, ‘but I think we should make a move after the raid. If we execute Costin, or this comes out, it could destroy morale.’
‘The only reason for keeping that little ghoul alive,’ said Rawne quietly, ‘is to crack him. With your permission, I’ll get the truth out of him.’
Hark and Gaunt exchanged glances.
‘It’s the best way,’ said Rawne, ‘seeing as this was all my idea.’
He glanced up, scornful of the horror on their faces.
‘Relax,’ he said. ‘I didn’t do it. But the idea was mine. Years ago, just after we left Tanith behind. I remember getting drunk with Corbec and Larkin one night, joking how we could make a killing from the dead. It became a regular gag, how we could compensate ourselves for having such a fething shit existence by claiming for the lives lost on Tanith. In time, it turned into a standing sick joke, gallows humour. Never thought anyone would be so twisted they’d actually try it. I don’t think anyone even thought I was capable, and that’s saying something.’
Gaunt took his cap off and combed his hair back with his fingers.
‘Do it,’ he told Rawne. ‘Whatever it is you do. I want to know who Costin’s in bed with. Do you want us to look the other way, or would you like our help holding him down?’
Rawne shook his head.
‘I can do it. I can put the fear of the Throne in him, and make him give up his confederates. And you won’t have to look the other way. I’m not even going to touch him. It’ll just take a word in his ear. Well, two words, actually.’
‘I won’t ask what they are,’ said Fazekiel.
Gaunt picked up one of the documents from the table.
‘The only reason I spared Costin on Aexe Cardinal was because Dorden pleaded with me,’ he said.
He showed Rawne the paper.
It was a viduity form filled out to benefit Dorden’s long-dead wife on Tanith.
They were six hours out. Ship bells rang to mark the half-hour. For the last two hours, there had been a regular series of thudding, tapping sounds. Debris from the immense Salvation’s Reach junk belt was growing so thick it was bouncing off the Armaduke’s shields.
The regiment was almost battle-ready. There was a tension in the air like an electrical charge. Gaunt summoned the entire strength to the main excursion deck, and ordered the retinue in too. There was no formal order, no regularised ranks or echelons. The regimental assembly simply stood in a group facing Gaunt. All the Ghosts had stopped their preparation work to attend. Some had only half kit, or their hands were dark with gun grease. The women and children gathered in around the crowded deck. Gaunt saw Tona with Dalin and the little girl. Curth and Kolding arrived from the infirmary with Dorden. The old man, his skin the colour of ash, insisted on walking.
‘You should be resting,’ Gaunt said.
‘What for?’ asked Dorden.
‘I still think–’
Dorden shook his head.
‘Ana has administered a very strong opiate, Ibram,’ he said. ‘I find I can get out of bed and walk about. I’m not going to miss this. In fact, I have no intention of missing anything from now until I’m done.’
‘I could order you to your bed,’ said Gaunt.
‘And I could disobey you,’ replied Dorden. ‘What would you do then? Shoot me?’
Gaunt laughed. Curth and Kolding were both trying not to smile, though Gaunt could tell that Curth was simultaneously riven with sadness.
‘I just want to say–’ Gaunt began.
‘If it’s goodbye,’ said Dorden, ‘I don’t want to hear it.’
Some of the ship’s crew, including several senior bridge officers, were attending the assembly too. Gaunt was about to clamber up onto a loading platform to address the crowd when the Space Marines arrived.
There was a hush. The three figures plodded into the hangar and across the deck like ogres, the crowd parting to let them through. The Space Marines had donned specialist armour that had been transferred aboard during the conjunction: ancient, ornate suits of boarding armour, precious relics from the most ancient times. Each suit of plate was decorated in the bearer’s Chapter colours. They were the engraved, polished works of master artificers, worn and gleaming, massively layered and reinforced for defence; Gothic, crested and shivering with purity seals. Each warrior carried a huge boarding shield in the form of a half-aquila. Holofurnace carried a long power spear in the other hand, Eadwine a chainsword. Sar Af’s huge right hand was free for his boltgun.
Their helms had visors like portcullis gates. They took up positions in front of Gaunt. Holofurnace held his spear horizontally at thigh level.
Gaunt nodded to them, and then looked at the body of the regiment. The double-headed psyber eagle shuffled and fluttered on its nearby perch.
Gaunt made a short address, just a few words. It didn’t need much. They were ready. They had been waiting since Jago for a real fight, and now it was upon them.
When he was done, he made way for Zweil. The ayatani led the assembly in a blessing and commendation. Just for once, Zweil was restrained and wandered off topic barely at all.
At the end of Zweil’s blessing, Gaunt nodded to Daur and Elodie, and they came to the front. Gaunt read the petition, and the marriage oath was sworn with the regiment as witnesses.
‘The Emperor protects,’ Gaunt told the couple. He looked up at the assembly again and repeated the words. The regiment cheered and clapped the union.
Gaunt looked at Wilder.
‘Captain? Please?’
The bandsmen weren’t in ceremonial rig. They were dressed in duty uniforms for combat, but they had brought their instruments. At Wilder’s command, they struck up a beloved battle hymn of the Imperium.
Daur and Elodie moved together through the crowd, receiving congratulations. When they came to Captain Zhukova, Elodie said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘What for?’ Zhukova asked, genuinely puzzled.
‘Never mind,’ said Daur.
Gaunt found Sar Af talking to Dorden. The old medicae looked especially fragile beside the vast Space Marine in his heavy boarding armour.
‘He is dying,’ Sar Af said to Gaunt, as though this was news and had just come up in the conversation.
‘I know,’ said Gaunt.
‘But he is not afraid,’ said Sar Af.
‘I’m not,’ Dorden said.
The White Scar nodded sagely.
He looked at Gaunt.
‘And they shall know no fear,’ he said.
The band was still playing as the crowd began to disperse. Guardsmen said their farewells to members of the support and retinue, and hurried off to finish their preparations. Captain Daur said goodbye to his new wife with a last kiss. Ezra walked into the open centre of the chamber, held up his ar
m, and the eagle obediently swooped to perch on his wrist. Carrying it as if he were a falconer, he walked out of the hangar at the heels of the scouts and the Space Marines.
Near one of the exits, in the bustle of the crowd, Rawne put out his hand and drew Costin to one side.
‘How can I help you, sir?’ Costin asked.
‘They know,’ said Rawne.
‘What?’
Rawne nodded across the chamber at Gaunt, who was talking with Hark and Ludd.
‘They know,’ he repeated, his eyes hooded, a wicked smile on his face.
Costin blinked. He started to tremble.
‘What do you mean? What the feth are you talking about? They know what? What do they know?’
Rawne’s grin broadened.
‘They know,’ he repeated.
He turned and walked away, leaving Costin gazing after him, wide-eyed.
SIXTEEN
Countdown
The currents of realspace and the vagaries of the warp had condensed a vast cloud of material in the gravity pit of the Rimworld Marginals. The few pale suns fluttered like candles in the deep ditch of blackness and shone their thin light upon a prodigious pall of flotsam.
At the place known as Salvation’s Reach, the junk belt was at its thickest: a monumental agglomeration of debris almost two hundred thousand kilometres deep at its thickest. Part of it was planetary debris: rocks, dust and other mineral effluent forming solid masses like gallstones or bezoars. Some of it, however, was artificial in origin.
There was tech. There were machine parts. There were the hulks and shells of space machines: ships, barges, carriers, void habitats, supermassives, like some graveyard of wrecks. Craft lost and foundered down through the ages had washed up at Salvation’s Reach, and there they had gathered, collected, mangled each other and, through the action of decay and gravitic pressure, fused into a great knot of material, accumulating like a metal reef.
Some of it was Imperial. Some of it was not. Some of it was of human or human-derivative manufacture. Some of it was not. Some ancient scraps, the carcasses of lost Imperial vessels, were relics of Terran tech that had not been seen for so long they were no longer recognisable to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Old template patterns, unrecoverably deformed, lurked in the silent residue.
Some of it was so old, so worn, so alien, it was impossible to discern the source or original function.
Mechanicus expeditions had been mounted down the years, along with Inquisitorial probe missions, and countless endeavours of salvage and scavenging.
But the Marginals were unstable, inhospitable and remote, and the secrets cast away there were too demanding to recover.
The Armaduke, adjusting its course by gentle realspace burns, slowly crept into this increasingly crowded environment, heading for the solid, planet-sized nugget at its heart.
During the Beati’s original crusade of liberation across the Sabbat Worlds, the Marginals had been the site of a significant fleet action, a turning point in the fortunes of the Imperium that had put the interests of the Sanguinary Worlds and their Archon into retreat. Legend said that Salvation’s Reach had been the name of the Imperial flagship, a flagship that had stood its ground under astonishing enemy fire and died with all hands, holding the line long enough for the Saint’s victory to be achieved. Legend said that the debris accumulated in the junk belt was the wreckage of that titanic fleet action, the battlefield litter of one of the Rim’s greatest realspace engagements.
Other legends said that Salvation’s Reach was the name of a planet, destroyed during that void fight. Different legends said it was the name of the Archenemy supermassive that had finally been scuppered just minutes before it target-locked the Saint’s cruiser.
In Spika’s opinion, none of the legends were any better than half-truths. The debris field included a great deal of space war junk, but it was the accumulated residue of thousands of fights accidentally clustered here, not the devastation left by one fight at this location. Besides, there were too many tech types, too many species variants. Cogitation analysis showed vast differences in the ages and decay of debris samples. Some pieces of scrap were just a few hundred years old. Some were a few hundred thousand.
Spika took the helm himself. This was rare, but his bridge officers did not question it. The insertion run required a shipmaster’s finesse. It needed to be fast and quiet, but their speed was limited by manoeuvrability in the junk zone. Most of the junk could be dealt with by shields, but some pieces were two or three times the size of the Armaduke and required evasion. Obliterating pathway targets was an emergency option only. Spika did not want to draw attention to their approach by disintegrating a looming junk obstacle with battery fire.
Spika was also letting cold momentum take them in whenever possible. With an expert touch, he was allowing the Armaduke to drift from one corrective burn to the next, almost to the point where the old ship began to slide and tumble. Just one more piece of space machine wreckage, drifting towards the core. It was an artful simulation. If the forces dwelling within the metal core of Salvation’s Reach had external sensors or detector grids, the Armaduke’s approach would not be betrayed by a nonballistic trajectory. Spika kept his propulsion systems simmering, ready to breathe and squirt power at short notice to turn the ship or avoid some spinning mass.
Gaunt’s adjutant, Beltayn, had arrived on the bridge and taken up a station near the shipmaster, with access to the strategium. Spika paid him little attention. He seemed a bright enough man, but he was just another drone, and Spika was sure he’d have difficulty picking him out of a squad in a day or two.
What he did pay attention to was the data that Beltayn had brought and loaded, with the help of the hololithic artificers, into the main strategium display. It was the most recent schematic of Salvation’s Reach extracted by mnemonic probe from the mind of Gaunt’s prisoner. This man, this etogaur, had been probed, interviewed and scanned on a daily basis since his capture.
As it had been explained to Spika, the man was a defector. A triple defector. It wasn’t clear, but it seemed that the etogaur had once been an Imperial Guardsman. He had been captured and turned by the forces of the Archenemy, and drafted, because of his training and expertise, into the Archon’s frightful cadre known as the Blood Pact. Later, for reasons Spika didn’t even want to consider, Mabbon Etogaur had renounced that allegiance and broken his pact, joining the Sons of Sek, another martial fraternity. The Sons, as their name suggested, were a consanguinous echelon sworn to the Magister Anakwanar Sek, the Archon’s principal ally and lieutenant.
He was a troubled soul, clearly, a restless heart. How, Spika wondered, did one man contain so much within one lifetime? Bonded into three different institutions that were ordinarily served unto death. Perhaps the original Imperial conditioning had won out in the end, driving Mabbon back to the Emperor despite everything.
If that were true, it was the most stupendous effort of fortitude and devotion. If it were false, they were heading to their deaths.
Mabbon had come to the Imperial side with vital data. He knew that the intelligence and insight he possessed would be the only things that would keep him alive and prevent summary execution. He had data, and he had the means to interpret that data. Despite the psionic scans and mind probes, he had kept certain things obscure. He was smart enough to know that he had to release the information he carried slowly. His life would become redundant the moment he gave it all up. He protected his mind through the conditioned resolve of someone who has both taken and broken the Bloody Pact, and through a variety of engrammatic codings. Before quitting the service of the Archenemy, he had layered into his mind data concerning the Salvation’s Reach facility using a cerebral encrypter; information that could not simply be stripped out, but could only be recovered by methodical and repeated meditation. Since his capture, he had been slowly remembering and building a picture for his Imperium handlers.
The core of Salvation’s Reach was a hulk habitat of considerable s
ize, converted for use as a weapons development facility and manufactory. This facility had originally been set up by the Magister Heritor Asphodel under the instruction of the then Archon Nadzybar. It was remote and inconspicuous, and allowed for the enhancement and testing of weapon systems, be they systems developed by the mad genius Asphodel, recovered xeno artifacts, or gifts from the demented Chaos Gods.
Nadzybar had fallen on Balhaut. Asphodel had perished by Gaunt’s hand on Verghast. The facility remained, inherited by the anarch, Sek. He was using it to strengthen his hand and develop weapon support for his Sons. It was an arsenal, a stockpile, a laboratory. According to Mabbon, Sek felt he should have taken on the mantle of Archon after Nadzybar. The anarch resented Gaur’s rise to eminence and, though obliged by the martial politics of the Sanguinary Worlds to pact with him, had little respect for Gaur’s command of the campaign since Balhaut. Sek envied Gaur’s authority, and he envied Gaur’s revolutionarily disciplined personal army, the Blood Pact. He press-ganged Blood Pact warriors like Mabbon to help him create his own force, the Sons of Sek, and set out to prove that he deserved the mantle of Archon.
It was a compelling claim. The previous decade had shown Urlock Gaur to be a savage chieftain, capable of extreme brutality, even by the standards of the Ruinous Powers. His Blood Pact was certainly supremely effective.
He was also sloppy, and lacked strategic insight. His blunt and ferocious style of warmaking had lost him as much as he had gained. It had driven him back all the way to the Erinyes Group in a series of catastrophic defeats, and only there had he managed to resist Macaroth’s impetus.
In contrast, the Anarch Sek, a far more ingenious and mercurial tactician, had performed superbly along the Crusade’s second front, securing and holding on to the Cabal Systems in the face of the Imperium’s most determined efforts. It was entirely reasonable to expect that if, by means of facilities such as Salvation’s Reach, Sek could show he was a better leader than Gaur, more able, better served and better equipped, the tribes of the Sanguinary Worlds might oust Gaur and look to Sek to take the crown of the Archon and break the stagnation.