Flanked by a small honour guard of Tanith and Verghastite troopers, Daur, Kolea and Ludd approached the small craft. Its hatch was opening.
Six figures stepped out. The four leading the way were dressed in a uniform that made Daur’s heart swell with unexpected pride. Blue, with a spiked helmet. Verghastite Hive Guard, very similar to the PDF uniform he’d worn back in the day at Vervunhive.
Two were Guard escorts, one of whom was carrying a double-headed eagle on a leather gauntlet. The eagle, cybernetically modified, was hooded. It twitched and ruffled its feathers.
The tallest figure was a woman, wearing the rank pins of a major. She was older, strong and slightly haggard. The other, shorter, was a female captain.
‘Major Pasha Petrushkevskaya,’ said the older woman. She made the sign of the aquila. ‘Reporting for duty to serve the Tanith First.’
‘Welcome,’ said Kolea.
‘I have six full companies,’ Petrushkevskaya said. ‘All Verghast-born and founded. They await in orbit to transfer to your vessels. They are bursting with pride to follow in the great tradition and join, at last, the regiment of the People’s Hero.’
‘I am Major Gol Kolea.’
Petrushkevskaya saluted.
‘Your name is also celebrated,’ she said. ‘The great scratch company hero. It is an honour.’
‘Thank you,’ said Kolea. ‘Though I understand you also served in the scratch companies during the Zoican War.’
‘We never met,’ said Petrushkevskaya.
‘It was a big war,’ said Kolea.
She nodded.
‘This is my second in command,’ she said, gesturing to the smaller, younger woman at her side. ‘Captain Ornella Zhukova.’
‘Once of the Hass West PDF Command,’ said Daur. He smiled broadly.
‘I wasn’t sure you’d remember me,’ said Zhukova. She was very neatly pretty, with olive skin and short black hair tied in a ponytail. Her features were elegantly symmetrical. ‘I was just a junior, and you were a captain.’
‘You know each other then?’ smiled Kolea.
‘A pleasant reunion,’ said Zhukova.
Petrushkevskaya stepped back to introduce the other two figures in her party. One was a lithe woman of startling beauty. Her head was shaved to a fine down of hair, emphasising the sculptural arch of her skull. She was wearing an armoured bodyglove and had an astonishingly crafted steel rose in her lapel. The weapon at her hip was shrouded with a red cloth, as was the Verghast custom. She was a civilian, an up-hive lifeguard, Daur realised, a very expensive and capable employee.
The other figure was clearly her principal. He was wearing a plain black bodysuit and boots, a young man no more than fifteen or sixteen years old who had not yet lost the frailty of adolescence. His thin face was striking and narrow, almost feminine in its beauty. His hair was blond.
‘This is Meritous Felyx Chass of House Chass,’ said Petrushkevskaya.
‘Sir,’ Kolea and Daur said in unison.
The boy regarded them haughtily.
‘Where is Gaunt?’ he asked.
‘We were sent to greet you,’ said Kolea, ‘and express the warm–’
‘It’s not good enough,’ said the lifeguard. Her accent was the very hardest end of Verghast. Her lips were as red as the shroud covering her gun.
‘It’s all right, Maddalena,’ said the boy.
‘It’s certainly not all right,’ the lifeguard said. She stepped up to Kolea, face to face.
‘Verghast sends six companies to reinforce your regiment,’ she said, ‘in honour of the debt owed to your commander by our hive, and the People’s Hero can’t be bothered to receive us in person?’
‘That is, unfortunately, the case,’ said Kolea.
‘This young man,’ said the lifeguard, gesturing to the slender boy, ‘is Meritous Felyx Chass, of House Chass, grandson of Lord Chass himself. His mother is heir to the House entire. He has come to honour your regiment by joining it as a junior commander. Are you telling me that Ibram Gaunt has something more important to do than greet him?’
‘Two things,’ said Kolea, his voice perfectly calm. ‘First, it’s Colonel-Commissar Gaunt to you, you arrogant up-hive bitch. And second, yes, on this occasion, he does.’
THREE
Silver, Snake and Scar
Tall double doors burst open as though they had been rammed by a siege clearance squad, and the band of officers continued on their way down the long colonnade. They were striding swiftly, boots clattering on the marble floor, coat tails trailing, not in step but at the speed of a forced march. Any faster and they would have broken into a run. To either side, along the imposing route, the sentinel guards snapped to rigid attention as the determined figures swept past.
They were officers, with a gaggle of ceremonial guardsmen trotting to keep at their heels. The ceremonials were struggling with sheathed sabres, lances, pennants, standards and pole honours that hadn’t been designed to be ported in haste.
The main group was led by a formidable augmented human, his towering frame elongated and buttressed by the frames of bionic articulation that cradled his once virile form. He wore emblems of black carrion birds. Lord Militant Cybon was one of the great architects of the Crusade, and his war record needed no interpretation or explanatory notes. He was a conqueror of worlds, a Guard commander of the highest distinction, and had served the great Sabbat Worlds theatre since the very instigation, at Warmaster Slaydo’s side. He was famously ruthless, and he was famously out of favour now the warmastery was held by Macaroth, who looked to younger blood.
Almost at Cybon’s side was Isiah Mercure, a senior figure in the sector’s Commissariat, head of the Intelligence Division. Far shorter than Cybon, upholstered in sallow flesh, Mercure was a grey-haired man with pock-marked skin. He somehow radiated just as much presence and authority as the regal lord militant.
Behind those two came four figures in pristine Commissariat uniforms, three males and a female: Viktor Hark, the robust and powerful senior commissar of the Tanith First; Nahum Ludd, his young and earnest junior; Usain Edur, the regal, dark-skinned commissar serving Mercure as his aide; Luna Fazekiel, a senior commissar from Mercure’s division.
Behind them, and in front of the struggling ceremonial guard, strode a man whose stark, black garb combined the uniform of an Imperial commissar and the authority of a colonel of the Guard. He was tall and lean, and his narrow face, made hollow by care, had the steel threat of an unsheathed weapon about it because of the peculiar quality of his eyes.
The man’s name was Ibram Gaunt.
Without even breaking stride, Cybon raised his left hand and delivered it like a breaching post. The blow opened another set of double doors, which slammed against the colonnade walls. Another line of sentinel guards flew to attention, eyes front. The party swept on.
‘Should we wait for the Administratum envoys?’ Edur called.
‘Screw them,’ Cybon growled.
‘There are formalities, protocols,’ Edur said.
‘Screw protocols,’ said Cybon.
To the left of them, a row of tall windows looked out onto the Anzimar Landing Fields. Lighters and transports hove in through the morning smog towards the main rockcrete aprons. Vendetta gunships roosted like hawks on the sky shield platforms that sprouted around the defence work of the field perimeter like a wreath. Gaunt saw the ship, the armoured ship, out on its own at one corner of the apron, re-entry heat still fuming off its hull in the damp air. The field crews were keeping a respectful distance. It was an Imperial machine, but it wasn’t a pattern used by the Guard or the Navy.
Another set of doors smashed open. Ahead of them lay the entrance to the audience hall. Gilded doors, four times the height of a man, wrought with bas relief lions and carnodons, eagles and angels. Angels of death.
Appropriate, thought Ibram Gaunt.
It was the first set of doors they had come to that Cybon hadn’t smashed open as if he was conducting an insertion raid. He an
d Mercure simply halted. After a half-second for the cue to sink in, Hark and Edur stepped around them, and opened the doors.
The room beyond the doors was vast, stone flagged and dressed with tall, stained-glass windows that turned the light into autumnal colours. High, clerestory levels stole more daylight from above the morning smog, and shed it down in silver beams between dark vault arches. A giant brass aquila had been inlaid into the centre of the floor.
Three figures awaited them under the chamber’s largest window, a vast roundel rendering the Golden Throne in multicoloured glass.
One sat on a wooden bench seat, brooding. The second had his back to the door, gazing up at the stained glass vision. The third loitered nearby, examining some food and drink that had been presented on a small table. It was hard to tell whether the third figure was debating if he was in need of refreshment, or simply puzzling as to what food was for.
All three were male, but none of them were men. None of them were even slightly men.
‘Holy Terra,’ whispered Ludd.
‘That’s the general idea,’ muttered Hark.
The lord militant stepped forwards.
‘I am Cybon,’ he declared, altering the volume of his augmetic voice box to declamatory mode. ‘Who am I addressing?’
The three figures looked up. Their eyes locked onto him like targeting systems. This was not a fanciful impression. Their eyes were literally biologic, autonomic targeting systems, their scrutiny instantly assessing range, movement, identity and armour. To be stared at was to be in crosshairs.
‘I am Cybon, the lord militant repeated firmly.
‘Not you,’ replied the figure on the bench, without getting up. His accent was thick, as though his language and inflection had been worn away by dry winds in some very distant reach of Imperial space.
‘I don’t think you appreciate who you’re speaking to,’ said Cybon.
‘I know you don’t,’ replied the figure on the bench. His massive plate armour was dirty white, edged in crimson. Ropes of beads and small fetish trophies, along with what looked like scalps, hung off the plates. His war helm rested on the bench beside him, his elbows rested on his knees. His bared head was immaculately shaven apart from a forked chin beard and a plume topknot of the blackest hair.
The figure who had been examining the refreshments was clad in grey plate, with a golden chest ornament and his Chapter symbol in blue on a red-edged white field upon his vast shoulder guards. Parts of his armour were decorated in blue teardrop shapes. He held his war helm under his arm. He was clean shaven, with close-cropped black hair that formed small ringlets on his high forehead.
‘Him,’ he stated, pointing directly past Cybon at Gaunt. His gauntleted fist was huge, the pointing finger like a rifle muzzle with a suppressor attached.
‘He’s why we’re here,’ he said, and lowered his hand. His voice was softer than the seated giant’s, and his accent more clipped.
‘There is a protocol–’ Cybon began.
‘We care not for your protocol,’ said the third figure. His armour was gleaming silver with traceries of white enamel. His voice was just an augmetic rasp. ‘He’s why we’re here. He’s the one we will deal with.’
Cybon hesitated, but decided not to reply. Mercure glowered and scratched his neck. Fazekiel swallowed hard. Edur, Hark and Ludd glanced back at Gaunt. The ceremonial guard had decided that it might be better to hover in the doorway than actually enter the chamber.
Gaunt stepped past the members of his party and walked across the chamber towards the three figures. He walked directly across the brass eagle scored into the flagstones and stopped face to face with the third figure in front of the window. He took off his cap, tucked it under his left arm, and made the sign of the aquila across his breast.
‘Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt,’ he said.
The third figure glared down at him.
‘Veegum said you’d seem small,’ he rumbled. ‘I forget how small human small is.’
‘I didn’t know if the Chapter Master would even consider my request,’ said Gaunt. ‘The fact that three of you–’
‘Three’s all you get,’ murmured the figure in grey.
‘We don’t want to be here,’ said the figure on the bench, rising. The bench creaked painfully.
‘There are more significant actions we should be involved in,’ said the figure in silver. ‘This is a waste of our strength, even just three of us. But my Chapter Master made the petition personally. Your estimation is six weeks’ operational time?’
‘Yes,’ said Gaunt. ‘Transit included. And transit time permitting.’
‘And we make shift tonight?’ asked the figure in white.
‘Yes,’ said Gaunt. He took an encrypted memory wafer out of his coat pocket and handed it to the silver giant. ‘Strategic evaluation. Everything we have so far, plus tactical proposals.’
The silver giant took the tiny sliver and passed it to the giant in white without looking at it. The bearded figure slotted the wafer into a data processor on the cuff of his vambrace. There was a low hum, and small hololithic images began to generate and rotate in the palm of his hand.
‘May I know you?’ asked Gaunt.
‘Brother-Sergeant Eadwine, Silver Guard,’ said the silver giant, tapping his own chestplate. He gestured at the giant in grey.
‘Brother Kater Holofurnace, Iron Snakes.’
He indicated the figure in white.
‘Brother Sar Af, White Scars.’
‘Who made these tactical assessments?’ asked the White Scar, still reading the hololith display.
‘The basics were drafted by Strategic Operations,’ replied Gaunt, ‘but the better parts were modifications made by my men. The regimental scouts, in particular.’
‘Is it the usual nonsense?’ asked the Iron Snake.
Sar Af, the White Scar, ejected the wafer and handed it back to Gaunt.
‘It’s not actually useless,’ he said. ‘I’ve made some initial adjustments. There will be more notes.’
‘I look forward to discussing them,’ said Gaunt.
‘There won’t be a discussion,’ said Sar Af. ‘There will simply be notes.’
‘Then I look forward to adjusting them,’ said Gaunt.
‘You can’t do this without us,’ said Sar Af, a shadow passing across his face. ‘In truth, few can see why this would even be attempted. The odds are long, the risks unrewarding, the objective insubstantial. It’s a tiny and extravagant sideshow, and Brother Eadwine’s Chapter Master is clearly growing sentimental in his dotage to even humour you over this.’
‘If that were true,’ said Gaunt, ‘you wouldn’t even be here.’
‘They’re so…’ Ludd whispered. ‘They’re hostile. Like we’re not on the same side.’
‘We’re on the same side,’ Hark muttered.
‘But–’
‘The Adeptus Astartes Space Marines operate on a different level to us, boy,’ said Mercure quietly. ‘We fight the same war, wage the same crusade, but their operational context is far removed. They attempt what we cannot even consider. They undertake what unmodified humans cannot. We are brothers in arms, but our paths and concerns seldom overlap. It’s simply the Imperial way of war.’
‘So if they’re here…’ Ludd began.
‘If the angels of death have come,’ hissed Cybon, ‘because they deem this operation worthy of their attention, it means Salvation’s Reach is going to be an unimaginably bloody hell.’
FOUR
Bonding
Lamps had been lit throughout the complex of the Anzimar Barracks, partly to add to the festival nature of the Makeshift Revels, mostly to combat the gloom of the afternoon smog. It was especially oppressive that day, and would not clear before nightfall. Already, the camp and landing fields felt as though they were cast in an evening shade.
Gaunt returned across the outer quadrangle with Hark, Ludd, Edur and Fazekiel. They could hear exuberant music playing from the halls, the clatter of
dishes and glasses from the refectory. The influx reception was underway.
‘At least we’re dressed for it,’ said Hark.
‘I thought the lord militant was going to become apoplectic,’ said Ludd, who was still processing the meeting they were coming from.
‘Lords militant don’t like to be slighted, Ludd,’ said Hark. ‘Not in favour of mere colonels. Not even for that rare beast the colonel-commissar.’
‘Cybon understood the game,’ replied Gaunt. ‘He was playing a part too. He knew they would want to make the bond personally, with me. But the Chapter Master wouldn’t have looked at my petition if it hadn’t come with the explicit backing of Crusade high echelon and a lord militant or two. Cybon was an enabler. He had to be present for form’s sake, even if it was just so they could belittle him.’
‘Are they ever polite?’ asked Ludd.
‘They’re Space Marines,’ said Gaunt.
‘But to be so disrespectful to a lord militant–’
‘They’re powerful beings,’ said Gaunt. ‘They like to remind people where that power lies.’
‘So they’re never cordial or–’
‘I don’t know them, Ludd,’ said Gaunt. He stopped sharply and turned to look at the junior. The others came to a halt around them, in the middle of the quad square. ‘I’ve made no particular study of their etiquette.’
‘No one knows them,’ said Edur quietly.
‘They know you, sir,’ said Ludd to Gaunt. ‘That’s what that was about. You’re calling in some kind of favour.’
Gaunt’s jaw tightened. In the gloom, his eyes seemed haunted by an uncanny light.
‘Not a favour,’ he said. ‘You don’t ask the Adeptus Astartes Space Marines for favours. It’s about compacts and alliances. It’s about doing enough to simply get noticed, so that when you ask them for something, they care who you are.’
‘You realise we all look alike to them, don’t you?’ said Hark.
Ludd laughed, and then realised it wasn’t supposed to be a joke.
‘What did you do?’ he asked.