PART II: ARRIVALS
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IV: In Exile
[mark: 31.16.21]
Six Months Previous…
‘Samothrace is pulling alongside,’
Marius Gage exhaled slowly at the words, though it was impossible to miss the bulk of the battle-barge edging closer. Far afield and beyond the backlit shape of Samothrace Gage could see the distinct shape of a battleship, though it was angled oddly and her engines were silent. Another battleship cruised below the plane of Macragge’s Honour, running lights active and looking nearly as pristine as the day she slipped her drydock - made the more striking by the crumpled wreck of her prow, leaking atmosphere into the void. Worse to see were closer: Numinus sported arcing forks of lightning that cracked from ruptured conduits and illuminated enormous, hungry craters along her port side. A destroyer huddled close to the flagship, decks exposed to space and searing, molten scars slashed along its entire length.
‘The Primarch is coming aboard.’
‘Not requesting to, then?’ Gage mused, turning away from the crystalflex window. Acting shipmaster Hommed, forehead wrapped in a bloody bandage, replied instead of the officer of the watch.
‘I don’t believe so, sir. The Primarch stated his expectation to board within a quarter hour.’ There was some tension on the auxiliary bridge. Everyone seemed to be avoiding each other’s gaze, most of all Marius’s. None could forget the near shouting match less than an hour ago.
‘Very well. I will meet our Primarch personally. You have all acted in the greatest traditions of Ultramar.’
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The lighter: unadorned, utilitarian, had barely begun to extend its ramp when Roboute Guilliman bulled down it, having to duck to avoid striking his head on the hull. The Lord of the XIIIth was a mess; limping, his peerless armor cratered and seared and Gage’s eyes widened to see blood still seeping from a long, vicious slice at his neck. The Primarch was pale, unnaturally so–hollowed around the eyes–and it took his centuries of experience not to take a step back at the sheer volatile intensity that raged around his gene-sire. Behind him rushed other figures in battered Mk. IV plate but Marius had eyes only for his father, the world seeming to contract to a knot that Roboute himself was tying. Pulling all of time and space together where he crossed the hangar, commanding authority, commanding respect. Demanding it.
A very long time ago Marius stood in the ashes of a ruined city and watched an entire Legion kneel. He wondered what it could have felt like to be struck down in such a way, he dreamt of what sort of turmoil might boil inside the soul of a transhuman to be forced into genuflection.
Now he felt with a shiver down his spine, a shred of that power as every part of him screamed to kneel. When Roboute came to a halt, as unbelievable as a mass conveyor stopping on a dime, towering over one of his oldest sons, Marius Gage was still on his feet, saluting, helmet tucked beneath his crippled arm.
‘My Primarch,’ he said, ‘welcome back aboard.’
‘Marius,’ Roboute said, or perhaps the words themselves merely emerged from the Primarch’s aura itself, piecing together landslip rumbles of sound from the sheer fury etched across his face. ‘I told you to kill that bastard Kor Phaeron.’
‘You did,’ Gage agreed.
Muscles bunched and released in Guilliman’s jaw and Marius saw acutely the familial resemblance to Russ and Angron and Perturabo that always seemed so elusive. In this elemental anger, this wrath of a son denied, this nearly incoherent and fulsome rage - righteous rage - Gage knew he was correct. He was right, and his father never punished that. He had nothing to fear.
This mantra he repeated to himself.
‘Practical,’ Gage began.
‘To hells with practicals! The bastard - the bastards! I wanted him dead, Marius, I wanted his corpse on a spike. Him and my bastard brother! Bastards!’
‘Practical,’ Gage continued.
Roboute threw back his head and bellowed, stunning the two Astartes in his wake to stumble to a halt and even Gage took a measured stride backwards. Massive ceramite gauntlets flexed, force-emitters crackling to life and thrumming annihilating energy between digits. Rotary cannons woke and growled as they spun, hungry for shells no longer present.
‘You disobeyed my order!’
‘I exercised judgment on a compromised command.’
‘You dare?’
Roboute’s eyes were bloodshot and trickles of blood ran down beneath his collar. His short cropped blond hair too was streaked with gore. His father looked a terror and it broke Gage’s hearts.
‘I dare, sire,’ Gage murmured. ‘You are not yourself.’
‘I am - I am! They are - my brother tried to kill me, Marius! My world is burned and my sons are butchered and you - I -’ Normally so eloquent and measured with his words, Roboute spun away, vibrating, trembling, so much so that decking itself quaked. With another wordless howl of rage he sunk his fists into the skin of a Thunderbolt and hurled the fightercraft across half the bay. The sound was horrendous, deafening: squealing and squalling metal as it sheared and crumpled. Roboute sagged. Marius was at his side in an instant, reaching out to support him.
‘I am not myself,’ his father muttered in agony-laced tones. ‘Ah. Marius. Marius. Ah, what happened? What has happened?’ Tentatively, a sergeant with a red-painted helm approached, who Gage recognized. Thiel, who’d gone with the boarding party. The other Ultramarine also bore a helm, red like Thiel’s, but Gage didn’t know him. Roboute fell to his knees, sagging, as three transhumans in oceanic blue surrounded him.
‘My sons,’ he whispered. ‘My sons.’
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‘You disobeyed me, Marius,’ Roboute said again as they left the hangar. Clean bandages wrapped about his neck, though slowly they stained crimson. Thiel offered support to both the Primarch and Chapter Master, but was waved off. They made slow going between the acid-shots of pain that still crackled up from his truncated right arm and the irritable fever-heat of his physiology still working to purge the last venoms from his veins. His bones were still creaking and joints still grinding from the monster that blew out the command bridge. The Primarch was injured more in other ways - the wound at his neck obvious, but he walked slower, more carefully. Tentatively. Like he was afraid the wrong step might shatter him to pieces.
‘Practical,’ Gage began again and this time, Roboute did not interrupt. ‘Macragge’s Honour might be undamaged in some respects, but her insides are a mess. The…daemons…ruined systems along the length of her. We have guns, but limited accuracy. We have thrust, but little control. Infidus Imperator was unscathed. Theoretical, sir, is that we lose the flagship. The Word Bearers were ready for this. They prepared for all of this.’
‘I wanted - I want him dead, Marius.’
‘Then we’ll kill him together, sir. Just not today.’
Guilliman sighed and it was the sigh of an avalanche or a wave devouring the shore.
‘We’ll kill them all. This I swear.’
Thiel and the other Ultramarine, still unintroduced, nodded. Thiel had removed his helm and there was a light in his eyes. A dangerous one.
‘Take me to the auxiliary bridge. I want to know where we are and I want to know the disposition of our forces.’
Gage led the way, limping.
‘Captain Empion is continuing to clear the ship, but we believe there are no remaining daemons. Activating the gellar fields prior to translation appeared to drive the last out.’
‘They are creatures of the empyrean,’ Roboute agreed. ‘It would follow.’
‘As best we can tell, none of the XVIIth made it aboard either. The ship is secure. Shipmaster Hommed should have gathered further information on those that made it with us.’
‘We’ll need a conference,’ the Primarch mused.
‘Likely,’ Gage agreed.
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They attended the Primarch, either physically or by lithocast. Roboute stood, arms folded, surveying the chamber. His neck still bled a day and a night later. An apothecary stood in the shadows. Vaulted ceilings soared overhead, supported by pillars of marble and ouslite, leafed in gold, etched by Ultimas and spiraling reliefs of laurel and creeping vine. No furniture was present - all stained and shattered and spoiled by daemonic spoor. Signs of fighting remained, though dust and rubble had been swept aside. Craters from mass-reactives stitched across friezes. Gouges from chainswords marred polished flagstones, alongside rents that could have only come from claws. Slick and shiny surfaces here and there revealed where acidic blood splashed and pooled, softening stone before it solidified again in treacherous patches.
There was Ouon Hommed, looking better rested, more solid, more sure of himself. He wore now the honours of the flagship; his temporary service confirmed. From Sanctity of Saramanth to Macragge’s Honour. A shocking elevation on any other day.
Beside him glowered Katryna Vaul, of Mantallikes, unscathed but carrying the pain of her brutalized command. Turetia Altuzer of Samothrace made the trio. Cornelius Regil, the highest ranking naval officer, a Lord Admiral, stood with his own small entourage but had graciously welcomed each arriving shipmaster and mistress in turn. Sestamius Asha of Fourth Honor and the bullish form of Morokai Vudurum Balt, of Numinus, were flickering shadows of themselves, attending by lithocast. Both were injured and recovering on their respective commands.
Uranthor Excilius, formerly the first officer of Born of Ashes now stood as its Shipmaster, joining the recently elevated Ebireke Langour of Sorpenton, whose command echelon had been killed to the last. Coron Valerius of Guilliman’s Glory represented the last of the cruisers.
Then there was Imbris Caraen to speak for the ragged soldiery. A General of a regiment that no longer existed, he now represented the entirety of disparate and piecemeal groups that managed to escape the madness of the surface. For one with such overwhelming duties, he stood firmly and carefully neutral in mien. Near him was Orichi-Mu, Magos Dominus Primus, Lord Explorator of the barque Touch of the Motive Force. His red robes, heavily cowled, left him in shadows, revealing only polished chrome forearms and hands folded before him, shaped to match those of flesh. No other of the Mechanicum came for none were necessary. Orichi-Mu spoke for them all.
Opposite the Magos Dominus, on the far side of the chamber, Princeps Noriomi leant against an ornate pillar. Slight and olive skinned, of panpacific genestock, she wiped occasional beads of blood that trickled from her nose with a kerchief of blue and gold.
The last of the mortals stood apart from all, hooded and robed and blinded by a strip of black silk. Keres Likentrix, Navigator for Macragge’s Honour. Few dared step near her invisible aura.
Marius Gage was to the left of the Primarch, Aeonid Thiel to the right. Four Invitarii flanked the three, hidden behind golden masks. Klord Empion, Chapter Master of the 9th stood shoulder to shoulder with Erriod Paston, Damastes Argant and Fastus Foltrus. Captains each of the 76th Company, 11th Company and 53rd Company, respectively. Drakus Gorod himself was just outside the chamber, entirely unwilling to be more than fifty paces from his liege but otherwise extraneous to this convocation. Gorod could not be removed from his Tartaros plate by command or trick. He slept in it.
They came in stained uniforms, they came with limbs in slings and bandages applied, they came bruised and bloody and coughing. They came with wargear chipped and rent, stained and cracked. They came as one, as humans, as Imperials. As the strength of Ultramar. Unbowed. This was what Roboute looked out upon and he nodded.
This was a time for speeches. This was a time for declarations and grand gestures to pull all together and reaffirm loyalties and purpose. This was a time for words that would ring through the millennia and shape the fates of trillions.
‘We survived Calth,’ is what Roboute said. ‘We are here now.’ He met the eyes of everyone, even the mortals, even those that had never stood in the presence of a son of the Emperor. ‘And we will kill the motherless bastards that started this.’
There were no cries of retribution, no cheering, no angered mutters of intent. There were nods. Lips thinned as jaws clenched. Neighbors glanced at one another and saw understanding. There was no need for anything else.
It was as the Primarch said. They survived Calth. That was all that mattered.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘Tell me of my fleet.’
Each, in turn, stepped forward to do so.
‘The flagship sustained the worst damage externally where the cruisers of the XVII Legion attempted boarding actions. There is armor damage and some breaches of decks to space, which have been patched over. Internally, the flagship will require years of repair and renovation until all damage wrought by the warpform intruders is erased. Luckily, the spoor of the creatures denatured rapidly upon their deaths and has not provided environmental or cognitive hazards. Macragge’s Honour is prepared to sail at near capacity of weaponry and voids, but will suffer reduced reactivity from damaged internals.’
‘Samothrace is nearly unscathed. We believe she was left alone by the XVIIth, likely due to her presence at the critical Zetsun Verid Yard. They could not risk her destruction damaging the data-engines. She sustained little damage from the flight out of Veridia and at the moment is prepared to sortie immediately.’
‘Fourth Honor is in most respects operable, save for significant damage to her prow and prow-mounted weaponry. We rammed the XVII cruiser Xarus Xathus during our escape from high anchor and as a result have structural and armor damage along the first fourth of the hull.’
‘Mantallikes is crippled. I say so bluntly. Her engines are inoperable and she can only function on a single reactor. Motion is limited to only station-keeping and maneuvering thrusters. Her void projectors are ruin and much of her armament is lost. Her hull remains strong and her keel is undamaged, so with proper time and facilities, Mantallikes could be brought back into service.’
‘My grand lady Opolor’s Vow was targeted for capture. Limited boarding actions by cultists and members of the XVIIth caused internal damage including loss of the primary bridge, but otherwise the battleship is intact and at full capacity. I second Turetia’s assessment. Opolor’s Vow is prepared to sortie.’
‘Numinus remains capable of motion and combat, but is operating at diminished capacity due to torpedo strikes that have damaged her reactors and rendered several void shields inoperable.’
Of the cruisers, Born of Ashes and Son of Iax were both docked at Zetsun Verid Yard like Samothrace and thus were spared much of the brutality of the assault. Both had superficial damage to their armor and hull but were otherwise at near full operative capacity. Sorpenton recovered none of the fighter and bomber wings she scrambled during the battle and now had no launch capacity. Guilliman’s Glory had lost three engines and several banks of macrocannon, along with one of her torpedo bays. The nine destroyers were all in fine condition, having been mostly ignored once they fled the inner orbits of Calth in favor of punishing the heavier tonnages of the Ultramarines fleet.
Lord Admiral Regil was granted overall authority over the flotilla, as befit his rank and experience, with Altuzer as his second. Vaul was to take command of all repair operations, organizing them from her own crippled battleship. Samothrace, along with Numinus, Born of Ashes, Son of Iax and Sorpenton would take up patrol duties, supported by a squadron of six destroyers.
Then it was Marius’ turn. Though fever-sweats still swept across his ravaged body, he had thrown himself into action the previous twenty-four hours, painstakingly collating everything he could about the status of all Astartes within the flotilla. It had not been simple work; many were injured, some even on the edge of death, trapped within rubble and collapsed decking sections. Others suffered ruined voxes and wargear, some having not even been able to gird themselves with armor now left behind on destroyed battle barges or even on the surface of Calth at muster points. Thiel and Empion aided Marius, along with the other captains as they shook order out of the bruised fragments of a dozen companies.
‘My Primarch, I would report the disposition of the XIIIth.’
Roboute waved one massive hand, impassive.
Marius drew in a death, glancing to the other four captains present. ‘We are organizing, sire. It bears little purpose to maintain company divisions here and now. I have ordered all previous assignments dissolved and as we speak, all Astartes are being recalled to Macragge’s Honour for muster. At best count, there are just under four thousand of our brothers across the flotilla.’
Damastes Argant indicated intent to speak and Marius acquiesced with a gesture.
‘There are as well a number of neophytes among that number, having been aboard during transit to the surface. They number ninety-three, all pre-implantation.’ Argant inclined his head.
‘Thank, you, Captain,’ Gage said. ‘The apothecarion is near overwhelmed. As much as a third of our strength are casualties - walking wounded or incapacitated enough to require time to heal.’ Gage held up the stump of his wrist. ‘As Astartes do not die easily, I project few of our injured brothers will succumb. But until such a time that our casualties are recovered, there will be a significant drain on our medicae resources and manpower. As is also the case with the injured among the Navy and Army.’
‘And the Legion assets?’ Roboute prompted.
‘Samothrace’s holds are empty. She was to be loaded through the Numinus muster. As for the flagship, I fear we are at less than half capacity. Many daemons…appeared…in critical locations.’ Roboute’s face hardened and he interjected,
‘My brother would know the places most grievous to strike. It is likely no accident.’
‘Agreed. With that said, reorganizing is proceeding apace. Fighting demicompanies are already provisionally formed and prepared for combat. We will not be left wanting or caught unmanned, wherever we are.’ Not again, were the unspoken words.
‘To that point, then, just where are we?’ asked General Caraen. Shipmaster Hommed stepped forward to answer.
‘It is…uncertain.’
‘The astronomican is gone,’ whispered Keres. Murmurs swept the chamber. Guilliman held up a hand, silencing them all.
‘There is more,’ he intoned and nodded to Hommed.
‘The stars are incorrect. We have surveyed the sky since returning to realspace and none of what we see matches Crusade records. More to the point, there are no landmarks to recognize. The Eye is not there. To remove the possibility of temporal disjunction, we sought the Maelstrom. It too is not present. There is only one accurate conclusion, as supported by our esteemed colleagues of Mars.’ Orichi-Mu’s cowl dipped, indicating recognition. ‘This is not our galaxy. The astronomican is not gone. We have left its light.’
Before the implications could truly sink in, the Primarch gestured toward the spindly shape of the Chief Navigator. Her silk-wrapped skull was thin and elongated, a hair past human-norm and sharp collarbones and shoulders poked out at the gauzy material of her robes. Though she was blinded, she gazed to each in turn as she spoke.
‘None have left the bounds of the Galaxy as we know it. In the depths of our archives, no Navigator would countenance it. The deep dark between the seas of stars is anathema to our sight. The warp is boundless there. There is no sense. There are no ways.’
‘Yet we have, mistress,’ the Primarch said gently.
‘A disjunction,’ she said, her voice hoarse. ‘We felt it. Veridia screamed. The star wailed agony and the sea of souls heaved. What we saw…’ Keres hissed in a long breath, chest expanding and when she let out it her words were a high pitched whine, an edge past painful. ‘Hollows. Tears. Hunger and hatred, sympathy and sorrow. Clouds gather. Gods shy away. Judgement. Faith becomes fear becomes fealty. Now we are here. We are no longer there.’ Slowly she folded, crumpled like scaffolding, weeping quietly. Two mute serfs bundled her up as if she weighed nothing and helped her from the chamber. Ringing silence stayed in her wake.
‘It’s impossible,’ Regil declared.
‘Look outside, Lord,’ Hommed countered.
‘Practical,’ Roboute interjected. ‘Our best instruments tell all the same tale. No maps match the stars around us and no landmarks of the Galaxy we know can be sighted. The practical is that no matter how theoretically impossible, we can see with our own eyes that it has happened.’ None dared gainsay the Primarch.
‘If it can happen once, it can happen again. I will not allow us to remain lost while traitors are loose among my worlds and my father’s empire. We will rest and we will repair and we will return. By my Father we will return. By my word we will return. I will not allow any other result.’ He dared them to disagree. He dared them to despair. Fists clenching, Roboute glared as if the weight of his indignance alone might shape reality.
It might.
‘Princeps Senioris,’ he called out as Noriomi dabbed another spot of blood away. ‘Tell me of Lacassex.’
Her face twisted in irritation, but not at Guilliman.
‘By your command my mount was recovered. Mortarch Abandon, primus engine of my Legio. Sanginum Oculi left with me, and our maniple Stallion of Grey and Hongulsa. There was time to evacuate Dawn’s Reave of the Legio Praesagius. Lacassex is two Warlord engines and two Warhound engines.’
‘By my command?’ Roboute raised a single eyebrow, slightest hint of mirth manifesting for the first time.
Noriomi frowned, eyes flicking between a motionless Orichi-Mu and the Primarch.
‘Your command, sir. To evacuate what engine strength we could.’
‘I had limited contact with Calth, mistress. It was only to Captain Ventanus.’
‘You scheming bastard,’ she hissed, fists balling at her sides. Her focus fell on the Magos entirely, formality shattered. ‘You scheming, slithering creature.’ Trembling, Noriomi turned to Roboute and extended an accusatory finger toward the Martian.
‘Sir, I would report treasonous usurpation of your authority by Magos Dominus Orichi-Mu. I request you execute him.’
‘That is unlikely to occur, mistress. Magos, have you a word in your defense?’
The Martian’s cowl tilted as if they canted their head to the side.
‘Records will confirm that I falsified the Primarch’s mark of authority, a simple enough subterfuge with command links lost. I informed the Princeps of a manufactured order to withdraw from Komesh to my own Barque.’
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
‘He damns himself. Allow me the pleasure, sir, of erasing this stain of dishonor-’
‘Enough, mistress.’ Her hand paused halfway to the volkite at her hip, her lip curled as she stared daggers at the Magos.
‘Go on, Dominus.’
The Martian spread his chromed hands wide.
‘The orbital grid was hijacked and the XVII Legion held orbital supremacy. For the moment I could detect them eliminating threats among the XIII Legion fleet, but that would change. The next logical targets would be on the surface of Calth and god-engines would be first. I deemed the minor treason of appropriating your authority worth the greater benefit of securing the survival of loyalist engines.’
Orichi-Mu did not shrug, as a Magos Dominus Explorator did not shrug, but he spoke in rich tones, surprisingly organic in timbre and depth and he sounded not at all contrite.
‘I could have died with my Legio,’ Noriomi hissed.
‘Yes, you could have,’ Orichi-Mu agreed.
‘Enough.’ The hints of amusement were gone from the Primarch’s tone. ‘Regardless of the theoretical, Magos, Calth proves the necessity of trust in our allies. You have weakened this faith. You have sowed division in our midst, when trust is worn thing. This I cannot allow, and while I cannot censure you publicly, know that I will remember this, Magos, and I will be watching. Mistress Noriomi, though I recognize the fervor of Lacessex, I would remind you that now is not the time to clash with what few allies remain. Do not compound the Magos’ mistake.’
‘No, lord,’ she ground out between clenched teeth. ‘My apologies. I spoke rashly.’
‘You did. It is forgotten. We have all been out of character. Tell me of the condition of your engines.’
Clearly more pleased to speak of her charges, the princeps exhaled and ran a hand through short-cropped black hair, oily with sweat and unwashed grime. Even a day and night later, she still trembled with withdrawal from Communion.
‘Mortarch Abandon is unscathed. The traitors could not touch us. Sanguinum Oculi has lost operation of their Saturnyne lascutter and two layers of voids. Stallion of Grey cannot stride at full speed and has sustained damage to their auspex. Hongulsa suffered a breach to the command decks. Dawn’s Reave no longer bears their left arm. Komesh was…’ she swallowed. ‘Komesh was a trial.’
‘Noted, mistress. General Caraen, your report.’
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Long hours later the chamber emptied, each occupant returning to their commands. There was a living world in this system. Already gunship flights were overflying the world, interdicting a handful of spacecraft even as they tried to go to ground. Cities were being reconnoitered, landmasses charted, all fed back to the bedraggled ships powering in-system from the Mandeville point. Orichi-Mu had his adepts chewing through transmissions to begin translation packages while on board mass conveyors shell-shocked soldiers were issued new orders, given new purpose.
Purpose was necessary. Something had to be done and fortune delivered it. The men and women of the Crusade knew how to enact compliance. They knew how to spread the light of the Imperium.
They did not know how to fight brothers and sisters, to stand against daemons, to face the horrors of transhuman slaughter. Roboute issued an immediate communique after the initial meeting drew to a close, designating this collection of disparate vessels as the 4911th Expeditionary Fleet. The planet was tagged as 4911/1 and a compliance order issued. It was a farce. Everyone knew it. But it was something to do, something usual, something that was understood. A purpose. Army units, from a hundred different regiments and cultures were meshed together, to be alloyed together in action. Ultramarines from across a dozen and more chapters formed new companies under a handful of surviving captains.
A new name they fought under: Imperium Exsilius.
The Imperium in Exile.
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V: Quiet World
Two Months Previous…
The best part of Pirve was that it was a quiet world. Those weren’t too hard to find - the Galaxy was a very big place, after all, but it was situated nicely just to the galactic north of the Vaathkree and to the east of the Hydian, which meant you weren’t too far away from the cosmopolitan. Rhoki always felt like Pirve was part of what she’d call the suburbs of the Galaxy. Pleasantly provincial but never more than a quick hop and a jump from places with more meat on their bones. Comkin was a few days away - just around the corner, really - and then from there you could be pocketing credits in Coruscant’s skyhooks at the end of the week.
It’s why she liked laying over here. The Boneyard mechanics knew her and her ship well - Wicked Minnow was a common enough sight among the dozen or so regulars that also liked this sleepy little hole-in-the-wall. A long time ago there was a shipbreaking operation here - long enough ago that no one remembers who ran it, when they ran it, or who they ran it for, but recent enough that downtown around the docks was a tangle of streets made from the bones of old star cruisers with flashy neon attractions beckoning the few arrivals into cantinas and kitschy trinket shops. Now the Boneyard was an expansive and rarely-filled spaceport, the only clear spot surrounded by arching durasteel ribs and long-gutted engine nacelles.
A quiet, peaceful place with wide skies, green farms and friendly enough folks.
It hurt to see the changes. She shook her head in renewed disbelief as she hurried along one of the main foot arterials, keeping a wary eye out. A lot can happen in a few months. The local constabulary was gone, replaced by knots of sullen-eyed humans in strange uniforms with stranger guns cradled in their arms. She’d’ve called the guns antiques or stubbers, more than a few made of wood of all things, but they put some real neat holes through a bunch of folks a few weeks back, when those good folks got the idea to get rowdy about all these changes.
Changes like the smoke always on the western horizon, staining the edge of the sky since a bunch of big, ugly landers came down and started, she heard, chewing up the low mountain range that-aways. Changes like no one got paid in good hard creds anymore, but in these hard metal ducats with a two-headed avioid stamped out on them. Changes like being stopped at random and questioned about what you were up to by flat-voiced translator buttons, speaking from lapels of hard-faced humans.
Changes like having to wear an ident-tag at all times clipped to her jacket or around her neck, just like every other non-human on the planet. Changes like oh-yeah-that’s-right, the Boneyard was a smoking hole in the ground, her freighter was half sunk in a bog outside the city, and how could you forget: the whole blasted planet was being run by a bunch of crazies.
Humans didn’t get stopped just walking over to a cafe. Humans didn’t get questioned and scowled at about are you really just meeting with friends?
On the other hand, half the humans she knew were now shipping out every morning and coming back every night, grimy and exhausted, because they worked out in the farms. These new crazies decided every droid and droid-brained thing needed to be rounded up and stuffed in warehouses next to where-the-Boneyard-used to be. Manual labor only, it seemed.
‘It’s slavery, I tell you.’
Rhoki grimaced and scrunched up her nose, ears twitching in disgust. Sitting across from her, knocking back another frosted mug of tapcafe ale, Marabe looked exhausted. He’d been one of the mechanics in the Boneyard, saved from the orbital strike because he was sleeping off a bender. The human was middle-aged and used to be paunchy, but now had a lean and wiry look to him that Rhoki wasn’t sure was healthy.
‘I mean, these ‘Imperials’ pay us their crappy gold and provide meals, but we all know if we don’t get on the trains, those assholes in blue and white will put a beam in our foreheads.’
‘I don’t know, ‘Abe,’ Rhoki sighed, glancing across the street at a passing patrol of the outworlders. One of them happened to catch her eye and peeled off, nodding at her compatriots to slowly amble over. ‘Well, never mind then.’ She flicked an ear toward the street and Marabe looked over, grimacing as he noticed.
‘Oh, wonderful.’
‘Shh, ‘Abe.’ Rhoki purposely grinned, baring her teeth and he winced at the gap in the front. ‘Wouldn’t want these Imperials to think we’re up to anything.’
‘Oh no, never. Compliant as a nerf, that’s us, isn’t it?’
Rhoki chuckled, wrapping her paw around her own ale and slowly rotating it in the ring of its own condensation on the plastine table. She flicked her tongue around the gap where her incisor had been, the socket healed but still sore enough to the touch. Apparently it had been in poor manners to compare the symbol of the outworlders to the seat of a ‘fresher and they’d informed her of this very politely with the butt of a rifle to the mouth.
Say what you will about the Imperium, but they were succinct fellows.
‘Ident,’ sang out the new arrival, snapping out her hand toward Rhoki imperiously.
‘Come off it, Zeka, you know Rhoki.’
‘Who I know and don’t know doesn’t matter, citizen,’ Zeka replied, running her left fingers along her newfound badge over her breast pocket. Like the Imperials, she wore the large white U that adorned their own uniforms and craft in copious amounts and she’d shined it so much it caught the string-lumes that encircled the tapcafe’s outdoor seating veranda, each winking different colors in the visible light spectrum. Over her shoulder was slung another of those archaic looking rifles, barrel burnished bright with a long, wicked bayonet already attached. Her uniform wasn’t the same - it was the auxiliary variant, produced by and for the new homegrown constabulary made from, as best Rhoki could tell, assholes and traitors.
She smiled at both of them, particularly at Rhoki, a smile that didn’t leave the confines of her lips.
‘I said, ‘Ident, citizen’.’
Rhoki held it out between two claws, refusing to rise to the bait.
‘Everything’s in order, ma’am.’
Zeka made a big show of passing a hand-held contraption of wires and clockwork machinery over Rhoki’s tag. It whirred and clicked and finally a small, harsh green bulb clicked on. Zeka squinted, scrutinizing the ID all the same, as if she had some sort of special understanding of a language she didn’t even speak. Pursing her lips, flipping the ID this way and that, inspecting the backside and then tapping fingernails on the laminate surface, Zeka finally handed it back over. Rhoki clipped it back to her jacket.
‘Rhoki Sal Huin, Captain, freighter Wicked Minnow. Non-native to Eboracum. Full-time trader.’ The farce was in full swing now, so Rhoke just swallowed her words and played along.
‘That’s me, ma’am.’
‘Just where is your ship now, Captain? Shouldn’t you be making preparations to go?’
Go. Absolutely. Absolutely. If the Imperials weren’t interdicting every single vessel from a skyhopper to an ore-hauler, Rhoki would’ve left ‘Eboracum’ in her ion trails weeks ago. Zeka knew it, of course - the sith-spawned twit - but she just had to rub it in.
‘She’s over there,’ Rhoki gestured, carelessly waving a paw toward where the Boneyard used to be. Out of sight from where they were, but the half-melted and charred remains of a half dozen ships were fused together and burned into the brains of every sapient in the city. Docking records were a bit lax and with half the spaceport crew dead and its datacores slagged, no one was the wiser.
‘Shame, Captain,’ Zeka drawled, dragging out the title to make it an insult. ‘If you don’t have a ship, it seems like you’re out of a job, huh? Not really contributing, are you…’
‘Knock if off, Zeka. Seriously.’ She rounded on Marabe, dropping her hand to caress the strap of her rifle.
‘Watch it, Marabe.’
‘Or what? We’ve known each other for ten years. You gonna just do me right here? Just ‘cause your new friends gave you some toys?’
‘I could report you to my Lieutenant. Everyone’s pulling together, you know. You wasting time here with an alien, well, that won’t look good.’
Zeka’s patrol saved them. They were nearing the corner of the avenue and a sharp whistle from down the street had her head snapping away from Rhoki and Marabe. Distant, a figure in the uniform of the offworlders waved and Zeka flushed.
‘Stay out of trouble,’ she shouted as parting, jogging away. Rhoki and Marabe watched her go, the latter shaking his head.
‘She was always a hassle, you know. Never thought she’d go this crazy.’
Rhoki had seen more locals than she was comfortable with picking up the emblem of the Imperials and scowling at their own neighbors. Not a lot, but more than she’d expect. The real Empire fell apart twenty years ago. She’d thought this kind of thing was in the past. She’d thought Pirve was removed enough away from the drama of the rest of the galaxy.
It ached that she’d been so wrong.
They watched the patrol vanish down a side-street, and it was like all the locals going about their business exhaled a long sigh of relief.
Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been one of those big armored monsters instead, the ones half the people Rhoki talked to were convinced were droids. Well, aside from how these ‘Imperials’ didn’t like the idea of droids one bit. Those big lugs gave everyone the creeps and just being in eyesight of one had Rhoki breathing faster.
‘You know,’ Rhoki mused, as Marabe leaned back, scowling at his empty mug. ‘Zeka was right about one thing, you know. I am a freighter captain and I really should be moving on.’ The man smirked, readjusting himself in his seat casually. If he happened to pull a small datachip out of one pocket, well, it might’ve been a fidget that had him turning it between his fingers. If he happened to tap the table to call over another mug, then the datachip might have been left behind. If Rhoki, by chance, reached for her napkin and brushed the datachip into her palm, well, who could say?
‘Best we can source,’ Marabe said.
‘And it’s all of them?’
‘The big ones, at least. The flocks don’t migrate that predictably. There’s some estimates though, where we think they might be. Should help you too.’
‘Really helpful, ‘Abe, thanks.’
They made smalltalk the rest of the evening, until Marabe wanted to turn in. Early day and all the next day, of course. Rhoki was still considering what he’d said as she meandered back to her rented quarters, fists tight in her jacket, pulling it close against the coming chill of night. Her fur rippled in the breeze as she kept her head down, passing another patrol, but they didn’t look twice at her. Not any more than they usually did toward non-humans.
Slavery, he called it. They got paid and provided for and Marabe did admit that there were new machines that the Imperials were letting them use. Big dumb machines, nothing as useful as a nice agricombine with a decent harvesting process. Not as much physical labor anymore, he cheered - they could put down the arc-scythes and repulsor baskets - but still a far cry from the handful of people needed to work the local farm production. Pirve had been mostly self-sustained before, trade instead being in local luxury produce and rarities, but this ‘Imperium’ wanted to expand capacity and fast.
Still, though. Not exactly given a choice. If it wasn’t slavery, it was adjacent. As for everyone else, well, like Rhoki, they went about the day-to-day and just waited for the next boot to fall. She smirked to herself, scrunching up her blunt snout. She turned the ‘chip over in her fingers, hidden in her pocket. Well, just everyone else, now. It was time to give her old Ghtroc a visit. The 720 was stashed out where she used to do slightly illicit runs in her more wild youth, away from prying eyes and even more impolitely intrusive scanners. It was always a hassle, since it would be ruinous if anyone noticed her heading out of the city, but if Marabe really did come through this time…
Rhoki craned her neck, peering up at the darkening sky. Overhead was the permanent presence of a ghostly, blocky ship, as small as her shortest claw at arm’s length. Big as a Star Destroyer, at least, and she could see blinking running lights fore and aft. They wanted to be seen. They were the threat to the promise of the local patrols. She smiled up at it, as alien as it looked.
‘Can’t see everything,’ she whispered, fingering the datachip again, precious as antimatter. ‘Can’t see everything…’
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VI: United Front
Now…
A mortal might need to squint or make use of magnoculars to make out the distant chips of light cordoned off in high orbit, but Aeonid Thiel, Sergeant, Red-Marked, Hero of the Halls, needed none, nor did the other in his company. Beyond the crystalflex panes lay the limb of Eboracum, green and blue and shining. Thiel blinked back afterimages of another world, seen from just the same vantage as it melted into choking swirls of ash and smoke over continental firestorms. For a moment the clear, ozone-tinged air turned sour and cloying, redolent with melted sugar reek and the odor of weird dreams. Calth lingered over them all.
'Master Primus,' he said, diverting his attention away from the world and the battered vessels of the new arrivals. Marius Gage, still slightly hunched by lingering injuries, clicked open and closed the crude augmetic that replaced his hand, brushed steel digits trembling slightly.
'Aeonid,' the Master of the First replied. 'The Primarch has requested you represent the Thirteenth, should this New Republic wish to establish lines of communication.' Gage tapped the pane with one metal digit, harsh clack echoing through the hollow observation space. Near the door a crippled servitor trembled to attention at the unexpected noise, then, without receiving any further input, slumped again. Pinpoints of bright reflected light moved afield, flitting back and forth, ascending from the surface and descending again in brief streaks of flames.
Thiel pulled a face, turning his back to the vista and pacing. A young man, by the measure of a transhuman, Thiel had not yet accumulated the full measure of weathering and scarring that those of his breed did – leaving him instead curiously youthful. His face was marked out by only a handful of scars, faint pale lines across cheek and brow. Perhaps he would once have been thought of as handsome, but the change wrought by elevation had thickened and elongated his features, broadened his face and left him indelibly beyond mortal men.
Gage, by contrast, wore his service like a cloak. Close-cropped brown hair, greying, drew back from a face more weathered than Terra's own moon. Above his left eye spread the silver wings of an Imperial Aquila and though Thiel and Gage were shaped of the same clay, stamped from the same mold, there was a divide between them, an ineffable otherness to the gene-sired similarities spawned by their ascension. It was not merely age nor service, scars nor originating world. No – this difference grew instead from what one might, in less secular times, term spiritual.
Aeonid Thiel was the new breed, marked by neither fleshcraft nor the rough red wash of his helmet, clamped to his hip, but by that of Calth.
Only months ago now, but Thiel had adapted. The younger brothers all had. Unmanned and stormtossed by unimaginable betrayal: they reacted the fastest. They adjusted first. Aeonid Thiel, youthful as he was even with campaigns and decades beneath his ceramite tread, had not quite known the truest glory of the Crusade. Not as Marius had. He had never served when the Emperor, beloved by all, strode the stars with his sons. He never served in the days when mankind seemed poised on the brink, beset on every side, when each campaign was balanced on the knife-point of victory and ghastly defeat.
Marius Gage was a man of the Crusade.
Aeonid Thiel was a man of the Betrayal.
Gage rued the day that the Crusade itself might be forgotten, swept away and replaced by the callous evils that Lorgar had wrought. When the golden promise would be broken, when the honor won by his brothers and his cousins; his father and his uncles; by the Emperor Himself would be left as ash on the tongue.
Thiel, pacing, shot a glance at Gage and dared to question why. This, too, set him apart.
'I've no diplomatic training, sir. I've spent little time on the surface as it is.'
True enough. The Primarch's fastidious – some might whisper obsessive – examination of Calth had kept Thiel within easy reach, even while the Sergeant pursued other directives from their august father. Only thrice had he set foot on Eboracum, and one of those counted little when it was in the presence of the Primarch, who had struck dumb all who set eyes on him. It was impossible to get the measure of the local populace when they stood transfixed and awestruck, human and alien alike.
'Then you'll need to make up that time. Who else would suffice?' Gage raised an eyebrow. 'Foltrus? Empion?' He scoffed. 'Auguston?'
Thiel could not suppress a quirk of his lips at the thought of the intractable 1st Company Captain. Phratus Auguston's voice had been loudest in calling for the purge of the xenoforms on the world below when it was yet nameless and compliance had still to be enacted. Placing him in a room with civilians alone was a mean joke, but alien civilians? Their father wanted embassy, not embarrassment. Auguston would incite war in moments. He had the bullishness of the legendary First Captain Abaddon more than the tempered mien of a son of Ultramar.
'Captains Paston and Argant are known for their friendship with the Army. I've heard Captain Argant in particular took quickly to the Primarch's dictates on fraternization.'
Thiel paused in his pacing, exhaling as he continued the thought.
'But Captain Argant is busy.'
'Quite busy, Sergeant,' Gage reminded him. 'He has a hundred neophytes to oversee and a world's population to process. Captain Paston is overseeing the assembly of Fortress Hatriunne.'
With a wry smile, Thiel shook his head.
'Practical: my tasks are the least important.'
Motioning toward Thiel, Gage led the way from the observation blister, back into the adjoining conference chamber which sported flickering hololiths and dataslates neatly stacked on a long, polished aluminum table. One of many slapdash replacements churned out by the Mechanicum to refurbish the flagship, the table was simple and crude, enough to do the job without any embellishment. The hostile xenoforms – daemons – had been comprehensive in their mindless destruction, leaving few compartments unspoilt. Parts of Macragge’s Honour still lingered with neither warmth nor atmosphere. This chamber was set and prepared for Thiel’s private use, one of dozens that usually serviced other officers. Gage trailed his flesh-and-blood fingers along the surface of the table, pacing around to stand opposite Thiel.
'Everything we do is important. There are merely levels of importance.' Forcing himself to use his augmetic, Gage carefully lifted a dataslate and offered it to the younger Astartes. 'This, among the others, contains a full brief on the 'New Republic'. Study it and commit it to memory. There is little telling how soon we might expect a response.'
Thiel frowned.
'So soon? Our own message was sent only hours ago.'
Used to vagaries of the immaterium and the empathic memes of astropaths, even Gage scarcely believed his words as he spoke.
'It is claimed the 'holonet' can relay messages across a galactic diameter in merely days, sometimes even instantaneously.'
Thiel turned the dataslate over and over again in his hands, ceramite fingers gentle on the small device. Rarely did Gage ever see Thiel out of his battered plate, though he himself wore a crisp tunic in abyssal blue with a simple white Ultima at the breast. His own armor still pained him to wear overlong.
'And all without using the warp.' Thiel spat the last word, like the taste of poison unlooked for.
'As far as our Magi can discern.'
Gage rested his palms on the table, peering at the man across from him.
'You will represent the Thirteenth as I know you can. Should you have questions,' Gage laughed, though the sound was more akin to slate tiles crumbling. 'I daresay I have experience treating with our far less diplomatic cousins to draw on.'
Thiel made the shape of the aquila.
'As the Primarch asks, I do.'
----------------------------------------
Marius Gage left him alone with his thoughts, which was rarely a state Aeonid Thiel enjoyed.
Action was his lifeblood. He thrived on moving, on doing, on keeping his mind busy and hands in motion. His days were filled with theory with his lord father, with interview and review of his own brothers, with hard training as he strained to be worthy of the blade at his back. Thiel knew his service was superlative these past months, more than enough to answer for the red helm at his hip.
Yet it was also this very same intensity that had landed him with his crimson-daubed helm and position on the flagship that fateful day. Left to his own devices, was it any surprise where his theoreticals might take him?
How ironic, now, that his crime was instead foresight. How cruel indeed. Proven right in his studies as he butchered traitors alongside his Primarch, Thiel had mused that this was payment in full for his censure.
Forcing down rumination, Thiel tapped the quiscient dataslate, looking over the provided hololith and display screens all waiting eagerly for interface. Thumbing the activation rune he was first greeted by a sigil he did not recognize, which the gothic tag beneath proclaimed was the 'Starbird, emblem of choice of the 'New Republic''. Thumbing to scroll, tracts of dense script rolled past, interspersed with images of aliens like might be found below on Eboracum. Many others he’d not seen nor heard of appeared as well. Of course he had known of the sheer variety of xenoforms in this area of space, revealed by interrogation of the natives. It was one thing to know, quite another to see. Images of humans standing alongside aliens of all shape and size had him slowly clenching digits about the dataslate, forcing Thiel to relax.
Exhaling, Thiel set about interfacing the slat with the conference chamber. Normally the job for a savant, there were few enough remaining as it was. To task one merely to Thiel would be wasteful at best. While the first dataslate spoke with and reached agreement with the hololith Thiel activated the other four, seeing similar spreads of information within. Making up his mind, Thiel straightened up, leaving aside the dataslates.
'Optarch,' he murmured, activating his vox. There was a moment of garbled static while the tangled spirits of Macragge's Honour confirmed his connection before the voice of Sannad Optarch returned.
'Sergeant? Is your audience finished already?'
'Short and swift, brother. I've been waylaid. Gather the others and continue theoreticals from yesterday. Table our pending reviews for now.'
'Sir.'
He cut his vox. Optarch, a line brother of 5th Chapter, 53rd Company, had become his de-facto second since he'd begun his father's tasking. Sannad was among the first four Thiel had interviewed and of that group, the only who had met his particular requirements.
'Find me a squad – a demicompany, Thiel. Find me men like you, men who will break my rules and remember the only one that matters.'
The words of his father still sat strangely on him.
To be rewarded for disobedience. To be lauded for divergence. To be given command because he'd dared think the unthinkable. But Thiel served. Aeonid Thiel always served. His father said: Information is victory.
That virtue he followed to the letter.
Information is victory. Unconsciously, Thiel reached back and brushed the scabbard of the longsword at his back with the tips of his fingers. When the hololith chimed a confirmation that all spirits were in accord, Thiel learned about the galaxy. More than he wanted, less than he desired and all that he could.
----------------------------------------
To his slight surprise, others filtered into the chamber over the next several hours. First to enter with a nervous and nearly silent rap of knuckles against the open hatch was an Army Colonel, fresh in pressed uniform. Thiel glanced up from where he'd been engrossed in notes on the structure of the New Republic Senate, taking occasional notes on exploitable inefficiencies when he'd heard the soft sound. Leaving aside thoughts on the incongruity of ruling a galaxy with an elected body, Thiel cleared his throat.
'Yes?' he asked, assuming a messenger. Stepping fully into the chamber, she smoothed down the front of her uniform and visibly swallowed.
'Lord, I am Colonel Lurense.' Thiel waited for her to elaborate, but she did not.
'Good evening Colonel,' he tried. 'Is there...?'
'Ah,' she started. 'Ah, I am. Ah, I was assigned – as representative of the, ah, Army.'
'Representative of the Army,' Thiel repeated. She went quite still.
'Y-yes, Lord.'
'Sergeant, Colonel.'
'I'm sorry?'
'I am a Sergeant, not a Lord. Call me Sergeant, or Thiel. I am not my father.'
Neither option looked likely to be taken from where he stood.
'I was told to report-'
'I gathered.' Thiel rubbed his chin between armored fingers. 'Take a seat, Colonel. I assume you have not interacted with many Astartes?' Lurense slowly approached a metal stool as if Thiel might bite, perching on just the edge.
'I have – I have not had the privilege, Lord. Merely from a – a distance. I’m – I’ve a staff position. I was overseeing logistics support and the muster at Devanse. Before my commission, I was a guildmistress.'
'It will pass, then.' Thiel looked her over. It was hard to tell with mortals, but he assumed she was middle aged. Colonels usually were. Dark haired, square shouldered and stocky, or at least as he could best estimate. How tall were mortals, usually? It depended on genestock. She certainly wasn't from Iax or Macragge. At her look of confusion he clarified.
'The fear, Colonel.'
As if jolted by a live conduit Lurense jerked then shook her head firmly.
'I would never fear the Avenging Sons.'
'Very well, Colonel,' he said, and reached to hand her a dataslate. When she flinched Thiel raised a brow, seeing red flush across her face. With some amusement he repeated himself.
'As I said, Colonel. It will pass. Welcome to the diplomatic corps.'
The next was a Magos, clicking and stalking, who glanced between Thiel, looming over the table and Lurense, who was marginally less tense, before extending a fleshless arm, palm open expectantly. This one was Corria Nalt, and he spoke as little as possible after stating his name and accepting a dataslate delivered by Lurense. Mechandendrites snaked out and clicked into ports on the hololith as well, the image noticeably clearing of some static. Lurense and Nalt both now sat the far side of the table from Thiel, establishing a divide.
Their fourth member swept in as an utter contrast to Lurense and Naut. This woman Thiel knew at least by sight – Katryna Vaul, Shipmistress of Mantallikes, the nearly crippled battleship at anchor beside Macragge's Honour. Vaul brought with her two ratings, silent and taking constant notes, who managed to remain a step beside and behind her at all times. One produced a complicated rigging from where it was slung over one shoulder, twisting and pulling it until to Thiel's mild surprise, a sort of hammock chair was produced, supported on telescoping legs, into which Vaul sunk. Imperiously she extended a hand, one rating fetching a slate to deliver to her.
‘Shipmistress,’ Thiel inclined his head.
‘Sergeant.’
Fifth and final introduced himself to everyone in the chamber with both hands clasped in warm handshakes including even Corria Nalt, though the magos only clicked his irised ocular implants twice. Sorvenos Tamirit Noskaur, Iterator, at your service. The effective leader of this assemblage, appointed by the Primarch himself (doubly an honour, to be sure, an honour indeed he was not worthy of, not at all!) to be the voice of the Imperium in Exsilium. He most assuredly had the voice for it, Thiel supposed, as Noskaur expounded at length at his joy and honor to serve the Imperium in such a proactive and positive way. He waxed on at his pleasure that he could make up for the dreadful drain he had been while the good men and women of the Army, Navy and Mechanicum had done so much after the aching tragedy of Calth until Vaul cleared her throat.
‘Oh, and I ramble on, don’t I? We will all be fast friends, I think, and present the perfect front to our counterparts of this New Republic. Grand, grand.’
Astartes, Army, Mechanicum and Navy. Thiel took in the other four and noted the absence.
‘Lacassex is not interested in sending one of their own?’
Noskaur spread his hands wide and smiled, thought Nalt straightened a little from his hunch at the.
‘The esteemed mistress was extended an offer but demurred. Our elements of the Legio here with us are quite busy, quite busy indeed and all hands are required on deck. Princeps Noriomi said as much, you see.’
Thiel grunted. Lacassex did what Lacassex did and none could task them. It was quite the point of the tempestuous Legio. Regardless, with Noskaur here, he relaxed. This is what they were for. Let Thiel be what he was made to be and let the speaker never shut up.