TWENTY-ONE

Hope to die
The man next to you
Legacy of Cortez

The streets of Lupercalia were crowded with people flocking towards the transit platforms. Alivia watched them through the vision blocks of the Galenus as it rumbled towards the upper reaches of the valley. Men, women and children were carrying everything they could on their backs or in overloaded groundcars.

Near the top of the valley she saw vapour trails of packed shuttles, lighters and supply barges struggling to get airborne.

‘What do you see?’ asked Jeph from farther back in the Galenus.

‘I see a lot of frightened faces,’ she answered.

Alivia knew they were right to be frightened.

None stood better than a one in hundred chance of getting off-world. Yet for all the fear she saw in the crowds pushing uphill, they still allowed the Galenus through. Some deep-rooted respect for the symbol of the Medicae made them get out of the way, and Alivia hated the fact that she considered her need greater than theirs.

After all, who was she to judge who should get off Molech and who should remain behind? And for the briefest moment she resented the one who had put her here and charged her with keeping watch over his secret.

She glanced down the length of the medicae vehicle, where Jeph, Vivyen and Miska sat with Noama Calver and Kjell. Five people she needed to get off-world. Five people whose escape would deny five others a chance of life. It was a trade off Alivia was more than willing to make.

But that didn’t make it sit any easier in her heart.

The vox-caster crackled, repeating the same message it had been transmitting for the last two hours. The speaker was concise, direct and eloquent in the way only career military men could be.

She’d suspected a trap, of course. False hope dangled for the sake of spite or some other malicious reason, but as she listened to the message, she’d heard the gloss of unvarnished truth.

There was a way off Molech.

An Imperial ship had survived the void war and found refuge in the asteroid belt. Repaired and rearmed, its captain had brought his ship back in an act of supreme courage.

Molech’s Enlightenment stood ready to evacuate refugees and survivors of the Warmaster’s invasion. The window of opportunity was narrow and shortening by the minute. Enemy ships would even now be lighting their reactors to break orbit and intercept it.

If Molech’s Enlightenment didn’t get away soon, it never would.

‘Coming up on the Windward Platforms,’ said Anson from the driver’s compartment. Alivia heard the anxiety in his voice. He wanted nothing more than to halt the Galenus and go get his girl, but Alivia didn’t have time to indulge him.

The Warmaster’s army would be here soon and she was already risking far too much by coming here first. But mission be damned, she wasn’t going to let her children die on Molech.

She smiled. Her children.

‘Don’t worry, Anson,’ said Alivia, clouding his anxieties and imparting a sense of wellbeing to him. ‘I’m sure Fiaa’s waiting for you here. She wouldn’t leave without you.’

‘No, she wouldn’t,’ said Anson, sounding relieved.

She justified the lie by telling herself it would keep him alive.

The Galenus rumbled to a halt and Alivia hauled open the side door of the vehicle. The smell of the city hit her first, warm spices and metallic smoke coming down from the fires burning beneath Mount Torger.

That and the smell of the thousands of shouting people mobbed before the gates to the landing platforms. The mood was ugly and ranked units of Dawn Guard were doing their best to keep a riot at bay. The mix of emotions was potent. Alivia did her best to shut them out, but there was only so much she could do.

She stifled a sob and leaned back into the Galenus.

‘Jeph, bring the girls,’ she said. ‘Noama, Kjell, time for you to get out too.’

She banged the driver’s door with her palm.

‘Anson, get out,’ she said. ‘I need you too.’

Jeph clambered out of the Galenus, his mouth dropping open in wonder at the scale of the city around him. Noama Calver and Kjell helped the girls down and kept them close as the press of nearby bodies closed in.

‘What about us?’ asked one of the wounded soldiers who’d hitched a ride with them back to Lupercalia.

‘You all stay put,’ she said, adding an emphatic push to her words. ‘I’m going to need you all. You, what’s your name?’

‘Valance. Corporal Arcadii Volunteers.’

‘Ever driven a Galenus before?’

‘No, ma’am, but I put some time in on a Trojan,’ said Valance. ‘Won’t be that much different.’

‘Good, get up front and keep the engine running. When I’m done here, we’re going to have to move fast to get to the Sanctuary. Are we clear?’

The man nodded and went forward into the driver’s compartment.

Alivia turned to the others and said, ‘Hold hands, and don’t let go for anything. Not for anything, you understand?’

They nodded, and she felt their fear. They linked hands and Alivia held hers out. Vivyen took one hand, Miska the other and with the adults trailing behind her in a narrow V, she pushed into the crowd.

The gates to the landing fields was perhaps a hundred metres away, and with every roar of struggling engines lifting off the mood of the crowd was souring further. She didn’t know what criteria the Dawn Guard were using for deciding who got through and who didn’t, but she guessed that most of the people here wouldn’t meet it.

Hostile stares and curses met her as she pushed forward, but she turned them all aside. The effort was draining. She’d never found this sort of thing as easy as John seemed to. Her talents lay towards empathic, less overt, means of manipulation. It took real effort and each calming touch took more out of her than the last.

But it was working, the crowds were moving aside for her.

She had her Ferlach serpenta loaded and tucked in the inside pocket of her coat should things get really ugly. She didn’t want to think what might happen to the girls if things got that bad.

Angry voices came from the gates. Querulous demands, pleading entreaties and desperate attempts at persuasion. Most were falling on deaf ears, but the occasional clang and clatter of a postern told her that at least some were getting through.

Alivia pushed her way to the front. A man in a richly-embroidered frock coat turned to berate her, but stepped aside with a puzzled expression.

‘No, after you, miss,’ he said.

Alivia nodded and turned her attention to the gate guards. She’d have to work fast. The man beside her might be accommodating enough to let her past, but the people behind him wouldn’t be so understanding.

The guard through the gate had a slung rifle and held out a data-slate and stylus. A list of approved personnel, quotas? It didn’t matter, it was her passport into the landing fields.

‘We need to get through,’ said Alivia, using a blunter form of persuasion than she would normally employ. ‘We’re on the list.’

‘Name?’

‘Alivia Sureka,’ she said, turning to push the others to the front and giving the guard their names. His face furrowed as his eyes scanned the slate. Alivia struggled to alter the perceptual centres of his brain. He was Munitorum. Unimaginative. A man born to live his life by lists.

‘Look, there,’ she said, reaching through the gate to put her hand on his wrist. ‘We’re on that list.’

The man shook his head, but Alivia conjured the image of her family’s names and those of Kjell and Noama into his mind.

‘I’m not seeing your... ah, wait, here they are,’ he said, nodding to the squad of soldiers at the gate controls. ‘Five coming in.’

The gate was a turnstile affair, unlocked to allow the requisite number of people through. The kind of gate that couldn’t easily be stormed once it was open.

Kjell and Anson went first, only too happy at this unexpected chance to get off-world. Noama went to follow them, but Alivia pulled her into a tight embrace before she went through.

‘Look after them for me,’ whispered Alivia.

Noama nodded and said, ‘I would have done anyway. You don’t need to do whatever it is you’ve done to the guard to me.’

‘Sorry,’ said Alivia with a flush of guilt. ‘I know you will.’

‘Take care,’ said Noama. ‘And whatever it is you’re going to do, be quick about it. These girls need you.’

Alivia nodded as Jeph steered the girls towards the gate. She put her arms around him and said ‘Be safe, and take care of our beautiful girls.’

He smiled. Then the import of her words hit him.

‘Wait, what? You’re staying?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I have to.’

‘You’re not coming with us?’ said Vivyen, her eyes brimming with tears. Alivia knelt beside the girl and took her in her arms.

‘There’s something I still need to do here,’ she said.

Miska put her arms around her. ‘Come with us, Liv. Please.’

Alivia hugged them tightly and just for a moment she considered just going through the gate. Getting on a shuttle and heading up to Molech’s Enlightenment. Who would blame her? What could she do against the might of an entire army?

The moment passed, but the thought of never seeing the girls again was a cold knife in her heart. Tears ran down her face as she held Vivyen and Miska tight.

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t come with you.’

‘Why not?’ sobbed Vivyen. ‘Please, don’t leave us.’

‘You’ve got your father,’ said Alivia. ‘And Noama and Kjell will look after you. I’ve got something I need to do here, so I can’t leave. Not yet. I made a promise a long time ago, and I can’t break it. As much as I want to.’

‘Come with us,’ said Miska. ‘Please, I love you and I don’t want you to die.’

‘I’m not going to die,’ said Alivia. ‘And once I get done I’ll come and join you.’

‘You promise?’ said Vivyen.

‘Hope to die,’ said Alivia, knowing she’d never make good on that promise. She’d broken a lot of promises over the years, but this one hurt worst of all.

She eased the girls’ fears with a gentle push.

‘Listen, you’ve got to go now. There’s a shuttle that’s going to take you to a starship, and that’s going to be the biggest adventure you’ve ever had. And once I get done here, I’ll see you on board. We’ll share the adventure together, yeah?’

They nodded, and the belief she saw in their faces almost broke her heart. Alivia wanted nothing more than to get on that shuttle with them, to turn her back on Molech forever, but that earlier promise had a stronger hold on her.

She reached into her coat and pulled out the battered storybook. It had been with her for longer than she could remember, but it wouldn’t do any good where she was going. She didn’t like the thought of the book ending its days lost forever beneath the surface of Molech and pressed it into Vivyen’s hands.

She closed the girl’s fingers around the book’s spine.

‘I want you to look after this for me, Viv,’ said Alivia. ‘It’s a very special book, and the stories in it will keep you from getting scared.’

Vivyen nodded and clutched the book to her chest.

‘Is everything going to be okay?’ asked Miska.

‘Yeah,’ said Alivia through her tears. ‘It’s going to be okay.’

Old breath sighed across his neck, chill and sharp despite the insulation of his armour. Loken moved slowly, trying to fix on the backplate of Ares Voitek’s armour. Three of the servo-arms were drawn in tight, a fourth with a passive auspex monitoring the surrounding spaces.

This high in the Vengeful Spirit, there were internal security surveyors, and each time Voitek raised a palm, they would stop and Tubal Cayne would develop a workaround. Often these would take them to places worthy of marking, and Bror’s futharc symbols became ever more elaborate in their directions.

‘What if one of the Sons of Horus sees these?’ asked Varren.

‘They won’t,’ said Bror. ‘And if they do, so what?’

‘Well, won’t they just erase them?’

Loken had wondered the same thing, but Bror just shrugged. ‘They will or they won’t. No use worrying about it.’

Loken heard a sound, like a palm slapping on pipework. He halted and dropped to one knee with a fist in the air.

‘What is it?’ hissed Nohai.

‘Thought I heard something.’

‘Severian? Anything ahead?’

The vox chirruped with burbling static. There’d been a lot of that the closer they’d moved to the vessel’s prow. Voitek said it was the increased density of machine-spirits, but Loken wasn’t so sure, though he couldn’t have named what he thought it might be.

‘Don’t you think I’d have said so?’ answered Severian.

‘Is that a no?’

‘Yes, it’s a no. Now shut up and let me work.’

They passed into the forward galleries, taking one of the service tunnels that ran the length of the ship. Following Cayne’s plotter towards the prow, Loken realised that this portion of the ship was one he had seen before.

Or, more accurately, it felt like somewhere he’d visited.

He paused to make sure he wasn’t mistaken.

No, this was one of the places, a lonely forgotten pocket within the ship’s layered superstructure. Dark now as it had been then, brackish water drizzled from conduits bolted to the roof. The remains of burned down tapers floated in oily puddles.

‘Something wrong?’ asked Varren.

‘I can’t say,’ replied Loken.

Varren grunted and moved ahead. Loken let Nohai and Tyrfingr pass him. Rubio paused at his side.

‘You’ll tell me if you start hearing things, yes?’

‘Of course,’ said Loken.

They moved on, entering, as Loken had known they would, a stagnant, vaulted space of old echoes and drifting flakes of ash. Iron bars framed the interior and numerous empty oil drums lay scattered throughout, spilling grey mulch over the deck.

The pathfinders circled around Severian and Cayne, who knelt in the centre of the space, conferring softly over a map hastily scrawled in the ash.

‘Where are we?’ asked Nohai. ‘This doesn’t look like anything worth marking. I thought the plan was to seek out places of importance.’

‘This place is important,’ said Loken. ‘More than you know.’

‘It’s just a hold,’ said Rubio, wrinkling his nose. ‘It stinks.’

‘This is where they first met, isn’t it?’ asked Qruze.

Loken nodded.

‘Where who met?’ asked Voitek.

‘The quiet order,’ said Loken.

‘The what?’

‘A warrior lodge,’ said Rubio, circling the chamber. Scaffolding still clung to the walls, ribbing them like steel bones. Discarded dust sheets hung like unpainted banners, as though a host of craftsmen might return at any moment. ‘This is where it began, the corruption.’

‘No,’ said Loken. ‘It began long before this place, but here’s where it took root.’

‘Were you a member?’ asked Severian.

‘No. You?’

Severian shook his head. ‘After my time. What about you, old man?’

Qruze pulled his shoulders back, as though offended by the notion. ‘I most certainly was not. When Erebus brought it to the Legion I didn’t know why we needed such a thing. Said so then, and I say so now.’

Loken moved through the space, thinking back to the time he’d attended a meeting with Torgaddon at his side.

‘I came here once,’ said Loken. ‘Not this space exactly, but one just like it.’

‘I thought you said you weren’t a member,’ said Bror.

‘I wasn’t. Torgaddon brought me here, thinking I might want to become part of the order.’

‘So why didn’t you?’ asked Varren.

‘I went along to see what sort of things the order did,’ said Loken. ‘A warrior of my company had... died. He’d been a member and I wanted to see if the order had anything to do with his death.’

‘Did it?’

‘Not directly, no, but even after I’d seen that it looked like nothing more than a harmless gathering of warriors, I felt there was something off about it. They’d gotten too good at keeping secrets, and I couldn’t bring myself to entirely trust any group that shrouded itself in that much secrecy.’

‘Good instincts,’ said Rubio.

Loken nodded, but before he could answer, Rama Karayan dropped from the scaffolding lining the walls. A Space Marine in full armour was a considerable weight, but he managed to land almost soundlessly.

‘Get into cover,’ said Karayan. ‘Someone approaches.’

They came in groups of three or four, mortal men in masks and heavy, hooded robes. Loken watched them assemble around what he’d at first assumed to be a defunct conduit hub. Roped down tarpaulin covered it, but when the first intruders to the chamber cut the ropes and pulled the covering away, Loken saw how wrong he’d been.

This wasn’t a lodge space, at least, not any more.

He groped for the word.

Temple. Fane.

An altar lay beneath the tarpaulin, a blocky plinth of dusty, baked ochre clay that looked oddly familiar. It took him a moment to recall where he’d seen stone just like it.

‘Davin,’ he whispered. ‘That altar stone, it came from Davin.’

Severian looked up as he spoke, shaking his head and placing a finger to his lips. The devotees continued to arrive, silently and reverently, until the space was filled with over a hundred bodies.

No words were spoken, as though they were about some solemn business. Some knelt before the altar, while others righted the toppled oil drums and relit the fires with rags, sheafs of paper and vials of viscous oils.

The fuel took hold swiftly and the heat of the flames soon warmed the chamber. Shadows swayed on the walls, cut and sliced by the bodies moving in time to some unheard music.

At last a group of eight appeared, marching a partially naked figure towards the altar. His physique was clearly transhuman, bulked out with muscle and sub-dermal bone sheaths. A long chasuble of purple cloth draped his shoulders and hung to just below his waist.

Severian tapped two fingers against his eyes and then pointed them towards the naked figure with his eyebrows raised.

Loken shook his head. No, he didn’t recognise him.

The figure was led to the altar, where he was bound with chains to the deck. The chasuble fell from his shoulders, and only then did Loken see the Ultima tattoo on the legionary’s scapula.

The warrior was of the XIII Legion.

Loken looked across the space to where Rubio was hidden. He couldn’t see him, but a barely perceptible movement in the darkness showed that he too had seen the warrior’s tattoo.

‘Why doesn’t he fight?’ whispered Loken, and this time Severian answered.

‘Drugged maybe? Look at his movements.’

Loken did and saw Severian was most likely correct. The warrior had the slack features of a sleepwalker. His arms were loose at his sides and his head sagged over his chest.

With the Ultramarine bound to the deck, the robed figures began a droning chant of garbled syllables, a collision of unsounds that Loken’s auto-senses registered as piercing static like insect bites.

At the height of the chant, another figure entered the chamber, this one just as genhanced as the bound warrior. He too was robed and hooded, but Loken instantly recognised him by his purposeful stride and swaying shoulders.

‘Serghar Targost,’ he said. ‘The lodge master.’

Loken’s fingers curled around the hilt of his chainsword, but Severian reached down and clamped his hand around its pommel. He shook his head.

‘He has to die,’ said Loken, as Targost scooped a handful of ash from a blazing drum and pressed it against the bound warrior’s chest.

‘Not now,’ said Severian.

‘Then when?’

Targost lifted a short bladed sword from beneath his robes, a gladius with a hemispherical pommel. The Sons of Horus did not favour the gladius. Too short and too mechanical. More suited to warriors who fought as one entity.

Its blade glittered dully as though sheened with coal dust, and Targost used it to cut radial grooves in the captive’s flesh. The Ultramarine did not cry out, whether due to his own fortitude or an induced fugue state, Loken couldn’t tell.

‘When?’ demanded Loken. Too loud. Heads turned upwards, searching the darkness. They were invisible, but Loken held his breath as the lodge master continued his ritual mutilations.

Severian’s eyes blazed with anger, then flicked over to the highest point of the scaffolding across the chamber. Loken could see nothing, just a confluence of girder and roof. A place the flames cast no shadow where they ought to.

‘Karayan?’

Severian nodded. ‘Let him take the shot.’

It irked Loken that someone not from the XVI Legion would get to kill Targost, but Severian’s logic was sound. He released the sword hilt and opened his fingers to show assent.

‘Be ready with that blade,’ said Severian. ‘No one gets out.’

Severian looked up to the shadows and tapped a finger against the centre of his helmet, right between the eye lenses.

He held up three fingers. Two. One.

A muted muzzle flash lit the shadows and Rama Karayan’s outline flickered against the roof. Loken paused just long enough to see Targost fall before pushing himself out from hiding.

He dropped seven metres and landed with a booming thud that buckled the deck plate. His sword roared from its sheath as he waded into the cultists. The blade’s teeth ripped them up, chewing meat and bone and robes with every slash and downward cut.

Loken raced to the arched entrance through which they’d entered and stood like a mythical sentinel barring a hero’s passage onwards. But these were no heroes, these were the scum of humanity, flotsam and jetsam swept up by the promise of easy gain offered by the corrupt powers at work within the Legion.

Unfit for war, all they could do was chant and pray and spill more worthy blood to corrupting alien powers. They came at him in a rush, with curved blades or clubs sourced from debris around the ship’s degenerating interior.

He let them come and cut them down without mercy.

The other pathfinders dropped into the midst of the cultists. Varren’s chainaxe hacked a bloody path. Voitek’s servo-arms lifted men from the deck and pulled them apart like a cruel child with a captive insect. Tyrfingr fought with his bare fists, roaring as though raucously brawling with trusted comrades.

Loken lost count of how many he killed.

Not enough, but eventually there were no more to slay.

He was blooded from head to foot. Through the entirety of his killing fury, he felt the presence of another at his shoulder, like a fencing master guiding his every strike. The sound in his helmet was hoarse, echoing, though he was not out of breath.

He blinked away the seconds the slaughter had taken.

Rubio stood amid a pile of corpses, his fists wreathed in killing fire. Cayne’s axe was dripping with gore, and Severian cleaned his combat blade on the robes of a headless corpse. Bror Tyrfingr spat blood not his own and wiped an elbow over his smeared chin.

Qruze and Cayne warily approached Serghar Targost, but Loken ignored the fallen lodge master. Instead, he went to help Ares Voitek and Nohai with the captive Ultramarine. While Voitek’s servo-arms cut through the chains binding him to the deck, Nohai knelt beside him, lifting his head and pressing a hand to the side of his neck.

‘What have they done to you, my friend?’ asked Rubio, tearing off his helmet. The light no longer danced in the crystalline matrix around his head, but the fire in his eyes was banked high.

‘You know him?’ said Loken, seeing recognition in Rubio’s eyes.

‘Proximo Tarchon,’ said Rubio. ‘An officer of the Twenty-Fifth Company. We marched with them on Arrigata, when Erikon Gaius led us.’

Loken recalled that blood-soaked world all too well. He glanced up at Varren and saw he too remembered it. But now was not the time for past regrets.

‘How in the Throne’s name did he end up here?’ asked Loken.

Rubio knelt beside the swaying captive and said, ‘How do any of us end up where we are? Chance, bad luck? The Sons of Horus must have taken him in battle.’

‘So Ultramarines are letting themselves get captured now, are they?’ said Varren, picking the blood from his axe-teeth.

Rubio shot him an angry glare, but didn’t waste words with the former World Eater. Instead, he turned to Altan Nohai.

‘What have they done to him?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ said Nohai, sliding a data-slug into the threaded sockets cored into Proximo Tarchon’s body. ‘Powerful drugs most likely, but I’ll know more soon. Don’t worry, we’ll get him back.’

Rubio’s fingertip followed the cuts made in Tarchon’s flesh, and Loken felt distinctly queasy at their precise nature.

‘You recognise these?’ asked Loken.

‘I have seen similar markings in primitive tribal cultures the Thirteenth Legion were forced to eradicate during the early years of the Crusade,’ said Rubio, his fists clenched and his voice betraying the depths of his fury. Cold fire shimmered at his hood, and Loken’s breath misted.

‘What are they?’ he asked.

‘Precursors to evocation.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means maleficarum,’ said Bror Tyrfingr, jerking a red thumb back towards Targost. ‘The dead one was trying to raise a wight of the Underverse and clothe it in this one’s flesh.’

‘A simplistic way of putting it,’ said Rubio, holding up a hand to forestall Bror’s rising choler, ‘but essentially correct.’

‘And this isn’t his first time,’ growled Bror. ‘Look at the cut lines. No hesitation, no mistakes. He’s cut them before. On too many other bodies, many other times. Lucky for this one we were here.’

Loken left them to it and returned to where Qruze and Cayne knelt beside the body of Serghar Targost.

The lodge master lay on his back, his hood ripped away by the passage of Karayan’s custom shell. What was left of his head was a splintered mass of leaking brain matter and bent metal fasteners. Bone hooks dangled from flaps of skin and skull fragments. One eye was a pulped scrap of exploded tissue, the other a blood-filled orb that wept red tears.

‘Too easy an end for you,’ said Loken.

‘Samus is here,’ said Targost and sat up.

Qruze fell back on his haunches as the lodge master’s fist punched into Cayne’s throat, tearing through the gorget seals with his bare hands. The former Iron Warrior didn’t have breath to cry out as the ruined, dead thing ripped out the ropy, meat-pipes of his throat.

The blood spray was catastrophic. Life ending.

Cayne fell back, vainly trying to stem the flood as Targost got to his feet. A black flame in the vague outline of a skull filled the ruined space where Targost’s head once sat.

‘Samus is the man next to you,’ he said.

Sabaen Queen burned fiercely, pillars of thick black smoke boiling from the Stormbird’s gutted interior and drawn up to the cavern hangar’s roof. The other gunships were just as useless. Melta bombs had turned their engine cores to slag and handfuls of kraks and frags smashed every control mechanism in their cockpits to scrap metal.

The thirty Ultramarines who’d survived the slaughter watched their escape from Molech’s surface burn to ruin. Their Rhinos idled behind them, engines coughing and retching as they too died.

Arcadon Kyro stood defiantly before the inferno of his own making and planted an Ultima vexil of the XIII Legion next to him, the one thing he had saved from Sabaen Queen’s interior after emptying it of weapons and ammunition.

His helmet was mag-locked at his waist and the ribbed arms of his experimental servo-harness were folded at his shoulders.

Tears streaked his ash-smeared features.

‘What did you do?’ said Castor Alcade in disbelief.

‘What I had to,’ replied Kyro. ‘I did it because you wouldn’t.’

Didacus Theron marched towards the unrepentant Techmarine, but Alcade held him back. Bad enough that legionary was fighting legionary, but for Ultramarine to fight Ultramarine? Unthinkable, even in a time when such thoughts were the norm.

‘You’ve killed us all,’ said Theron. ‘You’ve dug our graves on this miserable rock.’

‘A miserable rock entrusted to us by the Emperor,’ Kyro reminded him. ‘Or have you forgotten the oath we swore?’

‘I have forgotten nothing,’ said Theron.

‘You’ve forgotten where the power of your oath comes from.’

‘Then remind me.’

‘That by making it you ask the Emperor to bear witness to the promises you make with an expectation of being held accountable for how you honour them.’

Theron wrapped his hand around the hilt of his sword. Alcade knew that with but a moment’s provocation, he would draw it and strike Kyro down. Theron was Calth born and bred. Rough and ready, but with a nobility of heart that was all that kept him from killing Kyro where he stood.

‘My home world is burning,’ said Theron. ‘But Ultramar can still be saved. This world is lost. What will it achieve if we all die here? How does that serve the Emperor, Kyro? We are His Angels of Death, and this war against Horus has upset the board.’

Theron reached up to the scorched oath paper fluttering at his shoulder guard where a melted seal of wax affixed it to the curved plate. He tore it off and threw it aside.

‘An oath to die in vain is no oath at all,’ he said. ‘Calth needs us and you have kept me from her.’

‘Trying times don’t negate our duty to keep an oath,’ said Kyro. ‘They demand it, even more than when it’s easy to keep.’

Theron drew his sword, knuckles white.

Alcade took a breath. This had gone on long enough.

‘Centurion!’

Theron turned, his face ruddy with anger.

Alcade knew that anger. He felt it too, but with the horror of the massacre in the north behind them, cold practicality reasserted itself.

‘Leave him be, Didacus, he’s right,’ said Alcade, letting out a long, resigned breath. ‘An oath is not an oath if it can be set aside when it suits our desires. We swore to defend Molech, and that’s what we’re going to do.’

‘We can still get off-world, legate,’ said Theron, his anger undiminished, but bleeding out of him with every word. ‘We can seize another orbital craft. Capture a warp-capable ship and fight on. We can still make a difference. Thirty Ultramarines is not a force to be easily dismissed.’

‘I have made my decision,’ said Alcade. ‘The matter is closed. We march for Molech.’

Theron mustered his arguments, but Alcade cut him off before he could argue any more.

‘I said the matter is closed.’

For a moment he wondered if Theron might attack him, but decades of devotion to duty crushed any thought of disobedience.

‘As you say, legate,’ said Theron. ‘We march for Molech.’

Alcade waved his warriors towards the piled crates of ammunition and weaponry Kyro had removed from the gunships.

‘Gather up all the guns and blades you need,’ he said.

He marched to stand before Kyro and said, ‘On any other day I’d have you bear the red of censure, but I need every bolter I can muster. Rejoin the ranks, and bring that vexil with you. If we’re going to die here, we’re going to do it under the Ultima.’

Movement at the mouth of the hangar drew Alcade’s attention.

A wide-base Army vehicle lurched into the cavern, and thirty bolters snapped to face it. Automated weapon systems tracked it, but Kyro swiftly issued an override command at the sight of the red caduceus emblazoned on its glacis.

A heavy door rolled back on its side and a slender woman in a bloodstained coat and hard-wearing fatigues several sizes too big for her jumped down. Five men emerged behind her. Army by their bearing. Each was armed, but they were no threat.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he demanded.

The woman smiled in relief.

‘Legate Alcade,’ she said. ‘My name is Alivia Sureka and I very much need your help.’