The Flight of the Eisenstein (3 page)

'Mind your work.' He nodded at the ceiling, at the place where Kaleb had been staring. 'Sees through steel, the primarch does.'

The serf managed a weak grin and bowed, gathering up a cleaning cloth and a tin of waxy polish. Under Hakur's neutral gaze he moved to the centre of the alcove and set to work on the heavy ceramite and brass cuirass that rested there. This was a ceremonial piece that Garro wore only in combat or upon formal occasions. In tandem with the honour-rank of battle-captain, the decorative over-sheath sported an eagle, wings spread and beak arched, sculpted from brass as if about to take flight from the chest plate. Similarly, the rear of the cuirass had a second eagle as a head-guard that emerged from the shoulders when worn over the backpack of Astartes armour.

What made this piece unique was that its eagles differed from the Emperor's aquila. While the symbol of the Imperium of Man had two heads, one blinded to look at the past, one sighted to see to the future, the battle-captain's eagles were singular. Kaleb fancied this meant that they only saw into the time yet to pass, that perhaps they were a kind of charm that could know the advance of a killing shot or deadly blade before it arrived. Once he had voiced that thought aloud and received derision and scorn from Garro's men. Such thoughts, Sergeant Hakur had later said, were superstitions that had no place on a ship of the Emperor's Crusade. 'Ours is a war to dispel fable and falsehood with the cold light of truth, not to propagate myth.' The veteran had tapped the eagles with a finger.

'These are inanimate brass and no more, just as we are all flesh and bone.'

Still, Kaleb's hand could not help but drift to a brass icon on a chain around his neck, hidden inside the folds of his tunic where none could see it.

The figure was most assuredly female, lithe and poised, clad in a shimmering snakeskin over-suit of dense chainmail and a sweep of golden armour plate that resembled a bodice. A half-mask lay open at her neck, revealing an elegant face. Garro sometimes found it hard to determine the age of non-Astartes, but he estimated she could be no more than thirty solar years. Purple-black hair rose in a topknot from a seamless scalp, bare but for a blood-red aquila tattoo. She was quite beautiful, but what locked his attention on her was the way she moved noiselessly across the iron decks of the chamber. Had he not seen her emerge from the shadows, the Astartes might have thought the woman to be a holo-ghost, some finely detailed image cast from the projector.

Amendera Kendel,' noted Typhon, with a hint of distaste. A witchseeker.'

Temeter nodded. 'From the Storm Dagger cadre. She is here with a deputation of the Silent Sisterhood, apparently on the orders of the Sigillite himself.'

Grulgor's lip curled. There are no psykers here. What purpose could those women serve in the coming battle?'

'The Regent of Terra must have his reasons,' Typhon suggested, but his tone made it clear he thought little of what they might be.

Garro watched the witchseeker orbit the room. Her tradecraft was commendable. She moved in stealth even as she was obvious to the eye, passing around the naval officers in a way that appeared to be random, even as Garro's trained sense understood it was not.

Kendel was observing. She was cataloguing the reactions of the people in the assembly hall, filing them away for later review. It made the Astartes think of a scout, surveying the land before a battle, seeking weak points and targets. He had never encountered a Sister of Silence before, only heard of their exploits in service to the Imperium.

Their name was well deserved, he considered. Kendel
was
silent, like the wind across a grave, and in her passing, he noticed that some would shiver without being aware of it, or become distracted for a moment. It was as if the witchseeker cast an invisible aura around herself that gave mortal men pause.

Garro watched her pass by the entrance to the assembly hall and his gaze was hooked by the shine of brass and steel upon two grand figures that stood either side of the hatch. Barrel-chested in highly artificed armour, taller than Typhon, the identical sentinels blocked the steel door with crossed battle-scythes, the signature weapon of the Death Guard's elite warriors. Only the few personally favoured by the primarch were permitted to carry such artifacts. They were known as manreapers, forged in echo of the common farmer's harvesting scythe that it was said Mortarion had fought with in his youth. The first captain wielded one, but Garro recognized these twin blades immediately.

'Deathshroud” he whispered. These two Astartes were the personal honour guards of the primarch, fated never to reveal their faces to anyone but Mortarion, even to the end of their lives. So it was said, the warriors of the Deathshroud were chosen by the primarch from the rank and file men of the Legion in secret, and then listed as killed in action. They were his nameless guardians, never allowed to venture more than forty-nine paces from their lord's side. Garro felt a chill when he realized that he hadn't even been aware that the Deathshroud had entered the chamber.

'If they are here, then where is our master?' asked Grulgor.

A cold smile of understanding flickered over Typhon's lips. 'He has been here all along.'

At the far end of the chamber, a towering shadow detached itself from the dimness beside the oval windows. Steady footsteps brought silence to the room as they crossed the deck plates. With every other footfall there came a heavy metallic report as the base of an iron shaft tapped out the distance. Garro's muscles tensed as the sound made several of the common naval officers back away from the hololith.

In the dusty Terran legends that survived from the histories of nation states like Merica, Old Ursh and Oseania there was the myth of a walker in the darkness who came to claim the freshly dead, a skeletal individual, an incarnation that threshed souls from flesh as keenly as wheat in the fields. These were just stories, though, the speculations of the superstitious and fearful, and yet, here and now, a billion light-years from the birthplace of that folklore, the very mirror of that figure rose into the half-light aboard
Endurance,
tall and gaunt beneath a cloak as grey as sea-ice.

Mortarion halted and touched the deck plates with the hilt of his manreaper, the scythe as tall as the primarch and a head again. Only the Deathshroud stayed on their feet. Every other person in the room, human or Astartes, was on his knees. Mortarion's cloak parted as he raised his free hand, palm upwards. 'Rise,' he said.

The primarch's voice was low and firm, at odds with the ashen, hairless face that emerged from the heavy collar surrounding his throat. Wisps of white gas curled from the neck brace of Mortarion's wargear, captured philters of fumes from the air of Barbaras. Garro caught the scent of them and for an instant his sense memory took him back to the grim, clouded planet with its lethal skies.

The assemblage came to its feet, and still the pri-march dominated the room. Beneath the grey cloak, he was a knight in shining brass and bare steel. The ornamental skull and star device of the Death Guard grimaced out from his breastplate and at his waist, level with the chest of a file Astartes, Garro saw the drum-shaped holster that carried the Lantern, a handcrafted energy pistol of unique Shenlongi design.

Mortarion's only other adornments were a string of globe-shaped censers in brass. These too contained elements from the poisonous high atmosphere of the primarch's adoptive home world. Garro had heard it said that Mortarion would sometimes sample them, like a connoisseur tasting fine wines, or by turns pitch them into battle as grenades to send an enemy choking and dying.

The battle-captain realized he had been holding in his breath and released it as Mortarion's amber eyes took in the room. Silence fell as his lord commander began to speak.

'Xenos.' Pyr Rahl made the word into a curse without effort, drumming his fingers across the stubby barrel of his bolter. 'I wonder what colour these will bleed. White? Purple? Green?' He glanced around and ran a hand through the close-cut hair on his head. 'Come, who'll make a wager with me?'

'No one will, Pyr,' answered Hakur, shaking his head. We're all tired of your trivial gambling.' He threw a glance back to the arming pit where Garro's housecarl was hard at work.

'What currency is there to wager between us, anyway?' added Voyen, joining Hakur at the blade racks. The two veterans were quite unalike in physical aspect, Voyen ample in frame where Hakur was wiry, and yet they were together on most things that affected the squad. 'We're not swabs or soldiers grabbing over scrip and coinage!'

Rahl frowned. 'It's not a game of money, Apothecary, nothing as crude as that. Those things are just a way to keep score. We play for the right to be right.'

Solun Decius, the youngest member of the command squad, came closer, rubbing a towel over his face to wipe away the sweat from his exertions in the sparring cages. He had a hard look to him that seemed out of place on a youth of his age. His eyes were alight with energy barely held in check, enthused by the sudden possibilities of glory that the arrival of the primarch had brought. 'I'll take your wager, if it will quiet you.' Decius glanced at Hakur and Voyen, but his elders gave him no support. 'I'll say red, like the orks.'

Rahl sniffed. White as milk, like the megarachnid.'

You are both wrong.' Prom behind Rahl, his face buried in a data-slate festooned with tactical maps, Tollen Sendek's flat monotone issued out. 'The blood of the jorgall is a dark crimson.' The warrior had a heavy brow and hooded eyes that gave him a permanently sleepy expression.

'And this knowledge is yours how?' demanded Decius.

Sendek waved the data-slate in the air. 'I am well-read, Solun. While you batter your chainsword's teeth blunt in the cages, I study the foe. These dissection texts of the Magos Biologis are fascinating.'

Decius snorted. 'All I need to know is how to kill them. Does your text tell you that, Tollen?'

Sendek gave a heavy nod. 'It does.'

'Well, come, come.' Voyen beckoned the dour Astartes to his feet. 'Don't keep such information to yourself

Sendek sighed and stood, his perpetually morose features lit by the glow of the data-slate's display. He tapped his chest. The jorgall favour mechanical enhancements to improve their physical form. They have some humanoid traits – a head, neck, eyes and mouth – but it appears their brains and central nervous systems are situated not here,' and he tapped his brow, 'but here.' Tollen's hand lay flat on his chest.

'To kill would need a heart shot, then?' Rahl noted, accepting a nod in return.

'Ah,' said Decius, 'like this?' In a flash, the Astartes had spun in place and drawn his bolter. A single round exploded from the muzzle and ripped into the torso of a dormant practice dummy less than a few metres from Garro's arming pit. The captain's housecarl flinched at the sound of the shot, drawing a tut from Hakur.

Decius turned away, amused with himself. Meric Voyen threw Hakur a look. 'Arrogant whelp. I don't understand what the captain sees in him.'

'I once said the same thing about you, Meric'

'Speed and skill are nothing without control,' the Apothecary retorted tersely. 'Displays like that are better suited to fops like the Emperor's Children.'

The other man's words drew a thin smile from Hakur. 'We're all Astartes under the skin, brothers and kindred all.'

Voyen's humour dropped away suddenly. That, my brother, is as much a lie as it is the truth.'

In the hololith cube, the shape of the jorgalli construct became visible. It was a fat cylinder several kilometres long, bulbous at one end with drive clusters, thinning at the other to a stubby prow. Huge petal-shaped vanes coated with shimmering panels emerged from the stern of the thing, catching sunlight and bouncing it through massive windows as big as inland seas.

Mortarion gestured with a finger. 'A cylinder world. This one has twice the mass of the similar constructs found and eliminated in orbits around the planets Tasak Beta and Fallon, but unlike those, our target is the first jorgall craft to be found under power in deep space.' One of the adepts tickled switches with his worm-like mechadendrites and the image receded, revealing a halo of teardrop-shaped ships in close formation nearby.

'A substantial picket fleet travels ahead of the craft. Captain Temeter will lead the engagement to disrupt these ships and break their lines of communication.'

The primarch accepted a salute from Temeter. 'Elements of the First, Second and Seventh Great Companies will stand with me as I take the spear tip into the bottle itself. This battleground is suited to our unique talents. The jorgall breathe a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen with heavy concentrations of chlorine, a weak poison that our lungs will resist with little effort.'

As if to underline the point, Mortarion sniffed at a puff of gas from his half-mask. 'First Captain Typhon will be my support. Commander Grulgor will penetrate the drive cluster and take control of the cylinder's motive power centre. Battle-Captain Garro will neutralize the constract's hatcheries.'

Garro saluted firmly mirroring Grulgor and Typhon's gestures. He held off his disappointment at his assigned target, far down the cylinder from the primarch's attack point, and instead began to consider the first elements of his battle plan.

Mortarion hesitated a moment, and Garro could swear he heard the hint of a smile in the primarch's voice. 'As some of you have deduced, this fight will not be the Death Guard's alone. I have, on the request of Malcador the Sigillite, brought a cadre of investigators from the Divisio Astra Telepathica here, led by the Oblivion Knight Sister Amendera.' The primarch inclined his head and Garro saw the Sister of Silence bow low in return. She gestured in sign language, quick little motions of finger and wrist.

'The honoured Sisters will join us to seek out a psyker trace that has led to this bottle-world.'

Garro stiffened.
Psykers?
This was the first he had heard of such a threat on the jorgalli ship, and he noted that only Typhon did not seem surprised at such news.