On and on the negative declarations went, citing brutal weather conditions that would affect sensitive orbital communication satellites; continental forests useless for lumber because of the unsafe biochemistry in the world’s flora; and screeds of lore decreeing Caliban’s fauna among the most predatory yet found on any colonised world – from the lowliest vermin that showed no fear of humankind to the great beasts that mercifully stood on the edge of extinction.
Corswain knew it was all of that and worse. But it was also home, a home he’d not seen in three long decades. A home he no longer believed he would ever see again. His smile in the morning vigil was both secret and bittersweet.
Alajos called to him once the reverence ended. The other knights filed from the chamber of reflection, their white surplice robes not enough to cover the battle scarring that ravaged every suit of black armour.
We have been fighting this war for two years, and I recall each day, each night, every order to draw steel and every shell fired in anger.
Two years. Two years since Horus committed his first act of insanity. Two years since the VIII and I Legions both found themselves ordered into the void, feuding over possession of an entire subsector. Neither side gave ground without taking it back elsewhere. Neither side charged without leaving a vulnerable flank open to assault. Neither Legion lost a battle when their progenitors led them to war.
Two years of civil war. World against world, fleet against fleet, brother against brother.
‘Hail,’ Alajos greeted him.
Corswain nodded in reply. ‘Is something amiss?’
Alajos, like his brothers, wore his full armour beneath a clean surplice. The hood was up, leaving his features in shadow.
‘The Lion summons us,’ he said.
Corswain checked his weapons. ‘Very well.’
III
THE LORD OF the First Legion sat as he so often sat these nights, leaning back in an ornate throne of ivory and obsidian. His elbows rested upon the throne’s sculpted arms, while his fingers were steepled before his face, just barely touching his lips. Unblinking eyes, the brutal green of Caliban’s forests, stared dead ahead, watching the winking dance of distant stars. Every so often there’d be the slightest betrayal of movement: the rise and fall of his armoured shoulders, or a moment taken to blink and shake his crowned head in silent dismissal.
The warlord’s armour was the same rich, unspoiled black as the void into which he stared. Sculpted across his breastplate and greaves, rearing lions formed from red gold – that rarest of metals dredged from the dusty crust of Mars – bared their teeth at a diligent and devoted bridge crew. He wore no helm while he sat in repose, yet the mane of ashen blond locks was bound back in a tight horsetail to keep his face free of distraction, and a simple silver circlet adorned his tanned brow. This last trinket sported no ostentation, being nothing more than an echo of tradition from the disbanded knightly orders of the Lion’s adopted home world. By such simple crowns were the knight-lords of Caliban once known.
Alajos and Corswain approached the throne as one. In perfect unity, they drew their blades and kneeled before their liege. The Lion watched their obeisance with impassive eyes. When he spoke, his voice was the grind of thunder at the horizon – it could never be mistaken for human.
‘Rise.’
They rose as commanded, sheathing their swords in twinned movements. Alajos remained hooded, ignoring the bustle of the command deck around them, his hidden eyes focused only on the enthroned warlord. Corswain stood more at ease, arms crossed over his breastplate, his armour enlivened by the thick, white fur pelt draping down his back. The skinned beast’s fanged head draped over his shoulder guard, forming the cloak’s binding.
‘You summoned us, my liege?’
‘I did.’ The Lion remained seated with his fingers steepled before his lips. ‘Two years, little brothers. Two years. I can scarce give it countenance.’
Corswain allowed himself a smile. ‘I was thinking the very same thing no more than half an hour ago, my liege. But what causes you to dwell upon it?’
Now the Lion rose, leaving his long blade and helm resting on the throne’s arched sides. ‘It is not because I share your impatient nature, Cor. I assure you of that.’
Alajos snorted. Corswain grinned.
‘Come with me,’ the Lion said, his tone neither kind nor cold, and the three warriors moved to the holo-lithic table at the heart of the command chamber. At the Lion’s order, a robed servitor triggered the projectors into life, bathing them all in the ethereal green half-light of flickering holo-images. The patchwork display hovering in the air before them showed the suns of the Aegis Subsector, each with their child worlds. Heraldor and Thramas flashed brighter than any other, both systems marked by a messy display of Mechanicum symboliser runes.
Corswain saw nothing new. A long crescent of pulsing red worlds marked the spread of systems locked in open rebellion; these were the worlds existing in defiance of the Imperium, flying the banners of Horus Lupercal and the Mechanicum of Old Mars. Entire solar systems in breach of the Emperor’s will, opposing just as many systems crying for Imperial aid and Terran reinforcement.
‘Parthac fell earlier this evening,’ the Lion gestured to one of the systems ringed by Martian glyphs. ‘The Fabricator-Governor of Gulgorahd reported his victory four hours ago.’ The primarch’s subtle mirth would be invisible to all but his closest kin. ‘He was less elated when I informed him that his push to take Parthac left Yaelis open to attack. The rebels took Yaelis less than an hour ago.’
‘He overcommitted.’ Corswain watched the flashing glyphs before looking to his liege lord. ‘Again.’
Alajos spoke before the Lion could reply. ‘Did he tender an apology for failing to heed your words when you promised this is exactly what would happen?’
‘Of course not.’ The Lion leaned on the table, his fists on the smooth surface. ‘And that is not why you are here, so spare me the righteous indignation, even if it is fairly placed.’
‘Contact with the Imperium?’ Alajos let hope filter into his voice.
‘No.’ The Lion brushed his gauntleted hand through the flickering hololithic image, seeming to drift deeper into his own thoughts. ‘No, our astropaths are still rendered mute by the warp’s turbulence. I believe the last recorded contact is currently listed as four months and sixteen days ago.’ The warlord’s cold green eyes never wavered from the holo image. ‘Two years of void skirmishes, two years of planetary sieges, two years of global invasions and worldwide retreats, orbital assault and shipboard evacuation… and we have a chance to end it at last.’
Corswain narrowed his eyes. He’d never heard the Lion speak in possibilities before. Always, the primarch spoke with a pragmatist’s tongue guided by an analytical mind, his every wartime utterance drenched in logic, with all sides considered before any remark left his lips.
‘Curze,’ Corswain ventured. ‘Have we located Curze, my liege?’
The Lion shook his head. ‘My venomous brother,’ he gestured to the hololith again, ‘has located us.’
The hololith wavered, crackling audibly as it re-tuned to present another image. ‘One of our outrider vessels, the Seraphic Vigil, received this message from a deep-void beacon left in its patrol path.’
Corswain read the distorted words, silently mouthing them as he did so. They made his skin crawl. ‘I don’t understand,’ he confessed. ‘One of the Lutherian Amendments to the Verbatim.And an unpopular one, at that. Why leave this for us to find?’