‘Chapter Master, I would deem it an honour if you allowed me to act as Mortai Company’s Chaplain for the coming campaign, since it is currently lacking in spiritual guidance. Let me accompany Brother Kerne to Ras Hanem.’
‘An excellent idea,’ the Kharne said quietly. ‘I am sure Captain Kerne will welcome your assistance, Brother Malchai.’
Kerne bowed again, but said nothing. He was being punished, and he had earned it, but he still felt better for having aired his thoughts before his brothers.
Fornix is going to love this, he thought.
FOUR
In Aere
Phobian was a white blazing orb streaked with hints of blue and mottled grey. It floated tranquil and vast, its atmosphere a thin bright haze around its circumference. It had been almost two years since Jonah had been off-world, and it felt as though he were looking down on a picture from his past. The planet filled the tall viewport in the side of the ship, flickering now and again in the void shields that protected the hull.
Fornix joined him, his boots clicking as the magnetic fields in the soles hugged the steel deck.
‘By the Emperor and my faith, Jonah, it feels fine to be up this high again, to feel the engines of a good ship thrumming under my feet.’
Phobian swung round in the port as the ship began to wheel preparatory to full burn. They could see the terminator curve dark around the surface of the planet, and in the spreading night there was the tiny spangle of light that was Mors Angnar, cradled in the rugged peaks and glaciers of the Argahast Range. The Silverspears.
‘Perhaps Breughal was right,’ Kerne said quietly. ‘We must put some trust in ordinary men, and their resolve.’
‘Let us hope this Dietrich fellow has some iron in his backbone at least,’ Fornix said. ‘I pulled his files. He seems adequate enough.’
Kerne smiled. ‘I also. He is a veteran of twenty-eight years service in the Guard, but he only took command of the 387th three months ago. It remains to be seen how well that appointment takes.’
‘No matter what we find in the Kargad System, with Mortai and the Ogadai, nothing shall stand against us for long.’
‘Hubris, brother, is a dangerous thing.’
‘I merely state facts, captain. We have one hundred and eight Adeptus Astartes on board this ship. Whole systems have been conquered with less.’
‘And let us not forget Brother Malchai.’
‘Ah.’ Fornix grinned. ‘I did not see that coming, I’ll admit. What possessed him, do you think? The Chief Reclusiarch, ministering to the needs of a single company?’
‘Malchai keeps his own counsel, as he always has.’
‘He has never forgiven us for saving his life,’ Fornix snapped with sudden asperity.
‘Enough, brother-sergeant. As far as I am concerned, he belongs to Mortai now, and as a senior member of the Chapter he will be treated with nothing but the utmost respect.’
‘He has that, at least. I do not doubt that he has nothing but the welfare of the Chapter at heart, Jonah, but I will not say the same concerning his thoughts on you. He means to monitor your decisions, and seize upon any transgression he can find. He wants Thuraman to succeed the Kharne – they have always been close – and he sees this campaign as a means to advancing that end. Watch yourself, brother, for he will be watching you.’
‘You have spent too much time thinking of late, Fornix,’ Jonah said lightly. ‘It’s not good for you.’
‘I’m just glad I’m a–’
‘–mere sergeant, I know. You are first sergeant, do not forget, and if something should happen to me, then command of Mortai would devolve upon you. So do not play the bluff innocent. It may work with others, but not with me. I know you too well.’
‘Emperor forefend,’ Fornix said. He was grinning again. ‘Shall we continue to the bridge, and meet with the other great names of our expedition, captain?’
‘Lead on. And try to keep that mouth of yours in check.’
‘I shall be muteness itself.’
The two warriors clanked off down the steel corridor. They were in full power armour, in the dark livery of the Hunters, and they cradled their helms in one arm while bolt pistols were maglocked to their thighs.
Jonah Kerne’s armour was intricately damascened with patterns of liquid-streamed ceramite so that the glim lights overhead were reflected off it as from the surface of fast-running water. A work of ancient beauty and puissance, it had been worn by the captains of Mortai Company since time immemorial. The Kharne had worn it, as had several other Chapter Masters.
There was even a legend that Lukullus himself had had it made, back in a time when the construct of such artefacts was still possible in the Chapter forges. Jonah doubted that, but the armour was undeniably of great age, and the helm that came with it was of the older corvus pattern, with its raptor-like profile.
Jonah had worn it so long now that it was a part of him – true in a very real sense also, as the armour was plugged into his very anatomy at all the hardpoints which were surgically grafted into the carapace that underlay every Space Marine’s body. He could live within his armour for months on end, and had done so many times in the course of his long life.
Fornix’s armour was not of the same vintage. Although he was first sergeant of the company, he chose to wear a simple unadorned Mark VII suit with rank badge and Chapter symbol painted on the shoulder plates. The painting was inept – Fornix had done it himself – but that also was tradition. When Fornix had first been promoted, it had been in the smoking ruins of Mors Angnar, and he had painted his rank onto his armour in the midst of a smoking battlefield, using his own blood to make the stripes.
He bore no engravings, no purity seals or scrolls, and the armour, though well maintained and in perfect order, was a thing of pure utility. It had been repainted with cameleoline several times, as was common in the Hunters line companies, and small remnants of the chameleonic paint still clung to crevices and dents in the ceramite plates.
The heavy vault-like doors to the bridge rolled back in their grooves and the command section of the Ogadai opened out before the two warriors, a huge cathedral-like space with a long central nave and an upraised dais at the far end with high void-shielded viewports open to the stars. It seemed more a place of worship than anything else, and there was the same subdued reverence within.
Kerne and Fornix walked down the nave, past sunken pits on either side in which banks of servitors sat plugged into the mechanics of the ship itself, muttering to themselves and to the bowels of the Ogadai in binaric and machine-code, the data-tongues of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
They met human fleet members of the Chapter who each bowed as they passed, wide-eyed at their proximity to the Emperor’s elite, and came finally to the end-dais, where the high altar would be in a terrestrial cathedral. Here, there were upraised cliffs of monitors and dials and levers, watched over by fleet servitors, some almost human, some barely so.
And here also stood the shipmaster, Tomas Massaron, with his senior commanders, and towering over them in his tar-black power armour, Jord Malchai, his skull-shaped helm cradled at his side, the crozius arcanum which was both badge of office and deadly weapon in his other hand.
The Reclusiarch nodded curtly as Kerne and Fornix climbed the steps of the dais. The steps were crafted from the grey stone of the Argahast mountains, a little part of the home world to stand upon. The three Space Marines made a hulking trinity and acknowledged the salutes of Massaron and his crew with grave silence.