They were frightening, with their long, almost equine skulls and massive-boned features, and pitiless eyes. Their uncovered faces were more unsettling than the savage lineaments of their massive helmets. One could hardly meet their gaze, and when one did, it seemed they looked deep into the soul of a man, weighing him on the scales of their own puissance and finding him wanting.
Dietrich respected them, admired them and feared them. But aside from that he could not relate to them – they seemed to exist on some different level of reality, one in which he was barely able to register.
They were the Angels of Death, and they looked it.
Their captain, Jonah Kerne, was looking down on the table at the old-fashioned map Marshal Veigh had once shown Dietrich and Von Arnim in this very room. In the months since then, the map had been updated hundreds of times, but they had kept it current, because the power failures had rendered electronic record-keeping unreliable.
In the last few weeks, tactical readouts had become a thing of memory; they had gone back to the technology of their forefathers, and marked up maps of paper, plasment and even vellum, ripped from the ancient tomes of the palace library.
They had instituted a series of semaphore stations on the citadel and in the Armaments District as their vox frequencies succumbed to jamming, and at times they had been reduced to sending despatches by runner, harkening back to the dawn of warfare.
But it had sufficed – just – to hold together the dwindling, fragmented defence.
Now the generators were being turned on again, the solar panels on the side of the citadel – those that had survived – were once more being cranked by hand out of their protective housings, and there was electric light here in the audience chamber, where before they had burned torches and candles.
But the city below was still without mains water or power, and the only food to be had was decaying carrion. Even in the Armaments District, there had been rumours of cannibalism among the munitions workers.
‘We estimate that since the drop, we have slain some seventeen thousand of the enemy,’ the Adeptus Astartes captain was saying. ‘There are still pockets of cultists here and there in the city – the hive-scrapers house quite a few – but they have no hope of being more than a nuisance. In a few days we will begin the cleansing of the rest of the planet, but from what my people in orbit tell me, that will prove little more than a mopping-up operation. General Dietrich,’ Kerne’s stone-dark eyes met his own. ‘What is left in the way of defenders on Ras Hanem?’
Dietrich retrieved a scrap of grubby paper from his pocket and peered at it. ‘I have three hundred men left of my original command, nine main battle tanks in various states of repair, including two Baneblades, various other light armour to the total of some two skeleton companies.’
He looked up. ‘Our mobile artillery was all destroyed, as were our Hydras. They sought those out especially. As far as the Hanemites go, out of a total of some five divisions, we have one understrength battle-group remaining, some six thousand men, with almost no heavy weapons. In the citadel also are almost four thousand wounded.’
Dietrich put the paper away. He met Ismail’s eye and the commissar nodded, as though in approval.
‘You made a good defence,’ the Dark Hunters first sergeant said, a scalp-locked Space Marine named Fornix with one red-gleaming bionic eye. ‘Your idea of linking up the citadel to the Armaments District saved you and the city.’
Then the Chaplain, Brother Malchai, spoke up, and there was something in his voice that made Dietrich’s skin crawl.
‘We have heard the story of the traitor Marshal Veigh. I rejoice, general, that your commissar behaved properly, but I will of course have to conduct my own investigation. The murder of a planetary governor is no light matter, and the Administratum will want a full report on the affair.’
Dietrich bowed slightly, the blood leaving his face.
‘It seems to me,’ Fornix said, ‘that this Riedling was a liability to the defence.’
‘That is irrelevant,’ the Chaplain said, and Dietrich watched as he and the first sergeant held one another’s gaze for a long moment.
‘We all know how you love to send reports, Brother Malchai,’ Fornix said with a sneer.
‘Enough.’ It was Jonah Kerne, an edge of anger in his voice. ‘Our concern here and now is the strategic situation upon this world and within this system.’
Dietrich was startled to catch the undercurrents of hostility between these giants of the Imperium. It had never occurred to him before that Space Marines had their own arguments and rivalries, just as lesser men did.
After a pause, Jonah Kerne spoke again.
‘Ras Hanem is saved, that much seems clear. The forces of Chaos were not here long enough to embed their filth in the very fabric of the planet–’
‘We cannot yet know that,’ Malchai interjected.
Kerne held his temper. ‘Brother Kass, this is more in your province. What do your senses tell you?’
They all looked at the young epistolary. His psychic hood glowed slightly, a blue that matched the glow in his eyes.
‘I am still conducting my own researches, brother-captain.’
‘I suggest you accelerate your researches. You know what it means for the inhabitants of Ras Hanem if the taint of Chaos is proven to have taken root here.’
It would mean annihilation, the destruction of every living thing on the planet, down to the very microbes in the earth. And the sequestering of Dietrich’s own men, until agents of the Inquisition could vet them one by one: a trial so severe that many would not survive it.
Dietrich knew that, and he felt the first stirrings of anger. He started to say something, but Von Arnim, reading his face, set a warning hand on his arm and he subsided.
‘I know what it means,’ Brother Kass said. He glanced at Dietrich.
He felt my anger, the general realised.
‘Brother-captain, I have not thus far sensed any great taint of heresy upon this world, but I have felt the presence of something else. Something ancient and faint and deep buried, that I believe predates the Imperium’s presence here.’
Kerne raised an eyebrow. ‘Xenos?’
‘Perhaps. Something I have not encountered before at any rate. And captain, there are other flashes of it now and again which are similar, but far more recent. I cannot help thinking that we are not alone on this world. There is another element at work here besides us and the lingering traces of the Chaos presence.’
‘Could you be any less clear, brother?’ Fornix asked with a snort.
‘As the Chaos infestation recedes, this other element will become clearer to me, first sergeant,’ Elijah Kass said. ‘At this time, I cannot be more specific, no.’
Captain Kerne drummed his gauntleted fist heavily on the tabletop, like the mutter of a drum.
‘What else can we give you in the way of resources to aid your research, Elijah?’ he asked.
‘I would be appreciative of Brother Malchai’s assistance in this matter.’
There were cross-currents here, undertones of tension between these giant warriors. Dietrich was fascinated and disquieted by the realisation. Even the Emperor’s elite had disagreements amongst themselves. Kerne and Malchai were looking at each other as if this were some sort of contest between them.
‘Very well,’ Kerne said tersely. ‘Make it a priority. I do not want to spend time and treasure rebuilding a world which the Inquisition may yet find it necessary to cleanse.’
He straightened.
‘Fornix, have three Hawks prepped. I want mixed squads in each – light, heavy and line. They are detailed to hunt down and destroy the last remnants of the Punishers across this planet. Three more Hawk gunships will be held in reserve down at the spaceport once the servitors have cleared a landing pad, with three line squads on immediate notice to move, as a general reserve. The rest of the squadrons will maintain an overwatch for now, and the gunships will stay on call until further notice. How are we for ammo and supplies?’