‘A resupply shuttle is due from the Ogadai within the hour,’ Fornix said.
‘All brethren are to remain at maximum readiness. General Dietrich, do you require any technical help with matters inside this fortress?’
Dietrich started. ‘Our own enginseers are recovering what they can of our vehicles, but we could do with some help on the Baneblades. We’ve located the hulks of three that may be salvageable.’
‘I will second Brother Heinos, our Techmarine, and a detachment of servitors to your command. Scavenge whatever you can, and do your best to have the munition manufactoria run up to full production once more. I would rather we made our own munitions than have to rely on transports from the Ogadai.’
‘Those people in the factoria need food and water more than anything else,’ Dietrich said.
‘My servitors will look into it. Fornix, I want mixed teams of gun-servitors and brother Space Marines patrolling the city. Every single cultist must be destroyed, every scrap of Chaos eradicated. I want this city made clean. Do you understand me?’
‘Yes, brother-captain,’ Fornix said at once, his face flat and neutral now.
‘Brothers, general, we have a lot of work to do. You are all dismissed to your duties – we will speak again later. Brother Kass, you will remain behind if you please. I should like a word in private.’
They filed out of the soot-grimed, mud-tracked audience chamber where Riedling’s gaudily caparisoned boy-bodyguards had once stood by the doors under a gilt ceiling. As the doors boomed shut, Jonah Kerne turned to his young Librarian.
‘Brother Kass, I have been meaning to have a talk with you for some time.’
Elijah Kass bowed slightly. ‘I expected as much.’
‘You know then of the incident of which I mean to speak?’
‘Yes, captain. The boarding action, when I felt the minds of the Great Enemy for the first time.’
‘Indeed. Brother, it would be remiss of me not to tell you that your behaviour that day disquieted me.’
‘I was somewhat disquieted myself,’ Kass said with a smile. The smile faded as he caught the look in Kerne’s black eyes.
‘The minions of Chaos,’ he went on, ‘are like mosquitoes in a darkened room – one can hear their ruined minds like a continual annoying whine, but after a time, one can tune them out. Chief Librarian Vennan taught me that, prepared me for it. I was ready for that, captain, truly I was.’
‘This campaign was the first in which you have encountered the Great Enemy in any numbers,’ Jonah Kerne stated.
‘Yes, captain. Before this, it was the human pirates of the Gulbec war, or the childlike malevolence of the ork. The cultists, I could dismiss like the insects they are, but I was shocked to encounter the minds of those who had – who had–’ He seemed almost unable to continue.
‘Who had once been Adeptus Astartes, such as us,’ Kerne finished for him.
‘Yes. It was a profound shock to find in those twisted wrecks of intellect, the core of knowledge and will which is common to all of our Adept. It had been warped into something vile, but there was still something recognisable there.’
‘It is the reason for the great hatred we feel for those who followed the Heresy into darkness,’ Kerne told him. ‘We hate them not only because they are purely evil, not just because of the Great Betrayal that they perpetrated and which almost brought the whole Imperium down.
‘We hate them most of all because at times, we can glimpse in them a facet of ourselves.’
‘Yes!’ Kass agreed, his blue eyes flashing. ‘That is what I felt. I had not expected to feel that – it was almost a kind of grief.’
‘Forget the grief – concentrate on the hate,’ Kerne growled.
‘I know that now, captain. But there is one other thing, something I have been meaning to draw back to your attention in the last few days. Something else I felt while standing on the hull of that Punisher destroyer.’
He paused, and looked down at his hands. The blue gauntlets opened into palms, and then closed into fists, as though he were trying to grasp something indefinable.
‘Our foes on this world and in this system were not some ragged conglomeration of warbands, drawn together at random. They were a coherent whole. All those minds were gripped by an idea which brought them together, and it was not mindless hate, such as we have encountered in this city since we landed. It was directed, measured, implacable.
‘Captain, somewhere out there, in this system, or perhaps beyond it now, there is a single directing will which had planned all this. I felt an echo of it during the boarding action – and even then it was far away, and receding further.’
‘I am sorry to hear that. I would have liked to look upon this leader of Chaos,’ Kerne said. ‘Such champions spring up in the ranks of the Great Enemy eternally, Brother Kass. Daemon princes, warlords, black sorcerers of great subtlety and power. I met them and contended with them before you were born. I am not surprised to find that it was so in this system also. I only want to make sure that you are capable of dealing with the psychic shock of such encounters.’
‘I am, now,’ Kass said earnestly. ‘Forewarned is forearmed, captain. I shall know what to expect next time.
‘But what I meant to tell you – and I have been thinking about this ever since – is that this single, guiding intelligence did not feel alien at all to me.
‘It felt like the mind of a battle-brother.’
Out in the dark and ruin of Askai below, a creature detached itself from the deep shadow of the ruined hive-scraper and flowed across the rubble-strewn roadway. Seconds later, three more like it rippled in its wake.
They were hard to look upon, but if they remained still for more than a few moments, then it was possible to decipher an outline of interference in the normal range of vision, like a heat-shimmer caught out of the corner of the eye.
A series of clicks, interlocked with a flowing sing-song; it was not mere noise, but a strangely melodic language. One which no human being had ever spoken.
‘It is here, my sister, up ahead. The entrance to the way below is calling to me – I can feel its song even from here.’
‘The place has the look of one of their fortresses,’ another shape said.
‘It is guarded,’ put in a third.
‘No mon-keigh watcher can catch sight of us, hearts of my heart.’
‘The armoured fanatics are here – I can smell them. They can see us – nay, they can even sense us. I have known it before. We must go with extra care here, Callinall.’
‘I know it.’ The speaker hissed slightly. ‘I smell their reek as clear as you do, Vorporis.’
‘We can scale the wall, but there are untold numbers of them within – thousands. We will not evade them all – I state this as fact, my sister.’
Again, the hiss. It was anger and disgust and disappointment all in one.
‘What say you, then, shall we attempt it?’
‘It cannot be done without alerting the mon-keigh, and we are under orders above all not to reveal ourselves.’
‘Then so be it. But are we agreed that what the farseer suspects is true?’
‘It is. I can hear it calling – the song is faint, and so, so old and deep. But it is here.’
They all bowed their heads, in reverence and something approaching grief.
‘Then we shall return to the Brae-Kaithe, and make the news known. My sisters and brothers, it is not for us to recover this precious thing. For now it is enough that we have established its presence.’
‘How can the mon-keigh not suspect?’ one of them asked in disbelief.
‘They are mere animals. They know nothing of the true universe they walk upon – one might as well expect a plant to be able to read.’