‘Brother, I would not dwell on it. We are warriors of the Adeptus Astartes, whose lives belong to the service of mankind. So long as man exists amid the stars, so shall we. And in the end, for us, for man – for the universe we have created – there is only war.’
‘Which brings us back to the matter in hand. You did not answer my question, Forge-Master.’
Breughal stood stolid and immense, a dark shadow under the stars with glints of flame for eyes. The snow sizzled as it landed on the hot exhaust stacks at his back.
‘Very well then. Fornix, I do not believe that this is a mere raid. The Punishers are our nemesis, and they have been gone from this sector for what some would consider a long time. They will have used that time. If they were intent on raiding our territories, they would have done so sooner than this.
‘No, it is my belief that this is more likely to be another attempt at all-out invasion.’
Fornix considered the Dreadnought’s words, his head cocked to one side. For a second, what looked like sheer happiness crossed his face.
‘They will know this, Jonah and the Kharne,’ Breughal went on. ‘But they cannot risk Phobian by sending out the main strength of the Chapter. This may be a feint to draw us out.’
‘Mortai are a reconnaissance force then.’
‘No. It is more than that. If I know anything, I think that the Kharne means to fight the main battle as far from our home world as possible. Mortai’s job will be to pin the enemy in place, hold them, and gain intelligence. Then, perhaps, the bulk of the Chapter will become involved.’
There was a rumble deep in the heart of the towering Dreadnought, a kind of restlessness.
‘Your job, Fornix, is the same as it has always been. Your job is to bleed.’
Elijah Kass knelt before the statue of Lukullus in the Reclusiam, his head bowed within his hood. Even in here, the thunder of the embarkation could be heard, and he could feel along the electrodes embedded in his skull the tingle of expectation and speculation that now ran through Mors Angnar, as though the vast fortress and everyone in it were somehow more alive than they had been the day before.
It was unsettling and exhilarating at the same time.
‘We all have our heroes, our mentors, alive and dead,’ a voice said behind him. ‘We come here to reconnect with who we are, to remind ourselves that the greatest heroes are in some sense immortal. We think on them every day, though they are gone to dust and ashes in the passing centuries of history.’
Elijah tugged back his hood. A tall figure in bright blue, the colour of the Librarium, stood looking up at Lukullus Nogai, the man who had saved the Chapter all those years ago, and brought it back from the brink. An old face, broad, bony, with a nose like a flattened mushroom, and on either side of it two eyes as black as obsidian. The high-boned skull was implanted with psionic receivers like his own, though they seemed to have sunk into the wrinkled ivory flesh around them, becoming part of the man.
‘Lord Vennan. I was praying.’
‘Yes. To Lukullus. I would have thought someone else more fitting for one of your calling, Elijah.’
Here Vennan gestured across the chamber to another shadow-shrouded figure. It wore the metal cowl of a psychic hood, and the eyes within it glowed with a blue light, blue as the open sky on a bright day on Phobian. The name on its pedestal read Astanius.
‘He was Lukullus Nogai’s greatest friend, and he saved the legend and lore of the Chapter when all was lost. There were three of them: Lukullus Nogai, Astanius Tor and Breughal Paine. These three champions refounded the Dark Hunters. They saved us from abject degeneration.
‘Paine is still with us, our immortal Forge-Master. Nogai is a legend now, some say a Saint of the Imperium. And Astanius?’ Here Vennan opened his arms in a gesture of futility.
‘He is forgotten by all but a few. We of the Librarium revere his memory, but our brethren of the battle companies barely know his name. And yet without him, we would scarcely know who we are or from what we came.’
The anger came through now in Vennan’s voice.
‘And here you are, a Codicier of my own staff, praying with your back to him.’
Elijah rose. He was half a metre taller than the Chief Librarian, but he bowed his head, chastened.
‘I do not forget our forebear, or what he did, my lord.’
‘Perhaps you would prefer to wield a bolter in the line companies.’
‘No, my lord. I know who I am, and I am eternally grateful for your tutelage.’
Vennan’s eyes glittered. They were entirely black, the legacy of battling the warp for decades.
You will always be different to your brethren, and they will always see that difference, Elijah. Never forget that.
The voice crawled across Elijah’s mind, as bright and painful as the lash of a whip. He knelt once more.
‘You taught me well, lord. I shall not forget what I am – or who made me.’
Vennan glided closer. He set one gnarled hand on his inferior’s head. For a moment, blue light leapt up in infinitesimal sparks from the implants which ringed the bone, and Elijah flinched minutely.
‘You seek promotion to Epistolary, I am told.’
‘I do not seek promotion, but it is true that I have made application through Brother Greiff to join Mortai, yes.’
‘You have a high opinion of your abilities, it would seem. Epistolaries are usually veterans of many wars. What fighting have you seen, Elijah?’
Elijah wiped blood from his upper lip. It was trickling out of his nose in a thin stream.
‘Border skirmishes with the orks, as you know. Boarding actions off Perreken, when we destroyed the Gulbec pirates.’
Vennan lifted his hand. The blood from Elijah’s nose slowed to a drip, then stopped as his body systems repaired the damage. But there was still a shrill ache in his head that needled his mind every time the Chief Librarian spoke.
‘You have known battle, with blade and bolter, it is true. And you have acquitted yourself well – too well perhaps. I have heard it said in the Librarium that you would be well suited as a battle-brother, were it not for your Gift.’
Vennan bent low. ‘And that Gift cannot be denied, or ignored. It must either be trained and utilised, or its bearer must be destroyed. You understand that, do you not, Elijah Kass?’
‘I understand. A psyker is a double-edged sword.’
‘The warp is always there, waiting for us, as tireless as stone, its hunger never sated. You have never known the full extent of its evil and its majesty, Elijah, and yet you lobby to be sent on Captain Kerne’s expedition, where you will meet the Great Enemy at last, and you will experience the true terror of the warp, not diffused among the child-brains of orks or reflected in the intellect of common men, but raw and full-flowered in the psyches of our bitterest foes.
‘Stand up.’
Elijah did so. Vennan looked up at him, as though measuring his bulk.
‘The warp will shrivel you, as it did me. It will attempt to seduce you. It will play on love, Elijah. The love you have for the Emperor, for your Chapter, for your brethren. How do you know you can withstand that form of assault?’
‘I will withstand it, or I will die trying. I will never betray my brothers,’ Elijah said, and his face twisted with anger, eyes growing hot as he looked down on the Chief Librarian.
Strangely, Vennan smiled.
I believe you.
‘There is strength in you, brother. I know that.’ He set a hand on the younger man’s arm. ‘There are only eleven of us left in the Librarium, eleven true Adeptus Astartes with the Gift, or the Curse as some think it. The Dark Hunters have been unfortunate. In my time I have seen some two hundred aspiring psykers fail the tests. Some came all the way through the screening and became Neophytes, before the warp sensed their fledgling minds and consumed them.’