Jonah Kerne doffed his helm and looked at them all. They were crouched in a ruined basement, overlooked by the shattered remains of one of the city hive-scrapers. It had collapsed the day before, and now there were only twenty storeys of wrecked framework still standing of a building that had once towered hundreds of metres.
The night was dark as pitch, except for the flashes of artillery lighting up the horizon and the spatter of errant tracer through the sky. Above them, they could see the stars that were not stars wheeling in orbit above the city. The Punisher fleet, looking down on them.
‘Brothers, I would have you listen to me, and take a look at this.’
Kerne produced the Infinity Circuit from under a filthy cloth. The gleam and shine of it threw blue light on their helms, reflecting in the blank lenses. The egg-shaped artefact was a thing of such beauty that even the hardened Space Marines were silent, gazing upon it.
Kerne covered it up again.
‘It is this thing which has brought the eldar to Ras Hanem, and this alone. As you know, I made a bargain with the xenos leader. In return for her help with our communications, and the assistance of her warriors, I agreed to let her search for it. That part of the bargain has been kept, but all of her people died in the keeping of it, and so this thing comes to us. I ask you – what should I do with it? Do I try to destroy it, or keep it for investigation by the Inquisition?
‘Or do I keep my word and hand it over to the xenos?’
‘It is a device of an enemy species, and thus warrants destruction,’ Brother Malchai said. Kerne had expected no less from the Chapter Reclusiarch.
‘It’s an odd weapon, if that’s what it is,’ Fornix said. ‘I told you before, Jonah, I do not think this gew-gaw is a hazard to us. Valuable to the xenos, yes, but that is all.’
‘I sense no danger in it,’ the Librarian, Elijah Kass agreed. ‘There are many voices within, raised like a choir. It contains memories, and pictures I can only glimpse, but there is no hostility there. It is alive, but inert at the same time.’
‘Can the egg hatch?’ Malchai argued. ‘We do not know. We have no way of guessing what this thing might be used for. It should be destroyed, captain.’
Finn March spoke up for the first time. He took off his helm and looked Kerne in the eye.
‘Captain, all I know is that I have four battle-brothers remaining out of the nine I jumped with, and holding the line with them right at this moment are squads of these xenos. They have been fighting beside us now for almost three days, and they have helped us stem at least four major assaults. I speak merely as a combat leader – if the eldar become our enemies too, then the line will fold, and we will have to fall back to the citadel.’
Brother Malchai clenched a fist. ‘Brother-sergeant, are you suggesting that brothers of the Adeptus Astartes cannot hold their positions without the aid of filthy xenos?’
‘Yes, Reclusiarch, I am, and believe me when I say it is a bitter pill to swallow. We are over-extended as it is. If the eldar pull out, then we will have to redraw our positions drastically.’
‘He’s right,’ Fornix said. ‘I inspected the lines this evening. Jonah, there are fifty-two of us still standing. The militia and the Guard do their best, but aside from the gunners in the citadel, Dietrich is now down to three tanks and a few understrength battalions. Even with the help of the eldar, we will need to consider withdrawals by morning. Without them, many of our positions will be overrun almost at once.’
There was a silence as this sank in.
‘Better to die clean, than live with tainted honour,’ Malchai murmured.
Jonah Kerne touched the leather sheath at his hip in which Mortai’s ancient banner resided.
‘Honour?’ he said. ‘Brother Malchai, I gave my word to the eldar farseer. She has kept hers – must I break mine?’
‘You gave it to a xeno, from a race famed for its deceit,’ Malchai told him implacably. ‘There is no honour at stake.’
Kerne’s face hardened. ‘I see your reasoning, and there is much to recommend it. But I have been thinking over this since Fornix returned from the mines. I cannot agree with you, brother.’
‘You’re going to hand it over,’ Elijah Kass said, disbelief in his voice. ‘Captain–’
‘Let this be on my head alone. Brothers, the Kharne will be moving stone and stars to come to our relief. We have but to hold on here, even as General Dietrich did.’
‘Dietrich was allowed to survive to draw us in,’ Malchai rasped.
‘He fought for fifteen weeks in this charnel house. We can survive for as long, whether the Punishers wish it or no. We are Adepts of the Stars, brothers of the Dark Hunters Chapter, and we will not go gently into the night.’
Kerne stood up. The Infinity Circuit was balanced in the palm of his gauntlet, a faint glow visible through the cloth which covered it.
‘I have made my decision. I will keep my word to those who have kept theirs, and I will bear the consequences of that on my shoulders alone. Brother Malchai, you may make of that what you will. I respect your faith, your courage and your integrity – even in the worst of our disagreements, I have never doubted your loyalty and commitment to Mortai and to the Chapter. But I am the commander here, and I must consider the military realities of the situation as well as the niceties of the Codex.’
‘On your head be it, Jonah,’ Malchai muttered, and he seemed genuinely grieved.
‘Brothers,’ Kerne said, ‘the endgame of this little adventure lies before us, but it is a simple one. We must fight, and survive. That is all. If only one of us is still standing when relief arrives, then we will have been victorious here.’
He looked at his brothers. Malchai was staring at the ground, and Kass seemed deeply troubled.
‘Brother Passarion, I want you to secure the gene-seed of our fallen brethren and conceal it in the depths of the citadel, at the very heart of our strongest defences. If it survives, then so will Mortai.’
At that moment, with the Infinity Circuit in the very palm of his hand, Kerne realised the irony of the order. And it made him more sure than ever that he was doing the right thing – the necessary thing. He was trying to preserve some relic of his company for the future even as the eldar had done.
‘It shall be so, captain,’ the Apothecary said, as impassive as always.
‘Finn, go to the line squads, and warn them that we will be making a fighting withdrawal before dawn. I intend to evacuate the Armaments District. We have stockpiled enough munitions in the citadel now to last through weeks of siege. We are going to fall back to the fortress.’
‘And the eldar with us?’ Malchai asked sharply.
‘That is up to the eldar, Reclusiarch. I will notify Dietrich and his men, and the eldar farseer. We will begin shipping the civilians north in the last armaments convoy, while we still hold the road.’ He paused. ‘Only those who can fight. We cannot take them all.’
‘That is defeat,’ Malchai said.
‘That is reality, brother. Better to do it now by our own choice, than be forced into it in the midst of another assault. Fornix, you will see to it. Take direct command of the men still fighting down there and bring them north, across the spaceport lines.’
Fornix nodded. Even he could find nothing to say.
‘Let us go to our duties, brothers,’ Kerne said. ‘And may our mighty father look down upon us with favour. There is a lot to do before the sun rises.’
‘By the Throne,’ Brother Malchai said heavily.
Even on Ras Hanem, even now, the fighting had its lulls and pauses, as fleeting as the gaps between raindrops in a storm. It was in one of these that Kerne finally found his way back to the eldar farseer.