‘You have been in contact with him all along. That is where your information about the location of his headquarters came from.’
‘I had agents in place,’ said Drake.
‘No. It was not as simple as that. I saw his followers. None of them were sane enough to be your agents. They had lost all semblance of intelligence long ago. Someone informed Richter of my plans. It was the only way he could have kept anticipating my moves. You saw that ranting madman. He was not capable of it.’
‘Crassus,’ said Drake. I saw the storm trooper bend down over the cultist’s corpse, examining it as if he had found something curious.
‘Crassus could not have known all the details. He was too far away, and interstellar communication is too unreliable.’
Drake sat down at the table wearily. ‘He had an agent in place, just like I did.’ He offered it up as if he did not expect to be believed. He was just going through the motions.
‘Why?’ Macharius said.
‘Why what?’
‘Why betray me, betray the crusade and then come here with me to die? Do you feel so guilty?’
My gaze jumped between the two of them. I felt trapped in a nightmare. Had Macharius finally fallen victim to madness? Had the idea that everyone was plotting against him cracked his mind? Or was there something to his theory? It seemed impossible. Drake had been with us so long, had supported Macharius so fervently.
‘A martyr was needed,’ Drake said at last. ‘You were dying. What better way for you to leave the Emperor’s service than in one last battle against overwhelming odds, leaving an example of service unto death.’
‘And I spoiled it by winning,’ said Macharius. He smiled as if he saw some humour in the situation.
The storm trooper moved so swiftly I could not even follow his actions. There was no chance to even raise my shotgun. He lifted the cultist’s pistol, aimed it squarely at Macharius’s head and pulled the trigger. The greatest general of the age died victorious, with his smile still on his face.
Drake looked at his bodyguard and then at me. ‘What are you waiting for? We don’t need any witnesses. We have our martyr, gunned down by a hidden cultist in his moment of triumph.’
The pistol was turned on me. I found myself staring down its maw. I started to raise the shotgun but I had seen how fast the storm trooper was. I knew I had no chance. The pistol spoke again. I expected a blast of pain to tear through me and closed my eyes involuntarily. When I opened them again, Drake was dead, killed just as messily as Macharius. I looked at the storm trooper.
‘What?’ I said.
The storm trooper raised his visor. I saw Anna’s face. She winked at me, took my shotgun and pulled the trigger, blasting the cultist’s corpse with it. A moment later, she was gone from the chamber, announcing that a hidden assassin had killed Macharius and Drake and that I had killed them in turn.
And so all the great men died. And my friends. And I wonder to this day about what happened. There are times when I think that Anna killed Drake because, like Macharius, he had outlived his time and become a liability. There are times I think she was employed not by the inquisitor at all but by his rivals, or by the High Lords of Terra, and she was simply making sure that all the loose ends were tied up.
Which of course does not explain why she spared me. There are times when I think it was because she wanted to leave a witness who could both corroborate her story or be called upon to tell a different version if it was required. There are times when I wonder if it was because she actually cared for me. I do not know.
I do know that we fought our way out of Richter’s citadel and brought the corpses of Macharius and Drake with us. They both burned on funeral pyres. I stuck with the story Anna had given about the cultist, in part because she had spared my life, in part because it was her wish and in part because it was a better story for the Imperium. Of course Macharius died a hero in his hour of triumph. Of course Drake fell valiantly trying to protect him. Of course I cut down the heretic responsible.
And in the end it was all for nothing. Most of the men who fought on Loki died of the plagues they caught there. Macharius’s generals fell to fighting over the spoils of the empire he had built. The Schism returned in a new form and the threat of a Secessionist empire disappeared like morning mist, if it had ever really existed.
I was decorated for killing the monster that killed two of the Imperium’s heroes. Anna vanished into the night between the stars. I never saw her again and for that at least I am glad.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William King is the author of the Tyrion and Teclis saga, the Macharian Crusade trilogy as well as the much-loved Gotrek & Felix series and the Space Wolf novels. His short stories have appeared in many magazines and compilations, including White Dwarf and Inferno!. Bill was born in Stranraer, Scotland, in 1959 and currently lives in Prague.