Guilliman believes that none of them were made to be just weapons. No war is meant to last forever. The Emperor, his father, has not raised disposable sons. Why would he have gifted them with such talents if they were destined to become redundant when the war is done?
He turns the stylus in his hand and reads back what he has written. He writes a great deal. He codifies everything. Information is power. Technical theory is victory. He intends to compile and systemise it all. When the war is done, perhaps, he will have time to properly compose his archives of data into some formal codification.
He uses a stylus by choice, recording in his own handwriting. The stylus marks directly onto the lumoplastek surface of his data-slate, but even so it is considered antiquated. Key plates seem impersonal, and vox-recorders or secretarial rubricators have never suited his process. He tried a thought-tap for a time, and one of the newer mnemo-quills, but they were both unsatisfactory. The stylus will stay.
He turns it in his hand.
His compartment is quiet. Through the vast, tinted armourglas doors behind him, he can see his Chapter Masters gathering for audience. They are waiting for his summons. There is a great deal to do. They think he’s idling, recording notes and not keeping his eye on the dataflow.
It amuses him that they still underestimate him.
He has been writing notes on T’Vanti war practices for seventeen minutes, but he has still noted and marked fifteen hundred data bulletins and updates that have tracked across the secondary screens to his left.
He sees and reconciles everything.
Information is victory.
The Chapter Masters await their primarch. From the antechamber, they can see him through the tinted armourglas of the doors. He sits like a commemorative statute in an otherwise empty chapel. Every now and then, his hand moves as he makes a notation on the hovering slate with his antique pen. The compartment, Guilliman’s compartment, is stark and bare. Steel-fold floors and adamantium-ribbed walls. The far end is a crystalflex wall through which orbital space is visible. Stars glitter. A glare comes up through the blackness from the radiant world below.
Marius Gage is First Master. They’re not all here yet. Twelve have arrived so far, and that is, in itself, quite an assembly. By the day’s end, there will be twenty.
The XIII Legion, largest of all the Legiones Astartes, is divided into Chapters, a throwback to the old regimental structures of the thunder warriors. Each Chapter is formed of ten companies. The basic unit currency is the company, a thousand legionaries, plus their support retinue, led by a senior captain. A company, Gage has often heard his primarch comment, is more than sufficient for most purposes. There is an old aphorism, popular in the XIII. It is, perhaps, boastful and arrogant, and there are certain opponents such as the greenskins and the eldar to which it does not apply, but it contains a basic estimation of truth:
To take a town, send a legionary; to take a city, send a squad; to take a world, send a company; to take a culture, send a Chapter.
Today, at Calth, twenty of the XIII’s twenty-five Chapters will conjunct for deployment. Two hundred companies. Two hundred thousand legionaries. The remainder will maintain garrison positions throughout the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar.
Such a gathering is not unprecedented, but it is rare. The XIII hasn’t been oathed out in such numbers since the early days of the Great Crusade.
And you can add to their mass the equivalent of five Chapters of the XVII, the Word Bearers.
The level of overkill is almost comical. What exactly does the new Warmaster think the Ghaslakh xenohold has in its magazine?
‘I hope,’ says Kaen Atreus, Master of the 6th Chapter, ‘I hope,’ he says out loud, ‘we open up the heart of the biggest greenskin nest in known space.’
‘You hope for trouble?’ asks Gage, amused.
‘Remark 56.xxi,’ says Vared of the 11th. ‘Never wish for danger. Danger needs no help. There is no such thing as fate that can be tempted, but morale is never improved by an active lust for war.’
Atreus scowls.
‘I would rather tempt a little fate,’ he says, ‘than waste my time for the glory of others.’
‘Which others have you in mind?’ Gage wonders.
Atreus looks at him. A scar bisects his left eye and turns the corner of his mouth down. When he smiles, it is an act of stealth.
‘This compliance is designed to achieve two objectives, and neither of them is military,’ he says. ‘We’re to lend a little gloss to the clumsy reputation of the Word Bearers by operating in concert. And we’re to demonstrate the authority of Horus by jumping twenty full Chapters to his whim.’
‘Is this a theoretical or a practical assessment, Atreus?’ Banzor asks, and all the masters laugh.
‘You’ve seen the tactical audits. The Ghaslakh greenskins are a joke. There is some doubt they’ve even advanced to Golsoria. Their threat has been over-sold. I could take a company from the reserve and crush them in a week. This is about glorification and the demonstration of authority. This is about Horus throwing his weight around.’
Some murmurs, many of agreement.
‘Horus Lupercal,’ says Marius Gage.
‘What?’ says Atreus.
‘Horus Lupercal,’ says Gage. ‘Or Primarch Horus, or Warmaster. You may not consider him a worthier being than our primarch, but the Emperor does, and has bestowed the rank. Even informally, among ourselves, like this, you will refer to him with respect. He’s Warmaster, Atreus, he’s our Warmaster, and if he says we go to war, we go to war.’
Atreus stiffens, and then nods.
‘My apologies.’
Gage nods back. He glances around. Fourteen Chapter Masters have gathered now. He turns to the doors.
They open. Sub-deck hydraulic pistons pull them apart.
‘Enter,’ Guilliman calls. ‘I can see you fretting out there.’
They enter, Gage leading. Their retinues and veterans remain outside.
Guilliman does not look up. He makes another mark with his stylus. Data scrolls across hololithic plates, unobserved, to his left.
Now they are in the compartment, the view through the crystalflex wall has become more spectacular. Below them, the vast hull of the flagship gleams in the sunlight as it extends away. Macragge’s Honour. Twenty-six kilometres of polished ceramite and steel armour. Flanking it, at lateral anchor marks, eighteen fleet barges, each one the size of a city, gleam like silver-blue blades. In tiers above, grav-anchored like moons, are shining troop ships, carriers, Mechanicum bulkers, cruisers and grand cruisers and battleships. The space between is thick with small ships and cargo traffic, zipping between holds and berths.
Below, cargo-luggers raise hauls of materiel from the orbital platforms. They look like leafcutter ants, or scorpions bearing oversized prey in their claws.
Below that, a frigate test cycles its engines in the nearest orbital slip.
Below that, Calth, blue-white with reflected sunlight. Pinpricks mirror-flash in the glare: liftships coming up from the surface, catching the sun.
Gage clears his throat.
‘We had no wish to disturb you, primarch, but–’
‘–there is much to do,’ Guilliman finishes. He glances at his First Master. ‘I have been watching the datastream, Marius. Did you think I hadn’t?’
Gage smiles.
‘Never for a moment, sir.’
A hundred labours, simultaneously. The primarch’s ability to multitask is almost frightening.