‘Spared for what?’ asks Sullus. ‘A life spared under those terms is not a life I’d care for.’
Cxir nods.
‘I understand. I anticipated as much. There can be no rapprochement between us. We have waded into blood too far.’
‘Then what did you expect?’ asked Ventanus. ‘That we would surrender to you? Side with you, with the XVII, with – if what you say is true – Horus? Against Terra?’
‘Of course not,’ replies Cxir. ‘But I did, perhaps, expect that you might at least listen to our truth. It is not what you think, captain. It is beautiful. Your understanding of the galaxy will change. A paradigm shift. You will wonder why you ever thought the things you think. You will wonder how and why they ever made any sense.’
‘Cxir,’ says Ventanus. ‘I have listened to your terms, and I have heard your offer. I formally reject both.’
‘But you will die,’ says Cxir.
‘Everyone dies,’ replies Ventanus, turning away.
‘It will not be a good death,’ Cxir calls after him. ‘There will be no glory in it. It will be a sad and miserable end.’
‘Even in glory, death is miserable,’ Ventanus replies.
‘Fell will punish you! He will punish you in unimaginable ways! He will trample your flesh into the earth!’
‘Ignore him,’ Ventanus says to Sullus.
‘Just like we did to your primarch!’ Cxir yells. ‘We will cut you and bleed you and kill you, like we cut and bled him! He begged for death in the end. Pleaded for it! Begged us like a coward! He wept! He pleaded for us to finish him. To end his pain! We just laughed and pissed on his heart because we knew he was afraid.’
Ventanus can’t stop him. Sullus moves like a blur. Cxir’s torso is slashed open from the left hip to the throat in one ripping cut. The end of Sullus’s sword embeds itself in the underside of Cxir’s jaw.
Blood pours out of the Word Bearer. He sways. Black blood floods from the wound, down his legs, back down the wedged blade and up Sullus’s arm. It streams from Cxir’s mouth. His mouth is half-open. Ventanus can see the fine steel edge of the sword blade running between two of the lower teeth.
Cxir is laughing.
He murmurs something, choking on blood, gagged by the sword.
Ventanus pushes Sullus away and grasps the sword to wrench it out and deliver the mercy of a quick kill.
‘Finally,’ Cxir gurgles. ‘I w-wondered w-what it w-would take... I knew o-one of you would have the balls...’
He begins to collapse, dropping to his knees before Ventanus can withdraw the sword. The blood pools around him on the dry earth, rolling out like a purple mirror in all directions. The four Ultramarines guards step back in quiet disapproval. Sullus is staring, cursing himself for letting his anger out.
Something else is being let out, too.
Cxir is laughing. The laughter throbs tidal surges of blood out of his mouth. It is thick. There are clots in it. Shreds of tissue. The laughter is a gurgle, like a blocked storm drain.
Cxir divides along the line of the sword wound. He splits from the hip to the throat. Then his skull parts too in a vertical line, like a pea-pod dividing. Flesh tears and shreds apart like fibrous matter. The sword, unseated, falls onto the bloody earth.
Cxir is on his knees, opened from the waist like a bloody flower. He is still, somehow, laughing.
Then he turns inside out.
Ventanus, Sullus and the guards recoil in dismay. Blood spatters them. Cxir’s backbone sprouts like a calcified tree trunk, growing weird branches that look as if they are composed of arm bones. His ribcage opens like skeletal wings. His organs pulse and grow, smearing tissue and sinew across the reshaping skeleton.
Cxir becomes a vessel. Whatever is hidden inside him, whatever is germinating and shooting through him from the warp, is much much bigger than his physical form could have contained.
Sprouting limbs turn black and scaly. They grow bristles and thorns. They stretch out like the legs of a giant arachnid. Scorpion tails twist and thrash like a nightmare wreath as they grow out of the open ribs. Stings glitter like knives.
Cxir’s new head buds and unfolds, slowly turning up from a bowed stance. Mouthparts chatter. Huge multi-faceted eyes twinkle and glitter, iridescent. Horns sprout from the cranium; the huge, upright horns of some ancient Aegean bull-daemon.
Cxir is still laughing, but it’s not Cxir any more.
The air is full of blowflies, like a storm of buzzing ash.
‘Samus,’ laughs Cxir. ‘Samus is here!’
USHKUL // THU
‘In the End Phase of any combat, or at any point after the Decisive Strike has been accomplished, loss must be recognised. This is often the hardest lesson for a warrior to learn. It is seldom written about, and it is not valued or defined. You must understand when you have lost. Perceiving this state is as important as accomplishing victory. Once you appreciate that you have, by any theoretical measure, been defeated, you can decide what practical outcome you can best afford. You may, for example, choose to withdraw, thus preserving force strength and materiels that would otherwise be wasted. You may choose to surrender, if anything may be accomplished by the continuation of your life, even in captivity. You may choose to expend your last efforts doing as much punitive damage to the victor as possible, to weaken him for other adversaries. You may choose to die. The manner in which a warrior deals with defeat is a truer mark of his mettle than his comportment in victory.’
1
‘Who is... Samus?’ asks the Master of Vox. Then he flinches, and pulls his headset away from his ears.
‘Report!’ snaps Gage.
‘Sudden and chronic interrupt, sir,’ says the Master of Vox, working his console deftly to reconnect. ‘Interference patterns. It sounded like huge storm-pattern distortion, as if bad weather had closed in on the Leptius Numinus area.’
‘Have you lost vox?’ asks Gage.
‘Vox-link with Leptius Numinus is suspended,’ the Master of Vox reports.
‘The datalink is still active, however,’ says the magos at the next station. ‘Information is still being processed and relayed by the palace’s data-engine.’
‘Restore that link,’ Gage says to the Master of Vox.
Gage crosses to the strategium where Shipmaster Hommed and his officers are examining the rapidly building tactical plot. It is a three-dimensional hololithic representation of Calth and its nearspace regions.
The story it tells is a bitter one.
Virtually all the orbital yards are gone, or so damaged that they will need to be destroyed and replaced rather than rebuilt. XVII fleet formations are bombarding the southern hemisphere of Calth. The rest of the fleet has established a clear orbital superiority position.
The Ultramar fleet is scattered. It has been reduced to about a fifth of its original strength. Those vessels remaining are either fleeing to the far side of the local star to avoid fleet attack or the inexorable fire of the weapons grid or, like the Macragge’s Honour, they are lying helpless and drifting in the high anchor zone.
There’s virtually nothing left to fight with. They are done. It is over. It is simply a matter of the Word Bearers picking off the last few fighting ships of the XIII fleet.
The weapons grid seems to be having no difficulty doing that. It has destroyed the local forge world, a small moon with offensive capabilities, a starfort near the system’s Mandeville Point, and several capital ships.