One of them snorted in weak amusement. Arkhan Land sat slouched in a corner, holding a ration pack’s fluid phial in shaking hands. He turned haunted eyes upon the others, scarcely noticing them, still seeing the madness he’d witnessed outside in the city.
‘I see now why the Omnissiah kept the Great Work bound in absolute secrecy. To avoid this – this pathetic conflict of mortal minds.’
The Archimandrite turned to stare at the hunched technoarchaeologist. The cyborg construct’s eye-lenses meted out cold accusation, but the man did nothing but snort again, looking away. His hands hadn’t stopped shaking for an hour. Even his irritating ape-creature was bizarrely solemn, sat at his side.
‘We’ll begin evacuation preparations,’ Diocletian said at last. ‘Holding the tunnels is what matters now. We will give them the city, and nothing more.’
Zhanmadao took a breath. ‘Dio, even holding the tunnels may be beyond us for more than a few weeks. The host besieging the city has every chance of driving us back to the Dungeon.’
‘Unacceptable,’ repeated the Archimandrite.
We’re wasting time. Diocletian was on the edge of unmannerly cursing when another hololith appeared at the table. This one wore damaged armour plating, spinning a spear in gloved hands. Weapons and talons slashed into view at the edges of the holo’s range, but the warrior weaved aside from every blow he didn’t block. Bladed replies lashed back, killing the wielders of those weapons. The warrior didn’t break stride. He was always moving.
‘Reload!’ the holo called out, laden with distortion. He drove his spear into the ground by his feet and immediately pulled his meridian swords, turning and whirling into another phase of his arcane battle-dance.
‘Compliance.’ A servitor’s voice, toneless and obedient. The warrior moved away from the spear, it vanished out of the holo’s range.
The swords rose and fell, twisted and parried, thrust and hacked. Blood rained past him in flickering sprays. Endlessly came the crash of energy fields ramming against ceramite, warping the reinforced metal, mangling it, shattering it. The figure of a colourless Space Marine staggered into the holo’s view, tumbling to the ground with a blade through his spine. The warrior severed the falling legionary’s head from his shoulders without looking, already turning to meet another foe.
‘Reloaded,’ came the augmitted, mechanical voice again. The warrior sheathed both blades in a smooth motion, weaved aside from a swinging flail, which missed him by a metre, and reached upwards. He caught the spear in the air, bringing it down in another parry. He disengaged with a roar of effort, throwing his unseen opponent back. The guardian spear banged three times, spitting three bolts in succession, only to spin with another frenzied howl of abused energy fields as the blade punched through another legionary’s chestplate. The spear tore viscera and shards of armour free in a wrenching burst as he yanked the blade back, one-handed. His other fist discharged a laser-spit of digital weaponry from his clenched knuckles, lascutting through the faceplate of a charging, crested Legion officer.
Another fighter joined him in the whirling dance. A cloaked female wielding a circuit-lit zweihander, guarding his back one moment, then guarded in kind a moment later. They couldn’t have looked more unalike – fighting with utterly different styles, at different speeds; male and female, gold and black; towering genhanced warrior in auramite and regal huntress in armour that honoured the most ancient eras of warfare. Yet they moved in savage harmony, never coming close to harming one another. They fought in the spaces created by each other’s fighting styles. She hacked overhead when the long spear whirled aside, killing the enemy that fought to slip within his guard. He thrust over her shoulder, slaughtering the foes that sought to move behind her.
Zephon’s pale eyes narrowed, his concentration absolute, taking in the ballet of violence unfolding before him. He had seen the warriors of the Ten Thousand fight before, albeit only in grainy pict footage. He had heard the countless unpoetic comparisons describing their uniqueness as the perfect exemplar of a process that became diluted and rushed to mass-produce the Legiones Astartes. Yet he had never seen them in battle against Space Marines. This warrior reaved through them – reaved through Zephon’s cousins from the rebellious Legions – cutting them down, butchering them the way Zephon himself had massacred his way across human and alien battlefields.
How easy, all of a sudden, to see how Constantin Valdor, the Captain-General of the Custodian Guard, was considered an equal of the primarchs themselves in matters of blade-work, when any Custodian could be as skilled as this.
Had the Emperor foreseen this? His thoughts curdled, growing gravid with treason. Is this what they were made for? This annihilation? This slaughter of legionaries?
‘We’re here, Dio,’ came the Custodian’s words between panted breaths.
Diocletian inclined his head to the embattled holo. ‘Salutations, Ra. And greetings as well, Commander Krole.’
Kaeria watched the first ship descend through the atmosphere. Black even before the scorching of its heat shielding, its hull was unchanged by the shroud of fire that wrapped it.
The command deck of the Magadan Orbital was never quiet. Servitors limped and murmured and bleated code at one another. Robed adepts spoke in austere tones, avoiding all eye contact as they worked the controls, the buttons, the levers that kept the station in a geostationary orbit above the Imperial Palace. Vox-stations rasped. Doors whirred open and ground closed.
Kaeria was the silence at the storm’s heart. She watched through the great oculus as another of the Black Fleet made planetfall. There was something beautifully dramatic in how a vessel born within the void caught fire when it sought to land for the very first time. The flames of atmospheric entry served as Terra’s welcoming embrace.
Another figure joined her upon the viewing platform. Kaeria didn’t need to turn to see who it was.
The Mistress of the Black Fleet greeted her with clicking talons.
Your melancholic gazing is unbecoming, signed the older woman.
Kaeria rejected the rebuke, her hands weaving a response. Melancholy has no place within me. You mistake dread for discomfort.
Dread?
Yes. Dread. That it should come to this.
We have always known the drama may unfold in this manner. The preparations have been in place since the very first of us forswore the use of her tongue.
Kaeria met the other woman’s stare for a moment, seeking some semblance of emotion, of perspective, beneath the assured facade. She saw no evidence of either.
How resolute you are, she signed, and then gestured to the descending ships. How can you look upon this without fearing what it portends? The Imperium will never be the same with what we do here today.
The Mistress of the Black Fleet stroked her metal talons along the guardrail, eliciting a whispery whine of iron against iron. She replied after lifting the claws from the cold metal.
We are not the engineers of the Imperium’s change, Sister. We merely react to it. The Imperium changed when Horus set his blinded eyes upon a throne he does not deserve.
Kaeria’s eyes burned with sick amusement. You absolve yourself of the malice we are willingly undertaking.