What made her useful, what made her strong, also rendered her an outsider to her own species.
Similarly, past experience told her that the blinding majesty and stupefaction others felt in the presence of the Golden Throne were wholly absent for Kaeria and her Sisters. She saw a man on a throne, no more, no less. No radiant halo. No psychic corona.
She would have preferred the majestic ignorance. Better to feel everything and see almost nothing rather than stare upon the naked truth: the enthroned Emperor was just a man in pain, His suffering etched plain, His mouth open in a silent scream. The agonies He endured for the sake of the species had wrought lines upon His features, somehow bringing the passage of time to an ageless face.
Occasionally the tortured features would twitch in a quiet snarl. His fingers would spasm. A golden boot might gently thud against the metal throne. At first Kaeria had hoped such tics heralded the Emperor’s reawakening. Now she knew better.
The Sister rested a gloved hand upon the first coffin. A man slept within, his arms crossed over his chest and bound together at the wrists in unamusing mimicry of Gyptus’ faraoh-kings The sarcophagus bobbed beneath Kaeria’s gentle touch as she guided it towards the wall. The aquila tattoo upon her face suddenly itched. Not that she believed in omens.
All eyes were on her now, scientists and servitors alike. Several of the latter moved forwards to perform their function, but Kaeria warded them back with a raised hand.
It should be me, she thought. The first of the choir should be put in place by a Sister of Silence. Kaeria Casryn wouldn’t shirk from the bleakness of her duty at the eleventh hour.
The suspensors rendered the coffin near weightless, and Kaeria lifted it onto her shoulder despite the awkward heft of its bulky shape. She ascended the metal gantry stairs that awaited her, feeling the stares of every living being in the cavernous hall, with only one exception. The Emperor on His distant throne paid her no heed at all. He had other wars to fight.
The socket set into the wall was a two-metre indented cradle of circuitry and dark metal. Kaeria pushed the floating pod into its waiting recess, feeling the seals at the back of the sarcophagus lock tight and bind it into its cradle. The chains were next. These she wrapped around prepared hooks of polished steel, shackling the coffin in place. Nutrient cables and catheters hung like jungle vines nearby; she fixed these in place one by one, locking them tight.
A chime sounded as she linked the last one to the coffin. Primed, read the High Gothic rune on the external display.
Kaeria entered a thirty-digit code into the keypad, setting the sarcophagus to draw power from the machinery in its cradle. The suspensors powered down with a lurch – the coffin swayed slowly, moored to its cradle by the sealed cables and wrapped chains.
The man within stirred with the cessation of his slumber-narcotics.
He opened his eyes. This young man who had been taken from his home world and told he would be trained as an astropath, woke bleary-eyed and drugged inside his own coffin. He met Kaeria’s gaze through the transparent panel.
Whatever he tried to say was lost in the soundproof womb of the sarcophagus. Kaeria stared in at the man, watching the way weariness slurred his words, ruining any hope she had of reading his lips.
‘Sister?’ called one of the red priests from below. A cluster of her own Sisters and various tech-adepts had gathered together, watching her with unwelcome intensity.
She broke her gaze away from the entombed man for the last time and descended the ladder.
Kaeria didn’t even have to sign. A nod was enough to set the hundreds of servitors working, led by the scattering of Sisters and their Martian allies.
She stood in the heart of the Emperor’s throne room and watched every one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine other coffins raised into place along the arching walls. The process took several hours to complete, ending with the dark metal pods all staring inwardly towards the Golden Throne itself.
She refused to dwell on the fact that for each active coffin locked inside its cradle, another nine sockets remained empty.
Zephon had considered his exile from his Legion to be the most shameful moment of his life. It made for an unwelcome capstone to over a century of loyal, capable service. Yet being consigned to remain with the non-combatants after he had reached the Impossible City was proving to be a sentence of similar humiliation.
‘You can’t fight.’ Diocletian’s judgement had been bluntly absolute. ‘You would be useless.’
‘I have journeyed for days to get here,’ Zephon pressed. The tower’s turrets had cleared the skies by then, offering a brief respite to the Imperials using the Godspire as their command centre. The Knights of House Vyridion moved past the Blood Angel and the Custodian in a metallic chorus of protesting joints, striding across the courtyard, marching to join the war. The Blood Angel’s eyes snapped briefly towards them.
‘You agreed to come with me into the webway,’ replied Diocletian. ‘And here you are. I never promised you battle, Blood Angel.’
‘If I cannot fight, why am I here at all?’
‘Your comprehension of the minutiae couldn’t be of less interest to me, Bringer of Sorrow.’ Diocletian had fixed his helmet into place. ‘Farewell, Zephon.’
And with that he had left, boarding a grav-Raider. The gang ramp slammed closed, punctuating the conversation with neat finality.
Days passed. Wounded Custodians and Sisters were brought back in various anti-gravitic vehicles, but Zephon lacked the digital dexterity to even help with their injuries. Any attempts to lend aid failed with his flinching, twitching fingers. On more than one occasion Zephon considered leaving the Godspire alone and joining one of the skitarii forces engaged in the city, but what would be the use? What benefit could he possibly be?
There was no misery or anguish at his fallen circumstances, only cold anger. What was a soldier who couldn’t wage war? Who was he? What was his purpose? The same questions that had plagued him after first suffering his wounds decades before now returned to wrack him tenfold.
He walked the catacombs of the war-shaken Godspire, moving among the wounded skitarii and Unifier priests that made up the day’s evacuation manifest.
Among the crowds, he found the only other soul as isolated as himself. The man was alone in a circular chamber, bathed in haunting blue eldar light emitted from cracked gems mounted in a twisting pattern upon the ceiling. His head was down, his concentration levied upon a hand-held device resembling an auspex or a signum.
‘Technoarchaeologist Land?’ Zephon greeted him.
Arkhan Land looked up, as did the psyber-monkey on his shoulder. Zephon found himself smiling at the bizarrely comedic timing of their twinned movements.
‘Zephon,’ said the Martian distantly. ‘Yes. Hello.’
His eyes were bloodshot orbs in darkened pits. His pointed and immaculate little goat-like beard had spread with several days’ worth of stubble along his cheeks and around his mouth.
‘You look…’ Zephon trailed off, not wishing to be unmannerly.
‘A trifle unwell, I imagine.’ Land turned his gaze back down to the hand-held device. ‘Learning that hell is real and that an underworld of daemons will one day eat all of our souls has a way of meddling with a man’s sleep patterns.’ There was no life to his mockery. The words were spoken with bland indifference.