The walls of the room at the heart of the villa were covered in wax paper schematics retrieved from the deepest and most secure vaults of the palace. Hundreds of plans, sections and isometrics depicted one of the mightiest vessels ever adapted to the Scylla-pattern construction schemata.
The Vengeful Spirit had formed the core of the Luna Wolves campaigns for two centuries, a Gloriana-class war vessel of such power that entire systems had been cowed by the scale of the devastation it alone could unleash. The precisely inked lines of the plans were covered in hasty scrawls and pinned script paper. Choke points within the superstructure were identified, potential boarding points circled and its regions of greatest vulnerability and strength highlighted with painted brushstrokes. The latter far outnumbered the former.
Shipwrights’ plotter tables formed a circle around two warriors of transhuman scale, both engaged in heated debate as to the nature of the vessel they were to infiltrate.
Loken tapped a stylus against the upper transit decks.
‘The Avenue of Glory and Lament,’ said Loken. ‘It’s the approach to the strategium. Plenty of companionways and gallery decks connect to it, and it’s a natural highway through the ship.’
Loken’s companion was clearly of a different mindset, and shook his cybernetic-threaded skull. His bulk was considerable; broader and taller than Loken, but with a noticeable stoop that brought his pallid features to the same level.
His name was Tubal Cayne and he had once been an Iron Warrior.
‘Shows how long it’s been since you stormed a war vessel,’ he said, jabbing a finger at the funnel points along the transverse transits. ‘A breach there will require a fight, something I was under the impression you wanted to avoid. Besides, any commander worth his salt will have rapid reaction forces stationed here, here and all along here. Or are you telling me the Warmaster’s gone soft in the head as well as mad?’
Despite his primarch’s treachery, Loken felt an absurd need to defend him against Cayne’s insult. The Iron Warrior had a knack for irritating people with his cold logic and utter lack of empathy. Loken had already stepped in to keep Ares Voitek from strangling Cayne with his servo-arm when he suggested that the death of Ferrus Manus might actually have a positive effect on the Iron Tenth.
He took a deep breath to quell his rising choler. ‘The Vengeful Spirit has never been boarded,’ said Loken. ‘It’s a battle scenario we never bothered to run. Who’d be insane enough to board the Warmaster’s flagship?’
‘There’s always someone mad enough to try the one thing you’ve never considered,’ said Cayne. ‘Just look around you.’
‘Then where would you suggest?’ snapped Loken, tiring of Cayne’s incessant naysaying. He knew his irritation was more directed at himself, for each of Cayne’s objections was founded in logic and proper diligence of thought.
Cayne bent to study the schemata again, his eyes darting back and forth and his fingers tracing arcane patterns across the hair-thin lines of the Scyllan architect’s quill. Eventually he tapped a portside embarkation bay of a munitions sub-deck on the Vengeful Spirit’s ventral aspect.
‘The lower deck was always the weakest point in other ships’ defences,’ said Cayne, sweeping his finger out to encompass the adjacent dormitory spaces and magazine chambers. ‘It’s not presented to the planet below, so there’s only going to be menials down there, gun-crews and whatever dregs have sunk below the waterline.’
‘Other ships?’
‘Ships other than the Fourth Legion,’ said Cayne, and Loken felt a tremor of unease at the pride Cayne took when speaking of his former brothers. ‘The Lord of Iron knew a warship without guns is a powderless culverin and took steps to protect them.’
Tubal Cayne had come to the Knights Errant from the gaol of Kangba Marwu, one of the Crusader Host who had been garrisoned on Terra as a potent reminder of the Legion hosts fighting in humanity’s name. Cayne’s evolution of breaching doctrines during the storming of the glacier fortresses of Saturn’s rings was still an exemplary model by which orbital strongpoints ought to be taken. His release from the Legio Custodes cells had been Malcador’s doing, but had only been approved by Constantin Valdor after rigorous psy-screens had revealed no trace of traitorous rancour.
Cayne was not the only parolee from Kangba Marwu set to join this pathfinding mission, but he was the only one Loken had met so far. The Iron Warrior had responded to the treachery of Horus with stoic practicality, lamenting his Legion’s choice of alignment, while understanding that his place was no longer in their ranks.
‘Yes,’ nodded Cayne. ‘That’s your way in.’
Loken traced the route a craft would need to follow to reach the ventral decks and said, ‘That means flying through the guns’ fire zones. Minefields, sentinel arrays.’
‘More than likely, but a small enough craft most likely won’t show up on the threat auspex of cannons that size. And if a shell hits us we’ll be dead before we even know it. So why worry?’
Loken let out a breath at the thought of flying through a gauntlet of ship-killing ordnance and detection arrays. As plans went, it was a risky one, but Cayne was right. This was the portion of the Vengeful Spirit that offered the best way in.
The sound of breath at the doorway forestalled any further discussion. A young girl in a simple cream shift, with gleaming black skin and hard eyes of pale ivory stood at the open door, her hands clasped demurely in front of her. Loken had assumed she was a servant of Yasu Nagasena, but she carried a holstered pistol at her side at all times. He didn’t know what position she occupied within the household, but that she was utterly devoted to the villa’s master was beyond question.
‘Mistress Amita sent me to tell you that Rassuah is on approach,’ she said.
Tubal Cayne looked up. ‘The last of us?’
Loken nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Then let’s see who else is walking into hell,’ said Cayne.
Rubio and Varren came up from the sparring chambers carved into the rock beneath Nagasena’s villa, slathered in oily sweat and making imaginary sword cuts as they debated the merits of gladius over chainaxe. Though both warriors had left their Legion identity behind, their Legion expertise was still invaluable.
The interior courtyard of the villa was a place of peace and quiet reflection. A pool with a fountain in the shape of a coiled serpentine dragon burbled in the centre of gene-spliced plants and artificial blooms. Half a dozen robed servants tended the garden, and honeyed scents filled the air.
‘So they’re here,’ said Varren upon noticing Loken.
The former captain of the World Eaters was bare to the waist, his flesh a tapestry of knotted scar tissue, as if he had been stitched together as part of some hideous experiment in reanimation. Tattoos coiled around the scars and over his shoulders; each one a badge of honour and a memory of killing.
Macer Varren had come to the Sol system at the head of a patchwork fleet of refugees, together with detachments from the Emperor’s Children and White Scars. In the treachery that followed, Varren’s loyalty had been proven beyond question and Garro had offered him a place within Malcador’s Knights Errant.
His companion, Tylos Rubio, had been the first warrior that Garro had recruited, snatched from the war-torn surface of Calth in the moments after the XVII Legion doomed the Veridian star. A warrior of the Librarius whose powers had been shackled by the Decree of Nikaea, Rubio had once again taken up psychic arms against the Warmaster. The loss of the cobalt-blue still troubled him, and Loken knew exactly how he felt – though for very different reasons.