Chapters Ten and Eleven

Chapter Ten

	Lord General Halwart stared at the display screens in his Leviathan in total disbelief.  Was it an error?  They had just had to do some repairs to his machines, perhaps they were still malfunctioning?

	No.  No, that would be too easy.  He just had Horus’ own luck, lately.  Halwart sighed to himself and forced a positive face on for the lads.  “Well, that just means there’s a few more to kill, what!  Corporal Blorath, please do send a message to Chief Astropath Corlander and ask him if he might inquire to the Sector Overlord’s office about a few more men, eh?  Appreciate it, lad,” he said cheerfully.  The Corporal in question levered himself up out of his seat and scurried toward the door.

	Normally, Halwart was a cheerful fellow anyway, but even he was finding his readings a bit bleak.  Atongwë dead at the hands of an Ork sniper, the greenskins breaking through under the ground in old mines and evacuation tunnels, the stalemate in orbit tipping towards the Orks since the Glasians were focusing their fire on the Imperial ships, and now Squiggothrider assembling two Gargants?  When would it end?

	The Leviathan shook a bit as the tracks on the left side reversed to bring the main cannon to bear on something many kilometers away.  An alarm rang from the ceiling, and all assembled quickly put on their headphones to cancel the noise.  The sound of the cannon was still loud enough to make every man present wince in pain.  The second alarm announced that the cannon was reloading.  Most kept their headsets on.

	Halwart kept staring into the depths of the screens, trying to derive some advantage from it.  Periodically, part of it would blip and move, and he would quickly type an update for the troops in the field that his staff would flesh out into a proper tactical report.  Every so often, the big holo-screen on the front wall of the command chamber would show a green Ork or blue Glasian icon vanish, and people in the room would send up a ragged cheer.  Then an Imperial red or grey icon would vanish, and the cheering would stop.  Eventually, even that pattern halted, as the people at consoles grew more engrossed in the work of containing two concurrent alien invasions.

	“Lord General, sir!” a voice said loudly in his ear.  Halwart jumped.  He spun to see Corporal Blorath standing beside him, looking distinctly nervous.  From the look on the lad’s face, he must have been repeating himself.

	“Oh, er, yes, Corporal.  What is it, lad?” Halwart asked.

	“I gave your message to the Astropaths, sir,” the Corporal said.  “The Astropath said that some of the darkness between the worlds is dimming, but he couldn’t relay much more than that.”  The Corporal presented a message slate to Halwart.  “However, he did have a few things.  Apparently, somebody outside the system is trying to send a message to us, sir.  One from Celeste, he thinks, one from elsewhere.  He has no idea about the source of the second, sir.”

	Halwart squinted past the eye strain at the message slate.  “Hmm.  Perhaps reinforcements, perhaps orders… there’s just gibberish here,” he said irritably.  He huffed and returned to staring into the holotank.  “Well, thank you, Corporal.  As you were.”

	“Yes, sir.”  Blorath walked off while Halwart looked in quiet desperation at the screen before him.  There had to be more he could do.  There had to be.

	The Lord General’s silence was more unnerving than his usual casualness in the face of danger.  On the rooftop, the Battle Cannon turret rotated a few degrees left and fired a shell off towards an Ork battlewagon that had rolled over the Imperial trench line and was careening around behind it.  The shell impaled the battlewagon and sent it up in smoke.  This time, nobody cheered.


	Mimic, the greatest marksman in the Galactic North, sighted down the scope of his Exitus rifle.  He had four shots left in his current magazine of armor-piercing rounds, plus one in the chamber.  He had far more ammo in his hidden shuttle, of course, but he had already chewed up four magazines in his current battle.  He slowly pivoted his rifle to track the movement of an Ork Killa Kan and fired a single round.  Two seconds later, the Kan toppled over backwards as the slug ripped one of its legs’ motivators off, and it toppled over the hilltop it was climbing.  He didn’t even bother watching; he knew it had hit.  He fired again, and a Weirdboy a half mile north of the Kan exploded from the neck up.  That one he did watch.  No sense in not confirming a kill with a psyker.  No, he stayed dead.  Good.

	The Vindicare pivoted the rifle the other way and tweaked it up a few degrees, then fired his next slug.  That one took an Ork Kommando in the back.  An Imperial Guard flamer-operator lurched away from the fountain of gore, then frantically looked around for the shooter that had saved his life.  Mimic ignored the show and fired his last slug.  It passed through a sheet of drywall from a collapsed building and blew an eleven inch hole in the back of a Painboy that had just stooped over to lop up a fallen boy for his meaty bitz.

	Mimic was never unprofessional enough to feel the doldrums when working, but this was no challenge.  The shot that had killed the Subsector Overlord had at least been technically tricky.  He reloaded his rifle, stripped a slug into the chamber from the mag, ejected the mag, put a fresh round in from his bag, and slapped the mag back in.  Eight rounds to fire before reloading next.

	*Click*  A Meganob collapsed with no spine.  *Click*  A Mek toppled with an exit wound the size of an apple.  *Click*  An Imperial Guard grenadier managed to crawl back to the line, never having seen the ork Flash Git that had nearly set him on fire.  *Click*  Three grots blew apart at the seams as the shot passed through them and into the Ork that had been herding them.  *Click*  A shot whizzed past the shoulder of a Techpriest that had been barely fending off a pair of boyz that had tried to capture him, and passed through one of them on the way to lodge in the skull of the other.  The Techpriest nearly fell over from the shockwave.  *Click*  A fuel trukk at the back of the nearest Ork convoy exploded as an AP slug shot through the flamer on the hood down into the fuel tank.  It only worked because it had been going downhill at the time.  *Click*  A Fighta-Bomma suddenly spiraled out of control and twirled down to collide with a pack of Shoota Boyz.  *Click*  A looted Leman Russ skewed off-course as the shot ricocheted off the open hatch on top and bounced around inside a few times.  *Click*  A Loota Boy looked in confusion as something suddenly tugged his belt, then exploded as the grenades on his belt all detonated at once.  The pins clattered to the ground behind him.

	Mimic sighed.  Where in the name of the Golden Throne was Squiggothrider?  He had been causing havoc on the front lines for days, and the Big Chief hadn’t shown hide nor hair.  He rose to a crouch and grabbed his kitbag.  Time to relocate.


	Ranult Arden drank deep from a bottle of water as he watched the fleet disposition numbers roll in.  Ships lost, Marines lost.  It was hard reading, but he had seen it many times before, and it could have been so, so much worse.

	Total First Company losses: seven.  Total Council of Masters and Honor Guards lost or crippled: five, including the Chapter Champion.  Total Dreadnought losses: one.  Total Battle Company losses: thirty five.  Total Reserve Company losses: twenty eight.  Total Devastator losses: zero, because the Company was scattered across the Sector, save Norman Carache’s squad.  Total Scout losses: twenty seven.  Total serf losses: seven hundred ninety four.  Total Vehicle Crewer Marine losses: nine.  Total Techmarines lost: nine, six of them on the Sharp Edge.  Total Chaplains lost: none.  Total Librarians lost: two, Schlammer and Ledreaux.  Total Apothecaries lost: one, Pallus of the First Company, second in command to Master Koell.  Total aircraft crews lost: thirty, including four Marine crews, for a total of twelve more Marines dead or injured.

	Those numbers were bad enough.  An entire Company, dead in a week.  Worse were the ships.  The Sharp Edge, the massive Battle Barge flagship of the Chapter, was out of commission for years.  One Strike Cruiser crippled, another missing all three engines and slowly drifting out of the system, and would require a tug to go get it.  Seven Frigates destroyed, one more crippled, fourteen damaged.  Five Destroyers damaged.  Their Cutter nearly bisected by a Ruin Gun, necessitating its extensive repair.  One of the fleet’s two Luna Cruisers missing life support and shields after a torpedo barrage.  Worst of all were the gunships.  Twenty eight gunships destroyed or crippled.  All but ONE squadron of their deep-space interceptors destroyed.

	Arden had not succeeded the glorious strategist Augustus Alderoster by lacking in logistical and operational skill.  The losses his Chapter had suffered would require vast resources to replace.  Even if he managed to find replacement Techmarines and Librarians from among the Scouts and Initiates, the loss of well over a hundred Marines just among those who had stayed in Septiim and not joined the missions elsewhere in the Sector was brutal.  Assuming the Chapter took zero losses before the next Migration, he estimated it would take thirty five years to get back up to full strength.

	And the materiel losses were even more costly.  The fleet losses alone would take fifty years to replenish.  The losses of tanks and other vehicles were less crippling, and he estimated they could be replaced in four years, since the debris was all on one planet and could be reassembled, but it would still be an undertaking that would drag Solstice’s capacities to their very limit.

	A bright flash of light threw shadows over the viewport of his gunship.  Arden glanced over to see a flight of Solstice’s bombers pelting the Glasian Cylinder with more plasma bombs.  Five more vessels, ore freighters if he were to judge, had attached tow lines to the huge ship, and were hauling it slowly away from the planet.

	A Techpriest in the flight cabin of the gunship poked his head into the compartment.  “Lord Arden, sir, a message from Magos Sneth.”

	Arden nodded and sat up.  “What is it?”

	The Priest tapped a button on the blank screen beside Arden’s chair, and a picture of a Magos in bright red and white checked robes appeared, shot through with static.  “Lord Arden, sir, this is Magos Sneth.  We have successfully affixed the first tow cable.  We will halt the bombing of the Cylinder momentarily and begin accelerating it towards Septiim.”

	“Very well, Magos,” Arden replied.  “Do you have an ETA?”

	Sneth paused to calculate.  “I would guess eleven months, Lord.  The Cylinder is badly damaged and asymmetric, and thus difficult to accelerate cleanly.”

	“Very well.”  Arden gave Sneth a formal salute.  “I deeply appreciate your forces aiding us in this conflict, Magos.”

	Sneth was a diplomat by nature, and reciprocated the gesture despite its foreignness.  “Of course, Master Arden.  For Terra and Mars.”

	“For Terra and Mars,” Arden said solemnly, and the transmission ended.

	Arden sat back in his seat and finally let some of his weariness show on his face.  His brothers weren’t even close to done.  That Throne-cursed Space Hulk was slowly drifting towards the inner worlds of the Septiim system, and when they arrived, they would have to be dealt with.

	He worried about the other worlds hit by the Glasians, too.  The forces on Oglith and Hapster would probably be all right, thanks to the presence of Subsector Battlefleets and ample Blue Daggers.  It was Dawn-Break and Gorum’s Folly that troubled him.  Were his Marines even numerous enough to make a difference on those worlds?  Forender did not bother him; it was a personal project of Lord Fabricator Lister Beraxos.  The system would no doubt be swarming with Skitarii and Basilikon Astra ships by now.

	Arden stood and closed the casualty list.  He would review the mortal losses and the Deathwatch’s report later.  For now, he had to decide where to send the rest of his assets.  He slowly walked to the back of the compartment, where his Honor Guard were in various states of rest and meditation.  He didn’t disturb them, he simply passed among them and observed their status.  Some were clearly speaking with the Emperor in their way, others simply rested.  They had not been in combat long enough to tire their superhuman anatomy, but it was a poor soldier who didn’t take the opportunity for a rest when they had it.


	The gunship cruised through the quiet darkness of space until the Gargantuan loomed in the distance.  Arden’s ship cruised into the yawning maw of the main docking bay and settled down near the back.  Without the base’s complement of gunships and fighters, the giant bay seemed terribly empty and lonely.

	Arden’s Honor Guard weren’t completely alone, however.  There were a few shuttles here and there, and a maintenance lighter squadron off in one corner.  So too were Master of the Gargantuan Jeremy Haskell and the remaining Marines of the Chapter who had not left with Arden.  They awaited him at the entrance to the bay.  They saluted as one as Arden drew closer.  “Master Arden, welcome home, sir,” Haskell said.  “Septiim lives another century.”

	“Another day,” Arden corrected.  He kept the rancor from his voice with an effort.  The long flight had given him ample time to ponder the Warp Storm that had split the galaxy in twain.  “Once all of our brothers in-system are back on the Gargantuan, we must begin the process of arranging for their transport elsewhere in the Sector.  The other Cylinders weren’t disabled by this one’s loss.”

	“Agreed, Master,” Haskell said.  Arden motioned for him to follow.  All of the Marines present fell into a column behind the two Masters as they walked deeper into the station.  The door closed, cutting off the sight of the bay serfs beginning the Thunderhawk’s maintenance rituals for post-combat.

	Haskell eventually led the group into the huge tactical hall, where various individual secure comm booths ringed a vast holo-table of the entire Septiim system.  Arden marched straight up to it and looked it over.  It was all over but the cleanup, it seemed.  He could only find Glasian contact icons near the Astia Grand.  “Seems the beasts never had time to confront the Orks anyway,” Arden remarked.

	“No, Lord.  They are all but vanquished,” Haskell said with satisfaction.

	“Next steps, then.”  Arden watched the reforming Blue Dagger fleet.  “Oglith?  Dawn-Break?  Forender?  Foraldshold?  Celeste?  Hapster?  Gorum’s Folly?  There are still seven major conflict zones in the Sector.”

	“If I may, Lord, I recommend we split our forces, so that a loss in one does not jeopardize the Chapter overall,” Haskell suggested.

	“That was my idea, yes, but what proportion?” Arden asked irritably.  He did not need to be asked basic operational protocol.

	Haskell pointed at the icons at the edge of the table.  After a moment, the sensors recognized his gesture and pulled open another system map.  “Gorum’s Folly is so lightly defended that the Glasians are likely to take it if we do not reinforce,” Haskell pointed out.  “While Oglith is surely struggling with Orks fired up by the psychic backlash of this Warp Storm.”

	“Hmm.  No doubt,” Arden said.  He waved the image back to being that of the larger Sector.  “Then I shall sent a few more cruisers to both, with a Company of Blue Daggers and their associated support units with them.  I dare not strip the defenses of the system much more, however.  These Malice Remnants are a danger.”  He rubbed his chin and stared at the image in contemplation for a minute before speaking again.  “We shall leave all of our wounded and the Terminators behind.  All remaining Scouts shall also stay behind.  We shall leave behind the Librarians, as well, to defend the populace from these Malice Remnants.”  He scowled at the map.  “We shall split the remainder of the Chapter over Gorum’s Folly, Celeste, Oglith, and Dawn-Break.  I will command the Dawn-Break contingent myself.  We have the remainder of the First, Fourth, and parts of the Fifth through Eighth Companies here, and we shall send them out.”  He leaned over the map and pointed out a few stars.  “The remainder of the Reserve Companies will go where the rest of their Companies did, among Oglith and Forender.  The other First Company Veterans and I shall go to Dawn-Break.  Fourth Company shall fly to Celeste and deal with whatever is happening there.”

	Haskell watched Arden point out the conflict zones.  “As you command, my Lord.”

	“That damn Hulk is a problem, but not as urgent as the Glasians.  Once the cursed birds are dead, we can focus the entire Terminator force on the Hulk.  Until then, we have work to do,” Arden said.  “By the grace of the Emperor shall we triumph.”  He straightened up and fixed Haskell with a glare.  “Now what about my damn Nova Cannon?” he growled.

	Haskell bristled.  “The Cannon is still unstable.  Whatever energy signature tried to make it in appears to be weakened by the Gellar Field, but it is still present.”

	Arden scoffed.  “Then we resort to drastic measures!  Have the remaining Tech-brothers create a data-sanctification worm and unleash it in the control circuits for the Cannon.  We can’t risk our main weapons being offline much longer.”

	“And if the data-daemon overpowers our program?” Haskell asked.

	“Then the Nova Cannon will go off-line, which is exactly where we are now,” Arden pointed out.  He softened the blow a bit with a follow-up comment.  “Take heart, Jeremy.  This is not irreparable.”

	Haskell peered at him over the vast table.  “You don’t know that, sir.”

	“No, I suppose not, but we must press on regardless.”  Arden hefted his weapons.  “I need to maintain my gear.  Good luck, Jeremy.”


	From space, the world Cognomen looked like a wildfire.  Brown patches of dying vegetation shrank before the inexorable crawl of red buildings, all adorned with names carved into their walls and festooned with images of cogwheels, electronic thrones, and humans standing tall over defeated foes, sometimes other humans.  Cognomen’s mighty factories and foundries never cooled or deactivated, and its endless assembly lines constantly spat out fresh goods for Mankind.

	The heart of the Forge World, the industrial capstone of the entire Cloudburst Sector, was the Castle of the Forges.  It stood towering over all other construction on the world, and loomed over the edge of the continent-spanning Dolomblen Canyon.  The Castle had a one hundred yard open ring of space on the surface around it, both for security and to allow vehicles to maneuver.  Its highest spires and smokestacks reached over two hundred stories into the polluted sky.  Below, its deep warrens dug far wider than the building spread aboveground.

	Lister Beraxos’ personal sanctum sat in the middle of the warren.  It did resemble a spider’s web, especially if the warren were viewed from above, and Beraxos appreciated the effect.  The Lord Fabricator of the Cognomen Forge Priesthood rarely left his sanctum, even to entertain guests.

	At that moment, the guest had come to him.  Beraxos had intended to stand in respect towards his guest at first, but hadn’t sat down since they had started talking.  Faint status lights and tiny data-monitors cast weird shadows over the two Techpriests in the room.

	“I think we are not entirely dissimilar, you and I,” Archmagos Cawl had told him frankly.  The Archmagos was still standing – perhaps that wasn’t the right word, given his serpentine body – before him.  Cawl’s many implants glowed in the darkness of Braxos’ sanctum.  “I suppose the construction of a new Titan Legion in your lifetime would entail much trailblazing.”

	Beraxos technically outranked Cawl, but he felt like a student before the master.  Cawl pre-dated the Great Crusade.  He was a stripling before the ancient Archmagos, and he knew it.  “I think it does, Archmagos,” he said.  The contrast between them couldn’t have been much starker.  The only pieces of Cawl’s body that remained from his original human self were parts of his brain and left arm.  Braxos had modified himself as little as needed to perpetuate himself, and even then his implants were flesh-replicating.

	Cawl’s hood slithered as a data-probe extended and plugged into a datapad he had brought.  “I have collected all of the blueprints you will need to supply the complex machines of the expanded Blue Daggers Chapter, as well as a few Martian blueprints from the master archives.”

	Beraxos took the pad.  “You are a generous man, Archmagos,” he said thankfully.  “I am pleased that somebody was listening to my… lengthy pleas for greater clearance and access,” he added.  There were many, many blueprints in the pad.  They included a model of Titan he had never seen before, as well as all but a few of the models of Knights.  He looked up at Cawl, suddenly nervous.  “I see there are Knights in here.  Am I expected now to supply nearby Knight Houses?”

	Cawl’s face did not move.  “No.”

	Beraxos had a sinking feeling in the pit of his artificial stomach.  “Ah.  Then am I to research Knight technology?  My Magos Council would be happy to do it,” he said.

	“No.”

	Both men fell silent for a long moment.  Finally, Beraxos spoke in a Binaric burst.  “You have something else in mind, then?”

	“I know you are building Knights already, Lord Fabricator,” Cawl said flatly.  “Specifically, you are arming a House you have built yourself, on a planet somewhere in the ABX region.  ABX3, I suspect.”

	Beraxos felt cold fear congeal inside him.  “ABX2.”

	“I was close.”

	“Do you intend to act on this knowledge?” Beraxos asked.

	“Have I not?”

	Beraxos felt a hint of resentment in his soul and tried to quash it.  “I can not yet tell, Archmagos.  Is this a taunt, or a gesture of aid?”

	“What do you think, Lord Fabricator?” Cawl asked, emphasizing the Lord.  “Take a guess.”

	“I would guess… you do not object.”

	“No.  No, I do not.  Far to the contrary.  It was how I knew you and I were kindred souls,” Cawl said, with a note of smugness under his voice that surprised Beraxos.  He loomed up on his segmented lower parts and held out one withered claw.  “The Machines are temperamental beasts, after all, and the will of the Machine can be hard to define.  I think, Lister Beraxos, that if I were to say that the demands of the galaxy’s infrastructure and worship are so great that there is little room in the day-to-day to seek greater understanding of our Holy Machine, you would concur, wouldn’t you?”

	Beraxos thought about the massive and expanding demands of the Cloudburst Sector for resources and finished goods and had to agree.  “I suppose I would.”

	“It is a shame, is it not?”

	“Well, no, not a shame,” Beraxos said.  “It is a holy and important task to supply the galaxy.  It just leaves precious little time for anything else.”

	Cawl blurted in Binaric.  It was a laugh.  “You misunderstand.  Of course manufacturing is a good and holy task.  I mean that it is annoying that there are so few incentives, and so many disincentives, to learning new ways to express the power of the Machine, no?”

	Beraxos grimaced.  “Really?  Archmagos, are you trying to align me against Mars?”

	“Why do you ask?” Cawl asked blandly.

	The Lord Fabricator drew himself up.  “Thank you for the blueprints, Archmagos,” he said stiffly.  He hoped Cawl would catch the dismissal in his tone.  A Martian Archmagos was a high-ranked individual indeed, but he was a Lord Fabricator.  The rank disparity may have been tiny, but it did exist.

	Instead, Cawl did something that surprised Beraxos.  The ancient Archmagos withdrew another dataslate from his robes and set it down on a table beside them.  “Lord Beraxos, you impress me,” he said genially.  “I think I can entrust you with a secret.”

	Beraxos stayed silent.  He did not like the implications of Cawl’s words.  That didn’t stop Cawl from continuing.  “I have been entrusted myself, Lord Fabricator.  Lord Primarch Guilliman has bequeathed a mighty collection of gene-tech to me, with the task of ensuring that future generations of Space Marines are mightier, smarter, less corruptible,” Cawl explained.  “But I fill another role as well.”

	The near-blackness of the room shifted as Cawl activated the glowing screen of the second slate.  If Beraxos hadn’t replaced his eyes long ago, they would have widened with surprise at the contents.  He saw a list of data files, thousands at least, with gene sequences and speculative technological designs, some of them with file stamps so old that they could have pre-dated the Scouring.  “Archmagos, what is this?” he breathed.  Reluctant to believe Cawl he may have been, but he knew archaeotech when he saw it.

	“This is the future, Lister Beraxos,” Cawl said eagerly.  It was not a tone Beraxos associated with the Magi of Cawl’s age.  “It contains all of the speculative work I have done, for thousands of years, on the technologies stolen from ancient Man by the xenos races.”

	Beraxos picked it up and reverently paged through it.  “Gene sequences, circuit designs, STC distribution locales, looted shipwrecks, occupied colonies,” Cawl listed.  “Human enslavement camps, collapsed Terran Federation – Xeno alliances, Technotheological marketplaces from before the Fall of the Eldar, and more.”  Cawl’s eyes glittered.  “I have found that the galaxy is rife with it, rich with the technoarcana of lost Mankind, looted and picked over by dirty aliens.”

	“Remarkable,” Beraxos said.  His electronic eyes absorbed reams of data as he scrolled through the many thousands of files.  “This is all looted from humans by aliens?  There are inorganic compounds here I didn’t know ancient Man even knew how to make!”

	“More or less the whole collection, actually,” Cawl lied.  It was easier than admitting that he was guilty of eleven thousand years of pre-meditated Innovation.  Of course, some of his findings actually were from alien wreckage, so who knew?  Maybe it had been stolen from humans at some point.  “Regardless.  Some of this data is obviously so fragmentary that it is all but unusable.”

	“Understandable.  Entropy is success’ opponent,” Beraxos said, quoting The Canticles of Electrons.  After another few seconds of silent reading, he looked up at Cawl in awe.  “This is an extraordinary collection, Archmagos.”

	“Thank you.”  Cawl folded his arms under his robe.  “I wonder, Lord Beraxos, what you will do with it.”

	Beraxos’s breath shortened.  “You’re giving me your entire collection?” he gasped.

	“I am.”  Or, at least, the fragment Cawl had seen fit to bequeath.  In practice, Cawl felt disinclined to spread his darkest secrets too far.  Even Guilliman didn’t know all of them.  “You see, you have the peculiar mix of traits I require,” he said.  “You are clearly loyal to Mars, even to a fault.  You desire for Cognomen to receive more of the knowledge of Mars, and they have, put simply, ignored you.”

	Beraxos shifted uncomfortably.  He had said so many times, but only to others on Cognomen.  Was his impatience that transparent to one he had never met?  Cawl continued.  “You are building a Knight World, and yet you fear discovery.  Do not.  Far worse has happened to the Imperium of late.”

	“Bah!  Others would oppose it despite the magnitude of other perils to Mankind,” Beraxos scoffed.  “Some in the Mechanicus seek to punish those who deviate from their dogma regardless of harm done or harm avoided.  They can’t see the noose tighten, so they turn on their fellows.”  He tapped the dataslate.  “That does not mean I am willing to align myself against them, you understand,” he cautioned.  “I merely wish to do what I can for the betterment of Cognomen, Cloudburst, Terra, and Mars without being so… enburdened.”  He set the slate down.  “There are lines I refuse to cross.”

	“Do tell.”

	Beraxos regarded Cawl with careful neutrality.  “The creation of Abominable Intelligences, as a beginning.  I refuse to use artifacts tainted by Chaos.  These restrictions are in place for a very good reason.”

	Cawl filed that away.  “Go on.”

	“No, I think not,” Beraxos said.  He crossed his hands and made the cogwheel devotion.  “The Holy Triad of Knowledge and its tenets are well enough known to us both, Archmagos.  I thank you for your gifts, but I am not interested in reciting my ethical limits in a list.  It invites those of cross-purposed goals to… find ways around them,” he said.

	“Does that number include myself?” Cawl asked mildly.

	“I have no idea,” Beraxos said in the same tone.

	Silence filled the air for a few moments.  At length, Beraxos picked up the datalsate again and began paging through it, unspeaking.  Cawl shifted gears.  “What do you know of these Glasian items, these Ruin Guns?” Cawl asked.

	Beraxos answered without looking up.  “They are ionic streamer devices that discharge plasmic coils along guidance beams painted by the ionic currents,” he said mechanically.  “They use crystalline arrangements of magnetized cobalt.  They are heavy for their size, and are thus fielded by the Glasians only as shoulder-mount heavy weapons and larger.  Shot for shot, they are the deadliest weapon the enemy fields.”

	“They are different from both the Tau and Ork plasma weapons, then?” Cawl asked.

	“Very much so.”

	“Have either yours or the Priesthood of Solstice ever successfully reverse-engineered one?” Cawl inquired.

	Beraxos looked up from the treasure-laden slate.  “No.  The Inquisition has made it clear that all Tainted artifacts are to be disposed of.”

	“Surely they are not all Tainted, however,” Cawl pressed.

	“No, it’s true,” Beraxos ceded.  “There are a few which escaped the touch of the Warp.  The current Lord Inquisitor Coudburst has very strict policies about tampering with such things.  I admit, I am cautious as well.  Such things rarely seem to go well for us.”

	“That is fair.  I wonder, however, if it could be made to pass?  After all, it would not be the first time xeno weaponry made its way into our arsenals,” Cawl said.

	Beraxos sighed.  “You are an exceptionally unsubtle man, Archmagos.”

	“It is true.”  Cawl dipped his head in face Beraxos more directly.  “The Ruin Gun technology is not inherently Chaotic, and could benefit the Imperium greatly.  Please, in the service of your study of uncorrupted Glasian technology, extend your interest to the Ruin Guns.”

	Beraxos slowly put down his dataslate.  “In the name of seeking those aspects of the Omnissiah’s brilliance that were taken by dirty xenos, of course,” he said flatly.

	“Of course.”

	“The xenos from another galaxy, who use different technology entirely,” Beraxos continued disgustedly.

	“Of course.”

	Beraxos clenched a fist.  Cawl allowed himself to be surprised at the display of emotion by the Lord Fabricator.  “And all of the files to which I have been given such generous access, I assume they are of similarly plausible alien origin?” he ground out.

	Cawl tilted his head back.  “Of course.”

	Beraxos glared in stubborn silence.  Cawl broke the silence first.  “Is it so far from your own decision to perform the first scratch-building of a new Knight World in fourteen millennia, Lord Fabricator?” he asked.

	“Knights are human technoarcana!  They have always been!”  Beraxos waved the dataslate.  “Ruin Guns are not!  They are the polluted products of alien minds, alien bodies!”

	“As are psycannons, las-lances, digital weapons, Phase weapons, and stasis weapons, but I don’t see you objecting to their deployment,” Cawl pointed out.  “Do you think that human adaptations of alien weapons happen by unspoken but concurrent agreement, by hundreds of thousands of Techpriests, Assassins, Inquisitors, Rogue Traders, and Space Marines?  No.  They begin with research.  They begin with the Quest for Knowledge, being carried to the dark places on the map.  Carried by men, men like you and me.”

	Beraxos picked up the dataslate again with a heavy sigh.  He stared longingly at the lengthy list of technotheological treasures, enough to expand his Forge World’s power immeasurably.  After a long, wistful moment, he looked up at Cawl again.  “I thought I was a better man than this,” he said quietly.  Cawl no longer had the lips to smirk.


	Four hours later, Beraxos was alone in his sanctum once more, blessedly alone.  He sat with his head in his hands, allowing the data from the slate to pour into his mind through a neural link Cawl had ‘helpfully’ left behind.  Cawl had not been joking.  This was a magnificent data cache, containing blueprints for every model of Knight, Titan, and general-use Astartes technology the Imperium still knew how to build, and many more he didn’t recognize.  Neutron Lasers, Gravitic Cannons, Repulsor Tanks, Inferno Pistols, Exsanguinators, even the plans for the long-thought-lost Exorcist tank.  He saw plans for Knight-mounted Volkite weapons, plans for models of Power Armor he had never seen, and the blueprints for Nemesis-variant Titans.  He saw plans for Keilos traffic control satelites that Stygies Explorators had recovered not four months before from his perspective, and STC fragments with the names of a hundred glorious inventors of ancient days.

	Beraxos closed his eyes and immersed himself in the stream of data.  He had never imagined compromising on his principles would feel so good.  Nor had he quite imagined the shame that flowed in behind the pleasure.  He wondered if Cawl had known, then decided it didn’t matter.

	Eventually he rose from his seat.  He had to distribute this data to all of his brethren in the Sector.  Every Cognomen Forge or Artisan Magos in Cloudburst.  Sneth, too.  After spending decades complaining about Mars’ tight restrictions on data, he could hardly echo their tactics.

	Perhaps Asutori, too, he mused.  And Alling-Durant.  The Daggers would benefit from this, at least.  He sighed and began breaking his principles as he tapped keys and shared treasures beyond his wildest dreams with his friends and colleagues.  Perhaps the Machine God would show him mercy some day.

Chapter Eleven

	The flight from the Watch Fortress to Oglith was not a long one, even with the Warp in its new tumult.  Guilliman stayed busy, as always.  He and the two Killteams accompanying him studied their copies of the planetary geographical maps en route.  The two teams, Steadfast and Copperhead, were dealing with the news in their own ways.

	Wolf Scout Holgein paced about the Killteam’s loaner ready room.  The Macragge’s Honor was a colossal ship, even larger than the similarly named Allfather’s Honour.  The ready room the Killteam had been granted was twice the size of the one on the Imperium Avowed.  It was better appointed, too.  Some of the chairs even had cushions.

	Holgein had the sudden shift in the mission on his mind.  The old Wolf was no fool, and he understood better than any save possibly Domack himself what the abrupt return of Guilliman to the field actually meant.  Of course, the Space Wolves were not a particularly politics-active Chapter, certainly not compared to the Ultramarines themselves, but one did not survive multiple wars against the Ecclesiarchy and the Inquisition without learning a thing or two about Imperial Court politics.

	Guilliman was a landmine in a china shop.  There couldn’t have been one single member of the Senate of the High Lords that dealt with the day-to-day function of the Imperial government that were pleased by his sudden return, or his takeover of the Imperial military.  The way the commoners had deified his every word and deed probably stung a bit, too.  Holgein amused himself by wondering about the reaction Guilliman had had when he saw that some Ultramarines successors had started using the Codex Astartes as a religious document.

	Impulse struck.  What if he were to try to secure an audience?  That would be enlightening, certainly, if unlikely.  He had questions about the state of things that he suspected only Guilliman himself would answer.

	In the center of the briefing room sat a long table, with slots on it for dataslate ports.  Gregorius was at one, reviewing Oglith’s battle topography.  The underground cavern networks made battle there treacherous.  The other four Marines were all down in the ship’s Forge complex.

	Holgen cleared his throat.  “Gregorius, what do you think?  Would Guilliman be up for a personal chat?”

	Gregorius looked up long enough to deliver a withering glare.  “I imagine he has more pressing needs on his hands, Holgein,” he said reproachfully.

	Lacking anything else to do, Holgein played along.  “You never know.  He’s supposed to be a philosophical sort, no?”

	“He certainly was one,” Gregorius muttered, returning to his calculations.

	Holgein ambled over, staying just out of range of a quick punch.  “Then perhaps he would benefit from my worldview, to contrast his,” he said idly.

	Gregorius rolled his eyes.  Holgein was not deterred.  “I mean, he was supposed to be so smart, but here he is, wasting time on this pimple of a Sector,” he mused.  Gregorius, who had served on the Deathwatch in the Sector for eighteen years, was not amused, but mustered his patience and deflected the topic.

	“Perhaps he foresees some value here,” the Chaplain said.

	“Hmm.”  Holgein rubbed his jaw.  “Wonder if he’ll rewrite the Codex Astartes.”

	“That would be something,” Gregorius said, hoping noncommittal answers would deter the Wolf Scout.

	“Are the Dark Angels a Codex-compliant Chapter?”  Holgein asked innocently.  “We knew better ourselves, but…”

	Gregorius slowly straightened up.  “I am trying to work, Holgein,” he grated out.

	Holgein just barely smiled.  “But of course.”  He turned and slowly ambled out.  “I’ll find something else to do,” he said over his shoulder.


	Guilliman lifted the pair of dataslates from the sprawling desk before him and quickly memorized their screens’ contents.  “Right.  Where is the rest of Battlefleet Rampart?”

	Watch Commander Domack gestured at the map.  “This is Battlefleet Rapart, my Lord Guilliman.  The entirety of the Subsector Fleet is here, along with a few ships from the Sector Battlefleet.”

	“So three of the eight Subsectors have a fleet of their own, and each is a certain percentage of the size of the Sector fleet?” Guilliman asked.  “But they are actually separate?  Ships in the Subsector Battlefleets do not show up on lists of Sector assets?”

	“Correct, my Lord.  For only a few of the Subsectors, though.”

	“That is an odd arrangement for a Sector flotilla, certainly one with but a single Forge World and Hive World each,” Guilliman remarked.

	“Odd, perhaps, but it is unfortunately necessary,” Domack replied.

	“Because of the unusual stellar arrangement of the star clusters in Cloudburst, I suppose,” Guilliman observed.  The stars of Cloudburst tended to be clustered tightly together in groupings separated by vast gulfs of radioactive nebular gas.

	“Precisely, my Lord,” Domack said.  He had elected to accompany his Killteams directly, and would return to Dascomb with some of the brothers he had on Oglith.  Captain al-Hasat had command back on the Fortress.  “Battlefleet Rampart is defending the outer fringes of the Imperium.  Literally, in fact.  It has the Cloudburst Circuit to spinward and the Oldlight Exo-zone to trailing.”

	“The corner of space,” Guilliman said.  “Then we shall fight our way inward from there to Drumnos.”

	Domack took the opportunity to ask.  “My Lord, what is happening there?  All Astropathic communication from Drumnos has halted.”

	“I have no idea, Watch Commander,” Guilliman said.  “I have sent most of my Crusade’s Mechanicus assets there to scout out the borders.”

	“They should be congnizant of the enormous piracy problem the region possesses, then, my Lord,” Domack said.  “Some of the Sector’s worst wars were against pirates and separatists in that area.”

	“They are moving in a force of over two thousand ships in a distributed front half a Sector wide,” Guilliman said.  “The local pirate issue is not enough to slow the Crusade.  I would rather ask what other threats the Deathwatch in the region sees as sufficiently dangerous to merit their direct attention.”

	“The only real threat in the area beside the Orks, the Glasians, and the pirates is an insubstantial one, my Lord,” Domack informed him.  “There are whispers of Icnarus Dynastic Necrons moving north in small bands, seeking to test the defenses of the Imperium along the border with the Halo Stars and Oldlight Exo-zone.  However, they would have to get past both Watch Fortress Excalibris and the Drumnos Sector Battlefleet first.”

	“Indeed.”  Guilliman was sitting in a chair that seemed custom-built for his huge armor.  He had a variety of cogitator consoles on the desk before him, most built into the surface.  The Watch Commander stood on the other side, feeling incongruously like he was back in the Fists, being instructed by the leaders of the Scout Company.  “Then I suspect that we shall bring only a few Killteams with us from Cloudburst when we depart, and perhaps collect only one from Excalibris.”

	“If your Crusade is able to liberate Port Maw from the forces that periodically threaten its supply, my Lord, you would be able to draw on its immense fleets for Indomitus,” Domack suggested.

	“Such was implied by Lord Commander Dante,” Guilliman said.

	Domack respectfully inclined his head.  “I met Lord Dante once.  It was in the aftermath of the Second War for Armageddon, immediately prior to my Company being reassigned to this region.  He is the best of us.”

	Guilliman nodded.  “I see much of my brother in him,” he said quietly.  “I have appointed him Lord Regent for the Imperium Nihilo, the Dark Imperium.”

	“A fitting choice, my Lord.”  Domack looked at the globe on the humble side table next to the great desk.  Guilliman followed his gaze.

	“Ah.  That is a gift from Commodore Bollizar, the Rogue Trader who scouts for us even now,” Guilliman said.  “It is a recreation of what the continents and nations of Old Terra looked like at the time of the invenention of the first Warp Drive.”

	“So I see, my Lord.”  Domack looked back to see Guilliman staring at him expectantly.  “Lord Guilliman, sir… have you been to Terra since awakening on Macragge?”

	“Oh, yes,” Guilliman said evenly.  “I walked across the great queues of the Imperial Palace.  Something of a morale-raising gesture, from what I understood.”

	“I have not been to my home in a very long time,” Domack admitted.  “At least eighty years.”

	“And do you miss it?”

	“Throne, no, my Lord,” Domack said with barely-concealed disgust.  He still felt like a student at the feet of the master, but he knew enough of Guilliman to judge that the man would not like contemporary Terra very much.  “It is a polluted, dreary hell.  The Imperial Palace is a work of wonder and beauty yet, but the planet itself is distasteful in the extreme.”

	Guilliman agreed completely, but merely nodded.  “I did not enjoy my own visit.”

	“Are there some of my brothers in the ranks of the Indomitus Crusade, my Lord?” Domack asked.

	“Four hundred seventy five, in fact,” Guilliman said.  “They serve as one of the largest Astartes contributions to the Indomitus effort.”  The scar tissue on Domack’s cheeks twitched in what might have been a momentary smile of pleasure or pride.

	The door chimed.  Guilliman looked up to see the image that the camera on the far side of the door projected on the inside, and saw Colquan’s back.  He frowned and opened the audio circuit.

	“No, Space Wolf, you shall not enter.  Lord Primarch Guilliman is in conference,” Colquan said firmly.

	“I’m not asking to barge in, Custodian, I’m asking if I can get in later to ask a question,” a distinctly Fenrisian voice said, with a bit of a lazy drawl in his tone.

	A new voice spoke up.  “Brother Wolf, you may not enter yet.  If you have some important knowledge to impart, do so to us, and we shall pass it along.”  Decimus Felix, by the sound of him.

	Guilliman quirked an eyebrow at Domack.  “One of yours?”

	“Wolf Scout Holgein, the best shot on Dascomb,” Domack answered at once.

	“Surely the Lord Primarch has a sufficiently analytical mind to comprehend the intelligence of one who has acquired it first-hand,” the Space Wolf’s voice said.

	“By the Throne,” Guilliman sighed, “he sounds like Faffnr.”  He stood.  “Was there anything else, Domack?”

	Domack bowed.  “There was not, my Lord.  Nothing I have not included in those files.”

	Guilliman drained the data from the two slates to one of his non-networked terminals and blanked them, then gave them back to the waiting Watch Commander.  “Then go and prepare, Domack.  Rest, meditate, train, do as you will.  There is much to do, and I am curious.”

	“About Holgein?” Domack said.  He tilted the left corner corner of his lip again, the closest he managed to a smile most of the time.  “Hmph.  By your leave, my Lord.”


	Holgein slowly raised his eyebrows as both Colquan and the freak Marine raised their melee weapons.  “Really?” he asked lightly.

	The door swished open behind him.  Holgein snapped to a respectful stance as he saw his Watch Commander emerge.  He bared his fangs and saluted.  “Commander Domack.”

	Domack nodded politely.  “Wolf Scout.  Have you a report to deliver?”

	“I do, Watch Commander, and a question about the coming battle.”

	Colquan’s eyes narrowed behind his mask.  “Questions can be answered by people with more free time.”

	Holgein shot the Custodian a dirty look, one of very few he had ever received.  Domack raised a hand.  “I will be calling both Killteams and Master Molliere to our meeting in half a shipboard hour, Brother Holgein,” he said.

	“I’ll be there, Watch Commander.”  Holgein chuckled ruefully.  “Elkop must be as sad as a pup in a rainstorm.”

	Domack shook his head.  He walked off towards the lifts, to begin collecting his thoughts onto his dataslates.

	The door started sliding shut before it opened again on its own.  Felix and Colquan exchanged a surprised look, then stepped aside begrudgingly for the Wolf.  Holgein was as surprised as either of them, but walked in.

	Guilliman regarded him silently for a gauging moment.  The Wolf projected insouciance.  That much hadn’t changed in eleven thousand years of back-sliding.

	Of course, the two weren’t alone in the room.  Guilliman had been disappointed to learn that Alpharius’ attempt on his life by having his men impersonate Aeonid Thiel’s squad had been erased from the formal records by a Chapter Master at some point in the late M37s, perhaps to give the illusion that he was invincible.  He had not forgotten, and so two Ultramarines stood behind the desk, one Apothecary and one Techmarine.  He would have had a Librarian and a Chaplain to round out the set, but that would have been both overkill for security and a depletion of his wounded Chapter’s resources he chose not to countenance.

	Holgein came to a respectful stop a few paces from the desk and bowed deeply, to Guilliman’s slight surprise.  The old Wolves would never have done it.  Even the few new ones he had seen tended to have somewhat less interest in decorum.

	“Lord Primarch,” Holgein said.  He had a neutral tone.

	“Wolf Scout.  I understand you have intelligence?”

	“Despite all appearances, Lord,” Holgein said lightly, and Guillman had to fight off a smirk.

	“Then do share it.”

	Holgein shrugged.  “Truth be told, my Lord, my question should come first.  Well, questions.  This is a somewhat uncommon circumstance for me.”

	“There are so many possible ways the word ‘circumstance’ could apply here,” Guilliman observed.  The old Wolves had never applied the word ‘my’ before the word ‘Lord’ speaking to him before.

	“I’m sure, but I mean this.  Specifically,” Holgein said, gesturing at the ship all around them.

	“My flagship?  Macragge’s Honor?”

	“Yes.  It’s a work of art.”

	“It is.”

	Holgein looked around.  Every surface was worked with a level of craftsmanship the Space Wolves usually reserved for the Ancient Dreadnoughts.  “I confess, I did not know the Ultramarines had such a ship.  That anybody save Typhus still had such a ship.  Well, except maybe the Templars,” he chuckled.

	Guilliman grimaced at the name of his brother’s hated Herald.  “Well, we did.  In storage, from what I understand.”

	“And nobody thought to field this beauty against Behemoth?” Holgein asked incredulously.

	“You talked your way past a Custodian to ask me that?”

	“Well, and to ask why we’re going to Oglith, my Lord,” Holgein said.  “I mean, Oglith.  It’s the third… maybe fourth most heavily defended planet in the Sector right now, after Cognomen, Septiim.  Perhaps Coriolis.”

	“A Forge World, a Space Marine home system, and a Fortress World,” Guilliman said.  The Apothecary behind him shifted slightly.  “Yes, we’re going to Oglith.”

	“Well… yes.”

	“And the reason we’re going there would, I hope, be obvious,” Guilliman said.

	“Even to a silly old dog like me?” Holgein asked lazily.  “Of course.  It’s Oglith.  It’s the third, maybe fourth most heavily defended planet in the Sector right now, after Cognomen, Septiim, perhaps Coriolis.”

	Guilliman’s lip twisted.  “You’re catching on.”

	“Right.  Millions of Guardsmen.  Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of sailors, Scions, Skitarii.  Titans, bombers.  The big stuff.”

	“To drive off a force of Orks and Glasians that number half a million between them,” Guilliman said.  “Obviously.”

	“A proportionate response.  A fair response, my Lord.”  Holgein’s yellow and blue-flecked eyes regarded Guilliman patiently.  “So why go in person?  I’ve seen the size of your fleet, my Lord.  It’s got more men than you can see stars in the sky.”

	“Not from Cloudburst,” Guilliman said drily.  It was true.  When worlds pointed their night skies at the galactic core from Cloudburst, there were a hundred fifty billion stars in the sky, at least before the Great Rift opened.  Guilliman’s force wasn’t quite that large.  “But you have the right of it.  Yes, it would be overkill, if we weren’t on something of a time limit.”

	Now it was Holgein’s turn to shift uncomfortably.  He had been made aware of their time-displacement by Domack.  It hurt.  Three years he had left his pack to worry.  It was embarrassing.

	“You see, Scout Holgein, the Drumnos Sector is quiet.  It’s not right.  It’s grave-quiet, tension-quiet.  Something has gone terribly wrong there,” Guilliman said.  “And I wish to see these Glasians for myself.  I want to see what an extragalactic incursion into the territories of the Imperium looks like.”

	Holgein pondered that.  “I suppose that makes sense.”

	“And now, Wolf Scout,” Guilliman said, all business.  “What is it that you wished to tell me?”

	Holgein dipped his head.  “I wanted to let you know, my Lord, that the Vlka have come to an… awareness of something that we had long suspected, but never taken on more than faith.”  He straightened up.  “It may be, my Lord, that Leman Russ and Corvus Corax yet live.  My brothers fighting Chaos warbands have sighted what we think to be both in the Eye.”

	Guilliman slowly stood.  “How can this be?” he asked.

	Holgein shook his shaggy head.  "Truth be told, I don't know for certain.  Nobody does.  If there is any truth to Father Russ's survival, I think he would have joined us by now if he could.  If Lord Corax were free to leave the Eye, I think he would have.  The problem... I suppose what I'm saying is that there may be more truth to the rumors of things in the Eye that are not under Abbadon's control than we suspected."

	Guilliman smiled tightly.  "I'd welcome Russ, now.  The firey old bastard was loyal in ways that shamed the rest of us.  That's what the Imperium needs these days."

	Holgein said nothing.  Guilliman sat back down and leaned back in his chair.  "So now, we have a lead on the possibility of two of my brothers alive and changed by their time in the Warp?" Guilliman asked heavily.  "Very well.  Thank you, Brother Holgein.  I will... take this under advisement."

	"And action?" Holgein pressed.

	Guilliman shook his head.  "The Eye is no place for a Crusade.  When the Imperium isn't teetering on the brink of total destruction, then I shall see if my family can be hunted down.  As it stands, though, I suspect that you are right."

	"About what?"

	"About them being unable to return.  They would have come back by now if they could have."

	"Vulkan came back, my Lord, briefly," Holgein said.

	"So I have heard, and so I believe, for I have seen it.  But now he is gone, and the possibility that he is gone forever is one I must contemplate," Guilliman said sadly.  "Still.  Thank you for this information, Brother Wolf.  Please, go and prepare your Killteam for Domack's orders.  There is much to do."

	Holgein was ready to continue, but he felt his welcome evaporate.  He swallowed his commentary and bowed, then turned on his heel and walked out.

	Guilliman sat in silence for a long few moments, until both of his gene-sons looked at each other in uncomfortable silence.  At length, Guilliman reopened his cogitator screens and resumed working.  There was indeed much to do.