‘The fallen warrior should be honoured in death by his blood-comrades,’ said Tagore, ‘but these heroes are far from their Legion brothers, and they will never see their homeworlds again.’
‘ Thisis their homeworld,’ said Atharva.
‘And we are their comrades now,’ added Subha.
‘We will honour them,’ said Asubha. ‘As brothers of battle, we owe fealty to no brotherhood but our own.’
Kai was surprised to hear such words from these warriors. In the brief time he had spent with them, he had not thought them close, but these words spoke of a bond that ran deeper than he would ever know, a bond that could only ever be forged in the bloody cauldron of battle and death.
‘Come,’ said Palladis Novandio. ‘I’ll show you.’
Tagore placed a hand on Palladis’s chest and shook his head. ‘No, you won’t,’ he said, his teeth bared and a barely restrained hostility razoring the edges of his words. ‘The death of a Space Marine is a private affair.’
‘I apologise,’ said Palladis, recognising the threat. ‘I meant no disrespect.’
The Space Marines moved down the central aisle of the temple, and all sounds of mourning faded as those who bore witness to the solemn parade bowed their heads in silent and unspoken respect. Atharva’s power flared like a half-glimpsed flicker of lightning, as the door to the incinerator opened on rust and ash-gummed hinges.
Kai watched them pass from sight, and let out the breath he’d been holding.
It took a moment for him to realise the significance of the moment, but when he realised that he was alone and free, all he felt was a strange sense of emptiness. He no longer knew whether he was a fellow fugitive or a prisoner of the Outcast Dead, but he suspected that hinged upon what he carried within his head.
Kai turned towards the door through which he and the Space Marines had entered the temple. Slivers of torchlight eased through its imperfectly-fitted frame, and that soft glow was the promise of everything he had been denied: the freedom from responsibility, the choice to live or die and, finally, a chance to be no one’s slave.
The last realisation was hardest to admit, for Kai had always believed he was master of his own destiny. Here, alone and hunted in a temple dedicated to the dead, he realised how naïve he had been. The worth of the individual was the greatest lie the Imperium had made its people swallow. From soldiers in the army to the scribes of the palace to the workers toiling in the factories, every human life was in service to the Emperor. Whether they realised it or not, the human race had been yoked to the singular goal of the galaxy’s conquest.
For the first time in his life, Kai saw the Imperium for what it was, a machine that could operate on such a vast scale only because its fuel of human life was in never-ending supply. He had been part of that machine, but he was a tiny cog that had slipped its gear and was tumbling without purpose through its delicate workings. Kai knew enough of such mechanisms to know that such a random piece could not be allowed to remain within the body of the machine. Either that piece was returned to its designated place, or it was cast out and discarded.
‘Death surrounds you, my friend,’ said Palladis. ‘You were right to come here.’
Kai nodded and said, ‘Death surrounds me wherever I go.’
‘There is truth in that,’ agreed Palladis. ‘Do you mean to stay with the Angels of Death?’
‘Why do I get the feeling that you’re not using that as a nickname?’ asked Kai.
‘The Legiones Astartes are the physical embodiment of death,’ said Palladis. ‘You have seen them kill, so you must know that.’
Kai thought back to the bloodshed of their escape from the Custodes gaol, and suppressed a shiver at the ferocious carnage.
‘I suppose it’s apt,’ he agreed. ‘The Angels of Death. It has a ring to it.’
‘You haven’t answered my question,’ pointed out Palladis.
Kai thought for a moment, torn between his desire to shape his own future and the insistent voice that urged him to remain with the Outcast Dead.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Kai, surprising himself. ‘I feel that I wantto leave them, but I’m not sure I should. Which is stupid, because I think they mean to take me to… to a place I don’t think I’m meant to go.’
‘Where do you think are you meant to go?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Kai with a wan smile. ‘That’s the problem, you see.’
‘Then how do you know you are not already there?’ said Palladis, before giving his arm a gentle squeeze and making his way towards the man and woman who wept over the body of an old man at the foot of the faceless statue.
Before Kai could ponder the man’s last words, the door to the temple opened and a girl with a familiar aura entered. Though his psychic senses told him as much, he knew she had long blond hair beneath her hood and a blue bandanna wrapped around her forehead. He smiled, finally understanding that there were no accidents, no coincidences and no pieces of the universal puzzle that were not just links in a causal chain that stretched back to very beginning of all things.
‘Perhaps I amwhere I’m meant to be,’ he said softly, as the girl saw him and her eyes widened in surprise.
‘Kai?’ said the girl. ‘Throne, what are you doing here?’
‘Hello, Roxanne,’ said Kai.
NAGASENA WATCHES THE approaching vehicles with irritation and a sense of events moving faster than anyone gathered here can control. Six armoured vehicles, boxy and reeking of engine oil and hot metal. They have been forced to wait for these tanks by an order from the City of Sight. No explanation was forthcoming, and for nearly ninety minutes they have allowed their quarry to put ever greater distance between them.
‘We should not have waited,’ Kartono says to him, but he does not reply. The answer is self-evident. No, they should not have waited, but his every instinct is railing against this hunt. He tells himself that he is foolish to put faith in omens, that he should have continued without Golovko and Saturnalia.
He knows where his prey has gone, and he could be there already but for his hunt companions. Yet he did not set off on his own. He waited. Speed and the relentlessness of pursuit are his greatest weapons, and he has sacrificed them both.
Why?
Because this hunt does not serve the truth, it is intended to bury it.
Saturnalia stands at a crossroads to the east, eager to be on the hunt, but unwilling to disobey an order that comes countersigned with the authority of his own masters. Golovko sits with his men, displaying patience Nagasena had not suspected he possessed. He is a man to whom orders are absolute, a man who would kill a hundred innocents if so ordered. Such men are dangerous, for they can enact any horror in the unshakable belief that it serves a higher purpose.
The lead vehicle grinds to a halt in a squall of rubble and screeching metal. It is painted black and red, with the markings of a fortress gate upon which are crossed a black bladed spear and a lasgun. Golovko and Saturnalia join him as the side hatch opens and a junior lieutenant in a black breastplate and helmet emerges, looking as though he wishes he were anywhere but here.
The lieutenant marches over to Golovko and hands him a sealed, one-time message slate.
A code wand slides from Golovko’s gauntlet and the slate flickers into life. Softly glowing text appears on its smooth surface, and the man’s face breaks into a grin of feral anticipation.
Nagasena has seen that look before, and he does not like it.
‘What does the message say?’ he asks, though he fears he knows the answer.
Golovko hands the message slate to Saturnalia, who scans its contents with a nod that confirms what Nagasena is already suspecting. He turns away as Saturnalia offers him the slate.
‘We are no longer hunters,’ says Nagasena. ‘Are we?’