He had no need to raise his voice. His men, and the servitors working alongside them, operated fluidly and efficiently with only a little spoken direction. His role was one of organiser, not an overseer, and he took pride in the smooth operation taking place in his allotted section of the field. Axalian watched another of the black-hulled battle tanks being connected to the lifter claws of an Emperor’s Children transporter gunship. The servitors backed away, and a warrior nearby raised his hand. The captain nodded in reply.
‘This is Axalian,’ he spoke into the vox. ‘Sector 30, requesting clearance.’
‘Request acknowledged, Captain Axalian. Please hold.’
Another gunship, this one in the sea-green of the Sons of Horus, rattled overhead, pregnant with stolen Rhino troop carriers. About a minute after it, an Iron Warriors’ lander shook the ground as it lifted off on guttural engines.
‘Captain Axalian,’ came the reply from the Techmarine overseer at Reclamation Command, to the east. ‘You are clear, with five minutes to make your assigned launch window. If you fail to meet this requirement, you will surrender the launch window to the next vessel in line. Do you understand?’
Of course he understood. He’d been doing this for four days. He’d heard that same refrain, from the same Sons of Horus Techmarine, at least two hundred times.
‘I understand.’
‘Your launch window has commenced.’
He switched vox-channels. ‘Thunderhawk transporter Redeemer, you are clear for orbital return.’
‘Order received, captain. Launching now.’
The flyer’s thrusters started cycling up. Axalian watched it rise, shuddering with the weight of its plunder.
That was the moment a shadow passed overhead. The Reclamation Command bunker blurted an emergency code in screeching binaric cant across the communications channels.
‘Abort!’ Axalian called into the vox. ‘ Redeemer, this is Axalian, abort launch immediately. Land and cut engines at once.’
The Thunderhawk thudded down heavily on its landing gear. ‘Sir?’ voxed the pilot.
‘Stay down,’ said Axalian. ‘We have inbound.’
Three of them, and inbound without clearance. He watched the grey gunships roar overhead, spiralling down in landing trajectories, uncaring of the discord they sowed in their approaches.
‘Word Bearers.’
With an annoyed grunt, he jumped down from the Land Raider hull. Two of his warriors stood watch over a gang of servitors nearby; he gestured for them to leave their charges and follow him.
‘Self-righteous bastards,’ one of them voxed, ‘coming in like that.’
Axalian was irritated enough not to reprimand the Legionary for the breach of protocol. ‘Let us see what this is about,’ he said.
The gunships were kin to all Legion troop drop-ships: thick-hulled, swoop-winged and avian in a strangely hulking way. With a mechanical unison that could only have been intentional, the three ramps lowered as one. Axalian stood before the closest Thunderhawk, flanked by his guards.
‘I am Captain Axalian of the Third Legion. Explain yourse—’
‘Captain,’ both of his warriors hissed at once.
Leading the squad of Word Bearers was a towering figure in ceramite painted the red of fine wine. He stalked down the gang-ramp, ignoring how it shook beneath his boots. The primarch’s unmasked face was pale, given life and colour by the tattooed stripes of runic scripture inked in gold upon the white flesh. Axalian could claim the honour of standing in the Emperor’s presence a number of times, and this being resembled the Master of Mankind more than any other, but for the changes he wrought to himself to appear different.
‘My Lord Aurelian,’ Axalian saluted.
‘Tell me,’ Lorgar bared his perfect teeth in something that wasn’t quite a smile, ‘where is my brother Fulgrim?’
‘THE SCARS SUIT you.’
They faced each other in a mausoleum of tank husks, while their warriors looked on. Thirty Word Bearers held their bolters in loose fists – half of them in their Legion’s traditional granite-grey ceramite, the other half clad in betrayers’ red. Change had come to the Seventeenth Legion after the Dropsite Massacre. Great change indeed.
Lorgar stood at the head of his phalanx. Fulgrim, clad in burnished purple and gold, needed no such formation. His Emperor’s Children surrounded the intruders; some stood in neat squad rankings in the presence of two primarchs, others remaining by the hulls of battle tanks, awaiting orders to close into formation. All of them sensed the unpleasant tension in the air, few fingers strayed far from bolter grips. Legionaries firing upon brother Legionaries may have seemed madness only weeks before, but the age of innocence and inviolate trust was over. They had buried it forever on this very battlefield.
Fulgrim’s effortless charm manifested in a warm smile, a brotherly glint in his eyes. He made no effort to reach for a weapon, as if such behaviour was beyond conception.
‘I am not making a jest,’ Fulgrim said, ‘the scars suit you.’ He stroked his fingertips along his own pale cheeks, tracing a mirror image of where the scars were carved down Lorgar’s face and neck. ‘They blend well with your tattooed scripture, almost like understated tiger’s stripes. They ruin any hopes of refining your features to perfection, certainly, but they are not entirely unattractive.’
Lorgar’s own smile seemed genuine enough to all who looked upon the scene from the sidelines, at least as sincere as Fulgrim’s.
‘We must speak, you and I, my beloved brother.’
Fulgrim gave an elaborate shrug, his face a guileless picture. ‘Whatever could you mean? Are we not speaking now, Lorgar?’
Several of the Emperor’s Children chuckled through vox-speakers. Lorgar’s smile didn’t fade. He said two words into his own open vox-channel. A name.
‘Argel Tal.’
CAPTAIN ROUSHAL OF the Emperor’s Children destroyer Saturnine Martyrcovered his eyes as his command deck exploded in light and noise. The peal of thunder shattered several consoles, cracking glass instruments and driving a thick crack through the occulus screen.
He was already yelling into the vox for an emergency containment and repair team, while cursing at his on-board cult of tech-adepts for whatever laxity allowed such a grievous malfunction.
Several of the returning shouts insisted it was a teleport flare. Either way, alarms were ringing.
When Roushal dragged himself off the floor, waving a hand through the dissipating mist, the first thing he encountered was the muzzle of a bolt pistol. Fat-calibred and painfully wide, it broke his teeth on the way into his mouth, and rested hideously cold and bitter on his tongue. He tried to swallow. Three of his teeth went down with the saliva. They tasted smoky and bitter.
‘Unguh?’ he managed to gasp.
The mist cleared enough to reveal the massive arm clutching the pistol, and the Word Bearer in traitors’ red to whom the arm belonged.
‘My name is Argel Tal,’ said the warrior. ‘Remain silent, on your knees, and you will be allowed to survive the next hour.’
FULGRIM HESITATED.
‘Yes, Captain Axalian?’
The captain needed a second attempt to speak. The primarch was clearly unconnected to the main vox-net, and he was the ranking officer in his lord’s presence. It fell to him to appraise the Legion commander of the orbital… situation.
‘Lord, we are receiving a mass-aligned signal from forty-nine of our vessels. One signal, coming from the Saturnine Martyr, is the source pulse. The others are confirmations, aligned to the source message.’
Fulgrim ground his teeth together. The smile died in his handsome eyes. ‘And what is the message, Axalian?’
Before the captain could reply, Lorgar clicked his gorget’s voxsponder to a louder volume. The voice that came through was crackled by distance distortion, but the words were clear enough.