Galaxy in Flames (28 page)

Cassar’s grip on the gun relaxed. ‘You’re not in his pocket?’

‘Hey, we’ve been through some scary shit recently, haven’t we?’ said Aruken. ‘I know what you’re going through.’

Cassar shook his head. ‘No you don’t, and I know what you’re trying to do. I can’t back down, I’m making a stand in the name of my Emperor. I won’t just surrender.’

‘Look, Titus, if you believe then you believe, but you don’t have to prove that to anyone.’

‘You think I’m doing this for show?’ asked Cassar, aiming his gun at Aruken’s throat.

Aruken held out his hands and walked carefully around the princeps’s command chair to stand across the bridge from him.

‘The Emperor isn’t just a figurehead to cling to,’ said Cassar. ‘He is a god. He has a saint and miracles and I have seen them. And so have you! Think of all you have seen and you’ll realize you have to help me, Jonah!’

‘I saw some odd things, Titus, but—’

‘Don’t deny them,’ interrupted Cassar. ‘They happened. As sure as you and I are standing in this war machine. Jonah, there is an Emperor and He is watching over us. He judges us by the choices we make when those choices are hard. The Warmaster has betrayed us and if I stand back and let it happen then I am betraying my Emperor. There are principles that must be defended, Aruken. Don’t you even see that much? If none of us take a stand, then the Warmaster will win and there won’t even be the memory of this betrayal.’

Aruken shook his head in frustration. ‘Cassar, if I could just make you see—’

‘You’re trying to tell me you haven’t seen anything to believe in?’ asked Cassar, turning away in disappointment. He looked through the scorched panes of the viewing bay at the assembling Death Guard.

‘Titus, I haven’t believed in anything for a long time,’ said Aruken. ‘For that I’m truly sorry, and I’m sorry for this too.’

Cassar turned to see that Jonah Aruken had drawn his pistol and had it aimed squarely at his chest.

‘Jonah?’ said Cassar. ‘You would betray me? After all we have seen?’

‘There’s only one thing I want, Titus, and that’s command of my own Titan. One day I want to be Princeps Aruken and that’s not going to happen if I let you do this.’

Cassar said, ‘To know that this whole galaxy is starved of belief and to think that you might be the only one who believes… and yet to still believe in spite of all that. That is faith, Aruken. I wish that you could understand that.’

‘It’s too late for that, Titus,’ said Aruken. ‘I’m sorry.’

Aruken’s gun barked three times, filling the bridge with bursts of light and noise.

T
ARVITZ COULD SEE
the battle from the shadow of an entrance arch leading into the Precentor’s Palace. He had escaped the cyclone of carnage that Angron had slaughtered into life, to link up with his own warriors in the palace, but the sight of the World Eater’s primarch was still a vivid red horror in his mind.

Tarvitz glanced back into the palace, its vaulted hallways strewn with the bodies of the dead palace guard darkening as late afternoon turned the shadows long and dim. Soon it would be night.

‘Lucius,’ voxed Tarvitz, static howling. ‘Lucius, come in.’

‘Saul, what do you see?’

‘Gunships and drop-pods too, our colours, landing just north of here.’

‘Has the primarch blessed us with his presence?’

‘Looks like Eidolon,’ said Tarvitz with relish. The vox was heavy with static and he knew that the Warmaster’s forces would be attempting to jam their vox-channels without blocking their own.

‘Listen, Lucius, Angron is going to break through here. The loyal World Eaters down there won’t be able to hold him. He’s going to head for the palace.’

‘Then there will be a battle,’ deadpanned Lucius. ‘I hope Angron makes it a good fight. I think I might have found a decent fencing opponent at last.’

‘You’re welcome to him. We need to make this stand count. Start barricading the central dome. We’ll move to fortifying the main domes and junctions if Angron gives us that long.’

‘Since when did you become the leader here?’ asked Lucius petulantly. ‘I was the one who killed Vardus Praal.’

Tarvitz felt his anger rise at his friend’s childishness at such a volatile time, but bit back his anger to say, ‘Get in there and help man the barricades. We don’t have long before we’ll be in the thick of it.’

T
HE
T
HUNDERHAWK SPED
away from the
Vengeful Spirit
, gathering speed as Qruze kicked in the afterburners. Mersadie felt unutterably light-headed to be off the Warmaster’s ship at last, but the cold realization that they had nowhere to go sobered her as she saw glinting specks of the fleet all around them.

‘Now what?’ asked Qruze. ‘We’re away, but where to next?’

‘I told you we were not without friends, did I not, Iacton?’ said Euphrati, sitting in the co-pilot’s chair beside the Astartes warrior.

The warrior gave her a brief sideways look. ‘Be that as it may, remembrancer. Friends do us little good if we die out here.’

‘But what a death it would be,’ said Keeler, with the trace of a ghostly smile.

Sindermann shared a worried glance with her, no doubt wondering if they had overreached themselves in trusting that Euphrati could deliver them to safety out in the dark of space. The old man looked tiny and feeble and she took his hand in hers.

Through the viewshield, Mersadie could see a field of glittering lights: starships belonging to the Sixty-Third Expedition, and every one of them hostile.

As if to contradict her, Euphrati pointed upwards through the viewshield towards the belly of an ugly vessel they would pass beneath if they continued on their current course. The weak sun of Isstvan glinted from its unpainted gunmetal hull.

‘Head towards that one,’ commanded Euphrati and Mersadie was surprised to see Qruze turn the controls without a word of protest.

Mersadie didn’t know a great deal about spacecraft but she knew that the cruiser would be bristling with turrets that could pick off the Thunderhawk as it shot past, and could maybe even deploy fighters.

‘Why are we getting closer?’ she asked hurriedly. ‘Surely we want to head away?’

‘Trust me, Sadie,’ said Euphrati. This is the way it has to be.’

At least it will be quick,
she thought, as the vessel grew larger in the viewshield.

‘It’s Death Guard,’ said Qruze,

Mersadie bit her lip and glanced at Sindermann.

The old man looked calm and said, ‘Quite the adventure, eh?’

Mersadie smiled in spite of herself.

‘What are we going to do, Kyril?’ asked Mersadie, tears springing from her eyes. ‘What do we have left to us?’

‘This is still our fight, Mersadie,’ said Euphrati, turning from the viewshield. ‘Sometimes that fight must be open warfare, sometimes it must be fought with words and ideas. We all have our parts to play.’

Mersadie let out a breath, unable and unwilling to believe that there were allies in the cruiser looming in front of them. ‘We are not alone,’ smiled Euphrati. ‘But this fight… it feels a lot bigger than me.’

‘You are wrong. Each of us has as much right to have their say in the fate of the galaxy as the Warmaster. Believing that is how we will defeat him.’

Mersadie nodded and watched the cruiser above them drawing ever nearer, its long, dark shape edged in starlight and its engines wreathed in clouds of crystalline gasses.

‘Thunderhawk gunship, identify yourself,’ said a gruff, gravel-laden voice crackling from the vox-caster.

‘Be truthful,’ warned Euphrati. ‘All depends on it.’

Qruze nodded and said, ‘My name is Iacton Qruze, formerly of the Sons of Horus.’

‘Formerly?’ came the reply.

‘Yes, formerly,’ said Qruze.

‘Explain yourself.’

‘I am no longer part of the Legion,’ said Qruze, and Mersadie could hear the pain it caused him to give voice to these words. ‘I can no longer be party to what the Warmaster is doing.’

After a long pause, the voice returned. ‘Then you are welcome on my ship, Iacton Qruze.’

‘And who are you?’ asked Qruze. ‘I am Captain Nathaniel Garro of the
Eisenstein
.’

PART THREE

BROTHERS

FOURTEEN

Until it’s over

Charmoisan

Betrayal

‘I’
VE LOST COUNT
of the days,’ said Loken, crouching by one of the makeshift battlements that looked over the smouldering ruins of the Choral City.

‘I don’t think Isstvan III has days and nights any more,’ replied Saul Tarvitz.

Loken looked into the steel grey sky, a mantle of cloud kicked up by the catastrophic climate change forced on Isstvan III by the sudden extinction of almost all life on its surface. A thin drizzle of ash rained, the remains of the firestorm swept up by dry, dead winds a continent away.

‘They’re massing for another attack,’ said Tarvitz, indicating the tangle of twisted, ash-wreathed rubble that had once been a vast mass of tenement blocks to the east of the palace.

Loken followed his gaze. He could just glimpse a flash of dirty white armour.

‘World Eaters.’

‘Who else?’

‘I don’t know if Angron even knows another way to fight.’

Tarvitz shrugged. ‘He probably does. He just likes his way better.’

Tarvitz and Loken had first met on Murder, where the Sons of Horus had fought alongside the Emperor’s Children against hideous megarachnid aliens. Tarvitz had been a fine warrior, devoid of the grandstanding of his Legion that had so antagonised Torgaddon.

Loken barely remembered the journey back through the Sirenhold, scrambling through shattered tombs and burning ruins. He remembered fighting through men he had once called brother towards the great gates of the Sirenhold, and he had not stopped until he had his first proper sight of the Precentor’s Palace and its magnificent rose-granite petals.

‘They’ll hit within the hour,’ said Tarvitz. ‘I’ll move men over to the defences.’

‘It could be a feint,’ said Loken, vividly remembering the first days of the battle for the palace. ‘Angron hits one side, Eidolon counter-attacks.’

His first sight of Tarvitz’s warriors in battle had resembled a great game with the Emperor’s Children as pieces masterfully arranged in feints and counter-charges. A lesser man than Saul Tarvitz would have allowed his force to be picked apart by them, but the captain of the Emperor’s Children had somehow managed to weather three days of non-stop attacks.

‘We’ll be ready for it,’ said Tarvitz, looking down into the depths of the palace.

Loken and Tarvitz had climbed into the structure of a partially collapsed dome, one of the many sections of the Precentor’s Palace that had been ruined during the firestorm and fighting.

Sheared sections of granite petals formed the cover behind which Loken and Tarvitz were sheltering, while in the rubble-choked dome below, hundreds of the survivors were manning the defences. Luna Wolves and Emperor’s Children manned barricades made of priceless sculptures and other artworks that had filled the chambers beneath the dome.

Now these monumental sculptures of past rulers lay on their sides with Astartes crouched behind them.

‘How much longer do you think we can hold?’ asked Loken.

‘We’ll stay until it’s over,’ said Tarvitz. ‘You said so yourself, every second we survive, the chance grows that the Emperor hears of this and sends the other Legions to bring Horus to justice.’

‘If Garro makes it,’ said Loken. ‘He could be dead already, or lost in the warp.’

‘Perhaps, but I have to hope that Nathaniel made it out,’ said Tarvitz. ‘Our job is to hold them off for as long as we can.’

‘That’s what worries me. This probably all started when Angron slipped the leash, but the Warmaster could have just pulled his Legions out and bombed this city into dust. He would have lost some of them, but even so… this planet should have been dead a long time ago.’

Tarvitz smiled. ‘Four primarchs, Garviel. That’s your answer. Four warriors not given to backing down. Who would be the first to leave? Angron? Mortarion? If Eidolon’s leading the Emperor’s Children then he’s got a lot to prove alongside the primarchs, and I have never known Horus show weakness, not when his brother primarchs might see it.’

‘No,’ agreed Loken. ‘The Warmaster does not back down from a battle once he’s committed.’

‘Then they’ll have to kill us all,’ said Tarvitz.

‘Yes, they will,’ said Loken grimly.

The vox-beads in both their helmets chimed and Torgaddon’s voice sounded.

‘Garvi, Saul!’ said Torgaddon. ‘I’ve got reports that the World Eaters are massing. We can hear them chanting, so they’ll be coming soon. I’ve reinforced the eastern barricades, but we need every man down here.’

‘I’ll pull my men back from the gallery dome,’ voxed Tarvitz. ‘I’ll send Garviel to join you.’

‘Where are you going?’ asked Loken.

‘I’m going to make sure the west and north are still covered and to get some guns on the chapel too,’ said Tarvitz, pointing through the ruins of the dome to the strange organic shape of the Warsingers’ Chapel adjoining the palace complex.

The survivors had instinctively avoided the chapel and few of them had even seen inside it. Its very walls were redolent of the corruption that had consumed the soul of the Choral City.

‘I’ll take the chapel and Lucius can take the ground level,’ continued Tarvitz, turning back to Loken. ‘I swear that sometimes I think Lucius is actually enjoying this.’

‘A little too much, if you ask me,’ replied Loken. ‘You need to keep an eye on him.’

A familiar dull explosion sounded and a tower of rubble and smoke burst from the Choral City’s tortured cityscape to the north of the palace.

‘Amazing,’ said Tarvitz, ‘that there are any Death Guard left alive over there.’

‘Death Guard are tough to kill,’ replied Loken, heading for the makeshift ladder that led down to the remains of the gallery dome.

Despite his words, he knew that it really
was
amazing. Mortarion, never one to do things with finesse, had simply landed one of his fleet’s largest orbital landers on the edge of the western trenches and saturated the defences with turret fire while his Death Guard deployed.