Horus Rising (16 page)

The noise was punishing. Motorised tools hammered and ratcheted, hoists whined, loading units trundled and rattled, hatches slammed, and reactive engines whooped and flared as they were tested. There was activity everywhere: deck crews hurrying into position, fitters and artificers making final checks and adjustments, servitors unlocking fuel lines. Munition carts hummed past in long sausage-chains. The air stank of heat, oil and exhaust fumes.

Six stormbirds sat on launch carriages before them. Heavy, armoured delivery vehicles, they were void capable, but also honed and sleek for atmospheric work. They sat in two rows of three, wings extended, like hawks waiting to be thrown to the lure. They were painted white, and showed the wolf’s head icon and the eye of Horus on their hulls.

‘…known as stormbirds,’ the iterator was saying as he walked them forward. ‘The actual pattern type is Warhawk VI. Most expedition forces are now reliant on the smaller, standard construct Thunderhawk pattern, examples of which you can see under covers to our left in the hardstand area, but the Legion has made an effort to keep these old, heavy-duty machines in service. They have been delivering the Luna Wolves into war since the start of the Great Crusade, since before that, actually. They were manufactured on Terra by the Yndonesic Bloc for use against the Panpacific tribes during the Unification Wars. A dozen will be employed in this venture today. Six from this deck, six from Aft Embarkation 2.’ Keeler raised her picter and took several quick shots of the line of stormbirds ahead. For the last, she crouched down to get a low, impressive angle down the row of their flared wings. ‘I said no records!’ Emont snapped, hurrying to her. ‘I didn’t think for a moment you were serious,’ Keeler responded smoothly. ‘We’ve got ten minutes. I’m an imagist. What the hell did you think I was going to do?’ Emont looked flustered. He was about to say something when he noticed that Carnis and Flora were wandering astray, locked in some petty squabble.

‘Stay with the group!’ Emont cried out, hurrying to shepherd them back.

‘Get anything good?’ Sark asked Keeler.

‘
Please,
it’s me,’ she replied.

He laughed, and took out a picter of his own from his rucksack. ‘I didn’t have the balls, but you’re right. What the hell are we doing here if not our job?’

He took a few shots. Keeler liked Sark. He was good company and had a decent track record of work on Terra. She doubted he would get much here. His eye for composition was fine when it came to faces, but this was very much her thing.

Both the documentarists had now cornered Emont and were grilling him with questions that he struggled to answer. Keeler wondered where Mersadie Oliton had got to. Competition amongst the remembrancers for these six places had been fierce, and Mersadie had won a slot thanks to Keeler’s good word and, it was said, approval from someone high up in the Legion, but she had failed to show up on time that morning, and her place had been taken at the last minute by Borodin Flora.

Ignoring the iterator’s instructions, she moved away from the group, and chased images with her picter. The Luna Wolf emblem stencilled on an erect braking flap; two servitors glistening with lubricant as they struggled to fix a faulty feed; deck crew panting and wiping sweat from their brows beside a munition trolley they had just loaded; the bare-metal snout of an underwing cannon.

‘Are you trying to get me replaced?’ Emont asked, catching up with her.

‘No.’

‘I really must ask you to keep in line, madam,’ he said. ‘I know you’re in favour, but there is a limit. After that business on the surface…’

‘What business?’ she asked.

‘A couple of days ago, surely you heard?’

‘No.’

‘Some remembrancer gave his minders the slip during a surface visit and got into a deal of trouble. Quite a scandal. It’s annoyed the higher-ups. The Primary Iterator had to wrangle hard to prevent the remembrancer contingent being suspended from activity.’ ‘Was it that bad?’ ‘I don’t know the details. Please, for me, stay in line.’ ‘You have a very lovely voice.’ Keeler said. ‘You could ask me to do anything. Of course I will.’ Emont blushed. ‘Let’s continue with the visit.’ As he turned, she took another pict, capturing the scruffy iterator, head down, against a backdrop of bustling crewmen and threatening ships.

‘Iterator?’ she called. ‘Have we been granted permission to accompany the drop?’

‘I don’t believe so,’ he said sadly. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve not been told.’

A fanfare boomed out across the vast deck. Keeler heard – and felt – a beat like a heavy drum, like a warhammer striking again and again against metal.

‘Come to one side. Now! To one side!’ Emont called, trying to gather the group on the edge of the deck space. The drumming grew closer and louder. It was feet. Steel-shod feet marching across decking.

Three hundred Astartes, in full armour and marching perfectly in step, advanced onto the embarkation deck between the waiting stormbirds. At the front of them, a standard bearer carried the great banner of the Tenth Company.

Keeler gasped at the sight of them. So many, so perfect, so huge, so regimented. She raised her picter with trembling hands and began to shoot. Giants in white metal, assembling for war, uniform and identical, precise and composed.

Orders flew out, and the Astartes came to a halt with a crashing din of heels. They became statues, as equerries hurried through their files, directing and assigning men to their carriers.

Smoothly, units began to turn in fluid sequence, and filed onto the waiting vessels.

‘They will have already taken their oaths of moment,’ Emont was saying to the group in a hushed whisper.

‘Explain,’ Van Krasten requested.

Emont nodded. ‘Every soldier of the Imperium is sworn to uphold his loyalty to the Emperor at the start of his commission, and the Astartes are no exception. No one doubts their continued devotion to the pledge, but before individual missions, the Astartes choose to swear an immediate oath, an “oath of moment”, that binds them specifically to the matter at hand. They pledge to uphold the particular concerns of the enterprise before them. You may think of it as a reaffirmation, I suppose. It is a ritual re-pledging. The Astartes do love their rituals.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Van Krasten. ‘They are already sworn but—’

‘To uphold the truth of the Imperium and the light of the Emperor,’ Emont said, ‘As the name suggests, an oath of moment applies to an individual action. It is specific and precise.’

Van Krasten nodded.

‘Who’s that?’ Twell asked, pointing. A senior Astartes, a captain by his cloak, was walking the lines of warriors as they streamed neatly onto the drop-ships.

‘That’s Loken,’ Emont said.

Keeler raised her picter.

Loken’s comb-crested helm was off. His fair, cropped hair framed his pale, freckled face. His grey eyes seemed immense. Mersadie had spoken to her of Loken. Quite a force now, if the rumours were true. One of the four.

She shot him speaking to a subordinate, and again, waving servitors clear of a landing ramp. He was the most extraordinary subject. She didn’t have to compose around him, or shoot to crop later. He dominated every frame.

No wonder Mersadie was so taken with him. Keeler wondered again why Mersadie Oliton had missed this chance.

Now Loken turned away, his men all but boarded. He spoke with the standard bearer, and touched the hem of the banner with affection. Another fine shot. Then he swung round to face five armoured figures approaching across the suddenly empty deck.

‘This is…’ Emont whispered. ‘This is quite something. I hope you all understand you’re lucky to see this.’

‘See what?’ asked Sark.

‘The captain takes his oath of moment last of all. It will be heard and sworn to by two of his fellow captains, but, oh my goodness, the rest of the Mournival have come to hear him pledge.’

‘That’s the Mournival?’ Keeler asked, her picter shooting.

‘First Captain Abaddon, Captain Torgaddon, Captain Aximand, and with them Captains Sedirae and Targost,’ Emont breathed, afraid of raising his voice.

‘Which one is Abaddon?’ Keeler asked, aiming her picter.

L
OKEN KNELT
. ‘T
HERE
was no need—’ he began.

‘We wanted to do this right,’ Torgaddon replied. ‘Luc?’

Luc Sedirae, Captain of the Thirteenth Company, took out the seal paper on which the oath of moment was written. ‘I am sent to hear you,’ he said.

‘And I am here to witness it,’ Targost said.

‘And we are here to keep you cheerful,’ Torgaddon added. Abaddon and Little Horus chuckled.

Neither Targost nor Sedirae were sons of Horus. Targost, Captain of the Seventh, was a blunt-faced man with a deep scar across his brow. Luc Sedirae, champion of so many wars, was a smiling rogue, blond and handsome, his eyes blue and bright, his mouth permanently half-open as if about to bite something. Sedirae raised the scrap of parchment.

‘Do you, Garviel Loken, accept your role in this? Do you promise to lead your men into the zone of war, and conduct them to glory, no matter the ferocity or ingenuity of the foe? Do you swear to crush the insurgents of Sixty-Three Nineteen, despite all they might throw at you? Do you pledge to do honour to the XVI Legion and the Emperor?’

Loken placed his hand on the bolter Targost held out.

‘On this matter and by this weapon, I swear.’

Sedirae nodded and handed the oath paper to Loken.

‘Kill for the living, brother,’ he said, ‘and kill for the dead.’ He turned to walk away. Targost holstered his bolter, made the sign of the aquila, and followed him.

Loken rose to his feet, securing his oath paper to the rim of his right shoulderguard.

‘Do this right, Garviel,’ Abaddon said.

‘I’m glad you told me that,’ Loken dead-panned. ‘I’d been considering making a mess of it.’

Abaddon hesitated, wrong-footed. Torgaddon and Aximand laughed.

‘He’s growing that thick skin already, Ezekyle,’ Aximand sniggered.

‘You walked into that,’ Torgaddon added.

‘I know, I know,’ Abaddon snapped. He glared at Loken. ‘Don’t let the commander down.’

‘Would I?’ Loken replied, and walked away to his stormbird.

‘O
UR TIME
’
S UP
,’ Emont said.

Keeler didn’t care. That last pict had been exceptional. The Mournival, Sedirae and Targost, all in a solemn group, Loken on his knees.

Emont conducted the remembrancers out of the embarkation deck space to an observation deck, adjacent to the launch port from which they could watch the stormbirds deploy. They could hear the rising note of the stormbird engines behind them, trembling the embarkation deck as they fired up in pre-launch test. The roaring dulled away as they walked down the long access tunnel, hatches closing one by one after them.

The observation deck was a long chamber, one side of which was a frame of armoured glass. The deck’s internal lighting had been switched low so that they could better see into the darkness outside.

It was an impressive view. They directly overlooked the yawning maw of the embarkation deck, a colossal hatch ringing with winking guide lights. The bulk of the flagship rose away above them, like a crenellated Gothic city. Beyond, lay the void itself.

Small service craft and cargo landers flitted past, some on local business, some heading out to other ships of the expedition fleet. Five of these could be seen from the observation deck, sleek monsters at high anchor several kilometres away. They were virtual silhouettes, but the distant sun caught them obliquely, and gave them hard, golden outlines along their ribbed upper hulls.

Below lay the world they orbited. Sixty-Three Nineteen. They were above its nightside, but there was a smoky grey crescent of radiance where the terminator crept forward. In the dark mass, Keeler could make out the faint light-glow of cities speckling the sleeping surface.

Impressive though the view was, she knew shots would be a waste of time. Between the glass, the distance and the odd light sources, resolution would be poor.

She found a seat away from the others, and began to review the picts she’d already taken, calling them up on the picter’s viewscreen.

‘May I see?’ asked a voice.

She looked up and had to peer in the deck’s gloom to identify the speaker. It was Sindermann, the Primary Iterator.

‘Of course,’ she said, rising to her feet and holding the picter so he could see the images as she thumbed them up one by one. He craned his head forward, curious.

‘You have a wonderful eye, Mistress Keeler. Oh, that one is particularly fine! The crew working so hard. I find it striking because it is so natural, candid, I suppose. So very much of our pictorial record is arch and formally posed.’

‘I like to get people when they’re not aware of me.’

‘This one is simply magnificent. You’ve captured Garviel perfectly there.’

‘You know him personally, sir?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘You called him by his forename, not by any honorific or rank.’

Sindermann smiled at her. ‘I think Captain Loken might be considered a friend of mine. I’d like to think so, anyway. You never can tell with an Astartes. They form relationships with mortals in a curious way, but we spend time together and discuss certain matters.’

‘You’re his mentor?’

‘His tutor. There is a great difference. I know things he does not, so I am able to expand his knowledge, but I do not presume to have influence over him. Oh, Mistress Keeler! This one is superb! The best, I should say.’

‘I thought so. I was very pleased with it.’

‘All of them together like that, and Garviel kneeling so humbly, and the way you’ve framed them against the company standard.’

‘That was just happenstance,’ Keeler said. ‘They chose what they were standing beside.’

Sindermann placed his hand gently upon hers. He seemed genuinely grateful for the chance to review her work. ‘That pict alone will become famous, I have no doubt. It will be reproduced in history texts for as long as the Imperium endures.’

‘It’s just a pict,’ she chided.

‘It is a witness. It is a perfect example of what the remembrancers can do. I have been reviewing some of the material produced by the remembrancers thus far, the material that’s been added to the expedition’s collective archive. Some of it is… patchy, shall I say? Ideal ammunition for those who claim the remembrancer project is a waste of time, funds and ship space, but some is outstanding, and I would class your work amongst that.’