The Flight of the Eisenstein (22 page)

It was the lot of an Astartes simply to
do,
not to question, and he felt damned by the understanding that Horus would play that unswerving allegiance to his bitter ends. He had considered briefly the idea of opening up all of
Eisenstein's
vox transmitters to maximum power and broadcasting the truth of the treachery across the entire 63rd Fleet. There were noble men out there, he was sure of it, warriors like Loken and Torgaddon in the Warmaster's own Legion, and Varren of the World Eaters... If only he could contact them, save their lives; but to do so would have meant suicide for everyone on the frigate.

Every minute they kept their silence was a minute more for Garro to plan an escape with the warning. Kinsmen like Loken and the others would have to find their own path through this nightmare. The message was far more important than the lives of a handful of Astartes. Garro only hoped that once his mission had been fulfilled he might see them again, either back on Terra at the end of their own escape or here once more with a reprisal fleet at his back. For now, those men were on their own, as were Garro and his warriors.

The battle-captain crossed to the arming alcove that Kaleb had set aside for him, seeing the eagle cuirass mounted there on a stand. It was polished and perfect, as if the armour had come from a museum and not been battered in combat less than a week ago. He laid a hand on the cool ceramite and allowed himself to feel his full regret at the housecarl's death. 'You died well, Kaleb Arin,' he told the air, 'you did honour to the Death Guard and to the Seventh.' Garro wished mat he could promise the man's memory some form of tribute. He wanted to place the serfs name upon the Wall of Memory on Barbarus, give him the credit as if he had been a full-fledged battle-brother, but that would not happen, not now. Garro doubted that he would ever see the dank skies of the Death Guard's home world again, not after the events at Isstvan. Kaleb's spirit would have to be content with the esteem of his master.

Garro's lip curled. 'Here I am, thinking of spirits, talking to myself in an empty room.' He shook his head. 'What is happening to me?'

Next to the cuirass, a bolter lay upon a folded green cloth, and like the armour it too was pristine and unblemished, fresh from the Legion artificers. Garro took off a gauntlet and ran his fingers over the slab-sided breach. The weapon was deep with etchings in High Gothic script, combat honours and battle records listed along the length of it. There were names imprinted here and there, lined in dark emerald ink, each the name of a battle-brother who had carried the gun into war, and perished with it on them. Garro's weapon had been lost to him on Isstvan Extremis, destroyed by the brutal sonic attack of the Warsinger. Nothing but shattered, brittle metal had been left. This bolter, then, was to be his new sidearm, and it was with bittersweet pride he took it up and held it to parade ready. A new name glittered on the frame:
Pyr Rahl.
Thank you, brother,' whispered Garro, 'I will take a dozen foes with it in your name.'

As was the way of the Astartes, Rahl's wargear was salvaged and what could remain in use to the XIV Legion did so. In this manner, the Astartes kept the memories of their dead kinsmen alive long after they had perished. Garro's eyes fell to find a carry-sack made of roughly woven fabric, lying forgotten in the corner of the alcove. He dropped into a crouch and took it up.

Kaleb's belongings. He sighed. When an Astartes died, there was always a brother ready to gather up the meager possessions he might have left behind and see to them, but there were no provisions for a simple housecarl. Garro felt an unfamiliar kind of sorrow over Kaleb's passing. It wasn't the hard fury he had for the death of Rahl or the hundreds of others he had witnessed. Only now that Kaleb was gone, did Garro understand how much he had valued the little man, as a sounding board, as a servant, as a comrade. For a moment the captain considered ditching the sack in the nearest ejector chute and making an end of it, but that would have been ignoble. Instead, with a gentleness belied by his large, heavy hands, Garro traced through Kaleb's effects: utility blades and armoury tools, some changes of clothing, a trinket made from a bolter shell...

He turned the object between his fingers and held it up to the lamplight. A matrix-etching of the Emperor stared back at him, beneficent and all-knowing. He pocketed the icon in a belt pouch. With it there were dog-eared papers held together by a worn strap. In places they had been taped where they had become ripped. Some of the pages were on different kinds of paper, some handwritten, some from a crude mimeograph with words smudged and blurry from hundreds of reproductions. Garro found sketchy illustrations that made little sense to him, although he could pick out recognizable elements, iconography of the Emperor, of Terra, repeated again and again.
'Lectitio Divinitatus',
he read aloud. 'Is this what you kept from me, Kaleb?'

Garro knew of the sect. They were common people who, despite the constant light of the secular Imperial truth, had come to believe that the Emperor of Mankind was himself a divine being. Who else, they argued, had the right to crush all other belief in gods, than the one true deity himself? Was not the Emperor a singular, god-like entity?

Despite his open rejection of such beliefs, the Emperor instilled such dedication and devotion. Immortal and all-seeing, possessed of the greatest intellect and psychic potential of any living human, in the eyes of the
Lectitio Divinitatus,
what else could he be but a divinity?

Yes, now Garro saw it, he realized Kaleb's connection to the Cult of the God-Emperor had been there all along, simmering beneath the surface. A hundred tiny words and deeds suddenly took on new meaning in the light of this discovery. He had decried Grulgor on the gunnery deck for speaking blasphemy against the Emperor, and before in the murk of his healing coma, Garro had heard the invocation from Kaleb's lips, the entreaty for protection. 'You are of purpose,' he intoned flatly, the housecarl's final words returning once again. 'The God-Emperor wills it. His hand lies upon all of us. The Emperor... the Emperor protects.'

He knew that it was wrong to go any further, that it went against the letter of the Imperial truth he had dedicated his life to, but still Nathaniel Garro read on, absorbing the words of the tracts, page by tattered page.

Although he would never have showed it openly, the passing hours had shaken him to his core. He had always imagined himself as a blade in the Emperor's hand, or as an arrow in mankind's quiver to be nocked and sent tearing into the heart of humanity's foes, but what was he now? All the blades were blunted and twisted upon one another, the arrows broken about their shafts.

The firm ground Garro's beliefs stood upon was turning to quicksand beneath them. It was almost too much to contain within his mind! His brothers, his battle lord, his very Warmaster all ranged against him; the blood of a Death Guard on his sword and much more to come; the foreboding pall at the boundary of his thoughts; the omen of the blinded star, the smug prophecy of the dead xenos child and Kaleb's dying plea.

'It's too much!' Garro shouted, and sank to his knees, the papers tight in his hand. The horrible taint of this knowledge was a poison that threatened to shrivel his soul. Never in centuries of service had the Astartes felt himself to be so totally, so utterly vulnerable, and in that moment, he understood there was only one to whom he could reach out.

'Help me,' he cried, offering his entreaty to the darkness, 'I am lost.' Of their own accord, Garro's hands found the shape of the aquila, palms open across his chest. 'Emperor,' he choked, 'give me faith.'

Behind his eyes, Garro felt something break loose inside him and leap, a sudden release, a flood of energy. It was beyond his ability to describe it, and there in the gloom of the half-lit alcove, he felt the ghost of a voice brush over the edges of his psyche. A crying woman, pale and elfin, strong and delicate all at once, was calling him: the voice from his dream.

Save us, Nathaniel.

Garro cried out and stumbled backwards, fighting to recover his balance. The words had been so clear and close, it was as if she had been in the chamber with him, standing at his ear. The Death Guard recovered his composure, panting hard, and got back to his feet. He sensed a peculiar, greasy tang in the air, fading even as he noticed it. The stroke upon his thoughts had been like the jorgalli's intrusion into his mind, but different. It shocked him in its intimacy, and yet it did not feel wrong like the telepathic touch of the alien. Garro took a shuddering breath. As quickly as it had happened, the moment vanished like vapor.

He was still staring at the bundle of pages in his hand when Decius stormed into the chamber, anger tight on the younger man's face.

Solun Decius watched his commander stuff a fold of papers into a belt pouch and turn away, as if he wasn't ready to look the Astartes in the eye. 'Decius,' he managed. 'Report.'

'Resistance was encountered,' he growled. 'I... We dealt with the remainder of Grulgor's men. They made an attempt to reach the landing bay. We suffered some casualties as they were repelled.' Decius's face became a grimace. 'It was a slaughter.'

Garro eyed him. They would have done the same to us, if we had given them the opportunity. Why else do you think that Typhon placed both Grulgor and me aboard this ship, if not to have my command terminated when the moment came?'

Decius wanted to snap out the angry reply boiling in his thoughts, to say that maybe that was true, but perhaps it was only Garro who had been on the target list. He stared angrily at the deck. What exasperated him more than anything was that he had not been given the choice! His fate was tied to the battle-captain's now, whatever happened. Yes, perhaps this might have been what Decius would have chosen had he been given the opportunity, but the sheer fact he had not made him rebel against it!

His mentor read the emotion on his face. 'Speak plainly, lad.'

'What would you have me say?' Decius retorted hotly.

'The truth. If not here and now, then you may never get another chance,' Garro replied, keeping his tone level. 'I would have you speak your mind, Solum'

There was a long pause as Decius worked to frame his resentment. 'I put down three men wearing my own colours back there,' he said, jerking his head at the corridor and the ship beyond, 'not xenos or mutants, but Death Guard, my brother Astartes!'

'Those men ceased to be our brethren the instant they chose Horas's path over the Emperor's.' Garro sighed. 'I share the pain of this, Solun, more than you can know, but they have become traitors-'

'Traitors?' The curse exploded from him. 'Who are you to decide that, Battle-Captain Garro? What authority do you have to make such a determination, sir? You are not Warmaster, not a primarch, not even a first captain! Yet you make this choice for all of us!' Garro watched without responding. Decius knew that daring to take such a tone with a senior officer was worth punishment and censure, but still he raged on. What... what if it is
we
who are the traitors, captain? Horus will no doubt paint us as such when he learns of what you have done.'

You have seen what I have seen,' said his commander evenly. 'Tarvitz, Grulgor, the kill orders from Eidolon and Typhon... If there is an explanation that would undo all of that, that would make this all go away, I would give much to know it.'

Decius advanced a step. 'There is something you fail to consider. Ask yourself this, my lord: What if Horus is right?'

He had barely uttered the question when the combat alert sirens began to wail.

'Say that again!' snapped Temeter, pulling the Astartes holding the long-range vox towards him.

With the constant drumming of shellfire back and forth between the Death Guard assault force and the Isstvanian defenders, it was difficult to hear the man's words. Another blistering salvo of vulcan bolter fire from the
Dies Irae
roared over their heads, blotting out everything else as the Titan continued its slow advance.

'Lord, I have fragmentary signals! I can't make head nor tail of them!'

'Just give me what you have,' Temeter said, crouching down behind a broken ferrocrete emplacement, ignoring the whine of needier rounds and the snap-crack of crimson laser beams.

'Still nothing from the orbital elements,' continued the Death Guard, 'I caught an intercept to the Sons of

Horns, Squad Lachost, from Lucius of the Emperor's Children.'

'Lucius? What did he say?'

'It was very garbled, sir, but I distinctly heard the words "bio-weapon".'

Temeter's eyes narrowed. 'Are you certain? There was nothing in the mission briefing to indicate the Isstvanians have that capability. This is their holy city, after all. Why would they deploy something like that-'

Temeter suddenly broke off and looked up. The overlapping sounds of the battle had become background noise to him, a constant rush of shot and shell, but suddenly something had changed.

It was the Titan. The
Dies Irae
was only a few hundred metres from where Temeter crouched, and he had quickly become accustomed to the ground-shaking impacts it made with every footfall, anticipating the rhythm of them, but the massive humanoid machine had stilled and now it stood there, a vast iron citadel, joints hissing and ticking. Mortar shells arced past them and impacted harmlessly on
Dies Irae's
torso hull, drawing no reaction from the crew. The Titan's mighty guns were still pointed directly at the enemy lines, but they were silent.

'What in Terra's name is that fool up to?' Temeter snarled. 'Raise the Titan! Get Princeps Turnet on the vox and have him explain himself!'

The captain of the Fourth Company scanned the hull of the machine with his optics. There was no visible damage of such scale that would cause a Titan to shut down, no possible reason that Temeter could see for it to just
stop.
His line of sight passed over the access hatches in the hull and he saw all of them were shut fast. Temeter searched for and found power shaft vents in the thigh armour of the mechanism. Normally they would be puffing with the release of spent coolant gasses, but instead they were sealed. Chill knives of apprehension stabbed into him.