The Flight of the Eisenstein (24 page)

He heard the agony beneath the veteran's next words, even through the crackling hiss of the vox channel. 'I am no longer part of the Legion. I can no longer be a party to what the Warmaster is doing.'

The battle-captain held the vox away and rubbed at his face.

'It could be a ruse,' insisted Vought. 'That transport could be packed with Astartes from Horus's ship!'

'Let them come,' growled Decius. 'I would prefer honest battle to all this subterfuge.'

'Or perhaps a bomb

'No.' Garro's voice brought silence. 'She is aboard. He does not lie.'

She?
Carya's brow furrowed.
Who is he talking about?

'There are refugees on that vessel, I am certain of it. Open the landing bay and prepare to take the Thunderhawk aboard,' he ordered.

The blocky ship maneuvered uneasily into the capture cradle and the thrusters flared out. With grinding hisses, the deck servitors worked the manipulator arms to bring the Thunderhawk forward and down on to the same grating where Garro and his men had arrived less than a day ago. Hakur and his squad were ready with their combi-bolters cocked and aimed, but Garro refused to draw a weapon. He saw Voyen and the others watching him carefully, the question clear on their faces. They thought him mad to do this, he realized. He would have said the same in their place.

He did not blame them, but then they did not see as he did. Even Garro himself found it hard to articulate the compulsion he felt in his heart. He had knowledge. That was it. Although he could not explain it, he knew with absolute certainty that the ship before him carried a cargo as precious as the warning he had dedicated himself to delivering. The dream... It all came back to the dream.

The Thunderhawk's forward hatch spat atmospheric gasses and yawned open, allowing four figures to disembark. At the head was a craggy, aged warrior in the power armour of the Sons of Horus. He walked with the same stiff pride Garro had seen in a hundred other Cthonian Astartes, but his expression was one of sorrow, of a soldier who had seen too much. He bore the signs of recent combat, new wounds still wet with freshly clotted blood, but he paid them no mind.

'So you are Garro,' he said. 'Young Garviel spoke of you once or twice. He said you were a good man.'

'And you are Iacton Qruze. I would like to say well met, captain, but that is as far from the truth as it could be.'

Qruze nodded heavily. 'Aye.' He paused for a moment and then met Garro's gaze. 'You'll want this, then, I suppose.' The old warrior held out his bolter and the other Astartes tensed at the motion. 'Take it, lad. If you mean to end us, then do it with this, if that is to be the way of things. We can run no further.'

Garro took the gun and handed it away to Sendek. 'I'll have it cleaned and returned to you,' he said. 'I fear I will need every able man in the coming hours.' The captain stepped forward and offered Qruze his hand. 'I have a mission to take warning of Horus's perfidy to Terra and the Emperor. Will you join me in this?'

'I will at that,' Qruze said, accepting the gesture. 'I pledge my command to your mission, such as it is. I'm afraid all I have to offer from the Third Company is a single Luna Wolf, getting along in his years.'

'Luna Wolf?' repeated Decius. 'Your Legion-'

The old soldier's eyes flashed with anger. 'I'll not be known as a Son of Horus again, mark that well, lad.'

Garro gave a small smile. 'Just so, Captain Qruze. I welcome you to the motley company of the starship
Eisenstein.
We number less than a hundred battle-brothers.'

'Enough, if the fates smile kindly.'

Garro nodded at Qruze's injuries. 'Do you require a medicae?'

The Luna Wolf waved the question away, instead turning to gestured to the other passengers from the shuttle. 'I am remiss. Loken asked me to keep these people safe and that I've done by bringing them here. You should greet them too.'

Nathaniel looked down at an elderly fellow and recognized him instantly. 'You, I know you.'

The old man wore the robes of a highly-ranked iterator, now somewhat the worse for wear, but still with the manner of his esteemed office beneath his troubled expression. He managed a weak smile. 'If it pleases the battle-captain, I am Kyril Sindermann, primary iterator of the Imperial truth.' The words trickled out of his mouth by rote, but the pat response crumbled as he said it. 'Or, at least I was. I fear that in recent days I have come to a moment of transition.'

'As have we all,' agreed Garro, musing for a moment. 'I remember, I saw you on board the
Vengeful Spirit,
passing through the landing bay. You were going somewhere. You seemed disturbed.'

'Ah, yes,' Sindermann threw a look back at the other two passengers. 'Such is my vanity that I hoped you might have known me from my speeches, but no matter.' He composed himself. Clearly the escape from Horas's ship had taken its toll on the man. Sindermann placed a wary hand on Nathaniel's vambrace. 'Thank you for the sanctuary you have granted us, Captain Garro. Please, allow me to present my companions. The lady Mersadie Oliton, one of the Emperor's documentarists...'

'A remembrancer?' Nathaniel watched with interest as the ebon-skinned woman's head emerged from beneath a roughly woven traveling hood. She had a peculiar skull that extended beyond the back of her neck far more than that of a normal human, and it shimmered like glass. He instantly thought of the jor-gall psyker, but where that xenos child had been a thing of haphazard, ugly mutation, the documentarist was dainty and brimming with grace, even under these trying circumstances. Garro caught himself staring and nodded. 'My lady. Forgive me, I have never met a storyteller before.' She was quite different from what he had expected. Oliton seemed as if she was made of spun glass and he was afraid to touch her for fear she might break.

You remind me of Loken,' she blurted suddenly, the outburst seeming to surprise her. You have the same eyes.'

Garro nodded again. 'Thank you for the compliment. If it was Captain Loken's desire to see you kept safe, then it is mine as well. Do not fear.'

Sindermann saw the brittleness in her and gently guided the remembrancer to one side. 'One other refugee, captain-'

Nathaniel saw the last figure and his throat tightened. It was a woman in simple robes. He blinked, unsure if what he saw before him was real or some kind of strange vision. You,' he managed. Garro knew her even though they had never met. He had felt the salt tang of her tears on his face, the ghost of her voice in the depth of his healing Uance, and again in the barracks.

'My name is Euphrati Keeler,' she said. The woman laid her hand flat upon his chest plate and smiled warmly. 'Save us, Nathaniel Garro.'

'I will,' he said distantly, for long moments losing himself in her steady, shimmering gaze. With effort, he tore himself away and gestured to his men to stand down. Garro took a breath and beckoned Voyen. 'Get these civilians to the inner decks where they will be safer. See to their wellbeing and report back to me.'

Qruze hovered at his side. 'Do you have a plan of action, lad?'

'We fight our way out,' said Hakur as he approached. 'Punch through and go to the warp.'

'Huh, blunt and direct. How very like a Death Guard.'

Hakur eyed the Luna Wolf. 'I've often heard the same said of your Legion.'

The old Astartes nodded. 'That's true enough. The humours of our brotherhoods do find themselves in lockstep.' He looked at Nathaniel. 'To battle, then?'

Garro watched Keeler and the others walk away, his thoughts conflicted. 'To battle,' he replied.

Terminus Est

The Gauntlet

Into the Maelstrom

As Isstvan III revolved beneath them, the ships of the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet moved with it, following the planet as it turned from the watery sunlight of day and into the leaden darkness of twilight. The ships remained in geostationary orbits, the swarm curled around the world in a loose, iron-fingered grip. As night fell, the burning cities still smoldering from the passage of the firestorm were visible, the glow of the massive pyres sullen and shimmering through the murky cloud. So much ash and fumes had been thrown into the planet's atmosphere that the skies were turning into a shroud of chemical haze. In time, the climate would start to shift, becoming colder as the warmth from the Isstvan star was blotted out. If there had been any native flora or fauna remaining, this would have been the death sentence for them, but everything that had evolved to life on Isstvan III was already dust and cinders.

The fleet kept watch, sensors to the surface in search of any who might have survived the virus bombardment, and with the attention of the other ships elsewhere, it had become possible for the
Eisenstein
to shift slowly out of formation. Carya and his crew allowed the frigate to come up from the high anchor station, fading into the press of the other warships, but now they had gone as far as they could without courting suspicion. If
Eisenstein
were to escape the Isstvan system, it would not be by stealth.

Master Carya peered into the hololith tank, looking through the glowing symbols to Garro, the Luna Wolf Qruze and the other Death Guard warriors. The fingers of Carya's left hand were mechanical augments, replacements from an accident years earlier when a plasma holdout gun had overloaded in his grip. Inside them were delicate slivers of circuitry that, among other things, allowed him to manipulate the virtual shapes in the tank as if they were real objects.

The hololith showed a basic representation of the Isstvan system, distorted to present the close orbital space around the third planet in greater detail. Carya pointed to a stylized cross drifting high up over the star system's ecliptic plane. Vought has computed a minimum distance vector for us, using the ship's cogitator chorus. If we can reach this point, we will be beyond the c-limit and free to make a warp translation.'

'Naval terminology was never my strong point,' grumbled Qruze. 'Indulge an old war dog and explain it to me in terms a soldier might grasp.'

'We can't go to the warp while we're still inside the gravity shadow of the sun,' said Sendek briskly, indicating the Isstvan star. 'That is the threshold the shipmaster speaks of.'

Carya nodded, a little surprised to find a line Astartes with a basic grasp of astrogation. 'Indeed, the footprint of the solar energy interferes with the warp transition. We must go beyond it and reach the jump point in order to enter the immaterium with any degree of safety.'

'It's a long distance,' mused Garro. 'We'll have to travel several light-seconds at maximum burn to get there, and with the drives at full, it will light a torch to show Horus where we're heading.'

Qruze leaned into the hololith. 'There are capital ships all around. It would only take a couple of them to lay their lances on us and we'd be finished. Somehow I don't think the Warmaster will be willing to let us leave unchallenged, eh?'

'Our void shields are at full capacity,' continued Carya. 'We can weather a few indirect hits and we have agility on our side.'

Decius gave a humorless chuckle. While it heartens me to see that the good master here has confidence in his ship and his crew, if must be said that only a fool would not think the odds are stacked high against us!'

'I don't deny it,' retorted the naval officer. 'Given the circumstances, I rate our chances of survival at one in ten, and in that, I am being more than generous.'

Vought spoke up cautiously. 'At this time,
Eisenstein
is close to the rear edge of the fleet pattern. I took the liberty of informing the fleet master's office that we were suffering a malfunction in one of our tertiary fusion generators. It is standard naval procedure for a ship under those circumstances to drop back from the main formation, to prevent other vessels being damaged in case of a cascade failure and core implosion.'

'How long will that lie last us?' asked Garro.

'Until the moment we fire our main engines,' replied the woman.

Qruze made a
tsk
noise under his breath. 'We can't fight our way out on this little scow, and we can barely run. We may be able to duck and dive, but how far do you think we'll get before one of those monsters...' he stabbed a finger at the large warships flanking them, 'before one of them gets its fangs into our throat?'

'Not far enough,' said Sendek grimly.

Carya tapped his metal fingers on the control console. 'It is true that the
Eisenstein
lacks the velocity to make it to the jump point clear of any pursuit. That is,
if
we follow the most direct course.' He traced a straight line from the ship's orbital location to the cross icon. The shipmaster pulled at the course indicator and stretched it in another direction. Vought has come up with an alternative solution. It is not without risk, but if we succeed, we will be able to outrun the Warmaster's guns.'

Garro studied the new course plot and smiled at the daring of it. 'I concur. This is so ordered.'

'A bold action,' countered Decius, 'but I must highlight the single large impediment to it.' The Astartes leaned in and pointed at a massive vessel floating off to the port. 'That course takes us right across the arc of this ship's engagement zone.'

Typhon's command,' said Garro, 'the
Terminus Est!

Calas Typhon fingered the cutting edge of his man-reaper with bare fingers, letting the keen blade pull at the hardened skin there, drawing faint lines of dark Astartes blood. His mood was a mixture of conflicting, polar emotions. On one level, he felt a simmering elation at the unfolding events around him, an anticipation of what great things were coming to pass. Typhon felt liberation, if an Astartes could know such a thing, a cold and cruel joy to know that after so long, after so many years of nurturing and hiding his secret wisdom, he would soon be free to walk openly with it. The things he knew, the words he had read in the books shown to him by his kinsman Erebus... The enlightenment the Word Bearers chaplain had brought to Calas Typhon had changed him forever. But Typhon was angry with it. Oh, he knew that his master Mortarion was slowly coming to the same path as he was, thanks to the direction of Horus, but both the primarch and the Warmaster were only just starting down that road. Typhon and Erebus and the others... they were the ones who had been truly illuminated, and it chafed at him that he was forced to play the role of dutiful first captain when in fact it was his knowledge that outstripped theirs.