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  ‘Warmaster?’ asked Grammaticus sharply.

  ‘Horus Lupercal is Warmaster,’ Alpharius replied.

  ‘Since when?’ Grammaticus asked. There was a queasy look on his face suddenly.

  ‘Four months ago, after the Great Triumph on Ullanor. The Emperor retired from the Crusade and named his first son as Warmaster. I regret I could not attend the ceremony, but the retreat from Nurth and the business you presented to me was occupying my time. To be fair, I shun such occasions. I sent envoys.’

  ‘Horus is already Warmaster?’ Grammaticus whispered. He sat down heavily on the deck, and bowed his face. The massive Astartes looked down at him as if he was a child throwing a tantrum.

  ‘What’s the matter, John?’ asked Omegon.

  ‘Already,’ Grammaticus murmured, shaking his head. ‘So soon. Two years, he said, two years. We haven’t got two years.’

  ‘John?’

  Grammaticus refused to look up at the Astartes around him. Soneka stepped forwards and scooped him back onto his feet. Grammaticus was trembling.

  Wiping his mouth, Grammaticus looked up at Alpharius. ‘Horus is the catalyst. Please, lord, escort me to the venue. Take whatever retinue you choose. I will be your shibboleth. I will conduct you to the presence of the Cabal, as intermediary, and vouch for you. This is the way it has to be done. There is no more time. Horus is Warmaster. Oh, glory, Horus is Warmaster.’

  ‘Peto, conduct John back to his cell,’ Pech said.

  Holding Grammaticus upright, Soneka replied with a firm nod.

  Grammaticus began to struggle. ‘I have to go down first. I have to open the way!’ he cried.

  Soneka placed him in a tight arm lock, and led him towards the hatch.

  ‘We will commit a landing party to the venue zone as soon as the fleet has arrived to support us,’ Alpharius said.

  ‘You’re wasting time!’ Grammaticus yelled, fighting with Soneka. ‘You’re wasting valuable time!’

  ‘Remove him,’ said Alpharius.

  SONEKA PALMED THE lock of the cell open and threw Grammaticus inside.

  ‘I don’t appreciate the bruises, John,’ he said, rubbing his arms.

  ‘You don’t appreciate anything, Peto,’ Grammaticus growled, getting to his feet. ‘Horus is Warmaster. Do you know what that means?’

  Soneka shrugged.

  ‘It means that our timing is out! It means the war has already begun for all intents and purposes. Peto, you’ve got to help me. I need to get down there, down to the surface. I need to pave the way. The Alpha Legion mustn’t be allowed to go blundering in. It’ll ruin everything. The Cabal will not respond to military intimidation. Please, Peto.’

  ‘I can’t help you, John.’

  +Please, Peto!+

  Soneka recoiled as if he’d been stung. ‘Ow! Don’t do that again!’

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ Grammaticus murmured. ‘I’m sorry, Peto. Look, you have to help me get down to the surface.’

  ‘The primarch has ordered otherwise. I can’t do that.’

  ‘Peto…’

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘For Terra’s sake,’ Grammaticus said, sitting down on his cot. ‘The Alpha Legion has to be recruited before it’s too late, and I have to open the way.’

  ‘I have no leverage,’ Soneka said.

  ‘You hate it here!’

  Soneka nodded. ‘Yes, I fugging do. I’ve never been so lonely in my life. I trust the Alpha Legion less and less, and I positively despise my fellow operatives. I don’t understand what I’ve become caught up in, but I loathe it, day after day.’

  ‘So help me!’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You’re in a position of trust! They trust you!’ Soneka shook his head. ‘I can’t. I’m sorry, John, I just can’t.’

  ‘Peto!’ Grammaticus yelled.

  Peto waved his new hand and the hatch slammed shut, cutting Grammaticus off.

  SONEKA WALKED BACK down the grim iron corridors of the detention block. At the far end of the hallway, where he could no longer hear Grammaticus’s angry shouts and pounding fists, he leant against the wall and slid down into a crouch. ‘Peto?’

  He hadn’t heard the cage doors slide open. He sprang up, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘Was he difficult?’ asked Pech. ‘Did he try his tricks on you?’

  Soneka nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Pech asked. ‘Are you still up to the job? I can assign another operative to Grammaticus if you prefer.’

  ‘No, sir,’ Peto Soneka replied. ‘I can do this. You’ve given me a duty to perform, and I’ll see it through to the end.’

  Ingo Pech nodded. ‘Do it,’ he said.

  THREE

  High anchor, 42 Hydra Tertius, fourteen hours later

  AN AUTOMATED VOICE was blaring out across the principal embarkation deck of the carrier Loudon. ‘Move up to designated markers! Move up to designated markers! Boarding by company will commence in thirty-three zero minutes!’

  Buzzers sounded, and the announcement repeated, fighting with the cacophony of machine noise and shouts echoing around the vast platform.

  Swathed in cascades of steam and fanfared by raucous sirens, the next bank of drop-ships rose up from the service bays on the through-deck elevators, flight crews in russet overalls ran forwards to detach the undercarriage bolts with power ratchets, and servitors strutted up, tool limbs raised, to uncase and activate the autoguidance arrays built into bulges under the drop-ships’ cockpits. Overhead, the hangar’s primary hoist system swung a brace of hook-nosed escort fighters down the length of the deck to the stern catapult rails. There was a sudden, thunderous bellow of tank engines starting up. A row of forty, twin-barrelled assault tanks, drawn up along a line of thick yellow chevrons painted on the deck, began revving their turbines and snorting fumes from their exhausts, as service crews began to lower the cargo ramps of the massive bulk lifters.

  ‘Move up to designated markers!’ the automated voice repeated.

  Hurtado Bronzi signed the data-slate with a flourish, and removed his biometric from the slot in its side.

  ‘Your company stands certified, het,’ the liveried weaponsmith said formally, taking the slate back. ‘March in fortune.’

  Bronzi made the old salute of the Unity fist against his chest, nodded, and turned back to his unit.

  ‘You heard the call,’ he yelled. ‘Designated markers. Move your arses!’

  ‘Designated markers!’ Tche repeated.

  The Jokers hoisted their heavy kit and weapons, and advanced from the check station onto the main platform. Shouting and waving their arms, the bashaws shepherded them into positions on the red-painted sections of decking.

  ‘Request permission to furl the company banner for embarkation,’ Tche said.

  Bronzi nodded. There was a fire in his belly, for the first time in months. His appetite was back.

  He looked along the length of the giant platform. His bashaws were lowering the standard, and the pike-men had temporarily set their long weapons on the deck beside them. Forty metres to his left, the Carnivales had drawn up along their markers, and beyond them, the Troubadours. To his right, the 41st Zanzibari Hort were streaming forwards to their line. The air smelled of gun oil and engine smoke. Somewhere, diligently but futilely, a marching band was playing in competition with the general racket.

  Honen Mu and her aides, all carrying small kit bags and dressed in foul-weather gear, advanced across the open deck towards him.

  ‘Het Bronzi,’ Mu said.

  He made a namaste. ‘My beloved uxor. You look especially fragrant and, uhm, waterproof, today.’ The aides sniggered.

  ‘Operational?’ she asked, remaining composed.

  ‘We have just been certified,’ he replied. ‘We’re ready to ramble, uxor. When do we get to find out where?’

  ‘Any moment, Bronzi,’ she replied. She appreciated his annoyance. Namatjira had kept the details of the operation close to his chest, a mistake, in her opinion
. After the disaster of Nurth, the Lord Commander should have been working to rebuild morale. Instead, he had become even more poisonous than usual. The odium of defeat, she suspected, but there was no excuse.

  The expedition fleet had reassembled at the edge of the Nurthene system twenty-eight hours after the final collapse of the evacuation effort. From there, they had made shift to Empesal for refit and recovery. A brief furlough had been granted in the souks and circuses of Empesal, but for nothing like long enough. Word had spread that Namatjira was in close discussion with the high officers of the fleet, and some new operation was already being planned. There was a rumour that the entire expedition might be despatched to Sixty-Three Nineteen, to support the Luna Wolves in the compliance war that they had undertaken there. That, Mu believed, would have suited well. All thoughts of failure and loss, the bitter smirch of Nurth, would have been quickly expunged by the glory of serving alongside the new Warmaster and his noble Legion.

  However, Namatjira had evidently made other plans. He had declared that the expedition would be mounting an operation in concert with the Alpha Legion, and ordered immediate embarkation, an act so premature that nearly eight thousand Army casualties had to be left at Empesal, unfit for service, along with four carriers with refits and repairs still pending.

  To remedy the diminished strength of the 670th Expedition, Namatjira hastily enfranchised two brigades of Lusitan heavy infantry and an armoured cavalry company from Pramatia, together with their carrier ships and tenders, and sixteen fleet auxiliary and fire support vessels. When the expedition departed Empesal, its strength stood at about two-thirds of the force that had begun the Nurthene compliance. Even with Jeveth’s Titans gone, it was a considerable presence.

  And, of course, there was an Alpha Legion battle-barge at the head of the convoy.

  Namatjira had subjected his forces to a four and a half month shift to an undisclosed location. Onboard training continued as usual, but morale had wilted quickly. No one would say where they were going, or what manner of undertaking they would be expected to make. Namatjira seemed not to care. It was as if he had something to urgently prove, or wished to throw himself back into the field after the Nurthene debacle. Mu privately speculated that he was borrowing a little too much of the Alpha Legion’s pitiless pragmatism.

  A week before arrival, Namatjira ordered his forces to begin preparations for ground assault, and announced that the mission target had been designated as 42HtX.

  This was greeted with general puzzlement. According to form, the campaign should have been officially labelled Six-Seventy Twenty-Six. Evidently, they were not heading for a compliance action. 42Ht was a planetary code, and the X indicated Extraordinary Operations. Namatjira informed his officer caste that he had committed the expedition to support the Alpha Legion in a classified undertaking, and that Alpharius had obtained direct permission from the Warmaster for Extraordinary Operations status.

  Only the demands of deployment preparation, the daily routine of weapons certification and fitness tests, kept their minds, collectively, from wondering what the hell they were all getting into.

  Mu turned to Tiphaine, who opened the black leather wallet she was holding, and took out a sealed packet of papers. Mu took it and handed it to Bronzi.

  ‘Your operational orders,’ she said.

  ‘At last,’ Bronzi said. He held the packet up to his ear and shook it experimentally. ‘What does it say?’ he grinned.

  Mu resisted the temptation to grin back. ‘I have no idea. We all get to read the details at the same time. You’ll brief in transit. Get ready for last moment ’cept counsel as I get up to speed.’

  ‘This is going to be fun, isn’t it?’ Bronzi asked.

  ‘It rather depends on your definition of fun, Hurtado,’ she replied.

  He shrugged his heavy, armoured shoulders. ‘Well, you know… dropping blind into a place we don’t know, to go up against we know not what, with no advanced tactics? That sort of thing.’

  She returned his grin with a mordant look. ‘Then yes, this is going to be fun,’ she agreed.

  NAMATJIRA HELD OUT his arms, and the eunuch dressers slid on his full-length gloves and buttoned them around his shoulders and armpits. The gloves formed the sleeves of his dark tan leather doublet. He flexed his fingers to settle them into the gloves, as another dresser draped a cape of fur and zebra skin over his left shoulder, securing it with a golden fibula.

  He extended his right hand, and the Warden of the Seal carefully slid the heavy signet onto his middle finger. The ring was gold, with table-cut rubies at the shoulders, and a large, square bezel that bore, in intaglio, the crest of the office of Lord Commander. The band of the ring contained a biometric authority. Until the moment Namatjira had been ready to put it on, the ring had been secured in a stasis box, carried by the Warden’s men-at-arms. No chances were taken. The ring had legal force in and of itself.

  Snare drums were rapping a tattoo in the stateroom beyond the lord’s private wardrobe. Namatjira looked in the full length mirror, and then turned to his escort. One of the Lucifer Blacks carried the Lord Commander’s ceremonial hand-and-a-half sword, another his golden cap helm with its high criniere.

  Dinas Chayne entered the room, and saluted.

  ‘Is he here, Dinas?’

  ‘His ship has just docked.’

  Namatjira snapped his fingers, and the dressers, the attendants and warden and his men hurried out through the servants’ door.

  The Lord Commander turned and marched through the ornate archway into the stateroom, his companions in perfect step at his shoulders.

  Namatjira’s flagship had been named Blamires after a Concussion Age void Navy commander that the Lord Commander particularly admired. The Blamires was one of the best appointed and technically sophisticated vessels in the Imperial fleet. The stateroom he strode into was as long and broad as a cathedral’s nave, paved in black and white tiles, and walled with gold caryatid pillars and tall crystal mirrors. The high roof displayed scenes from the Age of Unification in fresco form. The ceremonial band’s tempo intensified at the Lord Commander’s approach, and the honour guard of six hundred Outremar lancers snapped to present arms.

  Halfway down the stateroom, Major General Dev, in full dress uniform, stood waiting with Jan Van Aunger, the master of the fleet, and eight senior adepts in long emerald robes. Dev stood to attention as Namatjira came to a halt in front of him. The drumming ceased the moment Namatjira stopped walking.

  ‘Lord Commander,’ said Dev, ‘the forces of the expedition stand ready for deployment. We await your authority.’

  Namatjira nodded. ‘Master Van Aunger?’ he asked.

  The venerable fleet master, robed in ermine and segmented mirror-steel, made a namaste. ‘The fleet abides, Lord Commander,’ he said, ‘all components and sub-components report smooth running. The escort squadrons are ready for launch. Target solutions for the surface coordinates have been supplied to the siege frigates, rail gun platforms, and all long range ordnance. We can commence orbital bombardment at your discretion.’

  ‘Thank you, Master Van Aunger. The bombardment will only be undertaken if necessary.’

  Van Aunger frowned. ‘As I have advised you, sir, the bombardment should precede the drop. We can’t very well hammer surface targets if our troops have already—’

  ‘Thank you, Master Van Aunger,’ said Namatjira. ‘You have your instructions.’

  Van Aunger stuck out his chin bullishly, but said nothing, and stepped back.

  ‘Lord Commander?’ Dev said gently, indicating the small jade coffer that one of the elderly adepts was holding on a velvet cushion.

  ‘A moment, major general,’ said Namatjira. On cue, a fanfare of horns sounded outside the stateroom and the double doors at the far end opened. Alpharius, alone, in full war plate, gleaming and polished, strode through, and came down the stateroom towards them. His armoured bulk was so massive that the black and white tiles creaked like ice as they took each step
.

  ‘My lord primarch,’ said Namatjira, bowing. ‘Welcome aboard.’

  ‘Lord Commander,’ Alpharius responded, making the sign of the aquila, and then unlocking his helmet. He removed it, and held it under his arm. ‘Your message said that you wished to speak with me.’

  ‘Our business commences,’ said Namatjira.

  ‘Let us pray it is fruitful,’ Alpharius agreed. In the silvery radiance of the grand stateroom, his eyes seemed as green as the jade coffer on the adept’s cushion.

  ‘I am about to issue authority,’ said Namatjira. ‘Is there any reason why I should not?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Alpharius answered. ‘The objective must be sectioned and secured as rapidly as possible. You estimated three days?’

  ‘Three days, lord primarch, unless we encounter unexpected difficulties of terrain or climate, or previously unidentified sources of resistance.’

  ‘There has been no supplementary data suggesting that, sir,’ replied Alpharius.

  ‘Then we will proceed,’ said Namatjira.

  ‘For the Emperor,’ said Alpharius.

  ‘For the Emperor!’ the honour guard barked with one voice.

  At a gesture from the major general, the adept carrying the jade coffer brought it forward to the Lord Commander, and knelt down. A second adept opened the coffer’s lid with a small silver key. As soon as the lid lifted, the receiver of the biometric scanner inside opened like a flower and dilated.

  Namatjira reached in and pressed the bezel of his signet ring into the receiver. There was a whirr and a brief pulse of light.

  ‘Authority confirmed,’ the adept said. Another fanfare sounded and sirens began to blare in the depths of the flagship below.

  Namatjira withdrew his hand, and the adepts closed the coffer and stepped back.

  ‘Lord primarch, the forces of the 670th Expedition are deploying,’ said Namatjira.

  ‘Thank you. Now, what did you want to speak about?’ asked Alpharius.

  ‘Oh, that. Let us withdraw. Privacy, I think, would be best,’ Namatjira replied.