“It is, Aun’el.”
“And yet I know, Por’el, as do you, that a being is far more content in the execution of its duties when it has unravelled the need for them, than when forced to comply. We each are called to serve the tau’va without question, but let us be under no illusion: the need to understand one’s niche is often powerful indeed. The Aun’chia’gor is a great tool in removing the reliance upon unthinking obedience. To become dependant upon such a thing would make us little better than the gue’la, with their stark Emperor and their blinkered, narrow little minds.” He leaned in close to the Por group, infinite eyes drinking them in. “Tell me, El’Yis’ten. Will you support me in this burden I carry, now that you see its necessity? Will you aid me in this unhappy duty?”
She looked directly into the ethereal’s eyes and Tyra, watching from across the room, was again struck by her beauty subtly enhanced by her proximity to the Aun.
“Without hesitation,” she replied.
The portal latch chimed, shattering the expectant atmosphere. Tyra watched the door melt open silently, recognising the entrant as the middle-aged shas’el who had accompanied Ko’vash to the bridge earlier. He looked tired.
The Aun tilted his head. “El’Lusha?”
“Apologies, Aun’el. And, ah, honoured tau’fann. There’s something wrong. The gue’la are scanning us, somehow. Some sort of transmission, fixing on the bridge. The AI doesn’t recognise it.”
Fio’el Boran stood, frowning. “Is it a tightbeam signal?”
“I wouldn’t know, Fio’el. Is security an issue?”
The engineer nodded, brows furrowed in thought. “I should think it is, yes... We picked up a peculiar sort of signal just before the assault on the power core. Some sort of... ‘matter transmitter’, I suspect. Fascinating.”
O’Udas addressed the room patiently, ignoring the fio’el’s enthusiasm. “I’m invoking Martial Command, just for now. With your permission, Kor’o?”
Tyra nodded helplessly, feeling events slipping beyond his grasp.
The general continued with gusto. “All ranking personnel to evacuate the bridge.”
The shas’el hurried to escort the ethereal from the room, already a hive of activity. Tyra sat in silence — how could they expect him to desert his bridge? The very idea was ludicrous.
His troubled thoughts were shattered by Udas, calling after El’Lusha. “Shas’el?” the general barked. “What’s the infantry situation?”
“Not good, O’Udas. We’re diverting all units to the central promenade — the gue’la are making a last stand.”
“Can you spare any to guard the bridge?”
“I wouldn’t like to. We’re not out of trouble yet.”
“Very well.” The general fidgeted with the single braid of hair hanging over his shoulder, deep in thought. He fixed El’Lusha with an inquisitive, if troubled, gaze. “Tell me... Where is La’Kais?”
They were a magnificent sight, Ensign Kilson thought (with, he admitted, a healthy twinge of fear). Clambering aboard the grid plate at the centre of the tech shrine, easing their way between resonating coils of copper viscera — they were enough to leave him staring dumbstruck, mouth hanging open.
Their enormity was, in itself, daunting. Half as tall again as an average man, they hulked above all the personnel around them, grey-green armour plates glinting dully in the light. More striking even than their appearance was their reputation: warriors such as these saturated the legends of the Imperium with tales of glory and honour and valour. They were avatars of humanity’s magnificence, living weapons designed solely to serve the Emperor’s guiding light.
Kilson had never imagined in his wildest dreams being so close to a Space Marine that he could almost touch its articulating armour segments, feeling the vibrations of its colossal strides running through the deck beneath his feet. To see even one of the legendary figures in an entire lifetime was considered extraordinary. To escort a full squad, across four decks and two vertices of a battlecruiser, no less... it was beyond incredible.
The chamber he’d led them to, a cavernous hangar with floating glow-globes and buttressed walls, was alive with the cloying emissions of two incense drones, circling one another in the shadows high above. A trio of tech-priests, sinister figures peering out beneath heavy cowls, chanted litanies from a pulpit nearby Arranged with sprawling organic randomness at one end of the hangar, the strangest machine that Kilson had ever seen thrummed with barely restrained energy. Its looping coils and copper ducts reached a higher resonance and Kilson felt sure the air itself had begun to shiver.
He’d been astonished at how enthusiastically the squad — a brother-sergeant and five Marines of the Raptors Chapter — had volunteered for the mission. On the admiral’s orders he’d visited the isolated section of the vessel where they were quartered, mind awash in excitement and trepidation. He’d not been allowed entry into the vaulted hallways and chapels of their habitation, of course (the very thought of desecrating those purified chambers was insane), but his stammered vox call across the internal comm had been answered almost immediately.
They’d come stamping along the deck like ancient giants, red eyeplates glowing, titanic frames easing forwards in a chorus of voices requesting information. With their helmets cradled uniformly in their left arms, Kilson had taken the opportunity to compare the exteriors of the armoured giants with the all too human, almost frail-seeming faces peering from within. Not that their features betrayed any fragility, of course; their dark expressions put him in mind of starving men, reacting to the promise of food.
He’d done his best to satisfy their curiosity, though they spent much of the journey to the tech bay in vox-communication with the admiral, clarifying their mission. He’d caught a snatch of their rumbled conversation as he led them along the secured corridors of the ship’s core (hastily cleared of ratings scum by a small horde of armsmen). They’d seemed eager for action.
At one point they’d passed through a crewspace where someone had daubed red graffiti across the tarnished bulkhead, an illiterate splatter of paint.
THEY iNSiDE AMUNG. ALL DiE!!
“Ensign,” one of the Marines had barked, gauntleted finger jabbing in his direction, then gesturing at the inscription. “What is this?”
“J-just nonsense, my lord. Ratings gossip. Superstition, you understand.”
“Explain.”
He swallowed, throat dry. “There’s talk of... uh... things, sir. Aboard the ship.”
“What ‘things’?”
Kilson shrugged helplessly, cheeks burning. The Marines exchanged glances, faces invisible behind glowering eyesockets.
“Lead on,” the sergeant growled.
And now, four decks and two vertices later, Kilson was forgotten by them — a brief insect guide that had fulfilled its purpose and vanished. He lurked in the doorway of the tech bay and watched the priests fussing around the energy grid.
As they worked, the Space Marines replaced their helmets and linked arms, bodies swaying almost imperceptibly in time to some unknown purification prayer or litany. Kilson found himself wishing that they’d share its comforting verses with those beyond their circle of internal communication. Despite the awe and fear he felt, he was quickly finding an urge growing within himself to cherish every moment of their presence, as if somehow their unmistakable righteousness and purity might rub off, even on one so humble as him.
“The locarus has a deployment solution,” a priest hissed, studying a complex arrangement of brass-bound gauges. “Omnissiah be praised.”