Selaton throws himself down in rolling cover, using the speeder as a block. He tries to return fire. His aim is good, but the cataphractii soaks up his rounds. Flames from the mass-reactive impacts gout around the reinforced carapace.
The Word Bearer heavy fires at Selaton. The speeder takes more serious damage, including a bolt that scalps the crew bay, peeling the metal skin of the cabin roof up like the tongue of a shoe.
Ventanus is hurt. His leg is punctured. The bleeding’s already stopped. He churns to his feet. He’s got the speed the hulking Terminator lacks. It’s a blood-red beast, maned with crimson horsehair. He rushes it.
It swings its aim back to him. Ventanus is transhuman fast, but he can’t outrun shells of a combi-bolter, and his armour won’t stop them either.
There’s a ping of tearing metal, of bolts popping. It’s the sound Selaton makes as he wrenches the speeder’s autocannon off its mount. He’s standing on the speeder, half inside the cab, one foot on the seats, one braced on the nose plate, the cabin roof peeled back as if to reveal him like a theatrical surprise. He’s got the multi-barrelled cannon wedged against his hip, the metal snake of the munition feeder coiling back, fat and heavy, into the crew bay.
He fires. The heavy weapon makes a grinding metal noise like bells being crushed through some kind of mill. A jumping lick of burning gases flickers around the rotating barrels.
The storm of shots brackets the cataphractii and rips across him. Fragments of metal flake off his armour in a puff of abraded smoke. Rubble on either side of him explodes. Pieces of the gorget and visor fly off, along with scraps of leather pteruges, shreds of horsehair, and broken mail rings. The shots penetrate in four places, allowing blood to glug out of the bare metal craters.
The Terminator stays upright for a long time, staggering backwards under the hail of fire. Finally, he goes down on his back with a crash.
Ventanus stands over him. Smoke, blue and pungent, streaks the air. The Word Bearer, gurgling the blood that is filling his helmet and throat brace, stirs. He’s dying, but he’s a long way from dead. He starts lifting the oil-black combi-bolter.
Ventanus brings the blade of the standard shaft down through the visor slot with both hands, driving it and turning it and screwing it, until it meets the inside back of the armoured helmet. Blood wells out over the eye slits and gorget lip, and runs down the sides of the helmet to mat the horsehair broom of the crest.
Ventanus steps back, leaving the standard planted there, crooked. Selaton approaches.
‘We must move,’ he says.
‘Is the speeder functional?’
‘Just about.’
Ventanus pulls out the standard and carries it towards the shot-up vehicle.
‘That’s why,’ he says.
‘What?’ asks Selaton.
‘That’s why I brought this,’ Ventanus replies, raising the bloody standard. ‘Precisely for things like that.’
‘What does it mean?’ asks Marius Gage.
‘It means…’ Guilliman begins. He takes the data-slate back, ponders it. ‘It means a precondition of malice.’
He looks out of the flagship’s vast crystalflex ports at the bombarded planet below.
‘Not that it‘s really in any doubt,’ he adds. ‘If this started as an accident or mistake, then it has truly passed beyond any limit of forgiveness. It is, however, salutary to know that my brother’s crime is entirely proven.’
Guilliman summons the Master of Vox with a quick gesture.
‘Rescind my previous looped broadcast,’ he says, taking the speaker horn. ‘Replace it with this.’
He hesitates, thinking, and then lifts his head and speaks cleanly and quickly into the device.
‘Lorgar of Colchis. You may consider the following. One: I entirely withdraw my previous offer of solemn ceasefire. It is cancelled, and will not be made again, to you or to any other of your motherless bastards. Two, you are no longer any brother of mine. I will find you, I will kill you, and I will hurl your toxic corpse into hell’s mouth.’
He hands the horn back to the vox-officer.
‘Put that on repeat immediately,’ he says.
Guilliman ushers Gage, Shipmaster Zedoff and a group of other senior executives towards the strategium.
‘In the absence of vox, we will need to use direct link laser comms and sealed orders physically carried by fast lighters to coordinate the fleet,’ he begins. ‘I have sketched a hasty tactical plan. Specific ship orders must be communicated to each master and captain by the most expedient means available. Within the hour – the hour, you understand – I want this fleet operating to purpose. We will deny that bombardment.’
‘That is our objective?’ asks Zedoff.
‘No,’ Guilliman admits. ‘I am going to put that trust in the Mlatus and the Solonim Woe. They will lead the formations against the planetary attack. Our specific objective will be the Fidelitas Lex.’
Zedoff raises his eyebrows.
‘A personal score, then,’ he says.
Guilliman doesn’t try to hide it.
‘I will kill him. I will literally kill him. With my bare hands.’
He looks at Gage.
‘Don’t say anything, Marius,’ he says. ‘You’ll be transferring to the Mlatus to lead the attack. With a sober head and a proper plan. I know that going after the enemy flag has serious demerits, tactically. I don’t care. This is the one battle of my career I’m going to fight with my heart rather than my head. The bastard will die. The bastard.’
‘I was merely going to object to being absent at the moment you kill him,’ says Gage.
‘My primarch!’
They turn. The Master of Vox is pale.
‘Lithocast, sir. Long-range signal from the Fidelitas Lex.’
Guilliman nods.
‘So he ignores my plea for ceasefire, but I tell him to go and screw himself and he makes contact immediately. Put it on.’
‘My primarch, I–’ Gage begins.
Guilliman pushes past him, heading for the lithocaster plate.
‘There is no way you will stop me having this conversation, Marius,’ he says.
Guilliman steps onto the hololithic platform. Light bends and bubbles in front of him. Images form and fade, re-form and decay, like scratches of light on film. Then Lorgar is standing there, life-size, facing Guilliman. His face is in shadow again, but the light construction makes him look utterly real. Other shapes crowd around him, sections and fragments of shadow, no longer recognisable as his minions and lieutenants.
‘Have you lost your temper, Roboute?’ Lorgar asks. They can hear the smile.
‘I am going to gut you,’ Guilliman replies softly.
‘You have lost your temper. The great and calm and level-headed Roboute Guilliman has finally succumbed to passion.’
‘I will gut you. I will skin you. I will behead you.’
‘Ah, Roboute,’ Lorgar murmurs. ‘Here, at the very end, I finally hear you talk in a way that actually makes me like you.’
‘Precondition of malice,’ says Guilliman, barely a whisper. ‘You took the Campanile. By my estimation, you took it at least a hundred and forty hours ago. You took the ship, and you staged this. You organised this atrocity, Lorgar, and you made it seem like a terrible accident so you could capitalise on our mercy. You made us stay our hand while you committed murder.’
‘It’s called treachery, Roboute. It works very well. How did you find out?’
‘We back-plotted the Campanile’s route once we’d worked out what had hit the yards. When you look at the plot, the notion that it was any kind of accident becomes laughable.’