‘You’ve got an Apothecary?’ Gage asks, his voice a husk of its normal baritone.
‘Just coming, sir.’
‘Your name?’
‘Thiel, sir. Aeonid Thiel. 135th Company.’
‘Marked for censure?’
‘Today started in a different place, sir.’
‘That it did, Thiel. Well said. Who put you in charge?’
‘I put myself in charge. I was awaiting interview on deck forty when everything went to pieces. There was no chain of command. I decided I needed to build one.’
‘Good work.’
‘What happened, sir?’ Thiel asks. He steps back slightly to allow the Apothecary to start work on Gage’s wounds.
‘Something attacked us. Blew the whole main bridge. Some of us got out. More than that, I can’t say.’
‘Who did we lose?’ Thiel asks.
He’s impertinent, Gage thinks. He’s–
No, he’s not. He’s level-headed. He’s practical. He’s fearless. He’s asking questions because he needs to know the answers.
‘The shipmaster, certainly,’ says Gage. ‘Most of the bridge seniors. Chapter Master Vared. Chapter Master Banzor. Your Chapter Master, Antoli.’
‘Terrible losses. What about the primarch?’
‘I did not see him die, but I fear the worst,’ replies Gage.
Thiel is silent for a moment.
‘What are your orders, sir?’ he asks.
‘What was your operational plan, sergeant?’
‘Practicaclass="underline" I was attempting to consolidate and coordinate a shipboard fighting force, sir, and begin to retake the ship. These daemons are everywhere.’
‘Daemons, Thiel? I don’t think we believe in daemons these days.’
‘Then I don’t know what you want to call them, sir, because they are not xenos. They are byblows. Monsters. Warp-things. It takes everything we’ve got to kill them.’
‘Is that why you raided the primarch’s collection?’ asks Gage.
‘No. I raided the primarch’s collection because of the Word Bearers, sir.’
‘Theoreticaclass="underline" explain that logic,’ Gage asks. Then he says, ‘Wait, wait. Apothecary, help me to my feet.’
‘My lord, you are in no condition to–’ the Apothecary begins.
‘Help me to damn well stand up, Apothecary,’ Gage snaps.
They help him up. He is unsteady. The Apothecary resumes dressing his wrist stump.
‘Now, continue,’ says Gage. ‘Theoretical?’
‘We are attacked by the Word Bearers,’ says Thiel.
‘Agreed.’
‘These byblow daemons may be allied to them, some form of creature they have enslaved to their service. Or they may be controlling the XVII. It would certainly explain why our brothers have turned against us in such a fundamental fashion.’
‘Agreed. Continue.’
‘The daemons present a significant threat, but they appear to be… receding.’
‘Receding? Explain.’
‘It’s like a tide going out, sir. They are fewer and weaker than they were an hour ago. As though they are draining back into hell or the warp. However, the Word Bearers have three cruisers alongside us, and they are in the process of boarding. Within the next hour they will be through the airgates and the hull, and we will be compelled to fight our own kind. This form of combat is unprecedented. Their advantage is shock and surprise. Our counter-advantage must be a lack of convention.’
‘Expand.’
‘They know what we are, for they are us. They know the attributes of our armour and our weapons. They also know our tactics and formulae of war, for our beloved primarch has made his codifications available to all his brothers. We never thought we would need to conceal our combat methods from our own kind. Today, we have been disabused of that notion. So we must fight them in ways that they do not expect from us. We must use the unconventional, the improvised and the makeshift. In order to properly honour the combat teachings of Roboute Guilliman, we must cast his rules aside for the day. I have always considered his greatest wisdom to be Remark 101.x–’
Gage nods.
‘I know it. “What wins the fight is what wins the fight. Ultimately, nothing should be excluded if that exclusion leads to defeat”.’
‘Precisely so, sir.’
‘The “by any means” edict,’ Gage says. ‘The ultimate rule that no rule is unbreakable. You know, that idea always troubled him. He told me he often thought to excise the remark. He thought it too dangerous. He feared it would stand, in posterity, as a justification for any action.’
‘I think the XVII have already dispensed with any such rationale, sir,’ replies Thiel. ‘I also would urge you not to refer to the primarch in the past tense in front of the men.’
Gage catches himself.
‘Quite correct, sergeant.’
‘Are my theory and my practice approved, sir?’ Thiel asks.
‘They are. Let us coordinate. What other officers can we contact?’
‘There is a possibility that Chapter Master Empion is operational on deck thirty-five with a resistance force, and Captain Heutonicus on deck twenty.’
‘A decent beginning,’ says Gage. He picks up his fallen power sword and slides it into its scabbard. ‘Let’s move before this day goes altogether. That friction axe?’
‘Sir?’
‘Can it be wielded one-handed?’
Thiel hands it over.
‘It’s light enough, sir.’
‘Lead the way. Let’s cut a line towards the bridge tower.’
Thiel salutes. He turns, raising his longsword and shouting instructions to the clearance team.
Gage glances at the Apothecary.
‘Are we done?’ he asks.
‘I’d prefer to get you to–’
‘Are we done, Jaer?’
‘We are, sir. For now.’
Gage hefts the axe in his good hand.
‘Sergeant Thiel. Do you happen to know why he was under censure?’
‘I do, sir,’ says Jaer. ‘His commanding officer discovered that he was running theoreticals on how to fight and defeat Space Marines, sir. Thiel claimed, in his defence, that he had run theoreticals on all other major adversaries, and it was a tactical blind spot not to know how to fight the Legions. He said, as I understand it, that the Space Marines of the Imperium were the greatest warriors in the galaxy, and thus had an obligation to understand how to fight and defeat the greatest warriors in the galaxy. Thiel declared that Space Marines were the only opponents left worth any theoretical study. His theoreticals were regarded as treasonous thought, and he was referred to the flagship for censure.’
‘That was his infraction?’ asks Gage.
‘Looks bloody pitiful from where we’re standing, doesn’t it?’ asks Jaer.
Trooper Bale Rane and Trooper Dogent Krank are running for their lives through the burning streets. Trooper Maxilid was with them for a while, but some fugging thing from hell, something they didn’t even see properly, swept out of the fog and bit Maxilid’s bloody head off, thank you, so now they’re on their own.
They’re only alive because the thing was too busy chomping Maxilid down. Blood fugging everywhere.
Rane is pretty numb. He’s seen it all today. All of it. Everything it’s possible to see. Every horror show. Every shock, every terror. He’s seen men die. He’s seen friends die. He’s seen cities burn and starships fall out of the bloody sky. He’s seen more dead bodies than he thought it was possible to see. He’s seen men torn apart. He’s seen daemons in the fog.
Worst of all, somehow, worse even than the daemons, is that he’s seen men who should be friends, men who were supposed to be friends, turn towards him with unalloyed murder in their eyes. The basis of the Imperium has been up-ended. The fundamental tenets of loyalty to the fugging Throne of Terra have been torn down and pissed on.