‘What does not kill me,’ replies Guilliman, ‘is not trying hard enough.’
He makes them smile. He’s good at that. But they can all read the change in him. He was never a man you could warm to. He was too hard, too driven, too austere. Now he is wounded. Wounded like an animal might be wounded. Wounded in a way that makes that animal dangerous.
‘Voided without a helm,’ Guilliman says. ‘Primarch biology helped, but the atmospheric envelope was my true saviour.’
‘What...’ Gage begins.
‘What was that thing?’ Guilliman finishes. Everyone is staring, everyone listening.
‘Should this be a conversation we finish in private?’ asks Gage.
Guilliman shakes his head.
‘As I understand it from Thiel,’ he says, gesturing to the sergeant at his side, ‘you have all spent hours fighting your way through this ship against other fiends like it. It has cost you. I can see it has cost you, Marius.’
Gage is suddenly painfully aware of his truncated arm.
‘I can’t see any point in hiding the truth from anybody here,’ says Guilliman. ‘You have all served Ultramar today with more than duty might have reason to expect. And the day is not done. It seems unlikely that we will win anything, or even survive, but I would dearly like to wound our treacherous foe before we die.’
The primarch looks around the room. His armour is sheened and sticky with filth. His face is dirty, and there is blood in his hair.
‘Let us share what we know, and build some strategy. I welcome theoreticals from anybody at this stage. Anything will be considered.’
He walks over to the strategium.
‘We can use the word daemon, I think. A warp entity manifested and destroyed the bridge. You have fought others. Daemon is as good a word as any. It was Lorgar, or at least...’
He pauses, and looks back at them.
‘I don’t know where Lorgar is. I don’t know if my brother was ever in this system in the flesh, but it was his voice and his presence that visited me, and it was him that transformed. It was no trick. Lorgar and his Legion have consorted with the powers of the warp. They have forged an unholy covenant. It has twisted them. It has started a war.’
Guilliman sighs.
‘I don’t know how to fight them. I know how to fight most things. I can even work out how to fight warriors of the Legiones Astartes, though the notion seems heretical. Like Thiel here, I can think the unthinkable, and make theoreticals out of the blasphemous. But daemons? It seems to me, with the Council of Nikaea, that we voluntarily rid ourselves of the one weapon we might have had against the warp. We could dearly use the Librarius now.’
His warriors nod in silent agreement.
‘We should petition for their reinstatement,’ he adds, ‘if we ever get the chance. We cannot do it now. There is no time, no means. But if any of us survive this, know that the edict must be overturned.’
He pauses, thoughtful.
‘It is almost as though,’ he muses, ‘someone knew. Nikaea disarmed us. It is as though our enemy knew what was coming, and orchestrated events so that we would voluntarily cast aside our only practical weapon the moment before it was needed.’
There is a murmur of quiet dismay.
‘We are all being used,’ Guilliman says, lifting his eyes and looking at Gage. ‘All of us. Even Lorgar. When he tried to kill me, to rip me into space, I could feel the pain in him. I have never been close to him, but there is a fraternal link. I could feel his horror. His agony at the way fate had twisted on us all.’
‘He said Horus–’ Gage begins.
‘I know what he said,’ replies Guilliman.
‘He said others were already dead. At Isstvan,’ Gage presses. ‘Manus. Vulkan. Corax.’
‘If that is true,’ says Empion, ‘it is a tragedy beyond belief.’
‘Three sons. Three primarchs, the loss is appalling,’ agrees Guilliman. ‘Four, if you count Lorgar. Five, if what he says of Horus is true. And others, he said, had turned...’
Guilliman takes a deep breath.
‘Corax and Vulkan I will mourn dearly. Manus I will miss most of all.’
Gage knows what his primarch means. In all tactical simulations, Guilliman shows particular favour for certain of his brothers. He refers to them as the dauntless few, the ones he can most truly depend upon to do what they were made to do. Dorn and his Legion are one. Ill-tempered, argumentative Russ is another. Sanguinius is a third. Guilliman admires the Khan greatly, but the White Scars are neither predictable nor trustworthy. Ferrus Manus and the Iron Hands were always the fourth of the dauntless few. With any one of those key four – Dorn, Russ, Manus or Sanguinius – Guilliman always claimed he could win any war. Outright. Against any foe. Even in extremis, the Ultramarines could compact with any one of those four allies and take down any foe. It was primary theoretical. In any doomsday scenario that faced the Imperium, Guilliman could play it out to a practical win provided he could rely on one of those four. And of them, Manus was the key. Implacable. Unshakeable. If he was at your side, he would never break.
Now, it seems, he is gone. Gone. Dead. Brother. Friend. Warrior. Leader. Ultramar’s most stalwart ally.
Guilliman breaks the bleak silence.
‘Show me tactical. The nearspace combat. Someone said there was a vox from the surface finally?’
‘From Leptius Numinus, lord,’ says the Master of Vox.
‘Who was it?’
‘Captain Ventanus,’ says Gage. ‘We had a good signal for a while, and were getting a vital datafeed, but the vox cut off suddenly about an hour ago. A violent interrupt.’
‘I don’t need to ask if you’re trying to re-establish the link?’ says Guilliman.
‘You do not, lord,’ replies the Master of Vox.
Guilliman turns to Empion.
‘Assemble all the strengths we have aboard this ship. Kill squads. Every heavy weapon we can find. Forget Chapter and company lines, just divide and group the men we have into viable fighting parties. Have the squad leaders mark their helms in red.’
‘Red, sir?’ asks Empion.
‘We do not have reliable vox, Klord, so I want firm and simple visual cues for the chain of command.’
Guilliman looks across at Thiel.
‘Besides,’ he says, ‘I think after Thiel’s efforts today, it’s high time that stopped being a mark of censure.’
‘Yes, sir,’ says Empion.
‘My lord!’ Shipmaster Hommed calls out.
‘What is it?’
‘The weapons grid, my lord. It’s firing.’
‘At whom?’
‘At... the sun.’
3
Thunder rolls through the glowering skies above the shattered palace of Leptius Numinus. It starts to rain torrentially. The weather patterns of the abused planet are convulsing again.
Ventanus stands for a moment and lets the streaming rain wash the foul black ichor off his armour. He feels the water hitting his face. He opens his eyes and watches Sparzi’s flamer squads burning the slime, the blubbery black flesh and the noxious inky entrails the daemon left behind when it exploded. The flame jets sizzle and hiss ferociously in the rain.
He walks up to what’s left of the palace atrium. Selaton is waiting for him.
‘You killed it,’ Selaton notes.
‘I don’t agree with your definition.’
‘You sent it away, then. How did you do that?’
‘Luck. Luck of the very worst kind.’
Ventanus glances back at the ruined gardens, the ragged walls, the rubble of the gate.
‘We can’t stay here,’ he says. ‘Cxir said other forces were coming. This place was hard to defend before. It will be impossible again. This was never a fortress.’