Their helms had visors like portcullis gates. They took up positions in front of Gaunt. Holofurnace held his spear horizontally at thigh level.
Gaunt nodded to them, and then looked at the body of the regiment. The double-headed psyber eagle shuffled and fluttered on its nearby perch.
Gaunt made a short address, just a few words. It didn’t need much. They were ready. They had been waiting since Jago for a real fight, and now it was upon them.
When he was done, he made way for Zweil. The ayatani led the assembly in a blessing and commendation. Just for once, Zweil was restrained and wandered off topic barely at all.
At the end of Zweil’s blessing, Gaunt nodded to Daur and Elodie, and they came to the front. Gaunt read the petition, and the marriage oath was sworn with the regiment as witnesses.
‘The Emperor protects,’ Gaunt told the couple. He looked up at the assembly again and repeated the words. The regiment cheered and clapped the union.
Gaunt looked at Wilder.
‘Captain? Please?’
The bandsmen weren’t in ceremonial rig. They were dressed in duty uniforms for combat, but they had brought their instruments. At Wilder’s command, they struck up a beloved battle hymn of the Imperium.
Daur and Elodie moved together through the crowd, receiving congratulations. When they came to Captain Zhukova, Elodie said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘What for?’ Zhukova asked, genuinely puzzled.
‘Never mind,’ said Daur.
Gaunt found Sar Af talking to Dorden. The old medicae looked especially fragile beside the vast Space Marine in his heavy boarding armour.
‘He is dying,’ Sar Af said to Gaunt, as though this was news and had just come up in the conversation.
‘I know,’ said Gaunt.
‘But he is not afraid,’ said Sar Af.
‘I’m not,’ Dorden said.
The White Scar nodded sagely.
He looked at Gaunt.
‘And they shall know no fear,’ he said.
The band was still playing as the crowd began to disperse. Guardsmen said their farewells to members of the support and retinue, and hurried off to finish their preparations. Captain Daur said goodbye to his new wife with a last kiss. Ezra walked into the open centre of the chamber, held up his arm, and the eagle obediently swooped to perch on his wrist. Carrying it as if he were a falconer, he walked out of the hangar at the heels of the scouts and the Space Marines.
Near one of the exits, in the bustle of the crowd, Rawne put out his hand and drew Costin to one side.
‘How can I help you, sir?’ Costin asked.
‘They know,’ said Rawne.
‘What?’
Rawne nodded across the chamber at Gaunt, who was talking with Hark and Ludd.
‘They know,’ he repeated, his eyes hooded, a wicked smile on his face.
Costin blinked. He started to tremble.
‘What do you mean? What the feth are you talking about? They know what? What do they know?’
Rawne’s grin broadened.
‘They know,’ he repeated.
He turned and walked away, leaving Costin gazing after him, wide-eyed.
SIXTEEN
Countdown
The currents of realspace and the vagaries of the warp had condensed a vast cloud of material in the gravity pit of the Rimworld Marginals. The few pale suns fluttered like candles in the deep ditch of blackness and shone their thin light upon a prodigious pall of flotsam.
At the place known as Salvation’s Reach, the junk belt was at its thickest: a monumental agglomeration of debris almost two hundred thousand kilometres deep at its thickest. Part of it was planetary debris: rocks, dust and other mineral effluent forming solid masses like gallstones or bezoars. Some of it, however, was artificial in origin.
There was tech. There were machine parts. There were the hulks and shells of space machines: ships, barges, carriers, void habitats, supermassives, like some graveyard of wrecks. Craft lost and foundered down through the ages had washed up at Salvation’s Reach, and there they had gathered, collected, mangled each other and, through the action of decay and gravitic pressure, fused into a great knot of material, accumulating like a metal reef.
Some of it was Imperial. Some of it was not. Some of it was of human or human-derivative manufacture. Some of it was not. Some ancient scraps, the carcasses of lost Imperial vessels, were relics of Terran tech that had not been seen for so long they were no longer recognisable to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Old template patterns, unrecoverably deformed, lurked in the silent residue.
Some of it was so old, so worn, so alien, it was impossible to discern the source or original function.
Mechanicus expeditions had been mounted down the years, along with Inquisitorial probe missions, and countless endeavours of salvage and scavenging.
But the Marginals were unstable, inhospitable and remote, and the secrets cast away there were too demanding to recover.
The Armaduke, adjusting its course by gentle realspace burns, slowly crept into this increasingly crowded environment, heading for the solid, planet-sized nugget at its heart.
During the Beati’s original crusade of liberation across the Sabbat Worlds, the Marginals had been the site of a significant fleet action, a turning point in the fortunes of the Imperium that had put the interests of the Sanguinary Worlds and their Archon into retreat. Legend said that Salvation’s Reach had been the name of the Imperial flagship, a flagship that had stood its ground under astonishing enemy fire and died with all hands, holding the line long enough for the Saint’s victory to be achieved. Legend said that the debris accumulated in the junk belt was the wreckage of that titanic fleet action, the battlefield litter of one of the Rim’s greatest realspace engagements.
Other legends said that Salvation’s Reach was the name of a planet, destroyed during that void fight. Different legends said it was the name of the Archenemy supermassive that had finally been scuppered just minutes before it target-locked the Saint’s cruiser.
In Spika’s opinion, none of the legends were any better than half-truths. The debris field included a great deal of space war junk, but it was the accumulated residue of thousands of fights accidentally clustered here, not the devastation left by one fight at this location. Besides, there were too many tech types, too many species variants. Cogitation analysis showed vast differences in the ages and decay of debris samples. Some pieces of scrap were just a few hundred years old. Some were a few hundred thousand.
Spika took the helm himself. This was rare, but his bridge officers did not question it. The insertion run required a shipmaster’s finesse. It needed to be fast and quiet, but their speed was limited by manoeuvrability in the junk zone. Most of the junk could be dealt with by shields, but some pieces were two or three times the size of the Armaduke and required evasion. Obliterating pathway targets was an emergency option only. Spika did not want to draw attention to their approach by disintegrating a looming junk obstacle with battery fire.