‘This is a plague.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Thane agreed. ‘Three companies of the Iron Hands are making for Terra, at least, though they have farther to go than we do.’
‘Has the invasion of Terra begun?’ Koorland asked.
‘Not at last word, but contact has become sporadic, and this news is days old.’
‘The latest information comes how long after the arrival of the planetoid?’
‘Two days.’
That long with no attack from the orks? He shook off the stun and began to don his armour. ‘Where is Marshal Bohemond?’ he asked.
‘On the bridge.’
‘He’s given orders that we make for Terra?’
‘No.’
‘What?’
Though Bohemond had accepted, for the moment, his right to lead the unified assault, Koorland found it out of character for the Marshal to defer to him to the extent of waiting for his command to begin the race to Terra. The only other explanation was unthinkable. He asked anyway. ‘He doesn’t plan to go?’
‘No,’ Thane said again.
Koorland strode to the doorway. Thane didn’t move. ‘Let me pass, brother,’ Koorland said.
‘Please listen to me first. I know what you’re planning. That was my first instinct too. That doesn’t mean it is the correct one.’
The last wall had fallen, and the enemy was storming the heart of the Imperium. The final Imperial Fist was alive to see the absolute failure of his Chapter’s most sacred duty. The ramparts that had withstood the Siege were dust. If he did not make all speed to Terra, he would be compounding shame.
‘How can there be any question?’ Koorland demanded.
‘There is every question, if we apply the precepts of our Primarch.’
Koorland stared at Thane. He waited, balancing between rage and shock.
‘What do we know of the tactical situation in the Sol System? Next to nothing. Force dispositions? Unknown. By the time we get there, we will be even more in the dark.’
‘The Navy destroyed its target.’
‘Which we might do, but the gathering of our strength, the gathering you brought into being, is incomplete. If you lead a partial force into a complex, obscure battlefield and are defeated, what then? When have the Imperial Fists ever acted rashly?’
‘No amount of preparation helped us on Ardamantua.’
‘Nor would it have helped any Chapter. What happened was a disaster, yet in surviving it, you can hold your head high. You are a symbol of resilience, not defeat. You came by your right to lead us not just through the Imperial Fists’ foundational status. You earned it by coming through that defeat. Don’t waste what you have won.’
‘What I’ve won?’ He couldn’t find the words to express his disbelief.
‘Think about what is coming together over Phall. Think of the size of the force that you will command. Think of how hard we will be able to strike the orks. If we do so properly. As Rogal Dorn has taught.’
Koorland unclenched his fists. ‘Go on.’
‘Even if we could reach Terra before the invasion began, which is unlikely, and even if we managed to destroy the ork base, winning a tactical victory, what of the larger strategic picture? How much good did the Imperial Navy’s triumph do? One fortress is destroyed. The orks have many more. How many? Unknown. And they are deploying them at will throughout the Imperium.’
Each question was a challenge and a balm. Koorland needed the answers, and he had to think calmly if he was to find them. ‘Thank you, brother,’ he said. ‘But if Terra falls…’
‘I don’t want to face that possibility any more than do you. But you are the answer. The Imperial Fists fell, but they live through you, and their defeat will be answered by a force unseen since the Heresy. If Terra falls, the Imperium will live on, because it must, and its vengeance will annihilate the orks forever.’
Koorland stared into the corridor beyond Thane’s shoulder. He didn’t see the walls of the Abhorrence. He envisaged the worst of realities. He pictured how he would have to respond to them. When he was ready, he focused his gaze on the Fist Exemplar again.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘We can’t attack the planetoids one at a time. Our assault has to take out the heart of the greenskin campaign.’ He almost added that doing so might be Terra’s salvation. He stopped himself. Hope was forbidden. There could only be reality. ‘We have to kill the Beast. And to do that, we have to find him.’
‘Agreed.’
The impossibility of the task silenced them.
No, Koorland thought. Not impossible. ‘We must ask different questions,’ he said.
Now Thane stood aside. Koorland took him down to the end of the corridor to the quarters of Magos Biologis Laurentis. Where Koorland hadn’t altered the spare surroundings of his cell, Laurentis had, at Bohemond’s sufferance, turned his space into a small laboratorium. Koorland could see no order in the mass of cables, cogitators and data-slates, but Laurentis was thriving in his environment and rarely emerged from it. When the two Space Marines arrived he was turning his head back and forth between two data-slates. He was making entries on them simultaneously, the four digits of his mechanical claws tapping at their surfaces with the rhythm of falling rain. From his speaker grilles came a steady commentary that was more dialogue than monologue.
‘Phylectic gradualism? Hardly. What are you thinking? Punctuated equilibrium, then? No better. Time span too brief, the result too massive. Oh, but you’re assuming that the rules apply to Veridi giganticus. Why wouldn’t they? They’re still part of the materium. And they haven’t changed into a new species, now have they? Haven’t they?’ He paused, considering his point, and noticed Koorland. His remaining eye twinkled. ‘Ah, captain — I’m sorry, Chapter Master.’ He corrected himself again. ‘Chapter Masters.’ The eye blinked. ‘How can I help?’
‘What progress have you been making on the orks?’ Koorland asked.
‘As subjects, they are fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. So much to speculate, but so few conclusions to make with any degree of certainty. We are being inundated with data, but all it does is create more questions. We are gathering more and more fragments of more and more picts, but never anything complete, if you follow.’
‘Do you have any new conclusions?’ said Thane.
‘I can assure you, Chapter Masters, that the orks will surprise us again.’
‘I think I might have guessed that.’
Koorland said, ‘You know about the moon in the Sol System.’
‘Yes, I do.’ Laurentis’ enthusiasm for his work, so strong that it was clear even through the artificial recreation of his voice, turned solemn.
‘Why haven’t they attacked yet?’
Laurentis’ eye brightened. The enthusiasm returned with a vengeance.
‘Exactly!’ he said. ‘That is exactly the question!’ He snatched up one of the data-slates and tapped at it as he spoke. ‘There are two primary categories of possibility. The first is that they cannot attack. There are numerous scenarios suggested by this hypothesis, most involving unprepared forces or a lack of energy, perhaps depleted in the journey.’ He looked at the files he had called up on the data-slate. He shook his head. The reconstructed magos had so little of his original body remaining that the very human gesture looked odd. ‘Most unsatisfactory. In every other instance of the intrusion into Imperial space by a star fortress, the assault has been immediate. The supposition that the Veridi giganticus could be unprepared to attack so vital a target defies reason.’
‘And the second category?’ Koorland asked.
‘That they have chosen not to attack.’
Koorland exchanged a look with Thane. ‘Orks refraining from battle?’ he said to Laurentis. ‘How is that more credible than an operational failure of some kind?’
‘Failure would be a massive anomaly in this campaign. Unorthodox behaviour, conversely, is very much the norm.’