The world was nightmare. The world was speed and pain and the warm choking in her lungs and the towering shadows finally meeting. She hit something very large and solid. She started to black out. Then she was moving down, and still down, and the violence of the torrent faded.
Behind and above, a great, final, echoing boom. The blood released her.
She gagged, vomited blood. She wiped the gore from her eyes. She was lying on a slope, surrounded by red light pulsing green. On either side were moving pistons like great towers, gears the size of cathedrals. Below, she heard the stir of an uncountable army, of a strength in weapons and ships that denied all measure.
She was inside the moon.
Narkissos and Kondos watched the mountains come together from the ramp leading to the Militant Fire’s primary cargo bay. Narkissos felt a jolt up his spine, and realised he had sat down. His legs refused to hold him. Kondos remained standing, motionless, as if the sight had turned her to stone.
In the first seconds of the trap’s activation, Narkissos had thought the chains in their entirety were moving. They were not. The orks had constructed them in sections. Only the region of the plain where the Crusaders marched was sealed between the towering walls. The landing zone was untouched.
Kondos whispered something.
‘What did you say?’ Narkissos asked. He couldn’t hear her over the fading echoes of the metallic death of hope.
‘They never bombed us,’ she repeated.
‘No, they didn’t.’ He struggled to his feet and wobbled down the rest of the ramp. There wasn’t much left to do. A shedding of denial, a full acknowledgement of the scale of defeat, was perhaps the only trace of heroism that could still be claimed. He turned around, looking at the plain, at the hundreds of ships that had reached the star fortress. The fleet that the orks had allowed to come this far.
He looked up. There were great vessels at low anchor. He could see their lights. Two of those would be the ork cruisers. The others were the spoils of war, boarded and captured by the orks. Narkissos understood that the Militant Fire’s heroic run through the gauntlet had been a farce. The orks had boarded only those vessels which would not be able to make moonfall. They had let the others deliver themselves into their hands, and had destroyed the ones not worth their bother.
We gave them the Armada, he thought.
Stretching almost to the horizon, with only skeleton crews remaining, the ships waited for the conquerors to arrive.
They came while Narkissos stood there. Around the periphery of the plain, at the base of the metal mountains, the great doors opened, releasing the green tide.
Narkissos walked back to the ramp. He joined Kondos, and together they re-entered the ship. They closed her down, and retreated to the bridge, along with what crew remained. They armed themselves.
The struggle would be brief and futile, Narkissos knew. But he would die fighting. He wanted his life to have had that much meaning, at least.
The pounding began.
Seventeen
There was no scream. No cry. Now the time of the great silence had come. The eyes of the people of Terra had been on the ork moon. No one had expected to see the Crusade, though the collective imagination of the Emperor’s subjects had landed with the Armada.
All who were watching saw the end of the Crusade. The movement of the mountains was visible from Terra. It looked like an eye closing, a wink, a mockery directed at its hapless prey.
Vangorich saw it happen from the Cerebrium. He was alone. The other High Lords were in session. They had remained in the Great Chamber for the length of the Crusade. The effort had been less heroic than they had expected. The war had lasted less than a day.
The movement seemed small on the surface of the planetoid. It was a minor rearrangement of its geography. Vangorich knew what it meant, though. He had told himself that he had nothing invested in Tull’s folly. He was wrong. He discovered that when he felt a vice crush something in his chest.
He thought of the reports that had come back about the star fortress over Ardamantua. How it had been a face. How it had spoken. He hadn’t thought about the scale involved in such movement. He did now. He pictured being on the surface of the moon, of being caught in that collision of mountain chains.
Of being so insignificant that so small a gesture extinguished him.
He sighed and left the Cerebrium. He supposed he should be present for the end of the farce in the Great Chamber. He would bear witness. If Wienand, or a saviour not yet present in the Sol System, produced a miracle, then there would still be a reckoning.
He encountered the silence when he entered the Great Chamber. The parliament was as full as it had been at the launch of the Crusade. The assembly sat, robbed of volition. A hundred thousand servants of the Imperium, empty. There were some sobs. The weeping was so scattered and weak that it made the silence all the more palpable.
The stillness extended to the dais. Juskina Tull had been the presiding presence on the dais for the entire duration of the Crusade. As word of the landings had arrived, she had grown even more in stature, her energy of speech and gesture reaching for the superhuman. Now she was shrunken on herself. Her face, wan, seemed to vanish beneath the dead hand of her robes’ glamour.
Vangorich thought of that moment, walking with Veritus in the aftermath of Tull’s first speech, when he had contemplated the assassination of Tull and all the Lords who had stood with her. He had judged the move pointless. He believed he had been correct. Even so, he regretted the decision, and thought, I carry my portion of the day’s shame.
The pict screens that had been installed around the dais showed static.
Vangorich mounted the dais. He evaluated the silence of the other High Lords. Tull’s allies were as defeated as she was. Fabricator General Kubik was looking from static to static on the screens. Now and then, he uttered a short burst of binary cant, as if making notes to himself. Veritus looked thoughtful, but far from defeated.
‘Are you going to share your optimism with the rest of the Senatorum, inquisitor?’ Vangorich asked. ‘Do you see a way forward?’
Veritus frowned. ‘Your levity is misplaced,’ he said.
‘Is it?’ He paused, then nodded. ‘I believe you’re right.’ He turned his gaze on Tull and her allies. ‘We’ve had enough of lunatic frivolities.’
The screen to the left of Udo’s throne flickered back to life. ‘It’s Lansung,’ the Lord Commander said.
Lansung’s image steadied. ‘We’ve picked up a signal,’ he said. ‘A ship has left the ork moon. It’s on a trajectory for Terra.’
‘The attack has begun?’ Verreault asked.
‘No. This is a single ship. It’s Terran, and transmitting identification codes. It’s a merchant vessel. The Militant Fire.’
‘What is your recommendation, Lord High Admiral?’ Vangorich asked.
‘To let it arrive. This can’t possibly be the invasion.’
‘Then what is it?’ Ekharth asked. The Master of the Administratum’s cry was childlike.