Through force of willpower, Bryce managed to crawl out as the doors hissed open, threw up on the panel-steel floor and rolled onto his back. Reoch plucked him from the ground by his webbing. Zerberyn and Antille shuffled out together.
They were on a wall-bracketed companionway at the equatorial line of a vast, spherical chamber. Vermillion alert lights strobed cyclically over the polished steel walls like the daylight terminator of a planet spinning out of control around a harsh red star. He looked down over the handrail. Far, far below, contained within concentric rings of adamantium and brass, was a tank of water so cold that Zerberyn felt moisture crystallising on his face even from where he was stood. Gas bubbled through it, but the water moved strangely, sluggishly.
‘Heavy water,’ murmured Antille, the acoustics lending themselves to the soft-spoken. ‘Used in atomic weaponry.’
Turning up, Zerberyn saw pistons as wide as the legs of a Reaver Titan slide in and out of solid metal jackets with a rhythmic, grinding thunder. Cabling hung from everything like cargo webbing.
‘Three minutes to mark,’ came a dolorous warning from all around.
With Antille a willing crutch, Zerberyn hurried around the companionway to the nearest of several catwalks that projected out over the water tank. He limped down it. Reoch and Bryce followed a short distance behind.
Suspended at the chamber’s core was an instrumentation platform of some kind. Banks of cogitators and command compilers filled it, tangling into the descending mess of cables with more wires of their own. There was Kalkator, unarmed, helm mag-locked to his thigh, his face dully illuminated with code projected by the surrounding screens. A pair of Iron Warriors Chosen were there with him, similarly unarmed and occupied with operating their systems. The rest must have been engaged elsewhere in the facility.
‘What is this?’ said Zerberyn, a gauntlet finger pointed accusingly at Kalkator.
‘You know what it is, little cousin.’
‘Two minutes to mark.’
‘Exterminatus…’
Kalkator smiled thinly. ‘Nothing so incomplete. Perturabo always believed in complete solutions and he raised his sons in his image.’ He indicated the interface in front of him. Lines of unintelligible green code filled the display, surrounded by a mass of coloured wires, switches and dials. There were prominent features, however, that Zerberyn instinctively recognised as a firing sequence. ‘Nothing will remain of Prax but an asteroid field.’
‘You talk of the absolute destruction of a habitable planet.’ Bryce’s eyes were wide and unfocused, but the wrath in his voice was tight as a laser. ‘There is no graver affront against the Emperor.’
Ignoring the Militarum Tempestus man, Kalkator looked Zerberyn’s beaten battleplate up and down. The warsmith noted the way he leaned against his brother, the raspiness of his breaths, and his gaze lingered on the stump of Zerberyn’s leg.
‘Neither of us wishes for a galaxy in which the greenskins dominate, mankind just one more diminished race cruising the Halo Stars or trapped within their fortresses in the Eye of Terror. Conventional warfare will not defeat this enemy. The orks are too organised, too powerful and too fast. This world could supply billions. Even if we could take it we are too far from reinforcements to hold it. The orks would have an attack moon in orbit in days. You know this. If we are to hurt the orks then we have to hit them hard.’
‘Chapter Master Thane could request an Exterminatus,’ said Zerberyn, shaking his head. ‘But even he would not authorise the ultimate sanction on a whim.’
‘Authority?’ said Kalkator, chalky features twisting in disgust, disappointment. ‘I was led to understand that your Chapter was the first of the Imperial Fists’ successors, that you carried the blood of visionaries. Your brother Chapters must despise you for your wisdom.’
‘Such is our burden.’
‘Thane is dead,’ Kalkator pressed. ‘Magneric is dead. Your founder, Dantalion, is dead. It is the way of the galaxy to renew itself to ever lesser degree and here, now, it is just you and me, cousin.’ His hand hovered over the reader. His gauntlets were locked to his hip beside his horned helm. ‘I am warsmith of a Grand Company, a rank equivalent to that of Chapter Master. I hold seniority and the larger force. By the principles of your Codex Astartes, the decision is mine to make.’
Something inside Zerberyn snapped. He shoved Kalkator back from the command console.
‘You quote the Codex to me? You are a traitor, Kalkator. Legion Excommunicatis. By Guilliman’s laws I should kill you now, and then deliver myself to the Inquisition in chains for allowing this travesty to have continued for so long.’
‘But you won’t. Not yet. Your Imperium needs us. It needs this.’
Zerberyn clenched his fists and forcibly lowered them.
Kalkator was right.
The same infernal logic that had led to the creation of the Last Wall led now to this. It felt inevitable, and no more wrong now than it had been amidst all the good intentions and necessary evils at Phall.
A pained laugh, the bubbling hurt-filled revelation of a man who had just witnessed the dark side of the universe and returned not quite sane, pulled their focus from one another.
Unnoticed, Bryce had slipped away from Reoch and had a hellpistol in each hand. One aimed between Kalkator’s eyes. The other at the dented ceramite providing incomplete coverage of Zerberyn’s primary heart. There was no indication that he faced down lords of mankind whom he had fought alongside bare moments before. He knew only conviction, the galaxy partitioned clearly into that which fell within the Emperor’s light, and all else.
Zerberyn wondered if any Exemplar had ever thought that way.
‘Move away from the controls, my lords,’ said Bryce. The honorific emerged like a term of disparagement, a placeholder that he had yet to consider an alternative to.
Zerberyn noted the other Tempestus Scions staggering out along the companionway above, groggy but disciplined. And with no uncertainty whatsoever in their aim. One of the Chosen reached for his mag-locked combi-bolter, but a wave of Bryce’s hellpistol across his warsmith’s eyes persuaded him to move his hand away.
‘Don’t fire,’ Zerberyn ordered the Iron Warriors, raising his empty hand, and turning back to Bryce.
‘Traitor, is it? Your Imperium, is it?’ Bryce laughed again, humourless, and tightened his grip. ‘What is an Imperial world filled with the Emperor’s subjects to such as you?’
‘I am no traitor,’ Zerberyn snapped.
Bryce’s burnt mouth became a disbelieving sneer.
‘One minute to mark.’
‘I am an Exemplar,’ Zerberyn shouted. ‘My word is that of Rogal Dorn himself. This is the only way.’
Zerberyn saw the man respond to his words, watched the expression on his face change as he tried to process the complex variables. He saw the expression set. He saw the tension that gripped Bryce’s trigger finger, and reacted on instinct.
Zerberyn’s gauntlet snapped out faster even than he could think, enclosing Bryce’s augmeticised right hand. A slight squeeze crushed the Scion’s bionic up to the wrist. Bryce closed his eyes and screamed, dragging his second shot wide of Kalkator’s shoulder.
‘Please, major—’
The Scion’s skull detonated before his eyes, plastering his face in sticky red gore. Half a second later, the arm went slack and slumped in Zerberyn’s grip, but he did not think to let go. Stunned, he stared past the headless corpse. Kalkator was there, his bolter up and hot.