‘No son of Dorn should owe his victory to luck,’ Thane continued.
‘Perhaps not,’ said Koorland. ‘But it is mere chance that I am alive. It could easily have been one of my brothers. Or none of us. Your hesitation served us well. Relentless advance is not enough in the battlefield, you know this as well as I. Sometimes we have to listen to our instincts. The disorder of war demands that we adapt and improvise. I take it you doubt your fitness to be Chapter Master.’
Thane looked ahead stonily. ‘Perhaps.’
‘I think the complete absence of such doubts is simply arrogance.’
Now Thane’s lips creased in a grim smile. ‘High Marshal Bohemond would disagree.’
‘Quite possibly. The fact remains that you made the right decision, and averted a greater disaster. Accept your victories, brother. We need them.’
Thane nodded. Koorland wasn’t sure if he was convinced, but he seemed content to let the matter drop for the moment. ‘And what do we do with what we have discovered?’
‘We go to Ullanor.’
Thane’s intake of breath was sharp. He must have known what I would say, Koorland thought. Just as he had known what he would say in response to the question Thane was bound to ask. Speaking that sentence, though, giving voice to the thought, made him realise the immensity of what he was contemplating.
We go to Ullanor.
Those words should have been inconceivable. But so was the ork occupation of the world. And so Koorland had to confront an impossible reality with an impossible act.
‘If that is where these orks are coming from, we are not in a condition to bring the battle to them,’ said Thane.
‘I know. We can’t go alone.’
He said nothing else until they reached their destination. Outside the chamber of the astropathic choir, other warriors of the Last Wall waited. Daylight, Eternity, Absolution and Hemisphere — once of the Fists Exemplar, the Black Templars, the Crimson Fists and the Excoriators, now they saluted Koorland as their new Chapter Master. They were a union come to support the summoning of an even greater one.
‘Thank you for attending, brothers,’ he said. The words were inadequate, but there were none equal to the gratitude he felt. He had lost his Chapter, yet another, equally his, had come into being.
‘The step is necessary,’ Hemisphere said.
‘That won’t make it popular,’ said Koorland.
‘Ah,’ said Thane. ‘I see.’
‘Wait for me,’ Koorland said to the five Space Marines. Then he pulled open the bronze doors, and went inside to begin the impossible act.
The ork moon was in orbit over Tarentus, circling closer. Gravity storms shook the agri world. From the huge maw of the battle moon, greenskin landing ships poured in an unending cataract. They descended through Tarentus’ atmosphere, met from the ground with volleys of skyspear surface-to-air missiles launched by Hunter battle tanks. They were challenged in the air by flights of Xiphon interceptors. In the near orbit, the fleet hurled its fury at the moon. It was the largest gathering of Ultramarines vessels in the living memory of the brothers of the Chapter.
They were holding the ork invasion, but only just. Greenskins were making landfall, but they had not broken out into the wider regions yet. However, the gravitic effects of the moon were disrupting everything the Ultramarines threw at it. They had fought the orks to an eroding stalemate, and the orks had the numbers and resources on their side.
On the bridge of the battle-barge Caracalla, Chapter Master Odaenathus watched the sear and flame of the war through the oculus. His fists were closed tight. He was holding the thought of defeat at bay. Unless he was able to shift the conditions over Tarentus in dramatic fashion, the conclusion that faced him was unavoidable. There would be no surrender, but the fate of the Imperial Fists haunted his thoughts. The unthinkable had already transpired.
And the parchment in his right fist announced it was about to happen once more.
‘Chapter Master, I have Captain Macrinus for you,’ said the Master of the Vox.
‘Private feed,’ Odaenathus said. He stepped back from the rail overlooking the bridge, moving deeper into the strategium. He kept his eyes on the oculus as he tapped the bead at his gorget. ‘Brother-captain,’ he said, ‘you have heard the call from Terra.’
‘I have, Chapter Master, but I’m not sure my astropaths have interpreted it correctly. Ullanor?’
‘The reading of my choir is the same. There is no mistake. Captain Macrinus, you are ordered to disengage immediately and make course in the Chalcedon for Terra.’
Macrinus hesitated. ‘Can the situation here afford the loss of a strike cruiser?’
In answer, a gravitic stormwave struck the Caracalla. A fist shook the massive ship and the hull shrieked. The bridge yawed back and forth. The artificial gravity fought for stability in the violent flux, as mortal serfs and servitors fell from their seats, skidding across the deck. A small gravity blister appeared on the starboard wall. Metal domed and burst upwards, catching a servitor and tearing its body apart.
Odaenathus stood firm. He felt his ship’s pain, and he also felt its anger. ‘Shipmaster!’ he called.
‘Reversing course!’
‘Maintain fire,’ Odaenathus said. ‘Keep them busy taking down our ordnance. Some may yet get through.’ To Macrinus he said, ‘Your absence will be hard. But the Ultramarines were late coming to the aid of Terra once. It will never happen again.’
‘It will not,’ Macrinus agreed. ‘So ordered, Chapter Master. We leave for Terra. Courage and honour.’
‘Courage and honour, captain.’
The Caracalla groaned again as another wave hit. The departing strike cruiser left a gap in the barrage. The ork weapons reached through it, lashing at the fleet.
‘Take us back, shipmaster,’ said Odaenathus. ‘Pull back but keep hitting.’
Ullanor, he thought. The name sounded in his thoughts like a cathedral bell. The echo of history was a dark one. He hoped he was not listening to a death knell.
The Caracalla rang once more, struck as by the hammer of a god.
The Ultramarines. The Dark Angels. The Space Wolves. The Blood Angels. Koorland had called them all.
No, he thought. You did more than call. You summoned.
He was walking with Drakan Vangorich. After Koorland had spoken to the High Lords again, he and the Grand Master had climbed the seating tiers until they reached the gallery beneath the dome. Some of its columns had fallen. The floor was uneven and fissured, but its path around the circumference of the Great Chamber was still complete. No falls of rubble forced them to turn around.
‘I assume this is about the call to the other Chapters,’ Vangorich said.
‘Yes. I know you’ve been working hard to make the Council respond with something like sense to the crisis.’
‘You’ve seen what success I’ve had. None.’
‘You have an understanding of the problems, though. Of why there is no unity.’
Vangorich nodded. ‘Too many egos. Too many agendas. Too many leaders, and too many of them weak. Their weakness infects the whole. Everyone struggling for supremacy, even when the situation makes that struggle an act of madness, even when we all know better. You were right to unseat Udo. The Council needs a clear leader. You can see the benefit already. You brought Kubik around.’
‘And what happens when I am not here?’
‘A reversion to form.’ Vangorich sounded disgusted. ‘Your influence won’t last without your presence, I’m afraid. You’ll be leading the attack on Ullanor, of course?’
‘Of course,’ he said, the words sharp with doubt.
‘You don’t think you should?’