Now he processed the losses. He whispered the names of the fallen brothers. There were many, added to the even greater list taken by this campaign.
This skirmish.
Adrenaline and rage leaked away. His wounds throbbed. He registered the toll ork shells and blades had taken on his armour. Exhaustion pressed down on his shoulders with the weight of a mountain.
But there was also the message. It had been transmitted during the battle. There had been no time to listen to it. No time to hear the name.
Ullanor.
The packs gathered the wounded and the dead. They stood before him, awaiting the next deployment. Asger’s exhaustion was mirrored before him in every warrior, yet they were all ready. They knew what he knew. They knew this had been a skirmish.
‘Will we be rejoining the Great Wolf?’ Hakon asked.
‘No. He is sending us to Terra. We are called to gather there, and then to make for Ullanor.’
‘Our brothers need us,’ Kaden Stormtree protested.
‘I know they do,’ Asger said. The outcome of the battle against the attack moon was far from assured. The Great Wolf’s reluctance to issue the command was clear in the tone of the voxmission.
‘Is Terra so helpless?’ Hakon was disgusted.
‘Our duty is to answer the call, and our duty is doubled,’ said Kagen Direfrost. The Wolf Priest stepped forwards, then turned to face the Great Company. ‘The true call is to Ullanor. The spirits of too many of our brothers have fallen in the shadow of the times spawned on that world.’
‘Perhaps there,’ Asger said, ‘we will rip out the heart of the Beast.’
He was called away from the bridge. Adnachiel was surprised, but he kept his face neutral. The moment was a poor one to return to his quarters, but that was where the serf said he would receive the communication, and so the Master of the Fourth Battle Company of the Dark Angels nodded and strode from the bridge. The nod was mostly for the benefit of his brothers, assuring them that they would know what was necessary in due course.
Adnachiel’s quarters were monastic. The small chamber was dark, a single lumen globe shining on a desk in one corner. The rest of the space was empty, a place of black stone and meditation. He closed the iron door behind him, strode to the desk, and picked up the vox-unit. It was not linked to the company network. Instead, it had a single line that received transmissions only from other equivalent units on other ships. It was a means of dialogue between Company Masters, and only between them.
Adnachiel thought he knew whose voice he would hear. What surprised him was that he was not speaking to the Grand Master of the Deathwing from the bridge of the Herald of Night.
‘Master Adnachiel,’ said Sachael.
‘We are coming to your aid, Master Sachael. We are entering the asteroid belt now. We have your position marked. We will attack from the orks’ rear within the hour.’
‘No. Reverse course. Do not let the enemy detect you.’
‘I don’t understand.’ The battle-barge Reprisal had been cornered by a large ork fleet as it attempted to close with the attack moon nested in the Astorias Cloud. If the system had ever had planets, they were fragments now. The asteroid belt was wide and dense, and mineral-rich. Some of the planetoids were so near to one another that mining concerns had linked them with webs of plasteel, facilitating passage and arresting the chance of collision. The ork gravity weapons had turned Astorias into a killing field. Planetoids smashed into one another. Webs became lethal tethers, yanking the bodies together. The Reprisal had attempted to close with the ork station through the maze of Astorias, but it had been caught by the fleet while still on the far side of the system’s star. Sachael was holding, but trapped. He had called for aid. The Herald of Night had answered.
Now the answer was being refused.
‘We have new information,’ said Sachael. ‘Proceed to Terra. Answer the call for aid. There will be a joint operation.’
‘With whom?’
‘The request was sent to the Blood Angels, Ultramarines and Space Wolves as well as ourselves.’
‘The Space Wolves.’ Adnachiel liked what he was hearing less and less. ‘Terra,’ he continued. ‘The Inquisition could be involved in that appeal. Its agents are thick as maggots on a corpse on Terra.’
‘We are aware of this, Company Master. But we are called. We will not fail Terra a second time. There is more. The combined forces are destined for Ullanor.’
An ill omen. The past reaching out to the present to carve new wounds. Even so, Adnachiel understood now. Over and above the principles of honour, there was a mystery that could not be ignored. The past was danger and tragedy, but it must be confronted. ‘Is there evidence of any—’
Sachael cut him off. ‘We know nothing of that kind. All we know is that we are going to Ullanor, and this cannot be mere chance. Your vessel is not in combat. You must go.’
‘And you?’
‘We will survive, or we will not. That is not your concern.’
‘The sacrifice of my brothers is always my concern.’
‘Believe me, I have no intention of being such a sacrifice.’
‘I believe you, Grand Master.’
Sachael broke off. Just before the connection ended, Adnachiel heard the grumble of blasts in the background, and a sound like a heavy wind.
Fire.
He returned to the strategium. He gave the orders for the new course. And he told his command squad of their destination. None of his brothers said anything. There was no need. The significance of Ullanor was enough.
As the Herald of Night veered off from the Astorias Cloud, the Master of Auspex picked up inbound hostile squadrons. The strike cruiser had been detected.
Good, Adnachiel thought. If he had to fight his way out of the system, he might draw enough of the enemy to ensure there would be no sacrifice.
Not yet.
The Imperium came to Caldera. Koorland and the Last Wall were aboard the Alcazar Remembered with Thane’s veterans. Flanking the Adeptus Astartes vessel were two of the Imperial Navy’s grand cruisers, Absolute Decree and Finality. Their troop holds carried regiments of the Lucifer Blacks. There were other regiments too, patchwork commands made up of the remains of the Orion Watch, the Jupiter Storm, the Granite Myrmidons, the Auroran Rifles, and more. They were the reserves of the Imperial Guard regiments that had been left behind at the time of the Proletarian Crusade. Their comrades had died in humiliation and futility. Koorland’s mission offered the possibility of restored pride as well as the hope of a myth. The reserves still on Terra were little more than a token now. It would be up to the Imperial Navy, led by Lord High Admiral Lansung’s battleship Autocephalax Eternal, to hold off an invasion.
On the bridge of the Alcazar Remembered, Thane said, ‘Your thoughts appear troubling.’
‘I’m thinking about an attack in our absence.’
‘You don’t like the odds of the High Admiral fighting it off?’
‘Do you?’
Thane grimaced.
The Autocephalax had become a symbol of failure and tragically empty gestures. Imperial Navy reinforcements had arrived in force. Koorland respected the power of the vessels shielding Terra. But he knew what the orks could do.
There had been little time to make repairs to the Alcazar Remembered. The Decree and Finality bore scars too, as did their escorts. But there were many vessels in the fleet that were undamaged. They had come from Mars, a gigantic mobilisation ordered by Kubik. The scale had pleased Koorland, and also taken him aback. Kubik had been eager to send the Mechanicus to Caldera, and Koorland wondered if he should read a desire for redemption in the Fabricator General’s rush to cooperate.