This was a new force for war.
Wienand watched the five Space Marines take apart a score of orks in a matter of seconds. She realised Veritus was looking at her. ‘What is it?’ she said as the squad moved on. Her boots splashed through a pool of blood.
‘That skirmish didn’t mean anything,’ said Veritus.
‘Your point?’
‘Any squad of Adeptus Astartes would have made short work of those orks.’
‘I see,’ she said, as if she accepted what Veritus was saying. Her interest in the Deathwatch threatened him, she thought. Good.
Veritus was right. He was also obfuscating. The importance of what Wienand had watched lay not in the challenge this group of orks had presented, but in the manner the squad had eliminated them. The disparate operated in unison, forming a lethally efficient whole. That was what was important.
The Deathwatch encountered two more ork patrols on the way to the dome. Warfist varied the route, switching corridors every few junctions, sometimes backtracking or travelling laterally for a brief period before returning to the original heading. The orks went down quickly each time, with no shots fired. The rest of the orks in the fortress never had the chance to learn what had come among them.
This deep in the fortress, they were surrounded by the clamour of the orks rampaging through chambers and halls, smashing all they found. The infernal choir of xenos roars was a mixture of triumph, rage and frustration. The orks had come to destroy an enemy that had vanished from these halls centuries before.
The Deathwatch entered the main hall again for the last hundred metres before the entrance to the dome.
‘We should wait,’ Forcas said. ‘There is a battle ahead that it will serve no purpose to engage.’
‘Ork witches?’ Thane asked.
‘Yes,’ said Forcas. ‘Several.’
‘The auspex indicates a large horde,’ Abathar said.
Warfist snorted. ‘I can hear it, Techmarine.’
The squad withdrew into an alcove. The entrance to the dome glimmered with light from the space beyond. Wienand could make out the movement of hundreds of large bodies. The dome rang with bestial shouts. There were flashes of energy too, which made her skin crawl. The flares were powerful, the colours somehow inherently inhuman. At intervals, the clamour of the mob faded and individual ork voices rose to prominence. The horde was listening. Wienand listened too, to the sound of the greenskin witches. There was no sense to the language, but she could hear the power. She glanced at Forcas. Deep in the shadows of his psychic hood, his eyes glittered. His concentration was ferocious.
These were the voices they must silence, Wienand thought. She felt the tension in the squad as the warriors held back from battle. They understood the necessity of restraint. And they resented that necessity.
‘How long must we wait here?’ Warfist growled.
‘Until they go,’ said Thane.
The Space Wolf growled. ‘This is shameful.’
‘Shame,’ said Forcas, ‘would come in failing the mission by rushing into a pointless fight we could not win.’
Warfist muttered something Wienand could not make out. Then he was silent again.
It was several hours before the orks tired of the dome. They streamed out of multiple doors. Three armoured transport vehicles thundered past the squad’s alcove. Behind them came well over a hundred orks. After they passed, Wienand could hear the fading sounds of other parties heading out in other directions from inside the dome.
Quiet fell at last beyond the doorway. Thane waited another few minutes, then nodded and led the way into the dome. In the distance, Wienand could still hear the orks ransacking Vultus. There was also the deep roar of ships taking off from the landing platforms. The greenskins were not yet done with the fortress, but the departure was accelerating.
She wondered if the orks had found a destination.
The Space Marines played their helm lights over the hall beneath the dome. They fanned out across the vastness.
‘What are we looking for?’ Straton asked.
‘Anything,’ said Thane.
‘The orks didn’t leave anything,’ Warfist observed.
The floor was a mass of wreckage. Wienand assumed there had been statuary here, but there was nothing left of it now. She had to clamber over mounds of rubble to reach the centre of the hall.
There had been something large there before, but now there was only a massive heap of ruined stone. There were angled chunks of marble and vague shapes suggestive of massiveness. A colossus of the Emperor, perhaps. A figure to tower beneath the dome, to inspire with majesty. Gone now, reduced to nothing, significance turned to dust.
Veritus wandered between the mounds a little distance away. Wienand called to him. ‘If we find nothing, then what?’
No answer.
You thought the Sisters of Silence would be here, didn’t you? she thought. You don’t have an option beyond this.
‘There’s nothing up there,’ Straton said.
Wienand craned her head back. The squad’s beams moved over the interior of the dome soaring far above. There was no fresco as there had been on Sacratus. There was nothing at all. Only darkness.
‘Did the orks destroy what was there?’ Thane asked.
‘It would appear not,’ Abathar said. ‘The stone itself is black. I perceive some smoke damage, but not much else.’ A few moments later he said, ‘There is evidence of scoring. The dome may have been scraped.’
‘By the orks?’ said Thane.
‘No. The scoring is beneath the smoke. It was done centuries ago.’
‘There’s no gallery,’ said Wienand. The walls of the hall rose uninterrupted to the base of the dome. ‘No way for the orks to get up there.’
‘And no reason for them to do so,’ Warfist said. He sounded disgusted. ‘This is futile.’
Wienand was still looking up at the hemisphere of darkness when the beams went away, and so she saw the light that stayed behind.
‘Wait,’ she said. She stared, wondering if she was hallucinating. There was a silvery glow around the base of the dome. It was so faint, it vanished when Wienand looked directly at it. She focused her gaze instead on the crown. The silver grew stronger in her peripheral vision. She perceived brighter points and the hint of tracery. ‘There is something. A faint phosphorescence.’
The Space Marines and Veritus moved towards her position. They turned off their lights. The hall fell into pitch darkness. Wienand could see the glow more clearly now. She could look at it directly, though she saw nothing more than the most fragile gossamer of grey. ‘Those are stars,’ she said. ‘It’s another chart.’
‘One that someone sought to obliterate,’ said Abathar.
‘Can you make a record of it?’ Thane asked.
‘Yes. It is too faint for pict inscription, but I am making a copy of the stars’ positions relative to each other.’
‘Will that be enough for the Navigator?’
‘We will hope it is.’
‘I see nothing in the centre,’ said Straton. ‘Is something missing? Is it possible all that remains is the edge of the chart?’
‘Unlikely,’ said Abathar. ‘The scoring cuts across the full height of the dome. The phosphorescence is limited to the lower third. There is…’ He trailed off.
‘What is it?’ said Thane.
‘I am uncertain. The pattern I have recorded is suggestive, but we will have to wait for confirmation aboard the Herald of Night.’