For a long spell, Veritus was silent, and Wienand feared that she was the focus of another unspoken reprimand. ‘Look out for him. For better or worse, Koorland is the only thing that holds the Imperium together.’
‘You don’t sound convinced that it is better.’
Veritus snorted, a crackling wheeze like the start of an old recording. ‘His diagnosis that the Imperium is not what it once was or was intended to be is correct, but, though it is not my place to question a primarch, Vulkan was missing for a thousand years. He lacked certain facts. The Emperor’s ambition for mankind was the product of an innocent time.’
‘Making this, what, a guilty one?’
It was a joke, but Veritus just looked at her, eyes dead, a slight curl to his upper lip.
‘Emperor watch over you both,’ he said, when he was ready. ‘I will be here when you return.’
Terra — orbital
Check 0, 05:22:46
Cold white vapour lay over the floor of the flight deck like a sub-zero froth, clinging to the thighs of the void-suited tech-serfs that hurried through it. The grinding closure of the anterior blast doors behind Thane’s back drew a ripple through the stew that lapped at the drab grey ceramite of his greaves.
He crossed the length of the deck. The hard grey mullions between launch bay doors passed slowly on his right, the rust-swathe crescent of Terra’s southern hemisphere dominating the spaces. There were no clouds. Terra no longer had a water cycle to speak of, but he could see gun-blimps, sub-orbital platforms, rad-harvesters, drifting across the slow-turning world like something robotically similar.
As he walked, a matt-grey Thunderhawk broke the coherence field in a squeal of spasming countervalencies and roared a few dozen metres over his head, turning tortuously on its axis before coming down in a marked bay in a blast of coolant vapours.
Incoming transports disgorged armoured Space Marines, or serfs laden with gear and pushing pallets stacked with equipment crates. Others were in the process of take-off, ferrying visiting officials and liaison staff back to their own ships.
Thane ignored the bustle, heading for the group of three gunships that were in the process of being unloaded at the far end of the deck. They were as devoid of Chapter icons and embellishment as any Fists Exemplar craft, but they were black. Quartermaster Heroth stood in the fountaining vapours with a clipboard tucked under one arm, glittering void suit made stiff with cold, and personally shook the hand of the more human of the disembarking passengers.
Thane recognised the Assassin, Krule, his big hand currently crushing the wincing Quartermaster’s, a light kit bag slung over the same shoulder. The magi, Eldon Urquidex and Phaeton Laurentis, he knew also. The latter scuttled down the boarding ramp on his tripod assembly, accompanied by a servitor pushing a tracked cart containing a set of lead containers marked with the Cog Mechanicus and cautionary runes in Low Gothic and binharic. Urquidex moved serenely a short distance behind. His left arm had been replaced with a bulky augmetic. His head was bald, bar-stamped and still scarred from the aborted surgical process of lobotomisation. His telescopic optics and facial grafts made the magos’ emotions alien to Thane, but the periodic twitch of his digital bionics seemed to betray his nerves. The ranger alpha seconded from the Taghmata to safeguard Mars’ investment met Thane’s regard with hard lenses of machined glass. Steam hissed from the blue-glowing cells of the plasma caliver in his articulated hands.
Kavalanera Brassanas and half a dozen of her Sisters gathered together, detached, parchment strips fluttering under the idling turbofans, in silent communion. About twice that number, Thane knew, would be distributed across Abhorrence, Punished, and the Anokrono. Six more hopefully waited at their separate rendezvous coordinates.
Leaning against their depowering gunship were two more that Thane did not know.
A pair of hugely muscular ogryn, their sloping brows almost level with the gunship roof, grunted at each other in their slow, sub-Gothic dialect. Their khaki vest tops hung open over slab-muscled chests and glittered with newly minted Ullanor campaign pins, Aquila Company patches, and numerous greatly loved honorifica for valour.
This was Koorland’s kill-team: the thirty or so that would succeed where the Emperor’s millions had failed.
‘The Lord Commander ordered me to find quarters for this group,’ said Heroth, still massaging his hand as Thane approached.
‘So I’ve been informed. Any further orders?’
‘No, lord.’
Thane grunted, somewhat disappointed, then looked up towards the tremendous metallic impact that rang against one of the gunship’s troop ramps.
‘Thane!’
The welcome came as a feline snarl from the closest gunship’s open hatch. A Space Marine in Deathwatch black bedecked in skull tokens and animal pelts walked down the ramp with his helm in his hands and the easy, nonchalant stride of an alpha wolf. He looked from side to side, seemingly idly, as he descended, an apex carnivore sizing up these other beasts that grazed on its plain.
Thane noted that even the skitarius looked away.
The first ever Watch Commander of the Deathwatch swept off the ramp, and thumped Thane with an embrace that had his gyros whirring to compensate. Thane awkwardly returned the bear hug, overwhelmed by raw animal charisma and the damp scent of musk. Thumping his rerebrace violently, the Wolf Lord pulled back. He smiled. His look might have been described as thoughtful, considered even, were it not for the set of sharp, overly long fangs.
‘Well met, Asger. Warfist’
‘And you, cousin.’ He slid one long arm across Thane’s shoulders and crushed his pauldron to his chest, a purring growl rolling from the back of his throat. ‘I never thought I would need to shake the hand of so many I have never met in one day.’
‘You grow accustomed to it.’
‘See my gladness at being here for just this one day. My ship translated into system barely six hours ago and I am already wearied by it.’ He turned to show the new crest on his armour. Thane could still smell the paint. ‘Though some idea of what the role of Watch Commander entails would have been welcome.’
‘If it makes you feel better, I am not sure either.’
Asger snorted, amused, as Thane’s gorget bead chimed. He held up a finger to forestall any further conversation. ‘Thane here.’
‘Lord Commander Koorland reports aboard, lord.’ The vox-whisper barely made it through the interference bands, but Shipmaster Weylon Kale was an old hand. A little inevitable physical deterioration was a fair price for almost three centuries of experience. ‘The shipmasters of Bulwark and Faceless Warrior also report ready. Lord Bohemond’s flotilla has cleared the exit lanes and is under way for the Mandeville point, and Lord Issachar signals that he now waits only on us.’
‘Inform Punished that we are ready.’
‘Signalled, lord. Lords Cuarrion and Verpall forward their regrets.’
Asger smirked, his hearing sharper even than Thane’s, and good enough to pick out the scratch of another man’s gorget bead over the flight deck’s clamour. ‘I do not envy the Iron Knight his chance to play guard dog over Terra, though I envy the Crimson Fist the opportunity to warm Koorland’s seat in the Great Chamber even less.’
Thane chose not to comment.
The loss of Quesadra remained too raw to properly acknowledge whatever difficulties his successor faced in filling his boots. So complete had been the Crimson Fists’ destruction on Ullanor that Cuarrion had barely made sergeant before his elevation to Chapter Master. They would stand guard over the Palace under Chapter Master Vorkogun and his similarly depleted Executioners, alongside the sentinels of the new-formed Imperial Fists.