‘Apparently not, or we wouldn’t have so much company. You are hurting my feelings. This is very fine wine. Venusian. Very rare.’
‘I will drink, but I’ll take that one there,’ said Wienand, picking up one of the goblets still on the table and bidding the serf pour again.
‘Thank you. I feel a little less offended.’ He raised the goblet he had offered to Veritus and knocked it against Wienand’s. Veritus snorted.
‘Why have you called us?’ said Veritus. ‘Are you attempting to shore up your power before we go in to see the Lord Guilliman? I’d expect that sort of behaviour from Ekharth or Lansung, not you.’
‘Did they send you messages too? They sent me messages. I didn’t answer them,’ said Vangorich.
‘They did. We didn’t,’ said Wienand.
‘Now, I thought you might say that. So, you answered my message. That suggests to me that we have some common ground,’ said Vangorich.
‘Maybe,’ conceded Veritus. ‘But you are becoming ever more slippery, Grand Master. Your schemes to put Thane in Lord Guilliman’s throne were overt and sloppy. We only went along with it—’
‘Because you agreed?’ interrupted Vangorich. ‘More common ground then.’
Veritus groaned slightly and sank into his armour.
‘What is it you want?’ said Wienand.
‘It’s impressive, isn’t it?’ said Vangorich. ‘Phalanx, I mean.’
‘You are changing the subject,’ said Wienand.
‘I am, but as is my usual way I will get to the point.’
‘Which is?’ said Veritus.
‘Humour me,’ said Vangorich. ‘That’s not my point, obviously. Just look at Phalanx. Huge, magnificent, terrifying, but like so many other Imperial works, its initial impression hides a sorry truth. No such thing can be built now in the Imperium. Phalanx is vast, and yet it is not so large as the smallest of the ork attack moons. Like so many of the supposedly overpowering weapons our Imperium possesses, for much of the war it was absent, kept in deep space between Venus and Earth. Do you know, it was denied participation in the battle over Terra because its mass would have proved its own worst enemy when confronted with the gravity lashes of the orks? Thane risked it in the Third Battle for Ullanor where Koorland would not, and look at the damage it has sustained. One only has to look at what became of the Throneworld’s orbital defences to see how useless large ships or stations were against the orks. And there is a further thing.’
He stepped closer to Wienand and pointed with his wine. ‘Those docking piers, there are hundreds of them. They hold space for the battlefleets of scores of Chapters. But the dozen belonging to the Imperial Fists look lost amid those soaring towers. The halls within will be similarly empty. At their height, the Legiones Astartes each had tens of thousands of Space Marines. The half a thousand that comprise today’s Imperial Fists would be swallowed up by that fortress a hundred times over. There was a term used in ancient times: a paper tiger. Now, a tiger was—’
‘I know what a tiger was, Vangorich!’ said Veritus.
‘Well then. So you see, this giant weapon was no danger to the orks. How do you suppose our enemies see us now? We look at Phalanx, at our armies and our Space Marine Chapters, and we see the glorious past. But we do not live in the past. We live now. Our enemies — the xenos, the followers of the dark, old gods — they look at us and they see weakness.’ He stamped his foot upon the deck. ‘Down there is the cause of that weakness. We cannot let this happen again.’
‘You are drifting close to treason,’ said Veritus. ‘We will not be complicit in the extermination of the High Lords of Terra. Attempt such an act, and the Inquisition will be forced to move against you.’
‘You see? Straight away you threaten me. I am proposing no such thing as assassination. I am performing my role, Lord Inquisitor, as a balance. All I ask is that we three work together to make sure that whatever it is Thane asks of us, the Senatorum does it correctly. We cannot afford to squabble. Look at us! We cannot build another Phalanx. We no longer understand our own science. We no longer even understand what our own Emperor wanted from us. The Imperial Truth? The Imperial Creed? Which is right?’
Veritus’ lips thinned at that.
‘Were our ancestors to come from out of the past of the Dark Ages, if they penetrated the veils of Old Night and stepped into the present, they would laugh at us. Our enemies laugh at us. Soon they will stop, and the feasting will begin. Work with me. Keep the Imperium alive.’
Veritus and Wienand looked at one another. Wienand raised her eyebrows at Veritus.
‘Very well,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Our alliance continues. But we are but two votes between the three.’
‘It’s all we need,’ said Vangorich.
A tocsin started up a frantic bleeping.
‘Warning, atmospheric pressure dropping. Vacate the observation gallery. Vacate the observation gallery,’ said a droning voice.
‘There we are, as if in evidence. Even this ship is old and worn out,’ said Vangorich.
A service door clanked upwards, releasing a spider-legged servitor from its cradle with a gush of gas. Its organics jiggled horribly to the march of its mechanical legs as it clambered up the gallery wall towards the source of the leak.
‘Stabilising atmosphere,’ said the droning voice.
Veritus stared at Vangorich suspiciously. ‘Probe 93/4A, scan for introduced toxins.’
A servo-skull swept over them, speeding from one end of the long gallery to another.
‘None detected,’ it said with its synthesised voice.
‘See?’ said Vangorich.
‘Very well,’ said Veritus. ‘Our alliance holds, for now.’
The inquisitors departed, their warriors marching out behind them. It amused Vangorich that four of them retreated backwards, covering the Grand Master all the way until they were out of the door. He saluted them with his goblet.
Vangorich remained with the deaf, dumb and blind servants, drinking up the wine, until Phalanx swallowed the Potus Terrae in its cavernous foredeck. Potus Terrae was not a small ship, but the size of a light cruiser. The space it flew into had berths for a dozen more of similar size. They were all empty.
Vangorich stood deep in thought for a few minutes, then took an anti-intoxicant and hurried away to prepare himself.
Priests, savants, servants and household troops accompanied the High Lords in great number. They met together in the grand atrium of the ship by the main docking portal. The ornate panels were already flung wide and a gloriously decorated docking corridor was locked on to the side of the ship. A delay was incurred by squabbling over precedence, in which order the Lords should depart the ship and head the procession to meet with the Lord Guilliman. An hour of close argument concluded with a smug Ekharth being given the lead position. Flanked by lines of Lucifer Blacks, his entourage strode down the docking tunnel and out into the main concourse.
Vangorich, predictably, had been given the last position in the parade, which suited him fine, even if it did only intensify his opinion that the High Lords were beneath his contempt. He had no attendants so he emerged alone from the tunnel to find the rest of the High Lords blinking idiotically on the docking concourse.
Potus Terrae was lavishly appointed. During his career Vangorich had had occasion to visit some of the richest halls on Terra and many other worlds. In short, he was no stranger to luxury — but the interior of Phalanx gave him pause.
The domed ceiling was over a hundred metres high, split into panels painted in exacting detail with murals of the victories of the Imperial Fists Chapter and its father Legion. The dividers were decorated with gold and precious stones from across the galaxy, and the dome was crowned with a dazzling light carved from a single enormous diamond thirty metres across. Its hard, geometric facets split the sunlight into dozens of intersecting rainbows, creating a prismatic display that delighted and confused the eye in equal measure. Four docking tunnels exited into the hall besides the one the High Lords had used. Between them were broad reliefs carved in alien marbles, depicting heroes of Dorn’s line in action. The floor was an exercise in magnificence, a huge mosaic of interlocking swirls at whose centre was inlaid a giant VII.