‘Receiving, Tiamat: proceed.’
‘Captain,’ the general said, ‘the regimental astropath has received immaterial confirmation.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘The Adeptus Astartes are not coming, captain.’
Phifer’s news felt like a lasbolt to the heart for each of the Marineers. There was another whimper. Some lowered heads. Others gave nods of grim acceptance.
‘Received, Tiamat,’ Allegra replied.
‘You are authorised to enact contingency measures,’ the general said. ‘I repeat: this is General Phifer and I am commanding you… to initiate contingency measures.’
‘Yes sir,’ Allegra replied. ‘Order received and understood.’
The Marineers stared at the master-vox.
‘Know this,’ Phifer told them. ‘We are going to win this battle. The battle for Undine. The battle for our world.’
Lux Allegra nodded.
‘But lose the war,’ she said, before dropping the vox-hailer in the rising waters and turning off the master-vox.
Nobody in the storage depot spoke. A minute, perhaps two, passed in silence.
‘Captain,’ Tyrhone began.
‘There are no words,’ Lux Allegra told him, bringing her knees up. ‘Only duty.’
Tyrhone gave her the slightest of acknowledgements. A bob of his head. The clenching of teeth and the tightness of his lips. As Allegra sat on top of the fat fuselage of the orbital virus bomb, the Marineer Elite commander reached forwards to set off the charge detonator.
Hugging her arms around her belly, Lux Allegra’s last thoughts were once again for what might have been, rather than what was — because what was, was oblivion.
TWENTY-ONE
Magos Urquidex entered the medicae section of the survey brig’s laboratorium. He passed Alpha Primus Orozko and two heavily-armed Collatorax sentinels on his way in. Artisan Trajectorae Van Auken was taking no chances with their guest.
Urquidex approached the small mountain of blood-dotted dressings standing amongst the mess of the cybernurgical theatre. The giant stood before the three recovered cocoons on their slabs. He was still, although the rasping passage of air through his multilung was raw and audible.
Urquidex stood to one side and adjusted several calibrates on the tracked and itinerant trolley-stand that followed the patient around like an obedient hound. Lines and tubes ran from the equipment and into the folds of the Space Marine’s dressings and hooded salve-robe. The giant didn’t acknowledge Urquidex.
‘I apologise for this,’ the magos biologis said. ‘You were not meant to see your Chapter brethren in this way. The autopsies are complete. The wonder of their design and genetic working has been honoured as the work of the Omnissiah. Last rites have been issued by our magi concisus, but we cannot carry out the appropriate cult observances out here.’
‘No one can,’ the giant rumbled.
‘They will be placed in methalon storage for the rest of the journey,’ Urquidex said. ‘There is the matter of their official identification; for our records, of course.’
The giant turned and looked briefly at the magos biologis. The wet sores, burns and radiation scarring that afflicted the Space Marine’s face made him appear raw and unfinished. The Imperial Fist turned back to the cocoons on the slabs. ‘Perhaps their plate designations might have meaning for…’
‘Diluvias: wall-name, Zarathustra,’ the Adeptus Astartes told him. Urquidex noted the designation on a data-slate. ‘Xavian: wall-name, Tranquility. Tylanor: wall-name, Dolorous.’
The Space Marine paused, his roll call complete. ‘They were found—?’ he asked after a moment.
‘Coordinates three, sixty-two, seventy-two, fourteen,’ Urquidex reported helpfully. ‘There had been such gravitational upheaval—’
‘The world turned itself inside out,’ the Imperial Fist said. ‘Chrome. Greenskin. Adeptus Astartes. Buried alive in mid-battle like some xenoarchaeological find. I had fought. I had killed. I don’t know for how long. I felt the land moving beneath my boots. A cliff face erupted before me. A tidal wave of rock, earth and bodies. My brothers were down. The ground had swallowed them. I thought the magos dead, also.’
Urquidex walked with the giant over to where Phaeton Laurentis lay on his tracked stretcher. His ruined mouth still rehearsed the formation of words that had no meaning. He dribbled and pawed at the air with his hands.
‘I think your assessment all but accurate,’ Urquidex said. ‘His workings sustain his failing organics. His cogitae and systems are being downstreamed for useful data. The magi physic do not expect him to live.’
‘Do what you can, magos,’ the Imperial Fist said. ‘I owe him my life.’ The Space Marine took the end of a piece of dressing, hanging loose from one great hand, and used it to clean a blood spot from Phaeton Laurentis’ brow.
‘How did you come to be on the Amkulon derelict?’ Urquidex said, ‘if you don’t mind me asking? My artisan-primus requests the knowledge for his report.’
‘I was alone,’ the Adeptus Astartes said, ‘on a planet the enemy was ripping apart. No one was coming for me. You cannot fight a planet with your sword. You cannot stand against it in your plate. All I had was the teleport homer… And hope.’
‘It worked?’
‘Yes.’
‘When it formerly had not.’
‘Yes.’
‘You were vectored?’
‘To the Amkulon,’ the Space Marine confirmed. ‘But there was a delay — not perceptible in transit. My plate detected the anomaly. Time had passed.’
‘My artisan-primus believes that when the xenos attack-moon cleared the system, the gravitic interference that had impeded guided vectoring was removed. Upon the removal of the affecting body, your transit became complete. It is true that Magos Laurentis alerted us to your life signs. If the attack moon had not interrupted your transit then you would have arrived upon the toxic derelict earlier. You would have succumbed to radiation trauma and there would not have been life signs to find.’
‘What are you saying, magos?’ the Space Marine said, leaving Laurentis and standing before the armourglass viewport set in the laboratorium wall. With the blast screens retracted, the viewport allowed light from the void into the chamber. ‘That I am the victim of good fortune?’
‘If I believed in such a thing as good fortune,’ Urquidex said, ‘and I don’t, then I should say you are very much its beneficiary. You are the last of your kind.’
‘That’s right,’ the Imperial Fist said. ‘I am the last of my kind. What good fortune is there in that?’
The pair turned their attentions to the two destruction-smeared ice worlds below. Despite the smouldering forges and cataclysmic black clouds that besmirched their twin surfaces, their reflected light still managed to dazzle.
‘Yours?’ the Space Marine asked.
‘No longer,’ Magos Urquidex said. ‘But they are forge-worlds, lost to the xenos invader. Incus Maximal and Malleus Mundi: the Hammer and Anvil. We have dropped out of the immaterium to dock with a Mechanicus signum-station and recover personnel and valuable data. Though the great forges were lost, we are told that a flotilla, heavily laden with preserved knowledge and faithful servants of the Machine God, escaped the enemy. Not everywhere has been blessed with survivors, however. Across the rimward sectors there are reports of entire swathes of Imperial worlds silent in their destruction, populations rotting and cities aflame. Most alarming and admirable are the worlds denied to the invader by Imperial hands. There are reports of virus bombs deployed on the hive-world of Undine. A tragedy indeed, but one from which we might learn. Knowledge through sacrifice.’
The Imperial Fist looked back at the cocoons on the surgical slabs, the smashed yellow pauldrons of their plate still visible through the protective membrane.