Pasanius shrugged. 'I just didn't get my block up in time.'
'You didn't even try, not even with the other arm.'
'You won. What are you complaining about?'
'It's just that I've never seen you miss such an easy block, that's all.'
Pasanius turned away, picking up a towel from where it hung on the brass rail that ran around the circumference of the geodesic viewing dome Captain Laskaris had given over to them for sparring and training. The blackness of space filled the view from the dome: stars spread across it like diamond dust on sable. Reflected light from the distant star of Macragge glittered on the dome's many facets and cast a soft pall of ghostly light throughout the viewing bay.
'I'm sorry, Uriel, this whole situation has me a little… off balance,' said Pasanius, draping his towel over his augmetic arm. 'To be exiled from the Chapter…'
'I know, Pasanius, I know,' said Uriel, joining his sergeant at the edge of the dome. He gripped the rail as he stared through the toughened arrhaglass at what lay beyond.
The gothic, cliff-like hull of the bulk-transporter, Calth's Pride, stretched away into the darkness of space and beyond sight as the vessel journeyed from Macragge towards the Masali jump point.
Uriel stepped into his quarters, throwing his towel onto the gunmetal grey footlocker at the foot of his bed and walking into the small ablutions cubicle set into the steel bulkhead. He pulled off his sweat-stained chiton and hung it from a chrome rail, turning the burnished lever above the chipped ceramic basin and waiting for it to fill. He scooped up a handful of ice-cold water, splashing it over his face and letting it drip from his craggy features.
Uriel stared at the foaming water in the basin, its spray reminding him of his last morning on Macragge, kneeling on Gallan's Rock and watching the glittering spume in the rocky pool at the base of the Falls of Hera. He closed his eyes, picturing again the distant seas, shimmering like a blanket of sapphires beyond the rocky white peaks of the western mountains, themselves sprinkled with scraps of green highland fir. The sun was setting, casting blood-red fingers of dying light and bathing the mountains in gold. It had felt as though the homeworld of his Chapter had been granting him one last vision of its majesty before it was denied to him forever.
He would hold onto that vision each night as he lay down on his simple cot bed, recalling its every nuance of colour, sight and smell, anxious that it should not fade from his memories. The stale, recycled taste to the air made the memory all the more poignant, and the harsh, spartanly furnished quarters he had been allocated aboard the Pride were a fond reminder of his captain's chambers back on Macragge.
Uriel lifted his head and stared at the polished steel mirror, watching as droplets trickled like tears down his reflection's cheek. He wiped the last of the water from his face, the grey eyes of his twin watching him, set beneath a heavy, brooding brow and close-cropped black hair. Two golden studs were set upon his brow and his jawline was angular and patrician. His physique dwarfed that of the ordinary human soldiers who filled this enormous starship, genetically enhanced by long-forgotten technologies and honed to the peak of physical perfection by a lifetime of training, discipline and war. His arms and chest were criss-crossed with scars, but greater than them all combined was a mass of pale, discoloured flesh across his stomach where a tyranid Norn-queen had almost slain him on Tarsis Ultra.
He shuddered at the memory, turning and sitting on the edge of his bed, remembering his last sight of Macragge as the shuttle had lifted off from the port facility at the end of the Valley of Laponis. He had watched his adopted homeworld shrink away, becoming a patchwork of glittering, quartz-rich mountains and vast oceans that were soon obscured as the shuttle rose into the lower atmosphere.
Slowly the curve of the world had become visible, together with the pale haze that marked the divide between the planet and the hard vacuum of space. Ahead, Calth's Pride had been an ugly, metallic oblong hanging in space above the planet's northern polar reaches.
He had reached out and placed a gauntleted hand against the shuttle's thick viewing block, wondering if he would ever set foot on Macragge again.
'Take a good look, captain.' Pasanius had said gloomily, following Uriel's gaze through the viewing block. 'It's the last time we'll see her.'
'I hope you're wrong, Pasanius,' said Uriel. 'I don't know where our journey will take us, but we may yet see the world of our Chapter again.'
Pasanius shrugged, his massive armoured form dwarfing his former captain. The late Techmarine Sevano Tomasin had forged the armour upon Pasanius's elevation to a full Space Marine, its armoured plates composed of parts scavenged from suits of tactical dreadnought armour that had been irreparably damaged in battle.
'Perhaps, captain, but I know that I'll never lay eyes on Macragge again.'
'What makes you so sure? And you don't need to call me "captain" any more, remember?'
'Of course, captain, but I just know I will not return here,' replied Pasanius. 'It's just a feeling I have.'
Uriel shook his head. 'No, I do not believe that Lord Calgar would have placed this death oath upon us if he thought we could not honour it,' he said. 'It may take many years, but there is always hope.'
Uriel had watched his former sergeant, understanding his grim mood as his eyes drifted to the huge shoulder guard where the symbol of the Ultramarines had once been emblazoned. Like his own armour, all insignia of the Ultramarines had been removed following their castigation by a conclave of their peers for breaches of the Codex Astartes on Tarsis Ultra and they had taken the March of Shame from the Fortress of Hera.
Uriel sighed as he thought of all that had happened since he had first taken up his former captain's sword to take command of the Ultramarines Fourth Company: so much death and battle that was a Space Marine's lot. Battle-brothers, allies and friends had died fighting renegades, xenos creatures and entire splinter fleets of tyranids.
He sat back against the bulkhead, casting his mind back to the carnage the tyranids had wreaked on Tarsis Ultra. He still had perfect recall of the horrific battles fought on that ice-locked industrial world, the fury of the extra-galactic predators' invasion indelibly etched on his memories. The battles on Ichar IV - another world ravaged by the tyranids - had been terrible, but the gathering of Imperial forces there had been magnificent, whereas those assembled on Tarsis Ultra had been horrifically outnumbered, and only desperate heroism and the intervention of the legendary Inquisitor Lord Krypt-man had brought them victory.
But it was a victory won at a cost.
To save the planet, Uriel had taken command of an Ordo Xenos Deathwatch squad - in defiance of his duty to his warriors and the tenets of his primarch's holy tome, the Codex Astartes - and fought his way to the heart of a tyranid hive ship. Upon the company's return to Macragge, Learchus, one of his most courageous sergeants, had reported Uriel's flagrant breaches of the Codex's teachings to the High Masters of the Chapter.
Tried before the great and good of the Ultramarines, Uriel and Pasanius had waived their right to defend themselves, instead accepting the judgement of Marneus Calgar to prevent their example passing down the chain of command. The penalty for such heresy could only be death, but rather than waste the lives of two courageous warriors who might yet bring ruin to the enemies of the Emperor, the Chapter Master had bound them to a death oath.
Uriel could vividly remember the evening they had set out from the Fortress of Hera, accepting the judgement of Lord Calgar and showing the Chapter that the way chosen by the Ultramarines was true. They were bound to the death oath that the Chapter might live on as it always had.