Galaxy in Flames Read online

  'You have failed in this, Sing. Co-ordination with Mars is essential.'

  Ing Mae Sing had telepathically broadcast a mulВ­titude of encoded messages between the Vengeful Spirit and Fabricator General Kelbor-Hal of the Mechanicum in the last few weeks. Although their substance was unknown to her, the emotions conВ­tained in them were all too clear. Whatever the Warmaster was planning, the Mechanicum was a key part of it.

  Horus spoke again, distracting her from her thoughts. The other primarchs, have they received their orders?'

  They have, my lord,' said Ing Mae Sing, unable to keep the unease from her voice.

  The reply from Lord Guilliman of the UltraВ­marines was clean and strong. They are approaching the muster at Calth and report all forces are ready to depart.'

  'And Lorgar?' asked Horus.

  Ing Mae Sing paused, as if unsure how to phrase her next words.

  'His message had residual symbols of… pride and obedience; very strong, almost fanatical. He acknowledges your attack order and is making good speed to Calth,’

  Ing Mae Sing prided herself on her immense self-control, as befitted one whose emotions had to be kept in check lest they be changed by the influence of the warp, but even she could not keep some emotion from surfacing.

  'Something bothers you Mistress Sing?' asked Horus, as though reading her mind.

  'My lord?'

  You seem troubled by my orders,’

  'It is not my place to be troubled or otherwise, my lord,’ said Ing Mae Sing neutrally.

  'Correct,’ agreed Horus. 'It is not, yet you doubt the wisdom of my course,’

  'No!' cried Ing Mae Sing. 'It is just that it is hard not to feel the nature of your communication, the weight of blood and death that each message is wreathed in. It is like breathing fiery smoke with every message we send,’

  You must trust me, Mistress Sing,’ said Horus. Trust that everything I do is for the good of the Imperium. Do you understand?'

  'It is not my place to understand,’ whispered the astropath. 'My role in the Crusade is to do the will of my Warmaster,’

  That is true, but before I dismiss you, Mistress Sing, tell me something,’

  Yes, my lord?'

  Tell me of Euphrati Keeler,’ said Horus. Tell me of the one they are calling the saint,’

  Loken still took Mersadie Oliton's breath away. The Astartes were astonishing enough when arrayed for war in their burnished plate, but that sight had been nothing compared to what a Space Marine – specifically, Loken – looked like without his armour.

  Stripped to the waist and wearing only pale fatigues and combat boots, Loken glistened with sweat as he ducked and wove between the combat appendages of a training servitor. Although few of the remembrancers had been privileged enough to witness an Astartes fight in battle, it was said that they could kill with their bare hands as effectively as they could with a bolter and chainsword. WatchВ­ing Loken demolishing the servitor limb by limb, Mersadie could well believe it. She saw such power in his broad, over-muscled torso and such intense focus in his sharp grey eyes that she wondered that she was not repelled by Loken. He was a killing machine, created and trained to deal death, but she couldn't stop watching and blink-clicking images of his heroic physique.

  Kyril Sindermann sat next to her and leaned over, saying, 'Don't you have plenty of picts of Garviel already?'

  Loken tore the head from the training servitor and turned to face them both, and Mersadie felt a thrill of anticipation. It had been too long since the conclusion of the war against the Technocracy and she had spent too few hours with the captain of the Tenth Company. As his documentarist, she knew that she had a paucity of material following that campaign, but Loken had kept himself to himself in the past few months.

  'Kyril, Mersadie,’ said Loken, marching past them towards his arming chamber. 'It is good to see you both,’

  'I am glad to be here, Garviel,’ said Sindermann. The primary iterator was an old man, and Mersadie was sure he had aged a great deal in the year since the fire that had nearly killed him in the Archive Halls of the Vengeful Spirit. Very glad. Mersadie was kind enough to bring me. I have had a spell of exerВ­tion recently, and I am not as fit as once I was. Time's winged chariot draws near,’ A quote?' asked Loken. A fragment,’ replied Sindermann. 'I haven't seen much of either of you recently,’ observed Loken, smiling down at her. 'Have I been replaced by a more interesting subject?'

  'Not at all,’ she replied, 'but it is becoming more and more difficult for us to move around the ship. The edict from Maloghurst, you must have heard of it,’

  'I have,’ agreed Loken, lifting a piece of armour and opening a tin of his ubiquitous lapping powВ­der, 'though I haven't studied the particulars,’

  The smell of the powder reminded Mersadie of happier times in this room, recording the tales of great triumphs and wondrous sights, but she cast off such thoughts of nostalgia.

  'We are restricted to our own quarters and the Retreat. We need permission to be anywhere else,’

  'Permission from whom?' asked Loken.

  She shrugged. 'I'm not sure. The edict speaks of submitting requests to the Office of the Lupercal's Court, but no one's been able to get any kind of response from whatever that is,’

  That must be frustrating,' observed Loken and Mer-sadie felt her anger rise at such an obvious statement.

  'Well of course it is! We can't record the Great Crusade if we can't interact with its warriors. We can barely even see them, let alone talk to them.'

  'You made it here,’ Loken pointed out.

  'Well, yes. Following you around has taught me how to keep a low profile, Captain Loken. It helps that you train on your own now.'

  Mersadie caught the hurt look in Loken's eye and instantly regretted her words. In previous times, Loken could often be found sparring with fellow officers, the smirking Sedirae, whose flinty dead eyes reminded Mersadie of an ocean predator, Nero Vipus or his Mournival brother, Tarik Torgaddon, but Loken fought alone now. By choice or by design, she did not know.

  'Anyway,’ continued Mersadie, 'it's getting bad for us. No one's speaking to us. We don't know what's going on any more,’

  'We're on a war footing,’ said Loken, putting down his armour and looking her straight in the eye. 'The fleet is heading for a rendezvous. We're joining up with Astartes from the other Legions. It'll be a complex campaign. Perhaps the Warmas-ter is just taking precautions,’

  'No, Garviel,’ said Sindermann, 'it's more than just that, and I know you well enough to know that you don't believe that either,’

  'Really?' snarled Loken. РўРѕР№ think you know me that well?'

  'Well enough, Garviel,’ nodded Sindermann, 'well enough. They're cracking down on us, cracking down hard. Not so everyone can see it, but it's hapВ­pening. You know it too,’ 'Do I?'

  'Ignace Karkasy,’ said Mersadie. Loken's face crumpled and he looked away, unable to hide the grief he felt for the dead Karkasy, the irascible poet who had been under his protecВ­tion. Ignace Karkasy had been nothing but trouble and inconvenience, but he had also been a man who had dared to speak out and tell the unpalatВ­able truths that needed to be told.

  They say he killed himself,’ continued Sindermann, unwilling to let Loken's grief dissuade him from his course, but I've never known a man more convinced that the galaxy needed to hear what he had to say He was angry at the massacre on the embarkation deck and he wrote about it. He was angry with a lot of things, and he wasn't afraid to speak of them. Now he is dead, and he's not the only one,’ 'Not the only one?' asked Loken. 'Who else?' 'Petronella Vivar, that insufferable documentarist woman. They say she got closer to the Warmaster than anyone, and now she's gone too, and I don't think it was back to Terra,’

  'I remember her, but you are on thin ice, Kynl.

  You need to be very clear w
hat you are suggesting,’

  Sindermann did not flinch from Loken's gaze and

  said, 'I believe that those who oppose the will of

  the Warmaster are being killed,’

  The iterator was a frail man, but Mersadie had never been more proud to know him as he stood unbending before a warrior of the Astartes and told him something he didn't want to hear.

  Sindermann paused, giving Loken ample time to refute his claims and remind them all that the Emperor had chosen Horus as the Warmaster because he alone could be trusted to uphold the Imperial Truth. Homs was the man to whom every Son of Horns had pledged his life a hundred times over.

  But Loken said nothing and Mersadie's heart sank.

  'I have read of it more times than I can rememВ­ber,’ continued Sindermann. 'The Uranan Chronicles, for example. The first thing those tyrants did was to murder those who spoke out against their tyranny. The Overlords of the Yndonesic Dark Age did the same thing. Mark my words, the Age of Strife was made possible when the doubting voices fell silent, and now it is hapВ­pening here,’

  'You have always taught temperance, Kyril,’ said Loken, 'weighing up arguments and never leaping past them into guesswork. We're at war and we have plenty of enemies already without you seeking to find new ones. It will be very dangerous for you and you may not like what you find. I do not wish to see you come to any harm, either of you,’

  'Ha! Now you lecture me, Garviel,’ sighed SinderВ­mann. 'So much has changed. You're not just a warrior any more, are you?'

  'And you are not just an iterator?'

  'No, I suppose not,’ nodded Sindermann. An iterВ­ator promulgates the Imperial Truth, does he not? He does not pick holes in it and spread rumours. But Karkasy is dead, and there are… other things,’

  'What things?' asked Loken. You mean Keeler?'

  'Perhaps,’ said Sindermann, shaking his head. 'I don't know, but I feel she is part of it,’

  'Part of what?'

  'You heard what happened in the Archive ChamВ­ber?'

  With Euphrati? Yes, there was a fire and she was badly hurt. She ended up in a coma,’

  'I was there,’ said Sindermann.

  'Kyril,’ said Mersadie, a note of warning in her voice.

  'Please, Mersadie,’ said Sindermann. 'I know what I saw,’

  'What did you see?' asked Loken. 'Lies,’ replied Sindermann, his voice hushed. 'Lies made real: a creature, something from the warp. Somehow Keeler and I brought it through the gates of the Empyrean with the Book of Lorgar. My own damn fault, too. It was… it was sorcery, the one thing that all these years I've been preaching is a lie, but it was real and standing before me as surely as I stand before you now. It should have killed us, but Euphrati stood against it and lived,’

  'How?' asked Loken.

  That's the part where I run out of rational explaВ­nations, Garviel,’ shrugged Sindermann.

  'Well, what do you think happened?'

  Sindermann exchanged a glance with Mersadie and she willed him not to say anything more, but the venerable iterator continued. 'When you destroyed poor Jubal, it was with your guns, but Euphrati was unarmed. All she had was her faith: her faith in the Emperor. I… I think it was the light of the Emperor that cast the horror back to the warp,’

  Hearing Kyril Sindermann talk of faith and the light of the Emperor was too much for Mersadie.

  'But Kyril,' she said, 'there must be another explaВ­nation. Even what happened to Jubal wasn't beyond physical possibilities. The Warmaster himВ­self told Loken that the thing that took Jubal was some kind of xeno creature from the warp. I've lisВ­tened to you teach about how minds have been twisted by magic and superstition and all the things that blind us to reality. That's what the Imperial Truth is. I can't believe that the Iterator Kyril SinВ­dermann doesn't believe the Imperial Truth any more.'

  'Believe, my dear?' said Sindermann, smiling bleakly and shaking his head. 'Maybe belief is the biggest lie. In ages past, the earliest philosophers tried to explain the stars in the sky and the world around them. One of them conceived of the notion that the universe was mounted on giant crystal spheres controlled by a giant machine, which explained the movements of the heavens. He was laughed at and told that such a machine would be

  so huge and noisy that everyone would hear it. He simply replied that we are born with that noise all around us, and that we are so used to hearing it that we cannot hear it at all,’

  Mersadie sat beside the old man and wrapped her arms around him, surprised to find that he was shivering and his eyes were wet with tears.

  'I'm starting to hear it, Garviel,’ said Sindermann, his voice quavering. 'I can hear the music of the spheres,’

  Mersadie watched Loken's face as he stared at SinВ­dermann, seeing the quality of intelligence and integrity Sindermann had recognised in him. The Astartes had been taught that superstition was the death of the Empire and only the Imperial Truth was a reality worth fighting for.

  Now, before her very eyes, that was unravelling.

  Yarvarus was killed,’ said Loken at last, 'deliberВ­ately, by one of our bolts,’

  'Hektor Varvarus? The Army commander?' asked Mersadie. 'I thought that was the Auretians?'

  'No,’ said Loken, 'it was one of ours,’

  'Why?' she asked.

  'He wanted us… I don't know… hauled before a court martial, brought to task for the… killings on the embarkation deck. Maloghurst wouldn't agree. Varvarus wouldn't back down and now he is dead,’

  'Then it's true,’ sighed Sindermann. 'The naysayers are being silenced,’

  'There are still a few of us left,’ said Loken, quiet steel in his voice.

  Then we do something about it, Garviel,’ said Sindermann. 'We must find out what has been brought into the Legion and stop it. We can fight it, Loken. We have you, we have the truth and there is no reason why we cannot-'

  The sound that cut off Sindermann's voice was the door to the practice deck slamming open, folВ­lowed by heavy metal-on-metal footsteps. Mersadie knew it was an Astartes even before the impossibly huge shadow fell over her. She turned to see the cursive form of Maloghurst behind her, robed in a cream tunic edged in sea green trim. The Warmas-ter's equerry, Maloghurst was known as 'the Twisted', as much for his labyrinthine mind as the horrible injuries that had broken his body and left him grotesquely malformed.

  His face was thunder and anger seemed to bleed from him.

  'Loken,' he said, 'these are civilians.'

  'Kyril Sindermann and Mersadie Oliton are offiВ­cial rememberers of the Great Crusade and I can vouch for them,' said Loken, standing to face MalВ­oghurst as an equal.

  Maloghurst spoke with Horus's authority and Mersadie marvelled at what it must take to stand up to such a man.

  'Perhaps you are unaware of the Warmaster's edict, captain,’ said Maloghurst, the pleasant neuВ­trality of his tone completely at odds with the tension that crackled between the two Astartes. 'These clerks and notaries have caused enough

  trouble; you of all people should understand that. There are to be no distractions, Loken, and no exceptions,’

  Loken stood face-to-face with Maloghurst and for one sickening moment, Mersadie thought he was about to strike the equerry.

  'We are all doing the work of the Great Crusade, Mai,’ said Loken tightly. 'Without these men and women, it cannot be completed,’

  'Civilians do not fight, captain, they only quesВ­tion and complain. They can record everything they desire once the war has been won and they can spread the Imperial Truth once we have conquered a population that needs to hear it. Until then, they are not a part of this Crusade,’

  'No, Maloghurst,’ said Loken. You're wrong and you know it. The Emperor did not create the pri-marchs and the Legions so they could fight on in ignorance. He did not set out to conquer the g
alaxy just for it to become another dictatorship,’

  The Emperor,’ said Maloghurst, gesturing towards the door, 'is a long way from here,’

  A dozen soldiers marched into the training halls and Mersadie recognised uniforms of the Imperial Army, but saw that their badges of unit and rank had been removed. With a start, she also recognised one face – the icy, golden-eyed features of Petronella Vivar's bodyguard. She recalled that his name was Maggard, and was amazed at the sheer size of the man, his physique bulky and muscled beyond that of the army soldiers who accompanied

  him. The exposed flesh of his muscles bore freshly healing scars and his face displayed a nascent giganВ­tism similar to Loken's. He stood out amongst the uniformed Army soldiers, and his presence only lent credence to Sindermann's wild theory that Petronella Vivar's disappearance had nothing to do with her returning to Terra.

  'Take the iterator and the remembrancer back to their quarters,’ said Maloghurst. 'Post guards and ensure that there are no more breaches.'

  Maggard nodded and stepped forwards. Mersadie tried to avoid him, but he was quick and strong, grabbing her by the scruff of her neck and hauling her towards the door. Sindermann stood of his own accord and allowed himself to be led away by the other soldiers.

  Maloghurst stood between Loken and the door. If Loken wanted to stop Maggard and his men, he would have to go through Maloghurst.

  'Captain Loken,’ called Sindermann as he was marched off the practice deck, 'if you wish to understand more, read the Chronicles of Ursh again. There you will find illumination,’

  Mersadie tried to look back. She could see Loken beyond Maloghurst's robed form, looking like a caged animal ready to attack.

  The door slammed shut, and Mersadie stopped struggling as Maggard led her and Sindermann back towards their quarters.

  TWO

  Perfection

  Iterator

  What we do best

  Perfection. The dead greenskins were a testament to it. Deep Orbital DS191 had been conquered in a matchless display of combat, fields of fire overlapВ­ping like dancers' fans, squads charging in to slaughter the orks that the guns could not finish. Squad by squad, room by room, the Emperor's Children had killed their way through the xenos holding the space station with all the handsome perfection of combat that Fulgrim had taught his Legion.