*One of ours?"
*It appears so," confirmed Saeverin, bending over his console. *Getting confirmation now."
*Who"s piloting it?" demanded Eidolon. *No one is authorized to travel to the surface."
*The last communication with the Thunderhawk indicates that it is Captain Saul Tarvitz."
*Tarvitz?" said Eidolon. *d.a.m.n him, but he is a thorn in my side."
*It"s certainly him," said Captain Saeverin. *It looks like he took one of the Thunderhawks from the planetside embarkation deck."
*Where is he heading?" asked Eidolon, *exactly."
*The Choral City," replied Saeverin.
Eidolon smiled. *He"s trying to warn them. He thinks he can make a difference. I thought we could use him, but he"s too d.a.m.n stubborn and now he"s got it into his head that he"s a hero. Saeverin, get some fighters out there and shoot him down. We don"t need any complications now."
*Aye, sir," nodded Saeverin. *Fighters launching in two minutes."
MERSADIE WRUNG OUT the cloth and draped it over Euphrati"s forehead. Euphrati moaned and shook, her arms thrashing as if she was throwing a fit. She looked as pale and thin as a corpse.
*I"m here," said Mersadie, even though she suspected the comatose imagist couldn"t hear her. She didn"t understand what Euphrati was going through, and it made her feel so useless.
For reasons she didn"t quite understand, she had stayed with Kyril Sindermann and Euphrati as they moved around the ship. The Vengeful Spirit was the size of a city and it had plenty of places in which to hide.
Word of their coming went ahead of them and wherever they went, grime-streaked engine crewmen or boiler-suited maintenance workers were there to show them to safety, supply them with food and water and catch a glimpse of the saint. At present, they sheltered inside one of the engine housings, a ma.s.sive hollow tube that was normally full of burning plasma and great thrusting pistons. Now the engine was decommissioned for maintenance and it made for a good bolt-hole, hidden and secret despite its vast dimensions.
Sindermann slept on a thin blanket beside Euphrati and the old man had never looked more exhausted. His thin limbs were spotted and bony, his cheeks sunken and hollow.
One of the engine crew hurried up to the nook where Keeler lay on a bundle of blankets and clothes. He was stripped to the waist and covered in grease, a huge and muscular man who was moved to kneel meekly a short distance from the bed of his saint.
*Miss Oliton," he said reverentially. *Is there anything you or the saint need?"
*Water," said Mersadie. *Clean water, and Kyril asked for more paper, too."
The crewman"s eyes lit up. *He"s writing something?" Mersadie wished she hadn"t mentioned it. *He"s collecting his thoughts for a speech," she said. *He"s still an iterator, after all. If you can find some medical supplies as well, that would be useful, she"s dehydrated."
*The Emperor will preserve her," said the crewman, worry in his voice.
*I"m sure he will, but we have to give him all the help we can," replied Mersadie, trying not to sound as condescending as she felt.
The effect the comatose Euphrati had on the crew was extraordinary, a miracle in itself. Her very presence seemed to focus the doubts and wishes of so many people into an iron-strong faith in a distant Emperor.
*We"ll get what we can," said the crewman. *We have people in the commissary and medical suites." He reached forward to touch Euphrati"s blanket and murmured a quiet prayer to his Emperor. As the crewman left she whispered her own perfunctory prayer. After all, the Emperor was more real than any of the so-called G.o.ds the Crusade had come across.
*Deliver us, Emperor," she said quietly, *from all of this."
She looked down sadly and caught her breath as Euphrati stirred and opened her eyes, like someone awakening from a deep sleep. Mersadie reached down slowly, afraid that if she moved too quickly she might shatter this brittle miracle, and took the imagists hand in hers. *Euphrati," she whispered softly. *Can you hear me?" Euphrati Keeler"s mouth fell open and she screamed in terror.
*ARE YOU SURE?" asked Captain Garro of the Death Guard, limping on his newly replaced augmetic leg.
The gyros had not yet meshed with his nervous system and, much to his fury, he had been denied a place in the Death Guard speartip. The bridge of the Eisenstein was open to the workings of the ship, as was typical with the Death Guard fleet, since Mortarion despised ornamentation of any kind.
The bridge was a skeletal framework suspended among the ship"s guts with ma.s.sive coolant pipes looming overhead like knots of metallic entrails. The bridge crew bent over a platform inset with cogitator banks, their faces illuminated in harsh greens and blues.
*Very sure, captain," replied the communications officer, reading from the data-slate in his hand. *An Emperor"s Children Thunderhawk is pa.s.sing through our engagement zone."
Garro took the data-slate from the officer and sure enough, there was a Thunderhawk gunship pa.s.sing close to the Eisenstein, a pack of fighters at its heels.
*Smells like trouble," said Garro. *Put us on an intercept course."
*Yes, captain," said the deck officer, turning smartly and heading for the helm.
Within moments the engines flared into life, vast pistons pumping through the oily shadows that surrounded the bridge. The Eisenstein tilted as it began a ponderous turn towards the approaching Thunderhawk.
THE SCREAM HURLED Kyril Sindermann from sleep with the force of a thunderbolt and he felt his heart thudding against his ribs in fright.
*What?" he managed before seeing Euphrati sitting bolt upright in bed and screaming fit to burst her lungs. He scrambled to his feet as Mersadie tried to put her arms around the screaming imagist. Keeler thrashed like a madwoman and Sindermann rushed over to help, putting his arms out as if to embrace them both.
The moment his fingers touched Euphrati he felt the heat radiating from her, wanting to recoil in pain, but feeling as though his hands were locked to her flesh. His eyes met Mersadie"s and he knew from the terror he saw there that she felt the same thing.
He whimpered as his vision blurred and darkened, as though he were having a heart attack. Images tumbled through his brain, dark and monstrous, and he fought to hold onto his sanity as visions of pure evil a.s.sailed him.
Death, like a black seething mantle, hung over everything. Sindermann saw Mersadie"s delicate, coal dark face overcome with it, her features sinking in corruption.
Tendrils of darkness wound through the air, destroying whatever they touched. He screamed as he saw the flesh sloughing from Mersadie"s bones, looking down at his hands to see them rotting away before his eyes. His skin peeled back, the bones maggot-white.
Then it was gone, the black, rotting death lifted from him and Sindermann could see their hiding place once again, unchanged since he had laid down to catch a few fitful hours of sleep. He stumbled away from Euphrati and with one look saw that Mersadie had experienced the same thing a horrendous, concentrated decay.
Sindermann put a hand to his chest, feeling his old heart working overtime.
*Oh, no..." Mersadie was moaning. *Please... what is...?"
*This is betrayal," said Keeler, her voice suddenly strong as she turned towards Sindermann, *and it is happening now. You need to tell them. Tell them all, Kyril!"
Keeler"s eyes closed and she slumped against Mersadie, who held her as she sobbed.
TARVITZ WRESTLED WITH the Thunderhawk controls. Streaks of bright crimson sheared past the c.o.c.kpit a the fighter craft were on his tail, spraying ruby-red lances of gunfire at him.
Isstvan III wheeled in front of him as the gunship spun in the view screen.
Impacts thudded into the back of the Thunderhawk and he felt the controls lurch in his hands. He answered by ripping his craft upwards, hearing the engines shriek in complaint beneath him as they flipped the gunship"s ma.s.s out of the enemy lines of fire. Loud juddering noises from behind him spoke of something giving way in one of the engines. Red warning lights and crisis telltales lit up the c.o.c.kpit.
The angry blips of the fighters loomed large in the tactical display.
The vox-unit sparked again and he reached to turn it off, not wanting to hear gloating taunts as he was destroyed and any hope of warning was lost. His hand paused as he heard a familiar voice say, *Thunderhawk on a closing course with the Eisenstein, identify yourself."
Tarvitz wanted to cry in relief as he recognised the voice of his honour brother.
*Nathaniel?" he cried. *It"s Saul. It"s good to hear your voice, my brother!"
*Saul?" asked Garro. *What in the name of the Emperor is going on? Are those fighters trying to shoot you down?"
*Yes!" shouted Tarvitz, tearing the Thunderhawk around again, Isstvan III spinning below him. The Death Guard fleet was a speckling of glittering streaks against the blackness, crisscrossed by red laser blasts.
Tarvitz gunned the stormbird"s remaining engine as Garro said, *Why? And be quick, Saul. They almost have you!"
*This is treachery!" shouted Tarvitz. *All of this! We are betrayed. The fleet is going to bombard the planet"s surface with virus bombs."
*What?" spluttered Garro, disbelief plain in his voice. *That"s insane."
*Trust me," said Tarvitz. *I know how it sounds, but as my honour brother I ask you to trust me like you have never trusted me before. On my life I swear I do not lie to you, Nathaniel."
*I don"t know, Saul," said Garro.
*Nathaniel!" screamed Tarvitz in frustration. *Ship to surface vox has been shut off, so unless I can get a warning down there, every Astartes on Isstvan III is going to die!"
CAPTAIN NATHANIEL GARRO could not tear his eyes from the hissing vox-unit, as if seeking to discern the truth of what Saul Tarvitz was saying just by staring hard enough. Beside him, the tactical plot displayed the weaving blips that represented Tarvitz"s Thunderhawk and the pursuing fighters. His experienced eye told him that he had seconds at best to make a decision and his every instinct screamed that what he was hearing could not possibly be true.
Yet Saul Tarvitz was his sworn honour brother, an oath sworn on the b.l.o.o.d.y fields of the Preaixor Campaign, when they had shed blood and stood shoulder to shoulder through the entirety of a b.l.o.o.d.y, ill-fated war that had seen many of their most beloved brothers killed.
Such a friendship and bond of honour forged in the h.e.l.l of combat was a powerful thing and Garro knew Saul Tarvitz well enough to know that he never exaggerated and never, ever lied. To imagine that his honour brother was lying to him now was beyond imagining, but to hear that the fleet was set to bombard their battle-brothers was equally unthinkable.
His thoughts tumbled like a whirlwind in his head and he cursed his indecision. He looked down at the eagle Tarvitz had carved into his vambrace so long ago and knew what he had to do.
TARVITZ PULLED THE Thunderhawk into a shallow dive, preparing to chop back the throttle and deploy his air brakes, hoping that he had descended far enough to allow the atmosphere of the planet below to slow him down sufficiently for what he planned...
He glanced down at the tactical display, seeing the fighters moving to either side of him, preparing to bracket him as his speed bled off. Judging the moment was crucial.
Tarvitz hauled back the throttle and hit the air brakes.
The grav seat harness pulled tight on his chest as he was hurled forwards and the c.o.c.kpit was suddenly lit by brilliant flashes and a terrific juddering seized the gunship. He heard impacts on the hull and felt the Thunderhawk tumble away from his control.
He yelled in anger as he realized that those who sought to betray the Astartes had won, that his defiance of their treachery had been in vain. Blooms of fire surged past the c.o.c.kpit and Tarvitz waited for the inevitable explosion of his death.
But it never came.
Amazed, he took hold of the gunship"s controls and wrestled with them as he fought to level out his flight. The tactical display was a mess of interference, electromagnetic hash and radioactive debris clogging it with an impenetrable fog of a ma.s.sive detonation. He couldn"t see the fighters, but with such interference they could still be out there, even now drawing a bead on him.
What had just happened?
*Saul," said a voice, heavy with sadness and Tarvitz knew that his honour brother had not let him down. *Ease down, the fighters are gone."
*Gone? How?"
*The Eisenstein shot them down on my orders," said Garro. *Tell me, Saul, was I right to do so, for if you speak falsely, then I have condemned myself alongside you."
Tarvitz wanted to laugh and wished his old friend was standing next to him so he could throw his arms around him and thank him for his trust, knowing that Nathaniel Garro had made the most monumental decision in his life on nothing but what had pa.s.sed between them moments ago. The depth of trust and the honour Garro had done him was immeasurable.
*Yes," he said. *You were right to trust me, my friend."
*Tell me why?" asked Garro.
Tarvitz tried to think of something rea.s.suring to tell his old friend, but knew that nothing he could say would soften the blow of this treachery. Instead, he said, *Do you remember what you once told me of Terra?"
*YES, MY FRIEND," sighed Garro. *I told you it was old, even back in the day."
*You told me of what the Emperor built there," said Tarvitz. *A whole world, where before there had been nothing, just barbarians and death. You spoke of the scars of the Age of Strife, whole glaciers burned away and mountains levelled."
*Yes," agreed Garro. *I remember. The Emperor took that blasted planet and he founded the Imperium there. That"s what I fight for, to stand against the darkness and build an empire for the human race to inherit."
*That"s what is being betrayed, my friend," said Tarvitz. *I will not allow that to happen, Saul."
*Nor I, my friend," swore Tarvitz. *What will you do now?"
Garro paused, the question of what to do, now that he had chosen a side, uppermost in his mind. *I"ll tell the Andronius that I shot you down. The flare of the explosion and the fact that you"re in the upper atmosphere should cover you long enough to get to the surface."
*And after that?"
*The other Legions must be warned of what is going on. Only the Warmaster would have the daring to conceive of such betrayal and he would not have begun an endeavor of this magnitude without swaying some of his brother primarchs to join him. Rogal Dorn or Magnus would never forsake the Emperor and if I can get the Eisenstein out of the Isstvan system, I can bring them here: all of them."
*Can you do it?" asked Tarvitz. *The Warmaster will soon realize what you attempt."
*I have some time before they will suspect, but then the whole fleet will be after me. Why is it that men have to die every time any of us tries to do what is right?"
*Because that"s the Imperial Truth," said Tarvitz. *Can you keep control of the Eisenstein once this gets out?"
*Yes," said Garro. *It will be messy, but enough of the crew are staunch Terrans, and they will side with me. Those who do not will die."
The port engine juddered and Tarvitz knew that he didn"t have much time before the gunship gave out beneath him.
*I have to make for the surface, Nathaniel," said Tarvitz. *I don"t know how much longer this ship will stay in the air."
*Then this is where we part," said Garro, an awful note of finality in his voice.
*The next time we see one another, it"ll be on Terra," said Tarvitz.
*If we meet again, my brother."
*We will, Nathaniel," promised Tarvitz. *By the Emperor, I swear it."
*May the luck of Terra be with you," said Garro and the vox went dead.
Moments ago, he had been on the brink of death, but now he had hope that he might succeed in preventing the Warmaster"s treachery from unfolding.
That was what the Imperial Truth meant, he realized at last.
It meant hope: hope for the galaxy; hope for humanity.