Garro took the data-slate from the officer and sure enough, there was a Thunderhawk gunship passing 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 sitВting 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 darkВened, as though he were having a heart attack. Images tumbled through his brain, dark and monВstrous, and he fought to hold onto his sanity as visions of pure evil assailed him.
Death, like a black seething mantle, hung over everything. Sinderman 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 stumВbled away from Euphrati and with one look saw that Mersadie had experienced the same thing –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 MerВsadie, who held her as she sobbed.
Tarvitz wrestled with the Thunderhawk controls. Streaks of bright crimson sheared past the cockpit –the fighter craft were on his tail, spraying ruby-red lances of gunfire at him.
Isstvan HI wheeled in front of him as the gunship spun in the viewscreen.
Impacts thudded into the back of the Thunder-hawk 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 mass 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 cockpit.
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 Eisen-stein, 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 posВsibly be true.
Yet Saul Tarvitz was his sworn honour brother, an oath sworn on the bloody fields of the Preaixor Campaign, when they had shed blood and stood shoulder to shoulder through the entirety of a bloody, ill-fated war that had seen many of their most beloved brothers killed.
Such a friendship and bond of honour forged in the hell of combat was a powerful thing and Garro knew Saul Tarvitz well enough to know that he never exagВgerated 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 bomВbard 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 vam-brace 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 cockpit was sudВdenly 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 realised that those who sought to betray the Astartes had won, that his defiВance of their treachery had been in vain. Blooms of fire surged past the cockpit 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 interferВence, electromagnetic hash and radioactive debris clogging it with an impenetrable fog of a massive 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?'