?' asked Ba'ken as they waited for the cryo-caskets to be secured aboard the The Thunderhawk had been waiting for them upon their return to the fighter bay. So too was the together with its capable guardian, Brother Amadeus. The Dreadnought was now secured in his grav-scaffold as the Salamanders made ready to depart the
had returned to Nocturne several days earlier. Of the seven Mechanicus adepts in the cryo-caskets salvaged from the
on the Cindara Plateau. Several of his brothers went immediately to their training regimen or summoned brander-priests for excoriation in the solitoriums; others made for their respective townships or settlements. Dak'ir chose the workshops and spent his time at the forge. The events aboard the
might mean. There was a thread of belief that, given the inauspicious times, it might pertain to the location where the primarch had sought solitude following the cessation of the Heresy. Tsu'gan doubted that greatly. He was a pragmatist, certainly too level-headed to indulge in such remote theories. He believed in what he could see, what he could touch. Tsu'gan knew of only one way to resolve a crisis: meet it head on with determination and resolve. With that in mind, while he awaited the Pantheon's findings, he had convened a meeting of his own. Several sergeants had been present, colluded by Iagon, impelled by Tsu'gan's shining Promethean example and the respect afforded to him by his contemporaries. They were there at his request, after all, to address a ''serious concern'' within the company. The subject of the secret assembly, conducted in one of the fortress monastery's few, and barely used, dormitories, was N'keln. Tsu'gan recalled it now, the guilt of the union merging with that he associated with Kadai's death, as he walked down the black marble corridors of the gallery.
'Ally with me in going to the Chapter Master and suing for the removal of N'keln as captain.'
Even then, through a fog of despair, Tsu'gan had witnessed the truth in N'keln's heart. Duty would not allow the veteran sergeant to refuse; prudence should have
and the subsequent translation to the Marines Malevolent ship,