The men at the gunnery stations stood in salute as they carried out the orders of the primarch. Heads bowed, they made the sign of the aquila across their chests before the commander of the cannonade island on the prow of the fortress placed his hand on die firing lever. The officer paused for a moment and then pulled the massive trigger.
Four high-yield ship-to-ship torpedoes flashed from their firing tubes, thruster rockets igniting to carry them the short distance from the fortress to the frigate. Each one was tipped with a compact but very powerful atomic warhead. One would have been enough to do the job, but after the catalogue of horrors that had walked the decks of the Eisenstein, the overkill was deemed necessary. The ship's duty was concluded, and only in death did duty end.
The Phalanx watched the last few seconds of the starship's life unfold. The massive construct, the
nomadic home of the Imperial Fists Legion, was more planetoid than it was space vessel. It stood at silent sentinel over the ending of its smaller Sister.
The torpedoes impacted at the bow, the stern and at equidistant points along the frigate's beaten and ravaged hull. The detonations had been programmed flawlessly, all four rippling into one seamless, silent flare of radiation and light. The glow illuminated the surrounding vessels of the Astartes fleet, and cast bright columns of white through the windows of Rogal Dorn's sanctorum atop the highest of the Phalanx's towers.
Garro turned his face away from the flash and in doing so felt an odd pang of regret, almost as if he had done the steadfast vessel a disservice in not watching her last moments of obligation to the Imperium. Dorn, some distance away at the largest of the windows, did not move. The nuclear light washed over the primarch and not for one moment did he flinch from it. As the flare died away, the master of the Imperial Fists gave a shallow nod.
'It's done, then.' Behind him, Garro heard Iacton Qruze's remark. 'If any taint of that warp witchery remained, it is ashes now.' The old warrior seemed to stand a little taller now that his power armour had been repainted in the old colours of the Luna Wolf lively. Dorn had raised an eyebrow at the change, but said nothing.
Garro was aware of Baryk Carya at his side. The shipmaster's face was sallow and drawn, and the Astartes felt pity for the man. Commanders like Carya were as much a part of their ship as the steel in the bulkheads, and to give up his vessel like this clearly struck him hard. In his fingers, the man held the brass
dedication plate that Garro had seen bolted to the base of Eisenstein's navigation podium. 'The ship died well,' said the Death Guard. 'We owe it our lives, and more.'
Carya looked up at him. 'Lord captain, at this moment I think I understand what you must have felt at Isstvan III. To lose your home, your purpose…'
Garro shook his head. 'Baryk… iron and steel, flesh and bone, these things are transient. Our purpose exists beyond them all, and it will never be destroyed.'
The shipmaster nodded. Thank you for your words, captain… Nathaniel.' He looked to the primarch and bowed low. 'If I may take my leave?'
Dorn's adjutant, the Astartes captain from the boarding party,, answered the question. 'You are dismissed.'
Carya bowed again to the Astartes and made his way out of the wide, oval chamber. Garro watched him go.
'What is to become of him?' Qruze wondered aloud.
'New roles will be found for the survivors,' replied the captain. His name was Sigismund, and he was a sturdy, thickset man, hair a dark blond with a patrician face that echoed the same austere lines as his liege lord's. 'The Imperial Fists have a large fleet and able crew are always prized. Perhaps the man can be put to use as an instructor.'
Garro frowned. An officer like that needs a ship under him. Anything else would be a waste. If only we could have taken the frigate in tow, perhaps-'
'Your recommendation will be noted, battle-captain.' Dorn's voice was a low thunder. 'I am not usually given to explaining myself to subordinate ranks, but as you are of a brother Legion and your
disciplines differ from that of my sons, I will make this exception.' He turned and looked at Garro, and the Death Guard did his best not to shrink beneath the steady attention. 4Ve are not given to waste time with ships that are wounded and unable to keep up with the Phalanx. Already during this journey I have lost three of my own vessels to the storms in the warp, and still I am no closer to my destination.'
'Terra,' breathed Garro.
'Indeed. My father bid me to follow him back to Terra in order to lend my arm to the fortification of his palace and the formation of a Praetorian aegis, but with the aftermath of Ullanor and all that came from it… we were waylaid.'
Garro felt rooted to the spot, the same tense awe he had felt before Mortarion and in the Lupercal's Court holding him in a tight embrace. It seemed so sUange to hear this mighty figure speaking of the Master of Mankind as any common son would talk of his parent.
Dorn continued. We left my brother, Horns, intent on making that voyage at long last, only to once more find the universe conspiring against us.'
Garro failed to keep a glimmer of unease from his face at the mention of the Warmaster's name, and he was aware that Sigismund noticed it. Garro knew from talk aboard the Endurance that the Imperial Fists had departed the 63rd Fleet some time before the Death Guard had arrived from the jorgall assault mission. In his years in the Legion, he had never shared the battlefield with the sons of Dorn and knew of them only by their standing with the other Legions.
Fierce warriors and masters of siegecraft, it was said that the Imperial Fists could hold any citadel and make it impregnable beyond the reach of any enemy. Garro had seen their work first-hand, in the design of
fortresses built on Helica and Zofor's World. What he had heard of them appeared to be accurate. Dorn and his men seemed as rigid as castle walls.
'The storms,' ventured Nathaniel. 'They almost claimed our lives.'
Sigismund nodded. 'If you will permit me to comment, lord, I have never seen the like. The tempest came upon us the moment we took to the empyrean, and it rendered the careful routes of our Navigators useless. Whatever waypoints we had turned to sand and disintegrated. The finest of the Navis Nobilite, and they were reduced to the level of blind children flailing in a featureless desert.'
Dorn stepped away from the window. 'This is how we came to find you, Garro. The storms ringed us in a disordered region of the warp, put us in the maddening stillness of their eye. The Phalanx and her fleet were becalmed. Every ship we attempted to send beyond the storms was torn apart.' A tiny flicker of grim irony crossed the primarch's face. 'The imma-terium besieged us.'
'You saw his flare,' said Qruze. 'Across all that distance, and you saw it?'
'A bold risk/ allowed the primarch. 'You could not have known that there would be anyone within range to glimpse it.'
'I had faith/ Garro replied.
Dorn studied him for a long moment, as if he were going to question the captain's words, but instead continued on. 'The Shockwave from the detonations of the drives disrupted the patterns of the storm barrier. The energy of the flare allowed our Navigators to get their bearings once more.' He inclined his head. We owe you a debt, Death Guard. You may consider it repaid by our rescue of your ship's crew.'
'My thanks, my lord.' Garro felt his gut tighten. 'My only wish is that the events that brought us to this place had not come to pass.'
'You pre-empt my questions, Garro. Now you understand how I came to your aid, it is your turn to illuminate me. I would have you explain why a lone Death Guard warship found itself in the uncharted territories, why signs of battle against Imperial guns lay upon her, and why one of your battle-brothers lies in my infirmary wracked by an illness that confounds the very best of my Legion's Apothecaries.'
Garro threw a look at Qruze for support and the veteran nodded back to him. 'Lord Dorn, what I have to say will not sit well with you, and at the end of the telling you may wish that you had not asked for it.'
'Oh?' The primarch moved to the middle of the sanctorum chamber, bidding them to follow. 'You think you know better than I what will distress me? Perhaps my brother, Mortarion, allows such presumption among the Death Guard, but that is not the manner of the Imperial Fists. You will give me the complete truth and you will excise nothing. Then, before my fleet makes space for Terra, I will decide how to deal with you, and the rest of your seventy errant Astartes.'
Not once did Dorn raise his voice or show even the slightest fraction of aggression behind his orders, yet the commands came with such quiet force that Garro found them impossible to resist. He was aware that Sigismund and a cohort of his men were at the edges of the chamber, watching him and Cruze for any signs of behaviour that might mark them as untrustworthy. Very well, my lord/ he replied.
Garro took a deep breath, and began the story at Isstvan and the Lupercal's Court.
On any other occasion, Qruze might have been willing to let his talkative manner come to the fore and lend his own viewpoint to a story told by one of his fellow Astartes, but as the lad Garro began to unfold the events to Dorn and his men, Qruze found himself quieted. He searched inside himself and realised there was nothing he could add to the Death Guard's dry, careful explanations, just a nod now and then when Garro looked to him for confirmation of some minor point.
The Luna Wolf became aware of the silence that had fallen across the rest of the sanctorum chamber. Sigismund and the other Imperial Fists in the black-trimmed armour of the First Company were as still as statues, their faces stoic against the unfolding tale. Rogal Dorn was the only point of motion in the room, the primarch walking back and forth in a slow pattern, lost in thought, occasionally pausing to stop and give Garro his full, unwavering attention. It was not until Garro reached the moment of Eidolon's orders to kill Saul Tarvitz and his refusal to obey that Dorn spoke again.
You disobeyed a ranking officer's direct command.' It was not a question.
'I did.'
'What evidence did you have at that time that Tarvitz was not, as Eidolon said, a renegade and a turncoat?'
Garro hesitated, shifting uncomfortably on his aug-metic leg. 'None, lord, only my faith in my honour brother.'
'That word again,' said the primarch. 'Continue, captain.'
Qruze had heard second-hand from conversations with Sergeant Hakur of the firefight on the Eisenstein's gun deck, but it was only as Garro relayed it that he found a true sense of it. The Death Guard baulked at repeating the seditious declarations of Commander Grulgor, and when Dorn ordered him to, a new tension emerged across the room as he finally gave voice to them. Qruze saw anger pushing at Sigismund's lips and finally the captain spoke.
'I cannot hear this without answer! If this is true, then tell me how the Warmaster allowed Death Guard and Emperor's Children alike to make these plays for power under his very nose? The unsanctioned virus bombardment of an entire world? The execution of civilians? How did he become so blind overnight, Garro?'
'He was not blind/ Garro said grimly. 'Horus sees only too well.' He looked the primarch in the eye. 'Lord, your brother is not ignorant of this duplicity. He is the author of it, and his hands are stained with the blood of men from his own Legion, from mine and from those of the World Eaters and the Emperor's Children as well-'