The Beast Arises

The Sol System was ordinarily alive with shipping travelling from the Mandeville point to Terra. The Last Wall saw few vessels. Those ships that had come to the cradle of mankind had aborted their journeys, and lurked unsurely around the outer planets. The captains of the ships and the lords of minor colonies around the gas giants relayed further details. The moon had arrived at Terra unopposed, they said, crushing the throneworld’s orbital defences without trouble. The Navy was mostly absent. When the Crusade had been called, the minor Imperial Navy presence held back while millions of Imperial citizens were slaughtered. Worse still, the ships of Mars remained in port, the red world’s armies mustered but inactive. Astropathic messages to both Terra and Mars went unanswered.

Koorland’s outrage grew. During the hours of swift travel from the Mandeville point to the inner system he remained in the cages. His sword clashed off Issachar’s twin axes. He fought instinctively, mind elsewhere. Several questions troubled him, and the answer to them all was more troubling still — the High Lords, the High Lords, the High Lords.

He grunted hard, and swung at Issachar. The Excoriator dodged.

‘My lords.’

Koorland drove another hard attack at Issachar, all his anger and frustration behind it.

‘My lords!’

Issachar caught Koorland’s blow upon crossed axes.

‘A messenger,’ said Issachar, nodding past their locked weapons. He and Koorland were stripped to the waist. Issachar’s torso was as scarified as his face, his flesh a coded manual to the rituals of his Chapter.

Koorland stepped back. Sweat poured off them both. A Black Templars bondsman stood by the doors, framed by the cage bars.

‘The High Lords have made contact, my lords,’ said the bondsman. He wore the weapons of a warrior, and had the physique to match. His attitude to Koorland was deferential without servility. There was pride in the hearts of the Black Templars’ men; they did not creep about as the servants of some Chapters did.

‘No news from Mars?’ said Koorland. He wiped down his face and naked torso with a towel handed to him by an arming servitor, and stepped out from the practice cage.

‘Alas, we have heard nothing from them, my lord.’

‘Continue our attempts to raise them. Have your astropaths and vox-officers make the implication the Last Wall may alter course to put into orbit around the forge world and investigate their silence. That will focus the tech-priests’ attention,’ said Koorland. ‘Have my armour prepared. I will speak with the High Lords garbed for war.’

‘Shall I inform my liege Bohemond?’

‘I shall speak to this representative alone,’ said Koorland.

‘My lord,’ said the bondsman, and departed.

‘If the High Lords contact us, we can rest easy that there is at least authority still upon Terra,’ said Issachar.

‘Yes, but whose?’ said Koorland. ‘And if the old authority, how effective can it be? The High Lords have proved nothing but their own incompetence.’

‘You are learning, Chapter Master Koorland.’

While in the arming chamber Bohemond had provided him, Koorland was informed that the representative of the High Lords was now present via lithocast. Koorland did not hurry. Arming servitors and bondsmen clad him in his armour, polished now but still bearing the marks of the conflict on Ardamantua. While the men worked silent around him, bolting him into his battleplate, he thought on what he must say to the lords of all the Imperium. Politics. How he loathed them, all the worse as he lacked the detail to make an adequate tactical plan. Idle fantasies of usurping them and replacing their corrupt rule with that of the Space Marines played through his mind. But Space Marines were no less fallible than mortal men, and far more dangerous for the belief many of them had in their own rectitude. The galaxy had suffered enough already because of transhuman arrogance. He chastised himself inwardly. Issachar’s sentiments were infectious. He could not succumb to them.

The last clasp of his armour fastened with a snap. The bondsmen oiled Koorland’s hair, set a cloak of rich red velvet about his shoulders, and he departed for the Chamber of Audience, high up on the Abhorrence’s superstructure. As befitted its purpose as a tool of diplomacy, the chamber was cavernous, possessing enough holoprojectors to accommodate the remote meetings of many hundreds of men. Only one awaited him, the slight phantom of an unremarkable man in the room’s centre, his full-size lithocast eerily lifelike.

‘My lord, my apologies for keeping you,’ said Koorland. The room swallowed his voice whole. His footsteps echoed sharply from the ornate walls.

The representative of the High Lords waved away the apology. He was plainly dressed, small.

‘These are trying times. I have not been waiting long. Rather, it is my own eagerness to speak with you that brings me to the lithocast chamber ahead of you, Second Captain Koorland.’

‘I am Chapter Master now,’ said Koorland.