He was sitting on a makeshift operating table in some kind of infirmary. So they had moved him then. At least that boded well, he supposed. The lights were out, but a glow was coming through a portal window in the door from a much larger room beyond the infirmary. Despite the gloom, Grammaticus could see that there was blood everywhere. The reek of it was heady and unpleasant. In particular it spattered a grimy-looking side bar where a selection of rough tools and ripped bandages lay discarded. Not a surgeon’s work, then. He found no stitches, but he was still badly bruised despite his new sleeve of flesh.
Slau Dha, you wretched alien bastard…
A metal bowl close to hand, filled with his blood and draped with the half-cut leavings of the butcher’s bandages, caught Grammaticus’s attention. The liquid was perfectly still and unusually reflective. As it shimmered, he realised what was happening and fought the urge to kick over the bowl and upend its contents onto the floor. It wouldn’t help. If he didn’t flectthey would just find another way to make contact. It would go badly for him if he refused.
So instead he leaned over and waited for the face to appear.
He’d been expecting Gahet, as before, but instead the haughty yet severe features of the autarch started to resolve instead. For a fleeting moment, Grammaticus thought Slau Dha had somehow ‘heard’ his earlier remarks. But he was mistaken, as he also was about the identity of the face in the blood.
‘You are not Slau Dha,’ he said to the eldar regarding him from across time and space.
‘An astute observation, John Grammaticus.’
‘Humour? You surprise me. I didn’t think your kind possessed it.’
‘ My kind? Are you really so jaded, John Grammaticus?’
‘I am the herald of destruction for my entire race,’ answered Grammaticus. ‘Jaded doesn’t even begin to cover it.’
The eldar didn’t respond to his sarcasm. He was male, dark hair scraped back over his forehead to reveal an inked rune on the skin. Only his face and shoulders were visible and described in red monochrome, the rest lost beyond the edges of the bowl.
‘Seems you know my name,’ said Grammaticus. ‘What’s yours? Are you another agent of the Cabal?’
‘Your associationis how we have come to be in communion, John Grammaticus. And my name is unimportant.’
‘Not to me it isn’t. I like to know who my handlers are before they jerk my strings.’
The eldar pursed his lips. ‘Hmm. I detect some bitterness in your tone.’
‘How astute of you,’ Grammaticus mocked. ‘Now, what do you want?’
‘The question is, John, what do you want?’
‘Who are you?’
‘I am not with the Cabal, and I know that you wish to extricate yourself from their “strings”, yes?’
Grammaticus didn’t answer.
‘Why are you here, John Grammaticus?’ the eldar went on. ‘What is your purpose?’
‘You seem knowledgeable, more so than me at least. Why don’t youtell me?’
‘Very well. You are seeking a fragment of power, weaponised in the form of a fulgurite spear. Your mission also concerns the primarch, Vulkan. I too am concerned with him as well as the matter of earth. I came to you because I need your help, and you are in a unique position to give it.’
‘And what makes you think I would be willing to exchange one puppeteer for another?’
‘You want to be released. I can give that to you, or at least show you how to release yourself. You are… long-lived, are you not?’
‘I suspect you already know the answer to that, too. Although, I think you’ve got me confused with a friend of mine. I would say I have had many lives rather than one that is especially long.’
‘Yes, of course. You perpetuals are all different, and not all human in the strictest sense either.’
‘You are referring to the Emperor?’
‘You met him once, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, briefly.’ Grammaticus did not know who this being was, but whatever his other claims, he was certainly powerful to be able to contact him in this way and knew a great deal of the greater stakes at play in the war. Long ago, during the Unification Wars when he had been part of the Caucasian Levies, Grammaticus had learned to be wary of those who possessed more knowledge than himself. When in such circumstances, he found it best to say little and listen intently.
The eldar went on. ‘Many years ago, wasn’t it? Several lifetimes, in fact.’
Grammaticus nodded.
‘No,’ said the eldar flatly. ‘I do not mean him, I refer to Vulkan. He also cannot die as such, but you already knew that, didn’t you? As you and I speak, he is in terrible danger. I need your help to save him, if you are willing?’
‘If I am willing?’ Grammaticus scoffed. ‘Do you even know why I am here, what I’ve been charged to do? So you are giving me a choice then, assuming I believe all I have been told?’
‘I am certain you know I speak with veracity, just as I am certain you will take up this cause.’
‘Then why ask, if it’s predetermined?’
‘Politeness, illusion of free will. Invent whatever rationale you choose, it does not matter.’
‘You say choice, but it still feels like manipulation. For argument’s sake though, tell me what you want me to do.’
‘Place your hands against the conduit,’ the eldar instructed.
Grammaticus was about to ask him what he meant by ‘the conduit’ when he guessed it was the bowl, so did as asked.
‘Now prepare yourself,’ said the eldar, not needing to be told that Grammaticus had done as requested.
‘Why?’
‘Because this will hurt.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Dropsite
‘When the traitor’s hand strikes, it strikes with the strength of a Legion.’
– Warmaster Horus,
after the Isstvan V massacre
Isstvan V
Clouds roiled across the sky, presaging a storm to come. They were a mix of deep red and umber, turned that way by the planetary bombardment unleashed from warships at anchor in the upper atmosphere, and so thick they clung to the vessels ploughing through them at speed in billowing streamers.
Thrusters blazing, the combined loyalist force led by Ferrus Manus surged through the fog, bent on retribution. The Gorgon’s drop-pod joined thousands of others, just as Vulkan’s Stormbird flew at the spear-tip of a vast flock of vessels.
Seconds after the first drop-ship pierced the cloud layer, batteries of emplaced guns erupted across metres of earthworks dug along the Urgall Depression. Flak fire filled the sky like upwards-pouring rain, chewing through wing and fuselage, detonating arrow-headed cocoons of metal and spilling their lethal payloads into the air.
It barely dented the assault, and when the Imperial loyalists finally made planetfall, over forty thousand legionaries tramped out upon the scorched earth.
Numeon sat mag-harnessed in the Stormbird, trying to track the unfolding carnage. His battle-helm was firmly clamped and he cycled through the various force commanders in his retinal display as the ship bucked and shuddered with its evasive actions.
A close impact prompted a rapid course correction, and he felt the sudden exertion of gravity as they pitched. Unperturbed, the captain of the Pyre Guard kept working through the Salamanders officers, committing their positions and statuses to his eidetic memory.
Heka’tan, 14th Company Fire-born…
Gravius, Fifth Company Fire-born…
K’gosi, 21st Company Pyroclasts…
Usabius, 33rd Company Fire-born…
Krysan, 40th Company Infernus…
Nemetor, 15th Company Reconnaissance …
Ral’stan, First Company Firedrakes…
Gaur’ach, Fourth Cohort Contemptors…
Chapter Masters, lieutenant commanders, company captains.
It went on.
More than a hundred names and faces scrolled across Numeon’s vision as he sought to follow the ever-shifting engagement. Thus far, they had only lost a dozen ships and eight drop-pods. In his mind’s eye, formations adapted, battle plans subtly altered, all to accommodate the violent landscape that was steadily unfolding above and below.