Sons of the Emperor Read online

  'You're here because I think I'm in trouble, Dita.' He handed her the data-slate. 'Look at this.'

  About halfway through, the colour drained from her face. By the time she lowered the data-slate, disbelief was fighting with discomfort for control of her expression.

  'Is this real?' she asked.

  Ulatal thumbed a code into his workstation, bringing up a hololithic display of a world with three moons, ringed by icons depicting two battlefleets.

  'This is Zoah, and… whatever its bloody moons are called. And this is the 3,283rd Expeditionary Fleet. It's broken up now. It wasn't a true Expeditionary Fleet at all, just another ad hoc armada forming when two Imperial fleets find their spheres of conquest overlapping.'

  He gestured to two of the icons, lighting them on the display and bolding their names. The first read Photep. The second, Nightfall. The flagships of the XV and VIII Legiones Astartes.

  'At Zoah, the unified host resulted in not just two legions being forced to work together, but two primarchs.'

  She handed the data-slate back to him. He took it, though he didn't want to. Neither of them seemed to want to hold it for long. 'So Zoah is real,' Perdita ventured, 'but what about the veracity of the events in the report?'

  Ulatal raised a finger, a teacher making a point. 'That's the question.'

  Perdita was watching him with an expression he couldn't quite read. The ambiguity surprised him, given how long they'd flown together.

  'What? Why are you looking at me like that?'

  'Did you ask for this assignment, sir? Or did they give it to you?'

  Ulatal snorted. 'I didn't want to be removed from active service while I convalesced. I think they agreed because they were scared that if I had too much time to think, I'd swallow a round from my sidearm. If you're asking whether I specifically asked for archive oversight duty, then no. I just wanted something to do.'

  He gestured around the chamber, in all its sparse grandeur. 'What amazes me is that there are ranking Crusade officers who spend their lives overseeing this work.'

  Perdita fixed him with a disapproving glare. 'It's a vital duty. This work is integral to the Great Crusade. To humanity itself. These are the records future generations will read, learning how we conquered the stars.'

  How grand. Ulatal's inner voice was slick and sly with the thought. How very grand that sounds.

  'It's a dull duty, Dita.' He grunted something that was almost a laugh. 'At least, it was until I got a report saying two primarchs now despise each other. None of the other missions I've archived were anything like this.'

  'I don't understand you, sir. You're diminishing the work with one breath, and fixated upon it with the next. You're shaking with unspent energy.'

  'I notice you're delicately avoiding the word obsession.'

  Her smile was a thin, sympathetic slice that softened her eyes. 'You said it, not me. So… what are you going to do?'

  Ulatal dragged in a breath through his aspirator. 'I don't know. I can't find anything like it anywhere else. And how does one follow up this Thousand Sons legionary's ramblings? I'd need to go to the flagship and speak with the Nightfall's archivists, but that's no guarantee of getting the truth.'

  'You suspect a cover-up?'

  Did he? Did he, honestly? 'I suspect something went on out there, something between the two primarchs, and they don't want any of the little people knowing about it. This legionary broke ranks and filed his report out of… I don't know. Vanity, perhaps. Superiority. Like he had something to prove.'

  Having Dita here was good. He was barely even talking to her now, but her presence let him work the problem through out loud, from another angle.

  And she knew it, too. She knew him well enough to know how he worked.

  'Sir?' she prompted.

  'I have the authority to investigate, but…'

  He let the words hang. Perdita didn't take them up in agreement, which he'd been hoping for.

  'And?' she asked. The woman was merciless when she wanted to be.

  'And I should. I need to. It's my duty.' Saying it out loud plascreted it into reality. 'It's my duty. I was hoping you'd talk me out of it. Maybe even suggesting the file could've got lost or corrupted along the way.'

  Perdita retightened her already immaculate ponytail. When she moved, Ulatal couldn't help but notice her brass rank insignia pins again, flashing as they reflected the light from the overhead lumes.

  'Would you listen to me if I tried to talk you out of it?' She looked him dead in the eyes. 'Honestly, sir?'

  He didn't reply, which was itself an answer.

  Perdita wasn't blind. Ulatal knew she recognised the threat of fixation in her commander's behaviour: the feverish need to see this through to the end. She'd seen it before. They all had, at one time or another - that need for a warrior to achieve something in the wake of going down in flames and crawling back up from the rubble.

  She gambled in the silence that followed. 'The Remembrancers have taken hold of pict-footage from the Juuvaur engagement.'

  Ulatal's throat worked. He tried and failed to swallow, hoping against hope he was keeping his emotions from his unshaven face. 'How?'

  'How does classified military intelligence always hit the public eye, sir? Someone leaked it.' She took a breath before speaking more. 'They're calling you a hero. 'They're writing poems about it, painting impressions… It's already spread to other fleets.'

  He snorted, resisting a pull on his aspirator. Let his last lung clench up. Let it shrivel in his scarred chest, for all that it mattered. Anything to stop Dita sensing the thrill of fearful discomfort snaking its way down Ulatal's spinal column.

  'Idiots,' he said.

  'Sir, no. No. You are a hero. That fight was…'

  She kept talking but Ulatal was no longer listening. He stared at her, his guts aching at the thought of all those ludicrous chroniclers and poets and artists watching him, watching his final mission, watching the fight itself, watching the way it ended in blood and choking smoke and shrieking engines and blood and burning iron and blood, so much blood and—

  Ulatal opened his eyes, unsure of just when he'd closed them. He limped back to his chair, hating the instinctive exhalation of relief when he took his weight off his abused hip. Perdita politely pretended not to notice.

  'It suits you,' Ulatal said at last.

  'Sir?'

  'My rank. You wear it well and we both knew it was coming. At least this way I didn't have to lose you to another squadron when they promoted you.'

  Perdita smiled. 'Is this the part where you tell me I'm the best pilot you've ever known and that you're ever so proud of me?'

  'Throne, no. I was the best. But you were a decent wingmate.'

  'You'll be back with us—'

  Ulatal raised a hand. 'Spare me the groxshit, please. My flying days are done, unless they rig up my next cockpit with a seat to counterbalance all the nausea from my broken skull, and an irrigation system to handle the fact I seem to crap blood now. Throne, half my organs are synthetic clone-copies that barely function. If they cybernetically replaced everything that was wrong with me, I'd be a servitor.' He showed his new metal teeth to illustrate the point.

  'Perhaps they'll give you a ship. A frigate to command.'

  He felt a moment of genuine horror filter into his ever-present irritation. 'I'm a starfighter pilot. I don't want a bloody ship, wallowing in the void with its fat arse hanging out.' Ulatal trailed off, hearing the petulance in his own voice. 'Although… a battleship, maybe? One of the big Glorianas. That might be fun.'

  Perdita laughed, and it was music to her former commander's ears. No charity or sympathy in that laugh. None in her eyes, either.

  'Aim high, sir,' she said with a grin. 'So, when do you leave?'

  Ulatal rocked in his restraint throne, doing his best not to grunt in pain each time the ship buckled around him. The first moment he'd felt the engines engage and shunt the vessel forwards, all of his injuries awoke at once, deter
mined to punish him for taking this little trip. The supply transport pulled none of the high-grav manoeuvres he'd spent a life acclimating to in the cockpit of his Rage-pattern fighter, but it was still anything but a smooth ride. The cargo-hauler felt like it rattled its way through the warp, held together more by luck than by skilled piloting or a decent hull.

  Few military vessels were en route anywhere near where he needed to go. That meant he'd needed to be creative. Three weeks transit on a resupply carrier here, a month-long warp jump on a pilgrim ship there… Through a mix of decent planning and good fortune, Ulatal had managed to make it to the final leg of his journey.

  None of the ships had been much fun for his weakened constitution, but this one was the worst yet. At a particularly nasty shudder, his pained grunt melted into a teeth-clenching groan. Several of the other passengers cast a glance his way. He licked the acid taste of nausea off the back of his teeth and swallowed, too irritated to be embarrassed.

  Every time he breathed in, he inhaled the sweat-stink of the other passengers. Every time he moved, he felt their eyes on him. The uneasy glances were fine; he could take those as they came. It was the looks of pity that knifed at him. The sympathetic, half-scared gazes of lifelong civilians seeing a warrior brought low.

  Well, there was nothing he could do about it now, apart from not throwing up in front of them. He'd certainly not be marching in any victory parades any time soon.

  'Are you all right?'

  Ulatal lifted his head to the man in the restraint throne across the thoroughfare. He drew breath to reply, and managed three words before his breakfast rations and chunks of stomach lining blasted against the cage of his clenched teeth. Ulatal sagged against his restraint buckles, and when he moaned he painted the gantry floor with vomit. Groans and curses sounded out around him.

  'Yeah,' he panted, head down, staring at the floor between his knees. 'Never better.'

  * * *

  Ulatal was in no fit state to spend too long gazing out of portholes as they glided in to dock, but he still spared himself a smile at the sight of all that void plating cast in dirty cobalt and tarnished bronze against the endless black. She was filthy from her journeys and bloodied from battle, but the Nightfall wasn't without her charms. If she ran out her guns, she was capable of levelling cities in minutes, and killing worlds within hours.

  Disembarking took place without a hitch, and the fleet liaison had assigned him quarters. Better quarters than his own back aboard the Serpent of the Black Seas, which was a surprise. The liaison had known he was coming, of course. He'd followed protocol and sent word ahead of his arrival. No sense making a bad first impression.

  'Wing Commander Orthos Ulatal, assigned to the Eighth legion, seconded to Crusade Battlefleet Archival Resources. Thank you for coming. I'd like to speak to one of your ranking Legion archivists,' he'd said to the portly, officious fellow duty-bound to welcome him aboard. 'At his earliest opportunity.'

  The liaison was of Nostramo, his skin the near-albino of the bulk of that world's unhealthy population. He spoke Gothic with the mellow flair typical of the Night Lords themselves, and kept to the common tongue of the Imperium despite the fact Ulatal spoke several Nostraman dialects as fluently as any native.

  'I will do what I can,' the liaison replied.

  'This is important,' Ulatal stressed in the face of the other man's placidity.

  'As I said, sir, I'll do what I can.'

  Ulatal winced as he leaned forward to unlace his boots, and something wetly unpleasant slipped in his healing guts. 'You don't sound confident,' he pointed out. 'I've served the Eighth Legion for almost two decades, my friend. I know what Space Marine officers can be like. You don't need to be delicate about this. I trust what you're trying not to say is that your overseers are standoffish bastards?'

  The liaison cleared his throat, seeking the right balance of truth and diplomacy. 'Well, they rarely fraternise with mortal crew—'

  'Listen to me,' Ulatal interrupted, looking down at his data-slate again and reading through the info-spillage. 'I just need to speak to one of the flagship's archivists. Not the bloody primarch himself, nor even any of the officers. Just an archivist.'

  The liaison hesitated, then gave a crisp salute. 'I think that can be arranged, sir.'

  It took three days to get an answer. The liaison didn't return. When Ulatal contacted him through his quarters' crew terminal, the replies ranged from evasive to placating, always smooth, never mired by awkwardness. The last time Ulatal reached out, he was politely rebuffed by a servitor, who informed him in a monotone drawl that he should remain in his chambers and await the arrival of someone who would be able to help with his investigation.

  'I can't help but think your phrasing is a little suspicious,' Ulatal replied to the lobotomised cyborg on the other end of the link. Instinct had him check his sidearm after the vox-call ended.

  The warrior that pounded a fist against Ulatal's door had come armed and armoured. The legionary towered above Ulatal, who was a tall man himself, standing clad in the brass-edged midnight ceramite of the VIII Legion. Standing this close to a Legiones Astartes warrior was never a comfortable experience, even for those used to the sheer size of them. This one, this close, was a revelation of immensity. In one of its hands, it held a chain-bladed glaive with a haft over three metres long. In its other hand, it held a snarling skull helmet crested with twin wings. The active power generator on the Space Marine's back made Ulatal's gums itch. He had to resist the unpleasant urge to rub his eyes; they felt like they were vibrating in their sockets.

  Ulatal knew who it was. He'd seen the warrior's image in countless Imperial inspirational holos relaying the deeds of Legiones Astartes heroes. He'd seen the armoured giant in almost as many classified post-mission picts, describing the VIII Legion's many victories over the last century.

  The Night Lord stared down, his inhuman eyes offering a gaze of passionless, unblinking blackness. When he spoke, his voice was the sound of an avalanche somehow given the power to sneer.

  'Greetings,' said First Captain Jago Sevatarion. 'You and I are going to have a conversation.'

  For the first few minutes, Ulatal was quite convinced he was going to die with each movement the warrior made. He was no coward. No one could rise to his rank and win the wars he'd won if cowardice ran through their veins, yet he flinched each rime Sevatarion's armour joints snarled at the merest motion. His guts physically clenched when the warrior dropped his war spear on the table with a resounding crash. As spacious as his quarters were, the Space Marine officer took up a threatening span.

  When the feeling of imminent death faded, it didn't retreat far. Instead it was replaced by a certainty that he wouldn't leave the room alive once his story was told. The idea of drawing his sidearm for protection was a cold and hilarious comfort; using his service laspistol on the first captain of the VIII Legion would be no more effective than throwing rocks at a Land Raider.

  He'd offered the Space Marine a cup of tea from his hospitality supplies, and First Captain Sevatarion had smiled, charmed by the offer, amused by it, or doing his best to mimic politeness.

  'No. Now start talking.'

  With those words, and the order within them, business had begun in earnest. Both men had sat - one with the grunt of his wounds troubling him, the other with the powered growls of his armour joints adapting to the change in posture. Ulatal handed over a data-slate with the transcribed report and relevant hololithic data. Then all he could do was wait. He sat there while the Night Lord finished reading, doing his best not to cough or clutch his pained stomach. The last thing he wanted was for the warrior to mistake his sickness for nervousness.

  Sevatarion's features were pale above his armour's ceramite collar, the pallid flesh so typical of all Nostraman-born souls. His black eyes flickered as he read. At one point he ran his gauntleted fingertips through the widow's peak of his black hair. At another point, his lip-curling sneer melted into a dry chuckle.

  A
Space Marine's cognition was a thing of transhuman processes. When Ulatal had shown the text to Perdita, it had taken her almost an hour to read it all. Sevatarion finished reviewing it in less than six minutes.

  The warrior didn't give back the data-slate once he was done with it. He locked eyes with Ulatal from across the chamber's low table. 'You're looking at me as though you expect me to kill you.'

  Ulatal gave a cautious smile. 'The thought had crossed my mind.'

  Sevatarion kept his eyes on the human as he nodded down at the data-slate still in his hand. 'Because of this?'

  Careful, careful.

  'With all due respect, lord…'

  ' "Sevatar" is fine, in this circumstance. Leave the "lord" elsewhere, please. I am not a king.'

  'With respect… Your reputation isn't one of patience and mercy.'

  Sevatar stared back at him, unblinking, unmoving. A servitor would have shown more emotion.

  'I feel that's an unfair judgement of my character,' the warrior said, perfectly calm. 'Your words grieve me. I'm deeply aggrieved.'

  Silence reigned. Is… is he joking? Is this a jest?

  Ulatal cleared his throat and drew breath to speak, but Sevatar interrupted him. 'There is hardly enough information here to be worth butchering you over. This is only a fraction of the story.'

  Ulatal leaned forward, feeling the looseness inside his chest and guts squirm in ways he'd rather not have considered. 'I came for the truth, first captain.'

  Sevatar met his gaze without blinking. He stared: judging, considering. 'You chase revelation with the fire of fever in your eyes, Orthos Ulatal. But such flames char a man's soul.'

  'This is my duty. That's all there is to it.'

  Sevatar's lip curled in some flavour of amused disgust. 'Is it indeed. I saw the gun-picter footage of your crash, by the way. The impact should have killed you three times over. You're a lucky man.'