James Swallow - The Flight of the Eisenstein

Qruze chuckled softly. 'Strange, is it not, that we choose that word? A term so loaded with overtones of religion and holy creed, at polar opposites to the sec­ular truth we are oath-bound to serve.'

'Belief is not always a matter of religion/ said Garro. 'Faith can be a thing of men as well as gods.'

You think so? Perhaps then you ought to venture below decks and visit the empty water store on the forty-ninth tier, and share your viewpoint with those gathered there.'

Garro's brow furrowed. 'I do not follow you.'

'I have learned there is a church aboard your ship, captain/ said Iacton, 'and the congregation swells with each passing day'

Sindermann looked up as Mersadie tapped him on the shoulder. He put down the electroquill and slate.

He saw she had a couple of men with her, two junior officers in the uniforms of the engineering division.

The remembrancer hesitated, and one of the men spoke. We've come to see the Saint.'

Kyril threw a sideways glance along the length of the makeshift chapel. He saw Euphrati down there, talking and smiling. 'Of course,' he began. 'You may have to wait.'

That's all right,' said the other. We're off-shift. Couldn't make the… the sermon before.'

The iterator smiled slightly. 'It was hardly that, just a few people of like mind, talking.' He nodded to the dark-skinned woman. 'Mersadie, why don't you take these young gentlemen up?' He patted his pockets. 'I think I have a tract I could give you both.'

'Got one already,' said the man who'd spoken first. He showed Sindermann a frayed booklet with the kind of rough printing that came from old and rusted machinery. It wasn't a pamphlet he had seen before, not one of those that had circulated on the Vengeful Spirit. It appeared that the Lectitio Divinitatus had already made inroads aboard the Eisenstein long before his arrival.

Oliton led the men away, and Kyril watched her go. Like all of them, only now was Mersadie coming to understand the path that was laid out before her. Sin­dermann knew she was holding true to her calling as a remembrancer, but the recollections that she stored in the memory spools of her augmented skull were not tales of the Great Crusade and of Horus's glory. Mersadie had gently moved into the role of docu-mentarist for their nascent credo. It was Euphrati Keeler's stories that she wrote now, storing them and weaving them into a coherent whole. Kyril looked down at the data-slate where he had been attempting

to marshal his own thoughts, and reflected. How could he ever have expected to become part of some­thing like this? All around him, a church, a system of belief was accreting, gaining mass and potency beneath the shadow of the Warmaster's rebellion. How could any fate have judged that he, Kyril Sinder­mann, primary iterator of the Imperial truth, was suited for this new role? And yet here he found him­self, shepherding the words of Keeler, moulding them for the ears of the people even as Mersadie stood at his side, blink-clicking still images and recording Euphrati's every deed.

Not for the first time, Sindermann traced the line of events that had brought him here and pondered how things might have played had he spoken differently, thought differently. He had no doubt that he would be dead by now, gunned down in the mass termina­tion of the remembrancers aboard Horus's battle-barge. It was only the intervention of Loken's comrade Qruze that had saved their lives. The echo of the fear he felt at the sight of the bombing of Isstvan III whispered through him again. Death had been only a moment away, and yet Euphrati had shown no apprehension. She had known that they would live, just as she had been able to guide them to this ship and their escape. Once he would have rejected ideas of divine powers and of the so-called saints who com­muned with them. Euphrati Keeler took that scepticism away from him with her quiet authority, and made him question the secular light of unswerv­ing reason he had lived his life in service to.

They had all been changed after that day at the Whisperhead Mountains, when Jubal had trans­formed into something that still defied categorisation in Sindermann's thoughts. A daemon? In the end,

Kyril was unable to find any other means to explain it away. His light of logic fled from him, his precious Imperial truth was found lacking. Then the horror had come again, this time to destroy them all.

But he lived. They lived, thanks to Euphrati. With his own eyes, Sindermann saw her turn the might of a warp-spawned monstrosity with nothing more than a silver aquila and her faith in the Emperor of Mankind. His need for denial perished with the hate­ful creature that day, and the iterator saw truth, real truth. Keeler was an instrument of the Emperor's will. There was no other explanation for it. In His great­ness – no, in His divinity – the Emperor had granted the imagist some splinter of His might. They had all been changed, yes, but Euphrati Keeler the most of all.

Gone was the defiant but directionless young woman whose picts had caught the history around them. In her stead there was a new creation, a woman both finding and forging the path for all of them. Kyril should have been afraid. He should have been terrified that they would perish fleeing from Horus's perfidy. A single look at Keeler made that all disap­pear. He watched her talk to the two engineers, smiling and nodding, and a warmth spread through him. This is faith, he realised, and it is such a heady sen­sation! It was no wonder that the believers he had encountered during the Crusade resisted so hard, if this was what they felt.

Now, in the Lectitio Divinitatus, Kyril Sindermann found the same strength. His loyalty and love for the Imperium had never swayed. Now, if it were possible, he felt an even deeper devotion to the Lord of Man. He was ready to give himself to the Emperor, not just in heart and mind, but in body and soul.

He was not alone in this. The Cult of Terra, as it was sometimes known, was strengthening. The pamphlet in the engineer's hands, the ease with which Mersadie was able to find this disused water reservoir in which to assemble their makeshift chapel, all these things showed that the Lectitio Divinitatus existed on this ves­sel. And if it was here on this small, unremarkable frigate, then perhaps it was elsewhere too, not just concealed in the midst of Horus's fleet but maybe fur­ther afield, on worlds and ships spread across the Imperium. This faith was on the cusp of becoming a self-actualised creation, and all it needed was an icon to rally behind, a living saint.

Euphrati made the sign of the aquila and the two engineers followed suit. The hollow, nervous mood he had seen in their eyes upon their arrival was gone, and they walked away with purposeful strides, a new assurance in their spirits.

The Emperor protects,' said the younger of the two as he passed the iterator, nodding in thanks. Kyril returned the gesture. The girl gave them faith and calmed their fears as she had with dozens of others. The train of men and women finding their way to this rough-hewn chapel had been slow at first, but now they were coming more often, to listen to him speak or merely to be in the presence of the young woman. Sin­dermann marvelled how word of Keeler had spread.

'Kyril!' He turned to see Mersadie coming towards him in a rush, her perfect face turned in abject fear. 'Someone is coming!' The hushed dread in her words brought back memories of the secret ministry on the Vengeful Spirit, and of the men who had come at the Warmaster's behest with bolters and clubs to destroy it. A lookout reported in, just one of them: a single Astartes.'

Sindermann stood up. He could hear heavy boot steps ringing off the gantry deck outside the service hatch to the reservoir chamber, coming closer. 'Did the lookout see a weapon? Was he armed?'