James Swallow - The Flight of the Eisenstein

Slowly and carefully, Garro drew his sword and turned it in his grip, offering the weapon to Dorn just as Voyen had offered his combat knife to Garro. 'Take my sword and end me with it if I am a deceiver, lord, I implore you, for I grow weary of each test that is heaped upon us! With all the lies and distrust that have bombarded me, I cannot face the same from those I call kinsmen!' With his free hand, Garro reached up to his chest and touched the eagle cuirass. He nodded to the primarch's armour and the similar aegis there, both echoes of the wargear worn by the Master of Mankind. *We both carry the mark of the Emperor's aquila. Does that count for so little?'

'In these dark times, nothing can be certain.' Dorn's face turned to stone once again. 'Put away your weapon and be silent, Battle-Captain Garro. Know

this: if you resist the edict of the Sigillite in any way, then the full and unfettered wrath of the Imperial Fists will be set upon you and your cohorts.'

4Ve will not resist/ Garro said, defeated. 'If this is what must be done, then so be it.' Libertas returned to its sheath in silence.

The primarch turned away. 'We will arrive in a few hours. Assemble your men and be ready to disem­bark.'

The distance across the marble floor to the cham­ber's doors seemed to expand as Garro's injured leg tensed with ghostly pain on every step he took.

The Phalanx approached Luna through the hanging ornaments of orbital defence stations and commerce platforms, her path an open corridor through the dark­ness towards Terra's natural satellite. As the fortress of the Imperial Fists found harbour at the gravity-null La Grange point beyond the moon, the Phalanx mimicked the orbit of Luna around its parent world.

Once, the satellite had been a mottled stone waste­land where humans had ventured in their first infantile steps away from their birth world. They had built colonies there, testing their mettle in the pitiless cold of the void in preparation for future voyages to other planets, but as Terra's people had advanced, Luna had become little more than a way station, a place to pass by on the journey to the interplanetary – and later, interstellar – deeps.

For a time, in the Age of Strife when Terra was engulfed in war and blood, the moon had become desolate and empty once again, but after the rise of the Emperor, Luna had known a rebirth. Waxing and waning, the satellite came full circle as the Age of Imperium brought it new life.

Bisecting the grey stone sphere across its equator lay a man-made valley many kilometres wide. This was the Circuit, an artificial canyon that laid open me rock and stone beneath the dusty lunar surface. All along the length of the chasm lay gateways into the moon's interior, vast doors to the honeycomb of spaces carved by mankind in the heart of Luna. The ancient, dead boulder of the moon became the largest military complex ever built by humans. A vast shipyard for the armada of the Imperium, thousands of starships from the smallest shuttle to the largest battle barge were built and maintained there, and across the face of the far side there were complex sta­tions for observation of the great void beyond. Port Luna was the cold, stone heart of humankind's great fleets.

The satellite was as much a weapon as it was a safe harbour. Much of the metals mined from the moon's heart and the rock from the Circuit's excavation had been employed by the Emperor's most skilled engi­neers, fashioned into a synthetic ring that girdled the planetoid. The vast grey hoop held batteries of lance cannons and docking bays for more warships. Wher­ever the light from Luna fell, those who saw it could sleep soundly knowing the ceaseless guardian stood to their defence.

And beyond it, Terra.

The cradle of humanity was in darkness. The light of the sun glimmered around the curvature of the planet, a brilliant arc of golden colour. Terra's night side showed its face towards Luna, the features of her continents and towering hive city constructs largely hidden beneath thick storm fronts and haze. In the places where the cloud formations were thin enough, the pulsing spark of lights from the great metropolis

arcologies made necklaces of stark white and bright blue, some clustered in haloes, others extending out along coastlines for hundreds of kilometres. Dark patches where the oceans lay shimmered like spilled ink.

On the yellow-hued Stormbird that carried the first group of the Eisenstein seventy, Nathaniel Garro detached himself from his acceleration cradle and made his way to a viewport, ignoring the neutral stares from Captain Halbrecht and his men. He pressed his head close to the hemisphere of armour-glass and looked with naked eyes upon the planet of his birth. How long had it been? Time seemed to weigh so much more upon him than it had before. Garro estimated that it had been several decades since he had last seen Imperial Terra's majesty.

There was a pang of sadness. In the dark of night, he could not hope to pick out the terrain formations and landmarks that he had learned so readily as a youth. Would there be men down there looking up as he stared out on them, Garro wondered? Perhaps a boy, no more than fifteen summers, out in the wild agri-parks of Albia for the first time in his life, would be staring up into the night sky and marvelling at the impossible magnitude of the stars.

Turning there below, somewhere beneath him was the place where he had been bom, and all the other land­scapes of his childhood. Down there was the heart of the Imperium, great complexes of infinite majesty and achievement like the Red Mountain, the Libraria Ultima, the Petitioner's City and the Imperial Palace itself, where even now the Emperor resided. It was so close, Garro felt like he could reach out and take it in his armoured fingers. He pressed his gauntlet to the win­dow and his palm covered the planet completely.

'If only it were that simple to keep it safe,' said Hakur. The sergeant joined him at the viewport.

In spite of everything, Garro felt strangely cheered by the sight of his home world, even as his emotions pulled him towards melancholy. 'As long as one Astartes still draws breath, old friend, Terra will never fall.'

'I would prefer not to be that one Astartes/ replied Hakur. 'With each passing day we are isolated further still.'

'Aye.' The Death Guard reflected. Time indeed was passing more swiftly than he had anticipated. While the Eisenstein's escape, becalming and rescue had seemed like little more than a matter of weeks for those on board, Garro soon discovered that their sub­jective period did not marry with the passing of days elsewhere. According to the central chronometer broadcast from the Imperial capital, more than twice as much time had passed since the attack on Isstvan III. Once more, Garro spared a thought for the loyal­ists left behind to face the guns of Horns.

The Stormbird turned and dipped its nose towards Luna, filling the viewport with spans of hard white stone the same shade as Garro's marble-hued armour. They were falling towards the Rhetia Valley and beyond it the Mare Crisium – the Sea of Crises where the Silent Sisterhood kept their secure lunar citadel.

Garro caught movement from the corner of his eye, the yellow of an Imperial Fist going forward from the aft compartment. Hakur saw him notice. 'I dislike being treated like a noviciate on my first mission off-world,' he said quietly. 'We don't need escorts, not from these humourless dullards.'

'It is by Dorn's orders,' Garro replied, although he said it with little conviction.

'Are we prisoners now, captain? Have we come so far only to be clapped in irons and stowed away in some lunar dungeon?'

Garro eyed him. 'We are not prisoners, Sergeant Hakur. Our wargear and weapons still remain in our possession.'