James Swallow - The Flight of the Eisenstein

Keeler's gaze crossed the chamber and found Garro. She gave him a nod of greeting that seemed almost regal. He had expected her to appear afraid, as nervous as Oliton and the old iterator obviously were, but Keeler stepped down into the citadel as if she were fated to be there, as if she were the mistress of the place.

Sister Amendera did something in sign-language and the unblinking woman in the red coat and her cohorts moved with sudden, graceful swiftness.

'An Excrutiatus,' said Halbrecht of the woman. It is said that each one of them must personally burn a hundred witches before they can take the rank.'

Keeler stood, unruffled, as the prosecutor squad approached her. With exaggerated caution, the Sister Excrutiatus gave Euphrati a cold and clinical once­over, looking her up and down. Then she signed to Kendel and gestured sharply to her warriors, who sur­rounded the refugees.

Both Garro and Qruze came forward at the same moment, ready to step to battle if events fell that way. 'These people are under my aegis!' barked the Death Guard. Those who harm them will face me-'

Sister Amendera and her witchseekers stepped in to block the Astartes's path, but it was Keeler who gave them pause.

'Nathaniel, Iacton, please, don't interfere. I will go with them, it is necessary.'

The woman in the red coat signed and the novice translated. 'This one demonstrates traits that are of issue to the Sisterhood. By the Emperor's edicts and the Decree of Nikaea, we have the authority to do with her as we wish. You have no right of claim in this place, Astartes.'

'And the civilians, a documentarist and an iterator?' snapped Qruze. 'Are you free to take them as well?'

'Wherever Euphrati goes, we will accompany her!' Mersadie managed a defiant interjection and Garro saw Sindermann nod in agreement.

Keeler began to walk. 'Don't be afraid for us/ she called. 'Have faith. The Emperor will protect.'

Garro watched the procession of figures disappear down a ramp and through a thick iris of steel leaves that slammed closed behind them. He could not shake the sudden, icy certainty that he would never see them again.

Amendera Kendel was still in front of him, still studying him with iron eyes. She signed again. 'Cap­tain Garro, and the men under your stewardship, know this,' the novice translated in a clear, crisp voice, 'we grant you sanctuary here until such time as the Master of Mankind makes ruling on what shall be done with you. Quarters have been prepared.' The Silent Sister never once broke eye contact with him. 'You are our guests and you will be treated as such. In return we ask that you behave only as the warriors of the Legiones Astartes should, with honour and respect.' The novice paused. 'Captain, she asks you for your word.'

It seemed like an eternity before Nathaniel answered. 'She has it.'

It was a prison, in any real sense of the word.

There were no bars upon the windows, no locked doors on the spartan tier of the citadel where the Sis­ters gave them quarters in which to wait, but outside was barren rock and airless void, and for kilometres in all directions there were autonomous sensor units and gun-drones. If they left the spire, where could they go? Steal a ship from the launch bay? And then what?

Garro sat in his small chamber in silence and lis­tened to the men of the seventy as they talked among themselves. All of them gave voice to the things that churned inside their minds, thoughts of what futures lay before them, fears borne of desperation and plans that went nowhere and did nothing.

Sister Amendera was no fool. He saw the look in her eyes. He knew as well as she did that if the Astartes of the Eisenstein decided that their confine­ment was at an end, there would be little the Sisters of Silence could do to stop them from leaving. Garro was certain that Kendel's warriors would make it a costly path for them, but he estimated he would lose no more than ten of his men, and probably only the ones who had been slowed by injury during the escape from Isstvan.

He knew the Phalanx was still nearby, and Dorn with it. Perhaps if they did try to leave, the primarch would send Halbrecht and Efried to convince them otherwise. Garro frowned. Yes, that was a sensible tac­tic and Dorn was nothing if not the master of level-headed strategy. Stepping back for a moment to examine the situation, Garro had to give the lord of the Imperial Fists his due for handling the Eisenstein men in the manner he had. If Garro and the others had remained on the star fortress, eventually friction would have flared and blood would have been shed. By placing them here, under the roof of the Sister­hood – and the very same women who had fought alongside them only months ago – Dorn forced Garro to give pause to any thoughts of unfettered combat.

Even if they fought through the Sisters and the Imperial Fists, and got themselves a ship, what would it earn them? It was madness to think they might

approach Terra and demand an audience with the Emperor to vindicate themselves. Any atmosphere-capable ship would be ripped from the sky before it came within sight of the Imperial Palace, and if they fled for deep space there were hundreds of battleships between Luna and a navigable jump locus.

Of all the things he feared would happen to the sev­enty, Nathaniel Garro had not expected this. To come so far, in measures of both his soul and of distance, only to be held at bay here, within sight of his goal… It was torture, in its own way.

Time passed and no word came for them. Sendek wondered aloud if they might be left here to live out their lives while the matter of Horus was settled on the other side of the galaxy, the seventy an inconve­nient footnote forgotten amid the fighting. Andus Hakur made a joke to him about it, but Garro saw the real concern beneath the forced humour. Barring death in battle or fatal accident, an Astartes was func­tionally immortal and he had heard it said that one of his kind might live a thousand years or more. Garro tried to imagine that, being trapped in the citadel while the future unfolded around them, unable to intervene.

The Death Guard had attempted to rest for the first few days, but as it was aboard the frigate, sleep came infrequently to him and when it did, it was brimming with images of darkness and horror dredged from the madness of the flight. The corrupted, diseased things he had seen masquerading as Grulgor and his men lurked in the shadows of his mind, tearing at his will. Had those things truly been real? The warp was after all, a reflection of human emotion and psychic tur­bulence. Perhaps the Grulgor-daemon was that, a freakish mirror of the black, diseased heart that beat

beneath Ignatius's chest made real, a fate that other unwary men could also fall to. At the opposite end of the spectrum, he felt the golden glow of something – someone – impossibly ancient and knowing. It wasn't Keeler, although he sensed her as well. It was a light that dwarfed hers, that reached into every corner of his spirit.

Finally, he awoke and decided to give up his efforts at sleep. There was a war being fought, he realised, and not just the one out in the Isstvan system, the one between those who stood by Horus and those who stood by his father. There was another war, a silent and insidious conflict that only a few were aware of, people like the girl Keeler, like Kaleb and now Nathaniel him­self: a war not for territory or material gain, but a war for souls and spirits, for hearts and minds.

Two paths lay open before him and his kindred. The Astartes understood that they had always been there, but his vision had been clouded and he had not seen them clearly. Along one, the route that Horus had taken, that way lay the monstrous horrors. The other led here, to Terra, to the truth and to this new war. It was on that battlefield that Garro stood, the battle looming ever closer like thunder at the horizon.