The war for Slodi would begin soon. Solomon Demeter watched the drop-pods scatter down from the Pride of the Emperor with some regret. Marius Vairosean was a true friend; they would stand together until the end. But now Vairosean was fighting below, and there was all too high a chance that in his drive to redeem himself he would get himself killed.

No, that wasn't right. Vairosean was never like that. He would wage the campaign according to all regulations, and in all likelihood come back in one piece. But if he did die, Demeter's position would become desperate. His public censure was bad enough, and Fulgrim's attempt to curb the Legion's excesses was a double-edged sword: it slowed down the decay, true, but it turned aside the protests of any who tried to stop it. Which was not, of course, to deny that threatening Eidolon had been unwise at best.

Politically speaking, he was in trouble. Politics, however, was not Demeter's business, any more than business. Thus the Second Captain forced a smile onto his face; Vairosean would at last get his redemption, and perhaps the Third Captain would complain about Demeter's lack of planning again. The Legion was being reborn, a phoenix of the Emperor. His own role was irrelevant, in that.

"Would you like to see our own deployments?" Captain Daimon of the Eighth inquired, coming up behind Demeter.

"Am I with you?"

"Indeed," Daimon said with a toothy grin. "along with Kaesoron and his Lions, and Ruen of the 21st as well. We're going to clear out the Slodi moon's research station, and after we're done in the system the Legion will spread out. But we'll stay with Fulgrim! Our four companies will carve the Legion's glory into the Unbroken Stars under the command of the Phoenician himself!"

"Why are you so excited? We've fought with the Primarch before, Daimon. Often."

"Yes, but not often for a full campaign!"

Demeter responded with a knowing smile. This was a great honor, and a fortunate one, given that Fulgrim would isolate Demeter from the Legion's worst. Perhaps the weeks to come, the weeks before Ultramar, could be somewhat of a return to normalcy. Perhaps there was hope yet.

"Fulgrim is executing a remembrancer today," Daimon announced. "Do you want to watch?"

"How long until deployment?"

"Onto the Slodi moon? A few hours. We have time."

"Executions aren't a source of entertainment for me. Who is it, though?"

"Sarnita Quoxitti, for making music that literally killed a crew member listening to it. It had to do with live bolters being used for the symphony. I think all the nudity had to do with it too."

"Bolters - seriously?"

"It was an accident. Believe me: I was there. The symphony itself wasn't even good."

Demeter suppressed a sigh; Daimon had been there at Laeran. His taste in music was odd to say the least, and a concert with live bolters seemed like exactly the sort of thing Daimon would enjoy. Exactly what distinguished one wall of painful, deafening noise from another was not clear to Demeter, but to Daimon and his ilk the chaos made sense.

Well, at least it had been music, and as such it probably hadn't smelled. Ever since bringing d'Angelos to her execution, Demeter had been having nightmares about that stench.

"But," Daimon continued, "the exquisiteness of some of her previous work… it'll be interesting to see her die. Tragic, but interesting. Why are you so repulsed, anyway?"

"I'm not repulsed," Demeter said. "I just want to get my Company battle-ready in a few hours. Farewell." He left without waiting for Daimon's answer; it didn't concern him anyway.

He heard it nevertheless. "Well, fine," Daimon said with fake apathy before exiting, presumably towards the execution.

Demeter voxed his Sergeants to gather before entering the Company's meeting hall himself. He was not yet prepared for battle, but that mattered little; even if he got together in five minutes, he would be nearer perfectly ready than Daimon or Ruen would with unlimited time. And he didn't plan to wait until there were five minutes left. As for assault plans, he would leave most of those to Kaesoron; for his own part, he preferred having a rough sketch that he could modify depending on the circumstances.

The Company gathered quickly: they seemed eager to get into action. The fleet - carrying nearly the entire Legion - had taken far too long to get to the Unbroken Stars. That had, in fact, probably been a major reason for the corruption and decadence. With nothing to do, Legionnaires had sunk as low as - according to the latest rumor - killing each other for sport.

Brother against brother, for no reason besides sick pleasure. But Demeter recalled, too, his own shame after coming so close with Eidolon. Yes, the Primarch had made mistakes, but regardless of politics cleaning up the Legion had been an utter necessity.

"Battle-Brothers of the Second Company!" Demeter proclaimed after confirming the order, via vox, with Lord Commander Vespasian. "Today the Primarch has seen fit to send us to war. We will fight on Slodi's moon and crush the rebellion for Primarch and Emperor. I know some of you have doubts about the changes in the Imperium, but some of you have doubts about whether Chemos is round. Doubts can be forgotten, especially now. On Slodi's moon we will fight together with the First, the Eighth, and the Twenty-First. I will distribute the rough battle-plans in an hour; we'll be on the surface in three hours."

The Second Company let out a cheer. Some Astartes, among them Sergeant Anapene, seemed fiery with enthusiasm; others, Gaius Caphen among them, apparently had difficulty forcing excitement out. Demeter did not, could not blame either side, but he was certainly in the first camp.

The assembly concluded quickly, and Demeter headed back to his chamber. He put on his armor, taking some seconds to polish the various segments before joining them on his body. Then, he actually began to contemplate the battle plans. Bringing up Kaesoron's tactical map on his cogitator, Demeter stared blankly at his screen. His mind was working slowly, it seemed.

The stupor passed, and Demeter began calculating possibilities for attack plans. Going up the centre was a favored tactic of his, but here a surrounding strike would be the best to take care of his objective. The centre would need to be heavily defended - perhaps a minor attack up the centre would push the enemy's focus away from the sides?

Yes, that would do it. Demeter would go up the centre, while Caphen and another lieutenant would surround the rebels and make their destruction inevitable. It'd be an interesting trial to see how the various fortifications and bunkers affected the general strategy, but given sensor coverage that would wait for the ground.

It took some time to write out a more detailed set of plans and send them to his sergeants, but Demeter still had an hour before real preparations would start. The time was right, he decided, to visit Ostian Delafour. The sculptor was among the few remembrancers with the fleet who had remained on the ships during the Laeran incident, and thus his work was undamaged by the temple's poisons.

Delafour was working on a titanic statue when Demeter peeked into the door; when remembrancer noticed Astarte, however, Delafour smiled and sat down on his work bench, breathing heavily.

"It's good to see you again," Delafour noted. "The stone's rather… uncooperative. I might have to make the sculpture in a more abstract style."

"What is it going to be, anyway?"

"What does it look like, now?"

"Spherical. Not quite regular, but it looks like a spherical space station."

Delafour smiled. "Think bigger. This, my friend, is Chemos. Not exactly a scale model, I'm afraid - the surface details would have to be tiny - but rather an artistic representation. Its surface will be a metaphor for the progress of the Great Crusade, in the incarnation of your Legion. That, for instance - " the remembrancer pointed at a set of tentacles entangling humanoid figures- "is the battle of Laeran."

"And that's Fulgrim." Demeter pointed at a large, somewhat man-shaped protuberance at the top of the ball.

"Indeed, though he's quite unpolished at the moment. So is there a specific reason for your being here?"

"Besides visiting a 'fellow unenlightened lifeform'?"

Delafour chuckled. "Still haven't forgiven Abranxe, have you?"

"Actually, Heliton said it first. Abranxe was just copying his blood-brother. But yes, there's a reason; I was wondering… I wanted a centerpiece for the Company hall, and there are all too few pre-Laeran sculptors left."

"Ah." Delafour smiled. "Of course - actually, do you want this sculpture of Chemos, if I ever finish it?"

"No," Demeter answered. "I have Kraste's statue of Fulgrim triumphant already, remember? I want something… less victorious. Tragic. I don't want to forget the evil we've done along with the good." With the way things have been going lately, there was actually a slight chance that he could.

"You won't," Delafour promised. "My next piece was actually - but no, not right now. Not now." Demeter wasn't sure, but he thought that for the first time ever, he saw tears in the remembrancer's eyes.

Delafour started hacking away at the stone once more, and Demeter soon retreated. Thinking of Delafour's unknown personal tragedy and his own frustration, the Second Captain spent the remaining minutes before deployment painting an image of nighttime battle, the Emperor's Children fighting the Luna Wolves under a sky of meteor fire. This was war, true war, suffering and treachery mixed into a maddening vortex that dragged down progress into regression and faith into nihilism.

Demeter sometimes found it useful to push himself into such an emotional state before battle; it made him more deadly.

Then the door opened, and First Captain Julius Kaesoron walked in.

"Demeter?" he asked. "Deployment is about to start."

"Of course," the Second Captain said, "of course."

He took a step back and looked at his work. It was at best a sketch for now, and an apprentice's sketch at that; but that was enough for now. The details would come if a basis was there. It was his approach to battle, though one disdained by the rest of the Legion, and it was his approach to art, no matter what it depicted.

What it depicted was - "Treachery," Demeter said. It applied to everything now.

Then they walked to the deck, where the Second Captain was reunited with his Company. They cheered his arrival, though in his regrets, Demeter was not sure they should have. Here, among those deployed, Demeter was generally the sanguine, Kaesoron the melancholic, Daimon the choleric; now Demeter was undeniably the melancholic and Kaesoron phlegmatic. Well, times changed.

The galaxy changed, thrashing mankind around in its endless boilers.

The Astartes filed into their drop pods, Demeter choosing a place next to Sergeant Oritran Sabato. Then they dropped, the Pride of the Emperor fading from being the world to being a violet splotch, and then a violet dot, on the blackness of space.

"Ten."

It was only then that Demeter recognized the true scope of this tragedy.

"Nine."

They were not going into battle against a xenos foe.

"Eight."

The Unbroken Stars were aligned with the Warmaster's revolt.

"Seven."

Their only error was not believing the Emperor was a god.

"Six."

Their only crime was backing the Warmaster.

"Five."

Their only sin was believing in his cousins.

"Four."

In a very real way, he was walking out to battle to forces of Horus.

"Three."

In a very real way, he was entering a war between brothers.

"Two."

He would kill his fellow human, and not for the sacred ideal of unification, but only for the conflicting ambitions of beings - albeit supreme beings - light-years away.

"One."

And what could that inspire, save equal measures of sadness and righteousness?

"Impact!"