Chapter Thirty-two
It had been a verdant world, once. A virtual paradise. Long ago. Now, it was dead, the tectonic plates themselves cracked and torn, their rocky surfaces covered in ash, rubble, and the millennia-abandoned remnants of war. No water flowed, and the atmosphere was too thinned of oxygen to support life. Only an ancient beacon, still sending its interdict warning from the system edge, indicated that there had ever been human interest here.
Far out on that edge, purple lightnings erupted out of nowhere. A vast tear in material space forced itself into existence, jagged contours smoothed by vast energies into a portal a hundred kilometres wide. From that portal slipped a long lean vessel, all dark armour with a few glints of gold. Once again, Eyes of the Phoenix came out of warp.
On the bridge, Sara turned to her small crew. "Good job, everyone. That was remarkably smooth."
The comms channel spoke. "There is no warp activity here, captain. That is why. I have never known anywhere so devoid of it. As if the warp itself shuns the system."
"Astrid, that is less than comforting," came Kat's voice from her station at system scan. She half-turned in her seat. "But she's right. Bar the interdict beacon, there's nothing I can pick up. The star is putting out the usual EM noise, but otherwise, nothing."
Sara nodded. "Good. Given what finding activity might mean, nothing is a lot safer. Morgan, you have a course?"
"Yes, captain. Displaying now."
She glanced at it, and downloaded it to her controls. "Alright. Keep shields and weapons online. Geller fields too. It seems that nothing is here, but let's not take any chances. Astrid, come up to the bridge. I want you at weapons aux."
The Navigator acknowledged. "On my way."
They drifted in at less than a twentieth c. Scans showed nothing except the beacon, and Janey had set automatic monitors in case that changed its signal. In the seventeen hours it took to close to high anchor above their destination, they had time to scan everything, to double-check the scans, to run all the ship's system checks. All of them had had a full sleep cycle, even Sedreth. Phoenix slid slowly past two outer multi-mooned gas giants, the rocky, blasted, fifth planet with its rings of ancient war-mangled detritus, the fourth planet – another gas giant – and finally past the remnants of a mined-out asteroid belt to take up position over the equator of the third world.
Janey and Kat spent the next thirty-three hours – the planet's rotational period – running scan after scan. Only a faint emission from the still-radioactive scar across the larger continent showed on their displays.
"Is it safe to go down?"
"Yes, mummy. The residual radiation levels are minimal now. Armour will be impervious to it. It won't even penetrate bare skin. Except that there's no atmosphere left to breathe, really. Oxygen levels are only 3%, and atmospheric pressure is only a couple of hundred Pascals – about a five hundredth of Terran normal. It's not quite vacuum, but only a space marine could survive in it for long."
Kat nodded. "And it's freezing. Even at noon, temperatures don't get much above two-sixty Kelvin; night-time temperatures are thirty degrees lower than that. An unprotected human would freeze to death in minutes."
Sara nodded thoughtfully. "But it's safe to go down in armour?"
"Or suits, yes."
"Fine. We know what we're here for. We'll take it in shifts. Astrid, you're not fitted to armour yet, so I want you in an environment suit and inside one of the vehicles at all times until Sedreth and Janey are finished with your set. We take no chances. Load the shuttles. Janey, you're first orbital watch. Kat, you're second. One of you two will remain aboard at all times, and keep tacscan operative. Any questions?"
Silence.
"Very well. Let's get started." The small group moved to obey.
The shuttle took them in without trouble. Picked up from a forge-world they'd delivered to six months before and designed for mining in hostile environments, it was simple to fly, rugged but stable. The chosen landing spot was an open area, what might once have been a forest or park perhaps. Sedreth landed the vehicle cleanly, and moved to the hatch, leaving Kat at co-pilot. She was, after much practice, a skilled enough shuttle pilot to lift off without a co-pilot these days, and as Sara had said, they were taking no chances.
He stepped carefully onto the surface; scans showed solid, but still. Good, decent footing even for a Terminator's thousand kilo bulk. A full scan of the area showed nothing; no movement, no sign of life. Not exactly surprising, but they lived by expecting surprises. Sara followed him down the short ramp.
"I have nothing."
"No. The planet appears devoid of life."
She spoke into the vox. "Astrid, you can bring it out."
Their little rock-miner, another recent addition to their equipment list, rumbled down the ramp. Tracked and squat, it had been designed to mine asteroids; a barren planetary surface posed no problems.
"Kat, lift off and pick up the additional gear from the ship. We'll head for that rocky hill and you can bring it down to us in about two hours."
Kat acknowledged and they were dusted in grey as the shuttle took off again. He and Sara took flanking positions as Astrid drove the miner forward.
Two days later the main work of cutting was finished. A smooth black plane of igneous bedrock now rose thirty metres high and fifty across overlooking the few shattered and crumbling ruins that had once been the Choral City.
Janey was at the miner controls, carefully plotting where and how deep to start carving. Astrid and Sara were on Phoenix, readying the evening meal. Sedreth and Kat were busily stacking ingots of gold-iridium alloy for later use. Four larger crates were also stacked, slightly to one side from the rest.
"All plotted, Mr Morgan."
Sedreth paused in his work. "Good, Janey. I shall contact your mother. I think we should all be here for this."
Astrid looked up as the comm beeped. "Brother-sergeant Sedreth? Is there a problem?"
The deep voice came back clearly. "Not at all, Navigator. I would, however, like both you and Sara to come down. We are about to start the next phase."
She smiled. It was nice of him to want everyone there. "I'll tell her. Shuttle should be down in fifteen minutes."
"Fifteen minutes. Confirmed. Sedreth out."
Sara came into land beside their monolith. Three armoured figures waved acknowledgement to her as the shuttle swept down. She gave a tiny sigh. It felt awful, as a mother, to see her daughter in battle-plate. Even Agnetha's battle-plate, that was still too big for her. It was a reminder that Janey would be risking her life as well, all too soon.
She extended the landing struts and touched down on the smooth bare rock; they'd cut a deliberate ellipse into the outcrop, the black monolith at its centre, which was eighty metres on its long axis. Sufficient for their shuttle, easily.
She undid the safety straps and the two of them walked down the ramp to join the others.
Sedreth's deep voice was firm. "Sara, I think you should give the command to start."
She nodded. "Janey. Execute programme."
A high-pitched whine rose as the drill-bit started, slowly carving into the two-metre thick slab. They all watched in silence as the Imperial aquila took shape, etched eighteen centimetres deep in the polished black surface.
"How long will it take to carve the whole thing?" asked Kat quietly.
"About seven hours," replied Sedreth, his voice solemn. "I have set up floodlights; we can finish that part tonight. The embedding will take about three days, as it is more difficult, then a further day to fix. We can hold the formal dedication in six days."
Astrid felt uncomfortable in the armour; she had never worn it before and although she knew it was necessary for protection from the freezing atmosphere it pressed on her in strange places. Sedreth had rebuilt three sets now. One each for Sara, Kat, and herself, although hers was only just completed and still to be finally fitted. Janey had been semi-fitted – enough for her to wear it at need – to the set of Sister of Battle armour that they had acquired before Astrid or Kat came aboard. Sedreth had refused to try and adapt a set of astartes plate for the girl; Janey was still not old enough – barely fourteen and therefore with growing still to do.
Astrid was, well, she was a Navigator. She had no real instinct for personal combat, nor for tactics beyond the most basic. She was, she admitted to herself, much healthier than she had been. She could use a sidearm competently. And she had found in herself a remarkably strong stomach which helped a great deal to act the medicae. Still, she was uncomfortable in armour.
Sedreth gave her a brief nod, likely picking up on her discomfort. He was no psyker; it was more that years and years of experience in reading opponents and allies, coupled with superhumanly acute senses, allowed him to diagnose at a glance the moods of those around him. And he could probably smell where any of them was in her menstrual cycle.
She returned the nod and walked slowly to the shuttle. Sedreth had promised to fit it better to her over the coming weeks; he had naturally concentrated on fitting Kat first.
She thought back to the first time the little crew had gone into a fight. It had been just over four months ago, an assistance request from a small colony world near the infamous Ork Empire known as Charadon. Although the arrival of a small Ork kroozer – barely a frigate really – was far from a full-scale Waagh!, the sparsely populated world nonetheless had little military capability with which to defend itself. Their obsolete and outgunned patrol ship had been no match for the Ork vessel.
Phoenix, however, was another matter entirely. The strike destroyer's massive lances had cut through the greenskin starship's defences in only a few minutes, blowing it to atoms, and they had taken orbit over the main human population.
Sedreth's tactical expertise had quickly diagnosed the direction of the heaviest ork attack, and he, Sara and a slightly nervous Kat had teleported down right on top of it, with commensurate slaughter.
Kat had been wounded though, and it could have been much worse if Janey hadn't 'ported herself down with extra ammunition for Kat and Sara, plus her own bolter, and joined in. Sedreth had not been best pleased and had driven all of them except Astrid extremely hard for weeks afterwards, until Janey had gone to him in tears and begged forgiveness.
Since then, Sara and Kat trained as a duo all the time.
The shuttle bumped slightly. Landing. Right. Wool-gathering. Sedreth didn't seem to have noticed, but she was sure he had. The space marine didn't miss much, if anything.
They walked together down the ramp into pale bright sunshine.
Sometime during the hours she'd been back on the ship, the four poles had been raised in front of the huge slab, which no longer stood black and forbidding but now glinted in the weak sun, inlaid in a platinum-gold alloy with thousands of names beneath a monstrous aquila and four ancient heraldic symbols.
Sedreth stopped beside her and she waited as he slowly scanned the new memorial.
"Excellent work, Sara. The Fallen would be pleased," he rumbled, sounding satisfied.
Sara sounded pleased. "I hope so. It is a pity that we don't have anyone official to dedicate it."
"No official of the Imperium as currently constituted would be recognised by them as representative of anything they had fought for, Sara. We are sufficient for this." Sedreth replied gravely.
"Very well. Shall we be about it?"
Each of the women moved to a pole and took the control in her hand. Sedreth spoke quietly, but firmly.
"As should have been done centuries since, we remember the Fallen of the Legions, Betrayed but Defiant, Loyal to their sworn oaths. Let their colours fly forever before their mighty names, until the world itself falls. The Third Legion."
Kat twisted her wrist and a huge Emperor's Children banner unfurled itself, flapping gently in the wind.
"The Twelfth Legion."
Janey did the same and the blue and white of the World Eaters flew for the first time in a hundred centuries.
"The Fourteenth Legion."
Astrid turned her own wrist over and unfurled the great green skull and ring of the Death Guard.
"The Sixteenth Legion."
Sara too worked the flagpole to release the black wolf's head and crescent on the pearl-white of the Luna Wolves.
The fabrics were expensive, specially made to order; even on this dead world with its constant freezing winds they would last hundreds of years.
Sedreth's deep voice held them still and unmoving. "In nomen et voluntate Imperatoris, aeternum nomina eorum tolerare. Ave Imperator."
"Ave Imperator."
Astrid bowed her head. "Requiescamus in pace."
She looked up at the huge monument, the thousands of names gleaming proud gold in the setting sun. One by one they knelt in silent prayer.
Finally, Janey spoke the ancient words quietly into the silence.
"Staunch to the end against odds uncounted,They fell with their faces to the foe. They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them. And we shall avenge them."
Sedreth spoke an unfamiliar question. "What is your duty?"
Only Sara and Janey answered. "Service to the Emperor's will."
"What is the Emperor's will?"
"That we fight and die."
"What is death?"
"Death is our duty."
The big marine stood; they all followed suit, copied his salute. He spoke one more word. "Dismissed."
They all bowed briefly to the monument, turned, and walked together back to the shuttle. After a few moments, the heavy tread of the Terminator followed behind.
A/n: apologies for the late update. This, and the next couple of chapters, which will follow soon, are relatively quiet as the tale moves towards its final phases. However I do hope you enjoy them; I always wanted to write a chapter like this one, where astartes commemorated their betrayed brethren. Finally, canon to the contrary, I am sticking to my Legion strengths despite the publication of the Horus Heresy series by Forge World.