Tink, tink. Thump. Tink, tink. Thump.
Three-quarters of Sixth Claw stood around the expansive hololithic display table of the Strategium, awaiting the arrival of their brother in silence.
Since translating out of the Warp, Retrigan couldn't help but breathe easier. Even with the Gellar Field operational, there was still an oppressive shadow that coiled around their strike cruiser whenever they traveled within the depths of the Immaterium. It weighed down upon him like–
Tink, tink. Thump.
Like a…
Tink, tink. Thump.
…It was as if it were–
Tink, tink. Thump.
"Would you stop that?" Retrigan snapped.
Gyrthemar glanced at the once-raptor and almost imperceptibly tilted his head to the side. "Stop what?"
Tink, tink. Thump.
"That."
Retrigan nodded to Gyrthemar's spear, which his brother had been rhythmically drumming the tip of on the deck before tilting it upwards and giving another, solitary tap with its butt.
Gyrthemar glanced at his weapon and nodded. "Understood, brother."
The chamber was blessed with peace once more as Gyrthemar fell still, folding his arms over his chest. Retrigan met Taresh's gaze and was given an expression that was solidary in its suffering.
The three Night Lords stood without words for several more minutes before an annoyed sigh came from Gyrthemar's lips. "He told us three hours, did he not?"
"Yes," Retrigan stated. Pyotr was now coming upon an hour late to his own meeting.
"Hmph," Gyrthemar grunted with irritation. "What do you think he wants us for?"
"The same thing he always wants," Taresh said. "To help him. Then, when we are no longer useful, to forget about his brothers entirely."
Retrigan said nothing. Once, he may have agreed, but something was stirring in Pyotr. He was unsure what, however, and that concerned him greatly. The corruption of the Ruinous Powers could do many things to a man, and none of them were sightly.
"Ha! If that were true, he would not have returned Vinkaldr."
Tink, tink. Thump. Retrigan scowled, Gyrthemar grinned in response.
"You deify him. That sycophancy will cost us when he inevitably fails."
"You speak nonsense."
"Then perhaps I should use smaller words."
Gyrthemar's jaw clenched and his grip tightened on his spear. Taresh slowly began to reach for his chainsword.
"Enough," Retrigan said, both exasperated and tired of this same debate. "We will hear what he has to tell us. If he needs our aid, we will provide it for he is our brother."
Taresh scoffed. "We owe no fealty to him. He is not our sergeant or clawmaster."
"Rank is not the only form of authority anymore," Retrigan countered. The words tasted bitter on his tongue. He did not like them, but that did not make them untrue.
Taresh looked at Retrigan with a mix of disappointment and disgust before his expression became neutral once more. "Very well. I'll speak nothing more of it."
Retrigan nodded. If only it were so easy to get Gyrthemar to silence himself.
The Strategium's bulkhead door slid open then. The dull timbre of metal-on-metal lightly carried throughout the chamber as Pyotr entered.
"Apologies, brothers," he said. "It took Zasharr and Curie longer than expected."
A gush of air came from Pyotr's helm as he pulled it off and set it down on the edge of the table upon taking his place. He began to activate and manipulate the hololith.
But Retrigan was not paying attention to that. No, neither he nor his two companions were. The three of them instead had their vision fastly locked upon their brother. For, sprouting from his back and undulating in the air like dancing vipers, was not one, but three mechatendrils.
The shock Retrigan had felt upon witnessing his brother's return to augmentation quickly gave way under the distress and weight of what he saw on the hololith's projection of the Savory Wound and what he heard from Pyotr's report.
"We are… completely without fuel?" Gyrthemar asked as he fiddled with his bionic eye.
"There is enough for another twelve hours. Maybe sixteen if we burn light or go dark. Regardless, we will only need a fraction to reach Kleos."
"Which is futile," Retrigan added. "Our entire plan hinged on fleeing from the planet at the right moment."
Pyotr nodded, but said nothing.
"How did this happen?" Taresh asked, his voice cool as he narrowed his eyes at Pyotr.
"A rupture in one of the reserve pipelines." He paused. "Caused by an explosion initiated by slave malcontents."
"It was yours, wasn't it?" Taresh pressed.
"The matter has been dealt with."
The thinblood let out a barking laugh—something Retrigan had not expected from him. "'Dealt with?' The matter is dealt with?" He gestured wildly to the flickering display. "We have no fuel, Pyotr! You have killed us because you trusted a whore over your own brothers! Because you thought yourself better than us!"
Pyotr frowned as he regarded Taresh. "I cannot affect what has been done, only how we move forward."
"How long have you known this?" Retrigan asked, seeking to pivot the subject. Taresh was seething, it would not be wise to continue the current line of discussion.
"It came to my knowledge shortly before the fight broke out with the Carnage Stitchers."
"And you didn't tell the rest of the ship?" Gyrthemar said, brow creased.
"No," Pyotr confessed.
That admission should have filled Retrigan with venom for his brother. Instead, it did the opposite. Gargahl and his ilk would have likely preached about how it was for the good of the warband or justified their actions with theocratic zeal. Not Pyotr. He provided no explanation or excuses, he laid himself bare for his brothers to form their own opinions—even if they resulted in vitriol.
Taresh scoffed, but made no further action against Pyotr. Gyrthemar simply scratched his head in confusion.
"Then… we are doomed?"
"No," Pyotr said in a stern voice. "No, I will not let my brothers die on this day."
"What do you have planned?" Retrigan asked, growing curious. He watched as Gyrthemar leaned forward, his face alight with excited interest as he—most certainly—hoped there would be some level of fighting involved. Even Taresh cocked an intrigued eyebrow.
"The rest of the warband does not hear of this," Pyotr prefaced. "It is vital they continue to believe nothing is awry. We cannot have a panic being incited at this time."
Retrigan and Gyrthemar both voiced their confirmation, leaving Pyotr to eye Taresh critically for his silence.
"You had to call in more favors with the surgeon for those mechadendrites," the thinblood pointed out.
"Yes. That was, in part, what took me so long. It was not easy to convince Zasharr to lend aid yet again."
"There will be a cost."
"He made that clear to me, yes."
Retrigan could see Taresh's lips shift as he worked his tongue to the rhythm of his internal thoughts. "And you are willing to pay them?"
Pyotr nodded. Taresh thought some more.
"Fine, then. What is this plan of yours?"
Pyotr cleared the projection of the Savory Wound, but before he could do anything more, the chamber doors slid open once again and a new figure stepped in, battle plate humming and the power sword on his hip glinting in the pale light.
"What do we have here?" Anras said with a conspiratorial smirk, as if he had just caught the four of them in some devious scheme.
The visionary looked terrible. He did not carry himself in the way he normally did, with that imperious sense of mastery. Instead, his hair was furled and knotted, the skin of his face was gaunt and slick with sweat, dark shadows ringed his eye sockets, and even the eyes themselves pulsed with irritated red veins around the edges where the black pools didn't dominate. He still wore a ghost of his usual expression, but beyond that was something Retrigan thought was akin to resignation, or perhaps almost stoicism.
He felt something tighten inside of him as he realized how disconcertingly similar his brother looked to their father near the end.
"What is it, Anras?" Pyotr asked.
Anras walked up to the display table, gripped its edge with hands spread wide, and leaned in to address them. "I wish to join you."
The statement was met with silence. Retrigan measured the visionary with narrowed eyes. Anras was many things, but collaborative was not one of them. He also knew nothing of what they were even…
A flicker of movement. Anras's eyes darted across the table, locking gazes with Pyotr for a microsecond before shifting away. The two shared a silent thought in that moment, a toneless word. Retrigan pursed his lips as he made the connection.
Pyotr had to learn about the lost fuel somehow. And one Astartes haunted that bridge more than any other—clinging to it like a life preserver of his own authority. As the sole bearer of their father's gift, Retrigan thought Anras the closest thing they had to a rightful heir of the Fifty-first Company, but he could still see the visionary's shortcomings as plainly as anyone else.
"What does he know of your plan, Pyotr?" Retrigan asked tentatively.
"Nothing," Pyotr responded without hesitation.
Retrigan turned back to the visionary. "Then what point is there in joining something you know nothing of?"
"Plan?" Anras said, his voice tittering. "I wasn't speaking of any plan, brothers. I wish to join Sixth Claw."
The words hung in the air like corpses on meathooks. They were heavy, daunting words that were laced with something that would not be known to be poison or spice until they were tasted and their effects metabolized. None of the gathered Night Lords seemed keen on taking the first bite.
Retrigan eyed Pyotr once again. The lord discordant stood in the same disquiet as his brothers, his eyes locked onto those of the visionary. That gaze was met and did not falter under the warpsmith's cold stare. The shifting and twitching of mechadendrite limbs were the only indicator of Pyotr's thoughts.
Gyrthemar's derisive snort eventually broke the silence. "As if we would ever consider such a–"
"Very well," Pyotr said.
Gyrthemar just about choked as he turned to his brother in stupefaction. Retrigan also raised a questioning eyebrow.
"Brother, you would be bringing a scorpion to our midsts!"
"Yes," Pyotr agreed, never turning his eyes from the visionary. "But this is a scorpion we could use. A Claw at full strength would benefit us for what I have in mind."
The muscles of Gyrthemar's face continued to twitch as he came to terms with what he was hearing. His spasming cheeks and veins settled down, however, as he seemingly came to accept what he had been told.
"If I sense even a whisper of treachery, I will execute you immediately—regardless of the situation," Pyotr said to Anras.
"You wound me, brother," the visionary said with a dry smile and a hand to his breast. "I am as honest as Rogal Dorn."
Retrigan rolled his eyes and looked at Pyotr. "You were saying?"
The lord discordant nodded and tapped the controls of the tactical hololith once again. This time, a projection of Kleos sputtered into existence as thousands of motes of light scattered then coalesced together once more into a new shape.
"In our current state, we will be slaughtered by the Ferric Sentries no matter what we do," he said.
"Inspiring," Retrigan said, receiving a chuckle from Gyrthemar and Anras.
"As it stands," Pyotr continued as if he had not heard, "we could not survive a direct assault. The Imperial mongrels have greater firepower and numbers. If we wait for them to descend, we will be slaughtered."
"Then we don't fight," Taresh said as if stating the obvious. "We find another method of victory."
"Such as?" Anras asked, idly looking down at his hand as he flexed his fingers. The plating of his gauntlet clicked with each movement. "We're stranded and running is no longer an option. Nor can we hide without the Sentries turning over every stone until we're found."
"Silence," Pyotr said and, remarkably, the visionary did as he was told. "The strategy for the greater bulk of the warband remains the same."
"For what gain?" Taresh retorted. "What could a single Claw do to shift the paradigm in such a way that we could achieve anything substantial?"
Pyotr placed a hand on the display table and tapped one finger against its edge with several, repetitive tinks. Gyrthemar glanced at Retrigan with a look that said, Are you going to tell him to stop? The once-raptor ignored him.
"Nox parabellum," he said, almost musingly. "We must strike first and strike with the fury of a heldrake. Tonight, we do not simply go for the throat. We go for the heart, the lungs, and the skull too."
"With one Claw," Taresh said dubiously.
"It can be done."
The thinblood narrowed his eyes. "How?"
"We are Night Lords, brother. When have we ever fought fair?"
Gyrthemar visibly perked up and chuckled. "Ah, but we will be fighting, then! You had me worried for a moment, Pyotr. Let us show these ferric whores what they face when we stand in midnight clad, eh, brother?"
Slowly, the lord discordant turned to look at Gyrthemar, his face lightly obscured behind the haze of a translucent, green projection. They locked eyes and Pyotr did what was perhaps the most disturbing thing Retrigan had seen in the past two centuries.
He smiled.
When it was over, she was given only seconds to wallow in the pain and misery that radiated throughout her body before she was ushered to her feet again.
She didn't bother to resist. There wouldn't have been any point. Even if she somehow managed to best the thing that Phihks had become, there was nowhere on the ship she could hide that she would not inevitably be found before they breached the planet's atmosphere.
The skitarius escorted her through the Savory Wound's metallic arteries, its shadows seeming to surround Artemis and grip her tighter than they ever had before as her feet dragged along. Her guard was not rough with her, but nor was he patient. Whenever she fell into a stupor caused by her own failures, she felt a light pressure on her lower back from some kind of weapon—be that the muzzle of a gun or the head of a shock maul—lurching her onward.
She was surprised when they ended up in the ship's hangar as opposed to the brig. There was a mess of activity and preparation for the battle to come. Artemis tried to summon some satisfaction from the knowledge of how fruitless it all was for them but couldn't manage it. The pain vibrating through her limbs and the despair coiling around her mind seemed to drown it out.
No one stopped or seemed to notice them as they navigated their way to a platform that held a deep blue thunderhawk, styled with the forked lightning patterns of the VIIIth legion. Artemis could not see the vessel's name stenciled on its side, nor did she care as she watched the ramp at the mouth of the gunship slowly begin to lower. As it settled against the hull, she felt another insistent nudge on her spine and continued to trudge forward.
Both she and Phihks entered the thunderhawk and immediately the ramp began to rise again. It wasn't until Artemis looked up that she saw, beyond sweaty strands of her own hair, that the hold was filled with people. People she recognized.
Every single crewman who worked the fuel loading station—even those who had not been involved in her revolt—had been brought and held here. A mixture of fear and confusion rippled across the crowd. None seemed harmed, but all seemed aware that they would be soon.
"Artemis?" a voice said, cracking as he shoved his way through the amassed people until he stood in front of her. Jep looked terrified—but only to her. She knew him well enough to know he was hiding his fear to comfort the others. Artemis would have smiled if it hadn't been so sad.
"What happened?" he asked. His eyes turned to Phihks who stood at the ramp's entrance with unnerving stiffness. "Is that…"
"Phihks," Artemis said, unsurprised by how small and laced with pain her voice was. "They caught him. He told them everything."
A wave of despair washed across the hold. Some people gasped, others began to cry. Jep looked back at them, then turned to Artemis with a surprising amount of determination. "We'll get through this," he said. "What's the play?"
She said nothing.
"You… you have a plan, don't you, Artemis?"
The crowd hung onto his words, desperate. They looked at her like she was the last flicker of a hearth's flame on a cold night. They needed her more now than they ever had before.
She said nothing.
Artemis looked into her friend's eyes and watched as the hope slowly died within them. It was the most heartbreaking thing she had ever witnessed.
Brushing past him, Artemis walked towards the edge of the hull. The amassed slaves parted for her—out of aversion rather than awe. Once she reached the farthest corner she could, she sat down on the floor, pressed her back up against the wall, and buried her face in red, tattooed hands.