For Glory and Honour by Various Authors

Author:Various Authors
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2023-06-26T07:42:44+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

72:09:32

Odoacer System, coreward edge

The mutant whimpered as Amatnim plucked a goblet from the tray it held. More mutants – decrepit, worm-pale things born on the lowest decks of the Glory Eternal – circulated through the ship’s strategium, offering drinks and sweetmeats to the gathered Word Bearers. Amatnim watched them. They made him curious, these creatures. They always had.

Was this, then, what the gods wanted? Was this the end result awaiting humanity, should the gods triumph over their great foe – enforced servitude, strangers in their own flesh, cowed and barely human at all? He remembered similar drudges aboard similar vessels in the days before the Great Liberation. Perhaps there was no difference. Humanity would serve one god or another, would be ruled by one brotherhood of demigods or the other. Perhaps that was simply the way of it.

He banished the thought with a swallow of wine. It was an excellent vintage, plundered from some aeldari trading enclave. Light, crisp, with a hint of strange spice. He had come to prefer their wine to that made by humans – the bitterness of a failed race added something to the taste. He looked around the chamber. Lakmhu wasn’t drinking, of course. Dark Apostles were abstemious sorts, even those that devoted their prayers to the Dark Prince. But the others seemed to be enjoying themselves. That was good. A bit of cheer before the bad news.

He took another sip and cleared his throat. The gathered Word Bearers fell silent. ‘I am certain that you have all noticed that we are under attack,’ he said. He activated the strategium’s star map – an immense hololithic projection that filled the chamber. Motes of light representing star clusters and celestial phenomena surrounded the Word Bearers. Half-visible shapes squirmed just beneath the glare, like eels in murky water.

At Amatnim’s gesture, a series of runes representing the fleet flashed to life. Other runes representing the elements of the fleet he’d sent out as predation forces flickered as well. There were fewer of these now than there ought to have been. Worse, they were retreating, as per the ­latest reports. ‘We’ve lost four vessels since Pergamon. Four battle-tested ships, as well as escorts and assault craft.’

‘The White Scars,’ Apis said. Murmurs accompanied this statement. Amatnim called up a pict-capture. It bloomed to his right, spreading like paint across a canvas. It showed a distorted image of an asteroid field, and bursts of light that all of them could identify as macro-cannon fire.

‘Yes – and no. This is a frame from the sensor-feed of Callyon’s Yearning. Even in his final moments, our departed brother Ashu served the Legion. This is the vessel that killed him.’ The pict-capture was rotated and magnified, so that the ship hidden amongst the asteroids was revealed. Black. Sleek. At once stripped-down and lethal. The hull was sloped strangely, perhaps to better baffle sensor sweeps. ‘That, my brothers, is no White Scars vessel.’

‘Corax’s whelps,’ Lakmhu growled. ‘They often flock with the Khan’s jackals.’

Amatnim smiled. ‘And what about this one?’

The pict-capture wavered.

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