The Flight of the Eisenstein (17 page)

'It doesn't look like much,' Voyen remarked quietly, peering through the Stormbird's viewport as they crossed from the
Endurance.
He was still wary around Garro and it showed in his voice.

'It's just a ship,' replied the battle-captain. 'There or elsewhere, we do our duty no differently'

In the frigate's landing bay, which seemed cramped and narrow in comparison to the
Endurance,
the ship's master was waiting to greet the Death Guard with a formal bridge party.

'Baryk Carya,' he said, with a clipped accent and a brisk salute. 'Commander Grulgor, Battle-Captain Garro. As the primarch has ordered, this ship is yours until death or new duty.'

Carya was thickset and tawny, with a matting of stubbly grey hair around his head and chin. Garro noticed the shine of a carbon-plated augmetic at his cheek and saw the stud-plug cords dangling in a queue from the back of his skull. He was terse in manner, but just on the right side of obedient.

As ship's master, Carya would be de facto captain when a ranking Astartes was not on board, and he didn't doubt the man had some resentment about stepping out of that role for this assignment. The shipmaster glanced at the lean, thin-faced woman at his side. Garro recognised the status pins on her epaulets as those of executive rank. 'My deck officer, Racel Vought.' She bowed and made the sign of the aquila.

Grulgor took this opportunity to sniff in slight disdain. 'You may carry on, shipmaster. When Captain Garro or I require you attention, you will be made aware of it.'

Carya and Vought saluted and left. Garro watched them go, aware that Grulgor was already attempting to place himself in a position of superiority less than a minute after they had stepped on to
Eisenstein's
decks.

He looked back towards the aura-field holding out the vacuum of space as the last of the Stormbirds drifted into the landing bay on darts of blue thrust, angling to land next to the transports assigned to the elements from the Second and Seventh Companies. A momentary crease of uncertainty crossed Garro's face. He counted the Stormbirds. Surely the new arrival was one too many for their needs? It wasn't as if the entirety of their commands had come with the two unit leaders.

The ship settled and folded its raptor wings to its fuselage. The captain watched it from the corner of his eye, waiting for the embarkation hatch to drop open to release more of Grulgor's men, but it remained static. There were no passengers aboard, then? Perhaps the ship only carried inanimate cargo.

Grulgor crossed his line of sight and showed Garro a thin, humourless smile. 'I intend to make an inspection of this vessel to ensure it is fully prepared for the battle.'

Very well.'

The commander signalled to a handful of his men and strode away without looking back. Garro sighed and turned to Kaleb, where the housecarl stood, bowed. 'Supervise the
Eisenstein's
servitors to unload our wargear and equipment.' He paused. 'And report to me any information about the payload from that last Stormbird.'

'Aye, lord. I'll have the crew install the gear on the frigate's arming racks.'

Garro looked at Sergeant Hakur. Andus, take the men and find us a good billet before Grulgor's men take the choice spaces.' Off the veteran's salute, the battle-captain turned to his command squad. 'I'm going to the bridge. Decius, Sendek, you'll join me.'

Voyen gave him a look. 'While Grulgor stalks the lower decks? Forgive me, lord, but I find something about his manner unsettling.'

Who doesn't?' offered Sendek.

'He's your superior, Apothecary,' Garro said, more bluntly than he had intended. 'He has the authority to do as he wishes, within reason.' Nathaniel waved Voyen away. 'Go with Hakur. I'm in no mood for idle speculation at this moment.'

With his warriors following him, Garro walked to the elevator platform that would take them up to the frigate's central tiers. He kept his face neutral, but Voyen had struck a sore point. It would be divisive and unseemly for the battle-captain to have spoken openly in front of line Astartes, but the truth was Garro too suspected an ulterior motive on Grulgor's part.

Have we come to this?
His thoughts echoed in his mind.
When men of the same Legion cannot look upon one another without a bloom of distrust? There is rivalry between warriors and then there is enmity... And this... What am I sensing?

'Captain !' Temeter looked up into the face of one of his junior officers. 'Sir, our approach on the northern flank is being forced into a bottleneck. The defenders have a twinned quad-barrel cannon sweeping the area. It is emplaced in a ferrocrete bunker. Shall I give the command to go around?'

Temeter snorted. We are Death Guard, lad. When we encounter a boulder in our path, we do not slink and flow around it like water. We strike and shatter it!' He rose and beckoned his command squad with him. 'Show me this impediment'

They moved low over undulating ground, leaping over shallow trench works clogged with Isstvanian dead and shell casings. The crack and screech of shots whizzed around them, and still Temeter heard the doleful droning dirges of the enemy. Crossing a shallow incline, the captain deliberately stepped out of line and stomped on a fallen speaker horn where it had fallen from a support pole. The device sparked and fell silent.

There, lord,' said the officer.

It was a flat hexagon set deep in the grey mud, the clean shade of ferrocrete not more than a few years old. Pits were being dug in the facia of it from bolt rounds as Death Guard sharpshooters sniped from cover. As the young Astartes had said, the wicked barrels of the quad-guns were spitting an endless stream of tracer out over the approaches. A handful of broken bodies in the killing zone showed where battle-brothers had advanced and died in the attempt. Temeter frowned. 'Shot and shell won't do the deed. Bring up the men with flamers and plasma weapons.'

The order was relayed and a troop of Death Guard carrying inferno guns came forward. Temeter tossed his combi-bolter to the young officer and beckoned another man closer. 'Your torch, give it to me.' The captain took the warrior's flamer and shook it, hearing the satisfying slosh of a near-full tank of liquid promethium. 'Bolters, draw their attention. Flamers, give them the heat.'

The Astartes opened fire and as Temeter expected, the heavy quad-guns inched around to track on them. His men understood the plan without the need for him to lay it out in detail. The moment the quads were depressed, the Death Guard with flamer and plasma weapons crested their cover and sent jets of superheated gas and burning fluid washing over the sides of the bunker and into the interior. The defenders couldn't range the guns back fast enough, and within moments, Temeter had led his men to the very wall of the low blockhouse. For good measure he had a sergeant toss a fist of krak grenades through the aiming slot and then projected himself up and over the bunker roof.

Temeter ran and dropped down into the S-shaped entry tunnel, smashing a hooded trooper into the ferrocrete with an ugly crack of bone. He heard the confusion inside the dugout and waded into it. Within, black smoke and licks of guttering fire clung to the walls and the heat radiating from the thrumming quad-guns was thick. The captain triggered the borrowed flamer and hosed it across the space before him, a hissing red whip of flame carving through the air at chest height. Men became torches and boxes of unspent ammunition in compartments below cooked off in blaring detonations. One of the Isst-vanian soldiers ran at him, shrieking and aflame, and pulled Temeter into an embrace. The captain let the flamer drop from his grip and ripped the man in two, tearing him apart. He beat out the flames and grimaced as the rest of his troop waded in and finished the task.

The bunker silenced, Temeter glanced into the tunnel mouths that branched downward from it. 'Seal all of these,' he ordered. 'We don't want rats popping up behind us after our line advances past this point.' Without the roar of the cannons, once again the captain became aware of the reedy caterwauling issuing from a vox-speaker. He punched it into pieces with his fist. 'Destroy those repeaters wherever you see them,' Temeter continued. That oath-forsaken noise is damaging my calm.'

'Sir!' called one of the men, pointing out through the gun slit.

Temeter saw a huge shadow dropping towards the horizon on pillars of retro-rocket fire, and then felt the earth tremble like a struck bell. Every Astartes in the bunker left the floor for a split second, and he heard the ferrocrete roof crack with the Shockwave. The captain peered out and saw a massive cylinder standing upright in a shroud of steam, some distance beyond the zone where the drop-pods had put down. It was easily the size of a hive-city habitat block, guidance fins still glowing cherry-red with the heat of re-entry. There came a mighty moan of stressed metals and the sides of the cylinder fell away, trailing flexible pipes and streams of white vapour. From inside the monstrous drop-capsule came the hooting call of a battle-horn, and then planes of steel and iron emerged from the smoke to become a colossus bristling with armour and guns. The ground resonated with each thunderous footfall as the Imperator-class Titan strode out towards the Choral City.

'Dies Irae',
said Temeter, naming the massive war machine. 'Our cousins from the Legion Mortis have decided to join our outing.' He allowed himself to marvel at the huge battle construct, then shook it off. 'Signals,' he called, 'contact the
Irae's
princeps and update him on the battle situation.'

The young Astartes officer handed Temeter back his combi-bolter and frowned. 'Lord, there is a concern with the vox.'

'Explain,' he demanded.

'We're having difficulty making contact on some channels, including the feed to the Titan and our ships in orbit.'

Temeter glanced up. Are the locals jamming us?'

The Astartes shook his head. 'I don't believe so, captain. The drop-out is too selective for that. It's as if...

Well, it's as if certain vox frequencies have just been switched off.'

He accepted this with a brisk nod. 'We'll work around it, then. If the problem gets worse, then inform me. Otherwise, we proceed with the attack plan as determined.' Temeter bounded out of the cloying air of the dead bunker and strode forward. 'On to the Choral City,' he called. A vast shadow hove above him and the captain looked up to see the underside of the
Dies Irae's
foot as it passed over him, descending to fall upon another bunker some distance ahead. The heavy impacts of artillery were starting to converge, coming down in twists of smoke. 'Death Guard!' he called, shouldering his bolter, 'we'll let the giant take the brunt of the big guns. Into the trenches, brothers. Sweep the ground clean of these rebellious scum!'

Carya looked up as the brass leaves of the bridge iris whispered open to admit Garro and his two warriors. The man shot a quick, nervous look across at the woman Vought and then put up the mask of sullen authority that he had worn in the landing bay. 'Battle-captain on the bridge,' he intoned, and saluted.

Garro accepted the honour with a nod. 'Ceremony was appeased down below, Master Carya. Let's not overburden ourselves with it here, and stick to the necessities instead, yes?'

As you wish, captain. Are you going to take the conn?'

He shook his head. 'Not wfthout good reason.' Garro took in the layout of the ship's command chamber. It was unornamented, as was fitting to the lean and spare intentions of a vessel in the service of the Death Guard. Unlike some starships, where decorative panels of wood or metal covered the walls, the
Eisenstein's
conduits and workings were bare to the eye. Twisted snarls of cables and piping ranged around the bridge space, clustering around cogitator consoles and viewports. They reminded Garro of the gnarled roots of ancient trees.

Vought seemed to catch on to Garro's train of thought. 'This vessel may not be pretty, but it has a strong heart, captain. It's been an unswerving servant of the Emperor since the day it left the Luna shipyards, before I was born.' He noticed how she was careful not to look directly at his injured leg. Even under his power armour, the stiffness in his gait made the aftermath of his recent injury obvious.

Garro put a hand on the central navitrix podium, studying the etheric compass enclosed in a sphere of glass and suspensor fields. A discreet gunmetal plaque fixed to the podium's base showed the ship's name, class and details of the frigate's launching. Nathaniel read it to himself and felt amusement tug at his lips. 'Fascinating. It seems the
Eisenstein
took to space in the same year I became an Astartes.' He glanced at Vought. 'I have a kinship with her already'

The deck officer returned his smile, and for the first time Garro felt a moment of genuine connection with a member of the crew.

'Eisenstein',
ventured Sendek, rolling the word over his lips. 'It is a word from an old Terran dialect, of the Jermani. It means "iron-stone". It is fitting.'

Carya nodded. 'Your warrior is correct, Captain Garro. It also shares its name with two noted men from the Age of Terra, one a remembrancer, the other a scientist.'

'Such history for a mere frigate,' Decius opined.

The shipmaster's eyes flashed for an instant. 'With respect, lord, in the Warmaster's military there is no such thing as a
mere
frigate.'

'Forgive my battle-brother,' said Garro mildly, 'he has grown too comfortable in the spacious bunks aboard the
Endurance'.

'A fine ship,' Carya replied. 'We'll do well to match the battle record of so illustrious a vessel.'

Garro smiled slightly. 'We're not here to win accolades, shipmaster, just to do our duty' He approached the front of the bridge, where rows of consoles and operator pulpits glowed with the actinic blue of pict-screens. What is our status?'

'At station-keeping,' said Vought. 'The Warmaster's orders were to hold at these co-ordinates until all Astartes were aboard, then await further commands'

The battle-captain nodded. 'I am afraid that we may not be making much history today. Our pri-march has ordered that we maintain orbit here at high anchor and watch for enemy ships that may attempt to escape Isstvan III under cover of the ground assault.'