‘He knows,’ said Perturabo, ‘or suspects, and that is more than enough for him to make time a weapon against us. Bleed us. Slow us. Cut by cut, minute by minute. We come to the cradle of all war and find that its craft is what we always knew it to be. Not a flash of blades or the fire of heroism, but the slow grinding of bloody inches. It can’t be escaped.’

Forrix thought of all they had given, of the legionaries that had died to slow the coming of the Ultramarines and those they had left to try to slow the inevitable.

Silence fell again.

‘The losses in our core fleet strength have been compensated for,’ said Forrix at last. ‘The ships that are not battle ready will remain and oversee the consolidation. The rest…’

‘Stand at ninety-eight-point-seven-five combat effectiveness,’ said Perturabo softly, and moved to the viewports on the other side of the tower.

Forrix began to reply then stopped himself. Time passed in the slow, buzzing pulse of Perturabo’s armour. Out beyond the armourglass hung the orb of Uranus, its face dark against the stars.

‘The strategic timetable still holds, lord. If we launch now we will still be within your margin of error.’

Perturabo did not reply. From the edge of the disc of Uranus a light began to gleam. Thin rays reached out and slid past the drifts of debris and the schools of ships. The sun…

Forrix blinked.

‘So many battlefields,’ said Perturabo, staring directly at the distant dot of brilliance. ‘So much blood and iron poured down into the earth to earn our place here…’ The Lord of Iron’s eyes seemed black in the pale glare, his armour slick with cold shadow. ‘We are coming, my brother. We are coming, my father. We have returned…’ He turned to Forrix. The coldness had gone from his eyes. Fire caught in their depths, and the edges of his exo-plates gleamed in the distant sunlight and made him seem skinned in blades and shadow. ‘Give the order. Launch for Jupiter.’

Fifteen

Shrine
Songs of fear, dreams of war
My father’s side

Comet shrine, Inner System Gulf

The comet was not undefended. Eight gun platforms ringed it, tracking its flight through the heavens with batteries of turbo lasers and rockets. Their auspex and targeting systems had enough power to see far beyond the reach of their guns. Once they detected and locked on to a target, they could coordinate fire with enough precision to equal the kill output of a star fort. It was enough that anything less than multiple battleships would be ill-advised to approach uninvited.

The servitors wired into the weapon platform’s auspex twitched in their cradles. Somewhere, out on the edge of their machine sight, something was moving, something large.