The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,28

the future by ourselves.

It had been different, once. We had been part of the grand machinery of the Adeptus Terra itself, able to draw on its near-infinite resources to bolster our unique martial expertise. That was how we had been designed, as interoperable parts of a greater whole. The Space Marine Legions were self-contained armies capable of doing everything, whereas we and the Custodian Guard had been complementary, just elements of a unified capability under the Throne’s combined gaze.

But that was all so long ago. I had no idea if the Custodian Guard still existed as they once had. Everything had decayed so much, falling steadily away from its original purpose. We were like children stumbling in the shadows, trying hard to remember old lessons before they were lost forever, and now the nightmares were coming back.

The rooms marched past me, each one more decrepit than the rest. The raiders had been thorough. Every corridor brought a fresh brace of bodies, wedged and broken into the corners. Here and there I could see my sisters had attempted to form bulwarks against the tide, barricading themselves behind strongpoints and fighting hard. I hoped they had extracted a heavy toll before the end.

There had to be a specific reason for this. It couldn’t have been a random raid – the resources required were too enormous, the intelligence too precise. I remembered the crowing words of the woman on Hellion – Doesn’t matter now. It’s all ending, and very soon.

What was the Circlet? Was it a creation of the Old Legions, then? Had our uncovering of its activities provoked this response, or had we been marked for destruction for some other reason?

There was no sign of Hestia. Some of the other Sisters were missing too, though I had no idea whether they had been absent on other missions. I reached the comm-station with its annihilated transmitters. Crunching across a floor of broken crystal, I managed to find a local-range emitter, which was still just about functional. I restored power to it from a half-empty cell and instructed it to broadcast a ciphered warning to stay away. I had no idea how long it would last, but at least it was something.

From far above, I heard heavy crashes, and the distant sound of human voices shouting. A search team, perhaps, finally making its way into the basilica. I would have to move on before they found me, but there were still some chambers to search.

The last was that of Lokk, the old astropath who had served Hestia faithfully for nearly twenty years. He had been a weakened man for much of that time, drained by his proximity to our foul, soulless ways, and yet he’d remained to do his duty. His body wasn’t there, though there was a long slick of blood along the far wall. His cot had been smashed and his books torched, leaving trails of soot across the crumbling plasterwork.

I pushed my boot-tip through the mess, sifting for anything retrievable. He’d been a writer of copious texts, had Lokk, forever scribbling down his dreams before they drifted from his memory. Most of it had never made much sense, and had only limited value for guiding the convent, but Hestia had valued his loyalty, and on occasion his visions had proved both true and valuable.

Very little of his stock of parchment had avoided the flames, and the few scraps that had survived were scrawled with endless lists of runes and astrological charts. I couldn’t make any sense of them, and let them flutter back to the ground.

It was only as I turned to leave that I saw the phrase, written across the door itself in what looked like blood. The language was our own, the private script we employed for the most secret matters, and which to an untrained eye hardly looked like writing at all. Even I almost missed it. Once I saw the patches of dark red, I wondered how they could have been made – had Lokk written them before he’d died? Or even before the attack?

In any event, it was unusually concise.

He calls His daughters Home.

I looked at it for a long time. I didn’t quite believe it. I wished Hestia were there to give me confidence in my judgement, but of course she couldn’t be. I felt very alone then, stalking through the ruins of the only home I had ever known, now a haunt of corpses.

I heard more noises from up above. I would have to