Chapter 129 - The Firing Command of the Ordinatus Engines
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"Are we going to help Lion clear out Seraphax and the Thousand Eyes Warband?"
Aboard the flagship Glory of Terra, Kaelen and Horus sat with several senior naval officers around a starchart, working through a strategic plan based on coordinates and enemy fleet positions.
Midway through the meeting, Horus leaned over and asked Kaelen quietly.
Kaelen's answer was direct.
"No. Our target is the Thousand Eyes fleet. Kullen already planted a micro-tracker on that Fallen Angel Bela, and Bela's going to lead us straight to the enemy main fleet."
"Seraphax is the Lion's prey. We stay out of it."
"The Thousand Eyes fleet is ours. So — have you worked out a plan for hitting their main force yet? My Wolf God."
Horus smiled at that.
"I am an expert in void warfare, my friend."
Kaelen nodded.
He had no doubts. With the Warmaster's genius for void combat, victory was as certain as the sun rising. If the expeditionary fleet could cripple or destroy the Thousand Eyes fleet, it would thin the enemy numbers pressing on the Lion and the Great Angel in the Dark Imperium. Take some weight off their shoulders.
A gift from Horus to Lion, in its own way.
Thinking of that Lion of Caliban, Kaelen found himself remembering a joke.
"I've got a joke."
He turned his head and leaned slightly toward Horus, dropping his voice low, the kind of hushed tone you used passing notes to a desk mate during a boring meeting.
"Want to hear it?"
"What joke?"
Horus leaned in instinctively. He was already smiling.
Not because he knew the punchline. It was just that after knowing Kaelen this long, he'd learned one thing: when Kaelen used that tone, whatever came next was usually worth hearing.
"Back on Diamat, Lion gave Perturabo those Ordinatus engines. Guess what the firing command was?"
"Theoretically, I don't recall the Ordinatus having a firing command. Weapons systems of that caliber wouldn't use something that primitive. The Tech-Priests handled the firing sequence directly..."
Horus started picking the question apart with his usual tactical precision, but halfway through he caught the look in Kaelen's eyes, that small, patient gleam of anticipation, and abandoned the logic entirely.
"But now that you mention it, I'm curious. What was the command?"
He was already smiling. He had a rough idea where this was going.
The setup was too clean, the architecture too deliberate. He could already see the shape of the punchline.
But he still wanted to hear Kaelen say it.
Kaelen paused. Lowered his voice.
"During the Siege of Terra, Perturabo stood in front of those two Ordinatus engines and shouted:
Let Lion be Warmaster. Let Lion be Warmaster."
Right at that moment, the senior naval officers finished compiling their tactical plan.
They turned around, expressions solemn and focused, data-slates in hand, hours of careful work, ready for the Warmaster's final review.
The entire group froze.
The Warmaster's broad shoulders were shaking. Muffled laughter was fighting its way out of his throat whether he wanted it to or not.
And beside him, Lord General Kaelen, personally commended by the Emperor, hand-picked by Lord Guilliman, was rubbing his chin with a perfectly straight face, expression grave as a funeral, while the words coming out of his mouth had Horus completely gone.
One laughing. One keeping a straight face while delivering the joke.
They looked nothing like expeditionary commanders deciding the fates of millions. They looked like two close friends goofing off in the back of a dull meeting, passing each other jokes no one else was supposed to hear.
The officers looked at each other.
Data-slates in hand. Offering them felt wrong. Not offering them felt wrong.
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"Lord Konrad Curze looks forward to seeing you again, Mister Sevatar."
Kullen had just finished speaking with his gene-father. Acting on the Night Haunter's behalf, he had come to deliver the news to Sevatar personally.
He told Sevatar it wasn't only Konrad who had returned. Three others as well. Guilliman. Horus. And Sanguinius.
Each name landed like a stone dropped into still water. Sevatar's expression held steady at Guilliman. At Sanguinius, something shifted in his face. At Horus, those aged hands tightened, barely, almost nothing, but it was there.
Sevatar had foreseen his father's return through his own precognitive gifts. But the return of the other three, Horus and Sanguinius above all, was territory no prophecy had ever touched.
Fate's hand, turning the world over without warning.
This old warrior had spent 10,000 years in the galaxy's dark places, and for the first time, he let his thoughts drift toward questions he had long since stopped believing he would ever get to ask.
His gaze moved slowly across the chamber and settled on its quietest corner. Two small stasis field generators sat there, and suspended within each field was a weapon, both of them received from that old king.
One was a custom power claw he recognized immediately. It fit his father's philosophy of killing perfectly.
The other had puzzled him for a long time.
A power hammer. And not just any hammer, it was nearly identical to the Warmaster's Worldbreaker.
He had never understood that. If the Emperor was sending weapons to his father, why include someone else's hammer?
He had found no answer at the time. He had set the question aside and waited, trusting the truth would surface eventually.
Now it had.
Lupercal had returned. That hammer had never been meant for his father.
The Emperor had prepared it for Horus. And Sevatar had simply been a waystation, a place for the cargo to rest until it reached its true destination.
He was quiet for a long moment.
Then he asked the only question that mattered.
"My father... is he well?"
He said it slowly. The question of a son, 10,000 years removed from his father, wanting to know if he was all right.
Kullen thought back carefully on the Night Haunter's life.
"He is well."
Short. Almost blunt.
Kullen paused, feeling the answer was too thin for what Sevatar deserved to hear.
He tried again.
"If you see him, you'll be surprised by how much he's changed. The positive kind of change."
A faint smile crossed Sevatar's aged face.
"That's good."
"Will you swear loyalty again, Mister Sevatar? To the Emperor and His loyal sons?"
Kullen asked.
"Without question, Knight."
"I, Jago Sevatarion, swear loyalty anew to the Master of Mankind and His loyal sons. And to my father."
"Hail the Night Haunter. I come for him."
Something ignited in Sevatar's chest, a flame rising from embers he had believed long dead.
For the first time in 10,000 years, he felt like there was something he could actually do. For the Emperor. For the Imperium. For his father.
➤ Next: To Sable Star
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