V3 Chapter 24: A Rotting Empire, but Hope Remains
Another Macragge week passed over Macragge.
In that time, Guilliman received the first wave of key figures on his list. The Archmagos of the Adeptus Mechanicus, Inquisitors, a Salamanders representative, mortal officers, the Aeldari, and representatives of the major institutions across Ultramar all passed through his quarters or the council chamber at different intervals.
From each of them he built an initial picture of the current state of the Imperium, of humanity, of Ultramar, and of Macragge.
Everything he learned in those days struck him like a blow.
The Imperium was still vast, still possessed of countless armies, fleets, forge worlds, and fortress worlds. But it was also bearing the weight of wars stretching across the length of the galaxy, a decaying political structure, a faith rooted in ignorance, and the accumulated inertia of ten thousand years.
Guilliman had expected to find an empire on the edge of its final crisis.
The truth was more complicated.
The Imperium had not yet encountered the single blow that would shatter it. At least at this moment, Chaos, the xenos, the traitors, the greenskins, and the more distant threats had not converged into one.
But in Guilliman's assessment, the Imperium had already been dragged into a slow bleed by countless separate wars.
Those enemies had not struck at Terra simultaneously, yet they had been sufficient to weaken humanity across ten thousand years. Every sector was burning. Every transit corridor needed defending. Every victory was bought by feeding in more lives.
From the data in the Macragge Library, he had formed a preliminary understanding of the twelve Black Crusades launched by the Black Warmaster, Abaddon.
He had also been briefed on the Tyranids.
The bio-fleets described in the records were capable of consuming worlds. The First Tyrannic War had reached Macragge itself. The Ultramarines had stopped that invasion at immense cost, but Guilliman could see from the records that the Imperium's understanding of this enemy was still inadequate.
There was also the War of the Beast from thousands of years before, when the greenskins had nearly broken the Imperium entirely.
And yet, through all of it, through every catastrophe and crisis, the Imperium had held.
These records gave him a brief and unwelcome thought.
Perhaps, if he returned to Terra and took the reins again, gave humanity a unified strategy and a clear chain of command, things could be set right.
He pressed it down quickly.
Ten thousand years of accumulated failure would not disappear because a Primarch had woken. The Imperium was not dead, but it had grown accustomed to bleeding, and had begun to treat that bleeding as the natural state of things.
Before he could go to Terra, there were matters here that had to be addressed.
The most important of them was the reintegration of greater Ultramar.
He had already learned from Calgar and the Ultramar administratum reports that the Codex Astartes, which he had written to stabilise a shattered Imperium after the Heresy, had become something close to inviolable law in the ten thousand years since.
Guilliman did not regret writing the Codex.
It had been the instrument an Imperium torn apart by the Great Heresy needed.
What he regretted was that he had left behind a framework intended to make warriors think, and those who came after had treated it as divine scripture. The Codex was meant to prevent the abuse of power. Instead it had become another component of a rigid and failing system.
All of that needed to change.
At the very least, he could begin with Ultramar.
For now, Guilliman sat in his quarters, working through the plans he would need to put in motion, turning the pages of materials sent from the Macragge Library, and handling the administrative matters that had built up on his desk.
The armour of fate was still on his body, several external cables connecting it to the maintenance cradle in the corner. Both Cawl and Yvraine had warned him that removing the armour now would kill him. Guilliman did not extend unconditional trust to either of them.
But for the time being, he chose to comply.
He was about to turn to the next report when a Cherub flew in through the side door.
The thing flapped its mechanical wings, its half-flesh, half-machine infant body hovering in the air. The miniature vox transmitter in its chest cavity produced a brief burst of static, then Calgar's voice came through.
"My lord, Marshal-Commissar Duvette and Archmagos Cawl are nearly here."
Guilliman stopped what he was doing.
He looked at the thing floating in the air, and a trace of distaste crossed his expression.
Guilliman knew what servo-skulls were. Servo-skulls, servitors, augmetic constructs: these had existed in his era as well. What genuinely repelled him was not the technology but the fact that this age had stitched together death, infants, machinery, and sacred iconography and had come to treat the combination as entirely unremarkable.
"Calgar."
Guilliman's voice carried from behind the desk.
"Do not use that thing to summon me again."
The Cherub bobbed up and down in the air.
"Understood, my lord."
Guilliman did not look at it again.
He stood, disconnected the external cables linking the armour of fate to the maintenance cradle. A low mechanical sound came from within the armour as the connection ports closed in sequence.
The constraints remained.
He could feel the armour sustaining him, and he could feel the old wound still seated deep in his throat.
Guilliman set aside the materials on his desk and walked out through the door.
Cawl and Duvette were moving toward the location Guilliman had designated, with their accompanying personnel.
In addition to the veteran officers Duvette had brought from his own formation, walking with them were thirteen Shadow Wolves who had put their white armour back on.
Markus walked at the front of the group.
The black paint had been stripped from his power armour. The pearl-white Mark X armour Cawl had provided for the Primaris conversion was visible once more, and the wolf's-head-and-crescent marking on the pauldron was catching the light of Macragge again for the first time.
That marking had once been hidden under black paint.
Now it was back in the open.
The group reached the sealed tactical training hall in the lower levels of the Fortress of Hera.
Calgar and the Honour Guard were waiting there.
When they saw the thirteen unusually large Astartes in Duvette's party, the atmosphere in the corridor went taut in an instant.
The Honour Guard's boltguns came up almost simultaneously.
They did not fire. Calgar had not given the order.
Calgar's hand rested near his weapon. His gaze moved across the thirteen suits of pearl-white power armour and stopped on the wolf's-head-and-crescent marking on Markus's pauldron.
"Shadow Wolves."
His voice was very low.
Duvette stepped forward.
"Chapter Master Calgar. The Primarch is already aware of their identities."
Calgar did not respond immediately.
He knew these were the people Guilliman had asked to see. But he had not anticipated that the guests Duvette was bringing would be this.
The gene-sire, newly awoken, pulled back from the boundary of death by an Aeldari's power over souls.
A mortal Commissar, standing in the shrine with Cawl, the Emissary of Death, and ancient Black Shields at his side.
And now thirteen remnants of the Sixteenth Legion, appearing in white armour at the heart of Ultramar's most significant fortress.
Calgar looked at Duvette with a gaze of extraordinary complexity.
How many more secrets was this mortal Commissar carrying?
Duvette offered no explanation.
There was no point in explaining now. What came next would determine how Guilliman saw him, and whether anyone else could continue to treat him as simply a suspect mortal officer.
Calgar pressed down whatever was moving in him.
"Follow me."
He turned and walked toward the doors of the tactical training hall.
The Honour Guard lowered their weapons slowly, but the vigilance did not leave them. Markus said nothing. He walked with his twelve brothers behind Duvette.
The heavy doors opened.
Inside, monitoring equipment had already been set up throughout the hall.
Ultramarines Apothecaries, Tech-Marines, and recording servitors stood at separate positions around the space. The observation arrays on the walls came to life one by one. The tactical markings on the floor had been freshly calibrated.
This was not simply a demonstration.
This was an inspection.
Duvette looked toward the far end of the training hall, where Guilliman's tall figure was already standing.
Cawl's mechaoptic lenses gave a faint sound of rotation.
The twelve Shadow Wolves behind Markus stood in silence.
Duvette understood that what came next would determine everything he had planned.
From this moment, he had to let Guilliman see the value of the Soul of the Legion with his own eyes.
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