Lesser lords in military dress and civilian frippery mingled in an anteroom around refectory tables laden with canapés, sipping on recaff and talking in hushed tones about the prior session’s business. The air trilled with privilege and the clink of glassware. Servitor cherubs hovered under a fresco of the Emperor delivering the Imperial Creed, weaving between columns and vid-capture drones bearing reams of parchment. A steady stream of dignitaries hurried from the ablutorials, hands still wet, and made for the waiting doors to the Great Chamber. A polite chime sounded through the vox-casters set up in the vaults, sounding the recall to session.
It all stopped as Koorland and the Last Wall strode past.
The Space Marines towered over the human lords like god-kings out of legend. A few hundred Lucifer Blacks, officers of the Adeptus Arbites and Palace Defence Forces, as well as liveried attachés of the High Lords, watched from various discreet corner rooms and side corridors, but stood off. Whether out of fear of his brothers or hesitation over stepping on another’s jurisdiction, Koorland could not care.
He turned to face the doors.
They were vast, oak, inlaid and fretted with silver from which an energy-nullifying protection field hummed. They were also open. Koorland focused his hearing on what lay beyond. His Lyman’s ear cued him to the strains of Ecclesiarch Mesring delivering the commencement blessing.
‘
As the Adeptus Astartes’ adherence to the secular Imperial Truth minimised direct contact with the Ecclesiarchy, he knew little of the forms and practices.
‘
But even to him, the Ecclesiarch’s address sounded strange.
‘
There was no time to dwell on it further as the Space Marines passed through the open doors and into the Great Chamber.
The tiered auditorium was almost empty. Row upon row of flipped-back wooden pews surrounded the central dais and a woolly throng of minor dignitaries milling around their seats. As Koorland was expecting, Ecclesiarch Mesring had the podium. There was an unkemptness to his hair and dress and an almost feral fervour in his eyes as he spoke, his voice coming asynchronously from the vox-casters positioned around the chamber.
Lord Admiral Lansung and Fabricator General Kubik were the only two presently seated, the pair sniping at one another across the intervening chairs. The others moved around the main platform, stretching their legs and taking sips of purified water, half-listening to the aides, analysts and codifiers that pursued them around the base of the dais.
It was Lansung who saw Koorland first.
His face blanched as Hemisphere and Absolution spread out around the standing galleries on the outer edge of the chamber and swung their bolters to cover the dais. As well he might — the fat fool’s politicking had done more to end the Imperial Fists than any ork or Chrome. People began to cry out and went to ground amongst the pews. Daylight and Eternity hung back, spear and sword raised respectively, as Koorland marched down the aisle.
A huge statue of Rogal Dorn stood to one side. He faced the aisle, the personal guarantor of safety to all delegates to this chamber, but his gaze was turned towards the dais, ever in judgement of the successors to his god-like brothers and father.
There, Koorland stopped.
There were other doors into the Great Chamber, other aisles to the dais, but Koorland had studied his battlefield and knew what terrain it had to exploit. His armour shone bright and perfect under the lighting directed onto the statue, and the impact of standing so outfitted before his own primarch, he who was the very symbol of this chamber’s endurance, was wholly deliberate.
Udin Macht Udo pulled the Ecclesiarch from the podium. He took the lectern bar in both hands and glared into the stage lights over the fan array of vox-pickups. His braided grand admiral’s uniform was luminous white and glittered with medals, power and pomposity in bald measure. His scarred face was pink and furious, his maimed eye gleaming like a pearl in oyster flesh.
‘This assembly has heard your petition, Koorland, and dismissed it. We legislated the immediate dispersal of your
Koorland took a moment to centre himself and to allow the lords to clamour down.
Instinctually, he scanned the chamber for Vangorich, an ally, but if the Grand Master was present at all then he was hidden amongst the lesser lords. His battleplate sensors called back no hostile targets. Another reason to prefer the battlefield. The words of Roboute Guilliman came to his mind then, written an age ago, at a time when such a future seemed possible for the then Legiones Astartes.
