Free The Death of Integrity by Guy Haley Page B

their way in. Boarding torpedoes will cause too much of a disturbance. One squad of Terminators, two at most. And they will have to move quickly. Three kilometres down. Hmmm.’ Galt sat back in his chair and narrowed his eyes. ‘But yes. It can be done. Lord Caedis, what is your opinion?’
    ‘My Chapter has little recent experience fighting such battles,’ said Caedis. ‘Although we have faced the genestealer threat on many worlds lately, we have not combated them in space for a long time, not for four recruitment generations. I defer to your Chapter’s more recent experience. I propose that you, Lord Captain Galt, should assume responsibility for this initial mission. Choose one of your warriors to lead it. I will provide a squad of my own brothers as support, under your overall command.’
    ‘It is an honour, Lord Chapter Master.’
    ‘It is prudence, lord captain, I am a proud warrior, but I will not let pride come in the way of sense.’
    ‘Cogitator-Lexmechanic Nuministon will accompany you,’ said Plosk.
    ‘Impossible,’ said Galt.
    ‘Necessary,’ said Plosk. ‘I doubt even your Forgemaster has the expertise required to activate our seismic probe and extract the relevant data from it.’
    Galt checked readings dancing close to the mechanism of the Imagifer Maximus. ‘Only Terminator armour is proof against such a high radiation count, lord magos, you will surely perish.’
    ‘I will survive. The flesh is weak, but there is little of flesh about me,’ grated Nuministon. ‘And you will find my armour to possess a sufficient grade of shielding. We have our means.’
    ‘Very well,’ said Galt reluctantly. ‘I will not be held accountable for your fate. You come on your own recognisance, and will suffer whatever befalls you on your own account.’
    ‘Agreed,’ said Plosk.
    ‘I will accompany them,’ said Clastrin. ‘My plate, too, is sufficiently shielded.’
    ‘As you desire, Forgemaster,’ said Galt, inwardly pleased that the Techmarine would be there. To have ordered him would have spoken too loudly of his mistrust of the tech-priests, that he volunteered removed his opinion from the equation.
    ‘Who will you choose to lead the mission, lord?’ asked Clastrin in his twin voices.
    Galt did not say. There was only man who should, even if to attempt this mission might mean his death, one man who had fought against xenos the length and breadth of the segmentum, including five successful hulk purgings.
    Veteran-Sergeant Voldo.

Chapter 5
    Mission the First
    Galt stood by the window of his sparsely furnished state room. He had removed his armour, and wore the robes of his order. He toyed idly with his pendant. The room’s window lay on the starboard side, opposite to the side facing the hulk and sun. He stared out through his own reflection at a starscape he had come to know very well from every angle over his long lifetime. He knew the ways it changed from place to place in the Ultima Segmentum. The stars always seemed so strong to him out in space, burning with eternal, unwavering light away from the occluding impurities of atmosphere, as if the cosmos were a thing of such cleanliness light could travel unimpeded to its every corner. Experience told him that this was not so, that the pure rays of the stars shone upon uncountable horrors, things that would snuff the life of all of mankind out given but half a chance. The universe was far from kind, no matter the beauty of the stellar light.
    How long ago was it, he thought, before he had been accepted into the halls of the dead, and shown a universe he could not have imagined? Time and many wars separated the adept from the boy he had been, a boy who had believed that the stars were the eyes of the Emperor’s judges, constantly measuring a man by the tally of deeds written upon his skin, choosing the most noble of them to present to the Sky-Emperor himself upon their death.
    He knew differently now, but part of him still believed. He and the