114
A flippant reference to the liturgical chants and votive incense generally employed by the Ecclesiarchy.
115
Or perhaps not quite so remarkable, considering the relative rarity of the occasions on which it had both popped out of the warp in an Imperial stellar system, and someone had been on hand to take auspex readings. If anyone had tried to board it before the Reclaimers, they left no record of the attempt; not even in the rather more comprehensive archives maintained by the Ordo Xenos.
116
Another typically vague statement, although study of the deck plans would seem to indicate either two or three, depending on whether you counted the exit from the hangar bay or not.
117
Not quite; though phenomenally tough, even compared to conventional Space Marine armour, Terminator suits are just as vulnerable to a lucky shot as anything else. Which, given that they're also employed by the Traitor Legions, is probably just as well.
118
Though Cain seems unaware of it, this was almost certainly Blain's blood, that of Astartes being modified to coagulate instantly on exposure to air in order to seal wounds which would incapacitate a normal man without impairing their fighting ability. That the Terminator had lost enough of it to leak out of his suit would indicate severe trauma, even by Space Marine standards.
119
Or, perhaps, by Jurgen's proximity: although his peculiar anti-psychic talent had yet to be revealed, some time later on Gravalax, it could well have been disrupting the brood mind, isolating and disorientating any of the genestealers incautious enough to venture close enough to him to become affected.
120
That he was evidently monitoring the condition of the other Astartes in the boarding party can be taken as a fairly reliable indicator that he was in overall charge of it; unless, as the de facto artificer responsible for their maintenance, he was more concerned with the condition of the Terminator suits than their wearers.
121
If true, one or both weapons must have been damaged in some way, in order for the las-bolt to be so widely diffused, instead of penetrating more deeply over a smaller surface area. Unless, of course, he's resorting to hyperbole again.
122
1 Small utensils, with a bowl roughly the size of a thumbnail, traditionally used to measure out the infusion. Among Valhallans, the consumption of this beverage, to which Cain's long association with regiments from that world left him inexplicably partial, has acquired a great deal of custom and etiquette, as baffling to outsiders as the appeal of the drink itself.
123
The usual Astartes designation for the twin-barrelled variant Cain noticed before; presumably he picked this up in conversation at some point, probably with Drumon.
124
This kind of fluctuation in the local gravity field is apparently common aboard space hulks, and far from unknown on the larger naval vessels and charter ships, particularly when they've been cobbled together from salvaged hulls: it's apparently due to the misalignment of overlapping gravity generators, something which is almost inevitable when as many vessels as commonly make up a space hulk have been randomly thrown together.
125
A debatable point. Some, otherwise indistinguishable from humans at a casual glance, seem to have inherited all the arcane senses of the abominations which polluted the genes of their forebears, while others, much closer to purestrains in appearance, do not. As with so much else where genetics is concerned, random chance appears to play a major part in the distribution of these characteristics.
