Helsreach

do?'

'Your job, Maghernus.'

'Have you even seen the docks recently, colonel?'

Sarren looked up again, laughing without even a shred of humour. 'Do I look like I have seen anything except casualty reports recently?'

'I can't do anything about the docks,' Maghernus shook his head, a sense of unreality settling over him. 'I'm not a miracle worker.'

'I appreciate you have an… intense… workload.'

'That's not the half of it. We're dealing with a backlog of weeks, months even, and no room to handle anything.'

'Nevertheless, I need more from you and your crews.'

'Of course, sir. I'll be back in a moment, I feel the sudden need to piss expensive white wine and turn everything I touch into gold.'

'This is no laughing matter.'

'And I'm not laughing you pompous son of a bitch. ''Work harder''? ''Do more''? Are you insane? There's nothing I can do!'

Nearby officers glanced his way. Sarren sighed and rubbed his closed eyes with the tips of his fingers.

'I respect the difficulties of your position, dockmaster, but this is the first week of the siege. This is only going to get worse. We are all going to sleep much less, and we are all going to work much harder. Furthermore, I understand that you are sweating blood in an underappreciated duty, but you are not the only one suffering. You, at least, are guaranteed to live longer than many of us. I have men and women in the streets, fighting and dying for your home, so that you may continue to complain at how I crack the whip over you. I have hundreds of thousands of citizens under arms, facing the greatest alien invasion force the world has ever seen.

'Sir,' Maghernus took a breath. 'I will—'

'You will shut up and let me finish, dockmaster. I have platoons of men and women lost behind the advancing enemy line, no doubt hacked to pieces by the axes of barbarous xenos monsters. I have armour divisions running out of fuel because of resupply difficulties in the embattled sectors. I have an Emperor-class Titan on its knees, because its commander was too angry to think clearly. I have a city with its edges on fire, and its population in rout with nowhere to run to. I have tens of thousands of soldiers dying to prevent the enemy from reaching the Hel's Highway - people dying for a

road,

dockmaster - because once the beasts reach the city's spine, we are all going to die a great deal faster.

'Now, am I making myself perfectly clear when I tell you that while I have sympathy for your difficulties, I also expect you to work through them? We are, just to be sure, no longer speaking past one another? We are, for the record, now on the same page?'

Maghernus swallowed and nodded.

'Good,' Sarren smiled. 'That's good. What can you do for me, dockmaster?'

'I'll… speak to my crews, colonel.'

'My thanks for understanding the situation we are in, Tomaz. You are dismissed. Now, someone raise a reliable vox-signal to the Reclusiarch. I need to know how close he is to getting that Titan walking.'

In the cognition

chamber, Grimaldus stood before the crippled Zarha.

His armour's calm, measured hum was marred by a mechanical ticking sound at random intervals. Something, some internal system linking the power pack to the suit of armour was malfunctioning. His skull helm with its silver faceplate was painted with alien blood. His armour's left knee joint clicked as he moved, the servos inside damaged and in need of reverent maintenance by Chapter artificers. Where scrolls of written oaths had hung from his pauldrons, the armour was burned, the ceramite cracked.

But he was alive.

At his side, Artarion looked similarly battered. The others remained in the cathedral above, maintaining a vigil now the orks were punished and slain for their blasphemy.

'Your Titan,' Grimaldus uttered the words, 'is purged. Now

stand,

princeps.'

Zarha floated in the milky waters, not hearing him, not even moving. She looked as if she had drowned.

'

Stormherald

has taken her,' Moderati Carsomir said, his voice low. 'She was ancient, and had oppressed her will over the Titan's core for many years.'

'She still lives,' the knight noted.

'Only in the flesh, and not for much longer.' Carsomir looked pained even explaining this. His eyes were bloodshot and rimmed by dark circles. 'The machine-spirit of an Imperator is so much stronger than any soul you can imagine, Reclusiarch. These precious engines are born as lesser reflections of the Machine-God Himself. They carry His will and His strength.'

'No machine-spirit is the equal of a living soul,' said Grimaldus. 'She was strong. I sensed it in her.'

'You understand nothing of the metaphysics at work here! Who are you to lecture us in this way? We were linked to the Titan's core at the end. You are nothing, an… an

outsider.'

Grimaldus turned to the crewmembers in their control seats, his broken armour joints snarling.

'I shed blood in the defence of your engine, as did my brothers. You would be torn from your thrones and buried in the rubble of your own failure, had I not saved your lives. The next time you call a Templar

nothing

is the moment

I

kill you where you sit, little man. You are nothing without your Titan, and your Titan lives because of me. Remember to whom you speak.'

The crew shared uncomfortable glances.

'He meant no offence,' one of the tech-priests mumbled through a facially- implanted vox-caster.

'I do not care what he intended. I deal in realities. Now. Make this Titan walk.'

'We… can't.'

'Do it anyway.

Stormherald

was supposed to move in synergy with the 199th Steel Legion Armoured Division over an hour ago, and they are in full retreat due to being unsupported. The delay is finished with. Get back in the fight.'

'Without a princeps? How are we to do that?' Carsomir shook his head. 'She is gone from us, Reclusiarch. The shame of it all, the rage of defeat. We all felt the Titan rush into her. Her mind has joined the union of all previous princeps, amalgamated in the Titan's core. Her soul is buried as surely as her body would be in a grave.'

'She lives,' the knight narrowed his eyes.

'For now. But this is how princeps die.'

Grimaldus turned back to the amniotic coffin, and the unmoving woman within.

'That is unacceptable.'