Engines of War Read Online Free Page A

been waiting for, and which he immediately relayed to his eager driver.
    ‘Artillery – advance!’
    Galenus strode brusquely into the Quintillus ’s strategium.
    His senior staff were waiting for him around its U-shaped table, as was Captain Mikael Fabian of the Third Company, flanked by his own entourage. Numitor of the Eighth was already down on Orath, of course, but he too was represented by several aides.
    Terserus stood quietly in one corner, but dominated the room all the same. Galenus liked to have him present at these meetings – after all, he was the Fifth Company’s most venerable and experienced member. He valued his wisdom.
    Terserus had led Galenus’s first squad as a fully-fledged battle-brother. Galenus had often said that everything he knew, Sergeant Terserus had taught him. Three-quarters of a century ago, he had tried to overrun an enemy tank. In the process, he had been struck point-blank in the chest by its autocannon and blasted to shreds.
    He had refused to die – he had always been stubborn, even by Space Marine standards – though his body had been beyond saving. His remains – some would say his very soul – had been interred in Dreadnought armour, so that he could continue to serve.
    Galenus took his place at the top of the table – at the apex of the U’s curve – but didn’t sit down. He rested his fists on the table instead.
    He studied the hovering tactical hololith that almost filled the space between the table’s arms. It showed him nothing that he hadn’t already known. His army had set down to the north-west of Fort Kerberos and begun their march towards it.
    ‘This is what we know,’ said Galenus. ‘Two ancient eldar artefacts were found beneath the surface of Orath. We call them – Librarian Appius Vabion called them – the Great Seals. He believed that the Seals secure a warp rift of unknown magnitude. Their purpose is to hold that rift at bay. What we don’t know…’
    He straightened up and pursed his thin lips. ‘What we don’t know, frankly, could fill tomes. Even Vabion, who devoted his life to the study of the Great Seals – even he confessed to me, in his final report before he died, that he had hardly begun to unpick their secrets.
    ‘What we can deduce is that the Great Seals were fashioned for a purpose. What we suspect – what we fear – is that the Orath rift… It could be big. A second Eye of Terror, perhaps.’
    Several human aides shuddered at the very sound of those words, and traced the sign of the Imperial aquila across their chests.
    ‘We suspect that, were the Great Seals to be destroyed…’
    ‘But hasn’t one of them been destroyed already?’ Captain Fabian spoke up.
    ‘Another thing we don’t know,’ Galenus conceded. ‘Two listening posts were constructed on this world, two centuries ago. Fort Kerberos. Fort Garm. Their purpose – their primary purpose – was to justify the presence of an Imperial garrison on Orath. The men stationed there were never told what they were really guarding. For two hundred years, the Great Seals remained hidden underneath those forts – until now. Now, clearly, the secret is out.
    ‘Two days ago, a Death Guard army attacked Fort Kerberos.
    ‘They reached the Great Seal underneath it and attempted to destroy it. However, according to the latest information we have, they were unsuccessful. A shard of the Great Seal remained intact. The current Orath garrison – two Doom Eagles squads – were all but wiped out. But the enemy paid dearly for their victory.
    ‘Their leader, their Plague Champion, was slain and Fort Kerberos collapsed. The Great Seal – what remains of it, if anything at all remains – was buried.’
    ‘But the rift–’ protested Fabian.
    Galenus nodded. ‘The warp rift, as doubtless you have seen, has already opened. Or perhaps it has only just begun to open. Again, we don’t know. We do know – from our orbital scans – that the Death Guard are busy excavating the Fort