The Death of Integrity Read Online Free

unsettling sensation.
    The feeling ceased. Galt was who he was, real and flesh, a servant of mankind and the Emperor unto death. The thrum of millions of tons of plasteel under his feet grounded him in reality even as the vessel hung precipitously on the cusp of non-existence. Galt’s faith in the ancient ship calmed him.
    The ship quaked, and was still.
    ‘Rejoice, brethren! Geller fields deactivated. Safe translation to real space accomplished,’ the ship-wide vox said.
    ‘We have arrived then, and in good time. Shall I accompany you to the bridge?’ said Odon.
    ‘Yes, Brother-Chaplain.’ Galt stood and pulled on his habit, covering his coloured flesh. As their fortress home was never finished, so the flesh art was never done, not until a brother fell in battle and the record of his achievements was buried with him. Galt called out his signifex code, engaging a vox in the ears of a nearby statue of an angel. ‘Captain Galt orders Captains Mastrik and Aresti, Epistolary Ranial, and Master of the Forge Clastrin to the bridge.’
    Odon smiled, his second skull spreading wider its own awful grin. ‘I do not know why you call Forgemaster Clastrin, brother. Where else would he be today, when there is treasure in the stars?’
    Galt smiled and gave a quiet grunt of affirmation. ‘You are right. Let us go. I don’t want Mastrik getting impatient and ordering the ship forward before I get there.’
    The chorus of Reclusiam serfs around the couch, gold-masked and dressed in bone-and-blue, dipped their heads as Galt stood. Their circle parted to let the captain and the Chaplain through. As they left the sanctuary and entered the main body of Novum in Honourum ’s Grand Chapel, Galt’s serf aides Artermin and Holstak stood up from the pews where they had been praying and fell in behind him, their ship’s uniforms emblazoned with the Chapter heraldry. They were not weaklings, these lesser men, but vigorous starfarers. Nevertheless, Galt and Odon towered over them. Six black-clad servitor-worshippers detached themselves from alcoves in the walls, and fell in behind.
    ‘We have arrived,’ Galt said to the men, ‘and I would look upon our foe.’
    On the way out of the chapel, the party turned and bowed as one to the statue of Lucretius Corvo, founder of their Chapter, which stood five times life-size by the soaring doors.
    Odon led them in a request for guidance. Not as an ecclesiarch would beseech the Emperor, but as a respectful officer asking advice of a much-loved leader. They were all brothers after all, even if long millennia separated their births.
    They left the chapel to its serfs. Their songs continued, gentle as the breeze that blew unceasingly over Honourum’s stony plains.

Chapter 2
    Brothers in Arms
    ‘First Captain on the bridge!’
    Galt stepped onto the bridge of the battle-barge. Chapter serfs and full brothers alike snapped to attention. Servitors, oblivious to his rank, went about their ponderous business. A fragment of flesh half-hidden in a web of cybernetic command and life-support cables turned to the door – the remains of a brother. The entirety of the machine he occupied rotated with him.
    ‘Brother-Captain Galt, we have arrived in-system.’
    ‘Brother-Captain Persimmon, how goes it?’
    ‘A smooth translation, Novum in Honourum serves us faithfully as always.’
    Persimmon was a wreck of a man, crippled in battle by a vicious xenos species never encountered before or since. Neurotoxins had destroyed his limbs and much of his musculature. Only chance had brought him to the Novum in Honourum ’s infirmary and not delivered the bolt of the Emperor’s Grace. The Apothecaries had been ready to send his soul to the Shadow Novum, where he would await the final call to battle from the Emperor. Yet he had lived, clawing his way back from the dead with his single, bloodied hand. Somehow, his body had healed itself enough to remain viable, and so he had also escaped the sarcophagus of a