Lionel's Arc

Chapter 1 of 6

Lionel was the last of his chapter, and he had come to Gourdhollow to dig his brothers' seed from the dirt. The gene-seed held their line. Without it, no new marines would ever carry their name. He had crossed the void for one purpose: recover the seed from the ruins where his brothers fell to the xenos. But the ruins were many, and he did not know which one hid the vault. He stood in a trader's cramped tent, still in his battered ceramite armor. Metal spiders skittered along the ridgelines outside. The xenos claimed this whole region now. A blind search meant days lost in their hunting grounds. Lionel did not have days. His seals were cracking, and his rations ran thin. The man he had come to see sat behind a table of rolled charts. Corvus Hadley traded maps to the desperate, and Lionel was desperate. The old cartographer had a white beard and eyes that measured you like cargo. He did not stand for a space marine. "Big fellow," Corvus said. He tapped a chart with one gloved finger. "Everyone who comes here is looking for something they lost. Most don't come back to complain about my prices." "I need the ruins where the Adeptus Astartes died," Lionel said. "The battle three years past. My brothers." Corvus scratched his beard. He pulled a chart from the pile and spread it flat. Dozens of ruin sites dotted the paper. He set his finger on none of them. "I mapped every stone in this waste," Corvus said. "I know your battle site. But the xenos moved a radar beacon there. Big one, high on the tower. It sweeps for heat and metal." He looked at Lionel's armor. "You'd light up like a fire. They'd swarm you before you reached the vault." Lionel leaned close. "Then tell me where it is. I will deal with the machine." "Information's cheap," Corvus said. "Living long enough to use it isn't." He named his price. Lionel set his combat knife on the table, its blade worth more than the tent. Corvus weighed it, then nodded. He drew a slow line across the chart. He circled one ruin near a broken tower. "Here. Your brothers are here. The beacon sits on that tower." He tapped it twice. "Take it down first, or don't go at all." Lionel rolled the chart and pushed it into his belt. For the first time in weeks, he knew where to walk. The blind search was over. But he had traded his knife, and the map led straight to a machine built to find him. The vault held his chapter's future. The tower held the eyes of the xenos. To reach one, he would have to blind the other, and every step toward the ruins would announce him louder than a shout.