The Luna docks rose like a crown of stone and steel, every tooth armed and awake. The Watcher Above slid toward them on a burn so clean it looked like intention rather than thrust, her hull still scarred from the long war of the outer dark. She dimmed the very air around herself as she approached, as if her presence turned light into a suggestion.
Clearance codes unfurled across the void in Malcador's private cipher. Servitor towers bowed their gantries. Vox-daemons that would have screamed at any other signature simply blinked and looked away. The ship's intelligence core murmured at Kael's shoulder, impressed with its own competence and careful not to show it.
"Docking spines engaged," Threx reported, voice thinned by sleeplessness and awe. "Pressure equalized. Spirits soothed. We are home, captain."
Kael stood with his palm on the forward glass, watching Terra crest the edge of the frame. He felt Veyra before he heard her; the cane's tap was softer now, but its rhythm had not forgotten how to count.
"Do we still call it that?" she asked quietly. "Home?"
"Yes," he said. "Because we'll leave again."
She exhaled through her nose, almost a smile. "A logic I can respect."
He left the bridge in armour dark as purpose, Veilrender sheathed at his hip, helm mag-locked at his belt. The gangways were busy but hushed; dock crews learned quickly what this ship did to noise. He stepped out onto the transfer platform and found a single robed figure waiting, backlit by Luna's pale light.
Malcador the Sigillite looked smaller against the machines than Kael remembered. Not diminished—condensed. Power packed into habit. His eyes were as sharp as ever; his breath came slower.
"Kael Varan," Malcador said.
"Lord Sigillite."
They did not embrace. That was not the grammar of men like them. Malcador produced a thin slate with two lines of ink.
"No more ghosts," he said. "The galaxy needs to see what the shadows serve."
Kael took the slate. It named the Silent Company under Malcador's writ, authorized for independent operations within the Sol defense network, and appended a single ugly word — visible.
He nodded once. "So be it."
Another presence arrived with the sensation of a door closing. Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists came in fortress-yellow, helm cradled under one arm, expression carved from stone that had been taught to think. He looked Kael up and down without hostility and without any of the courtesies men mistake for respect.
"You are the Night Lord Malcador insists upon," Dorn said.
"I am the man who will hold a line you haven't drawn yet," Kael answered.
Silence stretched. Something moved at the corner of Dorn's mouth—a thought deciding not to be said.
"I will not deny results," he said finally. "But understand me: terror is a poor brick in a wall."
"Terror is a scaffold," Kael said. "We use it only long enough to build."
Malcador interposed with a motion of his hand that looked like a benediction and wasn't. "He's a knife, Rogal. Knives are not meant to be admired. Only used correctly."
Dorn inclined his head by a precise degree. "Then we will use you. Jupiter needs a hunter. You will keep the traitors from turning its moons into stepping-stones."
Kael's eyes darkened, the shadow at his heels twitching like a hound that had heard its name. "Understood."
He turned to go. Malcador's voice stopped him for a breath. "Kael," the Sigillite said softly, and some fraction of the weariness in him showed. "Whatever you were in the dark, be it now where all can see."
Kael touched the slate, feeling the ink through ceramite. "I intend to," he said.
He returned to the Watcher Above. The ship brightened by a fraction at his tread, a small, private courtesy. In the gallery, Veyra stood with her slate and a tired patience that had not yet learned how to quit.
"Orders?" she asked.
"Jupiter," he said. "We hold what can be held and make the rest regret trying."
"Filed," she said. "Silas—plot a path behind the Jovian magnetopause. Malchion—ready boarding cadres one through four. Joras—load shadow-chaff and the phase-baffle packs. Threx—teach the engines humility."
"Aye," came four voices, layered and familiar.
The Watcher Above tore free of Luna like a thought changing its mind, and the Sol docks dimmed behind her.
---
The Jovian system filled the frame—bands of red and ochre boiling in a storm bigger than nations, moons hung like cold coins, a ring of industry glittering with the lights of men who worked because they were told to and because they liked to eat. Beyond those moons, the traitors came.
Kael stood at the forward glass and let the ship lean into him. The intelligence core whispered predictive arcs his five seconds had already offered. He did not argue with numbers that agreed with him.
"Pickets first," he said. "The Sons of Horus like a clean corridor. We will give them a hall of mirrors."
"Vectors laid," Silas answered, fingers dancing. "Shadow-sprints plotted. Their auspex will read our ghosts and miss our teeth."
Malchion's voice came from the mustering bay, steady as iron. "Boarding cadres ready. Code: doors, not throats."
Veyra's pencil moved. "Civilian shipyards on Io and Europa alerted. Evacuation schedules pushed. We'll look like we planned to save them."
Kael allowed himself a single breath that felt like pride and locked it away. "Engage."
The Watcher Above vanished into the planet's magnetic sheath and became a strobe of absence—here and then not, a silhouette offered and withdrawn. Auspex across the traitor flotilla filled with phantoms. Kael timed micro-burns to his five seconds—the enemy's helmsmen beginning a roll, their gunners committing, the quiet lurch before a lance breathes. He fired into intentions, and his broadsides landed on movements men had not yet finished.
The first kill came without light. A Sons of Horus picket corvette turned to face a ghost and found the Watcher Above already there, knife-close, batteries aligned. Kael whispered, "Now," and the void buckled around the ship as gravitic hearts kicked. Their volley took the corvette's bridge in a single clean cut. Lights went out like lies corrected.
"Contact two," Silas said. "Heavy. Mechanicum markings."
The Mechanicum cruiser loomed on the far side of a thin ring-wisp, bristling with guns that hadn't been blessed this century. It fired ungodly bright and stupid, lighting nothing but its own mistake. Kael shifted the Watcher Above through a shadow-sprint that made three auspex arrays report three different positions. He let the cruiser waste a broadside on where he wasn't, then slid beneath its starboard plane and opened it along the seam engineers had told themselves no one would find.
"Boarding pods away," Malchion announced. "Two through five attached. We are in."
Joras's voice came through the grit of close-combats. "Cutting the comm-spine. Doors, not throats."
Kael felt his five seconds unfold into corridors he could not see—men running where they thought safety lived, bulkheads choosing loyalty. He nudged the ship left and the pods locked in deeper, Veiled Hand marines spilling into red-lit halls and making them quiet. Malchion's team hit the flag-chamber with knives for punctuation. Thirty heartbeats and a prayer later, the cruiser's guns went still.
"Enemy destroyers on intercept," Silas reported. "Six signatures. Fast."
"Shadow-curtains," Kael said.
The Watcher Above bled a cloud into the void—chaff, heat-wash, and the new phase-baffle blooming like ink in water. The destroyers' augurs saw a wall and a hole that moved. Kael stepped through the hole and left the wall behind. He opened his hand; the darkness in the bridge came to his palm and stayed there, warm and waiting. Five seconds showed him two captains hesitating in the same breath. He gave them something to regret.
"Battery one, two—hold. Three—fire," he said, and three did, and two did not, and one waited like a loaded thought. Enemy shields took the first volley, adjusted for the second, and never saw the third. Both destroyers died with the gracelessness of things that had never expected to be wrong.
Veyra's pencil clicked. "Europa reports evacuation to phase two. Io's yards holding. We have saved twelve thousand men we can neither feed nor sleep."
"We will figure it out," Kael said.
"We always do," she answered, and coughed into her fist when she thought he wasn't looking.
A green dagger appeared on the hololithic plot and became a knife-edge. Sons of Horus strike cruiser, fast and hungry, angling to cut the Watcher Above off from the moons. Kael felt the seconds roll. The enemy's helmsman had learned a new trick and wanted to show it to someone who would appreciate the effort. Kael appreciated it. He refused to reward it.
"Open the lane," he said. "Let them think we are committed starboard."
Silas made the numbers lie beautifully. The Watcher Above yawed just enough to convince, then rolled, sank into magnetopause like a coin into dark water, and came up precisely where a proud captain would never expect to be boarded from. Malchion's pods punched through at a shallow angle and disgorged men who did not speak unless absolutely necessary.
Kael took the bridge-to-bridge link open. The Sons captain appeared as a smudge of pride and oil. "You should have stayed in the dark," the man said, grinning as if preparing to show a trick.
"I brought it with me," Kael said, and cut the channel.
He watched Malchion's life-sign pulse along a corridor and smile when it shouldn't. Joras's beacon flickered as the sergeant crawled through a maintenance artery men had told themselves no one would ever use. The ship's intelligence core tasted hull-stresses and breathed in time with Kael's ribs.
"Cut their helm," Kael said. "Then their name."
Minutes later, the strike cruiser drifted—alive, un-commanded, humiliated. The Watcher Above let it spin and did not shoot. Men on Europa saw the traitor ship lose its pride and began believing in schedules again.
"Channel from Fort Aeternum," Silas called. "Imperial Fist control. They request designation for after-action logs."
Kael looked at Jupiter's storms and the ring-fire and the way the traitor flotilla had begun to arc away without admitting that it was retreat. "Specify the Silent Company," he said. "Note: present."
There was a pause. "Acknowledge, Captain Varan. Your presence is… recorded."
"Good," he said, and meant the word with his bones.
He stood there until the last of the enemy withdrew to recompute its courage. The Watcher Above drifted into the shadow of a refinery plate and exhaled. Systems ticked as hot metal remembered cooler shapes. The bridge crew moved the way Veyra had taught them, which was to say like a song hummed under breath—unshowy, right.
"Losses?" Kael asked, keeping his gaze on the storms.
"Eleven Astartes," Malchion answered, voice level and raw in the same breath. "Forty-seven crew. Silas from the pit. He gave me numbers until the bulkhead came down. They were correct."
Kael closed his eyes once. Opened them. "Names to the ledger. The ones who did not come back will sit where we can see them."
"They will," Veyra said softly.
He breathed. The darkness in his hand warmed and settled. The ship dimmed with him, a companion learning a man's grief without panicking.
"Signal Fort Aeternum," he said. "Tell them the Jovian lanes are clear for six hours. If they do not use it, I will be offended."
"Aye," Silas would have said; instead Joras replied, his voice a little rough. "Sent."
Kael let the silence stay for a beat. He thought of Malcador's ink, Dorn's wall, Curze's hand, Veyra's cough. Then he gave the order he had been waiting to use for a decade.
"Set pattern Night's Prow," he said. "We are done being rumour."
The Watcher Above answered with a heartbeat through the hull, the gravitic hearts thudding once in approval. In the stormlight, the ship looked like a thought made into a weapon.
"Make it quiet," Kael said.
They did. And out beyond the refinery plates, traitor ships learned what it meant to earn every step.