After ending his communication with Horus, Ferrus Manus stood motionless for a moment in the darkness of the Command Headquarters.
The luminous motes of the Holographic Projection had long since dispersed, leaving only the dim screen of the Communications Terminal, like a closed eye.
He slowly drew his gaze back from the empty air and lowered it to his metal hands.
"Meduson." His voice was quiet, yet carried a force that seemed capable of passing straight through walls.
A moment later, the doors of the Command Headquarters were pushed open, and a heavily augmented figure clad in iron-grey Power Armour strode inside.
It was Shadrak Meduson, Company Captain of the Soguro Clan, the Iron Hands Legion's tenth clan company.
Even among Space Marines, he was powerfully built, his broad frame resembling a cast steel beam.
He removed his helmet, revealing a face altered beyond recognition by mechanical augmentation.
He stopped before Ferrus Manus without any unnecessary pleasantries, merely straightening and awaiting his instructions.
As one of Ferrus Manus's trusted confidants, he had been assigned to defend Sotha.
He was to remain on this world of factories and machinery, holding the Pharos and the Iron Hands' fortress.
Ferrus Manus told him everything.
He told Meduson that he would soon leave Sotha and head west toward Terra to join Horus's great army.
He told Meduson that the fighting in Ultramar had ended for the time being. The main forces of the Loyalist Faction had been scattered or destroyed, but their remnants might yet regroup and return.
He told Meduson to hold the Pharos, so that the loyalist fleets still struggling through the sea of stars would continue to plunge headlong into the trap, and this star cluster would remain a place of terror and silence in the eyes of the Imperium.
He