In the Lounge, Loken, Torgaddon, Kaebo, and the others had long since removed their armor and were resting.
They sat on plain metal benches, some with their heads lowered and eyes closed, their chests slowly rising and falling.
Some leaned against the walls, staring blankly at the ceiling.
Others sipped water, moistening their parched throats and lips.
Although their bodies had found a brief respite, their minds remained taut with tension.
Exhausted was no longer enough to describe their condition.
They were not merely weary in body. Their souls were weary, too.
The pain of betrayal by their own, the sorrow of having to raise their blades against former comrades, the exhaustion of struggling for survival on the brink of death—all of it had been etched deep into their bones.
As Loken and the others looked at their surviving comrades in the Lounge, conflicting emotions churned within them.
So many familiar faces were missing. The companions imprisoned alongside them in the Brig, the brothers who had fought beside them during their escape, the brave warriors who had resolutely stayed behind to hold off the pursuing Ringwraiths—many were gone.
Their sacrifices had bought survival for these fewer than a hundred and fifty men, this escape ship, and this brief chance to catch their breath.
Brothers of the Legion slaughtering one another was something they had never imagined.
Over the past several hundred years, they had fought side by side beneath the same banner, resisted the enemy in the same trenches, and raised their cups around the same table to celebrate victory.
But now, those former brothers had become mortal enemies.
What left them even more adrift was that they did not know which brothers remained loyal and which had chosen betrayal.
After Horus launched his purge, every warship, every Legion, and