Sons of the Hydra

by Rob Sanders

  ‘The blood that runs through these veins,’ Occam told her, his voice low, ‘belongs to my genic father and my father’s father. I am engineered of the Emperor’s flesh. What are you, priest, but the detritus of humanity washed up on the shores of some cardinal world, bloated with its own self-importance? You stand in those rags and in the ruins of churches and think that qualifies you to speak on His behalf? You are but charlatans puppeting the cadaverous remains of a tyrant you barely understand. His tyrannical spirit burns on in brothers brave enough to prosecute the cold complexities of his will.’

  ‘And you are one of those brothers?’

  ‘I am,’ Occam seethed across the altar. ‘He will deliver the promised empire – a dominion humanity can be proud to call its own – but for such an Imperium to exist, both the tainted meat of the body Imperial and the useless fat must be cut away. The weak and faithful of the galaxy are just as much an impediment to such an outcome as the powerful and traitorous.’

  ‘And that is what you intend to do?’ Perdita asked the Alpha Legion strike master. ‘Wield that knife and cut away the tainted and feeble?’

  ‘In the Emperor’s name, yes,’ Occam told her.

  ‘Even without the aid of your legionary allies?’

  Occam gave Perdita snake eyes. His lip curled into a slow snarl.

  ‘A small blade can do a lot of damage,’ Occam said, ‘if you know where to strike. Any Assassin would be able to tell you that.’

  When the strike master sprang, Mina Perdita was expecting it. It didn’t help her. Neither did her Assassin’s reflexes or temple training. She was slower than she might have been. Unsure of when to break character. Waiting until Occam confirmed his suspicions with violent conviction. His arm shot out and grabbed her by the scruff of her robes, his fist like a vice of bone and muscle.

  Occam the Untrue lifted her off her feet and slammed her down on the surface of the altar with merciless force. Holding her with one hand, he pushed the other into her robes. Perdita kicked, hit and thrashed in the Space Marine’s grip, attempting a series of locks, holds and defensive manoeuvres, as dictated by her training. Each had its own lethal follow-up, but fight though the Assassin might, she couldn’t get any to stick on the demigod.

  Running his hand through the robes, Occam found the blade Perdita had secreted there – a weapon she had surreptitiously picked up from the practice cages. As Occam pulled it from the rags and held the venom-slick blade above her, Perdita fell still in his grasp.

  ‘Is this for me, Assassin?’ he put to her. He gestured to his own features. ‘You think I don’t know a false face when I see it? Have you come to finish what you started? The Angelbane is dead. Are you here ensuring that I don’t take up his mantle?’

  ‘No,’ Perdita insisted, ‘a thousand times, no. I don’t expect you to believe me, my lord, but it remains the truth.’

  Occam peered into her eyes before his face creased with anger and frustration. He slammed her against the surface of the altar before lifting her off and pitching her across the chapel chamber. Usually a creature of precision and grace, Perdita tried to regain her balance but by the time she got her feet to the floor, her face was flying into the stone wall.

  Getting up, she felt the warmth of blood down the side of her face. It was seeping from a gash on her head. She turned and put her back against the wall. As she did she heard the clang of metal against the flags of the floor. Lord Occam had tossed the envenomed blade down at her feet.

  ‘You’re right,’ the strike master said. ‘I don’t believe you. Take your weapon and do what you came here to do. You have been a good servant to the Legion. I’ll kill you quickly. I owe you that much.’

  Perdita kicked the blade away, sending it skidding noisily across the flags and out of the chapel archway.

  ‘I swear,’ Perdita said, ‘by the Emperor, on some serpent shrine or to the Dark Gods – I am not here to harm you. I am Perdita. Your agent. Your operative. Your blade to strip the carcass Imperium of the feeble and the damned.’

  ‘Then what are you doing here, Assassin,’ Occam put to her, ‘in the private chambers of a renegade who needs little reason to end you? Consider your answer carefully. It may well be your last.’

  Mina Perdita licked her lips.

  ‘I thought myself accomplished,’ she said, ‘when I first infiltrated the Sons of the Hydra. I have learned a lot from you and your Legion. Like all in the Alpha Legion, I wanted to know. I wanted to understand and I’ll admit – to use such knowledge to my advantage. A great deal changed above Vitrea Mundi. So much depends upon what you decide. I’m not ashamed to admit that I would like to know what happens next. That is why I tried to deceive you. One way or another, I assure you that it won’t happen again. I just wanted to know the mind of the man who holds my fate in his hands.’

  The Alpha Legion strike master stared at the Assassin, the snarl contorting his face fading.

  ‘When I am ready to share my mind with you,’ Occam the Untrue said, ‘with the Seventh Sons or my legionary brothers, you will know about it. Now get out of my sight and frequent these chambers no more.’

  ζ

  Snake Oil ‘Is there a problem?’ a metallic voice proceeded from the darkness.

  As Mina Perdita left his chambers, Occam looked down at the partial imprint of the Emperor’s boot set in the surface of the altar. Following in the Master of Mankind’s footsteps was proving difficult indeed.

  The sons of Guilliman. Renegade madmen. The corrupted. Devout servants of the Emperor. All were out for Occam’s blood. Now his own operatives seemed to be stalking him and xenos abominations were trying to get him killed.

  ‘As she said,’ Occam answered, ‘the Alpha Legion teaches its operatives to be curious and to take the initiative.’

  The hunched figure of Omizhar Vohk ventured forth from the shadows of the chapel. He gave Occam the sickening green glare of his single optic.

  ‘You are fortunate, fleshling, that she didn’t take the initiative earlier with that blade,’ the xenos advisor said.

  ‘You overestimate her as you underestimate me, monster,’ Occam told him, leaving the chapel and crossing the chamber. ‘You have your predictions. The Legion has its games, its tricks and deceptions. She did well to get as close as she did, all things considered. The Legion can use such skill and audacity.’

  The xenos creature hung back and dug at the crumbling stone of the chapel with its metal claws.

  ‘It is interesting,’ Vohk said, ‘the fleshling preoccupation with stone. Everywhere you go you feel the need to erect your false temples and tiny tombs. Perhaps we are not so different, you and I. The worlds of my people are similarly dominated by such buildings – albeit on a much grander scale. Perhaps one day, I shall get the opportunity to show you such wonders.’

  ‘Perhaps one day, abomination, you’ll get to the point.’

  As Occam turned and sat back in his throne, the legionnaire heard the metallic thunk of the alien’s footsteps following him across the deck.

  ‘I understand, fleshling,’ Vohk said. ‘In a life as short as yours, I appreciate that you have little patience for such delays. I apologise. You see, all I have is time. Time and what it tells me.’

  ‘It’s the only reason you are alive to haunt the corridors of my ship,’ Occam told the alien. ‘You like tombs? If you pull something like that again, you are assured to see the inside of one.’

  ‘I saved your life,’ the alien taunted.

  ‘That is yet to be seen,’ Occam told him. ‘Now, as you were saying, monster.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Before we were rudely interrupted,’ Vohk said, standing beside the throne like a dutiful advisor. ‘I served as advisor to Quetzel Carthach – such colourful names you have.’

  ‘Before you had me drop a magma bomb warhead on him,’ Occam interjected, ‘the necessity of which you will also explain to me.’

  ‘Where I come from, fleshling,’ Vohk said, ‘I am called many things.’

  ‘I
don’t doubt it.’

  ‘Astraturge,’ Vohk continued. ‘Stellasayer. Chronomancer. I read the stars and harness their gravitational governance of the past, present and future. Lord Carthach benefitted from my talents in exterminating the sons of the warlord you call Guilliman – in that, the objectives of the Angelbane and my master overlapped.’

  ‘Your master?’

  ‘We all have masters, fleshling, do we not?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You do,’ Vohk assured Occam, ‘you just don’t know it yet. I foresaw for the Angelbane – further madness, obsession and the persecution of brother Space Marines.’

  ‘So you thought you would help such insanity along,’ Occam said with a baleful gaze.

  ‘Indeed, fleshling,’ Vohk told him, unfazed. ‘At my instigation, you became the focus of such obsession and the beneficiary of its tragic outcome. For now it is the objectives of the Redacted and my master that overlap.’

  ‘Until you advise someone to drop a magma bomb on me,’ the strike master said.

  ‘I will not be lectured on the rare necessitude of duplicity by a member of your Legion,’ Omizhar Vohk told him evenly. ‘We are both creatures of opportunity, are we not – and make opportunities where they fail to materialise?’

  ‘Fair enough, abomination,’ Occam said. ‘But tell me this – what are your master’s objectives? Because we no longer have the manpower to challenge Adeptus Astartes Chapters – no matter how depleted their ranks might be. You saw to that.’

  ‘My master wants something.’

  ‘What is this thing?’

  ‘A piece of alien technology, more ancient than your entire species,’ Omizhar Vohk said.

  ‘Most of the best technology is,’ Occam the Untrue agreed. ‘Is this artefact dangerous?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘And he needs this piece of technology locating?’

  ‘We know where it can be found,’ the alien advisor assured him.

  ‘Then why don’t you go fetch it for him, lapdog?’ Occam asked. ‘You seem pretty adept at ghosting your way into places into which you have not been invited. My ship and chambers, for example.’

  ‘The artefact is located in a place where such techno-sorcery is compromised. A fleshling is required for this task. He wants the Alpha Legion to retrieve it for him.’

  ‘Only the Legion?’

  ‘He trusts few others with such an important undertaking.’

  ‘Why not send Carthach?’ Occam put to him.

  ‘The Angelbane’s approach would have been… unproductive,’ Vohk told him. ‘This undertaking requires a light touch and the sensibilities of a thief, not a butcher.’

  ‘I am no thief, xenos.’

  ‘I beg to differ,’ Vohk said. ‘Everything about you is stolen, from your ship and plate to your face and your purpose.’

  Occam grunted.

  ‘Is your master too polite to go and recover this piece of technology himself? Why does he need the Redacted?’ the strike master asked.

  ‘The Lord Dominatus issues orders and the Alpha Legion follow them,’ Omizhar Vohk told him.

  ‘What did you just say?’ Occam said, rising out of his throne.

  ‘I see that I have your attention,’ the abomination observed.

  ‘The Lord Dominatus?’

  ‘My master,’ Vohk said, ‘and yours.’

  ‘You work for a member of the Legion?’ Occam asked, turning his head to one side to peer into the dark hood of the alien machine.

  ‘Quetzel Carthach is not the only arch-lord of the Alpha Legion to gather your dark brotherhood under his banner,’ Vohk said. ‘As emissary of the Lord Dominatus, I engaged the Angelbane and the Sons of the Hydra – as I have many Alpha Legion cells, warbands and lone legionnaires. Since you belonged to the Sons of the Hydra also, it could be argued that you are already engaged in my master’s service.’

  ‘The destruction of Adeptus Astartes Chapters,’ Occam said, ‘the retrieval of artefacts, the gathering of legionnaires – what does this Lord Dominatus want?’

  ‘A great many things,’ Vohk said, ‘one of which is for you to be a Legion again. A single, unified fighting force, rather than a scattered network of terror groups, all waging your own wars for your own reasons. The Lord Dominatus believes that the Legion can once again be more than the sum of its parts – that it can once again play its part in the destiny of the galaxy.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Occam demanded.

  ‘His identity is not mine to divulge,’ the xenos advisor said. ‘What I can tell you, Occam the Untrue, is that you and he are the same.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means, that you are both believers,’ Vohk said. ‘That despite a civil war that tore your empire asunder and ten thousand years of taint and degradation, you both wear the colours of the Legion and beneath them both still harbour loyalty to the corpse Emperor.’

  Occam turned away. His mind was a whirl. He absently shook his head.

  ‘How is this possible?’

  ‘Should you pass my master’s test,’ Vohk said, ‘then perhaps you could ask him face to face.’

  ‘Test?’ Occam said. ‘The artefact?’

  ‘It belongs to the Lord Dominatus,’ the alien said, ‘and he wants it back. He offers the Redacted the honour of returning it to him.’

  Occam’s eyes burned with questions. His hearts beat with the excitement of possibility. The opportunity to be truly part of the Legion rather than some crude harrowing or attempt at former glories sounded interesting enough. To serve with an arch-lord that shared Occam’s objectives, however, was an opportunity not to be passed up.

  The strike master felt the ghostly echo of caution flutter through his chest. He rubbed at his chin with his fingers and thumb before turning back to the alien advisor.

  ‘Why should I trust you?’

  ‘Lord Carthach trusted me,’ Vohk told him.

  ‘And look where that got him,’ Occam said. ‘One of the greatest renegade warlords of the Eastern empire, undone by a single lie, uttered from the mouth of a faithless xenos.’

  ‘The Lord Dominatus trusts me,’ Omizhar Vohk said.

  ‘Why does he trust you?’

  ‘You might not know this, fleshling,’ the alien said, ‘but the Alpha Legion has a long tradition of working with xenos interests for common aims. I’m not talking about mercenaries, alien cultists and indentured wretches. I’m talking about long-term strategic cooperation between xenos collectives and the leaders of your Legion.’

  ‘Leaders?’ Occam said. ‘You mean the primarch?’

  ‘I mean the primarchs…’

  While keeping his eyes on Vohk’s optic, Occam began to stalk around the machine. Before joining the secretive ranks of the Alpha Legion, Occam had spent years in the Reclusiam, librarium and forbidden archives studying their victories, their methods and history. As an outsider to the brotherhood – a non-genic legionnaire – he prided himself on understanding more about the Legion than most. Amongst warped warlords, lost to the Chaos gods and maniacs devoted to the anarchic destruction of the Imperium, Occam was a veritable expert on legionary culture and past glories.

  The strike master was shocked by the depth of the alien’s knowledge of the Legion’s most intimate secrets. During Occam’s researches he had pored through contradictory accounts of split loyalties within the Alpha Legion, dating back to the great betrayals of the Horus Heresy and even possibly further. There were ghosts of rumours concerning Alpha Legion involvement with clandestine alien groups who shared their objectives.

  The fact that convinced Occam the concept of collaborating with Vohk and his master was truly worth entertaining was the revelation of the twin primarchs. Two primarchs: one soul in two bodies – neither of whom had been seen in millennia. Sightings of the pair, like regular reports of their deaths, had largely been regarded as legend. It had been variously reported that Alpharius, the figurehead father of the Legion, had lost his life at the hands of
both Rogal Dorn and Roboute Guilliman of the Ultramarines – both of which, if either, could not be truth. Quetzel Carthach, like many legionary lords, claimed to have been there the day the primarch fell but such incidents had little, if any, basis in fact. Similarly, in a propaganda war perpetuated by Imperial authorities, the entire Alpha Legion – primarch and all – had been erroneously declared destroyed at least three times by the High Lords of Terra.

  ‘Abomination,’ Occam said slowly. ‘Tell me, is the Lord Dominatus–’

  ‘Fleshling,’ Omizhar Vohk said. ‘You are a member of the Legion. You know better than to ask questions, the answers to which I cannot give. Pass the test. Bring the Lord Dominatus what he desires and I’m sure that he will provide the answer to all of your questions.’

  ‘He had better,’ Occam said.

  ‘Then we have an accord?’ the alien advisor said. ‘A legionary compact.’

  ‘With the Lord Dominatus,’ Occam said. ‘Not with you, faithless xenos.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Now tell me,’ Occam said. ‘What is this artefact and where can we find it?’

  ‘I will not embarrass us both by trying to describe it to you,’ Omizhar Vohk said.

  ‘It must have a basic function.’

  ‘In terms you might understand,’ Vohk said, ‘it is a containment field generator.’

  ‘Does this thing have a name?’

  ‘The Tesseraqt.’

  ‘And where can I find this ancient piece of xenos technology?’ Occam the Untrue asked.

  ‘That’s simple,’ Omizhar Vohk said. ‘The Tesseraqt currently resides on the daemon world of Ghalmek… in the Maelstrom.’

  η

  Once Bitten

  The Crozier Worlds. Lord Occam stood on the bridge of the Iota-Æternus, staring out into the void. Having left the cloaked confines of the Kraal Nebula and the devastation of Vitrea Mundi long behind, the strike master had Naga-Khan make for a cradle of star systems linked by a web of busy trade routes and pilgrim trains.