by John French
‘For the days that have passed and the days that shall come, we stand.’
The swirl of dust in the sphere of the gate was moving faster, the light growing brighter.
‘For the living and the honour of the dead, we stand.’
Shapes formed in the glare, blinking into sight like shadows cast by the flash of lightning. The inner ring of gun platforms around the gate began to fire. Hundreds of shells blazed into the flashing dust. Some exploded, some vanished. The multicoloured swirl contracted. The gun platforms kept firing. Then the dust and light burst outwards.
A split opened at the gate’s centre, black beyond night. Across the gulf of the vacuum, the humans on the nearest gun platforms flinched as a ululating scream filled their ears. The dark hole flexed, its edges growing like a tear pulled wide in ragged fabric.
The fire from the gun platforms was a deluge now. Shells tumbled into the spreading breach. Those that exploded burst like water as they touched the warp. A trio of shapes appeared in the dark. Bloated and monstrous, they pushed into reality.
They had been macro-transporters once, made to shift the output of worlds across the galaxy. Each was bigger than even the largest warships. Slabs of raw iron had been welded to their flanks, and clusters of void shield generators blistered their skin like boils. They had borne other names in their former, ponderous lives, but the will of Perturabo had remade them, and had given them new titles to bear. Alekto, Megaera and Tilphousia were their names, and they had been reborn to die in the first moments of this assault.
The second cordon of defences opened fire. Long-range turbo lasers burned hundred-metre-wide channels through the blazing dust in the gate. The Alekto, Megaera and Tilphousia pushed onwards, molten metal weeping from their prows. Their void shields lit. Fresh storms of lightning blazed through the dust clouds, as ether-charged Siren Dust kissed the forming skins of energy. The deluge of fire began to find its mark as the three huge ships shot forwards.
The plasma reactors from hundreds of half-dead machines filled the trio’s decks and holds. They lit one after another. Power poured into engines and shields. Volleys of macro shells slammed into them as they shot out in different directions. Plasma conduits inside their guts began to rupture. Reactor containment began to fail, and thousands of the servitor crew died as their flesh cooked. Shells and las-fire crumpled shields and bit into iron skin. Fire chewed at them like rain into blocks of salt.
It did not matter, though. They had not been made to live. In another age, back when Terra had oceans, such vessels were called fire ships: crude mechanisms of horror and destruction in a time of primitive explosives and wooden vessels.
On the defence platforms, the gunnery officers saw what was about to happen as the three ships hurtled closer towards the first line of defences. They did everything that they could to prevent it.
Macro cannon fire tore savagely into the prow plating of the Tilphousia as her shields collapsed. A chunk of smelted iron the size of a hab-block peeled back, tumbling away as lance fire reached inside the first wound and burned into the huge ship’s bones.
The Tilphousia erupted in flame and light. The blast wave reached back to the warp gate, staining the dust cloud orange. Twenty gun platforms vanished, their deaths marked by blinks of light within the blaze as their magazines cooked off.
It was only as the defenders’ auspex and targeting systems went dark that the true spite of the ironclad vessels’ makers became clear. Laced into the heart of the Tilphousia and her sisters were machines looted from dead forge worlds. Half-wreckage, their spirits violated and rebound by the priests of the New Mechanicum, these engines had once been wonders of lost arts of communication. Now they were instruments of cacophony. Waves of wild electromagnetic distortion, scrap code and haywire radiation ripped out with the Tilphousia’s death fire. The distortion wave scratched its way into systems, darkened signal receivers and sent gunnery servitors into feedback convulsions.
The void-fortresses and weapon platforms fired with everything they had. Half-blinded they clawed burning holes in the hulls of the remaining sisters.
It was not enough.
The Alekto detonated as she breached the inner lines of defences around the gate. The Megaera exploded minutes later. Weapon platforms the size of manufactoria became shrapnel sprayed out into the dark. A blinding fog of fire and exotic radiation swallowed the gate, cloaking it in brightness.
Halbract had held his ships back, but loosed his first battle groups now. These were monitor ships, blunt craft of raw firepower and armour. Crewed by humans pressed from the Solar privateer clans, they knew the business of killing. They cut down channels between the fortresses and platforms. Gun batteries had fallen silent as their auspexes fogged. Torpedoes were shot blind into the fire-cloaked heart of the gate. For a moment, thousands of strands of light streaked the dark.
Within the cloak of fire and radiation surrounding the gate, eight main force class battleships translated into reality, guns primed. Each had been selected for their mass, armour and the discipline of their crews. They were all ships bound to the Iron Warriors and crewed by officers who had failed the IV Legion before. That failure had earned them the honour of crossing this breach first. Forgiveness awaited those that survived, and the release of death those that proved weak.
The guns of the eight were discharging even as they arrived. Nova cannons ran down the spines of four, and they began to fire blind. The squadrons of monitor craft responded with every weapon that could find a target.
The nova shells hit first. Each one was over fifty metres in diameter and longer than some of the smaller warships in the battle sphere. Accelerated to within a breath of the speed of light, each carried a ship-killing payload. Spheres of exotic energy and primal destruction burst into being.
Some caught gun platforms and void-stations and tore their shields and armour from them. Graviton and haywire torpedoes struck the defences next, seeking out mass and reactor signatures. Sensor arrays shorted. Crushing gravity fields yanked void bastions out of alignment and cracked the shells of the monitor ships.
The torpedoes fired by the defenders cut into the battle sphere. A cluster of twenty slammed into one of the eight vanguard ships and swallowed its flank and spine in a stuttering blaze. The ship listed, plunging downwards as it died. Burning atmosphere vented from its wounds in vast streams.
On the bridge of the Monarch of Fire, Halbract watched the first minutes unfold. This would not be a swift battle, but these moments would be crucial. The enemy had to race to establish a foothold in reality, a tipping point where the number of their ships outstripped the rate at which the defenders could kill them. So far, the odds of them succeeding were finely balanced.
‘Lord Halbract, something larger is coming through,’ called one of the sensor officers. ‘It casts a shadow even through the distortion.’
A shape pushed through the firelit dust and haze. At first it looked like a pitted asteroid or a wreck. Then the bulk behind its prow burst through the swirl. The dead of millennia of war amongst the stars were its mass – mangled carcasses of starships, asteroids, towers and broken star fortresses, all crushed together by the immaterium. It was a macro-agglomeration of debris and dead things secreted by storm tides, a pearl of sorrow, a space hulk. The New Mechanicum had dragged it from the tides of the warp and remade it. Launch bays had been cut into its mass, reactors lit in its heart and shield generators bound to its surface. Pushing and hauling it through the warp had cost a dozen ships, and once pushed back into reality, it would never move again. That, though, was not its purpose. The size of one of Uranus’ moons, it was made to be a besieger’s redoubt at the gate of a greater fortress. Daughter of Woe, it had been named.
The ships that had already exited the immaterium slewed aside as the hulk grew and grew. Its bulk was breaking through the cloud on all sides of the gate, now. Hundred-kilometre arcs of warp lightnin
g writhed from the tearing edge of the vast hole it was boring in space.
The dust of the Elysian Gate streamed down its face like water falling from a leviathan breaking from the depths of a dark sea. The wreckage of already-dead ships impacted on its surface. Torpedoes and battery fire slammed into it. Chunks of rock and metal tore from it. And it kept coming. Assault craft began to launch from it in clouds. Small frigates that had made the journey bound to its skin broke their tethers and slid into the void.
Lord Castellan Halbract watched as the Daughter of Woe lit with fire from the rings of defences. This had not been anticipated, but it changed little. His orders and oaths still stood. The only question was how much they could make the enemy pay, and the price his forces paid in turn.
‘Light our guns,’ he said, and the Monarch of Fire shook to his order.
Battle-barge War Oath, Supra-Solar Gulf
The herald ship surfaced from the night. Bit by bit her shape grew, spear-blade prow and gun-serrated flanks emerging from a lightless ocean. Shadows fumed from her substance like black ink dropped into water. The sun shone beyond her armoured bows. She had been birthed in the light of that sun but had not seen its light in over a century. The Emperor Himself had named her War Oath, and she still bore that name, but like the Legion that commanded her now, time had remade her. Ghost-light clung to her turrets and pooled in the scars that marked her flanks. The marks of the Imperial Fists had long been removed, and the wounds done to her at the Battle of Phall were now repaired, but signs of her one-time masters still lived in her bones.
Ezekyle Abaddon looked out at the void light through the armourglass dome of the War Oath’s observatory. Perched atop a slender tower on the ship’s command castle, its purpose had been to watch and chart the stars. A great stack of brass machinery hung from the dome’s apex, its lenses, dials and mirrors filmed with dust. Abaddon doubted that anyone had ever used the instruments; what need was there for such poetic flourishes on a warship equipped with sensors and long-range auspex? A neverborn hissed in his ears as it dissolved from the bones of the ship. A spectre with orb-eyes and a smile of needle teeth ran the tip of its claw down the observatory’s dome. It grinned. Abaddon met its gaze as it faded to nothing. The bright, distant jewel of Sol glowed through the fading shadow of its mouth. He caught a glimmer at the edge of his eyes, glanced around and saw the image of the sun shining from an octagonal silver mirror set at the centre of the chamber’s floor. He froze, eyes fixed on the circle of light floating beneath the surface of the dusty silver.
‘The gods bless us, and bring us to the light of truth,’ said Zardu Layak from where he knelt on the stone floor. Candles of human tallow burned with rainbow-streaked flames around him. Eight heaps of ash and blackened bone lay around the Word Bearer. They had been chosen from amongst Layak’s mortal flock and had burned where they knelt as the War Oath translated from the warp into reality. None of them had made a sound as they were engulfed. That silence had clenched the muscles along Abaddon’s jaw. Part of him had thought of ordering the Justaerin Terminators standing at the edge of the room to open fire and reduce the Word Bearers and their foul sacrifice to pulped meat and shredded armour.
Witch-frost cracked from Layak’s armour as he rose. The two red-armoured warriors that had stood guard over his vigil bowed their heads. Layak extended his hand and his staff coalesced into being in his grasp.
Abaddon looked into the rows of glowing eyes running down the cheeks of Layak’s horned mask.
‘It is done?’ he asked. Layak nodded.
‘By the will of the Four and the Eightfold star.’
Abaddon felt his lips pull back from his teeth.
‘You do not have faith in the gods?’
‘I have faith in our Warmaster,’ growled Abaddon, and opened a vox-link to the ship’s command echelon. ‘Report readiness condition.’ Static chopped through the replies. He listened, his mind folding each report into a precise map of the ship’s current strength and capability. Satisfactory. If needed, they could fight and kill now. The need was unlikely, if all had gone as it should, but you always drew a blade before stepping into the dark. The fingers of his right hand twitched, curling for an instant before he stilled them. For a second, he had felt the ghost of his false-father’s knife bite into his forearm as he squeezed.
‘You are a fool, boy!’ He could see the eyes above the bloodstained teeth, could feel his fingers digging into the neck beneath them. ‘It will… slip through… your fingers…’
‘You were not born under that light, were you?’ asked Layak. Abaddon blinked. The Word Bearer had come to stand next to him in front of the view of the sun. ‘But in a sense, I suppose we all were. This is our cradle, is it not, brother?’
The Luna gene-wright rose, chromed and cold, its six bladed limbs opening above his naked flesh in a spider embrace.
‘You will be born anew…’ it had whispered as it began to cut. ‘Moon-wrought and blooded.’
‘You are not my brother, priest,’ said Abaddon, and the threat in the words was enough to bring Layak’s bodyguards forwards, their blades drawing, cracks of fire spreading over their armour.
Abaddon looked at them, his eyes glittering above a cold smile.
Layak stilled them with a twitch of his head. The pair paused and nodded once before stepping back.
A blurt of data filled the vox for a second. Abaddon listened, and then cut the link.
‘The Thousand Sons ship translated successfully.’
It did, and we are here,+ said a voice that rolled in Abaddon’s skull. His teeth clamped shut as he shrugged the telepathic communication away.
An image unfolded in the air, translucent and shimmering: crimson armour, edged in ivory. The eyes set in the smooth face shone with a cold, blue light. Ahzek Ahriman nodded once to Abaddon and walked closer, his ghost image trailing light and frost in the air. Layak’s bodyguards had begun to draw their blades once more. Ahriman’s image turned to look at them. They met his gaze. The light of their eye-lenses had begun to burn red, and yellow embers were trickling from the splits that had opened in their armour. Ahriman tilted his head. Ice ran across the floor.
Tell the warlock to muzzle his dogs,+ he sent, without moving his lips.
The eyes in Layak’s mask were glowing, and blood was seeping from between its metal fangs. A smell of sulphur and burnt sugar mingled with ozone. Abaddon glanced at where the four Justaerin stood at the edge of the chamber. The glance held them in place.
‘Cease,’ growled Abaddon. Layak looked at the image of Ahriman for a second, and then turned away. His two bodyguards slid their blades back into their sheaths. The splits closed in their armour. The light in their eyes dimmed.
Ahriman turned and glided towards the viewport. An instinct to flinch away from the ghost-figure tugged at Abaddon’s muscles. He held still, eyes following the Thousand Sons Librarian as he looked out at the view of Terra beyond the dagger point of the ship’s prow.
Home.+ Ahriman’s mouth did not move, but the shadows of his brow furrowed. +What creatures are we that come from the night, to hearth and home, and find only strangers on the threshold?+
Layak made a sound that might have been a hiss of laughter.
‘Kaelic of Noropolis,’ said Abaddon. ‘From the Songs of Passing. “And what stranger beasts do the eyes of fathers see who after long years stand by open doors and wait…”’ Ahriman turned to look at him. The light of the stars glimmered through the gauzy image of his frown. He raised an eyebrow. ‘We are warriors, not barbarians,’ said Abaddon. Then he nodded at the distant sun. ‘Where is the rest of the armada?’
Watch,+ sent Ahriman.
Sheets of aurora light formed in the night beyond, flowing and curling across the dark. The light of the sun and the stars blurred as it fell through the curtains of colour, sliding out of place until it seemed that the heavens had been twisted into a new
position. Shadows formed in the folds of light, jagged silhouettes like the shards of broken spears.
Millions had died to make this possible. Tens of thousands had been bled into offering vats or been jettisoned from hangar bays into the warp. Most had died with pleas for mercy on their lips. Some had spoken prayers of thanks to the gods. Slaves taken from conquered worlds, helots from the deep decks of the ships, even some chosen from amongst the soldiery that had sworn loyalty to Horus, all had died, their blood and souls poured into nothing to make this possible. The powers that Horus had bound to his cause had seen his ships through the warp, and now they had slid them back into being well past the Mandeville point of the Solar System – that invisible barrier created by a star’s gravity past which it was unsafe to translate ships to and from the warp. There had been a price, of course, a price and a limit. The price had been paid in blood, and the limit was that for all the neverborn could bend the rules to place these ships deep within in the Solar sphere, they could not violate them utterly. They had not been able to return the Warmaster’s ships directly into Terran orbit. Not yet. But what the blood and death had bought was what some would have called a miracle, even so.
The jagged shadows in the coiling light faded momentarily. A fork of green lightning whipped across the void, branching across thousands of kilometres. The light froze for an instant. A shiver ran across Abaddon’s skin under his armour. His gaze was locked on the scene beyond the glass. He felt his twin hearts each beat once.
The frozen flash of lightning exploded. He blinked. Ships filled the void around the War Oath, tens of thousands of vast, dark metal shapes fuming pale smoke. The stars swirled, and the aurora light folded over and over, caressing their hulls as thousands of vessels shivered into full reality. Sons of Horus, Word Bearers and the New Mechanicum, enough to conquer star clusters, all hanging above the sun like daggers.
Abaddon watched the ships settle and the ghost-light fade from their hulls. Behind him, the image of Ahriman faded too. A moment later he heard the door release, and Layak and his bodyguards withdraw. Abaddon turned when he heard the doors reseal. He inhaled, bringing emotion to a point of focus. He loathed how they had come here. He loathed more the weakness of his own Legion, implied by the aid given by the Thousand Sons and Word Bearers to make this impossibility a reality. But here and now, his loathing did not matter. All that mattered was the weapon that his father, his Warmaster, had placed in his hand. He heard his oath then – not the oath he had knelt and given at the foot of Horus’ throne, but one given long ago beneath the light of the sun that waited for him at the end of this path.