by John French
‘Where is he?’ asked Layak, following Abaddon, ghost and shade-light spiralling over him. His blade slaves flanked him, their swords drawn, their bodies bloated, shedding cinders and ashes with every step. ‘Where are any of them?’
Abaddon turned, his mind shifting between possibilities. The bridge was silent, the few serf and servitor crew just those needed to keep the Lance of Heaven on course… No: to keep it on a trajectory that the War Oath could intercept. Hung out before them like a lure on a snare…
‘Brother!’ shouted Ralkor. Abaddon had time to turn and to see a spinning mote of light beyond the viewports streaking towards them. The armourglass imploded in a wave of fire as the assault rams hit the Lance of Heaven’s bridge. There were two of them, chisel-shaped blocks of armour and engines that carried five warriors in each tine of their forked hulls. Each mounted melta weapons powerful enough to punch a hole in the skin of a warship. Striking the unshielded bridge, those weapons reduced half the chamber to glowing slag.
The blast wave struck Abaddon and staggered him. Shards of wreckage and blobs of molten metal ricocheted from his battleplate. Tybar and his squad took the force of the hit and became fire and ash. The assault rams ripped through the bridge, embedding their prows deep in the deck. Sheets of metal scattered into the air. The assault rams’ front hatches blew open. Warriors in white leaped to the glowing deck. Bolter and plasma fire lashed out. Sons of Horus fell. Gunfire blazed back. Layak and his blade slaves stood amongst the ruin, the pale fire and shadow that wreathed them shredding bullets and debris to burning dust. Another assault ram ploughed through the hole left by the first two.
Abaddon rose. Gouges and pits marked his Terminator plate. The black lacquer of the Justaerin had burned away, replaced by the red of cooling ceramite and black of soot. Urskar and Gedephron stood with him. Air rushed past them into the void. Inside Abaddon’s helm the noise of battle reached him as a vibration through his feet. He saw his enemy then, a warrior running amongst the white-armoured figures charging across the deck: plumed helm, Chogorian hunt marks running across the plates of his armour, guandao spinning in his hands like the flash of lightning, like a bark of laughter as the rain fell.
Jubal Khan, a warrior who had fought across the stars and left a reputation that few could hope to touch. Jubal, whom he had met on the spires of Nissek, just before the counter-attack by the Arch-Drake’s horde. The Lord of Summer Lightning, the Death that Laughs. And here he was, a lord of war left to fight almost alone in this abyss. Left to fight and to die here.
Abaddon began to run to greet him.
‘Sycar,’ he growled as he took the first stride. ‘Kill the power generators.’
He heard gunfire chop through the vox as his lieutenant answered.
‘It won’t be clean, brother.’
‘Do it.’
‘With pleasure and obedience,’ said Sycar, and Abaddon heard his Legion brother smiling.
He was five strides across the deck. Jubal had seen him. The White Scar whirled his blade out, and another of the Sons of Horus was falling, helm split and blood burning on the guandao’s power field.
‘Brace for gravity loss!’ shouted Urskar over the vox, firing a stream of heavy rounds into the White Scars still leaping from the assault rams.
A vibration rose through the deck. The few remaining lights cut out. Abaddon felt the lurch in his stomach as gravity vanished. His boots mag-locked to the deck an instant later. One of the battered assault rams, still moving under the momentum of its impact, spun from the deck. Debris showered upwards. Half of the White Scars rose into the air. Bolt-rounds punched into them as they tumbled through the vanishing atmosphere. The rest mag-locked their feet to the deck in time. Jubal kept moving, his strides slowed but his speed still dazzling. Abaddon surged to meet him. Rounds blurred past him. The war shouts of the living and the dead filled his ears. His sword was in his hand, wreathed in lightning, his armour and blood and muscle flowing as one.
Jubal’s guandao flashed out, reaching across the space between them. It was so fast that it might have been the glint of light from a mirror. Abaddon brought his sword up to meet it.
But the weapons never met. Jubal flicked the guandao back as though the steel were a rope, and then slashed it out again. The blade edge kissed Abaddon’s right gauntlet. The power field bit deep. A spike of pain flared up his arm. He spun his sword, and sheared the guandao away, and struck back, turning the parry into an overhead cut. Jubal stepped away. The deck vibrated as the mag-locks in their boots released and engaged once more.
Abaddon struck again and again, pouring the force of each blow into the next so that their strength grew like a storm-sea clashing against the land. Jubal went back, pivoting and parrying. They were fighting on the deck before the wreck of the assault ram. Light flashed from the meeting of blades. Abaddon did not slow or step back. The battle was becoming silent as the last air drained from the bridge. The sound of his hearts filled his world, became the surge and murmur of war.
Jubal went back again, fast. Abaddon saw an opening and thrust. But Jubal clamped his feet to the deck halfway through his step and slashed his blade back. It was not a cut that a savant of any blade school would recognise, but it struck Abaddon’s sword arm, just above the elbow. Razor edge and power field sliced through the thinner armour of the joint. Pain flared, and a bright string of red pearls bubbled into the vacuum. It punched into his mind and stole the instant before he realised that Jubal was open. Mind and body shunted the pain aside, and he cut. Jubal somehow met the kill-stroke. The force of impact jolted through Abaddon. Jubal released the mag-locks holding him to the deck, and the impact of his strike sent him arcing over Abaddon’s head.
Jubal’s feet found the deck and his boots gripped him to the floor. He snapped the guandao out as he landed. The long haft slid through his right hand, the tip reaching out to Abaddon like a thunderbolt.
It was dazzling. From the first reversal of Abaddon’s plan to kill the leader of the Falcon fleets to this dance of blood and edges, this was war and killing on a level that rose to something beyond even the post-human. Abaddon would strike, and Jubal would slice, and bit by bit those cuts would bleed Abaddon, slow him, pull him down into more mistakes. They would follow this pattern on and on, cut after cut, and it would never cease, only flow into its next phase, like wind and storm-rain split by the flash of lightning.
Except it wouldn’t. It could not. He knew Jubal, had known him before and knew him better for these last moments.
Abaddon raised his sword to meet the guandao spearing towards him. To a human it would have been too fast to follow, but Jubal would have seen it, would have been waiting for it. The guandao flicked aside. Power fields grazed each other in a plume of sparks. Jubal’s feet locked to the floor as he turned his cut inside Abaddon’s parry.
Abaddon slammed his sword forwards. All his strength and all his skill focused in the blow. It struck the guandao. Sheets of sparks flashed out. Jubal flinched back, the flow of his strikes shattered as force jolted through his weapon and up his arms. Abaddon activated the field of his power fist and slammed it forwards, palm open. The lightning-wreathed fingers closed on the guandao with a flash of light. Jubal whirled back but Abaddon had already read the movement. His sword-thrust struck Jubal in the gut and cut upwards, sawing through armour, flesh and bone.
Blood poured into the air, glistening, burning in the sword’s power field. Jubal’s arms swung, still bearing his broken weapon. Abaddon stepped back, pulling the sword free and kicking the corpse off his blade. And the Lord of Summer Lightning tumbled away, limbs suddenly slack, blood venting in spheres into the all-but-vanished air.
Abaddon stood for a second, hearing his own breath inside his helm, watching the warrior he had killed.
Then the sound rose up through the deck, vibrating through his armour.
Abaddon’s awareness snapped back, sharp and bri
ght. Light was building in the front of one of the assault rams embedded in the deck. Abaddon had a stretching, momentary perception of the chamber before him, of the bolts and beams of energy reaching between the surviving White Scars and the Sons of Horus. The corpses already spinning through the air. The flicker of detonations out in the void beyond. And the light of the beam of heat building, ripping through the deck beneath his feet as the assault ram fired its magna-melta. For the narrowest sliver of an instant the deck plating seemed to contain it, glowing through red to white. Then the moment passed.
Heat and molten metal exploded outwards. The melta-beam sliced through the deck towards Abaddon. He felt the deck pitch as it began to crumple like parchment in a furnace. He was still moving, but these moments were slow, the last grains falling in an hourglass.
The molten beam struck an invisible wall. Frost exploded to steam as it spread across the torn deck. The sound of screaming voices filled Abaddon’s ears, shrieking and pleading. Shadows spiralled around him. He could smell burning parchment and incense.
Zardu Layak stepped to Abaddon’s side. His hand was raised. A device burned on his palm.
Move…+ said Layak’s voice in Abaddon’s mind. Layak stood for another second, the hemisphere of shadow holding back the blast. Then Layak closed his hand. The shield of shadows and the melta-beam vanished. Stillness filled the second. Then Layak opened his hand and the fire leapt out, like light trapped in a shuttered lamp. The assault ram exploded. Half of the deck vanished in a flash of white heat.
A moment later the gunfire ceased.
Abaddon walked to Layak. Blood bubbled from under the priest’s mask, dark and thick. Voices rose from the vox in Abaddon’s ears, but he did not listen. He was looking at the grey-armoured priest of the Word Bearers. He blinked his vox-channel to a direct link to Layak.
‘Saving a life forms a bond, First Son of Horus,’ said Layak looking up at him, the eyes of his horned and fanged mask glowing. ‘Remember that, always.’
The bitter angels of our hearts
Limit of kindness
Here for you
Freighter ship Antius, Jovian Gulf
‘Signal contact. Distance adjusting.’
The tech-priest’s drone buzzed across the bridge.
The watch officer, who had been nodding off, jerked upright, blinking. Vek had been sitting in a vacant helm cradle, trying to stave off the alternating fatigue and nerves.
‘What is it?’ asked Vek.
‘Uncertain,’ said the tech-priest. She had come up from the engine decks and wired herself into the helm and sensor instruments after they had broken from Uranus’ orbit. That had reassured Vek a little. The tech-priest, who he thought was called Chi-32-Beta, was cold and unfeeling, but she did not seem to sleep, nor to be as open to panic as the all-too-human bridge crew. ‘It is a small void-craft, fast, and its signal signature is tenuous,’ continued Chi-32-Beta. ‘If I was extending analysis to informed speculation, I might venture that it was equipped with counter-auspex systems.’
‘It’s hiding,’ said Vek.
‘That analysis is not accurate. It is less that it is hiding, and rather that we do not have the eyes to see it.’
‘Military?’
‘Almost a certainty,’ said the tech-priest.
‘Has it seen us? Is it coming closer?’ he asked.
‘To the first question – I would theorise that if its sacred machine systems are enough to fog the fidelity of our own auspex, then it will be more than blessed with the ability to have been aware of us for some time.’ The tech-priest paused. Vek saw cogs turn inside the sculpted lips of her brushed-steel mask. ‘As to whether it is closing, passing or attenuating, I have no data.’
Vek bit his lip. He thought of calling for Koln, but the brevet captain of the Antius had withdrawn further and further over the days since they ran from Uranus. When she spoke it was often as though she were not fully aware or present, and when she was focused she seethed with barely suppressed rage. She was seen on the bridge less and less, and Vek was happy not to know where it was she was going. But he was no void officer…
‘Go and find Sub-mistress Koln,’ he called to one of the junior deck officers, who looked barely old enough to hold rank. ‘Get her back to the bridge now.’
The officer nodded and left.
Vek closed his eyes and rubbed them with the heels of his hands. A headache had been growing in the space behind his eyes for hours now. The pain was becoming sharper as the adrenaline of the first days of their flight drained, and they had pushed further towards Jupiter and the system core beyond. Everyone was the same, though. He had heard the crew muttering to each other about their dreams after they returned from the few hours most of them had managed to sleep.
Everything was fraying. There had been incidents: shouted arguments between superiors and subordinates. This was a civilian ship, a short-range freighter. Its crew were not military and the habits of authority and command were barely surviving this new reality. And the refugees in the hold… He had gone down to see them every day until today. The last time he had stepped into the holds they had swarmed not to him but towards the door, and there had been a blank-eyed desperation to them.
Refugees… Isn’t that what they all were now?
‘Signal intensity altering!’ said Chi-32-Beta. ‘Secondary signal return detaching from the primary. Plotting location and vector.’
‘What is happening?’ he asked.
‘A second return has separated from the first. It is smaller, and not sensor baffled. In more easily parsed terms, the ship that we detected has launched a shuttle- or lighter-sized void-craft. It is visible to our auspex. I am using it to extrapolate data on the primary return.’ The tech-priest was silent for a second. Vek heard a metallic whir from inside her mask that made him think of a sharp inhalation. ‘Recommend brace condition and immediate internal lockdown!’
The officers of the bridge woke from lethargy into panicked motion. Crimson lights began to blink and strobe.
Vek started towards the tech-priest, but she was already calling out.
‘They are very close – they must have been gaining on us for hours, and the smaller craft that they have launched is approaching directly and swiftly.’
‘What is it?’
‘I would speculate that it is a class of assault craft.’ The tech-priest rotated her head on her shoulders to look fully at Vek. Her eyes were two circles of crystal-brushed steel. ‘They mean to board us.’
‘How long?’ Vek asked, and as though in reply a machine-voice boomed from vox-speakers across the bridge.
‘Brace! Ten seconds to impact! Brace!’
Vek turned to look at the viewport in time to see a sleek shape fall on them like a fiery arrow shot from the night.
All those people gone, just gone, and Vek did not even pause…
Pulled a gun, yes, he pulled a gun, and what choice did you have then?
You had to. He left the captain. He killed her. What choice did you have?
None.
And all for his brats. All to keep two rich little brats alive.
How many died?
He killed them. Yes, Vek killed them, not you. You gave the order to break from the dock, but he would have shot you.
You had no choice.
Down in the quiet, Zadia Koln, once sub-mistress and now brevet captain of the system freighter Antius listened to the thoughts roll and roar through her head. The passage was dark. The pistol in her hands hung in her fingers, still smoking, the slide open on an empty breech. Fat brass shell cases littered the floor around where she crouched. Further off, half folded in shadow, lay the bodies. Five of them, or maybe more. She was not sure. For a second, she caught them out of the edge of her eye.
She’d had no choice.
She had been walking the decks. They had come out of nowh
ere as she was sealing the bulkhead, and she had pulled the gun and…
Koln glanced up at the sealed door across the passage. She had come down to the decks to check that all of them were secure…
No that was a lie… She had just wanted to get away from the bridge, with its stink of fear, and Vek and his bodyguard watching everything like they didn’t trust Koln.
The thought of them brought the rage again, spearing up through her, sucking in terror as fuel like a firestorm drawing in air.
She hadn’t asked for this! How dare they doubt her. She was the one who had to give the orders, to keep the ship moving through the void…
She had spent most of her four decades on this ship or one of its sisters. Ore and supplies, back and forwards through the circles of Uranus’ moons, again and again, predictable and certain. A mundane life filled with boredom, but there had been the temple, the quiet gatherings in the silence of the docks off Miranda. She had been flattered to be asked to join, then intrigued. The frisson of secrecy had spiced the thought that she was, for once in her life, doing something not permitted. Something special. It had been just as mundane after a while, though, men and woman in tattered hoods, and nonsense words spoken to recognise each other. Tokens and coins, and meetings which were half-ritual and half the kind of talk you could have in any dock drinking hole.
Her eye settled on one of the corpses; its hand was open… Clear stars but it looked still alive. What was it they had shouted before she shot? Food, something about food.
What had she done?
No, no, no… It was not her fault.
What was Vek thinking? Almost a thousand refugees on a ship with provisions for its crew alone. Vek should have known… They had nothing. Hunger had begun to bite after only days. Soon it would make the refugees in the holds go further than this passage. They had just come running out of the dark and she had…