by John French
‘Send the codes,’ he said, raising his head. ‘Bring us on course to meet the rest of the fleet.’
Calculations and errors
Come with me
Dreams
Bhab Bastion, The Imperial Palace, Terra
‘They have failed,’ said Jaghatai Khan. ‘Horus has failed.’
The annex of the Grand Borealis Strategium was quiet. Four humans, three primarchs and one near-human stood in silence, looking at the Praetorian of Terra through the veil of holo-light. A single tactical projection turned at the centre of the room, its surface flashing as the data cycled across its sphere. Malcador the Regent stood between Sanguinius and the Khan; beside them were Magos-Emissary Kazzim-Aleph-1 and High Primary Solar General Niborran. Su-Kassen stood to Dorn’s right, and the ghost-like presence of Senior Astropath Armina Fel filled the space to his left.
None of them spoke after the Khan’s pronouncement. It was undoubtedly correct, but…
Su-Kassen watched as Kazzim-Aleph-1 extended a chromed digit and stopped the projection, as though halting the spin of a child’s top.
‘The outer reaches are the enemy’s,’ said the magos-emissary. ‘They advance into the inner system. Mars, sacred cradle of the machine, will be next. If disciples of the false Mechanicum rise from their pit, the Fourth Sphere fleet will be unable to drive them back. I estimate its primary strength will erode in main force effectiveness at a rate of three-point-six-one-two per cent per hour. That cannot be sustained. The Lost Forges will fall to the invaders.’
‘But they will be left with almost no forces that can be brought to bear here on the Throneworld or in orbit,’ said Niborran. The old general’s silver augmetic eyes did not seem to flinch from the display. The death rubies bonded to his right socket gleamed against the darkness of his skin as he gave a single nod. ‘Even if they do, it will not be in time. My lord Jaghatai is correct, the position is clear – they have failed. Their forces are too few, arriving too late and in parts. We can meet them, hold them and break them one after another. They will still be clawing at the walls when Lord Guilliman arrives.’
‘But what of sacred Mars?’ hissed Kazzim-Aleph-1. Su-Kassen thought he had never sounded so human. ‘Liberation was promised. Promised and encoded with oaths. This…’
‘Liberation requires victory,’ snarled Niborran. ‘And that requires a price to be paid now, by Mars too, just as it was by Pluto, by Uranus.’
Kazzim-Aleph-1 clicked and whirred, lenses rotating beneath his hood. Su-Kassen looked at Rogal Dorn. The primarch was still, his eyes steady on the magos-emissary and the general. Niborran was Dorn’s man, she knew. Born in the rings of Saturn and raised in the disciplines of the Saturnine Ordos, he was a veteran sharpened by a century and a half of war, and time had not taken his edge. Of all the Imperial Army and Militia units on Terra, several hundreds of millions were now his to command, but here in this chamber and at this moment he was here to speak the words that Dorn could not.
‘The Fabricator General shall learn of this and make objection,’ said Kazzim-Aleph-1. ‘There are forces available. They should be moved to Mars.’
‘An enemy fleet the equal of that making for Mars is descending towards Luna,’ said Malcador mildly. The Regent reached out and keyed a control that set the holo-display slowly rotating again. He still looked exhausted and drained, but there was a spark of strength in his eyes and words. ‘Unless you would suggest leaving the orbits of Terra unguarded, honoured magos-emissary? If you are not suggesting stripping those defences, then you can only be referring to the Phalanx and its attendant ships.’
‘The principal Seventh Legion craft is of a size and capability that would make a significant statistical difference to the outcome of these engagements.’
‘The Phalanx is mine to command,’ said Rogal Dorn, his words falling like an axe at the end of the magos’ words. ‘It goes where I will it.’
Kazzim-Aleph-1 recoiled with a click of turning cogs, and then dipped his head slightly in what might have been a nod.
‘But you wait, brother,’ said Sanguinius. ‘Move it to either Mars or Luna and the enemy in those spheres will be banished and Horus’ failure will be sealed.’
Dorn’s eyes moved from the holo-display to his brother primarch. The two held each other’s gaze, and in the moment of quiet Su-Kassen spoke the question that had been asked again and again in the past weeks.
‘Where is Horus?’ Eyes and faces turned towards her. ‘If we believe our intelligence was flawed…’ She saw Malcador give the smallest movement of his head. ‘For all the enemies that we can see there must be more, and so where are they, and where is he?’
‘Waiting for the primary attacks to strike home,’ said Niborran. ‘Any forces he still has to deploy will be moving through the Elysian and Khthonic Gates. Even at best speed those fresh forces will not arrive in time to reinforce the two inner system assaults.’
‘But what do these two strikes at the inner system achieve?’
‘They pin us in place,’ said Niborran. ‘They keep us from moving forces to counter-assault into the outer system. They are the claw-holds for a rapid assault. That was your assessment before, admiral. Are you disavowing it now?’
Su-Kassen shook her head.
‘No, it still stands, but Horus has failed, according to our assessment – failed, and never even taken the field in person.’
Sanguinius gave a small shiver. The feathers of his furled wings shook.
‘No,’ he said. ‘He is coming. I know. This ends with him here, on this ground.’
Malcador’s eyes lingered on the Angel for a long moment.
Dorn stepped forwards and collapsed the projection with a hand.
‘This has yet to end. Move now and we may just as likely seal defeat as seize victory.’ He looked at the magos-emissary, his features unreadable. ‘The Phalanx remains. And we wait.’
‘For what?’ asked the Khan.
‘To see if our traitor brother has truly failed,’ said Dorn. ‘Or if we have.’
Freighter ship Antius, Jovian Gulf
Mersadie heard the shouting before she reached the cargo bays. Even through plasteel, the noise echoed down the corridor. She paused as she saw the hazard-striped door. Beside her Mori looked up. The girl was still clutching her brother’s hand. He had not stirred. The deck had lurched beneath her feet as they reached this level.
Rudderless, Nilus had said, but what else had the assault done?
Mersadie took a step towards the door. Something crashed into the other side.
‘I don’t think that we should be here,’ said Mori, taking a step back. ‘I don’t want to be here.’
Mersadie turned and lowered Noon into the girl’s arms.
‘It’s all right. It will be all right. Just keep hold of your brother and make sure he is safe.’
‘My father,’ said the girl, ‘we should find my father.’
‘Nilus has gone to the bridge to look for him,’ said Mersadie.
‘Who…’ began the girl, but another wave of impacts rang against the door into the cargo space. Mersadie took out Aksinya’s pistol. It was surprisingly light, but she was not sure how its mechanisms worked.
Her mother had tried to teach her pistol shooting in the pinnacle-born fashion of her ancestors. Mersadie had not liked it. Like most other things her family valued, it had been a source of anger and disappointment.
Mersadie worked the cocking mechanism and checked the safety. There was still blood on the rapier-style grip, she noticed.
Aksinya’s dead eyes… The shadow… The red-black blink as the shadow tore towards her…
‘We are here for you…’
She could not move. Blood had seeped into the carved bone-and-silver design behind the trigger: a half-horse half-man, rearing and drawing a bow to shoot, a centaur… a sagittar. She wrenched her he
ad up, and the past flooded into her eyes.
The practice hall on the Vengeful Spirit looked back at her, unfolding out of memory in a waking fever-dream.
A dozen soldiers marched in. She recognised uniforms of the Imperial Army, but saw that their badges of unit and rank had been removed. And amongst them the icy, golden-eyed features of Petronella Vivar’s bodyguard. She recalled that his name was Maggard.
‘Take the iterator and the remembrancer back to their quarters,’ said Maloghurst. ‘Post guards and ensure that there are no more breaches.’ Maggard nodded and stepped forwards. Mersadie tried to avoid him, but he was quick and strong. His hand grabbed her neck and he yanked her towards the door. Sindermann had not resisted.
Maloghurst stood between Loken and the door. If Loken wanted to stop Maggard and his men, he would have to go through Maloghurst.
Mersadie tried to look back. She could see Loken beyond Maloghurst’s robed form, looking like a caged animal ready to attack. The door slammed shut.
‘No,’ she shouted, and heard the word come out as a whisper as she made to try to run towards a closed door.
She stopped. She still had the gun in her hand, she realised, and the entryway in front of her was not a hatch on the Vengeful Spirit, but a yellow-and-black chevroned blast door closing off a hold on the Antius.
Mori was looking at her, eyes wide with fresh fear. For a second, Mersadie saw a reflection of her own terror in the girl’s stare. With a breath she forced her hands to still, and then tucked the gun out of sight. She turned back to the door. There was a vox-horn next to the locking mechanism. She pushed the green intoning rune beside it. A snap of static spat from the speaker-grille. A wail of distortion rose over the shouting. The banging on the other side of the door stopped. Mersadie swallowed in a dry throat.
‘If you can…’ she began, then stopped as the sound of her own voice hummed through the speaker. ‘If you can hear me,’ she said, and felt the words gain strength as she spoke, ‘then you are alive. A military force tried to board the ship. They are dead. As far as I know the crew are dead too. The ship is drifting.’ She paused, hearing her words echo. She sounded calm, she realised. In control. ‘We can all get out of this, but only if we all stay steady. I am going to open the door in a moment. If there are any of you who have crewed a ship before, or know about anything that will keep one going, then come forwards.’ She stopped again and turned away from the vox-horn. Then she turned back and keyed it on again. ‘My name is Mersadie Oliton,’ she said.
She reached for the door lock release, paused, closed her eyes. She thought of the shuttle sitting in the hangar just a few hundred metres away. Nilus had thought they should run, leave this ship of the desperate and the dead. The world inside her skull was spinning, but her thoughts had found a clear centre. There was only one way she would let herself survive this.
Her hand found the release and punched in the code Aksinya had used. The piston locks released with a thump. Carefully she pushed the door inwards. The light inside was dim, stained orange by the red and yellow of slowly pulsing emergency lights. She stepped inside, hands open at her sides. Eyes looked back at her from a ring of faces. The gun, tucked out of sight, pressed sharp against her back. The lights pulsed in the lengthening seconds. In the distance something creaked and echoed through the hull.
A man stepped out of the crowd. Mersadie suppressed the instinct to flinch. The man was big, tall in the way that only the void-born were but bulked out with grafted muscle. He looked at her for a moment, and then nodded.
‘I was a second on a belt trader,’ he said. ‘I know ships.’
She looked at him for a moment, and then nodded.
‘Thank you,’ she said. The man nodded back.
‘I was a dock pilot,’ said a woman with a lined face and a liver-spotted scalp. And the silence broke as they came forwards in a babble of hope.
Hab Block 287, Worker Hab Plateau 67, Terra
Mekcrol woke, the scream from his dream still on his lips. The dim light of the night-cycle light set in the ceiling still shone. Familiar shadows fell from where his robe and rebreather mask hung by the door. The ventilation fan turned behind its grating, thumping and scraping as it pushed the smells of smoke and oil into the room. Mekcrol turned his head slowly. He was shivering. Sweat slicked his skin.
It was not real… Just a dream… Just a dream…
Still he did not move.
In the dream he had been standing in front of the door out of his hab-unit. He had been waiting for someone… Someone he knew… The white paint on the metal frame had the same pattern of grime and scratches beside the lock release as he saw every day as he left. Except there was something else there in the dream, something smudged and red… like the marks of fingers. Like the marks of bleeding fingers…
The door had opened. Air had gusted in. The smell. Could you smell in dreams? The air smelled of frost. It smelled clean, sharp. The space beyond the door was dark. He had stepped through. Lights had flickered on.
The corridor stretched away to either side. Closed doors led off every two metres. There was no one else there. That was not strange. Hab allocation was linked to shift rotations, so that people would not jam the corridors as they all left or returned at the same time. Mekcrol was lucky. His mother had secured an enhancement to their hereditary indenturing that had made her son a Twentieth Degree Supervisory Menial. That gave him a unit to himself, and an extra hour of rest.
The door had closed behind him. The sound echoed up the corridor. Air brushed past his cheek. Mekcrol had turned his head towards the breeze. It was cold. A flake of snow touched his face.
‘Son.’
He turned. His mother was there, standing in an open door. Behind her, he could see white snow, and a black sky. Shapes like the stretched shadows of pylons grasped at the silver circle of a moon. Were those trees? Was that what a forest looked like?
‘Son, please…’
He looked at his mother. She was thin, almost nothing between the folds of her skin and her bones. Vomit crusted her lips and the front of her smock. Her eyes were unfocused, half-closed. She had been like that the last time he had seen her. She had died while he was on shift. When he had come back, another resident had already been allocated to her hab-unit. It had been a decade ago.
But here she was…
‘Son…’ she said, voice rattling, ‘why did you leave me alone?’
He took a step back, reached for the door back into his unit. His hand found the lock release. It opened… Night sky and a blast of ice wind. She was standing there. Frost rimed her, freezing air fogging like smoke around her, ice clogging her eyes.
‘Son…’
He ran. Doors flew open as he passed. Night and snow poured in. His mother stood behind every door, calling to him, reaching for him, her cries following him.
‘Son…
‘…Son…
‘…Son.
‘Why…
‘…did you…
‘…leave me…
‘…alone.’
He had shouted then.
‘You are gone. You are gone… Who are you?’
And the wind and rattling branches had answered.
‘We are the man beside you…’
And the doors were opening in front of him as he ran, and hands were reaching for him, grabbing at him, tearing his skin, and he was screaming, and the wind was laughing.
Sitting up on his sweat-soaked bed, the slow beat of the fan pushing warm air through the room, it still seemed very real. He reached for the flask beside the bed, fingers shaking. He took a sip of water. It tasted of dust and metal. Water rations had been halved in the last few weeks. Like the constant drone of ready-sirens, it was another needle in the flesh of life. He looked up at the shift clock above the door. He had two hours left before his first rotation of the day.
> He would not go back to sleep.
He did not want to go back to sleep.
He took another sip of his water, and stood up, rubbed his eyes. He would go out into the hab. There was a viewing cupola on Level 3490. He could get there and back in time to suit up for his shift. He wondered if the shift numbers would be lower. Lots of people were getting pulled into militia. He was not certain why, and the rumours… well, the rumours were laughable. It was an excuse to squeeze more out of the indents like him, he was sure, ship labour to some other complex and tell those left that they had to work twice as hard with half-rations because of some kind of crisis. It was all just a play.
But the sirens were sounding a general alert, and Nula from work gang 67 had said that there were press gangs patrolling the west zones. They had shot people for resisting. That was what she had said, anyway. Mekcrol did not know what to believe. Just like bad dreams, there was nothing you could do about rumours except to try to get your head together and get on. He would go to the view cupola and look out down the street canyon towards the Iron Spire. It might be lit, but then again, the power had been rationed too, so more likely not.
He unlocked the door and opened it.
A blast of wind rocked him back. A figure was standing in the door, vomit and frost on her smock, bloody hands gripping the door frame, empty eyes looking at him. Skin folded, flesh stretched. Teeth grew.
‘We… are… coming…’ gasped the voice of his mother as she stepped across the threshold.
Mekcrol did not wake again. He died screaming, falling through his dreams. No one in his block noticed and by the time his absence from his work shift was logged, no one was wondering about where a low-level indent supervisor was.
The next night, half of the people across the northern hemisphere woke from dreams of things without eyes, or of creatures squatting on their chests in the dark, wearing the skinned faces of loved ones and crooning in the voices of past pain. People fell and fell forever through abysses of night lit with lambent eyes and bared teeth, the screams of their descent following them down and down. The sound of hooves and the howl of wolves rolled through the dark as night passed across the face of Terra.