by John French
She shivered, and blinked. Loken was still looking at her, eyes steady, face unmoving. For a second, in the reflected light of Jupiter, he looked almost human.
‘How long?’ she asked, trying to suppress the tremor running through her nerves.
‘There are no ships swifter than the one we stand on,’ he said. ‘It will not take us long, but we may arrive to find that the enemy has made that journey, too. There are traitor forces moving into the inner system from above the orbital disc.’
Mersadie glanced back at the sleeping children.
‘It’s not too late,’ she said. ‘We still have time. Not much, but some.’
‘How do you know?’ he asked.
‘I can feel it,’ she replied. ‘It is like the cogs of a device turning just on the edge of hearing. It is still turning…’
Loken opened his mouth to say something…
‘Captain Loken,’ said Maloghurst. The image of the Warmaster’s equerry turned its gaze on her. ‘He trusts you.’
‘I am a remembrancer. I am recording his experiences for posterity.’
‘Remembrance… A strange idea to take to the stars, I have always thought.’
‘I don’t understand.’ She thought of looking around but that cold gaze held her. ‘I thought I was to be returned to my quarters,’ she said.
She had been taken from the training decks on the Vengeful Spirit by the bodyguard Maggard and a squad of soldiers. Sindermann and the others had been peeled away under their own guard, but Maggard had stayed with her, leading her through passages and corridors that she had not seen before. After a while he had stopped, and he had gestured at a door leading off the corridor.
Mersadie, the blood roaring in her ears, had not moved until Maggard shoved her forwards.
‘Tell me,’ said Maloghurst, his power armour buzzing as he shifted. ‘Does he trust you?’
‘What?’
‘Does Captain Loken trust you?’
‘I… I don’t–’
‘He favours you, talks to you, shares his remembrances with you. I think that he does trust you a great deal, Mersadie Oliton.’
The equerry to the Warmaster had smiled, and unwilled she began to turn to run. A hand on her shoulder stopped her dead. Heavy fingers squeezed with the smallest amount of pressure and the promise of bone-breaking force.
‘You see, Mistress Oliton,’ said Maloghurst, ‘we do not trust him, at all.’
‘Is there something wrong?’ asked Loken.
Mersadie found herself leaning against the armourglass of the viewport. Distant explosions flashed like tiny stars under her fingers. She shook her head, swallowing a breath that tasted cold in her throat.
‘Memories,’ she said, blinking. ‘Just memories…’
But that memory of Maloghurst had not happened, said a voice in the back of her mind. What she had just remembered had never happened. She had been taken from the training chambers and returned to her quarters at Maloghurst’s orders. It had not happened…
‘Memories of what?’ he asked.
‘You, Sindermann, the Vengeful Spirit, how this all began.’
He looked like he was going to ask a question, when a light blinked in the collar of his armour. She heard a low chime, and the clatter of a vox-link connecting and decrypting. Loken turned his head to listen to words only he could hear.
‘So ordered,’ he said after a second, and began to move towards the door. ‘A major engagement is in progress around Luna. We will have to chart a course to skirt it.’
Mersadie nodded, still trying to grasp the strand of the memory that had risen in her mind. It was fading though, sinking back beneath the surface of the immediate, slipping through her grasp… There was something she had forgotten…
‘Loken,’ she said as he moved away. He stopped and looked over his shoulder. ‘There was a Navigator on the prison ship who escaped with me. I have not seen him since we reached the Caul – was he amongst the refugees that got off the ship?’
Loken gave a small shake of his head.
‘I do not know. I saw no Navigator, but it is possible.’
A laugh came to her lips as a thought struck her.
‘You might have known him, before I mean, during the crusade. He was a Navigator on the Thunder Break, part of the Sixty-Third Expeditionary Fleet – Nilus Yeshar.’
‘I never met a Navigator of that name,’ he said, and shrugged.
‘The universe is smaller than it seems sometimes, isn’t it.’
Loken frowned. ‘Is there a reason he would try to hide from you, and then flee without telling you?’
She thought of Nilus, of how the Imperium had tried to imprison and kill him ever since he had returned to it.
‘Every reason,’ she said.
The Phalanx, Terran orbit
The Phalanx moved by the will of Rogal Dorn. Greater than any ship of the Imperium, it was a moon of gilded armour and stone. Gun-fortresses rose in mountain ranges on its spine, and launch bays dotted its surface. A skin of atmosphere and ash from its engines surrounded it. Sunlight gleamed from the glass set in the cities borne on its back. It was not a ship; that was too small a title for it. It was war and empire given form and set amongst the stars.
Kilometre-long cones of fire stretched in its wake as its engines began to pull it up the incline of Terra’s gravity well. Its court of ships came with it: the Regis Astra, the Eagle of Inwit and the Noon Star, warships all, and around them the attendant destroyers and strike cruisers that held the honour of being heralds to the empress of war.
Su-Kassen fancied she could feel a tremble as the great ship began to move. She and half of the command staff had relocated with Rogal Dorn to the Phalanx’s command bastion. It was a fortress grown from a greater fortress; a third of a kilometre long, the command bastion rose in two towers of black stone linked by bridges of plasteel and marble. The bridge, command-seat of the ship was the aftward tower; the forward and broader of the two was the strategium. From the bridge, the chosen captain of the vessel commanded the Phalanx’s movement. From the strategium, the master of a Legion commanded crusades and conquests. At this moment, Rogal Dorn stood in the strategium, linked by vox and hololith with Shipmaster Sora on the bridge.
The strategium itself hung in tiers from a domed roof above a plane of crystal, over a hololithic pit thirty metres deep at its midpoint. Blue light flooded the space, rising and rippling from the tactical projections emanating from the pit. Command staff, tech-priests and Legion warriors looked down into the bowl of light, focusing on portions of the displays through lenses and screens. Dorn, Su-Kassen, Archamus and a clutch of senior command staff stood on a platform directly above the holo-pit’s centre. Huscarls in Indominatus Terminator plate stood amongst the tiered galleries, immobile and watchful. Most of the staff in the strategium had been here when Dorn and his retinue arrived. A mirror of those in the Bhab Bastion’s Grand Borealis Strategium, they had assumed their duties seamlessly.
‘Signal the fleet elements in Terran orbit,’ said Dorn as data-lenses rose around the platform edge. ‘All forces to integrate to our command. All are to stand by for engagement order.’
He had given the order to move his command to the Phalanx two hours before, and the transports had been in the air and reaching for the heavens minutes later. He had not given his reasons, but Su-Kassen had seen half of the catalyst and guessed the rest in his words.
She had wondered if it was now, after the weeks of feeling the darkness and the threat of fire rolling closer, that he needed to take up the sword, not in principle but in fact. The fires of war could be seen as Luna rose in the night sky above the Palace. And so now, Rogal Dorn would throw the traitors back into the dark with his own hand.
The pit of holo-light began to flare and boil. Su-Kassen began to syphon off information from the wider battle sphere, stretching h
er awareness out to the engagements around Mars, folding in the intelligence from Uranus, Neptune, Saturn and Jupiter.
The Solar System was ablaze. Battle data spiralled and multiplied as she watched. In places where there was need, she issued orders that would commit ships to battle; in others she pulled back what she could and watched the loss increments rise and rise. This was a war now measured in casualty estimates, lives spent by the thousand – because if they were not then what life would remain for anyone? This was her role, her duty, while Dorn turned his will to where it was needed, to the point where it could tip the scales of battle.
An alert light blinked at the edge of her sight from where the personal signal channel controls rose in a pillar of brushed bronze.
‘Admiral,’ said the officer a second later, ‘my lord Praetorian.’ She turned. ‘There is a ship closing at speed. It bears the clearance of the Lord Regent.’ Dorn was turning to look now, too. ‘It says that it brings someone you must see.’
‘Who?’ asked Dorn.
Battle-barge War Oath, Luna
The defenders knew the weapons of their attackers. The protectors of Luna, the veteran regiments, the ships of Su-Kassen’s fleets and the warriors of the VII and IX Legions knew that every thrust and manoeuvre of the assault had one aim: to allow the Sons of Horus to bring their legionary forces to bear on the surface and in the sub-surface warrens of the moon. Centuries ago, when the same Legion had spearheaded the conquest of Luna for the Emperor, the same had been true. The difference now was that Luna was not defended by the weapons of a gene-cult of Old Night, but by the arms and might of the Imperium. And those defences held the assault to the vacuum above.
Fire circled the moon. Rolling impacts struck void shields and peeled them back in flashes of light. Chains of plasma annihilators mounted on the Luna Ring spoke in sequence, one gun cooling while another poured sun-bright energy into the enemy ships. Swarms of bombers and interceptors spun amongst the fields of fire, thousands of tiny battles squeezed between exchanges that burned the dark like the fury of ancient gods.
Thirty Solar Auxilia bombers dodged through the grids of fire surrounding the Sons of Horus bombardment vessel Chieftain of the Red Blade. They were about to unleash their payloads just as a broadside struck the ship’s void shields. Arcs of discharge from the collapsing shields overloaded the bombers’ systems. They slewed off course, ploughing into the gun ports of the ship. Their payloads detonated. Fire punched into the Chieftain of the Red Blade’s gunnery decks and cooked off a macro shell being hauled towards a breech. Explosions ripped through the ship from the inside.
The Blood Angels ships Red Tear and Lamentation of War cut wide of the close formations of the main fleets and came about to unleash boarding torpedoes into the flanks of ships vying for the gulf between Luna and Terra. Each torpedo carried ten sons of Sanguinius. All had painted a portion of their armour with the black saltire of a death oath. Each knew that he would fall in this fight, and that his oath of moment would be his last. The twin ships fired as their torpedoes ran on to their targets. Plasma and macro-shells struck the attacking ships just as they were trying to find range on the closing ordnance. The torpedoes struck home and stabbed deep. Melta charges in their nose cones detonated. Walls and bulkheads became vapour. The Blood Angels squads charged out of the torpedoes. Orange light caught wings of gold and silver worked into their red armour.
They had chosen their targets well – ships carrying Sons of Horus from the 21st, 345th and 71st Companies. The Blood Angels met their traitor brothers. Blades lit with lightning. Bolters poured fire into armoured bodies. Broken ceramite, shell casings and blood fell to the deck.
And on the fight went, spread in a shifting crescent around Luna.
Abaddon felt the charge in the air around him as the War Oath’s teleporters built with power. He could taste metal and ash on his teeth. Layak stood at his shoulder, the two blade slaves seeming to shiver in the warp-charged air. His brothers were around him. They were all there: Thonas, Gedephron, Tybar, Ralkor, Sycar, Justaerin, Reavers, warriors clad in black and marked with red and gold. And behind them, he could feel the presence of all the rest, dead in all but memory: Sejanus, Syrakul, Torgaddon, Gul, Kars, Dask, Graidon – silent ghosts watching him as he took his sword from the hand of a serf.
‘We shall become death,’ said Layak. Incense smoke was fuming from his staff. ‘Our knives shall become the spears of angels, our hands the thunderbolts of the gods.’ Abaddon turned his gaze on the priest, who looked back at him with eye-lenses like burning coals. ‘I am glad, Abaddon, that I stand with you now at this sacred moment.’
Abaddon turned and gave the first order.
‘Full speed.’
The War Oath’s engines burned brighter. The ship had been prepared for this moment in its long fall from above the solar disc. Disciples of Kelbor-Hal had worked in its engine spaces and generatoria decks. They had modified and mutilated, changed the nature of the ship from the inside. Only the shell of the one-time Imperial Fists ship existed, the bones symbol enough for its purpose. As it leapt forwards, it screamed. Bulkheads began to vibrate. Plasma poured into reactor chambers and mixed with exotic energies. Speed built. The ships surrounding the War Oath peeled aside as it bore down towards Luna. They had protected and followed it as their flagship, but it was that no longer. The attacking fleet parted before it.
The defenders saw it come, its speed building second by second. Auspex screens fogged and stuttered as sensors tried to lock on to its passage. In its hull, the crew that still lived spoke their prayers to the gods that had claimed their souls.
Ships moved to block the War Oath’s path and its fleet moved to protect it in turn. Fire tore into their shields and armour.
In the teleportation chamber, Abaddon felt his skin tighten inside his armour. Arcs of lightning split the air.
The ships closest to the Luna Ring moved aside as the great ship plunged down. The Ring’s guns fired, half-blind. Explosions tore the War Oath’s shields and raked its flanks. Inside its engine spaces, tech-priests in black robes intoned their last commands to its reactors and folded themselves out of reality. The ship accelerated in a last jet of flame. Sections of plasteel ripped free. The fire pouring from the defences broke its shields. Balls of lightning burst across its hull. A hundred-metre-long section tore from its prow and ploughed back across its spine, striking the bridge castle.
The War Oath shrieked as it began to break apart. It was almost at the Ring.
Abaddon closed his eyes.
‘Activate,’ he said.
The teleportation generators convulsed and threw them into the void beyond.
A second later, the wounded ship struck the Luna Ring. Shock waves rippled through the vast hoop. The War Oath ploughed on for an instant. The Ring twisted like rope. The plasma reactors and munitions in the War Oath’s hull detonated. A sphere of energy exploded. Stone flashed to light. Metal became dust.
The tremors spilled into the warp as the destruction rolled out through the materium. Then the occult energies laced into the ship’s reactors flooded out. Paradox overtook reality. Fire unravelled substance. Light passed through stone and flesh. A twenty-kilometre-long section of the Ring vanished into a cloud of shadow.
An aching instant of time unfurled. On Terra, the image of a black moon rose in the nightmares of those few who slept.
Then the energies and the moment collapsed. Matter and light rushed back into the point where the War Oath had vanished. For a second there was just an empty volume of space. Then glowing cracks lashed out, flowing through the void, threading through the space where ships still moved and poured fire at each other.
The broken circle of the Ring trembled, then began to fall, sliding back down into the weak grasp of the moon it had protected. Vast sections of docks and defences met the grey Lunar surface. Clouds of rock and dust fountained up and up in the faint gravit
y.
Abaddon opened his eyes. Around him the whirlwind of darkness became the smooth stone of Luna’s caverns. There were figures moving beyond the settling shadows, clad in amber-yellow, guns firing, bolts and beams converging on him and the circle of warriors around him.
Reality asserted itself like a hammer blow.
‘Fire,’ he said, and around him the first of Horus’ warriors to set foot on the moon that made them obeyed.
Comet shrine, Inner System Gulf
Go,+ willed Ahriman. The gunship kicked free of the comet shrine. Around it dozens of others flew free, engines bright as they raced for the ships already moving to make distance from the comet.
Ahriman felt the universe turn under the surface of reality. Images bled into his mind’s eye. The spin of the Solar System above the night sky of Terra. The sages and sorcerers of ancient times, looking up and imagining the truth of the universe in the movement of stars. They were wrong, of course, but within their ignorance they were also right. They had thought that existence revolved around that Old Earth. It did not, not in the way they thought. The planets and stars and the arcing swirl of the galaxy turned without thought or care for the ball of rock that had spawned humanity. But another universe, one that lived in ideas and dreams, followed different rules. In that realm, the importance and power of objects and people did not follow the dry rules of atoms and gravity. Things made themselves important by the place they held in hopes and fears and in the stories that people told themselves. And now, at this moment, this small sun and its circle of moons and planets truly was the axis of all existence.
Ahriman saw Menkaura, his blind brother, floating in the centre of the solatarium. Cords of light held him aloft as bloody and burning spheres turned through the air. Ahriman felt perception and time and space flatten and bend, felt his inner eye fill with a view that held everything from the sun’s core to night’s edge.