by John French
A shape detached from the spreading dark. It grew as it moved, sheathing itself in bloody meat and bone as it ran. Su-Kassen fired again, and again, punching the dog-like thing backwards.
Dorn moved past her, a golden blur against the shadow. She had never seen him in battle. They had conducted war together for over half a decade, but it had always been remote, his genius and nature expressed in insight, in cold logic and plans that unfolded at a distance. She had never seen him fight in front of her. Not so close that she felt the rush of his passing. He did not have Storm’s Teeth. The great chainsword that he bore in battle was in his chambers. But he was still a primarch, a weapon that needed no other.
His first blow hit the daemon hound and exploded its skull and body down to his hind legs. The wall of shadow drew back, rising like a cresting wave as it touched the ceiling. Dorn had his bolter in his hands. Shots punched into the oily matter. It rushed forwards.
‘No!’ Su-Kassen went forwards, firing her pistol. Dorn stood his ground, a lone figure, face set, lit by muzzle flash. The tide coiled above them.
Dorn fired another burst and turned to one of the still-open exits from the chamber.
‘Move!’ he shouted. Su-Kassen dived after him as he went through the doorway. He turned as he crossed the threshold, grabbed the doors and pushed, his face pale and taut. The doors were three-metre-high slabs of plasteel inlaid with silver images of lightning bolts. The piston systems that shut them normally were capable of crushing an armoured Space Marine. Dorn rammed the doors shut with his hands. They shook as something struck the other side.
‘Seal them!’ he called, but Su-Kassen was already at the manual locking handle, yanking it down with all of her strength. Bolts shot into place with a drum roll of cogs. The doors began to glow red with heat. Dorn turned as warriors in yellow armour and black cloaks ran to circle them.
‘Lord,’ called Archamus, as the Huscarls formed a triangle around their primarch, guns facing outwards.
The silver on the doors was beginning to melt.
‘Go to the silent vault. Unshackle my forgotten sons. They join the battle by my will,’ said Dorn, his voice clear. ‘Now.’
Archamus paused and looked at Dorn.
‘And you, my lord?’
‘We need to reach the bridge.’
Archamus nodded and was already moving; half of the Huscarls broke away and formed up on him.
Dorn was moving towards one of the other doors that led to the arterial connection to the bridge.
‘With me, admiral,’ he called. Behind them, the doors began to flake chunks of molten metal.
Strike Frigate Persephone, Inner System Gulf
‘Auspex failure!’
‘Long-range vox failure!’
‘Fleet target integration lost!’
Alarms and voices cut across the Persephone’s bridge. Sigismund felt heat prickle his skin and the deck pitch as the Persephone rolled. An arc of lightning sliced across the void where she had been. Blood mist boiled out into the vacuum. Smoke was pouring from the helm machinery. Shouts and screams were echoing through his skull. The gravity on the bridge failed and for a second he was floating. Then it reasserted itself with crushing force. A human serf officer slammed into the deck nearby, skull and spine shattered.
‘Reality is coming apart,’ called the sensor officer. Blood was running down her face. ‘We cannot see the rest of the fleet. We cannot see anything.’
‘We are losing navigational data,’ intoned a lexmechanic from his cradle of brass-bound lenses.
Sigismund felt another jolt thump through the frigate.
‘Get us a bearing now!’ shouted Rann. The Assault commander was bareheaded, a fresh wound from falling debris seeping blood across his scars.
‘It’s gone…’ said one of the officers. ‘Every system is in seizure. We can’t–’
‘Open the blast shutters,’ said Sigismund. Rann looked around at him, mouth opening in question. ‘Open them now,’ called Sigismund.
A second later the plates covering the viewports folded back with a rolling boom of metal slamming into metal. Horror poured in. Light boiled and spun through every colour; depth and distance flexed and reversed. Spheres of distant planets loomed large, swallowing the view of the stars before shrinking to pinpricks of light. And across it, vast and billowing like a shot-slashed sail, was a rift between worlds. Ships swarmed from it, glittering, cloaked in ectoplasm and warp-skinned creatures.
A part of Sigismund’s mind saw and understood. The enemy had found a way to bring their host to the seat of the Solar System. The fight would not be in the void now. It would be decided where it was always going to end: on the soil of Terra, beneath a sky of fire and iron.
Human crew across the bridge moaned and screamed, and some of them vomited. Sigismund felt his jaw clamp shut and muscles bunch across his body, as though he were trying to stand still in the face of a hurricane.
‘What–’ began Rann.
‘The sun,’ said Sigismund, raising his hand to point through the roiling chaos surrounding them. ‘We can see the sun still.’ And there it was, its light shredded and stained, but shining yet. ‘Set our course by that. Reach every ship we can – close formation, steer by the sun. Full speed.’
Seventh Fane of the Selenar, Luna
Abaddon twisted aside as the guardian beast reared up, dragging Layak into the air like a broken doll. The blade slave whirled from where it was cutting through the wall of light. The opening in the fields began to shut in front of Abaddon.
Fire burst from Layak as he struggled in the beast’s grasp. Its armour plates charred and distorted with heat, but it did not let go.
Around them, the troops and guardian creatures of the temple were falling as the Justaerin advanced through the maze of energy fields. At the edge of his sight Abaddon saw Urskar brace and fire a line of heavy rounds into four troopers as a field snapped from one position to another. The resistance would not last much longer, minutes at most, but minutes was all Matriarch Heliosa would need to empty her vials into the font of tubes in front of her. From there their contents would flow into the fane and beyond, poisoning, destroying, salting this sacred ground for those who would take it.
Abaddon saw Layak’s blade slave swing at the guardian beast holding his master. Its sword was trailing smoke and blood. The beast’s tail lashed out, extending like a whip, a metre-long blade at its tip. The blade slave took the impact on its chest. The sting punched through its armour and flesh. Black fluid and ash poured from the wound. The beast whipped its tail and the blade slave flew through the air into one of the energy fields. Flesh and armour flashed, burning and crumbling as it fell.
Layak twisted in the beast’s grip. It opened a mouth filled with lightning-lit teeth.
Abaddon fired as he charged. Bolt-rounds struck the beast’s mouth and exploded between its fangs. Its head jerked back. Abaddon felt his first blow uncoil through him. His power fist tore into the beast’s flank. Bronze and black graphite shattered. The beast shuddered, back arching. Abaddon struck again and again, pounding through metal and ceramic to the human flesh within. Blood and shredded meat fountained out. The beast spasmed, toppling, the power fields around its claws flaring. Layak fell from its grasp. Abaddon punched up into the thing’s inner guts, gripped and pushed upwards with all the strength of body and armour. The dying beast twisted in his grasp as he lifted it and threw it at the energy fields.
Blinding light filled the chamber as false thunder shrieked. The fields vanished. The remains of the great beast struck the floor, mangled, charred and half-melted.
Abaddon turned, the beast’s blood lending the black plates of his armour a slick gloss. Layak was trying to rise. His armour was cracked, and half of the horned mask covering his face was torn. Abaddon had a moment to see a dark eye in a face of red, scarred flesh before the substance of the mask flowed
over the features and solidified. Bolters roared behind Abaddon as the Justaerin and Reavers fired into the remaining guards and guardians. He stepped towards Layak and reached down to the sorcerer.
‘What are you doing?’ rasped Layak, not taking the offered hand.
‘I remember and repay my bonds and oaths,’ said Abaddon. ‘You came to my side, now I come to yours.’
‘But the mission… The way is open. The matriarch will destroy what you have come here for.’
‘No,’ said Abaddon. ‘She will not.’
‘What?’ began Layak.
‘Weakness,’ said Abaddon. ‘We do not need to be mighty when we are faced with weakness.’
Layak hesitated and then clasped Abaddon’s hand and pulled himself to his feet. Blood fell from the sorcerer as he straightened, but shadows were already pooling in the breaks in his armour and pulling flesh and ceramite back together. Abaddon turned from him and strode towards where Matriarch Heliosa-78 was frantically locking vials of red liquid into the column of tubes and machinery in front of her. The gunfire began to fade from the chamber as the last of the guards crumpled to bloody debris. Abaddon’s steps were unhurried as he approached the Selenar. Casually, he reached up and released his helm. His brothers did not move; they could read the balance of the moment and follow his lead without a direct command.
‘Matriarch Heliosa,’ he called, and his voice rang clear. He saw her half turn as she slotted another vial of the red liquid she had been concocting into the mass of tubes. ‘You hold death in your hand, matriarch, but not mine.’ Another vial slotted in place. Her hands were moving over fine silver levers, releasing, priming. ‘I have no doubt that what you are about to do will destroy the value of this place to us. That is the gene font that links to all the gene-looms, stores and seed reservoirs in this complex. What is it you are going to unleash into it – a gene-scrambling toxin, a viral pollutant that will touch everything within your domain with imperfection?’
Heliosa did not stop in her movements.
‘You should have destroyed this place already, matriarch,’ he said, still advancing slowly. ‘You must have known we would return, that we would want the cradle of our creation back. If you wanted to stop that you should have purged every mystery and person here.’
He was within five strides of her now, close enough to see that her limbs were shaking. He stopped.
‘But you have not done that. We knew you wouldn’t. We know you. After all, in a sense, are we not your sons?’
Her hands had stopped moving on the crystal tubes and vials.
‘I am not here to kill you, matriarch. I am here to make you an offer. You could never let go of the hope of survival. This fane should be a ruin, but part of you can’t do that – you cling on, hoping that a moment like this will come to save you. That is why you bent the knee to the false Emperor, why you sold your purity and made us for Him. So now I make you another offer, matriarch, the same bargain that you made with our creator – live and serve, or die and see all you believe and love become ashes.’
Heliosa looked at him, blank eyes in a silver helm.
Then, she bowed her head.
‘The Selenar will serve,’ she said. ‘What is the will of the Warmaster?’
Abaddon looked at her for a long moment, then turned and began to walk back to his brothers and Layak. The smoke coiled from the torn remains covering the floor. The rest of Luna would fall within hours and there would be more killing until that was done, but they had accomplished what their father asked; they had the treasure of Luna in their grasp.
‘Build us warriors, matriarch,’ he said without looking at her. ‘Build us Legions.’
The Phalanx, Inner System Gulf
Blood. There was blood all around Massak. Snow boiled out of the night sky. He was running, but the world was pulling away even as he tried to hold on to it.
‘Come, my son…’ cackled the voices of crows and insects. ‘Come, you know what you must do. Come to us… Be free…’
‘No!’ he shouted, forcing his will against the image in his head. Somewhere, far off, he could feel his hand clenched around the haft of an axe. Heat was pouring off it, charring his palm as he gripped harder and harder.
‘No!’ he shouted again, and pulled himself down into the well of pain. He opened his eyes, biting back the agony that had been his tether to reality. He was kneeling on the floor of the chamber. His hands were locked around the haft of his force axe. Heat glowed yellow from his gauntlets. Ice covered his armour and the floor around him. Beside him knelt his brothers. Light and heat and cold fumed off them. All were fighting within themselves now. The warp was clawing at them, ripping at their will, trying to pull them into the storm tide. Something vast and terrible was happening, something that he could feel as though it were as real as the floor beneath him and the armour covering his skin. It would kill him soon. He could feel it shredding his psyche, and he could not fight it. He had the weapons to defend himself, to bite back at the things that clawed at him, to raise the voice of his spirit and escape the sea that drowned him…
But he could not. He had given his oath. There was only his will, his mortal will standing against the hungering ocean. He would die here, in this cell that had held him and his brother Librarians for the last seven years. And facing that death would be his last duty.
Beside him he heard Kordal gasp as the pain escaped his mouth. Blood-jewelled frost covered the former Lexicanium, branching into sharp spikes over Kordal’s skull.
‘Hold, brother!’ called Massak. ‘We are our oaths. They are our strength. Pain is the anvil of our honour.’
Kordal was juddering in place, blood flowing from his eyes, mouth and ears and freezing on his face.
The boom of releasing bolts shook the walls. The blast doors at the far end of the chamber pulled wide. A Huscarl with the black cloak and white fur of the Praetorian’s master bodyguard strode into sight, bolter and sword in hand.
‘Rise, brothers,’ said the figure. ‘Rise. Your lord calls you to war.’
‘Cerberus…’ laughed a voice in the warrior’s skull. ‘You are amongst the dead and betrayed again, returned to the hell you fled…’
He saw it all again: the Whisperheads, Xavyer Jubal rising from the floor, red light pouring from his eyes.
‘Samus is the man beside you…’
Abaddon’s blade cutting at him.
‘There was nothing to betray.’
Mersadie Oliton looking up at him, eyes wide but not afraid.
‘I understand you have a story…’
Mersadie… Mersadie…
Loken opened his eyes. There was blood across his sight, and blood dripping from the passage walls. He pulled himself up, feeling sharp edges grating against each other in his chest. Pieces of yellow armour and ragged meat lay in the congealing pool of blood covering the deck. Shadows writhed at the edge of sight.
‘Samus is here…’ the whisper distant, half-real, calling.
Something in the shape of a skinned dog was biting into the open ribcage of one of the Imperial Fists. It turned as Loken stood. Its mouth was a cave of needle teeth. It leaped. Loken met it with the edge of his chainsword. The spinning teeth chewed through the thing’s head and back into its body. It writhed, scrabbling at the air as black ichor sprayed out, but Loken was already surging forwards. He burst through its remains and began to run. In his head the call was rising, the scent in the air, shivering through his senses. He was Cerberus again now, forsaken and betrayed, loyal and inexorable, last hunter of the Luna Wolves, and he would have vengeance.
‘Samus is here…’
‘It’s coming!’ shouted Su-Kassen. Rogal Dorn did not turn. One of the trio of Huscarls spun to fire back down the passage behind them. Su-Kassen kept running.
‘The end and the death, the end and the death, the end and the death…’ sounded acro
ss the vox and growled from the ship’s alarm and speaker-horns.
Bolter fire sawed through the dark. The double-layered doors to the bridge slammed back into the walls in front of them. Su-Kassen looked behind her. Half-visible things with starved bodies and wings of rotting feathers tugged a Huscarl from the ground. Claws bit through armour. They lifted him, blood scattering as they peeled armour from flesh. A tide of black mist was pouring down the walls, strobing with red lightning. She could see the shadows of shapes inside the murk, bounding and rolling towards them on legs and tentacles.
She felt her mind flood with images of plains of dust and bone, her throat with the sting of bile.
Dorn was through the doors in front of her. She wrenched her eyes around and ran the last few strides.
A deluge of noise washed over them as she entered the bridge. It was a circular space a hundred metres in diameter, its command systems rising in tiered islands of stone from the black-and-white marble floor. Tactical displays ten metres high covered the walls, flashing with static and blurred images. Smoke was pouring from banks of machines. Crew lay on the floor, broken by the fluctuating gravity. The rest were moving under the called commands of Imperial Fists overseers as they tried to control the vast ship as it writhed in their grasp.
‘The end and the death, the end and the death, the end and the death…’ The hissing roar rose from every speaker and vox-system.
The doors they had come through began to swing shut. The daemon tide struck them. Gears and pistons jammed. Metal creaked and began to melt. The Huscarls in the chamber were running to Dorn’s side as the primarch pivoted and fired back through the gap in between the closing doors.
Su-Kassen was already moving across the floor towards the tiered mass of the command dais.
‘Shipmaster Sora,’ she called, vaulting up the spirals of stairs. Sora turned to look at her, his blue augmetic eye shining as it zoomed. His yellow armour blinked between black and crimson in the flash of alert lights and the flare of burning machines. ‘Full power to the engines – we need to push as far away from Terra as we can.’