Wolfsbane

by Guy Haley

  The blood of the betrayed had not yet dried as the Warmaster came to claim his new domain.

  Data transfer packets whisked across the space at frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum invisible to eyes of flesh. To those who could not see this additional layer of reality, the architecture of the sphere may have seemed brutal, a mess of metal, cables, and poorly considered embellishment. In the higher realms of data transfer a profound beauty was revealed. Cawl looked with near religious awe at the synchronicity of thought on display. It was rare indeed to see such a huge crowd engaged in singular communion.

  But though beautiful, the pattern of data transmission was dark in tone. Dread suffused it. None of the adepts within dared transmit their concerns openly, but to the practised eye of Belisarius Cawl, it was visible in the brevity of the communication bursts.

  There was no name for the dread that preceded Horus' arrival at the Heotaligon. It was a primeval feeling that predated language. Human concepts were too restrictive to properly describe it. Long before his ship was visible to human sight or machine moderated auspex, fear came like a wall of fog rolling in from a calm ocean. The infosphere throbbed with foreboding. Every patch of skin gleamed with fear sweat.

  The dread spiked a moment before Horus' craft flew into the orb. Pieters and augur eyes focused on it, displaying magnified views on the screens. This ship was a Stormbird, common to all the Legions, in the sea-green of the Sons of Horus, ordinary enough - though decorated in the ostentatious manner of Imperial warlords. The double-headed eagle of the Imperium had been removed, replaced by the icon of a glaring eye transfixed by a stylised spear-point.

  Cawl expected more ships to follow, but it came in solitary flight. His unease grew as it flew to the centre of the orb and landed upon the platform. Only a potentate utterly sure of his power would come into potentially hostile territory so lightly protected.

  'Now we go,' said Aspertia. Grav-engines purred, pushing the dais up towards the landing platform. Cawl lightly gripped the rail and leaned out a little. In Aspertia's wake came the daises of the other traitor adepts. Their reasons for throwing their lot in with Horus were their own. Cawl doubted they would be the same as Aspertia's. She rode proudly amid her acolytes, silver metal face held high.

  Cawl looked back to the others, deferentially hanging back from her. He had a very bad feeling about all of this.

  The daises gathered around the landing platform in a bobbing crowd. Hololight bathed the occupants' faces. Servo-skulls swooped in to orbit them.

  The Stormbird sat ominously upon the platform, venting waste gases from its exhausts. Servitors dumbly went about their tasks around it, ignorant of the terror those who could still call their minds their own felt from the craft. The cockpit windows were dark. The navigation lights were out. Cawl opened his augmetics to its digital emanations, and found the machine-spirits within silent. From where their simple souls should have run on tracks of light and metal, something else watched. It was unclean, and he hastily severed his connection.

  Aspertia guided her dais around the craft. The Stormbird was a blunt thing, as brutal as the warriors it was designed to convey, and bristling with weapons. Her subsidiary limbs waved with confusion. She, like Cawl and every other Mechanicum adept with a modicum of courage, was scanning the craft, and registering only that ominous watchfulness.

  A blaring klaxon scattered the daises. Spinning beacon lumens flashed around the back of the ship as, with a hiss of equalising atmosphere, the large rear access ramp descended.

  The magi recovered. Aspertia's dais jostled her colleagues out of the way, and drew her level with the stem of the ship. All over the orb interior, the assembled populace of Trisolian waited in fearful silence.

  The ramp clanged down to the pad deck. Thick red light lit the ship's interior, defying any form of vision to see more than a metre within.

  A lone figure clad in black came down the ramp. It broadcast an announcement of identity, Sota-Nul. Somehow, she looked different in the flesh. She halted at the base of the ramp, her face shrouded, saying nothing.

  Aspertia willed her dais closer.

  'I am Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma,' she said, simultaneously broadcasting her name, biography and rank via data squirt and binaric screech. 'Domina magos of the Trisolian forge world Taghmata.' Still no word was forthcoming from Sota-Nul.

  Aspertia shifted.

  'I offer the surrender of the forge world to the Warmaster Horus Lupercal in the name of the Fabricator General of Mars, Kelbor-Hal, and for the greater glory of the Machine-God.'

  'You deposed your superiors?' said Sota-Nul.

  The subtle pressure of an active scan swept over the delegation.

  'I did,' said the domina. 'As military commander of this facility, I have assumed control, following the errors of the Viceroy Extractatorian in defying you, and will gladly pass possession of his person to the appropriate Mechanicum authorities to do with as they see fit. I humbly present myself and my forces for assignment in battle.'

  Aspertia bowed her head. Her dozens of knees bent, lowering her into a strange form of curtsey.

  Sota-Nul obviously approved. A data carrier wave sprang from her internal augmitters, announcing her thoroughly. In flesh speech she said,

  'You have chosen wisely. On the Fabricator General's behalf, I accept your fealty.'

  'And the Warmaster? He is here, isn't he?' Aspertia's machine voice warbled.

  Sota-Nul inclined her head and stood aside, leaving the access ramp free.

  'The Warmaster,' she said.

  A group of armoured figures appeared suddenly in the ruddy interior, as if they had walked out of thick mist. They were universally savage, their armour hung with awful trophies. First out was a grinning warrior with a high topknot who swept the delegation with a challenging gaze. Three others came with him in a close group, then a Space Marine with halting gait and a serious mien. Their bare faces were pale and angry.

  When they were arrayed at the ramp's edge the Warmaster came out.

  Horus wore a variant of Terminator armour crafted specifically for his primarch's frame. His hands were sheathed in giant gauntlets from whose backs sprouted claws as long as swords. But impressive though his armour was, it merely acted as a frame for his majesty. His visage was at once beautiful and terrible. He was handsome by standards applicable to gods, his features sculpted by a hand of rare genius. All eyes in Tria Station were fixed upon that face. It was impossible to look away from it. He wore a smile that promised generosity and violence in equal measure.

  'Citizens of the Martian Empire,' he said. He did not speak loudly, but his voice carried further than that of the most skilled actor. 'I have come to you to free you from the lies of the False Emperor, my father.'

  When he spoke, every thinking being in earshot willed their hearts to be still in case they missed the slightest nuance to his words. When he paused, they craved more.

  'You have shown great wisdom in joining yourselves to my cause. At my side, you will help me usher in a new era for the Mechanicum. Together, as equals, not in the master and slave relationship the Emperor forced upon your noble nation, we shall reforge the galaxy and declare a new Terran Empire that shall rival the greatest realms of the ancient days. Only with me can mankind reach its true potential. By embracing the truth of the empyrean shall we conquer the galaxy and rule supremely for evermore.'

  A cheer erupted from every mouth and mechanical augment. An outpouring of love for the Warmaster banished every trace of fear, so loud and fervent the ships in the docks shook.

  By a great act of will Cawl cut all forms of broadcast and plugged any external data receivers he could find in his augments. He shielded his biological thoughts with a repeated loop of devotional binaric chants that drowned out the speech of the conqueror.

  The whole of Trisolian was enthralled. This was the legendary charisma of Horus Lupercal gone bad from within, like a great tree whose limbs bear green leaves and fresh shoots, but whose h
eartwood is rotted out. The compulsion to listen went far beyond that engendered by a man of oratorical prowess. The effect the words had was out of all proportion to their meaning. He was an artwork of a master overwritten by a less kind hand, its nobility perverted into something vile An urge to abase himself before this man gripped Cawl, and he knew it was wrong through and through.

  'A great age beckons our species,' Horus continued, and though Cawl was now intentionally deaf, he heard it still. 'To share in it I ask only that you pledge your service to me for the duration of this war. The forces of the Emperor are strong. The misguided stand before me. Every gun fired in my service no matter by which branch of humanity is a shot fired in the name of truth.' He lifted a massive claw and pointed at an adept upon Magos Visreen's grav-dais. 'Do you pledge allegiance to me?' the Warmaster said.

  'Me?' The adept looked nervously to his fellows. They drew back from him.

  'Answer the Warmaster!' shouted the warrior with the topknot. He plucked a mag-locked pistol from his thigh and aimed it at the hapless man.

  The adept was too slow in kneeling. The bolt pistol boomed. The adept's body flowered redly, showering chunks of meat and shattered bionics over the side of the grav-dais. They fell into the null grav zone generated at the heart of the sphere, where they took up orbit, like an orrery made from a butcher's leavings. The echoes of the bolt's detonation rang from far-off surfaces.

  'What about you?' said the warrior. He aimed his pistol at another adept.

  'Ezekyle, put away your gun,' said Horus.

  The warrior named Ezekyle made a dismissive noise, and locked his pistol back to his thigh.

  The adept he had aimed at knelt. Then the rest followed suit, displaying their submission in a rustle of robes.

  'I am with you,' one said. 'I pledge to serve the Warmaster, for the Greater Glory of the Martian Empire,' said another.

  'For the Mechanician, I will follow you,' said a third.

  So it went on. Wordlessly it was made perfectly clear that all were expected to voice their loyalty. Horus looked to each man and woman present as his lieutenants watched, the threat of death plain in their faces.

  The litany of surrender proceeded. The ripples of abasement lapped out into the crowds below, and they proclaimed their loyalty. Cawl kept his head bowed the whole time, until the words stopped, and he looked up to find the would-be master of mankind staring directly at him.

  An ancient Terran saying had it that the eyes were windows to the soul. In that moment, Cawl could believe it to be true. What he saw behind Horus' face was burned into his memory forever.

  He could never serve what he saw behind those eyes.

  'I am with you, my lord,' he said. 'I pledge my service to you and my life.' The oath was hollow. As he spoke, his interference cant shielding his mind, the thought of escape rose urgently in his thoughts.

  When the giving of oaths was done, Horus looked over the leaders of the forge world, and into the crowds packing the skin of the sphere.

  'Death is the price of disloyalty to me,' he said, and the screens showed his vastly magnified face. 'But know this - if I bring suffering to some it is because I would save you.'

  He returned to his ship. His men followed. Sota-Nul was the last aboard. She turned at the top of the ramp, and looked down upon Aspertia's barge. The Stormbird's engines ignited, their jet burn focusing to searing daggers of fire. 'You are the Warmasters now,' she shouted over the rising whine of the ship. 'Do not forget your oaths. Shortly I shall send advisers to you. With the blessing of Kelbor-Hal, await your orders.' The ramp rose. Before it had closed fully, the Stormbird lifted off, turned and accelerated away.

  Nineteen

  Arrival At Trisolian

  Curling tendrils of energy chased the Hrafnkel from the empyrean. Geller shields flickered maddeningly with an excess of energies. Other ships followed in close formation, bouncing on complex gravitic waves. Before they were fully out of the bleed of the warp, the ships ignited their real space engines, adjusted their flight paths and raced for the binary pair.

  With reckless speed, the Space Wolves came to Trisolian.

  Three suns created a complex gravity map. The Vlka Fenryka entered at the lesser Mandeville on the edge of the binaries' shared-termination shock, well away from the primary star and the traitor fleet moored around its worlds. Far enough away for their warp signatures to remain hidden.

  Russ sprawled in his throne upon the command deck. Mortals and legionaries filled the machine pits and crew galleries. Trisolian 2a and 2b dominated the oculus. Russ' fleet were dark shapes coasting on void tinted a dreary red. Reports came in from the jarls of the Legion and the warriors assigned to ship command, announcing safe warp passage. Though their emergence into real space had been smoother than their arrival at Fenris, Russ kept an ear on the chatter around the vox-stations, half expecting high losses from their turbulent journey.

  The last report came in.

  'The fleet has arrived without loss, my lord,' announced a fleet kaerl.

  'A good omen,' said Leman Russ, and he sat forwards. 'Have we been detected?'

  'Our vessels are hidden in the electromagnetic envelope of the two lesser stars, my king,' said the kaerl. 'We are as yet unseen.'

  'Horus has two eyes,' said Russ. 'One spies into the warp. Rune Priests, have my brother's sorcerers seen us?'

  The psykers of his Legion clustered together, heads nearly touching, as they debated the meaning of the runes they cast upon the floor. One looked up. Maet Far-scryer he was called, a priest of Tra-Tra. Russ didn't know him well, but he was more familiar than some who had been promoted to take the place of the gothi sacrificed for his trip to the Underverse.

  'They are blinded, Lord of Winter. They do not see us in the Verse, the Oververse or in the Underverse.'

  Russ grinned. His sharp teeth showed pink in the turbulent glow of the stars.

  'I trust you, my kaerls and my warriors, to keep it that way,' said Russ. 'Take us between the binary towards the primary sun. Full speed. I want as much energy committed to the engines as they will take. Where fleets of lesser men match the speed of the slowest today we strive to sail at the speed of the fastest, my sons. Aegis to maximum. Charge weapons batteries - as soon as we are past this binary, Horus will see us and he will come for us. We must strike swiftly to decapitate the serpent.'

  Adepts of the new Adeptus Mechanicus began their hymns to the machines. Russ observed them ruefully. Dorn called him a hypocrite; if that were so, so was their father, who had decried all religions as false save when it suited Him. Everything came down to expediency in the end. Russ took after Him in that way.

  The Hrafnkel juddered. The multiple machine voices of its systems raised in a plaintive whine. The chanting took on a soothing tone. Grumbling at the imposition, the reactor of the Hrafnkel burned hotter, a caged star more potent than the feeble twins the ship approached. The press of acceleration weighed on the bodies of the crew, and the stars swelled with increasing rapidity. With the certainty of an avalanche, the Vlka Fenryka's void ships moved towards the gulf between the subsidiary suns of Trisolian.

  The binaries were small and red, reckoned cool for stars. Such stellar objects were common, and though prone to fitful effusions of radiation, they were largely benign. Many habitable worlds orbited their sort in short years, close in, where seasons passed in the space of weeks and the sky was always ruddy.

  Not so the Trisolian twins. At a mere fifty million kilometres apart they were greatly perturbed by one another's gravity wells, and the primary star's influence exacerbated that. Plumes of incandescent gases arced out from them towards their opposites, like the arms of lovers who could not quite touch. The space between was a boiling cauldron of natural plasmas and energetic particles. Already, at fifty million kilometres away, the shields of the Vlka Fenryka's void craft sparkled with particular interference. Russ glanced at a display in an augur pit, his post-human eyes able to pick out the detail. His route took the fleet d
irectly between.

  Plotting a course through the gulf was fraught with risk. Gravity eddies and coronal mass ejections as deadly as any starship's weapon could rip the ships apart, but not one member of the Legion raised their voice in concern. They strained at the leash, eager to hunt. The perils of the strait meant nothing. From the dangers of the warp to the no-less-deadly breath of stars, the Hrafnkel eagerly flew.

  'Maintain heading,' said Russ. The stars grew swiftly. The ships of the Vlka Fenryka were under full motive power, still accelerating, their velocity approaching a substantial portion of the speed of light.

  Playful curlicues of fire licked out from the twinned suns to meet them. Radiation flare danced over the ships' void shields. The Hrafnkel groaned as it bumped over frame ructions in space time ploughed up by the stars' conflicting mass. Mortal crew moved to adjust the integrity fields that held the ship together.

  'Auspexes are blind. Augur eyes and picter units non-functional, my king,' spoke a kaerl.

  'Good,' said Russ. 'If we cannot see, the enemy will also be blind to our approach.'

  That was the gambit. Punch through the boiling space between the stars and take Horus by surprise. Russ calculated taking the more dangerous route would gain his fleet a precious six and a half hours where they would not be seen, reducing the time of their visible passage in-system towards the Vengeful Spirit to a mere three. That was six and a half hours less of manoeuvring time for the arch traitor. Six and a half hours less to loose long-range torpedoes and mass strikes towards the wolf fleet.

  Six and a half hours could win a war.

  Russ grinned. He could imagine the look on Horus' face as the Vlka Fenryka burst out of the broiling zone between the stars, and it made him happy.

  Naturally, they had to perform this feat first. Naturally, Russ expected his men to succeed.