Forgotten Sons - Nick Kyme

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘And in so doing, slew thousands,’ replied Arcadese, ‘scribes, poets, imagists and iterators from the Remembrancer Order into the bargain. He is a monster.’

  III

  The word was hard to use.

  Monster.

  Horus was still a father figure of sorts to this Legionary, Vorkellen saw it described in the anguish on the Ultramarine’s face.

  He is still struggling to understand, he thought. The Emperor was a fool to send warriors such as these. They are broken soldiers, gratefully forgotten by their Legions. He has doubts, and if he has doubts

  well

  ‘It was your beloved master who put these men and women in danger. Sent to document the Great Crusade, to cement forever in living memory the deeds of the Emperor and his primarchs. Their deaths were a tragedy, but war, a war brought about by an absent father who failed to attend to his sons, has many casualties. It hardly makes the Warmaster a monster.’

  As the Ultramarine’s face screwed up into a snarl, Vorkellen allowed himself a tiny smile. Go on then, now is the time – seal my victory.

  ‘What has been promised you, eh, Vorkellen is it?’ The Ultramarine couldn’t keep the venomous sneer from his lips.

  ‘I am merely a humble servant, here to see that my master is fairly represented.’

  ‘Do you honour a pact with some fell power, a concubine perhaps?’

  Vorkellen’s eyes were icy. ‘You would like to crush me, wouldn’t you?’

  Arcadese nodded slowly, drawing an objection from the clave that Vorkellen waved down.

  ‘The Emperor sends warriors when he really needs ambassadors, those who won’t embarrass themselves in unfamiliar surroundings where a bolter and blade is of no import.’

  ‘I don’t need my weapons to break you!’ Arcadese was raging again and stepped towards the iterator.

  And thereit is. Vorkellen smiled, just for the Ultramarine. You cannot fight nature.

  A squad of marshals wielding flash-sabres moved in to intercept him.

  IV

  Arcadese knew he could crush them without his weapons, do it so quick and clean he’d be at Vorkellen’s throat before the emergency command be given and the chamber flooded with armed men.

  Instead, he put up his hand.

  The guards backed off.

  Arcadese sagged, feeling the tendrils of defeat tighten around his heart.

  Heka’tan,where are you?

  Bodies

  I

  The levels below the auditorium were vast and labyrinthine. It would take an army of men weeks to find an individual in its depths if it didn’t want to be found. Heka’tan was but one man, and he had a few hours at most.

  At least the shaking had ceased. When he’d forced the guard to let him go below and the dark had enveloped him, he’d leant against the wall and closed his eyes. Images of the dropsite massacre had sprung unbidden into his mind. He remembered his last sight of Vulkan, the primarch engulfed in bright magnesium light.

  Dead? No one knew. It was a mystery that haunted the Legion. Ferrus Manus was dead. A terrible fate for any Legion to lose their father, but at least the Iron Hands had closure, at least they knew. In many ways, for the Salamanders, it was worse. And what now for them? A bit part in a galactic war where the fate of humanity and Terra was the prize and cost.

  Heka’tan put the thoughts from his mind and started to search.

  He found Persephia’s body after thirty minutes.

  She lay discarded like refuse in one of the archive chambers, her innards pooled in her lap like glossy red ribbons. The artificer’s face was locked in a horror-grimace, flecked by her own dried blood.

  She hadn’t died here. There were drag marks on the floor, hastily concealed. Heka’tan held out his hand and detected a tiny prickling sensation on his fingertips. Heat. It was bleeding upwards from below.

  Heka’tan looked back to the corpse. The wound in Persephia’s chest was familiar to him. He knew what had caused it. She had been eviscerated by a chainsword. It was a Legion weapon. Arcadese was right, Horus had sent warriors.

  The Salamander followed the source of the heat.

  II

  The shadow shifted on the balcony. It caressed the rifle in its hands now. The red-eyed one was missing, and it didn’t like that. Made it feel vulnerable, potentially exposed when there was a Legionary unaccounted for. The work below was supposed to be finished, now the second phase began. There were four marshals below, watching the stairways into the lower chambers. Another four stood nearby in the dark. No guns here. No weapons of any sort. How foolish they were. How arrogant.

  The high-marshal was alone and pensive as the proceedings went on. He was blind, just like the clave-nobles and the other onlookers were blind. They would see. Everyone would see. But then it would be too late. Then there was the iterator and his cronies, and the other warrior; the broken one, the half-Space Marine. Little did he realise it wasn’t just his body that had been ripped by the greenskin.

  It was nearly time. The shadow shifted on the balcony, bringing the rifle sight up to its eye. The target sat snugly in its crosshairs. A second and it would be over. Just one second, the time it takes to squeeze a trigger. Soon.

  III

  They were losing. He was losing. Not a bolt fired, nor a blade drawn and still Arcadese knew the battle was being lost, metre by agonising metre. For a warrior, it was a strange sensation, not how he had pictured his service to his Legion.

  The human iterator, despite his outward frailties, had a formidable intelligence; in a fit of pique, Arcadese thought he’d been mind-augmented or hypno-conditioned.

  Dagonet was a disaster. Vorkellen painted Horus as victim and the Imperium as dishonourable murderers. A fortunate twist of fate had allowed the Warmaster to escape a heinous assassination attempt; whilst leaving one of his captains and a vaunted Legionary, Luc Sedirae, slain in cold blood. The massacre that followed was retaliatory, an effort to find and execute the perpetrators. Collateral damage was inevitable. The Emperor’s hand had caused this, or the agents acting in his stead.

  Prospero was no better. Wolves unleashed on a cultured world and a son that desired only to please his father. The subsequent razing of the Planet of the Sorcerers was made to show the Emperor’s inability to forgive or grant mercy. Was Magnus really such a threat? Leman Russ and his Legion made sure that question could never be answered.

  None of it added strength to Arcadese’s cause, and he felt the allegiance of Bastion slipping from his grasp. He had only one argument left, but the one to give it was nowhere to be found.

  IV

  Unarmed and wearing robes, Heka’tan knew he was at a distinct disadvantage against another warrior of the Legiones Astartes.

  He could have gone back, raised the alarm, but then Persephia’s murderer might have already escaped and they would never know what was really going on here. He told himself this was the reason but the truth of it was his rage for Isstvan V had been impotent for too long; he needed to vent it.

  It didn’t take long to follow the murderer’s trail. It led Heka’tan to a steel gantry looking down on Bastion’s nuclear core. He recognised the figure still toiling in its depths. Memories of fighting a desperate last stand in the Urgall Depression came back to him.

  ‘Iron Warrior!’

  The grey-metal Legionary turned, his helmet lenses glinting coldly in the reflected nuclear light.

  He scoffed, a harsh and tinny sound that emanated from his vox-grille. ‘Aren’t your kind all dead?’

  Heka’tan roared and threw himself over the gantry. He collided with the Iron Warrior – hitting the ceramite like it was a fortress wall. He didn’t have time to evade the plunging Salamander. He’d only half-drawn his chainblade when Heka’tan knocked it buzzing from his grasp and onto the lower gantry floor.

  Instantly the two Legionaries became locked in a fearsome embrace. But with his power armoured battle-plate, the Iron Warrior was stronger.

  ‘What gave me away?’ he growled, forcing Heka’tan to his knees, the finger
s of both combatants laced together in a wrestler’s grappling hold. ‘It was the human, wasn’t it? So like your benevolent, dead Vulkan to come looking for an innocent.’

  A surge of anger leant Heka’tan strength. He pushed with his legs, using sheer brute force to draw level and stand face-to-face with the Iron Warrior.

  ‘Don’t sully his name with your tongue, betrayer,’ he spat.

  The Iron Warrior seized Heka’tan’s fingers in his gauntleted grip, causing the Salamander to cry out as he flung him across the gantry and down to the level below.

  Pain blurred Heka’tan’s vision but he saw his enemy coming to finish him well enough. He reached over and his shattered fingers found what they sought.

  The Iron Warrior raised a massive fist, intent on beating his former brother to death, when he found the buzzing teeth of his own chainsword lodged in his gut. He had charged right onto it.

  Heka’tan held onto the hilt as long as he could before struggling to his feet and barging into the flailing, bleeding Iron Warrior. The two of them broke the gantry rail and plunged over the edge.

  Heat radiation coming off the nuclear core warmed Heka’tan’s skin. He was hanging one-handed off the twisted railing several levels down, the Iron Warrior doing the same a few metres away. His armour was blistering, the black and yellow painted chevrons flaking away.

  ‘This changes nothing, Salamander. Vulkan is dead,’ he laughed. ‘You’re all dead.’ He reached for his bolt pistol sat snug in his side holster and made the railing squeal. He was too heavy for it to hold. The metal broke away and the Iron Warrior fell. Heka’tan watched him carom off another gantry, then a piece of piping, before bouncing off into the nuclear core itself. There was a brief flash of azure fire and the Legionary disappeared, burned to ash.

  With some effort, Heka’tan dragged his body back up onto the gantry. He tried not to think about the Iron Warrior’s last words, what he’d said about his father. It wasn’t true. He was merely being goaded.

  The enemy had dropped something when they’d fought. It was a data-bundle of some kind, taken from one of the subterranean terminals. It was smashed up but the last piece of data was still on the recorder: war machine schematics, vast and terrible engines the likes of which Heka’tan had never seen. They’d been kept here in secret and now the saboteur was erasing their existence. Coming to Bastion had never been about winning allegiance. Limping, he went to the terminal screen. It displayed all the other nuclear hubs around the planet, but he didn’t know why.

  With time running out and still weaponless, Heka’tan hurried back to the auditorium.

  V

  Arcadese had done his best, but the time for talking was over.

  The clave had heard the petitions of both parties, had deliberated and were about to give their answer.

  On the balcony above, the high-noble came forwards into the light. His expression was unreadable.

  ‘We of Bastion are a proud people. None the less we joined the nascent Imperium on the promise of unity and prosperity. I would prefer independence but since that would see us consigned to atoms by Legion starships, I have little choice.’ The high-noble seemed reluctant to continue. ‘We honour our original oaths, Bastion will pledge for Hor–’

  ‘Arcadese!’ The warning brought all eyes to the Salamander and came three seconds before the rifle shot. The Ultramarine had enough time to discern the grainy red light from the laser sight, to catch the opening bloom of the muzzle flash as it flared wide and put his body between the assassin and its target.

  Iterator Vorkellen screamed as the Legionary bore down on him, believing at first that the Ultramarine had finally cracked. The marshals were too slow to intervene, just as surprised as the iterator.

  The bullet forced a grimace as it grazed Arcadese’s shoulder. He was trying to twist mid-air so he didn’t crush Vorkellen’s bones to paste when they landed. The second shot, taking a marshal in the neck and killing him instantly, gave the others pause. Only when the third went down, right eye ventilated, did they all look to the other balcony.

  VI

  He was crouched, nose of the rifle just peeking over the balcony edge, when Heka’tan found him.

  The Salamander made the assessment of his enemy quickly, as he was reaching the top of the stairs and advancing.

  Human, wearing nondescript clothes. He recalled the landman from earlier and knew this was the same individual. He also saw a sanctum-marshal’s garb in a bundle nearby to the shooter’s position. The rifle was custom – it looked almost ceramic. That’s how he’d avoided detection. Nine marshals entered; now, only eight took up their positions. It was so dark, slipping away would’ve been easy.

  ‘You overextend yourself,’ said the Salamander, slowing to a walk, filling the balcony walkway with his onyx-black bulk. ‘I saw your rifle tip from below. I saw it earlier too, I think. You were the one that shot down our ship.’

  The landman stood and nodded. Evidently, the rifle was spent. He’d discarded it and drew a long blade from his side instead – literally from his side. Heka’tan’s eyes widened when he saw it snuck out of the assassin’s flesh.

  ‘You should’ve hit the fuel tanks and not the wing,’ the Salamander went on, creeping closer, allowing Arcadese time to catch up and support him. It looked like a man before him, but the Space Marine’s instincts told him otherwise. This was something else. ‘Your aim was off if you were planning on killing everyone on board.’

  ‘Was it?’ The assassin flashed a smile and his eyes changed colour, even the hue of his skin seemed to shift.

  Heka’tan lunged just as the blade was flung at him. He dodged, reacting to the sudden move, but cried out as it shaved his skin. He missed the assassin by a hand span, grasping air as he leapt off the balcony and to the floor below.

  VII

  Arcadese swung at the assassin’s leaping form with a flash-sabre from one of the dead guards but missed. He about-faced but couldn’t stop two more marshals dying to the assassin’s finger-blades. A third fell to what looked like a barbed tongue, lashing from the man’s mouth.

  The Ultramarine gave chase, but his bionics slowed him down. The assassin had reached the shadows and led into the corridors beyond. Even on the upper level, the auditorium space was a honeycomb of passageways and conduits.

  Heka’tan was right behind him.

  ‘You’re bleeding,’ he remarked, noting the bullet graze along the Ultramarine’s shoulder.

  ‘So are you.’

  Heka’tan dabbed at his flank with a finger and felt the blade wound. ‘Then we owe him two cuts, one each,’ he promised and followed the assassin into the darkness. Behind them, the remaining marshals were trying not to panic. They’d also foregone pursuit to secure the clave-nobles. The high-marshal was vociferous above the clamour, bellowing frantic orders.

  Vorkellen was screeching at his lackeys, in obvious pain. It drew a smile to Arcadese’s lips, smothered by the shadows that engulfed him.

  With the darkness the sound died away and the Legionaries slowed.

  Heka’tan hissed, ‘You were right, brother.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Arcadese, staying as low as he could and watching the deeper shadows.

  ‘I found another of Horus’s emissaries below, an Iron Warrior.’

  That piqued the Ultramarine’s interest.

  ‘I killed him but he was doing something below, something that the garrison here has been working on. He was monitoring the nuclear hubs too. I don’t know why. Answers may come from our assassin. Either way, word must reach the rest of the Imperium.’

  ‘And we are sealed in,’ Arcadese remarked ruefully.

  Heka’tan’s eyes blazed belligerently.

  ‘But so is he.’

  Hunters

  I

  The attack was swift. The red-eyed one was easy to spot; the broken one it could hear fifty metres away. They were not stealthy targets, either of them.

  A shallow cry of pain felt satisfying as it plunged a blade into red-eyes’s shoulder. A heavy punch into the broken one’s ribs made an audible
crack. So much for the dense bone-plate – the surgeries must have weakened it.

  It dodged a reply, then a second. Rolling up to its full height, it disengaged the holofield trapping it in the landman’s form.

  II

  Arcadese swung wildly, but met only air with his borrowed flash-sabre. Next to him, Heka’tan grunted and he assumed the Salamander had failed to make contact too.

  The assassin was fast – faster than them. Faster than him. Not for the first time, he cursed at his bionics.

  He was rolling and Arcadese was turning, Heka’tan too. What met them both as the darkness parted before the flash-sabre’s magnesium flare was not what the Ultramarine expected.

  He was not a man at all, at least not one that adhered to the normal conventions of size. He was massive, taller than either Arcadese or Heka’tan, and he was fierce. Tattoos around the attacker’s neck described a long chain of words, a name, or several fractions of a name, recounted on his body, disappearing beneath a loose-fitting bodyglove of red leather. The armour looked gladiatorial. There was something Terran about it. When Arcadese saw the marking on the warrior’s fist as he swung the spatha around in a lazy rotational arc, he knew.

  ‘Custodian.’

  III

  When the blade flashed in, the Ultramarine parried quickly. He was already backing away. Heka’tan was trying to circle. He’d made the connection too, realising the landman was merely a projection, courtesy of a holofield.

  The Salamander tried to shoulder barge the warrior, distract him and bring him into his battle-brother’s arc, but he weaved aside, slamming his elbow down on Heka’tan’s spine. Then he went down, snapping a blade-kick into Arcadese’s gut that sent him sprawling.

  When both Legiones Astartes had got up, the assassin was gone, absorbed into the darkness.

  Arcadese retrieved his flash-sabre and went to give chase. Heka’tan seized his shoulder, stopping him.