The Primarchs

by Edited by Christian Dunn

  ‘And?’ Charmian prompted, refusing to get caught up in the artisan’s growing excitement.

  ‘The immetereology of the warp is not dissimilar. The unfathomable workings of the Pylon Array produce an area of unprecedented calm within the warp. The range of astropathic communication is extended.’

  ‘But this creates storm fronts and immetereological disturbances in the regions beyond,’ Isidor said.

  ‘Exactly!’ Auguramus almost shrieked. ‘An unintentional consequence of the xenos technology’s operation. Far more useful than anything possessed by the other Legions.’

  ‘A consequence that Alpharius has used to further the Warmaster’s aims,’ Omegon informed the gathering. ‘Upon building this technology in the Octiss System, and charging it with immaterial energies sapped from the Mechanicum’s psyker slave-stock, we have succeeded in enveloping bordering regions in a communications blackout: Draconi, Tiamath, Chondax and the Scellis-Trevelya straits. We have not only restricted the White Scars Legion to the Chondax system, which was Alpharius’s promise to Horus, but we have kept Jaghatai Khan veiled in ignorance. He is blind to the atrocities of civil war and deaf to Dorn’s commands to return. Without the Scars and the Great Khan at the Emperor’s side, the Warmaster’s victory will be assured.’

  A murmur ran through the group. Omegon waited a moment before continuing.

  ‘The loyalists have also been denied reinforcement from the Regnault Thorns, the Seventh-Suckle Parthenari Shieldmaidens, and the Uzuran Sabreteurs: seventy-two thousand fighting souls, all delayed at Draconi. The Legio Cybernetica Maniple Theta-Iota and the Legio Gigantes Titan Legion were also lost, presumed destroyed, while in transit through Scellis-Trevelya.’

  ‘A powerful weapon indeed, my lord,’ Isidor said.

  ‘You see then, that this technology cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy,’ Omegon insisted. ‘That is why, powerful as it is, it must be destroyed. Utterly.’

  ‘Seismic charges and super-critical magnareactors cannot provide the kind of assurance we need,’ Auguramus added. ‘The very material from which the Pylon Array is constructed – remaining in certain configurations – is likely to maintain a residual immaterial presence. My calculations show that a blanket orbital bombardment could provide the coverage required, but even with the Beta at your disposal, or one of the Mechanicum vessels, Tenebrae 9-50 would simply disintegrate and spread recoverable evidence of the Pylon Array’s existence all over the system.’

  ‘There has to be a way,’ Setebos said, to which several Squad Sigma legionnaires nodded in agreement.

  ‘There is,’ the primarch told them. ‘We need to destroy the entire asteroid.’

  Isidor frowned. ‘I thought we just agreed that was unwise.’

  ‘The demiurg shunt these asteroids inertially between conveyer stations,’ Omegon said, ‘but if another force could be applied to the rock mid-voyage, a small deviation would soon make a large difference. Especially if the asteroid’s velocity could be increased.’

  The primarch and the Alpha Legionnaires turned their heads in unison to look at the dozing psyker.

  ‘Enough force to change the rock’s trajectory and put it – base, Pylon Array and all – into a nearby star.’

  Too numbed by the psi-dampening collar to mount any objection, Xalmagundi gave them all a lazy, cynical glance through the ghostly representation of the asteroid.

  ‘I’ve never... manipulated... anything... that size... before,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Then the true extent of your powers has never been tested, but from what I’ve heard already, I’m impressed. And that was working against gravity and atmospheric friction.’

  ‘What is our exit strategy?’ Setebos put to Omegon.

  ‘Yes,’ Vermes agreed. ‘Rolling the asteroid into 66-Zeta Octiss does seem an elegant solution to our problem, but that means we need a tightly scheduled evacuation.’

  ‘The Upsilon will be stationed just out of sensor range,’ the primarch said. ‘I’ve put Captain Ranko personally in charge of our extraction. He will leave with the finest from his Lernaean squad as soon as our mission is underway, and evacuate us from the Tenebrae surface in the Thunderhawk Chimerica.’

  Isidor nodded before looking over at his sergeant. They both seemed satisfied.

  Omegon checked his chronometer and stood. As the gathered Alpha Legionnaires and operatives did likewise, the hololith flickered and evaporated.

  ‘We have preparations to make and little time to make them,’ he said. ‘Before we go, let me say this: I understand the conflict in your hearts, how one may beat for duty while the other bleeds for your Legion brothers who will be sacrificed. But this is civil war. It is a time of confusion, and realigned loyalty. We have many heads but we act as one – one Legion with a single will. We are a union of the alike and the like-minded. We will not tolerate treachery. We will not allow our compact to fracture. We will not suffer the short-sightedness of our brother Legions, nor the averted gaze of the wider Imperium. We are Alpha Legion and we take the long view.’

  The assembled legionnaires thumped their fists on the table in salute.

  ‘As Alpha Legion, however, you are expected to think for yourselves. If anyone here today wishes to absolve himself of this responsibility; if he finds that under these most unique of circumstances he cannot imitate the action of the hydra; if he chooses not to be the whetstone upon which his Legion is sharpened, then he shall suffer no censure or judgement. He can walk away knowing that there are others who would be his brother’s keeper, and he can wait out this mission in the brig of the Upsilon before returning to duty.

  Omegon looked down the line of identical faces, searching for any seed of doubt or misgiving. He saw only cold-blooded determination in their arctic eyes.

  ‘Brothers. Hydra Dominatus.’

  ‘Hydra Dominatus,’ Setebos returned, followed by the rest of the squad.

  ‘Then let our enemies see the fallen fruit, sitting warm and inviting in the afternoon sun,’ the primarch said. ‘And let us be the serpent beneath, hidden and waiting to strike.’

  Operatus Five-Hydra: Elapsed Time Ω2/005.17//TENTenebrae Installation

  Omegon moved like a ghost through the unfolding catastrophe. Leading with his bolt pistol, but clutching his combat blade at his side like a hooked talon, he slipped through unnoticed.

  The installation passageways, sections and stairwells were bathed in the bloody light of warning lamps, and the spinning emergency beacons that added a sickly amber urgency to the base’s interior. The primarch’s movements were swift and his footfalls light, and lost beneath the insistent wail of klaxons. This had meant that those who had been unfortunate enough find themselves in his path had not heard Omegon’s caving of skulls, breaking of necks and slashing of throats as he approached.

  Near the armoury, a three-quarter squad of Spartocid soldiers rounded a corner ahead of Omegon. They were clutching their las-carbines to their chests and running with their faded cloaks rippling behind them, and a Geno subalterix clutched a vox-unit to the side of his plumed helmet, trying to get clarification over gunfire crowded channels. Upon sighting Omegon, in his Legion plate, the group slowed and angled the broad-burn muzzles of their stubby weapons at him. They had clearly heard the equally unbelievable reports either of Alpha Legion infiltrators compromising the base, or warp-possessed garrison legionnaires running amok on the penitorium level.

  He had to think fast. Aiming his bolt pistol down the adjacent empty corridor, Omegon repeatedly squeezed the trigger, emptying the magazine at some unseen target. The primarch then feigned alarm and began furiously reloading.

  ‘Get down here!’ he roared at the hesitant Spartocid.

  More a conditioned response than a strategic assessment of the situation, the subaltrix and his men rushed on, their carbines presented and ready. As they burst around the junction corner
they opened fire, slashing the empty darkness beyond, scanning for an enemy but blinded by the blurred flash of their own weaponry.

  Omegon allowed them to take a few more steps before he moved. Bringing up his freshly loaded pistol he blew gaping holes through the backs of their skulls. Even as the squad began to drop around him, the subaltrix urged his soldiers to keep firing in the mistaken belief that they were still being engaged from the corridor.

  Moving on from the massacre, Omegon reached the thick doors of the lifter shaft – through the metal he could hear the exchange of gunfire. Stabbing the tip of his combat blade between the edges and twisting it, he managed to prise the doors open and claw the mesh gate upwards. Omegon peered down the shaft and then up into its gloomy heights.

  Aside from the cacophony of battle on multiple levels, the most distinctive sound rising up from the installation depths was the haunting madness of liberated witchbreeds, shrieking and howling in the darkness. They were unleashing hell throughout the base and indiscriminately venting their fury and unnatural powers upon skitarri sentinels, genic Spartocids and Legion forces alike. A sudden eruption of directed soulfire ripped through the lifter doors several floors below, lighting up the darkness and blasting a garrison legionnaire into the shaft wall opposite. Omegon watched him fall, writhing in spectral flame, before smashing straight through the roof of the lifter car.

  The primarch felt a tremor through his gauntlets. Moving across to the rocky passageway wall, he put the side of his helmet to the stone. A series of grinding rumbles came from the base superstructure.

  He was running out of time.

  Reloading his bolt pistol with the last magazine, the primarch set off once again through the installation’s ear-splitting, labyrinthine murk.

  The chantry was a small block cut off from the rest of the operations level by bulkheads and a series of sombre archways. Each displayed the symbol of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, a single eye looking down upon Omegon as he slipped past.

  Pushing the muzzle of his pistol through the green velvet drapes, the primarch found the Astropaths within the sanctuary. There were tarot wafers spread on the polished floor of the chamber.

  They were on their knees before him. All men. All hooded. All terrified. They looked pleadingly up at him with their grisly, empty eye sockets. At first this confused Omegon, until he realised – looking down at the abandoned wafers – that they had already seen what was to happen next. They bowed their heads and pulled back their hoods.

  Omegon was not one to prolong suffering unless it served a purpose. He fell to doing what was necessary: hovering his bolt pistol at the back of the Astropath’s heads, he executed each in turn, quickly and efficiently.

  Turning to withdraw through the blood speckled velvet, Omegon stopped. There were three Astropaths, and yet there were four sub-sanctuaries leading from the chamber. Only one of the chambers had its drapes drawn.

  Storming forward, he swept the drapes aside and came face to face with the chief chorister – a lean, elderly Astropath – standing before a lectern. The floor about her was of polished metal into which hexagrammatic wardings and seals of safeguarding had been carved. She was clutching a thick staff bearing the icon of the all-seeing-eye, and mumbling the encryption rites of astrotelecommunication.

  ‘Desist,’ Omegon growled at her, bringing the pistol up.

  Suddenly there were arms everywhere, thick and armoured in heavy plate.

  Two garrison legionnaires lunged from hiding, inside the sub-sanctuary entrance. They reached for the primarch’s pistol with grasping hands, hauling it off to one side as the weapon spat a trio of rounds that narrowly missed the mediating Astropath and mauled the lectern. Two more legionnaires cannoned into him from behind, sending the wrestling throng crashing into the sub-sanctuary wall. Another shot went into the panelling before the pistol was out of his grip.

  ‘Remember,’ the sibilant voice of an officer cut through the violence, ‘I want him alive.’

  This was all Omegon needed to hear. Reaching for the legionnaires’ sheathed combat blades hanging at their belts, Omegon spun and buried the first blade in its owner’s neck. He knew there was a weak spot between the gorget casing and the helmet seals: he knew this because his own Alpha Legion plate sported the same weakness. He stabbed at two more of his assailants with the second blade, and pierced through the eye lens of the last.

  Momentarily shrugging off the attentions of the wounded Space Marines, the primarch threw the knife point-over-pommel down the length of the sub-sanctuary. The weighty blade thudded into the side of the Astropath’s hood, and the chorister collapsed against the lectern before tumbling to the ward-inscribed floor.

  With her message silenced, Omegon heaved himself and his assailants into the other wall, running the huddle of power armoured legionnaires one into another. Slamming an articulated elbow joint into a faceplate before following with a gauntleted fist to another, Omegon took a shoulderplate in the gut. Slammed into the far wall and cracking the panelling, he brought his knee up savagely, again and again, buckling the warrior’s ceramite. Pushing him away, Omegon readied himself as another legionnaire came at him with his fists, and the pair of them dissolved into a graceful blur of half-parried pummelling and powerful counter strikes.

  As the legionnaire lunged, Omegon stepped aside. Allowing the Space Marine follow his path of momentum, the primarch got his gauntlets around and under his backpack. He fingered the release clasps and tore the apparatus from the legionnaire’s suit before smashing him down into the floor with the dead weight of it.

  He turned just in time to smack aside an oncoming combat knife – the legionnaire wielding it had been the one Omegon had first stabbed, and the Space Marine’s gorget and plastron were slick with blood where he had extracted the blade. Omegon smashed the pack across the legionnaire’s helmet before planting it in the midriff cabling of another, bending him double.

  The graceless brawl continued and the sub-sanctuary rang with the crash of armour plate. Fibre bundles crackled and contracted. Ceramite buckled beneath superhuman blows. The primarch moved from opponent to opponent, checking the lethality of oncoming attacks and following up with as much lethality as he himself could spare before being forced to engage the next.

  The bloodied knife was back. It slashed and thrust, and he snatched the wrist and gauntlet of the wielder in an attempt to wrest it back again. Omegon wrenched the offending arm towards the ceiling and turned beneath it, hearing the seals crack and cabling snap. With one fluid movement he twisted the legionnaire’s arm to breaking, before ramming him helmet first into the wall panelling with a crunch of vertebrae. The combat knife, Omegon had pried from the grip of the Space Marine’s broken hand and kept for himself.

  Clutched like a dagger, Omegon brought it around in a searing arc and drove the blade tip through the half-blinded warrior’s intact optic and into his brain. With a sickening squeal of tortured ceramite, the primarch tore the weapon free again and allowed him to drop to the floor.

  Only one of his four opponents was still on his feet – the legionnaire struck down with one outstretched gauntlet and knocked the slippery blade from the primarch’s grip. Omegon shoved him up against the wall panelling, and brought his ceramite knuckles in again and again, each economic strike followed swiftly and pneumatically by the next.

  The faceplate crunched. An optic cracked.

  Again the legionnaire’s grasping gauntlets reached for Omegon, but again the primarch beat them back, and grabbed the dazed warrior by both sides of his ruined helmet. He fired the pressure seals and ripped it from the Space Marine’s head.

  He looked down upon copper skin and harsh blue eyes that were like unto his own. That didn’t stop him clutching the helmet by its piping and smashing the crest and bonding studs savagely into the legionnaire’s unprotected face over and over until he dropped to the metal floor.

  Heaving
with exertion, he stood with his back to the curtained doorway. ‘Commander Janic, I presume,’ he muttered between breaths. He turned, the bloody helmet still in his hand. ‘I have to commend you on-’

  Janic’s bolter barked. Omegon felt the mass-reactive shells punch into his armour, and detonate within his flesh. White hot agony flared, though his superhuman body fought to resist it.

  Omegon’s legs went out from under him.

  Dropping the legionnaire’s ruined helmet, he stumbled and crashed back into the wall. With his pack sliding down the panelling, the primarch slipped down onto the metal floor, his spilled blood beginning to flood the hexagrammatic carvings.

  He saw Arvas Janic standing over him in the sub-sanctuary doorway, amongst the green velvet drapes. The commander’s face was a taut mask of bitter intent, his helmet maglocked to his belt.

  ‘You were saying?’ the commander said, venturing forward.

  Omegon reached down his armour and found three fat, ragged punctures in the lower cuirass. He explored each opening with a fingertip and checked the position of each wound. To the side of the navel. Above the hip. Omegon nodded to himself. They had all missed the spine. He knew his body had gone into overdrive, with different organs, suprahormones and engineered processes interacting to reduce the severity of the wounds.

  Placing his gauntlets and boots flat on the floor, Omegon pushed his backpack a little farther up the wall. Through the superstructure he felt a distinctive rumble. Something more than a distant quake.

  ‘You were saying?’ Janic repeated.

  ‘Warning shots?’ Omegon asked.

  The commander nodded.

  Omegon coughed blood inside his visor. ‘I was saying that you should be commended for the first class security and counter measures employed on this base.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me,’ Janic warned with a snarl. ‘If it were truly first class, you wouldn’t be here.’