The Primarchs

by Edited by Christian Dunn

‘I see your point,’ Omegon told him. ‘Yet particular highlights were your ambushes here and on the dormitory level. You knew we’d try and silence the chantry – a priority target –and you even left the dummy dormitory on the schemata. Very clever.’

  ‘Enough of this,’ Arvas Janic said. ‘Remove your helmet. You will identify yourself and your designs on this installation. You will reveal how you came to know of its location. You will admit to your true Legion and deliver the name of the commanding officer foolish enough to despatch you here on a suicide mission.’

  ‘You sound confident of that, commander,’ Omegon muttered with grim humour.

  ‘Now. Later. It matters not,’ Janic promised. ‘We are renowned for our patience, and our methods of persuasion. While my legionnaires comb this base for evidence, my superiors will hunt your sponsors back along the trail you have undoubtedly left in coming here. Meanwhile, I’ll have my Apothecary take you apart, piece by piece – starting with your feet and working up – harvesting your organs one by one until you feel like volunteering the information I wish to know.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you would believe that I am an Alpha Legion officer and that this base is under inspection?’ Omegon asked the commander.

  ‘No,’ Janic returned with a sneer.

  ‘Or that this is a simulation designed to test your suitability for promotion?’

  ‘No, sir, I would not. As I’m sure you’re aware, this is a Vermillion-clearance operation. Our orders here come directly from the very highest authority: the primarch himself. So too would authorisation for the inspection or simulation to which you allude. A lot of my men are dead. What kind of an inspection involves brother legionnaires spilling each other’s blood?’

  ‘A very serious one, commander,’ Omegon said, wedging his backpack into the gap between the lectern and the wall. ‘Now, let me tell you what I really know, and why I agree with you that it matters not.’

  Below them both the base superstructure trembled again, more fiercely this time. Omegon motioned the commander in closer. Bringing the bolter up between them, Janic leaned in.

  ‘Hydra Dominatus, brother,’ the primarch whispered.

  Janic’s brow furrowed. He straightened. His face screwed up in fury and frustration.

  ‘What?’

  He backed away, and then his eyes fell upon the helmet clasped in Omegon’s hand.

  His helmet, unlocked from his belt.

  The sub-sanctuary suddenly became a maelstrom of howling, wind churned debris. Escaping air screamed through the wide vents in the wall above Omegon’s head, and every loose object in the chamber was dragged towards the open bulkheads outside. Drapes, discarded weapons, and the bodies that littered the chamber all whipped past the primarch in a few seconds of shrieking turbulence, dragged through the narrow doorway by the irresistible expulsion of artificial atmosphere. One moment Arvas Janic was before the primarch with his bolter in hand, and the next he was being smashed through the doorways and corridors of the section and whipped along a roaring path of least resistance to the yawning lifter shaft beyond.

  Alone in the evacuating sub-sanctuary, Omegon’s backpack held him wedged in place against the wall, and he was further anchored by the maglocks of his boots, freshly activated at the rumble of the demiurg mining machines cutting up through the foundations of the base.

  As they had done so – jarred into action by Krait’s territory-threatening trail of planted demolitions – the xenos monstrosities had smashed up through the same pressurised system of locks that Squad Sigma had been careful to use upon infiltrating the installation. The mining machines’ entrance had been less discrete, however, and as a result of the automatons cutting and tearing their way in, the base had been depressurised, breached and had lost its artificial atmosphere to the void.

  Suddenly there was silence.

  As predicted, the cogitator banks governing the installation’s environmental controls had sealed off the breached lower levels. It had all been over in moments.

  Deactivating the maglocks, Omegon hauled himself up and scrambled for the exit. With one gauntlet over his wounded stomach, the primarch threw himself around corners and through the crooked layout of the operations level.

  Half running, half stumbling through the command section, he found the chambers devoid of Alpha Legion officers or the Geno Seven-Sixty Strategarch. Only servitors wired into their thrones remained – sitting there with their jaundiced, lidless eyeballs and rot-retracted lips. A large runescreen flashed through a sequence of levels, with most blocks and sections blinking crimson. It wouldn’t take long for the demiurg mining machines to crash through an emergency bulkhead, or to cut their way up and through to the upper levels.

  Stomping past the vox listening posts and long range auspex stations, Omegon came across a security bulkhead that had a rough hole burned through the thick metal. He recognised it immediately: the security nexus.

  Clutching his abdomen, the primarch risked a moment to peer through the plasma-torched opening. Inside, the chamber was dark and lit only by banks of pict-screens. Strapped into an observation throne that moved between the rows of screens on a rotating gimbal, Omegon found the fat carcass of Volkern Auguramus. The Artisan Empyr had indeed been discovered by Spartocid soldiers, and his robed body was riddled with merciless las-fire. The screens told of more murderous desolation across the base.

  Omegon saw Alpha Legionnaires exchanging fire with skitarii sentinels and rallied contingents of the Spartocid. The screens glowed ghoulishly with flash of las-carbines, flamers and boltguns. Witchbreeds in all their wretched variety pounced on their victims, tearing them apart with supernatural strength, or vomiting forth warp-flame and arcs of green lightning. One of the witches – a gangling, twisted creature – had dislocated her jaw like some kind of snake and was screeching at soldiers and sentinels with deadly effect.

  The garrison legionnaires had been faring better in the lower levels with their well-practiced formations and tactics, but the appearance of great brazen xenos machines bursting up through the decking had proved more of a challenge. The bulbous, arachnoid monstrosities buzzed through the Alpha Legionnaires’ armour with their heavy cutting lasers.

  The confusion and carnage had a terrible beauty to it. An admirable chaos, that was a true reflection of the doctrine of the hydra – its multiple heads striking in disparate but co-ordinated devastation.

  Leaving behind the corpse of the Artisan Empyr, Omegon ducked back out of the nexus and stumbled down the adjoining passage. The lumen strips overhead fizzed and went out, only for the darkness to be abruptly interrupted by the searing flash of intense cutter beams searing up through the metal decking. He skidded to a stop to avoid a pair of the beams, sizzling with alien energy and slicing their way across his path, before ducking through a mangled bulkhead.

  Beyond a decimated scriptorium and around an agonising succession of corners, Omegon found his way to the lifter shaft. The lifter doors and mesh gate remained open, though the lifter car was lost to the vacuum ravaged depths. Heaving himself onto a maintenance ladder with some difficulty, he began the torturous climb to the surface.

  Each rung was a new and singular torment. His abdomen felt as though burning stakes were being hammered through it. Blood slicked his grip, and dripped from his wounds down into the yawning shaft below.

  He was approaching the top when he realised that he wasn’t the only one climbing the shaft – the gloom echoed with the approaching clatter of a many-legged colossus. Looking down, Omegon could see the brassy glint of a xenos machine making its way unimpeded up the sheer vertical; the stabbing motion of its legs chewed up the metal walls and propelled the monster with ease.

  The ladder lurched from its mountings and then began to rock back and forth as the abomination started to chew, its rotating maw of pulverising teeth grinding at the metal. As the ladder twisted, buckled and came away from the
shaft wall entirely, Omegon made a desperate leap across the shaft for the hangar level doorway.

  With a single gauntlet he managed to reach the ledge, hooking onto it like a grapnel and ignoring the agony in his belly. Reaching up with his other hand too, he hauled himself upwards only to find that the doors were still closed.

  Chewed up within the rotating maw of the demiurg machine, the ladder whipped about the open space, slicing through the blackness and thrashing against the walls. The primarch let go of the ledge with one hand and hammered on the closed doors before letting the arm fall again. His gaze fell to the xenos arachnoid looming up beneath his flailing legs. The rotating maw of metal teeth roared its mechanised intention to devour him alive.

  Sparks suddenly lit up the gloom as boltfire rippled off the machine’s thick brazen armour and interlocking teeth. The mining machine continued unperturbed, the grinding mouth still gaping open, but two braces of Legiones Astartes grenades clunked down from above and disappeared into the belly of the beast.

  Many pairs of gauntlets grabbed at his arm and backpack, and heaved him up into the light. The cacophonous din of the grenades detonating within the brazen belly of the beast was suddenly silenced by the forced closing of the lifter doors.

  As Omegon was dragged away he could see nothing but blotchy brightness – his plate’s autosenses had been momentarily overloaded. As they re-calibrated from the darkness of the shaft to the relative light of the asteroid surface, he could hear legionnaires about him calling for Sergeant Setebos. Gunfire still rattled in the distance.

  ‘He’s wounded,’ came Isidor’s unmistakeable voice.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Omegon grunted. ‘Status report.’

  Goran Setebos appeared, and helped him to his feet.

  ‘But my lor-’

  ‘There’s no time, sergeant,’ the primarch warned.

  The hangar deck was a vision of telekinetic destruction. Omegon could make out a wrecked Thunderhawk, and a mountain of scrap that might once have been a flight of Mechanicum lighters, humpshuttles and Imperial Army transports. Xalmagundi had been thorough, as instructed.

  The deck was also littered with bodies: Spartocid sentries, whose responsibility it had been to guard the hangar.

  ‘Stay down, sir,’ Isidor said as a las-bolt round seared the air above their heads. Falling to a pained crouch behind the shattered remains of an engine column, the primarch surveyed the scene. The hangar opened out onto the crater that Squad Sigma had observed in hololithic representation. At its centre, thrusting out of the crater like an accusatory finger was the black shaft of the Pylon Array.

  ‘We lost Zantine,’ Setebos reported, indicating the armoured body laid out nearby. The legionnaire had a neat bolt hole in the side of his helmet.

  ‘Janic has at least two squads of legionnaire snipers stationed in hides about the crater wall. Those positions weren’t on the plans either.’

  ‘What about Xalmagundi?’ Omegon asked.

  ‘She’s with Volion and Braxus,’ Krait told him. ‘Out in the crater.’

  ‘There’s something else, my lord,’ Isidor announced.

  ‘Speak,’ Omegon said.

  ‘Captain Ranko and the Chimerica are overdue. Long overdue. No vox contact, either.’

  ‘Take me to Xalmagundi,’ the primarch ordered.

  Leading the way with his blade drawn, Setebos stepped between the larger rocks and regolithic rubble. Omegon followed nearby, still holding a gauntlet across his bolt-chewed abdomen, with Krait and Isidor offering suppression fire close by.

  Overhead, Omegon saw the reason that his autosenses had struggled to adjust outside of the lifter shaft: above the crater, there was not a scrap of void. The raging surface of the Octiss star reigned above them, filling the firmament with an overwhelming, golden radiance. The phase field generators were the only shield standing between Squad Sigma and the intense radiation of the star.

  Two more las-bolts rocketed past Omegon, and he gave silent thanks for the star’s blinding glare, without which Janic’s sniper legionnaires would have had a far easier job of picking them off.

  Dropping down into a hollow, Omegon and the legionnaires found Xalmagundi. Volion crouched near the psyker with his boltgun aimed over her shoulder, whilst Braxus complained to himself behind a boulder that was receiving more than its fair share of attention from the legionnaire snipers.

  Xalmagundi was knelt in the regolith, with her outstretched fingers in the deep grit and dust. She had been given back her tinted goggles, through which she stared up into the blinding heavens. Her pale skin was streaked with sweat, from her ongoing efforts to shift the trajectory of the great asteroid and send Tenebrae 9-50 into the embrace of 66-Zeta Octiss.

  The witchbreed did not look well at all. Black tears rolled down the sides of her face from her large, underworlder eyes.

  ‘Volion?’ Omegon said as he skidded down into the boltfire-molested hollow. ‘Projection?’

  ‘Both trajectory and velocity are good, my lord,’ the legionnaire reported. ‘Tenebrae 9-50 and the Pylon Array are destined for the surface of that star.’

  ‘Omegon?’ Xalmagundi croaked. ‘Is that you?’

  The primarch crossed the hollow and knelt down beside the psyker.

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘I can’t see a damn thing,’ the underworlder told him. Her words were accompanied by a further cascade of midnight tears down her porcelain cheeks. ‘I’m blinded.’

  ‘You have done well, Xalmagundi,’ the primarch told her. ‘Very well.’

  ‘Can your people fix me?’ the psyker asked. ‘Can they fix my eyes?’

  Omegon held out a hand towards Setebos. The sergeant glared at him for a moment before turning over his bolt pistol.

  ‘They can fix you, Xalmagundi,’ Omegon promised.

  The shot echoed around the crater. The psyker’s fragile body fell across the grit and rubble. What was left of Squad Sigma stared at Omegon.

  ‘Permission to speak freely, my lord,’ Setebos said.

  Omegon settled down in the hollow, his armoured knees deep in the dust.

  ‘Granted, sergeant.’

  ‘That strikes me as a waste,’ Setebos told him. ‘She could have been of further use to the Legion.’

  ‘That strikes me as sentimental,’ Omegon replied. ‘Which truly is a waste. That’s not your reputation, sergeant. It was my impression that there is little you wouldn’t do for your Legion. Little you wouldn’t sacrifice for victory.’

  ‘And nothing in my conduct on this mission suggests otherwise,’ the sergeant returned. ‘It’s just there seemed no reason to execute the girl.’

  ‘She was expendable, sergeant,’ Omegon told him. ‘As are we all. Regicide pawns in a greater game.’

  ‘Where is the Chimerica?’ Isidor asked warily. ‘Where’s Captain Ranko?’

  After a pause, Omegon reached for the clasps on his helmet. The seals disengaged and he tossed it into the dust.

  Sheed Ranko regarded Setebos and Squad Sigma with his own eyes. The legionnaires stared at the captain in mute disbelief.

  ‘A greater game,’ Ranko repeated.

  The captain could still taste his primarch’s blood. Omegon had mixed a little of his shed vitality with the wine the pair had taken on the Upsilon – an offering of the primarch’s thanks, and much more. He had tasted remembrance and come to know the secrets of his gene-sire: early days spent by the twins on their distant homeworld, scheming their way to supremacy; the paradoxical horror of the alien Acuity; the gradual realisation of what would be required of each of them in the years still to come…

  Ranko had borne the burden of this offering and had done what his primarch had asked of him a thousand times before. He had taken his place. He had acted like, spoken like, all thought like his primarch.

  He had been Omegon.

 
Braxus scrambled down from his position and through the grit of the hollow.

  ‘What’s happening?’ the legionnaire rumbled.

  ‘Some details of the mission have been withheld from us,’ Setebos explained without taking his gaze off Ranko. ‘The captain is going to explain them to us now.’

  Ranko gazed back at Setebos. Then allowed his eyes to wander among the gathered legionnaires.

  ‘What does your primarch ask of you?’ he put to them.

  ‘The Chimerica isn’t coming, is it sir?’ Isidor asked. When Ranko didn’t answer, the legionnaire said, ‘There is no Thunderhawk extraction. Lord Omegon isn’t coming for us.’

  ‘No,’ the captain said finally.

  ‘Options?’ Setebos said, turning to the squad.

  ‘The garrison Stormbird and other craft have been destroyed,’ Krait told him.

  ‘There is only one way off this rock,’ Volion told them. ‘The boarding torpedo. We have to return to the Argolid.’

  Setebos grunted. There was little time to discuss alternatives.

  ‘Fastest route?’ he asked.

  ‘Temperature’s too hot on the unshielded surface,’ the legionnaire replied. ‘Even in our plate. We have to go back through the base and the mineworks.’

  ‘There’s not much chance of that,’ Braxus said, checking the ammunition left in his bolter’s magazine.

  ‘Better than the chance we have against that,’ Isidor countered, thrusting a ceramite thumb up at the raging heavens.

  ‘Then we’re decided,’ Setebos said, rising to his feet.

  ‘You won’t make it,’ Ranko told them. ‘You don’t have even one tenth of the time you’d need to make that return journey, even without hostilities.’

  ‘You would ask us to just sit here on this rock and die?’ Setebos spat back.

  ‘I ask nothing of you,’ Ranko told them honestly. Then he repeated, ‘What does your primarch ask of you?’

  Setebos and the legionnaires looked at one another. The sergeant nodded.

  ‘Everything.’