Vengeful Spirit

by Graham McNeill

  ‘I’d bring in another Chapter of the Thirteenth Legion to stiffen its soldiers’ backs,’ said Kyro. ‘Then more artillery. At least three brigades. Maybe some cohorts of Modwen’s Thallax cyborgs. And Titans, can’t go wrong with Titans.’

  ‘Always so precise,’ laughed Alcade. ‘I’d ask you the time and you’d tell me how to build a watch.’

  ‘It’s why I was chosen to go to Mars,’ said Kyro.

  Ahead of the Stormbird, Lupercalia gouged into the mountains along a stepped valley of ochre stone. Six kilometres wide at its opening, the valley gradually narrowed as it ascended towards Mount Torger and the Citadel of Dawn, where Cyprian Devine ruled Molech with an admirably stern hand. The city’s walled defences were impressive to look at, but archaic and largely valueless against a foe with any real military ability.

  Previous Ultramarines commanders had done their best to alter them, employing the primarch’s Notes towards Martial Codification, but they faced resistance from an intransigent population.

  ‘I sense there’s more you want to say,’ said Alcade.

  ‘Can I speak freely, sir?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The problem with Molech isn’t the emplaced defences or its armed might, the problem is the embedded culture.’

  ‘Give me your theoretical, sorry, speculative.’

  ‘Very well. The way I see it, the people of Molech have been raised on tales of heroic Knights riding out to do battle in honourable contests of arms,’ said Kyro. ‘Their world hasn’t seen real fighting in centuries. They don’t know that massed armies of ordinary men with guns is the new reality. Numbers, logistics and planning are the determining factors in who wins and who dies.’

  ‘A grim view,’ said Alcade. ‘Especially for the Legions.’

  ‘An empirical view,’ said Kyro, tapping two fingers to the skull-stamped Ultima on his breastplate. ‘Ah, don’t mind me, sir, I was always best at envisaging worst-case scenarios. But if you’re right and the traitors do come to Molech, it’s not the Army regiments they’ll look to kill first.’

  ‘True, it will be us and Salicar’s Bloodsworn.’

  ‘We have three companies, and Emperor alone knows how many Blood Angels are on Molech.’

  ‘I’d say less than half our strength,’ said Alcade. ‘Vared spoke of Vitus Salicar being a warrior not overly given to the spirit of cooperation.’

  ‘So five hundred legionaries,’ said Kyro. ‘And hyperbole aside, that’s not enough to defend a planet. Therefore the primary burden of defending Molech has to fall on the Army regiments.’

  ‘They might be mortals, but there’s nearly fifty million fighting men and women on this planet. When war comes to Molech, it’ll be bloody beyond imagining, and it won’t be ended quickly.’

  ‘But in the final practical, mortals simply can’t resist massed Legion war, sir,’ said Kyro.

  ‘You don’t think nearly a hundred regiments can hold one of the Emperor’s worlds?’

  ‘What practical would you give any mortal army resisting Legion forces? Honestly? You know what they call it when baseline humans find themselves fighting warriors like us?’

  ‘Transhuman dread,’ said Alcade.

  ‘Transhuman dread, yes,’ agreed Kyro. ‘We’ve both seen it. Remember the breach at Parsabad? It was like the blood had frozen their veins. I almost felt sorry for the poor bastards we had to kill that day.’

  Alcade nodded. ‘It was like threshing wheat.’

  ‘Since when have the noble families of Macragge ever threshed their own wheat?’ said Kyro.

  ‘Never,’ agreed Alcade, ‘but I have seen picts of it.’

  Approach vectors appeared on the display slates in front of Kyro. Alcade fell silent as Sabaen Queen began its descent to the cavern hangar just below the great citadel at the valley’s heart.

  The chiming of threat warnings was constant, but Kyro shut them off as he brought the aircraft level with a booming flare of deceleration, followed by the jolt of landing claws meeting the ground.

  Alcade unsnapped his restraints and returned to the troop compartment, where fifty Ultramarines sat in banked rows along the aircraft’s centreline and fuselage. Kyro powered down the engines, letting the Stormbird reach its own equilibrium before releasing the locking mechanisms on the assault doors.

  As the ground crew rushed to tend the aircraft, Kyro unsnapped his own restraints and finished the last of his post-flight checks. He placed a fist over the aquila on the flight console then made the Icon Mechanicum to honour both Terra and Mars.

  ‘My thanks,’ he said before ducking into the troop compartment. Armoured in cobalt-blue and ivory, the five squads of Ultramarines were a fine sight indeed, mustered and ready to debark.

  The scents of scorched iron, hot engines and venting propellant blew in through lowered assault ramp, a heady mix that took Kyro back to the forge and the simple pleasure of shaping metal.

  Gathering the equipment cases containing his servo-harness, Kyro followed the line warriors down the ramp as landing menials and deck crew readied the Stormbird for her next flight.

  Didacus Theron was already waiting for them on the landing strip, and from the look on the centurion’s face the news he bore was of a dark hue. A low-born scrambler from Calth, he’d achieved high office within the Legion by virtue of saving the life of Tauro Nicodemus at Terioth Ridge nearly sixty years ago.

  ‘Grim tidings,’ said Theron, as the legate approached.

  ‘Speak,’ commanded Alcade.

  ‘Cyprian Devine is dead,’ said Theron, ‘but that’s not the worst of it.’

  ‘The Imperial commander is dead and that’s not the worst of it?’ said Kyro.

  ‘Not even close,’ said Theron. ‘The Five Hundred Worlds are under attack and the whoreson Warmaster is en route to Molech.’

  Icy winds howled over the steeldust hull of the Valkyrie, spiralling in ghostly vortices around its cooling engines. Vapour streamed from the leading edges of its wings and linked tailfin, making it look as though it was still in flight. Loken had instructed Rassuah to keep the engines’ fires banked to prevent them icing up completely. Though his armour kept the cold at bay, Loken shivered at the frozen desolation of the mountaintop.

  The Urals ran for nearly two and a half thousand kilometres, from the frozen reaches of Kara Oceanica to the ancient realm of the Kievan Rus Khaganate. Ahead, the towering forge spire of Mount Narodnaya was a hazed blur, wreathed in the smoke and lightning of mighty subterranean endeavours.

  The riches of these mountains had been plundered by a succession of peoples, but none to match the monumental scale of the Terrawatt Clan. Said to spring from the same root as the Mechanicum, its theologiteks had carved temples into the bones of the Urals during a technological dark age, where they weathered the fury of Old Night in splendid isolation until their very existence became a whispered legend.

  When the Terrawatt Clan finally emerged from their lair beneath the Kholat Syakhl, it was to find a planet ravaged by wars fought between monstrous ethnarchs and tyrants. As word of the Clan’s rebirth spread, petitioners came from across the globe to beg for their ancient wonders, offering bargains, treaties and threats in equal measure.

  But only one man came offering more than he sought to take.

  He called Himself Emperor, a title the Clan Aghas mocked until His vast knowledge of long forgotten technologies became apparent. His willingness to share these lost arts allied the Clan to His banner, and from their archives came many of the weapons that brought Old Earth to Unity. The entombed memory-cores of its eldest Aghas claimed it was their technology, not that of Mars, that precipitated the creation of the first proto-Astartes, a claim utterly refuted by the Mechanicum.

  Loken saw little evidence of technological wonder here, just a high ridge of black rock swathed in freezing mists and blustering ash clouds expelled from the buried Dyatlov forge complexes. The rocks were bare of vegetation, sharp-edged and utterly inimical to flora of any kind. Loken
turned on the spot, seeing nothing but the solitary landing platform upon which sat the Valkyrie.

  He checked the slate he carried, its edges already limned with a coating of pale, fibrous dust.

  ‘You’re sure this is the place?’ he asked.

  ‘I have a hunter’s eye, and I’ve flown from one side of Terra to the other on the Sigillite’s business,’ said Rassuah, her voice clipped and efficient. ‘And I’ve landed at the Seven Strong Men many times, Garviel Loken, so, yes, I’m sure this is the place.’

  ‘Then where is he?’

  ‘You are asking me?’ said Rassuah. ‘He’s one of yours. Shouldn’t you know?’

  ‘I never met him,’ said Loken.

  ‘Neither have I, so why do you think I’ll know?’

  Loken didn’t bother to answer. Rassuah was a mortal, but even Loken could tell there was more to her than met the eye. Her augmetics were subtly woven into a physique clearly honed by genetic modification and a rigorous regime of training. Everything about her spoke of excellence. Rassuah claimed to be a simple naval pilot, but smiled as she said it, as if daring Loken to contradict her.

  Her inscrutability, skin tone, eye shape and gloss-black hair suggested Panpacific genestock, but she’d never volunteered any information on her heritage, and Loken never asked.

  Rassuah had flown him from Old Himalazia to the northern reaches of the Urals to find the first member of Loken’s pathfinders, but it seemed that was going to be more difficult than anticipated.

  The man Loken had come to find was Sons of Horus and he…

  No, he wasn’t. He was a Luna Wolf.

  He hadn’t been part of the Legion when it took that first step on the road to treachery. Not a true son then, but he was a gene-brother, and Loken wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

  Yes, Iacton Qruze was one of his fellow Knights Errant, but he’d served with the Half-heard aboard the Vengeful Spirit when things had gone to hell. They had a shared experience of what their lost brothers had done that this warrior could never know.

  The wind dropped for a moment, and Loken peered through the stilled clouds of particulate matter, seeing dark outlines like towering giants frozen to the summit. Too tall to be anything living, they were like the heavy columns of some vast temple that had been eroded over centuries of exposure.

  He set off towards them, trudging through the wind-blown ash with long strides. The shapes emerged from the clouds, revealing themselves to be far larger than he had suspected, great pillars of banded rock like the megaliths of some tribal fane.

  Six of them clustered close together, none less than thirty metres tall, with a seventh set apart like an outcast. Some were narrow at the base, widening like spear blades before tapering towards their peaks. The wind howled through them in a keening banshee’s wail that set Loken’s teeth on edge.

  Static buzzed in his helmet, a side effect of the charged air from the unceasing industry beneath the mountains. Loken heard whistles, clicks and burps of distortion, and what sounded very much like soft breath.

  Garvi…

  Loken knew that voice and spun around, as if expecting to see his fallen comrade, Tarik Torgaddon, standing behind him. But he was utterly alone; even the Valkyrie’s outline growing indistinct in the fog.

  He was no longer sure if he’d heard the voice or imagined its existence. It had been an apparition of his murdered friend that had convinced Loken to leave the sanctuary of the lunar biodome, a memory that was growing ever fainter, like the fading echoes of a distant dream.

  Had that even happened, or was it a reflection of guilt and shame caught in the splintered shards of his tortured psyche?

  Loken had been dug from the ruins of Isstvan III a broken shell of a man, haunted by delusions and phantasmal nightmares. Garro had brought him back to Terra and given him fresh purpose, but could any man return from such an abyss without scars?

  He took a moment to balance his humours as bleeding whispers of what might have been vox-traffic drifted on the edge of hearing. Loken’s breath caught in his throat at its familiarity.

  He’d heard this kind of thing before.

  On Sixty-Three Nineteen.

  At the Whisperheads.

  Jubal’s horrifying transformation flashed before Loken’s eyes like a stuttering pict-feed and his hand dropped to the holstered bolt pistol. He thumbed the catch from its cover. He didn’t expect to draw it, but just resting his hand on its textured grip gave him comfort.

  Moving through the gargantuan rock formations, the squalling static whined and crackled to the rhythm of the ash storm. Did the pillars amplify the interference or was it a by-product of the hundreds of forge temples below him?

  The static abruptly cut out.

  ‘Do you know where you are?’ said a low voice, its accent guttural and hard-boned with palatal edges and rough vowels.

  ‘Tarik?’ said Loken.

  ‘No. Answer the question.’

  ‘The Urals,’ said Loken.

  ‘This particular mountain.’

  ‘I didn’t know it had a name.’

  ‘It’s called Manpupuner,’ said the voice. ‘I’m told it means little mountain of the gods in some dead language. The clans say these are the petrified corpses of the Seven Neverborn.’

  ‘Are you trying to frighten me with old legends?’

  ‘No. We were born here, did you realise that?’ continued the voice. ‘Not literally, of course, but the first breed of transhumans were made beneath this mountain.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Loken. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Closer than you think, but you’ll have to find me if you want to talk face to face,’ said the voice. ‘If you can’t manage that, then we’ll not speak at all.’

  ‘Malcador said you would help me,’ said Loken. ‘He didn’t say anything about having to prove myself.’

  ‘There’s a lot that crafty old man isn’t saying,’ said the voice. ‘Now let’s see if you’re as good as Qruze says you are.’

  The voice faded into a rising hash of static, and Loken pressed himself against the nearest rock pillar. Smooth where exposed to the wind, pitted where centuries of atmospheric pollutants had eaten away at the rock, the mass of stone was immense and loomed like the leg of a titanic war engine.

  He eased his head around its rounded corner, switching between variant perceptual modes. None of the spectra through which his helm cycled could penetrate the fog. Loken suspected deliberate artifice in its occluding properties.

  Something moved ahead of him, a half-glimpsed shadow of a cowled warrior with the swagger of complete confidence. Loken stepped away from the rock and gave chase. The brittle shale of the ground made stealth impossible, but that handicap would work against his enemy too. He reached where he thought the shadow had gone, but there was no sign of his quarry.

  The mists swelled and surged, and the cragged towers of the Seven Neverborn loomed in the fog as if advancing and retreating. Whispering voices sighed through the vox-static; names and long lists of numbers, tallies of things long dead. Echoes of a past swept away by a cataclysmic tide of war and unremembering.

  None were discernible, but the sound struck a mournful chord in Loken. He kept still, filtering out the voices, and trying to hear the telltale scrape of armour on stone, a footstep on gravel. Anything that might reveal a hidden presence. Given the nature of the man he was here to find, he wasn’t holding out much hope.

  ‘You’ve forgotten what Cthonia taught you,’ said the voice.

  It burbled up through the static in his helm; no use for pinpointing a location.

  ‘Maybe you remember a little too much,’ replied Loken.

  ‘I remember that it was kill or be killed.’

  ‘Is that what this is?’ said Loken, moving as slowly and quietly as he could.

  ‘I’m not going to kill you,’ said the voice. ‘But you’re here to try and get me killed. Aren’t you?’

  A flicker of movement in the mist to his right. Lo
ken didn’t react, but gently eased his course towards it.

  ‘I’m here because I need you,’ said Loken, finally understanding the nature of this place. ‘The Knights Errant? This is where you trained them to become the grey ghosts, isn’t it?’

  ‘I taught them all,’ said the voice. ‘But not you. Why is that?’

  Loken shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Because you are the warrior who stands in the light,’ said the voice, and Loken couldn’t decide if the words were meant in admiration or derision. ‘There’s nothing I can teach you.’

  The blurred outline of the cowled warrior stood in the lee of a gigantic stone pillar, confident he went unobserved. Loken held him loose in his peripheral vision, moving as though unaware of his presence. He closed to within five paces. He would never get a better chance.

  Loken leapt towards the source of the taunting voice.

  The hooded man’s outline came apart like ash in a storm.

  Over there, Garvi…

  Loken turned on the spot, in time to see an umbral after-image of a man moving between two of the Seven Neverborn across the summit. Loken caught a flash of skin, a tattoo. Not the cowled man.

  Whose voice was he hearing? Was he chasing ghosts?

  The legends of the Neverborn were garish scare stories of outrageous hyperbole like those recounted in The Chronicles of Ursh. They spoke about phantom armies of killing shadows, mist-born wraiths and nightmares that clawed their way from men’s skulls, but that wasn’t what Loken was up against.

  Cracks in his memory and a silent hunter were his foes here.

  ‘You’re going back, aren’t you? To Lupercal’s lair.’

  Loken didn’t waste breath wondering how the nature of his mission could already be known. Instead, he opted to prick his opponent’s vanity.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘And I need your help to get in.’

  ‘Getting in’s the easy part. It’s getting out that’s going to be a problem.’

  ‘Less of a problem if you join me.’

  ‘I don’t make a habit of going on suicide missions.’

  ‘Neither do I.’