Vengeful Spirit

by Graham McNeill

  The black and white of the Legio were the heraldic colours of Princeps Etana Kalonice, whose Mechanicum forebears had piloted the first engines on Ryza.

  The heat from its weapons hazed the air, and Raeven blinked away tears of exhaustion.

  Connection fatigue made his bones ache, made every part of him ache. Broken glass ground in his joints and the stabbing pain behind his eyes was like something trying to burrow out from the centre of his brain. Fluids recycled around his body many more times than was healthy had kept him alive, but were now poisoning him.

  A patrolling squadron of scout Sentinels found Raeven staggering from the tree line overlooking the army. They turned heavy flamers and multi-lasers on him, and he readied his own weapons in response before the proper protocols were issued and returned.

  ‘Get me to the Sacristans,’ wheezed Raeven.

  He lost track of time. Or it slipped away from him.

  Either way, he remembered falling from Banelash’s opened carapace, rough hands – metal hands – lifting him down and carrying him to his pavilion.

  Lyx was waiting for him, but the hurt look in her eyes only made him smile. He liked hurting her, and couldn’t think why. She asked questions he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. His answers made no sense anyway.

  Needles stabbed his flesh. Toxic blood was siphoned from him and fresh litres washed in. Pain balms soothed his ground glass joints, smoothed his rough edges.

  Time fractured, moved out of joint. He heard angry voices and chattering machines. He actually felt fluids moving through him, as though he was a great pumping station over the promethium wells at Ophir. Sucking up immense breaths of fuel and spitting it out into the great silos.

  The image of himself as a vast pump pleased him.

  No, not a pump – an engine. An agent of change that drove the lifeblood of the planet around its myriad systems. Infrastructure as circulatory system.

  Yes, that was the metaphor he liked.

  Raeven looked down. His arm was dark iron, a pistoning length of machinery thick with grease and hydraulic fluids. Promethium coated his arms and he imagined sitting up as it gushed from his mouth in a flaming geyser. His other arm was a writhing pipe, plunging deep into the ground and gurgling with fluids pumped up from the depths of the planet.

  He was connected to Molech’s core…

  The enormity of that thought was too much and his stomach rebelled. That one man could be so intimately connected with the inner workings of an entire world was a concept beyond his grasp. His mind plunged into the depths of the planet, streaking faster than light, past its many layers until shattering through the core and emerging, phoenix-like from the other side…

  Raeven gasped for air, gulping in swelling lungfuls.

  A measure of clarity came with the oxygen.

  Lofty metaphors of planetary connection and bodily infrastructure diminished. With every breath, Raeven’s awareness of his surroundings pulled a little more into focus. He mouth tasted of metal and perfume, dry and with a mucus film clinging to the back of his throat.

  Raeven was no stranger to mind-expanding narcotics. Shargali-Shi’s venoms had allowed him to travel beyond his skull often enough to recognise the effects of a powerful hallucinogen. He’d had his share of balms too. Hunting the great beasts took a willingness to suffer pain, and Cyprian had beaten an acceptance of pain into him as a child.

  The balms he could understand, but hallucinogens?

  Why would the Sacristans administer hallucinogens?

  ‘What did you give me?’ he asked, knowing at least one Sacristan was nearby. Some Medicae staff too most likely from the sound of low voices, shuffling footsteps and the click of machinery.

  No one answered.

  ‘I said, what did you give me?’

  ‘Naga venom mixed with some potent ergot derivative,’ said a voice that couldn’t possibly be here. Raeven tried to move his head to bring the speaker into his line of sight, but there was something wrong.

  ‘Can’t move?’

  ‘No, why is that?’

  ‘That’ll be the muscle relaxants.’

  A hissing, clanking sound came from behind Raeven and he rolled his eyes to see an old man looking down at him. The face he didn’t recognise at first, clean shaven and greasy with healing agents.

  But the voice, ah, no mistaking that voice.

  Or the hissing, clanking exo-suit encasing his wasted limbs.

  ‘I’m still hallucinating,’ said Raeven. ‘You can’t be here.’

  ‘I assure you I am most definitely here,’ said Albard Devine, his one good eye fluttering as though finding it difficult to keep focus. ‘It’s taken forty years, but I’m finally here to take back what’s rightfully mine.’

  His stepbrother wore clothes several sizes too large for him. They hung from his bony frame like rags. The laurels of an Imperial commander were pinned to his lapel.

  ‘You can’t do this, Albard,’ said Raeven. ‘Not now.’

  ‘If not now, then when?’

  ‘Listen, you don’t need to do this,’ said Raeven, trying to keep the panic from his voice. ‘We can work something out, yes?’

  ‘Are you actually trying to bargain for your life?’ laughed Albard; a wheezing, racking cough of a sound. ‘After all you stole from me, all you did to me? Forty years of torture and neglect and you think you’re going to talk your way out of this?’

  ‘That exo-suit,’ said Raeven, stalling for time. ‘It’s mother’s isn’t it?’

  ‘Cebella was your mother, not mine.’

  ‘She’s not going to like that you’re wearing it.’

  ‘Don’t worry, she doesn’t need it anymore.’

  ‘You killed her?’ said Raeven, though he’d already come to that conclusion. Death was the only way Cebella Devine would be parted from her exo-suit. But he needed more time; for the Dawn Guard to realise there was a snake in their midst, for Lyx to return.

  Someone, anyone.

  ‘I cut your mother’s throat,’ said Albard, leaning close enough for Raeven to smell his corpse breath. ‘She bled out in my lap. It was almost beautiful in its own way.’

  Raeven nodded, and then stopped when he realised what he’d done.

  Either Albard didn’t notice or didn’t care that he’d moved, too lost in the reverie of his stepmother’s murder. The muscle relaxants were wearing off. Slowly. Raeven wasn’t going to be wrestling a mallahgra anytime soon, but surely he’d be strong enough to overcome a cripple in an exo-suit?

  ‘Where’s Lyx?’ asked Raeven. ‘Or did you kill her too?’

  ‘She’s alive.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘She’s here,’ said Albard, leaning down to adjust the medical table on which Raeven was lying. ‘Trust me, I don’t want her to miss out on what’s going to happen next.’

  Someone moved behind Raeven and the table rotated on its central axis, bringing him vertical. A restraint band around his waist kept him from falling flat on his face. A pair of Dawn Guard stood at the entrance to the pavilion, and a gaggle of Sacristans worked at the machines supposedly restoring him to health.

  His heart sank at the sight of the armoured soldiers. Their loyalty was enshrined in law to the scion of House Devine, and with Albard abroad from his tower, they were his to command.

  The men flanked Lyx, her hands fettered and her eyes wide with incomprehension. A gag filled her mouth and tears streaked her cheeks.

  ‘What’s the matter, Lyx?’ said Albard, lurching with the unfamiliar gait of the exo-suit. ‘The future not playing out as you planned it? Reality not matching your visions?’

  He ripped the gag from her mouth and threw it aside.

  She spat in his face. He slapped her, the metal encasing his hand tearing the skin of her cheek. Blood mingled with her tears.

  ‘Don’t you touch her!’ shouted Raeven.

  ‘Lyx was my wife before she was yours,’ said Albard. ‘It’s been a long time, but I seem to remember her liking that sort
of thing.’

  ‘Look, you want to be Imperial commander, yes?’ said Raeven. ‘You’re wearing the laurel on your lapel, I see that. Fine, yes, fine, you can be commander, of course you can. You’re the firstborn son of Cyprian Devine. The position’s yours. I give you it, have it.’

  ‘Shut up, Raeven!’ screamed Lyx. ‘Offer him nothing!’

  Raeven ignored her.

  ‘Be Imperial commander, brother. Lyx and I will leave, you’ll never hear from us. We’ll go south, over the mountains to the Tazkhar steppe, you’ll never see us again.’

  Albard listened to the rush of words without expression. Eventually he held up his hand.

  ‘You’re offering me what’s already mine,’ said Albard. ‘By right of birth and, well, let’s just call it right of arms.’

  ‘Shut your mouth, Raeven!’ howled Lyx, her face beautiful in her tears and pain. ‘Don’t give him anything! He killed our son!’

  ‘Ah, yes, didn’t I mention that?’ said Albard.

  Every molecule of air left Raeven’s body. As surely as if a pneumatic press had crushed him flat. He couldn’t breathe, his lungs screamed for air. First Egelic and Banan, and now Osgar. Grief warred with anger. Anger crushed grief without mercy.

  ‘You bastard!’ screamed Raeven. ‘I’ll kill you! I’ll hang your entrails from the Devine Towers. I’ll mount your head on Banelash’s canopy!’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Albard, pressing a hand down on Raeven’s chest. ‘The drugs coursing around your body came from Osgar’s supply. Such a good boy, he always came to visit his poor deranged uncle in his tower. Kept me informed of the comings and goings around Lupercalia, how Shargali-Shi’s devotions to the White Naga were spreading to his cousins in the Knights.’

  Seeing Raeven’s horror at the mention of the Serpent Cult’s avatar, Albard grinned. The resemblance to a leering skull was uncanny.

  ‘He didn’t say that every one of your Knights is a devotee of the Serpent Cult?’ said Albard. ‘Didn’t mention that they were no longer loyal to you, but to the cult? No? Well, you always did see Osgar as the runt of the litter, didn’t you? No taste for fighting, though I’m given to understand he was a hellion in the debauches.’

  Raeven tried to struggle against his bindings, but even with the tiny control he’d regained, it wasn’t enough.

  ‘Osgar even smuggled stimms and the like past Cebella’s Sacristans from time to time. Such a shame I had to kill him. As much as he had a fondness for indulging his insane old uncle, I don’t think he’d forgive me killing both of you. And I think you’ll agree that your deaths are long overdue.’

  ‘You can’t do this,’ pleaded Lyx. ‘I am the Devine Adoratrice, I saw the future. It can’t end this way! I saw Raeven turn the tide of the war, I saw him!’

  ‘You’re wrong, Lyx,’ said Albard, ‘Osgar told me you never actually saw Raeven in your visions. You saw Banelash.’

  Albard nodded to the Dawn Guard holding Lyx.

  The soldier forced her to her knees and placed the barrel of his bolt pistol against her head.

  ‘I saw–’ Lyx began, but a gunshot abruptly ended her words.

  ‘No!’ bellowed Raeven as Lyx fell forward with a smoking crater in the back of her skull. ‘Throne damn you, Albard! You didn’t have to do that… no, no, no… you didn’t… please no!’

  Albard turned from Lyx’s body, and drew a hunting knife from a leather sheath at his waist.

  ‘Now it’s your turn, Raeven,’ he said. ‘This won’t be quick, and I promise it will be agonising.’

  NINETEEN

  Casualties of war

  The order is given

  The Stormlord rides

  The transit was thick with bolter shells. They spanked from projecting stanchions and blasted portions of the walls away. Across from Loken, Qruze ducked back into cover and ejected the magazine from his weapon. The barrel drooled smoke and heat.

  Qruze slapped a fresh load into the weapon. He shouted to Loken.

  ‘Get in the damn fight!’

  Loken shook his head. This was all wrong.

  More shots filled the corridor leading to the armoury. A security detail of Sons of Horus – together with a number of Mechanicum adepts – were inside, hunkered behind a bulwark designed to prevent an enemy from seizing the stockpile of ammunition, weapons and explosives.

  A grenade detonated nearby. Fragments of hot iron pinged from his armour. A few embedded. None penetrated.

  ‘Loken, for Cthonia’s sake, shoot!’ shouted Qruze.

  The bolter in his hands felt like a relic dug up by the Conservatory. Something fascinating to look at, but whose purpose was alien and unknown. He could no more bring the gun to bear than he could understand the mechanisms of the machine that crafted it.

  ‘Loken!’

  The pathfinders had encountered the Sons of Horus en route to mark the armoury for a tertiary torpedo strike. Guiding futharc sigils had been scraped into the wall, warning assault teams away, and they’d paused for Tubal Cayne to divine a path towards a nearby ordnance signum array.

  Severian and Karayan were scouting potential routes when the Sons of Horus had marched straight into the radial hub.

  The watch sector had been Loken’s, but he’d missed them.

  He hadn’t heard them or even been aware of their approach.

  Lost in contemplation of a painted Eye of Horus on the opposite bulkhead and trying not to listen to the scratch of voices at the periphery of hearing.

  The first he’d known of the enemy was when their sergeant called out, demanding identification. Stupid, he should have shot first.

  Mutual surprise was all that saved the pathfinders.

  Neither force had expected to encounter the other. The fleeting shock was just enough time for Loken to raise the alarm.

  The Sons of Horus regrouped down the radial corridor towards the armoury as Altan Nohai and Bror Tyrfingr had opened fire.

  ‘Contact!’ reported Cayne.

  Qruze leaned out and fired a short burst.

  ‘Come on, Loken,’ he shouted between bursts. ‘I need you with me to go forward!’

  The hard bangs of bolter fire and the chugging beat of an emplaced autocannon filled the transit with a storm of solid rounds. Ricochets bounced madly from the walls. A shell fragment deformed the metal beside Loken’s helmet.

  He gripped his bolter, his grip threatening to crush the stock.

  This isn’t right.

  The Sons of Horus were traitors, the Warmaster the Arch-traitor.

  But these are your brothers. You accepted their brotherhood, and swore to return it as a brother.

  ‘No,’ he hissed, slamming the bolter against the faceplate of his helmet. ‘No, they’re traitors and they deserve to die.’

  You are a Son of Horus. So is Iacton. So is Severian. Kill them and kill yourself if you would damn all of Lupercal’s lineage!

  Loken fought to keep the voice out.

  The vox crackled.

  ‘Go when you hear us,’ said Severian.

  Assaulting an armoury was a sure-fire way to end up facing some extremely potent ordnance, but what choice did they have?

  ‘Tubal? Only two ways in or out?’ shouted Qruze.

  Cayne nodded, sweeping through layers of deck schematics. ‘Yes, according to the extant plans.’

  ‘Both covered?’

  ‘Voitek and Rubio are blocking the other one,’ said Varren, not shooting, but ready with his chainaxe.

  ‘So they’re not getting out,’ said Qruze. ‘But they’ll be voxing for help right now.’

  ‘Voitek is employing a vox-jammer,’ said Cayne, zooming in on the image of their current location.

  ‘How long before the adepts burn though it?’ asked Zaven, firing down the transit to the armoury. ‘And is anyone else even slightly concerned that we’re shooting into an armoury?’

  ‘Eighteen seconds till burn through,’ answered Cayne. ‘So long as you don’t hit anything sensitive in there
we should be fine.’

  ‘Sensitive?’ said Bror. ‘Hjolda! It’s a bloody armoury, everything’s sensitive!’

  ‘On the contrary, I think you’ll find–’ began Cayne, but Qruze shut him up.

  ‘Stow it,’ said Qruze, glancing over at Loken. ‘Everyone keep shooting and be ready.’

  ‘You said the armoury has only two exits?’ said Zaven.

  ‘Yes,’ confirmed Cayne.

  ‘So how’s Severian getting in?’

  ‘Ready?’ said Severian.

  Karayan nodded and Severian set the timer for two seconds.

  They rolled aside as the graviton grenade detonated with a pulse of energy that made him sick to his stomach. An orb of anomalous gravitational energy swelled to a diameter of exactly a metre and increased the local mass of steel girders and air-circulation units within the reinforced ceiling void a thousand-fold.

  A sphere of ultra-dense material compacted in on itself like the heart of a neutron star and fell into the armoury with the force of an Imperator Titan’s footfall.

  Karayan was first through the hole, dropping into the armoury like a weighted shadow. Severian followed him an instant later. He landed at the edge of the crater punched in the deck and brought his bolter up.

  The enemy reacted to the intruders in their midst quicker than Severian would have liked. They were Sons of Horus, what else could he expect? Severian put a bolt into the nearest, displacing and ripping a burst through another. Return fire chased him.

  Karayan favoured knifework. His non-reflective blade found the gap between a sergeant’s helmet and his gorget. He plunged and twisted. Blood sprayed. He moved on, diving, rolling, using the walls and floor. His knife killed the Mechanicum adepts. Chemical fumes misted the air. Floodstreams painted the walls with brackish, oily fluids.

  Severian took a knee and pumped another three shots out.

  Two legionaries dropped, the third brought an energised buckler around in time to deflect the bolt. Severian’s surprise almost cost him his life. The warrior was too bulky, had too many arms.

  Forge lord. Manipulator harness.

  He leapt at Severian, a photonic combat blade on a mechanised limb arcing for his neck. Severian threw up his bolter and the blade carved through it. Slowed enough for his armour to take the hit. A second and third arm snapped at his helm and shoulder. Severian barged forward, elbow cracking into the forge lord’s faceplate.