by John French
Kord let out a breath and brought his hands up to run them across his mouth. The chains rattled from the manacles circling his wrists. The cell was small, a single cot crammed into a box of rockcrete, and sealed behind a heavy plasteel door. It had been… he was not sure how long it had been since he had climbed from War Anvil to a waiting circle of gun muzzles. They had fed him and let him sleep before starting this; at least for that he was relieved if not grateful.
He looked up at the brigadier, whose eyes were steady on his face. Menoetius stood just behind her. The Iron Hand’s armour filled the cramped space with a buzz like active engines and electricity. He had said nothing since the pair had entered, but just watched and listened. Of the two Kord found the Space Marine’s silence and stillness by far the most disturbing. He looked back at Sussabarka.
‘We were attacked somewhere to the south. We lost most of our–’
‘I did not ask how you are here. I asked why.’
‘We were not an extended patrol.’
‘You are Colonel Silas Kord, commander of the reborn Seventy-First, latterly of the Seventy-First Tallarn?’ Her expression added the words ‘mongrel, and scrap regiment’ without her needing to say them. ‘Operating out of the Crescent Shelter complex?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Then why, colonel, are you nearly a thousand kilometres from the Crescent Shelter? And why were your units recorded as lost over eight weeks ago?’ She said the words softly, stepping forward, so that she could lean down to speak to him close to his face. ‘The Tallarn Seventy-First was deployed on a standard extended sweep patrol. It should have been back under earth and all of its crew tucked up forty-eight hours later, but none of them came back. No signals received, nothing. Another patrol found the wreck of an Executioner from the Seventy-First a week later. I had to monopolise some of our very limited signal capacity to confirm this. So that leads us back to the question of why you are here.’
She kept her head close to him, as if waiting to catch a whisper. Kord said nothing for a moment. He remembered the Crow Call peeling away from them when he had given the choice of following, or returning to the shelter. So none of them lived, not even those who had refused to follow him. He refocused his thoughts on the present. The brigadier wanted answers. He could not fault that need, even if he did not like her. The truth, though, was something that he was sure would not help take the chains from his wrists.
‘We strayed off course, couldn’t find our way back. Then we got hit, and we headed here because we heard there was a shelter.’
‘A shelter?’ She stood up, the disbelief in her voice and on her face too sharp to be feigned. ‘You know what this is, don’t you?’ He shrugged, and glanced back at Menoetius. The Space Marine did not seem to respond. ‘It is the Rachab, the Buried Mountain, stronghold of the Governor Militant, and the last place that a missing unit from the surface should stumble over. If we lose this battle, this will be the last place to fall. Making sure of that is my duty. Six days ago the Governor Militant was assassinated out in the world above by people who were supposed to be above suspicion. So, you see, Colonel Kord,’ she crouched down, and leaned back in so that he could smell the recaff on her breath. ‘I do not like nomads stumbling onto our doorstep with lies on their tongues.’
‘We simply came for shelter.’
She smiled, a crooked slash of teeth under her gun-barrel eyes.
‘I spoke to a colonel on the Crescent Command Staff. A man called Fask. The only reason he could plausibly think for someone called Kord being this far off his mark was if he were chasing some theory about a ghost patrol and patterns of enemy action. He said that if that was what had brought Kord here and cost him all but two machines of his command, that it would be kind to shoot him now.’ She folded the smile back into a hard line. ‘But that is only if you are who you say you are, and not… something else. Either way I do not like your answers.’
Kord dipped his head, took a breath, and rubbed his thumbs against his eyelids. Coloured smudges bloomed in the brief blackness. When he looked up Sussabarka was looking down at him, expectation held in her stare
‘We were attacked to the south…’ he said. The brigadier let out a sigh, and gave a small shake of her head then turned, and rapped on the door. It opened and Kord saw the guard standing on the other side of the threshold. The brigadier took a step through, turned and looked back at Kord.
‘I do not need to hear the truth, even if you decide to tell it to me,’ she said. ‘Whether you are a spy, or just a renegade, the answer will be the same. You will have time to think about that. All the time there is in fact.’ She stepped out of the cell. A moment later Menoetius followed. Just before the door sealed again, Kord saw the Iron Hand look back at him, a look that he could not begin to read in the flint-grey eyes.
‘Arm,’ he commanded.
The guns of the Cyllaros armed. Hrend felt it as soon as he said it, a hot blurred feeling spreading through him. For an eye-blink he thought he felt the rounds snap into breeches, and charges into focus chambers, in every weapon in every remaining machine. He tried to ignore the feeling. They spread out slowly. Hrend walked forward.
Sand and dust rattled against his iron skin. Above him the dust storm rose from the dun-coloured ground to the azure sky. Seen with clear sight it was a rolling cliff the colour of rust and snow. Flashes of lightning scored through its core. Hrend could feel the charge within it itching his sensors.
‘You see them?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Jarvak replied.
The dust and scoured rocks shifted like snow beneath his tread. The wind was rising. Snakes of dust were sliding across the ground. He kept his gaze on the storm wall. His weapons were ready. They had been ready from the moment he had seen the ghosts in the storm. At first he had thought they were simply shadows in the storm, scattered images created by the churning dust. Then one had briefly solidified into the shape of a tank, its silhouette swallowed as soon as it had appeared. Then he had seen more, each one a different size and in a different place, but every time he saw them they were closer.
‘I have no sensor readings.’
‘We should fire.’
‘Hold.’ He spoke the word as much for himself as the others. His world narrowed to the threat markers tracking the oncoming shapes. His weapon systems felt warm. He shifted. The fingers of his fists clacked shut and opened. He did not register the movement. The guns that were part of him were aching. ‘Hold,’ he said again.
‘It could be an entire army group,’ said a voice he could not identify. It did not matter. All that mattered was the building pain around the muzzles of his guns.
‘All the more reason not to shoot.’ That was Jarvak. At least he thought… He forced a thought to form in his mind.
‘Signal them,’ he growled.
‘Unknown units identify yourselves.’ The ghost shapes grew in the rolling wall of dust, shapes hardening into hulls of war machines, into gun barrels, and tracks.
‘Do we fire?’
‘Hold.’ The heat was bleeding through him.
‘Do we fire?’
Fire… Fire… Fire… The word echoed and rolled through him, like a drumbeat, like a heartbeat that had become his.
Fire…
The metal of his bones was aching. There was lightning under his skin. He was nothing. He was half a being, an empty skin hung like a banner in a dry wind.
Fire… We only live… in fire…
And above him a black sun hung in the half-dream of his thoughts, scattering light that cast no shadow. It grew, swelling, and bloating, and he had to fire, had to allow the shadow of destruction to become part of the world. The black sun swallowed him and he was…
Standing before the memory of Perturabo.
‘You will be given a… guide, to lead you, and your cadre will go with you, but you will be alone.’ The hard edge
had returned to Perturabo’s voice, and his eyes had seemed to sink back into the stillness of his face. ‘There are eyes within our allies that watch us, and look for weakness in us. They are all around us, never blinking, never sleeping.’ The primarch turned and began to move away as one the Iron Circle moved to enclose him. ‘They cannot know of this. Even those that go with you should know only what they need. No other, even those within the Legion, may know what you do for me.’
‘I will find it, my master.’
‘Others looked. Others failed.’
‘I will not fail.’
‘Unknown units identify yourselves.’ Jarvak’s challenge rang across the vox. The image of his father was gone. The black sun was gone. He felt nothing, the embrace of his metal body cold without sensation. For an instant he felt loss. The dust wind was streaking past, swallowing the edges of everything in sight. The cliff-face of the storm was above, its crest flickering with dry lightning. The ghosts advancing with the storm were no longer ghosts, they were war machines of the Legiones Astartes. Three machines rolled forward as though riding with the wind, a Venator, a Sicaran and the slope-fronted slab of a Land Raider. Their armour was metallic blue, the edges of their armour plates rubbed to bright metal. Etched serpents reared across their plates. Numerals and archaic letters ran in neat rows down white bands painted along their flanks. Hrend did not recognise the unit markings or even the organisational structure they conformed to. But he recognised who they were.
They were scions of the last born: Alpha Legion.
The three Alpha Legion vehicles halted. Hrend switched to infra-sight in time to see that their weapons were hot, held at full charge.
‘Harrow Group Arcadus, Twentieth Legion.’ The voice came over the vox, filled with a pop and snarl of distortion. ‘We see you, brothers.’
‘Signal identifiers confirm,’ said Jarvak. Hrend said nothing, watching as heat bled into the surrounding air from the Alpha Legion tanks. The wind gusted and the ochre swirl of dust enveloped them. The sky above was gone, and with it the sun.
‘How are you here?’ he asked at last.
‘May I not ask the same question first, ancient?’ came the reply, the voice smooth and confident.
‘I am not of the ancients,’ he replied.
‘My apologies. I am Thetacron. Who do I address?’
‘How are you here?’ he repeated.
Hes-Thal’s sight had guided them on through desolation after the battle of the pass. They had not seen even the signs of the dead for a very long time. In his sight the targeting runes blinked between red and amber above the three Alpha Legion machines, the words of Perturabo rising from memory.
There are eyes within our allies that watch us, and look for weakness in us. They are all around us, never blinking, never sleeping.
‘We hit an enemy patrol on the other side of this depression,’ said the voice which had named itself Thetacron. Casual arrogance dripped from his tones. ‘We are moving back across towards a hold position.’
‘You move with the storm?’ asked Jarvak.
‘We are the storm.’
Hrend pivoted his head. Data from his sensors flickered as they tried to claw detail from the swirl of charged dust.
‘You can navigate through it?’
‘Of course,’ Thetacron replied, paused, then carried on. ‘From the damage I can see on your machines, you must have taken casualties. We also are below strength. Where are you bound?’
A line of lightning cracked above them, turning the ochre swirl to sheet white.
Hrend could feel the tension in the situation itching against his instincts.
‘South,’ he said.
‘With the storm wind,’ said Thetacron. ‘We share a path. We will join with you.’
‘Master?’ Jarvak’s voice cut through the vox, low, insistent.
‘If you wish to keep moving through the storm we can guide you.’
The moment lengthened, and the wind tugged sheets of dust across them.
‘That is acceptable,’ he said.
‘Master…’
‘Good,’ said Thetacron. ‘You are the greater strength, you have our command. Who is it that we have the honour of following?’
‘I am Hrend,’ he said.
Argonis’s prison was a cube of plasteel, without seam or rivet. He had entered through a single door as thick as tank armour, and had heard a cascade of locks turn when it closed. Air seeped in and out from holes around the door no wider than a child’s finger. They had taken his armour, of course, and left him with a robe of grey fabric. Water and nutrition paste came through tubes mounted on the door, though he could have lived without both for many months. The door had remained shut since he had entered, and he had no reason to suppose that it would open again. They were watching him though. A pict-lens and sensor blister sat behind a crystal dome at the centre of the ceiling.
He supposed that this state of isolation might have caused panic, or the mind to begin to eat itself with uncontrolled emotion. For Argonis, his mind became focused, his emotions stilled.
The mysteries that had made him allowed no other response. He had failed, but while that weighed on his thoughts it was secondary. First and foremost he had to plan, had to find a way of turning this situation. That there was hope of doing so did not matter. Hope was one thing that he did not need to live.
They had not killed him. Deceiving the Warmaster was one thing, killing his emissary was another. The fact that they had resisted crossing that line implied that this was not treachery in the simple sense. If Perturabo had intended to move against Horus in the future, killing his representative would have been a simple thing. Holding him prisoner held more risk, but also opened the implication that Perturabo wanted to keep what he was doing secret from the Warmaster now. There were many possibilities as to why that might be, but one stood out more clearly than all the rest as Argonis considered them.
They have not succeeded in whatever their true purpose on Tallarn is, and if the Warmaster knew that purpose he might stop them before it was complete.
What that purpose was remained unknown, a shape suggested by the few details that Sota-Nul had told him before they were taken.
Black Oculus, ghost patrols, path seekers… the words resonated with implication but without clear conclusion. He thought of the words that Maloghurst had spoken to him before he had left the Vengeful Spirit.
Horus had not been present, but his throne with its empty chair had loomed in Argonis’s awareness as though his gene-father had been sitting there, silent, his eyes turned away in reproach.
‘Find out what they are doing,’ Maloghurst had said, looking down at him from beside the empty throne.
‘Cannot we just ask?’ Argonis had kept his voice respectful, but he had pointedly not bowed his head to the Equerry. He might speak for the primarch, but he was not Horus, and Argonis had been one of Abaddon’s chieftains for more than enough time to find making obeisance to Maloghurst a line that he would not cross, even now.
‘We can ask, but there are answers and answers.’
‘The Lord of Iron has always been stalwart in his backing for the Warmaster.’
‘He has, but we live in times when presumption is as dangerous as cowardice.’ Maloghurst left the word hanging at the tail of his words. Argonis felt the muscles tick in his jaws. ‘Besides, this engagement of his is sucking in and spending forces at a rate which must be justified. It is a hungry battle he is fighting, and we are fighting a war in which we cannot let such strength be spent blindly.’
‘What do you suspect?’
‘Suspect?’ A rattling smile had been in that word. ‘I suspect nothing. I fear everything. That is my great virtue. Find out what they are doing there, and why.’
‘If the reason is simple?’
‘Then impress on them that this battle cannot
last for all time.’
Argonis had wanted to shake his head. It was not that he was being sent on a mission that was so clearly a punishment concealed in an honour, it was that it felt dirty, tainted by subterfuge. After all that had happened, all the bonds of brotherhood severed, and the blood on all their hands, such a sense perhaps should not have mattered to him. It did matter to him, though. It mattered a great deal.
Maloghurst had watched him with wet, pale eyes while the instincts of honour and obedience warred behind Argonis’s face.
‘This is the Warmaster’s will?’ he asked at last.
‘To the letter and word.’
‘And if there is… something else, some reason that is not simple?’
‘Bring them to heel,’ said Maloghurst.
Argonis had been able to hide the disbelief on his face. How was he supposed to bring a system-killing force, led by a primarch, to heel?
Maloghurst had heard both the disbelief and the question in Argonis’s silence, and his eyes had sparkled cold, as he raised a hand and a pair of figures had drifted from the shadows. They had come to a halt beside Maloghurst: a black-robed spectre, and a green-robed man with a head locked in iron. Maloghurst had raised his other hand. Between his armoured fingers he held a key with twisted teeth.
‘You will not go alone,’ he had said.
Argonis thought of the key, taken along with his weapons and armour. Sota-Nul and Prophesius too, taken and imprisoned, or so he presumed. He would need them both, if he was to complete the mission his primarch had given him. It was not in his nature to accept the possibility of failure, but as the time had passed in the cell he had felt its presence growing in his awareness.
‘This is a chance, Argonis,’ Maloghurst had said, as he had handed him the standard of the Eye of Horus. ‘A chance for forgiveness, or oblivion. Which will it be?’