The Crimson Fist

by John French

  The Horus Heresy

  It is a time of legend.

  The galaxy is in flames. The Emperor’s glorious vision for humanity is in ruins. His favoured son, Horus, has turned from his father’s light and embraced Chaos.

  His armies, the mighty and redoubtable Space Marines, are locked in a brutal civil war. Once, these ultimate warriors fought side by side as brothers, protecting the galaxy and bringing mankind back into the Emperor’s light. Now they are divided.

  Some remain loyal to the Emperor, whilst others have sided with the Warmaster. Pre-eminent amongst them, the leaders of their thousands-strong Legions, are the primarchs. Magnificent, superhuman beings, they are the crowning achievement of the Emperor’s genetic science. Thrust into battle against one another, victory is uncertain for either side.

  Worlds are burning. At Isstvan V, Horus dealt a vicious blow and three loyal Legions were all but destroyed. War was begun, a conflict that will engulf all mankind in fire. Treachery and betrayal have usurped honour and nobility. Assassins lurk in every shadow. Armies are gathering.

  All must choose a side or die.

  Horus musters his armada, Terra itself the object of his wrath. Seated upon the Golden Throne, the Emperor waits for his wayward son to return. But his true enemy is Chaos, a primordial force that seeks to enslave mankind to its capricious whims.

  The screams of the innocent, the pleas of the righteous resound to the cruel laughter of Dark Gods. Suffering and damnation await all should the Emperor fail and the war be lost.

  The age of knowledge and enlightenment has ended.

  The Age of Darkness has begun.

  ~ DRAMATIS PERSONAE ~

  The Primarchs

  Rogal Dorn, Primarch of the Imperial Fists, Praetorian of Terra

  Perturabo, Primarch of the Iron Warriors

  The VII Legion ‘Imperial Fists’

  Sigismund, First Captain

  Amandus Tyr, Captain, 6th Company, Commander of the Halcyon

  Pertinax, Captain, 14th Company, Commander of the Hammer of Terra

  Alexis Polux, Captain, 405th Company, Master of the Retribution Fleet

  Raln, Sergeant, 1st Squad, 405th Company

  The IV Legion ‘Iron Warriors’

  Berossus, Captain, 2nd Company

  Golg, Captain, 11th Company, Commander of the Contrador

  Imperial Personae

  Armina Fel, Senior Astropath

  Calio Lezzek, The Retribution Fleet’s Master of Astropaths

  Halm Basus, Primus of the Tribune

  ‘True strength is born in pain.’

  – Ancient Terran proverb

  ‘All time is unredeemable.

  What might have been is an abstraction

  Remaining a perpetual possibility

  Only in a world of speculation.

  What might have been and what has been

  Point to one end, which is always present.

  Footfalls echo in the memory

  Down the passage which we did not take

  Towards the door we never opened’

  – from burnt fragments recovered from the Alba archives, attributed to the ancient poet Elliot

  ‘We are future memories. When our flesh is dust and our dreams faded we will be ghosts living in a land of legends, made real only by the memories of others. What we take with us into that realm of the dead, what we are remembered for, that will be the truth of our lives.’

  – Solomon Voss, from The Edge of Illumination

  Prologue

  The Nightside of Inwit

  Can I bear this?

  My world has become a shrinking sphere of cold darkness. Within there is only pain, beyond it there is nothing but hungering night. I cannot see. Ice has pooled in my eye sockets, my tears frozen against my skin. I try to breathe but each sip of air draws razor edges through my lungs. I cannot feel my hands. Numbness is spreading through me. I think I am on the ground, curled on the ice, my limbs shaking more slowly with every fading heartbeat.

  The beast must be close. It won’t have given up and it has my blood to follow.

  My blood.

  I must still be bleeding. It is not a large wound, a clean puncture through my calf, but it will kill me all the same. I have trailed red across the ice-dunes, trying to shut out the pain, trying to ignore the numbness, trying to keep moving. I have failed. The cold is taking me and the beast will have what is left.

  I cannot bear this.

  I was never going to succeed. I am not strong enough.

  The world is turning dark, the pain fading.

  There is a voice shouting out of the black distance. I try to hear what the voice is saying but it is too far away.

  Hands grip my face. Pain shoots through my head. I scream. Fingers peel back my eyelids.

  ‘Alexis, you must move.’ I see a face, surrounded by rime-caked fur. The eyes are blue, the blue of glacial ice. Helias. It is Helias, my brother. He is still with me. Behind his face a blizzard fills the starlit sky with spiralling shards of white.

  ‘You must move now.’ I feel him grip my arms and yank me to my feet. Bright pain flares through my body, jagged-edged, slicing and grinding with every movement. I scream again.

  ‘The pain is how you know you are still alive,’ shouts Helias over the wind. I blink, trying to focus. The numbness recedes; I can feel my limbs again. There is no comfort in the returning sensations. Part of me wants to be numb again, to lie down and let my blood freeze.

  We stand on a narrow flat ridge, crevasses opening to either side, its top sculpted into undulations of white powder. Around us the fractured pinnacles of ice rise above the blur of the snowstorm like shards of flawed glass, dark blue in the starlight. The false radiance of the fortress moons shines down on us from beyond curtains of emerald aurora light. These are the Splintered Lands, the night-soaked side of Inwit which has never seen the sun. The cold is as constant as the night. The warriors of the ice caste only venture here in metal-plated environmental suits, but those who wish to join the Legion must cross this desolate place in rotting pelts and rags. It is a test, a journey through a midnight realm of agony. I have chosen that journey, but I will not see its end.

  There is blood on the ice, frozen hard, trailing away into the distance.

  ‘Where is it?’ I say, looking at Helias. He shakes his head. Strips of rag hide his face, and the snow-caked furs magnify his bulk so that he looks more like a tundra-ox than a man.

  ‘I don’t know, but it is close,’ he says, his voice muffled but still strong. I know that his hands are swollen and black with frozen blood, but the pain does not even reach his eyes. As I fade, he is unbowed. He is my brother, my twin in all ways except one. He is stronger than me, he always has been. I would not have made it as far as this without him, and now I have failed him. He should leave me here; I am weak and I will kill us both.

  He looks at me, as if he heard my thoughts.

  ‘Don’t even think it, Alexis. I am not leaving you.’

  I open my mouth, but the reply dies in my throat. Over the snow-laden wind I hear it again, a low animal sound, like a breath released with a smile of anticipation. Helias has gone utterly still.

  There is a growl from behind me, a crackling purr that floods my veins with warm fear. The beast has found us. It wants me, I know; I am weak and bleeding and it has already tasted my blood. There is another growl, closer, longer. I can imagine it slinking across the ice behind me, its muscles moving with delicate slowness, its colourless eyes on my back. It is waiting to see what I will do, judging its attack for the moment when it is certain. And w
hile it prepares it wants its prey to know fear.

  The growl comes again, nearer, and I can hear the soft noise as the beast slides its furred body across the ice. I try to make myself calm, to ready my failing muscles for movement. Helias keeps his eyes steady on mine. He knows what I intend; it is what he would have done. I nod once, very slowly.

  I hear the beast’s claws scratch over the ice. In my mind I can almost see its muscles bunching under its ice-dusted pelt.

  The beast roars as it leaps towards my back, the sound rising over the blizzard. I dive to the side, my muscles on fire. I am too slow. The beast’s jaws close on my trailing left arm. It turns as it lands, dragging me across the ice. Teeth tear through my flesh. I can smell the rank meat stink of its mouth, the animal reek of its body. It flicks its head, my arm still between its teeth. I hear joints pop and agony flashes across my eyes. I do not even feel it as I slam back to the ground. It releases my arm, and places a clawed paw on my chest. Ribs crack, and needle-sharp claws touch my skin.

  There is a yell and suddenly the pressure on my chest is gone. I scramble to pull myself away, and look up. Helias is standing with his back to a crevasse, his body poised, arms spread like a wrestler. Between us the beast coils on its six legs. Pale fur covers its long body from the snout of its shovel-shaped head to the end of its twitching tail. It pauses, assessing the new prey that has drawn its attention away from the easier kill. It tenses. I cannot see my brother’s face but I know that under the rag mask he is smiling.

  The beast pounces. Helias is still. The beast’s jaws are wide, its glassy teeth like knife blades. My brother moves at the last instant, pivoting as his arms come up to grip the beast’s neck. He turns and the beast’s momentum spins it through the air towards the waiting crevasse. It is almost perfect. Almost.

  I start running, pain and injury falling away… The beast twists as it flies through the air, its forelimb raking flesh. The long hooked claws fasten on Helias’s leg. The beast howls as both tumble together into the crevasse.

  I reach the edge in time to grab my brother as he falls. His weight pulls me off my feet. The beast’s claws come free and it vanishes into the crevasse, drops of blood following its panicked snarls into the darkness below.

  Helias is hanging from my hand. I am on my front, my right hand gripping a ridge in the ice, my head and left arm extended over the crevasse’s edge. My brother is spinning at the end of my grasp, his hand locked around mine. My arm is a lacerated ruin, the flesh punctured and chewed in the beast’s jaws, and Helias’s weight is pulling the wounds into broad and bloody smiles. The pain is like nothing I have ever felt. Blood is running over our hands. My hold is slipping. Pain and fear have become one inside me. I will not let this happen. I am strong enough, I must be strong enough. I try to pull him up and my grunt of effort becomes a scream. I cannot lift him. My right hand holding the ice ridge slips. I jerk forwards, sliding further over the edge.

  ‘Alexis.’ My brother’s voice is so low that it is almost lost on the wind. I look down at Helias. His eyes flick to our hands, the frostbitten flesh slick with blood that looks black in the starlight. I see what he already knows; my grip has already broken. It is his hand locked around mine that is holding him from the black void below.

  He was always stronger than me. I look back into his eyes.

  ‘No!’ I shout.

  He opens his hand.

  One hundred and forty-one days before the Battle of Phall

  The Phall System

  My scream woke me from the dream.

  My eyes snapped open. For a moment I thought I was blind, that I was still on Inwit and that the cold had stolen my sight. Then the chill touch of my armour cut the long-distant past from the present. I was not blind, and my brother had fallen from my hand long ago. I felt cold, as if the dream had reached into reality to wrap me in a memory of Inwit’s chill. Ice covered my helmet’s eye lenses, turning the view into a frosted haze of slowly shifting light. The ice was pink, the colour of snow melted to slush by blood. Warning runes pulsed at the corner of my eyes, slow, dim red.

  Hard vacuum warning…

  Armour integrity warning…

  Gravity condition zero…

  Injury assessment…

  Armour power low…

  I could not remember where I had been, or how I had come to be freezing while my armour died around me. I blinked, tried to focus my thoughts. Sensations began to creep across my body: a numbed echo of pain from my right leg, a black absence of all feeling from my left hand, a metallic taste on my tongue. I am alive, I thought, and that is enough for now. I tried to move my right arm, but the armour resisted no matter how hard I strained. I tried to close my left hand. Nothing. I could not even feel my fingers.

  I looked back to the weakening pulse of the warning runes. The armour had cycled down to minimum power, turning it into little more than a lifeless shell of metal. It was keeping me alive, but it must have taken severe damage.

  I closed my eyes, steadied my pulse. I knew where I was. I was floating free in the vacuum of space. The armour was keeping my body warm, but it was failing. Its power would fade, and I would begin to bleed more heat into the void. My enhanced flesh would last for longer than that of an ordinary human, but the cold would eventually reach my hearts and still their twin beats to silence. It was only a matter of time.

  For a second my control almost broke. I wanted to scream, to thrash against the iron embrace of the armour. It was the instinct of a creature trapped beneath the water, its last breath burning in its lungs, the blackness of inevitability closing around its life. I let out a slow breath, forcing the instinct to stillness. I was alive, and while I lived I had a choice.

  ‘Re-power all systems,’ I said. A pulse of electric sensation ran through my body as the armour obeyed.

  Almost as soon as the armour powered up it began to scream. Sympathetic pain stabbed into my spine. Overlapping warning chimes filled my ears. Angry runes pulsed across my helmet display. I blinked the warnings away and the chimes faded. There were at most a few minutes of power left before the armour became a tomb. I brought my right hand up and scraped the melting ice from the helmet lenses.

  Light poured into my eyes, raw and white-edged. I was floating in a vast chamber lit by sunlight that came from a source somewhere behind me. A layer of pink frost covered everything, glittering in the stark light like a sugar glaze on a sweet cake. Small crystals floated all around me, turning slowly with the last of their fading momentum. Irregular shapes coated in rose-coloured rime hung in mid-air across the chamber.

  I blink-clicked a faint marker on my helmet display. The vox system activated with a moan of static. I set it to a full spectrum broadcast.

  ‘This is Alexis Polux of the Seventh Legion.’ My voice sounded hollow inside my helmet, and only more static answered me. I set the broadcast to a looped cycle that would last until the power faded. Perhaps someone will hear. Perhaps there is someone that can hear.

  Something bumped against my shoulder and spun lazily into view: a frozen lump a little wider than my hand. It spun lazily end-over-end. I reached out to knock it away, and it turned over and looked at me with lifeless eyes.

  Memory flashed through me: the hull splitting with an iron roar as the ship spilled from the warp storm’s grasp, blood arcing across the deck as debris sliced through the air; a human officer shouting, his eyes wide with terror. I had been on a ship. I remembered the deck shaking under my feet and the screams of the storm outside the hull.

  I jerked my hand back from the severed head, and the sudden movement sent me spinning through the frozen blood spray. The chamber rotated around me. I saw the ice-clogged servitor niches, and mangled banks of instruments. A tiered auspex dais pointed down at me from the floor, its screens and holo-projectors looking like the branches of a tree under winter snow. I tried to steady my momentum but I just continued spinning. Wa
rnings began to shriek in my ears.

  Power failing…

  Power failing…

  Power failing…

  Sights flicked past me, suffused in the warning rune’s ruddy light. There were bodies fused to the walls by layers of blood ice. Sections of splintered yellow armour drifted amongst limbs and shattered bone. Severed bundles of cabling hung from the walls like strings of intestine. Streamers of data-parchment floated beside the foetal shapes of frozen servitors. I spun on and saw the source of the light: a bright white sun shining through a wide tear in the hull. I could see the glittering blue sphere of a planet hung against the star-dotted darkness. Between me and that starlight was a sight that made me stare as my view turned over.

  Dead warships lay spread across the void. There were hundreds of them, their golden hulls chewed and split like worried carcasses. Vast strips of armour had peeled back from cold metal guts to show the lattice of chambers and passages within. Mountain-sized hulls had been portioned into ragged chunks. It was like looking at the jumbled remains of a slaughterhouse.

  All my brothers are gone, I thought, and felt colder than I had for decades. I remembered Helias, my true brother, my twin, falling into darkness from the end of my fingertips.

  Power failing… the warning runes chimed.

  Final memories clicked into place. I knew where we had been going: where all of us had been going. I stared at the graveyard and knew one more thing with certainty.

  Power failing…

  ‘We have failed,’ I said to the silence.

  ‘…respond…’ The mechanical voice filled my helmet, broken and raw with static. It took me a heartbeat to reply.

  ‘This is Captain Polux of the Seventh Legion,’ I said as my helmet display dimmed. Bursts of static filled my ears. I could feel the armour stiffening around me, its power finally drained. A quiet numbness began to spread across my body. The helmet display faded to black. I felt something bump into my chest and then fasten around me with a grind of metal. In the prison of my dying armour I could feel myself falling into darkness, falling beyond sight and pain, falling like my brothers. I am alone in the darkness and cold, and I always will be.