by Dan Abnett
Auguston bore down on the commander of the household company like a Titan lining up on an unshielded kill.
‘You screwed up,’ he snapped. ‘Where were you? Where were your toy soldiers? Your scans? Your surveillance? How long did it take you to respond?’
‘My lord,’ Badorum stammered. ‘Our scanners were jammed. We had no–’
‘Excuses,’ sniffed Auguston. ‘I have a mind to see you relieved of duties.’
‘I don’t think you can do that,’ said Verus Caspean. ‘Household is a different chain of command to the Legion and–’
‘Close your mouth, Verus,’ Auguston spat over his shoulder. ‘This is wartime. Wartime rules apply.’
‘First Master, the fault was most surely ours,’ said Drakus Gorod, commander of the Invictus guard. His voice surged out through the vox unit of his massive war-helm. His armour was stained with blood, Guilliman’s blood. He had been one of the men who had carried the primarch to the medicae hub as soon as the high chamber doors had been breached.
‘He dismissed you, Gorod,’ Auguston laughed. ‘He said he could do without you.’
‘I make no excuses,’ said Gorod. ‘We should have insisted. We should have vetted the visitor list, no matter who they seemed to be. Also, the assassins were Alpha Legion. Their jamming tech was exceptional. We could not override it’
‘Let us learn from it, then,’ said Auguston.
‘Their tech self-destructed before it could be examined and reverse-engineered,’ said Gorod.
‘Alpha Legion,’ murmured Niax Nessus, Master of the Third. ‘What have we become, the proud Legions? What has this conflict devolved into?’
‘Something we can kill and fight,’ Auguston said.
‘I think we may need to be smarter than that,’ said Caspean.
‘I told you to close your mouth,’ said Auguston. ‘We are one voice here.’
‘Then we should decide what that voice says,’ Caspean replied.
The hatch of the apothecarion whirred open suddenly. A gust of environmentally stabilised air exhaled at them, like the opening of a void-lock. It stank of blood, of counter-septic gels, of graft cultures and sterilising solutions. The chamber revealed before them was gloomy, illuminated only by the low-light displays of life support systems.
Guilliman had come to the door. He glared out at them like a wounded beast looking out of its cave-lair. He was breathing hard, and his torso, neck and one side of his face were wrapped in juvenat wadding and fixing wraps.
‘The walls,’ he wheezed, ‘are not so thick I cannot hear your bickering. This is not how we behave in crisis.’
‘Great lord,’ Auguston began. ‘You must recuperate and–’
‘This is not how we behave in crisis,’ Guilliman repeated.
Dolor stepped forward and dropped to one knee, his head bowed. One by one, the others did the same, transhumans and humans alike. Auguston was the last to kneel.
‘How may we serve you, lord?’ Dolor asked.
‘Stand,’ Guilliman said.
They stood.
‘I will take your private counsel now, tetrarch,’ Guilliman said. ‘I must do something more than just sit in a bed while I heal. First Master Auguston, you will carry out a full security review of the Residency and the city.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘I’m not looking for blame, Auguston, and I do not expect to hear of any punishment unless a true dereliction of duty can be proved. What I want to know is how they got in so we can prevent it happening again. Give us practical information, to improve our practical. Find out how else people come and go, especially the off-world influx. What needs to be monitored more closely? What procedures do we need to improve? Do any of the Alpha Legion – or any of our other enemies – remain among us?’
Auguston nodded.
‘My lord,’ he said, ‘I will have my staff officers detailed to this audit at once and–’
‘No, Auguston,’ said Guilliman. ‘You do it. Don’t hand it off. Oversee it personally. Consult by all means, but consult wisely. Bring in Polux.’
‘The Imperial Fist?’
‘Correct. The Fists were charged with the defence of Terra. Let us learn from their mouths about the performance of that duty. Am I understood?’
‘Yes, lord,’ replied Auguston, his jawline tight.
‘You think I demean you, somehow, Phratus?’ Guilliman asked. ‘You think I insult you by giving you a job that is beneath you? You are First Master of the Ultramarines, and that Legion knows no greater responsibility than the security of Macragge. I do not know how this task could possibly be beneath you.’
‘Apologies, my lord,’ said Auguston. ‘It is an honour. I will do this, and I will do it scrupulously.’
‘Of course you will,’ Guilliman said, nodding. ‘The rest of you return to your duties. Assist the First Master in any way he requires, and do your utmost to defuse any alarm or anxiety in the Legion, the Army and the public that has arisen because of this incident.’
‘News of the attempt on your life has been restricted to privileged personnel only, my lord,’ said Gorod.
Guilliman sighed.
‘Nevertheless, it will get out, so expect it to and be ready to diminish its negative effect,’ said Guilliman. ‘In fact, I think the news should be made known. If we have enemies on Macragge, they will learn they have failed, and the story will raise the base level of vigilance. Besides, the people of Macragge will be troubled by rumours of an attack on me. I think they would far prefer the fortifying frankness of an account of today’s events, especially if it includes the fact that I am very hard to kill.’
He dismissed them, and turned back into the apothecarion with Dolor. Suddenly, as soon as the hatch shut, Guilliman reached out to the tetrarch for support. Dolor shouldered Guilliman’s weight without a word and guided him back to the bed.
Shrouded medicae personnel, as silent as wraiths, lurking in the shadows, moved forward to reattach nutrient drips and monitors to Guilliman’s chest and limbs. Small servitor units were moving around and beneath the bed, scrubbing away the bloodstains and incinerating dirty dressings.
‘She was right,’ Guilliman murmured as he lay back.
‘Lord?’
‘Euten,’ Guilliman said. ‘She advised against Auguston.’
‘I confess,’ said Dolor, ‘I’ve never liked the man, except when he’s been at my side in a fight. Then he has few equals.’
‘That is precisely why I chose him to succeed Gage,’ said Guilliman. ‘I was angry. Treacherous war had wounded us deeply. I wanted a warrior to lead the Legion to vengeance. But our situation grows ever more complicated, and Phratus is no politician.’
‘None of us are,’ said Dolor.
‘Not true. Not if I have done what I set out to do. I didn’t raise the Legion solely to build an Imperium and fight a crusade. Crusades are finite. Wars end. I raised the Legion to have a successive function in peacetime too – as leaders, as statesmen, as rulers of the Imperium once it was built.’
Dolor said nothing.
‘I always thought of the future, the far future,’ Guilliman said quietly, ‘where there is only peace. What will our kind do then? What, by comparison, of Russ and his Wolves? What purpose will his kind have when there are no more worlds to conquer?’
‘The Warmaster’s treachery has given him a few extra years of bloodshed to justify his purpose,’ said Dolor.
Guilliman nodded.
‘He’s probably almost grateful. No, strike that. It’s too harsh a judgement, even for Russ, even as a joke. But Russ must wonder, mustn’t he, about the peacetime that will someday follow this? What will his purpose be? He believes that his Legion exists to sanction those who become problems to the Imperium. Does he fear that one day that will be him and his kind? That he will face the sanction for being too wild and dangerous for
a civilised culture to accept?’
He looked at Dolor.
‘Tell me of other things, Valentus. Let us do practical work here rather than theoretical musing. Report to me. What did you find? What fell from the heavens?’
‘A body,’ said Dolor.
Guilliman’s eyes narrowed.
‘Human?’
‘Transhuman,’ said Dolor. ‘It is remarkable, lord. We have not identified the corpse or its origin, but I have ordered that it be recovered and brought here to the medicae hall for analysis. The entire impact site is currently being scoured for evidentiary data. I have also taken the liberty of restricting the incident at vermilion-level until we know what we’re dealing with. Very few individuals know what has been found, and they are all oathed to secrecy.’
‘I trusted the light of the Pharos might bring many things to Macragge,’ said Guilliman. ‘Lost ships, lost friends, enemies even… I was prepared for the unexpected. But a body, falling from the stars?’
‘If I was a superstitious man, lord,’ said Dolor, ‘I would say it feels uncomfortably like an omen. And if I was a truly superstitious man, I would wonder what else might be coming.’
The warp sent a daemon to kill him.
He felt that he should have been flattered.
The hand-off was made without incident. The assigned stealth-cutter, procured by the Cabal, made no mark whatsoever on the acutely sensitive scanner systems of the Ultramar-humans as it blinked in and blinked out, depositing him by long-range jump onto the Northern Massif under a peak called Andromache.
He woke from the jump, aching and curled in the foetal position, on the glacier. Blood was streaming out of his nose like water from a tap.
‘Thank you so much,’ he whispered out loud, spluttering blood, speaking to inhuman gods and demi-deities who could no longer hear him, and who had never cared for his opinions anyway. The stealth-cutter was long gone, a darting spectre, retreating into the outer void. He wondered if any of the souls in Guilliman’s would-be empire had even tracked it. He doubted it. A ghost return? A slight imaging artefact? Perhaps. Human technology was highly advanced, but it did not begin to match ancient kinebrach levels.
No wonder the humans were losing. No wonder they were losing to themselves.
No wonder he cared. He was human. At least, he had been once, long ago. He worked with the eldar now, though he hated the mother-loving sweet stink of them. He worked with the eldar and the other inhuman breeds of the Cabal that they were in bed with.
In bed out of desperation.
He hated that fact even more. He hated the fact that the human race was the reason why the galaxy was dying. G’Latrro had explained that to him in great depth. He had explained it to him when he had first recruited him from the blood-soaked sands of Iwo Jima. The human race, vibrant, innocent and fecund, was the doorway that the warp was going to use to flood the galaxy. Chaos would win because mankind was the weak link that would allow the warp in.
He was a Perpetual. He had been born that way, a natural Perpetual, but the Cabal had enhanced his abilities. He’d been working for them ever since that recruitment on the beach, old-style bullets zipping and fizzing around his head.
He’d been killing people for them ever since: good men. Sometimes, serving the Cabal seemed counter-intuitive. They were very obliging. They explained why a good man had to die, and why it was not a bad thing. The wetwork they had had him perform… damn. In Memphis, against the Good Man, and then more than a thousand years later in the City of Angels, against the Brother. Then in M19, against Holiard in the Glass Temple of Manunkind, and in M22 against Maser Hassan in the Spire Terrace before his Word of the Law speech.
And then Dume, though no one could persuasively argue against the fact that Dume really had to die, by any standards, even human ones.
Things had evolved, of course they had, because of the quality of the opponent. The constant cosmological chess game with the hyper-brilliant, but wayward, Emperor had placed things in flux. The Cabal could no longer quite contain or predict his actions. The mon-keigh was getting above himself.
So, now the ploy was known as the Horus Gambit, or the Alpharius Position. The purpose was simple: let Chaos win. Let the warp win so hard, so damnably hard, it falls in upon itself and burns its fury out. Let humanity be the sword it falls on.
He did what he had to do. He did what they needed him to do. Downside, on an unfriendly planet, bleeding internally and externally from a covert, fast-jack jump, holding himself together and carrying the flesh-tanked sack his weapons were in.
He was high in the mountains, a week’s walk from Macragge City. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the daemon that the warp had sent after him.
Three days after his jump, he turned and said to the cold mountain air, ‘Show yourself.’
Laughter echoed back, though it was hardly human. It rippled up the deep trenches of the Andromache foothills.
‘Come on, sir,’ he said. ‘Come on, Mister Daemon. I await with interest.’
There was a long, silent, sucking second, then a voice said, ‘I know who you are. I have your name. I have possession of you.’
He sighed, and dropped his pack and his weapons and opened his arms wide to the mountain air.
‘You have me then. Take me.’
‘Damon,’ answered the voice. ‘An interesting choice of name, given your trade.’
‘What can I tell you, daemon?’ he answered.
Silence.
‘You have my name,’ Damon said. ‘What are you waiting for?’ His hands were still outstretched. He turned in a slow circle, the snow scrunching under his boots.
‘I have your name indeed,’ the voice answered. ‘And true names are true power. I have your name, and you cannot deflect me.’
‘I know that,’ he said.
‘So you know I am going to kill you? You know that is what I have been sent to do?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Good.’
He cleared his throat. The atmosphere on the high plateau was thin.
‘What is my name to you?’ he asked.
‘Damon Prytanis,’ the daemon replied.
‘And knowing my true name gives you power over me?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘You have me, then, child of the warp. You have me soundly. As I die, and as I accept my death, allow me one last boon.’
‘Speak it.’
‘Tell me, so I know the true name of my obliterator.’
A chuckle rippled through unspace.
‘Die forever knowing it,’ the voice said. ‘I am Ushpetkhar.’
‘I resign. Come and get me,’ he said.
The shadow of the void rose and rippled at him. It came at him across the snowfield like a black tsunami.
‘By the way,’ Damon Prytanis said at the very last minute, ‘that is not my true name. Turns out, you have no power over me. But I know you now. I have your true name… Ushpetkhar!’
In his pocket, Damon had been frantically getting the vessel ready. He made the appropriate signs and cast the appropriate runes, just as he had been shown. He threw his magic into the onrushing face of the screaming daemon.
The daemon exited realspace in an explosion of fury and indignation. Damon was thrown to the ground.
When he opened his eyes, he realised he was soaked. He was covered in blood, and so was a vast area of the glacier shelf around him. None of the blood was his.
Slowly, badly broken, he got up. Macragge City was still a while away, a long trek down the mountain.
In this manner, the killer calling himself Damon Prytanis came to Macragge.
8
First Among
Equals
‘A man chooses his friends; fate chooses his brothers.’
– attributed to Ondrin of Saramanth
The ship came out of the darkness, and within its darkness, an endless hunt played out.
It was a human ship, an Imperial ship, a battleship, a flagship, but it was unnaturally propelled through the miasma of the warp by means whose origins and nature would have been deemed heretical to the machinesmiths and forgefathers of mankind.
Behind the battleship, following in its wake, came its fleet. Within those storm-battered hulls, twenty thousand warriors awaited word of a destination, a safe haven.
They were twenty thousand of the greatest warriors in the Imperium. They were the First, and the first among equals.
The ship came out of the darkness, and within its darkness, an endless hunt played out.
The huntsman waited in the darkness, listening to the eerie throb of the unhuman device directing the ship’s engines. The darkness was oily black, as black as the armour he wore.
The quarry was close, but then, the quarry was always close.
The quarry was supposed to be dead, or at the very least a prisoner, but through his innate guile and wickedness, he had evaded capture and was loose in the ship, haunting its dark spaces and inaccessible extremities. Of course, the quarry was technically a prisoner, because the whole ship was his cell. There was no escape from the ship.
It galled the huntsman that the quarry was at liberty at all. The quarry should have been dead for his crimes long since. The huntsman should have made sure of that, blood or no blood. The quarry was not a sentient being deserving of any respect or mercy. The quarry was an insane animal that needed to be put down, a monster that deserved termination. All the while the wretched quarry was loose on the huntsman’s ship, the huntsman’s heart burned with rage.
The huntsman had sent warriors to locate the quarry and kill him, to section the ship, deck by deck, to smoke the monster out of hiding, and end his curse. But the quarry – the creature of darkness, the haunter of the eternal night that glowered in the unlit hold spaces and hull structures that were a feature of any warp-capable ship – had killed the men, and killed the men sent after them, and the men sent after them. The quarry had trapped them, and murdered them, stalked them and tricked them, left their bodies swinging from hold spars as warnings, left their heads in void-locks as messages, left their butchered remains impaled on inter-deck stanchions and pipework as bloody promises.