by Dan Abnett
‘Is it questioned, Wolf?’ asked Guilliman. ‘Because I use the Librarius in defiance of the Edict? The Edict was made before this war was begun. It is obsolete. We need the Librarius if we’re going to survive. Does that make me disobedient?’
Faffnr let out a deep, wet growl, like a jungle beast. His eyes stayed on Prayto’s face.
‘He thinks it might make you courageous and decisive in your obedience,’ Prayto told Guilliman, holding Faffnr’s stare, ‘to pursue your loyalty through decisive, unilateral and perhaps unpopular choices. He thinks that’s why you are a great leader.’
Guilliman nodded.
‘Tell him the rest while you’re in there, maleficarum,’ said Faffnr.
‘He thinks he will, nevertheless, keep a very close watch on you, lord,’ said Prayto.
‘A day without a clumsy threat from you is not complete, is it, Faffnr?’ asked Guilliman. ‘Really? Again with this? Me, alone in a room against a squad of ten? In case you’ve missed recent events, I’ve already done that.’
Faffnr Bludbroder shrugged.
‘They were Alpha Legion. Not Wolves.’
‘I did it unarmed.’
Faffnr broke his gaze from Prayto and looked at Guilliman. ‘I never said it wasn’t well done,’ he replied.
Prayto smiled.
‘Will you let my pack guard your hall, jarl?’ asked Faffnr. ‘We’ve come a long way to protect the Emperor’s peace.’
‘I think that responsibility is fully covered,’ rumbled Gorod, his words grinding out of the helm-vox, one by one, like heavy calibre rounds from a chain-fed weapon.
‘Not well enough, looks like,’ replied Faffnr.
‘Not even nearly well enough,’ added Bo Soren.
‘You may cross my threshold, Wolves,’ Guilliman said. ‘You may approach the fireside. I’ll permit it. But do not obstruct Gorod or his men. Can you be obedient in that respect?’
Faffnr nodded. His men broke and stood aside.
Guilliman entered the room where he had nearly met his end.
The furniture was shattered. The great desk was scarred and gouged like a meteor. There were holes in the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Pictures had fallen from their suspensions and broken. One portrait of Konor still hung, but the entire area of the face and shoulders was shot away. Hanging canvas shreds and fibres stilled in the gentle air-circulation.
All the corpses had been removed, but the carpets were still dyed with the lifeblood of the Legiones Astartes, and the walls were speckled with yet more blood that had dried and looked like black paint or spatters of tar. Parts of the wall and chunks of heavy furniture were peppered with pieces of exploded plate armour, shards of ceramite flung out from exploding wounds to embed like shrapnel. The main windows were crazed with spider-web patterns. One series of cracks looked like a coiled snake: a multi-headed coiled snake.
Guilliman drew a breath. He knew he was in a slightly heightened state. He was reading symbols and portents into things that had no significance.
He closed his eyes. For a millisecond, the noise and fury of the moment came back, filling his head, every last moment relived in flaring, vivid–
He opened his eyes again.
‘My lord?’ asked Prayto.
‘I’m all right,’ Guilliman said. He looked around, and moved forward, each step crunching scattered glass chips into the carpet. Konor’s cold-gestalt cogitator, and the stand that had housed it, was a smashed wreck on the floor. A falling body had crushed it.
Guilliman stared at the debris for a moment. The living history of Macragge, the rise of Ultramar, the fortunes of the Five Hundred Worlds, had all been witnessed and monitored by that ancient device. It was strange. The loss seemed to carry more emotional weight than had been provoked by the sight of his stepfather’s disfigured portrait. Guilliman felt unexpected levels of sentiment rising within him.
‘I will need–’ he began. His voice cracked slightly.
‘A replacement device,’ Prayto finished quickly. ‘I will speak to the adepts of the Mechanicum at once about furnishing you with a new cogitator system, a cognis-signum application device that will enhance data processing.’
Guilliman nodded.
‘I feel…’ he began to say to Prayto. He stopped. Gorod was waiting behind them at the door, the Wolves in the doorway behind him. Guilliman walked to the windows on the far side of the room and stood with his back to the doorway, staring out. Prayto went with him.
‘You feel pain and sadness,’ said Prayto, ‘and you do not want the others to overhear this.’
Guilliman nodded again.
‘It is a delayed reaction, lord,’ said Prayto.
‘To an attack? I’ve lived through wars, Prayto – I’ve fought daemons, and my own brothers. I’ve taken worse wounds than this.’
‘That was not my meaning, lord.’
‘Then what? To the loss of an old cogitator?’
‘I think that was just the trigger, my lord. It was an heirloom. It had personal meaning to you.’
‘Then what, I say? A delayed reaction to what?’
‘To Horus,’ said Prayto.
Guilliman sighed deeply.
‘Make sure they come no closer,’ he said to Prayto.
Prayto nodded, letting the unspoken thought finish in his mind.
Because I do not want those Wolves to see me with a tear in my damned eyes.
Euten found him alone in the room. Prayto had gone to meet with the Mechanicum, and Guilliman had sent Gorod and the Wolves out so he could have time for reflection. He heard her greet Gorod and grumble at the feral wolf pack as she came through the outer door.
He had raised one of the larger seats onto its feet. The back was shot out of it, so the shredded leather padding looked like ruptured blubber. He had placed it in front of the cobwebbed windows, and was sitting, leaning forward, elbows on his knees.
‘Do you bring me the day’s agenda, mam?’ he asked, without looking at her.
‘I do not,’ she replied. ‘I have dealt with most matters. You need time to think.’
‘I never stop thinking, mam.’
‘Then you need time to focus, my lord. The hour has come to commit.’
He glanced at her, though he still sat forward.
‘I have already committed. You know this. Macragge, and the Five Hundred Worlds… They are the Imperium. Imperium Secundus. The contingency that we never even dreamed might be necessary is now a practical.’
She nodded.
‘You continue to evade my meaning,’ she said. ‘What I mean is, I think it’s time you admitted it to more than just me and your closest confidences. It has been your private theoretical – now you must declare Imperium Secundus formally and publically. You have to have strength in your conviction, and not shrink from the more unedifying aspects of it. If you do not have faith in it, then neither will a single soul in the Five Hundred Worlds.’
He opened his mouth to answer, but said nothing.
‘What is it? What makes you hesitate?’ Euten asked. ‘Is it a fear that you are usurping every bit as much as Horus? Or is it–’
‘Grief,’ he said quietly. ‘Grief that my father, and Terra, and the grand dream of the Imperium are lost, and the only way for our civilisation to survive is to consolidate here. It is a burden I never looked for, mam, and it is made heavier by sorrow.’
He looked out through the crazed glass and surveyed the towers and stacks of Macragge Civitas, golden in the sickly warp-light.
‘You think I should make a formal declaration because I look weak, don’t you?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. She adjusted her grip on her staff to ease her stance and rest her back. ‘The morale of Ultramar has never been lower. Calth, the Ruinstorm, the war against the sons of Lorgar and Angron – these things have battered
us, but the assault on you… My lord, it has shown us that even the most precious thing we have left is not safe.’
Euten glanced around at the cold devastation of the chamber. Her eyes lingered on the smashed cogitator and a broken bust of Konor.
‘Just an hour before… before this happened,’ she said, gesturing at the room with her slender left hand, ‘I lectured you about how vulnerable you are. I am sorry if my tone was hectoring. I am not sorry that my words were true. This is all we have left of the Imperium, and you are the last precious prince. You cannot be all the things you once were. You are too valuable to be risked. You are too important to be diluted with a surfeit of roles.’
‘This isn’t a conversation about declaring Secundus, is it?’ he asked.
‘There is no point declaring Secundus if Secundus has an empty throne. You must declare yourself.’
‘What?’ he asked, a mocking laugh behind the words. ‘Emperor Guilliman?’
‘Regent at least, my lord. Don’t look at me like that. I know how you hate the word.’
He stood up.
‘Euten, I cannot. I cannot command and rule. I cannot administer this empire and be its figurehead.’
‘I told you, you must delegate,’ she said. ‘No one else can possibly be head of state. No one else can possibly be regent. You are the last primarch, my lord. The last loyal son. The only loyal son. Become what you must become. Invest yourself as the rallying point of Imperium Secundus. Be Imperial, and reveal your renewed strength, your resolve, your mettle and the glory, like a phoenix rising from these ashes. Leave the everyday mechanics of Imperial business to others.’
‘That is my point,’ he replied. ‘I trust no one else to oversee those mechanics. I have done it for so long. I… trust no one else… Not even you, dear lady.’
‘Because I am not capable?’ She sniffed, though she was mocking.
His reply was typically honest.
‘Because you are old, Lady Euten. You are human and old. I do not know how much longer life will let you stand at my side. I cannot rely on you being here, and I do not trust anyone else.’
‘A good answer,’ she said. ‘But, you know… I have known you since you were a child, Roboute. I know when you are being careful with the truth. This is such a time. For all your logic, none of the things you have said are the real reason you will not declare yourself Imperial Regent.’
‘Is that so?’ he asked.
‘You know it is.’
He sighed.
‘Then let me say it once. I cannot build an empire and put myself on the throne, even if I am the only candidate. It smacks of hubris, of arrogance, of overweening pride and foul ambition.’
‘It smacks of Horus Lupercal,’ she said.
‘Oh, indeed. It will diminish me in the eyes of those who yet respect me, and it will simply confirm the doubts of all those who do not. “Look at Guilliman,” they will say, “taking advantage of this crisis and naming himself king. Look at his unseemly eagerness. Look how fast he jumped in to take unwholesome advantage of the situation!”’
‘I am glad to hear you admit your misgivings at last,’ she said. ‘But it is the only practical action to take. You always taught me that practical trumps theoretical.’
‘But in this matter, the theoretical stinks,’ he said. ‘I have been holding out hope that one other brother might still come to me. Rogal, stars, but I would hand the throne selflessly to him! Sanguinius, in an instant! These are worthy heirs! These are noble brothers!’
‘And if they were willing, it would validate Secundus,’ she nodded. ‘Their sanction would reinforce your choices.’
‘Any loyal son,’ murmured Guilliman. ‘Right now, I would take any loyal son.’
‘Even Russ?’ she asked.
Guilliman laughed.
‘He’s a barbarian,’ he said, ‘but he is still a king. And he is loyal in ways that shame us all. Yes, even Russ. Perhaps we need a truly fierce monarch to see us through this new strife.’
‘And you, as his conscience, would keep his crown clean,’ she said.
‘Of course,’ he said. He sighed deeply again, and looked around. ‘Have the Residency staff clear this room. Strip it. Make it new. I’m hungry. I think I’ll feast with the Wolves tonight.’
He looked at her.
‘Rest easy, mam,’ he said, ‘by morning I will have made my decision. If I am going to declare as regent, you will know it soon, and we can prepare for the announcement.’
‘There is no one else fit, my lord,’ said Euten.
‘There is no one else at all,’ he replied. ‘So I suppose it will have to be me.’
The scorched corpse that had fallen on the southern deme of Magna Macragge Civitas had been taken to a private, secure suite in the lower levels of the Residency’s medicae hall. The exits to the area were guarded and locked, and only authorised personnel were allowed in and out, or even to know the nature of what the lab suite contained.
Valentus Dolor, Tetrarch of Occluda, arrived unescorted, and strode down the long, echoing hallway to a series of iris valve hatches. Ultramarines guards bowed to him and let him pass. The hatches scraped as they dilated, one by one.
Captain Casmir was waiting for him in a stark laboratory chamber of zinc and galvanised steel. The place was lit by greenish lights, and smelled industrial. A massive iron casket lay on a raised plinth in the main area of the room. There were heavy armourglass viewing ports built into the sides and top of the casket, so that the body, suspended in embalming solutions, could be examined. Instrument locks in the sides of the casket also allowed for surgical tools to be inserted so that tissue samples could be taken. All that could be seen through the ports was a thin, scummy murk. Several medicae technicians were working around the casket.
‘Do we have an identity?’ Dolor asked his equerry.
‘No, lord,’ replied Casmir. ‘But we have answered one question.’
He offered Dolor the data-slate he had been holding. Dolor took it and read.
‘Careful analysis of orbital watch records has finally revealed how our dead stranger arrived,’ said Casmir. ‘You see the brief spike there? A teleport flare in the upper atmosphere. Non-standard teleportation pattern.’
‘So he materialised in the upper atmosphere, out of nowhere?’
‘And then fell,’ Captain Casmir said, ‘all the way to the surface, burning like a meteor as he cut through the atmosphere.’
‘Do we know anything about the origin point of the teleportation?’
‘The flare pattern is being examined, but I doubt it, my lord.’
Dolor handed the slate back and took a few steps towards the casket.
‘The more we learn, the more of a mystery he becomes. I–’
He stopped short. Some monitor alarms had started to buzz. A few amber telltales lit up along the console beside the plinth. The medicae technicians reacted in surprise and backed away for a second.
‘What is it?’ asked Dolor. ‘What’s happening?’
‘I don’t know, lord tetrarch,’ said one of the technicians.
‘It makes no sense,’ said another.
‘It must be a system malfunction,’ said a third.
A new alarm started to sound.
Dolor stepped closer to the casket, his hand on the hilt of his sword. He peered in at one of the murky portals.
‘Someone explain to me what’s going on,’ he snarled.
There was a sudden, very violent bang. Even Dolor jerked back.
The sound had been made by an impact from inside the casket. Something had struck one of the glass portals very hard.
Dolor looked. He blinked. Pressed against the inside of the armourglass – bloody, raw and peeling with blackened, burned meat – were the palm and fingertips of a large human hand.
‘Open the damned cask
et!’ Dolor ordered, drawing his sword. ‘In the name of the Five Hundred Worlds, whatever’s in there isn’t dead at all!’
The ship came out of the darkness, and within its darkness, an endless hunt paused for a moment, for the first moment in sixteen weeks.
Deep in the almost lightless void of the ship reactor’s vast heat sink, the quarry paused, a nocturnal ghost, condemned to be absolutely alone for the rest of his life.
He crouched on a rusting stanchion above the smoking furnaces of the ship’s engines, and wrapped his arms around his body. His cloak was tattered and black. What little light was coming off the smouldering embers of the drive chambers beneath him caught along the razored lines of his claws.
He felt the bump, the ripple, the heave of transition. He heard the arrhythmic flutter of the engines as they dimensionally corrected. He felt his guts twist and his sinuses pinch. It made him whimper.
The ship had made a translation into realspace.
The quarry tilted his head back and began to laugh. He peeled back cracked lips to expose teeth that, had there been any light, would have showed as blackened and rotting. His laughter, as sharp and shattered as a calving glacier, fell away and echoed down the sink.
The rules had just been rewritten. In realspace, the ship was no longer a finite prison. He was no longer the quarry.
The rules had just changed, and people were going to die. A lot of them. All of them.
At long last.
The ship came out of the darkness.
‘Translation complete,’ Captain Stenius called from the high, railed platform of the bridge. ‘Realspace positioning achieved.’
Below him, on the main fore-station deck, the bridge crew, plugged into their various consoles, chattered back and forth, sharing and updating the surge of realspace data as fast as their automatics would allow.
Stenius turned to look at the ship’s lord. The low light of the flagship’s bridge hazed off Stenius’s smoked-silver augmetic eyes. The captain’s face, immobilised by nerve damage, hadn’t registered an expression for decades.
The ship’s lord, the huntsman, knew, however, that there was a smile of relief locked away in that unmoving flesh. He sat on his titanic, engraved throne, a shadow at the back of the flagship’s vast bridge space, a monarch with no realm.