by Gav Thorpe
She stopped as a junior officer appeared out of the gloom, the coils and box of a long-range vox hanging from a shoulder harness. Zenobi wasn’t close enough to hear what was said, but the urgency in the young man’s expression and the reaction from the captain were enough to communicate that the news was not welcome. Zenobi’s throat tightened sympathetically as Egwu started a hectic, hushed consultation with the integrity officer and the handful of nearby lieutenants.
Those behind were unconsciously but inexorably pushing forward to see or hear, creating a building pressure wave against those nearer the front. Someone stepped on Zenobi’s heel as they shifted position, one hand steadying on her shoulder. There were snarled complaints ringing around her, and she saw elbows and even fists being flung around as the troopers started pushing into one another.
‘We have to get moving!’ Kettai shouted, waving his hand at one of the enforcers lining the side of the train. A group of troopers from the platoon, Zenobi included, shuffled forward several steps, trying to allow more space, but this vacuum simply drew in those behind, causing a ripple to flow back through the growing crowd of waiting soldiers.
Then the lights went out.
The sudden darkness sucked at Zenobi, leeching the last of her nerve from her body. A squeak of a cry escaped her lips before she clamped down on the fear. Mixed shouts of panic and anger broke the stillness of the night.
Zenobi took another step, twisting her ankle on a buried rock. She threw out a hand and grabbed an arm to stop herself falling, heart hammering as she imagined the company surging forward, trampling over her in the moments of her fall.
‘Steady.’ It was Sergeant Alekzanda that grabbed her coat, keeping her upright. He turned, teeth bared as he berated the troopers directly behind them. Her eyes were getting accustomed to the dim illuminations of the orbital battle, the outline of the train and people resolving into focus in front of her.
A small lantern appeared from the left, illuminating the enforcer that carried it. The knot of officers broke apart, the lieutenants hurrying into the twilight.
‘Everybody, onto the train now!’ barked Okoye, slapping a hand on Menber’s shoulder, almost shoving the trooper towards the locomotive. ‘By squads and platoon. Now, now, now!’
It was the worst possible decision.
Like water through a broken dam, the defence corps soldiers burst forward, spooked by the darkness and then panicked by the sudden command. Gripping the banner pole tight, her lasgun and kitbag slapping against her side, Zenobi started forward, got caught with her neighbour and fell. Hands grabbed her shoulders, wrenching her up, and she was propelled towards the nearest train door, a set of metal steps folded down for access. She regained her feet before she had to be bodily thrown aboard, wrestling her burdens sideways through the door even as Kettai pushed in beside her.
By the same miracle by which he always seemed to be ahead of his squad, Sergeant Alekzanda was in the companionway just inside the door, marshalling the new arrivals.
‘Across to the other side, all the way to the far end. Across to the other side, all the way to the far end.’
The troopers piled on, into the darkness of the compartment. It was about thirty metres long, six wide, and the only light glimmered through a row of small windows that ran the length of the join between the wall and roof. There were hammock nets bundled to the ceiling and the benches that ran crosswise along the carriage had cloth pockets for those seated behind to stow small possessions. The carriage was split along its length by a thin latticework, through which Zenobi could see others herding onto the train. Curses followed the troopers as they negotiated their way around wooden benches with foot lockers beneath, navigating by bruised shins and clattered knees until they found space.
With the soldiers came the froth of muttered speculation.
‘Enemy on their way, I heard.’
‘Something’s spotted us.’
‘Gotta be a ship in orbit.’
‘Airstrike, she said. Definitely airstrike.’
‘I heard the captain say we had to get moving in five minutes.’
‘There’s no way we’ll all be aboard by then,’ said Menber in reply to this last claim.
Zenobi climbed onto a bench to look out the window and saw figures flowing between the wagons, heading to other trains on parallel sidings. A grumble announced the motors starting, and with a jolt a few seconds later the train began to move, almost spilling Zenobi from the bench.
‘No! Stop!’ she shouted, as though the driver would hear her, two hundred metres further up the track. ‘There’s people cutting past!’
She pressed her face back against the window so she could peer through the reflections into the darkness, others around her ascending the benches to look as well. The train was moving at a crawl, and still some of the troopers were daring to dart between the carriages. She couldn’t see but heard screams as some of them weren’t quick enough, disappearing beneath the grinding metal of the wheels.
Turning around, she looked over the packed troops to see that the doors were still open. Alekzanda and some others were there, hauling latecomers through the opening as they ran up alongside the moving vehicle. A little closer amidst the mass were the uniforms of the officers, Egwu among them.
People were coming on board from both sides now, but the rate of their boarding had slowed to a person every few seconds, not the constant rush that had greeted the original command. The train was picking up speed, moving from a walk to a jog, enough that those that had been chasing it started to fall behind, legs unaccustomed to running giving way to tiredness after a few hundred metres.
The track was curving to the left. Through the window Zenobi could see groups of abandoned troopers silhouetted against the glimmer of lights on the horizon. Brighter flares flashed across the night. A chorus of distant cracks cut across the clanking of the train.
‘Bolters!’ someone yelled. More small flares of red criss-crossed the gloom, converging in the patches of darker shadow that were the troopers left behind. A sudden, stark flash of muzzle fire lit the distance and a rapid-fire thunder drifted after the departing trains.
A few seconds later an explosion lit the middle distance, briefly highlighting ramshackle buildings that lined the track – a makeshift way station that the night had hidden. Zenobi flinched from the brightness, the sudden light searing her vision. But in the instant before momentary blindness she thought she had seen armoured figures against the billow of flames.
She stepped down from the bench and dragged her kitbag and lasgun to her lap, flopping back onto the seat in stunned silence.
‘Did you see them?’ whispered Menber, bending over the back of the bench from behind.
Zenobi stared ahead, not really looking at anything, her vision fogged by shock.
‘I’m not sure what I saw.’
She raised a shaking hand to wipe her brow. Her coat was now hot in the throng of troopers and her short curls of hair matted with sweat from the brief but sudden exertions that had got her to the train. Her gut was spinning and her pulse was unfeasibly loud in her ears, drumming incessantly like a forge hammer. Everything else was muted, a hundred conversations taking place in a neighbouring room.
In that moment she knew that the war was real. It wasn’t some distant battle beyond the stars. It wasn’t even a future conflict at the end of a train line, to be fought around the walls of the Imperial Palace. Folk of Addaba were dead now, slain by the violence of the struggle between the Emperor and Horus. Thousands had probably died on the production lines, worked beyond their limit, injured by machines that should have been maintained better, their bodies aged by the greater toil of the war effort. But that was different. That was at home, where they would be remembered, their bodies taken to the endfires. What would happen to those they had left in the Arabadlands? Did she know any of them? Would they be missed?
<
br /> It was suddenly so large and impersonal.
Would anyone remember her?
Drops of water fell on her hands and for several seconds she was confused, unable to recognise her own tears.
Katabatic Plains, eighteen hours since assault
Descending the gunship’s ramp, Abaddon paused for a second before stepping onto the bloodied dirt of Terra. He halted a few metres on and looked around, for the first time seeing the siege from below rather than above. Behind him came a bodyguard of Sons of Horus, but a raised hand stopped them as they disembarked.
‘Await me here,’ he told them, turning to the broken remnants of a defence keep that Layak had chosen to be the site of his ritual. The ground about it was littered with the corpses of Imperial Army troopers, skin blotched, tongues lolling, slain by some deadly disease or poison.
Passing into the ruin Abaddon came upon Layak in a central hall. In the hours before departing the Vengeful Spirit he had been absent from Abaddon’s presence, unusually so, and the Sons of Horus commander had found the experience partly a relief and partly filled with suspicion. On the premise that one should keep one’s enemies close, he was sure that he shouldn’t let Layak out of his sight, for all that the Word Bearer enjoyed almost unparalleled support from the Warmaster.
Now he found himself in close proximity to the Crimson Apostle and was of the firm opinion that absence was always preferable. The sorcerer had selected one of the overrun defence positions, a bastion of the outer defences directly north of the Lion’s Gate space port. Through the broken roof Abaddon could see the spear of the port reaching into the storm clouds.
Evidently the bastion had changed hands several times and nobody had bothered with the expense of energy required to remove the dead. Halls and corridors were choked with casualties from both sides: mostly human but a few abhumans, mutants. There were two power-armoured bodies, in the livery of Mortarion’s Legion. The bastion was located close to the central axis of the Death Guard’s first assault, more than a thousand kilometres from the Lion’s Gate.
‘Why here?’ growled Abaddon. ‘How will this get Perturabo into the space port?’
Layak gestured to the ground. Carrion-eaters crawled across the bodies, giant millipedes, mutant rats and black-backed beetles, impervious to the toxic fumes that lay like an ankle-deep cloud across much of the Katabatic Plains. Fungal growths wavered with strange life, puffing clouds of spores into the polluted air.
‘The God of Decay has already passed his eye across this place and found it pleasing. The barrier to the Neverborn comes not from the Lion’s Gate port but the Emperor. It is from within the heart of the Palace that we shall erode the shield.’
Typhon of the Death Guard was there also, crouched next to a distended corpse, allowing a segmented arthropod to crawl around his hand like some obscene pet. Since Abaddon had last met him, Calas Typhon was as much changed as his genefather. Abaddon recalled that Mortarion had named him Typhus, as though the morphing of his body necessitated a new identity. Though he still wore his heavy Terminator plate, as did Abaddon, it was pitted with odd corrosion, the ceramite covered in lesions like diseased bone. Organic-looking funnels splayed from the carapace across the power plant upon his back, a fume of buzzing insects constantly leaking forth. A horn protruded from the brow of Typhus’ helm, reminiscent of the emissaries of the God of Decay that Abaddon sometimes witnessed in the Warmaster’s warp chamber. The Death Guard bore a long scythe, a smaller replica of Mortarion’s signature weapon. Its pitted blade shone with unearthly light, a pale gleam in the death-fog.
Perturabo arrived soon after, his sour demeanour filling the bastion as much as his bulk. His presence was more oppressive than Horus’, his glare a challenge to any that dare meet it as it swept across the chamber at the heart of the bastion.
‘Your mechanical companions must wait outside,’ said Layak, gesturing towards the Iron Circle advancing through the door behind the primarch.
‘Send away my guards so that I remain alone amongst some of the Legions’ most powerful warriors?’ Perturabo turned his head towards the blade slaves, who stood a little back from Layak. ‘We all know how deceit is the handmaid of sorcery. I have not forgotten how Fulgrim earned his transformation at my expense.’
Layak’s blade slaves turned as one and departed by an archway. The Crimson Apostle kept his inhuman gaze upon the primarch, his voice tempered by patience.
‘Your presence is not necessary, Lord of Iron, if you wish to leave. You were invited so that you might observe, as you requested. Their soulless minds disturb the etheric qualities of the ritual.’
With his own command reflected back at him, Perturabo had little choice but to comply, and the Iron Circle withdrew, clanking into an antechamber. When they were gone, Layak stepped into the centre of the room. His gaze moved from one to the next, then stopped, his words intended for the primarch.
‘Were you to question Magnus or one of his Thousand Sons about the nature of the warp, you would come to a very different understanding to what I will demonstrate to you. The mystics of Prospero analyse the warp as analogy, thinking they might discern patterns and laws and equations from its movements. While it has moods and phases and textures, the warp is a law unto itself, and so that is how Magnus’ hubris led him into folly. You must abandon any sense that there is a science to be learnt, and instead focus on the concept of ritual and faith.’
Perturabo grunted, listening intently to every word. Abaddon was not sure whether it was wise to impart too much detail to the Lord of Iron. Perturabo excelled at perfecting what others started and creating marvel from nothing. Armed with deeper knowledge of the powers there might be no limit to what his imagination and craft could conjure.
‘Think of our place within the warp as a relationship, emotional rather than physical. Just as you and I have a context with each other that is separate from our bodies – our past, our attitudes to one another, our shared experiences. These cannot be catalogued. They defy calculation. They might even be misremembered or imagined. Yet to the warp, all of that is real, while the physical is unreal.’
‘I am not sure I fully grasp your meaning, but continue,’ said the primarch.
‘The ritual we used to allow your brothers to land upon Terra had a physical component and a spiritual one. Slaughter played its part.’ Layak waved a hand to the corpses that surrounded them. ‘Slaughter is meaningless without emotion. If I chopped down a forest of trees I would end as much life, but nobody would call it slaughter and I could not use it to summon the smallest manifestation of the powers. Death is intangible, as is fear, hatred, anger. These are the energies of the warp, the sustenance of the gods. The physical creates the spiritual. When the two are moulded and directed appropriately, a bond is made and passage between the realms can occur.’
‘I see your meaning more clearly,’ said Perturabo. ‘And how is the bond connected?’
‘That is the art, not the science,’ purred Layak. ‘It is the belief that shapes all things, and the dedication in heart to the powers. Words, symbols and actions are still physical properties of the ritual, to help shape the faith that stems from within. I have studied these mysteries for years, to smooth the passage, but it is my faith that creates the bond between me and the gods. For their boons, you must give yourselves over to them.’
Abaddon saw Perturabo’s eyes narrow.
‘Like my brothers?’
‘That is but one way. They have taken to themselves a patron and have become shaped by their inner desires. The gods are collectively happy to receive your worship.’
‘Worship? Gods?’ Perturabo clearly struggled with the concepts, though whether intellectually or dogmatically it was impossible to know.
‘You once followed a god, though He would not let you call Him such.’ Layak glanced now at Abaddon. ‘Why not serve powers that grant favour in return, rather than spurn yo
ur love and dedication?’
‘We are here for a more specific purpose,’ grunted Abaddon, uncomfortable beneath the gaze of the Crimson Apostle. ‘To break the barrier that protects the space port.’
Layak crouched, dipping his fingers towards the exposed viscera of a body at his feet. Bugs scuttled away, clustering around the feet of Typhus like chicks seeking protection from their hen. The Word Bearers sorcerer stood, pulling out a rope of intestine. It was clearly diseased, marked by pale blisters and dark scabs.
‘The gods will feast upon the light of the Emperor and in doing so will extinguish it. We must empower them with our prayers and sacrifices, lending them strength with our faith, giving of ourselves unto them that they may provide for us. In our commitment we grant them energy. We come upon this world at an auspicious time, when the warp waxes strong and the physical power of the Emperor wanes. The same thinning of the veil between realms that allowed our ships to penetrate the star system also brings close the breath of the gods.’
Talk of extinguishing the Emperor’s light, and what the Chaos Gods intended for humanity, sat uneasily with Abaddon, but he said nothing. Perturabo was ill at ease for a different reason.
‘You speak in metaphor, clouding the truth with esoteric nonsense.’ The primarch flexed his fingers in agitation. ‘Do not hide your knowledge with these riddles. Speak in plain terms.’
‘I return to my initial point,’ said Layak, looking at the organ in his hand. ‘The physical and the immaterial. The telaethesic ward is generated by the Emperor Himself. He is the physical. There is none except perhaps Magnus that could break it in direct opposition, and it would slay your brother in the doing. The only way to remove the barrier is to pile upon such pressure of the immaterial that its creator cannot sustain it. And, as you would know, master of sieges, the greatest way to seize a wall is from inside as well as out.’
‘We need to be inside the ward?’ Perturabo snarled. ‘But it is to gain entry to the port that we need to bring down the barrier!’