by Dan Abnett
The scrolling data in my eyes stops.
I hear a voice calling to me in tones of static, but I am no longer a thing that hears or replies. I am falling backwards away from the world above, falling back to the jumbled memories of life and the questions that only the dead ask.
What are the Keys of Hel?
They are a dream that ends and wishes it had not. They are what happens when life runs out and hate endures.
WAKEN.
I am standing beneath the burning dome of the heavens.
WAKEN.
I am watching the world become a receding dot. Beneath and behind me the blank dream of true death rushes up to catch me as I fall.
'Waken.'
It is a voice that calls me. I obey it. I waken to the slow unfolding of pain that is the return from the dreams of ice.
I know the face that greets me. It is a face of blank iron with slots for eyes. It is the face of Phidias, my resurrector, my brother amongst the living. Interface sockets dot his armour and a mane of interface cables hang down his back like a cloak.
I try to speak, but the connections between my mind and body are not complete.
Phidias gives a single shake of his head, as though hearing what I was about to ask.
'We endure still, Crius. The battle was won, the enemy destroyed.'
A spider of pain climbs my throat and I can speak.
'How?' I ask.
'You were found and taken from the void.' He pauses. 'I made you again.'
I track the sensations as my body becomes mine again. It is different. The beat of blood is fainter, the tingle of flesh more distant. The cold thrill of metal presses into my awareness where before there had been the warm pulse of muscle and nerves. I have lost much, but I do not feel weaker. I feel stronger.
'No,' I say, forming the word slowly. There is still ice on the remaining flesh of my face. 'How did we prevail?'
Phidias looks at me for a long moment. He is calculating, processing data and possibilities.
'Another ship came to our aid.'
'Another ship?'
'Its arrival caused the enemy to miscalculate its key defensive choices. That cost them everything.'
'What other ship?'
'They have been looking for us, following the messages we sent into the warp to bring the enemy to us. They have been seeking for some time. Or so they claim.'
'Who are they?'
'The ship is the Daedalus.'
I hear the word, and at the back of my awareness I feel something move a twitch, like the fingers of a hand beneath a shroud.
'Do they know I am here?'
'No,' he says with a brief shake of his head.
'Is the Daedalus still bound to the same clan?'
He nods. I wish that I could close my eyes to think, but I cannot. Data blinks across my vison as I consider. After a moment I speak one of the key questions aloud.
'If they do not know I am here, then why were they seeking us?'
'They say that they have been seeking all they can find of the Tenth Legion. There is a gathering of might, an attempt to mend what is broken so that we may be whole again.'
I pause. There is no point speaking of the delusion of such an idea. I think of Rogal Dorn, of Sigismund and the Imperial Fists squatting on Terra in hope of being able to face down the tide of treachery. I think of the hunger for hope that took me from Terra to find the shattered remains of my Legion. The nobility of such motives does not make any of those actions any less futile. There is only one reason to fight now, and that is to take the measure of vengeance from this universe before it is ashes.
'Why have you woken me, Phidias?' I ask, and the master of the Thetis nods again as though acknowledging that we have reached the point he was waiting for.
'Because they have asked to meet the chiefs of our force, and because they are not fools. The Thetis is still being repaired and will not be able to run. Once they realise what I have done and what you are, we will have to destroy them before they attempt to destroy us. Unless we can reach a point of balance.'
'You wish to avoid death at the hands of our kin. Does the manner in which we end still matter, Phidias?'
'Yes. It does'
I am silent. I do not know if I feel the same way he does. I do not know if I feel anything. At last I nod.
The Kadoran. The Daedalus.
Pearls of ice fall from my face as I shrug from my wrappings of frost.
My clan. My ship. Two shards from a life I no longer live.
'Very well,' I say as. 'Let us go and speak with my clanbrothers. Let them see what has become of their lord.'
What are the Keys of Hel?
They are the fires taken from the mountain. They are what should not and must not be. Only in the last days of humanity, when law has no meaning, should any think to break the locks placed upon them.
These are those days.
THE REPRESENTATIVES OF Clan Kadoran wait for us. Twenty warriors armoured and armed, their weapons ready stand beneath the wings of their gunships on the deck of a hangar bay. Around them, the jumble of our scavenged assault craft fill the gloom like the halfgnawed leavings of a carrion beast. It is hot, or so the data tells me. I feel neither cold nor heat anymore. They will have noticed that, as they will have noticed the damage to the Thetis's hull, and the quiet which radiates from the darkness of the ship. They wait and wonder exactly who, and what, they have found. I know this. It is a mirrored moment, an experience repeated from my past but this time seen from the other side.
We watch them for several seconds, but they do not see us. Beside me stands Phidias, and to either side of us, stretching away into the gloom, two hundred of our silent brotherhood. At last Phidias steps forwards and I go with him.
Our brothers remain where they are, unseen and unmoving.
The Kadoran react as they see us. Guns come up and volkite calivers and plasma blasters shrill as they rise to a firing charge.
We stop. Stillness extends into the space and silence. The moment has a feeling of stolen familiarity.
'I am Soter. I am ClanFather of the Kadoran.'
I look at him and he looks back. His armour is battle marked, but the marks are like scars over healed flesh, and beneath them his armour purrs with smooth efficiency. His helm is clamped at his belt, his head bare. A strip of steelgrey hair runs down the centre of a scalp dotted with cog studs. His eyes are his own, but the flesh of the righthand side of his face is a sculpture in circuitry and chrome. He radiates calm and strength.
I know him. I know him very well. His eyes move between Phidias and me in a single sweep of movement. Lights flicker beneath his right eye, but his face shows nothing. He waits, and when we say nothing he speaks again.
'We are come to you as blood of the same Legion, and to call you to gather with our kin. Who are you, and of what clan?'
'I am Phidias, master of the Thetis'. The words are uninflected, a blank gift of fact.
Soter gives the smallest nod, and then turns his gaze to me.
'And you?'
'It is I, brother,' I say, even though I know that my voice no longer sounds like the one they would remember.
He stares at me. Everything is very still. I feel a pulse in the air and know that vox transmissions are flicking between Soter's entourage. Their guns do not lower.
'Lord Crius?'
I take a single step closer, aware of the piston creak of my frame as I move.
'It is a long way from old wars, Soter, and longer since I was lord of anything.'
He continues to stare.
'We did not know you lived,' he says at last.
I do not respond to that. 'Why are you here?' I ask instead.
He pauses for a second, and I can feel him considering his answer. That was always his strength, both in battle and in strategy. Logic and strength were the pillars of the X Legion's might in war, but in Soter there was a vein of instinct rarely found in those of our blood. It was one of the qualities that all
owed him to rise above his peers, and triumph where others fell. It was one of the reasons in the limited form we are given to such sentiment that I liked him. And now I could tell that his instinct was holding his tongue, telling him that something was wrong.
'I came looking for any of our Legion who might endure.' His eyes move between Phidas and me. 'I came to summon all I found.'
'To what end?'
'For war.' He leaves off both my name and the title he had previously given me. It is not an accident. The Iron Hands do not make small errors.
'War is everywhere, Soter. There is no need to gather to find it.'
'The Legion will be drawn together again,' he says.
'He is dead!' I hear the dry voice roar into the vast space. It is a thundercrack of rage, bitterness and pain. It is my voice. I feel the bulk of my body flex, as pistons and cable feeds twitch. When I speak again my voice is quieter, but I can still feel the edge in it, the emotion which has come from somewhere I cannot see within myself. 'Ferrus Manus fell, our father is no more. We are broken. The Legion is no more. Nothing can change that.'
'We are strong. We endure, and we can be reforged.'
'We are not strong enough, brother. We are the remains, the echo which has yet to fade.'
'You refuse, then?' he asks, and I hear the suspicion in the words.
I take another step forwards.
'That you ask is a courtesy I appreciate. But you know already that we will not be a part of the false dream you chase.'
Our gazes are locked, and in that moment I know that I was right and that he has deduced what I am now. I wait to hear his next words.
'What have you done?' he asks, and I hear the voice of the young Medusan warrior who I chose from a throng of shivering humans, and who became a warrior at my side and bore my banner for six decades of conquest and war.
'I have become the vengeance of the fallen,' I say, and behind me my brothers in death step from the gloom.
What are the Keys of Hel?
They were the seal placed by our father upon all the principles and knowledge that should never be applied. Few outside the Legion knew of the ban placed by Ferrus Manus on the Sarcosan Formulae, the Progression of the Seventh Gate, and the Ophidian Scale. Even amongst his sons few knew more than the name and, of those who did know, most grasped only shadows of dark possibility. Cyberresurrection, ghola, death and life bound by field, woven by metal and sung by axioms of the unknown. Created by man in the Dark Age of Technology, or by alien hands under cruel suns, their origin does not matter. They are the evolution that our father placed beyond our reach, the lock upon a gate to a denied realm.
I have walked through those gates, and now I step between stolen moments amongst the living. I walk with fire, pain and hatred for all that has brought me here, and for all that has been lost.
And as I persist I think of my genefather. Of the warrior who died, who fell and who allowed himself to be weaker than the universe.
And I know now with every pulse of false life that he was right.
'HOLD!' SOTER'S SHOUT cuts through the buzz of fireready weapons.
I watch him. He has not taken his eyes off me. His warriors freeze. He had not needed to call out he could have held their fire with a subvocal command. But he had spoken it aloud, and I knew as I looked at him that it had been so I could hear it.
Beside him one of his warriors flicks a gaze across the lines of the dead. I recognise him: Taurus, a sergeant in the 167th. I had raised him to that rank. He had been a fine warrior, hard and unyielding as a worn anvil. I realise that I no longer think of them as my warriors. If I look further, and let memory and logic flow, I will recognise more of them. They once followed me in war, knelt to me as their lord, and I had called them brothers. That is gone now. We are separate, two shards cleaved from a broken sword falling away from one another.
'We did not come here as enemies,' he says. He looks carefully at the dead ranged behind me. I read the gesture and shake my head.
'I do not threaten, Soter. This is honesty. We cannot be a part of what you attempt. You know that. You need to understand.'
He shakes his head once.
'That you could do this…'
'There is nothing to protect. We are what we are. The Legion cannot be remade, and we are no longer with you. We are this age's last children. Go back to your dreams, Soter, and leave us to ours.'
Soter is utterly still. He is calculating, running the situation through logic and reason, searching for the decision he will have to make. The living flesh of his face shifts almost imperceptibly. He is about to speak.
'You have broken the decrees of our father,' he says. Behind him, Taurus and the rest shift imperceptibly. They are holding themselves on the razorfine edge before violence. 'You have passed beyond. You have turned your back on Ferrus Manus. You are not of the Legion. You are its shame.'
And there is a paused instant, as though the second that has just passed and the one that is to come have yet to join.
He is right. I know that he is right. The words are true, but they also do not matter. The warriors facing me come from a different world, a world that is not the cold sleep of death and the pain of waking.
'Kill them,' says Soter.
Gunfire blazes through the dark. Haloed beams of light spear into armour and explode cold muscle. Plasma screams as it blasts metal into vapour. Soter's Iron Hands are spreading out amongst the hulls of the assault craft, firing as they pull back towards their own gunships even as the ring of dead warriors closes. None of my brothers fire back.
'Hold your fire, Soter!' I call. He has leapt away and is firing at the slow shapes of the dead. He has not fired at me, though. He had the opportunity, in the long moment when he faced me, his weapon in his hand as the dead stepped into the light. He could have poured bolts into my head until it was pulp and bone.
He did not fire. Iron Hands do not make such errors. He had chosen not to fire.
'Soter,' I call and stride forward. The air is thick with the streaked light and tattered shrieks of gunfire.
'You are an abomination,' he calls.
They are halfway to their gunships. The craft's heavy bolters are stitching the gloom into a sheet of explosions.
'Leave us,' I call, as rounds explode across my armour. I rock in place. 'End this and go.'
'This ship will burn,' he calls and raises his bolter. Its muzzle is a frozen circle of black in my sight. 'We will purge you from us.'
'I cannot allow that,' I call. 'You will end here and we will endure.'
'So be it, then,' he says, and squeezes the trigger.
The bolt never leaves the barrel. A sharp edge of plasteel and lightning cuts the weapon in two, and a ball of shrapnel bursts from it.
Soter is turning fast, but Taurus's second blow cuts the front from his skull, and the third shatters his chest plate and ribs. Soter falls.
'Cease,' Taurus calls, and the warriors beside him put up their weapons. He turns and looks at those whose brother and leader he has just killed. Again there is the itching pulse of vox traffic, felt but silent to me, passing between them.
Then he turns back to me. I cannot read his posture; he seems just as all of the X Legion can at times, unmoving, poised between detachment and fury.
'My thanks,' I say. He twitches.
'We will leave,' he says. 'You will not try to prevent us. You will not stand against us.'
He turns and walks away. I can still see the sheen of Soter's blood on his armour, splattered red reflecting black in the dim light. The rest fold in around him, taking the places of a warrior guard of a clanfather.
'You claim his place by taking his life?'
Taurus pauses and turns back, and in that motion I can sense the loathing he is carrying just beneath the surface of control.
'That was always the way. The old Medusan way. He made the wrong choice, the weak choice, the choice of flesh and sentiment, not iron. If he was stronger I would not have been able to kill
him. Death is the consequence of weakness.'
The blank gaze of his helm is fixed on me, and I hear the unspoken implication in his words. 'What you have done is not gain strength. It is not inevitable. It is weakness.'
'Then why leave us unpunished?' I ask.
He laughs, a growling roll that sounds utterly inhuman, and utterly without humour.
'Destruction is forgiveness. I will not sacrifice the strength of our clan to undo what you have done. You are living the punishment for your own heresy, and I will not spare you from it.'
Taurus turns his back, contempt sharp in every line and movement. He begins to walk towards the waiting gunships.
'And him?' asks Phidias looking down at the shape of Soter on the deck between us. Taurus turns and looks at the bloody ruin of his former lord.
'He stays with you,' he says.
What are the Keys of Hel ?
They are a voice growing fainter as the past walks away from us. A key is a beginning, but once the door is open those beginnings are forgotten. We walk through and leave what brought us there behind. We become the present.
We become the inescapable now.
SOTER WAKES. I am waiting for him when he does. He looks up at me. He no longer has a true face. Lenses and tangles of wire sit at the front of a skull of chrome. I watch the lenses twitch, watch the hand rise and the digits flex.
'Welcome, brother,' I say.
'It…' he begins, and then stops as though the buzz and click of his voice has surprised him. 'It is… pain.'
'Yes,' I say. 'It is.'
He rises, each limb moving one at a time until he is standing. 'Will this end?' he asks and his eyes are not looking at me but at the exposed flesh of his right hand, waiting for its skin of armour. 'Yes,' I reply. 'When we wake no more.'
He looks for a moment longer at his still fingers, and then nods.
What are the Keys of Hel?
They are the reward for our weakness. They are the cruelty of iron. They are all we have left.
DEEDS ENDURE
GAV THORPE
'COMMENCE BOMBARDMENT!'
A second passed.
Then another.
Still there was no sign that the command of SpearheadCenturion Kratoz had been heard. The gun decks of the Phorcys remained suspiciously silent. On the ship schematic in the lower right corner of the main screen the status display showed the battle cruiser's torpedo tubes still loaded.