The Death of Antagonis

by David Annandale

  They were halfway across the roof, only a handful of people ahead of them, when there was another explosion. In the open air, it sounded much louder, much sharper, much closer, and Tennesyn had a moment to wonder why the tower didn’t collapse beneath him before he realised the blast had hit another target. Bisset turned his head, and Tennesyn followed his gaze to the west.

  ‘Throne,’ Bisset cursed.

  Tennesyn saw plumes of smoke rising from the base of another, higher tower half a kilometre away. The harsh roar of the explosion became a deeper, more terrible, unending thunder as the tower bowed in surrender. It disappeared with an end-of-the-world cry into a shroud of its own dust, dragging its neighbours down with it. The tangle of spires was too dense, and none would die alone. All the time, the sway of the palace grew worse. It was a slow waltz with a chorus of screams.

  ‘This is big!’ Bisset yelled as they ran. ‘Not just riots! Too organised!’

  They reached the Aquila. It was full, and it was starting to lift off the pad, but there was just enough authority in Bisset’s uniform to make the pilot hesitate another few seconds. Bisset grabbed Tennesyn with his bionic arm and threw him into the open passenger bay. Tennesyn landed hard on metal, almost slipped out, but hands grabbed him to pull him in. He scrabbled around and was reaching out to Bisset when the waltz ended.

  One more blast, big and close. The palace swayed and did not straighten. The roof tilted sharply. The screams of its refugees were drowned by the death howl of the structure itself. The lander banked away from the danger. Bisset stood still for a moment. The look he gave Tennesyn was resigned, stoic, and bitterly amused, as if he had had just about enough of this day, yet still expected to see worse ones. ‘Bring back help,’ he called. Then he was sprinting sideways against the tilt of the building. Tennesyn saw him make a leap of faith towards an adjacent roof, and he vanished into rising dust.

  In the confusion of the near-orbit stations, Tennesyn managed to find a merchant willing to make a run to Antagonis. He was an independent runner of small arms, a supplier to mercenaries though clearly too well-fed and lazy to have known combat himself. He hadn’t heard about any trouble on Antagonis, and Tennesyn didn’t enlighten him. The captain of the Trade Sail was eager to be out of the Camargus system, and being paid to run was even better.

  Tennesyn didn’t need further proof that Bisset was right, that something more serious than unrest was striking Aighe Mortis. But he received it, all the same. It came in two blows. The first arrived as the Trade Sail left anchor. With a peremptory electronic squeal, the message took over all vox channels. ‘Citizens of Aighe Mortis,’ it announced. ‘Your oppression beneath the Imperial heel is ended. Your deliverance is at hand.’

  Tennesyn was looking out the rear viewport at the receding planet when he saw the second proof hit. It came in the form of two ships. One was a heavy raider, of a type Tennesyn had never seen before. The other he recognised as a modified transport, warped into a shape of clawed, grasping hunger. Both were gold, and it was a terrible gold, a gold that crawled behind his eyes to scrape and infect his soul.

  But worse than the gold was the coat of arms on the hull: an eye over a sword. He had seen that sign before, swinging from a chain around the neck of a laughing cardinal. He felt the sick, wrenching certainty that he had, not long past, made an awful, devastating mistake.

  ‘How much time remains?’ Benedict Danton wanted to know. It was the morning after his rescue, and he had cleaned up well. He was pale, exhausted, perhaps a bit shrunken in his suit, but still very much the high lord.

  Dysfield shrugged. ‘Difficult to say. Along with the forces of Captain Vritras, we are conducting some aerial sweeps to determine how big a concentration of the dead are heading this way. We have also bombed the pass. The rockfall isn’t a hermetic seal on the valley, but it is slowing the enemy down. Even so, there are so many millions close at hand. A few days? Perhaps a bit longer. We could gain some time with strategic orbital bombardments, but even then…’ He trailed off.

  Volos stood with Squads Pythios, Ormarr and the captain’s own Nychus against the walls of the council chamber. They were not taking part in the deliberations. That was the remit of Vritras, Dysfield, Danton and Lettinger. At least officially. But Setheno was at the table too, her mere presence shoving Lettinger into the background. The sergeants, meanwhile, were here to listen, and to present a silent show of solidarity for their captain. Volos watched Danton react to Dysfield’s report. The Space Marine was taking the measure of the man whose life his brothers had bought with their own.

  ‘There has been no communication with any other population centre on this continent?’ Danton asked.

  ‘None,’ Dysfield confirmed. ‘Nor from anywhere else on the planet.’

  The lines on Danton’s face deepened. He rubbed a finger against his lips and stared at the tactical map of Antagonis spread out on the council table. ‘Well,’ he said. He cleared his throat, straightened and faced his audience. ‘Well,’ he repeated, ‘as abhorrent as it may be, it is my responsibility to say what must be said: Antagonis has fallen. The war is over, and we have lost.’ He turned to Vritras. ‘Captain, you and your men have my most profound thanks for rescuing me and my family. I grieve for your and Colonel Dysfield’s losses. This is a debt that I can never–’

  ‘No,’ Vritras said. His tone was calm, quiet, furious.

  Danton blinked. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand–’

  ‘We are the Black Dragons. We are Adeptus Astartes. We are the ultimate force of the Emperor, and we do not surrender. Ever. This war is not over.’

  In the silence that followed, Volos mentally applauded. Danton’s defeatism was as sickening as it was offensive. Volos noted that Dysfield was keeping his opinions to himself. The colonel’s mouth was a hard, narrow line, but his eyes were haggard, as if he hated what Danton was saying, but could not refute his logic.

  The lord of Antagonis regrouped. ‘Captain,’ he said, ‘I mean no disrespect either to your Chapter’s courage or its prowess. But no matter how formidable you and your brother warriors are, what good will that do against billions? Do you have that much ammunition? Do you have that much time?’ He spread his arms before the inevitability of humiliation. ‘We have, thanks to you, already salvaged what we can. There is nothing left but to retreat to orbit, and there Inquisitor Lettinger,’ he bowed to the hooded man, ‘can give the order to sterilise the planet, ensuring the archenemy’s victory is a pyrrhic one.’

  ‘And so, under my watch, I must see the Emperor lose another world?’ Vritras demanded.

  ‘It is hardly a strategic–’ Danton began.

  Vritras cut him off again, this time with a single shake of his head. ‘With every clod that is washed away, the Imperium is lessened, and we are all diminished. I will not let that happen without being certain I did everything that was possible, and more, to prevent it.’

  Setheno spoke up. ‘Captain Vritras is correct,’ she said. ‘This war is not over. We do not even know why it began. Until we do, we do not permit it to end.’ Her voice was low, smooth, and Volos thought it even had a certain plainsong musicality to it. At the same time, there was a merciless absoluteness to the judgements she made, as if no other opinion were even imaginable. And he had heard more emotion coming from a Dreadnought’s vox-speakers.

  Setheno turned to Vritras. ‘Captain, I realise that your men have already been imposed upon, rescue missions hardly being the best use of your skills.’ Her pause was tiny, but withering. Danton stiffened. ‘I wonder if I might test your patience a bit further. Based on the battle reports of undead behaviour,’ she tapped a data-slate and her eyes flicked a quick acknowledgement to Volos and Toharan, ‘there is something deep at work here. If we are to combat it, we need to know the precise nature of our enemy. I need a specimen, and I believe that only the Adeptus Astartes are able to gather one and return intact.’

  Toharan murmured to Volos, ‘Did I just hear an ecclesiarch say please and than
k you?’

  ‘The universe is full of wonders,’ First-Sergeant Aperos whispered.

  Not least among them, Volos thought, an Adeptus Sororitas infringing on an inquisitor’s investigatory purview without so much as a peep of protest from the man. Volos took a step forward to volunteer. Setheno nodded her thanks. ‘And sergeant,’ she added, ‘I will need the specimen to be… well… not alive but…’

  ‘Viable?’ Volos offered.

  ‘Precisely.’

  Lettinger tried to keep his dismay under control as he walked the corridors. He had barely had a chance to exchange two words with the Canoness Errant, and she was showing no interest at all in the problem of the Dragons. So be it. He had more than enough power on his own to do what must be done.

  He stopped before a closed door. He grasped the wrought-iron handle and gave it an experimental tug. The door wasn’t locked. It was heavy, the berbab wood as dense and unyielding as the long iron hinges that stretched across its entire width, but it opened without a sound. There were no torches in the corridor ahead, but there was just enough light leaking through from the far end for the inquisitor to see where he was going. Lettinger steeled himself. He felt no pride in what he was about to do. He knew the twist in his gut for what it was: shame. But there was no choice. What he did, he did out of duty. He made the sign of the aquila, drew strength from the unalterable truth that the Emperor watched over him, and started forward. He pulled the door closed behind him and moved down the short corridor, taking his time with each step so the heels of his boots didn’t sound against the flagstones.

  He emerged on a small balcony that overlooked Lexica’s chapel. The tall, narrow, stained glass windows, portraying scenes of judgement and justice during the Great Cull, filtered the daylight dark red and blue. The colours of blood and night washed over the assembled Black Dragons. Draped in shadows, Lettinger watched the monsters at worship.

  The Space Marines alternately stood and knelt over the length of the service, but they did not sit. Chaplain Massorus stood at the altar, his crozius in hand as he led the call and response. Lettinger noted that though the crozius’s head was the traditional winged skull configuration, the wings were reptilian. Knobby bone growths covered Massorus’s head like armour. There were, Lettinger knew, saurians on Cretacia with skulls like that. He shuddered.

  ‘Emperor,’ Massorus intoned, ‘curse Thy servants…’

  Lettinger stifled a gasp.

  ‘…that we might feel Thy shaping hand,’ the Dragons chanted back.

  ‘Forge them fire and bone…’

  ‘… that we shall evermore mightily defend Thee.’

  ‘Mould them, O Emperor, our Father and Saviour of man…’

  ‘… and for the glory of Thy Name deliver Thy enemies unto us.’

  ‘O Emperor, hear our prayer…’

  ‘… and let the cry of our rage come unto the heretic.’

  ‘Bless the curse!’ the Chaplain cried.

  ‘Bless the curse!’ the Dragons roared back.

  ‘It is the mark of the Emperor’s touch. By it, you will know Him. By it, you are shaped into His most perfect weapon. Deformity leads to the apotheosis of war. Can you ever forget the impurity of your body? No! Then neither can you forget the need for the purity of action. And in the agony of the emergence of bone, feel the memory of the greatest purity: the Emperor’s great sacrifice. Teach that memory to the enemy on the point of your most holy of blades. Fire and bone!’ Massorus raised his crozius to the sky.

  ‘Fire and bone!’ the Dragons echoed, and answered the Chaplain’s gesture with blades. Most held out chainswords, but the Dragon Claws, the most cursed and blessed, lifted their arm-blades. Some were retractable and shot out. Others were permanent deformities growing out of their forearms. Angles varied. Lethality did not. The air crackled with the mortification of flesh and the ecstasy of war.

  Lettinger swallowed, throat dry, and crept back down the corridor. He eased the door open, stepped through, then shut it and leaned his back against it, waiting for his breathing and heartbeat to settle. He sorted through his impressions. He felt a mix of pity and revulsion. The Dragons devotion to the Emperor appeared genuine, but the form that it took, that revelling in deformity and mutation, was dangerous. Misguided love was one of the surest routes to heresy, and Lettinger had seen that drama enacted time and again. At the individual level, it was a tragedy. But when it involved an entire Adeptus Astartes Chapter, it was a nightmare.

  Lettinger sighed, wondering if the Imperium would ever be done with the nightmares triggered by the 21st Founding. So much had gone wrong with so many Chapters that should never have been created. Rebellion, excommunication, luck that would make a daemon weep with sympathy – four millennia spent trying to undo the results brought on by the hubris of the Adeptus Mechanicus genetors who thought they could improve on the Emperor’s original genetic work. It was, perhaps, a saving grace that the gene flaws made further recruitment impossible. The cursed Chapters couldn’t replenish their ranks. One fallen Space Marine at a time, they were dying out.

  Except the Black Dragons. Isolated from other Chapters, despised by some, their home world unknown, they were still strong. They still inducted neophytes. The thought that kept Lettinger awake at nights was the threat the Dragons could present, should they fall all the way. From what he had seen, that fall was inevitable. The only question was whether they could be dealt with in time.

  No, he corrected himself. There was one other question. Because as much as that ceremony had disturbed him, he had also seen a few glimmers of hope, and by the Throne, did he want to hold them fast. There was, maybe, maybe, the possibility of redemption. Not for all the Dragons. Volos and his ilk were damned, corrupted beyond hope, even if they didn’t know it yet. But Toharan was different, and Lettinger had seen a few others in the chapel who, like him, showed no visible mutation. Lettinger thought that Toharan’s blessing of the curse had been just a bit forced, not quite soul-driven.

  Lettinger strode away from the door, the path of his duty clear before him. What the Inquisition must burn, it would burn, and he would see it done. He was a Monodominant, and he knew that anything mutant must be destroyed. But if there was something to be salvaged, he would see that done, too. For the love and glory of the Emperor.

  He found Toharan on the ramparts an hour later, inspecting the defences and watching the dead fill the valley and slowly rise up the mountainside. The peaks cast their afternoon shadows over the corpses, turning Antagonis’s growing doom into a single, dark, writhing mass.

  ‘Greetings, sergeant,’ Lettinger began.

  ‘Inquisitor,’ Toharan answered, with the bare minimum of civility.

  Lettinger wasn’t put off. He hadn’t expected anything different. He still felt at a disadvantage. Toharan was small next to Volos, but he still towered over Lettinger. His essential humanity was obvious only when he was next to the creatures who had lost theirs. On his own, he was a colossus built and designed for war. Even the planes of his face looked hard enough to crack granite. ‘I know you don’t welcome my company,’ Lettinger said, ‘but it is more important than I think you realise that there be some open lines of communication between us.’

  ‘Really.’ The word wasn’t a question. It was a dismissal.

  Lettinger ignored it. ‘Important for the Black Dragons.’

  Toharan hadn’t been looking at him. He did now. He said nothing, but his eyes bore an unmistakable warning.

  ‘We both know that the relations between my ordo and your Chapter have been difficult.’

  Toharan broke his silence. ‘Now why would that be?’ he snarled. ‘Maybe because we bleed and die for the Imperium, yet the Inquisition casts aspersions on our honour? We don’t ask for thanks or glory, but we could do without calumny.’

  ‘I understand your anger. But do you, I wonder, understand why there is a cloud over the Dragons? The Inquisition is not capricious. It doesn’t persecute for the sheer joy of it. We do have rathe
r a lot to keep ourselves busy, you know.’

  ‘Then make me understand.’

  ‘Forgive my bluntness, but do you have any idea just how dangerous mutation is? How closely aligned it is with the nature of the warp? The history of your fellow founding Chapters is–’

  ‘I’m aware of that history.’

  ‘Then you should see why the Black Dragons provoke such anxiety. There is so much mutation in your ranks. So much potential monstrosity. Remember the Flame Falcons!’ Engulfed in fire that did not consume them, they, too, had embraced their mutation without fear or repentance. The Inquisition had sent them judgement.

  ‘That slaughter was justice, was it?’

  Lettinger wondered if he’d been mistaken. Perhaps there was no hope for the Dragons after all, if even Toharan couldn’t be brought to the light of reason and orthodoxy. ‘It was necessary. Their mutation was a sign of daemonic corruption.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘I have no reason to doubt the sagacity of my superiors. And tell me, given the history you know so well, what does your Chapter think it is doing by not only welcoming, but encouraging mutation?’

  ‘You have no evidence–’

  ‘You, sergeant, are the evidence! Don’t you see? Mutation is not an inevitable fact of being a Black Dragon. Rather, it is being sought. Why seek something so unnecessary, so dangerous, and so likely to bring down scrutiny and shame?’

  ‘To be impure of body is to seek purity of action.’

  ‘But you are not impure of body. Are your actions any less worthy?’

  Toharan didn’t answer.

  Lettinger didn’t let up. ‘Doesn’t that argument sound like a rationalisation?’

  After another pause, Toharan sidestepped the question. ‘What exactly do you want of me?’

  ‘I would like you to ask yourself this question: is your leadership really acting in the Chapter’s best interests?’

  Toharan’s hand shot out. The movement was whip-fast, but stopped just short of Lettinger’s throat. Toharan leaned forward, his huge face filling Lettinger’s vision, his eyes dark with lethal fury. ‘I will not strike an inquisitor,’ he said. ‘This time. But if I ever again believe, or even suspect, that you have counselled treason on my part, then I shall defend the honour of my Chapter, no matter the consequences. Am I clear?’