Deathfire

by Nick Kyme

  Numeon nodded, grateful for his brother’s support. He was about to say so when the doors to the audience hall opened.

  Roboute Guilliman strode in alone. He was wearing armour, traditional Ultramarines cobalt-blue. A long crimson cloak with a furred trim taken from some native beast of Konor trailed across his broad shoulders. The gilded ultima was emblazoned proudly across his chest. He had few weapons, save for a simple heavy-gauge bolt pistol holstered on his left hip and a short-bladed gladius that would have been fit as a sword for any non-primarch. Nothing Guilliman would ever consider going into battle with but a necessary precaution given recent circumstances.

  ‘Captain Numeon, legionaries of the Eighteenth,’ Guilliman greeted them warmly, though his hard eyes suggested he had other matters on his mind beyond this particular meeting. ‘I am greatly relieved that Lord Vulkan has returned to us, and I swear to you all that everything shall be done to uncover how this happened.’

  He towered over the Salamanders, a Macraggian battle king of old, deigning to show empathy towards his serfs.

  ‘My advisors inform me the primarch’s ceremonial hammer still possessed an acute teleportation charge.’

  ‘That is one explanation, my lord,’ said Numeon.

  Guilliman nodded, not in agreement, but rather gauging the Salamander’s mood and coming to a decision.

  ‘Indeed it is. Either way, I am glad my brother is with us again.’

  ‘Yet the one complicit in his murder is not.’ Numeon’s eyes smouldered with repressed anger, as he tried to stay mindful of his surroundings. He was also reminded of the Lion’s words.

  Guilliman quickly surveyed the others, and found their demeanours similar to Numeon’s. His expression darkened.

  ‘I regret that happened. Everything is being done to apprehend the traitor Barthusa Narek. I give you my personal–’

  ‘Apologies, my lord,’ Numeon interrupted, ‘but it does not matter.’

  Guilliman’s eyes narrowed, and he could not hide his annoyance any more.

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘As I said before, we are leaving. Vulkan is returned to us and your city is no longer safe. My brothers and I thank you for sheltering us, but our father must return to the earth.’

  Guilliman pursed his lips. His gazed flicked to the others, who waited silently, and then back to Numeon.

  ‘Can I make a simple request before you make this decision?’

  ‘It is done, my lord. Once committed, a Salamander does not balk or turn. That is why our loyalty can never be questioned.’

  ‘And I would never do so, but please… Artellus, let me speak with you alone for just a moment.’

  Numeon regarded the stern, patrician face of the primarch for a few seconds before nodding.

  ‘Very well.’

  Guilliman led Numeon in silence to a true antechamber of the fortress. Within, it was well appointed with deep-pile rugs underfoot, several comfortable-looking chairs and shelves lined with parchment books. A casual glance revealed maps, histories, early scientific endeavour, philosophy, Macraggian culture and art. Nothing on tactics, weapons or warfare.

  ‘What is this place?’ asked Numeon, walking into the middle of the room as Guilliman retreated off to the side to stare from a glass portal that took up most of the south-facing wall.

  ‘A refuge,’ he said. ‘I want to savour it before it is gone forever.’

  Numeon frowned. ‘Must you destroy it?’

  A profound sadness entered the primarch’s voice, belying the warrior and the statesman that were his ostensible personas.

  ‘Yes.’

  Numeon joined him at the portal. It looked out onto the Castrum and beyond towards the rest of the Civitas. The Fortress of Hera’s high vantage point provided an almost unobscured vista that genuinely stole the viewer’s breath.

  ‘Quite a sight, isn’t it?’

  Numeon had to agree. ‘Nocturne has its wonders,’ he said, ‘but they are savage and glorious. Not like this.’

  Guilliman turned to face him, looking down although his expression and his tone suggested they were equals.

  ‘Beauty in all things, Artellus. That is what I am trying to preserve here. I cannot bring myself to voice the unspeakable. It is hard enough to countenance what Terra’s fate may be, but I must prepare for it nonetheless.’ He gestured to the view of the city. ‘What do you see?’

  Numeon saw splendour and industry. He saw the teeming millions of Macragge and the vaunted achievements of a powerful empire, resurgent from the blow dealt to it by a coalition of traitors.

  ‘I see Macragge. I see Ultramar. The crown of a glorious empire.’

  ‘Do you know what I see?’

  Numeon shook his head.

  ‘Look again. Closer,’ said Guilliman.

  Numeon did, and at first the view was the same. But as he lingered and interrogated with his eyes, a different vision began to manifest. Labourers repaired ornamental colonnades and replaced them with armoured bulwarks or flattened them for roads to convey tanks and carriers. The landing fields had been expanded for larger fleets of gunships. Towers were reinforced with metal and gun emplacements. Factorums billowed smoke and forges toiled endlessly in the creation of materiel. In Martial Square, a large cohort of legionaries went through practice drills. Every street and avenue, the ports and communal squares were patrolled by warriors in cobalt-blue, their bolters locked across their chests.

  ‘I have the greatest standing army amongst the Legions, by most reckonings,’ said Guilliman, his earlier melancholy replaced by conviction. ‘I have allies in two other primarchs, here on my soil with the majority of their sworn warriors and I am turning my beloved Macragge into a fortress. And even then, I still do not know if it will be enough.’

  ‘You are trying to convince us to stay,’ said Numeon, but without rancour.

  To his credit, Guilliman did not attempt to lie. ‘I am.’

  Numeon released a long, shuddering breath. ‘I thought I was decided. Now I have doubt,’ he confessed. Guilliman’s forthright manner was in stark contrast to the Lion’s subtler and interpretative rhetoric. Both were highly gifted at either, though.

  ‘Do you know what they called me after those bastards came and tried to lay waste to our way of life in Ultramar? The Avenging Son. I like that name. It is apt, for I swear to you that vengeance is what we will seek for your father, my brother. I shall not rest until every wrong done unto us, all of us, is repaid. I have built my empire anew, with Sanguinius upon the throne.’

  Numeon laughed. It was a gentle, sorrowful sound.

  ‘How the dreams and ambitions of Ultramar differ from those of Nocturne. We are such different people.’

  ‘Stay, Artellus,’ Guilliman implored. ‘Stay and become a part of this. Here, on Macragge, is where you are needed.’

  ‘Xathen would say we were just propaganda.’

  Guilliman smiled ruefully. ‘Perhaps he is wise not to trust so easily.’

  ‘The scars of Isstvan go deep,’ said Numeon, as if that were all the answer he needed to give.

  ‘You would be a symbol. Of unity, of our shared purpose. Of Imperium Secundus.’

  ‘I cannot,’ Numeon decided at length, as he turned from the portal. ‘I have to take my father back to Nocturne.’

  ‘I could forbid it,’ said Guilliman, though the threat lacked conviction.

  ‘You know you would have to take up your swords to prevent us.’

  ‘You are convinced then?’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘That Vulkan lives. I see a corpse, not my brother. Teleportation anomaly or not, I do not believe he rose from death and ended up in the memorial gardens for you to find, Numeon.’

  Numeon faced the primarch once more before he left the room.

  ‘And that is where we differ, my lord. I would
have your blessing for the sixty-six to leave Ultramar, but I do not need it.’

  ‘You’ll have it, as well as escort to the edge of the system.’

  ‘Your sanction to depart will suffice.’

  Guilliman nodded, resigned. ‘Then, so be it.’

  Eighteen

  Purpose

  Magna Macragge Civitas, Port Hera

  She had many scars. Never would she be considered beautiful or majestic. War had branded her as surely and indelibly as any fire-born. Despite her aesthetic imperfections, the Charybdis did have something going for her. She was unyielding. Few ships of the XVIII Legion escaped the atrocity at Isstvan. Many had been reduced to wrecks within the opening salvoes of the battle, plunging through the atmosphere like hell-wreathed comets. Others were struck down during the ill-fated rush to escape destruction.

  Their carcasses also now littered the black sand of Isstvan or floated ghost-like in the upper atmosphere, just beyond the world’s gravitational influence.

  More important than her size and the sheer power of her formidable arsenal, the Charybdis was a survivor. Her flanks were scored and dented. Burns marked most of her dorsal aspect. Gouges in her hull had been sealed and resealed, then patched with ablative armour. She was scorched and beaten, battered and bruised, but she endured.

  Like her Legion, the Charybdis endured.

  Numeon waited at Port Hera for the transport that would take him to the ship. On a pict-feed, he watched her enginseers direct a slew of servitors across her sore flanks as final preparation for departure was made.

  ‘She is an ugly ship,’ said a voice behind him he recognised.

  ‘I seem to remember declining Lord Guilliman’s offer of escort,’ he said, smiling as he turned.

  Thiel laughed but his humour was short-lived. ‘Just here to see you off and tell you there are many here who would come with you. Not just I.’

  Numeon looked up into the darkening sky as if he could perceive the many vessels flying in and out of Macragge, all on journeys of their own, though not nearly as far.

  ‘Sixty-six of us, braving the storm in a single gargantuan ship. It would be poetic if it weren’t so dangerous, but you are right.’

  ‘About what?’

  Numeon turned away to look back at Thiel. ‘She is ugly.’

  Thiel nodded.

  ‘Whatever good fortune still exists in the galaxy, I wish all of it finds you, Artellus. I’d be lying if I said I believed as you do, but the fact you cling to hope gives me hope in return.’

  They clasped forearms in the manner of warriors.

  ‘Thank you, Aeonid. You saved my life, and reunited me with my father. It’s a debt I can never repay.’

  ‘Reach Nocturne, finish this and reward my faith in you,’ said Thiel, ‘and I shall consider us even.’

  Numeon nodded. An announcement over the landing-pad vox said that his transport was inbound.

  ‘I had thought Guilliman sent you here to convince me to stay,’ he confessed.

  ‘He did,’ Thiel replied, ‘but if my primarch can’t sway you then no words of mine are going to succeed.’

  ‘What will you do now?’ asked Numeon, turning briefly as the low thrum of turbine engines resolved on the air. Three dark shapes were coming in to land. A cadre of Salamanders awaited the craft, their necks craned.

  ‘Same as before. Lead the Red-marked and cleanse the outer worlds.’

  ‘Inviglio…’ said Numeon. ‘I am sorry about his death.’

  ‘As am I, brother. But he will not be the last, and he knew the risks. We all know.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yours are soon to be greater than most.’

  ‘I fear my hardest trial will not be of the body.’

  Thiel laughed, but without humour. ‘I can’t disagree. Whatever awaits you and yours in that storm, I wish you fortune to overcome it. You’ll need luck. More than you’re owed.’

  Numeon smiled. ‘Perhaps I’ll get some of yours.’

  Behind him, the transports arrived, their landing stanchions touching ferrocrete with an audible clank of metal.

  Amongst the throng of drake-green legionaries there hovered a casket, its gravitic impellers raising it half a metre off the ground. Six Salamanders, including Var’kir and Zytos, stood around it in close proximity.

  ‘Courage and honour, Artellus Numeon,’ said Thiel by way of a final farewell.

  ‘Vulkan lives,’ Numeon replied and went to join the primarch’s funerary guard.

  Standing at the edge of the staging area, Thiel watched the Salamanders depart. As the three gunships rose slowly into the air, bound for the upper atmosphere and an embarkation with the Charybdis, Numeon’s parting words replayed in his mind.

  Vulkan lives.

  ‘Aye, he does,’ whispered Thiel to himself, ‘in you.’

  Nineteen

  The grey

  Darkness came first, followed by a slow but growing awareness that he was not dead. With waking came profound disorientation and a desire to expel the contents of his stomach. He did so violently, retching up bile into the corner of the chamber he currently occupied.

  Then he leant back, gasping for breath, alarmed by the sudden closeness of metal against him, and tried to remember.

  Even his own name eluded him, an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia strangling any attempt at cogent recall. Seized with sudden panic, he thrashed about the confines of the tiny cell. It was low and he hit his head several times as he tested the limits of his small, metal world. Pounding the walls with his fists proved equally futile.

  He had no memory. Of anything.

  Sagging down, he pushed his feet out in front of him. Something impeded them. He nudged it again, and found it heavy but yielding.

  It was a body. He was not alone. Instinct made him reach for a weapon that was not there. Instead, he balled his fists.

  ‘Who are you?’

  Another pang of anxiety gripped him as he didn’t recognise the rasping voice issuing from his own lips. Hands trembling, he ran his fingers across his face but didn’t recognise the features either.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked again, kicking the body hard to get a reaction.

  There was nothing. No answer. No movement.

  ‘Dead?’ He only realised he had said the word out loud when it echoed back at him.

  Struggling, he got onto his hands and knees and crawled the short distance to the body. By now, his eyes were adjusting to the darkness and he could discern a vague shape to the corpse he shared this cell with. It was armoured; he could tell by the form and the hardness of the edges. He tapped it experimentally with his finger and was rewarded with a hard thud of unyielding metal.

  Ceramite. Adamantium.

  The words sprang into his mind unbidden, but he instantly knew them to be true and accurate in describing the warrior’s armour.

  Legionary battleplate.

  Yes, he remembered that too, just as he became aware that he was also wearing armour.

  As if a gossamer thin veil had been spun to obscure a light and now that light was burning through the veil in tiny shafts of illumination, he began to piece together his fractured psyche.

  ‘Radiance.’

  A flare of magnesium-bright light exploded into being on his command. Issuing from a suit lamp built into his armour, it revealed his confinement to be some form of cargo crate. There was a hatch on the far side. It also described the body he shared it with in much more detail.

  Transhuman. Male.

  ‘Legionary…’ he said aloud, getting used to his own voice. ‘Or is it?’

  The dead warrior was armoured in grey. He wore a helm too. No markings. No rank insignia. Only one identifying sigil, so slight that he almost missed it – a stylised eye, within an iota.

  It had been engraved into the gr
ey armour. Small and unobtrusive. He had no knowledge of this.

  ‘Who are you?’

  Understandably, the dead warrior did not answer.

  ‘Did I do this?’

  There was no blood on his gauntleted hands.

  ‘Are we allies? Prisoners?’

  Searching the body, he found a sidearm.

  Bolt pistol, his slowly reassembling mind told him.

  There was a combat knife sheathed with a weapons belt, so he took those too.

  ‘Something went wrong…’

  There was blood. A tiny pinprick of it against the back of the dead warrior’s neck. He could smell it, that wet metal stench that was disturbingly familiar. A needle-thin blade had rolled into the edge of the crate, discarded, almost impossible to find.

  The memory of a struggle returned. Short-lived. A command word uttered with a dying breath.

  Sleep.

  Even the vague memory of it made him groggy.

  Another command word began to form. This one he spoke aloud as he holstered the pistol and pointed it at the wall of the crate.

  ‘Egress.’

  With a sharp clunk-thud of a retracting bolt, the hatch door in the crate opened. He levered it wider with his boot, keeping the pistol trained on whatever was waiting outside.

  A cluttered hold lay beyond. Dark, the air humming with the hold’s close proximity to the engines.

  A small ship. Freighter.

  Exiting the crate, he looked around and found an exit, a short stairway leading to a gantry that ended in an elliptical door portal.

  Freedom.

  He was about to move out when he paused and looked down. His armour was sacrificial red, crimson like blood. Cuneiform was etched in the plates.

  Colchisian.

  ‘I am Barthusa Narek,’ he said, and a deep smile crept across his pugnacious features as memory came full circle. There were lacunas still. After Titus Prayto’s most recent interrogation, he remembered nothing else. Not this ship. Not how he escaped from the Eastern Keep. Certainly not the dead legionary who he had shared a berth with.