Deathfire

by Nick Kyme

  Fifty-Eight

  Cast off the mask

  Battle-barge Charybdis, solitorium

  After they had reached the borders of the Segmentum Solar, Hecht had retreated to the solitorium. He waited until Numeon and Var’kir had left before secreting himself within the sanctuary. His mind strained under the weight of two conflicting psyches. During his reunion with Quor Gallek, he had believed he was Barthusa Narek but then, confronted by the reality of his mission, another had begun to assert itself. Kaspian Hecht.

  He was broken: a personality fractured across a bifurcating line, neither wholly one nor the other.

  Narek tried to remember what had been done to him. Hecht fought to deny it.

  ‘Who am I?’ he asked the dormant flame, flickering in its iron cradle.

  No answer came.

  He drew his knife. It had been polished to a mirror sheen but Narek did not recognise the face reflected back at him in the blade. In the lambent light it appeared like an impostor, an unseen and unknown identity.

  Kill the primarch. That was what his instincts were telling him. The Lord of Drakes… But he was already dead, wasn’t he? Nevertheless, the imperative lingered.

  It would be easy enough. Two more guards had been posted by the entrance to the sanctum. He could kill them. Only two Salamanders aboard this ship would present a challenge, and both of them were far enough away not to matter.

  But whenever Narek considered it, he hesitated, as if a counter impulse had been put in his way.

  And so he came to the solitorium, to try to order his thoughts.

  Two minds could not exist in one body for long, even a transhuman one. It would tear him apart, half Narek, half Hecht. He could already feel himself unravelling.

  To lose one’s identity, it tapped into something primal, something no hypno-conditioning could entirely contain.

  Fear seized him, genuine fear. The first he had ever known, or could remember.

  ‘Whose are these hands?’ he asked aloud, and heard the question echoed back. ‘This voice?’ he cried.

  Trying to regress, he thought back to the storage crate when he had first awoken. He also remembered his cell on Macragge, and Titus Prayto’s interrogations. At times, the latter felt like another life, like another’s life. At others, it was his history.

  He was slipping again. He thought about the crate, and about the body he had found within it. He remembered the armour. He remembered being Barthusa Narek. The civilians he had slain to take over the freighter. Docking at Rampart when his fuel had ebbed to fumes. The imperative to find fresh transport had been strong.

  A directive, almost like a conditioned reflex.

  Is Kaspian Hecht really Barthusa Narek or is Barthusa Narek really Kaspian Hecht?

  It spiralled endlessly.

  I was taken.

  He could deduce that much. One moment in a cell in the Eastern Keep, the next in the darkness of the storage crate.

  Smuggled off Macragge…

  But by whom? The one whose body he had regained consciousness next to?

  And to what end?

  A psyker.

  Not Titus Prayto, someone more powerful. Strong enough to cloak their escape and confound the sons of Guilliman in their own house.

  Only one psyker allied to the Imperium that Narek knew of could achieve that feat. His mark adorned the grey, nondescript armour that Narek wore. But it could not have been him.

  At least… not directly.

  Another then, his body a conduit for the will of the Sigillite.

  First Lord of Terra, Grand Master of…

  ‘Assassins,’ Narek said aloud. He lifted his knife so he could see the unfamiliar face staring back at him in the blade. It was unremarkable, forgettable. A mask. To get him out of Ultramar.

  ‘You are not the face of Kaspian Hecht,’ said Narek. Raising the knife to his cheek he made a small incision, just long enough to reach under it with his gauntleted finger. There was blood, but not much. He cut deeper. Longer. This time he gently dug up a flap of skin. Still, so little blood. Cursory. Minimal.

  And as he peeled back the layer, he saw not flesh, not tissue or muscle or even skull. Narek saw more skin. It carried etchings that he recognised. Colchisian cuneiform.

  It was his skin, Barthusa Narek’s skin.

  He pulled hard and the false flesh peeled off entirely, leaving a gruesome synth-skin mask in Narek’s hands. An iron ewer stood by the brazier, intended for the dousing of the flame and the raising of steam. He used it to cleanse his blade.

  ‘I know this face,’ he uttered to the shadows, and with that further revelation came swiftly.

  Kaspian Hecht had lived. He had been a psyker, his purpose to modify Narek’s mind, to bend and manipulate, to obscure even from the subject himself, who he was. He knew because Hecht knew it and he was Hecht, a part of him anyway.

  But something had gone wrong. Kaspian Hecht was dead, though something of him clung on, alive inside Narek’s mind.

  ‘I am a son of the Word. I am Narek.’

  The sound of a blade slipping its sheath made him turn.

  ‘That is unfortunate,’ said Rek’or Xathen, standing in the archway to the solitorium. ‘Because it means I am going to have to kill you now.’

  Narek rose from his kneeling position, his knife held loosely in his grasp.

  ‘Only two warriors aboard this ship are capable of defeating me in single combat.’

  ‘Arrogant and a traitor,’ Xathen replied, not bothering to hide his disgust at the pieces of skin mask still clinging to Narek’s face.

  ‘Just weary,’ said Narek, and looked it. ‘Do you know how many people want to kill me?’

  ‘I would think a great many.’

  Narek nodded. ‘You would be correct. I am traitor to you and pariah to my own Legion. I saw His light, and I knew then that I trod the wrong path. Only now I am uncertain what my path is.’

  Xathen twirled around his blade to loosen up his wrist.

  ‘Is this meant to garner sympathy? You will find none in me. It was the blood of my brothers you shed on the black sand.’

  ‘No, I merely tell you so that there is another soul who has heard it. Even now as I speak the words to you, it sounds inconceivable.’

  ‘From the moment we left Macragge, this journey has been inconceivable. Was this your doing somehow? A viper in our ranks, influencing our minds so we cast ourselves adrift again?’

  Narek showed his hands in genuine contrition.

  ‘It is one crime of which I am innocent. You Drakes did this alone. Are you so sure you will fail? Where is your faith in your Legion?’

  ‘It died on bloody, black sand, your knives lodged firmly in our backs. We should have died there. I should have died, but we survived and have limped on ever since. That is the cruellest irony about all of this – we are the dead ferrying the dead.’

  ‘I don’t want to kill you. We once fought as allies when you knew me as Kaspian Hecht.’

  Xathen’s eyes narrowed and he took a step into the solitorium, slowly closing Narek down. ‘Whatever armour you clad your body in, whoever’s skin you hide your true self behind does not change what you are, betrayer.’

  ‘This is foolish, Xathen.’

  ‘Don’t speak my name like we are brothers. Ready your blade. I won’t strike you down as you struck my brothers down.’

  ‘As you wish,’ said Narek, cracking his knuckles. ‘You should know something before we begin, though.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Those two warriors I mentioned… You are not one of them.’

  Both legionaries took up their fighting stances and were about to begin when the general alert sounded. Klaxons shrieked throughout the solitorium as Esenzi’s voice issued through the vox. They had broken back into real space, in sight of Noc
turne. She urged all to battle stations, lamenting the death of Kolo Adyssian, but instilling in her crew the resolve to avenge him and achieve what they had lost so much striving to achieve, to deliver Vulkan.

  Xathen appeared stunned at the news, as if he were scarcely able to comprehend it.

  ‘Impossible…’ he breathed, his attention elsewhere for but a moment as the import of what he had just heard sank in.

  Narek needed less than half that time to act.

  He sprang forwards, parrying Xathen’s instinctive thrust, turning it aside and coming in close to crash his forehead into the Salamander’s nose.

  Spitting fury, Xathen reeled but Narek pressed the advantage by seizing the back of his head and smashing it hard against the solitorium’s unyielding wall. Something cracked, either bone or rock. Potentially both. Either way, it left Xathen out cold and slumped on the floor.

  Narek had to move quickly. Quor Gallek had a henchman of a sort that Narek knew well, and who knew him. Esenzi had identified the Monarchia as one of the enemy vessels bearing down on the Charybdis. That meant Degat. Narek’s defection would have offended Degat’s twisted sense of honour. He would be coming for him.

  He looked down at the unconscious Salamander.

  ‘Looks like you get to live a little longer, brother.’

  Fifty-Nine

  Gauntlet

  The void

  Degat hunkered down in the troop hold of the gunship, eyes down as he re-toothed the belt on his chainsword.

  His warriors sat around him, similarly braced in restraint harnesses, their boots mag-locked and breathing through their helms’ respiratory systems in the zero gravity.

  Unclipping a bent adamantium tooth, Degat let it float away and quickly affixed another.

  Sharp enough to cut away his soul and send it screaming into the aether.

  His belligerent thoughts weren’t echoed in his body language. Degat moved only when he needed to, as still as a statue and machine-like in his efficiency of motion. He breathed deeply though, a helm slammed over his preferred rebreather mask for now, watching as the internal chronometer counted down the minutes to interception.

  Degat didn’t care about the Salamanders any more, nor was he concerned by the Death Guard commander’s orders. Who was this Barbaran savage to order him around anyway? The thought was enough to raise a slight smile.

  No, Degat had only one objective in mind as he hurtled through the void alongside his kin: to find Barthusa Narek and to kill him.

  A warning siren signalled their proximity to the enemy vessel. She was firing and they were in range of her formidable arsenal. The pilot’s voice issuing through Degat’s helm vox informed them he was taking evasive action.

  Every one of the boarding craft launched from the Reaper’s Shroud would be.

  Several would not be fast enough, but Degat knew his would not be amongst them. Fate demanded he meet Narek again. It had been foretold.

  On the bridge of the Reaper’s Shroud, Laestygon watched the holo­lith unblinking from his throne.

  Eighteen boarding craft, including one carrying the Preacher’s warriors, sped across the gulf between the two ships. At full burn, the gunships would take a matter of minutes to reach the Charybdis.

  They would need to be swift. The Salamanders had answered the threat by unleashing the ship’s guns against the potential boarders.

  Laestygon had sent missiles amongst his flock of boarding craft too. Each carried a virulent contagion, products of his Destroyer cadre. Against the ship’s armoured hull, they would burn and degrade. Versus the mortal crew aboard they would reduce skin to flensed bone.

  ‘Rack,’ Laestygon rasped, summoning the attention of his ship­master, who was watching the trajectory of the launched vessels almost as closely as his Death Guard overlord. ‘Fire off a few salvoes. Strip their shields. Cripple them. Everything dies aboard but leave the vessel intact. I shall enter the primarch’s mausoleum myself and cut off his head.’

  Wisely, subserviently, Rack did as bidden.

  The bridge of the Reaper’s Shroud shook with the discharge of its broadsides a few moments later.

  ‘You will find his skin tough, Laestygon,’ uttered Quor Gallek.

  Since his arrival aboard the Reaper’s Shroud, the Preacher had been a near-anonymous presence on the bridge. Though he wore his battle­plate instead of the ridiculous and craven robes of the prophet he claimed to be, Laestygon thought Quor Gallek still looked less of a warrior than his wretched shipmaster.

  He senses his usefulness ending, thought Laestygon, and considered how much longer he needed the Word Bearer around. He also considered if he would honour the promise he had given, to let him flee.

  Laestygon rapped his kukra, his gauntleted fist emitting a metal clang as it struck the blade.

  ‘Then I shall strike hard and with purpose.’

  ‘I remind you of our agreement. I take the fulgurite, the rest is yours.’

  ‘You are in no position to remind me of anything, preacher. Pray your war dog succeeds in leading my warriors to the sanctuary.’

  Quor Gallek said nothing further, which made Laestygon smile.

  As soon as I have Vulkan’s body…

  Down in the launch bays, the Charybdis shuddered as its shields were struck by a punitive barrage from the two enemy ships.

  Labour crews and enginseers toiled hard to get the gunship ready. There were fighters already primed, but too few pilots to fly them. An entire arsenal lying fallow since the sirens had their slaughter. Every able-bodied man and woman not charged with keeping the ship moving and fighting was guarding the bridge. Out of warp, the mortal defenders could move freely now, but were much diminished. Despite the hopelessness of their plight, every one had ash streaked across his or her face to echo and honour their lords.

  More than twenty Salamanders had assembled on the deck.

  In the end, Mu’garna and Baduk had volunteered to stay behind and protect the bridge. Xathen was curiously absent, but Numeon had no time to search for the veteran sergeant now.

  The rest stood reverently around the casket of the primarch, which had been brought up from the cargo hold and hovered at waist height on anti-gravity impellers.

  No sign came from the Lord of Drakes that he would or could stir. His face was as still as rock, his flesh as inviolable as obsidian.

  ‘Will he breathe still?’ asked Abidemi in a low whisper.

  ‘Once he is returned to the fire, he will do more than breathe,’ answered Numeon. ‘He will rise, reborn.’

  Zytos murmured the primarch’s name under his breath, echoed by Gargo.

  An enginseer signalled the gunship was ready. As the gang ramp to the hold lowered, Numeon raised Var’kir on the vox.

  ‘Brother, we are about to embark.’

  ‘And so our journey ends at last.’

  ‘Stand fast, Var’kir, and know your part in this miracle we have wrought.’

  ‘Be swift, Numeon. As soon as they realise what we have done, you will be hunted.’

  ‘I will not be stopped now, brother. Vulkan lives.’ Numeon was about to sign off when Var’kir stopped him.

  ‘Bring our father peace, Artellus. Return him to the earth where he belongs. Then allow yourself some peace. Don’t torture yourself any more.’

  The warm glow of determination faded in Numeon, replaced by an icy chill. Var’kir did not want him to doubt, merely to temper his hope. He recalled the vision given unto him by Magnus, of standing before the mountain and the sky red with flame.

  A melancholy mood threatened, until Numeon crushed it with his belief. They had crossed the Ruinstorm and breached the veil. In spite of everything, and all they had sacrificed, Nocturne was within their reach.

  Nothing was impossible.

  Vulkan would rise.

  All they needed to do
was reach Deathfire.

  The gang ramp hit the deck with a resounding clang.

  At Numeon’s silent order, the last of the Salamanders escorted their father aboard.

  Abidemi led them, while Zytos lingered, evidently picking up on his brother’s unease.

  The deck shook again, more violently this time as the shields collapsed entirely.

  ‘Nothing stands in their way now, brother,’ Numeon said to Zytos.

  ‘They’ll be on us in a few more seconds,’ he replied. ‘We need to launch and hope we can slip by any cordon that may have been put around the ship.’

  Numeon shook his head.

  ‘There’ll be no cordon. They won’t be expecting us to flee – they’ll think we’re going to fight.’

  ‘And should we fight?’

  ‘I would gladly die for the brave souls aboard the Charybdis but, no, Zytos. Getting our father back onto Nocturnean soil is too important to risk.’

  ‘Then why the doubt?’

  ‘Something I’ve seen, brother. Something that I think was just for me, meant for me for some reason I cannot yet fathom.’

  The hull trembled as the Charybdis shed armour plate like scales. Every salvo was intended to wound, not kill. Once the Death Guard or the Word Bearers had what they wanted, all restraint would end. That staying of their full military might would give Esenzi some advantage, at least.

  ‘Our path beckons, brother. One that began on Macragge and shall end on Nocturne with the resurrection of Vulkan.’

  Numeon nodded, and they made for the gunship.

  As the gang ramp closed, and the internal lumes of the troop hold flickered on to lift the gloom, tocsins sounded. The boarding craft had made contact. Enemies were gaining ingress.

  It was time to leave.

  Engines roaring, the gunship speared through the launch tunnel leaving the fire of afterburners in its wake, until it hit the black void and the war between three ships unfolding across it.

  Sixty

  Ship death

  Battle-barge Charybdis, bridge

  Lyssa Esenzi noted the departure of the gunship through the starboard-­side launch bay on the ship’s schematic display and turned her attention to an offensive war footing.