War Without End

by Various

They didn’t scare her, but it drove the others mad with fear. Those that could still run sprinted for the city limits, no doubt hoping that if they could just get clear of the drop zone then they might have a chance.

  Lermenta watched them from her inadequate shelter. They were doing what every instinct told them to do, though it made them terrifyingly easy to kill. She could only watch as men, women and children were gunned down at range, cut apart up close or crushed beneath the treads of tanks brought down by bulk landers. Terathalion had been home to a population in the billions, and it took a while for even the Legiones Astartes to track them all down.

  When she had to move, she kept her body low and hugged the remnants of whatever buildings still stood. The rockcrete was hot to the touch, burning through the soles of her regulation sandals. She didn’t have a plan. There was precious little to plan for when the entire planet was clearly being torn apart, and all that remained was a dumb, animalistic sense of wanting to stay intact for just a little bit longer.

  She went south, towards the old rivercourse where industrial hoppers for the jewel-trade stood. Those were made of plasteel and adamantium, enough to withstand the smelters, so some of them might still be standing. As she flitted between hollow wall sections, she felt her heart thudding in her chest, tight and rapid.

  She was so wrapped up in picking a route that she heard the boot-falls too late. Cursing under her breath, she did what all the others did and broke into a sprint. She did not look back.

  Perhaps they hadn’t seen her, in which case she might still race through the shadows and get away.

  Perhaps they hadn’t seen her.

  The absurdity of the thought was amusing, in spite of what it portended. These were Space Marines. They heard everything, they saw everything. Still, she ran on, gasping in the ash-thick air, weaving through what remained of an old manufactory depot. She veered hard around a corner, skidding on the rain-washed stone.

  Ahead of her, a long alley stretched away, lined with the empty corpses of drive-housings.

  At the far end, she saw him waiting.

  He was massive, far bigger in the flesh than she had ever conceived he might be, radiating an aura of such astonishing psychic authority that it made her want to gasp out loud. The elements themselves seemed to sheer away from him, though his scythe’s energised blade ran with boiling rainwater. She wanted to look away but the yellowed eyes held her fast. He walked slowly towards her, looming through twisting palls of smog, cracking the road surface under his heavy tread.

  For a moment, as she stared up at the approaching face, she was only struck by one thing in particular.

  Pain. The primarch’s grey visage was twisted into what looked like a permanent wince, half-hidden behind a hissing rebreather intake.

  ‘What do you want here?’ she managed to blurt out, hearing the arrival of more Death Guard coming up behind her.

  Mortarion shot her a withering look, as if to say, Don’t try that with me. He grabbed her chin and held it up, pinching it between the plates of his elaborate gauntlet and held her gaze for a little while longer. It felt like knives being shoved into her lungs. Then, mercifully, he released her. He gestured to his entourage, and Lermenta felt two hands grip her by the shoulders.

  ‘We have it,’ Mortarion announced, though not to her, and in a voice that sounded like a flail being dragged across rusted iron. ‘I will return to the ship. You may destroy what remains.’

  Malcador took Mortarion back up to his personal chambers, high up on the slopes overlooking the vast sprawl of the palace’s grand halls and spires. The Sigillite had spent more than a mortal lifetime making it a place of beauty and sanctuary, but Mortarion seemed barely to notice what had been placed there. The primarch simply stood on the polished marble, exuding vapours, his breathing a coarse scrape.

  ‘I would see my father now.’

  ‘The Emperor is not available,’ Malcador replied.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  Mortarion snorted. ‘You know his every movement. You know his every thought.’

  ‘No. No man knows those things.’

  Mortarion started pacing, kicking aside priceless pieces of antique furniture as he went. ‘He cannot keep me here for much longer. He tries my patience.’

  ‘Your Legion awaits you, and the last preparations are being made. You will join them soon enough.’

  Mortarion turned on him, his eyes flashing with frustrated anger. ‘Then why imprison me here? Did he do this to any of my brothers?’

  Malcador noticed the edge of unreason in his guest’s face, and wondered if it was getting worse. All the gene-progeny of the Great Project had been damaged by the scattering, but Mortarion’s wounds ran deeper than most. Angron had been physically damaged, and Curze’s mind had sunk into darkness, but Mortarion seemed to have been inherited something of both afflictions. The Emperor’s desire to keep him a while on Terra prior to joining the Crusade had been motivated from the highest intentions, just as all the decisions they had jointly made had been. That did not mean that it was the right decision, nor that the poisons could all be extracted…

  ‘You were all given different gifts,’ explained Malcador patiently. ‘You have all had different trials.’

  ‘None had more than I,’ muttered Mortarion.

  ‘I know you believe that.’

  Mortarion turned back to the view, wrinkling his grey skin against the glare. ‘You have done nothing but preach at me since I was brought here. You talk of the Imperial Truth, and yet you are neck-deep in witchery.’ He grimaced beneath his rebreather, making the skin around his temples wrinkle. ‘I can smell it on you. As soon as I leave your presence, you will be back at your spellbook.’

  Malcador suppressed a sigh. This again.

  ‘There are no spells, Mortarion. You know that.’

  ‘What is the gate you are building down there?’

  ‘I did not say it was a gate.’

  ‘It has eight sides. It is surrounded by numerological symbols. I could smell the incense.’

  ‘Your father has many projects.’

  The primarch nodded. ‘He does. He starts many things, and discards them when they no longer keep His interest. There are times when I think He may have started too many, and that they will come back to haunt Him.’

  ‘There is a purpose,’ Malcador replied. ‘A design. Some things He is able to explain now, and some He will explain later. All we ask – all we have ever asked – is for a little trust.’

  When Mortarion made his move, it was surprisingly quick.

  He whirled, his gauntlet flashing out, catching the frail lord by the neck and gripping tight. Malcador struggled for breath, looking up into the mask of sudden hatred now looming over him. The primarch still bore the stench of Barbarus upon his armour.

  ‘Trust?’ Mortarion hissed. ‘I see your foulness before me, as plain as the sun. You are a sorcerer, old man, and the stink of it makes me wish to vomit.’

  For once, Malcador struggled for the right words. He could have used his art to defend himself, but that would only enrage the primarch further. There was so much subtlety at stake – the nature of the psyker, the proper use of the human mind – but such arguments were hard to formulate with a gene-forged fist around one’s throat.

  Then Mortarion let go as suddenly as he had grasped him and snorted contemptuously as Malcador only barely found his feet.

  ‘You must think me stupid,’ he snarled. ‘A peasant of Barbarus, not fit to walk the same paths as my illustrious brothers. But I see through you, old man. I see what you are, and I tell you this – I will never serve in your Crusade while there are witches among us.’

  Mortarion’s toxin-spoiled voice shook with fervour, but Malcador composed himself. At one time or another, all of the primarchs had exerted their strength in his presence. They
seemed to enjoy demonstrating their physical prowess over him, as if perpetually resentful of his privileged place at their father’s side. He had gotten used to letting the slights pass.

  ‘Do you… really mean… that?’ Malcador managed to ask, and Mortarion’s glower was all the confirmation he needed. ‘Very well. I had hoped to show you this later… when matters were at a greater stage of readiness… but perhaps now will serve.’

  He brushed down his robes, trying not to show just how much Mortarion’s choking grip had pained him, and gestured towards a pair of mahogany doors that led to a chamber normally off-limits to all but himself and the Emperor.

  ‘After you. I think you will find this… interesting.’

  The primarch’s chamber aboard the Endurance was cluttered and claustrophobic. Lermenta let her eyes run across it, taking in the piles of old equipment scattered across the black pressed-metal floor. Perhaps once it had been a finely appointed space, decked with fine items more in keeping with a private retreat of an Emperor’s son, though now it looked more like the domain of a mind teetering on the edge of insanity. Rolls of crumpled parchment spilled across collections of ephemera from a thousand worlds – stuffed xenos heads, astrolabes, divination boards made of rosewood and iron, leather-bound manuals on numerology, or knapped-flint knives of all sizes tied with lengths of twine.

  The floor had been etched with concentric circles, each marked with a different rune. Iron lozenges, also marked with sigils, hung on chains from the arched ceiling, twisting gently under the dim light of flickering torches. The air was close and as hot as blood.

  Lermenta was shackled tightly by her wrists, neck and ankles, bound to an iron frame that stood at the far end of the ramshackle chamber, facing in towards the circles.

  She had to twist her head to catch a glimpse of Mortarion. An eye-shaped viewportal stood over to her left, taking up nearly the entire height of the outward-facing chamber wall. Terathalion could be seen through the armourglass, still glowing brightly in the void and betraying little of its ongoing pain. Mortarion stood before the portal, breathing deeply, watching the planet die. Every so often he would twitch, or his gauntlets would clench, or his rebreather would emit a faint choke of expelled air. He had been standing there for over an hour. Since the Legion menials had pinned her to the frame and left the two of them alone in the chamber, he had said nothing.

  ‘So, you did that all just to find me?’ asked Lermenta, growing tired of the enforced silence.

  Mortarion turned upon her slowly. His every movement was deliberate, as though weighed down by a terrible weariness. Up close, Lermenta could see barely-healed wounds beneath the shadow of his cowl.

  What could wound him? What could even scratch him?

  ‘Not all of it,’ he rasped throatily, his rebreather clicking as it filtered his words. ‘It is good to destroy a world. It purifies the soul.’

  Lermenta raised an eyebrow. The primarch’s voice sounded strangely febrile.

  He limped past her, coming to rest at the epicentre of the rune-circles. He folded his arms and regarded her. ‘For a long time,’ he said, ‘I believed what my new father told me. I told myself that you were a myth.’

  ‘Well, you can see that’s not true.’

  ‘I see a mortal woman.’ Mortarion said. ‘I could snap your neck with my fingertips.’

  ‘Such a charmer.’

  Mortarion advanced towards her, his tortured face looking oddly distracted. He stared at her like a man might stare at a newly discovered tumour.

  ‘How long were you down there with them?’

  ‘Twenty-five years,’ she replied.

  ‘And the mortal you consumed?’

  ‘I forget. I can’t ask her anymore – she quickly lost her mind.’

  ‘Why were you sent?’

  ‘I was not sent,’ Lermenta snapped. ‘I chose it. There were priceless things down there and now you have destroyed them all. Your brother Magnus will be angry, when he returns.’

  ‘Do not speak to me of my brothers. Any of them.’

  Mortarion was studying her intently. Close up, Lermenta could smell the chemical tang of his armour-systems, the ripe edge to his extruded breath. She could see the minuscule darts of his pupils, and the faint hidden spasms around his mouth.

  ‘You are foul to me,’ he pronounced at last.

  Lermenta bowed as much as her bonds would let her. ‘Yet you are nothing less than astonishing to me. I am full of admiration. Truthfully, I did not expect to endure long enough to see you at such… quarters.’

  The flattery made no impact – Mortarion’s psyche was so inured to disdain that he could no longer see anything other than veiled contempt. Lermenta could almost hear that paranoia echoing in his mind, pursuing him, dragging at his mighty, wounded soul.

  ‘My brothers are already using your kind,’ Mortarion told her. ‘They tell me Lorgar willingly infects his warriors. And there is Fulgrim.’ Mortarion shuddered. ‘I wonder at it. The hypocrisy.’

  ‘You should not. They have seen the order of nature and accepted it.’

  Mortarion smiled joylessly behind the rebreather. He turned, gesturing to the collection of esoterica in his chambers. ‘These are wards,’ he said. ‘Protections against the dark. Sorcery is a cancer. We must guard against it. Push it back.’ He shuffled over to one of the scrolls and idly traced a finger over the text. ‘The ancient Terrans believed in one god. Infinite. Omnipotent. That gave them a conundrum – how to describe perfection? What words could possibly suffice?’

  Mortarion crumpled the parchment in his fist. His fingers were almost trembling.

  ‘All they allowed themselves was the via negativa – to speak of what their god was not like. And when they had exhausted all the things that were not true, what remained in the blind spot was his nature.’ He looked back at her, and the evident loathing returned. ‘I surround myself with all that is not the warp, for it is hateful to me. Whatever remains is corruption. I seek it out. I destroy it.’

  ‘And yet,’ said Lermenta, ‘of all that world’s souls, you chose to preserve me.’

  Mortarion’s right eyelid twitched. ‘For now.’

  ‘Why?’

  He drew close again, and it was all Lermenta could do not to shrink back in her bonds. ‘I am surrounded by the damned,’ he said. ‘Jaghatai was right – I am on my own with them. The aether stains everything. But I will understand it. And I will overcome it.’

  ‘Oh, for pity. Nothing can overcome it.’

  The primarch loomed over her, and his shadowed face boiled with an old, old resentment. ‘All things can be overcome,’ he hissed. ‘Your final task, daemon, is to show me how.’

  Malcador ushered Mortarion into a narrow chamber. The only furniture was a long, low table draped in black silk. When the doors were closed behind them, the room sank into a velvety darkness.

  Malcador gestured with his index finger and a hololith emerged over the table, tiny points of light glinting like diamonds in the air. It was a tri-map of the galactic sector.

  ‘It took us a long time to find a suitable location,’ Malcador said, as the display gradually zoomed in. ‘A very long time.’

  He watched as Mortarion’s shrewd, suspicious eyes took in every detail – the inbound ship trajectory markers and the manifest logs that flickered in scrolling lists.

  ‘Then there were the negotiations with Mars. I thought they’d be pleased to help, but there are always difficulties to unravel. But the work, I am happy to say, is now advanced.’

  The hololith continued to cycle in closer. A planet swam into focus, its surface wracked by tectonic faultlines.

  ‘Where is this place?’ asked Mortarion.

  ‘You tell me you will refuse to serve if psychic potential remains in the Legions,’ said Malcador, watching the view continue to expand. ‘I believe you. It has been at the
forefront of the Emperor’s mind for many generations. There are complexities to overcome, but much of His labour has been expended on that very question. This is a part of it.’

  Mortarion gazed at the planetscape before them. There were rainy images of vast Mechanicum void-engines hanging in low orbit, and terraforming crawlers being lifted down through a volatile atmosphere. Other projections shimmered into life – a huge complex, rising out of a desolate landscape of volcanic ash, radiating out from a massive central arena.

  ‘Imagine it,’ said Malcador. ‘If a way could be found to remove the warp from the arteries of the Imperium. If the armies of humanity could travel without use of the Navigator gene. If the psykers could be withdrawn from the Legions, steadily and with caution. We have already begun to prepare for this day. It will not be easy, for there are powerful forces ranged against us, both within and without.’ Malcador arrested the zoom, hovering over the half-built arena. It was a colossal space, a palace in its own right, carved out of the volcanic wound of another world.

  ‘This is Nikaea, Mortarion. It is a world with a destiny, and you will have a part to play there.’

  Mortarion appeared to be caught between emotions – the perennial distrust, leavened by an undoubted curiosity.

  ‘What are you telling me?’ he asked, grudgingly.

  ‘That you are valued, Mortarion. You will be mighty, as strong as the bones of the earth, and a pillar of your Father’s vision.’ Malcador dared reach out to him, to rest a hand on the primarch’s colossal wrist. ‘Remain true to us, and He will give you this. You will speak there, to make your case before the eyes of the entire Imperium, to unburden yourself of the things that you now carry unaided. For now, we must perforce build an empire with forbidden tools. But a day will come when all these things are no longer necessary.’

  Mortarion’s eyes remained fixed upon the arena. It was as if he were already imagining himself standing there.

  For a long time, he said nothing. Then, slowly, his demeanour changed.

  ‘Tell me more,’ he said.

  ‘You are a fool,’ said Lermenta, interested to see how far she could push the primarch. She guessed that it would not be very far – he was already teetering on the precipice. She had heard of what had been done to him on Barbarus, and did not wonder at the monster that had been produced. In some ways, it was a miracle that he still had any sanity left at all.