by Various
‘I know Horus Lupercal was a better man than any other I met. He would never turn on his father.’
‘You do not really believe that,’ said Nagasena.
‘Don’t tell me what I believe,’ snarled Severian.
‘You do not believe it because if Horus was ever to turn on his father, you know this is exactly how he would do it. A sudden, shocking betrayal followed by an apparently suicidal gambit that results in the massacre of the Emperor’s best chance to stop the rebellion before it gains momentum.’
Severian said nothing, knowing Nagasena was right. What little he knew of the massacre at Isstvan V was just the manner in which Horus would open a rebellion.
‘I do not lie,’ said Nagasena. ‘On the blade Shoujiki, I swear it.’
‘Then why have you not shot me from the cliff?’
‘Perhaps I will before you reach Vadok Singh’s villa.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Severian, resuming his climb.
‘Then let us say that Horus may be a traitor, but I do not yet know if you are.’
Nagasena’s voice faded from the helm, lost in a squall of interference from a test firing of the Palace’s void generators.
Severian continued climbing, drawing closer to the top. With each moment of ascent, he wondered if Nagasena would shoot him from the cliff, but quickly dismissed the possibility. If Nagasena wanted to kill him, he would be dead already.
The sun was gone now, and only the faint haze of starlight and the arc-lights from the Bhabhar work camps and the Mechanicum ship forges on the Terai-Duar flatlands illuminated the rock face.
As he approached the lip of the cliff, he pressed his cheek to the black rock and focused his gaze on the boundary between stone and sky. Sure enough, he saw a wavering bloom of disturbed air.
The faint haze of a laser tripwire covered the full length of the cliff edge.
Severian took a firm grip of the rock in one hand and let himself dangle. He turned himself around and re-established his handholds as he braced his feet flat against the cliff, knees bent, muscles tense. He took a shallow breath and gathered his concentration, visualising the planned movement in his head, rehearsing the duration of each muscle contraction and snap of limb until he was certain of its success.
Severian pushed off, powering his legs out and up, using his handhold as a hinge about which his body arced like the overpowered swing of a pendulum. Halfway through, he released his grip and twisted his body, snapping around in a gymnast’s crunch. He landed a metre beyond the edge of the cliff and dropped to his knees in a sandy courtyard, one hand pressed flat to the ground, the other balled into a fist.
He awaited the scream of an alarm, the hue and cry of a sentry or the chatter of an automated weapon system. Nothing. Only the sigh of the wind and the hiss of his own breath disturbed the silence.
‘I expected better from you, Warmason,’ muttered Severian. ‘If you are Dorn’s architect, then the Warmaster will simply walk into the Emperor’s throne room.’
The courtyard was enclosed on three sides by tiered steps that led up to a cloister. Night-blooming plants with albino leaves spread themselves to the moon, and their bitter, almond scent hinted at bespoke genecraft. A stone-flagged path led around the edges of the courtyard, at the centre of which gurgled and frothed a fountain topped by the finial of a square and compass.
The numerous branches of the path enclosed rectangles of sand in which were rendered miniature sections of construction models of blockhouses, elevations and bastions. Intersecting lines of fire and dead zones were marked in the sand, together with guild markings that made no sense to Severian.
He recognised the Dhawalagiri in one, the Eternity Gate in another and the growing fortifications spreading at the opening of the Mohan. Severian ascended to the cloister, padding softly over the polished terrazzo. The heads of the flowers followed his movements.
He followed the cloister to the villa’s central pavilion, a wide elevation with a tall tower at its heart from which the Warmason could survey his great works. The landing platform and Singh’s tiltjet shuttle were on a raised plateau to the front of the main building. Severian had only the most basic knowledge of operating such a craft. He could fly it, but not well enough to avoid the inevitable interceptors and their seeker warheads.
No, if he was to reach the orbital plates alive, he needed to give his pursuers a reason not to shoot him down.
What better a reason than the Emperor’s own Warmason?
Severian paused, sensing a subtle, undefinable change in the air. The smell of almonds had vanished, replaced by something ammoniac. Instantly his hand flashed to his blade and he pressed himself against the wall.
A panel beside him slid open, and a multi-barrelled cannon pushed out on a circular gimbal mount. A green-lensed range-finder tracked across the courtyard, and Severian saw its twin emerge from the opposite wall. Its tracker beam panned across him and green flashed to red.
A blitz of shells hammered the air and he pushed off the wall as the cannon beside him spun around. He sprang up and wrenched the barrel around, its bucking motion like wrestling a greenskin. Its servos fought him, but he kept his grip firm and walked its fire into the opposite cannon. High-velocity shells ripped through it, tearing it from the wall in a blaze of impacts.
Severian jammed his blade into the cannon’s rotator mechanism, and threw himself to the side as the shells exploded in the breech, ripping the weapon apart in a spray of wild shots. He rolled to his feet and ran for the edge of the cloister. Vaulting from one of its supporting pillars, he swung up and hauled himself onto the tiled roof as more guns unmasked below. Having seen the Warmason’s schematics in the sand, Severian knew there would be no dead ground in which to hide.
Movement was his only ally here.
He ran along the ridge of the cloister’s roof as a wailing siren blared in alarm and light flooded the mountainside. Previously concealed arc-lights swung up and bathed the villa in blazing illumination that left him no shadow. More of the night-blooming flowers were situated at regular intervals in ornate planters. Spores misted their heads and Severian gagged at the stench, now realising how he had been unmasked so swiftly. These were bio-engineered plants, presumably tailored to react to any unfamiliar genetic sample.
Severian vaulted onto the higher roof of the main structure as four figures emerged from cavities worked into the lower reaches of the tower. Automata, rendered in glossy black flex-metal and moving with a suppleness that only connections to the high magi of the Mechanicum could procure. Superficially human, their heads were mannequin-blank, concealing a lethal array of combat wetware grafted to the cauterised remains of a human cerebral cortex. Each was armed with a long, whipping blade and an implanted energy weapon. Two of them came straight for him, the third and fourth taking to the air on repulsor packs. A flurry of shots scythed towards him. Severian ducked and rolled, knowing on an instinctual level where their targeters would aim.
He ran towards the first, drawing and firing a Black Sentinel’s pistol in one motion. The weapon was ridiculously small in his grip, but the nearest automaton went down, its head broken open. The second sprang away to the side.
Right into the arcing grenade Severian had thrown at the same instant.
The detonation sent it spinning down into the courtyard in flames. A shot struck him in the back and he grunted in pain as the beam punched through his armour. His war-plate would have stopped the shot, but this was armour of an earlier age.
He rolled and came up firing. The automata had spread out. His shots punched empty air. Severian kept moving, hearing the clatter of yet more emplaced sentinels being thrown into the fray. Escalating threat response; the more he killed, the more would come at him.
Another shot struck him, and this time searing heat burned him a cauterised wound. Severian turned as he heard the buzz of an approaching enemy.
The blank-faced automaton crashed down beside him, and Severian swung two pistols to bear. It struck out with its implanted blade, skewering him through his lower ribs. He slammed his fist down, snapping the blade at the root, and emptied one pistol’s magazine into the automaton. The impacts battered it down the slope of the roof, but pitch-perfect balance-gyros kept it from toppling over the edge. It took aim at him, but a grenade at its feet blew it off the roof in a cascade of broken tiles and fire.
Severian wrenched the flex-blade from his body as the fourth automaton dropped down ten metres behind him. It had seen the destruction of the first three and was in no hurry to share their fate. Severian ran towards the tower, chased by weapons fire. Shots blistered the air around him as he saw more of the blank-faced sentinels circling the structure.
Severian skidded to a halt, dropping to a crouch. His arm lifted and shot forwards. Black, nano-carbon steel flashed and the automaton went down with a bloodied flex-blade punched through its skull. It crumpled to its knees, but Severian was already on the move.
He dived into the recess from which the nearest of the automata had emerged.
Yasu Nagasena watches the battle on the rooftop with a hunter’s fascination. He is impressed that Severian has managed to penetrate this far. Vadok Singh dismissed his warning as unnecessary, yet here they stand in the Warmason’s extremis chamber, surrounded by free-floating pict-feed images generated by a holosphere.
Vadok Singh is accompanied by a migou pit-fighting creature and two of his glossy black automata. The warrior cyborgs were crafted in the forges of Magos Lukas Chrom, a Mechanicum adept now thought to be a traitor. Singh clearly valued Chrom’s work over his reputation.
The Warmason’s body is tall and willowy, engineered for height and guild-work. It looks too fragile and too breakable for Terran gravity. Nagasena has been in the presence of the gene-forged many times, but something in Singh’s form unnerves him more than any primarch, legionary or chimeric Mechanicum adept.
Singh glances over at him, stroking the wax-paper schemata Nagasena asked to see.
‘He is resourceful,’ allows Singh, his voice a mix of irritation and admiration. ‘But he is just one warrior.’
‘One warrior who has evaded capture by the Emperor’s Custodians and the Black Sentinels. Trust me, you do not know this man.’
‘Nor do you,’ snaps Singh.
‘To hunt a man is to know him,’ answers Nagasena, his presence here surely making the truth of his words self-evident.
Singh leans forwards as an explosion on the rooftop blanks the screens for a fraction of a second. The Warmason frowns, tracking the pict-feeds on the roof around in confusion.
Severian is nowhere to be seen.
‘Where is he?’ demands Singh, as though Severian’s disappearance is a personal affront.
Nagasena has no answer for him. Severian has vanished, and he can do nothing trapped in the extremis chamber. He realises it was a mistake to trust the Warmason’s assurances that there were no blind spots in his defences.
‘Open the door,’ he says. ‘Now.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ replies Singh, sifting through myriad holos with impatient haptic gestures.
‘Open it,’ repeats Nagasena. ‘I need to be out there.’
‘Very well,’ says Singh, tapping a code into a floating keypad of light. ‘But this door will not open again. Not for you or anyone else.’
‘I understand,’ says Nagasena as the metres-thick armoured blast door swings slowly open. He slips through as soon as it is wide enough.
The corridor is empty, as is the room beyond, a high-ceilinged chamber lush with alien furs, exquisitely crafted furniture of extinct woods and gilt-framed architectural plans said to have been a gift from Perturabo himself.
He hears something heavy and metallic behind him, and at first thinks it is the door-locks of the extremis chamber closing. Then he hears a scream and realises his mistake. Nagasena spins around in time to see one of Singh’s automata spill from the door, its head a pulverised ruin of sparking circuit boards and dribbling brain matter.
He knows immediately what has happened.
Severian has infiltrated the Warmason’s tower and broken through into the extremis chamber through its most unguarded flank, the roof.
Singh’s voice sounds from within, a reedy plea for mercy, and Nagasena wonders if Severian has any left in him. Strobing flashes of gunfire light the corridor and Nagasena hears grunts of pain and the sound of a furious brawl. Singh cries out and something explodes from within. The armoured door is still trying to close, but the body of the automaton is holding it open for now.
Two fist-sized objects fly through the gap, perfectly angled to bounce from the wall and land either side of Nagasena.
He throws himself back, dragging a heavy rosewood table after him as the fragmentation grenades explode. The blasts of fire and shrapnel are intensified in the confines of the room, and the table is blown to splinters by the impact. Sharp pain slices into him, and blood runs down his thigh. He tries to rise, but his leg gives out under him and he drops with a cry of pain.
Through the smoke of the explosion, Nagasena sees a vast shape moving towards him. He pulls his long-las tight into his shoulder and fires three shots in quick succession. He thinks all three hit, but he is smashed from his feet by a tremendous impact before he can be sure.
Nagasena lands badly on a sculpture of a golden lion. He spills from its back onto the soft furs. Ribs are broken and his leg is numb and useless. His long-las lies next to him, miraculously undamaged. Just as he reaches for it, a booted foot stamps down, breaking the weapon in two. Nagasena rolls onto his back and reaches for his sword, but the weapon is only half drawn before a fist too large to be mortal takes his arm and twists it.
Nagasena’s scream is one of agony and loss, for as his wrist breaks so too does Shoujiki.
The broken shards spin away across the floor, and through blurred vision, Nagasena sees Severian’s face. It is cruel and angular, sharply defined where many of his gene-brothers have a curious flattening of their features.
‘You let me live on the cliff,’ says Severian. ‘Now I return the favour.’
Nagasena sees that Severian carries the unconscious form of Vadok Singh under his arm, as easily as a man might carry a rolled up sheaf of papers.
‘You will not leave Terra,’ Nagasena promises him.
‘Watch me,’ says Severian, dropping Singh to the floor.
The legionary pushes open the wide doors that lead to the courtyard and the landing platforms. Automata descend from the roof on glowing flight packs, but they do not attack. Their targeting wetware has specific rules of engagement, and Singh’s own parameters for his safety render them impotent. Nagasena loses sight of Severian, gritting his teeth against the pain.
With his good arm, he drags himself across the floor. Every movement causes blood to pump from his wounded leg. He should lie still and bind his wounds, but Nagasena has not yet failed in a hunt and he does not intend to fail in this one. Sweat pours down his face. His features are drained of colour, but he keeps going. He leaves a line of smeared crimson in his wake.
Nagasena pulls himself through the doors into the courtyard. It is brightly lit, and the black-skinned automata stand motionless. The night-blooming flowers bend and flap in a roaring downdraught.
The building howl of engines comes from a double-rotored tiltjet sitting on a raised platform cantilevered from the villa’s outer walls. Severian sits at the flyer’s controls, with Vadok Singh slumped next to him. Nagasena shields his eyes against the hurricane-force propwash that billows dust into the air. He draws his volkite pistol.
Proximity protocols might keep the automata from engaging, but Nagasena has no such restrictions.
The rotor nacelles angle downwards and the tiltjet lifts into the night.
Holdin
g the pistol is almost too much for Nagasena. Sweat drips in his eyes and his limbs tremble with the effort of holding it straight. He will get one shot, two if he is lucky.
His first shot stabs into an engine, a bright beam that fuses components and blows hydraulic lines. His second misses.
But one was enough.
The engine coughs smoke and something inside explodes with a fearsome bang that rips the rotor assembly from the side of the tiltjet. The nacelle drops onto the villa’s gateway and its sculpted structure is obliterated with a shriek of buckling metal and cracking stone. Broken pieces of rotor blades whip through the courtyard, beheading automata and scything others down like deserters before a firing squad. Nagasena buries his head in his hands as the nacelle explodes and the spinning tiltjet slams down next to it. The impact collapses the flyer’s structure, its spine broken and the remaining engine spitting black smoke and screaming with grinding rotors.
Nagasena crawls towards the downed flyer and uses its buckled prow to pull himself upright. Through the shattered ruin of the canopy, he sees Vadok Singh is still unconscious, but relatively unscathed.
Severian is pinned in the pilot’s seat, his legs broken by the crushed avionics panel. With a little time he could free himself, but Nagasena has the volkite pistol aimed at his head.
The Legion warrior sees the gun, but Nagasena does not shoot.
Instead, he asks: ‘You were one of the Crusader Host, yes?’
‘I was,’ answers Severian. ‘I stood on the walls of Terra as a symbol of the warriors fighting to reclaim the galaxy your ancestors let slip through their fingers. My brothers and I forswore the glories of campaigning to stand as honour guard on Terra. And what did we get for our sacrifice? Betrayal and imprisonment!’
‘How long were you on Terra?’ asks Nagasena.
‘One hundred and seventy-seven years.’
‘Then you never became a Son of Horus.’