by John French
‘Are we so strange to your eyes?’
The question made Rihat blink with surprise for a moment. He almost wanted to smile. ‘Yes. To be honest, yes, you are.’
Phobos gave a thoughtful grunt, head nodding slightly in its armoured setting. ‘The angels of death walking amongst mortals.’
‘Yes, something like that,’ said Rihat, frowning. For a moment he had heard a hint of something he could not quite place in the Space Marine’s voice.
Phobos stopped and turned to Rihat. Behind them the honour guard clattered to a halt. The Space Marine looked steadily at Rihat, his storm-grey eyes unblinking amongst ridges of glossy scar tissue. His armour was white, but Rihat could see gouges and score marks under the paint. The crux on Phobos’s left shoulder was a death’s head of dull stone. There were patches where damage had been ground smooth. A sword hung in a bronze-worked scabbard at his waist, its grip bound with hide, its pommel a silver skull. Rihat doubted he could easily lift it.
Phobos’s armour clicked and whined as he shifted his posture, leaning closer. A smell of machine oil filled Rihat’s nose. He raised an eyebrow. ‘Tell me, do I look like an angel?’
‘No… No, you don’t. You look like the most terrifying thing I have ever seen.’
A ghost of a smile twitched across Phobos’s face. ‘Very good, colonel,’ he said, and turned to walk on, seeming to growl as he moved.
After a few steps, Rihat realised that the Space Marine was chuckling.
‘How long have you been an oracle?’
The question had come after they had walked the corridors and chambers of Claros station for several hours, Cyrus striding alongside the shuffling old man. They had talked and Cyrus found himself warming to Colophon’s wry remarks and sharp questions.
‘For as long as I can remember,’ Cyrus said. The brief years of his youth opened in his mind. The fear of his parents at their child’s strangeness, the shuddering terror of his dreams: all long ago on a world that existed now only in his memory. ‘It was the first sign of my talent. I would see snatches of things that would later happen.’
Colophon nodded. ‘The first awakenings of psychic talent are always the worst,’ said the old man softly.
‘Yes,’ said Cyrus. The Librarian found himself wondering at what might have happened to him if he had not proved strong enough in mind and body to be sent from the Black Ships to the White Consuls. Would he have been shuffling along these corridors, blind to everything beyond his mind’s eyes?
They turned to walk down a central chamber of one of the five wings of the station. It was wide and tall enough that a Titan could have strode between its stone pillars. People crowded its black stone floor. Administratum Ciphers hurried past, muttering mnemonic rhyme as they carried information from one part of the station to another. Hooded adepts talked in small groups, their mouths hidden by wide grey hoods. Menials in drab grey carried stacks of brass data sceptres, the tattooed marks of their service bright on their shaved heads. Wide eyes followed Cyrus from the crowd, fear and awe mingling on their faces. Some had knelt until he passed. It made him uncomfortable. He was a warrior used to the company of his brothers, not the grovelling fear of those he tried to protect.
‘It must be a burden,’ said Colophon, breaking Cyrus’s thoughts. ‘To see the future, to know what must happen.’
Cyrus shrugged, the gesture magnified through his armour into a massive shifting of armour plates. ‘It is a tool, that is all. A weapon that I wield for my Chapter and the Imperium.’
Colophon turned his blind eyes towards Cyrus, and the Librarian felt the old man’s psychic senses focus on him. ‘Is it a vision of what will happen that makes you wait and worry so, my friend? Do you know that something will happen here?’
Cyrus thought of the omens in the bone slivers, of the snatches of sensation and vision: snarling faces, bird-like cries, his life pulsing away. ‘Sometimes an omen is wrong, or open to interpretation,’ he said carefully. ‘Even if it appears clear, by knowing it and acting the oracle may change that future.’
‘A very clear answer to a different question,’ chuckled Colophon, turning to point them towards an arched door which led out of the pillared chamber. Beyond the door a spiral of wide iron steps led downwards. At the bottom was a tangle of narrow corridors, and cramped chambers. Most were closed by brass bound doors. Through the unsealed doors Cyrus could see figures polishing data sceptres by candlelight. In other chambers bent-backed curators shifted piles of parchment scrolls between dusty shelves. They looked up and watched as Cyrus and Colophon passed.
This place exists for the hundred astropaths that sit at its centre, he thought, but here is the blood and muscle of the station, never resting, always moving on the edge of others’ shadows.
‘Tell me,’ said Colophon, and Cyrus heard the shift in his voice, the edge of worry. Cyrus stopped and Colophon turned to face him, flickering candlelight from a side chamber turning the old man’s face into a twitching mask of shadow. ‘What is it that you see coming?’
‘Blood, Colophon. I see blood and ruin.’
The astropathic chamber was a place of whispers. A circular bowl over five hundred paces wide, it sides rose in tiers of grey stone seats to a domed ceiling of black glass. Green-robed astropaths sat on every tier. There were hundreds of them, their minds open to the immaterium like nets cast into the currents of a deep ocean. Gathered in these numbers they could send messages over vast distances. They were a choir of minds acting in concert, but each reacted to their task differently. Some mumbled strings of words, or twitched as if stirring in a fitful dream. Others sat as still as statues, chests hardly moving as they breathed. The air was heavy, filled with the smell of sweat, incense and the static tang of psychic power. Ether-sensors hung from the ceiling above, feeling the flow of power within the chamber, alert for anything abnormal. Even psykers soul-bound to the Emperor were a risk when gathered together in large numbers. Out in the shadow tides of the warp such a gathering shone bright to the predators that swarmed there. The sensors were there to warn of any dangerous levels of psychic activity.
The hush broke without warning as an astropath on the third tier moaned and shivered in her trance. Supervisory adepts looked up from their screens and moved towards her. When the adepts were a pace away she arched her back and screamed. There was a sound of bones cracking as she convulsed. Above them the ether-sensors shattered. A mist coiled from the woman’s mouth spreading into the air. It touched another green-robed figure and a new voice began to scream. The adepts froze for an instant and then began to run to the containment system.
More astropaths began to howl. Sparks rained down onto the tiered seats as the sensor arrays exploded. On every tier green-robed bodies spasmed, fingers clawing at the stone armrests of their chairs, pus running from empty eyes. A heavy stench of iron and raw meat spread through the air. Voice after voice rose into a storm of noise like the call of a choir of the damned. Frost began running across the domed ceiling. At the centre of the chamber adepts and guards fell to their knees. Some of the guards vomited as they felt voices rush through their minds, voices that moaned and pleaded for mercy. Alarms began to sound, but their shrills were swallowed in the chorus of screams.
They began to die. One man opened his mouth and liquid fire poured down his body, his flesh powdering from his bones. Another tried to stand, cables ripping from his scalp. He stumbled and exploded in a wet cloud of skin and bone fragments. Others rose screaming into the air before dissolving into smoke and black dust.
The sound grew louder, screams rolling over each other until a single voice shrieked from a hundred throats.
Beyond the chamber panic spread through the station in the blare of alarms, the clang of sealing blast doors and the shouts of running guards.
In the astropathic chamber the screams became a single word.
Then all was still, except for the drip of blood and softly falling ash.
Cyrus charged through the doors at a run,
his strides shaking the floor. Behind him Rihat did his best to match the White Consul’s pace. Helicon Guard followed in their wake. Cyrus had been in the station’s command chamber when the alarms had sounded and the servitors slaved to the sensors systems began to babble. Rihat had gone pale and then started to run, ordering troops to follow. Cyrus had overtaken him after only ten paces.
The psychic aftershock hit Cyrus as he entered the astropathic chamber, forcing him to stagger. The crystal matrix of his psychic hood was blazing with sickly light as it compensated for the wild power surging around him. A psychic event of huge magnitude had occurred in the chamber and a powerful echo of its fury still lingered. Dark liquid pooled on the floor; crumpled bodies lay in their stone thrones. Behind him, Cyrus heard some of the Helicon Guard vomiting onto the deck. The stink of sorcery was thick in the air: a sharp ozone tang that brought the twisted faces from his vision back into his mind. He scanned the chamber, its devastation lit by sparking glow-globes.
‘Spread out,’ he called. ‘Look for survivors, be alert for any hostile action.’ The Guardsmen moved around him, fanning out into the shadows. His storm bolter in hand, Cyrus moved deeper into the chamber.
There were bodies draping the stone tiers in piles of tangled limbs. A powdered layer covered everything, coating the dead so that they looked like grotesque sculptures. Scraps of debris still fell slowly through the air. Cyrus saw a severed hand on the snow-like covering, its fingers twisted into claws. There were lines in the dust, trail marks where people had crawled towards the doors. Dark stains had soaked into the ash in places, and Cyrus’s steps left red prints as he moved across the chamber.
A figure staggered towards him, its eyes wide in a face smeared red. Dust spilled from the man as he moved. Cyrus recognised the marks of a senior adept on the man’s robes. He mouthed something at Cyrus, his lips moving but his words muffled. Cyrus kept the muzzle of his bolter steady.
‘What did you say?’ asked Cyrus. The adept’s mouth spoke the half sounds again. ‘What did you say?’ repeated Cyrus.
‘He said that they screamed the same thing,’ came a cracked voice from behind him.
Cyrus turned to see Colophon limping into the chamber. He looked into the old astropath’s eyes, seeing an expression he could not read on the man’s face.
Colophon walked over to the adept, who was swaying where he stood. ‘I can see it in his thoughts,’ he added. ‘It is the only thing he is thinking. They screamed the same word at the end.’
Cyrus looked at the adept and saw the silent word in the shape of his moving lips. He felt a cold pulse run through him as he spoke the word out loud: ‘Fateweaver.’
The adept nodded, his eyes wide with fear. Cyrus thought of the recorded signal and of the visions that would not leave him. It was all happening as he had feared it must. The daemon came to consume this place, as it had so many others.
Will I fail, he thought, will I be able to defy that part of fate?
‘Not all of them are dead,’ called Rihat, bent down next to a green-robed figure that lay sprawled on the floor. ‘Some survived whatever this was.’
Cyrus saw that a few of the bodies scattered around the chamber were stirring, their movements feeble but signs of life none the less. ‘Something is coming,’ he said, glancing at the hunched man by his side. ‘Colophon, a message must be sent now.’ But the old astropath was shaking his head.
‘Can’t you feel it? The warp around us is…’ Colophon closed his eyes briefly, a shiver running through his hunched form. ‘The warp around us is a curtain of pain. No message will be able to break through. Even if any of my brothers and sisters recover, it would not be possible.’
Cyrus reached out with his psychic senses and tasted the veil of agony surrounding the station. It was as if a barbed web lay all around them, a shadow’s width away. The old man was right; no telepathic message could leave.
Colophon trembled, almost falling, before Rihat caught him and lowered him to sit on the edge of the first stone tier. ‘We are alone,’ the astropath said. The old man looked up, and Cyrus saw the panic overcoming him. ‘An evacuation?’ A tremor of fear edged his voice. ‘Your ship can hold many. We could–’
‘No.’ Cyrus cut the old man off. ‘It could carry some, but what of the rest, Colophon? What of those we left behind?’
Colophon looked into Cyrus’s eyes for an instant and then looked down, his hand trembling on his cane top.
‘Your orders, Epistolary?’ said Rihat.
Cyrus turned, looking at the tiered chamber and the motionless figures that would never rise from their seats. A few survivors were beginning to call out from the shadows. ‘Prepare the defences. We are alone, and so we must hold alone.’
‘How long do we have until an attack begins?’ asked Rihat. His face was pale and Cyrus could see fear in his wide eyes.
Cyrus looked at the colonel, and then at the blood congealing at their feet. ‘It has already begun.’
II
BLOODED
‘Flesh will fail, Space Marine,’ said Hekate, and Phobos had to bite back his anger at the contempt in her voice. ‘Against the enemy that comes, this is our true defence.’ Hekate raised her staff to point at the black pillar that rose above them. Bundles of humming cables snaked around it, and purity seals covered almost every inch of its surface. Phobos could see a delicate pattern of marks etched into the obsidian beneath the fluttering strips of parchment. The chamber was a narrow armoured cylinder that followed the pillar into blackness above. The air held a greasy static charge that played over his armour in small arcs.
Phobos had been reviewing the station’s defences for hours. His eyes had taken in every readied gun and choke-point, his mind sifting through possible weaknesses. Helicon Guard units waited in each of the five wings of the station. The White Consuls under his and Cyrus’s command formed a force of small units, ready to respond should the enemy break through. The Aethon would remain docked to the station, its guns ready if necessary. It was Cyrus’s plan and Phobos could not fault it given their resources, but the key to the defence was in front of him.
The pillar was a Geller field generator. The field it projected was a product of techno-arcana of the powerful kind. Normally used to shield ships as they passed through the warp, here it existed to shield the station from daemonic assault.
Phobos disliked Hekate but knew that she spoke truth. Besides his brothers, there were Rihat’s regiment of Helicon Guard, batteries of macro cannons trained on the void, and layers of void shields that could keep a battlefleet at bay. But, as Hekate had pointed out, they were not facing a battlefleet. She was a primaris psyker, a savant immaterium who knew secrets that Phobos would never learn. She had shared her thoughts with them over the past hours, and each comment was as accurate as it was barbed. Her latest observation was no less so. The Geller field was the station’s true defence.
The field would envelop the central section of the station, closing it off from daemonic assault. There would be sections that would be unshielded, flaws in the invisible wall where a daemon could pass through. These would be the points where flesh and bone would have to stand against the enemy. Should the daemons force a way inside the field envelope then there would be slaughter. Phobos thought of the thousands of non-military personnel crammed into chambers of the central hub, running prayer beads through their fingers, muttering implorations to the Emperor to protect them from their fears.
‘Are they at full power?’ asked Phobos.
‘They are bringing the generator on-line now,’ said Rihat, consulting a brass-framed data-slate in his hand. As he finished, the deck began to shake. Bright chains of electricity played up and down the pillar. The purity seals rustled as if in a rising wind. A warning chime sounded in Phobos’s ear as his armour detected a growing power spike.
The pillar shivered and issued a sound like a bell tolling underwater. A skin of heat haze formed on its surface. Phobos could hear a high hum like vibrating glass.
Phobos heard unspoken fears in the colonel’s voice. Rihat was a commander of men, chosen for that duty because of his quality. But he had never faced the kind of enemy that now came for them. A thought came unbidden to Phobos’s mind as he placed a hand upon the man’s shoulder: maybe you are another weakness in our armour, Rihat.
‘These are not our only defences,’ Phobos said. The colonel looked up at the scar-twisted face of the White Consul, and Phobos saw the uncertainty in his eyes. ‘We must stand whether these fields fail or not. Should they fail, flesh and spirit will have to suffice.’
Beside him Hekate gave a derisive snort. ‘That is true, Space Marine,’ said the psyker with a grim smile, ‘but if it comes to that, the station will fall.’
A pre-storm quiet permeated the pillared chamber where the White Consuls armed themselves. They gathered in squads, talking in low voices as servitors attached oath parchments to their shoulder guards. The clink of weapons and the smell of incense hung in the air.
Cyrus stood apart, his thoughts drifting back into the past. He was not supposed to have memories from before he became a White Consul. Years of psychic conditioning, and the indoctrinations of the Adeptus Astartes, should have removed any remnants of what he had been. But he did remember. Sometimes Cyrus wondered if it was the shadow of his oracular gift.
He could not recall much from before he became a Space Marine, but he could remember the day the Black Ships came. They had appeared out of the noon sun and had hung in the blue sky like impossible castles. On the mountain sides and on the plains, people looked up from the shadows they cast over the ground. He had not understood what it meant but the old men of the village had. They glanced at him with fear as they clustered around the fire in the meeting hall that night. They said that the shapes in the sky were the Sky God’s witch-seekers, and that they had come to take the god’s due.