Sevatar snorted in dismissal. ‘On any other day, sire, such words might hurt my feelings.’
‘Look around you,’ Curze said. ‘You were born on this world. You grew to adulthood here, just as I did. The Emperor praised me for my rule over this world. Even Fulgrim admired it. A model of compliance. An obedient world, they said. Were my people happy? Did that even matter? I made these people human, despite their feral drives. I made them civilised, despite their baser instincts. I raised them above the level of beasts. That was my responsibility to them, as a superior being. And I fulfilled it.’
Curze looked to the grey spires, rising in every direction, and the frozen smog from the foundries and manufactorums veiling the spire-tops in a haze of pollutant smoke. ‘And see how my people rewarded me. I was gone only a handful of years before everything soured. My own homeworld poisoned my Legion with recruits who were worthless as soldiers. Rapists. Murderers. Thieves. The scum. The dregs. The detritus.’
Sevatar almost laughed. ‘Sire, you are no different. The Legion is disorderly and vile because it is cast in your image.’
‘No.’ Curze drenched the single syllable in regret. ‘No, you don’t understand. I’ve never claimed to be perfect, Sevatar. But I became the sinner, the monster, the Night Haunter, so my people would never have to. And look at the result. Look at the recruits from Nostramo, less than a decade after I departed. Look at the filth they sent me. Look at the disgusting dregs of humanity my own Apothecaries infused with my genetic material and reforged into transhumans. The Eighth is poisoned, Sev. Generations of men who are murderers in my image, yet devoid of my conviction. They are killers and abusers because they want to be, not because someone had to be.’
‘The end result is the same,’ said Sevatar. ‘Fear is the weapon.’
‘Fear is supposed to be the means to the end. Look at the bloodshed my Legion has wrought these last years, even before the Crusade was done. Fear became the end itself. It was all they desired. They fed on it. My sons were strong, so they bled the weak for their own amusement. Tell me, captain, where the nobility is in that.’
‘Where is the nobility in any of this?’ Sevatar gestured to the streets of Nostramo Quintus around them. ‘You can claim a savage nobility, father, but this is far more savage than noble.’
Curze’s pale lips peeled back from his filed teeth. ‘There was no other way.’
‘No?’ Sevatar answered his father’s snarl with a grin. ‘What other ways did you try?’
‘Sevatar…’
‘Answer me, father. What politics of peace did you teach? What scientific and social illumination did you bring to this society? In your quest for a human utopia, what other ways did you try beyond eating the flesh of stray dogs and skinning people alive?’
‘It. Was. The. Only. Way.’
Sevatar laughed again. ‘The only way to do what? The only way to bring a population to heel? How then did the other primarchs manage it? How has world upon world managed it, with resorting to butchering children and broadcasting their screams across the planetary vox-net?’
‘Their worlds were never as… as serene as mine was.’
‘And the serenity of yours died the first second your back was turned. So tell me again how you succeeded. Tell me again how this all worked perfectly.’
Curze was on him in the time it took to blink. The primarch’s hand wrapped his throat, lifting him from the ground, stealing his breath.
‘You overstep your bounds, First Captain.’
‘How can you lie to me like this?’ Sevatar’s voice was a strangled growl. ‘How can you lie to yourself? I stand here, inside your mind, witnessing a theatre of your own memories. Your way is the Eighth Legion way, now. But it has never been the only way. Just the easiest way.’
Curze tightened his grip. ‘You lie.’
Sevatar narrowed his eyes, his last breath escaping as Curze squeezed. ‘You enjoyed this way,’ the captain hissed. ‘You came to love it… just as we all did. The power… The righteousness…’
Curze released him. Sevatar crashed to the ground, his armour joints snarling as his ceramite scraped the rockcrete.
‘Son of a…’ he trailed off, catching his breath.
‘The son of a god,’ Curze said softly. ‘Get up, Sevatar. Leave me be.’
The First Captain rose to his feet, his vision blurred. ‘I am going nowhere, sire. Not without you.’
Curze smiled. His son could see that much, at least. ‘I admire your tenacity. I always have. But you are a shadow of what I am, Sevatar. You cannot match me. Go.’
‘N–’
Sevatar filled his lungs, the sterile air viciously cold as he drew it in.
Trez released his hand. The primarch slumbered before them, scarred from the Lion’s blade.
His other senses filtered back into life. He smelled the bleachy, chemical reek of the apothecarion – a smell which could never quite hide the scent of fresh blood. He heard Trez’s laboured breathing, and the beat of the old man’s heart. He heard the sirens.
The…
Sevatar re-tuned back into the vox-net, immediately assaulted by five hundred voices overlaying each other. He focused on the scrolling runes dancing down his retinal display, and activated a direct link to the flagship.
‘This is Sevatar,’ he said.
‘First Captain!’ He didn’t recognise the voice. Human, certainly. But that could be one of several hundred bridge crew. He had difficulty telling their voices apart. In truth, he even had trouble telling their faces apart.
‘Tell me everything.’
‘It’s the Dark Angels, sir. They found us.’
Chapter VII
Nightfall
The tactical hololith flickered as the Nightfall’s engines flared into full-throated life. After demanding teleportation back to the flagship, it had taken Sevatar fourteen minutes of sprinting to reach the strategium from the principal deployment bay. He’d been worried the battle would be over by the time he arrived; at several thoroughfares, he’d killed crew members that hadn’t fled from his path fast enough.
Rarely before had he been so relieved to hear proximity alarms and auspex chimes signifying incoming foes. The fleets still hadn’t engaged.
Once he’d reached the bridge, he took in the tactical display, ordered a feed of the ship’s status data transferred to his left eye-lens, and took stock of just what was happening.
They were going to lose, that was what was happening. He watched the hololith for another few seconds, discerning the spread of forces in the void, and their projected attack vectors.
He listened, briefly, to the shouting voice of Admiral Yul, being ignored by the Legion commanders he technically outranked.
‘Fleet address,’ Sevatar ordered.
‘Uplink live, captain,’ one of the vox-officers shouted back over the shaking of the hull.
‘This is Sevatar to the fleet. Let me be clear, brothers and sisters. I am not losing to these pious, deluded, rag-wearing whoresons twice in the same month. Focus all fire on the Invincible Reason. They crippled our primarch. Let’s return the favour. I need at least fifty ships willing to remain for the attack.’
‘Sevatar,’ crackled one voice, murdered by vox-distortion. ‘This is suicide.’
Sevatar’s false smile played out across his cold lips. ‘I take it I can’t count on your support for the attack run, Krukesh?’
‘Not a chance.’
‘I hoped you’d say that, brother. It saves me ordering you to flee. Take your companies and vanish into the black. We’ll meet you at Torus Point, for the journey onwards to Terra.’
‘We’ll be waiting, Sev. Luck be with you.’
Sevatar switched back to the general channel. ‘Var Jahan, Naraka, Ophion, Tovac – go with him, or scatter as you desire.’
Two of the four named Kyroptera capta
ins replied in the affirmative. One didn’t reply at all. Only Ophion refused outright. ‘I’ll stay,’ he voxed back. ‘I’ll stand with you, Sevatar.’
‘I only need fifty ships. The Kyroptera has to get clear.’
A chorus of Yes, sir and Aye, captain filtered back from the command decks of the other ships. Over half of the fleet volunteered to stay. It wasn’t exactly the defiant bravery of the Ultramarines or the steadfast discipline of the Imperial Fists, but it was nothing to spit at. Sevatar took note of the ship identifier runes flickering gold, electing to remain and cover the retreat.
One of them made his skin crawl.
‘Var Jahan,’ he said.
‘Brother?’ the voice crackled back.
‘I ordered the Kyroptera to run. You can’t risk the primarch in this fight. Get clear of the battle, with the dispersing fleet.’
Sevatar had expected an argument from the veteran, perhaps yet another grunted complaint about authority.
‘Sevatar. There’s… Lord Curze is stirring.’
‘Is he awake? Can he stand? Can he fight?’
‘No.’
‘Then it changes nothing. Send Valzen back to the Nightfall before you break away. I trust your Apothecaries to watch over Lord Curze. I need mine back here.’
‘It will be done. Good hunting, Sevatar.’
Sevatar glanced back at the hololith, at the spread of so many ships, friend and foe alike. ‘Admiral Yul,’ he said aloud.
‘First Captain?’ came the vox-reply.
‘What, exactly, is your plan?’
The admiral relayed his intent. Sevatar listened in silence, and nodded at the very end.
‘I like the sound of that,’ he said. ‘They’ll likely name this manoeuvre after you, so let’s hope it works. No one wants their name attributed to a hilarious disaster.’
The VIII Legion fleet broke apart, a slow ballet of self-interest and defiance in equal measure. The Nightfall pulled ahead of the Blade in the Black, leading the armada intercepting the Dark Angels warships.
The rest of the Legion vessels turned tail and fled; some running in formation for the system’s coreward jump point, others rolling in the void and boosting away alone, heading in directions known only to their captains.
Sevatar drew his eyes away from the diaspora, biting back a sudden and strange sense of melancholy. This might be the last time the VIII Legion ever gathered in such numbers. The idea made tactical sense, and suited their way of war, but he couldn’t help a moment of regret.
The Nightfall thundered on, shaking with the strain of its engines.
‘Time to engage?’ he asked, seating himself in Lord Curze’s ivory command throne.
‘Six minutes, twelve seconds, First Captain. Ten. Nine…’
‘Launch fighters.’
A nearby servitor replied, dull-toned and unblinking, ‘Fighters launching.’
‘Very good. And open a channel to Wing Commander Karenna.’
The Wrath-pattern starfighter was a sleek shark of a girl, a throwback from a design era where genius minds drew inspiration from the beasts of Terra’s ancestral seas as much as from the extinct creatures of its polluted skies. This one was painted in the Legion’s colours, with bolts of lightning streaking across her slender hull.
In truth, the Wrath was an outdated model, rare to begin with and increasingly replaced in Imperial fleets by the mass-produced Fury-class. It was said the Fury had a finer temper. They handled more smoothly, they glitched less. Furies were the future, the modern face of void warfare. No rivals. No limit of sub-sector variations. No performance issues that so blighted previous models.
And no soul. Not to Taye.
Flying was more than some sterile interaction with manufactory-spec machines. She could outrun and outfight a Fury in her slower, older Wrath any night. She’d done it enough times already.
As soon as the sirens started, Taye had sprinted down to Preparations, going through the suiting-up rituals with her customary lack of patience. She’d buckled and sealed her pressure suit, putting up with the servitors checking and rechecking her life support backups and spinal interface connections.
‘Who’s on Ready Five?’ her gunner, Vensent, had asked.
‘The Ashen Masquerade. They’ll already be in the void.’ Taye’s short black hair saved her needing to deal with any additional hassle; she took her flight helm from the servitor offering it and fairly dropped it onto her head. She was already fastening her rebreather mask, ready to lock it in place.
‘Hurry up,’ she snapped.
Vensent shared a glance with the naviseer, Kyven, who was similarly slow in suiting up. ‘Slow and steady takes the prize,’ Vensent replied.
‘Slow and steady takes shit-all and nothing. Hurry up.’
‘Spinal connection,’ a servitor mumbled, ‘optimal function.’ The lobotomised slave withdrew its connectivity spikes from Taye’s spine. She winced, as she always did. Less than a minute later, they were running with the rest of her wing, sprinting across the launch deck towards their waiting fighters.
The sirens wailing above were almost drowned out by the rising whine of launch boosters and the yelling of several hundred deck crew. Scrambling a fighter wing was a cascade of coordination, and the Nightfall had several of them to get into the air at once.
The deck overseer was a balding rake of a man, more augmetic than human after four decades of service. He thudded over on his spindly bionic leg.
‘Wing Commander,’ he greeted her. He knew what she was going to ask. ‘Saevio and Aetus are still grounded. Relinquo is void-ready.’
She grinned, slapped him on the lump of augmetic gears that served as his shoulder, and was already running again. Twenty-two of her twenty-four fighters were about to ride skywards. That’ll do, she thought. That’ll do nicely.
Taye was first up the ladder, thumping down into her restraint throne and aligning her spinal sockets with the interface ports in the seatback. She rapped her knuckles on the side of the hull, twice for luck, before settling to get comfortable. Connection came with several insidious snicks as the needles slid into her spinal column.
‘I’m in,’ she said. Taye didn’t wait for the others; she started clicking switches and dragging levers at once. The Wrath started to tremble as it breathed again.
Kyven grunted as he buckled himself into his throne, back to back with hers. ‘I’m in,’ he said, and Taye heard the beeping and pulsing of his systems coming online, recognising his bio-imprint in the chair. She also heard him crack a gloved fist against the long-range auspex display.
‘Bastard thing,’ he grunted. ‘They said they’d finally fixed it.’
Taye grinned and said nothing. Vensent was climbing into his throne beneath hers, taking his place in the fighter’s nose. His own array of monitors and controls rivalled Kyven’s, and vastly outnumbered hers. She saw him lean back and tense as he connected.
‘I’m in,’ he sighed. He reached forwards, locking his hands around the control sticks.
Deck serfs lowered their tinted cockpit visor, hammering it sealed in the final preparations. She heard Kyven rap his knuckles on the hull, and Vensent do the same.
‘Wing Commander Karenna,’ she said into her rebreather mask. ‘Vespera ready for launch.’
The elevator platform gave a stark judder, beginning its achingly slow process of twisting them into place.
‘Taye,’ a low, calm voice rumbled across the cockpit vox.
‘First Captain.’
‘Tactical upload is already under way, but I need you to be aware of one thing in particular, as I’d prefer you to survive the next hour.’
‘Name it, sir.’
‘Just be ready to land in a rush, wing commander. Make sure your squadron leaders are also aware of the necessity. Fleet Admiral Yul’s plan will require a certain reaction
speed from everyone outside the main cruisers.’
‘Thanks for the warning, sir.’
Sevatar didn’t answer. The link was already dead.
‘He likes me,’ Taye said as they were elevated into position. Deck lights flashed either side of them. The fighter shuddered as it was locked into place.
‘We’re locked in,’ said Kyven. ‘Sitting ready. Pressure cylinders optimal, catapult primed. All signs are go for thrust.’ He paused for a moment, and broke the cockpit’s relative quiet with a muttered observation. ‘It’s not you. He likes all of us.’
‘He doesn’t like anyone,’ Vensent called back over his shoulder. ‘He owes us, and we’re useful to him. Huge difference.’
Sevatar watched the approaching armada, still too distant for visual confirmation but shining bright on the tactical hololith. Fire-control directions, updated every few seconds, passed between every vessel in the fleet, sent onwards to their escort vessels and fighter squadrons. Formations were still loose as the fleet accelerated to meet the Dark Angels, but he could see their alignment beginning to come together.
They had to buy more time. If the Dark Angels weren’t slowed down, they’d be all over the retreating fleet in a matter of minutes.
One rune on the display still troubled him. Being outnumbered eight to one wasn’t the problem. If Yul’s plan worked, they’d inflict maximum damage with minimal losses, and if it didn’t work, the majority of the VIII Legion fleet would be long gone, anyway. The mystery of how the Lion was managing to jump his entire armada with such unrivalled unity was a matter for idle consideration, but hardly an issue Sevatar could deal with at this moment.
No, the problem was one single rune – one of his own vessels – still wavering on the ghostly display, while the rest of the fleeing warships were winking out of existence, entering the warp and running free. First, the rune had maintained formation with the leaving ships. Then, it ceased. It remained dead in space, surrounded by its secondary frigates and fighter escorts.
Shadows of Treachery Page 29