Old Earth

by Nick Kyme

  The blockade ships in direct opposition to the Iron Hands vanguard burned their engines hard to expedite their turns, engaging in a slow and synchronised ballet. Their forward guns fell silent as broadsides were made ready.

  As the Gorgon’s Will came within assault range, its prow-mounted macrocannons opened up and raked the flanks of a vessel designated the Luna Scion. The Scion’s shields capitulated quickly against the sustained barrage of heavy ordnance, and chunks of armour sheared off, spilling loose into the darkness. A premature broadside from its laser batteries spat out in retaliation, but over half the blasts missed their target. The shields on the Gorgon weathered the hasty salvo, and it opened its launch bays under the cover of the flaring energy blooms. A host of assault boats disgorged into the void, flying under the shields to attack the Luna Scion’s ventral aspect as the Gorgon dramatically reduced power to its plasma drives and fed ­everything it had into its forward defences.

  The Unyielding Glory and Ferrum Unbowed surged ahead, closing the gap to the Gorgon and releasing an arsenal of cluster bombs against the Revenger, Horus Triumphant and Spear of Conquest, which were ranked up alongside the Luna Scion.

  Gun ports lit across the flanks of the three ships as laser batteries and macrocannons combined in a fearsome broadside that simultaneously tore apart the cluster bombs and hammered the Gorgon. Noiseless explosions rippled across the void. Overwhelmed, the Gorgon’s shields trembled and then collapsed in a violent flash of magnesium light.

  At the same time, the Bellicose and Karaashi decelerated hard, leaving a breach in the line for the two junkers to exploit.

  The Potentate and the other flanking Sons of Horus ships speared through the dark, blind hunters with a scent of prey, intent on reaching the Bellicose and Karaashi. As the two frigates peeled off from the attack, the renegades gave chase, ignoring the unarmed junkers.

  The flare of shield detonation faded, revealing the Gorgon’s Will alive but scathed, its forward armour black and buckled. Energy crackled in the hollows of its wounds, illuminating ugly but largely superficial damage.

  As the Gorgon’s Will retreated to reignite its shields, the Unyielding Glory and Ferrum Unbowed took the fore, paired lance strikes gouging the stricken Luna Scion and interrupting its counter-barrage. A fatal blow took the vessel amidships, its shields already diminished and unable to do more than flicker weakly against the Iron Hands’ savage guns. A plosive but brief gout of fire billowed from one of the Luna Scion’s gun ports. A burst of secondary explosions followed, racing down the ship’s starboard side and tearing a gaping rent in its armour.

  A second punitive barrage from the Unyielding Glory ended it, gutting the Luna Scion and provoking a reactor overload that ripped it and the Revenger apart.

  As a nuclear sun dawned, the Potentate and its hunters were bearing down on the Bellicose and Karaashi. Heedless of the junkers, the warships launched torpedoes at the Karaashi, tearing away its shields and destroying one of its main engines. The frigate fell back sharply from the Bellicose, limping and beleaguered.

  Reeling from the catastrophic death of the Luna Scion, the Horus Triumphant was still struggling to reignite its shields when a boarding party struck deep into its enginarium.

  A ragged hole yawned in the flank of the Horus Triumphant, venting pressure and the bodies of its hapless mortal crew. Fire guttered, slowly choking. Sirens wailed, deafening but impotent. Pipes ruptured, unable to take the strain, flash-freezing crewmen, who found their lungs filled with liquid coolant before they could even scream. Their bodies soon hardened to glittering, icy husks.

  Lumak ignored the mortals, their presence as inconsequential as the debris rattling against his armour in the cold darkness beyond the breach. Instead, he drew his sidearm and gave the order to advance.

  Darkness fell as power in the breached section failed. Helm lumens snapped on, strafing an expansive chamber. Bodies drifted, colliding serenely, their frozen grimaces anything but peaceful. Gantry chains hung still, icicles with cores of iron. Only cargo strapped down or bolted to the deck remained in place. Everything else had spewed from the ship, its guts violently expelled from its critical wound.

  Lumak reached the first bulkhead, a half-metre-thick reinforced blast door, and ushered forward two of his kinsmen bearing plasma-cutters. Light flared, cold and contained in the darkness.

  The other Iron Hands raised a shield wall, facing the breach.

  ‘I don’t think they’ll be coming from that way,’ Nuros said over the vox.

  His Drakes looked to the bulkhead, their toothy war-helms glower­ing with apparent disapproval.

  ‘I’ve been stabbed in the back once too often to be complacent,’ Lumak replied.

  Nuros nodded, the movement slow with the absence of gravity. ‘Hard to argue against that, iron brother. Though I fear we might die of old age before the traitor’s knife kills us.’ Nuros gestured to one of his warriors, who thumped a fist against his fire-blackened breastplate and brandished an ornate pike forged of deep red metal.

  ‘Have your men stand aside, iron brother,’ said Nuros.

  Lumak turned, his helm’s faceplate lit by the pale glow of the toiling plasma-cutters.

  ‘Let Umendi demonstrate the strength of Nocturnean steel.’

  Lumak gestured, and the two Iron Hands withdrew.

  Umendi engaged his pike, and the faint red crackle of a disruptor field suddenly wreathed the blade. A single thrust pierced the bulkhead, parting metal like flesh. With the blade still embedded, he cut across a diagonal, first up and to the right, then down. As Umendi wrenched the pike loose and stepped back, a triangular glow faded where the metal had been cut through.

  ‘And?’ asked Lumak.

  Nuros cocked his head slightly. ‘And I cannot do everything, iron brother.’

  Lumak gave a small shake of the head. ‘Velig, Kurnox!’

  Two Iron Hands advanced on the bulkhead and struck it with their breacher shields like a battering ram where Umendi had made the cut.

  After three blows, a large section of the bulkhead fell inwards, opening up the ship beyond.

  ‘Take the vanguard,’ said Lumak, and Velig and Kurnox entered the breach.

  About to follow, the Avernii captain felt a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Your gratitude is appreciated but unnecessary, iron brother,’ said Nuros.

  Lumak scowled behind his war-helm. ‘I need to kill something…’

  A second bulkhead door slammed down behind them cutting off their escape.

  ‘Don’t worry, iron brother,’ said Nuros as angry shouts echoed from deeper in the ship. ‘Something has come along.’

  The ironclad Saurod closed on the Spear of Conquest. The cruiser had been joined by four other Sons of Horus vessels in an effort to overwhelm the Unyielding Glory and the Ferrum Unbowed, which were running rampant in the wake of the Luna Scion’s destruction. But as the reinforcements closed, both the Unyielding Glory and the Ferrum Unbowed slackened off their plasma drives and began to lag behind the bullish Saurod.

  All weapons fell upon the ironclad and tore it apart, piece by piece, but like an ageing pugilist too stubborn to fall, the vessel kept on coming.

  On the Iron Heart, Meduson resisted the urge to punch the air. Corpses of renegade ships littered the void, listing dangerously into the paths of their comrades.

  The Sons of Horus held, but their right flank was in disarray. Gaps appeared in the blockade, but the rest of the fleet would soon fill them if the Iron Tenth committed everything now.

  As the Saurod charged towards certain death, and the junkers ­rattled within range of the Potentate, Meduson uttered two words that would shatter the right flank completely.

  ‘Aug… Forgebreaker.’

  The Saurod’s skeleton crew of servitors came to an abrupt halt, frozen in their duties. Dull-eyed and slack-witted, they had no concept of th
e volatile and explosive cargo that filled the echoing hangars of the ship. They knew only the imperatives given to them by their iron master.

  Slaved to a monotonous existence, some since the early days of the Crusade, none amongst the lobotomised wretches would ever know the importance of their sacrifice. No one would mourn them, because in truth they had died a long time ago. Only the ship would be remembered, its name forever etched in history.

  Alert sirens began to sound across the bridge, but no one heard them. Red flaring light stained it from within, but no one saw it. Stood erect at their stations, the servitors enacted their final task with curious dignity. An automated voice called out the last seconds of the Saurod’s proud existence, a diminishing sequence that ended in annihilation.

  A massive explosion erupted across the Iron Heart’s oculus as the Saurod self-destructed, followed moments later by the Ser Barnabus and Rennard Maximal. Every incendiary Meduson could spare had been packed into the gaping holds of those three vessels, his hope that they would be ignored by the renegades in the cut and thrust of fighting warships with teeth.

  ‘But you missed the hammer, didn’t you?’ he murmured to himself.

  In the days of sail when men still plied the oceans, old sea captains had a name for sacrificial vessels whose holds were crammed with barrels of gunpowder. They called them ‘fireships’ and sailors rightly feared them.

  With decks eerily deserted, their timber frames were set aflame and the blaze would carry onto any enemy ships that strayed too close. In turn, the fire would spread to other vessels and set them ablaze too before reaching the stores of gunpowder…

  In such a way blockading vessels around a port or island could be breached, and escape or relief bought for the sacrifice of a ­single ship.

  Ships of the void did not burn like the man o’ wars of old, but the tactic of a fireship still had merit.

  As the explosions faded, wreckage drifted in their wake. A host of Sons of Horus warships had been crippled or destroyed utterly. A gaping rift yawned in the blockade wall.

  ‘All ships to engage,’ said Meduson, eyeing the debris fields with grim satisfaction. This had been coming for a long time, ever since the Gorgon fell, though none would have known it back then. Most of the Iron Tenth hadn’t made it to Isstvan; they either died in orbit or were forced to turn back, chased by news of catastrophic defeat. A prideful Legion had been humbled, brought lower than they could have imagined possible. They knew of only one way to reclaim their dignity and honour. Fail at this and the Iron Hands would be no more. Death would be preferable.

  ‘No more hiding,’ muttered Meduson as alert klaxons sounded and the shields shimmered in readiness for the fury to come.

  He remembered Aug’s words.

  The Legion must survive.

  ‘Warleader,’ Mechosa spoke up, prompting Meduson to turn his head, but as he did so and his gaze took in the bridge behind him, he knew what the Clan Sorrgol captain had been about to say.

  Vulkan had gone.

  Twenty

  The alien prince, reposed in his arrogance

  The alien prince basked in the light of a dying sun.

  He had come to the temple to venerate the gods, and gave obeisance in the shadow of a statue carved in the likeness of such a deity. He knelt in a great crimson pool, the liquid too thick and too dark to be wine. It ran off the statue in slow, shining rivulets, from invisible pores in the stone, and caught in a shallow basin below. A faint but palpable heat haze trembled off the placid meniscus of the pool.

  The temple was a cold and echoing place of pale stone, its columns threaded with softly glowing runes. They reminded the alien prince of his purpose, his path and so in turn he considered the path of the universe.

  He and a cohort of others, a Cabal, knew war would consume the galaxy. They desired to avert this fate and engineer another in its stead. This required reach. It also required conspirators aligned to the very race the Cabal needed to sacrifice, in order to prevent the dissolution of the galaxy by ancient and primordial gods.

  Mankind.

  Mankind and all its grubby, petty, self-interest. Its mortality. Its endless clamouring for more, for meaning, for purpose… All of it had to end.

  Mankind must die, an offering to sate old gods whose voracious soul hunger would see them gorged unto extinction. The alien prince found the word ‘old’ amusing in this context, for he had witnessed the Fall and in turn experienced the true horror of what had been birthed in its aftermath.

  Even thinking on it, cloistered in the temple, his guard nearby, forced his hand to the shimmering stone he wore around his neck.

  She Who Thirsts would devour all their souls, unless…

  Yes, he thought, mankind must perish. Thus would the other races of the galaxy endure, while mankind was discarded as befitting its status – a mistake, an embarrassing footnote.

  Though the alien prince hated consorting with any mon-keigh, let alone a degenerate human, he recognised their uses and knew how easily they could be exploited. A creature such as he took immortality for granted, but these humans… They craved life and would do anything to perpetuate it.

  How irksome, then, to have learned that one he thought of a similar mind, if not an ally as such, had turned his back on the great cause to embrace another.

  ‘And you are sure?’ he asked, in a richly cultured voice.

  The messenger bowed, so low his pointed chin almost touched the floor.

  ‘Gahet is dead?’

  The messenger bowed lower still, his garish attire and flamboyant theatrics at odds with the solemnity of the temple.

  The alien prince half turned his head. He was naked but for the loincloth around his waist. He also radiated threat and not merely on account of the blood that swathed his lean and muscular body. His eyes narrowed, alighting on the messenger’s upraised finger.

  ‘Not just Gahet…’

  The finger turned into a thumb.

  ‘Is he coming for me?’

  A vigorous nod confirmed it, the messenger yet to rise.

  ‘Stand, klown. I am not your audience.’

  A euphonious voice answered.

  ‘I await your applause, my prince.’

  ‘I am not your prince, either.’

  ‘You are Slau Dha,’ said the messenger, as if that were answer enough, and raised his head.

  A perfect white mask as smooth as polished bone and as thin as porcelain obscured his face. A sculpted brow and sickle grin gave the wearer a permanently jovial expression, at odds with the horns and the three tears of blood painted across the left cheek.

  He wore a long black coat, its lining bright and many-hued. His boots had pointed toes, his diamond-patterned leggings were green and red. A motley fellow indeed.

  Slau Dha murmured words of worship to the Bloody-Handed God, rose to his feet and stepped from the shallow pool. ‘That I am,’ he said, ‘and now a seer shall end my reign.’

  He beckoned to his guard, a fearsome warrior in segmented black carapace and plumed war-helm.

  ‘Ready my ship.’

  Beyond a glassless arch lay a paradise, a lush green utopia fashioned by the eldar before the Fall. Slau Dha knew it as Lilaethan, a maiden world, once regarded as a great hope by his race. That all ended with the Fall, and so pragmatism had taken the place of dreaming. As he stood before the arch, considering all that had been lost, Slau Dha noticed his guard had yet to move.

  Still hot from his oaths to Khaine, slayer of Eldanesh, Slau Dha gave a bark of anger.

  ‘Are you deaf, servant?’ he asked.

  A smile pulled at Slau Dha’s lips as he regarded the guard in black.

  ‘Oh, that’s good,’ he said. ‘That’s very, very good.’

  Slau Dha barely moved, save to speak, but he felt his limbs tauten in readiness to act.

  He gestu
red to the shadows behind the guard in black, to a second figure that loomed by the edge of a column. Two interlopers breaching the sanctuary of the temple? It was unheard of.

  ‘I know how you got in here,’ he said, referring to the guard, ‘but I am impressed you got that in as well. Disgusted, but impressed.’ He frowned. ‘Actually, revolted. You are a traitor to me and your entire race.’

  The guard stepped forwards, unbuckling his breastplate with one hand and reaching for his helm with the other. As the armour came away, it faded, turning gossamer-thin until only a seer in the black robes of Ulthwé remained.

  Eldrad Ulthran blinked, his azure eyes curious as they regarded Slau Dha. He raised his hand the merest fraction, a half-gesture, nothing more.

  ‘Leashing your hound?’ said Slau Dha. ‘That’s wise.’

  ‘Says the half-naked eldar prince without his sword.’

  ‘I don’t need my sword to kill you, farseer. Taking your life with my bare hands would be more satisfying, for one thing.’

  ‘Then why don’t you?’

  ‘At least you have the decency to come here unmasked.’

  ‘I wanted to look you in the eye as you died, Slau Dha.’

  Slau Dha faced the arch again, enjoying the last of the sun, closing his eyes as it touched his ruddy skin.

  ‘Intriguing. Such anger…’ He looked askance at the seer. ‘Are you sure you tread the right path, Eldrad Nuirasha?’

  ‘Needs abide in this case.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘I cannot tolerate genocide, Slau Dha. This scheme of the Cabal’s must remain unfulfilled.’

  The prince gritted his teeth in anger, though he took care to do nothing further.

  ‘You would place the mon-keigh, their lives, their continued existence, above that of your own people?’

  ‘I am referring to our people. The Primordial Annihilator cannot be undone by sacrificial offering. It must be fought. Alas, we have shown a spectacular lack of resolve in this regard and our strength is not what it once was. Mankind, however, is young…’