Old Earth

by Nick Kyme

  Lurkers emanated from the ring of shadow, horned and rangy things, unravelling like smoke or spilling outwards like oil or ink. They shed the dark, a second skin, and emerged fully born to taint the golden light.

  Dark as old blood, crimson and deoxidised, the creatures crept forwards on hoofed toes, their gait at once lithe and spasmodic. A snicker trickled from unnatural gullets. Their tongues tasted the air. A febrile heat bled off their muscular bodies like animal sweat. Needle teeth as black as cancers glinted. Eyes of sulphur-yellow narrowed in anticipation.

  ‘Dread foot-soldiers,’ said Abidemi, the clatter of the creatures’ dark blades and spears uncannily in time with his pronouncement. ‘Anger and death has brought them,’ he hissed.

  ‘They come for me,’ said Vulkan.

  And as Zytos looked up at them, he knew his father was right.

  ‘The hunger, is this it?’ he asked. He had fought their kind before, daemons. Once on Macragge and again aboard the Charybdis, but they had been mortal flesh given over to possession of some kind, nothing like the creatures emerging from the shadows.

  ‘No,’ Vulkan told him. ‘They are just dregs.’ He sneered. ‘Wretches sent to keep us from our path.’

  Zytos clenched his teeth, fighting the impulse towards violence, and heard them grind hard against his skull. He sank to his knees, wracked with agony.

  ‘I feel it come again, the rage…’

  ‘And I,’ said Abidemi, his fists tight and pressed against his temples.

  Gargo grimaced, his arms held close to his chest. He had yet to reclaim his spear. Even Draukoros lay unclaimed amongst the dead.

  ‘We are from the fire born,’ Vulkan told them. ‘The heat of Deathfire burns in our breasts, and with it we shall vanquish all doubt. Hold to your purpose, sons of Nocturne.’

  He stepped forwards, and like moths drawn to the light, the creatures converged on Vulkan, uninterested in the scraps behind him.

  ‘To me then, hellspawn!’ declared Vulkan.

  He leapt, a single perfect parabola that saw him alight on the summit of the tower. The red-skinned creatures boiled towards the stairway, curling around it, a storm of hot blood.

  Zytos could only watch. His armoured fingers scraped against the plaza floor and came away lathered in dust.

  ‘Something is written here…’

  His impotent scratching had revealed something lying beneath.

  ‘Brother,’ said Abidemi, pointing upwards to where the primarch stood alone.

  The creatures surged towards the Lord of Drakes, skittering up the steps, clambering atop and under it like maddened ants scurry­ing through a hive.

  Vulkan lowered the hammer.

  Abidemi grimaced in horror. ‘What is he doing?’

  ‘Father!’

  Zytos cried out and reached for his thunder hammer.

  A flood of the creatures poured around the Drakes, blind to their presence, intent only on reaching Vulkan.

  Abidemi raised Draukoros with a whisper of apology to the blade, or to Numeon, Zytos could not tell. Gargo unclamped his arms from around his body and reclaimed his spear.

  Zytos regained his feet.

  ‘Rage or not,’ he said, ‘I won’t let our father face those things alone. We are sword dragons, the Draaksward.’

  He turned to his brothers.

  Abidemi touched Draukoros’ blade to his forehead, mouthing a silent oath.

  Gargo leaned heavily on the spear but found his strength again.

  ‘For the primarch,’ he said.

  ‘Vulkan lives,’ said Abidemi, readying his sword.

  Zytos swung his hammer into both hands.

  They attacked.

  At first, the creatures ignored them. Even as they fell, struck down by the Drakes, they did not fight back. Only when Zytos gained the first step on the stairway did he meet resistance, strength and fury to rival a legionary.

  ‘Stay together!’ he roared above the chittering, grunting cacophony of the creatures.

  As one, the Drakes slowly fought their way up the steps.

  For a brief moment, Zytos lost sight of Vulkan, but as he reached the next bend he saw his father through a fleeting gap in the throng, standing with his hammer by his side.

  ‘Why does he not fight them?’ asked Gargo, having seen the primarch too.

  Zytos had no answer. He booted a creature off the stairway into the churning red mass below, and saw the sigil he had partly revealed earlier.

  Higher up on the tower, he now saw it for what it was: a wheel with eight points, only of a much larger and grander design than those icons worn by the dead traitors in their midst.

  ‘A trap,’ he said to his brothers.

  ‘Our presence here was foreseen?’

  ‘Yes, Atok,’ Zytos replied, fending off a blow as Abidemi stepped in with the counter. ‘Whatever is hunting us knew we would come here. They wanted Vulkan alone.’

  ‘To kill him?’ asked Gargo, holding off a dark blade with the haft of his spear.

  ‘Something worse…’ breathed Zytos.

  The horde surrounded Vulkan but refrained from attacking him, the pain of their presence etched upon his face.

  The thought appalled Zytos worse than any death his father could face. To be corrupted, to become anything akin to the traitorous wretches they had just slain… It put a fear in Zytos he should not have been able to know.

  ‘They mean to turn him.’

  He fought harder, recklessly, and took a blow against his arm, another against his torso. Abidemi cried out, but Zytos barely heard him.

  ‘We must reach the primarch!’ he roared, but as they neared the summit of the tower the horde grew thick and carving through it was like cutting adamantium. ‘Brothers!’

  But Abidemi and Gargo fared no better.

  Hope faded. To come to this place, to have crossed the galaxy only to die here…

  The anger came again, barely held at bay. And as the killing went on without cease, even enhanced muscles began to tire…

  Vulkan stood alone, and felt the regard of the daemons, for what else could they be but the beings his father had denied existed? Their fury pushed against him, gnawing at his resolve, not one essence but a gestalt, threatening to overwhelm him and plunge him back into madness and rage.

  He thought of Isstvan and the terrors wreaked upon his sons. Of the betrayal by the hands of trusted brothers. Of poor Ferrus, a headless corpse lying in the blood of the massacre. Of Curze and the tortures he had inflicted. Of Nemetor, hung up like so much spoiled meat. Of the countless others, slain and defiled, of a galaxy turned to ruin and death.

  Vulkan’s grip tightened around Urdrakule. He had yet to raise it but felt the urge to now. The daemons aimed their blades towards him, their speartips and swords poised to kill, but did not strike.

  Fury bade them murder, and yet also leashed them.

  A relentless pounding sensation throbbed in Vulkan’s skull, demanding release.

  Is this how it is for you, poor brother? Poor Angron?

  Reason became fleeting, instinct smothered it.

  Vulkan closed his eyes, but the anger and his bleak imaginings would not abate.

  Of Ferrus hacked apart, his bloody effigy raised to a darkened sky.

  Of Perturabo and the cage he had fashioned.

  Of Caldera put to the flame.

  Of Numeon and the sacrifice he made…

  Vulkan smiled, tears of grief streaming down his face.

  He let the hammer fall, and heard the low chime of its head striking the ground. He did not fear death; he never had. His renewed immortality had yet to be proven after his apotheosis in fire. Perhaps it would be disproven now.

  He opened his eyes, and took the fulgurite spear from his belt. It felt warm to the touch.

  Fathe
r, are you with me now?

  ‘It took more than a hundred deaths to bring me to the brink of insanity before,’ he told the creatures. Though they could not understand him, Vulkan saw a moment of hesitation, of panic.

  ‘This is merely irksome.’

  He lifted the fulgurite aloft and his would-be murderers watched it rise. They snarled at the captured glory of the anathema still bound within it.

  Realising their abject failure, the creatures roared, turning their blades and spears upon the primarch.

  But it was too late.

  Everything has a purpose.

  The daemon horde vanished, eclipsed in a coruscating light.

  Twenty-Eight

  Beyond the wall, the hungering crowd

  Gethe was no coward, but he had no desire to descend into the mob. His place was on the wall. The dubious honour of leading the patrol fell to Renski.

  She had risen through the ranks of the arbitrators swiftly, even spending a little time with the Reeves, rooting out disorder and insurrection in the Petitioner’s City. Only recently had she been posted at the wall, a duty not to her liking but one she fulfilled with professional pride nonetheless.

  During her tenure with the Reeves, she had seen things. A man, a simple factorum labourer, who slew his entire family and hung the skinned corpses in his hab. The Reeves had found him sitting down eating a modest repast, while the fleshless dead looked on. The clerk who had brought a stubber instead of a data-slate to his place of work and left a bloodbath – his colleagues shot to death around him as he went about his normal duties, apparently heedless of the carnage. A freighter pilot who drove his rig into a densely populated hab district. Thousands died in the resulting crash, only for the pilot to calmly exit his armoured cab, light a lho-stick and sit down amongst the dead, waiting for the enforcers to take him.

  After that, the depths of horror and debasement a man’s soul could sink to held no surprises for Renski. It haunted her, and she could not forget those sights, but it held no surprises. Recent disturbances had challenged that conviction, though.

  Ritual killings. The dead with symbols carved in their flesh, or arranged from their distended intestines or daubed in their blood. Mania on a massive scale. Fires that ravaged entire districts, some of which still burned. Riots motivated by nothing more than the desire to vandalise or inflict violence upon others.

  Sickness plagued the more remote regions, something in the water or the rations that no adept had yet managed to identify.

  In their panic and despair, the citizens of the Petitioner’s City had turned to avarice and vice, finding comfort only in lustful and excessive pursuits. As yet, only a small proportion of the overall population had been afflicted by one or all of these maladies, but the number was rising.

  Renski had never been superstitious. She knew people who were and had mocked them to their faces, but even she could not deny the correlation between the alleged advance of Horus’ fleet and the increasing descent into anarchy and madness. Fear was a rational reaction, she supposed. Man reverted to his baser instincts when afraid, but the gnawing dread that had seized Terra, perpetuated by the demagogues and the firebrands and the doomsayers, was slowly driving everyone insane.

  So when the slab-sided hatch to the gunship closed, briefly swallowing her intercession squad in darkness, she felt a moment of disquiet and gripped her shock maul just a little tighter.

  Three Valkyries set down on the other side of the wall, hitting the crowds with enough light and noise to force a landing zone. Door gunners maintained a constant watch every second of the drop, heavy stubbers panning the clamouring hordes, daring them to act.

  Renski stepped off the trailing ramp of the lead gunship, jumping the last half-metre to the ground, the landing stanchions not quite touching earth. Backdraught from the engines buffeted her uniform and strained the comms. Vox crackle filled her ear-bead. She had hooked the shock maul to her belt, but kept a hand on her sidearm as she approached the blast site.

  Twenty enforcers disembarked with Renski. The majority formed a cordon around their proctor as the gunships took to the skies again, thus removing any temptation the crowds might have to try and commandeer them.

  ‘Maintaining vigil,’ the pilot’s voice said in her ear, clawing through the static.

  Renski signalled an affirmative, her gaze straying momentarily to the wall and the line of armed enforcers Gethe had mustered to watch her back. At any rate, she hoped that’s what they had been ordered to do.

  Debris from the blast covered a large area. Renski found pieces of shrapnel and human remains, all bloody and burned. Working from the outside in, she followed the trail of carnage to find the origin point.

  Nudging it first with her boot, she stooped to retrieve something from the debris and frowned.

  Gethe’s voice came through on the other end of the feed as she raised him on the vox.

  ‘Find something?’ he asked.

  Renski held the broken outer shell of a krak grenade, an improvised one by the looks of it.

  ‘It wasn’t an accident,’ she said, looking out through the gaps in the defensive cordon to the crowd beyond. Their hungering, wide-eyed expressions did little to alleviate her concerns. A few had started shouting, calling out in fear and anger. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  There was a long pause as Gethe considered his answer. Renski could hear his heavy breathing from the other end. He sounded scared.

  ‘Warden-primus?’ she pressed after almost a minute.

  ‘Hold position, proctor. You will be reinforced momentarily.’

  ‘And then, sir?’

  ‘Find out what really happened. I want to know if there’s a connection between the Valkyrie and the bomb. Root out who’s responsible.’

  ‘With respect, there are over fifty thousand people down here.’

  ‘Someone knows something. That’s fifty thousand potential witnesses, proctor. The perpetrators will be close, and couldn’t have acted alone. Find them, Renski, or find out what they’re planning. The wall is not safe until you do.’

  Gethe cut the feed. Renski was far enough out from the wall that she could still see him twenty metres above, his hands on the edge of the battlements, looking into the sea of bodies.

  The gunships returned, and brought others. Eight vessels in all, almost the entire complement set down around Renski’s men, radiating from their insertion point. The crowd retreated, battered by sirens and the harsh glare of search lamps that had grown colder since the sun had dipped in the sky.

  Renski’s command went from twenty to two hundred. She was met by a fellow proctor, who hurried over to her as the rest of the enforcers were still being disgorged from their transports.

  His name was Brankk. While less experienced, he was still a capable officer, in Renski’s opinion.

  ‘Ten-man squads,’ she told him, shouting above the sound of the Valkyries’ engines. ‘Twenty stay here to maintain our point of egress. I want loudhailers to keep the crowd informed and calm.’

  Brankk nodded, his eyes firm and his gaze unwavering, to show he had taken in and understood her orders.

  ‘I don’t need to tell you, proctor,’ she said, ‘that we are badly outnumbered out here. If they should turn, we are all dead.’

  As Brankk went to his duties, Renski spared another glance back up at the wall. She could not be sure without using her lens, but Gethe looked nervous. Nerves in a commanding officer had a habit of transferring to the men. A hundred guns looked down upon the crowds, a hundred nervous fingers upon a hundred triggers.

  As the loudhailers started up, Renski tried not to think about what could happen if one of those fingers grew too itchy. She summoned her squad. Nine able-bodied enforcers with a mixture of shields, mauls and combat shotguns followed her into the crowd. Fear and revulsion met them, a host of malnourished, dirty faces looking
to assign blame for their woes. They parted only reluctantly.

  Nade’s gunship still burned, lazy smoke drifting from the cracked hull. She’d head there first.

  Though she wasn’t superstitious, she had overheard a phrase spoken by some of the citizenry over the last few weeks. It appeared to bring comfort in such beleaguered and uncertain times. Men and women had been sanctioned for its use, so she only muttered it beneath her breath.

  ‘The Emperor protects…’

  Twenty-Nine

  Into the catacombs, the Palace beckoning

  Zytos found him at the summit of the tower, head bowed, crouched on one knee. Smoke rose from armour still shimmering with heat.

  Vulkan unclenched his fist, releasing a handful of ash that dispersed quickly in the air.

  ‘They’re gone, father,’ said Zytos, his own war-plate scorched by the cleansing flame.

  ‘What did you see?’ Vulkan asked, his voice a rasp.

  ‘I saw a figure, clad in gold,’ said Abidemi, limping as he brought up the rear. ‘As resplendent as the sun.’

  Zytos nodded. He had reached for Vulkan as his father crushed the fulgurite and unleashed what power remained within. He had seen… something… within the firestorm before he’d had to close his eyes or be struck blind. Upon opening them again, the horde had vanished. Not fled, but gone. Erased.

  Smote.

  ‘I saw Numeon take a blade to the fulgurite. I saw it withstand all efforts to destroy it. Even the heart of Deathfire could not touch it, and yet you merely close your fist…’

  Zytos dared Vulkan’s gaze but received no answer to his question.

  ‘They know we are here,’ Vulkan said, rising and reclaiming his hammer, unsteady at first but growing stronger. ‘And they will be hunting us. The Palace is close.’ He gripped the talisman. ‘I can feel it, the presence of my father. The Emperor is with us, my sons.’

  ‘My lord, I do not trust this,’ Zytos began.