Old Earth

by Nick Kyme

  Gethe lost his footing as the wall shook and he struck his head against the battlement.

  Groggily, he heard Renski’s impassioned pleas across the vox for the first time. Blood leaked down his face. He tried to stand but the wall shuddered. He thought it was the head wound and then he noticed the men on his section were unsteady too. Something was happening.

  He heard the break in the wall as much as he felt it.

  Then he saw disaster unfolding, and the poor souls about to be caught up in it.

  ‘Renski…’

  Skidding to a halt, Renski watched as a huge piece of the border wall sheared off and fell towards her. She held tight to Heg’s hand, knowing there was no escape. Photon flares lit the night, released by her comrades in desperation. A false sunrise flickered, ephemeral and actinic, before the shadow of the wall swallowed it. No rescue would come for them. Their rescuers were on the wall, and falling with it. Gethe was falling with it.

  ‘Throne of Terra,’ Renski murmured, wishing for a god to pray to.

  Behind her, she heard an eruption of earth as if something huge had just clawed its way out of the grave. She would have turned, but the wall was all she could see, falling inexorably, those caught in its shadow screaming.

  Heg had closed his eyes, teeth clenched against the inevitable outcome.

  Renski forced hers open, so she saw something of the giant that rushed to interpose itself between the proctor and death by pulverisation.

  What she saw next defied understanding. She thought the wall had stopped in midair, held by some force field. Then she saw the giant underneath it and realised he had caught it. He wielded a colossal hammer and had braced the wall against its shaft.

  The primarchs were known to Renski. Every citizen on Terra had seen their statues or heard of their legends. She had never borne witness to one in the flesh, especially up close. Even the Imperial Fists, merely the scions of such a being, were rarely seen outside the Palace confines.

  The primarch in their midst looked immense. His scalloped armour had seen war, she could tell even in the darkness, and his skin shone like polished onyx. His eyes glared fiery red with the effort of his feat. For the briefest moment they met with Renski’s and she felt a strange empathy with this god-like figure.

  He bore a huge slab of the wall. Alone.

  Then she saw the cultists who had also fallen in the wall’s shadow begin to gather their wits. They picked up blades and guns, intent on the primarch, some atavistic urge overcoming their awe of him.

  ‘Lupercal!’ one of them roared, a woman who looked like a medicae.

  Renski reacted on instinct. Questions could wait. Realisation of what was actually happening could wait. If she survived. ‘Protect him!’ she shouted.

  Heg and the other enforcers were on their feet, reaching for combat shotguns and shock mauls. Whatever they had left.

  They need not have bothered.

  Three legionaries came out of the darkness to cut the cultists down. More than twenty fell in seconds, dispatched with grim lethality. A stub pistol went off, but the bullet ricocheted off battle-worn war-plate. The legionaries moved through the rebel throng with a ferocity of purpose that Renski found at once terrifying and invigorating. Fifty, sixty cultists died before the rest broke. They scattered, harried by enforcers who had watched it all unfold.

  It was all over in seconds, the rest of the cultists either put to flight or left to be rounded up later by what remained of the intercession squads.

  Renski stared, awed and afraid, until one of the legionaries approached her. He was also massive, though not as large as his primarch, his armour of a draconic design. A cloak of scales that glistened in the light of stab lumens was draped across his shoulders. It looked ragged but sturdy. Savagery bled off him. Even his war-helm snarled. He carried a large hammer in one hand, energy crackling about its head. Perhaps seeing the fear in her eyes, he reached up and removed his helm. A face as black as soot greeted her, those same embers burning in his eyes as his primarch. A Salamander, Renski realised. She had been taught never to take off her helm in an active warzone but was not about to gainsay the warrior.

  ‘You there,’ he said, clamping his fearsome helmet to his belt, where it attached firmly, magnetically. The eyes blazed, but were not without compassion. She had never known Space Marines could feel such emotions. ‘Get these people clear. My brothers and I will deal with the vermin.’ And then he was gone again, replacing his helm and wading off into the shadows.

  Renski didn’t hesitate further.

  She and the men she had managed to gather together drove back the crowds, using the loudhailers to get their attention. She tried not to think about the wall, waiting to descend and crush her, or the goliath who held it upon his shoulders like some figure of myth. Those who saw him were aghast, but they realised the danger too and fell back.

  With the cultists dead or fleeing, some semblance of order returned, helped in part by the enforcers already amongst the crowds and beginning to marshal them in the absence of the immediate crisis.

  As soon as the masses were clear, Renski gave a signal across the loudhailer.

  The primarch, his face strained, fed a burst of power into his ­hammer and the wall shattered around him. Again, Renski found herself agog to witness such magnificent technology. And there he stood, surrounded by debris, weary but still strong enough to favour Renski with an appreciative nod.

  ‘Vulkan,’ she whispered, able to remember the primarch’s name now the threat of imminent death had passed. She managed to nod back, but that was all.

  His sons went to him at once, and she saw the mythic warriors and their father exchange words in a strange dialect. Renski found it odd to witness their obvious closeness. She had never seen Space Marines like this before, almost at rest. At peace. Their easy familiarity spoke of many shared experiences. That and their battered armour suggested they had been on a long journey. It had somehow brought them to the old earth of Terra.

  Then she remembered the crowd. They had been awestruck by the god-like figure in their midst, but now that awe was fading they began to clamour for the wall again. A ragged breach yawned in the barrier between the wastes and the outer precincts of Plaintive’s Reach. From there another wall and then the Petitioner’s City. Urgency seized the masses, fuelled by fear and a potent survival instinct.

  Vulkan’s sons surrounded him, but the crowd just flowed around them.

  Even with a primarch and three of his legionaries at her side, Renski and her enforcers could not hope to stem the tide. The wall would be overrun. She saw several of her comrades entangled in the fallen debris. One of the bodies was Gethe’s and she felt a great swell of pity that this should be his end after so many long years of service.

  Her immediate concerns arrested her attention. She turned back towards the crowds, drawing her shock maul as the stampede began, determined to try to slow the horde.

  ‘Halt!’ she cried, her vox slaved to the loudhailers, her voice booming across Plaintive’s Reach. ‘Cease, and come to order!’

  The crowd stopped, and Renski had to check herself.

  ‘I really didn’t think that would work,’ she muttered, baffled.

  A deeply resonant voice answered. ‘As powerful as your oratory is,’ declared Vulkan, gesturing towards the breach, ‘I think they are reason for the waning tide.’

  Renski turned and beheld a phalanx of shimmering golden-yellow standing in front of the breach.

  They had come at last. Not in answer to Gethe’s summons. They had come for him.

  The Imperial Fists.

  Zytos bristled when he saw Dorn’s own.

  ‘Why do they aim their weapons at us?’ asked Gargo.

  ‘It’s not us, brother,’ Zytos replied, but refrained from responding in kind. Nothing would be gained here from rashness.

  His gaze on
the wall of breacher shields suddenly before him, Vulkan stepped out from amongst the Drakes. ‘Be calm, my sons. We are not expected or wanted, and come at a dark hour.’

  ‘All the more reason to rejoice at your return, my lord,’ said Gargo.

  ‘They do not believe it is him,’ said Abidemi.

  Vulkan did not answer. Instead, he approached the Imperial Fists’ leader. A black skull adorned the warrior’s breastplate, laurel-wreathed in emerald. Silver lightning crossed his shoulder guards beneath a clenched fist of jet, and a black cloak trimmed with ice lion fur hung at his back. A Huscarl, one of Dorn’s fiercest protectors. His red retinal lenses glinted as they regarded the Lord of Drakes.

  The crowd fell to silence, the sight of forty bolters wielded by Dorn’s own praetorians enough to quell any riotous urges.

  ‘Do you speak for Dorn, and for these men?’ Vulkan asked of the warrior.

  He was the only legionary in golden-yellow not to have raised his weapon. He had a hand on the hilt of a ceremonial seax blade sheathed at his hip, the other within quick reach of a bolt pistol on the opposite side.

  Vulkan did not have the heart or pride to tell him that however fast he was able to draw them, it would still have been too slow. His brothers, on the other hand…

  Vulkan did not doubt his ability to survive forty bolter salvoes, but he could not say the same for his sons.

  ‘Answer me, legionary. I know my brother would have instilled respect in you. Or do you believe me a dead man, an apparition or a false face?’

  ‘I do not know what to believe,’ the warrior answered at last, gruff in the manner traditional of the VII. Dorn’s sons were as rigid and inflexible as the walls they stood sentry on. Vulkan applauded their dependability, where others might disparage it as lacking in imagination.

  ‘Have you not heard?’ said the primarch, his smile genuine but hinting at the pain of regret. ‘Vulkan lives.’

  The warrior did not respond. He maintained his watch, as did his men. Every one of them had his weapon trained on Vulkan, no thought spared for the crowd. They posed no threat, of course. None would dare approach the league of golden-yellow surrounding the breach.

  ‘I have a great desire to speak to your father,’ Vulkan told him. ‘I assume he sent you. I imagine he is watching even now. Rogal will know. He will see me and he will know. We are kin. So, while we wait for my brother, perhaps you would remove your helm and we can at least meet eye to eye as warriors. And I would have your name, unless I am to address you as legionary?’

  A moment’s pause suggested reluctance on the warrior’s part, but he spoke eventually.

  ‘I am Archamus.’

  Vulkan smiled, though his eyes were suddenly intent on the legionary.

  ‘Then let us greet each other as sword brothers, for we fought together during the Great Crusade.’

  The warrior who had identified himself as Archamus reached up and removed his helm with a hiss of pneumatic locks disengaging from their seals. A young but proud warrior regarded Vulkan. Despite his youth he had begun to bear the lines in his face that spoke of eternal vigilance.

  Vulkan frowned.

  ‘You are not he,’ he said. ‘You are not Archamus.’

  The warrior took on a solemn expression. ‘I bear his name, in both honour and memoriam.’

  At this Vulkan nodded, understanding.

  ‘Then I grieve for his passing, as I do all noble sons and brothers fallen in this war.’

  Archamus did not respond immediately, though the hardness of his eyes suggested agreement.

  He said, ‘If you are the Lord of Drakes, how did you survive? How did you reach Terra?’

  ‘There is a long answer to that question, but I shall simply say it was by my father’s will and the courage of my sons.’

  Archamus looked like he was about to say more when he received a message in the vox-bead in his ear.

  He listened, and Vulkan waited, though the message was terse as Archamus turned a moment later to his men and gave a signal.

  ‘Only you, my lord,’ said Archamus, and put his helmet back on.

  Zytos was about to protest but Vulkan calmed him with a gesture as he rejoined his sons for a brief moment.

  ‘I do not like this, father,’ said Zytos, a wary eye on the Imperial Fists, who moved in perfect lockstep, the parting of their ranks like a drawbridge revealing a safe passage into an unknown keep.

  ‘Nor I,’ said Abidemi. ‘We have come this far together.’

  Vulkan put his hands on the shoulder of both his sons, and nodded to Gargo. What the primarch said next was meant for all of them.

  ‘You have served beyond duty. You brought me back from the dead. There is no greater honour you could have shown me and I shall be forever indebted to you, my Draaksward. My sons. But I must go the rest of the way alone. Stay here.’ He gestured to a female enforcer who watched enrapt and the great swathe of humanity that had been her charge. ‘Vouchsafe these people. Lend them your courage. Lead them with your example. They have had enough of fear. Inspire them, as you have inspired me.’

  The three bowed as one, each sinking to a knee. Tears streamed freely down Gargo’s face, prompting a fierce salute from Zytos.

  ‘You have our oath, primarch.’

  Vulkan did not look back. He heard Abidemi singing, a lament of old Nocturne but one that spoke of glory and honour un­dying. Vulkan smiled sadly as he made for the breach, a phalanx of golden-yellow closing up behind him to seal the way, and a Huscarl with the name of Archamus watching him go as he listened to the voice in his ear.

  A female voice came through the vox-bead in his ear. ‘Is it him?’

  ‘Dorn will know,’ Archamus replied, standing with his warriors as he watched Vulkan depart alone.

  ‘But is it him? What is your assessment?’

  ‘Dorn will adjudge that.’

  ‘Indeed, but is… it… him?’

  Archamus sighed, but chose to relent.

  ‘It feels… right.’

  ‘Instinct alone should not be trusted, you know that.’

  ‘Sometimes that is all we have to avail ourselves of.’

  There was a pause as the person on the end of the vox-feed considered the import of that statement.

  ‘And the others? Is it them?’

  ‘It could be.’

  ‘It is as I said. We cannot assume all of the assets were activated.’

  ‘No, Andromeda,’ said Archamus, his eyes turning to the crowds waiting beyond the breach, ‘we cannot.’

  Thirty-One

  Two brothers, reunited

  Vulkan passed beyond the broken gates and left Plaintive’s Reach behind. He then crossed another gate, an auspex array scanning his every molecule but unable to define what they saw, as eagle-masked sentinels looked on with cold dispassion. Sentry lights strafed him, a statue in saurian armour.

  These too Vulkan left behind, the way made open to him amidst the crashing refrain of disengaging locking bolts and gear-driven barriers parting. The second gate led to a commercial district at the edges of the Petitioner’s City, which had been summarily evacuated. The resource alone to achieve such a feat and the apparent need to do so told Vulkan all he needed to know about how seriously Dorn was taking his sudden appearance.

  And yet after he passed through the ghost-like streets and avenues, he was to be given a further lesson.

  Upon reaching a third gate, much taller than the others and surprisingly ornate, Vulkan realised he was not merely being allowed ingress, he was being shepherded.

  The gate opened much like the others, the grand rendering of a mythic gryphonne splitting down the middle, its wings parting east and west. Behind it stood a formidable guardian.

  The Knight soared above Vulkan, who had to crane his neck to meet the ironclad gaze of its visor slit. Frosty azure
light burned within. A great chainblade was mounted on one arm, currently dormant. The other had a thermal cannon, cold for the moment. It would not take much for either weapon system to activate. Its armour fumed with mild radiation fog and heat-bleed. The reactors of the great war engine hummed, but it did not move, and nor did its vox-horns stir. Vulkan felt its regard upon him, but for now it was content to watch, to wait.

  Vulkan gave it no cause to anger, and did not engage with it in any way. He considered what must have happened on Terra to provoke such caution. Back at the wall, the Imperial Fists had seemed on edge. He had never known the sons of Dorn to be anything but stolid.

  As he passed beyond the threshold of the gate and its guardian, Vulkan found himself in a great square, empty but for the armoured warrior waiting for him there. Wintry light from a pair of enfilading watchtower lamps bled the figure almost to monochrome.

  Gold armour turned to white, its ornamentation made glorious, almost deific. An eagle head, rendered in profile, sat proudly upon each shoulder. The warrior’s gauntleted hands rested on the pommel of a great chainsword, its red casing made pale in the harsh light and chased with shimmering filigree, the blade pointed downwards. A crack in the stone flags underfoot webbed from where the weapon touched the ground.

  Though bareheaded, he did not squint in the pellucid aura that surrounded him. But as his dark eyes fell upon Vulkan, they narrowed. A hard face framed those chips of napped flint. White hair, so fair and fine it looked like fire, crowned his head.

  ‘You come at a most inauspicious time,’ said Dorn, his voice harsh and thunderous where Vulkan’s was deep and resonant.

  Vulkan crossed the hundred paces separating him from his brother.

  Though he could not see them, he felt the many pairs of eyes upon him, watching from somewhere in the shadowy arcade that delineated the square.

  Upon reaching Dorn, he smiled warmly.

  ‘It is good to see you, Rogal.’