by Ben Counter
‘You have seen what I saw, and what Ultis knew,’ Mhotep confirmed, regaining his composure and sitting up.
Cestus’s gaze was distant as he struggled to process everything he’d learned, together with resisting the urge to vomit against the invasive psychic experience. He looked back at Mhotep, a suspicious cast to his eyes and face.
‘Why are you here, Mhotep? I mean, why are you really here?’
The Thousand Son gazed back for a moment and then withdrew his hood and sighed deeply.
‘I have seen the lines of fate, Ultramarine. I knew long before we made contact with the Furious Abyss, back when we were on Vangelis, that my destiny lay with this ship, that this mission, your mission, was important.
‘My Legion is cursed with psychic mutation, but my lord Magnus taught us to harness it, to commune with the warp and fashion that communion into true power.’ Mhotep ignored the growing revulsion in Cestus’s face as he spoke of the empyrean, and went on. ‘Nikaea was no council, Ultramarine. It was a trial, not only of my lord Magnus but of the entire Thousand Sons Legion. The Emperor’s edict wounded him, like a father’s disapproval and chastisement would wound any child.
‘What I told you at Vangelis, that I sought to improve the reputation of my Legion, in the eyes of the sons of Guilliman if no other, was in part true. I desire only to open your eyes to the potential of the psychic and how it is a boon, a ready weapon to use against our enemies.’
Cestus’s expression was stern in the face of Mhotep’s impassioned arguments.
‘You saved us all in the lance deck,’ said the Ultramarine. ‘You probably did the same when we fought what became of the Fireblade. But, your ambition overreaches you, Mhotep. I have stayed Brynngar’s hand, but from this point on you will remain here in isolation. If we are successful and can reach Macragge or some other Imperial stronghold, you will face trial and there, your fate will be decided.’
Cestus got to his feet and turned. As he was about to leave the room, he paused.
‘If you ever invade my mind like that again, I will execute you myself,’ he added and left, the cell door sliding shut behind him.
‘How narrow your mind is,’ Mhotep hissed, focusing at once on the reflective sheen of the cell wall. ‘How ignorant you are of what is to come.’
SIXTEEN
Fleet
Kor Phaeron
A storm breaks
‘THAT,’ SAID ORCADUS, ‘is Macragge.’
The Navigator had received instructions from his admiral that whilst they were still in the warp he should make regular reports of their progress. The appearance of the Ultramarines’ home world, albeit through the misted lens of the empyrean, was worthy of note and so he had summoned her.
The observation blister was a chamber on the same deck of the Wrathful as the bridge and within walking distance. The room was usually reserved for formal gatherings, when officers came together to formalise some business within the Saturnine Fleet. Its grand transparent dome afforded a view of space that lent gravitas to the matters at hand. In the warp, of course, it was strictly off-limits and its eye was kept permanently closed.
The eye was open, but the dome was masked with heavy filters that kept all but the most mundane wavelengths of light out of the blister.
Admiral Kaminska faced away from the Navigator and actually followed Orcadus’s gaze through a mirror screen that offered a hazy representation of what he was seeing. To look at the warp, even filtered as it was, would be incredibly dangerous for her.
‘If you could see it as I can,’ Orcadus hissed, allowing a reverent tone to colour his voice. ‘What wonders there are out in the void. There is beauty in the galaxy, for those who can but see it.’
‘I’m happy staying blind,’ said Kaminska. The view through the filters and reflected by the mirror screen was heavily distorted, but she could make out a crescent-shaped mass of light hanging over the ship. Though she had no frame of reference, she had an impression of enormous distance.
‘Macragge,’ muttered Orcadus. ‘See how it glows, the brightest constellation in this depth of the abyss? All those hard-working souls toiling at its surface; their combined life-spark is refulgent to my eyes. Ultramar is the most heavily populated system in the whole segmentum and the minds of its citizens are bright and full of hope. That is what I mean by beauty. It is a beacon, one that shines amidst the malice and bleakness of the empyrean tide.’
Kaminska continued to regard the dim mirror image of the warp through the minute aperture offered by the filters. Old space-farers’ tales were full of the effects the naked warp could have on a human mind. Madness was the most merciful fate, they said: mutation, excruciating spontaneous cancers and even possession by some malfeasant presence all featured prominently. Kaminska felt a flicker of vulnerability, and was glad that only the Navigator was there with her.
‘Is this why you summoned me?’ she asked, having little time or inclination for a philosophical debate concerning the immaterium. Her mind was on other matters, namely the sudden revival of Mhotep and Cestus’s meeting with the Thousand Son. She hoped it would yield some good news.
‘No,’ Orcadus answered simply, puncturing the admiral’s introspection, and pointing to a different region of the warp. It was a dim mass of glowing bluffs, like the top of endless cliffs reaching down into blackness. Above the cliffs was a streak of red.
‘I am not well-versed in reading the empyrean tides, Navigator,’ she snapped, weary of Orcadus’s eccentricities, which were ubiquitous amongst all the great Navigator houses. ‘What am I looking at?’
‘Formations like these cliffs are common enough in the abyss,’ he explained, oblivious to Kaminska’s impatience. ‘I am steering us well clear of them, and I am certain that our quarry has taken the same route. The formation above them, however, is rather more troubling.’
‘Another world, perhaps?’ ventured Kaminska. ‘There’s plenty of new settlement out here near the fringe.’
‘I suspected that, but it is not a planet. I believe it is another ship.’ ‘A second vessel?’ ‘No. I think it is a fleet.’
‘Are they following us?’ asked Kaminska, a knot of dread building in her stomach.
‘I cannot tell. Distance is relative down here,’ the Navigator admitted.
‘Could it be the Ultramarines? Their Legion was heading for Calth.’
‘It is possible. Calth could be its destination, I suppose.’
‘If not, then what is the alternative, Navigator?’ Kaminska didn’t like where this was going as the knot in her stomach became a fist.
‘It could be another Legion fleet,’ said Orcadus, leaving the implication hanging.
‘You mean more Word Bearers.’
‘Yes,’ the Navigator confirmed after a moment’s pause.
LORD KOR PHAERON of the Word Bearers scowled. ‘He’s behind schedule,’ he said. Aboard the Infidus Imperator he and his warriors made their inexorable course towards Ultramar, the great flagship leading the dread fleet of battleships, cruisers, escorts and frigates towards their destiny.
The arch commander of the Legion, favoured of Lorgar, was immense in his panoply of war. Seated upon a throne of black iron, he towered like an all-powerful tyrant, the surveyor of all his deadly works. Votive chains, festooned with tiny silver skulls, and icons of dedication, arched from his shoulder pads to his cuirass. A spiked halo of iron arced across his mighty shoulders, fixed to his armoured backpack. The stout metal gorget fixed around his neck was forged into a high and imperious collar that bore the symbol of the Legion. The tenets of it were etched ostensibly across every surface of Kor Phaeron’s armour in the epistles of Lorgar. Parchments unfurled like ragged, script-ridden pennants from studded pauldrons; seals and scraps of vellum covered his leg greaves like patchwork.
In the eyes of the arch-commander there burned a relentless fervour that flowed outwards and ignited the room. It was almost as if any who fell beneath his glowering gaze would be immolated in righteous fir
e should they be found wanting. His voice was dominance and zeal, his Word the dictate of the primarch. This would be his finest hour, as it was written.
Six Chapter Masters of the Word Bearers stood behind Kor Phaeron, each resplendent in their respective panoplies. They still managed to fill the immense council chamber of the Infidus Imperator with their presence. Above them curved a great domed roof hung with smoking censers. The floor was a giant viewscreen, showing a stellar map of the space surrounding Ultramar.
‘Our most recent reports indicate that Zadkiel was being followed,’ said Faerskarel, Master of the Chapter of the Opening Eye. ‘It is possible that he is just showing caution.’
‘He has the Furious Abyss,’ roared Kor Phaeron. ‘He should have been able to see off anything that stood in his way. Zadkiel had better know the consequences for us all if we fail.’
Deinos, Master of the Burning Hand Chapter, stepped forwards. ‘Lorgar shows Admiral Zadkiel all honour,’ he said. In keeping with the name of his Chapter, Deinos’s gauntlets were permanently wreathed in flames from gas jets built into his vambraces. ‘It was written that we will succeed.’
‘Not,’ said Kor Phaeron, measuredly, ‘that we will do so without great loss. Calth will fall and the Ultramarines with it, that is already decided, but there is plenty of scope for our Legion to lose a great many brothers, and we certainly shall if Zadkiel cannot fulfil his mission.’
‘My lord, surely Zadkiel makes his own fate? We should be minded only with the progress of our own fleet.’ It was Rukis, the Master of the Crimson Mask Chapter, who spoke. The faceplate of his helmet was wrought to resemble a fearsome red-skinned snarling creature.
‘I will not allow our brother to fail us,’ hissed Kor Phaeron, intent on the stellar map and the alleged progress of the Furious Abyss. ‘I had not wanted to use my hand in this matter, but it seems that circumstances allow no other recourse. Much is written of Zadkiel’s success and its bearing upon our own. To prosecute the war on Calth, we must risk nothing. Is that understood?’
The Chapter Masters’ silence constituted their agreement. Skolinthos, Master of the Ebony Serpent Chapter, broke the quietude once his assent and that of his brothers was clear. Skolinthos’s oesophagus had been crushed in the early years of the Great Crusade when it was the Emperor whom the Word Bearers vaunted above all others. His voice crackled sibilantly through a vocal synthesiser on his chest, the honorific of his Chapter somehow perversely apt given his affliction. ‘Then how might we assist the admiral?’
‘There are still words newly written,’ said Kor Phaeron, ‘that you do not know of. They concern the warp through which we travel. We can reach Zadkiel even though the Furious Abyss lies many days ahead of us. Master Tenaebron?’
Chapter Master Tenaebron bowed in supplication behind his lord. The Chapter of the Void was probably the least respected among the Word Bearers Legion for it was by far the smallest, with less than seven hundred Astartes. There was little glory in its history, used moreover as a reserve force that enacted its missions behind the front line. This grim, dishonourable purpose fell to the Void and Tenaebron, their master, did not complain, for he knew that his Chapter’s true role was to create and test new weapons and tactics for the rest of the Legion. It had not gone unnoticed that Lorgar’s most recent orders to Tenaebron had concerned the exploitation of the Word Bearers’ psychic resources.
‘I trust you will require the use of the supplicants?’ said Tenaebron.
‘How many remain?’ asked Kor Phaeron, votive chains jangling as he shifted in his throne.
‘One hundred and thirty, my lord,’ Tenaebron replied. ‘Seventy here on the Infidus, thirty on the Camomancer and the remainder are spread throughout the fleet. I have ensured they are kept in a state of readiness; they can be awakened within the hour.’
‘Get them ready,’ Kor Phaeron ordered. ‘How many can we afford to lose?’
‘More than half would compromise the masking of the Calth assault,’ Tenaebron answered humbly.
‘Then be prepared to lose them.’
‘Understood, my lord. What will you have them do?’
Kor Phaeron cracked his knuckles in annoyance. There could be no doubt that he had hoped everything would go more smoothly than this. Zadkiel’s mission was supposedly easy. The assault on Calth would be far more complex, with much more to go wrong. If Zadkiel could not fulfil his written role, then the problems at Calth would be magnified greatly.
‘Give me a storm,’ said the arch-commander, darkly.
TENAEBRON LED KOR Phaeron down into the supplicant chambers of the Infidus Imperator. The arch-commander had since dismissed the other masters to their respective duties, ignoring their obvious surprise at his bold stratagem. The Infidus Imperator was a great and mighty flagship that almost rivalled the immensity of the Furious Abyss. It took some time to traverse the proving grounds and ritual chambers, the ranks of Word Bearers honing their battle-skills with bolter and blade in the arenas. Down here, upon every surface, the Word was ubiquitous. Sentences inscribed on bulkheads and support ribs, tomes penned by Lorgar on pulpits overlooking halls and seminary chapels, libraries of lore, the vessel was drenched in the primarch’s wisdom and zealotry.
The ship had once been known as the Raptorous Rex, a vessel devoted to the Emperor, who had plucked Lorgar from Colchis and placed the Word Bearers at his command. It was a temple to another, more willing and appreciative idol now, the False Emperor of Mankind having been stricken from its corridors.
Tenaebron reached the narrow, high chamber, like a steel canyon, where the supplicants resided. Held in glass blisters on the walls, each served by a bulky life support system feeding oxygen and nutrients, the supplicants slumbered. Curled up and naked, twitching with the force of the power held in their swollen, lacerated craniums it looked like they were dreaming. Their eyes and mouths had grown shut. Some had no facial features at all, their bodies abandoning the need to breathe, eat or experience externally.
A trio of Word Bearers Librarians saluted their Chapter Master as Tenaebron examined the vital-signs on a pict screen, slaved to the individual life supports, in the centre of the room. The Librarians bowed deeply as Kor Phaeron walked in, and genuflected silently before him.
‘Rise,’ he intoned, and the Librarians obeyed. ‘Is everything in preparation?’ he asked, directing the question at the Chapter Master.
Tenaebron consulted the data on the pict screen, turned to his lord and nodded. ‘Marshal the storm,’ he growled. ‘Let them be broken by its wrath.’
The Chapter Master nodded again, and proceeded to order his Librarians to activate the cogitators hooked up to the supplicants’ blisters. Kor Phaeron left Tenaebron to his duties without further word.
Up on the walls the supplicants stirred, as if the dream had become a nightmare.
ZADKIEL ARRIVED ON the bridge as the storm broke.
The vista below him was bathed in strobing hazard lights as if lashed by lightning. Complicated symbolic maps of the warp shone on the three main viewscreens and indicated that it was in violent flux. Bridge crew, Helmsmaster Sarkorov barking orders at them, bent over their picters, faces picked out in the green glow of reams of scrolling data.
‘The warp rebels!’ hissed Zadkiel.
‘Perhaps not,’ muttered Ikthalon. The chaplain, having left Reskiel to his pursuit of their stowaway, had been summoned to the bridge and stood alongside the command throne. The supplicants were recently animated. It was probably a foreshadowing of the empyrean’s current state of turmoil. ‘I believe that a higher purpose is at work. Confidence, it seems, in our ability to prosecute this mission, is waning.’ Ikthalon was careful to keep the barb well-hidden, but the implication at Zadkiel’s ineptitude was still there.
The admiral ignored it. The warp storm, and its origin, was of greater concern to him at that moment
‘Kor Phaeron?’ he wondered.
‘I can think of no other, save our arch lord, who would intercede on our be
half.’
Zadkiel sneered as another thought occurred to him.
‘It is Tenaebron, no doubt, trying to claim for the Chapter of the Void that which belongs to the Quill.’
‘He is ever ambitious,’ Ikthalon agreed, keeping his voice level.
Zadkiel assumed his position on the command throne.
‘It would be rude,’ Zadkiel sneered, ‘to deny Tenaebron his sliver of victory. It will be eclipsed utterly by our own. Helmsmaster Sarkorov,’ he snapped, ‘press on for Macragge. Let the warp take the Wrathful.’
CESTUS WAS THROWN against the wall as the Wrathful shuddered violently. He was heading back to the bridge in order to convene with Kaminska and the remaining Astartes when the storm wave hit. Debris was flung throughout the corridors, medi-bays were in disarray as desperate orderlies fought to hang on to the wounded, armsmen were smashed against bulkheads and ratings fell to their deaths as the Wrathful pitched and yawed. A terrible metallic moaning came from the engine sections as the ship fought to right itself. Cestus could feel the structure flexing and straining through the floor, as if the vessel was on the verge of snapping in two under the strain.
The Ultramarine made his way through the mayhem until he reached the bridge, blast doors opening to allow him access. The crew clung to their posts, Helmsmistress Venkmyer issuing frantic orders set against the unearthly calm of servitors running through their emergency protocols. Drenched in crimson gloom from vermillion alert status, the bridge looked bloody in the half-light.
‘Navigator Orcadus, report!’ snapped Kaminska, gripping the sides of her command position as the shaking Wrathful threatened to dethrone her.
‘A storm,’ Orcadus’s voice said over the bridge vox-caster, the Navigator sounding strained, ‘came out of nowhere.’
‘Evade it,’ ordered Kaminska.
‘Admiral, we are already in it!’ replied the Navigator.
‘Damage control to your posts!’ bellowed Kaminska. ‘Close off the reactor sections and clear the gun decks.’