Horus Heresy: Scars

by Chris Wraight

  ‘How are you doing this?’ breathed Ilya, watching the burning shells of Alpha Legion warships hurtle past.

  More White Scars destroyers screamed through the wreckage, corkscrewing and diving like plunging pods of cetaceans. Everything was aimed at a single point: the flanks were discarded, surrendered to the enemy as every V Legion asset in the battlesphere shot into close formation and boomed up to top velocity.

  ‘The weakness is there,’ said Halji, motioning to a location two-thirds of the way along the Alpha Legion second rank. ‘A slight one, but enough.’ He nodded in warm appreciation of what was taking place. ‘We race to get there first, and that would be honour worth remembering in verse.’

  The bridge of the Swordstorm hummed and rattled as though it might shake apart. Warning lights glowed angrily along diagnostic displays, cheerfully disregarded by the bridge crew. The Alpha Legion’s second rank swam towards them horrifyingly quickly, already glittering with distributed las-fire and hastily loosed torpedo batteries.

  The encircling Alpha Legion cordon was now compromised and fractured, its constituents struggling to respond to the lone column of ships that burned its way through their heart. Their capital ships were even slower, unable to take advantage of modified engines or the Scars almost preternaturally skilled crews.

  ‘A ruse,’ Ilya said, annoyed with herself. ‘You wanted them to relax.’

  Halji nodded. ‘There is advantage to being underestimated. And being fast.’

  Despite herself, she laughed then. It was the first time she’d done so since the muster orders had come in.

  What is happening to me? I am learning to love this stupid Legion.

  The Swordstorm pulled up to the forefront of the Chisel formation, propelled by its monstrous, raging engines and surrounded by a swarm of racing escorts. Bulky vessels of the Alpha Legion second rank tried to bar its path, sliding into a hurried defensive formation with what now looked to Ilya like ponderous clumsiness.

  ‘Those ones are big,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘They look like battle-barges,’ agreed Halji. ‘But Khagan does not think they are. One Legion cannot engage this many without some improvisation – they do not have the ships. Let us see.’

  Ilya found herself gritting her teeth as the Swordstorm barrelled into range. Its gigantic lances flared briefly, filling the void with the thrown light of a bounded supernova. All around it, other White Scars warships launched forward-facing barrages, vomiting lasbeams and plasma bolts and torpedo salvoes in a vast, intense column of pure destruction.

  The explosions were instant: palls of spiralling immolation crashing out in swathes of igniting promethium, flooding the cold vaults of space ahead. Ilya saw a massive Alpha Legion vessel collapse entirely, falling away sharply as its engines imploded. Another three targets took horrific damage to their forward void shields, sloughing badly amidst sheets of rippling orange and neon-yellow.

  Return fire was sporadic and insufficient, clattering and raking down the armoured prows of the racing White Scars vanguard and causing little damage.

  ‘They’re not battle-barges,’ said Ilya. ‘What are they then? Bulk troop-carriers?’

  ‘It matters not,’ said Halji. ‘We’re out.’

  He was right. The Chisel had hammered its way through the cordon, breaking it open at its weakest point. The entire formation – tight-knit, long and slender like a throwing javelin – raced out into open space. The Alpha Legion struggled to regroup in its wake, pulling ships from the far-flung cordon formation like an octopus clutching its many limbs back to itself. They hadn’t lost critical numbers of ships, but the sudden attack run had blown their formation wide open and destroyed the cohesion that they had so painstakingly built.

  The White Scars run did not slow. If anything, free of the need to maintain a barrage of las-fire, it accelerated. The orb of Chondax fell rapidly away aft, mediated by the glowing corpses of a dozen burned-out warships.

  ‘So what now?’ asked Ilya. ‘Do we finish them off? Or go for Russ? Or Terra? What’s the plan?’

  Halji looked over her shoulder, up to where the Khan still sat on his throne. The primarch’s expression had not changed – no satisfaction, no elation, just the habitual aquiline fierceness, the solid concentration. His flagship hummed with the release of fearsome energies, powering into the open void like a loosed arrow.

  ‘I do not know,’ Halji said. ‘My guess, knowing the Warhawk’s mood? None of those things.’

  Sometimes it was better not to know.

  Yesugei had often argued with Ahriman over the point. The Thousand Sons in general had never accepted that knowledge – any knowledge – should remain off-limits.

  ‘All is good,’ the Chief Librarian had told him once. ‘The more, the better.’

  But the old weather-makers of Chogoris had always resisted plumbing the depths of their craft, choosing to remain on the surface of it, honing a set of skills that they knew rested on deeper, more dangerous truths. That had always struck Yesugei as wisdom, not cowardice, for the sages of his home world had made a virtue of restraint.

  ‘Everything has its perils,’ Yesugei had warned Ahriman.

  ‘You are too cautious,’ Ahriman had replied. ‘Does anyone even know what gifts you have?’

  ‘Perhaps not, but why should I care?’

  ‘Because it matters, how you are perceived.’

  ‘You are perceived as dangerous. Does that not matter?’

  Ahriman had looked rueful. ‘You understand us. Do you think we are dangerous?’

  Back then, Yesugei had not wanted to reply. Sometimes I do, he had thought.

  Now, in his chambers on the Sickle Moon, he felt sick with knowledge, like he had ingested something poisonous that had got into his blood. The scale of it was hard to process, let alone come to terms with.

  Xa’ven had explained it all in careful detail, omitting nothing. There were some details, of course, that even he didn’t know, including the fate of his primarch.

  ‘We do not know what happened,’ said Xa’ven. ‘I think I would know, somehow, if he had died. But perhaps not.’

  The Salamanders legionary spoke slowly, deliberately, inflecting the syllables of Gothic with a rich Nocturnean burr. His words held no self-pity, nor anger – just a deep, calm defiance.

  Yesugei’s response to the news had been different: numbness, followed by a desperate sense of failure. He had sensed disturbances in the fabric of the universe for so long; perhaps he ought to have known, or guessed, or moved to investigate sooner.

  That mood soon passed. Treachery on such a scale was unimaginable – he could not have known. No one could.

  Horus. The Warmaster. The beloved son.

  He looked up. He shared his chamber with three others: Lushan, Xa’ven and a dour Iron Hands legionary called Bion Henricos.

  ‘You were telling me what happens next,’ Yesugei said, forcing himself to keep asking questions.

  ‘At first, it was only us,’ said Xa’ven. ‘My squad broke back into orbit on a captured Sixteenth Legion lander. Our own ship had been destroyed, so we were forced to dock with one of theirs and take it over.’

  Yesugei smiled, despite himself. Xa’ven’s dead-pan delivery could be quite amusing. ‘Just like that. You take over Sons of Horus frigate.’

  Xa’ven looked at him blankly, his dark features hard to read. He did not smile much and his blank red eyes made following his expressions difficult. ‘It was challenging,’ he said in his rumbling bass voice, ‘but they were not expecting us. Ever seen the sons of Vulkan fight, White Scar?’

  ‘I have not,’ said Yesugei. ‘Though have heard is formidable.’

  ‘We took the ship,’ said Xa’ven simply. ‘It was called the Grey Talon. We renamed it the Hesiod. That is a sanctuary-city of our home world.’

  ‘I have heard of it.’

  Xa’ven nodded in satisfaction. ‘Then we became renegades. We tried to make for Nocturne, but the Navigator had been injured. She die
d soon afterwards. The strain of fighting the warp storms, perhaps, or maybe her mind had turned – I do not think she had expected to see the things she witnessed.’

  Henricos, the Iron Hands legionary, let slip a low growl through his dark metal faceplate. Unlike the others, he had not taken his helm off. ‘None of us did.’

  ‘And what of you?’ asked Yesugei.

  ‘Survivors fight on, here and there,’ said Henricos. His voice, unlike Xa’ven’s, was acid with bitterness. Yesugei could understand why – he clearly had no doubt over his own primarch’s fate. ‘Scattered. Some of us found each other.’

  ‘We seek out survivors,’ added Xa’ven. ‘There are only sixteen of us, but we hope to add more. Then we can strike back.’

  Yesugei caught a strange look on Xa’ven’s face then, something like hunger.

  ‘And now you find us,’ the Stormseer said, making the Salamander’s thought explicit. ‘Warp-capable ship with living Navigator.’

  Xa’ven nodded. ‘Henricos is a master of ship-systems. He has found a way to track warp wakes at distance, so we knew just where you would be translating.’

  ‘But why attack?’ Lushan asked. He was still irritated – the Sickle Moon had taken significant damage after an already battering warp passage.

  ‘We have learned to be careful,’ replied Xa’ven. ‘For all we know, every Legion has turned to the Warmaster. If you had been a Blood Angels ship, or Ultramarines, we would have done the same.’

  Yesugei nodded with understanding. ‘And we are White Scars,’ he said. ‘Easy for you to believe we are renegade, yes?’

  Xa’ven said nothing, but Henricos grunted mordantly. ‘Since you said it, yes.’

  Yesugei smiled. ‘At least, then, we are honest with one another.’

  ‘You use warp-born powers,’ said Xa’ven, as if by way of explanation. ‘That, we have learned, is a sign of the enemy. They do not follow the Edict, and it cost us on Isstvan.’

  Yesugei placed his hands together. Every piece of information he was given from that damned planet was painful to hear; such things were exactly what Ahriman and he had warned would happen if the Librarius was disbanded.

  ‘I follow commands of my primarch,’ Yesugei said. ‘If he orders me to stop using gifts, I do so, but the Khan is out of contact for a long time.’ He gave Xa’ven a half-apologetic look. ‘In any case, he will take no notice of Edict. None of us will. The gift is part of who we are, has been for long time. Imagine if I tell you to put away your flamers, or you, Son of Medusa, your metal hand. Would you do it?’

  ‘You sound like one of Magnus’s sorcerers,’ spat Henricos.

  ‘I think,’ replied Yesugei, ‘they speak better Gothic.’

  Xa’ven laughed – a rumble that spilled up from his enormous barrel chest. ‘And what are you doing out here, Chogorian? You are a long way from home.’

  ‘Are we? Our ship lost bearing a long time ago.’

  ‘We can help with that. What is your course?’

  ‘Chondax,’ replied Yesugei. ‘My primarch is there, though I do not know if he is aware of Massacre.’

  ‘He will be by now,’ muttered Henricos. ‘The whole galaxy will be. Soon we will see Horus’s bastards falling on worlds like locusts. Everything is open to them, every defence destroyed.’

  Xa’ven raised a warning hand, but Henricos kept going.

  ‘Do you not see how futile this is? We can fight for a little longer, but Ferrus is gone. Vulkan and Corax are gone. It’s just stalling for time.’

  ‘We have discussed this many times, brother,’ said Xa’ven tolerantly.

  ‘And? You think there’s some way to turn this around? You’re a fool. I’ll kill as many of them as I can, and spit in their faces every time, but I’m not stupid enough to think it’ll change anything.’ Henricos swept his metallic deathmask around the chamber, as if daring someone to contradict him. ‘Vengeance, a little satisfaction, a share of pain. That’s all that’s left.’

  Xa’ven shot Yesugei an exculpatory look. ‘Bion and I have somewhat different perspectives on the war.’

  ‘I see,’ said Yesugei. ‘What is yours?’

  ‘Victory will come,’ Xa’ven replied calmly and without hesitation. ‘I do not know from where, but it will come. We must be patient.’

  Yesugei admired the sentiment, though from what he had been told he found it hard to share in it. ‘I hope you are right.’

  ‘Then are you with us?’ asked Henricos. ‘We could use some of that… What do you call it?’

  ‘Weather-magic,’ said Yesugei.

  ‘Stupid name.’ The Iron Hands legionary flexed his damaged shoulders. ‘Hurts when it hits, though.’

  ‘I have to get back to my primarch,’ said Yesugei, directing his words to Xa’ven. ‘I have dreams. Visions. He is in danger.’

  Xa’ven looked back at him equivocally. ‘That will be hard, and we have our own work.’

  ‘Would you not fight better joined with another Legion? One intact, and dangerous, and full of spell-makers like me?’

  ‘Would your Khan accept us? I know nothing of him.’

  ‘Few do, but I speak on your behalf.’ Yesugei smiled then, as warmly as he was able to in the circumstances. ‘If you come with me.’

  Xa’ven looked tempted, but cautious. He rested his chin, as black as burned embers, on his steepled gauntlets.

  ‘It has been a hard road,’ he said. ‘At times, in the deep of the void-night, I was tempted to ask for guidance. You know, in the old way, like we were taught to forget. I never did it, for we long since stopped believing in gods and monsters. Maybe we should not have been so quick to forget them.’

  Yesugei nodded. ‘Both are real.’

  ‘I wonder, though, what I thought might come of such guidance, had I pleaded for it? Would I be shown some sign, some way back? Would I stumble over Vulkan’s trail?’

  Henricos shook his head irritably. ‘Foolish.’

  ‘But something has occurred now. You have fallen into our path, though you know less than we do. What am I to make of this? Was it fated?’

  ‘I do not believe in fate,’ said Yesugei.

  ‘Luck, then.’

  ‘Even less.’

  Xa’ven raised a black eyebrow. ‘Then what do you believe in?’

  ‘The Khan,’ said Yesugei, as unhesitatingly and firmly as Xa’ven had spoken earlier. ‘Help me find him. Something can still be saved.’

  Henricos snorted disdainfully, but Xa’ven was no longer paying any attention to him. His ebony head nodded slowly, his thoughtful gaze never leaving Yesugei.

  ‘We shall see,’ he said. ‘We shall see.’

  The Khan rose from his throne, and his retinue stood back to let him pass. He walked slowly to the edge of the command dais, below which the full expanse of the flagship’s bridge stretched away from him in terraced rows.

  The galaxy’s starfield glittered on the other side of the armourglass observation dome, a uniform screen of infinite space. He felt the familiar urge stir within him: to power into the unknown, to range across the void as he had once ranged across the grasslands of home, beholden to no one, as free as the hunting raptors that rode the high airs.

  And yet, even the berkut are tamed, he thought to himself. They come back eventually, summoned by the bells of their master.

  None of his command staff spoke. They remained silent as the entire White Scars fleet powered further from Chondax, leaving the Alpha Legion behind like a bad memory. A pursuit had not materialised yet. Even if it did, the Khan doubted that the enemy had anything fast enough to catch them.

  For all that, he could sense his crew’s burning questions. Qin Xa wanted to turn around, to finish what had been started, to board the Alpha Legion ships and demand answers.

  It was a tempting proposition. Perhaps Alpharius was on board one of those ships. The Khan smiled grimly. It would be nice to drag that dissembler to his knees and rip the helm from his face.

  That would have been a mist
ake. The Alpha Legion had their combat weaknesses but they were no fools. He would learn nothing from them unless they wanted him to have it, in which case it was useless.

  He folded his arms across his chest and stared up at the stars, just as he had once done in the long night-chill of the Altak. The stars were his first memory. He still had fragmented recollections of muffled voices – and not Chogorian voices – shuffling around a casket in which he slept. He had dreams of whisperings in the dark, a rush of sudden indescribable speed, a whirl of dark stars and pearl-white skies, a sense of being momentarily suspended over an abyss of infinite, howling depth while greedy eyes regarded him with both fear and covetousness.

  Years later he had come to understand what those visions were: confused recollections of something he had not the faculties to understand at the time, dreams of unearthly powers at once more powerful than imagination and weaker than the sickliest human newborn.

  ‘The denizens of heaven are nothing without us,’ Yesugei had told him many years later. ‘They may only act through us. That is their great secret, and their great shame. We do not have to listen – we can go our own way.’

  The zadyin arga had always understood the relationship between the realm of the senses and the realm of dreams, and the Khan had always trusted what they said of it.

  ‘There are two great errors,’ a long-dead sage of Kai had written in scrolls still preserved in Khum Karta. ‘First, to pretend that the path of heaven does not exist, second, to follow it.’

  Perhaps Russ had tried to snuff out the gifted forever. The Khan could well imagine Horus taking a stand against it; he was a noble soul, the noblest of them all. Sanguinius, too, had always been pure of purpose, and the third member of the triumvirate. From the very start, it had been the four of them – the Khan, Magnus, Sanguinius, with tacit approval from the one who would one day be Warmaster. It was they who had laboured for so long to channel and protect the arts of the psyker within the Legions.