He had fallen a long way. His helm-display ran with static and gave him no figures, but the crevasse mouth was not visible above him. He felt wedged between shoulders of solidity.
‘Qin Xa,’ he voxed.
Nothing.
Gingerly, he moved his arm. Somehow he had managed to keep hold of his blade on the way down, and the dao emerged from a cascade of loose scree.
His helm lenses stabilised. His surroundings were revealed in a series of blurry grey outlines, and he turned his head carefully, scoping.
Tunnels ran away from him, twisting organically in the gloom. Some were choked with rubble, others half-clear. He saw faint shafts of light up ahead, no doubt from where other crevasses led back up to the surface.
The earth around him was honeycombed into chambers and arteries. A void ran away to his right, just over head height but narrow. He could hear more stone-falls in the distance, echoing through the underworld.
‘Xa,’ he voxed again, carefully pulling himself clear of the debris. The rubble shifted heavily, lodging into the cracks around him, and he sloughed it off.
Again, nothing. The vox-signal hissed with interference.
The space around him was hot and claustrophobic. He could barely move his arms without scraping them, and he had to stoop to move.
He looked up. The path of his descent disappeared after a few metres, lost in the twists and turns of the subterranean warren. He judged how possible it would be to claw his way back up, and reached for a handhold.
The rock crumbled under his touch. More debris tumbled down from the gap, skittering from his armour.
Not possible.
He checked the vox again – no signal. He checked for proximity markers, targets, threat-indicators, and found nothing.
The Khan kicked the last of the rubble from his boots. He could follow the fissure to his right for a while. It was a lead, at least. In this strange underground world of sink-holes and chasms it might open up into something bigger.
He had come looking for caves. He had found them.
Qin Xa tried to run, but the ripple-wave of breaking rockcrete nearly upended him.
‘The Khagan!’ he roared over the squad-vox, bracing himself against the buck and snap of the earth beneath his feet.
Rifts were opening across the whole expanse of the square. A jetting geyser of methane stabbed up a few metres away, ignited into blue-tinged flame as it thundered. The pillar’s plinth fractured.
The warriors of the keshig all moved at the same time, scrambling towards the chasm even as the stone around them buckled. The psychneuein kept up the attack throughout – they seemed to have been maddened by the explosion that had annihilated one of their number.
Maji was dead. He had no visible wounds but the psychneuein kept at him, mobbing his body and extending their proboscises into his prone body. The two warriors who had come to his aid were forced to withdraw, no longer wasting shells on creatures that could not be hit.
Just as Qin Xa neared the chasm that had swallowed the Khan, more psychneuein hove into range, swaying towards him with strangely unerring intent.
Qin Xa leapt up at the nearest, powered by his armour’s servos. Following the Khan’s example, he sliced it at the junction between wing-bulge and thorax. His blade – perfectly aimed – passed straight through, just as before, freezing him as his arm was absorbed by the ghostly flesh.
The psychneuein locked on to him, sinking tendrils into his still-moving body. Qin Xa dropped away, stricken with preternatural chill and feeling his hearts race out of control. His mind seemed to slacken, as if his very being were being leeched from its frame.
The psychneuein dipped in closer, slavering and chittering. Qin Xa scrambled away, slashing his blades ineffectively. Somehow the Khan had managed to hurt them, but whatever he had done was not easily replicated.
The ground bucked again, and a spear of lightning whipped against the broken pillar. A massive rumble ran up from the ground, breaking open more fissures. Another of the keshig screamed as he was caught, just as Maji had.
We cannot fight this.
‘Fall back!’ Qin Xa roared, staggering away from the creature in front of him. It came after him, just as erratically as before, guided by some imperfect psychic sense.
The other warriors did not respond to the order immediately. Despite their fearsome levels of discipline, leaving the site of the Khagan’s fall was anathema. They surged back across the heaving terrain, lumbering away from the psychneuein attacks as best they could, trying to reach the crumbling maw of the fissure that had swallowed their primarch.
It was a doomed attempt. Another of the creatures struck, clamping on to the foremost warrior and eliciting the now-familiar scream of mental agony. Other psychneuein latched on to the victim’s paralysed body, threading their phantasm-tentacles through the heavy battleplate like fingers through water.
‘Fall back!’ ordered Qin Xa for a second time, retreating steadily across the square. This time the surviving members of the keshig came with him, crunching across the debris, harassed and pursued by swarms of shimmering predators.
They pulled together, faces turned to the oncoming ghosts, and retreated towards the gaping jaws of a bombed-out terrace on the near edge of the square. The psychneuein came after them, still making no sound beyond the endless buzzing, and still swaying blindly.
Qin Xa swept his gaze around the terrain. There was plenty of cover, but that would do little good if the creatures were not hampered by it. Their vision was obviously defective or absent – if they could somehow shake them off, it might be possible to outflank them and get back to the ravine edge. Qin Xa’s proximity sensor had lost the Khan’s signal, and the vox-channel was silent.
The nine surviving Terminators cleared the perimeter of the ruins. Another warrior – Juma, by the kill-markers on his pauldron – was caught just before crossing the boundary. His battle-brothers immediately made to support him.
‘No!’ shouted Qin Xa, though it wrenched at him to give the order. ‘Stay together. ‘Keep moving.’
They obeyed, and pulled back further into the shadow of window-less walls. Behind them, Juma’s agony echoed from the stone. They pushed deeper inside, shouldering aside the broken outline of old door-frames and kicking through tottering wall sections.
Qin Xa’s mind raced as he went. Nothing hurt them, nothing deterred them. For a terrible moment, he began to wonder if the stories of Space Wolves had been mistaken – perhaps these things were what had devastated the planet, sweeping aside whatever defenders stood up to them.
They broke into what had once been a huge, domed chamber. Spars from the roof still extended upwards, broken halfway like snapped bones. A huge banner, tattered and stiff with ash, hung from a listing flagpole, sporting the eye-motif of Magnus. On the far side stood a largely intact wall, still bearing a marble façade in places. Huge chunks of masonry and steel littered the floor, forming natural barricades. Dust-encased bodies slumped everywhere, mortal and Space Marine alike.
Qin Xa stopped retreating. The remaining keshig fell in beside him, forming up a broken line among the barricades. He heard the clink and shunt of combi-bolters being reloaded.
The psychneuein followed them in. They surged straight through walls and pillars, glistening like warp-trails. Their unholy light fell across the shadowy wreckage.
Qin Xa kept his blades raised. For some reason, it seemed more likely that a sword would hurt them than a ranged weapon. The Khagan had managed it; perhaps it was a matter of technique.
The psychneuein glided closer, dozens of them now, each as insubstantial as jellyfish.
‘For the Khagan,’ murmured Qin Xa, preparing his soul for the trial.
Then, suddenly, he felt the build-up of enormous power. A second later and the entire chamber filled with light. Flames leapt up from underneath the psychneuein, seemingly bursting from the ground itself.
The creatures wailed and thrashed, caught up in a maelstrom of blazing,
purple-tinged fire. One by one they burst apart, exploding with sharp bangs that cracked the earth beneath them. More flames rushed down the line, rearing up and licking along the shafts of the pillars.
The heat was incredible, the sound of it deafening, though the barrage only lasted for a few seconds. The last of the psychneuein vanished, leaving behind only echoing wails and flickers of ghostly after-images.
The chamber-shell fell silent again. Qin Xa scanned around and above, searching for the source. Just as he did so, he felt a fresh surge of power just behind him. He turned, but too late.
His arms went rigid, locked by spidery lines of energy that ran from the gauntlets to the shoulder-joint. He felt a huge weight pressing against his hearts, slowing him down and deadening his movements.
A bolter was pressed against his chest, angled up from a figure before him in crimson armour. His face-plate was gold-crested Mark III, archaic and festooned with Thousand Sons iconography.
‘Move and I kill him,’ said the legionary, speaking out loud to the entire keshig. The muzzles of half a dozen combi-bolters swivelled in his direction.
Qin Xa blink-transmitted a desist order to his brothers. ‘And you are?’ he asked.
‘Revuel Arvida. Last of my kind. You?’
‘Qin Xa, Master of the keshig, Fifth Legion.’ He looked down at the bolter. Even at point-blank range it probably wouldn’t penetrate his Terminator plate – his would-be killer was taking a fearsome risk. ‘What happened here?’
The legionary didn’t answer for a moment. He stared up at the ivory giants that surrounded him, as though weighing up his options. ‘You really don’t know?’
Qin Xa felt the grip on his arms slacken. ‘My primarch is down there.’
‘You can’t go back.’
‘How do we get to him?’
‘You can’t. They infest that place.’
Qin Xa felt his heart sink. There had to be a way. ‘But you can hurt them.’
Arvida shook his head. ‘Not for long. They used to die, now they just come back. Why are you even here? This world is cracking apart.’
The Thousand Sons legionary had an aura about him like Yesugei did, rippling with pent-up energy. He was damaged, though. Qin Xa could hear the strained breathing through his vox-grille.
‘We came to find the truth,’ he said.
Arvida laughed then, a sour, grating rattle. ‘Ah, the truth.’
As he spoke, the sound of more psychneuein gathering echoed from back the way they had come. Arvida lowered his bolter and holstered it.
‘They’ll be back soon, and I won’t be able to stop them again.’
‘I will not leave him.’
‘You can’t do any good, not right now. Trust me, this is – or was – my world.’ The buzzing drew nearer. ‘I can sense him. He’s alive. All you’ll do if you stay here is have your mind consumed, which will not help anyone.’
Qin Xa glanced over his shoulder. Through the empty frames of old windows he could see the glow of more swarms. It would not be long before they came again, seeking out souls.
‘Lead, then,’ he growled, feeling the burn of failure. ‘Get us out of here.’
Yesugei headed back to Ledak’s holding cell, his mood dark. Henricos’s extraction of Xa’ven’s gene-seed had been a messy business – he was no Apothecary. It had felt like a further insult to the Salamander’s memory.
The death had been unnecessary. It had been reckless, driven by pride and desire for knowledge, all the things he had warned Ahriman against.
Mortals scurried out of his path as he strode along. The ship was being emptied. A few cogitators had been taken over to the Hesiod, but almost everything else, including the Word Bearers mortal crew, was staying. The longer Yesugei stayed aboard, the more the place made his flesh crawl.
Daemon. That was the word, the old Gothic title he had not been able to drag to mind until afterwards. Yaomo or yaksha were the Khorchin equivalents, fragments of old stories that had somehow survived the coming of Unity and the banishment of the old fears.
They had never gone away, not really – just been hidden under a veneer of technological hyperpower.
Xa’ven had deserved better. Yesugei would have liked to have stood beside him when he found Vulkan and had his faith rewarded. He knew how it would have gone: a stoical bow, a brief word of recognition, then back to the task, shoulder to the wheel.
If the entire Imperium had been Promethean, corruption would never have gained so much as a foothold.
He reached the cell doors, and the guards looked at him warily.
‘Go now,’ he told them.
They stared at one another, then up at him again.
‘Lord, I–’ one began.
‘Go now.’
Yesugei waited until they were gone before opening the doors again. The lumen flickered on as he entered, casting its bleak, antiseptic light over the hanging prisoner.
Ledak opened his eyes and smiled again. ‘Back for more, witch?’ he asked. ‘Where’s the other one?’
‘Will not be joining us,’ said Yesugei, sealing the doors behind him.
The Word Bearers legionary looked at him steadily. ‘So what do you want to know?’ he asked.
‘Nothing.’ Yesugei placed his hands together, feeling the first pricks of aetheric power against the inside of his gauntlets.
Ledak nodded resignedly. ‘Wondered how long it would take.’
Yesugei looked at him contemptuously. ‘Xa’ven was fine warrior. I liked him. I do not think he understood how things change.’ He stood before Ledak and raised his hands. ‘Everything changes. This ship will soon be atoms. You, too, Ledak.’
The Word Bearers legionary stared back at him, eyeball to eyeball, never flinching. His cheek was still only semi-healed, caked with a pus-streaked crust of scabs.
‘Really, no questions?’ he asked.
Yesugei shook his head.
‘Not any more,’ he said, and the chamber filled with fire.
The Khan clambered over a waist-high blockage in the tunnel, squeezing through the gap beyond. His armour grazed the rock, dragging dust down with him. He could hear his breathing echo in his helm, heavy and dragging.
It was horrifically hot. The walls of the tunnels pressed against him, forcing him to bend double. He had only been able to go down, despite several attempts to find a route back to the surface.
The space under the square was bizarre – a honeycomb of capillaries and chambers, all cramped and fissured, all showing signs of recent movement. The ash that coated the surface was down there, too. There was no water, nor any sign of it. Once or twice he had caught glimpses of a sullen red glow creeping out of the mouths of particular chasms, and had skirted wide around them.
Always down. Some tunnels sloped gently, others plunged along steep gradients of broken stone.
He had stopped often, listening the beating of his hearts, trying to detect anything but stillness around him. The psychneuein had not followed him down – that was something – but the absence of any movement beyond his own was chilling.
He dragged himself across the blockage, righting himself on the far side. The air felt a little clearer ahead, and the tunnel roof rose by half a metre.
He managed to stand upright, and edged forwards. The dark around him was now complete, picked out in false contours by his helm’s night vision. The tunnel widened with every pace. The heat increased.
The Khan travelled another fifty metres or so before it opened up fully. A jagged jawline of stalagmites framed the final obstacle, and he was through into the chamber beyond.
The space was immense. The upper reaches soared away into the darkness, vast and vaulted like some buried cathedral. Gigantic stalactites hung, glossy with the mineral residue of old moisture. Other tunnel entrances opened up along the walls, some high up, others at floor level. The walls curved upwards steeply, terraced like an auditorium and striated with bands of metallic ore. If there had been any light, the whole place m
ight have glinted and refracted it like an immense geode. As it was, his auto-senses picked out the same dreary layer of ash carpeting everything.
He strode out into the centre of the chamber. His footfalls barely echoed in the dust. Ahead of him, huge shapes emerged in the gloom. It took a while for him to see what they were.
A viewing lens lay shattered on the floor, six metres in diameter. Brass instruments lay about it, each one smashed or warped. A huge cylinder the length of a Thunderhawk reared up in the distance, its angled profile disfigured by a long, jagged crack.
The Khan stooped. There were bodies buried beneath the ash and metal: human bodies, mortal in stature. They were naked, or their robes had burned away, leaving nothing but withered flesh and exposed bone. He saw an eyeless, husk-dry face peering up at him from the filth. With a start, he thought that it was moving, but it was nothing but a trick of the dark. Everything, everyone, was dead.
Qin Xa had been right – there was nothing left on Prospero. He had been a fool to come, and a greater fool to come down to the surface in person. Perhaps it could have been scanned from orbit if they had worked harder, and found some way to do it remotely.
He rested his hands upon his knees, and gazed about him. It was only then that he felt it.
A stirring. A restless, gentle movement in the dust.
He leapt to his feet, and whirled around.
The figure before him glowed emptily, just like the psychneuein had done. Witch-light flickered around his ghostly outline, burning coldly.
He stood a little taller than the Khan, just as he had done in life. His face was the same, though the expression was infinitely weary, and a little distracted. His lone eye did not focus – in the past, its focus had been remorseless.
The Khan held his ground, speechless, still gripping his blade. He could feel his hearts pumping, his body flooding with combat readiness.
None of that was necessary. When the figure spoke, the voice dispelled any trace of doubt.
‘Jaghatai,’ said Magnus, his tired voice echoing strangely. ‘My friend. How good to see you again.’
Shiban hurried down the Kaljian’s corridors towards his private chambers. The ship rang with activity and the mortal crew scurried out of his path. He didn’t acknowledge any of them.
Horus Heresy: Scars Page 25