The Path of Heaven

by Chris Wraight

  My lord.

  Then he saw the one, him, charging towards him, shrieking in that mechanical, damaged vox-burst, his gunmetal armour dully reflecting the carnage unfolding about them.

  Cario felt a lurch of pleasure and readied his blade. He cast aside the pistol and held the sabre two-handed. It was only the two of them then, and the others mattered not. It was–

  ‘My lord.’

  Abruptly, the illusion shattered. The mind-impulse link severed, sending spears of pain into his eyes, and the inloaded cranial pattern de-shunted with a hard bang.

  Cario cried aloud, scrabbling to reach for his sense-mask. He ripped it free and pulled himself up from his bench, furious.

  There was nothing to hit. A hololith flickered before him, full-sized, displaying the translucent shade of Azael Konenos. The isolation chamber was otherwise empty – a lead-lined room deep within the Suzerain, brightly lit, stacked with Mechanicum mind-input devices.

  Cario was still breathing heavily, flushed with combat mania. Blood ran down from his temples where the mask-edges had been torn away from the skin.

  ‘I apologise for the intrusion,’ the hololith said. ‘How goes your practice?’

  Cario swung his legs over the edge of the bunk, pulling electrodes from his forearms as he did so. ‘How did you get into here?’ he asked, rolling his shoulders to ease the ache. If he had had his sword to hand, he might have hurled it through the luminous green spectre, just in case.

  ‘As I say, I apologise. We are in the warp, or I would have come in person.’

  The entire fleet had been in the aether for hours. Such an unwieldy joint armada had taken time to stitch together, for the Navigators had to combine forces, the astropath choirs had to align, the battleship’s protocol officers had to decide on the order of precedence. All of this had been of no interest to Cario – it mattered not whether they sailed with the Death Guard or any other Legion so long as they got there.

  ‘And it could not wait?’ grunted Cario, wiping the blood free.

  ‘When we reach Catullus, the Lord Commander Primus and the primarch of the Death Guard have determined we will attack immediately. Hence, I contact you before we break the veil. The Suzerain is important to us.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Cario cared nothing for that. He had already given the ident Kaljian to the sensorium crew, and issued his fraternity with their standing orders. His malice and energy were intact. Everything else was secondary.

  ‘We are gathering allies,’ said Konenos. ‘We wish the power at our disposal to be overwhelming.’

  ‘Allies?’

  ‘I am sending you coordinates. You are to be at the spearhead, my lord. I hope that is a pleasing prospect.’

  Cario fixed the hololith with a dead-eyed stare. ‘You disturb me for this?’

  ‘I wanted to be sure you had them. I wanted to be sure you realised the import of them. Everything will be balanced. You will be advancing in tandem with the Proudheart, part of the Soul-Severed’s first assault. Equerry Von Kalda will be at your flank.’

  At mention of the word Proudheart, the horned beast flashed across Cario’s thoughts once more – a spasm, an after-flicker from the cranial simulation.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Fine, whatever he commands. Send over the schematics.’

  Konenos bowed, Chemos-fashion, palms crossed. ‘I will do so. Once more, forgive the interruption. Train well, my lord. Perhaps we will fight together when the storm breaks. I would welcome that.’

  Then the hololith snapped out, leaving the chamber empty and silent. Cario blinked heavily, still adjusting.

  Konenos was a narcotic-addled dullard, a walking advertisement for the benefits of avoiding entanglement with Fulgrim’s perversions. The equerry was even worse, a sadist and a flesh-butcher. Only his brothers, the pure ones of the Palatine Blades, were a pleasure to fight alongside, and their number dwindled with every engagement.

  Cario reached for the sense-mask and clamped it into place. He lay back, blinking to activate the impulse-unit. Almost immediately the visions rushed back into place, embedding him within a world of imagined combat, honing him, preparing him.

  The real thing would come soon enough.

  ‘Again,’ he ordered.

  Eighteen

  Dark Glass’ command station was a circular arena, a hundred metres wide, ringed by concentric terraces facing a single central branched column. Above the column rose a huge dome, as black as everything else, bisected by thick struts of iron. Hundreds of cogitator stations, their screens blank, gazed across the empty space. No dust gathered. Every surface was as clean as when it had left the forge. The metal mesh floors were pristine.

  ‘Was this place ever used?’ asked Arvida.

  Yesugei nodded. ‘There were many souls here, for a long time.’

  The two of them stood near the entrance to the command station, where a heavy blast door had earlier been forced open. The Khan had moved off towards an iron throne placed under the column’s shadow, too small for him to occupy but clearly the seat of command. Veil followed, hanging a few paces behind like a kicked dog. The desertion of the station had knocked some of the arrogance out of him, and he looked around nervously, still cradling his wounded hand.

  White Scars legionaries were stationed at every entrance, bolters drawn. Dozens more moved through the decks below, scanning for life, for records, for anything. Techmarines had discovered control chambers for the main reactors, all of which were now shot and unable to function. Back-up generators had been located further down, which had given them use of at least some flickery, unreliable lumens. Their light – sour yellow and weak – did little except expose how mournful Dark Glass was.

  Arvida and Yesugei moved to catch up with the Khan and the ecumene. The pall of gloom was hard to shake off. There was nothing here.

  ‘No power to these units,’ Veil was complaining, rummaging through the cogitator valves with his good hand. ‘No good. Without power, we cannot tell what he was doing.’

  ‘If he ever came here,’ said the Khan, idly lifting a lens, angling it towards the nearest lumen.

  ‘He was here. He built this place.’

  The Khan looked back at him. ‘This is the work of generations.’ He put the lens down. ‘How was it kept secret? Who knew of it?’

  ‘I do not know.’ Veil’s ignorance, as ever, sounded perfectly genuine. ‘They were only rumours, things he let slip. He was close.’

  ‘Yes, so you say. The crew here must have run into the hundreds.’

  Veil shrugged. ‘I know not.’

  The Khan sighed and drifted aimlessly through the rings of cogitator stations. ‘There is nothing for us here, Yesugei.’

  ‘We do not know that yet,’ Yesugei replied, evenly.

  ‘Whatever it was built for, it does nothing now.’

  Yesugei looked up at the empty dome, then around at the poorly lit ranks of empty thrones. ‘Or maybe just sleeping.’

  Arvida, who had been exploring further up, slipped. As he fell, the echo rang around the vaults, resounding oddly, lasting longer than it should have done. Yesugei looked up at him, concerned that someone might have noticed the momentary weakness, but the sorcerer had already righted himself, and the rest of the search party were detained with their own work.

  ‘I would explore further,’ said the primarch. ‘Yet to stay is not without peril. You can feel it, yes?’

  Yesugei could feel it deeply. It was like an ache in his bones, a twitch in his jaw, a mote in his eye. Every gesture was clumsy, every thought sluggish. The entire station was bathed in the aftershock of what had been unleashed, and underneath that, the rupture below them was a constant, if invisible, churning presence.

  ‘This was a control centre,’ said Veil. ‘There are decks below us, a hundred of them. We cannot leave, not yet.’

  ‘You will leave when
we do,’ said the Khan absently, never looking away from Yesugei. ‘Namahi tells me he found an armoury. It is empty. He tells me there are blast-marks on the corridors three levels down.’

  ‘Bodies?’ asked Yesugei.

  ‘None found. He is investigating.’

  ‘Something must have happened to the crew.’

  ‘They were trained,’ said Veil. ‘They were Nobilite-screened.’

  The Khan snorted a laugh. ‘If we have learned one thing,’ he said, ‘it is how weak our safeguards were.’

  From far below, a long, drawn-out creak echoed towards them, like metal stretching. It was followed by a faint series of knocks, fading away into nothing.

  ‘Atmospheric pressure,’ remarked Yesugei. ‘The Techmarines have done their work.’

  The Khan wasn’t listening. He pressed his hand against the central column, holding his gauntlet tight to the iron, as if by linking himself to the structure he could divine its history and purpose.

  ‘Maintain the search,’ he said at last. ‘We have come this far – if anything remains, we will find it.’

  ‘And if it does not?’

  The Khan started to move, to head towards the gates that led deeper in. ‘Maintain the search.’

  Reports were coming in from all across the fleet. They had started in isolation – a gun-crew captain not turning up for duty, a lumen-bank shattering suddenly for no reason, an unarmed torpedo loosing without warning. Then they had mounted up, startlingly quickly, coming in from all decks and all ships.

  Jubal strode across the Swordstorm’s bridge, senior crew in train, all of them dealing with a flurry of inter-ship comms.

  ‘How long until we reach the outer barrier?’ he demanded.

  ‘Less than an hour,’ said Taban. ‘We were delayed by the Sunhawk.’

  That frigate had suddenly taken a wildly divergent course during a come-about manoeuvre, nearly running into the flanks of the battle­ship Lance of Heaven. Panicked comms had managed to establish that some madness had run through the frigate’s navigation crew, only suppressed when warriors of the ordu had intervened and disabled them all. Now the Sunhawk was limping along with a weakened bridge crew and damaged engines.

  Jubal felt it, too. First, a slight pressure behind the eyes. Then pain, throbbing under the skin, making his bones twitch. Then fatigue, sinking over them all, making it hard to think clearly. ‘Accelerate the movement,’ he ordered, approaching the command throne. ‘I want us into range within thirty minutes.’

  Taban bowed, and hurried off. Jian-Tzu remained at his side, ready to relay vocal orders over the fleet-comm. Down in the pits, the work-rate had become punishing. All but the servitors were struggling now, fighting against the deadening mental confusion that exposure to the raw warp brought.

  As Jubal took his seat, he caught sight of Ilya coming towards him. ‘Szu,’ he said. ‘Where have you been?’

  The general gave him a bow of apology. ‘Something I needed to pursue.’

  ‘Jian-Tzu tells me the astropaths are all united – the enemy has found us. I have augurs running at extreme range, but this… thing makes it hard to scry.’

  Ilya glanced up at the banks of pict screens, each one dense with real space sensor readings. ‘How stands the fleet?’

  ‘In position. And yet, the reports…’ He shook his head to clear it. ‘You have seen them? I have ordered us to pull out further.’

  ‘Not too far,’ said Ilya. ‘The Khagan is still on the station.’

  ‘I need my crews to operate. I need them to keep their minds together.’

  Even as he spoke, a scream burst out from the pits. A mortal man in Legion uniform jumped up from his position, a blade in hand, shouting incoherently. He lunged towards the nearest of his comrades, going for his back, when a single bolt-shell speared down from the upper terraces, exploding as it struck him in the throat. The White Scars legionary who had loosed it trudged down towards the body, followed by several more. All around the corpse, the rest of the mortal crew went uneasily back to their work.

  ‘My brothers stand guard over every critical sector,’ Jubal said, watching the scene impassively. ‘There are not enough of them.’

  ‘This anchorage will not endure long.’

  ‘He has not been in contact with you? No word of your target?’

  Ilya shook her head.

  ‘Then we wait.’ Menials raced up to the throne, handing Jubal a series of data-slates. Most were troubling – reactor failures, weapon-systems malfunctions. The formation he had ordered was holding, but only just. ‘Order the capital ships to move further apart,’ Jubal commanded. ‘Enhance escort spread, and double every comm-burst, just to be sure.’

  More orders followed, one after the other, shooting out across the entire fleet in an attempt to keep it moving together, to keep the lance fire-lanes clear, to ensure each flank was watched over by all the others. It was a few moments before Jubal could return his attention back to Ilya. When he did, she was staring hard at the readings from one of the long-range augurs.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Have these been verified? Where did they come from?’ She turned to Taban, who was returning to the command dais bearing data-slates of his own. ‘Have you seen this?’

  Taban’s face looked grey, as if he were ageing before their eyes. ‘I missed it,’ he mumbled, distractedly. ‘The error was mine, my khan. I missed it.’

  Jubal stood up. ‘Send a signal to the Khagan. Pull them off the station.’

  Ilya pressed Taban. ‘We need to know the angle of approach.’

  ‘Under-plane, twenty degrees, rising to parity at forty-five-six-three. But we cannot rotate, not with the–’

  Jubal pushed clear of the throne. ‘Sound the alarm!’ he roared, stirring even the most lethargic from their mental fug. ‘Raise status to gold, arm all weapons!’

  A gong began to hammer out, resounding dully throughout the vast bridge-space. Lumens dimmed, replaced by combat lighting along the paths between stations. By then the augur-screed had become apparent to all, and the tactical screens were thick with the light-points of incoming ships.

  Ilya looked sick. Even the legionaries themselves, their armour-plate giving nothing away, seemed to be moving less assuredly. The poison could be tasted on the air.

  ‘Open a channel to Tachseer,’ ordered Jubal, reaching the edge of the dais and peering over the mass of humanity below.

  ‘Ahn-ezen,’ came the reply from Shiban, swiftly, as if it had been expected.

  ‘We need more time, brother,’ Jubal told him. ‘Can you find me some?’

  ‘By your command.’

  Almost instantly, the local-range sensors showed Shiban’s fast-attack wings breaking free of the main cluster and racing ahead, aiming to intercept the more sluggish signals still inbound.

  After that, all that remained was to align the main defence-lattice, placing the heavy warships in positions where they could deal out the most damage.

  ‘So here they come, szu,’ Jubal said, watching the blips march across the pict screens.

  The general nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her fragile features a mask of foreboding. ‘Here they come.’

  It was foolish to have ended up alone. Every part of his old training had screamed at him to remain within sight of the others, but then he had other things on his mind that clouded matters – the Change was far advanced now, a body-wide itch that had begun as an irritant but was now almost maddening. He had to keep moving, just to prevent the effect from overwhelming him entirely. Extending his limbs, forcing them into their habitual patterns, felt like the only thing preventing him from metastasising entirely.

  As he walked, he recited the mantras over and over again. He barely noticed his surroundings, which passed in a dark procession of half-glimpsed shadows and swept light-pools from hi
s helm lumens.

  Going downwards helped. Every step he took away from the command chamber eased the pain a little more. At the start he had heard the thud of his brothers’ movements as they had scoured the decks for signs of life, but now they too had died out. The corridors around him were near-silent, their tomb-like calm broken only by the muffled knocks and ticks of the station’s deeper structure.

  After some time – it was hard to gauge the passage of the hours – his senses began to return. The pressure in his blood and body tissue fell, the hissed voices ebbed away.

  Arvida stopped moving and looked around him. He must have come a long way – the walls were of a different style – organic, almost, though still carved from the hard black iron that all of Dark Glass had been hewn from. He was in a circular chamber with a tulip-shaped roof. Every wall-panel was decorated with geometric shapes, overlapped and bisected with criss-crossed lines of force.

  He could hear a deep, distant roar, like foaming waters, coming from below.

  Below was where the rift circled. Below was the eye into the abyss.

  He reached for the wall to steady himself. It felt wet to the touch – impossible, to have sensed that through the armour of his gauntlets.

  In the centre of the chamber was a raised octagonal platform, carved into a nest of writhing forms like snakes. Its surface was polished to a high sheen. As he looked at it, he could hear his own breathing inside his armour, close and rapid.

  ‘Yesugei,’ he rasped over the comm. Nothing came back. ‘Yesugei,’ he said again.

  He felt light-headed. It was foolish to have ended up alone. Then again, he had been alone before, and for a long time. Even after they had taken him away from the ruins of Tizca, he had never truly been one of them. Alone had become the default, bereft of the company of true battle-brothers, of the kind of magisters he had once delighted to talk with, to learn from, to study.