The remains of the physical universe around the edge of the rift shuddered, flexed and shivered. Fresh explosions kindled, green-edged and violet-hearted, wedged between the furious battle of elemental forces. Somewhere in all that maelstrom, Yesugei’s will still lingered, maintaining the last dregs of psychic command. As the remains of the throne were smashed and pulled apart, scattered across the planes of madness by the vengeful aether, that will diminished, thought by thought, dream by dream.
Arvida recovered his senses first. Like most of the bridge personnel, he had been hurled to the deck by the impact of the shock wave, his mind filled with massed psychic clamour. He clambered to his feet, looking up at the screens filled with hissing white noise, the servitors hanging limp in their fused mind-impulse cages, the cogitators sparking. Warning klaxons were blaring across all levels, and the flagship was clearly drifting, its grav-compensators working erratically.
The Khan alone had not been felled, and knelt inviolate upon the command dais, staring into the maw of the rupture. There was a look of drawn horror on his lean face.
Perhaps he could sense the truth of it. Arvida certainly could – he could sense the hole in reality Yesugei had torn, and could feel the light and heat of the mortal realm draining into it. The path ran deep, plunging into the very flesh of the warp and penetrating a web of conduits beyond. The complexity was dizzying, almost beyond the capacity of the human mind to comprehend.
They will need a guide.
‘Khagan!’ he called out.
As if waking from a nightmare-plagued sleep, the Khan stood, and turned towards him.
‘This is it,’ Arvida said, walking towards him. ‘The Path of Heaven. He has opened it. There will never be another chance.’
The Khan was sluggish, his mind elsewhere. The rest of the bridge crew recovered themselves, restoring systems that had been primed for imminent attack. Out across the aether-wracked vacuum, the enemy were similarly recovering.
‘My lord, we must take it.’ Arvida was conscious of the danger. The Change still pawed at him, prowling around the edges of his self, watching for any weakness. The portal was the warp in its rawest, deepest form. It would be murderous, but it had to be attempted.
‘You saw no victory,’ said the Khan.
‘I did not.’
The primarch stared at the recovering scanner screens, at the enemy fleet that was bearing down on them again, barely halted by the tumult across the fabric of space. ‘Then the choice remains.’
Ilya burst between them then. The trails of angry tears were wet on her cheeks. ‘There is no choice!’ she hissed, her eyes flashing with anger. ‘He did this. Honour him. Take the path!’
Still he hesitated. The battleships were turning back towards them. Lascannons had started up again, slicing across the warp-lit abyss. The Endurance had carved its way into range, immolating anything that dared to block its passage. It was on the edge of sight now, unmagnified, colossal, its coming marked by spoilation and heralded by despair. Only one ship could hope to stand against it.
If the Legion turned now, if the order were given, then the retreat would be a bloodbath. Something needed to hold the line.
‘I have to face him,’ the Khan said, quietly.
‘You do not!’ raged Ilya, her grief making her wild.
‘Lord, if you fight him, the chance will be gone,’ urged Arvida. ‘There will be other days.’
‘Not for Targutai!’ roared the Khan, suddenly bursting into fury. ‘Not for Xa! My warriors have died for me, this day, and every day since my whoreson brother ignited this treachery. I have watched them die, year by year, their strength taken from them. No further! I will slay him, if I do nothing else.’
Arvida waited for the tirade to subside. To withstand the rage of an Emperor’s son, even one cast into doubt by grief, was no trivial feat, yet he never moved away.
‘The way is clear,’ he said. ‘I can guide us, if you let me.’ He paused, breathing hard, knowing the peril. The rift was already beginning to close, its edges falling away back into real space as Yesugei’s soul was consumed. ‘Our destiny is on Terra. Your destiny is on Terra.’
A tense silence fell across the bridge, broken only by the sounds of battle-preparation from the decks below. Ilya waited, desperate, her face white. Torghun and the other sagyar mazan waited, still armed, making no move. Arvida waited. The council of Stormseers waited, as did Jubal and the assembled keshig.
The primarch looked out into the heart of the warp rift. He looked out at the onrush of the enemy. His hand strayed to the hilt of his tulwar, and still he said nothing.
No one moved. The maelstrom churned, sucking matter into its ravening jaws. The Death Guard came into lance-range, and the first tracks of macrocannon blasts appeared on the augurs.
The Khan did not look at Arvida. He did not look at Ilya, nor at Namahi, nor at Jubal.
Eventually, he turned to Taban.
‘Order all ships into the rift, full burn,’ he said.
Then his gaze strayed to the real-view ports, to where Mortarion’s flagship loomed ever larger, a silhouette of decay against the tempest of the warp.
‘But not this one,’ the Khan ordered. ‘Set course. Intercept the Endurance.’
Targutai Yesugei is consumed by the throne’s power
Twenty-Four
The Brotherhood of the Storm smashed their way into the Suzerain, riding hard in the wake of torpedo strikes that had punctured the enemy’s void shields and left the way clear to break the hull. The tubes crunched in deep, launched true, driving far into the ship’s carcass. Three hundred warriors burst clear of the capsules, shoving aside burning launch-hatches, reaching for weapons and racing to rendezvous with their battle-brothers.
Jochi led one flank, fighting his way up from the lower foredecks. Yiman led another, taking a party deep into the under-hull. Shiban led the central charge, gathering his warriors about him and forcing a passage along the main grav-train artery towards the bridge.
They went like white ghosts, cutting through the crew in a whirl of blades and bolt-shells, picking up momentum as they raced. The mutants and the fleshweaver-twisted swarmed into them, blocking the narrow ways with their brutalised bodies, but they were hacked down before they had even got their battle-cries out of their scarified throats.
Shiban pushed himself hardest. The enemy rose up, and he cast them down, never pausing, never hesitating. His guan dao flew about him, blurred with disruptor lightning, a satellite that whirled and danced. Every movement gave him pain, but it was a pure pain now. For the first time in a long time, he was on the offensive. There would be no feints or false moves – this was the end, the clash of those who had remained faithful with those who had sunk into perversion.
He was fast, then, as fast he had ever been. He drove his metal armour-shell beyond its limits, powering into combat as if this were the Last Day and no more battles remained to be fought.
The first Emperor’s Children Space Marines loomed out of the hazy murk, lumbering into contact, firing as they came. Shiban swivelled, still running, letting the shells sweep past him, before slamming bodily into the first of his enemy.
‘Khagan!’ Shiban roared, smacking the hilt of his glaive into the warrior’s chest and sending him staggering. He followed up, slashing left, then right, carving the legionary open. The glaive rotated, arcing point-down, and Shiban grabbed it two-handed. ‘Faithless,’ he hissed, punching it down, jabbing the disruptor-charged blade through the armour and straight into the deck beneath.
His enemy spasmed, blood gushing up the length of the stave, then went still. Then Shiban was on the move again, heading up the charge of his brothers, carving a path through the ranks of resistance. They swept into a wide hall, decked in gilt embossing and lapis lazuli. Bolter-fire rained down on them, blowing the marble decks into spiralling flecks. The White Scars leapt and s
wung, responding preternaturally fast, returning fire and sprinting to where their blades could meet those of the enemy’s.
Shiban charged towards two more of them, each bearing the charnabal sabre. They moved just as he did – graceful, driven by exacting velocity. They were disciplined, fighting in tight order, but he was as wild as the storm. The guan dao swung fiercely, just on the edge of flying from his grasp before he reeled it back in. Its energy-seared edge cracked through ceramite, knocking a sabre away from its owner’s grip. The second Palatine Blade thrust back, taking advantage of the opening, only to be blocked by a new blade – a tulwar, rammed between the artisan steel and Shiban’s trailing arm.
Jochi, emerging from clouds of blown marble-dust, spat a hard laugh. ‘They are too good for that,’ he voxed. ‘One at a time, my khan.’
Shiban laughed back – a deep laugh, the sound not marked by scorn. ‘Together, then.’
He and Jochi fought side by side after that, step by step, smashing the Palatine Blades back in stages. The enemy fought well – ridiculously well, matching their every stroke with a frenzied set of counters and parries – but Shiban had the fire again, burning in spite of the deadening of his false muscles and steel sinews. ‘Hai, Chogoris!’ he roared, smacking the glaive in a wide arc, clattering the facing sabre out wide.
Jochi struck, thrusting his blade into the gap, ramming it up steep and catching the Palatine Blade in his exposed armpit. He shoved the tulwar further, and Shiban brought his guan dao back round, lashing it heavily, nearly taking the enemy’s helm off, gashing deep into his neck and digging out the flesh. The Palatine Blade fell at last, limbs jerking, and Jochi finished him off.
Then they were running again, all of them, hundreds strong, swarming through the halls and storming the corridors. The fighting was close-hemmed, as brutal as it was artful. The Emperor’s Children had the numbers, and this was their ship, and they fought with the vigour and arrogance of those with surety of the greater victory.
But the brotherhood had been held back for too long, condemned to a running war that always defeated them, set against numbers that were ever too large, too overwhelming, a swamp of corrupted humanity that just kept on coming. Now they were free again, drawn together, given licence to do what they had been bred for.
‘Jaghatai!’ bellowed Shiban, and his helm amplified the war-cry so it made the jewelled chandeliers above shake.
‘Khagan!’ came the response from the minghan kasurga, the Brotherhood of the Storm, just as it had rung out on Ullanor, and Chondax, and a hundred other worlds of the Legion’s wide and savage ambit.
They were on the cusp. The Suzerain’s bridge drew closer, blocked only by the approach halls, each one crammed with retreating Emperor’s Children forces, mustering for a decisive clash. The attackers broke into a silver-lined chamber, dome-roofed, mirror-walled. That place was wide enough to accommodate hundreds of defenders, and so they had clustered there, ranked against the wide stone stairways and arranged around the gilded feet of the enormous columns. The Palatine Blades made up the central bloc, formed into phalanxes, supported by teams of mortal troops bearing las-weapons. Their bolters thundered in unison, pulverising the walls behind the racing White Scars and sending the door lintels crashing down. The mirrors shattered and the silver-edges melted into bubbling streaks.
Shiban’s forces stumbled under the massed assault, breastplates burst inwards, helms blown apart, but others raced up to take the places of the fallen, vaulting to gain fire angles, skidding across the ruins and firing back. They wove through the storm of shells, riding the hits and adding their own layers to the chorus of destruction.
‘For the Khan!’ Jochi cried, his voice cutting through the roar and rush of battle. ‘For Tachseer!’
They forced their way up towards the stairway, driving onwards in a blurred mass of ivory and red. When they closed with the ranks of Palatine Blades, the boom of bolters was overlaid with the glittering clang of powerblades. Yiman’s warriors broke right, hacking their way up the far flank of the chamber. Jochi remained with Shiban, and together they hammered a path up the centre, supported by heavy ranged fire from warriors who poured through the great doors at the rear.
It was Jochi who was the fastest, out-pacing even his master in fervour. He sprang up the lower stairs, barging aside a looming Emperor’s Children legionary and sending him sprawling into the onrushing wave of his battle-brothers.
That only exposed the next in line, a champion with a lacquered violet-and-blue face mask wielding a charnabal sabre one-handed. Jochi leapt to engage him, recovering well from the initial impact and hauling his tulwar in a whistling arc.
But it was over contemptuously quickly. The prefector took one stroke to rip Jochi’s blade from his grip, and a second to swipe the edge across his gorget, cutting through the cables and lacerating the throat within. Jochi crumpled to his knees, gasping through a mouthful of blood, before a final stroke sent him crashing face-down on the stair.
Shiban reached him too late, lunging to prevent the final sabre-blow. He slammed his glaive upwards, catching the prefector on the parry and throwing him backwards. The Palatine Blade withdrew, as did those around him. White Scars pursued them up the stairs, their fury honed to a white heat, surging over Jochi’s body and driving the III Legion fighters ever higher.
‘I know you,’ hissed Shiban, his glaive-blows heavier, impelled now by black rage. He was back on the bulk carrier’s bridge then, fighting to hold ground before the Stormbirds came.
‘I have hunted you since Memnos,’ came the reply, giving away an almost childlike delight. ‘What are you named, steel-helm?’
Shiban pushed on, wielding the glaive like a warhammer, blunt and fast, his vision edged with the raw crimson of battle-rage. ‘You wish to know my name?’ he spat, lashing out wildly, catching his enemy as he tried to match the pace. ‘Tamu, of the plains.’ The blades flew, flailing trails of plasma. ‘Tachseer, of the Legion.’ The speed ramped up, the impacts ramped up, the world dissolved into a haze around them. ‘Shiban Khan, of the Brotherhood of the Storm.’
He jabbed upwards, viciously, smashing his enemy in the chest and unleashing a blaze of disruptor-release. The prefector was thrown back up the stairs, dragging a gouge through the stone. Shiban went after him, panting like a wolf, giving no respite.
‘But you need not these names, oathbreaker,’ he rasped, bloodily, hungrily. ‘For you, I am only retribution.’
The Endurance swaggered into the centre of the battle-plane, high above the imploding portal. Its heavy flanks still sparked from the aftermath of whatever forces had been detonated in the heart of the warp well. In its wake the Death Guard rallied, swiftly joined in support by their more febrile cousins. The twin fleets swivelled back into the attack, powering up to attack speed. The raging void, running like wildfire, was etched again with las-strikes, and the behemoths of the abyss turned their baleful weapons systems onto fresh targets.
The Proudheart tacked towards the zenith, loosing volley after volley, hammering the retreating V Legion lines with a studied accuracy. The Death Guard retained the centre ground, their warships forging a straight path and aligning lances towards the central defensive mass ahead.
The Endurance was the greatest of them, the most immense, the most lethal, the most secure. Its guns had already consigned a dozen enemy vessels to destruction, and more swam into its sights with every moment. Colossal lance-coils thrummed at a furious, superheated pitch; phosphex-feeders belched their boiling contents into iron-rimmed launchers; dispersal torpedoes were hauled into dispatch-tubes by a thousands-strong army of serfs, straining in the eternal heat, the eternal humidity, the endless filth and dark and toil.
From the bridge, Mortarion watched his enemies fall back, still fighting but no longer contesting void-volume. The rupture beyond them circled rapidly, ringed with an aegis of silver fire. Many were trying to turn as the ordnance of th
e twofold fleet’s arsenal scythed into them, but not all. Soaring above the yawning chasm, a lone battleship rose to defy the slaughter. This one was as vast as the Endurance but far leaner – a thoroughbred, its jowls as spare and austere as a hunting dog. Its white prow was marked with the patina of war, but still bore the lightning strike in faded gold, and its lances glowed with the savage illumination of pre-ignition.
‘My brother does not run,’ said Mortarion, curling his fingers around the haft of Silence. ‘Yes, that is as it should be.’
The Death Lord swept down from his throne, and the silent entourage came in his wake.
‘Concentrate all fire on the flagship,’ Mortarion ordered, heading towards the teleporters. ‘Break it open. I care not for the rest of his rabble – deliver that one to me.’
Kalgaro relayed the command. Soon every Death Guard ship broke from its attack, pulling away and turning to intercept the oncoming Swordstorm. Torpedo tracks raked out, snaking from all quarters and zeroing in on the lone flagship. With no escorts to protect it, the Swordstorm took the hits, one after the other, smashing into every void shield zone and bathing the entire length of its hull in rippling explosions.
Still it came on. Its guns burned, hurling rounds into the flickering void. The rate of fire was tremendous – a cycle of devastation that smashed into the gathering packs of XIV Legion hunters, cracking prows and puncturing hull-spines.
It was burning towards its sister vessel. Eschewing all thoughts of sanctuary or preservation, the Gloriana-class monster was ploughing a fiery path straight at its tormentor. The shipmastery was impeccable – it rolled and dipped through the waves of plasma and burning promethium, shepherding its remaining strength even as the wounds came in – shuddering wounds, dragged up from the depths of the XIV’s proscribed vaults of terror-weapons.
The Path of Heaven Page 33