Pharos

by Guy Haley

  ‘We can’t abandon our company!’ Florian. Smallest of them all, but strong. His implants functioned perfectly. He was adjusting to his new body better than the rest.

  ‘You are not,’ said Arkus. ‘You are the future of the Aegida. It is your role to ensure the gene-seed of your predecessors lives on. Wherever you go, there the company goes.’

  ‘Sergeant–’ began Mallius. He was keen of mind, that one, the best suited to reconnaissance and he excelled at the Scouts’ role because of it, but the same traits made him personally unreliable, too individualistic.

  Arkus cut him dead. ‘We have our orders. Your speed in preparation is superlative. Let us keep honouring our Legion through exemplary service. We are leaving now.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Oberdeii, speaking for the first time.

  ‘The Scout Auxilia gunship in hangar three,’ said Arkus.

  Without waiting for orders, Oberdeii opened the door to the wider barracks unit of the station, and covered it as his six brothers filed out, bolters ready.

  Arkus watched, appraising everything. Their training would not be interrupted by this attack. Making these boys into warriors was his role in the company, and he would not cease until death. He assessed them as they sneaked from the barracks. They were focused, stealthy, weapons ready even as they finished snapping their armour on.

  So far, so good.

  Alarms blared unceasingly from every corner of the orbital. Weapons fire banged in distant quadrants.

  Sergeant Arkus held his finger to his lips, and looked quickly around a corner.

  Legionaries in the colours of the Night Lords pounded down the corridor, flashing red warning beacons lighting their armour in sinister colours. The Scout squad readied themselves to fight, but no one came their way. After the last legionary had thundered past, Arkus spoke quietly.

  ‘They are headed for the command centre,’ he said. ‘They will be too focused on their primary target to pay much attention to the hangars, or to worry about neophytes, if we are cautious.’

  Arkus directed his young charges forward, slapping each on the back as they ran on to count them out. Right then, he wished for his full battleplate.

  He watched his charges go, keeping low and moving silently as he had taught them.

  They paused at another junction.

  Florian reconnoitred and nodded back.

  ‘Go, go, go!’ whispered Arkus.

  They dashed across toward the stairwell. The youths tracked their weapons nervously down both directions of the corridor as Tebecai ducked through the door onto the small landing on the other side.

  ‘Tebecai, continue on point,’ ordered Arkus. ‘Oberdeii, Solon, bring up the rear.’

  Arkus pushed past the Scouts. They all looked to him, they all needed him. They were performing well, but were unsure. He could taste their uncertainty on his neuroglottis.

  ‘A lack of confidence is your enemy as much as they are,’ he said quietly. ‘Master it, or we will not survive tonight.’

  He leaned against the wall, and nodded at Tebecai on the other side of the doorway. The boy gripped his bolter and nodded back. Bolt pistol in hand, Arkus went through the door. Tebecai leaned over the stair rail smoothly to cover his entrance.

  The stairwell was empty.

  ‘We are clear. Quickly now!’ said Arkus.

  With a stealth that made Arkus proud, the Scouts jogged down the stairs. All the while he was checking their covering patterns, their expressions, their reactions.

  The stairwell opened into a square room, as utilitarian and bare of adornment as the rest of the station. On that level the sounds of battle were muted. The station’s weapons batteries were falling silent one by one. The Night Lords were monsters, but they were efficient. They were enacting a textbook seizure of an orbital facility, command centre and batteries first. They meant to take it intact.

  They approached one of hangar three’s small doors. Arkus made sure the Scouts were ready, checking them all for signs of stress. Seven resolved young Space Marines looked back at him. He nodded at them in approval, then input his clearance code to the keypad.

  The door clunked as the broad teeth locking it into the deck disengaged. It opened with a sigh of equalising pressure. The hangar was dark and radiated a deep cold. Arkus held his hand up to stay his squad.

  ‘Oberdeii, Solon, cover me.’

  Arkus’ thoughts went to Mallius. His occulobe was lagging behind that of the others in its functionality. The boy would be nearly blind in the hangar. Arkus signalled for him to stay at the door and cover the entrance as the rest moved silently into the wide space of the bay. The temperature interface on the hangar threshold tightened his skin, and the fine hairs of his arms stood erect.

  Pallets of machinery and supplies covered in tarpaulins lined the outside edges of the bay. He headed for two pallets placed corner-to-corner and took refuge in the angle behind their cargoes.

  There were moorings for six ships in the hangar. Four were unoccupied. A lighter and the Scout Auxilia’s Thunderhawk sat at the far end, powered down, engines cold. The chamber was empty of occupants.

  He clicked his tongue softly and waved at the boys. They moved well through the door. Solon stumbled clumsily and lost his targeting line. He would need correcting for that later.

  ‘Oberdeii, Tebecai, you are to come with me and act as my co-pilot and gunner. As of this moment I am appointing Oberdeii as my second. Is that clear? If I should fall, he is in command.’

  Oberdeii looked shocked. He was the youngest, and had the experience under the mountain. Oberdeii did not see what Arkus saw: that his weathering of the incident indicated great strength.

  ‘Solon, Krissaeos, you will remain on deck, weapons ready. Once we have the primary flight preparations complete, I want you to get Mallius and help him towards the ship.’

  ‘Yes, sergeant.’

  ‘Pick a place, good cover. Cover door two.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Krissaeos.

  ‘You know enough by now to decide for yourself. Tolomachus, Florian, you remain by the access hatch, and cover door one and the cargo gate.’

  ‘Sergeant,’ Tolomachus acknowledged.

  ‘Are we ready?’

  They spoke their affirmations resolutely.

  Arkus looked them each in the eye. So much hope, so many futures that could be cut short if he made one error.

  ‘We march for Macragge,’ he said.

  Arkus, Oberdeii, Tebecai, Florian and Tolomachus sprinted for the Thunderhawk. The blast shield over the bay entrance was open, the void outside visible through the slight distortion of the atmospheric integrity field. The Night Lords approached in number. Arkus counted three heavy cruisers and a dozen smaller capital ships. They were poorly supported by lighter vessels, and he assumed these had suffered badly at the hands of the Lion, but there was no doubt Sotha was in trouble. If the ships were carrying their full capacity of legionaries, there could be more than twenty-five thousand Night Lords in the system.

  Arkus beckoned to his charges. They gathered around the Thunderhawk’s rearmost hatch. They waited for him to speak, their eyes gleaming with the reflected, blinking light of the integrity field’s warning strip.

  ‘Hangar protocols remain active. Their full activation will draw the enemy to us. We must be through this door as soon as I open it. Do you understand? We will have little time to take flight.’

  They nodded.

  ‘On three. Three, two…’ Arkus reached for the mechanism. ‘One.’

  The door opened and the hangar came to life. Servitors, summoned by the ship’s machine-spirit, came out of their coffins. Warning lights came on. Recorded announcements blared over voxcasters.

  Arkus inwardly cursed his Legion’s affinity for safety regulations. He was sure if this were the hangar of a Space Wolves or Dark Angels vessel the
y would be able to leave without announcing it so loudly.

  He hustled the Scouts aboard.

  ‘Tolomachus, Florian, to your stations. Oberdeii, Tebecai, with me.’

  Oberdeii and Tebecai followed Arkus onto the flight deck. Arkus slipped into the pilot’s seat, already activating systems before his back settled against the rest. Oberdeii sat next to him in the co-pilot’s seat, Tebecai took the gunner’s station behind. The fourth crew space was empty. The seats were sized for Space Marines in full battleplate. The youths would dwarf a standard man, but in the chairs they looked relatively small and frail by comparison.

  ‘Emergency flight preparation. Go. Skip the sub-phases. We need to get off station as quickly as possible.’

  The engine, never fully quiescent on a ship like a Thunderhawk, came smoothly online. The reactor thrummed. Systems blinked and chattered, their power coils filling the cockpit with an electric hum.

  The station shuddered again, twice, the aftershocks of another large explosion. Arkus suspected the Night Lords were breaching the command section doors.

  Gunfire sounded from outside the ship. Arkus punched a button, bringing up an external augur view. A grainy, black and white image showed him Mallius, shooting along the wall towards the hangar cargo gate. The broad doors had been opened wide enough to permit the entrance of a couple of Space Marines at once. A feeble ploy to catch the Scouts by surprise. Bursts of light from boltguns on rapid fire lit up dark-armoured figures coming through the door. The Scouts performed well, catching the Night Lords in a three-way crossfire. One of the enemy fell, and they retreated. Arkus nodded in approval as Mallius smashed the door mechanism with his gun’s stock.

  Mallius fell back to the other two, and they ran across the deck, firing at the gap in the cargo gate as they went.

  Then the integrity field went out, deactivated by the invaders.

  The venting of the hangar’s atmosphere was virtually instantan­eous. Cargo tumbled end over end. The force of it was enough to shake the Thunderhawk. Solon and Mallius somehow stumbled through the hatch. Krissaeos was ripped off his feet. He skidded across the deck plating, catching onto a grille atop a service hatch a second before he was sucked out of the station. The grille went whirling away into space, but Krissaeos caught the shallow lip of the access hole, face contorted with the effort.

  ‘Hold steady, Krissaeos,’ urged Arkus over the cohort vox-link. ‘You will be forced out into the void. Fill your multilung, keep your eyes closed. We shall retrieve you.’

  ‘Can we?’ asked Tebecai.

  Arkus did not respond. His hands danced over the Thunderhawk’s controls. Engine noise throbbed in the cabin.

  ‘Enemy approaching!’ said Tebecai.

  Night Lords advanced into the venting hangar, their maglocks keeping them steady in the decompression gale blasting through the open cargo gate.

  ‘Krissaeos, let go!’ commanded Arkus.

  The Scout did not relinquish his grip.

  ‘Maybe he can’t hear,’ said Tebecai.

  Boltgun fire rattled off the Thunderhawk’s tail section, blowing out chunks of its armour. But the plating was too thick to be troubled by small-arms, and the damage was superficial. Engines whined louder as the fans of their ignition chambers built up speed.

  ‘Neophyte Krissaeos, let go, that is an order!’ said Arkus.

  Krissaeos lifted his head. By chance he was looking directly into the pict-feed lens. With gritted teeth, he let go.

  A bolt found him before he exited the hangar, blasting his chest wide open. He hit the vacuum dead, trailing ribbons of freezing blood.

  The Scouts watched their comrade pinwheeling away in silence.

  ‘Prepare to launch,’ said Arkus.

  ‘I need more time!’ said Oberdeii through gritted teeth.

  ‘Stay calm,’ ordered Arkus. ‘Focus on your task.’

  Arkus flicked a dizzying array of switches. Oberdeii helped as best he could. One session in the hypnomat was insufficient preparation to fly such a machine. Fragments of knowledge floated up to the surface of his mind and were dragged back down again before he could seize them and put them to use.

  ‘Get the fuel ignition system ready,’ said Arkus.

  ‘I’m not sure how,’ said Oberdeii. Even as he spoke his hands went to a board of toggles, and flicked them in a specific order that he was not aware he knew.

  ‘Confirm fuel feed ready!’

  ‘Ready!’

  ‘That is not the correct response form, neophyte.’

  ‘Fuel feed online, sergeant!’ said Oberdeii.

  Tebecai hunched over the external viewscreens. ‘They’re bringing up lascannons!’

  ‘Not surprising,’ said Arkus. ‘Hang on.’

  The hangar’s vox-system blurted out a series of urgent honks. The blast doors began to descend.

  ‘I think not,’ said Arkus, slamming the Thunderhawk’s main throttle wide open. Without lifting off, its engines roared and shunted it across the hangar deck as hard as if it had been swatted by the Emperor’s own fury. Fans of sparks fountained off its landing gear as it hurtled towards the closing hangar doors.

  A hard jolt sent them off course. Arkus pulled on the sticks, recovering the ship. A blast of red light whipped past the cockpit, punching a guttering crater into the blast doors. Hazard-striped teeth looked to close upon them, and Oberdeii tensed in the co-pilot’s seat.

  Then the ship was through and into the void on plumes of gas. Sound from outside ceased, and they were hurled into a deadly maelstrom that played out in eerie silence against the sky.

  The three cruisers were at high anchor a few hundred kilometres from the orbital, showers of drop pods falling from them as iron-hard tears that burst into flame when they encountered the upper atmosphere. Glaring shock-fronts formed curved lenses of fire across their shielded undersides. Flights of Thunderhawks flew behind, noses up for atmospheric breaching.

  For a moment, the Scouts’ craft went unnoticed.

  ‘The ships aren’t returning fire on the orbital,’ said Tebecai. ‘They’re not firing on the Mechanicum ark either.’

  Arkus grunted, his face tight with concentration. ‘Then give me a theoretical, lad. Tell me why.’

  ‘They want them undamaged?’

  Arkus nodded. ‘That is as good a guess as any. This attack will not go unnoticed. Warsmith Dantioch will inform Macragge via the Pharos. As soon as Lord Guilliman hears of this, the Night Lords will have the best part of a Legion to deal with. Their fleet will not stand against a full retribution force, so they will want to capture as many of our guns as they can, and turn them on our brothers as they arrive.’

  ‘We should have stayed to fight,’ Tebecai muttered.

  ‘You were given a direct order, neophyte, and with good reason. You will do more good on the surface than up here. We will not be able to stop the Night Lords taking the orbital, but there are other considerations. The Night Lords exercise their unspeakable appetites on the civilian population. You Scouts know the terrain better than anyone. If any of our people are to survive, then they will need your guidance. Our mission is to harass the enemy where we can. Withdraw. Go to ground. Attack again. Protect the colonists until such time as Lord Guilliman arrives to teach these bastards the error of their ways.’

  ‘But without the Pharos to guide him, the journey could take months!’ said Tebecai.

  ‘If he gets here at all,’ said Oberdeii.

  ‘The primarch will get here. You have had the privilege of meeting our father. Do you fear that crossing the storm is beyond him? Put those thoughts away! He will prevail. Whether or not you are alive to see vengeance is down to you, do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sergeant,’ said Tebecai. Oberdeii gave a tight nod.

  ‘If you pass this test, you will have proven yourselves. You will be Legiones Astartes enti
rely, forged in the crucibles of war. Not many recruits can claim that. Try to stay alive.’

  ‘We will,’ said Oberdeii.

  ‘Yes, sergeant,’ said Tebecai.

  ‘Now prepare yourselves – we have been spotted. Three superiority fighters, Xiphon-class. Our first test begins now.’

  THIRTEEN

  Night sounds

  Psaltery’s lament

  Fire in the sky

  Vitellius poked a stick into the fire, sending up a storm of orange motes. Beyond the circles of the platoon’s campfires, the Ruinstorm bathed the forest in a febrile blood-glow. Two thousand metres below them, Sothopolis’ grid tentatively embraced the land with neat lines of streetlamps. Far to the west were the powerful lights of the spaceport. A glow on the slopes below their position marked the castellum.

  Much of Sotha was untrodden by human feet, and no lights shone in the endless wilderness beyond the mountain. The sea was dark with mystery. For Mericus, raised on a planet whose skies glowed with wasted light, the darkness was incredible, and unnerving.

  Sotha did its best to make them feel as if humanity was there on sufferance. Insects sang their songs loudly and relentlessly. The calls of nocturnal avians whooped out of the deeper forest, and every so often the crackling of larger animals made the men look to the gloom. Phantines had been extirpated from the mountain, but they came in frequently from the deeper forests, seeking to re-establish their old territories.

  Life made a constant din throughout the night, and it was the trees themselves that were the most vocal. At night the plants did their growing. Quicktree wood cracked as it swelled. Creepvine leaves rustled upward, impatient for tomorrow’s dawn.

  ‘I don’t like the tree talk,’ said Govenisk. The sergeants shared a fire with the lieutenant, giving the men a rest from their presence. Half a dozen campfires dotted a clearing around a cave mouth, upon a gently tilted slab of rock. The bare stone was free of Sotha’s vigorous flora. Chatter and laughter rose over the fires with the woodsmoke.

  ‘I never thought to see trees grow,’ said Mericus. ‘I mean actually grow. Right before your eyes.’