by Guy Haley
‘What is it?’ asked Kellendvar, still afraid.
‘A celebration,’ said his brother. ‘A lordling’s naming day perhaps. Father used to tell me about the rich folk in the upper levels. He was a server to them, you know. Before, before… Well, before the bad times.’
Neither of them ever spoke of the disease that had taken their mother and broken their father’s mind, turning him from parent to wreck, then finally to fiend.
The music grew louder. A slender cave ship passed along between the spires of Kemno, brilliant lights of gold and blue and green flickering over the filth-crusted lower city.
‘Let it be known, this day the eldest son of House Skraivok takes his lord-name. Let it be known! Gendor Skraivok! Gendor Skraivok! Hail! Hail! Hail!’
Low-yield lasers crossed the sky. Fireworks boomed around the craft. The boys shrank back, their sensitive eyes narrowed and hands clapped over their ears. They laughed at the display still, taking pleasure in the thrill of the boom, the searing light patterns, and their own startled reactions to both.
The cave ship slid on by. Images played over its long hull, showing celebrations in a place the boys would not believe existed if it were not displayed before them. A young man’s face, not much older than Kellenkir, featured prominently.
Kellenkir stood, and reached out a hand.
‘Come on! Let’s dance!’ he said laughingly, and hauled his little brother to his feet.
They danced with the unselfconscious abandon of children to the music of the far-away ball while ultraviolet stars burst all around. They laughed freely for the first time in months, safe in the knowledge the noise of the display would mask their delight.
Several times in the following years Kellendvar had brought this event up, hoping to kindle some recognition in his brother. When he was well-disposed to his sibling, Kellenkir had maintained that he did remember. But when he joined in the story, it was only repetition of what he had already been told. Kellenkir’s eyes told Kellendvar that he could not remember the fireworks.
As Kellendvar retold his memory again and again, it lost its vitality. It permanently fixed itself, becoming a Space Marine’s cast-iron remembrance of a memory, rather than a mutable, living recollection.
There was one detail he never shared with Kellenkir.
Kellenkir revelled in the fireworks with the joy of the damned. Kellendvar’s enjoyment was slightly restrained. As they danced and cackled at the nobles’ display, his eyes strayed to their small fire, to the delicate long bones toasting within, and the lump under the cloth on the far side. Now his hunger was sated, he could not help but think that the boy they ate might have liked the fireworks too.
Kellenkir brought them to a junction with a new tunnel, and here the character of the labyrinth changed, for the tunnel had an elevated walkway of Imperial make running down it. Yellow lumen balls topped posts at fifty-metre intervals. Half of them were out and the ones that glowed did so faintly, but after the midnight of the deeps, Kellendvar dimmed his helm lenses against them.
‘This way,’ said Kellenkir, climbing up onto the walkway via a set of three broad steps.
Kellendvar motioned for his Space Marines to follow. There was still no sign of any other Night Lords or Ultramarines. They clanked down the walkway unchallenged and isolated, hearing no footsteps but their own.
The came to a place where the lumens gave out, and the darkness rushed back in. A strange sense of disorientation came with it. Kellenkir did not slow, and outpaced his brother.
Kellendvar broke into a run after him. His perceptions became foggy; he was dizzy and he staggered.
A splayed hand thumped into Kellendvar’s chest.
‘Come no further,’ said Kellenkir.
‘Something down here is affecting me,’ slurred Kellendvar.
‘There is! It is what I want you to see. Listen to it.’
Kellendvar’s eyes adjusted and the dizziness lessened a little. There was the sense of a larger space ahead. He pulled a flare from his belt and struck it on the wall. Sullen red light burst across the room. Behind, his men caught up. They stopped at the edge of the flare’s light, many of them complaining of nausea and disorientation.
They were at the brink of a pit, a circle that was unnerving in its perfection. A hundred metres across, he guessed, probably as deep.
The walkway terminated at the lip of the pit, but there had once been a bridge there. The walkway metal was bent out of shape. Part of the structure curved over the edge, ending in a jagged edge of torn metal. A matching piece reached out from the other side.
‘Down there,’ said Kellenkir, ‘are secrets undreamt of. Whispers in endless night. Can you hear them? The servants of Macragge know. They have not rebuilt their bridge!’ He laughed, a black giggle that was mostly growl. ‘The builders of this place wait. They wait for a time when Chaos is done.’
‘Here? There are xenos here? Kellenkir, you are–’
‘Insane? Mad?’
‘Mistaken,’ said Kellendvar.
Kellenkir tittered, wiping clumsily at the saliva spilling from his mouth. The blood on his arms smeared his face. ‘They are not here. They are far, far away. This is but one of their places, a tool working away the countless millennia, waiting to be called back into service when the masters awake! Such arrogance. One cannot outwait the eternal! They will come back, one day, to find their scheme in tatters. Until then, their devices speak to each other, recording news of all they see! Can you hear the voices? There is wisdom in what they say.’
Kellendvar shook his brother’s shoulder. ‘Come on. Stop this madness. I can hear nothing.’ He looked back at his warriors, aware that they heard every insane word.
‘That is because you do not listen, brother! You never have. Do you think they know what they have here, the self-righteous lords of Ultramar? I do not think they do. They lack the imagination to grasp it.’ He smiled wolfishly, the widest smile Kellendvar had ever seen on his face. It was in all respects wrong. ‘We have imagination though, eh, little Kell?’
‘Yes,’ said Kellendvar warily. ‘Yes, we do. Which way now?’ he asked. ‘Where are the Ultramarines?’
Kellenkir made no indication he heard his brother, but stood at the edge of the broken bridge, his head to one side, listening to something only he could hear.
‘Brother!’ said Kellendvar.
Again that same inhuman smile split his brother’s features, and Kellendvar thought he heard two voices answering, not one.
‘Back there. They have gone to the roots of Sotha. We go back, then we go deeper.’
TWENTY-NINE
Alpha
Ultra
Betrayal
Primary Location Alpha shook to the beat of the mountain’s quantum pulse. The atmosphere crackled with barely restrained power. Sparks flew from armour. The Mechanicum machines showed a galaxy of red lights. Outside, the red of the Ruinstorm was giving way to the pale steel of predawn. Dantioch glanced at it anxiously through the cave mouth leading out onto the promontory.
‘The machine is ready. We may commence your search for the Nightfall now. If we find the vessel, you will not be able to translocate until after the light event. Only then will the quantum engines be fully charged.’
‘Very well,’ said Krukesh. ‘Proceed.’
‘There is no guarantee this will work, Lord Krukesh. The Pharos has a limited range – it may not grant what you desire.’
‘If it does not,’ said Krukesh, ‘Captain Polux will suffer for it.’
Polux hung limply from a torture cross, barely conscious. Mercifully, he was not seriously hurt, although blood streaked his skin and pain spikes jutted from every interface port in his skin.
‘Think on the Nightfall. You know it well?’ said Dantioch.
‘I have walked its decks many hundreds of times,’ said the Kyroptera lord condesce
ndingly.
‘Then remember it. Call it to mind. I cannot focus on something I do not know the location of, but your desire…’ Dantioch adjusted the machinery, opening the conduits fully. ‘That will find it for you.’
Krukesh turned to face the focus field. He breathed deeply, concentrating, but arrogant and assured of his success. Dantioch moved with care. What he was attempting had to appear harmless.
The black wall of the cave disappeared. The focus field of the Pharos lensed, displaying a smoky nothingness. Dantioch tensed. Krukesh curled his lip at him. ‘Warsmith…’
‘Lord Krukesh!’ said Skraivok. He pointed to the focus field. A wavering in the air became an image, unfocused and bleary.
‘I will see it, warsmith! Show me the flagship of my Legion!’
The image doubled, the two superimposed images slid over each other. The rumble of the xenos engines began to reverberate in the walls.
‘Give it to me!’ snarled Krukesh. His fists were clenched.
‘I am attempting to focus the Pharos! I require time!’
The picture disappeared. Dantioch limped along his array of instruments.
‘Tear out Captain Polux’s tongue!’ snapped Krukesh.
A Night Lord grabbed Polux’s head. Hard ceramite hands tipped it back. A second forced his jaw wide and a third brought up a vicious pair of angled pliers, long and thin, the end tipped with a curved pair of shear blades, the grippers studded with spikes.
‘No!’ said Dantioch. ‘Do not harm him! I am doing as you ask!’
Krukesh shook his head. ‘Too late.’
The shears were forced into Polux’s mouth. At the scrape of metal on his teeth he came fully awake. He threw his head from side to side, then convulsed, the pain spikes burning into his nervous system.
Dantioch became desperate. Affection of this kind was a weakness, he knew, but Polux was his friend.
Polux moaned as the shears nipped at his tongue.
‘Aha!’ said Krukesh. Upon the stage a scene gathered, swimming from obscurity into sharp focus; the command deck of a battleship, umbrous and sinister. ‘The Nightfall! Dantioch holds true to his promise. Hold your actions, brothers,’ said Krukesh. The Night Lords by Polux stopped rooting around in his mouth, and withdrew their implement. Polux spat blood.
‘I will kill you all,’ he said.
‘You see, Dantioch! He speaks.’ Krukesh smiled at the image with satisfaction. On board the ship, pale, malnourished men and women worked in near silence at their stations, their every action watched by darkly clad Night Lords and haughty human officers in uniforms of deepest blue.
‘Brothers of the Legion!’ he called. ‘Heed me!’
They showed no sign of hearing him. The image dimmed.
‘Dantioch,’ he growled.
‘My lord, I must increase the power.’
Dantioch moved as quickly as he could, twisting dial after dial on the instrument banks. He opened every conduit to the quantum engines. Primary Location Alpha trembled with barely channelled energies. A low moan blew through the tunnels. Infrasound thrummed in their bones.
‘Brothers!’ yelled Krukesh.
This time, the crew and warriors aboard the Nightfall did hear him. Space Marines whirled around, guns out. The command crew began shouting, orders and queries passed back and forth.
One legionary came forward. He was helmetless, his armour inscribed with the rank insignia of Exalted Terror Master.
‘What is the meaning of this?’
‘It is I, Krukesh the Pale. Do you not recognise me?’ He held up his arms. ‘I recognise you, Terror Master Thandamell.’
The warriors maintained their alert. ‘By what means do you communicate with us?’
‘A xenos beacon, lately the property of the Thirteenth Legion, now mine.’
‘Impossible, a trick.’
‘It is not a trick, dear Thandamell. Such things I have seen! I will return to you. Sevatar is in chains, the Night Haunter is missing. We must act!’
The Night Lords opened fire. Shouts and yells came from out of sight. Krukesh laughed.
‘I can step aboard at any time I wish, but you cannot touch me. Listen to me! Our primarch has deserted us, and his lapdog First Captain is captured. Our fleets are scattered. We must band together, my fleet and yours, and rendezvous with the rest. The time for licking our wounds is done. Sevatar was too quick in dividing our forces, and has failed dismally in reuniting them. I am here now to save us all from disaster.’
‘And do the warriors of the Atramentar hold with this opinion?’ said Thandamell. He nodded to the Terminators behind Krukesh.
‘Their loyalty is mine to command. Those who could see no sense have been disposed of. They see now that I am the only hope for the Legion.’ This gave Thandamell pause. ‘Surely you see their support gives me legitimacy?’
Thandamell gave a sharp, unfriendly smile. ‘And by this logic we should bow to you like them?’
‘I am Kyroptera,’ said Krukesh. ‘Sevatar was your commander. He is not aboard your ship. He is missing. He abandoned us. I am ranking lord.’
‘Sevatar appointed you,’ said Thandamell. ‘How do I know you will not betray us as he did?’
Krukesh laughed. ‘Come now, Thandamell. I would not be so unsubtle. I only wish to see Sevatar’s orders to regroup fulfilled. Prepare yourselves for my arrival.’
Corvo stepped into Primary Location Ultra carefully. The builders of the Pharos had not cared for guard rails. A sheer drop ended the passage, only passable thanks to a walkway that had been installed there by the Mechanicum.
He stepped onto it and looked out over a huge cavern, bigger than any other they had yet encountered. As with the rest of the Pharos, it was fashioned of altered stone – glossy and black as interstellar space, night trapped in vitreous form. That commonality aside, the room was singular. Here the ergonomic shapes of the tunnels gave way to precisely carved angles. Six massive structures occupied the floor, huge things in the shape of metal ingots. Ribs stretched out of the floor up their sloping sides and onto the roofs of the structures; they did not meet, but left a sharply angled gap down the centre of each. Window slots cut into the sides of the structures alternated with these ribs, and these glowed with a vibrant green light.
The machines appeared to have no motive parts, being made of the same flawless stone that made up the tunnel walls, but the chamber hummed with their industy. A sensation of great power pervaded the room, as palpable as a prickling feeling on the air that grew thicker as they went further in. Corvo found it reminiscent of the funerary monuments of the ancient Gyptians of Terra – a world of granite geometries intended for an eternity.
Were it not for the metal clamps suckered onto the machines and the thick cables that snaked from these to transect the glossy floor, Corvo would have walked cautiously. The clumsiness of the human technology spoiled the purity of the design, but Corvo found them fitting, manacles of plastek, steel and glittering optics, chaining the alien devices to mankind’s will. The Mechanicum had tamed the Pharos.
Oberdeii stepped to the railing around the walkway and rested one hand lightly there. The boy’s face was pale in the green light. ‘This is Primary Location Ultra. Here the quantum engines that power the Pharos, and make its operation possible, are housed,’ he said. More borrowed words. They sounded hollow, inadequate to describe the might of the ancient sciences there arrayed. ‘The Mechanicum’s governing and moderating machinery is in the galleries below the walkway.’ He pointed to a flight of stairs coming off the catwalk. These went down some sixty metres, divided up by short landings.
‘Nova Company veterans,’ ordered Corvo. ‘To your task. We must be swift. The enemy will be here soon.’ He looked across the chamber. Many other tunnels opened into Primary Location Ultra, some lined with Imperial walkways, others gaping unrailed and perilous. ‘Neoph
yte, how many of these lead back to the way we came?’
‘Nobody knows,’ said Oberdeii. His eyes were wide. The word ‘haunted’ sprang into Corvo’s mind. ‘Half a dozen, at least. Some of them have yet to be mapped. You can go everywhere from here. Those there go to the mountain peak eventually.’ He pointed out a trio of square-cut apertures on the far side, the middle one reached by a prefabricated staircase.
This was news Corvo had not wished to hear. He must divide his forces, or risk being cut down by the Night Lords if – when – they came into the chamber.
‘Crassus! Three squads, form a demolition team. Take out the Mechanicum machines. Be careful not to damage the xenos devices.’
‘Immediately, captain,’ said Crassus.
His lieutenant went about his task efficiently, leading thirty-five men down the stairs. Correlus, the strike force’s Techmarine, went with them. Corvo ordered his heavy weapons troopers and support squads into position, covering the walkways and major tunnel entrances.
He called up some of Guilliman’s writings on similar unusual deployments on his helm display. Consulting them, he became engrossed organising the defence until, some time later, Correlus contacted him. A steady pulse played under his message, the voice of the machines intruding on their vox.
‘Captain, I have something you should see.’
‘Affirmative. Neophytes, come with me. You are vulnerable here.’ Oberdeii, Tebecai and their squad mates fell in behind the captain, and they all went down the steps together.
Corvo’s auto-senses registered high static build up and discharged the energy through his boot soles.
The demolition detail ranged throughout the structure, targeting the Mechanicum additions to the xenos devices. A long row of machines lined the wall under the walkway, plugged by snaking cables into the quantum-pulse engines. The cables had been prepared for destruction with phosphor cords, and already melta bombs on remote detonation settings were clamped to the invidual units of Mechanicum cogitator arrays. A number of servitors prowled the aisles on maintenance patterns. They offered no aggression, but were gunned down when encountered by his warriors.