by Guy Haley
‘It is over, Kellenkir, you are free. Skraivok betrayed you.’
‘You? You call that freedom? You took my power!’ Kellenkir snarled. ‘You always were so weak, little brother. I should never have protected you. I should kill you now, and correct my mistake.’
Kellendvar shook his head. His birth heart was leaden in his chest. His secondary heart felt like an abomination nestled beside it, something he had never asked for. His power was a weight on him. Curze was right. The universe was unfeeling, merciless, cruel. There was no hope.
‘No, brother,’ he said, too quietly to be heard over the scream of the Pharos. ‘We both died a long time ago.’
Kellendvar swung his axe around with all his might. Its keen edge swept off the vent of Kellenkir’s backpack, the energy field crackling. The vent fell to the floor. Kellenkir’s head followed it.
Blood pooled around Kellendvar’s feet. The Ultramarines captain stared, swaying unsteadily to his feet, clutching at the sparking rent in his armour. He had a bolt pistol in his hand.
Kellendvar stood tall, and threw his axe aside.
‘Traitor,’ said the captain.
Three rounds hammered into Kellendvar’s chest. Seeing their leader open fire, the Ultramarines followed suit. A dozen bolts hit him at once. They shattered his armour. The explosions of the mass-reactives were separated from each other by milliseconds. They obliterated his flesh, and Kellendvar felt no more.
The shattered headsman fell. His corpse, so much ragged metal and pulverised meat, came to rest lying atop the other. Corvo lowered his gun and put a hand to the crack in his breastplate. The blood was slowing, but the pain was of an unclean kind that refused to die. When his men came to steady him, he couldn’t have shrugged them off had he wanted to.
‘The sword,’ he said hoarsely. ‘It must be destroyed.’
‘Sword?’ one asked.
‘Find it!’
His men searched the slaughtered Night Lords in the golden dazzle of the room, turning them over to look beneath. ‘There’s nothing here, my lord.’
‘Impossible,’ Corvo said. As he said the word he knew it for a lie. He had seen too many impossible things in the last few years to have any faith in the word any more.
The alien engines’ pitch was building, a booming throb now over a pulsing vibrato of infrasound that caused his wound to burn. ‘What is happening?’ he demanded, his vox set at maximum in an effort to be heard.
Techmarine Correlus looked up from the bank of Mechanicum machines. ‘Overload. The draw on the engines increases exponentially as the light event progresses.’
Corvo shoved the men supporting him away and hobbled over.
‘These dials, they show the power draw. See how they are all creeping into the red. As far as I can tell, these machines act as a governor for the xenos engines, dictating how much energy might be utilised. That light event has charged them. The modifications act as a modulator, smoothing out the energy draw. Most of this machinery seems to exist to allow the safe bleeding-off of excess power to allow directed operation. Someone’s directing it now, but that someone’s taken all the governers off.’
‘What will happen when they reach the maximum?’ said Corvo.
‘As my tutors on Mars would say, captain, the Omnissiah acts mysteriously. The ways of the motive force may be understood, from positive to negative and on through the circuit. That which guides it may not.’
‘You do not know.’
‘No. That is what they generally meant when they said that.’
‘And if we proceed with the plan?’
‘The machines are a brake. If we remove it entirely during the light event…’ The Techmarine shrugged. The arms of his tech-adept’s harness mimicked the motion.
‘Give me a theoretical, Correlus.’
‘Destruction of the Mechanicum devices will render the Pharos inoperable until they are replaced as per the plan, but there is a risk – I calculate of forty-five per cent – that we may damage it beyond repair should we remove their moderating influence altogether at this juncture,’ ventured the Techmarine.
Corvo ground his teeth. He tasted blood in his mouth. ‘I’ll not be the one to destroy the Pharos so readily. If I must, I must, but for the time being our objective remains only to cripple it.’ He looked around the entrances to Primary Location Ultra, now brighter shapes within the diffuse illumination of the machine hall. ‘We are alone. Set the charges for remote detonation. When – if – this light event is done and we have a better understanding of the current practical, we will execute our orders.’
The engines roared. The green light emanating from their slots grew in radiance. Arcs of lightning whipped out with loud cracks, leaping all over the engines.
‘Might I suggest we wait from a safe distance, my lord?’ shouted Correlus over the noise.
‘You might suggest, brother Techmarine. How far?’
‘Your theoretical is as good as mine, captain, but we must go now!’
Skraivok’s warning came too late. He pulled a bolter from the grasp of the warrior next to him and opened fire, but his bolts never met their mark. They slowed, pulled at by a force emanting from the interface between Primary Location Alpha and the Nightfall. They came to a stop, spinning miniature missiles, propellant roaring uselessly, until they burned out and hung there, glinting softly.
A strange stillness fell. Dantioch’s eyes were cold and hard and full of hate. The mountain drew in a breath.
Then the Pharos sang an apocalyptic fanfare.
The bolts flew suddenly from the room and onto the Nightfall. Equipment was wrenched from desks. Parchments and data-wafers whipped into the air in a storm, pulled into vortex of light turning around the hole in space leading to the Nightfall’s command deck.
Krukesh’s triumph transformed into horror. He bellowed orders that nobody heard, and raised his gun. One of his Atramentar bodyguards turned to escape. As soon as he lifted one foot from the stage he was yanked from the ground, crashing into the other two that were flanking Krukesh. All three hit the field edge and were caught. They hurtled around and around the vortex’s whipping arms, their forms distorted by the titanic energies exerted upon them by the xenos machine and tearing them limb from limb. Dantioch’s chair was torn from its mountings and tumbled up off the floor and through the threshold.
The other Night Lords around the tuning stage were ripped from their feet and fell screaming into the light. The view of the Nightfall had become a narrow circle swallowed by a roaring swirl of unfettered alien energies. Lightning thrashed it, stabbing out into the room, earthing itself in the armour of legionaries and bursting them apart with crackling energy.
The quantum pulses reached their screaming apex.
Green light burned from the rock of Primary Location Alpha. The remaining Night Lords screamed as their sensitive eyes burned out and their eardrums were shattered by the roar of the device.
Another lowing horn blast echoed from every opening in the mountain. Actinic green flares haloed around the peak. Mount Pharos shook as the full power of its quantum engines was unleashed for the first time in an age.
The energies streamed through Dantioch, ripping at the fabric of his being. The rush of it was exhilarating. His pain was forgotten, even as he knew that he was being disassembled atom by atom. Warnings bleated from the paltry Imperial machinery. One console after another gave out under the strain, showering bouncing sparks over the black floor. Lines of cables burst into flame. Metal melted.
The mountain trembled.
The grinding of stone rumbled up through the corridors as the black glass cracked. Outside, great cliffs tumbled from their footings and roared down into the lowlands.
Polux was tugged at by the draw of the beam, only the spiked manacles biting into his wrists and ankles preventing him from being sucked into the singularity growing in
the wall of the Pharos. He rose up from his cross, dragged at by the light, blood streaming from him where his restraints bit into his flesh.
‘Dantioch! Stop! Stop! You will destroy us all!’
His words were lost in the mountain’s roar. It sounded again, louder than the greatest Titan’s war-horn.
Dantioch was lifted into the air, his arms out, green light whirling around him.
The last Night Lords were plucked away, crumpled into shreds at the edge of the interface field, laid low by lightning or smashed into the walls of Primary Location Alpha. Those that hit the vortex askance left limbs behind. Skraivok took his chances and ran forwards, diving into it head first.
And so only Krukesh remained.
The Lord of the Kyroptera leaned into the storm, head bowed, fighting to plant one foot of his mighty Terminator plate in front of the other. Incredibly, he managed three full steps, teeth gritted, dark eyes narrowed against the gold dazzle of the Pharos.
Surrounded by the wavering shimmer of unfettered energy, Dantioch turned in the air towards Polux. He looked his friend in the eye one final time, and bowed his head.
Then he turned back into the vortex light and roared out his pain, his need to see the Night Lords destroyed driving on the Pharos to destruction.
Krukesh’s legs were tugged out from under him. His gauntleted fingers scrabbled at the floor as he was lifted up.
He went hurtling into the blazing field, his wordless scream loud enough to compete with the Pharos’ roar.
Polux screwed his eyes shut.
Primary Location Alpha exploded. Polux’s restraints ripped free of the cross and he was flung across the room, slamming into the far wall with bone-cracking force. Every machine in the chamber detonated simultaneously.
In a heartbeat, the light went out.
Barabas Dantioch dropped to the floor, armour smoking. His head hit the stone hard, dislodging his mask. It clattered away across the floor, and all was still.
For the first time in untold aeons, the engines of the Pharos fell silent.
THIRTY
Hero
Mask
Last light
Thandamell reeled from the blinding light of the Pharos. The crew of the Nightfall ran before it, too terror-stricken to pay heed to their masters’ barked orders. Mortal men and women clutched at their faces as the beacon’s light seared their retinas blind. Alarms howled. Fearing attack, the Night Lords on the bridge opened fire, gunning down their own crew, firing wildly into the howling light.
Through the screaming maelstrom, others came.
They came in pieces, limbs and heads blasting like cannonballs from light years away, translocated instantaneously by the Pharos. When they hit flesh, they pulverised it. An Atramentar Terminator, his body mangled, hurtled through the portal and slammed into a crew station, destroying it utterly.
More bodies came through. Some had melted, their armour and skin run together like wax. One appeared unharmed, stumbling to a stop on the deck, only to be gunned down by his nervous brethren.
Thandamell forced himself to look into the vortex. The aperture allowing him to see into the cavern on Sotha was shrinking, whirling away into a twist of heatless flame.
‘Stop firing!’ ordered Thandamell. ‘Cease!’
The light grew brighter and brighter, then gave out with a thunderclap that knocked the warriors of the flagship to the ground.
For a moment the command deck of the Nightfall was a void of greenish-white light. Thandamell blinked away painful afterimages and got shakily to his feet. Alarms shrieked. Mortals screamed as they scrambled to exit the command deck.
Scattered all about the plating, draped on crew stations, embedded in the fabric of the walls, were bodies.
The Night Lords from Sotha were dead – all save Krukesh the Pale, and Gendor Skraivok, the Painted Count.
Krukesh knelt, the bat wings on his Terminator cowl twisted askew. He clutched at his face, groaning, blood running between his fingers. Skraivok lumbered to his feet, fighting against the dead weight of his unpowered armour.
Guns were levelled at him.
‘Put up your weapons!’ He pointed a finger at Krukesh. ‘Hearken to me! Krukesh had the chance to rescue Sevatar. He had the chance to find our primarch. But he would not. He wanted power for himself, and bent the power of the artefact on Sotha to his own ends.’
‘Gendor Skraivok,’ said Thandamell. ‘You are hardly the paragon of boundless altruism yourself.’
‘I am but a loyal son of our Legion,’ said Skraivok. He thumped a fist against his chest and bowed with difficulty.
‘Do not listen to him!’ gasped Krukesh. He let his hands drop, and looked around blindly. Within the coffin of his armour, his white face shone wetly with fresh pink burns. ‘He is a poison. Kill him! Get me to the apothecarion, restore my sight. Then we shall make our plans for the regrouping of the Legion.’
Nobody moved.
‘Kill him!’ commanded Krukesh. ‘Why does no one act? I order you!’ His voice rose to a shriek. ‘Kill Skraivok!’
Thandamell looked from Krukesh to Skraivok and back again. The rest of the Night Lords remained still. Skraivok laughed. ‘They will not follow you, O mighty lord of the Kyroptera!’ he said nastily. ‘You have overstepped yourself. The spirit of the Legion lives on. You were unwise to believe you could seize it for yourself. Can’t you see that? No, I suppose you can’t…’
Krukesh attempted to rise, but the weight of his crippled Cataphractii armour was too great, and he howled impotently.
‘You are conceited! Arrogant! Snapping at Sevatar’s heels for scraps of glory just as he whined after our father!’
Skraivok stepped heavily over to the kneeling Kyroptera lord. He plucked a fallen bolt pistol from the deck. Krukesh hunted about for the source of the noise, his sightless eyes blinking.
The Night Lords shifted uneasily. Thandamell held up a hand to stay them.
‘There is but one law from Nostramo to cleave to, Krukesh the Pale. The strong shall prevail, and you are weak. Krukesh the Blind…’ Skraivok fired a single bolt into the head of his superior. ‘Krukesh the Dead.’
Krukesh sagged within his plate, blood sluicing from his shattered cranium.
Skraivok calmly tossed the gun aside.
‘I kill only this traitor to the Legion. I am done with death today. Without our primarch, we are finished as a unified force. We have two choices before us – continue to follow Krukesh’s example and watch our Legion fragment into petty bands under competing warlords, or reforge ourselves into a whole and press on to Terra, to aid the Warmaster in his war against our greatest oppressor of all… the False Emperor of Mankind!’
‘Fine sentiments, Skraivok,’ said Thandamell. ‘We have no idea as to the location of Night Haunter, or the First Captain who abandoned us. You forget we were already ordered to regroup, and without Sevatar or Curze the Kyroptera will continue to fall upon each other. The Legion is done, as are you. It is time we go our separate ways, and yours is darker than mine.’
Boltgun slides were racked. Skraivok laughed in the faces of his brothers.
‘If you would but listen, you would not aim your weapons at me. You would not be so eager to kill your own kind.’
‘You are out of time, Painted Count,’ said Thandamell. He raised his hand.
‘I am not,’ said Skraivok. ‘You will permit me to live, because I know things which will turn the tide of this war, once we relay them to Horus…’
He paused. Silence reigned, and he smiled.
‘Most importantly, that Guilliman’s cronies at Sotha believe that Terra has already fallen. They are not moving to reinforce it – they skulk in Ultramar licking their wounds, thinking that the Warmaster will one day turn his attentions to them. Terra stands without the Ultramarines, Sanguinius’ Angels or the First Legion. It w
ill be ours for the taking!’
Thandamell let out a long breath. His hand clenched and lowered slowly. ‘Very well. We will permit you to live, for now. Brothers – take his sword, then remove him to the brig.’
Skraivok frowned. ‘I have no sword.’
‘Then what is that?’ said Thandamell, pointing to his waist.
Skraivok looked down with a rising sense of dread. Scabbarded at his side was the sword he had given to Kellenkir.
Thandamell’s warriors came for him.
At the very edge of hearing, he heard a dry laugh.
Polux struggled to his hands and knees. The pain spikes were so much junk, like everything else in the room. All the illumination in the chamber was dead. The sun was over the horizon and the light of early morning shone through the aperture of the promontory, highlighting curls of smoke. Shakily, he got up. He plucked the wrecked spikes from his interface ports and shattered his bonds with his Emperor-given strength. He limped through the wreckage-strewn tuning floor, toward the still form of the warsmith, his friend.
‘Brother Dantioch,’ he said. ‘Barabas!’
He cradled the warsmith in his arms, and hope bloomed in him. Dantioch lived, for the moment.
The Iron Warrior’s mask lay on the floor, and so Polux looked upon a face he had never seen. Dantioch was older than he expected. Lines of pain were etched into his scarred face that nothing could erase.
His eyes opened. They moved sightlessly, blinded by the intense flare of the Pharos.
‘Alexis…?’ he whispered.
‘I am here, Barabas.’
The warsmith clutched at the arms encircling him. ‘I never thought to call one such as you friend,’ he smiled.
‘You are my friend, Barabas, and my teacher.’
‘I am dying.’
‘You will live!’ Polux said fiercely.
Dantioch shook his head. Polux wished he had water to give him, anything.
His croaking voice became insistent. ‘Listen to me. I saw such things in the light. This war is only the beginning…’ He swallowed, and his throat clicked painfully. ‘The beginning… of the end…’